th rowed on.

And now that the song had ceased she was again in the grey chaos of the
dream, in the irrevocable emptiness, the intense, the enormous solitude
that was like the solitude of an unpeopled eternity in which man had no
lot.

Presently, with a stroke of his right oar, the boy who had sung turned
the boat's prow toward the shore, and Lady Holme saw a large, lonely
house confronting them on the nearer bank of the lake. It stood apart.
For a long distance on either side of it there was no other habitation.
The flat, yellow facade rose out of the water. Behind was a dim tangle
of densely-growing trees rising up on the steep mountain side towards
the grey sky. Lady Holme could not yet see details. The boat was still
too far out upon the lake. Nor would she have been able to note details
if she had seen them. Only a sort of heavy impression that this house
had a pale, haunted aspect forced itself dully upon her.

"Ecco Casa Felice, signora!" said the foremost rower, half timidly,
pointing with his brown hand.

She made an intense effort and uttered some reply. The boy was
encouraged and began to tell her about the beauties of the house, the
gardens, the chasm behind the piazza down which the waterfall rushed, to
dive beneath the house and lose itself in the lake. She tried to listen,
but she could not. The strangeness of her being alone, hidden behind
a dense veil, of her coming to such a retired house in the autumn to
remain there in utter solitude, with no object except that of being
safe from the intrusion of anyone who knew her, of being hidden from
all watching eyes that had ever looked upon her--the strangeness of it
obsessed her, was both powerful and unreal. That she should be one of
those lonely women of whom the world speaks with a lightly-contemptuous
pity seemed incredible to her. Yet what woman was lonelier than she?

The boat drew in toward the shore and she began to see the house more
plainly. It was large, and the flat facade was broken in the middle
by an open piazza with round arches and slender columns. This piazza
divided the house in two. The villa was in fact composed of two square
buildings connected together by it. From the boat, looking up, Lady
Holme saw a fierce mountain gorge rising abruptly behind the house.
Huge cypresses grew on its sides, towering above the slate roof, and she
heard the loud noise of falling water. It seemed to add to the weight of
her desolation.

The boat sto