But still farther away, on the line of the horizon, a mighty wave—a veritable wall of water—was approaching, formidable, gigantic, fabulous....
That was the “tidal wave.”
In the course of my life, when events tragic and inexorable have raised their threatening billows above me and caught me in their crashing downfall, sweeping me like a piece of frail wreckage towards destruction, I have said to myself: “This is the tidal wave. Nothing worse can follow. Nothing more terrible than this can come upon me.”
But lo! behind that great wave of calamity another and still greater has followed, and still another and another—fabulous waves of tragedy and disaster.
Thus it was that when I left Prilukoff that evening I thought that the tidal wave of my destiny had at last passed over me. Nothing more could crush and overwhelm me; before me stretched only the limitless levels of grief and remorse.
But it was not so. Another—the last—wave of disaster was rearing itself like the fabulous wall of water of my childhood's recollections, carrying me on its crest, crashing down with me to irremediable ruin, to the fathomless abyss of crime.
That very night Tioka fell ill. Elise came hurriedly into my room to call me. “Come at once, my lady. The young master is very ill. He is delirious and keeps talking to himself.”
I ran into the child's room. He was sitting up in bed, his wide eyes glowing in his fevered face. Where and when had I once before seen him like this?...
His mind was wandering, and he talked incessantly—about Tania whom he had not seen or mentioned for the past two years, about his grandmother, and the old dog Bear. Then suddenly he asked for a picture and for some poetry. “Mama,” he said, clinging to my neck, “say the poetry to me, the poetry—”