On and on rolled the sound, rumbling ceaselessly, monotonously, through the scorching air. And seeing my companion motionless at my side, I dared not speak, nor break the spell. But suddenly she turned round and broke into sobs, as if she had just witnessed the end of a death agony. Leaning against the rock with her face in her hands, she sobbed on despairingly.
“Anatolia, Anatolia, what is the matter with you? Answer me, Anatolia! Say one word to me.”
And unable to resist the pain, I was just going to take her wrists and uncover her face.
I heard close by the sound of a swift step on the stones, the sound of painful breathing; I saw a shadow.
“You, Violante?”
She came up the steep rock with something of the elastic stride of a wild animal, something hostile and malevolent expressed in her whole person. Her thick blue veil was wrapped round her head in such a way that her whole face was hidden down to the chin, as if by a mask, and her eyes glittered through the gauze.
She stopped near the boulder in a hostile attitude throwing back her head like one who is suffocating, yet she did not loosen her veil. The vehemence of her breathing made her bosom rise and fall, and the veil flutter; an uncontrollable tremor shook her hands within the torn gloves she wore, torn probably on the sharp rocks in some perilous fall.
“We waited for you,” she said at last in a broken voice that almost hissed; “we waited for you a long time.... As you did not seem to be coming back, I came up ... to meet you....”
I could trace the convulsive motion of her lips through her veil; I could guess at the change in her face behind that suffocating blue mask that she would not lift up. And I felt my inward emotion increase so violently every minute, that it was impossible for me to open my lips. But I felt that not on me alone the necessity for silence had fallen.
The rumble of the bronze bells reverberating in the crater passed ceaselessly over our heads.