He sat down by the table on which it lay among the bright toys of
silver. Released from his great fear, released from his undertaking to
force his way into the darkness of that room which had been silent, he
seemed suddenly to regain his identity, to be put once more into
possession of his normal character. He had gone out from it. He
returned to it. The cloud of superstition, in which even he had been
for a moment involved with Vere and with the servants, evaporated, and
he was able to smile secretly at them and at himself. Yet while he
smiled thus secretly, and while he looked at the lemon with its
perforating nails, he realized his own smallness, helplessness, the
smallness and the helplessness of every man, as he had never realized
them before. And he realized also something, much, of what it would
have meant to him, had the body of his fear been the body of a truth,
not of a lie.
If death had really come into the Casa del Mare that night with the
death-charm!
He stretched out his hand to the table, lifted the death-charm from
among the silver ornaments, held it, kept it in his hand, which he
laid upon his knee.
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