Page:Pierre.djvu/63

Rh her over-charged lids, drops such warm drops as these? No joy now in Lucy's eyes and seeming tremor on her lips.

'Ah! thou too ardent and impetuous Pierre!'

'Nay, thou too moist and changeful April! know'st thou not, that the moist and changeful April is followed by the glad, assured, and showerless joy of June? And this, Lucy, this day should be thy June, even as it is the earth's?'

'Ah, Pierre! not June to me. But say, are not the sweets of June made sweet by the April tears?'

'Ay, love! but here fall more drops,—more and more;—these showers are longer than beseem the April, and pertain not to the June.'

'June! June!—thou bride's month of the summer,—following the spring's sweet courtship of the earth,—my June, my June is yet to come!'

'Oh! yet to come, but fixedly decreed;—good as come, and better.'

'Then no flower that, in the bud, the April showers have nurtured; no such flower may untimely perish, ere the June unfolds it? Ye will not swear that, Pierre?'

'The audacious immortalities of divinest love are in me; and I now swear to thee all the immutable eternities of joyfulness, that ever woman dreamed of, in this dream-house of the earth. A god decrees to thee unchangeable felicity; and to me, the unchallenged possession of thee and them, for my inalienable fief.—Do I rave? Look on me, Lucy; think on me, girl.'

'Thou art young, and beautiful, and strong; and a joyful manliness invests thee, Pierre; and thy intrepid heart never yet felt the touch of fear;—But——'

'But what?'

'Ah, my best Pierre!'

'With kisses I will suck thy secret from thy cheek!—but what?'