Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/102

 of Eden lay behind her deep, gold-reflecting eyes

Light, frothy love had come to him in the past. Had come and gone.

But now, for the first time, love that was not light had come into his life, and the burden of it was both heavy and sweet.

And all the time, while he was calling himself a silly fool who was trying to rope the far stars with a clumsy, leathern noose of his own clouting; while he cursed himself for a sentimental jackass who ought to be kicked; a wild thing in him, a thing that his past life seemed to have beggared and starved and denied, woke in its full, fresh strength.

Calling to him like some flying spirit in a storm, it claimed him. It seemed to summon him back to some thing he had forgotten long ago—centuries ago. It drew him as empty space draws a giddy man, to the very edge of the precipice. Steadily it gained in strength and massiveness until it had enveloped him completely in a silent, receptive atmosphere which he could not shake off, waking or sleeping; and, at the very core of it, at the flaming center of his love, strong yet soft, steely yet pliable, brutal yet loyal, was the sword—the ancient blade which had come out of Asia!

It gave meaning to his life and, somehow, a faint, silvery promise to his love—

His thoughts roamed back frequently to the little shop in Coal Yard Street, off Drury Lane, and to the strange, elderly Asiatic who, more even than his own impulse, had been responsible for his sudden, aimless,