CHAPTER III.
But in that small assembly there were two who did not attract the notice
of Duplessis or of the lady of the Imperial Court. While the Prince ----
and the placid Looker-on were engaged at a contest of ecarte, with the
lively Venosta, for the gallery, interposing criticisms and admonitions,
Isaura was listlessly turning over a collection of photographs, strewed
on a table that stood near to an open window in the remoter angle of the
room, communicating with a long and wide balcony filled partially with
flowers and overlooking the Champs Elysees, softly lit up by the
innumerable summer stars. Suddenly a whisper, the command of which she
could not resist, thrilled through her ear, and sent the blood rushing
back to her heart.
"Do you remember that evening at Enghien? how I said that our
imagination could not carry us beyond the question whether we two should
be gazing together that night twelve months on that star which each of us
had singled out from the hosts of heaven? That was the 8th of July. It
is the 8th of July once more. Come and seek for our chosen star--come.
I have something to say, which say I must. Come."
Mechanically, as it were,--mechanically, as they tell us the Somnambulist
obeys the Mesmeriser,--Isaura obeyed that summons. In a kind of dreamy
submission she followed his steps, and found herself on the balcony,
flowers around her and stars above, by the side of the man who had been
to her that being ever surrounded by flowers and lighted by stars,--the
ideal of Romance to the heart of virgin Woman.
"Isaura," said the Englishman, softly. At the sound of her own name for
the first time heard from those lips, every nerve in her frame quivered.
"Isaura, I have tried to live without you. I cannot. You are all in all
to me: without you it seems to me as if earth had no flowers, and even
heaven had withdrawn its stars. Are there differences between us,
differences of taste, of sentiments, of habits, of thought? Only let me
hope that you can love me a tenth part so much as I love you, and such
differences cease to be discord. Love harmonises all sounds, blends all
colours into its own divine oneness of heart and soul. Look up! is not
the star which this time last year invited our gaze above, is it not
still there? Does it not still invite our gaze? Isaura, speak!"
"Hush, hush, hush,"--the girl could say no more, but she recoiled from
his side.
The recoil did not wound him: there was no hate in it. He advanced, he
caught her hand, and continued, in one of those voices which become so
musical in summer nights under starry skies:
"Isaura, there is one name which I can never utter without a reverence
due to the religion which binds earth to heaven--a name which to man
should be the symbol of life cheered and beautified, exalted, hallowed.
That name is 'wife.' Will you take that name from me?"
And still Isaura made no reply. She stood mute, and cold, and rigid as a
statue of marble. At length, as if consciousness had been arrested and
was struggling back, she sighed heavily, and passed her hands slowly over
her forehead.
"Mockery, mockery," she said then, with a smile half bitter, half
plaintive, on her colourless lips. "Did you wait to ask me that question
till you knew what my answer must be? I have pledged the name of wife to
another."
"No, no; you say that to rebuke, to punish me! Unsay it! unsay it!"
Isaura beheld the anguish of his face with bewildered eyes. "How can my
words pain you?" she said, drearily. "Did you not write that I had
unfitted myself to be wife to you?"
"I?"
"That I had left behind me the peaceful immunities of private life? I
felt you were so right! Yes! I am affianced to one who thinks that in
spite of that misfortune--"
"Stop, I command you--stop! You saw my letter to Mrs. Morley. I have
not had one moment free from torture and remorse since I wrote it. But
whatever in that letter you might justly resent--"
"I did not resent--"
Graham heard not the interruption, but hurried on. "You would forgive
could you read my heart. No matter. Every sentiment in that letter,
except those which conveyed admiration, I retract. Be mine, and instead
of presuming to check in you the irresistible impulse of genius to the
first place in the head or the heart of the world, I teach myself to
encourage, to share, to exult in it. Do you know what a difference there
is between the absent one and the present one--between the distant image
against whom our doubts, our fears, our suspicions, raise up hosts of
imaginary giants, barriers of visionary walls, and the beloved face
before the sight of which the hosts are fled, the walls are vanished?
Isaura, we meet again. You know now from my own lips that I love you. I
think your lips will not deny that you love me. You say that you are
affianced to another. Tell the man frankly, honestly, that you mistook
your heart. It is not yours to give. Save yourself, save him, from a
union in which there can be no happiness."
"It is too late," said Isaura, with hollow tones, but with no trace of
vacillating weakness on her brow and lips. "Did I say now to that other
one, 'I break the faith that I pledged to you,' I should kill him, body
and soul. Slight thing though I be, to him I am all in all; to you, Mr.
Vane, to you a memory--the memory of one whom a year, perhaps a month,
hence, you will rejoice to think you have escaped."
She passed from him--passed away from the flowers and the starlight; and
when Graham,--recovering from the stun of her crushing words, and with
the haughty mien and stop of the man who goes forth from the ruin of his
hopes, leaning for support upon his pride,--when Graham re-entered the
room, all the guests had departed save only Alain, who was still
exchanging whispered words with Valerie.
