“‘Night and the sombre silence, oh, my love, and one star shining!
First, warm, velvety sleep, and then this quick, quiet waking to
your voice which seems to call me. Is it—is it you that calls?
Do you sometimes, even in your dreams, speak to me? Far beneath
unconsciousness is there the summons of your spirit to me?...
I like to think so. I like to think that this thing which has come
to us is deeper, greater than we are. Sometimes day and night there
flash before my eyes—my mind’s eyes—pictures of you and me in
places unfamiliar, landscapes never before seen, activities
uncomprehended and unknown, bright, alluring glimpses of some second
being, some possible, maybe never-to-be-realised future, alas! Yet
these swift-moving shutters of the soul, or imagination, or reality
—who shall say which?—give me a joy never before felt in life. If
I am not a better man for this love of mine for you, I am more than
I was, and shall be more than I am. Much of my life in the past was
mean and small, so much that I have said and done has been unworthy
—my love for you is too sharp a light for my gross imperfections of
the past! Come what will, be what must, I stake my life, my heart,
my soul on you—that beautiful, beloved face; those deep eyes in
which my being is drowned; those lucid, perfect hands that have
bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I must go
forwards: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did
not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of
devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams.
O Cithaeron! Turn from me now—or never, O my love! Loose me
from the mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea
of your forgetfulness now—or never!... But keep me, keep me,
if your love is great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; for I
am yours to my uttermost note of life.’”
“He knew—he knew!” Rawley said, catching her wrists in his hands and drawing her to him. “If I could write, that’s what I should have said to you, beautiful and beloved. How mean and small and ugly my life was till you made me over. I was a bad lot.”
“So much hung on one little promise,” she said, and drew closer to him. “You were never bad,” she added; then, with an arm sweeping the universe, “Oh, isn’t it all good, and isn’t it all worth living?”
His face lost its glow. Over in the town her brother faced a ruined life, and the girl beside him, a dark humiliation and a shame which would poison her life hereafter, unless—his look turned to the little house where the quack-doctor lived. He loosed her hands.
“Now for Caliban,” he said.
“I shall be Ariel and follow you-in my heart,” she said. “Be sure and make him tell you the story of his life,” she added with a laugh, as his lips swept the hair behind her ears.
As he moved swiftly away, watching his long strides, she said proudly, “As deep as the sea.”
After a moment she added: “And he was once a gambler, until, until—” she glanced at the open book, then with sweet mockery looked at her hands—“until ‘those lucid, perfect hands bound me to the mast of your destiny.’ O vain Diana! But they are rather beautiful,” she added softly, “and I am rather happy.” There was something like a gay little chuckle in her throat.
“O vain Diana!” she repeated.
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