Gerault looked about him a little helplessly. Then, taking new resolution, he put one arm about her, and, drawing her slight form close to him, he said in a halting and broken way: “Come, my wife—come with me for a little time. Let us walk out together to the cliff by the sea. The sun draws near the water—the afternoon grows rich with gold.—And thou and I will talk together.—Lenore, much might I tell thee of myself, whereby thou couldst understand many things that trouble thee now. Knowing them, and with them, me, thou shalt more justly judge me. Come, little one,—rise up!” He drew her to her feet beside him, and then, with his arms still around her, he stood and put his lips to her half-averted cheek. Under that kiss she grew cold and tremulous, but still preserved her silence. Then the two moved, side by side, out of the Castle, through the courtyard, and on to the outer terrace that ran along the very edge of the precipitous cliff against which, far below, the summer sea gently broke and plashed.
Here, hand in hand, the Seigneur and his lady walked, looking off together at the glory of the mighty waters. The crimson sky was veiled in light clouds that caught a more and more splendid reflection of the fiery ball behind them; while the moving waves below were stained with pink and mellow gold. Lenore kept her eyes fixed fast upon this sight, while she listened to what Gerault was saying to her. He talked, in a fitful, chaotic way, of many things: of his boyhood here, of Laure his sister, and Alixe, and of “one other that was not as any of us,—our cousin, a daughter of Laval, whose dead mother had put her in the keeping of mine.”
So much mention of this girl Gerault made, and then went on to other things, jumbling together many incidents and scenes of his boyhood and his youth, never guessing that Lenore, who continued so quietly to look off upon the sea, had seized upon this one little thing that he had said, and realized, with a woman’s intuition, that the story of his heart lay here. As Gerault rambled on, he came gradually to feel that he had lost her attention, and so, little by little, as the sunset light died away, he ceased to speak, and there crept in upon them, over them, through them, that terrible silence that both of them knew: the all-pervading, ghostly silence that haunted this spot; the silence that had brought the name upon the Castle,—the Chateau du Crépuscule. Lenore grew slowly cold with miserable foreboding, while Gerault, rebelling against himself, was struggling to break the bonds of his own nature.
“Well named is this home of ours, Lenore,” he said sadly.
“Yea, it is well named,” was the reply.
“Wilt thou—be—lonely forever here? Art thou lonely now? Hast thou a sickness for thy home and for thy people?”
For an instant Lenore hesitated. At Gerault’s words her heart had leaped up with a great cry of “Yes”; and yet now there was something in her that withheld her from saying it. When at last she answered him, her words were unaccountable to herself, yet she spoke them feelingly: “Nay, Gerault. Thou hast taken me to be one with thee. Thou hast brought me here to thy home, and it is also mine.”
A light of pleasure came into Gerault’s face, and he took her into his arms with a freer and more open warmth than he had ever shown her before. “Indeed, thou art my wife—one with me—my sweet one—my sweet child Lenore! And this my home is also thine,—Chateau du Crépuscule!”
Suddenly Lenore shivered in his clasp. That word “Crépuscule” sounded like a knell in her ears, and as she looked upon the gray walls looming out of the twilight mists, the very blood in her veins stood still. Whether Gerault felt her dread she did not know, but he did not loose his hold upon her for a long time. They stood, close-clasped, on the edge of the cliff, looking off upon the darkening sea, till, over the eastern horizon line, the great pink moon slipped up, giving promise of glory to the night. The cool evening breeze came off the waters. They heard the creaking and grating of the drawbridge, as it was raised. Then a flock of sea gulls floated up from the water below, and veered southward, along the shore, toward their home. Finally, in the deepening west, the evening star came out, hanging there like a diamond on an invisible thread. Then Gerault whispered in the ear of Lenore,—
“Sweet child, it is late. The hour of evening meat is now long past. Let us go into the Castle.”