Chapter VIII: Part II: I (3)

At her sister's door she paused for a moment, then she opened it noiselessly, and guided by the light of her lamp, approached her sister's bed. Laura was sleeping peacefully; Anna held up her lamp and looked at her.

She smiled in her sleep.

"Laura!" Anna called, so close to her that her breath fell on her cheek. "Laura!"

Her sister moved slightly, but did not wake.

"Laura! Laura!"

Her sister sat up. She appeared frightened for a moment, but then she composed herself with an effort.

"It is I, Laura," said Anna, putting her lamp on a table.

"I see you," returned Laura.

"Get up and come with me."

"What for?"

"Get up and come, Laura."

"Where, Anna?"

"Get up and come," said Anna, implacably.

"I won't obey you."

"Oh, you'll come," cried Anna, with an imperious smile.

"You're mistaken. I'll not come."

"You'll come, Laura."

"No, Anna."

"You're very much afraid of me then?"

"Here I am. I'll go where you like," Laura said, proudly, resenting the imputation of fear. And she began to dress.

Anna waited for her, standing up. Laura proceeded calmly with her toilet. But when she came to put on her frock of white wool, Anna had a mad access of rage, and covered her face with her hands, to shut out the sight. Four hours ago, only four hours ago, in that same frock, Laura had been kissed by Cesare. Her sister seemed to her the living image of treachery.

Laura moved about the room as if she was hunting for something.

"What are you doing?" asked Anna.

"I am looking for something."

And she drew from under a pocket-handkerchief her bunch of white roses.

"Throw those flowers away," cried Anna.

"And why?"

"Throw those flowers away, Laura, Laura."

"No."

"By our Lady of Sorrows, I beseech you, throw them away."

"You have threatened me. You have no further right to beseech me," said Laura quietly, putting the flowers in her belt.

"Oh God!" cried Anna, pressing her hands to her temples.

"Let us go," she said at last.

Laura followed her across the silent house to her room.

"Sit down," said Anna.

"I am waiting," said Laura.

"Then you don't understand?" asked Anna, smiling.

"No--I understand nothing."

"Can't you imagine?"

"I have no imagination."

"And your heart--does your heart tell you nothing, Laura? Laura, Laura, does your conscience tell you nothing?"

"Nothing," said the other quietly, lifting up the rich blonde hair behind her ears. The same gesture that Anna had seen her make in Cesare's room.

"Laura, you are my husband's mistress," Anna said, raising her arms towards heaven.

"You're mad, Anna."

"My husband's mistress, Laura."

"You're mad."

"Oh, liar, liar! Disloyal and vile woman, who has not even the courage of her love!" cried Anna, starting up, with flaming eyes.

"Beware, Anna, beware. Strong language at a moment like this is dangerous. Say what you've got to say clearly; but don't insult me. Don't insult me, because your diseased imagination happens to be excited. Do you understand?"

"Oh, heavens, heavens!" exclaimed Anna.

"But you can see for yourself, you're mad. You see, you have nothing to say to justify your insults."

"Oh, Madonna, Madonna, give me strength," prayed Anna, wringing her hands.

"Do you see?" asked Laura. "You've called me here to vilify my innocence."

"Laura," said poor Anna, trembling, "Laura, it's no guess of mine, no inference, that you are my husband's mistress. I have not read it in any anonymous letter. No servant has told me it. In such a case as this no one has a right to believe an anonymous letter or a servant's denunciation. One cannot on such grounds withdraw one's respect from a person whom one loves."

"Well, Anna."

"But I have seen, I have seen," she cried, prey to so violent an emotion that it seemed to her as if the thing she had seen was visible before her again.

"What have you seen?" asked Laura, suddenly.

"Oh, horrible, horrible," cried Anna, remembering her vision.

"What have you seen?" repeated Laura, seizing Anna's arm.

"Oh, what a dreadful thing, what a dreadful thing," she sobbed, covering her face with her hands.

But Laura was herself consumed with anger and pain; and she drew Anna's hands from her face, and insisted, "Now--at this very moment--you have got to tell me what you have seen. Do you understand?"

And the other, turning pale at her threatening tone, replied: "You wish to know what I have seen, Laura? And you ask me in a rage of offended innocence, of wounded virtue? You are angry, Laura? Angry--you? What right have you to be angry, or to speak to me as you have done? Aren't you afraid? Have you no fear, no suspicions, nothing? You threaten me; you tell me I am mad. You want to know what I have seen; and you are haughty because you deem yourself secure, and me a madwoman. But, to be secure, you should close the doors behind you when you go to an assignation. When you are speaking of love, and kissing, to be secure you should close the doors, Laura, close the doors."

"I don't understand you," murmured Laura, very pale.

"This evening, at nine o'clock, when you were in Cesare's room--I came home suddenly--you weren't expecting me--you were alone, secure--and I saw through the door----"

"What?" demanded the other, with bowed head.

"As much as can be seen and heard. Remember."

Laura fell into a chair.

"Why have you done this? Why? Why?" asked Anna.

Laura did not answer.

"Don't you dare to answer? Oh, see how base you are! See how perfidious you are. What manner of woman are you? Why did you do it?"

"Because I love Cesare."

"O Lord, Lord!" cried Anna, breaking into desperate sobs.

"Don't you know it? Haven't your eyes seen it? haven't your ears heard it? Do you imagine that a woman such as I am goes into a man's room if she doesn't love him! That she lets him kiss her, that she kisses him, unless she loves him! What more have you to ask! I love Cesare."

"Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet," said Anna.

"And Cesare loves me," Laura went on.

"Be quiet. You are my sister. You are a young girl. Don't speak such an infamy. Be quiet. Don't say that you and Cesare are two monsters."

"You have seen us together. I love Cesare, and he loves me."

"Monstrous, infamous!"

"It may be infamous, but it is so."

"But don't you realise what you are doing! Don't you feel that it is infamous; Don't you understand how dreadful your offence is! Am I not your sister--I whom you are betraying!"

"I loved Cesare from the beginning. You betrayed me."

"The excuse of guilt! I loved him, I love him. You are betraying me."

"You love him stupidly, and bore him; I love him well."

"He's a married man."

"He was married by force, Anna."

"He is my husband."

"Oh, very slightly!"

"Laura!" exclaimed Anna, wounded to the quick, she who was all wounds.

"I'm not blind," said Laura, tranquilly. "I can take in the situation."

"But your conscience! But your religion! But your modesty, which is soiled by such an atrocious sin!"

"I'm not your husband's mistress, you know that yourself."

"But you love him. You thrill at the touch of his hand. You kiss him. You tell him you love him."

"Well, all that doesn't signify that I'm his mistress."

"The sin is as great."

"No, it's not as great, Anna."

"It's a deadly sin merely to love another woman's husband."

"But I'm not his mistress. Be exact."

"A change of words; the sin is the same."

"Words have their importance; they are the symbols of facts."

"It's an infamy," said Anna.

"Anna, don't insult me."

"Insult you! Do you pretend that that pretty pure face of yours is capable of blushing under an insult? Can your chaste brow be troubled by an insult? You have trampled all innocence and all modesty under foot--you, the daughter of my mother! You have broken your sister's heart--you, the daughter of the same mother! And now you say that I insult you. Good!"

"You have no right to insult me."

"I haven't the right? Before such treachery? I haven't the right? Before such dishonour?"

"If you will call upon your memory, you will see that you haven't the right."

"What do you wish me to remember?"

"A single circumstance. Once upon a time, you, a girl like me, abandoned your home, and eloped with a man you loved, a nobody, a poor obscure nobody. Then you deceived me, Cesare, and everybody else. By that elopement you dishonoured the graves of your father and mother, and you dishonoured your name which is also mine."

"Oh, heavens, heavens, heavens!" cried Anna.

"You passed a whole day out of Naples, in an inn at Pompeii, alone the whole day with a man you loved, in a private room."

"I wasn't Giustino Morelli's mistress."

"Exactly. Nor am I Cesare Dias'."

"I wasn't Giustino Morelli's mistress," repeated Anna.

"I wasn't behind the door, as you were, to see the truth."

"Oh, cruel, wicked sister--cruel and wicked!"

"And please to have the fairness to remember that on that day Cesare Dias rushed to your rescue. In charity, without saying a word to reproach you, he brought you back to the home you had deserted. In charity, without insulting you, I opened my arms to welcome you. In charity we nursed you through your long illness, and never once did we reproach you. You see, you see, you're unjust and ungrateful."

"But you have wounded me in my love, Laura. But I adore Cesare, and I am horribly jealous of him. I can't banish the thought of your love for him; I can remember nothing but your kisses. I feel as if I were going mad. Oh, Laura, Laura, you who were so pure and beautiful, you who are worthy of a young man's love, why do you throw away your life and your honour for Cesare?"

"But you? Don't you also love him? You too are young. Yet didn't you love him so desperately that you would gladly have died, if he hadn't married you? I have followed your example, that is all. As you love him, I love him, Anna. We are sisters, and the same passion burns in our veins."

"Don't say that, don't say it. My love will last as long as my life, Laura."

"And so will mine."

"Don't say it, don't say it."

"Until I die, Anna."

"Don't say it."

"My blood is like yours; my nerves are like yours; my heart is as ardent as yours. My soul is consumed with love, as yours is. We are the daughters of the same parents. Cesare has fascinated you, Cesare has fascinated me."

"Oh, heavens, heavens! I must kill myself then. I must die!"

"Bah!" said Laura, with a movement of disdain.

"I will kill myself, Laura."

"Those who say it don't do it."

"You are deceiving yourself, wicked, scornful creature."

"Those who say it don't do it," repeated Laura, laughing bitterly.

"But understand me! I can't endure this betrayal. Understand! I--I alone have the right to love Cesare. He is mine. I won't give him up to anybody. My only refuge, my only comfort, my only consolation is in my love. Don't you see that I have nothing else?"

"Luigi Caracciolo loves you, though," said Laura, smiling.

"What are you saying to me?"

"You might fall in love with him."

"You propose an infamy to me."

"But consider. I love Cesare; Cesare loves me and not you. But Caracciolo loves you. Well, why not fall in love with him?"

"Because it would be infamous."

"You are beginning to insult me again, Anna. It is late. I am going away."

"No, don't go yet, Laura. Think how terrible this thing is for me. Listen to me, Laura, and call to aid all your kindness. I have insulted you, it is true; but you can't know what jealousy is like, you can't imagine the unendurable torture of it. Call to aid your goodness, Laura. Think--we were nourished at the same breast, the same mother's hands caressed us. Think--we have made our journey in life together. Laura, Laura, my sister! You have betrayed me; you have outraged me; in the past seven hours I have suffered all that it is humanly possible to suffer; you can't know what jealousy is like. Don't be impatient. Listen to me. It is a terrible moment. Don't laugh. I am not exaggerating. Listen to me carefully. Laura, all that you have done, I forget it, I forgive it. Do you hear? I forgive you. I am sure your heart is good. You will understand all the affection and all the meekness there are in my forgiveness."

