"See, see!" Rachel cried. She was still pointing. Her voice rang brokenly. "They're coming for me, Erik. Erik, don't you see? People wandering toward me. Horrible strangers. Oh, I know, I know!" She laughed. "My grandmother was a gypsy and she's telling my fortune in the snow. Things that will jump out of space and come at me, after you're gone."
The three men, puffing with exertion, converged upon the walk and passed on with a morose stare at the lovers. Dorn sighed, relieved. He had caught a strange foreboding sense out of the tableau of the white field and the three converging black figures.... If he loved her why was he letting her go? If he loved her....
He walked on suddenly wearied, saddened, uncertain. It was no more than a dream that had touched his senses, a breath of a dream that lingered for a moment upon his mirror. It would pass, as all things pass. And he would fall back into the pattern of streets and faces, watching as before the emptiness of life make geometrical figures of itself. Yes, it was better to have her go—simpler. Perhaps a desire would remain, a breath, a moonlit memory of her loveliness to mumble over now and then, like a line of poetry always unwritten. Let her go. Beautiful ... wonderful.... These were words. Was he even sad? She was—what? Another woman.
In the shadow of a snow-covered wall he paused. The snow had ended.
"Come closer," he whispered. She remained silent as he removed her overcoat. He dropped it in the snow and threw his own beside it.
"We'll be warm for a minute against each other."
She was a flower in his arms. She seemed to vanish and become mist. Slowly he became aware of her touch, of her arms holding him and her lips. She was saying:
"I am yours—always—everywhere. I will be a shrine to you. And whenever you want me I will come crawling on my knees to you."
Dying, dying! She was dying. Another moment and the mist of her would be gone. "Rachel.... Rachel. I love you. I send you away. Oh, God, why do I send you away?"
She was out of his arms. Undressed, naked, emptied, he stood unknown to himself. No words. Her kiss alone lived on his lips. She was looking at him with burning wild eyes. Expression seemed to have left her. There was something else in her face.