She handed me a lighted candle.
Then she stood and searched my face. She offered her lips to me, turned
and walked away.
I stood with the candle in my hand, watching her until she passed
through the shadows and darkness of the hall. The house was without a
sound. No step of her came from the hall or the stair. I still stood
with the candle in that silence and fluttering darkness. Then I went to
my room.
CHAPTER LVI
But I did not retire. I stood for a few moments looking through the
window into the darkness. Then I placed my belongings in my satchel,
stole softly out of the room, down the great stairs, opened the great
door of the main hallway and walked off the porch on to the gravel road,
through the iron gate and into the highway leading to the village. I
looked back at Isabel's mansion, at the roof dark between the dark
trees. Under that roof the most priceless heart I had found in life was
beating--but was it in sleep or in wakefulness? I was numbed, stunned,
hopeless. I could never return here, never see Isabel again. The Orphic
metamorphosis meant a complete disappearance from her life. She had not
turned me away or dismissed me; she had done no cruel thing, said no
word that wounded or would grow poignant in memory. She had been in
every way an angel of light--and for these reasons I could not see her
again.
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