She withdrew her hands and pressed them on her face, and on her hair. The man took a step toward her, and again, with that fierce gesture, she thrust her hands out.
"Don't," she cried. "Don't, don't come to undo what you have done."
And like a flash she was gone.
She fled past him, through the garden, from one terrace to another, swiftly toward the château.
The man turned, walked along the terrace, through a little gate, and returned by the great road, across the turf court, to the library. And he walked firmly like one who has finally laid his hands on a thing that eluded him, like one who has finally found, standing defiant in some cranny of the rocks, an enemy that, until now, he could never overtake.
In her mad flight, on the highest terrace in the exquisite Italian garden, Caroline Childers came on the Marchesa Soderrelli. She was standing erect, unmoving, like one of the figures in the niches along the wall. Her face was lifted, her arms lay stiffly extended along her body. Her eyes looked out over this sea of moonlight washing a shore of tree tops. There lay about her the atmosphere of some resolution that cast down the plans of life.
Behind her, as though they had put the riddle which she had answered, as though they had presented to her that eternal question, which they had presented to all the daughters of the world since that ball began its turning, those figures surmounting the stone pillars of the bronze gates, those figures having the face and bust of a woman and the body of a monster, those inscrutable chimeras, seemed in the soft light to lie content in the attitude of life.
The girl stopped when she saw the Marchesa Soderrelli. Then, with a cry, she flew to her and flung her arms around her and crushed her face against her bosom. The impulsive act awakened the woman. Her face softened; her body relaxed. She put her arm around the girl and drew her gently up against her heart.
"What is it, dear?" she said.
"Oh, Marchesa," the girl sobbed, "I have refused—I have refused to go to the city of Dreams."