Stelio thrilled as if she had suddenly touched him. Again her expressive mouth called up an ideal figure, which rose as if from a sepulcher before the eyes of the poets, with the color and the breath of life. The ancient viola-player, bereaved, ardent, and sorrowful, like the Orpheus of his own fable, seemed to appear before them.
It was a fiery apparition, more fervid and dazzling than that which had glowed in the harbor of San Marco; a flaming force of life, expelled from the deepest recesses of Nature toward the expectant multitude; a vehement zone of light, flashing out from an interior sky to illumine the most secret depths of human will and desire; an unheard word emerging from original silence to say that which is eternal and eternally ineffable in the heart of the world.
"Who could speak of him, even if he himself should speak to us?" said the Inspirer, agitated, unable to conceal the wave of emotion surging in his soul like the troubled waters of a stormy sea.
He looked at the singer, and beheld her as she had appeared during the pauses, when she stood amid the forest of instruments, white and inanimate as a statue.
But the spirit of Beauty they had called up was to manifest itself through her.
"Ariadne!" Stelio murmured, as if to awaken her from a dream.
She arose without speaking, reached the door, and entered the adjoining room. The light sweep of her skirts and her soft footfall were audible; then they heard the sound of the piano being opened. All were silent and expectant. A musical silence filled the vacant place in the supper-room. A sudden gust of wind shook the flames of the candles and swayed the flowers. Then all became motionless in the anxiety of anticipation.
Lasciatemi morire!
Suddenly their souls were ravished by a power comparable to the strength of the eagle which, in Dante's dream, bore the poet to the region of flame. They burned together in eternal truth; they heard the melody of the world pass through their luminous ecstasy: