第70章

It could be no one but Dominic.It dawned upon me that since the evening of our return I had not been near him or the ship, which was completely unusual, unheard of, and well calculated to startle Dominic.

"I have seen him before," continued Rose, "and as he told me he has been pursuing Monsieur all the afternoon and didn't like to go away without seeing Monsieur for a moment, I proposed to him to wait in the hall till Monsieur was at liberty."I said: "Very well," and with a sudden resumption of her extremely busy, not-a-moment-to-lose manner Rose departed from the room.Ilingered in an imaginary world full of tender light, of unheard-of colours, with a mad riot of flowers and an inconceivable happiness under the sky arched above its yawning precipices, while a feeling of awe enveloped me like its own proper atmosphere.But everything vanished at the sound of Dona Rita's loud whisper full of boundless dismay, such as to make one's hair stir on one's head.

"Mon Dieu! And what is going to happen now?"She got down from the couch and walked to a window.When the lights had been brought into the room all the panes had turned inky black; for the night had come and the garden was full of tall bushes and trees screening off the gas lamps of the main alley of the Prado.Whatever the question meant she was not likely to see an answer to it outside.But her whisper had offended me, had hurt something infinitely deep, infinitely subtle and infinitely clear-eyed in my nature.I said after her from the couch on which I had remained, "Don't lose your composure.You will always have some sort of bell at hand."I saw her shrug her uncovered shoulders impatiently.Her forehead was against the very blackness of the panes; pulled upward from the beautiful, strong nape of her neck, the twisted mass of her tawny hair was held high upon her head by the arrow of gold.

"You set up for being unforgiving," she said without anger.

I sprang to my feet while she turned about and came towards me bravely, with a wistful smile on her bold, adolescent face.

"It seems to me," she went on in a voice like a wave of love itself, "that one should try to understand before one sets up for being unforgiving.Forgiveness is a very fine word.It is a fine invocation.""There are other fine words in the language such as fascination, fidelity, also frivolity; and as for invocations there are plenty of them, too; for instance: alas, heaven help me."We stood very close together, her narrow eyes were as enigmatic as ever, but that face, which, like some ideal conception of art, was incapable of anything like untruth and grimace, expressed by some mysterious means such a depth of infinite patience that I felt profoundly ashamed of myself.

"This thing is beyond words altogether," I said."Beyond forgiveness, beyond forgetting, beyond anger or jealousy....

There is nothing between us two that could make us act together.""Then we must fall back perhaps on something within us, that - you admit it? - we have in common.""Don't be childish," I said."You give one with a perpetual and intense freshness feelings and sensations that are as old as the world itself, and you imagine that your enchantment can be broken off anywhere, at any time! But it can't be broken.And forgetfulness, like everything else, can only come from you.It's an impossible situation to stand up against."She listened with slightly parted lips as if to catch some further resonances.

"There is a sort of generous ardour about you," she said, "which Idon't really understand.No, I don't know it.Believe me, it is not of myself I am thinking.And you - you are going out to-night to make another landing.""Yes, it is a fact that before many hours I will be sailing away from you to try my luck once more.""Your wonderful luck," she breathed out.

"Oh, yes, I am wonderfully lucky.Unless the luck really is yours - in having found somebody like me, who cares at the same time so much and so little for what you have at heart.""What time will you be leaving the harbour?" she asked.

"Some time between midnight and daybreak.Our men may be a little late in joining, but certainly we will be gone before the first streak of light.""What freedom!" she murmured enviously."It's something I shall never know....""Freedom!" I protested."I am a slave to my word.There will be a siring of carts and mules on a certain part of the coast, and a most ruffianly lot of men, men you understand, men with wives and children and sweethearts, who from the very moment they start on a trip risk a bullet in the head at any moment, but who have a perfect conviction that I will never fail them.That's my freedom.

I wonder what they would think if they knew of your existence.""I don't exist," she said.

"That's easy to say.But I will go as if you didn't exist - yet only because you do exist.You exist in me.I don't know where Iend and you begin.You have got into my heart and into my veins and into my brain.""Take this fancy out and trample it down in the dust," she said in a tone of timid entreaty.

"Heroically," I suggested with the sarcasm of despair.

"Well, yes, heroically," she said; and there passed between us dim smiles, I have no doubt of the most touching imbecility on earth.

We were standing by then in the middle of the room with its vivid colours on a black background, with its multitude of winged figures with pale limbs, with hair like halos or flames, all strangely tense in their strained, decorative attitudes.Dona Rita made a step towards me, and as I attempted to seize her hand she flung her arms round my neck.I felt their strength drawing me towards her and by a sort of blind and desperate effort I resisted.And all the time she was repeating with nervous insistence: