Blithe and graceful, he had let Donovan go, and had taken between his hands the serpentine head of the slayer of gazelles; he gazed into those deep eyes, wherein lurked nostalgia for the silent, tropical land; for tents unfolded after a march toward some deceiving mirage; for fires kindled for the evening meal under stars that seemed to throb in the waves of the wind just above the summits of the palm-trees.
La Foscarina had entered into that physical enchantment of love whereby the limits of one's being seem to dilate and be fused in the air, so that every word and movement of the beloved object brings a feeling of happiness sweeter than any caress. Her lover had taken between his hands the head of Ali-Nour, but she felt the touch of those hands upon her own brow. He was gazing into Ali-Nour's eyes, but she could feel that gaze deep in her own soul.
Had he not touched the obscurest mystery of her being? Did he not compel her to feel within herself the animal depths whence had sprung the unexpected revelation of her tragic genius, moving and maddening the multitude as would a splendid spectacle of sea and sky, a gorgeous sunrise, a tremendous tempest. When he had spoken of the trembling sloughi, had he not divined the natural analogies whence she drew the power of expression that amazed peoples and poets? It was because she had re-discovered the Dionysian sense of Nature as a naturalizer, the antique fervor of instinctive and creative energies, the enthusiasm of the multiform god emerging from the fermentation of all sap, that she appeared so new and so great on the stage. Sometimes she felt within herself something like an immanence of the miracle which in the mystic past swelled with divine milk the breasts of the Mænads at the approach of the hungry young panthers.
Stelio began again to imitate the guttural call of the kennel-keeper. The dogs grew more excited; their eyes brightened again; the tense muscles swelled under the coats—tawny, black, white, gray, spotted; the long haunches were curved like bows ready to hurl into space those bodies dry and slender, like a quiver-full of arrows.
"There, Donovan, there!"
Stelio pointed to a reddish-gray object in the grass at the end of the garden; it looked somewhat like a crouching hare with flattened ears. The imperious voice deceived the hesitating hounds, and it was beautiful to see the slender, vigorous bodies quivering in the sunlight.
"There, Donovan!"
The great tawny dog looked him deep in the eyes, gave a formidable bound toward the imaginary prey, with all the vehemence of his reawakened instinct. He reached the spot in an instant, then stopped, disappointed, followed by the whole pack.
"A gourd! a gourd!" cried the deceiver, with shouts of laughter. "Not even a rabbit. Poor Donovan! He bit only a gourd! Poor Donovan! what humiliation! Take care, Lady Myrta, lest he drown himself in the canal for very shame!"
From the contagion of her lover's gayety, La Foscarina laughed too. Her fawn-tinted gown and the tan coats of the hounds shone in the sunlight against the green clover. Her white teeth, revealed by rippling laughter, graced her mouth with a renewal of youth.