"Ah, Mabel, come away, come away with me, far-away, renounce your millions, renounce all your money; say to your father that you don't want a farthing, that Vittorio Lante, your husband, wishes to work and create with you and for you life and riches."
With closed eyes she vacillated in his arms, vacillated beneath the wave of that enveloping passion.
"Mabel, you alone can make of me another man, with another soul, with another heart! Mabel, remember, remember our dreams of love in the Engadine, remember that you consented to love me up there; you did love me, you have been my beloved, you can't forget! Change yourself, change me; be another woman, give yourself to love, as I let myself be taken in the great battle for you! Change yourself, as I change myself! Deny not the arguments of love; be a woman as other women, as I ask to be a man in every strife however cruel. Mabel, Mabel, change yourself."
Holding her in his arms, a breath of scorching words wrapped the girl as in a fire of flame. For the first time Vittorio Lante saw on that face, so dazzling with youth and beauty, a lost expression of love and sorrow. Still, she was made for victory; she was the stronger. Tearing herself free, she composed her face, and replied:
"No soul ever changes; at least, not for love. Each soul remains what it is."
"It is true," he replied, coldly and sadly. "The soul never changes, not even for love."
A strong, fresh wind was coming from the deep, raising the waters of the Adriatic in long waves of incomparable light green, to hurl them, as they curved, rolled, and almost curled in greenish white with a crown of the whitest foam, and fragrant with the sharp smell of the sea, on the long, straight shore of the Lido. The waves broke one after the other, almost on top of each other, on the soft, yellow sand of the beach, which became dark with ever-increasing dark weals, and stained by the swelling water as the waves gained ground. Here and there the little mounds of seaweed and marine refuse on the sand were invaded, covered, and demolished, as they became higher and lower with the suction of the waves: here and there holes and little ditches full of water were being formed. The strong, fresh wind whirled round the fashionable huts that stretched numerously in a line far along the straight beach, and whirled around the vast bathing establishment of the Lido, causing the doors of the little cabins to rattle, and the linen to flutter, which here and there had been exposed to dry: it whirled round the immense covered terrace of the _café_, causing the awnings to flap which were still lowered against the sun.