, with a new import: 'Where love is,
there is God also.'

The fever of the music increased, and with it my fever. We seemed to be
approaching some mighty climax. I thought I might faint with ecstasy,
but I held on, and the climax arrived--a climax which touched the
limits of expression in expressing all that two souls could feel in
coming together.

'Tristan has come into the garden,' I muttered.

And Diaz, turning his face towards me, nodded.

We plunged forward into the love-scene itself--the scene in which the
miracle of love is solemnized and celebrated. I thought that of all
miracles, the miracle which had occurred that night, and was even then
occurring, might be counted among the most wondrous. What occult forces,
what secret influences of soul on soul, what courage on his part, what
sublime immodesty and unworldliness on mine had brought it about! In
what dreadful disaster would it not end! ... I cared not in that
marvellous hectic hour how it would end. I knew I had been blessed beyond
the common lot of women. I knew that I was living more intensely and more
fully than I could have hoped to live. I knew that my experience was a
supreme experience, and that another such could not be contained in my
life.... And Diaz was so close, so at one with me.... A hush descended on
the music, and I found myself playing strange disturbing chords with the
left hand, irregularly repeated, opposing the normal accent of the bar,
and becoming stranger and more disturbing. And Diaz was playing an air
fragmentary and poignant. The lovers were waiting; the very atmosphere of
the garden was drenched with an agonizing and exquisite anticipation. The
whole world stood still, expectant, while the strange chords fought
gently and persistently against the rhythm.

'Hear the beating of their hearts,' Diaz' whisper floated over the
chords.

It was too much. The obsession of his presence, reinforced by the
vibrating of his wistful, sensuous voice, overcame me suddenly. My hands
fell from the keyboard. He looked at me--and with what a glance!

'I can bear no more,' I cried wildly. 'It is too beautiful, too
beautiful!'

And I rushed from the piano, and sat down in an easy-chair, and hid my
face in my hands.

He came to me, and bent over me.

'Magda,' he whispered, 'show me your face.' With his hands he delicately
persuaded my hands away from my face, and forced me to look on him. 'How
dark and splendid you are, Magda!' he said, s