After a moment they saw each other again in a lucid way. The voices of the guests in the garden were wafted to their ears, and an indistinct clamor from the far-off canal rose from time to time.
"Well?" demanded the young man feverishly, after that burning kiss of body and soul.
The lady bent to lift a fallen pomegranate from the grass. The fruit was ripe; it had burst open in its fall and now poured out its blood from the wound it had received. With the vision of the fruit-laden boat, the pale islet, and the field of asphodels, to the impassioned woman's mind returned the words of the Inspirer: "This is my body.... Take, eat!"
"Well?"
"Yes!"
With a mechanical movement she crushed the fruit in her hand, as if she wished to expel all its juice, which trickled in a stream over her wrist. She trembled, as the glacial wave rushed over her anew.
"Go away when the others go, but then—return! I will wait for you at the gate of the Gradenigo garden."
She trembled still, partly from terror, a prey to an invincible power. As by a flash of light, again he saw her reclining, at rest, panting like a Mænad after the dance. They gazed at each other, but could not bear the fierce light of each other's eyes. They parted.
She went in the direction of the voices of the poets who had exalted her ideal power.