He never turned his eyes from her face.

"Poor Robin!--but it isn't your fault."

Then she put out her hand and touched his gently.

"My fault?

"That it was all a fancy, all a weaving of words. You want to be what you thought you were, but you can't be."

"You're wrong, Viola, you're utterly wrong--"

"Hush, Robin! That woman you spoke of--that woman knows."

He cleared his throat, got up, went over to the wall, leaned his arms upon it and hid his face on them. There were tears in his eyes. At that moment he was suffering more than she was. His soul was rent by an abject sense of loss, an abject sense of guilty impotence and shame.

It was frightful that he could not be what he wished to be, what he had thought he was. He longed to comfort her and could not do anything but plunge a sword into her heart. He longed to surround her with tenderness--yes, he was sure he longed--but he could only hold up to her in the sun her loneliness. And he had lost--what had he not lost? A dream of years, an imagination that had been his inseparable and dearest companion. His loneliness was intense in that moment as was hers. The tears seemed to scald his eyes. In his heart he cursed God for not permitting him to be what he longed to be, to feel what he longed to feel. It seemed to him monstrous, intolerable, that even our emotions are arranged for us as are arranged the events of our lives. He felt like a doll, a horrible puppet.

"Poor old Robin!"

She was standing beside him, and in her voice there was, just for a moment, the sound that sometimes comes into a mother's voice when she speaks to her little child in the dark.

At the moment when he knew he did not love the white angel she stood beside him.

And she thought that she was only a wretched woman.

CHAPTER XX

ROBIN had gone. He had gone, still protesting that Lady Holme was deceiving herself, protesting desperately, with the mistaken chivalry of one who was not only a gentleman to his finger-tips but who was also an almost fanatical lover of his own romance. After recovering from the first shock of his disillusion, and her strange reception of it, so different from anything he could have imagined possible in her, or indeed in any woman who had lived as she had, he had said everything that was passionate, everything that fitted in with his old protestations when she was beautiful. He had spoken, perhaps, even more to recall himself than to convince her, but he had not succeeded in either effort, and a strange, mingled sense of tragic sadness and immense relief invaded him as the width of waterway grew steadily larger between his boat and Casa Felice. He could have wept for her and for himself. He could even have wept for humanity. Yet he felt the comfort of one from whom an almost intolerable strain has just been removed. To a man of his calibre, sensitive, almost feminine in his subtlety, the situation had been exquisitely painful. He had felt what Viola was feeling as well as what he was feeling. He had struggled like a creature taken in a net. And how useless it had all been! He found himself horribly inferior to her. Her behaviour at this critical moment had proved to him that in his almost fantastic conception of her he had shown real insight. Then why had his heart betrayed his intellect? Why had his imagination proved true metal, his affection false? He asked himself these questions. He searched his own nature, as many a man has done in moments when he has found himself unworthy. And he was met by mystery, by the "It was impossible for me!" which stings the soul that would be strong. He remembered Carey's words that night in Half Moon Street when Sir Donald had accompanied him home after the dinner in Cadogan Square. Sir Donald had gone. He and Carey were alone, and he had said that if one loves, one loves the kernel not the shell. And Carey had said, "I think if the shell is a beautiful shell, and becomes suddenly broken, it makes a devil of a lot of difference in what most people think of the kernel." And when he--Robin--had replied, "It wouldn't to me," Carey had abruptly exclaimed, "I think it would." After Carey had gone Robin remembered very well saying to himself that it was strange no man will believe you if you hint at the truth of your true self. That night he had not known his true self and Carey had known it.

But then, had he loved the shell only? He could not believe it. He felt bewildered. Even now, as the boat crept onward through the falling darkness, he felt that he loved Viola, but as someone who had disappeared or who was dead. This woman whom he had just left was not Viola. And yet she was. When he was not looking at her and she spoke to him, the past seemed to take the form of the present. When she had worn the veil and had touched him all his pulses had leaped. But when she had touched him with those same hands after the veil had fallen, there had been frost in his veins. Nothing in his body had responded. The independence of the flesh appalled him. It had a mind of its own then.

It chose and acted quite apart from the spirit which dwelt in it. It even defied that spirit. And the eyes? They had become almost a terror to him. He thought of them as a slave thinks of a cruel master.

Were they to coerce his soul? Were they to force his heart from its allegiance? He had always been accustomed to think that the spirit was essentially the governing thing in man, that indestructible, fierce, beautiful flame which surely outlives death and time. But now he found himself thinking of the flesh, the corruptible part of man that mingles its dust with the earth, as dominant over the spirit. For the first time, and because of his impotence to force his body to feel as his spirit wished it to feel, he doubted if there were a future for the soul, if there were such a condition as immortality. He reached Villa d'Este in a condition of profound depression, almost bordering on despair.

