III
Gian-Luca took Maddalena to Hadley Woods—they are very lovely in June. Fabio had made up a luncheon basket, and as Gian-Luca carried it he smiled, remembering a day at Kew Gardens. Maddalena had dressed herself all in white, something had made her discard black that morning. She walked by Gian-Luca, very stately and tall, a true daughter of Rome the eternally fruitful—even so had her young virgins walked by their lovers for more than two thousand years.
They sat down together under the beech trees, and he lifted her hand and kissed it. “Your hand is full of happiness,” he said, “will it spare a little for me?”
“Whatever it holds is yours,” she told him, “all that it holds, I give.”
“And yet I have not been a good man,” he said slowly, “not as you understand goodness.”
“I do not know what you have been,” she answered; “I only know what you are.”
“And that is enough for you, Maddalena?”
She smiled: “It is more than enough.”
Then he said: “I have no name to offer my wife, I was born in what men call sin.”
“If you are the fruit of sin,” she said softly, “how great must be God’s forgiveness.”
“Will you marry a man without a name?” he persisted.
She said: “I will marry you. No name in the world has ever sounded so sweet to me as your name—Gian-Luca.” Then he took her in his arms and kissed her on the mouth—but gently, for she did not stir his passion. And she kissed him back with slow, lingering kisses, as though she were groping for the soul of this man, with her tender, virginal lips. Presently she pressed his head down on her bosom and rocked him with her arms about his shoulders.
“You who have suffered so much,” she whispered; “you who have suffered so much—”
“No one has ever loved me before,” he told her; and there was joy in his voice. “I am glad that no one has loved me before—that you should be the first, Maddalena.”
“Yes,” she answered, “for that is surely as it should be.” And now she was stroking his hair. “Because of that, beloved, the others do not count: I have washed them away with my love.”
He said: “Why are you so good to me, my woman?”
And at that she laughed to herself. “If I told you, how could you understand—you who are so much a man?” They got up and wandered together through the woods, arm-in-arm like the other lovers; and Maddalena welcomed their presence—for although he was wishing that the woods might be empty, she saw those lovers through the eyes of her love, and beheld much glory about them.
Presently he said: “These wide, green glades—they always make me feel strange; they make me feel as though I had come home—that is queer in a man like me—”
She pressed his arm. “But you have come home, amore—you have come home to Maddalena. Wherever we two are together that is home.”
“Yes—it must be so—” he murmured. His eyes were searching the long, cool shadows, green because of their trees; the turf and the rustle of last year’s leaves made him want to take off his shoes—“Let us get married very soon,” he said, as though his words were an answer to something. “Since you will take me as I am, diletta, let us get married very soon.”
“As soon as you wish, we will marry,” she agreed. “Why should we wait any longer?”
He withdrew his gaze from those long, cool shadows and let it rest on her face, and suddenly he wished to tell her of his childhood, knowing that she would understand.
“You are my woman—all my woman,” he repeated, “and so I can tell you all. I have never had anyone to talk to like this—no one who cared to listen.”
While he talked she saw him less as a man than as a lonely little boy; and all her motherhood stretched out its arms, so that she could not speak for tears—so great was the heart within her. And something of her motherhood touched him, too, and he walked with her holding her hand.
He said: “It is strange, but I think my mother must have been just like you Maddalena.”
They ate little of the meal that Fabio had prepared, and after a while it was evening. The voices of the other lovers came softly out of the dusk towards them. A large, yellow moon climbed up over the woods, and hung there opposite the sunset.
“Look!” said Gian-Luca, and his eyes were wide with the beauty and mystery of it, But Maddalena’s eyes were on him, seeing all mystery and beauty in his face, the beginnings and the noon-tides and the endings of all days—for such is the love of woman.