A fantastic purpose came into the man's thought. His mind was ever like a stage with the lights lighted and the curtains drawn, upon whose boards himself played a thousand parts and played them to the top. Here was the part he had never played, the noblest, the most heroic, chiefly perhaps in this, that it was also the loneliest. The purpose had hardly pricked before he seized it, hugged it to his breast, made it incorporate with his being. Mingled with his tender pity for Brilliana there was now a splendid pity for himself, the noblest Roman of them all. But the purpose must not cool. His thoughts were all a-jumble. One of them seemed to assert to his feverish fancy that this way meant atonement; the quenching of his torch some measure of compensation for the candles he had puffed out.
Unseen he stretched his hands as if in benediction towards Brilliana, and then went noiselessly out of the room. On the stairs he met Evander descending to say farewell to his hostess, his hat in his hand and his cloak over his arm. Halfman stopped him. "She waits you in the garden-room," he said; "I will hold your cloak and hat for you here while you make your adieus. A lover should not be cumbered." Evander thanked him, surrendered cloak and hat, and entered the garden-room. He did not hear what Halfman said, though Halfman spoke it aloud, with all the lovers of all time for audience: "There goes the blessedest man in all the world." Then, with Evander's cloak about him and Evander's hat upon his head, Halfman went out into the garden.
At the sound of Evander's step Brilliana turned and rose to greet him.
"My dear!" she cried, her eyes luminous, her breast heaving.
"My riding-time has come," he said, sadly. He stood apart, but she came near to him and put her hands on his shoulders.
"You found me in tears, but you must think of me as smiling--smiling for joy in my lover, smiling at the thought of his return."
He caught her in his arms, clasped her close to him, and kissed her lips. It seemed to him as if that moment consecrated him forever. She was simply glad that the man she loved had kissed her.
"These are evil days," he said. "Who knows when we shall meet again."
"At least we have met," she answered. "I shall thank God for that, morning and night. Nothing can change that, if we do not meet for months, for years, if we never meet again."
