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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Whosoever Shall Offend, by F. Marion Crawford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Whosoever Shall Offend
+
+Author: F. Marion Crawford
+
+Release Date: November 3, 2004 [eBook #13932]
+[Most recently updated: February 26, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Audrey Longhurst, Stephanie Fleck, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND ***
+
+
+
+
+WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND
+
+by
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+Author of _Saracinesca_, _The Heart Of Rome_, etc, etc.
+
+With Eight Illustrations Drawn in Rome with the Author's Suggestions
+
+by Horace T. Carpenter
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me,
+it were better for him that a mill stone were hanged about his neck, and
+that he were drowned in the depth of the sea"
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "SUDDENLY HE HEARD AN ITALIAN VOICE VERY NEAR TO HIM,
+CALLING HIM BY NAME, IN A TONE OF SURPRISE"]
+
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Suddenly he heard an Italian voice very near to him, calling him by
+name, in a tone of surprise"
+
+"'I call it the sleeping death,' answered the Professor"
+
+"He flushed again, very angry this time, and he moved away to leave her,
+without another word"
+
+" ... the door was darkened, and the girl stood there with a large copper
+'conca' ..."
+
+"He moved a step towards the bed, and then another, forcing himself to
+go on"
+
+"Ercole left his home after sunset that evening"
+
+"Regina made a steady effort, lifting fully half Aurora's weight with
+her"
+
+"She sat there like a figure of grief outlined in black against the
+moonlight on the great wall"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+When the widow of Martino Consalvi married young Corbario, people shook
+their heads and said that she was making a great mistake. Consalvi had
+been dead a good many years, but as yet no one had thought it was time
+to say that his widow was no longer young and beautiful, as she had
+always been. Many rich widows remain young and beautiful as much as a
+quarter of a century, or even longer, and the Signora Consalvi was very
+rich indeed. As soon as she was married to Folco Corbario every one knew
+that she was thirty-five years old and he was barely twenty-six, and
+that such a difference of ages on the wrong side was ridiculous if it
+was not positively immoral. No well-regulated young man had a right to
+marry a rich widow nine years older than himself, and who had a son only
+eleven years younger than he.
+
+A few philosophers who said that if the widow was satisfied the matter
+was nobody's business were treated with the contempt they deserved.
+Those who, on the contrary, observed that young Corbario had married for
+money and nothing else were heard with favour, until the man who knew
+everything pointed out that as the greater part of the fortune would be
+handed over to Marcello when he came of age, six years hence, Corbario
+had not made a good bargain and might have done better. It was true that
+Marcello Consalvi had inherited a delicate constitution of body, it had
+even been hinted that he was consumptive. Corbario would have done
+better to wait another year or two to see what happened, said a cynic,
+for young people often died of consumption between fifteen and twenty.
+The cynic was answered by a practical woman of the world, who said that
+Corbario had six years of luxury and extravagance before him, and that
+many men would have sold themselves to the devil for less. After the six
+years the deluge might come if it must; it was much pleasanter to drown
+in the end than never to have had the chance of swimming in the big
+stream at all, and bumping sides with the really big fish, and feeling
+oneself as good as any of them. Besides, Marcello was pale and thin, and
+had been heard to cough; he might die before he came of age. The only
+objection to this theory was that it was based on a fiction; for the
+whole fortune had been left to the Signora by a childless relation.
+
+These amiable and interesting views were expressed with variations by
+people who knew the three persons concerned, and with such a keen sense
+of appropriate time and place as made it quite sure that none of the
+three should ever know what was said of them. The caution of an old fox
+is rash temerity compared with the circumspection of a first-rate
+gossip; and when the gossips were tired of discussing Folco Corbario and
+his wife and her son, they talked about other matters, but they had a
+vague suspicion that they had been cheated out of something. A cat that
+has clawed all the feathers off a stuffed canary might feel just what
+they did.
+
+For nothing happened. Corbario did not launch into wild extravagance
+after all, but behaved himself with the faultless dulness of a model
+middle-aged husband. His wife loved him and was perfectly happy, and
+happiness finally stole her superfluous years away, and they evaporated
+in the sunshine, and she forgot all about them. Marcello Consalvi, who
+had lost his father when he was a mere child, found a friend in his
+mother's husband, and became very fond of him, and thought him a good
+man to imitate; and in return Corbario made a companion of the
+fair-haired boy, and taught him to ride and shoot in his holidays, and
+all went well.
+
+Moreover, Marcello's mother, who was a good woman, told him that the
+world was very wicked; and with the blind desire for her son's lasting
+innocence, which is the most touching instinct of loving motherhood, she
+entreated him to lead a spotless life. When Marcello, in the excusable
+curiosity of budding youth, asked his stepfather what that awful
+wickedness was against which he was so often warned, Corbario told him
+true stories of men who had betrayed their country and their friends,
+and of all sorts of treachery and meanness, to which misdeeds the boy
+did not feel himself at all inclined; so that he wondered why his mother
+seemed so very anxious lest he should go astray. Then he repeated to her
+what Corbario had told him, and she smiled sweetly and said nothing, and
+trusted her husband all the more. She felt that he understood her, and
+was doing his best to help her in making Marcello what she wished him to
+be.
+
+The boy was brought up at home; in Rome in the winter, and in summer on
+the great estate in the south, which his father had bought and which was
+to be a part of his inheritance.
+
+He was taught by masters who came to the house to give their lessons and
+went away as soon as the task was over. He had no tutor, for his mother
+had not found a layman whom she could trust in that capacity, and yet
+she understood that it was not good for a boy to be followed everywhere
+by a priest. Besides, Corbario gave so much of his time to his stepson
+that a tutor was hardly needed; he walked with him and rode with him, or
+spent hours with him at home when the weather was bad. There had never
+been a cross word between the two since they had met. It was an ideal
+existence. Even the gossips stopped talking at last, and there was not
+one, not even the most ingeniously evil-tongued of all, that prophesied
+evil.
+
+They raised their eyebrows, and the more primitive among them shrugged
+their shoulders a little, and smiled. If Providence really insisted upon
+making people so perfect, what was to be done? It was distressing, but
+there was nothing to be said; they must just lead their lives, and the
+gossips must bear it. No doubt Corbario had married for money, since he
+had nothing in particular and his wife had millions, but if ever a man
+had married for money and then behaved like an angel, that man was Folco
+Corbario and no other. He was everything to his wife, and all things to
+his stepson--husband, father, man of business, tutor, companion, and
+nurse; for when either his wife or Marcello was ill, he rarely left the
+sick-room, and no one could smooth a pillow as he could, or hold a glass
+so coaxingly to the feverish lips, or read aloud so untiringly in such a
+gentle and soothing voice.
+
+No ascendency of one human being over another is more complete than that
+of a full-grown man over a boy of sixteen, who venerates his elder as an
+ideal. To find a model, to believe it perfection, and to copy it
+energetically, is either a great piece of good fortune, or a misfortune
+even greater; in whatever follows in life, there is the same difference
+between such development and the normally slow growth of a boy's mind as
+that which lies between enthusiasm and indifference. It is true that
+where there has been no enthusiastic belief there can be no despairing
+disillusionment when the light goes out; but it is truer still that hope
+and happiness are the children of faith by the ideal.
+
+A boy's admiration for his hero is not always well founded; sometimes it
+is little short of ridiculous, and it is by no means always harmless.
+But no one found fault with Marcello for admiring his stepfather, and
+the attachment was a source of constant satisfaction to his mother. In
+her opinion Corbario was the handsomest, bravest, cleverest, and best of
+men, and after watching him for some time even the disappointed gossips
+were obliged to admit, though without superlatives, that he was a
+good-looking fellow, a good sportsman, sufficiently well gifted, and of
+excellent behaviour. There was the more merit in the admission, they
+maintained, because they had been inclined to doubt the man, and had
+accused him of marrying out of pure love of money. A keen judge of men
+might have thought that his handsome features were almost too still and
+too much like a mask, that his manner was so quiet as to be almost
+expressionless, and that the soft intonation of his speech was almost
+too monotonous to be natural. But all this was just what his wife
+admired, and she encouraged her son to imitate it. His father had been a
+man of quick impulses, weak to-day, strong to-morrow, restless, of
+uncertain temper, easily enthusiastic and easily cast down, capable of
+sudden emotions, and never able to conceal what he felt if he had cared
+to do so. Marcello had inherited his father's character and his mother's
+face, as often happens; but his unquiet disposition was tempered as yet
+by a certain almost girlish docility, which had clung to him from
+childhood as the result of being brought up almost entirely by the
+mother he worshipped. And now, for the first time, comparing him with
+her second husband, she realised the boy's girlishness, and wished him
+to outgrow it. Her own ideal of what even a young man should be was as
+unpractical as that of many thoroughly good and thoroughly unworldly
+mothers. She wished her son to be a man at all points, and yet she
+dreamed that he might remain a sort of glorified young girl; she desired
+him to be well prepared to face the world when he grew up, and yet it
+was her dearest wish that he might never know anything of the world's
+wickedness. Corbario seemed to understand her better in this than she
+understood herself, and devoted his excellent gifts and his almost
+superhuman patience to the task of forming a modern Galahad. Her
+confidence in her husband increased month by month, and year by year.
+
+"I wish to make a new will," she said to her lawyer in the third year of
+her marriage. "I shall leave my husband a life-interest in a part of my
+fortune, and the reversion of the whole in case anything should happen
+to my son."
+
+The lawyer was a middle-aged man, with hard black eyes. While he was
+listening to a client, he had a habit of folding his arms tightly across
+his chest and crossing one leg over the other. When the Signora Corbario
+had finished speaking he sat quite still for a moment, and then
+noiselessly reversed the crossing of his legs and the folding of his
+arms, and looked into her face. It was very gentle, fair, and
+thoughtful.
+
+"I presume," answered the lawyer, "that the clause providing for a
+reversion is only intended as an expression of your confidence in your
+husband?"
+
+"Affection," answered the Signora, "includes confidence."
+
+The lawyer raised one eyebrow almost imperceptibly, and changed his
+position a little.
+
+"Heaven forbid," he said, "that any accident should befall your son!"
+
+"Heaven forbid it!" replied the Signora. "He is very strong," she
+continued, in the tone people use who are anxious to convince themselves
+of something doubtful. "Yet I wish my husband to know that, after my
+son, he should have the first right."
+
+"Shall you inform him of the nature of your will, Signora?" inquired the
+lawyer.
+
+"I have already informed him of what I mean to do," replied Signora
+Corbario.
+
+Again the lawyer's eyebrow moved a little nervously, but he said
+nothing. It was not his place to express any doubt as to the wisdom of
+the disposition. He was not an old family adviser, who might have taken
+such a liberty. There had been such a man, indeed, but he was dead. It
+was the duty of the rich woman's legal adviser to hinder her from
+committing any positive legal mistake, but it was not his place to
+criticise her judgment of the man she had chosen to marry. The lawyer
+made a few notes without offering any comment, and on the following day
+he brought the will for the Signora to sign. By it, at her death,
+Marcello, her son, was to inherit her great fortune. Her husband, Folco
+Corbario, was constituted Marcello's sole guardian, and was to enjoy a
+life-interest in one-third of the inheritance. If Marcello died, the
+whole fortune was to go to Corbario, without any condition or
+reservation whatsoever.
+
+When the will was executed, the Signora told her husband that she had
+done what she intended.
+
+"My dear," said Corbario, gently, "I thank you for the true meaning of
+it. But as for the will itself, shall we talk of it thirty years hence,
+when Marcello's children's children are at your knee?"
+
+He kissed her hand tenderly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Marcello stood at an open window listening to the musical spring rain
+and watching the changing lights on the city below him, as the
+dove-coloured cloud that floated over Rome like thin gauze was drawn up
+into the sunshine. Then there were sudden reflections from distant
+windows and wet domes, that blazed like white fires for a little while,
+till the raindrops dried and the waves of changing hues that had surged
+up under the rain, rising, breaking, falling, and spreading, subsided
+into a restful sea of harmonious colour.
+
+After that, the sweet smell of the wet earth came up to Marcello's
+nostrils. A light breeze stirred the dripping emerald leaves, and the
+little birds fluttered down and hopped along the garden walks and over
+the leaves, picking up the small unwary worms that had been enjoying a
+bath while their enemies tried to keep dry under the ilex boughs.
+
+Marcello half closed his eyes and drank the fragrant air with parted
+lips, his slim white hands resting on the marble sill. The sunshine made
+his pale face luminous, and gilded his short fair hair, casting the
+shadow of the brown lashes upon his delicate cheeks. There was something
+angel-like in his expression--the look of the frescoed angels of Melozzo
+da Forli in the Sacristy of St. Peter's. They are all that is left of
+something very beautiful, brought thither broken from the Church of the
+Holy Apostles; and so, too, one might have fancied that Marcello,
+standing at the window in the morning sunshine, belonged to a world that
+had long passed away--fit for a life that was, fit for a life to come
+hereafter, perhaps, but not fit for the life that is. There are rare and
+beautiful beings in the world who belong to it so little that it seems
+cruelty and injustice to require of them what is demanded of us all.
+They are born ages too late, or ages too soon; they should not have been
+born now. Their very existence calls forth our tenderest sympathy, as we
+should pity a fawn facing its death among wolves.
+
+But Marcello Consalvi had no idea that he could deserve pity, and life
+looked very bright to him, very easy, and very peaceful. He could hardly
+have thought of anything at all likely to happen which could darken the
+future, or even give him reasonable cause for anxiety. There was no
+imaginative sadness in his nature, no morbid dread of undefined evil, no
+melancholy to dye the days black; for melancholy is more often an
+affliction of the very strong in body or mind than of the weak, or of
+average men and women. Marcello was delicate, but not degenerate; he
+seemed gentle, cheerful, and ready to believe the world a very good
+place, as indeed it is for people who are not too unlike their
+neighbours to enjoy it, or too unlucky to get some of its good things,
+or too weak to work, fight, and love, or too clever to be as satisfied
+with themselves as most men are. For plain, common, everyday happiness
+and contentment belong to plain, average people, who do what others do
+and have a cheerfully good opinion of themselves. Can a man make a good
+fight of it if he does not believe himself to be about as good as his
+adversary?
+
+It had never occurred to Marcello that he might have to fight for
+anything, and if some one had told him on that spring morning that he
+was on the very verge of a desperate struggle for existence against
+overwhelming odds, he would have turned his bright eyes wonderingly to
+the prophet of evil, asking whence danger could come, and trying to
+think what it might be like.
+
+At the first appearance of it he would have been startled into fear,
+too, as many a grown man has been before now, when suddenly brought face
+to face with an unknown peril, being quite untried: and small shame to
+him. He who has been waked from a peaceful sleep and pleasant dreams to
+find death at his throat, for the first time in his life, knows the
+meaning of that. Samson was a tried warrior when Delilah first roused
+him with her cry, "The Philistines are upon thee!"
+
+Marcello was no youthful Samson, yet he was not an unmanly boy, for all
+his bringing up. So far as his strength would allow he had been
+accustomed to the exercises and sports of men: he could ride fearlessly,
+if not untiringly; he was a fair shot; he had hunted wild boar with his
+stepfather in the marshy lands by the sea; he had been taught to fence
+and was not clumsy with weapons, though he had not yet any great skill.
+He had always been told that he was delicate and must be careful, and he
+knew that he was not strong; but there was one good sign in that his
+weakness irritated him and bred at least the desire for strength,
+instead of the poor-spirited indolence that bears bodily infirmity as
+something inevitable, and is ready to accept pity if not to ask for it.
+
+The smell of the damp earth was gone, and as the sun shone out the air
+was filled with the scent of warm roses and the faintly sweet odour of
+wistaria. Marcello heard a light footstep close to him, and met his
+mother's eyes as he turned.
+
+Even to him, she looked very young just then, as she stood in the light,
+smiling at him. A piece of lace was drawn half over her fair hair, and
+the ends went round her throat like a scarf and fell behind her. Its
+creamy tints heightened the rare transparency of her complexion by faint
+contrast. She was a slight woman and very graceful.
+
+"I have looked for you everywhere," she said, and she still smiled, as
+if with real pleasure at having found him.
+
+"I have been watching the shower" Marcello answered, drawing her to the
+window. "And then the earth and the roses smelt so sweet that I stayed
+here. Did you want me, mother?"
+
+"I always like to know where you are."
+
+She passed her arm through his with a loving pressure, and looked out
+of the window with him. The villa stood on the slope of the Janiculum,
+close to the Corsini gardens.
+
+"Do I run after you too much?" the mother asked presently, as if she
+knew the answer. "Now that you are growing up, do I make you feel as if
+you were still a little boy? You are nearly nineteen, you know! I
+suppose I ought to treat you like a man."
+
+Marcello laughed, and his hand slipped into hers with an almost childish
+and nestling movement.
+
+"You have made a man of me," he answered.
+
+Had she? A shadow of doubt crossed her thoughtful face as she glanced at
+his. He was so different from other young men of his age, so delicately
+nurtured, so very gentle; there was the radiance of maidenly innocence
+in his look, and she was afraid that he might be more like a girl than a
+man almost grown.
+
+"I have done my best," she said. "I hope I have done right."
+
+He scarcely understood what she meant, and his expression did not
+change.
+
+"You could not do anything that was not right," he answered.
+
+Perhaps such a being as Marcello would be an impossibility anywhere but
+in Italy. Modern life tears privacy to tatters, and privacy is the veil
+of the temple of home, within which every extreme of human development
+is possible, good and bad. Take privacy away and all the strangely
+compound fractions of humanity are soon reduced to a common
+denomination. In Italy life has more privacy than anywhere else west of
+Asia. The Englishman is fond of calling his home his castle, but it is a
+thoroughfare, a market-place, a club, a hotel, a glass house, compared
+with that of an average Italian. An Englishman goes home to escape
+restraint: an Italian goes out. But the northern man, who lives much in
+public, learns as a child to conceal what he feels, to be silent, to
+wear an indifferent look; whereas the man of the south, who hides
+nothing when the doors of his house are shut, can hide but little when
+he meets his enemy in the way. He laughs when he is pleased, and scowls
+when he is not, threatens when he is angry, and sheds tears when he is
+hurt, with a simplicity that too often excites the contempt of men
+accustomed to suffer or enjoy without moving a muscle.
+
+Privacy favours the growth of individual types, differing widely from
+each other; the destruction of it makes people very much alike.
+Marcello's mother asked herself whether she had done well in rearing him
+as a being apart from those amongst whom he must spend his life.
+
+And yet, as she looked at him, he seemed to be so nearly the ideal of
+which she had dreamt throughout long years of loving care that she was
+comforted, and the shadow passed away from her sweet face. He had
+answered that she could do nothing that was not right; she prayed that
+his words might be near the truth, and in her heart she was willing to
+believe that they were almost true. Had she not followed every good
+impulse of her own good heart? Had she not tried to realize literally
+for him the most beautiful possibilities of the Christian faith? That,
+at least, was true, and she could tell herself so without any mistaken
+pride. How, then, had she made any mistake? The boy had the face of a
+young saint.
+
+"Are you ready, my dear?" she asked suddenly, as a far-off clock struck.
+
+"Yes, mother, quite ready."
+
+"I am not," she answered with a little laugh. "And Folco is waiting, and
+I hear the carriage driving up."
+
+She slipped from Marcello's side and left the room quickly, for they
+were going to drive down to the sea, to a little shooting-lodge that
+belonged to them near Nettuno, a mere cottage among the trees by the
+Roman shore, habitable only in April and May, and useful only then, when
+the quail migrate along the coast and the malarious fever is not yet to
+be feared. It was there that Marcello had first learned to handle a gun,
+spending a week at a time there with his stepfather; and his mother used
+to come down now and then for a day or two on a visit, sometimes
+bringing her friend the Contessa dell' Armi. The latter had been very
+unhappy in her youth, and had been left a widow with one beautiful girl
+and a rather exiguous fortune. Some people thought that it was odd that
+the Signora Corbario, who was a saint if ever there was one, should have
+grown so fond of the Contessa, for the latter had seen stormy days in
+years gone by; and of course the ill-disposed gossips made up their
+minds that the Contessa was trying to catch Marcello for her daughter
+Aurora, though the child was barely seventeen.
+
+This was mere gossip, for she was quite incapable of any such scheme.
+What the gossips did not know was something which would have interested
+them much more, namely, that the Contessa was the only person in Rome
+who distrusted Folco Corbario, and that she was in constant fear lest
+she should turn out to be right, and lest her friend's paradise should
+be suddenly changed into a purgatory. But she held her tongue, and her
+quiet face never betrayed her thoughts. She only watched, and noted from
+month to month certain small signs which seemed to prove her right; and
+she should be ready, whenever the time should come, by day or night, to
+help her friend, or comfort her, or fight for her.
+
+If Corbario guessed that the Contessa did not trust him, he never showed
+it. He had found her installed as his wife's friend, and had accepted
+her, treating her with much courtesy and a sort of vicarious affection;
+but though he tried his best he could not succeed in reaching anything
+like intimacy with her, and while she seemed to conceal nothing, he felt
+that she was hiding her real self from him. Whether she did so out of
+pride, or distrust, or jealousy, he could never be sure. He was secretly
+irritated and humiliated by her power to oppose him and keep him at a
+distance without ever seeming to do so; but, on the other hand, he was
+very patient, very tenacious of his purpose, and very skilful. He knew
+something of the Contessa's past, but he recognised in her the nature
+that has known the world's worst side and has done with it for ever, and
+is lifted above it, and he knew the immense influence which the
+spectacle of a blameless life exercises upon the opinion of a good woman
+who has not always been blameless herself. Whatever he had been before
+he met his wife, whatever strange plans had been maturing in his brain
+since he had married her, his life had seemed as spotless from that day
+as the existence of the best man living. His wife believed in him, and
+the Contessa did not; but even she must in time accept the evidence of
+her senses. Then she, too, would trust him. Why it was essential that
+she should, he alone knew, unless he was merely piqued by her quiet
+reserve, as a child is when it cannot fix the attention of a grown-up
+person.
+
+The Contessa and her daughter were to be of the party that day, and the
+carriage stopped where they lived, near the Forum of Trajan. They
+appeared almost directly, the Contessa in grey with a grey veil and
+Aurora dressed in a lighter shade, the thick plaits of her auburn hair
+tied up short below her round straw hat, on the theory that she was
+still a school-girl, whose skirt must not quite touch the ground, who
+ought not to wear a veil, and whose mind was supposed to be a sensitive
+blank, particularly apt to receive bad impressions rather than good
+ones. In less than a year she would be dancing all night with men she
+had scarcely heard of before, listening to compliments of which she had
+never dreamt--of course not--and to declarations which no right-minded
+girl one day under eighteen could under any circumstances be thought to
+expect. Such miracles as these are wrought by the eighteenth birthday.
+
+Corbario's eyes looked from the mother to the daughter, as he and
+Marcello stood on the pavement to let them get in. The Contessa touched
+his outstretched hand without restraint but without cordiality, smiling
+just as much as was civil, and less readily than would have been
+friendly. Aurora glanced at him and laughed prettily without any
+apparent reason, which is the privilege of very young girls, because
+their minds are supposed to be a blank. Also because her skirt must not
+quite touch the ground, one very perfect black silk ankle was distinctly
+visible for a moment as she stepped into the carriage. Note that from
+the eve of her eighteenth birthday till she is old enough to be really
+wicked no well-regulated young woman shows her ankles. This also is one
+of the miracles of time.
+
+Marcello blushed faintly as he sat down beside Aurora. There were now
+five in the big carriage, so that she was between the two men; and
+though there was enough room Marcello felt the slight pressure of her
+arm against his. His mother saw his colour change, and looked away and
+smiled. The idea of marrying the two in a few years had often crossed
+her mind, and she was pleased whenever she saw that Marcello felt a
+little thrill of emotion in the girl's presence. As for Aurora, she
+looked straight before her, between the heads of the two elder women,
+and for a long time after they had started she seemed absorbed in
+watching the receding walls of the city and the long straight road that
+led back to it. The Contessa and her friend talked quietly, happy to be
+together for a whole day. Corbario now and then looked from one to the
+other, as if to assure himself that they were quite comfortable, and his
+still face wore an unchanging look of contented calm as his eyes turned
+again to the sunlit sweep of the low Campagna. Marcello looked steadily
+away from Aurora, happily and yet almost painfully aware that her arm
+could not help pressing against his. The horses' hoofs beat rhythmically
+on the hard high road, with the steady, cheerful energy which would tell
+a blind man that a team is well fed, fresh from rest, and altogether fit
+for a long day's work. The grey-haired coachman sat on his box like an
+old dragoon in the saddle; the young groom sat bolt upright beside him
+with folded arms, as if he could never tire of sitting straight. The
+whole party looked prosperous, harmonious, healthy, and perfectly happy,
+as if nothing in the least unpleasant could possibly happen to them,
+still less anything terrible, that could suddenly change all their
+lives.
+
+One of fate's favourite tricks is to make life look particularly gay and
+enjoyable, and full of sunshine and flowers, at the very moment when
+terror wakes from sleep and steps out of the shadow to stalk abroad.
+
+The cottage where the party were going to spend the next few days
+together was built like an Indian bungalow, consisting of a single story
+surrounded by a broad, covered verandah, and having a bit of lawn in
+front. It was sheltered by trees, and between it and the beach a bank
+of sand from ten to fifteen feet high ran along the shore, the work of
+the southwest gales during many ages. In many places this bank was
+covered with scrub and brushwood on the landward side.
+
+A little stream meandered down to the sea on the north side of the
+cottage, ending in a pool full of tall reeds, amongst which one could
+get about in a punt. The seashore itself is very shelving at that place,
+and there is a bar about a cable's length out, over which the sea breaks
+with a tremendous roar during westerly storms. Two hundred yards from
+the cottage, a large hut had been built for the men-servants and for the
+kitchen; near by it there was a rough coach-house and a stable with room
+for a dozen horses. The carriage usually went back to Rome on the day
+after every one had arrived, and was sent for when wanted; but there
+were a number of rough Campagna horses in the stable, such as are ridden
+by the cattle herders about Rome, tough little beasts of fairly good
+temper and up to a much heavier weight than might be guessed by a
+stranger in the country. In the morning the men of the party usually
+went shooting, if the wind was fair, for where quail are concerned much
+depends on that. Dinner was in the middle of the day, and every one was
+supposed to go to sleep after it. In the late afternoon the horses were
+saddled, and the whole party went for a gallop on the sands, or up to
+classic Ardea, or across the half-cultivated country, coming back to
+supper when it was dark. A particularly fat and quiet pony was kept for
+Marcello's mother, who was no great rider, but the Contessa and Aurora
+rode anything that was brought them, as the men did. To tell the truth,
+the Campagna horse is rarely vicious, and, even when only half broken,
+can be ridden by a lady if she be an average horsewoman.
+
+Everything happened as usual. The party reached the cottage in time for
+a late luncheon, rested afterwards, and then rode out. But the Signora
+Corbario would not go.
+
+"Your pony looks fatter and quieter than ever," said Maddalena dell'
+Armi with a smile. "If you do not ride him, he will turn into a
+fixture."
+
+"He is already a very solid piece of furniture," observed Folco, looking
+at the sleek animal.
+
+"He is very like the square piano I practise on," said Aurora. "He has
+such a flat back and such straight thick legs."
+
+"More like an organ," put in Marcello, gravely. "He has a curious,
+half-musical wheeze when he tries to move, like the organ in the church
+at San Domenico, when the bellows begin to work."
+
+"It is a shame to make fun of my horse," answered the Signora, smiling.
+"But really I am not afraid of him. I have a little headache from the
+drive, that is all."
+
+"Take some phenacetine," said Corbario with concern. "Let me make you
+quite comfortable before we start."
+
+He arranged a long straw chair for her in a sheltered corner of the
+verandah, with cushions and a rug and a small table beside it, on which
+Marcello placed a couple of new books that had been brought down. Then
+Folco went in and got a little glass bottle of tablets from his wife's
+travelling-bag and gave her one. She was subject to headaches and always
+had the medicine with her. It was the only remedy she ever carried or
+needed, and she had such confidence in it that she felt better almost as
+soon as she had swallowed the tablet her husband gave her.
+
+"Let me stay and read to you," he said. "Perhaps you would go to sleep."
+
+"You are not vain of your reading, my dear," she answered with a smile.
+"No, please go with the others."
+
+Then the Contessa offered to stay, and the good Signora had to use a
+good deal of persuasion to make them all understand that she would much
+rather be left alone. They mounted and rode away through the trees
+towards the beach, whence the sound of the small waves, breaking gently
+under the afternoon breeze, came echoing softly up to the cottage.
+
+The two young people rode in front, in silence; Corbario and the
+Contessa followed at a little distance.
+
+"How good you are to my wife!" Folco exclaimed presently, as they
+emerged upon the sand. "You are like a sister to her!"
+
+Maddalena glanced at him through her veil. She had small and classic
+features, rather hard and proud, and her eyes were of a dark violet
+colour, which is very unusual, especially in Italy. But she came from
+the north. Corbario could not see her expression, and she knew it.
+
+"You are good to her, too," she said presently, being anxious to be
+just. "You are very thoughtful and kind."
+
+Corbario thought it wiser to say nothing, and merely bent his head a
+little in acknowledgment of what he instinctively felt to be an
+admission on the part of a secret adversary. Maddalena had never said so
+much before.
+
+"If you were not, I should never forgive you," she added, thinking
+aloud.
+
+"I don't think you have quite forgiven me as it is," Folco answered more
+lightly.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For marrying your best friend."
+
+The little speech was well spoken, so utterly without complaint, or
+rancour, or suggestion of earnestness, that the Contessa could only
+smile.
+
+"And yet you admit that I am not a bad husband," continued Folco.
+"Should you accept me, or, say, my exact counterpart, for Aurora, in a
+year or two?"
+
+"I doubt whether you have any exact counterpart," Maddalena answered,
+checking the sharp denial that rose to her lips.
+
+"Myself, then, just for the sake of argument?"
+
+"What an absurd question! Do you mind tightening the girth for me a
+little? My saddle is slipping."
+
+She drew rein, and he was obliged to submit to the check. As he
+dismounted he glanced at Aurora's graceful figure, a hundred yards
+ahead, and for one instant he drew his eyelids together with a very
+strange expression. He knew that the Contessa could not see his face.
+
+Marcello and Aurora had been companions since they were children, and
+just now they were talking familiarly of the place, which they had not
+seen since the previous year. All sorts of details struck them. Here,
+there was more sand than usual; there, a large piece of timber had been
+washed ashore in the winter gales; at another place there was a new
+sand-drift that had quite buried the scrub on the top of the bank; the
+keeper of the San Lorenzo tower had painted his shutters brown, though
+they had always been green; here was the spot where Aurora had tumbled
+off her pony when she was only twelve years old--so long ago! And
+here--they looked at each other and then quickly at the sea, for it was
+here that Marcello, in a fit of boyish admiration, had once suddenly
+kissed her cheek, telling her that she was perfectly beautiful. Even
+now, he blushed when he thought of it, and yet he longed to do it again,
+and wondered inwardly what would happen if he did.
+
+As for Aurora, though she looked at the sea for a moment, she seemed
+quite self-possessed. It is a strange thing that if a boy and a girl are
+brought up in just the same way, by women, and without many companions,
+the boy should generally be by far the more shy of the two when
+childhood is just past.
+
+"You are very fond of your stepfather, are you not?" asked Aurora, so
+suddenly that Marcello started a little and hesitated slightly before he
+answered.
+
+"Yes," he said, almost directly, "of course I am! Don't you like him,
+too?"
+
+"I used to," answered Aurora in a low voice, "but now his eyes frighten
+me--sometimes. For instance, though he is a good way behind, I am sure
+he is looking at me now, just in that way."
+
+Marcello turned his head instinctively, and saw that Folco had just
+dismounted to tighten the girth of the Contessa's saddle. It was exactly
+while Aurora was speaking that he had drawn his eyelids together with
+such a strange expression--a mere coincidence, no doubt, but one that
+would have startled the girl if she could have suddenly seen his face.
+
+They rode on without waiting for the others, at an even canter over the
+sand.
+
+"I never saw anything in Folco's eyes that could frighten anybody,"
+Marcello said presently.
+
+"No," answered Aurora. "Very likely not."
+
+Marcello had always called Corbario by his first name, and as he grew up
+it seemed more and more natural to do so. Folco was so young, and he
+looked even younger than he was.
+
+"It must be your imagination," Marcello said.
+
+"Women," said Aurora, as if she were as near thirty as any young woman
+would acknowledge herself, "women have no imagination. That is why we
+have so much sense," she added thoughtfully.
+
+Marcello was so completely puzzled by this extraordinary statement that
+he could find nothing to say for a few moments. Then he felt that she
+had attacked his idol, and that Folco must be defended.
+
+"If you could find a single thing, however small, to bring against him,
+it would not be so silly to say that his eyes frighten you."
+
+"There!" laughed Aurora. "You might as well say that because at this
+moment there is only that one little cloud near the sun, there is no
+cloud at all!"
+
+"How ridiculous!" Marcello expressed his contempt of such girlish
+reasoning by putting his rough little horse to a gallop.
+
+"Men always say that," retorted Aurora, with exasperating calm. "I'll
+race you to the tower for the first choice of oranges at dessert. They
+are not very good this year, you know, and you like them."
+
+"Don't be silly!" Marcello immediately reined his horse back to a walk,
+and looked very dignified.
+
+"It is impossible to please you," observed Aurora, slackening her pace
+at once.
+
+"It is impossible, if you abuse Folco."
+
+"I am sure I did not mean to abuse him," Aurora answered meekly. "I
+never abuse anybody."
+
+"Women never do, I suppose," retorted Marcello, with a little snort of
+dissatisfaction.
+
+They were little more than children yet, and for pretty nearly five
+minutes neither spoke a word, as their horses walked side by side.
+
+"The keeper of the tower has more chickens this year," observed Aurora.
+"I can see them running about."
+
+This remark was evidently intended as an overture of reconciliation. It
+acted like magic upon Marcello, who hated quarrelling, and was moreover
+much more in love with the girl than he knew. Instinctively he put out
+his left hand to take her right. They always made peace by taking hands.
+
+But Aurora's did not move, and she did not even turn her head towards
+him.
+
+"Take care!" she said quickly, in a low tone. "They are watching us."
+
+Marcello looked round and saw that the others were nearer than he had
+supposed, and he blushed foolishly.
+
+"Well, what harm would there be if you gave me your hand?" he asked. "I
+only meant--"
+
+"Yes, I understand," Aurora answered, in the same tone as before. "And I
+am glad you like me, Marcello--if you really do."
+
+"If I do!" His tone was full of youthful and righteous indignation.
+
+"I did not mean to doubt it," she said quickly. "But it is getting to be
+different now, you know. We are older, and somehow everything means
+more, even the little things."
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated Marcello. "I begin to see. I suppose," he added, with
+what seemed to him reckless brutality, "that if I kissed you now you
+would be furious."
+
+He glanced uneasily at Aurora's face to note the effect of this
+terrible speech. The result was not exactly what he had expected. A
+faint colour rose in her cheeks, and then she laughed.
+
+"When you do," she said, "I would rather it should not be before
+people."
+
+"I shall try to remember that," answered Marcello, considerably
+emboldened.
+
+"Yes, do! It would be so humiliating if I boxed your ears in the
+presence of witnesses."
+
+"You would not dare," laughed Marcello.
+
+From a distance, as Aurora had guessed, Folco was watching them while he
+quietly talked to the Contessa; and as he watched, he understood what a
+change had taken place since last year, when he had seen Marcello and
+Aurora riding over the same stretch of sand on the same little horses.
+He ventured a reflection, to see what his companion would answer.
+
+"I daresay many people would say that those two young people were made
+for each other."
+
+Maddalena looked at him inquiringly and then glanced at her daughter.
+
+"And what do you say?" she asked, with some curiosity.
+
+"I say 'no.' And you?"
+
+"I agree with you. Aurora is like me--like what I was. Marcello would
+bore her to death in six months, and Aurora would drive him quite mad."
+
+Corbario smiled.
+
+"I had hoped," he said, "that women with marriageable daughters would
+think Marcello a model husband. But of course I am prejudiced. I have
+had a good deal to do with his bringing up during the last four years."
+
+"No one can say that you have not done your duty by him," Maddalena
+answered. "I wish I could feel that I had done as well by Aurora--indeed
+I do!"
+
+"You have, but you had quite a different nature to deal with."
+
+"I should think so! It is my own."
+
+Corbario heard the little sigh as she turned her head away, and being a
+wise man he said nothing in answer. He was not a Roman, if indeed he
+were really an Italian at all, but he had vaguely heard the Contessa's
+story. She had been married very young to a parliamentary high-light,
+who had made much noise in his day, had spent more than half of her
+fortune after getting rid of his own, and had been forgotten on the
+morrow of his premature death. It was said that she had loved another
+man with all her heart, but Corbario had never known who it was.
+
+The sun was almost setting when they turned homeward, and it was dark
+when they reached the cottage. They found an unexpected arrival
+installed beside the Signora in the doorway of the sitting-room.
+
+"Professor Kalmon is here," said the Signora's voice out of the gloom.
+"I have asked him to stay till to-morrow."
+
+The Professor rose up in the shadow and came forward, just as a servant
+brought a lamp. He was celebrated as a traveller, and occupied the chair
+of comparative physiology in the University of Milan. He belonged to
+the modern type of scientific man, which has replaced the one of fifty
+years ago, who lived in a dressing-gown and slippers, smoked a long
+pipe, and was always losing his belongings through absence of mind. The
+modern professor is very like other human beings in dress and
+appearance, and has even been known to pride himself on the fit of his
+coat, just like the common people.
+
+There were mutual greetings, for the Professor knew all the party, and
+everybody liked him. He was a big man, with a well-kept brown beard, a
+very clear complexion, and bright brown eyes that looked as if they
+would never need spectacles.
+
+"And where have you been since we last saw you?" asked Corbario.
+
+"Are your pockets full of snakes this time?" asked Aurora.
+
+The Professor looked at her and smiled, realising that she was no longer
+the child she had been when he had seen her last, and that she was very
+good to look at. His brown eyes beamed upon her benevolently.
+
+"Ah, my dear young lady, I see it is all over," he said. "You will never
+pull my beard again and turn my pockets inside out for specimens when I
+come back from my walks on the beach."
+
+"Do you think I am afraid of you or your specimens?" laughed Aurora.
+
+"I have got a terrible thing in my waistcoat pocket," the Professor
+answered. "Something you might very well be afraid of."
+
+"What is it? It must be very small to be in your waistcoat pocket."
+
+"It is a new form of death."
+
+He beamed on everybody with increasing benevolence; but somehow nobody
+smiled, and the Signora Corbario shivered and drew her light cloak more
+closely round her, as the first gust of the night breeze came up from
+the rustling reeds that grew in the pool below.
+
+"It is time to get ready for supper," said Folco. "I hope you are not
+hungry, Kalmon, for you will not get anything very elaborate to eat!"
+
+"Bread and cheese will do, my dear fellow."
+
+When Italians go to the country they take nothing of the city with them.
+They like the contrast to be complete; they love the total absence of
+restraint; they think it delightful to dine in their shooting-coats and
+to eat coarse fare. If they had to dress for dinner it would not be the
+country at all, nor if dinner had to begin with soup and end with sweets
+just as it does in town. They eat extraordinary messes that would make a
+Frenchman turn pale and a German look grave. They make portentous
+pasties, rich with everything under the sun; they eat fat boiled beef,
+and raw fennel, and green almonds, and vast quantities of cream cheese,
+and they drink sour wine like water; and it all agrees with them
+perfectly, so that they come back to the city refreshed and rested after
+a gastronomic treatment which would bring any other European to death's
+door.
+
+The table was set out on the verandah that evening, as usual in spring,
+and little by little the Professor absorbed the conversation, for they
+all asked him questions, few of which could be answered shortly. He was
+one of those profoundly cultivated Italians who are often to be met
+nowadays, but whose gifts it is not easy to appreciate except in a
+certain degree of intimacy. They are singularly modest men as a rule,
+and are by no means those about whom there is the most talk in the
+world.
+
+The party sat in their places when supper was over, with cloaks and
+coats thrown over them against the night air, while Kalmon talked of all
+sorts of things that seemed to have the least possible connection with
+each other, but which somehow came up quite naturally. He went from the
+last book on Dante to a new discovery in chemistry, thence to Japanese
+monks and their beliefs, and came back smiling to the latest development
+of politics, which led him quite naturally to the newest play, labour
+and capital, the German Emperor, and the immortality of the soul.
+
+"I believe you know everything!" exclaimed Marcello, with an admiring
+look. "Or else I know nothing, which is really more probable!" The boy
+laughed.
+
+"You have not told us about the new form of death yet," said Aurora,
+leaning on her elbows and burying her young hands in her auburn hair as
+she looked across the table at Kalmon.
+
+"You will never sleep again if I tell you about it," answered the
+Professor, opening his brown eyes very wide and trying to look terrible,
+which was quite impossible, because he had such a kindly face. "You do
+not look frightened at all," he added, pretending to be disappointed.
+
+"Let me see the thing," Aurora said. "Perhaps we shall all be
+frightened."
+
+"It looks very innocent," Kalmon answered. "Here it is."
+
+He took a small leather case from his pocket, opened it, and drew out a
+short blue glass tube, with a screw top. It contained half a dozen white
+tablets, apparently just like those in common use for five-grain doses
+of quinine.
+
+A little murmur of disappointment went around the table. The new form of
+death looked very commonplace. Corbario was the only one who showed any
+interest.
+
+"May I see?" he asked, holding out his hand to take the tube.
+
+Kalmon would not give it to him, but held the tube before his eyes under
+the bright light of the lamp.
+
+"Excuse me," he said, "but I make it a rule never to let it go out of my
+hands. You understand, don't you? If it were passed round, some one
+might lay it down, it might be forgotten, somebody might take it for
+something else."
+
+"Of course," said Folco, looking intently at the tube, as though he
+could understand something about the contents by mere inspection. "You
+are quite right. You should take no risks with such things--especially
+as they look so innocent!"
+
+He leaned back in his chair again, as if satisfied, and his eyes met the
+Contessa's at the same moment. There was no reason why she should not
+have looked at him just then, but he rested one elbow on the table and
+shaded his eyes from the light.
+
+"It is strange to reflect," said Kalmon, looking at the tube
+thoughtfully, "that one of those little things would be enough to put a
+Hercules out of misery, without leaving the slightest trace which
+science could discover."
+
+Corbario was still shading his eyes from the light.
+
+"How would one die if one took it?" asked Aurora. "Very suddenly?"
+
+"I call it the sleeping death," answered the Professor. "The poisoned
+person sinks into a sweet sleep in a few minutes, smiling as if enjoying
+the most delightful dreams."
+
+"And one never wakes up?" inquired Marcello.
+
+"Never. It is impossible, I believe. I have made experiments on animals,
+and have not succeeded in waking them by any known means."
+
+"I suppose it congests the brain, like opium," observed Corbario,
+quietly.
+
+"Not at all, not at all!" answered Kalmon, looking benevolently at the
+little tube which contained his discovery. "I tell you it leaves no
+trace whatever, not even as much as is left by death from an electric
+current. And it has no taste, no smell,--it seems the most innocent
+stuff in the world."
+
+Corbario's hand again lay on the table and he was gazing out into the
+night, as if he were curious about the weather. The moon was just
+rising, being past the full.
+
+"Is that all you have of the poison?" he asked in an idle tone.
+
+"Oh, no! This is only a small supply which I carry with me for
+experiments. I have made enough to send all our thirty-three millions of
+Italians to sleep for ever!"
+
+Kalmon laughed pleasantly.
+
+"If this could be properly used, civilisation would make a gigantic
+stride," he added. "In war, for instance, how infinitely pleasanter and
+more Êsthetic it would be to send the enemy to sleep, with the most
+delightful dreams, never to wake again, than to tear people to pieces
+with artillery and rifle bullets, and to blow up ships with hundreds of
+poor devils on board, who are torn limb from limb by the explosion."
+
+"The difficulty," observed the Contessa, "would be to induce the enemy
+to take your poison quietly. What if the enemy objected?"
+
+"I should put it into their water supply," said Kalmon.
+
+"Poison the water!" cried the Signora Corbario. "How barbarous!"
+
+"Much less barbarous than shedding oceans of blood. Only think--they
+would all go to sleep. That would be all."
+
+[Illustration: "'I CALL IT THE SLEEPING DEATH,' ANSWERED THE PROFESSOR"]
+
+"I thought," said Corbario, almost carelessly, "that there was no longer
+any such thing as a poison that left no traces or signs. Can you not
+generally detect vegetable poisons by the mode of death?"
+
+"Yes," answered the Professor, returning the glass tube to its case and
+the latter to his pocket. "But please to remember that although we can
+prove to our own satisfaction that some things really exist, we cannot
+prove that any imaginable thing outside our experience cannot possibly
+exist. Imagine the wildest impossibility you can think of; you will not
+induce a modern man of science to admit the impossibility of it as
+absolute. Impossibility is now a merely relative term, my dear Corbario,
+and only means great improbability. Now, to illustrate what I mean, it
+is altogether improbable that a devil with horns and hoofs and a fiery
+tail should suddenly appear, pick me up out of this delightful circle,
+and fly away with me. But you cannot induce me to deny the possibility
+of such a thing."
+
+"I am so glad to hear you say that," said the Signora, who was a
+religious woman.
+
+Kalmon looked at her a moment and then broke into a peal of laughter
+that was taken up by the rest, and in which the good lady joined.
+
+"You brought it on yourself," she said at last.
+
+"Yes," Kalmon answered. "I did. From your point of view it is better to
+admit the possibility of a mediÊval devil with horns than to have no
+religion at all. Half a loaf is better than no bread."
+
+"Is that stuff of yours animal, vegetable, or mineral?" asked Corbario
+as the laughter subsided.
+
+"I don't know," replied the Professor. "Animal, vegetable, mineral?
+Those are antiquated distinctions, like the four elements of the
+alchemists."
+
+"Well--but what is the thing, then?" asked Corbario, almost impatiently.
+"What should you call it in scientific language?"
+
+Kalmon closed his eyes for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts.
+
+"In scientific language," he began, "it is probably H three C seven,
+parenthesis, H two C plus C four O five, close parenthesis, HC three O."
+
+Corbario laughed carelessly.
+
+"I am no wiser than before," he said.
+
+"Nor I," answered the Professor. "Not a bit."
+
+"It is much simpler to call it 'the sleeping death,' is it not?"
+suggested the Contessa.
+
+"Much simpler, for that is precisely what it is."
+
+It was growing late, according to country ideas, and the party rose from
+the table and began to move about a little before going to bed. The moon
+had risen high by this time.
+
+Marcello and Aurora, unheeded by the rest, went round the verandah to
+the other side of the house and stood still a moment, looking out at the
+trees and listening to the sounds of the night. Down by the pool a frog
+croaked now and then; from a distance came the plaintive, often
+repeated cry of a solitary owlet; the night breeze sighed through the
+long grass and the low shrubbery.
+
+The boy and girl turned to each other, put out their hands and then
+their arms, and clasped each other silently, and kissed. Then they
+walked demurely back to their elders, without exchanging a word.
+
+"We have had to give you the little room at the end of the cottage,"
+Corbario was saying to Kalmon. "It is the only one left while the
+Contessa is here."
+
+"I should sleep soundly on bare boards to-night," Kalmon answered. "I
+have been walking all day."
+
+Corbario went with him, carrying a candle, and shielding the flame from
+the breeze with his hand. The room was furnished with the barest
+necessities, like most country rooms in Italy. There were wooden pegs on
+which to hang clothes instead of a wardrobe, an iron bedstead, a deal
+wash-stand, a small deal table, a rush-bottomed chair. The room had only
+one window, which was also the only door, opening to the floor upon the
+verandah.
+
+"You can bolt the window, if you like," said Corbario when he had bidden
+the Professor good-night, "but there are no thieves about."
+
+"I always sleep with my windows open," Kalmon answered, "and I have no
+valuables."
+
+"No? Good-night again."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+Corbario went out, leaving him the candle, and turned the corner of the
+verandah. Then he stood still a long time, leaning against one of the
+wooden pillars and looking out. Perhaps the moonlight falling through
+the stiff little trees upon the long grass and shrubbery reminded him of
+some scene familiar long ago. He smiled quietly to himself as he stood
+there.
+
+Three hours later he was there again, in almost exactly the same
+attitude. He must have been cold, for the night breeze was stronger, and
+he wore only his light sleeping clothes and his feet were bare. He
+shivered a little from time to time, and his face looked very white, for
+the moon was now high in the heavens and the light fell full upon him.
+His right hand was tightly closed, as if it held some small object fast,
+and he was listening intently, first to the right, whence he had come,
+then to the left, and then he turned his ear towards the trees, through
+which the path led away towards the hut where the men slept. But there
+was no sound except the sighing of the wind. The frog by the pool had
+stopped croaking, and the melancholy cry of the owlet had ceased.
+
+Corbario went softly on, trying the floor of the verandah with his bare
+feet at each step, lest the boards should creak a little under his
+weight. He reached the window door of his own room, and slipped into the
+darkness without noise.
+
+Kalmon cared little for quail-shooting, and as the carriage was going
+back to Rome he took advantage of it to reach the city, and took his
+departure about nine o'clock in the morning.
+
+"By the way, how did you sleep?" asked Corbario as he shook hands at
+parting. "I forgot to ask you."
+
+"Soundly, thank you," answered the Professor.
+
+And he drove away, waving his felt hat to his hosts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Marcello coughed a little as he and Corbario trudged home through the
+sand under the hot May sun. It was sultry, though there were few clouds,
+and everything that grew looked suddenly languid; each flower and shrub
+gave out its own peculiar scent abundantly, the smell of last year's
+rotting leaves and twigs all at once returned and mingled with the
+odours of green things and of the earth itself, and the heavy air was
+over-rich with it all, and hard to breathe. By and by the clouds would
+pile themselves up into vast grey and black fortresses, far away beyond
+Rome, between the Alban and the Samnite hills, and the lightning would
+dart at them and tear them to pieces in spite, while the thunder roared
+out at each home-thrust that it was well done; and then the spring rain
+would sweep the Campagna, by its length and breadth, from the mountains
+to the sea, and the world would be refreshed. But now it was near noon
+and a heavy weariness lay upon the earth.
+
+"You are tired," said Corbario, as they reached the shade of some trees,
+less than half a mile from the cottage. "Let us sit down for a while."
+
+They sat down, where they could see the sea. It was dull and glassy
+under the high sun; here and there, far out, the sluggish currents made
+dark, irregular streaks.
+
+Corbario produced cigarettes and offered one to Marcello, but the boy
+would not smoke; he said that it made him cough.
+
+"I should smoke all the time, if I were quite well," he said, with a
+smile.
+
+"And do many other things that young men do, I daresay," laughed
+Corbario. "Ride steeplechases, play cards all night, and drink champagne
+at breakfast."
+
+"Perhaps." Marcello was amused at the picture. "I wonder whether I ever
+shall," he added.
+
+Corbario glanced at him curiously. There was the faintest accent of
+longing in the tone, which was quite new.
+
+"Why not?" Folco asked, still smiling. "It is merely a question of
+health, my dear boy. There is no harm in steeplechases if you do not
+break your neck, nor in playing cards if you do not play high, nor in
+drinking a glass of champagne now and then--no harm at all, that I can
+see. But, of course, so long as your lungs are delicate, you must be
+careful."
+
+"Confound my lungs!" exclaimed Marcello with unusual energy. "I believe
+that I am much stronger than any of you think."
+
+"I am sometimes inclined to believe it too," Corbario answered
+encouragingly.
+
+"And I am quite sure that it would do me good to forget all about them
+and live as if there were nothing the matter with me. Don't you think so
+yourself?"
+
+Corbario made a gesture of doubt, as if it were possible after all.
+
+"Of course I don't mean dissipation," Marcello went on to say, suddenly
+assuming the manner of an elderly censor of morals, simply because he
+did not know what he was talking about. "I don't mean reckless
+dissipation."
+
+"Of course not," Folco answered gravely. "You see, there are two sorts
+of dissipation. You must not forget that. The one kind means dissipating
+your fortune and your health; the other merely means dissipating
+melancholy, getting rid of care now and then, and of everything that
+bores one. That is the harmless sort."
+
+"What they call 'harmless excitement'--yes, that is what I should like
+sometimes. There are days when I feel that I must have it. It is as if
+the blood went to my head, and my nerves are all on edge, and I wish
+something would happen, I don't know what, but something, something!"
+
+"I know exactly what you mean, my dear boy," said Corbario in a tone of
+sympathy. "You see I am not very old myself, after all--barely
+thirty--not quite, in fact. I could call myself twenty-nine if it were
+not so much more respectable to be older."
+
+"Yes. But do you mean to say that you feel just what I do now and then?"
+Marcello asked the question in considerable surprise. "Do you really
+know that sensation? That burning restlessness--that something like what
+the earth must feel before a thunderstorm--like the air at this moment?"
+
+Not a muscle of Folco's still face moved.
+
+"Yes," he answered quietly. "I know it very well. It is nothing but the
+sudden wish for a little harmless excitement, nothing else in the world,
+my dear boy, and it is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It does not
+follow that it is at all convenient to yield to it, but we feel it
+because we lead such a very quiet life."
+
+"But surely, we are perfectly happy," observed Marcello.
+
+"Perfectly, absolutely happy. I do not believe that there are any
+happier people in the world than we three, your mother, you, and I. We
+have not a wish unfulfilled."
+
+"No, except that one, when it comes."
+
+"And that does not count in my case," answered Folco. "You see I have
+had a good deal of--'harmless excitement' in my life, and I know just
+what it is like, and that it is quite possible to be perfectly happy
+without it. In fact, I am. But you have never had any at all, and it is
+as absurd to suppose that young birds will not try to fly as that young
+men will not want amusement, now and then."
+
+"I suppose that women cannot always understand that," said Marcello,
+after a moment.
+
+"Women," replied Folco, unmoved, "do not always distinguish quite
+closely between excitement that is harmless for a man and excitement
+which is not. To tell the truth," he added, with a laugh, "they hardly
+ever distinguish at all, and it is quite useless to talk to them about
+it."
+
+"But surely, there are exceptions?"
+
+"Not many. That is the reason why there is a sort of freemasonry among
+men of the world, a kind of tacit agreement that women need not be told
+what goes on at the clubs, and at men's dinners, and late at night when
+old friends have spent an evening together. Not that there is any harm
+in it all; but women would not understand. They have their innocent
+little mysteries which they keep from us, and we have harmless little
+secrets which we do not let them know."
+
+Folco laughed softly at his own way of putting it, and perhaps because
+Marcello so easily accepted his point of view.
+
+"I see," said the boy. "I wonder whether my mother would not understand
+that. It seems so simple!"
+
+"She will, when the time comes, no doubt," answered Corbario. "Your
+mother is a great exception, my dear boy. On the other hand, she is so
+anxious about your health just now, that, if I were you, I would not say
+anything about feeling the want of a little excitement. Of course your
+life is monotonous. I know it. But there is nothing more monotonous than
+getting well, is there? The best part of it is the looking forward to
+what one will do when one is quite strong. You and I can talk of that,
+sometimes, and build castles in the air; but it is of no use to give
+your mother the idea that you are beating your wings against the bars of
+your cage, is it?"
+
+Folco was quite lyric that day, but the words made exactly the
+impression he wished.
+
+"You are right," Marcello said. "You always are. There is nobody like
+you, Folco. You are an elder brother to me, and yet you don't preach. I
+often tell my mother so."
+
+This was true, and what Marcello told her added to her happiness, if
+anything could do that, and she encouraged the two to go off together as
+much as possible. She even suggested that they should go down to San
+Domenico for a fortnight, to look after the great Calabrian estate.
+
+They rose and began to walk toward the cottage. The shooting had been
+good that morning, as quail-shooting goes, and the man who acted as
+keeper, loader, gardener, and general factotum, and who went out with
+any one who wanted to shoot, had gone on to the cottage with the bag,
+the two guns, and the animal which he called his dog. The man's name was
+Ercole, that is to say, Hercules; and though he was not a giant, he
+certainly bore a closer resemblance to the hero than his dog did to dogs
+in general.
+
+"He was born in my house," Ercole said, when any one asked questions.
+"Find a better one if you can. His name? I call him Nino, short for
+John, because he barks so well at night. You don't understand? It is the
+'voice of one crying in the wilderness.' Did you never go to Sunday
+school? Or do you call this place a garden, a park, a public promenade?
+I call it a desert. There are not even cats."
+
+When an Italian countryman says of a place that even cats will not stay
+in it, he considers that he has evoked a picture of ultimate desolation
+that cannot be surpassed. It had always been Ercole's dream to live in
+the city, though he did not look like a man naturally intended for town
+life. He was short and skinny, though he was as wiry as a monkey; his
+face was slightly pitted with the smallpox, and the malaria of many
+summers had left him with a complexion of the colour of cheap leather;
+he had eyes like a hawk, matted black hair, and jagged white teeth. He
+and his fustian clothes smelt of earth, burnt gunpowder, goat's cheese,
+garlic, and bad tobacco. He was no great talker, but his language was
+picturesque and to the point; and he feared neither man nor beast,
+neither tramp nor horned cattle, nor yet wild boar. He was no respecter
+of persons at all. The land where the cottage was had belonged to a
+great Roman family, now ruined, and when, the land had been sold, he had
+apparently been part of the bargain, and had come into the possession of
+the Signora Corbario with it. In his lonely conversations with Nino, he
+had expressed his opinion of each member of the family with frankness.
+
+"You are a good dog, Nino," he would say. "You are the consolation of my
+soul. But you do not understand these things. Corbario is an assassin.
+Money, money, money! That is all he thinks of from morning till night. I
+know it, because he never speaks of it, and yet he never gives away
+anything. It is all for himself, the Signora's millions, the boy's
+millions, everything. When I look at his face, a chill seizes me, and I
+tremble as when I have the fever. You never had the malaria fever,
+Nino. Dogs don't have it, do they?"
+
+At the question Nino turned his monstrous head to one side and looked
+along his muzzle at his master. If he had possessed a tail he would have
+wagged it, or thumped the hard ground with it a few times; but he had
+none. He had probably lost it in some wild battle of his stormy youth,
+fought almost to death against the huge Campagna sheep-dogs; or perhaps
+a wolf had got it, or perhaps he had never had a tail at all. Ercole had
+probably forgotten, and it did not really matter much.
+
+"Corbario is an assassin," he said. "Remember that, Nino. As for his
+poor lady, she is a little lacking, or she would never have married him.
+But she is a saint, and what do saints want with cleverness? They go to
+paradise. Does that need much sense? We should all go if we could. Why
+do you cock your head on one side and look at me like a Christian? Are
+you trying to make me think you have a soul? You are made of nothing but
+corn meal and water, and a little wool, poor beast! But you have more
+sense than the Signora, and you are not an assassin, like her husband."
+
+At this, Nino threw himself upon his back with his four legs in the air
+and squirmed with sheer delight, showing his jagged teeth and the roof
+of a very terrible mouth, and emitting a series of wolfish snorts; after
+which he suddenly rolled over upon his feet again, shook himself till
+his shaggy coat bristled all over his body, walked sedately to the open
+door of the hut, and sat down to look at the weather.
+
+"He is almost a Christian," Ercole remarked under his breath, as if he
+were afraid the dog might hear the compliment and grow too vain.
+
+For Ercole was a reticent man, and though he told Nino what he thought
+about people, he never told any one else. Marcello was the only person
+to whom he ever showed any inclination to attach himself. He regarded
+even the Contessa with suspicion, perhaps merely because she was a
+woman; and as for Aurora, girls did not count at all in his cosmogony.
+
+"God made all the other animals before making women," he observed
+contemptuously one day, when he had gone out alone with Marcello.
+
+"I like them," laughed the boy.
+
+"So did Adam," retorted Ercole, "and you see what came of it."
+
+No answer to this argument occurred to Marcello just then, so he said
+nothing; and he thought of Aurora, and his mother, and the sad-eyed
+Contessa, and wondered vaguely whether they were very unlike other
+women, as Ercole implied.
+
+"When you know women," the man vouchsafed to add presently, "you will
+wish you were dead. The Lord sent them into the world for an affliction
+and for the punishment of our sins."
+
+"You were never married, were you?" asked Marcello, still smiling.
+
+Ercole stopped short in the sand, amongst the sea-thistles that grew
+there, and Nino trotted up and looked at him, to be ready if anything
+happened. Marcello knew the man's queer ways, and waited for him to
+speak.
+
+"Married?" he snorted. "Married? You have said it!"
+
+This seemed enigmatical, but Marcello understood the words to convey an
+affirmation.
+
+"Well?" he asked, expecting more.
+
+"Well? Well, what?" growled Ercole. "This is a bad world. A man falls in
+love with a pretty little caterpillar; he wakes up and finds himself
+married to a butterfly. Oh, this is a very bad world!"
+
+Marcello was struck by the simile, but he reflected that Aurora looked
+much more like a butterfly than a caterpillar, a fact which, if it meant
+anything, should signify that he knew the worst beforehand. Ercole
+declined to enter into any account of his conjugal experiences, and
+merely shrugged his shoulders and went on through the sand.
+
+With such fitting and warning as this to keep him out of trouble,
+Marcello was to face life: with his saintly mother's timid allusions to
+its wickedness, with Corbario's tempting suggestions of harmless
+dissipation, with an unlettered peasant's sour reflections on the world
+in general and women in particular.
+
+In the other scale of the balance fate set his delicate and high-strung
+nature, his burning desire for the great unknown something, the stinging
+impatience of bodily weakness, and the large element of recklessness he
+inherited from his father, besides a fine admixture of latent boyish
+vanity for women to play upon, and all the ordinary weaknesses of human
+nature in about the same proportion as every one has them.
+
+Given a large fortune and ordinary liberty, it might be foreseen that
+the boy would not reach the haven of maturity without meeting a storm,
+even if the outward circumstances of chance were all in his favour, even
+if no one had an interest in ruining him, even if Folco Corbario did not
+want all for himself, as poor Ercole told his dog that he did in the
+solitude of his hut.
+
+Marcello had a bad chance at the start, and Maddalena dell' Armi, who
+knew the world well in all its moods, and had suffered by it and sinned
+for it, and had shed many tears in secret before becoming what she was
+now, foresaw danger, and hoped that her daughter's fate might not be
+bound up with that of her friend's son, much as she herself liked the
+gentle-hearted boy. She wondered how long any one would call him gentle
+after he got his first taste of pleasure and pain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+It was very early morning, and there was no shooting, for a
+southwesterly gale had been blowing all night, and the birds passed far
+inland. All along the beach, for twenty-five miles in an unbroken line,
+the surf thundered in, with a double roar, breaking on the bar, then
+gathering strength again, rising grey and curling green and crashing
+down upon the sand. Then the water opened out in vast sheets of crawling
+foam that ran up to the very foot of the bank where the scrub began to
+grow, and ran regretfully back again, tracing myriads of tiny channels
+where the sand was loose; but just as it had almost subsided, another
+wave curled and uncurled itself, and trembled a moment, and flung its
+whole volume forwards through a cloud of unresisting spray.
+
+It had rained a little, too, and it would rain again. The sky was of an
+even leaden grey, and as the sun rose unseen, a wicked glare came into
+it, as if the lead were melting; and the wind howled unceasingly, the
+soft, wet, southwest wind of the great spring storms.
+
+Less than a mile from the shore a small brigantine, stripped to a lower
+topsail, storm-jib, and balance-reefed mainsail, was trying to claw off
+shore. She had small chance, unless the gale shifted or moderated, for
+she evidently could not carry enough sail to make any way against the
+huge sea, and to heave to would be sure destruction within two hours.
+
+The scrub and brushwood were dripping with raindrops, and the salt spray
+was blown up the bank with the loose sand. Everything was wet, grey, and
+dreary, as only the Roman shore can be at such times, with that
+unnatural dreariness of the south which comes down on nature suddenly
+like a bad dream, and is a thousand times more oppressive than the stern
+desolation of any northern sea-coast.
+
+Marcello and Aurora watched the storm from a break in the bank which
+made a little lee. The girl was wrapped in a grey military cloak, of
+which she had drawn the hood over her loose hair. Her delicate nostrils
+dilated with pleasure to breathe the salt wind, and her eyelids drooped
+as she watched the poor little vessel in the distance.
+
+"You like it, don't you?" asked Marcello, as he looked at her.
+
+"I love it!" she answered enthusiastically. "And I may never see it all
+again," she added after a little pause.
+
+"Never?" Marcello started a little. "Are you going away?"
+
+"We are going to Rome to-day. But that is not what I mean. We have
+always come down every year for ever so long. How long is it, Marcello?
+We were quite small the first time."
+
+"It must be five years. Four or five--ever since my mother bought the
+land here."
+
+"We were mere children," said Aurora, with the dignity of a grown
+person. "That is all over."
+
+"I wish it were not!" Marcello sighed.
+
+"How silly you are!" observed Aurora, throwing back her beautiful head.
+"But then, I am sure I am much more grown up than you are, though you
+are nineteen, and I am not quite eighteen."
+
+"You are seventeen," said Marcello firmly.
+
+"I shall be eighteen on my next birthday!" retorted Aurora with warmth.
+"Then we shall see who is the more grown up. I shall be in society, and
+you--why, you will not even be out of the University."
+
+She said this with the contempt which Marcello's extreme youth deserved.
+
+"I am not going to the University."
+
+"Then you will be a boy all your life. I always tell you so. Unless you
+do what other people do, you will never grow up at all. You ought to be
+among men by this time, instead of everlastingly at home, clinging to
+your mother's skirts!"
+
+A bright flush rose in Marcello's cheeks. He felt that he wanted to box
+her ears, and for an instant he wished himself small again that he might
+do it, though he remembered what a terrible fighter Aurora had been
+when she was a little girl, and had preserved a vivid recollection of
+her well-aimed slaps.
+
+"Don't talk about my mother in that way," he said angrily.
+
+"I'm not talking of her at all. She is a saint, and I love her very
+much. But that is no reason why you should always be with her, as if
+you were a girl! I don't suppose you mean to begin life as a saint
+yourself, do you? You are rather young for that, you know."
+
+"No," Marcello answered, feeling that he was not saying just the right
+thing, but not knowing what to say. "And I am sure my mother does not
+expect it of me, either," he added. "But that is no reason why you
+should be so disagreeable."
+
+He felt that he had been weak, and that he ought to say something sharp.
+He knew very well that his mother believed it quite possible for a boy
+to develop into saintship without passing through the intermediate state
+of sinning manhood; and though his nature told him that he was not of
+the temper that attains sanctity all at once, he felt that he owed to
+his mother's hopes for him a sort of loyalty in which Aurora had made
+him fail. The reasonings of innocent sentiment are more tortuous than
+the wiles of the devil himself, and have amazing power to torment the
+unfledged conscience of a boy brought up like Marcello.
+
+Aurora's way of thinking was much more direct.
+
+"If you think I am disagreeable, you can go away," she said, with a
+scornful laugh.
+
+"Thank you. You are very kind." He tried to speak sarcastically, but it
+was a decided failure.
+
+To his surprise, Aurora turned and looked at him very quietly.
+
+"I wonder whether I shall like you, when you are a man," she said in a
+tone of profound reflection. "I am rather ashamed of liking you now,
+because you are such a baby."
+
+He flushed again, very angry this time, and he moved away to leave her,
+without another word.
+
+She turned her face to the storm and took no notice of him. She thought
+that he would come back, but there was just the least doubt about it,
+which introduced an element of chance and was perfectly delightful while
+it lasted. Was there ever a woman, since the world began, who did not
+know that sensation, either by experience or by wishing she might try
+it? What pleasure would there be in angling if the fish did not try to
+get off the hook, but stupidly swallowed it, fly and all? It might as
+well crawl out of the stream at once and lay itself meekly down in the
+basket.
+
+And Marcello came back, before he had taken four steps.
+
+"Is that what you meant when you said that you might never come here
+again?" he asked, and there was something rough in his tone that pleased
+her.
+
+"No," she answered, as if nothing had happened. "Mamma talked to me a
+long time last night."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Do you want to know?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There is no reason why I should not tell you. She says that we must not
+come here after I go into society, because people will think that she is
+trying to marry me to you."
+
+She looked at him boldly for a moment, and then turned her eyes to the
+sea.
+
+"Why should she care what people think?" he asked.
+
+"Because it would prevent me from marrying any one else," answered
+Aurora, with the awful cynicism of youth. "If every one thought I was
+engaged to you, or going to be, no other man could ask for me. It's
+simple enough, I'm sure!"
+
+"And you wish other men to ask you to marry them, I suppose?"
+
+Marcello was a little pale, but he tried to throw all the contempt he
+could command into his tone. Aurora smiled sweetly.
+
+"Naturally," she said. "I'm only a woman."
+
+"Which means that I'm a fool to care for you!"
+
+"You are, if you think I'm not worth caring for." The girl laughed.
+
+This was so very hard to understand that Marcello knit his smooth young
+brow and looked very angry, but could find nothing to say on the spur of
+the moment. All women are born with the power to put a man into such a
+position that he must either contradict himself, hold his tongue, or fly
+into a senseless rage. They do this so easily, that even after the
+experience of a life-time we never suspect the trap until they pull the
+string and we are caught. Then, if we contradict ourselves, woman utters
+an inhuman cry of triumph and jeers at our unstable purpose; if we lose
+our tempers instead, she bursts into tears and calls us brutes; and
+finally, if we say nothing, she declares, with a show of reason, that we
+have nothing to say.
+
+[Illustration: "HE FLUSHED AGAIN, VERY ANGRY THIS TIME, AND HE MOVED
+AWAY TO LEAVE HER, WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD."]
+
+
+Marcello lost his temper.
+
+"You are quite right," he said angrily. "You are not worth caring for.
+You are a mere child, and you are a miserable little flirt already, and
+you will be a detestable woman when you grow up! You will lead men on,
+and play with them, and then laugh at them. But you shall not laugh at
+me again. You shall not have that satisfaction! You shall wish me back,
+but I will not come, not if you break your silly little heart!"
+
+With this terrific threat the boy strode away, leaving her to watch the
+storm alone in the lee of the sandbank. Aurora knew that he really meant
+to go this time, and at first she was rather glad of it, since he was in
+such a very bad temper. She felt that he had insulted her, and if he had
+stayed any longer she would doubtless have called him a brute, that
+being the woman's retort under the circumstances. She had not the
+slightest doubt of being quite reconciled with him before luncheon, of
+course, but in her heart she wished that she had not made him angry. It
+had been very pleasant to watch the storm together, and when they had
+come to the place, she had felt a strong presentiment that he would kiss
+her, and that the contrast between the kiss and the howling gale would
+be very delightful.
+
+The presentiment had certainly not come true, and now that Marcello was
+gone it was not very amusing to feel the spray and the sand on her
+face, or to watch the tumbling breakers and listen to the wind. Besides,
+she had been there some time, and she had not even had her little
+breakfast of coffee and rolls before coming down to the shore. She
+suddenly felt hungry and cold and absurdly inclined to cry, and she
+became aware that the sand had got into her russet shoes, and that it
+would be very uncomfortable to sit down in such a place to take them off
+and shake it out; and that, altogether, misfortunes never come singly.
+
+After standing still three or four minutes longer, she turned away with
+a discontented look in her face, all rosy with the wind and spray. She
+started as she saw Corbario standing before her, for she had not heard
+his footsteps in the gale. He wore his shooting-coat and heavy leathern
+gaiters, but he had no gun. She thought he looked pale, and that there
+was a shade of anxiety in his usually expressionless face.
+
+"We wondered where you were," he said. "There is coffee in the verandah,
+and your mother is out already."
+
+"I came down to look at the storm," Aurora answered. "I forgot all about
+breakfast."
+
+They made a few steps in the direction of the cottage. Aurora felt that
+Corbario was looking sideways at her as they walked.
+
+"Have you seen Marcello?" he asked presently.
+
+"Did you not meet him?" Aurora was surprised. "It is not five minutes
+since he left me."
+
+"No. I did not meet him."
+
+"That is strange."
+
+They went on in silence for a few moments.
+
+"I cannot understand why you did not meet Marcello," Aurora said
+suddenly, as if she had thought it over. "Did you come this way?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Perhaps he got back before you started. He walks very fast."
+
+"Perhaps," Corbario said, "but I did not see him. I came to look for you
+both."
+
+"Expecting to find us together, of course!" Aurora threw up her head a
+little disdainfully, for Marcello had offended her.
+
+"He is generally somewhere near you, poor boy," answered Corbario in a
+tone of pity.
+
+"Why do you say 'poor boy' in that tone? Do you think he is so much to
+be pitied?"
+
+"A little, certainly." Corbario smiled.
+
+"I don't see why."
+
+"Women never do, when a man is in love!"
+
+"Women"--the flattery was subtle and Aurora's face cleared. Corbario was
+a man of the world, without doubt, and he had called her a woman, in a
+most natural way, as if she had been at least twenty years old. It did
+not occur to her to ask herself whether Folco had any object in wishing
+to please her just then, but she knew well enough that he did wish to do
+so. Even a girl's instinct is unerring in that; and Corbario further
+pleased her by not pursuing the subject, for what he had said seemed all
+the more spontaneous because it led to nothing.
+
+"If Marcello is not in the cottage," he observed, as they came near,
+"he must have gone off for a walk after he left you. Did you not see
+which way he turned?"
+
+"How could I from the place where I stood?" asked Aurora in reply. "As
+soon as he had turned behind the bank it was impossible to say which way
+he had gone."
+
+"Of course," assented Folco. "I understand that."
+
+Marcello had not come home, and Aurora was sorry that she had teased him
+into a temper and had then allowed him to go away. It was not good for
+him, delicate as he was, to go for a long walk in such weather without
+any breakfast, and she felt distinctly contrite as she ate her roll in
+silence and drank her coffee, on the sheltered side of the cottage,
+under the verandah. The Signora Corbario had not appeared yet, but the
+Contessa was already out. As a rule the Signora preferred to have her
+coffee in her room, as if she were in town. For some time no one spoke.
+
+"Had we not better send Ercole to find Marcello?" the Contessa asked at
+last.
+
+"I had to send Ercole to Porto d'Anzio this morning," Corbario answered.
+"I took the opportunity, because I knew there would be no quail with
+this wind."
+
+"Marcello will come in when he is hungry," said Aurora, rather sharply,
+because she really felt sorry.
+
+But Marcello did not come in.
+
+Soon after eight o'clock his mother appeared on the verandah. Folco
+dropped his newspaper and hastened to make her comfortable in her
+favourite chair. Though she was not strong, she was not an invalid, but
+she was one of those women whom it seems natural to help, to whom men
+bring cushions, and with whom other women are always ready to
+sympathise. If one of Fra Angelico's saints should walk into a modern
+drawing-room all the men would fall over each other in the scramble to
+make her comfortable, and all the women would offer her tea and ask her
+if she felt the draught.
+
+The Signora looked about, expecting to see her son.
+
+"Marcello has not come in," said Folco, understanding. "He seems to have
+gone for a long walk."
+
+"I hope he has put on his thick boots," answered the Signora, in a
+thoughtful tone. "It is very wet."
+
+She asked why Folco was not with him shooting, and was told that there
+were no birds in such weather. She had never understood the winds, nor
+the points of the compass, nor why one should see the new moon in the
+west instead of in the east. Very few women do, but those who live much
+with men generally end by picking up a few useful expressions, a little
+phrase-book of jargon terms with which men are quite satisfied. They
+find out that a fox has no tail, a wild boar no teeth, a boat no prow,
+and a yacht no staircase; and this knowledge is better than none.
+
+The Signora accepted the fact that there were no birds that morning, and
+began to talk to Maddalena. Aurora got a book and pretended to read, but
+she was really listening for Marcello's footsteps, and wondering
+whether he would smile at her, or would still be cross when he came in.
+Corbario finished his paper and went off to look at the weather from the
+other side of the house, and the two women talked in broken sentences as
+old friends do, with long intervals of silence.
+
+The wind had moderated a good deal, but as the sun rose higher the glare
+in the sky grew more yellow, the air was much warmer, and the trees and
+shrubs and long grass began to steam as if they had been half boiled.
+All manner of tiny flies and gnats chased each other in the lurid light.
+
+"It feels as if there were going to be an earthquake," said Maddalena,
+throwing back the lace from her grey hair as if even its light weight
+oppressed her.
+
+"Yes."
+
+The women sat in silence, uneasy, their lips a little parted. Not that
+an earthquake would have disturbed them much, for slight ones are common
+enough in Italy, and could do no harm at all to a wooden cottage; it was
+a mere physical breathlessness that they felt, as the gale suddenly
+dropped and the heavy air became quite still on the sheltered side of
+the cottage.
+
+Aurora threw aside her book impatiently and rose from her chair.
+
+"I am going to look for Marcello," she said, and she went off without
+turning her head.
+
+On the other side of the cottage, as she went round, she found Folco
+sitting on the steps of the verandah, his elbows on his knees and his
+chin resting on his folded hands, apparently in deep thought. He had a
+cigar between his teeth, but it had gone out.
+
+"I am going to look for Marcello," said Aurora, as she passed close
+beside him.
+
+He said nothing, and hardly moved his head. Aurora turned and looked at
+him as she stepped upon the path.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, as she saw his face. "Is anything
+wrong?"
+
+Corbario looked up quickly, as if he had been in a reverie.
+
+"Anything the matter? No. Where did you say you were going?"
+
+"To find Marcello. He has not come in yet."
+
+"He has gone for a walk, I suppose. He often walks alone on off days. He
+will be back before luncheon, and you are not going to town till the
+afternoon."
+
+"Will you come with me?" Aurora asked, for she was in a good humour with
+Folco.
+
+He rose at once.
+
+"I'll go with you for a stroll," he said, "but I don't think it is of
+any use to look for Marcello near the house."
+
+"It can do no harm."
+
+"And it will do us good to walk a bit."
+
+They went down the path and through the trees towards the break in the
+bank.
+
+"The sand was very wet this morning, even inside the bank," Aurora
+said. "I daresay we shall find his footsteps and be able to guess which
+way he went."
+
+"Very likely," Folco answered.
+
+He pushed back his tweed cap a little and passed his handkerchief across
+his smooth brow. Aurora noticed the action, because he did not usually
+get warm so easily.
+
+"Are you hot?" she asked carelessly.
+
+"A little," he answered. "The air is so heavy this morning."
+
+"Perhaps you are not quite well," said Aurora. "You are a little pale."
+
+Apparently something in her youthfully patronising tone came as near
+irritating him as anything ever could.
+
+"What does it matter, whether I am hot or not?" he asked, almost
+impatiently, and again he passed his handkerchief over his forehead.
+
+"I did not mean to annoy you," Aurora answered with uncommon meekness.
+
+They came near the break in the bank, and she looked at the sand on each
+side of her. She thought it seemed smoother than usual, and that there
+were not so many little depressions in it, where there had been
+footsteps on previous days, half obliterated by wind and rain.
+
+"I cannot see where you and I passed an hour ago," she said, in some
+surprise.
+
+"The wind draws through the gap with tremendous strength," Folco
+explained. "Just before the gale moderated there was a heavy squall with
+rain."
+
+"Was there? I did not notice that--but I was on the lee side of the
+house. The wind must have smoothed the sand, just like a flat-iron!"
+
+"Yes." Corbario answered indifferently and gazed out to sea.
+
+Aurora left his side and looked about, going to a little distance from
+the gap, first on one side and then on the other.
+
+"It is as if the wind had done it on purpose!" she cried impatiently.
+"It is as smooth as if it had all been swept with a gardener's broom."
+
+Corbario turned, lighted his extinguished cigar, and watched her, as she
+moved about, stooping now and then to examine the sand.
+
+"I don't believe it is of any use to look here," he said. "Besides, he
+will be back in time for luncheon."
+
+"I suppose so," answered Aurora. "Why do you look at me in that way?"
+she asked, standing upright and meeting his eyes suddenly.
+
+He laughed softly and took his cigar from his mouth.
+
+"I was watching you. You are very graceful when you move."
+
+She did not like his expression.
+
+"I wish you would think less about me and more about finding Marcello,"
+she said rather sharply.
+
+"You talk as if he were lost. I tell you he will surely come back before
+long."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+But Marcello did not come back, and after Aurora had returned to the
+cottage and was seated in her chair again, with her book, she grew
+restless, and went over in her memory what had passed in the morning. It
+was not possible that Marcello should really mean to carry out his
+threat, to go away without a word, to leave her, to leave his mother;
+and yet, he was gone. A settled conviction came over her that he was
+really gone, just as he was, most probably back to Rome. She had teased
+him, and he had been very angry, absurdly angry; and yet she was perhaps
+responsible, in a way, for his disappearance. Presently his mother would
+grow anxious and would ask questions, and then it would all come out. It
+would be better to be brave and to say at once that he had been angry
+with her; she could confess the truth to her mother, to the Signora, if
+necessary, or even to both together, for they were women and would
+understand. But she could not tell the story before Corbario. That would
+be out of the question; and yet, anything would be better than to let
+them all think that something dreadful had happened to Marcello. He had
+gone to Rome, of course; or perhaps only to Porto d'Anzio, in which case
+he would meet Ercole coming back.
+
+The hours wore on to midday, and Signora Corbario's uneasiness grew into
+real anxiety. The Contessa did her best to soothe her, but was anxious
+herself, and still Aurora said nothing. Folco was grave, but assured
+every one that the boy would soon return, though the Signora would not
+believe it.
+
+"He will never come back! Something dreadful has happened to him!" And
+therewith she broke down completely and burst into tears.
+
+"You must go and look for him," said Maddalena quietly to Corbario.
+
+"I think you are right," he answered. "I am going to find him," he said
+softly, bending down to his wife as she lay in her chair, trying to
+control her sobs. "I will send some of the men towards Porto d'Anzio and
+will go towards Nettuno myself."
+
+She loved him and believed in him, and she was comforted when she saw
+him go away and heard him calling the men from their hut.
+
+Aurora was left alone with the two women.
+
+"I am afraid Marcello is gone to Rome," she said, with an effort.
+
+The Signora raised herself in her long chair and stared hard at the
+girl. The Contessa looked at her in surprise.
+
+"What do you know about it?" cried the Signora. "Why have you not
+spoken, if you know anything? Don't you see that I am half mad with
+anxiety?"
+
+Aurora had never seen the good lady in such a state, and was almost
+frightened; but there was nothing to be done now, except to go on. She
+told her little story timidly, but truthfully, looking from her mother
+to the Signora while she spoke, and wondering what would happen when she
+had finished.
+
+"He said, 'You shall wish me back, but I will not come.' I think those
+were his last words."
+
+"You have broken my boy's heart!" cried the Signora Corbario, turning
+her face away.
+
+Maddalena, whose heart had really been broken long ago, could not help
+smiling.
+
+"I am sure I did not mean to," cried Aurora, contritely. "And after all,
+though I daresay it was my fault, he called me a miserable little flirt,
+and I only called him a baby."
+
+Maddalena would have laughed if her friend had not been in such real
+distress. As for Aurora, she did not know whether she would have laughed
+or cried if she had not felt that her girl's dignity was at stake. As it
+was, she grew preternaturally calm.
+
+"You have driven him away," moaned the Signora piteously. "You have
+driven away my boy! Was he not good enough for you?"
+
+She asked the question suddenly and vehemently, turning upon poor Aurora
+with something like fury. She was quite beside herself, and the Contessa
+motioned the girl away. Aurora rose and disappeared round the corner of
+the house.
+
+Alone with her friend, Maddalena did her best to comfort her. There were
+arguments enough: it was barely noon, and Marcello had not been gone
+four hours; he was used to taking long walks, he had probably gone as
+far as the tower, and had rested there before coming back; or he had
+gone to meet Ercole on the road to Porto d'Anzio; or he had gone off
+towards the Nettuno woods to get over his anger in solitude; it was
+natural enough; and after all, if he had gone to Rome as Aurora
+thought, no harm could come to him, for he would go home, and would
+surely send a telegram before evening. It was unlike him, yes; but just
+at his age boys often did foolish things.
+
+"Marcello is not foolish!" objected the Signora indignantly.
+
+She could by no means listen to reason, and was angry because her friend
+tried to argue with her. She rose with an energy she seldom displayed,
+and began to walk up and down the verandah. Her face was very pale, her
+lip quivered when she spoke, and there was an unnatural light in her
+eyes. There was room for much moderate affection in her gentle nature;
+she had loved her first husband; she loved Corbario dearly; but the
+passion of her life was her son, and at the first presentiment of real
+danger to him the dominant preoccupation of her heart took violent
+possession of everything else in her, regardless of reason, friendship,
+consideration for others, or common sense.
+
+Maddalena walked up and down beside her, putting one arm affectionately
+round her waist, and doing the best she could to allay the tempest.
+
+It subsided suddenly, and was followed by a stony silence that
+frightened the Contessa. It was time for luncheon, and Aurora came back,
+hoping to find that she had been forgiven during her absence, but the
+Signora only looked at her coldly once or twice and would not speak.
+None of the three even pretended to have an appetite.
+
+"I shall not go back to Rome to-day," said the Contessa. "I cannot
+leave you in such anxiety."
+
+"Folco will take care of me," answered the Signora in a dull tone. "Do
+not change your plans on my account. The carriage is ordered at three
+o'clock."
+
+She spoke so coldly that Maddalena felt a little pardonable resentment,
+though she knew that her friend was not at all herself.
+
+"Very well," she answered quietly. "If you had rather that I should not
+stay with you we will go back this afternoon."
+
+"It will be much better."
+
+When the carriage appeared neither Folco nor any of the men had
+returned. The Signora made an evident attempt to show a little of her
+habitual cordiality at parting, and she even kissed Aurora coldly on the
+forehead, and embraced Maddalena with something like her usual
+affection. The two looked back as they drove away, calling out a last
+good-bye, but they saw that the Signora was not even looking after them;
+she was leaning against one of the wooden supports of the verandah,
+gazing towards the trees, and pressing one hand to her forehead.
+
+"Do you think it was my fault, mamma?" asked Aurora, when they were out
+of sight of the cottage.
+
+"No, dear," answered Maddalena. "Something has happened, I wish I knew
+what!"
+
+"I only told him he was a baby," said Aurora, settling herself in the
+corner of the carriage, and arranging her parasol behind her so that it
+rested on the open hood; for the weather had cleared and the sun was
+shining brightly after the storm.
+
+So she and her mother went back to Rome that afternoon. But when the
+Signora was alone, she was sorry that her friend was gone, and was all
+at once aware that her head was aching terribly. Every movement she made
+sent an agonizing thrill through her brain, and her hand trembled from
+the pain, as she pressed her palm to her forehead.
+
+She meant to go down to the beach alone, for she was sure that she could
+find Marcello, and at least she would meet the men who were searching
+for him, and have news sooner than if she stayed in the cottage. But she
+could not have walked fifty steps without fainting while her headache
+lasted. She would take five grains of phenacetine, and in a little while
+she would be better.
+
+She found the glass tube with the screw cap, and swallowed one of the
+tablets with a little water. Then she sat down on the edge of her long
+chair in the verandah to wait for the pain to pass. She was very tired,
+and presently, she scarcely knew how it was, she was lying at full
+length in her chair, her head resting comfortably against the cushion.
+
+The sunlight fell slanting across her feet. Amongst the trees two or
+three birds were twittering softly; it was warm, it was dreamy, she was
+forgetting Marcello. She tried to rouse herself as the thought of him
+crossed her mind, and she fancied that she almost rose from the chair;
+but she had hardly lifted one hand. Then she saw his face close before
+her, her lips relaxed, the pain was gone, she smiled happily, and she
+was asleep.
+
+Half an hour later her maid came quietly out to ask whether she needed
+anything, and seeing that she was sleeping peacefully spread a light
+shawl over her feet, placed the silver handbell within easy reach on the
+table, and went away again.
+
+Towards evening Folco came back and then the men, straggling in on their
+tired little horses, for they had ridden far and fast. Marcello was not
+with them.
+
+Corbario came in alone, and saw his wife lying in her chair in the
+evening light. He stood still a moment, and then came over and bent near
+her, looking earnestly into her quiet face.
+
+"Already," he said aloud, but in a very low voice.
+
+His hand shook as he laid it on her heart, bending low. Then he started
+violently and stood bolt upright, as an unearthly howl rent the air.
+
+Nino, Ercole's queer dog, was close beside him, his forepaws planted on
+the upper step of the verandah, his head thrown up, his half-open jaws
+showing his jagged teeth, his rough coat bristling like spikes of
+bearded barley.
+
+And Ercole, still a hundred yards away amongst the trees, shook his head
+and hurried forward as he heard the long-drawn note of brute terror.
+
+"Somebody is dead," he said to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+For a few weeks all Italy was profoundly interested in the story of
+Marcello Corbario's disappearance and of his mother's almost
+unaccountable death. It was spoken of as the "double tragedy of the
+Campagna," and the newspapers were full of it.
+
+The gates of the beautiful villa on the Janiculum were constantly
+assailed by reporters; the servants who came out from time to time were
+bribed, flattered, and tempted away to eat sumptuous meals and drink the
+oldest wine in quiet gardens behind old inns in Trastevere, in the hope
+that they might have some information to sell. But no one gained
+admittance to the villa except the agents of the police, who came daily
+to report the fruitless search; and the servants had nothing to tell
+beyond the bare truth. The young gentleman had gone for a walk near the
+sea, down at the cottage by the Roman shore, and he had never been heard
+of again. His mother had been suffering from a bad headache, had lain
+down to rest in a cane chair on the verandah, and had been found dead,
+with a smile on her face, by her husband, when he came back from his
+first attempt to find Marcello. The groom who always went down with the
+carriage could describe with greatest accuracy the spot where the
+Signorina Aurora had last seen him; the house servants gave the most
+minute details about the cane chair, the verandah, and the position in
+which the poor lady had been found; but that was all, and it was not at
+all what the reporters wanted. They had all been down to the cottage,
+each with his camera and note-book, and had photographed everything in
+sight, including Nino, Ercole's dog. What they wanted was a clue, a
+story, a scandal if possible, and they found nothing of the sort.
+
+Folco Corbario's mourning was unostentatious and quiet, but none of the
+few persons who saw him, whether detectives or servants, could doubt
+that he was profoundly affected. He grew paler and thinner every day,
+until his own man even began to fear that his health was failing. He had
+done, and continued to do, everything that was humanly possible. He had
+brought his wife's body to Rome, and had summoned the very highest
+authorities in the medical profession to discover, if possible, the
+cause of her death. They had come, old men of science, full of the
+experience of years, young men of the future, brimming with theories,
+experts in chemistry, experts in snake poisons; for Folco had even
+suggested that she might have been bitten by a viper or stung by a
+venomous spider, or accidentally poisoned by some medicine or something
+she had eaten.
+
+But the scientific gentlemen were soon agreed that no such thing had
+happened. Considerably disappointed, and with an unanimity which is so
+unusual in the confraternity as to be thought absolutely conclusive when
+it is observed, they decided that the Signora Corbario had died of
+collapse after intense excitement caused by the disappearance of her
+son. Thereafter she was buried out at San Lorenzo, with the secret, if
+there were any; masses were said, the verdict of the doctors was
+published, with the signatures of the most eminent practitioners and
+specialists in Italy; and the interest of the public concentrated itself
+upon the problem of Marcello's mysterious removal, or abduction, or
+subduction, or recession, or flight, from the very bosom of his family.
+
+This problem had the merit of defying solution. In a comparatively open
+country, within a space of time which could certainly be limited to five
+minutes, at a place whence he should have been clearly seen by Folco
+Corbario as soon as Aurora dell' Armi could no longer see him, the boy
+had been spirited away, leaving not even the trace of his footsteps in
+the sand. It was one of the most unaccountable disappearances on record,
+as Folco insisted in his conversations with the Chief of Police, who
+went down with him to the cottage and examined the spot most carefully,
+with several expert detectives. Folco showed him exactly where Aurora
+had stood, and precisely the direction he himself had followed in
+approaching the gap, and he declared it to be almost a physical
+impossibility that Marcello should have become suddenly invisible just
+then.
+
+The official thought so too, and shook his head. He looked at the
+detectives, and they shook their heads, also. And then they all looked
+at Corbario and expressed the opinion that there was some mistake about
+the length of time supposed by Aurora to have elapsed between the
+moment when Marcello left her and the instant of Folco's appearance
+before her. She had not looked at her watch; in fact, she had not
+carried a watch. The whole story therefore depended upon her more or
+less accurate judgment of time. It might have been a quarter of an hour
+instead of five minutes, in which case Corbario had not yet left the
+cottage, and Marcello would have had ample leisure to disappear in any
+direction he pleased. Ercole had been away at Porto d'Anzio, the men had
+been all at the hut; if Folco had not been on the path precisely at the
+time guessed by Aurora, everything could be accounted for.
+
+"Very well," Corbario answered. "Let us suppose that my stepson had time
+to get away. In that case he can be found, alive or dead. Italy is not
+China, nor Siberia, and I can place unlimited funds at your disposal.
+Find him for me; that is all I ask."
+
+"We shall find him, never fear!" answered the Chief of Police with a
+confidence he did not feel.
+
+"We shall find him!" echoed the three detectives in chorus.
+
+Ercole watched the proceedings and listened to what was said, for he
+considered it his duty to attend on such an occasion, his dog at his
+heels, his gun slung over his shoulder. He listened and looked from one
+to the other with his deep eyes and inscrutable parchment face,
+shrivelled by the malarious fever. But he said nothing. The Chief of
+Police turned to him at last.
+
+"Now what do you think about it?" asked the official. "You know the
+country. Had there been any suspicious characters about, fellows who
+could have carried off the boy?"
+
+"Such people would ask a ransom," answered Ercole. "You would soon hear
+from them. But I saw no one. There have been no brigands about Rome for
+more than twenty years. Do you dream that you are in Sicily? Praise be
+to Heaven, this is the Roman Campagna; we are Christians and we live
+under King Victor! Where are the brigands? They have melted. Or else
+they are making straw hats in the galleys. Do I know where they are?
+They are not here. That is enough."
+
+"Quite right, my friend," answered the Chief of Police. "There are no
+brigands. But I am sorry to say that there are thieves in the Campagna,
+as there are near every great city."
+
+Ercole shrugged his angular shoulders contemptuously.
+
+"Thieves would not carry a man away," he answered. "You know that, you
+who are of the profession, as they say. Such ruffians would have knocked
+the young gentleman on the head to keep him quiet, and would have made
+off. And besides, we should have found their tracks in the sand, and
+Nino would have smelt them."
+
+Nino pricked up one ragged ear at the sound of his name.
+
+"He does not look very intelligent," observed the official. "A clever
+dog might have been used to track the boy."
+
+"How?" inquired Ercole with scorn. "The footsteps of the young gentleman
+were everywhere, with those of all the family, who were always coming
+and going about here. How could he track them, or any of us? But he
+would have smelt a stranger, even if it had rained. I know this dog. He
+is the head dog on the Roman shore. There is no other dog like him."
+
+"I daresay not," assented the Chief of Police, looking at Nino. "In
+fact, he is not like any animal I ever saw."
+
+The detectives laughed at this.
+
+"There is no other," said Ercole without a smile. "He is the only son of
+a widowed mother. I am his family, and he is my family, and we live in
+good understanding in this desert. If there were no fever we should be
+like the saints in paradise--eating our corn meal together. And I will
+tell you another thing. If the young gentleman had been wounded anywhere
+near here, Nino would have found the blood even after three days. As for
+a dead man, he would make a point for him and howl half a mile off,
+unless the wind was the wrong way."
+
+"Would he really?" asked Corbario with a little interest.
+
+Ercole looked at him and nodded, but said no more, and presently the
+whole party of men went back to Rome, leaving him to the loneliness of
+the sand-banks and the sea.
+
+Then Ercole came back to the gap and stood still a little while, and
+his dog sat bolt upright beside him.
+
+"Nino," he said at last, in a rather regretful tone, "I gave you a good
+character. What could I say before those gentlemen? But I tell you this,
+you are growing old. And don't answer that I am getting old too, for
+that is my business. If your nose were what it was once, we should know
+the truth by this time. Smell that!"
+
+Ercole produced a small green morocco pocket-book, of the sort made to
+hold a few visiting cards and a little paper money, and held it to
+Nino's muzzle.
+
+Nino smelt it, looked up to his master's face inquiringly, smelt it
+again, and then, as if to explain that it did not interest him, lay down
+in the sand with his head on his forepaws.
+
+"You see!" growled Ercole. "You cannot even tell whether it belonged to
+the boy or to Corbario. An apoplexy on you! You understand nothing! Ill
+befall the souls of your dead, you ignorant beast!"
+
+Nino growled, but did not lift his head.
+
+"You understand that," said Ercole, discontentedly. "If you were a
+Christian you would stick a knife into me for insulting your dead! Yet
+you cannot tell whose pocket-book this is! And if I knew, I should know
+something worth knowing."
+
+The pocket-book disappeared in the interior recesses of Ercole's
+waistcoat. It was empty and bore no initial, and he could not remember
+to have seen it in Corbario's or Marcello's hands, but he was quite
+sure that it belonged to one of them. He was equally sure that if he
+showed it to Corbario the latter would at once say that it was
+Marcello's, and would take it away from him, so he said nothing about
+it. He had found it in the sand, a little way up the bank, during his
+first search after Marcello's disappearance.
+
+Ercole's confidence in the good intentions of his fellow-men was not
+great; he was quite lacking in the sort of charity which believeth all
+things, and had a large capacity for suspicion of everybody and
+everything; he held all men to be liars and most women to be something
+worse.
+
+"Men are at least Christians," he would say to Nino, "but a female is
+always a female."
+
+If he took a liking for any one, as for Marcello, he excused himself for
+the weakness on the ground that he was only human after all, and in his
+heart he respected his dog for snarling at everybody without
+discrimination. There was no doubt, however, that he felt a sort of
+attachment for the boy, and he admitted the failing while he deplored
+it. Besides, he detested Corbario, and had felt that his own common
+sense was insulted by the fact that Folco seemed devoted to Marcello.
+The suspicion that Folco had got rid of his stepson in order to get his
+fortune was therefore positively delightful, accompanied as it was by
+the conviction that he should one day prove his enemy a murderer.
+Perhaps if he could have known what Folco Corbario was suffering, he
+might have been almost satisfied, but he had no means of guessing that.
+In his opinion the man knew what had become of Marcello, and could be
+made to tell if proper means were used. At night Ercole put himself to
+sleep by devising the most horrible tortures for his master, such as no
+fortitude could resist, and by trying to guess what the wretched man
+would say when his agony forced him to confess the truth.
+
+He was almost sure by this time that Marcello was dead, though how Folco
+could have killed him, carried off his body to a great distance and
+buried him, without ever absenting himself from the cottage, was more
+than Ercole could imagine. He paid Corbario's skill the compliment of
+believing that he had not employed any accomplice, but had done the deed
+alone.
+
+How? That was the question. Ercole knew his dog well enough, and was
+perfectly sure that if the body had been concealed anywhere within a
+mile of the cottage Nino would have found it out, for the dog and his
+master had quartered every foot of the ground within three days after
+Marcello had been lost. It was utterly, entirely impossible that Folco,
+without help, could have dragged the dead boy farther. When he had gone
+on his pretended search he had not been alone; one of the men had ridden
+with him, and had never lost sight of him, as Ercole easily ascertained
+without seeming to ask questions. Ercole had obtained a pretty fair
+knowledge of Corbario's movements on that day, and it appeared that he
+had not been absent from the cottage more than half an hour at any time
+before he went to look for Marcello.
+
+"If Corbario himself had disappeared in that way," said Ercole to
+himself and Nino, "it would be easy to understand. We should know that
+the devil had carried him off."
+
+But no such supernatural intervention of the infernal powers could be
+supposed in Marcello's case, and Ercole racked his brains to no purpose,
+and pondered mad schemes for carrying Corbario off out of Rome to a
+quiet place where he would extract the truth from him, and he growled at
+the impossibility of such a thing, and fell to guessing again.
+
+In the magnificent library of the villa on the Janiculum, Folco was
+guessing, too, and with no better result. But because he could not guess
+right, and could get no news of Marcello, his eyes were growing hollow
+and his cheeks wan.
+
+The lawyers came and talked about the will, and explained to him that
+all the great property was his, unless Marcello came back, and that in
+any case he was to administer it. They said that if no news of the boy
+were obtained within a limited time, the law must take it for granted
+that he had perished in some unaccountable way. Folco shook his head.
+
+"He must be found," he said. "I have good nerves, but if I do not find
+out what has become of him I shall go mad."
+
+The lawyers spoke of courage and patience, but a sickly smile twisted
+Folco's lips.
+
+"Put yourself in my place, if you can," he answered.
+
+The lawyers, who knew the value of the property to a farthing, wished
+they could, though if they had known also what was passing in his mind
+they might have hesitated to exchange their lot for his.
+
+"He was like your own son," they said sympathetically. "A wife and a son
+gone on the same day! It is a tragedy. It is more than a man can bear."
+
+"It is indeed!" answered Corbario in a low voice and looking away.
+
+Almost the same phrases were exchanged each time that the two men came
+to the villa about the business, and when they left they never failed to
+look at each other gravely and to remark that Folco was a person of the
+deepest feeling, to whom such an awful trial was almost worse than
+death; and the elder lawyer, who was of a religious turn of mind, said
+that if such a calamity befell him he would retire from the world, but
+the younger answered that, for his part, he would travel and see the
+world and try to divert his thoughts. In their different ways they were
+hard-headed, experienced men; yet neither of them suspected for a moment
+that there was anything wrong. Both were honestly convinced that Folco
+had been a model husband to his dead wife, and a model father to her
+lost son. What they could not understand was that he should not find
+consolation in possessing their millions, and they could only account
+for the fact by calling him a person of the deepest feeling--a feeling,
+indeed, quite past their comprehension.
+
+Even the Contessa dell' Armi was impressed by the unmistakable signs of
+suffering in his face. She went twice to see him within three weeks
+after her friend's death, and she came away convinced that she had
+misjudged him. Aurora did not go with her, and Corbario barely asked
+after her. He led Maddalena to his dead wife's room and begged her to
+take some object that had belonged to the Signora, in memory of their
+long friendship. He pressed her to accept a necklace, or a bracelet, or
+some other valuable ornament, but Maddalena would only take a simple
+little gold chain which she herself had given long ago.
+
+Her own sorrow for her friend was profound but undemonstrative, as her
+nature had grown to be. Aurora saw it, and never referred to it,
+speaking only now and then of Marcello, to ask if there were any news of
+him.
+
+"He is not dead," the girl said one day. "I know he will come back. He
+went away because I called him a baby."
+
+Her mother smiled sadly and shook her head.
+
+"Did you love him, dear?" she asked softly.
+
+"We were children then," Aurora answered. "How do I know? I shall know
+when he comes back."
+
+It was true that the girl had changed within a few weeks, and her mother
+saw it. Her smile was not the same, and her eyes were deeper. She had
+begun to gather her hair in a knot, closer to her head, and that altered
+her expression a little and made her look much older; but there was more
+than that, there was something very hard to describe, something one
+might call conviction--the conviction that the world is real, which
+comes upon girlhood as suddenly as waking on sleep, or sleep on waking.
+She had crossed the narrow borderland between play and earnest, and she
+had crossed it very soon.
+
+"He will come back," she said. "He went away on that little ship that
+was tossing in the storm. I know it, though I cannot tell how he got out
+to it through the breaking waves."
+
+"That is perfectly impossible, child," said Maddalena with certainty.
+
+"Never mind. If we knew what ship that was, and where she is now, we
+could find Marcello. I am as sure of it as I am sure of seeing you at
+this moment. You know you often say that my presentiments come true. As
+soon as we knew he was gone I thought of the little ship."
+
+It was natural, perhaps. The picture of the small brigantine, fighting
+for existence, had graved itself in her memory. With its crew so near
+death, it had been the only thing within sight that suggested human life
+after Marcello was gone. The utter impossibility of a man's swimming out
+through the raging sea that broke upon the bar was nothing compared with
+Aurora's inward conviction that the little vessel had borne away the
+secret of his disappearance. And she had not been wrecked: Aurora knew
+that, for a wreck anywhere on the Roman shore would have been spoken of
+at once. They are unfortunately common enough, and since her childhood
+Aurora had more than once seen a schooner's masts sticking up out of
+the treacherous water a cable's length from the shore. The brigantine
+had got away, for the gale had moderated very suddenly, as spring gales
+do in the Mediterranean, just when the captain was making up his mind to
+let go both anchors and make a desperate attempt to save his vessel by
+riding out the storm--a forlorn hope with such ground tackle as he had
+in his chain lockers. And then he had stood out, and had sailed away,
+one danger more behind him in his hard life, and one less ahead. He had
+sailed away--whither? No one could tell. Those little vessels, built in
+the south of Italy, often enough take salt to South America, and are
+sold there, cargo and all; and some of the crew stay there, and some get
+other ships, but almost all are dispersed. The keeper of the San Lorenzo
+tower, who had been a deep-water man, had told Aurora about it. He
+himself had once gone out in a Sicilian brigantine from Trapani, and had
+stayed away three years, knocking about the world in all sorts of craft.
+
+Yet this one might have been on a coastwise trip to Genoa and
+Marseilles. That was quite possible. If one could only find out her
+name. And yet, if she had put into a near port Marcello would have come
+back; for Aurora was quite sure that he had got on board her somehow. It
+was all a mystery, all but the certainty she felt that he was still
+alive, and which nothing could shake, even when every one else had given
+him up. Aurora begged her mother to speak to Corbario about it. With his
+experience and knowledge of things he would know what to do; he could
+find some way of tracing the vessel, wherever she might be.
+
+The Contessa was convinced that the girl's theory was utterly untenable,
+and it was only to please her that she promised to speak of it if she
+saw Corbario again. Soon afterward she decided to leave Rome for the
+summer, and before going away she went once more to the villa. It was
+now late in June, and she found Folco in the garden late in the
+afternoon.
+
+He looked ill and tired, but she thought him a little less thin than
+when she had seen him last. He said that he, too, meant to leave Rome
+within a few days, that he intended to go northward first to see an old
+friend of his who had recently returned from South America, and that he
+should afterwards go down to Calabria, to San Domenico, and spend the
+autumn there. He had no news of Marcello. He looked thoughtfully down at
+his hands as he said this in a tone of profound sorrow.
+
+"Aurora has a fixed idea," said Maddalena. "While she was talking with
+Marcello at the gap in the bank there was a small ship tossing about not
+far from the shore."
+
+"Well?" asked Corbario. "What of it?"
+
+As he looked up from the contemplation of his hands Maddalena was struck
+by his extreme pallor and the terrible hollowness of his eyes.
+
+"How ill you look!" she exclaimed, almost involuntarily. "The sooner you
+go away the better."
+
+"What did Aurora say about the brigantine?" he asked earnestly, by way
+of answer.
+
+Maddalena knew too little about the sea to understand that he must have
+noticed the vessel's rig to name it correctly, as he did, and without
+hesitation.
+
+"She is convinced that Marcello got on board of her," she answered.
+
+Corbario's face relaxed a little, and he laughed harshly.
+
+"That is utterly absurd!" he answered. "No swimmer that ever lived could
+have got to her, nor any boat either! There was a terrific surf on the
+bar."
+
+"Of course not," assented Maddalena. "But you saw the ship, too?"
+
+"Yes. Aurora was looking at her when I reached the gap. That is why I
+noticed the vessel," Corbario added, as if by an afterthought. "She was
+a Sicilian brigantine, and was carrying hardly any sail. If the gale had
+lasted she would probably have been driven ashore. Her only chance would
+have been to drop anchor."
+
+"You know all about ships and the sea, don't you?" asked Maddalena, with
+a very little curiosity, but without any particular intention.
+
+"Oh, no!" cried Corbario, as if he were protesting against something. "I
+have made several long voyages, and I have a knack of remembering the
+names of things, nothing more."
+
+"I did not mean to suggest that you had been a sailor," Maddalena
+answered.
+
+"What an idea! I, a sailor!"
+
+He seemed vaguely amused at the idea. The Contessa took leave of him,
+after giving him her address in the north of Italy, and begging him to
+write if he found any clue to Marcello's disappearance. He promised
+this, and they parted, not expecting to meet again until the autumn.
+
+In a few days they had left Rome for different destinations. The little
+apartment near the Forum of Trajan where the Contessa and her daughter
+lived was shut up, and at the great villa on the Janiculum the solemn
+porter put off his mourning livery and dressed himself in brown linen,
+and smoked endless pipes within the closed gates when it was not too hot
+to be out of doors. The horses were turned out to grass, and the
+coachman and grooms departed to the country. The servants opened the
+windows in the early morning, shut them at ten o'clock against the heat,
+and dozed the rest of the time, or went down into the city to gossip
+with their friends in the afternoon. It was high summer, and Rome went
+to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"What do we eat to-day?" asked Paoluccio, the innkeeper on the Frascati
+road, as he came in from the glare and the dust and sat down in his own
+black kitchen.
+
+"Beans and oil," answered his wife.
+
+"An apoplexy take you!" observed the man, by way of mild comment.
+
+"It is Friday," said the woman, unmoved, though she was of a distinctly
+apoplectic habit.
+
+The kitchen was also the eating-room where meals were served to the
+wine-carters on their way to Rome and back. The beams and walls were
+black with the smoke of thirty years, for no whitewash had come near
+them since the innkeeper had married Nanna. It was a rich, crusty black,
+lightened here and there to chocolate brown, and shaded off again to the
+tint of strong coffee. High overhead three hams and half a dozen huge
+sausages hung slowly curing in the acrid wood smoke. There was an open
+hearth, waist high, for roasting, and having three square holes sunk in
+it for cooking with charcoal. An enormous bunch of green ferns had been
+hung by a long string from the highest beam to attract the flies, which
+swarmed on it like bees on a branch. The floor was of beaten cement,
+well swept and watered. Along three of the walls there were heavy
+tables of rough-hewn oak, with benches, polished by long and constant
+use. A trap-door covered the steps that led down to the deep cellar,
+which was nothing but a branch of those unexplored catacombs that
+undermine the Campagna in all directions. The place was dim, smoky, and
+old, but it was not really dirty, for in his primitive way the Roman
+wine-carter is fastidious. It is not long since he used to bring his own
+solid silver spoon and fork with him, and he will generally rinse a
+glass out two or three times before he will drink out of it.
+
+The kitchen of the inn was cool compared with the road outside, and
+though it smelt chiefly of the stale smoke of green wood, this was
+pervaded and tempered by odours of fern, fresh cabbages, goats'-milk
+cheese, and sour red wine. The brown earthen pot simmered over one of
+the holes in the hearth, emitting little clouds of steam; but boiling
+beans have no particular smell, as everybody knows.
+
+Paoluccio had pushed his weather-beaten soft hat back on his head, and
+sat drumming on the oak table with his knotty fingers. He was a strong
+man, thickset and healthy, with grizzled hair and an intensely black
+beard. His wife was fat, and purple about the jaws and under the ears.
+She stood with her back to the hearth, looking at him, with a wooden
+spoon in her hand.
+
+"Beans," she said slowly, and she looked up at the rafters and down
+again at her husband.
+
+"You have told me so," he growled, "and may the devil fly away with
+you!"
+
+"Beans are not good for people who have the fever," observed Nanna.
+
+"Beans are rather heavy food," assented the innkeeper, apparently
+understanding. "Bread and water are better. Pour a little oil on the
+bread."
+
+"A man who has the fever may die of eating beans," said Nanna
+thoughtfully. "This is also to be considered."
+
+"It is true." Paoluccio looked at his wife in silence for a moment. "But
+a person who is dead must be buried," he continued, as if he had
+discovered something. "When a person is dead, he is dead, whether he
+dies of eating beans or--"
+
+He broke off significantly, and his right hand, as it lay before him,
+straightened itself and made a very slight vibrating motion, with the
+fingers all close together. It is the gesture that means the knife among
+the southern people. Nanna instantly looked round, to be sure that no
+one else was in the room.
+
+"When you have given that medicine, you cannot send for the doctor," she
+observed, lowering her voice. "But if he eats, and dies, what can any
+one say? We have fed him for charity; it is Friday and we have given him
+beans. What can we know? Are not beans good food? We have nothing else,
+and it is for charity, and we give what we have. I don't think they
+could expect us to give him chickens and French wine, could they?"
+
+Paoluccio growled approval.
+
+"It is forty-seven days," continued Nanna. "You can make the account.
+Chickens and milk and fresh meat for forty-seven days! Even the bread
+comes to something in that time, at least two soldi a day--two forties
+eighty, two sevens fourteen, ninety-four--nearly five francs. Who will
+give us the five francs? Are we princes?"
+
+"There is the cow," observed Paoluccio with a grin.
+
+"Imbecile," retorted his wife. "It has been a good year; we bought the
+wine cheap, we sell it dear, without counting what we get for nothing
+from the carters; we buy a cow with our earnings, and where is the
+miracle?"
+
+The innkeeper looked towards the door and the small window suspiciously
+before he answered in a low voice.
+
+"If I had not been sure that he would die, I would not have sold the
+watch and chain," he said. "In the house of my father we have always
+been honest people."
+
+"He will die," answered Nanna, confidently and with emphasis. "The girl
+says he is hungry to-day. He shall eat beans. They are white beans, too,
+and the white are much heavier than the brown."
+
+She lifted the tin cover off the earthen pot and stirred the contents.
+
+"White beans!" grumbled Paoluccio. "And the weather is hot. Do you wish
+to kill me?"
+
+"No," answered Nanna quietly. "Not you."
+
+"Do you know what I say?" Paoluccio planted a huge finger on the oaken
+board. "That sick butterfly upstairs is tougher than I am. Forty-seven
+days of fever, and nothing but bread and water! Think of that, my Nanna!
+Think of it! You or I would be consumed, one would not even see our
+shadows on the floor! But he lives."
+
+"If he eats the white beans he has finished living," remarked Nanna.
+
+A short silence followed, during which Paoluccio seemed to be
+meditating, and Nanna began to ladle the beans out into four deep
+earthenware bowls, roughly glazed and decorated with green and brown
+stripes.
+
+"You are a jewel; you are the joy of my heart," he observed
+thoughtfully, as Nanna placed his portion before him, covered it with
+oil, and scattered some chopped basil on the surface.
+
+"Eat, my love," she said, and she cut a huge piece from a coarse loaf
+and placed it beside him on a folded napkin that looked remarkably clean
+in such surroundings, and emitted a pleasant odour of dried lavender
+blossoms.
+
+"Where is the girl?" asked Paoluccio, stirring the mess and blowing upon
+it.
+
+As he spoke, the door was darkened, and the girl stood there with a
+large copper "conca," the water-jar of the Roman province, balanced on
+her head--one of the most magnificent human beings on whom the sun of
+the Campagna ever shone. She was tall, and she bent her knees without
+moving her neck, in order to enter the door without first setting down
+the heavy vessel.
+
+[Illustration: " ... THE DOOR WAS DARKENED, AND THE GIRL STOOD THERE
+WITH A LARGE COPPER 'CONCA' ..."]
+
+Her thick dark hair grew low on her forehead, almost black, save for
+the reddish chestnut lights where a few tiny ringlets curled themselves
+about her small and classic ears. Straight black eyebrows outlined the
+snow-white forehead, and long brown lashes shaded the fearless eyes,
+that looked black too. She smiled a little, quite unconsciously, as she
+lowered herself with the weight and gracefully rose to her height again
+after she had entered. One shapely brown hand steadied the conca above,
+the other gathered her coarse skirt; then she stood still, lifted the
+load from her head with both hands and without any apparent effort, and
+set it down in its place on a stone slab near the hearth. Most women
+need a little help to do that.
+
+She laid aside the twisted cloth on which the conca had rested while she
+carried it, and she smoothed her hair carelessly.
+
+"There are beans," said Nanna, giving the girl one of the bowls. "There
+is the bread. While they are cooling take the other portion upstairs."
+
+The girl looked at the bowl, and at Nanna, and then at Paoluccio, and
+stood stock still.
+
+"Hey, there!" the man cried, with a rough laugh. "Hey! Reginella! Are
+you going to sleep, or are you turning into a statue?"
+
+"Am I to give him the beans to eat?" asked Regina, looking hard at the
+innkeeper.
+
+"You said he was hungry. That is what there is for dinner. We give him
+what we have."
+
+Regina's dark eyes lightened; her upper lip rose in a curve and showed
+her closed teeth, strong and white as those of a young animal.
+
+"Do as you are told," added Paoluccio. "This is charity. When you
+examine your conscience at Easter you can say, 'I have fed the hungry
+and cared for the sick.' The beans are mine, of course, but that makes
+no difference. I make you a present of them."
+
+"Thank you!"
+
+"Welcome," answered Paoluccio, with his mouth, full.
+
+Regina took the fourth bowl and a piece of bread and went out. The steps
+to the upper part of the house were on the outside, as is common in the
+houses of the Campagna.
+
+"How old is she?" Paoluccio asked when she was gone.
+
+"She must be twenty," answered Nanna. "It must be ten years since her
+mother died, and her mother said she was ten years old. She has eaten
+many loaves in this house."
+
+"She has worked for her food," said the innkeeper. "And she is an honest
+girl."
+
+"What did you expect? That I should let her be idle, or make eyes at the
+carters? But you always defend her, because she is pretty, you ugly
+scamp!"
+
+Nanna uttered her taunt in a good-natured tone, but she glanced
+furtively at her husband to see the effect of her words, for it was not
+always safe to joke with Paoluccio.
+
+"If I did not defend her," he answered, "you would beat the life out of
+her."
+
+"I daresay," replied Nanna, and filled her mouth with beans.
+
+"But now," said Paoluccio, swallowing, "if you are not careful she will
+break all your bones. She has the health of a horse."
+
+So the couple discussed matters amiably, while Regina was out of the
+way.
+
+In a garret that had a small unglazed window looking to the north, the
+girl was bending over a wretched trestle-bed, which was literally the
+only piece of furniture in the room; and on the coarse mattress, stuffed
+with the husks and leaves of maize, lay all that the fever had left of
+Marcello Consalvi, shivering under a tattered brown blanket. There was
+little more than the shadow of the boy, and his blue eyes stared dully
+up at the girl's face. But there was life in him still, thanks to her,
+and though there was no expression in his gaze, his lips smiled faintly,
+and faint words came from them.
+
+"Thank you," he said, "I am better to-day. Yes, I could eat something."
+
+Regina bent lower, smiling happily, and she kissed the boy's face three
+times; she kissed his eyes and dry lips. And he, too, smiled again.
+
+Then she left the bedside and went to a dark corner, where she
+cautiously moved aside a loose board. From the recess she took a common
+tumbler and a bottle of old wine and a battered iron spoon. She crouched
+upon the floor, because there was no table; she took two fresh eggs out
+of the folds of the big red and yellow cotton handkerchief that covered
+her shoulders and was crossed over her bosom, and she broke them into
+the glass, and hid the empty shells carefully in the folds again, so
+that they should not be found in the room. For she had stolen these for
+Marcello, as usual, as well as the old wine. She poured a little of the
+latter into the glass and stirred the eggs quickly and softly, making
+hardly any noise. From the recess in the wall she got a little sugar,
+which was wrapped up in a bit of newspaper brown with age and smoke, and
+she sweetened the eggs and wine and stirred again; and at last she came
+and fed Marcello with the battered spoon. She had put off her coarse
+slippers and walked about in her thick brown woollen stockings, lest she
+should be heard below. She was very quiet and skilful, and she had
+strangely small and gentle hands for a peasant girl. Marcello's head was
+propped up by her left arm while she fed him.
+
+She had kept him alive six weeks, and she had saved his life. She had
+found him lying against the door of the inn at dawn, convulsed with ague
+and almost unconscious, and had carried him into the house like a child,
+though he had been much heavier then. Of course the innkeeper had taken
+his watch and chain, and his jacket and sleeve-links and studs, to keep
+them safe, he said. Regina knew what that meant, but Paoluccio had
+ordered her to take care of him, and she had done her best. Paoluccio
+felt that if the boy died it would be the will of heaven, and that he
+probably would not live long with such care and such nourishment as he
+would get up there in the attic. When he was dead, it would be time
+enough to tell the carabineers who passed the house twice every
+twenty-four hours on their beat; they would see that a sick boy had been
+taken in, and that he had died of the fever, and as they need never know
+how long he had been in the inn, the whole affair would redound to
+Paoluccio's credit with them and with customers. But as long as he was
+alive it was quite unnecessary that any one should know of his
+existence, especially as the watch and chain had been converted into
+money, and the money into a fine young cow. That Marcello could get well
+on bread and water never entered Paoluccio's head.
+
+But he had counted without Regina; that is to say that he had overlooked
+the love and devotion of an intensely vital creature, younger, quicker,
+and far cleverer that he, who would watch the sick boy day and night,
+steal food and wine for him, lose sleep for him, risk blows for him, and
+breathe her strong life into his weak body; to whom the joy of saving
+him from death would be so much greater than all fatigue, that there
+would be no shadow under her eyes, no pallor in her cheek, no weariness
+in her elastic gait to tell of sleepless nights spent by his bedside in
+soothing his ravings, or in listening for the beat of his heart when he
+lay still and exhausted, his tired head resting on her strong white arm.
+And when he seemed better and at ease she often fell asleep beside him,
+half sitting, half lying, on the pallet bed, her cheek on the straw
+pillow, her breath mingling with his in the dark.
+
+He was better now, and she felt the returning life in him, almost before
+he was sure of it himself; and while her heart was almost bursting with
+happiness, so that she smiled to herself throughout her rough work all
+day long, she knew that he could not stay where he was. Paoluccio
+expected him to die, and was beginning to be tired of waiting, and so
+was Nanna. If he recovered, he would ask for his watch and other things;
+he was evidently a fine young gentleman to whom some strange accident
+had happened, and he must have friends somewhere. Half delirious, he had
+spoken of them and of his mother, and of some one called Aurora, whom
+Regina already hated with all her heart and soul. The innkeeper and his
+wife had never come near him since the former had helped the girl to
+carry him upstairs, but if they suspected that he was recovering she
+would not be able to prevent them from seeing him; and if they did, she
+knew what would happen. They would send her on an errand, and when she
+came back Marcello would be dead. She might refuse to go, but they were
+strong people and would be two to one. Brave as Regina was, she did not
+dare to wait for the carabineers when they came by on their beat and to
+tell them the truth, for she had the Italian peasant's horror and dread
+of the law and its visible authority; and moreover she was quite sure
+that Paoluccio would murder her if she told the secret.
+
+"If I could only take you to Rome!" she whispered, bending over him
+when he had swallowed the contents of the glass. "You could tell me
+where your friends are."
+
+"Rome?" he repeated, with a vacant questioning.
+
+She nodded and smiled, and then sighed. She had long been sure that the
+fever had affected his memory, and she had tried many times to awaken
+it.
+
+She loved him because he had the face of an angel, and was fair-haired,
+and seemed so gentle and patient, and smiled so sweetly when she kissed
+him. That was all. He could thank her; he could tell her that he was
+better or worse; he could speak of what he saw; he could even tell her
+that she was beautiful, and that was much. He was Marcello, he had told
+her that, but when she asked what other name he had, he looked at her
+blankly at first, and then an expression of painful effort came over his
+face, and she would not disturb him any more. He could not remember. He
+did not know how he had come to the inn door; he had been walking in the
+Campagna alone and had felt tired. He knew no more.
+
+If only she could get him to Rome. It was not more than seven or eight
+miles to the city, and Regina had often been there with Nanna. She had
+been to Saint John Lateran's at midsummer for the great festival, and
+she knew where the hospital was, in which famous professors cured every
+ill under the sun. If she could bring Marcello to them, he would get
+well; if he stayed much longer at the inn, Paoluccio would kill him;
+being a woman, and a loving one, Regina only regarded as possible what
+she wished, where the man she loved was concerned.
+
+She made up her mind that if it could not be done by any other means she
+would carry Marcello all the way. During his illness she had often
+lifted him from his bed like a little child, for he was slightly built
+by nature and was worn to a shadow by the fever. Even Aurora could have
+raised him, and he was a featherweight in the arms of such a creature as
+Regina. But it would be another matter to carry such an awkward burden
+for miles along the highroad; and besides, she would meet the
+carabineers, and as she would have to go at night, they would probably
+arrest her and put her in prison, and Marcello would die. She must find
+some other way.
+
+She laid his head tenderly on the pillow and left him, promising to come
+back as soon as she could. For safety she had brought the dish of beans
+with her, lest Nanna should follow her, and she took it with her, just
+as it was; but at the foot of the outer stairs she ran along the back of
+the house to the pig-sty, and emptied the mess into the trough,
+carefully scraping the bowl with the spoon so that it looked as if some
+one had eaten the contents. Then she went back to the kitchen.
+
+"Has he eaten?" inquired Nanna, and Paoluccio looked up, too.
+
+"You see," answered Regina, showing the empty bowl.
+
+"Health to him!" answered Paoluccio. "He has a good appetite."
+
+"Eat your own," said Nanna to the girl.
+
+She suspected that Regina might have eaten the beans meant for Marcello,
+but her doubt vanished as she saw how the hungry young thing devoured
+her own portion.
+
+"Are there any more left?" Regina asked when she had finished, for she
+understood perfectly what was going on in the minds of the other two.
+
+She looked into the earthen cooking-pot which now stood on the corner of
+the hearth.
+
+"Not even the smell of any more," answered Nanna. "There is bread."
+
+Regina's white teeth crushed the hard brown crust as if she had not
+eaten for a week. There could be no doubt but that the sick boy had
+eaten the beans; and beans, especially white ones, are not good for
+people who have the fever, as Nanna had justly observed.
+
+"On Sunday he shall have a dish of liver and cabbage," she said, in a
+cheerful tone. "There is much strength in liver, and cabbage is good for
+the blood. I shall take it to him myself, for it will be a pleasure to
+see him eat."
+
+"The beans were soon finished," said Regina, with perfect truth.
+
+"I told you how it would be," Paoluccio answered.
+
+But Regina knew that the time had come to get Marcello away from the inn
+if he ever was to leave it alive, and in the afternoon, when Nanna was
+dozing in her chair in the kitchen and Paoluccio was snoring upstairs,
+and when she had smoothed Marcello's pillow, she went out and sat down
+in front of the house, where there was shade at that hour, though the
+glare from the dusty road would have blinded weaker eyes than hers. She
+sat on the stone seat that ran along the house, and leaned against the
+rough wall, thinking and scheming, and quite sure that she should find a
+way.
+
+At first she looked about, while she thought, from the well-known
+mountains that bounded her world to the familiar arches of the distant
+aqueduct, from the dry ditch opposite to the burning sky above and the
+greyish green hillocks below Tivoli. But by and by she looked straight
+before her, with a steady, concentrated stare, as if she saw something
+happening and was watching to see how it would end.
+
+She had found what she wanted, and was quite sure of it; only a few
+details remained to be settled, such as what was to become of her after
+she left the inn where she had grown up. But that did not trouble her
+much.
+
+She was not delicately nurtured that she should dread the great world of
+which she knew nothing, nor had Nanna's conversation during ten years
+done much to strengthen her in the paths of virtue. Her pride had done
+much more and might save her wherever she went, but she was very well
+aware of life's evil truths. And what would her pride be compared with
+Marcello, the first and only being she had ever loved? To begin with,
+she knew that the handsome people from the country earned money by
+serving as models for painters and sculptors, and she had not the
+slightest illusion about her own looks. Since she had been a child
+people who came to the inn had told her that she was beautiful; and not
+the rough wine-carters only, for the fox-hunters sometimes came that
+way, riding slowly homeward after a long run, and many a fine gentleman
+in pink had said things to her which she had answered sharply, but which
+she remembered well. She had not the slightest doubt but that she was
+one of the handsomest girls in Italy, and the absolute certainty of the
+conviction saved her from having any small vanity about her looks. She
+knew that she had only to show herself and that every one would stand
+and look at her, only to beckon and she would be followed. She did not
+crave admiration; a great beauty rarely does. She simply defied
+competition, and was ready to laugh at it in a rather good-natured way,
+for she knew what she had, and was satisfied.
+
+As for the rest, she was merely clever and fearless, and her moral
+inheritance was not all that might be desired; for her father had left
+her mother in a fit of pardonable jealousy, after nearly killing her and
+quite killing his rival, and her mother had not redeemed her character
+after his abrupt departure. On the contrary, if an accident had not
+carried her off suddenly, Regina's virtuous parent would probably have
+sold the girl into slavery. Poor people are not all honest, any more
+than other kinds of people are. Regina did not mourn her mother, and
+hardly remembered her father at all, and she never thought of either.
+
+She owed Paoluccio and Nanna nothing, in her opinion. They had fed her
+sufficiently, and clothed her decently for the good of the house; she
+had done the work of two women in return, because she was strong, and
+she had been honest, because she was proud. Even the innkeeper and his
+wife would not have pretended that she owed them much gratitude; they
+were much too natural for that, and besides, the girl was too handsome,
+and there might be some scandal about her any day which would injure the
+credit of the inn. Nanna thought Paoluccio much too fond of watching
+her, as it was, and reflected that if she went to the city she would be
+well out of the way, and might go to the devil if she pleased.
+
+Regina's plan for taking Marcello was simple, like most plans which
+succeed, and only depended for its success on being carried out
+fearlessly.
+
+The wine-carters usually came to the inn from the hills between nine and
+eleven o'clock at night, and the carts, heavy-laden with wine casks,
+stood in a line along the road, while the men went into the kitchen to
+eat and drink. They generally paid for what they consumed by giving a
+measure or two of wine from the casks they were bringing, and which they
+filled up with water, a very simple plan which seems to have been in use
+for ages. It has several advantages; the owner of the wine does not
+suffer by it, since he gets his full price in town; the man who buys the
+wine in Rome does not suffer, because he adds so much water to the wine
+before selling it that a little more or less makes no difference; the
+public does not suffer, as it is well known that wine is much better for
+the health when drunk with plenty of water; and the carters do not
+suffer, because nobody would think of interfering with them. Moreover,
+they get food and drink for nothing.
+
+While the men were having supper in the inn, their carts were guarded by
+their little woolly dogs, black, white, or brown, and always terribly
+wide-awake and uncommonly fierce in spite of their small size.
+
+Now, just at this time, there was one carter who had none, and Regina
+knew it, for he was one of her chief admirers. He was the
+hardest-drinking ruffian of all the men who came and went on the
+Frascati road, and he had been quite willing to sell his dog in the
+street to a gentleman who admired it and offered him fifty francs for
+it, though that is a small price for a handsome "lupetto." But Mommo
+happened to be deeper in debt than usual, took the money, and cast about
+to steal another dog that might serve him. So far he had not seen one to
+his liking.
+
+It is the custom of the wine-carters, when they have had plenty to eat
+and drink, to climb to their seats under the fan-like goat-skin hoods of
+their carts, and to go to sleep, wrapped in their huge cloaks. Their
+mules plod along and keep out of the way of other vehicles without any
+guidance, and their dogs protect them from thieves, who might steal
+their money; for they always carry the sum necessary to pay the octroi
+duty at the city gates, where every cart is stopped. As they are on the
+road most of their lives, winter and summer, they would not get much
+sleep if they tried to keep awake all night; and they drink a good deal,
+partly because wine is really a protection against the dangerous fever,
+and partly because their drink costs them nothing. Some of them drank
+their employers' wine at supper, others exchanged what they brought for
+Paoluccio's, which they liked better.
+
+They usually got away about midnight, and Mommo was often the last to
+go. It was a part of Regina's work to go down to the cellar and draw the
+wine that was wanted from the hogsheads when the host was too lazy to go
+down himself, and being quite unwatched she could draw a measure from
+the oldest and strongest if she chose. Mommo could easily be made a
+little sleepier than usual, after being tempted to outstay the others.
+
+And so it turned out that night. After the necessary operation of
+tapping one of his casks and filling it up with water, he lingered on
+before a measure of the best, while Nanna and Paoluccio dozed in their
+chairs; and at last all three were asleep.
+
+Then Regina went out softly into the dark summer night, and climbed the
+stairs to the attic.
+
+"I am going to take you to Rome to-night," she whispered in Marcello's
+ear.
+
+"Rome?" he repeated vaguely, half asleep.
+
+She wrapped him in the tattered blanket as he was, and lifted him
+lightly in her arms. Down the stairs she bore him, and then lifted him
+upon the tail of the cart, propping him up as best she could, and
+passing round him the end of one of the ropes that held the casks in
+place. He breathed more freely in the open air, and she had fed him
+again before the carters came to supper.
+
+"And you?" he asked faintly.
+
+"I shall walk," she whispered. "Now wait, and make no noise, or they
+will kill you. Are you comfortable?"
+
+She could see that he nodded his head.
+
+"We shall start presently," she said.
+
+She went into the kitchen, waked Mommo, and made him swallow the rest of
+his wine. He was easily persuaded that he had slept too long, and must
+be on the road. The innkeeper and Nanna grumbled a good-night as he went
+out rather unsteadily, followed by Regina. A moment later the mules'
+bells jingled, the cart creaked, and Mommo was off.
+
+Paoluccio and his wife made their way to the outer stairs and to bed,
+leaving Regina to put out the lights and lock up the kitchen. She lost
+no time in doing this, ran up the steps in the dark, hung the key on its
+nail in the entry, and went to her attic, making a loud noise with her
+loose slippers, so that the couple might hear her. She came down again
+in her stockings almost at once, carrying the slippers and a small
+bundle containing her belongings. She made no noise now, though it was
+almost quite dark, and in another instant she was out on the road to
+Rome. It had all been done so quickly that she could still hear the
+jingling of Mommo's mule bells in the distance. She had only a few
+hundred yards to run, and she was walking at the tail of the cart with
+one hand resting on Marcello's knee as he lay there wrapped up in the
+ragged blanket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was clear dawn, and there was confusion at the Porta San Giovanni.
+Mommo had wakened, red-eyed and cross as usual, a little while before
+reaching the gate, and had uttered several strange noises to quicken the
+pace of his mules. After that, everything had happened as usual, for a
+little while; he had stopped inside the walls before the guard-house of
+the city customs, had nodded to the octroi inspectors, and had got his
+money ready while the printed receipt was being filled out. Then the
+excitement had begun.
+
+"You have a passenger," said one, and Mommo stared at him, not
+understanding.
+
+"You have a dead man on behind!" yelled a small boy, standing at safe
+distance.
+
+Mommo began to swear, but one of the inspectors stopped him.
+
+"Get down," said the man. "The carabineers are coming."
+
+Mommo finished his swearing internally, but with increased fervour. The
+small boy was joined by others, and they began to jeer in chorus, and
+perform war-dances.
+
+"There is a tax on dead men!" they screamed. "You must pay!"
+
+"May you all be butchered!" shouted Mommo, in a voice of thunder. "May
+your insides be fried!"
+
+"Brute beast, without education!" hooted the biggest boy,
+contemptuously.
+
+"I'll give you the education, and the instruction too," retorted the
+carter, making at them with his long whip.
+
+They scattered in all directions, like a flock of cawing jackdaws that
+fly a little way in tremendous haste, and then settle again at a
+distance and caw louder than before.
+
+"Animal!" they yelled. "Animal! Animal and beast!"
+
+By this time a crowd had collected round the cart, and two carabineers
+had come up to see what was the matter, quiet, sensible men in
+extraordinary cocked hats and well-fitting swallow-tailed uniforms of
+the fashion of 1810. The carabineers are quite the finest corps in the
+Italian service, and there are a good many valid reasons why their
+antiquated dress should not be changed. Their presence means law and
+order without unnecessary violence.
+
+Mommo was surly, but respectful enough. Yes, it was his cart, and he was
+a regular carter on the Frascati road. Yes, this was undoubtedly a sick
+man, who had climbed upon the cart while Mommo was asleep. Of course he
+had slept on the road, all carters did, and he had no dog, else no one
+would have dared to take liberties with his cart. No, he had never seen
+the sick man. The carabineers might send him to penal servitude for
+life, tear out his tongue, cut off his ears and nose, load him with
+chains, and otherwise annoy him, but he had never seen the sick man. If
+he had seen him, he would have pulled him off, and kicked him all the
+way to the hospital, where he ought to be. What right had such brigands
+as sick men to tamper with the carts of honest people? If the fellow had
+legs to jump upon the cart, he had legs to walk. Had Mommo ever done
+anything wrong in his life, that this should be done to him? Had he
+stolen, or killed anybody, or tried to evade the octroi duty? No. Then
+why should an ugly thief of a sick man climb upon his cart? The wretch
+had hardly clothes enough to cover him decently--a torn shirt and a pair
+of old trousers that he must have stolen, for they were much too short
+for him! And so on, and so forth, to the crowd, for the carabineers paid
+no more attention to him after he had answered their first questions;
+but the crowd listened with interest, the small boys drew near again,
+the octroi inspectors looked on, and Mommo had a sympathetic audience.
+It was the general opinion that he had been outrageously put upon, and
+that some one had murdered the sick man, and had tied the body to the
+cart in order that Mommo should be accused of the crime, it being highly
+likely that a murderer should take so much unnecessary trouble to carry
+his victim and the evidence of his crime about with him in such a very
+public manner.
+
+"If he were dead, now," observed an old peasant, who had trudged in with
+a bundle on his back, "you would immediately be sent to the galleys."
+
+This was so evident that the crowd felt very sorry for Mommo.
+
+"Of course I should," he answered. "By this time to-morrow I should have
+chains on my legs, and be breaking stones! What is the law for, I should
+like to know?"
+
+Meanwhile, the carabineers had lifted Marcello very gently from the cart
+and had carried him into the octroi guard-house, where they set him in a
+chair, wrapped the ragged blanket round his knees and waist, and poured
+a little wine down his throat. Seeing that he was very weak, and having
+ascertained that he had nothing whatever about him by which he could be
+identified, they sent for the municipal doctor of that quarter of the
+city.
+
+While they were busy within, one of the inspectors chanced to look at
+the closed window, and saw the face of a handsome girl pressed against
+the pane outside, and a pair of dark eyes anxiously watching what was
+going on. The girl was so very uncommonly handsome that the inspector
+went out to look at her, but she saw him coming and moved away, drawing
+her cotton kerchief half across her face. Regina's only fear was that
+Mommo might recognise her, in which case she would inevitably be
+questioned by the carabineers. It was characteristic of the class in
+which she had been brought up, that while she entertained a holy dread
+of being cross-questioned by them, she felt the most complete conviction
+that Marcello was safe in their hands. She had meant that he should
+somehow be taken off the cart at the gate, probably by the inspectors,
+and conveyed at once to the great hospital near by. She knew nothing
+about hospitals, and supposed that when he was once there, she might be
+allowed to come and take care of him. It would be easy, she thought, to
+invent some story to account for her interest in him. But she could do
+nothing until Mommo was gone, and he might recognise her figure even if
+he could not see her face.
+
+Finding that nothing more was wanted of him, and that he was in no
+immediate danger of penal servitude for having been found with a sick
+man on his cart, Mommo started his mules up the paved hill towards the
+church, walking beside them, as the carters mostly do within the city.
+The crowd dispersed, the small boys went off in search of fresh matter
+for contemptuous comment, and Regina went boldly to the door of the
+guard-house.
+
+"Can I be of any use with the sick man?" she asked of the inspector who
+had seen her through the window.
+
+The inspector prided himself on his gallantry and good education.
+
+"Signorina," he said, lifting his round hat with a magnificent gesture,
+"if you were to look only once at a dying man, he would revive and live
+a thousand years."
+
+He made eyes at her in a manner he considered irresistible, and replaced
+his hat on his head, a little on one side. Regina had never been called
+"Signorina" before, and she was well aware that no woman who wears a
+kerchief out of doors, instead of a hat, is entitled to be addressed as
+a lady in Rome; but she was not at all offended by the rank flattery of
+the speech, and she saw that the inspector was a good-natured young
+coxcomb.
+
+"You are too kind," she answered politely. "Do you think I can be of any
+use?"
+
+"There are the carabineers," objected the inspector, as if that were a
+sufficient answer. "But you may look in through the door and see the
+sick man."
+
+"I have seen him through the window. He looks very ill."
+
+"Ah, Signorina," sighed the youth, "if I were ill, I should pray the
+saints to send you--"
+
+He was interrupted by the arrival of the doctor, who asked him what was
+the matter, and was at once led in by him. Regina withdrew to a little
+distance in the direction of the church and waited. The doctor had come
+in a cab, and in a few moments she saw Marcello carried out and placed
+in it. Then she walked as fast as she could towards the church, quite
+sure that the cab would stop at the door of the hospital, and anxious to
+be within sight of it. Everything had turned out well, even beyond her
+expectations. The cab passed her at a brisk pace before she reached the
+top of the hill, and though she walked as fast as she could, it was no
+longer there when she had gone far enough to see the door. The doctor,
+who was a busy man, had handed Marcello over to the men on duty at the
+entrance, with an order he had pencilled on his card while driving up,
+and had gone on at once. But Regina was convinced that Marcello was
+there, as she hurried forward.
+
+A man in blue linen clothes and a laced cap stopped her on the steps and
+asked what she wanted.
+
+"A young man has just been brought here, very ill," she explained, "and
+I want to see him."
+
+"A very young man? Fair? Thin? From the Campagna? In rags?"
+
+"Yes. I want to see him."
+
+"You can see him to-morrow, if he is alive," answered the orderly in a
+business-like tone.
+
+"To-morrow?" repeated Regina, in a tone of profound disappointment.
+
+"To-morrow is Sunday. Friends and relatives can visit patients on
+Sundays between nine and four."
+
+"But he has no other friends," pleaded Regina. "Please, please let me go
+to him!"
+
+"To-morrow between nine and four."
+
+"No, no--to-day--now--he knows me--my name is Regina."
+
+"Not if you were the Queen of the world," answered the orderly, jesting
+with perfect calm. "You must have a written order from the
+Superintendent."
+
+"Yes, yes! Let me see him!"
+
+"You can see him on Mondays between ten and twelve."
+
+"The day after to-morrow?" cried Regina in despair.
+
+"Yes, between ten and twelve, the day after to-morrow."
+
+"But I may come to-morrow without an order?"
+
+"Yes. Friends and relatives can visit patients on Sundays between nine
+and four."
+
+The man's imperturbability was exasperating, and Regina, who was not
+patient, felt that if she stayed any longer she should try to take him
+by the collar, shake him, and force her way in. But she was much too
+sensible to do anything so rash. There was no choice but to go away.
+
+"Thank you," she said, as she turned to go down the steps.
+
+"You are welcome," the man answered very civilly, for he was watching
+her and was reflecting that he had never seen such a face and figure
+before.
+
+Some hours later, when the police communicated with the Superintendent,
+and when he found that a woman had come to the door who said that she
+knew the waif, and had been sent away, he called the orderly who had
+been on duty several hard names in his heart for having followed the
+rule of the hospital so scrupulously. He was an antediluvian, he was a
+case of arrested mental development, he was an ichthyosaurus, he was a
+new kind of idiot, he was a monumental fool, he was the mammoth ass
+reported to have been seen by a mediÊval traveller in the desert, that
+was forty cubits high, and whose braying was like the blast of ten
+thousand trumpets. The Superintendent wished he had time to select more
+choice epithets for that excellent orderly, but the police seemed so
+particularly curious about the new patient that he had no leisure for
+thinking out what he wanted.
+
+Nevertheless, the man had done his duty and nothing more nor less
+according to the rules, and Regina was forced to go away discomfited.
+
+She walked a hundred yards or more down the hill, towards San Clemente,
+and then stood still to think. The sun had risen, and Marcello was safe,
+though she could not see him. That was something. She stood there,
+young, strong, beautiful, and absolutely penniless; and Rome was before
+her.
+
+For the first time since the previous evening she asked herself what was
+to become of her, and how she was to find bread for that day and for the
+next, and for all the days afterwards. She would have robbed a church to
+feed Marcello, but she would sooner have lost her right hand than steal
+so much as a crust for herself. As for begging, she was too proud, and
+besides, no one would have given her anything, for she was the picture
+of health, her rough clothes were whole and clean, she had tiny gold
+earrings in her ears, and the red and yellow cotton kerchief on her head
+was as good as new. Nobody would believe that she was hungry.
+
+Meanwhile Marcello was made comfortable in one of the narrow white beds
+of an airy ward in the San Giovanni hospital. The institution is
+intended for women only, but there is now a ward for male patients, who
+are admitted when too ill to be taken farther. The doctor on duty had
+written him down as much reduced by malarious fever and wandering in his
+mind, but added that he might live and get well. It was wonderful, the
+doctor reflected for the thousandth time in his short experience, that
+humanity should bear so much as it daily did.
+
+The visiting physician, who was a man of learning and reputation, came
+three hours later and examined Marcello with interest. The boy had not
+suffered much by sleeping on the tail of the cart in the warm summer's
+night, and was now greatly refreshed by the cleanliness and comparative
+luxury of his new surroundings. He had no fever now and had slept
+quietly for two hours, but when he tried to remember what had happened
+to him, where he had been, and how he had come to the place where he
+was, it all grew vague and intricate by turns, and his memories faded
+away like the dreams we try to recall when we can only just recollect
+that we have had a dream of some sort. He knew that he was called
+Marcello, but the rest was gone; he knew that a beautiful creature had
+taken care of him, and that her name was Regina. How long? How many days
+and nights had he lain in the attic, hot by day and cold at night? He
+could not guess, and it tired him to try.
+
+The doctor asked two or three questions while he examined him, and then
+stood quite still for a few seconds, watching him intently. The two
+young house surgeons who accompanied the great man kept a respectful
+silence, waiting for his opinion. When he found an interesting case he
+sometimes delivered a little lecture on it, in a quiet monotonous tone
+that did not disturb the other patients. But to-day he did not seem
+inclined to talk.
+
+"Convalescent," he said, "at least of the fever. He needs good food
+more than anything else. In two days he will be walking about."
+
+He passed on, but in his own mind he was wondering what was the matter
+with the young man, why he had lost his memory, and what accident had
+brought him alone and friendless to one of the city hospitals. For the
+present it would be better to let him alone rather than tire him by a
+thorough examination of his head. There was probably a small fracture
+somewhere at the back of the skull, the doctor thought, and it would be
+easy enough to find it when the patient was strong enough to sit up.
+
+The doctor had not been long gone when an elderly man with a grizzled
+moustache and thoughtful eyes was led to Marcello's bedside by the
+Superintendent himself. The appearance of the latter at an unusual hour
+was always an event in the ward, and the nurses watched him with
+curiosity. They would have been still more curious had they known that
+the elderly gentleman was the Chief of the Police himself. The
+Superintendent raised his hand to motion them away.
+
+"What is your name, sir?" asked the Chief, bending down and speaking in
+a low voice.
+
+"Marcello."
+
+"Yes," replied the other, almost in a whisper, "you are Marcello. But
+what else? What is your family name? It is very important. Will you tell
+me?"
+
+The vague look came into Marcello's eyes, and then the look of pain, and
+he shook his head rather feebly.
+
+"I cannot remember," he answered at last. "It hurts me to remember."
+
+"Is it Consalvi?" asked the officer, smiling encouragement.
+
+"Consalvi?" Marcello's eyes wandered, as he tried to think. "I cannot
+remember," he said again after an interval.
+
+The Chief of Police was not discouraged yet.
+
+"You were knocked down and robbed by thieves, just after you had been
+talking with Aurora," he said, inventing what he believed to have
+happened.
+
+A faint light came into Marcello's eyes.
+
+"Aurora?" He repeated the name almost eagerly.
+
+"Yes. You had been talking to Signorina Aurora dell' Armi. You remember
+that?"
+
+The light faded suddenly.
+
+"I thought I remembered something," answered Marcello. "Aurora? Aurora?
+No, it is gone. I was dreaming again. I want to sleep now."
+
+The Chief stood upright and looked at the Superintendent, who looked at
+him, and both shook their heads. Then they asked what the visiting
+doctor had said, and what directions he had given about Marcello's
+treatment.
+
+"I am sure it is he," said the Chief of Police when they were closeted
+in the Superintendent's office, five minutes later. "I have studied his
+photograph every day for nearly three months. Look at it."
+
+He produced a good-sized photograph of Marcello which had been taken
+about a year earlier, but was the most recent. The Superintendent
+looked at it critically, and said it was not much like the patient. The
+official objected that a man who was half dead of fever and had lain
+starving for weeks, heaven only knew where, could hardly be quite
+himself in appearance. The Superintendent pointed out that this was
+precisely the difficulty; the photograph was not like the sick man. But
+the Chief politely insisted that it was. They differed altogether on
+this point, but quarrelled over it in the most urbane manner possible.
+
+The Superintendent suggested that it would be easy to identify Marcello
+Consalvi, by bringing people who knew him to his bedside, servants and
+others. The official answered that he should prefer to be sure of
+everything before calling in any one else. The patient had evidently
+lost his memory by some accident, and if he could not recall his own
+name it was not likely that he could recognise a face. Servants would
+swear that it was he, or not he, just as their interest suggested. Most
+of the people of his own class who knew him were out of town at the
+present season; and besides, the upper classes were not, in the Chief's
+opinion, a whit more intelligent or trustworthy than those that served
+them. The world, said the Chief, was an exceedingly bad place. That this
+was true, the Superintendent could not doubt, and he admitted the fact;
+but he was not sure how the Chief was applying the statement of it in
+his own reasoning. Perhaps he thought that some persons might have an
+interest in recognising Marcello.
+
+"In the meantime," said the Chief, rising to go away, "we will put him
+in a private room, where we shall not be watched by everybody when we
+come to see him. I have funds from Corbario to pay any possible expenses
+in the case."
+
+"Who is that man?" asked the Superintendent. "There has been a great
+deal of talk about him in the papers since his stepson was lost. What
+was he before he married the rich widow?"
+
+The Chief of Police did not reply at once, but lit a cigarette
+preparatory to going away, smoothed his hat on his arm, and flicked a
+tiny speck of dust from the lapel of his well-made coat. Then he smiled
+pleasantly and gave his answer.
+
+"I suppose that before he married Consalvi's widow he was a gentleman of
+small means, like many others. Why should you think that he was ever
+anything else?"
+
+To this direct question the Superintendent had no answer ready, nor, in
+fact, had the man who asked it, though he had looked so very wise. Then
+they glanced at each other and both laughed a little, and they parted.
+
+Half an hour later, Marcello was carried to an airy room with green
+blinds, and was made even more comfortable than he had been before. He
+slept, and awoke, and ate and slept again. Twice during the afternoon
+people were brought to see him. They were servants from the villa on the
+Janiculum, but he looked at them dully and said that he could not
+remember them.
+
+"We do not think it is he," they said, when questioned. "Why does he
+not know us, if it is he? We are old servants in the house. We carried
+the young gentleman in our arms when he was small. But this youth does
+not know us, nor our names. It is not he."
+
+They were dismissed, and afterwards they met and talked up at the villa.
+
+"The master has been sent for by telegraph," they said one to another.
+"We shall do what he says. If he tells us that it is the young gentleman
+we will also say that it is; but if he says it is not he, we will also
+deny it. This is the only way."
+
+Having decided upon this diplomatic course as the one most likely to
+prove advantageous to them, they went back to their several occupations
+and amusements. But at the very first they said what they really
+thought; none of them really believed the sick youth at the hospital to
+be Marcello. An illness of nearly seven weeks and a long course of
+privation can make a terrible difference in the looks of a very young
+person, and when the memory is gone, too, the chances of his being
+recognised are slight.
+
+But the Chief of Police was not disturbed in his belief, and after he
+had smoked several cigarettes very thoughtfully in his private office,
+he wrote a telegram to Corbario, advising him to come back to Rome at
+once. He was surprised to receive an answer from Folco late that night,
+inquiring why he was wanted. To this he replied in a second telegram of
+more length, which explained matters clearly. The next morning Corbario
+telegraphed that he was starting.
+
+The visiting physician came early and examined Marcello's head with the
+greatest minuteness. After much trouble he found what he was looking
+for--a very slight depression in the skull. There was no sign of a wound
+that had healed, and it was clear that the injury must have been either
+the result of a fall, in which case the scalp had been protected by a
+stiff hat, or else of a blow dealt with something like a sandbag, which
+had fractured the bone without leaving any mark beyond a bruise, now no
+longer visible.
+
+"It is my opinion," said the doctor, "that as soon as the pressure is
+removed the man's memory will come back exactly as it was before. We
+will operate next week, when he has gained a little more strength. Feed
+him and give him plenty of air, for he is very weak."
+
+So he went away for the day. But presently Regina came and demanded
+admittance according to the promise she had received, and she was
+immediately brought to the Superintendent's office, for he had given
+very clear instructions to this effect in case the girl came again. He
+had not told the Chief of Police about her, for he thought it would be
+amusing to do a little detective work on his own account, and he
+anticipated the triumph of finding out Marcello's story alone, and of
+then laying the facts before the authorities, just to show what ordinary
+common sense could do without the intervention of the law.
+
+Regina was ushered into the high cool room where the Superintendent sat
+alone, and the heavy door closed behind her. He was a large man with
+close-cropped hair and a short brown beard, and he had kind brown eyes.
+Regina came forward a few steps and then stood still, looking at him,
+and waiting for him to speak. He was astonished at her beauty, and at
+once decided that she had a romantic attachment for Marcello, and
+probably knew all about him. He leaned back in his chair, and pointed to
+a seat near him.
+
+"Pray sit down," he said. "I wish to have a little talk with you before
+you go upstairs to see Marcello."
+
+"How is he?" asked Regina, eagerly. "Is he worse?"
+
+"He is much better. But sit down, if you please. You shall stay with him
+as long as you like, or as long as it is good for him. You may come
+every day if you wish it."
+
+"Every day?" cried Regina in delight. "They told me that I could only
+come on Sunday."
+
+"Yes. That is the rule, my dear child. But I can give you permission to
+come every day, and as the poor young man seems to have no friends, it
+is very fortunate for him that you can be with him. You will cheer him
+and help him to get well."
+
+"Thank you, thank you!" answered the girl fervently, as she sat down.
+
+A great lady of Rome had been to see the Superintendent about a patient
+on the previous afternoon; he did not remember that she moved with more
+dignity than this peasant girl, or with nearly as much grace. Regina
+swept the folds of her short coarse skirt forward and sideways a little,
+so that they hid her brown woollen ankles as she took her seat, and with
+the other hand she threw back the end of the kerchief from her face.
+
+"You do not mind telling me your name?" said the Superintendent in a
+questioning tone.
+
+"Spalletta Regina," answered the girl promptly, putting her family name
+first, according to Italian custom. "I am of Rocca di Papa."
+
+"Thank you. I shall remember that. And you say that you know this poor
+young man. Now, what is his name, if you please? He does not seem able
+to remember anything about himself."
+
+"I have always called him Marcello," answered Regina.
+
+"Indeed? You call him Marcello? Yes, yes. Thank you. But, you know, we
+like to write down the full name of each patient in our books. Marcello,
+and then? What else?"
+
+By this time Regina felt quite at her ease with the pleasant-spoken
+gentleman, but in a flash it occurred to her that he would think it very
+strange if she could not answer such a simple question about a young man
+she professed to know very well.
+
+"His name is Botti," she said, with no apparent hesitation, and giving
+the first name that occurred to her.
+
+"Thank you. I shall enter him in the books as 'Botti Marcello.'"
+
+"Yes. That is the name." She watched the Superintendent's pen, though
+she could not read writing very well.
+
+"Thank you," he said, as he stuck the pen into a little pot of
+small-shot before him, and then looked at his watch. "The nurse is
+probably just making him comfortable after the doctor's morning visit,
+so you had better wait five minutes, if you do not mind. Besides, it
+will help us a good deal if you will tell me something about his
+illness. I suppose you have taken care of him."
+
+"As well as I could," Regina answered.
+
+"Where? At Rocca di Papa? The air is good there."
+
+"No, it was not in the village." The girl hesitated a moment, quickly
+making up her mind how much of the truth to tell. "You see," she
+continued presently, "I was only the servant girl there, and I saw that
+the people meant to let him die, because he was a burden on them. So I
+wrapped him in a blanket and carried him downstairs in the night."
+
+"You carried him down?" The Superintendent look at her in admiration.
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Regina quietly. "I could carry you up and down
+stairs easily. Do you wish to see?"
+
+The Superintendent laughed, for she actually made a movement as if she
+were going to leave her seat and pick him up.
+
+"Thank you," he said. "I quite believe you. What a nurse you would make!
+You say that you carried him down in the night--and then? What did you
+do?"
+
+"I laid him on the tail of a cart. The carter was asleep. I walked
+behind to the gate, for I was sure that when he was found he would be
+brought here, and that he would have care, and would get well."
+
+"Was it far to walk?" inquired the Superintendent, delighted with the
+result of his efforts as a detective. "You must have been very tired!"
+
+"What is it to walk all night, if one carries no load on one's head?"
+asked Regina with some scorn. "I walk as I breathe."
+
+"You walked all night, then? That was Friday night. I do not wish to
+keep you, my dear child, but if you would tell me how long Botti has
+been ill--" he waited.
+
+"This is the forty-ninth day," Regina answered at once.
+
+"Dear me! Poor boy! That is a long time!"
+
+"I stole eggs and wine to keep him alive," the girl explained. "They
+tried to make me give him white beans and oil. They wanted him to die,
+because he was an expense to them."
+
+"Who were those people?" asked the Superintendent, putting the question
+suddenly.
+
+But Regina had gained time to prepare her story.
+
+"Why should I tell you who they are?" she asked. "They did no harm,
+after all, and they let him lie in their house. At first they hoped he
+would get well, but you know how it is in the country. When sick people
+linger on, every one wishes them to die, because they are in the way,
+and cost money. That is how it is."
+
+"But you wished him to live," said the Superintendent in an encouraging
+tone.
+
+Regina shrugged her shoulders and smiled, without the slightest
+affectation or shyness.
+
+"What could I do?" she asked. "A passion for him had taken me, the first
+time that I saw him. So I stole for him, and sat up with him, and did
+what was possible. He lay in an attic with only one blanket, and my
+heart spoke. What could I do? If he had died I should have thrown myself
+into the water below the mill."
+
+Now there had been no mill within many miles of the inn on the Frascati
+road, in which there could be water in summer. Regina was perfectly
+sincere in describing her love for Marcello, but as she was a clever
+woman she knew that it was precisely when she was speaking with the
+greatest sincerity about one thing, that she could most easily throw a
+man off the scent with regard to another. The Superintendent mentally
+noted the allusion to the mill for future use; it had created an image
+in his mind; it meant that the place where Marcello had lain ill had
+been in the hills and probably near Tivoli, where there is much water
+and mills are plentiful.
+
+"I suppose he was a poor relation of the people," said the
+Superintendent thoughtfully, after a little pause. "That is why they
+wished to get rid of him."
+
+Regina made a gesture of indifferent assent, and told something like
+the truth.
+
+"He had not been there since I had been servant to them," she answered.
+"It must have been a long time since they had seen him. We found him
+early in the morning, lying unconscious against the door of the house,
+and we took him in. That is the whole story. Why should I tell you who
+the people are? I have eaten their bread, I have left them, I wish them
+no harm. They knew their business."
+
+"Certainly, my dear, certainly. I suppose I may say that Marcello Botti
+comes from Rocca di Papa?"
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Regina readily. "You may say that, if you like."
+
+As a matter of fact she did not care what he wrote in his big book, and
+he might as well write one name as another, so far as she was concerned.
+
+"But I never saw him there," she added by an afterthought. "There are
+many people of that name in our village, but I never saw him. Perhaps
+you had better say that he came from Albano."
+
+"Why from Albano?" asked the Superintendent, surprised.
+
+"It is a bigger place," explained Regina quite naturally.
+
+"Then I might as well write 'Rome' at once?"
+
+"Yes. Why not? If you must put down the name of a town in the book, you
+had better write a big one. You will be less likely to be found out if
+you have made a mistake."
+
+"I see," said the Superintendent, smiling. "I am much obliged for your
+advice. And now, if you will come with me, you shall see Botti. He has a
+room by himself and is very well cared for."
+
+The orderlies and nurses who came and went about the hospital glanced
+with a little discreet surprise at the handsome peasant girl who
+followed the Superintendent, but she paid no attention to them and
+looked straight before her, at the back of his head; for her heart was
+beating faster than if she had run a mile uphill.
+
+Marcello put out his arms when he saw her enter, and returning life sent
+a faint colour to his emaciated cheeks.
+
+"Regina--at last!" he cried in a stronger and clearer tone than she had
+ever heard him use.
+
+A splendid blush of pleasure glowed in her own face as she ran forward
+and leaned over him, smoothing the smooth pillow unconsciously, and
+looking down into his eyes.
+
+The Superintendent observed that Marcello certainly had no difficulty in
+recalling the girl's name, whatever might have become of his own during
+his illness. What Regina answered was not audible, but she kissed
+Marcello's eyes, and then stood upright beside the bed, and laughed a
+little.
+
+"What can I do?" she asked. "It is a passion! When I see him, I see
+nothing else. And then, I saved his life. Are you glad that Regina saved
+your life?" She bent down again, and her gentle hand played with
+Marcello's waving fair hair. "What should you have done without Regina?"
+
+"I should have died," Marcello answered happily.
+
+With much more strength than she had been used to find in him, he threw
+his arms round her neck and drew her face down to his.
+
+The Superintendent spoke to the nurse in a low tone, by the door, and
+both went out, leaving the two together. He was a sensible man, and a
+kind-hearted one; and though he was no doctor, he guessed that the
+peasant girl's glorious vitality would do as much for the sick man as
+any medicine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Corbario reached Rome in the afternoon, and the footman who stood
+waiting for him on the platform was struck by the change in his
+appearance. His eyes were hollow and bright, his cheeks were sunken, his
+lips looked dry; moreover, he moved a little nervously and his foot
+slipped as he got out of the carriage, so that he nearly fell. In the
+crowd, the footman asked his valet questions. Was he ill? What had
+happened to him? Was he consuming himself with grief? No, the valet
+thought not. He had been much better in Paris and had seen some old
+friends there. What harm was there in that? A bereaved man needed
+diversion. The change had come suddenly, when he had decided to return
+to Rome, and he had eaten nothing for thirty-six hours. The valet asked
+if the youth at the hospital, of whom Corbario had told him, were really
+Marcello. The footman answered that none of the servants thought so,
+after they had all been taken to see him.
+
+Having exchanged these confidences in the half-dumb language which
+servants command, they reached the gate. The footman rushed out to call
+the carriage, the valet delivered the tickets and followed the footman
+more slowly, carrying Corbario's bag and coat, and Corbario lighted a
+cigar and followed his man at a leisurely pace, absorbed in thought.
+
+Until the moment of passing the gate he had meant to drive directly to
+the hospital, which is at some distance from the station in a direction
+almost opposite to that of the Janiculum. He could have driven there in
+ten minutes, whereas he must lose more than an hour by going home first
+and then coming back. But his courage failed him, he felt faint and
+sick, and quite unable to bear any great emotion until he had rested and
+refreshed himself a little. A long railway journey stupefies some men,
+but makes others nervous and inclined to exaggerate danger or trouble.
+During the last twelve hours Corbario had been forcing himself to decide
+that he would go to the hospital and know the worst at once, but now
+that the moment was come he could not do it.
+
+He was walking slowly through the outer hall of the station when a large
+man came up with him and greeted him quietly. It was Professor Kalmon.
+Corbario started at the sound of his voice. They had not met since
+Kalmon had been at the cottage.
+
+"I wish I had known that you were in the train," the Professor said.
+
+"So do I," answered Corbario without enthusiasm. "Not that I am very
+good company," he added, looking sideways at the other's face and
+meeting a scrutinising glance.
+
+"You look ill," Kalmon replied. "I don't wonder."
+
+"I sometimes wish I had one of those tablets of yours that send people
+to sleep for ever," said Corbario, making a great effort to speak
+steadily.
+
+But his voice shook, and a sudden terror seized him, the abject fright
+that takes hold of a man who has been accustomed to do something very
+dangerous and who suddenly finds that his nerve is gone at the very
+moment of doing it again.
+
+The cold sweat stood on Folco's forehead under his hat; he stopped where
+he was and tried to draw a long breath, but something choked him.
+Kalmon's voice seemed to reach him from a great distance. Then he felt
+the Professor's strong arm under his own, supporting him and making him
+move forward.
+
+"The weather is hot," Kalmon said, "and you are ill and tired. Come
+outside."
+
+"It is nothing," Corbario tried to say. "I was dizzy for a moment."
+
+Kalmon and the footman helped him into his low carriage, and raised the
+hood, for the afternoon sun was still very hot.
+
+"Shall I go home with you?" Kalmon asked.
+
+"No, no!" cried Corbario nervously. "You are very kind. I am quite well
+now. Good-bye. Home!" he added to the footman, as he settled himself
+back under the hood, quite out of sight.
+
+The Professor stood still in the glaring heat, looking after the
+carriage, his travelling-bag in his hand, while the crowd poured out of
+the station, making for the cabs and omnibuses that were drawn up in
+rows, or crossing the burning pavement on foot to take the tram.
+
+When the carriage was out of sight, Kalmon looked up at the hot sky and
+down at the flagstones, and then made up his mind what to do.
+
+"To the hospital of San Giovanni," he said, as he got into a cab.
+
+He seemed to be well informed, for he inquired at the door about a
+certain Marcello Botti, who was in a private room; and when he gave his
+name he was admitted without even asking permission of the
+Superintendent, and was at once led upstairs.
+
+"Are you a friend of his, sir?" asked Regina, when he had looked a long
+time at the patient, who did not recognise him in the least.
+
+"Are you?" Kalmon looked at her quietly across the bed.
+
+"You see," she answered. "If I were not, why should I be here?"
+
+"She has saved my life," said Marcello suddenly, and he caught her hand
+in his and held it fast. "As soon as I am quite well we shall be
+married."
+
+"Certainly, my dear boy, certainly," replied Kalmon, as if it were quite
+a matter of course. "You must make haste and get well as soon as
+possible."
+
+He glanced at Regina's face, and as her eyes met his she shook her head
+almost imperceptibly, and smiled. Kalmon was not quite sure what she
+meant. He made a sign to her to go with him to the window, which was at
+some distance from the bed.
+
+"It may be long before he is well," he whispered. "There must be an
+operation."
+
+She nodded, for she knew that.
+
+"And do you expect to marry him when he is recovered?"
+
+She shook her head and laughed, glancing at Marcello.
+
+"He is a gentleman," she whispered, close to Kalmon's ear. "How could he
+marry me?"
+
+"You love him," Kalmon answered.
+
+Again she nodded, and laughed too.
+
+"What would you do for him?" asked Kalmon, looking at her keenly.
+
+"Die for him!"
+
+She meant it, and he saw that she did. Her eyes shone as she spoke, and
+then the lids drooped a little and she looked at him almost fiercely. He
+turned from her and his fingers softly tapped the marble window-sill. He
+was asking himself whether he could swear to Marcello's identity, in
+case he should be called upon to give evidence. On what could he base
+his certainty? Was he himself certain, or was he merely moved by the
+strong resemblance he saw, in spite of long illness and consequent
+emaciation? Was the visiting surgeon right in believing that the little
+depression in the skull had caused a suspension of memory? Such things
+happened, no doubt, but it also happened that doctors were mistaken and
+that nothing came of such operations. Who could prove the truth? The boy
+and girl might have a secret to keep; she might have arranged to get him
+into the hospital because it was his only chance, but the rest of the
+story, such as it was, might be a pure invention; and when Marcello was
+discharged cured, they would disappear together. There was the
+coincidence of the baptismal name, but men of science know how deceptive
+coincidences can be. Besides, the girl was very intelligent. She might
+easily have heard about the real Marcello's disappearance, and she was
+clever enough to have given her lover the name in the hope that he might
+be taken for the lost boy at least long enough to ensure him a great
+deal more comfort and consideration in the hospital than he otherwise
+would have got; she was clever enough to have seen that it would be a
+mistake to say outright that he was Marcello Consalvi, if she was
+practising a deception. Kalmon did not know what to think, and he wished
+the operation could be performed before Corbario came; but that was
+impossible.
+
+Regina stood beside him, waiting for him to speak again.
+
+"Do you need money?" he asked abruptly, with a sharp look at her face.
+
+"No, thank you, sir," she answered. "He has everything here."
+
+"But for yourself?" He kept his eyes on her.
+
+"I thank you, sir, I want nothing." Her look met his almost coldly as
+she spoke.
+
+"But when he is well again, how shall you live?"
+
+"I shall work for him, if it turns out that he has no friends. We shall
+soon know, for his memory will come back after the operation. The
+doctors say so. They know."
+
+"And if he has friends after all? If he is really the man I think he
+is, what then? What will become of you?"
+
+"I do not know. I am his. He can do what he likes with me."
+
+The Professor did not remember to have met any one who took quite such
+an elementary view of life, but he could not help feeling a sort of
+sympathy for the girl's total indifference to consequences.
+
+"I shall come to see him again," he said presently, turning back towards
+the bed and approaching Marcello. "Are you quite sure that you never saw
+me before?" he asked, taking the young man's hand.
+
+"I don't remember," answered Marcello, wearily. "They all want me to
+remember," he added almost peevishly. "I would if I could, if it were
+only to please them!"
+
+Kalmon went away, for he saw that his presence tired the patient. When
+he was gone Regina sat down beside the bed and stroked Marcello's hand,
+and talked soothingly to him, promising that no one should tease him to
+remember things. By and by, as she sat, she laid her head on the pillow
+beside him, and her sweet breath fanned his face, while a strange light
+played in her half-closed eyes.
+
+"Heart of my heart," she sighed happily. "Love of my soul! Do you know
+that I am all yours, soul and body, and earrings too?" And she laughed
+low.
+
+"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," Marcello answered. "I
+love you!"
+
+She laughed again, and kissed him.
+
+"You love me better than Aurora," she said suddenly.
+
+"Aurora?"
+
+"Yes, for you have forgotten her. But you will not forget Regina now,
+not even when you are very, very old, and your golden hair is all grey.
+You will never forget Regina, now!"
+
+"Never!" echoed Marcello, like a child. "Never, never, never!"
+
+"Not even when your friends try to take me away from you, love, not even
+if they try to kill me, because they want you to marry Aurora, who is a
+rich girl, all dressed with silk and covered with jewels, like the image
+of the Madonna at Genazzano. I am sure Aurora has yellow hair and blue
+eyes!"
+
+"I don't want any one but you," answered Marcello, drawing her face
+nearer.
+
+So the time passed, and it was to them as if there were no time. Then
+the door opened again, and a very pale man in deep mourning was brought
+in by the Superintendent himself. Regina rose and drew back a little, so
+that the shadow should not fall across Marcello's face, and she fixed
+her eyes on the gentleman in black.
+
+"This is the patient," said the Superintendent in a low voice.
+
+Corbario laid his hand nervously on his companion's arm, and stood still
+for a moment, holding his breath and leaning forward a little, his gaze
+riveted on Marcello's face. Regina had never before seen a man
+transfixed with fear.
+
+He moved a step towards the bed, and then another, forcing himself to go
+on. Then Marcello turned his head and looked at him vacantly. Regina
+heard the long breath Corbario drew, and saw his body straighten, as if
+relieved from a great burden. He stood beside the bed, and put out his
+hand to take Marcello's.
+
+"Do you know me?" he asked; but even then his voice was unsteady.
+
+Instead of answering, Marcello turned away to Regina.
+
+"You promised that they should not tease me any more," he said
+querulously. "Make them go away! I want to sleep."
+
+Regina came to his side at once, and faced the two men across the bed.
+
+"What is all this for?" she asked, with a little indignation. "You know
+that he cannot remember you, even if he ever saw you before. Cannot you
+leave him in peace? Come back after the operation. Then he will remember
+you, if you really know him."
+
+"Who is this girl?" asked Corbario of the Superintendent.
+
+"She took care of him when he had the fever, and she managed to get him
+here. She has undoubtedly saved his life."
+
+At the words a beautiful blush coloured Regina's cheeks, and her eyes
+were full of triumphant light; but at the same words Corbario's still
+face darkened, and as if it had been a mask that suddenly became
+transparent, the girl saw another face through it, drawn into an
+expression of malignant and devilish hatred.
+
+[Illustration: "HE MOVED A STEP TOWARDS THE BED, AND THEN ANOTHER,
+FORCING HIMSELF TO GO ON."]
+
+The vision only lasted a moment, and the impenetrable pale features were
+there once more, showing neither hate nor fear, nor any feeling or
+emotion whatever. Corbario was himself again, and turned quietly to the
+Superintendent.
+
+"She is quite right," he said. "His memory is gone, and we shall only
+disturb him. You tell me that the doctors have found a very slight
+depression in his head, as if from a blow. Do you think--but it will
+annoy him--I had better not."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the other, as he hesitated.
+
+"It is such a strange case that I should like to see just where it is,
+out of pure curiosity."
+
+"It is here," said Regina, answering, and setting the tip of one
+straight finger against her own head to point out the place.
+
+"Oh, at the back, on the right side? I see--yes--thank you. A little on
+one side, you say?"
+
+"Here," repeated Regina, turning so that Corbario could see exactly
+where the end of her finger touched her hair.
+
+"To think that so slight an injury may have permanently affected the
+young man's memory!" Corbario appeared much impressed. "Well," he
+continued, speaking to Regina, "if we ever find out who he is, his
+relations owe you a debt of gratitude quite beyond all payment."
+
+"Do you think I want to be paid?" asked Regina, and in her indignation
+she turned away and walked to the window.
+
+But Marcello called her back.
+
+"Please, Regina--please tell them to go away!" he pleaded.
+
+Corbario nodded to the Superintendent, and they left the room.
+
+"There is certainly a strong resemblance," said Folco, when they were
+outside, "but it really cannot be my poor Marcello. I was almost too
+much affected by the thought of seeing him again to control myself when
+we first entered, but when I came near I felt nothing. It is not he, I
+am sure. I loved him as if he were my own son; I brought him up; we were
+always together. It is not possible that I should be mistaken."
+
+"No," replied the Superintendent, "I should hardly think it possible.
+Besides, from what the girl has told me, I am quite sure that he lay ill
+near Tivoli. How is it possible that he should have got there, all the
+way from the Roman shore?"
+
+"And with a fractured skull! It is absurd!" Corbario was glad to find
+that the Superintendent held such a strong opinion. "It is not Marcello.
+The nose is not the same, and the expression of the mouth is quite
+different."
+
+He said these things with conviction, but he was not deceived. He knew
+that Marcello Consalvi was living and that he had seen him, risen from
+the dead, and apparently likely to remain among the living for some
+time. The first awful moment of anxiety was past, it was true, and
+Folco was able to think more connectedly than he had since he had
+received the telegram recalling him from Paris; but there was to be
+another. The doctors said that his memory would return--what would he
+remember? It would come back, beginning, most probably, at the very
+moment in which it had been interrupted. For one instant he would fancy
+that he saw again what he had seen then. What had he seen? That was the
+question. Had he seen anything but the sand, the scrubby bushes, and the
+trees round the cottage in the distance? Had he heard anything but the
+howling of the southwest gale and the thundering of the big surf over
+the bar and up the beach? The injury was at the back of his head, but it
+was a little on one side. Had he been in the act of turning? Had he
+turned far enough to see before the blow had extinguished memory? How
+far was the sudden going out of thought really instantaneous? What
+fraction of a second intervened between full life and what was so like
+death? How long did it take a man to look round quickly? Much less than
+a second, surely! Without effort or hurry a man could turn his head all
+the way from left to right, so as to look over each shoulder
+alternately, while a second pendulum swung once. A second was a much
+longer time than most people realised. Instruments made for scientific
+photography could be made to expose the plate not more than
+one-thousandth of a second. Corbario knew that, and wondered whether a
+man's eye could receive any impression in so short a time. He shuddered
+when he thought that it might be possible.
+
+The question was to be answered sooner than he expected. The doctors had
+reported that a week must pass before Marcello would be strong enough to
+undergo the operation, but he improved so quickly after he reached the
+hospital that it seemed useless to wait. It was not considered to be a
+very dangerous operation, nor one which weakened the patient much.
+
+Regina was not allowed to be present, and when Marcello had been wheeled
+out of his room, already under ether, she went and stood before the
+window, pressing down her clasped hands upon the marble sill with all
+her might, and resting her forehead against the green slats of the
+blind. She did not move from this position while the nurse made
+Marcello's bed ready to receive him on his return. It was long to wait.
+The great clock in the square struck eleven some time after he had been
+taken away, then the quarter, then half-past.
+
+Regina felt the blood slowly sinking to her heart. She would have given
+anything to move now, but she could not stir hand or foot; she was cold,
+yet somehow she could not even shiver; that would have been a relief;
+any motion, any shock, any violent pain would have been a thousand times
+better than the marble stillness that was like a spell.
+
+Far away on the Janiculum Folco Corbario sat in his splendid library
+alone, with strained eyes, waiting for the call of the telephone that
+stood on the polished table at his elbow. He, too, was motionless, and
+longed for release as he had never thought he could long for anything. A
+still unlighted cigar was almost bitten through by his sharp front
+teeth; every faculty was tense; and yet it was as if his brain had
+stopped thinking at the point where expectation had begun. He could not
+think now, he could only suffer. If the operation were successful there
+would be more suffering, doubt still more torturing, suspense more
+agonising still.
+
+The great clock over the stables struck eleven, then the quarter, then
+half-past. The familiar chimes floated in through the open windows.
+
+A wild hope came with the sound. Marcello, weak as he was, had died
+under ether, and that was the end. Corbario trembled from head to foot.
+The clock struck the third quarter, but no other sound broke the
+stillness of the near noon-tide. Yes, Marcello must be dead.
+
+Suddenly, in the silence, came the sharp buzz of the instrument. He
+leapt in his seat as if something had struck him unawares, and then,
+instantly controlling himself, he grasped the receiver and held it to
+his ear.
+
+"Signor Corbario?" came the question.
+
+"Yes, himself."
+
+"The hospital. The operation has been successful. Do you hear?"
+
+"Yes. Go on."
+
+"The patient has come to himself. He remembers everything."
+
+"Everything!" Corbario's voice shook.
+
+"He is Marcello Consalvi. He asks for his mother, and for you."
+
+"How--in what way does he ask for me? Will my presence do him good--or
+excite him?"
+
+The moment had come, and Folco's nerve was restored with the sense of
+danger. His face grew cold and expressionless as he waited for the
+answer.
+
+"He speaks most affectionately of you. But you had better not come until
+this afternoon, and then you must not stay long. The doctors say he must
+rest quietly."
+
+"I will come at four o'clock. Thank you. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+The click of the instrument, as Folco hung the receiver on the hook, and
+it was over. He shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair, his arms
+hanging by his sides as if there were no strength in them, and his head
+falling forward till his chin rested on his chest. He remained so for a
+long time without moving.
+
+But in the room at the hospital Marcello lay in bed with his head bound
+up, his cheek on the pillow, and his eyes fixed on Regina's face, as she
+knelt beside him and fanned him slowly, for it was hot.
+
+"Sleep, heart of my heart," she said softly. "Sleep and rest!"
+
+There was a sort of peaceful wonder in his look now. Nothing vacant,
+nothing that lacked meaning or understanding. But he did not answer her,
+he only gazed into her face, and gazed and gazed till his eyelids
+drooped and he fell asleep with a smile on his lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Two years had passed since Marcello had been brought home from the
+hospital, very feeble still, but himself again and master of his memory
+and thoughts.
+
+In his recollection, however, there was a blank. He had left Aurora
+standing in the gap, where the storm swept inland from the sea; then the
+light had gone out suddenly, in something violent which he could not
+understand, and after that he could remember nothing except that he had
+wandered in lonely places, trying to find out which way he was going,
+and terrified by the certainty that he had lost all sense of direction;
+so he had wandered on by day and night, as in a dark dream, and had at
+last fallen asleep, to wake in the wretched garret of the inn on the
+Frascati road, with Regina kneeling beside him and moistening his lips
+from a glass of water.
+
+He remembered that and other things, which came back to him uncertainly,
+like the little incidents of his early childhood, like the first words
+he could remember hearing and answering, like the sensation of being on
+his mother's knee and resting his head upon her shoulder, like the smell
+of the roses and the bitter-orange blossoms in the villa, like the first
+sensation of being set upon a pony's back in San Domenico, while
+Corbario held him up in the saddle, and tried to make his little hands
+hold the bridle. The inn was quite as far away as all that, and but for
+Regina he might have forgotten it altogether.
+
+She was "Consalvi's Regina" now; half Rome called her that, and she was
+famous. Naples and Florence and Milan had heard of her; she had been
+seen at Monte Carlo, and even in Paris and London her name was not
+unknown in places where young men congregate to discuss the wicked
+world, and where young women meet to compare husbands, over the secret
+and sacrificial teapot which represents virtue, or the less sacred
+bridge-table which represents vice. Smart young dandies who had never
+exchanged a word with her spoke of her familiarly as "Regina "; smarter
+and older men, who knew her a little, talked of her as "the Spalletta,"
+not without a certain respect; their mothers branded her as "that
+creature," and their wives, who envied her, called her "Consalvi's
+Regina."
+
+When people remonstrated with Folco Corbario for allowing his stepson
+too much liberty, he shook his head gravely and answered that he did
+what he could to keep Marcello in the right way, but that the boy's
+intellect had been shaken by the terrible accident, and that he had
+undoubtedly developed vicious tendencies--probably atavistic, Folco
+added. Why did Folco allow him to have so much money? The answer was
+that he was of age and the fortune was his. But why had Folco let him
+have it before he was twenty-one, ever since he was found and brought
+home? He had not had much, was the reply; at least it had not been much
+compared with the whole income he now enjoyed one could not bring up the
+heir of a great estate like a pauper, could one? So the questioners
+desisted from questioning, but they said among themselves that, although
+Folco had been an admirable husband and stepfather while his wife had
+lived, he had not shown as much good sense after her death as they had
+been led to expect. Meanwhile, no one had any right to interfere, and
+Marcello did as he pleased.
+
+Children instinctively attach themselves to whichever of their parents
+gives them the most liberty. It is sheer nonsense to deny it. Marcello
+had loved his mother dearly, but she had always been the one to hinder
+him from doing what he wished to do, because she had been excessively
+anxious about his bodily health, and over-desirous of bringing him up to
+manhood in a state of ideal moral perfection. Folco, on the other hand,
+had been associated with all the boy's sports and pleasures, and had
+always encouraged him to amuse himself, giving as a reason that there
+was no medicine like healthy happiness for a boy of delicate
+constitution. Corbario, like Satan, knew the uses of truth, which are
+numerous and not all good. Though Marcello would not have acknowledged
+it to himself, his stepfather had been nearer to him, and more necessary
+to him, than his mother, during several years; and besides, it was less
+hard to bear the loss of which he learned when he recovered, because it
+had befallen him during that dark and uncertain period of his illness
+that now seemed as if it had lasted for years, and whereby everything
+that had been before it belonged to a remote past.
+
+Moreover, there was Regina, and there was youth, and there was liberty;
+and Corbario was at hand, always ready to encourage and satisfy his
+slightest whim, on the plea that a convalescent must be humoured at any
+cost, and that there would be time enough to consider what should be
+done with Regina after Marcello was completely recovered. After all,
+Corbario told him, the girl had saved his life, and it was only right to
+be grateful, and she should be amply rewarded for all the trouble she
+had taken. It would have been sheer cruelty to have sent her away to the
+country; and what was the cost of a quiet lodging for her in Trastevere,
+and of a few decent clothes, and of a respectable middle-aged
+woman-servant to take care of her? Nothing at all; only a few francs,
+and Marcello was so rich! Regina, also, was so very unusually
+well-behaved, and so perfectly docile, so long as she was allowed to see
+Marcello every day! She did not care for dress at all, and was quite
+contented to wear black, with just a touch of some tender colour.
+Corbario made it all very easy, and saw to everything, and he seemed to
+know just how such things were arranged. He was so fortunate as to find
+a little house that had a quiet garden with an entrance on another
+street, all in very good condition because it had lately been used by a
+famous foreign painter who preferred to live in Trastevere, away from
+the interruptions and distractions of the growing city; and by a very
+simple transaction the house became the property of the minor, Marcello
+Consalvi, to do with as he thought fit. This was much more convenient
+than paying rent to a tiresome landlord who might at any time turn his
+tenant out. Corbario thought of everything. Twice a week a gardener
+came, early in the morning, and soon the garden was really pretty; and
+the respectable woman-servant watered the flowers every evening just
+before sunset. There was a comfortable Calcutta chair for Marcello in a
+shady corner, the very first time he came there, and Regina had learned
+how to make tea for him; for the respectable woman-servant knew how to
+do all sorts of things belonging to civilised life. She was so intensely
+respectable and quiet that Marcello was almost afraid of her, until it
+occurred to him that as she took so much trouble, he ought to give her a
+present of money; and when he had done this twice, he somehow became
+aware that she was his devoted slave--middle-aged and excessively
+respectable. Folco was really a very good judge of character, Marcello
+thought, since he could at once pick out such a person from the great
+horde of the unemployed.
+
+Her name was Settimia, and it was wonderful to see how she quietly
+transformed Regina into a civilised creature, who must attract attention
+by her beauty and carriage, but who might have belonged to a
+middle-class Roman family so far as manners and dress were concerned. It
+is true that the girl possessed by nature the innate dignity of the
+Roman peasant, with such a figure and such grace as any aristocrat might
+have envied, and that she spoke with the Roman accent which almost all
+other Italians admire; but though her manners had a certain repose, they
+were often of an extremely unexpected nature, and she had an
+astonishingly simple way of calling things by their names which
+sometimes disconcerted Marcello and sometimes amused him. Settimia
+civilised her, almost without letting her know it, for she was quick to
+learn, like all naturally clever people who have had no education, and
+she was imitative, as all womanly women are when they are obliged to
+adapt themselves quickly to new surroundings. She was stimulated, too,
+by the wish to appear well before Marcello, lest he should ever be
+ashamed of her. That was all. She never had the least illusion about
+herself, nor any hope of raising herself to his social level. She was
+far too much the real peasant girl for that, the descendant of thirty or
+more generations of serfs, the offspring of men and women who had felt
+that they belonged body and soul to the feudal lord of the land on which
+they were born, and had never been disturbed by tempting dreams of
+liberty, equality, fraternity, and the violent destruction of ladies and
+gentlemen.
+
+So she lived, and so she learned many things of Settimia, and looked
+upon herself as the absolute property of the man she loved and had
+saved; and she was perfectly happy, if not perfectly good.
+
+"When I am of age," Marcello used to say, "I shall buy a beautiful
+little palace near the Tiber, and you shall live in it."
+
+"Why?" she always asked. "Are we not happy here? Is it not cool in
+summer, and sunny in winter? Have we not all we want? When you marry,
+your wife will live in the splendid villa on the Janiculum, and when you
+are tired of her, you will come and see Regina here. I hope you will
+always be tired of her. Then I shall be happy."
+
+Marcello would laugh a little, and then he would look grave and
+thoughtful, for he had not forgotten Aurora, and sometimes wondered what
+she was doing, as a young man does who is losing his hold upon himself,
+and on the things in which he has always believed. He who has never
+lived through such times and outlived them, knows neither the world nor
+himself.
+
+Marcello wondered whether Aurora would ever meet Regina face to face,
+and what would happen if he were called upon to choose between the two.
+He would choose Regina, he said to himself, when he was going down the
+steep way from the villa to the little house, eager for her touch, her
+voice, her breath, and feeling in his pocket the key that opened the
+garden gate. But when the hours had passed, and he slowly walked up the
+road under the great plane-trees, in the cool of the late evening,
+glancing at the distant lights of Rome beyond the Tiber, and dimly
+conscious that something was still unsatisfied, then he hesitated and he
+remembered his boyish love, and fancied that if he met Aurora in the way
+they would stand still, each finding the other in the other's eyes, and
+silently kiss, as they had kissed long ago. Yet, with the thought, he
+felt shame, and he blushed, alone there under the plane-trees.
+
+But Aurora had never come back to Rome, and the small apartment that
+overlooked the Forum of Trajan had other tenants. It was strange that
+the Contessa and her daughter should not have returned, and sometimes
+Marcello felt a great longing to see them. He said "them" to himself at
+such times, but he knew what he meant.
+
+So time went on. Corbario said that he himself must really go to San
+Domenico, to look after the Calabrian property, but added that it would
+be quite useless for Marcello to go with him. Marcello could stay in
+Rome and amuse himself as he pleased, or he might make a little journey
+to the north, to Switzerland, to the Tyrol--there were so many places.
+Settimia would take care of Regina, and perhaps Regina herself had
+better make a little trip for a change. Yes, Settimia had travelled a
+good deal; she even knew enough French to travel in a foreign country,
+if necessary. Corbario said that he did not know where she had learned
+French, but he was quite sure she knew it tolerably well. Regina would
+be safe under her care, in some quiet place where the air would do her
+good.
+
+Thereupon Corbario went off to the south, leaving Marcello plentifully
+supplied with money and promising to write to him. They parted
+affectionately.
+
+"If you wish to go away," Corbario said, as he was leaving, "it might be
+as well to leave your next address, so that you may get letters. But
+please don't fancy that I want to know everything you do, my dear boy.
+You are quite old enough to take care of yourself, and quite sensible
+enough, too. The only thing you had better avoid for a few years is
+marriage!"
+
+Folco laughed softly as he delivered this piece of advice, and lit a
+cigar. Then he looked critically at Marcello.
+
+"You are still very pale," he observed thoughtfully. "You have not got
+back all your strength yet. Drink plenty of champagne at luncheon and
+dinner. There is nothing like it when a man is run down. And don't sit
+up all night smoking cigarettes more than three times a week!"
+
+He laughed again as he shook hands and got into the carriage, and
+Marcello was glad when he was gone, though he was so fond of him. It was
+a bore to be told that he was not strong, because it certainly was true,
+and, besides, even Folco was sometimes a little in the way.
+
+In a week Marcello and Regina were in Venice; a month later they were in
+Paris. The invaluable Settimia knew her way about, and spoke French with
+a fluency that amazed Marcello; she even taught Regina a few of those
+phrases which are particularly useful at a dressmaker's and quite
+incomprehensible anywhere else. Marcello told her to see that Regina was
+perfectly dressed, and Settimia carried out his instructions with taste
+and wisdom. Regina had arrived in Paris with one box of modest
+dimensions; she left with four more, of a size that made the railway
+porters stagger.
+
+One day Marcello brought home a string of pearls in his pocket, and
+tried to fasten it round her throat; but she would not let him do it.
+She was angry.
+
+"Keep those things for your wife!" she said, with flashing eyes and
+standing back from him. "I will wear the clothes you buy for me, because
+you like me to be pretty and I don't want you to be ashamed of me. But I
+will not take jewels, for jewels are money, just as gold is! You can buy
+a wife with that stuff, not a woman who loves you!"
+
+Her brows were level and stern, her face grew whiter as she spoke, and
+Marcello was suddenly aware, for the first time in his life, that he did
+not understand women. That knowledge comes sooner or later to almost
+every man, but many are spared it until they are much older than he was.
+
+"I did not mean to offend you," he said, in a rather injured tone, as he
+slipped the pearls into his pocket.
+
+"Of course not," she answered. "But you do not understand. If I thought
+you did, I would go back to the inn and never see you again. I should
+die, but it would not matter, for I should still respect myself!"
+
+"I only wished to please you," said Marcello apologetically.
+
+"You wish to please me? Love me! That is what I want. Love me as much as
+you can, it will always be less than I love you, and as long as you can,
+it will always be less long than I shall love you, for that will be
+always. And when you are tired of me, tell me so, heart of my heart, and
+I will go away, for that is better than to hang like a chain on a young
+man's neck. I will go away, and God will forgive me, for to love you is
+all I know."
+
+His kisses closed her flashing eyes, and her lips parted in a faint,
+expectant smile, that was not disappointed.
+
+So time passed, and Marcello heard occasionally from Corbario, and wrote
+to him once or twice, when he needed money. Folco never alluded to
+Regina, and Marcello wondered whether he guessed that she had left Rome.
+He was never quite sure how much Folco knew of his life, and Folco was
+careful never to ask questions.
+
+But the existence Marcello was leading was not calculated to restore his
+strength, which had never been great, even before his illness. Though
+Regina did not understand the language, she grew very fond of the
+theatre, for Marcello translated and explained everything; and it was
+such a pleasure to give her pleasure, that he forgot the stifling air
+and the late hours. Moreover, he met in Paris a couple of acquaintances
+a little older than himself, who were only too glad to see something of
+the beautiful Regina, so that there were often supper-parties after the
+play, and trips in motorcars in the morning, horse races in the
+afternoon, and all manner of amusements, with a general tendency to look
+upon sleep as a disease to be avoided and the wish to rest as a foolish
+weakness. It was true that Marcello never coughed, but he was very thin,
+and his delicate face had grown perfectly colourless, though he
+followed Corbario's advice and drank a good deal of champagne, not to
+mention other less harmless things, because the quick stimulant was as
+pleasant as a nap and did not involve such a waste of time.
+
+As for Regina, the life suited her, at least for a while, and her beauty
+was refined rather than marred by a little bodily weariness. The
+splendid blush of pleasure rarely rose in her cheeks now, but the clear
+pallor of her matchless complexion was quite as lovely. The constitution
+of a healthy Roman peasant girl does not break down easily under a
+course of pleasure and amusement, and it might never have occurred to
+Regina that Marcello was almost exhausted already, if her eyes had not
+been opened to his condition by some one else.
+
+They were leaving the ThÈ‚tre FranÁais one evening, intending to go home
+on foot as the night was fine and warm. They had seen _Hernani_, and
+Regina had naturally found it hard to understand the story, even with
+Marcello's explanations; the more so as he himself had never seen the
+play before, and had come to the theatre quite sure that it must be
+easily comprehensible from the opera founded on it, which he had heard.
+Regina's arm was passed through his, and as they made their way through
+the crowd, under the not very brilliant lights in the portico, Marcello
+was doing his best to make the plot of the piece clear, and Regina was
+looking earnestly into his face, trying to follow what he said. Suddenly
+he heard an Italian voice very near to him, calling him by name, in a
+tone of surprise.
+
+"Marcello!"
+
+He started, straightened himself, turned his head, and faced the
+Contessa dell' Armi. Close beside her was Aurora, leaning forward a
+little, with an expression of cold curiosity; she had already seen
+Regina, who did not withdraw her hand from Marcello's arm.
+
+"You here?" he cried, recovering himself quickly.
+
+As he spoke, the Contessa realised the situation, and at the same moment
+Marcello met Aurora's eyes. Regina felt his arm drop by his side, as if
+he were disowning her in the presence of these two smart women who were
+friends of his. She forgave him, for she was strangely humble in some
+ways, but she hated them forthwith.
+
+The Contessa, who was a woman of the world, nodded quietly and smiled as
+if she had seen nothing, but she at once began to steer her daughter in
+a divergent direction.
+
+"You are looking very ill," she said, turning her head back as she moved
+away. "Come and see us."
+
+"Where?" asked Marcello, making half a step to follow, and looking at
+the back of Aurora's head and at the pretty hat she wore.
+
+The Contessa named a quiet hotel in the Rue Saint HonorÈ, and was gone
+in the crowd. Marcello stood quite still for a moment, staring after the
+two. Then he felt Regina's hand slipping through his arm.
+
+"Come," she said softly, and she led him away to the left.
+
+He did not speak for a long time. They turned under the arches into the
+Palais Royal, and followed the long portico in silence, out to the Rue
+Vivienne and the narrow Rue des Petits Champs. Still Marcello did not
+speak, and without a word they reached the Avenue de l'OpÈra. The light
+was very bright there, and Regina looked long at Marcello's face, and
+saw how white it was.
+
+"She said you were looking very ill," said she, in a voice that shook a
+little.
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Marcello, rousing himself. "Shall we have supper at
+Henry's or at the CafÈ de Paris? We are near both."
+
+"We will go home," Regina answered. "I do not want any supper to-night."
+
+They reached their hotel. Regina tossed her hat upon a chair in the
+sitting-room and drew Marcello to the light, holding him before her, and
+scrutinising his face with extraordinary intensity. Suddenly her hands
+dropped from his shoulders.
+
+"She was right; you are ill. Who is this lady that knows your face
+better than I?"
+
+She asked the question in a tone of bitterness and self-reproach.
+
+"The Contessa dell' Armi," Marcello answered, with a shade of
+reluctance.
+
+"And the girl?" asked Regina, in a flash of intuition.
+
+"Her daughter Aurora." He turned away, lit a cigarette, and rang the
+bell.
+
+Regina bit her lip until it hurt her, for she remembered how often he
+had pronounced that name in his delirium, many months ago. She could
+not speak for a moment. A waiter came in answer to the bell, and
+Marcello ordered something, and then sat down. Regina went to her room
+and did not return until the servant had come back and was gone again,
+leaving a tray on the table.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Marcello in surprise, as he caught sight of
+her face.
+
+She sat down at a little distance, her eyes fixed on him.
+
+"I am a very wicked woman," she said, in a dull voice.
+
+"You?" Marcello laughed and filled the glasses.
+
+"I am letting you kill yourself to amuse me," Regina said. "I am a very,
+very wicked woman. But you shall not do it any more. We will go away at
+once."
+
+"I am perfectly well," Marcello answered, holding out a glass to her;
+but she would not take it.
+
+"I do not want wine to-night," she said. "It is good when one has a
+light heart, but my heart is as heavy as a stone. What am I good for?
+Kill me. It will be better. Then you will live."
+
+"I should have died without you long ago. You saved my life."
+
+"To take it again! To let you consume yourself, so that I may see the
+world! What do I care for the world, if you are not well? Let us go away
+quickly."
+
+"Next week, if you like."
+
+"No! To-morrow!"
+
+"Without waiting to hear Melba?"
+
+"Yes--to-morrow!"
+
+"Or Sarah Bernhardt in Sardou's new play?"
+
+"To-morrow! To-morrow morning, early! What is anything compared with
+your getting well?"
+
+"And your new summer costume that Doucet has not finished? How about
+that?"
+
+Marcello laughed gaily and emptied his glass. But Regina rose and knelt
+down beside him, laying her hands on his.
+
+"We must go to-morrow," she said. "You shall say where, for you know
+what countries are near Paris, and where there are hills, and trees, and
+waterfalls, and birds that sing, where the earth smells sweet when it
+rains, and it is quiet when the sun is high. We will go there, but you
+know where it is, and how far."
+
+"I have no doubt Settimia knows," laughed Marcello. "She knows
+everything."
+
+But Regina's face was grave, and she shook her head slowly.
+
+"What is the use of laughing?" she asked. "You cannot deceive me, you
+know you cannot! I deceived myself and was blind, but my eyes are open
+now, and I can only see the truth. Do you love me, Marcello?"
+
+His eyes looked tired a moment ago, even when he laughed, but the light
+came into them now. He breathed a little faster and bent forward to kiss
+her. She could feel the rising pulse in his thin hands. But she leaned
+back as she knelt, and pressed her lips together tightly.
+
+"Not that," she said, after they had both been motionless ten seconds.
+"I don't mean that! Love is not all kisses. There is more. There are
+tears, but there is more too. There is pain, there is doubting, there is
+jealousy, and more than that! There is avarice also, for a woman who
+loves is a miser, counting her treasure when others sleep. And she would
+kill any one who robbed her, and that is murder. Yet there is more,
+there are all the mortal sins in love, and even then there is worse. For
+there is this. She will not count her own soul for him she loves, no,
+not if the saints in Paradise came down weeping and begging her to think
+of her salvation. And that is a great sin, I suppose."
+
+Marcello looked at her, thinking that she was beautiful, and he said
+nothing.
+
+"But perhaps a man cannot love like that," she added presently. "So what
+is the use of my asking you whether you love me? You love Aurora too, I
+daresay! Such as your man's love is, and of its kind, you have enough
+for two!"
+
+Marcello smiled.
+
+"I do not love Aurora now," he said.
+
+"But you have, for you talked to her in your fever, and perhaps you will
+again, or perhaps you wish to marry her. How can I tell what you think?
+She is prettier than I, for she has fair hair. I knew she had. I hate
+fair women, but they are prettier than we dark things ever are. All men
+think so. What does it matter? It was I that saved your life when you
+were dying, and the people meant you to die. I shall always have that
+satisfaction, even when you are tired of me."
+
+"Say never, then!"
+
+"Never? Yes, if I let you stay here, you will not have time to be tired
+of me, for you will grow thinner and whiter, and one day you will be
+breathing, and not breathing, and breathing a little again, and then not
+breathing at all, and you will be lying dead with your head on my arm. I
+can see how it will be, for I thought more than once that you were dead,
+just like that, when you had the fever. No! If I let that happen you
+will never be tired of me while you are alive, and when you are dead
+Aurora cannot have you. Perhaps that would be better. I would almost
+rather have it so."
+
+"Then why should we go away?" asked Marcello, smiling a little.
+
+"Because to let you die would be a great sin, much worse than losing my
+soul for you, or killing some one to keep you. Don't you see that?"
+
+"Why would it be worse?"
+
+"I do not know, but I am sure it would. Perhaps because it would be
+losing your soul instead of mine. Who knows? It is not in the catechism.
+The catechism has nothing about love, and I never learned anything else.
+But I know things that I never learned. Every woman does. How? The heart
+says them, and they are true. Where shall we go to-morrow?"
+
+"Do you really want to leave Paris?"
+
+To impress upon him that she was in earnest Regina squeezed his hands
+together in hers with such energy that she really hurt him.
+
+"What else have I been saying for half an hour?" she asked impatiently.
+"Do you think I am playing a comedy?" She laughed. "Remember that I
+have carried you up and down stairs in my arms," she added, "and I could
+do it again!"
+
+"If you insist on going away, I will walk," Marcello answered with a
+laugh.
+
+She laughed too, as she rose to her feet. He put out his hand to fill
+his glass again, but she stopped him.
+
+"No," she said, "the wine keeps you awake, and makes you think you are
+stronger than you are. You shall sleep to-night, and to-morrow we will
+go. I am so glad it is settled!"
+
+She could do what she would with him, and so it turned out that Marcello
+left Paris without going to see the Contessa and Aurora; and when he was
+fairly away he felt that it was a relief not to be able to see them,
+since it would have been his duty to do so if he had stayed another day.
+Maddalena dell' Armi had not believed that he would come, but she
+stopped at home that afternoon on the bare possibility. Aurora made up
+her mind that if he came she would shut herself up in her own room. She
+expected that he would certainly call before the evening, and was
+strangely disappointed because he did not.
+
+"Who was that lady with him last night?" she asked of her mother.
+
+"I do not know that--lady," answered the Contessa, with a very slight
+hesitation before pronouncing the last word.
+
+But they had both heard of Regina already.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The Contessa wrote to Corbario two days later, addressing her letter to
+Rome, as she did not know where he was. It was not like her to meddle in
+the affairs of other people, or to give advice, but this was a special
+case, and she felt that something must be done to save Marcello; for she
+was a woman of the world, with much experience and few illusions, and
+she understood at a glance what was happening to her dead friend's son.
+She wrote to Folco, telling him of the accidental meeting in the portico
+of the ThÈ‚tre FranÁais, describing Marcello's looks, and saying pretty
+clearly what she thought of the extremely handsome young woman who was
+with him.
+
+Now Paris is a big city, and it chanced that Corbario himself was there
+at that very time. Possibly he had kept out of Marcello's way for some
+reason of his own, but he had really not known that the Contessa was
+there. Her letter was forwarded from Rome and reached him four days
+after it was written. He read it carefully, tore it into several dozen
+little bits, looked at his watch, and went at once to the quiet hotel in
+the Rue Saint HonorÈ. The Contessa was alone, Aurora having gone out
+with her mother's maid.
+
+Maddalena was glad to see him, not because she liked him, for she did
+not, but because it would be so much easier to talk of what was on her
+mind than to write about it.
+
+"I suppose you are surprised to see me," said Folco, after the first
+conventional greeting.
+
+"No, for one may meet any one in Paris, at any time of the year. When I
+wrote, I thought Marcello must be alone here--I mean, without you," she
+added.
+
+"I did not know he had been here, until I heard that he was gone. He
+left three or four days ago. I fancy that when you wrote your letter he
+was already gone."
+
+"Do you let him wander about Europe as he pleases?" asked the Contessa.
+
+"He is old enough to take care of himself," answered Corbario. "There is
+nothing worse for young men than running after them and prying into
+their affairs. I say, give a young fellow his independence as soon as
+possible. If he has been brought up in a manly way, with a feeling of
+self-respect, it can only do him good to travel alone. That is the
+English way, you know, and always succeeds."
+
+"Not always, and besides, we are not English. It is not 'succeeding,' as
+you call it, in Marcello's case. He will not live long, if you let him
+lead such a life."
+
+"Oh, he is stronger than he looks! He is no more threatened with
+consumption than I am, and a boy who can live through what happened to
+him two years ago can live through anything."
+
+Not a muscle of his face quivered as he looked quietly into the
+Contessa's eyes. He was quite sure that she did not suspect him of
+having been in any way concerned in Marcello's temporary disappearance.
+
+"Suppose him to be as strong as the strongest," Maddalena answered. "Put
+aside the question of his health. There is something else that seems to
+me quite as important."
+
+"The moral side?" Corbario smiled gravely. "My dear lady, you and I know
+the world, don't we? We do not expect young men to be saints!"
+
+Maddalena, who had not always been a saint, returned his look coldly.
+
+"Let us leave the saints out of the discussion," she said, "unless we
+speak of Marcello's mother. She was one, if any one ever was. I believe
+you loved her, and I know that I did, and I do still, for she is very
+real to me, even now. Don't you owe something to her memory? Don't you
+know how she would have felt if she could have met her son the other
+night, as I met him, looking as he looked? Don't you know that it would
+have hurt her as nothing else could? Think a moment!"
+
+She paused, waiting for his answer and watching his impenetrable face,
+that did not change even when he laughed, that could not change, she
+thought; but she had not seen him by Marcello's bedside at the hospital,
+when the mask had been gone for a few seconds. It was there now, in all
+its calm stillness.
+
+"You may be right," he answered, almost meekly, after a little pause.
+"I had not looked at it in that light. You see, I am not a very
+sensitive man, and I was brought up rather roughly. My dear wife went to
+the other extreme, of course. No one could really be what she wished to
+make Marcello. He felt that himself, though I honestly did all I could
+to make him act according to his mother's wishes. But now that she is
+gone--" he broke off, and was silent a moment. "You may be right," he
+repeated, shaking his head thoughtfully. "You are a very good woman, and
+you ought to know."
+
+She leaned back in her chair, and looked at him in silence, wondering
+whether she was not perhaps doing him a great injustice; yet his voice
+rang false to her ear, and the old conviction that he had never loved
+his wife came back with increased force and with the certainty that he
+had been playing a part for years without once breaking down.
+
+"I will join Marcello, and see what I can do," he said.
+
+"Do you know where he is?"
+
+"Oh, yes! He keeps me informed of his movements; he is very good about
+writing. You know how fond of each other we are, too, and I am sure he
+will be glad to see me. He is back in Italy by this time. He was going
+to Siena. We were to have met in Rome in about a month, to go down to
+San Domenico together, but I will join him at once."
+
+"If you find that--that young person with him, what shall you do?"
+
+"Send her about her business, of course," answered Folco promptly.
+
+"Suppose that she will not go, what then?"
+
+"It can only be a question of money, my dear lady. Leave that to me.
+Marcello is not the first young fellow who has been in a scrape!"
+
+Still Maddalena did not trust him, and she merely nodded with an air of
+doubt.
+
+"Shall I not see Aurora?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"She is out," answered the Contessa. "I will tell her that you asked
+after her."
+
+"Is she as beautiful as ever?" inquired Folco.
+
+"She is a very pretty girl."
+
+"She is beautiful," Folco said, with conviction. "I have never seen such
+a beautiful girl as she was, even when she was not quite grown up. No
+one ever had such hair and such eyes, and such a complexion!"
+
+"Dear me!" exclaimed Maddalena with a little surprise. "I had no idea
+that you thought her so good-looking!"
+
+"I always did. As for Marcello, we used to think he would never have
+eyes for any one else."
+
+"Young people who have known each other well as children rarely fall in
+love when they grow up," answered Maddalena.
+
+"So much the better," Folco said. "Aurora and Marcello are not at all
+suited to one another."
+
+"That is true," answered the Contessa.
+
+"And besides, he is much too young for her. They are nearly of the same
+age."
+
+"I never thought of their marrying," replied Maddalena, with a little
+emphasis, "and I should certainly not choose this time to think of it!"
+
+"I fancy few men can look at your daughter without wishing that they
+might marry her, my dear lady," said Corbario, rising to go away. "Pray
+present my homage to her, and tell her how very sorry I am not to have
+seen her."
+
+He smiled as if he were only half in earnest, and he took his leave. He
+was scarcely gone when Aurora entered the sitting-room by another door.
+
+"Was it Marcello?" she asked quietly enough, though her voice sounded a
+little dull.
+
+"No, dear," answered her mother. "It was Folco Corbario. I wrote to him
+some days ago and he came to see me. Marcello has left Paris. I did not
+know you had come home."
+
+Aurora sat down rather wearily, pulled out her hatpins, and laid her hat
+on her knee. Then she slowly turned it round and round, examining every
+inch of it with profound attention, as women do. They see things in hats
+which we do not.
+
+"Mamma--" Aurora got no further, and went on turning the hat round.
+
+"Yes? What were you going to say?"
+
+"Nothing--I have forgotten." The hat revolved steadily. "Are we going to
+stay here long?"
+
+"No. Paris is too expensive. When we have got the few things we want we
+will go back to Italy--next week, I should think."
+
+"I wish we were rich," observed Aurora.
+
+"I never heard you say that before," answered her mother. "But after
+all, wishing does no harm, and I am silly enough to wish we were rich
+too."
+
+"If I married Marcello, I should be very rich," said Aurora, ceasing to
+turn the hat, but still contemplating it critically.
+
+Maddalena looked at her daughter in some surprise. The girl's face was
+quite grave.
+
+"You had better think of getting rich in some other way, my dear," said
+the Contessa presently, with an asperity that did not escape Aurora, but
+produced no impression on her.
+
+"I was only supposing," she said. "But if it comes to that, it would be
+much better for him to marry me than that good-looking peasant girl he
+has picked up."
+
+The Contessa sat up straight and stared at her in astonishment. There
+was a coolness in the speech that positively horrified her.
+
+"My dear child!" she cried. "What in the world are you talking about?"
+
+"Regina," answered Aurora, looking up, and throwing the hat upon the
+table. "I am talking about Marcello's Regina. Did you suppose I had
+never heard of her, and that I did not guess that it was she, the other
+night? I had a good look at her. I hate her, but she is handsome. You
+cannot deny that."
+
+"I do not deny it, I'm sure!" The Contessa hardly knew what to say.
+
+"Very well. Would it not be much better for Marcello if he married me
+than if he let Regina marry him, as she will!"
+
+"I--possibly--you put it so strangely! But I am sure Marcello will never
+think of marrying her."
+
+"Then why does he go about with her, and what is it all for?" Aurora
+gazed innocently at her mother, waiting for an answer which did not
+come. "Besides," she added, "the girl will marry him, of course."
+
+"Perhaps. I daresay you are right, and after all, she may be in love
+with him. Why should you care, child?"
+
+"Because he used to be my best friend," Aurora answered demurely. "Is it
+wrong to take an interest in one's friends? And I still think of him as
+my friend, though I have never had a chance to speak to him since that
+day by the Roman shore, when he went off in a rage because I laughed at
+him. I wonder whether he has forgotten that! They say he lost his memory
+during his illness."
+
+"What a strange girl you are! You have hardly ever spoken of him in all
+this time, and now"--the Contessa laughed as if she thought the idea
+absurd--"and now you talk of marrying him!"
+
+"I have seen Regina," Aurora replied, as if that explained everything.
+
+The Contessa returned no answer, and she was rather unusually silent and
+preoccupied during the rest of that day. She was reflecting that if
+Aurora had not chanced to meet Marcello just when Regina was with him
+the girl might never have thought of him again, except with a
+half-amused recollection of the little romantic tenderness she had once
+felt for the friend and playfellow of her childhood. Maddalena was a
+wise woman now, and did not underestimate the influence of little things
+when great ones were not far off. That is a very important part of
+worldly wisdom, which is the science of estimating chances in a game of
+which love, hate, marriage, fortune, and social life and death may be
+the stakes.
+
+Her impulse was to prevent Aurora from seeing Marcello for a long time,
+for the thought of a possible marriage had never attracted her, and
+since the appearance of Regina on the scene every instinct of her nature
+was against it. Her pride revolted at the idea that her daughter might
+be the rival of a peasant girl, quite as much as at the possibility of
+its being said that she had captured her old friend's son for the sake
+of his money. But she remembered her own younger years and she judged
+Aurora by herself. There had been more in that little romantic
+tenderness for Marcello than any one had guessed, much of it had
+remained, it had perhaps grown instead of dying out, and the sight of
+Regina had awakened it to something much stronger than a girlish fancy.
