'And if curiosity be not enough, Messer Leonardo?' she said slowly, an unwonted fire in her eyes; 'if something further, a profounder feeling, were needed to lay bare the cavern's last and greatest treasure?'
And she turned toward him a smile he had never seen before.
'What more is needed?' he asked.
She was silent. Just then a slender blinding ray shone through a rent in the curtain; the dimness vanished; the mystery, the clear shadows, tender as distant music, fled.
'You leave to-morrow?' she said suddenly.
'No. To-night.'
'I, too, am soon departing.'
The artist looked at her steadily, attempted speech, and said nothing. He devined her meaning; that she would not stay in Florence without him.
'Messer Francesco,' she continued, 'goes presently for three months to Calabria. I have asked him to take me with him.'
He frowned. This sunshine was not to his mind; the fountain had been ghostly white; now it had taken the rainbow hues of life. Leonardo felt that he was returning to life, timid, weak, pitiable.