Three Weeks Page 10

  CHAPTER X

  That evening it was so warm and peaceful they dined at the wide-openbalcony windows. They could see far away over the terrace and down to thelake, with the distant lights towards Lucerne. The moon, still slender andfine, was drawing to her setting, and a few cloudlets floated over thesky, obscuring the stars here and there.

  The lady was quiet and tender, her eyes melting upon Paul, and somethingof her ring-dove mood was upon her again. Not once, since they had been onthe Buergenstock, had she shown any of the tigerish waywardness that he hadhad glimpses of at first. It seemed as if her moods, like her chameleoneyes, took colour from her surroundings, and there all was primitivesimplicity and nature and peace.

  Paul himself was in a state of ecstasy. He hardly knew whether he trod onair or no. No siren of old Greek fable had ever lured mortal more underher spell than this strange foreign woman thing--Queen or Princess or whatyou will. Nothing else in the world was of any consequence to him--and itwas all the more remarkable because subjection was in no way part of hisnature. Paul was a masterful youth, and ruled things to his will in hisown home.

  The lady talked of him--of his tastes--of his pleasures. There was not anincident 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 shesympathised with the girl, and how badly he had behaved.

  "Another proof, my Paul, of what I said today--no one must make vows aboutlove."

  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 itmay be so because you do not know from moment to moment how I shall be--ifI shall stay here in your arms, or fly far away beyond your reach. Youlove me because I give you the stimulus of uncertainty, and so keep brightyour passion, but once you were sure, I should become a duty, as all womenbecome, 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 herhow he longed to see the world and its people and its ways. She had beenalmost everywhere, it seemed, and with her talent of word-painting, shetook him with her on the magic carpet of her vivid description to east andwest and north and south.

  Oh! their _entr'actes_ between the incoherence of just lovers' love werenot banal or dull. And never she forgot her tender ways of insinuatedcaresses--small exquisite touches of sentiment and grace. The note ever ofOne--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 agreat lady, surrounded with state and cares, and now and then there was asavage echo which made him think of things barbaric, and wonder more thanever from whence she had come.

  It was quite late before the chill of night airs drove them into theirsalon, 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 wantspetting to cure it of some imaginary hurt. Only, in her tenderest caresseshe seemed at last to feel something of danger. A slumbering look ofpassion far under the calm exterior, but ready to break forth at anymoment from its studied control.

  It thrilled and maddened him.

  "Beloved, beloved!" he cried, "let us waste no more precious moments. Iwant you--I want you--my sweet!"

  * * * * *

  At the first glow of dawn, he awoke, a strange sensation, almost ofstrangling and suffocation, upon him. There, bending over, framed in amist of blue-black waves, he saw his lady's face. Its milky whiteness litby her strange eyes--green as cats' they seemed, and blazing with thefiercest passion of love--while twisted round his throat he felt a greatstrand of her splendid hair. The wildest thrill as yet his life had knownthen came to Paul; he clasped her in his arms with a frenzy of mad,passionate joy.