Cesare Dias came home one day towards six o'clock, in great good humour. At dinner he found everything excellent, though it was his habit to find everything bad. He ate with a hearty appetite, and told countless amusing stories, of the sort that he reserved for his agreeable moments. He joked with Laura, and with Anna; he even complimented his wife upon her dress, a new one that she had to-day put on for the first time. He succeeded in communicating his gaiety to the two women. Anna looked at him with meek and tender eyes; and as often as he smiled she smiled too.

Laura, it is true, spoke little, but in her face shone that expression of vivacity, of animation, which had characterised it for some time past. She agreed with everything Cesare said, bowing her head.

After dinner they all passed into Anna's drawing-room. It was her evening at home; and noticing that there were flowers in all the vases—it was in June, just a year after their talk at Sorrento—and seeing the silver samovar on the table, Cesare asked: "Are you expecting people to-night, Anna?"

"A few. Perhaps no one will come."

"Ah, that's why you've got yourself up so smartly."

"Did you fancy it was for you, that she had put on her new frock, Cesare?" Laura asked, jestingly.

"I was presumptuous enough to do so; and all presumptions are delusions. I'll bet that Luigi Caracciolo is coming—the ever faithful one."

"I'm sure I don't know," said Anna, indifferently.

"Oh, you hypocrite, Anna!" laughed Laura.

"Hypocrite, hypocrite!" repeated Cesare, also laughing. "Come, I'll warrant that the obstinate fidelity of Caracciolo has at last made an impression. Admirable! He's been in love with you for a hundred years."

"Oh, Cesare, don't joke about such subjects," Anna begged, in pain.

"You see, Laura, she is troubled."

"She's troubled, it's true," affirmed Laura.

"You're both of you heartless," Anna murmured.

Cesare opened his cigarette case, and playfully offered a cigarette to each of the ladies.

"I don't smoke," said Laura.

"Why don't you learn to?"

"Smoke is bad for the teeth;" and she showed her own, shining like those of Beatrice in the tale by Edgar Poe.

"You're right, fair Minerva. Will you smoke, Anna?"

"I don't smoke, either," she said, with a soft smile.

"You ought to learn. It would be becoming to you. You're dark, you have the Spanish type, and a papelito[D] would complete your charm."

"I will learn, Cesare," she assented.

"And what's more, smoke calms the nerves. You can't imagine the soothing effect it has. Nothing is better to relieve our little sorrows."

"Give me a cigarette, then," she said at once.

"Ah, you have little sorrows?"

"Who knows!" she sighed, putting aside her cigarette.

"You have no little sorrows, Laura?" asked Cesare.

"Neither little ones nor big ones."

"Who can boast of having never wept?" said Anna, with a melancholy accent.

"If we become sentimental, I shall take myself off," said Cesare.

"No, no, don't go away," Anna prayed him.

"I would remind you that we've got to pass our whole life-time together," said he, ironically, knocking off the ash of his cigarette.

"All our life-time, and more beyond it," said Anna, pensively.

"And more beyond! It's a grave affair. I will think of it while I am dressing, this evening."

"Where are you going?"

"To take a walk," he answered, rising.

"Why don't you stay here?" she ventured to ask.

"I can't. I'm obliged to go out."

"Come home early, won't you?"

"Early—yes," he consented, after a short hesitation.

"I'll wait for you, Cesare."

"Yes, yes. Good-night."

He went off.

Laura, according to her recent habit, had listened to this dialogue with her eyes half closed, and biting her lips; she said nothing. Whenever her sister and her brother-in-law exchanged a few affectionate words (and, indeed, Cesare did no more than respond to the affection of Anna), she assumed the countenance of a statue, which neither feels nor hears nor sees; or else, she got up and left the room noiselessly. Often Anna surprised on Laura's face a cynical smile that appeared the antithesis of its extreme purity, the irony of an icy virgin who is aware of the falsity and hollowness of love.

