"We can mean—nothing to each other in the future," Orion went on almost as if he spoke to himself, "and this is only prolonging the agony for me, if not for you.”
It was a worse agony for her than he imagined, she thought.
Whatever the responsibilities to which he had to return, he did not understand that she had to go hack to Mikis to tell the Prince that she would not marry him, to face her Aunt's anger and undoubtedly his.
She had thought before she came to Delphi that it would be very difficult, creating arguments and a situation with which she felt very inadequate to cope.
But now, having met Orion, she knew that not only to marry a man she did not love was impossible but whatever happened she would never now consent to marry the Prince.
Perhaps, she thought to herself, her bravery when she left the Palace had been superficial, and if the Prince had proved as pleasant and as charming as everybody averred she might have allowed herself to give in to the pressure that would undoubtedly have been put upon her.
It would be, Athena was well aware, ignominious and humiliating to return to England unmarried.
She would have to make explanations not only to her family but also to those relatives and friends who had been let in on the secret of what her journey to Athens actually entailed.
There was also the Greek Ambassador and members of his staff who had come to Wadebridge Castle to discuss the proposals with her father and grandmother.
At the thought of the Dowager Marchioness Athena felt much more apprehensive than she did in regard to the rest of her family.
Her grandmother had always meant so much to her. She had taken her mother's place after she had died, and she had adored her from the moment she was old enough to recognise anyone.
The Dowager Marchioness was now old and in ill health, and Athena feared that after setting her heart on arranging this marriage between the Prince of her House and her favourite grandchild, to learn that her arrangement had failed would be almost like a death-blow.
"I cannot help it," Athena thought. "Much as I love Grandmama I cannot do as she wishes, not after having met Orion and learning what love between two people really means."
This was not the bloodless comradeship between a man and a woman who had common interests or who were prepared, because they met more or less on equal terms, to find friendship and perhaps even a sexual satisfaction in each other.
What she felt for Orion was love.
She looked at him across the room and she thought that his face shone with a light that was echoed in her own.
Together they had found perfect love, together they had penetrated the mystic innermost shrine of life itself.
How could either of them afterwards ever be satisfied with second best?
"I .shall never marry," Athena thought wildly, and remembered how often she had been told that marriage meant more to a woman than to a man.
Orion would find himself a wife—for all she knew he might have one already and she would merely remain in his mind as a moment of enchantment.
Perhaps he would remember her when the moon was full or when he came to Delphi again.
She felt as if her whole body cried out in protest, and yet what could she do ?
As if with an effort Orion turned from the window.
"You must rest," he said. "Lie down, Athena, and try to go to sleep. You are quite safe while I am here and I am almost certain that we shall hear no more of Kazandis."
He paused to add:
"He has taken a large sum of money from Argeros, and as his action will doubtless be reported to the Military as will his robbery of last night at Arachova he will know that the soldiers are looking for him and will keep away from this region for some time."
Athena knew that he was talking to reassure her.
Looking round the bare room she said:
"What will... you do?"
"I am going to take one of the pillows from the bed," Orion said, "and there is a blanket in the cupboard. I promise you I shall be quite comfortable on the floor. I have slept in worse places and everything in the Taverna is very clean."
"I ... I would not wish you to be ... uncomfortable. If you want to go to my room I will try to be ... brave and you could leave the doors open so that you will hear if I ... called out to you."
"Did you call or scream when you knew Kazandis was breaking into your room from the roof?" Orion enquired.
She did not answer and he smiled.
"I know exactly what happened. Your voice died in your throat. It is what happens to most people when they are really afraid."
He moved around to the other side of the bed and picked up a pillow.
"So we will do things my way, Athena. Lie down and try to relax. You have had a long day and I feel quite certain you will sleep." "And... you?"
"I am used to going without sleep," he answered, "and if I do doze off, it will be with one eye open, like wild animals who are seldom taken by surprise."
He walked across the room with the pillow in his hand and she had the feeling that he deliberately did not look at her when he came to the bed.
There was a cupboard on the opposite wall and on a shelf at the top of it was a folded blanket.
Orion drew it out and put it down on the floor in a patch of silvery light made by the moon-beams.
"Now you can see me," he said, "and you will not feel afraid. Goodnight, Athena. Try to sleep."
"You will not... go in the ... morning without ... telling me? " she pleaded.
"I suspect that however carefully I move you will hear me," he answered, "but I shall be leaving very early. My horse has been ordered and tonight I told the man who brought you from Itea that you would be leaving at about seven o'clock. Madame Argeros will give you breakfast before you go."
He had arranged everything, Athena thought despairingly, and felt as if he almost told her what she must do for the rest of her life.
