A wick coated with aromatic wax burned in the brass bowl on a tripod and cast a crystal clear light down upon the exedra and the delicate lectern with its rolls of parchment and brass cylinders from which they had been withdrawn. Opposite, with her arms close down to her sides, her hands clenched, her shoulders drawn up, stood the girl he had played for and won in the hills of Judea!
Chapter XIII
A NEW PRETENDER
A sudden wave of delight, a sudden rush of blood through his veins, swept before it and away for that time all memory of his struggle and his resolution to renounce her. All that was left was the irresistible storm of impulse upon his reserve and his self-control.
When she recognized him, she started violently, smote her hands together and gazed at him with such overweening joy written on her face, that he would have swept her into his arms, but for her quick recovery and retreat. In shelter behind the exedra she halted, fended from him by the marble seat. He gazed across its back at her with all the love of his determined soul shining in his eyes.
"You! You!" she cried.
"But you!" he cried back at her across the exedra.
The preposterousness of their greetings appealed to them at that moment and they both laughed. He started around the exedra; she moved away.
"Stay!" he begged. "I want only to touch–your hand."
Shyly, she let him take both of her hands, and he lifted them in spite of her little show of resistance and kissed them.