§ 6
It seemed to him as he went to Les Bains that next evening that the world had somehow changed into another dimension, so much clearer the air was, so much brighter the stars.... He had discovered a higher, more rarefied stratum of life, in the dim, keen atmosphere of which things took on incomparable beauty and mystery, so that the water on his left hand, unseen, yet so blue, was not the Gulf of Lyons, but the whole Mediterranean, which washed Genoa and Naples and Sicily, and the little islands of the Greeks, and the barbaric shores of Africa, Morocco, and Algiers; and Gibraltar, where the English were, like an armed sentry in a turret. The ships in the harbor were not ships of commerce, but stately entities, each whispering to each in the shush-shush of water and wind, telling of the voyages they had made, adventurous as sturgeons. Even from the mud-and-rush huts along the sea-shore came the note of brave romance. And the softly singing trees! And in the great amphitheater of the woods no longer the shade of Pontius Pilate gnawed his bitten nails, but more gallant presences were, gray-eyed Greek women, with proud composed faces and eloquent hands, and Saracens calmly awaiting the morrow's battle, and troubadours puzzling keenly for a rime.... They were not colored thoughts, but sentient presences. Spirit and thought had united in him into a being like a bird, leaving the earth, and flying into a realm of ancient forgotten beauty, spirit being the will, and thought the vibrating wing.... How harmonious everything was, the stars, the earth, the sea, the people! How clear it had all become! How one!...
He came to her in her garden where she sat beneath a tree. Around, the cicadas whirred in the speaking trees. Zig-zig-zig-zig. But they were no longer strident. They seemed but a vibration of the high atmosphere in which he was....
"Claire-Anne! Claire-Anne...."
"Yes ... yes, lover...."
"Claire-Anne!"
She stood up as he took her lovely, pale hands. There was no shame to her glance, nothing but a wonderful frankness, her eyes going to his like brave winged things.
"Claire-Anne, I want to ask you something."
"Yes ... Lover...."
"Claire-Anne, when will you marry me?"
Her hands never quivered, but he was aware that her mouth did, in the high diluted starlight.
"Why do you want to marry me? Is it because ...? Do you feel bound?... or ... just why?"
"I want to be with you, Claire-Anne."
"Then—dearest, does it matter to go before the mayor and arrange about property? And to go before a priest and make promises—to God!... Sit down, lover; sit down with me here, in the dusk, under the tree."
She still clasped both his hands. He might have been talking to some beautiful disembodied spirit, as Pontius Pilate was a poor panic-stricken spirit, or to something he had conjured out of his head, but for her firm, warm hands. To-night it was she had strength....
"Dearest, promises are so easy to make. I have made promises, oh, so many promises!... And life or destiny.... And when you can't keep them, your heart breaks. You know nothing of me—Shane...."
"I don't want to know; I just want you, Claire-Anne!"
"You must know something. I was just a girl, well brought up, well educated.... I dreamed of being a great actress. I was an actress, but I was ... manquée ... didn't succeed, get success.... And then I married, and my husband died.... And here I am.... And there are other things you mustn't know.... Not that they are dear to me; oh, no!... but you must never hear them.... O Shane, if seven years ago.... But Destiny or life wouldn't let us. And now we can only cheat him, and that only for a while.... Because Destiny is all-seeing and jealous and cruel.... Only for a while, a sweet while...."
"But, Claire-Anne, I don't understand—"
"Don't understand, don't, my lover. Don't anything.... Only let me give all I have, can give to you, and let me take what you care to give in return, only that.... O Shane, we are two people in a dark wood, and it is lonely and terrifying.... And we have met, and our hands ... se sont serrées ... gripped and held.... And we aren't lonely any more, or afraid. And you have a picture in your mind of me, a beautiful, warm picture.... But if the night passed, and we came to the meadow-lands.... O Shane, don't let's go into the light—not into the open, not into the light.... Oh, no! no!"
"But, Claire-Anne...."
"Come closer, Shane. The night is empty. There are only we two in the world.... Come close. Closer. Closer still...."