All day long she worked on the bust. It was a new delight to model by
memory, to remember an expression and then try to reproduce it. The
greatest difficulty lay in the limitation of her beautiful art. There
were so many memories, so many expressions, and the clay would take but
one of them.
The next day after that she dressed herself as carefully as before, but
still David Rossi did not come. No matter! It would give her time to
think of all he had said, to go over his words and stories.
Did he know her? Certainly he knew her! He must have known from the
first that she was her father's daughter, or he would never have put
himself in her power. His belief in her was such a sweet thing. It was
delicious.
Next day also David Rossi did not come, and she began to torture herself
with misgivings. Was he indifferent? Had all her day-dreams been
delusions? Little as she wished to speak to Bruno, she was compelled to
do so.
Bruno hardly lifted his eyes from his chisel and soft iron hammer.
"Parliament is to meet soon," he said, "and when a man is leader of a
party he has enough to do, you know."
"Ask him to come to-morrow. Say I wish for one more sitting--only one."
"I'll tell him," said Bruno, with a bob of his head over the block of
marble.
But David Rossi did not come the next day either, and Bruno had no
better explanation.
"Busy with his new 'Republic' now, and no time to waste, I can tell
you."
"He will never come again," she thought, and then everything around and
within her grew dark and chill.
She was sleeping badly, and to tire herself at night she went out to
walk in the moonlight along the path under the convent wall. She walked
as far as the Pincio gates, where the path broadens to a circular space
under a table of clipped ilexes, beneath which there is a fountain and
a path going down to the Piazza di Spagna. The night was soft and very
quiet, and standing under the deep shadows of the trees, with only the
cruel stars shining through, and no sound in the air save the sobbing of
the fountain, she heard a man's footstep on the gravel coming up from
below.
It was David Rossi. He passed within a few yards, yet he did not see
her. She wanted to call to him, but she could not do so. For a moment he
stood by the deep wall that overlooks the city, and then turned down the
path which she had come by. A trembling thought that was afraid to take
shape held her back and kept her silent, but the stars beat kindly in an
instant and the blood in her veins ran warm. She watched him from where
she stood, and then with a light foot she followed him at a distance.