Ariadne said that she had been up in the observatory, and that there were indications of an approaching storm.
“I hope it may be a fine one!” exclaimed Clytia.
I thought this rather an extraordinary remark—coming from one of the sex whose formula is more likely to be, “I hope it will not be a severe one.”
At that moment a man appeared in the doorway, the majesty of whose presence I certainly felt before my eyes fell upon him. Or it might have been the reflection I saw in the countenances of my two companions,—I stood with my back to the door, facing them,—which gave me the curious, awe-touched sensation.
I turned round, and Clytia immediately started forward. Ariadne exclaimed in an undertone, with an accent of peculiar sweetness,—a commingling of delight, and reverence, and caressing tenderness:
“Ah! the Master!”
Clytia took him by the hand and brought him to me, where I stood rooted to my place.
“Father, this is our friend,” she said simply, without further ceremony of introduction. It was enough. He had come on purpose to see me, and therefore he knew who I was. As for him—one does not explain a king! The title by which Ariadne had called him did not at the moment raise an inquiry in my mind. I accepted it as the natural definition of the man. He was a man of kingly proportions, with eyes from which Clytia’s had borrowed their limpid blackness. His glance had a wide compresiveness, and a swift, sure, loving insight.
He struck me as a man used to moving among multitudes, with his head above all, but his heart embracing all.
You may think it strange, but I was not abashed. Perfect love casteth out fear; and there was in this divine countenance—I may well call it divine!—the lambent light of a love so kindly and so tender, that fear, pride, vanity, egotism, even false modesty—our pet hypocrisy—surrendered without a protest.