"Yes, my beloved, you are tired," he said; "and it is so long since you have sat at table in this room, that very simple things appear perplexing to you. But that's a small matter. The old habits will soon re-assert themselves, and all be natural and obvious enough. For in the coming days I intend we shall very constantly sit here together, you and I; and perhaps others will sit here with us as time goes on"—Laurence paused, his voice shook a little—"our children, fair girls and handsome lads, whom we shall greatly love, and in whose youth our own youth will live again. But to secure all that, Agnes, you must eat and drink now in plain, honest fashion, sleep sound of nights, wake in the kindly sunshine, put morbid fears and fancies far from you and grow strong. You are compounded of too tenuous and sublimated stuff for motherhood as yet. Therefore eat, dear love. Delay no longer. The hours run on towards the morning and this matter must be assured before the morning comes. Do not be wayward. In the name of your love for me, and of all your sorrows, I entreat you, eat and be strong!"
Once again she covered her face with her hand and gave a quick, little sneeze. Then looking full at him, she smiled, though somewhat sadly.
"Let it be even as you wish," she said very meekly. "Give me bread."
Laurence, mightily rejoicing, cut the loaf, and placed the bread upon her plate. Tremblingly, as though putting a great force upon herself, she broke it into little pieces, carried one to her lips, then laid it back beside the others on her plate; next stretched out her hand for the glass of wine her lover held towards her, but shook her head, and set it down untasted. While he, eager to the point of desperation, yet dreading in any way to affright her and so defeat his own ends, fell to coaxing her once more, with a certain playful seriousness.
"See here," he said, "learn by experience. The threshold which you declared impassable was very easily crossed. And this affair of your little supper is exactly parallel. You are the victim of your own imagination. What after all holds you back?"
Once more she essayed valiantly to obey him; but once more laid the morsel of bread down on her plate. The thunder rolled from east to west along the northern heights, and the lightning flickered; but both had grown faint and very distant, while a soft, cool air wandered in at the open window, dispelling the clinging and insidious odour of the orchids, purifying the heavy atmosphere of the room, and lightly stirring the little lace frills of Agnes Rivers's muslin cape.
"What after all holds you back?" he demanded, with some agitation. For that cool draw of air, though pleasant, affected him unexpectedly. It appeared to blow across the valley from Stoke Rivers churchyard, where, in the spring morning three months before, he had watched the little shadows cast by the feathery branches of the age-old yew-trees dance and beckon among the grass-grown graves.
But his fairy-lady pushed her plate aside. All her gentle dignity had returned to her, and a wisdom born of knowledge more profound than that granted to most human creatures sat once again enthroned in her eyes. There was an effulgence in her loveliness which almost awed him, yet she did that which during all their intercourse she had never done before. Calmly, fearlessly, and as of right, she put up her sweet lips and kissed him.
"This holds me back," she said, "that at last all the confusion which oppressed my mind is gone, and that I understand who and what I am. I have striven, and ah! how gladly would I have proved victorious in that strife, for all my heart goes forth in natural desire, not only to obey your dear wishes, but to secure to myself those things which your wishes would bring. I perceive that to eat is to live, not the shadowy, unrelated life of a disembodied spirit, divorced from the activities of earth, yet—by some inherent wilfulness—still so wedded to earth that it cannot enter the peaceful regions of the Faithful Departed. To eat is to live, as you live—and rightly—in the shock and tumult of the world; to love as you love—needs must, dear heart—with all the passions of the unstable flesh, as well as the pure and immutable passion of the soul. I have dallied too long with temptation, and in my weakness brought sorrow on you—perhaps worse than sorrow, disgrace. But the temptation was so potent, the promise of it so enchanting, that, until to-night, I had not grasped its full significance and scope. As to our first mother Eve, ages back, in the mystic garden, so to me to-night to eat, O my love, is sin!"
Laurence straightened himself up, and all the fierceness, the relentlessness of his race, stiffened itself within him; yet he kept himself in hand because love still was paramount to all other emotions.