XIV
Dorian Mode: Full Close
lessingham's 'i will have but upon no conditions
Queen Antiope, upon that good-night, went up to her rest. But Lessingham, being come at length to- his bedchamber, came and went betwixt window and bed and candle and hearth in an inward strife, as if right hand should grapple against left hand to peril of tearing in pieces the body that owns them.
'I will have nothing upon conditions,' he said at length, aloud. He stood now, looking in the glass until, with that staring, the reflection dimmed, and only his eyes, sharpened to steel with a veiling and confounding of all else, stood forth against him. 'Conditions!' he said; and, turning about, drew from the breast of his doublet a little withered leaf; the same which Anthea, for better convenience, had given him in Laimak. Upon this he looked for a while, musing; then opened the door: went out The corridors were as ante-chambers of sleep and oblivion: night-watchmen stood to a drowsed salute upon his passage, down the stairs, through empty halls, to the outer doors. At that leaf's touch doors opened. He came so to the privy garden. On noiseless hinges, under that leaf of virtue, the gate swung wide. And he began to say in himself, walking now in the night-light under stars, and with slower tread, and with an equanimity now of breath