“Yes; there is nothing for Your Excellency.”
“Good; you may go.”
She was expecting no letters from any one. But every now and then in her blackest crises of moral abandonment, of ineptitude to live or act, she began to desire an unknown letter written by an unknown hand, she found herself desiring an unexpected telegram, where might be contained from destiny the secret which should help her to do something with her useless life and useless days. While the time passed with desperate slowness, while the soft persistent rain continued to fall on Rome and envelope it in a grey veil of mist and water, she thought that there were not so many mysterious letters written by far-off mysterious persons containing powerful aid, that there are no unthought-of telegrams where a word tells the way for those who have consumed the forces of passion and goodness.
With a second familiar gesture she took a large work-bag of heavy material from a basket, lined with white silk and covered with pretty little bows of ribbon, and took out an embroidery of an old-fashioned kind, with slightly archaic colours, of a charming and rather childish design. Her beautiful hands sought among the tangled skeins of silk the threads suitable for the continuation of the work, and began to pierce the piece of silk with calm and regular movement. Two or three times her hands, as if oppressed with fatigue, dawdled over the embroidery, and she placed the piece of silk on her knees; two or three times a sigh full of annoyance and impatience escaped her breast, and her head fell back on the little cushion in silent exasperation; two or three times she shot a glance round her of anger and hate, yes, of hate, but mechanically her hands resumed the embroidery. The afternoon light began to be obscured, the corners of the room were in shadow; she had to stoop over her work to continue the embroidery.
Again a step approached.
It was the servant with the teapot and kettle. Without speaking he drew a table near Maria’s chair and placed everything there, and lit the spirit stove beneath the little kettle. Then, as it was getting darker, he stretched his hand towards a large pedestal lamp to turn on the electric light.
“No,” said Maria.
The sound of her voice after such an intense and mortal silence surprised her. The man left. The little flame alone seemed to live and breathe, a bluish little spirit flame, which licked the bottom of the silver kettle. Maria, with her hands stretched along her person, kept her eyes fixed on that poor form of life, a little passing light which was consuming itself, a little form of passing heat which was evaporating. The methodical work of preparing tea she accomplished in half obscurity, bending over the table, while the slight noise of the rain, with which the afternoon was lapsing into evening, still reached her ears. While the warm beverage smoked in the little china cup, she smiled silently with immense bitterness; for the servant had placed two cups on the tray.
She threw herself back in her chair, crossed her two hands behind her neck, stretched out her feet, closed her eyes and tried hard to sleep, at least to sleep and forget her useless life; her useless days, her hours of empty solitude, of savage impatience waiting for the person she did not know who would never come, waiting for a deed she was ignorant of which would never happen, for something strange, far off, unknown, but which should be living and let her live: to sleep, at any rate, since all this was no more possible when one has lived and loved too much; to sleep since no one comes again from afar, since nothing happens again when the heights of good and evil have been touched, and one has descended into the obscure valley of indifference and aridity.
A sudden light and a harsh voice aroused her at once from her torpor. Some one had suddenly turned on the electric light, and was before her talking harshly. It was her husband.