and the dim
paths between the cypresses, and the great silence that floated over the
lake to listen to the waterfall. And all these things were terrible to
her--all. Not one was beautiful. Each one seemed to threaten her, to
say to her, "Leave us, we are not for such as you." Well, she would obey
these voices. She would go. She wrapped the cloak more closely round
her, went to the balustrade and leaned over it looking at the water.

It seemed to her as if her life had been very trivial. She thought now
that she had never really enjoyed anything. She looked upon her life as
if it were down there in the water just beneath her, and she saw it as
a broken thing, a thing in many fragments. And the fragments, however
carefully and deftly arranged, could surely never have been fitted
together and become a complete whole. Everything in her life had been
awry as her face was now awry, and she had not realised it. Her love for
Fritz, and his--what he had called his, at least--for her, had seemed to
her once to be a round and beautiful thing, a circle of passion without
a flaw. How distorted, misshapen, absurd it had really been. Nothing
in her life had been carried through to a definite end. Even her petty
struggle with Miss Schley had been left unfinished. Those who had loved
her had been like spectres, and now, like spectres, had faded away. And
all through their spectral love she had clung to Fritz. She had clasped
the sand like a mad-woman, and never felt the treacherous grains
shifting between her arms at the touch of every wind.

A sudden passionate fury of longing woke in her to have one week, one
day, one hour of life, one hour of life now that her eyes were open, one
moment only--even one moment. She felt that she had had nothing, that
every other human being must have known the _dolcezza_, the ineffable,
the mysterious ecstasy, the one and only thing worth the having,
that she alone had been excluded, when she was beautiful, from the
participation in joy that was her right, and that now, in her ugliness,
she was irrevocably cast out from it.

It was unjust. Suddenly she faced a God without justice in His heart,
all-powerful and not just. She faced such a God and she knew Hell.

Swiftly she turned from the balustrade, went to the door by the
waterfall, unlocked it and descended the stone staircase. It was very
dark. She had to feel her way. When she reached the last step she could
just see the boat lying against it i