She looked at Stelio, who had thrown himself, half reclining, on a divan near the balcony, and now lay silent, his eyes half-closed, his disordered hair touched with a ray of gold from the setting sun. She realized that she was possessed by an incurable madness, spreading throughout her declining body. Lost! Lost! She was irrevocably lost!
"Die?" said her beloved, in a dreamy voice, without moving or opening his eyes, as if he were wrapped in a melancholy trance.
Stelio opened his eyes quickly, raised himself erect and held up one hand, as if to prevent her from saying more.
"Ah, why do you torment yourself in this way?" he said.
He saw that she was ivory pale; her hair fell in wandering wavy locks over her cheeks; she seemed consumed by some corrosive poison; her face was full of terror and misery.
"What are you doing with me? What are we both doing?" she exclaimed in anguish.
"Not as I wish, not as I have dreamed; I do not wish to be loved thus."
"But you set my heart on fire, and then madness seizes me."
"Your fierceness makes me feel that you hate me--that you even wish to kill me."
"But you make me blind, I tell you, and then I know not what I say or do."
"What is it that maddens you so? What do you see in me?"
"Why do you torment yourself, I say? I love you! This is the love...."
"That condemns me! I must die of it! Call me once more by the name you gave me long ago."
"You are mine! You belong to me, and I will not lose you."
"But why? I do not understand. What wild fancy is this of yours? Does my love offend you? Do you not love me in the same way?"
His irritation and misunderstanding only aggravated her suffering. She covered her face with her hands. Her heart throbbed with hammer-like beating in her rigid breast, seeming to echo in her brain.
Presently she raised her head and looked at him with painful effort.
"I have a heart, Stelio," she said, with trembling lips, as if she were struggling with a sort of fierce timidity in order to force herself to speak those words. "I suffer from a heart, too keenly alive--oh, Stelio, alive and eager and anguished as you never will know...."
She smiled the sweet, faint smile with which she sought to disguise her suffering; hesitated a moment, then reached toward a bunch of violets, which she took and pressed close to her lips. Her eyelids drooped, her classic brow, between her dark hair and the flowers, showed its ivory-like beauty.