Before the two foreigners came up with Hilda, who had walked on, Signor Bruno found time to say:
“I must see you to-night, without fail; I am in a very difficult position. I have had to resort to strong measures.”
“Where?” inquired the Vicomte d'Audierne, with that pleasant nonchalance which is so aggravating to the People.
“In the village, any time after nine; a yellow cottage near the well.”
“Good!”
And they joined Hilda Carew.
CHAPTER XVI. FOES
It is only when our feelings are imaginary that we analyse them. When the real thing comes—the thing that only does come to a few of us—we can only feel it, and there is no thought of analysis. Moreover, the action is purely involuntary. We feel strange things—such things as murder—and we cannot help feeling it. We may cringe and shrink; we may toss in our beds when we wake up with such thoughts living, moving, having their being in our brains—but we cannot toss them off. The very attempt to do so is a realisation, and from consciousness we spring to knowledge. We know that in our hearts we are thieves, murderers, slanderers; we know that if we read of such thoughts in a novel we should hold the thinker in all horror; but we are distinctly conscious all the time that these thoughts are our own. This is just the difference existing between artificial feelings and real: the one bears analysis, the other cannot.