He was dominated by a woman, by a woman
who had come into his life, seized it, made it a thing of glory, broken
it. He described to me the dominion of this woman. He told me how she
had transformed him. Till he met her he had been passionate but free,
his own master through many experiences, many intrigues. He was very
frank, Domini. He did not attempt to hide from me that his life had been
evil. It had been a life devoted to the acquiring of experience, of all
possible experience, mental and bodily. I gathered that he had shrunk
from nothing, avoided nothing. His nature had prompted him to rush upon
everything, to grasp at everything. At first I was horrified at what he
told me. I showed it. I remember the second evening after his arrival
we were sitting together in a little arbour at the foot of the vineyard
that sloped up to the cemetery. It was half an hour before the last
service in the chapel. The air was cool with breath from the distant
sea. An intense calm, a heavenly calm, I think, filled the garden,
floated away to the cypresses beside the graves, along the avenue where
stood the Fourteen Stations of the Cross.
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