第106章

She stepped forward on her bare feet as firm on that floor which seemed to heave up and down before my eyes as she had ever been -goatherd child leaping on the rocks of her native hills which she was never to see again.I snatched the arrow of gold from the table and threw it after her.

"Don't forget this thing," I cried, "you would never forgive yourself for leaving it behind."It struck the back of the fur coat and fell on the floor behind her.She never looked round.She walked to the door, opened it without haste, and on the landing in the diffused light from the ground-glass skylight there appeared, rigid, like an implacable and obscure fate, the awful Therese - waiting for her sister.The heavy ends of a big black shawl thrown over her head hung massively in biblical folds.With a faint cry of dismay Dona Rita stopped just within my room.

The two women faced each other for a few moments silently.Therese spoke first.There was no austerity in her tone.Her voice was as usual, pertinacious, unfeeling, with a slight plaint in it;terrible in its unchanged purpose.

"I have been standing here before this door all night," she said.

"I don't know how I lived through it.I thought I would die a hundred times for shame.So that's how you are spending your time?

You are worse than shameless.But God may still forgive you.You have a soul.You are my sister.I will never abandon you - till you die.""What is it?" Dona Rita was heard wistfully, "my soul or this house that you won't abandon.""Come out and bow your head in humiliation.I am your sister and Ishall help you to pray to God and all the Saints.Come away from that poor young gentleman who like all the others can have nothing but contempt and disgust for you in his heart.Come and hide your head where no one will reproach you - but I, your sister.Come out and beat your breast: come, poor Sinner, and let me kiss you, for you are my sister!"While Therese was speaking Dona Rita stepped back a pace and as the other moved forward still extending the hand of sisterly love, she slammed the door in Therese's face."You abominable girl!" she cried fiercely.Then she turned about and walked towards me who had not moved.I felt hardly alive but for the cruel pain that possessed my whole being.On the way she stooped to pick up the arrow of gold and then moved on quicker, holding it out to me in her open palm.

"You thought I wouldn't give it to you.Amigo, I wanted nothing so much as to give it to you.And now, perhaps - you will take it.""Not without the woman," I said sombrely.

"Take it," she said."I haven't the courage to deliver myself up to Therese.No.Not even for your sake.Don't you think I have been miserable enough yet?"I snatched the arrow out of her hand then and ridiculously pressed it to my breast; but as I opened my lips she who knew what was struggling for utterance in my heart cried in a ringing tone:

"Speak no words of love, George! Not yet.Not in this house of ill-luck and falsehood.Not within a hundred miles of this house, where they came clinging to me all profaned from the mouth of that man.Haven't you heard them - the horrible things? And what can words have to do between you and me?"Her hands were stretched out imploringly, I said, childishly disconcerted:

"But, Rita, how can I help using words of love to you? They come of themselves on my lips!""They come! Ah! But I shall seal your lips with the thing itself," she said."Like this..."

SECOND NOTE

The narrative of our man goes on for some six months more, from this, the last night of the Carnival season up to and beyond the season of roses.The tone of it is much less of exultation than might have been expected.Love as is well known having nothing to do with reason, being insensible to forebodings and even blind to evidence, the surrender of those two beings to a precarious bliss has nothing very astonishing in itself; and its portrayal, as he attempts it, lacks dramatic interest.The sentimental interest could only have a fascination for readers themselves actually in love.The response of a reader depends on the mood of the moment, so much so that a book may seem extremely interesting when read late at night, but might appear merely a lot of vapid verbiage in the morning.My conviction is that the mood in which the continuation of his story would appear sympathetic is very rare.

This consideration has induced me to suppress it - all but the actual facts which round up the previous events and satisfy such curiosity as might have been aroused by the foregoing narrative.

It is to be remarked that this period is characterized more by a deep and joyous tenderness than by sheer passion.All fierceness of spirit seems to have burnt itself out in their preliminary hesitations and struggles against each other and themselves.

Whether love in its entirety has, speaking generally, the same elementary meaning for women as for men, is very doubtful.

Civilization has been at work there.But the fact is that those two display, in every phase of discovery and response, an exact accord.Both show themselves amazingly ingenuous in the practice of sentiment.I believe that those who know women won't be surprised to hear me say that she was as new to love as he was.

During their retreat in the region of the Maritime Alps, in a small house built of dry stones and embowered with roses, they appear all through to be less like released lovers than as companions who had found out each other's fitness in a specially intense way.Upon the whole, I think that there must be some truth in his insistence of there having always been something childlike in their relation.