He was almost certain, at all events, that he had been thinking of Mrs.Anerton as he sat over his breakfast in the empty hotel restaurant, andthat, looking up on the approach of the lady who seated herself at thetable near the window, he had said to himself, "_That might be she_."
Ever since his Harvard days--he was still young enough to think of them asimmensely remote--Danyers had dreamed of Mrs. Anerton, the Silvia ofVincent Rendle's immortal sonnet-cycle, the Mrs. A. of the _Life andLetters_. Her name was enshrined in some of the noblest English verse ofthe nineteenth century--and of all past or future centuries, as Danyers,from the stand-point of a maturer judgment, still believed. The firstreading of certain poems--of the _Antinous_, the _Pia Tolomei_, the_Sonnets to Silvia_,--had been epochs in Danyers's growth, and the verseseemed to gain in mellowness, in amplitude, in meaning as one brought toits interpretation more experience of life, a finer emotional sense.Where, in his boyhood, he had felt only the perfect, the almost austerebeauty of form, the subtle interplay of vowel-sounds, the rush and fulnessof lyric emotion, he now thrilled to the close-packed significance of eachline, the allusiveness of each word--his imagination lured hither andthither on fresh trails of thought, and perpetually spurred by the sensethat, beyond what he had already discovered, more marvellous regions laywaiting to be explored. Danyers had written, at college, the prize essayon Rendle's poetry (it chanced to be the moment of the great man's death);he had fashioned the fugitive verse of his own storm-and-stress period onthe forms which Rendle had first given to English metre; and when twoyears later the _Life and Letters_ appeared, and the Silvia of the sonnetstook substance as Mrs. A., he had included in his worship of Rendle thewoman who had inspired not only such divine verse but such playful,tender, incomparable prose.
Danyers never forgot the day when Mrs. Memorall happened to mention thatshe knew Mrs. Anerton. He had known Mrs. Memorall for a year or more, andhad somewhat contemptuously classified her as the kind of woman who runscheap excursions to celebrities; when one afternoon she remarked, as sheput a second lump of sugar in his tea:
"Is it right this time? You're almost as particular as Mary Anerton."
"Mary Anerton?"
"Yes, I never _can_ remember how she likes her tea. Either it's lemon_with_ sugar, or lemon without sugar, or cream without either, andwhichever it is must be put into the cup before the tea is poured in; andif one hasn't remembered, one must begin all over again. I suppose it wasVincent Rendle's way of taking his tea and has become a sacred rite."
"Do you _know_ Mrs. Anerton?" cried Danyers, disturbed by this carelessfamiliarity with the habits of his divinity.
"'And did I once see Shelley plain?' Mercy, yes! She and I were at schooltogether--she's an American, you know. We were at a _pension_ near Toursfor nearly a year; then she went back to New York, and I didn't see heragain till after her marriage. She and Anerton spent a winter in Romewhile my husband was attached to our Legation there, and she used to bewith us a great deal." Mrs. Memorall smiled reminiscently. "It was _the_winter."
"The winter they first met?"
"Precisely--but unluckily I left Rome just before the meeting took place.Wasn't it too bad? I might have been in the _Life and Letters_. You knowhe mentions that stupid Madame Vodki, at whose house he first saw her."
"And did you see much of her after that?"
"Not during Rendle's life. You know she has lived in Europe almostentirely, and though I used to see her off and on when I went abroad, shewas always so engrossed, so preoccupied, that one felt one wasn't wanted.The fact is, she cared only about his friends--she separated herselfgradually from all her own people. Now, of course, it's different; she'sdesperately lonely; she's taken to writing to me now and then; and lastyear, when she heard I was going abroad, she asked me to meet her inVenice, and I spent a week with her there."
"And Rendle?"
Mrs. Memorall smiled and shook her head. "Oh, I never was allowed a peepat _him_; none of her old friends met him, except by accident. Ill-naturedpeople say that was the reason she kept him so long. If one happened inwhile he was there, he was hustled into Anerton's study, and the husbandmounted guard till the inopportune visitor had departed. Anerton, youknow, was really much more ridiculous about it than his wife. Mary was tooclever to lose her head, or at least to show she'd lost it--but Anertoncouldn't conceal his pride in the conquest. I've seen Mary shiver when hespoke of Rendle as _our poet_. Rendle always had to have a certain seat atthe dinner-table, away from the draught and not too near the fire, and abox of cigars that no one else was allowed to touch, and a writing-tableof his own in Mary's sitting-room--and Anerton was always telling one ofthe great man's idiosyncrasies: how he never would cut the ends of hiscigars, though Anerton himself had given him a gold cutter set with astar-sapphire, and how untidy his writing-table was, and how the house-maid had orders always to bring the waste-paper basket to her mistressbefore emptying it, lest some immortal verse should be thrown into thedust-bin."
