In the moonlit room, Paul and Opal faced each other in a silence heavy
with emotion.
It had been months since they parted, yet for some moments neither
spoke. Opal first found her voice.
"Paul! You-saw me!"
"I felt your eyes!"
"Oh, why did I come!"
Opal had begun to prepare for the night and had thrown about her
shoulders a loose robe of crimson silk. Her lustrous hair, like waves of
burnished copper, hung below her waist in beautiful confusion. With
trembling fingers she attempted to secure it.
"Your hair is wonderful, Opal! Please leave it as it is," Paul said
softly. And, curiously enough, she obeyed in silence.
"Paul," she said at last, with a little nervous laugh, as she recovered
her self-possession and seated herself on the couch, "don't stand
staring at me! I'm not a tragedy queen! You're too melodramatic. Sit
down and tell me why you've come here at this hour."
Paul obeyed mechanically, his gaze still upon her. She shrank from the
expression of his eyes--it was the old tiger-look again!
"I came because I had to, Opal. I could not have done otherwise. I have
something to tell you."
"Something to tell me?" she repeated.
"Yes. The most interesting story in the world to me, Opal--a letter from
my mother--a letter to me alone, which I can share with only one woman
in the world--the woman I love!"
Her eyes fell. As she raised her hand abstractedly to adjust the
curtain, Paul saw the flash of her betrothal ring. He caught her hand in
his and quietly slipped the ring from her finger. She seized the jewel
with her free hand and tried to thrust it into her bosom.
"No! no!--not there!" he remonstrated, and was not satisfied until she
had crossed the room and hidden it from his sight.
"Does that please your majesty?" she asked, with a curious little
tremble in her voice.
Paul started, and stared at her with a world of wonder in his eyes.
Could she know?
"Your majesty--" he stammered.
"Why not?" she laughed. "You speak as though you had but to command to
be obeyed."
"Forgive me, dear," he answered softly.
And Opal became her sympathetic self again.
"Tell me about your mother, Paul," she said.
And Paul, beginning at the very beginning, told her the whole story as
it had been told to him, reading much of his mother's letter to her,
reserving only such portions of it as would reveal the identity he was
determined to keep secret until she was his. The girl was moved to the
depths of her nature by the beauty and pathos of it all, and then the
thought came to her, "This, then, is Paul's heritage--his birthright!
He, like me, is doomed!"
And her heart ached for him--and for herself!
But Paul did not give her long to muse. Sitting down beside her for the
first time, he told her the plan he had been turning over in his mind
for their one day together.
"Surely," he said, "it is not too much to ask out of a lifetime of
misery--one little day of bliss! Just one day in which there shall be no
yesterday, and no to-morrow--one day of Elysium against years of
Purgatory! Let us have our idyl, dear, as my mother and father had
theirs--even though it must be as brief as a butterfly's existence, let
us not deny ourselves that much. I ask only one day!
"You love me, Opal. I love you. You are, of all the world of women, my
chosen one, as I--no, don't shake your head, for you can't honestly deny
it--am yours! We know we must soon part forever. Won't it be easier for
both of us--both, I say--if for but one day, we can give to each other
all! Won't all our lives be better for the memory of one perfect day?
Think, Opal--to take out of all eternity just a few hours--and yet out
of those few hours may be born sufficient courage for all the life to
come! Don't you see? Can't you? Oh, I can't argue--I can't reason! I
only want you to be mine--all mine--yes, if only for a few hours--all
mine!"
"Paul, you are mad," she began, but he would not listen.
"Just one day," he pleaded--"no yesterday, and no to-morrow!"
He looked at her tenderly.
"Opal, it simply has to be--it's Fate! If it wasn't meant to be, why
have we met here like this? Do you think we two are mere toys in the
grip of circumstances? Or do you believe the gods have crossed our paths
again just to tantalize us? Is that why we are here, Opal, you and
I--_together_?"
"Why, I came to rest--to see Lucerne! Most tourists come to Lucerne!
It's a--pretty--place--very!" she responded, lamely.
"Well, then, account for the rest of it. Why did _I_ come?--and at the
same time?--and find you here in my mother's room? Simply a coincidence?
Answer me that! Chance plays strange freaks sometimes, I'll admit, but
Fate is a little more than mere chance. Why did I hear your voice, that
time? Why did I see you, and follow? Why did we find ourselves so near
akin--so strangely, so irresistibly drawn to each other? Answer me,
Opal! Why was it, if we weren't created to be--_one_?"
