Olivia by Dorothy Strachey

you now, your hair down, your dress so untidy and rumpled, your eyes wild. Shame on you, Olivia. Shame! Shame!”
    Her voice rose to a shriek. I thought she was demented. I had never seen a person in hysterics before. I was terrified by that shrill, choking, sobbing laughter, by those insane words. And suddenly she turned. Mlle Julie had come into the room behind me; I was standing now between the two.
    “What is it, Cara?” she said.
    The raving flood changed its direction and went on. She was shaking now from head to foot.

    “One of your favourites, one of your darlings, one of your victims !” she shrieked.
    “Go, Olivia,” said Mlle Julie.
    She managed to extricate me and I ran to the door, but before I reached it, I heard the fury cry:
    “Oh yes, you go to their rooms at night—Cécile’s, Baietto’s, and now hers! You do, you do. ”
     
     
    My brain was whirling. I too was trembling from head to foot. What did it all mean? Why did I suddenly feel as if I were surrounded by horrors, as if the landscape, which a moment before had shone with an almost celestial radiance, were clouded now with darkness, full of abominable pitfalls and lurking hideous monsters? Mystery was about me, murky suspicions, and, at the bottom of my heart lay jealousy such as I had never known before, and a dreadful curiosity and a dreadful longing for wickedness. In so short a time to be cast from the glories of Paradise into this direful region! It was the first time I learnt how near, how contiguous, are the gates of Heaven and Hell.
    That night too I slept very little. I lay for hours, it seemed to me, tossing in an aimless conflict, everything at war within me, every issue confused and shadowy. What was this vice of which I was accused? Was I really capable of vice? Yes, I felt it within me, in this hatred, in this horror, in this confusion itself. But love was no vice.
When best I loved, then I was best. But lately, had not love too been clouded with exhalations from some obscure depths, at which I shuddered? Why were good and evil so inextricably mixed? Evil? Was there any evil in my love’s pure face, in the sweetness of her sensitive lips, in the delicate, pale curve of her cheek, in the deep thoughtful eyes, in the grave brow? And I thought of the other face, distorted with anger, swollen, inflamed, with ugly hatreds, ugly vanities, ugly weaknesses. Was there any doubt where virtue lay between those two? And then my thoughts were punctuated again by the sudden, flashing vision of Cécile’s creamy shoulder, and I writhed in my bed—I too in the clutches of ugly hatreds, ugly vanities, ugly weaknesses. I should like to pray, thought I, if only I knew to what deity. Ah! It is Reason I must implore—some calm Minerva, who shall look down from her god-like abode, and still my passions, and dispel these sulphurous fumes, and restore to my soul clarity and discernment. And with the thought and with the prayer, peace fell on me and I slept.

10

    I sprang out of bed next morning, full of good resolutions, determined to work better, to love better, to be better. I would attend to the history professor, though he was dull. I would check my thoughts the moment they began to wander down the familiar alluring paths. I would concentrate my mind on what I had to do. I would do it as well as I could. Alas! I had not yet learnt that concentration of mind comes from long discipline and sternly acquired habit. On the very first morning of what was to be my new life, how could I expect to banish entirely those haunting visions—of a shoulder, of a profile? Was I responsible when, in the middle of the professor’s lecture, his voice, his words, his person, were suddenly obliterated and I was conscious of nothing but an almost inaudible murmur, “ Je t’aime bien, mon enfant . . . plus que tu ne crois ”? Could I help it, if, with a sudden wild leap of my heart, I felt my lips pressing against warm hands, the hardness of a ring, the