"Now that the plan of your work is finished," said La Foscarina, beginning again her gentle persuasion, though her heart trembled in her breast, "you will need peace and quiet for your labor upon it. Have you not always worked best at your home? In no other place will you be able to soothe the restless anxiety that possesses you. I know it well."
"That is true," he replied. "When the yearning for glory seizes us, we believe that the conquest of art must be like the siege of a fortification, and that trumpets and shouts accompany the courageous assault; while in reality the only work that is of real value is that which has been developed in austere silence—work performed with slow, indomitable perseverance, in hard, pure solitude. Nothing is of any value save the complete abandonment of soul and body to the Idea which we desire to establish among men as a permanent and dominating force."
"Ah, you know it, too!"
The woman's eyes were filled with tears again, at the sound of those inexorable words, in which was expressed the depth of virile passion, the heroic necessity of mental domination, the firm determination to surpass himself and to force his destiny without flinching.
"Yes, you know it well!"
And she was thrilled, as one that beholds a noble spectacle; and, contemplating that embodied force of will, all else appeared vain to her. The tears she had felt in her eyes when he had brought her the flowering branch now seemed mean and weakly effeminate in comparison with those that in this moment welled up and were alone worthy to be kissed away by her friend.
"Ah, well, then—go back to your sea, to your own countryside, to your own home. Light your lamp once more with the oil of your own olives."
Stelio's lips were closely compressed, and a deep frown wrinkled his brow.
"The dear sister will come to your side again to lay a blade of grass on the difficult page."
He bent his brow, which was clouded with a thought.