CHAPTER NINE

At the selfsame hour, Diana awoke. She lay on a big rug, looked around her with sleep-laden eyes, and tried to remember what had happened. Gregor was asleep. She shivered in the chill morning air, and drew a blanket off her camp-bed which had not been used, covering both herself and the man at her side. As she did so, she glanced down at him and smiled to see how childlike was his slumber. Had she moved too suddenly, or was it merely the consciousness that her eyes were upon him? Who can tell? But at that moment he awoke, turned quickly as if danger threatened, looked around, saw Diana, remembered all, and smiled in his turn. He leaned over her, bending her face back to kiss her.

The hour of his conquest over her had been a light-hearted one, sportive and gay. Everything had lent enchantment to their union, the spirit of adventure fired their blood, the fact that each shared the same secret and that only the thin canvas wall of the tent screened them from inquisitive eyes, the grass of the steppe on which they lay, the memory of every word they had exchanged, the expectant waiting, the hopes that had filled their hearts, the delicious novelty of appealing to one another without the exchange of a single syllable, the sense of solitude, the enforced silence which caution constrained them to, all this and a hundred other influences of time and place had carried the pair onward on a mighty wave of rapturous daring, so that it was as if two beasts of the wilderness were playfully endeavouring to overcome one another. The reawakened yearning to recapture his lost youth, a yearning which had filled Gregor's whole being since he had met Diana, had gradually disappeared as day followed day which was to lead to this excursion, to this night of fulfilment.

Diana had not repelled him, for she was a woman who never closed the doors on nature's impulses; and when she felt his sensitive hands trembling within her own, the words he longed to hear fell simply from her lips. The man, for all his experience of love, had been shy as a boy in his attitude towards the enigma of this woman; he who was used to command had besought; his grey hairs notwithstanding, he had wooed her like a youth; all this had touched her, rather than carried her off her feet. He himself was unaware of the unusual emotional stress which once more after the lapse of decades, had transformed the connoisseur into a bashful wooer and the spoilt darling of so many female hearts into one who must use all his arts of cajolery to induce his love to bestow her gifts upon him. His tenderness, his supplicating desire, had made her conclude that a great change, a change he was blissfully unaware of, had taken place in the man at her side.

The physical intimacy was, however, no more than the sign that his whole nature was about to enter a new springtime, for Gregor Count of Münsterberg, despite his many love adventures, had during these last ten years been a very lonely man. In the days when Olivia was everything to him he had come implicitly to rely on her, giving her his all with a lavishness not unlike Andreas's spendthrift love--though in other respects the two men's dispositions were in such complete contrast.

"Diana, have you slept? Are you cold? Would you like a glass of water?"

He tucked her up, solicitous for her comfort; he slipped his arm under her and petted and caressed her as if he had done her an injury. He could not look upon the events of that night with the eyes of a conqueror; he felt somewhat ashamed of himself, for she had been so tender and, as it seemed to him, had yielded to him through complaisance, rather than from passion. He whispered:

"Are you angry? Do you forgive me? Sweet Diana!"

She smiled as she replied, equally softly:

"You are good."

"Won't you call me by my name?"

"Gregor!"

"Once again."

"Gregor!"

"Ah, that was boldly spoken, as you said it today--no, yesterday, when we were riding together."

"Tell me, why did you call out Diana then?"

"Because I was thinking of you like that, just at the moment when your horse shied. Had you never thought of me by name?"

"Yes, once."

"When?"

"As you left me that day we talked about the motto on your coat-of-arms."

"And then you thought of me as Gregor. Only that once? I always thought of you as Diana whenever you came into my mind."

"When was that, I pray?"

"Constantly."

"Oh, come."

"It's true. Constantly; at breakfast: Diana will be going for a sail. While at work: that's not clear, not very practical--Diana would have done it better. At dinner: Diana has a fine palate for wines. Out riding, engaged in conversation, even while dictating dispatches, always Diana is in my thoughts, for she grasps my meaning, knows what I want, understands, so much quicker than any one else."

