"You knew that she loved you?"
"Yes, but how many others have loved me for a fortnight or a month, afterwards to forget me!"
"Did she not tell you how much she loved you?"
"She told me a little, but I did not understand."
"But did she not show you?"
"She showed me a little, but I didn't understand. My eyes did not know how to read her soul or guess the riddle of her heart."
"But why? Why?"
"Because she was of another country, of another race; because she was another soul different from all the other souls I have known; because I had another heart. Lilian was unknown to me, and I let her die."
Slowly they reached the end of the long avenue that divides the little island and reached the shore of the lagoon, where no majestic hotels and sumptuous villas arise, but old Venetian houses of fishermen, sailors, and gondoliers. Already in the nocturnal gloom lights were to be seen flickering on the turbid waters. Once again Lucio stopped, as if speaking to himself; Vittorio stopped beside him, patiently, affectionately, pitifully.
"Oh, these Englishwomen, these Englishwomen," he said, passing his hand over his forehead. "Even if they are very young, even if they are twenty, as my poor love, as my poor Lilian, they have an interior life of singular intensity, whilst an absolute calm reigns in their faces and actions. They hide sentiments within their souls with a force, power, and ardour which would stupefy and frighten us if we could see within them for an instant. They have an absolute power over themselves and their expressions, a surprising domination over every manifestation. These Englishwomen—Lilian, Lilian mine! They say what they mean, not a word more, they express what they wish to express, no more; they know how to control themselves in the most impetuous moments of life, they know how to encloister themselves when everyone else would expand, and they find their greatest pride in their spiritual isolation, apart from whatever surrounds them, whatever is happening, far-away, closed in their interior life, in their kingdom, in their temple. Their heart is their temple. How often my dear Lilian was silent beside me, and I did not understand how full of things was her silence: how often she would have liked to fall into my arms, but restrained herself and merely smiled: how often she would have liked to cry and not a tear fell from her beautiful eyes; how often I found her cold, indifferent, apart from me, and never perhaps had she been more mine than in that moment. So I understood not how she loved me, because she was of another race, strong, firm, thoughtful, taciturn, faithful; because Lilian had another soul and all her soul escaped me."