She rested her head on her hands and looked at him. He preferred to have her mention Caspar Severance.
"Whenever I was beyond your eyes, you were not quite sure. You went back to your hotel and wondered. The wine was over strong for your temperate nerves, and there was so much to do elsewhere!" she mocked him.
"After all, I was a fragment. And you judged in your wise new-world fashion that fragments were--useless."
Just ahead was a tiny patch of earth, rimmed close to the edge by ruined walls. The current running landward drew them about the corner, under the madonna's hand, and the gondola came to rest beside the lichens and lizards of a crumbling wharf.
"No," she continued, "I shall not let you go so easily." One hand fell beside his arm, figuratively indicating her thought.
"And I shall carry you off," he responded, slowly. "It lies between you--and all, everything."
The gondolier had gone ashore. Silence had swallowed him up.
"All, myself and the others; effort, variety--for the man who loves _you_, there is but one act in life."
"Splendid!" Her lips parted as if savoring his words.
His voice went on, low, strained to plunge his words into her heart.
"You are the woman, the curious thing that God made to stir life. You would draw all activities to you, and through you nothing may pass. Like the dead sea of grass you encompass the end of desire. You have been with me from my manhood, the fata morgana that laughed at my love of other creatures. I must meet you, I knew, face to face!"
"I have met you," he added, sullenly, "and should I turn away, I should not forget you. You will go with me, and I shall hunger for you and hate you, and you will make it over, my life, to fill the hollow of your hand."
"To fill the hollow of my hand," she repeated softly, as if not understanding.
"You will mould it and pat it and caress it, until it fits. You will never reason about it, nor doubt, nor talk; the tide flows underneath into the laguna morta, and never wholly flows out. God has painted in man's mind the possible; and he has painted the delusions, the impossible--and that is woman?"
"Impossible," she murmured. "Oh, no, not that!"
Her eyes compelled him; her hand dropped to his hand. Venice sank into a gray blot in the lagoon. The water was waveless like a deep night.