really all over and it was over forever . . . But had she lost everything then? This was what she often asked herself in the days that followed, those days of sadness, sadness for herself, for him, for her son, for her husband, for the girl whom she loved too . . . for all those people, for all her life . . . And what of the great questions, the mighty problems of life? Ah, they no longer stood out before her, now that he who had called her attention to them had gone straight towards those mighty problems as to the towers of the greater life! To her they seemed infinitely remote, shadowy cities on a far horizon behind her own shattered cities of fair translucent hopes . . . Had she then lost her interest in all those things? And, having lost that interest, did she no longer care for her own development, for books, nature, art? Was the life that she had been living all illusion, a dream-life of love, lived under his influence, lived under his compelling eyes?
Yes, that was how it had been, that was how she would have to acknowledge it to herself! . . . That was how it was! . . . That was how it was! . . . Only with his eyes upon her had she felt herself born again . . . born again from her childhood onwards . . . until she had once more conjured up the fairy-vision of the little girl with the red flowers on her temples who ran over the boulders in the river under the spreading tropical leaves, beckoning the wondering little brothers . . . And she, a middle-aged
