Donna Maria Guasco Simonetti, gracefully stretched on the sofa and immersed in the many soft cushions of all kinds of fabrics and colours, was reading alone. A steady light, opalised by the clear transparent silk of a large shade, was diffused from the tall pedestal at her side, on which was placed a quaint lamp of chased silver, so that the reader’s head, with her thick mass of chestnut hair, attired almost in harmony with its natural lines in broad waves and rich braids, received exactly the clearness of the light.

The pale face, slightly rosy beneath the fineness of its complexion, the large eyes bent over the reading, the little composed mouth, without smile but without bitterness, were delicately illuminated. The soft, opaque silk, of a sheenless silver, of her dress of exquisite style, blended itself with the colour of the cushions, while the soft fleecy lace which adorned the dress seemed a sort of superfluity of the large sofa. Amidst stuff and lace the feet peeped out in shoes of gold cloth, slightly peculiar and bright, the caprice of a lady in her own home.

She was reading alone, and the slow rustling of the pages, which she turned with a gentle movement, alone broke the silence of the room.

The tiny clock on a small table at her side tinkled clearly, striking half-past nine. Donna Maria started slightly, gave a rapid glance at the clock, and, from a long habit of solitude, said to herself almost aloud—

“Always later, always a little later.”

Suppressing a sigh of impatience, and shrugging her beautiful shoulders, she resumed her reading. Her fine sense of hearing told her that outside in the hall the lock of the front door was rattling, and a slight blush rose to her cheeks and forehead.

A servant knocked at the door, entered without waiting for a reply, and silently offered the evening papers on a tray. She took them and placed them on the small table, scarcely bestowing a glance on him as he withdrew discreetly. Then, all of a sudden, a kind of spasm of grief, of anger and of annoyance, contracted her pure countenance, and with a half-angry, and yet suppressed cry, she exclaimed—

“How annoying! How annoying!”

The book fell down. Donna Maria arose, exposing her tall, lithe figure, full of noble grace. The harmony of a body not slender but comfortably covered, added to the pleasing maturity of thirty years, undulated in the silk dress with a slight rustling as she went to the balcony, and lifting the heavy lace curtains looked through the clear glass into the street.

The majestic piazza of Santa Maria Maggiore stretched before her eyes as far as the steps of the great basilica with its lofty closed doors, while the vastness of the piazza and the architectural grandeur of the temple were bathed on that June night by the soft brightness of the moon. The passers-by were few and scattered, little black shadows cast on the roads and footpaths of the square. Then an electric tram, coming from the via Cavour, crossed the square, desecrating for a moment the Roman scene, where faith and the Church had placed one of their most enduring and ancient manifestations, and suddenly disappeared into the other artery of the via Cavour.

The woman gazed at that almost deserted space, at the immense solitary church, rendered cold by the light of the moon, and the solitude of her desolate spirit and desolate heart became more profound and intense.

“Maria,” said a voice at her shoulder.

She turned suddenly. The young man who had called her took her two hands and kissed them one after the other with tender gallantry, and while she bent her head with a smile he kissed her eyes with a soft caress.

“It is a little late,” he said, excusing himself.

“It wants a quarter of an hour to ten,” replied Maria precisely. He looked at his watch and added—

“Perhaps your watch is fast?”

“Perhaps,” she replied, as if to break off the discussion.

She sat down, and the young man, taking a low chair, his usual seat, placed himself beside her. Taking her hand loosely he began to play a little with her fingers, toying distractedly with the rings with which they were loaded.

“ ...m’aimes?” said Maria, in an almost childish French fashion, but in a voice without tone or colour.

“ ...t’aime,” he replied childishly, and rather perfunctorily. Having, as it were, accomplished a small preliminary duty of conversation they were silent.

She looked at him, and noticed that he was in evening dress, and in his buttonhole were some carnations which she had given him in the morning. Marco Fiore’s slightly delicate appearance was aided by these garments of society. His person gained freedom from a certain thinness more apparent than real. His face was a little too pallid, with deep-black hair and moustaches; the lips were fresh and strong. The eyes, which were extremely soft, with a fascinating softness, had every now and then something feminine in them. But there was nothing feminine in the gleams of passion which kept crossing them in waves, nor was there anything feminine in the generality of the lines, where firmness and even obstinacy were prominent. Two or three times, to break the silence, he kissed her slender fingers.

“Are you going out, Marco?” she asked in that decided voice of hers, which required a precise and direct reply.

“Yes, for a moment or two.... I am obliged to,” Marco insinuated.

“Where?”

“To the English Embassy, Maria.”

“Is there a reception?”

“Yes, the last of the season,” he explained, as if to clear up his obligation for going.

Again there was a silence. Maria sat with her two jewelled hands clasped over her knees among the silken folds of opaque silver, as if in a dream.

“Once upon a time I was a great friend of Lady Clairville.”

“And now?” Marco asked absent-mindedly.

Suddenly he repented of the remark. Maria’s large eyes, proud and ardent, were veiled in tears.

“Now no longer,” she said, still as if in a dream.

“It is you who avoid her,” he said, trying to repair the mischief.

“It is I, yes,” she said, awakening suddenly, in a clear voice. “I did not wish her to cut me. The English are faithful, I know. But still she is an ambassadress and sees lots of people, even bad people.”

He shook his head melancholily, as if he thought, “What is to be done? These are fatal matters to discuss.”

“And you, Marco, why are you going?” Maria questioned, with an increase of hardness.

“My mother is going there, so——”

“But she has your sister-in-law for company?”

“Yes, Beatrice is accompanying her; but both have no escort.”

“Is your brother Giulio away?”

“Yes, he is at Spello.”

They remained silent for a while.

“I am sure,” resumed Maria, “you will meet some one at the English Embassy.”

“Whoever, Maria?”

“Vittoria Casalta, your former fiancÉe, the sister of your sister-in-law,” and an accent more ironical than disdainful pointed the sentence.

“No, Maria,” he said, at once becoming serious.

“What is this ‘No,’ Marco?” and she smiled more sarcastically; “what are you denying?”

“That Vittoria Casalta is going to the English Embassy, Maria.”

“Ah, you know that she is not going there!” and she laughed bitterly.

“Don’t torment yourself, don’t torment me, dear soul!” he said softly, tenderly drawing her to himself with his conquering sweetness and gentle grace.

Donna Maria let herself be drawn to him, no longer smiling, as if expecting some word or action. But neither action nor word came. After the tender admonition, as usual, a certain dryness rendered them dumb and motionless.

She, as usual, was the first to interrupt this state of mind.

“And then, Marco, how do you know that the fair Vittoria is not going to Lady Clairville’s?”

“Because she no longer goes into society, Maria.”

“Has she taken the veil?” she exclaimed, with a sarcastic smile.

“Almost. For that matter she never has loved the world.”

“Perhaps she flies from you, Marco?”

“Yes, I believe she flies from me.”

“I tell you Vittoria Casalta still loves you,” Maria murmured slowly as if she were speaking to herself, as if she were repeating to herself a thing said many times.

“No,” said Marco vivaciously.

“She still loves you,” the woman repeated authoritatively, almost imperiously.

“There is only one woman who loves me, and she is you, Maria—you,” he replied, as if to finish the discussion.

She listened attentively from the very first words of the sentence, attentively as if to find in them a trace or a recollection of past things, but she did not hear there quite what she wished. The words were the same, but the voice was no longer the same which pronounced them, and no longer the same, perhaps, was the man who said them. A sense of delusion for an instant, only for an instant, was depicted on her face; an expression, however, which he did not notice.

“I have never understood, Marco,” she resumed in a grave voice, “if you loved this Vittoria Casalta seriously.”

“What does it matter now?” he exclaimed, a little vexed.

“No, it doesn’t matter, it is true. Still, I should have liked to have heard it from you.”

“How many times have you asked this, Maria?” he said, between reproof and increasing vexation.

“Also you have asked me pretty often, Marco, if I ever loved my husband,” she retorted disdainfully.

