y she saw them not, for she was
sound asleep. She dreamed of a masque at Hampton Court, long ago, and of
the gown she had worn and how merry she had been, and she dreamed of the
Queen. Then her dream changed and she sat with Henry Sedley on the sands
of a lost sea-coast, stretching in pale levels beyond the ken of man.
The surf raced towards them like shadowy white horses, and a red moon
hung low in the sky. There was music in the air, and his voice was
speaking, but suddenly the sea and its champing horses and the red moon
passed away. She stirred, and now it was not her brother's voice that
spoke. Green grass was beneath her; splendid roses, red and gold, were
censers slowly swinging; the silver fountain leaped as if to meet the
skylark's song. Slowly Damaris raised herself from her grassy bed and
looked with widening eyes upon an intruder. "I--I went to sleep," she
said. "Is't Heaven or will this rose also fade?" She closed her eyes for
a moment, then, opening them, "O my dream!" she cried. "Go not away!"

The sunlight fell upon his lifted head, and on his dress, that was as
rich as any bridegroom's, and on a sword-knot of silver gauze. "Look you
thus in Heaven, O my King?" she breathed.

Sir Mortimer approached her very slowly, for he saw that her senses
strayed. As he came nearer she shrank against the wall of bloom. "Dear
heart," he said, "I am a living man, and before all the world I now may
wear thy silver sleave." But the rose you gave me once before hath
withered into dust. I could not hold it back. "Break for me another
rose--_Dione_!"

She put out her hand and obeyed. Into her eyes had come a crescent
splendor, upon her lips the dawn of an ineffable smile; but yet
troubled, yet without full understanding, she, trembling, held out the
flower at arm's length. But when Ferne's hand closed upon hers, when she
felt herself drawn into his arms and his kiss upon her lips, his whisper
in her ears, she awoke, and thought not less of Heaven, but only that
Heaven had come to earth.

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Mortimer, by Mary Johnston

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