“In the future,” he said eagerly, “I am content to do your will. But not now—not to draw the veil from our buried miseries. Let them be as dead things—out of sight and mind.”
“You know,” she said, “that nothing dies—not a life, or an act, or a thought. You may put the past out of sight, but it lives still—lives in its hidden crimes, its secret sins, its evil and its good—lives to haunt and shape our future, let that future dream as it will of forgetfulness.”
He rose from his knees, his face was still pale, but his eyes glowed like living fire.
“When will you wed me, Estarah?” he asked, abruptly.
The soft colour flushed her cheek. Her eyes drooped.
“My heart is yours,” she said. “My life lives but in the shadow of your own. Why should I withhold—this poor gift?”
She placed her hand in his, and let him draw her to his heart. “I will wed you when you will,” she said, “but only if you yield to my condition. It is an easy one, Julian. Why do you fear?”
Ah—why? He could not answer that question to his own heart, much less to hers. He could not paint the shuddering horror which had forced him to veil his eyes and shrink aghast from that last scene in his Dream.
Yet when he looked down on her in her pure womanly beauty, and felt the clinging tenderness of her arms, and knew that among all the world of men who had worshipped and wooed her, he alone had kept his place and awakened a response of tenderness, he felt his heart thrill and glow with sudden strength and pride.
“It shall be as you wish,” he said. “On the night that heralds our bridal morn, I promise, if my power be still the same, that I will do your bidding.”