“By Jove, that was a near thing!”
“Ah, that has made me feel bad!” said a woman.
“A French yacht,” said somebody.
Helena was waiting for the voice of Siegmund. But he did not know what to say. Confused, he repeated:
“That was a close shave,”
Helena clung to him, searching his face. She felt his difference from herself. There was something in his experience that made him different, quiet, with a peculiar expression as if he were pained.
“Ah, dear Lord!” he was saying to himself. “How bright and whole the day is for them! If God had suddenly put His hand over the sun, and swallowed us up in a shadow, they could not have been more startled. That man, with his fine, white-flannelled limbs and his dark head, has no suspicion of the shadow that supports it all. Between the blueness of the sea and the sky he passes easy as a gull, close to the fine white sea-mew of his mate, amid red flowers of flags, and soft birds of ships, and slow moving monsters of steam-boats.
“For me the day is transparent and shrivelling. I can see the darkness through its petals. But for him it is a fresh bell-flower, in which he fumbles with delights like a bee.
“For me, quivering in the interspaces of the atmosphere, is the darkness the same that fills in my soul. I can see death urging itself into life, the shadow supporting the substance. For my life is burning an invisible flame. The glare of the light of myself, as I burn on the fuel of death, is not enough to hide from me the source and the issue. For what is a life but