"The Anertons never separated, did they?"
"Separated? Bless you, no. He never would have left Rendle! And besides,he was very fond of his wife."
"And she?"
"Oh, she saw he was the kind of man who was fated to make himselfridiculous, and she never interfered with his natural tendencies."
From Mrs. Memorall, Danyers further learned that Mrs. Anerton, whosehusband had died some years before her poet, now divided her life betweenRome, where she had a small apartment, and England, where she occasionallywent to stay with those of her friends who had been Rendle's. She had beenengaged, for some time after his death, in editing some juvenilia which hehad bequeathed to her care; but that task being accomplished, she had beenleft without definite occupation, and Mrs. Memorall, on the occasion oftheir last meeting, had found her listless and out of spirits.
"She misses him too much--her life is too empty. I told her so--I told hershe ought to marry."
"Oh!"
"Why not, pray? She's a young woman still--what many people would callyoung," Mrs. Memorall interjected, with a parenthetic glance at themirror. "Why not accept the inevitable and begin over again? All theKing's horses and all the King's men won't bring Rendle to life-andbesides, she didn't marry _him_ when she had the chance."
Danyers winced slightly at this rude fingering of his idol. Was itpossible that Mrs. Memorall did not see what an anti-climax such amarriage would have been? Fancy Rendle "making an honest woman" of Silvia;for so society would have viewed it! How such a reparation would havevulgarized their past--it would have been like "restoring" a masterpiece;and how exquisite must have been the perceptions of the woman who, indefiance of appearances, and perhaps of her own secret inclination, choseto go down to posterity as Silvia rather than as Mrs. Vincent Rendle!
Mrs. Memorall, from this day forth, acquired an interest in Danyers'seyes. She was like a volume of unindexed and discursive memoirs, throughwhich he patiently plodded in the hope of finding embedded amid layers ofdusty twaddle some precious allusion to the subject of his thought. When,some months later, he brought out his first slim volume, in which theremodelled college essay on Rendle figured among a dozen, somewhatoverstudied "appreciations," he offered a copy to Mrs. Memorall; whosurprised him, the next time they met, with the announcement that she hadsent the book to Mrs. Anerton.
Mrs. Anerton in due time wrote to thank her friend. Danyers was privilegedto read the few lines in which, in terms that suggested the habit of"acknowledging" similar tributes, she spoke of the author's "feeling andinsight," and was "so glad of the opportunity," etc. He went awaydisappointed, without clearly knowing what else he had expected.
The following spring, when he went abroad, Mrs. Memorall offered himletters to everybody, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Louise Michel.She did not include Mrs. Anerton, however, and Danyers knew, from aprevious conversation, that Silvia objected to people who "broughtletters." He knew also that she travelled during the summer, and wasunlikely to return to Rome before the term of his holiday should bereached, and the hope of meeting her was not included among hisanticipations.
The lady whose entrance broke upon his solitary repast in the restaurantof the Hotel Villa d'Este had seated herself in such a way that herprofile was detached against the window; and thus viewed, her domedforehead, small arched nose, and fastidious lip suggested a silhouette ofMarie Antoinette. In the lady's dress and movements--in the very turn ofher wrist as she poured out her coffee--Danyers thought he detected thesame fastidiousness, the same air of tacitly excluding the obvious andunexceptional. Here was a woman who had been much bored and keenlyinterested. The waiter brought her a _Secolo,_ and as she bent above itDanyers noticed that the hair rolled back from her forehead was turninggray; but her figure was straight and slender, and she had the invaluablegift of a girlish back.
The rush of Anglo-Saxon travel had not set toward the lakes, and with theexception of an Italian family or two, and a hump-backed youth with an_abbe_, Danyers and the lady had the marble halls of the Villa d'Este tothemselves.