This evening, when Cesare had left them, the sisters remained together for a few minutes. But apparently both their minds were absorbed in deep thought; at any rate they could not keep up a conversation. Anna, in her lilac-coloured frock, lay in an easy-chair, leaning her head on her hands, over which her black hair seemed like a warrior's helmet. Laura was pulling and playing with the fringe of her white dress.

"I'm going; good night," she said suddenly.

"Why do you go, Laura?" asked Anna, issuing from her reverie.

"There's no use staying. People will be arriving."

"But stay for that very reason. You will help me to endure their visits."

"Oh, that's a task above my strength," said the blonde and beautiful Minerva. "Then, anyhow, it's you they come to see, my dear."

"You'll be married some day yourself," said Anna, laughing.

She was still in a pleasant mood—a reflection of Cesare's gaiety; and then he had promised to come home early.

"Who knows! Good night," and Laura rose to go away.

"But what are you going to do?"

"Read a little; then sleep."

"What are you reading?"

"'Le mot de l'Énigme,'[E] by Madame Pauline Craven."

"A mystical romance? Do you want to become a nun?"

"Who knows! Good night."

Anna herself took up a book after Laura's departure. It was Adolphe, by Benjamin Constant; she had found it one day on her husband's writing-desk. In its cool yet ardent pages one feels the charm of a truthful story, surging up from the heart in a single, vibrant cry of pain. Anna had read it two or three times; now she began it again, absent-mindedly. But she did not read long. A few callers came; the Marchesa Scibilia, her relative, accompanied by Gaetano Althan, who always liked to go about with old ladies; Commander Gabriele Mari, a man of seventy; and then the Prince of Gioiosa, a handsome, witty, and intelligent Calabrian.

The conversation, of course, was a mixture of frivolity and seriousness, as conversations are apt to be in a small gathering like the present, where nobody cares to appear too much in earnest, and everybody tries to speak in paradoxes.

The Prince di Gioiosa was the last to leave; it was then past eleven.

"No one else will come," she thought.

But she was mistaken. Acquaintances passing in the street, and seeing her windows alight, came up to pay their respects. When the last of these had gone, "It is late; no one else will come," she thought again.

But again she was mistaken. The servant announced Luigi Caracciolo; and the handsome young fellow entered, with that English correctness of bearing which somewhat tempered the vivacity of his blonde youthfulness. He was in evening dress, and wore a spray of lilies of the valley in his button-hole.

Anna gave him her hand amicably. Her rings glittered in the lamplight.

"Starry hand," he said, bowing, and pressing it softly.

"Where do you come from?" she asked, with that polite curiosity which implies no real interest.

"From the opera," he said, seating himself beside her.

"What were they giving?"

"'The Huguenots'—always the same."

"It is always beautiful."

"Do you remember?" he asked with a tender, caressing voice. "They were singing 'The Huguenots' on the evening when I was introduced to you."

"Yes, yes; I remember that evening," she said, with sudden melancholy.

"How horribly I displeased you that night, didn't I? The only thing to approach it was the tremendously delightful impression you made on me."

"What nonsense!" she protested kindly.

"And your first impression of me has never changed—confess it," he said.

"Even if that were true, it wouldn't make you very unhappy."

"What can you know about that? You beautiful women, admired and loved—what do you know?"

"You're right. Indeed, we know nothing."

But he saw that her mind was away in a land of dreams, far from him. He felt all at once the distance that divided them.

"When you come back from your travels let me know, that I may welcome you," he said, with his smooth, caressing voice.

"What travels?"

"Ah! If I knew! If I knew where your thoughts are wandering while I talk to you, I could go with you, I could follow you in your fantasies. Instead, I speak, and you don't listen to me. I say serious things to you in a jesting tone, and you understand neither the seriousness nor the joke. You leave me here alone, whilst you roam—who knows where? And I, a humble mortal, without visions, without imagination, I can only wait for your return, my dear lady."

