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.

When the pale facade of Casa Felice was visible once more, detaching itself from the surrounding darkness, she said to the boy carelessly:

“Where do you put the boat at night?”

“The signora has not seen?”

“No.”

“Under the house. There is deep water there. One can swim for five minutes without coming out into the open.”

“I should like to see that place. Can I get out of the boat there?”

“Si, signora. There is a staircase leading into the piazza by the waterfall.”

“Then row in.”

“Si, signora.”

He was beginning to sing again, but suddenly he stopped, looked over his shoulder and listened.

“What is it?” she asked quickly.

“There is a boat, signora.”

“Where.”

She looked into the darkness but saw nothing.

“Close to the house, signora.”

“But how do you know?”

“I heard the oars. The man in the boat was not rowing, but just as I began to sing he began to row. When I stopped singing he stopped rowing.”

“You didn’t see the boat?”

“No, signora. It carries no light.”

He looked at her mysteriously.

“It may be the contrabbandieri.”

“Smugglers?”

“Yes.”

He turned his head over his shoulder and whistled, in a peculiar way. There was no reply. Then he bent down over the gunwale of the boat till his ear nearly touched the water, and listened.

“The boat has stopped. It must be near us.”

His whole body seemed quivering with attentive life, like a terrier’s when it stands to be unchained.

“Might it not be a fisherman?” asked Lady Holme.

He shook his head.

“This is not the hour.”

“Some tourists, perhaps, making an excursion?”

“It is too far. They never come here at night.”

His eyes stared, his attitude was so intensely alert and his manner so mysterious that, despite her desperate preoccupation, Lady Holme found herself distracted for a moment. Her mind was detached from herself, and fixed upon this hidden boat and its occupant or occupants.

“You think it is contrabbandieri?” she whispered. He nodded.

“I have been one, signora.”

“You!”

“Yes, when I was a boy, in the winter. Once, when we were running for the shore, on a December night, the carabinieri fired on us and killed Gaetano Cremona.”

“Your companion?”

“Yes. He was sixteen and he died. The boat was full of his blood.”

She shuddered.

“Row in,” she said. “That boat must have gone.”

“Non, signora. It has not. It is close by and the oars are out of the water.”

He spoke with certainty, as if he saw the boat. Then, reluctantly, he dipped his oars in the lake, and rowed towards the house, keeping his head half turned and staring into the darkness with eyes that were still full of mystery and profound attention.

Lady Holme looked over the water too, but she saw nothing upon its calm surface.

“Go into the boat-house,” she said.

Paolo nodded without speaking. His lips were parted.

“Chi e la?” she heard him whisper to himself.

They were close to the house now. Its high, pale front, full of shuttered windows, loomed over them, and the roar of the waterfall was loud in their ears. Paolo turned the boat towards his right, and, almost directly, Lady Holme saw a dark opening in the solid stone blocks on which the house was built. The boat glided through it into cover, and the arrow of light at the prow pierced ebon blackness, while the plash of the oars made a curious sound, full of sudden desolation and weariness. A bat flitted over the arrow of light and vanished, and the head of a swimming rat was visible for a moment, pursued by a wrinkle on the water.

“How dark it is here,” Lady Holme said in a low voice. “And what strange noises there are.”

There was terror in the sound of the waterfall heard under this curving roof of stone. It sounded like a quantity of disputing voices, quarrelling in the blackness of the night. The arrow of light lay on a step, and the boat’s prow grated gently against a large ring of rusty iron.

“And you tie up the boat here at night?” she asked as she got up.

“Si, signora.”

While she stood on the step, close to the black water, he passed the rope through the ring, and tied it deftly in a loose knot that any backward movement of the boat would tighten. She watched with profound attention his hands moving quickly in the faint light cast by the lantern.

“How well you tie it,” she said.

He smiled.

“Si, signora.”

“Is it easy to untie?”

“Si, signora.”

