But he
could not make up his mind which of the two women he would prefer as the
centre of this fantastic scenery: Elena Heathfield robed in imperial
purple, or Maria Ferres robed in ermine. And as he lingered pleasurably
over this uncertainty of choice, he ended by mingling and confounding
his two anxieties--the real one for Elena and the imaginary one for
Maria.
A clock near by struck in the silence with a clear vibrating sound, and
each stroke seemed to break something crystalline in the air. The clock
of the Trinita de' Monti responded to the call, and after that the clock
of the Quirinal--then others faintly out of the distance. It was a
quarter past eleven.
Andrea strained his eyes towards the portico. Would she dare to traverse
the garden on foot? He pictured the figure of Elena in the midst of all
this dazzling whiteness, then, in an instant, that of Donna Maria
appeared to him, obliterating the other, triumphant over the whiteness,
_Candida super nivem_. This night of moonlight and snow then was under
the dominance of Maria Ferres as under some invincible actual influence.
The image of the pure creature grew symbolically out of the sovereign
purity of the surrounding aspect of things. The symbol re-acted forcibly
on the spirit of the poet.
While still watching to see if the other one would come, he gave himself
up to a vision suggested by the scene before him.
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