'I wrote:—I shall wake up in the house of a friend, to the enjoyment of Francesca's cordial hospitality, in Schifanoja, where the roses are so fair and the cypresses so tall and grand. I shall wake with the prospect of some weeks of peace before me—twenty days or more of congenial intellectual companionship—Alas! where is that promised peace? But the roses, the beautiful roses, were they, too, faithless to their promise? Did I perhaps, on that first night in the loggia, open my heart too wide to their seductive fragrance while Delfina slept? And now the October moon floods the sky with its cold radiance, and through the closed windows I see the sharp points of the cypresses, all sombre and motionless, and on that night they seemed to touch the stars.
'Of that prelude there is but one phrase which finds a place in this sad finale: So many hairs on my head, so many thorns in my woeful destiny!
'I am going, and what will he do when I am far away? What will Francesca do?
'The change in Francesca still remains incomprehensible, inexplicable—an enigma that torments and bewilders me. She loves him—but since when?—and does he know it? Confess, oh, my soul, to this fresh misery. A new poison is added to that already infecting me—I am jealous!
'But I am prepared for any suffering, even the most horrible; I know well the martyrdom that awaits me; I know that the anguish of these days is as nought compared to that which I must face presently, the terrible cross on which my soul must hang. I am ready. All I ask, oh my God, is a respite, a short respite for the hours that remain to me here. To-morrow I shall have need of all my strength.
'How strangely sometimes the incidents of one's life repeat themselves! This evening in the drawing-room, I seemed to have gone back to the 16th of September, when I first played and sang and my thoughts began to occupy themselves with him. This evening again I was seated at the piano, and the same subdued light illumined the room, and next door Manuel and the Marchese were at the card-table. I played the Gavotte of the Yellow Ladies, of which Francesca is so fond and which I heard some one trying to play on the 16th of September while I sat up in my room and began my nightly vigils of unrest.
'He, I am sure, is not asleep. When I came upstairs, he went in and took the Marchese's place opposite to my husband. Are they playing still? Doubtless he is thinking and his heart aches while he plays. What are his thoughts?—what are his sufferings?
'I cannot sleep. I shall go out into the loggia. I want to see if they are still playing, or if he has gone to his room. His windows are at the corner, in the second story.
'It is a clear, mild night. There are lights still in the card-room. I stayed a long time in the loggia looking down at the light shining out against the cypresses and mingling with the silvery whiteness of the moon. I am trembling from head to foot. I cannot describe the almost tragic effect of those lighted windows behind which the two men are playing, opposite to one another, in the deep silence of the night, scarcely broken by the dull sob of the sea. And they will perhaps play on till morning, if he will pander so far to my husband's terrible failing. So we shall all three wake till the dawn and take no rest, each a prey to his own passion.
'But what is he really thinking of? Of what nature is his pain? What would I not give, at this moment, to see him, to be able to gaze at him till the day breaks, even if it were only through the window, in the night dews, trembling, as I do now, from head to foot. The maddest, wildest thoughts rush through my brain like flashes of lightning, dazzling and confusing me. I feel the prompting of some evil spirit to do some rash and irreparable thing, I feel as if I were treading on the edge of perdition. It would, I feel, lift the great weight from my heart, would take this suffocating knot from my throat if, at this moment, I could cry aloud, into the silence of the night, with all the strength of my soul—"I love him! I love him! I love him!"'