"Sweetness? Don't you know that she is jealous of my poor Lilian, of my poor dead one? Don't you know that she still makes scenes of jealousy?"
"Oh!"
"It is so. When I read in the papers the dread news, when I read Lilian's poor, sweet, last words from up there, and understood that she had killed herself, like one possessed I set off by night for the Engadine. Ah, Vittorio, Vittorio, that second journey to ascend there from Chiavenna, what atrocious anxiety all that journey which I made alone, to the Maloja, to St. Moritz, to the Bernina, in a time of perfect solitude, with the snow hardly melted, with St. Moritz still shut up as if dead. The roads were still difficult, as everywhere I followed step for step the tracks of my poor little one who had gone up there, who had lovingly and piously visited all the places where we had been together—step for step after Lilian's tracks until one night I slept in the house of the guide who had seen her die; the man's eyes were full of tears as he told me of her death. Well, when I, full of horror and sorrow, pierced by remorse, unconsoled and unconsolable, came away, whatever do you think Beatrice Herz did? She came to meet me in the Engadine, to snatch me back. She said so—just to snatch me back. I found her in the inn at Chiavenna, whence she was hurrying to ascend to the Engadine. I found her there, and instead of weeping with me, instead of asking pardon of God, she acted a scene of jealousy, and insulted the dead and me."
"Oh, how horrible!"
"Horrible! For that matter I told her a great and simple truth, which made her rave, and always makes her rave; so I repeat it to her."
"What was that?"
"That she had loved me ten years, and did not know how to die for me, and that Lilian Temple had loved me one month and had died for me."
"She must suffer atrociously from all this?"
"Atrociously. I hate Beatrice Herz, and she hates me."
"Yet you remain together?"