'Yes.'
'Then why do you not show him up?'
'She must be prepared,' I muttered.
She laughed again; this time after a different fashion. 'Oh you fools of men!' she said. 'She must be prepared? Do you think that women are made of glass and that a shock breaks them? That she will die of joy? Or would have died of grief? Send him up, gaby, and I will prepare her! Send him up.'
I supposed that she knew women's ways, and I gave in to her, and sent him up; and I do not know that any harm was done. But, as a result of this, I was not present when my lady and the Waldgrave met, and I only learned by hearsay what happened.
* * * * *
An hour or two later, when the bustle of shrieks and questions had subsided, and the excitement caused by his return had somewhat worn itself out, Marie slipped out to me on the stairs, and sat with me in the darkness, talking. The gate of curious ironwork which guarded the house entrance was closed for the night; but the moon was up, and its light, falling through the scrollwork, lay like a pale, reedy pool at our feet. The men were at supper, the house was quiet, the city was for a little while still. Not a foot sounded on the roadway; only sometimes a skulking dog came ghost-like to the bars and sniffed, and sneaked noiselessly away.
I have said that we talked, but in truth we sat long silent, as lovers have sat these thousand years, I suppose, in such intervals of calm. The peace of the night lapped us round; after the perils and hurry, the storm and stress of many days, we were together and at rest, and content to be silent. All round us, under the covert of darkness, under the moonlight, the city lay quaking; dreading the future, torn by pangs in the present; sleepless, or dreaming of death and outrage, ridden by the nightmare of Wallenstein. But for the moment we recked nothing of this, nothing of the great camp round us, nothing of the crash of nations. We were of none of these. We had one another, and it was enough; loved one another, and the rest went by. For the moment we tasted perfect peace; and in the midst of the besieged city, were as much alone, as if the moonlight at our feet had been, indeed, a forest pool high in the hills over Heritzburg.
Does some old man smile? Do I smile myself now, though sadly? A brief madness, was it? Nay; but what if then only we were sane, and for a moment saw things as they are--lost sight of the unreal and awoke to the real? I once heard a wise man from Basle say something like that at my lady's table. The men, I remember, stared; the women looked thoughtful.
For all that, it was Marie who on this occasion broke the trance. The town clock struck ten, and at the sound hundreds, I dare swear, turned on their pillows, thinking of the husbands and sons and lovers whom the next light must imperil. My girl stirred.