“I have come,” she whispered, “but it was at great risk. Ye know not how I am watched. The priests watch me. Sorais watches me with those great eyes of hers. My very guards are spies upon me. Nasta watches me too. Oh, let him be careful!” and she stamped her foot. “Let him be careful; I am a woman, and therefore hard to drive. Ay, and I am a Queen, too, and can still avenge. Let him be careful, I say, lest in place of giving him my hand I take his head;” and she ended the outburst with a little sob, and then smiled up at us bewitchingly and laughed.
“Thou didst bid me come hither, my Lord Incubu” (Curtis had taught her to call him so). “Doubtless it is about business of the State, for I know that thou art ever full of great ideas and plans for my welfare and my people’s. So, even as a Queen should I have come, though I greatly fear the dark alone;” and again she laughed and gave him a glance from her grey eyes.
At this point I thought it wise to move a little, since secrets “of the State” should not be made public property, but she would not let me go far, peremptorily stopping me within five yards or so, saying that she feared surprise. So it came to pass that, however unwillingly, I heard all that passed.
“Thou knowest, Nyleptha,” said Sir Henry, “that it was for none of these things that I asked thee to meet me at this lonely place. Nyleptha, waste not the time in pleasantry, but listen to me, for—I love thee.”
As he said the words I saw her face break up, as it were, and change. The coquetry went out of it, and in its place there shone a great light of love, which seemed to glorify it, and make it like that of the marble angel overhead. I could not help thinking that it must have been a touch of prophetic instinct which made the long dead Rademas limn in the features of the angel of his inspiring vision so strange a likeness of his own descendant. Sir Henry also must have observed and been struck by the likeness, for, catching the look upon Nyleptha’s face, he glanced quickly from it to the moonlit statue, and then back again at his beloved.
“Thou sayest thou dost love me,” she said, in a low voice, “and thy voice rings true; but how am I to know that thou dost speak the truth? Though,” she went on, with proud humility, and in the stately third person which is so largely used by the Zu-Vendi, “I be as nothing in the eyes of my lord,” and she curtseyed towards him—“who comes from among a wonderful people, to whom my people are but children, yet here am I a queen and a leader of men, and if I would go to battle a hundred thousand spears shall sparkle in my train like stars glimmering down the path of the bent moon. And although my beauty be a little thing in the eyes of my lord”—and she lifted her broidered skirt and curtseyed again, “yet here among my own people am I held right fair; and ever since I was a woman the great lords of my kingdom have made quarrel concerning me, as though, forsooth,” she added with a flash of passion, “I were a deer to be pulled down by the hungriest wolf, or a horse to be sold to the highest bidder. Let my lord pardon me if I weary my lord, but it hath pleased my lord to say that he loves me, Nyleptha, a Queen of the Zu-Vendi; and therefore would I say, that though my love and my hand be not much to my lord, yet to me are they all.”
“Oh!” she cried, with a sudden and thrilling change of voice, and modifying her dignified mode of address—“oh, how can I know that thou lovest but me? How can I know that thou wilt not weary of me and seek thine own place again, leaving me desolate? Who is there to tell me but that thou lovest some other woman, some fair woman unknown to me, but who yet draws breath beneath this same moon that shines on me tonight? Tell me how am I to know?” And she clasped her hands and stretched them out towards him, and looked appealingly into his face.
“Nyleptha,” answered Sir Henry, adopting the Zu-Vendi way of speech, “I have told thee that I love thee; how am I to tell thee how much I love thee? Is there, then, a measure for love? Yet will I try. I say not that I have never looked upon another woman with favour, but this I say, that I love thee with all my life and with all my strength; that I love thee now, and shall love thee till I grow cold in death; ay, and as I believe beyond my death, and on and on forever: I say that thy voice is music to my ear, and thy touch as water to a thirsty land; that when thou art there the world is beautiful, and when I see thee not it is as though
