"Shall we walk on?" he said, in a low voice. "I know the island well...."
She turned away with him, feeling that perhaps she should not, feeling also that whether it were wrong or right she would have this last, beautiful hour with him.
They went in silence across the lawns to the flagged walk behind the Palazzo, which leads, broad and stately, set with shallow steps, beneath an avenue of ilex trees. The dark, pointed leaves made a gothic fret-work against the saffron of the sky.
"Ladies in Genoa velvets and silk gowns embroidered with golden castles, like the gown of poor Isabella," murmured Sophy. "I see them moving on before me—with white peacocks mincing after.... There.... Don't you see them, too? This walk is haunted...."
"It will be haunted ... when I return to it ... alone...." said Amaldi.
She tried to think of some answer. She could not. Yet the silence must be broken. Silence had such a terrible eloquence of its own.
"I ... I shall come back some day," she said at last. It was as if the words sprang of their own volition. Yet as she uttered them a feeling leaped also within her. She felt sure, sure that she would come back some day—that he and she would be walking here together—that all would be different—that they would say to each other: "Do you remember that other evening when we walked here?"
"So you feel that, too?" he said, in that same low voice. And now he was looking into her eyes steadily, and there was exultation in this look.
Here the Marchesa called them. She was walking briskly towards them, holding up her little watch on its jewelled chain, stopping where she was.
"Time to go!" she called. As they joined her, she said vexedly: "That oca of a woman kept me standing there till a moment since—I'm glad Marco thought of taking you on, my dear. You wouldn't have had time for even a peep, otherwise."