ere Gallery to settle a bet which had arisen between
my brother and Mr. Filmore about a portrait. I followed them dreamily,
and was hardly alive to what occurred till they had all gone up to the
gallery, leaving me below; for I refused to come within sight of another
picture that day. I made my way to the Grand Terrace, since it was
agreed that we should saunter in the gardens when the dispute had been
decided. I had been sitting here a short space, vaguely conscious of
trim gardens, with a city and green hills in the distance, when, wishing
to avoid the proximity of the sentinel, I rose and walked down the broad
stone steps, intending to seat myself farther on in the gardens. Just as
I reached the gravel-walk, I felt an arm slipped within mine, and a light
hand gently pressing my wrist. In the same instant a strange
intoxicating numbness passed over me, like the continuance or climax of
the sensation I was still feeling from the gaze of Lucrezia Borgia. The
gardens, the summer sky, the consciousness of Bertha's arm being within
mine, all vanished, and I seemed to be suddenly in darkness, out of which
there gradually broke a dim firelight, and I felt myself sitting in my
father's leather chair in the library at home. I knew the fireplace--the
dogs for the wood-fire--the black marble chimney-piece with the white
marble medallion of the dying Cleopatra in the centre. Intense and
hopeless misery was pressing on my soul; the light became stronger, for
Bertha was entering with a candle in her hand--Bertha, my wife--with
cruel eyes, with green jewels and green leaves on her white ball-dress;
every hateful thought within her present to me . . . "Madman, idiot! why
don't you kill yourself, then?" It was a moment of hell. I saw into her
pitiless soul--saw its barren worldliness, its scorching hate--and felt
it clothe me round like an air I was obliged to breathe. She came with
her candle and stood over me with a bitter smile of contempt; I saw the
great emerald brooch on her bosom, a studded serpent with diamond eyes. I
shuddered--I despised this woman with the barren soul and mean thoughts;
but I felt helpless before her, as if she clutched my bleeding heart, and
would clutch it till the last drop of life-blood ebbed away. She was my
wife, and we hated each other. Gradually the hearth, the dim library,
the candle-light disappeared--seemed to melt away into a background of
light, the green serpent with the diamond eye