The Capsina: An Historical NovelBenson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
History
The Capsina: An Historical Novel
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
Greece -- History -- War of Independence, 1821-1829 -- Fiction
She drove not her thoughts away, but picked those bright and evil
flowers, pressing them to her bosom: she tended them as a shepherd
tends his sheep, and like sheep they flocked into her soul, on the
instant a familiar abiding-place. If Suleima should die; better even
if she should not die, but live bitterly, for, no doubt, she too loved
him. He would come to her, how well she could picture in what manner,
great and awkward and burning and beyond compare, saying little but
letting all be seen. Not content with that picture, she went on to put
specious, despicable words into his mouth. Suleima, he should say,
would soon get over it; for him he was simply one of the sea, and
Suleima hated the sea; she would live with Mitsos's friends--a man's
friends were always kind to women who had wearied him. No, it was not
her fault nor his either--she had wearied him, he had wearied of her.
Besides, he loved. And even as she imagined him saying such sweet and
terrible things, her heart rose against him, and her better self spat
out like an evil taste the false image she had conjured up of him.
Sullen and windless rain began again outside, and fell hissing and
spitting like molten lead into the harbor water, yet somehow to her it
was a baptism and a washing of the soul. And she rose, and with quick
step and firm went back to opposite the _Revenge_, and blew her whistle
for the boat. And strangely sweet and bitter was it to hear Mitsos's
voice shouting an order, and to see him beneath the flare bareheaded
to the rain clamber quickly down the ship's side into the boat and
row with all the strength of those great limbs to come and fetch her,
himself and alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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