“Love, that is faithful, pure, and true, is a gift from the Gods, my lord,” she said. “And the woman that calls forth this affection (who e’er she be) should feel that nothing earth or heaven could give, could crown her with more honor or more glory, aye, for love like this she should gladly renounce all else; speak on my lord.”
“My princess, there is but one way, through, and by which, I may serve my love, there is but one way in which I can guard her, and it comes through a gift from you to me. On the day in which you wed yonder great, and sainted King, give me as wife not as slave, but as free woman Miriam.”
With a cry the Princess, all unmindful of past, and future, with no thought of Queenship, or of station, flung her arms about the neck of the man, and nestled close to him so that her warm lips touched his brown throat.
“Not that!” she moaned, “not that! Ask from me any other woman high, or low, rich, or poor, bound, or free! and she is yours but not Miriam!
“I have loved her, and she has loved me, and she knows my soul, she has read my most sacred thoughts. If,” (she cried looking up into his face) “if I thought, that she had been false to me, if I thought, that she had dared to love you! if I thought that you loved her, I would kill her as she sleeps, and then thrust the wet blade, into my own heart.”
He took the girl’s arms from about his neck, and laid her head upon his breast. He drew her close to him, and bent down and kissed her lips—he said words to her that only complete possession justifies, and she answered with the silence of acceptance, the silence of unspoken gladness. How long they stood thus, locked in each others’ arms, they never knew, for time and place are not spiritual attributes, and they had been lifted above the finite. It was Miriam stirring in her sleep, that came to be the Angel with the Sword, to drive them out, of their Eden! and the woman, wrapped her naked heart, in a mantle of crimson blushes, and the man rudely thrust away the light frail form, and fled to Miriam’s side, and by a few passes kept back still—a little longer—her returning consciousness.
Hatsu was the first to speak.
“My lord,” she said quietly, “ask your gift at my hands, and she shall be thine.”