“Show me, will you? It—it holds so well that I should have thought it would be difficult.”

He looked up at her with a flash of surprise. Something in her voice had caught his young attention sharply. She smiled at him when she saw the keen inquiry in his large eyes.

“I’m interested in all these little things you do so well,” she said.

He flushed with pride, and immediately untied the knot, carefully, showing her exactly how he did it.

“Thank you. I see. It’s very ingenious.”

“Si, signora. I can do many things like that.”

“You are a clever boy, Paolo.”

He tied the knot again, unhooked the lantern; jumped out of the boat, and lighted her up the staircase to a heavy wooden door. In another moment she stood on the piazza close to the waterfall. The cold spray from it fell on her face. He pushed the door to, but did not lock it.

“You leave it like that at night?” she asked.

“Non, signora. Before I go to bed I lock it.”

“I see.”

She saw a key sticking out from the door.

“A rivederci, Paolo.”

“A rivederci, signora.”

He took off his hat and went swiftly away. The light of the lantern danced on the pavement of the piazza, and, for one instant, on the white foam of the water falling between the cypresses.

When Viola was alone on the piazza she went to the stone balustrade and looked over it at the lake. Was there a boat close by? She could not see it. The chiming bells of the fishermen came up to her, mingling with the noise of the cascade. She took out her watch and held it up close to her eyes. The hour was half-past nine. She wondered what time Italian servants went to bed.

The butler came out and begged to know if she would not eat something. He seemed so distressed at her having missed dinner, that she went into the house, sat down at the dining table and made a pretence of eating. A clock struck ten as she finished.

“It is so warm that I am going to sit out in the piazza,” she said.

“Will the signora take coffee?”

“No—yes, bring me some there. And tell my maid—tell the servants they needn’t sit up. I may stay out quite late. If I do, I’ll lock the door on to the piazza when I go in.”

“Si, signora.”

When she reached the piazza she saw a shining red spark just above the balustrade. Paolo was there smoking a black cigar and leaning over sideways.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“That boat, signora. It has not gone.”

“How do you know? It may have gone when we were in the boat-house.”

He shook his head.

“You could not have heard the oars through the noise of the waterfall.”

“Si, signora. It has not gone. Shall I take the boat and—”

“No, no,” she interrupted quickly. “What does it matter? Go and have supper.”

“I have had it, signora.”

“Then, when you have finished smoking, you’d better go to bed.”

She forced herself to smile lightly.

“Boys like you need plenty of sleep.”

“Four hours is enough, signora.”

“No, no. You should go to bed early.”

She saw an odd expression come into his face. He looked over at the water, then at her, with a curious dawning significance, that would almost have been impudent if it had not been immensely young and full of a kind of gnomish sympathy.

“I’ll go to bed, signora!” he said.

Then he looked at her again and there were doubt and wonder in his eyes.

She turned away, with a sickness at her heart. She knew exactly what he had thought, was thinking. The suspicion had crossed his mind that she knew why the hidden boat was there, that she wished no one else to suspect why it was there. And then had followed the thought, “Ma—per questa signora—non e possibile.”

At certain crises of feeling, a tiny incident will often determine some vital act. So it was now. The fleeting glance in a carelessly expressive boy’s eyes at this moment gave to Lady Holme’s mind the last touch it needed to acquire the impetus which would carry it over the edge of the precipice into the abyss. The look in Paolo’s eyes said to her, “Life has done with you. Throw it away.” And she knew that though she had thought she had already decided to throw it away that night, she had really not decided. Secretly she had been hesitating. Now there was no more hesitation in her. She drank her coffee and had the cup taken away, and ordered the lights in the drawing-room to be put out.

“When I come in I shall go straight up to bed,” she said. “Leave me a candle in the hall.”

