through which he had
just passed.

The path was wide enough for two, and side by side they moved slowly
forward.

The somber garb in which he was dressed, and the brilliant colors of her
apparel, afforded a contrast like that between a pheasant and a scarlet
tanager. Color, form, motion--all were perfect. They fitted into the
scene without a jar or discord, and enhanced rather than disturbed the
harmony of the drowsy landscape.

As they walked onward, they vaguely felt the influence of the repose
that was stealing upon the tired world; the intellectual and volitional
elements of their natures becoming gradually quiescent, the emotions
were given full sway. They felt themselves drawn toward each other by
some irresistible power, and, although they had never before been
conscious of any incompleteness of their lives, they suddenly discovered
affinities of whose existence they had never dreamed. Their two
personalities seemed to be absorbed into one new mysterious and
indivisible being, and this identity gave them an incomprehensible joy.
Over them as they walked, Nature brooded, sphynx-like. Their young and
healthy natures were tuned in unison with the harmonies of the world
like perfect instruments from which the delicate fingers of the great
Musician evoked a melody of which she never tired, reserving her
discords for a future day. On this delicious evening she permitted them
to be thrilled through and through with joy and hope and she accompanied
the song their hearts were singing with her own multitudinous voices.
"Be happy," chirped the birds; "be happy," whispered the evening
breeze; "be happy," murmured the brook, running along by their side and
looking up into their faces with laughter. The whole world seemed to
resound with the refrain, "Be happy! Be happy! for you are young, are
young, are young!"

Pepeeta first broke the silence.

"I had never heard of the things about which you talked," she said.

"Thee never had? How could that be? I thought that every one knew them!"

"I must have lived in a different world from yours."

"What sort of a world has thee lived in?"

"A world of fairs and circuses, of traveling everywhere and never
stopping anywhere."

"Has thee never been in a church?"

"Never until that night."

"And thee knows nothing of God?"

"Nothing except the gypsy god, and he was not like yours."

"And thee was happy?"

"I thought so until I heard what you said. Since then I have be