"
"A dream!" he cried, flaming upon me, "a dream--when, even
now--"
For the first time he became animated. A faint flush crept
into his cheek. He raised his open hand and clenched it, and
dropped it to his knee. He spoke, looking away from me, and for
all the rest of the time he looked away. "We are but phantoms!" he
said, "and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and
wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont
carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights--so be
it! But one thing is real and certain, one thing is no dream-
stuff, but eternal and enduring. It is the centre of my life, and
all other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. I
loved her, that woman of a dream. And she and I are dead together!
"A dream! How can it be a dream, when it drenched a living
life with unappeasable sorrow, when it makes all that I have lived
for and cared for, worthless and unmeaning?
"Until that very moment when she was killed I believed we had
still a chance of getting away," he said. "All through the night
and morning that we sailed across the sea from Capri to Salerno, we
talked of escape. We were full of hope, and it clung about us to
the end, hope for the life together we should lead, out of it all,
out of the battle and struggle, the wild and empty passions, the
empty arbitrary 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' of the world.
Pages:
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91