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.
A tiresome, sophisticated friend of Marise's came, too, somehow
intruding another personality into the circle, already too full, and yet
he was but vaguely irritated by her. She only brought out by contrast
the thrilling quality of Marise's golden presence. He basked in that, as
in the sunshine, and thought of nothing else.
Possibilities he had never dreamed of, stretched before him,
possibilities of almost impersonal and yet desirable existence. Perhaps
this was the turning-point of his life. He supposed there really was
one, sometime, for everybody.
* * * * *
". . . Rocca di Papa .
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