Читать «Cup of Gold (Золотая чаша)» онлайн - страница 89

"You are like Elizabeth," he said, in the dull monotone of one dreaming. "You are like, and yet there is no likeness.

Perhaps you master the power she was just learning to handle. I think I love you, but I do not know. I am not sure."

His eyes had been half closed, and when he opened them there was a real woman before him, not the wraith-like Elizabeth. And she was gazing at him with curiosity, and perhaps, he thought, with some affection. It was queer that she had come to him when no one had forced her to come. She must be fascinated. He reached into his memory for the speeches he had built on his way across the isthmus.

"You must marry me, Elizabeth-Ysobel. I think I love you, Ysobel. You must come away with me and live with me and be my wife, under the protection of my name and of my hand."

"But I am already married," she interposed; "quite satisfactorily married."

He had even foreseen this. During the nights of the march he had planned this campaign as carefully as he might have planned a battle.

"But is it right that two, meeting and flaming white fire, should go apart for stark eternity, should trudge off into bleak infinity; that each of these two should bear black embers of a flame that has not burned itself to death? Is there anything under heaven to forbid us this burning? Heaven has given the deathless oil; each of us carries a little torch for the other. Ah, Ysobel-deny it, or shrink from the intruding knowledge if you will. You would vibrate to my touch like the fine body of an old violin.

"You are afraid, I think. There is in your mind a burrowing apprehension of the world; the prying world, the spiteful world. But do you not be fearsome, for I say to you that this world is a blind, doddering worm, knowing three passions only-jealousy, curiosity, and hate. It is easy to defeat the worm, so only you make the heart a universe to itself. The worm, having no heart, cannot conceive the workings of a heart. He lies confounded by the stars of this new system.

"Why do I tell you these things, Ysobel-knowing you will understand them? You must understand them. Perhaps I know by the dark, sweet music of your eyes. Perhaps I can read the throbbing heart-beats on your lips. Your beating heart is a little drum urging me to battle with your fears. Your lips are like twin petals of a red hibiscus.