She wondered what he would say if she confided in him.
Would he, because he was Greek, tell her that her duty lay in marrying the Prince? Would his patriotism mean more to him than his feelings for her?
She could not believe that any man feeling as he must have felt when he swept her up to the stars would wish to hand her over tamely to another man who might teach her to love him.
And yet after all what did she know about Orion? They had talked together for a few brief hours.
Yet they had found the secret of eternity together and that meant more than a lifetime of knowledge.
"Shall I tell him?" Athena asked herself.
Then she thought there was really no point. He had already given her the answer to her problem and as far as she was concerned it was no .
It was not only that she knew she could not bear another man to touch her; it would also be intolerable to live in Greece with the knowledge that once she was married somehow, by some chance, she might encounter Orion again.
She knew it would be impossible not to look for him in every crowd, at every party, in every street.
She would be searching the face of every man she saw for those perfect features, for that slim, athletic body, for the curve of his dark head.
And if they did meet—what then?
She had no idea what he did. All she knew with certainty was that he was the most cultured and civilised man she had ever met.
That was not to say that he might not live in very humble circumstances while she ... she would be a Princess!
"I must go away," Athena thought. "I must return to England and forget there was ever such a country as Greece and one man who means to me everything that was the splendour, the beauty and the inspiration of the past."
Orion had arranged his hard bed to his satisfaction and now he said: "You are not lying down, Athena, as I told you to do. Shut your eyes and think of all the happiness we have known today. Forget everything else."
He was still thinking that she was afraid, Athena knew. But her thoughts were far
away from Kazandis, and instead she was thinking only of Orion and what it would mean to lose him.
But because of the note of authority in his voice she did as he told her. She lay down, pulling the sheet over her shoulders and turning her cheek against the soft pillow.
"Good-night, Athena," Orion said as he lay down on the floor.
"Will you ... always remember today?" she asked softly.
"You know the answer to that question," he replied. "It would be impossible for me ever to forget."
His words were somehow comforting but she wanted to ask him so much more. Yet instinctively she knew that if she did he would not give her the right answers.
All the time they had been together she had known without being told in words that there was a deep reserve about him and it was that reserve which she knew now was like an impregnable wall between them.
And after all, what could she suggest?
That they should meet after she returned to the Palace? That was impossible!
That she should not return to the Palace?
Athena knew in her heart that was what she wanted!
She wanted Orion to ask her to stay with him and, unbelievable though it seemed, she knew what her answer would be.
Whatever the hardships she might encounter, whatever the heartbreaks, if they came, it would be worth everything to be with him if only for a year, a month, a week, any time however short, so that their love would be complete.
How strange it was, Athena thought, that while most people looked forward to living perhaps seventy years, all she wanted to live was just one moment of time however brief in the arms of one man.
It was difficult to express even to herself, but she knew that the life that had been hers for eightteen years had not been the fulfilment of everything of which she was capable.
There was no reason to think, however many years she lived in the future, that they would be any different.
In those minutes, when Orion kissed her and she had experienced a wonder and glory that was not of this world, she had lived—perhaps a whole lifetime—to the fullest of what any man or woman was capable and still remain human.
“How can I lose it? How can I let it go?" she asked herself and knew there was no answer.
Athena was very innocent, but she could not help feeling that any other man in the world in the situation in which she was now would not by lying on the floor on the other side of the room but beside her.
She attracted Orion, he felt about her as she felt about him, and yet deliberately he would not accept the fact that she was all too willing to surrender herself. He would not allow his desires to overthrow the conviction of his mind.
She respected him for it as she knew he would respect her and yet her whole being wanted him so insistently, so violently, that only a life-time of self-control prevented Athena from running to lie down beside him.
She wanted to feel herself close against him, she wanted to find in his arms not only the wonder and the glory of love but the protection and the sense of safety which she knew only he could give her.
She felt as if her whole heart cried out to him to understand.
She dared not put what she was feeling into words, and although she knew he was not asleep he did not speak to her again.
Slowly the hours of the night passed, the moonlight gradually began to fade and the silver light was no longer so intense in the little room.
It was then, just before dawn came, that Athena knew Orion was asleep.
For the first time she heard his even breathing and she wondered if any two people had ever spent a stranger night, both needing each other, both awake and both respecting a silent separation that was self-imposed.
"I love him!" Athena thought to herself. "I love him so completely and intensely that even if he wishes to crucify me, as indeed he is doing, I will obey him and do what he wants."
"I will go back," she told herself.
Because she had known Orion, she would face all the difficulties and all the unpleasantness that awaited her with a courage and a self-control which he himself would show in such circumstances.
She would be quite firm—she would promise the Prince large sums of money for the poor of Parnassus.
