I did not speak; rather would I have remained so watching; but turning at the end of the path, she saw me, and as she came towards me held out her hand. I knelt upon the path, and raised it to my lips. The action was spontaneous, till afterwards I was not aware of having done it. Her lips were smiling as I raised my eyes to them, the faintest suggestion of contempt mingling with amusement. Yet she seemed pleased, and her contempt, even if I were not mistaken, would not have wounded me.
"So you are still in love with me? I wondered if you would be."
"Did you know that I was in love with you?"
"I should have been blind if I had not."
"But I was only a boy."
"You were not the usual type of boy. You are not going to be the usual type of man."
"You do not mind my loving you?"
"I cannot help it, can I? Nor can you."
She seated herself on a stone bench facing a sun-dial, and leaning hack, her hands clasped behind her head, looked at me and laughed.
"I shall always love you," I answered, "but it is with a curious sort of love. I do not understand it myself."
"Tell me," she commanded, still with a smile about her lips, "describe it to me."
I was standing over against her, my arm resting upon the dial's stone column. The sun was sinking, casting long shadows on the velvety grass, illuminating with a golden light her upturned face.
"I would you were some great queen of olden days, and that I might be always near you, serving you, doing your bidding. Your love in return would spoil all; I shall never ask it, never desire it. That I might look upon you, touch now and then at rare intervals with my lips your hand, kiss in secret the glove you had let fall, the shoe you had flung off, know that you knew of my love, that I was yours to do with as you would, to live or die according to your wish. Or that you were priestess in some temple of forgotten gods, where I might steal at daybreak and at dusk to gaze upon your beauty; kneel with clasped hands, watching your sandalled feet coming and going about the altar steps; lie with pressed lips upon the stones your trailing robes had touched."
She laughed a light mocking laugh. "I should prefer to be the queen.
The role of priestess would not suit me. Temples are so cold." A slight shiver passed through her. She made a movement with her hand, beckoning me to her feet. "That is how you shall love me, Paul," she said, "adoring me, worshipping me--blindly. I will be your queen and treat you--as it chooses me. All I think, all I do, I will tell you, and you shall tell me it is right. The queen can do no wrong."
She took my face between her hands, and bending over me, looked long and steadfastly into my eyes. "You understand, Paul, the queen can do no wrong--never, never." There had crept into her voice a note of vehemence, in her face was a look almost of appeal.
"My queen can do no wrong," I repeated. And she laughed and let her hands fall back upon her lap.
"Now you may sit beside me. So much honour, Paul, shall you have to-day, but it will have to last you long. And you may tell me all you have been doing, maybe it will amuse me; and afterwards you shall hear what I have done, and shall say that it was right and good of me."
I obeyed, sketching my story briefly, yet leaving nothing untold, not even the transit of the Lady 'Ortensia, ashamed of the episode though I was. At that she looked a little grave.
"You must do nothing again, Paul," she commanded, "to make me feel ashamed of you, or I shall dismiss you from my presence for ever. I must be proud of you, or you shall not serve me. In dishonouring yourself you are dishonouring me. I am angry with you, Paul. Do not let me be angry with you again.
And so that passed; and although my love for her--as I know well she wished and sought it should--failed to save me at all times from the apish voices whispering ever to the beast within us, I know the desire to be worthy of her, to honour her with all my being, helped my life as only love can. The glory of the morning fades, the magic veil is rent; we see all things with cold, clear eyes. My love was a woman.
She lies dead. They have mocked her white sweet limbs with rags and tatters, but they cannot cheat love's eyes. God knows I loved her in all purity! Only with false love we love the false. Beneath the unclean clinging garments she sleeps fair.
My tale finished, "Now I will tell you mine," she said. "I am going to be married soon. I shall be a Countess, Paul, the Countess Huescar--I will teach you how to pronounce it--and I shall have a real castle in Spain. You need not look so frightened, Paul; we shall not live there. It is a half-ruined, gloomy place, among the mountains, and he loves it even less than I do. Paris and London will be my courts, so you will see me often. You shall know the great world, Paul, the world I mean to conquer, where I mean to rule."
"Is he very rich?" I asked.
"As poor," she laughed, "as poor as a Spanish nobleman. The money I shall have to provide, or, rather, poor dear Dad will. He gives me title, position. Of course I do not love him, handsome though he is.
Don't look so solemn, Paul. We shall get on together well enough.
Queens, Paul, do not make love matches, they contract alliances. I have done well, Paul; congratulate me. Do you hear, Paul? Say that I have acted rightly."
"Does he love you?" I asked.
"He tells me so," she answered, with a laugh. "How uncourtier-like you are, Paul! Do you suggest that any man could see me and not love me?"
She sprang to her feet. "I do not want his love," she cried; "it would bore me. Women hate love they cannot return. I don't mean love like yours, devout little Paul," she added, with a laugh. "That is sweet incense wafted round us that we like to scent with our noses in the air. Give me that, Paul; I want it, I ask for it. But the love of a hand, the love of a husband that one does not care for--it would be horrible!"
I felt myself growing older. For the moment my goddess became a child needing help.
"But have you thought--" I commenced.