"The most terrible thing in the world, and the sweetest," Nicanor answered, his eyes on hers. "It is a chain that binds life to life, and the links of the chain are drops of heart's blood. It is pain from which one would not seek relief. Men have called it a flower, beloved, but it is no flower, for flowers wither in a little space, and die, and love hath eternal life. Ay, for it is eternal; and death, to it, is but a moment in the dark."
Varia caught her breath with a smothered sob.
"Ah, but I do love thee when thou talkest so!" she whispered. "Often I cannot understand thy words, but I can feel them, here,—" she clasped her hands above her heart,—"and sometimes they make me glad, and sometimes sorry, and sometimes they frighten me, and I do not at all know why. But always I long to hear more. They make me to want things I have not got, to know things I do not know, for I am very foolish. Oh, thou wizard of the silver tongue!" She raised both hands to his temples, and he could feel that her fingers shook. "Play not with me for the sake of thy sport, I pray thee! Ay, I am very foolish,—I know it,—for I may not understand how such things be; but thy speech leads me as a nurse leads her child by the hand, and I am afraid, because I cannot understand whither thou wouldst have me go."
"Play with thee! Beloved, it is no play to me," Nicanor answered. "I'd give thee all my life and soul, as I've given thee my heart, could I but keep from thee a moment's fear or sorrow." He bent his head and kissed her snowy eyelids. "Whatever God or gods there be that men may pray to, may they have thee, lady mine, in their holy keeping. Whoever they may be, I give thanks that this night they guarded thee—or was it the veil of thine own white innocence around thee?—for this night hath a beast been held at bay."
He let her go, and stood watching hungrily as she slipped away from him across the grass. Over the surrounding walls of the villa a faint gray mist came stealing. The song of the insects had died, and the world hung silent, awaiting the mystery of the day. The trees and bushes of the garden massed themselves into denser shadow against the tinge of ghostly light. From somewhere, far away, a cock crew, and another answered.
Nicanor listened until the faint click of a closing window reached him. Suddenly he buried his face in his hands and stood an instant motionless, a dark and sombre figure in the gray loneliness of dawn. Before the light had gathered strength for him to be more than a moving blot among the shadows, he pulled himself together with a quick shake of his shoulders, and vanished amid the tangle of vines and shrubbery that hid the little garden door.
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