"We go to Rome?" Nicanor repeated. "Say rather that we should be left here to die like chained rats that the trainer hath forgotten."

He went off; and watched his chance and slipped away outside, and stopped before the little garden door. He put his hand upon it, drew back, and glanced over his shoulder as though for possible pursuit. His face held a curious mixture of doubt and boldness, hesitancy and desire.

Only a moment he paused; then opened the door with a silent key, slipped inside so that the vines scarcely rustled, and closed it without noise.

No one was in the garden. His eagerness took fire at the delay; lithe and silent as a mountain cat he crossed the open s.p.a.ce of lawn, mounted the steps of the terrace, and gained the windows, whence came no light from the tall silver lamps within. And here he discovered that the windows were closed. With all his boldness he dared venture no further.

Baffled, yet keener set in his determination for being thwarted, he drew back into the shadows and waited.

From where he stood by the marble bench no sound came to him save the chirring of insects in the gra.s.s, the squeak of a bat or twitter of a sleepy bird. One might never have thought the place to be in the heart of a house whose inmates numbered five hundred souls and more, so still it was, so seemingly remote from all human noise and tumult. The combined effects of the silence and the perfume of the many night-blooming plants made him drowsy; also his head was light from want of food. Every clump of bushes seemed suspicious; he began at last to hear footsteps in every sough of wind and creak of branch. But he set his teeth grimly, bound not to be beaten, fighting hard against sleep and overwhelming weariness. Yet what it meant for him should he, in spite of himself, fall asleep and be discovered there by Lady Varia's women, none knew better than he.

"She will come! She must come!" he muttered, and kept himself awake with that.

And she did come. After untold hours of waiting, during which he alternately dozed and started into uneasy watchfulness through sheer force of will, she came to him out of the scented darkness, walking slowly, with hands hanging straight at her sides, a slim figure dimly white. So suddenly did she appear that at first he did not move, believing himself still drowsing. But she stopped before him; and at once the world fell away from him, leaving him thought and memory of nothing but that she had come to him at his call and that they were alone together.

"I am here," she said, very low. "Didst call me, or did I dream it? And why?"

"Because I wanted thee!" he answered, and caught her hands and kissed them. His own hands shook as he drew her down upon the bench beside him; he dared not trust his voice to utter what was on his tongue. She sat beside him, leaving her hands in one of his, and he slipped his arm about her, unrebuked. In the darkness he could not tell whether or not her eyes were on him. Presently she spoke.

"Hast thou not a tale to tell to-night? Last night thou didst not come, and I was lonely. All the night I did not sleep. Now I am tired--so tired...."

Her voice drifted into silence. She yawned, quite openly, like a sleepy child, and leaned her head slowly back against his arm. Nicanor quivered from head to foot, and tightened his clasp about her. It was these innocent tricks of hers, these child ways, wholly trusting, without thought of guile, that made him mad for her, tempted him almost beyond endurance, and yet, in their very innocence, made themselves her strongest shield. She knew nothing, with that child's soul of hers, of the pa.s.sion which shook him at her touch, which sent his hands hot when her fingers fluttered into his, and set his heart pounding in heavy throbs when, as now, she leaned her cheek above it. How should she know?

Her mind was a child's mind, unawakened, even though her body was a woman's body, fragrant cup of the mystic wine of life, abounding in sweet allurements of which she knew not the smallest meaning.

"I would have another tale!" she said at length, imperiously, and raised her head to look at him in grieved surprise that her command should be so slighted. But Nicanor drew her back to him, lifting both her cool palms to his burning face.

"Ah, lady mine!" he said, "the only tale I have to tell thee, I may not utter. None other have I to-night; my heart is big with it, my brain reels with it, but my lips must e'en be dumb. And yet--I know that thou wouldst listen; that what I might say would echo in thy heart forever and a day. Then why should I not say it? Why, if the thorns be not strong enough to guard, should I not pluck the rose?"

