Part 4 (1/2)

Then something--a sound sweet as song--yet without the vibratory pa.s.sion of a human voice--seemed to float out of the darkness and hold his ear enchained like a spell. It was the divinest beauty of music, divinely interpreted, and it seemed to him as he listened that all the discord and woe and misery that oppressed his earthly senses, disappeared and died away into the very perfection of peace.

He stood there quite silent--quite motionless--waiting, so it seemed to himself, for some fuller revelation to which these exquisite sounds were but a prelude.

It was a matter of no surprise when he quietly lifted his dreamy glance to the stone balcony above, and saw there, in the soft glow of light from the rooms beyond, the fair form of the woman he had expected to see.

A faint tremor of fear and apprehension thrilled his heart, but it died away as a low remembered voice stole through the s.p.a.ce that parted him from a visible form he had never thought to see again.

”I told you we should meet. But I scarcely thought it would be so soon.

Will you come up here, or shall I join you?”

The voice and greeting roused him. He bared his head and bent low to the speaker in a deeper homage than that of conventional courtesy.

”Is it really you, Princess? And may I be permitted to join you?”

The mute sign of a.s.sent showed him also a flight of steps leading up from the terrace to the balcony. A moment, and he was by her side.

No ordinary greeting pa.s.sed between them. Perhaps none could have conveyed what that long silent gaze did; seeming to go straight to the heart of each, full of memories that time had softened, but sad with the sadness that is in all deep human love.

”A strange meeting-place,” she said. ”Yet why more strange than the mountains of the East, or the lonely plains of the Desert, the steppes of Russia, or the house-tops of Damascus?”

”You read my thoughts, as ever,” he said. ”I must confess that it seemed strange to see you here, treading the narrow path of English conventionalism, after--after--”

”I know,” she said. ”But life is full of the unexpected. You do not ask how these five years have been spent. The years that have changed the dreamy enthusiastic girl into a woman such as you see before you.”

”I do not ask,” he said, his voice vibrating beneath an emotion he could not conceal, ”because it can be no pleasure to me to learn. Do you forget what I told you? Do you think that the memory of these five years is a pleasant one for me? Against my prayers, against my warnings, you chose your own life. Are you free--now?”

”No,” she said, in a strange stifled voice, ”never _that_--never while I wear the shackles of humanity!” She sank suddenly down in a low seat, and buried her face in her hands. ”Oh,” she cried, faintly, ”if I could tell you--if I only dared; but I cannot! My bondage is deeper--my chains are heavier. Sometimes I think those years were only a dream--a horrible, frightful dream--but then, again, I _know_ they were not.”

”What do you mean?” he asked, his voice sharp with terror, for this shame and remorse that convulsed her, and made her one with the common weakness of her common womanhood, was something altogether different to the supremacy she had always shown in her proud girlhood.

”I cannot tell you,” she said, ”I dare not.”

”Do you forget,” he said, severely, ”that if I _wish_ to know, I shall learn it?”

”Not now,” she said, suddenly, and raised her face and looked calmly, yet not defiantly, back at him with her great, sad, and most lovely eyes. ”I have pa.s.sed beyond your power,” she went on. ”Beyond most human influence, I might say--” then she shuddered and her eyes sank again. ”But oh!” she cried, ”at what a cost!--at what a cost!”

He felt as if his heart grew suddenly chill and stony. ”I believe you are right,” he said; ”my power is gone--yours is the strongest now.”

He was silent for a few moments. ”One question only,” he then said; ”I don't wish to pry into your past. It is enough that we have met--for that would never have taken place if you had not needed me. So much I know. Your marriage--was it as I foretold?”

”It was worse,” she said, bitterly--”a million times worse! Body and soul, how I have suffered! And yet, as I told you then, _it had to be_.”

”I did not believe it then,” he said stormily; ”I refuse to believe it now. Your misery was self-created. You voluntarily degraded yourself.

What result could there be? Only suffering and shame.”

”The good of others,” she answered mournfully. ”You cannot see it yet; but I know--it was foretold me. I did my work there. Sometimes I hope it is finished; but I do not know. One can never tell; at any time the summons may come again. G.o.d help me if it does.”

”Is your life in danger, then?” he asked, and again that chill and horror seemed to thrill the pulses of his beating heart.