Page 200 - The snake's pass

188 THE snake's pass. ! ;
We sat on the boulder, hand in hand, and whispering
confessed to each other, in the triumph of our love, all
those little secrets of the growth of our affection that
lovers hold dear. That final separation, which had been
spoken of but a while ago, was kept out of sight by
mutual consent; the dead would claim its dead soon
enough. Love lives in the present and in the sunshine
finds its joy.
Well, the men of old knew the human heart, when
they fixed upon the butterfly as the symbol of the soul
for the rainbow is but sunshine through a cloud, and
love, like the butterfly, takes the colours of the rainbow
on its aery wings!
Long we sat in that beauteous spot. High above us
towered the everlasting rocks the green of nature's
;
planting lay beneath our feet ; and far off the reflec-
tion of the sunset lightened the dimness of the soft
twilight over the wrinkled sea.
We said little, as we sat hand in hand; but the
silence was a poem, and the sound of the sea, and the
beating of our hearts were hymns of praise to nature
and to nature's God.
We spoke no more of the future; for now that we
knew that we were each beloved, the future had but
little terror for us. We were content
When we had taken our last kiss, and parted beneath
the shadow of the rock, I watched her depart through
the gloaming to her own home; and then I too took my
way. At the foot of the Boreen I met Murdock, who