Voice of the Heart [antikvár]

Chapter One 1 came back because I wanted to, of my own free will. No one forced me to return,, But now that I am here, 1 want to take flight, to hide again in obscurity, to put this vast ocean between myself and this place, it bodes me no good. As these thought^ for hoiBfs nebulous and unformed, finally took shape, assumed troubling proportions, and jostled for prominence im her mmd, ihe woman's fine iiands, lying inertly in her lap, cam© together im a clencii so forceful the knuckles protruded sharply tlnrou^ the transparent skin. But there was no other outward display of emotion as her internal distress evolved. She sat as rigid as stone on the seat. Her face, pale and somewhat drawn in the murky mommg light, was impassive as a mask^ isnd her gaze was fixed with unwavering intensity on the Pacifiée líe sea was implacable and the color of chalcedony on this bleak and sunless day» on© that was unnaturally chilly for Southern California, even though it was December, when the weather was so often inclement The woman shivered. The dampness was beginning to seep through her trench coat into her bones. She felt icy, and yet» conversely, there was a light film of moisture on her forehead and neck and between her breasts. On an impulse sh© ros© from the seat, her movements abrupt; and with her head bent against the wind and her hands pushed deep into her pockets, she walked the length of the Santa Monica pier, which was now so entirely deserted it looked desolate, even forbidding, in its emptiness. When she arrived at th© outermost tip of the pier, where the turbulent waves, whipped by the wind, lashed at the exposed underpinnings, she paused and leaned against the railing. Once again her eyes were riveted in rabid concentration on the ocean curling out towards the dim horizon. There, on that far indistinct rim, where sea and sky merged in a smudge of limitless gray, a great liner bobbed along like & child's toy, tumed into an object of insignificance by the vastness of nature. We are all like that ship—^the woman mused inwardly^o fragile, so ÍQconsequenti?[ in tiie overall scheme of things.