In those hot May days, the big studio facing north was cool while the
town outside was scorching. Duco and Cornélie did not go out before
nightfall, when it was time to think of dining somewhere. Rome was
quiet: Roman society had fled; the tourists had migrated. They saw
nobody and their days glided past. He worked diligently; _The Banners_
was finished: the two of them, with their arms around each other's
waists and her head on his shoulder, would sit in front of it, proudly
smiling, during the last clays before the drawing was to be sent to
the International Exhibition in Knightsbridge. Their feeling for each
other had never contained such pure harmony, such unity of concord,
as now, when his work was done. He felt that he had never worked so
nobly, so firmly, so unhesitatingly, never with the same strength, yet
never so tenderly; and he was grateful to her for it. He confessed to
her that he could never have worked like that if she had not thought
with him and felt with him in their long hours of sitting and gazing at
the procession, the pageant of women, as it wound out of the night of
crumbling pillars to the city of sheer increasing radiance and gleaming
palaces of glass. There was rest in his soul, now that he had worked
so greatly and nobly. There was pride in them both: pride because of
their life, their independence, because of that work of noble and
stately art. In their happiness there was much that was arbitrary;
they looked down upon people, the multitude, the world; and this was
especially true of him. In her there was more of quietude and humility,
though outwardly she showed herself as proud as he. Her article on _The
Social Position of Divorced Women_ had been published in pamphlet form
and made a success. But her own performance did not make her proud as
Duco's art made her proud, proud of him and of their life and their
happiness.
While she read in the Dutch papers and magazines the reviews of
her pamphlet--often displaying opposition but never any slight and
always acknowledging her authority to speak on the question--while
she read her pamphlet through again, a doubt arose within her of her
own conviction. She felt how difficult it was to fight with a single
mind for a cause, as those symbolic women in the drawing marched to
the fight. She felt that what she had written was inspired by her own
experience, by her own suffering and by these only; she saw that she
had generalized her own sense of life and suffering, but without deeper
insight into the essence of those things: not from pure conviction, but
from anger and resentment; not from reflection, but after melancholy
musing upon her own fate; not from her love of her fellow-women, but
from a petty hatred of society. And she remembered Duco's silence at
that time, his mute disapproval, his intuitive feeling that the source
of her excitement was not pure, but the bitter and turbid spring of
her own experience. She now respected his intuition; she now perceived
the essential purity of his character; she now felt that he--because
of his art--was high, noble, without ulterior motives in his actions,
creating beauty for its own sake. But she also felt that she had roused
him to it. That was her pride and her happiness; and she loved him more
dearly for it. But about herself she was humble. She was conscious of
her femininity, of all the complexity of her soul, which prevented her
from continuing to fight for the objects of the feminist movement. And
she thought again of her education, of her husband, her short but sad
married life ... and she thought of the prince. She felt herself so
complex and she would gladly have been homogeneous. She swayed between
contradiction and contradiction and she confessed to herself that she
did not know herself. It gave a tinge of melancholy to her days of
happiness.
The prince ... was not her pride only apparent that she had asked him
not to tell Urania that she was living with Duco, because she would
tell her so herself? In reality, she feared Urania's opinion....
She was troubled by the dishonesty of the life: she called the
intersections of her line with the lines of other small people the
petty life. Why, so soon as she crossed one of these intersections, did
she feel, as though by instinct, that honesty was not always wise? What
became of her pride and her dignity--not apparently, but actually--from
the moment that she feared Urania's criticism, from the moment that
she feared lest this criticism might be unfavourable to her in one
respect or another? And why did she not speak of Virgilio's bracelet
to Duco? She did not speak of the thousand lire because she knew that
money matters depressed him and that he did not want to borrow from the
prince, because, if he knew about it, he would not be able to work free
from care; and her concealment had been for a noble object. But why did
she not speak of Gilio's bracelet?...
She did not know. Once or twice she had tried to say, just naturally
and casually:
"Look, I've had this from the prince, because I sold that one bracelet."
But she was not able to say it, she did not know why. Was it because
of Duco's jealousy? She didn't know, she didn't know. She felt that
it would make for peace and tranquillity if she said nothing about
the bracelet and did not wear it. Really she would have been glad to
send it back to the prince. But she thought that unkind, after all his
readiness to assist her.
And Duco ... he thought that she had sold the bracelets for a good
sum, he knew that she had received money from the publisher, for her
pamphlet. He asked no further questions and ceased to think about
money. They lived very simply.... But still she disliked his not
knowing, even though it had been good for his work that he had not
known.
These were little things. These were little clouds in the golden skies
of their great and noble Life, their life of which they were proud.
And she alone saw them. And, when she saw his eyes, radiant with the
pride of life; when she heard his voice, vibrating with his new assured
energy and pride; and when she felt his embrace, in which she felt the
thrill of his delight in the happiness which she brought him, then
she no longer saw the little clouds, then she felt her own thrill of
delight in the happiness which he had brought her and she loved him so
passionately that she could have died in his arms....