This also is part of the proper heritage of man and woman, and whoso has missed it may attain wealth or ambition, may exhaust the earth—­yet shall die without fully or truly living.

A moment they stood in silence, swaying a little like twin flowers in the wind of the morning.  Then taking hands like children, they slowly walked away with their faces towards the sunrise.  There was the light of a new life in their eyes.  It is good sometimes to live altogether in the present.  “Sufficient unto the day is the good thereof,” is a proverb in all respects equal to the scriptural original.

For a little while they thus walked silently forward, and on the crest of the ridge above the nestling farm Ralph paused to take his last look of Craig Ronald.  Winsome turned with him in complete comprehension, though as yet he had told her no word of his projects.  Nor did she think of any possible parting, or of anything save of the eyes into which she did not cease to look, and the lover whose hand it was enough to hold.  All true and pure love is an extension of God—­the gladness in the eyes of lovers, the tears also, bridals and espousals, the wife’s still happiness, the delight of new-made homes, the tinkle of children’s laughter.  It needs no learned exegete to explain to a true lover what John meant when he said, “For God is love.”  These things are not gifts of God, they are parts of him.

It was at this moment that Meg Kissock, having seen them stand a moment still against the sky, and then go down from their hilltop towards the north, unlocked the stable door, at which Ebie Fairrish had been vainly hammering from within for a quarter of an hour.  Then she went indoors and pulled close the curtains of Winsome’s little room.  She came out, locked the bedroom door, and put the key in her pocket.  Her mistress had a headache.  Meg was a treasure indeed, as a thoughtful person about a household often is.

As Winsome and Ralph went down the farther slope of the hill, towards the road that stretched away northward across the moors, they fell to talking together very practically.  They had much to say.  Before they had gone a mile the first strangeness had worn off, and the stage of their intimacy may be inferred from the fact that they were only at the edge of the great wood of Grannoch bank, when Winsome reached the remark which undoubtedly Mother Eve made to her husband after they had been some time acquainted: 

“Do you know, I never thought I should talk to any one as I am talking to you?”

Ralph allowed that it was an entirely wonderful thing—­indeed, a belated miracle.  Strangely enough, he had experienced exactly the same thought.  “Was it possible?” smiled Winsome gladly, from under the lilac sunbonnet.

Such wondrous and unexampled correspondence of impression proved that they were made for one another, did it not?  At this point they paused.  Exercise in the early morning is fatiguing.  Only the unique character of these refreshing experiences induces us to put them on record.