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Hichens, Robert Smythe, 1864-1950

"A Spirit in Prison"

It was
already locked. Yet Gaspare had not come up to say good-night to her.
And he always did that before he went to bed. She unlocked the door,
went out, shut it behind her, and stood still.
How strangely beautiful and touching the faint noise of the sea round
the island was at night, and how full of meaning not quite to be
divined! It came upon her heart like the whisper of a world trying to
tell its secret to the darkness. What depths, what subtleties, what
unfailing revelations of beauty, and surely, too, of love, there were
in Nature! And yet in Nature what terrible indifference there was: a
powerful, an almost terrific inattention, like that of the sphinx that
gazes at what men cannot see. Hermione moved away from the house. She
walked to the brow of the island and sat down on the seat that Vere
was fond of. Presently she would go to the bridge and look over into
the Pool and listen for the voices of the fishermen. She sat there for
some time gaining a certain peace, losing something of her feeling of
weary excitement and desolation under the stars.


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