The Dark Lady Read Online Free PDF

earth outside. And then she could defy the glinting idols, or at least fool them, dangerous game though it was, parading under their very eyes her heretic's game of unfleshly friendship, exulting in the whiteness, the spermlessness, the heady sanctity, the simple forbidden goodness of her friendly passion.
    Edouardo did not raise the subject again, and their friendship continued in apparent serenity. In the spring of 1914, at any rate, he became too preoccupied with European rivalries to be troubled further over sexual inadequacies. He was deeply pessimistic about the outcome of what he now saw as inevitable war. On their long carriage rides by the river he spoke forebodingly of the might of Wilhelm II.
    "People know the Kaiser is strong, Ivy, but they have no conception of how strong. His triumph will be the end of our way of life. We have had peace too long. We have cared too much about art and beauty and good manners. We are lost things. It is sad, for we are still better than those who will come after."
    "I don't think the Kaiser could conquer this country. I'd like to see him try!"
    "Oh, I don't mean your great nation," Edouardo replied with a smile. "No, I believe an army of Ivys could still drive back the Hohenzollerns. I was thinking of the gold-laden empires of Britain and France and of poor old Italy, with all her past and treasures."
    "You forget Russia!"
    "No, Ivy, I don't forget Russia. Promise me something. If I am called home, will you write to me?"
    "Edouardo, you know I will!"
    He returned to Italy in the war, and he wrote to her every month thereafter. Uncle Fred retired and went back to live in Auburn, and Ivy went with him and her aunt because it seemed unthinkable to do otherwise. It was there that, after the Armistice, she received the letter from Edouardo which asked her to come to Florence to be his bride.
    "I have been ill," he wrote, "and I am not what I was, but I am still something. I have a few years, perhaps, and a bit of money and an old house to share with you. I think you might be amused. Of course, if something better has turned up for you I understand—from the bottom of my heart."
    There was nobody to go with her—Aunt Amy and Uncle Fred were far too old—but Ivy never hesitated for a moment. She had more than ten years of savings. She bought herself a trousseau and a passage to Genoa and departed.
    The train from Genoa to Rome paused for an hour in Florence, but Ivy was ready to get off the moment it stopped. A very tall woman, with a huge beak of a nose, frigidly fashionable in black furs, stepped forward to take her by the arm.
    "My dear Miss Trask, I am Antonina de Selli, Edouardo's sister. He has sent me to talk to you. Could we go back into your compartment? Never fear. The train won't leave without our being warned. That has been arranged."
    Ivy calculated afterward that she had been thirty-seven years, two months and three days old when her life was cut in two. For what she now learned, shivering in the cold, dusty compartment, looking at the photographs of the Forum and of the Villa d'Este over her interlocutor's grim face, was that Edouardo had changed his mind. He was too old, too ill, to marry her. He had cancer, which he had kept from her. His family had persuaded him that it was his duty to leave his diminished property intact to them. He had sent his sister to break the news, but he had armed her with a confirmatory letter and with a check that he hoped would be expended on a wonderful vacation in Italy. Antonina went on so long and in such detail, in her grave, grating phrases, that Ivy had more than the time she needed to prepare her answer.
    "You are relieved, Contessa, to see how middle-aged and plain I am. I am also poor. You marvel that your brother could have contemplated so unequal a match. But let me tell you something. I could get off this train right now and go to Edouardo and make him change his mind. I could! And looking at me now, you know I could!