She saw him glance at her quickly, with anxiety in his eyes.
"You know best where we should go, Madame."
"I daresay you won't care about it. Probably you are not interested in
gardens. It does not matter really which path we take. They are all very
much alike."
"I am sure they are all very beautiful."
Suddenly he had become humble, anxious to please her. But now the
violent contrasts in him, unlike the violent contrasts of nature in this
land, exasperated her. She longed to be left alone. She felt ashamed of
Androvsky, and also of herself; she condemned herself bitterly for the
interest she had taken in him, for her desire to put some pleasure into
a life she had deemed sad, for her curiosity about him, for her wish
to share joy with him. She laughed at herself secretly for what she now
called her folly in having connected him imaginatively with the desert,
whereas in reality he made the desert, as everything he approached, lose
in beauty and wonder. His was a destructive personality. She knew it
now. Why had she not realised it before? He was a man to put gall in the
cup of pleasure, to create uneasiness, self-consciousness, constraint
round about him, to call up spectres at the banquet of life.
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