British -- France -- Fiction; Diary fiction; Epistolary fiction; Household employees -- Fiction; Love stories; Young women -- Fiction
We looked full at one another without speaking. And, as I looked, I knew
that, though he could not be mine in this world, I must be his for ever
and ever. Then the enormous whiteness of the cliff seemed to rock
before my eyes, and the humming of the beck swelled to thunder in my
ears. But he caught me before I fell.
"Susan!" he said softly in my ear. His voice was warmer and brighter
than gold, as he repeated: "Susan!"
I lay helpless in his arms. All strength had gone from me, just as it
had gone when I half swooned in the sea. I could not struggle. I could
only let myself sink more wholly against his heart, just as I had so
willingly sunk down, down, down through the cool green water to the
deep, strong peace of Death. But, though Death’s caress had been sweet,
it was sweeter to rest against the warm heart of Love.
I don’t know how long that perfect happiness endured before a stab of
anguish pierced me through. It seemed an hour; it may have been a
minute; perhaps it was less than half a second before full consciousness
returned. Then a voice within me cried shame. I remembered that,
although I had gazed at his face in the broad light of the moon, he had
only seen mine in the shadow. Bitterest of all, it was not my name he
had murmured in that voice brighter and warmer than gold. He had hailed
Susan. I was a cheat, a changeling, lying shameless in Susan’s place.
I knew it. But, for a moment longer, I rested at peace in the soft nest
of his arms. With all the grey years of the future to be lived through
in loveless loneliness, I deliberately gave myself that one long moment.
As if he knew that the warmth and sweetness of it must last me all my
life long, he held me closer to his heart. I wished, then, that I could
have died.
Life, harsh Life, cried aloud. I called up some sudden strength and
tore myself free.
"I am not Susan," I said.
He gave the slightest cry, made the slightest retreat in the world.
Then, before I knew, he enfolded me once more.
"No," he said proudly. "Not Susan. Suzanne--_ma petite Suzanne_. But I
frightened her. She is trembling. Suzanne, forgive me! I must have
been mad to leap out upon you like that. But how could she walk along
the beach to-night and not expect me to be here?"
I heard him vaguely. He was too strong for me. My will, my moral
energy as well as my bodily strength, refused to return at my command.
I could hardly open my eyes to look up at the mild moon, so like the
cool, round sun which I had seen from under the water.
"Say you forgive me, Suzanne," he murmured. "You are angry with me for
coming to France. How could I wait, Suzanne, when you had confessed
that you love me?"
I wrenched myself roughly free. With a frenzied effort of will, I
rallied back all my allies of conventionality and of pride.
"You have made a mistake," I said curtly, stepping away two or three
paces. "I am not Susan."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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