"In time!" In a room of the Academy, La Foscarina had stopped before La Vecchia, by Francesco Torbido—that wrinkled, toothless, flaccid, yellow old woman, who could no longer either smile or weep, that human ruin worse than decay, that species of earthly Parca, who, instead of spindle, thread, or scissors, held in her hand a card bearing that significant warning.

"In time!" she said again, when she and her companion were once more in the open air. She said it to break the pensive silence, during which she had felt her heart sink, like a stone cast into dark waters. She spoke again suddenly:

"Stelio, do you know that closed house in the Calle Gambara?"

"No—which house?"

"The house of the Countess of Glanegg."

"No, I don't know it."

"Do you not know the story of the beautiful Austrian?"

"No, Fosca. Tell it to me."

"Will you go with me as far as the Calle Gambara; it is only a short distance?"

"Yes, I will go."

They walked along, side by side, toward the closed mansion. Stelio fell back a step, that he might observe the actress, that he might behold her grace as she walked in that warm, dead air. With his ardent gaze he seemed to embrace her whole person: the line of her shoulders sloping with noble grace, the free and pliant waist on the strong hips, the knees that moved lightly among the folds of her robe, and that pale, passionate face, those eloquent lips, that brow, lofty and beautiful as that of a man, the fringe of dark lashes over the elongated eyes, that sometimes were clouded over, as if tears rose to them and remained unshed—the whole passionate face full of lights and shadows, love and sadness, feverish force and quivering life.

"I love you! I love you! You alone please me! Everything about you pleases me!" he said to her suddenly, whispering the words close to her cheek. He was now walking so close as almost to press against her, as he accommodated his step to hers, his arm passed under her arm. He could not bear to know that she was seized with startled anguish at those terrible warning words.

She trembled, stopped; her eyelids drooped, her cheeks turned pale.

"My friend!" she said, in a tone so faint that the two words seemed modulated less by her lips than by the rare smile of her spirit.

Her sudden sadness melted away, changed into a wave of tenderness that poured in a lavish flood over her friend. Her unbounded gratitude inspired her with an eager desire to find some great gift for him.

"Tell me, Stelio, what can I do for thee?"

She imagined some marvelous test, some unheard-of proof of love. "Let me serve! Let me serve!" cried her heart. She yearned to own the whole earth, that she might offer it to him.

"What dost thou wish? Tell me—what can I do for thee?"

"Love me—only love me!"

"Poor friend, my love is sad."

"It is perfect; it crowns my life."

"But you are young."

"I love you!"

"You should possess one with strength equal to your own."

"But it is you, and only you, that each day increases my strength and exalts my hope. My blood runs quicker when I am near you in your mystic silence. At those times things are born in my brain that in time you will marvel to see. You are necessary to me."

"Do not say that!"

"Each day you confirm me in the assurance that all promises made to me will be kept."

"Yes, you will have your own beautiful destiny. For you I have no fear; you are sure of yourself. No peril can surprise you, no obstacle can impede your progress. Oh, to be able to love without fear! One always fears when one loves. It is not for you that I fear. You seem to me invincible. I thank you for that also."

She showed him her faith, deep as her passion, lucid and unlimited. For a long time, even in the heat of her own struggles and the vicissitudes of her wandering life, she had kept her eyes fixed on this young, victorious existence, as on an ideal form born of the purification of her own desire. More than once, in the sadness of vain loves and the nobility of the prohibition imposed between them, she had thought: "Ah, if, some day, from all my courage, hardened in many storms, from all the strong, clear things that grief and revolt have revealed in the depths of my soul, from the best of myself, I could fashion for thee the wings that shall bear thee upward in thy last supreme flight!" More than once, her melancholy had been dissipated in a heroic presentiment. And then she had subjected her soul to restraint, had raised it to the highest plane of moral beauty that she could, had guided it in paths of purity, solely to merit that for which she hoped and feared at once—to be worthy of offering her servitude to him who was so impatient to conquer the world.

And now a sudden violent shock of Fate had thrown her before him in the guise of a mere weak woman, overcome by earthly passion. She had united herself to him by the closest tie; she had watched him at dawn, sleeping; she had had sudden awakenings, alarmed by cruel fear, and had found it impossible to close her tired eyes again, lest he should gaze on her while she slept, and see in her face the lines of care and years.

"Nothing is worth the inspiration you give me," said Stelio, pressing her arm close and seeking her soft wrist under her glove, urged by a longing to feel the pulsation of that devoted life. "Nothing is worth the assurance that nevermore until death shall I be alone."

"Ah, you too feel that, do you—that it is forever?" she cried in a transport of joy at seeing the triumph of her love. "Yes, forever, Stelio—whatever happens, wherever your destiny may lead you, in whatever way you wish me to serve you, either near you or afar...."

In the misty air rose a confused and monotonous sound, which La Foscarina recognized as the chorus of sparrows gathered among the dying trees in the garden of the Countess of Glanegg. The words died on her lips; she made an instinctive movement as if to turn back and to draw her companion with her.

"Where are we going?" Stelio asked, surprised at her sudden movement, and at the unforeseen interruption, that came like a burst of magic music.

She stopped, smiling her faint smile that showed her heart was aching. ("IN TIME!")

"I wished to escape," she replied, "but I cannot."

