“For the lover I had too high an esteem to give him a promise which I could not keep. I knew his generous nature. I told him at once that there was an invincible obstacle!”
“I should like incomparably to know what that obstacle could be?” said Constantius.
Astonishment fixed me to the spot. I was unable to move a step.
The natural playfulness of the sweet and light-hearted girl became manifest, and she replied “that a philosopher ought to know all things without questioning.”
“But there is much in the world that defies philosophy, my fair Salome; and of all its problems, the most perplexing is the mind of woman!—of young, lovely, dangerous woman!”
“Now, Constantius, you abandon the philosopher and play the poet.”
“Yet without the poet’s imagination. No; I need picture no beauty from the clouds—no nymph from the fountains—no loveliness that haunts the trees, and breathes more than mortal melody on the ear. Salome! my muse is before me.”
“You are a Greek,” said she, after a slight interval, “and Greeks are privileged to talk—and to deceive.”
“Salome! I am a Greek no longer. What I shall yet be may depend upon the fairest artist that ever fashioned the human mind. But mine are not the words of inexperience. I am on this day five-and-twenty years old. My life has led me into all that is various in the intercourse of earth. I have seen woman in her beauty, in her talent, in her art, in her accomplishment; from the cottage to the throne—but I never felt her real power before.”
“Which am I to believe—the possible or the impossible? A soldier! a noble! a Greek! and of all Greeks, one of Cyprus! the offerer of your eloquence at every shrine where your own lovely countrywomen stood by the altar!—I too have seen the world.”
“May all the Graces forbid that you should ever see it, but what it would be made by such as you—a place of gentleness and harmony—a place of fondness and innocence—a paradise!”
“Now you are further from the philosopher than ever; but—I must listen no more; the sun is taking its leave of us, and blushing its last through the vines for all the fine romance that it has heard from Constantius. Farewell, philosophy.”
“Then farewell, philosophy,” said Constantius, and caught her hand as she was lightly moving from the pavilion. He led her toward the casement. “Then farewell, philosophy, my sweet; and welcome truth, virtue, and nature. I loved you in your captivity; I loved you in your freedom; on the sea, on the shore, in the desert, in your home, I loved you. In life I will love you, in death we shall not be divided. This is not the language of mere admiration, the rapture of a fancy dazzled by the bright eyes of my Salome. It is the language of reason, of sacred truth, of honor bound by higher than human bonds; of fondness that even the tomb will render only more ardent and sublime. Here, in the sight of Heaven, I pledge an immortal to an immortal.”