They rose together, but another change had overspread his features. The gayety had disappeared from his face. It was covered with a calm that was frightful. The eye still maintained all its eager intensity, but the lips were fixed in the icy mould of resolution. They declared a deep, inflexible purpose. There was a corresponding change in his manner and deportment. But a moment before he was all life, grace, gayety and great flexibility; he was now erect, majestic, and commanding in aspect, with a lordly dignity in his movement, that declared a sense of a high duty to be done. Aurelia was suddenly impressed with misgivings. The change was too sudden not to startle. Her doubts and apprehensions were not lessened when, instead of conducting her to the studio, where she expected to see the picture, he led the way through the vestibule and into the open court of the palace. They lingered but for a moment at the entrance, and she then beheld his brother Aruns approaching. To him she gave not a look.
“All is right,” said the latter.
“Enter!” was the reply of Cœlius; and as the brother disappeared within the vestibule, the two moved forward through the outer gate. They passed through a lovely wood, shady and hidden, through which, subdued by intervening leaves, gleamed only faintly the bright, clear sun of Italy. From under the huge chestnuts, on either hand, the majestic gods of Etruria extended their guiding and endowing hands. Tina, or Jupiter, Aplu, or Apollo, Erkle, Turmes, and the rest, all conducting them along the via sacre, which led from the palaces to the tombs of every proud Etruscan family. They entered the solemn grove which was dedicated to night and silence, and were about to ascend the gradual slopes by which the tumulus was approached. Then it was that the misgivings of Aurelia took a more serious form. She felt a vague but oppressive fear. She hesitated.
“My Cœlius,” she exclaimed, “whither do we go. Is not this the passage to the house of silence?”
“Do you not know it?” he demanded quickly, and fixing upon her a keen inquiring glance. “Come!” he continued, “it is there that I have fixed the picture!”
“Alas! my Cœlius, wherefore! It is upon this picture that you have been so deeply engaged. It has made you sad—it has left us both unhappy. Let us not go—let me not see it!” Her agitation was greatly increased. He saw it, and his face put on a look of desperate exultation.
“Ay, but thou must see it—thou shalt look upon it and behold my triumph, my greatest triumph in art, and perhaps my last. I shall never touch pencil more, and wilt thou refuse to look upon my last and noblest work. Fie! this were a wrong to me, and a great shame in thee, Aurelia. Come! the toil of which thou think’st but coldly, has brought me peace rather than sadness. It has made of death a thing rather familiar than offensive. If it has deprived me of hopes, it has left me without terrors!”
“Deprived you of hopes, my Cœlius,” said the wife, still lingering, and in mortal terror.
“Even so!”
“And, wherefore, O, my husband, wherefore?”