His
hot, bold nature reasserted itself, the fire of his youth blazed up
again. He sang as if only the other boatman had been there and they had
seen the girls they loved among the trees upon the shore.
And the soul writhed, like an animal stretched and strapped upon the
board, to whom no anaesthetic, had been given.
Never before would it have been possible to Lady Holme to believe that
the mere sound of a word could inflict such torment upon a heart as the
sound of the word /amore/, coming from the boatman's lips, now inflicted
upon hers. Each time it came, with its soft beauty, its languor of
sweetness--like a word reclining--it flayed her soul alive, and showed
her red, raw bareness.
Yet she did not ask the man to stop singing. Few people in the hands of
Fate ask Fate for favours. Instinct speaks in the soul and says, "Be
silent."
The boat rounded the point of Torno and came at once into a lonelier
region of the lake. Autumn was more definite here. Its sadness spoke more
plainly. Habitations on the shores were fewer. The mountains were more
grim, though grander. And their greyness surely closed in a little upon
the boat, the rowers, the veiled woman who was being taken to Casa
Felice.
Perhaps to combat the gathering gloom of Nature the boatman sang more
loudly, with the full force of his voice. But suddenly he seemed to be
struck by the singular contrast opposed to his expansive energy by the
silent figure opposite to him.
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