+
+Maddalena remembered little incidents now, of which the importance had
+escaped her the more easily because the loss of her dearest friend had
+made her dull and listless at the time. Aurora had scarcely asked about
+Marcello during the weeks that followed his disappearance, but she had
+often looked pale and almost ill just then. She had been better after
+the news had come that he had been found, though she had barely said
+that she was glad to hear of him. Then she had grown more restless than
+she used to be, and there had sometimes been a dash of hardness in the
+things she said; and her mother was now quite sure that Aurora had
+intentionally avoided all mention of Marcello. To-day, she had suddenly
+made that rather startling remark about marrying him. All this proved
+clearly enough that he had been continually in her thoughts. When very
+young people take unusual pains to ignore a certain subject, and then
+unexpectedly blurt out some very rough observation about it, the chances
+are that they have been thinking of nothing else for a long time.
+
+A good deal had happened on that afternoon, for what Corbario had said
+about Aurora, half playfully and half in earnest, had left Maddalena
+under the impression that he had been trying a little experiment on his
+own account, to feel his way. Aurora had more than once said in the
+preceding years that she did not like his eyes and a certain way he had
+of looking at her. He had admired her, even then, and now that he was a
+widower it was not at all unlikely that he should think of marrying her.
+He was not much more than thirty years old, and he had a singularly
+youthful face. There was no objection on the score of his age. He was
+rich, at least for his life-time. He had always been called a model
+husband while his wife had been alive, and was said to have behaved
+with propriety since. Maddalena tried to look at the matter coolly and
+dispassionately, as if she did not instinctively dislike him. Why should
+he not wish to marry Aurora? No one of the Contessa's acquaintances
+would be at all surprised if he did, and most people would say that it
+was a very good match, and that Aurora was fortunate to get such a
+husband.
+
+This was precisely what Folco thought; and as it was his nature to think
+slowly and act quickly, it is not impossible that he may have revolved
+the plan in his mind for a year or two while Aurora was growing up. The
+final decision had perhaps been reached on that evening down by the
+Roman shore, when Professor Kalmon had held up to his eyes the sure
+means of taking the first step towards its accomplishment; and it had
+been before him late on the same night when he had stood still in the
+verandah holding the precious and terrible little tablet in the hollow
+of his hand; and the next morning when he had suddenly seen Marcello
+close before him, unconscious of his presence and defenceless. He had
+run a great risk in vain that day, since Marcello was still alive, a
+risk more awful than he cared to remember now; but it had been safely
+passed, and he must never do anything so dangerous again. There was a
+far safer and surer way of gaining his end than clumsy murder, and from
+what the Contessa had told him of the impression she had received the
+accomplishment was not far off. She had said that Marcello had looked
+half dead; his delicate constitution could not bear such a life much
+longer, and he would soon be dead in earnest.
+
+Marcello did not write as regularly as Folco pretended, but the latter
+had trustworthy and regular news of him from some one else. Twice a
+week, wherever he might be, a square envelope came by the post addressed
+in a rather cramped feminine hand, the almost unmistakable writing of a
+woman who had seen better days and had been put to many shifts in order
+to keep up some sort of outward respectability. The information conveyed
+was tolerably well expressed, in grammatical Italian; the only names
+contained in the letters were those of towns, and hotels, and the like,
+and Marcello was invariably spoken of as "our dear patient," and Regina
+as "that admirable woman" or "that ideal companion." The writer usually
+said that the dear patient seemed less strong than a month ago, or a
+week ago, and expressed a fear that he was slowly losing ground.
+Sometimes he was better, and the news was accompanied by a conventional
+word or two of satisfaction. Again, there would be a detailed account of
+his doings, showing that he had slept uncommonly little and had no
+appetite, and mentioning with a show of regret the sad fact that he
+lived principally on cigarettes, black coffee, and dry champagne. The
+ideal companion seemed to be always perfectly well, showed no tendency
+to be extravagant, and gave proof of the most constant devotion. The
+writer always concluded by promising that Corbario's instructions with
+regard to the dear patient should be faithfully carried out in future as
+they had been in the past.
+
+This was very reassuring, and Folco often congratulated himself on the
+wisdom he had shown in the selection of Settimia as a maid for Regina.
+The woman not only did what was required of her with the utmost
+exactitude; she took an evident pleasure in her work, and looked forward
+to the fatal result at no very distant time with all the satisfaction
+which Corbario could desire. So far everything had gone smoothly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was high summer again, and the Roman shore was feverish. In the hot
+afternoon Ercole had tramped along the shore with his dog at his heels
+as far as Torre San Lorenzo to have a chat with the watchman. They sat
+in the shade of the tower, smoking little red clay pipes with long
+wooden stems. The chickens walked about slowly, evidently oppressed by
+the heat and by a general lack of interest in life, since not a single
+grain of maize from the morning feed remained to be discovered on the
+disused brick threshing-floor or in the sand that surrounded it. From
+some dark recess came the occasional grunt of the pig, attending in
+solitude to the business of getting fat before October. Now and then the
+watchman's wife moved a chair in the lower room of the tower, or made a
+little clatter with some kitchen utensils, and the sounds came out to
+the solitude sharply and distinctly.
+
+There had been a flat calm for several days. Forty yards below the tower
+the sea lay along the sandy beach like a strip of glistening white
+glass, beyond which was a broader band of greenish blue that did not
+glitter; and beyond that, the oily water stretched out to westward in an
+unending expanse of neutral tints, arabesqued with current streaks and
+struck right across by the dazzling dirty-white blaze of the August sun.
+
+Swarms of flies chased each other where the two men sat, settled on
+their backs and dusty black hats, tried to settle on their faces and
+were brushed away, crawled on the ground, on the walls, even on the
+chickens, and on the rough coat of Nino, the dog. He followed the
+motions of those he saw before him with one bloodshot eye; the other
+seemed to be fast asleep.
+
+From time to time the men exchanged a few words. Ercole had apparently
+come over to enjoy the novelty of seeing a human being, and Padre
+Francesco, the watchman, was glad to talk with some one besides his
+wife. He enjoyed the title of "Padre," because he had once been master
+of a small martingane that traded between Civit‡ Vecchia and the south.
+In still earlier days he had been in deep water and had been boatswain
+of a square-rigger, yet there was nothing about his appearance now to
+show that he had been a sailor man. It was ten years since he had left
+the sea, and he had turned into a peasant.
+
+Ercole had told Padre Francesco that the second hay crop had been half
+spoilt by thunderstorms; also that the price of wine in Ardea had gone
+up, while the price of polenta had remained the same; also that a wild
+boar had broken out of the king's preserves near Nettuno and was
+supposed to be wandering in the brush not far away; also that if Ercole
+and Nino found him they would kill him, and that there would be a feast.
+Padre Francesco observed that his wife understood the cooking of wild
+boar with vinegar, sugar, pine-nuts, and sweet herbs, and that he
+himself knew how to salt the hams; he had also salted the flesh of
+porpoises at sea, more than once, and had eaten pickled dog-fish, which
+he considered to be nothing but young sharks, in the West Indies. This
+did not interest Ercole much, as he had heard it before, and he smoked
+in silence for a while. So did Padre Francesco; and both brushed away
+the flies. Nino rolled one bloodshot eye at his master, every time the
+latter moved; and it grew excessively hot, and the air smelt of
+chickens, rotten seaweed, and the pig. Yet both men were enjoying
+themselves after a fashion, though Ercole distrusted Padre Francesco, as
+he distrusted all human beings, and Padre Francesco looked upon Ercole
+as a person having no knowledge of the world, because he had never eaten
+pickled dog-fish in the West Indies.
+
+After a time, Padre Francesco remembered a piece of news which he had
+not yet told, cleared his throat, stirred the contents of his pipe with
+the point of a dangerous-looking knife, and looked at his companion for
+a full minute.
+
+"Speak," said Ercole, who understood these premonitory signs.
+
+"There has been one here who asked after you," Padre Francesco began.
+
+"What species of Christian?" inquired Ercole.
+
+"He was at the cottage when the blessed soul of the Signora departed, or
+just before that. It is a big gentleman with a brown beard and bright
+eyes. He looks for things in the sand and in the bushes and amongst the
+seaweed. Who knows what he looks for? Perhaps he looks for gold."
+
+"Or the souls of his dead," suggested Ercole with fine irony. "But I
+know this Signore who was at the cottage, with the brown beard and the
+bright eyes. He sometimes came to shoot quail. He also killed some. He
+is a professor of wisdom."
+
+"He asked if I knew you, but of course I said I did not. Why should he
+ask? How could I know what he wanted of you. I said that I had never
+heard of you."
+
+"You did well. Those who have business with me know where to find me.
+What else did he say?"
+
+"He asked if I had seen the young gentleman this year, and he told me
+that he had not seen him since the night before he was lost. So then I
+knew that he was a gentleman of some kind, since he had been at the
+cottage. I also asked if your masters were never coming to the Roman
+shore again."
+
+"What did he answer?" inquired Ercole, with an air of utter
+indifference.
+
+"He said an evil thing. He said that your young gentleman had gone off
+to foreign countries with a pretty peasant from Frascati, whose name was
+Regina; that it was she who had nursed him when he was ill, in some inn,
+and that out of gratitude, and because she was very pretty, he had
+given her much money, and silk dresses and earrings. That is what he
+said."
+
+Ercole gazed down at Nino's bloodshot eye, which was turned to him just
+then.
+
+"A girl called Regina," Ercole grumbled, in a tone even harsher than
+usual.
+
+"That is what he said. Why should he tell me one thing for another? He
+said that your young gentleman would perhaps come back when he was tired
+of Regina. And he laughed. That is all."
+
+A low growl from Nino interrupted the conversation. It was very low and
+long and then rose quickly and ended in a short bark, as the dog
+gathered his powerful hindquarters suddenly and raised himself,
+bristling all over and thrusting his sinewy forepaws out before him.
+Then the growl began again, but Ercole touched him lightly with the toe
+of his hob-nailed boot, and the dog was instantly silent. Both men
+looked about, but no one was to be seen.
+
+"There is a boat on the beach," said Padre Francesco, who had caught the
+faint soft sound of the keel running upon the sand.
+
+They both rose, Ercole picking up his gun as he did so; Nino, seeing
+that his master was on the alert, slunk to his heels without growling
+any more. A moment later a man's voice was heard calling on the other
+side of the tower.
+
+"Hi! Watchman of the tower! A favour! Watchman of the tower! Hi!"
+
+Padre Francesco turned the corner, followed by Ercole. A sailor in
+scanty ragged clothes and the remains of a rush hat was standing
+barefoot in the burning sand, with an earthen jug in his hand. A
+battered boat, from which all traces of paint had long since
+disappeared, was lying with her nose buried in the sand, not moving in
+the oily water. Another man was in her, very much like the first in
+looks.
+
+On seeing Nino at Ercole's heels, the man who was ashore drew back with
+an exclamation, as if he were going to run away, but Ercole spoke in a
+reassuring tone.
+
+"Be not afraid," he said. "This dog does not eat Christians. He gets
+enough to eat at home. He is not a dog, he is a lamb, and most
+affectionate."
+
+"It is an evil beast," observed the sailor, looking at Nino. "I am
+afraid."
+
+"What do you desire?" inquired Padre Francesco politely. "Is it water
+that you wish?"
+
+"As a favour," answered the man, seeing that the dog did not fly at him.
+"A little water to drink. We have been pulling all day; it is hot, and
+we have drunk what we had."
+
+"Come with me," said Padre Francesco. "Where is your vessel?"
+
+"At Fiumicino. The master sent us on an errand to Porto d'Anzio last
+night and we are going back."
+
+"It is a long pull," observed the watchman. "Tell the other man to come
+ashore and rest in the shade. I also have been to sea. The water is not
+very good here, but what there is you shall have."
+
+"Thank you," said the man gratefully, and giving Nino a very wide berth
+as he followed Padre Francesco. "We could have got some water at the
+Incastro creek, but it would have been the same as drinking the fever."
+
+"May the Madonna never will that you drink of it," said Padre Francesco,
+as they reached the shady side of the tower. "I see that you know the
+Roman shore."
+
+"It is our business," replied the man, taking off his ragged rush hat,
+and rubbing his still more ragged blue cotton sleeve over his wet
+forehead. "We are people of the sea, bringing wine and lemons to Civit‡
+Vecchia and taking charcoal back. Evil befall this calm weather."
+
+"And when it blows from the west-southwest we say, evil befall this time
+of storm," said Padre Francesco, nodding wisely. "Be seated in the
+shade. I will fetch water."
+
+"And also let us drink here, so that we may take the jug away full."
+
+"You shall also drink here." The old watchman went into the tower.
+
+"The last time I passed this way, it was in a west-southwest gale," said
+the man, addressing Ercole, who had sat down in his old place with his
+dog at his feet.
+
+"It is an evil shore," Ercole answered. "Many vessels have been lost
+here."
+
+"We were saved by a miracle that time," said the sailor, who seemed
+inclined to talk. "I was with a brigantine with wine for Marseilles.
+That vessel was like a rock in the sea, she would not move with less
+than seven points of the wind in fair weather. We afterwards went to Rio
+Janeiro, and it was two years before we got back."
+
+"So it was two years ago that you passed?" inquired Ercole.
+
+"Two years ago May or the beginning of June. She was so low in the water
+that she would have swamped if we had tried to carry on sail, and with
+the sail she could carry she could make no headway; so there we were,
+hove to under lower topsail and balance-reefed mainsail and storm-jib,
+with a lee shore less than a mile away. We recommended ourselves to the
+saints and the souls of purgatory, and our captain said to us, 'My fine
+sons, unless the wind shifts in half an hour we must run her ashore and
+save the cargo!' That is what he said. But I said that I knew this Roman
+shore from a boy, and that sometimes there was no bar at the mouth of
+the Incastro, so that a vessel might just slip into the pool where the
+reeds grow. You certainly know the place."
+
+"I know it well," said Ercole.
+
+"Yes. So I pointed out the spot to our captain, standing beside him, and
+he took his glasses and looked to see whether the sea was breaking on
+the bar."
+
+"The bar has not been open since I came here," said Padre Francesco,
+returning with water. "And that is ten years."
+
+The men drank eagerly, one after the other, and there was silence. The
+one who had been speaking wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and
+drew a long breath of satisfaction.
+
+"No, I daresay not," he said at last. "The captain looked all along the
+shore for a better place. Then he saw a bad thing with his glasses; for
+they were fine glasses, and though he was old, he had good sight. And I
+stood beside him, and he told me what he saw while he was looking."
+
+"What did he see?" asked Ercole, watching the man.
+
+"What did he see? I tell you it was a bad sight! Health to us all, as
+many as are here, he saw one man kill another and drag his body into
+some bushes."
+
+"Apoplexy!" observed Ercole, glancing at Padre Francesco. "Are there
+brigands here?"
+
+"I tell you what the captain said. 'There are two men,' said he, 'and
+they are like gentlemen by their dress.' 'They shoot quail,' said I,
+knowing the shore. 'They have no guns,' said he. Then he cried out,
+keeping his glasses to his eyes and steadying himself by the weather
+vang. 'God be blessed,' he cried--for he never said an evil word, that
+captain,--'one of those gentlemen has struck the other on the back of
+the head and killed him! And now he drags his body away towards the
+bushes.' And he saw nothing more, but he showed me the place, where
+there is a gap in the high bank. Afterwards he said he thought he had
+seen a woman too, and that it must have been an affair of jealousy."
+
+Ercole and Padre Francesco looked at each other in silence for a moment.
+
+"Did you hear of no murder at that time?" asked the sailor, taking up
+the earthen jar full of water.
+
+"We heard nothing," said Ercole promptly.
+
+"Nothing," echoed Padre Francesco. "The captain was dreaming. He saw
+trees moving in the wind."
+
+"Don Antonino had good eyes," answered the sailor incredulously.
+
+"What was the name of your vessel?" asked Padre Francesco.
+
+"The _Papa_" replied the sailor without a smile. "She was called
+_Papa_."
+
+Ercole stared at him a moment and then laughed; and he laughed so rarely
+that it distorted the yellow parchment of his face as if it must crack
+it. The sound of his laughter was something like the creaking of a cart
+imitated by a ventriloquist. But Padre Francesco knit his bushy brows,
+for he thought the sailor was making game of him, who had been boatswain
+on a square-rigger.
+
+"I went to sea for thirty years," he said, "but I never heard of a
+vessel called the _Papa_. You have said a silly thing. I have given you
+water to drink, and filled your jar. It is not courtesy to jest at men
+older than you."
+
+"Excuse me," answered the man politely. "May it never be that I should
+jest at such a respectable man as you seem to be; and, moreover, you
+have filled the jar with your own hands. The brigantine was called as I
+say. And if you wish to know why, I will tell you. She was built by two
+rich brothers of Torre Annunziata, who wished much good to their papa
+when he was old and no longer went to sea. Therefore, to honour him,
+they called the vessel the _Papa_. This is the truth."
+
+Lest this should seem extravagantly unlikely to the readers of this
+tale, I shall interrupt the conversation to say that I knew the _Papa_
+well, that "she" was built and christened as the sailor said, and that
+her name still stood on the register of Italian shipping a few years
+ago. She was not a brigantine, however, but a larger vessel, and she was
+bark-rigged; and she was ultimately lost in port, during a hurricane.
+
+"We have learned something to-day," observed Ercole, when the man had
+finished speaking.
+
+"It is true," the man said. "And the name of the captain was Don
+Antonino Maresca. He was of Vico."
+
+"Where is Vico?" inquired Ercole, idly scratching his dog's back with
+the stock of his gun.
+
+"Near Castellamare," answered Padre Francesco, willing to show his
+knowledge.
+
+"One sees that you are a man of the sea," said the sailor, meaning to
+please him. "And so we thank you, and we go."
+
+Ercole and the old watchman saw the two ragged sailors put off in the
+battered boat and pull away over the bar; then they went back to the
+shade of the tower and sat down again and refilled their pipes, and were
+silent for a long time. Padre Francesco's old wife, who had not shown
+herself yet, came and stood in the doorway, nodded to Ercole, fanned
+herself with her apron, counted the chickens in sight, and observed that
+the weather was hot. Then she went in again.
+
+"It is easy to remember the name of that ship," said Ercole at last,
+without glancing at his companion.
+
+"And the master was Antonino Maresca of Vico," said Padre Francesco.
+
+"But the truth is that it is none of our business," said Ercole.
+
+"The captain was mistaken," said Padre Francesco.
+
+"He saw trees moving in the wind," said Ercole.
+
+Then they looked at each other and nodded.
+
+"Perhaps the Professor was mistaken about the girl, and the silk dress
+and the gold earrings," suggested Padre Francesco, turning his eyes
+away.
+
+"He was certainly mistaken," asserted Ercole, watching him closely. "And
+moreover it is none of our business."
+
+"None whatever."
+
+They talked of other things, making remarks at longer and longer
+intervals, till the sun sank near the oily sea, and Ercole took his
+departure, much wiser in regard to Marcello's disappearance than when he
+had come. He followed the long beach for an hour till he came to the gap
+in the bank. There he stopped, and proceeded to examine the place
+carefully, going well inside it, and then turning to ascertain exactly
+where Marcello must have been when he was struck, since at that moment
+he must have been distinctly visible from the brigantine. The gap was so
+narrow that it was not hard to fix upon the spot where the deed had been
+done, especially as the captain had seen Marcello dragged quickly away
+towards the bushes. Every word of the sailor's story was stamped with
+truth; and so it came about that when Corbario believed himself at last
+quite safe, a man in his own pay suddenly discovered the whole truth
+about the attempted crime, even to the name of the principal witness.
+
+It was only in the quail season, when there were poachers about, during
+April, May, and early June, that Ercole lived in his straw hut, a little
+way from the cottage. He spent the rest of the year in a small stone
+house that stood on a knoll in sight of Ardea, high enough to be
+tolerably safe from the deadly Campagna fever. Every other day an old
+woman from the village brought him a copper conca full of water; once a
+month she came and washed for him. When he needed supplies he went to
+Ardea for them himself. His dwelling was of elementary simplicity,
+consisting of two rooms, one above the other, with grated windows and
+heavy shutters. In the lower one he cooked and ate, in the upper chamber
+he slept and kept his few belongings, which included a plentiful supply
+of ammunition, his Sunday clothes, his linen, and his papers. The latter
+consisted of a copy of his certificate of birth, his old military
+pass-book, showing that he had served his time in an infantry regiment,
+had been called in for six weeks' drill in the reserve, had been a
+number of years in the second reserve, and had finally been discharged
+from all military service. This booklet serves an Italian throughout
+life as a certificate of identity, and is necessary in order to obtain a
+passport to leave the country. Ercole kept his, with two or three other
+yellow papers, tied up in an old red cotton handkerchief in the bottom
+of the chest that held his clothes.
+
+When he got home after his visit to Padre Francesco he took the package
+out, untied the handkerchief, and looked through all the papers, one by
+one, sitting by the grated window in the twilight. He could read, and
+had once been able to write more or less intelligibly, and he knew by
+heart the contents of the paper he wanted, though he had not unfolded it
+for years. He now read it carefully, and held it some time open in his
+hand before he put it back with the rest. He held it so long, while he
+looked out of his grated window, that at last he could see the little
+lights twinkling here and there in the windows of Ardea, and it was
+almost dark in the room. Nino grew restless, and laid his grim head on
+Ercole's knee, and his bloodshot eyes began to glow in the dark like
+coals. Then Ercole moved at last.
+
+"Ugly animal, do you wish me well?" he asked, rubbing the dog's head
+with his knotty hand. "If you are good, you shall go on a journey with
+me."
+
+Nino's body moved in a way which showed that he would have wagged his
+tail if he had possessed one, and he uttered a strange gurgling growl of
+satisfaction.
+
+The next morning, the old woman came before sunrise with water.
+
+"You need not bring any more, till I let you know," Ercole said. "I am
+going away on business for a few days, and I shall shut up the house."
+
+"For anything that is in it, you might leave the door open," grumbled
+the hag, who was of a sour temper. "Give me my pay before you go."
+
+"You fear that I am going to America," retorted Ercole, producing an old
+sheepskin purse from the inside of his waistcoat. "Here is your money.
+Four trips, four pennies. Count them and go in peace."
+
+He gave her the coppers, and she carefully tied them up in a corner of
+her ragged kerchief.
+
+"And the bread?" she asked anxiously.
+
+Ercole went to the blackened cupboard, took out the remains of a stale
+loaf, drew a big clasp-knife from his pocket, and cut off a moderate
+slice.
+
+"Eat," he said, as he gave it to her.
+
+She went away grumbling, and Nino growled after her, standing on the
+door-step. When she was a hundred yards from the house, he lay down with
+his jaw on his forepaws and continued to watch her till she was out of
+sight; then he gave a snort of satisfaction and immediately went to
+sleep.
+
+Ercole left his home after sunset that evening. He locked both the upper
+and lower doors and immediately dropped the huge key into a crevice in
+the stone steps, from which one might have supposed that it would not
+be easy to recover it; but he doubtless knew what he was about. He might
+have had one of the little horses from the farm if he had wanted one,
+for he was a privileged person, but he preferred to walk. To a man of
+his wiry frame thirty or forty miles on foot were nothing, and he could
+easily have covered the distance in a night; but he was not going so
+far, by any means, and a horse would only have been in the way. He
+carried his gun, from force of habit, and he had his gun-licence in his
+pocket, with his other papers, tied up in the old red handkerchief.
+There was all that was left of the stale loaf, with the remains of some
+cheese, in a canvas bag, he had slung over his shoulder, and he had
+plenty of money; for his wages were good, and he never spent more than
+half of what he received, merely because he had no wants, and no
+friends.
+
+Under the starlight he walked at a steady pace by familiar paths and
+byways, so as to avoid the village and strike the highroad at some
+distance beyond it. Nino followed close at his heels and perfectly
+silent, and the pair might have been dangerous to any one inclined to
+quarrel with them.
+
+When Ercole was in sight of Porta San Sebastiano it was past midnight,
+and he stood still to fill and light his little clay pipe. Then he went
+on; but instead of entering the gate he took the road to the right
+again, along the Via Appia Nuova. Any one might have supposed that he
+would have struck across to that highroad some time before reaching the
+city, but it was very long since Ercole had gone in that direction;
+many new roads had been opened and some old ones had been closed, and he
+was simply afraid of losing his way in a part of the Campagna no longer
+familiar to him.
+
+[Illustration: "ERCOLE LEFT HIS HOME AFTER SUNSET THAT EVENING"]
+
+A short distance from the gate, where the inn stands that goes by the
+name of Baldinotti, he took the turning to the left, which is the
+Frascati road; and after that he walked more slowly, often stopping and
+peering into the gloom to right and left, as if he were trying to
+recognise objects in the Campagna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Corbario was not pleased with the account given by Settimia in the
+letter she wrote him after reaching Pontresina with Regina and Marcello,
+who had chosen the Engadine as the coolest place he could think of in
+which to spend the hot months, and had preferred Pontresina to Saint
+Moritz as being quieter and less fashionable. Settimia wrote that the
+dear patient had looked better the very day after arriving; that the
+admirable companion was making him drink milk and go to bed at ten
+o'clock; that the two spent most of the day in the pine-woods, and that
+Marcello already talked of an excursion up the glacier and of climbing
+some of the smaller peaks. If the improvement continued, Settimia wrote,
+it was extremely likely that the dear patient would soon be better than
+he had ever been in his life.
+
+Folco destroyed the letter, lit a cigarette, and thought the matter
+over. He had deemed it wise to pretend assent when the Contessa had
+urged him to join Marcello at once, but he had not had the least
+intention of doing so, and had come back to Paris as soon as he was sure
+that the Contessa was gone. But he had made a mistake in his
+calculations. He had counted on Regina for the love of excitement,
+display, and inane dissipation which women in her position very often
+develop when they find that a man will give them anything they like; and
+he had counted very little on her love for Marcello. Folco was still
+young enough to fall into one of the most common errors of youth, which
+is to believe most people worse than they are. Villains, as they grow
+older, learn that unselfish devotion is more common than they had
+thought, and that many persons habitually speak the truth, for
+conscience' sake; finding this out, villains have been known to turn
+into good men in their riper years, and have sometimes been almost
+saints in their old age. Corbario smoked his cigarette and mentally
+registered his mistake, and it is to be feared that the humiliation he
+felt at having made it was much more painful than the recollection of
+having dropped one deadly tablet into a little bottle that contained
+many harmless ones. He compared it in his mind to the keen
+disappointment he had felt when he had gone down to hide Marcello's
+body, and had discovered that he had failed to kill him. It is true that
+what he had felt then had been accompanied by the most awful terror he
+could imagine, but he distinguished clearly between the one sensation
+and the other. There was nothing to fear now; he had simply lost time,
+but that was bad enough, since it was due to his own stupidity.
+
+He thought over the situation carefully and considered how much it would
+be wise to risk. Another year of the life Marcello had been leading in
+Paris would have killed him to a certainty; perhaps six months would
+have done it. But a summer spent at Pontresina, living as it was clear
+that Regina meant him to live, would give the boy strength enough to
+last much longer, and might perhaps bring him out of all danger.
+
+Corbario considered what might be done, went over many plans in his
+mind, compared many schemes, for the execution of some of which he might
+have paid dearly; and in the end he was dissatisfied with all, and began
+over again. Still he reached no conclusion, and he attributed the fault
+to his own dulness, and his dulness to the life he had been leading of
+late, which was very much that which he wished Marcello to lead. But he
+had always trusted his nerves, his ingenuity, and his constitution; if
+one of the three were to fail him, now that he was rich, it was better
+that it should be his ingenuity.
+
+He made up his mind to go to the Engadine and see for himself how
+matters looked. He could stay at Saint Moritz, or even Samaden, so as
+not to disturb Marcello's idyl, and Marcello could come down alone to
+see him. He should probably meet acquaintances, and would give them to
+understand that he had come in order to get rid of Regina and save his
+stepson from certain destruction. Society was very lenient to young men
+as rich as Marcello, he reflected, but was inclined to lay all the blame
+of their doings on their natural guardians. There was no reason why
+Corbario should expose himself to such criticism, and he was sure that
+the Contessa had only said what many people clearly thought, namely,
+that he was allowing Marcello far too much liberty. The world should see
+that he was doing his duty by the boy.
+
+He left Paris with regret, as he always did, after writing to Marcello
+twenty-four hours beforehand. He wrote at the same time to Settimia.
+
+"Folco will be here to-morrow," Marcello said, as he and Regina sat
+under the pine-trees beyond the stream, a little way above the town.
+
+Regina sat leaning against the trunk of a tree, and Marcello lay on his
+side, resting on his elbow and looking up to her. He saw her face
+change.
+
+"Why should he come here?" she asked. "We are so happy!"
+
+"He will not disturb us," Marcello answered. "He will stop at Saint
+Moritz. I shall go down to see him there. I am very fond of him, you
+know, and we have not seen each other for at least two months. I shall
+be very glad to see him."
+
+The colour was sinking in Regina's face, and her eyelids were almost
+closed.
+
+"You are the master," she said quietly enough. "You will do as you
+will."
+
+He was surprised, and he felt a little resentment at her tone. He liked
+her better when she dominated him, as on that night in Paris when she
+had made him promise to come away, and had refused to let him drink more
+wine, and had sent him to bed like a child. Now she spoke as her
+forefathers, serfs born to the plough and bound to the soil, must have
+spoken to their lords and owners. There was no ancient aristocratic
+blood in his own veins; he was simply a middle-class Italian gentleman
+who chanced to be counted with the higher class because he had been born
+very rich, had been brought up by a lady, and had been more or less well
+educated. That was all. It did not seem natural to him that she should
+call him "the master" in that tone. He knew that she was not his equal,
+but somehow it was a little humiliating to have to own it, and he often
+wished that she were. Often, not always; for he had never been sure that
+he should have cared to make her his wife, had she been ever so well
+born. He scarcely knew what he really wanted now, for he had lost his
+hold on himself, and was content with mere enjoyment from day to day. He
+could no longer imagine living without her, and while he was conscious
+that the present state of things could not last very long, he could not
+face the problem of the future.
+
+He did not answer at once, and she sat quite still, almost closing her
+eyes.
+
+"Why should you be displeased because I am going to see Folco?" he asked
+after a while.
+
+"He comes to take you away from me," she answered, without moving.
+
+"That is absurd!" cried Marcello, annoyed by her tone.
+
+"No. It is true. I know it."
+
+"You are unreasonable. He is the best friend I have in the world. Do you
+expect me to promise that I will never see him again?"
+
+"You are the master."
+
+She repeated the words in the same dull tone, and her expression did not
+change in the least. Marcello moved and sat up opposite to her, clasping
+his hands round his knees. He was very thin, but the colour was already
+coming back to his face, and his eyes did not look tired.
+
+"Listen to me," he said. "You must put this idea out of your head. It
+was Folco who found the little house in Trastevere for you. He arranged
+everything. It was he who got you Settimia. He did everything to make
+you comfortable, and he has never disturbed us once when we have been
+together. He never so much as asked where I was going when I used to go
+down to see you every afternoon. No friend could have done more."
+
+"I know it," Regina answered; but still there was something in her tone
+which he could not understand.
+
+"Then why do you say that he means to separate us?"
+
+Regina did not reply, but she opened her eyes and looked into Marcello's
+long and lovingly. She knew something that he did not know, and which
+had haunted her long. When Folco had come to the bedside in the
+hospital, she had seen the abject terror in his face, the paralysing
+fear in his attitude, the trembling limbs and the cramped fingers. It
+had only lasted a moment, but she could never forget it. A child would
+have remembered how Folco looked then, and Regina knew that there was a
+mystery there which she could not understand, but which frightened her
+when she thought of it. Folco had not looked as men do who see one they
+love called back from almost certain death.
+
+"What are you thinking?" Marcello asked, for her deep look stirred his
+blood, and he forgot Folco and everything in the world except the
+beautiful creature that sat there, within his reach, in the lonely
+pine-woods.
+
+She understood, and turned her eyes to the distance; and she saw the
+quiet room in the hospital, the iron bedstead painted white, the smooth
+pillow, Marcello's emaciated head, and Corbario's face.
+
+"I was thinking how you looked when you were ill," she answered simply.
+
+The words and the tone broke the soft little spell that had been weaving
+itself out of her dark eyes. Marcello drew a short, impatient breath and
+threw himself on his side again, supporting his head on his hand and
+looking down at the brown pine-needles.
+
+"You do not know Folco," he said discontentedly. "I don't know why you
+should dislike him."
+
+"I will tell you something," Regina answered. "When you are tired of me,
+you shall send me away. You shall throw me away like an old coat."
+
+"You are always saying that!" returned Marcello, displeased. "You know
+very well that I shall never be tired of you. Why do you say it?"
+
+"Because I shall not complain. I shall not cry, and throw myself on my
+knees, and say, 'For the love of heaven, take me back!' I am not made
+like that. I shall go, without any noise, and what must be will be.
+That is all. Because I want nothing of you but love, I shall go when you
+have no more love. Why should I ask you for what you have not? That
+would be like asking charity of the poor. It would be foolish. But I
+shall tell you something else."
+
+"What?" asked Marcello, looking up to her face again, when she had
+finished her long speech.
+
+"If any one tries to make me go before you are tired of me, it shall be
+an evil day for him. He shall wish that he had not been born into this
+world."
+
+"You need not fear," Marcello said. "No one shall come between us."
+
+"Well, I have spoken. It does not matter whether I fear Signor Corbario
+or not, but if you like I will tell him what I have told you, when he
+comes. In that way he will know."
+
+She spoke quietly, and there was no murderous light in her eyes, nor any
+dramatic gesture with the words; but she was a little paler than before,
+and there was an odd fixedness in her expression, and Marcello knew that
+she was deeply moved, by the way she fell back into her primitive
+peasant's speech, not ungrammatical, but oddly rough and forcible
+compared with the language of educated society which she had now learned
+tolerably well from him.
+
+After that she was silent for a while, and then they talked as usual,
+and the day went by as other days had gone.
+
+On the next afternoon Folco Corbario reached Saint Moritz and sent a
+note up to Marcello asking him to come down on the following morning.
+
+Regina was left alone for a few hours, and she went out with the idea of
+taking a long walk by herself. It would be a relief and almost a
+pleasure to walk ten miles in the clear air, breathing the perfume of
+the pines and listening to the roar of the torrent. Marcello could not
+walk far without being tired, and she never thought of herself when he
+was with her; but when she was alone a great longing sometimes came over
+her to feel the weight of a conca full of water on her head, to roll up
+her sleeves and scrub the floors, to carry burdens and work with her
+hands all day long, as she had done ever since she was a child, with the
+certainty of being tired and hungry and sleepy afterwards. Her hands had
+grown smooth and white in a year, and her feet were tender, and she had
+almost forgotten what bodily weariness meant.
+
+But she was alone this morning, and she was full of gloomy
+presentiments. To stay indoors, or even to go and sit in the accustomed
+place under the pine-trees, would be unbearable. She felt quite sure
+that when Marcello came back he would be changed, that his expression
+would be less frank and natural, that he would avoid her eyes, and that
+by and by he would tell her something that would hurt her very much.
+Folco had come to take him away, she was quite sure, and it would be
+intolerable to sit still and think of it.
+
+She walked fast along the road that leads to the Rosegg glacier, not
+even glancing at the few people she met, though most of them stared at
+her, for almost every one in Pontresina knew who she was. The reputation
+of a great beauty is soon made, and Regina had been seen often enough in
+Paris alone with Marcello in a box at the theatre, or dining with him
+and two or three other young men at Ritz's or the CafÈ Anglais, to be an
+object of interest to the clever Parisian "chroniclers." The papers had
+duly announced the fact that the beauty had arrived at Pontresina, and
+the dwellers in the hotel were delighted to catch a glimpse of her,
+while those at Saint Moritz wished that she and Marcello had taken up
+their quarters there instead of in the higher village. Old maids with
+shawls and camp-stools glared at her round the edge of their parasols.
+English girls looked at her in frank admiration, till they were reproved
+by their mothers, who looked at her with furtive interest. Young
+Englishmen pretended not to see her at all, as they strode along with
+their pipes in their mouths; but they had an odd habit of being about
+when she passed. An occasional party of German students, who are the
+only real Bohemians left to the world in these days of progress, went
+sentimentally mad about her for twenty-four hours, and planned serenades
+in her honour which did not come off. A fashionable Italian composer
+dedicated a song to her, and Marcello asked him to dinner, for which he
+was more envied by the summer colony than for his undeniable talent. The
+Anglican clergyman declared that he would preach a sermon against her
+wickedness, but the hotel-keepers heard of his intention and
+unanimously requested him to let her alone, which, he did, reluctantly
+yielding to arguments which shall remain a secret. A certain Archduchess
+who was at Saint Moritz and was curious to see her adopted the simple
+plan of asking her to tea without knowing her, at which Marcello was
+furious; a semi-imperial Russian personage unblushingly scraped
+acquaintance with Marcello and was extremely bland for a few days, in
+the hope of being introduced to Regina. When he found that this was
+impossible, he went away, not in the least disconcerted, and he was
+heard to say that the girl "would go far."
+
+Regina would have been blind if she had not been aware that she
+attracted all this attention, and as she was probably not intended by
+nature for a saint, she would have been pleased by it if there had been
+room in her thoughts for any one but Marcello--even for herself.
+
+She walked far up the road, and after the first mile or two she met no
+one. At that hour the people who made excursions were already far away,
+and those who meant to do nothing stayed nearer to Pontresina. She grew
+tired of the road after a time. It led straight to the foot of the
+glacier, and she was not attracted by snow and ice as northern people
+are; there was something repellent to her in the thought of the
+bleakness and cold, and the sunshine itself looked as hard as the
+distant peaks on which it fell. But on the right there were rocky spurs
+of the mountains, half covered with short trees and brilliant with wild
+flowers that grew in little natural gardens here and there, not far
+below the level of perpetual snow. She left the road, and began to climb
+where there was no path. The air was delicious with the scent of flowers
+and shrubs; there were alp-roses everywhere, and purple gentian, and the
+little iva blossom that has an aromatic smell, and on tiny moss ledges
+the cold white stars of the edelweiss seemed to be keeping themselves as
+far above reach as they could. But she climbed as lightly as a savage
+woman, and picked them and sat down to look at them in the sunshine.
+Just beyond where she rested, the rock narrowed suddenly to a steep
+pass, within which were dark shadows. People who do not attempt anything
+in the way of ascending peaks often wander in that direction in search
+of edelweiss, but Regina fancied that she was sure to be alone as long
+as she pleased to stay.
+
+If she had not been sure of that she would not have taken off her left
+shoe to shake out some tiny thing that had got into it and that annoyed
+her. It turned out to be a bit of pine-needle. It was pleasant to feel
+her foot freed from the hot leather and resting on the thick moss, and
+so the other shoe came off too, and was turned upside down and shaken,
+as an excuse, for there was nothing in it, and both feet rested in the
+moss, side by side. She wished she could take off her stockings, and if
+there had been a stream she would have done it, so sure was she that no
+one would disturb her, up there amongst the rocks and ever so far from
+Pontresina. It would have been delightful to paddle in the cold running
+water, for it was much hotter than she had ever supposed that it could
+be in such a place.
+
+She took off her straw hat, and fanned herself gently with it, letting
+the sunshine fall full upon her thick black hair. She had never owned a
+hat in her life till she had been installed in the little house in
+Trastevere, and she hated the inconvenient things. What was her hair
+for, if it could not protect her head? But a straw hat made a very good
+fan. The air was hot and still, and there were none of those thousand
+little sounds which she would have heard in the chestnut woods above
+Frascati.
+
+A little cry broke the silence, and she turned her head in the direction
+whence it came. Then she dropped her hat, sprang to her feet, and ran
+forwards, forgetting that she had no shoes on. She saw a figure clinging
+to the rocks, where they suddenly narrowed, and she heard the cry again,
+desperate with fear and weak with effort. A young girl had evidently
+been trying to climb down, when she had lost her footing, and had only
+been saved from a bad fall because her grey woollen frock had caught her
+upon a projecting point of granite, giving her time to snatch at the
+strong twigs of some alp-roses, and to find a very slight projection on
+which she could rest the toe of one shoe. She was hanging there with her
+face to the rock, eight or ten feet from the ground, which was strewn
+with big stones, and she was in such a position that she seemed unable
+to turn her head in order to look down.
+
+In ten seconds Regina was standing directly below the terrified girl,
+raising herself on tiptoe, and trying to reach her feet with her hands,
+to guide them to a hold; but she could not.
+
+"Don't be frightened," Regina said in Italian, which was the only
+language she knew.
+
+"I cannot hold on!" answered the girl, trying to look down, but feeling
+that her foot would slip if she turned her head far enough.
+
+"Yes, you can," Regina replied, too much roused to be surprised that the
+answer had come in her own language. "Your dress will hold you, even if
+you let go with your hands. It is new and it is strong, and it is fairly
+caught on the rock. I can see that."
+
+"But I can't hang here until you go and get help," cried the girl, not
+much reassured.
+
+"I am going to climb to the top by an easier way and pull you up again,"
+Regina answered. "Then we can get down together."
+
+While Regina was speaking she had already begun the ascent, which was
+easy enough for her, at the point she had chosen, though many an Alpine
+climber might have envied the quickness and sureness of her hold with
+feet and hands. She realised that she had forgotten her shoes now, and
+was glad that she had taken them off.
+
+"One minute more!" she cried in an encouraging tone, when she had almost
+reached the top.
+
+"Quick!" came the imploring answer.
+
+Then Regina was lying flat on the ledge above the girl, stretching both
+hands down and catching the slender white wrists with a hold like
+steel. And then, feeling herself held and safe to move, the girl looked
+up, and Regina was looking into Aurora's face below her. For one instant
+the two did not recognise each other, for they had only seen each other
+once, by night, under the portico of the ThÈ‚tre FranÁais. But an
+instant later a flush of anger rose to Aurora's forehead, and the dark
+woman turned pale, and her brows were suddenly level and stern. They
+hated each other, as the one hung there held by the other's hands, and
+the black eyes gazed savagely into the angry blue ones. Aurora was not
+frightened any longer; she was angry because she was in Regina's power.
+The strong woman could save her if she would, and Aurora would despise
+herself ever afterwards for having been saved by her. Or the strong
+woman could let her fall, and she would probably be maimed for life if
+she were not killed outright. That seemed almost better. She had never
+understood before what it could mean to be altogether in the power of an
+enemy.
+
+Regina meant to save her; that was clear. With quick, commanding words
+she told her what to do.
+
+"Set your knees against the rock and pull yourself up a little by my
+hands. So! I can pull you higher now. Get one knee well on that ledge.
+Now I will hold your left hand with both mine while you disentangle your
+frock from the point. Now put your right hand round my neck while I
+raise myself a little. Yes, that way. Now, hold on tight!"
+
+Regina made a steady effort, lifting fully half Aurora's weight with
+her, as she got first upon one knee and then upon both.
+
+[Illustration: "REGINA MADE A STEADY EFFORT, LIFTING FULLY HALF AURORA'S
+WEIGHT WITH HER."]
+
+"There! Take breath and then scramble over the edge," she said.
+
+A few seconds, another effort, and Aurora sank exhausted beside Regina,
+half sitting, half lying, and resting on one hand.
+
+She looked up sideways at the dark woman's face; for Regina stood
+upright, gazing down into the valley. Aurora turned her eyes away, and
+then looked up again; she had recovered her breath now.
+
+"Thank you," she said, with an effort.
+
+"It is nothing," Regina answered in an indifferent tone, and without so
+much as moving her head; she was no more out of breath than if she had
+been sitting still.
+
+The fair girl hated her at that moment as she had never hated any one in
+her short life, nor had ever dreamed of hating. The flush of anger rose
+again and again to her forehead, to the very roots of her auburn hair,
+and lingered a second and sank again. Regina stood perfectly motionless,
+her face as unchanging as marble.
+
+Aurora rose to her feet, and leaned against the rock. She had suddenly
+felt herself at a disadvantage in remaining seated on the ground while
+her adversary was standing. It was the instinct of the animal that
+expects to be attacked. When two people who hate each other or love each
+other very much meet without warning in a very lonely place, the fierce
+old passions of the stone age may take hold of them and sway them, even
+nowadays.
+
+For a time that seemed long, there was silence; without words each knew
+that the other had recognised her. The peasant woman spoke first, though
+with an evident effort, and without turning her eyes.
+
+"When you are rested, we will go down," she said.
+
+Aurora moved a step towards the side on which Regina had climbed up.
+
+"I think I can get down alone," she answered coldly.
+
+Regina looked at her and laughed with a little contempt.
+
+"You will break your neck if you try," she said. "You cannot climb at
+all!"
+
+"I think I can get down," Aurora repeated.
+
+She went to the edge and was going to begin the attempt when Regina
+seized her by the wrist and dragged her back in spite of her resistance.
+
+"I have something to tell you first," Regina said. "Afterwards I will
+take you down, and you shall not fall. You shall reach the bottom safely
+and go home alone, or I will show you the way, as you please."
+
+"Let go of my wrist!" Aurora spoke angrily, for the strong grasp hurt
+her and humiliated her.
+
+"Listen to me," continued Regina, loosing her hold at once. "I am
+Regina. You are Aurora. We have heard of each other, and we have met.
+Let us talk. This is a good place and we are alone, and the day is
+long, and we may not meet again soon. We will say what we have to say
+now, and then we will part."
+
+"What is there to be said?" Aurora asked coldly and drawing back a
+little.
+
+"We two love the same man," Regina said. "Is that nothing? You know it
+is true. If we were not Christians we should try to kill each other
+here, where it is quiet. I could easily have killed you just now, and I
+wished to."
+
+"I wonder why you did not!" exclaimed Aurora, rather scornfully.
+
+"I thought with myself thus: 'If I kill her, I shall always have the
+satisfaction of it as long as I live. This is the truth. But I shall go
+to prison for many years and shall not see him again, therefore I will
+not do it. Besides, it will not please him. If it would make him happy I
+would kill her, even if I were to go to the galleys for it. But it would
+not. He would be very angry.' This is what I thought; and I pulled you
+up. And now, I will not let you hurt yourself in getting down, because
+he would be angry with me if he knew that it was my fault."
+
+Aurora listened to this extraordinary argument in silent surprise. She
+was not in the least frightened, but she saw at a glance that Regina was
+quite in earnest, and she knew her own people, and that the Roman
+peasants are not the gentlest of the Italians.
+
+"He would be very angry," Regina repeated. "I am sure he would!"
+
+"Why should he be angry?" Aurora asked, in a tone half contemptuous and
+yet half sad.
+
+"I know he would, because when he raved in his fever he used to call for
+you."
+
+Aurora started and fixed her eyes on Regina's.
+
+"Yes," Regina said, answering the look. "He often called you by name. He
+loved you once."
+
+She pronounced the words with an accent of pity, drawing herself up to
+her full height; and there was triumph in the light of her eyes. It is
+not every woman that has a chance of saying so much to her rival.
+
+"We were children then," Aurora said, in the very words she had used to
+her mother more than two years earlier.
+
+She was almost as pale as Regina now, for the thrust had been straight
+and sure, and right at her heart. But she was prouder than the peasant
+woman who had wounded her.
+
+"I have heard that you saved his life," she said presently. "And he
+loves you. You are happy!"
+
+"I should always be happy if he and I were alone in the world," Regina
+answered, for she was a little softened by the girl's tone. "But even
+now they are trying to part us."
+
+"To part you?" Again Aurora looked up suddenly. "Who is trying to do
+that? A woman?"
+
+Regina laughed a little.
+
+"You are jealous," she said. "That shows that you love him still. No. It
+is not a woman."
+
+"Corbario?" The name rose instinctively to Aurora's lips.
+
+"Yes," Regina answered. "That is why I am left alone this morning.
+Signor Corbario is at Saint Moritz and Marcello is gone down to see him.
+I know he is trying to separate us. You did not know that he was so
+near?"
+
+"We only came yesterday afternoon," Aurora answered. "We did not know
+that--that Signor Consalvi was here, or we should not have come at all."
+
+It had stung her to hear Regina speak of him quite naturally by his
+first name. Regina felt the rebuke.
+
+"I am truly sorry that I should have accidentally found myself in your
+path," she said, emphasising the rather grand phrase, and holding her
+handsome head very high.
+
+Aurora almost smiled at this sudden manifestation of the peasant's
+nature, and wondered whether Regina ever said such things to Marcello,
+and whether, if she did, they jarred on him very much. The speech had
+the very curious effect of restoring Aurora's sense of superiority, and
+she answered more kindly.
+
+"You need not be sorry," she said. "If you had not chanced to be here I
+should probably be lying amongst the rocks down there with several
+broken bones."
+
+"If it were not by my fault I should not care," Regina retorted, with
+elementary frankness.
+
+"But I should!" Aurora laughed, in spite of herself, and liking this
+phase of Regina's character better than any she had yet seen. "Come,"
+she said, with a sudden generous impulse, and holding out her hand,
+"let us stop quarrelling. You saved me from a bad accident, and I was
+too ungenerous to be grateful. I thank you now, with all my heart."
+
+Regina was surprised and stared hard at her for a moment, and then
+glanced at her outstretched hand.
+
+"You would not take my hand if there were any one here to see."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because they have told you that I am a wicked woman," Regina answered,
+a slight blush rising in her cheeks. "And perhaps it is true. But it was
+for him."
+
+"I would take your hand anywhere, because you saved his life," said
+Aurora, and her voice shook a little as she said the last words. "And
+besides, no one has told me that you are wicked. Come, what is the use
+of hating each other?"
+
+Regina took her hand reluctantly, but not suspiciously, and held it a
+moment.
+
+"It does not mean that I shall not hate you if he ever loves you again,"
+she said. "If I made you think that it would be treachery, and that is
+the worst sin."
+
+"It only means that I thank you now, quite honestly," Aurora answered,
+and their hands parted.
+
+"Very well." Regina seemed satisfied. "And I thank you for taking my
+hand," she added, with something oddly like real gratitude, "and because
+you said you would do it anywhere, even before other women. I know what
+I am, and what people call me. But it was for him. Let us not talk of
+it any more. I will help you down, and you shall go home alone."
+
+"My mother is waiting for me far down, towards the village," Aurora
+said.
+
+"All the better. A young lady like you should not go about without any
+one. It is not proper."
+
+Aurora suppressed a smile at the thought of being reproved concerning
+the proprieties by "Marcello's Regina," and she began the descent.
+Regina went down first, facing the rock, and planting the young girl's
+feet in the best stepping places, one after the other, with constant
+warnings and instructions as to holding on with her hands. They reached
+the bottom in safety, and came to the place where Regina had left her
+hat and shoes. She sat down where she had been sitting when she had
+first heard the cry, and began to put them on.
+
+"I had taken them off for coolness as I sat here," she explained. "You
+see, until I was fourteen I only wore them on Sundays."
+
+"And yet you have such beautiful feet," Aurora said.
+
+"Have I?" Regina asked indifferently. "I thought all feet were alike.
+But I have torn my stocking--it is hard to get the shoe on."
+
+"Let me help you." Aurora knelt down quickly, and began to loosen the
+lacing further, but Regina protested, flushing deeply and trying to draw
+her foot back.
+
+"No, no!" she cried. "You are a lady!"
+
+"What difference does that make?" asked Aurora, laughing and insisting.
+
+"This is not right!" Regina still protested, and the blush had not left
+her cheeks.
+
+But Aurora smoothed the torn stocking under the sole of each foot, and
+slipped on the shoes, which were by no means tight, and tied the lacing
+fast.
+
+"Thank you, Signorina," Regina said, much confused. "You are too good!"
+
+She picked up her hat and put it on, but she was not clever with the
+pin, for she was used to having Settimia do everything for her which she
+had not learned to do for herself before she had come to Rome.
+
+"I can never manage it without Settimia," she said, as if excusing
+herself for her awkwardness, as she again submitted to Aurora's help.
+
+"Settimia?" repeated the young girl, as she put the hat on and thrust a
+long pin through it. "Who is Settimia?"
+
+"Our--I mean my maid," Regina explained. "Thank you. You are too good!"
+
+"It is an uncommon name," Aurora said, looking critically at the hat.
+"But I think I have heard it before."
+
+"She is a wonderful woman. She knows French. She knows everything!"
+
+Aurora said nothing to this, but seemed to be trying to recall something
+she had long forgotten. Regina was very busy in her turn, pulling down
+the girl's frock all round, and brushing it with her hand as well as
+she could, and picking off bits of dry grass and thistles that clung to
+the grey woollen. Aurora thanked her.
+
+"The way down is very easy now," Regina said. "A few steps farther on we
+can see the road."
+
+"After all, why should you not come with me till we find my mother?"
+Aurora asked.
+
+"No," Regina answered with quiet decision. "I am what I am. You must not
+be seen with Regina. Do not tell your mother that you have been with me,
+and I shall not tell Marcello--I mean, Signor Consalvi."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Neither of them would be pleased. Trust me. I know the world. Good-bye,
+and the Madonna accompany you; and remember what I said when I took your
+hand."
+
+So they parted, and Regina stood up a long time, and watched the slender
+grey figure descending to the road in the valley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+"Variety, my dear Marcello, variety! There is nothing like it. If I were
+you, I would make some change, for your life must be growing monotonous,
+and besides, though I have not the least intention of reading you a
+lecture, you have really made your doings unnecessarily conspicuous of
+late. The Paris chroniclers have talked about you enough for the
+present. Don't you think so? Yes, finish the bottle. I always told you
+that champagne was good for you."
+
+Marcello filled his glass and sipped the wine before he answered. It had
+not gone to his head, but there was colour in his lean cheeks, his eyes
+were brighter than usual, and he felt the familiar exhilaration which he
+had missed of late.
+
+"I have been drinking milk for ten days," he said with a smile, as he
+set down the glass.
+
+"Good in its way, no doubt," Corbario answered genially, "but a little
+tiresome. One should often change from simple things to complicated
+ones. It is the science of enjoyment. Besides, it is bad for the
+digestion to live always on bread and milk."
+
+"I don't live on that altogether," laughed Marcello.
+
+"I mean it metaphorically, my dear boy. There is such a thing as
+simplifying one's existence too much. That sometimes ends in getting
+stuck. Now you cannot possibly allow yourself to get stuck in your
+present position. You know what I mean. Oh, I don't blame you! If I were
+your age I should probably do the same thing, especially if I had your
+luck. Blame you? No! Not in the least. The cigarettes are there. You've
+not given up smoking too? No, that's right. A man without a small vice
+is as uninteresting as a woman without a past or a landscape without
+shadows. Cigarettes never hurt anybody. Look at me! I used to smoke
+fifty a day when I was your age."
+
+Marcello blew a cloud of smoke, stirred his coffee, and leaned back. He
+had scarcely heard what Corbario said, but the elder man's careless
+chatter had put him at his ease.
+
+"Folco," he said quietly, "I want to ask you a question, and I want you
+to answer me seriously. Will you?"
+
+"As well as I can," answered Corbario, instantly changing his tone and
+growing earnest.
+
+"Don't be surprised," Marcello said, half apologetically, as if he were
+already weakening. "I shall never do anything without your advice. Of
+course you know how I feel about all this, that I am leading a
+disorderly life, and--well, you understand!"
+
+"Perfectly, my dear boy. I only wish to help you out of it as soon as
+possible, if you want to be helped. I'm quite sure that you will pull
+through in time. I have always believed in you."
+
+"Thank you. I know you have. Well, I'll ask you my question. You know
+well enough that I shall never care for society much, don't you?"
+
+"Society will care for you," answered Folco. "What is the question?"
+
+"I'm coming to it, but I want to explain, or it will not be quite clear.
+You see, it is not as if I were a personage in the world."
+
+"What sort of personage? Please explain."
+
+"I mean, if I were the head of a great house, with a great title and
+hereditary estate."
+
+"What has that to do with it?" Folco was mystified.
+
+"If I were, it would make a difference, I suppose. But I'm not. I'm
+plain Marcello Consalvi, no better than any one else."
+
+"But vastly richer," Folco suggested.
+
+"I wish I were not. I wish I were a poor clerk, working for my living."
+
+"The air of this place is not good for you, my boy." Folco laughed
+gaily.
+
+"No, don't laugh! I'm in earnest. If I were a poor man, nobody would
+think it at all strange if--" Marcello hesitated.
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If I married Regina," said Marcello rather desperately.
+
+Folco's expression changed instantly.
+
+"Was that the question you were going to ask me?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Marcello grew very red and smoked so fast that he choked himself.
+
+"Is there any earthly reason why you should marry her?" asked Folco very
+quietly.
+
+"It would be right," Marcello answered, gaining courage.
+
+"Yes, yes, undoubtedly," Folco hastened to admit. "In principle it would
+undoubtedly be right. But it is a very serious matter, my dear boy. It
+means your whole life and future. Have you"--he hesitated, with an
+affectation of delicacy--"have you said anything to her about it?"
+
+"I used to, at first, but she would not hear of it. You have no idea how
+simple she is, and how little she expects anything of the sort. She
+always tells me that I am to send her away when I am tired of her, to
+throw her away like an old coat, as she says herself. But I could never
+do that, you know. Could I?"
+
+Marcello blushed again, hardly knowing why. Corbario seemed deeply
+interested.
+
+"She must be a very unusual sort of girl," he observed thoughtfully.
+"There are not many like her, I fancy."
+
+"There is nobody like her," Marcello answered with conviction. "That is
+why I want to marry her. I owe it to her. You must admit that. I owe her
+my life, for I certainly should have died if she had not taken care of
+me. And then, there is the rest. She has given me all she has, and that
+is herself, and she asks nothing in return. She is very proud, too. I
+tried to make her accept a string of pearls in Paris, just because I
+thought they would be becoming to her, but she absolutely refused."
+
+"Really? I suppose you gave the pearls back to the jeweller?"
+
+"No, I kept them. Perhaps I shall get her to wear them some day."
+
+Folco smiled.
+
+"You may just as well encourage her simple tastes," he said. "Women
+always end by learning how to spend money, unless it is their own."
+
+Having delivered himself of this piece of wisdom Folco chose a cigar,
+nipped off the end of it neatly with a gold cutter, lit it and snuffed
+the rich smoke up his nose in a deliberate manner.
+
+"Regina is a very remarkable woman," he said at last. "If she had been
+well educated, she would make an admirable wife; and she loves you
+devotedly, Marcello. Now, the real question is--at least, it seems to me
+so--you don't mind my talking to you just as I would to myself, do you?
+Very well. If I were in your position, I should ask myself, as a man of
+honour, whether I really loved her as much as she loved me, or whether I
+had only been taken off my feet by her beauty. Don't misunderstand me,
+my boy! I should feel that if I were not quite sure of that, I ought not
+to marry her, because it would be much worse for her in the end than if
+we parted. Have you ever asked yourself that question, Marcello?"
+
+"Yes, I have."
+
+Marcello spoke in a low voice, and bent his head, as if he were not
+sure of the answer. Corbario, satisfied with the immediate effect of his
+satanic speech, waited a moment, sighed, looked down at his cigar, and
+then went on in gentle tones.
+
+"That is so often the way," he said. "A man marries a woman out of a
+sense of duty, and then makes her miserably unhappy, quite in spite of
+himself. Of course, in such a case as yours, you feel that you owe a
+woman amends--you cannot call it compensation, as if it were a matter of
+law! She has given everything, and you have given nothing. You owe her
+happiness, if you can bestow it upon her, don't you?"
+
+"Indeed I do!" assented Marcello.
+
+"Yes. The question is, whether the way to make her happy is to marry
+her, when you have a reasonable doubt as to whether you can be a good
+husband to her. That is the real problem, it seems to me. Do you love
+her enough to give up the life to which you were born, and for which you
+were educated? You would have to do that, you know. Our friends--your
+dear mother's friends, my boy--would never receive her, least of all
+after what has happened."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"You would have to wander about Europe, or live in San Domenico, for you
+could not bear to live in Rome, meeting women who would not bow to your
+wife. I know you. You could not possibly bear it."
+
+"I should think not!"
+
+"No. Therefore, since you have the doubt, since you are not absolutely
+sure of yourself, I think the only thing to do is to find out what you
+really feel, before taking an irreparable step."
+
+"Yes," said Marcello, who had fallen into the trap laid for him. "I know
+that. But how am I to make sure of myself?"
+
+"There is only one way," Folco answered. "I know it is not easy, and if
+I were not sure that you are perfectly sincere I should be afraid to
+propose it to you."
+
+"What is it? Tell me. You are the only friend I have in the world,
+Folco, and I want to do what is right. God knows, I am in earnest! There
+are moments when I cannot imagine living without Regina--it seemed hard
+to leave her this morning, even for these few hours, and I long to be
+back at Pontresina already! Yet you know how fond I am of you, and how I
+like to be with you, for we have always been more like brothers than
+anything else."
+
+"Indeed we have!" Folco assented fervently. "You were saying that there
+were moments--yes?"
+
+"Sometimes she jars upon me dreadfully," Marcello said in a low voice,
+as if he were ashamed of owning it. "Then I want to get away."
+
+"Exactly. You want to get away, not to leave her, but to be alone for a
+few hours, or a few days. That would be the very best thing you could
+do--to separate for a little while. You would very soon find out whether
+you could live without her or not; and believe me, if you feel that you
+can live without her, that means that you could not live with her for
+your whole life."
+
+"I should go back to her in twenty-four hours. I am sure I should."
+
+"Perhaps you would, if you went, say, from here to Paris alone, with
+nothing to distract your attention. But suppose that you and I should go
+together, to some place where we should meet our friends, all amusing
+themselves, where you could talk to other women, and meet men of your
+own age, and lead the life people expect you to lead, just for a few
+weeks. You know that society will be only too glad to see something of
+you, whenever you choose to go near it. You are what is called a good
+match, and all the mothers with marriageable daughters would run after
+you."
+
+"Disgusting!" exclaimed Marcello, with contempt.
+
+"No doubt, but it would be a wholesome change and a good test. When a
+young girl is determined to be a nun, she is generally made to spend a
+year in society, in order to make acquaintance with what she intends to
+give up. I don't see much difference between that and your case. Before
+you say good-bye for ever to your own world, find out what it is like.
+At the same time, you will settle for ever any doubts you have about
+really loving Regina."
+
+"Perhaps you are right. It would only be for a few days."
+
+"And besides," Folco continued, "if you have not yet found it dull at
+Pontresina, you certainly will before long. There is no reason why you
+should lead the life of an invalid, for you are quite strong now."
+
+"Oh, quite. I always tell Regina so, but she insists that I am too thin,
+and it amuses her to take care of me."
+
+"Naturally. That is how you first made acquaintance. A woman who has
+once taken care of a man she loves wants him to be ever afterwards an
+invalid, for ever getting better! A man gets tired of that in time. It
+was a great pity you left Paris just when I came, for there are many
+things we could have enjoyed together there."
+
+"I daresay," Marcello answered, not paying much attention to the other's
+words.
+
+"Take my advice, my dear boy," said Folco. "Come away with me for a few
+days. I will wait here till you are quite ready, for of course you
+cannot be sure of getting off at once. You will have to prepare Regina
+for this."
+
+"Of course. I am not sure that it is possible at all."
+
+Folco laughed gaily.
+
+"Anything is possible that you really wish to do," he said.
+
+"Regina may insist upon coming with me."
+
+"Nonsense. Women always submit in the end, and they never die of it.
+Assert yourself, Marcello! Be a man! You cannot be ordered about like a
+child by any woman, not even if she has saved your life, not even if
+she loves you to distraction. You have a right to a will of your own."
+
+"I know. And yet--oh, I wish I knew what I ought to do!"
+
+"Think over all I have said, and you will see that I am right," said
+Folco, rising from the table. "And if you take my advice, you will be
+doing what is fair and honest by Regina as well as by yourself. Your own
+conscience must tell you that."
+
+Poor Marcello was not very sure what had become of his own conscience
+during the past year, and Folco's arguments swayed him as he groped for
+something definite to follow, and found nothing but what Corbario chose
+to thrust into his hand.
+
+As they stood by the table, a servant brought a note on a little salver,
+holding it out to them as if he were not sure which of them was to
+receive it. Both glanced at the address; it was for Corbario, who took
+it quickly and put it into his pocket; but Marcello had recognised the
+handwriting--that rather cramped feminine hand of a woman who has seen
+better days, in which Settimia kept accounts for Regina. The latter
+insisted that an account should be kept of the money which Marcello gave
+her, and that he should see it from time to time. At the first moment,
+being absorbed with other matters, and inwardly much engaged in the
+pursuit of his own conscience, which eluded him at every turn like a
+figure in a dream, he paid no attention to what he had seen; but the
+writing had impressed itself on his memory.
+
+They had been lunching in Folco's sitting-room, and Corbario made an
+excuse to go into his bedroom for a moment, saying that he wanted
+certain cigars that his man had put away. Marcello stood at the window
+gazing down the broad valley. Scarcely a minute elapsed before Folco
+came back with a handful of Havanas which he dropped on a writing-table.
+
+"By the bye," he said carelessly, "there is another reason why you may
+not care to stay long in Pontresina. The Contessa and Aurora are there."
+
+"Are they?" Marcello turned sharply as he asked the question.
+
+He was surprised, and at the same instant it flashed upon him that Folco
+had just received the information from Settimia in the note that had
+been brought.
+
+"Yes," Folco answered with a smile. "And Pontresina is such a small
+place that you can hardly help meeting them. I thought I might as well
+tell you."
+
+"Thank you. Yes, it would be awkward, and unpleasant for them."
+
+"Precisely. The Contessa wrote me that she and Aurora had come upon you
+two unexpectedly in leaving a theatre, and that she had felt very
+uncomfortable."
+
+"Oh! I suppose she suggested that I should mend my ways?"
+
+"As a matter of fact, she did." Corbario smiled. "You know what a very
+proper person she is!"
+
+"She is quite right," answered Marcello gravely.
+
+"It certainly cannot have been pleasant for her, on account of Aurora."
+
+Folco looked at him thoughtfully, for his tone had suddenly changed.
+
+"If you don't mind," Folco said, "I think I will drive up with you and
+call on them this afternoon. You can drop me at their hotel, and I shall
+find my way back alone."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Are you sure you don't mind?" Folco affected to speak anxiously.
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"You see," Folco said, without heeding the question, "they let me know
+that they were there, and as we are such old friends it would be strange
+if I did not go to see them."
+
+"Of course it would," answered Marcello in an absent tone.
+
+He already connected Folco's knowledge of the Contessa's arrival in
+Pontresina so closely with Settimia's note that Folco's last statement
+had taken him by surprise, and a multitude of confused questions
+presented themselves to his mind. If Settimia had not written about the
+Contessa, why had she written at all? How did she know where Corbario
+was stopping in Saint Moritz? Was she in the habit of writing to him?
+Corbario had found her for Regina; was Settimia helping Corbario to
+exercise a sort of paternal vigilance over him? Somehow Marcello did not
+like that idea at all. So far as he knew, Folco had always been
+singularly frank with him, and had never deceived him in the smallest
+thing, even "for his own good." Marcello could only attribute good
+motives to him, but the mere idea of being watched was excessively
+disagreeable. He wondered whether Settimia had influenced Regina to get
+him away from Paris, acting under directions from Corbario. Was Regina
+deceiving him too, "for his own good"? If there is anything a man cannot
+bear from those he loves best, it is that they should take counsel
+together secretly to direct him "for his own good."
+
+Marcello tried to put the thought out of his mind; but it had dawned
+upon him for the first time that Folco could tell even a pious
+falsehood. Yet he had no proof whatever that he had guessed right; it
+was a sudden impression and nothing more. He was much more silent during
+the rest of the afternoon as he drove up to Pontresina with Folco, and
+it seemed to him that he had at last touched something definite; which
+was strange enough, considering that it was all a matter of guess-work
+and doubt.
+
+And now fate awoke again and did one of those little things that decide
+men's lives. If Folco and Marcello had stopped at the door of the
+Contessa's hotel two minutes earlier, or thirty seconds later, than they
+did, they would not have chanced upon the Contessa and Aurora just
+coming in from a walk. But fate brought the four together precisely at
+that moment. As the carriage stopped, the two ladies had come from the
+opposite direction and were on the door-step.
+
+"What a surprise!" exclaimed the Contessa, giving her hand graciously
+to Folco and then to Marcello.
+
+The latter had got hold of a thread. Since the Contessa was surprised to
+see Folco, she could not possibly have already let him know that she was
+in Pontresina.
+
+"I came as soon as I knew that you were here," said Corbario quickly.
+
+Marcello heard the words, though he was at that moment shaking hands
+with Aurora, and their eyes had met. She was perfectly calm and
+collected, none the worse for her adventure in the morning, and
+considerably the wiser.
+
+"Will you come in?" asked the Contessa, leading the way, as if expecting
+both men to follow.
+
+Corbario went at once. Marcello hesitated, and flushed a little, and
+Aurora seemed to be waiting for him.
+
+"Shall I come, too?" he asked.
+
+"Just as you please," she answered. "My mother will think it strange if
+you don't."
+
+Marcello bent his head, and the two followed the others towards the
+stairs at a little distance.
+
+"Did your mother send word to Folco that you were here?" asked Marcello
+quickly, in a low tone.
+
+"Not that I know. Why?"
+
+"It is no matter. I wanted to be sure. Thank you."
+
+They went upstairs side by side, not even glancing at each other, much
+more anxious to seem perfectly indifferent than to realise what they
+felt now that they had met at last.
+
+Marcello stayed ten minutes in the small sitting-room, talking as well
+as he could. He had no wish to be alone with Aurora or her mother, and
+since the visit had been pressed upon him he was glad that Folco was
+present. But he got away as soon as he could, leaving Corbario to his
+own devices. The Contessa gave him her hand quietly, as if she had not
+expected him to stay, and she did not ask him to come again. Aurora
+merely nodded to him, and he saw that just as he went out she left the
+room by another door, after glancing at him once more with apparent
+coldness.
+
+He walked quickly through the village until he came near to his own
+hotel, and then his pace slackened by degrees. He knew that he had felt
+a strong emotion in seeing Aurora again, and he was already wishing that
+he had not come away so soon. The room had been small, and it had been
+uncomfortable to be there, feeling himself judged and condemned by the
+Contessa and distrusted by Aurora; but he had been in an atmosphere that
+recalled all his youth, with people whose mere presence together brought
+back the memory of his dead mother as nothing else had done since his
+illness. He was just in that state of mind in which he would have broken
+away and freed himself within the hour, at any cost, if he had been
+involved in a common intrigue.
+
+At the same time he had become convinced that Folco had deceived him,
+for some reason or other which he could not guess, and the knowledge was
+the first serious disillusionment of his life. The deception had been
+small, and perhaps intended in some mysterious way to be "for his own
+good"; but it had been a distinct deception and no better than a lie. He
+was sure of that.
+
+He went upstairs slowly and Regina met him at the door of their rooms,
+and took his hat and stick without a word, for she saw that something
+had happened, and she felt suddenly cold. He was quite unlike himself.
+The careless look was gone from his face, his young lips were tightly
+closed, and he looked straight before him, quite unconscious that his
+manner was hurting her desperately.
+
+"Has Settimia been out to-day?" he asked, looking at her quickly.
+
+"I don't know," she answered, surprised. "I went for a long walk this
+morning. She probably went out into the village. I cannot tell. Why do
+you ask?"
+
+"I wish to know whether she sent a note to Saint Moritz by a messenger.
+Can you find out, without asking her a direct question? I am very
+anxious to know."
+
+"I will try, but it will not be easy," said Regina, watching him.
+
+She had made up her mind that the blow was coming, and that Marcello was
+only putting off the moment when she must be told that he meant to leave
+her. She was very quiet, and waited for him to speak again, for she was
+too proud to ask him questions. His inquiry about Settimia was in some
+way connected with what was to come. He sat down by the table, and
+drummed upon it absently with his fingers for a moment. Then he looked
+up suddenly and met her eyes; his look of troubled preoccupation faded
+all at once, and he smiled and held out one hand to draw her nearer.
+
+"Forgive me," he said. "All sorts of things have happened to-day. I have
+been annoyed."
+
+She came and bent over him, turning his face up to hers with her hands,
+very gently. His eyes lightened slowly, and his lips parted a little.
+
+"You are not tired of Regina yet," she said.
+
+"No!" he laughed. "But you were right," he added, almost immediately.
+
+"I knew I was," she answered, but not as she had expected to say the
+words when she had seen him come in.
+
+She dared not hope to keep him always, but she had not lost him yet, and
+that was enough for the moment. The weight had fallen from her heart,
+and the pain was gone.
+
+"Was it what I thought?" she asked softly. "Does your stepfather wish to
+separate us?"
+
+"For a little while," Marcello answered. "He says we ought to part for a
+few weeks, so that I may find out whether I love you enough to marry
+you!"
+
+"And he almost persuaded you that he was right," said Regina. "Is that
+what happened?"
+
+"That--and something else."
+
+"Will you tell me, heart of my heart?"
+
+In the falling twilight he told her all that had passed through his
+mind, from the moment when he had seen Settimia's handwriting on the
+note. Then Regina's lips moved.
+
+"He shall pay!" she was saying under her breath. "He shall pay!"
+
+"What are you saying?" Marcello asked.
+
+"An Ave Maria," she answered. "It is almost dark."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The little house in Trastevere was shut up, but the gardener had the
+keys, and came twice a week to air the rooms and sweep the paths and
+water the shrubs. He was to be informed by Settimia of Regina's return
+in time to have everything ready, but he did not expect any news before
+the end of September; and if he came regularly, on Tuesday and Saturday,
+and did his work, it was because he was a conscientious person in his
+way, elderly, neat, and systematic, a good sort of Roman of the old
+breed. But if he came on other days, as he often did, not to air the
+rooms, but to water and tend certain plants, and to do the many
+incomprehensible things which gardeners do with flower-pots, earth, and
+seeds, that was his own affair, and would bring a little money in the
+autumn when the small florists opened their shops and stands again, and
+the tide of foreigners set once more towards Rome. Also, if he had made
+friends with the gardeners at the beautiful villa on the Janiculum, that
+was not Corbario's business; and they gave him cuttings, and odds and
+ends, such as can be spared from a great garden where money is spent
+generously, but which mean a great deal to a poor man who is anxious to
+turn an honest penny by hard work.
+
+The immediate result of this little traffic was that the gardeners at
+the villa knew all about the little house in Trastevere; and what the
+gardeners knew was known also by the porter, and by the other servants,
+and through them by the servants of other people, and the confidential
+valet told his master, and the maid told her mistress; and so everybody
+had learned where "Consalvi's Regina" lived, and it was likely that
+everybody would know when she came back to Rome, and whether Marcello
+came with her or not.
+
+He had not taken Folco's advice, much to the latter's disappointment and
+annoyance. On the contrary, he and Regina had left the Engadine very
+suddenly, without so much as letting Corbario guess that they were going
+away; and Regina had managed to keep Settimia so very busy and so
+constantly under her eye that the maid had not been able to send Folco a
+word, warning him of the anticipated move. Almost for the first time
+Marcello had made up his mind for himself, and had acted upon his
+decision; and it seemed as if the exercise of his will had made a change
+in his character.
+
+They wandered from place to place; they went to Venice in the hottest
+season, when no one was there, and they came down to Florence and drove
+up to Vallombrosa, where they stumbled upon society, and were stared at
+accordingly. They went down to Siena, they stopped in Orvieto, and drove
+across to Assisi and Perugia; but they were perpetually drawn towards
+Rome, and knew that they longed to be there again.
+
+Marcello had plenty of time to think, and there was little to disturb
+his meditations on the past and future; for Regina was not talkative,
+and was content to be silent for hours, provided that she could see his
+face. He never knew whether she felt her ignorance about all they saw,
+and his own knowledge was by no means great. He told her what he knew
+and read about places they visited, and she remembered what he said, and
+sometimes asked simple questions which he could answer easily enough.
+For instance, she wished to know whether America were a city or an
+island, and who the Jews were, and if the sun rose in the west on the
+other side of the world, since Marcello assured her that the world was
+round.
+
+He was neither shocked nor amused; Ercole had asked him similar
+questions when he had been a boy; so had the peasants in Calabria, and
+there was no reason why Regina should know more than they did. Besides,
+she possessed wonderful tact, and now spoke her own language so well
+that she could pass for a person of average education, so long as she
+avoided speaking of anything that is learned from books. She was very
+quick to understand everything connected with the people she heard of,
+and she never forgot anything that Marcello told her. She was grateful
+to him for never laughing at her, but in reality he was indifferent. If
+she had known everything within bounds of knowledge, she would not have
+been a whit more beautiful, or more loving, or more womanly.
+
+But he himself was beginning to think, now that his faith in Folco had
+been shaken, and he began to realise that he had been strangely torpid
+and morally listless during the past years. The shock his whole system
+had received, the long interval during which his memory had been quite
+gone, the physical languor that had lasted some time after his recovery
+from the fever, had all combined to make the near past seem infinitely
+remote, to cloud his judgment of reality, and to destroy the healthy
+tension of his natural will. A good deal of what Corbario had called
+"harmless dissipation" had made matters worse, and when Regina had
+persuaded him to leave Paris he had really been in that dangerous moral,
+intellectual, and physical condition in which it takes very little to
+send a man to the bad altogether, and not much more to kill him
+outright, if he be of a delicate constitution and still very young.
+Corbario had almost succeeded in his work of destruction.
+
+He would not succeed now, for the worst danger was past, and Marcello
+had found his feet after being almost lost in the quicksand through
+which he had been led.
+
+He had not at first accused Folco of anything worse than that one little
+deception about the arrival of the Contessa, and of having caused him to
+be too closely watched by Settimia. Little by little, however, other
+possibilities had shaped themselves and had grown into certainties at an
+alarming rate. He understood all at once how Folco himself had been
+spending his time, while society had supposed him to be a broken
+hearted widower. A few hints which he had let fall about the things he
+would have shown Marcello in Paris suggested a great deal; his looks and
+manner told the rest, now that Marcello had guessed the main truth. He
+had not waited three months after his wife's death to profit by his
+liberty and the wealth she had left him. Marcello remembered the
+addresses he had given from time to time--Monte Carlo, Hombourg, Pau,
+and Paris very often. He had spoken of business in his letters, as an
+excuse for moving about so much, but "business" did not always take a
+man to places of amusement, and Folco seemed to have visited no others.
+Men whom Marcello had met had seen Corbario, and what they said about
+him was by no means indefinite. He had been amusing himself, and not
+alone, and the young men had laughed at his attempts to cloak his doings
+under an appearance of sorrowing respectability.
+
+As all this became clear to Marcello he suffered acutely at times, and
+he reproached himself bitterly for having been so long blind and
+indifferent. It was bad enough that he should have been leading a wild
+life with Regina in Paris within a few months of his mother's death, but
+even in the depths of his self-reproach he saw how much worse it was
+that Folco should have forgotten her so soon. It was worse than a slight
+upon his mother's memory, it was an insult. The good woman who was gone
+would have shed hot tears if she could have come to life and seen how
+her son was living; but she would have died again, could she have seen
+the husband she adored in the places where many had seen him since her
+death. It was no wonder that Marcello's anger rose at the mere thought.
+
+Moreover, as Marcello's understanding awoke, he realised that Folco had
+encouraged him in all he had done, and had not seemed pleased when he
+had begun to live more quietly. Folco would have made him his companion
+in pleasure, if he could, and the idea was horrible to Marcello as soon
+as it presented itself.
+
+It was the discovery that he had been mistaken in Corbario that most
+directly helped him to regain his foothold in life and his free will.
+There was more in the Spartan method than we are always ready to admit,
+for it is easier to disgust most men by the sight of human degradation
+than to strengthen them against temptation by preaching, or by the
+lessons of example which are so very peculiarly disagreeable to the
+normal man.
+
+"I am virtuous, I am sober, I resist temptation, imitate me!" cries the
+preacher. You say that you are virtuous, and you are apparently sober,
+my friend; and perhaps you are a very good man, though you need not
+scream out the statement at the top of your voice. But how are we to
+know that you have any temptations to resist? Or that your temptations
+are the same as ours, even supposing that you have any? Or that you are
+speaking the truth about yourself, since what you say is so extremely
+flattering to your vanity? Wherever there is preaching, those who are
+preached at are expected to accept a good deal on the mere word of the
+preacher, quite aside from anything they have been brought to believe
+elsewhere.
+
+"Temptation?" said a certain great lady who was not strong in theology.
+"That is what one yields to, isn't it?"
+
+She probably knew what she was talking about, for she had lived in the
+world a good while, as we have. But the preacher is not very often one
+of us, and he knows little of our ways and next to nothing of our real
+feelings; yet he exhorts us to be like him. It would be very odd if we
+succeeded. The world would probably stand still if we did, and most of
+us are so well aware of the fact that we do not even try; and the sermon
+simply has no effect at all, which need not prevent the preacher from
+being richly remunerated for delivering it.
+
+"Vice is very attractive, of course," he says, "but you must avoid it
+because it is sinful."
+
+And every time vice is mentioned we think how attractive it must be,
+since it is necessary to preach against it so much; and the more
+attractive it seems, the greater the temptation.
+
+"Should you like to try a vice or two?" said the Spartan, "Very well.
+Come with me, my boy, and you shall see what vice is; and after that, if
+you care to try it, please yourself, for I shall have nothing more to
+say!"
+
+And forthwith he played upon the string of disgust, which is the most
+sensitive of all the strings that vibrate in the great human instrument;
+and the boy's stomach rose, and he sickened and turned away, and
+remembered for ever, though he might try ever so hard to forget.
+
+Marcello at last saw Folco as he was, though still without understanding
+the worst, and with no suspicion that Folco wished him out of the world,
+and had deliberately set to work to kill him by dissipation; and the
+disgust he felt was the most horrible sensation that he could remember.
+At the same time he saw himself and his whole life, and the perplexity
+of his position frightened him.
+
+It seemed impossible to go back and live under the same roof with
+Corbario now. He flushed with shame when he remembered the luncheon at
+Saint Moritz, and how he had been almost persuaded to leave poor Regina
+suddenly, and to go back to Paris with his stepfather. He saw through
+the devilish cleverness of the man's arguments, and when he remembered
+that his dead mother's name had been spoken, a thrill of real pain ran
+through his body and he clenched his teeth and his hands.
+
+He asked himself how he could meet Folco after that, and the only answer
+was that if they met they must quarrel and part, not to meet again.
+
+He told Regina that he would not go back to the villa after they reached
+Rome, but would live in the little house in Trastevere. To his surprise,
+she looked grave and shook her head. She had never asked him what was
+making him so silent and thoughtful, but she had guessed much of the
+truth from little things; she herself had never trusted Corbario since
+she had first seen his face at the hospital, and she had long foreseen
+the coming struggle.
+
+"Why do you shake your head?" he asked. "Do you not want me at the
+little house?"
+
+"The villa is yours, not his," she said. "He will be glad if you will
+leave him there, for he will be the master. Then he will marry again,
+and live there, and it will be hard to turn him out."
+
+"What makes you think he wishes to marry again?"
+
+"He would be married already, if the girl would have him," answered
+Regina.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"You told me to watch, to find out. I have obeyed you. I know
+everything."
+
+Marcello was surprised, and did not quite understand. He only remembered
+that he had asked her to ascertain whether Settimia had sent a note to
+Folco at Saint Moritz. After a day or two she told him that she was
+quite sure of it. That was all, and Regina had scarcely ever spoken of
+Folco since then. Marcello reminded her of this, and asked her what she
+had done.
+
+"I can read," she said. "I can read writing, and that is very hard, you
+know. I made Settimia teach me. I said with myself, if he should be away
+and should write to me, what should I do? I could not let Settimia read
+his letters, and I am too well dressed to go to a public letter-writer
+in the street, as the peasants do. He would think me an ignorant person,
+and the people in the street would laugh. That would not help me. I
+should have to go to the priest, to my confessor."
+
+"Your confessor? Do you go to confession?"
+
+"Do you take me for a Turk?" Regina asked, laughing. "I go to confession
+at Christmas and Easter. I tell the priest that I am very bad, and am
+sorry, but that it is for you and that I cannot help it. Then he asks me
+if I will promise to leave you and be good. And I say no, that I will
+not promise that. And he tells me to go away and come back when I am
+ready to promise, and that he will give me absolution then. It is always
+the same. He shakes his head and frowns when he sees me coming, and I
+smile. We know each other quite well now. I have told him that when you
+are tired of me, then I will be good. Is not that enough? What can I do?
+I should like to be good, of course, but I like still better to be with
+you. So it is."
+
+"You are better than the priest knows," said Marcello thoughtfully, "and
+I am worse."
+
+"It is not true. But if I had a letter from you, I would not take it to
+the priest to read for me. He would be angry, and tear it up, and send
+me away. I understood this at the beginning, so I made Settimia teach me
+how to read the writing, and I also learned to write myself, not very
+well, but one can understand it."
+
+"I know. I have seen you writing copies. But how has that helped you to
+find out what Folco is doing?"
+
+"I read all Settimia's letters," Regina answered, with perfect
+simplicity.
+
+"Eh?" Marcello thought he had misunderstood her.
+
+"I read all the letters she gets," Regina replied, unmoved. "When she
+was teaching me to read I saw where she kept all her letters. It is
+always the same place. There is a pocket inside a little black bag she
+has, which opens easily, though she locks it. She puts the letters
+there, and when she has read them over she burns them. You see, she has
+no idea that I read them. But I always do, ever since you asked me about
+that note. When I know that she has had a letter, I send her out on an
+errand. Then I read. It is so easy!"
+
+Regina laughed, but Marcello looked displeased.
+
+"It is not honest to do such things," he said.
+
+"Not honest?" Regina stared at him in amazement. "How does honesty enter
+into the question? Is Settimia honest? Then honest people should all be
+in the galleys! And if you knew how he writes to her! Oh, yes! You are
+the 'dear patient,' and I am the 'admirable companion.' They have known
+each other long, those two. They have a language between them, but I
+have learned it. They have no more secrets that I do not know.
+Everything the admirable companion does that makes the dear patient
+better is wrong, and everything that used to make him worse was right.
+They were killing you in Paris, they wanted you to stay there until you
+were dead. Do you know who saved your life? It was the Contessa, when I
+heard her say that you were looking ill! If you ever see her again,
+thank her, for I was blind and she opened my eyes. The devil had blinded
+me, and the pleasure, and I could not see. I see now, thanks to heaven,
+and I know all, and they shall not hurt you. But they shall pay!"
+
+She was not laughing now, as she said the last words under her breath,
+and her beautiful lips just showed her white teeth, set savagely tight
+as though they had bitten through something that could be killed. Folco
+Corbario was not timid, but if he had seen her then, and known that the
+imaginary bite was meant for his life, he would have taken special care
+of his bodily safety whenever she was in his neighbourhood.
+
+Marcello had listened in profound surprise, for what she said threw new
+light on all he had thought out for himself of late.
+
+"And you say that Folco is thinking of marrying again," he said, almost
+ashamed to profit by information obtained as Regina had got it.
+
+"Yes, he is in love with a young girl, and wishes to marry her."
+
+Marcello said nothing.
+
+"Should you like to know her name?" asked Regina.
+
+Still Marcello was silent, as if refusing to answer, and yet wishing
+that she should go on.
+
+"I will tell you," Regina said. "Her name is Aurora dell' Armi."
+
+Marcello started, and looked into her face, doubting her word for the
+first time. He changed colour, too, flushing and then turning pale.
+
+"It is not true!" he cried, rather hoarsely. "It cannot be true!"
+
+"It is true," Regina answered, "but she will not have him. She would not
+marry him, even if her mother would allow it."
+
+"Thank God!" exclaimed Marcello fervently.
+
+Regina sighed, and turned away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Ercole sat on the stone seat that ran along the wall of the inn, facing
+the dusty road. He was waiting in the cool dawn until it should please
+the innkeeper to open the door, and Nino crouched beside him, his head
+resting on his forepaws.
+
+A great many years had passed since Ercole had sat there the last time,
+but nothing had changed, so far as he could see. He had been young, and
+the women had called him handsome; his face had not been shrivelled to
+parchment by the fever, and there had been no grey threads in his thick
+black hair. Nino had not been born then, and now Nino seemed to be a
+part of himself. Nino's grandam had lain in almost the same spot then,
+wolfish and hungry as her descendant was now, and only a trifle less
+uncannily hideous. It was all very much the same, but between that time
+and this there lay all Ercole's life by the Roman shore.
+
+When he had heard, as every one had, how Marcello had been brought to
+Rome on the tail of a wine-cart, he had been sure that the boy had been
+laid upon it while the cart was standing before Paoluccio's inn in the
+night. He knew the road well, and the ways of the carters, and that they
+rarely stopped anywhere else between Frascati and Rome. Again and again
+he had been on the point of tramping up from the seashore to the place,
+to see whether he could not find some clue to Marcello's accident there,
+but something had prevented him, some old dislike of returning to the
+neighbourhood after such a long absence. He knew why he had not gone,
+but he had not confided the reason even to Nino, who was told most
+things. He had, moreover, been tolerably sure that nothing short of
+thumb-screws would extract any information from Paoluccio or his wife,
+for he knew his own people. The only thing that surprised him was that
+the boy should ever have left the inn alive after being robbed of
+everything he had about him that was worth taking.
+
+Moreover, since Marcello had been found, and was alive and well, it was
+of very little use to try and discover exactly what had happened to him
+after he had been last seen by the shore. But the aspect of things had
+changed since Ercole had heard the sailor's story, and his wish to see
+the place where the boy had been hidden so long overcame any repugnance
+he felt to visiting a neighbourhood which had unpleasant associations
+with his younger years.
+
+He sat and waited at the door, and before the sun rose a young woman
+came round the house with the big key and opened the place, just as
+Regina had done in old days. She looked at Ercole, and he looked at her,
+and neither said anything as she went about her work, sprinkling the
+floor with water and then sweeping it, and noisily pulling the heavy
+benches about. When this operation was finished, Ercole rose and went
+in, and sat down at the end of a table. He took some bread and cheese
+from his canvas bag and began to eat, using his clasp-knife.
+
+"If you wish wine," said the woman, "you will have to wait till the
+master comes down."
+
+Ercole only answered by raising his head and throwing out his chin,
+which means "no" in gesture language. He threw pieces of the bread and
+the rind of the cheese to his dog. Nino caught each fragment in the air
+with a snap that would have lamed a horse for a month. The woman glanced
+nervously at the animal, each time she heard his jagged teeth close.
+
+Paoluccio appeared in due time, without coat or waistcoat, and with his
+sleeves rolled up above the elbows, as if he had been washing. If he
+had, the operation had succeeded very imperfectly. He glanced at Ercole
+as he passed in.
+
+"Good-morning," he said, for he made it a point to be polite to
+customers, even when they brought their own food.
+
+"Good-morning," answered Ercole, looking at him curiously.
+
+Possibly there was something unusual in the tone of Ercole's voice, for
+Nino suddenly sat up beside his master's knee, forgetting all about the
+bread, and watched Paoluccio too, as if he expected something. But
+nothing happened. Paoluccio opened a cupboard in the wall with a key he
+carried, took out a bottle of the coarse aniseed spirits which the Roman
+peasants drink, and filled himself a small glass of the stuff, which he
+tossed off with evident pleasure. Then he filled his pipe, lit it
+carefully, and went to the door again. By this time, though he had
+apparently not bestowed the least attention on Ercole, he had made up
+his mind about him, and was not mistaken. Ercole belonged to the better
+class of customers.
+
+"You come from the Roman shore?" he said, with an interrogation.
+
+"To serve you," Ercole assented, with evident willingness to enter into
+conversation. "I am a keeper and watchman on the lands of Signor
+Corbario."
+
+Paoluccio took his pipe from his mouth and nodded twice.
+
+"That is a very rich gentleman, I have heard," he observed. "He owns
+much land."
+
+"It all belongs to his stepson, now that the young gentleman is of age,"
+Ercole answered. "But as it was his mother's, and she married Signor
+Corbario, we have the habit of the name."
+
+"What is the name of the stepson?" asked Paoluccio.
+
+"Consalvi," Ercole replied.
+
+Paoluccio said nothing to this, but lit his pipe again with a sulphur
+match.
+
+"Evil befall the soul of our government!" he grumbled presently, with
+insufficient logic, but meaning that the government sold bad tobacco.
+
+"You must have heard of the young gentleman," Ercole said. "His name is
+Marcello Consalvi. They say that he lay ill for a long time at an inn on
+this road--"
+
+"For the love of heaven, don't talk to me about Marcello Consalvi!"
+cried Paoluccio, suddenly in a fury. "Blood of a dog! If you had not the
+face of an honest man I should think you were another of those newspaper
+men in disguise, pigs and animals that they are and sons of evil
+mothers, and ill befall their wicked dead, and their little dead ones,
+and those that shall be born to them!"
+
+Paoluccio's eyes were bloodshot and he spat furiously, half across the
+road. Nino watched him and hitched the side of his upper lip on one of
+his lower fangs, which produced the effect of a terrific smile. Ercole
+was unmoved.
+
+"I suppose," he observed, "that they said it happened in your inn."
+
+"And why should it happen in my inn, rather than in any other inn?"
+inquired Paoluccio angrily.
+
+"Indeed," said Ercole, "I cannot imagine why they should say that it
+did! Some one must have put the story about. A servant, perhaps, whom
+you sent away."
+
+"We did not send Regina away," answered Paoluccio, still furious. "She
+ran away in the night, about that time. But, as you say, she may have
+invented the story and sent the newspaper men here to worry our lives
+with their questions, out of mere spite."
+
+"Who was this Regina?" Ercole asked. "What has she to do with it?"
+
+"Regina? She was the servant girl we had before this one. We took her
+out of charity."
+
+"The daughter of some relation, no doubt," Ercole suggested.
+
+"May that never be, if it please the Madonna!" cried Paoluccio. "A
+relation? Thank God we have always been honest people in my father's
+house! No, it was not a relation. She came of a crooked race. Her mother
+took a lover, and her father killed him, here on the Frascati road, and
+almost killed her too; but the law gave him the right and he went free."
+
+"And then, what did he do?" asked Ercole, slowly putting the remains of
+his bread into his canvas bag.
+
+"What did he do? He went away and never came back. What should he do?"
+
+"Quite right. And the woman, what became of her?"
+
+"She took other men, for she had no shame. And at last one of them was
+jealous, and struck her on the head with a paving stone, not meaning to
+kill her; but she died."
+
+"Oh, she died, did she?"
+
+"She died. For she was always spiteful. And so that poor man went to the
+galleys, merely for hitting her on the head, and not meaning to kill
+her."
+
+"And you took the girl for your servant?"
+
+"Yes. She was old enough to work, and very strong, so we took her for
+charity. But for my part, I was glad when she ran away, for she grew up
+handsome, and with that blood there surely would have been a scandal
+some day."
+
+"One sees that you are a very charitable person," Ercole observed
+thoughtfully. "The girl must have been very ungrateful if she told
+untrue stories about your inn, after all you had done for her. You had
+nourished a viper in your house."
+
+"That is what my wife says," Paoluccio answered, now quite calm. "Those
+are my wife's very words. As for believing that the young man was ever
+in this house, I tell you that the story is a wicked lie. Where should
+we have put him? In the cellar with the hogsheads, or in the attic with
+the maid? or in our own room? Tell me where we could have put him! Or
+perhaps they will say that he slept on the ceiling, like the flies? They
+will say anything, chattering, chattering, and coming here with their
+questions and their photographing machines, and their bicycles, and the
+souls of their dead! If you do not believe me, you can see the place
+where they say that he lay! I tell you there is not room for a cat in
+this house. Believe me if you like!"
+
+"How can I not believe such a respectable person as you seem to be?"
+inquired Ercole gravely.
+
+"I thank you. And since it happens that you are in the service of the
+young gentleman himself, I hope you will tell him that if he fancies he
+was in my house, he is mistaken."
+
+"Surely," said Ercole.
+
+"Besides," exclaimed Paoluccio, "how could he know where he was? Are not
+all inns on these roads alike? He was in another, that is all. And what
+had I to do with that?"
+
+"Nothing," assented Ercole. "I thank you for your conversation. I will
+take a glass of the aniseed before I go, if you please."
+
+"Are you going already?" asked Paoluccio, as he went to fetch the bottle
+and the little cast glass from which he himself had drunk.
+
+"Yes," Ercole answered. "I go to Rome. I stopped to refresh myself."
+
+"It will be hot on the road," said Paoluccio, setting the full glass
+down on the table. "Two sous," he added, as Ercole produced his old
+sheepskin purse. "Thank you."
+
+"Thank you," Ercole answered, and tipped the spirits down his throat.
+"Yes, it will be hot, but what can one do? We are used to it, my dog and
+I. We are not of wax to melt in the sun."
+
+"It is true that this dog does not look as if he were wax," Paoluccio
+remarked, for the qualities of Nino had not escaped him.
+
+"No. He is not of wax. He is of sugar, all sugar! He has a very sweet
+nature."
+
+"One would not say so," answered Paoluccio doubtfully. "If you go to the
+city you must muzzle him, or they will make you pay a fine. Otherwise
+they will kill him for you."
+
+"Do you think any one would try to catch him if I let him run loose?"
+asked Ercole, as if in doubt. "He killed a full-grown wolf before he was
+two years old, and not long ago he worried a sheepdog of the Campagna as
+if it had been nothing but a lamb. Do you think any one would try to
+catch him?"
+
+"If it fell to me, I should go to confession first," said Paoluccio.
+
+So Ercole left the inn and trudged along the road to Rome with Nino at
+his heels, without once looking behind him; past the Baldinotti houses
+and into the Via Appia Nuova, and on into the city through the gate of
+San Giovanni, where the octroi men stopped him and made him show them
+what he had in his canvas bag. When they saw that there was no cheese
+left and but little bread, they let him go by without paying anything.
+
+He went up to the left and sat down on the ground under the trees that
+are there, and he filled his little clay pipe and smoked a while,
+without even speaking to his dog. It was quiet, for it was long past the
+hour when the carts come in, and the small boys were all gone to school,
+and the great paved slope between the steps of the basilica and the gate
+was quite deserted, and very white and hot.
+
+Ercole was not very tired, though he had walked all night and a good
+part of the morning. He could have gone on walking till sunset if he had
+chosen, all the way to his little stone house near Ardea, stopping by
+the way to get a meal; and then he would not have slept much longer than
+usual. A Roman peasant in his native Campagna, with enough to eat and a
+little wine, is hard to beat at walking. Ercole had not stopped to rest,
+but to think.
+
+When he had thought some time, he looked about to see if any one were
+looking at him, and he saw that the only people in sight were a long way
+off. He took his big clasp-knife out of his pocket and opened it. As the
+clasp clicked at the back of the blade Nino woke and sat up, for the
+noise generally meant food.
+
+The blade was straight and clean, and tolerably sharp. Ercole looked at
+it critically, drew the edge over his coarse thumb-nail to find if there
+were any nick in the steel, and then scratched the same thumb-nail with
+it, as one erases ink with a knife, to see how sharp it was. The point
+was like a needle, but he considered that the edge was dull, and he drew
+it up and down one of the brown barrels of his gun, as carefully as he
+would have sharpened a razor on a whetstone. After that he stropped it
+on the tough leathern strap by which he slung the gun over his shoulder
+when he walked; when he was quite satisfied, he shut the knife again and
+put it back into his pocket, and fell to thinking once more.
+
+Nino watched the whole operation with bloodshot eyes, his tongue hanging
+out and quivering rhythmically as he panted in the heat to cool himself.
+When the knife disappeared, and the chance of a crust with it, the dog
+got up, deliberately turned his back to his master, and sat down again
+to look at the view.
+
+"You see," said Ercole to himself and Nino, "this is an affair which
+needs thought. One must be just. It is one thing to kill a person's
+body, but it is quite another thing to kill a person's soul. That would
+be a great sin, and besides, it is not necessary. Do I wish harm to any
+one? No. It is justice. Perhaps I shall go to the galleys. Well, I shall
+always have the satisfaction, and it will be greater if I can say that
+this person is in Paradise. For I do not wish harm to any one."
+
+Having said this in a tone which Nino could hear, Ercole sat thinking
+for some time longer, and then he rose and slung his gun over his
+shoulder, and went out from under the trees into the glaring heat, as if
+he were going into the city. But instead of turning to the left, up the
+hill, he went on by the broad road that follows the walls, till he came
+to the ancient church of Santa Croce. He went up the low steps to the
+deep porch and on to the entrance at the left. Nino followed him very
+quietly.
+
+Ercole dipped his finger into the holy water and crossed himself, and
+then went up the nave, making as little noise as he could with his
+hob-nailed boots. An old monk in white was kneeling at a broad
+praying-stool before an altar on the left. Ercole stood still near him,
+waiting for him to rise, and slowly turning his soft hat in his hands,
+as if it were a rosary. He kept his eyes on the monk's face, studying
+the aged features. Presently the old man had finished his prayer and got
+upon his feet slowly, and looked at Ercole and then at Nino. Ercole
+moved forward a step, and stood still in an attitude of respect.
+
+"What do you desire, my son?" asked the monk, very quietly. "Do you wish
+to confess?"
+
+"No, father, not to-day," answered Ercole. "I come to pray you to say
+three masses for the soul of a person who died suddenly. I have also
+brought the money. Only tell me how much it will be, and I will pay."
+
+"You shall give what you will, my son," the monk said, "and I will say
+the masses myself."
+
+Ercole got out his sheepskin purse, untied the strings, and looked into
+it, weighing it in his hand. Then he seemed to hesitate. The monk looked
+on quietly.
+
+"It is of your own free will," he said. "What you choose to give is for
+the community, and for this church, and for the chapel of Saint Helen.
+It is better that you know."
+
+Ercole drew the mouth of the purse together again and returned it to the
+inside of his waistcoat, from which he produced a large old leathern
+pocket-book.
+
+"I will give five francs," he said, "for I know that if you say the
+masses yourself, they will be all good ones."
+
+A very faint and gentle smile flitted over the aged face. Ercole held
+out the small note, and the monk took it.
+
+"Thank you," he said. "Shall I say the masses for a man or a woman?"
+
+"As it pleases you, father," Ercole answered.
+
+"Eh?" The old monk looked surprised.
+
+"It does not matter," Ercole explained. "Is not a mass for a man good
+for a woman also?"
+
+"We say 'his' soul or 'her' soul, as the case may be, my son."
+
+"Is that written in the book of the mass?" inquired Ercole
+distrustfully.
+
+"Yes. Also, most people tell us the baptismal name of the dead person."
+
+"Must I do that too?" Ercole asked, by no means pleased.
+
+"Not unless you like," the monk answered, looking at him with some
+curiosity.
+
+"But it is in the book of the mass that you must say 'his' or 'her'
+soul?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then the masses will not be good unless you say the right word." Ercole
+paused a moment in deep thought, and looked down at his hat. "It will be
+better to say the masses for a female," he said at length, without
+meeting the monk's eyes.
+
+"Very well," the latter answered. "I will say the first mass to-morrow."
+
+"Thank you," said Ercole. "My respects!"
+
+He made a sort of bow and hurried away, followed by Nino. The old monk
+watched him thoughtfully, and shook his head once or twice, for he
+guessed something of the truth, though by no means all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+"One might almost think that you wished to marry Aurora yourself," said
+Corbario, with a sneer.
+
+He was standing with his back to the fire in the great library of the
+villa, for it was late autumn again; it was raining hard and the air was
+raw and chilly.
+
+"You may think what you please," Marcello answered, leaning back in his
+deep leathern chair and taking up a book. "I am not going to argue with
+you."
+
+"Insufferable puppy," growled Folco, almost under his teeth; but
+Marcello heard.
+
+He rose instantly and faced the elder man without the slightest fear or
+hesitation.
+
+"If this were not my house, and you my guest, I would have you put out
+of doors by the servants," he said, in a tone Corbario had never heard
+before. "As it is, I only advise you to go before I lose my temper
+altogether."
+
+Corbario backed till his heels were against the fender, and tried to
+smile.
+
+"My dear Marcello!" he protested. "What nonsense is this? You know I am
+not in earnest!"
+
+"I am," said Marcello quietly enough, but not moving.
+
+The half-invalid boy was not a boy any longer, nor an invalid either,
+and he had found his hold on things, since the days when Folco had been
+used to lead him as easily as if he had no will of his own. No one would
+have judged him to be a weak man now, physically or mentally. His frame
+was spare and graceful still, but there was energy and directness in his
+movements, his shoulders were square and he held his head high; yet it
+was his face that had changed most, though in a way very hard to define.
+A strong manhood sometimes follows a weak boyhood, very much to the
+surprise of those who have long been used to find feebleness where
+strength has suddenly developed. Marcello Consalvi had never been
+cowardly, or even timid; he had only been weak in will as in body, an
+easy prey to the man who had tried to ruin him, body and soul, in the
+hope of sending him to his grave.
+
+"I really cannot understand you, my dear boy," Corbario said very
+sweetly. "You used to be so gentle! But now you fly into a passion for
+the merest thing."
+
+"I told you that I would not argue with you," Marcello said, keeping his
+temper. "This is my house, and I choose that you should leave it at
+once. Go your way, and leave me to go mine. You are amply provided for,
+as long as you live, and you do not need my hospitality any longer,
+since you are no longer my guardian. Live where you please. You shall
+not stay here."
+
+"I certainly don't care to stay here if you don't want me," Folco
+answered. "But this is really too absurd! You must be going mad, to take
+such a tone with me!"
+
+"It is the only one which any honourable man who knows you would be
+inclined to take."
+
+"Take care! You are going too far."
+
+"Because you are under my roof? Yes, perhaps. As my guest, if I have
+been hasty, I apologise for expressing my opinion of you. I am going out
+now. I hope you will find it convenient to have left before I come in."
+
+Thereupon Marcello turned his back on Corbario, crossed the great
+library deliberately, and went out without looking round.
+
+Folco was left alone, and his still face did not even express surprise
+or annoyance. He had indeed foreseen the coming break, ever since he had
+returned to the villa three weeks earlier, when Marcello had received
+him with evident coldness, not even explaining where he had been since
+they had last parted. But Folco had not expected that the rupture would
+come so suddenly, still less that he was literally to be turned out of
+the house which he still regarded as his own, and in which he had spent
+so many prosperous years. There had, indeed, been some coldly angry
+words between the two men. Marcello had told Folco quite plainly that he
+meant to be the master, and that he was of age, and should regulate his
+own life as he pleased, and he had expressed considerable disgust at the
+existence Folco had been leading in Paris and elsewhere; and Folco had
+always tried to laugh it off, calling Marcello prudish and
+hypersensitive in matters of morality, which he certainly was not. Once
+he had attempted an appeal to Marcello's former affection, recalling
+his mother's love for them both, but a look had come into the young
+man's eyes just then which even Corbario did not care to face again, and
+the relations between the two had become more strained from that time
+on.
+
+It might seem almost incredible that a man capable of the crimes
+Corbario had committed in cold blood, for a settled purpose, should show
+so little power of following the purpose to its accomplishment after
+clearing the way to it by a murder; but every one who has had to do with
+criminals is aware that after any great exertion of destructive energy
+they are peculiarly subject to a long reaction of weakness which very
+often leads to their own destruction. If this were not a natural law, if
+criminals could exert continually the same energy and command the same
+superhuman cunning which momentarily helped them to perpetrate a crime,
+the world would be in danger of being possessed and ruled by them,
+instead of being mercifully, and perhaps too much, inclined to treat
+them as degenerates and madmen. Their conduct after committing a murder,
+for instance, seems to depend much more on their nerves than on their
+intelligence, and the time almost invariably comes when their nerves
+break down. It is upon the moment when this collapse of the will sets in
+that the really experienced detective counts, knowing that it may be
+hastened or retarded by circumstances quite beyond the murderer's
+control. The life of a murderer, after the deed, is one long fight with
+such circumstances, and if he once loses his coolness he is himself
+almost as surely lost as a man who is carried away by his temper in a
+duel with swords.
+
+After Folco had killed his wife and had just failed to kill Marcello, he
+had behaved with wonderful calm and propriety for a little while; but
+before long the old wild longing for excitement and dissipation, so long
+kept down during his married life, had come upon him with irresistible
+force, and he had yielded to it. Then, in hours of reaction, in the
+awful depression that comes with the grey dawn after a night of wine and
+pleasure and play, terrible little incidents had come back to his
+memory. He had recalled Kalmon's face and quiet words, and his own
+weakness when he had first come to see Marcello in the hospital--that
+abject terror which both Regina and the doctor must have noticed--and
+his first impression that Marcello no longer trusted him as formerly,
+and many other things; and each time he had been thus disturbed, he had
+plunged deeper into the dissipation which alone could cloud such
+memories and keep them out of sight for a time; till at last he had come
+to live in a continual transition from recklessness to fear and from
+fear to recklessness, and he had grown to detest the very sight of
+Marcello so heartily that an open quarrel was almost a relief.
+
+If he had been his former self, he would undoubtedly have returned to
+his original purpose of killing Marcello outright, since he had not
+succeeded in killing him by dissipation. But his nerve was not what it
+had been, and the circumstances were not in his favour. Moreover,
+Marcello was now of age, and had probably made a will, unknown to
+Corbario, in which case the fortune would no longer revert to the
+latter. The risk was too great, since it would no longer be undertaken
+for a certainty amounting to millions. It was better to be satisfied
+with the life-interest in one-third of the property, which he already
+enjoyed, and which supplied him with abundant means for amusing himself.
+
+It was humiliating to be turned out of the house by a mere boy, as he
+still called Marcello, but he was not excessively sensitive to
+humiliation, and he promised himself some sort of satisfactory vengeance
+before long. What surprised him most was that the first quarrel should
+have been about Aurora. He had more than once said in conversation that
+he meant to marry the girl, and Marcello had chosen to say nothing in
+answer to the statement; but when Folco had gone so far as to hint that
+Aurora was in love with him and was about to accept him, Marcello had as
+good as given him the lie direct, and a few more words had led to the
+outbreak recorded at the beginning of this chapter.
+
+As a matter of fact Corbario understood what had led to it better than
+Marcello himself, who had no very positive reason for entirely
+disbelieving his stepfather's words. The Contessa and her daughter had
+returned to Rome, and Corbario often went to see them, whereas Marcello
+had not been even once. When Marcello had last seen Folco in the
+Engadine, he had left him sitting in their little room at the hotel.
+Folco was not at all too old to marry Aurora; he was rich, at least for
+life, and Aurora was poor; he was good-looking, accomplished, and ready
+with his tongue. It was by no means impossible that he might make an
+impression on the girl and ultimately win her. Besides, Marcello felt
+that odd little resentment against Aurora which very young men sometimes
+feel against young girls, whom they have thought they loved, or are
+really about to love, or are afraid of loving, which makes them rude, or
+unjust, or both, towards those perhaps quite unconscious maidens, and
+which no woman can ever understand.
+
+"My dear Harry, why will you be so disagreeable to Mary?" asks the
+wondering mother. "She is such a charming girl, and only the other day
+she was saying that you are such a nice boy!"
+
+"Humph!" snorts Harry rudely, and forthwith lights his pipe and goes off
+to the stables to growl in peace, or across country, or to his boat, or
+to any other heavenly place not infested by women.
+
+There had been moments when, in his heart, Marcello had almost said that
+it would serve Aurora right to be married to Corbario; yet at the first
+hint from the latter that she was at all in danger of such a fate,
+Marcello had broken out as if the girl's good name had been attacked,
+and had turned his stepfather out of the house in a very summary
+fashion.
+
+Having done so, he left the villa on foot, though it was raining hard,
+and walked quickly past San Pietro in Montorio and down the hill towards
+Trastevere. The southwest wind blew the rain under his umbrella; it was
+chilly as well as wet, and a few big leaves were beginning to fall from
+the plane-trees.
+
+He was not going to the little house, where Regina sat by the window
+looking at the rain and wishing that he would come soon. When he was
+down in the streets he hailed the first cab he saw, gave the man an
+address in the Forum of Trajan, and climbed in under the hood, behind
+the dripping leathern apron, taking his umbrella with him and getting
+thoroughly wet, as is inevitable when one takes a Roman cab in the rain.
+
+The Contessa was out, in spite of the weather, but Marcello asked if
+Aurora would see him, and presently he was admitted to the drawing-room,
+where she was sitting beside a rather dreary little fire, cutting a new
+book. She threw it down and rose to meet him, as little outwardly
+disturbed as if they had seen each other constantly during the past two
+years. She gave him her hand quietly, and they sat down and looked at
+the fire.
+
+"It won't burn," Aurora said, rather disconsolately. "It never did burn
+very well, but those horrid people who have had the apartment for two
+years have spoilt the fireplace altogether."
+
+"I remember that it used to smoke," Marcello answered, going down on his
+knees and beginning to move the little logs into a better position.
+
+"Thank you," Aurora said, watching him. "You won't succeed, but it's
+good of you to try."
+
+Marcello said nothing, and presently he took the queer little Roman
+bellows, and set to work to blow upon the smouldering spots where the
+logs touched each other. In a few seconds a small flame appeared, and
+soon the fire was burning tolerably.
+
+"How clever you are!" Aurora laughed quietly.
+
+Marcello rose and sat upon a low chair, instead of on the sofa beside
+her. For a while neither spoke, and he looked about him rather
+awkwardly, while Aurora watched the flames. It was long since he had
+been in the room, and it looked shabby after the rather excessive
+magnificence of the villa on the Janiculum, for which Corbario's taste
+had been largely responsible. It was just a little shabby, too, compared
+with the dainty simplicity of the small house in Trastevere. The
+furniture, the carpets, and the curtains were two years older than when
+he had seen them last, and had been unkindly used by the tenants to whom
+the Contessa had sub-let the apartment in order to save the rent.
+Marcello missed certain pretty things that he had been used to see
+formerly, some bits of old Saxe, a little panel by an early master, a
+chiselled silver cup in which there always used to be flowers. He
+wondered where these things were, and felt that the room looked rather
+bare without them.
+
+"It burns very well now," said Aurora, still watching the fire.
+
+"What has become of the old silver cup," Marcello asked, "and all the
+little things that used to be about?"
+
+"We took them away with us when we let the apartment, and they are not
+unpacked yet, though we have been here two months."
+
+"Two months?"
+
+"Yes. I was wondering whether you were ever coming to see us again!"
+
+"Were you? I fancied that you would not care very much to see me now."
+
+Aurora said nothing to this, and they both looked at the fire for some
+time. The gentle sound of the little flames was cheerful, and gave them
+both the impression of a third person, talking quietly.
+
+"I should not have come to-day," Marcello said at last, "except that
+something has happened."
+
+"Nothing bad, I hope!" Aurora looked up with a sudden anxiety that
+surprised him.
+
+"Bad? No. At least, I think not. Why are you startled?"
+
+"I have had a headache," Aurora explained. "I am a little nervous, I
+fancy. What is it that has happened?"
+
+Marcello glanced at her doubtfully before he answered. Her quick
+interest in whatever chanced to him took him back to the old times in an
+instant. The place was familiar and quiet; her voice was like forgotten
+music, once delightful, and now suddenly recalled; her face had only
+changed to grow more womanly.
+
+"You never thought of marrying Folco, did you?" he asked, all at once,
+and a little surprised at the sound of his own words.
+
+"I?" Aurora started again, but not with anxiety. "How can you think such
+a thing?"
+
+"I don't think it; but an hour ago, at the villa, he told me in almost
+so many words that you loved him and meant to accept him."
+
+A blush of honest anger rose in the girl's fair face, and subsided
+instantly.
+
+"And what did you say?" she asked, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in
+her tone.
+
+"I turned him out of the house," Marcello answered quietly.
+
+"Turned him out?" Aurora seemed amazed. "You turned him out because he
+told you that?"
+
+"That and other things. But that was the beginning of it. I told him
+that he was lying, and he called me names, and then I told him to go. He
+will be gone when I reach home."
+
+To Marcello's surprise, Aurora got up suddenly, crossed the room and
+went to one of the windows. Marcello rose, too, and stood still. She
+seemed to be looking out at the rain, but she had grasped one of the
+curtains tightly, and it looked as if she were pressing the other hand
+to her left side. For a second her head bent forward a little and her
+graceful shoulders moved nervously, as though she were trying to swallow
+something hard. Marcello watched her a moment, and then crossed the room
+and stood beside her.
+
+"What is it?" he asked in a low voice, and laying his hand gently on
+hers that held the curtain.
+
+She drew her own away quietly and turned her head. Her eyes were dry and
+bright, but there were deep bistre shadows under them that had not been
+there before, and the lower lids were swollen.
+
+"It is nothing," she answered, and then laughed nervously. "I am glad
+you have made your stepfather go away. It was time! I was afraid you
+were as good friends as ever."
+
+"We have not been on good terms since we parted in Pontresina. Do you
+remember when I left him in your sitting-room at the hotel? He had been
+trying to persuade me to go back to Paris with him at once. In fact--"
+he hesitated.
+
+"You intended to go," Aurora said, completing the sentence. "And then
+you changed your mind."
+
+"Yes. I could not do it. I cannot explain everything."
+
+"I understand without any explanation. I think you did right."
+
+She went back to the fireplace and sat down in the corner of the sofa,
+leaning far back and stretching out one foot to the fender in an
+unconscious attitude of perfect grace. In the grey afternoon the
+firelight began to play in her auburn hair. Now and then she glanced at
+Marcello with half-closed lids, and there was a suggestion of a smile on
+her lips. Marcello saw that in her way she was as beautiful as Regina,
+and he remembered how they had kissed, without a word, when the moon's
+rays quivered through the trees by the Roman shore, more than two years
+ago. They had been children then. All at once he felt a great longing to
+kneel down beside the sofa and throw his arms round her waist and kiss
+her once again; but at almost the same instant he thought of Regina,
+waiting for him by the window over there in Trastevere, and he felt the
+shame rising to his face; and he leaned back in his low chair, clasping
+his hands tightly over one knee, as if to keep himself from moving.
+
+"Marcello," Aurora began presently, but she got no further.
+
+"Yes?" Still he did not move.
+
+"I have something on my conscience." She laughed low. "No, it is
+serious!" she went on, as if reproving herself. "I have always felt that
+everything that has happened to you since we parted that morning by the
+shore has been my fault."
+
+"Why?" Marcello seemed surprised.
+
+"Because I called you a baby," she said. "If you had not been angry at
+that, if you had not turned away and left me suddenly--you were quite
+right, you know--you would not have been knocked down, you would not
+have wandered away and lost yourself. You would not have lost your
+memory, or been ill in a strange place, or--or all the rest! So it is
+all my fault, you see, from beginning to end."
+
+"How absurd!" Marcello looked at her and smiled.
+
+"No. I think it is true. But you have changed very much, Marcello. You
+are not a boy any longer. You have a will of your own now; you are a
+man. Do you mind my telling you that?"
+
+"Certainly not!" He smiled again.
+
+"I remember very well what you answered. You said that I should not
+laugh at you again. And that has come true. You said a good many other
+things. Do you remember?"
+
+"No. I was angry. What did I say? Everything that happened before I was
+hurt seems very far off."
+
+"It does not matter," Aurora answered softly. "I am glad you have
+forgotten, for though I was angry too, and did not care at the time, the
+things you said have hurt me since."
+
+"I am sorry," Marcello said gently, "very, very sorry. Forgive me."
+
+"It was all my fault, for I was teasing you for the mere fun of the
+thing. I was nothing but a silly school-girl then."
+
+"Yes. You have changed, too."
+
+"Am I at all what you expected I should be?" Aurora asked, after a
+moment's silence.
+
+Marcello glanced at her, and clasped his hands over his knee more
+tightly than ever.
+
+"I wish you were not," he answered in a low voice.
+
+"Don't wish that." Her tone was even lower than his.
+
+Neither spoke again for some time, and they did not look at each other.
+But the flames flickering in the small fireplace seemed to be talking,
+like a third person in the room. Aurora moved at last, and changed her
+position.
+
+"I am glad that you have quarrelled with your stepfather," she said. "He
+meant to do you all the harm he could. He meant you to die of the life
+you were leading."
+
+"You know that?" Marcello looked up quickly.
+
+"Yes. I have heard my mother and Professor Kalmon talking about it when
+they thought I was not listening. I always pretend that I am not
+listening when anybody talks about you." She laughed a little. "It is so
+much simpler," she added, as if to explain. "The Professor said that
+your stepfather was killing you by inches. Those were his words."
+
+"The Professor never liked him. But he was right. Have you seen him
+often?"
+
+"Yes." Aurora laughed again. "He always turns up wherever we are,
+pretending that it is the most unexpected meeting in the world. He is
+just like a boy!"
+
+"What do you mean? Is he in love with you?"
+
+"With me? No! He is madly in love with my mother! Fancy such a thing!
+When he found that we were coming back to Rome he gave up his
+professorship in Milan, and he has come to live here so as to be able to
+see her. So I hear them talking a great deal, and he seems to have found
+out a great many things about your stepfather which nobody ever knew. He
+takes an extraordinary interest in him for some reason or other."
+
+"What has he found out?" asked Marcello.
+
+"Enough to hang him, if people could be hanged in Italy," Aurora
+answered.
+
+"I should have thought Folco too clever to do anything really against
+the law," said Marcello, who did not seem much surprised at what she
+said.
+
+"The Professor believes that it was he that tried to kill you."
+
+"How is that possible?" Marcello asked, in great astonishment. "You
+would have seen him!"
+
+"I did. You had not been gone three minutes when he came round to the
+gap in the bank where I was standing. He came from the side towards
+which I had seen you go. It was perfectly impossible that he should not
+have met you. The Professor says he must have known that you were there,
+looking at the storm, but that he did not know that I was with you, and
+that he was lying in wait for you to strike you from behind. If we had
+gone back together he would not have shown himself, that's all, and he
+would have waited for a better chance. If I had only followed you I
+should have seen what happened."
+
+"That is the trouble," said Marcello thoughtfully. "No one ever saw what
+happened, and I remember nothing but that I fell forward, feeling that I
+had been struck on the back of the head. Did you not hear any sound?"
+
+"How could I, in such a gale as was blowing? It all looks dreadfully
+likely and quite possible, and the Professor is convinced that your
+stepfather has done some worse things."
+
+"Worse?"
+
+"Yes, because he did not fail in doing them, as he did when he tried to
+kill you."
+
+"But what must such a man be?" cried Marcello, suddenly breaking out in
+anger. "What must his life have been in all the years before my mother
+married him?"
+
+"He was a kind of adventurer in South America. I don't quite know what
+he did there, but Professor Kalmon has found out a great deal about him
+from the Argentine Republic, where he lived until he killed somebody and
+had to escape to Europe. If I were you I would go and see the Professor,
+since he is in Rome. He lives at No. 16, Via Sicilia. He will tell you a
+great deal about that man when he knows that you have parted for good."
+
+"I'll go and see him. Thank you. I cannot imagine that he could tell me
+anything worse than I have already heard."
+
+"Perhaps he may," Aurora answered very gravely.
+
+Then she was silent, and Marcello could not help looking at her as she
+leaned back in the corner of the sofa. Of all things, at that moment, he
+dreaded lest he should lose command of himself under the unexpected
+influence of her beauty, of old memories, of the failing light, of the
+tender shadows that still lingered under her eyes, of that exquisite
+small hand that lay idly on the sofa beside her, just within his reach.
+He rose abruptly, no longer trusting himself.
+
+"I must be going," he said.
+
+"Already? Why?" She looked up at him and their eyes met.
+
+"Because I cannot be alone with you any longer. I do not trust myself."
+
+"Yes, you do. You are a man now, and I trust you."
+
+He had spoken roughly and harshly in his momentary self-contempt, but
+her words were clear and quiet, and rang true. He stood still in silence
+for a moment.
+
+"And besides," she added softly, "she trusts you too."
+
+There was a little emphasis on the word "she" and in her tone that was a
+reproach, and he looked at her in wonder.
+
+"We cannot talk of her, you and I," she said, turning her eyes to the
+fire, "but you know what I mean, Marcello. It is not enough to be kind.
+We women do not think so much of that as you men fancy. You must be true
+as well."
+
+"I know it," Marcello answered, bending his head a little. "Good-bye,
+Aurora."
+
+"No. Not good-bye, for you will come again soon, and then again, and
+often."
+
+"Shall I?"
+
+"Yes, because we can trust each other, though we are fond of each other.
+We are not children any longer, as we used to be."
+
+"Then I will come sometimes."
+
+He took her hand, trying not to feel that it was in his, and he left her
+sitting by the rather dreary little fire, in the rather shabby room, in
+the grey twilight.
+
+As he drove through the wet streets, he went over all she had said, went
+over it again and again, till he knew her words by heart. But he did not
+try, or dare to try, to examine what he felt, and was going to feel. The
+manliness that had at last come to its full growth in him clung to the
+word "true" as she had meant it.
+
+But she, being left alone, leaned forward, resting her elbows on her
+knees and clasping her hands as she gazed at the smouldering remains of
+the fire. She had known well enough that she had loved him before he had
+come; she had known it too well when he had told her how he had driven
+Folco out of his house for having spoken of her too carelessly. Then the
+blood had rushed to her throat, beating hard, and if she had not gone
+quickly to the window she felt that she must have cried for joy. She was
+far too proud to let him guess that, but she was not too proud to love
+him, in spite of everything, though it meant that she compared herself
+with the peasant girl, and envied her, and in all maiden innocence would
+have changed places with her if she could.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+It was late in the evening when Marcello reached the villa, and was told
+that his stepfather had left suddenly with his valet, before sunset,
+taking a good deal of luggage with him. The coachman had driven him to
+the station and had seen no more of him. He had not left any message or
+note for Marcello. This was as it should be, and Marcello did not care
+to know whither he had gone, since he was out of the house. He was glad,
+however, that he had left Rome at once instead of going to an hotel,
+which would have made an interesting topic of conversation for gossips.
+
+Marcello vaguely wondered why Folco had told a perfectly gratuitous
+falsehood about Aurora, and whether he could possibly have lied merely
+for the sake of hurting him. If so, he had got his deserts. It mattered
+very little now, and it was a waste of thought to think of him at all.
+
+The young man had a big fire built in the library, and sat down in his
+favourite leathern chair under the shaded light. He was tired, but not
+sleepy, and he was glad to be alone at last, for he had felt Corbario's
+evil presence in the house, though they had met little of late, and it
+was a great relief to know that he would never return.
+
+He was glad to be alone, and yet he felt lonely, for the one condition
+did not make the other impossible. He was glad to be able to think in
+peace, but when he did think, he longed for some companionship in his
+thoughts, and he found that he was wishing himself back in the room that
+looked down upon the Forum of Trajan, with Aurora, and that she was
+telling him again that she could trust him; and yet the very thought
+seemed to mean that he was not to be trusted.
+
+Psychological problems are only interesting when they concern other
+people than ourselves, for there can be no problem where there is not a
+difficulty, and where the inner self is concerned there can be no
+difficulty that does not demand immediate solution if we are to find
+peace. Some men of very strong and thoughtful character are conscious of
+a sort of second self within themselves, to which they appeal in trouble
+as Socrates to his DÊmon; but most men, in trouble and alone, would turn
+to a friend if there were one at hand.
+
+Marcello had none, and he felt horribly lonely in his great house, as
+the faces of two women rose before him, on the right and left.
+
+But he was a man now, and as he sat there he determined to face the
+problem bravely and to solve it once and for ever by doing what was
+right, wheresoever he could convince himself that right lay, and without
+any regard for his own inclinations.
+
+He told himself that this must be possible, because where right and
+wrong were concerned it was never possible to hesitate long. A man is
+never so convinced that right is easy to distinguish and to do as when
+he has lately made up his mind to reform. Indeed, the weakness as well
+as the strength of all reformers lies in their blind conviction that
+whatever strikes them as right must be done immediately, with a haste
+that strongly resembles hurry, and with no regard for consequences. You
+might as well try, when an express train is running at full speed on the
+wrong track, to heave it over to the right one without stopping it and
+without killing the passengers. Yet most reformers of themselves and
+others, from the smallest to the greatest, seem to believe that this can
+be done, ought to be done, and must be done at once.
+
+Marcello was just then a reformer of this sort. He had become aware in
+the course of that afternoon that something was seriously wrong, and as
+his own will and character had served him well of late, he trusted both
+beforehand and set to work to find out the right track, with the
+distinct intention of violently transferring the train of his existence
+to it as soon as it had been discovered. He was very sure of the result.
+
+Besides, he had been brought up by a very religious woman, and a strong
+foundation of belief remained in him, and was really the basis of all
+his thinking about himself. He had been careless, thoughtless, reckless,
+since his mother had died, but he had never lost that something to which
+a man may best go back in trouble. Sometimes it hurt him, sometimes it
+comforted him vaguely, but he was always conscious that it was there,
+and had been there through all his wildest days. It was not a very
+reasoning belief, for he was not an intellectual man, but it was
+unchangeable and solid still in spite of all his past weakness. It bade
+him do right, blindly, and only because right was right; but it did not
+open his eyes to the terrible truth that whereas right is right, the
+Supreme Power, which is always in the right, does not take human life
+into consideration at all, and that a man is under all circumstances
+bound to consider the value of life to others, and sometimes its value
+to himself, when others depend upon him for their happiness, or safety,
+or welfare.
+
+Animated by the most sincere wish to find the right direction and follow
+it--perhaps because Aurora had said that she trusted him--yet blind to
+the dangers that beset his path, there is no knowing how many lives
+Marcello might not have wrecked by acting on the resolutions he
+certainly would have made if he had been left to himself another hour.
+
+He was deep in thought, his feet stretched out to the fire, his head
+leaning back against the leathern cushion of his chair, his eyes half
+closed, feeling that he was quite alone and beyond the reach of every
+one, if he chose to sit there until morning wrestling with his
+psychological problem.
+
+He was roused by the sharp buzz of the telephone instrument which stood
+on the writing-table. It was very annoying, and he wished he had turned
+it off before he had sat down, but since some one was calling he got up
+reluctantly to learn who wanted him at that hour. He glanced at the
+clock, and saw that it was nearly half-past ten. The instrument buzzed
+again as he reached the table.
+
+"I want to see Signor Consalvi at once; is it too late?" asked a man's
+voice anxiously.
+
+"I am Consalvi. Who are you, please?" asked Marcello.
+
+"Kalmon. Is it true that Corbario has left the villa?"
+
+"Yes. He left this afternoon."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"He drove to the railway station. I don't know where he is gone. He left
+no address."
+
+"--railway station--no address--" Marcello heard the words as Kalmon
+spoke to some other person at his elbow, wherever he was.
+
+"May I come at once?" Kalmon asked.
+
+"Yes. I am alone. I'll have the lower gate opened."
+
+"Thanks. I shall be at the gate in twenty minutes. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+Marcello hung up the receiver, rang the bell, and gave the order for the
+gate, adding that the gentleman who came was to be shown in at once.
+Then he sat down and waited.
+
+It was clear that Kalmon had learned of Corbario's departure from
+Aurora, perhaps through her mother. He had probably dined with them, for
+he was intimate at the house, and Aurora had spoken of Marcello's visit.
+There was no reason why she should not have done so, and yet Marcello
+wished that she had kept it to herself a little longer. It had meant so
+much to him, and it suddenly seemed as if it had meant nothing at all to
+her. She had perhaps repeated to her mother everything that had been
+said, or almost everything, for she was very fond of her.
+
+Marcello told himself roughly that since he had no right to love her,
+and was determined not to, he had no claim upon such little delicacies
+of discretion and silence on her part; and his problem stuck up its head
+again out of the deep water in which it lived, and glared at him, and
+shot out all sorts of questions like the wriggling tentacles of an
+octopus, inviting him to wrestle with them, if only to see how useless
+all wrestling must be. He rose again impatiently, took a cigar from a
+big mahogany box on the table, lit it and smoked savagely, walking up
+and down.
+
+It was half finished when the door opened and Kalmon was ushered in. He
+held out his hand as he came forward, with the air of a man who has no
+time to lose.
+
+"I am glad to see you," Marcello said.
+
+"And I am exceedingly glad that you were at home when I called you up,"
+Kalmon answered. "Have you really no idea where Corbario is?"
+
+"Not the slightest. I am only too glad to get rid of him. I suppose the
+Contessa told you--"
+
+"Yes. I was dining there. But she only told me half an hour ago, just as
+I was coming away, and I rushed home to get at the telephone."
+
+It occurred to Marcello that Kalmon need not have driven all the way to
+Via Sicilia from the Forum of Trajan merely for the sake of telephoning.
+
+"But what is the hurry?" asked Marcello. "Do sit down and explain! I
+heard this afternoon that you had strong suspicions as to Folco's part
+in what happened to me."
+
+"Something more than suspicions now," Kalmon answered, settling his big
+frame in a deep chair before the tire; "but I am afraid he has escaped."
+
+"Escaped? He has not the slightest idea that he is suspected!"
+
+"How do you know? Don't you see that as he is guilty, he must have soon
+begun to think that the change in your manner toward him was due to the
+fact that you suspected him, and that you turned him out because you
+guessed the truth, though you could not prove it?"
+
+"Perhaps," Marcello admitted, in a rather preoccupied tone. "The young
+lady seems to have repeated to her mother everything I said this
+afternoon," he added with evident annoyance. "Did the Contessa tell you
+why I quarrelled with Folco to-day?"
+
+"No. She merely said that there had been angry words and that you had
+asked him to leave the house. She herself was surprised, she said, and
+wondered what could have brought matters to a crisis at last."
+
+Marcello's face cleared instantly. Aurora had not told any one that he
+had quarrelled with his stepfather about her; that was quite evident,
+for there were not two more truthful people in the world than the
+Contessa and Kalmon, whose bright brown eyes were at that moment quietly
+studying his face.
+
+"Not that the fact matters in the least," said the Professor, resting
+his feet on the fender and exposing the broad soles of his wet
+walking-boots to the flame. "The important fact is that the man has
+escaped, and we must catch him."
+
+"But how are you so sure that it was he that attacked me? You cannot
+arrest a man on suspicion, without going through a great many
+formalities. You cannot possibly have got an eye-witness to the fact,
+and so it must be a matter of suspicion after all, founded on a certain
+amount of rather weak circumstantial evidence. Now, if it was he that
+tried to kill me, he failed, for I am alive, and perfectly well. Why not
+let him alone, since I have got rid of him?"
+
+"For a very good reason, which I think I had better not tell you."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I am not sure what you would do if you were told it suddenly. Are your
+nerves pretty good? You used to be a delicate boy, though I confess that
+you look much stronger now."
+
+"You need not fear for my nerves," Marcello answered with a short laugh.
+"If they are sound after what I have been through in the last two years
+they will stand anything!"
+
+"Yes. Perhaps you had better know, though I warn you that what I am
+going to say will be a shock to you, of which you do not dream."
+
+"You must be exaggerating!" Marcello smiled incredulously. "You had
+better tell me at once, or I shall imagine it is much worse than it is."
+
+"It could not be," Kalmon answered. "It is hard even to tell, and not
+only because what happened was in a distant way my fault."
+
+"Your fault? For heaven's sake tell me what the matter is, and let us be
+done with it!"
+
+"Corbario wanted to get possession of your whole fortune. That is why he
+tried to kill you."
+
+"Yes. Is that all? You have made me understand that already."
+
+"He had conceived the plan before your mother's death," said Kalmon.
+
+"That would not surprise me either. But how do you know it?"
+
+"Do you remember that discovery of mine, that I called 'the sleeping
+death'?"
+
+"Yes. What has that to do with it?" Marcello's expression changed.
+
+"Corbario stole one of the tablets from the tube in my pocket, while I
+was asleep that night."
+
+"What?" Marcello began to grow pale.
+
+"Your mother died asleep," said Kalmon in a very low voice.
+
+Marcello was transfixed with horror, and grasped the arms of his chair.
+His face was livid. Kalmon watched him, and continued.
+
+"Yes. Corbario did it. Your mother used to take phenacetine tablets when
+she had headaches. They were very like the tablets of my poison in size
+and shape. Corbario stole into my room when I was sound asleep, took one
+of mine, and dropped in one of hers. Then he put mine amongst the
+phenacetine ones. She took it, slept, and died."
+
+Marcello gasped for breath, his eyes starting from his head.
+
+"You see," Kalmon went on, "it was long before I found that my tablets
+had been tampered with. There had been seven in the tube. I knew that,
+and when I glanced at the tube next day there were seven still. The tube
+was of rather thick blue glass, if you remember, so that the very small
+difference between the one tablet and the rest could not be seen through
+it. I went to Milan almost immediately, and when I got home I locked up
+the tube in a strong-box. It was not until long afterwards, when I
+wanted to make an experiment, that I opened the tube and emptied the
+contents into a glass dish. Then I saw that one tablet was unlike the
+rest. I saw that it had been made by a chemist and not by myself. I
+analysed it and found five grains of phenacetine."
+
+Marcello leaned back, listening intently, and still deadly pale.
+
+"You did not know that I was trying to find out how you had been hurt,
+that I was in communication with the police from the first, that I came
+to Rome and visited you in the hospital before you recovered your
+memory. The Contessa was very anxious to know the truth about her old
+friend's son, and I did what I could. That was natural. Something told
+me that Corbario had tried to kill you, and I suspected him, but it is
+only lately that I have got all the evidence we need. There is not a
+link lacking. Well, when I came to Rome that time, it chanced that I met
+Corbario at the station. He had come by the same train, and was looking
+dreadfully ill. That increased my suspicion, for I knew that his anxiety
+must be frightful, since you might have seen him when he struck you, and
+might recognise him, and accuse him. Yet he could not possibly avoid
+meeting you. Imagine what that man must have felt. He tried to smile
+when he saw me, and said he wished he had one of those sleeping tablets
+of mine. You understand. He thought I had already missed the one he had
+taken, though I had not, and that he had better disarm any possible
+suspicion by speaking of the poison carelessly. Then his face turned
+almost yellow, and he nearly fainted. He said it was the heat, and I
+helped him to his carriage. He looked like a man terrified out of his
+senses, and I remembered the fact afterwards, when I found that one
+tablet had been stolen; but at the time I attributed it all to his fear
+of facing you. Now we know the truth. He tried to murder you, and on the
+same day he poisoned your mother."
+
+Kalmon sat quite still when he had finished, and for a long time
+Marcello did not move, and made no sound. At last he spoke in a dull
+voice.
+
+"I want to kill him myself."
+
+The Professor glanced at him and nodded slowly, as if he understood the
+simple instinct of justice that moved him.
+
+"If I see him, I shall kill him," Marcello said slowly. "I am sure I
+shall."
+
+"I am afraid that he has escaped," Kalmon answered. "Of course there is
+a possibility that he may have had some object in deceiving your
+coachman by driving to the railway station, but it is not at all likely.
+He probably took the first train to the north."
+
+"But he can be stopped at the frontier!"
+
+"Do you think Corbario is the man to let himself be trapped easily if he
+knows that he is pursued?" asked Kalmon incredulously. "I do not."
+
+He rose from his chair and began to walk up and down, his hands behind
+him and his head bent.
+
+Marcello paid no attention to him and was silent for a long time,
+sitting quite motionless and scarcely seeming to breathe. What he felt
+he never could have told afterwards; he only knew that he suffered in
+every fibre of his brain and body, with every nerve of his heart and in
+every secret recess of his soul. His mother seemed to have been dead so
+long, beyond the break in his memory. The dreadful truth he had just
+heard made her die again before his eyes, by the hand of the man whom he
+and she had trusted.
+
+"Kalmon," he said at last, and the Professor stopped short in his walk.
+"Kalmon, do you think she knows?"
+
+It was like the cry of a child, but it came from a man who was already
+strong. Kalmon could only shake his head gravely; he could find nothing
+to say in answer to such a question, and yet he was too human and kind
+and simple-hearted not to understand the words that rose to Marcello's
+lips.
+
+"Then she was happy to the end--then she still believes in him."
+
+Kalmon turned his clear eyes thoughtfully towards Marcello's face.
+
+"She is gone," he answered. "She knows the great secret now. The rest is
+nothing to the dead. But we are living and it is much to us. The man
+must be brought to justice, and you must help me to bring him down, if
+we have to hunt him round the world."
+
+"By God, I will!" said Marcello, in the tone of one who takes a solemn
+obligation.
+
+He rose and stood upright, as if he were ready, and though he was still
+pale there was no look of weak horror left in his face, nor any weakness
+at all.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Kalmon. "I would rather see you so. Now listen to me,
+and collect your thoughts, Marcello. Ercole is in Rome. You remember
+Ercole, your keeper at the cottage by the shore? Yes. I got the last
+link in the evidence about Corbario's attack on you from him to-day. He
+is a strange fellow. He has known it since last summer and has kept it
+to himself. But he is one of those diabolically clever peasants that one
+meets in the Campagna, and he must have his reasons. I told him to sleep
+at my house to-night, and when I went home he was sitting up in the
+entry with his dog. I have sent him to the station to find out whether
+Corbario really left or not. You don't think he will succeed? I tell you
+there are few detectives to be compared with one of those fellows when
+they are on the track of a man they hate. I told him to come here, no
+matter how late it might be, since he is your man. I suppose he can get
+in?"
+
+"Of course. There is a night-bell for the porter. Ercole knows that.
+Besides, the porter will not go to bed as long as you are here. While we
+are waiting for him, tell me what Ercole has found out."
+
+They sat down again, and Kalmon told Marcello the sailor's story of what
+his captain had seen from the deck of the brigantine. Marcello listened
+gravely.
+
+"I remember that there was a small vessel very far in," he said. "Aurora
+will remember it, too, for she watched it and spoke of it. We thought it
+must run aground on the bar, it was so very near."
+
+"Yes. She remembers it, too. The evidence is complete."
+
+There was silence again. Marcello threw another log upon the fire, and
+they waited. Kalmon smoked thoughtfully, but Marcello leaned back in his
+chair, covering his eyes with one hand. The pain had not begun to be
+dulled yet, and he could only sit still and bear it.
+
+At last the door opened, and a servant said that Ercole was waiting, and
+had been ordered to come, no matter how late it was. A moment later he
+appeared, and for once without his dog.
+
+He stood before the door as it closed behind him waiting to be told to
+come forward. Marcello spoke kindly to him.
+
+"Come here," he said. "It is a long time since we saw each other, and
+now we are in a hurry."
+
+Ercole's heavy boots rang on the polished floor as he obeyed and came up
+to the table. He looked gloomily and suspiciously at both men.
+
+"Well?" said Kalmon, encouraging him to speak.
+
+"He is still in Rome," Ercole answered. "How do I know it? I began to
+ask the porters and the under station-masters who wear red caps, and the
+woman who sells newspapers and cigars at the stand, and the man who
+clips the tickets at the doors of the waiting-rooms. 'Did you see a
+gentleman, so and so, with a servant, so and so, and much luggage, going
+away by the train? For I am his keeper from the Roman shore, and he told
+me to be here when he went away, to give him a certain answer.' So I
+said, going from one to another, and weeping to show that it was a very
+urgent matter. And many shook their heads and laughed at me. But at last
+a porter heard, and asked if the gentleman were so and so. And I said
+yes, that he was so and so, and his servant was so and so, and that the
+gentleman was a rich gentleman. And the porter said, 'See what a
+combination! That is the gentleman who had all his luggage brought in
+this afternoon, to be weighed; but it was not weighed, for he came back
+after a quarter of an hour, and took some small things and had them put
+upon a cab, but the other boxes were left in deposit.' Then I took out
+four sous and showed them to the porter, and he led me to a certain
+hall, and showed me the luggage, which is that of the man we seek, and
+it is marked 'F.C.' So when I had seen, I made a show of being joyful,
+and gave the porter five sous instead of four. And he was very
+contented. This is the truth. So I say, he is still in Rome."
+
+"I told you so," said Kalmon, looking at Marcello.
+
+"Excuse me, but what did you tell the young gentleman?" asked Ercole
+suspiciously.
+
+"That you would surely find out," Kalmon answered.
+
+"I have found out many things," said Ercole gloomily.
+
+His voice was very harsh just then, as if speaking so much had made him
+hoarse.
+
+"He took some of his things away because he meant to spend the night in
+Rome," Kalmon said thoughtfully. "He means to leave to-morrow, perhaps
+by an early train. If we do not find him to-night, we shall not catch
+him in Rome at all."
+
+"Surely," said Ercole, "but Rome is very big, and it is late."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It was still raining when the three men left the villa, and the night
+was very dark, for the young moon had already set. The wind howled round
+San Pietro in Montorio and the Spanish Academy, and whistled through the
+branches of the plane-trees along the winding descent, and furiously
+tore the withering leaves. They struck Ercole's weather-beaten face as
+he sat beside the coachman with bent head, with his soft hat pulled down
+over his eyes, and the rain dripped from his coarse moustache. Kalmon
+and Marcello leaned as far back as they could, under the deep hood and
+behind the high leathern apron.
+
+"There is some animal following us," the cabman said to Ercole as they
+turned a corner.
+
+"It is my dog," Ercole answered.
+
+"It sounds like a calf," said the cabman, turning his head to listen
+through the storm.
+
+"It is not a calf," answered Ercole gruffly. "It is my dog. Or if you
+wish it to be the were-wolf, it will be the were-wolf."
+
+The cabman glanced uneasily at his companion on the box, for the
+were-wolf is a thing of terror to Romans. But he could not see the
+countryman's features in the gloom, and he hastened his horse's pace
+down the hill, for he did not like the sound of those galloping feet
+behind his cab, in that lonely road, in the dark and the rain.
+
+"Where am I to go?" he asked, as he came near the place where a turn to
+the right leads out of the Via Garibaldi down to the Via Luciano Manara.
+
+But Kalmon knew where they were, even better than Marcello, to whom the
+road was familiar by day and night, in all weathers.
+
+"We must leave that message first," said the Professor to Marcello. "We
+are coming to the turning."
+
+"To Santa Cecilia," Marcello called out to the cabman, thrusting his
+head forward into the rain, "then I will tell you where to go."
+
+"Santa Cecilia," echoed the cabman.
+
+Ercole growled something quite unintelligible, to which his companion
+paid no attention, and the cab rattled on through the rain down the long
+paved street. It made such a noise that the dog's feet could not be
+heard any more. There were more lamps, too, and it seemed less gloomy
+than up there under the plane-trees, though there were no lights in the
+windows at that late hour.
+
+"Now to the right," said Ercole, as they reached the back of Saint
+Cecilia's at the Via Anicia.
+
+"To the right!" Marcello called out a second later from under the hood.
+
+"You seem to know the way," said the cabman to Ercole. "Why don't you
+give me the address of the house at once and be done with it?"
+
+"I know the house, but not the street, nor the number."
+
+"I understand. Does your dog also know the house?"
+
+To this question Ercole made no answer, for he considered that it was
+none of the cabman's business, and, moreover, he regretted having shown
+that he knew where his master was going. Marcello now gave the final
+direction to the cabman, who drew up before a door in a wall, in a
+narrow lane, where the walls were high and the doors were few. It was
+the garden entrance to the little house in Trastevere.
+
+Marcello got out, opened the door with the key he carried, and went in.
+It was raining hard, and he disappeared into the darkness, shutting the
+door behind him. It had a small modern lock with a spring latch that
+clicked sharply as it shut. The cab had stopped with the door on the
+left, and therefore on the side on which Ercole was sitting. Nino, the
+dog, came up from behind, with his tongue hanging out, blood-red in the
+feeble light of the cab's lamp; he put his head up above the low front
+wheel to have a look at Ercole. Being satisfied, he at once lay down on
+the wet stones, with his muzzle towards the door.
+
+Two or three minutes passed thus, in total silence. The cab-horse hung
+his head patiently under the driving rain, but neither stamped on the
+paving stones nor shook himself, nor panted audibly, for he was a pretty
+good horse, as cab-horses go, and was not tired.
+
+Suddenly Nino growled without moving, the ominous low growl of a dog
+that can kill, and Ercole growled at him in turn, making a sound
+intended to impose silence. There was no reason why Nino should growl at
+Marcello. But Nino rose slowly upon his quarters, as if he were about to
+spring at the door, and his rough coat bristled along his back. Then
+Ercole distinctly heard the latch click as it had done when Marcello
+went in, and Nino put his muzzle to the crack of the closed door and
+sniffed up and down it, and then along the stone step. To Ercole it was
+clear that some person within had opened the door noiselessly a little
+way and had shut it again rather hurriedly, on hearing the dog and
+seeing the cab. Whoever it was had wished to see if there were any one
+outside, without being seen, or perhaps had meant to slip out without
+being heard by any one in the house.
+
+Kalmon, leaning back inside, had not heard the sound of the latch, and
+paid no attention to Nino's growl. It was natural that such an animal
+should growl and snarl for nothing, he thought, especially on a rainy
+night, when the lamps of a cab throw strange patches of light on the
+glistening pavement.
+
+There was some reason why Ercole, who had heard, did not get down and
+tell the Professor, who had noticed nothing. One reason, and a good
+enough one, was that whoever it was that had opened the door so
+cautiously, it certainly was not the man they were all hunting that
+night. Yet since Ercole knew the little house, and probably knew who
+lived there, and that it belonged to Marcello, it might have been
+supposed that he would have told the latter, whose footsteps were heard
+on the gravel a few moments afterwards. But though Marcello stood a
+moment by the wheel close to Ercole, and spoke across him to the cabman,
+Ercole said nothing. Nino had not growled at Marcello, even before the
+latter had appeared, for Nino had a good memory, for a dog, and
+doubtless remembered long days spent by the Roman shore, and copious
+leavings thrown to him from luxurious luncheons. Before they had left
+the villa he had sniffed at Marcello's clothes and hands in a manner
+that was meant to be uncommonly friendly, though it might not have
+seemed reassuring to a stranger; and Marcello had patted his huge head,
+and called him by name.
+
+The young man had given the cabman the address of the office of the
+Chief of Police, and when he had got in and hooked up the leathern
+apron, the cab rolled away over the stones through the dark streets,
+towards the bridge of Saint Bartholomew.
+
+Within the house Regina sat alone, as Marcello had found her, her chin
+resting on the back of her closed hand, her elbow on her knee, her eyes
+gazing at the bright little fire that blazed on the polished hearth. Her
+hair was knotted for the night, low down on her neck, and the loose
+dressing-gown of dove-coloured silk plush was unfastened at the neck,
+where a little lace fell about her strong white throat.
+
+She had sprung to her feet in happy surprise when Marcello had entered
+the room, though it was not two hours since he had left her, and she
+could still smell the smoke of his last cigarette. She had felt a
+sudden chill when she had seen his face, for she never saw him look
+grave and preoccupied without believing that he had grown suddenly tired
+of her, and that the end had come. But then she had seen his eyes
+lighten for her, and she had known that he was not tired of her, but
+only very much in earnest and very much in a hurry.
+
+He had bidden her find out from Settimia where Corbario was, if the
+woman knew it; he had told her to find out at any cost, and had put a
+great deal of emphasis on the last words. In answer to the one question
+she asked, he told her that Corbario was a murderer, and was trying to
+escape. He had not time to explain more fully, but he knew that he could
+count on her. She did not love Folco Corbario, and she came of a race
+that could hate, for it was the race of the Roman hill peasants. So he
+left her quickly and went on.
+
+But when he was gone, Regina sat quite still for some time, looking at
+the fire. Settimia was safe in her own room, and was probably asleep. It
+would be soon enough to wake her when Regina had considered what she
+should say in order to get the information Marcello wanted. Settimia
+would deny having had any communication with Corbario, or that she knew
+anything of his whereabouts. The next step would probably be to tempt
+her with money or other presents. If this failed, what was to be done?
+Somehow Regina guessed that a bribe would not have much effect on the
+woman.
+
+Marcello had wished to send her away long ago, but Regina had persuaded
+him to let her stay. It was part of her hatred of Corbario to accumulate
+proofs against him, and they were not lacking in the letters he wrote to
+Settimia. Regina could not understand the relation in which they stood
+to each other, but now and then she had found passages in the letters
+which referred neither to herself nor Marcello, but to things that had
+happened a good many years ago in another country. She was convinced
+that the two had once been companions in some nefarious business, of
+which they had escaped the consequences. It was her intention to find
+out exactly what the deed had been, and then to bring Corbario to ruin
+by exposing it. It was a simple scheme, but it seemed a sure one, and
+Regina was very patient. Corbario had tried to separate her from
+Marcello, and she had sworn that he should pay her for that; and
+besides, he had wished to kill Marcello in order to get his money. That
+was bad, undoubtedly--very bad; but to her peasant mind it was not
+unnatural. She had heard all her life of crimes committed for the sake
+of an inheritance; and so have most of us, and in countries that fondly
+believe themselves much more civilised than Italy. That was extremely
+wicked, but the attempt had failed, and it sank into insignificance in
+comparison with the heinous crime of trying to separate two lovers by
+treachery. That was what Regina would not forgive Corbario.
+
+Nor would she pardon Settimia, who had been Corbario's instrument and
+helper; and as she meant to include the woman in her vengeance, she
+would not let her go, but kept her, and treated her so generously and
+unsuspiciously that Settimia was glad to stay, since Corbario still
+wished it.
+
+Regina looked at the little travelling-clock that stood on the low table
+at her elbow, and saw that it was half-past eleven. Behind the drawn
+curtains she could hear the rain beating furiously against the shutters,
+but all was quiet within the house. Regina listened, for Settimia's room
+was overhead, and when she moved about her footsteps could be heard in
+the sitting-room. Regina had heard her just before Marcello had come in,
+but there was no sound now; she had probably gone to bed. Regina lit a
+candle and went into her own room.
+
+On a shelf near the little toilet-table there was a box, covered with
+old velvet, in which she kept the few simple pins and almost necessary
+bits of jewellery which she had been willing to accept from Marcello.
+She took it down, set it upon the toilet-table and opened it. A small
+silver-mounted revolver lay amongst the other things, for Marcello had
+insisted that she should have a weapon of some kind, because the house
+seemed lonely to him. He had shown her how to use it, but she had
+forgotten. She took it out, and turned it over and over in her hands,
+with a puzzled look. She did not even know whether it was loaded or not,
+and did not remember how to open the chamber. She wondered how the thing
+worked, and felt rather afraid of it. Besides, if she had to use it, it
+would make a dreadful noise; so she put it back carefully amongst the
+things.
+
+There were the cheap little earrings she had worn ever since she had
+been a child, till Marcello had made her take them out and wear none at
+all. There was a miserable little brooch of tarnished silver which she
+had bought with her own money at a country fair, and which had once
+seemed very fine to her. She had not the slightest sentiment about such
+trifles, for Italian peasants are altogether the least sentimental
+people in the world; the things were not even good enough to give to
+Settimia, and yet it seemed wrong to throw them away, so she had always
+kept them, with a vague idea of giving them to some poor little girl, to
+whom they would represent happiness. With them lay the long pin she used
+to stick through her hair on Sundays when she went to church.
+
+It had been her mother's, and it was the only thing she possessed which
+had belonged to the murdered woman who had given her birth. It was
+rather a fine specimen of the pins worn by the hill peasant women, and
+was made like a little cross-hilted sword, with a blade of fire-gilt
+steel about eight inches long. A little gilt ball was screwed upon the
+point, intended to keep the pin from coming out after it was thrust
+through the hair. Regina took the ball off and felt the point, which was
+as sharp as that of a pen-knife; and she tried the blade with her hands
+and found that it did not bend easily. It was strong enough for what she
+wanted of it. She stuck it through the heavy knot of her hair, rather
+low down at the back of her neck, where she could easily reach it with
+her right hand; but she did not screw on the ball. It was not likely
+that the pin would fall out. She was very deliberate in all she did; she
+even put up her hand two or three times, without looking at herself in
+the mirror, to be quite sure where to find the hilt of the pin if she
+should need it. Marcello had told her to get the information he wanted
+"at any cost."
+
+Then she went back, with her candle, through the cheerful sitting-room,
+and out through a small vestibule that was now dark, and up the narrow
+staircase to find Settimia.
+
+She knocked, and the woman opened, and Regina was a little surprised to
+see that she was still dressed. She was pale, and looked very anxious as
+she faced her mistress in the doorway.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, rather nervously.
+
+"Nothing," Regina answered in a reassuring tone. "I had forgotten to
+tell you about a little change I want in the trimming of that hat, and
+as I heard you moving about, I came up before going to bed."
+
+Settimia had taken off her shoes more than half an hour earlier in order
+to make no noise, and her suspicions and her fears were instantly
+aroused. She drew her lids together a little and looked over Regina's
+shoulder through the open door towards the dark staircase. She was not a
+tall woman, and was slightly made, but she was energetic and could be
+quick when she chose, as Regina knew. Regina quietly shut the door
+behind her and came forward into the room, carrying her candle-stick,
+which she set down upon the table near the lamp.
+
+"Where is that hat?" she asked, so naturally that the woman began to
+think nothing was wrong after all.
+
+Settimia turned to cross the room, in order to get the hat in question
+from a pasteboard bandbox that stood on the floor. Regina followed her,
+and stood beside her as she bent down.
+
+Then without the slightest warning Regina caught her arms from behind
+and threw her to her knees, so that she was forced to crouch down, her
+head almost touching the floor. She was no more than a child in the
+peasant woman's hands as soon as she was fairly caught. But she did not
+scream, and she seemed to be keeping her senses about her.
+
+"What do you want of me?" she asked, speaking with difficulty.
+
+Policemen know that ninety-nine out of a hundred criminals ask that
+question when they are taken.
+
+"I want to know several things," Regina answered.
+
+"Let me go, and I will tell you what I can."
+
+"No, you won't," Regina replied, looking about her for something with
+which to tie the woman's hands, for she had forgotten that this might be
+necessary. "I shall not let you go until I know everything."
+
+She felt that Settimia's thin hands were cautiously trying the strength
+of her own and turning a very little in her grasp. She threw her weight
+upon the woman's shoulders to keep her down, grasped both wrists in one
+hand, and with the other tore off the long silk cord that tied her own
+dressing-gown at the waist. It was new and strong.
+
+"You had better not struggle," she said, as she got the first turn
+round Settimia's wrists and began to pull it tight. "You are in my power
+now. It is of no use to scream either, for nobody will hear you."
+
+"I know it," the woman replied. "What are you going to do with me?"
+
+"I shall ask questions. If you answer them, I shall not hurt you. If you
+do not, I shall hurt you until you do, or until you die. Now I am going
+to tie your wrists to your heels, so that you cannot move. Then I will
+put a pillow under your head, so that you can be pretty comfortable
+while we talk a little."
+
+She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, which terrified Settimia much more
+than any dramatic display of anger or hatred could have done. In a few
+moments the woman was bound hand and foot. Regina turned her upon her
+side, and arranged a pillow under her head as she had promised to do.
+Then she sat down upon the floor beside the pillow and looked at her
+calmly.
+
+"In this way we can talk," she said.
+
+Settimia's rather stony eyes were wide with fear now, as she lay on her
+side, watching Regina's face.
+
+"I have always served you faithfully," she said. "I cannot understand
+why you treat me so cruelly."
+
+"Yes," Regina answered, unmoved, "you have been an excellent maid, and I
+am sorry that I am obliged to tie you up like the calves that are taken
+to the city on carts. Now tell me, where is Signor Corbario?"
+
+"How should I know?" whined Settimia, evidently more frightened. "I
+know nothing about Signor Corbario. I swear that I have hardly ever seen
+him. How can I possibly know where he is? He is probably at his house,
+at this hour."
+
+"No. You know very well that he has left the villa. It will not serve to
+tell lies, nor to say that you know nothing about him, for I am sure you
+do. Now listen. I wish to persuade you with good words. You and Signor
+Corbario were in South America together."
+
+Settimia's face expressed abject terror.
+
+"Never!" she cried, rocking her bound body sideways in an instinctive
+attempt to emphasise her words by a gesture. "I swear before heaven, and
+the saints, and the holy--"
+
+"It is useless," Regina interrupted. "You have not forgotten what you
+and he did in Salta ten years ago. You remember how suddenly Padilla
+died, when 'Doctor' Corbario was attending him, and you were his nurse,
+don't you?"
+
+She fixed her eyes sternly on Settimia's, and the woman turned livid,
+and ground her teeth.
+
+"You are the devil!" she said hoarsely. "But it is all a lie!" she
+cried, suddenly trying denial again. "I was never in South America,
+never, never, never!"
+
+"This is a lie," observed Regina, with perfect calm. "If you do not tell
+me where Signor Corbario is to-night, I shall go to the police to-morrow
+and tell all I know about you."
+
+"You know nothing. What is all this that you are inventing? You are a
+wicked woman!"
+
+"Take care! Perhaps I am a wicked woman. Who knows! I am not a saint,
+but you are not my confessor. It is the contrary, perhaps; and perhaps
+you will have to confess to me this night, before going to the other
+world, if you confess at all. Where is Signor Corbario?"
+
+As she asked the question, she quietly took the long pin from her hair
+and began to play with the point.
+
+"Are you going to murder me?" groaned the wretched woman, watching the
+terrible little weapon.
+
+"I should not call it murder to kill you. This point is sharp. Should
+you like to feel it? You shall. In this way you will perhaps be
+persuaded to speak."
+
+She gently pressed the point against Settimia's cheek.
+
+"Don't move, or you will scratch yourself," she said, as the woman tried
+to draw back her face. "Now, will you tell me where Signor Corbario is?
+I want to know."
+
+Settimia must have feared Corbario more than she feared Regina and the
+sharp pin at that moment, for she shook her head and set her teeth.
+Perhaps she believed that Regina was only threatening her, and did not
+mean to do her any real bodily hurt; but in this she was misled by
+Regina's very quiet manner.
+
+"I shall wait a little while," said Regina, almost indifferently, "and
+then, if you do not tell me, I shall begin to kill you. It may take a
+long time, and you will scream a good deal, but nobody will hear you.
+Now think a little, and decide what you will do."
+
+Regina laid the pin upon the floor beside her, drew up her knees, and
+clasped her hands together over them, as the hill women often sit for
+hours when they are waiting for anything.
+
+Her face hardened slowly until it had an expression which Marcello had
+never seen. It was not a look of cruelty, nor of fierce anticipated
+satisfaction in what she meant to do; it was simply cold and relentless,
+and Settimia gazed with terror on the splendid marble profile, so
+fearfully distinct against the dark wall in the bright light of the
+lamp. The strength of the woman, quietly waiting to kill, seemed to fill
+the room; her figure seemed to grow gigantic in the terrified eyes of
+her prisoner; the slow, regular heave of her bosom as she breathed was
+telling the seconds and minutes of fate, that would never reach an hour.
+
+It is bad to see death very near when one is tied hand and foot and
+cannot fight for life. Most people cannot bear the sight quietly for a
+quarter of an hour; they break down altogether, or struggle furiously,
+like animals, though they know it is perfectly useless and that they
+have no chance. Anything is easier than to lie still, watching the knife
+and wondering when and where it is going to enter into the flesh.
+
+Regina sat thinking and ready. She wished that she had Corbario himself
+in her power, but it was something to have the woman who had helped
+him. She was very glad that she had insisted on keeping Settimia in
+spite of Marcello's remonstrances. It had made it possible to obtain the
+information he wanted, and which, she felt sure, was to lead to
+Corbario's destruction. She was to find out "at any cost"; those had
+been Marcello's words, and she supposed he knew that she would obey him
+to the letter. For she said to herself that he was the master, and that
+if she did not obey him in such a matter, when he seemed so much in
+earnest, he would be disappointed, and angry, and would then grow
+quickly tired of her, and so the end would come. "At any cost," as he
+had said it in his haste, meant to Regina at the cost of blood, and
+life, and limb, if need were. Corbario was the enemy of the man she
+loved; it was her lover's pleasure to find out his enemy and to be
+revenged at last; what sort of woman must she be if she did not help
+him? what was her love worth if she did not obey him? He had been always
+kind to her, and more than kind; but it would have been quite the same
+if he had treated her worse than a dog, provided he did not send her
+away from him. She belonged to him, and he was the master, to do as he
+pleased. If he sent her away, she would go; but if not, he might have
+beaten her and she would never have complained. Now that he had given a
+simple command, she was not going to disobey him. She had pride, but it
+was not for him, and in her veins the blood of sixty generations of
+slaves and serfs had come down to her through two thousand years, the
+blood of men who had killed when they were bidden to kill by their
+masters, whose masters had killed them like sheep in war and often in
+peace, of women who had been reckoned as goods and as chattels with the
+land on which their mothers had borne them--of men and women too often
+familiar with murder and sudden death from their cradles to their
+graves.
+
+The minutes passed and Settimia's terror grew till the room swam with
+her, and she lost hold upon herself, and did not know whether she
+screamed or was silent, as her parched lips opened wide upon her parted
+teeth. But she had made no sound, and Regina did not even look at her.
+Death had not come yet; there was a respite of seconds, perhaps of
+minutes.
+
+At last Regina unclasped her hands and took up the pin again. The
+miserable woman fancied that she already felt the little blade creeping
+through her flesh and blood on its way to her heart. For Regina had said
+she would take a long time to kill her. It must have been a strong
+reason that could keep her silent still, if she knew the answer to the
+question.
+
+Regina turned her head very slowly and looked coldly down at the
+agonised face.
+
+"I am tired," she said. "I cannot wait any longer."
+
+Settimia's eyes seemed to be starting from her head, and her dry lips
+were stretched till they cracked, and she thought she had screamed
+again; but she had not, for her throat was paralysed with fear. Regina
+rose upon her knees beside the pillow, with the pin in her right hand.
+
+"Where is Corbario?" she asked, looking down. "If you will not tell I
+shall hurt you."
+
+Settimia's lips moved, as if she were trying to speak, but no words came
+from them. Regina got up from the floor, went to the washstand and
+poured some water into the glass, for she thought it possible that the
+woman was really unable to utter a sound because her throat was parched
+with fear. But she could speak a little as soon as Regina left her side,
+and the last peril seemed a few seconds less near.
+
+"For the love of God, don't kill me yet," she moaned. "Let me speak
+first!"
+
+Regina came back, knelt down, and set the glass on the floor, beside the
+pin.
+
+"That is all I want," she said quietly, "that you should speak."
+
+"Water," moaned Settimia, turning her eyes to the glass.
+
+Regina held up her head a little and set the tumbler to her lips, and
+she drank eagerly. The fear of death is more parching than wound-fever
+or passion.
+
+"Now you can surely talk a little," Regina said.
+
+"Why do you wish to know where he is?" Settimia asked in a weak voice.
+"Are the police looking for him? What has he done? Why do you want me to
+betray him?"
+
+"These are too many questions," Regina answered. "I have been told to
+make you tell where he is, and I will. That is enough."
+
+"I do not know where he is."
+
+In an instant the point of the sharp little blade was pressing against
+the woman's throat, harder and harder; one second more and it would
+pierce the skin and draw blood.
+
+"Stop," she screamed, with a convulsion of her whole body. "He is in the
+house!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+With a single movement Regina was on her feet, for she had been taken by
+surprise, and her first instinct was to be ready for some new and
+unsuspected danger. In a flash it seemed to her that since Corbario was
+in the house, he might very possibly enter suddenly and take Settimia's
+defence. Regina was not afraid of him, but she was only a woman after
+all, and Corbario was not a man to stop at trifles. He was very likely
+armed, and would perhaps shoot her, in order to make good his escape
+with Settimia, unless, as was quite probable, he killed his old
+accomplice too, before leaving the room.
+
+Regina stood still a moment, reflecting on the dangerous situation. It
+certainly would not be safe to release Settimia yet; for if Corbario
+were really in the house, the two together could easily overpower one
+woman, though she was strong.
+
+"I am sorry that I cannot untie you yet," Regina said, and with a glance
+at the prostrate figure she took up her candle-stick, stuck her pin
+through her hair before the mirror, and went to the door.
+
+She took the key from the lock, put it back on the outside, and turned
+it, and put it into her pocket when she had shut the door after her.
+Then she slowly descended the stairs, stopping now and then to listen,
+and shading her candle with her hand so that she could see over it, for
+she expected to be attacked at any moment. At the slightest sound she
+would have snatched her pin from her hair again, but she heard nothing,
+and went cautiously down till she reached the vestibule outside the
+sitting-room. She entered the latter and sat down to think.
+
+Should she boldly search the house? Settimia could hardly have had any
+object in lying. If she had meant to frighten Regina, she would have
+spoken very differently. She would have made out that Corbario was
+almost within hearing, waiting in a dark corner with a loaded revolver.
+But her words had been the cry of truth, uttered to save her life at the
+moment when death was actually upon her. She would have screamed out the
+truth just as certainly if Corbario had already left Rome, or if he were
+in some hotel for the night--or even if she had really known nothing. In
+the last case Regina would have believed her, and would have let her go.
+There is no mistaking the accent of mortal terror, whether one has ever
+heard it or not.
+
+Corbario was somewhere in the house, Marcello's enemy, and the man she
+herself had long hated. A wild longing came over her to have him in her
+power, bound hand and foot like Settimia, and then to torment him at her
+pleasure until he died. She felt the strength of half a dozen men in
+her, and the courage of an army, as she rose to her feet once more. She
+had seen him. He was not a big man. If she could catch him from behind,
+as she had caught the woman, she might perhaps overpower him. With the
+thought of near revenge the last ray of caution disappeared, and from
+being fearless Regina became suddenly reckless.
+
+But as she rose, she heard a sound overhead, and it was the unmistakable
+sound of footsteps. She started in surprise. It was simply impossible
+that Settimia should have loosed the cord that bound her. Regina had
+been brought up in the low hill country and in the Campagna, and she
+could tie some of the knots used by Roman muleteers and carters, which
+hold as well as those men learn at sea. She had tied Settimia very
+firmly, and short of a miracle the woman could not have freed herself.
+Yet the footsteps had been distinctly audible for a moment. Since
+Settimia was not walking about, Corbario must have got into the room.
+Yet Regina had locked the door, and had the key in her pocket. It was
+perfectly incomprehensible. She left the sitting-room again, carrying
+her candle as before; but at the door she turned back, and set the
+candle-stick upon the table. She would be safer in the dark, and would
+have a better chance of taking Corbario by surprise.
+
+Poor Regina had not grown up amongst people who had a high standard of
+honour, and her own ideas about right and wrong were primitive, to speak
+charitably. But if she had dreamt of the deed that was being done
+upstairs, her heart would have stood still, and she would have felt sick
+at the mere thought of such villainy.
+
+She had left the room and locked the door, and while her footsteps had
+been audible on the stairs no other sound had broken the stillness. But
+a few seconds later a whispered question came from some person out of
+sight.
+
+"Is she gone?" the whisper asked.
+
+"Yes," answered Settimia in a very low voice, which she knew Regina
+could not hear.
+
+Corbario's pale face cautiously emerged from the closet in which he had
+been hidden, and he looked round the room before he stepped out.
+Settimia could not turn over to see him, but she heard him coming
+towards her.
+
+"Cut this cord," she said in an undertone. "Make haste! We can be out of
+the house in less than half a minute."
+
+Corbario knelt beside her, and took out a handsome English clasp-knife.
+But he did not cut the cord. He looked down into Settimia's face, and
+she understood.
+
+"I could not help it," she answered. "She would have killed me!"
+
+Corbario laid his left hand upon her throat.
+
+"If you try to scream I shall strangle you," he said in a whisper. "You
+have betrayed me, and I cannot afford to trust you again. Do you know
+what I am going to do?"
+
+She tried to turn her head, but his hand was heavy on her throat. She
+strained frightfully to move, and her stony eyes lit up with a dying
+glare of terror.
+
+"Do it quickly!" she gasped.
+
+"Hush!" His hand tightened on her throat. "If you were in Salta, you
+should die by tenths of inches, if it took all night! That would be too
+good for you."
+
+He spat in her face as she writhed under his grasp. He looked into her
+living eyes once more with all the cowardly hate that possessed him, he
+struck deep and sure, he saw the light break in the pupils, and heard
+the awful rattle of her last breath.
+
+In an instant he was at the window, and had thrown it wide open. He got
+out quickly, let himself down with his hands, and pushed himself away
+from the wall with his feet as he jumped down backwards, well knowing
+that there was grass below him, and that the earth was as soft as sponge
+with the long rain. He was sure that he could not hurt himself. Yet
+before his feet touched the ground he had uttered a low cry of fear.
+
+He was on his legs now and trying to run, but it was too late. There was
+the flash of a lantern in the wet garden, and between him and the light,
+and just below it, he saw two points of greenish fire coming at him; for
+he saw everything then; and he heard the rush of a heavy beast's feet,
+tearing up the earth with iron claws, and the savage breath, and the
+loud hiss of a man setting the creature on; for he heard every sound
+then; and he knew that the thing of terror would leap up with resistless
+strength and hurl its weight upon him, and bury its jagged fangs in his
+throat and tear him, in an instant that would seem like an hour of
+agony, and that the pain and the fear would be as if he were hung up by
+all the nerves of his body, drawn out and twisted; for he knew
+everything then; and in that immeasurable time which is nothing, and yet
+is infinite, he remembered his evil life, his robberies, his murders,
+and his betrayals, one by one, but he remembered with most frightful
+clearness how he had tried to kill Marcello, how he had corrupted him
+from his childhood, with bad counsels very cunningly, and prepared him
+to go astray, how he had thrust evil in his path and laughed away the
+good, and had led him on, and poisoned him, and would have brought him
+to his death and damnation surely, but for one sinning devoted woman
+that loved him; for he remembered everything then; and from very far
+away, out of memories of his youth, there came a voice that had once
+been gentle and kind, but that rang in his ears now, like the blast of
+the trumpet of the last judgment.
+
+"Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it
+were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and
+that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
+
+Far better, indeed, for it all came, when the immeasurable second's
+length was past, and he was thrown down against the wall, and torn, and
+shaken like a rat; it all came just as he had felt that it was coming,
+and it lasted long, a long, long time, while he tried to howl, and the
+blood only gurgled in his throat. And then, just as many strong hands
+dragged away the thing of terror, and the light of a lantern and of a
+lamp flashed in his eyes, he fell asleep in the wet grass.
+
+For they had caught him fairly and brought him, down. Kalmon had
+watched him long, and had told some of his suspicions to the Chief of
+Police, and the latter, unknown to Kalmon, had caused him to be watched
+from time to time. But he, who had been watched before and had once
+already escaped for his life, had sometimes seen faces near him that he
+did not trust, and when he had turned back from the station that
+afternoon he had seen one of those faces; so he had driven away quickly
+in a cab, by winding ways, so as not to be followed. Yet Kalmon and
+Marcello, talking as they drove, grew more and more sure that he would
+wish to see Settimia before he left Rome, the more certainly if he
+believed himself pursued, as seemed likely from his changing his mind at
+the station. So they had stopped their cab before they had reached their
+destination, and had sent Ercole back to Trastevere with the key of the
+garden gate, bidding him watch, as it was most probable that Corbario
+would try to get out through the garden; and before long they had come
+back to the door of the house that opened upon the street, and had let
+themselves in quietly, just in time to hear the noise of the struggle as
+the dog threw Corbario to the ground. For the other entrance to the
+little vestibule opened upon the garden within, at the very spot where
+Corbario alighted when he jumped from the window.
+
+And now they stood there in the rain round the wounded man, while
+Marcello held the lantern to his face, and Regina thrust a lamp out of
+the lower window which she had thrown open.
+
+"Is he dead?" she asked, in the silence that followed when Ercole had
+got control of the dog again.
+
+At the sound of her voice Ercole started strangely and looked up to her
+face that was not far above his own, and his eyes fixed themselves upon
+her so intently that she looked down at him, while she still held out
+her lamp. She could not remember that she had ever seen him; but he had
+seen her many times since he had made his visit to the inn on the
+Frascati road.
+
+"Is he dead?" she repeated, putting the question directly to him as he
+was nearest.
+
+Still he looked at her in silence, with his deep-set, unwinking eyes.
+Marcello and Kalmon were bending over Corbario, Marcello holding the
+lantern, while the Professor listened for the beating of the heart and
+felt the pulse. They paid no attention to Regina for the moment.
+
+"Why don't you speak?" she asked, surprised by Ercole's silent stare.
+
+"You don't know me," he said slowly, "but I know you."
+
+The rain was beating upon her lamp, and at that moment the shade cracked
+under the cold drops and fell to pieces, and the wind instantly
+extinguished the flame of the flaring wick. Regina withdrew into the
+room to get another light, and Ercole stared after her into the gloom.
+
+"He is alive," said Kalmon, looking up to see why the light had gone
+out. "We must get him inside at once, or he will die here. Come,
+Ercole! Make that dog lie down and keep quiet."
+
+Between them they carried Corbario into the house. Nino watched on the
+step in the rain, but when the door was shut behind him, he crawled down
+to the wet grass and lapped the blood and water in the dark. They
+carried Corbario upstairs to an empty room there was, and as they went
+Regina tried to tell Marcello what she had done. They opened Settimia's
+door, which was still locked, and they found her quite dead, and the
+window was wide open; then Regina understood that Corbario had been
+hidden within hearing, and had killed the woman because she had
+confessed.
+
+The men who had been sent from the central police station at Kalmon's
+request arrived a few minutes later. One was at once sent for a surgeon
+and for more men; the other remained. Soon the little house was full of
+officials, in uniform and in plain clothes. They examined everything,
+they wrote rapidly on big sheets of stamped paper; their chief took the
+first deposition of Regina, and of the three men, and of the surgeon. At
+dawn a man came with a rough pine coffin. Officials came and went, and
+were gravely busy. One man spoke of coffee when it was day, and went and
+made some in the little kitchen, for the two young women who cooked and
+did the work of the house did not sleep there, and would not come till
+past seven o'clock.
+
+During the long hours, when Regina and Marcello were not wanted, they
+were together in the sitting-room downstairs. Regina told Marcello in
+detail everything she knew about the events of the night, and much which
+she had found out earlier about Settimia but had never told him. Kalmon
+came in from time to time and told them what was going on, and that
+Corbario was still alive; but they saw no more of Ercole. He had made
+his first deposition, to the effect that he had been set to watch the
+house, that the murderer had jumped from an upper window, and that the
+dog had pulled him down. The officials looked nervously at the dog,
+produced by Ercole in evidence, and were glad when the beast was out of
+their sight. There were dark stains about the bristles on his jaws, and
+his eyes were bloodshot; but Ercole laid one hand on his uncouth head,
+and he was very quiet, and did not even snarl at the policemen.
+
+Regina and Marcello sat side by side, talking in a low voice, and
+looking at each other now and then. The little house in which they had
+been happy was turned to a place of death and horror, and both knew that
+some change was coming to themselves.
+
+"You cannot live here any more," Marcello said at dawn, "not even till
+to-night."
+
+"Where could I go?" Regina asked. "Why should I not stay here? Do you
+think I am afraid of the dead woman?"
+
+"No," Marcello answered, "but you cannot stay here."
+
+He guessed what talking and gossiping there would be when the newspapers
+told what had happened in the little house, how the reporters would
+hang about the street for a week to come, and how fashionable people
+would go out of their way to see the place where a murder had been
+committed by such a well-known person as Corbario, and where he had been
+taken almost in the very act, and himself nearly killed. Besides all
+that, there would be the public curiosity about Regina, who had been so
+intimately concerned in a part of the tragedy, and whose name was
+everywhere associated with his own.
+
+He would have taken her away from Rome at once, if he could have done
+so. But he knew that they would both be called upon during the next few
+days to repeat in court the evidence they had already given in their
+first deposition. There was sure to be the most frightful publicity
+about the whole affair, of which reports would be published not only in
+Rome but throughout Italy, and all over the world. In real life the
+consequences of events generally have the importance which fiction is
+obliged to give the events themselves; which is the reason why the
+things that happen to real people rarely come to any precise conclusion,
+like those reached by a play or a novel. The "conclusion" lies in the
+lives of the people, after the tragedy, or the drama, or the comedy has
+violently upset their existences.
+
+"You cannot stay here," Marcello repeated with conviction.
+
+"You will go on living at your villa," Regina answered. "Why should I
+not go on living in this house? For a few days I will not go out, that
+is all. Is it the end of the world because a person has been killed who
+ought to have died in the galleys? Or because the man who tried to kill
+you was caught in a place that belongs to you? Tell me that."
+
+"You cannot stay here," Marcello repeated a third time.
+
+For a while Regina was silent. They were both very white and heavy-eyed
+in the cold daylight, though they could not have slept. At last she
+looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"If we were married, we should go on living in our own house," she said.
+"Is it true, or not? It is because there will be talking that you are
+ashamed to let me stay where I am, and would like to get me away. This
+is the truth. I know it."
+
+Marcello knew it too and did not answer at once, for it was not easy to
+decide what he ought to do. The problem that had seemed so hard to solve
+a few hours earlier was fast getting altogether beyond solution. There
+was only one thing to be done in the first present difficulty; he must
+take Regina to some other place at once. No doubt this was easy enough.
+He would take an apartment for her elsewhere, as far as possible from
+the scene of the tragedy, and in a few hours she could be installed
+there out of the way of annoyance. He could buy a house for her if he
+chose, for he was very rich. Possibly some house already belonging to
+him was vacant; his lawyer would know.
+
+But after that, what was to come? If Corbario lived, there would be a
+sensational trial in which he and Regina would be witnesses together,
+and Kalmon too, and very surely Aurora and her mother. For Aurora would
+be called upon to tell what she knew of Marcello's movements on the
+morning when he had been knocked down near the gap.
+
+Every moment of his past life would be publicly examined, to prove
+Corbario's guilt. Worse than that, there would be a long inquiry to show
+that Corbario had murdered his mother. Skilled surgeons were tending the
+man's wounds and reviving him by every means that science could suggest.
+Kalmon said that he might live. He was being kept alive in order to be
+condemned to the expiation of his crimes in penal servitude, since
+Italian law could not make him pay for them with his life. The man would
+be watched by day and night, lest he should try to commit suicide, for
+he was to suffer, if he lived. He was to suffer horribly, without doubt,
+and it was right and just that he should. But Marcello would suffer too.
+That was not just. The name of his saintly mother would be in the mouths
+of all kinds of witnesses, in the columns of all sorts of newspapers.
+Lawyers would make speeches about her to excite the pity of the jury and
+to turn the whole tide of feeling against Corbario. Marcello would
+himself be held up to public commiseration, as one of Corbario's
+victims. There would be allusions covert and open to Regina and to the
+position in which she stood to Marcello. There would be talk about
+Aurora. People would suddenly remember her mother's sad story and
+gossip about her; people would certainly say that there had been talk
+about marrying Aurora to Marcello, and that Regina had come between
+them. Yes, there would be much talk about Aurora; that was certain.
+
+All this was coming, and was not far off, if Corbario lived; and even if
+he died there would be a vast amount said and written about all the
+people concerned.
+
+And Regina was there, beside him, telling him that if they were married
+they could go on living in the little house, just as if nothing had
+happened. It was not true, but he could not find heart to tell her so.
+It was the first time that any suggestion of marriage had come from her,
+who had always told him that marriage was impossible. If she wished it
+now, could he refuse?
+
+Suddenly he knew that he had reached one of the great cross-roads in his
+life, and that fate had dragged him violently to it within the last few
+hours, to make him choose his way. The full-grown character of the man
+rebelled against being forced to a decision in spite of himself, but
+revolted at the thought of fearing to do what was right and honourable.
+He was not hesitating as he sat still in silence after Regina had
+spoken. He was thinking, with the firm determination to act as soon as
+he had reached a decision. When a man can do that, his weakness is past.
+
+Regina did not interrupt the current of his thoughts, and as she watched
+him she forgot all about the present; and they were just together, where
+they had so often been happy, and she loved him with all her heart. That
+was her strength. It had nothing to do with right or wrong, honour or
+dishonour, credit or discredit, or any choice of ways. She had no
+choice. She loved. It was a very simple thing.
+
+He looked up at last. She was still wearing the loose dressing-gown she
+had worn all night.
+
+"Could you sleep now?" he asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then you must dress," he said. "While you are dressing I will walk up
+to the villa and give some orders. Then I will come and get you in a
+closed carriage. Put together what you may need for the day, and I will
+have all your things moved before night."
+
+"Are you really going to take me away from here?" Regina asked,
+regretfully.
+
+"Yes. I must. It will be easy to find a place that will please you
+better. Will you do as I have said?"
+
+"Why do you ask? I go."
+
+She rose and stood beside him a moment while he sat still, and her hand
+caressed his short fair hair. She bent down and kissed the close waves
+of it, near his forehead.
+
+"We have been very happy here," she said quietly.
+
+She slipped away as he rose to his feet, with the sudden conviction that
+something had happened.
+
+"What is it?" he asked quickly, and making a step after her.
+
+"I am going to dress," she answered.
+
+She turned her head and smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in the
+look, as if she was saying good-bye. He partly understood, and her
+expression was reflected in his own face. They had been so happy in the
+little house in Trastevere.
+
+When the door had closed Marcello went to find Kalmon. He met him at the
+foot of the stairs.
+
+"The fellow is alive, and will probably recover," said the Professor, in
+answer to the unasked question in Marcello's eyes.
+
+"It would simplify matters if he died," said Marcello. "Will you walk up
+to the villa with me and have coffee? We cannot get a cab at this hour
+on this side of the Tiber."
+
+"Thank you," Kalmon answered, "but I must go home. The house is in
+charge of the police, and there is nothing more to be done here. They
+have already taken the woman's body to San Spirito, and they will move
+Corbario in a few hours. He is badly mauled, but no big arteries are
+torn. I must go home and write a letter. The Contessa must not hear what
+has happened through the newspapers."
+
+"No. Certainly not. As for me, I am going to take Regina away at once. I
+shall bring my own carriage down from the villa."
+
+"By the bye," Kalmon said, "I had thought of that. The house in which I
+live is divided into many small apartments. There is a very good one to
+let, decently furnished. I thought of taking it myself, and I looked at
+it yesterday. You might put the young lady there until you can find what
+you may prefer. She can move in at once."
+
+"Nothing could be better. If you are going home, will you say that I
+take the place and will be there in an hour? No. 16, Via Sicilia, is it
+not?"
+
+"Yes. I'll see to it. Shall I take the lease in your name?"
+
+"No. Any name will do better. The reporters would find her at once under
+mine."
+
+"I'll use my own," said the Professor. "I'll say that she is a lady who
+has arrived to consult me--I daresay she will--and that I'm responsible
+for her."
+
+"Thank you," answered Marcello gratefully. "And thank you for all that
+you have done to help me."
+
+"My dear Marcello," Kalmon said, smiling cheerfully, "in the first
+place, I have done nothing to help you, and secondly, through excess of
+zeal, I have got you into a very unpleasant situation, by indirectly
+causing a woman to be murdered in your house, and the murderer almost
+mauled to death by that very singular wild beast which your man calls a
+dog, and which I had often noticed in old times at the cottage. So there
+is nothing at all to thank me for, though I am most heartily at your
+service."
+
+The Professor was positively in high spirits just then, and Marcello
+envied him as they parted and took opposite directions.
+
+Though the Via Sicilia was a long way from the Janiculum, Marcello had
+been only too glad to accept Kalmon's suggestion at such a moment.
+Regina would feel that she was protected by Marcello's friend, and
+though she might rarely see him, it would be better for her than to be
+lodged in a house where she knew no one. Kalmon was a bachelor and a
+man of assured position, and it had cost him nothing to undertake to
+give Regina his protection; but Marcello was deeply grateful. He had
+already made up his mind as to what he would do next.
+
+It had stopped raining at last, and the wind had fallen to a soft breeze
+that bore the morning mist gently away towards the sea, and hardly
+stirred the wet leaves that strewed the road all the way up to San
+Pietro in Montorio. Marcello found the gate of the villa already open,
+for it was nearly eight o'clock by the time he got there.
+
+He summoned the servants to the library, told them briefly what had
+happened, and warned them that they might be summoned as witnesses at
+the coming trial, as most of them had been in his mother's service. In
+the days before Corbario had lost his head, and when he had controlled
+the household, it had been a part of his policy to have really
+respectable servants about him, and though some of them had never quite
+trusted him, they had all been devoted to the Signora and to Marcello.
+They listened in respectful silence now, and waited till he was out of
+the house before meeting to discuss the tragedy and to decide that
+Corbario had got his deserts at last.
+
+In a few hours Regina was installed in her new lodging with such
+belongings as she needed immediately. Kalmon, having finished writing
+his letter to the Contessa, left nothing undone which could contribute
+to the comfort of the "lady who had arrived to consult him." He had a
+respectable old woman servant, who had been with him for years, and who
+came from his native town. He took her into his confidence to some
+extent, and placed her in charge of Regina. As she thought that
+everything he did must be right, she accepted his statement that the
+young gentleman who would often come to see the young lady was deeply
+interested in the latter's welfare, and that, as the poor young lady had
+no relations, he, the Professor, had taken her under his protection
+while she remained in Rome.
+
+The old servant's name was Teresa, and she belonged to a certain type of
+elderly old maids who take a very kindly interest in the love affairs of
+the young. She smiled, shook her head in a very mild disapprobation, and
+did much more than Kalmon had asked of her; for she took the very first
+opportunity of informing Regina that the Professor was the greatest,
+wisest, best, and kindest of mankind; and Regina recognised in her a
+loyal soul, and forthwith liked her very much.
+
+It was late in the November afternoon when Marcello ascended the stairs
+and stopped before the door of the little apartment. He realised that he
+had no key to it, and that he must ring the bell as if he were a mere
+visitor. It was strange that such a little thing should affect him at
+all, but he was conscious of a sort of chill, as he pulled the metal
+handle and heard the tinkling of one of those cheap little bells that
+feebly imitate their electric betters by means of a rachet and a small
+weighted wheel. It was all so different from the little house in
+Trastevere with its bright varnished doors, its patent locks, its smart
+windows, and its lovely old garden. He wished he had not brought Regina
+to Via Sicilia, though Kalmon's advice had seemed so good. To Kalmon,
+who was used to no great luxury in his own life, the place doubtless
+seemed very well suited for a young person like Regina, who had been
+brought up a poor child in the hills. But the mere anticipation of the
+dark and narrow entry, and the sordid little sitting-room beyond, awoke
+in Marcello a sense of shame, whether for himself or for the woman who
+loved him he hardly knew.
+
+Old Teresa had gone out for something, and Regina opened the door
+herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+"I have come to see if you need anything," Marcello said, when they were
+in the sitting-room. "I am sorry to have been obliged to bring you to
+such a wretched place, but it seemed a good thing that you should be so
+near Kalmon."
+
+"It is not a wretched place," Regina answered. "It is clean, and the
+things are new, and the curtains have been washed. It is not wretched.
+We have been in worse lodgings when we have travelled and stopped in
+small towns. Professor Kalmon has been very kind. It was wise to bring
+me here."
+
+He wished she had seemed discontented.
+
+"Have you rested a little?" he asked.
+
+"I have slept two or three hours. And you? You look tired."
+
+"I have had no time to sleep. I shall sleep to-night."
+
+He leaned back in the small green arm-chair and rested his head against
+a coarse netted antimacassar. His eyes caught Regina's, but she was
+looking down thoughtfully at her hands, which lay in her lap together
+but not clasped. Peasant women often do that; their hands are resting
+then, after hard work, and they are thinking of nothing.
+
+"Look at me," Marcello said after a long time.
+
+Her glance was sad and almost dull, and there was no light in her face.
+She had made up her mind that something dreadful was going to happen to
+her, and that the end was coming soon. She could not have told why she
+felt it, and that made it worse. Her eyes had the indescribable look
+that one sees in those of a beautiful sick animal, the painful
+expression of an unintelligent suffering which the creature cannot
+understand. Regina, roused to act and face to face with danger, was
+brave, clever, and quick, but under the mysterious oppression of her
+forebodings she was the Roman hill woman, apathetic, hopeless,
+unconsciously fatalistic and sleepily miserable.
+
+"What is the matter?" Marcello asked. "What has happened?"
+
+"I shall know when you have told me," Regina answered, slowly shaking
+her head; and again she looked down at her hands.
+
+"What I have come to tell you will not make you sad," Marcello replied.
+
+"Speak, heart of my heart. I listen."
+
+Marcello leaned forward and laid his hand upon hers. She looked up
+quietly, for it was a familiar action of his.
+
+"I am going to marry you," he said, watching her, and speaking
+earnestly.
+
+She kept her eyes on his, but she shook her head again, slowly, from
+side to side, and her lips were pressed together.
+
+"Yes, I am," said Marcello, with a little pressure of his hand to
+emphasise the words.
+
+But she withdrew hers, and leaned far back from him.
+
+"Never," she said. "I have told you so, many times."
+
+"Not if I tell you that nothing else will make me happy?" he asked.
+
+"If I still made you happy, you would not talk of marriage," Regina
+answered.
+
+For the first time since she had loved him he heard a ring of bitterness
+in her voice. They had reached that first node of misunderstanding in
+the love relations of men and women, which lies where the one begins to
+think and act upon a principle while the other still feels and acts from
+the heart.
+
+"That is not reasonable," Marcello said.
+
+"It is truth," she answered.
+
+"But how?"
+
+"How! I feel it, here!"
+
+Her hands sprang to life and pressed her bosom, her voice rang deep and
+her eyes flashed, as if she were impatient of his misunderstanding.
+
+He tried to laugh gently.
+
+"But if I want to marry you, it is because I mean never to part from
+you," he said.
+
+"No!" she cried. "It is because you are afraid that you will leave me,
+unless you are bound to me."
+
+"Regina!" Marcello protested, by his tone.
+
+"It is as I say. It is because you are honourable. It is because you
+wish to be faithful. It is because you want to be true. But what do I
+care for honour, or faith, or truth, if I can only have them of you
+because you are tied to me? I only want love. That is everything. I want
+it, but I have never asked it of you, and never shall. Is love money,
+that you can take it out of your purse and give it? Is love a string,
+that the priest and the mayor can tie the ends so that they can never
+come undone? I do not know what it is, but it is not that!"
+
+She laughed scornfully, as if she were angry at the thought. But
+Marcello had made up his mind, and was obstinate.
+
+"We must be married at once," he said quietly, and fully believing that
+he could impose his will upon hers. "If I had not been weak and foolish,
+we should have been married long ago. But for a long time after my
+illness I had no will of my own. I am sorry. It was my fault."
+
+"It was not your fault, it was the illness, and it was my will. If I had
+said, any day in those first two years, 'Make me your wife, for I wish
+to be a real signora,' would you not have done it?"
+
+"You know I would."
+
+"But I would not, and I will not now. I am not a real signora. I am
+beautiful--yes, I see that. Am I blind when I look into my glass? I am
+very beautiful. We have not often met any woman in our travels as
+beautiful as I am. Am I blind? I have black hair, like the common
+people, but my hair is not coarse, like a mule's tail. It is as fine as
+silk. My eyes are black, and that is common too; but my eyes are not
+like those of the buffaloes in the Campagna, as the other women's are
+where I was born. And I am not dark-skinned; I am as white as the snow
+on Monte Cavo, as white as the milk in the pan. Also I have been told
+that I have beautiful feet, though I cannot tell why. They are small,
+this is the truth, and my hands are like those of a signora. But I am
+not a real signora, though I have all this. How can you marry me? None
+of your friends would speak to me, because I have not even been an
+honest girl. That was for you, but they do not count love. Your servants
+at the villa would laugh at you behind your back, and say, 'The master
+has married one of us!' Do you think I could bear that? Tell me what you
+think! Am I of stone, to bear that people should laugh at you?"
+
+She took breath at last and leaned back again, folding her arms and
+fixing her splendid eyes on his face, and challenging him to answer her.
+
+"We will go and live in Calabria, at San Domenico, for a while," he
+said. "We need not live in Rome at all, unless we please, for we have
+the whole world before us."
+
+"We saw the world together without being married," Regina answered
+obstinately. "What difference would there be, if we were husband and
+wife? Do you wish to know what difference there would be? I will tell
+you. There would be this difference. One day I should see no light in
+your eyes, and your lips would be like stone. Then I should say, 'Heart
+of my heart, you are tired of me, and I go.' But you would answer, 'You
+cannot go, for you are my wife.' What would that be? That would be the
+difference. Do you understand, or do you not understand? If you do not
+understand, I can do nothing. But I will not marry you. Have you ever
+seen a mule go down to the ford in spring, too heavily laden, when there
+is freshet? He drowns, if he is driven in, because the burden is too
+heavy. I will not be the burden; but I should be, if I were your wife,
+because I am not a real signora. Now you know what I think."
+
+"Yes," Marcello answered, "but I do not think in the same way."
+
+He was not sure how to answer her arguments, and he lit a cigarette to
+gain time. He was quietly determined to have his own way, but in order
+to succeed he knew that he must persuade her till she agreed with him.
+He could not drag her to the altar against her will.
+
+Before he had thrown away the match, Regina had risen from her chair.
+She leaned against the little marble mantelpiece, looking down at him.
+
+"There are things that you do not know," she said. "If you knew them you
+would not want to marry me. In all the time we have been together, you
+have hardly ever spoken to me of your mother."
+
+Marcello started a little and looked up, unconsciously showing that he
+was displeased.
+
+"No," he answered. "Why should I?"
+
+"You were right. Your mother is now one of the saints in Paradise. How
+do I know it? Even Settimia knew it. I am not going to talk of her now.
+I am not fit to speak her name in your hearing. Very well. Do you know
+what my mother was?"
+
+"She is dead," Marcello replied, meaning that Regina should let her
+memory alone.
+
+"Or my father?" she asked, going on. "They were bad people. I come of a
+bad race. Perhaps that is why I do wrong easily, for you. My father
+killed a man and left us, though he was allowed to go free, and I never
+saw him again. He had reason to kill the man. I was a little girl, but I
+remember. My mother took other men. They came and went; sometimes they
+were drunk and they beat us. When I was twelve years old one of them
+looked upon me with bad eyes. Then my mother cursed him, and he took up
+a stone and struck her on the head, and she died. They sent him to the
+galleys, and me to work at the inn, because I had no friends. This is
+the family of Regina. It is a race of assassins and wicked women. If I
+were your wife, that would be the family of your wife. If God sent
+children, that would be the blood they would have of me, to mix with
+that of your mother, who is one of the saints in heaven. This is the
+truth. If you think I am telling you one thing for another, let us go to
+the inn on the Frascati road. Paoluccio and Nanna know. They would laugh
+if they could see me dressed like a real signora, and they would say,
+'This girl is her mother's daughter!' And so I am."
+
+She ceased speaking, and again waited for his answer, but he had none
+ready, and there was silence. She had put the ugly truth too plainly
+before him, and he could not shut up his understanding against it; he
+could not deny what she said, he could never teach himself to believe
+that it did not matter. And yet, he did not mean to draw back, or give
+up his purpose, even then. Men of good birth had married peasant women
+before now. They had given up the society of their old friends, they had
+lived in remote places, they had become half peasants themselves, their
+sons had grown up to be rough farmers, and had done obligatory military
+service in the ranks for years, because they could not pass an easy
+examination. But was all that so very terrible after all, in the light
+of the duty that faced him?
+
+The woman had saved his life, had carried him in her arms, had tended
+him like a child, had stolen food to keep him alive, had faced
+starvation for him when she had got him to the hospital, had nursed
+him--had loved him, had given him all she had, and she would have died
+for him, if there had been need. Now, she was giving him something more,
+for she was refusing to be his wife because she was sure that sooner or
+later she must be a burden to him, and that her birth would be a
+reproach to his children. No woman could do more for a man than she had
+done. She had been his salvation and his good angel; when she had found
+out that the life in Paris that amused her was killing him, she had
+brought him back to himself, she had made him at last fit and able to
+face those who would have destroyed him. She had loved him like a
+woman, she had obeyed him and served him like a devoted servant, she had
+watched over him like a faithful dog; and he had given her nothing in
+return for all that, not one thing that deserved to be counted. Perhaps
+he had not even really loved her; most surely his love had been far less
+large and true and devoted than hers, and he felt that it was so. The
+reparation he was determined to make was not really for her honesty's
+sake; it was to be an attempt at repaying a debt that was weighing upon
+his conscience like a debt of honour.
+
+That was it. He felt that unless he could in some way repay her for what
+she had done, his man's honour would not be satisfied. That was very
+well, in its way, but it was not love. It was as if he had said to
+himself, "I cannot love her as she loves me, but I can at least marry
+her; and that is better than nothing, and has the merit of being morally
+right."
+
+She had told him that if she still made him happy he would not talk of
+marriage. The brutal truth shamed him, now that he knew it from her own
+lips. It was not the whole truth, but it was a great part of it. If he
+was happy with her now, when there was nothing to disturb them, it was
+by force of habit, it was because her beauty appealed to him, it was
+because her touch was dearer to him than her heart's devotion. Now that
+he was a grown man, he knew well enough that he craved something else
+which poor Regina could never give him.
+
+For he felt the want of companionship. Those who have lost what is most
+worth having, whether by death or by their own fault, or by the other's,
+miss the companionship of love more than anything else, when the pain of
+the first wrench is dulled and the heart's blood is staunched, and the
+dreadful bodily loneliness comes only in dreams. Then the longing for
+the old sweet intercourse of thought and word makes itself felt and is
+very hard to bear, though it is not sharp like the first wound; and it
+comes again and again for years, and perhaps for ever.
+
+But where there is no true companionship while love lasts, there is
+something lacking, and such love cannot live long. Men seem to want it
+more than women do; and women, seeing that men want something, often
+fancy they want flattery, and natter the men they love till they disgust
+them; and then the end comes suddenly, much to the astonishment of those
+women.
+
+Regina was too womanly not to feel that Marcello was in real need of
+something which she had not, and could never have. She had known it from
+the first, and had almost told him so. She gave what was hers to give,
+as long as he wanted it; when he wanted it no more, she meant to leave
+him, and it would make no difference what became of her afterwards.
+
+When she had finished speaking, Marcello was very miserable, because he
+could find no answer to what she had said, and he felt that she had no
+right to say it at all. His head ached now, from excitement and want of
+sleep, and he almost wished that he had put off speaking to Regina about
+her marriage. He rested his head in his hand as he sat thinking, and she
+came and stood beside him as she had done in the morning in the little
+house in Trastevere. But it was not the same now. She hoped that he
+would put up his other hand to find hers, without looking at her, as he
+often did, but it gripped his knee as if he did not mean to move it, and
+he did not raise his head.
+
+She looked up from his bent figure to the window and saw that the light
+was reddening with the first tinge of sunset. It would soon be night,
+Marcello would go away, and she would be dreadfully lonely. It was not
+like being in the little house, knowing that he was near her, in the
+great villa on top of the hill, hidden from her only by trees. She was
+in a strange place now, and he would be far away, across the Tiber, and
+the great dark city would be between her and him.
+
+For an instant her lip quivered, and she thought she was going to cry,
+though she had never cried in her life, except for rage and when she had
+been a little girl. She shook her handsome head impatiently at the mere
+sensation, and held it higher than ever. Then Marcello looked up at
+last.
+
+As their eyes met they heard the tinkle of the little bell. Regina at
+once left his side to go and open the door. It was not till she had left
+the room that Marcello rose, asking himself suddenly why it had not
+occurred to him to go himself. He realised that he had always allowed
+her to wait on him without question. Yet if she were his wife, he would
+not think of letting her do what she was doing now. He would even open
+the door of the room for her to go out.
+
+He knew why he had never treated her in that way. She was a peasant
+girl, she had been a servant in an inn; it was natural that she should
+serve him too. She often brought him his shoes when he was going out,
+and she would have put them on for him and laced them if he would have
+let her do it. It seemed natural that she should answer the bell and
+open the door, as it seemed unnatural that she should ever be his wife.
+The thought stung him, and again, he was ashamed.
+
+While these things were passing in his mind, he heard a familiar voice
+in the dark entry.
+
+"Signora, you will excuse me," Ercole was saying. "I asked the Professor
+and he told me. I beg the favour of a few words."
+
+"Come in," Regina answered, and a moment later they both entered the
+sitting-room.
+
+Ercole stood still when he saw Marcello, and began to turn his hat in
+his hands, as if it were a rosary, which he generally did when he was
+embarrassed. Marcello wondered what the man wanted.
+
+"Were you looking for me?" he asked. "Come in! What is it? Has anything
+happened?"
+
+"No, sir, nothing new has happened," answered Ercole.
+
+"What is it, then? Why did you come here?"
+
+Ercole had dressed himself for the occasion in his best clothes. He had
+on a snowy shirt and a new keeper's jacket, and his boots were blacked.
+Furthermore, he had just been shaved, and his shaggy hair had been cut
+rather close. He did not carry his gun about with him in the streets of
+Rome, though he felt that it was slightly derogatory to his dignity to
+be seen without it, and Nino was not with him, having been temporarily
+chained to the wall in the court of the stables at the villa.
+
+He stood still, and looked from Marcello to Regina, and back to Marcello
+again.
+
+"It cannot be done," he said suddenly. "It is useless. It cannot be
+done."
+
+Without another word he turned abruptly and was going to leave the room,
+when Marcello stopped him authoritatively.
+
+"Come here, Ercole!" he cried, as the man was disappearing into the
+entry.
+
+"Did you speak to me, sir?" Ercole inquired, stopping in the doorway.
+
+"Yes. Shut the door and come here." Ercole obeyed with evident
+reluctance. "Now, then," Marcello continued, "come here and tell me what
+you want, and what it is that cannot be done."
+
+"I desire a few words with this lady, and I did not know that you were
+here, sir. Therefore I said, it cannot be done. I mean that while you
+are here, sir, I cannot speak alone with this lady."
+
+"That is clear," Marcello answered. "You cannot be alone with this lady
+while I am in the room. That certainly cannot be done. Why do you wish
+to be alone with her? You can speak before me."
+
+"It will not be so easy, sir. I will come at another time."
+
+"No," Marcello answered, not liking his manner. "You will say what you
+have to say now, or you will say nothing, for you will not come at
+another time. The lady will not let you in, if you come again. Now
+speak."
+
+"It will be a little difficult, sir. I would rather speak to the lady
+alone."
+
+Regina had stood listening in silence, and looking intently at Ercole's
+face.
+
+"Let me speak to him," she said to Marcello. "What is your full name?"
+she asked, turning to Ercole again.
+
+"Spalletta Ercole, to serve you," was the prompt answer.
+
+"Spalletta?" Marcello asked in surprise, for strange as it may seem to
+any but Italians, it was quite natural that he should never have known
+Ercole's family name. "Spalletta? That is your own name, Regina! What a
+strange coincidence!"
+
+"Yes," Ercole said. "I know that the young lady's name is Spalletta. It
+is for this reason that I desire the favour of a few words with her
+alone."
+
+"There is no need," Regina answered. "Since we have the same name, there
+is no doubt. I remember your face now, though until last night I had not
+seen you since I was a little child. Yes. I know what you have come to
+say, and it is quite true."
+
+"What?" asked Marcello with some anxiety.
+
+"This man is my father," Regina said, very quietly.
+
+"Your father!" Marcello made half a step backwards in his surprise.
+
+"Yes. I have told you what he did." She turned to Ercole. "What do you
+want of me? Is it money that you want, perhaps?"
+
+Ercole stiffened himself and seemed to grow taller. His black eyes
+flashed dangerously, and his heavy eyebrows were suddenly stern and
+level, as Regina's were.
+
+"You are your mother's daughter," he said slowly. "Did I take money from
+her? I took blood, and when I was tried for it, I was set free. I was
+told that it was my right under our law. I do not want money. I have
+brought you money. There it is. It will buy you some bread when your
+lover turns you into the street!"
+
+He took out his old sheepskin purse with a quick movement, and laughed
+harshly as he tossed it at her. Marcello sprang forward and caught him
+by the collar, to thrust him out of the room; but Ercole was tough and
+wiry, and resisted.
+
+"Will you hinder me from giving money to my daughter?" he asked
+fiercely. "It was yours, for you paid it to me; but when I knew, I saved
+my wages to give them back, for I will not take your money, sir! Take
+your hands from me, sir! I have a right to be here and to speak. Let me
+go, I tell you! I am not in your service any longer. I do not eat your
+cursed bread. I am this woman's father, and I shall say what I will."
+
+Marcello withdrew his hands and pointed to the door.
+
+"Go!" he said, in a voice of command.
+
+Ercole backed away a little, and then stood still again.
+
+"I have to tell you that I have spent five francs of that money," he
+said, speaking to Regina. "But it was spent for you. I found a good
+monk, and I gave him the five francs to say three masses for your soul.
+The masses were said in August, and now it is November, and you are
+still alive!"
+
+"Go!" cried Marcello, understanding, and advancing upon him once more.
+
+"I go," answered Ercole hoarsely. "Let her live, till you are tired of
+her, and she dies in a ditch! I told the monk to say the masses for a
+female. They will do for the woman who was killed last night. One female
+is worth another, and evil befall them all, as many as they are! Why did
+the Eternal Father ever create them?"
+
+He had turned before he spoke the last words, and he went out
+deliberately, shutting the door behind him. They heard him go out upon
+the landing, and they were alone again. Regina leaned back against the
+mantelpiece, but Marcello began to walk up and down the room.
+
+"You have seen," she said, in a rather unsteady voice. "Now you know of
+what blood I am, and that what I said was true. The son of your mother
+cannot marry the daughter of that man."
+
+"What have you to do with him?" Marcello asked sharply, stopping in his
+walk.
+
+But Regina only shook her head, and turned away. She knew that she was
+right, and that he knew it too, or would know it soon.
+
+"You will never see him again," he said. "Forget that you have seen him
+at all!"
+
+Again she shook her head, not looking at him.
+
+"You will not forget," she answered, "and I shall always remember. He
+should have killed me, as he meant to do. It would have been the end. It
+would have been better, and quicker."
+
+"God forbid!"
+
+"Why? Would it not have been better?"
+
+She came close to him and laid one hand upon his shoulder and gazed into
+his eyes. They were full of trouble and pain, and they did not lighten
+for her; his brow did not relax and his lips did not part. After a
+little while she turned again and went back to the fireplace.
+
+"It would have been better," she said in a low voice. "I knew it this
+morning."
+
+There was silence in the room for a while. Marcello stood beside her,
+holding her hand in his, and trying to see her face. He was very tender
+with her, but there was no thrill in his touch. Something was gone that
+would never come back.
+
+"When all this trouble is over," he said at last, "you shall go back to
+the little house in Trastevere, and it will be just as it was before."
+
+She raised her head rather proudly, as she answered.
+
+"If that could be, it would be now. You would have taken me in your arms
+when he was gone, and you would have kissed my eyes and my hair, and we
+should have been happy, just as it was before. But instead, you want to
+comfort me, you want to be kind to me, you want to be just to me,
+instead of loving me!"
+
+"Regina! I do love you! I do indeed!"
+
+He would have put his arms round her to draw her closer to him, in the
+sudden longing to make her think that there was no change in his love,
+but she quietly resisted him.
+
+"You have been very good to me, dear," she said, "and I know you will
+always be that, whatever comes. And I am always yours, dear, and you are
+the master, whenever you choose to come and see me. For I care for
+nothing that God has made, except you. But it will never be just as it
+used to be."
+
+"It shall!" Marcello tried to put conviction into the words. "It shall!
+It shall!"
+
+"It cannot, my heart," she answered. "I used to say that when this came,
+I would go away. But I will not do that, unless you bid me to, for I
+think you would be sorry, and I should be giving you more pain, and you
+have enough. Only leave me a little while alone, dear, for I am very
+tired, and it is growing late."
+
+He took her hands and kissed them one after the other, and looked into
+her face. His own was very weary.
+
+"Promise me that I shall find you here to-morrow," he said.
+
+"You shall find me," she answered softly.
+
+They parted so, and he left her alone, in the dark, for the glow of the
+sunset had faded and the early November evening was closing in.
+
+Old Teresa came and brought a lamp, and drew the curtains, and gave her
+a message from Kalmon. If she needed anything she was to send for him,
+and he would come at once. She thanked Teresa. It was very kind of the
+Professor, but she needed nothing. Not even a fire; no, she hardly ever
+felt cold. Teresa brought something to eat, and set the little table for
+her. She was not hungry, and she was glad when the good soul was gone.
+
+She could open the windows when she was alone, and look out into the
+silent street. There was moonlight now, and it fell across the walls and
+trees of the Villa Aurora upon her face. It was a young moon, that would
+set before midnight, but it was very clear and bright, and the sky was
+infinitely deep and very clear behind it. Regina fancied that if there
+were really angels in heaven, she should be able to see them on such a
+night.
+
+If she had been in Trastevere she would have gone out to walk up and
+down the old paved paths of the little garden, for she could not sleep,
+though she was so tired. The lamp disturbed her and she put it out, and
+sat down by the window again.
+
+It was very quiet now, for it was past nine o'clock. She heard a step,
+and it almost surprised her. A man with a big dog was walking in the
+shadow on the other side of the street, and when he was opposite the
+house he stood still and looked up at her window. He did not move for
+some time, but the dog came out into the moonlight in a leisurely way,
+and lay down on the paving stones. All dogs think it is warmer in the
+light than in the shadow.
