"What is that?" he asked. "I don"t know it at all."
"It is--my--Song of Songs," she rejoined fetching a deep breath.
Never before had she uttered the name to a human being.
"Your Song of Songs?" he asked, bewildered.
Lilly realised an hour like this would never come again. It was the moment to confide to him the secret of her youth.
"Drop the oars and listen. I will tell you something. It may sound silly and stupid to you, but to me it was always like something sacred."
Without speaking he laid the oars down.
"You must sit next to me," she said, "so I can look at you."
He cast a searching glance in all directions.
The boat had long been quietly drifting again on the mirror-like lake, upon which all the light of the summer night had gathered in scintillating blue and purple spots. Nowhere the slightest sign of danger.
Then he did as she had asked.
They nestled on the boat bottom pressed close against each other with their heads leaning against the bench on which Konrad had been sitting.
And she told her tale.
Told of the legacy her vanished father had left, what power had always emanated from it; how it had completely filled her girlhood years, though later it had acquired a far loftier and more mysterious significance, becoming a symbol of her deeds. When her life sank into chaos and nothingness it remained dumb, often for years. But if her soul began to soar, when her hopes and activities harmonised then all of a sudden it reappeared, and with its soft song drowned the world"s evil.
It had not been able to guard her against guilt or disgrace, but it had kept her free inwardly and susceptible to the influence of the One who would some day come to her.
And now that he actually had come, she felt that this hour of fulfilment had struck both for her and her Song of Songs. It must now go forth into the world and conquer all hearts and bring purification and upliftment to its creator and herself.
In her enthusiasm she forgot the time and the place and the whole world.
The one thought obsessed her: to throw more of her inward self, of what was most holy to her, at his feet. But she had said everything, more than she had ever deemed herself likely to tell a living soul, more than she had known of herself up to that hour.
He now held in his hands whatever there was of good and lofty and hopeful still within her. The other--the lazy, the impure, that which had ruined her heart and life--no longer existed. It no longer concerned her.
While speaking, though she would have liked to look at him, she had not dared to; but now that she was finished she ventured to turn toward him.
She saw his eyes resting upon her with a singularly confused and drunken look, such as she had never before seen in him. He usually held his feelings as it were in his clenched fists.
Her heart began to throb, and the hopeful disquiet for which she had no name and no object became so strong that she felt she should have to run to the other end of the boat to keep from stifling at his side.
Then she saw him close his eyes and throw his head back hard against the bench.
"You"ll hurt yourself," she whispered. And so far from fleeing him, she laid her arm like a pillow between his neck and the cutting edge of the bench.
His head rested on her bosom, and he breathed heavily.
"Shall I sing some more of it?" she asked, bending over him tenderly.
"Yes, yes, yes," he burst out.
So she sang in a low caressing voice, as if they were lullabies, all those arias and odes which no mortal ear had heard from her lips since the day when her mother"s soul had gone down into eternal night.
She sang of the "lily of the valley" and the "rose of Sharon" and the verse in which all the witchery of spring is concentrated:
For, lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in the land; The fig putteth forth her green figs, And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
She sang more and still more. If she asked him "Enough?" he merely shook his head, and nestled closer.
Once she gave a fleeting glance upward, and noticed they were wedged in among the reeds, and night had completely descended.
But what cared she? Somehow or other they would manage to get home.
There was little more of it to sing. "Set me as a seal upon thy heart"
and "How beautiful are thy steps in sandals, O prince"s daughter." And then the verse the beginning of which so well suited the day:
Come, my friend!
Let us go forth into the field,
But when it came to
Let us see if the vine have blossomed, Whether the young grape have opened,
she could scarcely go on.
Whether the pomegranates have budded, There will I give my caresses unto thee.
She was unable to continue. Her breath began to give out.
"Why don"t you sing?" she heard him ask.
A buzzing of bees, a ringing of bells all about.
"Be brave!" her soul cried, "Else you will lose him."
She felt two twitching lips grope for hers.
A swift end to all bravery.
It was long past midnight when they landed. The bathing pavilion stood there dark and deserted; but lights were still shining in the hotel.
Very timidly they rang the bell.
"We always keep a room for belated young married couples," said the obsequious, smiling hostess.