Aldo knew little, but he knew the value of silence. He knew the lure of the hortus conclusus—the Closed Garden into which one has not stepped. Nancy stood outside its gates and dreamed of its unseen roses, of fountains and shadowy paths and water-lilied lakes. For Aldo was a closed garden.
Aldo also knew the value of his eyes—deep, passion-lit eyes, that looked, Clarissa said, as if he had rubbed the lids with burnt cork to darken them. When he raised them suddenly, and looked straight at Nancy, she felt a little shock of pleasure that took her breath away. Little by little, day by day, those eyes drew Nancy's spirit to their depths—she leaned over them as over an abyss. In them she sunk and drowned her soul.... Then, when from his eyes her own passionate purity gazed back at her, she thought she saw his soul and not her own.
The Book cried in her now and then, but she stifled its voice and whispered: "Wait!"
And The Book waited.
One day in the garden Aldo spoke to Clarissa. She was in the hammock pretending to read.
"Clarissa, I am twenty-five years old."
"Vlan! ça y est!" said Clarissa, dropping her book. Then she drew a deep breath, and her nostrils turned a little pale; but the superposed roses of her cheeks bloomed on, independent of her ebbing blood and sickening heart.
"I am penniless," continued Aldo, picking a piece of grass and chewing it; "and Carlo has given me to understand that he can exist without me if he tries very hard."
Clarissa sat up. "When? What did he say? Does he ... has he ... did he mean anything?"
Aldo shook his comely head. "Carlo never means anything. But I shall have to go back to—to the Texas ranch, or marry."