When he returned from his morning ramble among the hills he saw hersitting at one of the little tables at the edge of the lake. She waswriting, and a heap of books and newspapers lay on the table at her side.That evening they met again in the garden. He had strolled out to smoke alast cigarette before dinner, and under the black vaulting of ilexes, nearthe steps leading down to the boat-landing, he found her leaning on theparapet above the lake. At the sound of his approach she turned and lookedat him. She had thrown a black lace scarf over her head, and in thissombre setting her face seemed thin and unhappy. He remembered afterwardsthat her eyes, as they met his, expressed not so much sorrow as profounddiscontent.
To his surprise she stepped toward him with a detaining gesture.
"Mr. Lewis Danyers, I believe?"
He bowed.
"I am Mrs. Anerton. I saw your name on the visitors' list and wished tothank you for an essay on Mr. Rendle's poetry--or rather to tell you howmuch I appreciated it. The book was sent to me last winter by Mrs.Memorall."
She spoke in even melancholy tones, as though the habit of perfunctoryutterance had robbed her voice of more spontaneous accents; but her smilewas charming. They sat down on a stone bench under the ilexes, and shetold him how much pleasure his essay had given her. She thought it thebest in the book--she was sure he had put more of himself into it thaninto any other; was she not right in conjecturing that he had been verydeeply influenced by Mr. Rendle's poetry? _Pour comprendre il faut aimer_,and it seemed to her that, in some ways, he had penetrated the poet'sinner meaning more completely than any other critic. There were certainproblems, of course, that he had left untouched; certain aspects of thatmany-sided mind that he had perhaps failed to seize--
"But then you are young," she concluded gently, "and one could not wishyou, as yet, the experience that a fuller understanding would imply."
II
She stayed a month at Villa d'Este, and Danyers was with her daily. Sheshowed an unaffected pleasure in his society; a pleasure so obviouslyfounded on their common veneration of Rendle, that the young man couldenjoy it without fear of fatuity. At first he was merely one more grain offrankincense on the altar of her insatiable divinity; but gradually a morepersonal note crept into their intercourse. If she still liked him onlybecause he appreciated Rendle, she at least perceptibly distinguished himfrom the herd of Rendle's appreciators.
Her attitude toward the great man's memory struck Danyers as perfect. Sheneither proclaimed nor disavowed her identity. She was frankly Silvia tothose who knew and cared; but there was no trace of the Egeria in herpose. She spoke often of Rendle's books, but seldom of himself; there wasno posthumous conjugality, no use of the possessive tense, in herabounding reminiscences. Of the master's intellectual life, of his habitsof thought and work, she never wearied of talking. She knew the history ofeach poem; by what scene or episode each image had been evoked; how manytimes the words in a certain line had been transposed; how long a certainadjective had been sought, and what had at last suggested it; she couldeven explain that one impenetrable line, the torment of critics, the joyof detractors, the last line of _The Old Odysseus_.
Danyers felt that in talking of these things she was no mere echo ofRendle's thought. If her identity had appeared to be merged in his it wasbecause they thought alike, not because he had thought for her. Posterityis apt to regard the women whom poets have sung as chance pegs on whichthey hung their garlands; but Mrs. Anerton's mind was like some fertilegarden wherein, inevitably, Rendle's imagination had rooted itself andflowered. Danyers began to see how many threads of his complex mentaltissue the poet had owed to the blending of her temperament with his; in acertain sense Silvia had herself created the _Sonnets to Silvia_.
To be the custodian of Rendle's inner self, the door, as it were, to thesanctuary, had at first seemed to Danyers so comprehensive a privilegethat he had the sense, as his friendship with Mrs. Anerton advanced, offorcing his way into a life already crowded. What room was there, amongsuch towering memories, for so small an actuality as his? Quite suddenly,after this, he discovered that Mrs. Memorall knew better: his fortunatefriend was bored as well as lonely.
"You have had more than any other woman!" he had exclaimed to her one day;and her smile flashed a derisive light on his blunder. Fool that he was,not to have seen that she had not had enough! That she was young still--doyears count?--tender, human, a woman; that the living have need of theliving.
After that, when they climbed the alleys of the hanging park, resting inone of the little ruined temples, or watching, through a ripple offoliage, the remote blue flash of the lake, they did not always talk ofRendle or of literature. She encouraged Danyers to speak of himself; toconfide his ambitions to her; she asked him the questions which are thewise woman's substitute for advice.
"You must write," she said, administering the most exquisite flattery thathuman lips could give.
