‘Is there a periodical advertisement of your hopes?—or do they come to us by intuition?’
‘Kollin was right!—the ways of the serpent will be serpentine. I knew we must meet. It is no true day so long as the goddess of the morning and the sun-god are kept asunder. I speak of myself, by what I have felt since I heard of you.’
‘You are sure of your divinity?’
‘Through my belief in yours!’
They bowed smiling at the courtly exchanges.
‘And tell me,’ said he, ‘as to meeting me...?’
She replied: ‘When we are so like the rest of the world we may confess our weakness.’
‘Unlike! for the world and I meet and part: not we two.’
Clotilde attempted an answer: it would not come. She tried to be revolted by his lording tone, and found it strangely inoffensive. His lording presence and the smile that was like a waving feather on it compelled her so strongly to submit to hear, as to put her in danger of appearing to embrace this man’s rapid advances.
She said: ‘I first heed of you at Capri.’