“Yea, the sun,” she replied, “but not the twilight.”
“The twilight?”
“It has been twilight now for many years,” she said, “ever since I came to Ferrara.”
The moon was rising behind the cypress trees, a slip of glowing light. Lucrezia took her chin in her hand and stared before her; a soft breeze stirred the tall reeds in the pool behind her and gently ruffled the surface of the water.
The breath of the night-smelling flowers pierced the slumbrous air; the palace showed a faint shape, a marvellous tint; remote it looked and uncertain in outline.
Lucrezia was motionless; her garments were dim, yet glittering, her face a blur; she seemed the ruin of beauty and graciousness, a fair thing dropped suddenly into decay.
Orsini rose and stepped away from her; the perfume of her unguents offended him. He found something horrible in the memory of former allurement that clung to her; ghosts seemed to crowd round her and pluck at her, like fierce birds at carrion.
He caught the glitter of her eyes through the dusk; she was surely evil, bad to the inmost core of her heart; her stale beauty reeked of dead abomination.… Why had he never noticed it before?
The ready wit of his rank and blood failed him; he turned away towards the cypress trees.