She looked like a pale flame, as she stood there.

"I had forgotten, Stelio, that I was to take you to the closed house."

Like one lost in a desert, she stood there, helpless, under the gray sky.

"It seemed to me that we were to go somewhere else. But we are already here. 'In time'!"

She appeared to him now as she had in that memorable night, when she had said "Do not be cruel, Stelio!" Clothed in her sweet, tender soul she stood there, so easy to kill, to destroy, to immolate in a bloodless sacrifice.

"Come away—let us go," he said, trying to lead her with him. "Let us go somewhere else."

"I cannot."

"Let us go home—let us go to your house; we will light a fire, the first fire of October. Let me pass this evening with you, Foscarina. It will rain soon. It would be so sweet to sit in your room and talk, or be silent, hand-in-hand. Come! Let us go."

He would have liked to take her in his arms, to nurse her, soothe her, charm away her sadness. The sweetness of his own words augmented his tenderness. Of all her lovable person, he loved most fondly the delicate little lines that radiated from the corners of her eyes to her temples, the little purple veins that made her eyelids look like violets, the curve of her cheeks, the pointed chin, and all that seemed touched by the finger of Autumn, every shadow that overspread that passionate face.

"Foscarina! Foscarina!"

Whenever he called her by her real name, his heart beat faster, as if something more deeply human had entered into his love, as if suddenly her whole past had seized once more the figure he was pleased to isolate in his dream, and as if innumerable threads formed a bond uniting it more closely than ever to implacable life.

"Come! Let us go!"

She smiled pensively.

"But why? The house is very near. Let us pass it by the Calle Gambara. Do you not wish to know the story of the Countess of Glanegg? Look! One would think it a convent."

The street was deserted as the path leading to a hermitage; it was gray, damp, strewn with dead leaves. The east wind had brought a light, warm mist that softened all sounds.

"Behind those walls, a desolate soul survives the beauty of its body," said La Foscarina softly. "Look! The windows are closed, the blinds are nailed, the doors are sealed. Only one door is still open for the servants, and through it they carry the dead woman her nourishment, though she is walled up as if in an Egyptian tomb. The servants feed a body that no longer has the spirit of life."

The naked trees, which rose to the top of the cloister-like enclosure, looked almost smoky in the mist; the sparrows, more numerous than the leaves, twittered incessantly.

"Guess the Countess's name, Stelio. It is beautiful and rare—as beautiful as if you had originated it."

"I do not know."

"Radiana! The prisoner is called Radiana."

"But whose prisoner is she?"

"The prisoner of Time, Stelio. Time stands on guard at her door, with his scythe and hour-glass, as she is shown in old prints."

"Are you trying to describe an allegory?"

A boy passed, whistling. When he saw the two strangers looking at the closed windows, he stopped to gaze too, his large eyes full of curiosity and astonishment. They were silent. Presently the little boy grew tired of staring; nothing interesting could be seen; the windows were not opened; everything was motionless, so he ran away. They heard the flight of his little bare feet on the wet stones and rotting leaves.

"Well," said Stelio, "and what did Radiana do? You have not yet told me who is this woman, nor the reason why she is a recluse. Tell me her story. I have already been thinking of Soranza Soranzo."

"The Countess Glanegg is one of the greatest ladies of the aristocratic Viennese world, and perhaps the most beautiful I ever have seen. Franz Lenbach has painted her in the armor of the Valkyries, with the four-winged helmet. Have you ever visited his red studio in the Palazzo Borghese?"

"No, never."

"Go there some day, and ask him to show you that portrait. You will see it unchanged, as I see it now through all those walls. She has wished to remain like that in the memory of those that saw her in the splendor of her beauty. One day, when the sun shone too bright, she saw that the time had come for that beauty to fade, and she resolved to take leave of the world in such a way that men should not be witnesses of the decay and destruction of her famous beauty. Perhaps it was her sympathy with things that disintegrate and fall in ruins that has kept her in Venice. She gave a magnificent farewell banquet, where she appeared, still sovereignly beautiful; then she withdrew forever from the world to this house that you see, in this walled garden, where, alone with her servants, she awaits the end. She has become a legendary figure. They say that there are no mirrors in her house, and that she has forgotten her own face. She has forbidden even her most devoted friends and her nearest relatives to visit her. How does she live? What are her thoughts? By what means does she wile away the time of waiting? Is her soul in a state of grace?"

Every pause in that veiled voice questioning the mystery was filled with deepest melancholy.

"Does she pray? Does she contemplate? Does she weep? Or, perhaps, has she become inert, and suffers no more than a withered apple in the back of some old closet."

"What if she should suddenly show herself at that window?" said Stelio, feeling something like a real sensation, as he fancied he heard a creaking hinge.

Both looked closely at the nailed blinds.

"Perhaps she is sitting behind them, looking at us," he added, in a half whisper.

This thought made them both shudder.

They were leaning against a wall facing the house, and did not wish to move a step. The encircling inertia affected them, the smoke-like mist enveloped them more and more thickly; the chatter of the birds lulled their senses as a drug given to feverish patients. The siren whistles pierced the air from afar. The brown leaves dropped from the trees. How long it took for a floating leaf to reach the earth! All around them was mist, heaviness, slow consumption, ashes.