At such a reminder the countenance of Marco Fiore became convulsed. Every slightly feminine trace disappeared from his rather pale and delicate face, and the firm and obstinate lines of his profile and chin became more accentuated, manly and rough. His lips trembled as he spoke.

“Why do you name your husband? Why do you name him, Maria?”

“Because he is not dead, Marco; because he exists, because he lives,” she proclaimed imperiously, her large eyes flashing.

“I hate him. Don’t speak to me of him!” he exclaimed with agitation, rising and kicking the chair aside to walk about.

“But why do you hate him? Why? Tell me, tell me.”

“Because he is the only man of whom I can be, of whom I ought to be, jealous, Maria,” he exclaimed, beside himself with exasperation. Then Maria smiled joyfully, a smile which he did not observe.

“I renounced him, his name and his fortune for you,” she replied simply.

“Do you regret it?” he asked, still hot with anger, but somewhat distractedly.

“I do not regret it,” she replied, after an imperceptible moment of hesitation.

“But, Maria, I am sure he regrets you very much.”

“No.”

“I am as certain as if he had told me, and I am certain he will get you back, Maria.”

“No.”

“Yes, he will get you back.”

“Covering himself with shame?”

“Yes, because he loves you.”

“Covering himself with ridicule.”

“He loves you, he loves you.”

“Knowing that I do not love him.”

“What does that matter? He will take you back to try to make you love him.”

“This is madness.”

“All those who love are mad,” murmured Marco Fiore very sadly.

Stupefied and suffering, she looked at him. Each looked at the other as if to recognise themselves. They were the same who, strangely, every day and every evening, scarcely found themselves together without, after a few minutes, involuntarily irritating with curious and cruel fingers the old wounds which seemed to be healing, which their restless and disturbed minds caused to bleed again.

Here she was, Donna Maria Guasco Simonetti, graceful and exquisite, she who had been the object of a thousand desires, repulsed by her serene austerity and boundless pride, who had suddenly loved Marco Fiore madly and faithfully for three years. Here she was in that house where she had come to live alone, after abandoning the conjugal abode for three years, to live apart in a strange, constant and ardent love, forgetful of every other thing. Here she was, ever more graceful in the plenitude of her womanly grace, in the atmosphere of exclusive luxury with which she was surrounded, and in garments which reflected her fascination.

And the man, Marco Fiore, young, trembling with life, who had come there that evening, an impassioned lover who had not tolerated sharing the woman of his love with the husband, he had not fallen at her feet, infatuated as usual by his mortal infatuation; he had not taken her to his arms to press her to himself, to kiss her as his own.

Instead they had given themselves, as for some time, to a sad duel of words, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes angry, evoking the absent figures of the two betrayed, of Vittoria Casalta, Marco’s betrothed, of Emilio Guasco, the husband of Donna Maria.

Both tried to subdue themselves. She crossed the quiet room, and adjusted some knick-knacks on the pianoforte, which was covered with a peculiar flowered fabric, her profile was bent slightly in a pleasing way beneath the dense shadow of her magnificent hair.

Marco opened a cigarette case, and asked, with a voice already become expressionless—

“May I smoke?”

“Do smoke.”

“Would you like a cigarette?”

“No, Marco.”

She returned to the sofa, throwing herself down gently, and drawing under her head a cushion to support her mass of hair. So they remained for a while, he smoking his cigarette slowly, and she looking at a distant part of the room, her hands stretched along her body.

“Have you found some place for us, Marco, for August?”

“I am very uncertain,” he murmured. “In whatever holiday place one goes, however far away, one meets people.”

“Far too many,” she added.

“You don’t wish to meet any one?”

“That is so; I should like not to.”

“It is impossible, Maria.”

“People always make me suffer so.”

“Why, dear?”

“I don’t know.”

After an instant he resumed quietly—

“Let us remain in Rome.”

She trembled, and raised her eyebrows slightly.

“In Rome? In Rome in August?”

“If we can’t go anywhere else,” he added, without noticing Maria’s surprise.

“You renounce the holiday and travelling which we have had every year, Marco! Do you renounce them willingly?”

“Willingly,” he replied, with complete resignation.

Why did he not look her in the face? He would have seen the lines discompose under the wave of bitterness which invaded them, and then suddenly with heroic force recompose themselves. Instead, he only heard a proud, cold voice which accepted the renunciation.

“Let us remain in Rome.”

The hard, sharp compact which annulled one of their best dreams, and destroyed one of their intensest joys, was subscribed without any further observation.

He resumed with a little difficulty.

“Later on, in September, mamma wants me.”

“Where, then?”

“At Spello, you know, at our place, where she passes the autumn.”

“I know. You have gone there every year for some days; last year for ten days.”

“This year I ought to stay some days longer.”

“How many days longer?”

“Two weeks, perhaps two or three.”

As usual, on words which he feared would displease her Marco placed a courteous hesitation. He was never precise. He sought always to render the conversation more vague with a sweet smile.

Maria did not fall into the deception, and replied clearly—

“But three weeks are not the same as two, Marco.”

“They are not the same, it is true. I will try to shorten them.”

“Why remain so long?”

“My mother requires assistance this year; my brother Giulio is unable to give her any. I don’t like to say it, but my mother is getting older. The business of the house is heavy: there are so many things to regulate and decide. In fact, I neglect my mother a little.”

“Stop three weeks then,” she said, lowering her eyelids to hide the flash of her proud eyes.

“And you? What will you do in September in Rome alone?”

“I shall do what I can,” she said, throwing her head back among the cushions.

“Poor Maria,” he said slowly.

There was so much lack of comfort in those two words, so much empty sorrow; in fact, a pity so sterile, that she broke in—

“Don’t pity me, Marco; I don’t like you to pity me.”

“Does everything offend you, then, Maria?” he exclaimed, surprised.

“Pity above everything offends me—every one’s pity; but your pity offers me an atrocious offence.”

“You are very proud, Maria.”

“Very, Marco.”

“Will nothing ever conquer this fatal pride of yours?”

“Nothing, no one. No one except myself, and not even I myself.”

“Pride causes weeping, Maria.”

“It is true; but very seldom have human eyes seen my tears,” she said conclusively.

He felt that evening, as on so many others, that never more would they find, if not the flame of passion, even the penetrating sweetness of loving companionship. The beautiful and beloved woman was near him. They were together, alone and free, alone and masters of every movement of the mind and action of the body; but some mysterious obstacle had been interposed between them, whence all beauty, love, liberty and consent were in vain.

Maria had before her the man she loved, with all his attractive appearance, with all the charms of youth and health, with all his seductiveness of mind, and this man was there in the name of an invincible transport, and ought to be and could be hers in every hour of her life. Yet nothing came of it, just as if a wanton, and deliberately wanton, hand were destroying this flower and fruit of love.

Of the two, Marco Fiore seemed to be yielding feebly to this obstacle which was intruding itself between them: he was passive, a little morbid, and easily resigned. Maria Guasco, however, proud and combative, was fighting and endeavouring to conquer the infamous hand which was plucking in the dark all the roses of their passion. She, on the other hand, allowed herself to be conquered only at the last.

“Why don’t you go now?” she said anxiously.

“Do you believe I ought to?”

“Yes, it is nearly eleven. If you want to return here afterwards,” she added, “you will make me wait up rather too long.”

He raised his eyebrows as if he experienced some difficulty in breathing or speaking.

“Well ... afterwards I should like to return home with Beatrice and mamma.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed at this blow, without further observation.

They became silent. He bent his head with that aspect of accustoming himself to a thing which had to occur, which had been usual with him for some time. She, instead, raised hers with that ever renascent pride which scorched her soul, and at last succeeded in smiling.

“But what will you do afterwards at home, Marco?”

“I shall go to bed. I am a little tired.”

“Tired of what?”

“Why, I don’t know. I have a curious physical weariness.”

“You should let a doctor examine you.”

“Do you think so? Rest heals everything.”

“It is true. Do you remember the time when you were unable to go to sleep without having written me a letter?”

“Yes, I remember,” he said surprised; “but when was that?”

