"Give me yon spray of love-lies-bleeding," she said; then as it rested against the lily in her hand, "Wounds may be cured," she said. "I have heard talk here, there, at the court even, else, beshrew me, if I had come this way to-day! I know that thou goest forth--" Her voice broke and the gold star shook with the trembling of her frame. "I know that thou mayst never, never, never return. I will pray for thy soul's welfare.... See! there is a heartsease at my feet."
He knelt, but touched not the floweret, instead caught at the long folds of her silver gown and held her where she stood. "For my soul's welfare, thou balm from heaven!" he cried. "For only my soul's welfare?"
"No, no," she answered. "For the welfare of all of thee, soul and body--soul and body!" She bent over him, and there fell from her eyes a bright rain of tears, quickly come, quickly checked. "Ah, a contrary world of queens and guardians!" she cried. "Oh, my God! if thou mightst only make me thy wife before thou goest!"
He arose and drew her into his arms. "The story is true," he whispered, to which she answered:
"I care not! Sayest thou, 'A thing was done.' Say I, 'Thou didst it!' and high above the deed I love thee!"
Suddenly she fell into a storm of weeping, then broke from him, and somewhat blindly sought the garden seat, sank down upon it, and buried her face in her arms. He kneeled beside her, and presently she was crouching against his breast, that rose and fell with his answering emotion. She put up her hand and touched the deep lines of past suffering in the face above her.
"I know that thou must go," she said. "I would not have thee stay. But, Mortimer, if it were possible ... He forgave you long, long ago, for he loved you above all men. I, his sister, answer for him. Ah, God wot! brother and sister we have loved you well.... If I could keep tryst, after all, if thou couldst make me thy wife before thou goest--or if kindred and the Queen be too powerful, I could escape, could follow thee as thy page, trusting thy honor ... Ah, look not so upon me! Ah, to be a woman and do one's own wooing! Ah, think what thou wilt of me, only know that I love thee to the uttermost!"
Ferne left her side, and moving to the garden wall, looked out over the far-away downs to the far-away sea--the sea that, for weary months had called and-thundered in his ears. Now he saw it all halcyon, stretching fair and mute to the boundless west, the sinking sun, the lovers' star. They two--could they two, lying with closed eyes, but drift out over bar, floating away through golds and purples towards the kiss of heaven and sea--flotsam of this earth, jetsam of age-distant shores, each to the other paradise and all in all! How profound the stillness--how deep the fragrance of the lily--what indifference, what quiet as of scorn did the Maker of man, having placed his creature in the lists, turn aside to other spectacles!... Should man be more careful than his God? Right! Wrong!--to die at last and find them indeed words of a length and the prize of sore striving a fool's bauble:--to die and miss the rose and wine cup!--to die and find not the struggle and the star!--to loose the glorious bird in the hand and beyond the portals to feel no fanning of a vaster wing! What use--what use--to be at once the fleeing Adam and the dark archangel at Eden's gates?