I burst the fetters with which horror had chained my voice;--I spake to
her; I wept--I wept tears of blood!
And the old voice came to me, argentine and low and mockingly sweet as
the voices of birds that call to each other through the fervid West
Indian night--
"I knew thou wouldst come back to me--howsoever long thou mightst
wander under other skies and over other seas.
"Didst thou dream that I was dead? Nay, I die not so quickly! I have
lived through all these years. I shall live on; and thou must return
hither again to visit me like a thief in the night.
"Knowest thou how I have lived? I have lived in the bitter tears thou
hast wept through all these long years;--the agony of the remorse that
seized thee in silent nights and lonesome wastes;--in the breath of thy
youth and life exhaled in passionate agony when no human eyes beheld
thee;--in the images that haunt thy dreams and make it a horror for
thee to find thyself alone! Yet wouldst thou kiss me--"
I looked upon her again in the white light;--I saw the same weirdly
beautiful face, the same smile of the sphinx;--I saw the vacant tomb
yawning to its entrails;--I saw its shadow--my shadow--lying sharply
upon the graves;--and I saw that the tall white figure before me _cast
no shadow before the moon!_
And suddenly under the stars, sonorous and vibrant as far cathedral
bells, the voices of the awakening watchmen chanted--Ave Maria
Purísima!--las tres de la mañana, y tiempo sereno!