The following morning, on awakening, I retained only a confused notion of all that had happened. Cowardice and anguish seized upon me again, just as soon as I had before my eyes a second letter from Teresa Raffo, who decided upon the 21st for our meeting at Florence and gave me precise instructions. The 21st was a Sunday, and on Thursday, the 18th, Juliana rose for the first time. I argued for a long time with myself all the possibilities, and, arguing, I began to compromise. "There is certainly no doubt about it; the rupture is necessary, inevitable. But how to break off? Under what pretext? Can I announce my decision to Teresa in a mere letter? My last letter to her was still warm with passion, filled with longing. How can I justify the sudden change? Does the poor woman deserve so unexpected and brutal a blow? She has loved me much, she loves me still, and there was a time when she braved dangers for my sake. And I too have loved her.... I still love her. Our passion, powerful and strange, is known; she is envied, and she is also watched. How many men aspire to take my place! Too numerous to count." In making a rapid review of my most redoubtable rivals, of my most probable successors, I pictured to myself their forms. "Is there in Rome a woman more blonde, more fascinating, more desirable than she?" The same sudden fire that had heated my blood the evening before gushed through every vein, and the idea of voluntarily renouncing her seemed to me absurd, inadmissible. "No, no; I shall never have the courage; I never will and never can."
This tumult calmed, I followed my useless debate, at the same time retaining the conviction in the depths of my being that, when the hour came, it would be impossible for me not to go. Yet I had the courage, when I quitted Juliana's room still vibrating with emotion, I had the supreme courage to write to her who claimed me: "I will not come." I invented a pretext; and, I remember clearly, a kind of instinct made me choose one that would not appear very important to her. "So you hope that she will pay no attention to the pretext, and will command you to go?" asked an inner voice. I found myself without an answer to this sarcasm, and an irritation, an atrocious anxiety, took possession of me, and gave me no more peace. I made unheard-of efforts to dissimulate in the presence of Juliana and my mother; I carefully avoided being left alone with the poor abused one; each moment I thought I read in her gentle, humid eyes the shadow of a doubt, I thought I saw a cloud pass over her pure brow.
On Wednesday I received an imperious and threatening telegram. Did I not rather expect it? "Either you will come, or you will never see me again. Answer." I answered: "I will come."
As soon as I had done it, under the impulse of that species of unconscious superexcitation that, in life, accompanies every decisive act, I found myself singularly solaced by the view of the determined turn that events had taken. The feeling of my own irresponsibility, of the necessity of what had occurred and what was about to happen, became very profound. "If, though knowing all the evil that I do, though condemning myself, I cannot act in any other manner, it is a sign that I obey an unknown superior power. I am the victim of a cruel, ironical, irresistible destiny."
Nevertheless, I had scarcely put foot on the threshold of Juliana's room when I felt the pressure on my heart of an enormous weight, and I stopped, swaying, between the portières that hid me. "A look will suffice her to divine all," I thought, desperate. And I was on the point of turning back. But in a voice that had never before seemed so gentle to me, she said:
"Is it you, Tullio?"
Then I advanced a step. She exclaimed, on seeing me:
"What ails you? Are you not well?"
"A dizziness ... It is already gone," I answered. And I felt reassured on thinking: "She has not guessed."
In fact she had not the slightest suspicion; and it seemed to me strange that it should be so. Should I prepare her for the brutal blow? Should I speak frankly, or concoct some falsehood out of pity for her? Or would it not be better to go away unexpectedly, without letting her know, and leave a letter for her containing my confession? What was the best way of rendering my effort less painful, of making her surprise less cruel?