It was a heavenly night; if the baby waves broke in the little bay they must break in diamonds,—the wet stones must shine like crystals.
That day V. Lydiat had transported her to a great and silent jungle in Cambodia and they went up together through the crowding whispering trees to the ruined palaces where once great kings dwelt, and passed together through sounding halls sculptured with dead myths to the chambers, once secret, whence queens looked forth languidly from wildly-carved casements into the wilderness of sweets in the gardens.
V. Lydiat had led her to a great tank of crystal water in the knotted shade, paved with strange stones inlaid with human figures in wrought metal,—a place where women with gold-embraced heads once idly bathed their slender limbs in the warm lymph—a secret place then, but now open to cruel sunlight and cold incurious stars.
So far she knew it all. She had photographed that tank with its stony cobras while Sidney Verrier timed the exposure. But of the story told to-day she knew nothing.
A wonderful story, old as time, new as to-morrow, for the figures in it were of to-day, people who had gone there, as she herself had done, only to see, and were captured, subjugated by the old alarming magic which lurks in the jungle and behind the carven walls and eyeless windows. A dangerous place, and she had not known it then—had thought of it only as a sight to be seen, a memory to be treasured. But V. Lydiat knew better—knew it was alive and terrible still.
She leaned her arms on the sill and looked out to the sea that led towards the hidden Orient and in her heart she spoke to the strange visitor.
“I wish I knew you,” she whispered. “You come and go and I can’t touch you even while you are within and about me. You interpret. You make life wonderful, but perhaps you are more wonderful still. If I could only lay hold of you, touch you, have one glimpse of you! What are you? Where do you come from? Where do you go? I hear. O, let me see!”
It was like a prayer, and the more intense because the dead stillness of the night presented it as its own cry and entreaty.
Dead silence. Not even the voice of the sea.
She laid her head on her folded arms.