It was late when they got back to Frankfort. 'They'll scold me,' Emil said to Sanin as he said good-bye to him. 'Well, what does it matter? I've had such a splendid, splendid day!'
When he got home to his hotel, Sanin found a note there from Gemma. She fixed a meeting with him for next day, at seven o'clock in the morning, in one of the public gardens which surround Frankfort on all sides.
How his heart throbbed! How glad he was that he had obeyed her so unconditionally! And, my God, what was promised ... what was not promised, by that unknown, unique, impossible, and undubitably certain morrow!
He feasted his eyes on Gemma's note. The long, elegant tail of the letter G, the first letter of her name, which stood at the bottom of the sheet, reminded him of her lovely fingers, her hand.... He thought that he had not once touched that hand with his lips.... 'Italian women,' he mused, 'in spite of what's said of them, are modest and severe.... And Gemma above all! Queen ... goddess ... pure, virginal marble....'
'But the time will come; and it is not far off....' There was that night in Frankfort one happy man.... He slept; but he might have said of himself in the words of the poet: 'I sleep ... but my watchful heart sleeps not.'
And it fluttered as lightly as a butterfly flutters his wings, as he stoops over the flowers in the summer sunshine.