And as if it were she who were the guilty one, she knelt before her sister, taking her hand, kissing it, bathing it with her tears. Laura, seeing this woman whom she had so cruelly wronged kneel before her, closed her eyes, and for a moment was intensely pale. But her soul was strong; she was able to conquer her emotion. For an instant she was silent; then, coming to the supreme question of their existence, she demanded: "And what do you expect in exchange for this pardon?" She had the air of according a favour.

"Laura, Laura, you must be good and great, since I have forgiven you."

"What is your price for this forgiveness?"

"You must not love Cesare any more. Bravely you must cast that impure love out of your soul, which it degrades. You must not love him any more. And then, not only will my pardon be complete and absolute, but you will find in me the fondest and tenderest of sisters. I will devote my life to proving to you how much I love you. My sole desire will be to make you happy; I will be your best and surest friend. But you must be good and strong, Laura; you must remember that you are my sister; you must forget Cesare."

"Anna, I cannot."

"Listen, listen. Don't answer yet. Don't decide yet. Don't speak the last word yet, the awful word. Think, Laura, it is your future, it is your life, that you are staking upon this love: a black future, a fatal certainty of death, if you persist in it. But, on the contrary, if you forget it--if a chaste and innocent impulse of affection for me persuades you to put it from you--what peace, what calm! You will find another man, a worthier man, a man of your own loftiness of spirit, who will understand you, who will make you happy, whom you can love with all your soul, in the consciousness of having done your duty. You will be a happy wife, your husband will be a happy man, you will be a mother, you will have children--you will have children, you! But you must not love Cesare any more."

"Anna, I can't help it."

"Laura, don't make your mind up yet. For pity's sake, hear me. We must find a way out of it, an escape. You will travel, you will make a journey, a long journey, abroad; that will interest you. I'll ask Cousin Scibilia to go with you. She has nothing to detain her; she's a widow; she will go. You will travel. You can't think how travelling relieves one's sufferings. You will see new countries, beautiful countries, where your mind will rise high above the petty, every-day miseries of life. Laura, Laura, see how I pray you, see how I implore you. We have the same blood in our veins. We are children of the same mother. You must not love Cesare any more."

"Anna, I can't help it."

Anna moved towards her sister; but when she found herself face to face with her, an impulse of horror repelled her. She went to the window and stood there, gazing out into the street, into the great shadow of the night. When she came back, her face was cold, austere, self-contained. Her sister felt that she could read a menace in it.

"Is that your last word?" asked Anna.

"My last word."

"You don't think you can change?"

"I don't think so."

"You know what you are doing?"

"Yes, I know."

"And you face the danger?"

"Where is the danger?" asked Laura, rising.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid," said Anna, carrying her pocket-handkerchief to her lips and biting it. "I ask you if it doesn't strike you as dangerous that two women such as I, Anna Dias, and you, Laura Acquaviva, should live together in the same house and love the same man with the same passion?"

"It is certainly very dangerous," said Laura slowly, standing up, and looking into her sister's eyes.

"Leave me my husband, Laura," cried Anna, impetuously.

"Take him back--if you can. But you can't, you know. You never could."

"You're a monster. Go away," cried Anna, clenching her teeth, clenching her fists, driving her nails into her flesh.

"It's at your bidding that I'm here. I came to show that I wasn't afraid of you, that's all."

"Go away, monster, monster, monster!"

"Kill me, if you like; but don't call me by that name," cried Laura, at last exasperated.

"You deserve that I should kill you, it is true. By all the souls that hear me, by the souls of our dead parents, by the Madonna, who, with them, is shuddering in heaven at your crime, you deserve that I should kill you!"

"But Cesare would weep for me," taunted Laura, again mistress of herself.

"It is true," rejoined Anna, icily. "Go away then. Go at once."

"Good-bye, Anna."

"Good-bye, Laura."

Leisurely, collectedly, she turned her back upon her sister, and moved away, erect and supple in her white frock, with her light regular footstep. Her hand turned the knob of the door, but on the threshold she paused, involuntarily, and looked at Anna, who stood in the middle of the room with her head bowed, her cheeks colourless, her eyes expressionless, her lips violet and slightly parted, testifying to her fatigue. Laura's hesitation was but momentary. Shrugging her shoulders at that spectacle of sorrow, she closed the door behind her, and went off through the darkness to her own room.

Anna was alone. And within herself she was offering up thanks to the Madonna for having that night saved her from a terrible temptation. For, from the dreadful scene that had just passed, only one thought remained to her. She had besought her sister not to love Cesare any more, promising in exchange all the devotion of her soul and body; and Laura had thrice responded, obstinately, blindly, "I can't help it." Well, when for the third time she heard those words, a sudden, immense fury of jealousy had seized her; suddenly a great red cloud seemed to fall before her eyes, and the redness came from a wound in her sister's white throat, a wound which she had inflicted; and the pale girl lay at her feet lifeless, unable for ever to say again that she loved Cesare and would not cease to love him. Ah, for a minute, for a minute, murder had breathed in Anna's poor distracted heart, and she had wished to kill the daughter of her mother! Now, with spent eyes, feeling herself lost and dying at the bottom of an abyss, she uttered a deep prayer of thanksgiving to God, for that He had swept the red cloud away, for that He had allowed her to suffer without avenging herself. Slowly, slowly she sank upon her knees, she clasped her hands, she said over all the old simple prayers of her childhood, the holy prayers of innocence, praying that still, through all the hopeless misery that awaited her, she might ever be what she had been to-night, a woman capable of suffering everything, incapable of revenge. And in this pious longing her soul seemed to be lifted up, far above all earthly pain.

