As I thought the words there came humming through my brain that foolish saying of Mother Pêche’s. Again I saw her on that spring evening bending over my palm and murmuring—“Your heart’s desire is near your death of hope!”
“Here is my death of hope, mother,” said I to myself. “But where is my heart’s desire?”
And with that I laughed harshly—aloud.
It was an ill sound in that place of bitterness, and heads were raised to look at me. Marc asked, with a trace of apprehension in his voice:
“What’s the matter, Paul? Anything to laugh at?”
“Myself!” I muttered.
“The humour of the subject is not obvious,” said he curtly.
Chapter XXX
A Woman’s Privilege
I did not sleep that night—not one eye-wink—in the hold of the New England ship. Neither could I think, nor even greatly suffer. Rather I lay as it were numbly weltering in my despair. What if I had known all that was going on meanwhile in that other ship, a league behind us, sailing under the lurid sky!
The events which I am now about to set down were not, as will be seen, matter of my own experience. I tell what I have inferred and what has been told me—but told me from such lips and in such fashion that I may indeed be said to have lived it all myself. It is more real to me than if my own eyes had followed it. It is sometimes true that we may see with the eyes of others—of one other—more vividly than with our own.