I was too deeply moved for words. Speech seemed superfluous as we stood there, hand in hand, contemplating those gigantic, pale-green eggs.
There is something in a silent egg which moves one's deeper emotions—something solemn in its embryotic inertia, something awesome in its featureless immobility.
I know of nothing on earth which is so totally lacking in expression as an egg. The great desert Sphinx, brooding through its veil of sand, has not that tremendous and meaningless dignity which wraps the colorless oval effort of a single domestic hen.
I held the hand of the young Countess very tightly. Her fingers closed slightly.
Then and there, in the solemn presence of those emotionless eggs, I placed my arm around her supple waist and kissed her.
She said nothing. Presently she stooped to observe the thermometer. Naturally, it registered 95° Fahrenheit.
"Susanne," I said, softly.
"Oh, we must go up-stairs," she whispered, breathlessly; and, picking up her silken skirts, she fled up the cellar-stairs.
I turned out the gas, with that instinct of economy which early wastefulness has implanted in me, and followed the Countess Suzanne through the suite of rooms and into the small reception-hall where she had first received me.
She was sitting on a low divan, head bent, slowly turning a sapphire ring on her finger, round and round.