Her love and mine! What cared we for laws that barred it?—what mattered any law that dared attempt to link her destiny with that man who might, perhaps, wear a title as her husband—and might not. Who joined them? No God that I feared or worshiped. Then, why should I not sunder a pact inspired by hell itself; and if the law of the land made by men of the land permitted us no sanctuary in wedlock, then why did we not seek that shelter in a happiness the law forbids, inspired by a passion no law could forbid?
I had but to reach forward, to bend and touch her, and where was Death's triumph if I fell at last? What vague and terrible justice could rob us of these hours? Never, never had I loved her as I did then. She breathed so quietly, lying there, that I could not see her body stir; her stillness awed me, fascinated me; so still, so inert, so marvelously motionless, that her very soul seemed asleep within her. Should I awake her, this child whose calm, closed lids, whose soft lashes and tinted skin, whose young soul and body were in my keeping here under a strange roof, in a strange land?
Slowly, very slowly, a fear grew in me that took the shape of horror. My reasoning was the reasoning of Walter Butler!—my argument his damning creed! Dazed, shaken, I sank to my knees, overwhelmed by my own perfidy; and she stirred in her slumber and stretched out one little hand. All the chivalry, all the manhood in me responded to that appeal in a passion of loyalty which swept my somber heart clean of selfishness.
And there in the darkness I learned the lesson that she believed I had taught to her—a lesson so easily forgotten when the heart's loud clamor drowns all else, and every pulse throbs reckless response. And it was cold reasoning and chill logic for cooling hot young blood—but it was neither reason nor logic which prevailed, I think, but something—I know not what—something inborn that conquered spite of myself, and a guilty and rebellious heart that, after all, had only asked for love, at any price—only love, but all of it, its sweetness unbridled, its mystery unfathomed—lest the body die, and the soul, unsatisfied, wing upward to eternal ignorance.
As I crouched there beside her, in the darkness below the tall hall-clock fell a-striking; and she moved, sighed, and sat up—languid-eyed and pink from slumber.
"Carus," she murmured, "how long have I slept? How long have you been here, my darling? Heigho! Why did you wake me? I was in paradise with you but now. Where are you? I am minded to drowse, and go find you in paradise again."
She pushed her hair aside and turned, resting her chin on one hand, regarding me with sweet, sleepy, humorous eyes that glimmered like amethysts in the moonlight.
"Were ever two lovers so happy?" she asked. "Is there anything on earth that we lack?—possessing each other so completely. Tell me, Carus."
"Nothing," I said.
"Nothing," she echoed, leaning toward me and resting in my arms for a moment, then laid her hands on my shoulders, and, raising herself to a sitting posture, fell a-laughing to herself.