Like a light flaming from dark, the face shone through the gloom.
"Love, a phantom," laughs the mocking voice of the imperious Hortense I knew long ago; and the thrill of her laugh proves love the realest phantom life can know.
Then the child Hortense becomes of a sudden the grown woman, grave and sweet, with eyes in the dark like stars, and strange, broken thoughts I had not dared to hope shining unspoken on her face.
"Life, a phantom-substance, the shadow—love, the all," the dream-face seems to be saying. "Events are God's thoughts—storms and darkness and prey are his puppets, the blind gods, his slaves-God is love; for you are here!… You are here!… You are here with me!"
When I feel through the dark this time is the grip of a living hand.
Then we lock arms and sweep through space, the northern lights curtaining overhead, the stars for torches, and the blazing comets heralding a way.
"The very stars in their courses fight for us," says Hortense.
And I, with an earthy intellect groping behind the winged love of the woman, think that she refers to some of M. Picot's mystic astrologies.
"No—no," says the dream-face, with the love that divines without speech, "do you not understand? The stars fight for us—because—because——"
"Because God is love," catching the gleam of the thought; and the stars that fight in their courses for mortals sweep to a noonday splendour.