Venetian Masque

'Do you expect me to guess it?'

He looked at her intently, in silence, incensed by her calm. He was very near to hating her for this air of frosty, virginal purity which hung about her like the aureole about the Lion of Saint Mark, and which he knew to be the travesty of a wanton. He marvelled that she should dare to confront him in this half-scornful self-possession, carrying what she carried in her heart. He must see what he could do to shake it.

'I had discovered,' he said, 'that your Messer Melville was the seducer of the lady whom I hoped to make my wife.'

She sat stiff and straight, a slow flush mounting to her brow.

'You cannot be speaking of me,' she said.

He rose, forgetting wound and weakness in the intensity of his emotion. 'Must I advance the proof before you will cease to nauseate me with your hypocrisy? Must I tell you that I know you for the masked lady who fled so precipitately before me from Mr. Melville's lodging one morning months ago? Must I tell you how I know it? Shall I tell you what evidence I hold with which to convince others. Shall I . . .'

'Stop!' she cried, and she too was on her feet confronting him. 'How dare you soil me with your vile assumptions? It is quite true that I was that lady. Can you suppose that I would ever deny anything that I had ever done? But between what I went to do there, and what you so infamously conclude, because your mind is foul, there is the difference that lies between snow and mud.' No longer could he complain that she was a cold, insensible piece, incapable of emotion. Here was emotion and to spare, a withering, scorching emotion of anger before which he found himself flinching.

'Oh, my mind is foul? Test it against any other mind in Venice. Test it, if you dare, against your own father's mind. Ask him what inference he would draw if he found a lady of quality so closeted in a man's lodging; if he had seen her actually in that man's arms. If you want to break a father's heart with shame, ask him that.'

This was to her anger as water is to fire. But perception of the truth of what he asserted did no more than restore her to her normal calm.

Almost composedly she sat down again, and repressing emotion spoke in a quiet, level voice. If there was pleading in what she said, it was in her actual words, not in their tone.

'Listen, Leonardo.' Quietly she told him the circumstances and purpose of that visit of hers to Marc-Antoine. She made of it a long narrative, and weakness drove him to sit again whilst the tale was telling. If it convinced him, he showed no sign of it. On the contrary, his answering comment touched upon its main improbability.

'And for this renunciation, as you call it, no other occasion would serve? Although this man was a constant visitor here and your opportunities of speaking to him were frequent, you preferred a course from which any Venetian lady who prized her repute must have shrunk in horror?'

She knew that it would be idle to explain this by the urgency of her desire to put herself right in Marc-Antoine's eyes, an urgency that could brook no least delay. This was something that he would never understand. The statement would merely earn her an aggravation of his insulting incredulity.

'That,' she answered simply, but very firmly, 'was what I happened to prefer. I may not have perceived the indiscretion. But there was certainly nothing beyond indiscretion in that visit.'

'Will anyone believe that, Isotta?'

'Don't you?' she challenged him.

He considered before answering. When at last he spoke, his manner had subtly changed. 'I believe you now that you have explained. But I am asking myself whether I believe you merely because for my peace of mind's sake I must. Without this explanation I could believe only what all the world would believe. Because I loved you it was necessary that I should kill the only man who had knowledge of what I believed. By killing him I felt that I should kill at least some of the shame attaching to this. That is my explanation to you of a deed that has earned me your displeasure.'

He waited a moment for her to speak. Then, seeing her silent and thoughtful, he rose again and went to stand beside her and over her. 'Now that we have both confessed, shall we absolve each other?'

'You can be generous, then?' she said, and he did not know whether she spoke in sarcasm.

'Cruel question! Much more than that to you, Isotta.' He lowered his rich voice to a wooing note, a note which he believed that no woman could hear without a thrill. For it was a boast to which possibly his experiences may have entitled him that woman was an instrument upon which he was a virtuoso. 'Let us make peace, my dear. I am on my knees to implore it in the great need which my worship of you arouses in me. I have been speaking of our marriage to your father. He consents that it shall take place when Lent is out, provided that this shall be your wish.'

'My wish?' There was a crooked little smile of pain on her lips. 'It can never be my wish.'