“Aurora,” he said at last, stooping toward her with gentle coldness, “get up; cease weeping thus. It annoys me; I do not love you so well!”
She started up, choked back the sobs that were swelling in her throat, and stood before him with downcast eyes, like a culprit.
This self-power, the gentle submission that followed, reassured her lover. He smiled cordially again, took her hand, and drew her gently from the colonnade, moving downward partially in darkness, till they reached the Court of Lions.
The Gitanilla and her companion entered the Court of Lions through one of those incomparable pavilions that enrich each end of that marvellous spot. No dream could be more heavenly than the beauty that surrounded them. The gorgeousness, that time and siege had swept away, was more than replaced by the luminous grace shed over what remained by the moonlight.
On either hand stood a line of shaft-like columns, delicate beyond all our ideas of usefulness, yet with a superb filagree peristyle resting lightly, as so much snow upon their exquisite capitals—these capitals, so full of varied art, each fragment of marble a marvel of itself—each faded leaf the richest fancy of an artist. The arches rising between these graceful pillars were half choked up with shadows, leaving all the gorgeous apartments to which they led in misty doubt. It seemed as if with a single wave of the hand you might sweep away those curtain-like shadows, with a step enter the saloons, and find the moon sleeping upon their silken cushions.
It chanced that the Englishman had never visited the Court of Lions before, when the moon was at its full. He stood within the portico spell-bound, those noble masses of filagree work, rising up from the supporting pillars, seemed a marvel of fairy work, like ocean foam frozen into shapes of beauty—the pavement glittering with azulejos, broad golden tints, rich blue and red prevailing—the noble Fountain of Lions, rushing in floods of crystal over its great alabaster basin, which gleamed through the falling torrent like a solid mass of ice raining itself away, but never diminishing, all filled him with wonder and delight. How those shining water-drops idealized the twelve marble lions, upon whose backs the alabaster basin rested, flooding them with sheets of crystal, wreathing their huge legs with pearly froth, sending a shower of bubbles into their scaly manes, eddying, leaping, whirling around them, a fantastic storm of light, through which no deformity could be discovered!
Nothing but the rush of these falling waters could be heard in the Alhambra. Everything else was still as death. Oh, it was happiness to breathe in this wilderness of beauty! After all, there is such a thing as being intoxicated with mere physical harmony. With me great joy always rains itself away in tears. To my fancy, no person ever experienced perfect happiness, who has not felt the blissful dew leave his heart in tears.
But to know this, the bitter feelings of our nature must not have been recently disturbed. Neither the Gitanilla nor her lover were sufficiently tranquil for a thorough appreciation of the scene. Their thoughts were too much occupied with each other. Still, it was impossible to look upon this wonderful spot and not yield themselves up to it for a time, and this had a softening influence upon him. She, poor thing, required nothing to subdue her, for there is not a being on earth so gentle as a high-spirited woman when her strong passion is once surrendered—I will not say subdued—to the influence of the man she loves.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SIBYL AND THE LOVERS.
There had been no absolute disagreement between Aurora and her lover; yet with that keen intuition which belongs to love, and which becomes almost superhuman when love blends with genius in a woman’s heart, she felt that he was disturbed, that she had done something to arouse painful thoughts, which led him, for the time, away from her. She did not weep—he had told her that grief annoyed him—but in the shadow of that beautiful portico her little heart might heave, unnoticed, beneath its velvet bodice, and, spite of herself, tears would swell up into her great, mournful eyes.