THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.
"Aucassins, biax amis doux
En quel terre en irons nous?
--Douce amie, que sai jou?
Moi ne caut u nous aillons,
En forest u en destor,
Mais que je soie aveuc vous!"
_Aucassin and Nicolete.
"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."
_Dante_.
I awoke to a hum of voices . . . but when my eyes opened, the
speakers were gone, and I lay staring at an open window beyond which
the sky shone, blue and deep as a well. On a chair beside the window
sat the Princess, her hands in her lap. . . . While I stared at her,
two strange fancies played together in my mind like couples crossing
in a dance; the first, that she sat there waiting for something to
happen, and had been waiting for a very long, an endless, while; the
other that her body had grown transparent. The sunlight seemed to
float through it as through a curtain.
I dare say that I lay incapable of movement; but this did not
distress me at all, for I felt no desire to stir--only a contentment,
deep as the sky outside, to rest there and let my eyes rest on her.
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