The lights went out behind the windows. Blank darkness replaced the yellow gleam that had shone upon them. The two houses on either side of the piazza were wrapped in silence. Presently there was a soft noise of feet crossing the pavement. It was Paolo going to lock the door leading to the boathouse. Lady Holme moved round sharply in her chair to watch him. He bent down. With a swift turn of his brown wrists he secured the door and pulled the key out of the lock. She opened her lips to call out something to him, but when she saw him look at the key doubtfully, then towards her, she said nothing. And he put it back into the keyhole. When he did that she sighed. Perhaps a doubt had again come into his young mind. But, if so, it had come too late. He slipped away smiling, half ironically, to himself.

Lady Holme sat still. She had wrapped a white cloth cloak round her. She put up her hand to the disfigured side of her face, and touched it, trying to see its disfigurement as the blind see, by feeling. She kept her hand there, and her hand recognized ugliness vividly. After two or three minutes she took her hand away, got up and walked to and fro in the piazza, very near to the balustrade.

Now she was thinking fiercely.

She thought of Fritz. What would he feel when he knew? Shocked for a moment, no doubt. After all, they had been very close to each other, in body at least, if not in soul. And the memory of the body would surely cause him to suffer a little, to think, “I held it often, and now it is sodden and cold.” At least he must think something like that, and his body must shudder in sympathy with the catastrophe that had overtaken its old companion. She felt a painful yearning to see Fritz again. Yet she did not say to herself that she loved him any more. Even before the accident she had begun to realise that she had not found in Fritz the face of truth among the crowd of shams which all women seek, ignorantly or not. And since the accident—there are things that kill even a woman’s love abruptly. And for a dead love there is no resurrection.

Yet to-night she felt infinitely tender over Fritz, as if she stood by him again and saw the bandage darkened by the red stain.

Then she thought of the song she had sung to Lady Cardington, the song which had surely opened the eyes of her own drowsy, if not actually sleeping, heart:

It was horribly true to her to-night. She could imagine now, in her utter desolation, that for love a woman could easily sacrifice the world. But she had had the world—all she called the world—ruthlessly taken from her, and nothing had been given to her to fill its place. Possibly before the accident she might have recoiled from the idea of giving up the world for love. But now, as she walked to and fro, it seemed to her as if a woman isolated from everything with love possessed the world and all that is therein. Vaguely she remembered the story she had heard about this very house, Casa Felice. There had been a romance connected with it. Two lovers had fled here, had lived here for a long time. She imagined them now, sitting together at night in this piazza, hearing the waterfall together, looking at the calm lake together, watching the stars together. The sound of the water was terrible to her. To them how beautiful it must have been, how beautiful the light of the stars, and the lonely gardens stretching along the lake, and the dim paths between the cypresses, and the great silence that floated over the lake to listen to the waterfall. And all these things were terrible to her—all. Not one was beautiful. Each one seemed to threaten her, to say to her, “Leave us, we are not for such as you.” Well, she would obey these voices. She would go. She wrapped the cloak more closely round her, went to the balustrade and leaned over it looking at the water.

It seemed to her as if her life had been very trivial. She thought now that she had never really enjoyed anything. She looked upon her life as if it were down there in the water just beneath her, and she saw it as a broken thing, a thing in many fragments. And the fragments, however carefully and deftly arranged, could surely never have been fitted together and become a complete whole. Everything in her life had been awry as her face was now awry, and she had not realised it. Her love for Fritz, and his—what he had called his, at least—for her, had seemed to her once to be a round and beautiful thing, a circle of passion without a flaw. How distorted, misshapen, absurd it had really been. Nothing in her life had been carried through to a definite end. Even her petty struggle with Miss Schley had been left unfinished. Those who had loved her had been like spectres, and now, like spectres, had faded away. And all through their spectral love she had clung to Fritz. She had clasped the sand like a mad-woman, and never felt the treacherous grains shifting between her arms at the touch of every wind.

