eyes one day, and you will be sorry for me.”
“You mustn’t believe in curses,” I said. “Good God, curses!”
“The Marches,” she said, “are never let off anything. That is the curse.”
Her eyes were stronger than mine, even as wind is stronger than air, and always in them was the magic of wide open places. I looked down, and far below, like pearls in the dust, shone two ankles clasped in silk the colour of daylight. I thought of her fate and of her. I thought of corruption, of curses, of death, of life, of love, and of love’s delight. I took hold of the sword in my mind with both hands, but was not strong enough to lift it. I thought of the limbs of Aphrodite, of the sighs of Anaïtis, of the sharp cries of lov{45}e’s delight. I thought how charming men would be if they could misbehave outwardly as prettily as they can in their minds. I said: “And so the house of March, fatal and damned, can never avoid its destiny....”
{45}
“Yes,” she said reasonably, “it can avoid it. By not being weak enough to desire so strongly.”
“Oh, I see,” I said.
“I’m glad you see,” she said gravely. They listen to voices whispering dreams. While they listen, they do queer weak things. Of the soil sordid—there is your March. But there is another March, who listens to voices whispering dreams. My father, Barty March, was, I think, one of the most loved men of his time. Like Napier is now, but of course Napier behaves. A policeman found Barty early one morning on the doorstep of a house we had then in Cambridge Square. He used to say he was never drunk until he closed his eyes, but this time he had closed his eyes into pneumonia. He only opened them once again, to look at Gerald and me, sixteen years old apiece. He smiled, you know, because Barty couldn’t help smiling. Besides, he was happy at last. “Avoid dreams,” he said. “Never stop to listen to the clouds passing overhead. You will be run over. Never sympathise with the moon when you can hear it, cold and lonely and blind, crooning to itself like a corpse singing a hymn. You will catch pneumonia. Never dream of a world in which men are men and women are women. You will go mad....”
Her right hand hung limp over the arm of the chair. It was just faintly dirty, and the nails shone like pink ivory. The emerald on the third finger{46} held my eyes enchanted for a long while. She smiled at my look, and as she lay her eyes swept falcon-like down to the
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