“It was before—before we lived together,” she replied, with a slight trembling of the lips.

“Some time ago,” he said simply, without meaning it.

He got up to go. He took her two hands in his and pressed them with an infantile caress over his face, minutely kissing their soft and fragrant palms, and, as she lowered her head, instead of kissing her eyes as when he came in, his kisses were immersed in the dark and odorous waves of her hair.

“To-morrow, then, Marco,” she whispered, raising her head.

“To-morrow certainly, Maria,” he replied.

She accompanied him for two or three steps, almost to the door. Then she stopped for still a look or a word.

“Toujours?” she asked.

“Toujours,” he replied.

Their voices were monotonous and colourless, and their faces inexpressive as they pronounced the usual words of farewell, now three years old.

II

All was quiet in Rome when Marco Fiore returned home to the ancient Palazzo Fiore in the via Bocca di Leone. His mother and sister-in-law had returned from the reception at the English Embassy before him. Donna Arduina Fiore and Donna Beatrice Fiore had, in fact, left without looking for him, supposing that he had returned to the lonely lady in the silent little villa at Santa Maria Maggiore. Instead, he had allowed himself to wander here and there among the well-dressed crowd in the smaller reception-rooms to converse haphazardly with friends, married women and girls, conversations which, with a smile and a laugh, nearly always bore an allusion to his condition as a man chained firmly and for ever, as a man exiled voluntarily from society, and deprived of all intercourse with light loves and flirtations.

At a direct allusion to Maria Guasco, the woman who had behaved with such marvellous audacity in a hypocritical society, he lowered his eyes with a slight smile and did not reply. If the allusion was too unkind to the absent one, to her who had thrown everything on the pyre to be able to love him in liberty and beauty, his face became serious. Anyhow, the conversation languished after such an insinuation or was broken off, and suddenly he felt himself estranged and far away from that society, which nevertheless was his own, from the people who belonged to his set and perhaps to his race. To have lived three years apart from them was sufficient to break the tie.

But that evening amidst such profound elegance, among the most beautiful Roman and foreign women and the most celebrated men, it seemed to him as if like had found like, and that the other Marco Fiore, he of three years ago, was living again. When two or three times his friends had smiled intentionally at his secret marriage, as they called it, a feeling of annoyance and oppression had tormented him. A moral and perhaps physical agitation kept showing him the silent room at Santa Maria Maggiore where the solitary woman was waiting for him, and he no longer saw Maria Guasco in her proud and passionate beauty, refulgent with a powerful and charming love, but in her imperious aspect and indomitable pride, as a soul which had given up everything for ever and which wished for everything. The weight of his amorous chain crushed his heart, as he left the imposing rooms of the English Embassy.

However, when he found himself in his own room, in Palazzo Fiore, one of those old rooms with lofty ceilings and furniture exclusively old; when among the shadows and bizarre half-shadows he looked distractedly at the four or five portraits of Maria Guasco, which were mixed among the beautiful and costly ornaments adorning the table and bookshelves; when he had noticed one of her by his pillow, dressed simply in a travelling costume with a little hat on the abundance of flowing hair, a portrait in which she seemed to walk absorbed and ecstatic towards an ideal aim—in truth that aim had been love, and the portrait had been taken on their first journey, in fact during their flight—Marco Fiore trembled as if under a severe shock, and his heart melted towards her.

Her image, not from scattered portraits, but from the depth of his soul where it was impressed, rose to his eyes with all the allurements of love, and it seemed to him confused in a mortal, incurable sadness. Tears were rising in the eyes of the ardent, sorrowing image, consumed by its secret flame, tears which he had so seldom seen in reality. The fascination of a vision more subjugating than any form of tangible life! Marco Fiore’s heart began to melt, seeing Maria weeping in his dream, and an immense regret and remorse overpowered him, because by every movement and deed of his he had caused her sadness that evening, because he had not spoken a single word of love to her, because he had not yielded to her timid and impassioned invitation to return to her after midnight, as he had always done in the past; because she was there in her room alone with the sorrow of her abandonment and desertion. For a short time Marco had no peace thinking of his involuntary coldness and cruelty, and he experienced an irresistible desire to go out, to go to Maria, to throw himself at her feet.

“I will go,” he said to himself, starting up.

But he did not pass the threshold of his room. The flow of bitterness and repentance ceased and composed itself slowly at the bottom of his heart, which became all at once mysteriously calm. He meditated on his sudden appearance at Maria’s house when she was no longer expecting him, when perhaps she was asleep. Perhaps Maria on that evening had not even wept as his vision had showed him, or perhaps her tears had been dried by her pride. How cold and sharp she had been with him! With what delight she had tortured him, and afterwards had aroused, cleverly and cruelly, his jealousy! With what calmness and iciness she had accepted all he had scarcely dared to tell her for fear of crucifying her: the August without travelling or holiday-making, and the September separated and far away! How in her pride she had spurned his tender pity!

Marco Fiore did not leave his room. His good impulse had fallen, his remorse had dissolved, and his dream of amorous consolation and human compassion had vanished. A great aridness spread itself over him. He was without desires, without hope or plans. Maria’s portraits around him spoke no more to him, and before closing his eyes in sleep he looked at them as strange and unknown figures, as figures indifferent to him.

* * * * * * * *

A long absorption of thoughts held the woman who was left alone stretched among the cushions.

Twice her little clock struck the hour, but she did not heed it. The book had fallen on the ground and had not been picked up, the little chair where Marco had sat had not been moved from beside her, and in the air the subtle smell of cigarettes remained, while on the ash-tray on the little table there were some ashes. Amidst so much testimony of a vanished hour, which had spoken its word of truth, she immersed herself in the hidden passion of her tumultuous and ecstatic soul. Only the light step of her maid roused her, a pale and sleepy young woman, who was trying to keep her eyes open and conceal her weariness.

“Am I to wait for the master?” she asked in a subdued voice, as if fearing to wake her mistress.

“No, go to bed,” replied Donna Maria precisely.

“If Your Excellency is going to wait, I will wait too.”

“No, the master will not return.”

“Ah,” said the other, lowering her eyes, and after saying good-night she left.

At last Donna Maria arose and rapidly passed into the salotto, another room where she had placed her books, pictures, and writing-table, and where she used to pass the morning when she did not go out, and quickly entered the bedroom. A night-light was burning there subduedly, and a fresh fragrance impregnated the air. Everything was there in the familiar and caressing half-light. Like a shadow Donna Maria walked up and down her room, without stopping or touching anything, as if she were looking for something and really did not care to look for it.

She trembled, and sometimes stopped as if at the noise of steps.

With its counterpane of old flowered brocade, fringed with gold lace and turned down, the bed was made and glistened whitely with its sheets and lace.

All at once she discovered what she wanted. Her expert hands opened the drawer of a little inlaid cabinet near the bed, and fumbled there till she found and drew out a small object. It was a little diary, but she was unable to read the small pages as she turned them over. She came nearer the night-light and, finding the page, read thereon. Of a sudden a great cry escaped her breast, and, kneeling by the bed, she embraced the pillows convulsively.

“It is ten days ago—ten days!”

A hundred times with a hundred sighs, in a torrent of tears like one demented, she repeated the words in tones of anger, fear, and lament. She said the words with a desolation and sadness, and an immense melancholy. Then she murmured them more softly, and even stammered them. At last she was silent; her tears ceased. Then she fell, wearied out, into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

III

As she entered the courtyard of the Baths of Diocletian, where modern Rome has placed a museum for whatever the Tiber has restored, or whatever has been excavated in recent years, Maria Guasco closed her white lace parasol and looked around. The place seemed like the white and silent cloister of a Christian monastery. Four roomy covered portici surrounded a garden planted simply with rose-bushes, box hedges, and some small trees. In the middle rose a stone sundial, and on the right a well with an ancient pully from whose rope was hanging an old-fashioned bucket. The portici were quite white, and along their walls were hanging fragments of marble and pieces of Roman bas-reliefs. There was an occasional bust on its pedestal, and some wooden benches. But at the beginning of the summer, at ten in the morning, the place was without visitors. Donna Maria stopped undecidedly.

