He wafted a kiss to that lily sanctuary. “Could you not, unsuspected, come down from it,” he whispered--“just to the little balcony--and speak with me when all the house is silent? To be alone together in the night, my beautiful!” Her cheek had turned from pale to pink; but she looked at him with unfaltering eyes. “I will do anything you tell me to,” she said. “Even if it were that, Isabel?” “It would not be wrong if you told me.” Much moved, he touched her hand, and bade her sleep undisturbed for him. “And speak for me in your prayers,” he said. “Every night,” she answered, “when I kneel to our unknown God, Bonbec, and pray that some day we may find the print of His footsteps under the rainbow.” It was his song that was in her mind--that had become, indeed, her new faith’s inspiration. That “passion of the past” of which he had spoken, and into whose ghostly texture her own life seemed woven; those “long far lands of home” towards whose unutterable rest and understanding his spirit sought to convey her--to what more soothing wings of mysticism could she confide her burden of fearful joys and apprehensions? Northward: the world’s unfathomed mystery of the pointing finger: the threshold of the great wonder; and home--not home new made, but home recovered! That was the ecstasy of the thought. They had been wanderers apart these long centuries, and now at last were come together again upon the starry track. Fond nonsense, was it not? And yet so strangely real to them, that that flight together up the white staircase of the world for ever took them in fancy homewards. When they thought of escape--not spoke, for that had not come yet--those little outpost islands in the cold seas were always their mental refuge and first breathing-place. But these transcendent moods were not for every occasion. They had their living Eden to engage them, and it was sweet to tread all day on flowers, and hear the drowsy doves murmur, and take the sun into their hearts. And so fate allowed it until the golden cup was brimming. One night--long cause had Tiretta to remember that night with rapture and with grief--the Gonzalès left the two alone together in the _salon_ whither the chevalier had been invited to improvise sweet ditties for the ladies’ behoof. He had not perhaps acquitted himself very well; he seldom did under compulsion; and the marquise had shown signs of boredom. She was overfed, she was sleepy, she was cross; moreover she had an indescribable air as of resenting the lagging close of an entertainment which had lost its point and its motive. There was patronage in her manner to the soldier; there was even a hint of insolence. At last she said, with rude impatience: “Well, minstrels stale, I find, like other sweetmeats, and there comes a time when we wonder why we cloyed ourselves with them. After all they only appear at the feast to prove how well we could have done without them.”