“No, I did not know.”
“But I am, Isabel. When was it—when your great-great-great-great-grandfather was on the Spanish throne, and his fleet sailed northward to destroy the heretic. Do you know your house’s history, child—the magnificence and the shame of it? How those little islands, those little hazy islands, planted like green ramparts on the threshold of the unknown, called to their aid the winds and lightnings, and smote the invader, in his presumption, from their seas. And how of that vast flotilla few escaped; and not one but was disabled; while many beat round the northern limits, only to be dashed to pieces on the rocks and shoals of the western islands. And of those poor souls who found a landing there, hundreds were slain, and but a handful, sheltered of passion and pity, survived—pity that gave protection, passion that gave me my ancestors and my name. The sun and the mist meet in my blood, Isabel—the passion and the mystery of life. And sometimes one prevails, and I am human; and sometimes the other, and I am a seer or a lunatic.”
She listened, wondering a little; and then said she, “My strange love; let me look in your eyes.”
Smiling and unmoving he faced her; and she stood gazing in silence. Presently she said: “I have always wondered; and now I know. They are brown; and yet they are blue. It is the sea gleaming through their shadows.”
“It is the North,” he answered—“whither we are flying some day—you and I together, dear love. Listen!”
He took his lute, and sang softly to her:
“Where the sea and sky meet,
Kissing far away,
O, come, love! O, come, love,
Daring salt and spray!