So young—so sorely stricken—she knelt in the cold moonlight alone—her hands clasped in passionate repression on her throbbing heart—"Mater Dei!" she moaned: "Death—and then this!—If but it need not have been told me! If I might but have kept the memory of my happiness!"
Only the stars and the pitying angels looked down on the fierce conflict of grief and love and disillusion with which her desolate young soul wrestled alone through the long, midnight vigil. How should she separate these two beautiful faiths which had been enthroned as one in the happy depths of her guileless heart, without perilling her very trust in God!
Yet, as the sad day dawned over the hills and sea, she knew that God was still in His Heaven, behind the clouds—while she clung as a drowning mariner—the more desperately for her weakness—to the spar of this faith in the wreck of her happiness, though the love to which her whole being had moved in rhythmic content was as a lost star, glimmering uncertainly behind the mists.
But through the desolate night-watches the Lady of the Bernardini in the ante-chamber of the Queen had been agonizing in prayer for her until thought was spent; and now she had moved out upon the loggia and stood there waiting for the dawn that seemed long-deferred, in a half-conscious wonder that there were no sorrows great enough to stay Nature's punctual recurrences—that to-day and to-morrow there would still be dawns and sunsets, whatever happened to the souls of men.
In the silver line that etched the dark mountain crests against the pale monotone of the sky, single firs stood forth saliently, while dim in the distance, vast shapes, clothed in perpetual snows, held wraith-like watch over the smiling plains below, where life and bloom were possible.
Athwart the low, confused twittering of bird-notes which had infused the solemn silence with a vague hint of life, strident sounds grew dominant—a crow calling to his mate from tree to tree—a short, sharp symphony of swallows—a cock announcing the coming of the dawn.
Then motion broke in upon the majesty; hurried rushes of flight across the sky—beatings of wings—pulsings and ecstasies and triumphs of bird-life—and the Day was new.
Faint twitterings in the copses deepened to melody—to canticles of rejoicing; tints of turquoise and opal crept into the shadows and gold into the greens: the night-dews gleamed upon the firs and grasses, while a luminous haze dimmed the dark glint of the waters to pearly gray, softened the grimness of the mountain-faces and wrapped them—sea and mountains, as soul and body in a vision of mystery, a prelude to the blaze of golden glory that was suddenly outpoured on land and sea.
Yet the heavenly splendor was but for a moment; it faded in sudden gloom, as a bell from the inner chamber called the Lady of the Bernardini to attend the Queen.