And to Pierre that escutcheon recalled another memory, that of the portrait of Cassia Boccanera the _amorosa_ and avengeress who had flung herself into the Tiber with her brother Ercole and the corpse of her lover Flavio.

Was there not here even with Benedetta the same despairing clasp seeking to vanquish death, the same savagery in hurling oneself into the abyss with the corpse of the one's only love?
Benedetta and Cassia were as sisters, Cassia, who lived anew in the old painting in the _salon_ overhead, Benedetta who was here dying of her lover's death, as though she were but the other's spirit.

Both had the same delicate childish features, the same mouth of passion, the same large dreamy eyes set in the same round, practical, and stubborn head.
"My Dario, here I am!" For a second, which seemed an eternity, they clasped one another, she neither repelled nor terrified by the disorder which made him so unrecognisable, but displaying a delirious passion, a holy frenzy as if to pass beyond life, to penetrate with him into the black Unknown.

And beneath the shock of the felicity at last offered to him he expired, with his arms yet convulsively wound around her as though indeed to carry her off.

Then, whether from grief or from bliss amidst that embrace of death, there came such a rush of blood to her heart that the organ burst: she died on her lover's neck, both tightly and for ever clasped in one another's arms.
There was a faint sigh.