Consciousness came back to him with a sudden rush, not only the consciousness of what he had done, but of what he had now to do. Not all the bitter tears of lifelong remorse would ever succeed in wiping out the past; but honour demanded that at least the future be kept unsullied.
A final struggle with temptation that was proving overwhelming, a final, wholly human, longing to keep and to hold this glorious gift of God; then the last renunciation as he allowed the loved one to glide out of his arms like a graceful bird, still a-quiver after this brief immersion in the torrential wave of his passion. Then, as she stood now a few paces away from him, with wide, sad eyes deliberately turned to gaze on the distant sky, he passed his hand across his forehead, as if with the firm will to clear his brain and chase away the last vestige of the sweet, insistent dream.
Once more there was silence in the fragrant arbour; but it was the silence of unspoken sorrow—a silence laden with the portent of an approaching farewell. Gilles was the first to break it.
'It can never be, ma donna,' he said quietly, his rugged voice still shaking with emotion, now resolutely held in bondage. 'I know that well enough. Knew it even at the moment when, in my folly, I first dared to kiss your gown.'
'I was as much to blame as you, Messire,' she said naïvely, her lips trembling with suppressed sobs. 'I don't know how it came about, but...'
'It came about, ma donna,' he rejoined fervently, 'because you are as perfect as the angels, and God when He fashioned you allowed no human weakness to mar His adorable work. The avowal which came from your sweet lips was just like the manna which He gave to the hungry crowd. I, the poor soldier of fortune, have been made thereby more enviable than a king.'
'And yet we must part, Messire?' she said firmly, and withal in her voice that touching note of childlike appeal which for the unfortunate dweller on the outskirts of paradise was more difficult to withstand than were a glass of water to one dying of thirst. 'I do not belong to myself, you know,' she continued, and looked him once more serenely in the face. 'Ever since my dear brother died I have been made to understand that my future, my person, belong to my country—my poor, sorrowing country, who, it seems, hath sore need of me. I have no right to love, no right to think of mine own happiness. God alone in His Omniscience knows how you came to fill my heart, Messire, to the exclusion of every other thought, of every other duty. It was wrong of me, I know—wrong and unmaidenly. But the secret of my love would for ever have remained locked in my heart if I had not learned that you loved me too.'
She made her profession of faith so firmly and earnestly and with such touching innocence that the hot passion which a while ago was raging in Gilles' heart was suddenly soothed and purified as if with the touch of a divine breath. A wonderful peace descended on his soul: he hardly knew himself, his own turbulent temper, his untamed and passionate nature, so calm and serene did he suddenly feel. 'Yes, we must part, ma donna,' he said, in a simple, monotonous voice which he himself scarcely recognized as his own. 'We must each go our way; you to fulfil the great destiny for which God has created you and to which your sorrowing country calls you; I to watch from afar the course of your fortunes, like the poor, starving astrologer doth watch the course of the stars.'
'From afar?' she said, and her delicate cheeks took on a dull, lifeless hue. 'Then you will go away?'
'To-day, please God!' he replied.