When she saw that I did not shrink from her gaze, she was startled but not frightened; and, rising abruptly, she invited the explanation which I desired to propose.
"Signor Lelio," she said, "if you have finished your breakfast, you will kindly tell me why you came here."
"I will obey you, signora," I replied, picking up her plate and glass, which she had left on the floor, and carrying them back to the piano; "but I beg your ladyship to tell me whether the piano-tuner shall answer you sitting at the instrument, or whether the actor Lelio shall stand before you, hat in hand, ready to retire after he has had the honor to talk with you."
"Signor Lelio will kindly sit in this chair," she said, pointing to one on the right hand of the fire-place, "and I in this," she added, taking her seat on the left side, facing me and about ten feet away.
"Signora," I said, as I sat down, "in order to obey you I must go back a little. About two months ago I was playing in Romeo and Juliet at San Carlo. There was in one of the proscenium boxes——"
"I can refresh your memory," interposed La Grimani. "There was in one of the proscenium boxes on the right of the stage a young woman whom you considered beautiful; but on looking at her more closely, it seemed to you that her face was so devoid of expression that you shouted to one of the ladies on the stage, loud enough to be overheard by the young woman in question——"
"In heaven's name! signora," I interrupted, "do not repeat the words that escaped from me in my delirium, and let me tell you that I am subject to attacks of nervous irritation which make me almost insane. When I am in that condition everything offends me, everything causes me intense suffering——"
"I do not ask why it was your pleasure to announce so concisely your judgment of the young woman in the box; I simply ask you for the rest of the story."
"In order to be perfectly truthful and coherent, I must insist upon the prologue. Under the influence of a first attack of fever, the beginning of a serious illness from which I have hardly recovered, I fancied that I could read profound contempt and frigid irony on the incomparably lovely face of the young lady in the proscenium box. I was annoyed at first, then seriously disturbed, and at last completely upset, so that I lost my head and yielded to a brutal impulse in order to put an end to the fatal spell which benumbed all my faculties and paralyzed me at the most powerful and most important part of my rôle. Your ladyship must forgive me for an act of madness; I believe in magnetism, especially on those days when I am ill and when my brain is as weak as my legs. I fancied that the young lady in the box had an injurious influence over me; and during the cruel disease which took full possession of me on the day following my offence, I will confess that she often appeared in my delirium; but always haughty, always threatening, and promising me that I should pay dearly for the blasphemy that fell from my lips. Such, signora, is the first part of my story."
I made ready my shield to ward off a volley of epigrams by way of comment on this strange tale, which, although true, was most improbable, I must confess. But the young Grimani, gazing at me with a gentleness which I had no idea could be found in conjunction with her type of beauty, said to me, leaning a little heavily on the arm of her chair: