The Blue Lagoon: A Romance
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CHAPTER IX
THE SLEEP OF PARADISE
The moon rose up that evening and shot her silver arrows at the houseunder the artu tree. The house was empty. Then the moon came across thesea and across the reef.
She lit the lagoon to its dark, dim heart. She lit the coral brains andsand spaces, and the fish, casting their shadows on the sand and thecoral. The keeper of the lagoon rose to greet her, and the fin of himbroke her reflection on the mirror-like surface into a thousandglittering ripples. She saw the white staring ribs of the form on thereef. Then, peeping over the trees, she looked down into the valley,where the great idol of stone had kept its solitary vigil for fivethousand years, perhaps, or more.
At his base, in his shadow, looking as if under his protection, lay twohuman beings, naked, clasped in each other’s arms, and fast asleep. Onecould scarcely pity his vigil, had it been marked sometimes through theyears by such an incident as this. The thing had been conducted just asthe birds conduct their love affairs. An affair absolutely natural,absolutely blameless, and without sin.
It was a marriage according to Nature, without feast or guests,consummated with accidental cynicism under the shadow of a religion athousand years dead.
So happy in their ignorance were they, that they only knew thatsuddenly life had changed, that the skies and the sea were bluer, andthat they had become in some magical way one a part of the other. Thebirds on the tree above were equally as happy in their ignorance, andin their love.