At the selfsame hour, Diana awoke. She lay on a big rug, looked
around her with sleep-laden eyes, and tried to remember what had
happened. Gregor was asleep. She shivered in the chill morning air,
and drew a blanket off her camp-bed which had not been used, covering
both herself and the man at her side. As she did so, she glanced
down at him and smiled to see how childlike was his slumber. Had she
moved too suddenly, or was it merely the consciousness that her eyes
were upon him? Who can tell? But at that moment he awoke, turned
quickly as if danger threatened, looked around, saw Diana, remembered
all, and smiled in his turn. He leaned over her, bending her face
back to kiss her.
The hour of his conquest over her had been a light-hearted one,
sportive and gay. Everything had lent enchantment to their union,
the spirit of adventure fired their blood, the fact that each shared
the same secret and that only the thin canvas wall of the tent
screened them from inquisitive eyes, the grass of the steppe on which
they lay, the memory of every word they had exchanged, the expectant
waiting, the hopes that had filled their hearts, the delicious
novelty of appealing to one another without the exchange of a single
syllable, the sense of solitude, the enforced silence which caution
constrained them to, all this and a hundred other influences of time
and place had carried the pair onward on a mighty wave of rapturous
daring, so that it was as if two beasts of the wilderness were
playfully endeavouring to overcome one another. The reawakened
yearning to recapture his lost youth, a yearning which had filled
Gregor's whole being since he had met Diana, had gradually
disappeared as day followed day which was to lead to this excursion,
to this night of fulfilment.
Diana had not repelled him, for she was a woman who never closed the
doors on nature's impulses; and when she felt his sensitive hands
trembling within her own, the words he longed to hear fell simply
from her lips. The man, for all his experience of love, had been shy
as a boy in his attitude towards the enigma of this woman; he who was
used to command had besought; his grey hairs notwithstanding, he had
wooed her like a youth; all this had touched her, rather than carried
her off her feet. He himself was unaware of the unusual emotional
stress which once more after the lapse of decades, had transformed
the connoisseur into a bashful wooer and the spoilt darling of so
many female hearts into one who must use all his arts of cajolery to
induce his love to bestow her gifts upon him. His tenderness, his
supplicating desire, had made her conclude that a great change, a
change he was blissfully unaware of, had taken place in the man at
her side.
The physical intimacy was, however, no more than the sign that his
whole nature was about to enter a new springtime, for Gregor Count of
Münsterberg, despite his many love adventures, had during these last
ten years been a very lonely man. In the days when Olivia was
everything to him he had come implicitly to rely on her, giving her
his all with a lavishness not unlike Andreas's spendthrift
love--though in other respects the two men's dispositions were in
such complete contrast.
"Diana, have you slept? Are you cold? Would you like a glass of
water?"
He tucked her up, solicitous for her comfort; he slipped his arm
under her and petted and caressed her as if he had done her an
injury. He could not look upon the events of that night with the
eyes of a conqueror; he felt somewhat ashamed of himself, for she had
been so tender and, as it seemed to him, had yielded to him through
complaisance, rather than from passion. He whispered:
"Are you angry? Do you forgive me? Sweet Diana!"
She smiled as she replied, equally softly:
"You are good."
"Won't you call me by my name?"
"Gregor!"
"Once again."
"Gregor!"
"Ah, that was boldly spoken, as you said it today--no, yesterday,
when we were riding together."
"Tell me, why did you call out Diana then?"
"Because I was thinking of you like that, just at the moment when
your horse shied. Had you never thought of me by name?"
"Yes, once."
"When?"
"As you left me that day we talked about the motto on your
coat-of-arms."
"And then you thought of me as Gregor. Only that once? I always
thought of you as Diana whenever you came into my mind."
"When was that, I pray?"
"Constantly."
"Oh, come."
"It's true. Constantly; at breakfast: Diana will be going for a
sail. While at work: that's not clear, not very practical--Diana
would have done it better. At dinner: Diana has a fine palate for
wines. Out riding, engaged in conversation, even while dictating
dispatches, always Diana is in my thoughts, for she grasps my
meaning, knows what I want, understands, so much quicker than any one
else."
