"But, Belinda— I really need to rest a moment!" protested Mrs. Horton.
"You can rest all the time you're eating your luncheon," replied her step-daughter. "Come along, Morry!"
Sophy thanked Heaven that she was not called upon to hear Morris's voice. He was evidently sulky about something. He made no reply. Mrs. Horton grumbled a little, calling Belinda "selfish." Again Belinda laughed. Then the three went on up the narrow, twisting Rio.
Sophy, trembling all through, leaned there against the columns, with eyes closed. Round and round in her mind the old adage went humming: "It never rains but it pours.... It never rains but it pours...."
She remembered that Loring and Belinda had been married last May. She felt ashamed and sick for herself, for them, for life, for human nature, for the whole social scheme, for civilisation.... Everything seemed to her like a sickness in that moment. This life that the world crawled with was like the swarming of maggots in a cheese.... She hated herself—she hated the existing order of things. She understood the darkest throes of pessimists and cynics in that moment. And under it all her heart burnt fiercely with the supreme pang of the proud, chaste being, who has yielded to lesser loves before the one, great, real love has been revealed.
Sophy went back into the church and stayed there a long time. She felt faint and ill. She was grateful for the quiet darkness in which she could sit still without attracting attention. At last she went out into the street again. When she reached the Piazza, she took a gondola and returned to the Rio San Vio. She had forgotten that she had not lunched. She looked so pale and strange that Rosa exclaimed when she saw her. She lay down on a sofa in the little sitting-room and let the kind soul bring her a cup of hot tea. This revived her a little, and by and by as she lay there she fell asleep. It was nearly six o'clock when she waked. Her eyes and the back of her head ached dully; but she felt that she must refresh herself and change her morning gown before Lady Wychcote came back with Bobby. She bathed her face and eyes, put on a tea-gown, and returned to the drawing-room to wait for them. Taking up a book, she tried to read, but found that she could not command her attention. It occurred to her that she ought to write to Amaldi, but this also she found impossible. She could not write to him on the same day that she had seen Loring for the first time since her divorce. Then suddenly memories of Cecil began to haunt her. Incidents of their early love-days together came back to her with words and looks distinct as reality itself.
She went and leaned on the little balcony. The sun had just gone down. Air and water were suffused with the afterglow. High overhead, the Venice swifts flew shrilling as with ecstasy. Their musical arabesques of flight patterned the upper blue like joy made visible. Some dementia of supernal bliss seemed to impel them. The fine, exultant, piercing notes were like showers of tiny, crystal arrows shot earthward from the heights of heaven.
Sophy stood gazing up at them, and the mystery of their joy, and of her pain, filled her with a new aching.
She leaned there until the afterglow had died away; but it was not until seven o'clock that she began to feel anxious. By the time that it was nearly eight and Lady Wychcote and Bobby had not come, she was greatly alarmed, and this alarm swept away all lesser considerations. She sent a wire to Amaldi, saying: "Bobby and his grandmother went to Murano this morning. Expected to return at six. Not here yet. Fear some accident. Will you come and advise me." Then she had a consultation with Lorenzo, the first gondoliere, a quiet, capable man of about forty. She thought of going herself to Murano to make inquiries, but it would take a long time by gondola. Could Lorenzo think of any way of getting there more quickly. Lorenzo said that his cousin Ippolito had a steam-launch in which he took out pleasure-parties. He might try to get that; but then he must remind the Signora that the glass-works at Murano would be closed at this hour. It would be very difficult to make inquiries. Why did not the Signora go to the Questura for aid? The police might be able to think of some way in which to get at the people of the glass-works.