"No; I have no inclination now," he answered. "There is nothing I want on the other side."
The girl coloured and laughed at the implied compliment. Bending down and putting the key in the gate, she opened and pushed it. It swung wide, giving access to the quiet road, full now of a luminous rose dusk beneath its arching trees.
"Shall I see you and the pictures this evening?" he asked.
"Yes, I will bring them," she answered, and just at that moment, over their heads in the thickets of climbing rose, a nightingale burst into its loud throbbing, commanding call. They listened, hesitating, while the mad, impatient beat of it vibrated through the quiet air, and far off somewhere in the woods, after an interval, came back an answering call.
Then he passed through the gate and the girl stood watching him, delighting in the beauty of his quick and easy walk down the shadowy road. When he had vanished she turned back and went by the winding path to the centre palm, and there, beneath its protecting boughs, she threw herself down, laying her face against the bosom of the springing turf.
"I was right, I was right," she murmured to herself. "It is more beautiful than music, than the sunset skies, than the golden light on the palms, than the play of the moonbeams; and it is like them all. Bright as the sunlight, mysterious as the ocean, wonderful as the fragrance of the rose, that is what they call love, and I have it, I have found it in its perfection. What happiness! What good fortune!" She lay still and silent, wrapped round and round in a strange soft delight, lulled as if in some half-waking dream by the cooing of the doves above her, the wave of the tamarisk in the hot air, the low murmur of the sea.
The doves came down near her, finding her so still. They were very tame, for she came there to feed them all through the winter, and she heard the twinge of its lovely wings as one almost brushed her cheek.
She turned and stretched out her hand to it. "Bird of Venus," she said softly, "Erasmie peleia, come and talk to me." And the dove let her gather it up to her breast and put her lips on its sleek head. "Born of love and for love, I love you," she murmured to it. "Did you see him kiss me this evening? Oh, dove! how wonderful that was." She pressed her warm hands on the shoulders of the bird and kissed it again. Then she opened her clasp and let it go, for she could not bear to constrain it, but the bird only fluttered as far as her feet and stayed there beside her, pecking in the grass.