"No. It will never be arranged."
An hour later Laura asked: "Are you in love with Cesare Dias?"
"Yes," answered Anna, simply.
VI.
Anna's letter to Cesare Dias ran thus:
"I don't know what name to call you by, whether by your own name, so soft and proud, or whether by that of Friend, which says so much, and yet says nothing. I don't know whether I should write here the word that my respect for you imposes upon me, or the word that my heart inspires. Perhaps I had better call you by no name at all; perhaps I ought not to struggle against the unconquerable superior will that dominates me. I am so poor a creature, I am so devoid of moral strength, that the best part of my soul is unconscious of what it does, and when I attempt to act, I am defeated from the outset; is it not true? Ah, there is never an hour of noble and fruitful battle in my heart! Only an utter ignorance of things, of feelings, a complete surrender to the sweetness of love, and, thereby, the loss of all peace, all hope!
"How you must despise me. You are just and wise. You can't help despising a poor weak thing like me, a woman whose heart is always open, whose imagination is always ready to take fire, whose changeable mind is never fixed, whose veins, though cured of their great fever, are still burning, as if her rebellious blood could do nothing but burn, burn, burn. If you despise me—and your eyes, your voice, your manner, all tell me that you do—you are quite right. I never seem to be doing wrong, yet I am always doing it; and then, when I see it, it is too late to make good my error, to recover my own happiness, or to restore that of others. Ah, despise me, despise me; you are right to despise me. I bend to every wind that blows, like a broken reed. I am overturned and rent by the tempest, for I know neither how to defend myself nor how to die. Despise me; no one can despise me as you can, no one has so good a right to do it.
"When you are away from me, I can think of you with a certain amount of courage, trusting to your kindness, to your charity, to forgive me my lack of strength. When you are away from me, I feel myself more a woman, braver; I can dream of being something to you, not an equal, no, but a humble follower in the things of the soul. Dreams, dreams! When you are with me, all my faith in myself disappears; I recognise how feeble I am, how extravagant, how incoherent; no more, never more, can I hope for your indulgence.
"I think of my past—justly and cruelly you reproached me with it—and I find in it such a multitude of childish illusions, such an entirely false standard of life and love, such a monstrous abandonment of all right womanly traditions, that my shame rushes in a flame to my face. Have you not noticed it?