Manuel looked up from his work. “Yes, I heard. I am sorry, and I never understood politics, but I suppose it cannot be helped. So would you mind standing a little more to the left? You are in the light now, and that prevents my seeing clearly what I am doing here to this upper lip.”
“And how can you be messing with that wet mud when my heart is breaking!”
“Because a geas is upon me to make these images. No, I am sure I do not know why my mother desired it. But everything which is fated must be endured, just as we must now endure the obligation that is upon you to marry the high King of England.”
“My being married need not matter very much, after I am Queen, for people declare this King is a poor spindling creature, and, as I was saying, you can come presently into England.”
Manuel looked at her for a moment or two. She colored. He, sitting at the feet of weeping Jephthah, smiled. “Well,” said Manuel, “I will come into England when you send me a goose-feather. So the affair is arranged.”
“Oh, you are all ice and iron!” she said, “and you care for nothing except your wet mud images, and I detest you!”
“My dearest,” Manuel answered placidly, “the trouble is that each of us desires one particular thing over and above other things. Your desire is for power and a great name and for a king who will be at once your mouthpiece, your lackey and your lover. Now, candidly, I cannot spare the time to be any of these things, because my desire is different from your desire, but is equally strong. Also, it seems to me, as I become older, and see more of men and of men’s ways, that most people have no especial desire but only preferences. In a world of such wishy-washy folk you and I cannot hope to escape being aspersed with comparisons to ice and iron, but it does not become us to be flinging these venerable similes in each other’s faces.”
She kept silence a while. She laughed uneasily. “I so often wonder about you, Manuel, as to whether inside the big, high-colored, squinting, solemn husk is living a very wise person or a very unmitigated fool.”
“I perceive there is something else which we have in common, for I, too, often wonder about that.”
“It is settled, then?”
“It is settled that, instead of ruling little Arles, you are to be Queen of England, and Lady of Ireland, and Duchess of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Countess of Anjou; that our token is to be a goose-feather; and that, I diffidently repeat, you are to get out of my light and interfere no longer with the discharge of my geas.”
“And what will you do?”
“I must, as always, follow after my own thinking—”
“If you complete the sentence I shall undoubtedly scream.”
Manuel laughed good-humoredly. “I suppose I do say it rather often, but then it is true, and the great trouble between us, Alianora, is that you do not perceive its truth.”
She said, “And I suppose you will now be stalking off to some woman or another for consolation?”
“No, the consolation I desire is not to be found in petticoats. No, first of all, I shall go to King Helmas. For my images stay obstinately lifeless, and there is something lacking to each of them, and none is the figure I desire to make in this world. Now I do not know what can be done about it, but the Zhar-Ptitza informs me that King Helmas, since all doubt of himself has been put out of mind, can aid me if any man can.”
“Then we must say goodbye, though not for a long while, I hope.”
“Yes,” Manuel said, “this is goodbye, and to a part of my living it is an eternal goodbye.”
Dom Manuel left his images where the old Hebrew captain appeared to regard them with violent dumb anguish, and Manuel took both of the girl’s lovely little hands, and he stood thus for a while looking down at the Princess.
Said Manuel, very sadly:
“I cry the elegy of such notions as are possible to boys alone. ‘Surely,’ I said, ‘the informing and all-perfect soul shines through and is revealed in this beautiful body.’ So my worship began for you, whose violet eyes retain at all times their chill brittle shining, and do not soften, but have been to me always as those eyes which, they say, a goddess turns toward ruined lovers who cry the elegy of hope and contentment, with lips burned bloodless by the searing of passions which she, immortal, may neither feel nor comprehend. Even so do you, dear Alianora, who are not divine, look toward me, quite unmoved by anything except incurious wonder, the while that I cry my elegy.
“I, for love, and for the glamour of bright beguiling dreams that hover and delude and allure all lovers, could never until today behold clearly what person I was pestering with my notions. I, being blind, could not perceive your blindness which blindly strove to understand me, and which hungered for understanding, as I for love. Thus our kisses veiled, at most, the foiled endeavorings of flesh that willingly would enter into the soul’s high places, but is not able. Now, the game being over, what is the issue and end of it time must attest. At least we should each sorrow a little for what we have lost in this gaming—you for a lover, and I for love.
“No, but it is not love which lies here expiring, now we part friendlily at the deathbed of that emotion which yesterday we shared. This emotion also was not divine; and so might not outlive