She was dressed in a white soft stuff which waved noiselessly about her, a large white and very fine veil surrounded her hat, her abundant hair, and oval face. Youth, primal and fresh, proceeded from all the whiteness in which she walked, like one of those dense, soft, white clouds which give a sense of spiritual voluptuousness to the eyes. Her beauty was illuminated by it, and beneath the transparency of her complexion her blood coursed more lively, rendering more rosy her delicate and expressive countenance. Only her eyes contained a tinge of disturbance in their colour, undecided between grey and blue. Something proud and sad concealed them, sometimes even extinguishing their glance. Donna Maria’s mouth, too, had not a shadow of a smile. While she stood there she was so wrapped in her thoughts and sensations, as almost to forget the reason for which she had come at that unusual hour to the Baths of Diocletian.

“Good-morning, Donna Maria,” said a gentleman, coming towards her, taking off his hat with an extremely correct bow.

“Good-morning, Provana,” she said, frowning slightly and biting her lip; “since when have you been a frequenter of museums and a lover of the ancient statues of Faustina and Britannicus?”

“Oh, I don’t care for them, cara Signora,” he hastened to say with an ironical smile, “I don’t understand them, and, therefore, I detest them.”

“Why, then?”

“To be able to speak to you alone in a place which is completely deserted at this hour and season.”

“Why don’t you come to my house?” she replied, growing more austere; “I am alone sometimes.”

“Yes; but Marco Fiore can come there any minute, neither can you deny him entrance,” he replied coldly.

“Do you hate Marco Fiore so much, Provana?”

“I don’t hate him, I envy him,” he added, again becoming the gallant.

“So you hasten to give me a meeting where he must not interfere, to tell me things he must not hear?” she replied with a sardonic laugh.

“But you have come to listen,” he observed craftily.

She bit her lip hard, and extracted from her gold chain-purse a note, folded in four, which she gave to him.

“Take back your letter, Provana, and goodbye.”

“Don’t go, Donna Maria, don’t go. Listen to me since you have come. It is a serious matter.”

“Good-bye, Provana,” she replied, almost reaching the main entrance.

“In Heaven’s name, don’t leave! The matter is really so important;” and his voice trembled with anxiety.

Donna Maria looked at him intently. Gianni Provana, whose correct and gentlemanly face, with its more than forty years, for the most part pleasing and inexpressive in lines and colouring, seemed genuinely moved. His monocle had fallen from its orbit, and he was a little pale. He twisted his moustaches nervously, and his mouth, still fresh in spite of its maturity, seemed to restrain a flow of words with difficulty.

Donna Maria had never seen him thus; Gianni, the man of moderation in every gesture and word, so often sceptical, so often cold, but never agitated, the common type, in fact, of the elegant gentleman who assumes a correct pose from infancy, who cloaks himself with a studied disdain for everything, and most especially for the things he is not aiming at, and the persons he does not understand.

“Really I can’t think of anything important to listen to from you,” she murmured, turning back for a step or two.

“However, it is so, Donna Maria. It is a question of your good which is immensely dear to me.”

“Why is it dear to you? How do I concern you?”

“Why, I esteem you deeply; I love you.”

“Still I don’t love you, neither do I esteem you,” she replied icily.

“Why don’t you esteem me?”

“Because you are a dissembler, Provana.”

“Dissembling is often necessary and most useful in life. It is often an act of prudence and benevolence.”

“That is the invention of liars.”

They walked together, side by side, along one of the portici, drawing further away towards the back of the edifice. Gianni Provana watched her half curiously and half anxiously; she was distracted, gazing intently on an unknown point, trailing her parasol.

“How far has loyalty served you, Donna Maria? You have lost reputation, position, and family.”

“I have gained liberty and love,” she replied, raising her head proudly.

“But not happiness.”

“Liberty is love,” she answered, with a cry of revolt.

“You are the prisoner of your horrible condition, Donna Maria, and you are not sure that Marco Fiore loves you,” he insisted, determined to say all.

“It is I who ought to love him.”

“You don’t love him, Donna Maria. I swear that you don’t love him.”

“Who makes you say this? Who has told you this?”

“I say it because I know it. I say it because it is necessary to open your eyes to yourself and upon Marco Fiore!”

“Why do you do this? For what obscure motive? For what perfidious interest?”

“In your own interest entirely, Donna Maria.”

“That can’t be. You are a calculator. You have a plan; reveal it at once. I prefer it. What is the motive of this meeting?”

“To persuade you that you do not love Marco Fiore, and that he does not love you.”

“Is it he, is it Marco Fiore who sends you?” she exclaimed with a spasm in her voice.

Gianni Provana hesitated an instant.

“No, it is not he. It is I who have guessed all, who know all.”

She bent her head in thought. In spite of the horror which this colloquy with a man she had always despised caused her, although she was listening to words which offended her mortally, she continued to listen to him as if subjugated. They had now reached a corner of the portici near a large pillar. Not a shadow of a visitor appeared.

“Donna Maria, you who are truth herself, how can you endure this life of lies?”

“Of lies?”

“Exactly. You are deceiving Marco Fiore when you tell him that you love him, and you are deceiving yourself. He is deceiving you. This love is dead, in fact it has been lived much too long.”

“According to you, who suppose that you know something about love, how long does passion last? By the way, perhaps you have got the figures with you to explain them?”

“Yes; passion lasts from six months to a year, love from a year to two years. You have been living a lie for more than a year. O Donna Maria, break this chain.”

“Are we meant to slay this love?” she exclaimed mockingly, with a shrill bitterness in her voice.

“You ought to slay it!”

“And am I afterwards to burn myself on the pyre like the widows of Malabar?” she continued, even more mockingly and bitterly.

“You ought to live and be happy.”

“With you, eh? With Gianni Provana?”

“With another,” he said in a low voice, looking at her.

“With whom?”

“With Emilio Guasco,” he ventured to say.

“Don’t repeat the infamy!” she cried, clenching her teeth.

A terrible silence came upon them. The sun had already invaded half of the simple garden among the thick box hedges and winter roses. The soft singing of a little bird issued here and there from the trees.

“Does he send you, Provana?” she continued, in a voice almost hoarse with annoyance, so great was the disdain which she was controlling within her.

“No, he doesn’t send me, but I am come all the same. Donna Maria, does it please you to continue to live outside the laws, outside morality, outside society, when the great cause of it is at an end? Does it please you still to sacrifice your decorum, your dignity, your name, not to love but to your fancy? Where are there any more the supreme compensations for all that you have lost? Where are there any more the rich sentimental and sensual rewards for that which you have thrown away and abandoned? How does your abnegation profit you any more? You have given all and are giving all, and meanwhile your life is empty, your soul is empty.”

Why did she listen so intently, without interrupting, without rebelling? Why was no shock given to her pride? And why did she cry out no more in protest? Gianni Provana so cold, so sceptical in his manner, was reaching at that time and in that singular place almost to eloquence. She who suspected him, despised and considered him a liar and a hypocrite, was listening to him, while her face contracted with suffering and disdain.

“Donna Maria, you had the courage to offend and abandon your husband who had done nothing to you, because you did not care to live in deceit and treachery: have another courage, worthy of you, that of flying from Marco Fiore, since you love him no more and he does not love you. Leave the house where you live in heavy and gloomy silence; re-enter the world, re-enter society. Be an honoured and respected lady, as you deserve to be for your beauty and your great soul.”

“To become what you tell me, Provana,” she replied precisely, in a hard voice, “I ought to return to my husband.”

“You ought to return.”

“And he would take me back?”

“He would take you back.”

“Forgetting all?”

“Forgiving you everything.”

“After three years of public scandal, of life together with Marco Fiore in the same city, under his eyes—my husband would do this?”

“He would do it because he believes in the law of pardon.”

“Knowing that I do not love him?”

“Knowing it quite well.”

“That I shall never love him?”

“Who can tell that?”

“I!” she proclaimed. “I shall never love him, and he knows it.”

