"I danced for you. I've never danced like that before—it was the last time——"
"Sigrid—if you knew—why did you do it?—why have you hurt us both?"
"Have I hurt you?" She drew herself up a little, looking down at him with an exquisite compassion in her fading eyes. "Dear, it was to make you happy—to give you back all you had lost—I wanted you to see me—at the last—on the mountain-top—in my golden palace—don't you remember——? Not in decay and ugliness—but in beauty."
"It has always been in beauty!" he cried out in passionate protest.
She shook her head. Her eyes no longer saw him. They were fixed ahead on some brightening vision.
"Not always. You and I—we saw the same sunrise but we were afar off from each other. We stood on different mountain-peaks—there was a great valley between, which one of us had to cross before we could stand together. And one night—I couldn't bear to be so far off from you and I saw that your mountain-peak was higher than mine and nearer to the sun—and I made up my mind. I came down from my heights and went through the valley. It was so ugly—quagmire and darkness—and loathsome things—sometimes I felt I could never be clean again and sometimes that I should not have the strength to reach you—and in that time you could not see me but in the end we stood together—we're near each other now, Tristram——"
Her voice faded into an exhausted silence. He knew that her mind was clouded with a rising mist of old memories, old doubts and struggles. He could not wholly understand, and yet the recognition of an immeasurable, fearlessly born suffering came to him with her broken, fevered murmurs.
He bowed his face upon her hands.
"My mountain heights—oh, Sigrid, they have been low enough—if you knew how low——"
"I know everything—everything——"