‘These delicious verses of the gentle Tristan might have been a description of the land of l’Amitié Tendre, so charmed is its atmosphere, so deep its green shadows, so heavy its brooding peace. For all round it is traced a magic circle across which nothing discordant or vulgar can venture.... Without, moan the Passions like wild beasts enchained, the thunder booms, the lightning flashes, and there is a heap as high as a mountain of barbed arrows shot by Love, all of which have fallen short of that magic circle.
‘Happy they who have crossed it!
‘Madame, I called the Grecian Sappho a barbarian.... Barbarian or no she discovered hundreds of years ago the charm by which the magic circle can be crossed ... the charm is simple when you know it; it is merely this ... take another maiden with you. It has never been crossed by man and maid, for in sight of the country’s cool trees and with the murmur of its fountains in their ear they have been snatched from behind by one of the enchained passions, or grievously wounded by one of the whizzing arrows ... Madame, shall we try the virtue of the Grecian Sappho’s charm?’
And Sappho murmurs ‘yes.’
So Madeleine put her fate ‘to the touch, to win or lose it all,’ and there was something exhilarating in the thought that retreat now was impossible.
CHAPTER XXXII
‘UN CADEAU’
The next morning—the morning of the day—Madeleine woke up with the same feeling of purification; she seemed to be holding the day’s culmination in her hands, and it was made of solid white marble, that cooled her palms as she held it.
Berthe, with mysterious winks, brought her a sealed letter. It was from Jacques:—