“It is horrible, horrible beyond all thought or speech, but it is so, Isma, and I, of all the thousands of Aeria who will make merry to-day, shall be sad at heart and praying for the night to come.”
“I don’t believe it, Alma, however sincerely you may do so—as, of course, you do,” replied Isma impatiently. “It is not your true and loving self that is speaking. It is the woman who has been brooding over a shattered idol that never really was a man of flesh and blood.
“I tell you again—and before that sun has set you will confess in your own heart that I am right—that you have never known the Alan who is coming home to-day any more than I have known the Alexis who is coming home with him. Neither you nor I have ever seen two such men as they will be—men who have passed through such experiences as no other Aerians ever had, who have suffered and conquered, dared and done, like them.
“You must put away those morbid fancies of yours, dearest; they are not worthy of you any more than Olga Romanoff is worthy to cause you an hour’s unhappiness. Never mind thinking about Alan as a lover now. I tell you you have never seen him, therefore it will be time enough for you to begin to do that when you do see him.
“For my own part, I don’t mind telling you—of course, strictly between ourselves—that though I can hardly say that I love Alexis as he is now, since I do not know what he is like, I am quite prepared to fall in love with him all over again on the slightest provocation. And now, after that confession, I think we had better close the discussion and get ready to go over to the city.”
This frank avowal, uttered as it was with a delightful candour quite irresistible in its charm, brought a smile to Alma’s lips in spite of her own sombre thoughts. She slipped her arm round Isma’s waist, and led her towards one of the long windows which opened out on to the terrace under the pillared portico which ran the whole length of the front of the villa.
“I quite agree with you,” she said. “If that tell-tale face of yours is no better masked than it is now, when you meet your Alexis I don’t think you will have long to wait for the provocation. Ah, well, I suppose—in fact, I am sure—that you take by far the wiser view, and I would give anything to be able to look upon Alan as you are ready to do on Alexis.
“But no, it’s no use; do what I will I cannot think of him apart from that Syren who has held him in the bondage of her spells all these years. I know it is unreasonable, and yet he seems, even now that he has regained his freedom, to belong to her more than he ever did to me.”
“That, my dear Alma,” replied Isma, half seriously and half in jest, “is as nearly absurd as anything that such a serious and cultivated person as yourself could say. If I could give you a share of my more trivial temperament you would just say that you are still so desperately jealous of Olga Romanoff that you cannot bring yourself to think of Alan as a possible lover until you feel quite sure that he hates her as intensely as you do. That may not be a very heroic way of putting it, but I think we shall find it pretty near the truth before you have known the new Alan very long.”
Alma laughed more musically than mirthfully at this sally, but made no reply to it in words. There was, perhaps, more truth in the half-bantering, half-reproachful words than she would have cared to admit, even to her best-beloved and most confidential friend, and so she took a wise refuge in silence, from which Isma, in the gladness of her own heart, drew her own conclusions.