"Yes," said Amaldi, "he really merged his private self in the self of humanity. Buddha was not more a Buddhist in that respect than Cavour was."
"And you will stay here this winter, and tell America something of him?"
"I think so ... yes."
It solved for him the riddle of being longer near her without causing comment.
"Ah," said Sophy, "that will be something to look forward to."
She was utterly unaware of how much this sentence and the tone in which she said it revealed to Amaldi.
There was, then, an emptiness in her life. But the more that Amaldi realised the sort of existence she now led, the more he felt convinced that even love could not have compensated her for such surroundings. He knew her latest book of poems almost by heart. Their exaltation of spirit had made him feel when he read them that he had offered his hot, human love to one of those women who are by nature Vestals.
He, too, had been stirred by that cry, "I am the Wind's, and the Wind is mine." But with him it had been the cold thrill of appeased jealousy. "No mortal lover" would possess what had been denied him. There was a bleak joy in this thought. Then had come the news of her second marriage.
But in this marriage he now felt that both the poet and the woman suffered.