He let her go instantly. She began to
row back towards Casa Felice. And now that mystical attention of which
she had been conscious, that soul watching the night, her in the night,
was surely profounder, watched with more intensity as a spectator bending
down to see a struggle. Never before had she felt as if beyond human life
there was life compared with which human life was as death. And now she
told herself that she was mad, that this shock of human passion coming
suddenly upon her loneliness had harmed her brain, that this cry for
salvation addressed to one who looked upon herself as destroyed had
deafened reason within her.
His boat kept up with hers. She did not look at him. Casa Felice came in
sight. She pulled harder, like a mad creature. Her boat shot under the
archway into the darkness. Somehow--how, she did not know--she guided it
to the steps, left it, rushed up the staircase in the dark and came out
on to the piazza. There she stopped where the waterfall could cast its
spray upon her face. She stayed till her hair and cheeks and hands were
wet. Then she went to the balustrade. His boat was below and he was
looking up. She saw the tragic mask of his face down in the thin mist
that floated about the water, and now she imagined him in the pit, gazing
up and seeking those stars in which he still believed though he could not
see them.
"Go away," she said, not knowing why she said it or if she wished him to
go, only knowing that she had lost the faculty of self-control and might
say, do, be anything in that moment.
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