"Rhyme and reason both together," said Gerald, sitting down on a mossy stone fronting a smooth greensward. "Well, then, you are Titania, and I the rash mortal who has intruded on your privacy."
"Take care that I do not enchant you, poor mortal."
"You have done that already. Hark!" he raised a finger, "the wind is rising, your Majesty."
"To play for my dancing."
Then Gerald saw a wonderful thing. While the wind played with viewless fingers on the lyre of the surrounding woods, Mavis danced to the rhythm in exact unison with the gentle breaths which came and went. She bent her golden head to listen critically to the murmurings, and swung and swayed and floated to the melody of Nature. Her feet and arms scarcely moved, her slender body was almost still, yet by subtle movements she contrived to interpret the meaning of the hour. A low, low note from the tree-tops would send her floating across the grass: a pause would bring her to a statue stillness, and a dying sigh, as the wind lost heart, stirred her limbs to gentle movements, like the tremblings of a flower on its stalk. Poised gracefully in the radiant light, in her white garb, and with her mystical gestures timed to the Nature sounds, she looked like a spirit of the woods. Gerald faintly grasped for one fleeting moment the idea of the sacred dances of old, when every gesture and every pose was a sign of power to draw down the hierarchy of heaven to the physical plane.
Then the wind died away, and the golden notes of the nightingale fluted through the trees. One bird trilled wild music, and another replied with a scattering of liquid notes like falling rain. All the marvelous enchantment of the night was in that speechless song, and the young man's heart beat in measure with the pulse of Nature. He rose abruptly to his feet, and when Mavis floated within the circle of his arms they went round her passionately. Like a tamed bird she rested on his heaving breast, and looked up smilingly into his brown eyes. Mavis read therein all that the wind and the nightingale had been trying to tell her, and when the man's lips were pressed ardently to her own she felt as though she had stepped from the twilight of unformed things into the glory of sunlight and song.
"Oh," she panted, nestling to his heart, "what does this mean?"
"Love!" he breathed, "love, which changes man into God," and again his lips sought hers. With a thrill, she yielded to the first caress she had ever known. And the nightingale sang triumphantly in the thicket. But now the song was no longer wordless: she knew all that the bird could tell. "Which is love, love, and love again," whispered the Fairy Prince.
Then Mavis began to weep, with a natural fear of the unknown, and Gerald consoled her, as a mother consoles a child. She clung to him in the shadow of the tree, silent and wondering, and with something of pain--the pain of the reborn, when the fire of love purifies the soul. A veil had fallen from her eyes, and, beholding the secret shrine of the god, she trembled, and wept, and joyed, all in a breath. "It is wonderful, wonderful, terrible," she murmured. "Oh, Gerald, if you leave me I shall die. You are part of me: your soul is blended with mine. You love me: oh, say that you love me?"
"As I love Truth and Beauty and Wisdom, and all things that make up our conception of God."