Of course he meant to write--why not to do something great in his turn?His best, at least; with the resolve, at the outset, that his best shouldbe _the_ best. Nothing less seemed possible with that mandate in his ears.How she had divined him; lifted and disentangled his groping ambitions;laid the awakening touch on his spirit with her creative _Let there belight!_
It was his last day with her, and he was feeling very hopeless and happy.
"You ought to write a book about _him,"_ she went on gently.
Danyers started; he was beginning to dislike Rendle's way of walking inunannounced.
"You ought to do it," she insisted. "A complete interpretation--a summing-up of his style, his purpose, his theory of life and art. No one elsecould do it as well."
He sat looking at her perplexedly. Suddenly--dared he guess?
"I couldn't do it without you," he faltered.
"I could help you--I would help you, of course."
They sat silent, both looking at the lake.
It was agreed, when they parted, that he should rejoin her six weeks laterin Venice. There they were to talk about the book.
III
_Lago d'Iseo, August 14th_.
When I said good-by to you yesterday I promised to come back to Venice ina week: I was to give you your answer then. I was not honest in sayingthat; I didn't mean to go back to Venice or to see you again. I wasrunning away from you--and I mean to keep on running! If _you_ won't, _I_must. Somebody must save you from marrying a disappointed woman of--well,you say years don't count, and why should they, after all, since you arenot to marry me?
That is what I dare not go back to say. _You are not to marry me_. We havehad our month together in Venice (such a good month, was it not?) and nowyou are to go home and write a book--any book but the one we--didn't talkof!--and I am to stay here, attitudinizing among my memories like a sortof female Tithonus. The dreariness of this enforced immortality!
But you shall know the truth. I care for you, or at least for your love,enough to owe you that.
You thought it was because Vincent Rendle had loved me that there was solittle hope for you. I had had what I wanted to the full; wasn't that whatyou said? It is just when a man begins to think he understands a womanthat he may be sure he doesn't! It is because Vincent Rendle _didn't loveme_ that there is no hope for you. I never had what I wanted, and never,never, never will I stoop to wanting anything else.
Do you begin to understand? It was all a sham then, you say? No, it wasall real as far as it went. You are young--you haven't learned, as youwill later, the thousand imperceptible signs by which one gropes one's waythrough the labyrinth of human nature; but didn't it strike you,sometimes, that I never told you any foolish little anecdotes about him?His trick, for instance, of twirling a paper-knife round and round betweenhis thumb and forefinger while he talked; his mania for saving the backsof notes; his greediness for wild strawberries, the little pungent Alpineones; his childish delight in acrobats and jugglers; his way of alwayscalling me _you--dear you_, every letter began--I never told you a wordof all that, did I? Do you suppose I could have helped telling you, if hehad loved me? These little things would have been mine, then, a part of mylife--of our life--they would have slipped out in spite of me (it's onlyyour unhappy woman who is always reticent and dignified). But there neverwas any "our life;" it was always "our lives" to the end....
If you knew what a relief it is to tell some one at last, you would bearwith me, you would let me hurt you! I shall never be quite so lonelyagain, now that some one knows.
Let me begin at the beginning. When I first met Vincent Rendle I was nottwenty-five. That was twenty years ago. From that time until his death,five years ago, we were fast friends. He gave me fifteen years, perhapsthe best fifteen years, of his life. The world, as you know, thinks thathis greatest poems were written during those years; I am supposed to have"inspired" them, and in a sense I did. From the first, the intellectualsympathy between us was almost complete; my mind must have been to him (Ifancy) like some perfectly tuned instrument on which he was never tired ofplaying. Some one told me of his once saying of me that I "alwaysunderstood;" it is the only praise I ever heard of his giving me. I don'teven know if he thought me pretty, though I hardly think my appearancecould have been disagreeable to him, for he hated to be with ugly people.At all events he fell into the way of spending more and more of his timewith me. He liked our house; our ways suited him. He was nervous,irritable; people bored him and yet he disliked solitude. He tooksanctuary with us. When we travelled he went with us; in the winter hetook rooms near us in Rome. In England or on the continent he was alwayswith us for a good part of the year. In small ways I was able to help himin his work; he grew dependent on me. When we were apart he wrote to mecontinually--he liked to have me share in all he was doing or thinking; hewas impatient for my criticism of every new book that interested him; Iwas a part of his intellectual life. The pity of it was that I wanted tobe something more. I was a young woman and I was in love with him--notbecause he was Vincent Rendle, but just because he was himself!
