He clasped Maria's ungloved hand in his. The gardens seemed deserted. From the palace of the Accademia came not a sound, not a voice. Clear through the silence, they heard the lisp of the fountain in the middle of the esplanade; the avenues stretched away towards the Pincio, straight and rigid as if enclosed between two walls of bronze, upon which the gilding of the sunset still lingered; the absolute immobility of all things suggested the idea of a petrified labyrinth; the reeds round the basin of the fountain were not less motionless than the statues.
'I feel,' said Donna Maria, half-closing her eyes, 'as if I were on one of the terraces at Schifanoja—far, far away from Rome—alone—with you. When I shut my eyes, I see the sea.'
Born of her love and of the silence, she saw a vision rise up before her and spread wide under the setting sun. Andrea's gaze was upon her; she said no more, but she smiled faintly. As she uttered the two words—'with you'—she closed her eyes, but her mouth seemed suddenly to grow luminous as if on it were concentrated all the splendour veiled by her quivering lids and her eyelashes.
'I feel as if none of these things existed outside of my consciousness, but that you had created them in my soul, for my delight. I am profoundly affected with this illusion each time I stand before some spectacle of beauty and you are at my side.'
The words came slowly, with pauses in between, as if her voice were the halting echo of some other voice imperceptible to the senses, imparting to her words a singular accent, a tone of mystery, revealing that they proceeded from the innermost depths of her heart; they were no longer the ordinary imperfect symbols of thoughts, they were transformed into a more intense means of expression, transcendant, quivering with life, of infinitely ampler signification.
'And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
Killing the sense with passion, sweet as stops
Of planetary music heard in trance.'
Andrea thought of Shelley's lines. He repeated them to Maria, feeling the contagion of her emotion, penetrated by the charm of the hour and the scene.
'Never, in my hours of loftiest spiritual flights, have I attained to such heights. You lift yourself above my sublimest dream, shine resplendent above my most radiant thoughts; you illumine me with a ray that is almost brighter than I can bear.'
She stood up straight and slender against the balustrade, her hands clasping the stone, her head high, her face more pallid than on the memorable morning when they walked beneath the flowering trees. Tears filled her half-closed eyes and glittered upon her lashes, and as she gazed before her, she saw the sky all rosy-red through the mist of her tears.
The sky seemed to rain roses as on that evening in October when the sun, sinking behind the hill at Rovigliano, lit up the deep pools in the pine-wood. The Villa Medici, eternally green and flowerless, received upon the tops of its rigid arboreal walls this gentle rain of innumerable petals showered down from the celestial gardens.