"I am an Alsandrian: speak English no more," she replied to his question.
"Ah! but I must speak English," said the stranger.
"But why?"
"Because I am an Englishman, fair lady of Alsander," replied the poet, for it was he, as Norman had already guessed.
A little disappointed, as she confessed, the Princess told how, nevertheless, she called the poet to come in and see her, and to a scandalized protest from Miss Johnson merely rejoined that if he might not come in through the door he should enter through the window.
It was the poet, then, who arranged the secret visit of Ianthe to Alsander. It was he who suggested her disguise, he who made friends for her in Alsander who could be trusted with the great secret, he who managed Miss Johnson. This latter superhuman task he managed heaven knows how. But I think the little old lady was a romantic and would have come, too, had it not been necessary for her to continue the tour and post from various illustrious towns the charming letters which the Princess with the poet's aid (to lighten the touch of Baedeker) composed beforehand ready for the post. "And so ends my tale," concluded the Princess. "Three days ago Sforelli, at my request, informed my guardian of all the amazing truth: and he (stern old man!) without one comment, has ordered me back. I must obey. I leave to-night. Here ends the masquerade!"
"Poor masquerade!" cried Norman. "Is it here the curtain falls? Whatever be the strong and radiant drama of our lives on which it shall rise again, I regret the masquerade!"
Their footsteps ceased upon the garden path. The moonlight flung their stilly shadows to the tattered roses. On the pediment of Love's plaster Temple one fairy light still palely glimmered in the vast white splendour of chaste Artemis. A nightingale trilled once, then fell a-dreaming. And through the boy's learned soul passed murmurs of ages far estranged, which yet blended together and took on a nature of their own—a clear dim note of the Athenian lyre, hinting beneath all artificial chords the melody of the earth and of truth, a gavotte by Lully or Rameau, a laugh of Heine, or songs they sang at the Cremorne Gardens, twenty years ago. He felt the moonlit sky, the ruined bowers, the Temple and the roses dwindle and shapen into the scenery of a stage—as though the girl in travesty before him had made a mockery of all the linked worlds. Then suddenly he knew.
"Columbine," he said, "you will not leave me thus?"
She stepped away from him lightly, arms akimbo.