to Le Vigne, at a
rate that would have made the little _Fretta_ look like a water-snail.
And this new, powerful, highly-polished mahogany launch, glittering with
a sort of defiant grin of shining metal, hissing through the quiet lake
like an Express, seemed symbolical to Sophy of the ruthless power which
had suddenly seized her life and was hurling it blindly to some unknown
goal. As she sat quiet in the new launch, so she sat quiet in the grasp
of Chesney's will. So, she told herself, it was her duty to sit quiet.
Where she was now, her own act had placed her--besides, she still felt
affection for her husband, though love in its highest, divinest form was
gone forever. If only he would not stun her with those fiery crashes of
unshared passion! She felt like some sentient lyre, on which a giant
without sense of music strums with a mighty plectrum. The fine chords of
her nature snapped with the clashing shocks. She felt as though she had
been through some wild fever of which the delirium left her brain dazed
and numb.

What she now dreaded most was to see Amaldi. Not because of any feeling
that she had or might have had for him, but because he was so vividly a
part of something that was gone forever, and that had been so beautiful.
Yes, that tranquil dream of which he had been a part was as utterly
dispelled as the reflection in a quiet pool shattered by the crash of a
boulder. She felt that numbness, that lack of acute pain which it is
said a soldier experiences when in the heat of battle a limb is
suddenly shot away. She was maimed for life, she felt, and she regretted
it--but it was as if her mind rather than her heart suffered from this
regret.

They found the Marchesa alone at Le Vigne. She was sorry, she said, that
her son should miss the pleasure of seeing them. He had gone to Milan
for a few days. The relief of hearing this was so great that Sophy paled
with it. The elder woman thought she looked exhausted and oddly
listless. She firmly believed in the "Vampirising" qualities of some
people; taking in Chesney with her shrewd, lustrous eyes, she decided
that he was probably a most "Vampirising" person. By this, the Marchesa
did not mean that one actively plays the part of Vampire towards
another, but that, whether or no, some natures suck the vitality from
those with whom they are in contact. Yet Chesney attracted her in a way,
while at the same time he repelled her. She was too completely the woman
not to feel