There was no rustle among the lianas, no stir among the dead leaves; yet SHE stood again before me! My heart seemed to cease its beatings;—a chill as of those nights in which I had sailed Antarctic seas passed over me! Robed in white as in the buried years, with lights like fireflies in her hair, and the same dark, elfish smile! And suddenly the chill passed away with a fierce cataclysm of the blood, as though each of its cells were heated by volcanic fire;—for the strange words of the Hebrew canticle came to me like a far echo—
LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH!
I burst the fetters with which horror had chained my voice;—I spake to her; I wept—I wept tears of blood!
And the old voice came to me, argentine and low and mockingly sweet as the voices of birds that call to each other through the fervid West Indian night—
"I knew thou wouldst come back to me—howsoever long thou mightst wander under other skies and over other seas.
"Didst thou dream that I was dead? Nay, I die not so quickly! I have lived through all these years. I shall live on; and thou must return hither again to visit me like a thief in the night.
"Knowest thou how I have lived? I have lived in the bitter tears thou hast wept through all these long years;—the agony of the remorse that seized thee in silent nights and lonesome wastes;—in the breath of thy youth and life exhaled in passionate agony when no human eyes beheld thee;—in the images that haunt thy dreams and make it a horror for thee to find thyself alone! Yet wouldst thou kiss me—"
I looked upon her again in the white light;—I saw the same weirdly beautiful face, the same smile of the sphinx;—I saw the vacant tomb yawning to its entrails;—I saw its shadow—my shadow—lying sharply upon the graves;—and I saw that the tall white figure before me cast no shadow before the moon!
And suddenly under the stars, sonorous and vibrant as far cathedral bells, the voices of the awakening watchmen chanted—Ave Maria Purísima!—las tres de la mañana, y tiempo sereno!