each other's
eyes--sometimes out across the fields, sloping toward sunset. The
world seemed young as they, and the sky was fairly singing, with voices
sweet as kisses from dear lips long absent,--those voices saying,
saying always, "Life is fair--is fair;" and receding, as blown by on a
gentle wind, drifted "Life is fair;" and the lovers looked at each
other and were glad.

He was an artist, and his idle hand wrought pictures unconsciously. He
did not think things, but saw things. His lips were not given to
frequent speech, even with the woman he loved. He saw her, whether he
sat thus beside her or whether he sat apart from her with seas
between--he saw her always; for his was the gift of sight. He saw
visions as rapt prophets do. Life was a pageant, and he saw it all.

His brush is part of his hand, and his palette is as his hand's palm.
Painting is to him monologue. He is telling what he sees; talking to
himself, as children and poets do. Now, he talks to the woman he loves
and to himself in pictures, she saying nothing, save as her hand speaks
in a caress, and that her eyes are dreamy sweet; and the artist's hand
dreams over the paper with glancing touch, and this picture grows
before their eyes: A man and a woman, young and fair, are on a hilltop
alone, looking across a meadowland, lovely with spring and blossoms and
love-making of the birds; and ponds where lily-pads shine in the sun,
like metal patines, floating on the pool; and a flock lying in a quiet
place; and a lad plowing in a field, the blackbirds following his
furrow; and a blue sky, with dainty clouds of white faint against it,
like breathing against a window-pane in winter; and a farmhouse, where
early roses cluster, and little children are at play,--this, and his
brush loiters, and the woman knows her artist has painted a picture of
youth; and both look away as in a happy dream.

The artist paints again: and the landscape is in nothing changed. It
might have been a reprint rather than a repainting. A morning land,
where beauty and bounty courted like man and maid. No tints were lost.
The sunlight was unfailing, and roses clustered with their spendthrift
grace and loveliness; and the woman, looking at her lover, wondered why
he painted the same landscape twice, but, waiting, saw the artist paint
two figures, a man and woman at life's prime. She sees they are the
youth and maid of the first picture, only older--and what besides?
Then they