She was in his arms now, weeping strange, hot tears of joy, her heart throbbing fiercely against his own.
"Paul--Paul--I am mad, I think!--we are both mad, you and I!"
And as their lips at last met in one long, soul-maddening kiss, and the intoxication of the senses stole over them, she murmured in the fullness of her surrender, "Take me! Crush me! Kiss me! My love--my love!"
CHAPTER XXV
The morning dawned. The morning of their one day.
Nature had done her best for them and made it all that a May day should be. There was not one tint, nor tone, nor bit of fragrance lacking.
Silver-throated birds flooded the world with songs of love. The very air seemed full of beauty and pa.s.sion and the glory and joy of life in the dawn of its fullness.
Their arrangements had been hasty, but complete. Paul had stolen away from Lucerne in the middle of the night, to be ready to welcome his darling at the-first break of the morning; and it was at a delightfully early hour that they met at the little hotel on the Burgenstock where his mother"s love-dream had waxed to its idyllic perfection, one-and-twenty years ago. They sat on the balcony and ate their simple breakfast, looking down to where the reflection of the snow-crowned mountains trembled in the limpid lake.
Opal had never before looked so lovely, he thought. She was gowned in the simplest fashion in purest white, as a bride should be, her glorious hair arranged in a loose, girlish knot, while her l.u.s.trous eyes were cast down, shyly, and her cheeks were flushed--flushed with the revelations and memories of the night just pa.s.sed--flushed with the promise of the day just dawning--flushed with love, with slumbering, smouldering pa.s.sion--with wifehood!
How completely she was his when she had once surrendered!
In their first kiss of greeting, they bridged over, in one ecstatic moment, the hours of their brief separation. When he finally withdrew his lips from hers, with a deep sigh of momentary satisfaction, she looked up into his eyes with something of the old, capricious mischief dancing in her own.
"Let us make the most of our day, darling, our one day!" she said. "We must not waste a single minute of it."
Opal had stolen away from Lucerne and had come up the mountain absolutely unattended. She would share her secret with no one, she said, and Paul had acquiesced. And now he took her up in his arms as one would carry a little child, and bore her off to the suite he had engaged for them. What a bit of a thing she was to wield such an influence over a man"s whole life!
A pert little French maid waited upon them. She eyed with great favor the _distingue_ young monsieur, and his _charmante epouse!_ There was a knowing twinkle in her eye--she had not been a _femme de chambre_ even a little while without learning to scent a _lune de miel!_ And this promised to be especially _piquante_. But Paul would have none of her, and she tripped away disappointed of her coveted _divertiss.e.m.e.nt_.
Paul was very jealous and exacting and even domineering this morning, and would permit no intrusion. He would take care of madame, he had informed the girl, and when she had taken herself away, he repeated it emphatically. Opal was his little girl, he said, and he was going to pet and coddle her himself. _Femme de chambre_ indeed! Wasn"t he worth a dozen of the impertinent French minxes! Wanted to coquette with him, most likely--thought he might be ready to yawn over madame"s charms! She could keep her pretty ankles out of his sight--he wasn"t interested in them!
How Paul thrilled at the touch of everything Opal wore! Soft delicious things they were, and he handled them with an awkward reverence that brought tears to her eyes. They spoke a strange, shy language of their own--these little, filmy bits of fine linen.
Oh, but it was good, thought Opal, to be taken care of like this!--to be on these familiar terms with the Boy she loved--to give him the right to love her and do these little things, so sacred in a woman"s life. And to Paul it meant more than even she guessed. It was such a new world to him. He felt that he was treading on holy ground, and, for the moment, was half-afraid.
And thus began their one day--the one day that was to know no yesterday, and no tomorrow!
They found it hard to remember that part of it at all times. He would grow reminiscent for an instant, and begin, "Do you remember--" and she would catch him up quickly with a whispered, "No yesterday, Paul!" And again, it would be his turn, for a troubled look would cloud the joy of her eyes, and she would start to say, "What shall I do--" or "When I go to Paris--" and Paul would s.n.a.t.c.h her to his heart and remind her that there was "No tomorrow!"
All the forenoon she lay in his arms, crying out with little inarticulate gurgles of joy under his caresses, lavishing a whole lifetime"s concentrated emotion upon him in a ferocity of pa.s.sion that seemed quenchless.
And Paul was in the seventh heaven--mad with love! He was learning that there were tones in that glorious voice that he had never heard before, depths in those eyes that he had never fathomed--and those tones, those depths, were all for him, for him alone--aye, had been waiting there through all eternity for his awakening touch.
"Opal," he said, earnestly, "perhaps it was here--on this very spot, it may be, who knows--that my mother gave herself to my father!
But she could only smile at him through fast-gathering tears--strange tears of mingled joy and wonder and pain.
And he covered her face, her neck, her shoulders with burning kisses, and cried out in an ecstasy of bliss, "Oh, my love! My life!"
And thus the morning hours died away.
CHAPTER XXVI
And behold, it was noon!
The day and their love stood still together. The glamour of the day, the resistless force of their masterful love that seemed to them so unlike all other loves of which they had ever heard or dreamed, held them in a transport of delight that could only manifest itself in strange, bitter-sweet caresses, in incoherent murmurings.
This, then, was love! Aye, this was Love!
The thoughts of the two returned with a tender, persistent recollection to the love-tale of the past--the delicious idyl of love that had given birth to this boy. Here, even here, had been spent those three maddest and gladdest of weeks--that dream of an ideal love realized in its fullness, as it is given to few to realize.
Yes, that was Love!
It was youth eternal--youth and fire, power and pa.s.sion.
It was May! May!
It was mid-afternoon before they awakened, to look into each other"s eyes with a new understanding. Surely never since the world began had two souls loved each other as did these!
And what should they do with the afternoon? Such a little while remained for them--such a little while!
Paul drew out his mother"s letter, and together they read it, understanding now, as they had not been able to understand before, its whole wonderful significance.
When they read of the first dawn of the hope of parentage in the hearts of these long-ago lovers, their eyes met, heavy with the wistfulness of renunciation. That consolation, alas! was not for them. Only the joy of loving could ever be theirs.
And then, drawing out the other letters that had accompanied his mother"s, Paul revealed to his darling the whole mystery of his ident.i.ty.
At first she was startled--almost appalled--at the thought that she had given herself to a Prince of the Purple--a real king of a real kingdom--and for a moment felt a strange awe of him.
But Paul, reading her unspoken thought in her eyes, with that sweet clairvoyance that had always existed between them, soothed and petted and caressed her till the smiles returned to her face and she nestled in his arms, once more happy and content.
She was the queen of his soul, he told her, whoever might wear the crown and bear the t.i.tle before the world. Then, very carefully, lest he should wound her, he told her the whole story of the Princess Elodie.
Opal moved across the room and stood drumming idly by the long, open window. He watched her anxiously.
"Paul, did you go to see her as you promised--and is she ...pretty?"
"She is a cow!"
"Paul!" Opal laughed at his tone.