“Ah! And do you love any other woman?”
The great head drooped forward. “Yes, Mea.”
“So! Now what is her name?”
Rupert looked about him like a man who seeks escape from dangers and finds none. Then he answered:
“Her name is yours—yours and no other’s. But oh! have pity on my weakness. Remember that this lonely path is hard; do not drive me back into the wilderness.”
She let her head fall a little, and when she lifted it again he saw by the light of the fire and of the bright stars above, that her sweet face shone with a great and abiding joy.
“Have no fear, Rupert,” she said. “Is my own path so easy that I should wish to plant thorns in yours? I am well content; I tell you that I am well content. This is the best and happiest hour of my life; it shines bright above me as that star. I understand that you are great and noble, who being a man that loves, yet deny your heart. Shall I then not deny my heart also, or shall I seek to tarnish your honour in your own eyes? Nay, may I perish first, or—worse still—be parted from you. What was our compact? That we should be as brother and sister, having withal the love of a hundred husbands and the love of a hundred wives. It stands, and it shall stand, nor will I grow bitter or unkind. Only I fear me, Rupert, that as my beauty wanes, you who are tied to me but by the spirit, you who do not see me re-arise in children, may weary of this jealous, half-wild daughter of the desert—for jealous I know I still shall be.”
Now it was his turn to say “Fear not, Mea, fear not; broken body and broken spirit have come home together, have come home to you like a swallow in the spring, and they will seek no other nest.”
“In the name of God, so be it,” she said.
“In the name of God, so it is,” he answered.