“I do not want it to be a dream. I wish the love to continue with your eyes open, and therefore I say—not yet.”
“You wish my love to continue? Oh, never doubt that your wish shall be granted. But why that 'not yet '? I am weary of this mystery.”
She was perplexed. Why should she hold out any longer against this impetuous Prince of the land of King Cophetua? Why should she not be as other girls who allow themselves to be lifted out of insignificance by the man who loves them. Why should that gift of being able to see more closely into the truth of things that most others accept without a question, be laid upon her as a burden?
She had a strong impulse to let her resolution go down the wind, and to put her hand in his, no matter who might be looking on, and say the word to him that would give him happiness. Who was she to suggest that his happiness would not endure—that her happiness would not endure?
She was perplexed. She had more than once been called prim; but that only meant that it was her nature to weigh everything in a mental balance, as it were, and her imagination was equal (she thought) to the task of assigning their relative value to the many constituents of human happiness. If she had been told that this meant that she had not yet been in love, and that she was not now in love, she would not have felt uneasy in her mind. She did not mistrust the feeling she had for the man who was beside her. Surely this was the very spirit of truth in loving, to be ready to sacrifice everything, so that unhappiness should not overtake him; and she had long ago felt that unhappiness only could result from his linking his life with one who was rather less than a mere nobody. The thought never once left her mind of what would be said when it was known that she had married him. A dunce's triumph, the incident would be styled by the wits, and (assuming that the wits were masculine) how would it be styled by the opposite sex? She could see uplifted hands—incredulous eyebrows raised, while they discussed it, and she knew that the conclusion that everyone would come to was that to be the most divine singer in the world did not save a man from being the greatest fool in the world.
Was her love the less true because her intelligence insisted on her perceiving that such a man as Signor Rauzzini would not be happy if married to a nonentity like herself? “Surely not,” she would have cried. “Surely it is only the truest of all loves that would be ready to relinquish its object rather than bring unhappiness upon him! Is intelligence never to be found in association with true love? Must true love and folly ever be regarded as allies?”
Her intellect was quick in apprehending the strength of the position taken up by two combatants in an argument; but the juxtaposition of the Prim and the Passionate was too much for her. She was all intellect; he was all passion. Her mental outlook on the situation was acute; but his was non-existent. His passion blinded him; her intellect had a thousand eyes.
And there he was by her side; she could almost hear the strong beating of his heart in the pause that followed his question.
“What is this mystery?”
It was her feeling of this tumultuous beating of his heart that all but made her lose her intellectual foothold. His heart beating close to hers swayed her as the moon sways the tides, until for some moments she could not have told whether it was her heart or his that was beating so wildly—only for some moments, however; only long enough for that madness to suggest itself to her—to let her resolution fly to the winds—what did anything matter so long as she could lay her hand in his, and feel his fingers warm over hers? It was her first acquaintance with the tyranny of a heart aflame, and for a moment she bent her head before it. He thought that he had got the better of her scruples, whatever they were, by the way her voice broke as she said: