"And she said nothing, Luigi?" The story seemed like some horrible dream.
"No, nor shed a tear. All she did was to keep repeating—'Francesco! Francesco! Francesco!' I got there at daylight this morning and have been there ever since. I told her I was coming for you. She was sitting in a chair when I went in,—bolt up; she had not been in her bed. She seems like one in a trance—looked at me and held out her hand. I tried to talk to her and tell her it was all a lie, but she only answered—'Ask Francesco,—it is all Francesco,—ask Francesco.' Hurry, Signore,—we will miss her if we go to her house. We will go at once to our canal and wait for her. They have heard nothing down there at San Giuseppe, and you can talk to her without being interrupted, and then I'll get hold of Vittorio. This way, Signore."
I had hardly reached the water landing of my canal ten minutes later when I caught sight of her, coming directly toward me, head up, her lips tight-set, her black shawl curving and floating with every movement of her body—(nothing so wonderfully graceful and nothing so expressive of the wearer's moods as these black shawls of the Venetians). She wore her gala dress—the one in which she was married—white muslin with ribbons of scarlet, her wonderful hair in a heap above her forehead, her long gold earrings glinting in the sunshine. All the lovelight had died out of her eyes. In its place were two deep hollows rimmed about by dark lines, from out which flashed two points of cold steel light.
I sprang from my gondola and held out my hand:
"Sit down, Loretta, and let me talk to you."
She stopped, looked at me in a dazed sort of way, as if she was trying to focus my face so as to recall me to her memory, and said in a determined way:
"No, let me pass. It's too late for all that, Signore. I am—"
"But wait until you hear me."
"I will hear nothing until I find Francesco."
"You must not go near him. Get into the gondola and let Luigi and me take you home."