Helena had rejected him. In his heart he felt that in this love affair
also he had been a failure. No matter how he contradicted himself, and
said it was absurd to imagine he was a failure as Helena's lover, yet he
felt a physical sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast which
neither reason, nor dialectics, nor circumstance, not even Helena, could
untie. He had failed as lover to Helena.
It was not surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove
disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of
seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his
mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his
interests, he naturally inclined away from her, so that now, after
twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her. That was not very
surprising.
But why should he have failed with Helena?
The bees droned fitfully over the scented grass, aimlessly swinging in
the heat. Siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a
white clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming
softer and softer as he reeled along in the giddy space.
'The little fool!' said Siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into
the light.
No ship sailed the curving sea. The light danced in a whirl upon the
ripples. Everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement the
wild spinning of the lights.
'Even if I were free,' he continued to think, 'we should only grow
apart, Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the
laggard. She is young and vigorous; I am beginning to set.
'Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love sufficiently
to keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not follow her or
understand her swiftly enough. And I am always timid of compulsion. I
cannot compel anybody to follow me.
'So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the
sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no footing
to alight on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back.
When can I set my feet on when this is gone?' The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of
Siegmund's mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed,
looking out to sea. The sun was burning deeper into his face and head.
'I feel as if it were burning into me,' thought Siegmund abstractedly.
'It is certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me
ill.' Meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair
to the sun.