In the first few seconds he knew the clash of a dreadful fundamental struggle, while the spell of this woman’s strange enchantment poured over him, seeking the reconciliation he himself could not achieve. Yet the reconciliation she sought meant victory or defeat; no compromise lay in it. Something imperious emanating from her already dominated the warring elements towards a coherent whole. He stood before her, quivering with emotions he dared not name. Her great womanhood he recognized, acknowledging obedience to her undisclosed intentions. And this idea of coming surrender terrified him. Whence came, too, that queenly touch about her that made him feel he should have sunk upon his knees?
The conflict resulted in a curious compromise. He raised his hand; he saluted; he found very ordinary words.
“You passed me only a short time ago,” he stammered, “in the motors. There were others with you——”
“Knowing that you would find us and come after. We count on your presence and your willing help.” Her voice was firm as with unalterable conviction. It was persuasive too. He nodded, as though acquiescence seemed the only course.
“We need your sympathy; we must have your power too.”
He bowed again. “My power!” Something exulted in him. But he murmured only. It was natural, he felt; he gave consent without a question.
Strange words he both understood and did not understand. Her voice, low and silvery, was that of a gentle, cultured woman, but command rang through it with a clang of metal, terrible behind the sweetness. She moved a little closer, standing erect before him in the moonlight, her figure borrowing something of the great tree’s majesty behind her. It was incongruous, this gentle and yet sinister air she wore. Whence came, in this calm peaceful spot, the suggestion of a wild and savage background to her? Why were there tumult and oppression in his heart, pain, horror, tenderness and mercy, mixed beyond disentanglement? Why did he think already, but helplessly, of escape, yet at the same time burn to stay? Whence came again, too, a certain queenly touch he felt in her?
“The gods have brought you,” broke across his turmoil in a half whisper whose breath almost touched his face. “You belong to us.”
The deeps rose in him. Seduced by the sweetness and the power, the warring divisions in his being drew together. His under-self more and more obtained the mastery she willed. Then something in the French she used flickered across his mind with a faint reminder of normal things again.
“Belgian——” he began, and then stopped short, as her instant rejoinder broke in upon his halting speech and petrified him. In her voice sang that triumphant tenderness that only the feminine powers of the Universe may compass: it seemed the sky sang with her, the mating birds, wild flowers, the south wind and the running streams. All these, even the silver birches, lent their fluid, feminine undertones to the two pregnant words with which she interrupted him and completed his own unfinished sentence: