LADY HOLME never forgot that first evening at Casa Felice. The strangeness of it was greater than the strangeness of any nightmare. When she was shut up in her bedroom in London she had thought she realised all the meaning of the word loneliness. Now she knew that then she had not begun to realise it. For she had been in her own house, in the city which contained a troop of her friends, in the city where she had reigned. And although she knew that she would reign no more, she had not grasped the exact meaning of that knowledge in London. She had known a fact but not fully felt it. She had known what she now was but not fully felt what she now was. Even when Fritz, muttering almost terrified exclamations, had stumbled out of the bedroom, she had not heard the dull clamour of finality as she heard it now.

She was an exile. She was an outcast among women. She was no longer a beautiful woman, she was not even a plain woman—she was a dreadful-looking human being.

The Italian servants by whom she was surrounded suddenly educated her in the lore of exact knowledge of herself and her present situation.

Italians are the most charming of the nations, but Italians of the lower classes are often very unreserved in the display of their most fugitive sensations, their most passing moods. The men, especially when they are young, are highly susceptible to beauty in women. They are also—and the second emotion springs naturally enough from the first—almost childishly averse from female ugliness. It is a common thing in Italy to hear of men of the lower classes speak of a woman’s plainness with brutality, with a manner almost of personal offence. They often shrink from personal ugliness as Englishmen seldom do, like children shrinking from something abnormal—a frightening dwarf, a spectre.

Now that Lady Holme had reached the “hiding-place” for which she had longed, she resolved to be brutal with herself. Till now she had almost perpetually concealed her disfigured face. Even her servants had not seen it. But in this lonely house, among these strangers, she knew that the inevitable moment was come when she must begin the new life, the terrible life that was henceforth to be hers. In her bedroom she took off her hat and veil, and without glancing into the glass she came downstairs. In the hall she met the butler. She saw him start.

“Can I have tea?” she said, looking at him steadily.

“Yes, signora,” he answered, looking down.

“In the piazza, please.”

She went out through the open door into the piazza. The boy who had sung in the boat was there, watering some geraniums in pots. As she came out he glanced up curiously, at the same time pulling off his hat. When he saw her his mouth gaped, and an expression of pitiless repulsion came into his eyes. It died out almost instantaneously, and he smiled and began to speak about the flowers. But Lady Holme had received her education. She knew what she was to youth that instinctively loves beauty.

She sat down in a cane chair. It seemed to her as if people were scourging her with thongs of steel, as if she were bleeding from the strokes.

She looked out across the lake.

The butler brought tea and put it beside her. She did not hear him come or go. Behind her the waterfall roared down between the cypresses. Before her the lake spread out its grey, unruffled surface. And this was the baptism of Casa Felice, her baptism into a new life. Her agony was the more intense because she had never been an intellectual woman, had never lived the inner life. Always she had depended on outward things. Always she had been accustomed to bustle, movement, excitement, perpetual intercourse with people who paid her homage. Always she had lived for the world, and worshipped, because she had seen those around her worshipping, the body.

And now all was taken from her. Without warning, without a moment for preparation, she was cast down into Hell. Even her youth was made useless to her.

When she thought of that she began to cry, sitting there by the stone balustrade of the piazza, to cry convulsively. She remembered her pity for old age, for the monstrous loss it cannot cease from advertising. And now she, in her youth, had passed it on the road to the pit. Lady Cardington was a beautiful woman. She pitied herself bitterly because she was morbid, as many beautiful women are when they approach old age. But she was beautiful. She would always be beautiful. She might not think it, but she was still a power, could still inspire love. In her blanched face framed in white hair there was in truth a wonderful attraction.

Whiteness—Lady Holme shuddered when she thought of whiteness, remembering what the glass had shown her.

Fritz—his animal passion for her—his horror of her now—Miss Schley—their petty, concealed strife—Rupert Carey’s love—Leo Ulford’s desire of conquest—his father’s strange, pathetic devotion—Winter falling at the feet of Spring—figures and events from the panorama of her life now ended flickered through her almost numbed mind, while the tears still ran down her face.

And Robin Pierce?

As she thought of him more life quickened in her mind.

Since her accident he had written to her several times, ardent, tender letters, recalling all he had said to her, recounting again his adoration of her for her nature, her soul, the essence of her, the woman in her, telling her that this terror which had come upon her only made her dearer to him, that—as she knew—he had impiously dared almost to long for it, as for an order of release that would take effect in the liberation of her true self.

