“I will bring her on the instant,” said Maddelena, and returned to Grace.
“She is ready. Do you mind coming into the kitchen? She is always at her best in her own domain. Do you understand Italian? No? Then I must be with you to translate, for when she ‘sees’ she always speaks in her own tongue. I will write it down—that will be best. Ah, you have drunk the wine—that is good. You look just a little bit less like a ghost now, dear lady. This way.”
Giulia rose as they entered the kitchen, dropped a quaint little curtsey, and fixed her dark eyes earnestly on the visitor.
“Yes, I zink it vill be that I vill see. Zere is light all around you—ze great protecting light! Vill you sit here at my feet; take off your gloves and hold my hands—so! Vait now; do not speak!”
She pulled out a hassock, on which Grace obediently seated herself. Giulia took her hands, holding them lightly and moving her own wrinkled brown ones over them with a curious massage-like movement for a minute or more, while she continued to gaze searchingly at her. Maddelena, pencil and notebook in hand, leaned on the back of Giulia’s chair.
In the silence the slow tick of the clock sounded unnaturally loud; in Grace’s ears her own heartbeats sounded even louder.
Then Giulia ceased moving her hands and grasped those of her visitor closely and firmly, in a grip that occasionally, during the minutes that followed, became almost painful. Grace saw the light fade from the old woman’s eyes, leaving them fixed and glassy, like those of a corpse, till the lids drooped over them and she seemed to sleep, breathing deeply and heavily. Soon she began to speak, in Italian, slowly and with difficulty at first, then more fluently.
Grace, watching and listening with strained attention, could only understand a word here and there, but Maddelena later gave her the written translation.
“There is light all around you—a beautiful light; it is the great protection; but beyond there is gloom and within it I see a man; he is your beloved. I think he is young and handsome, but I cannot see him clearly. I could not see him at all but for the light around you that penetrates even to him. You stretch hands to each other, striving to meet—you in the light, he in the darkness—and sometimes the hands touch, just for a moment.