"Did you call me?" asked George, who thought he heard his name.
"No, I didn't call you," she answered.
"What are you doing? Are you going to sleep?"
She did not answer.
George reseated himself, and half-closed his eyes. His thoughts always went back towards the mountain. In this silence, he felt the silence of the solitary and abandoned garden in which the little cypress-trees, tall and straight, reared up motionless toward the sky, religiously, like votive wax candles; from which, through the windows of the deserted chambers, still intact like reliquaries, came a religious sweetness of recollections.
And he appeared to him, a mild, meditative man, with a face full of a virile melancholy, and a single white curl in the centre of his forehead, among the black hair, giving him an odd appearance.
"Oh! why," said he to Demetrius, "why did I not obey your suggestion, the last time I entered the chambers inhabited by your spirit? Why did I wish to make a new trial of life, and cover myself with shame before your eyes? How could I have made the mistake of pursuing the sure possession of another soul, when I possessed yours, and when you lived in me?"
After the physical death, the soul of Demetrius had been preserved in the survivor without any diminution, and in him it had even attained, and retained, its supreme intensity. All that the living person had consumed in contact with his fellows, all the words sown in the course of time, all the diverse manifestations that had determined the special character of his being compared with other beings, all the ways, constant or variable, that had distinguished his personality among other personalities and made of him a man apart in the human multitude; in short, all that had differentiated his own life from other lives—all that was collected, concentrated, circumscribed in the unique, ideal tie that attached the defunct to the survivor. And the divine ostensory preserved in the Duomo of the natal town seemed to consecrate this high mystery: Ego Demetrius Aurispa et unicus Georgius filius meus.
The impure creature who was now lying on that unchaste bed had interposed between. The terrible corrupter was not only the obstacle to life, but also an obstacle to death—to that death. She was the Enemy of both.
And George, in thought, returned to the mountain, once more reached the old mansion, reëntered the deserted rooms. As on that May morning, he crossed the tragic threshold. And, as on that day, he felt the obscure obsession over his will. The fifth anniversary was near. In what manner should he celebrate it?