“In spite of that, he desires to pardon you, and to give you back all that you have lost by your passion.”

“Why does he do this?”

“Because he is good.”

“A great many good people would never do it!”

“Because he has suffered much and learned much.”

“What have his sufferings to do with me?”

“He has pity for your sorrows.”

“Pity is not enough to do this, Provana.”

“Because he loves you,” Gianni Provana declared at last.

“What a poltroon!” she sneered with infinite contempt.

“Am I to tell Emilio Guasco this?”

“Tell him what you please.”

“His love does not move you?”

“No.”

“His pity does not soften you?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t his pardon seem a sublime act to you? Is he not a hero?”

“I am a miserable creature made of clay, and I do not understand sublimity.”

They were silent. The weather became warmer and slightly heavier, and the singing of the little birds in the trees grew weaker. Some of the roses had scattered their leaves on the ground.

“And with all this what are we going to do with Marco Fiore?” she broke in with irony.

“With Marco?”

“Yes, with him. What will he do when, according to you, I have returned to my husband? What will become of Marco?”

“He will be content to marry Vittoria Casalta. The girl has been waiting for him for three years.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed, in a voice scarcely recognisable.

Without greeting or looking at him she turned her back, and went quickly round the corner of the portico.

Nor did Gianni Provana dare to follow her.

IV

Maria had searched for Marco Fiore for an hour in all the places she supposed he might be; at the great door of Palazzo Fiore, in the via Bocca di Leone, leaving him word scribbled in pencil on a small piece of paper; at the Hunt Club, which he sometimes looked into towards noon; at the fencing rooms in the via Muratte, where two or three times a week he used to undergo a long sword exercise.

Porters, butlers, servants had seen the beautiful and elegant lady, dressed in white, hidden behind a white veil, ask with insistence for the noble Marco Fiore and go away slowly, as if not convinced that he was not in one of those places. Towards noon, agitated and silent, consumed by her emotion, she entered the little villa at Santa Maria Maggiore, and there, at the threshold, was Marco, who had just arrived, with a slightly languid smile on his lips and the habitual softness in his eyes.

“Ah, Marco, Marco, I have looked for you everywhere,” she stammered in confusion, taking him by the hand.

“What is the matter?” he asked, a little surprised, scrutinising her face.

“Come, Marco; come.”

Still leading him by the hand she made him cross the ante-room, the drawing-room, the little drawing-room, and the study, and did not stop till she was with him in the bedroom with its closed green shutters, whence entered the perfumes from a very tiny conservatory. Once within, she closed the door with a tired gesture. They were alone. She fixed him with her eyes right into his, placing her two hands on his shoulders, dominating him with her height. And to him never had her face seemed so beautiful and so ardent.

“Do you love me, Marco?”

“I love you,” he said with tender sweetness.

“You mustn’t say it so. Better, better. Do you love me?”

“I love you,” he replied, disturbed.

“As once upon a time, you must say, as once upon a time.”

“I love you, Maria,” he replied, still more disturbed.

“Do you love me as at first? Reply without hesitating, without thinking—as at first?”

Regarding him, scorching him with her glance, with the pressure of her white and firm hands on his shoulders, she subjugated him.

Already the youthful blood of Marco Fiore coursed in his veins, and the giddiness of passion, which for some time had not overcome his soul, mastered him.

“As at first,” he murmured, in a subdued voice.

“It is true you don’t want to lose me. Say it! Say it!”

“I would prefer to lose my soul.”

“You have never thought of leaving me?”

“Never.”

“Am I always your lady?”

“My lady, you, and you only.”

“Oh, Marco!” she sighed, letting her face fall on his breast, yielding to an emotion which was too violent.

He had become very pale. His eyebrows were knotted in sad thought. He took her face, covered with tears, and wiped it with his handkerchief, and asked her with a voice, where already suspicion was pressing, and where jealousy was hissing insidiously—

“What is this, Maria? Tell me all.”

“Oh, I can’t, I can’t,” she said desperately.

“Tell me all at once,” he rejoined in angry impatience.

“No, no, Marco, it is nothing. I am mad this morning.”

“That is impossible. You were calm and serene yesterday evening. There is something. There is somebody. Whom have you seen this morning?”

The question was so precise and abrupt that the woman of truth hesitated, and dared no longer be silent.

“I have seen Gianni Provana.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, twisting his moustaches; “did you see him here?”

“No, elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere? In the street?”

“Almost.”

“You met him by accident?”

“Not by accident.”

“Maria, Maria!” he cried; “why have you done this?”

“I have erred; pardon me, Marco.”

She humbled herself, taking his hands to kiss them in an act of profound contrition.

But releasing himself, he made two or three turns of the room, then returned to her.

“And what has that reptile said to you? Repeat to me what that horrid man said to you.”

“Oh, he is so horrid as to make one shudder.”

“Repeat it; repeat it at once, Maria.”

“How am I to tell them? They are infamous things.”

“Against me?”

“Against us.”

“But speak, at least speak! Do you wish to make me die of anger and impatience?”

“No, Marco. I will tell you all. Come, sit beside me, be tranquil. I don’t like to see you so. You must be calm, my love, so that I may tell you all; you must be sweet and loving, and not so disturbed and wicked.”

“Maria, I am waiting,” he said, almost without listening to her, folding his arms.

“Listen; it is true I ought not to have gone to the meeting with Gianni Provana. I have erred greatly, but a secret terror has been too much for me; I wished to know what he had to tell me. Could it not be perhaps a secret threat for me, for you?”

“I fear nothing, Maria.”

“I, too, nothing; but I went to know. That man is so perverse, and he is always seeing my husband.”

“Then he came for Emilio Guasco?” he exclaimed, rising.

“Yes,” she said with candour.

“To tell you what in the name of Emilio Guasco?”

“To tell me that you no longer love me.”

“It is false, I swear!” exclaimed Marco Fiore, with vehemence.

“To suggest to me that I no longer love you.”

“Swear that it is false.”

“I swear it,” she replied, with a grave voice.

“And then? and then?”

“And then, as our love had been killed, it was necessary and right to re-enter the lawful, to re-enter the moral, to resume my place in society, to return esteemed, respected, honoured.”

“That is to say?”

“To return to my husband.”

“He said this atrocious thing to you?”

“This atrocious thing.”

“Of his own initiative?”

“No, Marco.”

“So,” he exclaimed in the height of anger, “this husband of yours, this friend of his, beyond me, above me, and against me, laughing at me, propose that you should leave me and return to Casa Guasco?”

“Yes.”

“After all that has happened?”

“Yes.”

“After three years of a life of love, our only and unique life of love, you should return to Casa Guasco?”

“It is so.”

The physiognomy of Marco Fiore became transfigured. A convulsion of bitterness, of suffering, of fury shook it continuously; that slightly morbid insouciance, which composed its poetry together with its youth, had quite vanished, showing only a face of energy, crossed by sentiments more unrestrainedly virile.

“And your husband, whom they say is a man of honour, would he forget the dishonour?”

“He is ready to forget it.”

“Would a gentleman forget an offence so open and so cruel?”

“He has been ready, he says, for a long time to pardon.”

“But why? Is he a rascal perhaps? Is he a saint perhaps? Has he blood in his impoverished veins? Has he a heart in that money-grubbing breast of his?”

“He says that he has suffered; that he is suffering.”

“But why does he suffer?—through amour propre? through pride? through envy? through punctiliousness?”

She was silent. He, as one mad, continued—

“What has made him suffer?—the injury? the insult? the public shame? ridicule? Why, after having suffered, does he pardon?”

Still she was silent.

“And why does he want you? To shame me? To have his revenge? So that the world may mock me as it has mocked him? Why does he want you? To adorn his salons? To expose the jewels he has given you? To decorate his box at the theatre? Why does he want you?”

With head bowed and hands joined together on her knees, she remained silent and pale. He went towards her and forced her to rise and look at him.

“You know, Maria, why he forgets, why he pardons you, why he wants you. You know and you won’t tell me.”

She shook her head in denial.