A sudden passionate fury of longing woke in her to have one week, one day, one hour of life, one hour of life now that her eyes were open, one moment only—even one moment. She felt that she had had nothing, that every other human being must have known the dolcezza, the ineffable, the mysterious ecstasy, the one and only thing worth the having, that she alone had been excluded, when she was beautiful, from the participation in joy that was her right, and that now, in her ugliness, she was irrevocably cast out from it.

It was unjust. Suddenly she faced a God without justice in His heart, all-powerful and not just. She faced such a God and she knew Hell.

Swiftly she turned from the balustrade, went to the door by the waterfall, unlocked it and descended the stone staircase. It was very dark. She had to feel her way. When she reached the last step she could just see the boat lying against it in the black water. She put out her hand and felt for the ring through which the rope was slipped. The rope was wet. It took her some minutes to undo it. Then she got into the boat. Her eyes were more accustomed to the darkness now, and she could see the arched opening which gave access to the lake. She found the oars, pushed them into the rowlocks, and pulled gently to the opening. The boat struck against the wall and grated along it. She stood up and thrust one hand against the stone, leaning over to the side. The boat went away swiftly, and she nearly fell into the water, but managed to save herself by a rapid movement. She sank down, feeling horribly afraid. Yet, a moment after, she asked herself why she had not let herself go. It was too dark there under the house. Out in the open air it would be different, it would be easier. She wanted the stars above her. She did not know why she wanted them, why she wanted anything now.

The boat slipped out from the low archway into the open water.

It was a pale and delicate night, one of those autumn nights that are full of a white mystery. A thin mist lay about the water, floated among the lower woods. Higher up, the mountains rose out of it. Their green sides looked black and soft in the starlight, their summits strangely remote and inaccessible. Through the mist, here and there, shone faintly the lights of the scattered villages. The bells in the water were still ringing languidly, and their voices emphasised the pervading silence, a silence full of the pensive melancholy of Nature in decline.

Viola rowed slowly out towards the middle of the lake. Awe had come upon her. There seemed a mystical presence in the night, something far away but attentive, a mind concentrated upon the night, upon Nature, upon herself. She was very conscious of it, and it seemed to her not as if eyes, but as if a soul were watching her and everything about her; the stars and the mountains, the white mist, even the movement of the boat. This concentrated, mystical attention oppressed her. It was like a soft, impalpable weight laid upon her. She rowed faster.

But now it seemed to her as if she were being followed. Casa Felice had already disappeared. The shore was hidden in the darkness. She could only see vaguely the mountain-tops. She paused, then dipped the oars again, but again—after two or three strokes—she had the sensation that she was being followed. She recalled Paolo’s action when they were returning to Casa Felice in the evening, leaned over the boat’s side and put her ear close to the water.

When she did so she heard the plash of oars—rhythmical, steady, and surely very near. For a moment she listened. Then a sort of panic seized her. She remembered the incident of the evening, the hidden boat, Paolo’s assertion that it was waiting near the house, that it had not gone. He had said, too, that the unseen rower had begun to row when he began to sing, had stopped rowing when he stopped singing. A conviction came to her that this same rower as now following her. But why? Who was it? She knew nobody on the lake, except Robin. And he—no, it could not be Robin.

The ash of the oars became more distinct. Her unreasoning fear increased. With the mystical attention of the great and hidden mind was now blent a crude human attention. She began to feel really terrified, and, seizing her oars, she pulled frantically towards the middle of the lake.

“Viola!”

Out of the darkness it came.

“Viola!”

She stopped and began to tremble. Who—what—could be calling her by name, here, in the night? She heard the sound of oars plainly now. Then she saw a thing like a black shadow. It was the prow of an advancing boat. She sat quite still, with her hands on the oars. The boat came on till she could see the figure of one man in it, standing up, and rowing, as the Italian boatmen do when they are alone, with his face set towards the prow. A few strong strokes and it was beside her, and she was looking into Rupert Carey’s eyes.