"But she loves you, doesn't she? How can she see you unhappy?"
"Because she loved me, even she tried, the poor dear, to free me," Lucio Sabini resumed, with a voice almost oppressed with tears; "last year she wanted me to marry Bertha Meyer, the beautiful Viennese—an exquisite creature—but then she never succeeded. Poor, dear Beatrice! She suffered a thousand deaths. We suffered together. I love her tenderly, you understand; and, above all, I cannot see her suffer."
A sad and heavy silence fell upon the twain. Their teeth almost chattered from the severe cold which had surprised them, at that advanced hour of the evening on the high plain of the Maloja.
"Still," continued Lucio Sabini, "every now and then I feel my body, senses, and spirit weakened in this terrible slavery. Then, during these horrible crises, here and there I meet with other women, another woman—Bertha Meyer, who was so exquisite, or someone else—young, beautiful, free, with heart intact and fresh soul. In her come from afar, from countries which I know not, from a race that is foreign to me, I feel mysteriously the secret of my peace and repose, of the life that remains for me to live. Ah! what deep, what pungent nostalgia wounds me, Vittorio, through this fresh soul which has come to me from afar with all the gifts of existence in her white hands. I must let the white hands open, which I sadly repel, and allow the precious treasures they contain to fall—and all is lost."
"You make the renunciation?" asked Vittorio sadly.
"I make the renunciation," replied Lucio simply.
The immense and gloomy amphitheatre of the Maloja disclosed itself, stretched and prolonged itself in almost incalculable distances before their eyes, through the singular light that came from the immense sky, traversed by thick clouds, now white, now grey, now black, through the whiteness that came from the snows gathered amidst the twin peaks of the colossal Margna, and through the snows of Monte Lunghino. The mountains hemmed in the amphitheatre in an embrace bristling with peaks, bare, sharp, and black, without the shade of trees or vegetation; and on the rocks were tracks, yellowish and whitish tracks, not of paths but of rocky veins. All was rock from foot to summit; rocks with angry, desperate, tragic profiles. Here and there on the level, browner shadows in the obscurity of the night, appeared three or four uninhabited châlets, without sound and without light; but below, where the amphitheatre seemed to continue interminably, flickering lights in a row indicated a house, or rather a large edifice, where living beings were.
The deep and most extraordinary silence of the high land was uninterrupted by human sound or voice, only the violent gusts of wind produced a giant sigh and a dull rumbling. Suddenly the moon freed herself from the clouds and a spreading brightness was diffused on all the scene, rendering it less tragic, but not less sad. Even the wind and bare mountains, wrapped in cold and silvery light, preserved their disdainful and hopeless aspect, the aspect of rocks that have seen the ages without ever a blade of grass or a flower. Yet whiter seemed the snows of the Margna and the Lunghino; and below, behind the glimmering light of the moon, scintillated like a great metal shield the lake of Sils. Now and then the night wind screeched in fury.
"Shall we close the carriage?" Vittorio Lante asked. "Are you cold?"
"I am cold; but unless you insist on it, I prefer not to close it. In a closed carriage time becomes eternal."