"Then I need not speak," I answered.
"No, you need not speak, unless you give utterance to what is in your
true soul," he said--"I would rather you did not play at conventions
with me."
For the moment I felt almost angry.
"I do not play at conventions," I murmured.
"Oh, do you not? Is that quite candid?"
I raised my eyes and met his,--he was smiling. Some of the oppression
in my soul suddenly gave way, and I spoke hurriedly in a low tone.
"Surely you know how difficult it is for me?" I said. "Things have
happened so strangely,--and we are surrounded here by influences that
compel conventionality. I cannot speak to you as frankly as I would
under other circumstances. It is easy for YOU to be yourself;--you have
gained the mastery over all lesser forces than your own. But with me it
is different--perhaps when I am away I shall be able to think more
calmly--"
"You are going away?" he asked, gently.
"Yes. It is better so."
He remained silent. I went on, quickly.
"I am going away because I feel inadequate and unable to cope with my
present surroundings. I have had some experience of the same influences
before--I know I have--"
"I also!" he interrupted.
"Well, you must realise this better than I," and I looked at him now
with greater courage--"and if you have, you know they have led to
trouble. I want you to help me."
"I? To help you?" he said. "How can I help you when you leave me?"
There was something infinitely sad in his voice,--and the old fear came
over me like a chill--'lest I should lose what I had gained!'
"If I leave you," I said, tremblingly--"I do so because I am not worthy
to be with you! Oh, can you not see this in me?" For as I spoke he took
my hand in his and held it with a kindly clasp--"I am so self-willed,
so proud, so unworthy! There are a thousand things I would say to you,
but I dare not--not here, or now!"
"No one will approach us," he said, still holding my hand--"I am
keeping the others, unconsciously to themselves, at a distance till you
have finished speaking. Tell me some of these thousand things!"
I looked up at him and saw the deep lustre of his eyes filled with a
great tenderness. He drew me a little closer to his side.
"Tell me," he persisted, softly--"Is there very much that we do not, if
we are true to each other, know already?"
"YOU know more than I do!" I answered--"And I want to be equal with
you! I do! I cannot be content to feel that I am groping in the dark
weakly and blindly while you are in the light, strong and
self-contained! You can help me--and you WILL help me! You will tell me
where I should go and study as you did with Aselzion!"
He started back, amazed.
"With Aselzion! Dear, forgive me! You are a woman! It is impossible
that you should suffer so great an ordeal,--so severe a strain! And why
should you attempt it? If you would let me, I would be sufficient for
you." "But I will not let you!" I said, quickly, roused to a kind of
defiant energy--"I wish to go to the very source of your instruction,
and then I shall see where I stand with regard to you! If I stay here
now--"
"It will be the same old story over again!" he said--"Love--and
mistrust! Then drifting apart in the same weary way! Is it not possible
to avoid the errors of the past?"
"No!" I said, resolutely--"For me it is not possible! I cannot yield to
my own inward promptings. They offer me too much happiness! I doubt the
joy,--I fear the glory!"
My voice trembled--the very clasp of his hand unnerved me.
"I will tell you," he said, after a brief pause, "what you feel. You
are perfectly conscious that between you and myself there is a tie
which no power, earthly or heavenly, can break,--but you are living in
a matter-of-fact world with matter-of-fact persons, and the influence
they exert is to make you incredulous of the very truths which are an
essential part of your spiritual existence. I understand all this. I
understand also why you wish to go to the House of Aselzion, and you
shall go--"
I uttered an exclamation of relief and pleasure. His eyes grew dark
with earnest gravity as he looked at me.
"You are pleased at what you cannot realise," he said, slowly--"If you
go to the House of Aselzion--and I see you are determined--it will be a
matter of such vital import that it can only mean one of two
things,--your entire happiness or your entire misery. I cannot
contemplate with absolute calmness the risk you run,--and yet it is
better that you should follow the dictates of your own soul than be as
you are now--irresolute,--uncertain of yourself and ready to lose all
you have gained!"
'To lose all I have gained.' The old insidious terror! I met his
searching gaze imploringly.
"I must not lose anything!" I said, and my voice sank lower,--"I cannot
bear--to lose YOU!"
His hand closed on mine with a tighter grasp.
"Yet you doubt!" he said, softly.
"I must KNOW!" I said, resolutely.
