As he walked behind her, he looked hard at her back, with its undulating, vase-like beauty, so close to him; and felt her immeasurably distant. She opened the door now and went out into the sunlight, stepping a little to one side as though to make room for him to come up beside her. He found that he knew every turn of her head, every poise of her shoulders and action of her hands, the whole rhythm of her body, as though they were his own. And there she passed from him, far and remote.
A sudden certainty of fore-ordained defeat came over him, as he had never known before. He was amazed at the violence of his pain, intolerable, intolerable!
She turned her head quickly and caught his eyes in this instant of inexplicable suffering.
What miraculous thing happened then? It seemed to him that her face wavered in golden rays, from the radiance of her eyes. For she did not withdraw her gaze. She looked at him with an instant, profound sympathy and pity, no longer herself, transfigured, divine by the depth of her humanity.
The sore bitterness went out from his heart.
A voice called. She turned away. He felt himself following her. He looked about him, light-headed with relief from pain. The quiet, flowering world shimmered rainbow-like. What a strange power one human being could have with another that a look could be an event!
He walked more slowly, feeling with a curious pleasure the insatiable desire for possession ebbing from him. Why not let it ebb entirely? Why not enjoy the ineffable sweetness of what he could have? That was what would please her, what she would like, what she would give, freely. In this moment of hush, he quite saw how it would be possible, although he had never for a moment before in his life believed it. Yes, possible and lovely. After all, he must stop sometime, and take the slower pace. Why not now, when there was a certain and great prize to be won . . . ?
People talked around him. He talked and did not know his own words. Marise spun those sparkling webs of nonsense of hers, and made him laugh, but the next moment he could not have told what she had said. He must somehow have been very tired to take such intense pleasure in being at rest.
Her husband came, that rough and energetic husband. The children came, the children whose restless, selfish, noisy preying on their mother usually annoyed him so, and still the charm was not broken. Marise, as she always did when her husband and children were there, retreated into a remote plane of futile busyness with details that servants should have cared for; answering the children's silly questions, belonging to everyone, her personal existence blotted out. But this time he felt still, deep within him, the penetrating sweetness of her eyes as she had looked at him.