"You shall not! You shall remain as you are! Dear, don't you realise
that I can't steady myself unless I can look up to you? You've raised
yourself to where you stand; you've made your own pedestal. Look down
at me from it; don't ever step down; don't ever condescend; don't
ever let me think you mortal. You are not, now. Don't ever descend
entirely to my level--even if we marry."
She turned, smiling too wisely, yet adorably: "What endless romance
there is in that boy's heart of yours! There always was,--when you
came running back to me where I stood alone by the closed door,--when
you found me living as all women who work live, and made a beautiful
home for me and gave me more than I wished to take, asking nothing of
me in return. Oh, Clive, you were chivalrous and romantic, too, when
you listened to your mother's wishes and gave me up. I understand it
so much better, now. I know how it was--with your father dead and your
beautiful mother, broken, desolate, confiding to your keeping all her
hope and pride and future happiness,--all the traditions of the
family, and its dignity and honour!
"In the light of a clearer knowledge, do you suppose I blame you now?
Do you suppose I blame you for anything?--for your long and
broken-hearted and bitter silence?--for the quick resurgence of your
affection for me--for your love--Oh, Clive!--for your passion?
"Do you suppose I think less of you because you love me--care for me
in the many and inexplicable ways that a man cares for a
woman?--because you want me as a man wants the woman he loves, as his
wife if it may be so, as his own, anyhow?"
She let her eyes rest on him in a new and fearless comprehension,
tender, curious, sad by turns.
"It is the romance of passion in you that has been fighting to awaken
the Sleeping Princess of a legend," she said with a slight smile; "it
is the same illogical, impulsive romance that draws back just as her
closed lids tremble, fearing to awaken her to the sorrows and
temptations of a world which, after all, God made for us to wake in."
"Athalie! I am a scoundrel if I have--"
"Oh, Clive!" she laughed, mocking the solemn measure of her own words;
"adorable boy of impulse and romance, never to outgrow its magic
armour, destined always to be ruled by dreams through the sweetest and
most generous of hearts, you need not fear for me. I am already
awake--at least I am sufficiently aroused to understand you--and
something, too, of my own self which I have never hitherto
understood."