She knew what she was to youth that instinctively loves
beauty.
She sat down in a cane chair. It seemed to her as if people were
scourging her with thongs of steel, as if she were bleeding from the
strokes.
She looked out across the lake.
The butler brought tea and put it beside her. She did not hear him come
or go. Behind her the waterfall roared down between the cypresses. Before
her the lake spread out its grey, unruffled surface. And this was the
baptism of Casa Felice, her baptism into a new life. Her agony was the
more intense because she had never been an intellectual woman, had never
lived the inner life. Always she had depended on outward things. Always
she had been accustomed to bustle, movement, excitement, perpetual
intercourse with people who paid her homage. Always she had lived for the
world, and worshipped, because she had seen those around her worshipping,
the body.
And now all was taken from her. Without warning, without a moment for
preparation, she was cast down into Hell. Even her youth was made useless
to her.
When she thought of that she began to cry, sitting there by the stone
balustrade of the piazza, to cry convulsively. She remembered her pity
for old age, for the monstrous loss it cannot cease from advertising. And
now she, in her youth, had passed it on the road to the pit. Lady
Cardington was a beautiful woman. She pitied herself bitterly because she
was morbid, as many beautiful women are when they approach old age.
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