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Updated: May 21, 2025
Perhaps it would be better to stand on the cliff, and only look forth across the river." "I cannot stay always here," returned Gnulemah, shaking her turbaned head, with its gleaming bandeau and rattling pendants. "But no wall is between me and the sky; the flame of my lamp goes upward, and why should not Gnulemah?" "A friend is the only world one does not tire of," he replied after a pause.
Had the man survived, Balder might still have doubted; being dead, doubts were but cowardly sophistry. But during the brief pause he made, came a backward recoil of that impulse which had swept him on. All at once he was cold, and wavered. Gnulemah was sitting with her elbow on her knee, her strange eyes fixed upon him. Had he duly considered what effect all this might have on her?
Each will be above his rival, his enemy! he will be absolute master over him. And from that resolve is born murder!" "Why do you tell Gnulemah this?" she asked, lifting her head like a majestic serpent. But she could not stop him now. His voice, measured at first, was now driven by emotion.
At this moment, Balder's respect for wealth was many fold greater than ever it had been before. It should be the sword and shield wherewith he would protect the woman of his heart. Gnulemah was not of the kind who need the discipline of poverty; her beauty and goodness would be best nurtured beneath an affluent sun. Wants and inconveniences would rather pain and mystify than educate her.
While yet at a distance, he called to her, not from impatience, but because he stood in awe of the meeting, and wanted the first moments over. His voice touched Gnulemah like a beloved hand, and turned her towards him. Her face, which had not learned to be the mask of emotion, but was instead the full and immediate index thereof, brightened with joy; and as he came near, the joy increased.
Never, since Diana stooped to earth to love Endymion, was seen a nobler sight than Gnulemah in her simple, clinging tunic, whose heavy golden hem kissed her polished knee, while her round and clear-cut arms were left bare. After the first glance, her lover lowered his eyes, lest he should forget all else in gazing at her. But the blood mounted silently to his cheeks and burned there.
"Yes, often!" she said, fingering the golden serpent thoughtfully. "But that could not be unless I put out the lamp. Sometimes I get tired of this world, it has changed since I first came to it." "Is it less beautiful?" "It is smaller than it used to be," said Gnulemah, pensively. "Once the house was so high, it seemed to touch heaven; see how it has dwindled since then!
Was it a yell of triumph, a shout for help, a scream of terror? It does not come again; but the silence is more terrible than the cry. "Hiero, it was his voice!" said Gnulemah. She looked in her lover's face, trusting to his wisdom and strength. She rested her courage on his, but her eyes stirred him like a trumpet-call. The burden of that cry had been calamity.
She peeped at the questioner between her fingers, but ventured not quite to emerge from behind them, as she answered, her primary attempt at description, "Hiero is Hiero!" "And how long have you been here?" inquired Balder with a smile. Gnulemah forgot her embarrassment in wondering how so remarkable a creature happened to ask questions whose answers her whole world knew!
While he could not but rejoice to have been spared actually hurrying a soul from the life of free will to an unchangeable eternity, yet his dominant instinct was to man himself for the hostile issues still to arise. He looked at the being through whom his own life had received so dark a stain with stern, keen eyes. Gnulemah remained within the circle of her lover's arm.
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