She had learnt that the whole country was in desperate need of money, suffering from centuries of crippling taxes levied by the Turks and now by the King.
It would not be like accepting the money for himself, and she was certain she could give it to him in such a way that he would not feel humiliated by her generosity.
Then she would go home.
She had no wish to see Athens again; she had no wish to see any other part of Greece.
She just wanted to return in an English ship to the quiet life of Wade-bridge Castle.
She knew her father liked having her there with him and she would devote herself to him for the rest of his life.
They would ride together, hunt in the winter, and now that she was old enough would play hostess instead of her grandmother.
Although she supposed there would be men who would want to make love to her and to marry her, she knew it would be impossible to accept them.
"I shall be dedicated to an ideal," she told herself a little bitterly, "and ideals can be very ... cold and ... lonely ... especially when one grows ...old."
She would fill her days, she would make certain of that. Only as far as her heart was concerned it had been given to one man and it would be impossible for her to give it to any other.
She thought of the many orphanages that her father had on his enormous Estate.
Perhaps when he died, Athena thought, there would be a child to whom she would take a fancy and whom she could adopt.
Anyway there would be plenty of children for her to spend her huge fortune on and England would benefit instead of Greece.
It was easy to plan, but as she sat up very, very carefully so as not by a sudden movement to awaken Orion, she could see him in the gradually lightening sky, lying fast asleep.
Lying on his back with his shirt open nearly to the waist he looked, Athena thought, like a fallen god, perhaps like one of the statues that had once stood in Delphi and which Nero had carried away to Rome.
She had also meant to go to Rome, but now she knew that was another place that was barred to her.
How could she bear to find carved in marble or cast in bronze the man she had known as a living, pulsating being who had sent her blood racing through her veins?
"If I were an artist," Athena thought, "I would try to draw him as he is now. Then when I felt unhappy and miserable I could look at the sketch and remember what he meant to me."
But she knew there was no need for a drawing, a painting or even a sculpture.
Each line of Orion's face was indelibly etched in her mind and she knew that every time she shut her eyes and thought of him he would be there in her consciousness.
"I love you! I love you!" Athena thought looking at him. "Where-ever you go, wherever you may be, my love will be with you, protecting you, keeping you, perhaps inspiring you, even if you are unaware of it.'
If one believed in prayer, she thought, one must also believe in thought-transference : her prayers and thought and living sparks from within herself would wing out across the sea towards Orion and find him.
They would form an aura of protection around him, and perhaps because of it the light that she sensed came from him would bring Inspiration and help to all those with whom he came into contact.
"If that is all I can do for you, my beloved," Athena told him silently, "then at least it will be some small way by which I can express my love."
She sat looking at him as the room grew lighter and lighter. When the first rays of the sun appeared over the horizon suddenly there was a golden glow and the whole room was transformed. It was then that Orion awoke.
He opened his eyes and sat up abruptly and saw that Athena was looking at him.
"I have been asleep."
"Yo
u did not sleep for a very long time," she answered.
"It must be late!" he exclaimed, "and I meant to leave early."
"Does it matter so ... tremendously?"
"I did not mean to see you again."
"But that was ... impossible: you could not have ... left without... waking me."
"Then as I am so late," Orion said, "I will see you off first. I want to make sure that you are safe, and perhaps that is what I should have arranged in the first place."
He was trying to speak in an ordinary, matter-of-fact manner, and she knew that having looked at her once he deliberately looked away and did not glance again in her direction.
Now he started to move the furniture from the door, putting it back in the places where it stood normally.
After he had finished he walked onto the landing and crossed into her room; she knew that he was satisfying himself that it was safe for her to go there.
He came back into the bed-room.
"I am going downstairs to wash and shave," he said, "and as I am sure Madame Argeros will be awake by now I will order breakfast for both of us. I will also see that your horse is ready for you when you have eaten."
"Thank you," Athena said.
She knew he had taken charge and there was nothing for her to do except obey his orders.
Orion turned towards the door, then as he reached it he looked back at Athena as he had not done since the first moment of waking.
"You are very beautiful in the morning," he said in a deep voice. "You look like Persephone must have done when she came back from the darkest bowels of the earth to bring spring and hope to mankind."
His eyes seemed to take in everything about her, the soft outline of her breasts beneath the thin nightgown, the gold of her hair falling over her shoulders, the light in her grey eyes which seemed to hold the reflection of the sunlight.
Then he was gone and she heard him clattering down the stairs and a moment later his voice talking to Madame Argeros.
She got out of bed and went to her own room.
She washed in cold water which was no hardship as she realised that soon the sun would be very hot.
Kiss the Moonlight Page 8