“ ‘His.’ Can a woman?”
“Oh, you are clever! But, yes—in certain conditions. There are moments when I am happier than any one not an artist can ever dream of being. And betweenwhiles—with my studies, my long meditations upon the characters I portray—for I find always something new in those strange women, that not even The Master apprehended when he resurrected them—in my unruffled life, in my certainty of repeated triumphs—well, it is close enough to happiness; although I am willing to confess that it might not have been at your age. Have we really pulled up a bit?”
The horses were trotting quietly across a valley, where, unable to find excitement, the King, no doubt, was in the habit of sparing his unhappy beasts. But a few moments later the speed was increased again, apparently that they might enter a village on the other side of the valley like a hurricane. Here, as in all the other villages through which they had flashed, was the same rattling of windows flung up, the same flaring of lights, the same passionate cry:—
“Heil unserem König, Heil!”
But in this case the cheers stopped abruptly, for the faithful peasants had time to discover their mistake; the foaming horses came to a sudden halt before the gasthaus trembling and panting. As Ordham and Countess Tann descended into the narrow street which flamed like a comet, there were loud astonished cries. The outrider made a brief explanation, and the lights were extinguished, the windows slammed. In the beloved romantic figure of their King these humble folk took a deathless interest, but not the least in any guest he might invite to his castles; although for a week from this night they discussed the strange fact that he condescended to have guests at all, much less relinquish in their favour his midnight drive.
But the landlord of the inn had expected the King’s visitors, and kept his counsel: a groom on horseback had galloped in with orders half an hour before. Ordham and Styr were conducted into a long dark raftered room which had been hastily aired of its evening fumes of beer and tobacco, and illuminated with lamps and candles. There was a fire in the big tiled stove, and Ordham quickly threw off his overcoat and removed the long Arabian-looking wrap in which the singer was muffled. The supper was not ready, and he looked her over as she stood by the fire with her back to him, a tall figure draped in severe white folds, a finely poised head with loosened coils of heavy but rippling brown hair that shone as if polished daily with a silk handkerchief. But although she was engaged in the prosaic occupation of warming her hands, he received the impression that he always did in the first act of Tristan and the second of Götterdämmerung, of a ruthless mental force, barely held in leash, of sullen deadly fires.
It was like a sudden vision of Aspasia in the dark tobacco-scented room of the little Alpine gasthaus, but in a moment he forgot his fancies; she turned to him with bright eyes and flushed cheeks that made her look human and young.
“How odd! How odd!” she cried. “And the oddest part of it is that I like it—talking to a human being once more. It might even seem natural to feel young and gay again. And in spite of your preternatural insight—or whatever it is—you are deliciously young, and, I think, stimulated all that was still youthful in my brain the moment we made friends.”
“Are we to remain friends?”
“I do not know. I must think it over.”