them, and the light a sword-like sharpness over their edges. It was
inanimate radiance. The laurels sparkled as with frost-points; the
denser foliage dropped burning brown: a sickly saint's-ring was round the
heads of the pines. That afternoon the bee hummed of thunder, and
refreshed the ear.

I pitied the horse I rode, and the dog at his heels, but for me the
intensity was inspiriting. Nothing lay in the light, I had the land to
myself. 'What hurts me?' I thought. My physical pride was up, and I
looked on the cattle in black corners of the fields, and here and there a
man tumbled anyhow, a wreck of limbs, out of the insupportable glare,
with an even glance. Not an eye was lifted on me.

I saw nothing that moved until a boat shot out of the bight of sultry
lake-water, lying close below the dark promontory where I had drawn rein.
The rower was old Schwartz Warhead. How my gorge rose at the impartial
brute! He was rowing the princess and a young man in uniform across the
lake.

That they should cross from unsheltered paths to close covert was
reasonable conduct at a time when the vertical rays of the sun were fiery
arrow-heads. As soon as they were swallowed in the gloom I sprang in my
saddle with torture, transfixed by one of the coarsest shafts of hideous
jealousy. Off I flew, tearing through dry underwood, and round the bend
of the lake, determined to confront her, wave the man aside, and have my
last word with the false woman. Of the real Ottilia I had lost
conception. Blood was inflamed, brain bare of vision: 'He takes her
hand, she jumps from the boat; he keeps her hand, she feigns to withdraw
it, all woman to him in her eyes: they pass out of sight.' A groan burst
from me. I strained my crazy imagination to catch a view of them under