"Lucia, Lucia," I pleaded, "I would not insult you for the world—I would not think a thought—speak a word—dishonouring to you for my life—"
"You have—you have—it is all ended—broken!" she said, standing up—"all broken and thrown down!"
She made with her hands the bitter gesture of breaking.
"Listen," she said, while I stood amazed and silent. "I am no girl. I am older than you, and know the world. It is because I dreamed I saw that which I thought truer and purer in you than the conventions of life that I asked you to come here—"
"Lucia, Lucia, my lady, listen to me," I pleaded, trying to take her hand. She put me aside with the single swift, imperious movement which women use when their pride is deeply wounded.
"That lady"—she pointed within to where the silent dame of years was tinkling unconcernedly on the keys—"is my dead husband's mother. Surely she abundantly supplies the proprieties. And now you—you whom I thought I could trust, spoil my year—spoil my life, slay in a moment my love with reproach and scorn!"
She walked to the door, turned and said—"You, whom I trusted, have done this!" Then she threw out her hands in an attitude of despair and scorn, and disappeared.
I sat long with my head on my hands, thinking—the world about me in ruins, never to be built up. Then I went up to my room, paused at the wardrobe, changed my black coat to that in which I had arrived, and went softly down-stairs again. The waning moon had just risen late, and threw a weird light over the ranges of buildings, the gateways and towers.
I walked swiftly to the outer gate, and, there leaping a hedge of flowering plants, I fled down the mountain through the vineyards. I went swiftly, eager to escape from Castel del Monte, but in the tangle of walls and fences it was not easy to advance. At the parting of three ways I paused, uncertain in which direction to proceed. Suddenly, without warning, a dark figure stepped from some hidden place. I saw the gleam of something bright. I knew that I was smitten. Waves of white-hot metal ran suddenly in upon my brain, and I knew no more.
When I awoke, my first thought was that I was back again in the room where Lucia and I had talked together. I felt something perfumed and soft like a caress. It seemed like the filmy lace that the Countess wore upon her shoulder. My head lay against it. I heard a voice say, as it had been in my ear, through the murmuring floods of many waters—"My boy! my boy! And I, wicked one that I was, sent you to this!"