All her womanly goodness and weakness were mingled in her renunciation of revenge.

The violent energy which she had shown in her talk with Laura had given place to a mortal lassitude. She remained on her knees, and continued to murmur the words of her orisons, but now she no longer understood their meaning. Her head was whirling, as in the beginning of a swoon. She dragged herself with difficulty to her bed, and threw herself upon it, inert as a dead body, in utter physical exhaustion.

Laura had undone her. The whole long scene between them repeated itself over and over in her mind; again she passed from tears to anger, from jealousy to pleading affection; again she saw her sister's pure white face, and the cynical smile that disfigured it, and its hard incapacity for pity, fear, or contrition. Laura had overthrown her, conquered her, undone her. Anna had gone to her, strong in her outraged rights, strong in her offended love, strong in her knowledge of her sister's treachery; she had expected to see that proud brow bend before her, red with shame; she had expected to see those fair hands clasped and trembling, imploring pardon; she had expected to hear that clear voice utter words of penitence and promises of atonement. But far from that, far from accepting the punishment she had earned, the guilty woman had boldly defended her guilt; she had refused with fierce courage to give way; she had clung to her infamy, challenging her sister to do her worst. Anna understood that not one word that she had spoken had made the least impression upon Laura's heart, had stirred in it the faintest movement of generosity or affection; she understood that from beginning to end she had failed and blundered, knowing neither how to punish nor how to forgive.

"I did not kill her. She has beaten me!" she thought.

And yet Anna was in the right; and Laura, by all human and all moral law, was in the wrong. To love a married man, to love her sister's husband, almost her own brother! Anna was right before God, before mankind, before Cesare and Laura themselves. If, when her sister had refused to surrender her husband to her, she had killed her, no human being would have blamed her for it.

"And yet I did not kill her. She has beaten me!"

She tried to find the cause of her defeat, overwhelmed by the despair with which good people see wrong and injustice triumph. She sought for the cause of her defeat, but she could find none, none. She was right--according to all laws, human and divine, she was in the right; she alone was right. Oh, her agony was insupportable, more and more dreadful as she got farther from the fact, and could see it in its full hideousness, examine and analyse it in its full infamy.

"Beaten, beaten, beaten! bitterly worsted and overwhelmed!"

For the third time in her life she had been utterly defeated. She had not known how to defend herself; she had not known how to assert her rights, and conquer. On that fatal day at Pompeii, when Giustino Morelli had abandoned her; on that fatal night at Sorrento, when Cesare Dias had proposed his mephistophelian bargain to her, whereby she was to renounce love, dignity, and her every prerogative as a woman and a wife; at Pompeii and at Sorrento she had been worsted by those who were in the wrong, by Giustino Morelli who could not love, by Cesare Dias who would not.

And now again to-night--to-night, for the third time--betrayed by her husband and her sister--she had not known how to conquer. At Naples, as at Pompeii, as at Sorrento, she who was in the right had been defeated by one who was in the wrong.

"But why? why?" she asked herself, in despair.

She did not know. It was contrary to all reason and all justice. She could only see the fact, clear, cruel, inexorable.

It was destiny. A secret power fought against her, and baffled every effort she attempted. It was a fatality which she bore within herself, a fatality which it was useless to resist. All she could wish for now was that the last word might be spoken soon.

"I must seek the last word," she thought.

She rose from her bed, and looked at the clock. It was four in the morning.

She went to her writing-desk, and, leaning her head upon her hand, tried to think what she had come there to do. Then she took a sheet of paper, and wrote a few words upon it. But when she read them over, they displeased her; she tore the paper up, and threw it away. She wrote and tore up three more notes; at last she was contented with this one:

"Cesare, I must say something to you at once. As soon as you read these words, no matter at what hour of the night or morning, come to my room.--ANNA."

She sealed the note in an envelope, and addressed it to her husband. She left her room, to go to his. The door was locked; she could see no light, hear no sound within. She slipped the letter through the crack above the threshold.

"Cesare shall speak the last word," she thought.

She returned to her own room, and threw herself upon her bed to watch and wait for him.

V.

Anna got up and opened her window, to let in the sun, but it was a grey morning, grey in sky and sea. Lead-coloured clouds rested on the hill of Posillipo; and the wide Neapolitan landscape looked as if it had been covered with ashes. Few people were in the streets; and the palm in the middle of the Piazza Vittoria waved its long branches languidly in the wintry breeze.

Her eyes were burning and her eyelids were heavy. She went into her dressing-room and bathed her face in cold water. Then she combed her hair and fastened it up with a big gold pin. And then she put on a gown of black wool, richly trimmed with jet, a morning street costume. Was she going out? She did not know. She dressed herself in obedience to the necessity which women feel at certain hours of the day to occupy themselves with their toilets. But when she came to fasten her brooch, a clover leaf set with black pearls, that Laura had given her for a wedding-present, she discovered that one of the pearls was gone. The clover-leaf brings luck, but now this one was broken, and its power was gone.

Eleven o'clock struck, and somebody tapped discreetly at the door. She could not find her voice, to answer.

