"I may be mad, I may be dreaming," he cried, suddenly springing to his feet and confronting the woman he loved with eyes grown darker with the sudden intensity of his feelings. "I may be mad to risk forever losing a companionship which has become so great a part of my life, so vital to my whole existence. I may be dreaming to believe, or hope, that my longings can ever reach fulfillment. But I cannot help it. It is not in me to act otherwise. The soul-mate of a man either belongs to him, or is denied to him, as the great controlling forces ordain. For thirty-five years I have walked through life alone. I have seen no woman whose companionship I desired, or could desire, during all that time. Never once in all that time have the soul-fires in me been stirred. Never once have I longed for the warm heart of a woman to beat in unison with mine. Then came a night—a mentally black and dreary night—when the work seemed desolate, and existence a condition almost intolerable in the future. The darkest thoughts of my life passed through my hot brain that night; darker even than the thoughts during the darkest days of the great war. That moment was the one that preceded dawn—my dawn.
"Ah, Vita," he went on, with deeper, more vibrant meaning. "That dawn came like the miracle of every other dawn. But, unlike the dawn which heralds mere sunrise, it heralded an eternity of beautiful dreams untouched by the bitternesses and contentions of the human day. It came with a voice out of the moonlit darkness. The voice of a woman, who, within a space of time almost negligible, had changed the despairing blackness of night to a—wonderful dawn."
Ruxton turned from her and began to pace the narrow length of the room. It was an unstudied expression of the fierce fire which had leapt up in his passionate, Slavonic heart. Vita's eyes followed his movements, fascinated yet unseeing in the tumult which he had roused within her. For her his words, his sudden outburst, had reduced to concrete form all that gamut of feeling which had been hers from the moment of their first encounter. All unacknowledged, the latent power of this man's personality had absorbed her every feeling. He was the one out of all the world. His handsome head, his superb body, so strong, so perfectly poised, but above all that wonderful idealism which saw so clearly through the fog of sordid influences which clogged all real progress. Almost breathless she waited while he went on.
He paused in his walk and abruptly flung out his arms.
"I can see her now, a figure of perfect beauty, regal, splendid in the silvery moonlight. The light playing upon her marbled features, finding reflection in eyes wide with sincerity, truth and passion. Vita, Vita, I can never tell you all that picture inspired in me. Suddenly I knew what life meant. Up till then I had merely existed. Life had had no meaning for me but the necessity of working out that simple duty of effort which belongs to us all. With your coming everything changed. Life became at once that superb thing of which the dreamer speaks. Where before only the black shadows of a drear depression had been, at once life became flooded with a golden light. It was beautiful, beautiful."
The woman's wondering gaze was now frankly held by the passionate eyes regarding her. She had no power to withdraw it, she had no desire to withdraw it. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips were parted, revealing the pearly whiteness of her teeth framed in their ruby setting, so full, so ripe.
"But this is madness," she breathed without conviction. It was the burden of her feelings seeking expression. She leant forward in her chair, her hands so tightly clasped that the blood was pressed back from her delicate finger-tips, and the simple rings dug hard into the tender flesh.
"Madness? Madness?" Ruxton drew nearer. He laughed as he echoed the word. It was the inconsequent laugh which is merely an audible expression and possesses no meaning. "If it is madness let me be mad. Madness? Then I never want sanity again. Love is madness, Vita, a madness that is ordained, and without it love can never be love. The man who can pause to reason does not know love. He can never love. Leave reason and sanity for the cold affairs of life. Love can know no check from such a course. That is how I love you, Vita. I want you—you. I want you always with me, near me. I want you so that our life together is all one. You must be part of me. You must be me. You speak of the beginning. There is no beginning, just as there can be no end. Love is all, everything. Vita—Vita——"
He had bent down from his great height. He had seized the woman's tightly clasped hands. He had raised them with gentle force, and, as though caught by the magnetism of all the love he had endeavored to express, she rose to her feet, and permitted him to hold her prisoner before him.
But now with his final appeal the tension seemed to relax. She stood there for a moment, silent. Then she sighed faintly. It was as though she had awakened from some beautiful dream. The flush on her oval cheeks lessened, and the light in her eyes changed unmistakably. The man seemed to become suddenly aware of the change, and a note of apprehension sounded in his voice as he repeated his appeal.