The boat went away swiftly,
and she nearly fell into the water, but managed to save herself by a
rapid movement. She sank down, feeling horribly afraid. Yet, a moment
after, she asked herself why she had not let herself go. It was too dark
there under the house. Out in the open air it would be different, it
would be easier. She wanted the stars above her. She did not know why she
wanted them, why she wanted anything now.
The boat slipped out from the low archway into the open water.
It was a pale and delicate night, one of those autumn nights that are
full of a white mystery. A thin mist lay about the water, floated among
the lower woods. Higher up, the mountains rose out of it. Their green
sides looked black and soft in the starlight, their summits strangely
remote and inaccessible. Through the mist, here and there, shone faintly
the lights of the scattered villages. The bells in the water were still
ringing languidly, and their voices emphasised the pervading silence, a
silence full of the pensive melancholy of Nature in decline.
Viola rowed slowly out towards the middle of the lake. Awe had come upon
her. There seemed a mystical presence in the night, something far away
but attentive, a mind concentrated upon the night, upon Nature, upon
herself. She was very conscious of it, and it seemed to her not as if
eyes, but as if a soul were watching her and everything about her; the
stars and the mountains, the white mist, even the movement of the boat.
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