Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome. Gallizier Nathan
she said calmly.
"It was no answer," he pleaded, "from lover to lover – "
"Ah!" she replied, in her voice a great weariness which he had never noted before. "But here are neither loves nor lovers. – Look!"
And he looked.
Before them lay a colorless and lifeless sea, under the arch of a threatening sky. Across that sky dark clouds, with ever-changing shapes, rolled slowly, and presently condensed into a vague shadowy form, while the torpid waves droned a muffled and unearthly dirge.
He covered his eyes, overcome by a mastering fear of that dread shape which he knew, yet knew not.
He knelt before her, took the hands he loved so well into his own and pressed upon them his fevered lips.
"I do not understand – " he moaned.
She regarded him fixedly.
"I am another's wife – "
His head drooped.
"When my eyes first met yours they begged that my love for you might find response in your heart," he said, still holding on to those marvellous white hands. "Did you not accept my worship?"
She neither encouraged nor repulsed him by word or gesture. And he covered her hands with burning kisses. After his passionate outburst had died to silence she spoke quietly, tremulously.
"Tristan," she began, and paused as if she were summoning courage to do that which she must. "Tristan, this may not be."
"I love you," he sobbed. "I love you! This is all I know! All I shall ever know. How can I support life without you? heart of my heart – soul of my soul? – What must I do, to win you for my own – to give you happiness?"
A negative gesture came in response.
"Is sin ever happiness?"
"The priests say not! And yet – our love is not sinful – "
"The priests say truth." Hellayne interposed calmly.
He felt as if an immense darkness, the chaos of a thousand spheres, suddenly encompassed him, threatening to plunge him into a bottomless abyss of despair.
Then he made a quick forward step. Her face was close to his. Wide eyes fastened upon him in a compelling gaze.
"Tell me!" he urged, his own eyes lost in those unfathomable wells of dreams. "When love is with you – does aught matter? Does sin – discovery – God himself – matter?"
With a frightened cry she drew back.
But those steady, questioning eyes, sombre, yet aflame, compelled the shifting violet orbs.
"Tell me!" he urged again, his face very close to her face.
"Naught matters," she whispered faintly, as if under a spell.
Then her gaze relinquished his, as she looked dreamily out upon the woods. There was absolute silence, lasting apace. It was the stillness of a forest where no birds sing, no breezes stir. Then a twig snapped beneath Hellayne's foot. He had taken her to his heart and, his strong arms about her, kissed her eyes, her mouth, her hair. She suffered his caresses dreamily, passively, her white arms encircling his neck.
Suddenly he stiffened. His form was as that of one turned to stone.
In the shadow of the forest beneath a great oak, hooded, motionless, stood a man. His eyes seemed like glowing coals, as they stared at them. Hellayne did not see them, but she felt the tremor that passed through Tristan's frame. The mantle's hood was pulled far down over the man's face. No features were visible.
And yet Tristan knew that cowled and muffled form. He knew the eyes that had surprised their tryst.
It was Count Roger de Laval.
The muffled shadow was gone as quickly as it had come.
It was growing ever darker in the forest, and when he looked up again he saw that Hellayne's white roses were scattered on the ground. Her scarf of blue samite had fallen heedlessly beside them. He lifted it and pressed it to his lips.
"Will you give it to me?" he said tremulously. "That it may be with me always – "
There was no immediate response.
At last she said slowly:
"You shall have it – a parting gift – "
He seized her hands. They lay passively within his own.
There was a great fear in his eyes.
"I do not understand – "
She loosened the roses from her hair and garb before she made reply. Silently, like dead leaves in autumn, the fragrant petals dropped one by one to earth. Hellayne watched them with weary eyes as they drifted to their sleep, then, as she held the last spray in her hand, gazing upon it she said:
"When you gave them to me, Tristan, they were sweet and fresh, the fairest you could find. Now they have faded, perished, died – "
He started to plead, to protest, to silence her, but she continued:
"Ah! Can you not see? Can you not understand? Perchance," she added bitterly, "I was created to adorn the fleeting June afternoon of your life, and when this scarf is torn and faded as these flowers, let the wind carry it away, – like these dead petals at our feet – "
She let fall the withered spray, but he snatched it ere it touched the ground.
"I love you," he stammered passionately. "I love you! Love you as no woman was ever loved. You are my world – my fate – Hellayne! Hellayne! Know you what you say?" —
She gazed at him, with eyes from which all life had fled.
"I am another's," she said slowly. "I have sinned in loving you, in giving to you my soul. And even as you stood there and held me in your arms, it flashed upon me, like lightning in a dark stormy night – I saw the abyss, at the brink of which we stand, both, you and I." —
"But we have done no wrong – we have not sinned," he protested wildly.
She silenced him with a gesture of her beautiful hands.
"Who may command the waters of the cataract, go here, – or go there? Who may tell them to return to their lawful bed? I have neither power nor strength, to resist your pleading. You have been life and love to me, all, – all, – and all this you are to-day. And therefore must we part, – part, ere it be too late – " she concluded with a wild cry of anguish, "ere we are both engulfed in the darkness." —
And he fell at her feet as if stunned by a thunderbolt.
"Do not send me away – " he pleaded, his voice choked with anguish. "Do not send me from you."
"You will go," she said softly, deaf to his prayers. "It is the supreme test of your love, great as I know it is."
"But I cannot leave you, I cannot go, never to see you more – " and he grasped the cool white hands of the woman as a drowning man will grasp a straw.
She did not attempt, for the time, to take them from him. She looked down upon him wistfully.
"Would you make me the mock of Avalon?" she said. "Once my lord suspects we are lost. And, I fear, he does even now. For his gaze has been dark and troubled. And I cannot, will not, expose you to his cruelty. You know him not as I do – "
"Even therefore will I not leave you," he interposed, looking into the sweet face. "He has not been kind to you. His pride was flattered by your ready surrender, and your great beauty is but one of the many dishes that go to satiate his varied appetites. Of the others you know naught – "
She gave a shrug.
"If it be so," she said wearily, "so let it be. Nevertheless, I know whereof I speak. This thing has stolen over us like a madness. And, like a madness, it will hurl us to our doom."
Though he had seen the dark, glowering face among the branches, he said nothing, not to alarm her, not to cause her fear and misgiving. He loved her spotless purity as dearly as herself. To him they were inseparable.
His