“Unbearably sweet,” he interjected. “The scent is like the thrust of a lance. I know, I know. But there was another woman. I can’t remember her face.”
“How did she stand?” asked Beatrice Veronica.
“Near me—but she could see nothing. The day still blinded her, until——”
“Until you laid your hand on hers. Then she saw.”
Another long silence. Only the beating of the moth’s wings. He leaned forward from his chair and laid his hands on the clasp of hers. Their eyes met, absorbing each other; the way for the electric current was clear.
“I remember now,” he said, very softly. “It was you. It was you at the Temple of Govindhar. At the Massacre Ghaut of Cawnpore. Ah, I dragged you there against your will to show I was the stronger. It is you—always you.”
What was she to say? With his hands on hers it was a union of strength which put the past before both like an open book. She remembered all the dreams now. Impossible to tell them here—they were so many, like and unlike, shaken shifting jewels in a kaleidoscope held in some unseen hand. But jewels. They sat a long time in this way, rapt in wordless memories, their eyes absorbing each other—the strangest reunion. When speech came it brought rapture which needed little explanation. They bathed in wonder as in clear water, they flung the sparkle of it over their heads and glittered to each other in its radiance. When had such a miracle been wrought for any two people in all the world? The dreams of the visionary were actual for them and heaven and earth instinct with miracle.
“When we are married—when we pass our lives utterly together the bond will be stronger,” he said, kissing her hand passionately two hours later. “We shall be awake with reason and intellect as well as vision to help our work, we shall do such things as the world has never dreamed, prove that miracle is the daily bread of those who know. Two halves of a perfect whole made one forever and ever. You see?”
He looked at her a moment with shining eyes and added, “The wise will come to us for wisdom, the poets for beauty, and we shall make our meeting-places the shrines of a new worship.”
Beatrice Veronica agreed with every pulse of her blood. The Great Adventure, and together!—what bliss could equal that marvel?