The young man sprang up, and could not help clasping her to his heart in convulsive delight.
“Oh, my adored Ethel, call me your own Ordener! Tell me,”—and his ardent glances rested on her eyes wet with tears,—“tell me, do you love me still?”
The young girl’s answer went unheard, for Ordener, carried away by his emotions, snatched from her lips with her reply that first favor, that sacred kiss, which in the sight of God suffices to make two lovers man and wife.
Both were speechless, because the moment was one of those solemn ones, so rare and so brief in this world, when the soul seems to feel something of celestial bliss. These instants when two souls thus converse in a language understood by no other are not to be described; then all that is human is hushed, and the two immaterial beings become mysteriously united for life in this world and eternity in the next.
Ethel slowly withdrew from Ordener’s arms, and by the light of the moon each gazed into the other’s face with ecstasy; only, the young man’s eye of fire flashed with masculine pride and leonine courage, while the maiden’s downcast face was marked by that modesty and angelic shame which in a virgin beauty are always blended with all the joys of love.
“Were you trying to avoid me just now,” she said at last, “here in this corridor, my Ordener?”
“Not to avoid you. I was like the unfortunate blind man who is restored to sight after the lapse of long years, and who turns away from the light’s first radiance.”
“Your comparison is more applicable to me, for during your absence my only pleasure has been the presence of a wretched man, my father. I spent my weary days in trying to comfort him, and,” she added, looking down, “in hoping for your coming. I read the fables of the Edda to my father, and when he doubted all men, I read him the Gospel, that at least he might not doubt Heaven; then I talked to him of you, and he was silent, which shows that he loves you. But when I had spent my evenings in vainly watching the arrival of travellers by various roads, and the ships which anchored in the harbor, he shook his head with a bitter smile, and I wept. This prison, where my whole past life has been spent, grew hateful to me; and yet my father, who until you came was all-sufficient for my wants, was still here; but you were not here, and I longed for that liberty which I had never known.”
There was a charm which no tongue can express, in the maiden’s eyes, in the simplicity of her love, and the sweet hesitation of her confession. Ordener listened with the dreamy delight of a being who has been removed from the world of reality to enjoy an ideal world.
“And I,” said he, “no longer desire that liberty which you do not share!”