IV

There I stood again, as on that other morning, in the crevice

overlooking the same llyn, looking at what might well have been the

same masses of vapour enveloping the same peaks, rolling as then,

boiling as then, blazing as then, whenever the bright shafts of

morning struck them. There I stood again, listening to the wild notes

of Sinfi's crwth in the distance, as the sun rose higher, pouring a

radiance through the eastern gate of the gorge, and kindling the

aerial vapours moving about the llyn till their iridescent sails

suggested the wings of some enormous dragon-fly of every hue.

'Her song does not come,' I said, 'but, this time, when it does come,

it will not befool my senses. Sinfi's own presence by my side--that

magnetism of hers which D'Arcy spoke of--would be required before the

glamour could be cast over me, now that I know she is crazy. Poor

Sinfi! Her influence will not to-day be able to cajole my eyes into

accepting her superstitious visions as their own.'

But as I spoke a sound fell, not upon my ears alone, but upon every

nerve of my body, the sound of a voice singing, a voice that was not

Sinfi's, but another's,

'I met in a glade a lone little maid,

At the foot of y Wyddfa the white;

Oh, lissom her feet as the mountain hind,

And darker her hair than the night;

Her cheek was like the mountain rose,

But fairer far to see.

As driving along her sheep with a song,

Down from the hills came she.'

It was the same voice that I heard singing the same song on Raxton

Sands. It was the same voice that I heard singing the same song in

the London streets--Winnie's!

And then there appeared in the eastern cleft of the gorge on the

other side of the llyn, illuminated as by a rosy steam, Winnie! Amid

the opalescent vapours gleaming round the llyn, with eyes now

shimmering as through a veil--now flashing like sapphires in the

sun--there she stood gazing through the film, her eyes expressing a

surprise and a wonder as great as my own.

'It is no phantasm--it is no hallucination,' I said, while my

breathing had become a spasmodic, choking gasp.

But when I remembered the vision of Fairy Glen, I said, 'Imagination

can do that, and so can the glamour cast over me by Sinfi's music. It

does not vanish; ah, if the sweet madness should remain with me for

ever! It does not vanish--it is gliding along the side of the llyn:

it is moving towards me. And now those sudden little ripples in the

llyn--what do they mean? The trout are flying from her shadow. The

feet are grating on the stones. And hark! that pebble which falls

into the water with a splash; the glassy llyn is ribbed and rippled

with rings. Can a phantom do that? It comes towards me still.

Hallucination!'

Still the vision came on.

When I felt the touch of her body, when I felt myself clasped in soft

arms, and felt falling on my face warm tears, and on my lips the

pressure of Winnie's lips--lips that were murmuring, 'At last, at

last!'--a strange, wild effect was worked within me. The reality of

the beloved form now in my arms declared itself; it brought back the

scene where I had last clasped it.

Snowdon had vanished; the brilliant morning sun had vanished. The

moon was shining on a cottage near Raxton Church, and at the door two

lovers were standing, wet with the sea-water--with the sea-water

through which they had just waded. All the misery that had followed

was wiped out of my brain. It had not even the cobweb consistence of

a dream.

When, after a while, Snowdon and the drama of the present came back

to me, my brain was in such a marvellous state that it held two

pictures of the same Winnie as though each hemisphere of the brain

were occupied with its own vision. I was kissing Winnie's sea-salt

lips in the light of the moon at the cottage door, and I was kissing

them in the morning radiance by Knockers' Llyn. And yet so

overwhelming was the mighty tide of bliss overflowing my soul that

there was no room within me for any other emotion--no room for

curiosity, no room even for wonder.

Like a spirit awakening in Paradise, I accepted the heaven in which

I found myself, and did not inquire how I got there.

This did not last long, however. Suddenly and sharply the moonlight

scene vanished, and I was on Snowdon, and there came a burning

curiosity to know the meaning of this new life--the meaning of the

life of pain that had followed the parting at the cottage door.

V

'Winnie,' I said, 'tell me where we are. I have been very ill since

we parted in your father's cottage. I have had the wildest

hallucinations concerning you; dreams, intolerable dreams. And even

now they hang about me; even now it seems to me that we are far away

from Raxton, surrounded by the hills and peaks of Snowdon. If they

were real _you_ would be the dream, but you are real; this waist is

real.'

