The breeze blew faintly in through the great arched openings, behind which rose the mountain chain that led to his own Troödos; there were the groves of pine, darkly green, below the hills, with their deep solitudes for prayer and meditation between the vast gnarled trunks; and the group of the two noble women before him—severely simple—was a vision of love and womanly grace and spiritual need; the younger one, all pleading and pain, clinging to the elder who closely enfolded her, her face strong in the strength of love. It was not like any life that he had ever seen—this holy man, whose personal life had been solitary and whose knowledge of human love, as it is known in happy homes, had died long years ago with the passing of the mother who had borne him in her heart. It might be that he needed such a vision to redeem his spirit from the harshness which sin and pride in high places, and want and crime and poverty of spirit among ignoble ones, had made him grow to think the whole of life!
He was very weary and his vision was not clear; for the previous day had been a solemn fast, and he had walked far and long since the early morning, that he might be the less delayed. He felt like kneeling where he stood—if perchance it should be a vision!—But he only bowed his head and waited—and his weakness passed.
The younger one—the maiden with that strange mystery of pain and strength in her white face, was coming towards him.
"Father," she said, "hath none offered thee refreshment? Thou must indeed be weary, for the way is long. Zia, let us be served here—in sight of the great forest that will seem like home to our good Padre."
"Nay, nay," he interposed quickly, with an effort to shake off this incomprehensible spell and return to his wonted mood of protest, "for I have never banqueted in the palace of a Queen—your Majesty."
"Let it be brought," Caterina said, turning to the Lady Beata, "a simple meal; for I myself have need, having tasted nothing since the long vigil of the night—being too sore from my great perplexity." For she divined that she must be alone with the prior to melt his mood, which grieved her; but she had not the less faith in his judgment for his hatred of royalty, and at all costs she had the grace to crave for truth in the questions she would ask of him.
"My Father," she said with winning gentleness when they were alone, "we will speak together as father and daughter—it will be better so, for I was not born to Majesty, and I have sent to ask of thee thy counsel, for life is difficult. And for my hospitality—is it not offered to the pilgrim in thy House of Priests of the Troödista? Hath not our Lord Himself commanded the giving of the cup of water?"
He was startled at her learning: surely it was rare that women out of holy orders had such knowledge of Christian traditions. He looked at her reverently, still wondering, and would have spoken to excuse his rough speech, but that he knew not how to frame a thought so strange and new.
She motioned him to a seat where a table had been spread under the deep arches that looked toward the forest. There were wines and fruits in tempting chalices of rainbow glass and low baskets of ivory and chiselled silver, cooling with snow from the mountain; figs from Lefcara; caistas, golden and delicious, emitting a fragrance of glorified nectarine that rivalled the perfume of the wine itself; pomegranates—the gift of a goddess to the thirsty Cyprian land, planted, as was well known, by the royal hand of Aphrodite herself, each fruit holding a fair refreshment for a torrid Cyprian day in its sparkling, semilucent, ruby pulp: ortolans from the sea-coast, steeped in wine.
The table was a slab of oriental alabaster, polished like a jewel, upheld by griffins with outthrust tongues curiously contorted and entwined. But beyond the silken curtains of the palace-windows the forest and the hills, with a wandering breath of coolness from the mountain-breeze, drew and welcomed him, with some faint, new perception of the oneness of God's earth.