But Theodora had not this view of honeymoons. To her a honeymoon meant a
nightmare, now happily a thing of the past, and almost forgotten.
"Do not speak of it," she said, and she put out her hands as if to ward
off an ugly sight, and Hector bent over the table and touched her
fingers gently as he said: "Forgive me," and he raged within himself. How could he have been so
gauche, so clumsy and unlike himself. He had punished them both, and
destroyed an illusion. He meant that she should picture herself and him
as married lovers, and she had only seen--Josiah Brown. They both fell
into silence and so finished their repast.
"I want you to walk now," Hector said, "through some delicious allées
where I will show you Enceladus after he was struck by the
thunders of Zeus. You will like him, I think, and there is fine
greensward around him where we can sit awhile."
"I was always sorry for him," said Theodora; "and oh, how I would like
to go to Sicily and see Ætna and his fiery breath coming forth, and to
know when the island quakes it is the poor giant turning his weary
side!"
To go to Sicily--and with her! The picture conjured up in Hector's
imagination made him thrill again.
Then he told her about it all, he charmed her fancy and excited her
imagination, and by the time they came to their goal the feeling of jar
had departed, and the dangerous sense of attraction--of nearness--had
returned.
It was nearly seven o'clock, and here among the trees all was in a soft
gloom of evening light.
"Is not this still and far away?" he said, as they sat on an old stone
bench. "I often stay the whole morning here when I spend a week at
Versailles."
"How peaceful and beautiful! Oh, I would like a week here, too!" and
Theodora sighed.
"You must not sigh, beautiful princess," he implored, "on this our happy
day."
The slender lines of her figure seemed all drooping. She reminded him
more than ever of the fragment of Psyche in the Naples Museum.
"No, I must not sigh," she said. "But it seems suddenly to have grown
sad--the air--what does it mean? Tell me, you who know so many things?"
There was a pathos in her voice like a child in distress.
It communicated itself to him, it touched some chords in his nature
hitherto silent. His whole being rushed out to her in tenderness.