“You know, you know; they have told you; repeat it to me! If you don’t tell me, I am going away and I am never going to return again.”

Maria trembled.

“I know,” she stammered, “I know, but I did not wish to tell. Provana says ... that my husband loves me, he forgets because he loves me; he pardons because he loves me; he wants me because he loves me. That is all.”

Violently, brutally, he took her in his arms, and pressed her to himself.

“I love you, Maria, I only love you.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, with emotion; “as once upon a time, as once upon a time?”

Pressed to him, closed as in a vice in his arms, he kissed her on the hair, the eyes, the mouth, murmuring—

“I love you, Maria, as at first, as always, for ever, I love you.”

Radiant with joy, crying with joy, she threw back her head as if inebriated.

“You are mine, Maria, it is true?”

“Yours, yours, yours.”

“No one else’s ever?”

“No one else’s.”

“I shall never let you be taken by any one, Maria.”

“No one can take me.”

“I would kill him first, Maria, then myself.”

“Marco, Marco, I adore you!”

For a moment his encircling arms loosened, as he thought for an instant. A powerful exaltation, proceeding from a powerful instinct, was compelling him. And she was intoxicated with joy of him.

“Maria, will you do as I wish?”

“Yes, like a slave.”

“Good; let us go away together.”

“Let us go.”

“To-morrow?”

“No, this evening.”

“This evening? Where?”

“I don’t know. Far away. Together. Somewhere where there are not these infamous persons and horrible annoyances, Maria. Far away, where your soul and your person may be only mine, without remorse, without reproach, without remembrances. Together, away from here, far off.”

“Let us go, Marco.”

“You follow me with desire, with enthusiasm?”

“With desire, with enthusiasm.”

“As if you were leaving for ever, never more to return?”

“As if I were going to love and to death, Marco.”

“This evening, Maria?”

“This evening.”

“But I am not going to leave you to-day. I can’t leave you. I am frightened that you may not come. I am frightened that I may lose you, Maria.”

“Just as we fled the first time, then,” she murmured, in a mysterious, dreamy ecstasy.

“As the first time, darling.”

And the old times reappeared to them, just as the voices reappeared, just as the words reappeared; time was annulled, and everything was as at first. They asked nothing of their souls, of their hearts, since the looks, the voices, and the gestures were as at first; in the unrestrained tumult of resumed passion their souls and their hearts kept silence, in their profound, singular, and obscure silence.

Venice, who has consecrated and exalted in her soft and persuasive arms a thousand powerful loveknots, placed the wonderful peace of her mortal beauty round the grand flame of Maria Guasco and Marco Fiore; the silent caress of her glimmering lights, and the tenderness of her melancholy. The amorous fluid that thousands of lovers gathered wherever they lived, wherever they moved in Venice—that amorous fluid that emanates from her quiet waters, from the balconies of her palaces, from the veiled voices of those who sing in flowering gardens on quiet side canals, that emanates from the gloomy colour of her gondolas, from the whiteness of the marble which the water has left intact or obscured, which emanates from every lineament of the place and from every tint of the sky, enveloped Marco Fiore and Maria Guasco, and multiplied their flame into a precipitous tumult of their lives.

Their love had something mysterious, powerful, and troublous in that ardent renewal, which engulfed them as in a whirlwind. They seemed blind and deaf to every other aspect and every other sound of life which was not their amorous delirium. If no idyllic sweetness, if no sentimental tenderness brightened the passing of the days, the fever which caused them to palpitate, which singularly always gave them fresh fire, had aspects unknown to many, unknown even to themselves. A veil was over their eyes when they turned them away from the adored person; and the vision of Venice, where their days were slipping away, was like a dream around them, was like a scene unknown, appearing and vanishing just as in a dream. Never had Maria Guasco, whose beauty consisted above all in a lively, tender, and proud expression of countenance, never had she carried so clearly and openly those signs of amorous happiness which cause envy and regret to those who have never been in love, or who no longer love. Never, too, had Marco Fiore experienced a greater passion, or a larger sense of subjugation to a creature beloved.

Sometimes, however, passion in its violence seemed odious to him, and he would gaze at Maria with eyes sad and stern but still passionate, and he would speak to her shortly and commandingly, while his strong hands would press her soft hands so roughly as almost to cause her pain.

Then she would become silent, biting her lips to prevent a cry, and bowing her head as if conquered and crushed.

Long indeed were the silences of the lovers, and gladly were their lips dumb, as if words were useless to their understanding and thoughts weighed heavily on their hearts, or as if they felt it was profoundly dangerous to give life to their thoughts with a word. They remained side by side in their room in the Grand Hotel on the Grand Canal, silent and absorbed. Sometimes they stood together on the small marble balcony watching the canal winding among the magnificent palaces towards the Salute, with joined hands and fingers interlaced, and watched for a long time the bizarre reflections of the water changing colour beneath the light of the sky, always silent and oppressed. On the occasions when the gondola carried them in long excursions, left to the choice of the gondolier, to the more solitary canals and islands, Marco became more imperious in his lover’s exactions. If Maria drew aside from him even for a minute, he called her back with a sudden and almost angry gesture; if she had a bunch of flowers in her belt he snatched them one by one, kissed them, and threw them into the water, and he would continually take her handkerchief and gloves and press them to his face and lips.

They spoke seldom and subduedly, just their names, or a monosyllable uttered questioningly and repeated with an acquiescent nod and dropping of the eyes. Their passion, even in its greatest flame, was collected and gloomy, and just as they were not exuberant in words they were not exuberant in smiles. No puerile happiness or youthful gaiety enlivened its intensity. Their passion seemed greater than they could endure, heavy and crushing in its force and vigour, and their souls and heart were too little to contain it; or its secret violence and immeasurable power seemed to surprise and dispirit them every instant, as if they were ignorant of its origin and end. Every now and then Maria, as if she could no longer endure his intense glances, placed her hands over Marco’s eyes, as against the light of the sun which vivifies and yet blinds, and sometimes he returned the gesture, placing his hand on her ruby mouth, to stop her rare words and continuous kisses, as if his fibres were relaxing beneath the ideal and sensual caress which was consuming him. Their memories, too, were wrapped in a veil, or they would have remembered their first journey; their flight in which in a thousand forms of joy their cry of liberty had broken out, in which a thousand smiles carelessly adorned their day, in which the song of the simplest and purest jollity overflowed their mornings, and the laugh which closed their day and sent them deliciously to sleep.

They remembered none of that. This other love, silent, without jests, without songs, without smiles; this turbid and gloomy love resembled a spell-bound spiritual imprisonment, a magical slavery of the senses, and a tyrannous voluptuousness which filled them with madness and deadly intoxication.

Their reason for leaving Rome was never mentioned by them. Perhaps once or twice the woman wished to allude to it, but immediately, pale with anger and jealousy, the man had cried out—“No!”

And he closed her again to his breast, where his heart beat as tumultuously as on the day in which he had nearly seen the hand of Emilio Guasco, her husband, take her hand in the shade and lead her away. Very often such pallor and such fury passed over Marco’s face as to give a greater clearness and heat to the flame of love. Often, too, when she seemed thoughtful and absorbed, and her soul was slipping away from the place and altar of passion he would lean over her, and, seized again by the madness of that day, would embrace her fiercely, and his breath on her forehead seemed as if it wished to devour the thought which was going towards Rome.

She understood at once, and exclaimed passionately—

“No, Marco, no!”

Then Marco would stammer a question brokenly in a monosyllable.

“Mine? Mine?”

“Thine! thine!” she answered, looking at him.

Nothing more. Nothing more than these two words, so monotonous, intense and inexorable. Not another demand, not another reply; not a promise, not an oath. The words of possession: thine and mine. The length of this delirium and the passing of time left no impression on their minds. Others counted their days by their troubles or pleasures, not so Marco and Maria.

