She clung close to his arm, stumbling a little on the uneven ground. 'I
am going away this evening,' she said,--'this is the last time----'
There was a moment's silence; then in plaintive tones, and with frequent
pauses in between, she began to speak of the necessity of her departure,
the necessity of their rupture. The wind wrenched the words from her
lips, but she continued in spite of it, till Andrea interrupted her by
seizing her hand.
'Don't!' he cried--'be quiet.'
They walked on struggling against the fierce gusts of wind.
'Don't go--don't leave me! I want you--want you always.'
He had managed to unfasten her glove and laid hold of her bare wrist
with a caressing insistent clasp that was full of tormenting desire.
She threw him one of those glances that intoxicate like wine. They were
quite near the bridge now, all rosy under the setting sun. The river
looked motionless and steely throughout its sinuous length. Reeds swayed
and shivered on the banks, and some stakes, fixed in the clay of the
river-bed to fasten nets, shook with the motion of the water.
He then endeavoured to move her by reminiscences. He recalled those
first days--the ball at the Farnese palace, a certain hunting party out
in the Campagna, their early morning meetings in the Piazza di Spagna in
front of the jewellers' windows, or in the quiet and aristocratic Via
Sistina when she came out of the Barberini palace followed by the flower
girls offering her baskets of roses.
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