第40章

Dona Rita was curious to know how I got on with her peasant sister and all I could say in return for that inquiry was that the peasant sister was in her own way amiable.At this she clicked her tongue amusingly and repeated a remark she had made before: "She likes young men.The younger the better." The mere thought of those two women being sisters aroused one's wonder.Physically they were altogether of different design.It was also the difference between living tissue of glowing loveliness with a divine breath, and a hard hollow figure of baked clay.

Indeed Therese did somehow resemble an achievement, wonderful enough in its way, in unglazed earthenware.The only gleam perhaps that one could find on her was that of her teeth, which one used to get between her dull lips unexpectedly, startlingly, and a little inexplicably, because it was never associated with a smile.She smiled with compressed mouth.It was indeed difficult to conceive of those two birds coming from the same nest.And yet...

Contrary to what generally happens, it was when one saw those two women together that one lost all belief in the possibility of their relationship near or far.It extended even to their common humanity.One, as it were, doubted it.If one of the two was representative, then the other was either something more or less than human.One wondered whether these two women belonged to the same scheme of creation.One was secretly amazed to see them standing together, speaking to each other, having words in common, understanding each other.And yet!...Our psychological sense is the crudest of all; we don't know, we don't perceive how superficial we are.The simplest shades escape us, the secret of changes, of relations.No, upon the whole, the only feature (and yet with enormous differences) which Therese had in common with her sister, as I told Dona Rita, was amiability.

"For, you know, you are a most amiable person yourself," I went on.

"It's one of your characteristics, of course much more precious than in other people.You transmute the commonest traits into gold of your own; but after all there are no new names.You are amiable.You were most amiable to me when I first saw you.""Really.I was not aware.Not specially...""I had never the presumption to think that it was special.

Moreover, my head was in a whirl.I was lost in astonishment first of all at what I had been listening to all night.Your history, you know, a wonderful tale with a flavour of wine in it and wreathed in clouds, with that amazing decapitated, mutilated dummy of a woman lurking in a corner, and with Blunt's smile gleaming through a fog, the fog in my eyes, from Mills' pipe, you know.Iwas feeling quite inanimate as to body and frightfully stimulated as to mind all the time.I had never heard anything like that talk about you before.Of course I wasn't sleepy, but still I am not used to do altogether without sleep like Blunt...""Kept awake all night listening to my story!" She marvelled.

"Yes.You don't think I am complaining, do you? I wouldn't have missed it for the world.Blunt in a ragged old jacket and a white tie and that incisive polite voice of his seemed strange and weird.

It seemed as though he were inventing it all rather angrily.I had doubts as to your existence.""Mr.Blunt is very much interested in my story.""Anybody would be," I said."I was.I didn't sleep a wink.I was expecting to see you soon - and even then I had my doubts.""As to my existence?"

"It wasn't exactly that, though of course I couldn't tell that you weren't a product of Captain Blunt's sleeplessness.He seemed to dread exceedingly to be left alone and your story might have been a device to detain us...""He hasn't enough imagination for that," she said.

"It didn't occur to me.But there was Mills, who apparently believed in your existence.I could trust Mills.My doubts were about the propriety.I couldn't see any good reason for being taken to see you.Strange that it should be my connection with the sea which brought me here to the Villa.""Unexpected perhaps."

"No.I mean particularly strange and significant.""Why?"

"Because my friends are in the habit of telling me (and each other)that the sea is my only love.They were always chaffing me because they couldn't see or guess in my life at any woman, open or secret.

.."

"And is that really so?" she inquired negligently.

"Why, yes.I don't mean to say that I am like an innocent shepherd in one of those interminable stories of the eighteenth century.

But I don't throw the word love about indiscriminately.It may be all true about the sea; but some people would say that they love sausages.""You are horrible."

"I am surprised."

"I mean your choice of words."

"And you have never uttered a word yet that didn't change into a pearl as it dropped from your lips.At least not before me."She glanced down deliberately and said, "This is better.But Idon't see any of them on the floor."

"It's you who are horrible in the implications of your language.

Don't see any on the floor! Haven't I caught up and treasured them all in my heart? I am not the animal from which sausages are made."She looked at me suavely and then with the sweetest possible smile breathed out the word: "No."And we both laughed very loud.O! days of innocence! On this occasion we parted from each other on a light-hearted note.But already I had acquired the conviction that there was nothing more lovable in the world than that woman; nothing more life-giving, inspiring, and illuminating than the emanation of her charm.Imeant it absolutely - not excepting the light of the sun.

From this there was only one step further to take.The step into a conscious surrender; the open perception that this charm, warming like a flame, was also all-revealing like a great light; giving new depth to shades, new brilliance to colours, an amazing vividness to all sensations and vitality to all thoughts: so that all that had been lived before seemed to have been lived in a drab world and with a languid pulse.