Damaris had grown pale; she spoke with impetuous and almost fierce meaning; the darker instincts which were in the hot blood of the Bérardes were aroused; she did not pause to consider her own words.
It grew dark without: the sun had now sunk below the horizon; the red light of the fire on the hearth reached her and shone in her auburn curls, on her shining sombre eyes, on her lips shut close with scorn. She looked at him from under her level brows.
'You care for her very much?' she said suddenly.
Othmar was silent some moments. How much or how little should he show of his real thoughts to this child, who loved him and whom he could not love in any way as she deserved? He thought she had merited candour at the least from him.
'Yes, dear; I care for her very much, to use your words. She has been all the world to me; in a sense she will be so always. Every great passion has a certain immortal element in it; at least I think so. She has been the one woman for whom I would have sinned any sin, have done any folly, have given up place and name, and honour, and all I had, if she had wished. No one loves twice like that. Many never love so once. I do not pretend that life with her has been all I hoped for: those exquisite dreams are never realised; human nature does not hold the possibility of their realisation. I disappoint her perhaps as much as she chills me; it is inevitable, and is no one's fault that I know of; the fault lies with human nature.'
He paused. Damaris stood where she had been before, but the light had died down from the wood-fire, and the shadows of the twilight were upon her face. Her open-air, bird-like, flower-like life upon the island had made all life seem very simple to her, a thing regulated like the coming and going of the boats between the shores, broad and plain as the smooth sea sand of the mainland. All suddenly she saw that it was a thing of intricate mysteries, of cruel perplexities, of fathomless emotions, with whose disquietude and disillusion the learned played as with knotted threads which it amused them to disentangle, but before whose impenetrable secret the simple broke their heart.
Othmar continued with an effort, leaning against the side of the shut casement grown dark with the descending gloom of coming night.
'I cannot make you comprehend, my dear, with how great a passion I have loved her. You may have heard of one who bore my name before her, one who died on your own shores. She was lovely in body and soul, and had no fault that ever I saw, and would have died for me—did die for me, perchance—and to her I was without any love, always because my whole soul was set upon another woman. And that other is now my wife. And her, I tell you, I have loved in such wise that I believe no other love worthy the name will ever arise in me again. I do not say that it is impossible, for no man knows;—but so I think. She has disdained the place she took, and has left it empty, but no other can fill it after her. She has made that impossible——'
The tears rose to his eyes as he spoke. He could not think of the woman he had worshipped, and whose heart he thought had never had one pulse of actual love for him, without a pain which overmastered him. He had never spoken of all he felt for her to any living being throughout the years in which her influence had reigned over his life.
Damaris looked at him in the deepening shadows which hid her own face. A passionate pain communicated itself to her as she listened.