He gave a faint smile. Both understood that in this quarrel their love only had been wounded.
The prelate's carriage repassed, the two black, long-tailed horses going at a trot. In the atmosphere which the haze of twilight rendered more and more livid, the trees assumed the appearance of spectres. Leaden-looking clouds darkened the height of the Palatine and the Vatican. A ray of light, yellow as sulphur, straight as a sword, lightly touched Mount Mario behind the pointed tops of the cypress-trees.
"Does she still love me?" George thought to himself. "Why is she so easily irritated? It may be that she feels that I speak the truth, or, at least, what will soon be the truth. Irritation is a symptom. But am I not conscious of a constant dull irritation in myself also? I know well the cause of my irritation. I am jealous. Of what? Of everything. Of the objects reflected in her eyes."
He looked at her. "She is very beautiful to-day. She is pale. It would please me to see her always depressed, always ill. When her color returns it seems to me as if it were no longer she. When she laughs I cannot repress a vague hostility, almost anger, at her laugh. Not always, though."
His thoughts died away in the shade of the twilight. He noticed suddenly how much the appearance of the evening reminded him of his beloved. From beneath the pallor of her dark face a light, violet-colored effusion shone through; and the narrow ribbon, of an exquisite shade of yellow, which she wore about her throat disclosed the brown marks of two beauty spots.
"She is very beautiful," he mused. "The expression of her face is nearly always profound, expressive, passionate. Therein rests the secret of her charm. Her beauty never tires me; it constantly suggests new dreams. What are the elements of this beauty? I cannot say. Materially, she is not beautiful. Sometimes, when I look at her, I am painfully surprised by a disillusion. That is because I then see only her physical characteristics; her face is not transfigured, illumined by the power of spiritual expression. She possesses, however, three divine elements of beauty: the brow, the eyes, and the mouth. Yes, divine."
Her laugh came to his mind.
"What did she tell me yesterday? I have forgotten what it was, some humorous incident that had happened at Milan during her visit to her sister's. 'How we laughed!' So then, even when away from me, she can laugh, be happy! Yet all her letters, which I have treasured, are full of sorrow, of tears, of hopeless regrets."
He felt as if he had received a wound, and then a great restlessness came upon him, as if he were cognisant of a serious and irreparable fact not entirely clear to him. The ordinary phenomena of sentimental exaggeration manifested themselves in him by means of associated images. This simple laugh was transformed in his imagination into an incessant hilarity, ever-present, daily, hourly, during the entire period of her absence. Hippolyte had led a gay, commonplace existence, with people unknown to him, among the companions of her brother-in-law, in a circle of stupid admirers. Her sad letters were only lies. He remembered a passage in one letter: "Life here is insupportable; friends weary us constantly and do not leave us a single peaceful hour. You know how cordial the Milanese are." In his imagination arose a vision of Hippolyte surrounded by a crowd of common clerks, advocates, and tradesmen. She smiled on them all, giving her hand to all, listening to witless conversations, making stupid answers, sinking herself to the same ordinary level.
And then there fell upon his heart all the weight of the misery he had endured for the past two years at the thought of the existence his mistress led and the unknown world in which she passed the time not spent with him.