Donna Micaela does not answer; she gazes up at the image. “Is it your will? Is it your will?” she whispers anxiously.
Donna Elisa continues to bemoan herself. “I saw him so plainly, and he has never deceived before. I thought that some poor girl who had no marriage portion had prayed to him for a husband. Such things have happened before. What shall I do now?”
She laments and bewails; she cannot get away from the thought that it ought to be a poor woman. Donna Micaela grows impatient. She takes her by the arm and shakes her. “But Donna Elisa, Donna Elisa!”
Donna Elisa does not listen to her; she continues her laments. “What shall I do? what shall I do?”
“Why, make the poor woman who was kneeling and praying here your son’s wife, Donna Elisa!”
Donna Elisa looks up. Such a face as she sees before her! So bewitching, so captivating, so smiling!
But she may not look at it for more than a second. Donna Micaela hides it instantly in Donna Elisa’s old black dress.
Donna Micaela and Donna Elisa go together into the town. The street winds so that they cannot see Donna Elisa’s house until they are quite near. When it at last comes into view they see that the shop windows are lighted up. Four gigantic wax-candles are burning behind the bunches of rosaries.
Both the women press each other’s hands. “He lives!” one whispers to the other. “He lives!”
“You must not tell him anything about what the image commanded you to do,” says Donna Micaela to Donna Elisa.
Outside the shop they embrace one another and each goes her own way.
In a little while Gaetano comes out on the steps of the shop. He stands still for a moment and breathes in the fresh night air. Then he sees how lights are burning in the dark palace across the street.
Gaetano breathes short and panting; he seems almost afraid to go further. Suddenly he dashes across like some one going to meet an unavoidable misfortune. He finds the door to the summer-palace unlocked, takes the stairs in two bounds, and bursts open the door to the music-room without knocking.
Donna Micaela is sitting there, wondering if he will come now in the night or the next morning. Then she hears his step outside in the gallery. She is seized with terror; how will he be? She has longed so unspeakably for him. Will he really be so that all that longing will be satisfied?