+
+Regina rose, got a long black cloak and a dark veil without lighting a
+candle, and put them on. Then she went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Ercole walked on when he saw some one come out of No. 16, for he did not
+recognise Regina. She followed him at a distance. Even if he should pass
+where there might be many people, she would not lose sight of him easily
+because he had his dog with him. She noticed that his canvas bag was
+hung over one shoulder and that it seemed to be full, and his gun was
+slung over the other. He meant to leave Rome that night on foot. He
+walked fast through the new streets in the upper quarter, turned to the
+right when he reached the Via Venti Settembre, and went straight on,
+past the top of the hill, and along the Quirinal Palace; then down and
+on, down and on, through moonlight and shadow, winding streets and
+straight, till the Colosseum was in sight. He was going towards the
+Porta San Sebastiano to take the road to Ardea.
+
+The air was very clear, and the moonlight made the broad space as bright
+as if there were daylight. Regina walked fast, and began to overtake her
+father, and the dog turned his head and growled at the tall woman in
+black. She came up with Ercole by the ruin of the ancient fountain, and
+the dog snarled at her. Ercole stopped and looked at her sharply, and
+she raised her veil.
+
+"I have followed you," she said. "We are alone here. We can talk in
+peace."
+
+"And what am I to say to you?" Ercole asked, in a low and surly voice.
+
+"What you will, little or much, as you please. You shall speak, and I
+will listen. But we can walk on under the trees there. Then nobody can
+see us."
+
+Ercole began to go on, and Regina walked on his left side. The dog
+sniffed at the hem of her long black cloak. They came under the shade of
+the trees, and Ercole stopped again, and turned, facing the reflection
+of the moonlight on the vast curve of the Colosseum.
+
+"What do you want of me?" he asked. "Why do you follow me in the night?"
+
+"When you saw that the Signore was with me to-day, you said, 'It cannot
+be done.' He is not here now."
+
+She stood quite still, looking at him.
+
+"I understand nothing," he said, in the same surly tone as before.
+
+"You wished to kill me to-day," she answered. "I am here. This is a good
+place."
+
+Ercole looked about him instinctively, peering into the shadows under
+the trees.
+
+"There is no one," Regina said. "This is a good place."
+
+She had not lifted her veil, but she threw back the collar of her cloak,
+and with quick fingers undid the fastenings of her dress, opening it
+wide. Rays of moonlight fell through the trees upon her bosom, and it
+gleamed like fine ivory newly cut.
+
+"I wait," she said.
+
+She stood motionless before him, expecting the knife, but her father's
+hands did not move. His eyes were fixed on hers, though he could not see
+them through the veil.
+
+"So he has left you?" he said slowly.
+
+"No. I am waiting."
+
+Not a fold of her cloak stirred as she stood there to die. It seemed a
+long time, but his hands did not move. Then he heard the sound of her
+voice, very low and sweet, repeating a little prayer, but he only heard
+the last words distinctly.
+
+"--now, and in the hour of our death!"
+
+His right hand moved slowly and found something in his pocket, and then
+there was the sharp click of a strong spring, and a ray of moonlight
+fell upon steel, and her voice was heard again.
+
+"--in the hour of our death. Amen!"
+
+An unearthly sound rent the stillness. The huge dog sat upright on his
+haunches, his head thrown up and back, his terrible lower jaw trembling
+as he howled, and howled again, waking great echoes where the roar of
+wild lions had rung long ago.
+
+Regina started, though she did not move a step; but an unreasoning fear
+fell upon Ercole. He could not see her face, as the dark veil hung down.
+She was so motionless and fearless; only the dead could be as fearless
+of death and as still as she. Her breast was so white; her hands were
+like marble hands, parting a black shroud upon it. She was something
+risen from the grave to haunt him in that lonely place and drive him
+mad; and the appalling howl of the great dog robe deafeningly on the
+silence and trembled and died away, and began again.
+
+Ercole's hand relaxed, and the knife fell gleaming at his feet. One
+instant more and he turned and fled through the trees, towards San
+Gregorio, his dog galloping heavily after him.
+
+Regina's hands fell by her sides, and the folds of her cloak closed
+together and hung straight down. She stared into the shadowy distance a
+moment after her father, and saw his figure twice in the light where the
+trees were wider apart, before he disappeared altogether. She looked
+down and saw the knife at her feet, and she picked it up and felt the
+point. It was as sharp as a needle, for Ercole had whetted it often
+since he had sat by the gate in the early morning last August. It was
+wet, for the grass under the trees had not dried since the rain.
+
+She felt the point and edge with her hand, and sighed. It would have
+been better to have felt it in her breast, but she would not take her
+own life. She was not afraid to do it, and her young hand would have
+been strong enough and sure enough to do it quickly. It was not the
+thought of the pain that made her close the knife; it was the fear of
+hell. Nothing she had done in her life seemed very bad to her, because
+it had all been for Marcello. If Ercole had killed her, she thought that
+God would have forgiven her after a time. But if she killed herself she
+would instantly be seized by devils and thrust into real flames, to
+burn for ever, without the slightest chance of forgiveness. She had been
+taught that, and she believed it, and the thought of the fire made her
+shut the clasp-knife and slip it into her dress with a sigh. It would be
+a pity to throw it away, for it seemed to be a good knife, and her
+father could not have had it very long.
+
+She fastened her frock under her mantle and went a few steps down the
+little slope towards the Colosseum. To go on meant to go home, and she
+stopped again. The place was very lonely and peaceful, and the light on
+the great walls was quiet and good to see. Though she had stood so
+still, waiting to die, and had said her little prayer so calmly, her
+brave heart had been beating slow and hard as if it were counting the
+seconds before it was to stop; and now it beat fast and softly, and
+fluttered a little, so that she felt faint, as even brave people do
+after a great danger is past. I have seen hundreds of men together, just
+escaped from destruction by earthquake, moving about listlessly with
+veiled eyes, yawning as if they were dropping with sleep, and saying
+childish things when they spoke at all. Man's body is the part of
+himself which he least understands, unless he has spent half his life in
+studying its ways. Its many portions can only telegraph to the brain two
+words, 'pain' and 'pleasure,' with different degrees of energy; but that
+is all. The rest of their language belongs to science.
+
+Regina felt faint and sat down, because there was no reason for making
+any effort to go home. Perhaps a cab would pass, returning from some
+outlying part of the city, and she would take it. From the place where
+she sat she could see one far off, if any came.
+
+She sank down on the wet ground, and drew up her knees and pulled her
+cloak round her; and gradually her head bent forward and rested upon her
+hands, till she sat there like a figure of grief outlined in black
+against the moonlight on the great wall. She had forgotten where she
+was, and that there was any time in the world.
+
+Half an hour passed, and the moon sank low, and an hour, and the deadly
+white mist began to rise in the shadow round the base of the Colosseum,
+and crept up under the trees; and if any one had come upon her then, he
+would have seen its dull whiteness crawling round her feet and body, a
+hand-breadth above the wet ground. But she did not know; she had
+forgotten everything.
+
+Nothing was real any more. She could have believed that her father had
+killed her and left her corpse there, strangely sitting, though quite
+dead.
+
+Then she knew that the light had gone out; and suddenly she felt her
+teeth chatter, and a chill ran through her bones that was bad to feel.
+She raised her head and saw that the great walls were dark against the
+starry sky, and she rose with an effort, as if her limbs had suddenly
+become lead. But she could walk, though it was like walking in sleep.
+
+She did not afterwards remember how she got home, but she had a vague
+recollection of having lost her way, and of finding a cab at last, and
+then of letting herself into the little apartment in the dark.
+
+When she was next aware of anything it was broad daylight, and she was
+lying on her bed, still dressed and wearing her cloak; and Kalmon was
+bending over her, his eyes on hers and his fingers on her pulse, while
+old Teresa watched her anxiously from the foot of the bed.
+
+"I'm afraid it is a 'perniciosa,'" he said. "Put her to bed while I call
+a regular doctor."
+
+Regina looked up at him.
+
+"I have fever, have I not?" she asked quite quietly.
+
+"Yes. You have a little fever," he answered, but his big brown eyes were
+very grave.
+
+When Marcello came, an hour later, she did not know him. She stared at
+him with wide, unwinking eyes, and there were bright patches of colour
+in her cheeks. Already there were hollows in them, too, and at her
+temples, for the perniciosa fever is frightfully quick to waste the
+body. In the Campagna, where it is worst, men have died of it in less
+than four hours after first feeling it upon them. Great men have
+discovered wonderful remedies for it, but still it kills.
+
+Kalmon got one of the great men, who was his friend, and they did what
+they could. A nursing sister came and was installed. Marcello was
+summoned away soon after noon by an official person, who brought a
+carriage and said that Corbario was now conscious and able to speak, and
+that it was absolutely necessary that Marcello should be confronted
+with him, as he might not live another day. It was easier to go than it
+would have been if Regina had been conscious, but even so it was very
+hard. The nun and Teresa stayed with her.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE SAT THERE LIKE A FIGURE OF GRIEF OUTLINED IN BLACK
+AGAINST THE MOONLIGHT ON THE GREAT WALL."]
+
+She said little in her delirium, and nothing that had any meaning for
+either of the women. Twice she tried to tear away the linen and lace
+from her throat.
+
+"I wait!" she cried each time, and her eyes fixed themselves on the
+ceiling, while she held her breath.
+
+The women could not tell what she was waiting for, and they soothed her
+as best they could. She seemed to doze after that, and when Marcello
+came back she knew him, and took his hand. He sent away the nurses and
+sat by the bedside, and she spoke to him in short sentences, faintly. He
+bent forward, near the pillow, to catch the words.
+
+She was telling him what she had done last night.
+
+"But you promised that I should find you here to-day!" Marcello said,
+with gentle reproach.
+
+"Yes. I did not mean to break my word. But I thought he would do it. It
+seemed so easy."
+
+Her voice was weak with the fever, and sank almost to a whisper. He
+stroked her hand affectionately, hoping that she would go to sleep; and
+so a long time passed. Then Kalmon came in with his friend the great
+doctor. They saw that she was not yet any better; the doctor ordered
+several things to be done and went away. Kalmon drew Marcello out of the
+room.
+
+"You can do nothing," he said. "She has good care, and she is very
+strong. Go home and come back in the morning."
+
+"I must stay here," Marcello answered.
+
+"That is out of the question, on account of the Sister of Charity. But
+you can send for your things and camp in my rooms downstairs. There is a
+good sofa. You can telephone to the villa for what you want."
+
+"Thank you." Marcello's voice dropped and shook. "Will she live?" he
+asked.
+
+"I hope so. She is very strong, and it may be only fever."
+
+"What else could it be?"
+
+"Pneumonia."
+
+Marcello bit his lip and closed his eyes as if he were in bodily pain,
+and a moment later he turned away and went down to Kalmon's apartment.
+
+The Professor went back to Regina's side, and stood quietly watching
+her, with a very sad look in his eyes. She opened hers and saw him, and
+she brought one hand to her chest.
+
+"It burns," she said, almost in a whisper, but with a strange sort of
+eagerness, as if she were glad.
+
+"I wish I could bear it for you, my poor child," Kalmon answered.
+
+She shook her head, and turned uneasily on the pillow. He did not
+understand.
+
+"What is it?" he asked gently. "What can I do for you? Tell me."
+
+"I want to see some one very much. How long shall I live?"
+
+"You will get quite well," said Kalmon, in a reassuring tone. "But you
+must be very quiet." Again she moved her burning cheek on the pillow.
+
+"Do you want to see a priest?" asked the Professor, thinking he had
+guessed. "Is that it?"
+
+"Yes--there is time for that--some one else--could you? Will you?"
+
+"Yes." Kalmon bent down quickly, for he thought the delirium was coming
+again. "Who is it?" he asked.
+
+"Aurora--I mean, the Signorina--can you? Oh, do you think you could?"
+
+"I'll try," Kalmon answered in great surprise.
+
+But now the hoarseness was suddenly gone, and her sweet voice was softly
+humming an old song of the hills, forgotten many years, and the
+Professor saw that she did not know him any more. He nodded to Teresa,
+who was in the room, and went out.
+
+He wondered much at the request, but he remembered that it had been made
+in the full belief that he would say nothing of it to Marcello. If she
+had been willing that Marcello should know, she would have spoken to
+him, rather than to Kalmon. He had seen little enough of Regina, but he
+was sure that she could have no bad motive in wishing to see the young
+girl. Yet, from a social point of view, it was not exactly an easy thing
+to propose, and the Contessa would have a right to be offended at the
+mere suggestion that her daughter should speak to "Consalvi's Regina";
+and there could not be anything clandestine in the meeting, if Aurora
+consented to it. Kalmon was too deeply attached to the Contessa herself
+to be willing to risk her displeasure, or, indeed, to do anything of
+which she would not approve.
+
+He went to her house by the Forum of Trajan, and he found her at home.
+It was late in the afternoon, and the lamp was lighted in the little
+drawing-room, which did not seem at all shabby to Kalmon's accustomed
+eyes and not very exigent taste. The Contessa was reading an evening
+paper before the fire. She put out her hand to the Professor.
+
+"It is a bad business," she said, glancing at the newspaper, which had a
+long account of Corbario's arrest and of the murder of his old
+accomplice. "Poor Marcello!"
+
+"Poor Marcello! Yes, indeed! I'm sorry for him. There is something more
+than is in the papers, and more than I have written to you and told you.
+Regina has the perniciosa fever, complicated with pneumonia, and is not
+likely to live."
+
+"I am sorry," the Contessa answered. "I am very sorry for her. But after
+all, compared with what Marcello has learned about his mother's
+death--and other things Corbario did--"
+
+She stopped, implying by her tone that even if Regina died, that would
+not be the greatest of Marcello's misfortunes. Besides, she had long
+foreseen that the relations of the two could not last, and the simplest
+solution, and the happiest one for the poor devoted girl, was that she
+should die before her heart was broken. Maddalena dell' Armi had often
+wished that her own fate had been as merciful.
+
+"Yes," Kalmon answered. "You are right in that. But Regina has made a
+rather strange request. It was very unexpected, and perhaps I did wrong
+to tell her that I would do my best to satisfy her. I don't think she
+will live, and I felt sorry for her. That is why I came to you. It
+concerns Aurora."
+
+"Aurora?" The Contessa was surprised.
+
+"Yes. The girl knows she is dying, and wishes very much to see Aurora
+for a moment. I suppose it was weak of me to give her any hope."
+
+The Contessa dropped her newspaper and looked into the fire thoughtfully
+before she answered.
+
+"You and I are very good friends," she said. "You would not ask me to do
+anything you would not do yourself, would you? If you had a daughter of
+Aurora's age, should you let her go and see this poor woman, unless it
+were an act of real charity?"
+
+"No," Kalmon answered reluctantly. "I don't think I should."
+
+"Thank you for being so honest," Maddalena answered, and looked at the
+fire again.
+
+Some time passed before she spoke again, still watching the flames.
+Kalmon sighed, for he was very sorry for Regina.
+
+"On the other hand," the Contessa said at last, "it may be a real
+charity. Have you any idea why she wishes to see Aurora?"
+
+"No. I cannot guess."
+
+"I can. At least, I think I can." She paused again. "You know
+everything about me," she continued presently. "In the course of years I
+have told you all my story. Do you think I am a better woman than
+Regina?"
+
+"My dear friend!" cried Kalmon, almost angrily. "How can you suggest--"
+
+She turned her clear, sad eyes to him, and her look cut short his
+speech.
+
+"What has her sin been?" she asked gently. "She has loved Marcello. What
+was mine? That I loved one man too well. Which is the better woman? She,
+the peasant, who knew no better, who found her first love dying, and
+saved him, and loved him--knowing no better, and braving the world? Or
+I, well born, carefully brought up, a woman of the world, and
+married--no matter how--not braving the world at all, but miserably
+trying to deceive it, and my husband, and my child? Do you think I was
+so much better than poor Regina? Would my own daughter think so if she
+could know and understand?"
+
+"If you were not a very good woman now," Kalmon said earnestly, "you
+could not say what you are saying."
+
+"Never mind what I am now. I am not as good as you choose to think. If I
+were, there would not be a bitter thought left. I should have forgiven
+all. Leave out of the question what I am now. Compare me as I was with
+Regina as she is. That is how I put it, and I am right."
+
+"Even if you were," Kalmon answered doubtfully, "the situation would be
+the same, so far as Aurora is concerned."
+
+"But suppose that this poor woman cannot die in peace unless she has
+asked Aurora's pardon and obtained her forgiveness, what then?"
+
+"Her forgiveness? For what?"
+
+"For coming between her and Marcello. Say that, so far as Regina knows,
+my daughter is the only human being she has ever injured, what then?"
+
+"Does Aurora love Marcello?" asked Kalmon, instead of answering the
+question.
+
+"I think she does. I am almost sure of it."
+
+Kalmon was silent for a while.
+
+"But Marcello," he said at last, "what of him?"
+
+"He has always loved Aurora," the Contessa answered. "Do you blame him
+so much for what he has done? Why do you blame some people so easily, my
+dear friend, and others not at all? Do you realise what happened to him?
+He was virtually taken out of the life he was leading, by a blow that
+practically destroyed his memory, and of which the consequences
+altogether destroyed his will for some time. He found himself saved and
+at the same time loved--no, worshipped--by one of the most beautiful
+women in the world. Never mind her birth! She has never looked at any
+other man, before or since, and from what I have heard, she never will.
+Ah, if all women were like her! Marcello, weak from illness, allowed
+himself to be worshipped, and Corbario did the rest. I understand it
+all. Do you blame him very much? I don't. With all your strength of
+character, you would have done the same at his age! And having taken
+what she offered, what could he do, when he grew up and came to himself,
+and felt his will again? Could he cast her off, after all she had done
+for him?"
+
+"He could marry her," observed Kalmon. "I don't see why he should not,
+after all."
+
+"Marriage!" There was a little scornful sadness in Maddalena's voice.
+"Marriage is always the solution! No, no, he is right not to marry her,
+if he has ever thought of it. They would only make each other miserable
+for the rest of their lives. Miserable, and perhaps faithless too. That
+is what happens when men and women are not saints. Look at me!"
+
+"You were never in that position. Others were to blame, who made you
+marry when you were too young to have any will of your own."
+
+"Blame no one," said the Contessa gravely. "I shall give Aurora Regina's
+message, and if she is willing to go and see her, I shall bring her
+to-morrow morning--to-night, if there is no time to be lost. The world
+need never know. Go and tell Regina what I have said. It may comfort her
+a little, poor thing."
+
+"Indeed it will!"
+
+Kalmon's brown eyes beamed with pleasure at the thought of taking the
+kindly message to the dying girl. He rose to his feet at once.
+
+"There is no one like you," he said, as he took her hand.
+
+"It is nothing. It is what Marcello's mother would have done, and she
+was my best friend. All I do is to take the responsibility upon myself,
+however Aurora may choose to act. I will send you word, in either case.
+If Aurora will not go, I will come myself, if I can be of any use, if it
+would make Regina feel happier. I will come, and I will tell her what I
+have told you. Good-night, dear friend."
+
+Kalmon was not an emotional man, but as he went out he felt a little
+lump in his throat, as if he could not swallow.
+
+He had not doubted his friend's kindness, but he had doubted whether she
+would feel that she had a right to "expose her daughter," as the world
+would say, to meeting such a "person," as the world called
+Regina--"Consalvi's Regina."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+All that night and the following day Regina recognised no one; and it
+was night again, and her strength began to fail, but her understanding
+returned. Marcello saw the change, and made a sign to the nurse, who
+went out to tell Kalmon.
+
+It was about nine o'clock when he entered the room, and Regina knew him
+and looked at him anxiously. He, in turn, glanced at Marcello, and she
+understood. She begged Marcello to go and get some rest. Her voice was
+very weak, as if she were suffocating, and she coughed painfully. He did
+not like to go away, but Kalmon promised to call him at midnight; he had
+been in the room six hours, scarcely moving from his seat. He lingered
+at the door, looked back, and at last went out.
+
+"Will she come?" asked Regina, when he was gone.
+
+"In half an hour. I have sent a messenger, for they have no telephone."
+
+A bright smile lighted up the wasted face.
+
+"Heaven will reward you," she said, as the poor say in Rome when they
+receive a charity.
+
+Then she seemed to be resting, for her hands lay still, and she closed
+her eyes. But presently she opened them, looking up gratefully into the
+big man's kind face.
+
+"Shall I be alone with her a little?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, my dear. You shall be alone with her."
+
+Again she smiled, and he left the nurse with her and went and waited
+downstairs at the street door, till the Contessa and Aurora should come,
+in order to take them up to the little apartment. He knew that Marcello
+must have fallen asleep at once, for he had not rested at all for
+twenty-four hours, and very little during several days past. Kalmon was
+beginning to fear that he would break down, though he was so much
+stronger than formerly.
+
+Marcello had always been grateful to Regina, even when he had convinced
+himself that he loved her. Love is not very compatible with gratitude.
+Two people who love each other very much expect everything because they
+are always ready to give everything, not in return or by way of any
+exchange, but as if the two were one in giving and taking. A man cannot
+be grateful to himself. But Marcello had never felt that dear illusion
+with Regina, because there had been no real companionship; and so he had
+always been grateful to her, and now that she was perhaps dying, he was
+possessed by the horribly painful certainty that he could never repay
+her what he owed, and that this debt of honour must remain unpaid for
+ever, if she died. There was much more than that in what he felt, of
+course, for there was his very real affection, tormented by the
+foreboding of the coming wrench, and there was the profound sympathy of
+a very kind man for a suffering woman. But all that together was not
+love like hers for him; it was not love at all.
+
+Kalmon waited, and smoked a little, reflecting on these things, which
+he understood tolerably well. The quiet man of science had watched
+Marcello thoughtfully, and could not help asking himself what look there
+would be in his own eyes, if Maddalena dell' Armi were dying and he were
+standing by her bedside. It would not be Marcello's look.
+
+A closed cab stopped before the entrance, and almost before he could
+throw away his cigarette, the Contessa and Aurora were standing beside
+him on the pavement.
+
+"She is very weak," he said, "but she will not be delirious again for
+some time--if at all."
+
+Neither of the ladies spoke, and they followed him in silence up the
+ill-lighted staircase.
+
+"That is where I live," he said, as he passed his own door on the second
+landing. "Marcello is camping there. He is probably asleep now."
+
+"Asleep!" It was Aurora that uttered the single word, in a puzzled tone.
+
+"He did not go to bed last night," Kalmon explained, going on.
+
+"Oh!" Again the Professor was struck by the young girl's tone.
+
+They reached the third landing, and Kalmon pushed the door, which he had
+left ajar; he shut it when they had all entered, and he ushered the
+mother and daughter into the small sitting-room. There they waited a
+moment while he went to tell Regina that Aurora had come.
+
+The young girl dropped her cloak upon a chair and stood waiting, her
+eyes fixed on the door. She was a little pale, not knowing what was to
+come, yet feeling somehow that it was to make a great difference to her
+ever afterwards. She glanced at her mother, and the Contessa smiled
+gently, as much as to say that she was doing right, but neither spoke.
+
+Presently Kalmon came out with the Sister of Charity, who bent her head
+gravely to the two ladies.
+
+"She wishes to see you alone," Kalmon said, in explanation, while he
+held the door open for Aurora to pass in.
+
+He closed it after her, and the two were together.
+
+When Aurora entered, Regina's eyes were fixed upon her face as if they
+had already found her and seen her while she had been in the other room.
+She came straight to the bedside and took the hand that was stretched
+out to meet hers. It was thin and hot now, and the arm was already
+wasted. Aurora remembered how strongly it had lifted her to the edge of
+the rock, far away by Pontresina.
+
+"You are very kind, Signorina," said the faint voice. "You see how I
+am."
+
+Aurora saw indeed, and kept the hand in hers as she sat down in the
+chair that stood where Marcello had left it.
+
+"I am very, very sorry," she said, leaning forward a little and looking
+into the worn face, colourless now that the fever had subsided for a
+while.
+
+The same bright smile that Kalmon had seen lighted up Regina's features.
+
+"But I am glad!" she answered. "They do not understand that I am glad."
+
+"No, no!" cried Aurora softly. "Don't say you are glad!"
+
+The smile faded, and a very earnest look came into the hollow dark eyes.
+
+"But I have not done it on purpose," Regina said. "I did not know there
+was fever in that place, or I would not have sat down there. You believe
+me, Signorina, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, indeed!"
+
+The smile returned very gradually, and the anxious pressure of the hand
+relaxed.
+
+"You must not think that I was looking for the fever. But since it came,
+and I am going from here, I am glad. I shall not be in the way any more.
+That hindrance will be taken out of his life."
+
+"He would not like to hear you speak like this," Aurora said, with great
+gentleness.
+
+"There is no time for anything except the truth, now. And you are good,
+so good! No, there is no time. To-morrow, I shall be gone. Signorina, if
+I could kneel at your feet, I would kneel. But you see how I am. You
+must think I am kneeling at your feet."
+
+"But why?" asked Aurora, with a little distress.
+
+"To ask you to forgive me for being a hindrance. I want pardon before I
+go. But I found him half dead on the door-step. What could I do? When I
+had seen him, I loved him. I knew that he thought of you. That was all
+he remembered--just your name, and I hated it, because he had forgotten
+all other names, even his own, and his mother, and everything. He was
+like a little child that learns, to-day this, to-morrow that, one thing
+at a time. What could I do? I taught him. I also taught him to love
+Regina. But when the memory came back, I knew how it had been before."
+
+Her voice broke and she coughed, and raised one hand to her chest.
+Aurora supported her tenderly until it was over, and when the weary head
+sank back at last it lay upon the young girl's willing arm.
+
+"You are tiring yourself," Aurora said. "If it was to ask my forgiveness
+that you wished me to come, I forgave you long ago, if there was
+anything to forgive. I forgave you when we met, and I saw what you were,
+and that you loved him for himself, just as I do."
+
+"Is it true? Really true?"
+
+"So may God help me, it is quite true. But if I had thought it was not
+for himself--"
+
+"Oh, yes, it was," Regina answered. "It was, and it is, to the end. Will
+you see? I will show you. For what the eyes see the heart believes more
+easily. Signorina, will you bring the little box covered with old
+velvet? It is there, on the table, and it is open."
+
+Aurora rose, humouring her, and brought the thing she asked for, and sat
+down again, setting it on the edge of the bed. Regina turned her head to
+see it, and raised the lid with one hand.
+
+"This is my little box," she said. "What he has given me is all in it. I
+have no other. Will you see? Here is what I have taken from him. You
+shall look everywhere, if you do not believe."
+
+"But I do believe you!" Aurora cried, feeling that tears were coming to
+her eyes.
+
+"But you must see," Regina insisted. "Or perhaps when I am gone you will
+say to yourself, 'There may have been diamonds and pearls in the little
+box, after all!' You shall know that it was all for himself."
+
+To please her Aurora took up some of the simple trinkets, simpler and
+cheaper even than what she had herself.
+
+"There are dresses, yes, many more than I wanted. But I could not let
+him be ashamed of me when we went out together, and travelled. Do you
+forgive me the dresses, Signorina? I wore them to please him. Please
+forgive me that also!"
+
+Aurora dropped the things into the open box and laid both her hands on
+Regina's, bending down her radiant head and looking very earnestly into
+the anxious eyes.
+
+"Forgiveness is not all from me to you, Regina," she said. "I want yours
+too."
+
+"Mine?" The eyes grew wide and wondering.
+
+"Don't you see that but for me he would have married you, and that I
+have been the cause of a great wrong to you?"
+
+For one instant Regina's face darkened, her brows straightened
+themselves, and her lip curled. She remembered how, only two days ago,
+in the very next room, Marcello had insisted that she should he his
+wife. But as she looked into Aurora's innocent eyes she understood, and
+the cloud passed from her own, and the bright smile came back. Aurora
+had spoken in the simplicity of her true heart, sure that it was only
+the memory of his love for her that had withheld Marcello from first to
+last; and Regina well knew that it had always been present with him, in
+spite of his brave struggle to put it away. That memory of another,
+which Regina had seen slowly reviving in him, had been for something in
+her refusal to marry him.
+
+With the mysterious sure vision of those who are near death, she felt
+that it would hurt Aurora to know the truth, except from Marcello
+himself.
+
+"If you have ever stood between us," she said, "you had the right. He
+loved you first. There is nothing to forgive in that. Afterwards he
+loved me a little. No one can take that from me, no one! It is mine, and
+it is all I have, and though I am going, and though I know that he is
+tired of me, it is still more than the world. To have it, as I have it,
+I would do again what I did, from the first."
+
+The voice was weak and muffled, but the words were distinct, and they
+were the confession of poor Regina's life.
+
+"If he were here," she said, after a moment, "I would lay your hand in
+his. Only let me take that memory with me!"
+
+The young girl rose and bent over her as she answered.
+
+"It is yours, to keep for ever."
+
+She stooped a little lower and kissed the dying woman's forehead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the May moon a little brigantine came sailing up to a low island
+just within sight of Italy; when she was within half a mile of the reefs
+Don Antonino Maresca put her about, for he was a prudent man, and he
+knew that there are just a few more rocks in the sea than are in the
+charts. It was a quiet night, and he was beating up against a gentle
+northerly breeze.
+
+When the head yards were swung, and braced sharp up for the other tack,
+and the little vessel had gathered way again, the mate came aft and
+stood by the captain, watching the light on the island.
+
+"Are there still convicts on this island, Don Antonino?" the young man
+asked.
+
+"Yes, there are the convicts. And there is one among them whom I helped
+to put there. He is an assassin that killed many when he was at liberty.
+But now he sits for seven years in a little cell alone, and sees no
+Christian, and it will be thirty years before he is free."
+
+"Madonna!" ejaculated the mate. "When he has been there thirty years he
+will perhaps understand."
+
+"It is as I say," rejoined the captain. "The world is made so. There are
+the good and the bad. The Eternal Father has created things thus. Get a
+little more on the main sheet, and then flatten in those jibs."
+
+Under the May moon, in the small shaft of white light that fell through
+the narrow grated window, a man sat on the edge of his pallet bed. His
+face was ghastly, and there were strange scars on his bare throat. His
+cell was seven feet by six, and the air was hard to breathe, because the
+wind was not from the south. But the moon was kinder than the sun. He
+heard the ripple of the cool sea, and he tried to dream that a great
+stone was hung to his neck, and that he had been thrown into a deep
+place. Perhaps, some day, the gaoler would forget to take away the
+coarse towel which was brought with the water in the morning. With a
+towel he could hang himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the May moon a small marble cross cast its shadow upon young roses
+and violets and growing myrtle. In the sweet earth below a very loyal
+heart was at rest for ever. But the flowers were planted and still
+tended by a woman with radiant hair; and sometimes, when she stooped to
+train the young roses, bright drops fell quietly upon their bloom. Also,
+on certain days, a man came there alone and knelt upon the marble border
+within which the flowers grew. But the man and the woman never came
+together; and he gave the gardener of that place money, praising him for
+the care of the flowers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the May moon the man and the woman went down from the cottage by
+the Roman shore to the break in the high bank, and stood still a while,
+looking out at the peaceful sea and the moon's broad path. Presently
+they turned to each other, put out their hands, and then their arms, and
+clasped each other silently, and kissed.
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Whosoever Shall Offend, by F. Marion Crawford</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
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+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Whosoever Shall Offend</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: F. Marion Crawford</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 3, 2004 [eBook #13932]<br />
+[Most recently updated: February 26, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Audrey Longhurst, Stephanie Fleck, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND ***</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name='Suddenly'></a>
+<img src="images/Illusfront_Suddenly.jpg" width="400" height="580" alt="[Illustration]" />
+<p class="caption">"SUDDENLY HE HEARD AN ITALIAN VOICE VERY NEAR TO HIM, CALLING HIM BY NAME, IN A TONE OF SURPRISE"</p>
+</div>
+
+    <h1>WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND</h1>
+
+    <h4>BY</h4>
+
+    <h2>F. MARION CRAWFORD</h2>
+
+    <h5>AUTHOR OF <i>SARACINESCA</i>, <i>THE HEART OF ROME</i>, ETC,
+    ETC.</h5>
+
+    <h4>WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS</h4>
+
+    <h5>DRAWN IN ROME WITH THE AUTHOR'S SUGGESTIONS</h5>
+
+    <h5>BY</h5>
+
+    <h3>HORACE T. CARPENTER</h3>
+
+    <h5>1905</h5>
+
+        <p class="letter">"<i>Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones
+        which believe in Me, it were better for him that a mill
+        stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned
+        in the depth of the sea</i>"</p>
+
+    <hr />
+
+
+    <h2>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2>
+
+    <div class='toc'>
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_I'>CHAPTER I</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_II'>CHAPTER II</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_III'>CHAPTER III</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_IV'>CHAPTER IV</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_V'>CHAPTER V</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_VI'>CHAPTER VI</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_VII'>CHAPTER VII</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_VIII'>CHAPTER VIII</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_IX'>CHAPTER IX</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_X'>CHAPTER X</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XI'>CHAPTER XI</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XII'>CHAPTER XII</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XIII'>CHAPTER XIII</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XIV'>CHAPTER XIV</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XV'>CHAPTER XV</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XVI'>CHAPTER XVI</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XVII'>CHAPTER XVII</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XVIII'>CHAPTER XVIII</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XIX'>CHAPTER XIX</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XX'>CHAPTER XX</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XXI'>CHAPTER XXI</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#CHAPTER_XXII'>CHAPTER XXII</a></p>
+    </div>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+    <p><a href='#Suddenly'>"Suddenly he heard an Italian voice very
+    near to him, calling him by name, in a tone of
+    surprise"</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href='#Sleeping_Death'>"'I call it the sleeping death,'
+    answered the Professor"</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href='#Flushed'>"He flushed again, very angry this time,
+    and he moved away to leave her, without another word"</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href='#Door'>" ... the door was darkened, and the girl
+    stood there with a large copper 'conca' ..."</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href='#Moved'>"He moved a step towards the bed, and then
+    another, forcing himself to go on"</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href='#Ercole'>"Ercole left his home after sunset that
+    evening"</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href='#Regina'>"Regina made a steady effort, lifting
+    fully half Aurora's weight with her"</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href='#Grief'>"She sat there like a figure of grief
+    outlined in black against the moonlight on the great
+    wall"</a></p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2>WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND</h2>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_I'></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+    <p>When the widow of Martino Consalvi married young Corbario,
+    people shook their heads and said that she was making a great
+    mistake. Consalvi had been dead a good many years, but as yet
+    no one had thought it was time to say that his widow was no
+    longer young and beautiful, as she had always been. Many rich
+    widows remain young and beautiful as much as a quarter of a
+    century, or even longer, and the Signora Consalvi was very rich
+    indeed. As soon as she was married to Folco Corbario every one
+    knew that she was thirty-five years old and he was barely
+    twenty-six, and that such a difference of ages on the wrong
+    side was ridiculous if it was not positively immoral. No
+    well-regulated young man had a right to marry a rich widow nine
+    years older than himself, and who had a son only eleven years
+    younger than he.</p>
+
+    <p>A few philosophers who said that if the widow was satisfied
+    the matter was nobody's business were treated with the contempt
+    they deserved. Those who, on the contrary, observed that young
+    Corbario had married for money and nothing else were heard with
+    favour, until the man who knew everything pointed out that as
+    the greater part of the fortune would be handed over to
+    Marcello when he came of age, six years hence, Corbario had not
+    made a good bargain and might have done better. It was true
+    that Marcello Consalvi had inherited a delicate constitution of
+    body, it had even been hinted that he was consumptive. Corbario
+    would have done better to wait another year or two to see what
+    happened, said a cynic, for young people often died of
+    consumption between fifteen and twenty. The cynic was answered
+    by a practical woman of the world, who said that Corbario had
+    six years of luxury and extravagance before him, and that many
+    men would have sold themselves to the devil for less. After the
+    six years the deluge might come if it must; it was much
+    pleasanter to drown in the end than never to have had the
+    chance of swimming in the big stream at all, and bumping sides
+    with the really big fish, and feeling oneself as good as any of
+    them. Besides, Marcello was pale and thin, and had been heard
+    to cough; he might die before he came of age. The only
+    objection to this theory was that it was based on a fiction;
+    for the whole fortune had been left to the Signora by a
+    childless relation.</p>
+
+    <p>These amiable and interesting views were expressed with
+    variations by people who knew the three persons concerned, and
+    with such a keen sense of appropriate time and place as made it
+    quite sure that none of the three should ever know what was
+    said of them. The caution of an old fox is rash temerity
+    compared with the circumspection of a first-rate gossip; and
+    when the gossips were tired of discussing Folco Corbario and
+    his wife and her son, they talked about other matters, but they
+    had a vague suspicion that they had been cheated out of
+    something. A cat that has clawed all the feathers off a stuffed
+    canary might feel just what they did.</p>
+
+    <p>For nothing happened. Corbario did not launch into wild
+    extravagance after all, but behaved himself with the faultless
+    dulness of a model middle-aged husband. His wife loved him and
+    was perfectly happy, and happiness finally stole her
+    superfluous years away, and they evaporated in the sunshine,
+    and she forgot all about them. Marcello Consalvi, who had lost
+    his father when he was a mere child, found a friend in his
+    mother's husband, and became very fond of him, and thought him
+    a good man to imitate; and in return Corbario made a companion
+    of the fair-haired boy, and taught him to ride and shoot in his
+    holidays, and all went well.</p>
+
+    <p>Moreover, Marcello's mother, who was a good woman, told him
+    that the world was very wicked; and with the blind desire for
+    her son's lasting innocence, which is the most touching
+    instinct of loving motherhood, she entreated him to lead a
+    spotless life. When Marcello, in the excusable curiosity of
+    budding youth, asked his stepfather what that awful wickedness
+    was against which he was so often warned, Corbario told him
+    true stories of men who had betrayed their country and their
+    friends, and of all sorts of treachery and meanness, to which
+    misdeeds the boy did not feel himself at all inclined; so that
+    he wondered why his mother seemed so very anxious lest he
+    should go astray. Then he repeated to her what Corbario had
+    told him, and she smiled sweetly and said nothing, and trusted
+    her husband all the more. She felt that he understood her, and
+    was doing his best to help her in making Marcello what she
+    wished him to be.</p>
+
+    <p>The boy was brought up at home; in Rome in the winter, and
+    in summer on the great estate in the south, which his father
+    had bought and which was to be a part of his inheritance.</p>
+
+    <p>He was taught by masters who came to the house to give their
+    lessons and went away as soon as the task was over. He had no
+    tutor, for his mother had not found a layman whom she could
+    trust in that capacity, and yet she understood that it was not
+    good for a boy to be followed everywhere by a priest. Besides,
+    Corbario gave so much of his time to his stepson that a tutor
+    was hardly needed; he walked with him and rode with him, or
+    spent hours with him at home when the weather was bad. There
+    had never been a cross word between the two since they had met.
+    It was an ideal existence. Even the gossips stopped talking at
+    last, and there was not one, not even the most ingeniously
+    evil-tongued of all, that prophesied evil.</p>
+
+    <p>They raised their eyebrows, and the more primitive among
+    them shrugged their shoulders a little, and smiled. If
+    Providence really insisted upon making people so perfect, what
+    was to be done? It was distressing, but there was nothing to be
+    said; they must just lead their lives, and the gossips must
+    bear it. No doubt Corbario had married for money, since he had
+    nothing in particular and his wife had millions, but if ever a
+    man had married for money and then behaved like an angel, that
+    man was Folco Corbario and no other. He was everything to his
+    wife, and all things to his stepson&mdash;husband, father, man
+    of business, tutor, companion, and nurse; for when either his
+    wife or Marcello was ill, he rarely left the sick-room, and no
+    one could smooth a pillow as he could, or hold a glass so
+    coaxingly to the feverish lips, or read aloud so untiringly in
+    such a gentle and soothing voice.</p>
+
+    <p>No ascendency of one human being over another is more
+    complete than that of a full-grown man over a boy of sixteen,
+    who venerates his elder as an ideal. To find a model, to
+    believe it perfection, and to copy it energetically, is either
+    a great piece of good fortune, or a misfortune even greater; in
+    whatever follows in life, there is the same difference between
+    such development and the normally slow growth of a boy's mind
+    as that which lies between enthusiasm and indifference. It is
+    true that where there has been no enthusiastic belief there can
+    be no despairing disillusionment when the light goes out; but
+    it is truer still that hope and happiness are the children of
+    faith by the ideal.</p>
+
+    <p>A boy's admiration for his hero is not always well founded;
+    sometimes it is little short of ridiculous, and it is by no
+    means always harmless. But no one found fault with Marcello for
+    admiring his stepfather, and the attachment was a source of
+    constant satisfaction to his mother. In her opinion Corbario
+    was the handsomest, bravest, cleverest, and best of men, and
+    after watching him for some time even the disappointed gossips
+    were obliged to admit, though without superlatives, that he was
+    a good-looking fellow, a good sportsman, sufficiently well
+    gifted, and of excellent behaviour. There was the more merit in
+    the admission, they maintained, because they had been inclined
+    to doubt the man, and had accused him of marrying out of pure
+    love of money. A keen judge of men might have thought that his
+    handsome features were almost too still and too much like a
+    mask, that his manner was so quiet as to be almost
+    expressionless, and that the soft intonation of his speech was
+    almost too monotonous to be natural. But all this was just what
+    his wife admired, and she encouraged her son to imitate it. His
+    father had been a man of quick impulses, weak to-day, strong
+    to-morrow, restless, of uncertain temper, easily enthusiastic
+    and easily cast down, capable of sudden emotions, and never
+    able to conceal what he felt if he had cared to do so. Marcello
+    had inherited his father's character and his mother's face, as
+    often happens; but his unquiet disposition was tempered as yet
+    by a certain almost girlish docility, which had clung to him
+    from childhood as the result of being brought up almost
+    entirely by the mother he worshipped. And now, for the first
+    time, comparing him with her second husband, she realised the
+    boy's girlishness, and wished him to outgrow it. Her own ideal
+    of what even a young man should be was as unpractical as that
+    of many thoroughly good and thoroughly unworldly mothers. She
+    wished her son to be a man at all points, and yet she dreamed
+    that he might remain a sort of glorified young girl; she
+    desired him to be well prepared to face the world when he grew
+    up, and yet it was her dearest wish that he might never know
+    anything of the world's wickedness. Corbario seemed to
+    understand her better in this than she understood herself, and
+    devoted his excellent gifts and his almost superhuman patience
+    to the task of forming a modern Galahad. Her confidence in her
+    husband increased month by month, and year by year.</p>
+
+    <p>"I wish to make a new will," she said to her lawyer in the
+    third year of her marriage. "I shall leave my husband a
+    life-interest in a part of my fortune, and the reversion of the
+    whole in case anything should happen to my son."</p>
+
+    <p>The lawyer was a middle-aged man, with hard black eyes.
+    While he was listening to a client, he had a habit of folding
+    his arms tightly across his chest and crossing one leg over the
+    other. When the Signora Corbario had finished speaking he sat
+    quite still for a moment, and then noiselessly reversed the
+    crossing of his legs and the folding of his arms, and looked
+    into her face. It was very gentle, fair, and thoughtful.</p>
+
+    <p>"I presume," answered the lawyer, "that the clause providing
+    for a reversion is only intended as an expression of your
+    confidence in your husband?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Affection," answered the Signora, "includes
+    confidence."</p>
+
+    <p>The lawyer raised one eyebrow almost imperceptibly, and
+    changed his position a little.</p>
+
+    <p>"Heaven forbid," he said, "that any accident should befall
+    your son!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Heaven forbid it!" replied the Signora. "He is very
+    strong," she continued, in the tone people use who are anxious
+    to convince themselves of something doubtful. "Yet I wish my
+    husband to know that, after my son, he should have the first
+    right."</p>
+
+    <p>"Shall you inform him of the nature of your will, Signora?"
+    inquired the lawyer.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have already informed him of what I mean to do," replied
+    Signora Corbario.</p>
+
+    <p>Again the lawyer's eyebrow moved a little nervously, but he
+    said nothing. It was not his place to express any doubt as to
+    the wisdom of the disposition. He was not an old family
+    adviser, who might have taken such a liberty. There had been
+    such a man, indeed, but he was dead. It was the duty of the
+    rich woman's legal adviser to hinder her from committing any
+    positive legal mistake, but it was not his place to criticise
+    her judgment of the man she had chosen to marry. The lawyer
+    made a few notes without offering any comment, and on the
+    following day he brought the will for the Signora to sign. By
+    it, at her death, Marcello, her son, was to inherit her great
+    fortune. Her husband, Folco Corbario, was constituted
+    Marcello's sole guardian, and was to enjoy a life-interest in
+    one-third of the inheritance. If Marcello died, the whole
+    fortune was to go to Corbario, without any condition or
+    reservation whatsoever.</p>
+
+    <p>When the will was executed, the Signora told her husband
+    that she had done what she intended.</p>
+
+    <p>"My dear," said Corbario, gently, "I thank you for the true
+    meaning of it. But as for the will itself, shall we talk of it
+    thirty years hence, when Marcello's children's children are at
+    your knee?"</p>
+
+    <p>He kissed her hand tenderly.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_II'></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+    <p>Marcello stood at an open window listening to the musical
+    spring rain and watching the changing lights on the city below
+    him, as the dove-coloured cloud that floated over Rome like
+    thin gauze was drawn up into the sunshine. Then there were
+    sudden reflections from distant windows and wet domes, that
+    blazed like white fires for a little while, till the raindrops
+    dried and the waves of changing hues that had surged up under
+    the rain, rising, breaking, falling, and spreading, subsided
+    into a restful sea of harmonious colour.</p>
+
+    <p>After that, the sweet smell of the wet earth came up to
+    Marcello's nostrils. A light breeze stirred the dripping
+    emerald leaves, and the little birds fluttered down and hopped
+    along the garden walks and over the leaves, picking up the
+    small unwary worms that had been enjoying a bath while their
+    enemies tried to keep dry under the ilex boughs.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello half closed his eyes and drank the fragrant air
+    with parted lips, his slim white hands resting on the marble
+    sill. The sunshine made his pale face luminous, and gilded his
+    short fair hair, casting the shadow of the brown lashes upon
+    his delicate cheeks. There was something angel-like in his
+    expression&mdash;the look of the frescoed angels of Melozzo da
+    Forli in the Sacristy of St. Peter's. They are all that is left
+    of something very beautiful, brought thither broken from the
+    Church of the Holy Apostles; and so, too, one might have
+    fancied that Marcello, standing at the window in the morning
+    sunshine, belonged to a world that had long passed
+    away&mdash;fit for a life that was, fit for a life to come
+    hereafter, perhaps, but not fit for the life that is. There are
+    rare and beautiful beings in the world who belong to it so
+    little that it seems cruelty and injustice to require of them
+    what is demanded of us all. They are born ages too late, or
+    ages too soon; they should not have been born now. Their very
+    existence calls forth our tenderest sympathy, as we should pity
+    a fawn facing its death among wolves.</p>
+
+    <p>But Marcello Consalvi had no idea that he could deserve
+    pity, and life looked very bright to him, very easy, and very
+    peaceful. He could hardly have thought of anything at all
+    likely to happen which could darken the future, or even give
+    him reasonable cause for anxiety. There was no imaginative
+    sadness in his nature, no morbid dread of undefined evil, no
+    melancholy to dye the days black; for melancholy is more often
+    an affliction of the very strong in body or mind than of the
+    weak, or of average men and women. Marcello was delicate, but
+    not degenerate; he seemed gentle, cheerful, and ready to
+    believe the world a very good place, as indeed it is for people
+    who are not too unlike their neighbours to enjoy it, or too
+    unlucky to get some of its good things, or too weak to work,
+    fight, and love, or too clever to be as satisfied with
+    themselves as most men are. For plain, common, everyday
+    happiness and contentment belong to plain, average people, who
+    do what others do and have a cheerfully good opinion of
+    themselves. Can a man make a good fight of it if he does not
+    believe himself to be about as good as his adversary?</p>
+
+    <p>It had never occurred to Marcello that he might have to
+    fight for anything, and if some one had told him on that spring
+    morning that he was on the very verge of a desperate struggle
+    for existence against overwhelming odds, he would have turned
+    his bright eyes wonderingly to the prophet of evil, asking
+    whence danger could come, and trying to think what it might be
+    like.</p>
+
+    <p>At the first appearance of it he would have been startled
+    into fear, too, as many a grown man has been before now, when
+    suddenly brought face to face with an unknown peril, being
+    quite untried: and small shame to him. He who has been waked
+    from a peaceful sleep and pleasant dreams to find death at his
+    throat, for the first time in his life, knows the meaning of
+    that. Samson was a tried warrior when Delilah first roused him
+    with her cry, "The Philistines are upon thee!"</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello was no youthful Samson, yet he was not an unmanly
+    boy, for all his bringing up. So far as his strength would
+    allow he had been accustomed to the exercises and sports of
+    men: he could ride fearlessly, if not untiringly; he was a fair
+    shot; he had hunted wild boar with his stepfather in the marshy
+    lands by the sea; he had been taught to fence and was not
+    clumsy with weapons, though he had not yet any great skill. He
+    had always been told that he was delicate and must be careful,
+    and he knew that he was not strong; but there was one good sign
+    in that his weakness irritated him and bred at least the desire
+    for strength, instead of the poor-spirited indolence that bears
+    bodily infirmity as something inevitable, and is ready to
+    accept pity if not to ask for it.</p>
+
+    <p>The smell of the damp earth was gone, and as the sun shone
+    out the air was filled with the scent of warm roses and the
+    faintly sweet odour of wistaria. Marcello heard a light
+    footstep close to him, and met his mother's eyes as he
+    turned.</p>
+
+    <p>Even to him, she looked very young just then, as she stood
+    in the light, smiling at him. A piece of lace was drawn half
+    over her fair hair, and the ends went round her throat like a
+    scarf and fell behind her. Its creamy tints heightened the rare
+    transparency of her complexion by faint contrast. She was a
+    slight woman and very graceful.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have looked for you everywhere," she said, and she still
+    smiled, as if with real pleasure at having found him.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have been watching the shower" Marcello answered, drawing
+    her to the window. "And then the earth and the roses smelt so
+    sweet that I stayed here. Did you want me, mother?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I always like to know where you are."</p>
+
+    <p>She passed her arm through his with a loving pressure, and
+    looked out of the window with him. The villa stood on the slope
+    of the Janiculum, close to the Corsini gardens.</p>
+
+    <p>"Do I run after you too much?" the mother asked presently,
+    as if she knew the answer. "Now that you are growing up, do I
+    make you feel as if you were still a little boy? You are nearly
+    nineteen, you know! I suppose I ought to treat you like a
+    man."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello laughed, and his hand slipped into hers with an
+    almost childish and nestling movement.</p>
+
+    <p>"You have made a man of me," he answered.</p>
+
+    <p>Had she? A shadow of doubt crossed her thoughtful face as
+    she glanced at his. He was so different from other young men of
+    his age, so delicately nurtured, so very gentle; there was the
+    radiance of maidenly innocence in his look, and she was afraid
+    that he might be more like a girl than a man almost grown.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have done my best," she said. "I hope I have done
+    right."</p>
+
+    <p>He scarcely understood what she meant, and his expression
+    did not change.</p>
+
+    <p>"You could not do anything that was not right," he
+    answered.</p>
+
+    <p>Perhaps such a being as Marcello would be an impossibility
+    anywhere but in Italy. Modern life tears privacy to tatters,
+    and privacy is the veil of the temple of home, within which
+    every extreme of human development is possible, good and bad.
+    Take privacy away and all the strangely compound fractions of
+    humanity are soon reduced to a common denomination. In Italy
+    life has more privacy than anywhere else west of Asia. The
+    Englishman is fond of calling his home his castle, but it is a
+    thoroughfare, a market-place, a club, a hotel, a glass house,
+    compared with that of an average Italian. An Englishman goes
+    home to escape restraint: an Italian goes out. But the northern
+    man, who lives much in public, learns as a child to conceal
+    what he feels, to be silent, to wear an indifferent look;
+    whereas the man of the south, who hides nothing when the doors
+    of his house are shut, can hide but little when he meets his
+    enemy in the way. He laughs when he is pleased, and scowls when
+    he is not, threatens when he is angry, and sheds tears when he
+    is hurt, with a simplicity that too often excites the contempt
+    of men accustomed to suffer or enjoy without moving a
+    muscle.</p>
+
+    <p>Privacy favours the growth of individual types, differing
+    widely from each other; the destruction of it makes people very
+    much alike. Marcello's mother asked herself whether she had
+    done well in rearing him as a being apart from those amongst
+    whom he must spend his life.</p>
+
+    <p>And yet, as she looked at him, he seemed to be so nearly the
+    ideal of which she had dreamt throughout long years of loving
+    care that she was comforted, and the shadow passed away from
+    her sweet face. He had answered that she could do nothing that
+    was not right; she prayed that his words might be near the
+    truth, and in her heart she was willing to believe that they
+    were almost true. Had she not followed every good impulse of
+    her own good heart? Had she not tried to realize literally for
+    him the most beautiful possibilities of the Christian faith?
+    That, at least, was true, and she could tell herself so without
+    any mistaken pride. How, then, had she made any mistake? The
+    boy had the face of a young saint.</p>
+
+    <p>"Are you ready, my dear?" she asked suddenly, as a far-off
+    clock struck.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, mother, quite ready."</p>
+
+    <p>"I am not," she answered with a little laugh. "And Folco is
+    waiting, and I hear the carriage driving up."</p>
+
+    <p>She slipped from Marcello's side and left the room quickly,
+    for they were going to drive down to the sea, to a little
+    shooting-lodge that belonged to them near Nettuno, a mere
+    cottage among the trees by the Roman shore, habitable only in
+    April and May, and useful only then, when the quail migrate
+    along the coast and the malarious fever is not yet to be
+    feared. It was there that Marcello had first learned to handle
+    a gun, spending a week at a time there with his stepfather; and
+    his mother used to come down now and then for a day or two on a
+    visit, sometimes bringing her friend the Contessa dell' Armi.
+    The latter had been very unhappy in her youth, and had been
+    left a widow with one beautiful girl and a rather exiguous
+    fortune. Some people thought that it was odd that the Signora
+    Corbario, who was a saint if ever there was one, should have
+    grown so fond of the Contessa, for the latter had seen stormy
+    days in years gone by; and of course the ill-disposed gossips
+    made up their minds that the Contessa was trying to catch
+    Marcello for her daughter Aurora, though the child was barely
+    seventeen.</p>
+
+    <p>This was mere gossip, for she was quite incapable of any
+    such scheme. What the gossips did not know was something which
+    would have interested them much more, namely, that the Contessa
+    was the only person in Rome who distrusted Folco Corbario, and
+    that she was in constant fear lest she should turn out to be
+    right, and lest her friend's paradise should be suddenly
+    changed into a purgatory. But she held her tongue, and her
+    quiet face never betrayed her thoughts. She only watched, and
+    noted from month to month certain small signs which seemed to
+    prove her right; and she should be ready, whenever the time
+    should come, by day or night, to help her friend, or comfort
+    her, or fight for her.</p>
+
+    <p>If Corbario guessed that the Contessa did not trust him, he
+    never showed it. He had found her installed as his wife's
+    friend, and had accepted her, treating her with much courtesy
+    and a sort of vicarious affection; but though he tried his best
+    he could not succeed in reaching anything like intimacy with
+    her, and while she seemed to conceal nothing, he felt that she
+    was hiding her real self from him. Whether she did so out of
+    pride, or distrust, or jealousy, he could never be sure. He was
+    secretly irritated and humiliated by her power to oppose him
+    and keep him at a distance without ever seeming to do so; but,
+    on the other hand, he was very patient, very tenacious of his
+    purpose, and very skilful. He knew something of the Contessa's
+    past, but he recognised in her the nature that has known the
+    world's worst side and has done with it for ever, and is lifted
+    above it, and he knew the immense influence which the spectacle
+    of a blameless life exercises upon the opinion of a good woman
+    who has not always been blameless herself. Whatever he had been
+    before he met his wife, whatever strange plans had been
+    maturing in his brain since he had married her, his life had
+    seemed as spotless from that day as the existence of the best
+    man living. His wife believed in him, and the Contessa did not;
+    but even she must in time accept the evidence of her senses.
+    Then she, too, would trust him. Why it was essential that she
+    should, he alone knew, unless he was merely piqued by her quiet
+    reserve, as a child is when it cannot fix the attention of a
+    grown-up person.</p>
+
+    <p>The Contessa and her daughter were to be of the party that
+    day, and the carriage stopped where they lived, near the Forum
+    of Trajan. They appeared almost directly, the Contessa in grey
+    with a grey veil and Aurora dressed in a lighter shade, the
+    thick plaits of her auburn hair tied up short below her round
+    straw hat, on the theory that she was still a school-girl,
+    whose skirt must not quite touch the ground, who ought not to
+    wear a veil, and whose mind was supposed to be a sensitive
+    blank, particularly apt to receive bad impressions rather than
+    good ones. In less than a year she would be dancing all night
+    with men she had scarcely heard of before, listening to
+    compliments of which she had never dreamt&mdash;of course
+    not&mdash;and to declarations which no right-minded girl one
+    day under eighteen could under any circumstances be thought to
+    expect. Such miracles as these are wrought by the eighteenth
+    birthday.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario's eyes looked from the mother to the daughter, as
+    he and Marcello stood on the pavement to let them get in. The
+    Contessa touched his outstretched hand without restraint but
+    without cordiality, smiling just as much as was civil, and less
+    readily than would have been friendly. Aurora glanced at him
+    and laughed prettily without any apparent reason, which is the
+    privilege of very young girls, because their minds are supposed
+    to be a blank. Also because her skirt must not quite touch the
+    ground, one very perfect black silk ankle was distinctly
+    visible for a moment as she stepped into the carriage. Note
+    that from the eve of her eighteenth birthday till she is old
+    enough to be really wicked no well-regulated young woman shows
+    her ankles. This also is one of the miracles of time.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello blushed faintly as he sat down beside Aurora. There
+    were now five in the big carriage, so that she was between the
+    two men; and though there was enough room Marcello felt the
+    slight pressure of her arm against his. His mother saw his
+    colour change, and looked away and smiled. The idea of marrying
+    the two in a few years had often crossed her mind, and she was
+    pleased whenever she saw that Marcello felt a little thrill of
+    emotion in the girl's presence. As for Aurora, she looked
+    straight before her, between the heads of the two elder women,
+    and for a long time after they had started she seemed absorbed
+    in watching the receding walls of the city and the long
+    straight road that led back to it. The Contessa and her friend
+    talked quietly, happy to be together for a whole day. Corbario
+    now and then looked from one to the other, as if to assure
+    himself that they were quite comfortable, and his still face
+    wore an unchanging look of contented calm as his eyes turned
+    again to the sunlit sweep of the low Campagna. Marcello looked
+    steadily away from Aurora, happily and yet almost painfully
+    aware that her arm could not help pressing against his. The
+    horses' hoofs beat rhythmically on the hard high road, with the
+    steady, cheerful energy which would tell a blind man that a
+    team is well fed, fresh from rest, and altogether fit for a
+    long day's work. The grey-haired coachman sat on his box like
+    an old dragoon in the saddle; the young groom sat bolt upright
+    beside him with folded arms, as if he could never tire of
+    sitting straight. The whole party looked prosperous,
+    harmonious, healthy, and perfectly happy, as if nothing in the
+    least unpleasant could possibly happen to them, still less
+    anything terrible, that could suddenly change all their
+    lives.</p>
+
+    <p>One of fate's favourite tricks is to make life look
+    particularly gay and enjoyable, and full of sunshine and
+    flowers, at the very moment when terror wakes from sleep and
+    steps out of the shadow to stalk abroad.</p>
+
+    <p>The cottage where the party were going to spend the next few
+    days together was built like an Indian bungalow, consisting of
+    a single story surrounded by a broad, covered verandah, and
+    having a bit of lawn in front. It was sheltered by trees, and
+    between it and the beach a bank of sand from ten to fifteen
+    feet high ran along the shore, the work of the southwest gales
+    during many ages. In many places this bank was covered with
+    scrub and brushwood on the landward side.</p>
+
+    <p>A little stream meandered down to the sea on the north side
+    of the cottage, ending in a pool full of tall reeds, amongst
+    which one could get about in a punt. The seashore itself is
+    very shelving at that place, and there is a bar about a cable's
+    length out, over which the sea breaks with a tremendous roar
+    during westerly storms. Two hundred yards from the cottage, a
+    large hut had been built for the men-servants and for the
+    kitchen; near by it there was a rough coach-house and a stable
+    with room for a dozen horses. The carriage usually went back to
+    Rome on the day after every one had arrived, and was sent for
+    when wanted; but there were a number of rough Campagna horses
+    in the stable, such as are ridden by the cattle herders about
+    Rome, tough little beasts of fairly good temper and up to a
+    much heavier weight than might be guessed by a stranger in the
+    country. In the morning the men of the party usually went
+    shooting, if the wind was fair, for where quail are concerned
+    much depends on that. Dinner was in the middle of the day, and
+    every one was supposed to go to sleep after it. In the late
+    afternoon the horses were saddled, and the whole party went for
+    a gallop on the sands, or up to classic Ardea, or across the
+    half-cultivated country, coming back to supper when it was
+    dark. A particularly fat and quiet pony was kept for Marcello's
+    mother, who was no great rider, but the Contessa and Aurora
+    rode anything that was brought them, as the men did. To tell
+    the truth, the Campagna horse is rarely vicious, and, even when
+    only half broken, can be ridden by a lady if she be an average
+    horsewoman.</p>
+
+    <p>Everything happened as usual. The party reached the cottage
+    in time for a late luncheon, rested afterwards, and then rode
+    out. But the Signora Corbario would not go.</p>
+
+    <p>"Your pony looks fatter and quieter than ever," said
+    Maddalena dell' Armi with a smile. "If you do not ride him, he
+    will turn into a fixture."</p>
+
+    <p>"He is already a very solid piece of furniture," observed
+    Folco, looking at the sleek animal.</p>
+
+    <p>"He is very like the square piano I practise on," said
+    Aurora. "He has such a flat back and such straight thick
+    legs."</p>
+
+    <p>"More like an organ," put in Marcello, gravely. "He has a
+    curious, half-musical wheeze when he tries to move, like the
+    organ in the church at San Domenico, when the bellows begin to
+    work."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is a shame to make fun of my horse," answered the
+    Signora, smiling. "But really I am not afraid of him. I have a
+    little headache from the drive, that is all."</p>
+
+    <p>"Take some phenacetine," said Corbario with concern. "Let me
+    make you quite comfortable before we start."</p>
+
+    <p>He arranged a long straw chair for her in a sheltered corner
+    of the verandah, with cushions and a rug and a small table
+    beside it, on which Marcello placed a couple of new books that
+    had been brought down. Then Folco went in and got a little
+    glass bottle of tablets from his wife's travelling-bag and gave
+    her one. She was subject to headaches and always had the
+    medicine with her. It was the only remedy she ever carried or
+    needed, and she had such confidence in it that she felt better
+    almost as soon as she had swallowed the tablet her husband gave
+    her.</p>
+
+    <p>"Let me stay and read to you," he said. "Perhaps you would
+    go to sleep."</p>
+
+    <p>"You are not vain of your reading, my dear," she answered
+    with a smile. "No, please go with the others."</p>
+
+    <p>Then the Contessa offered to stay, and the good Signora had
+    to use a good deal of persuasion to make them all understand
+    that she would much rather be left alone. They mounted and rode
+    away through the trees towards the beach, whence the sound of
+    the small waves, breaking gently under the afternoon breeze,
+    came echoing softly up to the cottage.</p>
+
+    <p>The two young people rode in front, in silence; Corbario and
+    the Contessa followed at a little distance.</p>
+
+    <p>"How good you are to my wife!" Folco exclaimed presently, as
+    they emerged upon the sand. "You are like a sister to her!"</p>
+
+    <p>Maddalena glanced at him through her veil. She had small and
+    classic features, rather hard and proud, and her eyes were of a
+    dark violet colour, which is very unusual, especially in Italy.
+    But she came from the north. Corbario could not see her
+    expression, and she knew it.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are good to her, too," she said presently, being
+    anxious to be just. "You are very thoughtful and kind."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario thought it wiser to say nothing, and merely bent
+    his head a little in acknowledgment of what he instinctively
+    felt to be an admission on the part of a secret adversary.
+    Maddalena had never said so much before.</p>
+
+    <p>"If you were not, I should never forgive you," she added,
+    thinking aloud.</p>
+
+    <p>"I don't think you have quite forgiven me as it is," Folco
+    answered more lightly.</p>
+
+    <p>"For what?"</p>
+
+    <p>"For marrying your best friend."</p>
+
+    <p>The little speech was well spoken, so utterly without
+    complaint, or rancour, or suggestion of earnestness, that the
+    Contessa could only smile.</p>
+
+    <p>"And yet you admit that I am not a bad husband," continued
+    Folco. "Should you accept me, or, say, my exact counterpart,
+    for Aurora, in a year or two?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I doubt whether you have any exact counterpart," Maddalena
+    answered, checking the sharp denial that rose to her lips.</p>
+
+    <p>"Myself, then, just for the sake of argument?"</p>
+
+    <p>"What an absurd question! Do you mind tightening the girth
+    for me a little? My saddle is slipping."</p>
+
+    <p>She drew rein, and he was obliged to submit to the check. As
+    he dismounted he glanced at Aurora's graceful figure, a hundred
+    yards ahead, and for one instant he drew his eyelids together
+    with a very strange expression. He knew that the Contessa could
+    not see his face.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello and Aurora had been companions since they were
+    children, and just now they were talking familiarly of the
+    place, which they had not seen since the previous year. All
+    sorts of details struck them. Here, there was more sand than
+    usual; there, a large piece of timber had been washed ashore in
+    the winter gales; at another place there was a new sand-drift
+    that had quite buried the scrub on the top of the bank; the
+    keeper of the San Lorenzo tower had painted his shutters brown,
+    though they had always been green; here was the spot where
+    Aurora had tumbled off her pony when she was only twelve years
+    old&mdash;so long ago! And here&mdash;they looked at each other
+    and then quickly at the sea, for it was here that Marcello, in
+    a fit of boyish admiration, had once suddenly kissed her cheek,
+    telling her that she was perfectly beautiful. Even now, he
+    blushed when he thought of it, and yet he longed to do it
+    again, and wondered inwardly what would happen if he did.</p>
+
+    <p>As for Aurora, though she looked at the sea for a moment,
+    she seemed quite self-possessed. It is a strange thing that if
+    a boy and a girl are brought up in just the same way, by women,
+    and without many companions, the boy should generally be by far
+    the more shy of the two when childhood is just past.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are very fond of your stepfather, are you not?" asked
+    Aurora, so suddenly that Marcello started a little and
+    hesitated slightly before he answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," he said, almost directly, "of course I am! Don't you
+    like him, too?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I used to," answered Aurora in a low voice, "but now his
+    eyes frighten me&mdash;sometimes. For instance, though he is a
+    good way behind, I am sure he is looking at me now, just in
+    that way."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello turned his head instinctively, and saw that Folco
+    had just dismounted to tighten the girth of the Contessa's
+    saddle. It was exactly while Aurora was speaking that he had
+    drawn his eyelids together with such a strange
+    expression&mdash;a mere coincidence, no doubt, but one that
+    would have startled the girl if she could have suddenly seen
+    his face.</p>
+
+    <p>They rode on without waiting for the others, at an even
+    canter over the sand.</p>
+
+    <p>"I never saw anything in Folco's eyes that could frighten
+    anybody," Marcello said presently.</p>
+
+    <p>"No," answered Aurora. "Very likely not."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello had always called Corbario by his first name, and
+    as he grew up it seemed more and more natural to do so. Folco
+    was so young, and he looked even younger than he was.</p>
+
+    <p>"It must be your imagination," Marcello said.</p>
+
+    <p>"Women," said Aurora, as if she were as near thirty as any
+    young woman would acknowledge herself, "women have no
+    imagination. That is why we have so much sense," she added
+    thoughtfully.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello was so completely puzzled by this extraordinary
+    statement that he could find nothing to say for a few moments.
+    Then he felt that she had attacked his idol, and that Folco
+    must be defended.</p>
+
+    <p>"If you could find a single thing, however small, to bring
+    against him, it would not be so silly to say that his eyes
+    frighten you."</p>
+
+    <p>"There!" laughed Aurora. "You might as well say that because
+    at this moment there is only that one little cloud near the
+    sun, there is no cloud at all!"</p>
+
+    <p>"How ridiculous!" Marcello expressed his contempt of such
+    girlish reasoning by putting his rough little horse to a
+    gallop.</p>
+
+    <p>"Men always say that," retorted Aurora, with exasperating
+    calm. "I'll race you to the tower for the first choice of
+    oranges at dessert. They are not very good this year, you know,
+    and you like them."</p>
+
+    <p>"Don't be silly!" Marcello immediately reined his horse back
+    to a walk, and looked very dignified.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is impossible to please you," observed Aurora,
+    slackening her pace at once.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is impossible, if you abuse Folco."</p>
+
+    <p>"I am sure I did not mean to abuse him," Aurora answered
+    meekly. "I never abuse anybody."</p>
+
+    <p>"Women never do, I suppose," retorted Marcello, with a
+    little snort of dissatisfaction.</p>
+
+    <p>They were little more than children yet, and for pretty
+    nearly five minutes neither spoke a word, as their horses
+    walked side by side.</p>
+
+    <p>"The keeper of the tower has more chickens this year,"
+    observed Aurora. "I can see them running about."</p>
+
+    <p>This remark was evidently intended as an overture of
+    reconciliation. It acted like magic upon Marcello, who hated
+    quarrelling, and was moreover much more in love with the girl
+    than he knew. Instinctively he put out his left hand to take
+    her right. They always made peace by taking hands.</p>
+
+    <p>But Aurora's did not move, and she did not even turn her
+    head towards him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Take care!" she said quickly, in a low tone. "They are
+    watching us."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello looked round and saw that the others were nearer
+    than he had supposed, and he blushed foolishly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Well, what harm would there be if you gave me your hand?"
+    he asked. "I only meant&mdash;"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, I understand," Aurora answered, in the same tone as
+    before. "And I am glad you like me, Marcello&mdash;if you
+    really do."</p>
+
+    <p>"If I do!" His tone was full of youthful and righteous
+    indignation.</p>
+
+    <p>"I did not mean to doubt it," she said quickly. "But it is
+    getting to be different now, you know. We are older, and
+    somehow everything means more, even the little things."</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh!" ejaculated Marcello. "I begin to see. I suppose," he
+    added, with what seemed to him reckless brutality, "that if I
+    kissed you now you would be furious."</p>
+
+    <p>He glanced uneasily at Aurora's face to note the effect of
+    this terrible speech. The result was not exactly what he had
+    expected. A faint colour rose in her cheeks, and then she
+    laughed.</p>
+
+    <p>"When you do," she said, "I would rather it should not be
+    before people."</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall try to remember that," answered Marcello,
+    considerably emboldened.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, do! It would be so humiliating if I boxed your ears in
+    the presence of witnesses."</p>
+
+    <p>"You would not dare," laughed Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>From a distance, as Aurora had guessed, Folco was watching
+    them while he quietly talked to the Contessa; and as he
+    watched, he understood what a change had taken place since last
+    year, when he had seen Marcello and Aurora riding over the same
+    stretch of sand on the same little horses. He ventured a
+    reflection, to see what his companion would answer.</p>
+
+    <p>"I daresay many people would say that those two young people
+    were made for each other."</p>
+
+    <p>Maddalena looked at him inquiringly and then glanced at her
+    daughter.</p>
+
+    <p>"And what do you say?" she asked, with some curiosity.</p>
+
+    <p>"I say 'no.' And you?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I agree with you. Aurora is like me&mdash;like what I was.
+    Marcello would bore her to death in six months, and Aurora
+    would drive him quite mad."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario smiled.</p>
+
+    <p>"I had hoped," he said, "that women with
+    marriageable-daughters would think Marcello a model husband.
+    But of course I am prejudiced. I have had a good deal to do
+    with his bringing up during the last four years."</p>
+
+    <p>"No one can say that you have not done your duty by him,"
+    Maddalena answered. "I wish I could feel that I had done as
+    well by Aurora&mdash;indeed I do!"</p>
+
+    <p>"You have, but you had quite a different nature to deal
+    with."</p>
+
+    <p>"I should think so! It is my own."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario heard the little sigh as she turned her head away,
+    and being a wise man he said nothing in answer. He was not a
+    Roman, if indeed he were really an Italian at all, but he had
+    vaguely heard the Contessa's story. She had been married very
+    young to a parliamentary high-light, who had made much noise in
+    his day, had spent more than half of her fortune after getting
+    rid of his own, and had been forgotten on the morrow of his
+    premature death. It was said that she had loved another man
+    with all her heart, but Corbario had never known who it
+    was.</p>
+
+    <p>The sun was almost setting when they turned homeward, and it
+    was dark when they reached the cottage. They found an
+    unexpected arrival installed beside the Signora in the doorway
+    of the sitting-room.</p>
+
+    <p>"Professor Kalmon is here," said the Signora's voice out of
+    the gloom. "I have asked him to stay till to-morrow."</p>
+
+    <p>The Professor rose up in the shadow and came forward, just
+    as a servant brought a lamp. He was celebrated as a traveller,
+    and occupied the chair of comparative physiology in the
+    University of Milan. He belonged to the modern type of
+    scientific man, which has replaced the one of fifty years ago,
+    who lived in a dressing-gown and slippers, smoked a long pipe,
+    and was always losing his belongings through absence of mind.
+    The modern professor is very like other human beings in dress
+    and appearance, and has even been known to pride himself on the
+    fit of his coat, just like the common people.</p>
+
+    <p>There were mutual greetings, for the Professor knew all the
+    party, and everybody liked him. He was a big man, with a
+    well-kept brown beard, a very clear complexion, and bright
+    brown eyes that looked as if they would never need
+    spectacles.</p>
+
+    <p>"And where have you been since we last saw you?" asked
+    Corbario.</p>
+
+    <p>"Are your pockets full of snakes this time?" asked
+    Aurora.</p>
+
+    <p>The Professor looked at her and smiled, realising that she
+    was no longer the child she had been when he had seen her last,
+    and that she was very good to look at. His brown eyes beamed
+    upon her benevolently.</p>
+
+    <p>"Ah, my dear young lady, I see it is all over," he said.
+    "You will never pull my beard again and turn my pockets inside
+    out for specimens when I come back from my walks on the
+    beach."</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you think I am afraid of you or your specimens?" laughed
+    Aurora.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have got a terrible thing in my waistcoat pocket," the
+    Professor answered. "Something you might very well be afraid
+    of."</p>
+
+    <p>"What is it? It must be very small to be in your waistcoat
+    pocket."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is a new form of death."</p>
+
+    <p>He beamed on everybody with increasing benevolence; but
+    somehow nobody smiled, and the Signora Corbario shivered and
+    drew her light cloak more closely round her, as the first gust
+    of the night breeze came up from the rustling reeds that grew
+    in the pool below.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is time to get ready for supper," said Folco. "I hope
+    you are not hungry, Kalmon, for you will not get anything very
+    elaborate to eat!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Bread and cheese will do, my dear fellow."</p>
+
+    <p>When Italians go to the country they take nothing of the
+    city with them. They like the contrast to be complete; they
+    love the total absence of restraint; they think it delightful
+    to dine in their shooting-coats and to eat coarse fare. If they
+    had to dress for dinner it would not be the country at all, nor
+    if dinner had to begin with soup and end with sweets just as it
+    does in town. They eat extraordinary messes that would make a
+    Frenchman turn pale and a German look grave. They make
+    portentous pasties, rich with everything under the sun; they
+    eat fat boiled beef, and raw fennel, and green almonds, and
+    vast quantities of cream cheese, and they drink sour wine like
+    water; and it all agrees with them perfectly, so that they come
+    back to the city refreshed and rested after a gastronomic
+    treatment which would bring any other European to death's
+    door.</p>
+
+    <p>The table was set out on the verandah that evening, as usual
+    in spring, and little by little the Professor absorbed the
+    conversation, for they all asked him questions, few of which
+    could be answered shortly. He was one of those profoundly
+    cultivated Italians who are often to be met nowadays, but whose
+    gifts it is not easy to appreciate except in a certain degree
+    of intimacy. They are singularly modest men as a rule, and are
+    by no means those about whom there is the most talk in the
+    world.</p>
+
+    <p>The party sat in their places when supper was over, with
+    cloaks and coats thrown over them against the night air, while
+    Kalmon talked of all sorts of things that seemed to have the
+    least possible connection with each other, but which somehow
+    came up quite naturally. He went from the last book on Dante to
+    a new discovery in chemistry, thence to Japanese monks and
+    their beliefs, and came back smiling to the latest development
+    of politics, which led him quite naturally to the newest play,
+    labour and capital, the German Emperor, and the immortality of
+    the soul.</p>
+
+    <p>"I believe you know everything!" exclaimed Marcello, with an
+    admiring look. "Or else I know nothing, which is really more
+    probable!" The boy laughed.</p>
+
+    <p>"You have not told us about the new form of death yet," said
+    Aurora, leaning on her elbows and burying her young hands in
+    her auburn hair as she looked across the table at Kalmon.</p>
+
+    <p>"You will never sleep again if I tell you about it,"
+    answered the Professor, opening his brown eyes very wide and
+    trying to look terrible, which was quite impossible, because he
+    had such a kindly face. "You do not look frightened at all," he
+    added, pretending to be disappointed.</p>
+
+    <p>"Let me see the thing," Aurora said. "Perhaps we shall all
+    be frightened."</p>
+
+    <p>"It looks very innocent," Kalmon answered. "Here it is."</p>
+
+    <p>He took a small leather case from his pocket, opened it, and
+    drew out a short blue glass tube, with a screw top. It
+    contained half a dozen white tablets, apparently just like
+    those in common use for five-grain doses of quinine.</p>
+
+    <p>A little murmur of disappointment went around the table. The
+    new form of death looked very commonplace. Corbario was the
+    only one who showed any interest.</p>
+
+    <p>"May I see?" he asked, holding out his hand to take the
+    tube.</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon would not give it to him, but held the tube before
+    his eyes under the bright light of the lamp.</p>
+
+    <p>"Excuse me," he said, "but I make it a rule never to let it
+    go out of my hands. You understand, don't you? If it were
+    passed round, some one might lay it down, it might be
+    forgotten, somebody might take it for something else."</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course," said Folco, looking intently at the tube, as
+    though he could understand something about the contents by mere
+    inspection. "You are quite right. You should take no risks with
+    such things&mdash;especially as they look so innocent!"</p>
+
+    <p>He leaned back in his chair again, as if satisfied, and his
+    eyes met the Contessa's at the same moment. There was no reason
+    why she should not have looked at him just then, but he rested
+    one elbow on the table and shaded his eyes from the light.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is strange to reflect," said Kalmon, looking at the tube
+    thoughtfully, "that one of those little things would be enough
+    to put a Hercules out of misery, without leaving the slightest
+    trace which science could discover."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario was still shading his eyes from the light.</p>
+
+    <p>"How would one die if one took it?" asked Aurora. "Very
+    suddenly?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I call it the sleeping death," answered the Professor. "The
+    poisoned person sinks into a sweet sleep in a few minutes,
+    smiling as if enjoying the most delightful dreams."</p>
+
+    <p>"And one never wakes up?" inquired Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"Never. It is impossible, I believe. I have made experiments
+    on animals, and have not succeeded in waking them by any known
+    means."</p>
+
+    <p>"I suppose it congests the brain, like opium," observed
+    Corbario, quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Not at all, not at all!" answered Kalmon, looking
+    benevolently at the little tube which contained his discovery.
+    "I tell you it leaves no trace whatever, not even as much as is
+    left by death from an electric current. And it has no taste, no
+    smell,&mdash;it seems the most innocent stuff in the
+    world."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario's hand again lay on the table and he was gazing out
+    into the night, as if he were curious about the weather. The
+    moon was just rising, being past the full.</p>
+
+    <p>"Is that all you have of the poison?" he asked in an idle
+    tone.</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, no! This is only a small supply which I carry with me
+    for experiments. I have made enough to send all our
+    thirty-three millions of Italians to sleep for ever!"</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon laughed pleasantly.</p>
+
+    <p>"If this could be properly used, civilisation would make a
+    gigantic stride," he added. "In war, for instance, how
+    infinitely pleasanter and more &aelig;sthetic it would be to
+    send the enemy to sleep, with the most delightful dreams, never
+    to wake again, than to tear people to pieces with artillery and
+    rifle bullets, and to blow up ships with hundreds of poor
+    devils on board, who are torn limb from limb by the
+    explosion."</p>
+
+    <p>"The difficulty," observed the Contessa, "would be to induce
+    the enemy to take your poison quietly. What if the enemy
+    objected?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I should put it into their water supply," said Kalmon.</p>
+
+    <p>"Poison the water!" cried the Signora Corbario. "How
+    barbarous!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Much less barbarous than shedding oceans of blood. Only
+    think&mdash;they would all go to sleep. That would be
+    all."</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name='Sleeping_Death'></a>
+<img src="images/Illus040_Sleeping_Death.jpg" width="608" height="400" alt="[Illustration]" />
+<p class="caption">"'I CALL IT THE SLEEPING DEATH,' ANSWERED THE PROFESSOR"</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>"I thought," said Corbario, almost carelessly, "that there
+    was no longer any such thing as a poison that left no traces or
+    signs. Can you not generally detect vegetable poisons by the
+    mode of death?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," answered the Professor, returning the glass tube to
+    its case and the latter to his pocket. "But please to remember
+    that although we can prove to our own satisfaction that some
+    things really exist, we cannot prove that any imaginable thing
+    outside our experience cannot possibly exist. Imagine the
+    wildest impossibility you can think of; you will not induce a
+    modern man of science to admit the impossibility of it as
+    absolute. Impossibility is now a merely relative term, my dear
+    Corbario, and only means great improbability. Now, to
+    illustrate what I mean, it is altogether improbable that a
+    devil with horns and hoofs and a fiery tail should suddenly
+    appear, pick me up out of this delightful circle, and fly away
+    with me. But you cannot induce me to deny the possibility of
+    such a thing."</p>
+
+    <p>"I am so glad to hear you say that," said the Signora, who
+    was a religious woman.</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon looked at her a moment and then broke into a peal of
+    laughter that was taken up by the rest, and in which the good
+    lady joined.</p>
+
+    <p>"You brought it on yourself," she said at last.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," Kalmon answered. "I did. From your point of view it
+    is better to admit the possibility of a medi&aelig;val devil
+    with horns than to have no religion at all. Half a loaf is
+    better than no bread."</p>
+
+    <p>"Is that stuff of yours animal, vegetable, or mineral?"
+    asked Corbario as the laughter subsided.</p>
+
+    <p>"I don't know," replied the Professor. "Animal, vegetable,
+    mineral? Those are antiquated distinctions, like the four
+    elements of the alchemists."</p>
+
+    <p>"Well&mdash;but what is the thing, then?" asked Corbario,
+    almost impatiently. "What should you call it in scientific
+    language?"</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon closed his eyes for a moment, as if to collect his
+    thoughts.</p>
+
+    <p>"In scientific language," he began, "it is probably H three
+    C seven, parenthesis, H two C plus C four O five, close
+    parenthesis, HC three O."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario laughed carelessly.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am no wiser than before," he said.</p>
+
+    <p>"Nor I," answered the Professor. "Not a bit."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is much simpler to call it 'the sleeping death,' is it
+    not?" suggested the Contessa.</p>
+
+    <p>"Much simpler, for that is precisely what it is."</p>
+
+    <p>It was growing late, according to country ideas, and the
+    party rose from the table and began to move about a little
+    before going to bed. The moon had risen high by this time.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello and Aurora, unheeded by the rest, went round the
+    verandah to the other side of the house and stood still a
+    moment, looking out at the trees and listening to the sounds of
+    the night. Down by the pool a frog croaked now and then; from a
+    distance came the plaintive, often repeated cry of a solitary
+    owlet; the night breeze sighed through the long grass and the
+    low shrubbery.</p>
+
+    <p>The boy and girl turned to each other, put out their hands
+    and then their arms, and clasped each other silently, and
+    kissed. Then they walked demurely back to their elders, without
+    exchanging a word.</p>
+
+    <p>"We have had to give you the little room at the end of the
+    cottage," Corbario was saying to Kalmon. "It is the only one
+    left while the Contessa is here."</p>
+
+    <p>"I should sleep soundly on bare boards to-night," Kalmon
+    answered. "I have been walking all day."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario went with him, carrying a candle, and shielding the
+    flame from the breeze with his hand. The room was furnished
+    with the barest necessities, like most country rooms in Italy.
+    There were wooden pegs on which to hang clothes instead of a
+    wardrobe, an iron bedstead, a deal wash-stand, a small deal
+    table, a rush-bottomed chair. The room had only one window,
+    which was also the only door, opening to the floor upon the
+    verandah.</p>
+
+    <p>"You can bolt the window, if you like," said Corbario when
+    he had bidden the Professor good-night, "but there are no
+    thieves about."</p>
+
+    <p>"I always sleep with my windows open," Kalmon answered, "and
+    I have no valuables."</p>
+
+    <p>"No? Good-night again."</p>
+
+    <p>"Good-night."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario went out, leaving him the candle, and turned the
+    corner of the verandah. Then he stood still a long time,
+    leaning against one of the wooden pillars and looking out.
+    Perhaps the moonlight falling through the stiff little trees
+    upon the long grass and shrubbery reminded him of some scene
+    familiar long ago. He smiled quietly to himself as he stood
+    there.</p>
+
+    <p>Three hours later he was there again, in almost exactly the
+    same attitude. He must have been cold, for the night breeze was
+    stronger, and he wore only his light sleeping clothes and his
+    feet were bare. He shivered a little from time to time, and his
+    face looked very white, for the moon was now high in the
+    heavens and the light fell full upon him. His right hand was
+    tightly closed, as if it held some small object fast, and he
+    was listening intently, first to the right, whence he had come,
+    then to the left, and then he turned his ear towards the trees,
+    through which the path led away towards the hut where the men
+    slept. But there was no sound except the sighing of the wind.
+    The frog by the pool had stopped croaking, and the melancholy
+    cry of the owlet had ceased.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario went softly on, trying the floor of the verandah
+    with his bare feet at each step, lest the boards should creak a
+    little under his weight. He reached the window door of his own
+    room, and slipped into the darkness without noise.</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon cared little for quail-shooting, and as the carriage
+    was going back to Rome he took advantage of it to reach the
+    city, and took his departure about nine o'clock in the
+    morning.</p>
+
+    <p>"By the way, how did you sleep?" asked Corbario as he shook
+    hands at parting. "I forgot to ask you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Soundly, thank you," answered the Professor.</p>
+
+    <p>And he drove away, waving his felt hat to his hosts.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_III'></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+    <p>Marcello coughed a little as he and Corbario trudged home
+    through the sand under the hot May sun. It was sultry, though
+    there were few clouds, and everything that grew looked suddenly
+    languid; each flower and shrub gave out its own peculiar scent
+    abundantly, the smell of last year's rotting leaves and twigs
+    all at once returned and mingled with the odours of green
+    things and of the earth itself, and the heavy air was over-rich
+    with it all, and hard to breathe. By and by the clouds would
+    pile themselves up into vast grey and black fortresses, far
+    away beyond Rome, between the Alban and the Samnite hills, and
+    the lightning would dart at them and tear them to pieces in
+    spite, while the thunder roared out at each home-thrust that it
+    was well done; and then the spring rain would sweep the
+    Campagna, by its length and breadth, from the mountains to the
+    sea, and the world would be refreshed. But now it was near noon
+    and a heavy weariness lay upon the earth.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are tired," said Corbario, as they reached the shade of
+    some trees, less than half a mile from the cottage. "Let us sit
+    down for a while."</p>
+
+    <p>They sat down, where they could see the sea. It was dull and
+    glassy under the high sun; here and there, far out, the
+    sluggish currents made dark, irregular streaks.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario produced cigarettes and offered one to Marcello,
+    but the boy would not smoke; he said that it made him
+    cough.</p>
+
+    <p>"I should smoke all the time, if I were quite well," he
+    said, with a smile.</p>
+
+    <p>"And do many other things that young men do, I daresay,"
+    laughed Corbario. "Ride steeplechases, play cards all night,
+    and drink champagne at breakfast."</p>
+
+    <p>"Perhaps." Marcello was amused at the picture. "I wonder
+    whether I ever shall," he added.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario glanced at him curiously. There was the faintest
+    accent of longing in the tone, which was quite new.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why not?" Folco asked, still smiling. "It is merely a
+    question of health, my dear boy. There is no harm in
+    steeplechases if you do not break your neck, nor in playing
+    cards if you do not play high, nor in drinking a glass of
+    champagne now and then&mdash;no harm at all, that I can see.
+    But, of course, so long as your lungs are delicate, you must be
+    careful."</p>
+
+    <p>"Confound my lungs!" exclaimed Marcello with unusual energy.
+    "I believe that I am much stronger than any of you think."</p>
+
+    <p>"I am sometimes inclined to believe it too," Corbario
+    answered encouragingly.</p>
+
+    <p>"And I am quite sure that it would do me good to forget all
+    about them and live as if there were nothing the matter with
+    me. Don't you think so yourself?"</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario made a gesture of doubt, as if it were possible
+    after all.</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course I don't mean dissipation," Marcello went on to
+    say, suddenly assuming the manner of an elderly censor of
+    morals, simply because he did not know what he was talking
+    about. "I don't mean reckless dissipation."</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course not," Folco answered gravely. "You see, there are
+    two sorts of dissipation. You must not forget that. The one
+    kind means dissipating your fortune and your health; the other
+    merely means dissipating melancholy, getting rid of care now
+    and then, and of everything that bores one. That is the
+    harmless sort."</p>
+
+    <p>"What they call 'harmless excitement'&mdash;yes, that is
+    what I should like sometimes. There are days when I feel that I
+    must have it. It is as if the blood went to my head, and my
+    nerves are all on edge, and I wish something would happen, I
+    don't know what, but something, something!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I know exactly what you mean, my dear boy," said Corbario
+    in a tone of sympathy. "You see I am not very old myself, after
+    all&mdash;barely thirty&mdash;not quite, in fact. I could call
+    myself twenty-nine if it were not so much more respectable to
+    be older."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. But do you mean to say that you feel just what I do
+    now and then?" Marcello asked the question in considerable
+    surprise. "Do you really know that sensation? That burning
+    restlessness&mdash;that something like what the earth must feel
+    before a thunderstorm&mdash;like the air at this moment?"</p>
+
+    <p>Not a muscle of Folco's still face moved.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," he answered quietly. "I know it very well. It is
+    nothing but the sudden wish for a little harmless excitement,
+    nothing else in the world, my dear boy, and it is certainly
+    nothing to be ashamed of. It does not follow that it is at all
+    convenient to yield to it, but we feel it because we lead such
+    a very quiet life."</p>
+
+    <p>"But surely, we are perfectly happy," observed Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"Perfectly, absolutely happy. I do not believe that there
+    are any happier people in the world than we three, your mother,
+    you, and I. We have not a wish unfulfilled."</p>
+
+    <p>"No, except that one, when it comes."</p>
+
+    <p>"And that does not count in my case," answered Folco. "You
+    see I have had a good deal of&mdash;'harmless excitement' in my
+    life, and I know just what it is like, and that it is quite
+    possible to be perfectly happy without it. In fact, I am. But
+    you have never had any at all, and it is as absurd to suppose
+    that young birds will not try to fly as that young men will not
+    want amusement, now and then."</p>
+
+    <p>"I suppose that women cannot always understand that," said
+    Marcello, after a moment.</p>
+
+    <p>"Women," replied Folco, unmoved, "do not always distinguish
+    quite closely between excitement that is harmless for a man and
+    excitement which is not. To tell the truth," he added, with a
+    laugh, "they hardly ever distinguish at all, and it is quite
+    useless to talk to them about it."</p>
+
+    <p>"But surely, there are exceptions?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Not many. That is the reason why there is a sort of
+    freemasonry among men of the world, a kind of tacit agreement
+    that women need not be told what goes on at the clubs, and at
+    men's dinners, and late at night when old friends have spent an
+    evening together. Not that there is any harm in it all; but
+    women would not understand. They have their innocent little
+    mysteries which they keep from us, and we have harmless little
+    secrets which we do not let them know."</p>
+
+    <p>Folco laughed softly at his own way of putting it, and
+    perhaps because Marcello so easily accepted his point of
+    view.</p>
+
+    <p>"I see," said the boy. "I wonder whether my mother would not
+    understand that. It seems so simple!"</p>
+
+    <p>"She will, when the time comes, no doubt," answered
+    Corbario. "Your mother is a great exception, my dear boy. On
+    the other hand, she is so anxious about your health just now,
+    that, if I were you, I would not say anything about feeling the
+    want of a little excitement. Of course your life is monotonous.
+    I know it. But there is nothing more monotonous than getting
+    well, is there? The best part of it is the looking forward to
+    what one will do when one is quite strong. You and I can talk
+    of that, sometimes, and build castles in the air; but it is of
+    no use to give your mother the idea that you are beating your
+    wings against the bars of your cage, is it?"</p>
+
+    <p>Folco was quite lyric that day, but the words made exactly
+    the impression he wished.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are right," Marcello said. "You always are. There is
+    nobody like you, Folco. You are an elder brother to me, and yet
+    you don't preach. I often tell my mother so."</p>
+
+    <p>This was true, and what Marcello told her added to her
+    happiness, if anything could do that, and she encouraged the
+    two to go off together as much as possible. She even suggested
+    that they should go down to San Domenico for a fortnight, to
+    look after the great Calabrian estate.</p>
+
+    <p>They rose and began to walk toward the cottage. The shooting
+    had been good that morning, as quail-shooting goes, and the man
+    who acted as keeper, loader, gardener, and general factotum,
+    and who went out with any one who wanted to shoot, had gone on
+    to the cottage with the bag, the two guns, and the animal which
+    he called his dog. The man's name was Ercole, that is to say,
+    Hercules; and though he was not a giant, he certainly bore a
+    closer resemblance to the hero than his dog did to dogs in
+    general.</p>
+
+    <p>"He was born in my house," Ercole said, when any one asked
+    questions. "Find a better one if you can. His name? I call him
+    Nino, short for John, because he barks so well at night. You
+    don't understand? It is the 'voice of one crying in the
+    wilderness.' Did you never go to Sunday school? Or do you call
+    this place a garden, a park, a public promenade? I call it a
+    desert. There are not even cats."</p>
+
+    <p>When an Italian countryman says of a place that even cats
+    will not stay in it, he considers that he has evoked a picture
+    of ultimate desolation that cannot be surpassed. It had always
+    been Ercole's dream to live in the city, though he did not look
+    like a man naturally intended for town life. He was short and
+    skinny, though he was as wiry as a monkey; his face was
+    slightly pitted with the smallpox, and the malaria of many
+    summers had left him with a complexion of the colour of cheap
+    leather; he had eyes like a hawk, matted black hair, and jagged
+    white teeth. He and his fustian clothes smelt of earth, burnt
+    gunpowder, goat's cheese, garlic, and bad tobacco. He was no
+    great talker, but his language was picturesque and to the
+    point; and he feared neither man nor beast, neither tramp nor
+    horned cattle, nor yet wild boar. He was no respecter of
+    persons at all. The land where the cottage was had belonged to
+    a great Roman family, now ruined, and when, the land had been
+    sold, he had apparently been part of the bargain, and had come
+    into the possession of the Signora Corbario with it. In his
+    lonely conversations with Nino, he had expressed his opinion of
+    each member of the family with frankness.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are a good dog, Nino," he would say. "You are the
+    consolation of my soul. But you do not understand these things.
+    Corbario is an assassin. Money, money, money! That is all he
+    thinks of from morning till night. I know it, because he never
+    speaks of it, and yet he never gives away anything. It is all
+    for himself, the Signora's millions, the boy's millions,
+    everything. When I look at his face, a chill seizes me, and I
+    tremble as when I have the fever. You never had the malaria
+    fever, Nino. Dogs don't have it, do they?"</p>
+
+    <p>At the question Nino turned his monstrous head to one side
+    and looked along his muzzle at his master. If he had possessed
+    a tail he would have wagged it, or thumped the hard ground with
+    it a few times; but he had none. He had probably lost it in
+    some wild battle of his stormy youth, fought almost to death
+    against the huge Campagna sheep-dogs; or perhaps a wolf had got
+    it, or perhaps he had never had a tail at all. Ercole had
+    probably forgotten, and it did not really matter much.</p>
+
+    <p>"Corbario is an assassin," he said. "Remember that, Nino. As
+    for his poor lady, she is a little lacking, or she would never
+    have married him. But she is a saint, and what do saints want
+    with cleverness? They go to paradise. Does that need much
+    sense? We should all go if we could. Why do you cock your head
+    on one side and look at me like a Christian? Are you trying to
+    make me think you have a soul? You are made of nothing but corn
+    meal and water, and a little wool, poor beast! But you have
+    more sense than the Signora, and you are not an assassin, like
+    her husband."</p>
+
+    <p>At this, Nino threw himself upon his back with his four legs
+    in the air and squirmed with sheer delight, showing his jagged
+    teeth and the roof of a very terrible mouth, and emitting a
+    series of wolfish snorts; after which he suddenly rolled over
+    upon his feet again, shook himself till his shaggy coat
+    bristled all over his body, walked sedately to the open door of
+    the hut, and sat down to look at the weather.</p>
+
+    <p>"He is almost a Christian," Ercole remarked under his
+    breath, as if he were afraid the dog might hear the compliment
+    and grow too vain.</p>
+
+    <p>For Ercole was a reticent man, and though he told Nino what
+    he thought about people, he never told any one else. Marcello
+    was the only person to whom he ever showed any inclination to
+    attach himself. He regarded even the Contessa with suspicion,
+    perhaps merely because she was a woman; and as for Aurora,
+    girls did not count at all in his cosmogony.</p>
+
+    <p>"God made all the other animals before making women," he
+    observed contemptuously one day, when he had gone out alone
+    with Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"I like them," laughed the boy.</p>
+
+    <p>"So did Adam," retorted Ercole, "and you see what came of
+    it."</p>
+
+    <p>No answer to this argument occurred to Marcello just then,
+    so he said nothing; and he thought of Aurora, and his mother,
+    and the sad-eyed Contessa, and wondered vaguely whether they
+    were very unlike other women, as Ercole implied.</p>
+
+    <p>"When you know women," the man vouchsafed to add presently,
+    "you will wish you were dead. The Lord sent them into the world
+    for an affliction and for the punishment of our sins."</p>
+
+    <p>"You were never married, were you?" asked Marcello, still
+    smiling.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole stopped short in the sand, amongst the sea-thistles
+    that grew there, and Nino trotted up and looked at him, to be
+    ready if anything happened. Marcello knew the man's queer ways,
+    and waited for him to speak.</p>
+
+    <p>"Married?" he snorted. "Married? You have said it!"</p>
+
+    <p>This seemed enigmatical, but Marcello understood the words
+    to convey an affirmation.</p>
+
+    <p>"Well?" he asked, expecting more.</p>
+
+    <p>"Well? Well, what?" growled Ercole. "This is a bad world. A
+    man falls in love with a pretty little caterpillar; he wakes up
+    and finds himself married to a butterfly. Oh, this is a very
+    bad world!"</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello was struck by the simile, but he reflected that
+    Aurora looked much more like a butterfly than a caterpillar, a
+    fact which, if it meant anything, should signify that he knew
+    the worst beforehand. Ercole declined to enter into any account
+    of his conjugal experiences, and merely shrugged his shoulders
+    and went on through the sand.</p>
+
+    <p>With such fitting and warning as this to keep him out of
+    trouble, Marcello was to face life: with his saintly mother's
+    timid allusions to its wickedness, with Corbario's tempting
+    suggestions of harmless dissipation, with an unlettered
+    peasant's sour reflections on the world in general and women in
+    particular.</p>
+
+    <p>In the other scale of the balance fate set his delicate and
+    high-strung nature, his burning desire for the great unknown
+    something, the stinging impatience of bodily weakness, and the
+    large element of recklessness he inherited from his father,
+    besides a fine admixture of latent boyish vanity for women to
+    play upon, and all the ordinary weaknesses of human nature in
+    about the same proportion as every one has them.</p>
+
+    <p>Given a large fortune and ordinary liberty, it might be
+    foreseen that the boy would not reach the haven of maturity
+    without meeting a storm, even if the outward circumstances of
+    chance were all in his favour, even if no one had an interest
+    in ruining him, even if Folco Corbario did not want all for
+    himself, as poor Ercole told his dog that he did in the
+    solitude of his hut.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello had a bad chance at the start, and Maddalena dell'
+    Armi, who knew the world well in all its moods, and had
+    suffered by it and sinned for it, and had shed many tears in
+    secret before becoming what she was now, foresaw danger, and
+    hoped that her daughter's fate might not be bound up with that
+    of her friend's son, much as she herself liked the
+    gentle-hearted boy. She wondered how long any one would call
+    him gentle after he got his first taste of pleasure and
+    pain.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_IV'></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+    <p>It was very early morning, and there was no shooting, for a
+    southwesterly gale had been blowing all night, and the birds
+    passed far inland. All along the beach, for twenty-five miles
+    in an unbroken line, the surf thundered in, with a double roar,
+    breaking on the bar, then gathering strength again, rising grey
+    and curling green and crashing down upon the sand. Then the
+    water opened out in vast sheets of crawling foam that ran up to
+    the very foot of the bank where the scrub began to grow, and
+    ran regretfully back again, tracing myriads of tiny channels
+    where the sand was loose; but just as it had almost subsided,
+    another wave curled and uncurled itself, and trembled a moment,
+    and flung its whole volume forwards through a cloud of
+    unresisting spray.</p>
+
+    <p>It had rained a little, too, and it would rain again. The
+    sky was of an even leaden grey, and as the sun rose unseen, a
+    wicked glare came into it, as if the lead were melting; and the
+    wind howled unceasingly, the soft, wet, southwest wind of the
+    great spring storms.</p>
+
+    <p>Less than a mile from the shore a small brigantine, stripped
+    to a lower topsail, storm-jib, and balance-reefed mainsail, was
+    trying to claw off shore. She had small chance, unless the gale
+    shifted or moderated, for she evidently could not carry enough
+    sail to make any way against the huge sea, and to heave to
+    would be sure destruction within two hours.</p>
+
+    <p>The scrub and brushwood were dripping with raindrops, and
+    the salt spray was blown up the bank with the loose sand.
+    Everything was wet, grey, and dreary, as only the Roman shore
+    can be at such times, with that unnatural dreariness of the
+    south which comes down on nature suddenly like a bad dream, and
+    is a thousand times more oppressive than the stern desolation
+    of any northern sea-coast.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello and Aurora watched the storm from a break in the
+    bank which made a little lee. The girl was wrapped in a grey
+    military cloak, of which she had drawn the hood over her loose
+    hair. Her delicate nostrils dilated with pleasure to breathe
+    the salt wind, and her eyelids drooped as she watched the poor
+    little vessel in the distance.</p>
+
+    <p>"You like it, don't you?" asked Marcello, as he looked at
+    her.</p>
+
+    <p>"I love it!" she answered enthusiastically. "And I may never
+    see it all again," she added after a little pause.</p>
+
+    <p>"Never?" Marcello started a little. "Are you going
+    away?"</p>
+
+    <p>"We are going to Rome to-day. But that is not what I mean.
+    We have always come down every year for ever so long. How long
+    is it, Marcello? We were quite small the first time."</p>
+
+    <p>"It must be five years. Four or five&mdash;ever since my
+    mother bought the land here."</p>
+
+    <p>"We were mere children," said Aurora, with the dignity of a
+    grown person. "That is all over."</p>
+
+    <p>"I wish it were not!" Marcello sighed.</p>
+
+    <p>"How silly you are!" observed Aurora, throwing back her
+    beautiful head. "But then, I am sure I am much more grown up
+    than you are, though you are nineteen, and I am not quite
+    eighteen."</p>
+
+    <p>"You are seventeen," said Marcello firmly.</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall be eighteen on my next birthday!" retorted Aurora
+    with warmth. "Then we shall see who is the more grown up. I
+    shall be in society, and you&mdash;why, you will not even be
+    out of the University."</p>
+
+    <p>She said this with the contempt which Marcello's extreme
+    youth deserved.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am not going to the University."</p>
+
+    <p>"Then you will be a boy all your life. I always tell you so.
+    Unless you do what other people do, you will never grow up at
+    all. You ought to be among men by this time, instead of
+    everlastingly at home, clinging to your mother's skirts!"</p>
+
+    <p>A bright flush rose in Marcello's cheeks. He felt that he
+    wanted to box her ears, and for an instant he wished himself
+    small again that he might do it, though he remembered what a
+    terrible fighter Aurora had been when she was a little girl,
+    and had preserved a vivid recollection of her well-aimed
+    slaps.</p>
+
+    <p>"Don't talk about my mother in that way," he said
+    angrily.</p>
+
+    <p>"I'm not talking of her at all. She is a saint, and I love
+    her very much. But that is no reason why you should always be
+    with her, as if you were a girl! I don't suppose you mean to
+    begin life as a saint yourself, do you? You are rather young
+    for that, you know."</p>
+
+    <p>"No," Marcello answered, feeling that he was not saying just
+    the right thing, but not knowing what to say. "And I am sure my
+    mother does not expect it of me, either," he added. "But that
+    is no reason why you should be so disagreeable."</p>
+
+    <p>He felt that he had been weak, and that he ought to say
+    something sharp. He knew very well that his mother believed it
+    quite possible for a boy to develop into saintship without
+    passing through the intermediate state of sinning manhood; and
+    though his nature told him that he was not of the temper that
+    attains sanctity all at once, he felt that he owed to his
+    mother's hopes for him a sort of loyalty in which Aurora had
+    made him fail. The reasonings of innocent sentiment are more
+    tortuous than the wiles of the devil himself, and have amazing
+    power to torment the unfledged conscience of a boy brought up
+    like Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora's way of thinking was much more direct.</p>
+
+    <p>"If you think I am disagreeable, you can go away," she said,
+    with a scornful laugh.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you. You are very kind." He tried to speak
+    sarcastically, but it was a decided failure.</p>
+
+    <p>To his surprise, Aurora turned and looked at him very
+    quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>"I wonder whether I shall like you, when you are a man," she
+    said in a tone of profound reflection. "I am rather ashamed of
+    liking you now, because you are such a baby."</p>
+
+    <p>He flushed again, very angry this time, and he moved away to
+    leave her, without another word.</p>
+
+    <p>She turned her face to the storm and took no notice of him.
+    She thought that he would come back, but there was just the
+    least doubt about it, which introduced an element of chance and
+    was perfectly delightful while it lasted. Was there ever a
+    woman, since the world began, who did not know that sensation,
+    either by experience or by wishing she might try it? What
+    pleasure would there be in angling if the fish did not try to
+    get off the hook, but stupidly swallowed it, fly and all? It
+    might as well crawl out of the stream at once and lay itself
+    meekly down in the basket.</p>
+
+    <p>And Marcello came back, before he had taken four steps.</p>
+
+    <p>"Is that what you meant when you said that you might never
+    come here again?" he asked, and there was something rough in
+    his tone that pleased her.</p>
+
+    <p>"No," she answered, as if nothing had happened. "Mamma
+    talked to me a long time last night."</p>
+
+    <p>"What did she say?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you want to know?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+    <p>"There is no reason why I should not tell you. She says that
+    we must not come here after I go into society, because people
+    will think that she is trying to marry me to you."</p>
+
+    <p>She looked at him boldly for a moment, and then turned her
+    eyes to the sea.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why should she care what people think?" he asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"Because it would prevent me from marrying any one else,"
+    answered Aurora, with the awful cynicism of youth. "If every
+    one thought I was engaged to you, or going to be, no other man
+    could ask for me. It's simple enough, I'm sure!"</p>
+
+    <p>"And you wish other men to ask you to marry them, I
+    suppose?"</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello was a little pale, but he tried to throw all the
+    contempt he could command into his tone. Aurora smiled
+    sweetly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Naturally," she said. "I'm only a woman."</p>
+
+    <p>"Which means that I'm a fool to care for you!"</p>
+
+    <p>"You are, if you think I'm not worth caring for." The girl
+    laughed.</p>
+
+    <p>This was so very hard to understand that Marcello knit his
+    smooth young brow and looked very angry, but could find nothing
+    to say on the spur of the moment. All women are born with the
+    power to put a man into such a position that he must either
+    contradict himself, hold his tongue, or fly into a senseless
+    rage. They do this so easily, that even after the experience of
+    a life-time we never suspect the trap until they pull the
+    string and we are caught. Then, if we contradict ourselves,
+    woman utters an inhuman cry of triumph and jeers at our
+    unstable purpose; if we lose our tempers instead, she bursts
+    into tears and calls us brutes; and finally, if we say nothing,
+    she declares, with a show of reason, that we have nothing to
+    say.</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name='Flushed'></a>
+<img src="images/Illus063_Flushed.jpg" width="400" height="557" alt="[Illustration]" />
+<p class="caption">"HE FLUSHED AGAIN, VERY ANGRY THIS TIME, AND HE MOVED AWAY
+    TO LEAVE HER, WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD."</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>Marcello lost his temper.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are quite right," he said angrily. "You are not worth
+    caring for. You are a mere child, and you are a miserable
+    little flirt already, and you will be a detestable woman when
+    you grow up! You will lead men on, and play with them, and then
+    laugh at them. But you shall not laugh at me again. You shall
+    not have that satisfaction! You shall wish me back, but I will
+    not come, not if you break your silly little heart!"</p>
+
+    <p>With this terrific threat the boy strode away, leaving her
+    to watch the storm alone in the lee of the sandbank. Aurora
+    knew that he really meant to go this time, and at first she was
+    rather glad of it, since he was in such a very bad temper. She
+    felt that he had insulted her, and if he had stayed any longer
+    she would doubtless have called him a brute, that being the
+    woman's retort under the circumstances. She had not the
+    slightest doubt of being quite reconciled with him before
+    luncheon, of course, but in her heart she wished that she had
+    not made him angry. It had been very pleasant to watch the
+    storm together, and when they had come to the place, she had
+    felt a strong presentiment that he would kiss her, and that the
+    contrast between the kiss and the howling gale would be very
+    delightful.</p>
+
+    <p>The presentiment had certainly not come true, and now that
+    Marcello was gone it was not very amusing to feel the spray and
+    the sand on her face, or to watch the tumbling breakers and
+    listen to the wind. Besides, she had been there some time, and
+    she had not even had her little breakfast of coffee and rolls
+    before coming down to the shore. She suddenly felt hungry and
+    cold and absurdly inclined to cry, and she became aware that
+    the sand had got into her russet shoes, and that it would be
+    very uncomfortable to sit down in such a place to take them off
+    and shake it out; and that, altogether, misfortunes never come
+    singly.</p>
+
+    <p>After standing still three or four minutes longer, she
+    turned away with a discontented look in her face, all rosy with
+    the wind and spray. She started as she saw Corbario standing
+    before her, for she had not heard his footsteps in the gale. He
+    wore his shooting-coat and heavy leathern gaiters, but he had
+    no gun. She thought he looked pale, and that there was a shade
+    of anxiety in his usually expressionless face.</p>
+
+    <p>"We wondered where you were," he said. "There is coffee in
+    the verandah, and your mother is out already."</p>
+
+    <p>"I came down to look at the storm," Aurora answered. "I
+    forgot all about breakfast."</p>
+
+    <p>They made a few steps in the direction of the cottage.
+    Aurora felt that Corbario was looking sideways at her as they
+    walked.</p>
+
+    <p>"Have you seen Marcello?" he asked presently.</p>
+
+    <p>"Did you not meet him?" Aurora was surprised. "It is not
+    five minutes since he left me."</p>
+
+    <p>"No. I did not meet him."</p>
+
+    <p>"That is strange."</p>
+
+    <p>They went on in silence for a few moments.</p>
+
+    <p>"I cannot understand why you did not meet Marcello," Aurora
+    said suddenly, as if she had thought it over. "Did you come
+    this way?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+    <p>"Perhaps he got back before you started. He walks very
+    fast."</p>
+
+    <p>"Perhaps," Corbario said, "but I did not see him. I came to
+    look for you both."</p>
+
+    <p>"Expecting to find us together, of course!" Aurora threw up
+    her head a little disdainfully, for Marcello had offended
+    her.</p>
+
+    <p>"He is generally somewhere near you, poor boy," answered
+    Corbario in a tone of pity.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why do you say 'poor boy' in that tone? Do you think he is
+    so much to be pitied?"</p>
+
+    <p>"A little, certainly." Corbario smiled.</p>
+
+    <p>"I don't see why."</p>
+
+    <p>"Women never do, when a man is in love!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Women"&mdash;the flattery was subtle and Aurora's face
+    cleared. Corbario was a man of the world, without doubt, and he
+    had called her a woman, in a most natural way, as if she had
+    been at least twenty years old. It did not occur to her to ask
+    herself whether Folco had any object in wishing to please her
+    just then, but she knew well enough that he did wish to do so.
+    Even a girl's instinct is unerring in that; and Corbario
+    further pleased her by not pursuing the subject, for what he
+    had said seemed all the more spontaneous because it led to
+    nothing.</p>
+
+    <p>"If Marcello is not in the cottage," he observed, as they
+    came near, "he must have gone off for a walk after he left you.
+    Did you not see which way he turned?"</p>
+
+    <p>"How could I from the place where I stood?" asked Aurora in
+    reply. "As soon as he had turned behind the bank it was
+    impossible to say which way he had gone."</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course," assented Folco. "I understand that."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello had not come home, and Aurora was sorry that she
+    had teased him into a temper and had then allowed him to go
+    away. It was not good for him, delicate as he was, to go for a
+    long walk in such weather without any breakfast, and she felt
+    distinctly contrite as she ate her roll in silence and drank
+    her coffee, on the sheltered side of the cottage, under the
+    verandah. The Signora Corbario had not appeared yet, but the
+    Contessa was already out. As a rule the Signora preferred to
+    have her coffee in her room, as if she were in town. For some
+    time no one spoke.</p>
+
+    <p>"Had we not better send Ercole to find Marcello?" the
+    Contessa asked at last.</p>
+
+    <p>"I had to send Ercole to Porto d'Anzio this morning,"
+    Corbario answered. "I took the opportunity, because I knew
+    there would be no quail with this wind."</p>
+
+    <p>"Marcello will come in when he is hungry," said Aurora,
+    rather sharply, because she really felt sorry.</p>
+
+    <p>But Marcello did not come in.</p>
+
+    <p>Soon after eight o'clock his mother appeared on the
+    verandah. Folco dropped his newspaper and hastened to make her
+    comfortable in her favourite chair. Though she was not strong,
+    she was not an invalid, but she was one of those women whom it
+    seems natural to help, to whom men bring cushions, and with
+    whom other women are always ready to sympathise. If one of Fra
+    Angelico's saints should walk into a modern drawing-room all
+    the men would fall over each other in the scramble to make her
+    comfortable, and all the women would offer her tea and ask her
+    if she felt the draught.</p>
+
+    <p>The Signora looked about, expecting to see her son.</p>
+
+    <p>"Marcello has not come in," said Folco, understanding. "He
+    seems to have gone for a long walk."</p>
+
+    <p>"I hope he has put on his thick boots," answered the
+    Signora, in a thoughtful tone. "It is very wet."</p>
+
+    <p>She asked why Folco was not with him shooting, and was told
+    that there were no birds in such weather. She had never
+    understood the winds, nor the points of the compass, nor why
+    one should see the new moon in the west instead of in the east.
+    Very few women do, but those who live much with men generally
+    end by picking up a few useful expressions, a little
+    phrase-book of jargon terms with which men are quite satisfied.
+    They find out that a fox has no tail, a wild boar no teeth, a
+    boat no prow, and a yacht no staircase; and this knowledge is
+    better than none.</p>
+
+    <p>The Signora accepted the fact that there were no birds that
+    morning, and began to talk to Maddalena. Aurora got a book and
+    pretended to read, but she was really listening for Marcello's
+    footsteps, and wondering whether he would smile at her, or
+    would still be cross when he came in. Corbario finished his
+    paper and went off to look at the weather from the other side
+    of the house, and the two women talked in broken sentences as
+    old friends do, with long intervals of silence.</p>
+
+    <p>The wind had moderated a good deal, but as the sun rose
+    higher the glare in the sky grew more yellow, the air was much
+    warmer, and the trees and shrubs and long grass began to steam
+    as if they had been half boiled. All manner of tiny flies and
+    gnats chased each other in the lurid light.</p>
+
+    <p>"It feels as if there were going to be an earthquake," said
+    Maddalena, throwing back the lace from her grey hair as if even
+    its light weight oppressed her.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+    <p>The women sat in silence, uneasy, their lips a little
+    parted. Not that an earthquake would have disturbed them much,
+    for slight ones are common enough in Italy, and could do no
+    harm at all to a wooden cottage; it was a mere physical
+    breathlessness that they felt, as the gale suddenly dropped and
+    the heavy air became quite still on the sheltered side of the
+    cottage.</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora threw aside her book impatiently and rose from her
+    chair.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am going to look for Marcello," she said, and she went
+    off without turning her head.</p>
+
+    <p>On the other side of the cottage, as she went round, she
+    found Folco sitting on the steps of the verandah, his elbows on
+    his knees and his chin resting on his folded hands, apparently
+    in deep thought. He had a cigar between his teeth, but it had
+    gone out.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am going to look for Marcello," said Aurora, as she
+    passed close beside him.</p>
+
+    <p>He said nothing, and hardly moved his head. Aurora turned
+    and looked at him as she stepped upon the path.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is the matter?" she asked, as she saw his face. "Is
+    anything wrong?"</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario looked up quickly, as if he had been in a
+    reverie.</p>
+
+    <p>"Anything the matter? No. Where did you say you were
+    going?"</p>
+
+    <p>"To find Marcello. He has not come in yet."</p>
+
+    <p>"He has gone for a walk, I suppose. He often walks alone on
+    off days. He will be back before luncheon, and you are not
+    going to town till the afternoon."</p>
+
+    <p>"Will you come with me?" Aurora asked, for she was in a good
+    humour with Folco.</p>
+
+    <p>He rose at once.</p>
+
+    <p>"I'll go with you for a stroll," he said, "but I don't think
+    it is of any use to look for Marcello near the house."</p>
+
+    <p>"It can do no harm."</p>
+
+    <p>"And it will do us good to walk a bit."</p>
+
+    <p>They went down the path and through the trees towards the
+    break in the bank.</p>
+
+    <p>"The sand was very wet this morning, even inside the bank,"
+    Aurora said. "I daresay we shall find his footsteps and be able
+    to guess which way he went."</p>
+
+    <p>"Very likely," Folco answered.</p>
+
+    <p>He pushed back his tweed cap a little and passed his
+    handkerchief across his smooth brow. Aurora noticed the action,
+    because he did not usually get warm so easily.</p>
+
+    <p>"Are you hot?" she asked carelessly.</p>
+
+    <p>"A little," he answered. "The air is so heavy this
+    morning."</p>
+
+    <p>"Perhaps you are not quite well," said Aurora. "You are a
+    little pale."</p>
+
+    <p>Apparently something in her youthfully patronising tone came
+    as near irritating him as anything ever could.</p>
+
+    <p>"What does it matter, whether I am hot or not?" he asked,
+    almost impatiently, and again he passed his handkerchief over
+    his forehead.</p>
+
+    <p>"I did not mean to annoy you," Aurora answered with uncommon
+    meekness.</p>
+
+    <p>They came near the break in the bank, and she looked at the
+    sand on each side of her. She thought it seemed smoother than
+    usual, and that there were not so many little depressions in
+    it, where there had been footsteps on previous days, half
+    obliterated by wind and rain.</p>
+
+    <p>"I cannot see where you and I passed an hour ago," she said,
+    in some surprise.</p>
+
+    <p>"The wind draws through the gap with tremendous strength,"
+    Folco explained. "Just before the gale moderated there was a
+    heavy squall with rain."</p>
+
+    <p>"Was there? I did not notice that&mdash;but I was on the lee
+    side of the house. The wind must have smoothed the sand, just
+    like a flat-iron!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes." Corbario answered indifferently and gazed out to
+    sea.</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora left his side and looked about, going to a little
+    distance from the gap, first on one side and then on the
+    other.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is as if the wind had done it on purpose!" she cried
+    impatiently. "It is as smooth as if it had all been swept with
+    a gardener's broom."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario turned, lighted his extinguished cigar, and watched
+    her, as she moved about, stooping now and then to examine the
+    sand.</p>
+
+    <p>"I don't believe it is of any use to look here," he said.
+    "Besides, he will be back in time for luncheon."</p>
+
+    <p>"I suppose so," answered Aurora. "Why do you look at me in
+    that way?" she asked, standing upright and meeting his eyes
+    suddenly.</p>
+
+    <p>He laughed softly and took his cigar from his mouth.</p>
+
+    <p>"I was watching you. You are very graceful when you
+    move."</p>
+
+    <p>She did not like his expression.</p>
+
+    <p>"I wish you would think less about me and more about finding
+    Marcello," she said rather sharply.</p>
+
+    <p>"You talk as if he were lost. I tell you he will surely come
+    back before long."</p>
+
+    <p>"I hope so."</p>
+
+    <p>But Marcello did not come back, and after Aurora had
+    returned to the cottage and was seated in her chair again, with
+    her book, she grew restless, and went over in her memory what
+    had passed in the morning. It was not possible that Marcello
+    should really mean to carry out his threat, to go away without
+    a word, to leave her, to leave his mother; and yet, he was
+    gone. A settled conviction came over her that he was really
+    gone, just as he was, most probably back to Rome. She had
+    teased him, and he had been very angry, absurdly angry; and yet
+    she was perhaps responsible, in a way, for his disappearance.
+    Presently his mother would grow anxious and would ask
+    questions, and then it would all come out. It would be better
+    to be brave and to say at once that he had been angry with her;
+    she could confess the truth to her mother, to the Signora, if
+    necessary, or even to both together, for they were women and
+    would understand. But she could not tell the story before
+    Corbario. That would be out of the question; and yet, anything
+    would be better than to let them all think that something
+    dreadful had happened to Marcello. He had gone to Rome, of
+    course; or perhaps only to Porto d'Anzio, in which case he
+    would meet Ercole coming back.</p>
+
+    <p>The hours wore on to midday, and Signora Corbario's
+    uneasiness grew into real anxiety. The Contessa did her best to
+    soothe her, but was anxious herself, and still Aurora said
+    nothing. Folco was grave, but assured every one that the boy
+    would soon return, though the Signora would not believe it.</p>
+
+    <p>"He will never come back! Something dreadful has happened to
+    him!" And therewith she broke down completely and burst into
+    tears.</p>
+
+    <p>"You must go and look for him," said Maddalena quietly to
+    Corbario.</p>
+
+    <p>"I think you are right," he answered. "I am going to find
+    him," he said softly, bending down to his wife as she lay in
+    her chair, trying to control her sobs. "I will send some of the
+    men towards Porto d'Anzio and will go towards Nettuno
+    myself."</p>
+
+    <p>She loved him and believed in him, and she was comforted
+    when she saw him go away and heard him calling the men from
+    their hut.</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora was left alone with the two women.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am afraid Marcello is gone to Rome," she said, with an
+    effort.</p>
+
+    <p>The Signora raised herself in her long chair and stared hard
+    at the girl. The Contessa looked at her in surprise.</p>
+
+    <p>"What do you know about it?" cried the Signora. "Why have
+    you not spoken, if you know anything? Don't you see that I am
+    half mad with anxiety?"</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora had never seen the good lady in such a state, and was
+    almost frightened; but there was nothing to be done now, except
+    to go on. She told her little story timidly, but truthfully,
+    looking from her mother to the Signora while she spoke, and
+    wondering what would happen when she had finished.</p>
+
+    <p>"He said, 'You shall wish me back, but I will not come.' I
+    think those were his last words."</p>
+
+    <p>"You have broken my boy's heart!" cried the Signora
+    Corbario, turning her face away.</p>
+
+    <p>Maddalena, whose heart had really been broken long ago,
+    could not help smiling.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am sure I did not mean to," cried Aurora, contritely.
+    "And after all, though I daresay it was my fault, he called me
+    a miserable little flirt, and I only called him a baby."</p>
+
+    <p>Maddalena would have laughed if her friend had not been in
+    such real distress. As for Aurora, she did not know whether she
+    would have laughed or cried if she had not felt that her girl's
+    dignity was at stake. As it was, she grew preternaturally
+    calm.</p>
+
+    <p>"You have driven him away," moaned the Signora piteously.
+    "You have driven away my boy! Was he not good enough for
+    you?"</p>
+
+    <p>She asked the question suddenly and vehemently, turning upon
+    poor Aurora with something like fury. She was quite beside
+    herself, and the Contessa motioned the girl away. Aurora rose
+    and disappeared round the corner of the house.</p>
+
+    <p>Alone with her friend, Maddalena did her best to comfort
+    her. There were arguments enough: it was barely noon, and
+    Marcello had not been gone four hours; he was used to taking
+    long walks, he had probably gone as far as the tower, and had
+    rested there before coming back; or he had gone to meet Ercole
+    on the road to Porto d'Anzio; or he had gone off towards the
+    Nettuno woods to get over his anger in solitude; it was natural
+    enough; and after all, if he had gone to Rome as Aurora
+    thought, no harm could come to him, for he would go home, and
+    would surely send a telegram before evening. It was unlike him,
+    yes; but just at his age boys often did foolish things.</p>
+
+    <p>"Marcello is not foolish!" objected the Signora
+    indignantly.</p>
+
+    <p>She could by no means listen to reason, and was angry
+    because her friend tried to argue with her. She rose with an
+    energy she seldom displayed, and began to walk up and down the
+    verandah. Her face was very pale, her lip quivered when she
+    spoke, and there was an unnatural light in her eyes. There was
+    room for much moderate affection in her gentle nature; she had
+    loved her first husband; she loved Corbario dearly; but the
+    passion of her life was her son, and at the first presentiment
+    of real danger to him the dominant preoccupation of her heart
+    took violent possession of everything else in her, regardless
+    of reason, friendship, consideration for others, or common
+    sense.</p>
+
+    <p>Maddalena walked up and down beside her, putting one arm
+    affectionately round her waist, and doing the best she could to
+    allay the tempest.</p>
+
+    <p>It subsided suddenly, and was followed by a stony silence
+    that frightened the Contessa. It was time for luncheon, and
+    Aurora came back, hoping to find that she had been forgiven
+    during her absence, but the Signora only looked at her coldly
+    once or twice and would not speak. None of the three even
+    pretended to have an appetite.</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall not go back to Rome to-day," said the Contessa. "I
+    cannot leave you in such anxiety."</p>
+
+    <p>"Folco will take care of me," answered the Signora in a dull
+    tone. "Do not change your plans on my account. The carriage is
+    ordered at three o'clock."</p>
+
+    <p>She spoke so coldly that Maddalena felt a little pardonable
+    resentment, though she knew that her friend was not at all
+    herself.</p>
+
+    <p>"Very well," she answered quietly. "If you had rather that I
+    should not stay with you we will go back this afternoon."</p>
+
+    <p>"It will be much better."</p>
+
+    <p>When the carriage appeared neither Folco nor any of the men
+    had returned. The Signora made an evident attempt to show a
+    little of her habitual cordiality at parting, and she even
+    kissed Aurora coldly on the forehead, and embraced Maddalena
+    with something like her usual affection. The two looked back as
+    they drove away, calling out a last good-bye, but they saw that
+    the Signora was not even looking after them; she was leaning
+    against one of the wooden supports of the verandah, gazing
+    towards the trees, and pressing one hand to her forehead.</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you think it was my fault, mamma?" asked Aurora, when
+    they were out of sight of the cottage.</p>
+
+    <p>"No, dear," answered Maddalena. "Something has happened, I
+    wish I knew what!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I only told him he was a baby," said Aurora, settling
+    herself in the corner of the carriage, and arranging her
+    parasol behind her so that it rested on the open hood; for the
+    weather had cleared and the sun was shining brightly after the
+    storm.</p>
+
+    <p>So she and her mother went back to Rome that afternoon. But
+    when the Signora was alone, she was sorry that her friend was
+    gone, and was all at once aware that her head was aching
+    terribly. Every movement she made sent an agonizing thrill
+    through her brain, and her hand trembled from the pain, as she
+    pressed her palm to her forehead.</p>
+
+    <p>She meant to go down to the beach alone, for she was sure
+    that she could find Marcello, and at least she would meet the
+    men who were searching for him, and have news sooner than if
+    she stayed in the cottage. But she could not have walked fifty
+    steps without fainting while her headache lasted. She would
+    take five grains of phenacetine, and in a little while she
+    would be better.</p>
+
+    <p>She found the glass tube with the screw cap, and swallowed
+    one of the tablets with a little water. Then she sat down on
+    the edge of her long chair in the verandah to wait for the pain
+    to pass. She was very tired, and presently, she scarcely knew
+    how it was, she was lying at full length in her chair, her head
+    resting comfortably against the cushion.</p>
+
+    <p>The sunlight fell slanting across her feet. Amongst the
+    trees two or three birds were twittering softly; it was warm,
+    it was dreamy, she was forgetting Marcello. She tried to rouse
+    herself as the thought of him crossed her mind, and she fancied
+    that she almost rose from the chair; but she had hardly lifted
+    one hand. Then she saw his face close before her, her lips
+    relaxed, the pain was gone, she smiled happily, and she was
+    asleep.</p>
+
+    <p>Half an hour later her maid came quietly out to ask whether
+    she needed anything, and seeing that she was sleeping
+    peacefully spread a light shawl over her feet, placed the
+    silver handbell within easy reach on the table, and went away
+    again.</p>
+
+    <p>Towards evening Folco came back and then the men, straggling
+    in on their tired little horses, for they had ridden far and
+    fast. Marcello was not with them.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario came in alone, and saw his wife lying in her chair
+    in the evening light. He stood still a moment, and then came
+    over and bent near her, looking earnestly into her quiet
+    face.</p>
+
+    <p>"Already," he said aloud, but in a very low voice.</p>
+
+    <p>His hand shook as he laid it on her heart, bending low. Then
+    he started violently and stood bolt upright, as an unearthly
+    howl rent the air.</p>
+
+    <p>Nino, Ercole's queer dog, was close beside him, his forepaws
+    planted on the upper step of the verandah, his head thrown up,
+    his half-open jaws showing his jagged teeth, his rough coat
+    bristling like spikes of bearded barley.</p>
+
+    <p>And Ercole, still a hundred yards away amongst the trees,
+    shook his head and hurried forward as he heard the long-drawn
+    note of brute terror.</p>
+
+    <p>"Somebody is dead," he said to himself.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_V'></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+    <p>For a few weeks all Italy was profoundly interested in the
+    story of Marcello Corbario's disappearance and of his mother's
+    almost unaccountable death. It was spoken of as the "double
+    tragedy of the Campagna," and the newspapers were full of
+    it.</p>
+
+    <p>The gates of the beautiful villa on the Janiculum were
+    constantly assailed by reporters; the servants who came out
+    from time to time were bribed, flattered, and tempted away to
+    eat sumptuous meals and drink the oldest wine in quiet gardens
+    behind old inns in Trastevere, in the hope that they might have
+    some information to sell. But no one gained admittance to the
+    villa except the agents of the police, who came daily to report
+    the fruitless search; and the servants had nothing to tell
+    beyond the bare truth. The young gentleman had gone for a walk
+    near the sea, down at the cottage by the Roman shore, and he
+    had never been heard of again. His mother had been suffering
+    from a bad headache, had lain down to rest in a cane chair on
+    the verandah, and had been found dead, with a smile on her
+    face, by her husband, when he came back from his first attempt
+    to find Marcello. The groom who always went down with the
+    carriage could describe with greatest accuracy the spot where
+    the Signorina Aurora had last seen him; the house servants gave
+    the most minute details about the cane chair, the verandah, and
+    the position in which the poor lady had been found; but that
+    was all, and it was not at all what the reporters wanted. They
+    had all been down to the cottage, each with his camera and
+    note-book, and had photographed everything in sight, including
+    Nino, Ercole's dog. What they wanted was a clue, a story, a
+    scandal if possible, and they found nothing of the sort.</p>
+
+    <p>Folco Corbario's mourning was unostentatious and quiet, but
+    none of the few persons who saw him, whether detectives or
+    servants, could doubt that he was profoundly affected. He grew
+    paler and thinner every day, until his own man even began to
+    fear that his health was failing. He had done, and continued to
+    do, everything that was humanly possible. He had brought his
+    wife's body to Rome, and had summoned the very highest
+    authorities in the medical profession to discover, if possible,
+    the cause of her death. They had come, old men of science, full
+    of the experience of years, young men of the future, brimming
+    with theories, experts in chemistry, experts in snake poisons;
+    for Folco had even suggested that she might have been bitten by
+    a viper or stung by a venomous spider, or accidentally poisoned
+    by some medicine or something she had eaten.</p>
+
+    <p>But the scientific gentlemen were soon agreed that no such
+    thing had happened. Considerably disappointed, and with an
+    unanimity which is so unusual in the confraternity as to be
+    thought absolutely conclusive when it is observed, they decided
+    that the Signora Corbario had died of collapse after intense
+    excitement caused by the disappearance of her son. Thereafter
+    she was buried out at San Lorenzo, with the secret, if there
+    were any; masses were said, the verdict of the doctors was
+    published, with the signatures of the most eminent
+    practitioners and specialists in Italy; and the interest of the
+    public concentrated itself upon the problem of Marcello's
+    mysterious removal, or abduction, or subduction, or recession,
+    or flight, from the very bosom of his family.</p>
+
+    <p>This problem had the merit of defying solution. In a
+    comparatively open country, within a space of time which could
+    certainly be limited to five minutes, at a place whence he
+    should have been clearly seen by Folco Corbario as soon as
+    Aurora dell' Armi could no longer see him, the boy had been
+    spirited away, leaving not even the trace of his footsteps in
+    the sand. It was one of the most unaccountable disappearances
+    on record, as Folco insisted in his conversations with the
+    Chief of Police, who went down with him to the cottage and
+    examined the spot most carefully, with several expert
+    detectives. Folco showed him exactly where Aurora had stood,
+    and precisely the direction he himself had followed in
+    approaching the gap, and he declared it to be almost a physical
+    impossibility that Marcello should have become suddenly
+    invisible just then.</p>
+
+    <p>The official thought so too, and shook his head. He looked
+    at the detectives, and they shook their heads, also. And then
+    they all looked at Corbario and expressed the opinion that
+    there was some mistake about the length of time supposed by
+    Aurora to have elapsed between the moment when Marcello left
+    her and the instant of Folco's appearance before her. She had
+    not looked at her watch; in fact, she had not carried a watch.
+    The whole story therefore depended upon her more or less
+    accurate judgment of time. It might have been a quarter of an
+    hour instead of five minutes, in which case Corbario had not
+    yet left the cottage, and Marcello would have had ample leisure
+    to disappear in any direction he pleased. Ercole had been away
+    at Porto d'Anzio, the men had been all at the hut; if Folco had
+    not been on the path precisely at the time guessed by Aurora,
+    everything could be accounted for.</p>
+
+    <p>"Very well," Corbario answered. "Let us suppose that my
+    stepson had time to get away. In that case he can be found,
+    alive or dead. Italy is not China, nor Siberia, and I can place
+    unlimited funds at your disposal. Find him for me; that is all
+    I ask."</p>
+
+    <p>"We shall find him, never fear!" answered the Chief of
+    Police with a confidence he did not feel.</p>
+
+    <p>"We shall find him!" echoed the three detectives in
+    chorus.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole watched the proceedings and listened to what was
+    said, for he considered it his duty to attend on such an
+    occasion, his dog at his heels, his gun slung over his
+    shoulder. He listened and looked from one to the other with his
+    deep eyes and inscrutable parchment face, shrivelled by the
+    malarious fever. But he said nothing. The Chief of Police
+    turned to him at last.</p>
+
+    <p>"Now what do you think about it?" asked the official. "You
+    know the country. Had there been any suspicious characters
+    about, fellows who could have carried off the boy?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Such people would ask a ransom," answered Ercole. "You
+    would soon hear from them. But I saw no one. There have been no
+    brigands about Rome for more than twenty years. Do you dream
+    that you are in Sicily? Praise be to Heaven, this is the Roman
+    Campagna; we are Christians and we live under King Victor!
+    Where are the brigands? They have melted. Or else they are
+    making straw hats in the galleys. Do I know where they are?
+    They are not here. That is enough."</p>
+
+    <p>"Quite right, my friend," answered the Chief of Police.
+    "There are no brigands. But I am sorry to say that there are
+    thieves in the Campagna, as there are near every great
+    city."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole shrugged his angular shoulders contemptuously.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thieves would not carry a man away," he answered. "You know
+    that, you who are of the profession, as they say. Such ruffians
+    would have knocked the young gentleman on the head to keep him
+    quiet, and would have made off. And besides, we should have
+    found their tracks in the sand, and Nino would have smelt
+    them."</p>
+
+    <p>Nino pricked up one ragged ear at the sound of his name.</p>
+
+    <p>"He does not look very intelligent," observed the official.
+    "A clever dog might have been used to track the boy."</p>
+
+    <p>"How?" inquired Ercole with scorn. "The footsteps of the
+    young gentleman were everywhere, with those of all the family,
+    who were always coming and going about here. How could he track
+    them, or any of us? But he would have smelt a stranger, even if
+    it had rained. I know this dog. He is the head dog on the Roman
+    shore. There is no other dog like him."</p>
+
+    <p>"I daresay not," assented the Chief of Police, looking at
+    Nino. "In fact, he is not like any animal I ever saw."</p>
+
+    <p>The detectives laughed at this.</p>
+
+    <p>"There is no other," said Ercole without a smile. "He is the
+    only son of a widowed mother. I am his family, and he is my
+    family, and we live in good understanding in this desert. If
+    there were no fever we should be like the saints in
+    paradise&mdash;eating our corn meal together. And I will tell
+    you another thing. If the young gentleman had been wounded
+    anywhere near here, Nino would have found the blood even after
+    three days. As for a dead man, he would make a point for him
+    and howl half a mile off, unless the wind was the wrong
+    way."</p>
+
+    <p>"Would he really?" asked Corbario with a little
+    interest.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole looked at him and nodded, but said no more, and
+    presently the whole party of men went back to Rome, leaving him
+    to the loneliness of the sand-banks and the sea.</p>
+
+    <p>Then Ercole came back to the gap and stood still a little
+    while, and his dog sat bolt upright beside him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Nino," he said at last, in a rather regretful tone, "I gave
+    you a good character. What could I say before those gentlemen?
+    But I tell you this, you are growing old. And don't answer that
+    I am getting old too, for that is my business. If your nose
+    were what it was once, we should know the truth by this time.
+    Smell that!"</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole produced a small green morocco pocket-book, of the
+    sort made to hold a few visiting cards and a little paper
+    money, and held it to Nino's muzzle.</p>
+
+    <p>Nino smelt it, looked up to his master's face inquiringly,
+    smelt it again, and then, as if to explain that it did not
+    interest him, lay down in the sand with his head on his
+    forepaws.</p>
+
+    <p>"You see!" growled Ercole. "You cannot even tell whether it
+    belonged to the boy or to Corbario. An apoplexy on you! You
+    understand nothing! Ill befall the souls of your dead, you
+    ignorant beast!"</p>
+
+    <p>Nino growled, but did not lift his head.</p>
+
+    <p>"You understand that," said Ercole, discontentedly. "If you
+    were a Christian you would stick a knife into me for insulting
+    your dead! Yet you cannot tell whose pocket-book this is! And
+    if I knew, I should know something worth knowing."</p>
+
+    <p>The pocket-book disappeared in the interior recesses of
+    Ercole's waistcoat. It was empty and bore no initial, and he
+    could not remember to have seen it in Corbario's or Marcello's
+    hands, but he was quite sure that it belonged to one of them.
+    He was equally sure that if he showed it to Corbario the latter
+    would at once say that it was Marcello's, and would take it
+    away from him, so he said nothing about it. He had found it in
+    the sand, a little way up the bank, during his first search
+    after Marcello's disappearance.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole's confidence in the good intentions of his fellow-men
+    was not great; he was quite lacking in the sort of charity
+    which believeth all things, and had a large capacity for
+    suspicion of everybody and everything; he held all men to be
+    liars and most women to be something worse.</p>
+
+    <p>"Men are at least Christians," he would say to Nino, "but a
+    female is always a female."</p>
+
+    <p>If he took a liking for any one, as for Marcello, he excused
+    himself for the weakness on the ground that he was only human
+    after all, and in his heart he respected his dog for snarling
+    at everybody without discrimination. There was no doubt,
+    however, that he felt a sort of attachment for the boy, and he
+    admitted the failing while he deplored it. Besides, he detested
+    Corbario, and had felt that his own common sense was insulted
+    by the fact that Folco seemed devoted to Marcello. The
+    suspicion that Folco had got rid of his stepson in order to get
+    his fortune was therefore positively delightful, accompanied as
+    it was by the conviction that he should one day prove his enemy
+    a murderer. Perhaps if he could have known what Folco Corbario
+    was suffering, he might have been almost satisfied, but he had
+    no means of guessing that. In his opinion the man knew what had
+    become of Marcello, and could be made to tell if proper means
+    were used. At night Ercole put himself to sleep by devising the
+    most horrible tortures for his master, such as no fortitude
+    could resist, and by trying to guess what the wretched man
+    would say when his agony forced him to confess the truth.</p>
+
+    <p>He was almost sure by this time that Marcello was dead,
+    though how Folco could have killed him, carried off his body to
+    a great distance and buried him, without ever absenting himself
+    from the cottage, was more than Ercole could imagine. He paid
+    Corbario's skill the compliment of believing that he had not
+    employed any accomplice, but had done the deed alone.</p>
+
+    <p>How? That was the question. Ercole knew his dog well enough,
+    and was perfectly sure that if the body had been concealed
+    anywhere within a mile of the cottage Nino would have found it
+    out, for the dog and his master had quartered every foot of the
+    ground within three days after Marcello had been lost. It was
+    utterly, entirely impossible that Folco, without help, could
+    have dragged the dead boy farther. When he had gone on his
+    pretended search he had not been alone; one of the men had
+    ridden with him, and had never lost sight of him, as Ercole
+    easily ascertained without seeming to ask questions. Ercole had
+    obtained a pretty fair knowledge of Corbario's movements on
+    that day, and it appeared that he had not been absent from the
+    cottage more than half an hour at any time before he went to
+    look for Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"If Corbario himself had disappeared in that way," said
+    Ercole to himself and Nino, "it would be easy to understand. We
+    should know that the devil had carried him off."</p>
+
+    <p>But no such supernatural intervention of the infernal powers
+    could be supposed in Marcello's case, and Ercole racked his
+    brains to no purpose, and pondered mad schemes for carrying
+    Corbario off out of Rome to a quiet place where he would
+    extract the truth from him, and he growled at the impossibility
+    of such a thing, and fell to guessing again.</p>
+
+    <p>In the magnificent library of the villa on the Janiculum,
+    Folco was guessing, too, and with no better result. But because
+    he could not guess right, and could get no news of Marcello,
+    his eyes were growing hollow and his cheeks wan.</p>
+
+    <p>The lawyers came and talked about the will, and explained to
+    him that all the great property was his, unless Marcello came
+    back, and that in any case he was to administer it. They said
+    that if no news of the boy were obtained within a limited time,
+    the law must take it for granted that he had perished in some
+    unaccountable way. Folco shook his head.</p>
+
+    <p>"He must be found," he said. "I have good nerves, but if I
+    do not find out what has become of him I shall go mad."</p>
+
+    <p>The lawyers spoke of courage and patience, but a sickly
+    smile twisted Folco's lips.</p>
+
+    <p>"Put yourself in my place, if you can," he answered.</p>
+
+    <p>The lawyers, who knew the value of the property to a
+    farthing, wished they could, though if they had known also what
+    was passing in his mind they might have hesitated to exchange
+    their lot for his.</p>
+
+    <p>"He was like your own son," they said sympathetically. "A
+    wife and a son gone on the same day! It is a tragedy. It is
+    more than a man can bear."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is indeed!" answered Corbario in a low voice and looking
+    away.</p>
+
+    <p>Almost the same phrases were exchanged each time that the
+    two men came to the villa about the business, and when they
+    left they never failed to look at each other gravely and to
+    remark that Folco was a person of the deepest feeling, to whom
+    such an awful trial was almost worse than death; and the elder
+    lawyer, who was of a religious turn of mind, said that if such
+    a calamity befell him he would retire from the world, but the
+    younger answered that, for his part, he would travel and see
+    the world and try to divert his thoughts. In their different
+    ways they were hard-headed, experienced men; yet neither of
+    them suspected for a moment that there was anything wrong. Both
+    were honestly convinced that Folco had been a model husband to
+    his dead wife, and a model father to her lost son. What they
+    could not understand was that he should not find consolation in
+    possessing their millions, and they could only account for the
+    fact by calling him a person of the deepest feeling&mdash;a
+    feeling, indeed, quite past their comprehension.</p>
+
+    <p>Even the Contessa dell' Armi was impressed by the
+    unmistakable signs of suffering in his face. She went twice to
+    see him within three weeks after her friend's death, and she
+    came away convinced that she had misjudged him. Aurora did not
+    go with her, and Corbario barely asked after her. He led
+    Maddalena to his dead wife's room and begged her to take some
+    object that had belonged to the Signora, in memory of their
+    long friendship. He pressed her to accept a necklace, or a
+    bracelet, or some other valuable ornament, but Maddalena would
+    only take a simple little gold chain which she herself had
+    given long ago.</p>
+
+    <p>Her own sorrow for her friend was profound but
+    undemonstrative, as her nature had grown to be. Aurora saw it,
+    and never referred to it, speaking only now and then of
+    Marcello, to ask if there were any news of him.</p>
+
+    <p>"He is not dead," the girl said one day. "I know he will
+    come back. He went away because I called him a baby."</p>
+
+    <p>Her mother smiled sadly and shook her head.</p>
+
+    <p>"Did you love him, dear?" she asked softly.</p>
+
+    <p>"We were children then," Aurora answered. "How do I know? I
+    shall know when he comes back."</p>
+
+    <p>It was true that the girl had changed within a few weeks,
+    and her mother saw it. Her smile was not the same, and her eyes
+    were deeper. She had begun to gather her hair in a knot, closer
+    to her head, and that altered her expression a little and made
+    her look much older; but there was more than that, there was
+    something very hard to describe, something one might call
+    conviction&mdash;the conviction that the world is real, which
+    comes upon girlhood as suddenly as waking on sleep, or sleep on
+    waking. She had crossed the narrow borderland between play and
+    earnest, and she had crossed it very soon.</p>
+
+    <p>"He will come back," she said. "He went away on that little
+    ship that was tossing in the storm. I know it, though I cannot
+    tell how he got out to it through the breaking waves."</p>
+
+    <p>"That is perfectly impossible, child," said Maddalena with
+    certainty.</p>
+
+    <p>"Never mind. If we knew what ship that was, and where she is
+    now, we could find Marcello. I am as sure of it as I am sure of
+    seeing you at this moment. You know you often say that my
+    presentiments come true. As soon as we knew he was gone I
+    thought of the little ship."</p>
+
+    <p>It was natural, perhaps. The picture of the small
+    brigantine, fighting for existence, had graved itself in her
+    memory. With its crew so near death, it had been the only thing
+    within sight that suggested human life after Marcello was gone.
+    The utter impossibility of a man's swimming out through the
+    raging sea that broke upon the bar was nothing compared with
+    Aurora's inward conviction that the little vessel had borne
+    away the secret of his disappearance. And she had not been
+    wrecked: Aurora knew that, for a wreck anywhere on the Roman
+    shore would have been spoken of at once. They are unfortunately
+    common enough, and since her childhood Aurora had more than
+    once seen a schooner's masts sticking up out of the treacherous
+    water a cable's length from the shore. The brigantine had got
+    away, for the gale had moderated very suddenly, as spring gales
+    do in the Mediterranean, just when the captain was making up
+    his mind to let go both anchors and make a desperate attempt to
+    save his vessel by riding out the storm&mdash;a forlorn hope
+    with such ground tackle as he had in his chain lockers. And
+    then he had stood out, and had sailed away, one danger more
+    behind him in his hard life, and one less ahead. He had sailed
+    away&mdash;whither? No one could tell. Those little vessels,
+    built in the south of Italy, often enough take salt to South
+    America, and are sold there, cargo and all; and some of the
+    crew stay there, and some get other ships, but almost all are
+    dispersed. The keeper of the San Lorenzo tower, who had been a
+    deep-water man, had told Aurora about it. He himself had once
+    gone out in a Sicilian brigantine from Trapani, and had stayed
+    away three years, knocking about the world in all sorts of
+    craft.</p>
+
+    <p>Yet this one might have been on a coastwise trip to Genoa
+    and Marseilles. That was quite possible. If one could only find
+    out her name. And yet, if she had put into a near port Marcello
+    would have come back; for Aurora was quite sure that he had got
+    on board her somehow. It was all a mystery, all but the
+    certainty she felt that he was still alive, and which nothing
+    could shake, even when every one else had given him up. Aurora
+    begged her mother to speak to Corbario about it. With his
+    experience and knowledge of things he would know what to do; he
+    could find some way of tracing the vessel, wherever she might
+    be.</p>
+
+    <p>The Contessa was convinced that the girl's theory was
+    utterly untenable, and it was only to please her that she
+    promised to speak of it if she saw Corbario again. Soon
+    afterward she decided to leave Rome for the summer, and before
+    going away she went once more to the villa. It was now late in
+    June, and she found Folco in the garden late in the
+    afternoon.</p>
+
+    <p>He looked ill and tired, but she thought him a little less
+    thin than when she had seen him last. He said that he, too,
+    meant to leave Rome within a few days, that he intended to go
+    northward first to see an old friend of his who had recently
+    returned from South America, and that he should afterwards go
+    down to Calabria, to San Domenico, and spend the autumn there.
+    He had no news of Marcello. He looked thoughtfully down at his
+    hands as he said this in a tone of profound sorrow.</p>
+
+    <p>"Aurora has a fixed idea," said Maddalena. "While she was
+    talking with Marcello at the gap in the bank there was a small
+    ship tossing about not far from the shore."</p>
+
+    <p>"Well?" asked Corbario. "What of it?"</p>
+
+    <p>As he looked up from the contemplation of his hands
+    Maddalena was struck by his extreme pallor and the terrible
+    hollowness of his eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>"How ill you look!" she exclaimed, almost involuntarily.
+    "The sooner you go away the better."</p>
+
+    <p>"What did Aurora say about the brigantine?" he asked
+    earnestly, by way of answer.</p>
+
+    <p>Maddalena knew too little about the sea to understand that
+    he must have noticed the vessel's rig to name it correctly, as
+    he did, and without hesitation.</p>
+
+    <p>"She is convinced that Marcello got on board of her," she
+    answered.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario's face relaxed a little, and he laughed
+    harshly.</p>
+
+    <p>"That is utterly absurd!" he answered. "No swimmer that ever
+    lived could have got to her, nor any boat either! There was a
+    terrific surf on the bar."</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course not," assented Maddalena. "But you saw the ship,
+    too?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. Aurora was looking at her when I reached the gap. That
+    is why I noticed the vessel," Corbario added, as if by an
+    afterthought. "She was a Sicilian brigantine, and was carrying
+    hardly any sail. If the gale had lasted she would probably have
+    been driven ashore. Her only chance would have been to drop
+    anchor."</p>
+
+    <p>"You know all about ships and the sea, don't you?" asked
+    Maddalena, with a very little curiosity, but without any
+    particular intention.</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, no!" cried Corbario, as if he were protesting against
+    something. "I have made several long voyages, and I have a
+    knack of remembering the names of things, nothing more."</p>
+
+    <p>"I did not mean to suggest that you had been a sailor,"
+    Maddalena answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"What an idea! I, a sailor!"</p>
+
+    <p>He seemed vaguely amused at the idea. The Contessa took
+    leave of him, after giving him her address in the north of
+    Italy, and begging him to write if he found any clue to
+    Marcello's disappearance. He promised this, and they parted,
+    not expecting to meet again until the autumn.</p>
+
+    <p>In a few days they had left Rome for different destinations.
+    The little apartment near the Forum of Trajan where the
+    Contessa and her daughter lived was shut up, and at the great
+    villa on the Janiculum the solemn porter put off his mourning
+    livery and dressed himself in brown linen, and smoked endless
+    pipes within the closed gates when it was not too hot to be out
+    of doors. The horses were turned out to grass, and the coachman
+    and grooms departed to the country. The servants opened the
+    windows in the early morning, shut them at ten o'clock against
+    the heat, and dozed the rest of the time, or went down into the
+    city to gossip with their friends in the afternoon. It was high
+    summer, and Rome went to sleep.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_VI'></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+    <p>"What do we eat to-day?" asked Paoluccio, the innkeeper on
+    the Frascati road, as he came in from the glare and the dust
+    and sat down in his own black kitchen.</p>
+
+    <p>"Beans and oil," answered his wife.</p>
+
+    <p>"An apoplexy take you!" observed the man, by way of mild
+    comment.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is Friday," said the woman, unmoved, though she was of a
+    distinctly apoplectic habit.</p>
+
+    <p>The kitchen was also the eating-room where meals were served
+    to the wine-carters on their way to Rome and back. The beams
+    and walls were black with the smoke of thirty years, for no
+    whitewash had come near them since the innkeeper had married
+    Nanna. It was a rich, crusty black, lightened here and there to
+    chocolate brown, and shaded off again to the tint of strong
+    coffee. High overhead three hams and half a dozen huge sausages
+    hung slowly curing in the acrid wood smoke. There was an open
+    hearth, waist high, for roasting, and having three square holes
+    sunk in it for cooking with charcoal. An enormous bunch of
+    green ferns had been hung by a long string from the highest
+    beam to attract the flies, which swarmed on it like bees on a
+    branch. The floor was of beaten cement, well swept and watered.
+    Along three of the walls there were heavy tables of rough-hewn
+    oak, with benches, polished by long and constant use. A
+    trap-door covered the steps that led down to the deep cellar,
+    which was nothing but a branch of those unexplored catacombs
+    that undermine the Campagna in all directions. The place was
+    dim, smoky, and old, but it was not really dirty, for in his
+    primitive way the Roman wine-carter is fastidious. It is not
+    long since he used to bring his own solid silver spoon and fork
+    with him, and he will generally rinse a glass out two or three
+    times before he will drink out of it.</p>
+
+    <p>The kitchen of the inn was cool compared with the road
+    outside, and though it smelt chiefly of the stale smoke of
+    green wood, this was pervaded and tempered by odours of fern,
+    fresh cabbages, goats'-milk cheese, and sour red wine. The
+    brown earthen pot simmered over one of the holes in the hearth,
+    emitting little clouds of steam; but boiling beans have no
+    particular smell, as everybody knows.</p>
+
+    <p>Paoluccio had pushed his weather-beaten soft hat back on his
+    head, and sat drumming on the oak table with his knotty
+    fingers. He was a strong man, thickset and healthy, with
+    grizzled hair and an intensely black beard. His wife was fat,
+    and purple about the jaws and under the ears. She stood with
+    her back to the hearth, looking at him, with a wooden spoon in
+    her hand.</p>
+
+    <p>"Beans," she said slowly, and she looked up at the rafters
+    and down again at her husband.</p>
+
+    <p>"You have told me so," he growled, "and may the devil fly
+    away with you!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Beans are not good for people who have the fever," observed
+    Nanna.</p>
+
+    <p>"Beans are rather heavy food," assented the innkeeper,
+    apparently understanding. "Bread and water are better. Pour a
+    little oil on the bread."</p>
+
+    <p>"A man who has the fever may die of eating beans," said
+    Nanna thoughtfully. "This is also to be considered."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is true." Paoluccio looked at his wife in silence for a
+    moment. "But a person who is dead must be buried," he
+    continued, as if he had discovered something. "When a person is
+    dead, he is dead, whether he dies of eating beans
+    or&mdash;"</p>
+
+    <p>He broke off significantly, and his right hand, as it lay
+    before him, straightened itself and made a very slight
+    vibrating motion, with the fingers all close together. It is
+    the gesture that means the knife among the southern people.
+    Nanna instantly looked round, to be sure that no one else was
+    in the room.</p>
+
+    <p>"When you have given that medicine, you cannot send for the
+    doctor," she observed, lowering her voice. "But if he eats, and
+    dies, what can any one say? We have fed him for charity; it is
+    Friday and we have given him beans. What can we know? Are not
+    beans good food? We have nothing else, and it is for charity,
+    and we give what we have. I don't think they could expect us to
+    give him chickens and French wine, could they?"</p>
+
+    <p>Paoluccio growled approval.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is forty-seven days," continued Nanna. "You can make the
+    account. Chickens and milk and fresh meat for forty-seven days!
+    Even the bread comes to something in that time, at least two
+    soldi a day&mdash;two forties eighty, two sevens fourteen,
+    ninety-four&mdash;nearly five francs. Who will give us the five
+    francs? Are we princes?"</p>
+
+    <p>"There is the cow," observed Paoluccio with a grin.</p>
+
+    <p>"Imbecile," retorted his wife. "It has been a good year; we
+    bought the wine cheap, we sell it dear, without counting what
+    we get for nothing from the carters; we buy a cow with our
+    earnings, and where is the miracle?"</p>
+
+    <p>The innkeeper looked towards the door and the small window
+    suspiciously before he answered in a low voice.</p>
+
+    <p>"If I had not been sure that he would die, I would not have
+    sold the watch and chain," he said. "In the house of my father
+    we have always been honest people."</p>
+
+    <p>"He will die," answered Nanna, confidently and with
+    emphasis. "The girl says he is hungry to-day. He shall eat
+    beans. They are white beans, too, and the white are much
+    heavier than the brown."</p>
+
+    <p>She lifted the tin cover off the earthen pot and stirred the
+    contents.</p>
+
+    <p>"White beans!" grumbled Paoluccio. "And the weather is hot.
+    Do you wish to kill me?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No," answered Nanna quietly. "Not you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you know what I say?" Paoluccio planted a huge finger on
+    the oaken board. "That sick butterfly upstairs is tougher than
+    I am. Forty-seven days of fever, and nothing but bread and
+    water! Think of that, my Nanna! Think of it! You or I would be
+    consumed, one would not even see our shadows on the floor! But
+    he lives."</p>
+
+    <p>"If he eats the white beans he has finished living,"
+    remarked Nanna.</p>
+
+    <p>A short silence followed, during which Paoluccio seemed to
+    be meditating, and Nanna began to ladle the beans out into four
+    deep earthenware bowls, roughly glazed and decorated with green
+    and brown stripes.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are a jewel; you are the joy of my heart," he observed
+    thoughtfully, as Nanna placed his portion before him, covered
+    it with oil, and scattered some chopped basil on the
+    surface.</p>
+
+    <p>"Eat, my love," she said, and she cut a huge piece from a
+    coarse loaf and placed it beside him on a folded napkin that
+    looked remarkably clean in such surroundings, and emitted a
+    pleasant odour of dried lavender blossoms.</p>
+
+    <p>"Where is the girl?" asked Paoluccio, stirring the mess and
+    blowing upon it.</p>
+
+    <p>As he spoke, the door was darkened, and the girl stood there
+    with a large copper "conca," the water-jar of the Roman
+    province, balanced on her head&mdash;one of the most
+    magnificent human beings on whom the sun of the Campagna ever
+    shone. She was tall, and she bent her knees without moving her
+    neck, in order to enter the door without first setting down the
+    heavy vessel.</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="Door"></a>
+<img src="images/Illus102_Door.jpg" width="400" height="552" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">" ... THE DOOR WAS DARKENED, AND THE GIRL STOOD THERE WITH
+    A LARGE COPPER 'CONCA' ..."</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>Her thick dark hair grew low on her forehead, almost black,
+    save for the reddish chestnut lights where a few tiny ringlets
+    curled themselves about her small and classic ears. Straight
+    black eyebrows outlined the snow-white forehead, and long brown
+    lashes shaded the fearless eyes, that looked black too. She
+    smiled a little, quite unconsciously, as she lowered herself
+    with the weight and gracefully rose to her height again after
+    she had entered. One shapely brown hand steadied the conca
+    above, the other gathered her coarse skirt; then she stood
+    still, lifted the load from her head with both hands and
+    without any apparent effort, and set it down in its place on a
+    stone slab near the hearth. Most women need a little help to do
+    that.</p>
+
+    <p>She laid aside the twisted cloth on which the conca had
+    rested while she carried it, and she smoothed her hair
+    carelessly.</p>
+
+    <p>"There are beans," said Nanna, giving the girl one of the
+    bowls. "There is the bread. While they are cooling take the
+    other portion upstairs."</p>
+
+    <p>The girl looked at the bowl, and at Nanna, and then at
+    Paoluccio, and stood stock still.</p>
+
+    <p>"Hey, there!" the man cried, with a rough laugh. "Hey!
+    Reginella! Are you going to sleep, or are you turning into a
+    statue?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Am I to give him the beans to eat?" asked Regina, looking
+    hard at the innkeeper.</p>
+
+    <p>"You said he was hungry. That is what there is for dinner.
+    We give him what we have."</p>
+
+    <p>Regina's dark eyes lightened; her upper lip rose in a curve
+    and showed her closed teeth, strong and white as those of a
+    young animal.</p>
+
+    <p>"Do as you are told," added Paoluccio. "This is charity.
+    When you examine your conscience at Easter you can say, 'I have
+    fed the hungry and cared for the sick.' The beans are mine, of
+    course, but that makes no difference. I make you a present of
+    them."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Welcome," answered Paoluccio, with his mouth, full.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina took the fourth bowl and a piece of bread and went
+    out. The steps to the upper part of the house were on the
+    outside, as is common in the houses of the Campagna.</p>
+
+    <p>"How old is she?" Paoluccio asked when she was gone.</p>
+
+    <p>"She must be twenty," answered Nanna. "It must be ten years
+    since her mother died, and her mother said she was ten years
+    old. She has eaten many loaves in this house."</p>
+
+    <p>"She has worked for her food," said the innkeeper. "And she
+    is an honest girl."</p>
+
+    <p>"What did you expect? That I should let her be idle, or make
+    eyes at the carters? But you always defend her, because she is
+    pretty, you ugly scamp!"</p>
+
+    <p>Nanna uttered her taunt in a good-natured tone, but she
+    glanced furtively at her husband to see the effect of her
+    words, for it was not always safe to joke with Paoluccio.</p>
+
+    <p>"If I did not defend her," he answered, "you would beat the
+    life out of her."</p>
+
+    <p>"I daresay," replied Nanna, and filled her mouth with
+    beans.</p>
+
+    <p>"But now," said Paoluccio, swallowing, "if you are not
+    careful she will break all your bones. She has the health of a
+    horse."</p>
+
+    <p>So the couple discussed matters amiably, while Regina was
+    out of the way.</p>
+
+    <p>In a garret that had a small unglazed window looking to the
+    north, the girl was bending over a wretched trestle-bed, which
+    was literally the only piece of furniture in the room; and on
+    the coarse mattress, stuffed with the husks and leaves of
+    maize, lay all that the fever had left of Marcello Consalvi,
+    shivering under a tattered brown blanket. There was little more
+    than the shadow of the boy, and his blue eyes stared dully up
+    at the girl's face. But there was life in him still, thanks to
+    her, and though there was no expression in his gaze, his lips
+    smiled faintly, and faint words came from them.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," he said, "I am better to-day. Yes, I could eat
+    something."</p>
+
+    <p>Regina bent lower, smiling happily, and she kissed the boy's
+    face three times; she kissed his eyes and dry lips. And he,
+    too, smiled again.</p>
+
+    <p>Then she left the bedside and went to a dark corner, where
+    she cautiously moved aside a loose board. From the recess she
+    took a common tumbler and a bottle of old wine and a battered
+    iron spoon. She crouched upon the floor, because there was no
+    table; she took two fresh eggs out of the folds of the big red
+    and yellow cotton handkerchief that covered her shoulders and
+    was crossed over her bosom, and she broke them into the glass,
+    and hid the empty shells carefully in the folds again, so that
+    they should not be found in the room. For she had stolen these
+    for Marcello, as usual, as well as the old wine. She poured a
+    little of the latter into the glass and stirred the eggs
+    quickly and softly, making hardly any noise. From the recess in
+    the wall she got a little sugar, which was wrapped up in a bit
+    of newspaper brown with age and smoke, and she sweetened the
+    eggs and wine and stirred again; and at last she came and fed
+    Marcello with the battered spoon. She had put off her coarse
+    slippers and walked about in her thick brown woollen stockings,
+    lest she should be heard below. She was very quiet and skilful,
+    and she had strangely small and gentle hands for a peasant
+    girl. Marcello's head was propped up by her left arm while she
+    fed him.</p>
+
+    <p>She had kept him alive six weeks, and she had saved his
+    life. She had found him lying against the door of the inn at
+    dawn, convulsed with ague and almost unconscious, and had
+    carried him into the house like a child, though he had been
+    much heavier then. Of course the innkeeper had taken his watch
+    and chain, and his jacket and sleeve-links and studs, to keep
+    them safe, he said. Regina knew what that meant, but Paoluccio
+    had ordered her to take care of him, and she had done her best.
+    Paoluccio felt that if the boy died it would be the will of
+    heaven, and that he probably would not live long with such care
+    and such nourishment as he would get up there in the attic.
+    When he was dead, it would be time enough to tell the
+    carabineers who passed the house twice every twenty-four hours
+    on their beat; they would see that a sick boy had been taken
+    in, and that he had died of the fever, and as they need never
+    know how long he had been in the inn, the whole affair would
+    redound to Paoluccio's credit with them and with customers. But
+    as long as he was alive it was quite unnecessary that any one
+    should know of his existence, especially as the watch and chain
+    had been converted into money, and the money into a fine young
+    cow. That Marcello could get well on bread and water never
+    entered Paoluccio's head.</p>
+
+    <p>But he had counted without Regina; that is to say that he
+    had overlooked the love and devotion of an intensely vital
+    creature, younger, quicker, and far cleverer that he, who would
+    watch the sick boy day and night, steal food and wine for him,
+    lose sleep for him, risk blows for him, and breathe her strong
+    life into his weak body; to whom the joy of saving him from
+    death would be so much greater than all fatigue, that there
+    would be no shadow under her eyes, no pallor in her cheek, no
+    weariness in her elastic gait to tell of sleepless nights spent
+    by his bedside in soothing his ravings, or in listening for the
+    beat of his heart when he lay still and exhausted, his tired
+    head resting on her strong white arm. And when he seemed better
+    and at ease she often fell asleep beside him, half sitting,
+    half lying, on the pallet bed, her cheek on the straw pillow,
+    her breath mingling with his in the dark.</p>
+
+    <p>He was better now, and she felt the returning life in him,
+    almost before he was sure of it himself; and while her heart
+    was almost bursting with happiness, so that she smiled to
+    herself throughout her rough work all day long, she knew that
+    he could not stay where he was. Paoluccio expected him to die,
+    and was beginning to be tired of waiting, and so was Nanna. If
+    he recovered, he would ask for his watch and other things; he
+    was evidently a fine young gentleman to whom some strange
+    accident had happened, and he must have friends somewhere. Half
+    delirious, he had spoken of them and of his mother, and of some
+    one called Aurora, whom Regina already hated with all her heart
+    and soul. The innkeeper and his wife had never come near him
+    since the former had helped the girl to carry him upstairs, but
+    if they suspected that he was recovering she would not be able
+    to prevent them from seeing him; and if they did, she knew what
+    would happen. They would send her on an errand, and when she
+    came back Marcello would be dead. She might refuse to go, but
+    they were strong people and would be two to one. Brave as
+    Regina was, she did not dare to wait for the carabineers when
+    they came by on their beat and to tell them the truth, for she
+    had the Italian peasant's horror and dread of the law and its
+    visible authority; and moreover she was quite sure that
+    Paoluccio would murder her if she told the secret.</p>
+
+    <p>"If I could only take you to Rome!" she whispered, bending
+    over him when he had swallowed the contents of the glass. "You
+    could tell me where your friends are."</p>
+
+    <p>"Rome?" he repeated, with a vacant questioning.</p>
+
+    <p>She nodded and smiled, and then sighed. She had long been
+    sure that the fever had affected his memory, and she had tried
+    many times to awaken it.</p>
+
+    <p>She loved him because he had the face of an angel, and was
+    fair-haired, and seemed so gentle and patient, and smiled so
+    sweetly when she kissed him. That was all. He could thank her;
+    he could tell her that he was better or worse; he could speak
+    of what he saw; he could even tell her that she was beautiful,
+    and that was much. He was Marcello, he had told her that, but
+    when she asked what other name he had, he looked at her blankly
+    at first, and then an expression of painful effort came over
+    his face, and she would not disturb him any more. He could not
+    remember. He did not know how he had come to the inn door; he
+    had been walking in the Campagna alone and had felt tired. He
+    knew no more.</p>
+
+    <p>If only she could get him to Rome. It was not more than
+    seven or eight miles to the city, and Regina had often been
+    there with Nanna. She had been to Saint John Lateran's at
+    midsummer for the great festival, and she knew where the
+    hospital was, in which famous professors cured every ill under
+    the sun. If she could bring Marcello to them, he would get
+    well; if he stayed much longer at the inn, Paoluccio would kill
+    him; being a woman, and a loving one, Regina only regarded as
+    possible what she wished, where the man she loved was
+    concerned.</p>
+
+    <p>She made up her mind that if it could not be done by any
+    other means she would carry Marcello all the way. During his
+    illness she had often lifted him from his bed like a little
+    child, for he was slightly built by nature and was worn to a
+    shadow by the fever. Even Aurora could have raised him, and he
+    was a featherweight in the arms of such a creature as Regina.
+    But it would be another matter to carry such an awkward burden
+    for miles along the highroad; and besides, she would meet the
+    carabineers, and as she would have to go at night, they would
+    probably arrest her and put her in prison, and Marcello would
+    die. She must find some other way.</p>
+
+    <p>She laid his head tenderly on the pillow and left him,
+    promising to come back as soon as she could. For safety she had
+    brought the dish of beans with her, lest Nanna should follow
+    her, and she took it with her, just as it was; but at the foot
+    of the outer stairs she ran along the back of the house to the
+    pig-sty, and emptied the mess into the trough, carefully
+    scraping the bowl with the spoon so that it looked as if some
+    one had eaten the contents. Then she went back to the
+    kitchen.</p>
+
+    <p>"Has he eaten?" inquired Nanna, and Paoluccio looked up,
+    too.</p>
+
+    <p>"You see," answered Regina, showing the empty bowl.</p>
+
+    <p>"Health to him!" answered Paoluccio. "He has a good
+    appetite."</p>
+
+    <p>"Eat your own," said Nanna to the girl.</p>
+
+    <p>She suspected that Regina might have eaten the beans meant
+    for Marcello, but her doubt vanished as she saw how the hungry
+    young thing devoured her own portion.</p>
+
+    <p>"Are there any more left?" Regina asked when she had
+    finished, for she understood perfectly what was going on in the
+    minds of the other two.</p>
+
+    <p>She looked into the earthen cooking-pot which now stood on
+    the corner of the hearth.</p>
+
+    <p>"Not even the smell of any more," answered Nanna. "There is
+    bread."</p>
+
+    <p>Regina's white teeth crushed the hard brown crust as if she
+    had not eaten for a week. There could be no doubt but that the
+    sick boy had eaten the beans; and beans, especially white ones,
+    are not good for people who have the fever, as Nanna had justly
+    observed.</p>
+
+    <p>"On Sunday he shall have a dish of liver and cabbage," she
+    said, in a cheerful tone. "There is much strength in liver, and
+    cabbage is good for the blood. I shall take it to him myself,
+    for it will be a pleasure to see him eat."</p>
+
+    <p>"The beans were soon finished," said Regina, with perfect
+    truth.</p>
+
+    <p>"I told you how it would be," Paoluccio answered.</p>
+
+    <p>But Regina knew that the time had come to get Marcello away
+    from the inn if he ever was to leave it alive, and in the
+    afternoon, when Nanna was dozing in her chair in the kitchen
+    and Paoluccio was snoring upstairs, and when she had smoothed
+    Marcello's pillow, she went out and sat down in front of the
+    house, where there was shade at that hour, though the glare
+    from the dusty road would have blinded weaker eyes than hers.
+    She sat on the stone seat that ran along the house, and leaned
+    against the rough wall, thinking and scheming, and quite sure
+    that she should find a way.</p>
+
+    <p>At first she looked about, while she thought, from the
+    well-known mountains that bounded her world to the familiar
+    arches of the distant aqueduct, from the dry ditch opposite to
+    the burning sky above and the greyish green hillocks below
+    Tivoli. But by and by she looked straight before her, with a
+    steady, concentrated stare, as if she saw something happening
+    and was watching to see how it would end.</p>
+
+    <p>She had found what she wanted, and was quite sure of it;
+    only a few details remained to be settled, such as what was to
+    become of her after she left the inn where she had grown up.
+    But that did not trouble her much.</p>
+
+    <p>She was not delicately nurtured that she should dread the
+    great world of which she knew nothing, nor had Nanna's
+    conversation during ten years done much to strengthen her in
+    the paths of virtue. Her pride had done much more and might
+    save her wherever she went, but she was very well aware of
+    life's evil truths. And what would her pride be compared with
+    Marcello, the first and only being she had ever loved? To begin
+    with, she knew that the handsome people from the country earned
+    money by serving as models for painters and sculptors, and she
+    had not the slightest illusion about her own looks. Since she
+    had been a child people who came to the inn had told her that
+    she was beautiful; and not the rough wine-carters only, for the
+    fox-hunters sometimes came that way, riding slowly homeward
+    after a long run, and many a fine gentleman in pink had said
+    things to her which she had answered sharply, but which she
+    remembered well. She had not the slightest doubt but that she
+    was one of the handsomest girls in Italy, and the absolute
+    certainty of the conviction saved her from having any small
+    vanity about her looks. She knew that she had only to show
+    herself and that every one would stand and look at her, only to
+    beckon and she would be followed. She did not crave admiration;
+    a great beauty rarely does. She simply defied competition, and
+    was ready to laugh at it in a rather good-natured way, for she
+    knew what she had, and was satisfied.</p>
+
+    <p>As for the rest, she was merely clever and fearless, and her
+    moral inheritance was not all that might be desired; for her
+    father had left her mother in a fit of pardonable jealousy,
+    after nearly killing her and quite killing his rival, and her
+    mother had not redeemed her character after his abrupt
+    departure. On the contrary, if an accident had not carried her
+    off suddenly, Regina's virtuous parent would probably have sold
+    the girl into slavery. Poor people are not all honest, any more
+    than other kinds of people are. Regina did not mourn her
+    mother, and hardly remembered her father at all, and she never
+    thought of either.</p>
+
+    <p>She owed Paoluccio and Nanna nothing, in her opinion. They
+    had fed her sufficiently, and clothed her decently for the good
+    of the house; she had done the work of two women in return,
+    because she was strong, and she had been honest, because she
+    was proud. Even the innkeeper and his wife would not have
+    pretended that she owed them much gratitude; they were much too
+    natural for that, and besides, the girl was too handsome, and
+    there might be some scandal about her any day which would
+    injure the credit of the inn. Nanna thought Paoluccio much too
+    fond of watching her, as it was, and reflected that if she went
+    to the city she would be well out of the way, and might go to
+    the devil if she pleased.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina's plan for taking Marcello was simple, like most
+    plans which succeed, and only depended for its success on being
+    carried out fearlessly.</p>
+
+    <p>The wine-carters usually came to the inn from the hills
+    between nine and eleven o'clock at night, and the carts,
+    heavy-laden with wine casks, stood in a line along the road,
+    while the men went into the kitchen to eat and drink. They
+    generally paid for what they consumed by giving a measure or
+    two of wine from the casks they were bringing, and which they
+    filled up with water, a very simple plan which seems to have
+    been in use for ages. It has several advantages; the owner of
+    the wine does not suffer by it, since he gets his full price in
+    town; the man who buys the wine in Rome does not suffer,
+    because he adds so much water to the wine before selling it
+    that a little more or less makes no difference; the public does
+    not suffer, as it is well known that wine is much better for
+    the health when drunk with plenty of water; and the carters do
+    not suffer, because nobody would think of interfering with
+    them. Moreover, they get food and drink for nothing.</p>
+
+    <p>While the men were having supper in the inn, their carts
+    were guarded by their little woolly dogs, black, white, or
+    brown, and always terribly wide-awake and uncommonly fierce in
+    spite of their small size.</p>
+
+    <p>Now, just at this time, there was one carter who had none,
+    and Regina knew it, for he was one of her chief admirers. He
+    was the hardest-drinking ruffian of all the men who came and
+    went on the Frascati road, and he had been quite willing to
+    sell his dog in the street to a gentleman who admired it and
+    offered him fifty francs for it, though that is a small price
+    for a handsome "lupetto." But Mommo happened to be deeper in
+    debt than usual, took the money, and cast about to steal
+    another dog that might serve him. So far he had not seen one to
+    his liking.</p>
+
+    <p>It is the custom of the wine-carters, when they have had
+    plenty to eat and drink, to climb to their seats under the
+    fan-like goat-skin hoods of their carts, and to go to sleep,
+    wrapped in their huge cloaks. Their mules plod along and keep
+    out of the way of other vehicles without any guidance, and
+    their dogs protect them from thieves, who might steal their
+    money; for they always carry the sum necessary to pay the
+    octroi duty at the city gates, where every cart is stopped. As
+    they are on the road most of their lives, winter and summer,
+    they would not get much sleep if they tried to keep awake all
+    night; and they drink a good deal, partly because wine is
+    really a protection against the dangerous fever, and partly
+    because their drink costs them nothing. Some of them drank
+    their employers' wine at supper, others exchanged what they
+    brought for Paoluccio's, which they liked better.</p>
+
+    <p>They usually got away about midnight, and Mommo was often
+    the last to go. It was a part of Regina's work to go down to
+    the cellar and draw the wine that was wanted from the hogsheads
+    when the host was too lazy to go down himself, and being quite
+    unwatched she could draw a measure from the oldest and
+    strongest if she chose. Mommo could easily be made a little
+    sleepier than usual, after being tempted to outstay the
+    others.</p>
+
+    <p>And so it turned out that night. After the necessary
+    operation of tapping one of his casks and filling it up with
+    water, he lingered on before a measure of the best, while Nanna
+    and Paoluccio dozed in their chairs; and at last all three were
+    asleep.</p>
+
+    <p>Then Regina went out softly into the dark summer night, and
+    climbed the stairs to the attic.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am going to take you to Rome to-night," she whispered in
+    Marcello's ear.</p>
+
+    <p>"Rome?" he repeated vaguely, half asleep.</p>
+
+    <p>She wrapped him in the tattered blanket as he was, and
+    lifted him lightly in her arms. Down the stairs she bore him,
+    and then lifted him upon the tail of the cart, propping him up
+    as best she could, and passing round him the end of one of the
+    ropes that held the casks in place. He breathed more freely in
+    the open air, and she had fed him again before the carters came
+    to supper.</p>
+
+    <p>"And you?" he asked faintly.</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall walk," she whispered. "Now wait, and make no noise,
+    or they will kill you. Are you comfortable?"</p>
+
+    <p>She could see that he nodded his head.</p>
+
+    <p>"We shall start presently," she said.</p>
+
+    <p>She went into the kitchen, waked Mommo, and made him swallow
+    the rest of his wine. He was easily persuaded that he had slept
+    too long, and must be on the road. The innkeeper and Nanna
+    grumbled a good-night as he went out rather unsteadily,
+    followed by Regina. A moment later the mules' bells jingled,
+    the cart creaked, and Mommo was off.</p>
+
+    <p>Paoluccio and his wife made their way to the outer stairs
+    and to bed, leaving Regina to put out the lights and lock up
+    the kitchen. She lost no time in doing this, ran up the steps
+    in the dark, hung the key on its nail in the entry, and went to
+    her attic, making a loud noise with her loose slippers, so that
+    the couple might hear her. She came down again in her stockings
+    almost at once, carrying the slippers and a small bundle
+    containing her belongings. She made no noise now, though it was
+    almost quite dark, and in another instant she was out on the
+    road to Rome. It had all been done so quickly that she could
+    still hear the jingling of Mommo's mule bells in the distance.
+    She had only a few hundred yards to run, and she was walking at
+    the tail of the cart with one hand resting on Marcello's knee
+    as he lay there wrapped up in the ragged blanket.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_VII'></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+    <p>It was clear dawn, and there was confusion at the Porta San
+    Giovanni. Mommo had wakened, red-eyed and cross as usual, a
+    little while before reaching the gate, and had uttered several
+    strange noises to quicken the pace of his mules. After that,
+    everything had happened as usual, for a little while; he had
+    stopped inside the walls before the guard-house of the city
+    customs, had nodded to the octroi inspectors, and had got his
+    money ready while the printed receipt was being filled out.
+    Then the excitement had begun.</p>
+
+    <p>"You have a passenger," said one, and Mommo stared at him,
+    not understanding.</p>
+
+    <p>"You have a dead man on behind!" yelled a small boy,
+    standing at safe distance.</p>
+
+    <p>Mommo began to swear, but one of the inspectors stopped
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Get down," said the man. "The carabineers are coming."</p>
+
+    <p>Mommo finished his swearing internally, but with increased
+    fervour. The small boy was joined by others, and they began to
+    jeer in chorus, and perform war-dances.</p>
+
+    <p>"There is a tax on dead men!" they screamed. "You must
+    pay!"</p>
+
+    <p>"May you all be butchered!" shouted Mommo, in a voice of
+    thunder. "May your insides be fried!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Brute beast, without education!" hooted the biggest boy,
+    contemptuously.</p>
+
+    <p>"I'll give you the education, and the instruction too,"
+    retorted the carter, making at them with his long whip.</p>
+
+    <p>They scattered in all directions, like a flock of cawing
+    jackdaws that fly a little way in tremendous haste, and then
+    settle again at a distance and caw louder than before.</p>
+
+    <p>"Animal!" they yelled. "Animal! Animal and beast!"</p>
+
+    <p>By this time a crowd had collected round the cart, and two
+    carabineers had come up to see what was the matter, quiet,
+    sensible men in extraordinary cocked hats and well-fitting
+    swallow-tailed uniforms of the fashion of 1810. The carabineers
+    are quite the finest corps in the Italian service, and there
+    are a good many valid reasons why their antiquated dress should
+    not be changed. Their presence means law and order without
+    unnecessary violence.</p>
+
+    <p>Mommo was surly, but respectful enough. Yes, it was his
+    cart, and he was a regular carter on the Frascati road. Yes,
+    this was undoubtedly a sick man, who had climbed upon the cart
+    while Mommo was asleep. Of course he had slept on the road, all
+    carters did, and he had no dog, else no one would have dared to
+    take liberties with his cart. No, he had never seen the sick
+    man. The carabineers might send him to penal servitude for
+    life, tear out his tongue, cut off his ears and nose, load him
+    with chains, and otherwise annoy him, but he had never seen the
+    sick man. If he had seen him, he would have pulled him off, and
+    kicked him all the way to the hospital, where he ought to be.
+    What right had such brigands as sick men to tamper with the
+    carts of honest people? If the fellow had legs to jump upon the
+    cart, he had legs to walk. Had Mommo ever done anything wrong
+    in his life, that this should be done to him? Had he stolen, or
+    killed anybody, or tried to evade the octroi duty? No. Then why
+    should an ugly thief of a sick man climb upon his cart? The
+    wretch had hardly clothes enough to cover him decently&mdash;a
+    torn shirt and a pair of old trousers that he must have stolen,
+    for they were much too short for him! And so on, and so forth,
+    to the crowd, for the carabineers paid no more attention to him
+    after he had answered their first questions; but the crowd
+    listened with interest, the small boys drew near again, the
+    octroi inspectors looked on, and Mommo had a sympathetic
+    audience. It was the general opinion that he had been
+    outrageously put upon, and that some one had murdered the sick
+    man, and had tied the body to the cart in order that Mommo
+    should be accused of the crime, it being highly likely that a
+    murderer should take so much unnecessary trouble to carry his
+    victim and the evidence of his crime about with him in such a
+    very public manner.</p>
+
+    <p>"If he were dead, now," observed an old peasant, who had
+    trudged in with a bundle on his back, "you would immediately be
+    sent to the galleys."</p>
+
+    <p>This was so evident that the crowd felt very sorry for
+    Mommo.</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course I should," he answered. "By this time to-morrow I
+    should have chains on my legs, and be breaking stones! What is
+    the law for, I should like to know?"</p>
+
+    <p>Meanwhile, the carabineers had lifted Marcello very gently
+    from the cart and had carried him into the octroi guard-house,
+    where they set him in a chair, wrapped the ragged blanket round
+    his knees and waist, and poured a little wine down his throat.
+    Seeing that he was very weak, and having ascertained that he
+    had nothing whatever about him by which he could be identified,
+    they sent for the municipal doctor of that quarter of the
+    city.</p>
+
+    <p>While they were busy within, one of the inspectors chanced
+    to look at the closed window, and saw the face of a handsome
+    girl pressed against the pane outside, and a pair of dark eyes
+    anxiously watching what was going on. The girl was so very
+    uncommonly handsome that the inspector went out to look at her,
+    but she saw him coming and moved away, drawing her cotton
+    kerchief half across her face. Regina's only fear was that
+    Mommo might recognise her, in which case she would inevitably
+    be questioned by the carabineers. It was characteristic of the
+    class in which she had been brought up, that while she
+    entertained a holy dread of being cross-questioned by them, she
+    felt the most complete conviction that Marcello was safe in
+    their hands. She had meant that he should somehow be taken off
+    the cart at the gate, probably by the inspectors, and conveyed
+    at once to the great hospital near by. She knew nothing about
+    hospitals, and supposed that when he was once there, she might
+    be allowed to come and take care of him. It would be easy, she
+    thought, to invent some story to account for her interest in
+    him. But she could do nothing until Mommo was gone, and he
+    might recognise her figure even if he could not see her
+    face.</p>
+
+    <p>Finding that nothing more was wanted of him, and that he was
+    in no immediate danger of penal servitude for having been found
+    with a sick man on his cart, Mommo started his mules up the
+    paved hill towards the church, walking beside them, as the
+    carters mostly do within the city. The crowd dispersed, the
+    small boys went off in search of fresh matter for contemptuous
+    comment, and Regina went boldly to the door of the
+    guard-house.</p>
+
+    <p>"Can I be of any use with the sick man?" she asked of the
+    inspector who had seen her through the window.</p>
+
+    <p>The inspector prided himself on his gallantry and good
+    education.</p>
+
+    <p>"Signorina," he said, lifting his round hat with a
+    magnificent gesture, "if you were to look only once at a dying
+    man, he would revive and live a thousand years."</p>
+
+    <p>He made eyes at her in a manner he considered irresistible,
+    and replaced his hat on his head, a little on one side. Regina
+    had never been called "Signorina" before, and she was well
+    aware that no woman who wears a kerchief out of doors, instead
+    of a hat, is entitled to be addressed as a lady in Rome; but
+    she was not at all offended by the rank flattery of the speech,
+    and she saw that the inspector was a good-natured young
+    coxcomb.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are too kind," she answered politely. "Do you think I
+    can be of any use?"</p>
+
+    <p>"There are the carabineers," objected the inspector, as if
+    that were a sufficient answer. "But you may look in through the
+    door and see the sick man."</p>
+
+    <p>"I have seen him through the window. He looks very ill."</p>
+
+    <p>"Ah, Signorina," sighed the youth, "if I were ill, I should
+    pray the saints to send you&mdash;"</p>
+
+    <p>He was interrupted by the arrival of the doctor, who asked
+    him what was the matter, and was at once led in by him. Regina
+    withdrew to a little distance in the direction of the church
+    and waited. The doctor had come in a cab, and in a few moments
+    she saw Marcello carried out and placed in it. Then she walked
+    as fast as she could towards the church, quite sure that the
+    cab would stop at the door of the hospital, and anxious to be
+    within sight of it. Everything had turned out well, even beyond
+    her expectations. The cab passed her at a brisk pace before she
+    reached the top of the hill, and though she walked as fast as
+    she could, it was no longer there when she had gone far enough
+    to see the door. The doctor, who was a busy man, had handed
+    Marcello over to the men on duty at the entrance, with an order
+    he had pencilled on his card while driving up, and had gone on
+    at once. But Regina was convinced that Marcello was there, as
+    she hurried forward.</p>
+
+    <p>A man in blue linen clothes and a laced cap stopped her on
+    the steps and asked what she wanted.</p>
+
+    <p>"A young man has just been brought here, very ill," she
+    explained, "and I want to see him."</p>
+
+    <p>"A very young man? Fair? Thin? From the Campagna? In
+    rags?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. I want to see him."</p>
+
+    <p>"You can see him to-morrow, if he is alive," answered the
+    orderly in a business-like tone.</p>
+
+    <p>"To-morrow?" repeated Regina, in a tone of profound
+    disappointment.</p>
+
+    <p>"To-morrow is Sunday. Friends and relatives can visit
+    patients on Sundays between nine and four."</p>
+
+    <p>"But he has no other friends," pleaded Regina. "Please,
+    please let me go to him!"</p>
+
+    <p>"To-morrow between nine and four."</p>
+
+    <p>"No, no&mdash;to-day&mdash;now&mdash;he knows me&mdash;my
+    name is Regina."</p>
+
+    <p>"Not if you were the Queen of the world," answered the
+    orderly, jesting with perfect calm. "You must have a written
+    order from the Superintendent."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, yes! Let me see him!"</p>
+
+    <p>"You can see him on Mondays between ten and twelve."</p>
+
+    <p>"The day after to-morrow?" cried Regina in despair.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, between ten and twelve, the day after to-morrow."</p>
+
+    <p>"But I may come to-morrow without an order?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. Friends and relatives can visit patients on Sundays
+    between nine and four."</p>
+
+    <p>The man's imperturbability was exasperating, and Regina, who
+    was not patient, felt that if she stayed any longer she should
+    try to take him by the collar, shake him, and force her way in.
+    But she was much too sensible to do anything so rash. There was
+    no choice but to go away.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," she said, as she turned to go down the
+    steps.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are welcome," the man answered very civilly, for he was
+    watching her and was reflecting that he had never seen such a
+    face and figure before.</p>
+
+    <p>Some hours later, when the police communicated with the
+    Superintendent, and when he found that a woman had come to the
+    door who said that she knew the waif, and had been sent away,
+    he called the orderly who had been on duty several hard names
+    in his heart for having followed the rule of the hospital so
+    scrupulously. He was an antediluvian, he was a case of arrested
+    mental development, he was an ichthyosaurus, he was a new kind
+    of idiot, he was a monumental fool, he was the mammoth ass
+    reported to have been seen by a medi&aelig;val traveller in the
+    desert, that was forty cubits high, and whose braying was like
+    the blast of ten thousand trumpets. The Superintendent wished
+    he had time to select more choice epithets for that excellent
+    orderly, but the police seemed so particularly curious about
+    the new patient that he had no leisure for thinking out what he
+    wanted.</p>
+
+    <p>Nevertheless, the man had done his duty and nothing more nor
+    less according to the rules, and Regina was forced to go away
+    discomfited.</p>
+
+    <p>She walked a hundred yards or more down the hill, towards
+    San Clemente, and then stood still to think. The sun had risen,
+    and Marcello was safe, though she could not see him. That was
+    something. She stood there, young, strong, beautiful, and
+    absolutely penniless; and Rome was before her.</p>
+
+    <p>For the first time since the previous evening she asked
+    herself what was to become of her, and how she was to find
+    bread for that day and for the next, and for all the days
+    afterwards. She would have robbed a church to feed Marcello,
+    but she would sooner have lost her right hand than steal so
+    much as a crust for herself. As for begging, she was too proud,
+    and besides, no one would have given her anything, for she was
+    the picture of health, her rough clothes were whole and clean,
+    she had tiny gold earrings in her ears, and the red and yellow
+    cotton kerchief on her head was as good as new. Nobody would
+    believe that she was hungry.</p>
+
+    <p>Meanwhile Marcello was made comfortable in one of the narrow
+    white beds of an airy ward in the San Giovanni hospital. The
+    institution is intended for women only, but there is now a ward
+    for male patients, who are admitted when too ill to be taken
+    farther. The doctor on duty had written him down as much
+    reduced by malarious fever and wandering in his mind, but added
+    that he might live and get well. It was wonderful, the doctor
+    reflected for the thousandth time in his short experience, that
+    humanity should bear so much as it daily did.</p>
+
+    <p>The visiting physician, who was a man of learning and
+    reputation, came three hours later and examined Marcello with
+    interest. The boy had not suffered much by sleeping on the tail
+    of the cart in the warm summer's night, and was now greatly
+    refreshed by the cleanliness and comparative luxury of his new
+    surroundings. He had no fever now and had slept quietly for two
+    hours, but when he tried to remember what had happened to him,
+    where he had been, and how he had come to the place where he
+    was, it all grew vague and intricate by turns, and his memories
+    faded away like the dreams we try to recall when we can only
+    just recollect that we have had a dream of some sort. He knew
+    that he was called Marcello, but the rest was gone; he knew
+    that a beautiful creature had taken care of him, and that her
+    name was Regina. How long? How many days and nights had he lain
+    in the attic, hot by day and cold at night? He could not guess,
+    and it tired him to try.</p>
+
+    <p>The doctor asked two or three questions while he examined
+    him, and then stood quite still for a few seconds, watching him
+    intently. The two young house surgeons who accompanied the
+    great man kept a respectful silence, waiting for his opinion.
+    When he found an interesting case he sometimes delivered a
+    little lecture on it, in a quiet monotonous tone that did not
+    disturb the other patients. But to-day he did not seem inclined
+    to talk.</p>
+
+    <p>"Convalescent," he said, "at least of the fever. He needs
+    good food more than anything else. In two days he will be
+    walking about."</p>
+
+    <p>He passed on, but in his own mind he was wondering what was
+    the matter with the young man, why he had lost his memory, and
+    what accident had brought him alone and friendless to one of
+    the city hospitals. For the present it would be better to let
+    him alone rather than tire him by a thorough examination of his
+    head. There was probably a small fracture somewhere at the back
+    of the skull, the doctor thought, and it would be easy enough
+    to find it when the patient was strong enough to sit up.</p>
+
+    <p>The doctor had not been long gone when an elderly man with a
+    grizzled moustache and thoughtful eyes was led to Marcello's
+    bedside by the Superintendent himself. The appearance of the
+    latter at an unusual hour was always an event in the ward, and
+    the nurses watched him with curiosity. They would have been
+    still more curious had they known that the elderly gentleman
+    was the Chief of the Police himself. The Superintendent raised
+    his hand to motion them away.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is your name, sir?" asked the Chief, bending down and
+    speaking in a low voice.</p>
+
+    <p>"Marcello."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," replied the other, almost in a whisper, "you are
+    Marcello. But what else? What is your family name? It is very
+    important. Will you tell me?"</p>
+
+    <p>The vague look came into Marcello's eyes, and then the look
+    of pain, and he shook his head rather feebly.</p>
+
+    <p>"I cannot remember," he answered at last. "It hurts me to
+    remember."</p>
+
+    <p>"Is it Consalvi?" asked the officer, smiling
+    encouragement.</p>
+
+    <p>"Consalvi?" Marcello's eyes wandered, as he tried to think.
+    "I cannot remember," he said again after an interval.</p>
+
+    <p>The Chief of Police was not discouraged yet.</p>
+
+    <p>"You were knocked down and robbed by thieves, just after you
+    had been talking with Aurora," he said, inventing what he
+    believed to have happened.</p>
+
+    <p>A faint light came into Marcello's eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>"Aurora?" He repeated the name almost eagerly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. You had been talking to Signorina Aurora dell' Armi.
+    You remember that?"</p>
+
+    <p>The light faded suddenly.</p>
+
+    <p>"I thought I remembered something," answered Marcello.
+    "Aurora? Aurora? No, it is gone. I was dreaming again. I want
+    to sleep now."</p>
+
+    <p>The Chief stood upright and looked at the Superintendent,
+    who looked at him, and both shook their heads. Then they asked
+    what the visiting doctor had said, and what directions he had
+    given about Marcello's treatment.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am sure it is he," said the Chief of Police when they
+    were closeted in the Superintendent's office, five minutes
+    later. "I have studied his photograph every day for nearly
+    three months. Look at it."</p>
+
+    <p>He produced a good-sized photograph of Marcello which had
+    been taken about a year earlier, but was the most recent. The
+    Superintendent looked at it critically, and said it was not
+    much like the patient. The official objected that a man who was
+    half dead of fever and had lain starving for weeks, heaven only
+    knew where, could hardly be quite himself in appearance. The
+    Superintendent pointed out that this was precisely the
+    difficulty; the photograph was not like the sick man. But the
+    Chief politely insisted that it was. They differed altogether
+    on this point, but quarrelled over it in the most urbane manner
+    possible.</p>
+
+    <p>The Superintendent suggested that it would be easy to
+    identify Marcello Consalvi, by bringing people who knew him to
+    his bedside, servants and others. The official answered that he
+    should prefer to be sure of everything before calling in any
+    one else. The patient had evidently lost his memory by some
+    accident, and if he could not recall his own name it was not
+    likely that he could recognise a face. Servants would swear
+    that it was he, or not he, just as their interest suggested.
+    Most of the people of his own class who knew him were out of
+    town at the present season; and besides, the upper classes were
+    not, in the Chief's opinion, a whit more intelligent or
+    trustworthy than those that served them. The world, said the
+    Chief, was an exceedingly bad place. That this was true, the
+    Superintendent could not doubt, and he admitted the fact; but
+    he was not sure how the Chief was applying the statement of it
+    in his own reasoning. Perhaps he thought that some persons
+    might have an interest in recognising Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"In the meantime," said the Chief, rising to go away, "we
+    will put him in a private room, where we shall not be watched
+    by everybody when we come to see him. I have funds from
+    Corbario to pay any possible expenses in the case."</p>
+
+    <p>"Who is that man?" asked the Superintendent. "There has been
+    a great deal of talk about him in the papers since his stepson
+    was lost. What was he before he married the rich widow?"</p>
+
+    <p>The Chief of Police did not reply at once, but lit a
+    cigarette preparatory to going away, smoothed his hat on his
+    arm, and flicked a tiny speck of dust from the lapel of his
+    well-made coat. Then he smiled pleasantly and gave his
+    answer.</p>
+
+    <p>"I suppose that before he married Consalvi's widow he was a
+    gentleman of small means, like many others. Why should you
+    think that he was ever anything else?"</p>
+
+    <p>To this direct question the Superintendent had no answer
+    ready, nor, in fact, had the man who asked it, though he had
+    looked so very wise. Then they glanced at each other and both
+    laughed a little, and they parted.</p>
+
+    <p>Half an hour later, Marcello was carried to an airy room
+    with green blinds, and was made even more comfortable than he
+    had been before. He slept, and awoke, and ate and slept again.
+    Twice during the afternoon people were brought to see him. They
+    were servants from the villa on the Janiculum, but he looked at
+    them dully and said that he could not remember them.</p>
+
+    <p>"We do not think it is he," they said, when questioned. "Why
+    does he not know us, if it is he? We are old servants in the
+    house. We carried the young gentleman in our arms when he was
+    small. But this youth does not know us, nor our names. It is
+    not he."</p>
+
+    <p>They were dismissed, and afterwards they met and talked up
+    at the villa.</p>
+
+    <p>"The master has been sent for by telegraph," they said one
+    to another. "We shall do what he says. If he tells us that it
+    is the young gentleman we will also say that it is; but if he
+    says it is not he, we will also deny it. This is the only
+    way."</p>
+
+    <p>Having decided upon this diplomatic course as the one most
+    likely to prove advantageous to them, they went back to their
+    several occupations and amusements. But at the very first they
+    said what they really thought; none of them really believed the
+    sick youth at the hospital to be Marcello. An illness of nearly
+    seven weeks and a long course of privation can make a terrible
+    difference in the looks of a very young person, and when the
+    memory is gone, too, the chances of his being recognised are
+    slight.</p>
+
+    <p>But the Chief of Police was not disturbed in his belief, and
+    after he had smoked several cigarettes very thoughtfully in his
+    private office, he wrote a telegram to Corbario, advising him
+    to come back to Rome at once. He was surprised to receive an
+    answer from Folco late that night, inquiring why he was wanted.
+    To this he replied in a second telegram of more length, which
+    explained matters clearly. The next morning Corbario
+    telegraphed that he was starting.</p>
+
+    <p>The visiting physician came early and examined Marcello's
+    head with the greatest minuteness. After much trouble he found
+    what he was looking for&mdash;a very slight depression in the
+    skull. There was no sign of a wound that had healed, and it was
+    clear that the injury must have been either the result of a
+    fall, in which case the scalp had been protected by a stiff
+    hat, or else of a blow dealt with something like a sandbag,
+    which had fractured the bone without leaving any mark beyond a
+    bruise, now no longer visible.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is my opinion," said the doctor, "that as soon as the
+    pressure is removed the man's memory will come back exactly as
+    it was before. We will operate next week, when he has gained a
+    little more strength. Feed him and give him plenty of air, for
+    he is very weak."</p>
+
+    <p>So he went away for the day. But presently Regina came and
+    demanded admittance according to the promise she had received,
+    and she was immediately brought to the Superintendent's office,
+    for he had given very clear instructions to this effect in case
+    the girl came again. He had not told the Chief of Police about
+    her, for he thought it would be amusing to do a little
+    detective work on his own account, and he anticipated the
+    triumph of finding out Marcello's story alone, and of then
+    laying the facts before the authorities, just to show what
+    ordinary common sense could do without the intervention of the
+    law.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina was ushered into the high cool room where the
+    Superintendent sat alone, and the heavy door closed behind her.
+    He was a large man with close-cropped hair and a short brown
+    beard, and he had kind brown eyes. Regina came forward a few
+    steps and then stood still, looking at him, and waiting for him
+    to speak. He was astonished at her beauty, and at once decided
+    that she had a romantic attachment for Marcello, and probably
+    knew all about him. He leaned back in his chair, and pointed to
+    a seat near him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Pray sit down," he said. "I wish to have a little talk with
+    you before you go upstairs to see Marcello."</p>
+
+    <p>"How is he?" asked Regina, eagerly. "Is he worse?"</p>
+
+    <p>"He is much better. But sit down, if you please. You shall
+    stay with him as long as you like, or as long as it is good for
+    him. You may come every day if you wish it."</p>
+
+    <p>"Every day?" cried Regina in delight. "They told me that I
+    could only come on Sunday."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. That is the rule, my dear child. But I can give you
+    permission to come every day, and as the poor young man seems
+    to have no friends, it is very fortunate for him that you can
+    be with him. You will cheer him and help him to get well."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you, thank you!" answered the girl fervently, as she
+    sat down.</p>
+
+    <p>A great lady of Rome had been to see the Superintendent
+    about a patient on the previous afternoon; he did not remember
+    that she moved with more dignity than this peasant girl, or
+    with nearly as much grace. Regina swept the folds of her short
+    coarse skirt forward and sideways a little, so that they hid
+    her brown woollen ankles as she took her seat, and with the
+    other hand she threw back the end of the kerchief from her
+    face.</p>
+
+    <p>"You do not mind telling me your name?" said the
+    Superintendent in a questioning tone.</p>
+
+    <p>"Spalletta Regina," answered the girl promptly, putting her
+    family name first, according to Italian custom. "I am of Rocca
+    di Papa."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you. I shall remember that. And you say that you know
+    this poor young man. Now, what is his name, if you please? He
+    does not seem able to remember anything about himself."</p>
+
+    <p>"I have always called him Marcello," answered Regina.</p>
+
+    <p>"Indeed? You call him Marcello? Yes, yes. Thank you. But,
+    you know, we like to write down the full name of each patient
+    in our books. Marcello, and then? What else?"</p>
+
+    <p>By this time Regina felt quite at her ease with the
+    pleasant-spoken gentleman, but in a flash it occurred to her
+    that he would think it very strange if she could not answer
+    such a simple question about a young man she professed to know
+    very well.</p>
+
+    <p>"His name is Botti," she said, with no apparent hesitation,
+    and giving the first name that occurred to her.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you. I shall enter him in the books as 'Botti
+    Marcello.'"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. That is the name." She watched the Superintendent's
+    pen, though she could not read writing very well.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," he said, as he stuck the pen into a little pot
+    of small-shot before him, and then looked at his watch. "The
+    nurse is probably just making him comfortable after the
+    doctor's morning visit, so you had better wait five minutes, if
+    you do not mind. Besides, it will help us a good deal if you
+    will tell me something about his illness. I suppose you have
+    taken care of him."</p>
+
+    <p>"As well as I could," Regina answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"Where? At Rocca di Papa? The air is good there."</p>
+
+    <p>"No, it was not in the village." The girl hesitated a
+    moment, quickly making up her mind how much of the truth to
+    tell. "You see," she continued presently, "I was only the
+    servant girl there, and I saw that the people meant to let him
+    die, because he was a burden on them. So I wrapped him in a
+    blanket and carried him downstairs in the night."</p>
+
+    <p>"You carried him down?" The Superintendent look at her in
+    admiration.</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, yes," answered Regina quietly. "I could carry you up
+    and down stairs easily. Do you wish to see?"</p>
+
+    <p>The Superintendent laughed, for she actually made a movement
+    as if she were going to leave her seat and pick him up.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," he said. "I quite believe you. What a nurse you
+    would make! You say that you carried him down in the
+    night&mdash;and then? What did you do?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I laid him on the tail of a cart. The carter was asleep. I
+    walked behind to the gate, for I was sure that when he was
+    found he would be brought here, and that he would have care,
+    and would get well."</p>
+
+    <p>"Was it far to walk?" inquired the Superintendent, delighted
+    with the result of his efforts as a detective. "You must have
+    been very tired!"</p>
+
+    <p>"What is it to walk all night, if one carries no load on
+    one's head?" asked Regina with some scorn. "I walk as I
+    breathe."</p>
+
+    <p>"You walked all night, then? That was Friday night. I do not
+    wish to keep you, my dear child, but if you would tell me how
+    long Botti has been ill&mdash;" he waited.</p>
+
+    <p>"This is the forty-ninth day," Regina answered at once.</p>
+
+    <p>"Dear me! Poor boy! That is a long time!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I stole eggs and wine to keep him alive," the girl
+    explained. "They tried to make me give him white beans and oil.
+    They wanted him to die, because he was an expense to them."</p>
+
+    <p>"Who were those people?" asked the Superintendent, putting
+    the question suddenly.</p>
+
+    <p>But Regina had gained time to prepare her story.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why should I tell you who they are?" she asked. "They did
+    no harm, after all, and they let him lie in their house. At
+    first they hoped he would get well, but you know how it is in
+    the country. When sick people linger on, every one wishes them
+    to die, because they are in the way, and cost money. That is
+    how it is."</p>
+
+    <p>"But you wished him to live," said the Superintendent in an
+    encouraging tone.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina shrugged her shoulders and smiled, without the
+    slightest affectation or shyness.</p>
+
+    <p>"What could I do?" she asked. "A passion for him had taken
+    me, the first time that I saw him. So I stole for him, and sat
+    up with him, and did what was possible. He lay in an attic with
+    only one blanket, and my heart spoke. What could I do? If he
+    had died I should have thrown myself into the water below the
+    mill."</p>
+
+    <p>Now there had been no mill within many miles of the inn on
+    the Frascati road, in which there could be water in summer.
+    Regina was perfectly sincere in describing her love for
+    Marcello, but as she was a clever woman she knew that it was
+    precisely when she was speaking with the greatest sincerity
+    about one thing, that she could most easily throw a man off the
+    scent with regard to another. The Superintendent mentally noted
+    the allusion to the mill for future use; it had created an
+    image in his mind; it meant that the place where Marcello had
+    lain ill had been in the hills and probably near Tivoli, where
+    there is much water and mills are plentiful.</p>
+
+    <p>"I suppose he was a poor relation of the people," said the
+    Superintendent thoughtfully, after a little pause. "That is why
+    they wished to get rid of him."</p>
+
+    <p>Regina made a gesture of indifferent assent, and told
+    something like the truth.</p>
+
+    <p>"He had not been there since I had been servant to them,"
+    she answered. "It must have been a long time since they had
+    seen him. We found him early in the morning, lying unconscious
+    against the door of the house, and we took him in. That is the
+    whole story. Why should I tell you who the people are? I have
+    eaten their bread, I have left them, I wish them no harm. They
+    knew their business."</p>
+
+    <p>"Certainly, my dear, certainly. I suppose I may say that
+    Marcello Botti comes from Rocca di Papa?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, yes," answered Regina readily. "You may say that, if
+    you like."</p>
+
+    <p>As a matter of fact she did not care what he wrote in his
+    big book, and he might as well write one name as another, so
+    far as she was concerned.</p>
+
+    <p>"But I never saw him there," she added by an afterthought.
+    "There are many people of that name in our village, but I never
+    saw him. Perhaps you had better say that he came from
+    Albano."</p>
+
+    <p>"Why from Albano?" asked the Superintendent, surprised.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is a bigger place," explained Regina quite
+    naturally.</p>
+
+    <p>"Then I might as well write 'Rome' at once?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. Why not? If you must put down the name of a town in
+    the book, you had better write a big one. You will be less
+    likely to be found out if you have made a mistake."</p>
+
+    <p>"I see," said the Superintendent, smiling. "I am much
+    obliged for your advice. And now, if you will come with me, you
+    shall see Botti. He has a room by himself and is very well
+    cared for."</p>
+
+    <p>The orderlies and nurses who came and went about the
+    hospital glanced with a little discreet surprise at the
+    handsome peasant girl who followed the Superintendent, but she
+    paid no attention to them and looked straight before her, at
+    the back of his head; for her heart was beating faster than if
+    she had run a mile uphill.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello put out his arms when he saw her enter, and
+    returning life sent a faint colour to his emaciated cheeks.</p>
+
+    <p>"Regina&mdash;at last!" he cried in a stronger and clearer
+    tone than she had ever heard him use.</p>
+
+    <p>A splendid blush of pleasure glowed in her own face as she
+    ran forward and leaned over him, smoothing the smooth pillow
+    unconsciously, and looking down into his eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>The Superintendent observed that Marcello certainly had no
+    difficulty in recalling the girl's name, whatever might have
+    become of his own during his illness. What Regina answered was
+    not audible, but she kissed Marcello's eyes, and then stood
+    upright beside the bed, and laughed a little.</p>
+
+    <p>"What can I do?" she asked. "It is a passion! When I see
+    him, I see nothing else. And then, I saved his life. Are you
+    glad that Regina saved your life?" She bent down again, and her
+    gentle hand played with Marcello's waving fair hair. "What
+    should you have done without Regina?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I should have died," Marcello answered happily.</p>
+
+    <p>With much more strength than she had been used to find in
+    him, he threw his arms round her neck and drew her face down to
+    his.</p>
+
+    <p>The Superintendent spoke to the nurse in a low tone, by the
+    door, and both went out, leaving the two together. He was a
+    sensible man, and a kind-hearted one; and though he was no
+    doctor, he guessed that the peasant girl's glorious vitality
+    would do as much for the sick man as any medicine.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_VIII'></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+    <p>Corbario reached Rome in the afternoon, and the footman who
+    stood waiting for him on the platform was struck by the change
+    in his appearance. His eyes were hollow and bright, his cheeks
+    were sunken, his lips looked dry; moreover, he moved a little
+    nervously and his foot slipped as he got out of the carriage,
+    so that he nearly fell. In the crowd, the footman asked his
+    valet questions. Was he ill? What had happened to him? Was he
+    consuming himself with grief? No, the valet thought not. He had
+    been much better in Paris and had seen some old friends there.
+    What harm was there in that? A bereaved man needed diversion.
