She retreated, but held him with the bewildering tenderness of her glance.
“Your lover! Lord of you, my lady. Inarime, your husband.”
“I love you,” she cried, and covered her face with her hands.
“My own! Your eyes spoke first. I knew it. Nothing shall part us. Say you believe it.”
“I cannot; but I love you.”
He drew nearer, and his dark, impassioned gaze flamed fire into hers. His breath was on her hair, and he held her hand to his lips.
“Oh, my beloved, thou art the eye of my soul, the voice of my heart,” he burst out, incoherently. At that moment of high-wrought sensation and terrible sincerity, he could no more hold Eastern metaphor in abeyance than he could bid his gaze close upon the light it avidly drank—as sun-drained flowers drink dew. The restraints of European customs and education were broken and overtopped by the strong heat of passion, and wild words gushed upon its wave.
“Inarime, Inarime, thy slim fingers are the rivets that bind my willing feet to high service. Command me! Anything, I pray, but silence and averted looks. Withhold me not thy promise.”
“I cannot,” she said again, startled by his outburst.
“Nay, thou art offended. Oh! blind me not with thy anger, Inarime. But as thou wilt. Thy anger will I bear rather than that thou shouldst leave me. O fair one, O desired of my life! Thy kiss upon my eyelids shall be as the dawn of my Paradise. Be to me, sweet, as an angel of morning. Lift the gloom and fever of unsatisfied longing from my heart. Be to me as the sun, moon, and stars to this earth of ours—light, life, warmth, and colour. I grow chill with the fear of thy unwillingness, Inarime. Worse than perpetual deafness were to my ear thy ‘nay.’ But ‘nay’ it cannot be, beloved. Thou lovest me. The light has shown it in thy eyes. My voice has revealed it on thy face. Mine art thou, O Inarime, and by our love must thou abide.”