II.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT.


In spotless procession the days moved along until that morning on which
Adam dreamed his dream. He waked up trembling with joy and feeling the
tears run down his face. His watch ticked like the beating of a pulse
under his pillow, and he kept time to its rhythm with whispered words no
human ear would ever hear him utter with such rapture.

He had dreamed of breasting oceans and groping through darkness after
his wife until he was ready to die. Then, while he lay helpless, she
came to him and lifted him up in her arms. There was perfect and
unearthly union between them. His happiness became awful. He woke up
shaken by it as by a hand of infinite power.

Instead of turning toward her, he was still. Such experiences cannot be
told. The tongue falters and words limp when we try to repeat them to
the one beloved. A divine shame keeps us silent. Perhaps the glory of
that perfect love puts a halo around our common thoughts and actions for
days afterward, but no man or woman can fitly say, "I was in heaven with
you, my other soul, and the gladness was so mighty that I cried
helplessly long after I woke."

Adam kept his sleeve across his eyes. He had risked his life in many an
adventure without changing a pulse-beat, but now he was an infant in the