It has been said that Miltoun’s face was not unhandsome; for Audrey Noel at this moment when his eyes were so near hers, and his lips touching her, he was transfigured, and had become the spirit of all beauty.  And she, with heart beating fast against him, her eyes, half closing from delight, and her hair asking to be praised with its fragrance, her cheeks fainting pale with emotion, and her arms too languid with happiness to embrace him—­she, to him, was the incarnation of the woman that visits dreams.

So passed that moment.

The bee ended it; who, impatient with flowers that hid their honey so deep, had entangled himself in Audrey’s hair.  And then, seeing that words, those dreaded things, were on his lips, she tried to kiss them back.  But they came: 

“When will you marry me?”

It all swayed a little.  And with marvellous rapidity the whole position started up before her.  She saw, with preternatural insight, into its nooks and corners.  Something he had said one day, when they were talking of the Church view of marriage and divorce, lighted all up.  So he had really never known about her!  At this moment of utter sickness, she was saved from fainting by her sense of humour—­her cynicism.  Not content to let her be, people’s tongues had divorced her; he had believed them!  And the crown of irony was that he should want to marry her, when she felt so utterly, so sacredly his, to do what he liked with sans forms or ceremonies.  A surge of bitter feeling against the man who stood between her and Miltoun almost made her cry out.  That man had captured her before she knew the world or her own soul, and she was tied to him, till by some beneficent chance he drew his last breath when her hair was grey, and her eyes had no love light, and her cheeks no longer grew pale when they were kissed; when twilight had fallen, and the flowers, and bees no longer cared for her.

It was that feeling, the sudden revolt of the desperate prisoner, which steeled her to put out her hand, take up the paper, and give it to Miltoun.

When he had read the little paragraph, there followed one of those eternities which last perhaps two minutes.

He said, then: 

“It’s true, I suppose?” And, at her silence, added:  “I am sorry.”

This queer dry saying was so much more terrible than any outcry, that she remained, deprived even of the power of breathing, with her eyes still fixed on Miltoun’s face.

The smile of the old Cardinal had come up there, and was to her like a living accusation.  It seemed strange that the hum of the bees and flies and the gentle swishing of the limetree should still go on outside, insisting that there was a world moving and breathing apart from her, and careless of her misery.  Then some of her courage came back, and with it her woman’s mute power.  It came haunting about her face, perfectly still, about her lips, sensitive and drawn, about her eyes, dark, almost mutinous under their arched brows.  She stood, drawing him with silence and beauty.