And lifting up the Italian beauty, he opened his arms from off his heaving breast on which Lorenza enclasped herself as the ivy girdles the oak.
Another life commenced for the magician, unknown to him previously in his active, multiple, perplexed existence. For three days he felt no more anger, apprehension or jealousy; he heard nothing of plots, politics or conspiracies. Beside Lorenza he forgot the whole world. This strange love threw him into felicity composed of stupor and delirium, soaring over humanity, as it were, full of misery and intoxication, a phantom love—for he knew he could at a sign or a word change the sweet mistress into an implacable enemy.
Singularly, she remained of astonishing lucidity as far as regarded himself; but he wanted to learn if this were not sheer sympathy; if she became dark outside of the circle traced by his love—if the eyes of this new Eve clearly seeing in Eden, would not be this blind when expelled from Paradise.
He dared not make a decisive test, but he hoped, and hope was the starry crown to his happiness.
With gentle melancholy Lorenza said to him:
“Acharat, you are thinking of another woman than me, a woman of the North, with fair hair and blue eyes—Acharat, this woman walks beside you and me in your mind. Shall I tell you her name?”
“Yes,” he said in wonderment.
“Wait—it is Andrea.”
“Right. Yes, you can read my mind; one last fear troubles me. Can you still see through space though blocked by material obstacles?”
“Try me.”