And in the delight of the contrast, Mademoiselle de Savenaye fell into the profound slumber of the young and vigorous.
And I only think of the woman that weeps; But I forget, always forget, the smiling child. _Luteplayer's Song._
That night, even when sheer fatigue had subdued the currents of blood and thought that surged in his head, Sir Adrian was too restless to avail himself of the emergency couch providently prepared by René in a corner. But, ceasing his fretful pacing to and fro, he sat down in the arm-chair by the hearth where she had sat--the waif of the sea--wrapped round him the cloak that had enfolded the young body, hugging himself in the salt moisture the fur still retained, to spend the long hours in half-waking, firelight dreams.
And every burst of tempest rage, every lash of rain at the window, every thud of hurricane breaking itself on impassable ramparts, and shriek of baffled winds searching the roofless halls around, found a strangely glad echo in his brain--made a sort of burden to his thoughts:
Heap up the waters round this happy island, most welcome winds--heap them up high and boiling, and retain her long captive in these lonely ruins!
And ever the image in his mind's eye was, as before, Cécile--Cécile who had come back to him, for all sober reason knew it was but the child.
The child----! Why had he never thought of the children these weary years? They, all that remained of Cécile, were living and might have been sought. Strange that he had not remembered him of the children!
Twenty years since he had last set eyes upon the little living creature in her mother's arms. And the picture that the memory evoked was, after all, Cécile again, only Cécile--not the queer little black-eyed puppet, even then associated with sea-foam and salty breeze. Twenty years during which she was growing and waxing in beauty, and unawares, maturing towards this wonderful meeting--and he had never given a thought to her existence.
In what sheltered ways had this fair duplicate of his love been growing from a child to womanhood during that space of life, so long to look back upon--or so short and transient, according to the mood of the thinker?
And, lazily, in his happier and tender present mood he tried to measure once again the cycles of past discontent, this time in terms of the girl's own lifetime.