She let her shapely head fall back until it rested on his shoulder. Then she looked up to his face.
“Who could have thought it?” she cried. “Who could have predicted that evening when I stood on the cliffs and sent my voice out in that wild way across the lough, that we should be sitting here to-night?”
“I knew it when I got down to the boat and drew your hands into mine by that fishing-line,” said he. “When the moon showed me your face, I knew that I had seen the face for which I had been searching all my life. I had caught glimpses of that face many times in my life. I remember seeing it for a moment when a great musician was performing an incomparable work—a work the pure beauty of which made all who listened to it weep. I can hear that music now when I look upon your face. It conveys to me all that was conveyed to me by the music. I saw it again when, one exquisite dawn, I went into a garden while the dew was glistening over everything. There came to me the faint scent of violets. I thought that nothing could be lovelier; but in another moment, the glorious perfume of roses came upon me like a torrent. The odour of the roses and the scent of the violets mingled, and before my eyes floated your face. When the moonlight showed me your face on that night beside the Irish lough I felt myself wondering if it would vanish.”
“It has come to stay,” she whispered, in a way that gave the sweetest significance to the phrase that has become vulgarized.
“It came to stay with me for ever,” he said. “I knew it, and I felt myself saying, ‘Here by God’s grace is the one maid for me.’”
He did not falter as he looked down upon her face—he said the words “God’s grace” without the least hesitancy.
The moonlight that had been glistening on the ivy of the broken arches of the ancient Priory, was now shining through the diamond panes of the window at which they were sitting. As her head lay back it was illuminated by the moon. Her hair seemed delicate threads of spun glass through which the light was shining.
One of the candles flared up for a moment in its socket, then dwindled away to a single spark and then expired.
“You remember?” she whispered.
“The seal-cave,” he said. “I have often wondered how I dared to tell you that I loved you.”