And after this their came for our pair of embryo lovers some ten or twelve such happy days (for there was no talk of Arthur’s departure, Philip having on several occasions pointedly told him that the house was at his disposal for as long as he chose to remain in it).  The sky was blue in those days, or only flecked with summer clouds, just as Arthur and Angela’s perfect companionship was flecked and shaded with the deeper hues of dawning passion.  Alas, the sky in this terrestrial clime is never quite blue!

But as yet nothing of love had passed between them, no kiss or word of endearment; only when hand touched hand a strange thrill had moved them both, and sent the warm blood to stain Angela’s clear brow, like a wavering tint of sunlight thrown upon the marble features of some white Venus; only in each other’s eyes they found a holy mystery.  The spell was not yet fully at work, but the wand of earth’s great enchanter had touched them, and they were changed.  Angela is hardly the same girl she was when we met her a little more than a fortnight back.  A nameless change has come over her face and manner; the merry smile, once so bright, has grown softer and more sweet, and the laughing light of her grey eyes has given place to a look of some such gratitude and wonder, as that with which the traveller in lonely deserts gazes on the oasis of his perfect rest.

Many times Arthur had almost blurted out the truth to the woman he passionately adored, and every day so added to the suppressed fire of his love that at length he felt that he could not keep his secret to himself much longer.  And yet he feared to tell it; better, he thought, to live happy, if in doubt, than to risk all his fortune on a single throw, for before his eyes there lay the black dread of failure; and then, what would life be worth?  Here with Angela he lived in a Garden of Eden that no forebodings, no anxieties, no fear of that partially scotched serpent George, could render wretched, so long as it was gladdened by the presence of her whom he hoped to make his Eve.  But without, and around where she could not be, there was nothing but clods and thistles and a black desolation that, even in imagination, he dared not face.

And Angela, gazing on veiled mysteries with wondering eyes, was she happy during those spring-tide days?  Almost; but still there was in her heart a consciousness of effort, a sense of transformation and knowledge of the growth of hidden things.  The bud bursting into the glory of the rose, must, if there be feeling in a rose, undergo some such effort before it can make its beauty known; the butterfly but newly freed from the dull husk that hid its splendours, at first must feel the imperfect wings it stretches in the sun to be irksome to its unaccustomed sense.  And so it was with Angela; she spread her half-grown wings in the sun of her new existence, and found them strange, not knowing as yet that they were shaped to bear her to the flower-crowned heights of love.