Stelio entered La Foscarina's house like a spirit. His mental exaltation changed the aspect of things. The hall, lighted by a galley lamp, appeared immense to him. The detached cabin of a gondola standing on the pavement near the door, startled him as if he had suddenly seen a coffin. "Ah, Stelio!" exclaimed the actress, rising with a start and hastening toward him impetuously, with all the spring of her eagerness that had been repressed by expectation. "At last!"
She stopped before him suddenly, without touching him. The swift impulse vibrated in her visibly. She was like a wind when it falls. "Who has detained you from me?" was her thought, while her heart was filled with doubt; for in one instant she had discerned something about the beloved one that rendered him intangible to her—something strange and far-away in his eyes.
But he had found her most beautiful at the very moment when she sprang from the shadows, animated by a violence like that of the tempest sweeping the lagoons. The cry, the gesture, the sudden halt, the vibration of her body, the light in her countenance suddenly extinguished like a fire fallen to ashes, the intensity of her gaze, like the glow of battle, the breath that parted her lips as heat breaks open the lips of the earth—all these aspects of her real self showed a capability of pathos comparable only to the effervescence of natural energies, the power of cosmic force. The artist recognized in her the Dionysian creature, the living material, apt for receiving the rhythms of art, to be modeled according to poetic forms. And, because he saw her character as varying as the waves of the sea, he found inert the blind mask he thought to put on her face; the tragic fable through which she was to pass in sadness seemed narrow, and too limited was the order of sentiment whence she should draw her expressions, almost subterranean the soul she must reveal. His mental images were seized with a sort of panic, a fleeting terror. What could be that single work in the immensity of life? ?schylus composed more than a hundred tragedies, Sophocles still more. They had constructed a world with gigantic fragments lifted by their titanic arms. Their labor was as vast as a cosmogony. The ?schylian figures seemed still warm with ethereal life, shining with sidereal light, humid from the fertilizing cloud. The spirit of the Earth worked in the creators.
"Hide me, hide me! Do not ask me anything, and let me be silent!" he implored, incapable of concealing his perturbation, powerless to control the tumult of his disordered thoughts.
The woman's heart beat fast in the ignorance of fear.
"Why? What have you done?"
"I suffer."
"From what?"
"Anxiety, anxiety—from that trouble of mine which you know well."
She clasped him in her arms. He felt that she was trembling in doubt.
"Are you mine—are you still mine?" she asked, in a stifled voice, her lips pressed to his shoulder.
"Yes—always yours."
This woman always suffered a horrible fear every time she saw him depart from her, every time she saw him return. When he went, was it not toward the unknown betrothed? When he returned, was it not to bid her a last farewell?
She clasped him in her arms with the fondness of a lover, a sister, a mother—with all human love.
"What can I do for you? Tell me!"
A continual need tormented her to offer, to serve, to obey a command that urged her toward peril, toward a struggle to seize some good that she might bring to him.
"What can I give you?"
He smiled wearily, overcome by sudden languor.
"What do you wish? Ah, I know!"
He smiled again, allowing himself to be caressed by that voice, by those adoring hands.
"You wish for everything, do you not? You desire everything?"
Still he smiled sadly, like an ailing child listening to descriptions of delightful games.
"Ah, if I only could! But no one in the world can give you anything of any value, dearest friend. Your poetry and your music—they alone can demand everything. I remember that ode of yours beginning 'I was Pan.'"
He leaned against the faithful heart his head now filled with the light of beautiful thoughts.
"'I was Pan.'"
Through his spirit passed the splendor of that lyrical moment, the delirium of that ode.
"Have you seen your sea to-day? Did you see the storm?"
He shook his head, without speaking.
"Was it a great storm? One day you told me that you have many mariners among your forefathers. Have you been thinking to-day of your home on the dunes? Are you homesick for the sand? Do you wish to go back there? You have worked a great deal there, and have done great work. It is a consecrated house. Your mother was with you while you worked. You could hear her stepping softly in the next room. Sometimes she stopped to listen, did she not?"
He embraced her silently. That voice penetrated his very soul, and refreshed it.
"And your sister was with you, too? You told me her name once, and I have not forgotten it. She is called Sofia. I know that she is like you. I should like to hear her speak once, or to watch her walking along the road. Once you praised her hands. They are beautiful, are they not? You told me one day that when she is sad her hands hurt her, as if they were the roots of her soul. That is wha............