He wanted Maria's voice to lull the anguish caused him by _the other_; to animate for him the image of _the other_.

'Do you smell that?' she exclaimed, as she poured the boiling water on to the aromatic leaves.

A delicious fragrance diffused itself through the air with the steam.

'How I love that!' she cried.

Andrea shivered. Were not those the very words--and spoken in her very tone--that Elena had used on the evening she offered him her love? He fixed his eyes on Maria's mouth.

'Say that again.'

'What?'

'What you just said.'

'Why?'

'The words sound so sweet when you p.r.o.nounce them--you cannot understand it, of course. Say them again.'

She smiled, divining nothing, and a little troubled, even a little shy, under her lover's strange gaze.

'Well then--I love that!'

'And me?'

'What?'

'And me?----you----'

She looked down puzzled at her lover writhing at her feet, his face haggard and drawn, waiting for the words he was trying to draw out of her.

'And me?----'

'Ah! you----I love you----'

'That is it! That is it!--Say it again--again----'

She did so, quite unsuspecting. He felt a spasm of inexpressible pleasure.

'Why do you shut your eyes?' she asked, not because of any suspicion in her mind, but to lead him on to explain his emotion.

'So that I may die.'

He laid his head on her knee and remained for some minutes in that att.i.tude, silent and abstracted. She gently stroked his hair, his brow--that brow behind which his infamous imagination was working.

Shadows began to fill the room, and the fragrance of the flowers and the aromatic beverage mingled in the air; the outlines of the surrounding objects melted into one vague form, harmonious, dim, unsubstantial.

Presently she said: 'Get up, dearest, I must go. It is getting late.'

'Stay a little longer with me,' he entreated.

He drew her over to the divan where the gold on the cushions still gleamed through the shadows. There he suddenly clasped her head between his hands and covered her face with fierce hot kisses. He let himself imagine it was the other face he held, and he thought of it as sullied by the lips of her husband; and instead of disgust, was filled with still more savage desire of it. All the turbid sensations he had experienced in the presence of this man now rose to the surface of his consciousness, and with his kisses these vile things swept over the cheeks, the brow, the hair, the throat, the lips of Maria.

'Let me go--let me go,' she cried, struggling out of his arms.

She ran across to the tea-table to light the candles.

'You must be good,' she said, panting a little still, and with an air of fond reproof.

He did not move from the divan, but looked at her in silence.

She went over to the side of the mantelpiece, where, on the wall, hung the little old mirror. She put on her hat and veil before its dim surface, that looked so like a pool of dull and stagnant water.

'I am so loath to leave you this evening!' she murmured, oppressed by the melancholy of the twilight hour. 'This evening more than ever before.'

The violet gleam of the sunset struggled with the light of the candles.

The lilac in the crystal vases looked waxen white. The cushion in the arm-chair retained the impress of the form that had leaned against it.

The clock of the Trinita began to strike.

'Heavens! how late! Help me to put on my cloak,' exclaimed the poor creature, turning to Andrea.

He only clasped her once more in his arms, kissing her furiously, blindly, madly, with a devouring pa.s.sion, stifling on her lips his own insane desire to cry aloud the name of Elena.

At last she managed to gasp in an expiring voice--

'You are drawing my life out of me.' But his pa.s.sionate vehemence seemed to make her happy.

'My love, my soul, all, all mine!' she said.

And again, blissfully--'I can feel your heart beating--so fast, so fast.'

At last, with a sigh, 'I must go now.'

Andrea was as lividly pale and convulsed as if he had just committed a murder.

'What ails you?' she asked with tender solicitude.

He tried to smile. 'I never felt so profound an emotion,' he answered.

'I thought I should have died.'

He took the bouquet of flowers from one of the vases and handed it to her and went with her towards the door, almost hurrying her departure, for this woman's every look and gesture and word was a fresh sword-thrust in his heart.

'Good-bye, dear heart!' said the hapless creature to him with unspeakable tenderness. 'Think of me.'