Then Agnes Rivers rose up, pushing the carven chair away from her, and standing with a certain graceful independence before the sumptuously spread table, in the centre of the highly-lighted room, between the open window and the open door. Her person, thus seen, suggested some clear jewel of infinite value in a dark and heavy though splendid setting; or some tender, solitary flower amid the lifeless magnificence of a desert city, rich with the tombs of long-dead kings. A gentle daring, a self-assertion strong as steel yet soft as a silken thread, seemed to animate her whole being. "Rather is it you that are mistaken," she answered; "but whether with your consent or against it, I cannot tell. It is you that dream just now, my love, and suffer, perhaps subscribe to, delusion--strong man though you are--and I that wake. For the call has come to you; and though you should employ all the eloquence of all the sages to convince me it is otherwise, I could not be convinced." "You are very stubborn," he said. "And yet, I spare you," she replied, in a tone of half mirthful, half tender, reproach; "for I only assert the fact. The exact nature of the call I do not know, and I do not ask you to tell it me. I am sufficiently human--you have brought me so far on the backward road, which my naughty feet were only too willing to tread--to greatly long to know the exact nature of that call. Yet, did I know it, I fear it might provoke a wicked spirit of jealousy in me, and of envy towards one who has, in the natural sequence of things, that which I have not, yet fain would have. Therefore do not try me too far, lest my courage fail and I decline from right, and break the perfect circle of our dealings with one another, so painting both past and future with the ugly colours of remorseful regret. You told me you would never leave me again unless I bade you do so. Well, now, the time has come. Redeem your word." Laurence would have spoken; but, still with that air of almost heavenly mirth, she laid her hand upon his mouth. There was hardly perceptible substance or weight in it; and once again--now with despair, though the sensation was in itself delicious--he felt that fluttering, as of the wings of a captive butterfly, against his lips.