The Flame

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

The little walled islet passed before them, with its marble Madonna, perpetually admiring her reflection in the water, like a nymph.

"Why are you so sweet, my beloved? I never have seen you like this before. I know not where I am with you to-day. I cannot find words to tell you with what a sense of melody your presence inspires me. You are here beside me, I can hold your hand, yet you are diffused in the horizon, you yourself are the horizon, blended with the waters, with the islands, with the hills. When I was speaking just now, it seemed that each syllable created in you infinitely dilating circles, like those round that leaf just fallen from the gold-leaved tree. Is it true? Tell me that it is. Oh, look at me!"

He felt himself enveloped in this woman's love as by the air and the light; he breathed in that soul as in a distinct element, receiving from it an ineffable fulness of life as if a stream of mysterious things were flowing from her and from the glory of the daylight at the same time, and pouring itself into his heart. The desire to make some return for the happiness she gave him lifted him to an almost religious height of gratitude, and suggested to him words of thanks and of praise which he would have spoken had he been kneeling before her in the shadows. But the splendor of sky and sea around them was so great that he could only be as silent as she. And for both this was a moment of marvelous communion in the light; it was a journey brief yet immense, in which both traversed the dizzy distances they had within themselves.

The boat reached the shore of Fusina. They roused themselves, and gazed at each other with dazzled eyes.

—Does he love me, then?—

Hope and pain revived in the woman's heart. She did not doubt the sincerity of her beloved, nor that his words expressed the ardor of his heart. She knew how absolutely he abandoned himself to every wave of emotion, how incapable he was of deception or of falsehood. More than once she had heard him utter cruel truths with the same feline, flexible grace that some men adopt when they wish to appear charming. She knew well the direct, limpid gaze which sometimes became hard and icy, but which never was otherwise than straight; but she knew also the rapidity and marvelous diversity of emotion and thought that rendered his spirit unseizable. There was always in him something flexible and vigorous that suggested to the actress the double and diverse image of flame and of water. And it was this man she wished to fix, to captivate, to possess! There was always in him an unlimited ardor of life, a sense of euphoria, or joy in existence, as if every second were the supreme instant, and he were about to tear himself from the pleasure and pain of living, as from the tears and embraces of a last farewell. And it was for this insatiable avidity that she wished to remain the only nourishment!

What was she to him, if not an aspect of that "life of the thousand and thousand faces," toward which the poet's desire, according to one of his own images, continually shook all its thyrsi? For him she was a theme for visions and inventions, like the hills, the woods, the storms. He absorbed mystery and beauty from her as from all forms of the universe. Even now he had withdrawn his thoughts from her, and was occupied with a new quest; his changeful, ingenuous eyes sought for some miracle to marvel at and adore.

She looked at him, but he did not turn his face toward her; he was studying the damp, foggy region through which they were driving slowly. She sat beside him, feeling herself deprived of her strength, no longer capable of living in and for herself, of breathing with her own breath, of following a thought that was unknown to her beloved, hesitating even in her enjoyment of natural objects that he had not pointed out.

Her life seemed to be alternately dissolving and condensing itself. An instant of intensity would pass, and then she waited for the next, and between them she was conscious of nothing save that time was flying, the lamp was flickering, the body was fading, and that all things were perishing, dying.

"My dear, my friend," said Stelio, suddenly turning and taking her hand, impelled by an emotion that had overcome him, "why did we come to these places? They seem very sweet, but they are full of terror."