King of Albainn, poet of the old time, not alone three youthful dreamers would you have seen, there, in that storm-beset room. For there you would have seen six figures standing side by side. Three of these would have been Alan de Kerival, and Ynys the Dark, and Annaik the Fair; and of the other three, one would be of a dusky-haired woman with starry, luminous eyes; and one a pale woman with a wealth of tawny hair, with eyes aflame, meteors in a desert place; and one a man, young and strong and fair to see as Alan de Kerival, but round about him a gloom, and through that gloom his eyes as stars seen among the melancholy hills.
Happy laughter of the world that is always young—happy, in that we are not all seers of old or kings of Albainn! For who, looking into the mirrors of Life and seeing all that is to be seen, would look again, save those few to whom Life and Death have come sisterly and whispered the secret that some have discerned, how these twain are one and the same.
Nevertheless, in that happy hour for him, Alan saw nothing of what Ynys feared. Annaik had abruptly yielded to a strange gayety, and her swift laugh and gypsy smile made his heart glad.
Never had he seen, even in Paris, women more beautiful. Deep-set as his heart was in the beauty of Ynys, he found himself admiring that of Annaik with new eyes. Truly, she was just such a woman as he had often imagined when Ian had recited to him the ballad of the Sons of Usna or that of how Dermid and Graine fled from the wrath of Fionn.
And they, too, looking at their tall cousin, with his wavy brown hair, broad, low brows, gray-blue eyes, and erect carriage, thought him the comeliest man to be seen in France; and each in her own way was proud and glad, though one, also, with killing pain.
CHAPTER IV
THE DREAM AND THE DREAMERS
Soon after supper Annaik withdrew. Ynys and Alan were glad to be alone, and yet Annaik's absence perturbed them. In going she bade good-night to her cousin, but took no notice of her sister.
At first the lovers were silent though they had much to say, and in particular Alan was anxious to know what it was that Ynys had alluded to in her letter when she warned him that unforeseen difficulties were about their way.
It was pleasant to sit in that low-roofed, dark old room, and feel the world fallen away from them. Hand in hand they looked at each other lovingly, or dreamed into the burning logs, seeing there all manner of beautiful visions. Outside, the wind still moaned and howled, though with less of savage violence, and the rain had ceased.
For a time Ynys would have no talk of Kerival; Alan was to tell all he could concerning his life in Paris, what he had done, what he had dreamed of, and what he hoped for now. But at last he laughingly refused to speak more of himself, and pressed her to reveal what had been a source of anxiety.
"You know, dear," she said, as she rose and leaned against the mantel-piece, her tall figure and dusky hair catching a warm glow from the fire—"you know how pitiable is this feud between my father and mother—how for years they have seen next to nothing of each other; how they live in the same house and yet are strangers? You know, too, how more than ever unfortunate this is, for themselves, and for Annaik and me, on account of our mother being an invalid, and of our father being hardly less frail. Well, I have discovered that the chief, if not indeed the only abiding source of misunderstanding is you, dear Alan!"
"But why, Ynys?"
"Ah, why? That is, of course, what I cannot tell you. Have you no suspicion, no idea?"
"None. All I know is that M. de Kerival allows me to bear his name, but that he dislikes, if, indeed, he does not actually hate me."
"There is some reason. I came upon him talking to my mother a short time ago. She had told him of your imminent return.
"'I never wish to see his face,' my father cried, with fierce vehemence; then, seeing me, he refrained."
"Well, I shall know all the day after to-morrow. Meanwhile, Ynys, we have the night to ourselves. Dear, I want to learn one thing. What does Annaik know? Does she know that we love each other? Does she know that we have told each other of this love, and that we are secretly betrothed?"
"She must know that I love you; and sometimes I think she knows that you love me. But ... oh, Allan! I am so unhappy about it.... I fear that Annaik loves you also, and that this will come between us all. It has already frozen her to me and me to her."
Alan looked at Ynys with startled eyes. He knew Annaik better than any one did; and he dreaded the insurgent bitterness of that wild and wayward nature. Moreover, in a sense he loved her, and it was for sorrow to him that she should suffer in a way wherein he could be of no help.
At that moment the door opened, and Matieu, a white-haired old servant, bowing ceremoniously, remarked that M. le Marquis desired to see Mamzelle Ynys immediately.
Ynys glanced round, told Matieu that she would follow, and then turned to Alan. How beautiful she was! he thought; more and more beautiful every time he saw her. Ah! fair mystery of love, which puts a glory about the one loved; a glory that is no phantasmal light, but the realized beauty evoked by seeing eyes and calling heart. On her face was a wonderful color, a delicate flush that came and went. Again and again she made a characteristic gesture, putting her right hand to her forehead and then through the shadowy, wavy hair which Alan loved so well and ever thought of as the fragrant dusk. How glad he was that she was tall and lithe, graceful as a young birch; that she was strong and kissed brown and sweet of sun and wind; that her beauty was old as the world, and fresh as every dawn, and new as each recurrent spring! No wonder he was a poet, since Ynys was the living poem who inspired all that was best in his life, all that was fervent in his brain.
Thought, kindred to this, kept him a long while by the fire in deep revery, after Ynys had thrilled him by her parting kisses and had gone to her father. He realized, then, how it was she gave him the sense of womanhood as no other woman had done. In her, he recognized the symbol as well as the individual. All women shared in his homage because of her. His deep love for her, his ever growing passion, could evoke from him a courtesy, a chivalry, toward all women which only the callous or the coarse failed to note. She was his magic. The light of their love was upon every thing: everywhere he found synonyms and analogues of "Ynys." Deeply as he loved beauty, he had learned to love it far more keenly and understandingly, because of her. He saw now through the accidental, and everywhere discerned the eternal beauty, the echoes of whose wandering are in every heart and brain, though few discern the white vision or hear the haunting voice.
And with his love had come knowledge of many things hidden from him before. Sequences were revealed, where he had perceived only blind inconsequence. Nature became for him a scroll, a palimpsest with daily mutations. With each change he found a word, a clew, leading to the fuller elucidation of that primeval knowledge which, fragmentarily, from age to age has been painfully lost, regained, and lost again, though never yet wholly irrecoverable.
Through this new knowledge, too, he had come to understand the supreme wonder and promise, the supreme hope of our human life in the mystery of motherhood. All this and much more he owed to Ynys, and to his love for her. She was all that a woman can be to a man. In her he found the divine abstractions which are the beacons of the human soul in its obscure wayfaring—Romance, Love, Beauty. It was not enough that she gave him romance, that she gave him love, that she was the most beautiful of women in his eyes. When he thought of the one, it was to see the starry eyes and to hear the charmed voice of Romance herself, in the voice and in the eyes of Ynys: when he thought of Love it was to hear Ynys's heart beating, to listen to the secret rhythms in Ynys's brain, to feel the life-giving sun-flood that was in her pure but intense and glowing passion.
Thus it was that she had for him that immutable attraction which a few women