Her physician sentenced her to the Alps, whither a
friend, a daughter of our island, whose acquaintance
she had made in Italy, was going, and at an invitation
Clotilde accompanied her, and she breathed Alpine air.
Marko sank into the category of dreams during sickness.
There came a letter from the professor mentioning
that Alvan was on one of the kingly Alpine heights
in view, and the new blood running through her veins
became a torrent. He there! So near!
Could he not be reached?
He had a saying: Two wishes make a will.
The wishes of two lovers, he meant. A prettier
sentence for lovers, and one more intoxicating to
them, was never devised. It chirrups of the
dear silly couple. Well, this was her wish.
Was it his? Young health on the flow of her
leaping blood cried out that it could not be other
than Alvan’s wish; she believed in his wishing
it. Then as he wished and she wished, she had
the will immediately, and it was all the more her own
for being his as well. She hurried her friend
and her friend’s friends on horseback off to
the heights where the wounded eagle lodged overlooking
mountain and lake. The professor reported him
outwearied with excess of work. Alvan lived
the lives of three; the sins of thirty were laid to
his charge. Do you judge of heroes as of lesser
men? Her reckless defence of him, half spoken,
half in her mind, helped her to comprehend his dealings
with her, and how it was that he stormed her and consented
to be beaten. He had a thousand occupations,
an ambition out of the world of love, chains to break,
temptations, leanings . . . tut, tut! She
had not lived in her circle of society, and listened
to the tales of his friends and enemies, and been
the correspondent of flattering and flattered men
of learning, without understanding how a man like
Alvan found diversions when forbidden to act in a given
direction: and now that her healthful new blood
inspired the courage to turn two wishes to a will,
she saw both herself and him very clearly, enough at
least to pardon the man more than she did herself.
She had perforce of her radiant new healthfulness
arrived at an exact understanding of him. Where
she was deluded was in supposing that she would no
longer dread his impetuous disposition to turn rosy
visions into facts. But she had the revived
convalescent’s ardour to embrace things positive
while they were not knocking at the door; dreams were
abhorrent to her, tasteless and innutritious; she
cast herself on the flood, relying on his towering
strength and mastery of men and events to bring her
to some safe landing —the dream of hearts
athirst for facts.
Alvan was at his writing-table doing stout gladiator’s
work on paper in a chamber of one of the gaunt hotels
of the heights, which are Death’s Heads there
in Winter and have the tongues in Summer, when a Swiss
lad entered with a round grin to tell him that a lady
on horseback below had asked for him—Dr.
Alvan. Who could the lady be? He thought
of too many. The thought of Clotilde was dismissed
in its dimness. Issuing and beholding her, his
face became illuminated as by a stroke of sunlight.
