Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/246

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238
THE TWILIGHT OF THE SOULS

from the distance, blew through them and moved them.

The carriage turned into the bare front-garden, round the beds with the straw-shrouded rose-bushes. Constance had driven in like this only a few times before, with the careful coachman always describing the same accurate curve round the flower-beds: the first time, when she came back from Brussels, and two or three times since, after the old woman had been to the Hague, on one of Henri's birthdays. And suddenly a strange presentiment flashed through the black day right into her, a presentiment that she was destined very often, so many times that she could not count them, to drive with that curve round those beds. . . .

She stepped out of the carriage; and the strange presentiment flashed into her that she would often, very often, stand like that, waiting for that solemn front-door of the great gloomy, solemn villa to open to her. . . . Then she walked in; and the long oak entrance-hall stretched before her like a strange indoor vista, with at the end a dark door that led to . . . she did not quite know what. . . . And she felt that she would often, very often, go through that hall and stare at that dark door, knowing full well what it led to. . . . And it was very strange indeed now, but she imagined that she had, unconsciously, had this presentiment before—really unconsciously, so vaguely that she had not