He gathered her more closely into his arms, drinking the perfume of her hair, the warmth of her, into every fibre of his being. She lay quiet, her head thrown back against his shoulder, great eyes wide open in the darkness, resting easily as a bird in its nest against his strength.

"Because the rose is too fair and fragrant for common hands to pluck."

Nicanor's voice grew to a hushed intensity, as though he argued with himself a point gone over many times before, yet never wholly gained--what higher manhood there was in him contending with temptation innocently offered, striving against lawless pa.s.sion and desire. "Now it is but a half-blown bud, this rose, knowing nothing of the perils which beset all roses in all gardens, lady mine, hiding the golden heart of it in shy, half-open leaves. Some day a high-born stranger will enter the garden, and the gardener will point to this his rose, and say: 'Look you, friend, at the fair flower I have nurtured here. I have tended it well, kept from it frost and blasting heat, watered it, let the sun to shine upon it. Now it is ready for the plucking--take you it.' Then the stranger will pluck the rose, and will watch it unfold, petal by petal, until all the beauty of it is laid bare. And gardener nor stranger will ever know that one was in the garden there before them, with his hand upon the rose's stem and his breath upon the rose's heart."

Varia stirred and brushed a hand across his lips.

"But that is not a tale!" she said plaintively. "Or if it be a tale, it is a sad one. The poor rose! It may be that it wished to stay within the garden, and not be plucked to fade away and die. I had not thought of that before! Never will I pluck a rose again; I will let it live where the gardener plants it. I thought it pretty to pluck them and smell them, and watch the leaves all fall; I did not know I killed them!

Sometimes I think that people do not know when they kill roses. Now tell another tale, I pray thee! Tell that tale of when thou and I lived long and long ago, and of how we met in that other world which is gone. That tale I love the best of all."

"Of how we met--" Nicanor repeated absently. Again his mood had changed, as always in her presence. When away from her, with but the memory of her face, her innocent wiles, her pa.s.siveness under his caresses, pa.s.sion had its way with him, blinding him, rendering him desperate, careless of consequences. But when with her, that very innocence of hers wrought its own spell upon him, taming and stilling him with an awe which he but half understood. Curiously, this chastened mood left him invariably sullen and surly, after the manner of a beast which sulks at having missed its kill.

"Of how we met?" he said again. "So then. Once thou and I lived very long ago. Ages and ages ago it was, when the world was young, and only the moon and the stars were old. None walked upon the earth save we two, and the world and its beauty was for us alone. Dusky forests covered all the land, where strange birds sang and great flowers grew. Wild beasts roamed these forests with us, but we walked among them unafraid, for they knew not that they could harm us. Beneath the sunken light of old scarred moons we wandered hand in hand; and day by day I told that tale to thee I dare not tell thee now, and there was none to hinder me.

"Canst dream of a world all happiness, my lady, a world without shadow of sorrow or cloud of care, with nothing but happy sunshine and the songs of birds? That world was our world. And in it we were free, we two, free to wander where we would, free as the winds that called us.

Who may know freedom as do those who walk in chains? We knew not then the measure of this our freedom, for we had known no thraldom of flesh nor spirit. Therefore the high G.o.ds decreed that we should be brought to know the greatness of their gift, by losing it; that in our lives to come we should be bound, and bound remain until we knew what we had lost. Thy bonds sit upon thee lightly, yet in thine eyes I read that they are there. And I--I am learning fast what freedom means. In the shade of great trees which upheld the very floor of heaven we rested, thou and I, and saw the wide earth smiling in warm golden noons. It was then thy hands first learned to cling to mine"--he raised her hands and kissed them--"it was then thy head first leaned above my heart--ay, even so long since, in the beginning of the world. Down all the after ages it hath been the same; somewhere, somehow, we met; and each time of our meeting there came to us a memory of dear dead days long gone, forgotten until a breath from dim gardens where we wandered blew to us from the past. Oh, but those days were long, each one a jewel of flame and azure, strung on the golden chain of Time; and the nights were long, and warm, and clear, and perfumed as thy hair. Our food was fruit and the nuts I gathered; our wine the waters of clear brooks which thou drankest from my hands. Ferns, deep and fragrant, made our couch."

