not when the swelling chasms beneath them should claim their prey, but when the lenses of their staring eyes—fiercer than the mirrors of Archimedes—should consume them in the convergence of an all-devouring communion.
Suddenly Heide's head disappeared under the water and all movement in her seemed to cease. Then Herminien, with a sudden shudder, awoke and out of his breast rose an astonishing cry. They plunged into the watery half-light. White shapes floated before their eyes as one or another of their limbs appeared, slowly moving through the opaque greenness in which they seemed profoundly ensnared. Suddenly, in this submarine quest their eyes met, and seemed to touch, and they closed them with the sensation of an intolerable danger, as though confronted by the eye of the abyss itself, magnetic and hideous, engendering an icy dizziness.
In this frenzied search, during which it seemed to them that their hands brandished invisible knives, the form of a breast, as hard as stone, suddenly floated into Herminien's palm, then an arm which he seized with desperate violence, and when he opened his eyes above the surface of the water out of the choking terror that had surrounded him, he found the three of them reunited.
The sun blinded them like a flow of molten metal. Far away a yellowish line, thin and almost unreal, marked the beginning of that element which they had thought to have renounced forever. A spell was broken. They felt the earth's call, it echoed like an alarm bell, sounded deep in their muscles and in their brains. Anguish tightened around their temples, unnerved their hands; straining their wills to the uttermost, they swam towards land, and it seemed to them that they would never reach it now—the effort of their hands in the water seemed to be detached from them and like the dip of a useless oar. There was a burst of sunlight, and the whole bay was resplendent as for a melancholy celebration, a last irony of nature before their now inevitable end. Unendurably the blood tore like searing lightning through their brains.
But at last sand slipped under their feet; and with arms outflung they lay with all their weight, in mortal fatigue, on the wet beach, their eyes following the soothing movement of the clouds in the sky, and feeling all along their now supported limbs, the calm gladness of the earth. The wind caressed their faces and flew away like an insect from a flower, and they were astonished by the regular movement of the clouds, the agility of the grass, the noisy enthusiasm of the waves, and the mystery of their respiration that seemed to come to them like an unknown and charitable guest.
The hesitating spark of life wakened deeper and deeper zones of their flesh and, little by little, out of the mass of dense cold air, the clouds, and the penetrating humidity of the sand, like a statue out of its block of marble, they were born, they were detached. As in the morning of the world they expanded in the torrid heat of the sun, they began to stir on the sand and at last rising, they stood there erect on the shore, each surprised to assume again his own particular stature, surprised that life as it returned in its individual poverty, should hold out to them so quickly the decorous garments and the matrix of an ineluctable personality. But even now, still they did not dare to speak: had it been lost, drowned in the midst of the insatiable waves, the perverse secret of their hearts?
THE CHAPEL OF THE ABYSS
A FEW DAYS AFTER these signal events, Albert strolled idly along the banks of the river of Argol. These perilous gorges, these precipitous crags, veiled in the thick curtain of the woods, attracted his tormented soul. Here the river rolled its waters along the bottom of a natural chasm with towering sides, to which clung all the rich verdure of a glorious forest. The continual windings of the river's course gave an aspect of singular isolation to these retreats. Around Albert the high walls of
Suddenly Heide's head disappeared under the water and all movement in her seemed to cease. Then Herminien, with a sudden shudder, awoke and out of his breast rose an astonishing cry. They plunged into the watery half-light. White shapes floated before their eyes as one or another of their limbs appeared, slowly moving through the opaque greenness in which they seemed profoundly ensnared. Suddenly, in this submarine quest their eyes met, and seemed to touch, and they closed them with the sensation of an intolerable danger, as though confronted by the eye of the abyss itself, magnetic and hideous, engendering an icy dizziness.
In this frenzied search, during which it seemed to them that their hands brandished invisible knives, the form of a breast, as hard as stone, suddenly floated into Herminien's palm, then an arm which he seized with desperate violence, and when he opened his eyes above the surface of the water out of the choking terror that had surrounded him, he found the three of them reunited.
The sun blinded them like a flow of molten metal. Far away a yellowish line, thin and almost unreal, marked the beginning of that element which they had thought to have renounced forever. A spell was broken. They felt the earth's call, it echoed like an alarm bell, sounded deep in their muscles and in their brains. Anguish tightened around their temples, unnerved their hands; straining their wills to the uttermost, they swam towards land, and it seemed to them that they would never reach it now—the effort of their hands in the water seemed to be detached from them and like the dip of a useless oar. There was a burst of sunlight, and the whole bay was resplendent as for a melancholy celebration, a last irony of nature before their now inevitable end. Unendurably the blood tore like searing lightning through their brains.
But at last sand slipped under their feet; and with arms outflung they lay with all their weight, in mortal fatigue, on the wet beach, their eyes following the soothing movement of the clouds in the sky, and feeling all along their now supported limbs, the calm gladness of the earth. The wind caressed their faces and flew away like an insect from a flower, and they were astonished by the regular movement of the clouds, the agility of the grass, the noisy enthusiasm of the waves, and the mystery of their respiration that seemed to come to them like an unknown and charitable guest.
The hesitating spark of life wakened deeper and deeper zones of their flesh and, little by little, out of the mass of dense cold air, the clouds, and the penetrating humidity of the sand, like a statue out of its block of marble, they were born, they were detached. As in the morning of the world they expanded in the torrid heat of the sun, they began to stir on the sand and at last rising, they stood there erect on the shore, each surprised to assume again his own particular stature, surprised that life as it returned in its individual poverty, should hold out to them so quickly the decorous garments and the matrix of an ineluctable personality. But even now, still they did not dare to speak: had it been lost, drowned in the midst of the insatiable waves, the perverse secret of their hearts?
THE CHAPEL OF THE ABYSS
A FEW DAYS AFTER these signal events, Albert strolled idly along the banks of the river of Argol. These perilous gorges, these precipitous crags, veiled in the thick curtain of the woods, attracted his tormented soul. Here the river rolled its waters along the bottom of a natural chasm with towering sides, to which clung all the rich verdure of a glorious forest. The continual windings of the river's course gave an aspect of singular isolation to these retreats. Around Albert the high walls of
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