"'Margined by fruits of gold
And whispering myrtles, glassing softest skies
As cloudless, save with rare and roseate shadows,
As I would have thy fate!'"
Armstrong's face is a study of ludicrous amazement as the words fall in musical sequence from Everard's lips, and, when Pauline, leaning over him, murmurs ardently, "'My own dear love!'" he half rises to his feet; but Addie's hand detains him.
"'A palace lifting to eternal summer,'" continues the lover bleatingly; and then a ray of enlightenment crosses Armstrong's perplexed face, his restlessness subsides, he leans back and watches wistfully the mobile flushing face of his young wife, as she, bending forward eagerly with hands clasped, drinks in the luscious picture of wedded bliss that the gardener-poet paints for her he loves so cruelly. As he continues, Everard's delivery improves; the wooliness leaves his voice, and a ring of true passion which no art could ever teach him vibrates through his every tone and finds an echo in Addie's heart, thrilling through her like an electric current in which pain and pleasure are so subtly blended that she can not tell which predominates.
"'We'd read no books
That were not tales of love, that we might smile
To think how poorly eloquence of words
Translates the poetry of hearts like ours!
And, when night came, amidst the breathless heavens
We'd guess what star should be our home when love
Becomes immortal; while the perfumed light
Stole through the mists of alabaster lamps,
And every air was heavy with the sighs
Of orange-groves and music from sweet lutes
And murmurs of low fountains that gush forth
I' the midst of roses! Dost thou like the picture?'"
Addie turns to her husband with dewy eyes, and lays her hand timidly on his breast, echoing the last eager words—"'Dost thou like the picture?'"—in a soft whisper.
"I don't know—I did not listen," he answers dreamily. "I never could thrill to Melnotte's lyre. It is too measured, too smooth, too flowery to breathe the fire of earth-born passion."
"Then you do not believe in the eloquence of love?"
"No. I believe that the voice of love—the love man feels but once in a life—finds no polished utterance. It is most times dumb, strangled by the impotence, the poverty of words, or else finds vent in harsh, uncouth, halting measure. It never pleads in flowing rhythm; if it could, more lovers would be successful. You could be won, Addie, by honeyed words. I read it in your face as you sat listening."
"You gave me no honeyed words, no measured music, and yet—and yet—" Her whisper is drowned by Pauline's "stagey" metallic voice—
"'Oh, as the bee upon the flower I hang
Upon the honey of thy eloquent tongue!
Am I not blest? And, if I love too wildly,
Who would not love thee like Pauline?'