"I must die, my dear—I must die!" said La Foscarina, in a heart-rending voice, after a long silence, raising her face from the cushions where she had buried it, after a stormy scene of passion, in which the ardent words of her beloved had given her as much pain as pleasure.

She looked at Stelio, who had thrown himself, half reclining, on a divan near the balcony, and now lay silent, his eyes half-closed, his disordered hair touched with a ray of gold from the setting sun. She realized that she was possessed by an incurable madness, spreading throughout her declining body. Lost! Lost! She was irrevocably lost!

"Die?" said her beloved, in a dreamy voice, without moving or opening his eyes, as if he were wrapped in a melancholy trance.

"Yes—die—before you hate me!"

Stelio opened his eyes quickly, raised himself erect and held up one hand, as if to prevent her from saying more.

"Ah, why do you torment yourself in this way?" he said.

He saw that she was ivory pale; her hair fell in wandering wavy locks over her cheeks; she seemed consumed by some corrosive poison; her face was full of terror and misery.

"What are you doing with me? What are we both doing?" she exclaimed in anguish.

"I love you!"

"Not as I wish, not as I have dreamed; I do not wish to be loved thus."

"But you set my heart on fire, and then madness seizes me."

"It is like the madness of hatred."

"No, no; do not say that!"

"Your fierceness makes me feel that you hate me—that you even wish to kill me."

"But you make me blind, I tell you, and then I know not what I say or do."

"What is it that maddens you so? What do you see in me?"

"Ah, I know not—I cannot tell!"

"But I know very well what it is!"

"Why do you torment yourself, I say? I love you! This is the love...."

"That condemns me! I must die of it! Call me once more by the name you gave me long ago."

"You are mine! You belong to me, and I will not lose you."

"Yes, you will lose me."

"But why? I do not understand. What wild fancy is this of yours? Does my love offend you? Do you not love me in the same way?"

His irritation and misunderstanding only aggravated her suffering. She covered her face with her hands. Her heart throbbed with hammer-like beating in her rigid breast, seeming to echo in her brain.

Presently she raised her head and looked at him with painful effort.

"I have a heart, Stelio," she said, with trembling lips, as if she were struggling with a sort of fierce timidity in order to force herself to speak those words. "I suffer from a heart, too keenly alive—oh, Stelio, alive and eager and anguished as you never will know...."

She smiled the sweet, faint smile with which she sought to disguise her suffering; hesitated a moment, then reached toward a bunch of violets, which she took and pressed close to her lips. Her eyelids drooped, her classic brow, between her dark hair and the flowers, showed its ivory-like beauty.

"You wound my heart sometimes, Stelio," she said softly, her lips still caressing the violets. "Sometimes you are cruel to it."

It seemed as if those fragrant, humble blossoms helped her to confess her sadness, to veil still more the timid reproach she had made to her beloved. She was silent; Stelio bowed his head. The logs on the hearth crackled; the autumn rain fell monotonously in the fading garden.

"I long for kindness, with a thirst that you never will understand. For that deep, true kindness, dear friend, which does not speak but which comprehends, which knows how to give all in a single look or a single movement; which is strong, sure, always armed against the evil impulse that tempts us. Do you know the sort of kindness I mean?"

Her voice, alternately strong and wavering, was so warm with inner light, was so full of revelation of a soul, that it passed through the young man's blood more like a spiritual essence than a sound.

"In you, yes, Foscarina, I know it."

He took in his own hands the slender hands that lay filled with violets on her lap; he bowed his head low over them and kissed them submissively. Then he knelt at her feet, in the same submission. The delicate perfume seemed to arouse his tenderness. During the long pause the fire and the rain continued their murmured speech.

Suddenly she asked in a clear voice:

"Do you think that I believe myself sure of you?"

"Have you not watched over my slumbers?" he replied, but in an altered tone, for he was suddenly seized by a new emotion: with her query he had seen rise before him her naked soul; and he felt that that soul had penetrated his own, and recognized his secret yearning for the belief and confidence of others in himself.

