“Oh! yes; I know,” he replied, hurriedly; “but I mean that I haven’t yet got away. I travel constantly, but it does no good—and perhaps you can tell me the secret I want to know. I will pay any sum for it. I am very rich and very young, and, if money cannot buy it, I will give as many years of my life as you require.”
He moved his hands convulsively, and his hair was wet upon his forehead. He was very handsome in that mystic light, but his eye burned with eagerness, and his slight, graceful frame thrilled with the earnestness of his emotion. The Emperor Hadrian, who loved the boy Antinous, would have loved the youth.
“But what is it that you wish to leave behind?” said I, at length, holding his arm paternally; “what do you wish to escape?”
He threw his arms straight down by his side, clenched his, hands, and looked fixedly in my eyes. The beautiful head was thrown a little back upon one shoulder, and the wan faced glowed with yearning desire and utter abandonment to confidence, so that, without his saying it, I knew that he had never whispered the secret which he was about to impart to me. Then, with a long sigh, as if his life were exhaling, he whispered,
“Myself.”
“Ah! my boy, you are bound upon a long journey.”
“I know it,” he replied mournfully; “and I cannot even get started. If I don’t get off in this ship, I fear I shall never escape.” His last words were lost in the mist which gradually removed him from my view.
“The youth has been amusing you with some of his wild fancies, I suppose,” said a venerable man, who might have been twin brother of that snowy-bearded pilot. “It is a great pity so promising a young man should be the victim of such vagaries.”
He stood looking over the side for some time, and at length added,
“Don’t you think we ought to arrive soon?”