If, indeed, there was a certain poetic quality in what he said, there was a deeper poetry still in the tenderness and sweetness of his voice. He sat in front of her, gazing into her face, as if he could not tear himself from that contemplation. She sometimes lowered her eyes, sometimes turned them away, sometimes fixed them upon a page of Adolphe, which she had kept in her hands. If his gaze embarrassed her, however, his soft voice seemed to calm her nerves. She listened to it, scarcely understanding his words, as one listens to a vague pleasant music.

"Doesn't it bore you to wait?" she asked.

"I am never bored here. When I have this lovely sight before my eyes."

"What sight?" she inquired, ingenuously.

"Your person, my dear lady."

"But you can't always be looking at me," she said, laughing, trying to turn the conversation to a jest.

"That's a fatal misfortune, as they say in novels. I should like to pass my whole life near to you. Instead, I'm obliged to pass it among a lot of people who are utterly indifferent to me. A great misfortune!"

"It's not your fault," she said, with a faint smile.

"It certainly isn't. But that doesn't console me. Shall we try it—passing our lives together? One can overcome misfortunes. Our whole lives—that will mean many years."

"But I am married," she said, feeling that the talk was becoming dangerous.

"Oh, that's nothing," he cried emphatically.

"Caracciolo, I believe you've found the means to see me no more. What do you want from me?"

"Nothing, dear lady, nothing," he answered, with genuine grief in his face and voice.

"Then you ought not to risk destroying one of your friendships. What would Cesare have said if he had heard you for the last half hour?"

"Oh, nothing. He couldn't have heard me, you know, because he's never here."

"Sometimes he is," she said, with sudden emotion.

"Never, never. Don't tell pious fibs."

"He's always here."

"In your heart. I know it. It's an agreeable home for him, the more so because he can find others of the same sort wherever he goes."

"What are you saying?"

"One of my usual vulgarities. I'm speaking ill of your husband."

"Then be quiet."

But to soften the severity of this command, she offered him a box of cigarettes.

"Thanks for your charity," he said.

And he began to smoke, looking at one of her slippers of lilac satin embroidered with silver, which escaped from beneath her train. She sat with her elbow on the table, thinking. It was midnight. In a few minutes Caracciolo would be gone; and Cesare couldn't delay much longer about coming home.

Luigi Caracciolo seemed to divine her thoughts.

"After this cigarette, I will leave you. I'm afraid I've given you no great idea of my wit."

"I detest witty men."

"Small harm! I hope you believe, though, that I have a heart."

"I believe it."

"All the better. One day or another you will remember what I have said to you this evening, and understand it."

"Perhaps," she said, vaguely.

"You had a very happy inspiration, to dress in lilac. It's such a tender colour. That's the tint one sees in the sunsets at Venice. Have you ever been at Venice?"

"Never."

"That's a pity. It's a place full of soft tears. One can make a provision of them there, to last a life-time. Trifling loves become deep at Venice, and deep loves become indestructible. Good-night."

"Good-night."

She gave him her hand, like a white flower issuing from the satin of her sleeve. He touched it lightly with his lips, and went away.

Not for a moment during her conversation with Luigi Caracciolo had her husband been absent from Anna's mind. And all that the young man said, which constantly implied if it did not directly mention love, had but intensified her one eternal thought.

It was now half-past twelve. She rose and rang the bell; and her maid appeared.

They left the drawing-room and went into Anna's bedroom, which was lighted by a big lamp with a shade of pink silk.

Her maid helped her to undress, thinking that she was going to bed; but presently Anna asked for her tea-gown of cream-coloured crape, and put it on, as if she meant to sit up. She had loosened her hair, and it fell down her back in a single rich black tress.

The maid asked if she might go to bed. Anna said, "Yes." Cesare had given orders that no servant should ever sit up for him; he had a curiously wrought little key, a master-key, which he wore on his watch-chain, and which opened every door in his house. Thus he could come in at any hour of the night he liked, without being seen or heard. The maid went softly away, closing the door behind her.

