‘He shall not know; he shall not know,’ she whispered to the sunny air and to the crimson blossoms.
She stooped and tore the letter of Nadine Napraxine into small pieces, and cast them down amongst the shrubs. Then with slow, unsteady steps she took the familiar paths which led through the gardens to the hills. There were no tears in her eyes; a flame-like force of self-destruction burned in her and scorched up all natural fear. Even the frightful guilt which her creed made her believe she was about to take upon her soul could not appal or arrest her. Even the human yearning in her which impelled her to turn back once and look upon his face and hear his voice,—if only from some distant place, as strangers might look and hear,—she had strength in her to resist and repel. Seeing him, she would betray herself; he would suspect; her death would be a burden to him as her life had been. She wished him to be happy, never to think of her save now and then with kindness.
Fortitude and self-denial were stronger in her than any other thing, and hushed down the natural revolt of aching passions.
‘I will give him my life, since it is all I have to give,’ she thought: she was his debtor for so much, but thus her debt would be paid.
She went slowly, but steadily, up the familiar way in the glad light of the afternoon hours. With the swift, unstudied instincts of a mind feverish and confused, but holding fast to one central and immovable idea, she had remembered at once the means by which she could reach her end and make her death seem the result of accident; she had remembered a crumbling tower on the flower-farm of her fostermother, where the owls built and the pigeons mated, and where again and again as a child she had been forbidden to risk life and limb on its rotten stairway and its ancient stones, but obstinately had sat for many an hour, seeming close to the blue sky, looking down on the olive and orange woods, and calling to the birds wheeling above her head.
One false step there—then silence. Who would ever know?
The sun was near its setting as she reached the hedge of aloes marking the boundary of S. Pharamond. She passed through them, and crossed a field or two where the red tulips were glowing beneath the tall wheat; then she reached the farm of Nicole Sandroz. No one was in sight: the man was away in the town of Villefranche, the women were at work in the rose fields. No one saw her save the old dog of the house, who gave her a mute welcome, creeping out with stiffened limbs from his niche in the wall. From the hill side on which the house stood, the turrets and terraces of Millo, the towers and woods of S. Pharamond, the green oasis of their gardens and the blue sea shining beyond, spread out before her gaze in all the glow and glory of the sunset hour. The golden light suffused all the visible world in its effulgence, and the mountains northward were violet as the cup of an anemone flower. She looked a moment: then closed her eyes and turned away, lest the fair sight of the earth at evening should weaken and unnerve her.
She entered the dwelling-place and ascended the stairway leading to the tower, relic of an ancient time when the low white-walled building had been fortified and armed against the pirates of the sea and the freelances of the land. She climbed the broken steps of stone, which her young feet had so often trodden with the careless light tread of the kid, and its heedlessness of danger. Every now and then a narrow slit in the masonry of the tower let in the golden light of the world without and let her see the smiling sunlit fields. A strong shudder shook her at such times from head to foot, but she did not pause until she had reached the platform of the tower. It was worn and broken, many fissures yawned in it, the unused nests of birds cumbered it, the battlements which had once protected it were almost levelled with its floor; the stones which remained were lose and uneven. She paused upon the summit, and the glory of the evening light was all about her and upon her; the deep blue heavens seemed very near. Though it was daylight still there were stars clear and large above her head. The world lay soundless and serene; no echo from it reached her through those depths of air.