"I am happy enough to fly, but cannot. So I do the next best thing—I climb to you." His arm was across the stone railing by this time and he was panting from the exertion, not two feet from where she crouched. "Just one minute of heaven before I go back to the shadow of earth. I am happy again. Marlanx told me you had dismissed me. I wonder what he holds in reserve for me. I knew he lied, but it is not until now that I rejoice. Come, you are to shield me from the rain."
"Oh, oh!" she gasped, overwhelmed by his daring passion. "I should die if anyone saw you here." Yet she spasmodically extended the umbrella so that it covered him and left her out in the drizzle.
"And so should I," responded he softly. "Listen to me. For hours and hours I have been longing for the dear old hills in which you found me. I wanted to crawl out of Edelweiss and lose myself forever in the rocks and crags. To-night when you saw me I was trying to say good-bye to you forever. I was trying to make up my mind to desert. I could not endure the new order of things. You had cast me off. My friends out there were eager to have me with them. In the city everyone is ready to call me a spy—even you, I thought. Life was black and drear. Now, my princess, it is as bright as heaven itself."
"You must not talk like this," she whispered helplessly. "You are making me sorry I called to you."
"I should have heard you if you had only whispered, my rain princess. I have no right to talk of love—I am a vagabond; but I have a heart, and it is a bold one. Perhaps I dream that I am here beside you—so near that I can touch your face—but it is the sweetest of dreams. But for it I should have left Edelweiss weeks ago. I shall never awaken from this dream; you cannot rob me of the joys of dreaming."
Under the spell of his passion she drew nearer to him as he clung strongly to the rail. The roses at her throat came so close that he could bury his face in them. Her hand touched his cheek, and he kissed its palm again and again, his wet lips stinging her blood to the tips of her toes.
"Go away, please," she implored faintly. "Don't you see that you must not stay here—now?"
"A rose, my princess,—one rose to kiss all through the long night," he whispered. She could feel his eyes burning into her heart. With trembling, hurried fingers she tore loose a rose. He could not seize it with his hands because of the position he held, and she laughed tantalizingly. Then she kissed it first and pressed it against his mouth. His lips and teeth closed over the stem and the rose was his.
"There are thorns," she whispered, ever so softly.
"They are the riches of the poor," he murmured with difficulty, but she understood.