"Ah," said La Foscarina, mastering her agony with a bitterness that convulsed her mouth, "how strong I am! Another time have a care that your wounds are not made so slowly, since my resistance is so slight, my friend."
She saw that blood was dripping from her fingers; she wrapped them in her handkerchief. She looked at the sparkling fragments on the grass.
"The cup is broken! You had praised it too highly. Shall we raise a mausoleum for it here?"
She was very bitter, almost mocking, her lips opening slightly to utter a mirthless laugh. Stelio stood silent, chagrined, his heart full of rancor at beholding the destruction of so beautiful an effort as that perfect cup.
"Let us imitate Nero, since we have already imitated Xerxes!"
She felt even more keenly than he the harshness of her sarcasm, the insincerity of her voice, the malignity of the laugh that was like a muscular spasm. But she was unable to conquer her soul at that moment. She felt a bitter, irresistible necessity to scorn, to devastate, to trample under foot, invaded by a sort of perfidious demon. Every vestige of tenderness and benevolence had vanished, every hope, every illusion. The bitter hatred that lurks under the love of ardent natures was dominant. On the man's face she could discern the same shadow that darkened her own.
"Do I irritate you? Do you wish to return to Venice alone? Would you like to leave the dying season behind you? The tide is falling, but there is always enough water for one who has no intention of returning. Would it suit you to have me try it? Am I not as docile as you could wish?"
She said these insensate things in a hissing tone, and became almost livid, as if suddenly burned by some corroding poison. And Stelio remembered having seen the same mask on her face on a distant day of love, madness and sadness. His heart contracted, then softened.
"Ah, if I have hurt you, I ask for pardon," he said, trying to take her hand and soothe her by a gentle act. "But did we not begin together to approach this matter? Was it not you that"—
She interrupted him, exasperated by his gentleness.