So long as a woman loves, she loves right on, steadily. A man has to do something between whiles. Liana transformed everything into his image and his name: this mountain, this little chamber, this, to him once dangerous, bird-pole, became the crayon pencils for his stereotype image. She always came back upon this, that he deserved something better than her; for love is lowliness, on the wedding-ring sparkles no jewel. It touched her that her early death affected him. There she saw still the maiden blinded by the small-pox, whom he had once unconsciously pressed to his heart;[184] and, with the quick apprehension of sadness, she felt herself to resemble the blind one also, in that incident, and not merely in the similar, although shorter night, which pain had once thrown over her eyes.
As gentle as her emblem, Hesperus, dipping into the western horizon of life, did she seem to her lover. She never could pass immediately out of her own heart into the startling present; her turnings were always like those of the sunflower, very slow, and every sensation lived long in her faithful breast. Seldom, indeed, does a lover find the welcome of his loved one like the last image, which the farewell had imparted to him; a female soul must—so man desires—with all the wings, storms, heavens, of the last minute, sound over into the next. But Liana had ever received her friend shyly and softly, and otherwise than she had parted with him; and sometimes, to his fiery spirit, this tender waiting, this slow lifting of the eyelid, appeared almost as a return to the old coldness.
To-day it seized the more ardent Count more strongly than usual. Like a pair of strange children who are to become acquainted with each other, and smile upon and touch each other, the two stood beside each other friendly and embarrassed. She told how she had made his sister tell her of his childish break-neck adventure on this mountain. A loved maiden knows no more beautiful, no richer history than that of her friend. "O even then," he said with emotion, "I looked toward thy mountains! Thy name, like a golden inscription, was written on my whole youth. Ah, Liana! didst thou haply love me as I thee, when thou hadst not yet seen me?"
"Certainly not, Albano," answered she, "not till long after!" She meant, however, her blindness; and said he appeared to her in this twilight of the eyes, on that evening when he ate with her father, like an old northern king's son, somewhat like Olo,[185] and she had had a certain awe before him, as for her father and brother. Her high respect for men the fewest were hardly worthy to guess, not to say, occasion. "And how when thou hadst regained thy sight?" said Albano. "I just told thee that," she replied naively. "But when thou didst so love my brother," she continued, "and wast so good to thy sister, then to be sure I quite took heart, and am now and henceforth thy second sister. Besides, thou hast lost one—Albano, believe me, I know I am surely unworthy, especially of thee; but I have one consolation."
Perplexed by this mixture of sanctity and coldness, he could only passionately kiss her, and was constrained, without contradicting her, to ask forthwith, "What consolation?" "That thou wilt one day be entirely happy," said she softly. "Liana, speak more plainly!" said he. For he understood not that she meant her death and the announcement of Linda by the spirits. "I mean after one year," she replied, "from the date of the predictions." He looked at her speechless, wild, guessing and trembling. She fell weeping upon his heart, and suddenly gave vent to the swell of inward sighs: "Shall I not then be dead at that time," said she with deep emotion, "and look down from eternity to see that thou art rewarded for thy love to Liana? And that, too, certainly in a high degree!"
Weep, be angry, suffer, exult, and wonder more and more, passionate youth! But, to be sure, thou comprehendest not this lowly soul!—Holy humility! thou only virtue which God, not man, created! Thou art higher than all which thou concealest or knowest not! Thou heavenly beam of light! like the earthly light,[186] thou showest all other colors and floatest thyself invisible, colorless, in heaven! Let no one profane thy unconsciousness by instruction! When thy little white blossoms have once fallen, they come not again, and around thy fruits only modesty then spreads her foliage.
Painfully did the heart in Albano split into contradictions, as if into two, his own heart and Liana's. She was nothing but pure love and lowliness, and the splendor of her talents was only a foreign border-work, as white marble images of the gods have the variegated border only as decoration: one could not do anything but adore her, even in her errors. On the other hand, she had, in conjunction with tender, susceptible feelings, such firm opinions and errors; his modesty fought so vainly against her humility, and his clear-sightedness against her visionary tendency. The hostile train which this propensity drew after it he saw too clearly sweeping along over all the joys of her life. His ever-besetting suspicion, that she loved him merely because she hated nothing, and that she was always a sister instead of a lover, again charged home upon him like an armed man. Thus did all things fight together in this case,—duty and desire, fortune and place. Both were new and unknown to each other, because of love; but Liana divined as little as he. O how strange to each other and unlike each other two human beings, kindred souls, become, merely because a Divinity hovers between the two and shines upon both!
Something remained in him unharmonious and unsolved. He felt it so sadly, now that the summer night glimmered for higher raptures than he possessed; now that, deep in the ether, the trembling evening star pressed on after the sun through the rose-clouds under which he was buried; now that the meadows of grain breathed perfume and murmured not, and the closed pastures grew green and did not glow, and the world and every nightingale slept, and life below was a still cloister-garden, and, only overhead, the constellations, like silver, ethereal harps, seemed to tremble and sound before the spring winds of distant Edens.
He must needs see Liana again to-morrow, by way of tuning his heart. Rabette came up from the mountain with her friend, infinitely animated. Both seemed almost exhausted with laughing and joking; for Roquairol carried everything, even mirth, to the degree of pain. He had converted the evening star, for which he had given the invitation, into a hothouse and homestead of pleasant conceits and allusions. At first he would not come home with her, even to-morrow; but at last he consented, when Rabette assured him "she understood the fine gentleman well enough, but he must nevertheless just let her take care of things."
When the ruddy dawn arose, Albano, accompanied by him, came again; but the garden-gate of the "manor-garden" was already open, and Liana already in the arbor. A stitched book of public documents (seemingly) lay in her lap, and her folded hands beside it; she looked rather straightforward, as in thought, than upwards, as in prayer; yet she received her Albano with so mild and distant a smile, as a man, greeting a guest who comes right into the midst of his prayers, smiles upon him, and then continues his devotion. The Count had hitherto been obliged always to prepare himself for a certain reserve in her reception of him. A misunderstanding, which returns quickly, however often it is removed, acts again and again as deludingly and freshly as at the first time. He felt very strongly that something more fixed than that first virgin bashfulness, wherewith a maiden will always invent for the dazzling sun of love, besides the dawn, a twilight too, and again another for that, hindered the fiery melting together of their souls.