“I did not need to be told,” she said, when he had ended, “that you have suffered most cruelly. It is written on your face.... Possibly another might tell you you blame yourself needlessly—you were a tool in the hand of a master who was responsible—but I shall not do so!”
She sank down upon the prone trunk of a great cypress that old age had leveled, and in the characteristic way clasped her hands about her knee. She had on a plain gray dress of some soft material; a white silk shawl was wrapped about her. Not being on duty, she wore no cap, and the pure Greek outlines of the lovely head, with its classic coils and braids of golden-brown hair, were revealed in all their beauty—and the pale sea-shell pink of returning health was upon the oval cheek.
“I knew it!” she said, as though communing with herself, and forgetful of the man who stood beside her. “That the secret feeling of this man towards England and her people was fanged and venomous hatred, something has told me whenever I looked him in the face.... For the very generosity that harbored him, as for the indifference that merely tolerated while it despised him, he was bound to repay in his own coin. And that coin has been minted in Hell! And it has not only scorched and blistered the fingers that took it, but it has carried with it a pestilence that scourges and devastates.... And now that mourning, and sorrow, and ruin and desolation, sit in ashes by Britain’s hearth—he comes knocking at the door with soft words of sympathy. For those who are the victims of his vengeance will never realize it! he has learned in those years of poverty, obscurity and humiliation, to hide his hate so well!”
She might have been a Fate as she linked her long white fingers and looked out beneath her leveled brows over the olive-groves and gardens fringing the Cemetery, and beyond the sapphire-blue water, populous with boats and shipping, towards the European shore. A moment she waited, gathering her forces, and then she drew a deep breath, and rose, and said to Dunoisse, holding out her hand:
“You tell me that it is your purpose to leave here and go to the Crimea, obtain an audience of Lord Dalgan, and unfold the plot to him. It will be a difficult task to convince him—almost an impossible task. Still—since to you as to me the voice of conscience is the Voice of God—go—and Heaven be with you and bring you safely back again!”
The thrill in her sweet voice, the magic of the hand that gently touched his, thawed the old ice about Dunoisse’s heart. He fell down upon his knees before her, and caught a fold of her dress and kissed it, crying passionately:
“Oh! my good angel, from whom once I turned away! oh! dearest and noblest of women, I bless you for those words that hold out hope to me! I swear to you that I will atone!”
He sought her hands, and she yielded them to his clasp, and he kissed them lingeringly. He folded them in his own, and laid them upon his heart, and cried:
“How can one speak to one so spotless of an earthly passion? And yet I will earn the right, one day. Tell me—when I have erased all those black entries from the book of the Recording Angel—when I have washed my soul clean of the guilt of all this blood—tell me that I may come to you and claim my priceless joy—my great reward of you! Give me some sign, even though you do not speak!”
Their eyes met. For answer she leaned over him, and kissed him once, upon the lips, divinely.... Her mouth was a chalice of strengthening. The clasp of her hands gave new life.... He said, exultantly, as they rose up, still looking in each other’s faces: