Life and hope were ash in her mouth. She shuddered with discord. Despair
grated between her teeth. This dreariness was worse than any her dreary,
lonely life had known. She felt she could bear it no longer.
Siegmund was there. Surely he could help? He would rekindle her. But he
was straying ahead, carelessly whistling the Spring Song from _Die
Walküre_. She looked at him, and again shuddered with horror. Was that
really Siegmund, that stooping, thick-shouldered, indifferent man? Was
that the Siegmund who had seemed to radiate joy into his surroundings,
the Siegmund whose coming had always changed the whole weather of her
soul? Was that the Siegmund whose touch was keen with bliss for her,
whose face was a panorama of passing God? She looked at him again. His
radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. She saw him a stooping man, past
the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather stupidly--in short,
something of the 'clothed animal on end', like the rest of men.
She suffered an agony of disillusion. Was this the real Siegmund, and
her own only a projection of her soul? She took her breath sharply. Was
he the real clay, and that other, her beloved, only the breathing of her
soul upon this. There was an awful blank before her.
'Siegmund!' she said in despair.
He turned sharply at the sound of her voice. Seeing her face pale and
distorted in the twilight, he was filled with dismay. She mutely lifted
her arms to him, watching him in despair. Swiftly he took her in his
arms, and asked in a troubled voice: 'What is it, dear? Is something wrong?' His voice was nothing to her--it was stupid. She felt his arms round
her, felt her face pressed against the cloth of his coat, against the
beating of his heart. What was all this? This was not comfort or love.
He was not understanding or helping, only chaining her, hurting. She did
not want his brute embrace--she was most utterly alone, gripped so in
his arms. If he could not save her from herself, he must leave her free
to pant her heart out in free air. The secret thud, thud of his heart,
the very self of that animal in him she feared and hated, repulsed her.
She struggled to escape.
'What is it? Won't you tell me what is the matter?' he pleaded.
She began to sob, dry wild sobs, feeling as if she would go mad. He
tried to look at her face, for which she hated him. And all the time he
held her fast, all the time she was imprisoned in the embrace of this
brute, blind creature, whose heart confessed itself in thud, thud, thud.