People began to talk, of course--I was Vincent Rendle's Mrs. Anerton; whenthe _Sonnets to Silvia_ appeared, it was whispered that I was Silvia.Wherever he went, I was invited; people made up to me in the hope ofgetting to know him; when I was in London my doorbell never stoppedringing. Elderly peeresses, aspiring hostesses, love-sick girls andstruggling authors overwhelmed me with their assiduities. I hugged mysuccess, for I knew what it meant--they thought that Rendle was in lovewith me! Do you know, at times, they almost made me think so too? Oh,there was no phase of folly I didn't go through. You can't imagine theexcuses a woman will invent for a man's not telling her that he lovesher--pitiable arguments that she would see through at a glance if anyother woman used them! But all the while, deep down, I knew he had nevercared. I should have known it if he had made love to me every day of hislife. I could never guess whether he knew what people said about us--helistened so little to what people said; and cared still less, when heheard. He was always quite honest and straightforward with me; he treatedme as one man treats another; and yet at times I felt he _must_ see thatwith me it was different. If he did see, he made no sign. Perhaps he nevernoticed--I am sure he never meant to be cruel. He had never made love tome; it was no fault of his if I wanted more than he could give me. The_Sonnets to Silvia_, you say? But what are they? A cosmic philosophy, nota love-poem; addressed to Woman, not to a woman!
But then, the letters? Ah, the letters! Well, I'll make a clean breast ofit. You have noticed the breaks in the letters here and there, just asthey seem to be on the point of growing a little--warmer? The critics, youmay remember, praised the editor for his commendable delicacy and goodtaste (so rare in these days!) in omitting from the correspondence allpersonal allusions, all those _details intimes_ which should be keptsacred from the public gaze. They referred, of course, to the asterisks inthe letters to Mrs. A. Those letters I myself prepared for publication;that is to say, I copied them out for the editor, and every now and then Iput in a line of asterisks to make it appear that something had been leftout. You understand? The asterisks were a sham--_there was nothing toleave out_.
No one but a woman could understand what I went through during thoseyears--the moments of revolt, when I felt I must break away from it all,fling the truth in his face and never see him again; the inevitablereaction, when not to see him seemed the one unendurable thing, and Itrembled lest a look or word of mine should disturb the poise of ourfriendship; the silly days when I hugged the delusion that he _must_ loveme, since everybody thought he did; the long periods of numbness, when Ididn't seem to care whether he loved me or not. Between these wretcheddays came others when our intellectual accord was so perfect that I forgoteverything else in the joy of feeling myself lifted up on the wings of histhought. Sometimes, then, the heavens seemed to be opened....
* * * * *
All this time he was so dear a friend! He had the genius of friendship,and he spent it all on me. Yes, you were right when you said that I havehad more than any other woman. _Il faut de l'adresse pour aimer_, Pascalsays; and I was so quiet, so cheerful, so frankly affectionate with him,that in all those years I am almost sure I never bored him. Could I havehoped as much if he had loved me?
You mustn't think of him, though, as having been tied to my skirts. Hecame and went as he pleased, and so did his fancies. There was a girl once(I am telling you everything), a lovely being who called his poetry "deep"and gave him _Lucile_ on his birthday. He followed her to Switzerland onesummer, and all the time that he was dangling after her (a little tooconspicuously, I always thought, for a Great Man), he was writing to _me_about his theory of vowel-combinations--or was it his experiments inEnglish hexameter? The letters were dated from the very places where Iknew they went and sat by waterfalls together and he thought outadjectives for her hair. He talked to me about it quite franklyafterwards. She was perfectly beautiful and it had been a pure delight towatch her; but she _would_ talk, and her mind, he said, was "all elbows."And yet, the next year, when her marriage was announced, he went awayalone, quite suddenly ... and it was just afterwards that he published_Love's Viaticum_. Men are queer!
After my husband died--I am putting things crudely, you see--I had areturn of hope. It was because he loved me, I argued, that he had neverspoken; because he had always hoped some day to make me his wife; becausehe wanted to spare me the "reproach." Rubbish! I knew well enough, in myheart of hearts, that my one chance lay in the force of habit. He hadgrown used to me; he was no longer young; he dreaded new people and newways; _il avait pris son pli_. Would it not be easier to marry me?
