But never till now had she
felt the fierce tragedy of solitude, the utter terror of it. As she sat
in the _fumoir_, looking down on the smoothly-raked sand, she said to
herself that till this moment she had never had any idea of the meaning
of solitude. It was the desert within a human soul, but the desert
without the sun. And she knew this because at last she loved. The dark
and silent flood of passion that lay within her had been released from
its boundaries, the old landmarks were swept away for ever, the face of
the world was changed.
She loved Androvsky. Everything in her loved him; all that she had been,
all that she was, all that she could ever be loved him; that which was
physical in her, that which was spiritual, the brain, the heart, the
soul, body and flame burning within it--all that made her the wonder
that is woman, loved him. She was love for Androvsky. It seemed to her
that she was nothing else, had never been anything else. The past years
were nothing, the pain by which she was stricken when her mother fled,
by which she was tormented when her father died blaspheming, were
nothing.
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