Speaking in a low, wonderfully rich voice, Vittoria Lodi led the way into the familiar little salon, where a young man, known to most of the foreign colony in Florence, sat reading a medical paper. At Ivan's entrance the Englishman rose, and the two talked in whispers, the doctor giving Ivan a résumé of this last seizure: the fearful hemorrhage which had continued for half an hour, and had started up again at intervals throughout the day; and the marvellous vitality which had upheld her, even though her body was nearly bloodless, and her two lungs almost solidly filled.
As he finished speaking, Dr. Tremont looked at his watch. "A quarter to two.—She may possibly hold out till daylight. But from now on the vitality ebbs, and it is more than likely that she will go, quietly, at any moment.—I trust you can see her, Prince. But I hardly dare interrupt the priest, who came to her at her special request."
"Certainly not. My great regret is that, not dreaming the attack was serious, I left town for the day.—I shall never forgive myself."
A few words more of reassurance and sorrow, and then the two men seated themselves, the doctor returning to his paper, while Ivan sank into an arm-chair, and stared at the fire that burned in the tiny grate. Vittoria, thoroughly Italian in her habits, had withdrawn from this, and crouched on a little tabouret, leaning forward to rest her elbows on a chair in front of her, her chin propped upon her palms. The silence was absolute. The light of lamp and fire mingled and cast flickering shadows and fingers of light into the dark recesses of the antechamber. The air was tainted with the smell of iodine, carbolic, and various antiseptics; but the door leading into the Princess' bedroom was closed, and the portière also drawn across it. Young Tremont, whose thoughts had wandered from his reading, guessed rightly that Ivan's mind was fixed on what was passing beyond that door. Of the meditations of the girl, the daughter of his patient, who had arrived in the afternoon in the company of the priest now absolving the Princess, he was not so sure. And, as he thought, he began unconsciously to study her slender figure and half-hidden face.
How beautiful—how very beautiful—she was! Ah! Was it beauty? Was it not rather a kind of chic diablerie, that is so much more attractive, so much more dangerous, than mere perfection of feature and proportion?—Good Heavens! What a destiny, too, for such a personality! The mother dying; the father long since lost in the dreary throng of forgotten failures; not a relation in the world who could possibly acknowledge her left-handed relationship to one of the most powerful families in Europe:—what was left her but the veil? Instinctively he perceived that she must be intended for this. And yet, to put that creature into a convent! Set the Venus de Milo in a cathedral crypt!—What sort of nun would she make, this child of temperament and unholy passion? Could they manage to keep her consecrated to the hush of prayer, the eventless, endless routine of the mechanical religion of her order?
Again and again these thoughts revolved through the young man's brain; but he did not note that Ivan's gaze was fixed on Vittoria with the same expression; that his own thoughts were echoed in Gregoriev's mind. Ivan, indeed, was undergoing rather a startling dream, or hallucination, or waking-vision:—call it what one might.
Up around him, blotting out all the room save the little space where Vittoria sat, there rose a silvery white mist wherein she was framed. Then, gradually, her seated form faded from sight and reappeared again, changed in costume, and in attitude. And again she faded and reappeared, and again, and yet once more. He saw her in many pictures, in familiar places, in the company of persons known to him in the long ago. She was in Russia, in Petersburg. De Windt, not now young, his temples silvered, his eyes grown weary, was at her side. He was succeeded by others, men and women of exalted rank, many of them seeming oddly familiar to Ivan, who sat entranced, watching and wondering at the vividness of the dream. And while he gazed down the strange future of this girl, he seemed to realize, intangibly, that she whom he watched was in some way bound up with his own fate: connected with him by some powerful chain of circumstance.
The pictures, continuing, began to grow hazy. Little by little his sensations became less acute. He was yielding to the influence of intense fatigue. Tremont saw his head droop forward to his breast, and his eyes close. Darkness descended. Oblivion trembled over him. Then, suddenly, there was a creak, a movement, the sound of moaning. The mists dropped away. Tremont and the girl sprang to their feet; for the door of the Princess' room had opened and the priest emerged.
On the father's white face were traces of emotion. His right hand was uplifted, two of his fingers stretched out in benediction. As he spoke, his old voice trembled:
"Let us give thanks to God for His mercy. A sinful soul, repentant and shriven, has been gathered home."