Four weeks had fled on a day at the end of July when, one morning, Maria rising from the old-fashioned chair, approached a table, and, taking a pen, dipped it in the ink as if to write. Then she trembled at her act, which drew her back to the fiery circle of her love, and she looked at Marco. He had seen all without showing surprise. Then she heard his voice, that voice of other times, a little tired, a little veiled, letting fall a question almost of politeness, but without any interest in a reply—

“Are you going to write, Maria?”

A fit of trembling caused her to hesitate. He did not notice her disturbance as his eyes were lowered. She sat down to write. But the tumult within her was so strong that her hand traced mechanically meaningless signs. Maria had no one to write to, and did not know what to write. Her hand fell upon the paper, and she bent her head. Still he noticed nothing.

“Marco?” she asked, in the cold clear voice of former times, “Marco, what is the matter?”

And truth was evoked from the depth of the man’s soul. Truth said simply and cruelly: “I am tired.”

So it was all that memorable day. Maria saw in Marco Fiore’s face nothing but an unspeakable weariness. On the marble balcony above the silver-grey water which he was looking at, his weariness lent a leaden colour to his lips and eyes, and a dense pallor to his face. A sad wrinkle of exhaustion was at each corner of his mouth. Again she asked, “Are you tired?”

Again he replied, cruelly and monotonously, “I am tired.”

She saw him stretch himself on the soft black cushions of the gondola, as if he wished to stay there for ever. He did not look to see if she was beside him and shut his eyes as if asleep, but without sleeping, nor did he issue from that silence and stupor till they landed from the gondola at the Palazzo Ferro. When at night he retired, after touching her hair with the lightest of kisses, when later in her soft night-garments she went to see him asleep, she stopped near the bed. Horrible sight! Marco was sleeping heavily, with his head buried in the pillows just as if it was his last sleep, and all his face was decomposed in its fatigue and pallor, even the lips were white beneath the moustaches, and his forehead had a crease of weariness and bitterness. Too long, indeed, did she gaze at that sight, and drink in its poison with her soul and eyes. She felt her heart like a stone within her breast, and her soul wound her person like a sharp rock with a tremendous spasm. She felt, too, the floods of bitterness like a poison diffuse themselves through her being. Falling on the bed in her white garments she lapsed into the same lead-like lethargy as her lover.

Of their exhausted forces of desire, of their weary and somnolent bodies, their spent phantasies and arid souls, of this cessation of spiritual life, on the following day, they understood the tremendous truth. They understood how, as in common people, that rude and fierce instinct, which is jealousy, had plotted against them; a jealousy physical and base, taking the appearance of a higher and more ardent love, of a passion larger and more consuming; and how like inexperienced and weak creatures they had been victims of a trivial deception of the senses, abandoning themselves to it, as to a renewing flame of love more youthful and more devouring. The man felt the shame mount to his face for having mistaken the impulse of a vulgar, fatuous, and virile affirmation of possession for a fresher and more vigorous desire of love’s happiness, and he experienced a great repentance for having surrendered to it their hope in a new future for their love. But more supreme was the woman’s shame for having fallen into the net of the senses, she so proud, so modest, and so chaste even in passion. Her sorrow was the more supreme for having ever believed that love can be reborn from its ashes.

For a day they hated and despised themselves as never before. For a day they hated themselves fiercely. Then that shadow, that coldness, and that boredom ruled over them, whose signs they had piously hidden in Rome, but which at last in Venice they no longer dared conceal.

VI

This is the reply which reached Marco Fiore at Spello immediately.

VII

A strong, cold, almost wintry wind was blowing through the streets of Rome on an afternoon of late October, and a low sky with a mass of whitish-grey clouds was hanging over the semi-circle of the Esedra di Termini. Little whirlwinds of dust rolled from the Esquiline and the Viminal towards ancient Rome, while dead leaves issuing from the gardens of the suburban villas, gyrating, and small squares, still rolled along.

Marco, who had just arrived, trembled with cold, as he crossed on foot the little distance which separated the Stazione di Termini from Santa Maria Maggiore. In spite of his courage, which he knew had been inspired by the soul of Maria Guasco, a dumb fear agitated him, a fear of the present, a fear of the future. He was experiencing the agonising terror of life, when in certain supreme moments a man seems conquered by all the hostile forces within and without him. However, he did not hesitate a moment to enter the villa. He went towards his destiny with a soul in trepidation but with a firm step. The profound faith which he had in Maria’s heart, a faith experienced apart from passion and love, alone sustained him, and once again he sought from her the source of his strength in the hour of sorrow and torment.

But when she appeared, and he understood that he was seeing her for the last time, dressed as she was in black, so exquisite, so noble in her mourning, so disdainfully proud as she looked at him with a glance of intense sorrow, his heart was tormented with an immense desolation, and holding and caressing her hands like a child, he wept bigger tears than he had ever wept. Holding his hands in hers and sitting beside him Maria wept without sobs, and her tears coursed silently down her face while she bowed her head in silence, as if unable to pronounce a single word.

“Everything is finished, Maria, everything,” sighed Marco.

She was silent. Her tears ceased the first, but her face was composed in a febrile pallor. He kept lamenting brokenly, “Finished, all is finished,” like the burden of a death agony. Slowly their embrace relaxed. For some moments they found nothing to say. But again her pale worn face agonised his heart.

“Maria, I have loved you deeply!” he exclaimed.

“I know it,” she replied gravely. “Your love has given sun to my life, and its reflection and warmth will remain with me till death.”

“I shall never love a woman again like you, Maria, who have been all mine,” he said desolately.

“None, Marco,” continued Maria, lowering her eyelids to hide the expression of her eyes, “and so it ought to be.”

“I shall never forget you, you who have been all my ardour and sweetness,” he added, still desolately.

“You ought not to forget me, dear love of mine, you ought not to.”

“Well then, Maria, why is everything ended?”

“For this reason,” she replied enigmatically.

“I want to love you all my life passionately.”

“It isn’t possible, it isn’t possible. Love doesn’t last for life. Life is so long, love is so short.”

“Oh, what sadness, Maria! what sadness! I shall never console myself.”

“I too shall never console myself, Marco, never.”

Again they were silent, desperate and bowed down beneath their fate, as if separated by an iron wall and divided in soul, incapable of passing over or breaking down that wall. They felt as well the weight of time which was falling on their heads, and the mortal tedium which was enveloping them in that so far profitless conversation.

He felt the uselessness of tears and words, and with a renewal of life said—

“What shall we do, Maria?”

“Our duty,” she replied severely.

“To whom have we a duty to fulfil, Maria? To what?”

“We have a duty first of all to ourselves, Marco. And that is to live in truth and liberty of soul. Since our love is ended and our dream of happiness is over, let us not lie an instant longer, and separate.”

“For ever, Maria?”

“For ever, Marco.”

“Shall I never see you again, my friend?”

“I shall not see you, and you will not seek me. We will fly as far as we can and ought from each other.”

“That is very cruel, Maria.”

“Yes, it is very cruel, but it has to be done.”

“I shall suffer very much, because, apart from passion and love, you are very dear to me.”

“You are very dear to me, my friend,” she added, with a fresh veil of sorrow in her voice, “but it is necessary.”

“But what will become of me, Maria? Tell me. What will become of me? What shall I do? Where shall I go to lie me down? How will my life go on? Where shall I tie it that the knot does not come undone?”

She did not reply at once. Her eyes were closed as if to concentrate her thoughts, and her mouth was firm as if to close her words; her hands, loaded with jewels, were crossed over her knees in a familiar gesture.

“Maria, Maria, I have come purposely to ask you this, because you ought to tell me, because I do not know and you do. What will become of me without you? What shall I do with my soul? What shall I do with my days? Maria, think of me. Succour me, my friend, my sister, source of all my comfort. Tell me, tell me.”

A shadow of a smile, a bitter shadow of a smile, traced itself on Maria Guasco’s lips at the uneasiness of the man’s convulsed conscience.

“Well,” she said, softly and slowly, “after doing our duty towards ourselves in separating, we have to accomplish it towards others, Marco.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked him squarely in the eyes, and said—

“You will marry Vittoria Casalta, Marco.”

“No.”

“You will marry her; she loves you.”

