‘But you have your phantom eyes left,’ said Mark, dryly.
‘Yes, she came again that night. In my exultant humiliation I was rash: I closed my hand on the drapery that fluttered against it. I closed my hand. The smiling eyes grew large with surprise and alarm, and the face vanished—I held in my hand this scarf.’
There was silence. Then Rob continued:
‘I have sat here every night since then, often till after midnight: the face has never come back. For a while I expected to see the scarf vanish. I held it tightly for most of the night, and finally went to sleep with it wrapped closely around my arm and hand. It did not vanish—I have ceased to fear that. I know that somehow or other it has taken its material form for me, and however it came, it came from someone, and I shall meet her, whoever she is; wherever she is, she is mine. She will become mine, she waits for me. I shall carry this scarf across the sea; I shall travel with it till I meet her; she will recognize it and me; the scarf is my credential; no matter where we meet, I shall know her by her red-brown eyes and pointed chin; she will know this’—and he fluttered the full length of the scarf in the air. It shimmered and doubled on itself, and coiled and shifted in sentient evolutions as it fell again to his knee.
‘I don’t know what to think; you must not ask me to say anything,’ said Mark, as he arose to go. ‘All I can say is, that you have gone into a realm where I cannot follow—my path lies near the earth.’
‘No, of course he could not say anything; what could he say?’ thought Rob; ‘but I am glad I told him.’
‘I don’t know what to think.’ said Mark to himself, as he went homeward. ‘Rob is as sane as I am; he is logical, given the premise, and why shouldn’t he see red-brown eyes—is there ever a minute when I cannot summon an inward vision of dark ones? Yes, is there ever a minute in my life when I am not conforming my acts, my thoughts, my very self, to a vision that is as unsubstantial as his own? What if the being whose eidolon he lives for is thousands of miles away? What if he saw her in spirit before he saw her in fact—does that mean so very much? Have I been able to banish the dark eyes, try as I did? And he has fostered the vision of the red-brown eyes till he is as sure, yes, a thousand times more sure, of his title to them than I am of ever having a right to even touch the vaguest drapery that has brushed my hand as my love passed. He follows shadows of the unseen—I follow the less substantial visions of the seen.’
Up and down on the deck of the outward-bound steamer walked Rob, happy, and with expectant eyes. He had a word for each new friend, as he passed, on deck or in the reading-room; but mostly he was walking and thinking. In Switzerland, he walked much, and always dined at the public table, and he could have told you in particulars about every other one at the table, especially as to the color of the eyes of the women. He enjoyed seeing multitudes of people; but when, on meeting a chance friend, he was asked to go in a party over some particular route, he was always going the other way. His fancy was like the wind, and he obeyed it as does the weather-cock.
In Italy he staid many weeks, always straying among crowds, dining in public, riding out to the villas, often standing on the Pincio watching the carriages as they went by, delighting in looking at the faces of the beautiful women. He strolled through galleries, less to see the pictures than to see those who looked at them. It seemed as if she must be somewhere waiting for him with those smiling eyes. Had her garments but just brushed over this stone pavement? Had her hand rested for a moment on this delicate, fretted iron-work as she leaned over to see the crowd below? Had she watched last night’s glow as the sun had sent up those golden shafts behind that dome? Had she been in Venice, and watched the black gondolas as they slipped by in the night? Was it her voice that said, out of the darkness, as one of the shadows flitted, bat-like, across his path, ‘I could stay here forever, were I not driven by fate to further shores’?