“You said heaven speed that sail yonder; but the man has taken it down and is rowing in here.”

“Then he’s an impudent loon.  Who asked him?”

“The sight of our tent, very likely.  And maybe it will be some friend of ours, stopping at the Magog House.  He wears a white helmet-hat; and isn’t that a yachting-suit of white flannel?”

“He comes clothed as an angel of light,” said Adam.

They both watched the figure and the boat growing larger in perspective.  Features formed in the blur under the rower’s hat; his individuality sprung suddenly from a shape which a moment ago might have been any man’s.

“Oh, Adam, it will be Louis Satanette from Toronto,” exclaimed Eva.

“And what’s a Toronto man doing away up on Lake Magog?”

“What will a Glasgow man be doing away off here on Lake Magog?”

“Camping with his wife, and getting more religion than ever was taught in the creeds.”

“I’m not so sure of that, then.”

“Because I don’t love a Frenchman?”

“A French-Canadian.  And a member of Parliament, too.  Think of that at his age!  They say in Toronto he is one of the most promising men in the provinces.”

“Can he spear a salmon with a gaff, and does he know a pairch from a lunge?  And he couldn’t be a Macgregor, anyhow, if he was first man in Canada.”

Eva laughed, and, forming her lips into a kiss, slyly impressed the same upon the air, as if it could reach Adam through some invisible pneumatic tube.  He was not ashamed to make a return in kind; and, the boat being now within their bay, they went down to the sand to meet it.

II.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT.

In spotless procession the days moved along until that morning on which Adam dreamed his dream.  He waked up trembling with joy and feeling the tears run down his face.  His watch ticked like the beating of a pulse under his pillow, and he kept time to its rhythm with whispered words no human ear would ever hear him utter with such rapture.

He had dreamed of breasting oceans and groping through darkness after his wife until he was ready to die.  Then, while he lay helpless, she came to him and lifted him up in her arms.  There was perfect and unearthly union between them.  His happiness became awful.  He woke up shaken by it as by a hand of infinite power.

Instead of turning toward her, he was still.  Such experiences cannot be told.  The tongue falters and words limp when we try to repeat them to the one beloved.  A divine shame keeps us silent.  Perhaps the glory of that perfect love puts 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.