Anna sat down in an easy chair, beside her bed. She still had the volume of Adolphe in her hand. She sat still there, while she heard the servant moving about the apartment, shutting the windows. Then all was silent.

Anna got up, and opened the doors between her room and her husband's. So she would be able to hear him when he returned. He could not delay much longer. He had promised her to come home early; he knew that she would wait for him. And, as she had been doing through the whole evening, but with greater intensity than ever, she longed for the presence of her loved one. Was not every thing empty and colourless when he was away? And this evening he had been so merry and so kind. His promise resounded in her soul like a solemn vow. She thrilled with tremulous emotion. The softness of the spring night entered into her and exhilarated her.

She lay back in her easy-chair, with closed eyes, and dreamed of his coming. She felt an immense need of him, to have him there beside her, to hold his hand in hers, to lean her head upon his shoulder in sweet, deep peace, listening to the beating of his heart, supported by his arms, while his breath fell upon her hair, her eyelids, her lips. A dream of love; vivid and languid, full of delicate ardour and melancholy desire.

She surprised herself murmuring his name. "Cesare, Cesare," she said, trembling with love at the sound of her own voice.

Suddenly it seemed to her that she heard a noise in her husband's room. Then he had come!

Swiftly, like a flying shadow, she crossed the passage, and looked in. Only silence and darkness! She had been mistaken. She leaned on the frame of the door, and remained thus for a long moment.

Slowly she returned to her own room, thinking that "early" must mean for a man of late habits like Cesare two o'clock in the morning. That was it! He would arrive at two.

She took up Adolphe, thinking to divert herself with reading, and thus to moderate her impatience. She opened the book towards the middle, where the passionate struggle between Ellenore and Adolphe is shown in all its sorrowful intensity. And from the dry, precise words, the hard, effective style, the brief and austere narrative, which was like the cry of a soul destroyed by scepticism, Anna derived an impression of fright. Ah, in her sincere, youthful faith, what a horror she had of that modern malady which corrupts the mind, depraves the conscience, and kills whatever is most noble in the soul! What could she know, poor, simple, ignorant woman, whose only belief, whose only law, whose only hope was love—what could she know of the spiritual diseases of those who have seen too much, who have loved too much, who have squandered the purest treasures of their feelings? What could she know of the desolating torture of those souls who can no longer believe in anything, not even in themselves, and who have lost their last ideal? She could know nothing; and yet a terror assailed her. Perhaps Cesare, her husband, was like Adolphe, who could never more be happy, who could never more give happiness to others. She shuddered, and threw the book aside, in great distress.

She got up mechanically, and took from a table a rosary of sandal wood, which a Missionary Friar had brought from Jerusalem.

She had never been regular in her devotions; her imagination was too fervid. But religious feelings seemed sometimes to sweep in upon her in great waves of divine love. A child of the South, she only prayed when moved by some strong pain, for which she could find no earthly relief. She forgot to pray when she was happy. Now she pressed her rosary to her lips, and began to repeat the long and poetical Litany, which Domenico de Guzman has dedicated to the Virgin. Ingenuously enough, she thought that in this way the time would pass more rapidly, two o'clock would strike, and Cesare would arrive. But she endeavoured in vain to fix her mind upon her orisons; it flew away, before her, to her meeting with her Beloved; and though her lips pronounced the words of the Ave and the Pater, their sense escaped her. Once or twice she paused for a few minutes, and then went on, confused, beseeching Heaven's pardon for her slight attention.

When her rosary was finished, it was two precisely. Now Cesare would come.

She could not control her nervousness. She took her lamp and went into her husband's room: she placed the lamp on the writing-desk, and seated herself in one of the leather arm-chairs. She felt easier here; the austerity of the big chamber, with its dark furniture, told her that her husband's soul was above the sterile and frivolous pleasures in which he had already lost the best part of the night.

