But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track,
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before.”
So she had come and gone, and his hands touched only walls of adamant, his ears heard only an echo rolling across blank infinities!
The moon sank. The great, linked lamps of the heavens burned brighter, faded at length, and a breath of sea-breeze, harbinger of the dawn, struck coldly on his cheek. Night became soft twilight, twilight grew to warm amethyst. Little milky clouds dappled the zenith, slowly suffused by a flush of rose that grew to vivid splendor gray-streaked, as the sun’s climbing edge touched the humid horizon.
The occupant of the gondola stirred and looked about him. The air was full of mewing swallows, and a sandy island lay before him from which rose clumps of foliage and the dim outlines of brown stone walls, gilded by the growing light. The gondolier’s voice broke the long silence:
“It is the Armenian monastery of Saint Lazarus, Excellence.”
The island lay lapped in quiet. Not a sound or movement intrenched upon its peace. Only the swallows circled shrilly about slim bell-towers, lifting like fingers pointing silently. A narrow causeway through an encircling dike led to the wharf, and beyond, by a gate, to an orchard where gnarled fruit-trees sniffed the salt air. From a chimney at one side a strand of smoke sheered slenderly.
Gordon drew a long breath. “Put me ashore,” he said.