devil of a lot of difference in what most
people think of the kernel." And when he--Robin--had replied, "It
wouldn't to me," Carey had abruptly exclaimed, "I think it would." After
Carey had gone Robin remembered very well saying to himself that it was
strange no man will believe you if you hint at the truth of your true
self. That night he had not known his true self and Carey had known it.
But then, had he loved the shell only? He could not believe it. He
felt bewildered. Even now, as the boat crept onward through the
falling darkness, he felt that he loved Viola, but as someone who had
disappeared or who was dead. This woman whom he had just left was not
Viola. And yet she was. When he was not looking at her and she spoke to
him, the past seemed to take the form of the present. When she had worn
the veil and had touched him all his pulses had leaped. But when she had
touched him with those same hands after the veil had fallen, there
had been frost in his veins. Nothing in his body had responded. The
independence of the flesh appalled him. It had a mind of its own then.
It chose and acted quite apart from the spirit which dwelt in it. It
even defied that spirit. And the eyes? They had become almost a terror
to him. He thought of them as a slave thinks of a cruel master.
Were they to coerce his soul? Were they to force his heart from its
allegiance? He had always been accustomed to think that the spirit was
essentially the governing thing in man, that indestructible, fierce,
beautiful flame which surely outlives death and time. But now he found
himself thinking of the flesh, the corruptible part of man that mingles
its dust with the earth, as dominant over the spirit. For the first
time, and because of his impotence to force his body to feel as his
spirit wished it to feel, he doubted if there were a future for the
soul, if there were such a condition as immortality. He reached Villa
d'Este in a condition of profound depression, almost bordering on
despair.

Meanwhile Viola, standing by the garden wall, had watched the boat
that carried Robin disappear on the water. Till it was only a speck she
watched. It vanished. Evening came on. Still she stood there. She did
not feel very sad. The strange, dreamlike sensation of the preceding day
had returned to her, but with a larger vagueness that robbed it of some
of its former poignancy. It seemed to her that she felt as a spirit
might feel--detached. She remembered once seein