If her knees were not bent nor the body prostrated, the soul was prostrated, waiting for the complete pardon, for the word that absolves, the act that cancels, the gesture that redeems. The woman listened humbly without looking at him.
“I pardon you, Maria,” said the man.
Maria raised her eyes and fixed them on Emilio Guasco, and waited; but he did not look at her, neither did he move. An immense silence, an enormous distance seemed to have come between the man and the woman.
III
After having helped her into a soft white silk robe and laced her shoes, Chiara, the faithful maid, looked at Donna Maria, expecting orders. It was late, past eleven, and as they had been travelling weariness was overwhelming both. After thinking for an instant, Maria said to Chiara—
“Braid my hair.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Chiara, with the slightest movement of surprise. Chiara had forgotten the old custom. Formerly, when she had entered the service of Donna Maria Guasco Simonetti about six months after her marriage, every evening, whether her young mistress went out or not, sometimes even after a theatre or a ball, Chiara had to undo the great thick mass of chestnut hair, taking out the combs and pins, and having combed the magnificent tresses with an almost caressing movement of the brush and comb, she had to gather them into a long plait, tieing it at the end with a white silk ribbon, while a similar ribbon went round the head in a bow on top. This gave Maria an exceedingly young, almost girlish appearance. When Maria had fled from Casa Guasco with Marco Fiore, and had cloistered her life in the little villa at Santa Maria Maggiore, where Chiara followed her in blind devotion and obedience, the tresses were no longer unloosed by the girl’s expert hands and bound in a plait. Such a fashion perhaps no longer pleased Donna Maria, as she remembered the house she had left, or more likely it did not please her lover, whose delight it was to plunge his fingers and face in the soft and odorous waves of her hair.
“Make me a plait like you used to, Chiara,” Maria murmured, with her eyes closed.
With a slight tinkle the small combs and pins fell on the crystal-covered toilette table, and that well-known sound seemed to strike the two women as if the old life had begun again. When she had finished, Chiara searched for a moment among the silver-topped vials and ivory boxes.
“Here is the ribbon,” she said softly.