"Yes, but what does that prove?" was her reply. "Youth sleeps quietly on any pillow. You are young"—

"I love you and I have faith in you! I give myself entirely to you. You are my life's companion, and your hand is strong."

He saw the well known sadness in the lines of that loved face, and his voice trembled with tenderness.

"Kindness!" said she, caressing with light touch the hair on his temples. "You know how to be kind—you even feel a need to comfort at times. But a fault has been committed, and it calls for expiation. Once it seemed to me that for you I could do the humblest as well as the highest things; but now I feel that I can do only one thing—to go away, disappear, and leave you free with your destiny."

He interrupted her by springing to his feet and taking the loved face between his hands.

"I can do this, which love alone could not do," she said softly, turning pale, and looking at him with an expression he never had seen before.

Stelio felt that he held her soul in his hands—a living spring, infinitely beautiful and precious.

"Foscarina, Foscarina! my soul, my life! Yes, you can give me more than love—I know it well, and nothing is worth to me that which you give me; no other offer could console me for not having you beside me on my way. Believe me, believe! I have said this to you so often—don't you remember?—even before you became all my own, when the compact still held between us"—

Still holding her face between his palms, he leaned over and kissed her passionately on her lips.

This time she shivered; the glacial flood she felt at times seemed passing over her.

"No! no!" she pleaded, turning away from the young man. Dreamily she bent to gather up the scattered violets.

"The compact!" she said, after an interval of silence. "Why have we violated it?"

Stelio's eyes were fixed on the changeful splendor of the fire on the hearth, but in his open hands lingered the strange sensation, the trace of a miracle—that human face over which, through its sad pallor, had passed a wave of sublime beauty.

"Why?" the woman repeated sadly. "Ah, confess—confess that you, too, before we were seized with the blind madness of that night, felt that the higher life was about to be devastated and lost; that we must not yield if we wished to save the good that remained in us—that powerful, intoxicating thing which seemed to be the only treasure left in my life. Confess, Stelio! speak the truth! I can almost name the exact moment when the better voice spoke to you in warning. Was it not on the water, on the way home, when we had with us—Donatella?"

Before pronouncing that name she had hesitated a second, then she felt an almost physical bitterness—a bitterness that descended from her lips to the depths of her soul, as if the syllables held poison for her. She awaited his reply with suffering. "I do not know how to think about the past, Fosca," the young man replied; "moreover, I do not wish to think about it. I have lost no good attribute that belonged to me. It pleases me that your soul springs to your ripe lips, heavy with sweetness, and that your fair cheek pales when I embrace you."

"Hush, hush!" she begged. "Do not speak like that! Do not prevent me from saying what it is that troubles me! Why do you not help me?"

She shrank back among the cushions, and looked fixedly at the fire, to avoid meeting the eyes of her beloved.

"More than once I have seen a look in your eyes that has filled me with horror," she said at last, with a touch of hoarseness in her effort to speak.

Stelio started, but dared not contradict her.

"Yes, with horror," she repeated, in a clearer tone, implacable against herself, having already triumphed over her fear and regained her courage.

Both were now face to face with the truth.

She continued without faltering.

"The first time I saw it was out there in the garden—that night—you know! I understood then what it was you saw in me; all the mire over which I have walked, all the infamy that clung to my feet, all the impurity for which I have so much disgust! Ah, you could not have acknowledged the visions that kindled your thoughts that night! Your eyes were cruel and your mouth was convulsed. When you felt that you wounded my sensitiveness, you took pity on me. But then—but since then"—

Her face was covered with blushes; her voice had grown impetuous, and her eyes were brilliant.

