She listened in the half light, and his voice seemed to come from a long distance, and to be speaking not to her but to another woman; she felt as if she were overhearing a lover's protestations to his mistress, and suddenly fancied herself mad with jealousy, possessed by a desire to kill, filled with a spirit of revenge; but that body must remain motionless, her hands hanging at her sides, nerveless and powerless.
"You are my delight and my inspiration. You have a stimulating power of which you are unconscious. Your simplest act suffices to reveal to me some truth of which I was ignorant. And love is like the intellect: it shines in the measure of the truth it discovers. Why, why do you grieve yourself? Nothing is destroyed, nothing is lost. It was intended that we should be united, so that together we might rise to joy and triumph. It was necessary that I should be free and happy in your true and perfect love in order to create the work of beauty that so many men expect of me. I need your faith; I need to pass through joy and to create. Your presence alone suffices to inspire my mind with incalculable fruitfulness. Just now, when your arms held me close, I heard a sudden torrent of music, a flood of melody, passing through the silence."
To whom was he speaking? Whom did he ask for joy? Was not his imperious demand for music a yearning toward her that sang, transfiguring the universe with her song? Of whom, if not of fresh youth and maidenhood, could he ask joy and creation? While she had held him in her embrace, it was the other woman who had sung and spoken within him! And now, now—to whom was he speaking, if not to that other woman? She alone could give him what was necessary for his art and his life. The maiden was a new force, a closed beauty, an unused weapon, keen and magnificent for the intoxication of war. Malediction! Malediction!
Mingled sorrow and anger stirred her heart, in that vibrating darkness which she dared not leave. She suffered the torments of a nightmare; as if she were rolling toward a precipice with the indestructible burden of her vanished years—years of misery and of triumph—her fading face with its thousand masks, her despairing soul, and the thousand other souls that had inhabited her mortal body. This grand passion of her life, which was to have saved her, seemed now to be pushing her relentlessly toward ruin and death. In order to reach her, and through her to attain to his highest joy, the passion of her beloved was compelled to make its way through what he believed to be a multitude of unknown loves; it would contaminate, corrupt and embitter itself, perhaps even change by slow degrees to disgust. Always that shadowy multitude must keep alive in him that instinct of brutal ferocity which lurked in his strong nature. Ah, what had she done? She herself had armed a furious devastator, and had put him between her friend and herself. No escape was possible. She herself, on that night of the flame, had led before him the fresh and beautiful prey, of whom he had taken possession by one of those looks that are a choice and a promise. To whom was he speaking now, if not to that other woman. Of whom did he ask joy?
"Do not be sad! do not be sad!"
But now she heard his words only confusedly, more faint than before, as if her soul had sunk into a chasm; but she felt his impatient hands as they touched her caressingly. And, in that red darkness, wherein, as it seemed to her, all madnesses and folly were born, she felt a surging revolt in her veins.
"Do you wish me to take you to her? Do you wish me to call her to you?" cried the unhappy woman, suddenly opening her eyes with an expression that astonished Stelio; she seized his wrists and shook him with a grasp so tight that he felt her nails in his flesh. "Go! go! She awaits you! Why do you remain here? Go, run! She awaits you!"
She sprang up, raising him at the same time, and tried to push him toward the door. She was no longer recognizable, transfigured by fury into a dangerous, threatening creature. The strength of her hands was incredible, like the energy of evil intent in her whole being.
"Who awaits me? What did you say? What is the matter with you? Come back to your senses, Foscarina!"
He stammered his appeal, he trembled, fancying he saw madness in that distorted face. But she was like one distraught and heard him not.