“I have tried for the Mark of the White Brotherhood. I have tried to pass the first initiation of the Great Order. I did not dream I could fail, for I have passed through many initiations which men regard with fear. But I have failed.”
“I cannot believe,” said Hilary, “that you could fail in anything. You are—dreaming—you are feverish. Let me lift you, let me carry you into the house.”
“Yes, I have failed,” answered Fleta dully; “failed, because I had not measured the strength of my humanity. It is in me—in me still! I am the same as any other woman in this land. I, who thought myself supreme—I, who thought myself capable of great deeds! Ah, Hilary, the first simple lesson is yet unlearned. I have failed because I loved—because I love like any other fond and foolish woman! And yet no spark of any part of love but devotion is in my soul. That is too gross. Is it possible to purge even that away? Yes, those of the White Brotherhood have done it. I will do it even if it take me a thousand years, a dozen lifetimes!”
She had raised herself from the ground as she spoke, for a new fierce passion had taken the place of the dull despair in her manner; she had raised herself to her feet, and then unable to stand had fallen on to her knees. Hilary listened yet hardly heard; only some of her words hurried into his mind. He bent down till his face touched her white cloak where it lay on the grass, and kissed it a dozen times.
“You have failed because of love? Oh, my Princess, then it is not failure! Men live for love, men die for love! It is the golden power of life. Oh, my Princess, let me take you from this terrible place—come back with me to the world where men and women know love to be the one great joy for which all else is well lost. Fleta, while I doubted that you loved me I was as wax; but now that I know you do, and with a love so great that it has power to check the career of your soul, now I am strong, I am able to do all that a strong man can do. Come, let me raise you and take you away from here to a place of peace and delight!”
He had risen to his feet and stood before her, looking magnificent in the morning sunshine. He was slight of build, yet that slightness was really indicative of strength; when Hilary Estanol had been effeminate it was because he had not cared to be anything else. He stood grandly now, his hands stretched towards her; a man, lofty, transformed by the power of love. Fleta looking at him saw in his brilliant eyes the gleam of the conquering savage. She rose suddenly and confronted him.
“You are mistaken,” she said abruptly. “It is not you that I love.”
Then, as suddenly as Fleta had moved and spoken, the man before her vanished, with his nobility, and left the savage only, unvarnished, unhumanised.
“My God,” gasped Hilary, almost breathless from the sudden blow, “then it is that accursed priest?”
“Yes,” answered Fleta, her eyes on his, her voice dull, her whole form like that of a statue, so emotionless did she seem, “it is that accursed priest.”