Part 11

"You do not offend me," Argathona whispered, very softly, so softly that he could scarcely hear her. But he did hear her, and so hearing he now wondered, as Simon before him had wondered, how it happened that his own dear French speech should sound at all strange to him. As the girl's hands no longer restrained him, he struggled a little and sat erect, and stared into her eyes as she kneeled beside him. His troubled thoughts seemed to lapse again into a trance; surely he had strayed in the guarded garden, surely he lay in the mystical pleasance, surely he had touched with his lips the petals of the noble rose.

"What is your name?" he whispered, and she told him, and he repeated it softly, "Argathona," and found it very sweet to say and hear.

"When I kissed your hands, Argathona," he murmured, "all the pain of my wounds seemed to leave me, and I drew new life, new vigor, from the kiss. But when you withdraw your touch from me the smart returns and my head aches wearily. If you will let me kiss your hands once more I think that would surely banish pain."

He pleaded not because he dreaded to bear pain, but because he longed with all his heart to kiss her hands again, and he hoped to win her to yield through pity. He asked no more in his speech than to kiss her hands, and he asked no more in his heart. For this, though he knew it not, was his first acquaintance with the meaning of love, and his white chivalry would have died blithely for less grace than this from the loved one.

"You must not suffer pain," the girl said, looking with troubled doubt into his bright, mortal eyes. For this, though she knew it not, was her first acquaintance with the meaning of love. Then she yielded her hands to him sweetly as one who, being great, grants a favor, and granting it is glad to be humble in the granting. The young French knight took her white fingers in his and kissed them very tenderly, very courteously, and as he kissed them he looked up into her pitying eyes and longed to weep for the very keenness of the joy that filled his being. It seemed to him on the instant that he had waited through all the love-loneliness of his spring for the touch of those hands, for the regard of those eyes. Surely Lord Love had locked his heart with a golden key, to keep it as a shrine vacant till this hour and dedicated to this image.

"You have the most wonderful hands in all the world," he stammered, tremulous with a sense of intimate revelation. "Their touch yields life. But you have the most wonderful face in the world, the most wonderful eyes."

He had clean forgotten how he came there, he had clean forgotten Athens, forgotten everything except the glorious certainty that he had found the rose of the world. Argathona neared her face to his till she almost touched his cheek with her lips. She knew with the wisdom of the wood that he spoke the truth of his heart. She would have known even, if she had been wise in the wisdom of the world, from the loyalty of his voice, and she gave back the truth of her heart with the frankness of the dawn of time.

"Your hands are strong and shapely, like the hands of the gods; your eyes are bright, like the eyes of the gods; you are good to behold."

Rainouart colored, a little bashful as a gallant lad should be at the high praise of a fair girl, and tried, manlike, to put it by in spite of his wild pleasure at its sound and sense.

"So long as a man be brave, it matters little how he be formed and featured, at least so all men say, but I have heard that some ladies think otherwise." And he smiled shyly at her, hotly glad that she should think well of him, spirit and substance together glad to madness with happiness.

The dryad looked at him gravely. "Are there many mortals like this," she pondered--"so modest, so brave, so fair?" Her heart assured her that this must be the pride and idol of the time.

"Comeliness is a mark of the favor of the gods," she asserted.

Rainouart pressed her hands closely, his spirit rekindling at the exquisite contact, his soul desiring nothing better than this bright hour. Yet he wondered at her words.

"Why do you speak like a pagan?" he asked. "The gods have gone long ago."

The dryad sighed as she thought of the splendid figures riding to the twilight land. Was it yesterday?

"Ay," she sighed, "the gods have gone long ago," and she stared across the moonlit space into the blackness of the wood, and wondered what had happened to her which had changed so strangely the ancient way.

There was a little silence; mortal and immortal troubled with new thoughts. Then Rainouart made to rise. It was strangely sweet to lie there supported by this woman's arms; but Rainouart was a man and a knight, and must not presume on a fair lady's patience. So he got to his knees, and she helped him to his feet with her strength, which could have aided a greater than he; and they stood face to face in the moonlight, mortal boy and immortal girl, and to both alike the moment of mortal immortality had come. The night wind was very quiet, the wood seemed still with a kind of sacred stillness; it was as if the world were asleep and only they awake in all the world. The hearts of youth beat with the mutual pulses of a great passion.

VII

LOVE IS ENOUGH

The maid gazed at the man wistfully, a-quiver with mysterious hopes and fears.

"What god do you serve?" she faltered, her memory all alive with the divine faces and the shining forms and that calm, tragic procession to the shadowland.

Rainouart bowed his head, meekly devotional as his devout mother, and crossed himself slowly while he prayed a prayer.

"Messire Christ Jesus, who died for all men and for me, a sinner, thirteen hundred years ago. What other Lord may a knight serve? Do you take me for a follower of Mohammed?"

To Argathona neither name had any meaning. The beautiful gods her babehood knew had journeyed to the sunless land, and her mother had told her how a great voice, louder than all the winds that fill the sky, had cried abroad that great Pan was dead. She had always heard of a power mightier than the gods. That power had triumphed; she knew no more, she asked no more.

"I take you for a brave man," she said, looking him full in the face, and she looked many things that she could not say. In the conquering spell of that night of springtime his glorious youth seemed as abiding as hers, and she forgot to pity his dower of frailty or her dower of endurance, surrendering to a greater force than pity. To the man it seemed as if he, standing there holding this unknown woman's hands and drowning in this unknown woman's eyes, had learned in one noble moment the sacred secret of life, the reason why it is worth while to exist and to endure, live hardily a man's hard life, die firmly a man's inevitable death. All his spirit was at his lips as he spoke, his hands clinging to the clasp of her hands. For he knew that he had come to the crown of his life, that he had caught the clew that he was seeking, that he had found the noble rose.

"Pray God you take me for your loyal lover. My soul has lived alone for this moment, my little life has been spared for this grace." So he began, and then for the first time in all her age-long life the dryad heard the splendid, the terrible words that govern the reeling world.

"I love you," the man cried from the heart of his heart, and again, "I love you," and yet again, "I love you"--the mystical three words repeated mystically three times, as is meet in the litany of love. He would have caught her in his arms, but she held his hands fast, and for all his strength he could not pluck them away from her grasp. Joy and sorrow struggled for the supremacy of her being.

"Do you really love me, you mortal man, me whom you have never seen before this night?" she asked, with a tender pity, with a tender irony. The pity was for him, the about-to-die loving the undying; the irony was for her, that she spoke with the speech of doubt knowing with all her heart that he loved her, knowing with all her heart that she loved him.