“Let us link them together,” proposed Balder; and, loosening a link of his chain, he reunited it inside Gnulemah’s.  “We must keep together,” he continued with a smile, “or the marriage-bonds will break.”

“Is this marriage, Balder? to be tied together with flowers?”

“One part of marriage.  It shows the world that we belong only to each other.”

“How could they help knowing that,—­for to whom else could we belong? besides, why should they know?”

“Because,” answered Balder after some consideration, “the world is made in such a way, that unless we record all we do by some visible symbol, everything would get into confusion.”

“No no,” protested Gnulemah, earnestly.  “Only God should know how we love.  Must the world know our words and thoughts, and how we have sat beneath these trees?—­Then let us not be married!”

They were leaning side to side against the bench, along whose edge Balder had stretched an arm to cushion Gnulemah’s head.  As he turned to look at her, a dash of sunlight was quivering on her clear smooth cheek, and another ventured to nestle warmly below the head of the guardian serpent on her bosom, for Gnulemah and the sun had been lovers long before Balder’s appearance.  Where breathed such another woman?  From the low turban that pressed her hair to the bright sandals on her fine bronze feet, there was no fault, save her very uniqueness.  She belonged not to this era, but to the Golden Age, past or to come.  Could she ever be conformed to the world of to-day?  Dared her lover assume the responsibility of revealing to this noble soul all the meanness, sophistries, little pleasures, and low aims of this imperfect age?  Could he change the world to suit her needs? or endure to see her change to suit the world?  Moreover, changing so much, might she not change towards him?  The Balder she loved was a grander man than any Balder knew.  Might she not learn to abhor the hand which should unveil to her the Gorgon features of fallen humanity?—­Much has man lost in losing Paradise!

Contemplating Gnulemah’s entrance into the outer world, Manetho had anticipated her ruin from the flowering of the evil seed which he believed himself to have planted in her.  Might not the same result issue from a precisely opposite cause?  The Arcadian fashion in which the lovers’ passion had ripened must soon change forever.  It was perilous to advance, but to retreat was impossible.  Balder was at bay; had he loved Gnulemah less, he would have regretted Charon’s ferry-boat.  But his love was greater for the danger and difficulty wherewith it was fraught.  He could not summon the millennium; well, he might improve himself.

“If I could but shut her glorious eyes to all the shabby littleness they will have to see, we might hazard the rest,” he sighed to himself.  “If the pure visions of her maiden years might veil from her those gross realities of every-day life!  With what face shall I meet her glance after it has suffered the first shock?”