As she sat by their sick-beds, her thoughts went often in longing to Gaetano, and many were the times when she wished that he were at home. She would not feel such terror and fear of death if he stood once more in his workshop. Then she would have felt nothing but security and peace.
Even now, when he was so far away, it was to him her thoughts turned when fear was driving her mad. Not a single letter had come from him since he had gone away, so that sometimes she believed that he had forgotten her entirely. At other times she was quite sure that he loved her, for she felt herself compelled to think of him, and knew that he was near her in thought, and was calling to her.
That autumn she at last received a letter from Gaetano. Alas, such a letter! Donna Micaela’s first thought was to burn it.
She had gone up to the roof-garden in order to be alone when she read the letter. She had once heard Gaetano’s declaration of love there. That had not moved her. It had neither warmed her nor frightened her.
But this letter was different. He prayed that she would come to him, be his, give him her life. When she read it she was frightened at herself. She felt how she longed to cry out into the air, “I am coming, I am coming,” and set out. It drew her, carried her away.
“Let us be happy!” he wrote. “We are losing time; the years are passing. Let us be happy!”
He described to her how they would live. He told her of other women who had obeyed love and been happy. He wrote as temptingly as convincingly.
But it was not the contents; it was the love that glowed and burned in the letter which overcame her. It rose from the paper like an intoxicating incense, and she felt it penetrate her. It was burning, longing, speaking, in every word.
Now she was no longer a saint to him, as she had been before. It came so unexpectedly, after two years’ silence, that she was stunned. And she was troubled because it delighted her.