The bare hands of the three princesses rested in the light; and looking at them, I thought of the infinite number of uncreated gestures contained in them, and of the myriads of leaves bursting out in the garden.
Anatolia smiled as she saw my intent look.
“Why are you looking so attentively at our hands? Are you a palmist?”
“Yes, I am a palmist,” I answered in jest.
“Then tell us our fortunes.”
“Show me your left hand.”
She held out her palm, and her sisters did the same. And I bent over them, pretending to explore the lines of life, of fate, and of happiness in each. “What are your fortunes?” I thought meanwhile as I looked at these three fair hands stretched out as if to receive or offer, and in the pause my trouble was fed by the thousand unexpressed and inexplicable things generated by the silence. “Possibly even the iron magnet of fate may be subject to those sudden changes which affect the pointing of the magnetic needle in the compass. Possibly all the energies of will that I feel within me, both clear and confused, are already exercising their transforming power; and the deviating fortunes may be tending towards a final event which shall work out my good. But possibly also I may be the sport of an illusion born of my pride and confidence, and my present state may be only that of a prisoner among prisoners.”
Great was the silence during this pause; it was such that the perception of the immensity of the voiceless things embraced by it terrified me. The sun was still under a veil. Suddenly Antonello started and turned quickly towards the palace as if some one had called him. We all looked at him anxiously, and he looked at us with a wandering gaze. The sisters laid down their hands.
“Well?” Anatolia asked me, with a shadow of preoccupation on her brow. “What have you read?”
“I have read,” I replied, “but I cannot reveal.”