"Have you not?" she asked, gravely. "I am your kinswoman."
"Yes, yes, I know," I muttered, and fell to plucking at the lace on my
wristbands.
The dawn's chill was in the air, the dawn's silence, too, and I saw the
calm morning star on the horizon, watching the dark world--the dark, sad
world, lying so still, so patient, under the ancient sky.
That melancholy--which is an omen, too--left me benumbed, adrift in a
sort of pained contentment which alternately soothed and troubled, so
that at moments I almost drowsed, and at moments I heard my heart
stirring, as though in dull expectancy of beatitudes undreamed of.
Dorothy, too, sat listless, pensive, and in her eyes a sombre shadow,
such as falls on children's eyes at moments, leaving their
elders silent.
Once in the false dawn a cock crowed, and the shrill, far cry left the
raw air emptier and the silence more profound. I looked wistfully at the
maid beside me, chary of intrusion into the intimacy of her silence.
Presently her vague eyes met mine, and, as though I had spoken, she
said: "What is it?"
"Only this: I am sorry you are pledged."
"Why, cousin?"
"It is unfair."
"To whom?"
"To you. Bid him undo it and release you."
"What matters it?" she said, dully.
"To wed, one should love," I muttered.
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