“Oh, God! Madonna!”
“Does this astonish you, Mr. Toppi?”—Magnus asked, turning his head. “I dare say you are not alone. Do you remember, Wondergood, what I told you about Maria’s fatal resemblance, which drove one young man to suicide. I did not lie to you altogether: the youth actually did kill himself when he realized who Maria really was. He was pure of soul. He loved as you do and as you he could not bear—how do you put it?—the wreck of his ideal.”
Magnus laughed:
“Do you remember Giovanni, Maria?”
“Slightly.”
“Do you hear, Wondergood?” asked Magnus, laughing. “That is exactly the tone in which she would have spoken of me a week hence if you had killed me to-day. Have another orange, Maria.... But if I were to speak of Maria in extraordinary language—she is not at all stupid. She simply doesn’t happen to have what is called a soul. I have frequently tried to look deep into her heart and thoughts and I have always ended in vertigo, as if I had been hurled to the edge of an abyss: there was nothing there. Emptiness. You have probably observed, Wondergood, or you, Mr. Toppi, that ice is not as cold as the brow of a dead man? And no matter what emptiness familiar to you you may imagine, my friends, it cannot be compared with that absolute vacuum which forms the kernel of my beautiful, light-giving star. Star of the Seas?—that was what you once called her, Wondergood, was it not?”
Magnus laughed again and gulped down a glass of wine. He drank a great deal that evening.
“Will you have some wine, Mr. Toppi? No? Well, suit yourself. I’ll take some. So that is why, Mr. Wondergood, I did not want you to kiss the hand of that creature. Don’t turn your eyes away, old friend. Imagine you are in a museum and look straight at her, bravely. Did you wish to say something, Toppi?”
“Yes, Signor Magnus. Pardon me, Mr. Wondergood, but I would like to ask your permission to leave. As a gentleman, although not much of that, I...cannot remain...at....”
Magnus narrowed his eyes derisively: