I laughed aloud, and slid down into the water, but at the same moment I caught hold of one of the willow-branches, hanging above the yellow waves. As in a vision, I see the woman who has caused all my misery. She hovers above the level of the water, luminous in the sunlight as though she were transparent, with red flames about her head and neck. She turns her face toward me and smiles.

I am back again, dripping, wet through, glowing with shame and fever. The negress has delivered my letter; I am judged, lost, in the power of a heartless, affronted woman.

Well, let her kill me. I am unable to do it myself, and yet I have no wish to go on living.

As I walk around the house, she is standing in the gallery, leaning over the railing. Her face is full in the light of the sun, and her green eyes sparkle.

"Still alive?" she asked, without moving. I stood silent, with bowed head.

"Give me back my poinard," she continued. "It is of no use to you.

You haven't even the courage to take your own life."

"I have lost it," I replied, trembling, shaken by chills.

She looked me over with a proud, scornful glance.

"I suppose you lost it in the Arno?" She shrugged her shoulders. "No matter. Well, and why didn't you leave?"

I mumbled something which neither she nor I myself could understand.

"Oh! you haven't any money," she cried. "Here!" With an indescribably disdainful gesture she tossed me her purse.

I did not pick it up.

Both of us were silent for some time.

"You don't want to leave then?"

"I can't."

Wanda drives in the Cascine without me, and goes to the theater without me; she receives company, and the negress serves her. No one asks after me. I stray about the garden, irresolutely, like an animal that has lost its master.

Lying among the bushes, I watch a couple of sparrows, fighting over a seed.

Suddenly I hear the swish of a woman's dress.

Wanda approaches in a gown of dark silk, modestly closed up to the neck; the Greek is with her. They are in an eager discussion, but I cannot as yet understand a word of what they are saying. He stamps his foot so that the gravel scatters about in all directions, and he lashes the air with his riding whip. Wanda startles.

Is she afraid that he will strike her?

Have they gone that far?

He has left her, she calls him; he does not hear her, does not want to hear her.

Wanda sadly lowers her head, and then sits down on the nearest stone-bench. She sits for a long time, lost in thought. I watch her with a sort of malevolent pleasure, finally I pull myself together by sheer force of will, and ironically step before her. She startles, and trembles all over.

"I come to wish you happiness," I said, bowing, "I see, my dear lady, too, has found a master."

"Yes, thank G.o.d!" she exclaimed, "not a new slave, I have had enough of them. A master! Woman needs a master, and she adores him."

"You adore him, Wanda?" I cried, "this brutal person--"

"Yes, I love him, as I have never loved any one else."

"Wanda!" I clenched my fists, but tears already filled my eyes, and I was seized by the delirium of pa.s.sion, as by a sweet madness. "Very well, take him as your husband, let him be your master, but I want to remain your slave, as long as I live."

"You want to remain my slave, even then?" she said, "that would be interesting, but I am afraid he wouldn't permit it."

"He?"

"Yes, he is already jealous of you," she exclaimed, "he, of you! He demanded that I dismiss you immediately, and when I told him who you were--"

"You told him--" I repeated, thunderstruck.

"I told him everything," she replied, "our whole story, all your queerness, everything--and he, instead of being amused, grew angry, and stamped his foot."

"And threatened to strike you?"

Wanda looked to the ground, and remained silent.

"Yes, indeed," I said with mocking bitterness, "you are afraid of him, Wanda!" I threw myself down at her feet, and in my agitation embraced her knees. "I don't want anything of you, except to be your slave, to be always near you! I will be your dog-"

"Do you know, you bore me?" said Wanda, indifferently.

I leaped up. Everything within me was seething.

"You are now no longer cruel, but cheap," I said, clearly and distinctly, accentuating every word.

"You have already written that in your letter," Wanda replied, with a proud shrug of the shoulders. "A man of brains should never repeat himself."

"The way you are treating me," I broke out, "what would you call it?"

"I might punish you," she replied ironically, "but I prefer this time to reply with reasons instead of lashes. You have no right to accuse me. Haven't I always been honest with you? Haven't I warned you more than once? Didn't I love you with all my heart, even pa.s.sionately, and did I conceal the fact from you, that it was dangerous to give yourself into my power, to abase yourself before me, and that I want to be dominated? But you wished to be my plaything, my slave! You found the highest pleasure in feeling the foot, the whip of an arrogant, cruel woman. What do you want now?

"Dangerous potentialities were slumbering in me, but you were the first to awaken them. If I now take pleasure in torturing you, abusing you, it is your fault; you have made of me what I now am, and now you are even unmanly, weak, and miserable enough to accuse me."

"Yes, I am guilty," I said, "but haven't I suffered because of it?

Let us put an end now to the cruel game."

"That is my wish, too," she replied with a curious deceitful look.

"Wanda!" I exclaimed violently, "don't drive me to extremes; you see that I am a man again."

"A fire of straw," she replied, "which makes a lot of stir for a moment, and goes out as quickly as it flared up. You imagine you can intimidate me, and you only make yourself ridiculous. Had you been the man I first thought you were, serious, reserved, stern, I would have loved you faithfully, and become your wife. Woman demands that she can look up to a man, but one like you who voluntarily places his neck under her foot, she uses as a welcome plaything, only to toss it aside when she is tired of it."