She watched a glow-worm coming up her balcony, its clear light showing the color and grain of the stone, itself unseen.
How lovely had been her betrothal! She went over it again in fancy, catching her breath again as when, her guard of matrons parting to disclose her, she had walked out before the whole town to place her hand in Dylar’s, and heard the simultaneous “Ah!” of the whole crowd set the deep silence rustling. “Why had he not come one step to meet her? Her eyes were downcast after the flashing glance that met her own when he had called her forth. She had not looked once in his face; and it had seemed to her that, had there been one step more, she could not have taken it, but must have fallen at his feet. True, his hands, both tremulous, had gathered hers most tenderly; but why had he not taken at least one step? Could it have been coldness that kept him fixed to that square stone he stood on? It was a smooth gray stone with little silvery specks in it, and a larger spot at one corner. Dylar’s right foot was a little advanced to that spot, a neat foot in a black shoe with a silver buckle, and the edge of his long white robe, open over the shorter tunic, just touched the instep. She had not raised her eyes above that white hem and the border of her own veil.
“Oh, why is he not here for one moment!”
She recollected Italian lovers. There were young men in the provinces who, late on the night before their marriage, went to scatter flowers from the door of their beloved one to the church door; and rude people even who went abroad at early morning would step carefully not to disturb a blossom dropped there for her feet to pass over. And then, the stolen interviews, the whispered words, the sly hand-pressure!
Ah! Dylar would never love in that way. Perhaps he had no ardor of feeling toward her. And yet—and yet—
She smiled, remembering.
There was the sound of a step below, and some one stopped underneath her window. Her heart gave a bound, half joy and half fright, and she ran to lean over the railing. No; it was not Dylar.
“I am the college porter,” said a voice below. “I bring you a note. Drop me a ball of cord, and I will send it up.”
She flew to find the cord, dropped it, holding an end, and in a minute held the note in her hand.
“I will come back in fifteen minutes to see if there is any answer,” the man said. “The prince, my Lady’s betrothed, told me to wait.”