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 days 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 the 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....