"She is in a trance," the voice replied. "I speak through her, but when she awakes, she will not know what I have said. The spirits come to her directly sometimes, when she is awake, and they torment her. Bosio has been coming to her often, and has made her suffer, until she wrote to you. The spirits themselves suffer when they wish to communicate with the living, and cannot."

"What are you?" inquired Matilda.

"I am Giuditta's familiar. The spirits generally speak, through me, to her, when she is in the trance."

"And she knows nothing of what you say?"

"Nothing, after she is awake."

"Is Bosio suffering now?" asked Matilde, gravely but eagerly, after a moment's pause.

"I will ask him." And another brief pause followed. "Yes," continued the voice. "He is suffering because he has left you. He suffers remorse. He cannot be happy unless he can communicate with you."

"Can you see him? Can you see his face?"

"Yes," replied the voice, without hesitation. "He is very pale. His hair is soft, brown, and silky, with a few grey streaks in it. His eyes are gentle and tender, and his beard is like his hair, soft and like silk.

He is as you last saw him alive, when you kissed him by the fireplace in the room that is yellow, just before he died. He loves you, as he did then."

Such evidence of unnatural knowledge might have convinced a more sceptical mind than Matilde's of the fact that the somnambulist could at least read her thoughts and memories from her mind as from a book. It was impossible that any one but herself could know how, and in what room, she had kissed him for the last time, a few minutes before his end. Again the cold shiver ran under her hair, and she could not speak again for a few moments.

"Does he know what I am going to do to-day?" she asked at last, in a very low voice.

"I will ask him."

The silence which followed was the longest of all that there had been.

"I cannot see him any more," said the voice, speaking more faintly. "He is gone. He will communicate with you again. I cannot find him. Giuditta is tired--she will--" The last words were hardly audible, and the voice died away altogether.

In the dark, Matilde heard something like a yawn, as of a person waking from sleep. Then Giuditta's croaking voice spoke to her.

"I am tired," she said. "The spirits have kept me a long time. Did you hear anything that you wished to hear?"

"Yes. I heard much."

While Matilde was speaking, the woman drew the curtain back, and the dull steel light of the gloomy day filled the small room. But after the darkness it was almost dazzling. Matilde looked at Giuditta's face, and saw the same staring, china eyes, and the same listless expression in the unhealthy features. She had felt a sensation of relief when the voice had been unable to answer the last question she had asked; for she still thought that there might be a doubt as to Giuditta's total forgetfulness on waking. But that doubt was greatly diminished by the woman's indifferent and weary look.

"I hope that he will not torment me so much after this," said Giuditta.

"I have lost my sleep for several nights."

Matilde, believing that the somnambulist was one person when awake and quite another when asleep, did not care to enter into conversation with her in her present state. The vivid, terrible future of the day returned to her mind, too. She had been momentarily unstrung and was in haste to be gone and to be alone. She had her purse in her hand, and stood still a moment, hesitating.

"I generally ask twenty-five francs for a consultation," said Giuditta.

"But I am so much obliged to you for coming to free me from this obsession, that I shall not charge anything to-day."

"No," answered Matilde, quietly. "I am not accustomed to receiving anything without paying for it. But I thank you."

She laid the money upon the polished table, beside the volumes in their gilt bindings.

"Very well," said Giuditta. "If you desire it, I thank you. If you should wish to come again, I am always to be found between ten and three o'clock."

"I will come again," answered Matilde.

She pa.s.sed through the door while Giuditta held it open for her, and in the pa.s.sage she was met by the one-eyed woman. But she was more unnerved and less observant than Bosio had been, and she did not notice the extraordinary resemblance between the colour of the woman's one eye and that of Giuditta's two. She descended the stairs slowly, feeling dizzy at the turnings, but steadying herself as she went down each straight flight. She made her way quickly to the nearest large thoroughfare and took the first pa.s.sing cab to get home, for she felt that she had not strength left to walk much more on that day.

She had a moment of weakness and doubt, as she went up her own stairs, knowing that in half an hour she must sit down to table with Gregorio and with Veronica. It would be the last time, for Veronica would never sit down with them again. She had not realized exactly how it was to be.

Henceforth, at that table, two places were to be vacant, of two persons dead within a fortnight, the one by his own hand, the other by hers; and from that day, when she and her husband sat there, the shadows of those two would be between them always.

She paused on the staircase, and steadied herself with her hand against the wall. She knew that from now until it was done, she should have no moment in which she could allow herself the pitiful luxury of feeling weak. And as she stood there, and thought of the strange messages she had but now received from beyond the grave, she felt the terror of what the dead man's spirit might say to her when all was done, and Veronica lay dead in her own room upstairs--in this coming night.

The fear followed her up the steps like a living thing, its hand on her shoulder, its cold lips close to her ears, breathing fright and whispering terror. And it went in with her to her own room, and kept freezing company with her throughout a long half-hour of mental agony.

It could not bend her, but it almost broke her. If she could stand and walk and see, she would go to Veronica's room that afternoon and kill her. She hated her, too. She hated her all the more bitterly because she felt afraid to kill her, and knew that she must conquer her fear before she could do it. She hated her most savagely because, but for her, Bosio Macomer would still have been alive. As though she had been herself about to die, the great pictures of her own past rose in fierce colours, and faced her with vivid life in the very midst of death. And with them came the clear echo of that bell-like voice she had heard speaking message for message between her and the man she had lost.