"To have nourished for years, with all the best that was in me, a sentiment of devotion and unbounded admiration, near you or from afar, in joy and in sadness; to have accepted in the purest spirit all the consolation offered by you to mankind through your poetry, and to have awaited eagerly other gifts, even higher and more consoling; to have believed in the great force of your genius since its dawn, and never to have relaxed my watch over your ascent, and to have accompanied it with a wish that has been my morning and evening prayer all these years; to have continued, with silent fervor, the effort to give some beauty and harmony to my own spirit, that it might be more worthy to approach yours; so many times, on the stage, before an ardent audience, to have pronounced with a thrill some immortal phrase, thinking of those which perhaps one day you would communicate to mankind through my lips; to have worked without respite, to have tried always to rise to a higher and simpler form in my art, to have aspired unceasingly to perfection, fearing that nothing less would please you, that otherwise I should seem inferior to your dream; to have loved my fleeting glory only because some day it might serve yours; to have hastened, with the fervent confidence of faith, the latest of your revelations, that I might offer myself to you as the instrument of your victory before my own decay; against all and everything, to have defended this secret ideal in my soul, against all and against myself as much as against others; to have made of you my melancholy, my steadfast hope, my heroic test, the symbol of all things good, strong, and free—ah, Stelio! Stelio!"—

She paused an instant, overcome by that memory as by a new shame.

"And then to have reached that dawn—to have seen you leaving my house in that way on that horrible morning—Do you remember?"

"I was happy—happy!" cried the young man, in a stifled voice, pale and agitated.

"No, no! Do you remember? You left me as you would have left some light love, some passing fancy, after a few hours of idle pastime."

"You deceive yourself!"

"Confess! Come, speak the truth. Only through truth can we now hope to save ourselves."

"I was happy, I tell you; my whole heart expanded with joy; I dreamed, I hoped, I felt as if I were born anew."

"Yes, yes!—happy to breathe freely, to feel your youth in the breeze and the fresh air. What did you see in her who in her renunciation had so many times suffered keenly—yes, you know it well!—rather than break the vow that she had taken and borne with her in her wanderings over the earth? Tell me! what did you see in me, if you did not believe me a corrupt creature, the heroine of chance amours, the vagabond actress who in her own life, as on the stage, may belong to any man and every man?"

"Foscarina! Foscarina!"

Stelio leaned over her and closed her lips with a trembling hand.

"No, no, do not say that! You are mad! Hush! hush!"

"It is horrible!" murmured the woman, sinking back on the cushions, unnerved by her agitation, submerged in the bitter wave that had flooded her heart.

But her eyes remained wide open, fixed as two crystal orbs, hard as if they had no lashes, fastened on Stelio. They prevented him from speaking, from denying or softening the truth they had discovered. In a moment or two he found that gaze intolerable, and gently pressed the lids down with the tips of his fingers, as one closes the eyes of the dead. She noted the movement, which was full of infinite melancholy; she felt that only tender love and pity were in that touch. Her bitterness passed away, her eyes grew moist. She extended her arms, clasped them around his neck, and raised herself a little. She seemed to be shutting her soul within herself, and became once more gentle and weak, full of silent pleading.

"And so I must go," she sighed at last. "Is there no help for it? Is there no pardon?"

"I love you!" her lover repeated.

She disengaged one arm, and held her open hand toward the fire, as if to conjure fate. Then once more she clasped her lover in a close embrace.

"Yes, still a little while! Let me remain with you a little longer. Then I will go away; I will go somewhere, far-away, and die on a stone under a tree. But let me stay with you a little longer."

"I love you!"

The blind and indomitable forces of life were whirling over them in that embrace. And because they realized this with terror their clasp grew closer; and from that embrace sprang an impulse, both good and evil, that stirred them to the soul. In the silent room, the voices of the elements spoke their obscure language, which was like an uncomprehended reply to their mute questioning. The fire, near them, and the rain, from without, discoursed, replied, narrated. Little by little, these voices reached the spirit of the Animator, enticed it, charmed it, drew it into the world of innumerable myths, born of their eternity. His keener spiritual senses heard the deep resonance of the two melodies expressing the intimate essence of the two elementary wills—the two marvelous melodies that he had found, to weave them into the symphonic web of the new tragedy. Of a sudden, all sadness and anxiety left him as in a happy truce, an interval of enchantment. And the woman's clasp relaxed, as if in obedience to some command of liberation.