+    The change had come suddenly, when he had decided to return to
+    Rome, and he had eaten nothing for thirty-six hours. The valet
+    asked if the youth at the hospital, of whom Corbario had told
+    him, were really Marcello. The footman answered that none of
+    the servants thought so, after they had all been taken to see
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>Having exchanged these confidences in the half-dumb language
+    which servants command, they reached the gate. The footman
+    rushed out to call the carriage, the valet delivered the
+    tickets and followed the footman more slowly, carrying
+    Corbario's bag and coat, and Corbario lighted a cigar and
+    followed his man at a leisurely pace, absorbed in thought.</p>
+
+    <p>Until the moment of passing the gate he had meant to drive
+    directly to the hospital, which is at some distance from the
+    station in a direction almost opposite to that of the
+    Janiculum. He could have driven there in ten minutes, whereas
+    he must lose more than an hour by going home first and then
+    coming back. But his courage failed him, he felt faint and
+    sick, and quite unable to bear any great emotion until he had
+    rested and refreshed himself a little. A long railway journey
+    stupefies some men, but makes others nervous and inclined to
+    exaggerate danger or trouble. During the last twelve hours
+    Corbario had been forcing himself to decide that he would go to
+    the hospital and know the worst at once, but now that the
+    moment was come he could not do it.</p>
+
+    <p>He was walking slowly through the outer hall of the station
+    when a large man came up with him and greeted him quietly. It
+    was Professor Kalmon. Corbario started at the sound of his
+    voice. They had not met since Kalmon had been at the
+    cottage.</p>
+
+    <p>"I wish I had known that you were in the train," the
+    Professor said.</p>
+
+    <p>"So do I," answered Corbario without enthusiasm. "Not that I
+    am very good company," he added, looking sideways at the
+    other's face and meeting a scrutinising glance.</p>
+
+    <p>"You look ill," Kalmon replied. "I don't wonder."</p>
+
+    <p>"I sometimes wish I had one of those tablets of yours that
+    send people to sleep for ever," said Corbario, making a great
+    effort to speak steadily.</p>
+
+    <p>But his voice shook, and a sudden terror seized him, the
+    abject fright that takes hold of a man who has been accustomed
+    to do something very dangerous and who suddenly finds that his
+    nerve is gone at the very moment of doing it again.</p>
+
+    <p>The cold sweat stood on Folco's forehead under his hat; he
+    stopped where he was and tried to draw a long breath, but
+    something choked him. Kalmon's voice seemed to reach him from a
+    great distance. Then he felt the Professor's strong arm under
+    his own, supporting him and making him move forward.</p>
+
+    <p>"The weather is hot," Kalmon said, "and you are ill and
+    tired. Come outside."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is nothing," Corbario tried to say. "I was dizzy for a
+    moment."</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon and the footman helped him into his low carriage, and
+    raised the hood, for the afternoon sun was still very hot.</p>
+
+    <p>"Shall I go home with you?" Kalmon asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"No, no!" cried Corbario nervously. "You are very kind. I am
+    quite well now. Good-bye. Home!" he added to the footman, as he
+    settled himself back under the hood, quite out of sight.</p>
+
+    <p>The Professor stood still in the glaring heat, looking after
+    the carriage, his travelling-bag in his hand, while the crowd
+    poured out of the station, making for the cabs and omnibuses
+    that were drawn up in rows, or crossing the burning pavement on
+    foot to take the tram.</p>
+
+    <p>When the carriage was out of sight, Kalmon looked up at the
+    hot sky and down at the flagstones, and then made up his mind
+    what to do.</p>
+
+    <p>"To the hospital of San Giovanni," he said, as he got into a
+    cab.</p>
+
+    <p>He seemed to be well informed, for he inquired at the door
+    about a certain Marcello Botti, who was in a private room; and
+    when he gave his name he was admitted without even asking
+    permission of the Superintendent, and was at once led
+    upstairs.</p>
+
+    <p>"Are you a friend of his, sir?" asked Regina, when he had
+    looked a long time at the patient, who did not recognise him in
+    the least.</p>
+
+    <p>"Are you?" Kalmon looked at her quietly across the bed.</p>
+
+    <p>"You see," she answered. "If I were not, why should I be
+    here?"</p>
+
+    <p>"She has saved my life," said Marcello suddenly, and he
+    caught her hand in his and held it fast. "As soon as I am quite
+    well we shall be married."</p>
+
+    <p>"Certainly, my dear boy, certainly," replied Kalmon, as if
+    it were quite a matter of course. "You must make haste and get
+    well as soon as possible."</p>
+
+    <p>He glanced at Regina's face, and as her eyes met his she
+    shook her head almost imperceptibly, and smiled. Kalmon was not
+    quite sure what she meant. He made a sign to her to go with him
+    to the window, which was at some distance from the bed.</p>
+
+    <p>"It may be long before he is well," he whispered. "There
+    must be an operation."</p>
+
+    <p>She nodded, for she knew that.</p>
+
+    <p>"And do you expect to marry him when he is recovered?"</p>
+
+    <p>She shook her head and laughed, glancing at Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"He is a gentleman," she whispered, close to Kalmon's ear.
+    "How could he marry me?"</p>
+
+    <p>"You love him," Kalmon answered.</p>
+
+    <p>Again she nodded, and laughed too.</p>
+
+    <p>"What would you do for him?" asked Kalmon, looking at her
+    keenly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Die for him!"</p>
+
+    <p>She meant it, and he saw that she did. Her eyes shone as she
+    spoke, and then the lids drooped a little and she looked at him
+    almost fiercely. He turned from her and his fingers softly
+    tapped the marble window-sill. He was asking himself whether he
+    could swear to Marcello's identity, in case he should be called
+    upon to give evidence. On what could he base his certainty? Was
+    he himself certain, or was he merely moved by the strong
+    resemblance he saw, in spite of long illness and consequent
+    emaciation? Was the visiting surgeon right in believing that
+    the little depression in the skull had caused a suspension of
+    memory? Such things happened, no doubt, but it also happened
+    that doctors were mistaken and that nothing came of such
+    operations. Who could prove the truth? The boy and girl might
+    have a secret to keep; she might have arranged to get him into
+    the hospital because it was his only chance, but the rest of
+    the story, such as it was, might be a pure invention; and when
+    Marcello was discharged cured, they would disappear together.
+    There was the coincidence of the baptismal name, but men of
+    science know how deceptive coincidences can be. Besides, the
+    girl was very intelligent. She might easily have heard about
+    the real Marcello's disappearance, and she was clever enough to
+    have given her lover the name in the hope that he might be
+    taken for the lost boy at least long enough to ensure him a
+    great deal more comfort and consideration in the hospital than
+    he otherwise would have got; she was clever enough to have seen
+    that it would be a mistake to say outright that he was Marcello
+    Consalvi, if she was practising a deception. Kalmon did not
+    know what to think, and he wished the operation could be
+    performed before Corbario came; but that was impossible.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina stood beside him, waiting for him to speak again.</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you need money?" he asked abruptly, with a sharp look at
+    her face.</p>
+
+    <p>"No, thank you, sir," she answered. "He has everything
+    here."</p>
+
+    <p>"But for yourself?" He kept his eyes on her.</p>
+
+    <p>"I thank you, sir, I want nothing." Her look met his almost
+    coldly as she spoke.</p>
+
+    <p>"But when he is well again, how shall you live?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall work for him, if it turns out that he has no
+    friends. We shall soon know, for his memory will come back
+    after the operation. The doctors say so. They know."</p>
+
+    <p>"And if he has friends after all? If he is really the man I
+    think he is, what then? What will become of you?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I do not know. I am his. He can do what he likes with
+    me."</p>
+
+    <p>The Professor did not remember to have met any one who took
+    quite such an elementary view of life, but he could not help
+    feeling a sort of sympathy for the girl's total indifference to
+    consequences.</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall come to see him again," he said presently, turning
+    back towards the bed and approaching Marcello. "Are you quite
+    sure that you never saw me before?" he asked, taking the young
+    man's hand.</p>
+
+    <p>"I don't remember," answered Marcello, wearily. "They all
+    want me to remember," he added almost peevishly. "I would if I
+    could, if it were only to please them!"</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon went away, for he saw that his presence tired the
+    patient. When he was gone Regina sat down beside the bed and
+    stroked Marcello's hand, and talked soothingly to him,
+    promising that no one should tease him to remember things. By
+    and by, as she sat, she laid her head on the pillow beside him,
+    and her sweet breath fanned his face, while a strange light
+    played in her half-closed eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>"Heart of my heart," she sighed happily. "Love of my soul!
+    Do you know that I am all yours, soul and body, and earrings
+    too?" And she laughed low.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," Marcello
+    answered. "I love you!"</p>
+
+    <p>She laughed again, and kissed him.</p>
+
+    <p>"You love me better than Aurora," she said suddenly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Aurora?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, for you have forgotten her. But you will not forget
+    Regina now, not even when you are very, very old, and your
+    golden hair is all grey. You will never forget Regina,
+    now!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Never!" echoed Marcello, like a child. "Never, never,
+    never!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Not even when your friends try to take me away from you,
+    love, not even if they try to kill me, because they want you to
+    marry Aurora, who is a rich girl, all dressed with silk and
+    covered with jewels, like the image of the Madonna at
+    Genazzano. I am sure Aurora has yellow hair and blue eyes!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I don't want any one but you," answered Marcello, drawing
+    her face nearer.</p>
+
+    <p>So the time passed, and it was to them as if there were no
+    time. Then the door opened again, and a very pale man in deep
+    mourning was brought in by the Superintendent himself. Regina
+    rose and drew back a little, so that the shadow should not fall
+    across Marcello's face, and she fixed her eyes on the gentleman
+    in black.</p>
+
+    <p>"This is the patient," said the Superintendent in a low
+    voice.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario laid his hand nervously on his companion's arm, and
+    stood still for a moment, holding his breath and leaning
+    forward a little, his gaze riveted on Marcello's face. Regina
+    had never before seen a man transfixed with fear.</p>
+
+    <p>He moved a step towards the bed, and then another, forcing
+    himself to go on. Then Marcello turned his head and looked at
+    him vacantly. Regina heard the long breath Corbario drew, and
+    saw his body straighten, as if relieved from a great burden. He
+    stood beside the bed, and put out his hand to take
+    Marcello's.</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you know me?" he asked; but even then his voice was
+    unsteady.</p>
+
+    <p>Instead of answering, Marcello turned away to Regina.</p>
+
+    <p>"You promised that they should not tease me any more," he
+    said querulously. "Make them go away! I want to sleep."</p>
+
+    <p>Regina came to his side at once, and faced the two men
+    across the bed.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is all this for?" she asked, with a little
+    indignation. "You know that he cannot remember you, even if he
+    ever saw you before. Cannot you leave him in peace? Come back
+    after the operation. Then he will remember you, if you really
+    know him."</p>
+
+    <p>"Who is this girl?" asked Corbario of the
+    Superintendent.</p>
+
+    <p>"She took care of him when he had the fever, and she managed
+    to get him here. She has undoubtedly saved his life."</p>
+
+    <p>At the words a beautiful blush coloured Regina's cheeks, and
+    her eyes were full of triumphant light; but at the same words
+    Corbario's still face darkened, and as if it had been a mask
+    that suddenly became transparent, the girl saw another face
+    through it, drawn into an expression of malignant and devilish
+    hatred.</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="Moved"></a>
+<img src="images/Illus151_Moved.jpg" width="400" height="588" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">"HE MOVED A STEP TOWARDS THE BED, AND THEN ANOTHER, FORCING
+    HIMSELF TO GO ON."</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>The vision only lasted a moment, and the impenetrable pale
+    features were there once more, showing neither hate nor fear,
+    nor any feeling or emotion whatever. Corbario was himself
+    again, and turned quietly to the Superintendent.</p>
+
+    <p>"She is quite right," he said. "His memory is gone, and we
+    shall only disturb him. You tell me that the doctors have found
+    a very slight depression in his head, as if from a blow. Do you
+    think&mdash;but it will annoy him&mdash;I had better not."</p>
+
+    <p>"What do you mean?" asked the other, as he hesitated.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is such a strange case that I should like to see just
+    where it is, out of pure curiosity."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is here," said Regina, answering, and setting the tip of
+    one straight finger against her own head to point out the
+    place.</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, at the back, on the right side? I
+    see&mdash;yes&mdash;thank you. A little on one side, you
+    say?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Here," repeated Regina, turning so that Corbario could see
+    exactly where the end of her finger touched her hair.</p>
+
+    <p>"To think that so slight an injury may have permanently
+    affected the young man's memory!" Corbario appeared much
+    impressed. "Well," he continued, speaking to Regina, "if we
+    ever find out who he is, his relations owe you a debt of
+    gratitude quite beyond all payment."</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you think I want to be paid?" asked Regina, and in her
+    indignation she turned away and walked to the window.</p>
+
+    <p>But Marcello called her back.</p>
+
+    <p>"Please, Regina&mdash;please tell them to go away!" he
+    pleaded.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario nodded to the Superintendent, and they left the
+    room.</p>
+
+    <p>"There is certainly a strong resemblance," said Folco, when
+    they were outside, "but it really cannot be my poor Marcello. I
+    was almost too much affected by the thought of seeing him again
+    to control myself when we first entered, but when I came near I
+    felt nothing. It is not he, I am sure. I loved him as if he
+    were my own son; I brought him up; we were always together. It
+    is not possible that I should be mistaken."</p>
+
+    <p>"No," replied the Superintendent, "I should hardly think it
+    possible. Besides, from what the girl has told me, I am quite
+    sure that he lay ill near Tivoli. How is it possible that he
+    should have got there, all the way from the Roman shore?"</p>
+
+    <p>"And with a fractured skull! It is absurd!" Corbario was
+    glad to find that the Superintendent held such a strong
+    opinion. "It is not Marcello. The nose is not the same, and the
+    expression of the mouth is quite different."</p>
+
+    <p>He said these things with conviction, but he was not
+    deceived. He knew that Marcello Consalvi was living and that he
+    had seen him, risen from the dead, and apparently likely to
+    remain among the living for some time. The first awful moment
+    of anxiety was past, it was true, and Folco was able to think
+    more connectedly than he had since he had received the telegram
+    recalling him from Paris; but there was to be another. The
+    doctors said that his memory would return&mdash;what would he
+    remember? It would come back, beginning, most probably, at the
+    very moment in which it had been interrupted. For one instant
+    he would fancy that he saw again what he had seen then. What
+    had he seen? That was the question. Had he seen anything but
+    the sand, the scrubby bushes, and the trees round the cottage
+    in the distance? Had he heard anything but the howling of the
+    southwest gale and the thundering of the big surf over the bar
+    and up the beach? The injury was at the back of his head, but
+    it was a little on one side. Had he been in the act of turning?
+    Had he turned far enough to see before the blow had
+    extinguished memory? How far was the sudden going out of
+    thought really instantaneous? What fraction of a second
+    intervened between full life and what was so like death? How
+    long did it take a man to look round quickly? Much less than a
+    second, surely! Without effort or hurry a man could turn his
+    head all the way from left to right, so as to look over each
+    shoulder alternately, while a second pendulum swung once. A
+    second was a much longer time than most people realised.
+    Instruments made for scientific photography could be made to
+    expose the plate not more than one-thousandth of a second.
+    Corbario knew that, and wondered whether a man's eye could
+    receive any impression in so short a time. He shuddered when he
+    thought that it might be possible.</p>
+
+    <p>The question was to be answered sooner than he expected. The
+    doctors had reported that a week must pass before Marcello
+    would be strong enough to undergo the operation, but he
+    improved so quickly after he reached the hospital that it
+    seemed useless to wait. It was not considered to be a very
+    dangerous operation, nor one which weakened the patient
+    much.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina was not allowed to be present, and when Marcello had
+    been wheeled out of his room, already under ether, she went and
+    stood before the window, pressing down her clasped hands upon
+    the marble sill with all her might, and resting her forehead
+    against the green slats of the blind. She did not move from
+    this position while the nurse made Marcello's bed ready to
+    receive him on his return. It was long to wait. The great clock
+    in the square struck eleven some time after he had been taken
+    away, then the quarter, then half-past.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina felt the blood slowly sinking to her heart. She would
+    have given anything to move now, but she could not stir hand or
+    foot; she was cold, yet somehow she could not even shiver; that
+    would have been a relief; any motion, any shock, any violent
+    pain would have been a thousand times better than the marble
+    stillness that was like a spell.</p>
+
+    <p>Far away on the Janiculum Folco Corbario sat in his splendid
+    library alone, with strained eyes, waiting for the call of the
+    telephone that stood on the polished table at his elbow. He,
+    too, was motionless, and longed for release as he had never
+    thought he could long for anything. A still unlighted cigar was
+    almost bitten through by his sharp front teeth; every faculty
+    was tense; and yet it was as if his brain had stopped thinking
+    at the point where expectation had begun. He could not think
+    now, he could only suffer. If the operation were successful
+    there would be more suffering, doubt still more torturing,
+    suspense more agonising still.</p>
+
+    <p>The great clock over the stables struck eleven, then the
+    quarter, then half-past. The familiar chimes floated in through
+    the open windows.</p>
+
+    <p>A wild hope came with the sound. Marcello, weak as he was,
+    had died under ether, and that was the end. Corbario trembled
+    from head to foot. The clock struck the third quarter, but no
+    other sound broke the stillness of the near noon-tide. Yes,
+    Marcello must be dead.</p>
+
+    <p>Suddenly, in the silence, came the sharp buzz of the
+    instrument. He leapt in his seat as if something had struck him
+    unawares, and then, instantly controlling himself, he grasped
+    the receiver and held it to his ear.</p>
+
+    <p>"Signor Corbario?" came the question.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, himself."</p>
+
+    <p>"The hospital. The operation has been successful. Do you
+    hear?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. Go on."</p>
+
+    <p>"The patient has come to himself. He remembers
+    everything."</p>
+
+    <p>"Everything!" Corbario's voice shook.</p>
+
+    <p>"He is Marcello Consalvi. He asks for his mother, and for
+    you."</p>
+
+    <p>"How&mdash;in what way does he ask for me? Will my presence
+    do him good&mdash;or excite him?"</p>
+
+    <p>The moment had come, and Folco's nerve was restored with the
+    sense of danger. His face grew cold and expressionless as he
+    waited for the answer.</p>
+
+    <p>"He speaks most affectionately of you. But you had better
+    not come until this afternoon, and then you must not stay long.
+    The doctors say he must rest quietly."</p>
+
+    <p>"I will come at four o'clock. Thank you. Good-bye."</p>
+
+    <p>"Good-bye."</p>
+
+    <p>The click of the instrument, as Folco hung the receiver on
+    the hook, and it was over. He shut his eyes and leaned back in
+    his chair, his arms hanging by his sides as if there were no
+    strength in them, and his head falling forward till his chin
+    rested on his chest. He remained so for a long time without
+    moving.</p>
+
+    <p>But in the room at the hospital Marcello lay in bed with his
+    head bound up, his cheek on the pillow, and his eyes fixed on
+    Regina's face, as she knelt beside him and fanned him slowly,
+    for it was hot.</p>
+
+    <p>"Sleep, heart of my heart," she said softly. "Sleep and
+    rest!"</p>
+
+    <p>There was a sort of peaceful wonder in his look now. Nothing
+    vacant, nothing that lacked meaning or understanding. But he
+    did not answer her, he only gazed into her face, and gazed and
+    gazed till his eyelids drooped and he fell asleep with a smile
+    on his lips.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_IX'></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+    <p>Two years had passed since Marcello had been brought home
+    from the hospital, very feeble still, but himself again and
+    master of his memory and thoughts.</p>
+
+    <p>In his recollection, however, there was a blank. He had left
+    Aurora standing in the gap, where the storm swept inland from
+    the sea; then the light had gone out suddenly, in something
+    violent which he could not understand, and after that he could
+    remember nothing except that he had wandered in lonely places,
+    trying to find out which way he was going, and terrified by the
+    certainty that he had lost all sense of direction; so he had
+    wandered on by day and night, as in a dark dream, and had at
+    last fallen asleep, to wake in the wretched garret of the inn
+    on the Frascati road, with Regina kneeling beside him and
+    moistening his lips from a glass of water.</p>
+
+    <p>He remembered that and other things, which came back to him
+    uncertainly, like the little incidents of his early childhood,
+    like the first words he could remember hearing and answering,
+    like the sensation of being on his mother's knee and resting
+    his head upon her shoulder, like the smell of the roses and the
+    bitter-orange blossoms in the villa, like the first sensation
+    of being set upon a pony's back in San Domenico, while Corbario
+    held him up in the saddle, and tried to make his little hands
+    hold the bridle. The inn was quite as far away as all that, and
+    but for Regina he might have forgotten it altogether.</p>
+
+    <p>She was "Consalvi's Regina" now; half Rome called her that,
+    and she was famous. Naples and Florence and Milan had heard of
+    her; she had been seen at Monte Carlo, and even in Paris and
+    London her name was not unknown in places where young men
+    congregate to discuss the wicked world, and where young women
+    meet to compare husbands, over the secret and sacrificial
+    teapot which represents virtue, or the less sacred bridge-table
+    which represents vice. Smart young dandies who had never
+    exchanged a word with her spoke of her familiarly as "Regina ";
+    smarter and older men, who knew her a little, talked of her as
+    "the Spalletta," not without a certain respect; their mothers
+    branded her as "that creature," and their wives, who envied
+    her, called her "Consalvi's Regina."</p>
+
+    <p>When people remonstrated with Folco Corbario for allowing
+    his stepson too much liberty, he shook his head gravely and
+    answered that he did what he could to keep Marcello in the
+    right way, but that the boy's intellect had been shaken by the
+    terrible accident, and that he had undoubtedly developed
+    vicious tendencies&mdash;probably atavistic, Folco added. Why
+    did Folco allow him to have so much money? The answer was that
+    he was of age and the fortune was his. But why had Folco let
+    him have it before he was twenty-one, ever since he was found
+    and brought home? He had not had much, was the reply; at least
+    it had not been much compared with the whole income he now
+    enjoyed one could not bring up the heir of a great estate like
+    a pauper, could one? So the questioners desisted from
+    questioning, but they said among themselves that, although
+    Folco had been an admirable husband and stepfather while his
+    wife had lived, he had not shown as much good sense after her
+    death as they had been led to expect. Meanwhile, no one had any
+    right to interfere, and Marcello did as he pleased.</p>
+
+    <p>Children instinctively attach themselves to whichever of
+    their parents gives them the most liberty. It is sheer nonsense
+    to deny it. Marcello had loved his mother dearly, but she had
+    always been the one to hinder him from doing what he wished to
+    do, because she had been excessively anxious about his bodily
+    health, and over-desirous of bringing him up to manhood in a
+    state of ideal moral perfection. Folco, on the other hand, had
+    been associated with all the boy's sports and pleasures, and
+    had always encouraged him to amuse himself, giving as a reason
+    that there was no medicine like healthy happiness for a boy of
+    delicate constitution. Corbario, like Satan, knew the uses of
+    truth, which are numerous and not all good. Though Marcello
+    would not have acknowledged it to himself, his stepfather had
+    been nearer to him, and more necessary to him, than his mother,
+    during several years; and besides, it was less hard to bear the
+    loss of which he learned when he recovered, because it had
+    befallen him during that dark and uncertain period of his
+    illness that now seemed as if it had lasted for years, and
+    whereby everything that had been before it belonged to a remote
+    past.</p>
+
+    <p>Moreover, there was Regina, and there was youth, and there
+    was liberty; and Corbario was at hand, always ready to
+    encourage and satisfy his slightest whim, on the plea that a
+    convalescent must be humoured at any cost, and that there would
+    be time enough to consider what should be done with Regina
+    after Marcello was completely recovered. After all, Corbario
+    told him, the girl had saved his life, and it was only right to
+    be grateful, and she should be amply rewarded for all the
+    trouble she had taken. It would have been sheer cruelty to have
+    sent her away to the country; and what was the cost of a quiet
+    lodging for her in Trastevere, and of a few decent clothes, and
+    of a respectable middle-aged woman-servant to take care of her?
+    Nothing at all; only a few francs, and Marcello was so rich!
+    Regina, also, was so very unusually well-behaved, and so
+    perfectly docile, so long as she was allowed to see Marcello
+    every day! She did not care for dress at all, and was quite
+    contented to wear black, with just a touch of some tender
+    colour. Corbario made it all very easy, and saw to everything,
+    and he seemed to know just how such things were arranged. He
+    was so fortunate as to find a little house that had a quiet
+    garden with an entrance on another street, all in very good
+    condition because it had lately been used by a famous foreign
+    painter who preferred to live in Trastevere, away from the
+    interruptions and distractions of the growing city; and by a
+    very simple transaction the house became the property of the
+    minor, Marcello Consalvi, to do with as he thought fit. This
+    was much more convenient than paying rent to a tiresome
+    landlord who might at any time turn his tenant out. Corbario
+    thought of everything. Twice a week a gardener came, early in
+    the morning, and soon the garden was really pretty; and the
+    respectable woman-servant watered the flowers every evening
+    just before sunset. There was a comfortable Calcutta chair for
+    Marcello in a shady corner, the very first time he came there,
+    and Regina had learned how to make tea for him; for the
+    respectable woman-servant knew how to do all sorts of things
+    belonging to civilised life. She was so intensely respectable
+    and quiet that Marcello was almost afraid of her, until it
+    occurred to him that as she took so much trouble, he ought to
+    give her a present of money; and when he had done this twice,
+    he somehow became aware that she was his devoted
+    slave&mdash;middle-aged and excessively respectable. Folco was
+    really a very good judge of character, Marcello thought, since
+    he could at once pick out such a person from the great horde of
+    the unemployed.</p>
+
+    <p>Her name was Settimia, and it was wonderful to see how she
+    quietly transformed Regina into a civilised creature, who must
+    attract attention by her beauty and carriage, but who might
+    have belonged to a middle-class Roman family so far as manners
+    and dress were concerned. It is true that the girl possessed by
+    nature the innate dignity of the Roman peasant, with such a
+    figure and such grace as any aristocrat might have envied, and
+    that she spoke with the Roman accent which almost all other
+    Italians admire; but though her manners had a certain repose,
+    they were often of an extremely unexpected nature, and she had
+    an astonishingly simple way of calling things by their names
+    which sometimes disconcerted Marcello and sometimes amused him.
+    Settimia civilised her, almost without letting her know it, for
+    she was quick to learn, like all naturally clever people who
+    have had no education, and she was imitative, as all womanly
+    women are when they are obliged to adapt themselves quickly to
+    new surroundings. She was stimulated, too, by the wish to
+    appear well before Marcello, lest he should ever be ashamed of
+    her. That was all. She never had the least illusion about
+    herself, nor any hope of raising herself to his social level.
+    She was far too much the real peasant girl for that, the
+    descendant of thirty or more generations of serfs, the
+    offspring of men and women who had felt that they belonged body
+    and soul to the feudal lord of the land on which they were
+    born, and had never been disturbed by tempting dreams of
+    liberty, equality, fraternity, and the violent destruction of
+    ladies and gentlemen.</p>
+
+    <p>So she lived, and so she learned many things of Settimia,
+    and looked upon herself as the absolute property of the man she
+    loved and had saved; and she was perfectly happy, if not
+    perfectly good.</p>
+
+    <p>"When I am of age," Marcello used to say, "I shall buy a
+    beautiful little palace near the Tiber, and you shall live in
+    it."</p>
+
+    <p>"Why?" she always asked. "Are we not happy here? Is it not
+    cool in summer, and sunny in winter? Have we not all we want?
+    When you marry, your wife will live in the splendid villa on
+    the Janiculum, and when you are tired of her, you will come and
+    see Regina here. I hope you will always be tired of her. Then I
+    shall be happy."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello would laugh a little, and then he would look grave
+    and thoughtful, for he had not forgotten Aurora, and sometimes
+    wondered what she was doing, as a young man does who is losing
+    his hold upon himself, and on the things in which he has always
+    believed. He who has never lived through such times and
+    outlived them, knows neither the world nor himself.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello wondered whether Aurora would ever meet Regina face
+    to face, and what would happen if he were called upon to choose
+    between the two. He would choose Regina, he said to himself,
+    when he was going down the steep way from the villa to the
+    little house, eager for her touch, her voice, her breath, and
+    feeling in his pocket the key that opened the garden gate. But
+    when the hours had passed, and he slowly walked up the road
+    under the great plane-trees, in the cool of the late evening,
+    glancing at the distant lights of Rome beyond the Tiber, and
+    dimly conscious that something was still unsatisfied, then he
+    hesitated and he remembered his boyish love, and fancied that
+    if he met Aurora in the way they would stand still, each
+    finding the other in the other's eyes, and silently kiss, as
+    they had kissed long ago. Yet, with the thought, he felt shame,
+    and he blushed, alone there under the plane-trees.</p>
+
+    <p>But Aurora had never come back to Rome, and the small
+    apartment that overlooked the Forum of Trajan had other
+    tenants. It was strange that the Contessa and her daughter
+    should not have returned, and sometimes Marcello felt a great
+    longing to see them. He said "them" to himself at such times,
+    but he knew what he meant.</p>
+
+    <p>So time went on. Corbario said that he himself must really
+    go to San Domenico, to look after the Calabrian property, but
+    added that it would be quite useless for Marcello to go with
+    him. Marcello could stay in Rome and amuse himself as he
+    pleased, or he might make a little journey to the north, to
+    Switzerland, to the Tyrol&mdash;there were so many places.
+    Settimia would take care of Regina, and perhaps Regina herself
+    had better make a little trip for a change. Yes, Settimia had
+    travelled a good deal; she even knew enough French to travel in
+    a foreign country, if necessary. Corbario said that he did not
+    know where she had learned French, but he was quite sure she
+    knew it tolerably well. Regina would be safe under her care, in
+    some quiet place where the air would do her good.</p>
+
+    <p>Thereupon Corbario went off to the south, leaving Marcello
+    plentifully supplied with money and promising to write to him.
+    They parted affectionately.</p>
+
+    <p>"If you wish to go away," Corbario said, as he was leaving,
+    "it might be as well to leave your next address, so that you
+    may get letters. But please don't fancy that I want to know
+    everything you do, my dear boy. You are quite old enough to
+    take care of yourself, and quite sensible enough, too. The only
+    thing you had better avoid for a few years is marriage!"</p>
+
+    <p>Folco laughed softly as he delivered this piece of advice,
+    and lit a cigar. Then he looked critically at Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are still very pale," he observed thoughtfully. "You
+    have not got back all your strength yet. Drink plenty of
+    champagne at luncheon and dinner. There is nothing like it when
+    a man is run down. And don't sit up all night smoking
+    cigarettes more than three times a week!"</p>
+
+    <p>He laughed again as he shook hands and got into the
+    carriage, and Marcello was glad when he was gone, though he was
+    so fond of him. It was a bore to be told that he was not
+    strong, because it certainly was true, and, besides, even Folco
+    was sometimes a little in the way.</p>
+
+    <p>In a week Marcello and Regina were in Venice; a month later
+    they were in Paris. The invaluable Settimia knew her way about,
+    and spoke French with a fluency that amazed Marcello; she even
+    taught Regina a few of those phrases which are particularly
+    useful at a dressmaker's and quite incomprehensible anywhere
+    else. Marcello told her to see that Regina was perfectly
+    dressed, and Settimia carried out his instructions with taste
+    and wisdom. Regina had arrived in Paris with one box of modest
+    dimensions; she left with four more, of a size that made the
+    railway porters stagger.</p>
+
+    <p>One day Marcello brought home a string of pearls in his
+    pocket, and tried to fasten it round her throat; but she would
+    not let him do it. She was angry.</p>
+
+    <p>"Keep those things for your wife!" she said, with flashing
+    eyes and standing back from him. "I will wear the clothes you
+    buy for me, because you like me to be pretty and I don't want
+    you to be ashamed of me. But I will not take jewels, for jewels
+    are money, just as gold is! You can buy a wife with that stuff,
+    not a woman who loves you!"</p>
+
+    <p>Her brows were level and stern, her face grew whiter as she
+    spoke, and Marcello was suddenly aware, for the first time in
+    his life, that he did not understand women. That knowledge
+    comes sooner or later to almost every man, but many are spared
+    it until they are much older than he was.</p>
+
+    <p>"I did not mean to offend you," he said, in a rather injured
+    tone, as he slipped the pearls into his pocket.</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course not," she answered. "But you do not understand.
+    If I thought you did, I would go back to the inn and never see
+    you again. I should die, but it would not matter, for I should
+    still respect myself!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I only wished to please you," said Marcello
+    apologetically.</p>
+
+    <p>"You wish to please me? Love me! That is what I want. Love
+    me as much as you can, it will always be less than I love you,
+    and as long as you can, it will always be less long than I
+    shall love you, for that will be always. And when you are tired
+    of me, tell me so, heart of my heart, and I will go away, for
+    that is better than to hang like a chain on a young man's neck.
+    I will go away, and God will forgive me, for to love you is all
+    I know."</p>
+
+    <p>His kisses closed her flashing eyes, and her lips parted in
+    a faint, expectant smile, that was not disappointed.</p>
+
+    <p>So time passed, and Marcello heard occasionally from
+    Corbario, and wrote to him once or twice, when he needed money.
+    Folco never alluded to Regina, and Marcello wondered whether he
+    guessed that she had left Rome. He was never quite sure how
+    much Folco knew of his life, and Folco was careful never to ask
+    questions.</p>
+
+    <p>But the existence Marcello was leading was not calculated to
+    restore his strength, which had never been great, even before
+    his illness. Though Regina did not understand the language, she
+    grew very fond of the theatre, for Marcello translated and
+    explained everything; and it was such a pleasure to give her
+    pleasure, that he forgot the stifling air and the late hours.
+    Moreover, he met in Paris a couple of acquaintances a little
+    older than himself, who were only too glad to see something of
+    the beautiful Regina, so that there were often supper-parties
+    after the play, and trips in motorcars in the morning, horse
+    races in the afternoon, and all manner of amusements, with a
+    general tendency to look upon sleep as a disease to be avoided
+    and the wish to rest as a foolish weakness. It was true that
+    Marcello never coughed, but he was very thin, and his delicate
+    face had grown perfectly colourless, though he followed
+    Corbario's advice and drank a good deal of champagne, not to
+    mention other less harmless things, because the quick stimulant
+    was as pleasant as a nap and did not involve such a waste of
+    time.</p>
+
+    <p>As for Regina, the life suited her, at least for a while,
+    and her beauty was refined rather than marred by a little
+    bodily weariness. The splendid blush of pleasure rarely rose in
+    her cheeks now, but the clear pallor of her matchless
+    complexion was quite as lovely. The constitution of a healthy
+    Roman peasant girl does not break down easily under a course of
+    pleasure and amusement, and it might never have occurred to
+    Regina that Marcello was almost exhausted already, if her eyes
+    had not been opened to his condition by some one else.</p>
+
+    <p>They were leaving the Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais
+    one evening, intending to go home on foot as the night was fine
+    and warm. They had seen <i>Hernani</i>, and Regina had
+    naturally found it hard to understand the story, even with
+    Marcello's explanations; the more so as he himself had never
+    seen the play before, and had come to the theatre quite sure
+    that it must be easily comprehensible from the opera founded on
+    it, which he had heard. Regina's arm was passed through his,
+    and as they made their way through the crowd, under the not
+    very brilliant lights in the portico, Marcello was doing his
+    best to make the plot of the piece clear, and Regina was
+    looking earnestly into his face, trying to follow what he said.
+    Suddenly he heard an Italian voice very near to him, calling
+    him by name, in a tone of surprise.</p>
+
+    <p>"Marcello!"</p>
+
+    <p>He started, straightened himself, turned his head, and faced
+    the Contessa dell' Armi. Close beside her was Aurora, leaning
+    forward a little, with an expression of cold curiosity; she had
+    already seen Regina, who did not withdraw her hand from
+    Marcello's arm.</p>
+
+    <p>"You here?" he cried, recovering himself quickly.</p>
+
+    <p>As he spoke, the Contessa realised the situation, and at the
+    same moment Marcello met Aurora's eyes. Regina felt his arm
+    drop by his side, as if he were disowning her in the presence
+    of these two smart women who were friends of his. She forgave
+    him, for she was strangely humble in some ways, but she hated
+    them forthwith.</p>
+
+    <p>The Contessa, who was a woman of the world, nodded quietly
+    and smiled as if she had seen nothing, but she at once began to
+    steer her daughter in a divergent direction.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are looking very ill," she said, turning her head back
+    as she moved away. "Come and see us."</p>
+
+    <p>"Where?" asked Marcello, making half a step to follow, and
+    looking at the back of Aurora's head and at the pretty hat she
+    wore.</p>
+
+    <p>The Contessa named a quiet hotel in the Rue Saint
+    Honor&eacute;, and was gone in the crowd. Marcello stood quite
+    still for a moment, staring after the two. Then he felt
+    Regina's hand slipping through his arm.</p>
+
+    <p>"Come," she said softly, and she led him away to the
+    left.</p>
+
+    <p>He did not speak for a long time. They turned under the
+    arches into the Palais Royal, and followed the long portico in
+    silence, out to the Rue Vivienne and the narrow Rue des Petits
+    Champs. Still Marcello did not speak, and without a word they
+    reached the Avenue de l'Op&eacute;ra. The light was very bright
+    there, and Regina looked long at Marcello's face, and saw how
+    white it was.</p>
+
+    <p>"She said you were looking very ill," said she, in a voice
+    that shook a little.</p>
+
+    <p>"Nonsense!" cried Marcello, rousing himself. "Shall we have
+    supper at Henry's or at the Caf&eacute; de Paris? We are near
+    both."</p>
+
+    <p>"We will go home," Regina answered. "I do not want any
+    supper to-night."</p>
+
+    <p>They reached their hotel. Regina tossed her hat upon a chair
+    in the sitting-room and drew Marcello to the light, holding him
+    before her, and scrutinising his face with extraordinary
+    intensity. Suddenly her hands dropped from his shoulders.</p>
+
+    <p>"She was right; you are ill. Who is this lady that knows
+    your face better than I?"</p>
+
+    <p>She asked the question in a tone of bitterness and
+    self-reproach.</p>
+
+    <p>"The Contessa dell' Armi," Marcello answered, with a shade
+    of reluctance.</p>
+
+    <p>"And the girl?" asked Regina, in a flash of intuition.</p>
+
+    <p>"Her daughter Aurora." He turned away, lit a cigarette, and
+    rang the bell.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina bit her lip until it hurt her, for she remembered how
+    often he had pronounced that name in his delirium, many months
+    ago. She could not speak for a moment. A waiter came in answer
+    to the bell, and Marcello ordered something, and then sat down.
+    Regina went to her room and did not return until the servant
+    had come back and was gone again, leaving a tray on the
+    table.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is the matter?" asked Marcello in surprise, as he
+    caught sight of her face.</p>
+
+    <p>She sat down at a little distance, her eyes fixed on
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am a very wicked woman," she said, in a dull voice.</p>
+
+    <p>"You?" Marcello laughed and filled the glasses.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am letting you kill yourself to amuse me," Regina said.
+    "I am a very, very wicked woman. But you shall not do it any
+    more. We will go away at once."</p>
+
+    <p>"I am perfectly well," Marcello answered, holding out a
+    glass to her; but she would not take it.</p>
+
+    <p>"I do not want wine to-night," she said. "It is good when
+    one has a light heart, but my heart is as heavy as a stone.
+    What am I good for? Kill me. It will be better. Then you will
+    live."</p>
+
+    <p>"I should have died without you long ago. You saved my
+    life."</p>
+
+    <p>"To take it again! To let you consume yourself, so that I
+    may see the world! What do I care for the world, if you are not
+    well? Let us go away quickly."</p>
+
+    <p>"Next week, if you like."</p>
+
+    <p>"No! To-morrow!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Without waiting to hear Melba?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes&mdash;to-morrow!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Or Sarah Bernhardt in Sardou's new play?"</p>
+
+    <p>"To-morrow! To-morrow morning, early! What is anything
+    compared with your getting well?"</p>
+
+    <p>"And your new summer costume that Doucet has not finished?
+    How about that?"</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello laughed gaily and emptied his glass. But Regina
+    rose and knelt down beside him, laying her hands on his.</p>
+
+    <p>"We must go to-morrow," she said. "You shall say where, for
+    you know what countries are near Paris, and where there are
+    hills, and trees, and waterfalls, and birds that sing, where
+    the earth smells sweet when it rains, and it is quiet when the
+    sun is high. We will go there, but you know where it is, and
+    how far."</p>
+
+    <p>"I have no doubt Settimia knows," laughed Marcello. "She
+    knows everything."</p>
+
+    <p>But Regina's face was grave, and she shook her head
+    slowly.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is the use of laughing?" she asked. "You cannot
+    deceive me, you know you cannot! I deceived myself and was
+    blind, but my eyes are open now, and I can only see the truth.
+    Do you love me, Marcello?"</p>
+
+    <p>His eyes looked tired a moment ago, even when he laughed,
+    but the light came into them now. He breathed a little faster
+    and bent forward to kiss her. She could feel the rising pulse
+    in his thin hands. But she leaned back as she knelt, and
+    pressed her lips together tightly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Not that," she said, after they had both been motionless
+    ten seconds. "I don't mean that! Love is not all kisses. There
+    is more. There are tears, but there is more too. There is pain,
+    there is doubting, there is jealousy, and more than that! There
+    is avarice also, for a woman who loves is a miser, counting her
+    treasure when others sleep. And she would kill any one who
+    robbed her, and that is murder. Yet there is more, there are
+    all the mortal sins in love, and even then there is worse. For
+    there is this. She will not count her own soul for him she
+    loves, no, not if the saints in Paradise came down weeping and
+    begging her to think of her salvation. And that is a great sin,
+    I suppose."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello looked at her, thinking that she was beautiful, and
+    he said nothing.</p>
+
+    <p>"But perhaps a man cannot love like that," she added
+    presently. "So what is the use of my asking you whether you
+    love me? You love Aurora too, I daresay! Such as your man's
+    love is, and of its kind, you have enough for two!"</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello smiled.</p>
+
+    <p>"I do not love Aurora now," he said.</p>
+
+    <p>"But you have, for you talked to her in your fever, and
+    perhaps you will again, or perhaps you wish to marry her. How
+    can I tell what you think? She is prettier than I, for she has
+    fair hair. I knew she had. I hate fair women, but they are
+    prettier than we dark things ever are. All men think so. What
+    does it matter? It was I that saved your life when you were
+    dying, and the people meant you to die. I shall always have
+    that satisfaction, even when you are tired of me."</p>
+
+    <p>"Say never, then!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Never? Yes, if I let you stay here, you will not have time
+    to be tired of me, for you will grow thinner and whiter, and
+    one day you will be breathing, and not breathing, and breathing
+    a little again, and then not breathing at all, and you will be
+    lying dead with your head on my arm. I can see how it will be,
+    for I thought more than once that you were dead, just like
+    that, when you had the fever. No! If I let that happen you will
+    never be tired of me while you are alive, and when you are dead
+    Aurora cannot have you. Perhaps that would be better. I would
+    almost rather have it so."</p>
+
+    <p>"Then why should we go away?" asked Marcello, smiling a
+    little.</p>
+
+    <p>"Because to let you die would be a great sin, much worse
+    than losing my soul for you, or killing some one to keep you.
+    Don't you see that?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Why would it be worse?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I do not know, but I am sure it would. Perhaps because it
+    would be losing your soul instead of mine. Who knows? It is not
+    in the catechism. The catechism has nothing about love, and I
+    never learned anything else. But I know things that I never
+    learned. Every woman does. How? The heart says them, and they
+    are true. Where shall we go to-morrow?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you really want to leave Paris?"</p>
+
+    <p>To impress upon him that she was in earnest Regina squeezed
+    his hands together in hers with such energy that she really
+    hurt him.</p>
+
+    <p>"What else have I been saying for half an hour?" she asked
+    impatiently. "Do you think I am playing a comedy?" She laughed.
+    "Remember that I have carried you up and down stairs in my
+    arms," she added, "and I could do it again!"</p>
+
+    <p>"If you insist on going away, I will walk," Marcello
+    answered with a laugh.</p>
+
+    <p>She laughed too, as she rose to her feet. He put out his
+    hand to fill his glass again, but she stopped him.</p>
+
+    <p>"No," she said, "the wine keeps you awake, and makes you
+    think you are stronger than you are. You shall sleep to-night,
+    and to-morrow we will go. I am so glad it is settled!"</p>
+
+    <p>She could do what she would with him, and so it turned out
+    that Marcello left Paris without going to see the Contessa and
+    Aurora; and when he was fairly away he felt that it was a
+    relief not to be able to see them, since it would have been his
+    duty to do so if he had stayed another day. Maddalena dell'
+    Armi had not believed that he would come, but she stopped at
+    home that afternoon on the bare possibility. Aurora made up her
+    mind that if he came she would shut herself up in her own room.
+    She expected that he would certainly call before the evening,
+    and was strangely disappointed because he did not.</p>
+
+    <p>"Who was that lady with him last night?" she asked of her
+    mother.</p>
+
+    <p>"I do not know that&mdash;lady," answered the Contessa, with
+    a very slight hesitation before pronouncing the last word.</p>
+
+    <p>But they had both heard of Regina already.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_X'></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+    <p>The Contessa wrote to Corbario two days later, addressing
+    her letter to Rome, as she did not know where he was. It was
+    not like her to meddle in the affairs of other people, or to
+    give advice, but this was a special case, and she felt that
+    something must be done to save Marcello; for she was a woman of
+    the world, with much experience and few illusions, and she
+    understood at a glance what was happening to her dead friend's
+    son. She wrote to Folco, telling him of the accidental meeting
+    in the portico of the Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais,
+    describing Marcello's looks, and saying pretty clearly what she
+    thought of the extremely handsome young woman who was with
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>Now Paris is a big city, and it chanced that Corbario
+    himself was there at that very time. Possibly he had kept out
+    of Marcello's way for some reason of his own, but he had really
+    not known that the Contessa was there. Her letter was forwarded
+    from Rome and reached him four days after it was written. He
+    read it carefully, tore it into several dozen little bits,
+    looked at his watch, and went at once to the quiet hotel in the
+    Rue Saint Honor&eacute;. The Contessa was alone, Aurora having
+    gone out with her mother's maid.</p>
+
+    <p>Maddalena was glad to see him, not because she liked him,
+    for she did not, but because it would be so much easier to talk
+    of what was on her mind than to write about it.</p>
+
+    <p>"I suppose you are surprised to see me," said Folco, after
+    the first conventional greeting.</p>
+
+    <p>"No, for one may meet any one in Paris, at any time of the
+    year. When I wrote, I thought Marcello must be alone
+    here&mdash;I mean, without you," she added.</p>
+
+    <p>"I did not know he had been here, until I heard that he was
+    gone. He left three or four days ago. I fancy that when you
+    wrote your letter he was already gone."</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you let him wander about Europe as he pleases?" asked
+    the Contessa.</p>
+
+    <p>"He is old enough to take care of himself," answered
+    Corbario. "There is nothing worse for young men than running
+    after them and prying into their affairs. I say, give a young
+    fellow his independence as soon as possible. If he has been
+    brought up in a manly way, with a feeling of self-respect, it
+    can only do him good to travel alone. That is the English way,
+    you know, and always succeeds."</p>
+
+    <p>"Not always, and besides, we are not English. It is not
+    'succeeding,' as you call it, in Marcello's case. He will not
+    live long, if you let him lead such a life."</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, he is stronger than he looks! He is no more threatened
+    with consumption than I am, and a boy who can live through what
+    happened to him two years ago can live through anything."</p>
+
+    <p>Not a muscle of his face quivered as he looked quietly into
+    the Contessa's eyes. He was quite sure that she did not suspect
+    him of having been in any way concerned in Marcello's temporary
+    disappearance.</p>
+
+    <p>"Suppose him to be as strong as the strongest," Maddalena
+    answered. "Put aside the question of his health. There is
+    something else that seems to me quite as important."</p>
+
+    <p>"The moral side?" Corbario smiled gravely. "My dear lady,
+    you and I know the world, don't we? We do not expect young men
+    to be saints!"</p>
+
+    <p>Maddalena, who had not always been a saint, returned his
+    look coldly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Let us leave the saints out of the discussion," she said,
+    "unless we speak of Marcello's mother. She was one, if any one
+    ever was. I believe you loved her, and I know that I did, and I
+    do still, for she is very real to me, even now. Don't you owe
+    something to her memory? Don't you know how she would have felt
+    if she could have met her son the other night, as I met him,
+    looking as he looked? Don't you know that it would have hurt
+    her as nothing else could? Think a moment!"</p>
+
+    <p>She paused, waiting for his answer and watching his
+    impenetrable face, that did not change even when he laughed,
+    that could not change, she thought; but she had not seen him by
+    Marcello's bedside at the hospital, when the mask had been gone
+    for a few seconds. It was there now, in all its calm
+    stillness.</p>
+
+    <p>"You may be right," he answered, almost meekly, after a
+    little pause. "I had not looked at it in that light. You see, I
+    am not a very sensitive man, and I was brought up rather
+    roughly. My dear wife went to the other extreme, of course. No
+    one could really be what she wished to make Marcello. He felt
+    that himself, though I honestly did all I could to make him act
+    according to his mother's wishes. But now that she is
+    gone&mdash;" he broke off, and was silent a moment. "You may be
+    right," he repeated, shaking his head thoughtfully. "You are a
+    very good woman, and you ought to know."</p>
+
+    <p>She leaned back in her chair, and looked at him in silence,
+    wondering whether she was not perhaps doing him a great
+    injustice; yet his voice rang false to her ear, and the old
+    conviction that he had never loved his wife came back with
+    increased force and with the certainty that he had been playing
+    a part for years without once breaking down.</p>
+
+    <p>"I will join Marcello, and see what I can do," he said.</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you know where he is?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, yes! He keeps me informed of his movements; he is very
+    good about writing. You know how fond of each other we are,
+    too, and I am sure he will be glad to see me. He is back in
+    Italy by this time. He was going to Siena. We were to have met
+    in Rome in about a month, to go down to San Domenico together,
+    but I will join him at once."</p>
+
+    <p>"If you find that&mdash;that young person with him, what
+    shall you do?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Send her about her business, of course," answered Folco
+    promptly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Suppose that she will not go, what then?"</p>
+
+    <p>"It can only be a question of money, my dear lady. Leave
+    that to me. Marcello is not the first young fellow who has been
+    in a scrape!"</p>
+
+    <p>Still Maddalena did not trust him, and she merely nodded
+    with an air of doubt.</p>
+
+    <p>"Shall I not see Aurora?" he asked suddenly.</p>
+
+    <p>"She is out," answered the Contessa. "I will tell her that
+    you asked after her."</p>
+
+    <p>"Is she as beautiful as ever?" inquired Folco.</p>
+
+    <p>"She is a very pretty girl."</p>
+
+    <p>"She is beautiful," Folco said, with conviction. "I have
+    never seen such a beautiful girl as she was, even when she was
+    not quite grown up. No one ever had such hair and such eyes,
+    and such a complexion!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Dear me!" exclaimed Maddalena with a little surprise. "I
+    had no idea that you thought her so good-looking!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I always did. As for Marcello, we used to think he would
+    never have eyes for any one else."</p>
+
+    <p>"Young people who have known each other well as children
+    rarely fall in love when they grow up," answered Maddalena.</p>
+
+    <p>"So much the better," Folco said. "Aurora and Marcello are
+    not at all suited to one another."</p>
+
+    <p>"That is true," answered the Contessa.</p>
+
+    <p>"And besides, he is much too young for her. They are nearly
+    of the same age."</p>
+
+    <p>"I never thought of their marrying," replied Maddalena, with
+    a little emphasis, "and I should certainly not choose this time
+    to think of it!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I fancy few men can look at your daughter without wishing
+    that they might marry her, my dear lady," said Corbario, rising
+    to go away. "Pray present my homage to her, and tell her how
+    very sorry I am not to have seen her."</p>
+
+    <p>He smiled as if he were only half in earnest, and he took
+    his leave. He was scarcely gone when Aurora entered the
+    sitting-room by another door.</p>
+
+    <p>"Was it Marcello?" she asked quietly enough, though her
+    voice sounded a little dull.</p>
+
+    <p>"No, dear," answered her mother. "It was Folco Corbario. I
+    wrote to him some days ago and he came to see me. Marcello has
+    left Paris. I did not know you had come home."</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora sat down rather wearily, pulled out her hatpins, and
+    laid her hat on her knee. Then she slowly turned it round and
+    round, examining every inch of it with profound attention, as
+    women do. They see things in hats which we do not.</p>
+
+    <p>"Mamma&mdash;" Aurora got no further, and went on turning
+    the hat round.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes? What were you going to say?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Nothing&mdash;I have forgotten." The hat revolved steadily.
+    "Are we going to stay here long?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No. Paris is too expensive. When we have got the few things
+    we want we will go back to Italy&mdash;next week, I should
+    think."</p>
+
+    <p>"I wish we were rich," observed Aurora.</p>
+
+    <p>"I never heard you say that before," answered her mother.
+    "But after all, wishing does no harm, and I am silly enough to
+    wish we were rich too."</p>
+
+    <p>"If I married Marcello, I should be very rich," said Aurora,
+    ceasing to turn the hat, but still contemplating it
+    critically.</p>
+
+    <p>Maddalena looked at her daughter in some surprise. The
+    girl's face was quite grave.</p>
+
+    <p>"You had better think of getting rich in some other way, my
+    dear," said the Contessa presently, with an asperity that did
+    not escape Aurora, but produced no impression on her.</p>
+
+    <p>"I was only supposing," she said. "But if it comes to that,
+    it would be much better for him to marry me than that
+    good-looking peasant girl he has picked up."</p>
+
+    <p>The Contessa sat up straight and stared at her in
+    astonishment. There was a coolness in the speech that
+    positively horrified her.</p>
+
+    <p>"My dear child!" she cried. "What in the world are you
+    talking about?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Regina," answered Aurora, looking up, and throwing the hat
+    upon the table. "I am talking about Marcello's Regina. Did you
+    suppose I had never heard of her, and that I did not guess that
+    it was she, the other night? I had a good look at her. I hate
+    her, but she is handsome. You cannot deny that."</p>
+
+    <p>"I do not deny it, I'm sure!" The Contessa hardly knew what
+    to say.</p>
+
+    <p>"Very well. Would it not be much better for Marcello if he
+    married me than if he let Regina marry him, as she will!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I&mdash;possibly&mdash;you put it so strangely! But I am
+    sure Marcello will never think of marrying her."</p>
+
+    <p>"Then why does he go about with her, and what is it all
+    for?" Aurora gazed innocently at her mother, waiting for an
+    answer which did not come. "Besides," she added, "the girl will
+    marry him, of course."</p>
+
+    <p>"Perhaps. I daresay you are right, and after all, she may be
+    in love with him. Why should you care, child?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Because he used to be my best friend," Aurora answered
+    demurely. "Is it wrong to take an interest in one's friends?
+    And I still think of him as my friend, though I have never had
+    a chance to speak to him since that day by the Roman shore,
+    when he went off in a rage because I laughed at him. I wonder
+    whether he has forgotten that! They say he lost his memory
+    during his illness."</p>
+
+    <p>"What a strange girl you are! You have hardly ever spoken of
+    him in all this time, and now"&mdash;the Contessa laughed as if
+    she thought the idea absurd&mdash;"and now you talk of marrying
+    him!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I have seen Regina," Aurora replied, as if that explained
+    everything.</p>
+
+    <p>The Contessa returned no answer, and she was rather
+    unusually silent and preoccupied during the rest of that day.
+    She was reflecting that if Aurora had not chanced to meet
+    Marcello just when Regina was with him the girl might never
+    have thought of him again, except with a half-amused
+    recollection of the little romantic tenderness she had once
+    felt for the friend and playfellow of her childhood. Maddalena
+    was a wise woman now, and did not underestimate the influence
+    of little things when great ones were not far off. That is a
+    very important part of worldly wisdom, which is the science of
+    estimating chances in a game of which love, hate, marriage,
+    fortune, and social life and death may be the stakes.</p>
+
+    <p>Her impulse was to prevent Aurora from seeing Marcello for a
+    long time, for the thought of a possible marriage had never
+    attracted her, and since the appearance of Regina on the scene
+    every instinct of her nature was against it. Her pride revolted
+    at the idea that her daughter might be the rival of a peasant
+    girl, quite as much as at the possibility of its being said
+    that she had captured her old friend's son for the sake of his
+    money. But she remembered her own younger years and she judged
+    Aurora by herself. There had been more in that little romantic
+    tenderness for Marcello than any one had guessed, much of it
+    had remained, it had perhaps grown instead of dying out, and
+    the sight of Regina had awakened it to something much stronger
+    than a girlish fancy.</p>
+
+    <p>Maddalena remembered little incidents now, of which the
+    importance had escaped her the more easily because the loss of
+    her dearest friend had made her dull and listless at the time.
+    Aurora had scarcely asked about Marcello during the weeks that
+    followed his disappearance, but she had often looked pale and
+    almost ill just then. She had been better after the news had
+    come that he had been found, though she had barely said that
+    she was glad to hear of him. Then she had grown more restless
+    than she used to be, and there had sometimes been a dash of
+    hardness in the things she said; and her mother was now quite
+    sure that Aurora had intentionally avoided all mention of
+    Marcello. To-day, she had suddenly made that rather startling
+    remark about marrying him. All this proved clearly enough that
+    he had been continually in her thoughts. When very young people
+    take unusual pains to ignore a certain subject, and then
+    unexpectedly blurt out some very rough observation about it,
+    the chances are that they have been thinking of nothing else
+    for a long time.</p>
+
+    <p>A good deal had happened on that afternoon, for what
+    Corbario had said about Aurora, half playfully and half in
+    earnest, had left Maddalena under the impression that he had
+    been trying a little experiment on his own account, to feel his
+    way. Aurora had more than once said in the preceding years that
+    she did not like his eyes and a certain way he had of looking
+    at her. He had admired her, even then, and now that he was a
+    widower it was not at all unlikely that he should think of
+    marrying her. He was not much more than thirty years old, and
+    he had a singularly youthful face. There was no objection on
+    the score of his age. He was rich, at least for his life-time.
+    He had always been called a model husband while his wife had
+    been alive, and was said to have behaved with propriety since.
+    Maddalena tried to look at the matter coolly and
+    dispassionately, as if she did not instinctively dislike him.
+    Why should he not wish to marry Aurora? No one of the
+    Contessa's acquaintances would be at all surprised if he did,
+    and most people would say that it was a very good match, and
+    that Aurora was fortunate to get such a husband.</p>
+
+    <p>This was precisely what Folco thought; and as it was his
+    nature to think slowly and act quickly, it is not impossible
+    that he may have revolved the plan in his mind for a year or
+    two while Aurora was growing up. The final decision had perhaps
+    been reached on that evening down by the Roman shore, when
+    Professor Kalmon had held up to his eyes the sure means of
+    taking the first step towards its accomplishment; and it had
+    been before him late on the same night when he had stood still
+    in the verandah holding the precious and terrible little tablet
+    in the hollow of his hand; and the next morning when he had
+    suddenly seen Marcello close before him, unconscious of his
+    presence and defenceless. He had run a great risk in vain that
+    day, since Marcello was still alive, a risk more awful than he
+    cared to remember now; but it had been safely passed, and he
+    must never do anything so dangerous again. There was a far
+    safer and surer way of gaining his end than clumsy murder, and
+    from what the Contessa had told him of the impression she had
+    received the accomplishment was not far off. She had said that
+    Marcello had looked half dead; his delicate constitution could
+    not bear such a life much longer, and he would soon be dead in
+    earnest.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello did not write as regularly as Folco pretended, but
+    the latter had trustworthy and regular news of him from some
+    one else. Twice a week, wherever he might be, a square envelope
+    came by the post addressed in a rather cramped feminine hand,
+    the almost unmistakable writing of a woman who had seen better
+    days and had been put to many shifts in order to keep up some
+    sort of outward respectability. The information conveyed was
+    tolerably well expressed, in grammatical Italian; the only
+    names contained in the letters were those of towns, and hotels,
+    and the like, and Marcello was invariably spoken of as "our
+    dear patient," and Regina as "that admirable woman" or "that
+    ideal companion." The writer usually said that the dear patient
+    seemed less strong than a month ago, or a week ago, and
+    expressed a fear that he was slowly losing ground. Sometimes he
+    was better, and the news was accompanied by a conventional word
+    or two of satisfaction. Again, there would be a detailed
+    account of his doings, showing that he had slept uncommonly
+    little and had no appetite, and mentioning with a show of
+    regret the sad fact that he lived principally on cigarettes,
+    black coffee, and dry champagne. The ideal companion seemed to
+    be always perfectly well, showed no tendency to be extravagant,
+    and gave proof of the most constant devotion. The writer always
+    concluded by promising that Corbario's instructions with regard
+    to the dear patient should be faithfully carried out in future
+    as they had been in the past.</p>
+
+    <p>This was very reassuring, and Folco often congratulated
+    himself on the wisdom he had shown in the selection of Settimia
+    as a maid for Regina. The woman not only did what was required
+    of her with the utmost exactitude; she took an evident pleasure
+    in her work, and looked forward to the fatal result at no very
+    distant time with all the satisfaction which Corbario could
+    desire. So far everything had gone smoothly.</p>
+    <hr />
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XI'></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+    <p>It was high summer again, and the Roman shore was feverish.
+    In the hot afternoon Ercole had tramped along the shore with
+    his dog at his heels as far as Torre San Lorenzo to have a chat
+    with the watchman. They sat in the shade of the tower, smoking
+    little red clay pipes with long wooden stems. The chickens
+    walked about slowly, evidently oppressed by the heat and by a
+    general lack of interest in life, since not a single grain of
+    maize from the morning feed remained to be discovered on the
+    disused brick threshing-floor or in the sand that surrounded
+    it. From some dark recess came the occasional grunt of the pig,
+    attending in solitude to the business of getting fat before
+    October. Now and then the watchman's wife moved a chair in the
+    lower room of the tower, or made a little clatter with some
+    kitchen utensils, and the sounds came out to the solitude
+    sharply and distinctly.</p>
+
+    <p>There had been a flat calm for several days. Forty yards
+    below the tower the sea lay along the sandy beach like a strip
+    of glistening white glass, beyond which was a broader band of
+    greenish blue that did not glitter; and beyond that, the oily
+    water stretched out to westward in an unending expanse of
+    neutral tints, arabesqued with current streaks and struck right
+    across by the dazzling dirty-white blaze of the August sun.</p>
+
+    <p>Swarms of flies chased each other where the two men sat,
+    settled on their backs and dusty black hats, tried to settle on
+    their faces and were brushed away, crawled on the ground, on
+    the walls, even on the chickens, and on the rough coat of Nino,
+    the dog. He followed the motions of those he saw before him
+    with one bloodshot eye; the other seemed to be fast asleep.</p>
+
+    <p>From time to time the men exchanged a few words. Ercole had
+    apparently come over to enjoy the novelty of seeing a human
+    being, and Padre Francesco, the watchman, was glad to talk with
+    some one besides his wife. He enjoyed the title of "Padre,"
+    because he had once been master of a small martingane that
+    traded between Civit&agrave; Vecchia and the south. In still
+    earlier days he had been in deep water and had been boatswain
+    of a square-rigger, yet there was nothing about his appearance
+    now to show that he had been a sailor man. It was ten years
+    since he had left the sea, and he had turned into a
+    peasant.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole had told Padre Francesco that the second hay crop had
+    been half spoilt by thunderstorms; also that the price of wine
+    in Ardea had gone up, while the price of polenta had remained
+    the same; also that a wild boar had broken out of the king's
+    preserves near Nettuno and was supposed to be wandering in the
+    brush not far away; also that if Ercole and Nino found him they
+    would kill him, and that there would be a feast. Padre
+    Francesco observed that his wife understood the cooking of wild
+    boar with vinegar, sugar, pine-nuts, and sweet herbs, and that
+    he himself knew how to salt the hams; he had also salted the
+    flesh of porpoises at sea, more than once, and had eaten
+    pickled dog-fish, which he considered to be nothing but young
+    sharks, in the West Indies. This did not interest Ercole much,
+    as he had heard it before, and he smoked in silence for a
+    while. So did Padre Francesco; and both brushed away the flies.
+    Nino rolled one bloodshot eye at his master, every time the
+    latter moved; and it grew excessively hot, and the air smelt of
+    chickens, rotten seaweed, and the pig. Yet both men were
+    enjoying themselves after a fashion, though Ercole distrusted
+    Padre Francesco, as he distrusted all human beings, and Padre
+    Francesco looked upon Ercole as a person having no knowledge of
+    the world, because he had never eaten pickled dog-fish in the
+    West Indies.</p>
+
+    <p>After a time, Padre Francesco remembered a piece of news
+    which he had not yet told, cleared his throat, stirred the
+    contents of his pipe with the point of a dangerous-looking
+    knife, and looked at his companion for a full minute.</p>
+
+    <p>"Speak," said Ercole, who understood these premonitory
+    signs.</p>
+
+    <p>"There has been one here who asked after you," Padre
+    Francesco began.</p>
+
+    <p>"What species of Christian?" inquired Ercole.</p>
+
+    <p>"He was at the cottage when the blessed soul of the Signora
+    departed, or just before that. It is a big gentleman with a
+    brown beard and bright eyes. He looks for things in the sand
+    and in the bushes and amongst the seaweed. Who knows what he
+    looks for? Perhaps he looks for gold."</p>
+
+    <p>"Or the souls of his dead," suggested Ercole with fine
+    irony. "But I know this Signore who was at the cottage, with
+    the brown beard and the bright eyes. He sometimes came to shoot
+    quail. He also killed some. He is a professor of wisdom."</p>
+
+    <p>"He asked if I knew you, but of course I said I did not. Why
+    should he ask? How could I know what he wanted of you. I said
+    that I had never heard of you."</p>
+
+    <p>"You did well. Those who have business with me know where to
+    find me. What else did he say?"</p>
+
+    <p>"He asked if I had seen the young gentleman this year, and
+    he told me that he had not seen him since the night before he
+    was lost. So then I knew that he was a gentleman of some kind,
+    since he had been at the cottage. I also asked if your masters
+    were never coming to the Roman shore again."</p>
+
+    <p>"What did he answer?" inquired Ercole, with an air of utter
+    indifference.</p>
+
+    <p>"He said an evil thing. He said that your young gentleman
+    had gone off to foreign countries with a pretty peasant from
+    Frascati, whose name was Regina; that it was she who had nursed
+    him when he was ill, in some inn, and that out of gratitude,
+    and because she was very pretty, he had given her much money,
+    and silk dresses and earrings. That is what he said."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole gazed down at Nino's bloodshot eye, which was turned
+    to him just then.</p>
+
+    <p>"A girl called Regina," Ercole grumbled, in a tone even
+    harsher than usual.</p>
+
+    <p>"That is what he said. Why should he tell me one thing for
+    another? He said that your young gentleman would perhaps come
+    back when he was tired of Regina. And he laughed. That is
+    all."</p>
+
+    <p>A low growl from Nino interrupted the conversation. It was
+    very low and long and then rose quickly and ended in a short
+    bark, as the dog gathered his powerful hindquarters suddenly
+    and raised himself, bristling all over and thrusting his sinewy
+    forepaws out before him. Then the growl began again, but Ercole
+    touched him lightly with the toe of his hob-nailed boot, and
+    the dog was instantly silent. Both men looked about, but no one
+    was to be seen.</p>
+
+    <p>"There is a boat on the beach," said Padre Francesco, who
+    had caught the faint soft sound of the keel running upon the
+    sand.</p>
+
+    <p>They both rose, Ercole picking up his gun as he did so;
+    Nino, seeing that his master was on the alert, slunk to his
+    heels without growling any more. A moment later a man's voice
+    was heard calling on the other side of the tower.</p>
+
+    <p>"Hi! Watchman of the tower! A favour! Watchman of the tower!
+    Hi!"</p>
+
+    <p>Padre Francesco turned the corner, followed by Ercole. A
+    sailor in scanty ragged clothes and the remains of a rush hat
+    was standing barefoot in the burning sand, with an earthen jug
+    in his hand. A battered boat, from which all traces of paint
+    had long since disappeared, was lying with her nose buried in
+    the sand, not moving in the oily water. Another man was in her,
+    very much like the first in looks.</p>
+
+    <p>On seeing Nino at Ercole's heels, the man who was ashore
+    drew back with an exclamation, as if he were going to run away,
+    but Ercole spoke in a reassuring tone.</p>
+
+    <p>"Be not afraid," he said. "This dog does not eat Christians.
+    He gets enough to eat at home. He is not a dog, he is a lamb,
+    and most affectionate."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is an evil beast," observed the sailor, looking at Nino.
+    "I am afraid."</p>
+
+    <p>"What do you desire?" inquired Padre Francesco politely. "Is
+    it water that you wish?"</p>
+
+    <p>"As a favour," answered the man, seeing that the dog did not
+    fly at him. "A little water to drink. We have been pulling all
+    day; it is hot, and we have drunk what we had."</p>
+
+    <p>"Come with me," said Padre Francesco. "Where is your
+    vessel?"</p>
+
+    <p>"At Fiumicino. The master sent us on an errand to Porto
+    d'Anzio last night and we are going back."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is a long pull," observed the watchman. "Tell the other
+    man to come ashore and rest in the shade. I also have been to
+    sea. The water is not very good here, but what there is you
+    shall have."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," said the man gratefully, and giving Nino a very
+    wide berth as he followed Padre Francesco. "We could have got
+    some water at the Incastro creek, but it would have been the
+    same as drinking the fever."</p>
+
+    <p>"May the Madonna never will that you drink of it," said
+    Padre Francesco, as they reached the shady side of the tower.
+    "I see that you know the Roman shore."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is our business," replied the man, taking off his ragged
+    rush hat, and rubbing his still more ragged blue cotton sleeve
+    over his wet forehead. "We are people of the sea, bringing wine
+    and lemons to Civit&agrave; Vecchia and taking charcoal back.
+    Evil befall this calm weather."</p>
+
+    <p>"And when it blows from the west-southwest we say, evil
+    befall this time of storm," said Padre Francesco, nodding
+    wisely. "Be seated in the shade. I will fetch water."</p>
+
+    <p>"And also let us drink here, so that we may take the jug
+    away full."</p>
+
+    <p>"You shall also drink here." The old watchman went into the
+    tower.</p>
+
+    <p>"The last time I passed this way, it was in a west-southwest
+    gale," said the man, addressing Ercole, who had sat down in his
+    old place with his dog at his feet.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is an evil shore," Ercole answered. "Many vessels have
+    been lost here."</p>
+
+    <p>"We were saved by a miracle that time," said the sailor, who
+    seemed inclined to talk. "I was with a brigantine with wine for
+    Marseilles. That vessel was like a rock in the sea, she would
+    not move with less than seven points of the wind in fair
+    weather. We afterwards went to Rio Janeiro, and it was two
+    years before we got back."</p>
+
+    <p>"So it was two years ago that you passed?" inquired
+    Ercole.</p>
+
+    <p>"Two years ago May or the beginning of June. She was so low
+    in the water that she would have swamped if we had tried to
+    carry on sail, and with the sail she could carry she could make
+    no headway; so there we were, hove to under lower topsail and
+    balance-reefed mainsail and storm-jib, with a lee shore less
+    than a mile away. We recommended ourselves to the saints and
+    the souls of purgatory, and our captain said to us, 'My fine
+    sons, unless the wind shifts in half an hour we must run her
+    ashore and save the cargo!' That is what he said. But I said
+    that I knew this Roman shore from a boy, and that sometimes
+    there was no bar at the mouth of the Incastro, so that a vessel
+    might just slip into the pool where the reeds grow. You
+    certainly know the place."</p>
+
+    <p>"I know it well," said Ercole.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. So I pointed out the spot to our captain, standing
+    beside him, and he took his glasses and looked to see whether
+    the sea was breaking on the bar."</p>
+
+    <p>"The bar has not been open since I came here," said Padre
+    Francesco, returning with water. "And that is ten years."</p>
+
+    <p>The men drank eagerly, one after the other, and there was
+    silence. The one who had been speaking wiped his mouth with the
+    back of his hand and drew a long breath of satisfaction.</p>
+
+    <p>"No, I daresay not," he said at last. "The captain looked
+    all along the shore for a better place. Then he saw a bad thing
+    with his glasses; for they were fine glasses, and though he was
+    old, he had good sight. And I stood beside him, and he told me
+    what he saw while he was looking."</p>
+
+    <p>"What did he see?" asked Ercole, watching the man.</p>
+
+    <p>"What did he see? I tell you it was a bad sight! Health to
+    us all, as many as are here, he saw one man kill another and
+    drag his body into some bushes."</p>
+
+    <p>"Apoplexy!" observed Ercole, glancing at Padre Francesco.
+    "Are there brigands here?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I tell you what the captain said. 'There are two men,' said
+    he, 'and they are like gentlemen by their dress.' 'They shoot
+    quail,' said I, knowing the shore. 'They have no guns,' said
+    he. Then he cried out, keeping his glasses to his eyes and
+    steadying himself by the weather vang. 'God be blessed,' he
+    cried&mdash;for he never said an evil word, that
+    captain,&mdash;'one of those gentlemen has struck the other on
+    the back of the head and killed him! And now he drags his body
+    away towards the bushes.' And he saw nothing more, but he
+    showed me the place, where there is a gap in the high bank.
+    Afterwards he said he thought he had seen a woman too, and that
+    it must have been an affair of jealousy."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole and Padre Francesco looked at each other in silence
+    for a moment.</p>
+
+    <p>"Did you hear of no murder at that time?" asked the sailor,
+    taking up the earthen jar full of water.</p>
+
+    <p>"We heard nothing," said Ercole promptly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Nothing," echoed Padre Francesco. "The captain was
+    dreaming. He saw trees moving in the wind."</p>
+
+    <p>"Don Antonino had good eyes," answered the sailor
+    incredulously.</p>
+
+    <p>"What was the name of your vessel?" asked Padre
+    Francesco.</p>
+
+    <p>"The <i>Papa</i>" replied the sailor without a smile. "She
+    was called <i>Papa</i>."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole stared at him a moment and then laughed; and he
+    laughed so rarely that it distorted the yellow parchment of his
+    face as if it must crack it. The sound of his laughter was
+    something like the creaking of a cart imitated by a
+    ventriloquist. But Padre Francesco knit his bushy brows, for he
+    thought the sailor was making game of him, who had been
+    boatswain on a square-rigger.</p>
+
+    <p>"I went to sea for thirty years," he said, "but I never
+    heard of a vessel called the <i>Papa</i>. You have said a silly
+    thing. I have given you water to drink, and filled your jar. It
+    is not courtesy to jest at men older than you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Excuse me," answered the man politely. "May it never be
+    that I should jest at such a respectable man as you seem to be;
+    and, moreover, you have filled the jar with your own hands. The
+    brigantine was called as I say. And if you wish to know why, I
+    will tell you. She was built by two rich brothers of Torre
+    Annunziata, who wished much good to their papa when he was old
+    and no longer went to sea. Therefore, to honour him, they
+    called the vessel the <i>Papa</i>. This is the truth."</p>
+
+    <p>Lest this should seem extravagantly unlikely to the readers
+    of this tale, I shall interrupt the conversation to say that I
+    knew the <i>Papa</i> well, that "she" was built and christened
+    as the sailor said, and that her name still stood on the
+    register of Italian shipping a few years ago. She was not a
+    brigantine, however, but a larger vessel, and she was
+    bark-rigged; and she was ultimately lost in port, during a
+    hurricane.</p>
+
+    <p>"We have learned something to-day," observed Ercole, when
+    the man had finished speaking.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is true," the man said. "And the name of the captain was
+    Don Antonino Maresca. He was of Vico."</p>
+
+    <p>"Where is Vico?" inquired Ercole, idly scratching his dog's
+    back with the stock of his gun.</p>
+
+    <p>"Near Castellamare," answered Padre Francesco, willing to
+    show his knowledge.</p>
+
+    <p>"One sees that you are a man of the sea," said the sailor,
+    meaning to please him. "And so we thank you, and we go."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole and the old watchman saw the two ragged sailors put
+    off in the battered boat and pull away over the bar; then they
+    went back to the shade of the tower and sat down again and
+    refilled their pipes, and were silent for a long time. Padre
+    Francesco's old wife, who had not shown herself yet, came and
+    stood in the doorway, nodded to Ercole, fanned herself with her
+    apron, counted the chickens in sight, and observed that the
+    weather was hot. Then she went in again.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is easy to remember the name of that ship," said Ercole
+    at last, without glancing at his companion.</p>
+
+    <p>"And the master was Antonino Maresca of Vico," said Padre
+    Francesco.</p>
+
+    <p>"But the truth is that it is none of our business," said
+    Ercole.</p>
+
+    <p>"The captain was mistaken," said Padre Francesco.</p>
+
+    <p>"He saw trees moving in the wind," said Ercole.</p>
+
+    <p>Then they looked at each other and nodded.</p>
+
+    <p>"Perhaps the Professor was mistaken about the girl, and the
+    silk dress and the gold earrings," suggested Padre Francesco,
+    turning his eyes away.</p>
+
+    <p>"He was certainly mistaken," asserted Ercole, watching him
+    closely. "And moreover it is none of our business."</p>
+
+    <p>"None whatever."</p>
+
+    <p>They talked of other things, making remarks at longer and
+    longer intervals, till the sun sank near the oily sea, and
+    Ercole took his departure, much wiser in regard to Marcello's
+    disappearance than when he had come. He followed the long beach
+    for an hour till he came to the gap in the bank. There he
+    stopped, and proceeded to examine the place carefully, going
+    well inside it, and then turning to ascertain exactly where
+    Marcello must have been when he was struck, since at that
+    moment he must have been distinctly visible from the
+    brigantine. The gap was so narrow that it was not hard to fix
+    upon the spot where the deed had been done, especially as the
+    captain had seen Marcello dragged quickly away towards the
+    bushes. Every word of the sailor's story was stamped with
+    truth; and so it came about that when Corbario believed himself
+    at last quite safe, a man in his own pay suddenly discovered
+    the whole truth about the attempted crime, even to the name of
+    the principal witness.</p>
+
+    <p>It was only in the quail season, when there were poachers
+    about, during April, May, and early June, that Ercole lived in
+    his straw hut, a little way from the cottage. He spent the rest
+    of the year in a small stone house that stood on a knoll in
+    sight of Ardea, high enough to be tolerably safe from the
+    deadly Campagna fever. Every other day an old woman from the
+    village brought him a copper conca full of water; once a month
+    she came and washed for him. When he needed supplies he went to
+    Ardea for them himself. His dwelling was of elementary
+    simplicity, consisting of two rooms, one above the other, with
+    grated windows and heavy shutters. In the lower one he cooked
+    and ate, in the upper chamber he slept and kept his few
+    belongings, which included a plentiful supply of ammunition,
+    his Sunday clothes, his linen, and his papers. The latter
+    consisted of a copy of his certificate of birth, his old
+    military pass-book, showing that he had served his time in an
+    infantry regiment, had been called in for six weeks' drill in
+    the reserve, had been a number of years in the second reserve,
+    and had finally been discharged from all military service. This
+    booklet serves an Italian throughout life as a certificate of
+    identity, and is necessary in order to obtain a passport to
+    leave the country. Ercole kept his, with two or three other
+    yellow papers, tied up in an old red cotton handkerchief in the
+    bottom of the chest that held his clothes.</p>
+
+    <p>When he got home after his visit to Padre Francesco he took
+    the package out, untied the handkerchief, and looked through
+    all the papers, one by one, sitting by the grated window in the
+    twilight. He could read, and had once been able to write more
+    or less intelligibly, and he knew by heart the contents of the
+    paper he wanted, though he had not unfolded it for years. He
+    now read it carefully, and held it some time open in his hand
+    before he put it back with the rest. He held it so long, while
+    he looked out of his grated window, that at last he could see
+    the little lights twinkling here and there in the windows of
+    Ardea, and it was almost dark in the room. Nino grew restless,
+    and laid his grim head on Ercole's knee, and his bloodshot eyes
+    began to glow in the dark like coals. Then Ercole moved at
+    last.</p>
+
+    <p>"Ugly animal, do you wish me well?" he asked, rubbing the
+    dog's head with his knotty hand. "If you are good, you shall go
+    on a journey with me."</p>
+
+    <p>Nino's body moved in a way which showed that he would have
+    wagged his tail if he had possessed one, and he uttered a
+    strange gurgling growl of satisfaction.</p>
+
+    <p>The next morning, the old woman came before sunrise with
+    water.</p>
+
+    <p>"You need not bring any more, till I let you know," Ercole
+    said. "I am going away on business for a few days, and I shall
+    shut up the house."</p>
+
+    <p>"For anything that is in it, you might leave the door open,"
+    grumbled the hag, who was of a sour temper. "Give me my pay
+    before you go."</p>
+
+    <p>"You fear that I am going to America," retorted Ercole,
+    producing an old sheepskin purse from the inside of his
+    waistcoat. "Here is your money. Four trips, four pennies. Count
+    them and go in peace."</p>
+
+    <p>He gave her the coppers, and she carefully tied them up in a
+    corner of her ragged kerchief.</p>
+
+    <p>"And the bread?" she asked anxiously.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole went to the blackened cupboard, took out the remains
+    of a stale loaf, drew a big clasp-knife from his pocket, and
+    cut off a moderate slice.</p>
+
+    <p>"Eat," he said, as he gave it to her.</p>
+
+    <p>She went away grumbling, and Nino growled after her,
+    standing on the door-step. When she was a hundred yards from
+    the house, he lay down with his jaw on his forepaws and
+    continued to watch her till she was out of sight; then he gave
+    a snort of satisfaction and immediately went to sleep.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole left his home after sunset that evening. He locked
+    both the upper and lower doors and immediately dropped the huge
+    key into a crevice in the stone steps, from which one might
+    have supposed that it would not be easy to recover it; but he
+    doubtless knew what he was about. He might have had one of the
+    little horses from the farm if he had wanted one, for he was a
+    privileged person, but he preferred to walk. To a man of his
+    wiry frame thirty or forty miles on foot were nothing, and he
+    could easily have covered the distance in a night; but he was
+    not going so far, by any means, and a horse would only have
+    been in the way. He carried his gun, from force of habit, and
+    he had his gun-licence in his pocket, with his other papers,
+    tied up in the old red handkerchief. There was all that was
+    left of the stale loaf, with the remains of some cheese, in a
+    canvas bag, he had slung over his shoulder, and he had plenty
+    of money; for his wages were good, and he never spent more than
+    half of what he received, merely because he had no wants, and
+    no friends.</p>
+
+    <p>Under the starlight he walked at a steady pace by familiar
+    paths and byways, so as to avoid the village and strike the
+    highroad at some distance beyond it. Nino followed close at his
+    heels and perfectly silent, and the pair might have been
+    dangerous to any one inclined to quarrel with them.</p>
+
+    <p>When Ercole was in sight of Porta San Sebastiano it was past
+    midnight, and he stood still to fill and light his little clay
+    pipe. Then he went on; but instead of entering the gate he took
+    the road to the right again, along the Via Appia Nuova. Any one
+    might have supposed that he would have struck across to that
+    highroad some time before reaching the city, but it was very
+    long since Ercole had gone in that direction; many new roads
+    had been opened and some old ones had been closed, and he was
+    simply afraid of losing his way in a part of the Campagna no
+    longer familiar to him.</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="Ercole"></a>
+<img src="images/Illus206_Ercole.jpg" width="400" height="586" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">"ERCOLE LEFT HIS HOME AFTER SUNSET THAT EVENING"</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>A short distance from the gate, where the inn stands that
+    goes by the name of Baldinotti, he took the turning to the
+    left, which is the Frascati road; and after that he walked more
+    slowly, often stopping and peering into the gloom to right and
+    left, as if he were trying to recognise objects in the
+    Campagna.</p>
+    <hr />
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XII'></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+    <p>Corbario was not pleased with the account given by Settimia
+    in the letter she wrote him after reaching Pontresina with
+    Regina and Marcello, who had chosen the Engadine as the coolest
+    place he could think of in which to spend the hot months, and
+    had preferred Pontresina to Saint Moritz as being quieter and
+    less fashionable. Settimia wrote that the dear patient had
+    looked better the very day after arriving; that the admirable
+    companion was making him drink milk and go to bed at ten
+    o'clock; that the two spent most of the day in the pine-woods,
+    and that Marcello already talked of an excursion up the glacier
+    and of climbing some of the smaller peaks. If the improvement
+    continued, Settimia wrote, it was extremely likely that the
+    dear patient would soon be better than he had ever been in his
+    life.</p>
+
+    <p>Folco destroyed the letter, lit a cigarette, and thought the
+    matter over. He had deemed it wise to pretend assent when the
+    Contessa had urged him to join Marcello at once, but he had not
+    had the least intention of doing so, and had come back to Paris
+    as soon as he was sure that the Contessa was gone. But he had
+    made a mistake in his calculations. He had counted on Regina
+    for the love of excitement, display, and inane dissipation
+    which women in her position very often develop when they find
+    that a man will give them anything they like; and he had
+    counted very little on her love for Marcello. Folco was still
+    young enough to fall into one of the most common errors of
+    youth, which is to believe most people worse than they are.
+    Villains, as they grow older, learn that unselfish devotion is
+    more common than they had thought, and that many persons
+    habitually speak the truth, for conscience' sake; finding this
+    out, villains have been known to turn into good men in their
+    riper years, and have sometimes been almost saints in their old
+    age. Corbario smoked his cigarette and mentally registered his
+    mistake, and it is to be feared that the humiliation he felt at
+    having made it was much more painful than the recollection of
+    having dropped one deadly tablet into a little bottle that
+    contained many harmless ones. He compared it in his mind to the
+    keen disappointment he had felt when he had gone down to hide
+    Marcello's body, and had discovered that he had failed to kill
+    him. It is true that what he had felt then had been accompanied
+    by the most awful terror he could imagine, but he distinguished
+    clearly between the one sensation and the other. There was
+    nothing to fear now; he had simply lost time, but that was bad
+    enough, since it was due to his own stupidity.</p>
+
+    <p>He thought over the situation carefully and considered how
+    much it would be wise to risk. Another year of the life
+    Marcello had been leading in Paris would have killed him to a
+    certainty; perhaps six months would have done it. But a summer
+    spent at Pontresina, living as it was clear that Regina meant
+    him to live, would give the boy strength enough to last much
+    longer, and might perhaps bring him out of all danger.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario considered what might be done, went over many plans
+    in his mind, compared many schemes, for the execution of some
+    of which he might have paid dearly; and in the end he was
+    dissatisfied with all, and began over again. Still he reached
+    no conclusion, and he attributed the fault to his own dulness,
+    and his dulness to the life he had been leading of late, which
+    was very much that which he wished Marcello to lead. But he had
+    always trusted his nerves, his ingenuity, and his constitution;
+    if one of the three were to fail him, now that he was rich, it
+    was better that it should be his ingenuity.</p>
+
+    <p>He made up his mind to go to the Engadine and see for
+    himself how matters looked. He could stay at Saint Moritz, or
+    even Samaden, so as not to disturb Marcello's idyl, and
+    Marcello could come down alone to see him. He should probably
+    meet acquaintances, and would give them to understand that he
+    had come in order to get rid of Regina and save his stepson
+    from certain destruction. Society was very lenient to young men
+    as rich as Marcello, he reflected, but was inclined to lay all
+    the blame of their doings on their natural guardians. There was
+    no reason why Corbario should expose himself to such criticism,
+    and he was sure that the Contessa had only said what many
+    people clearly thought, namely, that he was allowing Marcello
+    far too much liberty. The world should see that he was doing
+    his duty by the boy.</p>
+
+    <p>He left Paris with regret, as he always did, after writing
+    to Marcello twenty-four hours beforehand. He wrote at the same
+    time to Settimia.</p>
+
+    <p>"Folco will be here to-morrow," Marcello said, as he and
+    Regina sat under the pine-trees beyond the stream, a little way
+    above the town.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina sat leaning against the trunk of a tree, and Marcello
+    lay on his side, resting on his elbow and looking up to her. He
+    saw her face change.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why should he come here?" she asked. "We are so happy!"</p>
+
+    <p>"He will not disturb us," Marcello answered. "He will stop
+    at Saint Moritz. I shall go down to see him there. I am very
+    fond of him, you know, and we have not seen each other for at
+    least two months. I shall be very glad to see him."</p>
+
+    <p>The colour was sinking in Regina's face, and her eyelids
+    were almost closed.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are the master," she said quietly enough. "You will do
+    as you will."</p>
+
+    <p>He was surprised, and he felt a little resentment at her
+    tone. He liked her better when she dominated him, as on that
+    night in Paris when she had made him promise to come away, and
+    had refused to let him drink more wine, and had sent him to bed
+    like a child. Now she spoke as her forefathers, serfs born to
+    the plough and bound to the soil, must have spoken to their
+    lords and owners. There was no ancient aristocratic blood in
+    his own veins; he was simply a middle-class Italian gentleman
+    who chanced to be counted with the higher class because he had
+    been born very rich, had been brought up by a lady, and had
+    been more or less well educated. That was all. It did not seem
+    natural to him that she should call him "the master" in that
+    tone. He knew that she was not his equal, but somehow it was a
+    little humiliating to have to own it, and he often wished that
+    she were. Often, not always; for he had never been sure that he
+    should have cared to make her his wife, had she been ever so
+    well born. He scarcely knew what he really wanted now, for he
+    had lost his hold on himself, and was content with mere
+    enjoyment from day to day. He could no longer imagine living
+    without her, and while he was conscious that the present state
+    of things could not last very long, he could not face the
+    problem of the future.</p>
+
+    <p>He did not answer at once, and she sat quite still, almost
+    closing her eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why should you be displeased because I am going to see
+    Folco?" he asked after a while.</p>
+
+    <p>"He comes to take you away from me," she answered, without
+    moving.</p>
+
+    <p>"That is absurd!" cried Marcello, annoyed by her tone.</p>
+
+    <p>"No. It is true. I know it."</p>
+
+    <p>"You are unreasonable. He is the best friend I have in the
+    world. Do you expect me to promise that I will never see him
+    again?"</p>
+
+    <p>"You are the master."</p>
+
+    <p>She repeated the words in the same dull tone, and her
+    expression did not change in the least. Marcello moved and sat
+    up opposite to her, clasping his hands round his knees. He was
+    very thin, but the colour was already coming back to his face,
+    and his eyes did not look tired.</p>
+
+    <p>"Listen to me," he said. "You must put this idea out of your
+    head. It was Folco who found the little house in Trastevere for
+    you. He arranged everything. It was he who got you Settimia. He
+    did everything to make you comfortable, and he has never
+    disturbed us once when we have been together. He never so much
+    as asked where I was going when I used to go down to see you
+    every afternoon. No friend could have done more."</p>
+
+    <p>"I know it," Regina answered; but still there was something
+    in her tone which he could not understand.</p>
+
+    <p>"Then why do you say that he means to separate us?"</p>
+
+    <p>Regina did not reply, but she opened her eyes and looked
+    into Marcello's long and lovingly. She knew something that he
+    did not know, and which had haunted her long. When Folco had
+    come to the bedside in the hospital, she had seen the abject
+    terror in his face, the paralysing fear in his attitude, the
+    trembling limbs and the cramped fingers. It had only lasted a
+    moment, but she could never forget it. A child would have
+    remembered how Folco looked then, and Regina knew that there
+    was a mystery there which she could not understand, but which
+    frightened her when she thought of it. Folco had not looked as
+    men do who see one they love called back from almost certain
+    death.</p>
+
+    <p>"What are you thinking?" Marcello asked, for her deep look
+    stirred his blood, and he forgot Folco and everything in the
+    world except the beautiful creature that sat there, within his
+    reach, in the lonely pine-woods.</p>
+
+    <p>She understood, and turned her eyes to the distance; and she
+    saw the quiet room in the hospital, the iron bedstead painted
+    white, the smooth pillow, Marcello's emaciated head, and
+    Corbario's face.</p>
+
+    <p>"I was thinking how you looked when you were ill," she
+    answered simply.</p>
+
+    <p>The words and the tone broke the soft little spell that had
+    been weaving itself out of her dark eyes. Marcello drew a
+    short, impatient breath and threw himself on his side again,
+    supporting his head on his hand and looking down at the brown
+    pine-needles.</p>
+
+    <p>"You do not know Folco," he said discontentedly. "I don't
+    know why you should dislike him."</p>
+
+    <p>"I will tell you something," Regina answered. "When you are
+    tired of me, you shall send me away. You shall throw me away
+    like an old coat."</p>
+
+    <p>"You are always saying that!" returned Marcello, displeased.
+    "You know very well that I shall never be tired of you. Why do
+    you say it?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Because I shall not complain. I shall not cry, and throw
+    myself on my knees, and say, 'For the love of heaven, take me
+    back!' I am not made like that. I shall go, without any noise,
+    and what must be will be. That is all. Because I want nothing
+    of you but love, I shall go when you have no more love. Why
+    should I ask you for what you have not? That would be like
+    asking charity of the poor. It would be foolish. But I shall
+    tell you something else."</p>
+
+    <p>"What?" asked Marcello, looking up to her face again, when
+    she had finished her long speech.</p>
+
+    <p>"If any one tries to make me go before you are tired of me,
+    it shall be an evil day for him. He shall wish that he had not
+    been born into this world."</p>
+
+    <p>"You need not fear," Marcello said. "No one shall come
+    between us."</p>
+
+    <p>"Well, I have spoken. It does not matter whether I fear
+    Signor Corbario or not, but if you like I will tell him what I
+    have told you, when he comes. In that way he will know."</p>
+
+    <p>She spoke quietly, and there was no murderous light in her
+    eyes, nor any dramatic gesture with the words; but she was a
+    little paler than before, and there was an odd fixedness in her
+    expression, and Marcello knew that she was deeply moved, by the
+    way she fell back into her primitive peasant's speech, not
+    ungrammatical, but oddly rough and forcible compared with the
+    language of educated society which she had now learned
+    tolerably well from him.</p>
+
+    <p>After that she was silent for a while, and then they talked
+    as usual, and the day went by as other days had gone.</p>
+
+    <p>On the next afternoon Folco Corbario reached Saint Moritz
+    and sent a note up to Marcello asking him to come down on the
+    following morning.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina was left alone for a few hours, and she went out with
+    the idea of taking a long walk by herself. It would be a relief
+    and almost a pleasure to walk ten miles in the clear air,
+    breathing the perfume of the pines and listening to the roar of
+    the torrent. Marcello could not walk far without being tired,
+    and she never thought of herself when he was with her; but when
+    she was alone a great longing sometimes came over her to feel
+    the weight of a conca full of water on her head, to roll up her
+    sleeves and scrub the floors, to carry burdens and work with
+    her hands all day long, as she had done ever since she was a
+    child, with the certainty of being tired and hungry and sleepy
+    afterwards. Her hands had grown smooth and white in a year, and
+    her feet were tender, and she had almost forgotten what bodily
+    weariness meant.</p>
+
+    <p>But she was alone this morning, and she was full of gloomy
+    presentiments. To stay indoors, or even to go and sit in the
+    accustomed place under the pine-trees, would be unbearable. She
+    felt quite sure that when Marcello came back he would be
+    changed, that his expression would be less frank and natural,
+    that he would avoid her eyes, and that by and by he would tell
+    her something that would hurt her very much. Folco had come to
+    take him away, she was quite sure, and it would be intolerable
+    to sit still and think of it.</p>
+
+    <p>She walked fast along the road that leads to the Rosegg
+    glacier, not even glancing at the few people she met, though
+    most of them stared at her, for almost every one in Pontresina
+    knew who she was. The reputation of a great beauty is soon
+    made, and Regina had been seen often enough in Paris alone with
+    Marcello in a box at the theatre, or dining with him and two or
+    three other young men at Ritz's or the Caf&eacute; Anglais, to
+    be an object of interest to the clever Parisian "chroniclers."
+    The papers had duly announced the fact that the beauty had
+    arrived at Pontresina, and the dwellers in the hotel were
+    delighted to catch a glimpse of her, while those at Saint
+    Moritz wished that she and Marcello had taken up their quarters
+    there instead of in the higher village. Old maids with shawls
+    and camp-stools glared at her round the edge of their parasols.
+    English girls looked at her in frank admiration, till they were
+    reproved by their mothers, who looked at her with furtive
+    interest. Young Englishmen pretended not to see her at all, as
+    they strode along with their pipes in their mouths; but they
+    had an odd habit of being about when she passed. An occasional
+    party of German students, who are the only real Bohemians left
+    to the world in these days of progress, went sentimentally mad
+    about her for twenty-four hours, and planned serenades in her
+    honour which did not come off. A fashionable Italian composer
+    dedicated a song to her, and Marcello asked him to dinner, for
+    which he was more envied by the summer colony than for his
+    undeniable talent. The Anglican clergyman declared that he
+    would preach a sermon against her wickedness, but the
+    hotel-keepers heard of his intention and unanimously requested
+    him to let her alone, which, he did, reluctantly yielding to
+    arguments which shall remain a secret. A certain Archduchess
+    who was at Saint Moritz and was curious to see her adopted the
+    simple plan of asking her to tea without knowing her, at which
+    Marcello was furious; a semi-imperial Russian personage
+    unblushingly scraped acquaintance with Marcello and was
+    extremely bland for a few days, in the hope of being introduced
+    to Regina. When he found that this was impossible, he went
+    away, not in the least disconcerted, and he was heard to say
+    that the girl "would go far."</p>
+
+    <p>Regina would have been blind if she had not been aware that
+    she attracted all this attention, and as she was probably not
+    intended by nature for a saint, she would have been pleased by
+    it if there had been room in her thoughts for any one but
+    Marcello&mdash;even for herself.</p>
+
+    <p>She walked far up the road, and after the first mile or two
+    she met no one. At that hour the people who made excursions
+    were already far away, and those who meant to do nothing stayed
+    nearer to Pontresina. She grew tired of the road after a time.
+    It led straight to the foot of the glacier, and she was not
+    attracted by snow and ice as northern people are; there was
+    something repellent to her in the thought of the bleakness and
+    cold, and the sunshine itself looked as hard as the distant
+    peaks on which it fell. But on the right there were rocky spurs
+    of the mountains, half covered with short trees and brilliant
+    with wild flowers that grew in little natural gardens here and
+    there, not far below the level of perpetual snow. She left the
+    road, and began to climb where there was no path. The air was
+    delicious with the scent of flowers and shrubs; there were
+    alp-roses everywhere, and purple gentian, and the little iva
+    blossom that has an aromatic smell, and on tiny moss ledges the
+    cold white stars of the edelweiss seemed to be keeping
+    themselves as far above reach as they could. But she climbed as
+    lightly as a savage woman, and picked them and sat down to look
+    at them in the sunshine. Just beyond where she rested, the rock
+    narrowed suddenly to a steep pass, within which were dark
+    shadows. People who do not attempt anything in the way of
+    ascending peaks often wander in that direction in search of
+    edelweiss, but Regina fancied that she was sure to be alone as
+    long as she pleased to stay.</p>
+
+    <p>If she had not been sure of that she would not have taken
+    off her left shoe to shake out some tiny thing that had got
+    into it and that annoyed her. It turned out to be a bit of
+    pine-needle. It was pleasant to feel her foot freed from the
+    hot leather and resting on the thick moss, and so the other
+    shoe came off too, and was turned upside down and shaken, as an
+    excuse, for there was nothing in it, and both feet rested in
+    the moss, side by side. She wished she could take off her
+    stockings, and if there had been a stream she would have done
+    it, so sure was she that no one would disturb her, up there
+    amongst the rocks and ever so far from Pontresina. It would
+    have been delightful to paddle in the cold running water, for
+    it was much hotter than she had ever supposed that it could be
+    in such a place.</p>
+
+    <p>She took off her straw hat, and fanned herself gently with
+    it, letting the sunshine fall full upon her thick black hair.
+    She had never owned a hat in her life till she had been
+    installed in the little house in Trastevere, and she hated the
+    inconvenient things. What was her hair for, if it could not
+    protect her head? But a straw hat made a very good fan. The air
+    was hot and still, and there were none of those thousand little
+    sounds which she would have heard in the chestnut woods above
+    Frascati.</p>
+
+    <p>A little cry broke the silence, and she turned her head in
+    the direction whence it came. Then she dropped her hat, sprang
+    to her feet, and ran forwards, forgetting that she had no shoes
+    on. She saw a figure clinging to the rocks, where they suddenly
+    narrowed, and she heard the cry again, desperate with fear and
+    weak with effort. A young girl had evidently been trying to
+    climb down, when she had lost her footing, and had only been
+    saved from a bad fall because her grey woollen frock had caught
+    her upon a projecting point of granite, giving her time to
+    snatch at the strong twigs of some alp-roses, and to find a
+    very slight projection on which she could rest the toe of one
+    shoe. She was hanging there with her face to the rock, eight or
+    ten feet from the ground, which was strewn with big stones, and
+    she was in such a position that she seemed unable to turn her
+    head in order to look down.</p>
+
+    <p>In ten seconds Regina was standing directly below the
+    terrified girl, raising herself on tiptoe, and trying to reach
+    her feet with her hands, to guide them to a hold; but she could
+    not.</p>
+
+    <p>"Don't be frightened," Regina said in Italian, which was the
+    only language she knew.</p>
+
+    <p>"I cannot hold on!" answered the girl, trying to look down,
+    but feeling that her foot would slip if she turned her head far
+    enough.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, you can," Regina replied, too much roused to be
+    surprised that the answer had come in her own language. "Your
+    dress will hold you, even if you let go with your hands. It is
+    new and it is strong, and it is fairly caught on the rock. I
+    can see that."</p>
+
+    <p>"But I can't hang here until you go and get help," cried the
+    girl, not much reassured.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am going to climb to the top by an easier way and pull
+    you up again," Regina answered. "Then we can get down
+    together."</p>
+
+    <p>While Regina was speaking she had already begun the ascent,
+    which was easy enough for her, at the point she had chosen,
+    though many an Alpine climber might have envied the quickness
+    and sureness of her hold with feet and hands. She realised that
+    she had forgotten her shoes now, and was glad that she had
+    taken them off.</p>
+
+    <p>"One minute more!" she cried in an encouraging tone, when
+    she had almost reached the top.</p>
+
+    <p>"Quick!" came the imploring answer.</p>
+
+    <p>Then Regina was lying flat on the ledge above the girl,
+    stretching both hands down and catching the slender white
+    wrists with a hold like steel. And then, feeling herself held
+    and safe to move, the girl looked up, and Regina was looking
+    into Aurora's face below her. For one instant the two did not
+    recognise each other, for they had only seen each other once,
+    by night, under the portico of the Th&eacute;&acirc;tre
+    Fran&ccedil;ais. But an instant later a flush of anger rose to
+    Aurora's forehead, and the dark woman turned pale, and her
+    brows were suddenly level and stern. They hated each other, as
+    the one hung there held by the other's hands, and the black
+    eyes gazed savagely into the angry blue ones. Aurora was not
+    frightened any longer; she was angry because she was in
+    Regina's power. The strong woman could save her if she would,
+    and Aurora would despise herself ever afterwards for having
+    been saved by her. Or the strong woman could let her fall, and
+    she would probably be maimed for life if she were not killed
+    outright. That seemed almost better. She had never understood
+    before what it could mean to be altogether in the power of an
+    enemy.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina meant to save her; that was clear. With quick,
+    commanding words she told her what to do.</p>
+
+    <p>"Set your knees against the rock and pull yourself up a
+    little by my hands. So! I can pull you higher now. Get one knee
+    well on that ledge. Now I will hold your left hand with both
+    mine while you disentangle your frock from the point. Now put
+    your right hand round my neck while I raise myself a little.
+    Yes, that way. Now, hold on tight!"</p>
+
+    <p>Regina made a steady effort, lifting fully half Aurora's
+    weight with her, as she got first upon one knee and then upon
+    both.</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="Regina"></a>
+<img src="images/Illus223_Regina.jpg" width="400" height="588" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">"REGINA MADE A STEADY EFFORT, LIFTING FULLY HALF AURORA'S
+    WEIGHT WITH HER."</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>"There! Take breath and then scramble over the edge," she
+    said.</p>
+
+    <p>A few seconds, another effort, and Aurora sank exhausted
+    beside Regina, half sitting, half lying, and resting on one
+    hand.</p>
+
+    <p>She looked up sideways at the dark woman's face; for Regina
+    stood upright, gazing down into the valley. Aurora turned her
+    eyes away, and then looked up again; she had recovered her
+    breath now.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," she said, with an effort.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is nothing," Regina answered in an indifferent tone, and
+    without so much as moving her head; she was no more out of
+    breath than if she had been sitting still.</p>
+
+    <p>The fair girl hated her at that moment as she had never
+    hated any one in her short life, nor had ever dreamed of
+    hating. The flush of anger rose again and again to her
+    forehead, to the very roots of her auburn hair, and lingered a
+    second and sank again. Regina stood perfectly motionless, her
+    face as unchanging as marble.</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora rose to her feet, and leaned against the rock. She
+    had suddenly felt herself at a disadvantage in remaining seated
+    on the ground while her adversary was standing. It was the
+    instinct of the animal that expects to be attacked. When two
+    people who hate each other or love each other very much meet
+    without warning in a very lonely place, the fierce old passions
+    of the stone age may take hold of them and sway them, even
+    nowadays.</p>
+
+    <p>For a time that seemed long, there was silence; without
+    words each knew that the other had recognised her. The peasant
+    woman spoke first, though with an evident effort, and without
+    turning her eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>"When you are rested, we will go down," she said.</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora moved a step towards the side on which Regina had
+    climbed up.</p>
+
+    <p>"I think I can get down alone," she answered coldly.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina looked at her and laughed with a little contempt.</p>
+
+    <p>"You will break your neck if you try," she said. "You cannot
+    climb at all!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I think I can get down," Aurora repeated.</p>
+
+    <p>She went to the edge and was going to begin the attempt when
+    Regina seized her by the wrist and dragged her back in spite of
+    her resistance.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have something to tell you first," Regina said.
+    "Afterwards I will take you down, and you shall not fall. You
+    shall reach the bottom safely and go home alone, or I will show
+    you the way, as you please."</p>
+
+    <p>"Let go of my wrist!" Aurora spoke angrily, for the strong
+    grasp hurt her and humiliated her.</p>
+
+    <p>"Listen to me," continued Regina, loosing her hold at once.
+    "I am Regina. You are Aurora. We have heard of each other, and
+    we have met. Let us talk. This is a good place and we are
+    alone, and the day is long, and we may not meet again soon. We
+    will say what we have to say now, and then we will part."</p>
+
+    <p>"What is there to be said?" Aurora asked coldly and drawing
+    back a little.</p>
+
+    <p>"We two love the same man," Regina said. "Is that nothing?
+    You know it is true. If we were not Christians we should try to
+    kill each other here, where it is quiet. I could easily have
+    killed you just now, and I wished to."</p>
+
+    <p>"I wonder why you did not!" exclaimed Aurora, rather
+    scornfully.</p>
+
+    <p>"I thought with myself thus: 'If I kill her, I shall always
+    have the satisfaction of it as long as I live. This is the
+    truth. But I shall go to prison for many years and shall not
+    see him again, therefore I will not do it. Besides, it will not
+    please him. If it would make him happy I would kill her, even
+    if I were to go to the galleys for it. But it would not. He
+    would be very angry.' This is what I thought; and I pulled you
+    up. And now, I will not let you hurt yourself in getting down,
+    because he would be angry with me if he knew that it was my
+    fault."</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora listened to this extraordinary argument in silent
+    surprise. She was not in the least frightened, but she saw at a
+    glance that Regina was quite in earnest, and she knew her own
+    people, and that the Roman peasants are not the gentlest of the
+    Italians.</p>
+
+    <p>"He would be very angry," Regina repeated. "I am sure he
+    would!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Why should he be angry?" Aurora asked, in a tone half
+    contemptuous and yet half sad.</p>
+
+    <p>"I know he would, because when he raved in his fever he used
+    to call for you."</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora started and fixed her eyes on Regina's.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," Regina said, answering the look. "He often called you
+    by name. He loved you once."</p>
+
+    <p>She pronounced the words with an accent of pity, drawing
+    herself up to her full height; and there was triumph in the
+    light of her eyes. It is not every woman that has a chance of
+    saying so much to her rival.</p>
+
+    <p>"We were children then," Aurora said, in the very words she
+    had used to her mother more than two years earlier.</p>
+
+    <p>She was almost as pale as Regina now, for the thrust had
+    been straight and sure, and right at her heart. But she was
+    prouder than the peasant woman who had wounded her.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have heard that you saved his life," she said presently.
+    "And he loves you. You are happy!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I should always be happy if he and I were alone in the
+    world," Regina answered, for she was a little softened by the
+    girl's tone. "But even now they are trying to part us."</p>
+
+    <p>"To part you?" Again Aurora looked up suddenly. "Who is
+    trying to do that? A woman?"</p>
+
+    <p>Regina laughed a little.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are jealous," she said. "That shows that you love him
+    still. No. It is not a woman."</p>
+
+    <p>"Corbario?" The name rose instinctively to Aurora's
+    lips.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," Regina answered. "That is why I am left alone this
+    morning. Signor Corbario is at Saint Moritz and Marcello is
+    gone down to see him. I know he is trying to separate us. You
+    did not know that he was so near?"</p>
+
+    <p>"We only came yesterday afternoon," Aurora answered. "We did
+    not know that&mdash;that Signor Consalvi was here, or we should
+    not have come at all."</p>
+
+    <p>It had stung her to hear Regina speak of him quite naturally
+    by his first name. Regina felt the rebuke.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am truly sorry that I should have accidentally found
+    myself in your path," she said, emphasising the rather grand
+    phrase, and holding her handsome head very high.</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora almost smiled at this sudden manifestation of the
+    peasant's nature, and wondered whether Regina ever said such
+    things to Marcello, and whether, if she did, they jarred on him
+    very much. The speech had the very curious effect of restoring
+    Aurora's sense of superiority, and she answered more
+    kindly.</p>
+
+    <p>"You need not be sorry," she said. "If you had not chanced
+    to be here I should probably be lying amongst the rocks down
+    there with several broken bones."</p>
+
+    <p>"If it were not by my fault I should not care," Regina
+    retorted, with elementary frankness.</p>
+
+    <p>"But I should!" Aurora laughed, in spite of herself, and
+    liking this phase of Regina's character better than any she had
+    yet seen. "Come," she said, with a sudden generous impulse, and
+    holding out her hand, "let us stop quarrelling. You saved me
+    from a bad accident, and I was too ungenerous to be grateful. I
+    thank you now, with all my heart."</p>
+
+    <p>Regina was surprised and stared hard at her for a moment,
+    and then glanced at her outstretched hand.</p>
+
+    <p>"You would not take my hand if there were any one here to
+    see."</p>
+
+    <p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Because they have told you that I am a wicked woman,"
+    Regina answered, a slight blush rising in her cheeks. "And
+    perhaps it is true. But it was for him."</p>
+
+    <p>"I would take your hand anywhere, because you saved his
+    life," said Aurora, and her voice shook a little as she said
+    the last words. "And besides, no one has told me that you are
+    wicked. Come, what is the use of hating each other?"</p>
+
+    <p>Regina took her hand reluctantly, but not suspiciously, and
+    held it a moment.</p>
+
+    <p>"It does not mean that I shall not hate you if he ever loves
+    you again," she said. "If I made you think that it would be
+    treachery, and that is the worst sin."</p>
+
+    <p>"It only means that I thank you now, quite honestly," Aurora
+    answered, and their hands parted.</p>
+
+    <p>"Very well." Regina seemed satisfied. "And I thank you for
+    taking my hand," she added, with something oddly like real
+    gratitude, "and because you said you would do it anywhere, even
+    before other women. I know what I am, and what people call me.
+    But it was for him. Let us not talk of it any more. I will help
+    you down, and you shall go home alone."</p>
+
+    <p>"My mother is waiting for me far down, towards the village,"
+    Aurora said.</p>
+
+    <p>"All the better. A young lady like you should not go about
+    without any one. It is not proper."</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora suppressed a smile at the thought of being reproved
+    concerning the proprieties by "Marcello's Regina," and she
+    began the descent. Regina went down first, facing the rock, and
+    planting the young girl's feet in the best stepping places, one
+    after the other, with constant warnings and instructions as to
+    holding on with her hands. They reached the bottom in safety,
+    and came to the place where Regina had left her hat and shoes.
+    She sat down where she had been sitting when she had first
+    heard the cry, and began to put them on.</p>
+
+    <p>"I had taken them off for coolness as I sat here," she
+    explained. "You see, until I was fourteen I only wore them on
+    Sundays."</p>
+
+    <p>"And yet you have such beautiful feet," Aurora said.</p>
+
+    <p>"Have I?" Regina asked indifferently. "I thought all feet
+    were alike. But I have torn my stocking&mdash;it is hard to get
+    the shoe on."</p>
+
+    <p>"Let me help you." Aurora knelt down quickly, and began to
+    loosen the lacing further, but Regina protested, flushing
+    deeply and trying to draw her foot back.</p>
+
+    <p>"No, no!" she cried. "You are a lady!"</p>
+
+    <p>"What difference does that make?" asked Aurora, laughing and
+    insisting.</p>
+
+    <p>"This is not right!" Regina still protested, and the blush
+    had not left her cheeks.</p>
+
+    <p>But Aurora smoothed the torn stocking under the sole of each
+    foot, and slipped on the shoes, which were by no means tight,
+    and tied the lacing fast.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you, Signorina," Regina said, much confused. "You are
+    too good!"</p>
+
+    <p>She picked up her hat and put it on, but she was not clever
+    with the pin, for she was used to having Settimia do everything
+    for her which she had not learned to do for herself before she
+    had come to Rome.</p>
+
+    <p>"I can never manage it without Settimia," she said, as if
+    excusing herself for her awkwardness, as she again submitted to
+    Aurora's help.</p>
+
+    <p>"Settimia?" repeated the young girl, as she put the hat on
+    and thrust a long pin through it. "Who is Settimia?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Our&mdash;I mean my maid," Regina explained. "Thank you.
+    You are too good!"</p>
+
+    <p>"It is an uncommon name," Aurora said, looking critically at
+    the hat. "But I think I have heard it before."</p>
+
+    <p>"She is a wonderful woman. She knows French. She knows
+    everything!"</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora said nothing to this, but seemed to be trying to
+    recall something she had long forgotten. Regina was very busy
+    in her turn, pulling down the girl's frock all round, and
+    brushing it with her hand as well as she could, and picking off
+    bits of dry grass and thistles that clung to the grey woollen.
+    Aurora thanked her.</p>
+
+    <p>"The way down is very easy now," Regina said. "A few steps
+    farther on we can see the road."</p>
+
+    <p>"After all, why should you not come with me till we find my
+    mother?" Aurora asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"No," Regina answered with quiet decision. "I am what I am.
+    You must not be seen with Regina. Do not tell your mother that
+    you have been with me, and I shall not tell Marcello&mdash;I
+    mean, Signor Consalvi."</p>
+
+    <p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Neither of them would be pleased. Trust me. I know the
+    world. Good-bye, and the Madonna accompany you; and remember
+    what I said when I took your hand."</p>
+
+    <p>So they parted, and Regina stood up a long time, and watched
+    the slender grey figure descending to the road in the
+    valley.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XIII'></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+    <p>"Variety, my dear Marcello, variety! There is nothing like
+    it. If I were you, I would make some change, for your life must
+    be growing monotonous, and besides, though I have not the least
+    intention of reading you a lecture, you have really made your
+    doings unnecessarily conspicuous of late. The Paris chroniclers
+    have talked about you enough for the present. Don't you think
+    so? Yes, finish the bottle. I always told you that champagne
+    was good for you."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello filled his glass and sipped the wine before he
+    answered. It had not gone to his head, but there was colour in
+    his lean cheeks, his eyes were brighter than usual, and he felt
+    the familiar exhilaration which he had missed of late.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have been drinking milk for ten days," he said with a
+    smile, as he set down the glass.</p>
+
+    <p>"Good in its way, no doubt," Corbario answered genially,
+    "but a little tiresome. One should often change from simple
+    things to complicated ones. It is the science of enjoyment.
+    Besides, it is bad for the digestion to live always on bread
+    and milk."</p>
+
+    <p>"I don't live on that altogether," laughed Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"I mean it metaphorically, my dear boy. There is such a
+    thing as simplifying one's existence too much. That sometimes
+    ends in getting stuck. Now you cannot possibly allow yourself
+    to get stuck in your present position. You know what I mean.
+    Oh, I don't blame you! If I were your age I should probably do
+    the same thing, especially if I had your luck. Blame you? No!
+    Not in the least. The cigarettes are there. You've not given up
+    smoking too? No, that's right. A man without a small vice is as
+    uninteresting as a woman without a past or a landscape without
+    shadows. Cigarettes never hurt anybody. Look at me! I used to
+    smoke fifty a day when I was your age."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello blew a cloud of smoke, stirred his coffee, and
+    leaned back. He had scarcely heard what Corbario said, but the
+    elder man's careless chatter had put him at his ease.</p>
+
+    <p>"Folco," he said quietly, "I want to ask you a question, and
+    I want you to answer me seriously. Will you?"</p>
+
+    <p>"As well as I can," answered Corbario, instantly changing
+    his tone and growing earnest.</p>
+
+    <p>"Don't be surprised," Marcello said, half apologetically, as
+    if he were already weakening. "I shall never do anything
+    without your advice. Of course you know how I feel about all
+    this, that I am leading a disorderly life, and&mdash;well, you
+    understand!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Perfectly, my dear boy. I only wish to help you out of it
+    as soon as possible, if you want to be helped. I'm quite sure
+    that you will pull through in time. I have always believed in
+    you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you. I know you have. Well, I'll ask you my question.
+    You know well enough that I shall never care for society much,
+    don't you?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Society will care for you," answered Folco. "What is the
+    question?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I'm coming to it, but I want to explain, or it will not be
+    quite clear. You see, it is not as if I were a personage in the
+    world."</p>
+
+    <p>"What sort of personage? Please explain."</p>
+
+    <p>"I mean, if I were the head of a great house, with a great
+    title and hereditary estate."</p>
+
+    <p>"What has that to do with it?" Folco was mystified.</p>
+
+    <p>"If I were, it would make a difference, I suppose. But I'm
+    not. I'm plain Marcello Consalvi, no better than any one
+    else."</p>
+
+    <p>"But vastly richer," Folco suggested.</p>
+
+    <p>"I wish I were not. I wish I were a poor clerk, working for
+    my living."</p>
+
+    <p>"The air of this place is not good for you, my boy." Folco
+    laughed gaily.</p>
+
+    <p>"No, don't laugh! I'm in earnest. If I were a poor man,
+    nobody would think it at all strange if&mdash;" Marcello
+    hesitated.</p>
+
+    <p>"If what?"</p>
+
+    <p>"If I married Regina," said Marcello rather desperately.</p>
+
+    <p>Folco's expression changed instantly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Was that the question you were going to ask me?" he
+    inquired.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello grew very red and smoked so fast that he choked
+    himself.</p>
+
+    <p>"Is there any earthly reason why you should marry her?"
+    asked Folco very quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>"It would be right," Marcello answered, gaining courage.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, yes, undoubtedly," Folco hastened to admit. "In
+    principle it would undoubtedly be right. But it is a very
+    serious matter, my dear boy. It means your whole life and
+    future. Have you"&mdash;he hesitated, with an affectation of
+    delicacy&mdash;"have you said anything to her about it?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I used to, at first, but she would not hear of it. You have
+    no idea how simple she is, and how little she expects anything
+    of the sort. She always tells me that I am to send her away
+    when I am tired of her, to throw her away like an old coat, as
+    she says herself. But I could never do that, you know. Could
+    I?"</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello blushed again, hardly knowing why. Corbario seemed
+    deeply interested.</p>
+
+    <p>"She must be a very unusual sort of girl," he observed
+    thoughtfully. "There are not many like her, I fancy."</p>
+
+    <p>"There is nobody like her," Marcello answered with
+    conviction. "That is why I want to marry her. I owe it to her.
+    You must admit that. I owe her my life, for I certainly should
+    have died if she had not taken care of me. And then, there is
+    the rest. She has given me all she has, and that is herself,
+    and she asks nothing in return. She is very proud, too. I tried
+    to make her accept a string of pearls in Paris, just because I
+    thought they would be becoming to her, but she absolutely
+    refused."</p>
+
+    <p>"Really? I suppose you gave the pearls back to the
+    jeweller?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No, I kept them. Perhaps I shall get her to wear them some
+    day."</p>
+
+    <p>Folco smiled.</p>
+
+    <p>"You may just as well encourage her simple tastes," he said.
+    "Women always end by learning how to spend money, unless it is
+    their own."</p>
+
+    <p>Having delivered himself of this piece of wisdom Folco chose
+    a cigar, nipped off the end of it neatly with a gold cutter,
+    lit it and snuffed the rich smoke up his nose in a deliberate
+    manner.</p>
+
+    <p>"Regina is a very remarkable woman," he said at last. "If
+    she had been well educated, she would make an admirable wife;
+    and she loves you devotedly, Marcello. Now, the real question
+    is&mdash;at least, it seems to me so&mdash;you don't mind my
+    talking to you just as I would to myself, do you? Very well. If
+    I were in your position, I should ask myself, as a man of
+    honour, whether I really loved her as much as she loved me, or
+    whether I had only been taken off my feet by her beauty. Don't
+    misunderstand me, my boy! I should feel that if I were not
+    quite sure of that, I ought not to marry her, because it would
+    be much worse for her in the end than if we parted. Have you
+    ever asked yourself that question, Marcello?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, I have."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello spoke in a low voice, and bent his head, as if he
+    were not sure of the answer. Corbario, satisfied with the
+    immediate effect of his satanic speech, waited a moment,
+    sighed, looked down at his cigar, and then went on in gentle
+    tones.</p>
+
+    <p>"That is so often the way," he said. "A man marries a woman
+    out of a sense of duty, and then makes her miserably unhappy,
+    quite in spite of himself. Of course, in such a case as yours,
+    you feel that you owe a woman amends&mdash;you cannot call it
+    compensation, as if it were a matter of law! She has given
+    everything, and you have given nothing. You owe her happiness,
+    if you can bestow it upon her, don't you?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Indeed I do!" assented Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. The question is, whether the way to make her happy is
+    to marry her, when you have a reasonable doubt as to whether
+    you can be a good husband to her. That is the real problem, it
+    seems to me. Do you love her enough to give up the life to
+    which you were born, and for which you were educated? You would
+    have to do that, you know. Our friends&mdash;your dear mother's
+    friends, my boy&mdash;would never receive her, least of all
+    after what has happened."</p>
+
+    <p>"I know it."</p>
+
+    <p>"You would have to wander about Europe, or live in San
+    Domenico, for you could not bear to live in Rome, meeting women
+    who would not bow to your wife. I know you. You could not
+    possibly bear it."</p>
+
+    <p>"I should think not!"</p>
+
+    <p>"No. Therefore, since you have the doubt, since you are not
+    absolutely sure of yourself, I think the only thing to do is to
+    find out what you really feel, before taking an irreparable
+    step."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," said Marcello, who had fallen into the trap laid for
+    him. "I know that. But how am I to make sure of myself?"</p>
+
+    <p>"There is only one way," Folco answered. "I know it is not
+    easy, and if I were not sure that you are perfectly sincere I
+    should be afraid to propose it to you."</p>
+
+    <p>"What is it? Tell me. You are the only friend I have in the
+    world, Folco, and I want to do what is right. God knows, I am
+    in earnest! There are moments when I cannot imagine living
+    without Regina&mdash;it seemed hard to leave her this morning,
+    even for these few hours, and I long to be back at Pontresina
+    already! Yet you know how fond I am of you, and how I like to
+    be with you, for we have always been more like brothers than
+    anything else."</p>
+
+    <p>"Indeed we have!" Folco assented fervently. "You were saying
+    that there were moments&mdash;yes?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Sometimes she jars upon me dreadfully," Marcello said in a
+    low voice, as if he were ashamed of owning it. "Then I want to
+    get away."</p>
+
+    <p>"Exactly. You want to get away, not to leave her, but to be
+    alone for a few hours, or a few days. That would be the very
+    best thing you could do&mdash;to separate for a little while.
+    You would very soon find out whether you could live without her
+    or not; and believe me, if you feel that you can live without
+    her, that means that you could not live with her for your whole
+    life."</p>
+
+    <p>"I should go back to her in twenty-four hours. I am sure I
+    should."</p>
+
+    <p>"Perhaps you would, if you went, say, from here to Paris
+    alone, with nothing to distract your attention. But suppose
+    that you and I should go together, to some place where we
+    should meet our friends, all amusing themselves, where you
+    could talk to other women, and meet men of your own age, and
+    lead the life people expect you to lead, just for a few weeks.
+    You know that society will be only too glad to see something of
+    you, whenever you choose to go near it. You are what is called
+    a good match, and all the mothers with marriageable daughters
+    would run after you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Disgusting!" exclaimed Marcello, with contempt.</p>
+
+    <p>"No doubt, but it would be a wholesome change and a good
+    test. When a young girl is determined to be a nun, she is
+    generally made to spend a year in society, in order to make
+    acquaintance with what she intends to give up. I don't see much
+    difference between that and your case. Before you say good-bye
+    for ever to your own world, find out what it is like. At the
+    same time, you will settle for ever any doubts you have about
+    really loving Regina."</p>
+
+    <p>"Perhaps you are right. It would only be for a few
+    days."</p>
+
+    <p>"And besides," Folco continued, "if you have not yet found
+    it dull at Pontresina, you certainly will before long. There is
+    no reason why you should lead the life of an invalid, for you
+    are quite strong now."</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, quite. I always tell Regina so, but she insists that I
+    am too thin, and it amuses her to take care of me."</p>
+
+    <p>"Naturally. That is how you first made acquaintance. A woman
+    who has once taken care of a man she loves wants him to be ever
+    afterwards an invalid, for ever getting better! A man gets
+    tired of that in time. It was a great pity you left Paris just
+    when I came, for there are many things we could have enjoyed
+    together there."</p>
+
+    <p>"I daresay," Marcello answered, not paying much attention to
+    the other's words.</p>
+
+    <p>"Take my advice, my dear boy," said Folco. "Come away with
+    me for a few days. I will wait here till you are quite ready,
+    for of course you cannot be sure of getting off at once. You
+    will have to prepare Regina for this."</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course. I am not sure that it is possible at all."</p>
+
+    <p>Folco laughed gaily.</p>
+
+    <p>"Anything is possible that you really wish to do," he
+    said.</p>
+
+    <p>"Regina may insist upon coming with me."</p>
+
+    <p>"Nonsense. Women always submit in the end, and they never
+    die of it. Assert yourself, Marcello! Be a man! You cannot be
+    ordered about like a child by any woman, not even if she has
+    saved your life, not even if she loves you to distraction. You
+    have a right to a will of your own."</p>
+
+    <p>"I know. And yet&mdash;oh, I wish I knew what I ought to
+    do!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Think over all I have said, and you will see that I am
+    right," said Folco, rising from the table. "And if you take my
+    advice, you will be doing what is fair and honest by Regina as
+    well as by yourself. Your own conscience must tell you
+    that."</p>
+
+    <p>Poor Marcello was not very sure what had become of his own
+    conscience during the past year, and Folco's arguments swayed
+    him as he groped for something definite to follow, and found
+    nothing but what Corbario chose to thrust into his hand.</p>
+
+    <p>As they stood by the table, a servant brought a note on a
+    little salver, holding it out to them as if he were not sure
+    which of them was to receive it. Both glanced at the address;
+    it was for Corbario, who took it quickly and put it into his
+    pocket; but Marcello had recognised the handwriting&mdash;that
+    rather cramped feminine hand of a woman who has seen better
+    days, in which Settimia kept accounts for Regina. The latter
+    insisted that an account should be kept of the money which
+    Marcello gave her, and that he should see it from time to time.
+    At the first moment, being absorbed with other matters, and
+    inwardly much engaged in the pursuit of his own conscience,
+    which eluded him at every turn like a figure in a dream, he
+    paid no attention to what he had seen; but the writing had
+    impressed itself on his memory.</p>
+
+    <p>They had been lunching in Folco's sitting-room, and Corbario
+    made an excuse to go into his bedroom for a moment, saying that
+    he wanted certain cigars that his man had put away. Marcello
+    stood at the window gazing down the broad valley. Scarcely a
+    minute elapsed before Folco came back with a handful of Havanas
+    which he dropped on a writing-table.</p>
+
+    <p>"By the bye," he said carelessly, "there is another reason
+    why you may not care to stay long in Pontresina. The Contessa
+    and Aurora are there."</p>
+
+    <p>"Are they?" Marcello turned sharply as he asked the
+    question.</p>
+
+    <p>He was surprised, and at the same instant it flashed upon
+    him that Folco had just received the information from Settimia
+    in the note that had been brought.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," Folco answered with a smile. "And Pontresina is such
+    a small place that you can hardly help meeting them. I thought
+    I might as well tell you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you. Yes, it would be awkward, and unpleasant for
+    them."</p>
+
+    <p>"Precisely. The Contessa wrote me that she and Aurora had
+    come upon you two unexpectedly in leaving a theatre, and that
+    she had felt very uncomfortable."</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh! I suppose she suggested that I should mend my
+    ways?"</p>
+
+    <p>"As a matter of fact, she did." Corbario smiled. "You know
+    what a very proper person she is!"</p>
+
+    <p>"She is quite right," answered Marcello gravely.</p>
+
+    <p>"It certainly cannot have been pleasant for her, on account
+    of Aurora."</p>
+
+    <p>Folco looked at him thoughtfully, for his tone had suddenly
+    changed.</p>
+
+    <p>"If you don't mind," Folco said, "I think I will drive up
+    with you and call on them this afternoon. You can drop me at
+    their hotel, and I shall find my way back alone."</p>
+
+    <p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+    <p>"Are you sure you don't mind?" Folco affected to speak
+    anxiously.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why should I?"</p>
+
+    <p>"You see," Folco said, without heeding the question, "they
+    let me know that they were there, and as we are such old
+    friends it would be strange if I did not go to see them."</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course it would," answered Marcello in an absent
+    tone.</p>
+
+    <p>He already connected Folco's knowledge of the Contessa's
+    arrival in Pontresina so closely with Settimia's note that
+    Folco's last statement had taken him by surprise, and a
+    multitude of confused questions presented themselves to his
+    mind. If Settimia had not written about the Contessa, why had
+    she written at all? How did she know where Corbario was
+    stopping in Saint Moritz? Was she in the habit of writing to
+    him? Corbario had found her for Regina; was Settimia helping
+    Corbario to exercise a sort of paternal vigilance over him?
+    Somehow Marcello did not like that idea at all. So far as he
+    knew, Folco had always been singularly frank with him, and had
+    never deceived him in the smallest thing, even "for his own
+    good." Marcello could only attribute good motives to him, but
+    the mere idea of being watched was excessively disagreeable. He
+    wondered whether Settimia had influenced Regina to get him away
+    from Paris, acting under directions from Corbario. Was Regina
+    deceiving him too, "for his own good"? If there is anything a
+    man cannot bear from those he loves best, it is that they
+    should take counsel together secretly to direct him "for his
+    own good."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello tried to put the thought out of his mind; but it
+    had dawned upon him for the first time that Folco could tell
+    even a pious falsehood. Yet he had no proof whatever that he
+    had guessed right; it was a sudden impression and nothing more.
+    He was much more silent during the rest of the afternoon as he
+    drove up to Pontresina with Folco, and it seemed to him that he
+    had at last touched something definite; which was strange
+    enough, considering that it was all a matter of guess-work and
+    doubt.</p>
+
+    <p>And now fate awoke again and did one of those little things
+    that decide men's lives. If Folco and Marcello had stopped at
+    the door of the Contessa's hotel two minutes earlier, or thirty
+    seconds later, than they did, they would not have chanced upon
+    the Contessa and Aurora just coming in from a walk. But fate
+    brought the four together precisely at that moment. As the
+    carriage stopped, the two ladies had come from the opposite
+    direction and were on the door-step.</p>
+
+    <p>"What a surprise!" exclaimed the Contessa, giving her hand
+    graciously to Folco and then to Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>The latter had got hold of a thread. Since the Contessa was
+    surprised to see Folco, she could not possibly have already let
+    him know that she was in Pontresina.</p>
+
+    <p>"I came as soon as I knew that you were here," said Corbario
+    quickly.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello heard the words, though he was at that moment
+    shaking hands with Aurora, and their eyes had met. She was
+    perfectly calm and collected, none the worse for her adventure
+    in the morning, and considerably the wiser.</p>
+
+    <p>"Will you come in?" asked the Contessa, leading the way, as
+    if expecting both men to follow.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario went at once. Marcello hesitated, and flushed a
+    little, and Aurora seemed to be waiting for him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Shall I come, too?" he asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"Just as you please," she answered. "My mother will think it
+    strange if you don't."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello bent his head, and the two followed the others
+    towards the stairs at a little distance.</p>
+
+    <p>"Did your mother send word to Folco that you were here?"
+    asked Marcello quickly, in a low tone.</p>
+
+    <p>"Not that I know. Why?"</p>
+
+    <p>"It is no matter. I wanted to be sure. Thank you."</p>
+
+    <p>They went upstairs side by side, not even glancing at each
+    other, much more anxious to seem perfectly indifferent than to
+    realise what they felt now that they had met at last.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello stayed ten minutes in the small sitting-room,
+    talking as well as he could. He had no wish to be alone with
+    Aurora or her mother, and since the visit had been pressed upon
+    him he was glad that Folco was present. But he got away as soon
+    as he could, leaving Corbario to his own devices. The Contessa
+    gave him her hand quietly, as if she had not expected him to
+    stay, and she did not ask him to come again. Aurora merely
+    nodded to him, and he saw that just as he went out she left the
+    room by another door, after glancing at him once more with
+    apparent coldness.</p>
+
+    <p>He walked quickly through the village until he came near to
+    his own hotel, and then his pace slackened by degrees. He knew
+    that he had felt a strong emotion in seeing Aurora again, and
+    he was already wishing that he had not come away so soon. The
+    room had been small, and it had been uncomfortable to be there,
+    feeling himself judged and condemned by the Contessa and
+    distrusted by Aurora; but he had been in an atmosphere that
+    recalled all his youth, with people whose mere presence
+    together brought back the memory of his dead mother as nothing
+    else had done since his illness. He was just in that state of
+    mind in which he would have broken away and freed himself
+    within the hour, at any cost, if he had been involved in a
+    common intrigue.</p>
+
+    <p>At the same time he had become convinced that Folco had
+    deceived him, for some reason or other which he could not
+    guess, and the knowledge was the first serious disillusionment
+    of his life. The deception had been small, and perhaps intended
+    in some mysterious way to be "for his own good"; but it had
+    been a distinct deception and no better than a lie. He was sure
+    of that.</p>
+
+    <p>He went upstairs slowly and Regina met him at the door of
+    their rooms, and took his hat and stick without a word, for she
+    saw that something had happened, and she felt suddenly cold. He
+    was quite unlike himself. The careless look was gone from his
+    face, his young lips were tightly closed, and he looked
+    straight before him, quite unconscious that his manner was
+    hurting her desperately.</p>
+
+    <p>"Has Settimia been out to-day?" he asked, looking at her
+    quickly.</p>
+
+    <p>"I don't know," she answered, surprised. "I went for a long
+    walk this morning. She probably went out into the village. I
+    cannot tell. Why do you ask?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I wish to know whether she sent a note to Saint Moritz by a
+    messenger. Can you find out, without asking her a direct
+    question? I am very anxious to know."</p>
+
+    <p>"I will try, but it will not be easy," said Regina, watching
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>She had made up her mind that the blow was coming, and that
+    Marcello was only putting off the moment when she must be told
+    that he meant to leave her. She was very quiet, and waited for
+    him to speak again, for she was too proud to ask him questions.
+    His inquiry about Settimia was in some way connected with what
+    was to come. He sat down by the table, and drummed upon it
+    absently with his fingers for a moment. Then he looked up
+    suddenly and met her eyes; his look of troubled preoccupation
+    faded all at once, and he smiled and held out one hand to draw
+    her nearer.</p>
+
+    <p>"Forgive me," he said. "All sorts of things have happened
+    to-day. I have been annoyed."</p>
+
+    <p>She came and bent over him, turning his face up to hers with
+    her hands, very gently. His eyes lightened slowly, and his lips
+    parted a little.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are not tired of Regina yet," she said.</p>
+
+    <p>"No!" he laughed. "But you were right," he added, almost
+    immediately.</p>
+
+    <p>"I knew I was," she answered, but not as she had expected to
+    say the words when she had seen him come in.</p>
+
+    <p>She dared not hope to keep him always, but she had not lost
+    him yet, and that was enough for the moment. The weight had
+    fallen from her heart, and the pain was gone.</p>
+
+    <p>"Was it what I thought?" she asked softly. "Does your
+    stepfather wish to separate us?"</p>
+
+    <p>"For a little while," Marcello answered. "He says we ought
+    to part for a few weeks, so that I may find out whether I love
+    you enough to marry you!"</p>
+
+    <p>"And he almost persuaded you that he was right," said
+    Regina. "Is that what happened?"</p>
+
+    <p>"That&mdash;and something else."</p>
+
+    <p>"Will you tell me, heart of my heart?"</p>
+
+    <p>In the falling twilight he told her all that had passed
+    through his mind, from the moment when he had seen Settimia's
+    handwriting on the note. Then Regina's lips moved.</p>
+
+    <p>"He shall pay!" she was saying under her breath. "He shall
+    pay!"</p>
+
+    <p>"What are you saying?" Marcello asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"An Ave Maria," she answered. "It is almost dark."</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XIV'></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+    <p>The little house in Trastevere was shut up, but the gardener
+    had the keys, and came twice a week to air the rooms and sweep
+    the paths and water the shrubs. He was to be informed by
+    Settimia of Regina's return in time to have everything ready,
+    but he did not expect any news before the end of September; and
+    if he came regularly, on Tuesday and Saturday, and did his
+    work, it was because he was a conscientious person in his way,
+    elderly, neat, and systematic, a good sort of Roman of the old
+    breed. But if he came on other days, as he often did, not to
+    air the rooms, but to water and tend certain plants, and to do
+    the many incomprehensible things which gardeners do with
+    flower-pots, earth, and seeds, that was his own affair, and
+    would bring a little money in the autumn when the small
+    florists opened their shops and stands again, and the tide of
+    foreigners set once more towards Rome. Also, if he had made
+    friends with the gardeners at the beautiful villa on the
+    Janiculum, that was not Corbario's business; and they gave him
+    cuttings, and odds and ends, such as can be spared from a great
+    garden where money is spent generously, but which mean a great
+    deal to a poor man who is anxious to turn an honest penny by
+    hard work.</p>
+
+    <p>The immediate result of this little traffic was that the
+    gardeners at the villa knew all about the little house in
+    Trastevere; and what the gardeners knew was known also by the
+    porter, and by the other servants, and through them by the
+    servants of other people, and the confidential valet told his
+    master, and the maid told her mistress; and so everybody had
+    learned where "Consalvi's Regina" lived, and it was likely that
+    everybody would know when she came back to Rome, and whether
+    Marcello came with her or not.</p>
+
+    <p>He had not taken Folco's advice, much to the latter's
+    disappointment and annoyance. On the contrary, he and Regina
+    had left the Engadine very suddenly, without so much as letting
+    Corbario guess that they were going away; and Regina had
+    managed to keep Settimia so very busy and so constantly under
+    her eye that the maid had not been able to send Folco a word,
+    warning him of the anticipated move. Almost for the first time
+    Marcello had made up his mind for himself, and had acted upon
+    his decision; and it seemed as if the exercise of his will had
+    made a change in his character.</p>
+
+    <p>They wandered from place to place; they went to Venice in
+    the hottest season, when no one was there, and they came down
+    to Florence and drove up to Vallombrosa, where they stumbled
+    upon society, and were stared at accordingly. They went down to
+    Siena, they stopped in Orvieto, and drove across to Assisi and
+    Perugia; but they were perpetually drawn towards Rome, and knew
+    that they longed to be there again.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello had plenty of time to think, and there was little
+    to disturb his meditations on the past and future; for Regina
+    was not talkative, and was content to be silent for hours,
+    provided that she could see his face. He never knew whether she
+    felt her ignorance about all they saw, and his own knowledge
+    was by no means great. He told her what he knew and read about
+    places they visited, and she remembered what he said, and
+    sometimes asked simple questions which he could answer easily
+    enough. For instance, she wished to know whether America were a
+    city or an island, and who the Jews were, and if the sun rose
+    in the west on the other side of the world, since Marcello
+    assured her that the world was round.</p>
+
+    <p>He was neither shocked nor amused; Ercole had asked him
+    similar questions when he had been a boy; so had the peasants
+    in Calabria, and there was no reason why Regina should know
+    more than they did. Besides, she possessed wonderful tact, and
+    now spoke her own language so well that she could pass for a
+    person of average education, so long as she avoided speaking of
+    anything that is learned from books. She was very quick to
+    understand everything connected with the people she heard of,
+    and she never forgot anything that Marcello told her. She was
+    grateful to him for never laughing at her, but in reality he
+    was indifferent. If she had known everything within bounds of
+    knowledge, she would not have been a whit more beautiful, or
+    more loving, or more womanly.</p>
+
+    <p>But he himself was beginning to think, now that his faith in
+    Folco had been shaken, and he began to realise that he had been
+    strangely torpid and morally listless during the past years.
+    The shock his whole system had received, the long interval
+    during which his memory had been quite gone, the physical
+    languor that had lasted some time after his recovery from the
+    fever, had all combined to make the near past seem infinitely
+    remote, to cloud his judgment of reality, and to destroy the
+    healthy tension of his natural will. A good deal of what
+    Corbario had called "harmless dissipation" had made matters
+    worse, and when Regina had persuaded him to leave Paris he had
+    really been in that dangerous moral, intellectual, and physical
+    condition in which it takes very little to send a man to the
+    bad altogether, and not much more to kill him outright, if he
+    be of a delicate constitution and still very young. Corbario
+    had almost succeeded in his work of destruction.</p>
+
+    <p>He would not succeed now, for the worst danger was past, and
+    Marcello had found his feet after being almost lost in the
+    quicksand through which he had been led.</p>
+
+    <p>He had not at first accused Folco of anything worse than
+    that one little deception about the arrival of the Contessa,
+    and of having caused him to be too closely watched by Settimia.
+    Little by little, however, other possibilities had shaped
+    themselves and had grown into certainties at an alarming rate.
+    He understood all at once how Folco himself had been spending
+    his time, while society had supposed him to be a broken hearted
+    widower. A few hints which he had let fall about the things he
+    would have shown Marcello in Paris suggested a great deal; his
+    looks and manner told the rest, now that Marcello had guessed
+    the main truth. He had not waited three months after his wife's
+    death to profit by his liberty and the wealth she had left him.
+    Marcello remembered the addresses he had given from time to
+    time&mdash;Monte Carlo, Hombourg, Pau, and Paris very often. He
+    had spoken of business in his letters, as an excuse for moving
+    about so much, but "business" did not always take a man to
+    places of amusement, and Folco seemed to have visited no
+    others. Men whom Marcello had met had seen Corbario, and what
+    they said about him was by no means indefinite. He had been
+    amusing himself, and not alone, and the young men had laughed
+    at his attempts to cloak his doings under an appearance of
+    sorrowing respectability.</p>
+
+    <p>As all this became clear to Marcello he suffered acutely at
+    times, and he reproached himself bitterly for having been so
+    long blind and indifferent. It was bad enough that he should
+    have been leading a wild life with Regina in Paris within a few
+    months of his mother's death, but even in the depths of his
+    self-reproach he saw how much worse it was that Folco should
+    have forgotten her so soon. It was worse than a slight upon his
+    mother's memory, it was an insult. The good woman who was gone
+    would have shed hot tears if she could have come to life and
+    seen how her son was living; but she would have died again,
+    could she have seen the husband she adored in the places where
+    many had seen him since her death. It was no wonder that
+    Marcello's anger rose at the mere thought.</p>
+
+    <p>Moreover, as Marcello's understanding awoke, he realised
+    that Folco had encouraged him in all he had done, and had not
+    seemed pleased when he had begun to live more quietly. Folco
+    would have made him his companion in pleasure, if he could, and
+    the idea was horrible to Marcello as soon as it presented
+    itself.</p>
+
+    <p>It was the discovery that he had been mistaken in Corbario
+    that most directly helped him to regain his foothold in life
+    and his free will. There was more in the Spartan method than we
+    are always ready to admit, for it is easier to disgust most men
+    by the sight of human degradation than to strengthen them
+    against temptation by preaching, or by the lessons of example
+    which are so very peculiarly disagreeable to the normal
+    man.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am virtuous, I am sober, I resist temptation, imitate
+    me!" cries the preacher. You say that you are virtuous, and you
+    are apparently sober, my friend; and perhaps you are a very
+    good man, though you need not scream out the statement at the
+    top of your voice. But how are we to know that you have any
+    temptations to resist? Or that your temptations are the same as
+    ours, even supposing that you have any? Or that you are
+    speaking the truth about yourself, since what you say is so
+    extremely flattering to your vanity? Wherever there is
+    preaching, those who are preached at are expected to accept a
+    good deal on the mere word of the preacher, quite aside from
+    anything they have been brought to believe elsewhere.</p>
+
+    <p>"Temptation?" said a certain great lady who was not strong
+    in theology. "That is what one yields to, isn't it?"</p>
+
+    <p>She probably knew what she was talking about, for she had
+    lived in the world a good while, as we have. But the preacher
+    is not very often one of us, and he knows little of our ways
+    and next to nothing of our real feelings; yet he exhorts us to
+    be like him. It would be very odd if we succeeded. The world
+    would probably stand still if we did, and most of us are so
+    well aware of the fact that we do not even try; and the sermon
+    simply has no effect at all, which need not prevent the
+    preacher from being richly remunerated for delivering it.</p>
+
+    <p>"Vice is very attractive, of course," he says, "but you must
+    avoid it because it is sinful."</p>
+
+    <p>And every time vice is mentioned we think how attractive it
+    must be, since it is necessary to preach against it so much;
+    and the more attractive it seems, the greater the
+    temptation.</p>
+
+    <p>"Should you like to try a vice or two?" said the Spartan,
+    "Very well. Come with me, my boy, and you shall see what vice
+    is; and after that, if you care to try it, please yourself, for
+    I shall have nothing more to say!"</p>
+
+    <p>And forthwith he played upon the string of disgust, which is
+    the most sensitive of all the strings that vibrate in the great
+    human instrument; and the boy's stomach rose, and he sickened
+    and turned away, and remembered for ever, though he might try
+    ever so hard to forget.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello at last saw Folco as he was, though still without
+    understanding the worst, and with no suspicion that Folco
+    wished him out of the world, and had deliberately set to work
+    to kill him by dissipation; and the disgust he felt was the
+    most horrible sensation that he could remember. At the same
+    time he saw himself and his whole life, and the perplexity of
+    his position frightened him.</p>
+
+    <p>It seemed impossible to go back and live under the same roof
+    with Corbario now. He flushed with shame when he remembered the
+    luncheon at Saint Moritz, and how he had been almost persuaded
+    to leave poor Regina suddenly, and to go back to Paris with his
+    stepfather. He saw through the devilish cleverness of the man's
+    arguments, and when he remembered that his dead mother's name
+    had been spoken, a thrill of real pain ran through his body and
+    he clenched his teeth and his hands.</p>
+
+    <p>He asked himself how he could meet Folco after that, and the
+    only answer was that if they met they must quarrel and part,
+    not to meet again.</p>
+
+    <p>He told Regina that he would not go back to the villa after
+    they reached Rome, but would live in the little house in
+    Trastevere. To his surprise, she looked grave and shook her
+    head. She had never asked him what was making him so silent and
+    thoughtful, but she had guessed much of the truth from little
+    things; she herself had never trusted Corbario since she had
+    first seen his face at the hospital, and she had long foreseen
+    the coming struggle.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why do you shake your head?" he asked. "Do you not want me
+    at the little house?"</p>
+
+    <p>"The villa is yours, not his," she said. "He will be glad if
+    you will leave him there, for he will be the master. Then he
+    will marry again, and live there, and it will be hard to turn
+    him out."</p>
+
+    <p>"What makes you think he wishes to marry again?"</p>
+
+    <p>"He would be married already, if the girl would have him,"
+    answered Regina.</p>
+
+    <p>"How do you know?"</p>
+
+    <p>"You told me to watch, to find out. I have obeyed you. I
+    know everything."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello was surprised, and did not quite understand. He
+    only remembered that he had asked her to ascertain whether
+    Settimia had sent a note to Folco at Saint Moritz. After a day
+    or two she told him that she was quite sure of it. That was
+    all, and Regina had scarcely ever spoken of Folco since then.
+    Marcello reminded her of this, and asked her what she had
+    done.</p>
+
+    <p>"I can read," she said. "I can read writing, and that is
+    very hard, you know. I made Settimia teach me. I said with
+    myself, if he should be away and should write to me, what
+    should I do? I could not let Settimia read his letters, and I
+    am too well dressed to go to a public letter-writer in the
+    street, as the peasants do. He would think me an ignorant
+    person, and the people in the street would laugh. That would
+    not help me. I should have to go to the priest, to my
+    confessor."</p>
+
+    <p>"Your confessor? Do you go to confession?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you take me for a Turk?" Regina asked, laughing. "I go
+    to confession at Christmas and Easter. I tell the priest that I
+    am very bad, and am sorry, but that it is for you and that I
+    cannot help it. Then he asks me if I will promise to leave you
+    and be good. And I say no, that I will not promise that. And he
+    tells me to go away and come back when I am ready to promise,
+    and that he will give me absolution then. It is always the
+    same. He shakes his head and frowns when he sees me coming, and
+    I smile. We know each other quite well now. I have told him
+    that when you are tired of me, then I will be good. Is not that
+    enough? What can I do? I should like to be good, of course, but
+    I like still better to be with you. So it is."</p>
+
+    <p>"You are better than the priest knows," said Marcello
+    thoughtfully, "and I am worse."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is not true. But if I had a letter from you, I would not
+    take it to the priest to read for me. He would be angry, and
+    tear it up, and send me away. I understood this at the
+    beginning, so I made Settimia teach me how to read the writing,
+    and I also learned to write myself, not very well, but one can
+    understand it."</p>
+
+    <p>"I know. I have seen you writing copies. But how has that
+    helped you to find out what Folco is doing?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I read all Settimia's letters," Regina answered, with
+    perfect simplicity.</p>
+
+    <p>"Eh?" Marcello thought he had misunderstood her.</p>
+
+    <p>"I read all the letters she gets," Regina replied, unmoved.
+    "When she was teaching me to read I saw where she kept all her
+    letters. It is always the same place. There is a pocket inside
+    a little black bag she has, which opens easily, though she
+    locks it. She puts the letters there, and when she has read
+    them over she burns them. You see, she has no idea that I read
+    them. But I always do, ever since you asked me about that note.
+    When I know that she has had a letter, I send her out on an
+    errand. Then I read. It is so easy!"</p>
+
+    <p>Regina laughed, but Marcello looked displeased.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is not honest to do such things," he said.</p>
+
+    <p>"Not honest?" Regina stared at him in amazement. "How does
+    honesty enter into the question? Is Settimia honest? Then
+    honest people should all be in the galleys! And if you knew how
+    he writes to her! Oh, yes! You are the 'dear patient,' and I am
+    the 'admirable companion.' They have known each other long,
+    those two. They have a language between them, but I have
+    learned it. They have no more secrets that I do not know.
+    Everything the admirable companion does that makes the dear
+    patient better is wrong, and everything that used to make him
+    worse was right. They were killing you in Paris, they wanted
+    you to stay there until you were dead. Do you know who saved
+    your life? It was the Contessa, when I heard her say that you
+    were looking ill! If you ever see her again, thank her, for I
+    was blind and she opened my eyes. The devil had blinded me, and
+    the pleasure, and I could not see. I see now, thanks to heaven,
+    and I know all, and they shall not hurt you. But they shall
+    pay!"</p>
+
+    <p>She was not laughing now, as she said the last words under
+    her breath, and her beautiful lips just showed her white teeth,
+    set savagely tight as though they had bitten through something
+    that could be killed. Folco Corbario was not timid, but if he
+    had seen her then, and known that the imaginary bite was meant
+    for his life, he would have taken special care of his bodily
+    safety whenever she was in his neighbourhood.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello had listened in profound surprise, for what she
+    said threw new light on all he had thought out for himself of
+    late.</p>
+
+    <p>"And you say that Folco is thinking of marrying again," he
+    said, almost ashamed to profit by information obtained as
+    Regina had got it.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, he is in love with a young girl, and wishes to marry
+    her."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello said nothing.</p>
+
+    <p>"Should you like to know her name?" asked Regina.</p>
+
+    <p>Still Marcello was silent, as if refusing to answer, and yet
+    wishing that she should go on.</p>
+
+    <p>"I will tell you," Regina said. "Her name is Aurora dell'
+    Armi."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello started, and looked into her face, doubting her
+    word for the first time. He changed colour, too, flushing and
+    then turning pale.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is not true!" he cried, rather hoarsely. "It cannot be
+    true!"</p>
+
+    <p>"It is true," Regina answered, "but she will not have him.
+    She would not marry him, even if her mother would allow
+    it."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank God!" exclaimed Marcello fervently.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina sighed, and turned away.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XV'></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+    <p>Ercole sat on the stone seat that ran along the wall of the
+    inn, facing the dusty road. He was waiting in the cool dawn
+    until it should please the innkeeper to open the door, and Nino
+    crouched beside him, his head resting on his forepaws.</p>
+
+    <p>A great many years had passed since Ercole had sat there the
+    last time, but nothing had changed, so far as he could see. He
+    had been young, and the women had called him handsome; his face
+    had not been shrivelled to parchment by the fever, and there
+    had been no grey threads in his thick black hair. Nino had not
+    been born then, and now Nino seemed to be a part of himself.
+    Nino's grandam had lain in almost the same spot then, wolfish
+    and hungry as her descendant was now, and only a trifle less
+    uncannily hideous. It was all very much the same, but between
+    that time and this there lay all Ercole's life by the Roman
+    shore.</p>
+
+    <p>When he had heard, as every one had, how Marcello had been
+    brought to Rome on the tail of a wine-cart, he had been sure
+    that the boy had been laid upon it while the cart was standing
+    before Paoluccio's inn in the night. He knew the road well, and
+    the ways of the carters, and that they rarely stopped anywhere
+    else between Frascati and Rome. Again and again he had been on
+    the point of tramping up from the seashore to the place, to see
+    whether he could not find some clue to Marcello's accident
+    there, but something had prevented him, some old dislike of
+    returning to the neighbourhood after such a long absence. He
+    knew why he had not gone, but he had not confided the reason
+    even to Nino, who was told most things. He had, moreover, been
+    tolerably sure that nothing short of thumb-screws would extract
+    any information from Paoluccio or his wife, for he knew his own
+    people. The only thing that surprised him was that the boy
+    should ever have left the inn alive after being robbed of
+    everything he had about him that was worth taking.</p>
+
+    <p>Moreover, since Marcello had been found, and was alive and
+    well, it was of very little use to try and discover exactly
+    what had happened to him after he had been last seen by the
+    shore. But the aspect of things had changed since Ercole had
+    heard the sailor's story, and his wish to see the place where
+    the boy had been hidden so long overcame any repugnance he felt
+    to visiting a neighbourhood which had unpleasant associations
+    with his younger years.</p>
+
+    <p>He sat and waited at the door, and before the sun rose a
+    young woman came round the house with the big key and opened
+    the place, just as Regina had done in old days. She looked at
+    Ercole, and he looked at her, and neither said anything as she
+    went about her work, sprinkling the floor with water and then
+    sweeping it, and noisily pulling the heavy benches about. When
+    this operation was finished, Ercole rose and went in, and sat
+    down at the end of a table. He took some bread and cheese from
+    his canvas bag and began to eat, using his clasp-knife.</p>
+
+    <p>"If you wish wine," said the woman, "you will have to wait
+    till the master comes down."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole only answered by raising his head and throwing out
+    his chin, which means "no" in gesture language. He threw pieces
+    of the bread and the rind of the cheese to his dog. Nino caught
+    each fragment in the air with a snap that would have lamed a
+    horse for a month. The woman glanced nervously at the animal,
+    each time she heard his jagged teeth close.</p>
+
+    <p>Paoluccio appeared in due time, without coat or waistcoat,
+    and with his sleeves rolled up above the elbows, as if he had
+    been washing. If he had, the operation had succeeded very
+    imperfectly. He glanced at Ercole as he passed in.</p>
+
+    <p>"Good-morning," he said, for he made it a point to be polite
+    to customers, even when they brought their own food.</p>
+
+    <p>"Good-morning," answered Ercole, looking at him
+    curiously.</p>
+
+    <p>Possibly there was something unusual in the tone of Ercole's
+    voice, for Nino suddenly sat up beside his master's knee,
+    forgetting all about the bread, and watched Paoluccio too, as
+    if he expected something. But nothing happened. Paoluccio
+    opened a cupboard in the wall with a key he carried, took out a
+    bottle of the coarse aniseed spirits which the Roman peasants
+    drink, and filled himself a small glass of the stuff, which he
+    tossed off with evident pleasure. Then he filled his pipe, lit
+    it carefully, and went to the door again. By this time, though
+    he had apparently not bestowed the least attention on Ercole,
+    he had made up his mind about him, and was not mistaken. Ercole
+    belonged to the better class of customers.</p>
+
+    <p>"You come from the Roman shore?" he said, with an
+    interrogation.</p>
+
+    <p>"To serve you," Ercole assented, with evident willingness to
+    enter into conversation. "I am a keeper and watchman on the
+    lands of Signor Corbario."</p>
+
+    <p>Paoluccio took his pipe from his mouth and nodded twice.</p>
+
+    <p>"That is a very rich gentleman, I have heard," he observed.
+    "He owns much land."</p>
+
+    <p>"It all belongs to his stepson, now that the young gentleman
+    is of age," Ercole answered. "But as it was his mother's, and
+    she married Signor Corbario, we have the habit of the
+    name."</p>
+
+    <p>"What is the name of the stepson?" asked Paoluccio.</p>
+
+    <p>"Consalvi," Ercole replied.</p>
+
+    <p>Paoluccio said nothing to this, but lit his pipe again with
+    a sulphur match.</p>
+
+    <p>"Evil befall the soul of our government!" he grumbled
+    presently, with insufficient logic, but meaning that the
+    government sold bad tobacco.</p>
+
+    <p>"You must have heard of the young gentleman," Ercole said.
+    "His name is Marcello Consalvi. They say that he lay ill for a
+    long time at an inn on this road&mdash;"</p>
+
+    <p>"For the love of heaven, don't talk to me about Marcello
+    Consalvi!" cried Paoluccio, suddenly in a fury. "Blood of a
+    dog! If you had not the face of an honest man I should think
+    you were another of those newspaper men in disguise, pigs and
+    animals that they are and sons of evil mothers, and ill befall
+    their wicked dead, and their little dead ones, and those that
+    shall be born to them!"</p>
+
+    <p>Paoluccio's eyes were bloodshot and he spat furiously, half
+    across the road. Nino watched him and hitched the side of his
+    upper lip on one of his lower fangs, which produced the effect
+    of a terrific smile. Ercole was unmoved.</p>
+
+    <p>"I suppose," he observed, "that they said it happened in
+    your inn."</p>
+
+    <p>"And why should it happen in my inn, rather than in any
+    other inn?" inquired Paoluccio angrily.</p>
+
+    <p>"Indeed," said Ercole, "I cannot imagine why they should say
+    that it did! Some one must have put the story about. A servant,
+    perhaps, whom you sent away."</p>
+
+    <p>"We did not send Regina away," answered Paoluccio, still
+    furious. "She ran away in the night, about that time. But, as
+    you say, she may have invented the story and sent the newspaper
+    men here to worry our lives with their questions, out of mere
+    spite."</p>
+
+    <p>"Who was this Regina?" Ercole asked. "What has she to do
+    with it?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Regina? She was the servant girl we had before this one. We
+    took her out of charity."</p>
+
+    <p>"The daughter of some relation, no doubt," Ercole
+    suggested.</p>
+
+    <p>"May that never be, if it please the Madonna!" cried
+    Paoluccio. "A relation? Thank God we have always been honest
+    people in my father's house! No, it was not a relation. She
+    came of a crooked race. Her mother took a lover, and her father
+    killed him, here on the Frascati road, and almost killed her
+    too; but the law gave him the right and he went free."</p>
+
+    <p>"And then, what did he do?" asked Ercole, slowly putting the
+    remains of his bread into his canvas bag.</p>
+
+    <p>"What did he do? He went away and never came back. What
+    should he do?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Quite right. And the woman, what became of her?"</p>
+
+    <p>"She took other men, for she had no shame. And at last one
+    of them was jealous, and struck her on the head with a paving
+    stone, not meaning to kill her; but she died."</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, she died, did she?"</p>
+
+    <p>"She died. For she was always spiteful. And so that poor man
+    went to the galleys, merely for hitting her on the head, and
+    not meaning to kill her."</p>
+
+    <p>"And you took the girl for your servant?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. She was old enough to work, and very strong, so we
+    took her for charity. But for my part, I was glad when she ran
+    away, for she grew up handsome, and with that blood there
+    surely would have been a scandal some day."</p>
+
+    <p>"One sees that you are a very charitable person," Ercole
+    observed thoughtfully. "The girl must have been very ungrateful
+    if she told untrue stories about your inn, after all you had
+    done for her. You had nourished a viper in your house."</p>
+
+    <p>"That is what my wife says," Paoluccio answered, now quite
+    calm. "Those are my wife's very words. As for believing that
+    the young man was ever in this house, I tell you that the story
+    is a wicked lie. Where should we have put him? In the cellar
+    with the hogsheads, or in the attic with the maid? or in our
+    own room? Tell me where we could have put him! Or perhaps they
+    will say that he slept on the ceiling, like the flies? They
+    will say anything, chattering, chattering, and coming here with
+    their questions and their photographing machines, and their
+    bicycles, and the souls of their dead! If you do not believe
+    me, you can see the place where they say that he lay! I tell
+    you there is not room for a cat in this house. Believe me if
+    you like!"</p>
+
+    <p>"How can I not believe such a respectable person as you seem
+    to be?" inquired Ercole gravely.</p>
+
+    <p>"I thank you. And since it happens that you are in the
+    service of the young gentleman himself, I hope you will tell
+    him that if he fancies he was in my house, he is mistaken."</p>
+
+    <p>"Surely," said Ercole.</p>
+
+    <p>"Besides," exclaimed Paoluccio, "how could he know where he
+    was? Are not all inns on these roads alike? He was in another,
+    that is all. And what had I to do with that?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Nothing," assented Ercole. "I thank you for your
+    conversation. I will take a glass of the aniseed before I go,
+    if you please."</p>
+
+    <p>"Are you going already?" asked Paoluccio, as he went to
+    fetch the bottle and the little cast glass from which he
+    himself had drunk.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," Ercole answered. "I go to Rome. I stopped to refresh
+    myself."</p>
+
+    <p>"It will be hot on the road," said Paoluccio, setting the
+    full glass down on the table. "Two sous," he added, as Ercole
+    produced his old sheepskin purse. "Thank you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," Ercole answered, and tipped the spirits down
+    his throat. "Yes, it will be hot, but what can one do? We are
+    used to it, my dog and I. We are not of wax to melt in the
+    sun."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is true that this dog does not look as if he were wax,"
+    Paoluccio remarked, for the qualities of Nino had not escaped
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>"No. He is not of wax. He is of sugar, all sugar! He has a
+    very sweet nature."</p>
+
+    <p>"One would not say so," answered Paoluccio doubtfully. "If
+    you go to the city you must muzzle him, or they will make you
+    pay a fine. Otherwise they will kill him for you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you think any one would try to catch him if I let him
+    run loose?" asked Ercole, as if in doubt. "He killed a
+    full-grown wolf before he was two years old, and not long ago
+    he worried a sheepdog of the Campagna as if it had been nothing
+    but a lamb. Do you think any one would try to catch him?"</p>
+
+    <p>"If it fell to me, I should go to confession first," said
+    Paoluccio.</p>
+
+    <p>So Ercole left the inn and trudged along the road to Rome
+    with Nino at his heels, without once looking behind him; past
+    the Baldinotti houses and into the Via Appia Nuova, and on into
+    the city through the gate of San Giovanni, where the octroi men
+    stopped him and made him show them what he had in his canvas
+    bag. When they saw that there was no cheese left and but little
+    bread, they let him go by without paying anything.</p>
+
+    <p>He went up to the left and sat down on the ground under the
+    trees that are there, and he filled his little clay pipe and
+    smoked a while, without even speaking to his dog. It was quiet,
+    for it was long past the hour when the carts come in, and the
+    small boys were all gone to school, and the great paved slope
+    between the steps of the basilica and the gate was quite
+    deserted, and very white and hot.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole was not very tired, though he had walked all night
+    and a good part of the morning. He could have gone on walking
+    till sunset if he had chosen, all the way to his little stone
+    house near Ardea, stopping by the way to get a meal; and then
+    he would not have slept much longer than usual. A Roman peasant
+    in his native Campagna, with enough to eat and a little wine,
+    is hard to beat at walking. Ercole had not stopped to rest, but
+    to think.</p>
+
+    <p>When he had thought some time, he looked about to see if any
+    one were looking at him, and he saw that the only people in
+    sight were a long way off. He took his big clasp-knife out of
+    his pocket and opened it. As the clasp clicked at the back of
+    the blade Nino woke and sat up, for the noise generally meant
+    food.</p>
+
+    <p>The blade was straight and clean, and tolerably sharp.
+    Ercole looked at it critically, drew the edge over his coarse
+    thumb-nail to find if there were any nick in the steel, and
+    then scratched the same thumb-nail with it, as one erases ink
+    with a knife, to see how sharp it was. The point was like a
+    needle, but he considered that the edge was dull, and he drew
+    it up and down one of the brown barrels of his gun, as
+    carefully as he would have sharpened a razor on a whetstone.
+    After that he stropped it on the tough leathern strap by which
+    he slung the gun over his shoulder when he walked; when he was
+    quite satisfied, he shut the knife again and put it back into
+    his pocket, and fell to thinking once more.</p>
+
+    <p>Nino watched the whole operation with bloodshot eyes, his
+    tongue hanging out and quivering rhythmically as he panted in
+    the heat to cool himself. When the knife disappeared, and the
+    chance of a crust with it, the dog got up, deliberately turned
+    his back to his master, and sat down again to look at the
+    view.</p>
+
+    <p>"You see," said Ercole to himself and Nino, "this is an
+    affair which needs thought. One must be just. It is one thing
+    to kill a person's body, but it is quite another thing to kill
+    a person's soul. That would be a great sin, and besides, it is
+    not necessary. Do I wish harm to any one? No. It is justice.
+    Perhaps I shall go to the galleys. Well, I shall always have
+    the satisfaction, and it will be greater if I can say that this
+    person is in Paradise. For I do not wish harm to any one."</p>
+
+    <p>Having said this in a tone which Nino could hear, Ercole sat
+    thinking for some time longer, and then he rose and slung his
+    gun over his shoulder, and went out from under the trees into
+    the glaring heat, as if he were going into the city. But
+    instead of turning to the left, up the hill, he went on by the
+    broad road that follows the walls, till he came to the ancient
+    church of Santa Croce. He went up the low steps to the deep
+    porch and on to the entrance at the left. Nino followed him
+    very quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole dipped his finger into the holy water and crossed
+    himself, and then went up the nave, making as little noise as
+    he could with his hob-nailed boots. An old monk in white was
+    kneeling at a broad praying-stool before an altar on the left.
+    Ercole stood still near him, waiting for him to rise, and
+    slowly turning his soft hat in his hands, as if it were a
+    rosary. He kept his eyes on the monk's face, studying the aged
+    features. Presently the old man had finished his prayer and got
+    upon his feet slowly, and looked at Ercole and then at Nino.
+    Ercole moved forward a step, and stood still in an attitude of
+    respect.</p>
+
+    <p>"What do you desire, my son?" asked the monk, very quietly.
+    "Do you wish to confess?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No, father, not to-day," answered Ercole. "I come to pray
+    you to say three masses for the soul of a person who died
+    suddenly. I have also brought the money. Only tell me how much
+    it will be, and I will pay."</p>
+
+    <p>"You shall give what you will, my son," the monk said, "and
+    I will say the masses myself."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole got out his sheepskin purse, untied the strings, and
+    looked into it, weighing it in his hand. Then he seemed to
+    hesitate. The monk looked on quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is of your own free will," he said. "What you choose to
+    give is for the community, and for this church, and for the
+    chapel of Saint Helen. It is better that you know."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole drew the mouth of the purse together again and
+    returned it to the inside of his waistcoat, from which he
+    produced a large old leathern pocket-book.</p>
+
+    <p>"I will give five francs," he said, "for I know that if you
+    say the masses yourself, they will be all good ones."</p>
+
+    <p>A very faint and gentle smile flitted over the aged face.
+    Ercole held out the small note, and the monk took it.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," he said. "Shall I say the masses for a man or a
+    woman?"</p>
+
+    <p>"As it pleases you, father," Ercole answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"Eh?" The old monk looked surprised.</p>
+
+    <p>"It does not matter," Ercole explained. "Is not a mass for a
+    man good for a woman also?"</p>
+
+    <p>"We say 'his' soul or 'her' soul, as the case may be, my
+    son."</p>
+
+    <p>"Is that written in the book of the mass?" inquired Ercole
+    distrustfully.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. Also, most people tell us the baptismal name of the
+    dead person."</p>
+
+    <p>"Must I do that too?" Ercole asked, by no means pleased.</p>
+
+    <p>"Not unless you like," the monk answered, looking at him
+    with some curiosity.</p>
+
+    <p>"But it is in the book of the mass that you must say 'his'
+    or 'her' soul?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+    <p>"Then the masses will not be good unless you say the right
+    word." Ercole paused a moment in deep thought, and looked down
+    at his hat. "It will be better to say the masses for a female,"
+    he said at length, without meeting the monk's eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>"Very well," the latter answered. "I will say the first mass
+    to-morrow."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," said Ercole. "My respects!"</p>
+
+    <p>He made a sort of bow and hurried away, followed by Nino.
+    The old monk watched him thoughtfully, and shook his head once
+    or twice, for he guessed something of the truth, though by no
+    means all.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XVI'></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+    <p>"One might almost think that you wished to marry Aurora
+    yourself," said Corbario, with a sneer.</p>
+
+    <p>He was standing with his back to the fire in the great
+    library of the villa, for it was late autumn again; it was
+    raining hard and the air was raw and chilly.</p>
+
+    <p>"You may think what you please," Marcello answered, leaning
+    back in his deep leathern chair and taking up a book. "I am not
+    going to argue with you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Insufferable puppy," growled Folco, almost under his teeth;
+    but Marcello heard.</p>
+
+    <p>He rose instantly and faced the elder man without the
+    slightest fear or hesitation.</p>
+
+    <p>"If this were not my house, and you my guest, I would have
+    you put out of doors by the servants," he said, in a tone
+    Corbario had never heard before. "As it is, I only advise you
+    to go before I lose my temper altogether."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario backed till his heels were against the fender, and
+    tried to smile.</p>
+
+    <p>"My dear Marcello!" he protested. "What nonsense is this?
+    You know I am not in earnest!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I am," said Marcello quietly enough, but not moving.</p>
+
+    <p>The half-invalid boy was not a boy any longer, nor an
+    invalid either, and he had found his hold on things, since the
+    days when Folco had been used to lead him as easily as if he
+    had no will of his own. No one would have judged him to be a
+    weak man now, physically or mentally. His frame was spare and
+    graceful still, but there was energy and directness in his
+    movements, his shoulders were square and he held his head high;
+    yet it was his face that had changed most, though in a way very
+    hard to define. A strong manhood sometimes follows a weak
+    boyhood, very much to the surprise of those who have long been
+    used to find feebleness where strength has suddenly developed.
+    Marcello Consalvi had never been cowardly, or even timid; he
+    had only been weak in will as in body, an easy prey to the man
+    who had tried to ruin him, body and soul, in the hope of
+    sending him to his grave.</p>
+
+    <p>"I really cannot understand you, my dear boy," Corbario said
+    very sweetly. "You used to be so gentle! But now you fly into a
+    passion for the merest thing."</p>
+
+    <p>"I told you that I would not argue with you," Marcello said,
+    keeping his temper. "This is my house, and I choose that you
+    should leave it at once. Go your way, and leave me to go mine.
+    You are amply provided for, as long as you live, and you do not
+    need my hospitality any longer, since you are no longer my
+    guardian. Live where you please. You shall not stay here."</p>
+
+    <p>"I certainly don't care to stay here if you don't want me,"
+    Folco answered. "But this is really too absurd! You must be
+    going mad, to take such a tone with me!"</p>
+
+    <p>"It is the only one which any honourable man who knows you
+    would be inclined to take."</p>
+
+    <p>"Take care! You are going too far."</p>
+
+    <p>"Because you are under my roof? Yes, perhaps. As my guest,
+    if I have been hasty, I apologise for expressing my opinion of
+    you. I am going out now. I hope you will find it convenient to
+    have left before I come in."</p>
+
+    <p>Thereupon Marcello turned his back on Corbario, crossed the
+    great library deliberately, and went out without looking
+    round.</p>
+
+    <p>Folco was left alone, and his still face did not even
+    express surprise or annoyance. He had indeed foreseen the
+    coming break, ever since he had returned to the villa three
+    weeks earlier, when Marcello had received him with evident
+    coldness, not even explaining where he had been since they had
+    last parted. But Folco had not expected that the rupture would
+    come so suddenly, still less that he was literally to be turned
+    out of the house which he still regarded as his own, and in
+    which he had spent so many prosperous years. There had, indeed,
+    been some coldly angry words between the two men. Marcello had
+    told Folco quite plainly that he meant to be the master, and
+    that he was of age, and should regulate his own life as he
+    pleased, and he had expressed considerable disgust at the
+    existence Folco had been leading in Paris and elsewhere; and
+    Folco had always tried to laugh it off, calling Marcello
+    prudish and hypersensitive in matters of morality, which he
+    certainly was not. Once he had attempted an appeal to
+    Marcello's former affection, recalling his mother's love for
+    them both, but a look had come into the young man's eyes just
+    then which even Corbario did not care to face again, and the
+    relations between the two had become more strained from that
+    time on.</p>
+
+    <p>It might seem almost incredible that a man capable of the
+    crimes Corbario had committed in cold blood, for a settled
+    purpose, should show so little power of following the purpose
+    to its accomplishment after clearing the way to it by a murder;
+    but every one who has had to do with criminals is aware that
+    after any great exertion of destructive energy they are
+    peculiarly subject to a long reaction of weakness which very
+    often leads to their own destruction. If this were not a
+    natural law, if criminals could exert continually the same
+    energy and command the same superhuman cunning which
+    momentarily helped them to perpetrate a crime, the world would
+    be in danger of being possessed and ruled by them, instead of
+    being mercifully, and perhaps too much, inclined to treat them
+    as degenerates and madmen. Their conduct after committing a
+    murder, for instance, seems to depend much more on their nerves
+    than on their intelligence, and the time almost invariably
+    comes when their nerves break down. It is upon the moment when
+    this collapse of the will sets in that the really experienced
+    detective counts, knowing that it may be hastened or retarded
+    by circumstances quite beyond the murderer's control. The life
+    of a murderer, after the deed, is one long fight with such
+    circumstances, and if he once loses his coolness he is himself
+    almost as surely lost as a man who is carried away by his
+    temper in a duel with swords.</p>
+
+    <p>After Folco had killed his wife and had just failed to kill
+    Marcello, he had behaved with wonderful calm and propriety for
+    a little while; but before long the old wild longing for
+    excitement and dissipation, so long kept down during his
+    married life, had come upon him with irresistible force, and he
+    had yielded to it. Then, in hours of reaction, in the awful
+    depression that comes with the grey dawn after a night of wine
+    and pleasure and play, terrible little incidents had come back
+    to his memory. He had recalled Kalmon's face and quiet words,
+    and his own weakness when he had first come to see Marcello in
+    the hospital&mdash;that abject terror which both Regina and the
+    doctor must have noticed&mdash;and his first impression that
+    Marcello no longer trusted him as formerly, and many other
+    things; and each time he had been thus disturbed, he had
+    plunged deeper into the dissipation which alone could cloud
+    such memories and keep them out of sight for a time; till at
+    last he had come to live in a continual transition from
+    recklessness to fear and from fear to recklessness, and he had
+    grown to detest the very sight of Marcello so heartily that an
+    open quarrel was almost a relief.</p>
+
+    <p>If he had been his former self, he would undoubtedly have
+    returned to his original purpose of killing Marcello outright,
+    since he had not succeeded in killing him by dissipation. But
+    his nerve was not what it had been, and the circumstances were
+    not in his favour. Moreover, Marcello was now of age, and had
+    probably made a will, unknown to Corbario, in which case the
+    fortune would no longer revert to the latter. The risk was too
+    great, since it would no longer be undertaken for a certainty
+    amounting to millions. It was better to be satisfied with the
+    life-interest in one-third of the property, which he already
+    enjoyed, and which supplied him with abundant means for amusing
+    himself.</p>
+
+    <p>It was humiliating to be turned out of the house by a mere
+    boy, as he still called Marcello, but he was not excessively
+    sensitive to humiliation, and he promised himself some sort of
+    satisfactory vengeance before long. What surprised him most was
+    that the first quarrel should have been about Aurora. He had
+    more than once said in conversation that he meant to marry the
+    girl, and Marcello had chosen to say nothing in answer to the
+    statement; but when Folco had gone so far as to hint that
+    Aurora was in love with him and was about to accept him,
+    Marcello had as good as given him the lie direct, and a few
+    more words had led to the outbreak recorded at the beginning of
+    this chapter.</p>
+
+    <p>As a matter of fact Corbario understood what had led to it
+    better than Marcello himself, who had no very positive reason
+    for entirely disbelieving his stepfather's words. The Contessa
+    and her daughter had returned to Rome, and Corbario often went
+    to see them, whereas Marcello had not been even once. When
+    Marcello had last seen Folco in the Engadine, he had left him
+    sitting in their little room at the hotel. Folco was not at all
+    too old to marry Aurora; he was rich, at least for life, and
+    Aurora was poor; he was good-looking, accomplished, and ready
+    with his tongue. It was by no means impossible that he might
+    make an impression on the girl and ultimately win her. Besides,
+    Marcello felt that odd little resentment against Aurora which
+    very young men sometimes feel against young girls, whom they
+    have thought they loved, or are really about to love, or are
+    afraid of loving, which makes them rude, or unjust, or both,
+    towards those perhaps quite unconscious maidens, and which no
+    woman can ever understand.</p>
+
+    <p>"My dear Harry, why will you be so disagreeable to Mary?"
+    asks the wondering mother. "She is such a charming girl, and
+    only the other day she was saying that you are such a nice
+    boy!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Humph!" snorts Harry rudely, and forthwith lights his pipe
+    and goes off to the stables to growl in peace, or across
+    country, or to his boat, or to any other heavenly place not
+    infested by women.</p>
+
+    <p>There had been moments when, in his heart, Marcello had
+    almost said that it would serve Aurora right to be married to
+    Corbario; yet at the first hint from the latter that she was at
+    all in danger of such a fate, Marcello had broken out as if the
+    girl's good name had been attacked, and had turned his
+    stepfather out of the house in a very summary fashion.</p>
+
+    <p>Having done so, he left the villa on foot, though it was
+    raining hard, and walked quickly past San Pietro in Montorio
+    and down the hill towards Trastevere. The southwest wind blew
+    the rain under his umbrella; it was chilly as well as wet, and
+    a few big leaves were beginning to fall from the
+    plane-trees.</p>
+
+    <p>He was not going to the little house, where Regina sat by
+    the window looking at the rain and wishing that he would come
+    soon. When he was down in the streets he hailed the first cab
+    he saw, gave the man an address in the Forum of Trajan, and
+    climbed in under the hood, behind the dripping leathern apron,
+    taking his umbrella with him and getting thoroughly wet, as is
+    inevitable when one takes a Roman cab in the rain.</p>
+
+    <p>The Contessa was out, in spite of the weather, but Marcello
+    asked if Aurora would see him, and presently he was admitted to
+    the drawing-room, where she was sitting beside a rather dreary
+    little fire, cutting a new book. She threw it down and rose to
+    meet him, as little outwardly disturbed as if they had seen
+    each other constantly during the past two years. She gave him
+    her hand quietly, and they sat down and looked at the fire.</p>
+
+    <p>"It won't burn," Aurora said, rather disconsolately. "It
+    never did burn very well, but those horrid people who have had
+    the apartment for two years have spoilt the fireplace
+    altogether."</p>
+
+    <p>"I remember that it used to smoke," Marcello answered, going
+    down on his knees and beginning to move the little logs into a
+    better position.</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," Aurora said, watching him. "You won't succeed,
+    but it's good of you to try."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello said nothing, and presently he took the queer
+    little Roman bellows, and set to work to blow upon the
+    smouldering spots where the logs touched each other. In a few
+    seconds a small flame appeared, and soon the fire was burning
+    tolerably.</p>
+
+    <p>"How clever you are!" Aurora laughed quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello rose and sat upon a low chair, instead of on the
+    sofa beside her. For a while neither spoke, and he looked about
+    him rather awkwardly, while Aurora watched the flames. It was
+    long since he had been in the room, and it looked shabby after
+    the rather excessive magnificence of the villa on the
+    Janiculum, for which Corbario's taste had been largely
+    responsible. It was just a little shabby, too, compared with
+    the dainty simplicity of the small house in Trastevere. The
+    furniture, the carpets, and the curtains were two years older
+    than when he had seen them last, and had been unkindly used by
+    the tenants to whom the Contessa had sub-let the apartment in
+    order to save the rent. Marcello missed certain pretty things
+    that he had been used to see formerly, some bits of old Saxe, a
+    little panel by an early master, a chiselled silver cup in
+    which there always used to be flowers. He wondered where these
+    things were, and felt that the room looked rather bare without
+    them.</p>
+
+    <p>"It burns very well now," said Aurora, still watching the
+    fire.</p>
+
+    <p>"What has become of the old silver cup," Marcello asked,
+    "and all the little things that used to be about?"</p>
+
+    <p>"We took them away with us when we let the apartment, and
+    they are not unpacked yet, though we have been here two
+    months."</p>
+
+    <p>"Two months?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. I was wondering whether you were ever coming to see us
+    again!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Were you? I fancied that you would not care very much to
+    see me now."</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora said nothing to this, and they both looked at the
+    fire for some time. The gentle sound of the little flames was
+    cheerful, and gave them both the impression of a third person,
+    talking quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>"I should not have come to-day," Marcello said at last,
+    "except that something has happened."</p>
+
+    <p>"Nothing bad, I hope!" Aurora looked up with a sudden
+    anxiety that surprised him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Bad? No. At least, I think not. Why are you startled?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I have had a headache," Aurora explained. "I am a little
+    nervous, I fancy. What is it that has happened?"</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello glanced at her doubtfully before he answered. Her
+    quick interest in whatever chanced to him took him back to the
+    old times in an instant. The place was familiar and quiet; her
+    voice was like forgotten music, once delightful, and now
+    suddenly recalled; her face had only changed to grow more
+    womanly.</p>
+
+    <p>"You never thought of marrying Folco, did you?" he asked,
+    all at once, and a little surprised at the sound of his own
+    words.</p>
+
+    <p>"I?" Aurora started again, but not with anxiety. "How can
+    you think such a thing?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I don't think it; but an hour ago, at the villa, he told me
+    in almost so many words that you loved him and meant to accept
+    him."</p>
+
+    <p>A blush of honest anger rose in the girl's fair face, and
+    subsided instantly.</p>
+
+    <p>"And what did you say?" she asked, with a scarcely
+    perceptible tremor in her tone.</p>
+
+    <p>"I turned him out of the house," Marcello answered
+    quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Turned him out?" Aurora seemed amazed. "You turned him out
+    because he told you that?"</p>
+
+    <p>"That and other things. But that was the beginning of it. I
+    told him that he was lying, and he called me names, and then I
+    told him to go. He will be gone when I reach home."</p>
+
+    <p>To Marcello's surprise, Aurora got up suddenly, crossed the
+    room and went to one of the windows. Marcello rose, too, and
+    stood still. She seemed to be looking out at the rain, but she
+    had grasped one of the curtains tightly, and it looked as if
+    she were pressing the other hand to her left side. For a second
+    her head bent forward a little and her graceful shoulders moved
+    nervously, as though she were trying to swallow something hard.
+    Marcello watched her a moment, and then crossed the room and
+    stood beside her.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is it?" he asked in a low voice, and laying his hand
+    gently on hers that held the curtain.</p>
+
+    <p>She drew her own away quietly and turned her head. Her eyes
+    were dry and bright, but there were deep bistre shadows under
+    them that had not been there before, and the lower lids were
+    swollen.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is nothing," she answered, and then laughed nervously.
+    "I am glad you have made your stepfather go away. It was time!
+    I was afraid you were as good friends as ever."</p>
+
+    <p>"We have not been on good terms since we parted in
+    Pontresina. Do you remember when I left him in your
+    sitting-room at the hotel? He had been trying to persuade me to
+    go back to Paris with him at once. In fact&mdash;" he
+    hesitated.</p>
+
+    <p>"You intended to go," Aurora said, completing the sentence.
+    "And then you changed your mind."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. I could not do it. I cannot explain everything."</p>
+
+    <p>"I understand without any explanation. I think you did
+    right."</p>
+
+    <p>She went back to the fireplace and sat down in the corner of
+    the sofa, leaning far back and stretching out one foot to the
+    fender in an unconscious attitude of perfect grace. In the grey
+    afternoon the firelight began to play in her auburn hair. Now
+    and then she glanced at Marcello with half-closed lids, and
+    there was a suggestion of a smile on her lips. Marcello saw
+    that in her way she was as beautiful as Regina, and he
+    remembered how they had kissed, without a word, when the moon's
+    rays quivered through the trees by the Roman shore, more than
+    two years ago. They had been children then. All at once he felt
+    a great longing to kneel down beside the sofa and throw his
+    arms round her waist and kiss her once again; but at almost the
+    same instant he thought of Regina, waiting for him by the
+    window over there in Trastevere, and he felt the shame rising
+    to his face; and he leaned back in his low chair, clasping his
+    hands tightly over one knee, as if to keep himself from
+    moving.</p>
+
+    <p>"Marcello," Aurora began presently, but she got no
+    further.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes?" Still he did not move.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have something on my conscience." She laughed low. "No,
+    it is serious!" she went on, as if reproving herself. "I have
+    always felt that everything that has happened to you since we
+    parted that morning by the shore has been my fault."</p>
+
+    <p>"Why?" Marcello seemed surprised.</p>
+
+    <p>"Because I called you a baby," she said. "If you had not
+    been angry at that, if you had not turned away and left me
+    suddenly&mdash;you were quite right, you know&mdash;you would
+    not have been knocked down, you would not have wandered away
+    and lost yourself. You would not have lost your memory, or been
+    ill in a strange place, or&mdash;or all the rest! So it is all
+    my fault, you see, from beginning to end."</p>
+
+    <p>"How absurd!" Marcello looked at her and smiled.</p>
+
+    <p>"No. I think it is true. But you have changed very much,
+    Marcello. You are not a boy any longer. You have a will of your
+    own now; you are a man. Do you mind my telling you that?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Certainly not!" He smiled again.</p>
+
+    <p>"I remember very well what you answered. You said that I
+    should not laugh at you again. And that has come true. You said
+    a good many other things. Do you remember?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No. I was angry. What did I say? Everything that happened
+    before I was hurt seems very far off."</p>
+
+    <p>"It does not matter," Aurora answered softly. "I am glad you
+    have forgotten, for though I was angry too, and did not care at
+    the time, the things you said have hurt me since."</p>
+
+    <p>"I am sorry," Marcello said gently, "very, very sorry.
+    Forgive me."</p>
+
+    <p>"It was all my fault, for I was teasing you for the mere fun
+    of the thing. I was nothing but a silly school-girl then."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. You have changed, too."</p>
+
+    <p>"Am I at all what you expected I should be?" Aurora asked,
+    after a moment's silence.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello glanced at her, and clasped his hands over his knee
+    more tightly than ever.</p>
+
+    <p>"I wish you were not," he answered in a low voice.</p>
+
+    <p>"Don't wish that." Her tone was even lower than his.</p>
+
+    <p>Neither spoke again for some time, and they did not look at
+    each other. But the flames flickering in the small fireplace
+    seemed to be talking, like a third person in the room. Aurora
+    moved at last, and changed her position.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am glad that you have quarrelled with your stepfather,"
+    she said. "He meant to do you all the harm he could. He meant
+    you to die of the life you were leading."</p>
+
+    <p>"You know that?" Marcello looked up quickly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. I have heard my mother and Professor Kalmon talking
+    about it when they thought I was not listening. I always
+    pretend that I am not listening when anybody talks about you."
+    She laughed a little. "It is so much simpler," she added, as if
+    to explain. "The Professor said that your stepfather was
+    killing you by inches. Those were his words."</p>
+
+    <p>"The Professor never liked him. But he was right. Have you
+    seen him often?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes." Aurora laughed again. "He always turns up wherever we
+    are, pretending that it is the most unexpected meeting in the
+    world. He is just like a boy!"</p>
+
+    <p>"What do you mean? Is he in love with you?"</p>
+
+    <p>"With me? No! He is madly in love with my mother! Fancy such
+    a thing! When he found that we were coming back to Rome he gave
+    up his professorship in Milan, and he has come to live here so
+    as to be able to see her. So I hear them talking a great deal,
+    and he seems to have found out a great many things about your
+    stepfather which nobody ever knew. He takes an extraordinary
+    interest in him for some reason or other."</p>
+
+    <p>"What has he found out?" asked Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"Enough to hang him, if people could be hanged in Italy,"
+    Aurora answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"I should have thought Folco too clever to do anything
+    really against the law," said Marcello, who did not seem much
+    surprised at what she said.</p>
+
+    <p>"The Professor believes that it was he that tried to kill
+    you."</p>
+
+    <p>"How is that possible?" Marcello asked, in great
+    astonishment. "You would have seen him!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I did. You had not been gone three minutes when he came
+    round to the gap in the bank where I was standing. He came from
+    the side towards which I had seen you go. It was perfectly
+    impossible that he should not have met you. The Professor says
+    he must have known that you were there, looking at the storm,
+    but that he did not know that I was with you, and that he was
+    lying in wait for you to strike you from behind. If we had gone
+    back together he would not have shown himself, that's all, and
+    he would have waited for a better chance. If I had only
+    followed you I should have seen what happened."</p>
+
+    <p>"That is the trouble," said Marcello thoughtfully. "No one
+    ever saw what happened, and I remember nothing but that I fell
+    forward, feeling that I had been struck on the back of the
+    head. Did you not hear any sound?"</p>
+
+    <p>"How could I, in such a gale as was blowing? It all looks
+    dreadfully likely and quite possible, and the Professor is
+    convinced that your stepfather has done some worse things."</p>
+
+    <p>"Worse?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, because he did not fail in doing them, as he did when
+    he tried to kill you."</p>
+
+    <p>"But what must such a man be?" cried Marcello, suddenly
+    breaking out in anger. "What must his life have been in all the
+    years before my mother married him?"</p>
+
+    <p>"He was a kind of adventurer in South America. I don't quite
+    know what he did there, but Professor Kalmon has found out a
+    great deal about him from the Argentine Republic, where he
+    lived until he killed somebody and had to escape to Europe. If
+    I were you I would go and see the Professor, since he is in
+    Rome. He lives at No. 16, Via Sicilia. He will tell you a great
+    deal about that man when he knows that you have parted for
+    good."</p>
+
+    <p>"I'll go and see him. Thank you. I cannot imagine that he
+    could tell me anything worse than I have already heard."</p>
+
+    <p>"Perhaps he may," Aurora answered very gravely.</p>
+
+    <p>Then she was silent, and Marcello could not help looking at
+    her as she leaned back in the corner of the sofa. Of all
+    things, at that moment, he dreaded lest he should lose command
+    of himself under the unexpected influence of her beauty, of old
+    memories, of the failing light, of the tender shadows that
+    still lingered under her eyes, of that exquisite small hand
+    that lay idly on the sofa beside her, just within his reach. He
+    rose abruptly, no longer trusting himself.</p>
+
+    <p>"I must be going," he said.</p>
+
+    <p>"Already? Why?" She looked up at him and their eyes met.</p>
+
+    <p>"Because I cannot be alone with you any longer. I do not
+    trust myself."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, you do. You are a man now, and I trust you."</p>
+
+    <p>He had spoken roughly and harshly in his momentary
+    self-contempt, but her words were clear and quiet, and rang
+    true. He stood still in silence for a moment.</p>
+
+    <p>"And besides," she added softly, "she trusts you too."</p>
+
+    <p>There was a little emphasis on the word "she" and in her
+    tone that was a reproach, and he looked at her in wonder.</p>
+
+    <p>"We cannot talk of her, you and I," she said, turning her
+    eyes to the fire, "but you know what I mean, Marcello. It is
+    not enough to be kind. We women do not think so much of that as
+    you men fancy. You must be true as well."</p>
+
+    <p>"I know it," Marcello answered, bending his head a little.
+    "Good-bye, Aurora."</p>
+
+    <p>"No. Not good-bye, for you will come again soon, and then
+    again, and often."</p>
+
+    <p>"Shall I?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, because we can trust each other, though we are fond of
+    each other. We are not children any longer, as we used to
+    be."</p>
+
+    <p>"Then I will come sometimes."</p>
+
+    <p>He took her hand, trying not to feel that it was in his, and
+    he left her sitting by the rather dreary little fire, in the
+    rather shabby room, in the grey twilight.</p>
+
+    <p>As he drove through the wet streets, he went over all she
+    had said, went over it again and again, till he knew her words
+    by heart. But he did not try, or dare to try, to examine what
+    he felt, and was going to feel. The manliness that had at last
+    come to its full growth in him clung to the word "true" as she
+    had meant it.</p>
+
+    <p>But she, being left alone, leaned forward, resting her
+    elbows on her knees and clasping her hands as she gazed at the
+    smouldering remains of the fire. She had known well enough that
+    she had loved him before he had come; she had known it too well
+    when he had told her how he had driven Folco out of his house
+    for having spoken of her too carelessly. Then the blood had
+    rushed to her throat, beating hard, and if she had not gone
+    quickly to the window she felt that she must have cried for
+    joy. She was far too proud to let him guess that, but she was
+    not too proud to love him, in spite of everything, though it
+    meant that she compared herself with the peasant girl, and
+    envied her, and in all maiden innocence would have changed
+    places with her if she could.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XVII'></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+    <p>It was late in the evening when Marcello reached the villa,
+    and was told that his stepfather had left suddenly with his
+    valet, before sunset, taking a good deal of luggage with him.
+    The coachman had driven him to the station and had seen no more
+    of him. He had not left any message or note for Marcello. This
+    was as it should be, and Marcello did not care to know whither
+    he had gone, since he was out of the house. He was glad,
+    however, that he had left Rome at once instead of going to an
+    hotel, which would have made an interesting topic of
+    conversation for gossips.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello vaguely wondered why Folco had told a perfectly
+    gratuitous falsehood about Aurora, and whether he could
+    possibly have lied merely for the sake of hurting him. If so,
+    he had got his deserts. It mattered very little now, and it was
+    a waste of thought to think of him at all.</p>
+
+    <p>The young man had a big fire built in the library, and sat
+    down in his favourite leathern chair under the shaded light. He
+    was tired, but not sleepy, and he was glad to be alone at last,
+    for he had felt Corbario's evil presence in the house, though
+    they had met little of late, and it was a great relief to know
+    that he would never return.</p>
+
+    <p>He was glad to be alone, and yet he felt lonely, for the one
+    condition did not make the other impossible. He was glad to be
+    able to think in peace, but when he did think, he longed for
+    some companionship in his thoughts, and he found that he was
+    wishing himself back in the room that looked down upon the
+    Forum of Trajan, with Aurora, and that she was telling him
+    again that she could trust him; and yet the very thought seemed
+    to mean that he was not to be trusted.</p>
+
+    <p>Psychological problems are only interesting when they
+    concern other people than ourselves, for there can be no
+    problem where there is not a difficulty, and where the inner
+    self is concerned there can be no difficulty that does not
+    demand immediate solution if we are to find peace. Some men of
+    very strong and thoughtful character are conscious of a sort of
+    second self within themselves, to which they appeal in trouble
+    as Socrates to his D&aelig;mon; but most men, in trouble and
+    alone, would turn to a friend if there were one at hand.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello had none, and he felt horribly lonely in his great
+    house, as the faces of two women rose before him, on the right
+    and left.</p>
+
+    <p>But he was a man now, and as he sat there he determined to
+    face the problem bravely and to solve it once and for ever by
+    doing what was right, wheresoever he could convince himself
+    that right lay, and without any regard for his own
+    inclinations.</p>
+
+    <p>He told himself that this must be possible, because where
+    right and wrong were concerned it was never possible to
+    hesitate long. A man is never so convinced that right is easy
+    to distinguish and to do as when he has lately made up his mind
+    to reform. Indeed, the weakness as well as the strength of all
+    reformers lies in their blind conviction that whatever strikes
+    them as right must be done immediately, with a haste that
+    strongly resembles hurry, and with no regard for consequences.
+    You might as well try, when an express train is running at full
+    speed on the wrong track, to heave it over to the right one
+    without stopping it and without killing the passengers. Yet
+    most reformers of themselves and others, from the smallest to
+    the greatest, seem to believe that this can be done, ought to
+    be done, and must be done at once.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello was just then a reformer of this sort. He had
+    become aware in the course of that afternoon that something was
+    seriously wrong, and as his own will and character had served
+    him well of late, he trusted both beforehand and set to work to
+    find out the right track, with the distinct intention of
+    violently transferring the train of his existence to it as soon
+    as it had been discovered. He was very sure of the result.</p>
+
+    <p>Besides, he had been brought up by a very religious woman,
+    and a strong foundation of belief remained in him, and was
+    really the basis of all his thinking about himself. He had been
+    careless, thoughtless, reckless, since his mother had died, but
+    he had never lost that something to which a man may best go
+    back in trouble. Sometimes it hurt him, sometimes it comforted
+    him vaguely, but he was always conscious that it was there, and
+    had been there through all his wildest days. It was not a very
+    reasoning belief, for he was not an intellectual man, but it
+    was unchangeable and solid still in spite of all his past
+    weakness. It bade him do right, blindly, and only because right
+    was right; but it did not open his eyes to the terrible truth
+    that whereas right is right, the Supreme Power, which is always
+    in the right, does not take human life into consideration at
+    all, and that a man is under all circumstances bound to
+    consider the value of life to others, and sometimes its value
+    to himself, when others depend upon him for their happiness, or
+    safety, or welfare.</p>
+
+    <p>Animated by the most sincere wish to find the right
+    direction and follow it&mdash;perhaps because Aurora had said
+    that she trusted him&mdash;yet blind to the dangers that beset
+    his path, there is no knowing how many lives Marcello might not
+    have wrecked by acting on the resolutions he certainly would
+    have made if he had been left to himself another hour.</p>
+
+    <p>He was deep in thought, his feet stretched out to the fire,
+    his head leaning back against the leathern cushion of his
+    chair, his eyes half closed, feeling that he was quite alone
+    and beyond the reach of every one, if he chose to sit there
+    until morning wrestling with his psychological problem.</p>
+
+    <p>He was roused by the sharp buzz of the telephone instrument
+    which stood on the writing-table. It was very annoying, and he
+    wished he had turned it off before he had sat down, but since
+    some one was calling he got up reluctantly to learn who wanted
+    him at that hour. He glanced at the clock, and saw that it was
+    nearly half-past ten. The instrument buzzed again as he reached
+    the table.</p>
+
+    <p>"I want to see Signor Consalvi at once; is it too late?"
+    asked a man's voice anxiously.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am Consalvi. Who are you, please?" asked Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"Kalmon. Is it true that Corbario has left the villa?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. He left this afternoon."</p>
+
+    <p>"Where is he now?"</p>
+
+    <p>"He drove to the railway station. I don't know where he is
+    gone. He left no address."</p>
+
+    <p>"&mdash;railway station&mdash;no address&mdash;" Marcello
+    heard the words as Kalmon spoke to some other person at his
+    elbow, wherever he was.</p>
+
+    <p>"May I come at once?" Kalmon asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. I am alone. I'll have the lower gate opened."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thanks. I shall be at the gate in twenty minutes.
+    Good-bye."</p>
+
+    <p>"Good-bye."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello hung up the receiver, rang the bell, and gave the
+    order for the gate, adding that the gentleman who came was to
+    be shown in at once. Then he sat down and waited.</p>
+
+    <p>It was clear that Kalmon had learned of Corbario's departure
+    from Aurora, perhaps through her mother. He had probably dined
+    with them, for he was intimate at the house, and Aurora had
+    spoken of Marcello's visit. There was no reason why she should
+    not have done so, and yet Marcello wished that she had kept it
+    to herself a little longer. It had meant so much to him, and it
+    suddenly seemed as if it had meant nothing at all to her. She
+    had perhaps repeated to her mother everything that had been
+    said, or almost everything, for she was very fond of her.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello told himself roughly that since he had no right to
+    love her, and was determined not to, he had no claim upon such
+    little delicacies of discretion and silence on her part; and
+    his problem stuck up its head again out of the deep water in
+    which it lived, and glared at him, and shot out all sorts of
+    questions like the wriggling tentacles of an octopus, inviting
+    him to wrestle with them, if only to see how useless all
+    wrestling must be. He rose again impatiently, took a cigar from
+    a big mahogany box on the table, lit it and smoked savagely,
+    walking up and down.</p>
+
+    <p>It was half finished when the door opened and Kalmon was
+    ushered in. He held out his hand as he came forward, with the
+    air of a man who has no time to lose.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am glad to see you," Marcello said.</p>
+
+    <p>"And I am exceedingly glad that you were at home when I
+    called you up," Kalmon answered. "Have you really no idea where
+    Corbario is?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Not the slightest. I am only too glad to get rid of him. I
+    suppose the Contessa told you&mdash;"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. I was dining there. But she only told me half an hour
+    ago, just as I was coming away, and I rushed home to get at the
+    telephone."</p>
+
+    <p>It occurred to Marcello that Kalmon need not have driven all
+    the way to Via Sicilia from the Forum of Trajan merely for the
+    sake of telephoning.</p>
+
+    <p>"But what is the hurry?" asked Marcello. "Do sit down and
+    explain! I heard this afternoon that you had strong suspicions
+    as to Folco's part in what happened to me."</p>
+
+    <p>"Something more than suspicions now," Kalmon answered,
+    settling his big frame in a deep chair before the tire; "but I
+    am afraid he has escaped."</p>
+
+    <p>"Escaped? He has not the slightest idea that he is
+    suspected!"</p>
+
+    <p>"How do you know? Don't you see that as he is guilty, he
+    must have soon begun to think that the change in your manner
+    toward him was due to the fact that you suspected him, and that
+    you turned him out because you guessed the truth, though you
+    could not prove it?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Perhaps," Marcello admitted, in a rather preoccupied tone.
+    "The young lady seems to have repeated to her mother everything
+    I said this afternoon," he added with evident annoyance. "Did
+    the Contessa tell you why I quarrelled with Folco to-day?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No. She merely said that there had been angry words and
+    that you had asked him to leave the house. She herself was
+    surprised, she said, and wondered what could have brought
+    matters to a crisis at last."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello's face cleared instantly. Aurora had not told any
+    one that he had quarrelled with his stepfather about her; that
+    was quite evident, for there were not two more truthful people
+    in the world than the Contessa and Kalmon, whose bright brown
+    eyes were at that moment quietly studying his face.</p>
+
+    <p>"Not that the fact matters in the least," said the
+    Professor, resting his feet on the fender and exposing the
+    broad soles of his wet walking-boots to the flame. "The
+    important fact is that the man has escaped, and we must catch
+    him."</p>
+
+    <p>"But how are you so sure that it was he that attacked me?
+    You cannot arrest a man on suspicion, without going through a
+    great many formalities. You cannot possibly have got an
+    eye-witness to the fact, and so it must be a matter of
+    suspicion after all, founded on a certain amount of rather weak
+    circumstantial evidence. Now, if it was he that tried to kill
+    me, he failed, for I am alive, and perfectly well. Why not let
+    him alone, since I have got rid of him?"</p>
+
+    <p>"For a very good reason, which I think I had better not tell
+    you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I am not sure what you would do if you were told it
+    suddenly. Are your nerves pretty good? You used to be a
+    delicate boy, though I confess that you look much stronger
+    now."</p>
+
+    <p>"You need not fear for my nerves," Marcello answered with a
+    short laugh. "If they are sound after what I have been through
+    in the last two years they will stand anything!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. Perhaps you had better know, though I warn you that
+    what I am going to say will be a shock to you, of which you do
+    not dream."</p>
+
+    <p>"You must be exaggerating!" Marcello smiled incredulously.
+    "You had better tell me at once, or I shall imagine it is much
+    worse than it is."</p>
+
+    <p>"It could not be," Kalmon answered. "It is hard even to
+    tell, and not only because what happened was in a distant way
+    my fault."</p>
+
+    <p>"Your fault? For heaven's sake tell me what the matter is,
+    and let us be done with it!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Corbario wanted to get possession of your whole fortune.
+    That is why he tried to kill you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. Is that all? You have made me understand that
+    already."</p>
+
+    <p>"He had conceived the plan before your mother's death," said
+    Kalmon.</p>
+
+    <p>"That would not surprise me either. But how do you know
+    it?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you remember that discovery of mine, that I called 'the
+    sleeping death'?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. What has that to do with it?" Marcello's expression
+    changed.</p>
+
+    <p>"Corbario stole one of the tablets from the tube in my
+    pocket, while I was asleep that night."</p>
+
+    <p>"What?" Marcello began to grow pale.</p>
+
+    <p>"Your mother died asleep," said Kalmon in a very low
+    voice.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello was transfixed with horror, and grasped the arms of
+    his chair. His face was livid. Kalmon watched him, and
+    continued.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. Corbario did it. Your mother used to take phenacetine
+    tablets when she had headaches. They were very like the tablets
+    of my poison in size and shape. Corbario stole into my room
+    when I was sound asleep, took one of mine, and dropped in one
+    of hers. Then he put mine amongst the phenacetine ones. She
+    took it, slept, and died."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello gasped for breath, his eyes starting from his
+    head.</p>
+
+    <p>"You see," Kalmon went on, "it was long before I found that
+    my tablets had been tampered with. There had been seven in the
+    tube. I knew that, and when I glanced at the tube next day
+    there were seven still. The tube was of rather thick blue
+    glass, if you remember, so that the very small difference
+    between the one tablet and the rest could not be seen through
+    it. I went to Milan almost immediately, and when I got home I
+    locked up the tube in a strong-box. It was not until long
+    afterwards, when I wanted to make an experiment, that I opened
+    the tube and emptied the contents into a glass dish. Then I saw
+    that one tablet was unlike the rest. I saw that it had been
+    made by a chemist and not by myself. I analysed it and found
+    five grains of phenacetine."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello leaned back, listening intently, and still deadly
+    pale.</p>
+
+    <p>"You did not know that I was trying to find out how you had
+    been hurt, that I was in communication with the police from the
+    first, that I came to Rome and visited you in the hospital
+    before you recovered your memory. The Contessa was very anxious
+    to know the truth about her old friend's son, and I did what I
+    could. That was natural. Something told me that Corbario had
+    tried to kill you, and I suspected him, but it is only lately
+    that I have got all the evidence we need. There is not a link
+    lacking. Well, when I came to Rome that time, it chanced that I
+    met Corbario at the station. He had come by the same train, and
+    was looking dreadfully ill. That increased my suspicion, for I
+    knew that his anxiety must be frightful, since you might have
+    seen him when he struck you, and might recognise him, and
+    accuse him. Yet he could not possibly avoid meeting you.
+    Imagine what that man must have felt. He tried to smile when he
+    saw me, and said he wished he had one of those sleeping tablets
+    of mine. You understand. He thought I had already missed the
+    one he had taken, though I had not, and that he had better
+    disarm any possible suspicion by speaking of the poison
+    carelessly. Then his face turned almost yellow, and he nearly
+    fainted. He said it was the heat, and I helped him to his
+    carriage. He looked like a man terrified out of his senses, and
+    I remembered the fact afterwards, when I found that one tablet
+    had been stolen; but at the time I attributed it all to his
+    fear of facing you. Now we know the truth. He tried to murder
+    you, and on the same day he poisoned your mother."</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon sat quite still when he had finished, and for a long
+    time Marcello did not move, and made no sound. At last he spoke
+    in a dull voice.</p>
+
+    <p>"I want to kill him myself."</p>
+
+    <p>The Professor glanced at him and nodded slowly, as if he
+    understood the simple instinct of justice that moved him.</p>
+
+    <p>"If I see him, I shall kill him," Marcello said slowly. "I
+    am sure I shall."</p>
+
+    <p>"I am afraid that he has escaped," Kalmon answered. "Of
+    course there is a possibility that he may have had some object
+    in deceiving your coachman by driving to the railway station,
+    but it is not at all likely. He probably took the first train
+    to the north."</p>
+
+    <p>"But he can be stopped at the frontier!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you think Corbario is the man to let himself be trapped
+    easily if he knows that he is pursued?" asked Kalmon
+    incredulously. "I do not."</p>
+
+    <p>He rose from his chair and began to walk up and down, his
+    hands behind him and his head bent.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello paid no attention to him and was silent for a long
+    time, sitting quite motionless and scarcely seeming to breathe.
+    What he felt he never could have told afterwards; he only knew
+    that he suffered in every fibre of his brain and body, with
+    every nerve of his heart and in every secret recess of his
+    soul. His mother seemed to have been dead so long, beyond the
+    break in his memory. The dreadful truth he had just heard made
+    her die again before his eyes, by the hand of the man whom he
+    and she had trusted.</p>
+
+    <p>"Kalmon," he said at last, and the Professor stopped short
+    in his walk. "Kalmon, do you think she knows?"</p>
+
+    <p>It was like the cry of a child, but it came from a man who
+    was already strong. Kalmon could only shake his head gravely;
+    he could find nothing to say in answer to such a question, and
+    yet he was too human and kind and simple-hearted not to
+    understand the words that rose to Marcello's lips.</p>
+
+    <p>"Then she was happy to the end&mdash;then she still believes
+    in him."</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon turned his clear eyes thoughtfully towards Marcello's
+    face.</p>
+
+    <p>"She is gone," he answered. "She knows the great secret now.
+    The rest is nothing to the dead. But we are living and it is
+    much to us. The man must be brought to justice, and you must
+    help me to bring him down, if we have to hunt him round the
+    world."</p>
+
+    <p>"By God, I will!" said Marcello, in the tone of one who
+    takes a solemn obligation.</p>
+
+    <p>He rose and stood upright, as if he were ready, and though
+    he was still pale there was no look of weak horror left in his
+    face, nor any weakness at all.</p>
+
+    <p>"Good!" exclaimed Kalmon. "I would rather see you so. Now
+    listen to me, and collect your thoughts, Marcello. Ercole is in
+    Rome. You remember Ercole, your keeper at the cottage by the
+    shore? Yes. I got the last link in the evidence about
+    Corbario's attack on you from him to-day. He is a strange
+    fellow. He has known it since last summer and has kept it to
+    himself. But he is one of those diabolically clever peasants
+    that one meets in the Campagna, and he must have his reasons. I
+    told him to sleep at my house to-night, and when I went home he
+    was sitting up in the entry with his dog. I have sent him to
+    the station to find out whether Corbario really left or not.
+    You don't think he will succeed? I tell you there are few
+    detectives to be compared with one of those fellows when they
+    are on the track of a man they hate. I told him to come here,
+    no matter how late it might be, since he is your man. I suppose
+    he can get in?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course. There is a night-bell for the porter. Ercole
+    knows that. Besides, the porter will not go to bed as long as
+    you are here. While we are waiting for him, tell me what Ercole
+    has found out."</p>
+
+    <p>They sat down again, and Kalmon told Marcello the sailor's
+    story of what his captain had seen from the deck of the
+    brigantine. Marcello listened gravely.</p>
+
+    <p>"I remember that there was a small vessel very far in," he
+    said. "Aurora will remember it, too, for she watched it and
+    spoke of it. We thought it must run aground on the bar, it was
+    so very near."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. She remembers it, too. The evidence is complete."</p>
+
+    <p>There was silence again. Marcello threw another log upon the
+    fire, and they waited. Kalmon smoked thoughtfully, but Marcello
+    leaned back in his chair, covering his eyes with one hand. The
+    pain had not begun to be dulled yet, and he could only sit
+    still and bear it.</p>
+
+    <p>At last the door opened, and a servant said that Ercole was
+    waiting, and had been ordered to come, no matter how late it
+    was. A moment later he appeared, and for once without his
+    dog.</p>
+
+    <p>He stood before the door as it closed behind him waiting to
+    be told to come forward. Marcello spoke kindly to him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Come here," he said. "It is a long time since we saw each
+    other, and now we are in a hurry."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole's heavy boots rang on the polished floor as he obeyed
+    and came up to the table. He looked gloomily and suspiciously
+    at both men.</p>
+
+    <p>"Well?" said Kalmon, encouraging him to speak.</p>
+
+    <p>"He is still in Rome," Ercole answered. "How do I know it? I
+    began to ask the porters and the under station-masters who wear
+    red caps, and the woman who sells newspapers and cigars at the
+    stand, and the man who clips the tickets at the doors of the
+    waiting-rooms. 'Did you see a gentleman, so and so, with a
+    servant, so and so, and much luggage, going away by the train?
