A-a-a-y! Before I saw thee I was at peace.’
The strange minor music with its restless rhythms, possessed a very potent enchantment, so that the heart beat faster to hear it, and the mind grew mazed with forbidden thoughts, and the soul grew heavy with the infinite sadness of fulfilled desire; but the body knew only the urge towards a complete fulfilment. . . . ‘A-a-a-a-y! Before I saw thee I was at peace.’
They would not understand the soft Spanish words, and yet as they sat there they could but divine their meaning, for love is no slave of mere language. Mary would want Stephen to take her in her arms, so must rest her cheek against Stephen’s shoulder, as though they two had a right to such music, had a right to their share in the love songs of the world. But Stephen would always move away quickly.
‘Let’s go in,’ she would mutter; and her voice would sound rough, for that bright sword of youth would have leapt out between them.
5
There came days when they purposely avoided each other, trying to find peace in separation. Stephen would go for long rides alone, leaving Mary to idle about the villa; and when she got back Mary would not speak, but would wander away by herself to the garden. For Stephen had grown almost harsh at times, possessed as she now was by something like terror, since it seemed to her that what she must say to this creature she loved would come as a death-blow, that all youth and all joy would be slain in Mary.
Tormented in body and mind and spirit, she would push the girl away from her roughly: ‘Leave me alone, I can’t bear any more!’
‘Stephen—I don’t understand. Do you hate me?’
‘Hate you? Of course you don’t understand—only, I tell you I simply can’t bear it.’
They would stare at each other pale-faced and shaken.