Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/231

Rh her presence; now she spoke to him familiarly and without ceremony, with the charm of those first bright sweet hours of communion when strangers glide into friends; that hour which either, in friendship or in love, is as the bloom to the fruit, as the daybreak to the day, indefinable, magical, and fleeting.

The caïque rocked on the water, half hidden under the hanging boughs of myrtles at the landing-stairs, while the sea lay calm as a sun-girded lake, nothing in sight except a far-off fleet of olive-wood feluccas. And with one stroke of the oars among the fragrant water-weeds, the little curled gilded sea-toy floated softly and slowly down the still grey waters that glistened like a lake of silver in the sun. Erceldoune was in as ecstatic a dream as any opium-eater. She had cast away whatever thoughts had weighed on her when she had bade him leave her; a step once taken, a decision once given, she was not a woman to vacillate in further doubt or in after regret, she was at once too proud and too nonchalant. She had bidden him, in all sincerity, remain a stranger to her; he had refused to obey, and had chosen to linger in her presence. She let his will take its course, and accepted the present hour. The vessel dropped down the Bosphorus in