I learnt many strange and beautiful secrets of the human heart in those days: what the dreams of womanhood are--how wholly different from the dreams of man, in which there is always a combative element. The soul of Cynthia was like a silent cleft among the hills, which waits, in its own still content, until the horn of the shepherd winds the notes of a chord in the valley below; and then the cleft makes answer and returns an airy echo, blending the notes into a harmony of dulcet utterance. And she too, I doubt not, learnt something from my soul, which was eager and inventive enough, but restless and fugitive of purpose. And then there came a further joy to us. That which is fatherly and motherly in the world below is not a thing that is lost in heaven; and just as the love of man and woman can draw down and imprison a soul in a body of flesh, so in heaven the dear intention of one soul to another brings about a yearning, which grows day by day in intensity, for some further outlet of love and care.
It was one quiet misty morning that, as we sat together in tranquil talk, we heard faltering steps within our garden. We had seen, let me say, very little of the other inhabitants of our valley. We had sometimes seen a pair of figures wandering at a distance, and we had even met neighbours and exchanged a greeting. But the valley had no social life of its own, and no one ever seemed, so far as we knew, to enter any other dwelling, though they met in quiet friendliness. Cynthia went to the door and opened it; then she darted out, and, just when I was about to follow, she returned, leading by the hand a tiny child, who looked at us with an air of perfect contentment and simplicity.
"Where on earth has this enchanting baby sprung from?" said Cynthia, seating the child upon her lap, and beginning to talk to it in a strangely unintelligible language, which the child appeared to understand perfectly.
I laughed. "Out of our two hearts, perhaps," I said. At which Cynthia blushed, and said that I did not understand or care for children. She added that men's only idea about children was to think how much they could teach them.
"Yes," I said, "we will begin lessons to-morrow, and go on to the Latin Grammar very shortly."