--To go away, always to be going away, to wander throughout the world, to go long distances!--thought the nomad woman.--Never to stop, never to rest! The anxiety of the journey is not over yet, but already the truce has expired. You wish to comfort me, my friend, and, to console me, you propose that I should go far-away once more, although I returned to my home, as it were, but yesterday.--
Suddenly her eyes looked like two sparkling springs.
"Leave me in my home a little while longer. And remain here, too, if that is possible. Later, you will be free, you will be happy. You have so long a time before you! You are young. You will win what you deserve. They will not lose you, even if they must wait for you."
Her eyes had two crystal masks before them; they glittered in the sunshine, and seemed almost fixed in her fevered face.
"Ah, always the same shadow!" Stelio exclaimed, with an impatience he could not conceal. "But what are you thinking of? What do you fear? Why not tell me what it is that troubles you? Explain yourself. Who is it that must wait for me?"
She trembled with terror at that question, which seemed new and unexpected, although he only repeated her own last words. She trembled to find herself so near danger, as if, in walking across this fair meadow, a precipice had suddenly opened under her feet.
And suddenly, in that unfamiliar place, on that beautiful grass, at the end of the day, after all those specters, sanguinary or bloodless, rose a living image of will and desire, which filled her with far greater terror. Suddenly, above all the figures of the Past, arose the figure of the Future, and again the aspect of her life was changed; and the sweetness of the respite was already lost, and the fair meadow with its sweet grass was worth nothing.
But she was obliged to lift her face a little to keep her tears from falling.
"Do not be sad!" pleaded the young man, whose soul was suspended on those eyelids, whence the tears would not fall. "You hold my heart in your hand. I never will fail you. Then why torment yourself? I am wholly yours."
For him, too, the image of Donatella was there, with her rounded figure, her body as robust and agile as a wingless Victory, armed with the glory of maidenhood, attractive yet hostile, ready to struggle, and then to yield. But his soul was suspended from the eyelids of the other woman, like the tears that veiled the eyes in which he had seen the vastness of the universe, the infinity of love.