The words fell from her lips naturally.  To her it seemed true that she had indeed waited long and hoped and thought of him.  And it was not all false.  Ever since her childhood she had been told to wait, for her love would come and would come only once.  And so it was true, and the dream grew sweeter and the illusion of the enchantment more enchanting still.  For it was an enchantment and a spell that bound them together there, among the flowers, the drooping palms, the graceful tropic plants and the shadowy leaves.  And still the day rose higher, but still the lamps burned on, fed by the silent, mysterious current that never tires, blending a real light with an unreal one, an emblem of Unorna’s self, mixing and blending, too, with a self not hers.

“And the sun is risen, indeed,” she added presently.

“Am I the sun, dear?” he asked, foretasting the delight of listening to her simple answer.

“You are the sun, beloved, and when you shine, my eyes can see nothing else in heaven.”

“And what are you yourself—­Beatrice—­no, Unorna—­is that the name you chose?  It is so hard to remember anything when I look at you.”

“Beatrice—­Unorna—­anything,” came the answer, softly murmuring.  “Anything, dear, any name, any face, any voice, if only I am I, and you are you, and we two love!  Both, neither, anything—­do the blessed souls in Paradise know their own names?”

“You are right—­what does it matter?  Why should you need a name at all, since I have you with me always?  It was well once—­it served me when I prayed for you—­and it served to tell me that my heart was gold while you were there, as the goldsmith’s mark upon his jewel stamps the pure metal, that all men may know it.”

“You need no sign like that to show me what you are,” said she, with a long glance.

“Nor I to tell me you are in my heart,” he answered.  “It was a foolish speech.  Would you have me wise now?”

“If wisdom is love—­yes.  If not——­” She laughed softly.

“Then folly?”

“Then folly, madness, anything—­so that this last, as last it must, or I shall die!”

“And why should it not last?  Is there any reason, in earth or Heaven, why we two should part?  If there is—­I will make that reason itself folly, and madness, and unreason.  Dear, do not speak of this not lasting.  Die, you say?  Worse, far worse; as much as eternal death is worse than bodily dying.  Last?  Does any one know what for ever means, if we do not?  Die, we must, in these dying bodies of ours, but part—­no.  Love has burned the cruel sense out of that word, and bleached its blackness white.  We wounded the devil, parting, with one kiss, we killed him with the next—­this buries him—­ah, love, how sweet——­”

There was neither resistance nor the thought of resisting.  Their lips met and were withdrawn only that their eyes might drink again the draught the lips had tasted, long draughts of sweetness and liquid light and love unfathomable.  And in the interval of speech half false, the truth of what was all true welled up from the clear depths and overflowed the falseness, till it grew falser and more fleeting still—­as a thing lying deep in a bright water casts up a distorted image on refracted rays.