After a long time, she fell into a half-conscious, restless state. Motionless and unreasoning, she passed in succession through all the events of the day gigantically exaggerated, blending grotesquely one into the other; then through each one of them, startlingly distinct, having no relation to any other thing that had ever happened to her—visions of things, which seemed like vast, shadow-throwing rocks one might encounter in a desert of sand. Then again, in sudden change, a great, blurred mist of vaporous phantoms came before her. One by one she strove to attain them—they were without form and void, and one by one they passed her by, remote and mournful as the flight of a lapwing. Images, carved in the air, of people she had known, of faces she had never seen; words she had heard, words that had never been spoken, flitted by, hovering like moths with restless wings. All that she had ever done, seen, or heard, was before her in a dancing maze of coloured shapes, threading singly to the centre of a blazing wheel, darting outwards radiant to the misty circle edge, like a flight of gnats round a fire. The lids fast-closed over her eyes seemed to enclose the world for her, to drive down into her brain a mass of wheeling unreality. With an effort she wrenched herself free from her pillows, tossing her bare arms over her head. She fell back again, with one hand clasped behind her thick, soft hair, looking up with wide eyes at the dim shape of the curtained bed roof. It was thus that sleep presently found her....
When she awoke in the morning, a faint feeling of frightened discomfort, a feeling that something new and dangerous was before her, vanished with the slanting, brilliant beams of sun striking through the shutters. She lay, quietly twisting a wisp of her tumbled hair, surprised only that she had forgotten to plait it the night before. Then, as everything came back to her with a rush, she wondered what she had found to so trouble and alarm her. Giles loved her!—well, it was very sweet and good to be loved by him, and she could not help it. She only wanted to be with him—to know that he loved her! What harm was there! She sprang from the bed.
The pulse of life beat very strongly this morning in the green-clothed, quivering valley behind the town; the almond trees seemed to flush a deeper pink; the tinkle of bells, as goats shifted dustily along the road to a new pasture, came with fuller melody to her ears. She leaned from the window and drew in a deep breath of the freshened air.
After all, there was nearly a month, and life was good just now—nearly a month of a sweet companionship, and after—well—all things come to a end!—it was not very good to dwell upon that thought, it was better to take things as they came. She fell to wondering what time Giles would be with them.
That morning Mrs. Travis, in pursuance of her resolve, went early into Monte Carlo. She knew that Giles would come over, but she always shut her eyes to the possibility of mischief, knowing that to recognise it would mean the sacrifice of her daily visit to the gambling-tables. Taking the greatest care never to dive below the surface, she was enabled to persuade herself quite comfortably that her niece ran no risk, and she consoled herself for leaving her with her habitual reflection that Giles was a connection of her own—the elasticity of her principles enabling her that morning to fix the relationship at some two degrees nearer than it really was. He was also a married man, a fact which she could twist either way as it suited her convenience, with an equally full and just feeling of comfort. She departed, getting over the ground at a great pace with a dignified, flat-footed gait, her head full of enthusiasm and artificial flowers. She studied, as she went, a little book on her “system”—without in the least understanding it, which was immaterial, as she always abandoned it after playing it for a quarter of an hour. She assured Jocelyn comfortably, on parting from her, that she would be back quite early, and Jocelyn looked after her, smiling, perfectly assured that she would be free till dinner.
Giles came soon after; his face, impassively haggard, lighted up when Jocelyn came towards him. She had never seemed to him so beautiful and full of life. She gave him both her hands, with the intuitive feeling that in frank friendliness alone lay a narrow path of safety and happiness for the days left to them. She looked at him softly, and so took from him the bitterness which might have driven him to passionate words. In the reaction of a long, sleepless night he had schooled himself painfully to accept this position, but he was relieved beyond measure not to have to take the initiative. It hurt him to see those two hands so frankly stretched to him, but he was grateful to her, with a dull, despairing sort of gratitude.
He had not seen his wife since the scene of the night before—the impression left upon him by it was too strong and painful. For the space of a short hour, he had proposed to himself not to see Jocelyn again, to keep away at all costs, but his resolve had shrivelled, like all his resolves, before the flame of his passion, and he had come, with the reservation to let yesterday’s words be as if unspoken.
He spent the whole day with her, and went home in the evening humble, and almost happy. He was worn out by the conflicting emotions of the previous day and his sleepless night....
A fortnight of days went by, and as the sands of their hour-glass of time ran out, the strain upon them became almost unbearable. Jocelyn’s continual thought was, “I shall go away, and there will be the end!” But she found that there were moments when she was dumb with the dull craving to feel his arms round her. At other times she longed to get away at once, anywhere away; to be free for ever, and at all costs, from this grinding necessity for repression, from the appealing, haunting look which Giles could not keep out of his face. With the constant varying of her moods their meetings became daily more difficult, the hours spent together more feverish or more dismal. Once Giles broke through the intolerable restraint, but the piteous, frightened look that came into her face at the first word held him mute.
Never for one moment did Jocelyn doubt herself. She would go away, and there would be the end! But the very impossibility of union with him, which she kept ever before her as the one barrier of safety, roused at times in her feelings before which she recoiled ashamed, which she had never thought that her mind could harbour—curiosity to probe her lover’s nature to its depths, ardent longing to know, and to prove the full meaning of the passion she saw in his eyes, felt in every touch of his fingers. At other times she had an intense, passionless pity for the suffering he could not hide from her. And sometimes the old horror came over her, and she would turn from him with aversion, only to be smitten with remorse when he had left her.