I don't believe he ever thought of it. He wrote me what people call "abeautiful letter;" he was kind; considerate, decently commiserating; then,after a few weeks, he slipped into his old way of coming in everyafternoon, and our interminable talks began again just where they had leftoff. I heard later that people thought I had shown "such good taste" innot marrying him.
So we jogged on for five years longer. Perhaps they were the best years,for I had given up hoping. Then he died.
After his death--this is curious--there came to me a kind of mirage oflove. All the books and articles written about him, all the reviews of the"Life," were full of discreet allusions to Silvia. I became again the Mrs.Anerton of the glorious days. Sentimental girls and dear lads like youturned pink when somebody whispered, "that was Silvia you were talkingto." Idiots begged for my autograph--publishers urged me to write myreminiscences of him--critics consulted me about the reading of doubtfullines. And I knew that, to all these people, I was the woman VincentRendle had loved.
After a while that fire went out too and I was left alone with my past.Alone--quite alone; for he had never really been with me. The intellectualunion counted for nothing now. It had been soul to soul, but never hand inhand, and there were no little things to remember him by.
Then there set in a kind of Arctic winter. I crawled into myself as into asnow-hut. I hated my solitude and yet dreaded any one who disturbed it.That phase, of course, passed like the others. I took up life again, andbegan to read the papers and consider the cut of my gowns. But there wasone question that I could not be rid of, that haunted me night and day.Why had he never loved me? Why had I been so much to him, and no more? WasI so ugly, so essentially unlovable, that though a man might cherish me ashis mind's comrade, he could not care for me as a woman? I can't tell youhow that question tortured me. It became an obsession.
My poor friend, do you begin to see? I had to find out what some other manthought of me. Don't be too hard on me! Listen first--consider. When Ifirst met Vincent Rendle I was a young woman, who had married early andled the quietest kind of life; I had had no "experiences." From the hourof our first meeting to the day of his death I never looked at any otherman, and never noticed whether any other man looked at me. When he died,five years ago, I knew the extent of my powers no more than a baby. Was ittoo late to find out? Should I never know _why?_
Forgive me--forgive me. You are so young; it will be an episode, a mere"document," to you so soon! And, besides, it wasn't as deliberate, ascold-blooded as these disjointed lines have made it appear. I didn't planit, like a woman in a book. Life is so much more complex than anyrendering of it can be. I liked you from the first--I was drawn to you(you must have seen that)--I wanted you to like me; it was not a merepsychological experiment. And yet in a sense it was that, too--I must behonest. I had to have an answer to that question; it was a ghost that hadto be laid.
At first I was afraid--oh, so much afraid--that you cared for me onlybecause I was Silvia, that you loved me because you thought Rendle hadloved me. I began to think there was no escaping my destiny.
How happy I was when I discovered that you were growing jealous of mypast; that you actually hated Rendle! My heart beat like a girl's when youtold me you meant to follow me to Venice.
After our parting at Villa d'Este my old doubts reasserted themselves.What did I know of your feeling for me, after all? Were you capable ofanalyzing it yourself? Was it not likely to be two-thirds vanity andcuriosity, and one-third literary sentimentality? You might easily fancythat you cared for Mary Anerton when you were really in love with Silvia--the heart is such a hypocrite! Or you might be more calculating than I hadsupposed. Perhaps it was you who had been flattering _my_ vanity in thehope (the pardonable hope!) of turning me, after a decent interval, into apretty little essay with a margin.
When you arrived in Venice and we met again--do you remember the music onthe lagoon, that evening, from my balcony?--I was so afraid you wouldbegin to talk about the book--the book, you remember, was your ostensiblereason for coming. You never spoke of it, and I soon saw your one fear was_I_ might do so--might remind you of your object in being with me. Then Iknew you cared for me! yes, at that moment really cared! We nevermentioned the book once, did we, during that month in Venice?
I have read my letter over; and now I wish that I had said this to youinstead of writing it. I could have felt my way then, watching your faceand seeing if you understood. But, no, I could not go back to Venice; andI could not tell you (though I tried) while we were there together. Icouldn't spoil that month--my one month. It was so good, for once in mylife, to get away from literature....
You will be angry with me at first--but, alas! not for long. What I havedone would have been cruel if I had been a younger woman; as it is, theexperiment will hurt no one but myself. And it will hurt me horribly (asmuch as, in your first anger, you may perhaps wish), because it has shownme, for the first time, all that I have missed....
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