On that morning he went again without the
city and lay among the grasses. But the sky to-day was closed, and all
dead Rome that had been proud or violent or a lover of self seemed to
move around him multitudinous. He fought the shapes down, but the sea
in storm then turned sluggish, dead and weary.... What was he going to
do? Scotland? Was he going back to Scotland? The glen, the moor, White
Farm and the kirk, Black Hill and his own house--all seemed cold and
without tint, gray, small, and withered, and yet oppressive. All that
would be importunate, officious. He cried out, "O my God, I want
healing!" For a long time he lay there still, then, rising, went
wandering by arches and broken columns, choked doorways, graved slabs
sunken in fairy jungles. Into his mind came a journey years before
when he had just brushed a desert. The East, the Out-of-Europe, called
to him now.
CHAPTER XXIX
Ian guided the boat to the water steps. Above, over the wall, streamed
roses, a great, soundless fall of them, reflected, mass and color, in
the lake. Above the roses sprang deep trees, shade behind shade, and
here sang nightingales. Facing him sat the Milanese song-bird, the
singer Antonia Castinelli. She had the throat of the nightingale and
the beauty of the velvety open rose.
"Why land?" she said. "Why climb the steps to the chatter in the
villa?"
"Why indeed?"
"They are not singing! They are talking.
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