'Of course we are on Snowdon, Henry!' said she. 'You must indeed have

been ill--you must now be very ill--to suppose you are at Raxton.'

'But what are we doing here?' I said. 'How did we come here?'

'Let Badoura speak for herself only,' she said, with that arch smile

of hers. She was alluding to the old days at Raxton, when she hoped

that some day her little Camaralzaman would be carried by genii to

her as she sat thinking of him by the magic llyn. 'The genie who

brought me was Sinfi Lovell. But who brought Camaralzaman? That is a

question,' she said, 'I am dying to have answered.'

At the name of Sinfi Lovell the past came flowing in.

'Then there _is_ a Sinfi Lovell, Winnie! And yet she is one of the

figures in the dream. There was no Sinfi Lovell with us at Raxton.'

'Of course there is a Sinfi Lovell! You begin to make me as dazed as

yourself. You have known her well; you and she were seeking me when I

was lost.'

'Then you _were_ lost?' I said. 'That, then, is no dream. And yet if

you were lost you have been--But you are alive, Winnie. Let me

feel the lips on mine again. You are alive! Snowdon told me at last

that you were alive, but I dared not believe it, my darling. I dared

not believe that my misery would end thus--thus.'

There came upon her face an expression of distressed perplexity which

did more than anything else to recall me to my senses.

'Winnie,' I said, 'my brain is whirling. Let us sit down.'

She sat down by my side.

'You thought your Winnie was dead, Henry. Sinfi Lovell has told me

all about it.' Then, looking intently at me, she said, 'And how your

sorrow has changed you, dear!'

'You mean it has aged me, Winnie. I have observed it myself, and

people tell me it has made me look older than I am by many years.

These furrows around the eyes--these furrows on my brow--you are

kissing them, dear.'

'Oh, I love them; how I love them!' she said. 'I am not kissing them

to smooth them away. To me every line tells of your love for Winnie.'

'And the hair, Winnie--look, it is getting quite grizzled.' Then, as

the lovely head sank upon my breast. I whispered in her ears, 'Is

there at last sorrow enough in the eyes, Winnie? Has the hardening

effect of wealth coarsened my expression? Can a rich man for once

enter the kingdom of love? Is the betrothal now complete? Are we both

betrothed now?'

I stopped, for bliss and love were convulsing her with sobs until you

might have supposed her heart was breaking.

While she lay silent thus, I was able in some degree to call my wits

around me. And the difficulty of knowing in what course I ought to

direct conversation presented itself, and seemed to numb my faculties

and paralyse me.

After a while she became more composed, and sat in a trance, so to

speak, of happiness.

But she remained silent. The conversation, I perceived, would have to

be directed entirely by me. With the appalling seizures ever present

in my mind, I felt that every word that came from my lips was

dangerous.

'Look,' I said, 'the colours of the vapours round the llyn are as

rich as they were when we breakfasted here together.'

'We breakfasted here together! Why, what do you mean?' she said,

looking in my face. 'You forget, Henry, you never knew me in Wales at

all; it was only at Raxton that you ever saw me.'

'I mean when you breakfasted with the Prince of the Mist. I was the

Prince of the Mist, dear.'

She gave me a puzzled look which scared while it warned me. How cruel

it seemed of Sinfi, who had planned this meeting, not to have told me

how much and how little Winnie knew of the past.

'You know nothing about the Prince of the Mist except what I told you

on Raxton sands,' she said. 'But you have been very ill; you will be

well now.'

'Yes,' I said; 'I have found the life I had lost, and these dreams of

mine will soon pass.'

As the conversation went on I began to see that she remembered our

meetings on the sands--remembered everything up to a certain point.

What was that point? This was the question that kept me on

tenterhooks.

Every word she uttered, however, shed light into my mind, and served

as a warning that I must feel my way cautiously. It was evident to me

that in some unaccountable way Sinfi at some time after she left me

at Beddgelert had discovered that Winnie was not really dead, and had

brought her back to me--brought her back to me restored in mind, but

with all memory of what had passed during her dementia erased from

her consciousness. Everything depended now upon my learning how much

of her past she did remember. A single ill-judged word of mine--a

single false move--might ruin all, and bring back the life of misery

which I seemed at last to have left behind me.