A confused sound of horses' hoofs outside, of shouts and calls from within roused them both from their dream. She succeeded now in disengaging herself from his arms, and still whispering:
"I'll come back!" she retreated toward the door.
Just as she reached it, the moon so long obscured burst forth in full glory from behind a bank of clouds, her rays came straight into the narrow room and lighted on the dainty figure of the girl standing with crumpled white dress and hair disarranged, cheeks rosy red and eyes full of promise and love against the dark background of the heavy oaken door.
Michael looked upon her with longing, hungry eyes, drinking in every line of that delicately-moulded form, the graceful neck, the slender hands, the firm girlish shoulders on which the prim kerchief had become slightly disarranged. Then as she retreated further into the next room, she vanished from his sight; the door fell to behind her with a heavy, ominous sound, shutting out the radiant vision of Michael's cherished dream, leaving him on the other side of the heavenly portals, alone and desolate.
Thus he saw her in full light, and lost her in the shadows. Something of the premonition of what was to come already held his heart as in a cold and cruel vice. When the door closed upon his dream, upon his Rose Marie, he knew by an unerring and torturing instinct that he would never, never see her quite as she had been just now. The Rose Marie who had left him was for remembrance.
CHAPTER XXV
Though doom keep always heaven and hell
Irreconcilable, infinitely apart;