Her soul was not in the balance, for the die was cast and the deed was to be done. But she suffered then, as though she had still been free to choose. She was not. The atrocious vision of an infamous disgrace stood between her and all possibility of relenting. She saw again the coa.r.s.e striped clothes, the cropped hair, the hands and feet shackled in irons, the hideous faces of women murderers and thieves around her. Well, that was the alternative, if she let Veronica live--all that, or death.

Of course, in such a case she would have chosen death. But it was characteristic of her that from beginning to end she never thought of taking her own life. She was too vital by nature. She had loved life long and well; she loved it even now that it was not worth living. She never even asked herself the question, whether it would not be better and easier to end all and leave Gregorio to his fate. Gregorio! Her smooth lip curled in contempt. A coward, a thief, a fool--why should she care what became of him? Coldly and sincerely she wished that she were going to kill him, and not Veronica. She despised the one, and hated the other; of the two, she would rather have let the hated one live. But to die herself seemed absurd to her, because she really feared death with all her heart, and clung to life with all her strong, vital nature. If the lives of all Naples could have saved her own, death should have had them all, rather than take hers. To live was a pa.s.sion of itself--even to live lonely, with a despicable and hated companion in the consciousness of the enormous and irrevocable crime by which that living was to be secured to her.

There was a common, straight-backed chair in the room, between the chest of drawers and the wall. Through that interminable half-hour she sat upright upon it, her hands folded upon her knees, quite cold and motionless, her eyes closed, and her lips parted in an expression of bodily pain. Then she rose suddenly, all straight at once, tall and unbending, and stood still while one might have counted ten, and she opened and shut her eyes slowly, two or three times, as though she were comparing the outer world with that within her. So Clytemnestra might have stood, before she laid her hands to the axe.

She did not mean to be alone again until all was over. It would be easier then. She would have her own bodily pain to bear. There would be confusion in the house--doctors--screaming women--trembling men-servants--her husband's groans; for he was a coward, and would bear ill the little suffering which would help to save him. Then they would tell her that Veronica was dead; and then--then she could sleep for hours, nights, days, calmly, and at rest.

She bathed her tired face in cold water, and went to face them at luncheon. With iron will, she ate and drank and talked, bearing herself bravely, as some great actresses have acted out their parts, while death waited for them at the stage door.

Had the weather been fine, she would have persuaded Veronica to drive with her, as on the previous day. But it was dark and gloomy, and there would be rain before night. She talked with the young girl, and began to make plans with her for going away. Gregorio ate nothing, and looked on, uttering a monosyllable now and then, and laughing frantically, two or three times. n.o.body paid any attention to his laughter, now, for the household had grown used to it. It might break out just when a servant was handing him something; the man would merely draw back a step, and wait until the count was quiet again, before offering the dish.

Over their coffee, Matilde read fragments of news from the day's paper, and made comments on what was happening in the world. Veronica thought her unnaturally talkative and excited, but put it down to the reaction after the poisoning of the previous night. Matilde drank two cups of coffee instead of one. Macomer smoked one cigarette after another, and sent for a sweet liqueur, of which he swallowed two gla.s.ses. He did not look at Veronica, when he could avoid doing so.

At last Matilde rose and asked Veronica to allow her to bring her work and sit with her in her room, to which the young girl of course a.s.sented.

"By and by, we will have tea there," said Matilde. "Perhaps you will let your uncle come and have a cup with us--he always drinks tea in the afternoon."

"Certainly," answered Veronica, quietly. "Will you come at four o'clock, Uncle Gregorio? Or is that too early?"

"Thank you. I will come at four, my dear," said Gregorio; and Matilde saw that his knees shook as he moved.

In Veronica's room the two women sat through the early part of the afternoon, and still Matilde talked almost continuously. That was the only outward sign that she was not in her usual state, and Veronica scarcely noticed it, for as the time wore on, she spoke less excitedly, and more often waited for an answer to what she said. Of course, the conversation turned for some time upon what had occurred on the preceding evening. Matilde scouted the idea that any one had attempted to poison her. It was perfectly clear, she said, that, although the paper which the doctor had carried away to examine only contained exactly the right amount of medicine, the one from which Matilda had taken her dose must have had too much in it. She was quite out of the habit of taking a.r.s.enic, too, and a very slight overdose would always produce the symptoms of poisoning. Veronica could see that she had felt no serious ill effects from the accident. As for thinking that any one had given her poison intentionally, it was utterly and entirely absurd.

Matilde refused to entertain the idea even for a moment, and presently she went on to speak of other things, and soon fell back upon making plans for the winter. She did not allow the conversation to flag, for she feared lest Veronica should be tired of sitting in her room and suddenly propose to go somewhere else, just for the sake of the change.

It was essential to Matilde's plan that Elettra should bring the things for tea.

She did not allow herself to think, and she succeeded in staving off silence. Now that the deed was so near, it seemed unreal. Once she touched her handkerchief in her pocket, and felt the three prepared lumps concealed in it, to a.s.sure herself that she was not imagining all she had done, and meant to do. Then, suddenly, she felt that her brow was moist, a thing she could hardly remember having noticed before in her life. But the moisture disappeared almost instantly, and her skin was dry and burning.

Then the time came, and it was four o'clock.

Elettra opened the door and brought in the tea things on a large silver tray, set them down, and went to get the little tea-table, that was made with a shelf below, between the four legs, as a table with two stories.

"Let me make it," said Matilde, cheerfully; "I like to do it."

She laid down her work, and Elettra set the table before her knees, with its high silver urn, and all the necessary little implements. Veronica found herself on the other side of it, for Matilde had carefully chosen her seat when she had first come, placing herself in such a way with regard to Veronica as to make the present result almost inevitable unless the girl moved into a very inconvenient position.