Slowly, very slowly, a fear grew in me that took the shape of horror. My reasoning was the reasoning of Walter Butler!--my argument his damning creed! Dazed, shaken, I sank to my knees, overwhelmed by my own perfidy; and she stirred in her slumber and stretched out one little hand. All the chivalry, all the manhood in me responded to that appeal in a passion of loyalty which swept my somber heart clean of selfishness.
And there in the darkness I learned the lesson that she believed I had taught to her--a lesson so easily forgotten when the heart's loud clamor drowns all else, and every pulse throbs reckless response. And it was cold reasoning and chill logic for cooling hot young blood--but it was neither reason nor logic which prevailed, I think, but something--I know not what--something inborn that conquered spite of myself, and a guilty and rebellious heart that, after all, had only asked for love, at any price--only love, but all of it, its sweetness unbridled, its mystery unfathomed--lest the body die, and the soul, unsatisfied, wing upward to eternal ignorance.
As I crouched there beside her, in the darkness below the tall hall-clock fell a-striking; and she moved, sighed, and sat up--languid-eyed and pink from slumber.
"Carus," she murmured, "how long have I slept? How long have you been here, my darling? Heigho! Why did you wake me? I was in paradise with you but now. Where are you? I am minded to drowse, and go find you in paradise again."
She pushed her hair aside and turned, resting her chin on one hand, regarding me with sweet, sleepy, humorous eyes that glimmered like amethysts in the moonlight.
"Were ever two lovers so happy?" she asked. "Is there anything on earth that we lack?--possessing each other so completely. Tell me, Carus."
"Nothing," I said.
"Nothing," she echoed, leaning toward me and resting in my arms for a moment, then laid her hands on my shoulders, and, raising herself to a sitting posture, fell a-laughing to herself.
"While you were gone this afternoon," she said, "and I was lying here, eyes wide open, seeming to feel the bed sway like the ship, I fell to counting the ticking of the stair-clock below, and thinking how each second was recording the eternity of my love for you. And as I lay a-listening and thinking, came one by the window singing 'John O'Bail', and I heard voices in the tap-room and the clatter of pewter flagons. On a settle outside the tap-room window, full in the sun, sat the songster and his companions, drinking new ale and singing 'John O'Bail'--a song I never chanced to hear before, and I shall not soon forget it for lack of schooling"--and she sang softly, sitting there, clasping her knees, and swaying with the quaint rhythm: "'Where do you wend your way, John O'Bail, Where do you wend your way?' 'I follow the spotted trail Till a maiden bids me stay,' 'Beware of the trail, John O'Bail, Beware of the trail, I say!'