The knock was repeated.

"Come in," she said feebly.

Cesare entered, calm and composed, carrying his hat and ebony walking-stick in his hand.

"Good-morning. Are you going out?" he asked tranquilly.

"No. I don't know," she answered, with a vague gesture.

All her nerves were tingling, as she looked at the traitor's handsome, wasted face, a face so quiet and smiling.

"You had something to say to me?" he reminded her, wrinkling his brow a little.

"Yes."

"I came home late. I didn't want to disturb you," he said, producing a cigarette, and asking permission with a glance to light it.

"You would not have disturbed me."

"I suppose it's nothing of much importance."

"It's a thing of great importance, Cesare."

"As usual," he said, with the shadow of a smile.

"I swear to you by the memory of my mother that nothing is more important."

"Goodness gracious! Act three, scene four!" he exclaimed ironically.

"Scene last," she said, dully, tearing a few beads from her dress, and fingering them.

"So much the better, if we are near the end. The play was rather long, my dear." He was tapping his boot with his walking-stick.

"We will cut it short, Cesare. I have a favour to ask of you. Will you grant it?"

"Ask, oh lovely lady; and in spite of the fact that last night you closed your door upon me, here I am, ready to serve you."

"I have a favour to ask, Cesare."

"Ask it, then, before I go out."

"I want to make a long journey with you--to be gone a year."

"A second honeymoon? The like was never known."

"A journey of a year, do you understand? Take me as your travelling companion, your friend, your servant. For a year, away from here, far away."

"Taking with us our sister, our governess, our dog, our cat, and the whole menagerie?"

"We two alone," she said.

"Ah," said he.

"What is your decision?"

"I will think about it."

"No. You must decide at once."

"What's the hurry? Are we threatened with an epidemic?"

"Decide now."

"Then I decide--no," he said.

"And why?" she asked, turning pale.

"Because I won't."

"Tell me your reason."

"I don't wish to travel."

"You have always enjoyed travelling."

"Well, I enjoy it no more. I am tired, I am old, I will stay at home."

"I implore you, let us go away, far from here."

"But why do you want to go away?"

"Listen. Don't ask me. Say yes."

"Why do you want to go away, Anna?"

"Because, I want to go. Do me the favour."

"Is my lady flying from some danger that threatens her virtue? From some unhappy love?"

"There's something more than my virtue in danger. I am flying from an unhappy love, Cesare," she said gravely, shutting her eyes.

"Heavens! And am I to mix myself up in these tragical complications? No, Anna, no, I sha'n't budge."

"Is there no prayer that can move you. Will you always answer no?"

"I shall always say no."

"Even if I begged you at the point of death?"

"Fortunately your health is excellent," he rejoined, smiling slightly.

"We may all die--from one moment to another," she answered, simply. "Let us go away together, Cesare."

"I have said no, and I mean no, Anna. Don't try to change me. You know it's useless."

"Then will you grant me another favour? This one you will grant."

"Let's hear it."

"Let us go and live alone in the palace in Via Gerolimini."

"In that ugly house?"

"Let us live there alone together."

"Alone? How do you mean?"

"Alone, you and I."

"Without Laura?"

"Without Laura."

"Ah," he said.

She looked at him pleadingly, and in her brown eyes he must have been able to read the sorrowful truth. But he had no pity; he would not spare her the bitter confession of it.

"Be frank," he said, with some severity. "You wish to separate from your sister!"

"Yes."

"And why? Tell me the reason."

"I can't tell you. I wish to separate from Laura."

"When?"

"At once. To-day."

"Indeed? Have you had a quarrel? I'll be peacemaker."

"I doubt it," she said, with a strange smile.

"If you'll tell me what you've quarrelled about, I'll make peace between you."

"But why do you ask these questions and make these offers? I want to separate from my sister. That is all."

"And I don't wish to," he said, looking coldly into his wife's eyes.

"You don't wish to be parted from Laura!" she cried, feeling her feet giving way beneath her.

"I don't indeed."

"Then I will go away myself, she cried, her brain reeling.

"Do as you like," he answered, calmly.

"Oh, heaven help me," she murmured, under her breath, staggering, losing all her strength.

"Now we have come to the fainting-fit," said Cesare, looking at her scornfully, "and so will end this scene of stupid jealousy."

"What jealousy! Who has spoken of jealousy?" she asked haughtily.

"Must I inform you that you have done nothing else for the past half-hour! It strikes me that you have lost the little good sense you ever had. And I give you notice that I'm not going to make myself ridiculous on your account."

"You wish to stay with Laura!"

"Not only I, but you too. For the sake of the world's opinion, as well as for our own sakes, we can't desert the girl. She's been confided to our protection. It would be a scandal which I'll not permit you to make. If I have to suffer a hundred deaths, I'll not allow you to make a scandal. Do you understand!"

She looked at him, changing colour, feeling that her last hope was escaping her.

"And then," he went on, "I don't know your reasons for not wishing to live any longer with your sister. She's good, she's well-behaved, she's serious; she gives you no trouble; you have no right to find fault with her. It's one of your whims--it's your everlasting desire to be unhappy. Anyhow, your idiotic caprice will soon enough be gratified. Laura will soon be married."

"Do you wish Laura to marry!"

"I wish it earnestly."

"You'll be glad of it!"

"Most glad," he answered, smiling.

