She made no reply. Something vaguely sweet and irresistible overpowered her,--she was barely conscious of herself, or of anything, save that "Amadis de Jocelyn" was beside her. She had lived so long in her dream of the old French knight, whose written thoughts and confessions had influenced her imagination and swayed her mind since childhood, that she could not detach herself from the idealistic conception she had formed of his character,--and to her the sixteenth-century "Amadis" had become embodied in this modern man of brilliant but erratic genius, who, if the truth were told, had nothing idealistic about him but his art, which in itself was more the outcome of emotionalism than conviction. He drew her gently down beside him, feeling her quiver like a leaf touched by the wind, and his own heart began to beat with a pleasurable thrill. The silence around them seemed waiting for speech, but none came. It was one of those tense moments on which sometimes hangs the happiness or the misery of a lifetime--a stray thread from the web of Chance, which may be woven into a smooth pattern or knotted into a cruel tangle,--a freakish circumstance in which the human beings most concerned are helplessly involved without any conscious premonition of impending fate. Suddenly, yielding to a passionate impulse, he caught her close in his arms and kissed her. "Forgive me!" he whispered--"I could not help it!" She put him gently back from her with two little hands that caressed rather than repulsed him, and gazed at him with startled, tender eyes in which a new and wonderful radiance shone,--while he in self-confident audacity still held her in his embrace. "You are not angry?" he went on, in quick, soft accents. "No! Why should you be? Why should not love come to you as to other women! Don't analyse!--don't speak! There is nothing to be said--we know all!" Silently she clung to him, yielding more and more to the sensation of exquisite joy that poured through her whole being like sunlight--her heart beat with new and keener life,--the warm kindling blood burned her cheeks like the breath of a hot wind--and her whole soul rose to meet and greet what she in her poor credulousness welcomed as the crown and glory of existence--love! Love was hers, she thought--at last!--she knew the great secret,--the long delight that death itself could not destroy,--her ideal of romance was realised, and Amadis de Jocelyn, the brave, the true, the chivalrous, the strong, was her very own! Enchanted with the ease of his conquest, he played with her pretty hair as with a bird's wing, and held her against his heart, sensuously gratified to feel her soft breast heaving with its pent-up emotion, and to hear her murmured words of love confessed. "How I have wished and prayed that you might love me!" she said, raising her dewy eyes to his in the darkness. "Is it good when God grants one's prayers? I am almost afraid! My Amadis! It is a dream come true!"