Seraphita | Page 6

his arms inclosing her once more.
"But, Minna," answered Seraphitus, "you look fearlessly at greater spaces far than that."
Then with raised finger, this strange being pointed upward to the blue dome, which parting clouds left clear above their heads, where stars could be seen in open day by virtue of atmospheric laws as yet unstudied.
"But what a difference!" she answered smiling.
"You are right," he said; "we are born to stretch upward to the skies. Our native land, like the face of a mother, cannot terrify her children."
His voice vibrated through the being of his companion, who made no reply.
"Come! let us go on," he said.
The pair darted forward along the narrow paths traced back and forth upon the mountain, skimming from terrace to terrace, from line to line, with the rapidity of a barb, that bird of the desert. Presently they reached an open space, carpeted with turf and moss and flowers, where no foot had ever trod.
"Oh, the pretty saeter!" cried Minna, giving to the upland meadow its Norwegian name. "But how comes it here, at such a height?"
"Vegetation ceases here, it is true," said Seraphitus. "These few plants and flowers are due to that sheltering rock which protects the meadow from the polar winds. Put that tuft in your bosom, Minna," he added, gathering a flower,--"that balmy creation which no eye has ever seen; keep the solitary matchless flower in memory of this one matchless morning of your life. You will find no other guide to lead you again to this saeter."
So saying, he gave her the hybrid plant his falcon eye had seen amid the tufts of gentian acaulis and saxifrages,--a marvel, brought to bloom by the breath of angels. With girlish eagerness Minna seized the tufted plant of transparent green, vivid as emerald, which was formed of little leaves rolled trumpet-wise, brown at the smaller end but changing tint by tint to their delicately notched edges, which were green. These leaves were so tightly pressed together that they seemed to blend and form a mat or cluster of rosettes. Here and there from this green ground rose pure white stars edged with a line of gold, and from their throats came crimson anthers but no pistils. A fragrance, blended of roses and of orange blossoms, yet ethereal and fugitive, gave something as it were celestial to that mysterious flower, which Seraphitus sadly contemplated, as though it uttered plaintive thoughts which he alone could understand. But to Minna this mysterious phenomenon seemed a mere caprice of nature giving to stone the freshness, softness, and perfume of plants.
"Why do you call it matchless? can it not reproduce itself?" she asked, looking at Seraphitus, who colored and turned away.
"Let us sit down," he said presently; "look below you, Minna. See! At this height you will have no fear. The abyss is so far beneath us that we no longer have a sense of its depths; it acquires the perspective uniformity of ocean, the vagueness of clouds, the soft coloring of the sky. See, the ice of the fiord is a turquoise, the dark pine forests are mere threads of brown; for us all abysses should be thus adorned."
Seraphitus said the words with that fervor of tone and gesture seen and known only by those who have ascended the highest mountains of the globe,--a fervor so involuntarily acquired that the haughtiest of men is forced to regard his guide as a brother, forgetting his own superior station till he descends to the valleys and the abodes of his kind. Seraphitus unfastened the skees from Minna's feet, kneeling before her. The girl did not notice him, so absorbed was she in the marvellous view now offered of her native land, whose rocky outlines could here be seen at a glance. She felt, with deep emotion, the solemn permanence of those frozen summits, to which words could give no adequate utterance.
"We have not come here by human power alone," she said, clasping her hands. "But perhaps I dream."
"You think that facts the causes of which you cannot perceive are supernatural," replied her companion.
"Your replies," she said, "always bear the stamp of some deep thought. When I am near you I understand all things without an effort. Ah, I am free!"
"If so, you will not need your skees," he answered.
"Oh!" she said; "I who would fain unfasten yours and kiss your feet!"
"Keep such words for Wilfrid," said Seraphitus, gently.
"Wilfrid!" cried Minna angrily; then, softening as she glanced at her companion's face and trying, but in vain, to take his hand, she added, "You are never angry, never; you are so hopelessly perfect in all things."
"From which you conclude that I am unfeeling."
Minna was startled at this lucid interpretation of her thought.
"You prove to me, at any rate, that we understand each other," she said,