After a moment of waiting he said, "Listen to the music, Opal! Only
listen! Doesn't it remind you of dreams and visions--of fairyland, of
happiness, and--love?"
But she could not answer.
At last she said slowly, "Oh, it's too late, Paul--too late!"
"Too late?" he echoed. "It's never too late to take the good the gods
send! Never, while love lasts!"
"But the Count, Paul--and your fiancée! Think, Paul, think!"
"I can't think! What does the Count matter, Opal! Nothing--nothing makes
any difference when you are face to face with destiny and your soul-mate
calls! It has to be--_it has to be!_--can't you--won't you--see it?"
"_God help all poor souls lost in the dark!_" She did see it. It stared
her relentlessly in the face and tugged mercilessly at her heart with
fingers of red-hot steel! She covered her face with her hands, but she
could not shut out the terrible image of advancing Death that held for
her all the charm of a serpent's eye. She struggled, as virgin woman has
always struggled. But in her heart she knew that she would yield. What
was her weak woman's nature after all, when pitted against the strength
of the man she loved!
"Oh, I was feeling so pure--so good--so true--to-night! Are there not
thousands of beautiful women in the world who might be yours for the
asking? Could you not let the poor Count have his wife and his honeymoon
in peace?"
Honeymoon! She shuddered at the thought.
"Sweetheart," he whispered, "by every God-made law of Nature you are
mine--mine--mine! What care we for the foolish, man-made conventions of
this or any other land? There is only one law in the universe--the
divine right of the individual to choose for himself his mate!"
Then his whisper became softer--more enticing--more resistless in its
passionate appeal.
He was pleading with his whole soul--this prince who with one word could
command the unquestioning obedience of a kingdom! But the woman in his
arms did not know that, and it would have made no difference if she had!
In that supreme moment it was only man and woman.
Opal gazed in amazement at this revelation of a new Paul. How splendid
he was! What a king among all the men she knew! What a god in his
manhood's glory!--a god to make the hearts of better and wiser women
than she ache--and break--with longing! Her hand stole to her heart to
still the fury of its beating.
"Opal," he breathed, "I have wanted you ever since that mad moment in
gray old London when I first caught the lure in your glorious eyes--do
you remember, sweetheart? I know you are mine--and you know it--girl!
His voice sank lower and lower, growing more and more intense with
suppressed passion. Opal was held spell-bound by the subtle charm of his
languorous eyes. She wanted to cry out, but she could not speak--she
could not think--the spell of his fascination overpowered her.
She felt her eyes grow humid. Her heart seemed to struggle upward, till
it caught in her throat like a huge lump of molten lead and threatened
to choke her with its wild, hot pulsations.
"I love you, Opal! I love you! and I want you! God! how I want you!"
Paul stammered on, with a catch in his boyish voice it made her heart
leap to hear. "I want your eyes, Opal--your hair--your lips--your
glorious self! I want you as man never wanted woman before!"
He paused, dazed by his own passion, maddened by her lack of
response--blinded by a mist of fire that made his senses swim and his
brain reel, and crazed by the throbbing of the pulse that cried out from
every vein in his body with the world-old elemental call. Was she going
to close the gates of Paradise in his very face and in the very hour of
his triumph rob him of the one day--his little day?
It was too much.
More overwhelmed by her lack of response than by any words she could
have uttered, Paul hesitated. Then, speech failing him, half-dazed, he
stumbled toward the door.
"Paul!... Paul!"
He heard her call as one in dreamland catches the far-off summons of
earth's realities. He turned. She stretched out her arms to him--those
round, white arms.
"I understand you, Paul! I do understand." She threw her arms around his
neck and drew his face down to hers. "Yes, I love you, Paul, I love you!
Do you hear, I love you! I am yours--utterly--heart, mind, soul, and
body! Don't you know that I am yours?"
She was in his arms now, weeping strange, hot tears of joy, her heart
throbbing fiercely against his own.
"Paul--Paul--I am mad, I think!--we are both mad, you and I!"
And as their lips at last met in one long, soul-maddening kiss, and the
intoxication of the senses stole over them, she murmured in the fullness
of her surrender, "Take me! Crush me! Kiss me! My love--my love!"