Varia stirred and brushed a hand across his lips.
"But that is not a tale!" she said plaintively. "Or if it be a tale, it is a sad one. The poor rose! It may be that it wished to stay within the garden, and not be plucked to fade away and die. I had not thought of that before! Never will I pluck a rose again; I will let it live where the gardener plants it. I thought it pretty to pluck them and smell them, and watch the leaves all fall; I did not know I killed them! Sometimes I think that people do not know when they kill roses. Now tell another tale, I pray thee! Tell that tale of when thou and I lived long and long ago, and of how we met in that other world which is gone. That tale I love the best of all."
"Of how we met—" Nicanor repeated absently. Again his mood had changed, as always in her presence. When away from her, with but the memory of her face, her innocent wiles, her passiveness under his caresses, passion had its way with him, blinding him, rendering him desperate, careless of consequences. But when with her, that very innocence of hers wrought its own spell upon him, taming and stilling him with an awe which he but half understood. Curiously, this chastened mood left him invariably sullen and surly, after the manner of a beast which sulks at having missed its kill.
"Of how we met?" he said again. "So then. Once thou and I lived very long ago. Ages and ages ago it was, when the world was young, and only the moon and the stars were old. None walked upon the earth save we two, and the world and its beauty was for us alone. Dusky forests covered all the land, where strange birds sang and great flowers grew. Wild beasts roamed these forests with us, but we walked among them unafraid, for they knew not that they could harm us. Beneath the sunken light of old scarred moons we wandered hand in hand; and day by day I told that tale to thee I dare not tell thee now, and there was none to hinder me.
"Canst dream of a world all happiness, my lady, a world without shadow of sorrow or cloud of care, with nothing but happy sunshine and the songs of birds? That world was our world. And in it we were free, we two, free to wander where we would, free as the winds that called us. Who may know freedom as do those who walk in chains? We knew not then the measure of this our freedom, for we had known no thraldom of flesh nor spirit. Therefore the high gods decreed that we should be brought to know the greatness of their gift, by losing it; that in our lives to come we should be bound, and bound remain until we knew what we had lost. Thy bonds sit upon thee lightly, yet in thine eyes I read that they are there. And I—I am learning fast what freedom means. In the shade of great trees which upheld the very floor of heaven we rested, thou and I, and saw the wide earth smiling in warm golden noons. It was then thy hands first learned to cling to mine"—he raised her hands and kissed them—"it was then thy head first leaned above my heart—ay, even so long since, in the beginning of the world. Down all the after ages it hath been the same; somewhere, somehow, we met; and each time of our meeting there came to us a memory of dear dead days long gone, forgotten until a breath from dim gardens where we wandered blew to us from the past. Oh, but those days were long, each one a jewel of flame and azure, strung on the golden chain of Time; and the nights were long, and warm, and clear, and perfumed as thy hair. Our food was fruit and the nuts I gathered; our wine the waters of clear brooks which thou drankest from my hands. Ferns, deep and fragrant, made our couch."
He stopped abruptly.
"As my soul liveth, I can tell no more!" he said, and his voice was shaken. "Sweet lady o' mine, urge me not, for thine own sake! Thou dost not understand—how shouldst thou? Any tale I'll tell thee—any tale save a tale of thee and me."
"That is the tale which I will have," said Varia, drowsily.
Nicanor smothered an exclamation.
"Child, canst not see that my hands tremble, that I burn with fever, and am scarce master of myself?" His tone quickly changed and softened. "There, then, I will not frighten thee! Only ask me not to try my strength beyond its limit with that tale I taught thee to love and long for—"