“Toujours, toujours, Marco,” she said once again brokenly.
“Toujours, Maria, toujours,” he replied desperately.
Then he left.
She heard nothing. She knew about herself, about the whole world revolving in its immense concentration around her, but every sense of persons, of space, and of time was ignored by her for several hours in that deserted room. When she awoke from this long absence from life, she found nothing within her but bitterness, such a great bitterness that it seemed as if her body and soul had been poisoned for ever. Since all that had seemed lasting to her and alone worthy to be lasting was dispersed and finished with, since the only lofty outstanding reason of life—love—was ended, she felt a nauseating disgust of that mediocre thing, existence, with its false and fugitive sensations.
Marco went as one mad through the streets of Rome, already gloomy with falling night, and swept by chilly winds beneath the low nocturnal clouds. For some time he wandered aimlessly, like a dead leaf detached from a tree, and felt himself dispersed in the shadowy cold and solitude. He felt it useless to call for aid, since the only thing which could succour him—love—was dead. He felt that he too was dead, and that he could never rise again.
PART II
THE PARDON
I
Whisperings, now slow now more frequent, filled the top of the church dedicated to Santa Maria del Popolo, where the guests invited to the wedding were gathered before the high altar, while the rest of the large central nave preserved the usual solitude and silence of Roman temples. Around the high altar were placed large clumps of palms, and white azaleas with such a wealth of bloom that they seemed as white as snow, without the shadow of a leaf between flower and flower. Some soft dark carpets descended from the altar as far as the first row of seats. The rest of the church, the greater part of it, which it would have been vain to decorate, kept its cold, marbled, and imposing aspect.
Now and then the guests, politely restraining their impatience, turned towards the great door, which was open to the limpid spring sky, to watch if the couple, already late, had arrived. Compared with the vastness of the church, and in spite of their large numbers, they seemed a very small group near the high altar in an oasis of plants and flowers.
All the relations of Casa Fiore were there, together with the Casalta, who are not Romans but Neapolitans, of remote Neapolitan origin but living in Rome for two or three generations. Many had come from the outskirts of Rome, from Umbria and Campania, to be present at the marriage of Marco Fiore and Vittoria Casalta, a marriage so resisted by fate that for a time it had seemed quite broken off, but which had at last become a reality. There was much whispering over the strange story, the lateness of the couple, and the great size of the church.