Had he played upon a point less sensitive, Eckhardt might have turned his back even now upon the groves, whose whispering gloom was to him more terrible than the din of battle, and whose mysterious perfumes exercised an almost bewildering effect upon his overwrought senses.
A moment's deliberation only and Eckhardt replied:
"Lead on! I follow!"
He was now resolved to penetrate at every hazard the mystery which mocked his life, his waking hours and his dreams.
On they walked.
Here and there, from branch-shadowed thickets gleamed the stone-face of a sphinx or the white column of an obelisk, illumined by the lightnings that shot through the limitless depth of the midnight sky. The storm rustled among the arched branches, driving the dead and dying leaves in a mad whirl through the wooded labyrinth.
At last, Eckhardt's strange guide stopped before a cypress hedge of great height, which loomed black in the night, and penetrating through an opening scarce wide enough for one man, beckoned to Eckhardt to follow him. As the latter did so he stared in breathless bewilderment upon the scene which unfolded itself to his gaze.
The cypress hedge formed the entrance to a grotto, the interior of which was faintly lighted by a crystal lamp of tenderest rose lustre.
For a moment Eckhardt paused where he stood, then he touched his head with both hands, as if wondering if he were dreaming or awake. If it was not the work of sorcery, if he was not the victim of some strange hallucination, if it was not indeed a miracle—what was it? He gazed round, awe-struck, bewildered. His guide had disappeared.
The denizen of the grotto, a woman reclining on a divan, like a goddess receiving the homage of her worshippers, was the image of the one who had gone from him for ever, and the longer his gaze was riveted on this enchanting counterfeit of Ginevra, the more his blood began to seethe and his senses to reel.