He lifted his head with a proud gesture that was curiously familiar to
me.
"So the old spirit is not dead in you, my queen," he said, smiling.
"The old indomitable will!--the desire to probe to the very centre of
things! Yet love defies analysis,--and is the only thing that binds the
Universe together. A fact beyond all proving--a truth which cannot be
expounded by any given rule or line but which is the most emphatic
force of life! My queen, it is a force that must either bend or break
you!"
I made no reply. He still held my hand, and we looked out together on
the shining expanse of the sea where there was no vessel visible and
where our schooner alone flew over the watery, moonlit surface like a
winged flame.
"In your working life," he continued, gently, "you have done much. You
have thought clearly, and you have not been frightened away from any
eternal fact by the difficulties of research. But in your living life
you have missed more than you will care to know. You have been content
to remain a passive recipient of influences--you have not thoroughly
learned how to combine and use them. You have overcome altogether what
are generally the chief obstacles in the way of a woman's higher
progress,--her inherent childishness--her delight in imagining herself
wronged or neglected,--her absurd way of attaching weighty importance
to the merest trifles--her want of balance, and the foolish resentment
she feels at being told any of her faults,--this is all past in you,
and you stand free of the shackles of sheer stupidity which makes so
many women impossible to deal with from a man's standpoint, and which
renders it almost necessary for men to estimate them at a low
intellectual standard. For even in the supreme passion of love,
millions of women are only capable of understanding its merely physical
side, while the union of soul with soul is never consummated:
Where is that love supreme
In which souls meet? Where is it satisfied?
En-isled on heaving sands
Of lone desire, spirit to spirit cries,
While float across the skies
Bright phantoms of fair lands,
Where fancies fade not and where dreams abide."
His voice dropped to the softest musical cadence, and I looked up. He
answered my look.
"Dear one!" he said, "You shall go to the House of Aselzion, and with
you will be the future!"
He let go my hand very gently--I felt a sudden sense of utter
loneliness.
"You do not--you will not misjudge me?" I said.
"I! Dear, I have made so many errors of judgment in the past and I have
lost you so many times, that I shall do nothing now which might lose
you again!"
He smiled, and for one moment I was impelled to throw hesitation to the
winds and say all that I knew in my inmost self ought to be said,--but
my rebellious will held me back, and I remained silent,--while he
turned away and rejoined the rest of the party, with whom he was soon
chatting in such a cheery, easy fashion that they appeared to forget
that there was anything remarkable about him or about his wonderful
vessel, which had now turned on her course and was carrying us back to
Loch Scavaig at a speed which matched the fleetest wind. When she
arrived at her former anchorage just opposite the 'Diana,' we saw that
all the crew of Mr. Harland's yacht were on deck watching our
movements, which must have been well worth watching considering what an
amazing spectacle the 'Dream' made of herself and her glittering sails
against the dark loch and mountains,--so brilliant indeed as almost to
eclipse the very moon. But the light began to pale as soon as we
dropped anchor, and very soon faded out completely, whereupon the
sailors hauled down canvas, uttering musical cries as they pulled and
braced it together. This work done, they retired, and a couple of
servants waited upon our party, bringing wine and fruit as a parting
refreshment before we said good-night,--and once again the sweet voice
of the Egyptian boy singer smote upon our ears, with a prelude of
harp-strings:
Good-night,--farewell! If it should chance that nevermore we meet,
Remember that the hours we spent together here were sweet!
Good-night,--farewell! If henceforth different ways of life we wend,
Remember that I sought to walk beside you to the end!
Good-night,--farewell! When present things are merged into the past,
Remember that I love you and shall love you to the last!
My heart beat with a quick and sudden agony of pain--was it, could it
be true that I was of my own accord going to sever myself from one whom
I knew,--whom I felt--to be all in all to me?
"Good-night!" said a low voice close to my ear.
I started. I had lost myself in a wilderness of thought and memory.
Santoris stood beside me.
"Your friends are going," he said,--"and I too shall be gone to-morrow!"
A wave of desolation overcame me.
"Ah, no!" I exclaimed--"Surely you will not go--"
"I must," he answered, quietly,--"Are not YOU going? It has been a joy
to meet you, if only for a little while--a pause in the journey,--an
attempt at an understanding!--though you have decided that we must part
again."