For this was Olivia, in his arms. St. George looked down at her, at
the white, exquisite face with its shadow of lashes, and it seemed
to him that he must not breathe, or remember, or hope, lest the gods
should be jealous and claim the moment, and leave him once more
forlorn. That was the secret, he thought, not to touch away the
elusive moment by hope or memory, but just to live it, filled with
its ecstasies, borne on the crest of its consciousness. It seemed to
him in some intimately communicated fashion, that the moment, the
very world of the island, was become to him a more intense object
of consciousness than himself. And somehow Olivia was its
expression--Olivia, here in his arms, with the stir of her breath
and the light, light pressure of her body and the fall of her hair,
not only symbols of the sovereign hour, but the hour's realities.
On either side the phantom wood pressed close about them, and its
light seemed coined by goblin fingers. Dissolving wind, persuading
little voices musical beyond the domain of music that he knew,
quick, poignant vistas of glades where the light spent itself in
its longed-for liberty of colour, labyrinthine ways of shadow that
taught the necessity of mystery.
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