“No, it tires me,” replied Maria exhaustedly.
She only took off her hat, drawing out the two pearl-headed pins, and consigning them to Chiara. The rain poured incessantly and noisily.
Once more Maria made a gesture of indecision, looked at her watch, and shook her head discouragedly.
It was only two o’clock in the afternoon. On that Sunday, with the rain falling for nearly an hour, not a sound was to be heard in the streets; not a step or a shadow came to break the silence or populate the desert of Casa Guasco.
“Do you want me any more?” asked Chiara.
Maria hesitated for a minute, almost as if she wished to ask that human being, that living creature, who was her servant, to remain with her to keep her company; but she felt ashamed of her moral wretchedness, and a motive of pride counselled her to immerse herself in solitude.
“No, you may go,” she replied.
Quite alone she passed into her boudoir, which was very light, papered and furnished in an almost white stuff, with bunches of pale roses and soft green grasses, with frames of pale gold, and a carpet of light yellow, with cushions of a very pale colour. With its exquisite taste toned to the surroundings, in that sunless afternoon and incessant rain, the room seemed like that of a person dead for a long time, like a room uninhabited for a long time. Maria sat down in her usual arm-chair, placed her feet on a buffet, and leaned her head against a cushion, letting her arms fall and closing her eyes to allow all the mortal tedium of her soul to expand, to allow all the despair of her heart to cross the lines of her beautiful and noble countenance.
Some time passed thus. Occasionally the rain diminished, becoming a dull noise like steps in the distance, or increased with a pattering as if a fresh whirlwind were spreading over the streets and houses. Maria in her absolute silence started twice and raised her head, stretching her hand towards a table. She took up a book bound in soft chamois leather, with strange designs, and with troubled and indifferent eyes glanced through several pages; even the noise of turning leaves in the silence of Casa Guasco caused her to tremble. The poet whose verses she was slowly reading was of all the most sorrowful, and amidst the gloomy sadness of the sky and earth, of that house and her soul, Maria felt the ardent and powerful words with which Sapho’s soul takes leave of life spreading in her spirit. Her head sank on her breast, the book remained open on her knees, and she thought bitterly of the grand lover of Mitylene, to whom everything was unprofitable from birth till death, save her lofty genius, which love had not conceded her; she thought of the most sorrowful poet of all, whose bitterness was joined in that hour to her own bitterness, of Giacomo Leopardi, to whom genius had not even conceded love. An obscure anguish closed her heart in the profound silence and solitude, in that mortally long hour of boredom and sadness. Her hand almost involuntarily touched a bell concealed behind her chair. After a moment a servant appeared.
“Has the post been?”