“Ah! but I knew it,” said Fleta. “It was Hilary Estanol who cried out my name.”
“He said ‘Fleta, my love, my love,’” added Otto. “Is he that?”
“Yes,” said Fleta unmoved, indeed strangely calm. “He is. More, Otto; he has loved me long centuries ago, when this world wore a different face. When the very surface of the earth was savage and untaught so were we. And then we enacted this same scene. Yes Alan, we three enacted it before, without this pomp, but with the natural splendour of savage beauty and undimmed skies. Otto, I sinned then I expiated my sin. Again and again have I expiated it. Again and again has Nature punished me for my offence against her. Now at last I know more, I see more, I understand more. The sin remains. I desired to take, to have for myself, to be a conqueror. I conquered—I have conquered since! how often! That has been my expiation: satiety. But now I will no longer enjoy. I will stand on that error, that folly, and win from it strength which shall lift me from this wretched little theatre where we play the same dramas for ever through the fond weariness of recurring lives.”
Otto had drawn back from her, and gazed intently upon her as she spoke, passion and vehemence gradually entering her low voice. As she ceased he passed his hand over his forehead.
“Fleta,” he said, “is this some spell of yours upon me? While you spoke I saw your face change, and become the face of one familiar to me, but far, far back! I smelled the intense rich scent of innumerable fruit blossoms——Fleta, tell me, are you dreaming or speaking fables, or is this thing true? Have I lived for you before, loved you, served you, ages back, when the world was young?”
“Yes,” said Fleta.
“Ah!” cried Otto suddenly, “I feel it—there is blood on you—blood on your hand!”
Fleta raised her beautiful hand, and looked at it with an infinite sadness on her face.
“It is so,” she answered. “There is blood on it, and there will be, until I have got beyond the reign of blood and of death. You held me down then, Otto; you triumphed by brute force, not knowing that in me lay a power undreamed of by you—a vital, stirring will. I could have crushed you. But already I had used my will once, and found the bitter, unintelligible suffering it produced. I determined to try and understand Nature before I again used my power. So I submitted to your tyranny; you learned to love it, and through many lives have learned to love it more. It has brought you a crown at last, and a little army of soldiers to defend it for you, and half-a-dozen crafty old diplomats who want you to keep it, and who think they can make you do just as their respective monarchs wish. Move your puppets, Otto. No such kingdom satisfies me. I mean to win my own crown. I will be a queen of souls, not of bodies; a queen in reality, not in name.”
She seemed to wrap herself in an impenetrable veil of scorn as she ceased speaking and leaned back in the carriage.