She did not know how it happened, but presently she was lying on her bed, her face buried in the pillows, and she was tearing her heart out in a tearless storm of shame and self-contempt.
What right had that man whom she had so often seen in her dreams to be alive in the real world, walking among other men, recognising her, as she had felt that he did that very afternoon? What right had he to come to her again in the vision and to change it all, to take her in his violent arms and kiss her on the mouth, and burn the mark of shame into her soul, and fill her with a pleasure more horrible than any pain? Was this the end of all her girlish meditation, of the Vestal's longing for higher things, of the mystic's perfect way? A man's brutal kiss not even resisted? Was that all? It could not have been worse if on that same day she had been alone with him in the garden, instead of with Guido d'Este, and if he had suddenly put his arms round her, and if she had not even turned her face from his.
It was only a dream. Yes, to-morrow she would awake, if she slept at all, and the sunshine would be streaming in where the moonlight had shone, and it would only be a dream, past and to be forgotten. Perhaps. But what were dreams, then? She had not been asleep, she was quite sure. There was not even that poor excuse. The man's phantasm had come to her awake.
And Lamberto Lamberti was nothing to her. Beyond the startling recognition of a face long familiar, but never seen among the living, he was to her a man she had met but once, and did not wish to meet again. She had been aware of his presence near her at the Princess's, and when he had gone away she had looked at him once more with a sort of wonder; but she had felt nothing else, she had not touched his hand, the thought that he would ever dare to seize her roughly in his arms brought burning blushes to her cheek and outraged all her maiden senses. She had never seen any man whom she could suffer to touch her; her whole nature revolted at the thought. Yet, just now, there had been neither revolt nor resistance; she felt that she had been herself, awake, alive, and consenting to an unknown but frightfully real contamination, from which her soul could never again be wholly clean.
The storm subsided, and sullen waves of self-contempt swelled and sank, as if to overwhelm her drowning soul. She understood at last the ascetic's wrath against the mortal body and his irresistible craving for bodily pain.
CHAPTER IV
Very early in the morning Cecilia fell into a dreamless sleep at last, and awoke, unrefreshed, after nine o'clock. She felt very tired and listless as she opened the window a little and let in the light and air, with the sounds of the busy thoroughfare below. The weather was suddenly much warmer, and her head was heavy.
It had all been a dream, no doubt, and was gone where dreams go; but it had been like a fight, out of which she had come alive by a miracle, bruised and wounded, and offended in her whole being. Never again would she sit alone at night and look for her image in the shadow, since such things could come of playing with visions; and she trusted that she might never again set eyes upon Lamberto Lamberti. She was alone, but at the thought of meeting him she blushed and bit her lip angrily. How was it possible that he should know what she had dreamt? For years, in that dream of the Vestal, a being had played a part, a being too like him in face to be another man, but who had loved her as a goddess, and whom she had loved for his matchless bravery and his glorious strength over himself. It was a long story, that had gradually grown clear in every detail, that had gone far beyond death to a spiritual life in a place of light, though it had always ended in something vaguely fearful that brought her back to the world, and to her present living self, to begin again. She could not go over it now, but she was conscious, and to her shame, that the spell of perfect happiness had always been broken at last by the taint of earthly longing and regret that crept up stealthily from the world below, an evil mist, laden with poison and fever and mortality.
That change had been undefined, though it had been horrible and irresistible; it had been evil, but it had not been brutal, and it had thrilled her with the certainty of passion and pain to come, realising neither while dreading and loving both.