'She is asleep now, shaded from the lamp which shines with the soft radiance of the moon. Her face—white with dewy freshness of a white rose, seems half buried in the masses of her dark hair. One would think the eyelids were too delicately transparent to veil the splendour of her eyes. As I lean over her and gaze at her, all the sinister voices of the night are silenced for me, and the silence is measured only by her gentle respiration.
'She feels the vicinity of her mother. The longer I contemplate her, the more does she assume in my eyes the aspect of some ethereal creature, of a being formed of "such stuff as dreams are made of."
'She shall grow up nourished and enwrapped by the flame of my love—of my great, my only love——
'September 24th.—I can form no resolve—I can decide upon no plan of action. I am simply abandoning myself a little to this new sentiment, shutting my eyes to the distant peril, and my ears to the warning voice of conscience, with the shuddering temerity of one who, in gathering violets, ventures too near the edge of a precipice at the foot of which roars a hungry torrent.
'He shall never know anything from my lips, I shall never know anything from his. Our two souls will mount together, for a brief space, to the mountain-tops of the Ideal, will drink side by side at the perennial fountains, and then each go on its separate way, encouraged and refreshed.
'How still the air is this afternoon! The sea has the faint milky-blue tints of the opal, of Murano glass, with here and there a patch like a mirror dimmed by a breath.
'I am reading Shelley, a favourite poet with him, that divine Ariel feeding upon light and speaking with the tongues of angels. It is night——
'September 25th.—Mio Dio! Mio Dio! His voice when he spoke my name—the tremor in it—oh, I thought my heart was breaking in my bosom, and that I must inevitably lose consciousness.—"You will never know," he said—"never know how utterly my soul is yours."
'We were in the avenue of the fountains—I was listening to the sound of the water; but from that moment, I heard nothing more. Everything around me seemed to flee away, carrying my life with it, and the earth to open beneath my feet. I made a superhuman effort to control myself. Delfina's name rose to my lips and I was seized with a wild impulse to fly to her for protection, for safety. Three times I cried that name, but in the intervals my heart ceased to beat and the breath died away upon my lips.
'September 26th.—Was it true? Was it not merely some illusion of my overwrought and distracted spirit? Why should that hour yesterday seem to me so far away, so unreal?