Stelio leaned over her and closed her lips with a trembling hand.
"No, no, do not say that! You are mad! Hush! hush!"
"It is horrible!" murmured the woman, sinking back on the cushions, unnerved by her agitation, submerged in the bitter wave that had flooded her heart.
But her eyes remained wide open, fixed as two crystal orbs, hard as if they had no lashes, fastened on Stelio. They prevented him from speaking, from denying or softening the truth they had discovered. In a moment or two he found that gaze intolerable, and gently pressed the lids down with the tips of his fingers, as one closes the eyes of the dead. She noted the movement, which was full of infinite melancholy; she felt that only tender love and pity were in that touch. Her bitterness passed away, her eyes grew moist. She extended her arms, clasped them around his neck, and raised herself a little. She seemed to be shutting her soul within herself, and became once more gentle and weak, full of silent pleading.
"And so I must go," she sighed at last. "Is there no help for it? Is there no pardon?"
"I love you!" her lover repeated.
She disengaged one arm, and held her open hand toward the fire, as if to conjure fate. Then once more she clasped her lover in a close embrace.
"Yes, still a little while! Let me remain with you a little longer. Then I will go away; I will go somewhere, far-away, and die on a stone under a tree. But let me stay with you a little longer."
"I love you!"
The blind and indomitable forces of life were whirling over them in that embrace. And because they realized this with terror their clasp grew closer; and from that embrace sprang an impulse, both good and evil, that stirred them to the soul. In the silent room, the voices of the elements spoke their obscure language, which was like an uncomprehended reply to their mute questioning. The fire, near them, and the rain, from without, discoursed, replied, narrated. Little by little, these voices reached the spirit of the Animator, enticed it, charmed it, drew it into the world of innumerable myths, born of their eternity. His keener spiritual senses heard the deep resonance of the two melodies expressing the intimate essence of the two elementary wills—the two marvelous melodies that he had found, to weave them into the symphonic web of the new tragedy. Of a sudden, all sadness and anxiety left him as in a happy truce, an interval of enchantment. And the woman's clasp relaxed, as if in obedience to some command of liberation.