Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/94

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CONFESSIONS OF A WIFE

past buried treasure; and then I am hurled up and back, and thrown panting on the shore. Then I perceive that I am a weed upon a wave, and whithersoever the wave wills, there am I borne, and because I am a weed I do not buffet the wave, but love it, and it driveth me, for it is a wave.

But I do not show these things that I perceive to him.

For the princess hid from him.

Of flying or drowning we do not speak together. And he calls me a truant of the heart. What paradise is betrothal! I would be his promised wife forever. I do not think that Adam and Eve in Eden were married for a long time. And if they had never been married at all, Paradise would have been eternal. There can be no doubt of that.

August the twelfth.

A terrible thing has happened. Paradise is lost. So soon, too soon, I am exiled from my Eden; and each soul's Eden is its own. We may exchange tastes, habits, characters even, in this world our Edens are untransferable; and an angel with a frowning smile stands guard at the gates of mine, already, to bar me out. That frowning smile is the nature of a man. Dana wishes me to marry him the first of October.

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