She raised herself on her elbow and leaned over him, stroked his
hair, and pushed the grey locks away from his brow.
"How white your forehead is, how beautifully shaped," she whispered.
Then she hummed very softly to herself, a velvety sound like that
made by the drowsy horses outside as they rubbed their heads one
against the other. "It's a pity to keep it hidden under this mass of
grey hair. Have you ever tried brushing it back?"
"A high forehead makes a man look older. Besides, my hair is whiter
still underneath. The way one wears the hair is a fine art which
even Peter, my man, is incapable of achieving. I am always my own
hairdresser."
"Why?"
He suddenly seized her by the hair:
"I wish your chestnut locks could stay that colour for ever."
"I don't wish it at all. Or, perhaps to be quite truthful, the wish
might cross my mind occasionally. Still, I know that when my time
comes I shall not pull one grey hair out. We must not run counter to
nature."
"You believe that?" he asked, pulling himself up into a sitting
position. "Am I running counter to nature when I...?" He stole a
look at her, and waited for her to complete his thought. But she
played with the fringe of the rug and held her peace. He took her
hand, and bent towards her so as to compel her to look him in the
eyes. "You might easily be my daughter..."
She answered very slowly:
"Say, rather, that you might well be my son."
Hand in hand the two sat gazing at one another, Diana and Gregor, on
the rug widespread among the dry herbage of the steppe, in the softly
diffused moonlight which struggled through the thin canvas of the
tent.
What did Diana see?
The vision of this man in his youthful prime, transparent, so that
the story of his life stood revealed. Those blue eyes had never
blenched at what life chose to offer him. They had flashed upon the
world their searching fires. Now their look was turned inward,
earnest, and inexpressibly lonesome. Those lips, once so firm, were
now sunk between furrows telling of a disillusionment in strange
contrast to the strength expressed in the straight, high-pitched nose
and the salient chin, proclaiming as they did the resolution with
which this man sought power and ever more power in compensation for
the loss of his capacity for enjoyment.
And Gregor, what were his thoughts while he sat in the pale light
filtering through the tent as the moon set?
He felt as if he were coming into closer contact with humanity as a
whole, not merely with the twenty-five year old creature at his side.
He saw as it were in timeless and ageless shape, before her and
behind her as she sat, the form of a child and of a woman. Slowly,
the meaning of her last words and of his became disentangled from the
vision. How explain the mystery of sexual union? He brooded upon
this, not in relation to what had happened this night, but as
something remote and intangible. How not shudder in the placid
morning light at the madness of venturing to penetrate into the life
of another being, and yet hope neither to kill that being nor to
suffer death at its hands? He was painfully aware of the weight of
the years that lay upon him. Had he not hitherto always been as a
god showering happiness on the woman of his choice? But now, what
had he to bestow on this young thing whose hand lay so confidingly in
his own?
From those delicate lips that had kissed him last night as if their
owner were asleep, from those cheeks whose oval was so pure, which
sun and wind had bronzed and made so firm a setting for the face,
from those short, boyish curls which seemed wilfully to renounce all
womanly lure, above all from the solemn fire of her brown eyes, he
drew so powerful a sense of vital security, so mighty an assurance of
youth's everlasting renewal, that he was overwhelmed with gratitude
and could only bow his grey head, kiss her hand, and rest his
forehead in her lap.
She loosed the flap of the tent and threw it back without disturbing
him. Far away on the eastward margin of the steppe the sky was pale
with the earliest flicker of dawn. The tiny breeze came cold and
sharp upon her, so that she drew the folds of the silk cloak tighter
around her. For a moment she thought of a morning on the island when
she had likewise waked up to find herself in the open. But the head
resting in her lap that day had dark hair.... Where was Andreas now?
Alone?
Many minutes went by before the grizzled man raised his head again.
The blue eyes were so earnest that one might have thought they had
never been aglow with laughter all yesterday. Slowly Gregor pulled
aside the silken folds that covered her, and laid her bosom bare.
His movements were tender and delicate, as with an artist's
appreciation he passed his sensitive fingers over the small bronzed
breasts, while Diana sat spellbound, motionless....