His start made Maria smile; and as a tear still lingered on her
lashes--'This one too,' she said.
He kissed it away, and she laughed softly without a thought of
suspicion.
Her tears had ceased, and, reassured, she turned almost gay and full of
charming graces.
'I am going to make the tea now,' she said.
'No, stay where you are.' The image of Elena had suddenly interposed
between them.
'No, let me get up,' begged Maria, disengaging herself from his
constraining arms. 'I want you to taste my tea. The aroma will penetrate
to your very soul.'
She was alluding to some costly tea she had received from Calcutta which
she had given to Andrea the day before.
She rose and went over to the arm-chair with the dragons in which the
melting shades of the _rosa di gruogo_ of the ancient dalmatic continued
to languish exquisitely. The little cups of fine Castel-Durante Majolica
still glittered on the tea-table.
While preparing the tea, she said a thousand charming things, she let
all the goodness and tenderness of her fond heart bloom out with entire
freedom; she took an ingenuous delight in this dear and secret intimacy,
the hushed calm of the room with all its accessories of refined luxury.
Behind her, as behind the Virgin in Botticelli's _tondo_, rose the tall
vases crowned with sprays of white lilac, and her archangelic hands
moved about among the little mythological pictures of Luzio Dolci and
the hexameters of Ovid beneath them.
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