Emerging arm in arm on the enchanted lawn the lovers turned southwards up the winding avenue.  The fragrance, the light and warmth, the bird and insect voices, imperfectly expressed their own heart-happiness.  The living turf softly pressed up their feet.  This was the fortunate hour that comes not twice.  Happy those to whom it comes at all!  To live was such full bliss, every new movement overflowed the cup.  Joy was it to look on earth and sky; but to behold each other was heaven!  More life in a moment such as this, than in twenty years of scheming more successful than Manetho’s.

They followed the same path Helen had walked the eve of her death; and presently arrived at the old bench.  Shadow and sunshine wrestled playfully over it, while the green blood of the leaves overhead glowed vividly against the blue.  Around the bench the grass grew taller, as on a grave; and crisp lichens, gray and brown, overspread its surface.  Man had neglected it so long that Nature, overcoming her diffidence towards his handiwork, had at length claimed it for her own.

The glade was full of great golden dandelions, whose soft yellow crowns were almost too heavy for the slender necks.  The prince and princess of the fairy-tale paused here, recognizing the spot as the most beautiful on earth,—­albeit only since their love’s arrival.  They seated themselves not on the bench, but on the yet more primitive grass beside it.  They had not spoken as yet.  Balder plucked some dandelions, and proceeded to twist them into a chain; and Gnulemah, after watching him for a while followed his example.

“You and I have sat on the grass and woven such chains before,” asserted she at length.  “When was it?”

“I haven’t done such a thing since I was a child not much taller than a dandelion,” returned Balder.  He was not ethereal enough to follow Gnulemah in her apparently fanciful flight, else might he have lighted on a discovery to which all the good sense and logic in the world would not have brought him.

“Yes; we have made these chains before!” reiterated Gnulemah, looking at her companion in a preoccupied manner.  “They were to have chained us together forever.”

“We should have made them of stronger stuff then.  But which of us broke the chain?”

“They took us away from each other, and it was never finished.  Do you remember nothing?”

“The present is enough for me,” said her lover; and he finished his necklace with a handsome clasp of blossoms, and threw it over her neck.  She gave a low sigh of satisfaction.

“I have been waiting for it ever since that time!  And here is mine for you.”

Thus adorned by each other’s hands, their love seemed greater than before, and they laughed from pure delight.  Their bonds looked fragile; yet it would need a stronger wrench to part them than had they been cables of iron or gold, unsustained by the subtile might of love.