"Would I not?" she breathed.
"Oh, I can't give up hoping it may all become possible!" he cried at last, but she shuddered a little. "Don't," she said, "it's building on a grave."
But her heart ached at the sweetness of the vision. She never felt any temptation to fling her cap over the windmill for him, partly because it is very true that "Les bonnes femmes n'ont pas ces tentations-là," partly because of the much greater things she wanted to give—a hearth that would always warm him, a pillow that would always rest him, and on the hearth a cradle—and these were things that he could not come at through a back door.
They said good-bye on the loggia in Florence, and that night he left for Leghorn. He wrote to her in the train; and bringing her thoughts back to the present by an effort, Sophia picked up the letter now.
"Sophia, Sophia," she read, "is it only you who pay? My sweet, I hope you will never feel what I felt as I went home. The bare truth is I am a coward and a cad, besides being a fool. I began it, and if I didn't know where it was going to lead to I was a fool to play with fire, and I was a cad to go on. Dear, I'd rather go through years of anything you feel than ten minutes of what I'm feeling. But I've got to stick it henceforth when I'm not buoyed up with your presence. It's been so gorgeous, you've been so heavenly, that I'd do it all again. But now besides the awful want of you there's the clear vision of what I am, and it's hideous. I haven't the pluck or the passion to carry you right off before all the world whether you would or no, nor the sense and the honesty and the decency to be just friends with you. Oh, Sophia, I hate myself for it, and hate myself most for being glad, deep down, that I did get what you gave me. I can't find anything solid or honest in me anywhere, except my feeling for you and my joy in our time together, and I've no right to that. This is cruelly unlike what I've preached to you about possessing for ever past joys. I suppose I shall forget my own wickedness and even come to regret that I didn't take more—take all by force or guile—for perhaps, after all, it's better to be a downright brute than a half-and-halfer. If so, shan't I be even more unworthy of all you've given me, you sweet, foolish, lavish child? If you were here now, Sophia, I shouldn't be feeling all this. You'd only have to smile at me and I should get back my pride in having won what I have won. But without you I seem to see more clearly what I am. My sweet, wouldn't you be happier if you saw me so, too? All I feel now is a desperate need of you, your hands and your hair and your eyes and your mouth and your voice and your wit and your dear mothering. And next month? Secret meetings and concerted lies, and all the rest of the filthy game? And I drag you into it all because I want you and because my affairs make it necessary to do it or part for good. I'm trying to look at it clearly and see all the worst—misunderstandings, preoccupation, work, moods, fears, all the things that are going to prevent a wretched thing like me from being where he wants to be and doing what he could for you. I wish from the bottom of my soul the train would smash up and kill me to-night. Oh, if there were only the past few weeks to consider it would be simple enough. I've had such a time as I've never had before, and you made it. You said you would and you did. You've given me such a time as a woman never gave a man in our circumstances before. But there's you and the world and the future to consider. It's very small moral satisfaction to me that I didn't deliberately set to work to make love to you. It grew, as you showed me more and more how adorable you were, how gracious and desirable and generous and trusting, you dear nymph of the woods, virgin-mother, friend and lover and comforter. It's no good going on like this, man's a self-deceiving kind of brute, and perhaps before long all the glory of the days of you, you, you, will fit in quite comfortably and the poison of self-hatred cease to hurt. I stop to-morrow night at the Grand Hotel, Livorno. Will you write to me there, sweet? If I could really be sorry for it all I should like myself better. But I can't. I can only hate myself for glorying in what I got by such means. Write to me—I'm frightened and alone.
"Richard."
"My sweet," the next letter began, "your letter has come. It's what I knew it would be, so brave and sweet and good that I can only wonder at you all the more. It soothes and heals and cheers me, and once more I am drinking your life-blood and using your youth and splendour to live on. Is there anything you wouldn't do for my comfort? When I fell asleep this morning about dawn I dreamt of you and woke all hot and frightened, because I thought I heard you moaning, a horrible, strangled moan. Did I? Oh, my dear, I hope not. I can't get at the truth all these miles away. You see, that brave, wise letter of yours might have meant a huge effort of the will and brain, and not be a direct outflow from the you that gave me those days. Shall I ever see that you again, I wonder? Your letter's like the touch of your lips on my forehead—cooling, healing, bracing and most sweet. Dear, you're not only all I've told you before that you are, but you're wise as well. Oh! child, girl, most wonderfully woman-wise. My sweet, what you could do for me if only we could belong to each other. Sophia, I'm trying hard to knock it into my head that we can't, but I can see now that the trouble's going to be, not remorse or anxiety, but just the big, aching lack of you, and not of your beauty so much as of your tenderness and wit and your weak, clinging strength. Oh, Sophia, I'm writing a lot of rot, but it isn't rot really. I mean, you understand. D'you remember the day when you said you'd exactly fitted that long body of yours into the ground? That's how I feel when I rest my mind on yours, only it's the ground and not me that does the shaping."
The next letter was from Marseilles. The last page, which Sophia read through twice, ran thus:
"So good-bye to it all, but not good-bye to Sophia. Dear, I believe very strongly in spiritual converse (I can't find the word I want for it). But don't you feel that my arms are round you? I can feel your head on my shoulder and your hair against my cheek. I mean that it isn't just cheating oneself with vain imaginations to meet like that. I mean to go on thinking of you hard and the vision soothes, not aggravates, the longing, and I will meet you like that at our Castello di Luna. But oh, my dear, I wish it were really true now! There is so much I want from you and must go on wanting. Come to me in thought, my sweet, until we can see and touch and hear each other again. We will always say to each other whatever is in our hearts and minds. And so I'm just starting to go back—Sophia, I can't say 'home.' Home means what you are. Oh, I thought I should go back gaily and take it all up, but it makes me sick with dread. I ought never to have got out of harness. It's better to go on till one drops than to taste freedom and have to give it up. Sweet, your eyes and your mouth and your hair are with me always. Don't call me a materialist, and say it's only your body's beauty that I value. You're sweet to me through and through. Oh, Sophia, come often to meet me in Monte Luna. And there is Lucia to say sweet, impossible things to make us dream. Ti bacio gl'occhi.
"Richard."
Sophia opened the last sheet of paper. It enfolded three primroses, and on it was written "Primavere per la Primavera." She looked at them a moment, then wrapped them up again and put letters and flowers back in the bag. Behind her the sun was near to setting, and the blaze of it lay full on the towers, making them a bright tawny-grey against the sky of deep steel-colour, and turning to tongues of flame the tufts of yellow gillyflowers—Santa Beata's own plant—that sprang out here and there from the sheer masonry. Some jackdaws flew out of the nearest belfry, and circled round it, black amid the brightness. Sophia sprang up and walked to and fro.
"I shall feel again, if I stay here. Unbearably. I wish I hadn't come. I'll go away to-morrow. Richard, Richard, Richard!"