Then, with a return of his boyish vanity, he thought of the eyes of the unknown women who would see him that evening for the first time.
"To the Hotel Danieli," La Foscarina said to the boatman.
While the dentellated iron of the prow swung around on the water, with a slow, animal-like movement, each felt a sadness different but equally painful at leaving behind them the infinite silence of the estuary, already overcome by darkness and death, and being compelled to return toward the magnificent and tempting city, whose canals, like the veins of a full-blooded woman, began to burn with the fever of night.
They were quiet for some time, absorbed by their interior agitation, which shook each heart to it depths. And all things around them exalted the power of life in the man who wished to attract to himself the universe in order not to die, and in the woman, who would have thrown her oppressed soul to the flames in order to die pure.
Both started at the unexpected sound of the salute at the lowering of the flag on board a man-of-war anchored before the gardens. At the summit of the black mass they saw the tricolored flag slide down the staff and fold itself up, like a heroic dream that suddenly vanishes. For a moment the silence seemed deeper, and the gondola glided into darker shadows, grazing the side of the armed colossus.
"Do you know that Donatella Arvale who is to sing in Ariadne?" said Stelio suddenly.
"She is the daughter of the great sculptor, Lorenzo Arvale," La Foscarina replied, after an instant of hesitation. "I have no dearer friend than she—and in fact she is my guest at present. You will meet her at my house this evening, after the festival."
"Donna Andriana spoke to me of her last night as a prodigy. She said that the idea of resurrecting Ariadne had come to her on hearing Donatella Arvale sing divinely the air: Come mai puoi—Vedermi piangere? We shall have some divine music at your house, Perdita. Oh, how I long to hear it! Below there, in my solitude, for months and months, I hear only the music of the sea, which is too terrible, and my own music, which is too tumultuous."
The bells of San Marco gave the signal for the Angelus, and their powerful notes spread in great waves of sound over the water, vibrating among the masts of the vessels, and creeping out upon the infinite reach of the lagoon. From San Giorgio Maggiore, San Giorgio dei Greci, San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, San Giovanni in Bragora, and San Moisé, from the Salute, the Redentore, and beyond, over the entire domain of the Evangelista, to the distant towers of the Madonna dell' Orto, San Giobbe and Sant' Andrea, tongues of bronze responded, mingling in one great chorus, seeming to extend over the silent stones and waters a single immense and invisible dome of metal, the vibration of which might almost reach the first sparkling stars. Those sacred voices seemed to lend to the City of Silence an ideal and infinite grandeur.
"Can you still pray?" said Stelio in a softened voice, looking at the woman who, with eyes downcast, and hands clasped on her knees, seemed absorbed in a silent orison.