The fullness of spring had come thus early to that southern coast. The festivals had been festivals of spring amid a tropical wealth of flowers and in that heroic landscape. The flight from the winter of the North had been so swift that no dignity could withstand its effects. It had intoxicated every soul. They had given themselves up to the mere delight of breathing, to the astonishment of the senses. Some had felt like carousers and gluttons merely, others like liberated prisoners, and all had been conscious of the brevity of their respite; and this consciousness breathed a breath of melancholy over all delight. The atmosphere still echoed the thrill of impassioned words and the tread and laughter of women; the sounds had not yet quite died away, and in the night the darkness of the silent park still yearned for the glow of lights which the stars above could not cause it to forget. But they were all gone. The Grand Duke had accepted the invitation of an Austrian Archduke to shoot on his estates. In April Eva was to meet him in Vienna and accompany him to Florence. She had asked none of her friends to stay longer, no woman, no artist, and no paladin. It had become a very hunger of her soul to be alone once more. She had not been alone for four years. She felt even Susan to be in the way. When the woman crept about her in foolish anxiety, she sent her out of the room. She desired not to be addressed nor to be beheld; she wanted to escape into a crystalline structure of loneliness. She had built it, and wanted the full experience of it; and suddenly she became aware of the fact that it estranged her from herself. Something had happened to make the blood of her heart cool and sick. She could not read nor write letters nor consider plans. No hour seemed to grow out of another living hour. All day she walked alone by the sea or sat amid flowers in the garden. The greater part of the night she lay on an open terrace, in front of which the sky hung down like a curtain of dark-blue velvet. Often the dawn had arisen before she went to bed. She had a sensation within herself as of loosened organization and rhythms dissolved. At times she felt a sting of dread. Noon glowed on her like steel; evening was a gate into the unknown. She had forbidden all messages. Letters that laid claim to any urgency were answered by Susan or Monsieur Labourdemont. Yet casting a chance and inattentive look at the letter of a friend she saw something about Ivan Becker. What she read took possession of her mind. It was like a presage and a touch of danger. When she lay at night on her terrace, there was a pallid flashing behind the azure curtain of the sky, and the silence breathed treachery.