Her appeal was now urgent; her arms called me as well as her voice; but
I seemed to shrink from them, as if there were danger in her.
This very singular hallucination of mine decided me to go, for now I was
curious. The strife, in which I had had so little to do, had been most
vivid, the parties to it so real, that there were moments when I caught
myself speaking aloud to one of my phantoms. That one was always
Virginia; therefore I dared to go, knowing full well that she would now
go with me.
And it was so. At six o'clock of an evening I went out of doors and
turned my face towards the east. It was a mild evening as that on which
I had seen Virginia for the first time in the wood, her faggot on her
head. I seemed to see her now going bravely before me. So clearly did
she show, I quickened my steps to overtake her; and again my heart beat,
and again I thought of the nymphs and all the soft riot of the woodland
scents and sounds. Strange! how the slim figure of the peasant-girl
possessed me. I thought of her as I entered the grove of cypresses which
led to the villa, and if my heart was in high trouble as I asked for
Donna Aurelia, it was the surmise that I should again see Virginia
fluttering among the trees that set my blood a-tingling.
But she left me there, as I waited in the saloon open to the shadowed
garden; and I knew not whether I felt her the more certainly for her
absence than for her former persistent company.
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