The perfect beauty of her figure, outlined on green by her thin white gown, charmed and enchanted him. He stared at her, trying to focus her face more clearly upon his sight; her loveliness struck him dumb. She seemed a statue of ivory, hung with garlands of gold, crimson and green, half-hidden by a rood-screen of shimmering emerald. It seemed to him that he looked on more than mortal beauty.
Leaning forward a little, one hand outstretched, one clasping her throat, she watched his face with its golden hair aglow in the last red sunlight. How could she tell if it were a god or a man,—that face with its shimmering locks like living fire around it, a gleaming nimbus whose dancing flames were fashioned of burnished gold, a face like a blazing seraph’s, or Ariel’s? She looked at that proud young countenance in wordless adoration.
Her own face was now intensely bright with the sunset’s declining glory. Into the crevice between her lips the sunshine had slipped; her lips were translucent; her mouth was aglow as if she breathed ethereal fire.
Suddenly he drew his breath with a sharply audible sound; for, as he gazed, longing seized the boy’s heart and wrung it bitterly.
The flame which blazed in his bright eyes put an answering glow in her own. She was aware that her beauty had startled him. For the first time in her life she was awake to her own loveliness, a sense wonderful and sweet. A delicate, throbbing fire came fluttering up through her breast; a flush stole into her cheeks and warmed their ashy pallor. Her eyes met his: in his eyes were joy, surprise, and longing. His eyes met hers: and all her doubts went out in wordless joy. For, when she perceived that look in his face, she, too, was thrilled with longing; the silence sang; fire thrilled her heart; suddenly neck and cheeks flamed red.
She answered his look with glorious eyes, humid, terrified, alight. Then her frightened eyes fell and her shy face. But, like a wave which breaks along a beach in a passionate surge, her heart rushed out to greet him.
He saw her neck and her cheeks flame red; passion struck him to the heart. With a gesture of haughty but boyish humility he pushed through the hedge, seized the sheltering pomegranate branches, and swept them aside. She stood uncurtained before him. He gazed at her. “St. Jacques!” he cried. “Are you a living creature?”
She regarded him for an instant with a look of undisguised terror, catching her breath with a sobbing sound right pitiful to hear; then her quivering, piteous face was made exquisite by tears.
A back-wash of timidity held him silently staring at her,—a boy, hot and hasty, sure of himself, impulsively bold, but abashed,—admiration and longing ablaze in his eyes. Gabrielle stammered, but could not find words; her breast heaved and sank; she could not control it. Overwhelmed by the sudden strange rush of emotion, she swayed giddily, dizzily put out one hand to steady herself, and laid it upon his arm: a tremulous smile came over her face; her tears, like an April shower, were gone.
His hand sought her other hand; found it; held it; thus their hands met. Half a step timidly they approached each other; then stood at a halt as if turned to stone. Her frightened breath was the only sound save the stirring of the night-wind in the dark boughs overhead.