Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/110

 head resting on her fiancé’s breast. The delicate oval face took on a faint flush of colour, and suddenly tears welled forth from her blue eyes. Her fiancé understood her emotion, bent down and kissed them away, one by one. The mother saw it and wept like her daughter, and I looking at the girl, I also felt as though heart was too full.

‘Here body and soul must recover,’ whispered the girl, ‘what a wonderful spot!’

‘God knows, I have no enemies,’ said her father, ‘but if I had, and met them here, I should forgive them.’

His voice was trembling.

Again there was silence; we all felt an unspeakably sweet emotion. Every one was conscious of a world of happiness within him which he longed to share with all the world. As we all understood what the others felt, none of us talked.

We had hardly noticed that the Greek had closed his sketch-book after about an hour’s work, and taken himself off with a slight acknowledgment of our presence. We remained.

When several hours had passed, the sky had begun to take on the purple tint