n sections this afternoon."
"What's on her mind now?" Eugene Wellington asked, as he leaned
easefully back in his chair.
"She says I am heir--" Jerry always wondered what made her pause there.
Years afterward, when this June evening came back in memory, she could
not account for it.
"Heir to what?" the young artist inquired, a faint, shadowy something
sweeping his countenance fleetly.
"To all the sphere,
To the seven stars and the solar year;
also to my father's entire estate that's left after some two years of
litigation. I hate litigations."
"So do I, Jerry. Let's forget them. Isn't 'Eden' beautiful? I'm so glad
to be back here again." Eugene Wellington looked out at the idyllic
loveliness of the place which the rose-arbor was built especially to
command. "Nobody could sin here, for there are no serpents busy-bodying
around in such a dream of a landscape as this. I'm glad I'm an artist,
if I never become famous. There's such a joy in being able to see, even
if your brush fails miserably in trying to make others see."
Again the man's shapely hand fell gently on the girl's hand, and this
time it stayed there.
"You love it all as much as I do, don't you, Jerry?" The voice was deep
with emotion. "And you feel as I do, how this lifts one nearer to God.
Or is it because you are here with me that 'Eden' is so fair to-night?
May I tell you something, Jerry? Something I've waited for the summer
and 'Eden' to give me the hour and the place to say? We've always known
each other. We thought we did before, but a new knowing came to me the
day your father left us. Look up, little cousin. I want to say
something to you."
June-time, and youth, and roses, and soft, sweet air, and nobody there
but blossoms, and whispering breezes, and these two. And they had known
each other always. Oh, always! But now--something was different now,
something that was grander, more beautiful in this place, in this day,
in each other, than had ever been before--the old, old miracle of a man
and a maid.
Suddenly something whizzed through the air and a snakelike streak of
shadow cut the light of the doorway. Out in the open, Uncle Cornie came
slowly stepping off the space to where his discus lay beside the
rose-arbor--one of the good little snakes. Every Eden has them, and some
are much better than others.
The discus-ground was out on a lovely stretch of shorn clover sod. Why
the discus should wander from the thrower's h
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