“She’s married.”
The silence was broken by her taking my hand. She took it with a sudden gesture and, bowing her head, kissed it. “Poor Dante,” she whispered.
I rose from the sofa and lit the lamp. Kneeling by my trunk, I blunderingly recommenced my packing. From the window came a muffled, choking sound. Perhaps she was trying not to sob. I had never seen her so gentle as just now. My mind ran back over the long road we had traveled. The Fiesole I had seen was a wild, mad girl, provoking, charming, inconsiderate as a child and frolicsome as the mad spring weather—but rarely tender. I wondered what other secrets of kindness lay hidden in her personality. She was the sort of woman a man might live with for twenty years and still be discovering. She kept one restless by the very richness of her character. It was true what she had said: many men might love her; few would desire to marry her.
She rose from the lounge. Standing between me and the lamp, her long shadow fell across me. I looked up and saw that her lashes glistened. Against the background of the white-paneled room she looked supremely lovely—a tall, gold daffodil. She held her head high on her splendid shoulders with a gesture of proud despair. And yet an appearance of meekness clothed her. Her face had an expression which a young girl’s often has, but which hers had seldom—an expression which was maternal. She watched my clumsy attempts to squeeze my clothes into smaller compass. Then she came and knelt beside me, saying, “Let me do it.”
Her swift white hands plied back and forth, re-arranging, smoothing out with deft touches, reaching out for socks to fill the hollows, rectifying my awkwardness. The thought flashed on me that this sensation I had was one of the sacred things of marriage—a man’s dependence on a woman. As I watched, I imagined the future, if this woman should become a wife to me. But the passion for her was not in me. She was only an emotion. The sight of her made me hungrier, but not for her. I reasoned with myself, saying how many men would desire her. I forced myself to notice the curve of her neck, the way the red-gold curls clustered about her shell-like ears and broad white forehead. I told myself that the best solution for Vi would be that I leave her unembarrassed by marrying Fiesole. But the more I urged matters, the colder grew my emotions. Then my emotions ceased and my observations became entirely mental.
Overhead, strident and uproarious, as if striving to burlesque what should have been chivalrous, the piano thumped and banged; men’s voices smote the night like hammer-strokes on steel, singing,
“Mr. Dooley! Oh, Mr. Dooley!
Mr. Dooley——ooley——ooley——oo.”
“It’s done,” she said. Then, “Where are you going?”
“To Italy.”