A week had passed. Duco had arrived. After the solemn dinner in the gloomy dining-room, where Duco had been presented to Prince Ercole, the summer evening, when CornÉlie and Duco went outside, was like a dream. The castle was already wrapped in heavy repose; but CornÉlie had made Giuseppe give her a key. And they went out, to the pergola. The stars dusted the night sky with a pale radiance; and the moon crowned the hill-tops and shimmered faintly in the mystic depths of the lake. A breath of sleeping roses was wafted from the flower-garden beyond the pergola; and below, in the flat-roofed town, the cathedral, standing in its moonlit square, lifted its gigantic fabric to the stars. And sleep hung everywhere, over the lake, over the town and behind the windows of the castle; the caryatides and hermes—the satyrs and nymphs—slept, as they bore the leafy roof of the pergola, in the enchanted attitudes of the servants of the Sleeping Beauty. A cricket chirped, but fell silent the moment that Duco and CornÉlie approached. And they sat down on an antique bench; and she flung her arms about his body and nestled against him:

“A week!” she whispered. “A whole week since I saw you, Duco, my darling. I cannot do so long without you. At everything that I thought and saw and admired I thought of you, of how lovely you would think it here. You have been here once before on an excursion. Oh, but that is so different! It is so beautiful just to stay here, not just to go on, but to remain. That lake, that cathedral, those hills! The rooms indoors: neglected but so wonderful! The three courtyards are dilapidated, the fountains are crumbling to pieces ... but the style of the atrio, the sombre gloom of the dining-room, the poetry of this pergola!... Duco, doesn’t the pergola remind you of a classic ode? You know how we used to read Horace together: you translated the verses so well, you improvised so delightfully. How clever you are! You know so much, you feel things so beautifully. I love your eyes, your voice, I love you altogether, I love everything that is you ... I can’t tell you how much, Duco. I have gradually surrendered myself to every word of you, to every sensation of you, to your love for Rome, to your love for museums, to your manner of seeing the skies which you put into your drawings. You are so deliriously calm, almost like this lake. Oh, don’t laugh, don’t make a jest of it: it’s a week since I saw you, I feel such a need to talk to you! Is it exaggerated? I don’t feel quite normal here either: there is something in that sky, in that light, that makes me talk like this. It is so beautiful that I can hardly believe that all this is ordinary life, ordinary reality.... Do you remember, at Sorrento, on the terrace of the hotel, when we looked out over the sea, over that pearl-grey sea, with Naples lying white in the distance? I felt like this then; but then I dared not speak like this: it was in the morning; there were people about, whom we didn’t see but who saw us and whom I suspected all around me; but now we are alone and now I want to tell you, in your arms, against your breast, how happy I am! I love you so! All my soul, all that is finest in me is for you. You laugh, but you don’t believe me. Or do you? Do you believe me?”

“Yes, I believe you, I am not laughing at you, I am only just laughing.... Yes, it is beautiful here.... I also feel happy. I am so happy in you and in my art. You taught me to work, you roused me from my dreams. I am so happy about The Banners: I have heard from London; I will show you the letters to-morrow. I have you to thank for everything. It is almost incredible that this is ordinary life. I have been so quiet too in Rome. I saw nobody; I just worked a bit, not very much; and I had my meals alone in the osteria. The two Italians—you know the men I mean—felt sorry for me, I think. Oh, it was a terrible week! I can no longer do without you.... Do you remember our first walks and talks in the Borghese and on the Palatine? How strange we were to each other then, not a bit in unison. But I believe I felt at once that all would be well and beautiful between us....”

She was silent and lay against his breast. The cricket chirped again, with a long quaver. But everything else slept....

“Between us,” she repeated, as though in a fever; and she embraced him passionately.

The whole night slept; and, while they breathed their life in each other’s arms, the enchanted caryatides—fauns and nymphs—lifted the leafy roof of the pergola above their heads, between them and the star-spangled sky.