Taking the wreath from the
child's hand, she placed it on the pensive brows of the god. As she did
so, her eyes fell involuntarily upon the inscriptions.
'Who has been writing verses here.--You?' she asked, turning to Andrea
in surprise and pleasure. 'Yes--I recognise your hand.'
Forthwith, she knelt upon the grass to read with eager curiosity. While
Donna Maria read the words in a low voice, Delfina leaned upon her
mother's shoulder, one arm about her neck, cheek pressed to cheek. The
two figures thus bending over the pedestal of the tall flower-wreathed
statue, in the uncertain light, surrounded by the emblematical acanthus,
formed a group so harmonious in line and colouring that the poet stood a
moment lost in pure aesthetic pleasure and admiration.
But the next moment the old obscure sense of jealousy was upon him once
more. The fragile little creature clinging to the mother, indissolubly
connected with her mother's very being, seemed to him an enemy, an
insurmountable obstacle rising up against his love, his desires, his
hopes. He was not jealous of the husband, but he was of the daughter. It
was not the body but the soul of this woman that he longed to possess,
and to possess it wholly, undivided, with all its tenderness, all its
joys, its hopes, its fears, its pain, its dreams--in short the sum total
of her spiritual being, and be able to say--'I am the life of her life.
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