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With what composure he might, he assured Fulvia of his desire to serve her, and asked if she had no hope of obtaining her release from the Holy See. She answered: none, since enquiry must reveal that she was the daughter of a man who had been prosecuted for heresy, and that after his death she had devoted the small sum he had left her to the publication of his writings.
His words calmed the two disputants who were preparing to do battle over Odo's unborn scientific creed, and the talk growing more general, the Professor turned to his daughter, saying, "My Fulvia, is the study prepared?"
Was not this the word for which he had waited? But still some deeper instinct held him back, warning him, as it seemed, that to fall below his purpose at such a juncture was the only measurable failure. He must know more before he yielded, see deeper into her heart and his; and each moment brought the clearer conviction that there was more to know and see. "This is unlike you, Fulvia," he said.
All these considerations, however, were subordinate to the thought that he must see Fulvia at once.
'Gently! said the lady, stamping her small foot violently: 'you pull my hair as if you were plucking up a weed! 'Dull thing! continued the directress of the ceremony. 'Do you not know how delicate is your mistress? you are not dressing the coarse horsehair of the widow Fulvia. Now, then, the riband that's right. Fair Julia, look in the mirror; saw you ever anything so lovely as yourself?
Odo felt a slow cold strength pouring into all his veins. It was as though his enemies, in thinking to mix a mortal poison, had rendered him invulnerable. He bent over her with great gentleness. "Fulvia, this is madness," he said. "A moment's thought must show you what passions are here at work. Can you not rise above such fears? No one can judge between us but ourselves."
But at any rate, when this news was announced, both sides laid down their arms and effected a reconciliation, either because Fulvia had actually been the original cause of their variance or because they chose to make her death an excuse in view of the fear with which each inspired the other and the equality of their forces and hopes.
Amshar was kneeling at her feet, and kissing her gown gratefully. She pushed him away with her foot, and, coolly turning aside, began to arrange her hair. As I approached her, she glanced down at the Arab. "Horrible! horrible!" she said. I remembered that these were her words when her husband was lifted from the sea to the 'Fulvia'.
The "All's well" of the look-out seemed to come from an endless distance; the swish of water against the dividing hull of the 'Fulvia' sounded like a call to silence from another world; the phosphorescence swimming through the jarred waters added to the sensation of unreality and dreams.
"Remember, Fulvia," he went on almost sternly, "that this is the end for which we have worked together all these years the end for which we renounced each other and went forth in our youth, you to exile and I to an unwilling sovereignty. It was because we loved this cause better than ourselves that we had strength to give up for it our personal hopes of happiness.
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