"Not so; for it is the gulf of the Cross," she mocked. "I go the way of Vera Cruz—the True Cross. No heretic may pass that way."
The words struck down my last hope. It was the truth—a double truth. The way of my body was barred by the city of the Cross; the way of my spirit by that which to her the Cross symbolized.
"So this is the end," I replied. "We have come to the parting of the ways. Do not fear that I shall weary you with annoying persistence. I shall go my way before sunrise to-morrow. Only—let me ask that this last hour with you may hold its share of sweetness with the bitterness of parting,—Alisanda!"
"An hour?" she repeated. "The air in here is close."
She laid her fingers lightly upon my arm, and we passed out into the moonlit balcony. For a time we sat silent, she gazing out across the broken slopes of the town, I gazing at her still white face and shadowy eyes. Her loveliness was part with the night and the moonlight and the scarlet bloom of the climber upon the balcony rail.
At last I could no longer endure the thought that she was lost to me; I could no longer deny utterance to my love and longing.
"Alisanda! dearest one! Is there then no hope that I may win you? I have no gallant speeches—my love is voiceless; no less is it a love that shall endure always. Alisanda! my dearest one! is my love of no worth to you? Let your heart speak! Can it not give me one word of hope?"
My voice failed me. Throughout my passionate appeal I failed to see the slightest change in her calm face. I had failed to stir her even to mockery. Truly all was now at an end! I bowed my head and groaned in most unmanly fashion.
The low murmur of her voice roused me to despairing eagerness. She spoke in a tone of light inconsequence, yet I seized upon the words as the drowning man clutches at straws.
"Love?—love?" she repeated. "The word has become a jest. Men protest that they know the meaning of love—that they suffer its bitterest pangs. Yet speak to them of the days of chivalry, when gallant knights bore the colors of their ladies through deadly battle, and the ogling beaux turn an epigram on les sauvages nous ancêtres!"