The Hosts of the Lord Part 53

"Good-by," she echoed dully, her face grown very pale. His hand left hers gently. She turned and faced the garden, where the shadows were invading the blaze of colour, and the coming cool was sending the scent of the orange-blossoms into the air. The water-maze, with its marble ledges, where there was but room for the feet of a laughing girl, lay still and glistening before her. The palace, with its fanciful nooks, its illogical recesses, its suggestion of elusive pleasures beyond the pale of solid reality, rose up into the sky.

And something in the scene came home to her with the sense that all this, in its way, was real also. That this was part of the truth. The truth which she had not told.

"_It has been the truth between us, hasn't it, always?_"

She turned suddenly to where Lance stood; turned to find him leaning over the balcony, looking down into the water with a listlessness he had held in check till then; and a great wave of remorse swept through her.

"It has not been the truth between us!" she cried impulsively, recklessly--"not quite--but, I will tell it now--if you like."

He looked up, startled. "If you think I--I ought to know."

She gave a queer, half-impatient laugh. "Ought! How do I know? Yes! I suppose so--as it's true--absolutely true. I can't help that, can I?"

There was a forlornness in the confession; almost a despair.

"Then tell me, please," said Lance, deliberately making room for her to lean over the bal.u.s.trade beside him. His heart was beating fast at something in her face, and yet his uppermost thought was for her; for that forlornness, that despair. "I can forget it afterwards--if you want me to," he added consolingly.

She came to the place beside him, and looked down, hiding her face from all but the sliding river; and he, seeing her desire, looked into it also.

"It was about my starting on the raft," she began with a little sob. "I didn't tell you the truth about that. I--I didn't come to give the warning at first--I--I was coming to you."

"Yes!" he said quietly; but his hand found hers and held it. "You were coming to me, dear,--why?"

That touch seemed at once to help her, and to make her desperate.

"Because--oh, Lance! it was so foolis.h.!.+ I saw myself in the gla.s.s--all in white with the orange in my hand--and I thought of you--of what you said--of--of the World's Desire, and--and I felt I couldn't--so--so I was coming to you--first--when Am-ma--don't you see--"

There was a long pause. His hand, firm, strong, did not tighten, it simply held hers as they both looked down on the sliding river.

"Thanks!" he said after a time; and then there was another pause until he added, "It will be a bit rough, I'm afraid, on the Reverend David, but I don't see how we can help that--do you?"

And this time his clasp tightened. Erda said nothing; she felt there was nothing more to say, now that the truth had been told between them.

So while the sinking sun flared red on the "Cradle of the G.o.ds" another man and woman consoled themselves for the lost Paradise.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Bonaventura.]

[Footnote 2: Pension.]

[Footnote 3: Night, or darkness.]

[Footnote 4: Light, or day.]

[Footnote 5: Narayan, in the Hindoo mythology, is the creative spirit brooding on the waters.]

[Footnote 6: Another kind of religious mendicant.]

[Footnote 7: The ceremonial hospitality offered at levees.]

[Footnote 8: Big lady.]

[Footnote 9: Abuse it.]

[Footnote 10: Lit.: outcasts, used as a term of abuse for Europeans.]

[Footnote 11: Certain.]