We have done what we
were meant to do and can do no more. Let the race of men continue. Our
course is run out. To strive beyond the goal is to offer oneself up to
the derision of the gods. In her song, Lady Holme felt that suddenly, and
with great ease, she touched the perfection that it was possible for her
to reach. She felt that, and she saw what she had done--in the eyes of
Lady Cardington that wept, in Sir Donald's eyes, which had become young
as the eyes of Spring, and in the eyes of that poor prisoner who was the
real Rupert Carey. When she sang the first refrain she knew.
"Torna in fior di giovinezza
Isaotta Blanzesmano,
Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano:
Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."
She understood while she sang--she had never understood before, nor could
conceive why she understood now--what love had been to the world, was
being, would be so long as there was a world. The sweetness of love did
not merely present itself to her imagination, but penetrated her soul.
And that penetration, while it carried with it and infused through her
whole being a delicate radiance, that was as the radiance of light in the
midst of surrounding blackness--beams of the moon in a forest--carried
with it also into her heart a frightful sense of individual isolation, of
having missed the figure of Truth in the jostling crowd of shams.
Fritz stood there against the wall. Yes--Fritz.
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