a halo around our common thoughts and actions for
days afterward, but no man or woman can fitly say, "I was in heaven with
you, my other soul, and the gladness was so mighty that I cried
helplessly long after I woke."
Adam kept his sleeve across his eyes. He had risked his life in many an
adventure without changing a pulse-beat, but now he was an infant in the
grasp of emotion.
When at last he cast a furtive glance at Eva's cot, she was not there.
She often slipped out in the early morning to drench herself with dew.
Once he had discovered her stooping on the sand, washing soiled clothes
in the lake. She clapped and rubbed the garments between soap and her
little fists. The sun was just coming up in the far northeast. Shapes of
mist gyrated slowly upward in the distance, and all the morning birds
were rushing about, full of eager business. Eva stopped her humming song
when she saw him, and laughed over her unusual employment. The first
time she ever washed clothes in her life she wanted to have Magog for
her tub and accomplish the labor on a vast and princess-like scale. Adam
helped her spread the wet things on bushes, and they both marvelled at
the bleached dazzle which the sun gave to those garments.
He did not move from the cot, hoping awhile that she might come in,
dew-footed, and yet kiss him. That clear shining of the face which one
sometimes observes in pure-minded devotees, or in young mothers over
their firstborn, gave him a look of nobility in the pallid shadow of the
tent.
He thought of all their days on the island, and, incidentally, of Louis
Satanette's frequent comings. The Frenchman was a beautiful, versatile
fellow. He sailed a boat, he swam, he fished knowingly, he sang like an
angel, leaning his head back against a tree to let the moonlight touch
up his ivory face and silky moustache and eyebrows. He had firm,
marble-white fingers, nicely veined, on which reckless exposure to sun
and wind had no effect, and the kindliest blue eyes that ever beamed
equal esteem upon man and woman. Sometimes this Satanette came in a
blue-flannel suit, the collar turned well back from the throat, and in a
broad straw hat wound with pink and white tarlatan. He looked like a
flower,--if any flower ever expressed along with its beauty the powerful
nerve of manliness.
Frequently he sailed out from Magog House and stayed all night on the
island, slinging his own hammock between trees. Then he and Adam rose
early and
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