Swiftly, like a flying shadow, she crossed the passage, and looked in. Only silence and darkness! She had been mistaken. She leaned on the frame of the door, and remained thus for a long moment.
Slowly she returned to her own room, thinking that "early" must mean for a man of late habits like Cesare two o'clock in the morning. That was it! He would arrive at two.
She took up Adolphe, thinking to divert herself with reading, and thus to moderate her impatience. She opened the book towards the middle, where the passionate struggle between Ellenore and Adolphe is shown in all its sorrowful intensity. And from the dry, precise words, the hard, effective style, the brief and austere narrative, which was like the cry of a soul destroyed by scepticism, Anna derived an impression of fright. Ah, in her sincere, youthful faith, what a horror she had of that modern malady which corrupts the mind, depraves the conscience, and kills whatever is most noble in the soul! What could she know, poor, simple, ignorant woman, whose only belief, whose only law, whose only hope was love—what could she know of the spiritual diseases of those who have seen too much, who have loved too much, who have squandered the purest treasures of their feelings? What could she know of the desolating torture of those souls who can no longer believe in anything, not even in themselves, and who have lost their last ideal? She could know nothing; and yet a terror assailed her. Perhaps Cesare, her husband, was like Adolphe, who could never more be happy, who could never more give happiness to others. She shuddered, and threw the book aside, in great distress.
She got up mechanically, and took from a table a rosary of sandal wood, which a Missionary Friar had brought from Jerusalem.
She had never been regular in her devotions; her imagination was too fervid. But religious feelings seemed sometimes to sweep in upon her in great waves of divine love. A child of the South, she only prayed when moved by some strong pain, for which she could find no earthly relief. She forgot to pray when she was happy. Now she pressed her rosary to her lips, and began to repeat the long and poetical Litany, which Domenico de Guzman has dedicated to the Virgin. Ingenuously enough, she thought that in this way the time would pass more rapidly, two o'clock would strike, and Cesare would arrive. But she endeavoured in vain to fix her mind upon her orisons; it flew away, before her, to her meeting with her Beloved; and though her lips pronounced the words of the Ave and the Pater, their sense escaped her. Once or twice she paused for a few minutes, and then went on, confused, beseeching Heaven's pardon for her slight attention.
When her rosary was finished, it was two precisely. Now Cesare would come.
She could not control her nervousness. She took her lamp and went into her husband's room: she placed the lamp on the writing-desk, and seated herself in one of the leather arm-chairs. She felt easier here; the austerity of the big chamber, with its dark furniture, told her that her husband's soul was above the sterile and frivolous pleasures in which he had already lost the best part of the night.
The air still smelt of cigarette smoke. Here and there a point of metal gleamed in the lamplight. On a table lay a pair of gloves; they had been worn that day, and they retained the form of his hands. She kissed them, and put them into the bosom of her gown.
But where was Cesare?
She began to pace backwards and forwards, the train of her dress following her like a white wave. Why did he not come home? It was late, very late. There were no balls on for that night; no social function could detain him till this hour.