V
There came days when they purposely avoided each other, trying to find peace in separation. Stephen would go for long rides alone, leaving Mary to idle about the villa; and when she got back Mary would not speak, but would wander away by herself to the garden. For Stephen had grown almost harsh at times, possessed as she now was by something like terror, since it seemed to her that what she must say to this creature she loved would come as a deathblow, that all youth and all joy would be slain in Mary.
Tormented in body and mind and spirit, she would push the girl away from her roughly: “Leave me alone, I can’t bear any more!”
“Stephen—I don’t understand. Do you hate me?”
“Hate you? Of course you don’t understand—only, I tell you I simply can’t bear it.”
They would stare at each other pale-faced and shaken.
The long nights became even harder to endure, for now they would feel so terribly divided. Their days would be heavy with misunderstandings, their nights filled with doubts, apprehensions and longings. They would often have parted as enemies, and therein would lie the great loneliness of it.
As time went on they grew deeply despondent, their despondency robbing the sun of its brightness, robbing the little goat-bells of their music, robbing the dark of its luminous glory. The songs of the beggars who sang in the garden at the hour when the santa noche smelt sweetest, those songs would seem full of a cruel jibing: “A-a-a-y! Before I saw thee I was at peace, but now I am tormented because I have seen thee.”
Thus were all things becoming less good in their sight, less perfect because of their own frustration.