As that figure floated, smiling, into her dream, Iona’s empire crumbled, her lover became a mocking delusion, her shining babe faded to a snow-drop broken from its stem, her enthusiastic youth shrank like dry leaves, her purple-robed prince fell with a crash at her feet.
“A—a—a—i!”
It was almost like the growl and spring of the tiger. But the rein was drawn as involuntarily as a falling person seeks to maintain his equilibrium.
“A l’aide, mon Roi!” she cried, and stretched her hands out, not toward Dylar, but toward the Basilica, showing faint and ghost-like against the western mountains. “A l’aide, mon Dieu!” and lifted her face to heaven.
To a strong, high soul, despair is impossible. However dark the overhanging cloud, it never believes that there is no help. It has felt its own wings in the sunshine, and it knows that somewhere there must be a way for them to lift it out of the storm.
But where?
“My father told me to do without love, if I could,” thought Iona, and sank down, and sat leaning against the tree. The time-blurred image of that father rose before her mind, and the scenes following his death. Of her life with him, except that it was happy, she could recollect nothing definite. With the egotism and ignorance of youth she had taken a father’s loving presence for granted, as she had taken sunshine and air. He had died at Castle Dylar, and she was with him. His illness was brief, she had scarcely known that he was ill. For one day only she had not seen him.
She seemed again to stand, a child, in the middle of the great salon, looking at a closed door. The prince held her hand and murmured words of consolation. Her playmate, young Dylar, stood at a distance wistfully gazing at them. She did not understand for what she needed to be consoled; but an undefined dread oppressed her.
“What is in that room?” asked the child with a gloomy imperiousness. “They close the door, and tell me not to open it.”
“Only a mortal body from which the soul has fled,” said the prince. “Your real father has gone to see the King, to see your dear mother; and both, unseen, will watch over you and your little brother. Do not you want to go home and see poor little Ion? He is alone.”