e past. But this year they had not served. . . . One
Sunday, coming from confession unconfessed, she had faced herself. It
was wicked. She would have to kill this feeling--must fly from this boy
who moved her so! If she did not act quickly, she would be swept away.
And then the thought had come: Why not? Life was to be lived--not
torpidly dozed through in this queer cultured place, where age was in the
blood! Life was for love--to be enjoyed! And she would be thirty-six
next month! It seemed to her already an enormous age. Thirty-six! Soon
she would be old, actually old--and never have known passion! The
worship, which had made a hero of the distinguished-looking Englishman,
twelve years older than herself, who could lead up the Cimone della Pala,
had not been passion. It might, perhaps, have become passion if he had
so willed. But he was all form, ice, books. Had he a heart at all, had
he blood in his veins? Was there any joy of life in this too beautiful
city and these people who lived in it--this place where even enthusiasms
seemed to be formal and have no wings, where everything was settled and
sophisticated as the very chapels and cloisters? And yet, to have this
feeling for a boy--for one almost young enough to be her son! It was
so--shameless! That thought haunted her, made her flush in the dark,
lying awake at night. And desperately she would pray--for she was
devout--pray to be made pure, to be given the holy feelings of a mother,
to be filled simply with the sweet sense that she could do everything,
suffer anything for him, for his good. After these long prayers she would
feel calmed, drowsy, as though she had taken a drug. For hours, perhaps,
she would stay like that. And then it would all come over her again.
She never thought of his loving her; that would be--unnatural. Why
should he love her? She was very humble about it. Ever since that
Sunday, when she avoided the confessional, she had brooded over how to
make an end--how to get away from a longing that was too strong for her.
And she had hit on this plan--to beg for the mountains, to go back to
where her husband had come into her life, and try if this feeling would
not die. If it did not, she would ask to be left out there with her own
people, away from this danger. And now the fool--the blind fool--the
superior fool--with his satiric smile, his everlasting patronage, had
driven her to overturn her own plan. Well, let him take the