He looked at her keenly.
"You suffer," he said, with a depth of pity in his tone that made the woman turn pale. "Do you too feel this terror?"
She looked around with the anxiety of one pursued, and fancied she saw a thousand ominous phantoms rising from the earth.
"Those statues!" said Stelio, in a tone that changed them in her eyes into witnesses of her own wasting life.
The country around them was as deserted and silent as if its former inhabitants had been gone for centuries, or were sleeping in graves new-made the day before.
"Do you wish to return? The boat is still there."
She seemed not to hear.
"Speak, Foscarina!"
"Let us go—let us go on," she replied. "Wherever we may go our fate will not change."
Her body swayed to the slow, lulling roll of the wheels, and she feared to interrupt it; she shrank from the least effort, the smallest fatigue, overcome by heavy inertia. Her face was like the delicate veil of ash that covers a live coal, hiding its consumption.