This was how he opened the interview which he had arranged to part them for ever.
Then they both drew a long breath simultaneously, and both laughed in unison.
Then he held her away from him for a few seconds, looking upon her exquisite face. Again he kissed her—but this time solemnly and with something of the father about the action.
“At last—at last,” he said.
“At last,” she murmured in reply.
“It seems to me that I have never seen you before,” said he. “You seem to be a different person altogether. I do not remember anything of your face, except your eyes—no, by heavens! your eyes are different also.”
“It was dark as midnight in the depths of that seal-cave,” she whispered.
“You mean that—ah, yes, my beloved! If I could have seen your eyes at that moment I know I should have found them full of the light that I now see in their depths. You remember what I said to you on the morning after your arrival at the Castle? Your eyes meant everything to me then—I knew it—beatitude or doom.”
“And you know now what they meant?”
He looked at her earnestly and passionately for some moments. Then his hands dropped suddenly as though they were the hands of a man who had died in a moment—his hands dropped, he turned away his face.