At her feet crisped the shining ripples of the incoming tide. Far beyond, calm and burnished, stretched the summer sea into the dreamy distance, where the white noon sky, stricken through with intensest light and heat, dropped down a palpitating arch to meet it. And in all the dazzle of blue and white and silver and bare shining gray, she stood, a straight, slender, haughty little figure, as indefinite of color as all the rest; all but a narrow strip of scarlet at her throat, falling in a flaming line to her waist. The shimmering atmosphere seemed to pant about her; and through the high noon, over the still waters and sleeping shore, hummed the peering strains of a weird little song. She was singing softly:
'For men must work and women must weep,
And the sooner 'tis over the sooner to sleep.'
In the long parlor, the leaf ghosts that had all day long been flitting in, were darkening with the sunset and filling the room with twilight dimness. Deep in a crimson couch and haloed with the last brightness, lay the long, white outlines of a reclining figure. A handful of Japan lilies burned against the pure drapery, and another handful of tea violets lay crushed in the fleecy handkerchief on the floor. Against the cushions the exquisite contour of the sleeping face showed plainly. Coolest quiet sphered the whole figure; not a suggestion of anything but slowest calm grace disturbed its repose. But with the hushing rustle of leaves with the summer murmur flowing in, seemed to come also the deep monotone of the waves, when this inanimate statue was striking out at his side through the rattle and rush of the surf, the wide eyes filled with fierce light, the whole face fixed and stern with the strain of heart muscle, toward the helpless shape shooting out on the undertow. He had not seen her after, and, coming to seek her that night with words of compliment and thanks, he was met by this white vision that had absorbed all the fire and force of the afternoon into its blankness.
A depot platform—long afternoon shadows fell over the pretty country station—standing alone in the woods. The small, temporary bustle about the waiting train was not discordant with the dreamy, restful look of the whole picture. Then the culminating hurry, the shriek and rattle of the starting train—a little figure poising itself for an instant on the car step—a face flushed a little, and dark eyes brightened with a flash of surprised recognition—a quick gesture of greeting and farewell, and then she was gone into the purple shades of evening.
Once again he had seen her, but from afar off, in the glare and heat of a crowded assembly room. The face was a little thinner now, and the eyes were looking farther away than ever. The blood-red light of rubies flashed in the soft lace at her throat and wrists, and dropped in glittering pendants against the slender neck. She was talking evidently of a brilliant bouquet of pomegranates and daphnes that lay in her lap, swinging dreamily the dainty, glittering white fan. And while he looked, she drew away the heavy brocade she wore, from under a careless tread—a slight, slow motion, wholly unlike the careless sweeps of other women. The imperious nature that thrilled her even to the tips of the long fingers, manifested itself, as inborn natures always do, under the deepest disguises, in just this unconscious, most trifling of acts; and, remembering the gesture, he asked, with words far lighter than the tone or feeling:
'As much of a princess as ever?'
And Captain George answered:
'As much of a princess!' both unmindful that no word had been spoken to token who was in the thought of each.
Very trifling things these were to remember. Very likely he had seen scores of far more graceful and memorable scenes; but just these trifles, coming back so vividly, proved to him, as nothing else could have done, with what a keen, intense sympathy every word and look of hers had been noted.
The spoken words roused him. In the ride that followed, twenty different persons and things came into their talk; but never once the princess. That, arousing himself again from his half-dreamful lapse from the old guarded habit, was put away steadily and quietly. His battle had been fought once. He was not to weaken his victory with fancies of the 'might have been.' He had not been tempted, through all these months; he would not tempt himself, now that real trial was so near at hand. Man as he was, if escape had been possible, he would have fled. But there was nothing to do but to go forward, and he called up that old, mighty, intangible safeguard of honor. The matter was settled beyond any question of surprise—he must avoid the long, sapping days of contact, the wasting, feverish yearnings of absence coming after.