“‘Ah! my lady, I am afraid, greatly afraid!’
“I did not rush to welcome him, nor did I cry out aloud: I felt too weak for any display of joy. But at that first instant, in the sole knowledge that he was living, an infinite intensity of quiet and fathomless and endless bliss flooded my heart: and I was minded to exclaim, like Mary Magdalene at the Sepulchre, ‘Rabboni: which is to say, Master!’
“And then up rose the sun!
“He had never before appeared so admirable to me, as in that attitude of a page of Mediæval times, and with the playful humility of his bright smile; he had never yet been so loved by me, so dear beyond all measure. No, I had never been so glad in all my life as in this one short instant of consolation!
“And yet they say that women have intuitive minds!
“I was as it were caught and suspended in an aërial cobweb that stretched over an abyss of waters; and there I gazed upon the golden glitter of the morning landscape now that the tempest was over—gazed into the blue and shimmering stillness. Beneath me, under the bridge of hanging gossamer, rolled the sombre sea of dread and death; before me rose the sea of life, crimson and blood-red in hue. But I—I saw nothing there, save the dawn and the sunshine.”
Here she broke off, closed her eyes, and, resting her head on the arm of her easy-chair, remained some time plunged in the contemplation of that past scenery, all azure and gold. I let her rest so for a while, and then, rousing her:
“Well, and what then?” said I.
She knit her brows slightly.
“Then, ah! then! It was a mere idle question, for I troubled about nothing now that I had him again; but I asked him what he had been doing all night.