I ought really to have put those blue slippers in my pocket.One dropped off at the bottom of the stairs as I was stepping over an unpleasant-looking mess on the marble pavement, and the other was lost a little way up the flight when, for some reason (perhaps from a sense of insecurity), she began to struggle.Though I had an odd sense of being engaged in a sort of nursery adventure she was no child to carry.I could just do it.But not if she chose to struggle.I set her down hastily and only supported her round the waist for the rest of the way.My room, of course, was perfectly dark but I led her straight to the sofa at once and let her fall on it.Then as if I had in sober truth rescued her from an Alpine height or an Arctic floe, I busied myself with nothing but lighting the gas and starting the fire.I didn't even pause to lock my door.All the time I was aware of her presence behind me, nay, of something deeper and more my own - of her existence itself - of a small blue flame, blue like her eyes, flickering and clear within her frozen body.When I turned to her she was sitting very stiff and upright, with her feet posed, hieratically on the carpet and her head emerging out of the ample fur collar, such as a gem-like flower above the rim of a dark vase.I tore the blankets and the pillows off my bed and piled them up in readiness in a great heap on the floor near the couch.My reason for this was that the room was large, too large for the fireplace, and the couch was nearest to the fire.She gave no sign but one of her wistful attempts at a smile.In a most business-like way I took the arrow out of her hair and laid it on the centre table.The tawny mass fell loose at once about her shoulders and made her look even more desolate than before.But there was an invincible need of gaiety in her heart.
She said funnily, looking at the arrow sparkling in the gas light:
"Ah! That poor philistinish ornament!"
An echo of our early days, not more innocent but so much more youthful, was in her tone; and we both, as if touched with poignant regret, looked at each other with enlightened eyes.
"Yes," I said, "how far away all this is.And you wouldn't leave even that object behind when you came last in here.Perhaps it is for that reason it haunted me - mostly at night.I dreamed of you sometimes as a huntress nymph gleaming white through the foliage and throwing this arrow like a dart straight at my heart.But it never reached it.It always fell at my feet as I woke up.The huntress never meant to strike down that particular quarry.""The huntress was wild but she was not evil.And she was no nymph, but only a goatherd girl.Dream of her no more, my dear."I had the strength of mind to make a sign of assent and busied myself arranging a couple of pillows at one end of the sofa."Upon my soul, goatherd, you are not responsible," I said."You are not!
Lay down that uneasy head," I continued, forcing a half-playful note into my immense sadness, "that has even dreamed of a crown -but not for itself."
She lay down quietly.I covered her up, looked once into her eyes and felt the restlessness of fatigue over-power me so that I wanted to stagger out, walk straight before me, stagger on and on till Idropped.In the end I lost myself in thought.I woke with a start to her voice saying positively:
"No.Not even in this room.I can't close my eyes.Impossible.
I have a horror of myself.That voice in my ears.All true.All true."She was sitting up, two masses of tawny hair fell on each side of her tense face.I threw away the pillows from which she had risen and sat down behind her on the couch."Perhaps like this," Isuggested, drawing her head gently on my breast.She didn't resist, she didn't even sigh, she didn't look at me or attempt to settle herself in any way.It was I who settled her after taking up a position which I thought I should be able to keep for hours -for ages.After a time I grew composed enough to become aware of the ticking of the clock, even to take pleasure in it.The beat recorded the moments of her rest, while I sat, keeping as still as if my life depended upon it with my eyes fixed idly on the arrow of gold gleaming and glittering dimly on the table under the lowered gas-jet.And presently my breathing fell into the quiet rhythm of the sleep which descended on her at last.My thought was that now nothing mattered in the world because I had the world safe resting in my arms - or was it in my heart?
Suddenly my heart seemed torn in two within my breast and half of my breath knocked out of me.It was a tumultuous awakening.The day had come.Dona Rita had opened her eyes, found herself in my arms, and instantly had flung herself out of them with one sudden effort.I saw her already standing in the filtered sunshine of the closed shutters, with all the childlike horror and shame of that night vibrating afresh in the awakened body of the woman.
"Daylight," she whispered in an appalled voice."Don't look at me, George.I can't face daylight.No - not with you.Before we set eyes on each other all that past was like nothing.I had crushed it all in my new pride.Nothing could touch the Rita whose hand was kissed by you.But now! Never in daylight."I sat there stupid with surprise and grief.This was no longer the adventure of venturesome children in a nursery-book.A grown man's bitterness, informed, suspicious, resembling hatred, welled out of my heart.
"All this means that you are going to desert me again?" I said with contempt."All right.I won't throw stones after you...Are you going, then?"She lowered her head slowly with a backward gesture of her arm as if to keep me off, for I had sprung to my feet all at once as if mad.
"Then go quickly," I said."You are afraid of living flesh and blood.What are you running after? Honesty, as you say, or some distinguished carcass to feed your vanity on? I know how cold you can be - and yet live.What have I done to you? You go to sleep in my arms, wake up and go away.Is it to impress me?
Charlatani** of character, my dear."
