Her voice sweetened yet more. She leaned forward, pressing her bosom against the rough ironwork of the balcony.
"I knew that, from the first hour we met, in the variegated, autumn sunshine, upon the greensward, before the white summer-house overlooking that noble, English, woodland view. I saw you, and so doing I saw mysteries of joy in myself unimagined by me before. It went very hard with me then, Richard. It has gone very hard with me ever since."
Madame de Vallorbes' words died away in a grave and delicate whisper. But she did not turn her head, nor did Richard speak. Only, close there beside her, she heard him breathe, panting short and quick even as a dog pants, while a certain vibration seemed to run along the rough ironwork against which she leaned. And by these signs Helen judged her speech, though unanswered, had not been wholly in vain. From below, the luscious fragrance of the garden, the chime of falling water, and the urgent voice of the painted pleasure-city came up about her. Night had veiled the face of Naples, even as Helen's own. Yet lines of innumerable lights described the suave curve of the bay, climbed the heights of Posilipo, were doubled in the oily waters of the harbour, spread abroad alluring gaiety in the wide piazzas, and shone like watchful and soliciting eyes from out the darkness of narrow street, steep lane, and cutthroat alley. While, above all that, high uplifted against the opacity of the starless sky, a blood-red beacon burned on the summit of Vesuvius, the sombre glow of it reflected upon the underside of the masses of downward-rolling smoke as upon the belly of some slow-crawling, monstrous serpent.
Suddenly Helen spoke once again, and with apparent inconsequence.
"Richard, you must have known she could never satisfy you—why did you try to marry Constance Quayle?"
"To escape."
"From whom—from me?"
"From myself, which is much the same thing as saying from you, I suppose."
"And you could not escape?"
"So it seems."