Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/360

 of the wet sky. The whole circus appeared, magnified by the pale light. At the same moment, came a sudden squall of wind, so strong that Nino just escaped being blown over. He gripped fast; and as he wished to take in, at one look, both the night and the city, he must needs clamber onward up to the last rows of seats. There he sat down, and looked on at the festival; For it was really a festival, worthy the caprice of an emperor,—the wild night playing on the ruin. The clouds, like resuscitated heroes, rushed along endless avenues, broad as the sea, or as their processions. Defiles that by turn were sumptuous or fragmentary, as marked out on the hard sky or softened by the moonlight, passed onward with the wind, before the imaginary stage-box of some Caesar! Then circling above the city's campanili and palaces, reflected in the curve of the Adige, sweeping across the flat country, they went on to be lost to sight in the south—where the flowers warm to life ……

Nino felt clearly these things, though without force, without volition, as he sat up there. He saw himself, too, as some stranger would have seen him; the tears slowly came into his eyes. But a groan, at his side, made him tremble. Was that, too, a dream? He looked about him. Someone had just fallen down at his very feet, a lamentable human shape, shaken by sobs … Not till there came again a trembling blue ray from the moon did the lad bend his head, only to raise it. suddenly with the cry—"Jélaine!"

"I have been following you for hours, for days, for months, for years—Nino!" the man murmured—"all my life was waiting for you! I could not stay away from you. I am willing to do whatever you wish. Insult me—strike me—hate me—revenge yourself. The only strength that I have, like the only weakness, is to breathe the same air that you breathe!—I have suffered, I have been dragging my life around with me as a drunkard drags his feet in the gutter! I have stooped to all cowardly things—I can be ready to endure all shames—only with one condition—that I see you, Nino!—only that I shall be near enough to you to hear your whisper if you speak to me, to inhale the faint warm odour of your body. You are in my blood!"

"Do you know what you have done for me with that letter of yours?" interrupted the boy with a hiss in his voice. "I have lost my road in life forever! Do you understand that?—in spite of your fine phrases? The Seminary? I'm driven out of it! Family? Don't speak of that! Anything left me anywhere? Ah, yes,—for what is left me? An unhappy little girl, whom I have abused, ill-treated, like a coward; abused, yes! since only that line from you was lacking to make it clear that I was unworthy of her. See what you have done!"