“I must not stay. My gouvernante is waiting for me in the road. To-night----” “Yes, to-night, Isabel?” “After the gates are shut. Come to the little wicket in the eastern wall. My maid will let you in.” “Fanchette?” “Ah, yes! You know her.” “Enough to mistrust her. But if she is our friend----?” “She is always her own best friend, I think. But she will be there.” “And I.” “You know the way?” He held her apart, questioning with impassioned eagerness the face which drooped a little from his, its lids half closed, its cheeks just tinged with flame; then bending, put his lips to the soft white rapture of the throat. “Isabel! The little balcony above the myrtles?” “It is secret there. I must go--I dare not stop to say more--Bonbec, let me go. We can talk there alone, and decide what is best to be done. But not now.” Lingeringly, reluctantly, he let her slip from his arms. She put a finger to her lips. “Stay here,” she whispered, with a radiant smile. And then once more she approached him, as if irresistibly, and looked with wistful ecstasy into his face. “How thin and worn you are, dear love,” she said pitifully. “And yet, how can I wish you to have grieved less?” Once more, moved beyond endurance, he caught her to his heart, and shamed the rosy colour to her lips and neck, until, gently upbraiding him, she broke away. “Until to-night, soul of my soul,” he said. The faithful Bissy was waiting for her in the grove. She kept him blithely chatting a little while, and then, hoping the best for her face, went on to rejoin her maid. Fanchette acknowledged her reappearance as tart as crabs. “I’m sure I wish,” she said, “that _I_ could find in those trees the delight your Highness seems to borrow from them. Your Highness looks quite another person since making the little excursion.” And in what, after all, had their enemies succeeded against these lovers? Surely was never such an impregnable perversity as their faith. CHAPTER XXV. DELIRIUM “The balcony whence our Juliet leaned to whisper to her Romeo.” Do you recall how it was mentioned earlier, with wondering if in these days lunatics still came there to gibber to the moon? I say “still,” for if passion is the reverse of reason, then is not love a sort of madness? And were not these two demented things, to think that, in a chief province of despotism, love would be allowed to override all distinctions of rank and fortune? Or did they really think so, or think that disgrace and ostracism were the worst alternatives they had to face? What does it matter what they thought, or failed to think; their need was not in thinking; the fire of immortality is in the transcendent passions which take no thought, and of their seed is born all that beauty which redeems the ignoble materialism of the world.