Free Olivia by Dorothy Strachey

all this story? Because I wanted to hear it so? Wasn’t it as a warning too? A warning then, given in vain, for there was nothing I could alter, nothing I would try to alter.
    And then my thoughts went back to that past when they had both been young, both beautiful, both happy. Like a wedded couple, I thought. And when couples who have loved part, what a tragedy is that. What disillusionment, what self-reproach, what regrets were eating my beloved’s heart out. It was that that had hollowed her cheek, that had made the sensitive curve of her lips so
sad, so bitter. And I could do nothing for her. Yet oh, I sighed, how willingly I would die to make her happy.
    It was not long after this talk with Signorina, and a day or two after Laura had left, that I gathered up my courage and went by myself to the library at the usual hour. I stood for a minute or two outside the door before turning the handle. When I was alone, I always stood so before the door which was shut between her and me. It seemed an almost superhuman effort to open it. It wasn’t exactly fear that stopped me. No, but a kind of religious awe. The next step was too grave, too portentous to be taken without preparation—the step which was to abolish absence. All one’s fortitude, all one’s powers, must be summoned and concentrated to enable one to endure that overwhelming change. She is behind that door. The door will open and I shall be in her presence.
    “Is that you, Olivia? Come in.”
    “May I?”
    “Yes. I was feeling lonely without Laura. I’m glad you’ve come. But I’m busy. You needn’t go though. Take a book and read. The Sainte-Beuves are over there. You’d better take a Lundi .”
    “May I take a poet?”
    “Yes, certainly. What do you want?”
    “The Vigny you were reading yesterday.”
    “Yes. There it is.”
    I took the little red volume and sat down on the floor.

    How happy I was!
    I could see her sitting at her table. I could see her beautiful, serious profile, when I raised my eyes from my book, and when I dropped them I could still feel she was there.
    I re-read the Moïse .
    Greatness and loneliness. “ Puissant et solitaire .” To live above the crowd in loneliness. To be condemned to loneliness by the greatness of one’s qualities. To be condemned to live apart, however much one wanted the contact of warm human companionship. To be the Lord’s anointed. Strange and dreadful fate! I forgot where I was as I thought of it. At last I raised my head and saw her eyes fixed upon me. Without knowing what I was doing, without reflection, as if moved by some independent spring of whose existence I was unaware, and whose violence I was totally unable to resist, I suddenly found myself kneeling before her, kissing her hands, crying out over and over again, “I love you!”—sobbing “I love you!”
    Can I remember what she said, what she did? No. Nothing. I can only remember myself kneeling beside her—the feel of her woollen dress on my cheeks, the feel of her hands, the softness and warmth of her hands under my lips, the hardness of her rings. I don’t know how I left the room. The rest of the day I lived in a kind of maze, dreaming of those hands, of those kisses.

8

    I t was at this time that a change came over me. That delicious sensation of gladness, of lightness, of springing vitality, that consciousness of youth and strength and ardour, that feeling that some divine power had suddenly granted me an undreamt-of felicity and made me free of boundless kingdoms and untold wealth, faded as mysteriously as it had come and was succeeded by a very different state. Now I was all moroseness and gloom—heavy-hearted, leaden-footed. I could take no interest in my lessons; it was impossible to think of them. When, on Thursdays and Sundays, I sat with the other girls in our study where we were supposed to be writing our devoirs, I could not work. I sat for hours, my arms folded on the table in front of me, my head resting on them,