His hand passed down her face, fluttering lightly, and she sensed the eagerness of every touch. Cold fear took hold of her lest those searching fingers should discover the truth.
"Your eyes are blue. Yes, yes! Deep-blue for golden hair. It cannot be otherwise. Speak."
"God help me!"
"Madame?"
"I have been too vain of my eyes, sir. Yes, they are blue."
The fingers were on her cheeks, trembling on her lips, touching chin and throat.
"You are divine. It was foredoomed that this should be! Yes, my life has been one long succession of miracles, but the greatest was reserved until the end. I have followed my heart through the world in search of perfect beauty and now I am about to die, I find it. Oh, God! For one moment with canvas, brush, and the blessed light of the sun! It cannot be! No miracle is complete; but I carry out into the eternal night one perfect picture. Canvas and paint? No, no! Your picture must be drawn in the soul and colored with love. The last miracle and the greatest! Three days? No, three ages, three centuries of happiness, for are you not here?"
Who will say that there is not an eye with which we pierce the night? To each of these two sitting in the utter dark there came a vision. Imagination became more real than reality. He saw his ideal of the woman, that picture which every man carries in his heart to think of in the times of silence, to see in every void. And she saw her ideal of manly power. The dark pressed them together as if with the force of physical hands. For a moment they waited, and in that moment each knew the heart of the other, for in that utter void of light and sound, they saw with the eyes of the soul and they heard the music of the spheres.
Then she seemed to hear the voice of the prince: "You should be grateful to me. Trust me, child, I am bringing you that love of which you dreamed. Le Dieu, c'est moi!"
Yes, it was the voice of doom which had spoken from those sardonic lips. The dark which annihilates time made their love a century old.