He stopped abruptly.

"As my soul liveth, I can tell no more!" he said, and his voice was shaken. "Sweet lady o' mine, urge me not, for thine own sake! Thou dost not understand--how shouldst thou? Any tale I'll tell thee--any tale save a tale of thee and me."

"That is the tale which I will have," said Varia, drowsily.

Nicanor smothered an exclamation.

"Child, canst not see that my hands tremble, that I burn with fever, and am scarce master of myself?" His tone quickly changed and softened.

"There, then, I will not frighten thee! Only ask me not to try my strength beyond its limit with that tale I taught thee to love and long for--"

"Then I shall go," said Varia, with no smallest understanding of his cry, and rose from the bench. But Nicanor was quicker than she. He caught her hand and turned her half around to face him.

"Nay, I'll not let thee go!" he said unevenly. "The hour is mine, and the night is mine--and I cannot let thee go!"

She sat down once more upon the bench, pa.s.sively submissive as a child to its elders' will. Nicanor dropped on one knee on the gra.s.s beside her, his arms across her lap, his hands prisoning one of hers. His deep voice lowered to a note of lingering tenderness that thrilled like the strings of a harp gently touched.

"Oh, light of all the world to me!" he said softly. "If I but dared tell thee of the thoughts that are mine, and the madness that is mine, and the punishment for them that is mine also! Wouldst understand? Ay, truly, I think so! For I'd tell it so that the deaf trees, that whisper always and hear not--ay, and the very winds of heaven, could not help but know the meaning of my words."

She put her free hand to his face, upturned to hers, and stroked it.

"Thou poor one!" she said with gentle pity. "Is it that thou art ill to-night? Thy face burns hot, like fire. Is all well with thee?"

Nicanor suddenly bowed his head forward on her knees.

"Nay," he answered huskily. "It is not well."

She sat a moment, her hand resting idle on his rough black head.

"I am sorry!" she said then, simply. "Is there--is there aught that I could do? When my lord father is ill, he will have me sometimes to stroke his head, to ease the pain. Wilt thou that I should stroke thy head also?--Nay, do not move! See, I will touch it so, and so, and soon thou shalt be cured."

She bent over him, as he leaned against her, her soft hands slowly stroking his forehead with touch as light as the brushing of a rose-leaf. Nicanor stood it as long as he could. Then he crushed her hands in his, and kissed them pa.s.sionately, many times, and rose to his feet.

"Dear little hands, that would cure all the pain and sorrow of the world an they might! They have healed me, sweet, and made me sane--ay, and wounded deeper than they healed! Go now, quickly, dear heart, while I have courage and will to say it."

"But--" she began, hesitating. He interrupted, fiercely.

"Go, child, go! Or I'll not give thee the chance again!"

"But thy head--" she persisted.

"It is cured," he answered. As she turned away, surprised at his sudden brusqueness, he took a step beside her.

"Hast heard that thy lord father will leave Britain for Rome?" he asked abruptly.

"Leave Britain? But it is not so!" she exclaimed. "Why should he do that? He would not leave without me, and I--I will not go. I will stay here; I will not go to Rome! And thou,--" she came closer to him,--"wilt thou come to-morrow and tell me tales? Last night I waited for thee, and when thou didst not come I was lonely. Do not let me be lonely again, I pray thee!"

Nicanor looked at her for a time.

"Ay," he said finally, in a hushed voice. "I will come."

She turned from him and started across the gra.s.s. He watched her, and his hands slowly clenched. She looked back once over her shoulder, her face glimmering white in the starlit darkness. It was enough. In a stride he was after her; in a heart-beat she was in his arms, her face hidden against his breast.

"I love thee--I love thee!" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Heart of mine, that is the tale I dared not tell! A tale of three words, three little words, which yet is longer than any tale that ever was said or sung. Dost understand, dear heart, what that must mean to thee and me?"

She drew herself away from him with her hands against his breast.