"How appropriate!" she laughed.
"Which? The Bastille to the stick, or the stick to me?"
"Both."
He grew serious.
"What would you do if I lost my head?"
"I should stand by till your head was severed in order that you might look on your beloved to the last. Then I should take poison."
"My Cleopatra!"
Her fitful face changed.
"Or marry Janko!"
"That weakling--is he still hovering?"
"He pa.s.sed the winter with us. He looks upon me as his," she said dolefully.
"I flick him away. Do not try to belong to another. I tell you solemnly I claim you as mine. We cannot resist destiny. Our meeting to-day proves it. To-morrow we climb to see the sunrise together,--the sunrise over the mountains. Symbol of our future that begins. The heavens opening in purple and gold over the white summits--love breaking upon your virginal purity."
Already she felt, as of yore, swept off on roaring seas. But the rush and the ecstasy had their alloy of terror. To be with him was to be no longer herself, but a hypnotized stranger. Perhaps she was unwise to have provoked this meeting. She should have remembered he was not to be coquetted with. As well put a match to a gunpowder barrel to warm your fingers. Every other man could be played with. This one swallowed you up.
"But Prince Janko has no one but me," she tried to protest. "My little Moorish page, my young Oth.e.l.lo!"
"Keep him a page. Oth.e.l.los are best left bachelors. Remember the fate of Desdemona."
"I"ll give you both up," she half whimpered. "I"ll go on the stage."
"You!"
"Yes. Everybody says I"m splendid at burlesque. You should see me as a boy."
"You baby! You need no triumphs in the mimic world. Your role is grander."
"Oh, please let us wait for Mrs. Arson. You go too fast."
"I don"t. I have waited a year for you. When shall we marry?"
"Not before our wedding-day."
"Evasive Helene!"
"Cruel Ferdinand! Ask anything of me, but not will-power."
A little cough came to accentuate her weakness.
"My darling!" he cried in deep emotion. "We"ll fly to Egypt or the Indies. I"ll hang up politics and all that frippery. My books and science shall claim me again, and I will watch over my ailing little girl till she becomes the old splendid Brunehild again!"
"No, no, I am no Brunehild; only a modern woman with nerves--the most feminine woman in the world, irresponsible, capricious--please, please remember."
"If you were not yourself I should not love you."
"But it cannot come to anything."
"Cannot? The word is for pigmies."
"But my mother?"
"She is a woman--I will talk to her."
"My father!"
"He is a man, with men one can always get on. They are reasonable.
Besides, you tell me he is an author, and I will read his famous books."
She smiled faintly. "But there is myself."
"You are myself--and I never doubt myself."
"Oh, but there are heaps of other difficulties."
"There are none other."
She pouted deliciously. "You don"t know everything under the sun."
"Under your aureole of hair, do you mean?"
"What if I do?" she smiled back. "You must not trust me too far. I am a spoilt child--wild, unbridled, unaccustomed to please others except by pleasing myself."
Her actress-nature enjoyed the picture of herself. She felt that Baudelaire himself would have admired it. La.s.salle"s answer was subtly attuned:
"My Satanic enchantress! my bewitching child of the devil."
"_Bien fou qui s"y fie._ When I lived at Nice in that royal Bohemia, where musicians rubbed shoulders with grand-d.u.c.h.esses, and the King of Bavaria exchanged epigrams with Bulwer Lytton, do you know what they called me?"
"The Queen of all the Follies!"
"You know?"
"Did I not love my Brunehild ere we met?"
"Yes, and I--knew of you. Only I didn"t recognize you at first, because they told me you were a frightful demagogue and--a--a--Jew!"
He laughed. "And so you expected a gaberdine. And yet surely Bulwer Lytton gave you a presentation copy of _Leila_. Don"t you remember the Jew in it? As a boy I had his ideal--to redeem my people. But if my Judaism offends you, I can become a Christian--not in belief of course, but--"
"Oh, not for worlds. I believe too little myself to bother about religion. My friends call me the Greek, because I can readily believe in many G.o.ds, but only with difficulty in one."