She raised herself on her elbow and leaned over him, stroked his hair, and pushed the grey locks away from his brow.

"How white your forehead is, how beautifully shaped," she whispered. Then she hummed very softly to herself, a velvety sound like that made by the drowsy horses outside as they rubbed their heads one against the other. "It's a pity to keep it hidden under this mass of grey hair. Have you ever tried brushing it back?"

"A high forehead makes a man look older. Besides, my hair is whiter still underneath. The way one wears the hair is a fine art which even Peter, my man, is incapable of achieving. I am always my own hairdresser."

"Why?"

He suddenly seized her by the hair:

"I wish your chestnut locks could stay that colour for ever."

"I don't wish it at all. Or, perhaps to be quite truthful, the wish might cross my mind occasionally. Still, I know that when my time comes I shall not pull one grey hair out. We must not run counter to nature."

"You believe that?" he asked, pulling himself up into a sitting position. "Am I running counter to nature when I...?" He stole a look at her, and waited for her to complete his thought. But she played with the fringe of the rug and held her peace. He took her hand, and bent towards her so as to compel her to look him in the eyes. "You might easily be my daughter..."

She answered very slowly:

"Say, rather, that you might well be my son."

Hand in hand the two sat gazing at one another, Diana and Gregor, on the rug widespread among the dry herbage of the steppe, in the softly diffused moonlight which struggled through the thin canvas of the tent.

What did Diana see?

The vision of this man in his youthful prime, transparent, so that the story of his life stood revealed. Those blue eyes had never blenched at what life chose to offer him. They had flashed upon the world their searching fires. Now their look was turned inward, earnest, and inexpressibly lonesome. Those lips, once so firm, were now sunk between furrows telling of a disillusionment in strange contrast to the strength expressed in the straight, high-pitched nose and the salient chin, proclaiming as they did the resolution with which this man sought power and ever more power in compensation for the loss of his capacity for enjoyment.

And Gregor, what were his thoughts while he sat in the pale light filtering through the tent as the moon set?

He felt as if he were coming into closer contact with humanity as a whole, not merely with the twenty-five year old creature at his side. He saw as it were in timeless and ageless shape, before her and behind her as she sat, the form of a child and of a woman. Slowly, the meaning of her last words and of his became disentangled from the vision. How explain the mystery of sexual union? He brooded upon this, not in relation to what had happened this night, but as something remote and intangible. How not shudder in the placid morning light at the madness of venturing to penetrate into the life of another being, and yet hope neither to kill that being nor to suffer death at its hands? He was painfully aware of the weight of the years that lay upon him. Had he not hitherto always been as a god showering happiness on the woman of his choice? But now, what had he to bestow on this young thing whose hand lay so confidingly in his own?

From those delicate lips that had kissed him last night as if their owner were asleep, from those cheeks whose oval was so pure, which sun and wind had bronzed and made so firm a setting for the face, from those short, boyish curls which seemed wilfully to renounce all womanly lure, above all from the solemn fire of her brown eyes, he drew so powerful a sense of vital security, so mighty an assurance of youth's everlasting renewal, that he was overwhelmed with gratitude and could only bow his grey head, kiss her hand, and rest his forehead in her lap.

She loosed the flap of the tent and threw it back without disturbing him. Far away on the eastward margin of the steppe the sky was pale with the earliest flicker of dawn. The tiny breeze came cold and sharp upon her, so that she drew the folds of the silk cloak tighter around her. For a moment she thought of a morning on the island when she had likewise waked up to find herself in the open. But the head resting in her lap that day had dark hair.... Where was Andreas now? Alone?

Many minutes went by before the grizzled man raised his head again. The blue eyes were so earnest that one might have thought they had never been aglow with laughter all yesterday. Slowly Gregor pulled aside the silken folds that covered her, and laid her bosom bare. His movements were tender and delicate, as with an artist's appreciation he passed his sensitive fingers over the small bronzed breasts, while Diana sat spellbound, motionless....