Instead of turning back to the house behind them, the two, without
speaking, as though obeying a common impulse, set out down the canyon.
A little later they stood in the old spring glade, where the alders bore,
still, in the smooth, gray bark of their trunks, the memories of long-ago
lovers; where the light fell, slanting softly through the screen of leaf
and branch and vine and virgin's-bower, upon the granite boulder and the
cress-mottled waters of the spring, as through the window traceries of a
vast and quiet cathedral; and where the distant roar of the mountain
stream trembled in the air like the deep tones of some great organ.
Sibyl, dressed in her brown, mountain costume, was sitting on the boulder,
when the artist said softly, "Look!"
Lifting her eyes, as he pointed, she saw two butterflies--it might almost
have been the same two--with zigzag flight, through the opening in the
draperies of virgin's-bower. With parted lips and flushed cheeks, the girl
watched. Then--as the beautiful creatures, in their aerial waltz, whirled
above her head--she rose, and lightly, gracefully,--almost as her winged
companions,--accompanied them in their dance.
The winged emblems of innocence and purity flitted away over the willow
wall.
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