+    For I am his keeper from the Roman shore, and he told me to be
+    here when he went away, to give him a certain answer.' So I
+    said, going from one to another, and weeping to show that it
+    was a very urgent matter. And many shook their heads and
+    laughed at me. But at last a porter heard, and asked if the
+    gentleman were so and so. And I said yes, that he was so and
+    so, and his servant was so and so, and that the gentleman was a
+    rich gentleman. And the porter said, 'See what a combination!
+    That is the gentleman who had all his luggage brought in this
+    afternoon, to be weighed; but it was not weighed, for he came
+    back after a quarter of an hour, and took some small things and
+    had them put upon a cab, but the other boxes were left in
+    deposit.' Then I took out four sous and showed them to the
+    porter, and he led me to a certain hall, and showed me the
+    luggage, which is that of the man we seek, and it is marked
+    'F.C.' So when I had seen, I made a show of being joyful, and
+    gave the porter five sous instead of four. And he was very
+    contented. This is the truth. So I say, he is still in
+    Rome."</p>
+
+    <p>"I told you so," said Kalmon, looking at Marcello.</p>
+
+    <p>"Excuse me, but what did you tell the young gentleman?"
+    asked Ercole suspiciously.</p>
+
+    <p>"That you would surely find out," Kalmon answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have found out many things," said Ercole gloomily.</p>
+
+    <p>His voice was very harsh just then, as if speaking so much
+    had made him hoarse.</p>
+
+    <p>"He took some of his things away because he meant to spend
+    the night in Rome," Kalmon said thoughtfully. "He means to
+    leave to-morrow, perhaps by an early train. If we do not find
+    him to-night, we shall not catch him in Rome at all."</p>
+
+    <p>"Surely," said Ercole, "but Rome is very big, and it is
+    late."</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XVIII'></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+    <p>It was still raining when the three men left the villa, and
+    the night was very dark, for the young moon had already set.
+    The wind howled round San Pietro in Montorio and the Spanish
+    Academy, and whistled through the branches of the plane-trees
+    along the winding descent, and furiously tore the withering
+    leaves. They struck Ercole's weather-beaten face as he sat
+    beside the coachman with bent head, with his soft hat pulled
+    down over his eyes, and the rain dripped from his coarse
+    moustache. Kalmon and Marcello leaned as far back as they
+    could, under the deep hood and behind the high leathern
+    apron.</p>
+
+    <p>"There is some animal following us," the cabman said to
+    Ercole as they turned a corner.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is my dog," Ercole answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"It sounds like a calf," said the cabman, turning his head
+    to listen through the storm.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is not a calf," answered Ercole gruffly. "It is my dog.
+    Or if you wish it to be the were-wolf, it will be the
+    were-wolf."</p>
+
+    <p>The cabman glanced uneasily at his companion on the box, for
+    the were-wolf is a thing of terror to Romans. But he could not
+    see the countryman's features in the gloom, and he hastened his
+    horse's pace down the hill, for he did not like the sound of
+    those galloping feet behind his cab, in that lonely road, in
+    the dark and the rain.</p>
+
+    <p>"Where am I to go?" he asked, as he came near the place
+    where a turn to the right leads out of the Via Garibaldi down
+    to the Via Luciano Manara.</p>
+
+    <p>But Kalmon knew where they were, even better than Marcello,
+    to whom the road was familiar by day and night, in all
+    weathers.</p>
+
+    <p>"We must leave that message first," said the Professor to
+    Marcello. "We are coming to the turning."</p>
+
+    <p>"To Santa Cecilia," Marcello called out to the cabman,
+    thrusting his head forward into the rain, "then I will tell you
+    where to go."</p>
+
+    <p>"Santa Cecilia," echoed the cabman.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole growled something quite unintelligible, to which his
+    companion paid no attention, and the cab rattled on through the
+    rain down the long paved street. It made such a noise that the
+    dog's feet could not be heard any more. There were more lamps,
+    too, and it seemed less gloomy than up there under the
+    plane-trees, though there were no lights in the windows at that
+    late hour.</p>
+
+    <p>"Now to the right," said Ercole, as they reached the back of
+    Saint Cecilia's at the Via Anicia.</p>
+
+    <p>"To the right!" Marcello called out a second later from
+    under the hood.</p>
+
+    <p>"You seem to know the way," said the cabman to Ercole. "Why
+    don't you give me the address of the house at once and be done
+    with it?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I know the house, but not the street, nor the number."</p>
+
+    <p>"I understand. Does your dog also know the house?"</p>
+
+    <p>To this question Ercole made no answer, for he considered
+    that it was none of the cabman's business, and, moreover, he
+    regretted having shown that he knew where his master was going.
+    Marcello now gave the final direction to the cabman, who drew
+    up before a door in a wall, in a narrow lane, where the walls
+    were high and the doors were few. It was the garden entrance to
+    the little house in Trastevere.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello got out, opened the door with the key he carried,
+    and went in. It was raining hard, and he disappeared into the
+    darkness, shutting the door behind him. It had a small modern
+    lock with a spring latch that clicked sharply as it shut. The
+    cab had stopped with the door on the left, and therefore on the
+    side on which Ercole was sitting. Nino, the dog, came up from
+    behind, with his tongue hanging out, blood-red in the feeble
+    light of the cab's lamp; he put his head up above the low front
+    wheel to have a look at Ercole. Being satisfied, he at once lay
+    down on the wet stones, with his muzzle towards the door.</p>
+
+    <p>Two or three minutes passed thus, in total silence. The
+    cab-horse hung his head patiently under the driving rain, but
+    neither stamped on the paving stones nor shook himself, nor
+    panted audibly, for he was a pretty good horse, as cab-horses
+    go, and was not tired.</p>
+
+    <p>Suddenly Nino growled without moving, the ominous low growl
+    of a dog that can kill, and Ercole growled at him in turn,
+    making a sound intended to impose silence. There was no reason
+    why Nino should growl at Marcello. But Nino rose slowly upon
+    his quarters, as if he were about to spring at the door, and
+    his rough coat bristled along his back. Then Ercole distinctly
+    heard the latch click as it had done when Marcello went in, and
+    Nino put his muzzle to the crack of the closed door and sniffed
+    up and down it, and then along the stone step. To Ercole it was
+    clear that some person within had opened the door noiselessly a
+    little way and had shut it again rather hurriedly, on hearing
+    the dog and seeing the cab. Whoever it was had wished to see if
+    there were any one outside, without being seen, or perhaps had
+    meant to slip out without being heard by any one in the
+    house.</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon, leaning back inside, had not heard the sound of the
+    latch, and paid no attention to Nino's growl. It was natural
+    that such an animal should growl and snarl for nothing, he
+    thought, especially on a rainy night, when the lamps of a cab
+    throw strange patches of light on the glistening pavement.</p>
+
+    <p>There was some reason why Ercole, who had heard, did not get
+    down and tell the Professor, who had noticed nothing. One
+    reason, and a good enough one, was that whoever it was that had
+    opened the door so cautiously, it certainly was not the man
+    they were all hunting that night. Yet since Ercole knew the
+    little house, and probably knew who lived there, and that it
+    belonged to Marcello, it might have been supposed that he would
+    have told the latter, whose footsteps were heard on the gravel
+    a few moments afterwards. But though Marcello stood a moment by
+    the wheel close to Ercole, and spoke across him to the cabman,
+    Ercole said nothing. Nino had not growled at Marcello, even
+    before the latter had appeared, for Nino had a good memory, for
+    a dog, and doubtless remembered long days spent by the Roman
+    shore, and copious leavings thrown to him from luxurious
+    luncheons. Before they had left the villa he had sniffed at
+    Marcello's clothes and hands in a manner that was meant to be
+    uncommonly friendly, though it might not have seemed reassuring
+    to a stranger; and Marcello had patted his huge head, and
+    called him by name.</p>
+
+    <p>The young man had given the cabman the address of the office
+    of the Chief of Police, and when he had got in and hooked up
+    the leathern apron, the cab rolled away over the stones through
+    the dark streets, towards the bridge of Saint Bartholomew.</p>
+
+    <p>Within the house Regina sat alone, as Marcello had found
+    her, her chin resting on the back of her closed hand, her elbow
+    on her knee, her eyes gazing at the bright little fire that
+    blazed on the polished hearth. Her hair was knotted for the
+    night, low down on her neck, and the loose dressing-gown of
+    dove-coloured silk plush was unfastened at the neck, where a
+    little lace fell about her strong white throat.</p>
+
+    <p>She had sprung to her feet in happy surprise when Marcello
+    had entered the room, though it was not two hours since he had
+    left her, and she could still smell the smoke of his last
+    cigarette. She had felt a sudden chill when she had seen his
+    face, for she never saw him look grave and preoccupied without
+    believing that he had grown suddenly tired of her, and that the
+    end had come. But then she had seen his eyes lighten for her,
+    and she had known that he was not tired of her, but only very
+    much in earnest and very much in a hurry.</p>
+
+    <p>He had bidden her find out from Settimia where Corbario was,
+    if the woman knew it; he had told her to find out at any cost,
+    and had put a great deal of emphasis on the last words. In
+    answer to the one question she asked, he told her that Corbario
+    was a murderer, and was trying to escape. He had not time to
+    explain more fully, but he knew that he could count on her. She
+    did not love Folco Corbario, and she came of a race that could
+    hate, for it was the race of the Roman hill peasants. So he
+    left her quickly and went on.</p>
+
+    <p>But when he was gone, Regina sat quite still for some time,
+    looking at the fire. Settimia was safe in her own room, and was
+    probably asleep. It would be soon enough to wake her when
+    Regina had considered what she should say in order to get the
+    information Marcello wanted. Settimia would deny having had any
+    communication with Corbario, or that she knew anything of his
+    whereabouts. The next step would probably be to tempt her with
+    money or other presents. If this failed, what was to be done?
+    Somehow Regina guessed that a bribe would not have much effect
+    on the woman.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello had wished to send her away long ago, but Regina
+    had persuaded him to let her stay. It was part of her hatred of
+    Corbario to accumulate proofs against him, and they were not
+    lacking in the letters he wrote to Settimia. Regina could not
+    understand the relation in which they stood to each other, but
+    now and then she had found passages in the letters which
+    referred neither to herself nor Marcello, but to things that
+    had happened a good many years ago in another country. She was
+    convinced that the two had once been companions in some
+    nefarious business, of which they had escaped the consequences.
+    It was her intention to find out exactly what the deed had
+    been, and then to bring Corbario to ruin by exposing it. It was
+    a simple scheme, but it seemed a sure one, and Regina was very
+    patient. Corbario had tried to separate her from Marcello, and
+    she had sworn that he should pay her for that; and besides, he
+    had wished to kill Marcello in order to get his money. That was
+    bad, undoubtedly&mdash;very bad; but to her peasant mind it was
+    not unnatural. She had heard all her life of crimes committed
+    for the sake of an inheritance; and so have most of us, and in
+    countries that fondly believe themselves much more civilised
+    than Italy. That was extremely wicked, but the attempt had
+    failed, and it sank into insignificance in comparison with the
+    heinous crime of trying to separate two lovers by treachery.
+    That was what Regina would not forgive Corbario.</p>
+
+    <p>Nor would she pardon Settimia, who had been Corbario's
+    instrument and helper; and as she meant to include the woman in
+    her vengeance, she would not let her go, but kept her, and
+    treated her so generously and unsuspiciously that Settimia was
+    glad to stay, since Corbario still wished it.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina looked at the little travelling-clock that stood on
+    the low table at her elbow, and saw that it was half-past
+    eleven. Behind the drawn curtains she could hear the rain
+    beating furiously against the shutters, but all was quiet
+    within the house. Regina listened, for Settimia's room was
+    overhead, and when she moved about her footsteps could be heard
+    in the sitting-room. Regina had heard her just before Marcello
+    had come in, but there was no sound now; she had probably gone
+    to bed. Regina lit a candle and went into her own room.</p>
+
+    <p>On a shelf near the little toilet-table there was a box,
+    covered with old velvet, in which she kept the few simple pins
+    and almost necessary bits of jewellery which she had been
+    willing to accept from Marcello. She took it down, set it upon
+    the toilet-table and opened it. A small silver-mounted revolver
+    lay amongst the other things, for Marcello had insisted that
+    she should have a weapon of some kind, because the house seemed
+    lonely to him. He had shown her how to use it, but she had
+    forgotten. She took it out, and turned it over and over in her
+    hands, with a puzzled look. She did not even know whether it
+    was loaded or not, and did not remember how to open the
+    chamber. She wondered how the thing worked, and felt rather
+    afraid of it. Besides, if she had to use it, it would make a
+    dreadful noise; so she put it back carefully amongst the
+    things.</p>
+
+    <p>There were the cheap little earrings she had worn ever since
+    she had been a child, till Marcello had made her take them out
+    and wear none at all. There was a miserable little brooch of
+    tarnished silver which she had bought with her own money at a
+    country fair, and which had once seemed very fine to her. She
+    had not the slightest sentiment about such trifles, for Italian
+    peasants are altogether the least sentimental people in the
+    world; the things were not even good enough to give to
+    Settimia, and yet it seemed wrong to throw them away, so she
+    had always kept them, with a vague idea of giving them to some
+    poor little girl, to whom they would represent happiness. With
+    them lay the long pin she used to stick through her hair on
+    Sundays when she went to church.</p>
+
+    <p>It had been her mother's, and it was the only thing she
+    possessed which had belonged to the murdered woman who had
+    given her birth. It was rather a fine specimen of the pins worn
+    by the hill peasant women, and was made like a little
+    cross-hilted sword, with a blade of fire-gilt steel about eight
+    inches long. A little gilt ball was screwed upon the point,
+    intended to keep the pin from coming out after it was thrust
+    through the hair. Regina took the ball off and felt the point,
+    which was as sharp as that of a pen-knife; and she tried the
+    blade with her hands and found that it did not bend easily. It
+    was strong enough for what she wanted of it. She stuck it
+    through the heavy knot of her hair, rather low down at the back
+    of her neck, where she could easily reach it with her right
+    hand; but she did not screw on the ball. It was not likely that
+    the pin would fall out. She was very deliberate in all she did;
+    she even put up her hand two or three times, without looking at
+    herself in the mirror, to be quite sure where to find the hilt
+    of the pin if she should need it. Marcello had told her to get
+    the information he wanted "at any cost."</p>
+
+    <p>Then she went back, with her candle, through the cheerful
+    sitting-room, and out through a small vestibule that was now
+    dark, and up the narrow staircase to find Settimia.</p>
+
+    <p>She knocked, and the woman opened, and Regina was a little
+    surprised to see that she was still dressed. She was pale, and
+    looked very anxious as she faced her mistress in the
+    doorway.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is the matter?" she asked, rather nervously.</p>
+
+    <p>"Nothing," Regina answered in a reassuring tone. "I had
+    forgotten to tell you about a little change I want in the
+    trimming of that hat, and as I heard you moving about, I came
+    up before going to bed."</p>
+
+    <p>Settimia had taken off her shoes more than half an hour
+    earlier in order to make no noise, and her suspicions and her
+    fears were instantly aroused. She drew her lids together a
+    little and looked over Regina's shoulder through the open door
+    towards the dark staircase. She was not a tall woman, and was
+    slightly made, but she was energetic and could be quick when
+    she chose, as Regina knew. Regina quietly shut the door behind
+    her and came forward into the room, carrying her candle-stick,
+    which she set down upon the table near the lamp.</p>
+
+    <p>"Where is that hat?" she asked, so naturally that the woman
+    began to think nothing was wrong after all.</p>
+
+    <p>Settimia turned to cross the room, in order to get the hat
+    in question from a pasteboard bandbox that stood on the floor.
+    Regina followed her, and stood beside her as she bent down.</p>
+
+    <p>Then without the slightest warning Regina caught her arms
+    from behind and threw her to her knees, so that she was forced
+    to crouch down, her head almost touching the floor. She was no
+    more than a child in the peasant woman's hands as soon as she
+    was fairly caught. But she did not scream, and she seemed to be
+    keeping her senses about her.</p>
+
+    <p>"What do you want of me?" she asked, speaking with
+    difficulty.</p>
+
+    <p>Policemen know that ninety-nine out of a hundred criminals
+    ask that question when they are taken.</p>
+
+    <p>"I want to know several things," Regina answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"Let me go, and I will tell you what I can."</p>
+
+    <p>"No, you won't," Regina replied, looking about her for
+    something with which to tie the woman's hands, for she had
+    forgotten that this might be necessary. "I shall not let you go
+    until I know everything."</p>
+
+    <p>She felt that Settimia's thin hands were cautiously trying
+    the strength of her own and turning a very little in her grasp.
+    She threw her weight upon the woman's shoulders to keep her
+    down, grasped both wrists in one hand, and with the other tore
+    off the long silk cord that tied her own dressing-gown at the
+    waist. It was new and strong.</p>
+
+    <p>"You had better not struggle," she said, as she got the
+    first turn round Settimia's wrists and began to pull it tight.
+    "You are in my power now. It is of no use to scream either, for
+    nobody will hear you."</p>
+
+    <p>"I know it," the woman replied. "What are you going to do
+    with me?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall ask questions. If you answer them, I shall not hurt
+    you. If you do not, I shall hurt you until you do, or until you
+    die. Now I am going to tie your wrists to your heels, so that
+    you cannot move. Then I will put a pillow under your head, so
+    that you can be pretty comfortable while we talk a little."</p>
+
+    <p>She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, which terrified Settimia
+    much more than any dramatic display of anger or hatred could
+    have done. In a few moments the woman was bound hand and foot.
+    Regina turned her upon her side, and arranged a pillow under
+    her head as she had promised to do. Then she sat down upon the
+    floor beside the pillow and looked at her calmly.</p>
+
+    <p>"In this way we can talk," she said.</p>
+
+    <p>Settimia's rather stony eyes were wide with fear now, as she
+    lay on her side, watching Regina's face.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have always served you faithfully," she said. "I cannot
+    understand why you treat me so cruelly."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," Regina answered, unmoved, "you have been an excellent
+    maid, and I am sorry that I am obliged to tie you up like the
+    calves that are taken to the city on carts. Now tell me, where
+    is Signor Corbario?"</p>
+
+    <p>"How should I know?" whined Settimia, evidently more
+    frightened. "I know nothing about Signor Corbario. I swear that
+    I have hardly ever seen him. How can I possibly know where he
+    is? He is probably at his house, at this hour."</p>
+
+    <p>"No. You know very well that he has left the villa. It will
+    not serve to tell lies, nor to say that you know nothing about
+    him, for I am sure you do. Now listen. I wish to persuade you
+    with good words. You and Signor Corbario were in South America
+    together."</p>
+
+    <p>Settimia's face expressed abject terror.</p>
+
+    <p>"Never!" she cried, rocking her bound body sideways in an
+    instinctive attempt to emphasise her words by a gesture. "I
+    swear before heaven, and the saints, and the holy&mdash;"</p>
+
+    <p>"It is useless," Regina interrupted. "You have not forgotten
+    what you and he did in Salta ten years ago. You remember how
+    suddenly Padilla died, when 'Doctor' Corbario was attending
+    him, and you were his nurse, don't you?"</p>
+
+    <p>She fixed her eyes sternly on Settimia's, and the woman
+    turned livid, and ground her teeth.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are the devil!" she said hoarsely. "But it is all a
+    lie!" she cried, suddenly trying denial again. "I was never in
+    South America, never, never, never!"</p>
+
+    <p>"This is a lie," observed Regina, with perfect calm. "If you
+    do not tell me where Signor Corbario is to-night, I shall go to
+    the police to-morrow and tell all I know about you."</p>
+
+    <p>"You know nothing. What is all this that you are inventing?
+    You are a wicked woman!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Take care! Perhaps I am a wicked woman. Who knows! I am not
+    a saint, but you are not my confessor. It is the contrary,
+    perhaps; and perhaps you will have to confess to me this night,
+    before going to the other world, if you confess at all. Where
+    is Signor Corbario?"</p>
+
+    <p>As she asked the question, she quietly took the long pin
+    from her hair and began to play with the point.</p>
+
+    <p>"Are you going to murder me?" groaned the wretched woman,
+    watching the terrible little weapon.</p>
+
+    <p>"I should not call it murder to kill you. This point is
+    sharp. Should you like to feel it? You shall. In this way you
+    will perhaps be persuaded to speak."</p>
+
+    <p>She gently pressed the point against Settimia's cheek.</p>
+
+    <p>"Don't move, or you will scratch yourself," she said, as the
+    woman tried to draw back her face. "Now, will you tell me where
+    Signor Corbario is? I want to know."</p>
+
+    <p>Settimia must have feared Corbario more than she feared
+    Regina and the sharp pin at that moment, for she shook her head
+    and set her teeth. Perhaps she believed that Regina was only
+    threatening her, and did not mean to do her any real bodily
+    hurt; but in this she was misled by Regina's very quiet
+    manner.</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall wait a little while," said Regina, almost
+    indifferently, "and then, if you do not tell me, I shall begin
+    to kill you. It may take a long time, and you will scream a
+    good deal, but nobody will hear you. Now think a little, and
+    decide what you will do."</p>
+
+    <p>Regina laid the pin upon the floor beside her, drew up her
+    knees, and clasped her hands together over them, as the hill
+    women often sit for hours when they are waiting for
+    anything.</p>
+
+    <p>Her face hardened slowly until it had an expression which
+    Marcello had never seen. It was not a look of cruelty, nor of
+    fierce anticipated satisfaction in what she meant to do; it was
+    simply cold and relentless, and Settimia gazed with terror on
+    the splendid marble profile, so fearfully distinct against the
+    dark wall in the bright light of the lamp. The strength of the
+    woman, quietly waiting to kill, seemed to fill the room; her
+    figure seemed to grow gigantic in the terrified eyes of her
+    prisoner; the slow, regular heave of her bosom as she breathed
+    was telling the seconds and minutes of fate, that would never
+    reach an hour.</p>
+
+    <p>It is bad to see death very near when one is tied hand and
+    foot and cannot fight for life. Most people cannot bear the
+    sight quietly for a quarter of an hour; they break down
+    altogether, or struggle furiously, like animals, though they
+    know it is perfectly useless and that they have no chance.
+    Anything is easier than to lie still, watching the knife and
+    wondering when and where it is going to enter into the
+    flesh.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina sat thinking and ready. She wished that she had
+    Corbario himself in her power, but it was something to have the
+    woman who had helped him. She was very glad that she had
+    insisted on keeping Settimia in spite of Marcello's
+    remonstrances. It had made it possible to obtain the
+    information he wanted, and which, she felt sure, was to lead to
+    Corbario's destruction. She was to find out "at any cost";
+    those had been Marcello's words, and she supposed he knew that
+    she would obey him to the letter. For she said to herself that
+    he was the master, and that if she did not obey him in such a
+    matter, when he seemed so much in earnest, he would be
+    disappointed, and angry, and would then grow quickly tired of
+    her, and so the end would come. "At any cost," as he had said
+    it in his haste, meant to Regina at the cost of blood, and
+    life, and limb, if need were. Corbario was the enemy of the man
+    she loved; it was her lover's pleasure to find out his enemy
+    and to be revenged at last; what sort of woman must she be if
+    she did not help him? what was her love worth if she did not
+    obey him? He had been always kind to her, and more than kind;
+    but it would have been quite the same if he had treated her
+    worse than a dog, provided he did not send her away from him.
+    She belonged to him, and he was the master, to do as he
+    pleased. If he sent her away, she would go; but if not, he
+    might have beaten her and she would never have complained. Now
+    that he had given a simple command, she was not going to
+    disobey him. She had pride, but it was not for him, and in her
+    veins the blood of sixty generations of slaves and serfs had
+    come down to her through two thousand years, the blood of men
+    who had killed when they were bidden to kill by their masters,
+    whose masters had killed them like sheep in war and often in
+    peace, of women who had been reckoned as goods and as chattels
+    with the land on which their mothers had borne them&mdash;of
+    men and women too often familiar with murder and sudden death
+    from their cradles to their graves.</p>
+
+    <p>The minutes passed and Settimia's terror grew till the room
+    swam with her, and she lost hold upon herself, and did not know
+    whether she screamed or was silent, as her parched lips opened
+    wide upon her parted teeth. But she had made no sound, and
+    Regina did not even look at her. Death had not come yet; there
+    was a respite of seconds, perhaps of minutes.</p>
+
+    <p>At last Regina unclasped her hands and took up the pin
+    again. The miserable woman fancied that she already felt the
+    little blade creeping through her flesh and blood on its way to
+    her heart. For Regina had said she would take a long time to
+    kill her. It must have been a strong reason that could keep her
+    silent still, if she knew the answer to the question.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina turned her head very slowly and looked coldly down at
+    the agonised face.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am tired," she said. "I cannot wait any longer."</p>
+
+    <p>Settimia's eyes seemed to be starting from her head, and her
+    dry lips were stretched till they cracked, and she thought she
+    had screamed again; but she had not, for her throat was
+    paralysed with fear. Regina rose upon her knees beside the
+    pillow, with the pin in her right hand.</p>
+
+    <p>"Where is Corbario?" she asked, looking down. "If you will
+    not tell I shall hurt you."</p>
+
+    <p>Settimia's lips moved, as if she were trying to speak, but
+    no words came from them. Regina got up from the floor, went to
+    the washstand and poured some water into the glass, for she
+    thought it possible that the woman was really unable to utter a
+    sound because her throat was parched with fear. But she could
+    speak a little as soon as Regina left her side, and the last
+    peril seemed a few seconds less near.</p>
+
+    <p>"For the love of God, don't kill me yet," she moaned. "Let
+    me speak first!"</p>
+
+    <p>Regina came back, knelt down, and set the glass on the
+    floor, beside the pin.</p>
+
+    <p>"That is all I want," she said quietly, "that you should
+    speak."</p>
+
+    <p>"Water," moaned Settimia, turning her eyes to the glass.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina held up her head a little and set the tumbler to her
+    lips, and she drank eagerly. The fear of death is more parching
+    than wound-fever or passion.</p>
+
+    <p>"Now you can surely talk a little," Regina said.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why do you wish to know where he is?" Settimia asked in a
+    weak voice. "Are the police looking for him? What has he done?
+    Why do you want me to betray him?"</p>
+
+    <p>"These are too many questions," Regina answered. "I have
+    been told to make you tell where he is, and I will. That is
+    enough."</p>
+
+    <p>"I do not know where he is."</p>
+
+    <p>In an instant the point of the sharp little blade was
+    pressing against the woman's throat, harder and harder; one
+    second more and it would pierce the skin and draw blood.</p>
+
+    <p>"Stop," she screamed, with a convulsion of her whole body.
+    "He is in the house!"</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XIX'></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+    <p>With a single movement Regina was on her feet, for she had
+    been taken by surprise, and her first instinct was to be ready
+    for some new and unsuspected danger. In a flash it seemed to
+    her that since Corbario was in the house, he might very
+    possibly enter suddenly and take Settimia's defence. Regina was
+    not afraid of him, but she was only a woman after all, and
+    Corbario was not a man to stop at trifles. He was very likely
+    armed, and would perhaps shoot her, in order to make good his
+    escape with Settimia, unless, as was quite probable, he killed
+    his old accomplice too, before leaving the room.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina stood still a moment, reflecting on the dangerous
+    situation. It certainly would not be safe to release Settimia
+    yet; for if Corbario were really in the house, the two together
+    could easily overpower one woman, though she was strong.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am sorry that I cannot untie you yet," Regina said, and
+    with a glance at the prostrate figure she took up her
+    candle-stick, stuck her pin through her hair before the mirror,
+    and went to the door.</p>
+
+    <p>She took the key from the lock, put it back on the outside,
+    and turned it, and put it into her pocket when she had shut the
+    door after her. Then she slowly descended the stairs, stopping
+    now and then to listen. and shading her candle with her hand so
+    that she could see over it, for she expected to be attacked at
+    any moment. At the slightest sound she would have snatched her
+    pin from her hair again, but she heard nothing, and went
+    cautiously down till she reached the vestibule outside the
+    sitting-room. She entered the latter and sat down to think.</p>
+
+    <p>Should she boldly search the house? Settimia could hardly
+    have had any object in lying. If she had meant to frighten
+    Regina, she would have spoken very differently. She would have
+    made out that Corbario was almost within hearing, waiting in a
+    dark corner with a loaded revolver. But her words had been the
+    cry of truth, uttered to save her life at the moment when death
+    was actually upon her. She would have screamed out the truth
+    just as certainly if Corbario had already left Rome, or if he
+    were in some hotel for the night&mdash;or even if she had
+    really known nothing. In the last case Regina would have
+    believed her, and would have let her go. There is no mistaking
+    the accent of mortal terror, whether one has ever heard it or
+    not.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario was somewhere in the house, Marcello's enemy, and
+    the man she herself had long hated. A wild longing came over
+    her to have him in her power, bound hand and foot like
+    Settimia, and then to torment him at her pleasure until he
+    died. She felt the strength of half a dozen men in her, and the
+    courage of an army, as she rose to her feet once more. She had
+    seen him. He was not a big man. If she could catch him from
+    behind, as she had caught the woman, she might perhaps
+    overpower him. With the thought of near revenge the last ray of
+    caution disappeared, and from being fearless Regina became
+    suddenly reckless.</p>
+
+    <p>But as she rose, she heard a sound overhead, and it was the
+    unmistakable sound of footsteps. She started in surprise. It
+    was simply impossible that Settimia should have loosed the cord
+    that bound her. Regina had been brought up in the low hill
+    country and in the Campagna, and she could tie some of the
+    knots used by Roman muleteers and carters, which hold as well
+    as those men learn at sea. She had tied Settimia very firmly,
+    and short of a miracle the woman could not have freed herself.
+    Yet the footsteps had been distinctly audible for a moment.
+    Since Settimia was not walking about, Corbario must have got
+    into the room. Yet Regina had locked the door, and had the key
+    in her pocket. It was perfectly incomprehensible. She left the
+    sitting-room again, carrying her candle as before; but at the
+    door she turned back, and set the candle-stick upon the table.
+    She would be safer in the dark, and would have a better chance
+    of taking Corbario by surprise.</p>
+
+    <p>Poor Regina had not grown up amongst people who had a high
+    standard of honour, and her own ideas about right and wrong
+    were primitive, to speak charitably. But if she had dreamt of
+    the deed that was being done upstairs, her heart would have
+    stood still, and she would have felt sick at the mere thought
+    of such villainy.</p>
+
+    <p>She had left the room and locked the door, and while her
+    footsteps had been audible on the stairs no other sound had
+    broken the stillness. But a few seconds later a whispered
+    question came from some person out of sight.</p>
+
+    <p>"Is she gone?" the whisper asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," answered Settimia in a very low voice, which she knew
+    Regina could not hear.</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario's pale face cautiously emerged from the closet in
+    which he had been hidden, and he looked round the room before
+    he stepped out. Settimia could not turn over to see him, but
+    she heard him coming towards her.</p>
+
+    <p>"Cut this cord," she said in an undertone. "Make haste! We
+    can be out of the house in less than half a minute."</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario knelt beside her, and took out a handsome English
+    clasp-knife. But he did not cut the cord. He looked down into
+    Settimia's face, and she understood.</p>
+
+    <p>"I could not help it," she answered. "She would have killed
+    me!"</p>
+
+    <p>Corbario laid his left hand upon her throat.</p>
+
+    <p>"If you try to scream I shall strangle you," he said in a
+    whisper. "You have betrayed me, and I cannot afford to trust
+    you again. Do you know what I am going to do?"</p>
+
+    <p>She tried to turn her head, but his hand was heavy on her
+    throat. She strained frightfully to move, and her stony eyes
+    lit up with a dying glare of terror.</p>
+
+    <p>"Do it quickly!" she gasped.</p>
+
+    <p>"Hush!" His hand tightened on her throat. "If you were in
+    Salta, you should die by tenths of inches, if it took all
+    night! That would be too good for you."</p>
+
+    <p>He spat in her face as she writhed under his grasp. He
+    looked into her living eyes once more with all the cowardly
+    hate that possessed him, he struck deep and sure, he saw the
+    light break in the pupils, and heard the awful rattle of her
+    last breath.</p>
+
+    <p>In an instant he was at the window, and had thrown it wide
+    open. He got out quickly, let himself down with his hands, and
+    pushed himself away from the wall with his feet as he jumped
+    down backwards, well knowing that there was grass below him,
+    and that the earth was as soft as sponge with the long rain. He
+    was sure that he could not hurt himself. Yet before his feet
+    touched the ground he had uttered a low cry of fear.</p>
+
+    <p>He was on his legs now and trying to run, but it was too
+    late. There was the flash of a lantern in the wet garden, and
+    between him and the light, and just below it, he saw two points
+    of greenish fire coming at him; for he saw everything then; and
+    he heard the rush of a heavy beast's feet, tearing up the earth
+    with iron claws, and the savage breath, and the loud hiss of a
+    man setting the creature on; for he heard every sound then; and
+    he knew that the thing of terror would leap up with resistless
+    strength and hurl its weight upon him, and bury its jagged
+    fangs in his throat and tear him, in an instant that would seem
+    like an hour of agony, and that the pain and the fear would be
+    as if he were hung up by all the nerves of his body, drawn out
+    and twisted; for he knew everything then; and in that
+    immeasurable time which is nothing, and yet is infinite, he
+    remembered his evil life, his robberies, his murders, and his
+    betrayals, one by one, but he remembered with most frightful
+    clearness how he had tried to kill Marcello, how he had
+    corrupted him from his childhood, with bad counsels very
+    cunningly, and prepared him to go astray, how he had thrust
+    evil in his path and laughed away the good, and had led him on,
+    and poisoned him, and would have brought him to his death and
+    damnation surely, but for one sinning devoted woman that loved
+    him; for he remembered everything then; and from very far away,
+    out of memories of his youth, there came a voice that had once
+    been gentle and kind, but that rang in his ears now, like the
+    blast of the trumpet of the last judgment.</p>
+
+    <p>"Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which
+    believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were
+    hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of
+    the sea."</p>
+
+    <p>Far better, indeed, for it all came, when the immeasurable
+    second's length was past, and he was thrown down against the
+    wall, and torn, and shaken like a rat; it all came just as he
+    had felt that it was coming, and it lasted long, a long, long
+    time, while he tried to howl, and the blood only gurgled in his
+    throat. And then, just as many strong hands dragged away the
+    thing of terror, and the light of a lantern and of a lamp
+    flashed in his eyes, he fell asleep in the wet grass.</p>
+
+    <p>For they had caught him fairly and brought him, down. Kalmon
+    had watched him long, and had told some of his suspicions to
+    the Chief of Police, and the latter, unknown to Kalmon, had
+    caused him to be watched from time to time. But he, who had
+    been watched before and had once already escaped for his life,
+    had sometimes seen faces near him that he did not trust, and
+    when he had turned back from the station that afternoon he had
+    seen one of those faces; so he had driven away quickly in a
+    cab, by winding ways, so as not to be followed. Yet Kalmon and
+    Marcello, talking as they drove, grew more and more sure that
+    he would wish to see Settimia before he left Rome, the more
+    certainly if he believed himself pursued, as seemed likely from
+    his changing his mind at the station. So they had stopped their
+    cab before they had reached their destination, and had sent
+    Ercole back to Trastevere with the key of the garden gate,
+    bidding him watch, as it was most probable that Corbario would
+    try to get out through the garden; and before long they had
+    come back to the door of the house that opened upon the street,
+    and had let themselves in quietly, just in time to hear the
+    noise of the struggle as the dog threw Corbario to the ground.
+    For the other entrance to the little vestibule opened upon the
+    garden within, at the very spot where Corbario alighted when he
+    jumped from the window.</p>
+
+    <p>And now they stood there in the rain round the wounded man,
+    while Marcello held the lantern to his face, and Regina thrust
+    a lamp out of the lower window which she had thrown open.</p>
+
+    <p>"Is he dead?" she asked, in the silence that followed when
+    Ercole had got control of the dog again.</p>
+
+    <p>At the sound of her voice Ercole started strangely and
+    looked up to her face that was not far above his own, and his
+    eyes fixed themselves upon her so intently that she looked down
+    at him, while she still held out her lamp. She could not
+    remember that she had ever seen him; but he had seen her many
+    times since he had made his visit to the inn on the Frascati
+    road.</p>
+
+    <p>"Is he dead?" she repeated, putting the question directly to
+    him as he was nearest.</p>
+
+    <p>Still he looked at her in silence, with his deep-set,
+    unwinking eyes. Marcello and Kalmon were bending over Corbario,
+    Marcello holding the lantern, while the Professor listened for
+    the beating of the heart and felt the pulse. They paid no
+    attention to Regina for the moment.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why don't you speak?" she asked, surprised by Ercole's
+    silent stare.</p>
+
+    <p>"You don't know me," he said slowly, "but I know you."</p>
+
+    <p>The rain was beating upon her lamp, and at that moment the
+    shade cracked under the cold drops and fell to pieces, and the
+    wind instantly extinguished the flame of the flaring wick.
+    Regina withdrew into the room to get another light, and Ercole
+    stared after her into the gloom.</p>
+
+    <p>"He is alive," said Kalmon, looking up to see why the light
+    had gone out. "We must get him inside at once, or he will die
+    here. Come, Ercole! Make that dog lie down and keep quiet."</p>
+
+    <p>Between them they carried Corbario into the house. Nino
+    watched on the step in the rain, but when the door was shut
+    behind him, he crawled down to the wet grass and lapped the
+    blood and water in the dark. They carried Corbario upstairs to
+    an empty room there was, and as they went Regina tried to tell
+    Marcello what she had done. They opened Settimia's door, which
+    was still locked, and they found her quite dead, and the window
+    was wide open; then Regina understood that Corbario had been
+    hidden within hearing, and had killed the woman because she had
+    confessed.</p>
+
+    <p>The men who had been sent from the central police station at
+    Kalmon's request arrived a few minutes later. One was at once
+    sent for a surgeon and for more men; the other remained. Soon
+    the little house was full of officials, in uniform and in plain
+    clothes. They examined everything, they wrote rapidly on big
+    sheets of stamped paper; their chief took the first deposition
+    of Regina, and of the three men, and of the surgeon. At dawn a
+    man came with a rough pine coffin. Officials came and went, and
+    were gravely busy. One man spoke of coffee when it was day, and
+    went and made some in the little kitchen, for the two young
+    women who cooked and did the work of the house did not sleep
+    there, and would not come till past seven o'clock.</p>
+
+    <p>During the long hours, when Regina and Marcello were not
+    wanted, they were together in the sitting-room downstairs.
+    Regina told Marcello in detail everything she knew about the
+    events of the night, and much which she had found out earlier
+    about Settimia but had never told him. Kalmon came in from time
+    to time and told them what was going on, and that Corbario was
+    still alive; but they saw no more of Ercole. He had made his
+    first deposition, to the effect that he had been set to watch
+    the house, that the murderer had jumped from an upper window,
+    and that the dog had pulled him down. The officials looked
+    nervously at the dog, produced by Ercole in evidence, and were
+    glad when the beast was out of their sight. There were dark
+    stains about the bristles on his jaws, and his eyes were
+    bloodshot; but Ercole laid one hand on his uncouth head, and he
+    was very quiet, and did not even snarl at the policemen.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina and Marcello sat side by side, talking in a low
+    voice, and looking at each other now and then. The little house
+    in which they had been happy was turned to a place of death and
+    horror, and both knew that some change was coming to
+    themselves.</p>
+
+    <p>"You cannot live here any more," Marcello said at dawn, "not
+    even till to-night."</p>
+
+    <p>"Where could I go?" Regina asked. "Why should I not stay
+    here? Do you think I am afraid of the dead woman?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No," Marcello answered, "but you cannot stay here."</p>
+
+    <p>He guessed what talking and gossiping there would be when
+    the newspapers told what had happened in the little house, how
+    the reporters would hang about the street for a week to come,
+    and how fashionable people would go out of their way to see the
+    place where a murder had been committed by such a well-known
+    person as Corbario, and where he had been taken almost in the
+    very act, and himself nearly killed. Besides all that, there
+    would be the public curiosity about Regina, who had been so
+    intimately concerned in a part of the tragedy, and whose name
+    was everywhere associated with his own.</p>
+
+    <p>He would have taken her away from Rome at once, if he could
+    have done so. But he knew that they would both be called upon
+    during the next few days to repeat in court the evidence they
+    had already given in their first deposition. There was sure to
+    be the most frightful publicity about the whole affair, of
+    which reports would be published not only in Rome but
+    throughout Italy, and all over the world. In real life the
+    consequences of events generally have the importance which
+    fiction is obliged to give the events themselves; which is the
+    reason why the things that happen to real people rarely come to
+    any precise conclusion, like those reached by a play or a
+    novel. The "conclusion" lies in the lives of the people, after
+    the tragedy, or the drama, or the comedy has violently upset
+    their existences.</p>
+
+    <p>"You cannot stay here," Marcello repeated with
+    conviction.</p>
+
+    <p>"You will go on living at your villa," Regina answered. "Why
+    should I not go on living in this house? For a few days I will
+    not go out, that is all. Is it the end of the world because a
+    person has been killed who ought to have died in the galleys?
+    Or because the man who tried to kill you was caught in a place
+    that belongs to you? Tell me that."</p>
+
+    <p>"You cannot stay here," Marcello repeated a third time.</p>
+
+    <p>For a while Regina was silent. They were both very white and
+    heavy-eyed in the cold daylight, though they could not have
+    slept. At last she looked at him thoughtfully.</p>
+
+    <p>"If we were married, we should go on living in our own
+    house," she said. "Is it true, or not? It is because there will
+    be talking that you are ashamed to let me stay where I am, and
+    would like to get me away. This is the truth. I know it."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello knew it too and did not answer at once, for it was
+    not easy to decide what he ought to do. The problem that had
+    seemed so hard to solve a few hours earlier was fast getting
+    altogether beyond solution. There was only one thing to be done
+    in the first present difficulty; he must take Regina to some
+    other place at once. No doubt this was easy enough. He would
+    take an apartment for her elsewhere, as far as possible from
+    the scene of the tragedy, and in a few hours she could be
+    installed there out of the way of annoyance. He could buy a
+    house for her if he chose, for he was very rich. Possibly some
+    house already belonging to him was vacant; his lawyer would
+    know.</p>
+
+    <p>But after that, what was to come? If Corbario lived, there
+    would be a sensational trial in which he and Regina would be
+    witnesses together, and Kalmon too, and very surely Aurora and
+    her mother. For Aurora would be called upon to tell what she
+    knew of Marcello's movements on the morning when he had been
+    knocked down near the gap.</p>
+
+    <p>Every moment of his past life would be publicly examined, to
+    prove Corbario's guilt. Worse than that, there would be a long
+    inquiry to show that Corbario had murdered his mother. Skilled
+    surgeons were tending the man's wounds and reviving him by
+    every means that science could suggest. Kalmon said that he
+    might live. He was being kept alive in order to be condemned to
+    the expiation of his crimes in penal servitude, since Italian
+    law could not make him pay for them with his life. The man
+    would be watched by day and night, lest he should try to commit
+    suicide, for he was to suffer, if he lived. He was to suffer
+    horribly, without doubt, and it was right and just that he
+    should. But Marcello would suffer too. That was not just. The
+    name of his saintly mother would be in the mouths of all kinds
+    of witnesses, in the columns of all sorts of newspapers.
+    Lawyers would make speeches about her to excite the pity of the
+    jury and to turn the whole tide of feeling against Corbario.
+    Marcello would himself be held up to public commiseration, as
+    one of Corbario's victims. There would be allusions covert and
+    open to Regina and to the position in which she stood to
+    Marcello. There would be talk about Aurora. People would
+    suddenly remember her mother's sad story and gossip about her;
+    people would certainly say that there had been talk about
+    marrying Aurora to Marcello, and that Regina had come between
+    them. Yes, there would be much talk about Aurora; that was
+    certain.</p>
+
+    <p>All this was coming, and was not far off, if Corbario lived;
+    and even if he died there would be a vast amount said and
+    written about all the people concerned.</p>
+
+    <p>And Regina was there, beside him, telling him that if they
+    were married they could go on living in the little house, just
+    as if nothing had happened. It was not true, but he could not
+    find heart to tell her so. It was the first time that any
+    suggestion of marriage had come from her, who had always told
+    him that marriage was impossible. If she wished it now, could
+    he refuse?</p>
+
+    <p>Suddenly he knew that he had reached one of the great
+    cross-roads in his life, and that fate had dragged him
+    violently to it within the last few hours, to make him choose
+    his way. The full-grown character of the man rebelled against
+    being forced to a decision in spite of himself, but revolted at
+    the thought of fearing to do what was right and honourable. He
+    was not hesitating as he sat still in silence after Regina had
+    spoken. He was thinking, with the firm determination to act as
+    soon as he had reached a decision. When a man can do that, his
+    weakness is past.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina did not interrupt the current of his thoughts, and as
+    she watched him she forgot all about the present; and they were
+    just together, where they had so often been happy, and she
+    loved him with all her heart. That was her strength. It had
+    nothing to do with right or wrong, honour or dishonour, credit
+    or discredit, or any choice of ways. She had no choice. She
+    loved. It was a very simple thing.</p>
+
+    <p>He looked up at last. She was still wearing the loose
+    dressing-gown she had worn all night.</p>
+
+    <p>"Could you sleep now?" he asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"No."</p>
+
+    <p>"Then you must dress," he said. "While you are dressing I
+    will walk up to the villa and give some orders. Then I will
+    come and get you in a closed carriage. Put together what you
+    may need for the day, and I will have all your things moved
+    before night."</p>
+
+    <p>"Are you really going to take me away from here?" Regina
+    asked, regretfully.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. I must. It will be easy to find a place that will
+    please you better. Will you do as I have said?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Why do you ask? I go."</p>
+
+    <p>She rose and stood beside him a moment while he sat still,
+    and her hand caressed his short fair hair. She bent down and
+    kissed the close waves of it, near his forehead.</p>
+
+    <p>"We have been very happy here," she said quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>She slipped away as he rose to his feet, with the sudden
+    conviction that something had happened.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is it?" he asked quickly, and making a step after
+    her.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am going to dress," she answered.</p>
+
+    <p>She turned her head and smiled, but there was a touch of
+    sadness in the look, as if she was saying good-bye. He partly
+    understood, and her expression was reflected in his own face.
+    They had been so happy in the little house in Trastevere.</p>
+
+    <p>When the door had closed Marcello went to find Kalmon. He
+    met him at the foot of the stairs.</p>
+
+    <p>"The fellow is alive, and will probably recover," said the
+    Professor, in answer to the unasked question in Marcello's
+    eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>"It would simplify matters if he died," said Marcello. "Will
+    you walk up to the villa with me and have coffee? We cannot get
+    a cab at this hour on this side of the Tiber."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," Kalmon answered, "but I must go home. The house
+    is in charge of the police, and there is nothing more to be
+    done here. They have already taken the woman's body to San
+    Spirito, and they will move Corbario in a few hours. He is
+    badly mauled, but no big arteries are torn. I must go home and
+    write a letter. The Contessa must not hear what has happened
+    through the newspapers."</p>
+
+    <p>"No. Certainly not. As for me, I am going to take Regina
+    away at once. I shall bring my own carriage down from the
+    villa."</p>
+
+    <p>"By the bye," Kalmon said, "I had thought of that. The house
+    in which I live is divided into many small apartments. There is
+    a very good one to let, decently furnished. I thought of taking
+    it myself, and I looked at it yesterday. You might put the
+    young lady there until you can find what you may prefer. She
+    can move in at once."</p>
+
+    <p>"Nothing could be better. If you are going home, will you
+    say that I take the place and will be there in an hour? No. 16,
+    Via Sicilia, is it not?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. I'll see to it. Shall I take the lease in your
+    name?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No. Any name will do better. The reporters would find her
+    at once under mine."</p>
+
+    <p>"I'll use my own," said the Professor. "I'll say that she is
+    a lady who has arrived to consult me&mdash;I daresay she
+    will&mdash;and that I'm responsible for her."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you," answered Marcello gratefully. "And thank you
+    for all that you have done to help me."</p>
+
+    <p>"My dear Marcello," Kalmon said, smiling cheerfully, "in the
+    first place, I have done nothing to help you, and secondly,
+    through excess of zeal, I have got you into a very unpleasant
+    situation, by indirectly causing a woman to be murdered in your
+    house, and the murderer almost mauled to death by that very
+    singular wild beast which your man calls a dog, and which I had
+    often noticed in old times at the cottage. So there is nothing
+    at all to thank me for, though I am most heartily at your
+    service."</p>
+
+    <p>The Professor was positively in high spirits just then, and
+    Marcello envied him as they parted and took opposite
+    directions.</p>
+
+    <p>Though the Via Sicilia was a long way from the Janiculum,
+    Marcello had been only too glad to accept Kalmon's suggestion
+    at such a moment. Regina would feel that she was protected by
+    Marcello's friend, and though she might rarely see him, it
+    would be better for her than to be lodged in a house where she
+    knew no one. Kalmon was a bachelor and a man of assured
+    position, and it had cost him nothing to undertake to give
+    Regina his protection; but Marcello was deeply grateful. He had
+    already made up his mind as to what he would do next.</p>
+
+    <p>It had stopped raining at last, and the wind had fallen to a
+    soft breeze that bore the morning mist gently away towards the
+    sea, and hardly stirred the wet leaves that strewed the road
+    all the way up to San Pietro in Montorio. Marcello found the
+    gate of the villa already open, for it was nearly eight o'clock
+    by the time he got there.</p>
+
+    <p>He summoned the servants to the library, told them briefly
+    what had happened, and warned them that they might be summoned
+    as witnesses at the coming trial, as most of them had been in
+    his mother's service. In the days before Corbario had lost his
+    head, and when he had controlled the household, it had been a
+    part of his policy to have really respectable servants about
+    him, and though some of them had never quite trusted him, they
+    had all been devoted to the Signora and to Marcello. They
+    listened in respectful silence now, and waited till he was out
+    of the house before meeting to discuss the tragedy and to
+    decide that Corbario had got his deserts at last.</p>
+
+    <p>In a few hours Regina was installed in her new lodging with
+    such belongings as she needed immediately. Kalmon, having
+    finished writing his letter to the Contessa, left nothing
+    undone which could contribute to the comfort of the "lady who
+    had arrived to consult him." He had a respectable old woman
+    servant, who had been with him for years, and who came from his
+    native town. He took her into his confidence to some extent,
+    and placed her in charge of Regina. As she thought that
+    everything he did must be right, she accepted his statement
+    that the young gentleman who would often come to see the young
+    lady was deeply interested in the latter's welfare, and that,
+    as the poor young lady had no relations, he, the Professor, had
+    taken her under his protection while she remained in Rome.</p>
+
+    <p>The old servant's name was Teresa, and she belonged to a
+    certain type of elderly old maids who take a very kindly
+    interest in the love affairs of the young. She smiled, shook
+    her head in a very mild disapprobation, and did much more than
+    Kalmon had asked of her; for she took the very first
+    opportunity of informing Regina that the Professor was the
+    greatest, wisest, best, and kindest of mankind; and Regina
+    recognised in her a loyal soul, and forthwith liked her very
+    much.</p>
+
+    <p>It was late in the November afternoon when Marcello ascended
+    the stairs and stopped before the door of the little apartment.
+    He realised that he had no key to it, and that he must ring the
+    bell as if he were a mere visitor. It was strange that such a
+    little thing should affect him at all, but he was conscious of
+    a sort of chill, as he pulled the metal handle and heard the
+    tinkling of one of those cheap little bells that feebly imitate
+    their electric betters by means of a rachet and a small
+    weighted wheel. It was all so different from the little house
+    in Trastevere with its bright varnished doors, its patent
+    locks, its smart windows, and its lovely old garden. He wished
+    he had not brought Regina to Via Sicilia, though Kalmon's
+    advice had seemed so good. To Kalmon, who was used to no great
+    luxury in his own life, the place doubtless seemed very well
+    suited for a young person like Regina, who had been brought up
+    a poor child in the hills. But the mere anticipation of the
+    dark and narrow entry, and the sordid little sitting-room
+    beyond, awoke in Marcello a sense of shame, whether for himself
+    or for the woman who loved him he hardly knew.</p>
+
+    <p>Old Teresa had gone out for something, and Regina opened the
+    door herself.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XX'></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+    <p>"I have come to see if you need anything," Marcello said,
+    when they were in the sitting-room. "I am sorry to have been
+    obliged to bring you to such a wretched place, but it seemed a
+    good thing that you should be so near Kalmon."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is not a wretched place," Regina answered. "It is clean,
+    and the things are new, and the curtains have been washed. It
+    is not wretched. We have been in worse lodgings when we have
+    travelled and stopped in small towns. Professor Kalmon has been
+    very kind. It was wise to bring me here."</p>
+
+    <p>He wished she had seemed discontented.</p>
+
+    <p>"Have you rested a little?" he asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have slept two or three hours. And you? You look
+    tired."</p>
+
+    <p>"I have had no time to sleep. I shall sleep to-night."</p>
+
+    <p>He leaned back in the small green arm-chair and rested his
+    head against a coarse netted antimacassar. His eyes caught
+    Regina's, but she was looking down thoughtfully at her hands,
+    which lay in her lap together but not clasped. Peasant women
+    often do that; their hands are resting then, after hard work,
+    and they are thinking of nothing.</p>
+
+    <p>"Look at me," Marcello said after a long time.</p>
+
+    <p>Her glance was sad and almost dull, and there was no light
+    in her face. She had made up her mind that something dreadful
+    was going to happen to her, and that the end was coming soon.
+    She could not have told why she felt it, and that made it
+    worse. Her eyes had the indescribable look that one sees in
+    those of a beautiful sick animal, the painful expression of an
+    unintelligent suffering which the creature cannot understand.
+    Regina, roused to act and face to face with danger, was brave,
+    clever, and quick, but under the mysterious oppression of her
+    forebodings she was the Roman hill woman, apathetic, hopeless,
+    unconsciously fatalistic and sleepily miserable.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is the matter?" Marcello asked. "What has
+    happened?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall know when you have told me," Regina answered,
+    slowly shaking her head; and again she looked down at her
+    hands.</p>
+
+    <p>"What I have come to tell you will not make you sad,"
+    Marcello replied.</p>
+
+    <p>"Speak, heart of my heart. I listen."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello leaned forward and laid his hand upon hers. She
+    looked up quietly, for it was a familiar action of his.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am going to marry you," he said, watching her, and
+    speaking earnestly.</p>
+
+    <p>She kept her eyes on his, but she shook her head again,
+    slowly, from side to side, and her lips were pressed
+    together.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, I am," said Marcello, with a little pressure of his
+    hand to emphasise the words.</p>
+
+    <p>But she withdrew hers, and leaned far back from him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Never," she said. "I have told you so, many times."</p>
+
+    <p>"Not if I tell you that nothing else will make me happy?" he
+    asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"If I still made you happy, you would not talk of marriage,"
+    Regina answered.</p>
+
+    <p>For the first time since she had loved him he heard a ring
+    of bitterness in her voice. They had reached that first node of
+    misunderstanding in the love relations of men and women, which
+    lies where the one begins to think and act upon a principle
+    while the other still feels and acts from the heart.</p>
+
+    <p>"That is not reasonable," Marcello said.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is truth," she answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"But how?"</p>
+
+    <p>"How! I feel it, here!"</p>
+
+    <p>Her hands sprang to life and pressed her bosom, her voice
+    rang deep and her eyes flashed, as if she were impatient of his
+    misunderstanding.</p>
+
+    <p>He tried to laugh gently.</p>
+
+    <p>"But if I want to marry you, it is because I mean never to
+    part from you," he said.</p>
+
+    <p>"No!" she cried. "It is because you are afraid that you will
+    leave me, unless you are bound to me."</p>
+
+    <p>"Regina!" Marcello protested, by his tone.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is as I say. It is because you are honourable. It is
+    because you wish to be faithful. It is because you want to be
+    true. But what do I care for honour, or faith, or truth, if I
+    can only have them of you because you are tied to me? I only
+    want love. That is everything. I want it, but I have never
+    asked it of you, and never shall. Is love money, that you can
+    take it out of your purse and give it? Is love a string, that
+    the priest and the mayor can tie the ends so that they can
+    never come undone? I do not know what it is, but it is not
+    that!"</p>
+
+    <p>She laughed scornfully, as if she were angry at the thought.
+    But Marcello had made up his mind, and was obstinate.</p>
+
+    <p>"We must be married at once," he said quietly, and fully
+    believing that he could impose his will upon hers. "If I had
+    not been weak and foolish, we should have been married long
+    ago. But for a long time after my illness I had no will of my
+    own. I am sorry. It was my fault."</p>
+
+    <p>"It was not your fault, it was the illness, and it was my
+    will. If I had said, any day in those first two years, 'Make me
+    your wife, for I wish to be a real signora,' would you not have
+    done it?"</p>
+
+    <p>"You know I would."</p>
+
+    <p>"But I would not, and I will not now. I am not a real
+    signora. I am beautiful&mdash;yes, I see that. Am I blind when
+    I look into my glass? I am very beautiful. We have not often
+    met any woman in our travels as beautiful as I am. Am I blind?
+    I have black hair, like the common people, but my hair is not
+    coarse, like a mule's tail. It is as fine as silk. My eyes are
+    black, and that is common too; but my eyes are not like those
+    of the buffaloes in the Campagna, as the other women's are
+    where I was born. And I am not dark-skinned; I am as white as
+    the snow on Monte Cavo, as white as the milk in the pan. Also I
+    have been told that I have beautiful feet, though I cannot tell
+    why. They are small, this is the truth, and my hands are like
+    those of a signora. But I am not a real signora, though I have
+    all this. How can you marry me? None of your friends would
+    speak to me, because I have not even been an honest girl. That
+    was for you, but they do not count love. Your servants at the
+    villa would laugh at you behind your back, and say, 'The master
+    has married one of us!' Do you think I could bear that? Tell me
+    what you think! Am I of stone, to bear that people should laugh
+    at you?"</p>
+
+    <p>She took breath at last and leaned back again, folding her
+    arms and fixing her splendid eyes on his face, and challenging
+    him to answer her.</p>
+
+    <p>"We will go and live in Calabria, at San Domenico, for a
+    while," he said. "We need not live in Rome at all, unless we
+    please, for we have the whole world before us."</p>
+
+    <p>"We saw the world together without being married," Regina
+    answered obstinately. "What difference would there be, if we
+    were husband and wife? Do you wish to know what difference
+    there would be? I will tell you. There would be this
+    difference. One day I should see no light in your eyes, and
+    your lips would be like stone. Then I should say, 'Heart of my
+    heart, you are tired of me, and I go.' But you would answer,
+    'You cannot go, for you are my wife.' What would that be? That
+    would be the difference. Do you understand, or do you not
+    understand? If you do not understand, I can do nothing. But I
+    will not marry you. Have you ever seen a mule go down to the
+    ford in spring, too heavily laden, when there is freshet? He
+    drowns, if he is driven in, because the burden is too heavy. I
+    will not be the burden; but I should be, if I were your wife,
+    because I am not a real signora. Now you know what I
+    think."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," Marcello answered, "but I do not think in the same
+    way."</p>
+
+    <p>He was not sure how to answer her arguments, and he lit a
+    cigarette to gain time. He was quietly determined to have his
+    own way, but in order to succeed he knew that he must persuade
+    her till she agreed with him. He could not drag her to the
+    altar against her will.</p>
+
+    <p>Before he had thrown away the match, Regina had risen from
+    her chair. She leaned against the little marble mantelpiece,
+    looking down at him.</p>
+
+    <p>"There are things that you do not know," she said. "If you
+    knew them you would not want to marry me. In all the time we
+    have been together, you have hardly ever spoken to me of your
+    mother."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello started a little and looked up, unconsciously
+    showing that he was displeased.</p>
+
+    <p>"No," he answered. "Why should I?"</p>
+
+    <p>"You were right. Your mother is now one of the saints in
+    Paradise. How do I know it? Even Settimia knew it. I am not
+    going to talk of her now. I am not fit to speak her name in
+    your hearing. Very well. Do you know what my mother was?"</p>
+
+    <p>"She is dead," Marcello replied, meaning that Regina should
+    let her memory alone.</p>
+
+    <p>"Or my father?" she asked, going on. "They were bad people.
+    I come of a bad race. Perhaps that is why I do wrong easily,
+    for you. My father killed a man and left us, though he was
+    allowed to go free, and I never saw him again. He had reason to
+    kill the man. I was a little girl, but I remember. My mother
+    took other men. They came and went; sometimes they were drunk
+    and they beat us. When I was twelve years old one of them
+    looked upon me with bad eyes. Then my mother cursed him, and he
+    took up a stone and struck her on the head, and she died. They
+    sent him to the galleys, and me to work at the inn, because I
+    had no friends. This is the family of Regina. It is a race of
+    assassins and wicked women. If I were your wife, that would be
+    the family of your wife. If God sent children, that would be
+    the blood they would have of me, to mix with that of your
+    mother, who is one of the saints in heaven. This is the truth.
+    If you think I am telling you one thing for another, let us go
+    to the inn on the Frascati road. Paoluccio and Nanna know. They
+    would laugh if they could see me dressed like a real signora,
+    and they would say, 'This girl is her mother's daughter!' And
+    so I am."</p>
+
+    <p>She ceased speaking, and again waited for his answer, but he
+    had none ready, and there was silence. She had put the ugly
+    truth too plainly before him, and he could not shut up his
+    understanding against it; he could not deny what she said, he
+    could never teach himself to believe that it did not matter.
+    And yet, he did not mean to draw back, or give up his purpose,
+    even then. Men of good birth had married peasant women before
+    now. They had given up the society of their old friends, they
+    had lived in remote places, they had become half peasants
+    themselves, their sons had grown up to be rough farmers, and
+    had done obligatory military service in the ranks for years,
+    because they could not pass an easy examination. But was all
+    that so very terrible after all, in the light of the duty that
+    faced him?</p>
+
+    <p>The woman had saved his life, had carried him in her arms,
+    had tended him like a child, had stolen food to keep him alive,
+    had faced starvation for him when she had got him to the
+    hospital, had nursed him&mdash;had loved him, had given him all
+    she had, and she would have died for him, if there had been
+    need. Now, she was giving him something more, for she was
+    refusing to be his wife because she was sure that sooner or
+    later she must be a burden to him, and that her birth would be
+    a reproach to his children. No woman could do more for a man
+    than she had done. She had been his salvation and his good
+    angel; when she had found out that the life in Paris that
+    amused her was killing him, she had brought him back to
+    himself, she had made him at last fit and able to face those
+    who would have destroyed him. She had loved him like a woman,
+    she had obeyed him and served him like a devoted servant, she
+    had watched over him like a faithful dog; and he had given her
+    nothing in return for all that, not one thing that deserved to
+    be counted. Perhaps he had not even really loved her; most
+    surely his love had been far less large and true and devoted
+    than hers, and he felt that it was so. The reparation he was
+    determined to make was not really for her honesty's sake; it
+    was to be an attempt at repaying a debt that was weighing upon
+    his conscience like a debt of honour.</p>
+
+    <p>That was it. He felt that unless he could in some way repay
+    her for what she had done, his man's honour would not be
+    satisfied. That was very well, in its way, but it was not love.
+    It was as if he had said to himself, "I cannot love her as she
+    loves me, but I can at least marry her; and that is better than
+    nothing, and has the merit of being morally right."</p>
+
+    <p>She had told him that if she still made him happy he would
+    not talk of marriage. The brutal truth shamed him, now that he
+    knew it from her own lips. It was not the whole truth, but it
+    was a great part of it. If he was happy with her now, when
+    there was nothing to disturb them, it was by force of habit, it
+    was because her beauty appealed to him, it was because her
+    touch was dearer to him than her heart's devotion. Now that he
+    was a grown man, he knew well enough that he craved something
+    else which poor Regina could never give him.</p>
+
+    <p>For he felt the want of companionship. Those who have lost
+    what is most worth having, whether by death or by their own
+    fault, or by the other's, miss the companionship of love more
+    than anything else, when the pain of the first wrench is dulled
+    and the heart's blood is staunched, and the dreadful bodily
+    loneliness comes only in dreams. Then the longing for the old
+    sweet intercourse of thought and word makes itself felt and is
+    very hard to bear, though it is not sharp like the first wound;
+    and it comes again and again for years, and perhaps for
+    ever.</p>
+
+    <p>But where there is no true companionship while love lasts,
+    there is something lacking, and such love cannot live long. Men
+    seem to want it more than women do; and women, seeing that men
+    want something, often fancy they want flattery, and natter the
+    men they love till they disgust them; and then the end comes
+    suddenly, much to the astonishment of those women.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina was too womanly not to feel that Marcello was in real
+    need of something which she had not, and could never have. She
+    had known it from the first, and had almost told him so. She
+    gave what was hers to give, as long as he wanted it; when he
+    wanted it no more, she meant to leave him, and it would make no
+    difference what became of her afterwards.</p>
+
+    <p>When she had finished speaking, Marcello was very miserable,
+    because he could find no answer to what she had said, and he
+    felt that she had no right to say it at all. His head ached
+    now, from excitement and want of sleep, and he almost wished
+    that he had put off speaking to Regina about her marriage. He
+    rested his head in his hand as he sat thinking, and she came
+    and stood beside him as she had done in the morning in the
+    little house in Trastevere. But it was not the same now. She
+    hoped that he would put up his other hand to find hers, without
+    looking at her, as he often did, but it gripped his knee as if
+    he did not mean to move it, and he did not raise his head.</p>
+
+    <p>She looked up from his bent figure to the window and saw
+    that the light was reddening with the first tinge of sunset. It
+    would soon be night, Marcello would go away, and she would be
+    dreadfully lonely. It was not like being in the little house,
+    knowing that he was near her, in the great villa on top of the
+    hill, hidden from her only by trees. She was in a strange place
+    now, and he would be far away, across the Tiber, and the great
+    dark city would be between her and him.</p>
+
+    <p>For an instant her lip quivered, and she thought she was
+    going to cry, though she had never cried in her life, except
+    for rage and when she had been a little girl. She shook her
+    handsome head impatiently at the mere sensation, and held it
+    higher than ever. Then Marcello looked up at last.</p>
+
+    <p>As their eyes met they heard the tinkle of the little bell.
+    Regina at once left his side to go and open the door. It was
+    not till she had left the room that Marcello rose, asking
+    himself suddenly why it had not occurred to him to go himself.
+    He realised that he had always allowed her to wait on him
+    without question. Yet if she were his wife, he would not think
+    of letting her do what she was doing now. He would even open
+    the door of the room for her to go out.</p>
+
+    <p>He knew why he had never treated her in that way. She was a
+    peasant girl, she had been a servant in an inn; it was natural
+    that she should serve him too. She often brought him his shoes
+    when he was going out, and she would have put them on for him
+    and laced them if he would have let her do it. It seemed
+    natural that she should answer the bell and open the door, as
+    it seemed unnatural that she should ever be his wife. The
+    thought stung him, and again, he was ashamed.</p>
+
+    <p>While these things were passing in his mind, he heard a
+    familiar voice in the dark entry.</p>
+
+    <p>"Signora, you will excuse me," Ercole was saying. "I asked
+    the Professor and he told me. I beg the favour of a few
+    words."</p>
+
+    <p>"Come in," Regina answered, and a moment later they both
+    entered the sitting-room.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole stood still when he saw Marcello, and began to turn
+    his hat in his hands, as if it were a rosary, which he
+    generally did when he was embarrassed. Marcello wondered what
+    the man wanted.</p>
+
+    <p>"Were you looking for me?" he asked. "Come in! What is it?
+    Has anything happened?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No, sir, nothing new has happened," answered Ercole.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is it, then? Why did you come here?"</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole had dressed himself for the occasion in his best
+    clothes. He had on a snowy shirt and a new keeper's jacket, and
+    his boots were blacked. Furthermore, he had just been shaved,
+    and his shaggy hair had been cut rather close. He did not carry
+    his gun about with him in the streets of Rome, though he felt
+    that it was slightly derogatory to his dignity to be seen
+    without it, and Nino was not with him, having been temporarily
+    chained to the wall in the court of the stables at the
+    villa.</p>
+
+    <p>He stood still, and looked from Marcello to Regina, and back
+    to Marcello again.</p>
+
+    <p>"It cannot be done," he said suddenly. "It is useless. It
+    cannot be done."</p>
+
+    <p>Without another word he turned abruptly and was going to
+    leave the room, when Marcello stopped him authoritatively.</p>
+
+    <p>"Come here, Ercole!" he cried, as the man was disappearing
+    into the entry.</p>
+
+    <p>"Did you speak to me, sir?" Ercole inquired, stopping in the
+    doorway.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. Shut the door and come here." Ercole obeyed with
+    evident reluctance. "Now, then," Marcello continued, "come here
+    and tell me what you want, and what it is that cannot be
+    done."</p>
+
+    <p>"I desire a few words with this lady, and I did not know
+    that you were here, sir. Therefore I said, it cannot be done. I
+    mean that while you are here, sir, I cannot speak alone with
+    this lady."</p>
+
+    <p>"That is clear," Marcello answered. "You cannot be alone
+    with this lady while I am in the room. That certainly cannot be
+    done. Why do you wish to be alone with her? You can speak
+    before me."</p>
+
+    <p>"It will not be so easy, sir. I will come at another
+    time."</p>
+
+    <p>"No," Marcello answered, not liking his manner. "You will
+    say what you have to say now, or you will say nothing, for you
+    will not come at another time. The lady will not let you in, if
+    you come again. Now speak."</p>
+
+    <p>"It will be a little difficult, sir. I would rather speak to
+    the lady alone."</p>
+
+    <p>Regina had stood listening in silence, and looking intently
+    at Ercole's face.</p>
+
+    <p>"Let me speak to him," she said to Marcello. "What is your
+    full name?" she asked, turning to Ercole again.</p>
+
+    <p>"Spalletta Ercole, to serve you," was the prompt answer.</p>
+
+    <p>"Spalletta?" Marcello asked in surprise, for strange as it
+    may seem to any but Italians, it was quite natural that he
+    should never have known Ercole's family name. "Spalletta? That
+    is your own name, Regina! What a strange coincidence!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," Ercole said. "I know that the young lady's name is
+    Spalletta. It is for this reason that I desire the favour of a
+    few words with her alone."</p>
+
+    <p>"There is no need," Regina answered. "Since we have the same
+    name, there is no doubt. I remember your face now, though until
+    last night I had not seen you since I was a little child. Yes.
+    I know what you have come to say, and it is quite true."</p>
+
+    <p>"What?" asked Marcello with some anxiety.</p>
+
+    <p>"This man is my father," Regina said, very quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Your father!" Marcello made half a step backwards in his
+    surprise.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. I have told you what he did." She turned to Ercole.
+    "What do you want of me? Is it money that you want,
+    perhaps?"</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole stiffened himself and seemed to grow taller. His
+    black eyes flashed dangerously, and his heavy eyebrows were
+    suddenly stern and level, as Regina's were.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are your mother's daughter," he said slowly. "Did I
+    take money from her? I took blood, and when I was tried for it,
+    I was set free. I was told that it was my right under our law.
+    I do not want money. I have brought you money. There it is. It
+    will buy you some bread when your lover turns you into the
+    street!"</p>
+
+    <p>He took out his old sheepskin purse with a quick movement,
+    and laughed harshly as he tossed it at her. Marcello sprang
+    forward and caught him by the collar, to thrust him out of the
+    room; but Ercole was tough and wiry, and resisted.</p>
+
+    <p>"Will you hinder me from giving money to my daughter?" he
+    asked fiercely. "It was yours, for you paid it to me; but when
+    I knew, I saved my wages to give them back, for I will not take
+    your money, sir! Take your hands from me, sir! I have a right
+    to be here and to speak. Let me go, I tell you! I am not in
+    your service any longer. I do not eat your cursed bread. I am
+    this woman's father, and I shall say what I will."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello withdrew his hands and pointed to the door.</p>
+
+    <p>"Go!" he said, in a voice of command.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole backed away a little, and then stood still again.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have to tell you that I have spent five francs of that
+    money," he said, speaking to Regina. "But it was spent for you.
+    I found a good monk, and I gave him the five francs to say
+    three masses for your soul. The masses were said in August, and
+    now it is November, and you are still alive!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Go!" cried Marcello, understanding, and advancing upon him
+    once more.</p>
+
+    <p>"I go," answered Ercole hoarsely. "Let her live, till you
+    are tired of her, and she dies in a ditch! I told the monk to
+    say the masses for a female. They will do for the woman who was
+    killed last night. One female is worth another, and evil befall
+    them all, as many as they are! Why did the Eternal Father ever
+    create them?"</p>
+
+    <p>He had turned before he spoke the last words, and he went
+    out deliberately, shutting the door behind him. They heard him
+    go out upon the landing, and they were alone again. Regina
+    leaned back against the mantelpiece, but Marcello began to walk
+    up and down the room.</p>
+
+    <p>"You have seen," she said, in a rather unsteady voice. "Now
+    you know of what blood I am, and that what I said was true. The
+    son of your mother cannot marry the daughter of that man."</p>
+
+    <p>"What have you to do with him?" Marcello asked sharply,
+    stopping in his walk.</p>
+
+    <p>But Regina only shook her head, and turned away. She knew
+    that she was right, and that he knew it too, or would know it
+    soon.</p>
+
+    <p>"You will never see him again," he said. "Forget that you
+    have seen him at all!"</p>
+
+    <p>Again she shook her head, not looking at him.</p>
+
+    <p>"You will not forget," she answered, "and I shall always
+    remember. He should have killed me, as he meant to do. It would
+    have been the end. It would have been better, and quicker."</p>
+
+    <p>"God forbid!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Why? Would it not have been better?"</p>
+
+    <p>She came close to him and laid one hand upon his shoulder
+    and gazed into his eyes. They were full of trouble and pain,
+    and they did not lighten for her; his brow did not relax and
+    his lips did not part. After a little while she turned again
+    and went back to the fireplace.</p>
+
+    <p>"It would have been better," she said in a low voice. "I
+    knew it this morning."</p>
+
+    <p>There was silence in the room for a while. Marcello stood
+    beside her, holding her hand in his, and trying to see her
+    face. He was very tender with her, but there was no thrill in
+    his touch. Something was gone that would never come back.</p>
+
+    <p>"When all this trouble is over," he said at last, "you shall
+    go back to the little house in Trastevere, and it will be just
+    as it was before."</p>
+
+    <p>She raised her head rather proudly, as she answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"If that could be, it would be now. You would have taken me
+    in your arms when he was gone, and you would have kissed my
+    eyes and my hair, and we should have been happy, just as it was
+    before. But instead, you want to comfort me, you want to be
+    kind to me, you want to be just to me, instead of loving
+    me!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Regina! I do love you! I do indeed!"</p>
+
+    <p>He would have put his arms round her to draw her closer to
+    him, in the sudden longing to make her think that there was no
+    change in his love, but she quietly resisted him.</p>
+
+    <p>"You have been very good to me, dear," she said, "and I know
+    you will always be that, whatever comes. And I am always yours,
+    dear, and you are the master, whenever you choose to come and
+    see me. For I care for nothing that God has made, except you.
+    But it will never be just as it used to be."</p>
+
+    <p>"It shall!" Marcello tried to put conviction into the words.
+    "It shall! It shall!"</p>
+
+    <p>"It cannot, my heart," she answered. "I used to say that
+    when this came, I would go away. But I will not do that, unless
+    you bid me to, for I think you would be sorry, and I should be
+    giving you more pain, and you have enough. Only leave me a
+    little while alone, dear, for I am very tired, and it is
+    growing late."</p>
+
+    <p>He took her hands and kissed them one after the other, and
+    looked into her face. His own was very weary.</p>
+
+    <p>"Promise me that I shall find you here to-morrow," he
+    said.</p>
+
+    <p>"You shall find me," she answered softly.</p>
+
+    <p>They parted so, and he left her alone, in the dark, for the
+    glow of the sunset had faded and the early November evening was
+    closing in.</p>
+
+    <p>Old Teresa came and brought a lamp, and drew the curtains,
+    and gave her a message from Kalmon. If she needed anything she
+    was to send for him, and he would come at once. She thanked
+    Teresa. It was very kind of the Professor, but she needed
+    nothing. Not even a fire; no, she hardly ever felt cold. Teresa
+    brought something to eat, and set the little table for her. She
+    was not hungry, and she was glad when the good soul was
+    gone.</p>
+
+    <p>She could open the windows when she was alone, and look out
+    into the silent street. There was moonlight now, and it fell
+    across the walls and trees of the Villa Aurora upon her face.
+    It was a young moon, that would set before midnight, but it was
+    very clear and bright, and the sky was infinitely deep and very
+    clear behind it. Regina fancied that if there were really
+    angels in heaven, she should be able to see them on such a
+    night.</p>
+
+    <p>If she had been in Trastevere she would have gone out to
+    walk up and down the old paved paths of the little garden, for
+    she could not sleep, though she was so tired. The lamp
+    disturbed her and she put it out, and sat down by the window
+    again.</p>
+
+    <p>It was very quiet now, for it was past nine o'clock. She
+    heard a step, and it almost surprised her. A man with a big dog
+    was walking in the shadow on the other side of the street, and
+    when he was opposite the house he stood still and looked up at
+    her window. He did not move for some time, but the dog came out
+    into the moonlight in a leisurely way, and lay down on the
+    paving stones. All dogs think it is warmer in the light than in
+    the shadow.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina rose, got a long black cloak and a dark veil without
+    lighting a candle, and put them on. Then she went out.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XXI'></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+    <p>Ercole walked on when he saw some one come out of No. 16,
+    for he did not recognise Regina. She followed him at a
+    distance. Even if he should pass where there might be many
+    people, she would not lose sight of him easily because he had
+    his dog with him. She noticed that his canvas bag was hung over
+    one shoulder and that it seemed to be full, and his gun was
+    slung over the other. He meant to leave Rome that night on
+    foot. He walked fast through the new streets in the upper
+    quarter, turned to the right when he reached the Via Venti
+    Settembre, and went straight on, past the top of the hill, and
+    along the Quirinal Palace; then down and on, down and on,
+    through moonlight and shadow, winding streets and straight,
+    till the Colosseum was in sight. He was going towards the Porta
+    San Sebastiano to take the road to Ardea.</p>
+
+    <p>The air was very clear, and the moonlight made the broad
+    space as bright as if there were daylight. Regina walked fast,
+    and began to overtake her father, and the dog turned his head
+    and growled at the tall woman in black. She came up with Ercole
+    by the ruin of the ancient fountain, and the dog snarled at
+    her. Ercole stopped and looked at her sharply, and she raised
+    her veil.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have followed you," she said. "We are alone here. We can
+    talk in peace."</p>
+
+    <p>"And what am I to say to you?" Ercole asked, in a low and
+    surly voice.</p>
+
+    <p>"What you will, little or much, as you please. You shall
+    speak, and I will listen. But we can walk on under the trees
+    there. Then nobody can see us."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole began to go on, and Regina walked on his left side.
+    The dog sniffed at the hem of her long black cloak. They came
+    under the shade of the trees, and Ercole stopped again, and
+    turned, facing the reflection of the moonlight on the vast
+    curve of the Colosseum.</p>
+
+    <p>"What do you want of me?" he asked. "Why do you follow me in
+    the night?"</p>
+
+    <p>"When you saw that the Signore was with me to-day, you said,
+    'It cannot be done.' He is not here now."</p>
+
+    <p>She stood quite still, looking at him.</p>
+
+    <p>"I understand nothing," he said, in the same surly tone as
+    before.</p>
+
+    <p>"You wished to kill me to-day," she answered. "I am here.
+    This is a good place."</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole looked about him instinctively, peering into the
+    shadows under the trees.</p>
+
+    <p>"There is no one," Regina said. "This is a good place."</p>
+
+    <p>She had not lifted her veil, but she threw back the collar
+    of her cloak, and with quick fingers undid the fastenings of
+    her dress, opening it wide. Rays of moonlight fell through the
+    trees upon her bosom, and it gleamed like fine ivory newly
+    cut.</p>
+
+    <p>"I wait," she said.</p>
+
+    <p>She stood motionless before him, expecting the knife, but
+    her father's hands did not move. His eyes were fixed on hers,
+    though he could not see them through the veil.</p>
+
+    <p>"So he has left you?" he said slowly.</p>
+
+    <p>"No. I am waiting."</p>
+
+    <p>Not a fold of her cloak stirred as she stood there to die.
+    It seemed a long time, but his hands did not move. Then he
+    heard the sound of her voice, very low and sweet, repeating a
+    little prayer, but he only heard the last words distinctly.</p>
+
+    <p>"&mdash;now, and in the hour of our death!"</p>
+
+    <p>His right hand moved slowly and found something in his
+    pocket, and then there was the sharp click of a strong spring,
+    and a ray of moonlight fell upon steel, and her voice was heard
+    again.</p>
+
+    <p>"&mdash;in the hour of our death. Amen!"</p>
+
+    <p>An unearthly sound rent the stillness. The huge dog sat
+    upright on his haunches, his head thrown up and back, his
+    terrible lower jaw trembling as he howled, and howled again,
+    waking great echoes where the roar of wild lions had rung long
+    ago.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina started, though she did not move a step; but an
+    unreasoning fear fell upon Ercole. He could not see her face,
+    as the dark veil hung down. She was so motionless and fearless;
+    only the dead could be as fearless of death and as still as
+    she. Her breast was so white; her hands were like marble hands,
+    parting a black shroud upon it. She was something risen from
+    the grave to haunt him in that lonely place and drive him mad;
+    and the appalling howl of the great dog robe deafeningly on the
+    silence and trembled and died away, and began again.</p>
+
+    <p>Ercole's hand relaxed, and the knife fell gleaming at his
+    feet. One instant more and he turned and fled through the
+    trees, towards San Gregorio, his dog galloping heavily after
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina's hands fell by her sides, and the folds of her cloak
+    closed together and hung straight down. She stared into the
+    shadowy distance a moment after her father, and saw his figure
+    twice in the light where the trees were wider apart, before he
+    disappeared altogether. She looked down and saw the knife at
+    her feet, and she picked it up and felt the point. It was as
+    sharp as a needle, for Ercole had whetted it often since he had
+    sat by the gate in the early morning last August. It was wet,
+    for the grass under the trees had not dried since the rain.</p>
+
+    <p>She felt the point and edge with her hand, and sighed. It
+    would have been better to have felt it in her breast, but she
+    would not take her own life. She was not afraid to do it, and
+    her young hand would have been strong enough and sure enough to
+    do it quickly. It was not the thought of the pain that made her
+    close the knife; it was the fear of hell. Nothing she had done
+    in her life seemed very bad to her, because it had all been for
+    Marcello. If Ercole had killed her, she thought that God would
+    have forgiven her after a time. But if she killed herself she
+    would instantly be seized by devils and thrust into real
+    flames, to burn for ever, without the slightest chance of
+    forgiveness. She had been taught that, and she believed it, and
+    the thought of the fire made her shut the clasp-knife and slip
+    it into her dress with a sigh. It would be a pity to throw it
+    away, for it seemed to be a good knife, and her father could
+    not have had it very long.</p>
+
+    <p>She fastened her frock under her mantle and went a few steps
+    down the little slope towards the Colosseum. To go on meant to
+    go home, and she stopped again. The place was very lonely and
+    peaceful, and the light on the great walls was quiet and good
+    to see. Though she had stood so still, waiting to die, and had
+    said her little prayer so calmly, her brave heart had been
+    beating slow and hard as if it were counting the seconds before
+    it was to stop; and now it beat fast and softly, and fluttered
+    a little, so that she felt faint, as even brave people do after
+    a great danger is past. I have seen hundreds of men together,
+    just escaped from destruction by earthquake, moving about
+    listlessly with veiled eyes, yawning as if they were dropping
+    with sleep, and saying childish things when they spoke at all.
+    Man's body is the part of himself which he least understands,
+    unless he has spent half his life in studying its ways. Its
+    many portions can only telegraph to the brain two words, 'pain'
+    and 'pleasure,' with different degrees of energy; but that is
+    all. The rest of their language belongs to science.</p>
+
+    <p>Regina felt faint and sat down, because there was no reason
+    for making any effort to go home. Perhaps a cab would pass,
+    returning from some outlying part of the city, and she would
+    take it. From the place where she sat she could see one far
+    off, if any came.</p>
+
+    <p>She sank down on the wet ground, and drew up her knees and
+    pulled her cloak round her; and gradually her head bent forward
+    and rested upon her hands, till she sat there like a figure of
+    grief outlined in black against the moonlight on the great
+    wall. She had forgotten where she was, and that there was any
+    time in the world.</p>
+
+    <p>Half an hour passed, and the moon sank low, and an hour, and
+    the deadly white mist began to rise in the shadow round the
+    base of the Colosseum, and crept up under the trees; and if any
+    one had come upon her then, he would have seen its dull
+    whiteness crawling round her feet and body, a hand-breadth
+    above the wet ground. But she did not know; she had forgotten
+    everything.</p>
+
+    <p>Nothing was real any more. She could have believed that her
+    father had killed her and left her corpse there, strangely
+    sitting, though quite dead.</p>
+
+    <p>Then she knew that the light had gone out; and suddenly she
+    felt her teeth chatter, and a chill ran through her bones that
+    was bad to feel. She raised her head and saw that the great
+    walls were dark against the starry sky, and she rose with an
+    effort, as if her limbs had suddenly become lead. But she could
+    walk, though it was like walking in sleep.</p>
+
+    <p>She did not afterwards remember how she got home, but she
+    had a vague recollection of having lost her way, and of finding
+    a cab at last, and then of letting herself into the little
+    apartment in the dark.</p>
+
+    <p>When she was next aware of anything it was broad daylight,
+    and she was lying on her bed, still dressed and wearing her
+    cloak; and Kalmon was bending over her, his eyes on hers and
+    his fingers on her pulse, while old Teresa watched her
+    anxiously from the foot of the bed.</p>
+
+    <p>"I'm afraid it is a 'perniciosa,'" he said. "Put her to bed
+    while I call a regular doctor."</p>
+
+    <p>Regina looked up at him.</p>
+
+    <p>"I have fever, have I not?" she asked quite quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. You have a little fever," he answered, but his big
+    brown eyes were very grave.</p>
+
+    <p>When Marcello came, an hour later, she did not know him. She
+    stared at him with wide, unwinking eyes, and there were bright
+    patches of colour in her cheeks. Already there were hollows in
+    them, too, and at her temples, for the perniciosa fever is
+    frightfully quick to waste the body. In the Campagna, where it
+    is worst, men have died of it in less than four hours after
+    first feeling it upon them. Great men have discovered wonderful
+    remedies for it, but still it kills.</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon got one of the great men, who was his friend, and
+    they did what they could. A nursing sister came and was
+    installed. Marcello was summoned away soon after noon by an
+    official person, who brought a carriage and said that Corbario
+    was now conscious and able to speak, and that it was absolutely
+    necessary that Marcello should be confronted with him, as he
+    might not live another day. It was easier to go than it would
+    have been if Regina had been conscious, but even so it was very
+    hard. The nun and Teresa stayed with her.</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<a name="Grief"></a>
+<img src="images/Illus378_Grief.jpg" width="595" height="400" alt="[Illustration: ]" />
+<p class="caption">"SHE SAT THERE LIKE A FIGURE OF GRIEF OUTLINED IN BLACK
+    AGAINST THE MOONLIGHT ON THE GREAT WALL."</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>She said little in her delirium, and nothing that had any
+    meaning for either of the women. Twice she tried to tear away
+    the linen and lace from her throat.</p>
+
+    <p>"I wait!" she cried each time, and her eyes fixed themselves
+    on the ceiling, while she held her breath.</p>
+
+    <p>The women could not tell what she was waiting for, and they
+    soothed her as best they could. She seemed to doze after that,
+    and when Marcello came back she knew him, and took his hand. He
+    sent away the nurses and sat by the bedside, and she spoke to
+    him in short sentences, faintly. He bent forward, near the
+    pillow, to catch the words.</p>
+
+    <p>She was telling him what she had done last night.</p>
+
+    <p>"But you promised that I should find you here to-day!"
+    Marcello said, with gentle reproach.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. I did not mean to break my word. But I thought he
+    would do it. It seemed so easy."</p>
+
+    <p>Her voice was weak with the fever, and sank almost to a
+    whisper. He stroked her hand affectionately, hoping that she
+    would go to sleep; and so a long time passed. Then Kalmon came
+    in with his friend the great doctor. They saw that she was not
+    yet any better; the doctor ordered several things to be done
+    and went away. Kalmon drew Marcello out of the room.</p>
+
+    <p>"You can do nothing," he said. "She has good care, and she
+    is very strong. Go home and come back in the morning."</p>
+
+    <p>"I must stay here," Marcello answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"That is out of the question, on account of the Sister of
+    Charity. But you can send for your things and camp in my rooms
+    downstairs. There is a good sofa. You can telephone to the
+    villa for what you want."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you." Marcello's voice dropped and shook. "Will she
+    live?" he asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"I hope so. She is very strong, and it may be only
+    fever."</p>
+
+    <p>"What else could it be?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Pneumonia."</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello bit his lip and closed his eyes as if he were in
+    bodily pain, and a moment later he turned away and went down to
+    Kalmon's apartment.</p>
+
+    <p>The Professor went back to Regina's side, and stood quietly
+    watching her, with a very sad look in his eyes. She opened hers
+    and saw him, and she brought one hand to her chest.</p>
+
+    <p>"It burns," she said, almost in a whisper, but with a
+    strange sort of eagerness, as if she were glad.</p>
+
+    <p>"I wish I could bear it for you, my poor child," Kalmon
+    answered.</p>
+
+    <p>She shook her head, and turned uneasily on the pillow. He
+    did not understand.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is it?" he asked gently. "What can I do for you? Tell
+    me."</p>
+
+    <p>"I want to see some one very much. How long shall I
+    live?"</p>
+
+    <p>"You will get quite well," said Kalmon, in a reassuring
+    tone. "But you must be very quiet." Again she moved her burning
+    cheek on the pillow.</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you want to see a priest?" asked the Professor, thinking
+    he had guessed. "Is that it?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes&mdash;there is time for that&mdash;some one
+    else&mdash;could you? Will you?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes." Kalmon bent down quickly, for he thought the delirium
+    was coming again. "Who is it?" he asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"Aurora&mdash;I mean, the Signorina&mdash;can you? Oh, do
+    you think you could?"</p>
+
+    <p>"I'll try," Kalmon answered in great surprise.</p>
+
+    <p>But now the hoarseness was suddenly gone, and her sweet
+    voice was softly humming an old song of the hills, forgotten
+    many years, and the Professor saw that she did not know him any
+    more. He nodded to Teresa, who was in the room, and went
+    out.</p>
+
+    <p>He wondered much at the request, but he remembered that it
+    had been made in the full belief that he would say nothing of
+    it to Marcello. If she had been willing that Marcello should
+    know, she would have spoken to him, rather than to Kalmon. He
+    had seen little enough of Regina, but he was sure that she
+    could have no bad motive in wishing to see the young girl. Yet,
+    from a social point of view, it was not exactly an easy thing
+    to propose, and the Contessa would have a right to be offended
+    at the mere suggestion that her daughter should speak to
+    "Consalvi's Regina"; and there could not be anything
+    clandestine in the meeting, if Aurora consented to it. Kalmon
+    was too deeply attached to the Contessa herself to be willing
+    to risk her displeasure, or, indeed, to do anything of which
+    she would not approve.</p>
+
+    <p>He went to her house by the Forum of Trajan, and he found
+    her at home. It was late in the afternoon, and the lamp was
+    lighted in the little drawing-room, which did not seem at all
+    shabby to Kalmon's accustomed eyes and not very exigent taste.
+    The Contessa was reading an evening paper before the fire. She
+    put out her hand to the Professor.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is a bad business," she said, glancing at the newspaper,
+    which had a long account of Corbario's arrest and of the murder
+    of his old accomplice. "Poor Marcello!"</p>
+
+    <p>"Poor Marcello! Yes, indeed! I'm sorry for him. There is
+    something more than is in the papers, and more than I have
+    written to you and told you. Regina has the perniciosa fever,
+    complicated with pneumonia, and is not likely to live."</p>
+
+    <p>"I am sorry," the Contessa answered. "I am very sorry for
+    her. But after all, compared with what Marcello has learned
+    about his mother's death&mdash;and other things Corbario
+    did&mdash;"</p>
+
+    <p>She stopped, implying by her tone that even if Regina died,
+    that would not be the greatest of Marcello's misfortunes.
+    Besides, she had long foreseen that the relations of the two
+    could not last, and the simplest solution, and the happiest one
+    for the poor devoted girl, was that she should die before her
+    heart was broken. Maddalena dell' Armi had often wished that
+    her own fate had been as merciful.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," Kalmon answered. "You are right in that. But Regina
+    has made a rather strange request. It was very unexpected, and
+    perhaps I did wrong to tell her that I would do my best to
+    satisfy her. I don't think she will live, and I felt sorry for
+    her. That is why I came to you. It concerns Aurora."</p>
+
+    <p>"Aurora?" The Contessa was surprised.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. The girl knows she is dying, and wishes very much to
+    see Aurora for a moment. I suppose it was weak of me to give
+    her any hope."</p>
+
+    <p>The Contessa dropped her newspaper and looked into the fire
+    thoughtfully before she answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"You and I are very good friends," she said. "You would not
+    ask me to do anything you would not do yourself, would you? If
+    you had a daughter of Aurora's age, should you let her go and
+    see this poor woman, unless it were an act of real
+    charity?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No," Kalmon answered reluctantly. "I don't think I
+    should."</p>
+
+    <p>"Thank you for being so honest," Maddalena answered, and
+    looked at the fire again.</p>
+
+    <p>Some time passed before she spoke again, still watching the
+    flames. Kalmon sighed, for he was very sorry for Regina.</p>
+
+    <p>"On the other hand," the Contessa said at last, "it may be a
+    real charity. Have you any idea why she wishes to see
+    Aurora?"</p>
+
+    <p>"No. I cannot guess."</p>
+
+    <p>"I can. At least, I think I can." She paused again. "You
+    know everything about me," she continued presently. "In the
+    course of years I have told you all my story. Do you think I am
+    a better woman than Regina?"</p>
+
+    <p>"My dear friend!" cried Kalmon, almost angrily. "How can you
+    suggest&mdash;"</p>
+
+    <p>She turned her clear, sad eyes to him, and her look cut
+    short his speech.</p>
+
+    <p>"What has her sin been?" she asked gently. "She has loved
+    Marcello. What was mine? That I loved one man too well. Which
+    is the better woman? She, the peasant, who knew no better, who
+    found her first love dying, and saved him, and loved
+    him&mdash;knowing no better, and braving the world? Or I, well
+    born, carefully brought up, a woman of the world, and
+    married&mdash;no matter how&mdash;not braving the world at all,
+    but miserably trying to deceive it, and my husband, and my
+    child? Do you think I was so much better than poor Regina?
+    Would my own daughter think so if she could know and
+    understand?"</p>
+
+    <p>"If you were not a very good woman now," Kalmon said
+    earnestly, "you could not say what you are saying."</p>
+
+    <p>"Never mind what I am now. I am not as good as you choose to
+    think. If I were, there would not be a bitter thought left. I
+    should have forgiven all. Leave out of the question what I am
+    now. Compare me as I was with Regina as she is. That is how I
+    put it, and I am right."</p>
+
+    <p>"Even if you were," Kalmon answered doubtfully, "the
+    situation would be the same, so far as Aurora is
+    concerned."</p>
+
+    <p>"But suppose that this poor woman cannot die in peace unless
+    she has asked Aurora's pardon and obtained her forgiveness,
+    what then?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Her forgiveness? For what?"</p>
+
+    <p>"For coming between her and Marcello. Say that, so far as
+    Regina knows, my daughter is the only human being she has ever
+    injured, what then?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Does Aurora love Marcello?" asked Kalmon, instead of
+    answering the question.</p>
+
+    <p>"I think she does. I am almost sure of it."</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon was silent for a while.</p>
+
+    <p>"But Marcello," he said at last, "what of him?"</p>
+
+    <p>"He has always loved Aurora," the Contessa answered. "Do you
+    blame him so much for what he has done? Why do you blame some
+    people so easily, my dear friend, and others not at all? Do you
+    realise what happened to him? He was virtually taken out of the
+    life he was leading, by a blow that practically destroyed his
+    memory, and of which the consequences altogether destroyed his
+    will for some time. He found himself saved and at the same time
+    loved&mdash;no, worshipped&mdash;by one of the most beautiful
+    women in the world. Never mind her birth! She has never looked
+    at any other man, before or since, and from what I have heard,
+    she never will. Ah, if all women were like her! Marcello, weak
+    from illness, allowed himself to be worshipped, and Corbario
+    did the rest. I understand it all. Do you blame him very much?
+    I don't. With all your strength of character, you would have
+    done the same at his age! And having taken what she offered,
+    what could he do, when he grew up and came to himself, and felt
+    his will again? Could he cast her off, after all she had done
+    for him?"</p>
+
+    <p>"He could marry her," observed Kalmon. "I don't see why he
+    should not, after all."</p>
+
+    <p>"Marriage!" There was a little scornful sadness in
+    Maddalena's voice. "Marriage is always the solution! No, no, he
+    is right not to marry her, if he has ever thought of it. They
+    would only make each other miserable for the rest of their
+    lives. Miserable, and perhaps faithless too. That is what
+    happens when men and women are not saints. Look at me!"</p>
+
+    <p>"You were never in that position. Others were to blame, who
+    made you marry when you were too young to have any will of your
+    own."</p>
+
+    <p>"Blame no one," said the Contessa gravely. "I shall give
+    Aurora Regina's message, and if she is willing to go and see
+    her, I shall bring her to-morrow morning&mdash;to-night, if
+    there is no time to be lost. The world need never know. Go and
+    tell Regina what I have said. It may comfort her a little, poor
+    thing."</p>
+
+    <p>"Indeed it will!"</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon's brown eyes beamed with pleasure at the thought of
+    taking the kindly message to the dying girl. He rose to his
+    feet at once.</p>
+
+    <p>"There is no one like you," he said, as he took her
+    hand.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is nothing. It is what Marcello's mother would have
+    done, and she was my best friend. All I do is to take the
+    responsibility upon myself, however Aurora may choose to act. I
+    will send you word, in either case. If Aurora will not go, I
+    will come myself, if I can be of any use, if it would make
+    Regina feel happier. I will come, and I will tell her what I
+    have told you. Good-night, dear friend."</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon was not an emotional man, but as he went out he felt
+    a little lump in his throat, as if he could not swallow.</p>
+
+    <p>He had not doubted his friend's kindness, but he had doubted
+    whether she would feel that she had a right to "expose her
+    daughter," as the world would say, to meeting such a "person,"
+    as the world called Regina&mdash;"Consalvi's Regina."</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2><a name='CHAPTER_XXII'></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+    <p>All that night and the following day Regina recognised no
+    one; and it was night again, and her strength began to fail,
+    but her understanding returned. Marcello saw the change, and
+    made a sign to the nurse, who went out to tell Kalmon.</p>
+
+    <p>It was about nine o'clock when he entered the room, and
+    Regina knew him and looked at him anxiously. He, in turn,
+    glanced at Marcello, and she understood. She begged Marcello to
+    go and get some rest. Her voice was very weak, as if she were
+    suffocating, and she coughed painfully. He did not like to go
+    away, but Kalmon promised to call him at midnight; he had been
+    in the room six hours, scarcely moving from his seat. He
+    lingered at the door, looked back, and at last went out.</p>
+
+    <p>"Will she come?" asked Regina, when he was gone.</p>
+
+    <p>"In half an hour. I have sent a messenger, for they have no
+    telephone."</p>
+
+    <p>A bright smile lighted up the wasted face.</p>
+
+    <p>"Heaven will reward you," she said, as the poor say in Rome
+    when they receive a charity.</p>
+
+    <p>Then she seemed to be resting, for her hands lay still, and
+    she closed her eyes. But presently she opened them, looking up
+    gratefully into the big man's kind face.</p>
+
+    <p>"Shall I be alone with her a little?" she asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, my dear. You shall be alone with her."</p>
+
+    <p>Again she smiled, and he left the nurse with her and went
+    and waited downstairs at the street door, till the Contessa and
+    Aurora should come, in order to take them up to the little
+    apartment. He knew that Marcello must have fallen asleep at
+    once, for he had not rested at all for twenty-four hours, and
+    very little during several days past. Kalmon was beginning to
+    fear that he would break down, though he was so much stronger
+    than formerly.</p>
+
+    <p>Marcello had always been grateful to Regina, even when he
+    had convinced himself that he loved her. Love is not very
+    compatible with gratitude. Two people who love each other very
+    much expect everything because they are always ready to give
+    everything, not in return or by way of any exchange, but as if
+    the two were one in giving and taking. A man cannot be grateful
+    to himself. But Marcello had never felt that dear illusion with
+    Regina, because there had been no real companionship; and so he
+    had always been grateful to her, and now that she was perhaps
+    dying, he was possessed by the horribly painful certainty that
+    he could never repay her what he owed, and that this debt of
+    honour must remain unpaid for ever, if she died. There was much
+    more than that in what he felt, of course, for there was his
+    very real affection, tormented by the foreboding of the coming
+    wrench, and there was the profound sympathy of a very kind man
+    for a suffering woman. But all that together was not love like
+    hers for him; it was not love at all.</p>
+
+    <p>Kalmon waited, and smoked a little, reflecting on these
+    things, which he understood tolerably well. The quiet man of
+    science had watched Marcello thoughtfully, and could not help
+    asking himself what look there would be in his own eyes, if
+    Maddalena dell' Armi were dying and he were standing by her
+    bedside. It would not be Marcello's look.</p>
+
+    <p>A closed cab stopped before the entrance, and almost before
+    he could throw away his cigarette, the Contessa and Aurora were
+    standing beside him on the pavement.</p>
+
+    <p>"She is very weak," he said, "but she will not be delirious
+    again for some time&mdash;if at all."</p>
+
+    <p>Neither of the ladies spoke, and they followed him in
+    silence up the ill-lighted staircase.</p>
+
+    <p>"That is where I live," he said, as he passed his own door
+    on the second landing. "Marcello is camping there. He is
+    probably asleep now."</p>
+
+    <p>"Asleep!" It was Aurora that uttered the single word, in a
+    puzzled tone.</p>
+
+    <p>"He did not go to bed last night," Kalmon explained, going
+    on.</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh!" Again the Professor was struck by the young girl's
+    tone.</p>
+
+    <p>They reached the third landing, and Kalmon pushed the door,
+    which he had left ajar; he shut it when they had all entered,
+    and he ushered the mother and daughter into the small
+    sitting-room. There they waited a moment while he went to tell
+    Regina that Aurora had come.</p>
+
+    <p>The young girl dropped her cloak upon a chair and stood
+    waiting, her eyes fixed on the door. She was a little pale, not
+    knowing what was to come, yet feeling somehow that it was to
+    make a great difference to her ever afterwards. She glanced at
+    her mother, and the Contessa smiled gently, as much as to say
+    that she was doing right, but neither spoke.</p>
+
+    <p>Presently Kalmon came out with the Sister of Charity, who
+    bent her head gravely to the two ladies.</p>
+
+    <p>"She wishes to see you alone," Kalmon said, in explanation,
+    while he held the door open for Aurora to pass in.</p>
+
+    <p>He closed it after her, and the two were together.</p>
+
+    <p>When Aurora entered, Regina's eyes were fixed upon her face
+    as if they had already found her and seen her while she had
+    been in the other room. She came straight to the bedside and
+    took the hand that was stretched out to meet hers. It was thin
+    and hot now, and the arm was already wasted. Aurora remembered
+    how strongly it had lifted her to the edge of the rock, far
+    away by Pontresina.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are very kind, Signorina," said the faint voice. "You
+    see how I am."</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora saw indeed, and kept the hand in hers as she sat down
+    in the chair that stood where Marcello had left it.</p>
+
+    <p>"I am very, very sorry," she said, leaning forward a little
+    and looking into the worn face, colourless now that the fever
+    had subsided for a while.</p>
+
+    <p>The same bright smile that Kalmon had seen lighted up
+    Regina's features.</p>
+
+    <p>"But I am glad!" she answered. "They do not understand that
+    I am glad."</p>
+
+    <p>"No, no!" cried Aurora softly. "Don't say you are glad!"</p>
+
+    <p>The smile faded, and a very earnest look came into the
+    hollow dark eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>"But I have not done it on purpose," Regina said. "I did not
+    know there was fever in that place, or I would not have sat
+    down there. You believe me, Signorina, don't you?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, indeed!"</p>
+
+    <p>The smile returned very gradually, and the anxious pressure
+    of the hand relaxed.</p>
+
+    <p>"You must not think that I was looking for the fever. But
+    since it came, and I am going from here, I am glad. I shall not
+    be in the way any more. That hindrance will be taken out of his
+    life."</p>
+
+    <p>"He would not like to hear you speak like this," Aurora
+    said, with great gentleness.</p>
+
+    <p>"There is no time for anything except the truth, now. And
+    you are good, so good! No, there is no time. To-morrow, I shall
+    be gone. Signorina, if I could kneel at your feet, I would
+    kneel. But you see how I am. You must think I am kneeling at
+    your feet."</p>
+
+    <p>"But why?" asked Aurora, with a little distress.</p>
+
+    <p>"To ask you to forgive me for being a hindrance. I want
+    pardon before I go. But I found him half dead on the door-step.
+    What could I do? When I had seen him, I loved him. I knew that
+    he thought of you. That was all he remembered&mdash;just your
+    name, and I hated it, because he had forgotten all other names,
+    even his own, and his mother, and everything. He was like a
+    little child that learns, to-day this, to-morrow that, one
+    thing at a time. What could I do? I taught him. I also taught
+    him to love Regina. But when the memory came back, I knew how
+    it had been before."</p>
+
+    <p>Her voice broke and she coughed, and raised one hand to her
+    chest. Aurora supported her tenderly until it was over, and
+    when the weary head sank back at last it lay upon the young
+    girl's willing arm.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are tiring yourself," Aurora said. "If it was to ask my
+    forgiveness that you wished me to come, I forgave you long ago,
+    if there was anything to forgive. I forgave you when we met,
+    and I saw what you were, and that you loved him for himself,
+    just as I do."</p>
+
+    <p>"Is it true? Really true?"</p>
+
+    <p>"So may God help me, it is quite true. But if I had thought
+    it was not for himself&mdash;"</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, yes, it was," Regina answered. "It was, and it is, to
+    the end. Will you see? I will show you. For what the eyes see
+    the heart believes more easily. Signorina, will you bring the
+    little box covered with old velvet? It is there, on the table,
+    and it is open."</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora rose, humouring her, and brought the thing she asked
+    for, and sat down again, setting it on the edge of the bed.
+    Regina turned her head to see it, and raised the lid with one
+    hand.</p>
+
+    <p>"This is my little box," she said. "What he has given me is
+    all in it. I have no other. Will you see? Here is what I have
+    taken from him. You shall look everywhere, if you do not
+    believe."</p>
+
+    <p>"But I do believe you!" Aurora cried, feeling that tears
+    were coming to her eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>"But you must see," Regina insisted. "Or perhaps when I am
+    gone you will say to yourself, 'There may have been diamonds
+    and pearls in the little box, after all!' You shall know that
+    it was all for himself."</p>
+
+    <p>To please her Aurora took up some of the simple trinkets,
+    simpler and cheaper even than what she had herself.</p>
+
+    <p>"There are dresses, yes, many more than I wanted. But I
+    could not let him be ashamed of me when we went out together,
+    and travelled. Do you forgive me the dresses, Signorina? I wore
+    them to please him. Please forgive me that also!"</p>
+
+    <p>Aurora dropped the things into the open box and laid both
+    her hands on Regina's, bending down her radiant head and
+    looking very earnestly into the anxious eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>"Forgiveness is not all from me to you, Regina," she said.
+    "I want yours too."</p>
+
+    <p>"Mine?" The eyes grew wide and wondering.</p>
+
+    <p>"Don't you see that but for me he would have married you,
+    and that I have been the cause of a great wrong to you?"</p>
+
+    <p>For one instant Regina's face darkened, her brows
+    straightened themselves, and her lip curled. She remembered
+    how, only two days ago, in the very next room, Marcello had
+    insisted that she should he his wife. But as she looked into
+    Aurora's innocent eyes she understood, and the cloud passed
+    from her own, and the bright smile came back. Aurora had spoken
+    in the simplicity of her true heart, sure that it was only the
+    memory of his love for her that had withheld Marcello from
+    first to last; and Regina well knew that it had always been
+    present with him, in spite of his brave struggle to put it
+    away. That memory of another, which Regina had seen slowly
+    reviving in him, had been for something in her refusal to marry
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>With the mysterious sure vision of those who are near death,
+    she felt that it would hurt Aurora to know the truth, except
+    from Marcello himself.</p>
+
+    <p>"If you have ever stood between us," she said, "you had the
+    right. He loved you first. There is nothing to forgive in that.
+    Afterwards he loved me a little. No one can take that from me,
+    no one! It is mine, and it is all I have, and though I am
+    going, and though I know that he is tired of me, it is still
+    more than the world. To have it, as I have it, I would do again
+    what I did, from the first."</p>
+
+    <p>The voice was weak and muffled, but the words were distinct,
+    and they were the confession of poor Regina's life.</p>
+
+    <p>"If he were here," she said, after a moment, "I would lay
+    your hand in his. Only let me take that memory with me!"</p>
+
+    <p>The young girl rose and bent over her as she answered.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is yours, to keep for ever."</p>
+
+    <p>She stooped a little lower and kissed the dying woman's
+    forehead.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>Under the May moon a little brigantine came sailing up to a
+    low island just within sight of Italy; when she was within half
+    a mile of the reefs Don Antonino Maresca put her about, for he
+    was a prudent man, and he knew that there are just a few more
+    rocks in the sea than are in the charts. It was a quiet night,
+    and he was beating up against a gentle northerly breeze.</p>
+
+    <p>When the head yards were swung, and braced sharp up for the
+    other tack, and the little vessel had gathered way again, the
+    mate came aft and stood by the captain, watching the light on
+    the island.</p>
+
+    <p>"Are there still convicts on this island, Don Antonino?" the
+    young man asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, there are the convicts. And there is one among them
+    whom I helped to put there. He is an assassin that killed many
+    when he was at liberty. But now he sits for seven years in a
+    little cell alone, and sees no Christian, and it will be thirty
+    years before he is free."</p>
+
+    <p>"Madonna!" ejaculated the mate. "When he has been there
+    thirty years he will perhaps understand."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is as I say," rejoined the captain. "The world is made
+    so. There are the good and the bad. The Eternal Father has
+    created things thus. Get a little more on the main sheet, and
+    then flatten in those jibs."</p>
+
+    <p>Under the May moon, in the small shaft of white light that
+    fell through the narrow grated window, a man sat on the edge of
+    his pallet bed. His face was ghastly, and there were strange
+    scars on his bare throat. His cell was seven feet by six, and
+    the air was hard to breathe, because the wind was not from the
+    south. But the moon was kinder than the sun. He heard the
+    ripple of the cool sea, and he tried to dream that a great
+    stone was hung to his neck, and that he had been thrown into a
+    deep place. Perhaps, some day, the gaoler would forget to take
+    away the coarse towel which was brought with the water in the
+    morning. With a towel he could hang himself.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>Under the May moon a small marble cross cast its shadow upon
+    young roses and violets and growing myrtle. In the sweet earth
+    below a very loyal heart was at rest for ever. But the flowers
+    were planted and still tended by a woman with radiant hair; and
+    sometimes, when she stooped to train the young roses, bright
+    drops fell quietly upon their bloom. Also, on certain days, a
+    man came there alone and knelt upon the marble border within
+    which the flowers grew. But the man and the woman never came
+    together; and he gave the gardener of that place money,
+    praising him for the care of the flowers.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>Under the May moon the man and the woman went down from the
+    cottage by the Roman shore to the break in the high bank, and
+    stood still a while, looking out at the peaceful sea and the
+    moon's broad path. Presently they turned to each other, put out
+    their hands, and then their arms, and clasped each other
+    silently, and kissed.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND ***</div>
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@@ -0,0 +1,11441 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Whosoever Shall Offend, by F. Marion Crawford
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Whosoever Shall Offend
+
+Author: F. Marion Crawford
+
+Release Date: November 3, 2004  [eBook #13932]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Stephanie Fleck, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND
+
+by
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+Author of _Saracinesca_, _The Heart Of Rome_, etc, etc.
+
+With Eight Illustrations Drawn in Rome with the Author's Suggestions
+
+by Horace T. Carpenter
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me,
+it were better for him that a mill stone were hanged about his neck, and
+that he were drowned in the depth of the sea"
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "SUDDENLY HE HEARD AN ITALIAN VOICE VERY NEAR TO HIM,
+CALLING HIM BY NAME, IN A TONE OF SURPRISE"]
+
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Suddenly he heard an Italian voice very near to him, calling him by
+name, in a tone of surprise"
+
+"'I call it the sleeping death,' answered the Professor"
+
+"He flushed again, very angry this time, and he moved away to leave her,
+without another word"
+
+" ... the door was darkened, and the girl stood there with a large copper
+'conca' ..."
+
+"He moved a step towards the bed, and then another, forcing himself to
+go on"
+
+"Ercole left his home after sunset that evening"
+
+"Regina made a steady effort, lifting fully half Aurora's weight with
+her"
+
+"She sat there like a figure of grief outlined in black against the
+moonlight on the great wall"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+When the widow of Martino Consalvi married young Corbario, people shook
+their heads and said that she was making a great mistake. Consalvi had
+been dead a good many years, but as yet no one had thought it was time
+to say that his widow was no longer young and beautiful, as she had
+always been. Many rich widows remain young and beautiful as much as a
+quarter of a century, or even longer, and the Signora Consalvi was very
+rich indeed. As soon as she was married to Folco Corbario every one knew
+that she was thirty-five years old and he was barely twenty-six, and
+that such a difference of ages on the wrong side was ridiculous if it
+was not positively immoral. No well-regulated young man had a right to
+marry a rich widow nine years older than himself, and who had a son only
+eleven years younger than he.
+
+A few philosophers who said that if the widow was satisfied the matter
+was nobody's business were treated with the contempt they deserved.
+Those who, on the contrary, observed that young Corbario had married for
+money and nothing else were heard with favour, until the man who knew
+everything pointed out that as the greater part of the fortune would be
+handed over to Marcello when he came of age, six years hence, Corbario
+had not made a good bargain and might have done better. It was true that
+Marcello Consalvi had inherited a delicate constitution of body, it had
+even been hinted that he was consumptive. Corbario would have done
+better to wait another year or two to see what happened, said a cynic,
+for young people often died of consumption between fifteen and twenty.
+The cynic was answered by a practical woman of the world, who said that
+Corbario had six years of luxury and extravagance before him, and that
+many men would have sold themselves to the devil for less. After the six
+years the deluge might come if it must; it was much pleasanter to drown
+in the end than never to have had the chance of swimming in the big
+stream at all, and bumping sides with the really big fish, and feeling
+oneself as good as any of them. Besides, Marcello was pale and thin, and
+had been heard to cough; he might die before he came of age. The only
+objection to this theory was that it was based on a fiction; for the
+whole fortune had been left to the Signora by a childless relation.
+
+These amiable and interesting views were expressed with variations by
+people who knew the three persons concerned, and with such a keen sense
+of appropriate time and place as made it quite sure that none of the
+three should ever know what was said of them. The caution of an old fox
+is rash temerity compared with the circumspection of a first-rate
+gossip; and when the gossips were tired of discussing Folco Corbario and
+his wife and her son, they talked about other matters, but they had a
+vague suspicion that they had been cheated out of something. A cat that
+has clawed all the feathers off a stuffed canary might feel just what
+they did.
+
+For nothing happened. Corbario did not launch into wild extravagance
+after all, but behaved himself with the faultless dulness of a model
+middle-aged husband. His wife loved him and was perfectly happy, and
+happiness finally stole her superfluous years away, and they evaporated
+in the sunshine, and she forgot all about them. Marcello Consalvi, who
+had lost his father when he was a mere child, found a friend in his
+mother's husband, and became very fond of him, and thought him a good
+man to imitate; and in return Corbario made a companion of the
+fair-haired boy, and taught him to ride and shoot in his holidays, and
+all went well.
+
+Moreover, Marcello's mother, who was a good woman, told him that the
+world was very wicked; and with the blind desire for her son's lasting
+innocence, which is the most touching instinct of loving motherhood, she
+entreated him to lead a spotless life. When Marcello, in the excusable
+curiosity of budding youth, asked his stepfather what that awful
+wickedness was against which he was so often warned, Corbario told him
+true stories of men who had betrayed their country and their friends,
+and of all sorts of treachery and meanness, to which misdeeds the boy
+did not feel himself at all inclined; so that he wondered why his mother
+seemed so very anxious lest he should go astray. Then he repeated to her
+what Corbario had told him, and she smiled sweetly and said nothing, and
+trusted her husband all the more. She felt that he understood her, and
+was doing his best to help her in making Marcello what she wished him to
+be.
+
+The boy was brought up at home; in Rome in the winter, and in summer on
+the great estate in the south, which his father had bought and which was
+to be a part of his inheritance.
+
+He was taught by masters who came to the house to give their lessons and
+went away as soon as the task was over. He had no tutor, for his mother
+had not found a layman whom she could trust in that capacity, and yet
+she understood that it was not good for a boy to be followed everywhere
+by a priest. Besides, Corbario gave so much of his time to his stepson
+that a tutor was hardly needed; he walked with him and rode with him, or
+spent hours with him at home when the weather was bad. There had never
+been a cross word between the two since they had met. It was an ideal
+existence. Even the gossips stopped talking at last, and there was not
+one, not even the most ingeniously evil-tongued of all, that prophesied
+evil.
+
+They raised their eyebrows, and the more primitive among them shrugged
+their shoulders a little, and smiled. If Providence really insisted upon
+making people so perfect, what was to be done? It was distressing, but
+there was nothing to be said; they must just lead their lives, and the
+gossips must bear it. No doubt Corbario had married for money, since he
+had nothing in particular and his wife had millions, but if ever a man
+had married for money and then behaved like an angel, that man was Folco
+Corbario and no other. He was everything to his wife, and all things to
+his stepson--husband, father, man of business, tutor, companion, and
+nurse; for when either his wife or Marcello was ill, he rarely left the
+sick-room, and no one could smooth a pillow as he could, or hold a glass
+so coaxingly to the feverish lips, or read aloud so untiringly in such a
+gentle and soothing voice.
+
+No ascendency of one human being over another is more complete than that
+of a full-grown man over a boy of sixteen, who venerates his elder as an
+ideal. To find a model, to believe it perfection, and to copy it
+energetically, is either a great piece of good fortune, or a misfortune
+even greater; in whatever follows in life, there is the same difference
+between such development and the normally slow growth of a boy's mind as
+that which lies between enthusiasm and indifference. It is true that
+where there has been no enthusiastic belief there can be no despairing
+disillusionment when the light goes out; but it is truer still that hope
+and happiness are the children of faith by the ideal.
+
+A boy's admiration for his hero is not always well founded; sometimes it
+is little short of ridiculous, and it is by no means always harmless.
+But no one found fault with Marcello for admiring his stepfather, and
+the attachment was a source of constant satisfaction to his mother. In
+her opinion Corbario was the handsomest, bravest, cleverest, and best of
+men, and after watching him for some time even the disappointed gossips
+were obliged to admit, though without superlatives, that he was a
+good-looking fellow, a good sportsman, sufficiently well gifted, and of
+excellent behaviour. There was the more merit in the admission, they
+maintained, because they had been inclined to doubt the man, and had
+accused him of marrying out of pure love of money. A keen judge of men
+might have thought that his handsome features were almost too still and
+too much like a mask, that his manner was so quiet as to be almost
+expressionless, and that the soft intonation of his speech was almost
+too monotonous to be natural. But all this was just what his wife
+admired, and she encouraged her son to imitate it. His father had been a
+man of quick impulses, weak to-day, strong to-morrow, restless, of
+uncertain temper, easily enthusiastic and easily cast down, capable of
+sudden emotions, and never able to conceal what he felt if he had cared
+to do so. Marcello had inherited his father's character and his mother's
+face, as often happens; but his unquiet disposition was tempered as yet
+by a certain almost girlish docility, which had clung to him from
+childhood as the result of being brought up almost entirely by the
+mother he worshipped. And now, for the first time, comparing him with
+her second husband, she realised the boy's girlishness, and wished him
+to outgrow it. Her own ideal of what even a young man should be was as
+unpractical as that of many thoroughly good and thoroughly unworldly
+mothers. She wished her son to be a man at all points, and yet she
+dreamed that he might remain a sort of glorified young girl; she desired
+him to be well prepared to face the world when he grew up, and yet it
+was her dearest wish that he might never know anything of the world's
+wickedness. Corbario seemed to understand her better in this than she
+understood herself, and devoted his excellent gifts and his almost
+superhuman patience to the task of forming a modern Galahad. Her
+confidence in her husband increased month by month, and year by year.
+
+"I wish to make a new will," she said to her lawyer in the third year of
+her marriage. "I shall leave my husband a life-interest in a part of my
+fortune, and the reversion of the whole in case anything should happen
+to my son."
+
+The lawyer was a middle-aged man, with hard black eyes. While he was
+listening to a client, he had a habit of folding his arms tightly across
+his chest and crossing one leg over the other. When the Signora Corbario
+had finished speaking he sat quite still for a moment, and then
+noiselessly reversed the crossing of his legs and the folding of his
+arms, and looked into her face. It was very gentle, fair, and
+thoughtful.
+
+"I presume," answered the lawyer, "that the clause providing for a
+reversion is only intended as an expression of your confidence in your
+husband?"
+
+"Affection," answered the Signora, "includes confidence."
+
+The lawyer raised one eyebrow almost imperceptibly, and changed his
+position a little.
+
+"Heaven forbid," he said, "that any accident should befall your son!"
+
+"Heaven forbid it!" replied the Signora. "He is very strong," she
+continued, in the tone people use who are anxious to convince themselves
+of something doubtful. "Yet I wish my husband to know that, after my
+son, he should have the first right."
+
+"Shall you inform him of the nature of your will, Signora?" inquired the
+lawyer.
+
+"I have already informed him of what I mean to do," replied Signora
+Corbario.
+
+Again the lawyer's eyebrow moved a little nervously, but he said
+nothing. It was not his place to express any doubt as to the wisdom of
+the disposition. He was not an old family adviser, who might have taken
+such a liberty. There had been such a man, indeed, but he was dead. It
+was the duty of the rich woman's legal adviser to hinder her from
+committing any positive legal mistake, but it was not his place to
+criticise her judgment of the man she had chosen to marry. The lawyer
+made a few notes without offering any comment, and on the following day
+he brought the will for the Signora to sign. By it, at her death,
+Marcello, her son, was to inherit her great fortune. Her husband, Folco
+Corbario, was constituted Marcello's sole guardian, and was to enjoy a
+life-interest in one-third of the inheritance. If Marcello died, the
+whole fortune was to go to Corbario, without any condition or
+reservation whatsoever.
+
+When the will was executed, the Signora told her husband that she had
+done what she intended.
+
+"My dear," said Corbario, gently, "I thank you for the true meaning of
+it. But as for the will itself, shall we talk of it thirty years hence,
+when Marcello's children's children are at your knee?"
+
+He kissed her hand tenderly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Marcello stood at an open window listening to the musical spring rain
+and watching the changing lights on the city below him, as the
+dove-coloured cloud that floated over Rome like thin gauze was drawn up
+into the sunshine. Then there were sudden reflections from distant
+windows and wet domes, that blazed like white fires for a little while,
+till the raindrops dried and the waves of changing hues that had surged
+up under the rain, rising, breaking, falling, and spreading, subsided
+into a restful sea of harmonious colour.
+
+After that, the sweet smell of the wet earth came up to Marcello's
+nostrils. A light breeze stirred the dripping emerald leaves, and the
+little birds fluttered down and hopped along the garden walks and over
+the leaves, picking up the small unwary worms that had been enjoying a
+bath while their enemies tried to keep dry under the ilex boughs.
+
+Marcello half closed his eyes and drank the fragrant air with parted
+lips, his slim white hands resting on the marble sill. The sunshine made
+his pale face luminous, and gilded his short fair hair, casting the
+shadow of the brown lashes upon his delicate cheeks. There was something
+angel-like in his expression--the look of the frescoed angels of Melozzo
+da Forli in the Sacristy of St. Peter's. They are all that is left of
+something very beautiful, brought thither broken from the Church of the
+Holy Apostles; and so, too, one might have fancied that Marcello,
+standing at the window in the morning sunshine, belonged to a world that
+had long passed away--fit for a life that was, fit for a life to come
+hereafter, perhaps, but not fit for the life that is. There are rare and
+beautiful beings in the world who belong to it so little that it seems
+cruelty and injustice to require of them what is demanded of us all.
+They are born ages too late, or ages too soon; they should not have been
+born now. Their very existence calls forth our tenderest sympathy, as we
+should pity a fawn facing its death among wolves.
+
+But Marcello Consalvi had no idea that he could deserve pity, and life
+looked very bright to him, very easy, and very peaceful. He could hardly
+have thought of anything at all likely to happen which could darken the
+future, or even give him reasonable cause for anxiety. There was no
+imaginative sadness in his nature, no morbid dread of undefined evil, no
+melancholy to dye the days black; for melancholy is more often an
+affliction of the very strong in body or mind than of the weak, or of
+average men and women. Marcello was delicate, but not degenerate; he
+seemed gentle, cheerful, and ready to believe the world a very good
+place, as indeed it is for people who are not too unlike their
+neighbours to enjoy it, or too unlucky to get some of its good things,
+or too weak to work, fight, and love, or too clever to be as satisfied
+with themselves as most men are. For plain, common, everyday happiness
+and contentment belong to plain, average people, who do what others do
+and have a cheerfully good opinion of themselves. Can a man make a good
+fight of it if he does not believe himself to be about as good as his
+adversary?
+
+It had never occurred to Marcello that he might have to fight for
+anything, and if some one had told him on that spring morning that he
+was on the very verge of a desperate struggle for existence against
+overwhelming odds, he would have turned his bright eyes wonderingly to
+the prophet of evil, asking whence danger could come, and trying to
+think what it might be like.
+
+At the first appearance of it he would have been startled into fear,
+too, as many a grown man has been before now, when suddenly brought face
+to face with an unknown peril, being quite untried: and small shame to
+him. He who has been waked from a peaceful sleep and pleasant dreams to
+find death at his throat, for the first time in his life, knows the
+meaning of that. Samson was a tried warrior when Delilah first roused
+him with her cry, "The Philistines are upon thee!"
+
+Marcello was no youthful Samson, yet he was not an unmanly boy, for all
+his bringing up. So far as his strength would allow he had been
+accustomed to the exercises and sports of men: he could ride fearlessly,
+if not untiringly; he was a fair shot; he had hunted wild boar with his
+stepfather in the marshy lands by the sea; he had been taught to fence
+and was not clumsy with weapons, though he had not yet any great skill.
+He had always been told that he was delicate and must be careful, and he
+knew that he was not strong; but there was one good sign in that his
+weakness irritated him and bred at least the desire for strength,
+instead of the poor-spirited indolence that bears bodily infirmity as
+something inevitable, and is ready to accept pity if not to ask for it.
+
+The smell of the damp earth was gone, and as the sun shone out the air
+was filled with the scent of warm roses and the faintly sweet odour of
+wistaria. Marcello heard a light footstep close to him, and met his
+mother's eyes as he turned.
+
+Even to him, she looked very young just then, as she stood in the light,
+smiling at him. A piece of lace was drawn half over her fair hair, and
+the ends went round her throat like a scarf and fell behind her. Its
+creamy tints heightened the rare transparency of her complexion by faint
+contrast. She was a slight woman and very graceful.
+
+"I have looked for you everywhere," she said, and she still smiled, as
+if with real pleasure at having found him.
+
+"I have been watching the shower" Marcello answered, drawing her to the
+window. "And then the earth and the roses smelt so sweet that I stayed
+here. Did you want me, mother?"
+
+"I always like to know where you are."
+
+She passed her arm through his with a loving pressure, and looked out
+of the window with him. The villa stood on the slope of the Janiculum,
+close to the Corsini gardens.
+
+"Do I run after you too much?" the mother asked presently, as if she
+knew the answer. "Now that you are growing up, do I make you feel as if
+you were still a little boy? You are nearly nineteen, you know! I
+suppose I ought to treat you like a man."
+
+Marcello laughed, and his hand slipped into hers with an almost childish
+and nestling movement.
+
+"You have made a man of me," he answered.
+
+Had she? A shadow of doubt crossed her thoughtful face as she glanced at
+his. He was so different from other young men of his age, so delicately
+nurtured, so very gentle; there was the radiance of maidenly innocence
+in his look, and she was afraid that he might be more like a girl than a
+man almost grown.
+
+"I have done my best," she said. "I hope I have done right."
+
+He scarcely understood what she meant, and his expression did not
+change.
+
+"You could not do anything that was not right," he answered.
+
+Perhaps such a being as Marcello would be an impossibility anywhere but
+in Italy. Modern life tears privacy to tatters, and privacy is the veil
+of the temple of home, within which every extreme of human development
+is possible, good and bad. Take privacy away and all the strangely
+compound fractions of humanity are soon reduced to a common
+denomination. In Italy life has more privacy than anywhere else west of
+Asia. The Englishman is fond of calling his home his castle, but it is a
+thoroughfare, a market-place, a club, a hotel, a glass house, compared
+with that of an average Italian. An Englishman goes home to escape
+restraint: an Italian goes out. But the northern man, who lives much in
+public, learns as a child to conceal what he feels, to be silent, to
+wear an indifferent look; whereas the man of the south, who hides
+nothing when the doors of his house are shut, can hide but little when
+he meets his enemy in the way. He laughs when he is pleased, and scowls
+when he is not, threatens when he is angry, and sheds tears when he is
+hurt, with a simplicity that too often excites the contempt of men
+accustomed to suffer or enjoy without moving a muscle.
+
+Privacy favours the growth of individual types, differing widely from
+each other; the destruction of it makes people very much alike.
+Marcello's mother asked herself whether she had done well in rearing him
+as a being apart from those amongst whom he must spend his life.
+
+And yet, as she looked at him, he seemed to be so nearly the ideal of
+which she had dreamt throughout long years of loving care that she was
+comforted, and the shadow passed away from her sweet face. He had
+answered that she could do nothing that was not right; she prayed that
+his words might be near the truth, and in her heart she was willing to
+believe that they were almost true. Had she not followed every good
+impulse of her own good heart? Had she not tried to realize literally
+for him the most beautiful possibilities of the Christian faith? That,
+at least, was true, and she could tell herself so without any mistaken
+pride. How, then, had she made any mistake? The boy had the face of a
+young saint.
+
+"Are you ready, my dear?" she asked suddenly, as a far-off clock struck.
+
+"Yes, mother, quite ready."
+
+"I am not," she answered with a little laugh. "And Folco is waiting, and
+I hear the carriage driving up."
+
+She slipped from Marcello's side and left the room quickly, for they
+were going to drive down to the sea, to a little shooting-lodge that
+belonged to them near Nettuno, a mere cottage among the trees by the
+Roman shore, habitable only in April and May, and useful only then, when
+the quail migrate along the coast and the malarious fever is not yet to
+be feared. It was there that Marcello had first learned to handle a gun,
+spending a week at a time there with his stepfather; and his mother used
+to come down now and then for a day or two on a visit, sometimes
+bringing her friend the Contessa dell' Armi. The latter had been very
+unhappy in her youth, and had been left a widow with one beautiful girl
+and a rather exiguous fortune. Some people thought that it was odd that
+the Signora Corbario, who was a saint if ever there was one, should have
+grown so fond of the Contessa, for the latter had seen stormy days in
+years gone by; and of course the ill-disposed gossips made up their
+minds that the Contessa was trying to catch Marcello for her daughter
+Aurora, though the child was barely seventeen.
+
+This was mere gossip, for she was quite incapable of any such scheme.
+What the gossips did not know was something which would have interested
+them much more, namely, that the Contessa was the only person in Rome
+who distrusted Folco Corbario, and that she was in constant fear lest
+she should turn out to be right, and lest her friend's paradise should
+be suddenly changed into a purgatory. But she held her tongue, and her
+quiet face never betrayed her thoughts. She only watched, and noted from
+month to month certain small signs which seemed to prove her right; and
+she should be ready, whenever the time should come, by day or night, to
+help her friend, or comfort her, or fight for her.
+
+If Corbario guessed that the Contessa did not trust him, he never showed
+it. He had found her installed as his wife's friend, and had accepted
+her, treating her with much courtesy and a sort of vicarious affection;
+but though he tried his best he could not succeed in reaching anything
+like intimacy with her, and while she seemed to conceal nothing, he felt
+that she was hiding her real self from him. Whether she did so out of
+pride, or distrust, or jealousy, he could never be sure. He was secretly
+irritated and humiliated by her power to oppose him and keep him at a
+distance without ever seeming to do so; but, on the other hand, he was
+very patient, very tenacious of his purpose, and very skilful. He knew
+something of the Contessa's past, but he recognised in her the nature
+that has known the world's worst side and has done with it for ever, and
+is lifted above it, and he knew the immense influence which the
+spectacle of a blameless life exercises upon the opinion of a good woman
+who has not always been blameless herself. Whatever he had been before
+he met his wife, whatever strange plans had been maturing in his brain
+since he had married her, his life had seemed as spotless from that day
+as the existence of the best man living. His wife believed in him, and
+the Contessa did not; but even she must in time accept the evidence of
+her senses. Then she, too, would trust him. Why it was essential that
+she should, he alone knew, unless he was merely piqued by her quiet
+reserve, as a child is when it cannot fix the attention of a grown-up
+person.
+
+The Contessa and her daughter were to be of the party that day, and the
+carriage stopped where they lived, near the Forum of Trajan. They
+appeared almost directly, the Contessa in grey with a grey veil and
+Aurora dressed in a lighter shade, the thick plaits of her auburn hair
+tied up short below her round straw hat, on the theory that she was
+still a school-girl, whose skirt must not quite touch the ground, who
+ought not to wear a veil, and whose mind was supposed to be a sensitive
+blank, particularly apt to receive bad impressions rather than good
+ones. In less than a year she would be dancing all night with men she
+had scarcely heard of before, listening to compliments of which she had
+never dreamt--of course not--and to declarations which no right-minded
+girl one day under eighteen could under any circumstances be thought to
+expect. Such miracles as these are wrought by the eighteenth birthday.
+
+Corbario's eyes looked from the mother to the daughter, as he and
+Marcello stood on the pavement to let them get in. The Contessa touched
+his outstretched hand without restraint but without cordiality, smiling
+just as much as was civil, and less readily than would have been
+friendly. Aurora glanced at him and laughed prettily without any
+apparent reason, which is the privilege of very young girls, because
+their minds are supposed to be a blank. Also because her skirt must not
+quite touch the ground, one very perfect black silk ankle was distinctly
+visible for a moment as she stepped into the carriage. Note that from
+the eve of her eighteenth birthday till she is old enough to be really
+wicked no well-regulated young woman shows her ankles. This also is one
+of the miracles of time.
+
+Marcello blushed faintly as he sat down beside Aurora. There were now
+five in the big carriage, so that she was between the two men; and
+though there was enough room Marcello felt the slight pressure of her
+arm against his. His mother saw his colour change, and looked away and
+smiled. The idea of marrying the two in a few years had often crossed
+her mind, and she was pleased whenever she saw that Marcello felt a
+little thrill of emotion in the girl's presence. As for Aurora, she
+looked straight before her, between the heads of the two elder women,
+and for a long time after they had started she seemed absorbed in
+watching the receding walls of the city and the long straight road that
+led back to it. The Contessa and her friend talked quietly, happy to be
+together for a whole day. Corbario now and then looked from one to the
+other, as if to assure himself that they were quite comfortable, and his
+still face wore an unchanging look of contented calm as his eyes turned
+again to the sunlit sweep of the low Campagna. Marcello looked steadily
+away from Aurora, happily and yet almost painfully aware that her arm
+could not help pressing against his. The horses' hoofs beat rhythmically
+on the hard high road, with the steady, cheerful energy which would tell
+a blind man that a team is well fed, fresh from rest, and altogether fit
+for a long day's work. The grey-haired coachman sat on his box like an
+old dragoon in the saddle; the young groom sat bolt upright beside him
+with folded arms, as if he could never tire of sitting straight. The
+whole party looked prosperous, harmonious, healthy, and perfectly happy,
+as if nothing in the least unpleasant could possibly happen to them,
+still less anything terrible, that could suddenly change all their
+lives.
+
+One of fate's favourite tricks is to make life look particularly gay and
+enjoyable, and full of sunshine and flowers, at the very moment when
+terror wakes from sleep and steps out of the shadow to stalk abroad.
+
+The cottage where the party were going to spend the next few days
+together was built like an Indian bungalow, consisting of a single story
+surrounded by a broad, covered verandah, and having a bit of lawn in
+front. It was sheltered by trees, and between it and the beach a bank
+of sand from ten to fifteen feet high ran along the shore, the work of
+the southwest gales during many ages. In many places this bank was
+covered with scrub and brushwood on the landward side.
+
+A little stream meandered down to the sea on the north side of the
+cottage, ending in a pool full of tall reeds, amongst which one could
+get about in a punt. The seashore itself is very shelving at that place,
+and there is a bar about a cable's length out, over which the sea breaks
+with a tremendous roar during westerly storms. Two hundred yards from
+the cottage, a large hut had been built for the men-servants and for the
+kitchen; near by it there was a rough coach-house and a stable with room
+for a dozen horses. The carriage usually went back to Rome on the day
+after every one had arrived, and was sent for when wanted; but there
+were a number of rough Campagna horses in the stable, such as are ridden
+by the cattle herders about Rome, tough little beasts of fairly good
+temper and up to a much heavier weight than might be guessed by a
+stranger in the country. In the morning the men of the party usually
+went shooting, if the wind was fair, for where quail are concerned much
+depends on that. Dinner was in the middle of the day, and every one was
+supposed to go to sleep after it. In the late afternoon the horses were
+saddled, and the whole party went for a gallop on the sands, or up to
+classic Ardea, or across the half-cultivated country, coming back to
+supper when it was dark. A particularly fat and quiet pony was kept for
+Marcello's mother, who was no great rider, but the Contessa and Aurora
+rode anything that was brought them, as the men did. To tell the truth,
+the Campagna horse is rarely vicious, and, even when only half broken,
+can be ridden by a lady if she be an average horsewoman.
+
+Everything happened as usual. The party reached the cottage in time for
+a late luncheon, rested afterwards, and then rode out. But the Signora
+Corbario would not go.
+
+"Your pony looks fatter and quieter than ever," said Maddalena dell'
+Armi with a smile. "If you do not ride him, he will turn into a
+fixture."
+
+"He is already a very solid piece of furniture," observed Folco, looking
+at the sleek animal.
+
+"He is very like the square piano I practise on," said Aurora. "He has
+such a flat back and such straight thick legs."
+
+"More like an organ," put in Marcello, gravely. "He has a curious,
+half-musical wheeze when he tries to move, like the organ in the church
+at San Domenico, when the bellows begin to work."
+
+"It is a shame to make fun of my horse," answered the Signora, smiling.
+"But really I am not afraid of him. I have a little headache from the
+drive, that is all."
+
+"Take some phenacetine," said Corbario with concern. "Let me make you
+quite comfortable before we start."
+
+He arranged a long straw chair for her in a sheltered corner of the
+verandah, with cushions and a rug and a small table beside it, on which
+Marcello placed a couple of new books that had been brought down. Then
+Folco went in and got a little glass bottle of tablets from his wife's
+travelling-bag and gave her one. She was subject to headaches and always
+had the medicine with her. It was the only remedy she ever carried or
+needed, and she had such confidence in it that she felt better almost as
+soon as she had swallowed the tablet her husband gave her.
+
+"Let me stay and read to you," he said. "Perhaps you would go to sleep."
+
+"You are not vain of your reading, my dear," she answered with a smile.
+"No, please go with the others."
+
+Then the Contessa offered to stay, and the good Signora had to use a
+good deal of persuasion to make them all understand that she would much
+rather be left alone. They mounted and rode away through the trees
+towards the beach, whence the sound of the small waves, breaking gently
+under the afternoon breeze, came echoing softly up to the cottage.
+
+The two young people rode in front, in silence; Corbario and the
+Contessa followed at a little distance.
+
+"How good you are to my wife!" Folco exclaimed presently, as they
+emerged upon the sand. "You are like a sister to her!"
+
+Maddalena glanced at him through her veil. She had small and classic
+features, rather hard and proud, and her eyes were of a dark violet
+colour, which is very unusual, especially in Italy. But she came from
+the north. Corbario could not see her expression, and she knew it.
+
+"You are good to her, too," she said presently, being anxious to be
+just. "You are very thoughtful and kind."
+
+Corbario thought it wiser to say nothing, and merely bent his head a
+little in acknowledgment of what he instinctively felt to be an
+admission on the part of a secret adversary. Maddalena had never said so
+much before.
+
+"If you were not, I should never forgive you," she added, thinking
+aloud.
+
+"I don't think you have quite forgiven me as it is," Folco answered more
+lightly.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For marrying your best friend."
+
+The little speech was well spoken, so utterly without complaint, or
+rancour, or suggestion of earnestness, that the Contessa could only
+smile.
+
+"And yet you admit that I am not a bad husband," continued Folco.
+"Should you accept me, or, say, my exact counterpart, for Aurora, in a
+year or two?"
+
+"I doubt whether you have any exact counterpart," Maddalena answered,
+checking the sharp denial that rose to her lips.
+
+"Myself, then, just for the sake of argument?"
+
+"What an absurd question! Do you mind tightening the girth for me a
+little? My saddle is slipping."
+
+She drew rein, and he was obliged to submit to the check. As he
+dismounted he glanced at Aurora's graceful figure, a hundred yards
+ahead, and for one instant he drew his eyelids together with a very
+strange expression. He knew that the Contessa could not see his face.
+
+Marcello and Aurora had been companions since they were children, and
+just now they were talking familiarly of the place, which they had not
+seen since the previous year. All sorts of details struck them. Here,
+there was more sand than usual; there, a large piece of timber had been
+washed ashore in the winter gales; at another place there was a new
+sand-drift that had quite buried the scrub on the top of the bank; the
+keeper of the San Lorenzo tower had painted his shutters brown, though
+they had always been green; here was the spot where Aurora had tumbled
+off her pony when she was only twelve years old--so long ago! And
+here--they looked at each other and then quickly at the sea, for it was
+here that Marcello, in a fit of boyish admiration, had once suddenly
+kissed her cheek, telling her that she was perfectly beautiful. Even
+now, he blushed when he thought of it, and yet he longed to do it again,
+and wondered inwardly what would happen if he did.
+
+As for Aurora, though she looked at the sea for a moment, she seemed
+quite self-possessed. It is a strange thing that if a boy and a girl are
+brought up in just the same way, by women, and without many companions,
+the boy should generally be by far the more shy of the two when
+childhood is just past.
+
+"You are very fond of your stepfather, are you not?" asked Aurora, so
+suddenly that Marcello started a little and hesitated slightly before he
+answered.
+
+"Yes," he said, almost directly, "of course I am! Don't you like him,
+too?"
+
+"I used to," answered Aurora in a low voice, "but now his eyes frighten
+me--sometimes. For instance, though he is a good way behind, I am sure
+he is looking at me now, just in that way."
+
+Marcello turned his head instinctively, and saw that Folco had just
+dismounted to tighten the girth of the Contessa's saddle. It was exactly
+while Aurora was speaking that he had drawn his eyelids together with
+such a strange expression--a mere coincidence, no doubt, but one that
+would have startled the girl if she could have suddenly seen his face.
+
+They rode on without waiting for the others, at an even canter over the
+sand.
+
+"I never saw anything in Folco's eyes that could frighten anybody,"
+Marcello said presently.
+
+"No," answered Aurora. "Very likely not."
+
+Marcello had always called Corbario by his first name, and as he grew up
+it seemed more and more natural to do so. Folco was so young, and he
+looked even younger than he was.
+
+"It must be your imagination," Marcello said.
+
+"Women," said Aurora, as if she were as near thirty as any young woman
+would acknowledge herself, "women have no imagination. That is why we
+have so much sense," she added thoughtfully.
+
+Marcello was so completely puzzled by this extraordinary statement that
+he could find nothing to say for a few moments. Then he felt that she
+had attacked his idol, and that Folco must be defended.
+
+"If you could find a single thing, however small, to bring against him,
+it would not be so silly to say that his eyes frighten you."
+
+"There!" laughed Aurora. "You might as well say that because at this
+moment there is only that one little cloud near the sun, there is no
+cloud at all!"
+
+"How ridiculous!" Marcello expressed his contempt of such girlish
+reasoning by putting his rough little horse to a gallop.
+
+"Men always say that," retorted Aurora, with exasperating calm. "I'll
+race you to the tower for the first choice of oranges at dessert. They
+are not very good this year, you know, and you like them."
+
+"Don't be silly!" Marcello immediately reined his horse back to a walk,
+and looked very dignified.
+
+"It is impossible to please you," observed Aurora, slackening her pace
+at once.
+
+"It is impossible, if you abuse Folco."
+
+"I am sure I did not mean to abuse him," Aurora answered meekly. "I
+never abuse anybody."
+
+"Women never do, I suppose," retorted Marcello, with a little snort of
+dissatisfaction.
+
+They were little more than children yet, and for pretty nearly five
+minutes neither spoke a word, as their horses walked side by side.
+
+"The keeper of the tower has more chickens this year," observed Aurora.
+"I can see them running about."
+
+This remark was evidently intended as an overture of reconciliation. It
+acted like magic upon Marcello, who hated quarrelling, and was moreover
+much more in love with the girl than he knew. Instinctively he put out
+his left hand to take her right. They always made peace by taking hands.
+
+But Aurora's did not move, and she did not even turn her head towards
+him.
+
+"Take care!" she said quickly, in a low tone. "They are watching us."
+
+Marcello looked round and saw that the others were nearer than he had
+supposed, and he blushed foolishly.
+
+"Well, what harm would there be if you gave me your hand?" he asked. "I
+only meant--"
+
+"Yes, I understand," Aurora answered, in the same tone as before. "And I
+am glad you like me, Marcello--if you really do."
+
+"If I do!" His tone was full of youthful and righteous indignation.
+
+"I did not mean to doubt it," she said quickly. "But it is getting to be
+different now, you know. We are older, and somehow everything means
+more, even the little things."
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated Marcello. "I begin to see. I suppose," he added, with
+what seemed to him reckless brutality, "that if I kissed you now you
+would be furious."
+
+He glanced uneasily at Aurora's face to note the effect of this
+terrible speech. The result was not exactly what he had expected. A
+faint colour rose in her cheeks, and then she laughed.
+
+"When you do," she said, "I would rather it should not be before
+people."
+
+"I shall try to remember that," answered Marcello, considerably
+emboldened.
+
+"Yes, do! It would be so humiliating if I boxed your ears in the
+presence of witnesses."
+
+"You would not dare," laughed Marcello.
+
+From a distance, as Aurora had guessed, Folco was watching them while he
+quietly talked to the Contessa; and as he watched, he understood what a
+change had taken place since last year, when he had seen Marcello and
+Aurora riding over the same stretch of sand on the same little horses.
+He ventured a reflection, to see what his companion would answer.
+
+"I daresay many people would say that those two young people were made
+for each other."
+
+Maddalena looked at him inquiringly and then glanced at her daughter.
+
+"And what do you say?" she asked, with some curiosity.
+
+"I say 'no.' And you?"
+
+"I agree with you. Aurora is like me--like what I was. Marcello would
+bore her to death in six months, and Aurora would drive him quite mad."
+
+Corbario smiled.
+
+"I had hoped," he said, "that women with marriageable daughters would
+think Marcello a model husband. But of course I am prejudiced. I have
+had a good deal to do with his bringing up during the last four years."
+
+"No one can say that you have not done your duty by him," Maddalena
+answered. "I wish I could feel that I had done as well by Aurora--indeed
+I do!"
+
+"You have, but you had quite a different nature to deal with."
+
+"I should think so! It is my own."
+
+Corbario heard the little sigh as she turned her head away, and being a
+wise man he said nothing in answer. He was not a Roman, if indeed he
+were really an Italian at all, but he had vaguely heard the Contessa's
+story. She had been married very young to a parliamentary high-light,
+who had made much noise in his day, had spent more than half of her
+fortune after getting rid of his own, and had been forgotten on the
+morrow of his premature death. It was said that she had loved another
+man with all her heart, but Corbario had never known who it was.
+
+The sun was almost setting when they turned homeward, and it was dark
+when they reached the cottage. They found an unexpected arrival
+installed beside the Signora in the doorway of the sitting-room.
+
+"Professor Kalmon is here," said the Signora's voice out of the gloom.
+"I have asked him to stay till to-morrow."
+
+The Professor rose up in the shadow and came forward, just as a servant
+brought a lamp. He was celebrated as a traveller, and occupied the chair
+of comparative physiology in the University of Milan. He belonged to
+the modern type of scientific man, which has replaced the one of fifty
+years ago, who lived in a dressing-gown and slippers, smoked a long
+pipe, and was always losing his belongings through absence of mind. The
+modern professor is very like other human beings in dress and
+appearance, and has even been known to pride himself on the fit of his
+coat, just like the common people.
+
+There were mutual greetings, for the Professor knew all the party, and
+everybody liked him. He was a big man, with a well-kept brown beard, a
+very clear complexion, and bright brown eyes that looked as if they
+would never need spectacles.
+
+"And where have you been since we last saw you?" asked Corbario.
+
+"Are your pockets full of snakes this time?" asked Aurora.
+
+The Professor looked at her and smiled, realising that she was no longer
+the child she had been when he had seen her last, and that she was very
+good to look at. His brown eyes beamed upon her benevolently.
+
+"Ah, my dear young lady, I see it is all over," he said. "You will never
+pull my beard again and turn my pockets inside out for specimens when I
+come back from my walks on the beach."
+
+"Do you think I am afraid of you or your specimens?" laughed Aurora.
+
+"I have got a terrible thing in my waistcoat pocket," the Professor
+answered. "Something you might very well be afraid of."
+
+"What is it? It must be very small to be in your waistcoat pocket."
+
+"It is a new form of death."
+
+He beamed on everybody with increasing benevolence; but somehow nobody
+smiled, and the Signora Corbario shivered and drew her light cloak more
+closely round her, as the first gust of the night breeze came up from
+the rustling reeds that grew in the pool below.
+
+"It is time to get ready for supper," said Folco. "I hope you are not
+hungry, Kalmon, for you will not get anything very elaborate to eat!"
+
+"Bread and cheese will do, my dear fellow."
+
+When Italians go to the country they take nothing of the city with them.
+They like the contrast to be complete; they love the total absence of
+restraint; they think it delightful to dine in their shooting-coats and
+to eat coarse fare. If they had to dress for dinner it would not be the
+country at all, nor if dinner had to begin with soup and end with sweets
+just as it does in town. They eat extraordinary messes that would make a
+Frenchman turn pale and a German look grave. They make portentous
+pasties, rich with everything under the sun; they eat fat boiled beef,
+and raw fennel, and green almonds, and vast quantities of cream cheese,
+and they drink sour wine like water; and it all agrees with them
+perfectly, so that they come back to the city refreshed and rested after
+a gastronomic treatment which would bring any other European to death's
+door.
+
+The table was set out on the verandah that evening, as usual in spring,
+and little by little the Professor absorbed the conversation, for they
+all asked him questions, few of which could be answered shortly. He was
+one of those profoundly cultivated Italians who are often to be met
+nowadays, but whose gifts it is not easy to appreciate except in a
+certain degree of intimacy. They are singularly modest men as a rule,
+and are by no means those about whom there is the most talk in the
+world.
+
+The party sat in their places when supper was over, with cloaks and
+coats thrown over them against the night air, while Kalmon talked of all
+sorts of things that seemed to have the least possible connection with
+each other, but which somehow came up quite naturally. He went from the
+last book on Dante to a new discovery in chemistry, thence to Japanese
+monks and their beliefs, and came back smiling to the latest development
+of politics, which led him quite naturally to the newest play, labour
+and capital, the German Emperor, and the immortality of the soul.
+
+"I believe you know everything!" exclaimed Marcello, with an admiring
+look. "Or else I know nothing, which is really more probable!" The boy
+laughed.
+
+"You have not told us about the new form of death yet," said Aurora,
+leaning on her elbows and burying her young hands in her auburn hair as
+she looked across the table at Kalmon.
+
+"You will never sleep again if I tell you about it," answered the
+Professor, opening his brown eyes very wide and trying to look terrible,
+which was quite impossible, because he had such a kindly face. "You do
+not look frightened at all," he added, pretending to be disappointed.
+
+"Let me see the thing," Aurora said. "Perhaps we shall all be
+frightened."
+
+"It looks very innocent," Kalmon answered. "Here it is."
+
+He took a small leather case from his pocket, opened it, and drew out a
+short blue glass tube, with a screw top. It contained half a dozen white
+tablets, apparently just like those in common use for five-grain doses
+of quinine.
+
+A little murmur of disappointment went around the table. The new form of
+death looked very commonplace. Corbario was the only one who showed any
+interest.
+
+"May I see?" he asked, holding out his hand to take the tube.
+
+Kalmon would not give it to him, but held the tube before his eyes under
+the bright light of the lamp.
+
+"Excuse me," he said, "but I make it a rule never to let it go out of my
+hands. You understand, don't you? If it were passed round, some one
+might lay it down, it might be forgotten, somebody might take it for
+something else."
+
+"Of course," said Folco, looking intently at the tube, as though he
+could understand something about the contents by mere inspection. "You
+are quite right. You should take no risks with such things--especially
+as they look so innocent!"
+
+He leaned back in his chair again, as if satisfied, and his eyes met the
+Contessa's at the same moment. There was no reason why she should not
+have looked at him just then, but he rested one elbow on the table and
+shaded his eyes from the light.
+
+"It is strange to reflect," said Kalmon, looking at the tube
+thoughtfully, "that one of those little things would be enough to put a
+Hercules out of misery, without leaving the slightest trace which
+science could discover."
+
+Corbario was still shading his eyes from the light.
+
+"How would one die if one took it?" asked Aurora. "Very suddenly?"
+
+"I call it the sleeping death," answered the Professor. "The poisoned
+person sinks into a sweet sleep in a few minutes, smiling as if enjoying
+the most delightful dreams."
+
+"And one never wakes up?" inquired Marcello.
+
+"Never. It is impossible, I believe. I have made experiments on animals,
+and have not succeeded in waking them by any known means."
+
+"I suppose it congests the brain, like opium," observed Corbario,
+quietly.
+
+"Not at all, not at all!" answered Kalmon, looking benevolently at the
+little tube which contained his discovery. "I tell you it leaves no
+trace whatever, not even as much as is left by death from an electric
+current. And it has no taste, no smell,--it seems the most innocent
+stuff in the world."
+
+Corbario's hand again lay on the table and he was gazing out into the
+night, as if he were curious about the weather. The moon was just
+rising, being past the full.
+
+"Is that all you have of the poison?" he asked in an idle tone.
+
+"Oh, no! This is only a small supply which I carry with me for
+experiments. I have made enough to send all our thirty-three millions of
+Italians to sleep for ever!"
+
+Kalmon laughed pleasantly.
+
+"If this could be properly used, civilisation would make a gigantic
+stride," he added. "In war, for instance, how infinitely pleasanter and
+more �sthetic it would be to send the enemy to sleep, with the most
+delightful dreams, never to wake again, than to tear people to pieces
+with artillery and rifle bullets, and to blow up ships with hundreds of
+poor devils on board, who are torn limb from limb by the explosion."
+
+"The difficulty," observed the Contessa, "would be to induce the enemy
+to take your poison quietly. What if the enemy objected?"
+
+"I should put it into their water supply," said Kalmon.
+
+"Poison the water!" cried the Signora Corbario. "How barbarous!"
+
+"Much less barbarous than shedding oceans of blood. Only think--they
+would all go to sleep. That would be all."
+
+[Illustration: "'I CALL IT THE SLEEPING DEATH,' ANSWERED THE PROFESSOR"]
+
+"I thought," said Corbario, almost carelessly, "that there was no longer
+any such thing as a poison that left no traces or signs. Can you not
+generally detect vegetable poisons by the mode of death?"
+
+"Yes," answered the Professor, returning the glass tube to its case and
+the latter to his pocket. "But please to remember that although we can
+prove to our own satisfaction that some things really exist, we cannot
+prove that any imaginable thing outside our experience cannot possibly
+exist. Imagine the wildest impossibility you can think of; you will not
+induce a modern man of science to admit the impossibility of it as
+absolute. Impossibility is now a merely relative term, my dear Corbario,
+and only means great improbability. Now, to illustrate what I mean, it
+is altogether improbable that a devil with horns and hoofs and a fiery
+tail should suddenly appear, pick me up out of this delightful circle,
+and fly away with me. But you cannot induce me to deny the possibility
+of such a thing."
+
+"I am so glad to hear you say that," said the Signora, who was a
+religious woman.
+
+Kalmon looked at her a moment and then broke into a peal of laughter
+that was taken up by the rest, and in which the good lady joined.
+
+"You brought it on yourself," she said at last.
+
+"Yes," Kalmon answered. "I did. From your point of view it is better to
+admit the possibility of a medi�val devil with horns than to have no
+religion at all. Half a loaf is better than no bread."
+
+"Is that stuff of yours animal, vegetable, or mineral?" asked Corbario
+as the laughter subsided.
+
+"I don't know," replied the Professor. "Animal, vegetable, mineral?
+Those are antiquated distinctions, like the four elements of the
+alchemists."
+
+"Well--but what is the thing, then?" asked Corbario, almost impatiently.
+"What should you call it in scientific language?"
+
+Kalmon closed his eyes for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts.
+
+"In scientific language," he began, "it is probably H three C seven,
+parenthesis, H two C plus C four O five, close parenthesis, HC three O."
+
+Corbario laughed carelessly.
+
+"I am no wiser than before," he said.
+
+"Nor I," answered the Professor. "Not a bit."
+
+"It is much simpler to call it 'the sleeping death,' is it not?"
+suggested the Contessa.
+
+"Much simpler, for that is precisely what it is."
+
+It was growing late, according to country ideas, and the party rose from
+the table and began to move about a little before going to bed. The moon
+had risen high by this time.
+
+Marcello and Aurora, unheeded by the rest, went round the verandah to
+the other side of the house and stood still a moment, looking out at the
+trees and listening to the sounds of the night. Down by the pool a frog
+croaked now and then; from a distance came the plaintive, often
+repeated cry of a solitary owlet; the night breeze sighed through the
+long grass and the low shrubbery.
+
+The boy and girl turned to each other, put out their hands and then
+their arms, and clasped each other silently, and kissed. Then they
+walked demurely back to their elders, without exchanging a word.
+
+"We have had to give you the little room at the end of the cottage,"
+Corbario was saying to Kalmon. "It is the only one left while the
+Contessa is here."
+
+"I should sleep soundly on bare boards to-night," Kalmon answered. "I
+have been walking all day."
+
+Corbario went with him, carrying a candle, and shielding the flame from
+the breeze with his hand. The room was furnished with the barest
+necessities, like most country rooms in Italy. There were wooden pegs on
+which to hang clothes instead of a wardrobe, an iron bedstead, a deal
+wash-stand, a small deal table, a rush-bottomed chair. The room had only
+one window, which was also the only door, opening to the floor upon the
+verandah.
+
+"You can bolt the window, if you like," said Corbario when he had bidden
+the Professor good-night, "but there are no thieves about."
+
+"I always sleep with my windows open," Kalmon answered, "and I have no
+valuables."
+
+"No? Good-night again."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+Corbario went out, leaving him the candle, and turned the corner of the
+verandah. Then he stood still a long time, leaning against one of the
+wooden pillars and looking out. Perhaps the moonlight falling through
+the stiff little trees upon the long grass and shrubbery reminded him of
+some scene familiar long ago. He smiled quietly to himself as he stood
+there.
+
+Three hours later he was there again, in almost exactly the same
+attitude. He must have been cold, for the night breeze was stronger, and
+he wore only his light sleeping clothes and his feet were bare. He
+shivered a little from time to time, and his face looked very white, for
+the moon was now high in the heavens and the light fell full upon him.
+His right hand was tightly closed, as if it held some small object fast,
+and he was listening intently, first to the right, whence he had come,
+then to the left, and then he turned his ear towards the trees, through
+which the path led away towards the hut where the men slept. But there
+was no sound except the sighing of the wind. The frog by the pool had
+stopped croaking, and the melancholy cry of the owlet had ceased.
+
+Corbario went softly on, trying the floor of the verandah with his bare
+feet at each step, lest the boards should creak a little under his
+weight. He reached the window door of his own room, and slipped into the
+darkness without noise.
+
+Kalmon cared little for quail-shooting, and as the carriage was going
+back to Rome he took advantage of it to reach the city, and took his
+departure about nine o'clock in the morning.
+
+"By the way, how did you sleep?" asked Corbario as he shook hands at
+parting. "I forgot to ask you."
+
+"Soundly, thank you," answered the Professor.
+
+And he drove away, waving his felt hat to his hosts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Marcello coughed a little as he and Corbario trudged home through the
+sand under the hot May sun. It was sultry, though there were few clouds,
+and everything that grew looked suddenly languid; each flower and shrub
+gave out its own peculiar scent abundantly, the smell of last year's
+rotting leaves and twigs all at once returned and mingled with the
+odours of green things and of the earth itself, and the heavy air was
+over-rich with it all, and hard to breathe. By and by the clouds would
+pile themselves up into vast grey and black fortresses, far away beyond
+Rome, between the Alban and the Samnite hills, and the lightning would
+dart at them and tear them to pieces in spite, while the thunder roared
+out at each home-thrust that it was well done; and then the spring rain
+would sweep the Campagna, by its length and breadth, from the mountains
+to the sea, and the world would be refreshed. But now it was near noon
+and a heavy weariness lay upon the earth.
+
+"You are tired," said Corbario, as they reached the shade of some trees,
+less than half a mile from the cottage. "Let us sit down for a while."
+
+They sat down, where they could see the sea. It was dull and glassy
+under the high sun; here and there, far out, the sluggish currents made
+dark, irregular streaks.
+
+Corbario produced cigarettes and offered one to Marcello, but the boy
+would not smoke; he said that it made him cough.
+
+"I should smoke all the time, if I were quite well," he said, with a
+smile.
+
+"And do many other things that young men do, I daresay," laughed
+Corbario. "Ride steeplechases, play cards all night, and drink champagne
+at breakfast."
+
+"Perhaps." Marcello was amused at the picture. "I wonder whether I ever
+shall," he added.
+
+Corbario glanced at him curiously. There was the faintest accent of
+longing in the tone, which was quite new.
+
+"Why not?" Folco asked, still smiling. "It is merely a question of
+health, my dear boy. There is no harm in steeplechases if you do not
+break your neck, nor in playing cards if you do not play high, nor in
+drinking a glass of champagne now and then--no harm at all, that I can
+see. But, of course, so long as your lungs are delicate, you must be
+careful."
+
+"Confound my lungs!" exclaimed Marcello with unusual energy. "I believe
+that I am much stronger than any of you think."
+
+"I am sometimes inclined to believe it too," Corbario answered
+encouragingly.
+
+"And I am quite sure that it would do me good to forget all about them
+and live as if there were nothing the matter with me. Don't you think so
+yourself?"
+
+Corbario made a gesture of doubt, as if it were possible after all.
+
+"Of course I don't mean dissipation," Marcello went on to say, suddenly
+assuming the manner of an elderly censor of morals, simply because he
+did not know what he was talking about. "I don't mean reckless
+dissipation."
+
+"Of course not," Folco answered gravely. "You see, there are two sorts
+of dissipation. You must not forget that. The one kind means dissipating
+your fortune and your health; the other merely means dissipating
+melancholy, getting rid of care now and then, and of everything that
+bores one. That is the harmless sort."
+
+"What they call 'harmless excitement'--yes, that is what I should like
+sometimes. There are days when I feel that I must have it. It is as if
+the blood went to my head, and my nerves are all on edge, and I wish
+something would happen, I don't know what, but something, something!"
+
+"I know exactly what you mean, my dear boy," said Corbario in a tone of
+sympathy. "You see I am not very old myself, after all--barely
+thirty--not quite, in fact. I could call myself twenty-nine if it were
+not so much more respectable to be older."
+
+"Yes. But do you mean to say that you feel just what I do now and then?"
+Marcello asked the question in considerable surprise. "Do you really
+know that sensation? That burning restlessness--that something like what
+the earth must feel before a thunderstorm--like the air at this moment?"
+
+Not a muscle of Folco's still face moved.
+
+"Yes," he answered quietly. "I know it very well. It is nothing but the
+sudden wish for a little harmless excitement, nothing else in the world,
+my dear boy, and it is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It does not
+follow that it is at all convenient to yield to it, but we feel it
+because we lead such a very quiet life."
+
+"But surely, we are perfectly happy," observed Marcello.
+
+"Perfectly, absolutely happy. I do not believe that there are any
+happier people in the world than we three, your mother, you, and I. We
+have not a wish unfulfilled."
+
+"No, except that one, when it comes."
+
+"And that does not count in my case," answered Folco. "You see I have
+had a good deal of--'harmless excitement' in my life, and I know just
+what it is like, and that it is quite possible to be perfectly happy
+without it. In fact, I am. But you have never had any at all, and it is
+as absurd to suppose that young birds will not try to fly as that young
+men will not want amusement, now and then."
+
+"I suppose that women cannot always understand that," said Marcello,
+after a moment.
+
+"Women," replied Folco, unmoved, "do not always distinguish quite
+closely between excitement that is harmless for a man and excitement
+which is not. To tell the truth," he added, with a laugh, "they hardly
+ever distinguish at all, and it is quite useless to talk to them about
+it."
+
+"But surely, there are exceptions?"
+
+"Not many. That is the reason why there is a sort of freemasonry among
+men of the world, a kind of tacit agreement that women need not be told
+what goes on at the clubs, and at men's dinners, and late at night when
+old friends have spent an evening together. Not that there is any harm
+in it all; but women would not understand. They have their innocent
+little mysteries which they keep from us, and we have harmless little
+secrets which we do not let them know."
+
+Folco laughed softly at his own way of putting it, and perhaps because
+Marcello so easily accepted his point of view.
+
+"I see," said the boy. "I wonder whether my mother would not understand
+that. It seems so simple!"
+
+"She will, when the time comes, no doubt," answered Corbario. "Your
+mother is a great exception, my dear boy. On the other hand, she is so
+anxious about your health just now, that, if I were you, I would not say
+anything about feeling the want of a little excitement. Of course your
+life is monotonous. I know it. But there is nothing more monotonous than
+getting well, is there? The best part of it is the looking forward to
+what one will do when one is quite strong. You and I can talk of that,
+sometimes, and build castles in the air; but it is of no use to give
+your mother the idea that you are beating your wings against the bars of
+your cage, is it?"
+
+Folco was quite lyric that day, but the words made exactly the
+impression he wished.
+
+"You are right," Marcello said. "You always are. There is nobody like
+you, Folco. You are an elder brother to me, and yet you don't preach. I
+often tell my mother so."
+
+This was true, and what Marcello told her added to her happiness, if
+anything could do that, and she encouraged the two to go off together as
+much as possible. She even suggested that they should go down to San
+Domenico for a fortnight, to look after the great Calabrian estate.
+
+They rose and began to walk toward the cottage. The shooting had been
+good that morning, as quail-shooting goes, and the man who acted as
+keeper, loader, gardener, and general factotum, and who went out with
+any one who wanted to shoot, had gone on to the cottage with the bag,
+the two guns, and the animal which he called his dog. The man's name was
+Ercole, that is to say, Hercules; and though he was not a giant, he
+certainly bore a closer resemblance to the hero than his dog did to dogs
+in general.
+
+"He was born in my house," Ercole said, when any one asked questions.
+"Find a better one if you can. His name? I call him Nino, short for
+John, because he barks so well at night. You don't understand? It is the
+'voice of one crying in the wilderness.' Did you never go to Sunday
+school? Or do you call this place a garden, a park, a public promenade?
+I call it a desert. There are not even cats."
+
+When an Italian countryman says of a place that even cats will not stay
+in it, he considers that he has evoked a picture of ultimate desolation
+that cannot be surpassed. It had always been Ercole's dream to live in
+the city, though he did not look like a man naturally intended for town
+life. He was short and skinny, though he was as wiry as a monkey; his
+face was slightly pitted with the smallpox, and the malaria of many
+summers had left him with a complexion of the colour of cheap leather;
+he had eyes like a hawk, matted black hair, and jagged white teeth. He
+and his fustian clothes smelt of earth, burnt gunpowder, goat's cheese,
+garlic, and bad tobacco. He was no great talker, but his language was
+picturesque and to the point; and he feared neither man nor beast,
+neither tramp nor horned cattle, nor yet wild boar. He was no respecter
+of persons at all. The land where the cottage was had belonged to a
+great Roman family, now ruined, and when, the land had been sold, he had
+apparently been part of the bargain, and had come into the possession of
+the Signora Corbario with it. In his lonely conversations with Nino, he
+had expressed his opinion of each member of the family with frankness.
+
+"You are a good dog, Nino," he would say. "You are the consolation of my
+soul. But you do not understand these things. Corbario is an assassin.
+Money, money, money! That is all he thinks of from morning till night. I
+know it, because he never speaks of it, and yet he never gives away
+anything. It is all for himself, the Signora's millions, the boy's
+millions, everything. When I look at his face, a chill seizes me, and I
+tremble as when I have the fever. You never had the malaria fever,
+Nino. Dogs don't have it, do they?"
+
+At the question Nino turned his monstrous head to one side and looked
+along his muzzle at his master. If he had possessed a tail he would have
+wagged it, or thumped the hard ground with it a few times; but he had
+none. He had probably lost it in some wild battle of his stormy youth,
+fought almost to death against the huge Campagna sheep-dogs; or perhaps
+a wolf had got it, or perhaps he had never had a tail at all. Ercole had
+probably forgotten, and it did not really matter much.
+
+"Corbario is an assassin," he said. "Remember that, Nino. As for his
+poor lady, she is a little lacking, or she would never have married him.
+But she is a saint, and what do saints want with cleverness? They go to
+paradise. Does that need much sense? We should all go if we could. Why
+do you cock your head on one side and look at me like a Christian? Are
+you trying to make me think you have a soul? You are made of nothing but
+corn meal and water, and a little wool, poor beast! But you have more
+sense than the Signora, and you are not an assassin, like her husband."
+
+At this, Nino threw himself upon his back with his four legs in the air
+and squirmed with sheer delight, showing his jagged teeth and the roof
+of a very terrible mouth, and emitting a series of wolfish snorts; after
+which he suddenly rolled over upon his feet again, shook himself till
+his shaggy coat bristled all over his body, walked sedately to the open
+door of the hut, and sat down to look at the weather.
+
+"He is almost a Christian," Ercole remarked under his breath, as if he
+were afraid the dog might hear the compliment and grow too vain.
+
+For Ercole was a reticent man, and though he told Nino what he thought
+about people, he never told any one else. Marcello was the only person
+to whom he ever showed any inclination to attach himself. He regarded
+even the Contessa with suspicion, perhaps merely because she was a
+woman; and as for Aurora, girls did not count at all in his cosmogony.
+
+"God made all the other animals before making women," he observed
+contemptuously one day, when he had gone out alone with Marcello.
+
+"I like them," laughed the boy.
+
+"So did Adam," retorted Ercole, "and you see what came of it."
+
+No answer to this argument occurred to Marcello just then, so he said
+nothing; and he thought of Aurora, and his mother, and the sad-eyed
+Contessa, and wondered vaguely whether they were very unlike other
+women, as Ercole implied.
+
+"When you know women," the man vouchsafed to add presently, "you will
+wish you were dead. The Lord sent them into the world for an affliction
+and for the punishment of our sins."
+
+"You were never married, were you?" asked Marcello, still smiling.
+
+Ercole stopped short in the sand, amongst the sea-thistles that grew
+there, and Nino trotted up and looked at him, to be ready if anything
+happened. Marcello knew the man's queer ways, and waited for him to
+speak.
+
+"Married?" he snorted. "Married? You have said it!"
+
+This seemed enigmatical, but Marcello understood the words to convey an
+affirmation.
+
+"Well?" he asked, expecting more.
+
+"Well? Well, what?" growled Ercole. "This is a bad world. A man falls in
+love with a pretty little caterpillar; he wakes up and finds himself
+married to a butterfly. Oh, this is a very bad world!"
+
+Marcello was struck by the simile, but he reflected that Aurora looked
+much more like a butterfly than a caterpillar, a fact which, if it meant
+anything, should signify that he knew the worst beforehand. Ercole
+declined to enter into any account of his conjugal experiences, and
+merely shrugged his shoulders and went on through the sand.
+
+With such fitting and warning as this to keep him out of trouble,
+Marcello was to face life: with his saintly mother's timid allusions to
+its wickedness, with Corbario's tempting suggestions of harmless
+dissipation, with an unlettered peasant's sour reflections on the world
+in general and women in particular.
+
+In the other scale of the balance fate set his delicate and high-strung
+nature, his burning desire for the great unknown something, the stinging
+impatience of bodily weakness, and the large element of recklessness he
+inherited from his father, besides a fine admixture of latent boyish
+vanity for women to play upon, and all the ordinary weaknesses of human
+nature in about the same proportion as every one has them.
+
+Given a large fortune and ordinary liberty, it might be foreseen that
+the boy would not reach the haven of maturity without meeting a storm,
+even if the outward circumstances of chance were all in his favour, even
+if no one had an interest in ruining him, even if Folco Corbario did not
+want all for himself, as poor Ercole told his dog that he did in the
+solitude of his hut.
+
+Marcello had a bad chance at the start, and Maddalena dell' Armi, who
+knew the world well in all its moods, and had suffered by it and sinned
+for it, and had shed many tears in secret before becoming what she was
+now, foresaw danger, and hoped that her daughter's fate might not be
+bound up with that of her friend's son, much as she herself liked the
+gentle-hearted boy. She wondered how long any one would call him gentle
+after he got his first taste of pleasure and pain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+It was very early morning, and there was no shooting, for a
+southwesterly gale had been blowing all night, and the birds passed far
+inland. All along the beach, for twenty-five miles in an unbroken line,
+the surf thundered in, with a double roar, breaking on the bar, then
+gathering strength again, rising grey and curling green and crashing
+down upon the sand. Then the water opened out in vast sheets of crawling
+foam that ran up to the very foot of the bank where the scrub began to
+grow, and ran regretfully back again, tracing myriads of tiny channels
+where the sand was loose; but just as it had almost subsided, another
+wave curled and uncurled itself, and trembled a moment, and flung its
+whole volume forwards through a cloud of unresisting spray.
+
+It had rained a little, too, and it would rain again. The sky was of an
+even leaden grey, and as the sun rose unseen, a wicked glare came into
+it, as if the lead were melting; and the wind howled unceasingly, the
+soft, wet, southwest wind of the great spring storms.
+
+Less than a mile from the shore a small brigantine, stripped to a lower
+topsail, storm-jib, and balance-reefed mainsail, was trying to claw off
+shore. She had small chance, unless the gale shifted or moderated, for
+she evidently could not carry enough sail to make any way against the
+huge sea, and to heave to would be sure destruction within two hours.
+
+The scrub and brushwood were dripping with raindrops, and the salt spray
+was blown up the bank with the loose sand. Everything was wet, grey, and
+dreary, as only the Roman shore can be at such times, with that
+unnatural dreariness of the south which comes down on nature suddenly
+like a bad dream, and is a thousand times more oppressive than the stern
+desolation of any northern sea-coast.
+
+Marcello and Aurora watched the storm from a break in the bank which
+made a little lee. The girl was wrapped in a grey military cloak, of
+which she had drawn the hood over her loose hair. Her delicate nostrils
+dilated with pleasure to breathe the salt wind, and her eyelids drooped
+as she watched the poor little vessel in the distance.
+
+"You like it, don't you?" asked Marcello, as he looked at her.
+
+"I love it!" she answered enthusiastically. "And I may never see it all
+again," she added after a little pause.
+
+"Never?" Marcello started a little. "Are you going away?"
+
+"We are going to Rome to-day. But that is not what I mean. We have
+always come down every year for ever so long. How long is it, Marcello?
+We were quite small the, first time."
+
+"It must be five years. Four or five--ever since my mother bought the
+land here."
+
+"We were mere children," said Aurora, with the dignity of a grown
+person. "That is all over."
+
+"I wish it were not!" Marcello sighed.
+
+"How silly you are!" observed Aurora, throwing back her beautiful head.
+"But then, I am sure I am much more grown up than you are, though you
+are nineteen, and I am not quite eighteen."
+
+"You are seventeen," said Marcello firmly.
+
+"I shall be eighteen on my next birthday!" retorted Aurora with warmth.
+"Then we shall see who is the more grown up. I shall be in society, and
+you--why, you will not even be out of the University."
+
+She said this with the contempt which Marcello's extreme youth deserved.
+
+"I am not going to the University."
+
+"Then you will be a boy all your life. I always tell you so. Unless you
+do what other people do, you will never grow up at all. You ought to be
+among men by this time, instead of everlastingly at home, clinging to
+your mother's skirts!"
+
+A bright flush rose in Marcello's cheeks. He felt that he wanted to box
+her ears, and for an instant he wished himself small again that he might
+do it, though he remembered what a terrible fighter Aurora had been
+when she was a little girl, and had preserved a vivid recollection of
+her well-aimed slaps.
+
+"Don't talk about my mother in that way," he said angrily.
+
+"I'm not talking of her at all. She is a saint, and I love her very
+much. But that is no reason why you should always be with her, as if
+you were a girl! I don't suppose you mean to begin life as a saint
+yourself, do you? You are rather young for that, you know."
+
+"No," Marcello answered, feeling that he was not saying just the right
+thing, but not knowing what to say. "And I am sure my mother does not
+expect it of me, either," he added. "But that is no reason why you
+should be so disagreeable."
+
+He felt that he had been weak, and that he ought to say something sharp.
+He knew very well that his mother believed it quite possible for a boy
+to develop into saintship without passing through the intermediate state
+of sinning manhood; and though his nature told him that he was not of
+the temper that attains sanctity all at once, he felt that he owed to
+his mother's hopes for him a sort of loyalty in which Aurora had made
+him fail. The reasonings of innocent sentiment are more tortuous than
+the wiles of the devil himself, and have amazing power to torment the
+unfledged conscience of a boy brought up like Marcello.
+
+Aurora's way of thinking was much more direct.
+
+"If you think I am disagreeable, you can go away," she said, with a
+scornful laugh.
+
+"Thank you. You are very kind." He tried to speak sarcastically, but it
+was a decided failure.
+
+To his surprise, Aurora turned and looked at him very quietly.
+
+"I wonder whether I shall like you, when you are a man," she said in a
+tone of profound reflection. "I am rather ashamed of liking you now,
+because you are such a baby."
+
+He flushed again, very angry this time, and he moved away to leave her,
+without another word.
+
+She turned her face to the storm and took no notice of him. She thought
+that he would come back, but there was just the least doubt about it,
+which introduced an element of chance and was perfectly delightful while
+it lasted. Was there ever a woman, since the world began, who did not
+know that sensation, either by experience or by wishing she might try
+it? What pleasure would there be in angling if the fish did not try to
+get off the hook, but stupidly swallowed it, fly and all? It might as
+well crawl out of the stream at once and lay itself meekly down in the
+basket.
+
+And Marcello came back, before he had taken four steps.
+
+"Is that what you meant when you said that you might never come here
+again?" he asked, and there was something rough in his tone that pleased
+her.
+
+"No," she answered, as if nothing had happened. "Mamma talked to me a
+long time last night."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Do you want to know?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There is no reason why I should not tell you. She says that we must not
+come here after I go into society, because people will think that she is
+trying to marry me to you."
+
+She looked at him boldly for a moment, and then turned her eyes to the
+sea.
+
+"Why should she care what people think?" he asked.
+
+"Because it would prevent me from marrying any one else," answered
+Aurora, with the awful cynicism of youth. "If every one thought I was
+engaged to you, or going to be, no other man could ask for me. It's
+simple enough, I'm sure!"
+
+"And you wish other men to ask you to marry them, I suppose?"
+
+Marcello was a little pale, but he tried to throw all the contempt he
+could command into his tone. Aurora smiled sweetly.
+
+"Naturally," she said. "I'm only a woman."
+
+"Which means that I'm a fool to care for you!"
+
+"You are, if you think I'm not worth caring for." The girl laughed.
+
+This was so very hard to understand that Marcello knit his smooth young
+brow and looked very angry, but could find nothing to say on the spur of
+the moment. All women are born with the power to put a man into such a
+position that he must either contradict himself, hold his tongue, or fly
+into a senseless rage. They do this so easily, that even after the
+experience of a life-time we never suspect the trap until they pull the
+string and we are caught. Then, if we contradict ourselves, woman utters
+an inhuman cry of triumph and jeers at our unstable purpose; if we lose
+our tempers instead, she bursts into tears and calls us brutes; and
+finally, if we say nothing, she declares, with a show of reason, that we
+have nothing to say.
+
+[Illustration: "HE FLUSHED AGAIN, VERY ANGRY THIS TIME, AND HE MOVED
+AWAY TO LEAVE HER, WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD."]
+
+
+Marcello lost his temper.
+
+"You are quite right," he said angrily. "You are not worth caring for.
+You are a mere child, and you are a miserable little flirt already, and
+you will be a detestable woman when you grow up! You will lead men on,
+and play with them, and then laugh at them. But you shall not laugh at
+me again. You shall not have that satisfaction! You shall wish me back,
+but I will not come, not if you break your silly little heart!"
+
+With this terrific threat the boy strode away, leaving her to watch the
+storm alone in the lee of the sandbank. Aurora knew that he really meant
+to go this time, and at first she was rather glad of it, since he was in
+such a very bad temper. She felt that he had insulted her, and if he had
+stayed any longer she would doubtless have called him a brute, that
+being the woman's retort under the circumstances. She had not the
+slightest doubt of being quite reconciled with him before luncheon, of
+course, but in her heart she wished that she had not made him angry. It
+had been very pleasant to watch the storm together, and when they had
+come to the place, she had felt a strong presentiment that he would kiss
+her, and that the contrast between the kiss and the howling gale would
+be very delightful.
+
+The presentiment had certainly not come true, and now that Marcello was
+gone it was not very amusing to feel the spray and the sand on her
+face, or to watch the tumbling breakers and listen to the wind. Besides,
+she had been there some time, and she had not even had her little
+breakfast of coffee and rolls before coming down to the shore. She
+suddenly felt hungry and cold and absurdly inclined to cry, and she
+became aware that the sand had got into her russet shoes, and that it
+would be very uncomfortable to sit down in such a place to take them off
+and shake it out; and that, altogether, misfortunes never come singly.
+
+After standing still three or four minutes longer, she turned away with
+a discontented look in her face, all rosy with the wind and spray. She
+started as she saw Corbario standing before her, for she had not heard
+his footsteps in the gale. He wore his shooting-coat and heavy leathern
+gaiters, but he had no gun. She thought he looked pale, and that there
+was a shade of anxiety in his usually expressionless face.
+
+"We wondered where you were," he said. "There is coffee in the verandah,
+and your mother is out already."
+
+"I came down to look at the storm," Aurora answered. "I forgot all about
+breakfast."
+
+They made a few steps in the direction of the cottage. Aurora felt that
+Corbario was looking sideways at her as they walked.
+
+"Have you seen Marcello?" he asked presently.
+
+"Did you not meet him?" Aurora was surprised. "It is not five minutes
+since he left me."
+
+"No. I did not meet him."
+
+"That is strange."
+
+They went on in silence for a few moments.
+
+"I cannot understand why you did not meet Marcello," Aurora said
+suddenly, as if she had thought it over. "Did you come this way?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Perhaps he got back before you started. He walks very fast."
+
+"Perhaps," Corbario said, "but I did not see him. I came to look for you
+both."
+
+"Expecting to find us together, of course!" Aurora threw up her head a
+little disdainfully, for Marcello had offended her.
+
+"He is generally somewhere near you, poor boy," answered Corbario in a
+tone of pity.
+
+"Why do you say 'poor boy' in that tone? Do you think he is so much to
+be pitied?"
+
+"A little, certainly." Corbario smiled.
+
+"I don't see why."
+
+"Women never do, when a man is in love!"
+
+"Women"--the flattery was subtle and Aurora's face cleared. Corbario was
+a man of the world, without doubt, and he had called her a woman, in a
+most natural way, as if she had been at least twenty years old. It did
+not occur to her to ask herself whether Folco had any object in wishing
+to please her just then, but she knew well enough that he did wish to do
+so. Even a girl's instinct is unerring in that; and Corbario further
+pleased her by not pursuing the subject, for what he had said seemed all
+the more spontaneous because it led to nothing.
+
+"If Marcello is not in the cottage," he observed, as they came near,
+"he must have gone off for a walk after he left you. Did you not see
+which way he turned?"
+
+"How could I from the place where I stood?" asked Aurora in reply. "As
+soon as he had turned behind the bank it was impossible to say which way
+he had gone."
+
+"Of course," assented Folco. "I understand that."
+
+Marcello had not come home, and Aurora was sorry that she had teased him
+into a temper and had then allowed him to go away. It was not good for
+him, delicate as he was, to go for a long walk in such weather without
+any breakfast, and she felt distinctly contrite as she ate her roll in
+silence and drank her coffee, on the sheltered side of the cottage,
+under the verandah. The Signora Corbario had not appeared yet, but the
+Contessa was already out. As a rule the Signora preferred to have her
+coffee in her room, as if she were in town. For some time no one spoke.
+
+"Had we not better send Ercole to find Marcello?" the Contessa asked at
+last.
+
+"I had to send Ercole to Porto d'Anzio this morning," Corbario answered.
+"I took the opportunity, because I knew there would be no quail with
+this wind."
+
+"Marcello will come in when he is hungry," said Aurora, rather sharply,
+because she really felt sorry.
+
+But Marcello did not come in.
+
+Soon after eight o'clock his mother appeared on the verandah. Folco
+dropped his newspaper and hastened to make her comfortable in her
+favourite chair. Though she was not strong, she was not an invalid, but
+she was one of those women whom it seems natural to help, to whom men
+bring cushions, and with whom other women are always ready to
+sympathise. If one of Fra Angelico's saints should walk into a modern
+drawing-room all the men would fall over each other in the scramble to
+make her comfortable, and all the women would offer her tea and ask her
+if she felt the draught.
+
+The Signora looked about, expecting to see her son.
+
+"Marcello has not come in," said Folco, understanding. "He seems to have
+gone for a long walk."
+
+"I hope he has put on his thick boots," answered the Signora, in a
+thoughtful tone. "It is very wet."
+
+She asked why Folco was not with him shooting, and was told that there
+were no birds in such weather. She had never understood the winds, nor
+the points of the compass, nor why one should see the new moon in the
+west instead of in the east. Very few women do, but those who live much
+with men generally end by picking up a few useful expressions, a little
+phrase-book of jargon terms with which men are quite satisfied. They
+find out that a fox has no tail, a wild boar no teeth, a boat no prow,
+and a yacht no staircase; and this knowledge is better than none.
+
+The Signora accepted the fact that there were no birds that morning, and
+began to talk to Maddalena. Aurora got a book and pretended to read, but
+she was really listening for Marcello's footsteps, and wondering
+whether he would smile at her, or would still be cross when he came in.
+Corbario finished his paper and went off to look at the weather from the
+other side of the house, and the two women talked in broken sentences as
+old friends do, with long intervals of silence.
+
+The wind had moderated a good deal, but as the sun rose higher the glare
+in the sky grew more yellow, the air was much warmer, and the trees and
+shrubs and long grass began to steam as if they had been half boiled.
+All manner of tiny flies and gnats chased each other in the lurid light.
+
+"It feels as if there were going to be an earthquake," said Maddalena,
+throwing back the lace from her grey hair as if even its light weight
+oppressed her.
+
+"Yes."
+
+The women sat in silence, uneasy, their lips a little parted. Not that
+an earthquake would have disturbed them much, for slight ones are common
+enough in Italy, and could do no harm at all to a wooden cottage; it was
+a mere physical breathlessness that they felt, as the gale suddenly
+dropped and the heavy air became quite still on the sheltered side of
+the cottage.
+
+Aurora threw aside her book impatiently and rose from her chair.
+
+"I am going to look for Marcello," she said, and she went off without
+turning her head.
+
+On the other side of the cottage, as she went round, she found Folco
+sitting on the steps of the verandah, his elbows on his knees and his
+chin resting on his folded hands, apparently in deep thought. He had a
+cigar between his teeth, but it had gone out.
+
+"I am going to look for Marcello," said Aurora, as she passed close
+beside him.
+
+He said nothing, and hardly moved his head. Aurora turned and looked at
+him as she stepped upon the path.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, as she saw his face. "Is anything
+wrong?"
+
+Corbario looked up quickly, as if he had been in a reverie.
+
+"Anything the matter? No. Where did you say you were going?"
+
+"To find Marcello. He has not come in yet."
+
+"He has gone for a walk, I suppose. He often walks alone on off days. He
+will be back before luncheon, and you are not going to town till the
+afternoon."
+
+"Will you come with me?" Aurora asked, for she was in a good humour with
+Folco.
+
+He rose at once.
+
+"I'll go with you for a stroll," he said, "but I don't think it is of
+any use to look for Marcello near the house."
+
+"It can do no harm."
+
+"And it will do us good to walk a bit."
+
+They went down the path and through the trees towards the break in the
+bank.
+
+"The sand was very wet this morning, even inside the bank," Aurora
+said. "I daresay we shall find his footsteps and be able to guess which
+way he went."
+
+"Very likely," Folco answered.
+
+He pushed back his tweed cap a little and passed his handkerchief across
+his smooth brow. Aurora noticed the action, because he did not usually
+get warm so easily.
+
+"Are you hot?" she asked carelessly.
+
+"A little," he answered. "The air is so heavy this morning."
+
+"Perhaps you are not quite well," said Aurora. "You are a little pale."
+
+Apparently something in her youthfully patronising tone came as near
+irritating him as anything ever could.
+
+"What does it matter, whether I am hot or not?" he asked, almost
+impatiently, and again he passed his handkerchief over his forehead.
+
+"I did not mean to annoy you," Aurora answered with uncommon meekness.
+
+They came near the break in the bank, and she looked at the sand on each
+side of her. She thought it seemed smoother than usual, and that there
+were not so many little depressions in it, where there had been
+footsteps on previous days, half obliterated by wind and rain.
+
+"I cannot see where you and I passed an hour ago," she said, in some
+surprise.
+
+"The wind draws through the gap with tremendous strength," Folco
+explained. "Just before the gale moderated there was a heavy squall with
+rain."
+
+"Was there? I did not notice that--but I was on the lee side of the
+house. The wind must have smoothed the sand, just like a flat-iron!"
+
+"Yes." Corbario answered indifferently and gazed out to sea.
+
+Aurora left his side and looked about, going to a little distance from
+the gap, first on one side and then on the other.
+
+"It is as if the wind had done it on purpose!" she cried impatiently.
+"It is as smooth as if it had all been swept with a gardener's broom."
+
+Corbario turned, lighted his extinguished cigar, and watched her, as she
+moved about, stooping now and then to examine the sand.
+
+"I don't believe it is of any use to look here," he said. "Besides, he
+will be back in time for luncheon."
+
+"I suppose so," answered Aurora. "Why do you look at me in that way?"
+she asked, standing upright and meeting his eyes suddenly.
+
+He laughed softly and took his cigar from his mouth.
+
+"I was watching you. You are very graceful when you move."
+
+She did not like his expression.
+
+"I wish you would think less about me and more about finding Marcello,"
+she said rather sharply.
+
+"You talk as if he were lost. I tell you he will surely come back before
+long."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+But Marcello did not come back, and after Aurora had returned to the
+cottage and was seated in her chair again, with her book, she grew
+restless, and went over in her memory what had passed in the morning. It
+was not possible that Marcello should really mean to carry out his
+threat, to go away without a word, to leave her, to leave his mother;
+and yet, he was gone. A settled conviction came over her that he was
+really gone, just as he was, most probably back to Rome. She had teased
+him, and he had been very angry, absurdly angry; and yet she was perhaps
+responsible, in a way, for his disappearance. Presently his mother would
+grow anxious and would ask questions, and then it would all come out. It
+would be better to be brave and to say at once that he had been angry
+with her; she could confess the truth to her mother, to the Signora, if
+necessary, or even to both together, for they were women and would
+understand. But she could not tell the story before Corbario. That would
+be out of the question; and yet, anything would be better than to let
+them all think that something dreadful had happened to Marcello. He had
+gone to Rome, of course; or perhaps only to Porto d'Anzio, in which case
+he would meet Ercole coming back.
+
+The hours wore on to midday, and Signora Corbario's uneasiness grew into
+real anxiety. The Contessa did her best to soothe her, but was anxious
+herself, and still Aurora said nothing. Folco was grave, but assured
+every one that the boy would soon return, though the Signora would not
+believe it.
+
+"He will never come back! Something dreadful has happened to him!" And
+therewith she broke down completely and burst into tears.
+
+"You must go and look for him," said Maddalena quietly to Corbario.
+
+"I think you are right," he answered. "I am going to find him," he said
+softly, bending down to his wife as she lay in her chair, trying to
+control her sobs. "I will send some of the men towards Porto d'Anzio and
+will go towards Nettuno myself."
+
+She loved him and believed in him, and she was comforted when she saw
+him go away and heard him calling the men from their hut.
+
+Aurora was left alone with the two women.
+
+"I am afraid Marcello is gone to Rome," she said, with an effort.
+
+The Signora raised herself in her long chair and stared hard at the
+girl. The Contessa looked at her in surprise.
+
+"What do you know about it?" cried the Signora. "Why have you not
+spoken, if you know anything? Don't you see that I am half mad with
+anxiety?"
+
+Aurora had never seen the good lady in such a state, and was almost
+frightened; but there was nothing to be done now, except to go on. She
+told her little story timidly, but truthfully, looking from her mother
+to the Signora while she spoke, and wondering what would happen when she
+had finished.
+
+"He said, 'You shall wish me back, but I will not come.' I think those
+were his last words."
+
+"You have broken my boy's heart!" cried the Signora Corbario, turning
+her face away.
+
+Maddalena, whose heart had really been broken long ago, could not help
+smiling.
+
+"I am sure I did not mean to," cried Aurora, contritely. "And after all,
+though I daresay it was my fault, he called me a miserable little flirt,
+and I only called him a baby."
+
+Maddalena would have laughed if her friend had not been in such real
+distress. As for Aurora, she did not know whether she would have laughed
+or cried if she had not felt that her girl's dignity was at stake. As it
+was, she grew preternaturally calm.
+
+"You have driven him away," moaned the Signora piteously. "You have
+driven away my boy! Was he not good enough for you?"
+
+She asked the question suddenly and vehemently, turning upon poor Aurora
+with something like fury. She was quite beside herself, and the Contessa
+motioned the girl away. Aurora rose and disappeared round the corner of
+the house.
+
+Alone with her friend, Maddalena did her best to comfort her. There were
+arguments enough: it was barely noon, and Marcello had not been gone
+four hours; he was used to taking long walks, he had probably gone as
+far as the tower, and had rested there before coming back; or he had
+gone to meet Ercole on the road to Porto d'Anzio; or he had gone off
+towards the Nettuno woods to get over his anger in solitude; it was
+natural enough; and after all, if he had gone to Rome as Aurora
+thought, no harm could come to him, for he would go home, and would
+surely send a telegram before evening. It was unlike him, yes; but just
+at his age boys often did foolish things.
+
+"Marcello is not foolish!" objected the Signora indignantly.
+
+She could by no means listen to reason, and was angry because her friend
+tried to argue with her. She rose with an energy she seldom displayed,
+and began to walk up and down the verandah. Her face was very pale, her
+lip quivered when she spoke, and there was an unnatural light in her
+eyes. There was room for much moderate affection in her gentle nature;
+she had loved her first husband; she loved Corbario dearly; but the
+passion of her life was her son, and at the first presentiment of real
+danger to him the dominant preoccupation of her heart took violent
+possession of everything else in her, regardless of reason, friendship,
+consideration for others, or common sense.
+
+Maddalena walked up and down beside her, putting one arm affectionately
+round her waist, and doing the best she could to allay the tempest.
+
+It subsided suddenly, and was followed by a stony silence that
+frightened the Contessa. It was time for luncheon, and Aurora came back,
+hoping to find that she had been forgiven during her absence, but the
+Signora only looked at her coldly once or twice and would not speak.
+None of the three even pretended to have an appetite.
+
+"I shall not go back to Rome to-day," said the Contessa. "I cannot
+leave you in such anxiety."
+
+"Folco will take care of me," answered the Signora in a dull tone. "Do
+not change your plans on my account. The carriage is ordered at three
+o'clock."
+
+She spoke so coldly that Maddalena felt a little pardonable resentment,
+though she knew that her friend was not at all herself.
+
+"Very well," she answered quietly. "If you had rather that I should not
+stay with you we will go back this afternoon."
+
+"It will be much better."
+
+When the carriage appeared neither Folco nor any of the men had
+returned. The Signora made an evident attempt to show a little of her
+habitual cordiality at parting, and she even kissed Aurora coldly on the
+forehead, and embraced Maddalena with something like her usual
+affection. The two looked back as they drove away, calling out a last
+good-bye, but they saw that the Signora was not even looking after them;
+she was leaning against one of the wooden supports of the verandah,
+gazing towards the trees, and pressing one hand to her forehead.
+
+"Do you think it was my fault, mamma?" asked Aurora, when they were out
+of sight of the cottage.
+
+"No, dear," answered Maddalena. "Something has happened, I wish I knew
+what!"
+
+"I only told him he was a baby," said Aurora, settling herself in the
+corner of the carriage, and arranging her parasol behind her so that it
+rested on the open hood; for the weather had cleared and the sun was
+shining brightly after the storm.
+
+So she and her mother went back to Rome that afternoon. But when the
+Signora was alone, she was sorry that her friend was gone, and was all
+at once aware that her head was aching terribly. Every movement she made
+sent an agonizing thrill through her brain, and her hand trembled from
+the pain, as she pressed her palm to her forehead.
+
+She meant to go down to the beach alone, for she was sure that she could
+find Marcello, and at least she would meet the men who were searching
+for him, and have news sooner than if she stayed in the cottage. But she
+could not have walked fifty steps without fainting while her headache
+lasted. She would take five grains of phenacetine, and in a little while
+she would be better.
+
+She found the glass tube with the screw cap, and swallowed one of the
+tablets with a little water. Then she sat down on the edge of her long
+chair in the verandah to wait for the pain to pass. She was very tired,
+and presently, she scarcely knew how it was, she was lying at full
+length in her chair, her head resting comfortably against the cushion.
+
+The sunlight fell slanting across her feet. Amongst the trees two or
+three birds were twittering softly; it was warm, it was dreamy, she was
+forgetting Marcello. She tried to rouse herself as the thought of him
+crossed her mind, and she fancied that she almost rose from the chair;
+but she had hardly lifted one hand. Then she saw his face close before
+her, her lips relaxed, the pain was gone, she smiled happily, and she
+was asleep.
+
+Half an hour later her maid came quietly out to ask whether she needed
+anything, and seeing that she was sleeping peacefully spread a light
+shawl over her feet, placed the silver handbell within easy reach on the
+table, and went away again.
+
+Towards evening Folco came back and then the men, straggling in on their
+tired little horses, for they had ridden far and fast. Marcello was not
+with them.
+
+Corbario came in alone, and saw his wife lying in her chair in the
+evening light. He stood still a moment, and then came over and bent near
+her, looking earnestly into her quiet face.
+
+"Already," he said aloud, but in a very low voice.
+
+His hand shook as he laid it on her heart, bending low. Then he started
+violently and stood bolt upright, as an unearthly howl rent the air.
+
+Nino, Ercole's queer dog, was close beside him, his forepaws planted on
+the upper step of the verandah, his head thrown up, his half-open jaws
+showing his jagged teeth, his rough coat bristling like spikes of
+bearded barley.
+
+And Ercole, still a hundred yards away amongst the trees, shook his head
+and hurried forward as he heard the long-drawn note of brute terror.
+
+"Somebody is dead," he said to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+For a few weeks all Italy was profoundly interested in the story of
+Marcello Corbario's disappearance and of his mother's almost
+unaccountable death. It was spoken of as the "double tragedy of the
+Campagna," and the newspapers were full of it.
+
+The gates of the beautiful villa on the Janiculum were constantly
+assailed by reporters; the servants who came out from time to time were
+bribed, flattered, and tempted away to eat sumptuous meals and drink the
+oldest wine in quiet gardens behind old inns in Trastevere, in the hope
+that they might have some information to sell. But no one gained
+admittance to the villa except the agents of the police, who came daily
+to report the fruitless search; and the servants had nothing to tell
+beyond the bare truth. The young gentleman had gone for a walk near the
+sea, down at the cottage by the Roman shore, and he had never been heard
+of again. His mother had been suffering from a bad headache, had lain
+down to rest in a cane chair on the verandah, and had been found dead,
+with a smile on her face, by her husband, when he came back from his
+first attempt to find Marcello. The groom who always went down with the
+carriage could describe with greatest accuracy the spot where the
+Signorina Aurora had last seen him; the house servants gave the most
+minute details about the cane chair, the verandah, and the position in
+which the poor lady had been found; but that was all, and it was not at
+all what the reporters wanted. They had all been down to the cottage,
+each with his camera and note-book, and had photographed everything in
+sight, including Nino, Ercole's dog. What they wanted was a clue, a
+story, a scandal if possible, and they found nothing of the sort.
+
+Folco Corbario's mourning was unostentatious and quiet, but none of the
+few persons who saw him, whether detectives or servants, could doubt
+that he was profoundly affected. He grew paler and thinner every day,
+until his own man even began to fear that his health was failing. He had
+done, and continued to do, everything that was humanly possible. He had
+brought his wife's body to Rome, and had summoned the very highest
+authorities in the medical profession to discover, if possible, the
+cause of her death. They had come, old men of science, full of the
+experience of years, young men of the future, brimming with theories,
+experts in chemistry, experts in snake poisons; for Folco had even
+suggested that she might have been bitten by a viper or stung by a
+venomous spider, or accidentally poisoned by some medicine or something
+she had eaten.
+
+But the scientific gentlemen were soon agreed that no such thing had
+happened. Considerably disappointed, and with an unanimity which is so
+unusual in the confraternity as to be thought absolutely conclusive when
+it is observed, they decided that the Signora Corbario had died of
+collapse after intense excitement caused by the disappearance of her
+son. Thereafter she was buried out at San Lorenzo, with the secret, if
+there were any; masses were said, the verdict of the doctors was
+published, with the signatures of the most eminent practitioners and
+specialists in Italy; and the interest of the public concentrated itself
+upon the problem of Marcello's mysterious removal, or abduction, or
+subduction, or recession, or flight, from the very bosom of his family.
+
+This problem had the merit of defying solution. In a comparatively open
+country, within a space of time which could certainly be limited to five
+minutes, at a place whence he should have been clearly seen by Folco
+Corbario as soon as Aurora dell' Armi could no longer see him, the boy
+had been spirited away, leaving not even the trace of his footsteps in
+the sand. It was one of the most unaccountable disappearances on record,
+as Folco insisted in his conversations with the Chief of Police, who
+went down with him to the cottage and examined the spot most carefully,
+with several expert detectives. Folco showed him exactly where Aurora
+had stood, and precisely the direction he himself had followed in
+approaching the gap, and he declared it to be almost a physical
+impossibility that Marcello should have become suddenly invisible just
+then.
+
+The official thought so too, and shook his head. He looked at the
+detectives, and they shook their heads, also. And then they all looked
+at Corbario and expressed the opinion that there was some mistake about
+the length of time supposed by Aurora to have elapsed between the
+moment when Marcello left her and the instant of Folco's appearance
+before her. She had not looked at her watch; in fact, she had not
+carried a watch. The whole story therefore depended upon her more or
+less accurate judgment of time. It might have been a quarter of an hour
+instead of five minutes, in which case Corbario had not yet left the
+cottage, and Marcello would have had ample leisure to disappear in any
+direction he pleased. Ercole had been away at Porto d'Anzio, the men had
+been all at the hut; if Folco had not been on the path precisely at the
+time guessed by Aurora, everything could be accounted for.
+
+"Very well," Corbario answered. "Let us suppose that my stepson had time
+to get away. In that case he can be found, alive or dead. Italy is not
+China, nor Siberia, and I can place unlimited funds at your disposal.
+Find him for me; that is all I ask."
+
+"We shall find him, never fear!" answered the Chief of Police with a
+confidence he did not feel.
+
+"We shall find him!" echoed the three detectives in chorus.
+
+Ercole watched the proceedings and listened to what was said, for he
+considered it his duty to attend on such an occasion, his dog at his
+heels, his gun slung over his shoulder. He listened and looked from one
+to the other with his deep eyes and inscrutable parchment face,
+shrivelled by the malarious fever. But he said nothing. The Chief of
+Police turned to him at last.
+
+"Now what do you think about it?" asked the official. "You know the
+country. Had there been any suspicious characters about, fellows who
+could have carried off the boy?"
+
+"Such people would ask a ransom," answered Ercole. "You would soon hear
+from them. But I saw no one. There have been no brigands about Rome for
+more than twenty years. Do you dream that you are in Sicily? Praise be
+to Heaven, this is the Roman Campagna; we are Christians and we live
+under King Victor! Where are the brigands? They have melted. Or else
+they are making straw hats in the galleys. Do I know where they are?
+They are not here. That is enough."
+
+"Quite right, my friend," answered the Chief of Police. "There are no
+brigands. But I am sorry to say that there are thieves in the Campagna,
+as there are near every great city."
+
+Ercole shrugged his angular shoulders contemptuously.
+
+"Thieves would not carry a man away," he answered. "You know that, you
+who are of the profession, as they say. Such ruffians would have knocked
+the young gentleman on the head to keep him quiet, and would have made
+off. And besides, we should have found their tracks in the sand, and
+Nino would have smelt them."
+
+Nino pricked up one ragged ear at the sound of his name.
+
+"He does not look very intelligent," observed the official. "A clever
+dog might have been used to track the boy."
+
+"How?" inquired Ercole with scorn. "The footsteps of the young gentleman
+were everywhere, with those of all the family, who were always coming
+and going about here. How could he track them, or any of us? But he
+would have smelt a stranger, even if it had rained. I know this dog. He
+is the head dog on the Roman shore. There is no other dog like him."
+
+"I daresay not," assented the Chief of Police, looking at Nino. "In
+fact, he is not like any animal I ever saw."
+
+The detectives laughed at this.
+
+"There is no other," said Ercole without a smile. "He is the only son of
+a widowed mother. I am his family, and he is my family, and we live in
+good understanding in this desert. If there were no fever we should be
+like the saints in paradise--eating our corn meal together. And I will
+tell you another thing. If the young gentleman had been wounded anywhere
+near here, Nino would have found the blood even after three days. As for
+a dead man, he would make a point for him and howl half a mile off,
+unless the wind was the wrong way."
+
+"Would he really?" asked Corbario with a little interest.
+
+Ercole looked at him and nodded, but said no more, and presently the
+whole party of men went back to Rome, leaving him to the loneliness of
+the sand-banks and the sea.
+
+Then Ercole came back to the gap and stood still a little while, and
+his dog sat bolt upright beside him.
+
+"Nino," he said at last, in a rather regretful tone, "I gave you a good
+character. What could I say before those gentlemen? But I tell you this,
+you are growing old. And don't answer that I am getting old too, for
+that is my business. If your nose were what it was once, we should know
+the truth by this time. Smell that!"
+
+Ercole produced a small green morocco pocket-book, of the sort made to
+hold a few visiting cards and a little paper money, and held it to
+Nino's muzzle.
+
+Nino smelt it, looked up to his master's face inquiringly, smelt it
+again, and then, as if to explain that it did not interest him, lay down
+in the sand with his head on his forepaws.
+
+"You see!" growled Ercole. "You cannot even tell whether it belonged to
+the boy or to Corbario. An apoplexy on you! You understand nothing! Ill
+befall the souls of your dead, you ignorant beast!"
+
+Nino growled, but did not lift his head.
+
+"You understand that," said Ercole, discontentedly. "If you were a
+Christian you would stick a knife into me for insulting your dead! Yet
+you cannot tell whose pocket-book this is! And if I knew, I should know
+something worth knowing."
+
+The pocket-book disappeared in the interior recesses of Ercole's
+waistcoat. It was empty and bore no initial, and he could not remember
+to have seen it in Corbario's or Marcello's hands, but he was quite
+sure that it belonged to one of them. He was equally sure that if he
+showed it to Corbario the latter would at once say that it was
+Marcello's, and would take it away from him, so he said nothing about
+it. He had found it in the sand, a little way up the bank, during his
+first search after Marcello's disappearance.
+
+Ercole's confidence in the good intentions of his fellow-men was not
+great; he was quite lacking in the sort of charity which believeth all
+things, and had a large capacity for suspicion of everybody and
+everything; he held all men to be liars and most women to be something
+worse.
+
+"Men are at least Christians," he would say to Nino, "but a female is
+always a female."
+
+If he took a liking for any one, as for Marcello, he excused himself for
+the weakness on the ground that he was only human after all, and in his
+heart he respected his dog for snarling at everybody without
+discrimination. There was no doubt, however, that he felt a sort of
+attachment for the boy, and he admitted the failing while he deplored
+it. Besides, he detested Corbario, and had felt that his own common
+sense was insulted by the fact that Folco seemed devoted to Marcello.
+The suspicion that Folco had got rid of his stepson in order to get his
+fortune was therefore positively delightful, accompanied as it was by
+the conviction that he should one day prove his enemy a murderer.
+Perhaps if he could have known what Folco Corbario was suffering, he
+might have been almost satisfied, but he had no means of guessing that.
+In his opinion the man knew what had become of Marcello, and could be
+made to tell if proper means were used. At night Ercole put himself to
+sleep by devising the most horrible tortures for his master, such as no
+fortitude could resist, and by trying to guess what the wretched man
+would say when his agony forced him to confess the truth.
+
+He was almost sure by this time that Marcello was dead, though how Folco
+could have killed him, carried off his body to a great distance and
+buried him, without ever absenting himself from the cottage, was more
+than Ercole could imagine. He paid Corbario's skill the compliment of
+believing that he had not employed any accomplice, but had done the deed
+alone.
+
+How? That was the question. Ercole knew his dog well enough, and was
+perfectly sure that if the body had been concealed anywhere within a
+mile of the cottage Nino would have found it out, for the dog and his
+master had quartered every foot of the ground within three days after
+Marcello had been lost. It was utterly, entirely impossible that Folco,
+without help, could have dragged the dead boy farther. When he had gone
+on his pretended search he had not been alone; one of the men had ridden
+with him, and had never lost sight of him, as Ercole easily ascertained
+without seeming to ask questions. Ercole had obtained a pretty fair
+knowledge of Corbario's movements on that day, and it appeared that he
+had not been absent from the cottage more than half an hour at any time
+before he went to look for Marcello.
+
+"If Corbario himself had disappeared in that way," said Ercole to
+himself and Nino, "it would be easy to understand. We should know that
+the devil had carried him off."
+
+But no such supernatural intervention of the infernal powers could be
+supposed in Marcello's case, and Ercole racked his brains to no purpose,
+and pondered mad schemes for carrying Corbario off out of Rome to a
+quiet place where he would extract the truth from him, and he growled at
+the impossibility of such a thing, and fell to guessing again.
+
+In the magnificent library of the villa on the Janiculum, Folco was
+guessing, too, and with no better result. But because he could not guess
+right, and could get no news of Marcello, his eyes were growing hollow
+and his cheeks wan.
