The breeze shifted, bringing with it the hollow sea-thunder. She turned her head and glanced out across the ocean, hands behind her, fingers linked.
“I have come here into your garden uninvited,” I said.
“Shall we sit here—a moment?” she suggested, without turning.
Presently she seated herself in one corner of the bench; her gaze wandered over the partly blighted garden, then once more centred on the seaward skyline.
The color of her hands, her neck, fascinated me. That flesh texture of snow and roses, firmly and delicately modelled, which sometimes is seen with red hair, I had seen once before in a picture by a Spanish master, but never, until now, in real life.
And she was life incarnate in her wholesome beauty—a beauty of which I had perceived only the sad shadow at La Trappe—a sweet, healthy, exquisite woman, moulded, fashioned, colored by a greater Master than the Spanish painter dreaming of perfection centuries ago.
In the sun a fragrance grew—the subtle incense from her gown—perhaps from her hair.
“Autumn is already gone; we are close to winter,” she said, under her breath. “See, there is nothing left—scarcely a blossom—a rose or two; but the first frost will scatter the petals. Look at the pinks; look at the dead leaves. Ah, tristesse, tristesse! The life of summer is too short; the life of flowers is too short; so are our lives, Monsieur Scarlett. Do you believe it?”
“Yes—now.”
She was very still for a while, her head bent toward the sea. Then, without turning: “Have you not always believed it?”