"What profundity in her wonderful silence!"
She seemed to be repeating words suggested to her by mysterious genii, and, while the poet listened to her, he fancied that he himself had been about to speak them. A profound tremor shook him, as if he were witnessing a miracle.
"And her eyes?" he demanded, agitated. "Of what color were her eyes?"
She made no reply.
The marble lines of her face changed slightly, as if under a wave of suffering. A furrow appeared between her eyes.
"Her eyes," continued the revealer, "were as sweet and sad as two violets."
She paused again, panting, as one who suffers in a dream. Her lips were dry, her temples moist.
"Thus they were before they closed forever!"
Sometimes Stelio came to his friend's house breathless and excited, as if pursued by an Erinni. La Foscarina never questioned him, but her personality soothed that restless spirit.