Ah, in the days of her womanly innocence, before her mind had been opened to the atrocious revelations of their treason, she would not have understood the import of that answer and that smile; but she knew now the whole depth of human wickedness. He smiled, and curled his handsome black moustaches. Anna lost her head.

"Then you are more infamous than Laura," she cried.

"The vocabulary of Othello," he cried, calmly. "But, you know, it has been proved that Othello was epileptic."

"And he killed Desdemona," said Anna.

"Does it strike you that I look like Desdemona?"

"Not you, not you."

"And who then?"

"Laura."

"Your folly is becoming dangerous, Anna."

"Imminently, terribly dangerous, Cesare."

"Fortunately you take it out in words, not in actions," he concluded, smiling.

She wrung her hands.

"Last night Laura owed her life to a miracle," she said.

"But what has been going on here?" he exclaimed, agitated, rising to his feet. "And where is Laura?"

"Oh, fear nothing, fear nothing on her account. I've not harmed her. She's alive. She's well. She's very well. No wrinkle troubles her beauty, no anxiety disturbs her mind. Fear nothing. She is a sacred person. Your love protects her. Listen, Cesare; she was here last night alone in this room with me; and I had over her the right given me by heaven, given me by men; and I _did not kill her_."

Cesare had turned slightly pale; that was all.

"And if it is permitted to talk in your own high-sounding rhetoric, what was the ground of your right to kill her?" he asked, looking at the handle of his walking-stick, and emphasising the disdainful _you_.[F]

"Laura has betrayed me. She's in love with you."

"Nothing but this was lacking! That Laura should be in love with me! I'm glad to hear it. You are sure of it? It's an important matter for my vanity. Are you sure of it?"

"Don't jeer at me, Cesare. You don't realise what you are doing. Don't smile like that. Don't drive me to extremes."

"There are two of you in love with me--for I suppose you still love me, don't you? It's a family misfortune. But since you both adore me, it's probably not my fault."

"Cesare, Cesare!"

"And confess that I did nothing to win you."

"You have betrayed me, Cesare. You are in love with Laura."

"Are you sure of it?"

"Sure, Cesare."

"But bear in mind that certainties are somewhat rare in this world. For the past few minutes I've been examining myself, to discover if indeed I had in my soul a guilty passion for Laura. Perhaps I am mad about her, without knowing it. But you, who are an expert in these affairs, you are sure of it. Have the goodness to explain to me, oh, passionate Signora Dias, in what manner I have betrayed you, loving your sister. Describe to me the whole blackness of my treason. Tell me in what my--infamy--consists. Wasn't it infamy you called it? I'm not learned in the language of the heart."

"Oh, God! oh, God!" sobbed Anna, her face buried in her hands, horrified at what she heard and saw.

"I hope we've not to pass the morning invoking the Lord, the Virgin, and the Saints. What do you suppose they care for your idiocy, Anna? They are too wise; and I should be wiser if I cared nothing for it, either. But when your rhetoric casts a slur upon others, it can't be overlooked. I beg you, Signora Dias, to do your husband the kindness of stating your accusations precisely. Set forth the whole atrocity of his conduct. I fold my hands, and sit here on this chair like a king on his judgment-seat. I wait, only adding that you have already used up a good deal of my patience."

"But has Laura told you nothing?"

"Nothing, my dear lady."

"Where is she?"

"She's gone to church, I hear."

"Quietly gone to church?"

"Do you fancy that all women dance in perpetual convulsions to the tune of their sentiments, Signora Dias? No, for the happiness of men, no. Our dear and wise Minerva has gone to mass, for to-day is Sunday."

"With that horrible sin on her conscience! Does she think she can lie even to God? But it's a sacrilege."

"Ah, we're to have a mystical drama, a passion-play now, are we? Dear lady, I see that you have nothing to say to me, and I make my adieux."

He started to go, but she barred the way to him.

"Don't go, Cesare; don't leave me. Since you will have it so, you shall hear from my lips, though they tremble with horror in pronouncing it, the story of your infamy. I will repeat it to you to-day as I repeated it to Laura last night; and I hope it may burn in your heart as it burns in mine. Ah, you laugh; you have the boldness to laugh. You treat this talk as a joke. You sneer at my anger. You would like to get away from me. I annoy you. My voice wearies you. And what I have to say to you will perhaps bring a blush of shame even to your face, corrupt man that you are. But you cannot leave me. You are obliged to remain here. You must give me an account of your betrayal. Ah, don't smile, don't smile; that will do no good; your smile can't turn me aside. I won't allow you to leave me. Remember, Cesare, remember what you did last evening. Remember and be ashamed. Remember how cruel, how wicked, how atrocious it was, what happened last evening between you and my sister. Under my eyes Cesare, and for long minutes, so that I could have no doubt. I could not imagine that I was mad or dreaming. I saw it all, my ears heard the words you spoke, the sound of your kisses, your long kisses. I could not doubt. Oh, how horrible it is for a woman who loves to see the proof that she is betrayed! What new, unknown capacities for sorrow open in her soul! Oh, what have you done to me, Cesare, you whom I adored! You and my sister Laura, what have you done to me!"

She fell into a chair, crushing her temples between her hands.

"Is it your habit to listen at doors? It's not considered good form," said Cesare coldly.

"Do you wish me to die, Cesare? How could you forget that I loved you, that I had given you my youth, my beauty, all my heart, all my soul, that I adored you with every breath, that you alone were the reason for my being? You have forgotten all this, forgotten that I live only for you, my love--you have forgotten it?"

