came! O Abel, was that the
something you told me about on the mountain? And the other was lost for
ever, and she was alone in the forests and mountains of the world. Oh,
why do we cry for what is lost? Why do we not quickly forget it and feel
glad again? Now only do I know what you felt, O sweet mother, when you
sat still and cried, while I ran about and played and laughed! O poor
mother! Oh, what pain!" And hiding her face against my neck, she sobbed
once more.

To my eyes also love and sympathy brought the tears; but in a little
while the fond, comforting words I spoke and my caresses recalled her
from that sad past to the present; then, lying back as at first,
her head resting on my folded cloak, her body partly supported by my
encircling arm and partly by the rock we were leaning against,
her half-closed eyes turned to mine expressed a tender assured
happiness--the chastened gladness of sunshine after rain; a soft
delicious languor that was partly passionate with the passion
etherealized.

"Tell me, Rima," I said, bending down to her, "in all those troubled
days with me in the woods had you no happy moments? Did not something in
your heart tell you that it was sweet to love, even before you knew what
love meant?"

"Yes; and once--O Abel, do you remember that night, after returning from
Ytaioa, when you sat so late talking by the fire--I in the shadow, never
stirring, listening, listening; you by the fire with the light on your
face, saying so many strange things? I was happy then--oh, how happy! It
was black night and raining, and I a plant growing in the dark, feeling
the sweet raindrops falling, falling on my leaves. Oh, it will be
morning by and by and the sun will shine on my wet leaves; and that
made me glad till I trembled with happiness. Then suddenly the lightning
would come, so bright, and I would tremble with fear, and wish that
it would be dark again. That was when you looked at me sitting in the
shadow, and I could not take my eyes away quickly and could not meet
yours, so that I trembled with fear."

"And now there is no fear--no shadow; now you are perfectly happy?"

"Oh, so happy! If the way back to the wood was longer, ten times, and
if the great mountains, white with snow on their tops, were between, and
the great dark forest, and rivers wider than Orinoco, still I would go
alone without fear, because you would come after me, to join me in the
wood, to be with me at last and always."

"But I