But he interrupted himself—
“I will tell you the story another time.”
I saw that he shrank from calling up these memories in presence of his daughters, and I did not press him.
But shortly after, in the outer portico, as we paced slowly up and down with his arm in mine, he returned to the story; and all the time the sun blazed on the series of terraces from which the tall white statues of the Seasons looked over the tawny valley of the Saurgo.
It was a mysterious secret drama of passion and death, worthy of the weird stone cloister which had fostered and exalted its violence in rapid alternation. To me it signified the power which the genius of places can exercise over the responsive soul, a power by which every genuine feeling of the soul must concentrate itself to the utmost degree of intensity possible to human nature, in order to express its whole force in a definite act with a certain result.
As I listened to the prince’s imperfect account, I mentally reconstructed that hour of intense life which produced the death of Pantea; and the midnight crime appeared to me clothed in a beauty which was the harbinger of profound thoughts.
At the close of the story Prince Luzio took leave of me, saying: “I hope from this day you will treat this house as your own. Whenever you like to come, you will be welcome, dear boy. So do not stay away too long.”
It made me sad to see him enter the desolate palace alone, so I went back a little way with him, talking affectionately. We stopped again before the fountain; and he made a motion of his hand towards the basin, and in the chill, clear water I saw the fatal beauty of Pantea and her curved white hands floating in the water, like two magnolia petals, and her soft hair fluttering under the horses’ hoofs.
“A legend grew up years afterwards,” said the prince, smiling. “On moonless nights Pantea’s soul sings on the summit of the fountain, while that of her lover groans within the jaws of the stone beasts until the dawn breaks.”