+
+The lawyers came and talked about the will, and explained to him that
+all the great property was his, unless Marcello came back, and that in
+any case he was to administer it. They said that if no news of the boy
+were obtained within a limited time, the law must take it for granted
+that he had perished in some unaccountable way. Folco shook his head.
+
+"He must be found," he said. "I have good nerves, but if I do not find
+out what has become of him I shall go mad."
+
+The lawyers spoke of courage and patience, but a sickly smile twisted
+Folco's lips.
+
+"Put yourself in my place, if you can," he answered.
+
+The lawyers, who knew the value of the property to a farthing, wished
+they could, though if they had known also what was passing in his mind
+they might have hesitated to exchange their lot for his.
+
+"He was like your own son," they said sympathetically. "A wife and a son
+gone on the same day! It is a tragedy. It is more than a man can bear."
+
+"It is indeed!" answered Corbario in a low voice and looking away.
+
+Almost the same phrases were exchanged each time that the two men came
+to the villa about the business, and when they left they never failed to
+look at each other gravely and to remark that Folco was a person of the
+deepest feeling, to whom such an awful trial was almost worse than
+death; and the elder lawyer, who was of a religious turn of mind, said
+that if such a calamity befell him he would retire from the world, but
+the younger answered that, for his part, he would travel and see the
+world and try to divert his thoughts. In their different ways they were
+hard-headed, experienced men; yet neither of them suspected for a moment
+that there was anything wrong. Both were honestly convinced that Folco
+had been a model husband to his dead wife, and a model father to her
+lost son. What they could not understand was that he should not find
+consolation in possessing their millions, and they could only account
+for the fact by calling him a person of the deepest feeling--a feeling,
+indeed, quite past their comprehension.
+
+Even the Contessa dell' Armi was impressed by the unmistakable signs of
+suffering in his face. She went twice to see him within three weeks
+after her friend's death, and she came away convinced that she had
+misjudged him. Aurora did not go with her, and Corbario barely asked
+after her. He led Maddalena to his dead wife's room and begged her to
+take some object that had belonged to the Signora, in memory of their
+long friendship. He pressed her to accept a necklace, or a bracelet, or
+some other valuable ornament, but Maddalena would only take a simple
+little gold chain which she herself had given long ago.
+
+Her own sorrow for her friend was profound but undemonstrative, as her
+nature had grown to be. Aurora saw it, and never referred to it,
+speaking only now and then of Marcello, to ask if there were any news of
+him.
+
+"He is not dead," the girl said one day. "I know he will come back. He
+went away because I called him a baby."
+
+Her mother smiled sadly and shook her head.
+
+"Did you love him, dear?" she asked softly.
+
+"We were children then," Aurora answered. "How do I know? I shall know
+when he comes back."
+
+It was true that the girl had changed within a few weeks, and her mother
+saw it. Her smile was not the same, and her eyes were deeper. She had
+begun to gather her hair in a knot, closer to her head, and that altered
+her expression a little and made her look much older; but there was more
+than that, there was something very hard to describe, something one
+might call conviction--the conviction that the world is real, which
+comes upon girlhood as suddenly as waking on sleep, or sleep on waking.
+She had crossed the narrow borderland between play and earnest, and she
+had crossed it very soon.
+
+"He will come back," she said. "He went away on that little ship that
+was tossing in the storm. I know it, though I cannot tell how he got out
+to it through the breaking waves."
+
+"That is perfectly impossible, child," said Maddalena with certainty.
+
+"Never mind. If we knew what ship that was, and where she is now, we
+could find Marcello. I am as sure of it as I am sure of seeing you at
+this moment. You know you often say that my presentiments come true. As
+soon as we knew he was gone I thought of the little ship."
+
+It was natural, perhaps. The picture of the small brigantine, fighting
+for existence, had graved itself in her memory. With its crew so near
+death, it had been the only thing within sight that suggested human life
+after Marcello was gone. The utter impossibility of a man's swimming out
+through the raging sea that broke upon the bar was nothing compared with
+Aurora's inward conviction that the little vessel had borne away the
+secret of his disappearance. And she had not been wrecked: Aurora knew
+that, for a wreck anywhere on the Roman shore would have been spoken of
+at once. They are unfortunately common enough, and since her childhood
+Aurora had more than once seen a schooner's masts sticking up out of
+the treacherous water a cable's length from the shore. The brigantine
+had got away, for the gale had moderated very suddenly, as spring gales
+do in the Mediterranean, just when the captain was making up his mind to
+let go both anchors and make a desperate attempt to save his vessel by
+riding out the storm--a forlorn hope with such ground tackle as he had
+in his chain lockers. And then he had stood out, and had sailed away,
+one danger more behind him in his hard life, and one less ahead. He had
+sailed away--whither? No one could tell. Those little vessels, built in
+the south of Italy, often enough take salt to South America, and are
+sold there, cargo and all; and some of the crew stay there, and some get
+other ships, but almost all are dispersed. The keeper of the San Lorenzo
+tower, who had been a deep-water man, had told Aurora about it. He
+himself had once gone out in a Sicilian brigantine from Trapani, and had
+stayed away three years, knocking about the world in all sorts of craft.
+
+Yet this one might have been on a coastwise trip to Genoa and
+Marseilles. That was quite possible. If one could only find out her
+name. And yet, if she had put into a near port Marcello would have come
+back; for Aurora was quite sure that he had got on board her somehow. It
+was all a mystery, all but the certainty she felt that he was still
+alive, and which nothing could shake, even when every one else had given
+him up. Aurora begged her mother to speak to Corbario about it. With his
+experience and knowledge of things he would know what to do; he could
+find some way of tracing the vessel, wherever she might be.
+
+The Contessa was convinced that the girl's theory was utterly untenable,
+and it was only to please her that she promised to speak of it if she
+saw Corbario again. Soon afterward she decided to leave Rome for the
+summer, and before going away she went once more to the villa. It was
+now late in June, and she found Folco in the garden late in the
+afternoon.
+
+He looked ill and tired, but she thought him a little less thin than
+when she had seen him last. He said that he, too, meant to leave Rome
+within a few days, that he intended to go northward first to see an old
+friend of his who had recently returned from South America, and that he
+should afterwards go down to Calabria, to San Domenico, and spend the
+autumn there. He had no news of Marcello. He looked thoughtfully down at
+his hands as he said this in a tone of profound sorrow.
+
+"Aurora has a fixed idea," said Maddalena. "While she was talking with
+Marcello at the gap in the bank there was a small ship tossing about not
+far from the shore."
+
+"Well?" asked Corbario. "What of it?"
+
+As he looked up from the contemplation of his hands Maddalena was struck
+by his extreme pallor and the terrible hollowness of his eyes.
+
+"How ill you look!" she exclaimed, almost involuntarily. "The sooner you
+go away the better."
+
+"What did Aurora say about the brigantine?" he asked earnestly, by way
+of answer.
+
+Maddalena knew too little about the sea to understand that he must have
+noticed the vessel's rig to name it correctly, as he did, and without
+hesitation.
+
+"She is convinced that Marcello got on board of her," she answered.
+
+Corbario's face relaxed a little, and he laughed harshly.
+
+"That is utterly absurd!" he answered. "No swimmer that ever lived could
+have got to her, nor any boat either! There was a terrific surf on the
+bar."
+
+"Of course not," assented Maddalena. "But you saw the ship, too?"
+
+"Yes. Aurora was looking at her when I reached the gap. That is why I
+noticed the vessel," Corbario added, as if by an afterthought. "She was
+a Sicilian brigantine, and was carrying hardly any sail. If the gale had
+lasted she would probably have been driven ashore. Her only chance would
+have been to drop anchor."
+
+"You know all about ships and the sea, don't you?" asked Maddalena, with
+a very little curiosity, but without any particular intention.
+
+"Oh, no!" cried Corbario, as if he were protesting against something. "I
+have made several long voyages, and I have a knack of remembering the
+names of things, nothing more."
+
+"I did not mean to suggest that you had been a sailor," Maddalena
+answered.
+
+"What an idea! I, a sailor!"
+
+He seemed vaguely amused at the idea. The Contessa took leave of him,
+after giving him her address in the north of Italy, and begging him to
+write if he found any clue to Marcello's disappearance. He promised
+this, and they parted, not expecting to meet again until the autumn.
+
+In a few days they had left Rome for different destinations. The little
+apartment near the Forum of Trajan where the Contessa and her daughter
+lived was shut up, and at the great villa on the Janiculum the solemn
+porter put off his mourning livery and dressed himself in brown linen,
+and smoked endless pipes within the closed gates when it was not too hot
+to be out of doors. The horses were turned out to grass, and the
+coachman and grooms departed to the country. The servants opened the
+windows in the early morning, shut them at ten o'clock against the heat,
+and dozed the rest of the time, or went down into the city to gossip
+with their friends in the afternoon. It was high summer, and Rome went
+to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"What do we eat to-day?" asked Paoluccio, the innkeeper on the Frascati
+road, as he came in from the glare and the dust and sat down in his own
+black kitchen.
+
+"Beans and oil," answered his wife.
+
+"An apoplexy take you!" observed the man, by way of mild comment.
+
+"It is Friday," said the woman, unmoved, though she was of a distinctly
+apoplectic habit.
+
+The kitchen was also the eating-room where meals were served to the
+wine-carters on their way to Rome and back. The beams and walls were
+black with the smoke of thirty years, for no whitewash had come near
+them since the innkeeper had married Nanna. It was a rich, crusty black,
+lightened here and there to chocolate brown, and shaded off again to the
+tint of strong coffee. High overhead three hams and half a dozen huge
+sausages hung slowly curing in the acrid wood smoke. There was an open
+hearth, waist high, for roasting, and having three square holes sunk in
+it for cooking with charcoal. An enormous bunch of green ferns had been
+hung by a long string from the highest beam to attract the flies, which
+swarmed on it like bees on a branch. The floor was of beaten cement,
+well swept and watered. Along three of the walls there were heavy
+tables of rough-hewn oak, with benches, polished by long and constant
+use. A trap-door covered the steps that led down to the deep cellar,
+which was nothing but a branch of those unexplored catacombs that
+undermine the Campagna in all directions. The place was dim, smoky, and
+old, but it was not really dirty, for in his primitive way the Roman
+wine-carter is fastidious. It is not long since he used to bring his own
+solid silver spoon and fork with him, and he will generally rinse a
+glass out two or three times before he will drink out of it.
+
+The kitchen of the inn was cool compared with the road outside, and
+though it smelt chiefly of the stale smoke of green wood, this was
+pervaded and tempered by odours of fern, fresh cabbages, goats'-milk
+cheese, and sour red wine. The brown earthen pot simmered over one of
+the holes in the hearth, emitting little clouds of steam; but boiling
+beans have no particular smell, as everybody knows.
+
+Paoluccio had pushed his weather-beaten soft hat back on his head, and
+sat drumming on the oak table with his knotty fingers. He was a strong
+man, thickset and healthy, with grizzled hair and an intensely black
+beard. His wife was fat, and purple about the jaws and under the ears.
+She stood with her back to the hearth, looking at him, with a wooden
+spoon in her hand.
+
+"Beans," she said slowly, and she looked up at the rafters and down
+again at her husband.
+
+"You have told me so," he growled, "and may the devil fly away with
+you!"
+
+"Beans are not good for people who have the fever," observed Nanna.
+
+"Beans are rather heavy food," assented the innkeeper, apparently
+understanding. "Bread and water are better. Pour a little oil on the
+bread."
+
+"A man who has the fever may die of eating beans," said Nanna
+thoughtfully. "This is also to be considered."
+
+"It is true." Paoluccio looked at his wife in silence for a moment. "But
+a person who is dead must be buried," he continued, as if he had
+discovered something. "When a person is dead, he is dead, whether he
+dies of eating beans or--"
+
+He broke off significantly, and his right hand, as it lay before him,
+straightened itself and made a very slight vibrating motion, with the
+fingers all close together. It is the gesture that means the knife among
+the southern people. Nanna instantly looked round, to be sure that no
+one else was in the room.
+
+"When you have given that medicine, you cannot send for the doctor," she
+observed, lowering her voice. "But if he eats, and dies, what can any
+one say? We have fed him for charity; it is Friday and we have given him
+beans. What can we know? Are not beans good food? We have nothing else,
+and it is for charity, and we give what we have. I don't think they
+could expect us to give him chickens and French wine, could they?"
+
+Paoluccio growled approval.
+
+"It is forty-seven days," continued Nanna. "You can make the account.
+Chickens and milk and fresh meat for forty-seven days! Even the bread
+comes to something in that time, at least two soldi a day--two forties
+eighty, two sevens fourteen, ninety-four--nearly five francs. Who will
+give us the five francs? Are we princes?"
+
+"There is the cow," observed Paoluccio with a grin.
+
+"Imbecile," retorted his wife. "It has been a good year; we bought the
+wine cheap, we sell it dear, without counting what we get for nothing
+from the carters; we buy a cow with our earnings, and where is the
+miracle?"
+
+The innkeeper looked towards the door and the small window suspiciously
+before he answered in a low voice.
+
+"If I had not been sure that he would die, I would not have sold the
+watch and chain," he said. "In the house of my father we have always
+been honest people."
+
+"He will die," answered Nanna, confidently and with emphasis. "The girl
+says he is hungry to-day. He shall eat beans. They are white beans, too,
+and the white are much heavier than the brown."
+
+She lifted the tin cover off the earthen pot and stirred the contents.
+
+"White beans!" grumbled Paoluccio. "And the weather is hot. Do you wish
+to kill me?"
+
+"No," answered Nanna quietly. "Not you."
+
+"Do you know what I say?" Paoluccio planted a huge finger on the oaken
+board. "That sick butterfly upstairs is tougher than I am. Forty-seven
+days of fever, and nothing but bread and water! Think of that, my Nanna!
+Think of it! You or I would be consumed, one would not even see our
+shadows on the floor! But he lives."
+
+"If he eats the white beans he has finished living," remarked Nanna.
+
+A short silence followed, during which Paoluccio seemed to be
+meditating, and Nanna began to ladle the beans out into four deep
+earthenware bowls, roughly glazed and decorated with green and brown
+stripes.
+
+"You are a jewel; you are the joy of my heart," he observed
+thoughtfully, as Nanna placed his portion before him, covered it with
+oil, and scattered some chopped basil on the surface.
+
+"Eat, my love," she said, and she cut a huge piece from a coarse loaf
+and placed it beside him on a folded napkin that looked remarkably clean
+in such surroundings, and emitted a pleasant odour of dried lavender
+blossoms.
+
+"Where is the girl?" asked Paoluccio, stirring the mess and blowing upon
+it.
+
+As he spoke, the door was darkened, and the girl stood there with a
+large copper "conca," the water-jar of the Roman province, balanced on
+her head--one of the most magnificent human beings on whom the sun of
+the Campagna ever shone. She was tall, and she bent her knees without
+moving her neck, in order to enter the door without first setting down
+the heavy vessel.
+
+[Illustration: " ... THE DOOR WAS DARKENED, AND THE GIRL STOOD THERE
+WITH A LARGE COPPER 'CONCA' ..."]
+
+Her thick dark hair grew low on her forehead, almost black, save for
+the reddish chestnut lights where a few tiny ringlets curled themselves
+about her small and classic ears. Straight black eyebrows outlined the
+snow-white forehead, and long brown lashes shaded the fearless eyes,
+that looked black too. She smiled a little, quite unconsciously, as she
+lowered herself with the weight and gracefully rose to her height again
+after she had entered. One shapely brown hand steadied the conca above,
+the other gathered her coarse skirt; then she stood still, lifted the
+load from her head with both hands and without any apparent effort, and
+set it down in its place on a stone slab near the hearth. Most women
+need a little help to do that.
+
+She laid aside the twisted cloth on which the conca had rested while she
+carried it, and she smoothed her hair carelessly.
+
+"There are beans," said Nanna, giving the girl one of the bowls. "There
+is the bread. While they are cooling take the other portion upstairs."
+
+The girl looked at the bowl, and at Nanna, and then at Paoluccio, and
+stood stock still.
+
+"Hey, there!" the man cried, with a rough laugh. "Hey! Reginella! Are
+you going to sleep, or are you turning into a statue?"
+
+"Am I to give him the beans to eat?" asked Regina, looking hard at the
+innkeeper.
+
+"You said he was hungry. That is what there is for dinner. We give him
+what we have."
+
+Regina's dark eyes lightened; her upper lip rose in a curve and showed
+her closed teeth, strong and white as those of a young animal.
+
+"Do as you are told," added Paoluccio. "This is charity. When you
+examine your conscience at Easter you can say, 'I have fed the hungry
+and cared for the sick.' The beans are mine, of course, but that makes
+no difference. I make you a present of them."
+
+"Thank you!"
+
+"Welcome," answered Paoluccio, with his mouth, full.
+
+Regina took the fourth bowl and a piece of bread and went out. The steps
+to the upper part of the house were on the outside, as is common in the
+houses of the Campagna.
+
+"How old is she?" Paoluccio asked when she was gone.
+
+"She must be twenty," answered Nanna. "It must be ten years since her
+mother died, and her mother said she was ten years old. She has eaten
+many loaves in this house."
+
+"She has worked for her food," said the innkeeper. "And she is an honest
+girl."
+
+"What did you expect? That I should let her be idle, or make eyes at the
+carters? But you always defend her, because she is pretty, you ugly
+scamp!"
+
+Nanna uttered her taunt in a good-natured tone, but she glanced
+furtively at her husband to see the effect of her words, for it was not
+always safe to joke with Paoluccio.
+
+"If I did not defend her," he answered, "you would beat the life out of
+her."
+
+"I daresay," replied Nanna, and filled her mouth with beans.
+
+"But now," said Paoluccio, swallowing, "if you are not careful she will
+break all your bones. She has the health of a horse."
+
+So the couple discussed matters amiably, while Regina was out of the
+way.
+
+In a garret that had a small unglazed window looking to the north, the
+girl was bending over a wretched trestle-bed, which was literally the
+only piece of furniture in the room; and on the coarse mattress, stuffed
+with the husks and leaves of maize, lay all that the fever had left of
+Marcello Consalvi, shivering under a tattered brown blanket. There was
+little more than the shadow of the boy, and his blue eyes stared dully
+up at the girl's face. But there was life in him still, thanks to her,
+and though there was no expression in his gaze, his lips smiled faintly,
+and faint words came from them.
+
+"Thank you," he said, "I am better to-day. Yes, I could eat something."
+
+Regina bent lower, smiling happily, and she kissed the boy's face three
+times; she kissed his eyes and dry lips. And he, too, smiled again.
+
+Then she left the bedside and went to a dark corner, where she
+cautiously moved aside a loose board. From the recess she took a common
+tumbler and a bottle of old wine and a battered iron spoon. She crouched
+upon the floor, because there was no table; she took two fresh eggs out
+of the folds of the big red and yellow cotton handkerchief that covered
+her shoulders and was crossed over her bosom, and she broke them into
+the glass, and hid the empty shells carefully in the folds again, so
+that they should not be found in the room. For she had stolen these for
+Marcello, as usual, as well as the old wine. She poured a little of the
+latter into the glass and stirred the eggs quickly and softly, making
+hardly any noise. From the recess in the wall she got a little sugar,
+which was wrapped up in a bit of newspaper brown with age and smoke, and
+she sweetened the eggs and wine and stirred again; and at last she came
+and fed Marcello with the battered spoon. She had put off her coarse
+slippers and walked about in her thick brown woollen stockings, lest she
+should be heard below. She was very quiet and skilful, and she had
+strangely small and gentle hands for a peasant girl. Marcello's head was
+propped up by her left arm while she fed him.
+
+She had kept him alive six weeks, and she had saved his life. She had
+found him lying against the door of the inn at dawn, convulsed with ague
+and almost unconscious, and had carried him into the house like a child,
+though he had been much heavier then. Of course the innkeeper had taken
+his watch and chain, and his jacket and sleeve-links and studs, to keep
+them safe, he said. Regina knew what that meant, but Paoluccio had
+ordered her to take care of him, and she had done her best. Paoluccio
+felt that if the boy died it would be the will of heaven, and that he
+probably would not live long with such care and such nourishment as he
+would get up there in the attic. When he was dead, it would be time
+enough to tell the carabineers who passed the house twice every
+twenty-four hours on their beat; they would see that a sick boy had been
+taken in, and that he had died of the fever, and as they need never know
+how long he had been in the inn, the whole affair would redound to
+Paoluccio's credit with them and with customers. But as long as he was
+alive it was quite unnecessary that any one should know of his
+existence, especially as the watch and chain had been converted into
+money, and the money into a fine young cow. That Marcello could get well
+on bread and water never entered Paoluccio's head.
+
+But he had counted without Regina; that is to say that he had overlooked
+the love and devotion of an intensely vital creature, younger, quicker,
+and far cleverer that he, who would watch the sick boy day and night,
+steal food and wine for him, lose sleep for him, risk blows for him, and
+breathe her strong life into his weak body; to whom the joy of saving
+him from death would be so much greater than all fatigue, that there
+would be no shadow under her eyes, no pallor in her cheek, no weariness
+in her elastic gait to tell of sleepless nights spent by his bedside in
+soothing his ravings, or in listening for the beat of his heart when he
+lay still and exhausted, his tired head resting on her strong white arm.
+And when he seemed better and at ease she often fell asleep beside him,
+half sitting, half lying, on the pallet bed, her cheek on the straw
+pillow, her breath mingling with his in the dark.
+
+He was better now, and she felt the returning life in him, almost before
+he was sure of it himself; and while her heart was almost bursting with
+happiness, so that she smiled to herself throughout her rough work all
+day long, she knew that he could not stay where he was. Paoluccio
+expected him to die, and was beginning to be tired of waiting, and so
+was Nanna. If he recovered, he would ask for his watch and other things;
+he was evidently a fine young gentleman to whom some strange accident
+had happened, and he must have friends somewhere. Half delirious, he had
+spoken of them and of his mother, and of some one called Aurora, whom
+Regina already hated with all her heart and soul. The innkeeper and his
+wife had never come near him since the former had helped the girl to
+carry him upstairs, but if they suspected that he was recovering she
+would not be able to prevent them from seeing him; and if they did, she
+knew what would happen. They would send her on an errand, and when she
+came back Marcello would be dead. She might refuse to go, but they were
+strong people and would be two to one. Brave as Regina was, she did not
+dare to wait for the carabineers when they came by on their beat and to
+tell them the truth, for she had the Italian peasant's horror and dread
+of the law and its visible authority; and moreover she was quite sure
+that Paoluccio would murder her if she told the secret.
+
+"If I could only take you to Rome!" she whispered, bending over him
+when he had swallowed the contents of the glass. "You could tell me
+where your friends are."
+
+"Rome?" he repeated, with a vacant questioning.
+
+She nodded and smiled, and then sighed. She had long been sure that the
+fever had affected his memory, and she had tried many times to awaken
+it.
+
+She loved him because he had the face of an angel, and was fair-haired,
+and seemed so gentle and patient, and smiled so sweetly when she kissed
+him. That was all. He could thank her; he could tell her that he was
+better or worse; he could speak of what he saw; he could even tell her
+that she was beautiful, and that was much. He was Marcello, he had told
+her that, but when she asked what other name he had, he looked at her
+blankly at first, and then an expression of painful effort came over his
+face, and she would not disturb him any more. He could not remember. He
+did not know how he had come to the inn door; he had been walking in the
+Campagna alone and had felt tired. He knew no more.
+
+If only she could get him to Rome. It was not more than seven or eight
+miles to the city, and Regina had often been there with Nanna. She had
+been to Saint John Lateran's at midsummer for the great festival, and
+she knew where the hospital was, in which famous professors cured every
+ill under the sun. If she could bring Marcello to them, he would get
+well; if he stayed much longer at the inn, Paoluccio would kill him;
+being a woman, and a loving one, Regina only regarded as possible what
+she wished, where the man she loved was concerned.
+
+She made up her mind that if it could not be done by any other means she
+would carry Marcello all the way. During his illness she had often
+lifted him from his bed like a little child, for he was slightly built
+by nature and was worn to a shadow by the fever. Even Aurora could have
+raised him, and he was a featherweight in the arms of such a creature as
+Regina. But it would be another matter to carry such an awkward burden
+for miles along the highroad; and besides, she would meet the
+carabineers, and as she would have to go at night, they would probably
+arrest her and put her in prison, and Marcello would die. She must find
+some other way.
+
+She laid his head tenderly on the pillow and left him, promising to come
+back as soon as she could. For safety she had brought the dish of beans
+with her, lest Nanna should follow her, and she took it with her, just
+as it was; but at the foot of the outer stairs she ran along the back of
+the house to the pig-sty, and emptied the mess into the trough,
+carefully scraping the bowl with the spoon so that it looked as if some
+one had eaten the contents. Then she went back to the kitchen.
+
+"Has he eaten?" inquired Nanna, and Paoluccio looked up, too.
+
+"You see," answered Regina, showing the empty bowl.
+
+"Health to him!" answered Paoluccio. "He has a good appetite."
+
+"Eat your own," said Nanna to the girl.
+
+She suspected that Regina might have eaten the beans meant for Marcello,
+but her doubt vanished as she saw how the hungry young thing devoured
+her own portion.
+
+"Are there any more left?" Regina asked when she had finished, for she
+understood perfectly what was going on in the minds of the other two.
+
+She looked into the earthen cooking-pot which now stood on the corner of
+the hearth.
+
+"Not even the smell of any more," answered Nanna. "There is bread."
+
+Regina's white teeth crushed the hard brown crust as if she had not
+eaten for a week. There could be no doubt but that the sick boy had
+eaten the beans; and beans, especially white ones, are not good for
+people who have the fever, as Nanna had justly observed.
+
+"On Sunday he shall have a dish of liver and cabbage," she said, in a
+cheerful tone. "There is much strength in liver, and cabbage is good for
+the blood. I shall take it to him myself, for it will be a pleasure to
+see him eat."
+
+"The beans were soon finished," said Regina, with perfect truth.
+
+"I told you how it would be," Paoluccio answered.
+
+But Regina knew that the time had come to get Marcello away from the inn
+if he ever was to leave it alive, and in the afternoon, when Nanna was
+dozing in her chair in the kitchen and Paoluccio was snoring upstairs,
+and when she had smoothed Marcello's pillow, she went out and sat down
+in front of the house, where there was shade at that hour, though the
+glare from the dusty road would have blinded weaker eyes than hers. She
+sat on the stone seat that ran along the house, and leaned against the
+rough wall, thinking and scheming, and quite sure that she should find a
+way.
+
+At first she looked about, while she thought, from the well-known
+mountains that bounded her world to the familiar arches of the distant
+aqueduct, from the dry ditch opposite to the burning sky above and the
+greyish green hillocks below Tivoli. But by and by she looked straight
+before her, with a steady, concentrated stare, as if she saw something
+happening and was watching to see how it would end.
+
+She had found what she wanted, and was quite sure of it; only a few
+details remained to be settled, such as what was to become of her after
+she left the inn where she had grown up. But that did not trouble her
+much.
+
+She was not delicately nurtured that she should dread the great world of
+which she knew nothing, nor had Nanna's conversation during ten years
+done much to strengthen her in the paths of virtue. Her pride had done
+much more and might save her wherever she went, but she was very well
+aware of life's evil truths. And what would her pride be compared with
+Marcello, the first and only being she had ever loved? To begin with,
+she knew that the handsome people from the country earned money by
+serving as models for painters and sculptors, and she had not the
+slightest illusion about her own looks. Since she had been a child
+people who came to the inn had told her that she was beautiful; and not
+the rough wine-carters only, for the fox-hunters sometimes came that
+way, riding slowly homeward after a long run, and many a fine gentleman
+in pink had said things to her which she had answered sharply, but which
+she remembered well. She had not the slightest doubt but that she was
+one of the handsomest girls in Italy, and the absolute certainty of the
+conviction saved her from having any small vanity about her looks. She
+knew that she had only to show herself and that every one would stand
+and look at her, only to beckon and she would be followed. She did not
+crave admiration; a great beauty rarely does. She simply defied
+competition, and was ready to laugh at it in a rather good-natured way,
+for she knew what she had, and was satisfied.
+
+As for the rest, she was merely clever and fearless, and her moral
+inheritance was not all that might be desired; for her father had left
+her mother in a fit of pardonable jealousy, after nearly killing her and
+quite killing his rival, and her mother had not redeemed her character
+after his abrupt departure. On the contrary, if an accident had not
+carried her off suddenly, Regina's virtuous parent would probably have
+sold the girl into slavery. Poor people are not all honest, any more
+than other kinds of people are. Regina did not mourn her mother, and
+hardly remembered her father at all, and she never thought of either.
+
+She owed Paoluccio and Nanna nothing, in her opinion. They had fed her
+sufficiently, and clothed her decently for the good of the house; she
+had done the work of two women in return, because she was strong, and
+she had been honest, because she was proud. Even the innkeeper and his
+wife would not have pretended that she owed them much gratitude; they
+were much too natural for that, and besides, the girl was too handsome,
+and there might be some scandal about her any day which would injure the
+credit of the inn. Nanna thought Paoluccio much too fond of watching
+her, as it was, and reflected that if she went to the city she would be
+well out of the way, and might go to the devil if she pleased.
+
+Regina's plan for taking Marcello was simple, like most plans which
+succeed, and only depended for its success on being carried out
+fearlessly.
+
+The wine-carters usually came to the inn from the hills between nine and
+eleven o'clock at night, and the carts, heavy-laden with wine casks,
+stood in a line along the road, while the men went into the kitchen to
+eat and drink. They generally paid for what they consumed by giving a
+measure or two of wine from the casks they were bringing, and which they
+filled up with water, a very simple plan which seems to have been in use
+for ages. It has several advantages; the owner of the wine does not
+suffer by it, since he gets his full price in town; the man who buys the
+wine in Rome does not suffer, because he adds so much water to the wine
+before selling it that a little more or less makes no difference; the
+public does not suffer, as it is well known that wine is much better for
+the health when drunk with plenty of water; and the carters do not
+suffer, because nobody would think of interfering with them. Moreover,
+they get food and drink for nothing.
+
+While the men were having supper in the inn, their carts were guarded by
+their little woolly dogs, black, white, or brown, and always terribly
+wide-awake and uncommonly fierce in spite of their small size.
+
+Now, just at this time, there was one carter who had none, and Regina
+knew it, for he was one of her chief admirers. He was the
+hardest-drinking ruffian of all the men who came and went on the
+Frascati road, and he had been quite willing to sell his dog in the
+street to a gentleman who admired it and offered him fifty francs for
+it, though that is a small price for a handsome "lupetto." But Mommo
+happened to be deeper in debt than usual, took the money, and cast about
+to steal another dog that might serve him. So far he had not seen one to
+his liking.
+
+It is the custom of the wine-carters, when they have had plenty to eat
+and drink, to climb to their seats under the fan-like goat-skin hoods of
+their carts, and to go to sleep, wrapped in their huge cloaks. Their
+mules plod along and keep out of the way of other vehicles without any
+guidance, and their dogs protect them from thieves, who might steal
+their money; for they always carry the sum necessary to pay the octroi
+duty at the city gates, where every cart is stopped. As they are on the
+road most of their lives, winter and summer, they would not get much
+sleep if they tried to keep awake all night; and they drink a good deal,
+partly because wine is really a protection against the dangerous fever,
+and partly because their drink costs them nothing. Some of them drank
+their employers' wine at supper, others exchanged what they brought for
+Paoluccio's, which they liked better.
+
+They usually got away about midnight, and Mommo was often the last to
+go. It was a part of Regina's work to go down to the cellar and draw the
+wine that was wanted from the hogsheads when the host was too lazy to go
+down himself, and being quite unwatched she could draw a measure from
+the oldest and strongest if she chose. Mommo could easily be made a
+little sleepier than usual, after being tempted to outstay the others.
+
+And so it turned out that night. After the necessary operation of
+tapping one of his casks and filling it up with water, he lingered on
+before a measure of the best, while Nanna and Paoluccio dozed in their
+chairs; and at last all three were asleep.
+
+Then Regina went out softly into the dark summer night, and climbed the
+stairs to the attic.
+
+"I am going to take you to Rome to-night," she whispered in Marcello's
+ear.
+
+"Rome?" he repeated vaguely, half asleep.
+
+She wrapped him in the tattered blanket as he was, and lifted him
+lightly in her arms. Down the stairs she bore him, and then lifted him
+upon the tail of the cart, propping him up as best she could, and
+passing round him the end of one of the ropes that held the casks in
+place. He breathed more freely in the open air, and she had fed him
+again before the carters came to supper.
+
+"And you?" he asked faintly.
+
+"I shall walk," she whispered. "Now wait, and make no noise, or they
+will kill you. Are you comfortable?"
+
+She could see that he nodded his head.
+
+"We shall start presently," she said.
+
+She went into the kitchen, waked Mommo, and made him swallow the rest of
+his wine. He was easily persuaded that he had slept too long, and must
+be on the road. The innkeeper and Nanna grumbled a good-night as he went
+out rather unsteadily, followed by Regina. A moment later the mules'
+bells jingled, the cart creaked, and Mommo was off.
+
+Paoluccio and his wife made their way to the outer stairs and to bed,
+leaving Regina to put out the lights and lock up the kitchen. She lost
+no time in doing this, ran up the steps in the dark, hung the key on its
+nail in the entry, and went to her attic, making a loud noise with her
+loose slippers, so that the couple might hear her. She came down again
+in her stockings almost at once, carrying the slippers and a small
+bundle containing her belongings. She made no noise now, though it was
+almost quite dark, and in another instant she was out on the road to
+Rome. It had all been done so quickly that she could still hear the
+jingling of Mommo's mule bells in the distance. She had only a few
+hundred yards to run, and she was walking at the tail of the cart with
+one hand resting on Marcello's knee as he lay there wrapped up in the
+ragged blanket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was clear dawn, and there was confusion at the Porta San Giovanni.
+Mommo had wakened, red-eyed and cross as usual, a little while before
+reaching the gate, and had uttered several strange noises to quicken the
+pace of his mules. After that, everything had happened as usual, for a
+little while; he had stopped inside the walls before the guard-house of
+the city customs, had nodded to the octroi inspectors, and had got his
+money ready while the printed receipt was being filled out. Then the
+excitement had begun.
+
+"You have a passenger," said one, and Mommo stared at him, not
+understanding.
+
+"You have a dead man on behind!" yelled a small boy, standing at safe
+distance.
+
+Mommo began to swear, but one of the inspectors stopped him.
+
+"Get down," said the man. "The carabineers are coming."
+
+Mommo finished his swearing internally, but with increased fervour. The
+small boy was joined by others, and they began to jeer in chorus, and
+perform war-dances.
+
+"There is a tax on dead men!" they screamed. "You must pay!"
+
+"May you all be butchered!" shouted Mommo, in a voice of thunder. "May
+your insides be fried!"
+
+"Brute beast, without education!" hooted the biggest boy,
+contemptuously.
+
+"I'll give you the education, and the instruction too," retorted the
+carter, making at them with his long whip.
+
+They scattered in all directions, like a flock of cawing jackdaws that
+fly a little way in tremendous haste, and then settle again at a
+distance and caw louder than before.
+
+"Animal!" they yelled. "Animal! Animal and beast!"
+
+By this time a crowd had collected round the cart, and two carabineers
+had come up to see what was the matter, quiet, sensible men in
+extraordinary cocked hats and well-fitting swallow-tailed uniforms of
+the fashion of 1810. The carabineers are quite the finest corps in the
+Italian service, and there are a good many valid reasons why their
+antiquated dress should not be changed. Their presence means law and
+order without unnecessary violence.
+
+Mommo was surly, but respectful enough. Yes, it was his cart, and he was
+a regular carter on the Frascati road. Yes, this was undoubtedly a sick
+man, who had climbed upon the cart while Mommo was asleep. Of course he
+had slept on the road, all carters did, and he had no dog, else no one
+would have dared to take liberties with his cart. No, he had never seen
+the sick man. The carabineers might send him to penal servitude for
+life, tear out his tongue, cut off his ears and nose, load him with
+chains, and otherwise annoy him, but he had never seen the sick man. If
+he had seen him, he would have pulled him off, and kicked him all the
+way to the hospital, where he ought to be. What right had such brigands
+as sick men to tamper with the carts of honest people? If the fellow had
+legs to jump upon the cart, he had legs to walk. Had Mommo ever done
+anything wrong in his life, that this should be done to him? Had he
+stolen, or killed anybody, or tried to evade the octroi duty? No. Then
+why should an ugly thief of a sick man climb upon his cart? The wretch
+had hardly clothes enough to cover him decently--a torn shirt and a pair
+of old trousers that he must have stolen, for they were much too short
+for him! And so on, and so forth, to the crowd, for the carabineers paid
+no more attention to him after he had answered their first questions;
+but the crowd listened with interest, the small boys drew near again,
+the octroi inspectors looked on, and Mommo had a sympathetic audience.
+It was the general opinion that he had been outrageously put upon, and
+that some one had murdered the sick man, and had tied the body to the
+cart in order that Mommo should be accused of the crime, it being highly
+likely that a murderer should take so much unnecessary trouble to carry
+his victim and the evidence of his crime about with him in such a very
+public manner.
+
+"If he were dead, now," observed an old peasant, who had trudged in with
+a bundle on his back, "you would immediately be sent to the galleys."
+
+This was so evident that the crowd felt very sorry for Mommo.
+
+"Of course I should," he answered. "By this time to-morrow I should have
+chains on my legs, and be breaking stones! What is the law for, I should
+like to know?"
+
+Meanwhile, the carabineers had lifted Marcello very gently from the cart
+and had carried him into the octroi guard-house, where they set him in a
+chair, wrapped the ragged blanket round his knees and waist, and poured
+a little wine down his throat. Seeing that he was very weak, and having
+ascertained that he had nothing whatever about him by which he could be
+identified, they sent for the municipal doctor of that quarter of the
+city.
+
+While they were busy within, one of the inspectors chanced to look at
+the closed window, and saw the face of a handsome girl pressed against
+the pane outside, and a pair of dark eyes anxiously watching what was
+going on. The girl was so very uncommonly handsome that the inspector
+went out to look at her, but she saw him coming and moved away, drawing
+her cotton kerchief half across her face. Regina's only fear was that
+Mommo might recognise her, in which case she would inevitably be
+questioned by the carabineers. It was characteristic of the class in
+which she had been brought up, that while she entertained a holy dread
+of being cross-questioned by them, she felt the most complete conviction
+that Marcello was safe in their hands. She had meant that he should
+somehow be taken off the cart at the gate, probably by the inspectors,
+and conveyed at once to the great hospital near by. She knew nothing
+about hospitals, and supposed that when he was once there, she might be
+allowed to come and take care of him. It would be easy, she thought, to
+invent some story to account for her interest in him. But she could do
+nothing until Mommo was gone, and he might recognise her figure even if
+he could not see her face.
+
+Finding that nothing more was wanted of him, and that he was in no
+immediate danger of penal servitude for having been found with a sick
+man on his cart, Mommo started his mules up the paved hill towards the
+church, walking beside them, as the carters mostly do within the city.
+The crowd dispersed, the small boys went off in search of fresh matter
+for contemptuous comment, and Regina went boldly to the door of the
+guard-house.
+
+"Can I be of any use with the sick man?" she asked of the inspector who
+had seen her through the window.
+
+The inspector prided himself on his gallantry and good education.
+
+"Signorina," he said, lifting his round hat with a magnificent gesture,
+"if you were to look only once at a dying man, he would revive and live
+a thousand years."
+
+He made eyes at her in a manner he considered irresistible, and replaced
+his hat on his head, a little on one side. Regina had never been called
+"Signorina" before, and she was well aware that no woman who wears a
+kerchief out of doors, instead of a hat, is entitled to be addressed as
+a lady in Rome; but she was not at all offended by the rank flattery of
+the speech, and she saw that the inspector was a good-natured young
+coxcomb.
+
+"You are too kind," she answered politely. "Do you think I can be of any
+use?"
+
+"There are the carabineers," objected the inspector, as if that were a
+sufficient answer. "But you may look in through the door and see the
+sick man."
+
+"I have seen him through the window. He looks very ill."
+
+"Ah, Signorina," sighed the youth, "if I were ill, I should pray the
+saints to send you--"
+
+He was interrupted by the arrival of the doctor, who asked him what was
+the matter, and was at once led in by him. Regina withdrew to a little
+distance in the direction of the church and waited. The doctor had come
+in a cab, and in a few moments she saw Marcello carried out and placed
+in it. Then she walked as fast as she could towards the church, quite
+sure that the cab would stop at the door of the hospital, and anxious to
+be within sight of it. Everything had turned out well, even beyond her
+expectations. The cab passed her at a brisk pace before she reached the
+top of the hill, and though she walked as fast as she could, it was no
+longer there when she had gone far enough to see the door. The doctor,
+who was a busy man, had handed Marcello over to the men on duty at the
+entrance, with an order he had pencilled on his card while driving up,
+and had gone on at once. But Regina was convinced that Marcello was
+there, as she hurried forward.
+
+A man in blue linen clothes and a laced cap stopped her on the steps and
+asked what she wanted.
+
+"A young man has just been brought here, very ill," she explained, "and
+I want to see him."
+
+"A very young man? Fair? Thin? From the Campagna? In rags?"
+
+"Yes. I want to see him."
+
+"You can see him to-morrow, if he is alive," answered the orderly in a
+business-like tone.
+
+"To-morrow?" repeated Regina, in a tone of profound disappointment.
+
+"To-morrow is Sunday. Friends and relatives can visit patients on
+Sundays between nine and four."
+
+"But he has no other friends," pleaded Regina. "Please, please let me go
+to him!"
+
+"To-morrow between nine and four."
+
+"No, no--to-day--now--he knows me--my name is Regina."
+
+"Not if you were the Queen of the world," answered the orderly, jesting
+with perfect calm. "You must have a written order from the
+Superintendent."
+
+"Yes, yes! Let me see him!"
+
+"You can see him on Mondays between ten and twelve."
+
+"The day after to-morrow?" cried Regina in despair.
+
+"Yes, between ten and twelve, the day after to-morrow."
+
+"But I may come to-morrow without an order?"
+
+"Yes. Friends and relatives can visit patients on Sundays between nine
+and four."
+
+The man's imperturbability was exasperating, and Regina, who was not
+patient, felt that if she stayed any longer she should try to take him
+by the collar, shake him, and force her way in. But she was much too
+sensible to do anything so rash. There was no choice but to go away.
+
+"Thank you," she said, as she turned to go down the steps.
+
+"You are welcome," the man answered very civilly, for he was watching
+her and was reflecting that he had never seen such a face and figure
+before.
+
+Some hours later, when the police communicated with the Superintendent,
+and when he found that a woman had come to the door who said that she
+knew the waif, and had been sent away, he called the orderly who had
+been on duty several hard names in his heart for having followed the
+rule of the hospital so scrupulously. He was an antediluvian, he was a
+case of arrested mental development, he was an ichthyosaurus, he was a
+new kind of idiot, he was a monumental fool, he was the mammoth ass
+reported to have been seen by a medi�val traveller in the desert, that
+was forty cubits high, and whose braying was like the blast of ten
+thousand trumpets. The Superintendent wished he had time to select more
+choice epithets for that excellent orderly, but the police seemed so
+particularly curious about the new patient that he had no leisure for
+thinking out what he wanted.
+
+Nevertheless, the man had done his duty and nothing more nor less
+according to the rules, and Regina was forced to go away discomfited.
+
+She walked a hundred yards or more down the hill, towards San Clemente,
+and then stood still to think. The sun had risen, and Marcello was safe,
+though she could not see him. That was something. She stood there,
+young, strong, beautiful, and absolutely penniless; and Rome was before
+her.
+
+For the first time since the previous evening she asked herself what was
+to become of her, and how she was to find bread for that day and for the
+next, and for all the days afterwards. She would have robbed a church to
+feed Marcello, but she would sooner have lost her right hand than steal
+so much as a crust for herself. As for begging, she was too proud, and
+besides, no one would have given her anything, for she was the picture
+of health, her rough clothes were whole and clean, she had tiny gold
+earrings in her ears, and the red and yellow cotton kerchief on her head
+was as good as new. Nobody would believe that she was hungry.
+
+Meanwhile Marcello was made comfortable in one of the narrow white beds
+of an airy ward in the San Giovanni hospital. The institution is
+intended for women only, but there is now a ward for male patients, who
+are admitted when too ill to be taken farther. The doctor on duty had
+written him down as much reduced by malarious fever and wandering in his
+mind, but added that he might live and get well. It was wonderful, the
+doctor reflected for the thousandth time in his short experience, that
+humanity should bear so much as it daily did.
+
+The visiting physician, who was a man of learning and reputation, came
+three hours later and examined Marcello with interest. The boy had not
+suffered much by sleeping on the tail of the cart in the warm summer's
+night, and was now greatly refreshed by the cleanliness and comparative
+luxury of his new surroundings. He had no fever now and had slept
+quietly for two hours, but when he tried to remember what had happened
+to him, where he had been, and how he had come to the place where he
+was, it all grew vague and intricate by turns, and his memories faded
+away like the dreams we try to recall when we can only just recollect
+that we have had a dream of some sort. He knew that he was called
+Marcello, but the rest was gone; he knew that a beautiful creature had
+taken care of him, and that her name was Regina. How long? How many days
+and nights had he lain in the attic, hot by day and cold at night? He
+could not guess, and it tired him to try.
+
+The doctor asked two or three questions while he examined him, and then
+stood quite still for a few seconds, watching him intently. The two
+young house surgeons who accompanied the great man kept a respectful
+silence, waiting for his opinion. When he found an interesting case he
+sometimes delivered a little lecture on it, in a quiet monotonous tone
+that did not disturb the other patients. But to-day he did not seem
+inclined to talk.
+
+"Convalescent," he said, "at least of the fever. He needs good food
+more than anything else. In two days he will be walking about."
+
+He passed on, but in his own mind he was wondering what was the matter
+with the young man, why he had lost his memory, and what accident had
+brought him alone and friendless to one of the city hospitals. For the
+present it would be better to let him alone rather than tire him by a
+thorough examination of his head. There was probably a small fracture
+somewhere at the back of the skull, the doctor thought, and it would be
+easy enough to find it when the patient was strong enough to sit up.
+
+The doctor had not been long gone when an elderly man with a grizzled
+moustache and thoughtful eyes was led to Marcello's bedside by the
+Superintendent himself. The appearance of the latter at an unusual hour
+was always an event in the ward, and the nurses watched him with
+curiosity. They would have been still more curious had they known that
+the elderly gentleman was the Chief of the Police himself. The
+Superintendent raised his hand to motion them away.
+
+"What is your name, sir?" asked the Chief, bending down and speaking in
+a low voice.
+
+"Marcello."
+
+"Yes," replied the other, almost in a whisper, "you are Marcello. But
+what else? What is your family name? It is very important. Will you tell
+me?"
+
+The vague look came into Marcello's eyes, and then the look of pain, and
+he shook his head rather feebly.
+
+"I cannot remember," he answered at last. "It hurts me to remember."
+
+"Is it Consalvi?" asked the officer, smiling encouragement.
+
+"Consalvi?" Marcello's eyes wandered, as he tried to think. "I cannot
+remember," he said again after an interval.
+
+The Chief of Police was not discouraged yet.
+
+"You were knocked down and robbed by thieves, just after you had been
+talking with Aurora," he said, inventing what he believed to have
+happened.
+
+A faint light came into Marcello's eyes.
+
+"Aurora?" He repeated the name almost eagerly.
+
+"Yes. You had been talking to Signorina Aurora dell' Armi. You remember
+that?"
+
+The light faded suddenly.
+
+"I thought I remembered something," answered Marcello. "Aurora? Aurora?
+No, it is gone. I was dreaming again. I want to sleep now."
+
+The Chief stood upright and looked at the Superintendent, who looked at
+him, and both shook their heads. Then they asked what the visiting
+doctor had said, and what directions he had given about Marcello's
+treatment.
+
+"I am sure it is he," said the Chief of Police when they were closeted
+in the Superintendent's office, five minutes later. "I have studied his
+photograph every day for nearly three months. Look at it."
+
+He produced a good-sized photograph of Marcello which had been taken
+about a year earlier, but was the most recent. The Superintendent
+looked at it critically, and said it was not much like the patient. The
+official objected that a man who was half dead of fever and had lain
+starving for weeks, heaven only knew where, could hardly be quite
+himself in appearance. The Superintendent pointed out that this was
+precisely the difficulty; the photograph was not like the sick man. But
+the Chief politely insisted that it was. They differed altogether on
+this point, but quarrelled over it in the most urbane manner possible.
+
+The Superintendent suggested that it would be easy to identify Marcello
+Consalvi, by bringing people who knew him to his bedside, servants and
+others. The official answered that he should prefer to be sure of
+everything before calling in any one else. The patient had evidently
+lost his memory by some accident, and if he could not recall his own
+name it was not likely that he could recognise a face. Servants would
+swear that it was he, or not he, just as their interest suggested. Most
+of the people of his own class who knew him were out of town at the
+present season; and besides, the upper classes were not, in the Chief's
+opinion, a whit more intelligent or trustworthy than those that served
+them. The world, said the Chief, was an exceedingly bad place. That this
+was true, the Superintendent could not doubt, and he admitted the fact;
+but he was not sure how the Chief was applying the statement of it in
+his own reasoning. Perhaps he thought that some persons might have an
+interest in recognising Marcello.
+
+"In the meantime," said the Chief, rising to go away, "we will put him
+in a private room, where we shall not be watched by everybody when we
+come to see him. I have funds from Corbario to pay any possible expenses
+in the case."
+
+"Who is that man?" asked the Superintendent. "There has been a great
+deal of talk about him in the papers since his stepson was lost. What
+was he before he married the rich widow?"
+
+The Chief of Police did not reply at once, but lit a cigarette
+preparatory to going away, smoothed his hat on his arm, and flicked a
+tiny speck of dust from the lapel of his well-made coat. Then he smiled
+pleasantly and gave his answer.
+
+"I suppose that before he married Consalvi's widow he was a gentleman of
+small means, like many others. Why should you think that he was ever
+anything else?"
+
+To this direct question the Superintendent had no answer ready, nor, in
+fact, had the man who asked it, though he had looked so very wise. Then
+they glanced at each other and both laughed a little, and they parted.
+
+Half an hour later, Marcello was carried to an airy room with green
+blinds, and was made even more comfortable than he had been before. He
+slept, and awoke, and ate and slept again. Twice during the afternoon
+people were brought to see him. They were servants from the villa on the
+Janiculum, but he looked at them dully and said that he could not
+remember them.
+
+"We do not think it is he," they said, when questioned. "Why does he
+not know us, if it is he? We are old servants in the house. We carried
+the young gentleman in our arms when he was small. But this youth does
+not know us, nor our names. It is not he."
+
+They were dismissed, and afterwards they met and talked up at the villa.
+
+"The master has been sent for by telegraph," they said one to another.
+"We shall do what he says. If he tells us that it is the young gentleman
+we will also say that it is; but if he says it is not he, we will also
+deny it. This is the only way."
+
+Having decided upon this diplomatic course as the one most likely to
+prove advantageous to them, they went back to their several occupations
+and amusements. But at the very first they said what they really
+thought; none of them really believed the sick youth at the hospital to
+be Marcello. An illness of nearly seven weeks and a long course of
+privation can make a terrible difference in the looks of a very young
+person, and when the memory is gone, too, the chances of his being
+recognised are slight.
+
+But the Chief of Police was not disturbed in his belief, and after he
+had smoked several cigarettes very thoughtfully in his private office,
+he wrote a telegram to Corbario, advising him to come back to Rome at
+once. He was surprised to receive an answer from Folco late that night,
+inquiring why he was wanted. To this he replied in a second telegram of
+more length, which explained matters clearly. The next morning Corbario
+telegraphed that he was starting.
+
+The visiting physician came early and examined Marcello's head with the
+greatest minuteness. After much trouble he found what he was looking
+for--a very slight depression in the skull. There was no sign of a wound
+that had healed, and it was clear that the injury must have been either
+the result of a fall, in which case the scalp had been protected by a
+stiff hat, or else of a blow dealt with something like a sandbag, which
+had fractured the bone without leaving any mark beyond a bruise, now no
+longer visible.
+
+"It is my opinion," said the doctor, "that as soon as the pressure is
+removed the man's memory will come back exactly as it was before. We
+will operate next week, when he has gained a little more strength. Feed
+him and give him plenty of air, for he is very weak."
+
+So he went away for the day. But presently Regina came and demanded
+admittance according to the promise she had received, and she was
+immediately brought to the Superintendent's office, for he had given
+very clear instructions to this effect in case the girl came again. He
+had not told the Chief of Police about her, for he thought it would be
+amusing to do a little detective work on his own account, and he
+anticipated the triumph of finding out Marcello's story alone, and of
+then laying the facts before the authorities, just to show what ordinary
+common sense could do without the intervention of the law.
+
+Regina was ushered into the high cool room where the Superintendent sat
+alone, and the heavy door closed behind her. He was a large man with
+close-cropped hair and a short brown beard, and he had kind brown eyes.
+Regina came forward a few steps and then stood still, looking at him,
+and waiting for him to speak. He was astonished at her beauty, and at
+once decided that she had a romantic attachment for Marcello, and
+probably knew all about him. He leaned back in his chair, and pointed to
+a seat near him.
+
+"Pray sit down," he said. "I wish to have a little talk with you before
+you go upstairs to see Marcello."
+
+"How is he?" asked Regina, eagerly. "Is he worse?"
+
+"He is much better. But sit down, if you please. You shall stay with him
+as long as you like, or as long as it is good for him. You may come
+every day if you wish it."
+
+"Every day?" cried Regina in delight. "They told me that I could only
+come on Sunday."
+
+"Yes. That is the rule, my dear child. But I can give you permission to
+come every day, and as the poor young man seems to have no friends, it
+is very fortunate for him that you can be with him. You will cheer him
+and help him to get well."
+
+"Thank you, thank you!" answered the girl fervently, as she sat down.
+
+A great lady of Rome had been to see the Superintendent about a patient
+on the previous afternoon; he did not remember that she moved with more
+dignity than this peasant girl, or with nearly as much grace. Regina
+swept the folds of her short coarse skirt forward and sideways a little,
+so that they hid her brown woollen ankles as she took her seat, and with
+the other hand she threw back the end of the kerchief from her face.
+
+"You do not mind telling me your name?" said the Superintendent in a
+questioning tone.
+
+"Spalletta Regina," answered the girl promptly, putting her family name
+first, according to Italian custom. "I am of Rocca di Papa."
+
+"Thank you. I shall remember that. And you say that you know this poor
+young man. Now, what is his name, if you please? He does not seem able
+to remember anything about himself."
+
+"I have always called him Marcello," answered Regina.
+
+"Indeed? You call him Marcello? Yes, yes. Thank you. But, you know, we
+like to write down the full name of each patient in our books. Marcello,
+and then? What else?"
+
+By this time Regina felt quite at her ease with the pleasant-spoken
+gentleman, but in a flash it occurred to her that he would think it very
+strange if she could not answer such a simple question about a young man
+she professed to know very well.
+
+"His name is Botti," she said, with no apparent hesitation, and giving
+the first name that occurred to her.
+
+"Thank you. I shall enter him in the books as 'Botti Marcello.'"
+
+"Yes. That is the name." She watched the Superintendent's pen, though
+she could not read writing very well.
+
+"Thank you," he said, as he stuck the pen into a little pot of
+small-shot before him, and then looked at his watch. "The nurse is
+probably just making him comfortable after the doctor's morning visit,
+so you had better wait five minutes, if you do not mind. Besides, it
+will help us a good deal if you will tell me something about his
+illness. I suppose you have taken care of him."
+
+"As well as I could," Regina answered.
+
+"Where? At Rocca di Papa? The air is good there."
+
+"No, it was not in the village." The girl hesitated a moment, quickly
+making up her mind how much of the truth to tell. "You see," she
+continued presently, "I was only the servant girl there, and I saw that
+the people meant to let him die, because he was a burden on them. So I
+wrapped him in a blanket and carried him downstairs in the night."
+
+"You carried him down?" The Superintendent look at her in admiration.
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Regina quietly. "I could carry you up and down
+stairs easily. Do you wish to see?"
+
+The Superintendent laughed, for she actually made a movement as if she
+were going to leave her seat and pick him up.
+
+"Thank you," he said. "I quite believe you. What a nurse you would make!
+You say that you carried him down in the night--and then? What did you
+do?"
+
+"I laid him on the tail of a cart. The carter was asleep. I walked
+behind to the gate, for I was sure that when he was found he would be
+brought here, and that he would have care, and would get well."
+
+"Was it far to walk?" inquired the Superintendent, delighted with the
+result of his efforts as a detective. "You must have been very tired!"
+
+"What is it to walk all night, if one carries no load on one's head?"
+asked Regina with some scorn. "I walk as I breathe."
+
+"You walked all night, then? That was Friday night. I do not wish to
+keep you, my dear child, but if you would tell me how long Botti has
+been ill--" he waited.
+
+"This is the forty-ninth day," Regina answered at once.
+
+"Dear me! Poor boy! That is a long time!"
+
+"I stole eggs and wine to keep him alive," the girl explained. "They
+tried to make me give him white beans and oil. They wanted him to die,
+because he was an expense to them."
+
+"Who were those people?" asked the Superintendent, putting the question
+suddenly.
+
+But Regina had gained time to prepare her story.
+
+"Why should I tell you who they are?" she asked. "They did no harm,
+after all, and they let him lie in their house. At first they hoped he
+would get well, but you know how it is in the country. When sick people
+linger on, every one wishes them to die, because they are in the way,
+and cost money. That is how it is."
+
+"But you wished him to live," said the Superintendent in an encouraging
+tone.
+
+Regina shrugged her shoulders and smiled, without the slightest
+affectation or shyness.
+
+"What could I do?" she asked. "A passion for him had taken me, the first
+time that I saw him. So I stole for him, and sat up with him, and did
+what was possible. He lay in an attic with only one blanket, and my
+heart spoke. What could I do? If he had died I should have thrown myself
+into the water below the mill."
+
+Now there had been no mill within many miles of the inn on the Frascati
+road, in which there could be water in summer. Regina was perfectly
+sincere in describing her love for Marcello, but as she was a clever
+woman she knew that it was precisely when she was speaking with the
+greatest sincerity about one thing, that she could most easily throw a
+man off the scent with regard to another. The Superintendent mentally
+noted the allusion to the mill for future use; it had created an image
+in his mind; it meant that the place where Marcello had lain ill had
+been in the hills and probably near Tivoli, where there is much water
+and mills are plentiful.
+
+"I suppose he was a poor relation of the people," said the
+Superintendent thoughtfully, after a little pause. "That is why they
+wished to get rid of him."
+
+Regina made a gesture of indifferent assent, and told something like
+the truth.
+
+"He had not been there since I had been servant to them," she answered.
+"It must have been a long time since they had seen him. We found him
+early in the morning, lying unconscious against the door of the house,
+and we took him in. That is the whole story. Why should I tell you who
+the people are? I have eaten their bread, I have left them, I wish them
+no harm. They knew their business."
+
+"Certainly, my dear, certainly. I suppose I may say that Marcello Botti
+comes from Rocca di Papa?"
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Regina readily. "You may say that, if you like."
+
+As a matter of fact she did not care what he wrote in his big book, and
+he might as well write one name as another, so far as she was concerned.
+
+"But I never saw him there," she added by an afterthought. "There are
+many people of that name in our village, but I never saw him. Perhaps
+you had better say that he came from Albano."
+
+"Why from Albano?" asked the Superintendent, surprised.
+
+"It is a bigger place," explained Regina quite naturally.
+
+"Then I might as well write 'Rome' at once?"
+
+"Yes. Why not? If you must put down the name of a town in the book, you
+had better write a big one. You will be less likely to be found out if
+you have made a mistake."
+
+"I see," said the Superintendent, smiling. "I am much obliged for your
+advice. And now, if you will come with me, you shall see Botti. He has a
+room by himself and is very well cared for."
+
+The orderlies and nurses who came and went about the hospital glanced
+with a little discreet surprise at the handsome peasant girl who
+followed the Superintendent, but she paid no attention to them and
+looked straight before her, at the back of his head; for her heart was
+beating faster than if she had run a mile uphill.
+
+Marcello put out his arms when he saw her enter, and returning life sent
+a faint colour to his emaciated cheeks.
+
+"Regina--at last!" he cried in a stronger and clearer tone than she had
+ever heard him use.
+
+A splendid blush of pleasure glowed in her own face as she ran forward
+and leaned over him, smoothing the smooth pillow unconsciously, and
+looking down into his eyes.
+
+The Superintendent observed that Marcello certainly had no difficulty in
+recalling the girl's name, whatever might have become of his own during
+his illness. What Regina answered was not audible, but she kissed
+Marcello's eyes, and then stood upright beside the bed, and laughed a
+little.
+
+"What can I do?" she asked. "It is a passion! When I see him, I see
+nothing else. And then, I saved his life. Are you glad that Regina saved
+your life?" She bent down again, and her gentle hand played with
+Marcello's waving fair hair. "What should you have done without Regina?"
+
+"I should have died," Marcello answered happily.
+
+With much more strength than she had been used to find in him, he threw
+his arms round her neck and drew her face down to his.
+
+The Superintendent spoke to the nurse in a low tone, by the door, and
+both went out, leaving the two together. He was a sensible man, and a
+kind-hearted one; and though he was no doctor, he guessed that the
+peasant girl's glorious vitality would do as much for the sick man as
+any medicine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Corbario reached Rome in the afternoon, and the footman who stood
+waiting for him on the platform was struck by the change in his
+appearance. His eyes were hollow and bright, his cheeks were sunken, his
+lips looked dry; moreover, he moved a little nervously and his foot
+slipped as he got out of the carriage, so that he nearly fell. In the
+crowd, the footman asked his valet questions. Was he ill? What had
+happened to him? Was he consuming himself with grief? No, the valet
+thought not. He had been much better in Paris and had seen some old
+friends there. What harm was there in that? A bereaved man needed
+diversion. The change had come suddenly, when he had decided to return
+to Rome, and he had eaten nothing for thirty-six hours. The valet asked
+if the youth at the hospital, of whom Corbario had told him, were really
+Marcello. The footman answered that none of the servants thought so,
+after they had all been taken to see him.
+
+Having exchanged these confidences in the half-dumb language which
+servants command, they reached the gate. The footman rushed out to call
+the carriage, the valet delivered the tickets and followed the footman
+more slowly, carrying Corbario's bag and coat, and Corbario lighted a
+cigar and followed his man at a leisurely pace, absorbed in thought.
+
+Until the moment of passing the gate he had meant to drive directly to
+the hospital, which is at some distance from the station in a direction
+almost opposite to that of the Janiculum. He could have driven there in
+ten minutes, whereas he must lose more than an hour by going home first
+and then coming back. But his courage failed him, he felt faint and
+sick, and quite unable to bear any great emotion until he had rested and
+refreshed himself a little. A long railway journey stupefies some men,
+but makes others nervous and inclined to exaggerate danger or trouble.
+During the last twelve hours Corbario had been forcing himself to decide
+that he would go to the hospital and know the worst at once, but now
+that the moment was come he could not do it.
+
+He was walking slowly through the outer hall of the station when a large
+man came up with him and greeted him quietly. It was Professor Kalmon.
+Corbario started at the sound of his voice. They had not met since
+Kalmon had been at the cottage.
+
+"I wish I had known that you were in the train," the Professor said.
+
+"So do I," answered Corbario without enthusiasm. "Not that I am very
+good company," he added, looking sideways at the other's face and
+meeting a scrutinising glance.
+
+"You look ill," Kalmon replied. "I don't wonder."
+
+"I sometimes wish I had one of those tablets of yours that send people
+to sleep for ever," said Corbario, making a great effort to speak
+steadily.
+
+But his voice shook, and a sudden terror seized him, the abject fright
+that takes hold of a man who has been accustomed to do something very
+dangerous and who suddenly finds that his nerve is gone at the very
+moment of doing it again.
+
+The cold sweat stood on Folco's forehead under his hat; he stopped where
+he was and tried to draw a long breath, but something choked him.
+Kalmon's voice seemed to reach him from a great distance. Then he felt
+the Professor's strong arm under his own, supporting him and making him
+move forward.
+
+"The weather is hot," Kalmon said, "and you are ill and tired. Come
+outside."
+
+"It is nothing," Corbario tried to say. "I was dizzy for a moment."
+
+Kalmon and the footman helped him into his low carriage, and raised the
+hood, for the afternoon sun was still very hot.
+
+"Shall I go home with you?" Kalmon asked.
+
+"No, no!" cried Corbario nervously. "You are very kind. I am quite well
+now. Good-bye. Home!" he added to the footman, as he settled himself
+back under the hood, quite out of sight.
+
+The Professor stood still in the glaring heat, looking after the
+carriage, his travelling-bag in his hand, while the crowd poured out of
+the station, making for the cabs and omnibuses that were drawn up in
+rows, or crossing the burning pavement on foot to take the tram.
+
+When the carriage was out of sight, Kalmon looked up at the hot sky and
+down at the flagstones, and then made up his mind what to do.
+
+"To the hospital of San Giovanni," he said, as he got into a cab.
+
+He seemed to be well informed, for he inquired at the door about a
+certain Marcello Botti, who was in a private room; and when he gave his
+name he was admitted without even asking permission of the
+Superintendent, and was at once led upstairs.
+
+"Are you a friend of his, sir?" asked Regina, when he had looked a long
+time at the patient, who did not recognise him in the least.
+
+"Are you?" Kalmon looked at her quietly across the bed.
+
+"You see," she answered. "If I were not, why should I be here?"
+
+"She has saved my life," said Marcello suddenly, and he caught her hand
+in his and held it fast. "As soon as I am quite well we shall be
+married."
+
+"Certainly, my dear boy, certainly," replied Kalmon, as if it were quite
+a matter of course. "You must make haste and get well as soon as
+possible."
+
+He glanced at Regina's face, and as her eyes met his she shook her head
+almost imperceptibly, and smiled. Kalmon was not quite sure what she
+meant. He made a sign to her to go with him to the window, which was at
+some distance from the bed.
+
+"It may be long before he is well," he whispered. "There must be an
+operation."
+
+She nodded, for she knew that.
+
+"And do you expect to marry him when he is recovered?"
+
+She shook her head and laughed, glancing at Marcello.
+
+"He is a gentleman," she whispered, close to Kalmon's ear. "How could he
+marry me?"
+
+"You love him," Kalmon answered.
+
+Again she nodded, and laughed too.
+
+"What would you do for him?" asked Kalmon, looking at her keenly.
+
+"Die for him!"
+
+She meant it, and he saw that she did. Her eyes shone as she spoke, and
+then the lids drooped a little and she looked at him almost fiercely. He
+turned from her and his fingers softly tapped the marble window-sill. He
+was asking himself whether he could swear to Marcello's identity, in
+case he should be called upon to give evidence. On what could he base
+his certainty? Was he himself certain, or was he merely moved by the
+strong resemblance he saw, in spite of long illness and consequent
+emaciation? Was the visiting surgeon right in believing that the little
+depression in the skull had caused a suspension of memory? Such things
+happened, no doubt, but it also happened that doctors were mistaken and
+that nothing came of such operations. Who could prove the truth? The boy
+and girl might have a secret to keep; she might have arranged to get him
+into the hospital because it was his only chance, but the rest of the
+story, such as it was, might be a pure invention; and when Marcello was
+discharged cured, they would disappear together. There was the
+coincidence of the baptismal name, but men of science know how deceptive
+coincidences can be. Besides, the girl was very intelligent. She might
+easily have heard about the real Marcello's disappearance, and she was
+clever enough to have given her lover the name in the hope that he might
+be taken for the lost boy at least long enough to ensure him a great
+deal more comfort and consideration in the hospital than he otherwise
+would have got; she was clever enough to have seen that it would be a
+mistake to say outright that he was Marcello Consalvi, if she was
+practising a deception. Kalmon did not know what to think, and he wished
+the operation could be performed before Corbario came; but that was
+impossible.
+
+Regina stood beside him, waiting for him to speak again.
+
+"Do you need money?" he asked abruptly, with a sharp look at her face.
+
+"No, thank you, sir," she answered. "He has everything here."
+
+"But for yourself?" He kept his eyes on her.
+
+"I thank you, sir, I want nothing." Her look met his almost coldly as
+she spoke.
+
+"But when he is well again, how shall you live?"
+
+"I shall work for him, if it turns out that he has no friends. We shall
+soon know, for his memory will come back after the operation. The
+doctors say so. They know."
+
+"And if he has friends after all? If he is really the man I think he
+is, what then? What will become of you?"
+
+"I do not know. I am his. He can do what he likes with me."
+
+The Professor did not remember to have met any one who took quite such
+an elementary view of life, but he could not help feeling a sort of
+sympathy for the girl's total indifference to consequences.
+
+"I shall come to see him again," he said presently, turning back towards
+the bed and approaching Marcello. "Are you quite sure that you never saw
+me before?" he asked, taking the young man's hand.
+
+"I don't remember," answered Marcello, wearily. "They all want me to
+remember," he added almost peevishly. "I would if I could, if it were
+only to please them!"
+
+Kalmon went away, for he saw that his presence tired the patient. When
+he was gone Regina sat down beside the bed and stroked Marcello's hand,
+and talked soothingly to him, promising that no one should tease him to
+remember things. By and by, as she sat, she laid her head on the pillow
+beside him, and her sweet breath fanned his face, while a strange light
+played in her half-closed eyes.
+
+"Heart of my heart," she sighed happily. "Love of my soul! Do you know
+that I am all yours, soul and body, and earrings too?" And she laughed
+low.
+
+"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," Marcello answered. "I
+love you!"
+
+She laughed again, and kissed him.
+
+"You love me better than Aurora," she said suddenly.
+
+"Aurora?"
+
+"Yes, for you have forgotten her. But you will not forget Regina now,
+not even when you are very, very old, and your golden hair is all grey.
+You will never forget Regina, now!"
+
+"Never!" echoed Marcello, like a child. "Never, never, never!"
+
+"Not even when your friends try to take me away from you, love, not even
+if they try to kill me, because they want you to marry Aurora, who is a
+rich girl, all dressed with silk and covered with jewels, like the image
+of the Madonna at Genazzano. I am sure Aurora has yellow hair and blue
+eyes!"
+
+"I don't want any one but you," answered Marcello, drawing her face
+nearer.
+
+So the time passed, and it was to them as if there were no time. Then
+the door opened again, and a very pale man in deep mourning was brought
+in by the Superintendent himself. Regina rose and drew back a little, so
+that the shadow should not fall across Marcello's face, and she fixed
+her eyes on the gentleman in black.
+
+"This is the patient," said the Superintendent in a low voice.
+
+Corbario laid his hand nervously on his companion's arm, and stood still
+for a moment, holding his breath and leaning forward a little, his gaze
+riveted on Marcello's face. Regina had never before seen a man
+transfixed with fear.
+
+He moved a step towards the bed, and then another, forcing himself to go
+on. Then Marcello turned his head and looked at him vacantly. Regina
+heard the long breath Corbario drew, and saw his body straighten, as if
+relieved from a great burden. He stood beside the bed, and put out his
+hand to take Marcello's.
+
+"Do you know me?" he asked; but even then his voice was unsteady.
+
+Instead of answering, Marcello turned away to Regina.
+
+"You promised that they should not tease me any more," he said
+querulously. "Make them go away! I want to sleep."
+
+Regina came to his side at once, and faced the two men across the bed.
+
+"What is all this for?" she asked, with a little indignation. "You know
+that he cannot remember you, even if he ever saw you before. Cannot you
+leave him in peace? Come back after the operation. Then he will remember
+you, if you really know him."
+
+"Who is this girl?" asked Corbario of the Superintendent.
+
+"She took care of him when he had the fever, and she managed to get him
+here. She has undoubtedly saved his life."
+
+At the words a beautiful blush coloured Regina's cheeks, and her eyes
+were full of triumphant light; but at the same words Corbario's still
+face darkened, and as if it had been a mask that suddenly became
+transparent, the girl saw another face through it, drawn into an
+expression of malignant and devilish hatred.
+
+[Illustration: "HE MOVED A STEP TOWARDS THE BED, AND THEN ANOTHER,
+FORCING HIMSELF TO GO ON."]
+
+The vision only lasted a moment, and the impenetrable pale features were
+there once more, showing neither hate nor fear, nor any feeling or
+emotion whatever. Corbario was himself again, and turned quietly to the
+Superintendent.
+
+"She is quite right," he said. "His memory is gone, and we shall only
+disturb him. You tell me that the doctors have found a very slight
+depression in his head, as if from a blow. Do you think--but it will
+annoy him--I had better not."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the other, as he hesitated.
+
+"It is such a strange case that I should like to see just where it is,
+out of pure curiosity."
+
+"It is here," said Regina, answering, and setting the tip of one
+straight finger against her own head to point out the place.
+
+"Oh, at the back, on the right side? I see--yes--thank you. A little on
+one side, you say?"
+
+"Here," repeated Regina, turning so that Corbario could see exactly
+where the end of her finger touched her hair.
+
+"To think that so slight an injury may have permanently affected the
+young man's memory!" Corbario appeared much impressed. "Well," he
+continued, speaking to Regina, "if we ever find out who he is, his
+relations owe you a debt of gratitude quite beyond all payment."
+
+"Do you think I want to be paid?" asked Regina, and in her indignation
+she turned away and walked to the window.
+
+But Marcello called her back.
+
+"Please, Regina--please tell them to go away!" he pleaded.
+
+Corbario nodded to the Superintendent, and they left the room.
+
+"There is certainly a strong resemblance," said Folco, when they were
+outside, "but it really cannot be my poor Marcello. I was almost too
+much affected by the thought of seeing him again to control myself when
+we first entered, but when I came near I felt nothing. It is not he, I
+am sure. I loved him as if he were my own son; I brought him up; we were
+always together. It is not possible that I should be mistaken."
+
+"No," replied the Superintendent, "I should hardly think it possible.
+Besides, from what the girl has told me, I am quite sure that he lay ill
+near Tivoli. How is it possible that he should have got there, all the
+way from the Roman shore?"
+
+"And with a fractured skull! It is absurd!" Corbario was glad to find
+that the Superintendent held such a strong opinion. "It is not Marcello.
+The nose is not the same, and the expression of the mouth is quite
+different."
+
+He said these things with conviction, but he was not deceived. He knew
+that Marcello Consalvi was living and that he had seen him, risen from
+the dead, and apparently likely to remain among the living for some
+time. The first awful moment of anxiety was past, it was true, and
+Folco was able to think more connectedly than he had since he had
+received the telegram recalling him from Paris; but there was to be
+another. The doctors said that his memory would return--what would he
+remember? It would come back, beginning, most probably, at the very
+moment in which it had been interrupted. For one instant he would fancy
+that he saw again what he had seen then. What had he seen? That was the
+question. Had he seen anything but the sand, the scrubby bushes, and the
+trees round the cottage in the distance? Had he heard anything but the
+howling of the southwest gale and the thundering of the big surf over
+the bar and up the beach? The injury was at the back of his head, but it
+was a little on one side. Had he been in the act of turning? Had he
+turned far enough to see before the blow had extinguished memory? How
+far was the sudden going out of thought really instantaneous? What
+fraction of a second intervened between full life and what was so like
+death? How long did it take a man to look round quickly? Much less than
+a second, surely! Without effort or hurry a man could turn his head all
+the way from left to right, so as to look over each shoulder
+alternately, while a second pendulum swung once. A second was a much
+longer time than most people realised. Instruments made for scientific
+photography could be made to expose the plate not more than
+one-thousandth of a second. Corbario knew that, and wondered whether a
+man's eye could receive any impression in so short a time. He shuddered
+when he thought that it might be possible.
+
+The question was to be answered sooner than he expected. The doctors had
+reported that a week must pass before Marcello would be strong enough to
+undergo the operation, but he improved so quickly after he reached the
+hospital that it seemed useless to wait. It was not considered to be a
+very dangerous operation, nor one which weakened the patient much.
+
+Regina was not allowed to be present, and when Marcello had been wheeled
+out of his room, already under ether, she went and stood before the
+window, pressing down her clasped hands upon the marble sill with all
+her might, and resting her forehead against the green slats of the
+blind. She did not move from this position while the nurse made
+Marcello's bed ready to receive him on his return. It was long to wait.
+The great clock in the square struck eleven some time after he had been
+taken away, then the quarter, then half-past.
+
+Regina felt the blood slowly sinking to her heart. She would have given
+anything to move now, but she could not stir hand or foot; she was cold,
+yet somehow she could not even shiver; that would have been a relief;
+any motion, any shock, any violent pain would have been a thousand times
+better than the marble stillness that was like a spell.
+
+Far away on the Janiculum Folco Corbario sat in his splendid library
+alone, with strained eyes, waiting for the call of the telephone that
+stood on the polished table at his elbow. He, too, was motionless, and
+longed for release as he had never thought he could long for anything. A
+still unlighted cigar was almost bitten through by his sharp front
+teeth; every faculty was tense; and yet it was as if his brain had
+stopped thinking at the point where expectation had begun. He could not
+think now, he could only suffer. If the operation were successful there
+would be more suffering, doubt still more torturing, suspense more
+agonising still.
+
+The great clock over the stables struck eleven, then the quarter, then
+half-past. The familiar chimes floated in through the open windows.
+
+A wild hope came with the sound. Marcello, weak as he was, had died
+under ether, and that was the end. Corbario trembled from head to foot.
+The clock struck the third quarter, but no other sound broke the
+stillness of the near noon-tide. Yes, Marcello must be dead.
+
+Suddenly, in the silence, came the sharp buzz of the instrument. He
+leapt in his seat as if something had struck him unawares, and then,
+instantly controlling himself, he grasped the receiver and held it to
+his ear.
+
+"Signor Corbario?" came the question.
+
+"Yes, himself."
+
+"The hospital. The operation has been successful. Do you hear?"
+
+"Yes. Go on."
+
+"The patient has come to himself. He remembers everything."
+
+"Everything!" Corbario's voice shook.
+
+"He is Marcello Consalvi. He asks for his mother, and for you."
+
+"How--in what way does he ask for me? Will my presence do him good--or
+excite him?"
+
+The moment had come, and Folco's nerve was restored with the sense of
+danger. His face grew cold and expressionless as he waited for the
+answer.
+
+"He speaks most affectionately of you. But you had better not come until
+this afternoon, and then you must not stay long. The doctors say he must
+rest quietly."
+
+"I will come at four o'clock. Thank you. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+The click of the instrument, as Folco hung the receiver on the hook, and
+it was over. He shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair, his arms
+hanging by his sides as if there were no strength in them, and his head
+falling forward till his chin rested on his chest. He remained so for a
+long time without moving.
+
+But in the room at the hospital Marcello lay in bed with his head bound
+up, his cheek on the pillow, and his eyes fixed on Regina's face, as she
+knelt beside him and fanned him slowly, for it was hot.
+
+"Sleep, heart of my heart," she said softly. "Sleep and rest!"
+
+There was a sort of peaceful wonder in his look now. Nothing vacant,
+nothing that lacked meaning or understanding. But he did not answer her,
+he only gazed into her face, and gazed and gazed till his eyelids
+drooped and he fell asleep with a smile on his lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Two years had passed since Marcello had been brought home from the
+hospital, very feeble still, but himself again and master of his memory
+and thoughts.
+
+In his recollection, however, there was a blank. He had left Aurora
+standing in the gap, where the storm swept inland from the sea; then the
+light had gone out suddenly, in something violent which he could not
+understand, and after that he could remember nothing except that he had
+wandered in lonely places, trying to find out which way he was going,
+and terrified by the certainty that he had lost all sense of direction;
+so he had wandered on by day and night, as in a dark dream, and had at
+last fallen asleep, to wake in the wretched garret of the inn on the
+Frascati road, with Regina kneeling beside him and moistening his lips
+from a glass of water.
+
+He remembered that and other things, which came back to him uncertainly,
+like the little incidents of his early childhood, like the first words
+he could remember hearing and answering, like the sensation of being on
+his mother's knee and resting his head upon her shoulder, like the smell
+of the roses and the bitter-orange blossoms in the villa, like the first
+sensation of being set upon a pony's back in San Domenico, while
+Corbario held him up in the saddle, and tried to make his little hands
+hold the bridle. The inn was quite as far away as all that, and but for
+Regina he might have forgotten it altogether.
+
+She was "Consalvi's Regina" now; half Rome called her that, and she was
+famous. Naples and Florence and Milan had heard of her; she had been
+seen at Monte Carlo, and even in Paris and London her name was not
+unknown in places where young men congregate to discuss the wicked
+world, and where young women meet to compare husbands, over the secret
+and sacrificial teapot which represents virtue, or the less sacred
+bridge-table which represents vice. Smart young dandies who had never
+exchanged a word with her spoke of her familiarly as "Regina "; smarter
+and older men, who knew her a little, talked of her as "the Spalletta,"
+not without a certain respect; their mothers branded her as "that
+creature," and their wives, who envied her, called her "Consalvi's
+Regina."
+
+When people remonstrated with Folco Corbario for allowing his stepson
+too much liberty, he shook his head gravely and answered that he did
+what he could to keep Marcello in the right way, but that the boy's
+intellect had been shaken by the terrible accident, and that he had
+undoubtedly developed vicious tendencies--probably atavistic, Folco
+added. Why did Folco allow him to have so much money? The answer was
+that he was of age and the fortune was his. But why had Folco let him
+have it before he was twenty-one, ever since he was found and brought
+home? He had not had much, was the reply; at least it had not been much
+compared with the whole income he now enjoyed one could not bring up the
+heir of a great estate like a pauper, could one? So the questioners
+desisted from questioning, but they said among themselves that, although
+Folco had been an admirable husband and stepfather while his wife had
+lived, he had not shown as much good sense after her death as they had
+been led to expect. Meanwhile, no one had any right to interfere, and
+Marcello did as he pleased.
+
+Children instinctively attach themselves to whichever of their parents
+gives them the most liberty. It is sheer nonsense to deny it. Marcello
+had loved his mother dearly, but she had always been the one to hinder
+him from doing what he wished to do, because she had been excessively
+anxious about his bodily health, and over-desirous of bringing him up to
+manhood in a state of ideal moral perfection. Folco, on the other hand,
+had been associated with all the boy's sports and pleasures, and had
+always encouraged him to amuse himself, giving as a reason that there
+was no medicine like healthy happiness for a boy of delicate
+constitution. Corbario, like Satan, knew the uses of truth, which are
+numerous and not all good. Though Marcello would not have acknowledged
+it to himself, his stepfather had been nearer to him, and more necessary
+to him, than his mother, during several years; and besides, it was less
+hard to bear the loss of which he learned when he recovered, because it
+had befallen him during that dark and uncertain period of his illness
+that now seemed as if it had lasted for years, and whereby everything
+that had been before it belonged to a remote past.
+
+Moreover, there was Regina, and there was youth, and there was liberty;
+and Corbario was at hand, always ready to encourage and satisfy his
+slightest whim, on the plea that a convalescent must be humoured at any
+cost, and that there would be time enough to consider what should be
+done with Regina after Marcello was completely recovered. After all,
+Corbario told him, the girl had saved his life, and it was only right to
+be grateful, and she should be amply rewarded for all the trouble she
+had taken. It would have been sheer cruelty to have sent her away to the
+country; and what was the cost of a quiet lodging for her in Trastevere,
+and of a few decent clothes, and of a respectable middle-aged
+woman-servant to take care of her? Nothing at all; only a few francs,
+and Marcello was so rich! Regina, also, was so very unusually
+well-behaved, and so perfectly docile, so long as she was allowed to see
+Marcello every day! She did not care for dress at all, and was quite
+contented to wear black, with just a touch of some tender colour.
+Corbario made it all very easy, and saw to everything, and he seemed to
+know just how such things were arranged. He was so fortunate as to find
+a little house that had a quiet garden with an entrance on another
+street, all in very good condition because it had lately been used by a
+famous foreign painter who preferred to live in Trastevere, away from
+the interruptions and distractions of the growing city; and by a very
+simple transaction the house became the property of the minor, Marcello
+Consalvi, to do with as he thought fit. This was much more convenient
+than paying rent to a tiresome landlord who might at any time turn his
+tenant out. Corbario thought of everything. Twice a week a gardener
+came, early in the morning, and soon the garden was really pretty; and
+the respectable woman-servant watered the flowers every evening just
+before sunset. There was a comfortable Calcutta chair for Marcello in a
+shady corner, the very first time he came there, and Regina had learned
+how to make tea for him; for the respectable woman-servant knew how to
+do all sorts of things belonging to civilised life. She was so intensely
+respectable and quiet that Marcello was almost afraid of her, until it
+occurred to him that as she took so much trouble, he ought to give her a
+present of money; and when he had done this twice, he somehow became
+aware that she was his devoted slave--middle-aged and excessively
+respectable. Folco was really a very good judge of character, Marcello
+thought, since he could at once pick out such a person from the great
+horde of the unemployed.
+
+Her name was Settimia, and it was wonderful to see how she quietly
+transformed Regina into a civilised creature, who must attract attention
+by her beauty and carriage, but who might have belonged to a
+middle-class Roman family so far as manners and dress were concerned. It
+is true that the girl possessed by nature the innate dignity of the
+Roman peasant, with such a figure and such grace as any aristocrat might
+have envied, and that she spoke with the Roman accent which almost all
+other Italians admire; but though her manners had a certain repose, they
+were often of an extremely unexpected nature, and she had an
+astonishingly simple way of calling things by their names which
+sometimes disconcerted Marcello and sometimes amused him. Settimia
+civilised her, almost without letting her know it, for she was quick to
+learn, like all naturally clever people who have had no education, and
+she was imitative, as all womanly women are when they are obliged to
+adapt themselves quickly to new surroundings. She was stimulated, too,
+by the wish to appear well before Marcello, lest he should ever be
+ashamed of her. That was all. She never had the least illusion about
+herself, nor any hope of raising herself to his social level. She was
+far too much the real peasant girl for that, the descendant of thirty or
+more generations of serfs, the offspring of men and women who had felt
+that they belonged body and soul to the feudal lord of the land on which
+they were born, and had never been disturbed by tempting dreams of
+liberty, equality, fraternity, and the violent destruction of ladies and
+gentlemen.
+
+So she lived, and so she learned many things of Settimia, and looked
+upon herself as the absolute property of the man she loved and had
+saved; and she was perfectly happy, if not perfectly good.
+
+"When I am of age," Marcello used to say, "I shall buy a beautiful
+little palace near the Tiber, and you shall live in it."
+
+"Why?" she always asked. "Are we not happy here? Is it not cool in
+summer, and sunny in winter? Have we not all we want? When you marry,
+your wife will live in the splendid villa on the Janiculum, and when you
+are tired of her, you will come and see Regina here. I hope you will
+always be tired of her. Then I shall be happy."
+
+Marcello would laugh a little, and then he would look grave and
+thoughtful, for he had not forgotten Aurora, and sometimes wondered what
+she was doing, as a young man does who is losing his hold upon himself,
+and on the things in which he has always believed. He who has never
+lived through such times and outlived them, knows neither the world nor
+himself.
+
+Marcello wondered whether Aurora would ever meet Regina face to face,
+and what would happen if he were called upon to choose between the two.
+He would choose Regina, he said to himself, when he was going down the
+steep way from the villa to the little house, eager for her touch, her
+voice, her breath, and feeling in his pocket the key that opened the
+garden gate. But when the hours had passed, and he slowly walked up the
+road under the great plane-trees, in the cool of the late evening,
+glancing at the distant lights of Rome beyond the Tiber, and dimly
+conscious that something was still unsatisfied, then he hesitated and he
+remembered his boyish love, and fancied that if he met Aurora in the way
+they would stand still, each finding the other in the other's eyes, and
+silently kiss, as they had kissed long ago. Yet, with the thought, he
+felt shame, and he blushed, alone there under the plane-trees.
+
+But Aurora had never come back to Rome, and the small apartment that
+overlooked the Forum of Trajan had other tenants. It was strange that
+the Contessa and her daughter should not have returned, and sometimes
+Marcello felt a great longing to see them. He said "them" to himself at
+such times, but he knew what he meant.
+
+So time went on. Corbario said that he himself must really go to San
+Domenico, to look after the Calabrian property, but added that it would
+be quite useless for Marcello to go with him. Marcello could stay in
+Rome and amuse himself as he pleased, or he might make a little journey
+to the north, to Switzerland, to the Tyrol--there were so many places.
+Settimia would take care of Regina, and perhaps Regina herself had
+better make a little trip for a change. Yes, Settimia had travelled a
+good deal; she even knew enough French to travel in a foreign country,
+if necessary. Corbario said that he did not know where she had learned
+French, but he was quite sure she knew it tolerably well. Regina would
+be safe under her care, in some quiet place where the air would do her
+good.
+
+Thereupon Corbario went off to the south, leaving Marcello plentifully
+supplied with money and promising to write to him. They parted
+affectionately.
+
+"If you wish to go away," Corbario said, as he was leaving, "it might be
+as well to leave your next address, so that you may get letters. But
+please don't fancy that I want to know everything you do, my dear boy.
+You are quite old enough to take care of yourself, and quite sensible
+enough, too. The only thing you had better avoid for a few years is
+marriage!"
+
+Folco laughed softly as he delivered this piece of advice, and lit a
+cigar. Then he looked critically at Marcello.
+
+"You are still very pale," he observed thoughtfully. "You have not got
+back all your strength yet. Drink plenty of champagne at luncheon and
+dinner. There is nothing like it when a man is run down. And don't sit
+up all night smoking cigarettes more than three times a week!"
+
+He laughed again as he shook hands and got into the carriage, and
+Marcello was glad when he was gone, though he was so fond of him. It was
+a bore to be told that he was not strong, because it certainly was true,
+and, besides, even Folco was sometimes a little in the way.
+
+In a week Marcello and Regina were in Venice; a month later they were in
+Paris. The invaluable Settimia knew her way about, and spoke French with
+a fluency that amazed Marcello; she even taught Regina a few of those
+phrases which are particularly useful at a dressmaker's and quite
+incomprehensible anywhere else. Marcello told her to see that Regina was
+perfectly dressed, and Settimia carried out his instructions with taste
+and wisdom. Regina had arrived in Paris with one box of modest
+dimensions; she left with four more, of a size that made the railway
+porters stagger.
+
+One day Marcello brought home a string of pearls in his pocket, and
+tried to fasten it round her throat; but she would not let him do it.
+She was angry.
+
+"Keep those things for your wife!" she said, with flashing eyes and
+standing back from him. "I will wear the clothes you buy for me, because
+you like me to be pretty and I don't want you to be ashamed of me. But I
+will not take jewels, for jewels are money, just as gold is! You can buy
+a wife with that stuff, not a woman who loves you!"
+
+Her brows were level and stern, her face grew whiter as she spoke, and
+Marcello was suddenly aware, for the first time in his life, that he did
+not understand women. That knowledge comes sooner or later to almost
+every man, but many are spared it until they are much older than he was.
+
+"I did not mean to offend you," he said, in a rather injured tone, as he
+slipped the pearls into his pocket.
+
+"Of course not," she answered. "But you do not understand. If I thought
+you did, I would go back to the inn and never see you again. I should
+die, but it would not matter, for I should still respect myself!"
+
+"I only wished to please you," said Marcello apologetically.
+
+"You wish to please me? Love me! That is what I want. Love me as much as
+you can, it will always be less than I love you, and as long as you can,
+it will always be less long than I shall love you, for that will be
+always. And when you are tired of me, tell me so, heart of my heart, and
+I will go away, for that is better than to hang like a chain on a young
+man's neck. I will go away, and God will forgive me, for to love you is
+all I know."
+
+His kisses closed her flashing eyes, and her lips parted in a faint,
+expectant smile, that was not disappointed.
+
+So time passed, and Marcello heard occasionally from Corbario, and wrote
+to him once or twice, when he needed money. Folco never alluded to
+Regina, and Marcello wondered whether he guessed that she had left Rome.
+He was never quite sure how much Folco knew of his life, and Folco was
+careful never to ask questions.
+
+But the existence Marcello was leading was not calculated to restore his
+strength, which had never been great, even before his illness. Though
+Regina did not understand the language, she grew very fond of the
+theatre, for Marcello translated and explained everything; and it was
+such a pleasure to give her pleasure, that he forgot the stifling air
+and the late hours. Moreover, he met in Paris a couple of acquaintances
+a little older than himself, who were only too glad to see something of
+the beautiful Regina, so that there were often supper-parties after the
+play, and trips in motorcars in the morning, horse races in the
+afternoon, and all manner of amusements, with a general tendency to look
+upon sleep as a disease to be avoided and the wish to rest as a foolish
+weakness. It was true that Marcello never coughed, but he was very thin,
+and his delicate face had grown perfectly colourless, though he
+followed Corbario's advice and drank a good deal of champagne, not to
+mention other less harmless things, because the quick stimulant was as
+pleasant as a nap and did not involve such a waste of time.
+
+As for Regina, the life suited her, at least for a while, and her beauty
+was refined rather than marred by a little bodily weariness. The
+splendid blush of pleasure rarely rose in her cheeks now, but the clear
+pallor of her matchless complexion was quite as lovely. The constitution
+of a healthy Roman peasant girl does not break down easily under a
+course of pleasure and amusement, and it might never have occurred to
+Regina that Marcello was almost exhausted already, if her eyes had not
+been opened to his condition by some one else.
+
+They were leaving the Th��tre Fran�ais one evening, intending to go home
+on foot as the night was fine and warm. They had seen _Hernani_, and
+Regina had naturally found it hard to understand the story, even with
+Marcello's explanations; the more so as he himself had never seen the
+play before, and had come to the theatre quite sure that it must be
+easily comprehensible from the opera founded on it, which he had heard.
+Regina's arm was passed through his, and as they made their way through
+the crowd, under the not very brilliant lights in the portico, Marcello
+was doing his best to make the plot of the piece clear, and Regina was
+looking earnestly into his face, trying to follow what he said. Suddenly
+he heard an Italian voice very near to him, calling him by name, in a
+tone of surprise.
+
+"Marcello!"
+
+He started, straightened himself, turned his head, and faced the
+Contessa dell' Armi. Close beside her was Aurora, leaning forward a
+little, with an expression of cold curiosity; she had already seen
+Regina, who did not withdraw her hand from Marcello's arm.
+
+"You here?" he cried, recovering himself quickly.
+
+As he spoke, the Contessa realised the situation, and at the same moment
+Marcello met Aurora's eyes. Regina felt his arm drop by his side, as if
+he were disowning her in the presence of these two smart women who were
+friends of his. She forgave him, for she was strangely humble in some
+ways, but she hated them forthwith.
+
+The Contessa, who was a woman of the world, nodded quietly and smiled as
+if she had seen nothing, but she at once began to steer her daughter in
+a divergent direction.
+
+"You are looking very ill," she said, turning her head back as she moved
+away. "Come and see us."
+
+"Where?" asked Marcello, making half a step to follow, and looking at
+the back of Aurora's head and at the pretty hat she wore.
+
+The Contessa named a quiet hotel in the Rue Saint Honor�, and was gone
+in the crowd. Marcello stood quite still for a moment, staring after the
+two. Then he felt Regina's hand slipping through his arm.
+
+"Come," she said softly, and she led him away to the left.
+
+He did not speak for a long time. They turned under the arches into the
+Palais Royal, and followed the long portico in silence, out to the Rue
+Vivienne and the narrow Rue des Petits Champs. Still Marcello did not
+speak, and without a word they reached the Avenue de l'Op�ra. The light
+was very bright there, and Regina looked long at Marcello's face, and
+saw how white it was.
+
+"She said you were looking very ill," said she, in a voice that shook a
+little.
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Marcello, rousing himself. "Shall we have supper at
+Henry's or at the Caf� de Paris? We are near both."
+
+"We will go home," Regina answered. "I do not want any supper to-night."
+
+They reached their hotel. Regina tossed her hat upon a chair in the
+sitting-room and drew Marcello to the light, holding him before her, and
+scrutinising his face with extraordinary intensity. Suddenly her hands
+dropped from his shoulders.
+
+"She was right; you are ill. Who is this lady that knows your face
+better than I?"
+
+She asked the question in a tone of bitterness and self-reproach.
+
+"The Contessa dell' Armi," Marcello answered, with a shade of
+reluctance.
+
+"And the girl?" asked Regina, in a flash of intuition.
+
+"Her daughter Aurora." He turned away, lit a cigarette, and rang the
+bell.
+
+Regina bit her lip until it hurt her, for she remembered how often he
+had pronounced that name in his delirium, many months ago. She could
+not speak for a moment. A waiter came in answer to the bell, and
+Marcello ordered something, and then sat down. Regina went to her room
+and did not return until the servant had come back and was gone again,
+leaving a tray on the table.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Marcello in surprise, as he caught sight of
+her face.
+
+She sat down at a little distance, her eyes fixed on him.
+
+"I am a very wicked woman," she said, in a dull voice.
+
+"You?" Marcello laughed and filled the glasses.
+
+"I am letting you kill yourself to amuse me," Regina said. "I am a very,
+very wicked woman. But you shall not do it any more. We will go away at
+once."
+
+"I am perfectly well," Marcello answered, holding out a glass to her;
+but she would not take it.
+
+"I do not want wine to-night," she said. "It is good when one has a
+light heart, but my heart is as heavy as a stone. What am I good for?
+Kill me. It will be better. Then you will live."
+
+"I should have died without you long ago. You saved my life."
+
+"To take it again! To let you consume yourself, so that I may see the
+world! What do I care for the world, if you are not well? Let us go away
+quickly."
+
+"Next week, if you like."
+
+"No! To-morrow!"
+
+"Without waiting to hear Melba?"
+
+"Yes--to-morrow!"
+
+"Or Sarah Bernhardt in Sardou's new play?"
+
+"To-morrow! To-morrow morning, early! What is anything compared with
+your getting well?"
+
+"And your new summer costume that Doucet has not finished? How about
+that?"
+
+Marcello laughed gaily and emptied his glass. But Regina rose and knelt
+down beside him, laying her hands on his.
+
+"We must go to-morrow," she said. "You shall say where, for you know
+what countries are near Paris, and where there are hills, and trees, and
+waterfalls, and birds that sing, where the earth smells sweet when it
+rains, and it is quiet when the sun is high. We will go there, but you
+know where it is, and how far."
+
+"I have no doubt Settimia knows," laughed Marcello. "She knows
+everything."
+
+But Regina's face was grave, and she shook her head slowly.
+
+"What is the use of laughing?" she asked. "You cannot deceive me, you
+know you cannot! I deceived myself and was blind, but my eyes are open
+now, and I can only see the truth. Do you love me, Marcello?"
+
+His eyes looked tired a moment ago, even when he laughed, but the light
+came into them now. He breathed a little faster and bent forward to kiss
+her. She could feel the rising pulse in his thin hands. But she leaned
+back as she knelt, and pressed her lips together tightly.
+
+"Not that," she said, after they had both been motionless ten seconds.
+"I don't mean that! Love is not all kisses. There is more. There are
+tears, but there is more too. There is pain, there is doubting, there is
+jealousy, and more than that! There is avarice also, for a woman who
+loves is a miser, counting her treasure when others sleep. And she would
+kill any one who robbed her, and that is murder. Yet there is more,
+there are all the mortal sins in love, and even then there is worse. For
+there is this. She will not count her own soul for him she loves, no,
+not if the saints in Paradise came down weeping and begging her to think
+of her salvation. And that is a great sin, I suppose."
+
+Marcello looked at her, thinking that she was beautiful, and he said
+nothing.
+
+"But perhaps a man cannot love like that," she added presently. "So what
+is the use of my asking you whether you love me? You love Aurora too, I
+daresay! Such as your man's love is, and of its kind, you have enough
+for two!"
+
+Marcello smiled.
+
+"I do not love Aurora now," he said.
+
+"But you have, for you talked to her in your fever, and perhaps you will
+again, or perhaps you wish to marry her. How can I tell what you think?
+She is prettier than I, for she has fair hair. I knew she had. I hate
+fair women, but they are prettier than we dark things ever are. All men
+think so. What does it matter? It was I that saved your life when you
+were dying, and the people meant you to die. I shall always have that
+satisfaction, even when you are tired of me."
+
+"Say never, then!"
+
+"Never? Yes, if I let you stay here, you will not have time to be tired
+of me, for you will grow thinner and whiter, and one day you will be
+breathing, and not breathing, and breathing a little again, and then not
+breathing at all, and you will be lying dead with your head on my arm. I
+can see how it will be, for I thought more than once that you were dead,
+just like that, when you had the fever. No! If I let that happen you
+will never be tired of me while you are alive, and when you are dead
+Aurora cannot have you. Perhaps that would be better. I would almost
+rather have it so."
+
+"Then why should we go away?" asked Marcello, smiling a little.
+
+"Because to let you die would be a great sin, much worse than losing my
+soul for you, or killing some one to keep you. Don't you see that?"
+
+"Why would it be worse?"
+
+"I do not know, but I am sure it would. Perhaps because it would be
+losing your soul instead of mine. Who knows? It is not in the catechism.
+The catechism has nothing about love, and I never learned anything else.
+But I know things that I never learned. Every woman does. How? The heart
+says them, and they are true. Where shall we go to-morrow?"
+
+"Do you really want to leave Paris?"
+
+To impress upon him that she was in earnest Regina squeezed his hands
+together in hers with such energy that she really hurt him.
+
+"What else have I been saying for half an hour?" she asked impatiently.
+"Do you think I am playing a comedy?" She laughed. "Remember that I
+have carried you up and down stairs in my arms," she added, "and I could
+do it again!"
+
+"If you insist on going away, I will walk," Marcello answered with a
+laugh.
+
+She laughed too, as she rose to her feet. He put out his hand to fill
+his glass again, but she stopped him.
+
+"No," she said, "the wine keeps you awake, and makes you think you are
+stronger than you are. You shall sleep to-night, and to-morrow we will
+go. I am so glad it is settled!"
+
+She could do what she would with him, and so it turned out that Marcello
+left Paris without going to see the Contessa and Aurora; and when he was
+fairly away he felt that it was a relief not to be able to see them,
+since it would have been his duty to do so if he had stayed another day.
+Maddalena dell' Armi had not believed that he would come, but she
+stopped at home that afternoon on the bare possibility. Aurora made up
+her mind that if he came she would shut herself up in her own room. She
+expected that he would certainly call before the evening, and was
+strangely disappointed because he did not.
+
+"Who was that lady with him last night?" she asked of her mother.
+
+"I do not know that--lady," answered the Contessa, with a very slight
+hesitation before pronouncing the last word.
+
+But they had both heard of Regina already.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The Contessa wrote to Corbario two days later, addressing her letter to
+Rome, as she did not know where he was. It was not like her to meddle in
+the affairs of other people, or to give advice, but this was a special
+case, and she felt that something must be done to save Marcello; for she
+was a woman of the world, with much experience and few illusions, and
+she understood at a glance what was happening to her dead friend's son.
+She wrote to Folco, telling him of the accidental meeting in the portico
+of the Th��tre Fran�ais, describing Marcello's looks, and saying pretty
+clearly what she thought of the extremely handsome young woman who was
+with him.
+
+Now Paris is a big city, and it chanced that Corbario himself was there
+at that very time. Possibly he had kept out of Marcello's way for some
+reason of his own, but he had really not known that the Contessa was
+there. Her letter was forwarded from Rome and reached him four days
+after it was written. He read it carefully, tore it into several dozen
+little bits, looked at his watch, and went at once to the quiet hotel in
+the Rue Saint Honor�. The Contessa was alone, Aurora having gone out
+with her mother's maid.
+
+Maddalena was glad to see him, not because she liked him, for she did
+not, but because it would be so much easier to talk of what was on her
+mind than to write about it.
+
+"I suppose you are surprised to see me," said Folco, after the first
+conventional greeting.
+
+"No, for one may meet any one in Paris, at any time of the year. When I
+wrote, I thought Marcello must be alone here--I mean, without you," she
+added.
+
+"I did not know he had been here, until I heard that he was gone. He
+left three or four days ago. I fancy that when you wrote your letter he
+was already gone."
+
+"Do you let him wander about Europe as he pleases?" asked the Contessa.
+
+"He is old enough to take care of himself," answered Corbario. "There is
+nothing worse for young men than running after them and prying into
+their affairs. I say, give a young fellow his independence as soon as
+possible. If he has been brought up in a manly way, with a feeling of
+self-respect, it can only do him good to travel alone. That is the
+English way, you know, and always succeeds."
+
+"Not always, and besides, we are not English. It is not 'succeeding,' as
+you call it, in Marcello's case. He will not live long, if you let him
+lead such a life."
+
+"Oh, he is stronger than he looks! He is no more threatened with
+consumption than I am, and a boy who can live through what happened to
+him two years ago can live through anything."
+
+Not a muscle of his face quivered as he looked quietly into the
+Contessa's eyes. He was quite sure that she did not suspect him of
+having been in any way concerned in Marcello's temporary disappearance.
+
+"Suppose him to be as strong as the strongest," Maddalena answered. "Put
+aside the question of his health. There is something else that seems to
+me quite as important."
+
+"The moral side?" Corbario smiled gravely. "My dear lady, you and I know
+the world, don't we? We do not expect young men to be saints!"
+
+Maddalena, who had not always been a saint, returned his look coldly.
+
+"Let us leave the saints out of the discussion," she said, "unless we
+speak of Marcello's mother. She was one, if any one ever was. I believe
+you loved her, and I know that I did, and I do still, for she is very
+real to me, even now. Don't you owe something to her memory? Don't you
+know how she would have felt if she could have met her son the other
+night, as I met him, looking as he looked? Don't you know that it would
+have hurt her as nothing else could? Think a moment!"
+
+She paused, waiting for his answer and watching his impenetrable face,
+that did not change even when he laughed, that could not change, she
+thought; but she had not seen him by Marcello's bedside at the hospital,
+when the mask had been gone for a few seconds. It was there now, in all
+its calm stillness.
+
+"You may be right," he answered, almost meekly, after a little pause.
+"I had not looked at it in that light. You see, I am not a very
+sensitive man, and I was brought up rather roughly. My dear wife went to
+the other extreme, of course. No one could really be what she wished to
+make Marcello. He felt that himself, though I honestly did all I could
+to make him act according to his mother's wishes. But now that she is
+gone--" he broke off, and was silent a moment. "You may be right," he
+repeated, shaking his head thoughtfully. "You are a very good woman, and
+you ought to know."
+
+She leaned back in her chair, and looked at him in silence, wondering
+whether she was not perhaps doing him a great injustice; yet his voice
+rang false to her ear, and the old conviction that he had never loved
+his wife came back with increased force and with the certainty that he
+had been playing a part for years without once breaking down.
+
+"I will join Marcello, and see what I can do," he said.
+
+"Do you know where he is?"
+
+"Oh, yes! He keeps me informed of his movements; he is very good about
+writing. You know how fond of each other we are, too, and I am sure he
+will be glad to see me. He is back in Italy by this time. He was going
+to Siena. We were to have met in Rome in about a month, to go down to
+San Domenico together, but I will join him at once."
+
+"If you find that--that young person with him, what shall you do?"
+
+"Send her about her business, of course," answered Folco promptly.
+
+"Suppose that she will not go, what then?"
+
+"It can only be a question of money, my dear lady. Leave that to me.
+Marcello is not the first young fellow who has been in a scrape!"
+
+Still Maddalena did not trust him, and she merely nodded with an air of
+doubt.
+
+"Shall I not see Aurora?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"She is out," answered the Contessa. "I will tell her that you asked
+after her."
+
+"Is she as beautiful as ever?" inquired Folco.
+
+"She is a very pretty girl."
+
+"She is beautiful," Folco said, with conviction. "I have never seen such
+a beautiful girl as she was, even when she was not quite grown up. No
+one ever had such hair and such eyes, and such a complexion!"
+
+"Dear me!" exclaimed Maddalena with a little surprise. "I had no idea
+that you thought her so good-looking!"
+
+"I always did. As for Marcello, we used to think he would never have
+eyes for any one else."
+
+"Young people who have known each other well as children rarely fall in
+love when they grow up," answered Maddalena.
+
+"So much the better," Folco said. "Aurora and Marcello are not at all
+suited to one another."
+
+"That is true," answered the Contessa.
+
+"And besides, he is much too young for her. They are nearly of the same
+age."
+
+"I never thought of their marrying," replied Maddalena, with a little
+emphasis, "and I should certainly not choose this time to think of it!"
+
+"I fancy few men can look at your daughter without wishing that they
+might marry her, my dear lady," said Corbario, rising to go away. "Pray
+present my homage to her, and tell her how very sorry I am not to have
+seen her."
+
+He smiled as if he were only half in earnest, and he took his leave. He
+was scarcely gone when Aurora entered the sitting-room by another door.
+
+"Was it Marcello?" she asked quietly enough, though her voice sounded a
+little dull.
+
+"No, dear," answered her mother. "It was Folco Corbario. I wrote to him
+some days ago and he came to see me. Marcello has left Paris. I did not
+know you had come home."
+
+Aurora sat down rather wearily, pulled out her hatpins, and laid her hat
+on her knee. Then she slowly turned it round and round, examining every
+inch of it with profound attention, as women do. They see things in hats
+which we do not.
+
+"Mamma--" Aurora got no further, and went on turning the hat round.
+
+"Yes? What were you going to say?"
+
+"Nothing--I have forgotten." The hat revolved steadily. "Are we going to
+stay here long?"
+
+"No. Paris is too expensive. When we have got the few things we want we
+will go back to Italy--next week, I should think."
+
+"I wish we were rich," observed Aurora.
+
+"I never heard you say that before," answered her mother. "But after
+all, wishing does no harm, and I am silly enough to wish we were rich
+too."
+
+"If I married Marcello, I should be very rich," said Aurora, ceasing to
+turn the hat, but still contemplating it critically.
+
+Maddalena looked at her daughter in some surprise. The girl's face was
+quite grave.
+
+"You had better think of getting rich in some other way, my dear," said
+the Contessa presently, with an asperity that did not escape Aurora, but
+produced no impression on her.
+
+"I was only supposing," she said. "But if it comes to that, it would be
+much better for him to marry me than that good-looking peasant girl he
+has picked up."
+
+The Contessa sat up straight and stared at her in astonishment. There
+was a coolness in the speech that positively horrified her.
+
+"My dear child!" she cried. "What in the world are you talking about?"
+
+"Regina," answered Aurora, looking up, and throwing the hat upon the
+table. "I am talking about Marcello's Regina. Did you suppose I had
+never heard of her, and that I did not guess that it was she, the other
+night? I had a good look at her. I hate her, but she is handsome. You
+cannot deny that."
+
+"I do not deny it, I'm sure!" The Contessa hardly knew what to say.
+
+"Very well. Would it not be much better for Marcello if he married me
+than if he let Regina marry him, as she will!"
+
+"I--possibly--you put it so strangely! But I am sure Marcello will never
+think of marrying her."
+
+"Then why does he go about with her, and what is it all for?" Aurora
+gazed innocently at her mother, waiting for an answer which did not
+come. "Besides," she added, "the girl will marry him, of course."
+
+"Perhaps. I daresay you are right, and after all, she may be in love
+with him. Why should you care, child?"
+
+"Because he used to be my best friend," Aurora answered demurely. "Is it
+wrong to take an interest in one's friends? And I still think of him as
+my friend, though I have never had a chance to speak to him since that
+day by the Roman shore, when he went off in a rage because I laughed at
+him. I wonder whether he has forgotten that! They say he lost his memory
+during his illness."
+
+"What a strange girl you are! You have hardly ever spoken of him in all
+this time, and now"--the Contessa laughed as if she thought the idea
+absurd--"and now you talk of marrying him!"
+
+"I have seen Regina," Aurora replied, as if that explained everything.
+
+The Contessa returned no answer, and she was rather unusually silent and
+preoccupied during the rest of that day. She was reflecting that if
+Aurora had not chanced to meet Marcello just when Regina was with him
+the girl might never have thought of him again, except with a
+half-amused recollection of the little romantic tenderness she had once
+felt for the friend and playfellow of her childhood. Maddalena was a
+wise woman now, and did not underestimate the influence of little things
+when great ones were not far off. That is a very important part of
+worldly wisdom, which is the science of estimating chances in a game of
+which love, hate, marriage, fortune, and social life and death may be
+the stakes.
+
+Her impulse was to prevent Aurora from seeing Marcello for a long time,
+for the thought of a possible marriage had never attracted her, and
+since the appearance of Regina on the scene every instinct of her nature
+was against it. Her pride revolted at the idea that her daughter might
+be the rival of a peasant girl, quite as much as at the possibility of
+its being said that she had captured her old friend's son for the sake
+of his money. But she remembered her own younger years and she judged
+Aurora by herself. There had been more in that little romantic
+tenderness for Marcello than any one had guessed, much of it had
+remained, it had perhaps grown instead of dying out, and the sight of
+Regina had awakened it to something much stronger than a girlish fancy.
+
+Maddalena remembered little incidents now, of which the importance had
+escaped her the more easily because the loss of her dearest friend had
+made her dull and listless at the time. Aurora had scarcely asked about
+Marcello during the weeks that followed his disappearance, but she had
+often looked pale and almost ill just then. She had been better after
+the news had come that he had been found, though she had barely said
+that she was glad to hear of him. Then she had grown more restless than
+she used to be, and there had sometimes been a dash of hardness in the
+things she said; and her mother was now quite sure that Aurora had
+intentionally avoided all mention of Marcello. To-day, she had suddenly
+made that rather startling remark about marrying him. All this proved
+clearly enough that he had been continually in her thoughts. When very
+young people take unusual pains to ignore a certain subject, and then
+unexpectedly blurt out some very rough observation about it, the chances
+are that they have been thinking of nothing else for a long time.
+
+A good deal had happened on that afternoon, for what Corbario had said
+about Aurora, half playfully and half in earnest, had left Maddalena
+under the impression that he had been trying a little experiment on his
+own account, to feel his way. Aurora had more than once said in the
+preceding years that she did not like his eyes and a certain way he had
+of looking at her. He had admired her, even then, and now that he was a
+widower it was not at all unlikely that he should think of marrying her.
+He was not much more than thirty years old, and he had a singularly
+youthful face. There was no objection on the score of his age. He was
+rich, at least for his life-time. He had always been called a model
+husband while his wife had been alive, and was said to have behaved
+with propriety since. Maddalena tried to look at the matter coolly and
+dispassionately, as if she did not instinctively dislike him. Why should
+he not wish to marry Aurora? No one of the Contessa's acquaintances
+would be at all surprised if he did, and most people would say that it
+was a very good match, and that Aurora was fortunate to get such a
+husband.
+
+This was precisely what Folco thought; and as it was his nature to think
+slowly and act quickly, it is not impossible that he may have revolved
+the plan in his mind for a year or two while Aurora was growing up. The
+final decision had perhaps been reached on that evening down by the
+Roman shore, when Professor Kalmon had held up to his eyes the sure
+means of taking the first step towards its accomplishment; and it had
+been before him late on the same night when he had stood still in the
+verandah holding the precious and terrible little tablet in the hollow
+of his hand; and the next morning when he had suddenly seen Marcello
+close before him, unconscious of his presence and defenceless. He had
+run a great risk in vain that day, since Marcello was still alive, a
+risk more awful than he cared to remember now; but it had been safely
+passed, and he must never do anything so dangerous again. There was a
+far safer and surer way of gaining his end than clumsy murder, and from
+what the Contessa had told him of the impression she had received the
+accomplishment was not far off. She had said that Marcello had looked
+half dead; his delicate constitution could not bear such a life much
+longer, and he would soon be dead in earnest.
+
+Marcello did not write as regularly as Folco pretended, but the latter
+had trustworthy and regular news of him from some one else. Twice a
+week, wherever he might be, a square envelope came by the post addressed
+in a rather cramped feminine hand, the almost unmistakable writing of a
+woman who had seen better days and had been put to many shifts in order
+to keep up some sort of outward respectability. The information conveyed
+was tolerably well expressed, in grammatical Italian; the only names
+contained in the letters were those of towns, and hotels, and the like,
+and Marcello was invariably spoken of as "our dear patient," and Regina
+as "that admirable woman" or "that ideal companion." The writer usually
+said that the dear patient seemed less strong than a month ago, or a
+week ago, and expressed a fear that he was slowly losing ground.
+Sometimes he was better, and the news was accompanied by a conventional
+word or two of satisfaction. Again, there would be a detailed account of
+his doings, showing that he had slept uncommonly little and had no
+appetite, and mentioning with a show of regret the sad fact that he
+lived principally on cigarettes, black coffee, and dry champagne. The
+ideal companion seemed to be always perfectly well, showed no tendency
+to be extravagant, and gave proof of the most constant devotion. The
+writer always concluded by promising that Corbario's instructions with
+regard to the dear patient should be faithfully carried out in future as
+they had been in the past.
+
+This was very reassuring, and Folco often congratulated himself on the
+wisdom he had shown in the selection of Settimia as a maid for Regina.
+The woman not only did what was required of her with the utmost
+exactitude; she took an evident pleasure in her work, and looked forward
+to the fatal result at no very distant time with all the satisfaction
+which Corbario could desire. So far everything had gone smoothly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was high summer again, and the Roman shore was feverish. In the hot
+afternoon Ercole had tramped along the shore with his dog at his heels
+as far as Torre San Lorenzo to have a chat with the watchman. They sat
+in the shade of the tower, smoking little red clay pipes with long
+wooden stems. The chickens walked about slowly, evidently oppressed by
+the heat and by a general lack of interest in life, since not a single
+grain of maize from the morning feed remained to be discovered on the
+disused brick threshing-floor or in the sand that surrounded it. From
+some dark recess came the occasional grunt of the pig, attending in
+solitude to the business of getting fat before October. Now and then the
+watchman's wife moved a chair in the lower room of the tower, or made a
+little clatter with some kitchen utensils, and the sounds came out to
+the solitude sharply and distinctly.
+
+There had been a flat calm for several days. Forty yards below the tower
+the sea lay along the sandy beach like a strip of glistening white
+glass, beyond which was a broader band of greenish blue that did not
+glitter; and beyond that, the oily water stretched out to westward in an
+unending expanse of neutral tints, arabesqued with current streaks and
+struck right across by the dazzling dirty-white blaze of the August sun.
+
+Swarms of flies chased each other where the two men sat, settled on
+their backs and dusty black hats, tried to settle on their faces and
+were brushed away, crawled on the ground, on the walls, even on the
+chickens, and on the rough coat of Nino, the dog. He followed the
+motions of those he saw before him with one bloodshot eye; the other
+seemed to be fast asleep.
+
+From time to time the men exchanged a few words. Ercole had apparently
+come over to enjoy the novelty of seeing a human being, and Padre
+Francesco, the watchman, was glad to talk with some one besides his
+wife. He enjoyed the title of "Padre," because he had once been master
+of a small martingane that traded between Civit� Vecchia and the south.
+In still earlier days he had been in deep water and had been boatswain
+of a square-rigger, yet there was nothing about his appearance now to
+show that he had been a sailor man. It was ten years since he had left
+the sea, and he had turned into a peasant.
+
+Ercole had told Padre Francesco that the second hay crop had been half
+spoilt by thunderstorms; also that the price of wine in Ardea had gone
+up, while the price of polenta had remained the same; also that a wild
+boar had broken out of the king's preserves near Nettuno and was
+supposed to be wandering in the brush not far away; also that if Ercole
+and Nino found him they would kill him, and that there would be a feast.
+Padre Francesco observed that his wife understood the cooking of wild
+boar with vinegar, sugar, pine-nuts, and sweet herbs, and that he
+himself knew how to salt the hams; he had also salted the flesh of
+porpoises at sea, more than once, and had eaten pickled dog-fish, which
+he considered to be nothing but young sharks, in the West Indies. This
+did not interest Ercole much, as he had heard it before, and he smoked
+in silence for a while. So did Padre Francesco; and both brushed away
+the flies. Nino rolled one bloodshot eye at his master, every time the
+latter moved; and it grew excessively hot, and the air smelt of
+chickens, rotten seaweed, and the pig. Yet both men were enjoying
+themselves after a fashion, though Ercole distrusted Padre Francesco, as
+he distrusted all human beings, and Padre Francesco looked upon Ercole
+as a person having no knowledge of the world, because he had never eaten
+pickled dog-fish in the West Indies.
+
+After a time, Padre Francesco remembered a piece of news which he had
+not yet told, cleared his throat, stirred the contents of his pipe with
+the point of a dangerous-looking knife, and looked at his companion for
+a full minute.
+
+"Speak," said Ercole, who understood these premonitory signs.
+
+"There has been one here who asked after you," Padre Francesco began.
+
+"What species of Christian?" inquired Ercole.
+
+"He was at the cottage when the blessed soul of the Signora departed, or
+just before that. It is a big gentleman with a brown beard and bright
+eyes. He looks for things in the sand and in the bushes and amongst the
+seaweed. Who knows what he looks for? Perhaps he looks for gold."
+
+"Or the souls of his dead," suggested Ercole with fine irony. "But I
+know this Signore who was at the cottage, with the brown beard and the
+bright eyes. He sometimes came to shoot quail. He also killed some. He
+is a professor of wisdom."
+
+"He asked if I knew you, but of course I said I did not. Why should he
+ask? How could I know what he wanted of you. I said that I had never
+heard of you."
+
+"You did well. Those who have business with me know where to find me.
+What else did he say?"
+
+"He asked if I had seen the young gentleman this year, and he told me
+that he had not seen him since the night before he was lost. So then I
+knew that he was a gentleman of some kind, since he had been at the
+cottage. I also asked if your masters were never coming to the Roman
+shore again."
+
+"What did he answer?" inquired Ercole, with an air of utter
+indifference.
+
+"He said an evil thing. He said that your young gentleman had gone off
+to foreign countries with a pretty peasant from Frascati, whose name was
+Regina; that it was she who had nursed him when he was ill, in some inn,
+and that out of gratitude, and because she was very pretty, he had
+given her much money, and silk dresses and earrings. That is what he
+said."
+
+Ercole gazed down at Nino's bloodshot eye, which was turned to him just
+then.
+
+"A girl called Regina," Ercole grumbled, in a tone even harsher than
+usual.
+
+"That is what he said. Why should he tell me one thing for another? He
+said that your young gentleman would perhaps come back when he was tired
+of Regina. And he laughed. That is all."
+
+A low growl from Nino interrupted the conversation. It was very low and
+long and then rose quickly and ended in a short bark, as the dog
+gathered his powerful hindquarters suddenly and raised himself,
+bristling all over and thrusting his sinewy forepaws out before him.
+Then the growl began again, but Ercole touched him lightly with the toe
+of his hob-nailed boot, and the dog was instantly silent. Both men
+looked about, but no one was to be seen.
+
+"There is a boat on the beach," said Padre Francesco, who had caught the
+faint soft sound of the keel running upon the sand.
+
+They both rose, Ercole picking up his gun as he did so; Nino, seeing
+that his master was on the alert, slunk to his heels without growling
+any more. A moment later a man's voice was heard calling on the other
+side of the tower.
+
+"Hi! Watchman of the tower! A favour! Watchman of the tower! Hi!"
+
+Padre Francesco turned the corner, followed by Ercole. A sailor in
+scanty ragged clothes and the remains of a rush hat was standing
+barefoot in the burning sand, with an earthen jug in his hand. A
+battered boat, from which all traces of paint had long since
+disappeared, was lying with her nose buried in the sand, not moving in
+the oily water. Another man was in her, very much like the first in
+looks.
+
+On seeing Nino at Ercole's heels, the man who was ashore drew back with
+an exclamation, as if he were going to run away, but Ercole spoke in a
+reassuring tone.
+
+"Be not afraid," he said. "This dog does not eat Christians. He gets
+enough to eat at home. He is not a dog, he is a lamb, and most
+affectionate."
+
+"It is an evil beast," observed the sailor, looking at Nino. "I am
+afraid."
+
+"What do you desire?" inquired Padre Francesco politely. "Is it water
+that you wish?"
+
+"As a favour," answered the man, seeing that the dog did not fly at him.
+"A little water to drink. We have been pulling all day; it is hot, and
+we have drunk what we had."
+
+"Come with me," said Padre Francesco. "Where is your vessel?"
+
+"At Fiumicino. The master sent us on an errand to Porto d'Anzio last
+night and we are going back."
+
+"It is a long pull," observed the watchman. "Tell the other man to come
+ashore and rest in the shade. I also have been to sea. The water is not
+very good here, but what there is you shall have."
+
+"Thank you," said the man gratefully, and giving Nino a very wide berth
+as he followed Padre Francesco. "We could have got some water at the
+Incastro creek, but it would have been the same as drinking the fever."
+
+"May the Madonna never will that you drink of it," said Padre Francesco,
+as they reached the shady side of the tower. "I see that you know the
+Roman shore."
+
+"It is our business," replied the man, taking off his ragged rush hat,
+and rubbing his still more ragged blue cotton sleeve over his wet
+forehead. "We are people of the sea, bringing wine and lemons to Civit�
+Vecchia and taking charcoal back. Evil befall this calm weather."
+
+"And when it blows from the west-southwest we say, evil befall this time
+of storm," said Padre Francesco, nodding wisely. "Be seated in the
+shade. I will fetch water."
+
+"And also let us drink here, so that we may take the jug away full."
+
+"You shall also drink here." The old watchman went into the tower.
+
+"The last time I passed this way, it was in a west-southwest gale," said
+the man, addressing Ercole, who had sat down in his old place with his
+dog at his feet.
+
+"It is an evil shore," Ercole answered. "Many vessels have been lost
+here."
+
+"We were saved by a miracle that time," said the sailor, who seemed
+inclined to talk. "I was with a brigantine with wine for Marseilles.
+That vessel was like a rock in the sea, she would not move with less
+than seven points of the wind in fair weather. We afterwards went to Rio
+Janeiro, and it was two years before we got back."
+
+"So it was two years ago that you passed?" inquired Ercole.
+
+"Two years ago May or the beginning of June. She was so low in the water
+that she would have swamped if we had tried to carry on sail, and with
+the sail she could carry she could make no headway; so there we were,
+hove to under lower topsail and balance-reefed mainsail and storm-jib,
+with a lee shore less than a mile away. We recommended ourselves to the
+saints and the souls of purgatory, and our captain said to us, 'My fine
+sons, unless the wind shifts in half an hour we must run her ashore and
+save the cargo!' That is what he said. But I said that I knew this Roman
+shore from a boy, and that sometimes there was no bar at the mouth of
+the Incastro, so that a vessel might just slip into the pool where the
+reeds grow. You certainly know the place."
+
+"I know it well," said Ercole.
+
+"Yes. So I pointed out the spot to our captain, standing beside him, and
+he took his glasses and looked to see whether the sea was breaking on
+the bar."
+
+"The bar has not been open since I came here," said Padre Francesco,
+returning with water. "And that is ten years."
+
+The men drank eagerly, one after the other, and there was silence. The
+one who had been speaking wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and
+drew a long breath of satisfaction.
+
+"No, I daresay not," he said at last. "The captain looked all along the
+shore for a better place. Then he saw a bad thing with his glasses; for
+they were fine glasses, and though he was old, he had good sight. And I
+stood beside him, and he told me what he saw while he was looking."
+
+"What did he see?" asked Ercole, watching the man.
+
+"What did he see? I tell you it was a bad sight! Health to us all, as
+many as are here, he saw one man kill another and drag his body into
+some bushes."
+
+"Apoplexy!" observed Ercole, glancing at Padre Francesco. "Are there
+brigands here?"
+
+"I tell you what the captain said. 'There are two men,' said he, 'and
+they are like gentlemen by their dress.' 'They shoot quail,' said I,
+knowing the shore. 'They have no guns,' said he. Then he cried out,
+keeping his glasses to his eyes and steadying himself by the weather
+vang. 'God be blessed,' he cried--for he never said an evil word, that
+captain,--'one of those gentlemen has struck the other on the back of
+the head and killed him! And now he drags his body away towards the
+bushes.' And he saw nothing more, but he showed me the place, where
+there is a gap in the high bank. Afterwards he said he thought he had
+seen a woman too, and that it must have been an affair of jealousy."
+
+Ercole and Padre Francesco looked at each other in silence for a moment.
+
+"Did you hear of no murder at that time?" asked the sailor, taking up
+the earthen jar full of water.
+
+"We heard nothing," said Ercole promptly.
+
+"Nothing," echoed Padre Francesco. "The captain was dreaming. He saw
+trees moving in the wind."
+
+"Don Antonino had good eyes," answered the sailor incredulously.
+
+"What was the name of your vessel?" asked Padre Francesco.
+
+"The _Papa_" replied the sailor without a smile. "She was called
+_Papa_."
+
+Ercole stared at him a moment and then laughed; and he laughed so rarely
+that it distorted the yellow parchment of his face as if it must crack
+it. The sound of his laughter was something like the creaking of a cart
+imitated by a ventriloquist. But Padre Francesco knit his bushy brows,
+for he thought the sailor was making game of him, who had been boatswain
+on a square-rigger.
+
+"I went to sea for thirty years," he said, "but I never heard of a
+vessel called the _Papa_. You have said a silly thing. I have given you
+water to drink, and filled your jar. It is not courtesy to jest at men
+older than you."
+
+"Excuse me," answered the man politely. "May it never be that I should
+jest at such a respectable man as you seem to be; and, moreover, you
+have filled the jar with your own hands. The brigantine was called as I
+say. And if you wish to know why, I will tell you. She was built by two
+rich brothers of Torre Annunziata, who wished much good to their papa
+when he was old and no longer went to sea. Therefore, to honour him,
+they called the vessel the _Papa_. This is the truth."
+
+Lest this should seem extravagantly unlikely to the readers of this
+tale, I shall interrupt the conversation to say that I knew the _Papa_
+well, that "she" was built and christened as the sailor said, and that
+her name still stood on the register of Italian shipping a few years
+ago. She was not a brigantine, however, but a larger vessel, and she was
+bark-rigged; and she was ultimately lost in port, during a hurricane.
+
+"We have learned something to-day," observed Ercole, when the man had
+finished speaking.
+
+"It is true," the man said. "And the name of the captain was Don
+Antonino Maresca. He was of Vico."
+
+"Where is Vico?" inquired Ercole, idly scratching his dog's back with
+the stock of his gun.
+
+"Near Castellamare," answered Padre Francesco, willing to show his
+knowledge.
+
+"One sees that you are a man of the sea," said the sailor, meaning to
+please him. "And so we thank you, and we go."
+
+Ercole and the old watchman saw the two ragged sailors put off in the
+battered boat and pull away over the bar; then they went back to the
+shade of the tower and sat down again and refilled their pipes, and were
+silent for a long time. Padre Francesco's old wife, who had not shown
+herself yet, came and stood in the doorway, nodded to Ercole, fanned
+herself with her apron, counted the chickens in sight, and observed that
+the weather was hot. Then she went in again.
+
+"It is easy to remember the name of that ship," said Ercole at last,
+without glancing at his companion.
+
+"And the master was Antonino Maresca of Vico," said Padre Francesco.
+
+"But the truth is that it is none of our business," said Ercole.
+
+"The captain was mistaken," said Padre Francesco.
+
+"He saw trees moving in the wind," said Ercole.
+
+Then they looked at each other and nodded.
+
+"Perhaps the Professor was mistaken about the girl, and the silk dress
+and the gold earrings," suggested Padre Francesco, turning his eyes
+away.
+
+"He was certainly mistaken," asserted Ercole, watching him closely. "And
+moreover it is none of our business."
+
+"None whatever."
+
+They talked of other things, making remarks at longer and longer
+intervals, till the sun sank near the oily sea, and Ercole took his
+departure, much wiser in regard to Marcello's disappearance than when he
+had come. He followed the long beach for an hour till he came to the gap
+in the bank. There he stopped, and proceeded to examine the place
+carefully, going well inside it, and then turning to ascertain exactly
+where Marcello must have been when he was struck, since at that moment
+he must have been distinctly visible from the brigantine. The gap was so
+narrow that it was not hard to fix upon the spot where the deed had been
+done, especially as the captain had seen Marcello dragged quickly away
+towards the bushes. Every word of the sailor's story was stamped with
+truth; and so it came about that when Corbario believed himself at last
+quite safe, a man in his own pay suddenly discovered the whole truth
+about the attempted crime, even to the name of the principal witness.
+
+It was only in the quail season, when there were poachers about, during
+April, May, and early June, that Ercole lived in his straw hut, a little
+way from the cottage. He spent the rest of the year in a small stone
+house that stood on a knoll in sight of Ardea, high enough to be
+tolerably safe from the deadly Campagna fever. Every other day an old
+woman from the village brought him a copper conca full of water; once a
+month she came and washed for him. When he needed supplies he went to
+Ardea for them himself. His dwelling was of elementary simplicity,
+consisting of two rooms, one above the other, with grated windows and
+heavy shutters. In the lower one he cooked and ate, in the upper chamber
+he slept and kept his few belongings, which included a plentiful supply
+of ammunition, his Sunday clothes, his linen, and his papers. The latter
+consisted of a copy of his certificate of birth, his old military
+pass-book, showing that he had served his time in an infantry regiment,
+had been called in for six weeks' drill in the reserve, had been a
+number of years in the second reserve, and had finally been discharged
+from all military service. This booklet serves an Italian throughout
+life as a certificate of identity, and is necessary in order to obtain a
+passport to leave the country. Ercole kept his, with two or three other
+yellow papers, tied up in an old red cotton handkerchief in the bottom
+of the chest that held his clothes.
+
+When he got home after his visit to Padre Francesco he took the package
+out, untied the handkerchief, and looked through all the papers, one by
+one, sitting by the grated window in the twilight. He could read, and
+had once been able to write more or less intelligibly, and he knew by
+heart the contents of the paper he wanted, though he had not unfolded it
+for years. He now read it carefully, and held it some time open in his
+hand before he put it back with the rest. He held it so long, while he
+looked out of his grated window, that at last he could see the little
+lights twinkling here and there in the windows of Ardea, and it was
+almost dark in the room. Nino grew restless, and laid his grim head on
+Ercole's knee, and his bloodshot eyes began to glow in the dark like
+coals. Then Ercole moved at last.
+
+"Ugly animal, do you wish me well?" he asked, rubbing the dog's head
+with his knotty hand. "If you are good, you shall go on a journey with
+me."
+
+Nino's body moved in a way which showed that he would have wagged his
+tail if he had possessed one, and he uttered a strange gurgling growl of
+satisfaction.
+
+The next morning, the old woman came before sunrise with water.
+
+"You need not bring any more, till I let you know," Ercole said. "I am
+going away on business for a few days, and I shall shut up the house."
+
+"For anything that is in it, you might leave the door open," grumbled
+the hag, who was of a sour temper. "Give me my pay before you go."
+
+"You fear that I am going to America," retorted Ercole, producing an old
+sheepskin purse from the inside of his waistcoat. "Here is your money.
+Four trips, four pennies. Count them and go in peace."
+
+He gave her the coppers, and she carefully tied them up in a corner of
+her ragged kerchief.
+
+"And the bread?" she asked anxiously.
+
+Ercole went to the blackened cupboard, took out the remains of a stale
+loaf, drew a big clasp-knife from his pocket, and cut off a moderate
+slice.
+
+"Eat," he said, as he gave it to her.
+
+She went away grumbling, and Nino growled after her, standing on the
+door-step. When she was a hundred yards from the house, he lay down with
+his jaw on his forepaws and continued to watch her till she was out of
+sight; then he gave a snort of satisfaction and immediately went to
+sleep.
+
+Ercole left his home after sunset that evening. He locked both the upper
+and lower doors and immediately dropped the huge key into a crevice in
+the stone steps, from which one might have supposed that it would not
+be easy to recover it; but he doubtless knew what he was about. He might
+have had one of the little horses from the farm if he had wanted one,
+for he was a privileged person, but he preferred to walk. To a man of
+his wiry frame thirty or forty miles on foot were nothing, and he could
+easily have covered the distance in a night; but he was not going so
+far, by any means, and a horse would only have been in the way. He
+carried his gun, from force of habit, and he had his gun-licence in his
+pocket, with his other papers, tied up in the old red handkerchief.
+There was all that was left of the stale loaf, with the remains of some
+cheese, in a canvas bag, he had slung over his shoulder, and he had
+plenty of money; for his wages were good, and he never spent more than
+half of what he received, merely because he had no wants, and no
+friends.
+
+Under the starlight he walked at a steady pace by familiar paths and
+byways, so as to avoid the village and strike the highroad at some
+distance beyond it. Nino followed close at his heels and perfectly
+silent, and the pair might have been dangerous to any one inclined to
+quarrel with them.
+
+When Ercole was in sight of Porta San Sebastiano it was past midnight,
+and he stood still to fill and light his little clay pipe. Then he went
+on; but instead of entering the gate he took the road to the right
+again, along the Via Appia Nuova. Any one might have supposed that he
+would have struck across to that highroad some time before reaching the
+city, but it was very long since Ercole had gone in that direction;
+many new roads had been opened and some old ones had been closed, and he
+was simply afraid of losing his way in a part of the Campagna no longer
+familiar to him.
+
+[Illustration: "ERCOLE LEFT HIS HOME AFTER SUNSET THAT EVENING"]
+
+A short distance from the gate, where the inn stands that goes by the
+name of Baldinotti, he took the turning to the left, which is the
+Frascati road; and after that he walked more slowly, often stopping and
+peering into the gloom to right and left, as if he were trying to
+recognise objects in the Campagna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Corbario was not pleased with the account given by Settimia in the
+letter she wrote him after reaching Pontresina with Regina and Marcello,
+who had chosen the Engadine as the coolest place he could think of in
+which to spend the hot months, and had preferred Pontresina to Saint
+Moritz as being quieter and less fashionable. Settimia wrote that the
+dear patient had looked better the very day after arriving; that the
+admirable companion was making him drink milk and go to bed at ten
+o'clock; that the two spent most of the day in the pine-woods, and that
+Marcello already talked of an excursion up the glacier and of climbing
+some of the smaller peaks. If the improvement continued, Settimia wrote,
+it was extremely likely that the dear patient would soon be better than
+he had ever been in his life.
+
+Folco destroyed the letter, lit a cigarette, and thought the matter
+over. He had deemed it wise to pretend assent when the Contessa had
+urged him to join Marcello at once, but he had not had the least
+intention of doing so, and had come back to Paris as soon as he was sure
+that the Contessa was gone. But he had made a mistake in his
+calculations. He had counted on Regina for the love of excitement,
+display, and inane dissipation which women in her position very often
+develop when they find that a man will give them anything they like; and
+he had counted very little on her love for Marcello. Folco was still
+young enough to fall into one of the most common errors of youth, which
+is to believe most people worse than they are. Villains, as they grow
+older, learn that unselfish devotion is more common than they had
+thought, and that many persons habitually speak the truth, for
+conscience' sake; finding this out, villains have been known to turn
+into good men in their riper years, and have sometimes been almost
+saints in their old age. Corbario smoked his cigarette and mentally
+registered his mistake, and it is to be feared that the humiliation he
+felt at having made it was much more painful than the recollection of
+having dropped one deadly tablet into a little bottle that contained
+many harmless ones. He compared it in his mind to the keen
+disappointment he had felt when he had gone down to hide Marcello's
+body, and had discovered that he had failed to kill him. It is true that
+what he had felt then had been accompanied by the most awful terror he
+could imagine, but he distinguished clearly between the one sensation
+and the other. There was nothing to fear now; he had simply lost time,
+but that was bad enough, since it was due to his own stupidity.
+
+He thought over the situation carefully and considered how much it would
+be wise to risk. Another year of the life Marcello had been leading in
+Paris would have killed him to a certainty; perhaps six months would
+have done it. But a summer spent at Pontresina, living as it was clear
+that Regina meant him to live, would give the boy strength enough to
+last much longer, and might perhaps bring him out of all danger.
+
+Corbario considered what might be done, went over many plans in his
+mind, compared many schemes, for the execution of some of which he might
+have paid dearly; and in the end he was dissatisfied with all, and began
+over again. Still he reached no conclusion, and he attributed the fault
+to his own dulness, and his dulness to the life he had been leading of
+late, which was very much that which he wished Marcello to lead. But he
+had always trusted his nerves, his ingenuity, and his constitution; if
+one of the three were to fail him, now that he was rich, it was better
+that it should be his ingenuity.
+
+He made up his mind to go to the Engadine and see for himself how
+matters looked. He could stay at Saint Moritz, or even Samaden, so as
+not to disturb Marcello's idyl, and Marcello could come down alone to
+see him. He should probably meet acquaintances, and would give them to
+understand that he had come in order to get rid of Regina and save his
+stepson from certain destruction. Society was very lenient to young men
+as rich as Marcello, he reflected, but was inclined to lay all the blame
+of their doings on their natural guardians. There was no reason why
+Corbario should expose himself to such criticism, and he was sure that
+the Contessa had only said what many people clearly thought, namely,
+that he was allowing Marcello far too much liberty. The world should see
+that he was doing his duty by the boy.
+
+He left Paris with regret, as he always did, after writing to Marcello
+twenty-four hours beforehand. He wrote at the same time to Settimia.
+
+"Folco will be here to-morrow," Marcello said, as he and Regina sat
+under the pine-trees beyond the stream, a little way above the town.
+
+Regina sat leaning against the trunk of a tree, and Marcello lay on his
+side, resting on his elbow and looking up to her. He saw her face
+change.
+
+"Why should he come here?" she asked. "We are so happy!"
+
+"He will not disturb us," Marcello answered. "He will stop at Saint
+Moritz. I shall go down to see him there. I am very fond of him, you
+know, and we have not seen each other for at least two months. I shall
+be very glad to see him."
+
+The colour was sinking in Regina's face, and her eyelids were almost
+closed.
+
+"You are the master," she said quietly enough. "You will do as you
+will."
+
+He was surprised, and he felt a little resentment at her tone. He liked
+her better when she dominated him, as on that night in Paris when she
+had made him promise to come away, and had refused to let him drink more
+wine, and had sent him to bed like a child. Now she spoke as her
+forefathers, serfs born to the plough and bound to the soil, must have
+spoken to their lords and owners. There was no ancient aristocratic
+blood in his own veins; he was simply a middle-class Italian gentleman
+who chanced to be counted with the higher class because he had been born
+very rich, had been brought up by a lady, and had been more or less well
+educated. That was all. It did not seem natural to him that she should
+call him "the master" in that tone. He knew that she was not his equal,
+but somehow it was a little humiliating to have to own it, and he often
+wished that she were. Often, not always; for he had never been sure that
+he should have cared to make her his wife, had she been ever so well
+born. He scarcely knew what he really wanted now, for he had lost his
+hold on himself, and was content with mere enjoyment from day to day. He
+could no longer imagine living without her, and while he was conscious
+that the present state of things could not last very long, he could not
+face the problem of the future.
+
+He did not answer at once, and she sat quite still, almost closing her
+eyes.
+
+"Why should you be displeased because I am going to see Folco?" he asked
+after a while.
+
+"He comes to take you away from me," she answered, without moving.
+
+"That is absurd!" cried Marcello, annoyed by her tone.
+
+"No. It is true. I know it."
+
+"You are unreasonable. He is the best friend I have in the world. Do you
+expect me to promise that I will never see him again?"
+
+"You are the master."
+
+She repeated the words in the same dull tone, and her expression did not
+change in the least. Marcello moved and sat up opposite to her, clasping
+his hands round his knees. He was very thin, but the colour was already
+coming back to his face, and his eyes did not look tired.
+
+"Listen to me," he said. "You must put this idea out of your head. It
+was Folco who found the little house in Trastevere for you. He arranged
+everything. It was he who got you Settimia. He did everything to make
+you comfortable, and he has never disturbed us once when we have been
+together. He never so much as asked where I was going when I used to go
+down to see you every afternoon. No friend could have done more."
+
+"I know it," Regina answered; but still there was something in her tone
+which he could not understand.
+
+"Then why do you say that he means to separate us?"
+
+Regina did not reply, but she opened her eyes and looked into Marcello's
+long and lovingly. She knew something that he did not know, and which
+had haunted her long. When Folco had come to the bedside in the
+hospital, she had seen the abject terror in his face, the paralysing
+fear in his attitude, the trembling limbs and the cramped fingers. It
+had only lasted a moment, but she could never forget it. A child would
+have remembered how Folco looked then, and Regina knew that there was a
+mystery there which she could not understand, but which frightened her
+when she thought of it. Folco had not looked as men do who see one they
+love called back from almost certain death.
+
+"What are you thinking?" Marcello asked, for her deep look stirred his
+blood, and he forgot Folco and everything in the world except the
+beautiful creature that sat there, within his reach, in the lonely
+pine-woods.
+
+She understood, and turned her eyes to the distance; and she saw the
+quiet room in the hospital, the iron bedstead painted white, the smooth
+pillow, Marcello's emaciated head, and Corbario's face.
+
+"I was thinking how you looked when you were ill," she answered simply.
+
+The words and the tone broke the soft little spell that had been weaving
+itself out of her dark eyes. Marcello drew a short, impatient breath and
+threw himself on his side again, supporting his head on his hand and
+looking down at the brown pine-needles.
+
+"You do not know Folco," he said discontentedly. "I don't know why you
+should dislike him."
+
+"I will tell you something," Regina answered. "When you are tired of me,
+you shall send me away. You shall throw me away like an old coat."
+
+"You are always saying that!" returned Marcello, displeased. "You know
+very well that I shall never be tired of you. Why do you say it?"
+
+"Because I shall not complain. I shall not cry, and throw myself on my
+knees, and say, 'For the love of heaven, take me back!' I am not made
+like that. I shall go, without any noise, and what must be will be.
+That is all. Because I want nothing of you but love, I shall go when you
+have no more love. Why should I ask you for what you have not? That
+would be like asking charity of the poor. It would be foolish. But I
+shall tell you something else."
+
+"What?" asked Marcello, looking up to her face again, when she had
+finished her long speech.
+
+"If any one tries to make me go before you are tired of me, it shall be
+an evil day for him. He shall wish that he had not been born into this
+world."
+
+"You need not fear," Marcello said. "No one shall come between us."
+
+"Well, I have spoken. It does not matter whether I fear Signor Corbario
+or not, but if you like I will tell him what I have told you, when he
+comes. In that way he will know."
+
+She spoke quietly, and there was no murderous light in her eyes, nor any
+dramatic gesture with the words; but she was a little paler than before,
+and there was an odd fixedness in her expression, and Marcello knew that
+she was deeply moved, by the way she fell back into her primitive
+peasant's speech, not ungrammatical, but oddly rough and forcible
+compared with the language of educated society which she had now learned
+tolerably well from him.
+
+After that she was silent for a while, and then they talked as usual,
+and the day went by as other days had gone.
+
+On the next afternoon Folco Corbario reached Saint Moritz and sent a
+note up to Marcello asking him to come down on the following morning.
+
+Regina was left alone for a few hours, and she went out with the idea of
+taking a long walk by herself. It would be a relief and almost a
+pleasure to walk ten miles in the clear air, breathing the perfume of
+the pines and listening to the roar of the torrent. Marcello could not
+walk far without being tired, and she never thought of herself when he
+was with her; but when she was alone a great longing sometimes came over
+her to feel the weight of a conca full of water on her head, to roll up
+her sleeves and scrub the floors, to carry burdens and work with her
+hands all day long, as she had done ever since she was a child, with the
+certainty of being tired and hungry and sleepy afterwards. Her hands had
+grown smooth and white in a year, and her feet were tender, and she had
+almost forgotten what bodily weariness meant.
+
+But she was alone this morning, and she was full of gloomy
+presentiments. To stay indoors, or even to go and sit in the accustomed
+place under the pine-trees, would be unbearable. She felt quite sure
+that when Marcello came back he would be changed, that his expression
+would be less frank and natural, that he would avoid her eyes, and that
+by and by he would tell her something that would hurt her very much.
+Folco had come to take him away, she was quite sure, and it would be
+intolerable to sit still and think of it.
+
+She walked fast along the road that leads to the Rosegg glacier, not
+even glancing at the few people she met, though most of them stared at
+her, for almost every one in Pontresina knew who she was. The reputation
+of a great beauty is soon made, and Regina had been seen often enough in
+Paris alone with Marcello in a box at the theatre, or dining with him
+and two or three other young men at Ritz's or the Caf� Anglais, to be an
+object of interest to the clever Parisian "chroniclers." The papers had
+duly announced the fact that the beauty had arrived at Pontresina, and
+the dwellers in the hotel were delighted to catch a glimpse of her,
+while those at Saint Moritz wished that she and Marcello had taken up
+their quarters there instead of in the higher village. Old maids with
+shawls and camp-stools glared at her round the edge of their parasols.
+English girls looked at her in frank admiration, till they were reproved
+by their mothers, who looked at her with furtive interest. Young
+Englishmen pretended not to see her at all, as they strode along with
+their pipes in their mouths; but they had an odd habit of being about
+when she passed. An occasional party of German students, who are the
+only real Bohemians left to the world in these days of progress, went
+sentimentally mad about her for twenty-four hours, and planned serenades
+in her honour which did not come off. A fashionable Italian composer
+dedicated a song to her, and Marcello asked him to dinner, for which he
+was more envied by the summer colony than for his undeniable talent. The
+Anglican clergyman declared that he would preach a sermon against her
+wickedness, but the hotel-keepers heard of his intention and
+unanimously requested him to let her alone, which, he did, reluctantly
+yielding to arguments which shall remain a secret. A certain Archduchess
+who was at Saint Moritz and was curious to see her adopted the simple
+plan of asking her to tea without knowing her, at which Marcello was
+furious; a semi-imperial Russian personage unblushingly scraped
+acquaintance with Marcello and was extremely bland for a few days, in
+the hope of being introduced to Regina. When he found that this was
+impossible, he went away, not in the least disconcerted, and he was
+heard to say that the girl "would go far."
+
+Regina would have been blind if she had not been aware that she
+attracted all this attention, and as she was probably not intended by
+nature for a saint, she would have been pleased by it if there had been
+room in her thoughts for any one but Marcello--even for herself.
+
+She walked far up the road, and after the first mile or two she met no
+one. At that hour the people who made excursions were already far away,
+and those who meant to do nothing stayed nearer to Pontresina. She grew
+tired of the road after a time. It led straight to the foot of the
+glacier, and she was not attracted by snow and ice as northern people
+are; there was something repellent to her in the thought of the
+bleakness and cold, and the sunshine itself looked as hard as the
+distant peaks on which it fell. But on the right there were rocky spurs
+of the mountains, half covered with short trees and brilliant with wild
+flowers that grew in little natural gardens here and there, not far
+below the level of perpetual snow. She left the road, and began to climb
+where there was no path. The air was delicious with the scent of flowers
+and shrubs; there were alp-roses everywhere, and purple gentian, and the
+little iva blossom that has an aromatic smell, and on tiny moss ledges
+the cold white stars of the edelweiss seemed to be keeping themselves as
+far above reach as they could. But she climbed as lightly as a savage
+woman, and picked them and sat down to look at them in the sunshine.
+Just beyond where she rested, the rock narrowed suddenly to a steep
+pass, within which were dark shadows. People who do not attempt anything
+in the way of ascending peaks often wander in that direction in search
+of edelweiss, but Regina fancied that she was sure to be alone as long
+as she pleased to stay.
+
+If she had not been sure of that she would not have taken off her left
+shoe to shake out some tiny thing that had got into it and that annoyed
+her. It turned out to be a bit of pine-needle. It was pleasant to feel
+her foot freed from the hot leather and resting on the thick moss, and
+so the other shoe came off too, and was turned upside down and shaken,
+as an excuse, for there was nothing in it, and both feet rested in the
+moss, side by side. She wished she could take off her stockings, and if
+there had been a stream she would have done it, so sure was she that no
+one would disturb her, up there amongst the rocks and ever so far from
+Pontresina. It would have been delightful to paddle in the cold running
+water, for it was much hotter than she had ever supposed that it could
+be in such a place.
+
+She took off her straw hat, and fanned herself gently with it, letting
+the sunshine fall full upon her thick black hair. She had never owned a
+hat in her life till she had been installed in the little house in
+Trastevere, and she hated the inconvenient things. What was her hair
+for, if it could not protect her head? But a straw hat made a very good
+fan. The air was hot and still, and there were none of those thousand
+little sounds which she would have heard in the chestnut woods above
+Frascati.
+
+A little cry broke the silence, and she turned her head in the direction
+whence it came. Then she dropped her hat, sprang to her feet, and ran
+forwards, forgetting that she had no shoes on. She saw a figure clinging
+to the rocks, where they suddenly narrowed, and she heard the cry again,
+desperate with fear and weak with effort. A young girl had evidently
+been trying to climb down, when she had lost her footing, and had only
+been saved from a bad fall because her grey woollen frock had caught her
+upon a projecting point of granite, giving her time to snatch at the
+strong twigs of some alp-roses, and to find a very slight projection on
+which she could rest the toe of one shoe. She was hanging there with her
+face to the rock, eight or ten feet from the ground, which was strewn
+with big stones, and she was in such a position that she seemed unable
+to turn her head in order to look down.
+
+In ten seconds Regina was standing directly below the terrified girl,
+raising herself on tiptoe, and trying to reach her feet with her hands,
+to guide them to a hold; but she could not.
+
+"Don't be frightened," Regina said in Italian, which was the only
+language she knew.
+
+"I cannot hold on!" answered the girl, trying to look down, but feeling
+that her foot would slip if she turned her head far enough.
+
+"Yes, you can," Regina replied, too much roused to be surprised that the
+answer had come in her own language. "Your dress will hold you, even if
+you let go with your hands. It is new and it is strong, and it is fairly
+caught on the rock. I can see that."
+
+"But I can't hang here until you go and get help," cried the girl, not
+much reassured.
+
+"I am going to climb to the top by an easier way and pull you up again,"
+Regina answered. "Then we can get down together."
+
+While Regina was speaking she had already begun the ascent, which was
+easy enough for her, at the point she had chosen, though many an Alpine
+climber might have envied the quickness and sureness of her hold with
+feet and hands. She realised that she had forgotten her shoes now, and
+was glad that she had taken them off.
+
+"One minute more!" she cried in an encouraging tone, when she had almost
+reached the top.
+
+"Quick!" came the imploring answer.
+
+Then Regina was lying flat on the ledge above the girl, stretching both
+hands down and catching the slender white wrists with a hold like
+steel. And then, feeling herself held and safe to move, the girl looked
+up, and Regina was looking into Aurora's face below her. For one instant
+the two did not recognise each other, for they had only seen each other
+once, by night, under the portico of the Th��tre Fran�ais. But an
+instant later a flush of anger rose to Aurora's forehead, and the dark
+woman turned pale, and her brows were suddenly level and stern. They
+hated each other, as the one hung there held by the other's hands, and
+the black eyes gazed savagely into the angry blue ones. Aurora was not
+frightened any longer; she was angry because she was in Regina's power.
+The strong woman could save her if she would, and Aurora would despise
+herself ever afterwards for having been saved by her. Or the strong
+woman could let her fall, and she would probably be maimed for life if
+she were not killed outright. That seemed almost better. She had never
+understood before what it could mean to be altogether in the power of an
+enemy.
+
+Regina meant to save her; that was clear. With quick, commanding words
+she told her what to do.
+
+"Set your knees against the rock and pull yourself up a little by my
+hands. So! I can pull you higher now. Get one knee well on that ledge.
+Now I will hold your left hand with both mine while you disentangle your
+frock from the point. Now put your right hand round my neck while I
+raise myself a little. Yes, that way. Now, hold on tight!"
+
+Regina made a steady effort, lifting fully half Aurora's weight with
+her, as she got first upon one knee and then upon both.
+
+[Illustration: "REGINA MADE A STEADY EFFORT, LIFTING FULLY HALF AURORA'S
+WEIGHT WITH HER."]
+
+"There! Take breath and then scramble over the edge," she said.
+
+A few seconds, another effort, and Aurora sank exhausted beside Regina,
+half sitting, half lying, and resting on one hand.
+
+She looked up sideways at the dark woman's face; for Regina stood
+upright, gazing down into the valley. Aurora turned her eyes away, and
+then looked up again; she had recovered her breath now.
+
+"Thank you," she said, with an effort.
+
+"It is nothing," Regina answered in an indifferent tone, and without so
+much as moving her head; she was no more out of breath than if she had
+been sitting still.
+
+The fair girl hated her at that moment as she had never hated any one in
+her short life, nor had ever dreamed of hating. The flush of anger rose
+again and again to her forehead, to the very roots of her auburn hair,
+and lingered a second and sank again. Regina stood perfectly motionless,
+her face as unchanging as marble.
+
+Aurora rose to her feet, and leaned against the rock. She had suddenly
+felt herself at a disadvantage in remaining seated on the ground while
+her adversary was standing. It was the instinct of the animal that
+expects to be attacked. When two people who hate each other or love each
+other very much meet without warning in a very lonely place, the fierce
+old passions of the stone age may take hold of them and sway them, even
+nowadays.
+
+For a time that seemed long, there was silence; without words each knew
+that the other had recognised her. The peasant woman spoke first, though
+with an evident effort, and without turning her eyes.
+
+"When you are rested, we will go down," she said.
+
+Aurora moved a step towards the side on which Regina had climbed up.
+
+"I think I can get down alone," she answered coldly.
+
+Regina looked at her and laughed with a little contempt.
+
+"You will break your neck if you try," she said. "You cannot climb at
+all!"
+
+"I think I can get down," Aurora repeated.
+
+She went to the edge and was going to begin the attempt when Regina
+seized her by the wrist and dragged her back in spite of her resistance.
+
+"I have something to tell you first," Regina said. "Afterwards I will
+take you down, and you shall not fall. You shall reach the bottom safely
+and go home alone, or I will show you the way, as you please."
+
+"Let go of my wrist!" Aurora spoke angrily, for the strong grasp hurt
+her and humiliated her.
+
+"Listen to me," continued Regina, loosing her hold at once. "I am
+Regina. You are Aurora. We have heard of each other, and we have met.
+Let us talk. This is a good place and we are alone, and the day is
+long, and we may not meet again soon. We will say what we have to say
+now, and then we will part."
+
+"What is there to be said?" Aurora asked coldly and drawing back a
+little.
+
+"We two love the same man," Regina said. "Is that nothing? You know it
+is true. If we were not Christians we should try to kill each other
+here, where it is quiet. I could easily have killed you just now, and I
+wished to."
+
+"I wonder why you did not!" exclaimed Aurora, rather scornfully.
+
+"I thought with myself thus: 'If I kill her, I shall always have the
+satisfaction of it as long as I live. This is the truth. But I shall go
+to prison for many years and shall not see him again, therefore I will
+not do it. Besides, it will not please him. If it would make him happy I
+would kill her, even if I were to go to the galleys for it. But it would
+not. He would be very angry.' This is what I thought; and I pulled you
+up. And now, I will not let you hurt yourself in getting down, because
+he would be angry with me if he knew that it was my fault."
+
+Aurora listened to this extraordinary argument in silent surprise. She
+was not in the least frightened, but she saw at a glance that Regina was
+quite in earnest, and she knew her own people, and that the Roman
+peasants are not the gentlest of the Italians.
+
+"He would be very angry," Regina repeated. "I am sure he would!"
+
+"Why should he be angry?" Aurora asked, in a tone half contemptuous and
+yet half sad.
+
+"I know he would, because when he raved in his fever he used to call for
+you."
+
+Aurora started and fixed her eyes on Regina's.
+
+"Yes," Regina said, answering the look. "He often called you by name. He
+loved you once."
+
+She pronounced the words with an accent of pity, drawing herself up to
+her full height; and there was triumph in the light of her eyes. It is
+not every woman that has a chance of saying so much to her rival.
+
+"We were children then," Aurora said, in the very words she had used to
+her mother more than two years earlier.
+
+She was almost as pale as Regina now, for the thrust had been straight
+and sure, and right at her heart. But she was prouder than the peasant
+woman who had wounded her.
+
+"I have heard that you saved his life," she said presently. "And he
+loves you. You are happy!"
+
+"I should always be happy if he and I were alone in the world," Regina
+answered, for she was a little softened by the girl's tone. "But even
+now they are trying to part us."
+
+"To part you?" Again Aurora looked up suddenly. "Who is trying to do
+that? A woman?"
+
+Regina laughed a little.
+
+"You are jealous," she said. "That shows that you love him still. No. It
+is not a woman."
+
+"Corbario?" The name rose instinctively to Aurora's lips.
+
+"Yes," Regina answered. "That is why I am left alone this morning.
+Signor Corbario is at Saint Moritz and Marcello is gone down to see him.
+I know he is trying to separate us. You did not know that he was so
+near?"
+
+"We only came yesterday afternoon," Aurora answered. "We did not know
+that--that Signor Consalvi was here, or we should not have come at all."
+
+It had stung her to hear Regina speak of him quite naturally by his
+first name. Regina felt the rebuke.
+
+"I am truly sorry that I should have accidentally found myself in your
+path," she said, emphasising the rather grand phrase, and holding her
+handsome head very high.
+
+Aurora almost smiled at this sudden manifestation of the peasant's
+nature, and wondered whether Regina ever said such things to Marcello,
+and whether, if she did, they jarred on him very much. The speech had
+the very curious effect of restoring Aurora's sense of superiority, and
+she answered more kindly.
+
+"You need not be sorry," she said. "If you had not chanced to be here I
+should probably be lying amongst the rocks down there with several
+broken bones."
+
+"If it were not by my fault I should not care," Regina retorted, with
+elementary frankness.
+
+"But I should!" Aurora laughed, in spite of herself, and liking this
+phase of Regina's character better than any she had yet seen. "Come,"
+she said, with a sudden generous impulse, and holding out her hand,
+"let us stop quarrelling. You saved me from a bad accident, and I was
+too ungenerous to be grateful. I thank you now, with all my heart."
+
+Regina was surprised and stared hard at her for a moment, and then
+glanced at her outstretched hand.
+
+"You would not take my hand if there were any one here to see."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because they have told you that I am a wicked woman," Regina answered,
+a slight blush rising in her cheeks. "And perhaps it is true. But it was
+for him."
+
+"I would take your hand anywhere, because you saved his life," said
+Aurora, and her voice shook a little as she said the last words. "And
+besides, no one has told me that you are wicked. Come, what is the use
+of hating each other?"
+
+Regina took her hand reluctantly, but not suspiciously, and held it a
+moment.
+
+"It does not mean that I shall not hate you if he ever loves you again,"
+she said. "If I made you think that it would be treachery, and that is
+the worst sin."
+
+"It only means that I thank you now, quite honestly," Aurora answered,
+and their hands parted.
+
+"Very well." Regina seemed satisfied. "And I thank you for taking my
+hand," she added, with something oddly like real gratitude, "and because
+you said you would do it anywhere, even before other women. I know what
+I am, and what people call me. But it was for him. Let us not talk of
+it any more. I will help you down, and you shall go home alone."
+
+"My mother is waiting for me far down, towards the village," Aurora
+said.
+
+"All the better. A young lady like you should not go about without any
+one. It is not proper."
+
+Aurora suppressed a smile at the thought of being reproved concerning
+the proprieties by "Marcello's Regina," and she began the descent.
+Regina went down first, facing the rock, and planting the young girl's
+feet in the best stepping places, one after the other, with constant
+warnings and instructions as to holding on with her hands. They reached
+the bottom in safety, and came to the place where Regina had left her
+hat and shoes. She sat down where she had been sitting when she had
+first heard the cry, and began to put them on.
+
+"I had taken them off for coolness as I sat here," she explained. "You
+see, until I was fourteen I only wore them on Sundays."
+
+"And yet you have such beautiful feet," Aurora said.
+
+"Have I?" Regina asked indifferently. "I thought all feet were alike.
+But I have torn my stocking--it is hard to get the shoe on."
+
+"Let me help you." Aurora knelt down quickly, and began to loosen the
+lacing further, but Regina protested, flushing deeply and trying to draw
+her foot back.
+
+"No, no!" she cried. "You are a lady!"
+
+"What difference does that make?" asked Aurora, laughing and insisting.
+
+"This is not right!" Regina still protested, and the blush had not left
+her cheeks.
+
+But Aurora smoothed the torn stocking under the sole of each foot, and
+slipped on the shoes, which were by no means tight, and tied the lacing
+fast.
+
+"Thank you, Signorina," Regina said, much confused. "You are too good!"
+
+She picked up her hat and put it on, but she was not clever with the
+pin, for she was used to having Settimia do everything for her which she
+had not learned to do for herself before she had come to Rome.
+
+"I can never manage it without Settimia," she said, as if excusing
+herself for her awkwardness, as she again submitted to Aurora's help.
+
+"Settimia?" repeated the young girl, as she put the hat on and thrust a
+long pin through it. "Who is Settimia?"
+
+"Our--I mean my maid," Regina explained. "Thank you. You are too good!"
+
+"It is an uncommon name," Aurora said, looking critically at the hat.
+"But I think I have heard it before."
+
+"She is a wonderful woman. She knows French. She knows everything!"
+
+Aurora said nothing to this, but seemed to be trying to recall something
+she had long forgotten. Regina was very busy in her turn, pulling down
+the girl's frock all round, and brushing it with her hand as well as
+she could, and picking off bits of dry grass and thistles that clung to
+the grey woollen. Aurora thanked her.
+
+"The way down is very easy now," Regina said. "A few steps farther on we
+can see the road."
+
+"After all, why should you not come with me till we find my mother?"
+Aurora asked.
+
+"No," Regina answered with quiet decision. "I am what I am. You must not
+be seen with Regina. Do not tell your mother that you have been with me,
+and I shall not tell Marcello--I mean, Signor Consalvi."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Neither of them would be pleased. Trust me. I know the world. Good-bye,
+and the Madonna accompany you; and remember what I said when I took your
+hand."
+
+So they parted, and Regina stood up a long time, and watched the slender
+grey figure descending to the road in the valley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+"Variety, my dear Marcello, variety! There is nothing like it. If I were
+you, I would make some change, for your life must be growing monotonous,
+and besides, though I have not the least intention of reading you a
+lecture, you have really made your doings unnecessarily conspicuous of
+late. The Paris chroniclers have talked about you enough for the
+present. Don't you think so? Yes, finish the bottle. I always told you
+that champagne was good for you."
+
+Marcello filled his glass and sipped the wine before he answered. It had
+not gone to his head, but there was colour in his lean cheeks, his eyes
+were brighter than usual, and he felt the familiar exhilaration which he
+had missed of late.
+
+"I have been drinking milk for ten days," he said with a smile, as he
+set down the glass.
+
+"Good in its way, no doubt," Corbario answered genially, "but a little
+tiresome. One should often change from simple things to complicated
+ones. It is the science of enjoyment. Besides, it is bad for the
+digestion to live always on bread and milk."
+
+"I don't live on that altogether," laughed Marcello.
+
+"I mean it metaphorically, my dear boy. There is such a thing as
+simplifying one's existence too much. That sometimes ends in getting
+stuck. Now you cannot possibly allow yourself to get stuck in your
+present position. You know what I mean. Oh, I don't blame you! If I were
+your age I should probably do the same thing, especially if I had your
+luck. Blame you? No! Not in the least. The cigarettes are there. You've
+not given up smoking too? No, that's right. A man without a small vice
+is as uninteresting as a woman without a past or a landscape without
+shadows. Cigarettes never hurt anybody. Look at me! I used to smoke
+fifty a day when I was your age."
+
+Marcello blew a cloud of smoke, stirred his coffee, and leaned back. He
+had scarcely heard what Corbario said, but the elder man's careless
+chatter had put him at his ease.
+
+"Folco," he said quietly, "I want to ask you a question, and I want you
+to answer me seriously. Will you?"
+
+"As well as I can," answered Corbario, instantly changing his tone and
+growing earnest.
+
+"Don't be surprised," Marcello said, half apologetically, as if he were
+already weakening. "I shall never do anything without your advice. Of
+course you know how I feel about all this, that I am leading a
+disorderly life, and--well, you understand!"
+
+"Perfectly, my dear boy. I only wish to help you out of it as soon as
+possible, if you want to be helped. I'm quite sure that you will pull
+through in time. I have always believed in you."
+
+"Thank you. I know you have. Well, I'll ask you my question. You know
+well enough that I shall never care for society much, don't you?"
+
+"Society will care for you," answered Folco. "What is the question?"
+
+"I'm coming to it, but I want to explain, or it will not be quite clear.
+You see, it is not as if I were a personage in the world."
+
+"What sort of personage? Please explain."
+
+"I mean, if I were the head of a great house, with a great title and
+hereditary estate."
+
+"What has that to do with it?" Folco was mystified.
+
+"If I were, it would make a difference, I suppose. But I'm not. I'm
+plain Marcello Consalvi, no better than any one else."
+
+"But vastly richer," Folco suggested.
+
+"I wish I were not. I wish I were a poor clerk, working for my living."
+
+"The air of this place is not good for you, my boy." Folco laughed
+gaily.
+
+"No, don't laugh! I'm in earnest. If I were a poor man, nobody would
+think it at all strange if--" Marcello hesitated.
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If I married Regina," said Marcello rather desperately.
+
+Folco's expression changed instantly.
+
+"Was that the question you were going to ask me?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Marcello grew very red and smoked so fast that he choked himself.
+
+"Is there any earthly reason why you should marry her?" asked Folco very
+quietly.
+
+"It would be right," Marcello answered, gaining courage.
+
+"Yes, yes, undoubtedly," Folco hastened to admit. "In principle it would
+undoubtedly be right. But it is a very serious matter, my dear boy. It
+means your whole life and future. Have you"--he hesitated, with an
+affectation of delicacy--"have you said anything to her about it?"
+
+"I used to, at first, but she would not hear of it. You have no idea how
+simple she is, and how little she expects anything of the sort. She
+always tells me that I am to send her away when I am tired of her, to
+throw her away like an old coat, as she says herself. But I could never
+do that, you know. Could I?"
+
+Marcello blushed again, hardly knowing why. Corbario seemed deeply
+interested.
+
+"She must be a very unusual sort of girl," he observed thoughtfully.
+"There are not many like her, I fancy."
+
+"There is nobody like her," Marcello answered with conviction. "That is
+why I want to marry her. I owe it to her. You must admit that. I owe her
+my life, for I certainly should have died if she had not taken care of
+me. And then, there is the rest. She has given me all she has, and that
+is herself, and she asks nothing in return. She is very proud, too. I
+tried to make her accept a string of pearls in Paris, just because I
+thought they would be becoming to her, but she absolutely refused."
+
+"Really? I suppose you gave the pearls back to the jeweller?"
+
+"No, I kept them. Perhaps I shall get her to wear them some day."
+
+Folco smiled.
+
+"You may just as well encourage her simple tastes," he said. "Women
+always end by learning how to spend money, unless it is their own."
+
+Having delivered himself of this piece of wisdom Folco chose a cigar,
+nipped off the end of it neatly with a gold cutter, lit it and snuffed
+the rich smoke up his nose in a deliberate manner.
+
+"Regina is a very remarkable woman," he said at last. "If she had been
+well educated, she would make an admirable wife; and she loves you
+devotedly, Marcello. Now, the real question is--at least, it seems to me
+so--you don't mind my talking to you just as I would to myself, do you?
+Very well. If I were in your position, I should ask myself, as a man of
+honour, whether I really loved her as much as she loved me, or whether I
+had only been taken off my feet by her beauty. Don't misunderstand me,
+my boy! I should feel that if I were not quite sure of that, I ought not
+to marry her, because it would be much worse for her in the end than if
+we parted. Have you ever asked yourself that question, Marcello?"
+
+"Yes, I have."
+
+Marcello spoke in a low voice, and bent his head, as if he were not
+sure of the answer. Corbario, satisfied with the immediate effect of his
+satanic speech, waited a moment, sighed, looked down at his cigar, and
+then went on in gentle tones.
+
+"That is so often the way," he said. "A man marries a woman out of a
+sense of duty, and then makes her miserably unhappy, quite in spite of
+himself. Of course, in such a case as yours, you feel that you owe a
+woman amends--you cannot call it compensation, as if it were a matter of
+law! She has given everything, and you have given nothing. You owe her
+happiness, if you can bestow it upon her, don't you?"
+
+"Indeed I do!" assented Marcello.
+
+"Yes. The question is, whether the way to make her happy is to marry
+her, when you have a reasonable doubt as to whether you can be a good
+husband to her. That is the real problem, it seems to me. Do you love
+her enough to give up the life to which you were born, and for which you
+were educated? You would have to do that, you know. Our friends--your
+dear mother's friends, my boy--would never receive her, least of all
+after what has happened."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"You would have to wander about Europe, or live in San Domenico, for you
+could not bear to live in Rome, meeting women who would not bow to your
+wife. I know you. You could not possibly bear it."
+
+"I should think not!"
+
+"No. Therefore, since you have the doubt, since you are not absolutely
+sure of yourself, I think the only thing to do is to find out what you
+really feel, before taking an irreparable step."
+
+"Yes," said Marcello, who had fallen into the trap laid for him. "I know
+that. But how am I to make sure of myself?"
+
+"There is only one way," Folco answered. "I know it is not easy, and if
+I were not sure that you are perfectly sincere I should be afraid to
+propose it to you."
+
+"What is it? Tell me. You are the only friend I have in the world,
+Folco, and I want to do what is right. God knows, I am in earnest! There
+are moments when I cannot imagine living without Regina--it seemed hard
+to leave her this morning, even for these few hours, and I long to be
+back at Pontresina already! Yet you know how fond I am of you, and how I
+like to be with you, for we have always been more like brothers than
+anything else."
+
+"Indeed we have!" Folco assented fervently. "You were saying that there
+were moments--yes?"
+
+"Sometimes she jars upon me dreadfully," Marcello said in a low voice,
+as if he were ashamed of owning it. "Then I want to get away."
+
+"Exactly. You want to get away, not to leave her, but to be alone for a
+few hours, or a few days. That would be the very best thing you could
+do--to separate for a little while. You would very soon find out whether
+you could live without her or not; and believe me, if you feel that you
+can live without her, that means that you could not live with her for
+your whole life."
+
+"I should go back to her in twenty-four hours. I am sure I should."
+
+"Perhaps you would, if you went, say, from here to Paris alone, with
+nothing to distract your attention. But suppose that you and I should go
+together, to some place where we should meet our friends, all amusing
+themselves, where you could talk to other women, and meet men of your
+own age, and lead the life people expect you to lead, just for a few
+weeks. You know that society will be only too glad to see something of
+you, whenever you choose to go near it. You are what is called a good
+match, and all the mothers with marriageable daughters would run after
+you."
+
+"Disgusting!" exclaimed Marcello, with contempt.
+
+"No doubt, but it would be a wholesome change and a good test. When a
+young girl is determined to be a nun, she is generally made to spend a
+year in society, in order to make acquaintance with what she intends to
+give up. I don't see much difference between that and your case. Before
+you say good-bye for ever to your own world, find out what it is like.
+At the same time, you will settle for ever any doubts you have about
+really loving Regina."
+
+"Perhaps you are right. It would only be for a few days."
+
+"And besides," Folco continued, "if you have not yet found it dull at
+Pontresina, you certainly will before long. There is no reason why you
+should lead the life of an invalid, for you are quite strong now."
+
+"Oh, quite. I always tell Regina so, but she insists that I am too thin,
+and it amuses her to take care of me."
+
+"Naturally. That is how you first made acquaintance. A woman who has
+once taken care of a man she loves wants him to be ever afterwards an
+invalid, for ever getting better! A man gets tired of that in time. It
+was a great pity you left Paris just when I came, for there are many
+things we could have enjoyed together there."
+
+"I daresay," Marcello answered, not paying much attention to the other's
+words.
+
+"Take my advice, my dear boy," said Folco. "Come away with me for a few
+days. I will wait here till you are quite ready, for of course you
+cannot be sure of getting off at once. You will have to prepare Regina
+for this."
+
+"Of course. I am not sure that it is possible at all."
+
+Folco laughed gaily.
+
+"Anything is possible that you really wish to do," he said.
+
+"Regina may insist upon coming with me."
+
+"Nonsense. Women always submit in the end, and they never die of it.
+Assert yourself, Marcello! Be a man! You cannot be ordered about like a
+child by any woman, not even if she has saved your life, not even if
+she loves you to distraction. You have a right to a will of your own."
+
+"I know. And yet--oh, I wish I knew what I ought to do!"
+
+"Think over all I have said, and you will see that I am right," said
+Folco, rising from the table. "And if you take my advice, you will be
+doing what is fair and honest by Regina as well as by yourself. Your own
+conscience must tell you that."
+
+Poor Marcello was not very sure what had become of his own conscience
+during the past year, and Folco's arguments swayed him as he groped for
+something definite to follow, and found nothing but what Corbario chose
+to thrust into his hand.
+
+As they stood by the table, a servant brought a note on a little salver,
+holding it out to them as if he were not sure which of them was to
+receive it. Both glanced at the address; it was for Corbario, who took
+it quickly and put it into his pocket; but Marcello had recognised the
+handwriting--that rather cramped feminine hand of a woman who has seen
+better days, in which Settimia kept accounts for Regina. The latter
+insisted that an account should be kept of the money which Marcello gave
+her, and that he should see it from time to time. At the first moment,
+being absorbed with other matters, and inwardly much engaged in the
+pursuit of his own conscience, which eluded him at every turn like a
+figure in a dream, he paid no attention to what he had seen; but the
+writing had impressed itself on his memory.
+
+They had been lunching in Folco's sitting-room, and Corbario made an
+excuse to go into his bedroom for a moment, saying that he wanted
+certain cigars that his man had put away. Marcello stood at the window
+gazing down the broad valley. Scarcely a minute elapsed before Folco
+came back with a handful of Havanas which he dropped on a writing-table.
+
+"By the bye," he said carelessly, "there is another reason why you may
+not care to stay long in Pontresina. The Contessa and Aurora are there."
+
+"Are they?" Marcello turned sharply as he asked the question.
+
+He was surprised, and at the same instant it flashed upon him that Folco
+had just received the information from Settimia in the note that had
+been brought.
+
+"Yes," Folco answered with a smile. "And Pontresina is such a small
+place that you can hardly help meeting them. I thought I might as well
+tell you."
+
+"Thank you. Yes, it would be awkward, and unpleasant for them."
+
+"Precisely. The Contessa wrote me that she and Aurora had come upon you
+two unexpectedly in leaving a theatre, and that she had felt very
+uncomfortable."
+
+"Oh! I suppose she suggested that I should mend my ways?"
+
+"As a matter of fact, she did." Corbario smiled. "You know what a very
+proper person she is!"
+
+"She is quite right," answered Marcello gravely.
+
+"It certainly cannot have been pleasant for her, on account of Aurora."
+
+Folco looked at him thoughtfully, for his tone had suddenly changed.
+
+"If you don't mind," Folco said, "I think I will drive up with you and
+call on them this afternoon. You can drop me at their hotel, and I shall
+find my way back alone."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Are you sure you don't mind?" Folco affected to speak anxiously.
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"You see," Folco said, without heeding the question, "they let me know
+that they were there, and as we are such old friends it would be strange
+if I did not go to see them."
+
+"Of course it would," answered Marcello in an absent tone.
+
+He already connected Folco's knowledge of the Contessa's arrival in
+Pontresina so closely with Settimia's note that Folco's last statement
+had taken him by surprise, and a multitude of confused questions
+presented themselves to his mind. If Settimia had not written about the
+Contessa, why had she written at all? How did she know where Corbario
+was stopping in Saint Moritz? Was she in the habit of writing to him?
+Corbario had found her for Regina; was Settimia helping Corbario to
+exercise a sort of paternal vigilance over him? Somehow Marcello did not
+like that idea at all. So far as he knew, Folco had always been
+singularly frank with him, and had never deceived him in the smallest
+thing, even "for his own good." Marcello could only attribute good
+motives to him, but the mere idea of being watched was excessively
+disagreeable. He wondered whether Settimia had influenced Regina to get
+him away from Paris, acting under directions from Corbario. Was Regina
+deceiving him too, "for his own good"? If there is anything a man cannot
+bear from those he loves best, it is that they should take counsel
+together secretly to direct him "for his own good."
+
+Marcello tried to put the thought out of his mind; but it had dawned
+upon him for the first time that Folco could tell even a pious
+falsehood. Yet he had no proof whatever that he had guessed right; it
+was a sudden impression and nothing more. He was much more silent during
+the rest of the afternoon as he drove up to Pontresina with Folco, and
+it seemed to him that he had at last touched something definite; which
+was strange enough, considering that it was all a matter of guess-work
+and doubt.
+
+And now fate awoke again and did one of those little things that decide
+men's lives. If Folco and Marcello had stopped at the door of the
+Contessa's hotel two minutes earlier, or thirty seconds later, than they
+did, they would not have chanced upon the Contessa and Aurora just
+coming in from a walk. But fate brought the four together precisely at
+that moment. As the carriage stopped, the two ladies had come from the
+opposite direction and were on the door-step.
+
+"What a surprise!" exclaimed the Contessa, giving her hand graciously
+to Folco and then to Marcello.
+
+The latter had got hold of a thread. Since the Contessa was surprised to
+see Folco, she could not possibly have already let him know that she was
+in Pontresina.
+
+"I came as soon as I knew that you were here," said Corbario quickly.
+
+Marcello heard the words, though he was at that moment shaking hands
+with Aurora, and their eyes had met. She was perfectly calm and
+collected, none the worse for her adventure in the morning, and
+considerably the wiser.
+
+"Will you come in?" asked the Contessa, leading the way, as if expecting
+both men to follow.
+
+Corbario went at once. Marcello hesitated, and flushed a little, and
+Aurora seemed to be waiting for him.
+
+"Shall I come, too?" he asked.
+
+"Just as you please," she answered. "My mother will think it strange if
+you don't."
+
+Marcello bent his head, and the two followed the others towards the
+stairs at a little distance.
+
+"Did your mother send word to Folco that you were here?" asked Marcello
+quickly, in a low tone.
+
+"Not that I know. Why?"
+
+"It is no matter. I wanted to be sure. Thank you."
+
+They went upstairs side by side, not even glancing at each other, much
+more anxious to seem perfectly indifferent than to realise what they
+felt now that they had met at last.
+
+Marcello stayed ten minutes in the small sitting-room, talking as well
+as he could. He had no wish to be alone with Aurora or her mother, and
+since the visit had been pressed upon him he was glad that Folco was
+present. But he got away as soon as he could, leaving Corbario to his
+own devices. The Contessa gave him her hand quietly, as if she had not
+expected him to stay, and she did not ask him to come again. Aurora
+merely nodded to him, and he saw that just as he went out she left the
+room by another door, after glancing at him once more with apparent
+coldness.
+
+He walked quickly through the village until he came near to his own
+hotel, and then his pace slackened by degrees. He knew that he had felt
+a strong emotion in seeing Aurora again, and he was already wishing that
+he had not come away so soon. The room had been small, and it had been
+uncomfortable to be there, feeling himself judged and condemned by the
+Contessa and distrusted by Aurora; but he had been in an atmosphere that
+recalled all his youth, with people whose mere presence together brought
+back the memory of his dead mother as nothing else had done since his
+illness. He was just in that state of mind in which he would have broken
+away and freed himself within the hour, at any cost, if he had been
+involved in a common intrigue.
+
+At the same time he had become convinced that Folco had deceived him,
+for some reason or other which he could not guess, and the knowledge was
+the first serious disillusionment of his life. The deception had been
+small, and perhaps intended in some mysterious way to be "for his own
+good"; but it had been a distinct deception and no better than a lie. He
+was sure of that.
+
+He went upstairs slowly and Regina met him at the door of their rooms,
+and took his hat and stick without a word, for she saw that something
+had happened, and she felt suddenly cold. He was quite unlike himself.
+The careless look was gone from his face, his young lips were tightly
+closed, and he looked straight before him, quite unconscious that his
+manner was hurting her desperately.
+
+"Has Settimia been out to-day?" he asked, looking at her quickly.
+
+"I don't know," she answered, surprised. "I went for a long walk this
+morning. She probably went out into the village. I cannot tell. Why do
+you ask?"
+
+"I wish to know whether she sent a note to Saint Moritz by a messenger.
+Can you find out, without asking her a direct question? I am very
+anxious to know."
+
+"I will try, but it will not be easy," said Regina, watching him.
+
+She had made up her mind that the blow was coming, and that Marcello was
+only putting off the moment when she must be told that he meant to leave
+her. She was very quiet, and waited for him to speak again, for she was
+too proud to ask him questions. His inquiry about Settimia was in some
+way connected with what was to come. He sat down by the table, and
+drummed upon it absently with his fingers for a moment. Then he looked
+up suddenly and met her eyes; his look of troubled preoccupation faded
+all at once, and he smiled and held out one hand to draw her nearer.
+
+"Forgive me," he said. "All sorts of things have happened to-day. I have
+been annoyed."
+
+She came and bent over him, turning his face up to hers with her hands,
+very gently. His eyes lightened slowly, and his lips parted a little.
+
+"You are not tired of Regina yet," she said.
+
+"No!" he laughed. "But you were right," he added, almost immediately.
+
+"I knew I was," she answered, but not as she had expected to say the
+words when she had seen him come in.
+
+She dared not hope to keep him always, but she had not lost him yet, and
+that was enough for the moment. The weight had fallen from her heart,
+and the pain was gone.
+
+"Was it what I thought?" she asked softly. "Does your stepfather wish to
+separate us?"
+
+"For a little while," Marcello answered. "He says we ought to part for a
+few weeks, so that I may find out whether I love you enough to marry
+you!"
+
+"And he almost persuaded you that he was right," said Regina. "Is that
+what happened?"
+
+"That--and something else."
+
+"Will you tell me, heart of my heart?"
+
+In the falling twilight he told her all that had passed through his
+mind, from the moment when he had seen Settimia's handwriting on the
+note. Then Regina's lips moved.
+
+"He shall pay!" she was saying under her breath. "He shall pay!"
+
+"What are you saying?" Marcello asked.
+
+"An Ave Maria," she answered. "It is almost dark."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The little house in Trastevere was shut up, but the gardener had the
+keys, and came twice a week to air the rooms and sweep the paths and
+water the shrubs. He was to be informed by Settimia of Regina's return
+in time to have everything ready, but he did not expect any news before
+the end of September; and if he came regularly, on Tuesday and Saturday,
+and did his work, it was because he was a conscientious person in his
+way, elderly, neat, and systematic, a good sort of Roman of the old
+breed. But if he came on other days, as he often did, not to air the
+rooms, but to water and tend certain plants, and to do the many
+incomprehensible things which gardeners do with flower-pots, earth, and
+seeds, that was his own affair, and would bring a little money in the
+autumn when the small florists opened their shops and stands again, and
+the tide of foreigners set once more towards Rome. Also, if he had made
+friends with the gardeners at the beautiful villa on the Janiculum, that
+was not Corbario's business; and they gave him cuttings, and odds and
+ends, such as can be spared from a great garden where money is spent
+generously, but which mean a great deal to a poor man who is anxious to
+turn an honest penny by hard work.
+
+The immediate result of this little traffic was that the gardeners at
+the villa knew all about the little house in Trastevere; and what the
+gardeners knew was known also by the porter, and by the other servants,
+and through them by the servants of other people, and the confidential
+valet told his master, and the maid told her mistress; and so everybody
+had learned where "Consalvi's Regina" lived, and it was likely that
+everybody would know when she came back to Rome, and whether Marcello
+came with her or not.
+
+He had not taken Folco's advice, much to the latter's disappointment and
+annoyance. On the contrary, he and Regina had left the Engadine very
+suddenly, without so much as letting Corbario guess that they were going
+away; and Regina had managed to keep Settimia so very busy and so
+constantly under her eye that the maid had not been able to send Folco a
+word, warning him of the anticipated move. Almost for the first time
+Marcello had made up his mind for himself, and had acted upon his
+decision; and it seemed as if the exercise of his will had made a change
+in his character.
+
+They wandered from place to place; they went to Venice in the hottest
+season, when no one was there, and they came down to Florence and drove
+up to Vallombrosa, where they stumbled upon society, and were stared at
+accordingly. They went down to Siena, they stopped in Orvieto, and drove
+across to Assisi and Perugia; but they were perpetually drawn towards
+Rome, and knew that they longed to be there again.
+
+Marcello had plenty of time to think, and there was little to disturb
+his meditations on the past and future; for Regina was not talkative,
+and was content to be silent for hours, provided that she could see his
+face. He never knew whether she felt her ignorance about all they saw,
+and his own knowledge was by no means great. He told her what he knew
+and read about places they visited, and she remembered what he said, and
+sometimes asked simple questions which he could answer easily enough.
+For instance, she wished to know whether America were a city or an
+island, and who the Jews were, and if the sun rose in the west on the
+other side of the world, since Marcello assured her that the world was
+round.
+
+He was neither shocked nor amused; Ercole had asked him similar
+questions when he had been a boy; so had the peasants in Calabria, and
+there was no reason why Regina should know more than they did. Besides,
+she possessed wonderful tact, and now spoke her own language so well
+that she could pass for a person of average education, so long as she
+avoided speaking of anything that is learned from books. She was very
+quick to understand everything connected with the people she heard of,
+and she never forgot anything that Marcello told her. She was grateful
+to him for never laughing at her, but in reality he was indifferent. If
+she had known everything within bounds of knowledge, she would not have
+been a whit more beautiful, or more loving, or more womanly.
+
+But he himself was beginning to think, now that his faith in Folco had
+been shaken, and he began to realise that he had been strangely torpid
+and morally listless during the past years. The shock his whole system
+had received, the long interval during which his memory had been quite
+gone, the physical languor that had lasted some time after his recovery
+from the fever, had all combined to make the near past seem infinitely
+remote, to cloud his judgment of reality, and to destroy the healthy
+tension of his natural will. A good deal of what Corbario had called
+"harmless dissipation" had made matters worse, and when Regina had
+persuaded him to leave Paris he had really been in that dangerous moral,
+intellectual, and physical condition in which it takes very little to
+send a man to the bad altogether, and not much more to kill him
+outright, if he be of a delicate constitution and still very young.
+Corbario had almost succeeded in his work of destruction.
+
+He would not succeed now, for the worst danger was past, and Marcello
+had found his feet after being almost lost in the quicksand through
+which he had been led.
+
+He had not at first accused Folco of anything worse than that one little
+deception about the arrival of the Contessa, and of having caused him to
+be too closely watched by Settimia. Little by little, however, other
+possibilities had shaped themselves and had grown into certainties at an
+alarming rate. He understood all at once how Folco himself had been
+spending his time, while society had supposed him to be a broken
+hearted widower. A few hints which he had let fall about the things he
+would have shown Marcello in Paris suggested a great deal; his looks and
+manner told the rest, now that Marcello had guessed the main truth. He
+had not waited three months after his wife's death to profit by his
+liberty and the wealth she had left him. Marcello remembered the
+addresses he had given from time to time--Monte Carlo, Hombourg, Pau,
+and Paris very often. He had spoken of business in his letters, as an
+excuse for moving about so much, but "business" did not always take a
+man to places of amusement, and Folco seemed to have visited no others.
+Men whom Marcello had met had seen Corbario, and what they said about
+him was by no means indefinite. He had been amusing himself, and not
+alone, and the young men had laughed at his attempts to cloak his doings
+under an appearance of sorrowing respectability.
+
+As all this became clear to Marcello he suffered acutely at times, and
+he reproached himself bitterly for having been so long blind and
+indifferent. It was bad enough that he should have been leading a wild
+life with Regina in Paris within a few months of his mother's death, but
+even in the depths of his self-reproach he saw how much worse it was
+that Folco should have forgotten her so soon. It was worse than a slight
+upon his mother's memory, it was an insult. The good woman who was gone
+would have shed hot tears if she could have come to life and seen how
+her son was living; but she would have died again, could she have seen
+the husband she adored in the places where many had seen him since her
+death. It was no wonder that Marcello's anger rose at the mere thought.
+
+Moreover, as Marcello's understanding awoke, he realised that Folco had
+encouraged him in all he had done, and had not seemed pleased when he
+had begun to live more quietly. Folco would have made him his companion
+in pleasure, if he could, and the idea was horrible to Marcello as soon
+as it presented itself.
+
+It was the discovery that he had been mistaken in Corbario that most
+directly helped him to regain his foothold in life and his free will.
+There was more in the Spartan method than we are always ready to admit,
+for it is easier to disgust most men by the sight of human degradation
+than to strengthen them against temptation by preaching, or by the
+lessons of example which are so very peculiarly disagreeable to the
+normal man.
+
+"I am virtuous, I am sober, I resist temptation, imitate me!" cries the
+preacher. You say that you are virtuous, and you are apparently sober,
+my friend; and perhaps you are a very good man, though you need not
+scream out the statement at the top of your voice. But how are we to
+know that you have any temptations to resist? Or that your temptations
+are the same as ours, even supposing that you have any? Or that you are
+speaking the truth about yourself, since what you say is so extremely
+flattering to your vanity? Wherever there is preaching, those who are
+preached at are expected to accept a good deal on the mere word of the
+preacher, quite aside from anything they have been brought to believe
+elsewhere.
+
+"Temptation?" said a certain great lady who was not strong in theology.
+"That is what one yields to, isn't it?"
+
+She probably knew what she was talking about, for she had lived in the
+world a good while, as we have. But the preacher is not very often one
+of us, and he knows little of our ways and next to nothing of our real
+feelings; yet he exhorts us to be like him. It would be very odd if we
+succeeded. The world would probably stand still if we did, and most of
+us are so well aware of the fact that we do not even try; and the sermon
+simply has no effect at all, which need not prevent the preacher from
+being richly remunerated for delivering it.
+
+"Vice is very attractive, of course," he says, "but you must avoid it
+because it is sinful."
+
+And every time vice is mentioned we think how attractive it must be,
+since it is necessary to preach against it so much; and the more
+attractive it seems, the greater the temptation.
+
+"Should you like to try a vice or two?" said the Spartan, "Very well.
+Come with me, my boy, and you shall see what vice is; and after that, if
+you care to try it, please yourself, for I shall have nothing more to
+say!"
+
+And forthwith he played upon the string of disgust, which is the most
+sensitive of all the strings that vibrate in the great human instrument;
+and the boy's stomach rose, and he sickened and turned away, and
+remembered for ever, though he might try ever so hard to forget.
+
+Marcello at last saw Folco as he was, though still without understanding
+the worst, and with no suspicion that Folco wished him out of the world,
+and had deliberately set to work to kill him by dissipation; and the
+disgust he felt was the most horrible sensation that he could remember.
+At the same time he saw himself and his whole life, and the perplexity
+of his position frightened him.
+
+It seemed impossible to go back and live under the same roof with
+Corbario now. He flushed with shame when he remembered the luncheon at
+Saint Moritz, and how he had been almost persuaded to leave poor Regina
+suddenly, and to go back to Paris with his stepfather. He saw through
+the devilish cleverness of the man's arguments, and when he remembered
+that his dead mother's name had been spoken, a thrill of real pain ran
+through his body and he clenched his teeth and his hands.
+
+He asked himself how he could meet Folco after that, and the only answer
+was that if they met they must quarrel and part, not to meet again.
+
+He told Regina that he would not go back to the villa after they reached
+Rome, but would live in the little house in Trastevere. To his surprise,
+she looked grave and shook her head. She had never asked him what was
+making him so silent and thoughtful, but she had guessed much of the
+truth from little things; she herself had never trusted Corbario since
+she had first seen his face at the hospital, and she had long foreseen
+the coming struggle.
+
+"Why do you shake your head?" he asked. "Do you not want me at the
+little house?"
+
+"The villa is yours, not his," she said. "He will be glad if you will
+leave him there, for he will be the master. Then he will marry again,
+and live there, and it will be hard to turn him out."
+
+"What makes you think he wishes to marry again?"
+
+"He would be married already, if the girl would have him," answered
+Regina.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"You told me to watch, to find out. I have obeyed you. I know
+everything."
+
+Marcello was surprised, and did not quite understand. He only remembered
+that he had asked her to ascertain whether Settimia had sent a note to
+Folco at Saint Moritz. After a day or two she told him that she was
+quite sure of it. That was all, and Regina had scarcely ever spoken of
+Folco since then. Marcello reminded her of this, and asked her what she
+had done.
+
+"I can read," she said. "I can read writing, and that is very hard, you
+know. I made Settimia teach me. I said with myself, if he should be away
+and should write to me, what should I do? I could not let Settimia read
+his letters, and I am too well dressed to go to a public letter-writer
+in the street, as the peasants do. He would think me an ignorant person,
+and the people in the street would laugh. That would not help me. I
+should have to go to the priest, to my confessor."
+
+"Your confessor? Do you go to confession?"
+
+"Do you take me for a Turk?" Regina asked, laughing. "I go to confession
+at Christmas and Easter. I tell the priest that I am very bad, and am
+sorry, but that it is for you and that I cannot help it. Then he asks me
+if I will promise to leave you and be good. And I say no, that I will
+not promise that. And he tells me to go away and come back when I am
+ready to promise, and that he will give me absolution then. It is always
+the same. He shakes his head and frowns when he sees me coming, and I
+smile. We know each other quite well now. I have told him that when you
+are tired of me, then I will be good. Is not that enough? What can I do?
+I should like to be good, of course, but I like still better to be with
+you. So it is."
+
+"You are better than the priest knows," said Marcello thoughtfully, "and
+I am worse."
+
+"It is not true. But if I had a letter from you, I would not take it to
+the priest to read for me. He would be angry, and tear it up, and send
+me away. I understood this at the beginning, so I made Settimia teach me
+how to read the writing, and I also learned to write myself, not very
+well, but one can understand it."
+
+"I know. I have seen you writing copies. But how has that helped you to
+find out what Folco is doing?"
+
+"I read all Settimia's letters," Regina answered, with perfect
+simplicity.
+
+"Eh?" Marcello thought he had misunderstood her.
+
+"I read all the letters she gets," Regina replied, unmoved. "When she
+was teaching me to read I saw where she kept all her letters. It is
+always the same place. There is a pocket inside a little black bag she
+has, which opens easily, though she locks it. She puts the letters
+there, and when she has read them over she burns them. You see, she has
+no idea that I read them. But I always do, ever since you asked me about
+that note. When I know that she has had a letter, I send her out on an
+errand. Then I read. It is so easy!"
+
+Regina laughed, but Marcello looked displeased.
+
+"It is not honest to do such things," he said.
+
+"Not honest?" Regina stared at him in amazement. "How does honesty enter
+into the question? Is Settimia honest? Then honest people should all be
+in the galleys! And if you knew how he writes to her! Oh, yes! You are
+the 'dear patient,' and I am the 'admirable companion.' They have known
+each other long, those two. They have a language between them, but I
+have learned it. They have no more secrets that I do not know.
+Everything the admirable companion does that makes the dear patient
+better is wrong, and everything that used to make him worse was right.
+They were killing you in Paris, they wanted you to stay there until you
+were dead. Do you know who saved your life? It was the Contessa, when I
+heard her say that you were looking ill! If you ever see her again,
+thank her, for I was blind and she opened my eyes. The devil had blinded
+me, and the pleasure, and I could not see. I see now, thanks to heaven,
+and I know all, and they shall not hurt you. But they shall pay!"
+
+She was not laughing now, as she said the last words under her breath,
+and her beautiful lips just showed her white teeth, set savagely tight
+as though they had bitten through something that could be killed. Folco
+Corbario was not timid, but if he had seen her then, and known that the
+imaginary bite was meant for his life, he would have taken special care
+of his bodily safety whenever she was in his neighbourhood.
+
+Marcello had listened in profound surprise, for what she said threw new
+light on all he had thought out for himself of late.
+
+"And you say that Folco is thinking of marrying again," he said, almost
+ashamed to profit by information obtained as Regina had got it.
+
+"Yes, he is in love with a young girl, and wishes to marry her."
+
+Marcello said nothing.
+
+"Should you like to know her name?" asked Regina.
+
+Still Marcello was silent, as if refusing to answer, and yet wishing
+that she should go on.
+
+"I will tell you," Regina said. "Her name is Aurora dell' Armi."
+
+Marcello started, and looked into her face, doubting her word for the
+first time. He changed colour, too, flushing and then turning pale.
+
+"It is not true!" he cried, rather hoarsely. "It cannot be true!"
+
+"It is true," Regina answered, "but she will not have him. She would not
+marry him, even if her mother would allow it."
+
+"Thank God!" exclaimed Marcello fervently.
+
+Regina sighed, and turned away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Ercole sat on the stone seat that ran along the wall of the inn, facing
+the dusty road. He was waiting in the cool dawn until it should please
+the innkeeper to open the door, and Nino crouched beside him, his head
+resting on his forepaws.
+
+A great many years had passed since Ercole had sat there the last time,
+but nothing had changed, so far as he could see. He had been young, and
+the women had called him handsome; his face had not been shrivelled to
+parchment by the fever, and there had been no grey threads in his thick
+black hair. Nino had not been born then, and now Nino seemed to be a
+part of himself. Nino's grandam had lain in almost the same spot then,
+wolfish and hungry as her descendant was now, and only a trifle less
+uncannily hideous. It was all very much the same, but between that time
+and this there lay all Ercole's life by the Roman shore.
+
+When he had heard, as every one had, how Marcello had been brought to
+Rome on the tail of a wine-cart, he had been sure that the boy had been
+laid upon it while the cart was standing before Paoluccio's inn in the
+night. He knew the road well, and the ways of the carters, and that they
+rarely stopped anywhere else between Frascati and Rome. Again and again
+he had been on the point of tramping up from the seashore to the place,
+to see whether he could not find some clue to Marcello's accident there,
+but something had prevented him, some old dislike of returning to the
+neighbourhood after such a long absence. He knew why he had not gone,
+but he had not confided the reason even to Nino, who was told most
+things. He had, moreover, been tolerably sure that nothing short of
+thumb-screws would extract any information from Paoluccio or his wife,
+for he knew his own people. The only thing that surprised him was that
+the boy should ever have left the inn alive after being robbed of
+everything he had about him that was worth taking.
+
+Moreover, since Marcello had been found, and was alive and well, it was
+of very little use to try and discover exactly what had happened to him
+after he had been last seen by the shore. But the aspect of things had
+changed since Ercole had heard the sailor's story, and his wish to see
+the place where the boy had been hidden so long overcame any repugnance
+he felt to visiting a neighbourhood which had unpleasant associations
+with his younger years.
+
+He sat and waited at the door, and before the sun rose a young woman
+came round the house with the big key and opened the place, just as
+Regina had done in old days. She looked at Ercole, and he looked at her,
+and neither said anything as she went about her work, sprinkling the
+floor with water and then sweeping it, and noisily pulling the heavy
+benches about. When this operation was finished, Ercole rose and went
+in, and sat down at the end of a table. He took some bread and cheese
+from his canvas bag and began to eat, using his clasp-knife.
+
+"If you wish wine," said the woman, "you will have to wait till the
+master comes down."
+
+Ercole only answered by raising his head and throwing out his chin,
+which means "no" in gesture language. He threw pieces of the bread and
+the rind of the cheese to his dog. Nino caught each fragment in the air
+with a snap that would have lamed a horse for a month. The woman glanced
+nervously at the animal, each time she heard his jagged teeth close.
+
+Paoluccio appeared in due time, without coat or waistcoat, and with his
+sleeves rolled up above the elbows, as if he had been washing. If he
+had, the operation had succeeded very imperfectly. He glanced at Ercole
+as he passed in.
+
+"Good-morning," he said, for he made it a point to be polite to
+customers, even when they brought their own food.
+
+"Good-morning," answered Ercole, looking at him curiously.
+
+Possibly there was something unusual in the tone of Ercole's voice, for
+Nino suddenly sat up beside his master's knee, forgetting all about the
+bread, and watched Paoluccio too, as if he expected something. But
+nothing happened. Paoluccio opened a cupboard in the wall with a key he
+carried, took out a bottle of the coarse aniseed spirits which the Roman
+peasants drink, and filled himself a small glass of the stuff, which he
+tossed off with evident pleasure. Then he filled his pipe, lit it
+carefully, and went to the door again. By this time, though he had
+apparently not bestowed the least attention on Ercole, he had made up
+his mind about him, and was not mistaken. Ercole belonged to the better
+class of customers.
+
+"You come from the Roman shore?" he said, with an interrogation.
+
+"To serve you," Ercole assented, with evident willingness to enter into
+conversation. "I am a keeper and watchman on the lands of Signor
+Corbario."
+
+Paoluccio took his pipe from his mouth and nodded twice.
+
+"That is a very rich gentleman, I have heard," he observed. "He owns
+much land."
+
+"It all belongs to his stepson, now that the young gentleman is of age,"
+Ercole answered. "But as it was his mother's, and she married Signor
+Corbario, we have the habit of the name."
+
+"What is the name of the stepson?" asked Paoluccio.
+
+"Consalvi," Ercole replied.
+
+Paoluccio said nothing to this, but lit his pipe again with a sulphur
+match.
+
+"Evil befall the soul of our government!" he grumbled presently, with
+insufficient logic, but meaning that the government sold bad tobacco.
+
+"You must have heard of the young gentleman," Ercole said. "His name is
+Marcello Consalvi. They say that he lay ill for a long time at an inn on
+this road--"
+
+"For the love of heaven, don't talk to me about Marcello Consalvi!"
+cried Paoluccio, suddenly in a fury. "Blood of a dog! If you had not the
+face of an honest man I should think you were another of those newspaper
+men in disguise, pigs and animals that they are and sons of evil
+mothers, and ill befall their wicked dead, and their little dead ones,
+and those that shall be born to them!"
+
+Paoluccio's eyes were bloodshot and he spat furiously, half across the
+road. Nino watched him and hitched the side of his upper lip on one of
+his lower fangs, which produced the effect of a terrific smile. Ercole
+was unmoved.
+
+"I suppose," he observed, "that they said it happened in your inn."
+
+"And why should it happen in my inn, rather than in any other inn?"
+inquired Paoluccio angrily.
+
+"Indeed," said Ercole, "I cannot imagine why they should say that it
+did! Some one must have put the story about. A servant, perhaps, whom
+you sent away."
+
+"We did not send Regina away," answered Paoluccio, still furious. "She
+ran away in the night, about that time. But, as you say, she may have
+invented the story and sent the newspaper men here to worry our lives
+with their questions, out of mere spite."
+
+"Who was this Regina?" Ercole asked. "What has she to do with it?"
+
+"Regina? She was the servant girl we had before this one. We took her
+out of charity."
+
+"The daughter of some relation, no doubt," Ercole suggested.
+
+"May that never be, if it please the Madonna!" cried Paoluccio. "A
+relation? Thank God we have always been honest people in my father's
+house! No, it was not a relation. She came of a crooked race. Her mother
+took a lover, and her father killed him, here on the Frascati road, and
+almost killed her too; but the law gave him the right and he went free."
+
+"And then, what did he do?" asked Ercole, slowly putting the remains of
+his bread into his canvas bag.
+
+"What did he do? He went away and never came back. What should he do?"
+
+"Quite right. And the woman, what became of her?"
+
+"She took other men, for she had no shame. And at last one of them was
+jealous, and struck her on the head with a paving stone, not meaning to
+kill her; but she died."
+
+"Oh, she died, did she?"
+
+"She died. For she was always spiteful. And so that poor man went to the
+galleys, merely for hitting her on the head, and not meaning to kill
+her."
+
+"And you took the girl for your servant?"
+
+"Yes. She was old enough to work, and very strong, so we took her for
+charity. But for my part, I was glad when she ran away, for she grew up
+handsome, and with that blood there surely would have been a scandal
+some day."
+
+"One sees that you are a very charitable person," Ercole observed
+thoughtfully. "The girl must have been very ungrateful if she told
+untrue stories about your inn, after all you had done for her. You had
+nourished a viper in your house."
+
+"That is what my wife says," Paoluccio answered, now quite calm. "Those
+are my wife's very words. As for believing that the young man was ever
+in this house, I tell you that the story is a wicked lie. Where should
+we have put him? In the cellar with the hogsheads, or in the attic with
+the maid? or in our own room? Tell me where we could have put him! Or
+perhaps they will say that he slept on the ceiling, like the flies? They
+will say anything, chattering, chattering, and coming here with their
+questions and their photographing machines, and their bicycles, and the
+souls of their dead! If you do not believe me, you can see the place
+where they say that he lay! I tell you there is not room for a cat in
+this house. Believe me if you like!"
+
+"How can I not believe such a respectable person as you seem to be?"
+inquired Ercole gravely.
+
+"I thank you. And since it happens that you are in the service of the
+young gentleman himself, I hope you will tell him that if he fancies he
+was in my house, he is mistaken."
+
+"Surely," said Ercole.
+
+"Besides," exclaimed Paoluccio, "how could he know where he was? Are not
+all inns on these roads alike? He was in another, that is all. And what
+had I to do with that?"
+
+"Nothing," assented Ercole. "I thank you for your conversation. I will
+take a glass of the aniseed before I go, if you please."
+
+"Are you going already?" asked Paoluccio, as he went to fetch the bottle
+and the little cast glass from which he himself had drunk.
+
+"Yes," Ercole answered. "I go to Rome. I stopped to refresh myself."
+
+"It will be hot on the road," said Paoluccio, setting the full glass
+down on the table. "Two sous," he added, as Ercole produced his old
+sheepskin purse. "Thank you."
+
+"Thank you," Ercole answered, and tipped the spirits down his throat.
+"Yes, it will be hot, but what can one do? We are used to it, my dog and
+I. We are not of wax to melt in the sun."
+
+"It is true that this dog does not look as if he were wax," Paoluccio
+remarked, for the qualities of Nino had not escaped him.
+
+"No. He is not of wax. He is of sugar, all sugar! He has a very sweet
+nature."
+
+"One would not say so," answered Paoluccio doubtfully. "If you go to the
+city you must muzzle him, or they will make you pay a fine. Otherwise
+they will kill him for you."
+
+"Do you think any one would try to catch him if I let him run loose?"
+asked Ercole, as if in doubt. "He killed a full-grown wolf before he was
+two years old, and not long ago he worried a sheepdog of the Campagna as
+if it had been nothing but a lamb. Do you think any one would try to
+catch him?"
+
+"If it fell to me, I should go to confession first," said Paoluccio.
+
+So Ercole left the inn and trudged along the road to Rome with Nino at
+his heels, without once looking behind him; past the Baldinotti houses
+and into the Via Appia Nuova, and on into the city through the gate of
+San Giovanni, where the octroi men stopped him and made him show them
+what he had in his canvas bag. When they saw that there was no cheese
+left and but little bread, they let him go by without paying anything.
+
+He went up to the left and sat down on the ground under the trees that
+are there, and he filled his little clay pipe and smoked a while,
+without even speaking to his dog. It was quiet, for it was long past the
+hour when the carts come in, and the small boys were all gone to school,
+and the great paved slope between the steps of the basilica and the gate
+was quite deserted, and very white and hot.
+
+Ercole was not very tired, though he had walked all night and a good
+part of the morning. He could have gone on walking till sunset if he had
+chosen, all the way to his little stone house near Ardea, stopping by
+the way to get a meal; and then he would not have slept much longer than
+usual. A Roman peasant in his native Campagna, with enough to eat and a
+little wine, is hard to beat at walking. Ercole had not stopped to rest,
+but to think.
+
+When he had thought some time, he looked about to see if any one were
+looking at him, and he saw that the only people in sight were a long way
+off. He took his big clasp-knife out of his pocket and opened it. As the
+clasp clicked at the back of the blade Nino woke and sat up, for the
+noise generally meant food.
+
+The blade was straight and clean, and tolerably sharp. Ercole looked at
+it critically, drew the edge over his coarse thumb-nail to find if there
+were any nick in the steel, and then scratched the same thumb-nail with
+it, as one erases ink with a knife, to see how sharp it was. The point
+was like a needle, but he considered that the edge was dull, and he drew
+it up and down one of the brown barrels of his gun, as carefully as he
+would have sharpened a razor on a whetstone. After that he stropped it
+on the tough leathern strap by which he slung the gun over his shoulder
+when he walked; when he was quite satisfied, he shut the knife again and
+put it back into his pocket, and fell to thinking once more.
+
+Nino watched the whole operation with bloodshot eyes, his tongue hanging
+out and quivering rhythmically as he panted in the heat to cool himself.
+When the knife disappeared, and the chance of a crust with it, the dog
+got up, deliberately turned his back to his master, and sat down again
+to look at the view.
+
+"You see," said Ercole to himself and Nino, "this is an affair which
+needs thought. One must be just. It is one thing to kill a person's
+body, but it is quite another thing to kill a person's soul. That would
+be a great sin, and besides, it is not necessary. Do I wish harm to any
+one? No. It is justice. Perhaps I shall go to the galleys. Well, I shall
+always have the satisfaction, and it will be greater if I can say that
+this person is in Paradise. For I do not wish harm to any one."
