Edith began to love her quietude, and grow merry, but with an angelic merriment. “Do you think that the Lord came down to the garden only at evening?” she asked. “I think he came at early morning, unless he stayed all night--morning is so beautiful! How alive everything is! You can almost see eyes in the flowers. See the swans on the water. They float like clouds in the sky. Fancy a pink swan in a large blue lake, throwing up sprays as white as snow over his bosom! Do you think that the earth was any more beautiful when it was first made? Is it not lovely now?” There was no answer in words, but the young man’s eyes, glancing about, were eloquent, and his smile was one of peaceful delight. “Come,” the girl said, “let’s play that this is really the Garden of Eden, and that you and I are just taking our first walk in it, wondering over everything. Let us look at ourselves in the water, and see if we are as beautiful as all the rest.” He smiled at the childish fancy, took the hand she offered him, and went with her over the water. The swans passed by, and sent ripples over their mirror, but it was clear enough to give back the image of a sweet oval face with bright eyes and lips, and of another face more richly tinted, peach-colored with sun and wind, with eyes that sparkled, and white teeth that laughed through a chestnut beard. “Adam,” said the woman, “thou art more stately than the palm, and thine eyes have beams like the sun. Let us praise the Creator who hath formed thee in his own image!” Dick’s hand and voice trembled, his face grew red in the water, then grew pale. “Eve,” he said, “thou art whiter and more graceful than the swan, and, while thou art speaking, the birds listen. I praise him who has given thee to me to be mine alone and for ever--my mate in this world and in the next.” Speaking, his light clasp grew tight on her hand. The face and throat that had shown swan-white in the water grew rose-red, then disappeared as Edith started back. “How could I look forward to anything else, Edith?” the young man exclaimed desperately. “I have never dreamed of any other life. I have worked, and studied, and hoped for you. What! will you turn away from me now, for the first time? God have mercy on me!” She did not utter a word at first. She was too much confounded. It was to her as though the friend she had so long known had been suddenly snatched from her side, and a stranger like, and yet unlike, him put in his place. This man with the pallid face and trembling voice was not Dick Rowan. She wanted to get away from him. But after a step or two she turned back again. “Who would have thought it?” she said, looking at him anxiously, as though half hoping that the whole was a jest. “Who would have thought anything else?” he replied, taking courage. 28 She turned away again, but he walked on beside her. It was too late to withdraw. Having spoken, he must say all.