She looked straight in front of her and drooped her head a little and stared before her earnestly. They were no longer eating. The two Italians stood up, bowed and went away. They were alone. The waiter set some fruit before them and withdrew.
They both sat silent for a moment. Then she spoke in a gentle voice; and her whole being displayed so tender a melancholy that he could have burst into sobs and worshipped her where she sat.
"I knew of course that you would ask me that some day. It was in the nature of things. A great friendship like ours was bound to lead to that question. But it can't be, dearest Duco. It can't be, my dear, dear boy. I have my own ideas ... but it's not that. I am against marriage ... but it's not that. In some cases a woman is unfaithful to all her ideas in a single second.... Then what is it?..."
She stared wide-eyed and passed her hand over her forehead, as though she did not see clearly. Then she continued:
"It is this, that I am afraid of marriage. I have been through it, I know what it means.... I see my husband before me now. I see that habit, that groove before me, in which the subtler individual characteristics are effaced. That is what marriage is: a habit, a groove. And I tell you candidly: I think marriage loathsome. I think passion beautiful, but marriage is not passion. Passion can be noble and superhuman, but marriage is a human institution based upon our petty human morality and calculation. And I have become frightened of those prudent moral ties. I promised myself—and I believe that I shall keep my promise—never to marry again. My whole nature has become unfitted for it. I am no longer the Hague girl going to parties and dinners and looking out for a husband, together with her parents.... My love for him was passion. And in my marriage he wanted to restrict that passion to a groove and a custom. Then I rebelled.... I'd rather not talk about it. Passion lasts too short a time to fill a married life.... Mutual esteem to follow, etcetera? One needn't marry for that. I can feel esteem just as well without being married. Of course there is the question of the children, there are many difficulties. I can't think it all out now. I merely feel now, very seriously and calmly, that I am not fit to marry and that I never will marry again. I should not make you happy.... Don't be sad, Duco. I am fond of you, I love you. And perhaps ... had I met you at the right moment, had I met you before, in my Hague life ... you would certainly have stood too high for me. I could not have grown fond of you. Now I can understand you, respect you and look up to you. I tell you this quite simply, that I love you and look up to you, look up to you, in spite of all your gentleness, as I never looked up to my husband, however much he made his manly privilege prevail. And you are to believe that, very firmly and with great certainty, and you must believe that I am true. I am coquettish ... only with Gilio."
He looked at her through his silent tears. He stood up, called the waiter, paid the bill absent-mindedly, while everything swam and flashed before his eyes. They went out of the door and she hailed a carriage and told the man to drive to the Villa Doria-Pamphili. She remembered that the gardens were open. They drove there in silence, steeped in their thoughts of the future that was opening tremulously before them. Sometimes he heaved a deep breath and quivered all over his body. Once she fervently squeezed his hand. At the gate of the villa they alighted and walked up the majestic avenues. Rome lay in the depths below; and they suddenly saw St. Peter's. But they did not speak; and she suddenly sat down on an ancient bench and began to weep softly and feebly. He put his arm round her and comforted her. She dried her tears, smiled and embraced him and returned his kiss.... Twilight fell; and they went back. He gave the address of his studio. She accompanied him. And she gave herself to him, in all her truthful sincerity and with a love so violent and so great that she thought she would swoon in his arms.
CHAPTER XXV
They did not alter their mode of life. Duco, however, after a scene with his mother, no longer slept at Belloni's but in a little room, adjoining his studio, originally filled with trunks and lumber. Cornélie was sorry about the scene: she had always had a liking for Mrs. Van der Staal and the girls. But a certain pride arose in her; and Cornélie despised Mrs. Van der Staal because she was unable to understand either her or Duco. Still, she would have been pleased to prevent this coolness. At her advice Duco went to see his mother again, but she remained cool and sent him away. Thereupon Cornélie and Duco went to Naples. They did not do this by way of an elopement, they did it quite simply: Cornélie told Urania and the prince that she was going to Naples for a little while and that Van der Staal would probably follow her. She did not know Naples and would appreciate it greatly if Van der Staal showed her the town and the surrounding country. Cornélie kept on her rooms in Rome. And they spent a fortnight of sheer, careless and immense happiness. Their love grew spacious and blossoming in the golden sunlight of Naples, on the blue gulfs of Amalfi, Sorrento, Capri and Castellamare, simply, irresistibly and restfully. They glided gradually along the purple thread of their lives, they walked hand in hand down their lines now fused into one path, heedless of the laws and ideas of men; and their attitude was so lofty, their action so serene and so certain of their happiness, that their relations did not degenerate into insolence, although within themselves they despised the world. But this happiness softened all that pride in their soaring souls, as if their happiness were strewing blossoms all around it. They lived in a dream, first among the marbles in the museum, then on the flower-strewn cliffs of Amalfi, on the beach of Capri or on the terrace of the hotel at Sorrento, with the sea roaring at their feet and, in a pearly haze, yonder, vaguely white, as though drawn in white chalk, Castellamare and Naples and the ghost of Vesuvius, with its hazy plume of smoke.
They held aloof from everybody, from all the people and excursionists; they had their meals at a small table; and it was generally thought that they were newly married. If others looked up their names in the visitors' book, they read two names and made whispered comments. But the lovers did not hear, did not see; they lived their dream, looking into each other's eyes or at the opal sky, the pearly sea and the hazy, white mountain-vistas, studded with villages like little specks of chalk.