Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/88

 thousands of years. And we will stand by them together and look over the plains where there are no shadows, to the mountains, and you will feel an impression of something mysterious and immense. Perhaps even the tears will come to your eyes with a nostalgia for you know not what. Will you come?”

She was aware that the people were kneeling about them, and as a bell rang the host was raised. The priests had ceased their chant and the incense rose in silence, but all this was more and more like a dream to her.

There was heat and emotion in his words, and Anne was moved by them as by the lyrical passion of drama, or music, or poetry. They awakened response in the regions of her mind and spirit, and gave the man who spoke them a power over her which no charm of person or temperament could have won him.

“Will you come?” he pleaded. “Ah, if I could stand with you once on those plains and look with you to those mountains, I could teach you something, something you do not know, and which is so precious that for the sake of it you would take all the rest of life and tie it into a pocket-handkerchief and toss it into the sea!”

Something seemed to be coming to Anne from