Hedvig stared fixedly down. She was very pale.
“This is horrible,” she muttered. “I want to go.”
But she did not go.
More picadors, more bleeding horses. Then banderilleros who, dancing nimbly, buried their flag-adorned darts in the bleeding neck of the bull with subtle, playful cruelty. Meanwhile the sunlight lay like fire on the yellow sand, the red blood stains, and the bright shawls of the women on the rails of the boxes. Even the rising metallic sound of thousands of voices seemed to be burnt through by the heat of the sun.
Then the espada entered. With his knee breeches, slippers and pouched hair he seemed to have stepped straight out of a Mozart opera.
Swinging his red cloth he dances an elegant Death dance before he draws his weapon. Now everything gleams bright, the sun, eyes, the thin fire-shaft of the sword. His posture, as with his weapon raised to the level of his eyes he calmly awaits the onslaught of the bull, is extremely graceful. Now the fire of the fine tongue of steel is suddenly extinguished in the bull’s neck, the Colossus staggers and falls heavily.
Hedvig sat mute and pale with devouring eyes. She was staring at the gate from which the next bull would rush in. …
When they drove home in the first yellow twilight Percy’s arm stole round her waist.
“I believe all the same Toledo has amused itself in Seville,” he smiled. “Wasn’t that a fine way of getting the sanatorium out of the system?”
Hedvig pushed away his arm almost unkindly:
“Don’t laugh at everything,” she muttered.
And suddenly she felt a secret bitterness that the man by her side was not stronger, more robust, more dangerous, that he had allowed her to say “no” so often.
Darkness requires more heat than light. The sun, the sight of blood, the inborn cruelty of the south had all at once burnt through her shyness, her fear and her brooding. Hunger for life buried its claws deep in this strange virgin soul that had lain so anxious and so self-absorbed. She was not the first barbarian from a twilight-land to whom the south has given a bold desire to live.
That night Sister Hedvig became her husband’s lover.
They remained the whole autumn in Seville and saw many bull fights. Hedvig was very beautiful at this time. Hers was a dark passionate unfolding. Percy overwhelmed her with costly clothes and jewels. He dressed her up as a Spaniard with combs and shawls and mantillas. He did not touch his paint brush, but he let her pose to his love. And Hedvig enjoyed his admiration, enjoyed her own beauty. For the first time in her life she was at peace with her own body. It was no longer the cause of restlessness and heavy care and danger. It took pride in this man’s caresses. Beneath her silk and her jewels she felt the glow of her nakedness. A solemn thrill would pass through her at the thought of her own shoulders and breast. And she enjoyed the feeling of satisfaction, which was both hot and cold. Oh, what a relief not to feel any longer that anxious longing in her inmost soul.
Hedvig Hill was happily in love with herself. For Percy also these were happy days. Their late union gave his mind a bright coolness. Perhaps he sometimes suspected the gulf which nevertheless existed between them. But that did not frighten a dilettante, it only now and then liberated a certain light self-irony. He enjoyed his own extravagant gifts, he enjoyed seeing her bloom in her own way under his hands. He felt something of the cool intoxication of the artist before his work when it has achieved independent life.
“You are my most beautiful picture,” he would whisper. “I sometimes imagine I have done it myself.”
The time was far away when he had lain in the shadow of Death looking at her with a beggar’s eyes. Percy Hill forgot things easily.
It was the evening of a clear and brilliant October day. The whitewashed walls no longer dazzled. Down in the patio of the small hotel two Spanish matrons in black were sitting talking with phlegmatic fire. Their talk flowed as musically and as monotonously as the little spraying fountain in the marble basin. Hedvig and Percy had just returned from a long drive towards the vega. The coolness of the approaching autumn suited him wonderfully well. He stood leaning against the window frame with his hands behind his head:
“Today I feel quite aggressively alive,” he said. “Fancy if we should have a child, Hedvig. A little girl. I would much rather have a girl than a boy.”
There was a slight touch of annoyance in his voice.
Hedvig sat at her dressing table doing her hair. She felt a sudden unpleasant shock. Strange as it may sound, she had up till that moment not thought of the consequences of their life together, and not for a moment had she thought of herself as a mother. She let slip the knot and her black hair flowed again over her naked white shoulders. She sprang up from the dressing table with a hard expression and frightened eyes:
“I don’t want a child!” she cried. “Never, never!”
Percy wondered at her vehemence. His smile grew hesitating:
“Dear child, forget my nonsense. It is bad taste to foretell nature in that way. I only meant that I should certainly find your condition beautiful.”
Hedvig had now calmed down again. She came up to him and stroked his hair:
“You must never talk like that, Percy,” she muttered. “You … we have no right to children … they are for those who are healthy …”
And her face had suddenly resumed the old expression of sisterly resignation and self-sacrifice.
Percy grew a shade