Meanwhile Viola, standing by the garden wall, had watched the boat that carried Robin disappear on the water. Till it was only a speck she watched. It vanished. Evening came on. Still she stood there. She did not feel very sad. The strange, dreamlike sensation of the preceding day had returned to her, but with a larger vagueness that robbed it of some of its former poignancy. It seemed to her that she felt as a spirit might feel--detached. She remembered once seeing a man, who called himself an "illusionist," displaying a woman's figure suspended apparently in mid-air. He took a wand and passed it over, under, around the woman to show that she was unattached to anything, that she did not rest upon anything. Viola thought that she was like that woman. She was not embittered. She was not even crushed. Her impulse of pity, when she understood what Robin was feeling, had been absolutely genuine. It had rushed upon her. It remained with her. But now it was far less definite, and embraced not only Robin but surely other men whom she had never known or even seen. They could not help themselves. It was not their fault. They were made in a certain way. They were governed. It seemed to her that she looked out vaguely over a world of slaves, the serfs of God who have never been emancipated. She had no hope. But just then she had no fear. The past did not ebb from her, nor did the future steal towards her. The tides were stilled. The pulses of life were stopped. Everything was wrapped in a cold, grey calm. She had never been a very thoughtful woman. She had not had much time for thought. That is what she herself would probably have said. Seldom had she puzzled her head over the mysteries of existence. Even now, when she confronted the great mystery of her own, she did not think very definitely. Before Robin came her mind had been in a fever. Now that he was gone the fever had gone with him. Would it ever return? She did not ask or wonder.

The night fell and the servant came to summon her to dinner. She shook her head.

"The signora will not eat anything?"

"No, thank you."

She took her arms from the wall and looked at the man.

"Could I have the boat?"

"The signora wishes to go on the lake?"

"Yes."

"I will tell Paolo."

Two or three minutes later the boy who had sung came to say that the boat was ready.

Lady Holme fetched a cloak, and went down the dark stone staircase between the lichen-covered walls to the tall iron gate. The boat was lying by the outer steps. She got in and Paolo took the oars.

"Where does the signora wish to go?"

"Anywhere out on the lake."

He pushed off. Soon the noise of the waterfall behind Casa Felice died away, the spectral facade faded and only the plash of the oars and the tinkle of fishermen's bells above the nets, floating here and there in the lake, were audible. The distant lights of mountain villages gleamed along the shores, and the lights of the stars gleamed in the clear sky.

Now that she was away from the land Lady Holme became more conscious of herself and of life. The gentle movement of the boat promoted an echoing mental movement in her. Thoughts glided through the shadows of her soul as the boat glided through the shadows of the night. Her mind was like a pilgrim, wandering in the darkness cast by the soul.

She felt, first, immensely ignorant. She had scarcely ever, perhaps never, consciously felt immensely ignorant before. She felt also very poor, very small and very dingy, like a woman very badly dressed. She felt, finally, that she was the most insignificant of all the living things under the stars to the stars and all they watched, but that, to herself, she was of a burning, a flaming significance.

There seemed to be bells everywhere in the lake. The water was full of their small, persistent voices.

So had her former life been full of small, persistent voices, but now, abruptly, they were all struck into silence, and she was left listening--for what? For some far-off but larger voice beyond?

"What am I to do? What am I to do?"

Now she began to say this within herself. The grey calm was floating away from her spirit, and she began to realise what had happened that afternoon. She remembered that just before Robin came she had made up her mind that, though she did not love him, he held the matter of her life or death in his power. Well, if that were so, he had decided. The dice had been thrown and death had come up. No hand had been stretched out in the darkness to the child.

She looked round her. On every side she saw smooth water, a still surface which hid depths. At the prow of the boat shone a small lantern, which cast before the boat an arrow of light. And as the boat moved this arrow perpetually attacked the darkness in front. It was like the curiosity of man attacking the impenetrable mysteries of God. It seemed to penetrate, but always new darkness disclosed itself beyond, new darkness flowed silently around.

Was the darkness the larger voice?

She did not say this to herself. Her mind was not of the definite species that frames such silent questions often. But, like all human beings plunged in the strangeness of a terror that is absolutely new, and left to struggle in it quite alone, she thought a thousand things that she did not even know she thought, her mind touched many verges of which she was not aware. There were within her tremendous activities of which she was scarcely conscious. She was like a woman who wakes at night without knowing why, and hears afterwards that there was a tumult in the city where she dwelt.

Gradually, along devious ways, she came to the thought that life had done with her. It seemed to her that life said to her, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" The man who had sworn to protect her could not endure to look at her. The man who had vowed that he loved her soul shrank before her face. She had never been a friend to women. Why should they wish to be her friends now? They would not wish it. And if they did she felt their friendship would be useless to her, more--horrible. She would rather have shown her shattered face to a thousand men than to ten women. She had never "bothered" much about religion. No God seemed near her now. She had no sense of being chastened because she was loved. On the other hand, she did feel as if she had been caught by a torturer who did not mean to let her go.

It became obvious to her that there was no place for her in life, and presently she returned to the conclusion that, totally unloved, she could not continue to exist.

She began definitely to contemplate self-destruction.

She looked at the little arrow of light beyond the boat's prow. Like that little arrow she must go out into the darkness. When? Could she go to-night? If not, probably she could never go at all by her own will and act. It should be done to-night then, abruptly, without much thought.

For thought is dangerous and often paralysing.

She spoke to the boat boy. He answered. They fell into conversation.

She asked him about his family, his life, whether he would have to be a soldier; whether he had a sweetheart. She forced herself to listen attentively to his replies. He was a responsive boy and soon began to talk volubly, letting the oars trail idly in the water. With energy he paraded his joyous youth before her. Even in his touches of melancholy there was hope. His happiness confirmed her in her resolution. She put herself in contrast with this boy, and her heart sank below the sources of tears into a dry place, like the valley of bones.

"Will you turn towards Casa Feli--towards the house now," she said presently.

The boat swung round, and instantly the boy began to sing.

"Yes, I can do it to-night," she thought.

His happy singing entered like iron into her soul.