These letters she had read, but they had not stirred her. She had told herself that Robin did not know, that he was a self-deceiver, that he did not understand his own nature, which was allied to the nature of every living man. But now, seeking some, even the smallest solace in the intense agony of desolation that was upon her, she caught—in her bleeding woman’s heart—at this hand stretched out from Rome. She got up, went to her bedroom, unlocked her despatch-box, took out these letters of Robin’s. They had not stirred her, yet she had kept them. Now she came down once more to the piazza, sat by the tea-table, opened them, read them, re-read them, whispered them over again and again. Something she must have; some hand she must catch at. She could not die in this freezing cold which she had never known, this cold that came out of the Inferno, at whose cavern mouth she stood. And Robin said he was there—Robin said he was there.

She did not love Robin. It seemed to her now that it would be grotesque for her to love any man. Her face was not meant for love. But as she read these ardent, romantic letters, written since the tragedy that had overtaken her, she began to ask herself, with a fierce anxiety, whether what Robin affirmed could be the truth? Was he unlike other men? Was his nature capable of a devotion of the soul to another soul, of a devotion to which any physical ugliness, even any physical horror, would count as nothing?

After that last scene with Fritz she felt as if he were no longer her husband, as if he were only a man who had fled from her in fear. She did not think any more of his rights, her duties. He had abandoned his rights. What duties could she have towards a man who was frightened when he looked at her? And indeed all the social and moral questions to which the average woman of the world pays—because she must pay—attention had suddenly ceased to exist for Lady Holme. She was no longer a woman of the world. All worldly matters had sunk down beneath her feet with her lost beauty. She had wanted to be free. Well, now she was surely free. Who would care what she did in the future?

Robin said he was there.

She thought that, unless she could feel that in world there was one man who wanted to take care of her, she must destroy herself. The thought grew in her as she sat there, till she said to herself, “If it is true what he says, perhaps I shall be able to live. If it is not true—” She looked over the stone balustrade at the grey waters of the lake. Twilight was darkening over them.

Late that evening, when she was sitting in the big drawing-room staring at the floor, the butler came in with a telegram. She opened it and read:

“No answer,” she said.

So he was coming—to-morrow. The awful sense of desolation lifted slightly from her. A human being was travelling to her, was wanting to see her. To see her! She shuddered. Then fiercely she asked herself why she was afraid. She would not be afraid. She would trust in Robin. He was unlike other men. There had always been in him something that set him apart, a strangeness, a romance, a love of hidden things, a subtlety. If only he would still care for her, still feel towards her as he had felt, she could face the future, she thought. They might be apart. That did not matter. She had no thought of a close connection, of frequent intercourse even. She only wanted desperately, frantically, to know that someone who had loved her could love her still in spite of what had happened. If she could retain one deep affection she felt that she could live.

The morrow would convince her.

That night she did not sleep. She lay in bed and heard the water falling in the gorge, and when the dawn began to break she did a thing she had not done for a long time.

She got out of bed, knelt down and prayed—prayed to Him who had dealt terribly with her that He would be merciful when Robin came.

When it was daylight and the Italian maid knocked at her door she told her to get out a plain, dark dress. She did her hair herself with the utmost simplicity. That at least was still beautiful. Then she went down and walked in the high garden above the lake. The greyness had lifted and the sky was blue. The mellowness rather than the sadness of autumn was apparent, throned on the tall mountains whose woods were bathed in sunshine. All along the great old wall, that soared forty feet from the water, roses were climbing. Scarlet and white geraniums bloomed in discoloured ancient vases. Clumps of oleanders showed pink showers of blossoms. Tall bamboos reared their thin heads towards the tufted summits of palms that suggested Africa. Monstrous cypresses aspired, with a sort of haughty resignation, above their brother trees. The bees went to and fro. Flies circled and settled. Lizards glided across the warm stones and rustled into hiding among the ruddy fallen leaves. And always the white water sang in the gorge as it rushed towards the piazza of Casa Felice.

And Lady Holme tried to hope.

Yet, as she walked slowly to and fro amid the almost rank luxuriance of the garden, she was gnawed by a terrible anxiety. The dreadful humbleness, the shrinking cowardice of the unsightly human being invaded her. She strove to put them from her. She strove to call Robin’s own arguments and assertions to her aid. What she had been she still was in all essentials. Her self was unharmed, existed, could love, hate, be tender, be passionate as before. Viola was there still within her, the living spirit to which a name had been given when she was a little child. The talent was there which had spoken, which could still speak, through her voice. The beating heart was there which could still speak through her actions. The mysteries of the soul still pursued their secret courses within her, like far-off subterranean streams. The essential part of her remained as it had been. Only a little outside bit of a framework had been twisted awry. Could that matter very much? Had she not perhaps been morbid in her despair?

