That evening it was so warm and peaceful they dined at the wide-open
balcony windows. They could see far away over the terrace and down to the
lake, with the distant lights towards Lucerne. The moon, still slender and
fine, was drawing to her setting, and a few cloudlets floated over the
sky, obscuring the stars here and there.
The lady was quiet and tender, her eyes melting upon Paul, and something
of her ring-dove mood was upon her again. Not once, since they had been on
the Bürgenstock, had she shown any of the tigerish waywardness that he had
had glimpses of at first. It seemed as if her moods, like her chameleon
eyes, took colour from her surroundings, and there all was primitive
simplicity and nature and peace.
Paul himself was in a state of ecstasy. He hardly knew whether he trod on
air or no. No siren of old Greek fable had ever lured mortal more under
her spell than this strange foreign woman thing--Queen or Princess or what
you will. Nothing else in the world was of any consequence to him--and it
was all the more remarkable because subjection was in no way part of his
nature. Paul was a masterful youth, and ruled things to his will in his
own home.
The lady talked of him--of his tastes--of his pleasures. There was not an
incident in his life, or of his family, that she had not fathomed by now.
All about Isabella even--poor Isabella! And she told him how she
sympathised with the girl, and how badly he had behaved.
"Another proof, my Paul, of what I said today--no one must make vows about
love."
But Paul, in his heart, believed her not. He would worship her for ever,
he knew.
"Yes," she said, answering his thoughts. "You think so, beloved, and it
may be so because you do not know from moment to moment how I shall be--if
I shall stay here in your arms, or fly far away beyond your reach. You
love me because I give you the stimulus of uncertainty, and so keep bright
your passion, but once you were sure, I should become a duty, as all women
become, and then my Paul would yawn and grow to see I was no longer young,
and that the expected is always an _ennui_ when it comes!"
"Never, never!" said Paul, with fervour.
Presently their conversation drifted to other things, and Paul told her
how he longed to see the world and its people and its ways. She had been
almost everywhere, it seemed, and with her talent of word-painting, she
took him with her on the magic carpet of her vivid description to east and
west and north and south.
Oh! their _entr'actes_ between the incoherence of just lovers' love were
not banal or dull. And never she forgot her tender ways of insinuated
caresses--small exquisite touches of sentiment and grace. The note ever of
One--that they were fused and melted together into one body and soul.
Through all her talk that night Paul caught glimpses of the life of a
great lady, surrounded with state and cares, and now and then there was a
savage echo which made him think of things barbaric, and wonder more than
ever from whence she had come.
It was quite late before the chill of night airs drove them into their
salon, and here she made him some Russian tea, and then lay in his arms,
and purred love-words to him, and nestled close like a child who wants
petting to cure it of some imaginary hurt. Only, in her tenderest caresses
he seemed at last to feel something of danger. A slumbering look of
passion far under the calm exterior, but ready to break forth at any
moment from its studied control.
It thrilled and maddened him.
"Beloved, beloved!" he cried, "let us waste no more precious moments. I
want you--I want you--my sweet!"
* * * * *
At the first glow of dawn, he awoke, a strange sensation, almost of
strangling and suffocation, upon him. There, bending over, framed in a
mist of blue-black waves, he saw his lady's face. Its milky whiteness lit
by her strange eyes--green as cats' they seemed, and blazing with the
fiercest passion of love--while twisted round his throat he felt a great
strand of her splendid hair. The wildest thrill as yet his life had known
then came to Paul; he clasped her in his arms with a frenzy of mad,
passionate joy.