"There is no help for it!" she repeated to herself, seeming to repeat a formula of condemnation heard by her in the same mysterious way that Stelio had heard the wonderful melodies.

She leaned forward, resting her chin in her hand and her elbow on her knee; and in this attitude she gazed a long time into the fire, with a slight frown on her brow.

As Stelio looked at her, his soul was troubled. He yearned to find some way of breaking the iron band that oppressed her, of dissipating that mist of sadness, of leading his beloved back to joy.

The fire in its sudden burst of flame illumined her face and hair; her forehead was as beautiful as a noble manly brow; something natural and untamed was suggested in the rippling waves and changeful hue of her thick hair.

"What are you looking at so intently?" she said at last, feeling his fixed gaze. "Have you found a gray hair?"

He knelt before his love again, flexible and tender.

"I see only your beauty. In you I always find something that delights me. I was looking then at the strange wave of your hair here—a wave not made by the comb, but by the storm!"

He slipped his fingers through the thick tresses. She closed her eyes, feeling again the spell of his terrible power over her.

"I see only your beauty. When you close your eyes thus, I feel that you are mine to the depth of your heart—lost in me, as the soul is one with the body: a single life, mine and thine."

She listened in the half light, and his voice seemed to come from a long distance, and to be speaking not to her but to another woman; she felt as if she were overhearing a lover's protestations to his mistress, and suddenly fancied herself mad with jealousy, possessed by a desire to kill, filled with a spirit of revenge; but that body must remain motionless, her hands hanging at her sides, nerveless and powerless.

"You are my delight and my inspiration. You have a stimulating power of which you are unconscious. Your simplest act suffices to reveal to me some truth of which I was ignorant. And love is like the intellect: it shines in the measure of the truth it discovers. Why, why do you grieve yourself? Nothing is destroyed, nothing is lost. It was intended that we should be united, so that together we might rise to joy and triumph. It was necessary that I should be free and happy in your true and perfect love in order to create the work of beauty that so many men expect of me. I need your faith; I need to pass through joy and to create. Your presence alone suffices to inspire my mind with incalculable fruitfulness. Just now, when your arms held me close, I heard a sudden torrent of music, a flood of melody, passing through the silence."

To whom was he speaking? Whom did he ask for joy? Was not his imperious demand for music a yearning toward her that sang, transfiguring the universe with her song? Of whom, if not of fresh youth and maidenhood, could he ask joy and creation? While she had held him in her embrace, it was the other woman who had sung and spoken within him! And now, now—to whom was he speaking, if not to that other woman? She alone could give him what was necessary for his art and his life. The maiden was a new force, a closed beauty, an unused weapon, keen and magnificent for the intoxication of war. Malediction! Malediction!

Mingled sorrow and anger stirred her heart, in that vibrating darkness which she dared not leave. She suffered the torments of a nightmare; as if she were rolling toward a precipice with the indestructible burden of her vanished years—years of misery and of triumph—her fading face with its thousand masks, her despairing soul, and the thousand other souls that had inhabited her mortal body. This grand passion of her life, which was to have saved her, seemed now to be pushing her relentlessly toward ruin and death. In order to reach her, and through her to attain to his highest joy, the passion of her beloved was compelled to make its way through what he believed to be a multitude of unknown loves; it would contaminate, corrupt and embitter itself, perhaps even change by slow degrees to disgust. Always that shadowy multitude must keep alive in him that instinct of brutal ferocity which lurked in his strong nature. Ah, what had she done? She herself had armed a furious devastator, and had put him between her friend and herself. No escape was possible. She herself, on that night of the flame, had led before him the fresh and beautiful prey, of whom he had taken possession by one of those looks that are a choice and a promise. To whom was he speaking now, if not to that other woman. Of whom did he ask joy?

"Do not be sad! do not be sad!"

But now she heard his words only confusedly, more faint than before, as if her soul had sunk into a chasm; but she felt his impatient hands as they touched her caressingly. And, in that red darkness, wherein, as it seemed to her, all madnesses and folly were born, she felt a surging revolt in her veins.

