"I did not kill her. She has beaten me!" she thought.
And yet Anna was in the right; and Laura, by all human and all moral law, was in the wrong. To love a married man, to love her sister's husband, almost her own brother! Anna was right before God, before mankind, before Cesare and Laura themselves. If, when her sister had refused to surrender her husband to her, she had killed her, no human being would have blamed her for it.
"And yet I did not kill her. She has beaten me!"
She tried to find the cause of her defeat, overwhelmed by the despair with which good people see wrong and injustice triumph. She sought for the cause of her defeat, but she could find none, none. She was right—according to all laws, human and divine, she was in the right; she alone was right. Oh, her agony was insupportable, more and more dreadful as she got farther from the fact, and could see it in its full hideousness, examine and analyse it in its full infamy.
"Beaten, beaten, beaten! bitterly worsted and overwhelmed!"
For the third time in her life she had been utterly defeated. She had not known how to defend herself; she had not known how to assert her rights, and conquer. On that fatal day at Pompeii, when Giustino Morelli had abandoned her; on that fatal night at Sorrento, when Cesare Dias had proposed his mephistophelian bargain to her, whereby she was to renounce love, dignity, and her every prerogative as a woman and a wife; at Pompeii and at Sorrento she had been worsted by those who were in the wrong, by Giustino Morelli who could not love, by Cesare Dias who would not.
And now again to-night—to-night, for the third time—betrayed by her husband and her sister—she had not known how to conquer. At Naples, as at Pompeii, as at Sorrento, she who was in the right had been defeated by one who was in the wrong.
"But why? why?" she asked herself, in despair.
She did not know. It was contrary to all reason and all justice. She could only see the fact, clear, cruel, inexorable.
It was destiny. A secret power fought against her, and baffled every effort she attempted. It was a fatality which she bore within herself, a fatality which it was useless to resist. All she could wish for now was that the last word might be spoken soon.