Philippa, with her scarlet lips, her classic flesh, her Circean feverishness, suffered from her close association with this exultant mourner, as some heathen boy robbed of his companion might have suffered from contact with a Christian visionary, for whom death was “far better.”
At this moment, however, as she hurried towards the station, it was not of Baltazar, it was of Adrian, and Adrian only, that she thought.
She dismissed the fact of Baptiste’s expected arrival with bitter contempt. Let the boy go to Nance if he pleased! After all, it was to herself—much more intimately than to Nance—that Adrian had confided his passionate idealization of his son and his savage craving for him.
Yes, it was to her he had confided this, and it was to her always, and never to Nance, that he spoke of his book and of his secret thoughts. Her mind was what Adrian wanted—her mind, her spirit, her imagination. These were things that Nance, with all her feminine ways, was never able to give him.
Why couldn’t she tear him from her now and from all these people?
Let these others be afraid of his madness. He was not mad to her. If he were, why then, she too, she who loved him and understood him, was mad!
From the long sloping spaces of the park, as she hurried on, she could see at intervals, through the misty sun-bathed trees, the mouth of the harbour, with its masts and shipping, and, beyond that, the sea itself.
Ah! the sea was the thing that had mingled their souls! The sea was the accomplice of their love!
Yes, he was hers—hers in the heights and the depths—and none of them should tear him from her!
All the whimpering human crowd of them, with their paltry pieties and vulgar prudence—how she would love to strike them down and pass over them—over their upturned staring faces—until he and she were together!