She had passed a very broken night, and Lucy looked at her with tender concern. She quickly but carefully laid aside her terra-cottas, that she might go in with Eleanor and 'settle her' comfortably.
But when she was left to rest in her carefully darkened room, and Lucy had gone back to the loggia, Eleanor got no wink of sleep. She lay in an anguish of memory, living over again that last night at the villa—thinking of Manisty in the dark garden and her own ungovernable impulse.
Presently a slight sound reached her from the loggia. She turned her head quickly. A sob?—from Lucy?
Her heart stood still. Noiselessly she slipped to her feet. The door between her and the loggia had been left ajar for air. It was partially glazed, with shutters of plain green wood outside, and inside a muslin blind. Eleanor approached it.
Through the chink of the door she saw Lucy plainly. The girl had been sitting almost with her back to the door, but she had turned so that her profile and hands were visible.
How quiet she was! Yet never was there an attitude more eloquent. She held in her hands, which lay upon her knee, one of the little terra-cottas. Eleanor could see it perfectly. It was the head of a statuette, not unlike her own which she had destroyed,—a smaller and ruder Artemis with the Cybele crown. There flashed into her mind the memory of Manisty explaining it to the girl, sitting on the bench behind the strawberry hut; his black brows bent in the eagerness of his talk; her sweet eyes, her pure pleasure.
And now Lucy had no companion—but thought. Her face was raised, the eyes were shut, the beautiful mouth quivered in the effort to be still. She was mistress of herself, yet not for the moment wholly mistress of longing and of sorrow. A quick struggle passed over the face. There was another slight sob. Then Eleanor saw her raise the terra-cotta, bow her face upon it, press it long and lingeringly to her lips. It was like a gesture of eternal farewell; the gesture of a child expressing the heart of a woman.
Eleanor tottered back. She sat on the edge of her bed, motionless in the darkness, till the sounds of Cecco bringing up the pranzo in the corridor outside warned her that her time of solitude was over.
* * * * *
In the evening Eleanor was sitting in the Sassetto. Lucy with her young need of exercise had set off to walk down through the wood to the first bridge over the Paglia. Eleanor had been very weary all day, and for the first time irritable. It was almost with a secret relief that Lucy started, and Eleanor saw her depart.