La Foscarina was standing under a shrub laden with fruit. The sudden beauty that had illumined her in the supper-room, made up of a thousand ideal forces, reappeared in her face with still greater intensity, kindled now from the flame that never dies, the fervor that never languishes. The magnificent fruits hung over her head, bearing the crown of a royal donor. The myth of the pomegranate was revivified in the mystery of midnight, as it had been at the passing of the boat in the mystic twilight. Who was this woman? Was she Persephone herself, Queen of Shades? Had she dwelt in that unknown region where all human agitations seem as trifling as idle winds on a dusty, interminable road? Had she contemplated the springs of the world, sunk deep in the earth? Had she counted the roots of the flowers, immobile as the veins in a petrified body? Was she weary or intoxicated with human tears, laughter, and sensuousness, and with having touched, one after another, all things mortal, to make them bloom only to see them perish? Who was she? Had she struck upon cities like a scourge, silenced forever with her kiss all lips that sang, stopped the pulsation of tyrannous hearts? Who was she—who? What secret past made her so pale, so passionate, so perilous? Had she already divulged all her secrets and given all her gifts, or could she still, by new arts, enchant her new lover, for whom life, love, and victory were one and the same thing? All this, and more, was suggested to him by the little veins in her temples, the curve of her cheeks, the lithe strength of her body.
"All evil, all good, that which I know and do not know, that which you know, as well as that which you are ignorant of—all this had to be, to prepare the fulnessof this night." Life and the dream had become one. Thought and sense were as wines poured into the same cup. Even their garments, their faces, their hopes, their glances, were like the plants of the garden, like the air, the stars, the silence.
Sublime moment, never to return! Before he realized it, his hands involuntarily reached out to draw her to himself. The woman's head fell backward, as if she were about to faint; between her half-closed eyelids and her parted lips her eyes and her teeth gleamed as things gleam for the last time. Then swiftly she raised her head again and recovered herself; her lips sought the lips that sought hers.
After a moment they saw each other again in a lucid way. The voices of the guests in the garden were wafted to their ears, and an indistinct clamor from the far-off canal rose from time to time.
"Well?" demanded the young man feverishly, after that burning kiss of body and soul.
The lady bent to lift a fallen pomegranate from the grass. The fruit was ripe; it had burst open in its fall and now poured out its blood from the wound it had received. With the vision of the fruit-laden boat, the pale islet, and the field of asphodels, to the impassioned woman's mind returned the words of the Inspirer: "This is my body.... Take, eat!"
"Well?"
"Yes!"
With a mechanical movement she crushed the fruit in her hand, as if she wished to expel all its juice, whichtrickled in a stream over her wrist. She trembled, as the glacial wave rushed over her anew.
"Go away when the others go, but then—return! I will wait for you at the gate of the Gradenigo garden."
She trembled still, partly from terror, a prey to an invincible power. As by a flash of light, again he saw her reclining, at rest, panting like a Mænad after the dance. They gazed at each other, but could not bear the fierce light of each other's eyes. They parted.
She went in the direction of the voices of the poets who had exalted her ideal power.