All at once a cold shudder ran freezingly through his veins,--a something chill and impalpable appeared to pass between him and her caressing arms--his limbs grew numb and heavy--his sight began to fail him ... he was sinking ... sinking, he knew not where, when suddenly she withdrew herself from his embrace. Instantly his strength came back to him with a rush--he sprang to his feet and stood erect, breathless, dizzy, and confused--his pulses beating like hammer-strokes and every fiber in his frame quivering with excitement.
Entranced, impassioned, elated,--filled with unutterable incomprehensible joy, he would have clasped her again to his heart,--but she retreated swiftly from him, and standing several paces off, motioned him not to approach her more nearly. He scarcely heeded her warning gesture, ... plunging recklessly through the flowers he had almost reached her side, when to his amazement and fear, his eager progress was stopped!
Stopped by some invisible, intangible barrier, which despite all his efforts, forcibly prevented him from advancing one step further,--she was close within an arm's length of him--and yet he could not touch her! ... Nothing apparently divided them, save a small breadth of the Ardath blossoms gleaming ivory-soft in the moonlight ... nevertheless that invincible influence thrust him back and held him fast, as though he were chained to the ground with weights of iron!
"Edris!". he cried loudly, his former transport of delight changed into agony.. "Edris! ... Come to me! I cannot come to you! What is this that parts us?"
"Death!" she answered.. and the solemn word seemed to toll slowly through the still air like a knell.
He stood bewildered and dismayed. Death! What could she mean? What in the name of all her beautiful, delicate, glowing youth, had she to do with death? Gazing at her in mute wonder, he saw her stoop and gather one flower from the clusters growing thickly around her--she held it shieldwise against her breast, where it shone like a large white jewel, and regarded him with sweet, wistful eyes full of a mournful longing.
"Death lies between us, my Beloved!" she continued--"One line of shadow ... only one little line! But thou mayest not pass it, save when God commands,--and I--I cannot! For I know naught of death, . . save that it is a heavy dreamless sleep allotted to over-wearied mortals, wherein they gain brief rest 'twixt many lives,--lives that, like recurring dawns, rouse them anew to labor. How often hast thou slept thus, my Theos, and forgotten me!"
She paused, ... and Alwyn met her clear, steadfast looks with a swift glance of something like defiance. For as she spoke, his previous idea concerning her came back upon him with redoubled force. He was keenly conscious of the vehement fever of love into which her presence had thrown him,--but all the same he was unable to dispossess himself of the notion that she was a pupil and an accomplice of Heliobas, thoroughly trained and practiced in his mysterious doctrine, and that therefore she most probably had some magnetic power in herself that at her pleasure not only attracted him TO her, but also held him thus motionless at a distance, FROM her.