She listened, but did not lift her head or suffer the change of a fold;
then there came the tinkle of the strings that embalmed the tune, and
the singer's steps grew soundless as he left the street. A new phantasm
crept upon me. What right had any other man to sing to her his
love-songs? Did she not live, was not her beauty created, her soul
given, for me? Did not the very breath she drew belong to me? My voice,
hoarse and husky, disturbed the stillness, my eyes flamed on her.

"Do you love that man who sang?" I murmured.

"Signor, I love you," she said.

Then we were silent as before, but she stood no longer alone and
opposite. One passionate step, an outstretched arm, and her head on my
bosom, my lips bent to hers.

All the nightingales burst forth in choral redundance of song, all the
low winds woke and fainted again through the balmy boughs, all the great
stars bent out of heaven to shed their sweet influences upon us.

It seemed to me that in that old palace-garden life began, my memory
went out in confused joy. I held her, she was mine! mine, mine, in life
and for eternity! Fool! it was I who was hers! Man, you are a priest,
and must not love. I, too, was sworn a priest to my country. So we break
oaths!

O moments of swift bliss, why are you torture to remember? Let me not
think how the night slipped into dawn as we roamed, how pale gold
filtered through the darkness and bleached the air, how bird after bird
with distant chirrup and breaking time announced the day. She left me,