Anna Lombard, page 89 by Victoria Cross
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advanced farther through the tangle of the roses, the heavy breath of stephanotis and tuberose grew more and more oppressive, until at last, when I stood beneath her window, it weighed upon the senses. I glanced round me. There was deep, hot stillness everywhere. The whole of Anna's room was built out from the house being really nothing more than an extended veranda and from the casement ran down to the compound a little, light iron stair-way, which white convolvulus and passion-flowers and magnolia had embraced with their twining arms, till it seemed like a stair- way of flowers. I passed round behind this, and then was standing practically under the floor of her chamber. All was profoundly still. I slipped the guitar round and had it in position against my breast. I bent over it, and was just going to sound one of the strings that I thought might have slipped in coming, when a whisper, a breath it was hardly more struck upon my ear.
I looked up, my heart beating to suffocation. Anna's window was set wide, and from there I knew the sound had floated out upon the tranquil air. For the first moment I thought she had been awake and seen me coming, and my heart leaped up with joy. The word "Anna!" rose in a joyful cry and had almost burst from my lips, when it stayed frozen there. Another whisper came down to me, clearer than the last:
"Ke Wmlsurat ho !" (" How beautiful thou art!")
It was Anna's voice and speaking in Hindustani. Her voice, and yet as I had never heard it. There seemed a deep contralto note in it a vibration of intense passion. Ana I stood beneath, immovable, stunned, and paralyzed. Thick, intense, palpable silence for many seconds, and then again that deep whisper in the air, terribly distinct to my distended ear.
"Tumko asliik karti hun!" (" Hove you!"), and then two long sighs, and then silence again, so long, so absolute that it seemed to mock all sound as a dream.
I stood there rigid, tense. Then I looked up. Why did not the sky fall or the stars rush togethe