And he had thought he could tell Angela how to make love like Emile and Sophie! To tell her that! And so she had laughed at him. She had known. Had she ? How did she know ? Just as he did now. Now, after it was too late. She had known all along! He understood now why it was that he had been so happy with her when she had looked at him like that. That was being in love. They had been. They were! And he had thought it had something to do with words.
There was only one kind of words that could give him any satisfaction now—oaths. He had always shrunk from them a little when he heard them along the docks. They had secretly hurt him, the terrible, coarse ones particularly. Now he needed them. A string of them rolled out of his brain through his lips. He whispered them huskily in his throat. He cursed himself. It was a relief. He shifted his head onto his other arm. That cheek was not wet. It felt hot against his muscles. How cool and smooth his arm was.
Then he heard Faith coming down the hall. He forgot everything for a moment but her footsteps. Would she come in ? He hoped not. He did not want her to see that he had been in torment, weeping. She would understand. He knew she would. What was it she had whispered to Tony about the madonna? But how could she know those numbers would win, that Angela would have to go ? How could she ? But would she come in ? He hoped not.
Her footsteps passed down the corridor to Mr. Bonnyfeather's door. He heard her knock and give the merchant his hot, night drink. The door closed. Faith returned to the kitchen again. After all she might have come in. He might have liked to talk to her—in the dark. How hot it was! He was clammy. Even the bedclothes were drenched with perspiration. He began to throw off his clothes now. The thought of the tub of cool water in the room just across the hall occurred to him. Quick! He would run across and cool himself off before Faith returned. On noiseless, bare feet he sped through the door.
The reflection of the full moon from the courtyard turned the walls of Faith's apartment into a dull, silvery grey. The various familiar objects of her furniture seemed to be faintly luminous. What a night it was! He could see the disk of the water in the cask faintly gleaming around the edge. There seemed to be a film of quicksilver on it. He discarded his last garment to step in. At that instant a crisp rustling sound as if someone were drawing a silk drapery over stone, the very faintest of hisses, caused him to turn.
In a patch of moonlight near the door stood a naked woman. He was just in time to see the folds of her dress rustle down from her knees into coils about her feet. She stood poised there for a moment, with her head drawn back, before she stepped out of them. He saw she was beautiful. For some seconds he did not realize that it was Faith. Then he gasped.
In the moonlight she was another person. She continued to look at him. He could feel that and looked down. Then he looked at her again. He stood still, rooted. The faint aroma of her body floated to him. A sudden tide of passion dragged at his legs. He could not help it. He swayed slightly, away from her. Then he felt her arms wind around him in the dark. They were smooth and cool, smoother than his own. Her hand pressed his head onto her breast.
He was half blind, and speechless now. All his senses had merged into one feeling. She seemed to be carrying him somewhere. As he stepped through the moony darkness his legs had lost the sensation of weight. "I shall think it is Angela," he said to himself. But he soon forgot all about Angela. He could remember nothing but himself.
To lie face downward on smooth, soft water with warmth lapping you about, that had always been delightful. How easily your arms and legs moved in such an element. The whole surface of the body felt its soft, exquisite touch. To be supported and yet possessed by an ocean of unknown blue depths below you and to cease to think! Yes, it was something like swimming on a transcendent summer night.
Although his eyes were tightly closed, he was looking Into dim, moonlit depths where blue and green flashes of light and long silver shafts wavered down to the darker depths below him. On the subliminal floor of this ocean in which he was now submerged, the same shadow-play that had haunted the walls of his room seemed to be going on. Translucent monsters, giant growths dimly opaque, were alive and moving down there.
Now he began to rise and fall with the waves that washed over him and yet lifted and lowered him, carrying with them as they passed a tide of tingling feeling from his neck to his heels. After a while he was just drifting in a continuous, rippling current of ecstasy that penetrated him as if he were part of the current in which he lay. He was completely alone again, but happy, completely happy. "Are you?" something from beyond him seemed to ask. "Yes," he answered, "be quiet . . . not thinking now ... let me alone."
He drifted on with the current. Wherever it might be going he would go with it. It was moving fast now. He was being borne along more swiftly. Faster yet. The entire ocean was rushing down a slope. He was being whirled around and around, dying with a delicious giddiness that drew on his brain. He was in a whirlpool. He was being drawn into the centre of it.
There began to be something just a little terrifying in the pleasure of the descent. The sensation divided. "Be careful!" He opened his eyes and thrust up his head like one stretched on an exquisite rack. In the blur of moonlight and darkness a vision shaped itself. He saw he was not in the ocean but swimming in the pool under the tree. He was moving around with the water in it.
The water in the pool was bubbling and whirling at enormous speed. It was shrinking down into a funnel-shape toward the middle. He would be drawn into that. A curious, dim, white animal could be seen at play as the water shoaled toward the floor of the pool. He looked beneath himself. The monster with a pale, smooth belly lay looking up at him. Its eyes were terrible. He began to struggle to avoid it but his limbs were possessed by the lethargy of a dream. He saw that his own movements were reflected in every motion by the bronze boy that stood at the edge of the pool. There was a terrible, mad pleasure that convulsed that boy by more than pain.
There was something in the hollow statue causing that. He must get rid of it; fill up the hollow in the pool and rest again! The bronze boy grew still, trembled. Suddenly from the mouth of the beast below him a flood burst forth and filled up the pool. It overflowed gently now and washed Anthony clear over the brim.
He was lying on his back now looking up at the moonlight filtered through the leaves of the great tree. All was well.
He lay, for how long he did not know, in a timeless trance of relief and release. When he opened his eyes he saw that Faith Paleologus was lying beside him. Her bosom rose and fell softly. Then he remembered Angela.
He was sorry he had forgotten her. As the lethargy passed he made a little mourning within himself for the memory that had been Angela. But he saw that it was for a memory, an ideal, not for Angela herself. Perhaps after a few days that ideal would return. The desire would return and he would dream of it as Angela. He looked at Faith who lay there breathing as if she were asleep. He did not blame her. No feeling of rage overcame him as it had that day in the room with Arnolfo. Yet this was a much more important thing that had happened. It had merely happened to him, there could be no doubt of that. Yet not because of some person, not because of Faith. It was the blind, overpowering feeling that had come upon them both. That was what had done it. A slight noise from the courtyard disturbed his half-dreamful, easy reverie.