But now, seeking some, even the smallest solace in the
intense agony of desolation that was upon her, she caught--in her
bleeding woman's heart--at this hand stretched out from Rome. She got up,
went to her bedroom, unlocked her despatch-box, took out these letters of
Robin's. They had not stirred her, yet she had kept them. Now she came
down once more to the piazza, sat by the tea-table, opened them, read
them, re-read them, whispered them over again and again. Something she
must have; some hand she must catch at. She could not die in this
freezing cold which she had never known, this cold that came out of the
Inferno, at whose cavern mouth she stood. And Robin said he was
there--Robin said he was there.
She did not love Robin. It seemed to her now that it would be grotesque
for her to love any man. Her face was not meant for love. But as she read
these ardent, romantic letters, written since the tragedy that had
overtaken her, she began to ask herself, with a fierce anxiety, whether
what Robin affirmed could be the truth? Was he unlike other men? Was his
nature capable of a devotion of the soul to another soul, of a devotion
to which any physical ugliness, even any physical horror, would count as
nothing?
After that last scene with Fritz she felt as if he were no longer her
husband, as if he were only a man who had fled from her in fear. She did
not think any more of his rights, her duties.
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