"We are only two, and have known each other to-day and yesterday. But
they, you said, are as many as the stars, and have been together many
yesterdays."

Such was the woman's unclinched argument, leaving her listener to draw
the inference. He would not forestall her enlightenment from the grim
page of his own experience. But do not many pure and loving souls pass
through the world without once noticing how bad most of the roads are,
and how vexed the climates? So might not the earthly heaven of
Gnulemah's imagination tenderly blind her to the unheavenly earth of
Balder's knowledge?

Through his abstraction Balder felt on his hand a touch soft as the
flowing of a breath, yet pregnant of indefinite apprehension. When two
clouds meet, there is a hush and calm; but the first seeming-trifling
lightning-flash brings on the storm whereby earth's face is altered.
So Balder, full-charged as the thunder-cloud, awaited fearfully the
first vivid word which should light the way for those he had resolved
to speak.

"I see you with my open eyes, Balder, and touch you and hear you. Is
this the end I thought would come? Balder, are you greatest?" With
full trust she appealed to him to testify concerning himself. This was
the seriousness he had marked beneath the smile.

"Are you content it should be so?"

She plucked a blade of grass and tied it in a knot, and began,
drawing a trembling breath between each few words,--

"O Balder,--if I must kneel to you as to the last and greatest of
all,--if there is nothing too holy to be seen and touched,--if there
is no Presence too sublime for me to comprehend--"

"What then?" asked he, meeting her troubled look with a strong,
cheerful glance.

"Then the world is less beautiful than I thought it; the sun is less
bright, and I am no more pleasing to myself." Tears began to flow down
her noble cheeks; but Balder's eyes grew brighter, seeing which,
Gnulemah was encouraged to continue.

"How could I be happy? for either must I draw myself apart from you--O
Balder!--or else live as your equal, and so degrade you; for I am not
a goddess!"

"Then there are no goddesses on earth, nor gods! Gnulemah, you need
not shrink from me for that."

The beautiful woman smiled through her sparkling eyelashes. She could
love and reverence the man who, as a deity, bewildered and
disappointed her. But was the intuition therefore false which had
revealed to her the grand conception of a supreme, eternal