Maria repeated the last line. Then, moved by a delicate inspiration—'Please unfasten my veil,' she said to Andrea.
She leaned her head back slightly so that he might untie the knot, and Andrea's fingers touched her hair—that magnificent hair, in the dense shadow of which he had so often tasted all the delights of his perfidious imagination, evoked the image of her rival.
'Thank you,' she said.
She then drew the veil from before her face and looked at Andrea with eyes that were a little dazed. She looked very beautiful. The shadows round her eyes were darker and deeper, but the eyes themselves burned with a more intense light. Her hair clung to her temples in heavy hyacinthine curls tinged with violet. The middle of her forehead, which was left free, gleamed, by contrast, in moonlike purity. Her features had fined down and lost something of their materiality through stress of love and sorrow.
She wound the veil about the stems of the roses, tied the two ends together with much care, and then buried her face in the flowers, inhaling their perfume. Then she laid them on the simple stone that bears the poet's name engraved upon it. There was an indefinable expression in the gesture, which Andrea could not understand.
As they moved away, he suddenly stopped short, and looking back towards the tower, 'How did you manage to get those roses?' he asked.
She smiled, but her eyes were wet.
'They are yours—those of that snowy night—they have bloomed again this evening. Do you not believe it?'
The evening breeze was rising, and behind the hill the sky was overspread with gold, in the midst of which the purple cloud dissolved, as if consumed by fire. Against this field of light, the serried ranks of the cypresses looked more imposing and mysterious than before. The Psyche at the end of the middle avenue seemed to flush with pale tints as of flesh. A crescent moon rose over the pyramid of Cestius, in a deep and glassy sky, like the waters of a calm and sheltered bay.
They went through the centre avenue to the gates. The gardeners were still watering the plants, and two other men held a velvet and silver pall by the two ends, and were beating it vigorously, while the dust rose high and glittered in the air.