+
+Having said this in a tone which Nino could hear, Ercole sat thinking
+for some time longer, and then he rose and slung his gun over his
+shoulder, and went out from under the trees into the glaring heat, as if
+he were going into the city. But instead of turning to the left, up the
+hill, he went on by the broad road that follows the walls, till he came
+to the ancient church of Santa Croce. He went up the low steps to the
+deep porch and on to the entrance at the left. Nino followed him very
+quietly.
+
+Ercole dipped his finger into the holy water and crossed himself, and
+then went up the nave, making as little noise as he could with his
+hob-nailed boots. An old monk in white was kneeling at a broad
+praying-stool before an altar on the left. Ercole stood still near him,
+waiting for him to rise, and slowly turning his soft hat in his hands,
+as if it were a rosary. He kept his eyes on the monk's face, studying
+the aged features. Presently the old man had finished his prayer and got
+upon his feet slowly, and looked at Ercole and then at Nino. Ercole
+moved forward a step, and stood still in an attitude of respect.
+
+"What do you desire, my son?" asked the monk, very quietly. "Do you wish
+to confess?"
+
+"No, father, not to-day," answered Ercole. "I come to pray you to say
+three masses for the soul of a person who died suddenly. I have also
+brought the money. Only tell me how much it will be, and I will pay."
+
+"You shall give what you will, my son," the monk said, "and I will say
+the masses myself."
+
+Ercole got out his sheepskin purse, untied the strings, and looked into
+it, weighing it in his hand. Then he seemed to hesitate. The monk looked
+on quietly.
+
+"It is of your own free will," he said. "What you choose to give is for
+the community, and for this church, and for the chapel of Saint Helen.
+It is better that you know."
+
+Ercole drew the mouth of the purse together again and returned it to the
+inside of his waistcoat, from which he produced a large old leathern
+pocket-book.
+
+"I will give five francs," he said, "for I know that if you say the
+masses yourself, they will be all good ones."
+
+A very faint and gentle smile flitted over the aged face. Ercole held
+out the small note, and the monk took it.
+
+"Thank you," he said. "Shall I say the masses for a man or a woman?"
+
+"As it pleases you, father," Ercole answered.
+
+"Eh?" The old monk looked surprised.
+
+"It does not matter," Ercole explained. "Is not a mass for a man good
+for a woman also?"
+
+"We say 'his' soul or 'her' soul, as the case may be, my son."
+
+"Is that written in the book of the mass?" inquired Ercole
+distrustfully.
+
+"Yes. Also, most people tell us the baptismal name of the dead person."
+
+"Must I do that too?" Ercole asked, by no means pleased.
+
+"Not unless you like," the monk answered, looking at him with some
+curiosity.
+
+"But it is in the book of the mass that you must say 'his' or 'her'
+soul?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then the masses will not be good unless you say the right word." Ercole
+paused a moment in deep thought, and looked down at his hat. "It will be
+better to say the masses for a female," he said at length, without
+meeting the monk's eyes.
+
+"Very well," the latter answered. "I will say the first mass to-morrow."
+
+"Thank you," said Ercole. "My respects!"
+
+He made a sort of bow and hurried away, followed by Nino. The old monk
+watched him thoughtfully, and shook his head once or twice, for he
+guessed something of the truth, though by no means all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+"One might almost think that you wished to marry Aurora yourself," said
+Corbario, with a sneer.
+
+He was standing with his back to the fire in the great library of the
+villa, for it was late autumn again; it was raining hard and the air was
+raw and chilly.
+
+"You may think what you please," Marcello answered, leaning back in his
+deep leathern chair and taking up a book. "I am not going to argue with
+you."
+
+"Insufferable puppy," growled Folco, almost under his teeth; but
+Marcello heard.
+
+He rose instantly and faced the elder man without the slightest fear or
+hesitation.
+
+"If this were not my house, and you my guest, I would have you put out
+of doors by the servants," he said, in a tone Corbario had never heard
+before. "As it is, I only advise you to go before I lose my temper
+altogether."
+
+Corbario backed till his heels were against the fender, and tried to
+smile.
+
+"My dear Marcello!" he protested. "What nonsense is this? You know I am
+not in earnest!"
+
+"I am," said Marcello quietly enough, but not moving.
+
+The half-invalid boy was not a boy any longer, nor an invalid either,
+and he had found his hold on things, since the days when Folco had been
+used to lead him as easily as if he had no will of his own. No one would
+have judged him to be a weak man now, physically or mentally. His frame
+was spare and graceful still, but there was energy and directness in his
+movements, his shoulders were square and he held his head high; yet it
+was his face that had changed most, though in a way very hard to define.
+A strong manhood sometimes follows a weak boyhood, very much to the
+surprise of those who have long been used to find feebleness where
+strength has suddenly developed. Marcello Consalvi had never been
+cowardly, or even timid; he had only been weak in will as in body, an
+easy prey to the man who had tried to ruin him, body and soul, in the
+hope of sending him to his grave.
+
+"I really cannot understand you, my dear boy," Corbario said very
+sweetly. "You used to be so gentle! But now you fly into a passion for
+the merest thing."
+
+"I told you that I would not argue with you," Marcello said, keeping his
+temper. "This is my house, and I choose that you should leave it at
+once. Go your way, and leave me to go mine. You are amply provided for,
+as long as you live, and you do not need my hospitality any longer,
+since you are no longer my guardian. Live where you please. You shall
+not stay here."
+
+"I certainly don't care to stay here if you don't want me," Folco
+answered. "But this is really too absurd! You must be going mad, to take
+such a tone with me!"
+
+"It is the only one which any honourable man who knows you would be
+inclined to take."
+
+"Take care! You are going too far."
+
+"Because you are under my roof? Yes, perhaps. As my guest, if I have
+been hasty, I apologise for expressing my opinion of you. I am going out
+now. I hope you will find it convenient to have left before I come in."
+
+Thereupon Marcello turned his back on Corbario, crossed the great
+library deliberately, and went out without looking round.
+
+Folco was left alone, and his still face did not even express surprise
+or annoyance. He had indeed foreseen the coming break, ever since he had
+returned to the villa three weeks earlier, when Marcello had received
+him with evident coldness, not even explaining where he had been since
+they had last parted. But Folco had not expected that the rupture would
+come so suddenly, still less that he was literally to be turned out of
+the house which he still regarded as his own, and in which he had spent
+so many prosperous years. There had, indeed, been some coldly angry
+words between the two men. Marcello had told Folco quite plainly that he
+meant to be the master, and that he was of age, and should regulate his
+own life as he pleased, and he had expressed considerable disgust at the
+existence Folco had been leading in Paris and elsewhere; and Folco had
+always tried to laugh it off, calling Marcello prudish and
+hypersensitive in matters of morality, which he certainly was not. Once
+he had attempted an appeal to Marcello's former affection, recalling
+his mother's love for them both, but a look had come into the young
+man's eyes just then which even Corbario did not care to face again, and
+the relations between the two had become more strained from that time
+on.
+
+It might seem almost incredible that a man capable of the crimes
+Corbario had committed in cold blood, for a settled purpose, should show
+so little power of following the purpose to its accomplishment after
+clearing the way to it by a murder; but every one who has had to do with
+criminals is aware that after any great exertion of destructive energy
+they are peculiarly subject to a long reaction of weakness which very
+often leads to their own destruction. If this were not a natural law, if
+criminals could exert continually the same energy and command the same
+superhuman cunning which momentarily helped them to perpetrate a crime,
+the world would be in danger of being possessed and ruled by them,
+instead of being mercifully, and perhaps too much, inclined to treat
+them as degenerates and madmen. Their conduct after committing a murder,
+for instance, seems to depend much more on their nerves than on their
+intelligence, and the time almost invariably comes when their nerves
+break down. It is upon the moment when this collapse of the will sets in
+that the really experienced detective counts, knowing that it may be
+hastened or retarded by circumstances quite beyond the murderer's
+control. The life of a murderer, after the deed, is one long fight with
+such circumstances, and if he once loses his coolness he is himself
+almost as surely lost as a man who is carried away by his temper in a
+duel with swords.
+
+After Folco had killed his wife and had just failed to kill Marcello, he
+had behaved with wonderful calm and propriety for a little while; but
+before long the old wild longing for excitement and dissipation, so long
+kept down during his married life, had come upon him with irresistible
+force, and he had yielded to it. Then, in hours of reaction, in the
+awful depression that comes with the grey dawn after a night of wine and
+pleasure and play, terrible little incidents had come back to his
+memory. He had recalled Kalmon's face and quiet words, and his own
+weakness when he had first come to see Marcello in the hospital--that
+abject terror which both Regina and the doctor must have noticed--and
+his first impression that Marcello no longer trusted him as formerly,
+and many other things; and each time he had been thus disturbed, he had
+plunged deeper into the dissipation which alone could cloud such
+memories and keep them out of sight for a time; till at last he had come
+to live in a continual transition from recklessness to fear and from
+fear to recklessness, and he had grown to detest the very sight of
+Marcello so heartily that an open quarrel was almost a relief.
+
+If he had been his former self, he would undoubtedly have returned to
+his original purpose of killing Marcello outright, since he had not
+succeeded in killing him by dissipation. But his nerve was not what it
+had been, and the circumstances were not in his favour. Moreover,
+Marcello was now of age, and had probably made a will, unknown to
+Corbario, in which case the fortune would no longer revert to the
+latter. The risk was too great, since it would no longer be undertaken
+for a certainty amounting to millions. It was better to be satisfied
+with the life-interest in one-third of the property, which he already
+enjoyed, and which supplied him with abundant means for amusing himself.
+
+It was humiliating to be turned out of the house by a mere boy, as he
+still called Marcello, but he was not excessively sensitive to
+humiliation, and he promised himself some sort of satisfactory vengeance
+before long. What surprised him most was that the first quarrel should
+have been about Aurora. He had more than once said in conversation that
+he meant to marry the girl, and Marcello had chosen to say nothing in
+answer to the statement; but when Folco had gone so far as to hint that
+Aurora was in love with him and was about to accept him, Marcello had as
+good as given him the lie direct, and a few more words had led to the
+outbreak recorded at the beginning of this chapter.
+
+As a matter of fact Corbario understood what had led to it better than
+Marcello himself, who had no very positive reason for entirely
+disbelieving his stepfather's words. The Contessa and her daughter had
+returned to Rome, and Corbario often went to see them, whereas Marcello
+had not been even once. When Marcello had last seen Folco in the
+Engadine, he had left him sitting in their little room at the hotel.
+Folco was not at all too old to marry Aurora; he was rich, at least for
+life, and Aurora was poor; he was good-looking, accomplished, and ready
+with his tongue. It was by no means impossible that he might make an
+impression on the girl and ultimately win her. Besides, Marcello felt
+that odd little resentment against Aurora which very young men sometimes
+feel against young girls, whom they have thought they loved, or are
+really about to love, or are afraid of loving, which makes them rude, or
+unjust, or both, towards those perhaps quite unconscious maidens, and
+which no woman can ever understand.
+
+"My dear Harry, why will you be so disagreeable to Mary?" asks the
+wondering mother. "She is such a charming girl, and only the other day
+she was saying that you are such a nice boy!"
+
+"Humph!" snorts Harry rudely, and forthwith lights his pipe and goes off
+to the stables to growl in peace, or across country, or to his boat, or
+to any other heavenly place not infested by women.
+
+There had been moments when, in his heart, Marcello had almost said that
+it would serve Aurora right to be married to Corbario; yet at the first
+hint from the latter that she was at all in danger of such a fate,
+Marcello had broken out as if the girl's good name had been attacked,
+and had turned his stepfather out of the house in a very summary
+fashion.
+
+Having done so, he left the villa on foot, though it was raining hard,
+and walked quickly past San Pietro in Montorio and down the hill towards
+Trastevere. The southwest wind blew the rain under his umbrella; it was
+chilly as well as wet, and a few big leaves were beginning to fall from
+the plane-trees.
+
+He was not going to the little house, where Regina sat by the window
+looking at the rain and wishing that he would come soon. When he was
+down in the streets he hailed the first cab he saw, gave the man an
+address in the Forum of Trajan, and climbed in under the hood, behind
+the dripping leathern apron, taking his umbrella with him and getting
+thoroughly wet, as is inevitable when one takes a Roman cab in the rain.
+
+The Contessa was out, in spite of the weather, but Marcello asked if
+Aurora would see him, and presently he was admitted to the drawing-room,
+where she was sitting beside a rather dreary little fire, cutting a new
+book. She threw it down and rose to meet him, as little outwardly
+disturbed as if they had seen each other constantly during the past two
+years. She gave him her hand quietly, and they sat down and looked at
+the fire.
+
+"It won't burn," Aurora said, rather disconsolately. "It never did burn
+very well, but those horrid people who have had the apartment for two
+years have spoilt the fireplace altogether."
+
+"I remember that it used to smoke," Marcello answered, going down on his
+knees and beginning to move the little logs into a better position.
+
+"Thank you," Aurora said, watching him. "You won't succeed, but it's
+good of you to try."
+
+Marcello said nothing, and presently he took the queer little Roman
+bellows, and set to work to blow upon the smouldering spots where the
+logs touched each other. In a few seconds a small flame appeared, and
+soon the fire was burning tolerably.
+
+"How clever you are!" Aurora laughed quietly.
+
+Marcello rose and sat upon a low chair, instead of on the sofa beside
+her. For a while neither spoke, and he looked about him rather
+awkwardly, while Aurora watched the flames. It was long since he had
+been in the room, and it looked shabby after the rather excessive
+magnificence of the villa on the Janiculum, for which Corbario's taste
+had been largely responsible. It was just a little shabby, too, compared
+with the dainty simplicity of the small house in Trastevere. The
+furniture, the carpets, and the curtains were two years older than when
+he had seen them last, and had been unkindly used by the tenants to whom
+the Contessa had sub-let the apartment in order to save the rent.
+Marcello missed certain pretty things that he had been used to see
+formerly, some bits of old Saxe, a little panel by an early master, a
+chiselled silver cup in which there always used to be flowers. He
+wondered where these things were, and felt that the room looked rather
+bare without them.
+
+"It burns very well now," said Aurora, still watching the fire.
+
+"What has become of the old silver cup," Marcello asked, "and all the
+little things that used to be about?"
+
+"We took them away with us when we let the apartment, and they are not
+unpacked yet, though we have been here two months."
+
+"Two months?"
+
+"Yes. I was wondering whether you were ever coming to see us again!"
+
+"Were you? I fancied that you would not care very much to see me now."
+
+Aurora said nothing to this, and they both looked at the fire for some
+time. The gentle sound of the little flames was cheerful, and gave them
+both the impression of a third person, talking quietly.
+
+"I should not have come to-day," Marcello said at last, "except that
+something has happened."
+
+"Nothing bad, I hope!" Aurora looked up with a sudden anxiety that
+surprised him.
+
+"Bad? No. At least, I think not. Why are you startled?"
+
+"I have had a headache," Aurora explained. "I am a little nervous, I
+fancy. What is it that has happened?"
+
+Marcello glanced at her doubtfully before he answered. Her quick
+interest in whatever chanced to him took him back to the old times in an
+instant. The place was familiar and quiet; her voice was like forgotten
+music, once delightful, and now suddenly recalled; her face had only
+changed to grow more womanly.
+
+"You never thought of marrying Folco, did you?" he asked, all at once,
+and a little surprised at the sound of his own words.
+
+"I?" Aurora started again, but not with anxiety. "How can you think such
+a thing?"
+
+"I don't think it; but an hour ago, at the villa, he told me in almost
+so many words that you loved him and meant to accept him."
+
+A blush of honest anger rose in the girl's fair face, and subsided
+instantly.
+
+"And what did you say?" she asked, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in
+her tone.
+
+"I turned him out of the house," Marcello answered quietly.
+
+"Turned him out?" Aurora seemed amazed. "You turned him out because he
+told you that?"
+
+"That and other things. But that was the beginning of it. I told him
+that he was lying, and he called me names, and then I told him to go. He
+will be gone when I reach home."
+
+To Marcello's surprise, Aurora got up suddenly, crossed the room and
+went to one of the windows. Marcello rose, too, and stood still. She
+seemed to be looking out at the rain, but she had grasped one of the
+curtains tightly, and it looked as if she were pressing the other hand
+to her left side. For a second her head bent forward a little and her
+graceful shoulders moved nervously, as though she were trying to swallow
+something hard. Marcello watched her a moment, and then crossed the room
+and stood beside her.
+
+"What is it?" he asked in a low voice, and laying his hand gently on
+hers that held the curtain.
+
+She drew her own away quietly and turned her head. Her eyes were dry and
+bright, but there were deep bistre shadows under them that had not been
+there before, and the lower lids were swollen.
+
+"It is nothing," she answered, and then laughed nervously. "I am glad
+you have made your stepfather go away. It was time! I was afraid you
+were as good friends as ever."
+
+"We have not been on good terms since we parted in Pontresina. Do you
+remember when I left him in your sitting-room at the hotel? He had been
+trying to persuade me to go back to Paris with him at once. In fact--"
+he hesitated.
+
+"You intended to go," Aurora said, completing the sentence. "And then
+you changed your mind."
+
+"Yes. I could not do it. I cannot explain everything."
+
+"I understand without any explanation. I think you did right."
+
+She went back to the fireplace and sat down in the corner of the sofa,
+leaning far back and stretching out one foot to the fender in an
+unconscious attitude of perfect grace. In the grey afternoon the
+firelight began to play in her auburn hair. Now and then she glanced at
+Marcello with half-closed lids, and there was a suggestion of a smile on
+her lips. Marcello saw that in her way she was as beautiful as Regina,
+and he remembered how they had kissed, without a word, when the moon's
+rays quivered through the trees by the Roman shore, more than two years
+ago. They had been children then. All at once he felt a great longing to
+kneel down beside the sofa and throw his arms round her waist and kiss
+her once again; but at almost the same instant he thought of Regina,
+waiting for him by the window over there in Trastevere, and he felt the
+shame rising to his face; and he leaned back in his low chair, clasping
+his hands tightly over one knee, as if to keep himself from moving.
+
+"Marcello," Aurora began presently, but she got no further.
+
+"Yes?" Still he did not move.
+
+"I have something on my conscience." She laughed low. "No, it is
+serious!" she went on, as if reproving herself. "I have always felt that
+everything that has happened to you since we parted that morning by the
+shore has been my fault."
+
+"Why?" Marcello seemed surprised.
+
+"Because I called you a baby," she said. "If you had not been angry at
+that, if you had not turned away and left me suddenly--you were quite
+right, you know--you would not have been knocked down, you would not
+have wandered away and lost yourself. You would not have lost your
+memory, or been ill in a strange place, or--or all the rest! So it is
+all my fault, you see, from beginning to end."
+
+"How absurd!" Marcello looked at her and smiled.
+
+"No. I think it is true. But you have changed very much, Marcello. You
+are not a boy any longer. You have a will of your own now; you are a
+man. Do you mind my telling you that?"
+
+"Certainly not!" He smiled again.
+
+"I remember very well what you answered. You said that I should not
+laugh at you again. And that has come true. You said a good many other
+things. Do you remember?"
+
+"No. I was angry. What did I say? Everything that happened before I was
+hurt seems very far off."
+
+"It does not matter," Aurora answered softly. "I am glad you have
+forgotten, for though I was angry too, and did not care at the time, the
+things you said have hurt me since."
+
+"I am sorry," Marcello said gently, "very, very sorry. Forgive me."
+
+"It was all my fault, for I was teasing you for the mere fun of the
+thing. I was nothing but a silly school-girl then."
+
+"Yes. You have changed, too."
+
+"Am I at all what you expected I should be?" Aurora asked, after a
+moment's silence.
+
+Marcello glanced at her, and clasped his hands over his knee more
+tightly than ever.
+
+"I wish you were not," he answered in a low voice.
+
+"Don't wish that." Her tone was even lower than his.
+
+Neither spoke again for some time, and they did not look at each other.
+But the flames flickering in the small fireplace seemed to be talking,
+like a third person in the room. Aurora moved at last, and changed her
+position.
+
+"I am glad that you have quarrelled with your stepfather," she said. "He
+meant to do you all the harm he could. He meant you to die of the life
+you were leading."
+
+"You know that?" Marcello looked up quickly.
+
+"Yes. I have heard my mother and Professor Kalmon talking about it when
+they thought I was not listening. I always pretend that I am not
+listening when anybody talks about you." She laughed a little. "It is so
+much simpler," she added, as if to explain. "The Professor said that
+your stepfather was killing you by inches. Those were his words."
+
+"The Professor never liked him. But he was right. Have you seen him
+often?"
+
+"Yes." Aurora laughed again. "He always turns up wherever we are,
+pretending that it is the most unexpected meeting in the world. He is
+just like a boy!"
+
+"What do you mean? Is he in love with you?"
+
+"With me? No! He is madly in love with my mother! Fancy such a thing!
+When he found that we were coming back to Rome he gave up his
+professorship in Milan, and he has come to live here so as to be able to
+see her. So I hear them talking a great deal, and he seems to have found
+out a great many things about your stepfather which nobody ever knew. He
+takes an extraordinary interest in him for some reason or other."
+
+"What has he found out?" asked Marcello.
+
+"Enough to hang him, if people could be hanged in Italy," Aurora
+answered.
+
+"I should have thought Folco too clever to do anything really against
+the law," said Marcello, who did not seem much surprised at what she
+said.
+
+"The Professor believes that it was he that tried to kill you."
+
+"How is that possible?" Marcello asked, in great astonishment. "You
+would have seen him!"
+
+"I did. You had not been gone three minutes when he came round to the
+gap in the bank where I was standing. He came from the side towards
+which I had seen you go. It was perfectly impossible that he should not
+have met you. The Professor says he must have known that you were there,
+looking at the storm, but that he did not know that I was with you, and
+that he was lying in wait for you to strike you from behind. If we had
+gone back together he would not have shown himself, that's all, and he
+would have waited for a better chance. If I had only followed you I
+should have seen what happened."
+
+"That is the trouble," said Marcello thoughtfully. "No one ever saw what
+happened, and I remember nothing but that I fell forward, feeling that I
+had been struck on the back of the head. Did you not hear any sound?"
+
+"How could I, in such a gale as was blowing? It all looks dreadfully
+likely and quite possible, and the Professor is convinced that your
+stepfather has done some worse things."
+
+"Worse?"
+
+"Yes, because he did not fail in doing them, as he did when he tried to
+kill you."
+
+"But what must such a man be?" cried Marcello, suddenly breaking out in
+anger. "What must his life have been in all the years before my mother
+married him?"
+
+"He was a kind of adventurer in South America. I don't quite know what
+he did there, but Professor Kalmon has found out a great deal about him
+from the Argentine Republic, where he lived until he killed somebody and
+had to escape to Europe. If I were you I would go and see the Professor,
+since he is in Rome. He lives at No. 16, Via Sicilia. He will tell you a
+great deal about that man when he knows that you have parted for good."
+
+"I'll go and see him. Thank you. I cannot imagine that he could tell me
+anything worse than I have already heard."
+
+"Perhaps he may," Aurora answered very gravely.
+
+Then she was silent, and Marcello could not help looking at her as she
+leaned back in the corner of the sofa. Of all things, at that moment, he
+dreaded lest he should lose command of himself under the unexpected
+influence of her beauty, of old memories, of the failing light, of the
+tender shadows that still lingered under her eyes, of that exquisite
+small hand that lay idly on the sofa beside her, just within his reach.
+He rose abruptly, no longer trusting himself.
+
+"I must be going," he said.
+
+"Already? Why?" She looked up at him and their eyes met.
+
+"Because I cannot be alone with you any longer. I do not trust myself."
+
+"Yes, you do. You are a man now, and I trust you."
+
+He had spoken roughly and harshly in his momentary self-contempt, but
+her words were clear and quiet, and rang true. He stood still in silence
+for a moment.
+
+"And besides," she added softly, "she trusts you too."
+
+There was a little emphasis on the word "she" and in her tone that was a
+reproach, and he looked at her in wonder.
+
+"We cannot talk of her, you and I," she said, turning her eyes to the
+fire, "but you know what I mean, Marcello. It is not enough to be kind.
+We women do not think so much of that as you men fancy. You must be true
+as well."
+
+"I know it," Marcello answered, bending his head a little. "Good-bye,
+Aurora."
+
+"No. Not good-bye, for you will come again soon, and then again, and
+often."
+
+"Shall I?"
+
+"Yes, because we can trust each other, though we are fond of each other.
+We are not children any longer, as we used to be."
+
+"Then I will come sometimes."
+
+He took her hand, trying not to feel that it was in his, and he left her
+sitting by the rather dreary little fire, in the rather shabby room, in
+the grey twilight.
+
+As he drove through the wet streets, he went over all she had said, went
+over it again and again, till he knew her words by heart. But he did not
+try, or dare to try, to examine what he felt, and was going to feel. The
+manliness that had at last come to its full growth in him clung to the
+word "true" as she had meant it.
+
+But she, being left alone, leaned forward, resting her elbows on her
+knees and clasping her hands as she gazed at the smouldering remains of
+the fire. She had known well enough that she had loved him before he had
+come; she had known it too well when he had told her how he had driven
+Folco out of his house for having spoken of her too carelessly. Then the
+blood had rushed to her throat, beating hard, and if she had not gone
+quickly to the window she felt that she must have cried for joy. She was
+far too proud to let him guess that, but she was not too proud to love
+him, in spite of everything, though it meant that she compared herself
+with the peasant girl, and envied her, and in all maiden innocence would
+have changed places with her if she could.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+It was late in the evening when Marcello reached the villa, and was told
+that his stepfather had left suddenly with his valet, before sunset,
+taking a good deal of luggage with him. The coachman had driven him to
+the station and had seen no more of him. He had not left any message or
+note for Marcello. This was as it should be, and Marcello did not care
+to know whither he had gone, since he was out of the house. He was glad,
+however, that he had left Rome at once instead of going to an hotel,
+which would have made an interesting topic of conversation for gossips.
+
+Marcello vaguely wondered why Folco had told a perfectly gratuitous
+falsehood about Aurora, and whether he could possibly have lied merely
+for the sake of hurting him. If so, he had got his deserts. It mattered
+very little now, and it was a waste of thought to think of him at all.
+
+The young man had a big fire built in the library, and sat down in his
+favourite leathern chair under the shaded light. He was tired, but not
+sleepy, and he was glad to be alone at last, for he had felt Corbario's
+evil presence in the house, though they had met little of late, and it
+was a great relief to know that he would never return.
+
+He was glad to be alone, and yet he felt lonely, for the one condition
+did not make the other impossible. He was glad to be able to think in
+peace, but when he did think, he longed for some companionship in his
+thoughts, and he found that he was wishing himself back in the room that
+looked down upon the Forum of Trajan, with Aurora, and that she was
+telling him again that she could trust him; and yet the very thought
+seemed to mean that he was not to be trusted.
+
+Psychological problems are only interesting when they concern other
+people than ourselves, for there can be no problem where there is not a
+difficulty, and where the inner self is concerned there can be no
+difficulty that does not demand immediate solution if we are to find
+peace. Some men of very strong and thoughtful character are conscious of
+a sort of second self within themselves, to which they appeal in trouble
+as Socrates to his D�mon; but most men, in trouble and alone, would turn
+to a friend if there were one at hand.
+
+Marcello had none, and he felt horribly lonely in his great house, as
+the faces of two women rose before him, on the right and left.
+
+But he was a man now, and as he sat there he determined to face the
+problem bravely and to solve it once and for ever by doing what was
+right, wheresoever he could convince himself that right lay, and without
+any regard for his own inclinations.
+
+He told himself that this must be possible, because where right and
+wrong were concerned it was never possible to hesitate long. A man is
+never so convinced that right is easy to distinguish and to do as when
+he has lately made up his mind to reform. Indeed, the weakness as well
+as the strength of all reformers lies in their blind conviction that
+whatever strikes them as right must be done immediately, with a haste
+that strongly resembles hurry, and with no regard for consequences. You
+might as well try, when an express train is running at full speed on the
+wrong track, to heave it over to the right one without stopping it and
+without killing the passengers. Yet most reformers of themselves and
+others, from the smallest to the greatest, seem to believe that this can
+be done, ought to be done, and must be done at once.
+
+Marcello was just then a reformer of this sort. He had become aware in
+the course of that afternoon that something was seriously wrong, and as
+his own will and character had served him well of late, he trusted both
+beforehand and set to work to find out the right track, with the
+distinct intention of violently transferring the train of his existence
+to it as soon as it had been discovered. He was very sure of the result.
+
+Besides, he had been brought up by a very religious woman, and a strong
+foundation of belief remained in him, and was really the basis of all
+his thinking about himself. He had been careless, thoughtless, reckless,
+since his mother had died, but he had never lost that something to which
+a man may best go back in trouble. Sometimes it hurt him, sometimes it
+comforted him vaguely, but he was always conscious that it was there,
+and had been there through all his wildest days. It was not a very
+reasoning belief, for he was not an intellectual man, but it was
+unchangeable and solid still in spite of all his past weakness. It bade
+him do right, blindly, and only because right was right; but it did not
+open his eyes to the terrible truth that whereas right is right, the
+Supreme Power, which is always in the right, does not take human life
+into consideration at all, and that a man is under all circumstances
+bound to consider the value of life to others, and sometimes its value
+to himself, when others depend upon him for their happiness, or safety,
+or welfare.
+
+Animated by the most sincere wish to find the right direction and follow
+it--perhaps because Aurora had said that she trusted him--yet blind to
+the dangers that beset his path, there is no knowing how many lives
+Marcello might not have wrecked by acting on the resolutions he
+certainly would have made if he had been left to himself another hour.
+
+He was deep in thought, his feet stretched out to the fire, his head
+leaning back against the leathern cushion of his chair, his eyes half
+closed, feeling that he was quite alone and beyond the reach of every
+one, if he chose to sit there until morning wrestling with his
+psychological problem.
+
+He was roused by the sharp buzz of the telephone instrument which stood
+on the writing-table. It was very annoying, and he wished he had turned
+it off before he had sat down, but since some one was calling he got up
+reluctantly to learn who wanted him at that hour. He glanced at the
+clock, and saw that it was nearly half-past ten. The instrument buzzed
+again as he reached the table.
+
+"I want to see Signor Consalvi at once; is it too late?" asked a man's
+voice anxiously.
+
+"I am Consalvi. Who are you, please?" asked Marcello.
+
+"Kalmon. Is it true that Corbario has left the villa?"
+
+"Yes. He left this afternoon."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"He drove to the railway station. I don't know where he is gone. He left
+no address."
+
+"--railway station--no address--" Marcello heard the words as Kalmon
+spoke to some other person at his elbow, wherever he was.
+
+"May I come at once?" Kalmon asked.
+
+"Yes. I am alone. I'll have the lower gate opened."
+
+"Thanks. I shall be at the gate in twenty minutes. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+Marcello hung up the receiver, rang the bell, and gave the order for the
+gate, adding that the gentleman who came was to be shown in at once.
+Then he sat down and waited.
+
+It was clear that Kalmon had learned of Corbario's departure from
+Aurora, perhaps through her mother. He had probably dined with them, for
+he was intimate at the house, and Aurora had spoken of Marcello's visit.
+There was no reason why she should not have done so, and yet Marcello
+wished that she had kept it to herself a little longer. It had meant so
+much to him, and it suddenly seemed as if it had meant nothing at all to
+her. She had perhaps repeated to her mother everything that had been
+said, or almost everything, for she was very fond of her.
+
+Marcello told himself roughly that since he had no right to love her,
+and was determined not to, he had no claim upon such little delicacies
+of discretion and silence on her part; and his problem stuck up its head
+again out of the deep water in which it lived, and glared at him, and
+shot out all sorts of questions like the wriggling tentacles of an
+octopus, inviting him to wrestle with them, if only to see how useless
+all wrestling must be. He rose again impatiently, took a cigar from a
+big mahogany box on the table, lit it and smoked savagely, walking up
+and down.
+
+It was half finished when the door opened and Kalmon was ushered in. He
+held out his hand as he came forward, with the air of a man who has no
+time to lose.
+
+"I am glad to see you," Marcello said.
+
+"And I am exceedingly glad that you were at home when I called you up,"
+Kalmon answered. "Have you really no idea where Corbario is?"
+
+"Not the slightest. I am only too glad to get rid of him. I suppose the
+Contessa told you--"
+
+"Yes. I was dining there. But she only told me half an hour ago, just as
+I was coming away, and I rushed home to get at the telephone."
+
+It occurred to Marcello that Kalmon need not have driven all the way to
+Via Sicilia from the Forum of Trajan merely for the sake of telephoning.
+
+"But what is the hurry?" asked Marcello. "Do sit down and explain! I
+heard this afternoon that you had strong suspicions as to Folco's part
+in what happened to me."
+
+"Something more than suspicions now," Kalmon answered, settling his big
+frame in a deep chair before the tire; "but I am afraid he has escaped."
+
+"Escaped? He has not the slightest idea that he is suspected!"
+
+"How do you know? Don't you see that as he is guilty, he must have soon
+begun to think that the change in your manner toward him was due to the
+fact that you suspected him, and that you turned him out because you
+guessed the truth, though you could not prove it?"
+
+"Perhaps," Marcello admitted, in a rather preoccupied tone. "The young
+lady seems to have repeated to her mother everything I said this
+afternoon," he added with evident annoyance. "Did the Contessa tell you
+why I quarrelled with Folco to-day?"
+
+"No. She merely said that there had been angry words and that you had
+asked him to leave the house. She herself was surprised, she said, and
+wondered what could have brought matters to a crisis at last."
+
+Marcello's face cleared instantly. Aurora had not told any one that he
+had quarrelled with his stepfather about her; that was quite evident,
+for there were not two more truthful people in the world than the
+Contessa and Kalmon, whose bright brown eyes were at that moment quietly
+studying his face.
+
+"Not that the fact matters in the least," said the Professor, resting
+his feet on the fender and exposing the broad soles of his wet
+walking-boots to the flame. "The important fact is that the man has
+escaped, and we must catch him."
+
+"But how are you so sure that it was he that attacked me? You cannot
+arrest a man on suspicion, without going through a great many
+formalities. You cannot possibly have got an eye-witness to the fact,
+and so it must be a matter of suspicion after all, founded on a certain
+amount of rather weak circumstantial evidence. Now, if it was he that
+tried to kill me, he failed, for I am alive, and perfectly well. Why not
+let him alone, since I have got rid of him?"
+
+"For a very good reason, which I think I had better not tell you."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I am not sure what you would do if you were told it suddenly. Are your
+nerves pretty good? You used to be a delicate boy, though I confess that
+you look much stronger now."
+
+"You need not fear for my nerves," Marcello answered with a short laugh.
+"If they are sound after what I have been through in the last two years
+they will stand anything!"
+
+"Yes. Perhaps you had better know, though I warn you that what I am
+going to say will be a shock to you, of which you do not dream."
+
+"You must be exaggerating!" Marcello smiled incredulously. "You had
+better tell me at once, or I shall imagine it is much worse than it is."
+
+"It could not be," Kalmon answered. "It is hard even to tell, and not
+only because what happened was in a distant way my fault."
+
+"Your fault? For heaven's sake tell me what the matter is, and let us be
+done with it!"
+
+"Corbario wanted to get possession of your whole fortune. That is why he
+tried to kill you."
+
+"Yes. Is that all? You have made me understand that already."
+
+"He had conceived the plan before your mother's death," said Kalmon.
+
+"That would not surprise me either. But how do you know it?"
+
+"Do you remember that discovery of mine, that I called 'the sleeping
+death'?"
+
+"Yes. What has that to do with it?" Marcello's expression changed.
+
+"Corbario stole one of the tablets from the tube in my pocket, while I
+was asleep that night."
+
+"What?" Marcello began to grow pale.
+
+"Your mother died asleep," said Kalmon in a very low voice.
+
+Marcello was transfixed with horror, and grasped the arms of his chair.
+His face was livid. Kalmon watched him, and continued.
+
+"Yes. Corbario did it. Your mother used to take phenacetine tablets when
+she had headaches. They were very like the tablets of my poison in size
+and shape. Corbario stole into my room when I was sound asleep, took one
+of mine, and dropped in one of hers. Then he put mine amongst the
+phenacetine ones. She took it, slept, and died."
+
+Marcello gasped for breath, his eyes starting from his head.
+
+"You see," Kalmon went on, "it was long before I found that my tablets
+had been tampered with. There had been seven in the tube. I knew that,
+and when I glanced at the tube next day there were seven still. The tube
+was of rather thick blue glass, if you remember, so that the very small
+difference between the one tablet and the rest could not be seen through
+it. I went to Milan almost immediately, and when I got home I locked up
+the tube in a strong-box. It was not until long afterwards, when I
+wanted to make an experiment, that I opened the tube and emptied the
+contents into a glass dish. Then I saw that one tablet was unlike the
+rest. I saw that it had been made by a chemist and not by myself. I
+analysed it and found five grains of phenacetine."
+
+Marcello leaned back, listening intently, and still deadly pale.
+
+"You did not know that I was trying to find out how you had been hurt,
+that I was in communication with the police from the first, that I came
+to Rome and visited you in the hospital before you recovered your
+memory. The Contessa was very anxious to know the truth about her old
+friend's son, and I did what I could. That was natural. Something told
+me that Corbario had tried to kill you, and I suspected him, but it is
+only lately that I have got all the evidence we need. There is not a
+link lacking. Well, when I came to Rome that time, it chanced that I met
+Corbario at the station. He had come by the same train, and was looking
+dreadfully ill. That increased my suspicion, for I knew that his anxiety
+must be frightful, since you might have seen him when he struck you, and
+might recognise him, and accuse him. Yet he could not possibly avoid
+meeting you. Imagine what that man must have felt. He tried to smile
+when he saw me, and said he wished he had one of those sleeping tablets
+of mine. You understand. He thought I had already missed the one he had
+taken, though I had not, and that he had better disarm any possible
+suspicion by speaking of the poison carelessly. Then his face turned
+almost yellow, and he nearly fainted. He said it was the heat, and I
+helped him to his carriage. He looked like a man terrified out of his
+senses, and I remembered the fact afterwards, when I found that one
+tablet had been stolen; but at the time I attributed it all to his fear
+of facing you. Now we know the truth. He tried to murder you, and on the
+same day he poisoned your mother."
+
+Kalmon sat quite still when he had finished, and for a long time
+Marcello did not move, and made no sound. At last he spoke in a dull
+voice.
+
+"I want to kill him myself."
+
+The Professor glanced at him and nodded slowly, as if he understood the
+simple instinct of justice that moved him.
+
+"If I see him, I shall kill him," Marcello said slowly. "I am sure I
+shall."
+
+"I am afraid that he has escaped," Kalmon answered. "Of course there is
+a possibility that he may have had some object in deceiving your
+coachman by driving to the railway station, but it is not at all likely.
+He probably took the first train to the north."
+
+"But he can be stopped at the frontier!"
+
+"Do you think Corbario is the man to let himself be trapped easily if he
+knows that he is pursued?" asked Kalmon incredulously. "I do not."
+
+He rose from his chair and began to walk up and down, his hands behind
+him and his head bent.
+
+Marcello paid no attention to him and was silent for a long time,
+sitting quite motionless and scarcely seeming to breathe. What he felt
+he never could have told afterwards; he only knew that he suffered in
+every fibre of his brain and body, with every nerve of his heart and in
+every secret recess of his soul. His mother seemed to have been dead so
+long, beyond the break in his memory. The dreadful truth he had just
+heard made her die again before his eyes, by the hand of the man whom he
+and she had trusted.
+
+"Kalmon," he said at last, and the Professor stopped short in his walk.
+"Kalmon, do you think she knows?"
+
+It was like the cry of a child, but it came from a man who was already
+strong. Kalmon could only shake his head gravely; he could find nothing
+to say in answer to such a question, and yet he was too human and kind
+and simple-hearted not to understand the words that rose to Marcello's
+lips.
+
+"Then she was happy to the end--then she still believes in him."
+
+Kalmon turned his clear eyes thoughtfully towards Marcello's face.
+
+"She is gone," he answered. "She knows the great secret now. The rest is
+nothing to the dead. But we are living and it is much to us. The man
+must be brought to justice, and you must help me to bring him down, if
+we have to hunt him round the world."
+
+"By God, I will!" said Marcello, in the tone of one who takes a solemn
+obligation.
+
+He rose and stood upright, as if he were ready, and though he was still
+pale there was no look of weak horror left in his face, nor any weakness
+at all.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Kalmon. "I would rather see you so. Now listen to me,
+and collect your thoughts, Marcello. Ercole is in Rome. You remember
+Ercole, your keeper at the cottage by the shore? Yes. I got the last
+link in the evidence about Corbario's attack on you from him to-day. He
+is a strange fellow. He has known it since last summer and has kept it
+to himself. But he is one of those diabolically clever peasants that one
+meets in the Campagna, and he must have his reasons. I told him to sleep
+at my house to-night, and when I went home he was sitting up in the
+entry with his dog. I have sent him to the station to find out whether
+Corbario really left or not. You don't think he will succeed? I tell you
+there are few detectives to be compared with one of those fellows when
+they are on the track of a man they hate. I told him to come here, no
+matter how late it might be, since he is your man. I suppose he can get
+in?"
+
+"Of course. There is a night-bell for the porter. Ercole knows that.
+Besides, the porter will not go to bed as long as you are here. While we
+are waiting for him, tell me what Ercole has found out."
+
+They sat down again, and Kalmon told Marcello the sailor's story of what
+his captain had seen from the deck of the brigantine. Marcello listened
+gravely.
+
+"I remember that there was a small vessel very far in," he said. "Aurora
+will remember it, too, for she watched it and spoke of it. We thought it
+must run aground on the bar, it was so very near."
+
+"Yes. She remembers it, too. The evidence is complete."
+
+There was silence again. Marcello threw another log upon the fire, and
+they waited. Kalmon smoked thoughtfully, but Marcello leaned back in his
+chair, covering his eyes with one hand. The pain had not begun to be
+dulled yet, and he could only sit still and bear it.
+
+At last the door opened, and a servant said that Ercole was waiting, and
+had been ordered to come, no matter how late it was. A moment later he
+appeared, and for once without his dog.
+
+He stood before the door as it closed behind him waiting to be told to
+come forward. Marcello spoke kindly to him.
+
+"Come here," he said. "It is a long time since we saw each other, and
+now we are in a hurry."
+
+Ercole's heavy boots rang on the polished floor as he obeyed and came up
+to the table. He looked gloomily and suspiciously at both men.
+
+"Well?" said Kalmon, encouraging him to speak.
+
+"He is still in Rome," Ercole answered. "How do I know it? I began to
+ask the porters and the under station-masters who wear red caps, and the
+woman who sells newspapers and cigars at the stand, and the man who
+clips the tickets at the doors of the waiting-rooms. 'Did you see a
+gentleman, so and so, with a servant, so and so, and much luggage, going
+away by the train? For I am his keeper from the Roman shore, and he told
+me to be here when he went away, to give him a certain answer.' So I
+said, going from one to another, and weeping to show that it was a very
+urgent matter. And many shook their heads and laughed at me. But at last
+a porter heard, and asked if the gentleman were so and so. And I said
+yes, that he was so and so, and his servant was so and so, and that the
+gentleman was a rich gentleman. And the porter said, 'See what a
+combination! That is the gentleman who had all his luggage brought in
+this afternoon, to be weighed; but it was not weighed, for he came back
+after a quarter of an hour, and took some small things and had them put
+upon a cab, but the other boxes were left in deposit.' Then I took out
+four sous and showed them to the porter, and he led me to a certain
+hall, and showed me the luggage, which is that of the man we seek, and
+it is marked 'F.C.' So when I had seen, I made a show of being joyful,
+and gave the porter five sous instead of four. And he was very
+contented. This is the truth. So I say, he is still in Rome."
+
+"I told you so," said Kalmon, looking at Marcello.
+
+"Excuse me, but what did you tell the young gentleman?" asked Ercole
+suspiciously.
+
+"That you would surely find out," Kalmon answered.
+
+"I have found out many things," said Ercole gloomily.
+
+His voice was very harsh just then, as if speaking so much had made him
+hoarse.
+
+"He took some of his things away because he meant to spend the night in
+Rome," Kalmon said thoughtfully. "He means to leave to-morrow, perhaps
+by an early train. If we do not find him to-night, we shall not catch
+him in Rome at all."
+
+"Surely," said Ercole, "but Rome is very big, and it is late."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It was still raining when the three men left the villa, and the night
+was very dark, for the young moon had already set. The wind howled round
+San Pietro in Montorio and the Spanish Academy, and whistled through the
+branches of the plane-trees along the winding descent, and furiously
+tore the withering leaves. They struck Ercole's weather-beaten face as
+he sat beside the coachman with bent head, with his soft hat pulled down
+over his eyes, and the rain dripped from his coarse moustache. Kalmon
+and Marcello leaned as far back as they could, under the deep hood and
+behind the high leathern apron.
+
+"There is some animal following us," the cabman said to Ercole as they
+turned a corner.
+
+"It is my dog," Ercole answered.
+
+"It sounds like a calf," said the cabman, turning his head to listen
+through the storm.
+
+"It is not a calf," answered Ercole gruffly. "It is my dog. Or if you
+wish it to be the were-wolf, it will be the were-wolf."
+
+The cabman glanced uneasily at his companion on the box, for the
+were-wolf is a thing of terror to Romans. But he could not see the
+countryman's features in the gloom, and he hastened his horse's pace
+down the hill, for he did not like the sound of those galloping feet
+behind his cab, in that lonely road, in the dark and the rain.
+
+"Where am I to go?" he asked, as he came near the place where a turn to
+the right leads out of the Via Garibaldi down to the Via Luciano Manara.
+
+But Kalmon knew where they were, even better than Marcello, to whom the
+road was familiar by day and night, in all weathers.
+
+"We must leave that message first," said the Professor to Marcello. "We
+are coming to the turning."
+
+"To Santa Cecilia," Marcello called out to the cabman, thrusting his
+head forward into the rain, "then I will tell you where to go."
+
+"Santa Cecilia," echoed the cabman.
+
+Ercole growled something quite unintelligible, to which his companion
+paid no attention, and the cab rattled on through the rain down the long
+paved street. It made such a noise that the dog's feet could not be
+heard any more. There were more lamps, too, and it seemed less gloomy
+than up there under the plane-trees, though there were no lights in the
+windows at that late hour.
+
+"Now to the right," said Ercole, as they reached the back of Saint
+Cecilia's at the Via Anicia.
+
+"To the right!" Marcello called out a second later from under the hood.
+
+"You seem to know the way," said the cabman to Ercole. "Why don't you
+give me the address of the house at once and be done with it?"
+
+"I know the house, but not the street, nor the number."
+
+"I understand. Does your dog also know the house?"
+
+To this question Ercole made no answer, for he considered that it was
+none of the cabman's business, and, moreover, he regretted having shown
+that he knew where his master was going. Marcello now gave the final
+direction to the cabman, who drew up before a door in a wall, in a
+narrow lane, where the walls were high and the doors were few. It was
+the garden entrance to the little house in Trastevere.
+
+Marcello got out, opened the door with the key he carried, and went in.
+It was raining hard, and he disappeared into the darkness, shutting the
+door behind him. It had a small modern lock with a spring latch that
+clicked sharply as it shut. The cab had stopped with the door on the
+left, and therefore on the side on which Ercole was sitting. Nino, the
+dog, came up from behind, with his tongue hanging out, blood-red in the
+feeble light of the cab's lamp; he put his head up above the low front
+wheel to have a look at Ercole. Being satisfied, he at once lay down on
+the wet stones, with his muzzle towards the door.
+
+Two or three minutes passed thus, in total silence. The cab-horse hung
+his head patiently under the driving rain, but neither stamped on the
+paving stones nor shook himself, nor panted audibly, for he was a pretty
+good horse, as cab-horses go, and was not tired.
+
+Suddenly Nino growled without moving, the ominous low growl of a dog
+that can kill, and Ercole growled at him in turn, making a sound
+intended to impose silence. There was no reason why Nino should growl at
+Marcello. But Nino rose slowly upon his quarters, as if he were about to
+spring at the door, and his rough coat bristled along his back. Then
+Ercole distinctly heard the latch click as it had done when Marcello
+went in, and Nino put his muzzle to the crack of the closed door and
+sniffed up and down it, and then along the stone step. To Ercole it was
+clear that some person within had opened the door noiselessly a little
+way and had shut it again rather hurriedly, on hearing the dog and
+seeing the cab. Whoever it was had wished to see if there were any one
+outside, without being seen, or perhaps had meant to slip out without
+being heard by any one in the house.
+
+Kalmon, leaning back inside, had not heard the sound of the latch, and
+paid no attention to Nino's growl. It was natural that such an animal
+should growl and snarl for nothing, he thought, especially on a rainy
+night, when the lamps of a cab throw strange patches of light on the
+glistening pavement.
+
+There was some reason why Ercole, who had heard, did not get down and
+tell the Professor, who had noticed nothing. One reason, and a good
+enough one, was that whoever it was that had opened the door so
+cautiously, it certainly was not the man they were all hunting that
+night. Yet since Ercole knew the little house, and probably knew who
+lived there, and that it belonged to Marcello, it might have been
+supposed that he would have told the latter, whose footsteps were heard
+on the gravel a few moments afterwards. But though Marcello stood a
+moment by the wheel close to Ercole, and spoke across him to the cabman,
+Ercole said nothing. Nino had not growled at Marcello, even before the
+latter had appeared, for Nino had a good memory, for a dog, and
+doubtless remembered long days spent by the Roman shore, and copious
+leavings thrown to him from luxurious luncheons. Before they had left
+the villa he had sniffed at Marcello's clothes and hands in a manner
+that was meant to be uncommonly friendly, though it might not have
+seemed reassuring to a stranger; and Marcello had patted his huge head,
+and called him by name.
+
+The young man had given the cabman the address of the office of the
+Chief of Police, and when he had got in and hooked up the leathern
+apron, the cab rolled away over the stones through the dark streets,
+towards the bridge of Saint Bartholomew.
+
+Within the house Regina sat alone, as Marcello had found her, her chin
+resting on the back of her closed hand, her elbow on her knee, her eyes
+gazing at the bright little fire that blazed on the polished hearth. Her
+hair was knotted for the night, low down on her neck, and the loose
+dressing-gown of dove-coloured silk plush was unfastened at the neck,
+where a little lace fell about her strong white throat.
+
+She had sprung to her feet in happy surprise when Marcello had entered
+the room, though it was not two hours since he had left her, and she
+could still smell the smoke of his last cigarette. She had felt a
+sudden chill when she had seen his face, for she never saw him look
+grave and preoccupied without believing that he had grown suddenly tired
+of her, and that the end had come. But then she had seen his eyes
+lighten for her, and she had known that he was not tired of her, but
+only very much in earnest and very much in a hurry.
+
+He had bidden her find out from Settimia where Corbario was, if the
+woman knew it; he had told her to find out at any cost, and had put a
+great deal of emphasis on the last words. In answer to the one question
+she asked, he told her that Corbario was a murderer, and was trying to
+escape. He had not time to explain more fully, but he knew that he could
+count on her. She did not love Folco Corbario, and she came of a race
+that could hate, for it was the race of the Roman hill peasants. So he
+left her quickly and went on.
+
+But when he was gone, Regina sat quite still for some time, looking at
+the fire. Settimia was safe in her own room, and was probably asleep. It
+would be soon enough to wake her when Regina had considered what she
+should say in order to get the information Marcello wanted. Settimia
+would deny having had any communication with Corbario, or that she knew
+anything of his whereabouts. The next step would probably be to tempt
+her with money or other presents. If this failed, what was to be done?
+Somehow Regina guessed that a bribe would not have much effect on the
+woman.
+
+Marcello had wished to send her away long ago, but Regina had persuaded
+him to let her stay. It was part of her hatred of Corbario to accumulate
+proofs against him, and they were not lacking in the letters he wrote to
+Settimia. Regina could not understand the relation in which they stood
+to each other, but now and then she had found passages in the letters
+which referred neither to herself nor Marcello, but to things that had
+happened a good many years ago in another country. She was convinced
+that the two had once been companions in some nefarious business, of
+which they had escaped the consequences. It was her intention to find
+out exactly what the deed had been, and then to bring Corbario to ruin
+by exposing it. It was a simple scheme, but it seemed a sure one, and
+Regina was very patient. Corbario had tried to separate her from
+Marcello, and she had sworn that he should pay her for that; and
+besides, he had wished to kill Marcello in order to get his money. That
+was bad, undoubtedly--very bad; but to her peasant mind it was not
+unnatural. She had heard all her life of crimes committed for the sake
+of an inheritance; and so have most of us, and in countries that fondly
+believe themselves much more civilised than Italy. That was extremely
+wicked, but the attempt had failed, and it sank into insignificance in
+comparison with the heinous crime of trying to separate two lovers by
+treachery. That was what Regina would not forgive Corbario.
+
+Nor would she pardon Settimia, who had been Corbario's instrument and
+helper; and as she meant to include the woman in her vengeance, she
+would not let her go, but kept her, and treated her so generously and
+unsuspiciously that Settimia was glad to stay, since Corbario still
+wished it.
+
+Regina looked at the little travelling-clock that stood on the low table
+at her elbow, and saw that it was half-past eleven. Behind the drawn
+curtains she could hear the rain beating furiously against the shutters,
+but all was quiet within the house. Regina listened, for Settimia's room
+was overhead, and when she moved about her footsteps could be heard in
+the sitting-room. Regina had heard her just before Marcello had come in,
+but there was no sound now; she had probably gone to bed. Regina lit a
+candle and went into her own room.
+
+On a shelf near the little toilet-table there was a box, covered with
+old velvet, in which she kept the few simple pins and almost necessary
+bits of jewellery which she had been willing to accept from Marcello.
+She took it down, set it upon the toilet-table and opened it. A small
+silver-mounted revolver lay amongst the other things, for Marcello had
+insisted that she should have a weapon of some kind, because the house
+seemed lonely to him. He had shown her how to use it, but she had
+forgotten. She took it out, and turned it over and over in her hands,
+with a puzzled look. She did not even know whether it was loaded or not,
+and did not remember how to open the chamber. She wondered how the thing
+worked, and felt rather afraid of it. Besides, if she had to use it, it
+would make a dreadful noise; so she put it back carefully amongst the
+things.
+
+There were the cheap little earrings she had worn ever since she had
+been a child, till Marcello had made her take them out and wear none at
+all. There was a miserable little brooch of tarnished silver which she
+had bought with her own money at a country fair, and which had once
+seemed very fine to her. She had not the slightest sentiment about such
+trifles, for Italian peasants are altogether the least sentimental
+people in the world; the things were not even good enough to give to
+Settimia, and yet it seemed wrong to throw them away, so she had always
+kept them, with a vague idea of giving them to some poor little girl, to
+whom they would represent happiness. With them lay the long pin she used
+to stick through her hair on Sundays when she went to church.
+
+It had been her mother's, and it was the only thing she possessed which
+had belonged to the murdered woman who had given her birth. It was
+rather a fine specimen of the pins worn by the hill peasant women, and
+was made like a little cross-hilted sword, with a blade of fire-gilt
+steel about eight inches long. A little gilt ball was screwed upon the
+point, intended to keep the pin from coming out after it was thrust
+through the hair. Regina took the ball off and felt the point, which was
+as sharp as that of a pen-knife; and she tried the blade with her hands
+and found that it did not bend easily. It was strong enough for what she
+wanted of it. She stuck it through the heavy knot of her hair, rather
+low down at the back of her neck, where she could easily reach it with
+her right hand; but she did not screw on the ball. It was not likely
+that the pin would fall out. She was very deliberate in all she did; she
+even put up her hand two or three times, without looking at herself in
+the mirror, to be quite sure where to find the hilt of the pin if she
+should need it. Marcello had told her to get the information he wanted
+"at any cost."
+
+Then she went back, with her candle, through the cheerful sitting-room,
+and out through a small vestibule that was now dark, and up the narrow
+staircase to find Settimia.
+
+She knocked, and the woman opened, and Regina was a little surprised to
+see that she was still dressed. She was pale, and looked very anxious as
+she faced her mistress in the doorway.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, rather nervously.
+
+"Nothing," Regina answered in a reassuring tone. "I had forgotten to
+tell you about a little change I want in the trimming of that hat, and
+as I heard you moving about, I came up before going to bed."
+
+Settimia had taken off her shoes more than half an hour earlier in order
+to make no noise, and her suspicions and her fears were instantly
+aroused. She drew her lids together a little and looked over Regina's
+shoulder through the open door towards the dark staircase. She was not a
+tall woman, and was slightly made, but she was energetic and could be
+quick when she chose, as Regina knew. Regina quietly shut the door
+behind her and came forward into the room, carrying her candle-stick,
+which she set down upon the table near the lamp.
+
+"Where is that hat?" she asked, so naturally that the woman began to
+think nothing was wrong after all.
+
+Settimia turned to cross the room, in order to get the hat in question
+from a pasteboard bandbox that stood on the floor. Regina followed her,
+and stood beside her as she bent down.
+
+Then without the slightest warning Regina caught her arms from behind
+and threw her to her knees, so that she was forced to crouch down, her
+head almost touching the floor. She was no more than a child in the
+peasant woman's hands as soon as she was fairly caught. But she did not
+scream, and she seemed to be keeping her senses about her.
+
+"What do you want of me?" she asked, speaking with difficulty.
+
+Policemen know that ninety-nine out of a hundred criminals ask that
+question when they are taken.
+
+"I want to know several things," Regina answered.
+
+"Let me go, and I will tell you what I can."
+
+"No, you won't," Regina replied, looking about her for something with
+which to tie the woman's hands, for she had forgotten that this might be
+necessary. "I shall not let you go until I know everything."
+
+She felt that Settimia's thin hands were cautiously trying the strength
+of her own and turning a very little in her grasp. She threw her weight
+upon the woman's shoulders to keep her down, grasped both wrists in one
+hand, and with the other tore off the long silk cord that tied her own
+dressing-gown at the waist. It was new and strong.
+
+"You had better not struggle," she said, as she got the first turn
+round Settimia's wrists and began to pull it tight. "You are in my power
+now. It is of no use to scream either, for nobody will hear you."
+
+"I know it," the woman replied. "What are you going to do with me?"
+
+"I shall ask questions. If you answer them, I shall not hurt you. If you
+do not, I shall hurt you until you do, or until you die. Now I am going
+to tie your wrists to your heels, so that you cannot move. Then I will
+put a pillow under your head, so that you can be pretty comfortable
+while we talk a little."
+
+She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, which terrified Settimia much more
+than any dramatic display of anger or hatred could have done. In a few
+moments the woman was bound hand and foot. Regina turned her upon her
+side, and arranged a pillow under her head as she had promised to do.
+Then she sat down upon the floor beside the pillow and looked at her
+calmly.
+
+"In this way we can talk," she said.
+
+Settimia's rather stony eyes were wide with fear now, as she lay on her
+side, watching Regina's face.
+
+"I have always served you faithfully," she said. "I cannot understand
+why you treat me so cruelly."
+
+"Yes," Regina answered, unmoved, "you have been an excellent maid, and I
+am sorry that I am obliged to tie you up like the calves that are taken
+to the city on carts. Now tell me, where is Signor Corbario?"
+
+"How should I know?" whined Settimia, evidently more frightened. "I
+know nothing about Signor Corbario. I swear that I have hardly ever seen
+him. How can I possibly know where he is? He is probably at his house,
+at this hour."
+
+"No. You know very well that he has left the villa. It will not serve to
+tell lies, nor to say that you know nothing about him, for I am sure you
+do. Now listen. I wish to persuade you with good words. You and Signor
+Corbario were in South America together."
+
+Settimia's face expressed abject terror.
+
+"Never!" she cried, rocking her bound body sideways in an instinctive
+attempt to emphasise her words by a gesture. "I swear before heaven, and
+the saints, and the holy--"
+
+"It is useless," Regina interrupted. "You have not forgotten what you
+and he did in Salta ten years ago. You remember how suddenly Padilla
+died, when 'Doctor' Corbario was attending him, and you were his nurse,
+don't you?"
+
+She fixed her eyes sternly on Settimia's, and the woman turned livid,
+and ground her teeth.
+
+"You are the devil!" she said hoarsely. "But it is all a lie!" she
+cried, suddenly trying denial again. "I was never in South America,
+never, never, never!"
+
+"This is a lie," observed Regina, with perfect calm. "If you do not tell
+me where Signor Corbario is to-night, I shall go to the police to-morrow
+and tell all I know about you."
+
+"You know nothing. What is all this that you are inventing? You are a
+wicked woman!"
+
+"Take care! Perhaps I am a wicked woman. Who knows! I am not a saint,
+but you are not my confessor. It is the contrary, perhaps; and perhaps
+you will have to confess to me this night, before going to the other
+world, if you confess at all. Where is Signor Corbario?"
+
+As she asked the question, she quietly took the long pin from her hair
+and began to play with the point.
+
+"Are you going to murder me?" groaned the wretched woman, watching the
+terrible little weapon.
+
+"I should not call it murder to kill you. This point is sharp. Should
+you like to feel it? You shall. In this way you will perhaps be
+persuaded to speak."
+
+She gently pressed the point against Settimia's cheek.
+
+"Don't move, or you will scratch yourself," she said, as the woman tried
+to draw back her face. "Now, will you tell me where Signor Corbario is?
+I want to know."
+
+Settimia must have feared Corbario more than she feared Regina and the
+sharp pin at that moment, for she shook her head and set her teeth.
+Perhaps she believed that Regina was only threatening her, and did not
+mean to do her any real bodily hurt; but in this she was misled by
+Regina's very quiet manner.
+
+"I shall wait a little while," said Regina, almost indifferently, "and
+then, if you do not tell me, I shall begin to kill you. It may take a
+long time, and you will scream a good deal, but nobody will hear you.
+Now think a little, and decide what you will do."
+
+Regina laid the pin upon the floor beside her, drew up her knees, and
+clasped her hands together over them, as the hill women often sit for
+hours when they are waiting for anything.
+
+Her face hardened slowly until it had an expression which Marcello had
+never seen. It was not a look of cruelty, nor of fierce anticipated
+satisfaction in what she meant to do; it was simply cold and relentless,
+and Settimia gazed with terror on the splendid marble profile, so
+fearfully distinct against the dark wall in the bright light of the
+lamp. The strength of the woman, quietly waiting to kill, seemed to fill
+the room; her figure seemed to grow gigantic in the terrified eyes of
+her prisoner; the slow, regular heave of her bosom as she breathed was
+telling the seconds and minutes of fate, that would never reach an hour.
+
+It is bad to see death very near when one is tied hand and foot and
+cannot fight for life. Most people cannot bear the sight quietly for a
+quarter of an hour; they break down altogether, or struggle furiously,
+like animals, though they know it is perfectly useless and that they
+have no chance. Anything is easier than to lie still, watching the knife
+and wondering when and where it is going to enter into the flesh.
+
+Regina sat thinking and ready. She wished that she had Corbario himself
+in her power, but it was something to have the woman who had helped
+him. She was very glad that she had insisted on keeping Settimia in
+spite of Marcello's remonstrances. It had made it possible to obtain the
+information he wanted, and which, she felt sure, was to lead to
+Corbario's destruction. She was to find out "at any cost"; those had
+been Marcello's words, and she supposed he knew that she would obey him
+to the letter. For she said to herself that he was the master, and that
+if she did not obey him in such a matter, when he seemed so much in
+earnest, he would be disappointed, and angry, and would then grow
+quickly tired of her, and so the end would come. "At any cost," as he
+had said it in his haste, meant to Regina at the cost of blood, and
+life, and limb, if need were. Corbario was the enemy of the man she
+loved; it was her lover's pleasure to find out his enemy and to be
+revenged at last; what sort of woman must she be if she did not help
+him? what was her love worth if she did not obey him? He had been always
+kind to her, and more than kind; but it would have been quite the same
+if he had treated her worse than a dog, provided he did not send her
+away from him. She belonged to him, and he was the master, to do as he
+pleased. If he sent her away, she would go; but if not, he might have
+beaten her and she would never have complained. Now that he had given a
+simple command, she was not going to disobey him. She had pride, but it
+was not for him, and in her veins the blood of sixty generations of
+slaves and serfs had come down to her through two thousand years, the
+blood of men who had killed when they were bidden to kill by their
+masters, whose masters had killed them like sheep in war and often in
+peace, of women who had been reckoned as goods and as chattels with the
+land on which their mothers had borne them--of men and women too often
+familiar with murder and sudden death from their cradles to their
+graves.
+
+The minutes passed and Settimia's terror grew till the room swam with
+her, and she lost hold upon herself, and did not know whether she
+screamed or was silent, as her parched lips opened wide upon her parted
+teeth. But she had made no sound, and Regina did not even look at her.
+Death had not come yet; there was a respite of seconds, perhaps of
+minutes.
+
+At last Regina unclasped her hands and took up the pin again. The
+miserable woman fancied that she already felt the little blade creeping
+through her flesh and blood on its way to her heart. For Regina had said
+she would take a long time to kill her. It must have been a strong
+reason that could keep her silent still, if she knew the answer to the
+question.
+
+Regina turned her head very slowly and looked coldly down at the
+agonised face.
+
+"I am tired," she said. "I cannot wait any longer."
+
+Settimia's eyes seemed to be starting from her head, and her dry lips
+were stretched till they cracked, and she thought she had screamed
+again; but she had not, for her throat was paralysed with fear. Regina
+rose upon her knees beside the pillow, with the pin in her right hand.
+
+"Where is Corbario?" she asked, looking down. "If you will not tell I
+shall hurt you."
+
+Settimia's lips moved, as if she were trying to speak, but no words came
+from them. Regina got up from the floor, went to the washstand and
+poured some water into the glass, for she thought it possible that the
+woman was really unable to utter a sound because her throat was parched
+with fear. But she could speak a little as soon as Regina left her side,
+and the last peril seemed a few seconds less near.
+
+"For the love of God, don't kill me yet," she moaned. "Let me speak
+first!"
+
+Regina came back, knelt down, and set the glass on the floor, beside the
+pin.
+
+"That is all I want," she said quietly, "that you should speak."
+
+"Water," moaned Settimia, turning her eyes to the glass.
+
+Regina held up her head a little and set the tumbler to her lips, and
+she drank eagerly. The fear of death is more parching than wound-fever
+or passion.
+
+"Now you can surely talk a little," Regina said.
+
+"Why do you wish to know where he is?" Settimia asked in a weak voice.
+"Are the police looking for him? What has he done? Why do you want me to
+betray him?"
+
+"These are too many questions," Regina answered. "I have been told to
+make you tell where he is, and I will. That is enough."
+
+"I do not know where he is."
+
+In an instant the point of the sharp little blade was pressing against
+the woman's throat, harder and harder; one second more and it would
+pierce the skin and draw blood.
+
+"Stop," she screamed, with a convulsion of her whole body. "He is in the
+house!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+With a single movement Regina was on her feet, for she had been taken by
+surprise, and her first instinct was to be ready for some new and
+unsuspected danger. In a flash it seemed to her that since Corbario was
+in the house, he might very possibly enter suddenly and take Settimia's
+defence. Regina was not afraid of him, but she was only a woman after
+all, and Corbario was not a man to stop at trifles. He was very likely
+armed, and would perhaps shoot her, in order to make good his escape
+with Settimia, unless, as was quite probable, he killed his old
+accomplice too, before leaving the room.
+
+Regina stood still a moment, reflecting on the dangerous situation. It
+certainly would not be safe to release Settimia yet; for if Corbario
+were really in the house, the two together could easily overpower one
+woman, though she was strong.
+
+"I am sorry that I cannot untie you yet," Regina said, and with a glance
+at the prostrate figure she took up her candle-stick, stuck her pin
+through her hair before the mirror, and went to the door.
+
+She took the key from the lock, put it back on the outside, and turned
+it, and put it into her pocket when she had shut the door after her.
+Then she slowly descended the stairs, stopping now and then to listen,
+and shading her candle with her hand so that she could see over it, for
+she expected to be attacked at any moment. At the slightest sound she
+would have snatched her pin from her hair again, but she heard nothing,
+and went cautiously down till she reached the vestibule outside the
+sitting-room. She entered the latter and sat down to think.
+
+Should she boldly search the house? Settimia could hardly have had any
+object in lying. If she had meant to frighten Regina, she would have
+spoken very differently. She would have made out that Corbario was
+almost within hearing, waiting in a dark corner with a loaded revolver.
+But her words had been the cry of truth, uttered to save her life at the
+moment when death was actually upon her. She would have screamed out the
+truth just as certainly if Corbario had already left Rome, or if he were
+in some hotel for the night--or even if she had really known nothing. In
+the last case Regina would have believed her, and would have let her go.
+There is no mistaking the accent of mortal terror, whether one has ever
+heard it or not.
+
+Corbario was somewhere in the house, Marcello's enemy, and the man she
+herself had long hated. A wild longing came over her to have him in her
+power, bound hand and foot like Settimia, and then to torment him at her
+pleasure until he died. She felt the strength of half a dozen men in
+her, and the courage of an army, as she rose to her feet once more. She
+had seen him. He was not a big man. If she could catch him from behind,
+as she had caught the woman, she might perhaps overpower him. With the
+thought of near revenge the last ray of caution disappeared, and from
+being fearless Regina became suddenly reckless.
+
+But as she rose, she heard a sound overhead, and it was the unmistakable
+sound of footsteps. She started in surprise. It was simply impossible
+that Settimia should have loosed the cord that bound her. Regina had
+been brought up in the low hill country and in the Campagna, and she
+could tie some of the knots used by Roman muleteers and carters, which
+hold as well as those men learn at sea. She had tied Settimia very
+firmly, and short of a miracle the woman could not have freed herself.
+Yet the footsteps had been distinctly audible for a moment. Since
+Settimia was not walking about, Corbario must have got into the room.
+Yet Regina had locked the door, and had the key in her pocket. It was
+perfectly incomprehensible. She left the sitting-room again, carrying
+her candle as before; but at the door she turned back, and set the
+candle-stick upon the table. She would be safer in the dark, and would
+have a better chance of taking Corbario by surprise.
+
+Poor Regina had not grown up amongst people who had a high standard of
+honour, and her own ideas about right and wrong were primitive, to speak
+charitably. But if she had dreamt of the deed that was being done
+upstairs, her heart would have stood still, and she would have felt sick
+at the mere thought of such villainy.
+
+She had left the room and locked the door, and while her footsteps had
+been audible on the stairs no other sound had broken the stillness. But
+a few seconds later a whispered question came from some person out of
+sight.
+
+"Is she gone?" the whisper asked.
+
+"Yes," answered Settimia in a very low voice, which she knew Regina
+could not hear.
+
+Corbario's pale face cautiously emerged from the closet in which he had
+been hidden, and he looked round the room before he stepped out.
+Settimia could not turn over to see him, but she heard him coming
+towards her.
+
+"Cut this cord," she said in an undertone. "Make haste! We can be out of
+the house in less than half a minute."
+
+Corbario knelt beside her, and took out a handsome English clasp-knife.
+But he did not cut the cord. He looked down into Settimia's face, and
+she understood.
+
+"I could not help it," she answered. "She would have killed me!"
+
+Corbario laid his left hand upon her throat.
+
+"If you try to scream I shall strangle you," he said in a whisper. "You
+have betrayed me, and I cannot afford to trust you again. Do you know
+what I am going to do?"
+
+She tried to turn her head, but his hand was heavy on her throat. She
+strained frightfully to move, and her stony eyes lit up with a dying
+glare of terror.
+
+"Do it quickly!" she gasped.
+
+"Hush!" His hand tightened on her throat. "If you were in Salta, you
+should die by tenths of inches, if it took all night! That would be too
+good for you."
+
+He spat in her face as she writhed under his grasp. He looked into her
+living eyes once more with all the cowardly hate that possessed him, he
+struck deep and sure, he saw the light break in the pupils, and heard
+the awful rattle of her last breath.
+
+In an instant he was at the window, and had thrown it wide open. He got
+out quickly, let himself down with his hands, and pushed himself away
+from the wall with his feet as he jumped down backwards, well knowing
+that there was grass below him, and that the earth was as soft as sponge
+with the long rain. He was sure that he could not hurt himself. Yet
+before his feet touched the ground he had uttered a low cry of fear.
+
+He was on his legs now and trying to run, but it was too late. There was
+the flash of a lantern in the wet garden, and between him and the light,
+and just below it, he saw two points of greenish fire coming at him; for
+he saw everything then; and he heard the rush of a heavy beast's feet,
+tearing up the earth with iron claws, and the savage breath, and the
+loud hiss of a man setting the creature on; for he heard every sound
+then; and he knew that the thing of terror would leap up with resistless
+strength and hurl its weight upon him, and bury its jagged fangs in his
+throat and tear him, in an instant that would seem like an hour of
+agony, and that the pain and the fear would be as if he were hung up by
+all the nerves of his body, drawn out and twisted; for he knew
+everything then; and in that immeasurable time which is nothing, and yet
+is infinite, he remembered his evil life, his robberies, his murders,
+and his betrayals, one by one, but he remembered with most frightful
+clearness how he had tried to kill Marcello, how he had corrupted him
+from his childhood, with bad counsels very cunningly, and prepared him
+to go astray, how he had thrust evil in his path and laughed away the
+good, and had led him on, and poisoned him, and would have brought him
+to his death and damnation surely, but for one sinning devoted woman
+that loved him; for he remembered everything then; and from very far
+away, out of memories of his youth, there came a voice that had once
+been gentle and kind, but that rang in his ears now, like the blast of
+the trumpet of the last judgment.
+
+"Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it
+were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and
+that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
+
+Far better, indeed, for it all came, when the immeasurable second's
+length was past, and he was thrown down against the wall, and torn, and
+shaken like a rat; it all came just as he had felt that it was coming,
+and it lasted long, a long, long time, while he tried to howl, and the
+blood only gurgled in his throat. And then, just as many strong hands
+dragged away the thing of terror, and the light of a lantern and of a
+lamp flashed in his eyes, he fell asleep in the wet grass.
+
+For they had caught him fairly and brought him, down. Kalmon had
+watched him long, and had told some of his suspicions to the Chief of
+Police, and the latter, unknown to Kalmon, had caused him to be watched
+from time to time. But he, who had been watched before and had once
+already escaped for his life, had sometimes seen faces near him that he
+did not trust, and when he had turned back from the station that
+afternoon he had seen one of those faces; so he had driven away quickly
+in a cab, by winding ways, so as not to be followed. Yet Kalmon and
+Marcello, talking as they drove, grew more and more sure that he would
+wish to see Settimia before he left Rome, the more certainly if he
+believed himself pursued, as seemed likely from his changing his mind at
+the station. So they had stopped their cab before they had reached their
+destination, and had sent Ercole back to Trastevere with the key of the
+garden gate, bidding him watch, as it was most probable that Corbario
+would try to get out through the garden; and before long they had come
+back to the door of the house that opened upon the street, and had let
+themselves in quietly, just in time to hear the noise of the struggle as
+the dog threw Corbario to the ground. For the other entrance to the
+little vestibule opened upon the garden within, at the very spot where
+Corbario alighted when he jumped from the window.
+
+And now they stood there in the rain round the wounded man, while
+Marcello held the lantern to his face, and Regina thrust a lamp out of
+the lower window which she had thrown open.
+
+"Is he dead?" she asked, in the silence that followed when Ercole had
+got control of the dog again.
+
+At the sound of her voice Ercole started strangely and looked up to her
+face that was not far above his own, and his eyes fixed themselves upon
+her so intently that she looked down at him, while she still held out
+her lamp. She could not remember that she had ever seen him; but he had
+seen her many times since he had made his visit to the inn on the
+Frascati road.
+
+"Is he dead?" she repeated, putting the question directly to him as he
+was nearest.
+
+Still he looked at her in silence, with his deep-set, unwinking eyes.
+Marcello and Kalmon were bending over Corbario, Marcello holding the
+lantern, while the Professor listened for the beating of the heart and
+felt the pulse. They paid no attention to Regina for the moment.
+
+"Why don't you speak?" she asked, surprised by Ercole's silent stare.
+
+"You don't know me," he said slowly, "but I know you."
+
+The rain was beating upon her lamp, and at that moment the shade cracked
+under the cold drops and fell to pieces, and the wind instantly
+extinguished the flame of the flaring wick. Regina withdrew into the
+room to get another light, and Ercole stared after her into the gloom.
+
+"He is alive," said Kalmon, looking up to see why the light had gone
+out. "We must get him inside at once, or he will die here. Come,
+Ercole! Make that dog lie down and keep quiet."
+
+Between them they carried Corbario into the house. Nino watched on the
+step in the rain, but when the door was shut behind him, he crawled down
+to the wet grass and lapped the blood and water in the dark. They
+carried Corbario upstairs to an empty room there was, and as they went
+Regina tried to tell Marcello what she had done. They opened Settimia's
+door, which was still locked, and they found her quite dead, and the
+window was wide open; then Regina understood that Corbario had been
+hidden within hearing, and had killed the woman because she had
+confessed.
+
+The men who had been sent from the central police station at Kalmon's
+request arrived a few minutes later. One was at once sent for a surgeon
+and for more men; the other remained. Soon the little house was full of
+officials, in uniform and in plain clothes. They examined everything,
+they wrote rapidly on big sheets of stamped paper; their chief took the
+first deposition of Regina, and of the three men, and of the surgeon. At
+dawn a man came with a rough pine coffin. Officials came and went, and
+were gravely busy. One man spoke of coffee when it was day, and went and
+made some in the little kitchen, for the two young women who cooked and
+did the work of the house did not sleep there, and would not come till
+past seven o'clock.
+
+During the long hours, when Regina and Marcello were not wanted, they
+were together in the sitting-room downstairs. Regina told Marcello in
+detail everything she knew about the events of the night, and much which
+she had found out earlier about Settimia but had never told him. Kalmon
+came in from time to time and told them what was going on, and that
+Corbario was still alive; but they saw no more of Ercole. He had made
+his first deposition, to the effect that he had been set to watch the
+house, that the murderer had jumped from an upper window, and that the
+dog had pulled him down. The officials looked nervously at the dog,
+produced by Ercole in evidence, and were glad when the beast was out of
+their sight. There were dark stains about the bristles on his jaws, and
+his eyes were bloodshot; but Ercole laid one hand on his uncouth head,
+and he was very quiet, and did not even snarl at the policemen.
+
+Regina and Marcello sat side by side, talking in a low voice, and
+looking at each other now and then. The little house in which they had
+been happy was turned to a place of death and horror, and both knew that
+some change was coming to themselves.
+
+"You cannot live here any more," Marcello said at dawn, "not even till
+to-night."
+
+"Where could I go?" Regina asked. "Why should I not stay here? Do you
+think I am afraid of the dead woman?"
+
+"No," Marcello answered, "but you cannot stay here."
+
+He guessed what talking and gossiping there would be when the newspapers
+told what had happened in the little house, how the reporters would
+hang about the street for a week to come, and how fashionable people
+would go out of their way to see the place where a murder had been
+committed by such a well-known person as Corbario, and where he had been
+taken almost in the very act, and himself nearly killed. Besides all
+that, there would be the public curiosity about Regina, who had been so
+intimately concerned in a part of the tragedy, and whose name was
+everywhere associated with his own.
+
+He would have taken her away from Rome at once, if he could have done
+so. But he knew that they would both be called upon during the next few
+days to repeat in court the evidence they had already given in their
+first deposition. There was sure to be the most frightful publicity
+about the whole affair, of which reports would be published not only in
+Rome but throughout Italy, and all over the world. In real life the
+consequences of events generally have the importance which fiction is
+obliged to give the events themselves; which is the reason why the
+things that happen to real people rarely come to any precise conclusion,
+like those reached by a play or a novel. The "conclusion" lies in the
+lives of the people, after the tragedy, or the drama, or the comedy has
+violently upset their existences.
+
+"You cannot stay here," Marcello repeated with conviction.
+
+"You will go on living at your villa," Regina answered. "Why should I
+not go on living in this house? For a few days I will not go out, that
+is all. Is it the end of the world because a person has been killed who
+ought to have died in the galleys? Or because the man who tried to kill
+you was caught in a place that belongs to you? Tell me that."
+
+"You cannot stay here," Marcello repeated a third time.
+
+For a while Regina was silent. They were both very white and heavy-eyed
+in the cold daylight, though they could not have slept. At last she
+looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"If we were married, we should go on living in our own house," she said.
+"Is it true, or not? It is because there will be talking that you are
+ashamed to let me stay where I am, and would like to get me away. This
+is the truth. I know it."
+
+Marcello knew it too and did not answer at once, for it was not easy to
+decide what he ought to do. The problem that had seemed so hard to solve
+a few hours earlier was fast getting altogether beyond solution. There
+was only one thing to be done in the first present difficulty; he must
+take Regina to some other place at once. No doubt this was easy enough.
+He would take an apartment for her elsewhere, as far as possible from
+the scene of the tragedy, and in a few hours she could be installed
+there out of the way of annoyance. He could buy a house for her if he
+chose, for he was very rich. Possibly some house already belonging to
+him was vacant; his lawyer would know.
+
+But after that, what was to come? If Corbario lived, there would be a
+sensational trial in which he and Regina would be witnesses together,
+and Kalmon too, and very surely Aurora and her mother. For Aurora would
+be called upon to tell what she knew of Marcello's movements on the
+morning when he had been knocked down near the gap.
+
+Every moment of his past life would be publicly examined, to prove
+Corbario's guilt. Worse than that, there would be a long inquiry to show
+that Corbario had murdered his mother. Skilled surgeons were tending the
+man's wounds and reviving him by every means that science could suggest.
+Kalmon said that he might live. He was being kept alive in order to be
+condemned to the expiation of his crimes in penal servitude, since
+Italian law could not make him pay for them with his life. The man would
+be watched by day and night, lest he should try to commit suicide, for
+he was to suffer, if he lived. He was to suffer horribly, without doubt,
+and it was right and just that he should. But Marcello would suffer too.
+That was not just. The name of his saintly mother would be in the mouths
+of all kinds of witnesses, in the columns of all sorts of newspapers.
+Lawyers would make speeches about her to excite the pity of the jury and
+to turn the whole tide of feeling against Corbario. Marcello would
+himself be held up to public commiseration, as one of Corbario's
+victims. There would be allusions covert and open to Regina and to the
+position in which she stood to Marcello. There would be talk about
+Aurora. People would suddenly remember her mother's sad story and
+gossip about her; people would certainly say that there had been talk
+about marrying Aurora to Marcello, and that Regina had come between
+them. Yes, there would be much talk about Aurora; that was certain.
+
+All this was coming, and was not far off, if Corbario lived; and even if
+he died there would be a vast amount said and written about all the
+people concerned.
+
+And Regina was there, beside him, telling him that if they were married
+they could go on living in the little house, just as if nothing had
+happened. It was not true, but he could not find heart to tell her so.
+It was the first time that any suggestion of marriage had come from her,
+who had always told him that marriage was impossible. If she wished it
+now, could he refuse?
+
+Suddenly he knew that he had reached one of the great cross-roads in his
+life, and that fate had dragged him violently to it within the last few
+hours, to make him choose his way. The full-grown character of the man
+rebelled against being forced to a decision in spite of himself, but
+revolted at the thought of fearing to do what was right and honourable.
+He was not hesitating as he sat still in silence after Regina had
+spoken. He was thinking, with the firm determination to act as soon as
+he had reached a decision. When a man can do that, his weakness is past.
+
+Regina did not interrupt the current of his thoughts, and as she watched
+him she forgot all about the present; and they were just together, where
+they had so often been happy, and she loved him with all her heart. That
+was her strength. It had nothing to do with right or wrong, honour or
+dishonour, credit or discredit, or any choice of ways. She had no
+choice. She loved. It was a very simple thing.
+
+He looked up at last. She was still wearing the loose dressing-gown she
+had worn all night.
+
+"Could you sleep now?" he asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then you must dress," he said. "While you are dressing I will walk up
+to the villa and give some orders. Then I will come and get you in a
+closed carriage. Put together what you may need for the day, and I will
+have all your things moved before night."
+
+"Are you really going to take me away from here?" Regina asked,
+regretfully.
+
+"Yes. I must. It will be easy to find a place that will please you
+better. Will you do as I have said?"
+
+"Why do you ask? I go."
+
+She rose and stood beside him a moment while he sat still, and her hand
+caressed his short fair hair. She bent down and kissed the close waves
+of it, near his forehead.
+
+"We have been very happy here," she said quietly.
+
+She slipped away as he rose to his feet, with the sudden conviction that
+something had happened.
+
+"What is it?" he asked quickly, and making a step after her.
+
+"I am going to dress," she answered.
+
+She turned her head and smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in the
+look, as if she was saying good-bye. He partly understood, and her
+expression was reflected in his own face. They had been so happy in the
+little house in Trastevere.
+
+When the door had closed Marcello went to find Kalmon. He met him at the
+foot of the stairs.
+
+"The fellow is alive, and will probably recover," said the Professor, in
+answer to the unasked question in Marcello's eyes.
+
+"It would simplify matters if he died," said Marcello. "Will you walk up
+to the villa with me and have coffee? We cannot get a cab at this hour
+on this side of the Tiber."
+
+"Thank you," Kalmon answered, "but I must go home. The house is in
+charge of the police, and there is nothing more to be done here. They
+have already taken the woman's body to San Spirito, and they will move
+Corbario in a few hours. He is badly mauled, but no big arteries are
+torn. I must go home and write a letter. The Contessa must not hear what
+has happened through the newspapers."
+
+"No. Certainly not. As for me, I am going to take Regina away at once. I
+shall bring my own carriage down from the villa."
+
+"By the bye," Kalmon said, "I had thought of that. The house in which I
+live is divided into many small apartments. There is a very good one to
+let, decently furnished. I thought of taking it myself, and I looked at
+it yesterday. You might put the young lady there until you can find what
+you may prefer. She can move in at once."
+
+"Nothing could be better. If you are going home, will you say that I
+take the place and will be there in an hour? No. 16, Via Sicilia, is it
+not?"
+
+"Yes. I'll see to it. Shall I take the lease in your name?"
+
+"No. Any name will do better. The reporters would find her at once under
+mine."
+
+"I'll use my own," said the Professor. "I'll say that she is a lady who
+has arrived to consult me--I daresay she will--and that I'm responsible
+for her."
+
+"Thank you," answered Marcello gratefully. "And thank you for all that
+you have done to help me."
+
+"My dear Marcello," Kalmon said, smiling cheerfully, "in the first
+place, I have done nothing to help you, and secondly, through excess of
+zeal, I have got you into a very unpleasant situation, by indirectly
+causing a woman to be murdered in your house, and the murderer almost
+mauled to death by that very singular wild beast which your man calls a
+dog, and which I had often noticed in old times at the cottage. So there
+is nothing at all to thank me for, though I am most heartily at your
+service."
+
+The Professor was positively in high spirits just then, and Marcello
+envied him as they parted and took opposite directions.
+
+Though the Via Sicilia was a long way from the Janiculum, Marcello had
+been only too glad to accept Kalmon's suggestion at such a moment.
+Regina would feel that she was protected by Marcello's friend, and
+though she might rarely see him, it would be better for her than to be
+lodged in a house where she knew no one. Kalmon was a bachelor and a
+man of assured position, and it had cost him nothing to undertake to
+give Regina his protection; but Marcello was deeply grateful. He had
+already made up his mind as to what he would do next.
+
+It had stopped raining at last, and the wind had fallen to a soft breeze
+that bore the morning mist gently away towards the sea, and hardly
+stirred the wet leaves that strewed the road all the way up to San
+Pietro in Montorio. Marcello found the gate of the villa already open,
+for it was nearly eight o'clock by the time he got there.
+
+He summoned the servants to the library, told them briefly what had
+happened, and warned them that they might be summoned as witnesses at
+the coming trial, as most of them had been in his mother's service. In
+the days before Corbario had lost his head, and when he had controlled
+the household, it had been a part of his policy to have really
+respectable servants about him, and though some of them had never quite
+trusted him, they had all been devoted to the Signora and to Marcello.
+They listened in respectful silence now, and waited till he was out of
+the house before meeting to discuss the tragedy and to decide that
+Corbario had got his deserts at last.
+
+In a few hours Regina was installed in her new lodging with such
+belongings as she needed immediately. Kalmon, having finished writing
+his letter to the Contessa, left nothing undone which could contribute
+to the comfort of the "lady who had arrived to consult him." He had a
+respectable old woman servant, who had been with him for years, and who
+came from his native town. He took her into his confidence to some
+extent, and placed her in charge of Regina. As she thought that
+everything he did must be right, she accepted his statement that the
+young gentleman who would often come to see the young lady was deeply
+interested in the latter's welfare, and that, as the poor young lady had
+no relations, he, the Professor, had taken her under his protection
+while she remained in Rome.
+
+The old servant's name was Teresa, and she belonged to a certain type of
+elderly old maids who take a very kindly interest in the love affairs of
+the young. She smiled, shook her head in a very mild disapprobation, and
+did much more than Kalmon had asked of her; for she took the very first
+opportunity of informing Regina that the Professor was the greatest,
+wisest, best, and kindest of mankind; and Regina recognised in her a
+loyal soul, and forthwith liked her very much.
+
+It was late in the November afternoon when Marcello ascended the stairs
+and stopped before the door of the little apartment. He realised that he
+had no key to it, and that he must ring the bell as if he were a mere
+visitor. It was strange that such a little thing should affect him at
+all, but he was conscious of a sort of chill, as he pulled the metal
+handle and heard the tinkling of one of those cheap little bells that
+feebly imitate their electric betters by means of a rachet and a small
+weighted wheel. It was all so different from the little house in
+Trastevere with its bright varnished doors, its patent locks, its smart
+windows, and its lovely old garden. He wished he had not brought Regina
+to Via Sicilia, though Kalmon's advice had seemed so good. To Kalmon,
+who was used to no great luxury in his own life, the place doubtless
+seemed very well suited for a young person like Regina, who had been
+brought up a poor child in the hills. But the mere anticipation of the
+dark and narrow entry, and the sordid little sitting-room beyond, awoke
+in Marcello a sense of shame, whether for himself or for the woman who
+loved him he hardly knew.
+
+Old Teresa had gone out for something, and Regina opened the door
+herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+"I have come to see if you need anything," Marcello said, when they were
+in the sitting-room. "I am sorry to have been obliged to bring you to
+such a wretched place, but it seemed a good thing that you should be so
+near Kalmon."
+
+"It is not a wretched place," Regina answered. "It is clean, and the
+things are new, and the curtains have been washed. It is not wretched.
+We have been in worse lodgings when we have travelled and stopped in
+small towns. Professor Kalmon has been very kind. It was wise to bring
+me here."
+
+He wished she had seemed discontented.
+
+"Have you rested a little?" he asked.
+
+"I have slept two or three hours. And you? You look tired."
+
+"I have had no time to sleep. I shall sleep to-night."
+
+He leaned back in the small green arm-chair and rested his head against
+a coarse netted antimacassar. His eyes caught Regina's, but she was
+looking down thoughtfully at her hands, which lay in her lap together
+but not clasped. Peasant women often do that; their hands are resting
+then, after hard work, and they are thinking of nothing.
+
+"Look at me," Marcello said after a long time.
+
+Her glance was sad and almost dull, and there was no light in her face.
+She had made up her mind that something dreadful was going to happen to
+her, and that the end was coming soon. She could not have told why she
+felt it, and that made it worse. Her eyes had the indescribable look
+that one sees in those of a beautiful sick animal, the painful
+expression of an unintelligent suffering which the creature cannot
+understand. Regina, roused to act and face to face with danger, was
+brave, clever, and quick, but under the mysterious oppression of her
+forebodings she was the Roman hill woman, apathetic, hopeless,
+unconsciously fatalistic and sleepily miserable.
+
+"What is the matter?" Marcello asked. "What has happened?"
+
+"I shall know when you have told me," Regina answered, slowly shaking
+her head; and again she looked down at her hands.
+
+"What I have come to tell you will not make you sad," Marcello replied.
+
+"Speak, heart of my heart. I listen."
+
+Marcello leaned forward and laid his hand upon hers. She looked up
+quietly, for it was a familiar action of his.
+
+"I am going to marry you," he said, watching her, and speaking
+earnestly.
+
+She kept her eyes on his, but she shook her head again, slowly, from
+side to side, and her lips were pressed together.
+
+"Yes, I am," said Marcello, with a little pressure of his hand to
+emphasise the words.
+
+But she withdrew hers, and leaned far back from him.
+
+"Never," she said. "I have told you so, many times."
+
+"Not if I tell you that nothing else will make me happy?" he asked.
+
+"If I still made you happy, you would not talk of marriage," Regina
+answered.
+
+For the first time since she had loved him he heard a ring of bitterness
+in her voice. They had reached that first node of misunderstanding in
+the love relations of men and women, which lies where the one begins to
+think and act upon a principle while the other still feels and acts from
+the heart.
+
+"That is not reasonable," Marcello said.
+
+"It is truth," she answered.
+
+"But how?"
+
+"How! I feel it, here!"
+
+Her hands sprang to life and pressed her bosom, her voice rang deep and
+her eyes flashed, as if she were impatient of his misunderstanding.
+
+He tried to laugh gently.
+
+"But if I want to marry you, it is because I mean never to part from
+you," he said.
+
+"No!" she cried. "It is because you are afraid that you will leave me,
+unless you are bound to me."
+
+"Regina!" Marcello protested, by his tone.
+
+"It is as I say. It is because you are honourable. It is because you
+wish to be faithful. It is because you want to be true. But what do I
+care for honour, or faith, or truth, if I can only have them of you
+because you are tied to me? I only want love. That is everything. I want
+it, but I have never asked it of you, and never shall. Is love money,
+that you can take it out of your purse and give it? Is love a string,
+that the priest and the mayor can tie the ends so that they can never
+come undone? I do not know what it is, but it is not that!"
+
+She laughed scornfully, as if she were angry at the thought. But
+Marcello had made up his mind, and was obstinate.
+
+"We must be married at once," he said quietly, and fully believing that
+he could impose his will upon hers. "If I had not been weak and foolish,
+we should have been married long ago. But for a long time after my
+illness I had no will of my own. I am sorry. It was my fault."
+
+"It was not your fault, it was the illness, and it was my will. If I had
+said, any day in those first two years, 'Make me your wife, for I wish
+to be a real signora,' would you not have done it?"
+
+"You know I would."
+
+"But I would not, and I will not now. I am not a real signora. I am
+beautiful--yes, I see that. Am I blind when I look into my glass? I am
+very beautiful. We have not often met any woman in our travels as
+beautiful as I am. Am I blind? I have black hair, like the common
+people, but my hair is not coarse, like a mule's tail. It is as fine as
+silk. My eyes are black, and that is common too; but my eyes are not
+like those of the buffaloes in the Campagna, as the other women's are
+where I was born. And I am not dark-skinned; I am as white as the snow
+on Monte Cavo, as white as the milk in the pan. Also I have been told
+that I have beautiful feet, though I cannot tell why. They are small,
+this is the truth, and my hands are like those of a signora. But I am
+not a real signora, though I have all this. How can you marry me? None
+of your friends would speak to me, because I have not even been an
+honest girl. That was for you, but they do not count love. Your servants
+at the villa would laugh at you behind your back, and say, 'The master
+has married one of us!' Do you think I could bear that? Tell me what you
+think! Am I of stone, to bear that people should laugh at you?"
+
+She took breath at last and leaned back again, folding her arms and
+fixing her splendid eyes on his face, and challenging him to answer her.
+
+"We will go and live in Calabria, at San Domenico, for a while," he
+said. "We need not live in Rome at all, unless we please, for we have
+the whole world before us."
+
+"We saw the world together without being married," Regina answered
+obstinately. "What difference would there be, if we were husband and
+wife? Do you wish to know what difference there would be? I will tell
+you. There would be this difference. One day I should see no light in
+your eyes, and your lips would be like stone. Then I should say, 'Heart
+of my heart, you are tired of me, and I go.' But you would answer, 'You
+cannot go, for you are my wife.' What would that be? That would be the
+difference. Do you understand, or do you not understand? If you do not
+understand, I can do nothing. But I will not marry you. Have you ever
+seen a mule go down to the ford in spring, too heavily laden, when there
+is freshet? He drowns, if he is driven in, because the burden is too
+heavy. I will not be the burden; but I should be, if I were your wife,
+because I am not a real signora. Now you know what I think."
+
+"Yes," Marcello answered, "but I do not think in the same way."
+
+He was not sure how to answer her arguments, and he lit a cigarette to
+gain time. He was quietly determined to have his own way, but in order
+to succeed he knew that he must persuade her till she agreed with him.
+He could not drag her to the altar against her will.
+
+Before he had thrown away the match, Regina had risen from her chair.
+She leaned against the little marble mantelpiece, looking down at him.
+
+"There are things that you do not know," she said. "If you knew them you
+would not want to marry me. In all the time we have been together, you
+have hardly ever spoken to me of your mother."
+
+Marcello started a little and looked up, unconsciously showing that he
+was displeased.
+
+"No," he answered. "Why should I?"
+
+"You were right. Your mother is now one of the saints in Paradise. How
+do I know it? Even Settimia knew it. I am not going to talk of her now.
+I am not fit to speak her name in your hearing. Very well. Do you know
+what my mother was?"
+
+"She is dead," Marcello replied, meaning that Regina should let her
+memory alone.
+
+"Or my father?" she asked, going on. "They were bad people. I come of a
+bad race. Perhaps that is why I do wrong easily, for you. My father
+killed a man and left us, though he was allowed to go free, and I never
+saw him again. He had reason to kill the man. I was a little girl, but I
+remember. My mother took other men. They came and went; sometimes they
+were drunk and they beat us. When I was twelve years old one of them
+looked upon me with bad eyes. Then my mother cursed him, and he took up
+a stone and struck her on the head, and she died. They sent him to the
+galleys, and me to work at the inn, because I had no friends. This is
+the family of Regina. It is a race of assassins and wicked women. If I
+were your wife, that would be the family of your wife. If God sent
+children, that would be the blood they would have of me, to mix with
+that of your mother, who is one of the saints in heaven. This is the
+truth. If you think I am telling you one thing for another, let us go to
+the inn on the Frascati road. Paoluccio and Nanna know. They would laugh
+if they could see me dressed like a real signora, and they would say,
+'This girl is her mother's daughter!' And so I am."
+
+She ceased speaking, and again waited for his answer, but he had none
+ready, and there was silence. She had put the ugly truth too plainly
+before him, and he could not shut up his understanding against it; he
+could not deny what she said, he could never teach himself to believe
+that it did not matter. And yet, he did not mean to draw back, or give
+up his purpose, even then. Men of good birth had married peasant women
+before now. They had given up the society of their old friends, they had
+lived in remote places, they had become half peasants themselves, their
+sons had grown up to be rough farmers, and had done obligatory military
+service in the ranks for years, because they could not pass an easy
+examination. But was all that so very terrible after all, in the light
+of the duty that faced him?
+
+The woman had saved his life, had carried him in her arms, had tended
+him like a child, had stolen food to keep him alive, had faced
+starvation for him when she had got him to the hospital, had nursed
+him--had loved him, had given him all she had, and she would have died
+for him, if there had been need. Now, she was giving him something more,
+for she was refusing to be his wife because she was sure that sooner or
+later she must be a burden to him, and that her birth would be a
+reproach to his children. No woman could do more for a man than she had
+done. She had been his salvation and his good angel; when she had found
+out that the life in Paris that amused her was killing him, she had
+brought him back to himself, she had made him at last fit and able to
+face those who would have destroyed him. She had loved him like a
+woman, she had obeyed him and served him like a devoted servant, she had
+watched over him like a faithful dog; and he had given her nothing in
+return for all that, not one thing that deserved to be counted. Perhaps
+he had not even really loved her; most surely his love had been far less
+large and true and devoted than hers, and he felt that it was so. The
+reparation he was determined to make was not really for her honesty's
+sake; it was to be an attempt at repaying a debt that was weighing upon
+his conscience like a debt of honour.
+
+That was it. He felt that unless he could in some way repay her for what
+she had done, his man's honour would not be satisfied. That was very
+well, in its way, but it was not love. It was as if he had said to
+himself, "I cannot love her as she loves me, but I can at least marry
+her; and that is better than nothing, and has the merit of being morally
+right."
+
+She had told him that if she still made him happy he would not talk of
+marriage. The brutal truth shamed him, now that he knew it from her own
+lips. It was not the whole truth, but it was a great part of it. If he
+was happy with her now, when there was nothing to disturb them, it was
+by force of habit, it was because her beauty appealed to him, it was
+because her touch was dearer to him than her heart's devotion. Now that
+he was a grown man, he knew well enough that he craved something else
+which poor Regina could never give him.
+
+For he felt the want of companionship. Those who have lost what is most
+worth having, whether by death or by their own fault, or by the other's,
+miss the companionship of love more than anything else, when the pain of
+the first wrench is dulled and the heart's blood is staunched, and the
+dreadful bodily loneliness comes only in dreams. Then the longing for
+the old sweet intercourse of thought and word makes itself felt and is
+very hard to bear, though it is not sharp like the first wound; and it
+comes again and again for years, and perhaps for ever.
+
+But where there is no true companionship while love lasts, there is
+something lacking, and such love cannot live long. Men seem to want it
+more than women do; and women, seeing that men want something, often
+fancy they want flattery, and natter the men they love till they disgust
+them; and then the end comes suddenly, much to the astonishment of those
+women.
+
+Regina was too womanly not to feel that Marcello was in real need of
+something which she had not, and could never have. She had known it from
+the first, and had almost told him so. She gave what was hers to give,
+as long as he wanted it; when he wanted it no more, she meant to leave
+him, and it would make no difference what became of her afterwards.
+
+When she had finished speaking, Marcello was very miserable, because he
+could find no answer to what she had said, and he felt that she had no
+right to say it at all. His head ached now, from excitement and want of
+sleep, and he almost wished that he had put off speaking to Regina about
+her marriage. He rested his head in his hand as he sat thinking, and she
+came and stood beside him as she had done in the morning in the little
+house in Trastevere. But it was not the same now. She hoped that he
+would put up his other hand to find hers, without looking at her, as he
+often did, but it gripped his knee as if he did not mean to move it, and
+he did not raise his head.
+
+She looked up from his bent figure to the window and saw that the light
+was reddening with the first tinge of sunset. It would soon be night,
+Marcello would go away, and she would be dreadfully lonely. It was not
+like being in the little house, knowing that he was near her, in the
+great villa on top of the hill, hidden from her only by trees. She was
+in a strange place now, and he would be far away, across the Tiber, and
+the great dark city would be between her and him.
+
+For an instant her lip quivered, and she thought she was going to cry,
+though she had never cried in her life, except for rage and when she had
+been a little girl. She shook her handsome head impatiently at the mere
+sensation, and held it higher than ever. Then Marcello looked up at
+last.
+
+As their eyes met they heard the tinkle of the little bell. Regina at
+once left his side to go and open the door. It was not till she had left
+the room that Marcello rose, asking himself suddenly why it had not
+occurred to him to go himself. He realised that he had always allowed
+her to wait on him without question. Yet if she were his wife, he would
+not think of letting her do what she was doing now. He would even open
+the door of the room for her to go out.
+
+He knew why he had never treated her in that way. She was a peasant
+girl, she had been a servant in an inn; it was natural that she should
+serve him too. She often brought him his shoes when he was going out,
+and she would have put them on for him and laced them if he would have
+let her do it. It seemed natural that she should answer the bell and
+open the door, as it seemed unnatural that she should ever be his wife.
+The thought stung him, and again, he was ashamed.
+
+While these things were passing in his mind, he heard a familiar voice
+in the dark entry.
+
+"Signora, you will excuse me," Ercole was saying. "I asked the Professor
+and he told me. I beg the favour of a few words."
+
+"Come in," Regina answered, and a moment later they both entered the
+sitting-room.
+
+Ercole stood still when he saw Marcello, and began to turn his hat in
+his hands, as if it were a rosary, which he generally did when he was
+embarrassed. Marcello wondered what the man wanted.
+
+"Were you looking for me?" he asked. "Come in! What is it? Has anything
+happened?"
+
+"No, sir, nothing new has happened," answered Ercole.
+
+"What is it, then? Why did you come here?"
+
+Ercole had dressed himself for the occasion in his best clothes. He had
+on a snowy shirt and a new keeper's jacket, and his boots were blacked.
+Furthermore, he had just been shaved, and his shaggy hair had been cut
+rather close. He did not carry his gun about with him in the streets of
+Rome, though he felt that it was slightly derogatory to his dignity to
+be seen without it, and Nino was not with him, having been temporarily
+chained to the wall in the court of the stables at the villa.
+
+He stood still, and looked from Marcello to Regina, and back to Marcello
+again.
+
+"It cannot be done," he said suddenly. "It is useless. It cannot be
+done."
+
+Without another word he turned abruptly and was going to leave the room,
+when Marcello stopped him authoritatively.
+
+"Come here, Ercole!" he cried, as the man was disappearing into the
+entry.
+
+"Did you speak to me, sir?" Ercole inquired, stopping in the doorway.
+
+"Yes. Shut the door and come here." Ercole obeyed with evident
+reluctance. "Now, then," Marcello continued, "come here and tell me what
+you want, and what it is that cannot be done."
+
+"I desire a few words with this lady, and I did not know that you were
+here, sir. Therefore I said, it cannot be done. I mean that while you
+are here, sir, I cannot speak alone with this lady."
+
+"That is clear," Marcello answered. "You cannot be alone with this lady
+while I am in the room. That certainly cannot be done. Why do you wish
+to be alone with her? You can speak before me."
+
+"It will not be so easy, sir. I will come at another time."
+
+"No," Marcello answered, not liking his manner. "You will say what you
+have to say now, or you will say nothing, for you will not come at
+another time. The lady will not let you in, if you come again. Now
+speak."
+
+"It will be a little difficult, sir. I would rather speak to the lady
+alone."
+
+Regina had stood listening in silence, and looking intently at Ercole's
+face.
+
+"Let me speak to him," she said to Marcello. "What is your full name?"
+she asked, turning to Ercole again.
+
+"Spalletta Ercole, to serve you," was the prompt answer.
+
+"Spalletta?" Marcello asked in surprise, for strange as it may seem to
+any but Italians, it was quite natural that he should never have known
+Ercole's family name. "Spalletta? That is your own name, Regina! What a
+strange coincidence!"
+
+"Yes," Ercole said. "I know that the young lady's name is Spalletta. It
+is for this reason that I desire the favour of a few words with her
+alone."
+
+"There is no need," Regina answered. "Since we have the same name, there
+is no doubt. I remember your face now, though until last night I had not
+seen you since I was a little child. Yes. I know what you have come to
+say, and it is quite true."
+
+"What?" asked Marcello with some anxiety.
+
+"This man is my father," Regina said, very quietly.
+
+"Your father!" Marcello made half a step backwards in his surprise.
+
+"Yes. I have told you what he did." She turned to Ercole. "What do you
+want of me? Is it money that you want, perhaps?"
+
+Ercole stiffened himself and seemed to grow taller. His black eyes
+flashed dangerously, and his heavy eyebrows were suddenly stern and
+level, as Regina's were.
+
+"You are your mother's daughter," he said slowly. "Did I take money from
+her? I took blood, and when I was tried for it, I was set free. I was
+told that it was my right under our law. I do not want money. I have
+brought you money. There it is. It will buy you some bread when your
+lover turns you into the street!"
+
+He took out his old sheepskin purse with a quick movement, and laughed
+harshly as he tossed it at her. Marcello sprang forward and caught him
+by the collar, to thrust him out of the room; but Ercole was tough and
+wiry, and resisted.
+
+"Will you hinder me from giving money to my daughter?" he asked
+fiercely. "It was yours, for you paid it to me; but when I knew, I saved
+my wages to give them back, for I will not take your money, sir! Take
+your hands from me, sir! I have a right to be here and to speak. Let me
+go, I tell you! I am not in your service any longer. I do not eat your
+cursed bread. I am this woman's father, and I shall say what I will."
+
+Marcello withdrew his hands and pointed to the door.
+
+"Go!" he said, in a voice of command.
+
+Ercole backed away a little, and then stood still again.
+
+"I have to tell you that I have spent five francs of that money," he
+said, speaking to Regina. "But it was spent for you. I found a good
+monk, and I gave him the five francs to say three masses for your soul.
+The masses were said in August, and now it is November, and you are
+still alive!"
+
+"Go!" cried Marcello, understanding, and advancing upon him once more.
+
+"I go," answered Ercole hoarsely. "Let her live, till you are tired of
+her, and she dies in a ditch! I told the monk to say the masses for a
+female. They will do for the woman who was killed last night. One female
+is worth another, and evil befall them all, as many as they are! Why did
+the Eternal Father ever create them?"
+
+He had turned before he spoke the last words, and he went out
+deliberately, shutting the door behind him. They heard him go out upon
+the landing, and they were alone again. Regina leaned back against the
+mantelpiece, but Marcello began to walk up and down the room.
+
+"You have seen," she said, in a rather unsteady voice. "Now you know of
+what blood I am, and that what I said was true. The son of your mother
+cannot marry the daughter of that man."
+
+"What have you to do with him?" Marcello asked sharply, stopping in his
+walk.
+
+But Regina only shook her head, and turned away. She knew that she was
+right, and that he knew it too, or would know it soon.
+
+"You will never see him again," he said. "Forget that you have seen him
+at all!"
+
+Again she shook her head, not looking at him.
+
+"You will not forget," she answered, "and I shall always remember. He
+should have killed me, as he meant to do. It would have been the end. It
+would have been better, and quicker."
+
+"God forbid!"
+
+"Why? Would it not have been better?"
+
+She came close to him and laid one hand upon his shoulder and gazed into
+his eyes. They were full of trouble and pain, and they did not lighten
+for her; his brow did not relax and his lips did not part. After a
+little while she turned again and went back to the fireplace.
+
+"It would have been better," she said in a low voice. "I knew it this
+morning."
+
+There was silence in the room for a while. Marcello stood beside her,
+holding her hand in his, and trying to see her face. He was very tender
+with her, but there was no thrill in his touch. Something was gone that
+would never come back.
+
+"When all this trouble is over," he said at last, "you shall go back to
+the little house in Trastevere, and it will be just as it was before."
+
+She raised her head rather proudly, as she answered.
+
+"If that could be, it would be now. You would have taken me in your arms
+when he was gone, and you would have kissed my eyes and my hair, and we
+should have been happy, just as it was before. But instead, you want to
+comfort me, you want to be kind to me, you want to be just to me,
+instead of loving me!"
+
+"Regina! I do love you! I do indeed!"
+
+He would have put his arms round her to draw her closer to him, in the
+sudden longing to make her think that there was no change in his love,
+but she quietly resisted him.
+
+"You have been very good to me, dear," she said, "and I know you will
+always be that, whatever comes. And I am always yours, dear, and you are
+the master, whenever you choose to come and see me. For I care for
+nothing that God has made, except you. But it will never be just as it
+used to be."
+
+"It shall!" Marcello tried to put conviction into the words. "It shall!
+It shall!"
+
+"It cannot, my heart," she answered. "I used to say that when this came,
+I would go away. But I will not do that, unless you bid me to, for I
+think you would be sorry, and I should be giving you more pain, and you
+have enough. Only leave me a little while alone, dear, for I am very
+tired, and it is growing late."
+
+He took her hands and kissed them one after the other, and looked into
+her face. His own was very weary.
+
+"Promise me that I shall find you here to-morrow," he said.
+
+"You shall find me," she answered softly.
+
+They parted so, and he left her alone, in the dark, for the glow of the
+sunset had faded and the early November evening was closing in.
+
+Old Teresa came and brought a lamp, and drew the curtains, and gave her
+a message from Kalmon. If she needed anything she was to send for him,
+and he would come at once. She thanked Teresa. It was very kind of the
+Professor, but she needed nothing. Not even a fire; no, she hardly ever
+felt cold. Teresa brought something to eat, and set the little table for
+her. She was not hungry, and she was glad when the good soul was gone.
+
+She could open the windows when she was alone, and look out into the
+silent street. There was moonlight now, and it fell across the walls and
+trees of the Villa Aurora upon her face. It was a young moon, that would
+set before midnight, but it was very clear and bright, and the sky was
+infinitely deep and very clear behind it. Regina fancied that if there
+were really angels in heaven, she should be able to see them on such a
+night.
+
+If she had been in Trastevere she would have gone out to walk up and
+down the old paved paths of the little garden, for she could not sleep,
+though she was so tired. The lamp disturbed her and she put it out, and
+sat down by the window again.
+
+It was very quiet now, for it was past nine o'clock. She heard a step,
+and it almost surprised her. A man with a big dog was walking in the
+shadow on the other side of the street, and when he was opposite the
+house he stood still and looked up at her window. He did not move for
+some time, but the dog came out into the moonlight in a leisurely way,
+and lay down on the paving stones. All dogs think it is warmer in the
+light than in the shadow.
+
+Regina rose, got a long black cloak and a dark veil without lighting a
+candle, and put them on. Then she went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Ercole walked on when he saw some one come out of No. 16, for he did not
+recognise Regina. She followed him at a distance. Even if he should pass
+where there might be many people, she would not lose sight of him easily
+because he had his dog with him. She noticed that his canvas bag was
+hung over one shoulder and that it seemed to be full, and his gun was
+slung over the other. He meant to leave Rome that night on foot. He
+walked fast through the new streets in the upper quarter, turned to the
+right when he reached the Via Venti Settembre, and went straight on,
+past the top of the hill, and along the Quirinal Palace; then down and
+on, down and on, through moonlight and shadow, winding streets and
+straight, till the Colosseum was in sight. He was going towards the
+Porta San Sebastiano to take the road to Ardea.
+
+The air was very clear, and the moonlight made the broad space as bright
+as if there were daylight. Regina walked fast, and began to overtake her
+father, and the dog turned his head and growled at the tall woman in
+black. She came up with Ercole by the ruin of the ancient fountain, and
+the dog snarled at her. Ercole stopped and looked at her sharply, and
+she raised her veil.
+
+"I have followed you," she said. "We are alone here. We can talk in
+peace."
+
+"And what am I to say to you?" Ercole asked, in a low and surly voice.
+
+"What you will, little or much, as you please. You shall speak, and I
+will listen. But we can walk on under the trees there. Then nobody can
+see us."
+
+Ercole began to go on, and Regina walked on his left side. The dog
+sniffed at the hem of her long black cloak. They came under the shade of
+the trees, and Ercole stopped again, and turned, facing the reflection
+of the moonlight on the vast curve of the Colosseum.
+
+"What do you want of me?" he asked. "Why do you follow me in the night?"
+
+"When you saw that the Signore was with me to-day, you said, 'It cannot
+be done.' He is not here now."
+
+She stood quite still, looking at him.
+
+"I understand nothing," he said, in the same surly tone as before.
+
+"You wished to kill me to-day," she answered. "I am here. This is a good
+place."
+
+Ercole looked about him instinctively, peering into the shadows under
+the trees.
+
+"There is no one," Regina said. "This is a good place."
+
+She had not lifted her veil, but she threw back the collar of her cloak,
+and with quick fingers undid the fastenings of her dress, opening it
+wide. Rays of moonlight fell through the trees upon her bosom, and it
+gleamed like fine ivory newly cut.
+
+"I wait," she said.
+
+She stood motionless before him, expecting the knife, but her father's
+hands did not move. His eyes were fixed on hers, though he could not see
+them through the veil.
+
+"So he has left you?" he said slowly.
+
+"No. I am waiting."
+
+Not a fold of her cloak stirred as she stood there to die. It seemed a
+long time, but his hands did not move. Then he heard the sound of her
+voice, very low and sweet, repeating a little prayer, but he only heard
+the last words distinctly.
+
+"--now, and in the hour of our death!"
+
+His right hand moved slowly and found something in his pocket, and then
+there was the sharp click of a strong spring, and a ray of moonlight
+fell upon steel, and her voice was heard again.
+
+"--in the hour of our death. Amen!"
+
+An unearthly sound rent the stillness. The huge dog sat upright on his
+haunches, his head thrown up and back, his terrible lower jaw trembling
+as he howled, and howled again, waking great echoes where the roar of
+wild lions had rung long ago.
+
+Regina started, though she did not move a step; but an unreasoning fear
+fell upon Ercole. He could not see her face, as the dark veil hung down.
+She was so motionless and fearless; only the dead could be as fearless
+of death and as still as she. Her breast was so white; her hands were
+like marble hands, parting a black shroud upon it. She was something
+risen from the grave to haunt him in that lonely place and drive him
+mad; and the appalling howl of the great dog robe deafeningly on the
+silence and trembled and died away, and began again.
+
+Ercole's hand relaxed, and the knife fell gleaming at his feet. One
+instant more and he turned and fled through the trees, towards San
+Gregorio, his dog galloping heavily after him.
+
+Regina's hands fell by her sides, and the folds of her cloak closed
+together and hung straight down. She stared into the shadowy distance a
+moment after her father, and saw his figure twice in the light where the
+trees were wider apart, before he disappeared altogether. She looked
+down and saw the knife at her feet, and she picked it up and felt the
+point. It was as sharp as a needle, for Ercole had whetted it often
+since he had sat by the gate in the early morning last August. It was
+wet, for the grass under the trees had not dried since the rain.
+
+She felt the point and edge with her hand, and sighed. It would have
+been better to have felt it in her breast, but she would not take her
+own life. She was not afraid to do it, and her young hand would have
+been strong enough and sure enough to do it quickly. It was not the
+thought of the pain that made her close the knife; it was the fear of
+hell. Nothing she had done in her life seemed very bad to her, because
+it had all been for Marcello. If Ercole had killed her, she thought that
+God would have forgiven her after a time. But if she killed herself she
+would instantly be seized by devils and thrust into real flames, to
+burn for ever, without the slightest chance of forgiveness. She had been
+taught that, and she believed it, and the thought of the fire made her
+shut the clasp-knife and slip it into her dress with a sigh. It would be
+a pity to throw it away, for it seemed to be a good knife, and her
+father could not have had it very long.
+
+She fastened her frock under her mantle and went a few steps down the
+little slope towards the Colosseum. To go on meant to go home, and she
+stopped again. The place was very lonely and peaceful, and the light on
+the great walls was quiet and good to see. Though she had stood so
+still, waiting to die, and had said her little prayer so calmly, her
+brave heart had been beating slow and hard as if it were counting the
+seconds before it was to stop; and now it beat fast and softly, and
+fluttered a little, so that she felt faint, as even brave people do
+after a great danger is past. I have seen hundreds of men together, just
+escaped from destruction by earthquake, moving about listlessly with
+veiled eyes, yawning as if they were dropping with sleep, and saying
+childish things when they spoke at all. Man's body is the part of
+himself which he least understands, unless he has spent half his life in
+studying its ways. Its many portions can only telegraph to the brain two
+words, 'pain' and 'pleasure,' with different degrees of energy; but that
+is all. The rest of their language belongs to science.
+
+Regina felt faint and sat down, because there was no reason for making
+any effort to go home. Perhaps a cab would pass, returning from some
+outlying part of the city, and she would take it. From the place where
+she sat she could see one far off, if any came.
+
+She sank down on the wet ground, and drew up her knees and pulled her
+cloak round her; and gradually her head bent forward and rested upon her
+hands, till she sat there like a figure of grief outlined in black
+against the moonlight on the great wall. She had forgotten where she
+was, and that there was any time in the world.
+
+Half an hour passed, and the moon sank low, and an hour, and the deadly
+white mist began to rise in the shadow round the base of the Colosseum,
+and crept up under the trees; and if any one had come upon her then, he
+would have seen its dull whiteness crawling round her feet and body, a
+hand-breadth above the wet ground. But she did not know; she had
+forgotten everything.
+
+Nothing was real any more. She could have believed that her father had
+killed her and left her corpse there, strangely sitting, though quite
+dead.
+
+Then she knew that the light had gone out; and suddenly she felt her
+teeth chatter, and a chill ran through her bones that was bad to feel.
+She raised her head and saw that the great walls were dark against the
+starry sky, and she rose with an effort, as if her limbs had suddenly
+become lead. But she could walk, though it was like walking in sleep.
+
+She did not afterwards remember how she got home, but she had a vague
+recollection of having lost her way, and of finding a cab at last, and
+then of letting herself into the little apartment in the dark.
+
+When she was next aware of anything it was broad daylight, and she was
+lying on her bed, still dressed and wearing her cloak; and Kalmon was
+bending over her, his eyes on hers and his fingers on her pulse, while
+old Teresa watched her anxiously from the foot of the bed.
+
+"I'm afraid it is a 'perniciosa,'" he said. "Put her to bed while I call
+a regular doctor."
+
+Regina looked up at him.
+
+"I have fever, have I not?" she asked quite quietly.
+
+"Yes. You have a little fever," he answered, but his big brown eyes were
+very grave.
+
+When Marcello came, an hour later, she did not know him. She stared at
+him with wide, unwinking eyes, and there were bright patches of colour
+in her cheeks. Already there were hollows in them, too, and at her
+temples, for the perniciosa fever is frightfully quick to waste the
+body. In the Campagna, where it is worst, men have died of it in less
+than four hours after first feeling it upon them. Great men have
+discovered wonderful remedies for it, but still it kills.
+
+Kalmon got one of the great men, who was his friend, and they did what
+they could. A nursing sister came and was installed. Marcello was
+summoned away soon after noon by an official person, who brought a
+carriage and said that Corbario was now conscious and able to speak, and
+that it was absolutely necessary that Marcello should be confronted
+with him, as he might not live another day. It was easier to go than it
+would have been if Regina had been conscious, but even so it was very
+hard. The nun and Teresa stayed with her.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE SAT THERE LIKE A FIGURE OF GRIEF OUTLINED IN BLACK
+AGAINST THE MOONLIGHT ON THE GREAT WALL."]
+
+She said little in her delirium, and nothing that had any meaning for
+either of the women. Twice she tried to tear away the linen and lace
+from her throat.
+
+"I wait!" she cried each time, and her eyes fixed themselves on the
+ceiling, while she held her breath.
+
+The women could not tell what she was waiting for, and they soothed her
+as best they could. She seemed to doze after that, and when Marcello
+came back she knew him, and took his hand. He sent away the nurses and
+sat by the bedside, and she spoke to him in short sentences, faintly. He
+bent forward, near the pillow, to catch the words.
+
+She was telling him what she had done last night.
+
+"But you promised that I should find you here to-day!" Marcello said,
+with gentle reproach.
+
+"Yes. I did not mean to break my word. But I thought he would do it. It
+seemed so easy."
+
+Her voice was weak with the fever, and sank almost to a whisper. He
+stroked her hand affectionately, hoping that she would go to sleep; and
+so a long time passed. Then Kalmon came in with his friend the great
+doctor. They saw that she was not yet any better; the doctor ordered
+several things to be done and went away. Kalmon drew Marcello out of the
+room.
+
+"You can do nothing," he said. "She has good care, and she is very
+strong. Go home and come back in the morning."
+
+"I must stay here," Marcello answered.
+
+"That is out of the question, on account of the Sister of Charity. But
+you can send for your things and camp in my rooms downstairs. There is a
+good sofa. You can telephone to the villa for what you want."
+
+"Thank you." Marcello's voice dropped and shook. "Will she live?" he
+asked.
+
+"I hope so. She is very strong, and it may be only fever."
+
+"What else could it be?"
+
+"Pneumonia."
+
+Marcello bit his lip and closed his eyes as if he were in bodily pain,
+and a moment later he turned away and went down to Kalmon's apartment.
+
+The Professor went back to Regina's side, and stood quietly watching
+her, with a very sad look in his eyes. She opened hers and saw him, and
+she brought one hand to her chest.
+
+"It burns," she said, almost in a whisper, but with a strange sort of
+eagerness, as if she were glad.
+
+"I wish I could bear it for you, my poor child," Kalmon answered.
+
+She shook her head, and turned uneasily on the pillow. He did not
+understand.
+
+"What is it?" he asked gently. "What can I do for you? Tell me."
+
+"I want to see some one very much. How long shall I live?"
+
+"You will get quite well," said Kalmon, in a reassuring tone. "But you
+must be very quiet." Again she moved her burning cheek on the pillow.
+
+"Do you want to see a priest?" asked the Professor, thinking he had
+guessed. "Is that it?"
+
+"Yes--there is time for that--some one else--could you? Will you?"
+
+"Yes." Kalmon bent down quickly, for he thought the delirium was coming
+again. "Who is it?" he asked.
+
+"Aurora--I mean, the Signorina--can you? Oh, do you think you could?"
+
+"I'll try," Kalmon answered in great surprise.
+
+But now the hoarseness was suddenly gone, and her sweet voice was softly
+humming an old song of the hills, forgotten many years, and the
+Professor saw that she did not know him any more. He nodded to Teresa,
+who was in the room, and went out.
+
+He wondered much at the request, but he remembered that it had been made
+in the full belief that he would say nothing of it to Marcello. If she
+had been willing that Marcello should know, she would have spoken to
+him, rather than to Kalmon. He had seen little enough of Regina, but he
+was sure that she could have no bad motive in wishing to see the young
+girl. Yet, from a social point of view, it was not exactly an easy thing
+to propose, and the Contessa would have a right to be offended at the
+mere suggestion that her daughter should speak to "Consalvi's Regina";
+and there could not be anything clandestine in the meeting, if Aurora
+consented to it. Kalmon was too deeply attached to the Contessa herself
+to be willing to risk her displeasure, or, indeed, to do anything of
+which she would not approve.
+
+He went to her house by the Forum of Trajan, and he found her at home.
+It was late in the afternoon, and the lamp was lighted in the little
+drawing-room, which did not seem at all shabby to Kalmon's accustomed
+eyes and not very exigent taste. The Contessa was reading an evening
+paper before the fire. She put out her hand to the Professor.
+
+"It is a bad business," she said, glancing at the newspaper, which had a
+long account of Corbario's arrest and of the murder of his old
+accomplice. "Poor Marcello!"
+
+"Poor Marcello! Yes, indeed! I'm sorry for him. There is something more
+than is in the papers, and more than I have written to you and told you.
+Regina has the perniciosa fever, complicated with pneumonia, and is not
+likely to live."
+
+"I am sorry," the Contessa answered. "I am very sorry for her. But after
+all, compared with what Marcello has learned about his mother's
+death--and other things Corbario did--"
+
+She stopped, implying by her tone that even if Regina died, that would
+not be the greatest of Marcello's misfortunes. Besides, she had long
+foreseen that the relations of the two could not last, and the simplest
+solution, and the happiest one for the poor devoted girl, was that she
+should die before her heart was broken. Maddalena dell' Armi had often
+wished that her own fate had been as merciful.
+
+"Yes," Kalmon answered. "You are right in that. But Regina has made a
+rather strange request. It was very unexpected, and perhaps I did wrong
+to tell her that I would do my best to satisfy her. I don't think she
+will live, and I felt sorry for her. That is why I came to you. It
+concerns Aurora."
+
+"Aurora?" The Contessa was surprised.
+
+"Yes. The girl knows she is dying, and wishes very much to see Aurora
+for a moment. I suppose it was weak of me to give her any hope."
+
+The Contessa dropped her newspaper and looked into the fire thoughtfully
+before she answered.
+
+"You and I are very good friends," she said. "You would not ask me to do
+anything you would not do yourself, would you? If you had a daughter of
+Aurora's age, should you let her go and see this poor woman, unless it
+were an act of real charity?"
+
+"No," Kalmon answered reluctantly. "I don't think I should."
+
+"Thank you for being so honest," Maddalena answered, and looked at the
+fire again.
+
+Some time passed before she spoke again, still watching the flames.
+Kalmon sighed, for he was very sorry for Regina.
+
+"On the other hand," the Contessa said at last, "it may be a real
+charity. Have you any idea why she wishes to see Aurora?"
+
+"No. I cannot guess."
+
+"I can. At least, I think I can." She paused again. "You know
+everything about me," she continued presently. "In the course of years I
+have told you all my story. Do you think I am a better woman than
+Regina?"
+
+"My dear friend!" cried Kalmon, almost angrily. "How can you suggest--"
+
+She turned her clear, sad eyes to him, and her look cut short his
+speech.
+
+"What has her sin been?" she asked gently. "She has loved Marcello. What
+was mine? That I loved one man too well. Which is the better woman? She,
+the peasant, who knew no better, who found her first love dying, and
+saved him, and loved him--knowing no better, and braving the world? Or
+I, well born, carefully brought up, a woman of the world, and
+married--no matter how--not braving the world at all, but miserably
+trying to deceive it, and my husband, and my child? Do you think I was
+so much better than poor Regina? Would my own daughter think so if she
+could know and understand?"
+
+"If you were not a very good woman now," Kalmon said earnestly, "you
+could not say what you are saying."
+
+"Never mind what I am now. I am not as good as you choose to think. If I
+were, there would not be a bitter thought left. I should have forgiven
+all. Leave out of the question what I am now. Compare me as I was with
+Regina as she is. That is how I put it, and I am right."
+
+"Even if you were," Kalmon answered doubtfully, "the situation would be
+the same, so far as Aurora is concerned."
+
+"But suppose that this poor woman cannot die in peace unless she has
+asked Aurora's pardon and obtained her forgiveness, what then?"
+
+"Her forgiveness? For what?"
+
+"For coming between her and Marcello. Say that, so far as Regina knows,
+my daughter is the only human being she has ever injured, what then?"
+
+"Does Aurora love Marcello?" asked Kalmon, instead of answering the
+question.
+
+"I think she does. I am almost sure of it."
+
+Kalmon was silent for a while.
+
+"But Marcello," he said at last, "what of him?"
+
+"He has always loved Aurora," the Contessa answered. "Do you blame him
+so much for what he has done? Why do you blame some people so easily, my
+dear friend, and others not at all? Do you realise what happened to him?
+He was virtually taken out of the life he was leading, by a blow that
+practically destroyed his memory, and of which the consequences
+altogether destroyed his will for some time. He found himself saved and
+at the same time loved--no, worshipped--by one of the most beautiful
+women in the world. Never mind her birth! She has never looked at any
+other man, before or since, and from what I have heard, she never will.
+Ah, if all women were like her! Marcello, weak from illness, allowed
+himself to be worshipped, and Corbario did the rest. I understand it
+all. Do you blame him very much? I don't. With all your strength of
+character, you would have done the same at his age! And having taken
+what she offered, what could he do, when he grew up and came to himself,
+and felt his will again? Could he cast her off, after all she had done
+for him?"
+
+"He could marry her," observed Kalmon. "I don't see why he should not,
+after all."
+
+"Marriage!" There was a little scornful sadness in Maddalena's voice.
+"Marriage is always the solution! No, no, he is right not to marry her,
+if he has ever thought of it. They would only make each other miserable
+for the rest of their lives. Miserable, and perhaps faithless too. That
+is what happens when men and women are not saints. Look at me!"
+
+"You were never in that position. Others were to blame, who made you
+marry when you were too young to have any will of your own."
+
+"Blame no one," said the Contessa gravely. "I shall give Aurora Regina's
+message, and if she is willing to go and see her, I shall bring her
+to-morrow morning--to-night, if there is no time to be lost. The world
+need never know. Go and tell Regina what I have said. It may comfort her
+a little, poor thing."
+
+"Indeed it will!"
+
+Kalmon's brown eyes beamed with pleasure at the thought of taking the
+kindly message to the dying girl. He rose to his feet at once.
+
+"There is no one like you," he said, as he took her hand.
+
+"It is nothing. It is what Marcello's mother would have done, and she
+was my best friend. All I do is to take the responsibility upon myself,
+however Aurora may choose to act. I will send you word, in either case.
+If Aurora will not go, I will come myself, if I can be of any use, if it
+would make Regina feel happier. I will come, and I will tell her what I
+have told you. Good-night, dear friend."
+
+Kalmon was not an emotional man, but as he went out he felt a little
+lump in his throat, as if he could not swallow.
+
+He had not doubted his friend's kindness, but he had doubted whether she
+would feel that she had a right to "expose her daughter," as the world
+would say, to meeting such a "person," as the world called
+Regina--"Consalvi's Regina."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+All that night and the following day Regina recognised no one; and it
+was night again, and her strength began to fail, but her understanding
+returned. Marcello saw the change, and made a sign to the nurse, who
+went out to tell Kalmon.
+
+It was about nine o'clock when he entered the room, and Regina knew him
+and looked at him anxiously. He, in turn, glanced at Marcello, and she
+understood. She begged Marcello to go and get some rest. Her voice was
+very weak, as if she were suffocating, and she coughed painfully. He did
+not like to go away, but Kalmon promised to call him at midnight; he had
+been in the room six hours, scarcely moving from his seat. He lingered
+at the door, looked back, and at last went out.
+
+"Will she come?" asked Regina, when he was gone.
+
+"In half an hour. I have sent a messenger, for they have no telephone."
+
+A bright smile lighted up the wasted face.
+
+"Heaven will reward you," she said, as the poor say in Rome when they
+receive a charity.
+
+Then she seemed to be resting, for her hands lay still, and she closed
+her eyes. But presently she opened them, looking up gratefully into the
+big man's kind face.
+
+"Shall I be alone with her a little?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, my dear. You shall be alone with her."
+
+Again she smiled, and he left the nurse with her and went and waited
+downstairs at the street door, till the Contessa and Aurora should come,
+in order to take them up to the little apartment. He knew that Marcello
+must have fallen asleep at once, for he had not rested at all for
+twenty-four hours, and very little during several days past. Kalmon was
+beginning to fear that he would break down, though he was so much
+stronger than formerly.
+
+Marcello had always been grateful to Regina, even when he had convinced
+himself that he loved her. Love is not very compatible with gratitude.
+Two people who love each other very much expect everything because they
+are always ready to give everything, not in return or by way of any
+exchange, but as if the two were one in giving and taking. A man cannot
+be grateful to himself. But Marcello had never felt that dear illusion
+with Regina, because there had been no real companionship; and so he had
+always been grateful to her, and now that she was perhaps dying, he was
+possessed by the horribly painful certainty that he could never repay
+her what he owed, and that this debt of honour must remain unpaid for
+ever, if she died. There was much more than that in what he felt, of
+course, for there was his very real affection, tormented by the
+foreboding of the coming wrench, and there was the profound sympathy of
+a very kind man for a suffering woman. But all that together was not
+love like hers for him; it was not love at all.
+
+Kalmon waited, and smoked a little, reflecting on these things, which
+he understood tolerably well. The quiet man of science had watched
+Marcello thoughtfully, and could not help asking himself what look there
+would be in his own eyes, if Maddalena dell' Armi were dying and he were
+standing by her bedside. It would not be Marcello's look.
+
+A closed cab stopped before the entrance, and almost before he could
+throw away his cigarette, the Contessa and Aurora were standing beside
+him on the pavement.
+
+"She is very weak," he said, "but she will not be delirious again for
+some time--if at all."
+
+Neither of the ladies spoke, and they followed him in silence up the
+ill-lighted staircase.
+
+"That is where I live," he said, as he passed his own door on the second
+landing. "Marcello is camping there. He is probably asleep now."
+
+"Asleep!" It was Aurora that uttered the single word, in a puzzled tone.
+
+"He did not go to bed last night," Kalmon explained, going on.
+
+"Oh!" Again the Professor was struck by the young girl's tone.
+
+They reached the third landing, and Kalmon pushed the door, which he had
+left ajar; he shut it when they had all entered, and he ushered the
+mother and daughter into the small sitting-room. There they waited a
+moment while he went to tell Regina that Aurora had come.
+
+The young girl dropped her cloak upon a chair and stood waiting, her
+eyes fixed on the door. She was a little pale, not knowing what was to
+come, yet feeling somehow that it was to make a great difference to her
+ever afterwards. She glanced at her mother, and the Contessa smiled
+gently, as much as to say that she was doing right, but neither spoke.
+
+Presently Kalmon came out with the Sister of Charity, who bent her head
+gravely to the two ladies.
+
+"She wishes to see you alone," Kalmon said, in explanation, while he
+held the door open for Aurora to pass in.
+
+He closed it after her, and the two were together.
+
+When Aurora entered, Regina's eyes were fixed upon her face as if they
+had already found her and seen her while she had been in the other room.
+She came straight to the bedside and took the hand that was stretched
+out to meet hers. It was thin and hot now, and the arm was already
+wasted. Aurora remembered how strongly it had lifted her to the edge of
+the rock, far away by Pontresina.
+
+"You are very kind, Signorina," said the faint voice. "You see how I
+am."
+
+Aurora saw indeed, and kept the hand in hers as she sat down in the
+chair that stood where Marcello had left it.
+
+"I am very, very sorry," she said, leaning forward a little and looking
+into the worn face, colourless now that the fever had subsided for a
+while.
+
+The same bright smile that Kalmon had seen lighted up Regina's features.
+
+"But I am glad!" she answered. "They do not understand that I am glad."
+
+"No, no!" cried Aurora softly. "Don't say you are glad!"
+
+The smile faded, and a very earnest look came into the hollow dark eyes.
+
+"But I have not done it on purpose," Regina said. "I did not know there
+was fever in that place, or I would not have sat down there. You believe
+me, Signorina, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, indeed!"
+
+The smile returned very gradually, and the anxious pressure of the hand
+relaxed.
+
+"You must not think that I was looking for the fever. But since it came,
+and I am going from here, I am glad. I shall not be in the way any more.
+That hindrance will be taken out of his life."
+
+"He would not like to hear you speak like this," Aurora said, with great
+gentleness.
+
+"There is no time for anything except the truth, now. And you are good,
+so good! No, there is no time. To-morrow, I shall be gone. Signorina, if
+I could kneel at your feet, I would kneel. But you see how I am. You
+must think I am kneeling at your feet."
+
+"But why?" asked Aurora, with a little distress.
+
+"To ask you to forgive me for being a hindrance. I want pardon before I
+go. But I found him half dead on the door-step. What could I do? When I
+had seen him, I loved him. I knew that he thought of you. That was all
+he remembered--just your name, and I hated it, because he had forgotten
+all other names, even his own, and his mother, and everything. He was
+like a little child that learns, to-day this, to-morrow that, one thing
+at a time. What could I do? I taught him. I also taught him to love
+Regina. But when the memory came back, I knew how it had been before."
+
+Her voice broke and she coughed, and raised one hand to her chest.
+Aurora supported her tenderly until it was over, and when the weary head
+sank back at last it lay upon the young girl's willing arm.
+
+"You are tiring yourself," Aurora said. "If it was to ask my forgiveness
+that you wished me to come, I forgave you long ago, if there was
+anything to forgive. I forgave you when we met, and I saw what you were,
+and that you loved him for himself, just as I do."
+
+"Is it true? Really true?"
+
+"So may God help me, it is quite true. But if I had thought it was not
+for himself--"
+
+"Oh, yes, it was," Regina answered. "It was, and it is, to the end. Will
+you see? I will show you. For what the eyes see the heart believes more
+easily. Signorina, will you bring the little box covered with old
+velvet? It is there, on the table, and it is open."
+
+Aurora rose, humouring her, and brought the thing she asked for, and sat
+down again, setting it on the edge of the bed. Regina turned her head to
+see it, and raised the lid with one hand.
+
+"This is my little box," she said. "What he has given me is all in it. I
+have no other. Will you see? Here is what I have taken from him. You
+shall look everywhere, if you do not believe."
+
+"But I do believe you!" Aurora cried, feeling that tears were coming to
+her eyes.
+
+"But you must see," Regina insisted. "Or perhaps when I am gone you will
+say to yourself, 'There may have been diamonds and pearls in the little
+box, after all!' You shall know that it was all for himself."
+
+To please her Aurora took up some of the simple trinkets, simpler and
+cheaper even than what she had herself.
+
+"There are dresses, yes, many more than I wanted. But I could not let
+him be ashamed of me when we went out together, and travelled. Do you
+forgive me the dresses, Signorina? I wore them to please him. Please
+forgive me that also!"
+
+Aurora dropped the things into the open box and laid both her hands on
+Regina's, bending down her radiant head and looking very earnestly into
+the anxious eyes.
+
+"Forgiveness is not all from me to you, Regina," she said. "I want yours
+too."
+
+"Mine?" The eyes grew wide and wondering.
+
+"Don't you see that but for me he would have married you, and that I
+have been the cause of a great wrong to you?"
+
+For one instant Regina's face darkened, her brows straightened
+themselves, and her lip curled. She remembered how, only two days ago,
+in the very next room, Marcello had insisted that she should he his
+wife. But as she looked into Aurora's innocent eyes she understood, and
+the cloud passed from her own, and the bright smile came back. Aurora
+had spoken in the simplicity of her true heart, sure that it was only
+the memory of his love for her that had withheld Marcello from first to
+last; and Regina well knew that it had always been present with him, in
+spite of his brave struggle to put it away. That memory of another,
+which Regina had seen slowly reviving in him, had been for something in
+her refusal to marry him.
+
+With the mysterious sure vision of those who are near death, she felt
+that it would hurt Aurora to know the truth, except from Marcello
+himself.
+
+"If you have ever stood between us," she said, "you had the right. He
+loved you first. There is nothing to forgive in that. Afterwards he
+loved me a little. No one can take that from me, no one! It is mine, and
+it is all I have, and though I am going, and though I know that he is
+tired of me, it is still more than the world. To have it, as I have it,
+I would do again what I did, from the first."
+
+The voice was weak and muffled, but the words were distinct, and they
+were the confession of poor Regina's life.
+
+"If he were here," she said, after a moment, "I would lay your hand in
+his. Only let me take that memory with me!"
+
+The young girl rose and bent over her as she answered.
+
+"It is yours, to keep for ever."
+
+She stooped a little lower and kissed the dying woman's forehead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the May moon a little brigantine came sailing up to a low island
+just within sight of Italy; when she was within half a mile of the reefs
+Don Antonino Maresca put her about, for he was a prudent man, and he
+knew that there are just a few more rocks in the sea than are in the
+charts. It was a quiet night, and he was beating up against a gentle
+northerly breeze.
+
+When the head yards were swung, and braced sharp up for the other tack,
+and the little vessel had gathered way again, the mate came aft and
+stood by the captain, watching the light on the island.
+
+"Are there still convicts on this island, Don Antonino?" the young man
+asked.
+
+"Yes, there are the convicts. And there is one among them whom I helped
+to put there. He is an assassin that killed many when he was at liberty.
+But now he sits for seven years in a little cell alone, and sees no
+Christian, and it will be thirty years before he is free."
+
+"Madonna!" ejaculated the mate. "When he has been there thirty years he
+will perhaps understand."
+
+"It is as I say," rejoined the captain. "The world is made so. There are
+the good and the bad. The Eternal Father has created things thus. Get a
+little more on the main sheet, and then flatten in those jibs."
+
+Under the May moon, in the small shaft of white light that fell through
+the narrow grated window, a man sat on the edge of his pallet bed. His
+face was ghastly, and there were strange scars on his bare throat. His
+cell was seven feet by six, and the air was hard to breathe, because the
+wind was not from the south. But the moon was kinder than the sun. He
+heard the ripple of the cool sea, and he tried to dream that a great
+stone was hung to his neck, and that he had been thrown into a deep
+place. Perhaps, some day, the gaoler would forget to take away the
+coarse towel which was brought with the water in the morning. With a
+towel he could hang himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the May moon a small marble cross cast its shadow upon young roses
+and violets and growing myrtle. In the sweet earth below a very loyal
+heart was at rest for ever. But the flowers were planted and still
+tended by a woman with radiant hair; and sometimes, when she stooped to
+train the young roses, bright drops fell quietly upon their bloom. Also,
+on certain days, a man came there alone and knelt upon the marble border
+within which the flowers grew. But the man and the woman never came
+together; and he gave the gardener of that place money, praising him for
+the care of the flowers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the May moon the man and the woman went down from the cottage by
+the Roman shore to the break in the high bank, and stood still a while,
+looking out at the peaceful sea and the moon's broad path. Presently
+they turned to each other, put out their hands, and then their arms, and
+clasped each other silently, and kissed.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Whosoever Shall Offend, by F. Marion Crawford
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Whosoever Shall Offend
+
+Author: F. Marion Crawford
+
+Release Date: November 3, 2004  [eBook #13932]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Stephanie Fleck, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND
+
+by
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+Author of _Saracinesca_, _The Heart Of Rome_, etc, etc.
+
+With Eight Illustrations Drawn in Rome with the Author's Suggestions
+
+by Horace T. Carpenter
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me,
+it were better for him that a mill stone were hanged about his neck, and
+that he were drowned in the depth of the sea"
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "SUDDENLY HE HEARD AN ITALIAN VOICE VERY NEAR TO HIM,
+CALLING HIM BY NAME, IN A TONE OF SURPRISE"]
+
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Suddenly he heard an Italian voice very near to him, calling him by
+name, in a tone of surprise"
+
+"'I call it the sleeping death,' answered the Professor"
+
+"He flushed again, very angry this time, and he moved away to leave her,
+without another word"
+
+" ... the door was darkened, and the girl stood there with a large copper
+'conca' ..."
+
+"He moved a step towards the bed, and then another, forcing himself to
+go on"
+
+"Ercole left his home after sunset that evening"
+
+"Regina made a steady effort, lifting fully half Aurora's weight with
+her"
+
+"She sat there like a figure of grief outlined in black against the
+moonlight on the great wall"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+When the widow of Martino Consalvi married young Corbario, people shook
+their heads and said that she was making a great mistake. Consalvi had
+been dead a good many years, but as yet no one had thought it was time
+to say that his widow was no longer young and beautiful, as she had
+always been. Many rich widows remain young and beautiful as much as a
+quarter of a century, or even longer, and the Signora Consalvi was very
+rich indeed. As soon as she was married to Folco Corbario every one knew
+that she was thirty-five years old and he was barely twenty-six, and
+that such a difference of ages on the wrong side was ridiculous if it
+was not positively immoral. No well-regulated young man had a right to
+marry a rich widow nine years older than himself, and who had a son only
+eleven years younger than he.
+
+A few philosophers who said that if the widow was satisfied the matter
+was nobody's business were treated with the contempt they deserved.
+Those who, on the contrary, observed that young Corbario had married for
+money and nothing else were heard with favour, until the man who knew
+everything pointed out that as the greater part of the fortune would be
+handed over to Marcello when he came of age, six years hence, Corbario
+had not made a good bargain and might have done better. It was true that
+Marcello Consalvi had inherited a delicate constitution of body, it had
+even been hinted that he was consumptive. Corbario would have done
+better to wait another year or two to see what happened, said a cynic,
+for young people often died of consumption between fifteen and twenty.
+The cynic was answered by a practical woman of the world, who said that
+Corbario had six years of luxury and extravagance before him, and that
+many men would have sold themselves to the devil for less. After the six
+years the deluge might come if it must; it was much pleasanter to drown
+in the end than never to have had the chance of swimming in the big
+stream at all, and bumping sides with the really big fish, and feeling
+oneself as good as any of them. Besides, Marcello was pale and thin, and
+had been heard to cough; he might die before he came of age. The only
+objection to this theory was that it was based on a fiction; for the
+whole fortune had been left to the Signora by a childless relation.
+
+These amiable and interesting views were expressed with variations by
+people who knew the three persons concerned, and with such a keen sense
+of appropriate time and place as made it quite sure that none of the
+three should ever know what was said of them. The caution of an old fox
+is rash temerity compared with the circumspection of a first-rate
+gossip; and when the gossips were tired of discussing Folco Corbario and
+his wife and her son, they talked about other matters, but they had a
+vague suspicion that they had been cheated out of something. A cat that
+has clawed all the feathers off a stuffed canary might feel just what
+they did.
+
+For nothing happened. Corbario did not launch into wild extravagance
+after all, but behaved himself with the faultless dulness of a model
+middle-aged husband. His wife loved him and was perfectly happy, and
+happiness finally stole her superfluous years away, and they evaporated
+in the sunshine, and she forgot all about them. Marcello Consalvi, who
+had lost his father when he was a mere child, found a friend in his
+mother's husband, and became very fond of him, and thought him a good
+man to imitate; and in return Corbario made a companion of the
+fair-haired boy, and taught him to ride and shoot in his holidays, and
+all went well.
+
+Moreover, Marcello's mother, who was a good woman, told him that the
+world was very wicked; and with the blind desire for her son's lasting
+innocence, which is the most touching instinct of loving motherhood, she
+entreated him to lead a spotless life. When Marcello, in the excusable
+curiosity of budding youth, asked his stepfather what that awful
+wickedness was against which he was so often warned, Corbario told him
+true stories of men who had betrayed their country and their friends,
+and of all sorts of treachery and meanness, to which misdeeds the boy
+did not feel himself at all inclined; so that he wondered why his mother
+seemed so very anxious lest he should go astray. Then he repeated to her
+what Corbario had told him, and she smiled sweetly and said nothing, and
+trusted her husband all the more. She felt that he understood her, and
+was doing his best to help her in making Marcello what she wished him to
+be.
+
+The boy was brought up at home; in Rome in the winter, and in summer on
+the great estate in the south, which his father had bought and which was
+to be a part of his inheritance.
+
+He was taught by masters who came to the house to give their lessons and
+went away as soon as the task was over. He had no tutor, for his mother
+had not found a layman whom she could trust in that capacity, and yet
+she understood that it was not good for a boy to be followed everywhere
+by a priest. Besides, Corbario gave so much of his time to his stepson
+that a tutor was hardly needed; he walked with him and rode with him, or
+spent hours with him at home when the weather was bad. There had never
+been a cross word between the two since they had met. It was an ideal
+existence. Even the gossips stopped talking at last, and there was not
+one, not even the most ingeniously evil-tongued of all, that prophesied
+evil.
+
+They raised their eyebrows, and the more primitive among them shrugged
+their shoulders a little, and smiled. If Providence really insisted upon
+making people so perfect, what was to be done? It was distressing, but
+there was nothing to be said; they must just lead their lives, and the
+gossips must bear it. No doubt Corbario had married for money, since he
+had nothing in particular and his wife had millions, but if ever a man
+had married for money and then behaved like an angel, that man was Folco
+Corbario and no other. He was everything to his wife, and all things to
+his stepson--husband, father, man of business, tutor, companion, and
+nurse; for when either his wife or Marcello was ill, he rarely left the
+sick-room, and no one could smooth a pillow as he could, or hold a glass
+so coaxingly to the feverish lips, or read aloud so untiringly in such a
+gentle and soothing voice.
+
+No ascendency of one human being over another is more complete than that
+of a full-grown man over a boy of sixteen, who venerates his elder as an
+ideal. To find a model, to believe it perfection, and to copy it
+energetically, is either a great piece of good fortune, or a misfortune
+even greater; in whatever follows in life, there is the same difference
+between such development and the normally slow growth of a boy's mind as
+that which lies between enthusiasm and indifference. It is true that
+where there has been no enthusiastic belief there can be no despairing
+disillusionment when the light goes out; but it is truer still that hope
+and happiness are the children of faith by the ideal.
+
+A boy's admiration for his hero is not always well founded; sometimes it
+is little short of ridiculous, and it is by no means always harmless.
+But no one found fault with Marcello for admiring his stepfather, and
+the attachment was a source of constant satisfaction to his mother. In
+her opinion Corbario was the handsomest, bravest, cleverest, and best of
+men, and after watching him for some time even the disappointed gossips
+were obliged to admit, though without superlatives, that he was a
+good-looking fellow, a good sportsman, sufficiently well gifted, and of
+excellent behaviour. There was the more merit in the admission, they
+maintained, because they had been inclined to doubt the man, and had
+accused him of marrying out of pure love of money. A keen judge of men
+might have thought that his handsome features were almost too still and
+too much like a mask, that his manner was so quiet as to be almost
+expressionless, and that the soft intonation of his speech was almost
+too monotonous to be natural. But all this was just what his wife
+admired, and she encouraged her son to imitate it. His father had been a
+man of quick impulses, weak to-day, strong to-morrow, restless, of
+uncertain temper, easily enthusiastic and easily cast down, capable of
+sudden emotions, and never able to conceal what he felt if he had cared
+to do so. Marcello had inherited his father's character and his mother's
+face, as often happens; but his unquiet disposition was tempered as yet
+by a certain almost girlish docility, which had clung to him from
+childhood as the result of being brought up almost entirely by the
+mother he worshipped. And now, for the first time, comparing him with
+her second husband, she realised the boy's girlishness, and wished him
+to outgrow it. Her own ideal of what even a young man should be was as
+unpractical as that of many thoroughly good and thoroughly unworldly
+mothers. She wished her son to be a man at all points, and yet she
+dreamed that he might remain a sort of glorified young girl; she desired
+him to be well prepared to face the world when he grew up, and yet it
+was her dearest wish that he might never know anything of the world's
+wickedness. Corbario seemed to understand her better in this than she
+understood herself, and devoted his excellent gifts and his almost
+superhuman patience to the task of forming a modern Galahad. Her
+confidence in her husband increased month by month, and year by year.
+
+"I wish to make a new will," she said to her lawyer in the third year of
+her marriage. "I shall leave my husband a life-interest in a part of my
+fortune, and the reversion of the whole in case anything should happen
+to my son."
+
+The lawyer was a middle-aged man, with hard black eyes. While he was
+listening to a client, he had a habit of folding his arms tightly across
+his chest and crossing one leg over the other. When the Signora Corbario
+had finished speaking he sat quite still for a moment, and then
+noiselessly reversed the crossing of his legs and the folding of his
+arms, and looked into her face. It was very gentle, fair, and
+thoughtful.
+
+"I presume," answered the lawyer, "that the clause providing for a
+reversion is only intended as an expression of your confidence in your
+husband?"
+
+"Affection," answered the Signora, "includes confidence."
+
+The lawyer raised one eyebrow almost imperceptibly, and changed his
+position a little.
+
+"Heaven forbid," he said, "that any accident should befall your son!"
+
+"Heaven forbid it!" replied the Signora. "He is very strong," she
+continued, in the tone people use who are anxious to convince themselves
+of something doubtful. "Yet I wish my husband to know that, after my
+son, he should have the first right."
+
+"Shall you inform him of the nature of your will, Signora?" inquired the
+lawyer.
+
+"I have already informed him of what I mean to do," replied Signora
+Corbario.
+
+Again the lawyer's eyebrow moved a little nervously, but he said
+nothing. It was not his place to express any doubt as to the wisdom of
+the disposition. He was not an old family adviser, who might have taken
+such a liberty. There had been such a man, indeed, but he was dead. It
+was the duty of the rich woman's legal adviser to hinder her from
+committing any positive legal mistake, but it was not his place to
+criticise her judgment of the man she had chosen to marry. The lawyer
+made a few notes without offering any comment, and on the following day
+he brought the will for the Signora to sign. By it, at her death,
+Marcello, her son, was to inherit her great fortune. Her husband, Folco
+Corbario, was constituted Marcello's sole guardian, and was to enjoy a
+life-interest in one-third of the inheritance. If Marcello died, the
+whole fortune was to go to Corbario, without any condition or
+reservation whatsoever.
+
+When the will was executed, the Signora told her husband that she had
+done what she intended.
+
+"My dear," said Corbario, gently, "I thank you for the true meaning of
+it. But as for the will itself, shall we talk of it thirty years hence,
+when Marcello's children's children are at your knee?"
+
+He kissed her hand tenderly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Marcello stood at an open window listening to the musical spring rain
+and watching the changing lights on the city below him, as the
+dove-coloured cloud that floated over Rome like thin gauze was drawn up
+into the sunshine. Then there were sudden reflections from distant
+windows and wet domes, that blazed like white fires for a little while,
+till the raindrops dried and the waves of changing hues that had surged
+up under the rain, rising, breaking, falling, and spreading, subsided
+into a restful sea of harmonious colour.
+
+After that, the sweet smell of the wet earth came up to Marcello's
+nostrils. A light breeze stirred the dripping emerald leaves, and the
+little birds fluttered down and hopped along the garden walks and over
+the leaves, picking up the small unwary worms that had been enjoying a
+bath while their enemies tried to keep dry under the ilex boughs.
+
+Marcello half closed his eyes and drank the fragrant air with parted
+lips, his slim white hands resting on the marble sill. The sunshine made
+his pale face luminous, and gilded his short fair hair, casting the
+shadow of the brown lashes upon his delicate cheeks. There was something
+angel-like in his expression--the look of the frescoed angels of Melozzo
+da Forli in the Sacristy of St. Peter's. They are all that is left of
+something very beautiful, brought thither broken from the Church of the
+Holy Apostles; and so, too, one might have fancied that Marcello,
+standing at the window in the morning sunshine, belonged to a world that
+had long passed away--fit for a life that was, fit for a life to come
+hereafter, perhaps, but not fit for the life that is. There are rare and
+beautiful beings in the world who belong to it so little that it seems
+cruelty and injustice to require of them what is demanded of us all.
+They are born ages too late, or ages too soon; they should not have been
+born now. Their very existence calls forth our tenderest sympathy, as we
+should pity a fawn facing its death among wolves.
+
+But Marcello Consalvi had no idea that he could deserve pity, and life
+looked very bright to him, very easy, and very peaceful. He could hardly
+have thought of anything at all likely to happen which could darken the
+future, or even give him reasonable cause for anxiety. There was no
+imaginative sadness in his nature, no morbid dread of undefined evil, no
+melancholy to dye the days black; for melancholy is more often an
+affliction of the very strong in body or mind than of the weak, or of
+average men and women. Marcello was delicate, but not degenerate; he
+seemed gentle, cheerful, and ready to believe the world a very good
+place, as indeed it is for people who are not too unlike their
+neighbours to enjoy it, or too unlucky to get some of its good things,
+or too weak to work, fight, and love, or too clever to be as satisfied
+with themselves as most men are. For plain, common, everyday happiness
+and contentment belong to plain, average people, who do what others do
+and have a cheerfully good opinion of themselves. Can a man make a good
+fight of it if he does not believe himself to be about as good as his
+adversary?
+
+It had never occurred to Marcello that he might have to fight for
+anything, and if some one had told him on that spring morning that he
+was on the very verge of a desperate struggle for existence against
+overwhelming odds, he would have turned his bright eyes wonderingly to
+the prophet of evil, asking whence danger could come, and trying to
+think what it might be like.
+
+At the first appearance of it he would have been startled into fear,
+too, as many a grown man has been before now, when suddenly brought face
+to face with an unknown peril, being quite untried: and small shame to
+him. He who has been waked from a peaceful sleep and pleasant dreams to
+find death at his throat, for the first time in his life, knows the
+meaning of that. Samson was a tried warrior when Delilah first roused
+him with her cry, "The Philistines are upon thee!"
+
+Marcello was no youthful Samson, yet he was not an unmanly boy, for all
+his bringing up. So far as his strength would allow he had been
+accustomed to the exercises and sports of men: he could ride fearlessly,
+if not untiringly; he was a fair shot; he had hunted wild boar with his
+stepfather in the marshy lands by the sea; he had been taught to fence
+and was not clumsy with weapons, though he had not yet any great skill.
+He had always been told that he was delicate and must be careful, and he
+knew that he was not strong; but there was one good sign in that his
+weakness irritated him and bred at least the desire for strength,
+instead of the poor-spirited indolence that bears bodily infirmity as
+something inevitable, and is ready to accept pity if not to ask for it.
+
+The smell of the damp earth was gone, and as the sun shone out the air
+was filled with the scent of warm roses and the faintly sweet odour of
+wistaria. Marcello heard a light footstep close to him, and met his
+mother's eyes as he turned.
+
+Even to him, she looked very young just then, as she stood in the light,
+smiling at him. A piece of lace was drawn half over her fair hair, and
+the ends went round her throat like a scarf and fell behind her. Its
+creamy tints heightened the rare transparency of her complexion by faint
+contrast. She was a slight woman and very graceful.
+
+"I have looked for you everywhere," she said, and she still smiled, as
+if with real pleasure at having found him.
+
+"I have been watching the shower" Marcello answered, drawing her to the
+window. "And then the earth and the roses smelt so sweet that I stayed
+here. Did you want me, mother?"
+
+"I always like to know where you are."
+
+She passed her arm through his with a loving pressure, and looked out
+of the window with him. The villa stood on the slope of the Janiculum,
+close to the Corsini gardens.
+
+"Do I run after you too much?" the mother asked presently, as if she
+knew the answer. "Now that you are growing up, do I make you feel as if
+you were still a little boy? You are nearly nineteen, you know! I
+suppose I ought to treat you like a man."
+
+Marcello laughed, and his hand slipped into hers with an almost childish
+and nestling movement.
+
+"You have made a man of me," he answered.
+
+Had she? A shadow of doubt crossed her thoughtful face as she glanced at
+his. He was so different from other young men of his age, so delicately
+nurtured, so very gentle; there was the radiance of maidenly innocence
+in his look, and she was afraid that he might be more like a girl than a
+man almost grown.
+
+"I have done my best," she said. "I hope I have done right."
+
+He scarcely understood what she meant, and his expression did not
+change.
+
+"You could not do anything that was not right," he answered.
+
+Perhaps such a being as Marcello would be an impossibility anywhere but
+in Italy. Modern life tears privacy to tatters, and privacy is the veil
+of the temple of home, within which every extreme of human development
+is possible, good and bad. Take privacy away and all the strangely
+compound fractions of humanity are soon reduced to a common
+denomination. In Italy life has more privacy than anywhere else west of
+Asia. The Englishman is fond of calling his home his castle, but it is a
+thoroughfare, a market-place, a club, a hotel, a glass house, compared
+with that of an average Italian. An Englishman goes home to escape
+restraint: an Italian goes out. But the northern man, who lives much in
+public, learns as a child to conceal what he feels, to be silent, to
+wear an indifferent look; whereas the man of the south, who hides
+nothing when the doors of his house are shut, can hide but little when
+he meets his enemy in the way. He laughs when he is pleased, and scowls
+when he is not, threatens when he is angry, and sheds tears when he is
+hurt, with a simplicity that too often excites the contempt of men
+accustomed to suffer or enjoy without moving a muscle.
+
+Privacy favours the growth of individual types, differing widely from
+each other; the destruction of it makes people very much alike.
+Marcello's mother asked herself whether she had done well in rearing him
+as a being apart from those amongst whom he must spend his life.
+
+And yet, as she looked at him, he seemed to be so nearly the ideal of
+which she had dreamt throughout long years of loving care that she was
+comforted, and the shadow passed away from her sweet face. He had
+answered that she could do nothing that was not right; she prayed that
+his words might be near the truth, and in her heart she was willing to
+believe that they were almost true. Had she not followed every good
+impulse of her own good heart? Had she not tried to realize literally
+for him the most beautiful possibilities of the Christian faith? That,
+at least, was true, and she could tell herself so without any mistaken
+pride. How, then, had she made any mistake? The boy had the face of a
+young saint.
+
+"Are you ready, my dear?" she asked suddenly, as a far-off clock struck.
+
+"Yes, mother, quite ready."
+
+"I am not," she answered with a little laugh. "And Folco is waiting, and
+I hear the carriage driving up."
+
+She slipped from Marcello's side and left the room quickly, for they
+were going to drive down to the sea, to a little shooting-lodge that
+belonged to them near Nettuno, a mere cottage among the trees by the
+Roman shore, habitable only in April and May, and useful only then, when
+the quail migrate along the coast and the malarious fever is not yet to
+be feared. It was there that Marcello had first learned to handle a gun,
+spending a week at a time there with his stepfather; and his mother used
+to come down now and then for a day or two on a visit, sometimes
+bringing her friend the Contessa dell' Armi. The latter had been very
+unhappy in her youth, and had been left a widow with one beautiful girl
+and a rather exiguous fortune. Some people thought that it was odd that
+the Signora Corbario, who was a saint if ever there was one, should have
+grown so fond of the Contessa, for the latter had seen stormy days in
+years gone by; and of course the ill-disposed gossips made up their
+minds that the Contessa was trying to catch Marcello for her daughter
+Aurora, though the child was barely seventeen.
+
+This was mere gossip, for she was quite incapable of any such scheme.
+What the gossips did not know was something which would have interested
+them much more, namely, that the Contessa was the only person in Rome
+who distrusted Folco Corbario, and that she was in constant fear lest
+she should turn out to be right, and lest her friend's paradise should
+be suddenly changed into a purgatory. But she held her tongue, and her
+quiet face never betrayed her thoughts. She only watched, and noted from
+month to month certain small signs which seemed to prove her right; and
+she should be ready, whenever the time should come, by day or night, to
+help her friend, or comfort her, or fight for her.
+
+If Corbario guessed that the Contessa did not trust him, he never showed
+it. He had found her installed as his wife's friend, and had accepted
+her, treating her with much courtesy and a sort of vicarious affection;
+but though he tried his best he could not succeed in reaching anything
+like intimacy with her, and while she seemed to conceal nothing, he felt
+that she was hiding her real self from him. Whether she did so out of
+pride, or distrust, or jealousy, he could never be sure. He was secretly
+irritated and humiliated by her power to oppose him and keep him at a
+distance without ever seeming to do so; but, on the other hand, he was
+very patient, very tenacious of his purpose, and very skilful. He knew
+something of the Contessa's past, but he recognised in her the nature
+that has known the world's worst side and has done with it for ever, and
+is lifted above it, and he knew the immense influence which the
+spectacle of a blameless life exercises upon the opinion of a good woman
+who has not always been blameless herself. Whatever he had been before
+he met his wife, whatever strange plans had been maturing in his brain
+since he had married her, his life had seemed as spotless from that day
+as the existence of the best man living. His wife believed in him, and
+the Contessa did not; but even she must in time accept the evidence of
+her senses. Then she, too, would trust him. Why it was essential that
+she should, he alone knew, unless he was merely piqued by her quiet
+reserve, as a child is when it cannot fix the attention of a grown-up
+person.
+
+The Contessa and her daughter were to be of the party that day, and the
+carriage stopped where they lived, near the Forum of Trajan. They
+appeared almost directly, the Contessa in grey with a grey veil and
+Aurora dressed in a lighter shade, the thick plaits of her auburn hair
+tied up short below her round straw hat, on the theory that she was
+still a school-girl, whose skirt must not quite touch the ground, who
+ought not to wear a veil, and whose mind was supposed to be a sensitive
+blank, particularly apt to receive bad impressions rather than good
+ones. In less than a year she would be dancing all night with men she
+had scarcely heard of before, listening to compliments of which she had
+never dreamt--of course not--and to declarations which no right-minded
+girl one day under eighteen could under any circumstances be thought to
+expect. Such miracles as these are wrought by the eighteenth birthday.
+
+Corbario's eyes looked from the mother to the daughter, as he and
+Marcello stood on the pavement to let them get in. The Contessa touched
+his outstretched hand without restraint but without cordiality, smiling
+just as much as was civil, and less readily than would have been
+friendly. Aurora glanced at him and laughed prettily without any
+apparent reason, which is the privilege of very young girls, because
+their minds are supposed to be a blank. Also because her skirt must not
+quite touch the ground, one very perfect black silk ankle was distinctly
+visible for a moment as she stepped into the carriage. Note that from
+the eve of her eighteenth birthday till she is old enough to be really
+wicked no well-regulated young woman shows her ankles. This also is one
+of the miracles of time.
+
+Marcello blushed faintly as he sat down beside Aurora. There were now
+five in the big carriage, so that she was between the two men; and
+though there was enough room Marcello felt the slight pressure of her
+arm against his. His mother saw his colour change, and looked away and
+smiled. The idea of marrying the two in a few years had often crossed
+her mind, and she was pleased whenever she saw that Marcello felt a
+little thrill of emotion in the girl's presence. As for Aurora, she
+looked straight before her, between the heads of the two elder women,
+and for a long time after they had started she seemed absorbed in
+watching the receding walls of the city and the long straight road that
+led back to it. The Contessa and her friend talked quietly, happy to be
+together for a whole day. Corbario now and then looked from one to the
+other, as if to assure himself that they were quite comfortable, and his
+still face wore an unchanging look of contented calm as his eyes turned
+again to the sunlit sweep of the low Campagna. Marcello looked steadily
+away from Aurora, happily and yet almost painfully aware that her arm
+could not help pressing against his. The horses' hoofs beat rhythmically
+on the hard high road, with the steady, cheerful energy which would tell
+a blind man that a team is well fed, fresh from rest, and altogether fit
+for a long day's work. The grey-haired coachman sat on his box like an
+old dragoon in the saddle; the young groom sat bolt upright beside him
+with folded arms, as if he could never tire of sitting straight. The
+whole party looked prosperous, harmonious, healthy, and perfectly happy,
+as if nothing in the least unpleasant could possibly happen to them,
+still less anything terrible, that could suddenly change all their
+lives.
+
+One of fate's favourite tricks is to make life look particularly gay and
+enjoyable, and full of sunshine and flowers, at the very moment when
+terror wakes from sleep and steps out of the shadow to stalk abroad.
+
+The cottage where the party were going to spend the next few days
+together was built like an Indian bungalow, consisting of a single story
+surrounded by a broad, covered verandah, and having a bit of lawn in
+front. It was sheltered by trees, and between it and the beach a bank
+of sand from ten to fifteen feet high ran along the shore, the work of
+the southwest gales during many ages. In many places this bank was
+covered with scrub and brushwood on the landward side.
+
+A little stream meandered down to the sea on the north side of the
+cottage, ending in a pool full of tall reeds, amongst which one could
+get about in a punt. The seashore itself is very shelving at that place,
+and there is a bar about a cable's length out, over which the sea breaks
+with a tremendous roar during westerly storms. Two hundred yards from
+the cottage, a large hut had been built for the men-servants and for the
+kitchen; near by it there was a rough coach-house and a stable with room
+for a dozen horses. The carriage usually went back to Rome on the day
+after every one had arrived, and was sent for when wanted; but there
+were a number of rough Campagna horses in the stable, such as are ridden
+by the cattle herders about Rome, tough little beasts of fairly good
+temper and up to a much heavier weight than might be guessed by a
+stranger in the country. In the morning the men of the party usually
+went shooting, if the wind was fair, for where quail are concerned much
+depends on that. Dinner was in the middle of the day, and every one was
+supposed to go to sleep after it. In the late afternoon the horses were
+saddled, and the whole party went for a gallop on the sands, or up to
+classic Ardea, or across the half-cultivated country, coming back to
+supper when it was dark. A particularly fat and quiet pony was kept for
+Marcello's mother, who was no great rider, but the Contessa and Aurora
+rode anything that was brought them, as the men did. To tell the truth,
+the Campagna horse is rarely vicious, and, even when only half broken,
+can be ridden by a lady if she be an average horsewoman.
+
+Everything happened as usual. The party reached the cottage in time for
+a late luncheon, rested afterwards, and then rode out. But the Signora
+Corbario would not go.
+
+"Your pony looks fatter and quieter than ever," said Maddalena dell'
+Armi with a smile. "If you do not ride him, he will turn into a
+fixture."
+
+"He is already a very solid piece of furniture," observed Folco, looking
+at the sleek animal.
+
+"He is very like the square piano I practise on," said Aurora. "He has
+such a flat back and such straight thick legs."
+
+"More like an organ," put in Marcello, gravely. "He has a curious,
+half-musical wheeze when he tries to move, like the organ in the church
+at San Domenico, when the bellows begin to work."
+
+"It is a shame to make fun of my horse," answered the Signora, smiling.
+"But really I am not afraid of him. I have a little headache from the
+drive, that is all."
+
+"Take some phenacetine," said Corbario with concern. "Let me make you
+quite comfortable before we start."
+
+He arranged a long straw chair for her in a sheltered corner of the
+verandah, with cushions and a rug and a small table beside it, on which
+Marcello placed a couple of new books that had been brought down. Then
+Folco went in and got a little glass bottle of tablets from his wife's
+travelling-bag and gave her one. She was subject to headaches and always
+had the medicine with her. It was the only remedy she ever carried or
+needed, and she had such confidence in it that she felt better almost as
+soon as she had swallowed the tablet her husband gave her.
+
+"Let me stay and read to you," he said. "Perhaps you would go to sleep."
+
+"You are not vain of your reading, my dear," she answered with a smile.
+"No, please go with the others."
+
+Then the Contessa offered to stay, and the good Signora had to use a
+good deal of persuasion to make them all understand that she would much
+rather be left alone. They mounted and rode away through the trees
+towards the beach, whence the sound of the small waves, breaking gently
+under the afternoon breeze, came echoing softly up to the cottage.
+
+The two young people rode in front, in silence; Corbario and the
+Contessa followed at a little distance.
+
+"How good you are to my wife!" Folco exclaimed presently, as they
+emerged upon the sand. "You are like a sister to her!"
+
+Maddalena glanced at him through her veil. She had small and classic
+features, rather hard and proud, and her eyes were of a dark violet
+colour, which is very unusual, especially in Italy. But she came from
+the north. Corbario could not see her expression, and she knew it.
+
+"You are good to her, too," she said presently, being anxious to be
+just. "You are very thoughtful and kind."
+
+Corbario thought it wiser to say nothing, and merely bent his head a
+little in acknowledgment of what he instinctively felt to be an
+admission on the part of a secret adversary. Maddalena had never said so
+much before.
+
+"If you were not, I should never forgive you," she added, thinking
+aloud.
+
+"I don't think you have quite forgiven me as it is," Folco answered more
+lightly.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For marrying your best friend."
+
+The little speech was well spoken, so utterly without complaint, or
+rancour, or suggestion of earnestness, that the Contessa could only
+smile.
+
+"And yet you admit that I am not a bad husband," continued Folco.
+"Should you accept me, or, say, my exact counterpart, for Aurora, in a
+year or two?"
+
+"I doubt whether you have any exact counterpart," Maddalena answered,
+checking the sharp denial that rose to her lips.
+
+"Myself, then, just for the sake of argument?"
+
+"What an absurd question! Do you mind tightening the girth for me a
+little? My saddle is slipping."
+
+She drew rein, and he was obliged to submit to the check. As he
+dismounted he glanced at Aurora's graceful figure, a hundred yards
+ahead, and for one instant he drew his eyelids together with a very
+strange expression. He knew that the Contessa could not see his face.
+
+Marcello and Aurora had been companions since they were children, and
+just now they were talking familiarly of the place, which they had not
+seen since the previous year. All sorts of details struck them. Here,
+there was more sand than usual; there, a large piece of timber had been
+washed ashore in the winter gales; at another place there was a new
+sand-drift that had quite buried the scrub on the top of the bank; the
+keeper of the San Lorenzo tower had painted his shutters brown, though
+they had always been green; here was the spot where Aurora had tumbled
+off her pony when she was only twelve years old--so long ago! And
+here--they looked at each other and then quickly at the sea, for it was
+here that Marcello, in a fit of boyish admiration, had once suddenly
+kissed her cheek, telling her that she was perfectly beautiful. Even
+now, he blushed when he thought of it, and yet he longed to do it again,
+and wondered inwardly what would happen if he did.
+
+As for Aurora, though she looked at the sea for a moment, she seemed
+quite self-possessed. It is a strange thing that if a boy and a girl are
+brought up in just the same way, by women, and without many companions,
+the boy should generally be by far the more shy of the two when
+childhood is just past.
+
+"You are very fond of your stepfather, are you not?" asked Aurora, so
+suddenly that Marcello started a little and hesitated slightly before he
+answered.
+
+"Yes," he said, almost directly, "of course I am! Don't you like him,
+too?"
+
+"I used to," answered Aurora in a low voice, "but now his eyes frighten
+me--sometimes. For instance, though he is a good way behind, I am sure
+he is looking at me now, just in that way."
+
+Marcello turned his head instinctively, and saw that Folco had just
+dismounted to tighten the girth of the Contessa's saddle. It was exactly
+while Aurora was speaking that he had drawn his eyelids together with
+such a strange expression--a mere coincidence, no doubt, but one that
+would have startled the girl if she could have suddenly seen his face.
+
+They rode on without waiting for the others, at an even canter over the
+sand.
+
+"I never saw anything in Folco's eyes that could frighten anybody,"
+Marcello said presently.
+
+"No," answered Aurora. "Very likely not."
+
+Marcello had always called Corbario by his first name, and as he grew up
+it seemed more and more natural to do so. Folco was so young, and he
+looked even younger than he was.
+
+"It must be your imagination," Marcello said.
+
+"Women," said Aurora, as if she were as near thirty as any young woman
+would acknowledge herself, "women have no imagination. That is why we
+have so much sense," she added thoughtfully.
+
+Marcello was so completely puzzled by this extraordinary statement that
+he could find nothing to say for a few moments. Then he felt that she
+had attacked his idol, and that Folco must be defended.
+
+"If you could find a single thing, however small, to bring against him,
+it would not be so silly to say that his eyes frighten you."
+
+"There!" laughed Aurora. "You might as well say that because at this
+moment there is only that one little cloud near the sun, there is no
+cloud at all!"
+
+"How ridiculous!" Marcello expressed his contempt of such girlish
+reasoning by putting his rough little horse to a gallop.
+
+"Men always say that," retorted Aurora, with exasperating calm. "I'll
+race you to the tower for the first choice of oranges at dessert. They
+are not very good this year, you know, and you like them."
+
+"Don't be silly!" Marcello immediately reined his horse back to a walk,
+and looked very dignified.
+
+"It is impossible to please you," observed Aurora, slackening her pace
+at once.
+
+"It is impossible, if you abuse Folco."
+
+"I am sure I did not mean to abuse him," Aurora answered meekly. "I
+never abuse anybody."
+
+"Women never do, I suppose," retorted Marcello, with a little snort of
+dissatisfaction.
+
+They were little more than children yet, and for pretty nearly five
+minutes neither spoke a word, as their horses walked side by side.
+
+"The keeper of the tower has more chickens this year," observed Aurora.
+"I can see them running about."
+
+This remark was evidently intended as an overture of reconciliation. It
+acted like magic upon Marcello, who hated quarrelling, and was moreover
+much more in love with the girl than he knew. Instinctively he put out
+his left hand to take her right. They always made peace by taking hands.
+
+But Aurora's did not move, and she did not even turn her head towards
+him.
+
+"Take care!" she said quickly, in a low tone. "They are watching us."
+
+Marcello looked round and saw that the others were nearer than he had
+supposed, and he blushed foolishly.
+
+"Well, what harm would there be if you gave me your hand?" he asked. "I
+only meant--"
+
+"Yes, I understand," Aurora answered, in the same tone as before. "And I
+am glad you like me, Marcello--if you really do."
+
+"If I do!" His tone was full of youthful and righteous indignation.
+
+"I did not mean to doubt it," she said quickly. "But it is getting to be
+different now, you know. We are older, and somehow everything means
+more, even the little things."
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated Marcello. "I begin to see. I suppose," he added, with
+what seemed to him reckless brutality, "that if I kissed you now you
+would be furious."
+
+He glanced uneasily at Aurora's face to note the effect of this
+terrible speech. The result was not exactly what he had expected. A
+faint colour rose in her cheeks, and then she laughed.
+
+"When you do," she said, "I would rather it should not be before
+people."
+
+"I shall try to remember that," answered Marcello, considerably
+emboldened.
+
+"Yes, do! It would be so humiliating if I boxed your ears in the
+presence of witnesses."
+
+"You would not dare," laughed Marcello.
+
+From a distance, as Aurora had guessed, Folco was watching them while he
+quietly talked to the Contessa; and as he watched, he understood what a
+change had taken place since last year, when he had seen Marcello and
+Aurora riding over the same stretch of sand on the same little horses.
+He ventured a reflection, to see what his companion would answer.
+
+"I daresay many people would say that those two young people were made
+for each other."
+
+Maddalena looked at him inquiringly and then glanced at her daughter.
+
+"And what do you say?" she asked, with some curiosity.
+
+"I say 'no.' And you?"
+
+"I agree with you. Aurora is like me--like what I was. Marcello would
+bore her to death in six months, and Aurora would drive him quite mad."
+
+Corbario smiled.
+
+"I had hoped," he said, "that women with marriageable daughters would
+think Marcello a model husband. But of course I am prejudiced. I have
+had a good deal to do with his bringing up during the last four years."
+
+"No one can say that you have not done your duty by him," Maddalena
+answered. "I wish I could feel that I had done as well by Aurora--indeed
+I do!"
+
+"You have, but you had quite a different nature to deal with."
+
+"I should think so! It is my own."
+
+Corbario heard the little sigh as she turned her head away, and being a
+wise man he said nothing in answer. He was not a Roman, if indeed he
+were really an Italian at all, but he had vaguely heard the Contessa's
+story. She had been married very young to a parliamentary high-light,
+who had made much noise in his day, had spent more than half of her
+fortune after getting rid of his own, and had been forgotten on the
+morrow of his premature death. It was said that she had loved another
+man with all her heart, but Corbario had never known who it was.
+
+The sun was almost setting when they turned homeward, and it was dark
+when they reached the cottage. They found an unexpected arrival
+installed beside the Signora in the doorway of the sitting-room.
+
+"Professor Kalmon is here," said the Signora's voice out of the gloom.
+"I have asked him to stay till to-morrow."
+
+The Professor rose up in the shadow and came forward, just as a servant
+brought a lamp. He was celebrated as a traveller, and occupied the chair
+of comparative physiology in the University of Milan. He belonged to
+the modern type of scientific man, which has replaced the one of fifty
+years ago, who lived in a dressing-gown and slippers, smoked a long
+pipe, and was always losing his belongings through absence of mind. The
+modern professor is very like other human beings in dress and
+appearance, and has even been known to pride himself on the fit of his
+coat, just like the common people.
+
+There were mutual greetings, for the Professor knew all the party, and
+everybody liked him. He was a big man, with a well-kept brown beard, a
+very clear complexion, and bright brown eyes that looked as if they
+would never need spectacles.
+
+"And where have you been since we last saw you?" asked Corbario.
+
+"Are your pockets full of snakes this time?" asked Aurora.
+
+The Professor looked at her and smiled, realising that she was no longer
+the child she had been when he had seen her last, and that she was very
+good to look at. His brown eyes beamed upon her benevolently.
+
+"Ah, my dear young lady, I see it is all over," he said. "You will never
+pull my beard again and turn my pockets inside out for specimens when I
+come back from my walks on the beach."
+
+"Do you think I am afraid of you or your specimens?" laughed Aurora.
+
+"I have got a terrible thing in my waistcoat pocket," the Professor
+answered. "Something you might very well be afraid of."
+
+"What is it? It must be very small to be in your waistcoat pocket."
+
+"It is a new form of death."
+
+He beamed on everybody with increasing benevolence; but somehow nobody
+smiled, and the Signora Corbario shivered and drew her light cloak more
+closely round her, as the first gust of the night breeze came up from
+the rustling reeds that grew in the pool below.
+
+"It is time to get ready for supper," said Folco. "I hope you are not
+hungry, Kalmon, for you will not get anything very elaborate to eat!"
+
+"Bread and cheese will do, my dear fellow."
+
+When Italians go to the country they take nothing of the city with them.
+They like the contrast to be complete; they love the total absence of
+restraint; they think it delightful to dine in their shooting-coats and
+to eat coarse fare. If they had to dress for dinner it would not be the
+country at all, nor if dinner had to begin with soup and end with sweets
+just as it does in town. They eat extraordinary messes that would make a
+Frenchman turn pale and a German look grave. They make portentous
+pasties, rich with everything under the sun; they eat fat boiled beef,
+and raw fennel, and green almonds, and vast quantities of cream cheese,
+and they drink sour wine like water; and it all agrees with them
+perfectly, so that they come back to the city refreshed and rested after
+a gastronomic treatment which would bring any other European to death's
+door.
+
+The table was set out on the verandah that evening, as usual in spring,
+and little by little the Professor absorbed the conversation, for they
+all asked him questions, few of which could be answered shortly. He was
+one of those profoundly cultivated Italians who are often to be met
+nowadays, but whose gifts it is not easy to appreciate except in a
+certain degree of intimacy. They are singularly modest men as a rule,
+and are by no means those about whom there is the most talk in the
+world.
+
+The party sat in their places when supper was over, with cloaks and
+coats thrown over them against the night air, while Kalmon talked of all
+sorts of things that seemed to have the least possible connection with
+each other, but which somehow came up quite naturally. He went from the
+last book on Dante to a new discovery in chemistry, thence to Japanese
+monks and their beliefs, and came back smiling to the latest development
+of politics, which led him quite naturally to the newest play, labour
+and capital, the German Emperor, and the immortality of the soul.
+
+"I believe you know everything!" exclaimed Marcello, with an admiring
+look. "Or else I know nothing, which is really more probable!" The boy
+laughed.
+
+"You have not told us about the new form of death yet," said Aurora,
+leaning on her elbows and burying her young hands in her auburn hair as
+she looked across the table at Kalmon.
+
+"You will never sleep again if I tell you about it," answered the
+Professor, opening his brown eyes very wide and trying to look terrible,
+which was quite impossible, because he had such a kindly face. "You do
+not look frightened at all," he added, pretending to be disappointed.
+
+"Let me see the thing," Aurora said. "Perhaps we shall all be
+frightened."
+
+"It looks very innocent," Kalmon answered. "Here it is."
+
+He took a small leather case from his pocket, opened it, and drew out a
+short blue glass tube, with a screw top. It contained half a dozen white
+tablets, apparently just like those in common use for five-grain doses
+of quinine.
+
+A little murmur of disappointment went around the table. The new form of
+death looked very commonplace. Corbario was the only one who showed any
+interest.
+
+"May I see?" he asked, holding out his hand to take the tube.
+
+Kalmon would not give it to him, but held the tube before his eyes under
+the bright light of the lamp.
+
+"Excuse me," he said, "but I make it a rule never to let it go out of my
+hands. You understand, don't you? If it were passed round, some one
+might lay it down, it might be forgotten, somebody might take it for
+something else."
+
+"Of course," said Folco, looking intently at the tube, as though he
+could understand something about the contents by mere inspection. "You
+are quite right. You should take no risks with such things--especially
+as they look so innocent!"
+
+He leaned back in his chair again, as if satisfied, and his eyes met the
+Contessa's at the same moment. There was no reason why she should not
+have looked at him just then, but he rested one elbow on the table and
+shaded his eyes from the light.
+
+"It is strange to reflect," said Kalmon, looking at the tube
+thoughtfully, "that one of those little things would be enough to put a
+Hercules out of misery, without leaving the slightest trace which
+science could discover."
+
+Corbario was still shading his eyes from the light.
+
+"How would one die if one took it?" asked Aurora. "Very suddenly?"
+
+"I call it the sleeping death," answered the Professor. "The poisoned
+person sinks into a sweet sleep in a few minutes, smiling as if enjoying
+the most delightful dreams."
+
+"And one never wakes up?" inquired Marcello.
+
+"Never. It is impossible, I believe. I have made experiments on animals,
+and have not succeeded in waking them by any known means."
+
+"I suppose it congests the brain, like opium," observed Corbario,
+quietly.
+
+"Not at all, not at all!" answered Kalmon, looking benevolently at the
+little tube which contained his discovery. "I tell you it leaves no
+trace whatever, not even as much as is left by death from an electric
+current. And it has no taste, no smell,--it seems the most innocent
+stuff in the world."
+
+Corbario's hand again lay on the table and he was gazing out into the
+night, as if he were curious about the weather. The moon was just
+rising, being past the full.
+
+"Is that all you have of the poison?" he asked in an idle tone.
+
+"Oh, no! This is only a small supply which I carry with me for
+experiments. I have made enough to send all our thirty-three millions of
+Italians to sleep for ever!"
+
+Kalmon laughed pleasantly.
+
+"If this could be properly used, civilisation would make a gigantic
+stride," he added. "In war, for instance, how infinitely pleasanter and
+more aesthetic it would be to send the enemy to sleep, with the most
+delightful dreams, never to wake again, than to tear people to pieces
+with artillery and rifle bullets, and to blow up ships with hundreds of
+poor devils on board, who are torn limb from limb by the explosion."
+
+"The difficulty," observed the Contessa, "would be to induce the enemy
+to take your poison quietly. What if the enemy objected?"
+
+"I should put it into their water supply," said Kalmon.
+
+"Poison the water!" cried the Signora Corbario. "How barbarous!"
+
+"Much less barbarous than shedding oceans of blood. Only think--they
+would all go to sleep. That would be all."
+
+[Illustration: "'I CALL IT THE SLEEPING DEATH,' ANSWERED THE PROFESSOR"]
+
+"I thought," said Corbario, almost carelessly, "that there was no longer
+any such thing as a poison that left no traces or signs. Can you not
+generally detect vegetable poisons by the mode of death?"
+
+"Yes," answered the Professor, returning the glass tube to its case and
+the latter to his pocket. "But please to remember that although we can
+prove to our own satisfaction that some things really exist, we cannot
+prove that any imaginable thing outside our experience cannot possibly
+exist. Imagine the wildest impossibility you can think of; you will not
+induce a modern man of science to admit the impossibility of it as
+absolute. Impossibility is now a merely relative term, my dear Corbario,
+and only means great improbability. Now, to illustrate what I mean, it
+is altogether improbable that a devil with horns and hoofs and a fiery
+tail should suddenly appear, pick me up out of this delightful circle,
+and fly away with me. But you cannot induce me to deny the possibility
+of such a thing."
+
+"I am so glad to hear you say that," said the Signora, who was a
+religious woman.
+
+Kalmon looked at her a moment and then broke into a peal of laughter
+that was taken up by the rest, and in which the good lady joined.
+
+"You brought it on yourself," she said at last.
+
+"Yes," Kalmon answered. "I did. From your point of view it is better to
+admit the possibility of a mediaeval devil with horns than to have no
+religion at all. Half a loaf is better than no bread."
+
+"Is that stuff of yours animal, vegetable, or mineral?" asked Corbario
+as the laughter subsided.
+
+"I don't know," replied the Professor. "Animal, vegetable, mineral?
+Those are antiquated distinctions, like the four elements of the
+alchemists."
+
+"Well--but what is the thing, then?" asked Corbario, almost impatiently.
+"What should you call it in scientific language?"
+
+Kalmon closed his eyes for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts.
+
+"In scientific language," he began, "it is probably H three C seven,
+parenthesis, H two C plus C four O five, close parenthesis, HC three O."
+
+Corbario laughed carelessly.
+
+"I am no wiser than before," he said.
+
+"Nor I," answered the Professor. "Not a bit."
+
+"It is much simpler to call it 'the sleeping death,' is it not?"
+suggested the Contessa.
+
+"Much simpler, for that is precisely what it is."
+
+It was growing late, according to country ideas, and the party rose from
+the table and began to move about a little before going to bed. The moon
+had risen high by this time.
+
+Marcello and Aurora, unheeded by the rest, went round the verandah to
+the other side of the house and stood still a moment, looking out at the
+trees and listening to the sounds of the night. Down by the pool a frog
+croaked now and then; from a distance came the plaintive, often
+repeated cry of a solitary owlet; the night breeze sighed through the
+long grass and the low shrubbery.
+
+The boy and girl turned to each other, put out their hands and then
+their arms, and clasped each other silently, and kissed. Then they
+walked demurely back to their elders, without exchanging a word.
+
+"We have had to give you the little room at the end of the cottage,"
+Corbario was saying to Kalmon. "It is the only one left while the
+Contessa is here."
+
+"I should sleep soundly on bare boards to-night," Kalmon answered. "I
+have been walking all day."
+
+Corbario went with him, carrying a candle, and shielding the flame from
+the breeze with his hand. The room was furnished with the barest
+necessities, like most country rooms in Italy. There were wooden pegs on
+which to hang clothes instead of a wardrobe, an iron bedstead, a deal
+wash-stand, a small deal table, a rush-bottomed chair. The room had only
+one window, which was also the only door, opening to the floor upon the
+verandah.
+
+"You can bolt the window, if you like," said Corbario when he had bidden
+the Professor good-night, "but there are no thieves about."
+
+"I always sleep with my windows open," Kalmon answered, "and I have no
+valuables."
+
+"No? Good-night again."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+Corbario went out, leaving him the candle, and turned the corner of the
+verandah. Then he stood still a long time, leaning against one of the
+wooden pillars and looking out. Perhaps the moonlight falling through
+the stiff little trees upon the long grass and shrubbery reminded him of
+some scene familiar long ago. He smiled quietly to himself as he stood
+there.
+
+Three hours later he was there again, in almost exactly the same
+attitude. He must have been cold, for the night breeze was stronger, and
+he wore only his light sleeping clothes and his feet were bare. He
+shivered a little from time to time, and his face looked very white, for
+the moon was now high in the heavens and the light fell full upon him.
+His right hand was tightly closed, as if it held some small object fast,
+and he was listening intently, first to the right, whence he had come,
+then to the left, and then he turned his ear towards the trees, through
+which the path led away towards the hut where the men slept. But there
+was no sound except the sighing of the wind. The frog by the pool had
+stopped croaking, and the melancholy cry of the owlet had ceased.
+
+Corbario went softly on, trying the floor of the verandah with his bare
+feet at each step, lest the boards should creak a little under his
+weight. He reached the window door of his own room, and slipped into the
+darkness without noise.
+
+Kalmon cared little for quail-shooting, and as the carriage was going
+back to Rome he took advantage of it to reach the city, and took his
+departure about nine o'clock in the morning.
+
+"By the way, how did you sleep?" asked Corbario as he shook hands at
+parting. "I forgot to ask you."
+
+"Soundly, thank you," answered the Professor.
+
+And he drove away, waving his felt hat to his hosts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Marcello coughed a little as he and Corbario trudged home through the
+sand under the hot May sun. It was sultry, though there were few clouds,
+and everything that grew looked suddenly languid; each flower and shrub
+gave out its own peculiar scent abundantly, the smell of last year's
+rotting leaves and twigs all at once returned and mingled with the
+odours of green things and of the earth itself, and the heavy air was
+over-rich with it all, and hard to breathe. By and by the clouds would
+pile themselves up into vast grey and black fortresses, far away beyond
+Rome, between the Alban and the Samnite hills, and the lightning would
+dart at them and tear them to pieces in spite, while the thunder roared
+out at each home-thrust that it was well done; and then the spring rain
+would sweep the Campagna, by its length and breadth, from the mountains
+to the sea, and the world would be refreshed. But now it was near noon
+and a heavy weariness lay upon the earth.
+
+"You are tired," said Corbario, as they reached the shade of some trees,
+less than half a mile from the cottage. "Let us sit down for a while."
+
+They sat down, where they could see the sea. It was dull and glassy
+under the high sun; here and there, far out, the sluggish currents made
+dark, irregular streaks.
+
+Corbario produced cigarettes and offered one to Marcello, but the boy
+would not smoke; he said that it made him cough.
+
+"I should smoke all the time, if I were quite well," he said, with a
+smile.
+
+"And do many other things that young men do, I daresay," laughed
+Corbario. "Ride steeplechases, play cards all night, and drink champagne
+at breakfast."
+
+"Perhaps." Marcello was amused at the picture. "I wonder whether I ever
+shall," he added.
+
+Corbario glanced at him curiously. There was the faintest accent of
+longing in the tone, which was quite new.
+
+"Why not?" Folco asked, still smiling. "It is merely a question of
+health, my dear boy. There is no harm in steeplechases if you do not
+break your neck, nor in playing cards if you do not play high, nor in
+drinking a glass of champagne now and then--no harm at all, that I can
+see. But, of course, so long as your lungs are delicate, you must be
+careful."
+
+"Confound my lungs!" exclaimed Marcello with unusual energy. "I believe
+that I am much stronger than any of you think."
+
+"I am sometimes inclined to believe it too," Corbario answered
+encouragingly.
+
+"And I am quite sure that it would do me good to forget all about them
+and live as if there were nothing the matter with me. Don't you think so
+yourself?"
+
+Corbario made a gesture of doubt, as if it were possible after all.
+
+"Of course I don't mean dissipation," Marcello went on to say, suddenly
+assuming the manner of an elderly censor of morals, simply because he
+did not know what he was talking about. "I don't mean reckless
+dissipation."
+
+"Of course not," Folco answered gravely. "You see, there are two sorts
+of dissipation. You must not forget that. The one kind means dissipating
+your fortune and your health; the other merely means dissipating
+melancholy, getting rid of care now and then, and of everything that
+bores one. That is the harmless sort."
+
+"What they call 'harmless excitement'--yes, that is what I should like
+sometimes. There are days when I feel that I must have it. It is as if
+the blood went to my head, and my nerves are all on edge, and I wish
+something would happen, I don't know what, but something, something!"
+
+"I know exactly what you mean, my dear boy," said Corbario in a tone of
+sympathy. "You see I am not very old myself, after all--barely
+thirty--not quite, in fact. I could call myself twenty-nine if it were
+not so much more respectable to be older."
+
+"Yes. But do you mean to say that you feel just what I do now and then?"
+Marcello asked the question in considerable surprise. "Do you really
+know that sensation? That burning restlessness--that something like what
+the earth must feel before a thunderstorm--like the air at this moment?"
+
+Not a muscle of Folco's still face moved.
+
+"Yes," he answered quietly. "I know it very well. It is nothing but the
+sudden wish for a little harmless excitement, nothing else in the world,
+my dear boy, and it is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It does not
+follow that it is at all convenient to yield to it, but we feel it
+because we lead such a very quiet life."
+
+"But surely, we are perfectly happy," observed Marcello.
+
+"Perfectly, absolutely happy. I do not believe that there are any
+happier people in the world than we three, your mother, you, and I. We
+have not a wish unfulfilled."
+
+"No, except that one, when it comes."
+
+"And that does not count in my case," answered Folco. "You see I have
+had a good deal of--'harmless excitement' in my life, and I know just
+what it is like, and that it is quite possible to be perfectly happy
+without it. In fact, I am. But you have never had any at all, and it is
+as absurd to suppose that young birds will not try to fly as that young
+men will not want amusement, now and then."
+
+"I suppose that women cannot always understand that," said Marcello,
+after a moment.
+
+"Women," replied Folco, unmoved, "do not always distinguish quite
+closely between excitement that is harmless for a man and excitement
+which is not. To tell the truth," he added, with a laugh, "they hardly
+ever distinguish at all, and it is quite useless to talk to them about
+it."
+
+"But surely, there are exceptions?"
+
+"Not many. That is the reason why there is a sort of freemasonry among
+men of the world, a kind of tacit agreement that women need not be told
+what goes on at the clubs, and at men's dinners, and late at night when
+old friends have spent an evening together. Not that there is any harm
+in it all; but women would not understand. They have their innocent
+little mysteries which they keep from us, and we have harmless little
+secrets which we do not let them know."
+
+Folco laughed softly at his own way of putting it, and perhaps because
+Marcello so easily accepted his point of view.
+
+"I see," said the boy. "I wonder whether my mother would not understand
+that. It seems so simple!"
+
+"She will, when the time comes, no doubt," answered Corbario. "Your
+mother is a great exception, my dear boy. On the other hand, she is so
+anxious about your health just now, that, if I were you, I would not say
+anything about feeling the want of a little excitement. Of course your
+life is monotonous. I know it. But there is nothing more monotonous than
+getting well, is there? The best part of it is the looking forward to
+what one will do when one is quite strong. You and I can talk of that,
+sometimes, and build castles in the air; but it is of no use to give
+your mother the idea that you are beating your wings against the bars of
+your cage, is it?"
+
+Folco was quite lyric that day, but the words made exactly the
+impression he wished.
+
+"You are right," Marcello said. "You always are. There is nobody like
+you, Folco. You are an elder brother to me, and yet you don't preach. I
+often tell my mother so."
+
+This was true, and what Marcello told her added to her happiness, if
+anything could do that, and she encouraged the two to go off together as
+much as possible. She even suggested that they should go down to San
+Domenico for a fortnight, to look after the great Calabrian estate.
+
+They rose and began to walk toward the cottage. The shooting had been
+good that morning, as quail-shooting goes, and the man who acted as
+keeper, loader, gardener, and general factotum, and who went out with
+any one who wanted to shoot, had gone on to the cottage with the bag,
+the two guns, and the animal which he called his dog. The man's name was
+Ercole, that is to say, Hercules; and though he was not a giant, he
+certainly bore a closer resemblance to the hero than his dog did to dogs
+in general.
+
+"He was born in my house," Ercole said, when any one asked questions.
+"Find a better one if you can. His name? I call him Nino, short for
+John, because he barks so well at night. You don't understand? It is the
+'voice of one crying in the wilderness.' Did you never go to Sunday
+school? Or do you call this place a garden, a park, a public promenade?
+I call it a desert. There are not even cats."
+
+When an Italian countryman says of a place that even cats will not stay
+in it, he considers that he has evoked a picture of ultimate desolation
+that cannot be surpassed. It had always been Ercole's dream to live in
+the city, though he did not look like a man naturally intended for town
+life. He was short and skinny, though he was as wiry as a monkey; his
+face was slightly pitted with the smallpox, and the malaria of many
+summers had left him with a complexion of the colour of cheap leather;
+he had eyes like a hawk, matted black hair, and jagged white teeth. He
+and his fustian clothes smelt of earth, burnt gunpowder, goat's cheese,
+garlic, and bad tobacco. He was no great talker, but his language was
+picturesque and to the point; and he feared neither man nor beast,
+neither tramp nor horned cattle, nor yet wild boar. He was no respecter
+of persons at all. The land where the cottage was had belonged to a
+great Roman family, now ruined, and when, the land had been sold, he had
+apparently been part of the bargain, and had come into the possession of
+the Signora Corbario with it. In his lonely conversations with Nino, he
+had expressed his opinion of each member of the family with frankness.
+
+"You are a good dog, Nino," he would say. "You are the consolation of my
+soul. But you do not understand these things. Corbario is an assassin.
+Money, money, money! That is all he thinks of from morning till night. I
+know it, because he never speaks of it, and yet he never gives away
+anything. It is all for himself, the Signora's millions, the boy's
+millions, everything. When I look at his face, a chill seizes me, and I
+tremble as when I have the fever. You never had the malaria fever,
+Nino. Dogs don't have it, do they?"
+
+At the question Nino turned his monstrous head to one side and looked
+along his muzzle at his master. If he had possessed a tail he would have
+wagged it, or thumped the hard ground with it a few times; but he had
+none. He had probably lost it in some wild battle of his stormy youth,
+fought almost to death against the huge Campagna sheep-dogs; or perhaps
+a wolf had got it, or perhaps he had never had a tail at all. Ercole had
+probably forgotten, and it did not really matter much.
+
+"Corbario is an assassin," he said. "Remember that, Nino. As for his
+poor lady, she is a little lacking, or she would never have married him.
+But she is a saint, and what do saints want with cleverness? They go to
+paradise. Does that need much sense? We should all go if we could. Why
+do you cock your head on one side and look at me like a Christian? Are
+you trying to make me think you have a soul? You are made of nothing but
+corn meal and water, and a little wool, poor beast! But you have more
+sense than the Signora, and you are not an assassin, like her husband."
+
+At this, Nino threw himself upon his back with his four legs in the air
+and squirmed with sheer delight, showing his jagged teeth and the roof
+of a very terrible mouth, and emitting a series of wolfish snorts; after
+which he suddenly rolled over upon his feet again, shook himself till
+his shaggy coat bristled all over his body, walked sedately to the open
+door of the hut, and sat down to look at the weather.
+
+"He is almost a Christian," Ercole remarked under his breath, as if he
+were afraid the dog might hear the compliment and grow too vain.
+
+For Ercole was a reticent man, and though he told Nino what he thought
+about people, he never told any one else. Marcello was the only person
+to whom he ever showed any inclination to attach himself. He regarded
+even the Contessa with suspicion, perhaps merely because she was a
+woman; and as for Aurora, girls did not count at all in his cosmogony.
+
+"God made all the other animals before making women," he observed
+contemptuously one day, when he had gone out alone with Marcello.
+
+"I like them," laughed the boy.
+
+"So did Adam," retorted Ercole, "and you see what came of it."
+
+No answer to this argument occurred to Marcello just then, so he said
+nothing; and he thought of Aurora, and his mother, and the sad-eyed
+Contessa, and wondered vaguely whether they were very unlike other
+women, as Ercole implied.
+
+"When you know women," the man vouchsafed to add presently, "you will
+wish you were dead. The Lord sent them into the world for an affliction
+and for the punishment of our sins."
+
+"You were never married, were you?" asked Marcello, still smiling.
+
+Ercole stopped short in the sand, amongst the sea-thistles that grew
+there, and Nino trotted up and looked at him, to be ready if anything
+happened. Marcello knew the man's queer ways, and waited for him to
+speak.
+
+"Married?" he snorted. "Married? You have said it!"
+
+This seemed enigmatical, but Marcello understood the words to convey an
+affirmation.
+
+"Well?" he asked, expecting more.
+
+"Well? Well, what?" growled Ercole. "This is a bad world. A man falls in
+love with a pretty little caterpillar; he wakes up and finds himself
+married to a butterfly. Oh, this is a very bad world!"
+
+Marcello was struck by the simile, but he reflected that Aurora looked
+much more like a butterfly than a caterpillar, a fact which, if it meant
+anything, should signify that he knew the worst beforehand. Ercole
+declined to enter into any account of his conjugal experiences, and
+merely shrugged his shoulders and went on through the sand.
+
+With such fitting and warning as this to keep him out of trouble,
+Marcello was to face life: with his saintly mother's timid allusions to
+its wickedness, with Corbario's tempting suggestions of harmless
+dissipation, with an unlettered peasant's sour reflections on the world
+in general and women in particular.
+
+In the other scale of the balance fate set his delicate and high-strung
+nature, his burning desire for the great unknown something, the stinging
+impatience of bodily weakness, and the large element of recklessness he
+inherited from his father, besides a fine admixture of latent boyish
+vanity for women to play upon, and all the ordinary weaknesses of human
+nature in about the same proportion as every one has them.
+
+Given a large fortune and ordinary liberty, it might be foreseen that
+the boy would not reach the haven of maturity without meeting a storm,
+even if the outward circumstances of chance were all in his favour, even
+if no one had an interest in ruining him, even if Folco Corbario did not
+want all for himself, as poor Ercole told his dog that he did in the
+solitude of his hut.
+
+Marcello had a bad chance at the start, and Maddalena dell' Armi, who
+knew the world well in all its moods, and had suffered by it and sinned
+for it, and had shed many tears in secret before becoming what she was
+now, foresaw danger, and hoped that her daughter's fate might not be
+bound up with that of her friend's son, much as she herself liked the
+gentle-hearted boy. She wondered how long any one would call him gentle
+after he got his first taste of pleasure and pain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+It was very early morning, and there was no shooting, for a
+southwesterly gale had been blowing all night, and the birds passed far
+inland. All along the beach, for twenty-five miles in an unbroken line,
+the surf thundered in, with a double roar, breaking on the bar, then
+gathering strength again, rising grey and curling green and crashing
+down upon the sand. Then the water opened out in vast sheets of crawling
+foam that ran up to the very foot of the bank where the scrub began to
+grow, and ran regretfully back again, tracing myriads of tiny channels
+where the sand was loose; but just as it had almost subsided, another
+wave curled and uncurled itself, and trembled a moment, and flung its
+whole volume forwards through a cloud of unresisting spray.
+
+It had rained a little, too, and it would rain again. The sky was of an
+even leaden grey, and as the sun rose unseen, a wicked glare came into
+it, as if the lead were melting; and the wind howled unceasingly, the
+soft, wet, southwest wind of the great spring storms.
+
+Less than a mile from the shore a small brigantine, stripped to a lower
+topsail, storm-jib, and balance-reefed mainsail, was trying to claw off
+shore. She had small chance, unless the gale shifted or moderated, for
+she evidently could not carry enough sail to make any way against the
+huge sea, and to heave to would be sure destruction within two hours.
+
+The scrub and brushwood were dripping with raindrops, and the salt spray
+was blown up the bank with the loose sand. Everything was wet, grey, and
+dreary, as only the Roman shore can be at such times, with that
+unnatural dreariness of the south which comes down on nature suddenly
+like a bad dream, and is a thousand times more oppressive than the stern
+desolation of any northern sea-coast.
+
+Marcello and Aurora watched the storm from a break in the bank which
+made a little lee. The girl was wrapped in a grey military cloak, of
+which she had drawn the hood over her loose hair. Her delicate nostrils
+dilated with pleasure to breathe the salt wind, and her eyelids drooped
+as she watched the poor little vessel in the distance.
+
+"You like it, don't you?" asked Marcello, as he looked at her.
+
+"I love it!" she answered enthusiastically. "And I may never see it all
+again," she added after a little pause.
+
+"Never?" Marcello started a little. "Are you going away?"
+
+"We are going to Rome to-day. But that is not what I mean. We have
+always come down every year for ever so long. How long is it, Marcello?
+We were quite small the, first time."
+
+"It must be five years. Four or five--ever since my mother bought the
+land here."
+
+"We were mere children," said Aurora, with the dignity of a grown
+person. "That is all over."
+
+"I wish it were not!" Marcello sighed.
+
+"How silly you are!" observed Aurora, throwing back her beautiful head.
+"But then, I am sure I am much more grown up than you are, though you
+are nineteen, and I am not quite eighteen."
+
+"You are seventeen," said Marcello firmly.
+
+"I shall be eighteen on my next birthday!" retorted Aurora with warmth.
+"Then we shall see who is the more grown up. I shall be in society, and
+you--why, you will not even be out of the University."
+
+She said this with the contempt which Marcello's extreme youth deserved.
+
+"I am not going to the University."
+
+"Then you will be a boy all your life. I always tell you so. Unless you
+do what other people do, you will never grow up at all. You ought to be
+among men by this time, instead of everlastingly at home, clinging to
+your mother's skirts!"
+
+A bright flush rose in Marcello's cheeks. He felt that he wanted to box
+her ears, and for an instant he wished himself small again that he might
+do it, though he remembered what a terrible fighter Aurora had been
+when she was a little girl, and had preserved a vivid recollection of
+her well-aimed slaps.
+
+"Don't talk about my mother in that way," he said angrily.
+
+"I'm not talking of her at all. She is a saint, and I love her very
+much. But that is no reason why you should always be with her, as if
+you were a girl! I don't suppose you mean to begin life as a saint
+yourself, do you? You are rather young for that, you know."
+
+"No," Marcello answered, feeling that he was not saying just the right
+thing, but not knowing what to say. "And I am sure my mother does not
+expect it of me, either," he added. "But that is no reason why you
+should be so disagreeable."
+
+He felt that he had been weak, and that he ought to say something sharp.
+He knew very well that his mother believed it quite possible for a boy
+to develop into saintship without passing through the intermediate state
+of sinning manhood; and though his nature told him that he was not of
+the temper that attains sanctity all at once, he felt that he owed to
+his mother's hopes for him a sort of loyalty in which Aurora had made
+him fail. The reasonings of innocent sentiment are more tortuous than
+the wiles of the devil himself, and have amazing power to torment the
+unfledged conscience of a boy brought up like Marcello.
+
+Aurora's way of thinking was much more direct.
+
+"If you think I am disagreeable, you can go away," she said, with a
+scornful laugh.
+
+"Thank you. You are very kind." He tried to speak sarcastically, but it
+was a decided failure.
+
+To his surprise, Aurora turned and looked at him very quietly.
+
+"I wonder whether I shall like you, when you are a man," she said in a
+tone of profound reflection. "I am rather ashamed of liking you now,
+because you are such a baby."
+
+He flushed again, very angry this time, and he moved away to leave her,
+without another word.
+
+She turned her face to the storm and took no notice of him. She thought
+that he would come back, but there was just the least doubt about it,
+which introduced an element of chance and was perfectly delightful while
+it lasted. Was there ever a woman, since the world began, who did not
+know that sensation, either by experience or by wishing she might try
+it? What pleasure would there be in angling if the fish did not try to
+get off the hook, but stupidly swallowed it, fly and all? It might as
+well crawl out of the stream at once and lay itself meekly down in the
+basket.
+
+And Marcello came back, before he had taken four steps.
+
+"Is that what you meant when you said that you might never come here
+again?" he asked, and there was something rough in his tone that pleased
+her.
+
+"No," she answered, as if nothing had happened. "Mamma talked to me a
+long time last night."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Do you want to know?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There is no reason why I should not tell you. She says that we must not
+come here after I go into society, because people will think that she is
+trying to marry me to you."
+
+She looked at him boldly for a moment, and then turned her eyes to the
+sea.
+
+"Why should she care what people think?" he asked.
+
+"Because it would prevent me from marrying any one else," answered
+Aurora, with the awful cynicism of youth. "If every one thought I was
+engaged to you, or going to be, no other man could ask for me. It's
+simple enough, I'm sure!"
+
+"And you wish other men to ask you to marry them, I suppose?"
+
+Marcello was a little pale, but he tried to throw all the contempt he
+could command into his tone. Aurora smiled sweetly.
+
+"Naturally," she said. "I'm only a woman."
+
+"Which means that I'm a fool to care for you!"
+
+"You are, if you think I'm not worth caring for." The girl laughed.
+
+This was so very hard to understand that Marcello knit his smooth young
+brow and looked very angry, but could find nothing to say on the spur of
+the moment. All women are born with the power to put a man into such a
+position that he must either contradict himself, hold his tongue, or fly
+into a senseless rage. They do this so easily, that even after the
+experience of a life-time we never suspect the trap until they pull the
+string and we are caught. Then, if we contradict ourselves, woman utters
+an inhuman cry of triumph and jeers at our unstable purpose; if we lose
+our tempers instead, she bursts into tears and calls us brutes; and
+finally, if we say nothing, she declares, with a show of reason, that we
+have nothing to say.
