It was empty: not even a tourist was present to gaze upon the beauty of the famous Gianbellini.
She crouched down in the darkest corner upon the hard stones, and there, leaning her head upon the rush seat of a church chair, she wept more uncontrollably than she had done beside the corpse of the poor music-teacher. All at once she felt that she was no longer alone. She looked up. Beside her stood Lozoncyi.
She arose, doing what she could to summon her pride to her aid. "What strange chance brings you here?" she asked him.
"No chance whatever," he replied. "I saw you enter the church, and I followed you."
"Ah!" By a supreme effort she forced herself to assume an indifferent tone. "I have just been to the Pension Weber to take leave of my poor music-teacher. I found her dead. You may imagine----"
He shook his head: "And you would have me believe that the tears you have just shed are for that poor creature? It is hardly worth the trouble. Countess Erika, I have followed you to speak with you undisturbed for the last time, to thank you, and to entreat your forgiveness. Be frank with me, as I shall be with you. Let us have the consolation of knowing that, when we parted, the heart of each was laid bare to the other: it will be but poor comfort, after all."
He uttered the words with so decided a casting aside of all disguise that Erika's pride availed her nothing. In vain did she seek for words in which to reply. She looked in his face, and was startled to see it so wan and haggard.
"You see," he said, perceiving her dismay, "that in this case your wounded pride may be entirely satisfied; you can easily dispense with it. Compared with the torture I have endured since the day before yesterday evening, your pain is mere child's play. Oh, I pray you,"--he spoke in somewhat of his old impatient tone, the tone of a man whose wishes are usually complied with gladly,--"sit down for a moment: this is our last opportunity for speaking with each other. I owe you an explanation. You have a right to ask me how I came to conceal from you that I was married. To that I can only reply that I never speak of my marriage. I am not proud of my wife; I never take her into society with me; few of the friends whom I have here are aware that I am married, although I do not intentionally make a secret of it. I frequently travel alone, and last autumn the relations between my wife and myself, from causes unnecessary to relate, became of so strained a nature that we agreed to separate for a time. I avoided, when I could, even the thought of her. In spite of all this, I ought not to have refrained from acquainting you with my circumstances; nor should I have done so if I had dreamed---- You shrink, but we have agreed that for once in our lives, entirely casting aside pretence, we will tell each other the truth. In this case there is nothing in it that can offend your pride. I had conceived an enthusiasm for you when you were a very little girl. Shall I say that I loved you from the first moment that I saw you? No! you excited my curiosity, my wonder; I could not help thinking of you. A veritable angel with wings would not have been more wonderful to me than such a being as yourself. I did not wish to believe in you. At times I called you too high-strung, at times I said to myself that yours was simply a cold nature. You know how I avoided you,--avoided you when I could not take my eyes off you; and then--then--you have no idea of how my heart beat when I went to you to beg to be allowed to paint your portrait. From that time all speculation with regard to you was at an end: I blissfully and gratefully accepted the miracle revealed to me; nay, I ceased to regard you as a miracle; you were for me the key to a pure, noble life, of which I had hitherto never dreamed. And I began to long for this life: the disgust I had hitherto felt for the whole world I now felt for myself; and then all was over with me. I had no longer any thought save of you; my whole soul was filled with eager anticipation of the short time I could pass with you; when you were gone I used to sit for hours in my studio, recalling in memory your every look and word. The budding freshness of your being, which needed only a little sunshine to blossom forth gloriously, your profound capacity for enthusiasm, the wealth of affection concealed beneath a coldness of manner, and withal the proud, unsullied purity of your heart, mind, and soul--oh, God! how lovely it all was! But you were so far removed from me; a universe separated us. Never, no, never for one moment did I dream of your bestowing one thought of love upon me. Then, when, conscious that the joy which had come to be my life was so soon to end, I went to you in most melancholy mood, the day before yesterday evening, your look, the tone of your voice, set my brain on fire. I left you and wandered about the streets like one possessed. When at last I went home, I shut myself up in the studio and began to dream. I pictured what my life might have been had I been free to clasp in my arms the bliss that might have been mine. I seemed to feel your presence, so pure, so holy, and yet so tender and loving. The life at which I had always sneered--a home-life--seemed to me the only one worth living, if lived with you. I dreamed it in every detail; I thought how my art could be ennobled and purified through you,--my art, which until now had been little more than the cry of a tortured soul. My former life lay far behind me, like some foul swamp from which you had rescued me. How I adored you! how tenderly and truly I reverenced you! Then on a sudden I awoke to the consciousness of how impossible it all was. I crept out into the garden, where in the early dawn all looked pale and fading like my dying dream. I forced myself to think: it pained me so to think!--but I forced myself to do so, to draw conclusions. Whichever way my thoughts turned, they led to despair,--to separation from you. I could not resist the conviction that it was my duty to end all intercourse with you as quickly as possible. What next occurred you know yourself. But you never can dream of what I endured from the time when you entered my studio yesterday morning until the moment when you followed me into the garden and there among the roses held out your hands to me, your eyes filled with light, everything about you so chaste, so grave, so tender; no, that agony you never can imagine! Not to be able to fall at your feet, to take you in my arms and say, 'My heaven, my queen, my every thought, my life, my art, shall all be one prayer of gratitude to you!' To live a joyless life when joy is all unknown is nothing,--a matter of course. But when an angel opens wide the gates of Paradise for one, and one must say, 'No, I dare not!' it is horrible! one cannot believe it possible to survive it!" He ceased.
Erika had listened to him with bowed head. Every word that he had uttered had been balm to her wounded pride, and at the same time had excited that which was most easily stirred within her, the tenderest, warmest emotion of her heart,--her compassion. She had, it is true, a vague consciousness that it was not right that she should listen to such words from a married man, but she stifled it with the excuse that it was their last interview.
His eyes sought hers: apparently he expected her to speak; but her lips refused to frame a sentence, although there was a question which she longed to ask.