lift it off
them and take it; to charge herself with it as the scapegoat of old,
of whom she had once seen a terrible picture, had been charged with the
sins of the people and had gone forth into the desert to sink under his
burden and die. That indeed wasn't THEIR design and their interest, that
she should sink under hers; it wouldn't be their feeling that she should
do anything but live, live on somehow for their benefit, and even as
much as possible in their company, to keep proving to them that they had
truly escaped and that she was still there to simplify. This idea of
her simplifying, and of their combined struggle, dim as yet but steadily
growing, toward the perception of her adopting it from them, clung to
her while she hovered on the terrace, where the summer night was so soft
that she scarce needed the light shawl she had picked up. Several of the
long windows of the occupied rooms stood open to it, and the light came
out in vague shafts and fell upon the old smooth stones. The hour was
moonless and starless and the air heavy and still--which was why, in her
evening dress, she need fear no chill and could get away, in the outer
darkness, from that provocation of opportunity which had assaulted her,
within, on her sofa, as a beast might have leaped at her throat.

Nothing in fact was stranger than the way in which, when she had
remained there a little, her companions, watched by her through one of
the windows, actually struck her as almost consciously and gratefully
safer. They might have been--really charming as they showed in the
beautiful room, and Charlotte certainly, as always, magnificently
handsome and supremely distinguished--they might have been figures
rehearsing some play of which she herself was the author; they might
even, for the happy appearance they continued to present, have been
such figures as would, by the strong note of character in each, fill
any author with the certitude of success, especially of their own
histrionic. They might in short have represented any mystery they would;
the point being predominantly that the key to the mystery, the key that
could wind and unwind it without a snap of the spring, was there in
her pocket--or rather, no doubt, clasped at this crisis in her hand and
pressed, as she walked back and forth, to her breast. She walked to
the end and far out of the light; she returned and saw the others still
where she had left them; she passed round the house and looked in