With these motives (worthy of the single-hearted devotion to dramatic business which made Francis a successful manager) he related, without further hesitation, what his own experience had been, and what the experience of his relatives had been, in the haunted hotel. He even described the outbreak of superstitious terror which had escaped Mrs. Norbury’s ignorant maid. “Sad stuff, if you look at it reasonably,” he remarked. “But there is something dramatic in the notion of the ghostly influence making itself felt by the relations in succession, as they one after another enter the fatal room—until the one chosen relative comes who will see the Unearthly Creature, and know the terrible truth. Material for a play, Countess—first-rate material for a play!”
There he paused. She neither moved nor spoke. He stooped and looked closer at her.
What impression had he produced? It was an impression which his utmost ingenuity had failed to anticipate. She stood by his side—just as she had stood before Agnes when her question about Ferrari was plainly answered at last—like a woman turned to stone. Her eyes were vacant and rigid; all the life in her face had faded out of it. Francis took her by the hand. Her hand was as cold as the pavement that they were standing on. He asked her if she was ill.
Not a muscle in her moved. He might as well have spoken to the dead.
“Surely,” he said, “you are not foolish enough to take what I have been telling you seriously?”
Her lips moved slowly. As it seemed, she was making an effort to speak to him.
“Louder,” he said. “I can’t hear you.”
She struggled to recover possession of herself. A faint light began to soften the dull cold stare of her eyes. In a moment more she spoke so that he could hear her.
“I never thought of the other world,” she murmured, in low dull tones, like a woman talking in her sleep.
Her mind had gone back to the day of her last memorable interview with Agnes; she was slowly recalling the confession that had escaped her, the warning words which she had spoken at that past time. Necessarily incapable of understanding this, Francis looked at her in perplexity. She went on in the same dull vacant tone, steadily following out her own train of thought, with her heedless eyes on his face, and her wandering mind far away from him.
“I said some trifling event would bring us together the next time. I was wrong. No trifling event will bring us together. I said I might be the person who told her what had become of Ferrari, if she forced me to it. Shall I feel some other influence than hers? Will he force me to it? When she sees him, shall I see him too?”
Her head sank a little; her heavy eyelids dropped slowly; she heaved a long low weary sigh. Francis put her arm in his, and made an attempt to rouse her.
“Come, Countess, you are weary and overwrought. We have had enough talking tonight. Let me see you safe back to your hotel. Is it far from here?”
She started when he moved, and obliged her to move with him, as if he had suddenly awakened her out of a deep sleep.
“Not far,” she said faintly. “The old hotel on the quay. My mind’s in a strange state; I have forgotten the name.”
“Danieli’s?”
“Yes!”
He led her on slowly. She accompanied him in silence as far as the end of the Piazzetta. There, when the full view of the moonlit Lagoon revealed itself, she stopped him as he turned towards the Riva degli Schiavoni. “I have something to ask you. I want to wait and think.”
She recovered her lost idea, after a long pause.
“Are you going to sleep in the room tonight?” she asked.
He told her that another traveller was in possession of the room that night. “But the manager has reserved it for me tomorrow,” he added, “if I wish to have it.”
“No,” she said. “You must give it up.”
“To whom?”
“To me!”
He started. “After what I have told you, do you really wish to sleep in that room tomorrow night?”
“I must sleep in it.”
“Are you not afraid?”
“I am horribly afraid.”
“So I should have thought, after what I have observed in you tonight. Why should you take the room? You are not obliged to occupy it, unless you like.”
“I was not obliged to go to Venice, when I left America,” she answered. “And yet I came here. I must take the room, and keep the room, until—” She broke off at those words. “Never mind the rest,” she said. “It doesn’t interest you.”
It was useless to dispute with her. Francis changed the subject. “We can do nothing tonight,” he said. “I will call on you tomorrow morning, and hear what you think of it then.”
They moved on again to the hotel. As they approached the door, Francis asked if she was staying in Venice under her own name.
She shook her head. “As your brother’s widow, I am known here. As Countess Narona, I am known here. I want to be unknown, this time, to strangers in Venice; I am travelling under a common English name.” She hesitated, and stood still. “What has come to me?” she muttered to herself. “Some things I remember; and some I forget. I forgot Danieli’s—and now I forget my English name.”
