And all these things were terrible to her--all. Not one was beautiful.
Each one seemed to threaten her, to say to her, "Leave us, we are not for
such as you." Well, she would obey these voices. She would go. She
wrapped the cloak more closely round her, went to the balustrade and
leaned over it looking at the water.
It seemed to her as if her life had been very trivial. She thought now
that she had never really enjoyed anything. She looked upon her life as
if it were down there in the water just beneath her, and she saw it as a
broken thing, a thing in many fragments. And the fragments, however
carefully and deftly arranged, could surely never have been fitted
together and become a complete whole. Everything in her life had been
awry as her face was now awry, and she had not realised it. Her love for
Fritz, and his--what he had called his, at least--for her, had seemed to
her once to be a round and beautiful thing, a circle of passion without a
flaw. How distorted, misshapen, absurd it had really been. Nothing in her
life had been carried through to a definite end. Even her petty struggle
with Miss Schley had been left unfinished. Those who had loved her had
been like spectres, and now, like spectres, had faded away. And all
through their spectral love she had clung to Fritz. She had clasped the
sand like a mad-woman, and never felt the treacherous grains shifting
between her arms at the touch of every wind.
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