She knew that Andrea had been this woman's lover; she knew that her name was Elena; she knew also that she was the Elena of the inscription—'Ich lebe!' Goethe's distich rang painfully in her heart. That lyric cry gave her the measure of Andrea's love for this most beautiful woman. He must have loved her boundlessly!
Walking slowly under the trees, she recalled Elena's appearance in the concert-hall and the ill-disguised uneasiness of the old lover. She remembered her own terrible agitation one evening at the Austrian Embassy when the Countess Starnina said to her, seeing Elena pass by—'What do you think of Lady Heathfield? She was, and is still, I fancy, a great flame of our friend Sperelli's.'
'Is still, I fancy.' What tortures in a single sentence! She followed her rival persistently with her eyes through the throng, and more than once her gaze met that of the other, sending a nameless shiver through her. Later on in the evening, when they were introduced to one another by the Baroness Bockhorst, in the middle of the crowd, they merely exchanged an inclination of the head. And that perfunctory salutation had been repeated on the rare occasions on which Maria Ferrès had joined in any social function.
Why should these doubts and suspicions, beaten down and stifled under the flood of her passion, rise up again now with so much vehemence? Why had she not the strength to repress them or put them away from her altogether? The least touch brought them up to the surface as lively as ever.
Her distress and unhappiness increased with every moment. Her heart was not satisfied; the dream that had risen up within her on that mystical morning under the flowering trees in sight of the sea, had not come true. All that was purest and fairest in that love had remained down there in the sequestered glades in the symbolical forest that bloomed and bore fruit perpetually in contemplation of the Infinite.
She stood and leaned against the parapet that looks towards San Sebastianello. The ancient oaks, their foliage so dark as almost to seem black, spread a sombre artificial roof over the fountain. There were great rents in their trunks filled up with bricks and mortar like the breaches in a wall. Oh, the young arbutus-trees all radiant and breathing in the light! The fountain, dripping from the higher into the lower basin, moaned at intervals, like a heart that fills with anguish and then overflows in a torrent of tears; oh, the melody of the Hundred Fountains in the laurel avenue! The city lay as dead, as if buried under the ashes of an invisible volcano, silent and funereal as a city ravaged by the plague, enormous, shapeless, dominated by the cupola that rose out of its bosom like a cloud. Oh, the sea, the tranquil sea!
Her uneasiness increased. An obscure menace emanated from these things. She was seized with the feeling of terror she had already experienced on so many occasions. Across her pious spirit there flashed once more the thought of punishment.
Nevertheless, the recollection that her lover awaited her, thrilled her to the heart's core; at the thought of his kisses, his caresses, his mad endearments, her blood was on fire and her soul grew faint. The thrill of passion triumphed over the fear of God. She turned her steps towards her lover's house with all the palpitating emotion of her first rendezvous.
'At last!' cried Andrea, gathering her into his arms, and drinking the breath from her panting lips.
He took one of her hands and held it against his breast.