“But, lord of my life, how is it known to you that their life is all good? Is it possible to envy what you know not?”
“I know that with them life is eternal as with me and doubtless joy perpetual. But to this they add useful toil that gives us our luxuries. All these fair things about us are made by the hands of free men rejoicing in beauty. And I make nothing. I pass from one enjoyment to another, fettered—a winged bird in a jewelled cage. Are they not happier than I? And you, sweet wife,—what joy have you in comforting the long hours of a slave?”
She kissed his hands with passion, her black hair falling silken about his feet.
“It is I that am the slave, my King—the happy slave of your beauty and nobleness, and what could I ask but to wait eternally upon your pleasure and that of your son.”
He turned his eyes gravely upon her.
“My son?” he said. And she:
“It is true—it is true. And it is because I bear this hope in my bosom that it pierces me like a sword to see your calm averted eyes and know you far away in that strange heaven where I cannot follow. O, my lord, if it be true that you have alien kindred I cannot reach, let your son be of them. Give him all good!”
Then stooping, he drew her head to his breast and put his arm about her and drew her gently until she sat upon his left knee—that throne of the Indian wife, and thus they remained awhile in silence, and his touch was better than speech and his quiet healing as moonlight. Nor did she miss words of love or rejoicing for his calm folded her in the very wings of peace. At long last he spoke:
“My Pearl of Perfectness, we two are one, and of our true oneness springs this new delight. To me the hope is sweeter than all harps touched in the hollow of Heaven, and if you were dear to me before, judge how dear now. But since we are so one, come nearer, share my thought as well as my heart. Does it content you that we should bring into our prison another prisoner and one so dear? Here the days slip by uncounted—a chain of fadeless flowers. Here the river links its long silver thought for ever and ever down the channel from the peaks. Here the bright birds flash by eternally. Will they people the garden to overflowing with their beauty or do they fly away to freer lands as I would if I could? When this garden is full of our children and theirs, what then? Am I the only prisoner or they also? What is the secret my father holds from me?”
But she, trembling, could answer nothing. And again there was silence and only the bright slow dropping of the little spring, and her heart forboded sorrow.