I was separated from those who knew me, and as things now
stood - unless this were, indeed, Lavedan - it might be days before
they found me again.
I was beginning to deplore my folly at having cut myself adrift
from my followers in the first place, and having embroiled myself
with the soldiers in the second; I was beginning to contemplate the
wisdom of seeking some outhouse of this mansion wherein to lie
until morning, when of a sudden a broad shaft of light, coming from
one of the windows on the first floor, fell athwart the courtyard.
Instinctively I crouched back into the shadow of my friendly
buttress, and looked up.
That sudden shaft of light resulted from the withdrawal of the
curtains that masked a window. At this window, which opened outward
on to a balcony; I now beheld - and to me it was as the vision of
Beatrice may have been to Dante - the white figure of a woman. The
moonlight bathed her, as in her white robe she leaned upon the
parapet gazing upward into the empyrean. A sweet, delicate face
I saw, not endowed, perhaps, with that exquisite balance and
proportion of feature wherein they tell us beauty lies, but blessed
with a wondrously dainty beauty all its own; a beauty, perhaps, as
much of expression as of form; for in that gentle countenance was
mirrored every tender grace of girlhood, all that is fresh and pure
and virginal.
I held my breath, I think, as I stood in ravished contemplation of
that white vision.
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