And again:
“You are like a great light in my heart; may your glory never cease from my soul. Through you I am transfigured; in your voice Eternity speaks to me.”
Joan carried Gabriel’s letters in her bosom in a case of green silk. They lay warm and still against her heart. She read them often, for they were like the words of a new world to her, eloquent and lovely.
XX
THE old castle of Domremy stood in a green valley running northward from the Mallan, a gray and solemn ruin bosomed in the tranquil shadows of the woods. Set in a broad moat as in a shield of silver, its black battlements rose black with their machiolated shadows against the blue background of sky. The clouds cast their shadows over the ruin like ghost memories of the past. There was a wild melancholy about the place, an infinite wistfulness that touched the heart. Romance seemed to tread the ruined walls, her sable hair sweeping in the wind, her wild voice weaving enchantments through the listening woods.
Gabriel had loved Domremy since the first June evening when its gray towers had dreamed to him from their green repose. In later years it had often solaced him with its plaintive loveliness, its eyrie whisperings of the past. Its grandeur had served as a bulwark against the prosaic sterility of modern minds. Like the dark and mysterious prophecy of some ancient alchemist, it put forth reality from the heart and throned the infinite in its stead.
Gabriel had spoken to Joan of the place in his letters. She knew Domremy well, had dreamed there even as he had done, and looked down upon the white lilies mimicking the face of the moon. The pair had plotted a tryst there, had met one April day on a path that ran from the hills, and wandered through the woods to the gray towers brooding over the water. They had climbed one of the turrets together, leaned upon the battlements, and turned back like children into the past.
The sky was dappled with innumerable isles of snow. The meadows were wondrous green under the blue heavens; the gnarled and naked trees glistened in the sun. Joan, her hat laid upon the parapet, stood like a damsel of old, her hair flashing gold in the eyes of romance. Gabriel leaned against the battlements two paces away, watching the woods and water and the face of the girl at his side.
“You are content?” he asked her.
She turned her eyes to his and smiled.