Chapter VWe never talked again about the events of that night. For a few days, we withdrew from each other and only exchanged a few words about other things, keeping ourselves busy and avoiding each other’s eyes. Time passed, and we forgot.
Now, when I recall Arabela’s fervour that evening, her horror, how she recoiled from debauchery and death, all those feelings that for a few days she hid behind her weary smile, it doesn’t seem to me, through the distance of time, as if that should be derided, but rather as if there was instead a certain radiance about her that I couldn’t see then, because I was too close to it.
And yet it must have been this quality that was later recognized as her “genius” by the critics. There have been so many articles written about Arabela, about her art, about t