The air still smelt of cigarette smoke. Here and there a point of metal gleamed in the lamplight. On a table lay a pair of gloves; they had been worn that day, and they retained the form of his hands. She kissed them, and put them into the bosom of her gown.

But where was Cesare?

She began to pace backwards and forwards, the train of her dress following her like a white wave. Why did he not come home? It was late, very late. There were no balls on for that night; no social function could detain him till this hour.

Where was Cesare? Ah, Cesare, Cesare, Cesare, her dear love, where was he? She passed her hands over her burning forehead.

All at once, looking out into the night, she noticed in the distance the windows of Cesare's club, brilliantly lighted. Then a sudden peace came to her. He would be there, playing, talking, enjoying the company of his friends, forgetful of the time. It was an old habit of his, and old habits are so hard to break. She remained at the window of his room, with her eyes fixed upon the windows of his club; the light that shone from them was the pole-star of her heart.

She opened the window and went out upon the balcony.

Presently two men issued from the club-house, stood for a moment chatting together at the entrance, and then moved off towards the Chiaia. Ah, she thought, the company at the Club was beginning to break up; at last Cesare would come. At the end of ten minutes, four men came out together. These also chatted together for a minute, then separated, two going towards the Riviera, two entering the Via Vittoria. By-and-by one man came out alone, and advanced directly towards Dias' house. This, this surely would be he.

The man was looking up, towards the balcony.

"Good-night, Signora Anna," said the voice of Luigi Caracciolo.

"Good-night," she murmured, faint with disappointment.

Caracciolo had stopped, and was leaning on the railing, gazing up at her. Anna drew back out of sight.

"Good-night, Anna," he repeated, very softly.

She did not answer.

Caracciolo went off, slowly, slowly; stopping now and then to look back.

She turned her eyes again upon the windows of the club, but they were quite dark; the lights had been extinguished.

So Caracciolo had been the last to leave; and Cesare was not there!

She felt terribly cold, all at once. Her teeth chattered. She went back into the room, shivering, and had scarcely strength enough to shut the window. She fell upon a chair, exhausted. The clock struck. It was half-past three.

And now a hideous suspicion began to torture her. There were no balls to-night, no receptions, no functions. The club was shut up. The cafÉs were shut up. All talking, eating, drinking, gambling, were over for the night. The life of the night was spent. Everybody had gone home to bed. Then where was Cesare? Cesare, her husband, was with a woman! And jealousy began to gnaw her heart. With a woman; that was certain. The truth burned her soul. He could be nowhere else than with a woman. The truth rang in her heart like a trumpet-blast. Mechanically she put her fingers to her ears to shut out the words—with a woman, with a woman.

But what woman?

She knew nothing of her husband's secrets, nothing of his past or present loves.

She was a mere stranger whom he tolerated, not a friend, not a confidant. She was a troublesome bond upon him, an obstacle to his pleasures, an interference with his habits. No doubt there were older bonds, stronger ties, that kept him from her; or it might be the mere force of a passing fancy. But for what woman, for what woman? In vain she tried to give the woman a name, a living form.

Oh, certainly not a lady, not a woman of honourable rank and reputation; not the Contessa d'Alemagna.

Who then? Who then?

How much time passed, while she sat there, in a convulsion of tears and sobs, prey to all the anguish of jealousy?

The day broke; a greenish, livid light entered the room.

The handle of the door turned. Cesare came in. He was very pale, with dull, weary eyes. He had a cigarette in his mouth; his lips were blue. The collar of his overcoat was turned up; his hands were in his pockets. He looked at his wife indifferently, coldly, as if he did not recognise her.

She rose. Her face was ashen. Her capacity for feeling was exhausted.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

He threw away his cigarette, and took off his hat. How old and used up he looked, with his hair in disorder, his cheeks sunken from lack of sleep.

"I was waiting for you," she said.

"All night?"

"All night."

"You have great patience."

He opened the door.

"Good-bye, Anna."

"Good-bye, Cesare."

And she returned to her own room.