Meanwhile her last objection remained unanswered, and Balder, distrustful of his capacity, was inspired to seek inspiration from her he would instruct.

“Tell me how you love me, Gnulemah,” said he.

She roused herself, and bending her face to his, breathlessly kissed his lips.  Then she drooped her warm cheek on his shoulder, and whispered the rest:—­

“My love is to be near you, and to breathe when breathe; it is love to become you, as water becomes wave.  And love would make me sweet to you, as honey and music and flowers.  I love to be needed by you, as you need food and drink and sleep; and my love will be loved, as God loves the world.”

To the lover these sentences were tender and sublime poetry.  The tears came to his eyes, hearing her speak out her loving soul so simply.  He had travelled through the world, while she had lived her life between a wall and a precipice.  But not the noisy, gaudy, gloomy crust which is fresh to-day, and to-morrow hardens, and the next day crumbles, is the world; but the fire-globe within:  and Gnulemah was nearer that fire than Balder.  There was puissance in her simplicity,—­in her ignorance of that crust which he had so widely studied.  Her knowledge was more profound than his, for she had never learned to stultify it with reasons.

“It is true,—­God only can know our love,” said Balder, and, having said it, he felt his mind clear and strengthen.  For it is the acknowledgment of God that lends the deepest seeing to the eye, and tunes the universe to man; and Balder, at this moment of mingled love, humility, and fear, made and confessed that supreme discovery.—­“Only He knows what our love is, but the marriage-rite informs the world that He knows it.”

“But why must the world know?” persisted Gnulemah, still seeming to shrink at the idea.

“Because it is wholesome for all men to know that we have made God party to our union.  That our love may be pure and immortal, we must look through each other to Him; the acknowledgment will keep others as well as ourselves from misusing love’s happiness.”

“Then, after we have knelt together before Him, we shall be no longer two, but one!” Gnulemah spoke, after some pause, in a full tone of joy; yet her voice shrank at the last, from the feeling that she had penetrated all at once to a holy place.  A delicious fear seized her, and she clung to her lover so that he could perceive the tremor that agitated her.

No more was said.  Their confidence was in each other; with Balder at her side, Gnulemah was fearful of the world no longer.  But her visions were all spiritual; even the kisses on her lips were to her a sacred miracle!  Love makes children of men and women,—­shows them the wisdom of unreason and the value of soap-bubbles.  These lovers must meet the world, but the light and freshness of the Golden Age should accompany them.  The man held the maiden’s hand, and so faced the future with a smile.