He had come one evening and found Orient among the grape-vines, playing with a parcel of little children, as pretty, bright, and fresh as a bunch of flowers. After the hubbub of business, the dust of travel, this garden, in a far outlying city suburb stretching towards the sea, seemed as pure and innocent as Eden. On Sunday morning, when the air soared illumined with a stiller lustre, when the azure deepened as if fresh-washed by sacred rains and dews, when the winds bore no murmur but that of ripening leaf and floating petal, when the birds themselves seemed to sing in the Sabbath, and all the wide world to be gladly and tranquilly conscious of the day,--they went to church together. If Orient was rapt in the worship, Reymund was at an exaltation as high for him,--rapt in his worship of her. By times this very thing lifted him into the upper region, his soul rose buoyant on the prayer and praise, and floated forward like a waif on the full tide of the organ’s music. When, afterward, he found himself and his sentience again, he said the thing was in him,--could he but keep the pitch,--were Orient forever by him to give him that key-note. But alone we come into this world, alone we go out of it. Neither Orient nor another could, for all eternity, give the tone to any soul; that discord or that harmony which one shall make must be the result of one’s own being. He sat with Orient, in the afternoon, on the bank of turf that sloped down to the clear, brown brook, in whose bed many a diving and dipping sunbeam wrought mosaics of light and shade with the shining pebbles. The brook rustled and lilted on its way, a bird above it turned its burden into melody, now and then a waft of wind rippled all its course till the lily leaves shivered and turned up their crimson linings, soft clouds chased one another across the sky,--everything around wore the bloom of peace and pleasure. “I often fear,” said Reymund, “that I must come here no more. The place grows too dear for one that must some day leave it.” Orient turned and looked at him. He saw her tremble. “Not come here any more!” she said. “Ah, Orient!” he cried, “once I declared to you the purpose of my life. Sometimes--now--sometimes--it seems to me as if you were almost won.” He bent above her, glowing and passionate and daring. She trembled again, neither drew away, nor surrendered herself to the waiting grasp. “I do not know,” she answered him, the globy tears suffusing her eyes till each one shone like the great star that hung its blue lamp in the zenith that night when they were lost upon the mountain. “Perhaps I cannot read my heart; but does a woman really love that which is less strong than herself? I must lean upon my husband, not he on me.”