That night she did not sleep. She lay in bed and heard the water falling in the gorge, and when the dawn began to break she did a thing she had not done for a long time.
She got out of bed, knelt down and prayed--prayed to Him who had dealt terribly with her that He would be merciful when Robin came.
When it was daylight and the Italian maid knocked at her door she told her to get out a plain, dark dress. She did her hair herself with the utmost simplicity. That at least was still beautiful. Then she went down and walked in the high garden above the lake. The greyness had lifted and the sky was blue. The mellowness rather than the sadness of autumn was apparent, throned on the tall mountains whose woods were bathed in sunshine. All along the great old wall, that soared forty feet from the water, roses were climbing. Scarlet and white geraniums bloomed in discoloured ancient vases. Clumps of oleanders showed pink showers of blossoms. Tall bamboos reared their thin heads towards the tufted summits of palms that suggested Africa. Monstrous cypresses aspired, with a sort of haughty resignation, above their brother trees. The bees went to and fro. Flies circled and settled. Lizards glided across the warm stones and rustled into hiding among the ruddy fallen leaves. And always the white water sang in the gorge as it rushed towards the piazza of Casa Felice.
Yet, as she walked slowly to and fro amid the almost rank luxuriance of the garden, she was gnawed by a terrible anxiety. The dreadful humbleness, the shrinking cowardice of the unsightly human being invaded her. She strove to put them from her. She strove to call Robin’s own arguments and assertions to her aid. What she had been she still was in all essentials. Her self was unharmed, existed, could love, hate, be tender, be passionate as before. Viola was there still within her, the living spirit to which a name had been given when she was a little child. The talent was there which had spoken, which could still speak, through her voice. The beating heart was there which could still speak through her actions. The mysteries of the soul still pursued their secret courses within her, like far-off subterranean streams. The essential part of her remained as it had been. Only a little outside bit of a framework had been twisted awry. Could that matter very much? Had she not perhaps been morbid in her despair?