"Ah, che sono infelice!" murmured varillo softly, "you are right, bellissima madama! I am not myself with many people—but with you—you are one of the few who understand me . . . I am the very soul of candour!"
He fixed his eyes full upon her with an open and straight regard, adding, "Can you doubt me?" in a touching tone of wounded feeling.
The Comtesse laughed, and her face flushed.
"Well, I do not know!" she said, with a light gesture of her hands as though she threw something unpleasant away from her, "I shall fudge of you by the happiness—or sorrow—of Angela!"
A slight frown contracted his brows—but it passed quickly, and the candid smile illumined his mobile face once more.
"Ebben! Buona notte, bela capricciosa!" and bowing low he turned towards the door, "Thank you a thousand times for a very happy evening! Even when you are unkind to me you are still charming! Addio!"
She murmured an "addio" in response, and when he had gone, and the echo of his footfall down the great marble stairs had completely died away, she went out once more to the balcony and leaned among the sculptured angels, a dainty, slender, white figure, with her soft flower-like face turned up to the solemn sky, where the large moon marched like an Amazon through space, attended by her legions and battalions of stars. So slight, so fragile and sweet a woman!—with a precious world of love pent up in her heart . . . yet alone—quite alone on this night of splendid luminousness and majestic suggestions of infinity,—an infinity so monstrous and solitary to the one delicate creature, whose whole soul craved for a perfect love. Alas, for this "perfect love," of which all the dearest women dream! Where shall they find it?—and how shall they win it? Too often it comes when they may not have it; the cup of nectar is offered to lips that are forbidden to drink of it, because the world's convention stands between and turns the honey to gall. One of the many vague problems of a future life, offered for our consideration, is the one concerning the righteous satisfaction of love. Will not those who have been bound fast as prisoners in the bonds of matrimony without love, find those whose spirits are naturally one with theirs, but whom they have somehow missed in this life? For Byron's fine lines are eternally true,—
"Few—none—find what they love or could have loved,—
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
Necessity of loving, have removed
Antipathies—but to recur ere long
Envenom'd with irrevocable wrong."
And the "blind contact" is the worst of all influences brought to bear upon the mind and heart,—the most pernicious, and the most deeply weighted with responsibility. In this regard, Sylvie Hermenstein had acted wisely by removing herself from association, or "blind contact" with her would-be lover,—and yet, though she was aware that her doing so had caused a certain dispersal of the atmosphere which almost veered towards complete disillusion, she found nevertheless, that Rome as she had said, was "dull"; her heart was empty, and longing for she knew not what. And that deep longing she felt could not have been completely gratified by the brief ardours of Fontenelle. And so she sat thinking wearily,—wondering what was to become of her life. She had riches in plenty, a fine estate and castle in Hungary,—servants at her beck and call—and yet with all her wealth and beauty and brilliancy, she felt that she was only loved by two persons in the world, her old butler, and Madame Bozier, who had been her first governess, and who now lived with her, as a sort of dame d'honneur surrounded with every comfort and luxury, and who certainly served her former pupil with a faithful worship that would not have changed, even if the direst poverty instead of riches had been the portion of her beloved patroness. This elderly lady it was who entered now with a soft and hesitating step, and raising her glasses to her eyes, peered anxiously through the lighted room towards the dark balcony where Sylvie stood, like a fairy fallen out of the moon, and who presently ventured to advance and call softly,
"Sylvie!"