"These sentiments do you honour, though they're somewhat exaggerated. Buy a book of manners, and learn that it's not the thing to listen at doors."

"It was my right to listen, do you understand? I was defending my love, my happiness, my all; but the terrible thing I saw has destroyed for ever everything I cared for."

"Did you really see such a terrible thing?" he asked, smiling.

"If I should live a thousand years, nothing could blot it from my mind. Oh, I shall die, I shall die; I can only forget it by dying."

"You are suffering from cerebral dilatation. It was nothing but a harmless scene of gallantry--it was a jest, Anna."

"Laura said that she loved you. I heard her."

"Of course, girls of her age always say they're in love."

"She kissed you, Cesare. I saw her."

"And what of that? Girls of her age are fond of kissing. They're none the worse for it."

"She was in your arms, Cesare, and for so long a time that to me it seemed a century."

"It's not a bad place, you know, Signora Dias," he responded, smiling.

"Oh, how low, how monstrous! And you, Cesare, you told her that you loved her. I heard you."

"A man always loves a little the woman that is with him. Besides, I couldn't tell her that I hated her; it would scarcely have been polite. I know my book of manners. There's at least one member of our family who preserves good form."

"Cesare, you kissed her."

"I'd defy you to have done otherwise, if you'd been a man. You don't understand these matters."

"On the lips, Cesare."

"It's my habit. It's not a custom of my invention, either. It's rather old. I suspect it took its rise with Adam and Eve."

"But she's a young girl, an innocent young girl, Cesare."

"Girls are not so innocent as they used to be, Anna. I assure you the world is changing."

"She is my sister, Cesare."

"That's a circumstance quite without importance. Relationship counts for nothing."

She looked at him with an expression of intense disgust.

"You, then, Cesare," she said, "have no sense of the greatness of this infamy. She at least, Laura, the other guilty person, turned pale, was troubled, trembled with passion and with terror. You--no! Here you have been for an hour absolutely imperturable; not a shade of emotion has crossed your brazen face; your voice hasn't changed; you feel no fear, no love, no shame; you are not even surprised. She at least shuddered and cried out; she is an Acquaviva! It is true that, though she saw my anger and my despair, she had neither pity nor compunction, but her passion for you, at least, was undisguised. She had feeling, strength, will. But you--no. You, like her, indeed, could see me weep my heart out, could see me convulsed by the most unendurable agony, and have not an ounce of pity for me; but your hardness does not spring, like hers, from love; no, no; from icy indifference. You are as heartless as a tombstone. She, at least, has the courage, the audacity, the effrontery of her wickedness; she declares boldly that she loves you, that she adores you, that she will never cease to love you, that she will always adore you. She is my sister. In her heart there is the same canker that is in mine--a canker from which we are both dying. You--no! Love? Passion? Not even an illusion. Nothing but a harmless scene of gallantry! A half-hour of amusing flirtation, without consequence! But what does it mean, then, to say that we love? Is it a lie that a man feels justified in telling any woman? And what is a kiss? A fugitive contact of the lips, immediately forgotten? So many false kisses are given in the course of a day and night! Nonsense, triviality, rubbish! It's bad form to spy at doors; its exaggeration to call a thing infamous; it's madness to be jealous. And the sin that you have committed, instead of originating in passion, which might in some degree excuse it, you reduce to an every-day vulgarity, a commonplace indecency; my sister becomes a vulgar flirt, you a vulgar seducer, and I a vulgar termagant screaming out her morbid jealousy. The whole affair falls into the mud. My sister's guilty love, your caprice, my despair, all are in the mud, among the most disgusting human garbage, where there is no spiritual light, no cry of sorrow, where everything is permissible, where the man expires and the beast triumphs. Do you know what you are, Cesare?"

"No, I don't know. But if you can tell me, I shall be indebted for the favour."

"You are a man without heart, without conscience; a soul without greatness and without enthusiasm; you are a lump of flesh, exhausted by unworthy pleasures and morbid desires. You are a ruin, in heart, in mind, in senses; you belong to the class of men who are rotten; you fill me with fright and with pity. I did not know that I was giving my hand to a corpse scented with heliotrope, that I was uniting my life to the mummy of a gentleman, whose vitiated senses could not be pleased by a young, beautiful, and loving wife, but must crave her sister, her pure, chaste, younger sister! Have you ever loved, Cesare? Have you ever for a moment felt the immensity of real love? In your selfishness you have made an idol of yourself, an idol without greatness. A thing without viscera, without pulses, without emotion! You are corrupt, perverted, depraved, even to the point of betraying your wife who adores you, with her sister whom you do not love! Ah, you are a coward, a dastard; that's what you are, a dastard!"

She wrung her hands and beat her temples, pacing the room as a madwoman paces her cell. But not a tear fell from her eyes, not a sob issued from her breast.

He stood still, his face impenetrable; not one of her reproaches had brought a trace of colour to it. She threw herself upon a sofa, exhausted; but her eyes still burned and her lips trembled.

"Now that you have favoured me with so amiable a definition of myself," said he, "permit me to attempt one of you."

His tone was so icy, he pronounced the words so slowly, that Anna knew he was preparing a tremendous insult. Instinctively, obeying the blind anger of her love, she repeated, "You are a dastard; that's what you are, a dastard."

"My dear, you are a bore--that's what _you_ are."

"What do you say?" she asked, not understanding.

"You're a bore, my dear."

