“Stay!” she said again, after our mute gaze, and laying her hand upon my arm.  “You shall not love me in vain, you shall not trust me for nothing.  Your cause is mine to-day.  That is the last message I send to Vienna.”

And then I believed her.

The light, slanting up, crept in and touched the brow of an ideal bust of Mithras which she had invested with her faintly-faded wreath of heliotropes; their fragrance falling through the place already made the atmosphere more rich than that of chest of almond-wood,—­this perfume that is like the soul of the earth itself exhaled to the amorous air.  Behind an alabaster shrine she lighted a holy-taper, slowly to waste and pale in the spreading day.  We went to the window, where among the ivy-nooks day’s life was just astir with gaudy wings.

“All will be seeking you, and yet you cannot go,” she said.

“Why can I not go?”

“It is broad morning.”

“And what of that?”

“One thing.  You shall not compromise yourself, going from the house of an Austrian woman and worse!”

She was too winningly imperious to fail.  I delayed, and together we looked out on the rosy sky.

“Come down,” she said at last, “and on an arbor-moss the sun shall drowse you, the flower-scents be your opiates, the birds your lullaby, and I your guard.”

We went, and, wandering again through the garden-paths, she brushed the dew with her trailing festal garments, and plucked the great blue convolvuli to crown her forehead.  Soon, on a plot of Roman violets, screened by tall trees and trellises, we breakfasted.  One might have said that the cloth was laid above giant mushroom-stems, the service acorn-cups and calices of milky blooms; golden was the honey-comb we broke, manna was our bread; she caught the water in her hand from the fountain and pledged me, and swift as sunshine I bent forward and prevented the thirsty lips.  Then she laid my head on her shoulder, with her cool finger-tips she stroked the temples and soothed the lids, they fell and closed on the vision bending above me,—­loveliness like painting, pallor that was waxen, yellow tresses wreathed with azure stars, eyes that caught the hue again and absorbed all Tyrian dyes.

The plash and bubble of waters swooned dreamily about my ears, and far off it seemed I heard the wild, sad songs of her native land, that now in tinkling tune, and now in long, slow rise and fall of mellow sound, swathed me with sweet satiety to dreamless rest.

The sun stole round and rose above the screen of trees at last and woke me.  I was alone, the silent statues looked on me, the breath of the dark violets crushed by my weight rose in shrouding incense.  I lifted myself and searched for her, and asked why I must needs believe each hour of joy a dream,—­then went and cooled my brow in the lucent basin at hand, and waited till she came, in changed raiment, and gliding toward me as the Spirit of Noon might have come.