The ruined shrine, where he had encountered Masolino, rose in the shadow of the roadside. He paused there to rest, crouched on the step, and with his head supported on his hands. What had become of Masolino? What were the words uttered by Cesare Tommasi's wife? He could no longer repeat them, but the sting of look and gesture remained. Thought became confused; his brain was light. The darkness seemed peopled with faces, watching him derisively, their eyes full of curiosity and malevolence, like those of the woman from the Romagna.
The tall and haughty Duke di Nespoli, the duchess, smiling in her tender grace, the sprightly baroness, had once traversed this road, but it was a long time ago; perhaps in another life.
The youth of Guido Cari had shrivelled and vanished in the crucible of the past few months.
These mocking shapes goaded him on. He rose and chose a branching path leading to the heart of the hills.
The access of fury in which he had broken the statue was passing, leaving a sensation of dull oblivion. He no longer recalled the act with the first thrilling agony of pain and triumph in the deed. He had left all behind him, with the fast-vanishing walls and roofs of Spina. A criminal will sometimes sleep soundly after the perpetration of a misdeed.
Daring impulse did not bridge circumstance and place him at the feet of the duchess to drink deep of the beauty of her eyes. He had dreamed of again beholding her, but now the hope was quenched. The living woman had become merged in the statue of his own creation, and the Aurora was shattered. That was the end; yet
When vain desire at last, and vain regret,
Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,
What shall assuage the unforgotten pain,
And teach the unforgetful to forget?
"Ecco il mio destino!" said Guido Cari.
The quarries drew him to their precincts, as if by a spell. A haunting longing, an unsatisfied quest, began to torment him. Marble of Carrara had become to him the supreme Might Have Been of a blasted career. He wished to see and touch the marble.
Such was the fierce conflict, the torture of disappointment, mingled with fresh anxiety, which had driven Guido and Emilia from Spina in the night when the sirocco blew, bringing the tempest of thunder, lightning, and rain sweeping over the bosom of the leaden sea. Two beings, widely dissimilar in character and purpose, had gone forth into the darkness, spurning the shelter of the home roof, and straining at the curbing chain of routine until the links yielded and each was free.
Guido Cari, previously caught up in a whirlwind of artistic exaltation, had been dropped to earth, spent in the struggle. Emilia, grovelling for gain, had been rendered desperate by failure to grasp more money and increase her hoard. She left the old nook of the hill-top, as certain birds of ill repute flap forth on heavy wing from a ruined turret, uttering a harsh note of defiance.