“I don’t love her.”

“What does it matter? Thousands of marriages are made so. She has loved you for years, and you were betrothed. You have betrayed her. She has waited, and she is a patient creature. She has waited, and, see, she was right to wait.”

“I can’t marry her with a heart devastated by passion, with an unconsolable regret.”

“Marco, hearts are healed. Yours will heal. Regrets go to sleep at the bottom of the soul, and one day you will wake up consoled. You ought to marry Vittoria Casalta.”

“Ought I to?”

“You ought to. She has suffered for you. She doesn’t deserve to suffer. She is good, they say; I don’t know. Anyhow, she has suffered. Since your heart is empty, and your spirit has no goal, since your soul has no pasture, fill your heart with charity towards a sufferer, give an affectionate scope to your existence, create a pleasing duty of reparation, and heal the wounds you have made by marrying Vittoria Casalta.”

Maria spoke in a low voice, slowly, but suggestively and persuasively. Marco’s face grew paler and his lips were white. He recognised that an immense effort was uplifting her courage to say all that she was saying, and he regarded her with profound admiration as he touched her hand lightly to kiss it, which he did almost timorously. A cry escaped his breast.

“Maria, I can’t be happy with Vittoria Casalta.”

“You can’t be; that is true. You have been happy, too happy perhaps. You can’t be happy again. And what does it matter? Content yourself in giving happiness to her who has suffered so much for you. That is a great deal.”

“That will not suffice for me, Maria.”

“You want too much from life, Marco,” she said, shaking her head; “you must give something instead. Vittoria Casalta has suffered secret torture for three years. You ought to marry her to sweeten her existence and render her happiness.”

He became silent and thoughtful, and she, who was used to reading almost the ideas of his mind on his forehead, saw the doubt there.

“Vittoria desires nothing else but to pardon you and open her arms to you, Marco.”

He looked at her, but did not reply. An almost definite silence fell between them. This part of their conversation was concluded. It seemed as if there was nothing else to be said; that they understood each other. Marco was the first to express this feeling.

“And you, Maria?”

“I, Marco?”

“Yes, you. What will you do?”

She shrugged her shoulders in an act of complete indifference, and did not reply.

“Will you return to your husband?”

“I shall return,” she said coldly.

“Will you return willingly, Maria?” he exclaimed sorrowfully, but without a trace of anger in his voice.

“Not willingly. I am going to return because I ought to.”

“Won’t you suffer in returning? Tell me, Maria.”

“I shall suffer, that is true,” she declared precisely, “but I ought to suffer, it seems. I have been intoxicated with happiness and liberty, my friend. One pays for such things. Here I am ready to pay.”

“How will you live with him?”

“As I can. I shall do my best, and shall try to do my duty. Emilio, too, has suffered through my betrayal. In returning to him I must do what I can to make him forget his suffering.”

“But you don’t love him.”

“I don’t love him, and I can’t love him again. I am exhausted. My heart has lived as much as it can, and it can do no more. But I can, however, have great pity for him, great sweetness, and great friendship to make him forget the torture I have inflicted on him.”

Again, before the force of energy which was exalting her and with which she was struggling, Marco felt a great emotion invade him, a melancholy enthusiasm for the moral martyrdom which she was enduring, and forgot his own immense pain. And anew a lament escaped his lips.

“Poor Maria!”

“Ah, pity me, pity me; you are right!” she cried, twisting her hands in agitation, “I am an unfortunate.”

“We are two unfortunates!” he exclaimed, taking her to his arms and kissing her on her hair and eyes.

She repelled him, and drying her tears composed herself.

But he, as he felt the moments of their last meeting flying, and the unsupportable pain of a farewell which was rending his soul, resisted the more.

“Maria, Maria, let us remain together, I implore you.”

“No, Marco, no.”

“I can’t live without you, my love.”

“You deceive yourself.”

“I see myself dying if I leave you, Maria.”

“You deceive yourself.”

“I still want you. I want you always.”

“You deceive yourself.”

“I love you, Maria. I swear it; I love you.”

“You lie!” she cried, with a voice vibrant with anger and with a heightened complexion.

“I love you, I love you,” he cried more weakly.

“You lie! You lie!”

“I love you,” he murmured, with lowered eyes.

“Have you understood that you are lying?” she said. “Be silent.”

So all was ended. Even this last rebellion of Marco’s soul evaporated, leaving him cold and dumb. His very torment, given its supreme grief, seemed to quieten into torpor. The large emotions which he had just experienced left him exhausted with a disgust of himself and life. White and done up he lay upon the sofa scarcely noticing the woman at his side. She herself, spent by the long spiritual struggle maintained with herself and him, lay with closed mouth, her beautiful chestnut hair with its deep shining waves had fallen about her neck, and her head had fallen forward listlessly. Each was far away, full of thought and sorrow for the new life so uncertain and doubtful which was presenting itself to their gaze, and each was trying to read the unknown words of their new fate.

Both felt themselves in the great obscurity to be without energy, to have spent everything, to have lost all in the high crisis of detachment.

How long this sad absorption lasted they did not know.

It was already dusk when Maria started, and desired that everything should be ended fittingly between them. Silently she rose and giving him her hand led him into the bedroom, to the room which had been theirs. Near the bed, upon a background of dark-blue velvet, an old crucifix of yellowish ivory was hanging, and the face of the Martyr was full of profound and yet serene sorrow.

She looked at the Christ who had died for love and duty, for the desire of the salvation of every suffering soul.

“Do you remember, Marco, we did not dare to invoke the blessing of Maria, the most pure, on our love, but before Him who understood all and pardoned all, who was God, but was also man, who sees all, and who raised all to heaven, we asked Jesus to consecrate our knot?”

“Yes, Maria,” he murmured, regarding the anguished but tranquil face of the Son of man.

“Before Him we united ourselves for life and death. I obtained your promise of love and fidelity, Marco.”

“I have kept it, Maria.”

“It is not our fault if the knot is undone, if our eternity has only lasted three years. That is outside us, Marco. But we were faithful, and if love has deserted us it means that life is fleeting, and that human forces are weak. We were as faithful as we could be. I have loved you, Marco, above everything and everybody.”

“And so have I loved you, Maria.”

“Well, let us release ourselves to-day before Him, suffering profoundly, but knowing that we have done what is possible to be worthy of our passion, having never lied, having never deceived. Let us release ourselves, suffering like Him, but with the knowledge that this suffering is not useless, dedicating it as we do to the consolation of others, to the happiness of others.”

“Let it be so, Maria,” he said piously.

They stood a little in silence before the crucifix, as if praying mentally. A sigh escaped Maria Guasco’s tired bosom.

“I shall keep all I have of yours, Maria,” he murmured in a weak and tremulous voice, “I could never separate myself from them.”

“Nor I, Marco.”

In truth their anguish had become unbearable, they had cruelly prolonged their martyrdom.

“Good-bye, Marco!” she exclaimed almost inaudibly, bending her head on his shoulder.

“Good-bye, Maria,” he said, with a short but almost frenzied embrace.

“Toujours, toujours, Marco,” she said once again brokenly.

“Toujours, Maria, toujours,” he replied desperately.

Then he left.

She heard nothing. She knew about herself, about the whole world revolving in its immense concentration around her, but every sense of persons, of space, and of time was ignored by her for several hours in that deserted room. When she awoke from this long absence from life, she found nothing within her but bitterness, such a great bitterness that it seemed as if her body and soul had been poisoned for ever. Since all that had seemed lasting to her and alone worthy to be lasting was dispersed and finished with, since the only lofty outstanding reason of life—love—was ended, she felt a nauseating disgust of that mediocre thing, existence, with its false and fugitive sensations.

Marco went as one mad through the streets of Rome, already gloomy with falling night, and swept by chilly winds beneath the low nocturnal clouds. For some time he wandered aimlessly, like a dead leaf detached from a tree, and felt himself dispersed in the shadowy cold and solitude. He felt it useless to call for aid, since the only thing which could succour him—love—was dead. He felt that he too was dead, and that he could never rise again.