And I thought of the title of the book announced by Filippo Arborio: Turris Eburnea. Doubts pressed in a crowd in my mind. Did that dedication refer to an accidental encounter? Or rather, on the contrary, had the writer had the intention of creating a literary type after the image of Juliana Hermil, of relating his recent and personal adventure? The torturing problem presented itself anew. What had been the progressive incidents of this adventure, from the beginning to its close?
And I thought I could hear the words uttered by Juliana that unforgettable night: "I love you, I have always loved you, I have always been yours; I expiate by this hell one moment's weakness, you understand? One moment's weakness. It is the truth. Do you not feel that it is the truth?"
Alas! how often we believe we feel the truth in a voice that lies. Nothing can guard us from being thus duped. But if what I had felt in Juliana's voice was the pure truth, then, had she really been taken during a physical languor, in my very house? Had she submitted with a sort of unconsciousness? And, on awakening, had she felt only horror and disgust at the irreparable act, and had she banished that man, had she never seen him again?
This supposition, in fact, was in nowise contradicted by appearances; and appearances even supported the supposition that, for a long time, the rupture between Juliana and him was complete and definite.
"In my own house!" I repeated. And, in this house, silent as a tomb, in these deserted and close rooms, I was followed by the obsession of the vision.
XXV.
What should I do? Stay longer in Rome until madness seized my brain, in the midst of this furnace, during the heat of the dog-days? Go to the seaside, to the mountains, seek oblivion in society, at the fashionable summer resorts? Reawaken in myself the old-time voluptuousness, go in quest of another Teresa Raffo, any sort of frivolity?
Two or three times I dwelt on the remembrance of the Biondissima, although she had entirely passed from my heart, and even, for a long time, from my memory. "Where could she be? Is she still with Eugenio Egano? What would be my sensations on seeing her again?" It was only vain curiosity. I perceived that my sole, profound, unconquerable desire was to go back there, to my house of sorrow, to my torture.
I took the necessary measures with the greatest care. I paid a visit to Dr. Vebesti, and wired to the Badiola that I was on the way home.
Impatience devoured me; acute anxiety urged me on, as if I were to encounter new and extraordinary things. The journey appeared interminable. Stretched on the cushions, oppressed by the heat, suffocated by the dust that penetrated through the interstices of the railway carriage, I thought of the approaching events, I considered the future possibilities, I essayed to read the great darkness. The father was mortally tainted. What could be expected of the son?