"Foscarina!"
But he dared not detain her longer. He saw the despairing one walk through the zone of sunlight that invaded the basilica like a rushing torrent entering through a door opened by an unknown hand. Behind her the deep golden cavern, with its apostles, martyrs, and sacred beasts, glittered as if the thousand torches of the daylight were pouring in on it.
"I am lost in the depths of sadness.... This violent impulse to revolt against fate, to rush away in search of adventure—to seek.—Who will save my hope? Whence will come a ray of light?... To sing, to sing! But I would sing a song of life at last.... Can you tell me where the Lord of the Flame is at present?"
These words, in a letter from Donatella Arvale, were branded on her eyes and on her soul, with all the characteristics of handwriting, as much alive as the hand that traced them, as throbbing as that impatient pulse. She saw them graved on the stones, outlined on the clouds, reflected in the water, indelible and inevitable as the decrees of Fate.
—Where shall I go? Where shall I go?—Through all her agitation and despair, she had still a sense of the sweetness of things, the warmth of the gilded marbles, the perfume of the quiet air, the languor of human leisure.
She turned with a start, fearing yet hoping to be followed by her lover. She could not see him. She would have fled had she seen him, but her heart ached as if he had sent her to death without a word of recall.—All is over!—
She entered the Porta della Carta, having crossed the threshold. The intoxication of her sorrow led her to the spot where, on a night of glory, the three destinies had come together. She went to the well, the point of that rendezvous. Around that bronze curb the whole life of those few seconds rose again with the distinct outline of reality. There she had said, addressing her companion with a smile: "Donatella, this is the Lord of the Flame!" Then the immense cry of the multitude had drowned her voice, and above their head rose a flight of fiery pigeons against the dark sky.
She approached the well, and gazed into it. She leaned over the curb, saw her own face in the deep mirror, saw in it terror and perdition, saw the motionless Medusa she carried in the depth of her soul. Without realizing it, she repeated the action of him she loved. She saw his face, too, and Donatella's, as she had seen them illumined for an instant that night, close together, lighted by the radiance in the sky.
—Love, love each other! I will go away, I shall disappear! Good-by!—
She closed her eyes at the thought of death, and in that darkness she saw the kind, strong eyes of her mother, infinite as a horizon of peace.—You are at peace, and you await me—you whose life and death were of passion.—