He placed himself beside her. Lightly and gently he took her gloved hand and pressed it between his for a minute, placing it to his lips. She bent her face just for a minute. The boat went on; the pilot fixed his eyes still more sharply on the mist, because it was getting late and the grey of sky and lake was becoming darker and even threatening.
“I didn’t know that you were travelling in these parts,” he said, trying to discover her face through her veil.
“Nor I that you were, Marco,” she murmured.
Each looked at the other at the same moment, as if they were about to say the same word to express the same idea thought by both, which each left unpronounced.
“Have you been travelling for some time, Maria?” he asked, after a few minutes’ silence.
“For more than three months, Marco,” she replied wearily.
“And where have you been, Maria, always alone? Tell me everything, please.”
Marco questioned her with penetrating sweetness, in which, however, weariness was mixed.
“I have been everywhere,” she replied, and he seemed to notice a tremor in her voice, “everywhere. One can go to a good many places in three months.”
“That’s true,” he added; “I started before you from Rome, a couple of months before.”
“I know, Marco. I was told so. Have you always been alone on your journey?”
“Have you no regret for those you have left behind?” she asked in a still sadder accent.
“I have regret,” he confessed, “for one person only, Maria.”
“Always for the same person, for her of former days, for her of always--for my mother,” and a rush of tenderness and sorrow pulsated in the words.
She placed her hand on his arm quickly for a moment without speaking, to calm him.
“Still I have left. I am far away, and I don’t want to return!” he exclaimed impetuously.
“Don’t you wish to return? Don’t you wish to?” and the accent had suddenly become spasmodical.
“I don’t wish to,” he rejoined gloomily, with decision.
She shook her head sorrowfully, and looked ahead among the fleeting clouds which were rising from the still waters, as if asking the secret of the riddle from those waves of vapour which were closing in on the horizon. The prow of the _Vierwaldstettersee_ was directed to the last station, towards a little place on the bank, where an occasional tree was still in foliage, where among woods and meadows the white houses, with their red roofs and little windows full of flowers, did not seem so deserted and dead as the others. Two children, dressed in thick woollen as a protection against the Swiss autumn, were playing outside the inn.