He laughed sharply and bitterly as Theodore turned away, and yet he did not seem sorry at his going.
On getting into the open air, the young man stood long opposite the fountain, and drew into his confused soul the breath of the water, and the living rushing of its fall. The moon lighted up the head and part of the chest of the water god, below the drops only glanced out of the darkness. He descended the steps, and drank as if to wash away the intoxication of his soul, and then seated himself upon the edge of the bason. He remembered the old saying, that whoever drank of this fountain would lose his home-longing for Rome; and then he fell into painful reveries. When the noise of the tambourine reached his ear anew from the osteria, he started up in terror, with difficulty he forced himself to pass the door, and to follow one of the neighbouring streets. When in the distance, the deadened sound again reached him, he paused for a moment and seemed to wrestle with himself; then he went resolutely farther down into the town to Mary's house.
CHAPTER IV.
There was a pause in the conversation when he entered. His bride arose, advanced to meet him, and took his hand warmly. He let a keen passing glance rest for a moment on the noble face which looked up so frankly to his, and then approached her mother, who greeted him heartily, and bent forward in her easy-chair to shake his hand. Like her daughter, she was still dressed in black; but wore her hair gathered under a grey gauze cap, whilst Mary's brown locks were kept in order by a narrow black ribbon across her brow. Her father, too, received him kindly, and introduced him to two gentlemen, strangers, who were seated at the brightly-lighted table. They were Englishmen, brothers, old friends of the house, who had arrived from England but shortly before. For their convenience, the conversation was carried on in English.
"You are late, dear Theodore," said the mother; "we wanted you whilst we were describing to our friends the last hours of poor Edward. My poor eyes did their duty but feebly then, and Mary and her father were both ill, as you know. We all felt the loss more than you did, for you hardly knew him; and so you were the most self-possessed, and better able to realize what rests upon our memories only as a horrible agitated dream, even now almost incredible!"
Theodore felt a reluctance to talk. The quiet, of the room, the feeling of agitation with which he entered, strange faces, and a strange tongue, all oppressed him in the highest degree. And now, at this same moment, when he had but just been face to face with an existence so full of magical bliss, he was expected to describe the death-bed of poor Edward to strangers.
They thought that it was his sorrow that prevented his answering. He had seated himself near Mary, and gazed long on her delicate, pale brow. Its unruffled, snowy stillness disturbed him. Her blue eyes, that beamed clear, and happy, and calmly, had to-day lost their power over him. He felt distinctly that it was his own incapacity which prevented his enjoying this noble face as formerly, that made him no longer wait longingly for each word from those charming lips, or feel each smile penetrate into his inmost soul. He struggled for awhile against this insensibility, which caused him bitter agony,--it was in vain!
She was conscious of the existence of some struggle going on within him; but the presence of the others prevented her grasping closer, by her fervent participation in its sorrows, the heart which was separating itself from her.
One of the strangers asked about the monument which was intended to be erected to Edward. Theodore roused himself, and mentioned that that very day he had entrusted the work to a friend, of whose character and circumstances he gave a slight sketch. Mary's parents knew more of him; but the disjointed picture did not seem to satisfy the stranger.
"It were to be wished,"' he said, "that this man could be conscious of some trace of Edward's inner nature in his own being, so that he might be able to identify himself with the delicate form and short blessed life of our lost friend, as something beloved. He seems to be, from your description, a violent, inflexible man, to whom nothing can be more incomprehensible than our Edward's idea of living only for others, and of shaping his last sigh into a wish for the happiness of those he loved."