Would one doubt suffice to destroy all that in a moment?
I repassed from one end to the other the scene that had taken place between Juliana and myself from the moment I had entered the room to the instant she had left it. And it was in vain I attributed a great part of my inner agitation to a special and transient nervous condition; I could not succeed in dissipating the strange impression exactly translated by these words:
"She seemed to me to be another woman."
There was certainly something new about her. But what? Was not Filippo Arborio's dedication in a sense reassuring? Did it not precisely affirm that the Turris Eburnea was impregnable? This glorious qualification had been suggested to the author either simply by the reputation for purity that Juliana Hermil's name bore, or by the non-success of an attempted assault, or, possibly, by the abandonment of a siege undertaken. In consequence, the Ivory Tower still remained unsullied.
While reasoning thus to allay the gnawings of suspicion, I could not remove the confused anxiety that lay at the bottom of my being, as if I feared a sudden apparition of some ironical objection. "You know, Juliana has extraordinarily white skin. She is literally as white as her night-dress. The pious qualification might well hide some profane meaning." But the word unworthy? "Oh! Oh! What subtleties!"
An attack of impatience and anger cut short this humiliating and vain debate. I withdrew from the window, shrugged my shoulders, made two or three turns in the room, mechanically opened a book, then threw it down again. But my anguish did not decrease. "In short," I thought, stopping short, as if to confront some invisible adversary, "to what does all this lead me? Either she has already fallen, and the loss is irreparable; or she is in danger, and in my present situation I cannot interfere to save her; or else she is pure, and then there is no change. In any case, it is not for me to act. What exists, exists of necessity; what is to happen, will of necessity happen. This crisis of suffering will pass. One must wait. How beautiful those white chrysanthemums were that were on Juliana's table just now! I will go and buy a heap more just like them. My rendezvous with Teresa is for two o'clock to-day. I have still almost three hours before me. Did she not tell me, the last time, that she wished to find the fire burning? This will be the first fire of the winter on such a warm day. It seems to me she is in a week of kindness. I only hope it will last! But, at the first opportunity, I shall challenge Eugenio Egano."
My thoughts followed a new course, with sudden checks, with unforeseen divergences. In the midst even of the pictures of the approaching voluptuousness, another contaminating imagination passed like a lightning flash, one that I feared, one from which I should like to flee. Certain audacious and ardent pages of The True Catholic recurred to me. One of these passions aroused the other, and, while suffering from the distinct pains, I confounded the two women in the same pollution, Filippo Arborio and Eugenio Egano in the same hate.
The crisis passed, leaving in my soul a species of vague contempt mixed with rancor against the sister. I drifted away still further from her; I became more and more hardened, more and more careless, more and more reserved. My sad passion for Teresa Raffo became more exclusive, occupied all my faculties, left me no respite. I was really a maniac, a man possessed by a diabolical insanity, devoured by an unknown and frightful malady. My mind has retained of that winter only confused, incoherent souvenirs, interspersed with strange, rare obscurities.
That winter I never encountered Filippo Arborio at my house; but I saw him sometimes in public. One evening, however, I met him in a salle d'armes; and there we became acquainted. We were introduced by the fencing-master, and we exchanged a few words. The gaslight, the creaking of the flooring, the flash and clatter of the foils, the clumsy or graceful attitudes of the swordsmen, the rapid extension of all those bent limbs, the warm and acrid exhalations of all those bodies, the guttural cries, rude interjections, the bursts of laughter—such are the details that my memory furnishes to reconstruct with singular clearness the scene that unrolled itself before us, while we were standing face to face and the master pronounced our names. I again see the gesture with which Filippo Arborio, raising his mask, displayed a heated face all bathed in perspiration. He was panting with fatigue, and somewhat convulsed, like a man unaccustomed to muscular exercise. Instinctively I thought that he would not be a formidable opponent in a duel. I affected also a certain haughtiness; I especially avoided saying anything that bore any reference to his celebrity or to my admiration; I assumed the attitude I would have taken towards a perfect stranger.
"So it is for to-morrow?" said the fencing-master to me, smiling.