She determined to take courage. She told herself that if she allowed this dreadful, invading humbleness way in her she would lose all power to dominate another by showing that she had ceased to dominate herself. If she met Robin in fear and trembling she would actually teach him to despise her. If she showed that she thought herself changed, horrible, he would inevitably catch her thought and turn it to her own destruction. Men despise those who despise themselves. She knew that, and she argued with herself, fought with herself. If Robin loved the angel; surely he could still love. For if there were an angel within her it had not been harmed. And she leaned on the stone wall and prayed again while the roses touched her altered face.

It seemed to her then that courage was sent to her. She felt less terrified of what was before her, as if something had risen up within her upon which she could lean, as if her soul began to support the trembling, craven thing that would betray her, began to teach it how to be still.

She did not feel happy, but she felt less desperately miserable than she had felt since the accident.

After dejeuner she walked again in the garden. As the time drew near for Robin to arrive, the dreadful feverish anxiety of the early morning awoke again within her. She had not conquered herself. Again the thought of suicide came upon her, and she felt that her life or death were in the hands of this man whom yet she did not love. They were in his hands because he was a human being and she was one. There are straits in which the child of life, whom the invisible hand that is extended in a religion has not yet found, must find in the darkness a human hand stretched out to it or sink down in utter terror and perhaps perish. Lady Holme was in such a strait. She knew it. She said to herself quite plainly that if Robin failed to stretch out his hand to her she could not go on living. It was clear to her that her life or death depended upon whether he remained true to what he had said was his ideal, or whether he proved false to it and showed himself such a man as Fritz, as a thousand others.

She sickened with anxiety as the moments passed.

Now, leaning upon the wall, she began to scan the lake. Presently she saw the steamer approaching the landing-stage of Carate on the opposite bank. The train from Rome had arrived. But Robin would doubtless come by boat. There was at least another hour to wait. She left the wall and walked quickly up and down, moving her hands and her lips. Now she almost wished he were not coming. She recalled the whole story of her acquaintance with Robin—his adoration of her when she was a girl, his wish to marry her, his melancholy when she refused him, his persistent affection for her after she had married Fritz, his persistent belief that there was that within her which Fritz did not understand and could never satisfy, his persistent obstinacy in asserting that he had the capacity to understand and content this hidden want. Was that true?

Fritz had cared for nothing but the body, yet she had loved Fritz. She did not love Robin. Yet there was a feeling in her that if he proved true to his ideal now she might love him in the end. If only he would love her—after he knew.

She heard a sound of oars. The blood rushed to her face. She drew back from the wall and hurried into her house. All the morning she had been making up her mind to go to meet Robin at once in the sunlight, to let him know all at once. But now, in terror, she went to her room. With trembling hands she pinned on a hat; she took out of a drawer the thick veil she wore when travelling and tied it tightly over her face. Panic seized her.

There was a knock at the door, the announcement that a signore was waiting in the drawing-room for the signora.

Lady Holme felt an almost ungovernable sensation of physical nausea. She went to her dressing-case and drank one or two burning drops of eau de Cologne. Then she pulled down the veil under her chin and stood in the middle of the room for several minutes without moving. Then she went downstairs quickly and went quickly into the drawing-room.

Robin was there, standing by the window. He looked excited, with an excitement of happiness, and this gave to him an aspect of almost boyish youth. His long black eyes shone with eagerness when she came into the room. But when he saw the veil his face changed.

“You don’t trust me!” he said, without any greeting.

She went up to him and put out her hand.

“Robin!” she said.

“You don’t trust me,” he repeated.

He took her hand. His was hot.

“Robin—I’m a coward,” she said.

Her voice quivered.

“Oh, my dearest!” he exclaimed, melted in a moment.

He took her other hand, and she felt his hands throbbing. His clasp was so ardent that it startled her into forgetting everything for one instant, everything that except these clasping hands loved her hands, loved her. That instant was exquisitely sweet to her. There was a stinging sweetness in it, a mystery of sweetness, as if their four hands were four souls longing to be lost in one another.

“Now you’ll trust me,” he said.

She released her hands and immediately her terror of doubt returned.

“Let us go into the garden,” she answered.

