Here they were who, without words or acts, had been to each other what Adam and Eve were in the Garden, without furtiveness, and guiltless of secret acts which poison Love.

What restrained them was native, childlike camaraderie, intense, unusual and strange.

The world would call them romancists, if they believed that this restraint could be.

But there was something more.

With all their frank childlikeness, there was also a shyness, a reserve, which would not have been, if either had ever eaten of the Fruit of Understanding until they met each other for the first time.
"Are you--are you hurt ?" he asked, his voice calmer than his spirit, his heart beating terribly hard.