Her voice was so changed that Stelio broke off his laughter and his sport, withdrew his arm, and rose to his feet. She could not see him; the leafy, impenetrable wall was between them again.
"Take me away from this place. I cannot bear any more. My strength is gone. I suffer."
He could find no words to comfort her. The simultaneous coincidence of his recent thought of Donatella, and her sudden divination of it, impressed him deeply.
"Wait a little! I will try to find the way out. I will call some one."
"Are you going away?"
"Don't be afraid! There is no danger."
But while he spoke thus to reassure her, he felt the inaneness of his words—the incongruity between that laughable adventure and the obscure emotion born of a far different cause. And now he too felt the strange ambiguity whereby the trifling event appeared in two confusing aspects: a suppressed desire to laugh persisted under his concern for her, so that his perturbation was new to him, like wild agitations born of extravagant dreams.
"Do not go away!" she implored, a prey to her hallucinations. "Perhaps we can meet there at the next turning. Let us try. Take my hands."
Through an opening, he took her hands; he started on touching them; they were icy cold.
"Foscarina, what is the matter? Are you really ill? Wait! I will try to break through."