“A long time to be without you.”
“But promise.”
“All right. Very well.”
She stooped over me quietly before she went. I watched her pass swaying across the dappled turf, under the dancing shadows and rain of petals. Just before she entered the courtyard, she turned and waved her hand.
Something in Fiesole’s distant aspect, something of seeming maidenly daintiness, brought to mind another woman—gold and ivory, with poppies for her lips, were the words which had described her. While I had walked Falaise that morning I had striven to banish her from my thoughts. And now Fiesole, from whom I had hoped to obtain forgetfulness, Fiesole herself had unconsciously reminded me.
In the stillness I confronted myself: I was being faithless to the loyalty of years—I had done and was about to do a thing which was traitorous to all my past. Vi’s memory, though in itself sinful, had demanded chastity from me.
Yet my present conduct was not incompatible with my past: it was the result of it. Puppy passions of thought had grown into hounds of action—that was all.
From the first my pagan imagination, at war with my puritan conscience, had lured me on. All my life I had been breaking bounds imaginatively: innocently for Ruthita in my childhood; in appearance for Fiesole at Venice; dangerously for Vi; and at last in fact for Fiesole. Narrower affections I had passed by, not perceiving that their narrowness made for safety and kindness. The unwalled garden of masterless desire had proved a wilderness; its fruit was loneliness.
Last night, sitting in the courtyard, I had told myself that in remaining constant to Vi, I had gambled for the impossible. Was it true? In any case, to have followed up the risk strongly was my only excuse for having gambled at all. By turning back I abandoned the prize, and made the sin of loving a forbidden woman paltry.—Might she not have been waiting for me all these years, as I had been waiting! What an irony if now, when I was destroying both the hope and reward of our sacrifice, she were free and preparing to come to me!
And Fiesole! I had used her to drug my unsatisfied longing. Should I not do her more grievous wrong in marrying her while I loved another woman?—I had been mad. I was appalled.