Love alone will stand.
"Closely cling, for waves beat fast,
Foam flakes cloud the hurrying blast,
Love alone will last.
"Kiss my lips and softly say,
'Joy, sea-swept, may fade to-day;
Love alone will stay.'"
Sylvia leaned her head against the vine-wreathed stone, and her eyes closed against the glory of a world that seemed hushing itself to listen,—closed against John Dunham, whose personality had so strangely permeated the song on the day she first heard it. What a different day from this, and how long, long ago it was! Then storm was sweeping sea and land; the hurrying blast, the beating waves, the driven foam flakes, had been an actuality. Now all unrest was in her own thought, while o'er sea and land brooded a peace that suggested eternity. The sweetness of that which alone would last,—how it appealed to her!
She could see beneath her lashes the moonlight falling on John's strong profile, and on the brown hands that clasped his knee. If, without word or look, he could reach up to her one of those hands, and she could put her own into it with the knowledge that there was its rightful place, what would every storm of circumstance mean to her henceforth!
She came to herself with a start. Here on Edna's very piazza, enjoying her hospitality, she was indulging in a dream of theft from her. If her thoughts could be so betrayed, might it not be that some action had indeed given Edna just cause of offense? She remembered the day when, in the boat with her newly discovered uncle, he had told her that Dunham was straining at the leash to get away to Boston to Miss Derwent. Every moment of the latter's charming hospitality, and now her glorious voice, doubtless bound him closer to her. Sylvia knew herself to be not of their world, and perhaps she was more of a novelty to Dunham than she could realize. It was some strangeness in her, possibly some unconscious gaucherie, that so often called his attention to herself. Surely she should blush forever that, so soon as her thoughts escaped control, the subject began to attempt to betray her Princess and usurp her place.