“Nor I with you!” I said fiercely.

“Nor I with you—nor I with you!” she repeated like a child saying a lesson—“Of course not!—if I do not live with you, you cannot live with me!” She laughed discordantly; then turned her beseeching gaze once more upon Lucio—“Good-bye!” she said.

He looked at her with a curious fixity, but returned no word in answer. His eyes flashed coldly in the moonlight like sharp steel, and he smiled. She regarded him with such passionate intentness that it seemed as though she sought to draw his very soul into herself by the magnetism of her glance,—but he stood unmoved, a very statue of fine disdain and intellectual self-repression. My scarcely controlled fury broke out again at the sight of her dumb yearning, and I gave vent to a shout of scornful laughter.

[p 375]
“By heaven, a veritable new Venus and reluctant Adonis!” I cried deliriously—“A poet should be here to immortalize so touching a scene! Go—go!”—and I motioned her away with a furious gesture—“Go, if you do not want me to murder you! Go, with the proud consciousness that you have worked all the mischief and ruin that is most dear to the heart of a woman,—you have spoilt a life and dishonoured a name,—you can do no more,—your feminine triumph is complete! Go!—would to God I might never see your face again!—would to God I had been spared the misery of having married you!”

She paid no attention whatever to my words, but kept her eyes fixed on Lucio. Retreating slowly, she seemed to feel rather than see her way to the winding stair, and there, turning, she began to ascend. Half way up she paused—looked back and fully confronted us once more,—with a wild wicked rapture on her face she kissed her hands to Lucio, smiling like a spectral woman in a dream,—then she went onward and upward step by step, till the last white fold of her robe had vanished,—and we two,—my friend and I,—were alone. Facing one another we stood, silently,—I met his sombre eyes and thought I read an infinite compassion in them!—then,—while I yet looked upon him, something seemed to clutch my throat and stop my breathing,—his dark and beautiful countenance appeared to me to grow suddenly lurid as with fire,—a coronal of flame seemed to tremble above his brows,—the moonlight glistened blood-red!—a noise was in my ears of mingled thunder and music as though the silent organ at the end of the gallery were played by hands invisible;—struggling against these delusive sensations, I involuntarily stretched out my hands ...

“Lucio! ...” I gasped—“Lucio ... my friend! I think, ... I am, ... dying! My heart is broken!”

As I spoke, a great blackness closed over me,—and I fell senseless.

[p 376]
XXXII

Oh, the blessedness of absolute unconsciousness! It is enough to make one wish that death were indeed annihilation! Utter oblivion,—complete destruction,—surely this would be a greater mercy to the erring soul of man than the terrible God’s-gift of Immortality,—the dazzling impress of that divine ‘Image’ of the Creator in which we are all made, and which we can never obliterate from our beings. I, who have realized to the full the unalterable truth of eternal life,—eternal regeneration for each individual spirit in each individual human creature,—look upon the endless futures through which I am compelled to take my part with something more like horror than gratitude. For I have wasted my time and thrown away priceless opportunities,—and though repentance may retrieve these, the work of retrieval is long and bitter. It is easier to lose a glory than to win it; and if I could have died the death that positivists hope for at the very moment when I learned the full measure of my heart’s desolation, surely it would have been well! But my temporary swoon was only too brief,—and when I recovered I found myself in Lucio’s own apartment, one of the largest and most sumptuously furnished of all the guest-chambers at Willowsmere,—the windows were wide open, and the floor was flooded with moonlight. As I shuddered coldly back to life and consciousness, I heard a tinkling sound of tune, and opening my eyes wearily I saw Lucio himself seated in the full radiance of the moon with a mandoline on his knee from [p 377] which he was softly striking delicate impromptu melodies. I was amazed at this,—astounded that while I personally was overwhelmed with a weight of woe, he should still be capable of amusing himself. It is a common idea with us all that when we ourselves are put out, no one else should dare to be merry,—in fact we expect Nature itself to wear a miserable face if our own beloved Ego is disturbed by any trouble,—such is the extent of our ridiculous self-consciousness. I moved in my chair and half rose from it,—when Lucio, still thrumming the strings of his instrument piano pianissimo, said—