CHAPTER VIII
"TO CREATE WITH JOY!"
Lost! Lost! Now she was lost! She still lived—vanquished, humiliated, as if some one had trampled pitilessly upon her; she still lived, and dawn was breaking, the days were beginning again, the fresh tide was flowing once more into the City Beautiful, and Donatella was still sleeping upon her pure pillow. Into an infinite distance had faded the hour, in reality so short a time before, when she had waited at the gate for her beloved, recognized his step in the funereal silence of the deserted path, and felt her knees weaken as if from a blow, while a strange reverberation rang in her ears. How far-away now seemed that hour! yet the little incidents of her vigil returned to her mind with intensity: the cold iron rail against which she had leaned her head, the sharp, acrid odor that rose from the grass as from a retting-vat, the moist tongue of Lady Myrta's greyhounds that came noiselessly and licked her hands.
"Good-by! Good-by!"
She was lost! He had left her as he would have left some light love, almost with the manner of a stranger, almost impatient even, drawn by the freshness of the dawn, by the freedom of the morning.
"Good-by!"
From her window she perceived Stelio on the bank of the canal; he was inhaling deep breaths of the fresh morning air; then in the perfect calm that reigned over all things, she heard his clear, confident voice calling the gondolier:
"Zorzi!"
The man was asleep in the bottom of his gondola, and his human slumber resembled that of the curved boat that obeyed his movements. Stelio touched him lightly with his foot, and instantly he sprang up, jumped to his place and seized the oar. Man and boat awoke at the same time, as if they had but one body, ready to glide over the water.
"Your servant, Signor!" said Zorzi with a smile, glancing up at the brightening sky. "Sit down, Signor, and I will row."