But her loveliness was all the more palpable, all the more a low beating torment, and finally he reached out to extinguish the candle flame. Deliberately he let it burn his fingers and then he rose reluctantly to go. What had she to do with him, after all? What did it matter she had such skill in her, such craft, such preoccupation that it made of her a lost sprite of a girl? Somewhere in his mind there was the notion that innocence alone could have done nothing so interesting as this work for he saw in it little simpering sweetness which he associated with innocence. Rather it was massive. And it was very fine.
But again, what was this to him, and why was he sweating? Why were his palms damp?
It occurred to him as he hovered in the doorway that he wished she would leave him alone, and in an instant he realized foolishly that it was he who perpetually stared at her, so much so she had nodded finally. Well, then, why the hell hadn’t she told someone how badly he behaved? He was furious with her.
And then looking up he saw her.
She was sitting in the rose garden, and her long robe was very white under the moon.
He sucked in his breath. But he was so badly shaken that he felt almost a fool. She’d been watching him! She’d seen the light in her little studio. And surely she could see him as clearly as he now saw her.
The blood was teeming in his face. And then to his gentle amazement she rose from the marble bench and came towards him, so slowly and so soundlessly that she appeared to drift rather than to move. In the grass he saw the gleam of her naked foot, and the breeze stirring the gauzy layers of her robe caused her form to be visible as if these loose garments were an eerie collection of light.
It seemed to him that for her sake he must make some nod and get gone from her as quickly as he could. But he didn’t stir. He only watched her and something about her deliberation began to terrify him.
She came closer and closer until he could see her face clearly, and her eyes were full of significance, and as she looked up to him, her forehead creased with a little frown; she was speaking to him without words. And there came that fragrance from her that was the actual smell of summer rain. He was not thinking anymore. He was not seeing her rounded cheeks, or the dark pout of her small mouth. Rather he was seeing the whole of her, the pulsing thing she was beneath that sheathing of sheer linen and all that neglected golden hair: the body inside it, with its inevitable heat and damp and this fragrance so like the rain beating in full force on flowers, on pathways, on dead leaves.
He wanted her so badly it was an agony, as if all of him were starving for her and sharpened for her and paralyzed at the same time. It was a nightmare in which one cannot scream; one cannot move. It horrified him. Had she no caution, no care? This great empty garden, and beyond it the slumbering house, and here she stood alone with him. Would she have done that with any other man? A terrible violence rose in him suddenly, and it seemed she was some hideous thing and not the most lovely and delicate creature he’d ever seen.
He wanted to hurt her, to catch her up and crush her, and show her the truth of it, make her see what he was! He was trembling; he could hear his own breath.
But her face was changing. It had darkened and wrinkled in a terrible little frown. She bowed her head, and shrinking back, she turned away from him as if falling from a great height.
He was stricken watching her, seeing her recoil. And then helplessly, he saw her move away, straightening when she had covered some distance, her yellow hair a great gleaming mass just before she vanished in the dark.
Once inside his room, he rested gently against the closed door. He pressed his forehead to the hard enameled wood.
Miserable with shame, he could not believe it had come to this! It had seemed over the years they had been partners in some wondrous dance, and always there had been the terrifying