He followed her to the path beside the wall.

“I looked for you from here,” she said.

“I did not see you.”

“No. When I heard the boat I—Robin, I’m afraid—I’m afraid.”

“Of me, Viola?”

He laughed joyously.

“Take off your veil,” he said.

“No, no—not yet. I want to tell you first—”

“To tell me what?”

“That my—that my—Robin, I’m not beautiful now.”

Her voice quivered again.

“You tell me so,” he answered.

“It’s true.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“But,” she began, almost desperately, “it’s true, Robin, oh, it’s true! When Fritz—”

She stopped. She was choking.

“Oh—Fritz!” he said with scathing contempt.

“No, no, listen! You’ve got to listen.” She put her hand on his arm. “When Fritz saw me—afterwards he—he was afraid of me. He couldn’t speak to me. He just looked and said—and said—”

Tears were running down behind the veil. He put up his hand to hers, which still touched his arm.

“Don’t tell me what he said. What do I care? Viola, you know I’ve almost longed for this—no, not that, but—can’t you understand that when one loves a woman one loves something hidden, something mystical? It’s so much more than a face that one loves. One doesn’t want to live in a house merely because it’s got a nice front door.”

He laughed again as if he were half ashamed of his own feeling.

“Is that true, Robin?”

The sound of her voice told him that he need not be afraid to be passionate.

“Sit down here,” he said.

They had reached an old stone bench at the end of the garden where the woods began. Two cypresses towered behind it, sad-looking sentinels. There was a gap in the wall here through which the lake could be seen as one sat upon the bench.

“I want to make you understand, to make you trust me.”

She sat down without speaking, and he sat beside her.

“Viola,” he said, “there are many men who love only what they can see, and never think of the spirit behind it. They care only for a woman’s body. For them the woman’s body is the woman. I put it rather brutally. What they can touch, what they can kiss, what they can hold in their arms is all to them. They are unconscious of the distant, untameable woman, the lawless woman who may be free in the body that is captive, who may be unknown in the body that is familiar, who may even be pure in the body that is defiled as she is immortal though her body is mortal. These men love the flesh only. But there are at least some men who love the spirit. They love the flesh, too, because it manifests the spirit, but to them the spirit is the real thing. They are always stretching out their arms to that. The hearth can’t satisfy them. They demand the fire. The fire, the fire!” he repeated, as if the word warmed him. “I’ve so often thought of this, imagined this. It’s as if I’d actually foreseen it.”

He spoke with gathering excitement.

“What?” she murmured.

“That some day the woman men—those men I’ve spoken of—loved would be struck down, and the real woman, the woman of the true beauty, the mystic, the spirit woman, would be set free. If this had not happened you could perhaps never have known who was the man that really loved you—that loved the real you, the you that lies so far beyond the flesh, the you that has sung and suffered—”

“Ah, suffered!” she said.

But there was a note of something that was not sorrow in her voice.

“If you want to know the man I mean,” Robin said, “lift up your veil, Viola.”

She sat quite still for a moment, a moment that seemed very long. Then she put up both hands to her head, untied the veil and let it fall into her lap. He looked at her, and there was silence. They heard the bees humming. There were many among the roses on the wall. She had turned her face fully towards him, but she kept her eyes on the veil that lay in her lap. It was covered with little raised black spots. She began to count them. As the number mounted she felt her body turning gradually cold.

“Fifteen—sixteen-seventeen”—she formed the words with her lips, striving to concentrate her whole soul upon this useless triviality—“eighteen—nineteen—twenty.”

Little drops of moisture came out upon her temples. Still the silence continued. She knew that all this time Robin was looking into her face. She felt his eyes like two knives piercing her face.

“Twenty-one—twenty-two—”

“Viola!”

He spoke at last and his voice was extraordinary. It was husky, and sounded desperate and guilty.

“Well?” she said, still looking at the spots.

“Now you know the man I spoke of.”

Yes, it was a desperate voice and hard in its desperation.

“You mean that you are the man?”

Still she did not look up. After a pause she heard him say:

“Yes, that I am the man.”

Then she looked up. His face was scarlet, like a face flushed with guilt. His eyes met hers with a staring glance, yet they were furtive. His hands were clenched on his knees. When she looked at him he began to smile.

“Viola,” he said, “Viola.”

He unclenched his hands and put them out towards her, as if to take her hands. She did not move.

“Poor Robin!” she said.

“Poor—but—what do you mean?” he stammered.

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.