“Change in love—indifference to you!” she cried, all at once, hiding her lovely face in his breast and twining her arms about his neck. “No, no! I never meant that such things could be—they are but empty words, words one hears spoken lightly by lips that never spoke the truth, by men and women who never had such truth to speak as you and I.”
“And as for old age,” he said, dwelling upon her speech, “what is that to us? Let it come, since come it must. It is good to be young and fair and strong, but would not you or I give up all that for love’s sake, each of us of our own free will, rather than lose the other’s love?”
“Indeed, indeed I would!” Unorna answered.
“Then what of age? What is it after all? A few gray hairs, a wrinkle here and there, a slower step, perhaps a dimmer glance. That is all it is—the quiet, sunny channel between the sea of earthly joy and the ocean of heavenly happiness. The breeze of love still fills the sails, wafting us softly onward through the narrows, never failing, though it be softer and softer, till we glide out, scarce knowing it, upon the broader water and are borne swiftly away from the lost land by the first breath of heaven.”
His words brought peace and the mirage of a far-off rest, that soothed again the little half-born doubt.
“Yes,” she said. “It is better to think so. Then we need think of no other change.”
“There is no other possible,” he answered, gently pressing the shoulder upon which his hand was resting. “We have not waited and believed, and trusted and loved, for seven years, to wake at last—face to face as we are to-day—and to find that we have trusted vainly and loved two shadows, I yours, and you mine, to find at the great moment of all that we are not ourselves, the selves we knew, but others of like passions but of less endurance. Have we, beloved? And if we could love, and trust, and believe without each other, each alone, is it not all the more sure that we shall be unchanging together? It must be so. The whole is greater than its parts, two loves together are greater and stronger than each could be of itself. The strength of two strands close twined together is more than twice the strength of each.”
She said nothing. By merest chance he had said words that had waked the doubt again, so that it grew a little and took a firmer hold in her unwilling heart. To love a shadow, he had said, to wake and find self not self at all. That was what might come, would come, must come, sooner or later, said the doubt. What matter where, or when, or how? The question came again, vaguely, faintly as a mere memory, but confidently as though knowing its own answer. Had she not rested in his arms, and felt his kisses and heard his voice? What matter how, indeed? It matters greatly, said the growing doubt, rearing its head and finding speech at last. It matters greatly, it said, for love lies not alone in voice, and kiss, and gentle touch, but in things more enduring, which to endure must be sound and whole and not cankered to the core by a living lie. Then came the old reckless reasoning again: Am I not I? Is he not he? Do I not love him with my whole strength? Does he not love this very self of mine, here as it is, my head upon his shoulder, my hand within his hand? And if he once loved another, have I not her place, to have and hold, that I may be loved in her stead? Go, said the doubt, growing black and strong; go, for you are nothing to him but a figure in his dream, disguised in the lines of one he really loved and loves; go quickly, before it is too late, before that real Beatrice comes and wakes him and drives you out of the kingdom you usurp.
But she knew it was only a doubt, and had it been the truth, and had Beatrice’s foot been on the threshold, she would not have been driven away by fear. But the fight had begun.
“Speak to me, dear,” she said. “I must hear your voice—it makes me know that it is all real.”