'Did he understand, I wonder, how much of myself, of my thoughts and
griefs found voice in the music of others?
'It is a threatening night. A hot moist wind blows over the garden and
its dull moaning dies away in the darkness only to begin again more
loudly. The tops of the cypresses wave to and fro under an almost inky
sky in which the stars burn with feeble ray. A band of clouds spans the
heavens from side to side, ragged, contorted, blacker than the sky, like
the tragic locks of a Medusa. The sea is invisible through the darkness,
but it sobs as if in measureless and uncontrollable grief--forsaken and
alone.
'Why this unreasoning terror? The night seems to warn me of approaching
disaster, a warning that finds its echo in a dim remorse within my
heart.
'But I always take comfort from my daughter, she heals my fever like
some blessed balm.
'She is asleep now, shaded from the lamp which shines with the soft
radiance of the moon. Her face--white with dewy freshness of a white
rose, seems half buried in the masses of her dark hair. One would think
the eyelids were too delicately transparent to veil the splendour of her
eyes. As I lean over her and gaze at her, all the sinister voices of the
night are silenced for me, and the silence is measured only by her
gentle respiration.
'She feels the vicinity of her mother.
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