“Cherish, my lord, my darling Heart of Fire. Serpents twist and twine. So do rose vines. May their petals make your path of velvet and sweet scented. May everything that is round be a pomegranate for you two to share; may everything that sways be lilies bordering a path wide enough for two. In the name of the Most Merciful God, may the only cry you hear be the first sweet wail of your first-born. And when the tenth shall be born, may you and Heart of Fire bewail your fate because both of you desire more children!”
She was laughing when she disappeared. Cleves thought she was still there, so radiant the sunshine, so sweet the scent in the room.
But the golden shadow by the door was empty of her. If she had slipped through the doorway he had not noticed her departure. Yet she was no longer there. And, when he understood, he turned back into the empty room, quivering all over. Suddenly a terrible need of Tressa assailed him—an imperative necessity to speak to her—hear her voice.
“Tressa!” he called, and rested his hand on the centre table, feeling weak and shaken to the knees. Then he looked down and saw the mulberry leaves lying scattered there, tender and green and still dewy with the dew of China.
“Oh, my God!” he whispered, “such things are! It isn’t my mind that has gone wrong. There are such things!”
The conviction swept him like a tide till his senses swam. As though peering through a mist of gold he saw his wife enter and come to him;—felt her arm about him, sustaining him where he swayed slightly with one hand on the table among the mulberry leaves.
“Ah,” murmured Tressa, noticing the green leaves, “she oughtn’t to have done that. That was thoughtless of her, to show herself to you.”
Cleves looked at her in a dazed way. “The body is nothing,” he muttered. “The rest only is real. That is the truth, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I seem to be beginning to believe it.... Sansa said things—I shall try to tell you—some day—dear.... I’m so glad to hear your voice.”