“Aye,” said the count, with one of his melancholy glances, “she is indeed the Proud Princess. Therefore I expect to-morrow will not dawn for us. We shall fall asleep over our wine, you and I, my dear Don Miguel, and awake to find that there is an end to our dreams. We shall find the bird flown.”
“She will have to fly out at the window, then, Sir Count.”
“Yes; doubtless she will prefer to do that. For there never was a bird so beautiful, so graceful, so touched with the soft hues of romance that the soul of a man was able to keep it before it to gaze upon. This is some princess out of an Arabian story. We shall find, dear friend, that there is no flesh and blood in her. She came to us out of the air, and to-morrow at dawn we shall find her resolved again into that element.”
“In the meantime we will be of good courage, Sir Count, and dream upon her—”
“In all her lily-white daintiness, which was never so dustily and coarsely clad.”
The Count of Nullepart took forth his music yet again, and played a final melody; one which in grave sweetness and fantasy and delicacy of passion was more than equal to all the others. We then drained our cups and fell into slumber presently, with our heads on the table at which we sat.
I suppose we must both have been dreaming of that vision that had made poetry of our ideas, and I suppose that proud and beautiful face, which was yet so bright with youth, and so grave with its coquetry, may even have revealed itself through the mists of the brain, for at some hour towards two of the clock of the summer’s darkness we sprang to our feet with that imperious voice in our ears.
“To me, my friends, to me!” was the cry we heard.
Together we sprang from the settle, and ran to the stairs.
“To me, my friends, to me!” we heard the cry again. It was clear and spreading, yet withal it was the voice of a child.