"Do you wish me to take you to her? Do you wish me to call her to you?" cried the unhappy woman, suddenly opening her eyes with an expression that astonished Stelio; she seized his wrists and shook him with a grasp so tight that he felt her nails in his flesh. "Go! go! She awaits you! Why do you remain here? Go, run! She awaits you!"

She sprang up, raising him at the same time, and tried to push him toward the door. She was no longer recognizable, transfigured by fury into a dangerous, threatening creature. The strength of her hands was incredible, like the energy of evil intent in her whole being.

"Who awaits me? What did you say? What is the matter with you? Come back to your senses, Foscarina!"

He stammered his appeal, he trembled, fancying he saw madness in that distorted face. But she was like one distraught and heard him not.

"Foscarina!" He called her with all his soul, white with terror, as if to stop with his cry her escaping reason.

She gave a great start, opened her hands, and gazed around as if just roused from a long sleep, of which she remembered nothing.

"Come, sit down."

He led her back to the cushions, and gently made her settle herself among them. She allowed herself to be soothed by his solicitous tenderness. Presently she moaned:

"Who has beaten me?"

She felt of her bruised arms, and touched her face lightly, trembling as if she were cold.

"Come; lie down! Put your head here."

He made her lie on the couch; disposed her head comfortably, put a light cushion over her feet, softly and carefully, leaning over her as over a dear invalid, giving up to her all his heart still throbbing with fear.

"Yes, yes," she repeated, in a voice no louder than a sigh, at each movement he made, as if she would prolong the sweetness of these cares.

"Are you cold?"

"Yes."

"Shall I cover you with something?" Stelio inquired.

"Yes."

He sought for some wrap, and found on a table a piece of antique velvet, which he spread over her. She smiled faintly.

"Are you comfortable like that?"

She made an affirmative sign by simply closing her eyelids.

Stelio gathered up the violets, now warm and languid, and laid them on the pillow near her head.

"So?"

Her eyelids drooped even more slightly than before. He kissed her forehead, amid the perfume of the violets; then he turned to stir the fire, putting on more wood and raising a fine blaze.

"Do you feel the heat? Are you getting warm?" he asked softly.

He approached and bent over the poor soul. She slept; the contraction of her face had relaxed, and the lines of her mouth were composed in the equal rhythm of sleep; a calm like that of death spread over her pale face. "Sleep! Sleep!" He was so moved by love and pity that he would have liked to transfuse into that slumber an infinite virtue of consolation and forgetfulness.

He remained standing on the rug, watching her, counting her respirations. Those lips had said: "I can do one thing that love alone cannot do." Those lips had said: "Do you wish me to take you to her? Do you wish me to call her to you?" He neither judged nor resolved, but let his thoughts scatter. Once again he felt the blind, indomitable forces of life whirling over his head, over that sleeping form, and also his terrible desire to cling to life. "The bow is named BIOS, and its work is death."

In the silence, the fire and the rain continued to talk. The voice of the elements, the woman sleeping in her sadness, the imminence of fate, the immensity of the future, remembrance and presentiment, all these things created in his mind a state of musical mystery wherein the yet unwritten work surged anew and illumined his thought. He listened to his melodies developing themselves indefinitely, and heard a personage in the drama say: "This alone quenches our thirst, and all the thirst in us turns eagerly toward this freshness. If it did not exist, none could live here; we should all die of thirst." He saw a country furrowed by the dry, white bed of an ancient river, dotted with bonfires which lighted up the extraordinarily calm, pure evening. He saw a funereal gleam of gold, a tomb filled with corpses all covered with gold, and the crowned corpse of Cassandra among the sepulchral urns. A voice said: "How soft her ashes are! They run between the fingers like the sands of the sea." Another voice said: "She speaks of a shadow that passes over things, and of a damp sponge that effaces all traces." Then night fell; stars sparkled, the myrtles breathed perfume, and a voice said: "Ah! Behold the statue of Niobe! Before dying, Antigone sees a stone statue whence gushes an eternal fountain of tears." The error of the age had passed away; the remoteness of centuries was abolished.