xisted outside of my consciousness,
but that you had created them in my soul, for my delight. I am
profoundly affected with this illusion each time I stand before some
spectacle of beauty and you are at my side.'

The words came slowly, with pauses in between, as if her voice were the
halting echo of some other voice imperceptible to the senses, imparting
to her words a singular accent, a tone of mystery, revealing that they
proceeded from the innermost depths of her heart; they were no longer
the ordinary imperfect symbols of thoughts, they were transformed into a
more intense means of expression, transcendant, quivering with life, of
infinitely ampler signification.

'And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
Killing the sense with passion, sweet as stops
Of planetary music heard in trance.'

Andrea thought of Shelley's lines. He repeated them to Maria, feeling
the contagion of her emotion, penetrated by the charm of the hour and
the scene.

'Never, in my hours of loftiest spiritual flights, have I attained to
such heights. You lift yourself above my sublimest dream, shine
resplendent above my most radiant thoughts; you illumine me with a ray
that is almost brighter than I can bear.'

She stood up straight and slender against the balustrade, her hands
clasping the stone, her head high, her face more pallid than on the
memorable morning when they walked beneath the flowering trees. Tears
filled her half-closed eyes and glittered upon her lashes, and as she
gazed before her, she saw the sky all rosy-red through the mist of her
tears.

The sky seemed to rain roses as on that evening in October when the sun,
sinking behind the hill at Rovigliano, lit up the deep pools in the
pine-wood. The Villa Medici, eternally green and flowerless, received
upon the tops of its rigid arboreal walls this gentle rain of
innumerable petals showered down from the celestial gardens.

She turned to go down. Andrea followed her. They walked in silence
towards the stairway; they looked at the wood that stretched between the
terrace and the Belvedere. The light seemed to stop short at the
entrance to it, where stood the two guardian statues, unable to pierce
the further gloom; and the trees looked as if they spread their branches
in a different atmosphere, or rather in some dark waters at the bottom
of the sea, like giant marine plants.

She was seized with sudden terror. Hast