Here and there
folds of the great flag were looped back with wooden shields, gilded and
painted with coats of arms--the crest of the Holbeins, no doubt,
invented to order at great expense. These loopings were like curtains
which left square, open apertures; and as Mary looked toward the shore
the balmy night air brushed against her hot cheeks like cool wings.
"I don't know, I don't suppose it's possible--no, it can't be possible
that it should be with you as it is with me," Vanno said, in a low voice
which sounded to her ears suppressed and strange, as if he kept back
some secret passion, perhaps anger. "Ever since the first moment I saw
you standing on the platform of the train at Marseilles, looking down
like Juliet from her balcony, I have felt as if I'd known you all my
life, even before this life began, in some other existence of which you
remain the only memory: you, your eyes, your smile."
Her heart bounded as sometimes the heart bounds at night, in that
mysterious break between waking and sleeping, which is like a leap, and
a fall over an abyss without bottom.
She wished to hold his words in her mind and dwell upon them, as if upon
a suddenly opened page of some marvellous illuminated missal of
priceless value. Conscious of no answer to give, or need of answer for
the moment, her subconscious self nevertheless began at once to speak,
and the rest of her listened, startled at first, then with wonder
acknowledging the truth of her own admission.
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