The insult was so atrocious, that for the first time in the course of their talk her eyes filled with tears, and a sigh burst from her lips--lips that were purple, like those of a dying child. It seemed as if something had broken in her heart.

"Nothing but a bore. I don't employ high-sounding words, you see. I speak the plain truth. You're a bore."

Another sigh, a sigh of insupportable physical pain, as if the hard word _bore_ had cut her flesh, like a knife.

"You flatter yourself that you're a woman of grand passions," he went on, after looking at his watch, and giving a little start of surprise to see how much time he had wasted here. "No? You flatter yourself that you're a creature of impulse, a woman with a fate, a woman destined to a tragic end; and to satisfy this notion, you complicate and embroil and muddle up your own existence, and mortally bore those who are about you. With your rhetoric, your tears, your sobs, your despair, your interminable letters, your livid face and your gray lips, you're enough to bore the very saints in heaven."

He pretended not to see her imploring eyes, which had suddenly lost their anger, and were craving mercy.

"Remember all the stupidities you've committed in the past four or five years," he went on, "and all the annoyance you've given us. You were a handsome girl, rich, with a good name. You might have married any one of a dozen men of your own age, your own rank, gentlemen, who were in love with you. That would have been sensible, orderly; you would have been as happy as happy can be. But what! Anna Acquaviva, the romantic heroine, condescend to be happy! No, no. That were beneath her! So you had to fancy yourself in love with a beggar whom you couldn't marry."

She made a gesture, as if to defend Giustino Morelli.

"Oh, did you really love him? Thanks for the compliment; you're charming this morning. Passion, inequality of position, drama, flight into Egypt, fortunately without a child--forgive the impropriety, but it escaped me. Morelli, chancing to be a decent fellow, Morelli ran away, poor devil! and our heroine treated herself to the luxury of a mortal illness. We, Laura, I, everybody, were bored by the flight, bored by the illness. The lesson was a severe one, and most women would have been cured of their inclination towards the theatrical, as well as of their scarlet fever. But not so Anna Acquaviva. It didn't matter to her that she had risked her reputation, her honour; it didn't matter to her that she had staked the name of her family; all this only excited her imagination. And, behold, she begins her second romance, her second drama, her second tragedy, and enter upon the scene, to be bored to death, Signor Cesare Dias!"

"Oh, Holy Virgin, help me," murmured Anna, pressing her hands to her temples.

"Dramatic love for Cesare Dias, an old man, a man who has never gone in for passion, who doesn't wish to go in for it, who is tired of all such bothersome worries. Anna Acquaviva gives herself up to an unrequited love, 'one of the most desolating experiences of the soul'--that's a phrase I found in one of your letters. Desolation, torture, spasms, despair, bitterness, these are the words which our ill-fated heroine, Anna Acquaviva, employs to depict her condition to herself and to others. And Cesare Dias, who had arranged his life in a way not to be bored and not to bore anyone, Cesare Dias, who is an entirely common and ordinary person, happy in his mediocrity, suddenly finds himself against his will dragged upon the scene as hero! He is the man of mysteries, the man who will not love or who loves another, the superior man, the neighbour of the stars. And nevertheless we find a means of boring him."

"Ah, Cesare, Cesare, Cesare!" she said, beseeching compassion.

"Imbecile ought to be added to the name of Cesare Dias. That's the title which I best deserve. Only an imbecile--and I was one for half-an-hour--could have ceded to your sentimental hysterics. I was an imbecile. But to let you die, to complete your tragedy of unrequited love----"

"Oh, why didn't you let me die?" she cried.

"I believe it would have been as well for many of us. What a comfort for you, dear heroine, to die consumed by an unhappy passion! Gaspara Stampa, Properzia de' Rossi, and other illustrious ladies of ancient times, with whose names you have favoured me in your letters, would have found their imitator. I'm sure you would have died blessing me."

Bowing her head, she sighed deeply, as if she were indeed dying.

"Instead of letting you die, I went through the dismal farce of marrying you. And I assure you that I've never ceased to regret it. I regretted it the very minute after I'd made you my idiotic proposal. Ah, well, every man has his moments of inexplicable weakness, and he pays dearly for them. And marriage, alas, hasn't proved a sentimental comedy. With your pretentions to passion, to love, to mutual adoration, you've bored me even more than I expected."

"But what, then, is marriage from your point of view?" she cried.

"A bothersome obligation, when a man marries a woman like you."

"You would have preferred my sister?" she asked, exasperated. But she was at once sorry for this vulgarity; and he speedily punished it.

"Yes, I should have preferred your sister. She's not a bore. I find her extremely diverting."

"She loved you from the beginning," she says. "A pity she didn't tell you so."

"A pity. I assure you I should have married her."

"Ah, very well."

But suddenly she raised her eyes to her husband; and at the sight of that beloved person her courage failed her. She took his hand, and said, "Ah, Cesare, Cesare, you are right. But I loved you, I loved you, and you have deceived me with my sister."

"Signora Dias, you have rather a feeble memory," he returned, icily, drawing his hand away.

"How do you mean?"

"I mean that you easily forget. We are face to face; you can't lie. Have I ever told you that I loved you?"

"No--never," she admitted, closing her eyes agonised to have to admit it.

"Have I ever promised to love you?"

"No--never."

"Well, then, according to the laws of love, I've not deceived you, my dear Anna. My heart has never belonged to you, therefore it's not been taken from you. I promised nothing, therefore I owe you nothing."

"It's true. You're right, Cesare," she said; draining this new cup of bitterness that he had distilled for her.