I bowed my head, and Phroso set the ring on my finger.
‘Wear it till a woman you love gives you one to wear instead,’ said Phroso with a little smile. ‘Then go to the edge of your island—you are an islander too, are you not? so we are brethren—go to the edge of your island and throw it into the sea; and perhaps, my dear friend, the sea will bring it back, a message from you to me. For I think you will never again come to Neopalia.’
I made no answer: we walked together to the door of the house, and paused again for a moment on the threshold.
‘See the blue sea!’ said Phroso. ‘Is it not—is not your island—a beautiful island? If God brings you safe to your own land, my lord, as I will pray Him to do on my knees, think kindly of your island, and of one who dwells there.’
The blast of the horn had died away. The setting sun was turning blue to gold on the quiet water. The evening was very still, as we stood looking from the threshold of the door, under the portal of the house that had seen such strange wild doings, and had so swiftly made for itself a place for ever in my life and memory.
I glanced at Phroso’s face. Her eyes were set on the sea, her cheeks had turned pale again, and her lip was quivering. Suddenly came a loud sharp note on the horn.
‘It is the signal for the start,’ said she. ‘I must go, or they will be here in heat and anger, and I shall not be able to stop them. And they will kill my lord. No, I will say “my lord.”’
She moved to leave me. I had answered nothing to all she had said. What was there that an honourable man could say? Was there one thing? I told myself (too eager to tell myself) that I had no right to presume to say that. And anything else I would not say.
‘God bless you,’ I said, as she moved away; I caught her hand and again lightly kissed it. ‘My homage to the Lady of the Island,’ I whispered.
Her hand dwelt in mine a moment, briefer than our divisions of time can reckon, fuller than is often the longest of them. Then, with one last look, questioning, appealing, excusing, protesting, confessing, ay, and (for my sins) hoping, she left me, and stepped along the rocky road in the grace and glory of her youthful beauty. I stood watching her, forgetting the woman at the cottage, forgetting my own danger, forgetting even the peril she ran whom I watched, forgetting everything save the old that bound me and the new that called me. So I stood till she vanished from my sight; and still I stood, for she was there, though the road hid her. And I was roused at last only by a great cry of surprise, of fierce joy and triumph, that rent the still air of the evening, and echoed back in rumblings from the hill. The Neopalians were greeting their rescued Lady.