+
+[Illustration: "HE FLUSHED AGAIN, VERY ANGRY THIS TIME, AND HE MOVED
+AWAY TO LEAVE HER, WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD."]
+
+
+Marcello lost his temper.
+
+"You are quite right," he said angrily. "You are not worth caring for.
+You are a mere child, and you are a miserable little flirt already, and
+you will be a detestable woman when you grow up! You will lead men on,
+and play with them, and then laugh at them. But you shall not laugh at
+me again. You shall not have that satisfaction! You shall wish me back,
+but I will not come, not if you break your silly little heart!"
+
+With this terrific threat the boy strode away, leaving her to watch the
+storm alone in the lee of the sandbank. Aurora knew that he really meant
+to go this time, and at first she was rather glad of it, since he was in
+such a very bad temper. She felt that he had insulted her, and if he had
+stayed any longer she would doubtless have called him a brute, that
+being the woman's retort under the circumstances. She had not the
+slightest doubt of being quite reconciled with him before luncheon, of
+course, but in her heart she wished that she had not made him angry. It
+had been very pleasant to watch the storm together, and when they had
+come to the place, she had felt a strong presentiment that he would kiss
+her, and that the contrast between the kiss and the howling gale would
+be very delightful.
+
+The presentiment had certainly not come true, and now that Marcello was
+gone it was not very amusing to feel the spray and the sand on her
+face, or to watch the tumbling breakers and listen to the wind. Besides,
+she had been there some time, and she had not even had her little
+breakfast of coffee and rolls before coming down to the shore. She
+suddenly felt hungry and cold and absurdly inclined to cry, and she
+became aware that the sand had got into her russet shoes, and that it
+would be very uncomfortable to sit down in such a place to take them off
+and shake it out; and that, altogether, misfortunes never come singly.
+
+After standing still three or four minutes longer, she turned away with
+a discontented look in her face, all rosy with the wind and spray. She
+started as she saw Corbario standing before her, for she had not heard
+his footsteps in the gale. He wore his shooting-coat and heavy leathern
+gaiters, but he had no gun. She thought he looked pale, and that there
+was a shade of anxiety in his usually expressionless face.
+
+"We wondered where you were," he said. "There is coffee in the verandah,
+and your mother is out already."
+
+"I came down to look at the storm," Aurora answered. "I forgot all about
+breakfast."
+
+They made a few steps in the direction of the cottage. Aurora felt that
+Corbario was looking sideways at her as they walked.
+
+"Have you seen Marcello?" he asked presently.
+
+"Did you not meet him?" Aurora was surprised. "It is not five minutes
+since he left me."
+
+"No. I did not meet him."
+
+"That is strange."
+
+They went on in silence for a few moments.
+
+"I cannot understand why you did not meet Marcello," Aurora said
+suddenly, as if she had thought it over. "Did you come this way?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Perhaps he got back before you started. He walks very fast."
+
+"Perhaps," Corbario said, "but I did not see him. I came to look for you
+both."
+
+"Expecting to find us together, of course!" Aurora threw up her head a
+little disdainfully, for Marcello had offended her.
+
+"He is generally somewhere near you, poor boy," answered Corbario in a
+tone of pity.
+
+"Why do you say 'poor boy' in that tone? Do you think he is so much to
+be pitied?"
+
+"A little, certainly." Corbario smiled.
+
+"I don't see why."
+
+"Women never do, when a man is in love!"
+
+"Women"--the flattery was subtle and Aurora's face cleared. Corbario was
+a man of the world, without doubt, and he had called her a woman, in a
+most natural way, as if she had been at least twenty years old. It did
+not occur to her to ask herself whether Folco had any object in wishing
+to please her just then, but she knew well enough that he did wish to do
+so. Even a girl's instinct is unerring in that; and Corbario further
+pleased her by not pursuing the subject, for what he had said seemed all
+the more spontaneous because it led to nothing.
+
+"If Marcello is not in the cottage," he observed, as they came near,
+"he must have gone off for a walk after he left you. Did you not see
+which way he turned?"
+
+"How could I from the place where I stood?" asked Aurora in reply. "As
+soon as he had turned behind the bank it was impossible to say which way
+he had gone."
+
+"Of course," assented Folco. "I understand that."
+
+Marcello had not come home, and Aurora was sorry that she had teased him
+into a temper and had then allowed him to go away. It was not good for
+him, delicate as he was, to go for a long walk in such weather without
+any breakfast, and she felt distinctly contrite as she ate her roll in
+silence and drank her coffee, on the sheltered side of the cottage,
+under the verandah. The Signora Corbario had not appeared yet, but the
+Contessa was already out. As a rule the Signora preferred to have her
+coffee in her room, as if she were in town. For some time no one spoke.
+
+"Had we not better send Ercole to find Marcello?" the Contessa asked at
+last.
+
+"I had to send Ercole to Porto d'Anzio this morning," Corbario answered.
+"I took the opportunity, because I knew there would be no quail with
+this wind."
+
+"Marcello will come in when he is hungry," said Aurora, rather sharply,
+because she really felt sorry.
+
+But Marcello did not come in.
+
+Soon after eight o'clock his mother appeared on the verandah. Folco
+dropped his newspaper and hastened to make her comfortable in her
+favourite chair. Though she was not strong, she was not an invalid, but
+she was one of those women whom it seems natural to help, to whom men
+bring cushions, and with whom other women are always ready to
+sympathise. If one of Fra Angelico's saints should walk into a modern
+drawing-room all the men would fall over each other in the scramble to
+make her comfortable, and all the women would offer her tea and ask her
+if she felt the draught.
+
+The Signora looked about, expecting to see her son.
+
+"Marcello has not come in," said Folco, understanding. "He seems to have
+gone for a long walk."
+
+"I hope he has put on his thick boots," answered the Signora, in a
+thoughtful tone. "It is very wet."
+
+She asked why Folco was not with him shooting, and was told that there
+were no birds in such weather. She had never understood the winds, nor
+the points of the compass, nor why one should see the new moon in the
+west instead of in the east. Very few women do, but those who live much
+with men generally end by picking up a few useful expressions, a little
+phrase-book of jargon terms with which men are quite satisfied. They
+find out that a fox has no tail, a wild boar no teeth, a boat no prow,
+and a yacht no staircase; and this knowledge is better than none.
+
+The Signora accepted the fact that there were no birds that morning, and
+began to talk to Maddalena. Aurora got a book and pretended to read, but
+she was really listening for Marcello's footsteps, and wondering
+whether he would smile at her, or would still be cross when he came in.
+Corbario finished his paper and went off to look at the weather from the
+other side of the house, and the two women talked in broken sentences as
+old friends do, with long intervals of silence.
+
+The wind had moderated a good deal, but as the sun rose higher the glare
+in the sky grew more yellow, the air was much warmer, and the trees and
+shrubs and long grass began to steam as if they had been half boiled.
+All manner of tiny flies and gnats chased each other in the lurid light.
+
+"It feels as if there were going to be an earthquake," said Maddalena,
+throwing back the lace from her grey hair as if even its light weight
+oppressed her.
+
+"Yes."
+
+The women sat in silence, uneasy, their lips a little parted. Not that
+an earthquake would have disturbed them much, for slight ones are common
+enough in Italy, and could do no harm at all to a wooden cottage; it was
+a mere physical breathlessness that they felt, as the gale suddenly
+dropped and the heavy air became quite still on the sheltered side of
+the cottage.
+
+Aurora threw aside her book impatiently and rose from her chair.
+
+"I am going to look for Marcello," she said, and she went off without
+turning her head.
+
+On the other side of the cottage, as she went round, she found Folco
+sitting on the steps of the verandah, his elbows on his knees and his
+chin resting on his folded hands, apparently in deep thought. He had a
+cigar between his teeth, but it had gone out.
+
+"I am going to look for Marcello," said Aurora, as she passed close
+beside him.
+
+He said nothing, and hardly moved his head. Aurora turned and looked at
+him as she stepped upon the path.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, as she saw his face. "Is anything
+wrong?"
+
+Corbario looked up quickly, as if he had been in a reverie.
+
+"Anything the matter? No. Where did you say you were going?"
+
+"To find Marcello. He has not come in yet."
+
+"He has gone for a walk, I suppose. He often walks alone on off days. He
+will be back before luncheon, and you are not going to town till the
+afternoon."
+
+"Will you come with me?" Aurora asked, for she was in a good humour with
+Folco.
+
+He rose at once.
+
+"I'll go with you for a stroll," he said, "but I don't think it is of
+any use to look for Marcello near the house."
+
+"It can do no harm."
+
+"And it will do us good to walk a bit."
+
+They went down the path and through the trees towards the break in the
+bank.
+
+"The sand was very wet this morning, even inside the bank," Aurora
+said. "I daresay we shall find his footsteps and be able to guess which
+way he went."
+
+"Very likely," Folco answered.
+
+He pushed back his tweed cap a little and passed his handkerchief across
+his smooth brow. Aurora noticed the action, because he did not usually
+get warm so easily.
+
+"Are you hot?" she asked carelessly.
+
+"A little," he answered. "The air is so heavy this morning."
+
+"Perhaps you are not quite well," said Aurora. "You are a little pale."
+
+Apparently something in her youthfully patronising tone came as near
+irritating him as anything ever could.
+
+"What does it matter, whether I am hot or not?" he asked, almost
+impatiently, and again he passed his handkerchief over his forehead.
+
+"I did not mean to annoy you," Aurora answered with uncommon meekness.
+
+They came near the break in the bank, and she looked at the sand on each
+side of her. She thought it seemed smoother than usual, and that there
+were not so many little depressions in it, where there had been
+footsteps on previous days, half obliterated by wind and rain.
+
+"I cannot see where you and I passed an hour ago," she said, in some
+surprise.
+
+"The wind draws through the gap with tremendous strength," Folco
+explained. "Just before the gale moderated there was a heavy squall with
+rain."
+
+"Was there? I did not notice that--but I was on the lee side of the
+house. The wind must have smoothed the sand, just like a flat-iron!"
+
+"Yes." Corbario answered indifferently and gazed out to sea.
+
+Aurora left his side and looked about, going to a little distance from
+the gap, first on one side and then on the other.
+
+"It is as if the wind had done it on purpose!" she cried impatiently.
+"It is as smooth as if it had all been swept with a gardener's broom."
+
+Corbario turned, lighted his extinguished cigar, and watched her, as she
+moved about, stooping now and then to examine the sand.
+
+"I don't believe it is of any use to look here," he said. "Besides, he
+will be back in time for luncheon."
+
+"I suppose so," answered Aurora. "Why do you look at me in that way?"
+she asked, standing upright and meeting his eyes suddenly.
+
+He laughed softly and took his cigar from his mouth.
+
+"I was watching you. You are very graceful when you move."
+
+She did not like his expression.
+
+"I wish you would think less about me and more about finding Marcello,"
+she said rather sharply.
+
+"You talk as if he were lost. I tell you he will surely come back before
+long."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+But Marcello did not come back, and after Aurora had returned to the
+cottage and was seated in her chair again, with her book, she grew
+restless, and went over in her memory what had passed in the morning. It
+was not possible that Marcello should really mean to carry out his
+threat, to go away without a word, to leave her, to leave his mother;
+and yet, he was gone. A settled conviction came over her that he was
+really gone, just as he was, most probably back to Rome. She had teased
+him, and he had been very angry, absurdly angry; and yet she was perhaps
+responsible, in a way, for his disappearance. Presently his mother would
+grow anxious and would ask questions, and then it would all come out. It
+would be better to be brave and to say at once that he had been angry
+with her; she could confess the truth to her mother, to the Signora, if
+necessary, or even to both together, for they were women and would
+understand. But she could not tell the story before Corbario. That would
+be out of the question; and yet, anything would be better than to let
+them all think that something dreadful had happened to Marcello. He had
+gone to Rome, of course; or perhaps only to Porto d'Anzio, in which case
+he would meet Ercole coming back.
+
+The hours wore on to midday, and Signora Corbario's uneasiness grew into
+real anxiety. The Contessa did her best to soothe her, but was anxious
+herself, and still Aurora said nothing. Folco was grave, but assured
+every one that the boy would soon return, though the Signora would not
+believe it.
+
+"He will never come back! Something dreadful has happened to him!" And
+therewith she broke down completely and burst into tears.
+
+"You must go and look for him," said Maddalena quietly to Corbario.
+
+"I think you are right," he answered. "I am going to find him," he said
+softly, bending down to his wife as she lay in her chair, trying to
+control her sobs. "I will send some of the men towards Porto d'Anzio and
+will go towards Nettuno myself."
+
+She loved him and believed in him, and she was comforted when she saw
+him go away and heard him calling the men from their hut.
+
+Aurora was left alone with the two women.
+
+"I am afraid Marcello is gone to Rome," she said, with an effort.
+
+The Signora raised herself in her long chair and stared hard at the
+girl. The Contessa looked at her in surprise.
+
+"What do you know about it?" cried the Signora. "Why have you not
+spoken, if you know anything? Don't you see that I am half mad with
+anxiety?"
+
+Aurora had never seen the good lady in such a state, and was almost
+frightened; but there was nothing to be done now, except to go on. She
+told her little story timidly, but truthfully, looking from her mother
+to the Signora while she spoke, and wondering what would happen when she
+had finished.
+
+"He said, 'You shall wish me back, but I will not come.' I think those
+were his last words."
+
+"You have broken my boy's heart!" cried the Signora Corbario, turning
+her face away.
+
+Maddalena, whose heart had really been broken long ago, could not help
+smiling.
+
+"I am sure I did not mean to," cried Aurora, contritely. "And after all,
+though I daresay it was my fault, he called me a miserable little flirt,
+and I only called him a baby."
+
+Maddalena would have laughed if her friend had not been in such real
+distress. As for Aurora, she did not know whether she would have laughed
+or cried if she had not felt that her girl's dignity was at stake. As it
+was, she grew preternaturally calm.
+
+"You have driven him away," moaned the Signora piteously. "You have
+driven away my boy! Was he not good enough for you?"
+
+She asked the question suddenly and vehemently, turning upon poor Aurora
+with something like fury. She was quite beside herself, and the Contessa
+motioned the girl away. Aurora rose and disappeared round the corner of
+the house.
+
+Alone with her friend, Maddalena did her best to comfort her. There were
+arguments enough: it was barely noon, and Marcello had not been gone
+four hours; he was used to taking long walks, he had probably gone as
+far as the tower, and had rested there before coming back; or he had
+gone to meet Ercole on the road to Porto d'Anzio; or he had gone off
+towards the Nettuno woods to get over his anger in solitude; it was
+natural enough; and after all, if he had gone to Rome as Aurora
+thought, no harm could come to him, for he would go home, and would
+surely send a telegram before evening. It was unlike him, yes; but just
+at his age boys often did foolish things.
+
+"Marcello is not foolish!" objected the Signora indignantly.
+
+She could by no means listen to reason, and was angry because her friend
+tried to argue with her. She rose with an energy she seldom displayed,
+and began to walk up and down the verandah. Her face was very pale, her
+lip quivered when she spoke, and there was an unnatural light in her
+eyes. There was room for much moderate affection in her gentle nature;
+she had loved her first husband; she loved Corbario dearly; but the
+passion of her life was her son, and at the first presentiment of real
+danger to him the dominant preoccupation of her heart took violent
+possession of everything else in her, regardless of reason, friendship,
+consideration for others, or common sense.
+
+Maddalena walked up and down beside her, putting one arm affectionately
+round her waist, and doing the best she could to allay the tempest.
+
+It subsided suddenly, and was followed by a stony silence that
+frightened the Contessa. It was time for luncheon, and Aurora came back,
+hoping to find that she had been forgiven during her absence, but the
+Signora only looked at her coldly once or twice and would not speak.
+None of the three even pretended to have an appetite.
+
+"I shall not go back to Rome to-day," said the Contessa. "I cannot
+leave you in such anxiety."
+
+"Folco will take care of me," answered the Signora in a dull tone. "Do
+not change your plans on my account. The carriage is ordered at three
+o'clock."
+
+She spoke so coldly that Maddalena felt a little pardonable resentment,
+though she knew that her friend was not at all herself.
+
+"Very well," she answered quietly. "If you had rather that I should not
+stay with you we will go back this afternoon."
+
+"It will be much better."
+
+When the carriage appeared neither Folco nor any of the men had
+returned. The Signora made an evident attempt to show a little of her
+habitual cordiality at parting, and she even kissed Aurora coldly on the
+forehead, and embraced Maddalena with something like her usual
+affection. The two looked back as they drove away, calling out a last
+good-bye, but they saw that the Signora was not even looking after them;
+she was leaning against one of the wooden supports of the verandah,
+gazing towards the trees, and pressing one hand to her forehead.
+
+"Do you think it was my fault, mamma?" asked Aurora, when they were out
+of sight of the cottage.
+
+"No, dear," answered Maddalena. "Something has happened, I wish I knew
+what!"
+
+"I only told him he was a baby," said Aurora, settling herself in the
+corner of the carriage, and arranging her parasol behind her so that it
+rested on the open hood; for the weather had cleared and the sun was
+shining brightly after the storm.
+
+So she and her mother went back to Rome that afternoon. But when the
+Signora was alone, she was sorry that her friend was gone, and was all
+at once aware that her head was aching terribly. Every movement she made
+sent an agonizing thrill through her brain, and her hand trembled from
+the pain, as she pressed her palm to her forehead.
+
+She meant to go down to the beach alone, for she was sure that she could
+find Marcello, and at least she would meet the men who were searching
+for him, and have news sooner than if she stayed in the cottage. But she
+could not have walked fifty steps without fainting while her headache
+lasted. She would take five grains of phenacetine, and in a little while
+she would be better.
+
+She found the glass tube with the screw cap, and swallowed one of the
+tablets with a little water. Then she sat down on the edge of her long
+chair in the verandah to wait for the pain to pass. She was very tired,
+and presently, she scarcely knew how it was, she was lying at full
+length in her chair, her head resting comfortably against the cushion.
+
+The sunlight fell slanting across her feet. Amongst the trees two or
+three birds were twittering softly; it was warm, it was dreamy, she was
+forgetting Marcello. She tried to rouse herself as the thought of him
+crossed her mind, and she fancied that she almost rose from the chair;
+but she had hardly lifted one hand. Then she saw his face close before
+her, her lips relaxed, the pain was gone, she smiled happily, and she
+was asleep.
+
+Half an hour later her maid came quietly out to ask whether she needed
+anything, and seeing that she was sleeping peacefully spread a light
+shawl over her feet, placed the silver handbell within easy reach on the
+table, and went away again.
+
+Towards evening Folco came back and then the men, straggling in on their
+tired little horses, for they had ridden far and fast. Marcello was not
+with them.
+
+Corbario came in alone, and saw his wife lying in her chair in the
+evening light. He stood still a moment, and then came over and bent near
+her, looking earnestly into her quiet face.
+
+"Already," he said aloud, but in a very low voice.
+
+His hand shook as he laid it on her heart, bending low. Then he started
+violently and stood bolt upright, as an unearthly howl rent the air.
+
+Nino, Ercole's queer dog, was close beside him, his forepaws planted on
+the upper step of the verandah, his head thrown up, his half-open jaws
+showing his jagged teeth, his rough coat bristling like spikes of
+bearded barley.
+
+And Ercole, still a hundred yards away amongst the trees, shook his head
+and hurried forward as he heard the long-drawn note of brute terror.
+
+"Somebody is dead," he said to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+For a few weeks all Italy was profoundly interested in the story of
+Marcello Corbario's disappearance and of his mother's almost
+unaccountable death. It was spoken of as the "double tragedy of the
+Campagna," and the newspapers were full of it.
+
+The gates of the beautiful villa on the Janiculum were constantly
+assailed by reporters; the servants who came out from time to time were
+bribed, flattered, and tempted away to eat sumptuous meals and drink the
+oldest wine in quiet gardens behind old inns in Trastevere, in the hope
+that they might have some information to sell. But no one gained
+admittance to the villa except the agents of the police, who came daily
+to report the fruitless search; and the servants had nothing to tell
+beyond the bare truth. The young gentleman had gone for a walk near the
+sea, down at the cottage by the Roman shore, and he had never been heard
+of again. His mother had been suffering from a bad headache, had lain
+down to rest in a cane chair on the verandah, and had been found dead,
+with a smile on her face, by her husband, when he came back from his
+first attempt to find Marcello. The groom who always went down with the
+carriage could describe with greatest accuracy the spot where the
+Signorina Aurora had last seen him; the house servants gave the most
+minute details about the cane chair, the verandah, and the position in
+which the poor lady had been found; but that was all, and it was not at
+all what the reporters wanted. They had all been down to the cottage,
+each with his camera and note-book, and had photographed everything in
+sight, including Nino, Ercole's dog. What they wanted was a clue, a
+story, a scandal if possible, and they found nothing of the sort.
+
+Folco Corbario's mourning was unostentatious and quiet, but none of the
+few persons who saw him, whether detectives or servants, could doubt
+that he was profoundly affected. He grew paler and thinner every day,
+until his own man even began to fear that his health was failing. He had
+done, and continued to do, everything that was humanly possible. He had
+brought his wife's body to Rome, and had summoned the very highest
+authorities in the medical profession to discover, if possible, the
+cause of her death. They had come, old men of science, full of the
+experience of years, young men of the future, brimming with theories,
+experts in chemistry, experts in snake poisons; for Folco had even
+suggested that she might have been bitten by a viper or stung by a
+venomous spider, or accidentally poisoned by some medicine or something
+she had eaten.
+
+But the scientific gentlemen were soon agreed that no such thing had
+happened. Considerably disappointed, and with an unanimity which is so
+unusual in the confraternity as to be thought absolutely conclusive when
+it is observed, they decided that the Signora Corbario had died of
+collapse after intense excitement caused by the disappearance of her
+son. Thereafter she was buried out at San Lorenzo, with the secret, if
+there were any; masses were said, the verdict of the doctors was
+published, with the signatures of the most eminent practitioners and
+specialists in Italy; and the interest of the public concentrated itself
+upon the problem of Marcello's mysterious removal, or abduction, or
+subduction, or recession, or flight, from the very bosom of his family.
+
+This problem had the merit of defying solution. In a comparatively open
+country, within a space of time which could certainly be limited to five
+minutes, at a place whence he should have been clearly seen by Folco
+Corbario as soon as Aurora dell' Armi could no longer see him, the boy
+had been spirited away, leaving not even the trace of his footsteps in
+the sand. It was one of the most unaccountable disappearances on record,
+as Folco insisted in his conversations with the Chief of Police, who
+went down with him to the cottage and examined the spot most carefully,
+with several expert detectives. Folco showed him exactly where Aurora
+had stood, and precisely the direction he himself had followed in
+approaching the gap, and he declared it to be almost a physical
+impossibility that Marcello should have become suddenly invisible just
+then.
+
+The official thought so too, and shook his head. He looked at the
+detectives, and they shook their heads, also. And then they all looked
+at Corbario and expressed the opinion that there was some mistake about
+the length of time supposed by Aurora to have elapsed between the
+moment when Marcello left her and the instant of Folco's appearance
+before her. She had not looked at her watch; in fact, she had not
+carried a watch. The whole story therefore depended upon her more or
+less accurate judgment of time. It might have been a quarter of an hour
+instead of five minutes, in which case Corbario had not yet left the
+cottage, and Marcello would have had ample leisure to disappear in any
+direction he pleased. Ercole had been away at Porto d'Anzio, the men had
+been all at the hut; if Folco had not been on the path precisely at the
+time guessed by Aurora, everything could be accounted for.
+
+"Very well," Corbario answered. "Let us suppose that my stepson had time
+to get away. In that case he can be found, alive or dead. Italy is not
+China, nor Siberia, and I can place unlimited funds at your disposal.
+Find him for me; that is all I ask."
+
+"We shall find him, never fear!" answered the Chief of Police with a
+confidence he did not feel.
+
+"We shall find him!" echoed the three detectives in chorus.
+
+Ercole watched the proceedings and listened to what was said, for he
+considered it his duty to attend on such an occasion, his dog at his
+heels, his gun slung over his shoulder. He listened and looked from one
+to the other with his deep eyes and inscrutable parchment face,
+shrivelled by the malarious fever. But he said nothing. The Chief of
+Police turned to him at last.
+
+"Now what do you think about it?" asked the official. "You know the
+country. Had there been any suspicious characters about, fellows who
+could have carried off the boy?"
+
+"Such people would ask a ransom," answered Ercole. "You would soon hear
+from them. But I saw no one. There have been no brigands about Rome for
+more than twenty years. Do you dream that you are in Sicily? Praise be
+to Heaven, this is the Roman Campagna; we are Christians and we live
+under King Victor! Where are the brigands? They have melted. Or else
+they are making straw hats in the galleys. Do I know where they are?
+They are not here. That is enough."
+
+"Quite right, my friend," answered the Chief of Police. "There are no
+brigands. But I am sorry to say that there are thieves in the Campagna,
+as there are near every great city."
+
+Ercole shrugged his angular shoulders contemptuously.
+
+"Thieves would not carry a man away," he answered. "You know that, you
+who are of the profession, as they say. Such ruffians would have knocked
+the young gentleman on the head to keep him quiet, and would have made
+off. And besides, we should have found their tracks in the sand, and
+Nino would have smelt them."
+
+Nino pricked up one ragged ear at the sound of his name.
+
+"He does not look very intelligent," observed the official. "A clever
+dog might have been used to track the boy."
+
+"How?" inquired Ercole with scorn. "The footsteps of the young gentleman
+were everywhere, with those of all the family, who were always coming
+and going about here. How could he track them, or any of us? But he
+would have smelt a stranger, even if it had rained. I know this dog. He
+is the head dog on the Roman shore. There is no other dog like him."
+
+"I daresay not," assented the Chief of Police, looking at Nino. "In
+fact, he is not like any animal I ever saw."
+
+The detectives laughed at this.
+
+"There is no other," said Ercole without a smile. "He is the only son of
+a widowed mother. I am his family, and he is my family, and we live in
+good understanding in this desert. If there were no fever we should be
+like the saints in paradise--eating our corn meal together. And I will
+tell you another thing. If the young gentleman had been wounded anywhere
+near here, Nino would have found the blood even after three days. As for
+a dead man, he would make a point for him and howl half a mile off,
+unless the wind was the wrong way."
+
+"Would he really?" asked Corbario with a little interest.
+
+Ercole looked at him and nodded, but said no more, and presently the
+whole party of men went back to Rome, leaving him to the loneliness of
+the sand-banks and the sea.
+
+Then Ercole came back to the gap and stood still a little while, and
+his dog sat bolt upright beside him.
+
+"Nino," he said at last, in a rather regretful tone, "I gave you a good
+character. What could I say before those gentlemen? But I tell you this,
+you are growing old. And don't answer that I am getting old too, for
+that is my business. If your nose were what it was once, we should know
+the truth by this time. Smell that!"
+
+Ercole produced a small green morocco pocket-book, of the sort made to
+hold a few visiting cards and a little paper money, and held it to
+Nino's muzzle.
+
+Nino smelt it, looked up to his master's face inquiringly, smelt it
+again, and then, as if to explain that it did not interest him, lay down
+in the sand with his head on his forepaws.
+
+"You see!" growled Ercole. "You cannot even tell whether it belonged to
+the boy or to Corbario. An apoplexy on you! You understand nothing! Ill
+befall the souls of your dead, you ignorant beast!"
+
+Nino growled, but did not lift his head.
+
+"You understand that," said Ercole, discontentedly. "If you were a
+Christian you would stick a knife into me for insulting your dead! Yet
+you cannot tell whose pocket-book this is! And if I knew, I should know
+something worth knowing."
+
+The pocket-book disappeared in the interior recesses of Ercole's
+waistcoat. It was empty and bore no initial, and he could not remember
+to have seen it in Corbario's or Marcello's hands, but he was quite
+sure that it belonged to one of them. He was equally sure that if he
+showed it to Corbario the latter would at once say that it was
+Marcello's, and would take it away from him, so he said nothing about
+it. He had found it in the sand, a little way up the bank, during his
+first search after Marcello's disappearance.
+
+Ercole's confidence in the good intentions of his fellow-men was not
+great; he was quite lacking in the sort of charity which believeth all
+things, and had a large capacity for suspicion of everybody and
+everything; he held all men to be liars and most women to be something
+worse.
+
+"Men are at least Christians," he would say to Nino, "but a female is
+always a female."
+
+If he took a liking for any one, as for Marcello, he excused himself for
+the weakness on the ground that he was only human after all, and in his
+heart he respected his dog for snarling at everybody without
+discrimination. There was no doubt, however, that he felt a sort of
+attachment for the boy, and he admitted the failing while he deplored
+it. Besides, he detested Corbario, and had felt that his own common
+sense was insulted by the fact that Folco seemed devoted to Marcello.
+The suspicion that Folco had got rid of his stepson in order to get his
+fortune was therefore positively delightful, accompanied as it was by
+the conviction that he should one day prove his enemy a murderer.
+Perhaps if he could have known what Folco Corbario was suffering, he
+might have been almost satisfied, but he had no means of guessing that.
+In his opinion the man knew what had become of Marcello, and could be
+made to tell if proper means were used. At night Ercole put himself to
+sleep by devising the most horrible tortures for his master, such as no
+fortitude could resist, and by trying to guess what the wretched man
+would say when his agony forced him to confess the truth.
+
+He was almost sure by this time that Marcello was dead, though how Folco
+could have killed him, carried off his body to a great distance and
+buried him, without ever absenting himself from the cottage, was more
+than Ercole could imagine. He paid Corbario's skill the compliment of
+believing that he had not employed any accomplice, but had done the deed
+alone.
+
+How? That was the question. Ercole knew his dog well enough, and was
+perfectly sure that if the body had been concealed anywhere within a
+mile of the cottage Nino would have found it out, for the dog and his
+master had quartered every foot of the ground within three days after
+Marcello had been lost. It was utterly, entirely impossible that Folco,
+without help, could have dragged the dead boy farther. When he had gone
+on his pretended search he had not been alone; one of the men had ridden
+with him, and had never lost sight of him, as Ercole easily ascertained
+without seeming to ask questions. Ercole had obtained a pretty fair
+knowledge of Corbario's movements on that day, and it appeared that he
+had not been absent from the cottage more than half an hour at any time
+before he went to look for Marcello.
+
+"If Corbario himself had disappeared in that way," said Ercole to
+himself and Nino, "it would be easy to understand. We should know that
+the devil had carried him off."
+
+But no such supernatural intervention of the infernal powers could be
+supposed in Marcello's case, and Ercole racked his brains to no purpose,
+and pondered mad schemes for carrying Corbario off out of Rome to a
+quiet place where he would extract the truth from him, and he growled at
+the impossibility of such a thing, and fell to guessing again.
+
+In the magnificent library of the villa on the Janiculum, Folco was
+guessing, too, and with no better result. But because he could not guess
+right, and could get no news of Marcello, his eyes were growing hollow
+and his cheeks wan.
+
+The lawyers came and talked about the will, and explained to him that
+all the great property was his, unless Marcello came back, and that in
+any case he was to administer it. They said that if no news of the boy
+were obtained within a limited time, the law must take it for granted
+that he had perished in some unaccountable way. Folco shook his head.
+
+"He must be found," he said. "I have good nerves, but if I do not find
+out what has become of him I shall go mad."
+
+The lawyers spoke of courage and patience, but a sickly smile twisted
+Folco's lips.
+
+"Put yourself in my place, if you can," he answered.
+
+The lawyers, who knew the value of the property to a farthing, wished
+they could, though if they had known also what was passing in his mind
+they might have hesitated to exchange their lot for his.
+
+"He was like your own son," they said sympathetically. "A wife and a son
+gone on the same day! It is a tragedy. It is more than a man can bear."
+
+"It is indeed!" answered Corbario in a low voice and looking away.
+
+Almost the same phrases were exchanged each time that the two men came
+to the villa about the business, and when they left they never failed to
+look at each other gravely and to remark that Folco was a person of the
+deepest feeling, to whom such an awful trial was almost worse than
+death; and the elder lawyer, who was of a religious turn of mind, said
+that if such a calamity befell him he would retire from the world, but
+the younger answered that, for his part, he would travel and see the
+world and try to divert his thoughts. In their different ways they were
+hard-headed, experienced men; yet neither of them suspected for a moment
+that there was anything wrong. Both were honestly convinced that Folco
+had been a model husband to his dead wife, and a model father to her
+lost son. What they could not understand was that he should not find
+consolation in possessing their millions, and they could only account
+for the fact by calling him a person of the deepest feeling--a feeling,
+indeed, quite past their comprehension.
+
+Even the Contessa dell' Armi was impressed by the unmistakable signs of
+suffering in his face. She went twice to see him within three weeks
+after her friend's death, and she came away convinced that she had
+misjudged him. Aurora did not go with her, and Corbario barely asked
+after her. He led Maddalena to his dead wife's room and begged her to
+take some object that had belonged to the Signora, in memory of their
+long friendship. He pressed her to accept a necklace, or a bracelet, or
+some other valuable ornament, but Maddalena would only take a simple
+little gold chain which she herself had given long ago.
+
+Her own sorrow for her friend was profound but undemonstrative, as her
+nature had grown to be. Aurora saw it, and never referred to it,
+speaking only now and then of Marcello, to ask if there were any news of
+him.
+
+"He is not dead," the girl said one day. "I know he will come back. He
+went away because I called him a baby."
+
+Her mother smiled sadly and shook her head.
+
+"Did you love him, dear?" she asked softly.
+
+"We were children then," Aurora answered. "How do I know? I shall know
+when he comes back."
+
+It was true that the girl had changed within a few weeks, and her mother
+saw it. Her smile was not the same, and her eyes were deeper. She had
+begun to gather her hair in a knot, closer to her head, and that altered
+her expression a little and made her look much older; but there was more
+than that, there was something very hard to describe, something one
+might call conviction--the conviction that the world is real, which
+comes upon girlhood as suddenly as waking on sleep, or sleep on waking.
+She had crossed the narrow borderland between play and earnest, and she
+had crossed it very soon.
+
+"He will come back," she said. "He went away on that little ship that
+was tossing in the storm. I know it, though I cannot tell how he got out
+to it through the breaking waves."
+
+"That is perfectly impossible, child," said Maddalena with certainty.
+
+"Never mind. If we knew what ship that was, and where she is now, we
+could find Marcello. I am as sure of it as I am sure of seeing you at
+this moment. You know you often say that my presentiments come true. As
+soon as we knew he was gone I thought of the little ship."
+
+It was natural, perhaps. The picture of the small brigantine, fighting
+for existence, had graved itself in her memory. With its crew so near
+death, it had been the only thing within sight that suggested human life
+after Marcello was gone. The utter impossibility of a man's swimming out
+through the raging sea that broke upon the bar was nothing compared with
+Aurora's inward conviction that the little vessel had borne away the
+secret of his disappearance. And she had not been wrecked: Aurora knew
+that, for a wreck anywhere on the Roman shore would have been spoken of
+at once. They are unfortunately common enough, and since her childhood
+Aurora had more than once seen a schooner's masts sticking up out of
+the treacherous water a cable's length from the shore. The brigantine
+had got away, for the gale had moderated very suddenly, as spring gales
+do in the Mediterranean, just when the captain was making up his mind to
+let go both anchors and make a desperate attempt to save his vessel by
+riding out the storm--a forlorn hope with such ground tackle as he had
+in his chain lockers. And then he had stood out, and had sailed away,
+one danger more behind him in his hard life, and one less ahead. He had
+sailed away--whither? No one could tell. Those little vessels, built in
+the south of Italy, often enough take salt to South America, and are
+sold there, cargo and all; and some of the crew stay there, and some get
+other ships, but almost all are dispersed. The keeper of the San Lorenzo
+tower, who had been a deep-water man, had told Aurora about it. He
+himself had once gone out in a Sicilian brigantine from Trapani, and had
+stayed away three years, knocking about the world in all sorts of craft.
+
+Yet this one might have been on a coastwise trip to Genoa and
+Marseilles. That was quite possible. If one could only find out her
+name. And yet, if she had put into a near port Marcello would have come
+back; for Aurora was quite sure that he had got on board her somehow. It
+was all a mystery, all but the certainty she felt that he was still
+alive, and which nothing could shake, even when every one else had given
+him up. Aurora begged her mother to speak to Corbario about it. With his
+experience and knowledge of things he would know what to do; he could
+find some way of tracing the vessel, wherever she might be.
+
+The Contessa was convinced that the girl's theory was utterly untenable,
+and it was only to please her that she promised to speak of it if she
+saw Corbario again. Soon afterward she decided to leave Rome for the
+summer, and before going away she went once more to the villa. It was
+now late in June, and she found Folco in the garden late in the
+afternoon.
+
+He looked ill and tired, but she thought him a little less thin than
+when she had seen him last. He said that he, too, meant to leave Rome
+within a few days, that he intended to go northward first to see an old
+friend of his who had recently returned from South America, and that he
+should afterwards go down to Calabria, to San Domenico, and spend the
+autumn there. He had no news of Marcello. He looked thoughtfully down at
+his hands as he said this in a tone of profound sorrow.
+
+"Aurora has a fixed idea," said Maddalena. "While she was talking with
+Marcello at the gap in the bank there was a small ship tossing about not
+far from the shore."
+
+"Well?" asked Corbario. "What of it?"
+
+As he looked up from the contemplation of his hands Maddalena was struck
+by his extreme pallor and the terrible hollowness of his eyes.
+
+"How ill you look!" she exclaimed, almost involuntarily. "The sooner you
+go away the better."
+
+"What did Aurora say about the brigantine?" he asked earnestly, by way
+of answer.
+
+Maddalena knew too little about the sea to understand that he must have
+noticed the vessel's rig to name it correctly, as he did, and without
+hesitation.
+
+"She is convinced that Marcello got on board of her," she answered.
+
+Corbario's face relaxed a little, and he laughed harshly.
+
+"That is utterly absurd!" he answered. "No swimmer that ever lived could
+have got to her, nor any boat either! There was a terrific surf on the
+bar."
+
+"Of course not," assented Maddalena. "But you saw the ship, too?"
+
+"Yes. Aurora was looking at her when I reached the gap. That is why I
+noticed the vessel," Corbario added, as if by an afterthought. "She was
+a Sicilian brigantine, and was carrying hardly any sail. If the gale had
+lasted she would probably have been driven ashore. Her only chance would
+have been to drop anchor."
+
+"You know all about ships and the sea, don't you?" asked Maddalena, with
+a very little curiosity, but without any particular intention.
+
+"Oh, no!" cried Corbario, as if he were protesting against something. "I
+have made several long voyages, and I have a knack of remembering the
+names of things, nothing more."
+
+"I did not mean to suggest that you had been a sailor," Maddalena
+answered.
+
+"What an idea! I, a sailor!"
+
+He seemed vaguely amused at the idea. The Contessa took leave of him,
+after giving him her address in the north of Italy, and begging him to
+write if he found any clue to Marcello's disappearance. He promised
+this, and they parted, not expecting to meet again until the autumn.
+
+In a few days they had left Rome for different destinations. The little
+apartment near the Forum of Trajan where the Contessa and her daughter
+lived was shut up, and at the great villa on the Janiculum the solemn
+porter put off his mourning livery and dressed himself in brown linen,
+and smoked endless pipes within the closed gates when it was not too hot
+to be out of doors. The horses were turned out to grass, and the
+coachman and grooms departed to the country. The servants opened the
+windows in the early morning, shut them at ten o'clock against the heat,
+and dozed the rest of the time, or went down into the city to gossip
+with their friends in the afternoon. It was high summer, and Rome went
+to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"What do we eat to-day?" asked Paoluccio, the innkeeper on the Frascati
+road, as he came in from the glare and the dust and sat down in his own
+black kitchen.
+
+"Beans and oil," answered his wife.
+
+"An apoplexy take you!" observed the man, by way of mild comment.
+
+"It is Friday," said the woman, unmoved, though she was of a distinctly
+apoplectic habit.
+
+The kitchen was also the eating-room where meals were served to the
+wine-carters on their way to Rome and back. The beams and walls were
+black with the smoke of thirty years, for no whitewash had come near
+them since the innkeeper had married Nanna. It was a rich, crusty black,
+lightened here and there to chocolate brown, and shaded off again to the
+tint of strong coffee. High overhead three hams and half a dozen huge
+sausages hung slowly curing in the acrid wood smoke. There was an open
+hearth, waist high, for roasting, and having three square holes sunk in
+it for cooking with charcoal. An enormous bunch of green ferns had been
+hung by a long string from the highest beam to attract the flies, which
+swarmed on it like bees on a branch. The floor was of beaten cement,
+well swept and watered. Along three of the walls there were heavy
+tables of rough-hewn oak, with benches, polished by long and constant
+use. A trap-door covered the steps that led down to the deep cellar,
+which was nothing but a branch of those unexplored catacombs that
+undermine the Campagna in all directions. The place was dim, smoky, and
+old, but it was not really dirty, for in his primitive way the Roman
+wine-carter is fastidious. It is not long since he used to bring his own
+solid silver spoon and fork with him, and he will generally rinse a
+glass out two or three times before he will drink out of it.
+
+The kitchen of the inn was cool compared with the road outside, and
+though it smelt chiefly of the stale smoke of green wood, this was
+pervaded and tempered by odours of fern, fresh cabbages, goats'-milk
+cheese, and sour red wine. The brown earthen pot simmered over one of
+the holes in the hearth, emitting little clouds of steam; but boiling
+beans have no particular smell, as everybody knows.
+
+Paoluccio had pushed his weather-beaten soft hat back on his head, and
+sat drumming on the oak table with his knotty fingers. He was a strong
+man, thickset and healthy, with grizzled hair and an intensely black
+beard. His wife was fat, and purple about the jaws and under the ears.
+She stood with her back to the hearth, looking at him, with a wooden
+spoon in her hand.
+
+"Beans," she said slowly, and she looked up at the rafters and down
+again at her husband.
+
+"You have told me so," he growled, "and may the devil fly away with
+you!"
+
+"Beans are not good for people who have the fever," observed Nanna.
+
+"Beans are rather heavy food," assented the innkeeper, apparently
+understanding. "Bread and water are better. Pour a little oil on the
+bread."
+
+"A man who has the fever may die of eating beans," said Nanna
+thoughtfully. "This is also to be considered."
+
+"It is true." Paoluccio looked at his wife in silence for a moment. "But
+a person who is dead must be buried," he continued, as if he had
+discovered something. "When a person is dead, he is dead, whether he
+dies of eating beans or--"
+
+He broke off significantly, and his right hand, as it lay before him,
+straightened itself and made a very slight vibrating motion, with the
+fingers all close together. It is the gesture that means the knife among
+the southern people. Nanna instantly looked round, to be sure that no
+one else was in the room.
+
+"When you have given that medicine, you cannot send for the doctor," she
+observed, lowering her voice. "But if he eats, and dies, what can any
+one say? We have fed him for charity; it is Friday and we have given him
+beans. What can we know? Are not beans good food? We have nothing else,
+and it is for charity, and we give what we have. I don't think they
+could expect us to give him chickens and French wine, could they?"
+
+Paoluccio growled approval.
+
+"It is forty-seven days," continued Nanna. "You can make the account.
+Chickens and milk and fresh meat for forty-seven days! Even the bread
+comes to something in that time, at least two soldi a day--two forties
+eighty, two sevens fourteen, ninety-four--nearly five francs. Who will
+give us the five francs? Are we princes?"
+
+"There is the cow," observed Paoluccio with a grin.
+
+"Imbecile," retorted his wife. "It has been a good year; we bought the
+wine cheap, we sell it dear, without counting what we get for nothing
+from the carters; we buy a cow with our earnings, and where is the
+miracle?"
+
+The innkeeper looked towards the door and the small window suspiciously
+before he answered in a low voice.
+
+"If I had not been sure that he would die, I would not have sold the
+watch and chain," he said. "In the house of my father we have always
+been honest people."
+
+"He will die," answered Nanna, confidently and with emphasis. "The girl
+says he is hungry to-day. He shall eat beans. They are white beans, too,
+and the white are much heavier than the brown."
+
+She lifted the tin cover off the earthen pot and stirred the contents.
+
+"White beans!" grumbled Paoluccio. "And the weather is hot. Do you wish
+to kill me?"
+
+"No," answered Nanna quietly. "Not you."
+
+"Do you know what I say?" Paoluccio planted a huge finger on the oaken
+board. "That sick butterfly upstairs is tougher than I am. Forty-seven
+days of fever, and nothing but bread and water! Think of that, my Nanna!
+Think of it! You or I would be consumed, one would not even see our
+shadows on the floor! But he lives."
+
+"If he eats the white beans he has finished living," remarked Nanna.
+
+A short silence followed, during which Paoluccio seemed to be
+meditating, and Nanna began to ladle the beans out into four deep
+earthenware bowls, roughly glazed and decorated with green and brown
+stripes.
+
+"You are a jewel; you are the joy of my heart," he observed
+thoughtfully, as Nanna placed his portion before him, covered it with
+oil, and scattered some chopped basil on the surface.
+
+"Eat, my love," she said, and she cut a huge piece from a coarse loaf
+and placed it beside him on a folded napkin that looked remarkably clean
+in such surroundings, and emitted a pleasant odour of dried lavender
+blossoms.
+
+"Where is the girl?" asked Paoluccio, stirring the mess and blowing upon
+it.
+
+As he spoke, the door was darkened, and the girl stood there with a
+large copper "conca," the water-jar of the Roman province, balanced on
+her head--one of the most magnificent human beings on whom the sun of
+the Campagna ever shone. She was tall, and she bent her knees without
+moving her neck, in order to enter the door without first setting down
+the heavy vessel.
+
+[Illustration: " ... THE DOOR WAS DARKENED, AND THE GIRL STOOD THERE
+WITH A LARGE COPPER 'CONCA' ..."]
+
+Her thick dark hair grew low on her forehead, almost black, save for
+the reddish chestnut lights where a few tiny ringlets curled themselves
+about her small and classic ears. Straight black eyebrows outlined the
+snow-white forehead, and long brown lashes shaded the fearless eyes,
+that looked black too. She smiled a little, quite unconsciously, as she
+lowered herself with the weight and gracefully rose to her height again
+after she had entered. One shapely brown hand steadied the conca above,
+the other gathered her coarse skirt; then she stood still, lifted the
+load from her head with both hands and without any apparent effort, and
+set it down in its place on a stone slab near the hearth. Most women
+need a little help to do that.
+
+She laid aside the twisted cloth on which the conca had rested while she
+carried it, and she smoothed her hair carelessly.
+
+"There are beans," said Nanna, giving the girl one of the bowls. "There
+is the bread. While they are cooling take the other portion upstairs."
+
+The girl looked at the bowl, and at Nanna, and then at Paoluccio, and
+stood stock still.
+
+"Hey, there!" the man cried, with a rough laugh. "Hey! Reginella! Are
+you going to sleep, or are you turning into a statue?"
+
+"Am I to give him the beans to eat?" asked Regina, looking hard at the
+innkeeper.
+
+"You said he was hungry. That is what there is for dinner. We give him
+what we have."
+
+Regina's dark eyes lightened; her upper lip rose in a curve and showed
+her closed teeth, strong and white as those of a young animal.
+
+"Do as you are told," added Paoluccio. "This is charity. When you
+examine your conscience at Easter you can say, 'I have fed the hungry
+and cared for the sick.' The beans are mine, of course, but that makes
+no difference. I make you a present of them."
+
+"Thank you!"
+
+"Welcome," answered Paoluccio, with his mouth, full.
+
+Regina took the fourth bowl and a piece of bread and went out. The steps
+to the upper part of the house were on the outside, as is common in the
+houses of the Campagna.
+
+"How old is she?" Paoluccio asked when she was gone.
+
+"She must be twenty," answered Nanna. "It must be ten years since her
+mother died, and her mother said she was ten years old. She has eaten
+many loaves in this house."
+
+"She has worked for her food," said the innkeeper. "And she is an honest
+girl."
+
+"What did you expect? That I should let her be idle, or make eyes at the
+carters? But you always defend her, because she is pretty, you ugly
+scamp!"
+
+Nanna uttered her taunt in a good-natured tone, but she glanced
+furtively at her husband to see the effect of her words, for it was not
+always safe to joke with Paoluccio.
+
+"If I did not defend her," he answered, "you would beat the life out of
+her."
+
+"I daresay," replied Nanna, and filled her mouth with beans.
+
+"But now," said Paoluccio, swallowing, "if you are not careful she will
+break all your bones. She has the health of a horse."
+
+So the couple discussed matters amiably, while Regina was out of the
+way.
+
+In a garret that had a small unglazed window looking to the north, the
+girl was bending over a wretched trestle-bed, which was literally the
+only piece of furniture in the room; and on the coarse mattress, stuffed
+with the husks and leaves of maize, lay all that the fever had left of
+Marcello Consalvi, shivering under a tattered brown blanket. There was
+little more than the shadow of the boy, and his blue eyes stared dully
+up at the girl's face. But there was life in him still, thanks to her,
+and though there was no expression in his gaze, his lips smiled faintly,
+and faint words came from them.
+
+"Thank you," he said, "I am better to-day. Yes, I could eat something."
+
+Regina bent lower, smiling happily, and she kissed the boy's face three
+times; she kissed his eyes and dry lips. And he, too, smiled again.
+
+Then she left the bedside and went to a dark corner, where she
+cautiously moved aside a loose board. From the recess she took a common
+tumbler and a bottle of old wine and a battered iron spoon. She crouched
+upon the floor, because there was no table; she took two fresh eggs out
+of the folds of the big red and yellow cotton handkerchief that covered
+her shoulders and was crossed over her bosom, and she broke them into
+the glass, and hid the empty shells carefully in the folds again, so
+that they should not be found in the room. For she had stolen these for
+Marcello, as usual, as well as the old wine. She poured a little of the
+latter into the glass and stirred the eggs quickly and softly, making
+hardly any noise. From the recess in the wall she got a little sugar,
+which was wrapped up in a bit of newspaper brown with age and smoke, and
+she sweetened the eggs and wine and stirred again; and at last she came
+and fed Marcello with the battered spoon. She had put off her coarse
+slippers and walked about in her thick brown woollen stockings, lest she
+should be heard below. She was very quiet and skilful, and she had
+strangely small and gentle hands for a peasant girl. Marcello's head was
+propped up by her left arm while she fed him.
+
+She had kept him alive six weeks, and she had saved his life. She had
+found him lying against the door of the inn at dawn, convulsed with ague
+and almost unconscious, and had carried him into the house like a child,
+though he had been much heavier then. Of course the innkeeper had taken
+his watch and chain, and his jacket and sleeve-links and studs, to keep
+them safe, he said. Regina knew what that meant, but Paoluccio had
+ordered her to take care of him, and she had done her best. Paoluccio
+felt that if the boy died it would be the will of heaven, and that he
+probably would not live long with such care and such nourishment as he
+would get up there in the attic. When he was dead, it would be time
+enough to tell the carabineers who passed the house twice every
+twenty-four hours on their beat; they would see that a sick boy had been
+taken in, and that he had died of the fever, and as they need never know
+how long he had been in the inn, the whole affair would redound to
+Paoluccio's credit with them and with customers. But as long as he was
+alive it was quite unnecessary that any one should know of his
+existence, especially as the watch and chain had been converted into
+money, and the money into a fine young cow. That Marcello could get well
+on bread and water never entered Paoluccio's head.
+
+But he had counted without Regina; that is to say that he had overlooked
+the love and devotion of an intensely vital creature, younger, quicker,
+and far cleverer that he, who would watch the sick boy day and night,
+steal food and wine for him, lose sleep for him, risk blows for him, and
+breathe her strong life into his weak body; to whom the joy of saving
+him from death would be so much greater than all fatigue, that there
+would be no shadow under her eyes, no pallor in her cheek, no weariness
+in her elastic gait to tell of sleepless nights spent by his bedside in
+soothing his ravings, or in listening for the beat of his heart when he
+lay still and exhausted, his tired head resting on her strong white arm.
+And when he seemed better and at ease she often fell asleep beside him,
+half sitting, half lying, on the pallet bed, her cheek on the straw
+pillow, her breath mingling with his in the dark.
+
+He was better now, and she felt the returning life in him, almost before
+he was sure of it himself; and while her heart was almost bursting with
+happiness, so that she smiled to herself throughout her rough work all
+day long, she knew that he could not stay where he was. Paoluccio
+expected him to die, and was beginning to be tired of waiting, and so
+was Nanna. If he recovered, he would ask for his watch and other things;
+he was evidently a fine young gentleman to whom some strange accident
+had happened, and he must have friends somewhere. Half delirious, he had
+spoken of them and of his mother, and of some one called Aurora, whom
+Regina already hated with all her heart and soul. The innkeeper and his
+wife had never come near him since the former had helped the girl to
+carry him upstairs, but if they suspected that he was recovering she
+would not be able to prevent them from seeing him; and if they did, she
+knew what would happen. They would send her on an errand, and when she
+came back Marcello would be dead. She might refuse to go, but they were
+strong people and would be two to one. Brave as Regina was, she did not
+dare to wait for the carabineers when they came by on their beat and to
+tell them the truth, for she had the Italian peasant's horror and dread
+of the law and its visible authority; and moreover she was quite sure
+that Paoluccio would murder her if she told the secret.
+
+"If I could only take you to Rome!" she whispered, bending over him
+when he had swallowed the contents of the glass. "You could tell me
+where your friends are."
+
+"Rome?" he repeated, with a vacant questioning.
+
+She nodded and smiled, and then sighed. She had long been sure that the
+fever had affected his memory, and she had tried many times to awaken
+it.
+
+She loved him because he had the face of an angel, and was fair-haired,
+and seemed so gentle and patient, and smiled so sweetly when she kissed
+him. That was all. He could thank her; he could tell her that he was
+better or worse; he could speak of what he saw; he could even tell her
+that she was beautiful, and that was much. He was Marcello, he had told
+her that, but when she asked what other name he had, he looked at her
+blankly at first, and then an expression of painful effort came over his
+face, and she would not disturb him any more. He could not remember. He
+did not know how he had come to the inn door; he had been walking in the
+Campagna alone and had felt tired. He knew no more.
+
+If only she could get him to Rome. It was not more than seven or eight
+miles to the city, and Regina had often been there with Nanna. She had
+been to Saint John Lateran's at midsummer for the great festival, and
+she knew where the hospital was, in which famous professors cured every
+ill under the sun. If she could bring Marcello to them, he would get
+well; if he stayed much longer at the inn, Paoluccio would kill him;
+being a woman, and a loving one, Regina only regarded as possible what
+she wished, where the man she loved was concerned.
+
+She made up her mind that if it could not be done by any other means she
+would carry Marcello all the way. During his illness she had often
+lifted him from his bed like a little child, for he was slightly built
+by nature and was worn to a shadow by the fever. Even Aurora could have
+raised him, and he was a featherweight in the arms of such a creature as
+Regina. But it would be another matter to carry such an awkward burden
+for miles along the highroad; and besides, she would meet the
+carabineers, and as she would have to go at night, they would probably
+arrest her and put her in prison, and Marcello would die. She must find
+some other way.
+
+She laid his head tenderly on the pillow and left him, promising to come
+back as soon as she could. For safety she had brought the dish of beans
+with her, lest Nanna should follow her, and she took it with her, just
+as it was; but at the foot of the outer stairs she ran along the back of
+the house to the pig-sty, and emptied the mess into the trough,
+carefully scraping the bowl with the spoon so that it looked as if some
+one had eaten the contents. Then she went back to the kitchen.
+
+"Has he eaten?" inquired Nanna, and Paoluccio looked up, too.
+
+"You see," answered Regina, showing the empty bowl.
+
+"Health to him!" answered Paoluccio. "He has a good appetite."
+
+"Eat your own," said Nanna to the girl.
+
+She suspected that Regina might have eaten the beans meant for Marcello,
+but her doubt vanished as she saw how the hungry young thing devoured
+her own portion.
+
+"Are there any more left?" Regina asked when she had finished, for she
+understood perfectly what was going on in the minds of the other two.
+
+She looked into the earthen cooking-pot which now stood on the corner of
+the hearth.
+
+"Not even the smell of any more," answered Nanna. "There is bread."
+
+Regina's white teeth crushed the hard brown crust as if she had not
+eaten for a week. There could be no doubt but that the sick boy had
+eaten the beans; and beans, especially white ones, are not good for
+people who have the fever, as Nanna had justly observed.
+
+"On Sunday he shall have a dish of liver and cabbage," she said, in a
+cheerful tone. "There is much strength in liver, and cabbage is good for
+the blood. I shall take it to him myself, for it will be a pleasure to
+see him eat."
+
+"The beans were soon finished," said Regina, with perfect truth.
+
+"I told you how it would be," Paoluccio answered.
+
+But Regina knew that the time had come to get Marcello away from the inn
+if he ever was to leave it alive, and in the afternoon, when Nanna was
+dozing in her chair in the kitchen and Paoluccio was snoring upstairs,
+and when she had smoothed Marcello's pillow, she went out and sat down
+in front of the house, where there was shade at that hour, though the
+glare from the dusty road would have blinded weaker eyes than hers. She
+sat on the stone seat that ran along the house, and leaned against the
+rough wall, thinking and scheming, and quite sure that she should find a
+way.
+
+At first she looked about, while she thought, from the well-known
+mountains that bounded her world to the familiar arches of the distant
+aqueduct, from the dry ditch opposite to the burning sky above and the
+greyish green hillocks below Tivoli. But by and by she looked straight
+before her, with a steady, concentrated stare, as if she saw something
+happening and was watching to see how it would end.
+
+She had found what she wanted, and was quite sure of it; only a few
+details remained to be settled, such as what was to become of her after
+she left the inn where she had grown up. But that did not trouble her
+much.
+
+She was not delicately nurtured that she should dread the great world of
+which she knew nothing, nor had Nanna's conversation during ten years
+done much to strengthen her in the paths of virtue. Her pride had done
+much more and might save her wherever she went, but she was very well
+aware of life's evil truths. And what would her pride be compared with
+Marcello, the first and only being she had ever loved? To begin with,
+she knew that the handsome people from the country earned money by
+serving as models for painters and sculptors, and she had not the
+slightest illusion about her own looks. Since she had been a child
+people who came to the inn had told her that she was beautiful; and not
+the rough wine-carters only, for the fox-hunters sometimes came that
+way, riding slowly homeward after a long run, and many a fine gentleman
+in pink had said things to her which she had answered sharply, but which
+she remembered well. She had not the slightest doubt but that she was
+one of the handsomest girls in Italy, and the absolute certainty of the
+conviction saved her from having any small vanity about her looks. She
+knew that she had only to show herself and that every one would stand
+and look at her, only to beckon and she would be followed. She did not
+crave admiration; a great beauty rarely does. She simply defied
+competition, and was ready to laugh at it in a rather good-natured way,
+for she knew what she had, and was satisfied.
+
+As for the rest, she was merely clever and fearless, and her moral
+inheritance was not all that might be desired; for her father had left
+her mother in a fit of pardonable jealousy, after nearly killing her and
+quite killing his rival, and her mother had not redeemed her character
+after his abrupt departure. On the contrary, if an accident had not
+carried her off suddenly, Regina's virtuous parent would probably have
+sold the girl into slavery. Poor people are not all honest, any more
+than other kinds of people are. Regina did not mourn her mother, and
+hardly remembered her father at all, and she never thought of either.
+
+She owed Paoluccio and Nanna nothing, in her opinion. They had fed her
+sufficiently, and clothed her decently for the good of the house; she
+had done the work of two women in return, because she was strong, and
+she had been honest, because she was proud. Even the innkeeper and his
+wife would not have pretended that she owed them much gratitude; they
+were much too natural for that, and besides, the girl was too handsome,
+and there might be some scandal about her any day which would injure the
+credit of the inn. Nanna thought Paoluccio much too fond of watching
+her, as it was, and reflected that if she went to the city she would be
+well out of the way, and might go to the devil if she pleased.
+
+Regina's plan for taking Marcello was simple, like most plans which
+succeed, and only depended for its success on being carried out
+fearlessly.
+
+The wine-carters usually came to the inn from the hills between nine and
+eleven o'clock at night, and the carts, heavy-laden with wine casks,
+stood in a line along the road, while the men went into the kitchen to
+eat and drink. They generally paid for what they consumed by giving a
+measure or two of wine from the casks they were bringing, and which they
+filled up with water, a very simple plan which seems to have been in use
+for ages. It has several advantages; the owner of the wine does not
+suffer by it, since he gets his full price in town; the man who buys the
+wine in Rome does not suffer, because he adds so much water to the wine
+before selling it that a little more or less makes no difference; the
+public does not suffer, as it is well known that wine is much better for
+the health when drunk with plenty of water; and the carters do not
+suffer, because nobody would think of interfering with them. Moreover,
+they get food and drink for nothing.
+
+While the men were having supper in the inn, their carts were guarded by
+their little woolly dogs, black, white, or brown, and always terribly
+wide-awake and uncommonly fierce in spite of their small size.
+
+Now, just at this time, there was one carter who had none, and Regina
+knew it, for he was one of her chief admirers. He was the
+hardest-drinking ruffian of all the men who came and went on the
+Frascati road, and he had been quite willing to sell his dog in the
+street to a gentleman who admired it and offered him fifty francs for
+it, though that is a small price for a handsome "lupetto." But Mommo
+happened to be deeper in debt than usual, took the money, and cast about
+to steal another dog that might serve him. So far he had not seen one to
+his liking.
+
+It is the custom of the wine-carters, when they have had plenty to eat
+and drink, to climb to their seats under the fan-like goat-skin hoods of
+their carts, and to go to sleep, wrapped in their huge cloaks. Their
+mules plod along and keep out of the way of other vehicles without any
+guidance, and their dogs protect them from thieves, who might steal
+their money; for they always carry the sum necessary to pay the octroi
+duty at the city gates, where every cart is stopped. As they are on the
+road most of their lives, winter and summer, they would not get much
+sleep if they tried to keep awake all night; and they drink a good deal,
+partly because wine is really a protection against the dangerous fever,
+and partly because their drink costs them nothing. Some of them drank
+their employers' wine at supper, others exchanged what they brought for
+Paoluccio's, which they liked better.
+
+They usually got away about midnight, and Mommo was often the last to
+go. It was a part of Regina's work to go down to the cellar and draw the
+wine that was wanted from the hogsheads when the host was too lazy to go
+down himself, and being quite unwatched she could draw a measure from
+the oldest and strongest if she chose. Mommo could easily be made a
+little sleepier than usual, after being tempted to outstay the others.
+
+And so it turned out that night. After the necessary operation of
+tapping one of his casks and filling it up with water, he lingered on
+before a measure of the best, while Nanna and Paoluccio dozed in their
+chairs; and at last all three were asleep.
+
+Then Regina went out softly into the dark summer night, and climbed the
+stairs to the attic.
+
+"I am going to take you to Rome to-night," she whispered in Marcello's
+ear.
+
+"Rome?" he repeated vaguely, half asleep.
+
+She wrapped him in the tattered blanket as he was, and lifted him
+lightly in her arms. Down the stairs she bore him, and then lifted him
+upon the tail of the cart, propping him up as best she could, and
+passing round him the end of one of the ropes that held the casks in
+place. He breathed more freely in the open air, and she had fed him
+again before the carters came to supper.
+
+"And you?" he asked faintly.
+
+"I shall walk," she whispered. "Now wait, and make no noise, or they
+will kill you. Are you comfortable?"
+
+She could see that he nodded his head.
+
+"We shall start presently," she said.
+
+She went into the kitchen, waked Mommo, and made him swallow the rest of
+his wine. He was easily persuaded that he had slept too long, and must
+be on the road. The innkeeper and Nanna grumbled a good-night as he went
+out rather unsteadily, followed by Regina. A moment later the mules'
+bells jingled, the cart creaked, and Mommo was off.
+
+Paoluccio and his wife made their way to the outer stairs and to bed,
+leaving Regina to put out the lights and lock up the kitchen. She lost
+no time in doing this, ran up the steps in the dark, hung the key on its
+nail in the entry, and went to her attic, making a loud noise with her
+loose slippers, so that the couple might hear her. She came down again
+in her stockings almost at once, carrying the slippers and a small
+bundle containing her belongings. She made no noise now, though it was
+almost quite dark, and in another instant she was out on the road to
+Rome. It had all been done so quickly that she could still hear the
+jingling of Mommo's mule bells in the distance. She had only a few
+hundred yards to run, and she was walking at the tail of the cart with
+one hand resting on Marcello's knee as he lay there wrapped up in the
+ragged blanket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was clear dawn, and there was confusion at the Porta San Giovanni.
+Mommo had wakened, red-eyed and cross as usual, a little while before
+reaching the gate, and had uttered several strange noises to quicken the
+pace of his mules. After that, everything had happened as usual, for a
+little while; he had stopped inside the walls before the guard-house of
+the city customs, had nodded to the octroi inspectors, and had got his
+money ready while the printed receipt was being filled out. Then the
+excitement had begun.
+
+"You have a passenger," said one, and Mommo stared at him, not
+understanding.
+
+"You have a dead man on behind!" yelled a small boy, standing at safe
+distance.
+
+Mommo began to swear, but one of the inspectors stopped him.
+
+"Get down," said the man. "The carabineers are coming."
+
+Mommo finished his swearing internally, but with increased fervour. The
+small boy was joined by others, and they began to jeer in chorus, and
+perform war-dances.
+
+"There is a tax on dead men!" they screamed. "You must pay!"
+
+"May you all be butchered!" shouted Mommo, in a voice of thunder. "May
+your insides be fried!"
+
+"Brute beast, without education!" hooted the biggest boy,
+contemptuously.
+
+"I'll give you the education, and the instruction too," retorted the
+carter, making at them with his long whip.
+
+They scattered in all directions, like a flock of cawing jackdaws that
+fly a little way in tremendous haste, and then settle again at a
+distance and caw louder than before.
+
+"Animal!" they yelled. "Animal! Animal and beast!"
+
+By this time a crowd had collected round the cart, and two carabineers
+had come up to see what was the matter, quiet, sensible men in
+extraordinary cocked hats and well-fitting swallow-tailed uniforms of
+the fashion of 1810. The carabineers are quite the finest corps in the
+Italian service, and there are a good many valid reasons why their
+antiquated dress should not be changed. Their presence means law and
+order without unnecessary violence.
+
+Mommo was surly, but respectful enough. Yes, it was his cart, and he was
+a regular carter on the Frascati road. Yes, this was undoubtedly a sick
+man, who had climbed upon the cart while Mommo was asleep. Of course he
+had slept on the road, all carters did, and he had no dog, else no one
+would have dared to take liberties with his cart. No, he had never seen
+the sick man. The carabineers might send him to penal servitude for
+life, tear out his tongue, cut off his ears and nose, load him with
+chains, and otherwise annoy him, but he had never seen the sick man. If
+he had seen him, he would have pulled him off, and kicked him all the
+way to the hospital, where he ought to be. What right had such brigands
+as sick men to tamper with the carts of honest people? If the fellow had
+legs to jump upon the cart, he had legs to walk. Had Mommo ever done
+anything wrong in his life, that this should be done to him? Had he
+stolen, or killed anybody, or tried to evade the octroi duty? No. Then
+why should an ugly thief of a sick man climb upon his cart? The wretch
+had hardly clothes enough to cover him decently--a torn shirt and a pair
+of old trousers that he must have stolen, for they were much too short
+for him! And so on, and so forth, to the crowd, for the carabineers paid
+no more attention to him after he had answered their first questions;
+but the crowd listened with interest, the small boys drew near again,
+the octroi inspectors looked on, and Mommo had a sympathetic audience.
+It was the general opinion that he had been outrageously put upon, and
+that some one had murdered the sick man, and had tied the body to the
+cart in order that Mommo should be accused of the crime, it being highly
+likely that a murderer should take so much unnecessary trouble to carry
+his victim and the evidence of his crime about with him in such a very
+public manner.
+
+"If he were dead, now," observed an old peasant, who had trudged in with
+a bundle on his back, "you would immediately be sent to the galleys."
+
+This was so evident that the crowd felt very sorry for Mommo.
+
+"Of course I should," he answered. "By this time to-morrow I should have
+chains on my legs, and be breaking stones! What is the law for, I should
+like to know?"
+
+Meanwhile, the carabineers had lifted Marcello very gently from the cart
+and had carried him into the octroi guard-house, where they set him in a
+chair, wrapped the ragged blanket round his knees and waist, and poured
+a little wine down his throat. Seeing that he was very weak, and having
+ascertained that he had nothing whatever about him by which he could be
+identified, they sent for the municipal doctor of that quarter of the
+city.
+
+While they were busy within, one of the inspectors chanced to look at
+the closed window, and saw the face of a handsome girl pressed against
+the pane outside, and a pair of dark eyes anxiously watching what was
+going on. The girl was so very uncommonly handsome that the inspector
+went out to look at her, but she saw him coming and moved away, drawing
+her cotton kerchief half across her face. Regina's only fear was that
+Mommo might recognise her, in which case she would inevitably be
+questioned by the carabineers. It was characteristic of the class in
+which she had been brought up, that while she entertained a holy dread
+of being cross-questioned by them, she felt the most complete conviction
+that Marcello was safe in their hands. She had meant that he should
+somehow be taken off the cart at the gate, probably by the inspectors,
+and conveyed at once to the great hospital near by. She knew nothing
+about hospitals, and supposed that when he was once there, she might be
+allowed to come and take care of him. It would be easy, she thought, to
+invent some story to account for her interest in him. But she could do
+nothing until Mommo was gone, and he might recognise her figure even if
+he could not see her face.
+
+Finding that nothing more was wanted of him, and that he was in no
+immediate danger of penal servitude for having been found with a sick
+man on his cart, Mommo started his mules up the paved hill towards the
+church, walking beside them, as the carters mostly do within the city.
+The crowd dispersed, the small boys went off in search of fresh matter
+for contemptuous comment, and Regina went boldly to the door of the
+guard-house.
+
+"Can I be of any use with the sick man?" she asked of the inspector who
+had seen her through the window.
+
+The inspector prided himself on his gallantry and good education.
+
+"Signorina," he said, lifting his round hat with a magnificent gesture,
+"if you were to look only once at a dying man, he would revive and live
+a thousand years."
+
+He made eyes at her in a manner he considered irresistible, and replaced
+his hat on his head, a little on one side. Regina had never been called
+"Signorina" before, and she was well aware that no woman who wears a
+kerchief out of doors, instead of a hat, is entitled to be addressed as
+a lady in Rome; but she was not at all offended by the rank flattery of
+the speech, and she saw that the inspector was a good-natured young
+coxcomb.
+
+"You are too kind," she answered politely. "Do you think I can be of any
+use?"
+
+"There are the carabineers," objected the inspector, as if that were a
+sufficient answer. "But you may look in through the door and see the
+sick man."
+
+"I have seen him through the window. He looks very ill."
+
+"Ah, Signorina," sighed the youth, "if I were ill, I should pray the
+saints to send you--"
+
+He was interrupted by the arrival of the doctor, who asked him what was
+the matter, and was at once led in by him. Regina withdrew to a little
+distance in the direction of the church and waited. The doctor had come
+in a cab, and in a few moments she saw Marcello carried out and placed
+in it. Then she walked as fast as she could towards the church, quite
+sure that the cab would stop at the door of the hospital, and anxious to
+be within sight of it. Everything had turned out well, even beyond her
+expectations. The cab passed her at a brisk pace before she reached the
+top of the hill, and though she walked as fast as she could, it was no
+longer there when she had gone far enough to see the door. The doctor,
+who was a busy man, had handed Marcello over to the men on duty at the
+entrance, with an order he had pencilled on his card while driving up,
+and had gone on at once. But Regina was convinced that Marcello was
+there, as she hurried forward.
+
+A man in blue linen clothes and a laced cap stopped her on the steps and
+asked what she wanted.
+
+"A young man has just been brought here, very ill," she explained, "and
+I want to see him."
+
+"A very young man? Fair? Thin? From the Campagna? In rags?"
+
+"Yes. I want to see him."
+
+"You can see him to-morrow, if he is alive," answered the orderly in a
+business-like tone.
+
+"To-morrow?" repeated Regina, in a tone of profound disappointment.
+
+"To-morrow is Sunday. Friends and relatives can visit patients on
+Sundays between nine and four."
+
+"But he has no other friends," pleaded Regina. "Please, please let me go
+to him!"
+
+"To-morrow between nine and four."
+
+"No, no--to-day--now--he knows me--my name is Regina."
+
+"Not if you were the Queen of the world," answered the orderly, jesting
+with perfect calm. "You must have a written order from the
+Superintendent."
+
+"Yes, yes! Let me see him!"
+
+"You can see him on Mondays between ten and twelve."
+
+"The day after to-morrow?" cried Regina in despair.
+
+"Yes, between ten and twelve, the day after to-morrow."
+
+"But I may come to-morrow without an order?"
+
+"Yes. Friends and relatives can visit patients on Sundays between nine
+and four."
+
+The man's imperturbability was exasperating, and Regina, who was not
+patient, felt that if she stayed any longer she should try to take him
+by the collar, shake him, and force her way in. But she was much too
+sensible to do anything so rash. There was no choice but to go away.
+
+"Thank you," she said, as she turned to go down the steps.
+
+"You are welcome," the man answered very civilly, for he was watching
+her and was reflecting that he had never seen such a face and figure
+before.
+
+Some hours later, when the police communicated with the Superintendent,
+and when he found that a woman had come to the door who said that she
+knew the waif, and had been sent away, he called the orderly who had
+been on duty several hard names in his heart for having followed the
+rule of the hospital so scrupulously. He was an antediluvian, he was a
+case of arrested mental development, he was an ichthyosaurus, he was a
+new kind of idiot, he was a monumental fool, he was the mammoth ass
+reported to have been seen by a mediaeval traveller in the desert, that
+was forty cubits high, and whose braying was like the blast of ten
+thousand trumpets. The Superintendent wished he had time to select more
+choice epithets for that excellent orderly, but the police seemed so
+particularly curious about the new patient that he had no leisure for
+thinking out what he wanted.
+
+Nevertheless, the man had done his duty and nothing more nor less
+according to the rules, and Regina was forced to go away discomfited.
+
+She walked a hundred yards or more down the hill, towards San Clemente,
+and then stood still to think. The sun had risen, and Marcello was safe,
+though she could not see him. That was something. She stood there,
+young, strong, beautiful, and absolutely penniless; and Rome was before
+her.
+
+For the first time since the previous evening she asked herself what was
+to become of her, and how she was to find bread for that day and for the
+next, and for all the days afterwards. She would have robbed a church to
+feed Marcello, but she would sooner have lost her right hand than steal
+so much as a crust for herself. As for begging, she was too proud, and
+besides, no one would have given her anything, for she was the picture
+of health, her rough clothes were whole and clean, she had tiny gold
+earrings in her ears, and the red and yellow cotton kerchief on her head
+was as good as new. Nobody would believe that she was hungry.
+
+Meanwhile Marcello was made comfortable in one of the narrow white beds
+of an airy ward in the San Giovanni hospital. The institution is
+intended for women only, but there is now a ward for male patients, who
+are admitted when too ill to be taken farther. The doctor on duty had
+written him down as much reduced by malarious fever and wandering in his
+mind, but added that he might live and get well. It was wonderful, the
+doctor reflected for the thousandth time in his short experience, that
+humanity should bear so much as it daily did.
+
+The visiting physician, who was a man of learning and reputation, came
+three hours later and examined Marcello with interest. The boy had not
+suffered much by sleeping on the tail of the cart in the warm summer's
+night, and was now greatly refreshed by the cleanliness and comparative
+luxury of his new surroundings. He had no fever now and had slept
+quietly for two hours, but when he tried to remember what had happened
+to him, where he had been, and how he had come to the place where he
+was, it all grew vague and intricate by turns, and his memories faded
+away like the dreams we try to recall when we can only just recollect
+that we have had a dream of some sort. He knew that he was called
+Marcello, but the rest was gone; he knew that a beautiful creature had
+taken care of him, and that her name was Regina. How long? How many days
+and nights had he lain in the attic, hot by day and cold at night? He
+could not guess, and it tired him to try.
+
+The doctor asked two or three questions while he examined him, and then
+stood quite still for a few seconds, watching him intently. The two
+young house surgeons who accompanied the great man kept a respectful
+silence, waiting for his opinion. When he found an interesting case he
+sometimes delivered a little lecture on it, in a quiet monotonous tone
+that did not disturb the other patients. But to-day he did not seem
+inclined to talk.
+
+"Convalescent," he said, "at least of the fever. He needs good food
+more than anything else. In two days he will be walking about."
+
+He passed on, but in his own mind he was wondering what was the matter
+with the young man, why he had lost his memory, and what accident had
+brought him alone and friendless to one of the city hospitals. For the
+present it would be better to let him alone rather than tire him by a
+thorough examination of his head. There was probably a small fracture
+somewhere at the back of the skull, the doctor thought, and it would be
+easy enough to find it when the patient was strong enough to sit up.
+
+The doctor had not been long gone when an elderly man with a grizzled
+moustache and thoughtful eyes was led to Marcello's bedside by the
+Superintendent himself. The appearance of the latter at an unusual hour
+was always an event in the ward, and the nurses watched him with
+curiosity. They would have been still more curious had they known that
+the elderly gentleman was the Chief of the Police himself. The
+Superintendent raised his hand to motion them away.
+
+"What is your name, sir?" asked the Chief, bending down and speaking in
+a low voice.
+
+"Marcello."
+
+"Yes," replied the other, almost in a whisper, "you are Marcello. But
+what else? What is your family name? It is very important. Will you tell
+me?"
+
+The vague look came into Marcello's eyes, and then the look of pain, and
+he shook his head rather feebly.
+
+"I cannot remember," he answered at last. "It hurts me to remember."
+
+"Is it Consalvi?" asked the officer, smiling encouragement.
+
+"Consalvi?" Marcello's eyes wandered, as he tried to think. "I cannot
+remember," he said again after an interval.
+
+The Chief of Police was not discouraged yet.
+
+"You were knocked down and robbed by thieves, just after you had been
+talking with Aurora," he said, inventing what he believed to have
+happened.
+
+A faint light came into Marcello's eyes.
+
+"Aurora?" He repeated the name almost eagerly.
+
+"Yes. You had been talking to Signorina Aurora dell' Armi. You remember
+that?"
+
+The light faded suddenly.
+
+"I thought I remembered something," answered Marcello. "Aurora? Aurora?
+No, it is gone. I was dreaming again. I want to sleep now."
+
+The Chief stood upright and looked at the Superintendent, who looked at
+him, and both shook their heads. Then they asked what the visiting
+doctor had said, and what directions he had given about Marcello's
+treatment.
+
+"I am sure it is he," said the Chief of Police when they were closeted
+in the Superintendent's office, five minutes later. "I have studied his
+photograph every day for nearly three months. Look at it."
+
+He produced a good-sized photograph of Marcello which had been taken
+about a year earlier, but was the most recent. The Superintendent
+looked at it critically, and said it was not much like the patient. The
+official objected that a man who was half dead of fever and had lain
+starving for weeks, heaven only knew where, could hardly be quite
+himself in appearance. The Superintendent pointed out that this was
+precisely the difficulty; the photograph was not like the sick man. But
+the Chief politely insisted that it was. They differed altogether on
+this point, but quarrelled over it in the most urbane manner possible.
+
+The Superintendent suggested that it would be easy to identify Marcello
+Consalvi, by bringing people who knew him to his bedside, servants and
+others. The official answered that he should prefer to be sure of
+everything before calling in any one else. The patient had evidently
+lost his memory by some accident, and if he could not recall his own
+name it was not likely that he could recognise a face. Servants would
+swear that it was he, or not he, just as their interest suggested. Most
+of the people of his own class who knew him were out of town at the
+present season; and besides, the upper classes were not, in the Chief's
+opinion, a whit more intelligent or trustworthy than those that served
+them. The world, said the Chief, was an exceedingly bad place. That this
+was true, the Superintendent could not doubt, and he admitted the fact;
+but he was not sure how the Chief was applying the statement of it in
+his own reasoning. Perhaps he thought that some persons might have an
+interest in recognising Marcello.
+
+"In the meantime," said the Chief, rising to go away, "we will put him
+in a private room, where we shall not be watched by everybody when we
+come to see him. I have funds from Corbario to pay any possible expenses
+in the case."
+
+"Who is that man?" asked the Superintendent. "There has been a great
+deal of talk about him in the papers since his stepson was lost. What
+was he before he married the rich widow?"
+
+The Chief of Police did not reply at once, but lit a cigarette
+preparatory to going away, smoothed his hat on his arm, and flicked a
+tiny speck of dust from the lapel of his well-made coat. Then he smiled
+pleasantly and gave his answer.
+
+"I suppose that before he married Consalvi's widow he was a gentleman of
+small means, like many others. Why should you think that he was ever
+anything else?"
+
+To this direct question the Superintendent had no answer ready, nor, in
+fact, had the man who asked it, though he had looked so very wise. Then
+they glanced at each other and both laughed a little, and they parted.
+
+Half an hour later, Marcello was carried to an airy room with green
+blinds, and was made even more comfortable than he had been before. He
+slept, and awoke, and ate and slept again. Twice during the afternoon
+people were brought to see him. They were servants from the villa on the
+Janiculum, but he looked at them dully and said that he could not
+remember them.
+
+"We do not think it is he," they said, when questioned. "Why does he
+not know us, if it is he? We are old servants in the house. We carried
+the young gentleman in our arms when he was small. But this youth does
+not know us, nor our names. It is not he."
+
+They were dismissed, and afterwards they met and talked up at the villa.
+
+"The master has been sent for by telegraph," they said one to another.
+"We shall do what he says. If he tells us that it is the young gentleman
+we will also say that it is; but if he says it is not he, we will also
+deny it. This is the only way."
+
+Having decided upon this diplomatic course as the one most likely to
+prove advantageous to them, they went back to their several occupations
+and amusements. But at the very first they said what they really
+thought; none of them really believed the sick youth at the hospital to
+be Marcello. An illness of nearly seven weeks and a long course of
+privation can make a terrible difference in the looks of a very young
+person, and when the memory is gone, too, the chances of his being
+recognised are slight.
+
+But the Chief of Police was not disturbed in his belief, and after he
+had smoked several cigarettes very thoughtfully in his private office,
+he wrote a telegram to Corbario, advising him to come back to Rome at
+once. He was surprised to receive an answer from Folco late that night,
+inquiring why he was wanted. To this he replied in a second telegram of
+more length, which explained matters clearly. The next morning Corbario
+telegraphed that he was starting.
+
+The visiting physician came early and examined Marcello's head with the
+greatest minuteness. After much trouble he found what he was looking
+for--a very slight depression in the skull. There was no sign of a wound
+that had healed, and it was clear that the injury must have been either
+the result of a fall, in which case the scalp had been protected by a
+stiff hat, or else of a blow dealt with something like a sandbag, which
+had fractured the bone without leaving any mark beyond a bruise, now no
+longer visible.
+
+"It is my opinion," said the doctor, "that as soon as the pressure is
+removed the man's memory will come back exactly as it was before. We
+will operate next week, when he has gained a little more strength. Feed
+him and give him plenty of air, for he is very weak."
+
+So he went away for the day. But presently Regina came and demanded
+admittance according to the promise she had received, and she was
+immediately brought to the Superintendent's office, for he had given
+very clear instructions to this effect in case the girl came again. He
+had not told the Chief of Police about her, for he thought it would be
+amusing to do a little detective work on his own account, and he
+anticipated the triumph of finding out Marcello's story alone, and of
+then laying the facts before the authorities, just to show what ordinary
+common sense could do without the intervention of the law.
+
+Regina was ushered into the high cool room where the Superintendent sat
+alone, and the heavy door closed behind her. He was a large man with
+close-cropped hair and a short brown beard, and he had kind brown eyes.
+Regina came forward a few steps and then stood still, looking at him,
+and waiting for him to speak. He was astonished at her beauty, and at
+once decided that she had a romantic attachment for Marcello, and
+probably knew all about him. He leaned back in his chair, and pointed to
+a seat near him.
+
+"Pray sit down," he said. "I wish to have a little talk with you before
+you go upstairs to see Marcello."
+
+"How is he?" asked Regina, eagerly. "Is he worse?"
+
+"He is much better. But sit down, if you please. You shall stay with him
+as long as you like, or as long as it is good for him. You may come
+every day if you wish it."
+
+"Every day?" cried Regina in delight. "They told me that I could only
+come on Sunday."
+
+"Yes. That is the rule, my dear child. But I can give you permission to
+come every day, and as the poor young man seems to have no friends, it
+is very fortunate for him that you can be with him. You will cheer him
+and help him to get well."
+
+"Thank you, thank you!" answered the girl fervently, as she sat down.
+
+A great lady of Rome had been to see the Superintendent about a patient
+on the previous afternoon; he did not remember that she moved with more
+dignity than this peasant girl, or with nearly as much grace. Regina
+swept the folds of her short coarse skirt forward and sideways a little,
+so that they hid her brown woollen ankles as she took her seat, and with
+the other hand she threw back the end of the kerchief from her face.
+
+"You do not mind telling me your name?" said the Superintendent in a
+questioning tone.
+
+"Spalletta Regina," answered the girl promptly, putting her family name
+first, according to Italian custom. "I am of Rocca di Papa."
+
+"Thank you. I shall remember that. And you say that you know this poor
+young man. Now, what is his name, if you please? He does not seem able
+to remember anything about himself."
+
+"I have always called him Marcello," answered Regina.
+
+"Indeed? You call him Marcello? Yes, yes. Thank you. But, you know, we
+like to write down the full name of each patient in our books. Marcello,
+and then? What else?"
+
+By this time Regina felt quite at her ease with the pleasant-spoken
+gentleman, but in a flash it occurred to her that he would think it very
+strange if she could not answer such a simple question about a young man
+she professed to know very well.
+
+"His name is Botti," she said, with no apparent hesitation, and giving
+the first name that occurred to her.
+
+"Thank you. I shall enter him in the books as 'Botti Marcello.'"
+
+"Yes. That is the name." She watched the Superintendent's pen, though
+she could not read writing very well.
+
+"Thank you," he said, as he stuck the pen into a little pot of
+small-shot before him, and then looked at his watch. "The nurse is
+probably just making him comfortable after the doctor's morning visit,
+so you had better wait five minutes, if you do not mind. Besides, it
+will help us a good deal if you will tell me something about his
+illness. I suppose you have taken care of him."
+
+"As well as I could," Regina answered.
+
+"Where? At Rocca di Papa? The air is good there."
+
+"No, it was not in the village." The girl hesitated a moment, quickly
+making up her mind how much of the truth to tell. "You see," she
+continued presently, "I was only the servant girl there, and I saw that
+the people meant to let him die, because he was a burden on them. So I
+wrapped him in a blanket and carried him downstairs in the night."
+
+"You carried him down?" The Superintendent look at her in admiration.
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Regina quietly. "I could carry you up and down
+stairs easily. Do you wish to see?"
+
+The Superintendent laughed, for she actually made a movement as if she
+were going to leave her seat and pick him up.
+
+"Thank you," he said. "I quite believe you. What a nurse you would make!
+You say that you carried him down in the night--and then? What did you
+do?"
+
+"I laid him on the tail of a cart. The carter was asleep. I walked
+behind to the gate, for I was sure that when he was found he would be
+brought here, and that he would have care, and would get well."
+
+"Was it far to walk?" inquired the Superintendent, delighted with the
+result of his efforts as a detective. "You must have been very tired!"
+
+"What is it to walk all night, if one carries no load on one's head?"
+asked Regina with some scorn. "I walk as I breathe."
+
+"You walked all night, then? That was Friday night. I do not wish to
+keep you, my dear child, but if you would tell me how long Botti has
+been ill--" he waited.
+
+"This is the forty-ninth day," Regina answered at once.
+
+"Dear me! Poor boy! That is a long time!"
+
+"I stole eggs and wine to keep him alive," the girl explained. "They
+tried to make me give him white beans and oil. They wanted him to die,
+because he was an expense to them."
+
+"Who were those people?" asked the Superintendent, putting the question
+suddenly.
+
+But Regina had gained time to prepare her story.
+
+"Why should I tell you who they are?" she asked. "They did no harm,
+after all, and they let him lie in their house. At first they hoped he
+would get well, but you know how it is in the country. When sick people
+linger on, every one wishes them to die, because they are in the way,
+and cost money. That is how it is."
+
+"But you wished him to live," said the Superintendent in an encouraging
+tone.
+
+Regina shrugged her shoulders and smiled, without the slightest
+affectation or shyness.
+
+"What could I do?" she asked. "A passion for him had taken me, the first
+time that I saw him. So I stole for him, and sat up with him, and did
+what was possible. He lay in an attic with only one blanket, and my
+heart spoke. What could I do? If he had died I should have thrown myself
+into the water below the mill."
+
+Now there had been no mill within many miles of the inn on the Frascati
+road, in which there could be water in summer. Regina was perfectly
+sincere in describing her love for Marcello, but as she was a clever
+woman she knew that it was precisely when she was speaking with the
+greatest sincerity about one thing, that she could most easily throw a
+man off the scent with regard to another. The Superintendent mentally
+noted the allusion to the mill for future use; it had created an image
+in his mind; it meant that the place where Marcello had lain ill had
+been in the hills and probably near Tivoli, where there is much water
+and mills are plentiful.
+
+"I suppose he was a poor relation of the people," said the
+Superintendent thoughtfully, after a little pause. "That is why they
+wished to get rid of him."
+
+Regina made a gesture of indifferent assent, and told something like
+the truth.
+
+"He had not been there since I had been servant to them," she answered.
+"It must have been a long time since they had seen him. We found him
+early in the morning, lying unconscious against the door of the house,
+and we took him in. That is the whole story. Why should I tell you who
+the people are? I have eaten their bread, I have left them, I wish them
+no harm. They knew their business."
+
+"Certainly, my dear, certainly. I suppose I may say that Marcello Botti
+comes from Rocca di Papa?"
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Regina readily. "You may say that, if you like."
+
+As a matter of fact she did not care what he wrote in his big book, and
+he might as well write one name as another, so far as she was concerned.
+
+"But I never saw him there," she added by an afterthought. "There are
+many people of that name in our village, but I never saw him. Perhaps
+you had better say that he came from Albano."
+
+"Why from Albano?" asked the Superintendent, surprised.
+
+"It is a bigger place," explained Regina quite naturally.
+
+"Then I might as well write 'Rome' at once?"
+
+"Yes. Why not? If you must put down the name of a town in the book, you
+had better write a big one. You will be less likely to be found out if
+you have made a mistake."
+
+"I see," said the Superintendent, smiling. "I am much obliged for your
+advice. And now, if you will come with me, you shall see Botti. He has a
+room by himself and is very well cared for."
+
+The orderlies and nurses who came and went about the hospital glanced
+with a little discreet surprise at the handsome peasant girl who
+followed the Superintendent, but she paid no attention to them and
+looked straight before her, at the back of his head; for her heart was
+beating faster than if she had run a mile uphill.
+
+Marcello put out his arms when he saw her enter, and returning life sent
+a faint colour to his emaciated cheeks.
+
+"Regina--at last!" he cried in a stronger and clearer tone than she had
+ever heard him use.
+
+A splendid blush of pleasure glowed in her own face as she ran forward
+and leaned over him, smoothing the smooth pillow unconsciously, and
+looking down into his eyes.
+
+The Superintendent observed that Marcello certainly had no difficulty in
+recalling the girl's name, whatever might have become of his own during
+his illness. What Regina answered was not audible, but she kissed
+Marcello's eyes, and then stood upright beside the bed, and laughed a
+little.
+
+"What can I do?" she asked. "It is a passion! When I see him, I see
+nothing else. And then, I saved his life. Are you glad that Regina saved
+your life?" She bent down again, and her gentle hand played with
+Marcello's waving fair hair. "What should you have done without Regina?"
+
+"I should have died," Marcello answered happily.
+
+With much more strength than she had been used to find in him, he threw
+his arms round her neck and drew her face down to his.
+
+The Superintendent spoke to the nurse in a low tone, by the door, and
+both went out, leaving the two together. He was a sensible man, and a
+kind-hearted one; and though he was no doctor, he guessed that the
+peasant girl's glorious vitality would do as much for the sick man as
+any medicine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Corbario reached Rome in the afternoon, and the footman who stood
+waiting for him on the platform was struck by the change in his
+appearance. His eyes were hollow and bright, his cheeks were sunken, his
+lips looked dry; moreover, he moved a little nervously and his foot
+slipped as he got out of the carriage, so that he nearly fell. In the
+crowd, the footman asked his valet questions. Was he ill? What had
+happened to him? Was he consuming himself with grief? No, the valet
+thought not. He had been much better in Paris and had seen some old
+friends there. What harm was there in that? A bereaved man needed
+diversion. The change had come suddenly, when he had decided to return
+to Rome, and he had eaten nothing for thirty-six hours. The valet asked
+if the youth at the hospital, of whom Corbario had told him, were really
+Marcello. The footman answered that none of the servants thought so,
+after they had all been taken to see him.
+
+Having exchanged these confidences in the half-dumb language which
+servants command, they reached the gate. The footman rushed out to call
+the carriage, the valet delivered the tickets and followed the footman
+more slowly, carrying Corbario's bag and coat, and Corbario lighted a
+cigar and followed his man at a leisurely pace, absorbed in thought.
+
+Until the moment of passing the gate he had meant to drive directly to
+the hospital, which is at some distance from the station in a direction
+almost opposite to that of the Janiculum. He could have driven there in
+ten minutes, whereas he must lose more than an hour by going home first
+and then coming back. But his courage failed him, he felt faint and
+sick, and quite unable to bear any great emotion until he had rested and
+refreshed himself a little. A long railway journey stupefies some men,
+but makes others nervous and inclined to exaggerate danger or trouble.
+During the last twelve hours Corbario had been forcing himself to decide
+that he would go to the hospital and know the worst at once, but now
+that the moment was come he could not do it.
+
+He was walking slowly through the outer hall of the station when a large
+man came up with him and greeted him quietly. It was Professor Kalmon.
+Corbario started at the sound of his voice. They had not met since
+Kalmon had been at the cottage.
+
+"I wish I had known that you were in the train," the Professor said.
+
+"So do I," answered Corbario without enthusiasm. "Not that I am very
+good company," he added, looking sideways at the other's face and
+meeting a scrutinising glance.
+
+"You look ill," Kalmon replied. "I don't wonder."
+
+"I sometimes wish I had one of those tablets of yours that send people
+to sleep for ever," said Corbario, making a great effort to speak
+steadily.
+
+But his voice shook, and a sudden terror seized him, the abject fright
+that takes hold of a man who has been accustomed to do something very
+dangerous and who suddenly finds that his nerve is gone at the very
+moment of doing it again.
+
+The cold sweat stood on Folco's forehead under his hat; he stopped where
+he was and tried to draw a long breath, but something choked him.
+Kalmon's voice seemed to reach him from a great distance. Then he felt
+the Professor's strong arm under his own, supporting him and making him
+move forward.
+
+"The weather is hot," Kalmon said, "and you are ill and tired. Come
+outside."
+
+"It is nothing," Corbario tried to say. "I was dizzy for a moment."
+
+Kalmon and the footman helped him into his low carriage, and raised the
+hood, for the afternoon sun was still very hot.
+
+"Shall I go home with you?" Kalmon asked.
+
+"No, no!" cried Corbario nervously. "You are very kind. I am quite well
+now. Good-bye. Home!" he added to the footman, as he settled himself
+back under the hood, quite out of sight.
+
+The Professor stood still in the glaring heat, looking after the
+carriage, his travelling-bag in his hand, while the crowd poured out of
+the station, making for the cabs and omnibuses that were drawn up in
+rows, or crossing the burning pavement on foot to take the tram.
+
+When the carriage was out of sight, Kalmon looked up at the hot sky and
+down at the flagstones, and then made up his mind what to do.
+
+"To the hospital of San Giovanni," he said, as he got into a cab.
+
+He seemed to be well informed, for he inquired at the door about a
+certain Marcello Botti, who was in a private room; and when he gave his
+name he was admitted without even asking permission of the
+Superintendent, and was at once led upstairs.
+
+"Are you a friend of his, sir?" asked Regina, when he had looked a long
+time at the patient, who did not recognise him in the least.
+
+"Are you?" Kalmon looked at her quietly across the bed.
+
+"You see," she answered. "If I were not, why should I be here?"
+
+"She has saved my life," said Marcello suddenly, and he caught her hand
+in his and held it fast. "As soon as I am quite well we shall be
+married."
+
+"Certainly, my dear boy, certainly," replied Kalmon, as if it were quite
+a matter of course. "You must make haste and get well as soon as
+possible."
+
+He glanced at Regina's face, and as her eyes met his she shook her head
+almost imperceptibly, and smiled. Kalmon was not quite sure what she
+meant. He made a sign to her to go with him to the window, which was at
+some distance from the bed.
+
+"It may be long before he is well," he whispered. "There must be an
+operation."
+
+She nodded, for she knew that.
+
+"And do you expect to marry him when he is recovered?"
+
+She shook her head and laughed, glancing at Marcello.
+
+"He is a gentleman," she whispered, close to Kalmon's ear. "How could he
+marry me?"
+
+"You love him," Kalmon answered.
+
+Again she nodded, and laughed too.
+
+"What would you do for him?" asked Kalmon, looking at her keenly.
+
+"Die for him!"
+
+She meant it, and he saw that she did. Her eyes shone as she spoke, and
+then the lids drooped a little and she looked at him almost fiercely. He
+turned from her and his fingers softly tapped the marble window-sill. He
+was asking himself whether he could swear to Marcello's identity, in
+case he should be called upon to give evidence. On what could he base
+his certainty? Was he himself certain, or was he merely moved by the
+strong resemblance he saw, in spite of long illness and consequent
+emaciation? Was the visiting surgeon right in believing that the little
+depression in the skull had caused a suspension of memory? Such things
+happened, no doubt, but it also happened that doctors were mistaken and
+that nothing came of such operations. Who could prove the truth? The boy
+and girl might have a secret to keep; she might have arranged to get him
+into the hospital because it was his only chance, but the rest of the
+story, such as it was, might be a pure invention; and when Marcello was
+discharged cured, they would disappear together. There was the
+coincidence of the baptismal name, but men of science know how deceptive
+coincidences can be. Besides, the girl was very intelligent. She might
+easily have heard about the real Marcello's disappearance, and she was
+clever enough to have given her lover the name in the hope that he might
+be taken for the lost boy at least long enough to ensure him a great
+deal more comfort and consideration in the hospital than he otherwise
+would have got; she was clever enough to have seen that it would be a
+mistake to say outright that he was Marcello Consalvi, if she was
+practising a deception. Kalmon did not know what to think, and he wished
+the operation could be performed before Corbario came; but that was
+impossible.
+
+Regina stood beside him, waiting for him to speak again.
+
+"Do you need money?" he asked abruptly, with a sharp look at her face.
+
+"No, thank you, sir," she answered. "He has everything here."
+
+"But for yourself?" He kept his eyes on her.
+
+"I thank you, sir, I want nothing." Her look met his almost coldly as
+she spoke.
+
+"But when he is well again, how shall you live?"
+
+"I shall work for him, if it turns out that he has no friends. We shall
+soon know, for his memory will come back after the operation. The
+doctors say so. They know."
+
+"And if he has friends after all? If he is really the man I think he
+is, what then? What will become of you?"
+
+"I do not know. I am his. He can do what he likes with me."
+
+The Professor did not remember to have met any one who took quite such
+an elementary view of life, but he could not help feeling a sort of
+sympathy for the girl's total indifference to consequences.
+
+"I shall come to see him again," he said presently, turning back towards
+the bed and approaching Marcello. "Are you quite sure that you never saw
+me before?" he asked, taking the young man's hand.
+
+"I don't remember," answered Marcello, wearily. "They all want me to
+remember," he added almost peevishly. "I would if I could, if it were
+only to please them!"
+
+Kalmon went away, for he saw that his presence tired the patient. When
+he was gone Regina sat down beside the bed and stroked Marcello's hand,
+and talked soothingly to him, promising that no one should tease him to
+remember things. By and by, as she sat, she laid her head on the pillow
+beside him, and her sweet breath fanned his face, while a strange light
+played in her half-closed eyes.
+
+"Heart of my heart," she sighed happily. "Love of my soul! Do you know
+that I am all yours, soul and body, and earrings too?" And she laughed
+low.
+
+"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," Marcello answered. "I
+love you!"
+
+She laughed again, and kissed him.
+
+"You love me better than Aurora," she said suddenly.
+
+"Aurora?"
+
+"Yes, for you have forgotten her. But you will not forget Regina now,
+not even when you are very, very old, and your golden hair is all grey.
+You will never forget Regina, now!"
+
+"Never!" echoed Marcello, like a child. "Never, never, never!"
+
+"Not even when your friends try to take me away from you, love, not even
+if they try to kill me, because they want you to marry Aurora, who is a
+rich girl, all dressed with silk and covered with jewels, like the image
+of the Madonna at Genazzano. I am sure Aurora has yellow hair and blue
+eyes!"
+
+"I don't want any one but you," answered Marcello, drawing her face
+nearer.
+
+So the time passed, and it was to them as if there were no time. Then
+the door opened again, and a very pale man in deep mourning was brought
+in by the Superintendent himself. Regina rose and drew back a little, so
+that the shadow should not fall across Marcello's face, and she fixed
+her eyes on the gentleman in black.
+
+"This is the patient," said the Superintendent in a low voice.
+
+Corbario laid his hand nervously on his companion's arm, and stood still
+for a moment, holding his breath and leaning forward a little, his gaze
+riveted on Marcello's face. Regina had never before seen a man
+transfixed with fear.
+
+He moved a step towards the bed, and then another, forcing himself to go
+on. Then Marcello turned his head and looked at him vacantly. Regina
+heard the long breath Corbario drew, and saw his body straighten, as if
+relieved from a great burden. He stood beside the bed, and put out his
+hand to take Marcello's.
+
+"Do you know me?" he asked; but even then his voice was unsteady.
+
+Instead of answering, Marcello turned away to Regina.
+
+"You promised that they should not tease me any more," he said
+querulously. "Make them go away! I want to sleep."
+
+Regina came to his side at once, and faced the two men across the bed.
+
+"What is all this for?" she asked, with a little indignation. "You know
+that he cannot remember you, even if he ever saw you before. Cannot you
+leave him in peace? Come back after the operation. Then he will remember
+you, if you really know him."
+
+"Who is this girl?" asked Corbario of the Superintendent.
+
+"She took care of him when he had the fever, and she managed to get him
+here. She has undoubtedly saved his life."
+
+At the words a beautiful blush coloured Regina's cheeks, and her eyes
+were full of triumphant light; but at the same words Corbario's still
+face darkened, and as if it had been a mask that suddenly became
+transparent, the girl saw another face through it, drawn into an
+expression of malignant and devilish hatred.
+
+[Illustration: "HE MOVED A STEP TOWARDS THE BED, AND THEN ANOTHER,
+FORCING HIMSELF TO GO ON."]
+
+The vision only lasted a moment, and the impenetrable pale features were
+there once more, showing neither hate nor fear, nor any feeling or
+emotion whatever. Corbario was himself again, and turned quietly to the
+Superintendent.
+
+"She is quite right," he said. "His memory is gone, and we shall only
+disturb him. You tell me that the doctors have found a very slight
+depression in his head, as if from a blow. Do you think--but it will
+annoy him--I had better not."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the other, as he hesitated.
+
+"It is such a strange case that I should like to see just where it is,
+out of pure curiosity."
+
+"It is here," said Regina, answering, and setting the tip of one
+straight finger against her own head to point out the place.
+
+"Oh, at the back, on the right side? I see--yes--thank you. A little on
+one side, you say?"
+
+"Here," repeated Regina, turning so that Corbario could see exactly
+where the end of her finger touched her hair.
+
+"To think that so slight an injury may have permanently affected the
+young man's memory!" Corbario appeared much impressed. "Well," he
+continued, speaking to Regina, "if we ever find out who he is, his
+relations owe you a debt of gratitude quite beyond all payment."
+
+"Do you think I want to be paid?" asked Regina, and in her indignation
+she turned away and walked to the window.
+
+But Marcello called her back.
+
+"Please, Regina--please tell them to go away!" he pleaded.
+
+Corbario nodded to the Superintendent, and they left the room.
+
+"There is certainly a strong resemblance," said Folco, when they were
+outside, "but it really cannot be my poor Marcello. I was almost too
+much affected by the thought of seeing him again to control myself when
+we first entered, but when I came near I felt nothing. It is not he, I
+am sure. I loved him as if he were my own son; I brought him up; we were
+always together. It is not possible that I should be mistaken."
+
+"No," replied the Superintendent, "I should hardly think it possible.
+Besides, from what the girl has told me, I am quite sure that he lay ill
+near Tivoli. How is it possible that he should have got there, all the
+way from the Roman shore?"
+
+"And with a fractured skull! It is absurd!" Corbario was glad to find
+that the Superintendent held such a strong opinion. "It is not Marcello.
+The nose is not the same, and the expression of the mouth is quite
+different."
+
+He said these things with conviction, but he was not deceived. He knew
+that Marcello Consalvi was living and that he had seen him, risen from
+the dead, and apparently likely to remain among the living for some
+time. The first awful moment of anxiety was past, it was true, and
+Folco was able to think more connectedly than he had since he had
+received the telegram recalling him from Paris; but there was to be
+another. The doctors said that his memory would return--what would he
+remember? It would come back, beginning, most probably, at the very
+moment in which it had been interrupted. For one instant he would fancy
+that he saw again what he had seen then. What had he seen? That was the
+question. Had he seen anything but the sand, the scrubby bushes, and the
+trees round the cottage in the distance? Had he heard anything but the
+howling of the southwest gale and the thundering of the big surf over
+the bar and up the beach? The injury was at the back of his head, but it
+was a little on one side. Had he been in the act of turning? Had he
+turned far enough to see before the blow had extinguished memory? How
+far was the sudden going out of thought really instantaneous? What
+fraction of a second intervened between full life and what was so like
+death? How long did it take a man to look round quickly? Much less than
+a second, surely! Without effort or hurry a man could turn his head all
+the way from left to right, so as to look over each shoulder
+alternately, while a second pendulum swung once. A second was a much
+longer time than most people realised. Instruments made for scientific
+photography could be made to expose the plate not more than
+one-thousandth of a second. Corbario knew that, and wondered whether a
+man's eye could receive any impression in so short a time. He shuddered
+when he thought that it might be possible.
+
+The question was to be answered sooner than he expected. The doctors had
+reported that a week must pass before Marcello would be strong enough to
+undergo the operation, but he improved so quickly after he reached the
+hospital that it seemed useless to wait. It was not considered to be a
+very dangerous operation, nor one which weakened the patient much.
+
+Regina was not allowed to be present, and when Marcello had been wheeled
+out of his room, already under ether, she went and stood before the
+window, pressing down her clasped hands upon the marble sill with all
+her might, and resting her forehead against the green slats of the
+blind. She did not move from this position while the nurse made
+Marcello's bed ready to receive him on his return. It was long to wait.
+The great clock in the square struck eleven some time after he had been
+taken away, then the quarter, then half-past.
+
+Regina felt the blood slowly sinking to her heart. She would have given
+anything to move now, but she could not stir hand or foot; she was cold,
+yet somehow she could not even shiver; that would have been a relief;
+any motion, any shock, any violent pain would have been a thousand times
+better than the marble stillness that was like a spell.
+
+Far away on the Janiculum Folco Corbario sat in his splendid library
+alone, with strained eyes, waiting for the call of the telephone that
+stood on the polished table at his elbow. He, too, was motionless, and
+longed for release as he had never thought he could long for anything. A
+still unlighted cigar was almost bitten through by his sharp front
+teeth; every faculty was tense; and yet it was as if his brain had
+stopped thinking at the point where expectation had begun. He could not
+think now, he could only suffer. If the operation were successful there
+would be more suffering, doubt still more torturing, suspense more
+agonising still.
+
+The great clock over the stables struck eleven, then the quarter, then
+half-past. The familiar chimes floated in through the open windows.
+
+A wild hope came with the sound. Marcello, weak as he was, had died
+under ether, and that was the end. Corbario trembled from head to foot.
+The clock struck the third quarter, but no other sound broke the
+stillness of the near noon-tide. Yes, Marcello must be dead.
+
+Suddenly, in the silence, came the sharp buzz of the instrument. He
+leapt in his seat as if something had struck him unawares, and then,
+instantly controlling himself, he grasped the receiver and held it to
+his ear.
+
+"Signor Corbario?" came the question.
+
+"Yes, himself."
+
+"The hospital. The operation has been successful. Do you hear?"
+
+"Yes. Go on."
+
+"The patient has come to himself. He remembers everything."
+
+"Everything!" Corbario's voice shook.
+
+"He is Marcello Consalvi. He asks for his mother, and for you."
+
+"How--in what way does he ask for me? Will my presence do him good--or
+excite him?"
+
+The moment had come, and Folco's nerve was restored with the sense of
+danger. His face grew cold and expressionless as he waited for the
+answer.
+
+"He speaks most affectionately of you. But you had better not come until
+this afternoon, and then you must not stay long. The doctors say he must
+rest quietly."
+
+"I will come at four o'clock. Thank you. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+The click of the instrument, as Folco hung the receiver on the hook, and
+it was over. He shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair, his arms
+hanging by his sides as if there were no strength in them, and his head
+falling forward till his chin rested on his chest. He remained so for a
+long time without moving.
+
+But in the room at the hospital Marcello lay in bed with his head bound
+up, his cheek on the pillow, and his eyes fixed on Regina's face, as she
+knelt beside him and fanned him slowly, for it was hot.
+
+"Sleep, heart of my heart," she said softly. "Sleep and rest!"
+
+There was a sort of peaceful wonder in his look now. Nothing vacant,
+nothing that lacked meaning or understanding. But he did not answer her,
+he only gazed into her face, and gazed and gazed till his eyelids
+drooped and he fell asleep with a smile on his lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Two years had passed since Marcello had been brought home from the
+hospital, very feeble still, but himself again and master of his memory
+and thoughts.
+
+In his recollection, however, there was a blank. He had left Aurora
+standing in the gap, where the storm swept inland from the sea; then the
+light had gone out suddenly, in something violent which he could not
+understand, and after that he could remember nothing except that he had
+wandered in lonely places, trying to find out which way he was going,
+and terrified by the certainty that he had lost all sense of direction;
+so he had wandered on by day and night, as in a dark dream, and had at
+last fallen asleep, to wake in the wretched garret of the inn on the
+Frascati road, with Regina kneeling beside him and moistening his lips
+from a glass of water.
+
+He remembered that and other things, which came back to him uncertainly,
+like the little incidents of his early childhood, like the first words
+he could remember hearing and answering, like the sensation of being on
+his mother's knee and resting his head upon her shoulder, like the smell
+of the roses and the bitter-orange blossoms in the villa, like the first
+sensation of being set upon a pony's back in San Domenico, while
+Corbario held him up in the saddle, and tried to make his little hands
+hold the bridle. The inn was quite as far away as all that, and but for
+Regina he might have forgotten it altogether.
+
+She was "Consalvi's Regina" now; half Rome called her that, and she was
+famous. Naples and Florence and Milan had heard of her; she had been
+seen at Monte Carlo, and even in Paris and London her name was not
+unknown in places where young men congregate to discuss the wicked
+world, and where young women meet to compare husbands, over the secret
+and sacrificial teapot which represents virtue, or the less sacred
+bridge-table which represents vice. Smart young dandies who had never
+exchanged a word with her spoke of her familiarly as "Regina "; smarter
+and older men, who knew her a little, talked of her as "the Spalletta,"
+not without a certain respect; their mothers branded her as "that
+creature," and their wives, who envied her, called her "Consalvi's
+Regina."
+
+When people remonstrated with Folco Corbario for allowing his stepson
+too much liberty, he shook his head gravely and answered that he did
+what he could to keep Marcello in the right way, but that the boy's
+intellect had been shaken by the terrible accident, and that he had
+undoubtedly developed vicious tendencies--probably atavistic, Folco
+added. Why did Folco allow him to have so much money? The answer was
+that he was of age and the fortune was his. But why had Folco let him
+have it before he was twenty-one, ever since he was found and brought
+home? He had not had much, was the reply; at least it had not been much
+compared with the whole income he now enjoyed one could not bring up the
+heir of a great estate like a pauper, could one? So the questioners
+desisted from questioning, but they said among themselves that, although
+Folco had been an admirable husband and stepfather while his wife had
+lived, he had not shown as much good sense after her death as they had
+been led to expect. Meanwhile, no one had any right to interfere, and
+Marcello did as he pleased.
+
+Children instinctively attach themselves to whichever of their parents
+gives them the most liberty. It is sheer nonsense to deny it. Marcello
+had loved his mother dearly, but she had always been the one to hinder
+him from doing what he wished to do, because she had been excessively
+anxious about his bodily health, and over-desirous of bringing him up to
+manhood in a state of ideal moral perfection. Folco, on the other hand,
+had been associated with all the boy's sports and pleasures, and had
+always encouraged him to amuse himself, giving as a reason that there
+was no medicine like healthy happiness for a boy of delicate
+constitution. Corbario, like Satan, knew the uses of truth, which are
+numerous and not all good. Though Marcello would not have acknowledged
+it to himself, his stepfather had been nearer to him, and more necessary
+to him, than his mother, during several years; and besides, it was less
+hard to bear the loss of which he learned when he recovered, because it
+had befallen him during that dark and uncertain period of his illness
+that now seemed as if it had lasted for years, and whereby everything
+that had been before it belonged to a remote past.
+
+Moreover, there was Regina, and there was youth, and there was liberty;
+and Corbario was at hand, always ready to encourage and satisfy his
+slightest whim, on the plea that a convalescent must be humoured at any
+cost, and that there would be time enough to consider what should be
+done with Regina after Marcello was completely recovered. After all,
+Corbario told him, the girl had saved his life, and it was only right to
+be grateful, and she should be amply rewarded for all the trouble she
+had taken. It would have been sheer cruelty to have sent her away to the
+country; and what was the cost of a quiet lodging for her in Trastevere,
+and of a few decent clothes, and of a respectable middle-aged
+woman-servant to take care of her? Nothing at all; only a few francs,
+and Marcello was so rich! Regina, also, was so very unusually
+well-behaved, and so perfectly docile, so long as she was allowed to see
+Marcello every day! She did not care for dress at all, and was quite
+contented to wear black, with just a touch of some tender colour.
+Corbario made it all very easy, and saw to everything, and he seemed to
+know just how such things were arranged. He was so fortunate as to find
+a little house that had a quiet garden with an entrance on another
+street, all in very good condition because it had lately been used by a
+famous foreign painter who preferred to live in Trastevere, away from
+the interruptions and distractions of the growing city; and by a very
+simple transaction the house became the property of the minor, Marcello
+Consalvi, to do with as he thought fit. This was much more convenient
+than paying rent to a tiresome landlord who might at any time turn his
+tenant out. Corbario thought of everything. Twice a week a gardener
+came, early in the morning, and soon the garden was really pretty; and
+the respectable woman-servant watered the flowers every evening just
+before sunset. There was a comfortable Calcutta chair for Marcello in a
+shady corner, the very first time he came there, and Regina had learned
+how to make tea for him; for the respectable woman-servant knew how to
+do all sorts of things belonging to civilised life. She was so intensely
+respectable and quiet that Marcello was almost afraid of her, until it
+occurred to him that as she took so much trouble, he ought to give her a
+present of money; and when he had done this twice, he somehow became
+aware that she was his devoted slave--middle-aged and excessively
+respectable. Folco was really a very good judge of character, Marcello
+thought, since he could at once pick out such a person from the great
+horde of the unemployed.
+
+Her name was Settimia, and it was wonderful to see how she quietly
+transformed Regina into a civilised creature, who must attract attention
+by her beauty and carriage, but who might have belonged to a
+middle-class Roman family so far as manners and dress were concerned. It
+is true that the girl possessed by nature the innate dignity of the
+Roman peasant, with such a figure and such grace as any aristocrat might
+have envied, and that she spoke with the Roman accent which almost all
+other Italians admire; but though her manners had a certain repose, they
+were often of an extremely unexpected nature, and she had an
+astonishingly simple way of calling things by their names which
+sometimes disconcerted Marcello and sometimes amused him. Settimia
+civilised her, almost without letting her know it, for she was quick to
+learn, like all naturally clever people who have had no education, and
+she was imitative, as all womanly women are when they are obliged to
+adapt themselves quickly to new surroundings. She was stimulated, too,
+by the wish to appear well before Marcello, lest he should ever be
+ashamed of her. That was all. She never had the least illusion about
+herself, nor any hope of raising herself to his social level. She was
+far too much the real peasant girl for that, the descendant of thirty or
+more generations of serfs, the offspring of men and women who had felt
+that they belonged body and soul to the feudal lord of the land on which
+they were born, and had never been disturbed by tempting dreams of
+liberty, equality, fraternity, and the violent destruction of ladies and
+gentlemen.
+
+So she lived, and so she learned many things of Settimia, and looked
+upon herself as the absolute property of the man she loved and had
+saved; and she was perfectly happy, if not perfectly good.
+
+"When I am of age," Marcello used to say, "I shall buy a beautiful
+little palace near the Tiber, and you shall live in it."
+
+"Why?" she always asked. "Are we not happy here? Is it not cool in
+summer, and sunny in winter? Have we not all we want? When you marry,
+your wife will live in the splendid villa on the Janiculum, and when you
+are tired of her, you will come and see Regina here. I hope you will
+always be tired of her. Then I shall be happy."
+
+Marcello would laugh a little, and then he would look grave and
+thoughtful, for he had not forgotten Aurora, and sometimes wondered what
+she was doing, as a young man does who is losing his hold upon himself,
+and on the things in which he has always believed. He who has never
+lived through such times and outlived them, knows neither the world nor
+himself.
+
+Marcello wondered whether Aurora would ever meet Regina face to face,
+and what would happen if he were called upon to choose between the two.
+He would choose Regina, he said to himself, when he was going down the
+steep way from the villa to the little house, eager for her touch, her
+voice, her breath, and feeling in his pocket the key that opened the
+garden gate. But when the hours had passed, and he slowly walked up the
+road under the great plane-trees, in the cool of the late evening,
+glancing at the distant lights of Rome beyond the Tiber, and dimly
+conscious that something was still unsatisfied, then he hesitated and he
+remembered his boyish love, and fancied that if he met Aurora in the way
+they would stand still, each finding the other in the other's eyes, and
+silently kiss, as they had kissed long ago. Yet, with the thought, he
+felt shame, and he blushed, alone there under the plane-trees.
+
+But Aurora had never come back to Rome, and the small apartment that
+overlooked the Forum of Trajan had other tenants. It was strange that
+the Contessa and her daughter should not have returned, and sometimes
+Marcello felt a great longing to see them. He said "them" to himself at
+such times, but he knew what he meant.
+
+So time went on. Corbario said that he himself must really go to San
+Domenico, to look after the Calabrian property, but added that it would
+be quite useless for Marcello to go with him. Marcello could stay in
+Rome and amuse himself as he pleased, or he might make a little journey
+to the north, to Switzerland, to the Tyrol--there were so many places.
+Settimia would take care of Regina, and perhaps Regina herself had
+better make a little trip for a change. Yes, Settimia had travelled a
+good deal; she even knew enough French to travel in a foreign country,
+if necessary. Corbario said that he did not know where she had learned
+French, but he was quite sure she knew it tolerably well. Regina would
+be safe under her care, in some quiet place where the air would do her
+good.
+
+Thereupon Corbario went off to the south, leaving Marcello plentifully
+supplied with money and promising to write to him. They parted
+affectionately.
+
+"If you wish to go away," Corbario said, as he was leaving, "it might be
+as well to leave your next address, so that you may get letters. But
+please don't fancy that I want to know everything you do, my dear boy.
+You are quite old enough to take care of yourself, and quite sensible
+enough, too. The only thing you had better avoid for a few years is
+marriage!"
+
+Folco laughed softly as he delivered this piece of advice, and lit a
+cigar. Then he looked critically at Marcello.
+
+"You are still very pale," he observed thoughtfully. "You have not got
+back all your strength yet. Drink plenty of champagne at luncheon and
+dinner. There is nothing like it when a man is run down. And don't sit
+up all night smoking cigarettes more than three times a week!"
+
+He laughed again as he shook hands and got into the carriage, and
+Marcello was glad when he was gone, though he was so fond of him. It was
+a bore to be told that he was not strong, because it certainly was true,
+and, besides, even Folco was sometimes a little in the way.
+
+In a week Marcello and Regina were in Venice; a month later they were in
+Paris. The invaluable Settimia knew her way about, and spoke French with
+a fluency that amazed Marcello; she even taught Regina a few of those
+phrases which are particularly useful at a dressmaker's and quite
+incomprehensible anywhere else. Marcello told her to see that Regina was
+perfectly dressed, and Settimia carried out his instructions with taste
+and wisdom. Regina had arrived in Paris with one box of modest
+dimensions; she left with four more, of a size that made the railway
+porters stagger.
+
+One day Marcello brought home a string of pearls in his pocket, and
+tried to fasten it round her throat; but she would not let him do it.
+She was angry.
+
+"Keep those things for your wife!" she said, with flashing eyes and
+standing back from him. "I will wear the clothes you buy for me, because
+you like me to be pretty and I don't want you to be ashamed of me. But I
+will not take jewels, for jewels are money, just as gold is! You can buy
+a wife with that stuff, not a woman who loves you!"
+
+Her brows were level and stern, her face grew whiter as she spoke, and
+Marcello was suddenly aware, for the first time in his life, that he did
+not understand women. That knowledge comes sooner or later to almost
+every man, but many are spared it until they are much older than he was.
+
+"I did not mean to offend you," he said, in a rather injured tone, as he
+slipped the pearls into his pocket.
+
+"Of course not," she answered. "But you do not understand. If I thought
+you did, I would go back to the inn and never see you again. I should
+die, but it would not matter, for I should still respect myself!"
+
+"I only wished to please you," said Marcello apologetically.
+
+"You wish to please me? Love me! That is what I want. Love me as much as
+you can, it will always be less than I love you, and as long as you can,
+it will always be less long than I shall love you, for that will be
+always. And when you are tired of me, tell me so, heart of my heart, and
+I will go away, for that is better than to hang like a chain on a young
+man's neck. I will go away, and God will forgive me, for to love you is
+all I know."
+
+His kisses closed her flashing eyes, and her lips parted in a faint,
+expectant smile, that was not disappointed.
+
+So time passed, and Marcello heard occasionally from Corbario, and wrote
+to him once or twice, when he needed money. Folco never alluded to
+Regina, and Marcello wondered whether he guessed that she had left Rome.
+He was never quite sure how much Folco knew of his life, and Folco was
+careful never to ask questions.
+
+But the existence Marcello was leading was not calculated to restore his
+strength, which had never been great, even before his illness. Though
+Regina did not understand the language, she grew very fond of the
+theatre, for Marcello translated and explained everything; and it was
+such a pleasure to give her pleasure, that he forgot the stifling air
+and the late hours. Moreover, he met in Paris a couple of acquaintances
+a little older than himself, who were only too glad to see something of
+the beautiful Regina, so that there were often supper-parties after the
+play, and trips in motorcars in the morning, horse races in the
+afternoon, and all manner of amusements, with a general tendency to look
+upon sleep as a disease to be avoided and the wish to rest as a foolish
+weakness. It was true that Marcello never coughed, but he was very thin,
+and his delicate face had grown perfectly colourless, though he
+followed Corbario's advice and drank a good deal of champagne, not to
+mention other less harmless things, because the quick stimulant was as
+pleasant as a nap and did not involve such a waste of time.
+
+As for Regina, the life suited her, at least for a while, and her beauty
+was refined rather than marred by a little bodily weariness. The
+splendid blush of pleasure rarely rose in her cheeks now, but the clear
+pallor of her matchless complexion was quite as lovely. The constitution
+of a healthy Roman peasant girl does not break down easily under a
+course of pleasure and amusement, and it might never have occurred to
+Regina that Marcello was almost exhausted already, if her eyes had not
+been opened to his condition by some one else.
+
+They were leaving the Theatre Francais one evening, intending to go home
+on foot as the night was fine and warm. They had seen _Hernani_, and
+Regina had naturally found it hard to understand the story, even with
+Marcello's explanations; the more so as he himself had never seen the
+play before, and had come to the theatre quite sure that it must be
+easily comprehensible from the opera founded on it, which he had heard.
+Regina's arm was passed through his, and as they made their way through
+the crowd, under the not very brilliant lights in the portico, Marcello
+was doing his best to make the plot of the piece clear, and Regina was
+looking earnestly into his face, trying to follow what he said. Suddenly
+he heard an Italian voice very near to him, calling him by name, in a
+tone of surprise.
+
+"Marcello!"
+
+He started, straightened himself, turned his head, and faced the
+Contessa dell' Armi. Close beside her was Aurora, leaning forward a
+little, with an expression of cold curiosity; she had already seen
+Regina, who did not withdraw her hand from Marcello's arm.
+
+"You here?" he cried, recovering himself quickly.
+
+As he spoke, the Contessa realised the situation, and at the same moment
+Marcello met Aurora's eyes. Regina felt his arm drop by his side, as if
+he were disowning her in the presence of these two smart women who were
+friends of his. She forgave him, for she was strangely humble in some
+ways, but she hated them forthwith.
+
+The Contessa, who was a woman of the world, nodded quietly and smiled as
+if she had seen nothing, but she at once began to steer her daughter in
+a divergent direction.
+
+"You are looking very ill," she said, turning her head back as she moved
+away. "Come and see us."
+
+"Where?" asked Marcello, making half a step to follow, and looking at
+the back of Aurora's head and at the pretty hat she wore.
+
+The Contessa named a quiet hotel in the Rue Saint Honore, and was gone
+in the crowd. Marcello stood quite still for a moment, staring after the
+two. Then he felt Regina's hand slipping through his arm.
+
+"Come," she said softly, and she led him away to the left.
+
+He did not speak for a long time. They turned under the arches into the
+Palais Royal, and followed the long portico in silence, out to the Rue
+Vivienne and the narrow Rue des Petits Champs. Still Marcello did not
+speak, and without a word they reached the Avenue de l'Opera. The light
+was very bright there, and Regina looked long at Marcello's face, and
+saw how white it was.
+
+"She said you were looking very ill," said she, in a voice that shook a
+little.
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Marcello, rousing himself. "Shall we have supper at
+Henry's or at the Cafe de Paris? We are near both."
+
+"We will go home," Regina answered. "I do not want any supper to-night."
+
+They reached their hotel. Regina tossed her hat upon a chair in the
+sitting-room and drew Marcello to the light, holding him before her, and
+scrutinising his face with extraordinary intensity. Suddenly her hands
+dropped from his shoulders.
+
+"She was right; you are ill. Who is this lady that knows your face
+better than I?"
+
+She asked the question in a tone of bitterness and self-reproach.
+
+"The Contessa dell' Armi," Marcello answered, with a shade of
+reluctance.
+
+"And the girl?" asked Regina, in a flash of intuition.
+
+"Her daughter Aurora." He turned away, lit a cigarette, and rang the
+bell.
+
+Regina bit her lip until it hurt her, for she remembered how often he
+had pronounced that name in his delirium, many months ago. She could
+not speak for a moment. A waiter came in answer to the bell, and
+Marcello ordered something, and then sat down. Regina went to her room
+and did not return until the servant had come back and was gone again,
+leaving a tray on the table.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Marcello in surprise, as he caught sight of
+her face.
+
+She sat down at a little distance, her eyes fixed on him.
+
+"I am a very wicked woman," she said, in a dull voice.
+
+"You?" Marcello laughed and filled the glasses.
+
+"I am letting you kill yourself to amuse me," Regina said. "I am a very,
+very wicked woman. But you shall not do it any more. We will go away at
+once."
+
+"I am perfectly well," Marcello answered, holding out a glass to her;
+but she would not take it.
+
+"I do not want wine to-night," she said. "It is good when one has a
+light heart, but my heart is as heavy as a stone. What am I good for?
+Kill me. It will be better. Then you will live."
+
+"I should have died without you long ago. You saved my life."
+
+"To take it again! To let you consume yourself, so that I may see the
+world! What do I care for the world, if you are not well? Let us go away
+quickly."
+
+"Next week, if you like."
+
+"No! To-morrow!"
+
+"Without waiting to hear Melba?"
+
+"Yes--to-morrow!"
+
+"Or Sarah Bernhardt in Sardou's new play?"
+
+"To-morrow! To-morrow morning, early! What is anything compared with
+your getting well?"
+
+"And your new summer costume that Doucet has not finished? How about
+that?"
+
+Marcello laughed gaily and emptied his glass. But Regina rose and knelt
+down beside him, laying her hands on his.
+
+"We must go to-morrow," she said. "You shall say where, for you know
+what countries are near Paris, and where there are hills, and trees, and
+waterfalls, and birds that sing, where the earth smells sweet when it
+rains, and it is quiet when the sun is high. We will go there, but you
+know where it is, and how far."
+
+"I have no doubt Settimia knows," laughed Marcello. "She knows
+everything."
+
+But Regina's face was grave, and she shook her head slowly.
+
+"What is the use of laughing?" she asked. "You cannot deceive me, you
+know you cannot! I deceived myself and was blind, but my eyes are open
+now, and I can only see the truth. Do you love me, Marcello?"
+
+His eyes looked tired a moment ago, even when he laughed, but the light
+came into them now. He breathed a little faster and bent forward to kiss
+her. She could feel the rising pulse in his thin hands. But she leaned
+back as she knelt, and pressed her lips together tightly.
+
+"Not that," she said, after they had both been motionless ten seconds.
+"I don't mean that! Love is not all kisses. There is more. There are
+tears, but there is more too. There is pain, there is doubting, there is
+jealousy, and more than that! There is avarice also, for a woman who
+loves is a miser, counting her treasure when others sleep. And she would
+kill any one who robbed her, and that is murder. Yet there is more,
+there are all the mortal sins in love, and even then there is worse. For
+there is this. She will not count her own soul for him she loves, no,
+not if the saints in Paradise came down weeping and begging her to think
+of her salvation. And that is a great sin, I suppose."
+
+Marcello looked at her, thinking that she was beautiful, and he said
+nothing.
+
+"But perhaps a man cannot love like that," she added presently. "So what
+is the use of my asking you whether you love me? You love Aurora too, I
+daresay! Such as your man's love is, and of its kind, you have enough
+for two!"
+
+Marcello smiled.
+
+"I do not love Aurora now," he said.
+
+"But you have, for you talked to her in your fever, and perhaps you will
+again, or perhaps you wish to marry her. How can I tell what you think?
+She is prettier than I, for she has fair hair. I knew she had. I hate
+fair women, but they are prettier than we dark things ever are. All men
+think so. What does it matter? It was I that saved your life when you
+were dying, and the people meant you to die. I shall always have that
+satisfaction, even when you are tired of me."
+
+"Say never, then!"
+
+"Never? Yes, if I let you stay here, you will not have time to be tired
+of me, for you will grow thinner and whiter, and one day you will be
+breathing, and not breathing, and breathing a little again, and then not
+breathing at all, and you will be lying dead with your head on my arm. I
+can see how it will be, for I thought more than once that you were dead,
+just like that, when you had the fever. No! If I let that happen you
+will never be tired of me while you are alive, and when you are dead
+Aurora cannot have you. Perhaps that would be better. I would almost
+rather have it so."
+
+"Then why should we go away?" asked Marcello, smiling a little.
+
+"Because to let you die would be a great sin, much worse than losing my
+soul for you, or killing some one to keep you. Don't you see that?"
+
+"Why would it be worse?"
+
+"I do not know, but I am sure it would. Perhaps because it would be
+losing your soul instead of mine. Who knows? It is not in the catechism.
+The catechism has nothing about love, and I never learned anything else.
+But I know things that I never learned. Every woman does. How? The heart
+says them, and they are true. Where shall we go to-morrow?"
+
+"Do you really want to leave Paris?"
+
+To impress upon him that she was in earnest Regina squeezed his hands
+together in hers with such energy that she really hurt him.
+
+"What else have I been saying for half an hour?" she asked impatiently.
+"Do you think I am playing a comedy?" She laughed. "Remember that I
+have carried you up and down stairs in my arms," she added, "and I could
+do it again!"
+
+"If you insist on going away, I will walk," Marcello answered with a
+laugh.
+
+She laughed too, as she rose to her feet. He put out his hand to fill
+his glass again, but she stopped him.
+
+"No," she said, "the wine keeps you awake, and makes you think you are
+stronger than you are. You shall sleep to-night, and to-morrow we will
+go. I am so glad it is settled!"
+
+She could do what she would with him, and so it turned out that Marcello
+left Paris without going to see the Contessa and Aurora; and when he was
+fairly away he felt that it was a relief not to be able to see them,
+since it would have been his duty to do so if he had stayed another day.
+Maddalena dell' Armi had not believed that he would come, but she
+stopped at home that afternoon on the bare possibility. Aurora made up
+her mind that if he came she would shut herself up in her own room. She
+expected that he would certainly call before the evening, and was
+strangely disappointed because he did not.
+
+"Who was that lady with him last night?" she asked of her mother.
+
+"I do not know that--lady," answered the Contessa, with a very slight
+hesitation before pronouncing the last word.
+
+But they had both heard of Regina already.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The Contessa wrote to Corbario two days later, addressing her letter to
+Rome, as she did not know where he was. It was not like her to meddle in
+the affairs of other people, or to give advice, but this was a special
+case, and she felt that something must be done to save Marcello; for she
+was a woman of the world, with much experience and few illusions, and
+she understood at a glance what was happening to her dead friend's son.
+She wrote to Folco, telling him of the accidental meeting in the portico
+of the Theatre Francais, describing Marcello's looks, and saying pretty
+clearly what she thought of the extremely handsome young woman who was
+with him.
+
+Now Paris is a big city, and it chanced that Corbario himself was there
+at that very time. Possibly he had kept out of Marcello's way for some
+reason of his own, but he had really not known that the Contessa was
+there. Her letter was forwarded from Rome and reached him four days
+after it was written. He read it carefully, tore it into several dozen
+little bits, looked at his watch, and went at once to the quiet hotel in
+the Rue Saint Honore. The Contessa was alone, Aurora having gone out
+with her mother's maid.
+
+Maddalena was glad to see him, not because she liked him, for she did
+not, but because it would be so much easier to talk of what was on her
+mind than to write about it.
+
+"I suppose you are surprised to see me," said Folco, after the first
+conventional greeting.
+
+"No, for one may meet any one in Paris, at any time of the year. When I
+wrote, I thought Marcello must be alone here--I mean, without you," she
+added.
+
+"I did not know he had been here, until I heard that he was gone. He
+left three or four days ago. I fancy that when you wrote your letter he
+was already gone."
+
+"Do you let him wander about Europe as he pleases?" asked the Contessa.
+
+"He is old enough to take care of himself," answered Corbario. "There is
+nothing worse for young men than running after them and prying into
+their affairs. I say, give a young fellow his independence as soon as
+possible. If he has been brought up in a manly way, with a feeling of
+self-respect, it can only do him good to travel alone. That is the
+English way, you know, and always succeeds."
+
+"Not always, and besides, we are not English. It is not 'succeeding,' as
+you call it, in Marcello's case. He will not live long, if you let him
+lead such a life."
+
+"Oh, he is stronger than he looks! He is no more threatened with
+consumption than I am, and a boy who can live through what happened to
+him two years ago can live through anything."
+
+Not a muscle of his face quivered as he looked quietly into the
+Contessa's eyes. He was quite sure that she did not suspect him of
+having been in any way concerned in Marcello's temporary disappearance.
+
+"Suppose him to be as strong as the strongest," Maddalena answered. "Put
+aside the question of his health. There is something else that seems to
+me quite as important."
+
+"The moral side?" Corbario smiled gravely. "My dear lady, you and I know
+the world, don't we? We do not expect young men to be saints!"
+
+Maddalena, who had not always been a saint, returned his look coldly.
+
+"Let us leave the saints out of the discussion," she said, "unless we
+speak of Marcello's mother. She was one, if any one ever was. I believe
+you loved her, and I know that I did, and I do still, for she is very
+real to me, even now. Don't you owe something to her memory? Don't you
+know how she would have felt if she could have met her son the other
+night, as I met him, looking as he looked? Don't you know that it would
+have hurt her as nothing else could? Think a moment!"
+
+She paused, waiting for his answer and watching his impenetrable face,
+that did not change even when he laughed, that could not change, she
+thought; but she had not seen him by Marcello's bedside at the hospital,
+when the mask had been gone for a few seconds. It was there now, in all
+its calm stillness.
+
+"You may be right," he answered, almost meekly, after a little pause.
+"I had not looked at it in that light. You see, I am not a very
+sensitive man, and I was brought up rather roughly. My dear wife went to
+the other extreme, of course. No one could really be what she wished to
+make Marcello. He felt that himself, though I honestly did all I could
+to make him act according to his mother's wishes. But now that she is
+gone--" he broke off, and was silent a moment. "You may be right," he
+repeated, shaking his head thoughtfully. "You are a very good woman, and
+you ought to know."
+
+She leaned back in her chair, and looked at him in silence, wondering
+whether she was not perhaps doing him a great injustice; yet his voice
+rang false to her ear, and the old conviction that he had never loved
+his wife came back with increased force and with the certainty that he
+had been playing a part for years without once breaking down.
+
+"I will join Marcello, and see what I can do," he said.
+
+"Do you know where he is?"
+
+"Oh, yes! He keeps me informed of his movements; he is very good about
+writing. You know how fond of each other we are, too, and I am sure he
+will be glad to see me. He is back in Italy by this time. He was going
+to Siena. We were to have met in Rome in about a month, to go down to
+San Domenico together, but I will join him at once."
+
+"If you find that--that young person with him, what shall you do?"
+
+"Send her about her business, of course," answered Folco promptly.
+
+"Suppose that she will not go, what then?"
+
+"It can only be a question of money, my dear lady. Leave that to me.
+Marcello is not the first young fellow who has been in a scrape!"
+
+Still Maddalena did not trust him, and she merely nodded with an air of
+doubt.
+
+"Shall I not see Aurora?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"She is out," answered the Contessa. "I will tell her that you asked
+after her."
+
+"Is she as beautiful as ever?" inquired Folco.
+
+"She is a very pretty girl."
+
+"She is beautiful," Folco said, with conviction. "I have never seen such
+a beautiful girl as she was, even when she was not quite grown up. No
+one ever had such hair and such eyes, and such a complexion!"
+
+"Dear me!" exclaimed Maddalena with a little surprise. "I had no idea
+that you thought her so good-looking!"
+
+"I always did. As for Marcello, we used to think he would never have
+eyes for any one else."
+
+"Young people who have known each other well as children rarely fall in
+love when they grow up," answered Maddalena.
+
+"So much the better," Folco said. "Aurora and Marcello are not at all
+suited to one another."
+
+"That is true," answered the Contessa.
+
+"And besides, he is much too young for her. They are nearly of the same
+age."
+
+"I never thought of their marrying," replied Maddalena, with a little
+emphasis, "and I should certainly not choose this time to think of it!"
+
+"I fancy few men can look at your daughter without wishing that they
+might marry her, my dear lady," said Corbario, rising to go away. "Pray
+present my homage to her, and tell her how very sorry I am not to have
+seen her."
+
+He smiled as if he were only half in earnest, and he took his leave. He
+was scarcely gone when Aurora entered the sitting-room by another door.
+
+"Was it Marcello?" she asked quietly enough, though her voice sounded a
+little dull.
+
+"No, dear," answered her mother. "It was Folco Corbario. I wrote to him
+some days ago and he came to see me. Marcello has left Paris. I did not
+know you had come home."
+
+Aurora sat down rather wearily, pulled out her hatpins, and laid her hat
+on her knee. Then she slowly turned it round and round, examining every
+inch of it with profound attention, as women do. They see things in hats
+which we do not.
+
+"Mamma--" Aurora got no further, and went on turning the hat round.
+
+"Yes? What were you going to say?"
+
+"Nothing--I have forgotten." The hat revolved steadily. "Are we going to
+stay here long?"
+
+"No. Paris is too expensive. When we have got the few things we want we
+will go back to Italy--next week, I should think."
+
+"I wish we were rich," observed Aurora.
+
+"I never heard you say that before," answered her mother. "But after
+all, wishing does no harm, and I am silly enough to wish we were rich
+too."
+
+"If I married Marcello, I should be very rich," said Aurora, ceasing to
+turn the hat, but still contemplating it critically.
+
+Maddalena looked at her daughter in some surprise. The girl's face was
+quite grave.
+
+"You had better think of getting rich in some other way, my dear," said
+the Contessa presently, with an asperity that did not escape Aurora, but
+produced no impression on her.
+
+"I was only supposing," she said. "But if it comes to that, it would be
+much better for him to marry me than that good-looking peasant girl he
+has picked up."
+
+The Contessa sat up straight and stared at her in astonishment. There
+was a coolness in the speech that positively horrified her.
+
+"My dear child!" she cried. "What in the world are you talking about?"
+
+"Regina," answered Aurora, looking up, and throwing the hat upon the
+table. "I am talking about Marcello's Regina. Did you suppose I had
+never heard of her, and that I did not guess that it was she, the other
+night? I had a good look at her. I hate her, but she is handsome. You
+cannot deny that."
+
+"I do not deny it, I'm sure!" The Contessa hardly knew what to say.
+
+"Very well. Would it not be much better for Marcello if he married me
+than if he let Regina marry him, as she will!"
+
+"I--possibly--you put it so strangely! But I am sure Marcello will never
+think of marrying her."
+
+"Then why does he go about with her, and what is it all for?" Aurora
+gazed innocently at her mother, waiting for an answer which did not
+come. "Besides," she added, "the girl will marry him, of course."
+
+"Perhaps. I daresay you are right, and after all, she may be in love
+with him. Why should you care, child?"
+
+"Because he used to be my best friend," Aurora answered demurely. "Is it
+wrong to take an interest in one's friends? And I still think of him as
+my friend, though I have never had a chance to speak to him since that
+day by the Roman shore, when he went off in a rage because I laughed at
+him. I wonder whether he has forgotten that! They say he lost his memory
+during his illness."
+
+"What a strange girl you are! You have hardly ever spoken of him in all
+this time, and now"--the Contessa laughed as if she thought the idea
+absurd--"and now you talk of marrying him!"
+
+"I have seen Regina," Aurora replied, as if that explained everything.
+
+The Contessa returned no answer, and she was rather unusually silent and
+preoccupied during the rest of that day. She was reflecting that if
+Aurora had not chanced to meet Marcello just when Regina was with him
+the girl might never have thought of him again, except with a
+half-amused recollection of the little romantic tenderness she had once
+felt for the friend and playfellow of her childhood. Maddalena was a
+wise woman now, and did not underestimate the influence of little things
+when great ones were not far off. That is a very important part of
+worldly wisdom, which is the science of estimating chances in a game of
+which love, hate, marriage, fortune, and social life and death may be
+the stakes.
+
+Her impulse was to prevent Aurora from seeing Marcello for a long time,
+for the thought of a possible marriage had never attracted her, and
+since the appearance of Regina on the scene every instinct of her nature
+was against it. Her pride revolted at the idea that her daughter might
+be the rival of a peasant girl, quite as much as at the possibility of
+its being said that she had captured her old friend's son for the sake
+of his money. But she remembered her own younger years and she judged
+Aurora by herself. There had been more in that little romantic
+tenderness for Marcello than any one had guessed, much of it had
+remained, it had perhaps grown instead of dying out, and the sight of
+Regina had awakened it to something much stronger than a girlish fancy.
+
+Maddalena remembered little incidents now, of which the importance had
+escaped her the more easily because the loss of her dearest friend had
+made her dull and listless at the time. Aurora had scarcely asked about
+Marcello during the weeks that followed his disappearance, but she had
+often looked pale and almost ill just then. She had been better after
+the news had come that he had been found, though she had barely said
+that she was glad to hear of him. Then she had grown more restless than
+she used to be, and there had sometimes been a dash of hardness in the
+things she said; and her mother was now quite sure that Aurora had
+intentionally avoided all mention of Marcello. To-day, she had suddenly
+made that rather startling remark about marrying him. All this proved
+clearly enough that he had been continually in her thoughts. When very
+young people take unusual pains to ignore a certain subject, and then
+unexpectedly blurt out some very rough observation about it, the chances
+are that they have been thinking of nothing else for a long time.
+
+A good deal had happened on that afternoon, for what Corbario had said
+about Aurora, half playfully and half in earnest, had left Maddalena
+under the impression that he had been trying a little experiment on his
+own account, to feel his way. Aurora had more than once said in the
+preceding years that she did not like his eyes and a certain way he had
+of looking at her. He had admired her, even then, and now that he was a
+widower it was not at all unlikely that he should think of marrying her.
+He was not much more than thirty years old, and he had a singularly
+youthful face. There was no objection on the score of his age. He was
+rich, at least for his life-time. He had always been called a model
+husband while his wife had been alive, and was said to have behaved
+with propriety since. Maddalena tried to look at the matter coolly and
+dispassionately, as if she did not instinctively dislike him. Why should
+he not wish to marry Aurora? No one of the Contessa's acquaintances
+would be at all surprised if he did, and most people would say that it
+was a very good match, and that Aurora was fortunate to get such a
+husband.
+
+This was precisely what Folco thought; and as it was his nature to think
+slowly and act quickly, it is not impossible that he may have revolved
+the plan in his mind for a year or two while Aurora was growing up. The
+final decision had perhaps been reached on that evening down by the
+Roman shore, when Professor Kalmon had held up to his eyes the sure
+means of taking the first step towards its accomplishment; and it had
+been before him late on the same night when he had stood still in the
+verandah holding the precious and terrible little tablet in the hollow
+of his hand; and the next morning when he had suddenly seen Marcello
+close before him, unconscious of his presence and defenceless. He had
+run a great risk in vain that day, since Marcello was still alive, a
+risk more awful than he cared to remember now; but it had been safely
+passed, and he must never do anything so dangerous again. There was a
+far safer and surer way of gaining his end than clumsy murder, and from
+what the Contessa had told him of the impression she had received the
+accomplishment was not far off. She had said that Marcello had looked
+half dead; his delicate constitution could not bear such a life much
+longer, and he would soon be dead in earnest.
+
+Marcello did not write as regularly as Folco pretended, but the latter
+had trustworthy and regular news of him from some one else. Twice a
+week, wherever he might be, a square envelope came by the post addressed
+in a rather cramped feminine hand, the almost unmistakable writing of a
+woman who had seen better days and had been put to many shifts in order
+to keep up some sort of outward respectability. The information conveyed
+was tolerably well expressed, in grammatical Italian; the only names
+contained in the letters were those of towns, and hotels, and the like,
+and Marcello was invariably spoken of as "our dear patient," and Regina
+as "that admirable woman" or "that ideal companion." The writer usually
+said that the dear patient seemed less strong than a month ago, or a
+week ago, and expressed a fear that he was slowly losing ground.
+Sometimes he was better, and the news was accompanied by a conventional
+word or two of satisfaction. Again, there would be a detailed account of
+his doings, showing that he had slept uncommonly little and had no
+appetite, and mentioning with a show of regret the sad fact that he
+lived principally on cigarettes, black coffee, and dry champagne. The
+ideal companion seemed to be always perfectly well, showed no tendency
+to be extravagant, and gave proof of the most constant devotion. The
+writer always concluded by promising that Corbario's instructions with
+regard to the dear patient should be faithfully carried out in future as
+they had been in the past.
+
+This was very reassuring, and Folco often congratulated himself on the
+wisdom he had shown in the selection of Settimia as a maid for Regina.
+The woman not only did what was required of her with the utmost
+exactitude; she took an evident pleasure in her work, and looked forward
+to the fatal result at no very distant time with all the satisfaction
+which Corbario could desire. So far everything had gone smoothly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was high summer again, and the Roman shore was feverish. In the hot
+afternoon Ercole had tramped along the shore with his dog at his heels
+as far as Torre San Lorenzo to have a chat with the watchman. They sat
+in the shade of the tower, smoking little red clay pipes with long
+wooden stems. The chickens walked about slowly, evidently oppressed by
+the heat and by a general lack of interest in life, since not a single
+grain of maize from the morning feed remained to be discovered on the
+disused brick threshing-floor or in the sand that surrounded it. From
+some dark recess came the occasional grunt of the pig, attending in
+solitude to the business of getting fat before October. Now and then the
+watchman's wife moved a chair in the lower room of the tower, or made a
+little clatter with some kitchen utensils, and the sounds came out to
+the solitude sharply and distinctly.
+
+There had been a flat calm for several days. Forty yards below the tower
+the sea lay along the sandy beach like a strip of glistening white
+glass, beyond which was a broader band of greenish blue that did not
+glitter; and beyond that, the oily water stretched out to westward in an
+unending expanse of neutral tints, arabesqued with current streaks and
+struck right across by the dazzling dirty-white blaze of the August sun.
+
+Swarms of flies chased each other where the two men sat, settled on
+their backs and dusty black hats, tried to settle on their faces and
+were brushed away, crawled on the ground, on the walls, even on the
+chickens, and on the rough coat of Nino, the dog. He followed the
+motions of those he saw before him with one bloodshot eye; the other
+seemed to be fast asleep.
+
+From time to time the men exchanged a few words. Ercole had apparently
+come over to enjoy the novelty of seeing a human being, and Padre
+Francesco, the watchman, was glad to talk with some one besides his
+wife. He enjoyed the title of "Padre," because he had once been master
+of a small martingane that traded between Civita Vecchia and the south.
+In still earlier days he had been in deep water and had been boatswain
+of a square-rigger, yet there was nothing about his appearance now to
+show that he had been a sailor man. It was ten years since he had left
+the sea, and he had turned into a peasant.
+
+Ercole had told Padre Francesco that the second hay crop had been half
+spoilt by thunderstorms; also that the price of wine in Ardea had gone
+up, while the price of polenta had remained the same; also that a wild
+boar had broken out of the king's preserves near Nettuno and was
+supposed to be wandering in the brush not far away; also that if Ercole
+and Nino found him they would kill him, and that there would be a feast.
+Padre Francesco observed that his wife understood the cooking of wild
+boar with vinegar, sugar, pine-nuts, and sweet herbs, and that he
+himself knew how to salt the hams; he had also salted the flesh of
+porpoises at sea, more than once, and had eaten pickled dog-fish, which
+he considered to be nothing but young sharks, in the West Indies. This
+did not interest Ercole much, as he had heard it before, and he smoked
+in silence for a while. So did Padre Francesco; and both brushed away
+the flies. Nino rolled one bloodshot eye at his master, every time the
+latter moved; and it grew excessively hot, and the air smelt of
+chickens, rotten seaweed, and the pig. Yet both men were enjoying
+themselves after a fashion, though Ercole distrusted Padre Francesco, as
+he distrusted all human beings, and Padre Francesco looked upon Ercole
+as a person having no knowledge of the world, because he had never eaten
+pickled dog-fish in the West Indies.
+
+After a time, Padre Francesco remembered a piece of news which he had
+not yet told, cleared his throat, stirred the contents of his pipe with
+the point of a dangerous-looking knife, and looked at his companion for
+a full minute.
+
+"Speak," said Ercole, who understood these premonitory signs.
+
+"There has been one here who asked after you," Padre Francesco began.
+
+"What species of Christian?" inquired Ercole.
+
+"He was at the cottage when the blessed soul of the Signora departed, or
+just before that. It is a big gentleman with a brown beard and bright
+eyes. He looks for things in the sand and in the bushes and amongst the
+seaweed. Who knows what he looks for? Perhaps he looks for gold."
+
+"Or the souls of his dead," suggested Ercole with fine irony. "But I
+know this Signore who was at the cottage, with the brown beard and the
+bright eyes. He sometimes came to shoot quail. He also killed some. He
+is a professor of wisdom."
+
+"He asked if I knew you, but of course I said I did not. Why should he
+ask? How could I know what he wanted of you. I said that I had never
+heard of you."
+
+"You did well. Those who have business with me know where to find me.
+What else did he say?"
+
+"He asked if I had seen the young gentleman this year, and he told me
+that he had not seen him since the night before he was lost. So then I
+knew that he was a gentleman of some kind, since he had been at the
+cottage. I also asked if your masters were never coming to the Roman
+shore again."
+
+"What did he answer?" inquired Ercole, with an air of utter
+indifference.
+
+"He said an evil thing. He said that your young gentleman had gone off
+to foreign countries with a pretty peasant from Frascati, whose name was
+Regina; that it was she who had nursed him when he was ill, in some inn,
+and that out of gratitude, and because she was very pretty, he had
+given her much money, and silk dresses and earrings. That is what he
+said."
+
+Ercole gazed down at Nino's bloodshot eye, which was turned to him just
+then.
+
+"A girl called Regina," Ercole grumbled, in a tone even harsher than
+usual.
+
+"That is what he said. Why should he tell me one thing for another? He
+said that your young gentleman would perhaps come back when he was tired
+of Regina. And he laughed. That is all."
+
+A low growl from Nino interrupted the conversation. It was very low and
+long and then rose quickly and ended in a short bark, as the dog
+gathered his powerful hindquarters suddenly and raised himself,
+bristling all over and thrusting his sinewy forepaws out before him.
+Then the growl began again, but Ercole touched him lightly with the toe
+of his hob-nailed boot, and the dog was instantly silent. Both men
+looked about, but no one was to be seen.
+
+"There is a boat on the beach," said Padre Francesco, who had caught the
+faint soft sound of the keel running upon the sand.
+
+They both rose, Ercole picking up his gun as he did so; Nino, seeing
+that his master was on the alert, slunk to his heels without growling
+any more. A moment later a man's voice was heard calling on the other
+side of the tower.
+
+"Hi! Watchman of the tower! A favour! Watchman of the tower! Hi!"
+
+Padre Francesco turned the corner, followed by Ercole. A sailor in
+scanty ragged clothes and the remains of a rush hat was standing
+barefoot in the burning sand, with an earthen jug in his hand. A
+battered boat, from which all traces of paint had long since
+disappeared, was lying with her nose buried in the sand, not moving in
+the oily water. Another man was in her, very much like the first in
+looks.
+
+On seeing Nino at Ercole's heels, the man who was ashore drew back with
+an exclamation, as if he were going to run away, but Ercole spoke in a
+reassuring tone.
+
+"Be not afraid," he said. "This dog does not eat Christians. He gets
+enough to eat at home. He is not a dog, he is a lamb, and most
+affectionate."
+
+"It is an evil beast," observed the sailor, looking at Nino. "I am
+afraid."
+
+"What do you desire?" inquired Padre Francesco politely. "Is it water
+that you wish?"
+
+"As a favour," answered the man, seeing that the dog did not fly at him.
+"A little water to drink. We have been pulling all day; it is hot, and
+we have drunk what we had."
+
+"Come with me," said Padre Francesco. "Where is your vessel?"
+
+"At Fiumicino. The master sent us on an errand to Porto d'Anzio last
+night and we are going back."
+
+"It is a long pull," observed the watchman. "Tell the other man to come
+ashore and rest in the shade. I also have been to sea. The water is not
+very good here, but what there is you shall have."
+
+"Thank you," said the man gratefully, and giving Nino a very wide berth
+as he followed Padre Francesco. "We could have got some water at the
+Incastro creek, but it would have been the same as drinking the fever."
+
+"May the Madonna never will that you drink of it," said Padre Francesco,
+as they reached the shady side of the tower. "I see that you know the
+Roman shore."
+
+"It is our business," replied the man, taking off his ragged rush hat,
+and rubbing his still more ragged blue cotton sleeve over his wet
+forehead. "We are people of the sea, bringing wine and lemons to Civita
+Vecchia and taking charcoal back. Evil befall this calm weather."
+
+"And when it blows from the west-southwest we say, evil befall this time
+of storm," said Padre Francesco, nodding wisely. "Be seated in the
+shade. I will fetch water."
+
+"And also let us drink here, so that we may take the jug away full."
+
+"You shall also drink here." The old watchman went into the tower.
+
+"The last time I passed this way, it was in a west-southwest gale," said
+the man, addressing Ercole, who had sat down in his old place with his
+dog at his feet.
+
+"It is an evil shore," Ercole answered. "Many vessels have been lost
+here."
+
+"We were saved by a miracle that time," said the sailor, who seemed
+inclined to talk. "I was with a brigantine with wine for Marseilles.
+That vessel was like a rock in the sea, she would not move with less
+than seven points of the wind in fair weather. We afterwards went to Rio
+Janeiro, and it was two years before we got back."
+
+"So it was two years ago that you passed?" inquired Ercole.
+
+"Two years ago May or the beginning of June. She was so low in the water
+that she would have swamped if we had tried to carry on sail, and with
+the sail she could carry she could make no headway; so there we were,
+hove to under lower topsail and balance-reefed mainsail and storm-jib,
+with a lee shore less than a mile away. We recommended ourselves to the
+saints and the souls of purgatory, and our captain said to us, 'My fine
+sons, unless the wind shifts in half an hour we must run her ashore and
+save the cargo!' That is what he said. But I said that I knew this Roman
+shore from a boy, and that sometimes there was no bar at the mouth of
+the Incastro, so that a vessel might just slip into the pool where the
+reeds grow. You certainly know the place."
+
+"I know it well," said Ercole.
+
+"Yes. So I pointed out the spot to our captain, standing beside him, and
+he took his glasses and looked to see whether the sea was breaking on
+the bar."
+
+"The bar has not been open since I came here," said Padre Francesco,
+returning with water. "And that is ten years."
+
+The men drank eagerly, one after the other, and there was silence. The
+one who had been speaking wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and
+drew a long breath of satisfaction.
+
+"No, I daresay not," he said at last. "The captain looked all along the
+shore for a better place. Then he saw a bad thing with his glasses; for
+they were fine glasses, and though he was old, he had good sight. And I
+stood beside him, and he told me what he saw while he was looking."
+
+"What did he see?" asked Ercole, watching the man.
+
+"What did he see? I tell you it was a bad sight! Health to us all, as
+many as are here, he saw one man kill another and drag his body into
+some bushes."
+
+"Apoplexy!" observed Ercole, glancing at Padre Francesco. "Are there
+brigands here?"
+
+"I tell you what the captain said. 'There are two men,' said he, 'and
+they are like gentlemen by their dress.' 'They shoot quail,' said I,
+knowing the shore. 'They have no guns,' said he. Then he cried out,
+keeping his glasses to his eyes and steadying himself by the weather
+vang. 'God be blessed,' he cried--for he never said an evil word, that
+captain,--'one of those gentlemen has struck the other on the back of
+the head and killed him! And now he drags his body away towards the
+bushes.' And he saw nothing more, but he showed me the place, where
+there is a gap in the high bank. Afterwards he said he thought he had
+seen a woman too, and that it must have been an affair of jealousy."
+
+Ercole and Padre Francesco looked at each other in silence for a moment.
+
+"Did you hear of no murder at that time?" asked the sailor, taking up
+the earthen jar full of water.
+
+"We heard nothing," said Ercole promptly.
+
+"Nothing," echoed Padre Francesco. "The captain was dreaming. He saw
+trees moving in the wind."
+
+"Don Antonino had good eyes," answered the sailor incredulously.
+
+"What was the name of your vessel?" asked Padre Francesco.
+
+"The _Papa_" replied the sailor without a smile. "She was called
+_Papa_."
+
+Ercole stared at him a moment and then laughed; and he laughed so rarely
+that it distorted the yellow parchment of his face as if it must crack
+it. The sound of his laughter was something like the creaking of a cart
+imitated by a ventriloquist. But Padre Francesco knit his bushy brows,
+for he thought the sailor was making game of him, who had been boatswain
+on a square-rigger.
+
+"I went to sea for thirty years," he said, "but I never heard of a
+vessel called the _Papa_. You have said a silly thing. I have given you
+water to drink, and filled your jar. It is not courtesy to jest at men
+older than you."
+
+"Excuse me," answered the man politely. "May it never be that I should
+jest at such a respectable man as you seem to be; and, moreover, you
+have filled the jar with your own hands. The brigantine was called as I
+say. And if you wish to know why, I will tell you. She was built by two
+rich brothers of Torre Annunziata, who wished much good to their papa
+when he was old and no longer went to sea. Therefore, to honour him,
+they called the vessel the _Papa_. This is the truth."
+
+Lest this should seem extravagantly unlikely to the readers of this
+tale, I shall interrupt the conversation to say that I knew the _Papa_
+well, that "she" was built and christened as the sailor said, and that
+her name still stood on the register of Italian shipping a few years
+ago. She was not a brigantine, however, but a larger vessel, and she was
+bark-rigged; and she was ultimately lost in port, during a hurricane.
+
+"We have learned something to-day," observed Ercole, when the man had
+finished speaking.
+
+"It is true," the man said. "And the name of the captain was Don
+Antonino Maresca. He was of Vico."
+
+"Where is Vico?" inquired Ercole, idly scratching his dog's back with
+the stock of his gun.
+
+"Near Castellamare," answered Padre Francesco, willing to show his
+knowledge.
+
+"One sees that you are a man of the sea," said the sailor, meaning to
+please him. "And so we thank you, and we go."
+
+Ercole and the old watchman saw the two ragged sailors put off in the
+battered boat and pull away over the bar; then they went back to the
+shade of the tower and sat down again and refilled their pipes, and were
+silent for a long time. Padre Francesco's old wife, who had not shown
+herself yet, came and stood in the doorway, nodded to Ercole, fanned
+herself with her apron, counted the chickens in sight, and observed that
+the weather was hot. Then she went in again.
+
+"It is easy to remember the name of that ship," said Ercole at last,
+without glancing at his companion.
+
+"And the master was Antonino Maresca of Vico," said Padre Francesco.
+
+"But the truth is that it is none of our business," said Ercole.
+
+"The captain was mistaken," said Padre Francesco.
+
+"He saw trees moving in the wind," said Ercole.
+
+Then they looked at each other and nodded.
+
+"Perhaps the Professor was mistaken about the girl, and the silk dress
+and the gold earrings," suggested Padre Francesco, turning his eyes
+away.
+
+"He was certainly mistaken," asserted Ercole, watching him closely. "And
+moreover it is none of our business."
+
+"None whatever."
+
+They talked of other things, making remarks at longer and longer
+intervals, till the sun sank near the oily sea, and Ercole took his
+departure, much wiser in regard to Marcello's disappearance than when he
+had come. He followed the long beach for an hour till he came to the gap
+in the bank. There he stopped, and proceeded to examine the place
+carefully, going well inside it, and then turning to ascertain exactly
+where Marcello must have been when he was struck, since at that moment
+he must have been distinctly visible from the brigantine. The gap was so
+narrow that it was not hard to fix upon the spot where the deed had been
+done, especially as the captain had seen Marcello dragged quickly away
+towards the bushes. Every word of the sailor's story was stamped with
+truth; and so it came about that when Corbario believed himself at last
+quite safe, a man in his own pay suddenly discovered the whole truth
+about the attempted crime, even to the name of the principal witness.
+
+It was only in the quail season, when there were poachers about, during
+April, May, and early June, that Ercole lived in his straw hut, a little
+way from the cottage. He spent the rest of the year in a small stone
+house that stood on a knoll in sight of Ardea, high enough to be
+tolerably safe from the deadly Campagna fever. Every other day an old
+woman from the village brought him a copper conca full of water; once a
+month she came and washed for him. When he needed supplies he went to
+Ardea for them himself. His dwelling was of elementary simplicity,
+consisting of two rooms, one above the other, with grated windows and
+heavy shutters. In the lower one he cooked and ate, in the upper chamber
+he slept and kept his few belongings, which included a plentiful supply
+of ammunition, his Sunday clothes, his linen, and his papers. The latter
+consisted of a copy of his certificate of birth, his old military
+pass-book, showing that he had served his time in an infantry regiment,
+had been called in for six weeks' drill in the reserve, had been a
+number of years in the second reserve, and had finally been discharged
+from all military service. This booklet serves an Italian throughout
+life as a certificate of identity, and is necessary in order to obtain a
+passport to leave the country. Ercole kept his, with two or three other
+yellow papers, tied up in an old red cotton handkerchief in the bottom
+of the chest that held his clothes.
+
+When he got home after his visit to Padre Francesco he took the package
+out, untied the handkerchief, and looked through all the papers, one by
+one, sitting by the grated window in the twilight. He could read, and
+had once been able to write more or less intelligibly, and he knew by
+heart the contents of the paper he wanted, though he had not unfolded it
+for years. He now read it carefully, and held it some time open in his
+hand before he put it back with the rest. He held it so long, while he
+looked out of his grated window, that at last he could see the little
+lights twinkling here and there in the windows of Ardea, and it was
+almost dark in the room. Nino grew restless, and laid his grim head on
+Ercole's knee, and his bloodshot eyes began to glow in the dark like
+coals. Then Ercole moved at last.
+
+"Ugly animal, do you wish me well?" he asked, rubbing the dog's head
+with his knotty hand. "If you are good, you shall go on a journey with
+me."
+
+Nino's body moved in a way which showed that he would have wagged his
+tail if he had possessed one, and he uttered a strange gurgling growl of
+satisfaction.
+
+The next morning, the old woman came before sunrise with water.
+
+"You need not bring any more, till I let you know," Ercole said. "I am
+going away on business for a few days, and I shall shut up the house."
+
+"For anything that is in it, you might leave the door open," grumbled
+the hag, who was of a sour temper. "Give me my pay before you go."
+
+"You fear that I am going to America," retorted Ercole, producing an old
+sheepskin purse from the inside of his waistcoat. "Here is your money.
+Four trips, four pennies. Count them and go in peace."
+
+He gave her the coppers, and she carefully tied them up in a corner of
+her ragged kerchief.
+
+"And the bread?" she asked anxiously.
+
+Ercole went to the blackened cupboard, took out the remains of a stale
+loaf, drew a big clasp-knife from his pocket, and cut off a moderate
+slice.
+
+"Eat," he said, as he gave it to her.
+
+She went away grumbling, and Nino growled after her, standing on the
+door-step. When she was a hundred yards from the house, he lay down with
+his jaw on his forepaws and continued to watch her till she was out of
+sight; then he gave a snort of satisfaction and immediately went to
+sleep.
+
+Ercole left his home after sunset that evening. He locked both the upper
+and lower doors and immediately dropped the huge key into a crevice in
+the stone steps, from which one might have supposed that it would not
+be easy to recover it; but he doubtless knew what he was about. He might
+have had one of the little horses from the farm if he had wanted one,
+for he was a privileged person, but he preferred to walk. To a man of
+his wiry frame thirty or forty miles on foot were nothing, and he could
+easily have covered the distance in a night; but he was not going so
+far, by any means, and a horse would only have been in the way. He
+carried his gun, from force of habit, and he had his gun-licence in his
+pocket, with his other papers, tied up in the old red handkerchief.
+There was all that was left of the stale loaf, with the remains of some
+cheese, in a canvas bag, he had slung over his shoulder, and he had
+plenty of money; for his wages were good, and he never spent more than
+half of what he received, merely because he had no wants, and no
+friends.
+
+Under the starlight he walked at a steady pace by familiar paths and
+byways, so as to avoid the village and strike the highroad at some
+distance beyond it. Nino followed close at his heels and perfectly
+silent, and the pair might have been dangerous to any one inclined to
+quarrel with them.
+
+When Ercole was in sight of Porta San Sebastiano it was past midnight,
+and he stood still to fill and light his little clay pipe. Then he went
+on; but instead of entering the gate he took the road to the right
+again, along the Via Appia Nuova. Any one might have supposed that he
+would have struck across to that highroad some time before reaching the
+city, but it was very long since Ercole had gone in that direction;
+many new roads had been opened and some old ones had been closed, and he
+was simply afraid of losing his way in a part of the Campagna no longer
+familiar to him.
+
+[Illustration: "ERCOLE LEFT HIS HOME AFTER SUNSET THAT EVENING"]
+
+A short distance from the gate, where the inn stands that goes by the
+name of Baldinotti, he took the turning to the left, which is the
+Frascati road; and after that he walked more slowly, often stopping and
+peering into the gloom to right and left, as if he were trying to
+recognise objects in the Campagna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Corbario was not pleased with the account given by Settimia in the
+letter she wrote him after reaching Pontresina with Regina and Marcello,
+who had chosen the Engadine as the coolest place he could think of in
+which to spend the hot months, and had preferred Pontresina to Saint
+Moritz as being quieter and less fashionable. Settimia wrote that the
+dear patient had looked better the very day after arriving; that the
+admirable companion was making him drink milk and go to bed at ten
+o'clock; that the two spent most of the day in the pine-woods, and that
+Marcello already talked of an excursion up the glacier and of climbing
+some of the smaller peaks. If the improvement continued, Settimia wrote,
+it was extremely likely that the dear patient would soon be better than
+he had ever been in his life.
+
+Folco destroyed the letter, lit a cigarette, and thought the matter
+over. He had deemed it wise to pretend assent when the Contessa had
+urged him to join Marcello at once, but he had not had the least
+intention of doing so, and had come back to Paris as soon as he was sure
+that the Contessa was gone. But he had made a mistake in his
+calculations. He had counted on Regina for the love of excitement,
+display, and inane dissipation which women in her position very often
+develop when they find that a man will give them anything they like; and
+he had counted very little on her love for Marcello. Folco was still
+young enough to fall into one of the most common errors of youth, which
+is to believe most people worse than they are. Villains, as they grow
+older, learn that unselfish devotion is more common than they had
+thought, and that many persons habitually speak the truth, for
+conscience' sake; finding this out, villains have been known to turn
+into good men in their riper years, and have sometimes been almost
+saints in their old age. Corbario smoked his cigarette and mentally
+registered his mistake, and it is to be feared that the humiliation he
+felt at having made it was much more painful than the recollection of
+having dropped one deadly tablet into a little bottle that contained
+many harmless ones. He compared it in his mind to the keen
+disappointment he had felt when he had gone down to hide Marcello's
+body, and had discovered that he had failed to kill him. It is true that
+what he had felt then had been accompanied by the most awful terror he
+could imagine, but he distinguished clearly between the one sensation
+and the other. There was nothing to fear now; he had simply lost time,
+but that was bad enough, since it was due to his own stupidity.
+
+He thought over the situation carefully and considered how much it would
+be wise to risk. Another year of the life Marcello had been leading in
+Paris would have killed him to a certainty; perhaps six months would
+have done it. But a summer spent at Pontresina, living as it was clear
+that Regina meant him to live, would give the boy strength enough to
+last much longer, and might perhaps bring him out of all danger.
+
+Corbario considered what might be done, went over many plans in his
+mind, compared many schemes, for the execution of some of which he might
+have paid dearly; and in the end he was dissatisfied with all, and began
+over again. Still he reached no conclusion, and he attributed the fault
+to his own dulness, and his dulness to the life he had been leading of
+late, which was very much that which he wished Marcello to lead. But he
+had always trusted his nerves, his ingenuity, and his constitution; if
+one of the three were to fail him, now that he was rich, it was better
+that it should be his ingenuity.
+
+He made up his mind to go to the Engadine and see for himself how
+matters looked. He could stay at Saint Moritz, or even Samaden, so as
+not to disturb Marcello's idyl, and Marcello could come down alone to
+see him. He should probably meet acquaintances, and would give them to
+understand that he had come in order to get rid of Regina and save his
+stepson from certain destruction. Society was very lenient to young men
+as rich as Marcello, he reflected, but was inclined to lay all the blame
+of their doings on their natural guardians. There was no reason why
+Corbario should expose himself to such criticism, and he was sure that
+the Contessa had only said what many people clearly thought, namely,
+that he was allowing Marcello far too much liberty. The world should see
+that he was doing his duty by the boy.
+
+He left Paris with regret, as he always did, after writing to Marcello
+twenty-four hours beforehand. He wrote at the same time to Settimia.
+
+"Folco will be here to-morrow," Marcello said, as he and Regina sat
+under the pine-trees beyond the stream, a little way above the town.
+
+Regina sat leaning against the trunk of a tree, and Marcello lay on his
+side, resting on his elbow and looking up to her. He saw her face
+change.
+
+"Why should he come here?" she asked. "We are so happy!"
+
+"He will not disturb us," Marcello answered. "He will stop at Saint
+Moritz. I shall go down to see him there. I am very fond of him, you
+know, and we have not seen each other for at least two months. I shall
+be very glad to see him."
+
+The colour was sinking in Regina's face, and her eyelids were almost
+closed.
+
+"You are the master," she said quietly enough. "You will do as you
+will."
+
+He was surprised, and he felt a little resentment at her tone. He liked
+her better when she dominated him, as on that night in Paris when she
+had made him promise to come away, and had refused to let him drink more
+wine, and had sent him to bed like a child. Now she spoke as her
+forefathers, serfs born to the plough and bound to the soil, must have
+spoken to their lords and owners. There was no ancient aristocratic
+blood in his own veins; he was simply a middle-class Italian gentleman
+who chanced to be counted with the higher class because he had been born
+very rich, had been brought up by a lady, and had been more or less well
+educated. That was all. It did not seem natural to him that she should
+call him "the master" in that tone. He knew that she was not his equal,
+but somehow it was a little humiliating to have to own it, and he often
+wished that she were. Often, not always; for he had never been sure that
+he should have cared to make her his wife, had she been ever so well
+born. He scarcely knew what he really wanted now, for he had lost his
+hold on himself, and was content with mere enjoyment from day to day. He
+could no longer imagine living without her, and while he was conscious
+that the present state of things could not last very long, he could not
+face the problem of the future.
+
+He did not answer at once, and she sat quite still, almost closing her
+eyes.
+
+"Why should you be displeased because I am going to see Folco?" he asked
+after a while.
+
+"He comes to take you away from me," she answered, without moving.
+
+"That is absurd!" cried Marcello, annoyed by her tone.
+
+"No. It is true. I know it."
+
+"You are unreasonable. He is the best friend I have in the world. Do you
+expect me to promise that I will never see him again?"
+
+"You are the master."
+
+She repeated the words in the same dull tone, and her expression did not
+change in the least. Marcello moved and sat up opposite to her, clasping
+his hands round his knees. He was very thin, but the colour was already
+coming back to his face, and his eyes did not look tired.
+
+"Listen to me," he said. "You must put this idea out of your head. It
+was Folco who found the little house in Trastevere for you. He arranged
+everything. It was he who got you Settimia. He did everything to make
+you comfortable, and he has never disturbed us once when we have been
+together. He never so much as asked where I was going when I used to go
+down to see you every afternoon. No friend could have done more."
+
+"I know it," Regina answered; but still there was something in her tone
+which he could not understand.
+
+"Then why do you say that he means to separate us?"
+
+Regina did not reply, but she opened her eyes and looked into Marcello's
+long and lovingly. She knew something that he did not know, and which
+had haunted her long. When Folco had come to the bedside in the
+hospital, she had seen the abject terror in his face, the paralysing
+fear in his attitude, the trembling limbs and the cramped fingers. It
+had only lasted a moment, but she could never forget it. A child would
+have remembered how Folco looked then, and Regina knew that there was a
+mystery there which she could not understand, but which frightened her
+when she thought of it. Folco had not looked as men do who see one they
+love called back from almost certain death.
+
+"What are you thinking?" Marcello asked, for her deep look stirred his
+blood, and he forgot Folco and everything in the world except the
+beautiful creature that sat there, within his reach, in the lonely
+pine-woods.
+
+She understood, and turned her eyes to the distance; and she saw the
+quiet room in the hospital, the iron bedstead painted white, the smooth
+pillow, Marcello's emaciated head, and Corbario's face.
+
+"I was thinking how you looked when you were ill," she answered simply.
+
+The words and the tone broke the soft little spell that had been weaving
+itself out of her dark eyes. Marcello drew a short, impatient breath and
+threw himself on his side again, supporting his head on his hand and
+looking down at the brown pine-needles.
+
+"You do not know Folco," he said discontentedly. "I don't know why you
+should dislike him."
+
+"I will tell you something," Regina answered. "When you are tired of me,
+you shall send me away. You shall throw me away like an old coat."
+
+"You are always saying that!" returned Marcello, displeased. "You know
+very well that I shall never be tired of you. Why do you say it?"
+
+"Because I shall not complain. I shall not cry, and throw myself on my
+knees, and say, 'For the love of heaven, take me back!' I am not made
+like that. I shall go, without any noise, and what must be will be.
+That is all. Because I want nothing of you but love, I shall go when you
+have no more love. Why should I ask you for what you have not? That
+would be like asking charity of the poor. It would be foolish. But I
+shall tell you something else."
+
+"What?" asked Marcello, looking up to her face again, when she had
+finished her long speech.
+
+"If any one tries to make me go before you are tired of me, it shall be
+an evil day for him. He shall wish that he had not been born into this
+world."
+
+"You need not fear," Marcello said. "No one shall come between us."
+
+"Well, I have spoken. It does not matter whether I fear Signor Corbario
+or not, but if you like I will tell him what I have told you, when he
+comes. In that way he will know."
+
+She spoke quietly, and there was no murderous light in her eyes, nor any
+dramatic gesture with the words; but she was a little paler than before,
+and there was an odd fixedness in her expression, and Marcello knew that
+she was deeply moved, by the way she fell back into her primitive
+peasant's speech, not ungrammatical, but oddly rough and forcible
+compared with the language of educated society which she had now learned
+tolerably well from him.
+
+After that she was silent for a while, and then they talked as usual,
+and the day went by as other days had gone.
+
+On the next afternoon Folco Corbario reached Saint Moritz and sent a
+note up to Marcello asking him to come down on the following morning.
+
+Regina was left alone for a few hours, and she went out with the idea of
+taking a long walk by herself. It would be a relief and almost a
+pleasure to walk ten miles in the clear air, breathing the perfume of
+the pines and listening to the roar of the torrent. Marcello could not
+walk far without being tired, and she never thought of herself when he
+was with her; but when she was alone a great longing sometimes came over
+her to feel the weight of a conca full of water on her head, to roll up
+her sleeves and scrub the floors, to carry burdens and work with her
+hands all day long, as she had done ever since she was a child, with the
+certainty of being tired and hungry and sleepy afterwards. Her hands had
+grown smooth and white in a year, and her feet were tender, and she had
+almost forgotten what bodily weariness meant.
+
+But she was alone this morning, and she was full of gloomy
+presentiments. To stay indoors, or even to go and sit in the accustomed
+place under the pine-trees, would be unbearable. She felt quite sure
+that when Marcello came back he would be changed, that his expression
+would be less frank and natural, that he would avoid her eyes, and that
+by and by he would tell her something that would hurt her very much.
+Folco had come to take him away, she was quite sure, and it would be
+intolerable to sit still and think of it.
+
+She walked fast along the road that leads to the Rosegg glacier, not
+even glancing at the few people she met, though most of them stared at
+her, for almost every one in Pontresina knew who she was. The reputation
+of a great beauty is soon made, and Regina had been seen often enough in
+Paris alone with Marcello in a box at the theatre, or dining with him
+and two or three other young men at Ritz's or the Cafe Anglais, to be an
+object of interest to the clever Parisian "chroniclers." The papers had
+duly announced the fact that the beauty had arrived at Pontresina, and
+the dwellers in the hotel were delighted to catch a glimpse of her,
+while those at Saint Moritz wished that she and Marcello had taken up
+their quarters there instead of in the higher village. Old maids with
+shawls and camp-stools glared at her round the edge of their parasols.
+English girls looked at her in frank admiration, till they were reproved
+by their mothers, who looked at her with furtive interest. Young
+Englishmen pretended not to see her at all, as they strode along with
+their pipes in their mouths; but they had an odd habit of being about
+when she passed. An occasional party of German students, who are the
+only real Bohemians left to the world in these days of progress, went
+sentimentally mad about her for twenty-four hours, and planned serenades
+in her honour which did not come off. A fashionable Italian composer
+dedicated a song to her, and Marcello asked him to dinner, for which he
+was more envied by the summer colony than for his undeniable talent. The
+Anglican clergyman declared that he would preach a sermon against her
+wickedness, but the hotel-keepers heard of his intention and
+unanimously requested him to let her alone, which, he did, reluctantly
+yielding to arguments which shall remain a secret. A certain Archduchess
+who was at Saint Moritz and was curious to see her adopted the simple
+plan of asking her to tea without knowing her, at which Marcello was
+furious; a semi-imperial Russian personage unblushingly scraped
+acquaintance with Marcello and was extremely bland for a few days, in
+the hope of being introduced to Regina. When he found that this was
+impossible, he went away, not in the least disconcerted, and he was
+heard to say that the girl "would go far."
+
+Regina would have been blind if she had not been aware that she
+attracted all this attention, and as she was probably not intended by
+nature for a saint, she would have been pleased by it if there had been
+room in her thoughts for any one but Marcello--even for herself.
+
+She walked far up the road, and after the first mile or two she met no
+one. At that hour the people who made excursions were already far away,
+and those who meant to do nothing stayed nearer to Pontresina. She grew
+tired of the road after a time. It led straight to the foot of the
+glacier, and she was not attracted by snow and ice as northern people
+are; there was something repellent to her in the thought of the
+bleakness and cold, and the sunshine itself looked as hard as the
+distant peaks on which it fell. But on the right there were rocky spurs
+of the mountains, half covered with short trees and brilliant with wild
+flowers that grew in little natural gardens here and there, not far
+below the level of perpetual snow. She left the road, and began to climb
+where there was no path. The air was delicious with the scent of flowers
+and shrubs; there were alp-roses everywhere, and purple gentian, and the
+little iva blossom that has an aromatic smell, and on tiny moss ledges
+the cold white stars of the edelweiss seemed to be keeping themselves as
+far above reach as they could. But she climbed as lightly as a savage
+woman, and picked them and sat down to look at them in the sunshine.
+Just beyond where she rested, the rock narrowed suddenly to a steep
+pass, within which were dark shadows. People who do not attempt anything
+in the way of ascending peaks often wander in that direction in search
+of edelweiss, but Regina fancied that she was sure to be alone as long
+as she pleased to stay.
+
+If she had not been sure of that she would not have taken off her left
+shoe to shake out some tiny thing that had got into it and that annoyed
+her. It turned out to be a bit of pine-needle. It was pleasant to feel
+her foot freed from the hot leather and resting on the thick moss, and
+so the other shoe came off too, and was turned upside down and shaken,
+as an excuse, for there was nothing in it, and both feet rested in the
+moss, side by side. She wished she could take off her stockings, and if
+there had been a stream she would have done it, so sure was she that no
+one would disturb her, up there amongst the rocks and ever so far from
+Pontresina. It would have been delightful to paddle in the cold running
+water, for it was much hotter than she had ever supposed that it could
+be in such a place.
+
+She took off her straw hat, and fanned herself gently with it, letting
+the sunshine fall full upon her thick black hair. She had never owned a
+hat in her life till she had been installed in the little house in
+Trastevere, and she hated the inconvenient things. What was her hair
+for, if it could not protect her head? But a straw hat made a very good
+fan. The air was hot and still, and there were none of those thousand
+little sounds which she would have heard in the chestnut woods above
+Frascati.
+
+A little cry broke the silence, and she turned her head in the direction
+whence it came. Then she dropped her hat, sprang to her feet, and ran
+forwards, forgetting that she had no shoes on. She saw a figure clinging
+to the rocks, where they suddenly narrowed, and she heard the cry again,
+desperate with fear and weak with effort. A young girl had evidently
+been trying to climb down, when she had lost her footing, and had only
+been saved from a bad fall because her grey woollen frock had caught her
+upon a projecting point of granite, giving her time to snatch at the
+strong twigs of some alp-roses, and to find a very slight projection on
+which she could rest the toe of one shoe. She was hanging there with her
+face to the rock, eight or ten feet from the ground, which was strewn
+with big stones, and she was in such a position that she seemed unable
+to turn her head in order to look down.
+
+In ten seconds Regina was standing directly below the terrified girl,
+raising herself on tiptoe, and trying to reach her feet with her hands,
+to guide them to a hold; but she could not.
+
+"Don't be frightened," Regina said in Italian, which was the only
+language she knew.
+
+"I cannot hold on!" answered the girl, trying to look down, but feeling
+that her foot would slip if she turned her head far enough.
+
+"Yes, you can," Regina replied, too much roused to be surprised that the
+answer had come in her own language. "Your dress will hold you, even if
+you let go with your hands. It is new and it is strong, and it is fairly
+caught on the rock. I can see that."
+
+"But I can't hang here until you go and get help," cried the girl, not
+much reassured.
+
+"I am going to climb to the top by an easier way and pull you up again,"
+Regina answered. "Then we can get down together."
+
+While Regina was speaking she had already begun the ascent, which was
+easy enough for her, at the point she had chosen, though many an Alpine
+climber might have envied the quickness and sureness of her hold with
+feet and hands. She realised that she had forgotten her shoes now, and
+was glad that she had taken them off.
+
+"One minute more!" she cried in an encouraging tone, when she had almost
+reached the top.
+
+"Quick!" came the imploring answer.
+
+Then Regina was lying flat on the ledge above the girl, stretching both
+hands down and catching the slender white wrists with a hold like
+steel. And then, feeling herself held and safe to move, the girl looked
+up, and Regina was looking into Aurora's face below her. For one instant
+the two did not recognise each other, for they had only seen each other
+once, by night, under the portico of the Theatre Francais. But an
+instant later a flush of anger rose to Aurora's forehead, and the dark
+woman turned pale, and her brows were suddenly level and stern. They
+hated each other, as the one hung there held by the other's hands, and
+the black eyes gazed savagely into the angry blue ones. Aurora was not
+frightened any longer; she was angry because she was in Regina's power.
+The strong woman could save her if she would, and Aurora would despise
+herself ever afterwards for having been saved by her. Or the strong
+woman could let her fall, and she would probably be maimed for life if
+she were not killed outright. That seemed almost better. She had never
+understood before what it could mean to be altogether in the power of an
+enemy.
+
+Regina meant to save her; that was clear. With quick, commanding words
+she told her what to do.
+
+"Set your knees against the rock and pull yourself up a little by my
+hands. So! I can pull you higher now. Get one knee well on that ledge.
+Now I will hold your left hand with both mine while you disentangle your
+frock from the point. Now put your right hand round my neck while I
+raise myself a little. Yes, that way. Now, hold on tight!"
+
+Regina made a steady effort, lifting fully half Aurora's weight with
+her, as she got first upon one knee and then upon both.
+
+[Illustration: "REGINA MADE A STEADY EFFORT, LIFTING FULLY HALF AURORA'S
+WEIGHT WITH HER."]
+
+"There! Take breath and then scramble over the edge," she said.
+
+A few seconds, another effort, and Aurora sank exhausted beside Regina,
+half sitting, half lying, and resting on one hand.
+
+She looked up sideways at the dark woman's face; for Regina stood
+upright, gazing down into the valley. Aurora turned her eyes away, and
+then looked up again; she had recovered her breath now.
+
+"Thank you," she said, with an effort.
+
+"It is nothing," Regina answered in an indifferent tone, and without so
+much as moving her head; she was no more out of breath than if she had
+been sitting still.
+
+The fair girl hated her at that moment as she had never hated any one in
+her short life, nor had ever dreamed of hating. The flush of anger rose
+again and again to her forehead, to the very roots of her auburn hair,
+and lingered a second and sank again. Regina stood perfectly motionless,
+her face as unchanging as marble.
+
+Aurora rose to her feet, and leaned against the rock. She had suddenly
+felt herself at a disadvantage in remaining seated on the ground while
+her adversary was standing. It was the instinct of the animal that
+expects to be attacked. When two people who hate each other or love each
+other very much meet without warning in a very lonely place, the fierce
+old passions of the stone age may take hold of them and sway them, even
+nowadays.
+
+For a time that seemed long, there was silence; without words each knew
+that the other had recognised her. The peasant woman spoke first, though
+with an evident effort, and without turning her eyes.
+
+"When you are rested, we will go down," she said.
+
+Aurora moved a step towards the side on which Regina had climbed up.
+
+"I think I can get down alone," she answered coldly.
+
+Regina looked at her and laughed with a little contempt.
+
+"You will break your neck if you try," she said. "You cannot climb at
+all!"
+
+"I think I can get down," Aurora repeated.
+
+She went to the edge and was going to begin the attempt when Regina
+seized her by the wrist and dragged her back in spite of her resistance.
+
+"I have something to tell you first," Regina said. "Afterwards I will
+take you down, and you shall not fall. You shall reach the bottom safely
+and go home alone, or I will show you the way, as you please."
+
+"Let go of my wrist!" Aurora spoke angrily, for the strong grasp hurt
+her and humiliated her.
+
+"Listen to me," continued Regina, loosing her hold at once. "I am
+Regina. You are Aurora. We have heard of each other, and we have met.
+Let us talk. This is a good place and we are alone, and the day is
+long, and we may not meet again soon. We will say what we have to say
+now, and then we will part."
+
+"What is there to be said?" Aurora asked coldly and drawing back a
+little.
+
+"We two love the same man," Regina said. "Is that nothing? You know it
+is true. If we were not Christians we should try to kill each other
+here, where it is quiet. I could easily have killed you just now, and I
+wished to."
+
+"I wonder why you did not!" exclaimed Aurora, rather scornfully.
+
+"I thought with myself thus: 'If I kill her, I shall always have the
+satisfaction of it as long as I live. This is the truth. But I shall go
+to prison for many years and shall not see him again, therefore I will
+not do it. Besides, it will not please him. If it would make him happy I
+would kill her, even if I were to go to the galleys for it. But it would
+not. He would be very angry.' This is what I thought; and I pulled you
+up. And now, I will not let you hurt yourself in getting down, because
+he would be angry with me if he knew that it was my fault."
+
+Aurora listened to this extraordinary argument in silent surprise. She
+was not in the least frightened, but she saw at a glance that Regina was
+quite in earnest, and she knew her own people, and that the Roman
+peasants are not the gentlest of the Italians.
+
+"He would be very angry," Regina repeated. "I am sure he would!"
+
+"Why should he be angry?" Aurora asked, in a tone half contemptuous and
+yet half sad.
+
+"I know he would, because when he raved in his fever he used to call for
+you."
+
+Aurora started and fixed her eyes on Regina's.
+
+"Yes," Regina said, answering the look. "He often called you by name. He
+loved you once."
+
+She pronounced the words with an accent of pity, drawing herself up to
+her full height; and there was triumph in the light of her eyes. It is
+not every woman that has a chance of saying so much to her rival.
+
+"We were children then," Aurora said, in the very words she had used to
+her mother more than two years earlier.
+
+She was almost as pale as Regina now, for the thrust had been straight
+and sure, and right at her heart. But she was prouder than the peasant
+woman who had wounded her.
+
+"I have heard that you saved his life," she said presently. "And he
+loves you. You are happy!"
+
+"I should always be happy if he and I were alone in the world," Regina
+answered, for she was a little softened by the girl's tone. "But even
+now they are trying to part us."
+
+"To part you?" Again Aurora looked up suddenly. "Who is trying to do
+that? A woman?"
+
+Regina laughed a little.
+
+"You are jealous," she said. "That shows that you love him still. No. It
+is not a woman."
+
+"Corbario?" The name rose instinctively to Aurora's lips.
+
+"Yes," Regina answered. "That is why I am left alone this morning.
+Signor Corbario is at Saint Moritz and Marcello is gone down to see him.
+I know he is trying to separate us. You did not know that he was so
+near?"
+
+"We only came yesterday afternoon," Aurora answered. "We did not know
+that--that Signor Consalvi was here, or we should not have come at all."
+
+It had stung her to hear Regina speak of him quite naturally by his
+first name. Regina felt the rebuke.
+
+"I am truly sorry that I should have accidentally found myself in your
+path," she said, emphasising the rather grand phrase, and holding her
+handsome head very high.
+
+Aurora almost smiled at this sudden manifestation of the peasant's
+nature, and wondered whether Regina ever said such things to Marcello,
+and whether, if she did, they jarred on him very much. The speech had
+the very curious effect of restoring Aurora's sense of superiority, and
+she answered more kindly.
+
+"You need not be sorry," she said. "If you had not chanced to be here I
+should probably be lying amongst the rocks down there with several
+broken bones."
+
+"If it were not by my fault I should not care," Regina retorted, with
+elementary frankness.
+
+"But I should!" Aurora laughed, in spite of herself, and liking this
+phase of Regina's character better than any she had yet seen. "Come,"
+she said, with a sudden generous impulse, and holding out her hand,
+"let us stop quarrelling. You saved me from a bad accident, and I was
+too ungenerous to be grateful. I thank you now, with all my heart."
+
+Regina was surprised and stared hard at her for a moment, and then
+glanced at her outstretched hand.
+
+"You would not take my hand if there were any one here to see."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because they have told you that I am a wicked woman," Regina answered,
+a slight blush rising in her cheeks. "And perhaps it is true. But it was
+for him."
+
+"I would take your hand anywhere, because you saved his life," said
+Aurora, and her voice shook a little as she said the last words. "And
+besides, no one has told me that you are wicked. Come, what is the use
+of hating each other?"
+
+Regina took her hand reluctantly, but not suspiciously, and held it a
+moment.
+
+"It does not mean that I shall not hate you if he ever loves you again,"
+she said. "If I made you think that it would be treachery, and that is
+the worst sin."
+
+"It only means that I thank you now, quite honestly," Aurora answered,
+and their hands parted.
+
+"Very well." Regina seemed satisfied. "And I thank you for taking my
+hand," she added, with something oddly like real gratitude, "and because
+you said you would do it anywhere, even before other women. I know what
+I am, and what people call me. But it was for him. Let us not talk of
+it any more. I will help you down, and you shall go home alone."
+
+"My mother is waiting for me far down, towards the village," Aurora
+said.
+
+"All the better. A young lady like you should not go about without any
+one. It is not proper."
+
+Aurora suppressed a smile at the thought of being reproved concerning
+the proprieties by "Marcello's Regina," and she began the descent.
+Regina went down first, facing the rock, and planting the young girl's
+feet in the best stepping places, one after the other, with constant
+warnings and instructions as to holding on with her hands. They reached
+the bottom in safety, and came to the place where Regina had left her
+hat and shoes. She sat down where she had been sitting when she had
+first heard the cry, and began to put them on.
+
+"I had taken them off for coolness as I sat here," she explained. "You
+see, until I was fourteen I only wore them on Sundays."
+
+"And yet you have such beautiful feet," Aurora said.
+
+"Have I?" Regina asked indifferently. "I thought all feet were alike.
+But I have torn my stocking--it is hard to get the shoe on."
+
+"Let me help you." Aurora knelt down quickly, and began to loosen the
+lacing further, but Regina protested, flushing deeply and trying to draw
+her foot back.
+
+"No, no!" she cried. "You are a lady!"
+
+"What difference does that make?" asked Aurora, laughing and insisting.
+
+"This is not right!" Regina still protested, and the blush had not left
+her cheeks.
+
+But Aurora smoothed the torn stocking under the sole of each foot, and
+slipped on the shoes, which were by no means tight, and tied the lacing
+fast.
+
+"Thank you, Signorina," Regina said, much confused. "You are too good!"
+
+She picked up her hat and put it on, but she was not clever with the
+pin, for she was used to having Settimia do everything for her which she
+had not learned to do for herself before she had come to Rome.
+
+"I can never manage it without Settimia," she said, as if excusing
+herself for her awkwardness, as she again submitted to Aurora's help.
+
+"Settimia?" repeated the young girl, as she put the hat on and thrust a
+long pin through it. "Who is Settimia?"
+
+"Our--I mean my maid," Regina explained. "Thank you. You are too good!"
+
+"It is an uncommon name," Aurora said, looking critically at the hat.
+"But I think I have heard it before."
+
+"She is a wonderful woman. She knows French. She knows everything!"
+
+Aurora said nothing to this, but seemed to be trying to recall something
+she had long forgotten. Regina was very busy in her turn, pulling down
+the girl's frock all round, and brushing it with her hand as well as
+she could, and picking off bits of dry grass and thistles that clung to
+the grey woollen. Aurora thanked her.
+
+"The way down is very easy now," Regina said. "A few steps farther on we
+can see the road."
+
+"After all, why should you not come with me till we find my mother?"
+Aurora asked.
+
+"No," Regina answered with quiet decision. "I am what I am. You must not
+be seen with Regina. Do not tell your mother that you have been with me,
+and I shall not tell Marcello--I mean, Signor Consalvi."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Neither of them would be pleased. Trust me. I know the world. Good-bye,
+and the Madonna accompany you; and remember what I said when I took your
+hand."
+
+So they parted, and Regina stood up a long time, and watched the slender
+grey figure descending to the road in the valley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+"Variety, my dear Marcello, variety! There is nothing like it. If I were
+you, I would make some change, for your life must be growing monotonous,
+and besides, though I have not the least intention of reading you a
+lecture, you have really made your doings unnecessarily conspicuous of
+late. The Paris chroniclers have talked about you enough for the
+present. Don't you think so? Yes, finish the bottle. I always told you
+that champagne was good for you."
+
+Marcello filled his glass and sipped the wine before he answered. It had
+not gone to his head, but there was colour in his lean cheeks, his eyes
+were brighter than usual, and he felt the familiar exhilaration which he
+had missed of late.
+
+"I have been drinking milk for ten days," he said with a smile, as he
+set down the glass.
+
+"Good in its way, no doubt," Corbario answered genially, "but a little
+tiresome. One should often change from simple things to complicated
+ones. It is the science of enjoyment. Besides, it is bad for the
+digestion to live always on bread and milk."
+
+"I don't live on that altogether," laughed Marcello.
+
+"I mean it metaphorically, my dear boy. There is such a thing as
+simplifying one's existence too much. That sometimes ends in getting
+stuck. Now you cannot possibly allow yourself to get stuck in your
+present position. You know what I mean. Oh, I don't blame you! If I were
+your age I should probably do the same thing, especially if I had your
+luck. Blame you? No! Not in the least. The cigarettes are there. You've
+not given up smoking too? No, that's right. A man without a small vice
+is as uninteresting as a woman without a past or a landscape without
+shadows. Cigarettes never hurt anybody. Look at me! I used to smoke
+fifty a day when I was your age."
+
+Marcello blew a cloud of smoke, stirred his coffee, and leaned back. He
+had scarcely heard what Corbario said, but the elder man's careless
+chatter had put him at his ease.
+
+"Folco," he said quietly, "I want to ask you a question, and I want you
+to answer me seriously. Will you?"
+
+"As well as I can," answered Corbario, instantly changing his tone and
+growing earnest.
+
+"Don't be surprised," Marcello said, half apologetically, as if he were
+already weakening. "I shall never do anything without your advice. Of
+course you know how I feel about all this, that I am leading a
+disorderly life, and--well, you understand!"
+
+"Perfectly, my dear boy. I only wish to help you out of it as soon as
+possible, if you want to be helped. I'm quite sure that you will pull
+through in time. I have always believed in you."
+
+"Thank you. I know you have. Well, I'll ask you my question. You know
+well enough that I shall never care for society much, don't you?"
+
+"Society will care for you," answered Folco. "What is the question?"
+
+"I'm coming to it, but I want to explain, or it will not be quite clear.
+You see, it is not as if I were a personage in the world."
+
+"What sort of personage? Please explain."
+
+"I mean, if I were the head of a great house, with a great title and
+hereditary estate."
+
+"What has that to do with it?" Folco was mystified.
+
+"If I were, it would make a difference, I suppose. But I'm not. I'm
+plain Marcello Consalvi, no better than any one else."
+
+"But vastly richer," Folco suggested.
+
+"I wish I were not. I wish I were a poor clerk, working for my living."
+
+"The air of this place is not good for you, my boy." Folco laughed
+gaily.
+
+"No, don't laugh! I'm in earnest. If I were a poor man, nobody would
+think it at all strange if--" Marcello hesitated.
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If I married Regina," said Marcello rather desperately.
+
+Folco's expression changed instantly.
+
+"Was that the question you were going to ask me?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Marcello grew very red and smoked so fast that he choked himself.
+
+"Is there any earthly reason why you should marry her?" asked Folco very
+quietly.
+
+"It would be right," Marcello answered, gaining courage.
+
+"Yes, yes, undoubtedly," Folco hastened to admit. "In principle it would
+undoubtedly be right. But it is a very serious matter, my dear boy. It
+means your whole life and future. Have you"--he hesitated, with an
+affectation of delicacy--"have you said anything to her about it?"
+
+"I used to, at first, but she would not hear of it. You have no idea how
+simple she is, and how little she expects anything of the sort. She
+always tells me that I am to send her away when I am tired of her, to
+throw her away like an old coat, as she says herself. But I could never
+do that, you know. Could I?"
+
+Marcello blushed again, hardly knowing why. Corbario seemed deeply
+interested.
+
+"She must be a very unusual sort of girl," he observed thoughtfully.
+"There are not many like her, I fancy."
+
+"There is nobody like her," Marcello answered with conviction. "That is
+why I want to marry her. I owe it to her. You must admit that. I owe her
+my life, for I certainly should have died if she had not taken care of
+me. And then, there is the rest. She has given me all she has, and that
+is herself, and she asks nothing in return. She is very proud, too. I
+tried to make her accept a string of pearls in Paris, just because I
+thought they would be becoming to her, but she absolutely refused."
+
+"Really? I suppose you gave the pearls back to the jeweller?"
+
+"No, I kept them. Perhaps I shall get her to wear them some day."
+
+Folco smiled.
+
+"You may just as well encourage her simple tastes," he said. "Women
+always end by learning how to spend money, unless it is their own."
+
+Having delivered himself of this piece of wisdom Folco chose a cigar,
+nipped off the end of it neatly with a gold cutter, lit it and snuffed
+the rich smoke up his nose in a deliberate manner.
+
+"Regina is a very remarkable woman," he said at last. "If she had been
+well educated, she would make an admirable wife; and she loves you
+devotedly, Marcello. Now, the real question is--at least, it seems to me
+so--you don't mind my talking to you just as I would to myself, do you?
+Very well. If I were in your position, I should ask myself, as a man of
+honour, whether I really loved her as much as she loved me, or whether I
+had only been taken off my feet by her beauty. Don't misunderstand me,
+my boy! I should feel that if I were not quite sure of that, I ought not
+to marry her, because it would be much worse for her in the end than if
+we parted. Have you ever asked yourself that question, Marcello?"
+
+"Yes, I have."
+
+Marcello spoke in a low voice, and bent his head, as if he were not
+sure of the answer. Corbario, satisfied with the immediate effect of his
+satanic speech, waited a moment, sighed, looked down at his cigar, and
+then went on in gentle tones.
+
+"That is so often the way," he said. "A man marries a woman out of a
+sense of duty, and then makes her miserably unhappy, quite in spite of
+himself. Of course, in such a case as yours, you feel that you owe a
+woman amends--you cannot call it compensation, as if it were a matter of
+law! She has given everything, and you have given nothing. You owe her
+happiness, if you can bestow it upon her, don't you?"
+
+"Indeed I do!" assented Marcello.
+
+"Yes. The question is, whether the way to make her happy is to marry
+her, when you have a reasonable doubt as to whether you can be a good
+husband to her. That is the real problem, it seems to me. Do you love
+her enough to give up the life to which you were born, and for which you
+were educated? You would have to do that, you know. Our friends--your
+dear mother's friends, my boy--would never receive her, least of all
+after what has happened."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"You would have to wander about Europe, or live in San Domenico, for you
+could not bear to live in Rome, meeting women who would not bow to your
+wife. I know you. You could not possibly bear it."
+
+"I should think not!"
+
+"No. Therefore, since you have the doubt, since you are not absolutely
+sure of yourself, I think the only thing to do is to find out what you
+really feel, before taking an irreparable step."
+
+"Yes," said Marcello, who had fallen into the trap laid for him. "I know
+that. But how am I to make sure of myself?"
+
+"There is only one way," Folco answered. "I know it is not easy, and if
+I were not sure that you are perfectly sincere I should be afraid to
+propose it to you."
+
+"What is it? Tell me. You are the only friend I have in the world,
+Folco, and I want to do what is right. God knows, I am in earnest! There
+are moments when I cannot imagine living without Regina--it seemed hard
+to leave her this morning, even for these few hours, and I long to be
+back at Pontresina already! Yet you know how fond I am of you, and how I
+like to be with you, for we have always been more like brothers than
+anything else."
+
+"Indeed we have!" Folco assented fervently. "You were saying that there
+were moments--yes?"
+
+"Sometimes she jars upon me dreadfully," Marcello said in a low voice,
+as if he were ashamed of owning it. "Then I want to get away."
+
+"Exactly. You want to get away, not to leave her, but to be alone for a
+few hours, or a few days. That would be the very best thing you could
+do--to separate for a little while. You would very soon find out whether
+you could live without her or not; and believe me, if you feel that you
+can live without her, that means that you could not live with her for
+your whole life."
+
+"I should go back to her in twenty-four hours. I am sure I should."
+
+"Perhaps you would, if you went, say, from here to Paris alone, with
+nothing to distract your attention. But suppose that you and I should go
+together, to some place where we should meet our friends, all amusing
+themselves, where you could talk to other women, and meet men of your
+own age, and lead the life people expect you to lead, just for a few
+weeks. You know that society will be only too glad to see something of
+you, whenever you choose to go near it. You are what is called a good
+match, and all the mothers with marriageable daughters would run after
+you."
+
+"Disgusting!" exclaimed Marcello, with contempt.
+
+"No doubt, but it would be a wholesome change and a good test. When a
+young girl is determined to be a nun, she is generally made to spend a
+year in society, in order to make acquaintance with what she intends to
+give up. I don't see much difference between that and your case. Before
+you say good-bye for ever to your own world, find out what it is like.
+At the same time, you will settle for ever any doubts you have about
+really loving Regina."
+
+"Perhaps you are right. It would only be for a few days."
+
+"And besides," Folco continued, "if you have not yet found it dull at
+Pontresina, you certainly will before long. There is no reason why you
+should lead the life of an invalid, for you are quite strong now."
+
+"Oh, quite. I always tell Regina so, but she insists that I am too thin,
+and it amuses her to take care of me."
+
+"Naturally. That is how you first made acquaintance. A woman who has
+once taken care of a man she loves wants him to be ever afterwards an
+invalid, for ever getting better! A man gets tired of that in time. It
+was a great pity you left Paris just when I came, for there are many
+things we could have enjoyed together there."
+
+"I daresay," Marcello answered, not paying much attention to the other's
+words.
+
+"Take my advice, my dear boy," said Folco. "Come away with me for a few
+days. I will wait here till you are quite ready, for of course you
+cannot be sure of getting off at once. You will have to prepare Regina
+for this."
+
+"Of course. I am not sure that it is possible at all."
+
+Folco laughed gaily.
+
+"Anything is possible that you really wish to do," he said.
+
+"Regina may insist upon coming with me."
+
+"Nonsense. Women always submit in the end, and they never die of it.
+Assert yourself, Marcello! Be a man! You cannot be ordered about like a
+child by any woman, not even if she has saved your life, not even if
+she loves you to distraction. You have a right to a will of your own."
+
+"I know. And yet--oh, I wish I knew what I ought to do!"
+
+"Think over all I have said, and you will see that I am right," said
+Folco, rising from the table. "And if you take my advice, you will be
+doing what is fair and honest by Regina as well as by yourself. Your own
+conscience must tell you that."
+
+Poor Marcello was not very sure what had become of his own conscience
+during the past year, and Folco's arguments swayed him as he groped for
+something definite to follow, and found nothing but what Corbario chose
+to thrust into his hand.
+
+As they stood by the table, a servant brought a note on a little salver,
+holding it out to them as if he were not sure which of them was to
+receive it. Both glanced at the address; it was for Corbario, who took
+it quickly and put it into his pocket; but Marcello had recognised the
+handwriting--that rather cramped feminine hand of a woman who has seen
+better days, in which Settimia kept accounts for Regina. The latter
+insisted that an account should be kept of the money which Marcello gave
+her, and that he should see it from time to time. At the first moment,
+being absorbed with other matters, and inwardly much engaged in the
+pursuit of his own conscience, which eluded him at every turn like a
+figure in a dream, he paid no attention to what he had seen; but the
+writing had impressed itself on his memory.
+
+They had been lunching in Folco's sitting-room, and Corbario made an
+excuse to go into his bedroom for a moment, saying that he wanted
+certain cigars that his man had put away. Marcello stood at the window
+gazing down the broad valley. Scarcely a minute elapsed before Folco
+came back with a handful of Havanas which he dropped on a writing-table.
+
+"By the bye," he said carelessly, "there is another reason why you may
+not care to stay long in Pontresina. The Contessa and Aurora are there."
+
+"Are they?" Marcello turned sharply as he asked the question.
+
+He was surprised, and at the same instant it flashed upon him that Folco
+had just received the information from Settimia in the note that had
+been brought.
+
+"Yes," Folco answered with a smile. "And Pontresina is such a small
+place that you can hardly help meeting them. I thought I might as well
+tell you."
+
+"Thank you. Yes, it would be awkward, and unpleasant for them."
+
+"Precisely. The Contessa wrote me that she and Aurora had come upon you
+two unexpectedly in leaving a theatre, and that she had felt very
+uncomfortable."
+
+"Oh! I suppose she suggested that I should mend my ways?"
+
+"As a matter of fact, she did." Corbario smiled. "You know what a very
+proper person she is!"
+
+"She is quite right," answered Marcello gravely.
+
+"It certainly cannot have been pleasant for her, on account of Aurora."
+
+Folco looked at him thoughtfully, for his tone had suddenly changed.
+
+"If you don't mind," Folco said, "I think I will drive up with you and
+call on them this afternoon. You can drop me at their hotel, and I shall
+find my way back alone."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Are you sure you don't mind?" Folco affected to speak anxiously.
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"You see," Folco said, without heeding the question, "they let me know
+that they were there, and as we are such old friends it would be strange
+if I did not go to see them."
+
+"Of course it would," answered Marcello in an absent tone.
+
+He already connected Folco's knowledge of the Contessa's arrival in
+Pontresina so closely with Settimia's note that Folco's last statement
+had taken him by surprise, and a multitude of confused questions
+presented themselves to his mind. If Settimia had not written about the
+Contessa, why had she written at all? How did she know where Corbario
+was stopping in Saint Moritz? Was she in the habit of writing to him?
+Corbario had found her for Regina; was Settimia helping Corbario to
+exercise a sort of paternal vigilance over him? Somehow Marcello did not
+like that idea at all. So far as he knew, Folco had always been
+singularly frank with him, and had never deceived him in the smallest
+thing, even "for his own good." Marcello could only attribute good
+motives to him, but the mere idea of being watched was excessively
+disagreeable. He wondered whether Settimia had influenced Regina to get
+him away from Paris, acting under directions from Corbario. Was Regina
+deceiving him too, "for his own good"? If there is anything a man cannot
+bear from those he loves best, it is that they should take counsel
+together secretly to direct him "for his own good."
+
+Marcello tried to put the thought out of his mind; but it had dawned
+upon him for the first time that Folco could tell even a pious
+falsehood. Yet he had no proof whatever that he had guessed right; it
+was a sudden impression and nothing more. He was much more silent during
+the rest of the afternoon as he drove up to Pontresina with Folco, and
+it seemed to him that he had at last touched something definite; which
+was strange enough, considering that it was all a matter of guess-work
+and doubt.
+
+And now fate awoke again and did one of those little things that decide
+men's lives. If Folco and Marcello had stopped at the door of the
+Contessa's hotel two minutes earlier, or thirty seconds later, than they
+did, they would not have chanced upon the Contessa and Aurora just
+coming in from a walk. But fate brought the four together precisely at
+that moment. As the carriage stopped, the two ladies had come from the
+opposite direction and were on the door-step.
+
+"What a surprise!" exclaimed the Contessa, giving her hand graciously
+to Folco and then to Marcello.
+
+The latter had got hold of a thread. Since the Contessa was surprised to
+see Folco, she could not possibly have already let him know that she was
+in Pontresina.
+
+"I came as soon as I knew that you were here," said Corbario quickly.
+
+Marcello heard the words, though he was at that moment shaking hands
+with Aurora, and their eyes had met. She was perfectly calm and
+collected, none the worse for her adventure in the morning, and
+considerably the wiser.
+
+"Will you come in?" asked the Contessa, leading the way, as if expecting
+both men to follow.
+
+Corbario went at once. Marcello hesitated, and flushed a little, and
+Aurora seemed to be waiting for him.
+
+"Shall I come, too?" he asked.
+
+"Just as you please," she answered. "My mother will think it strange if
+you don't."
+
+Marcello bent his head, and the two followed the others towards the
+stairs at a little distance.
+
+"Did your mother send word to Folco that you were here?" asked Marcello
+quickly, in a low tone.
+
+"Not that I know. Why?"
+
+"It is no matter. I wanted to be sure. Thank you."
+
+They went upstairs side by side, not even glancing at each other, much
+more anxious to seem perfectly indifferent than to realise what they
+felt now that they had met at last.
+
+Marcello stayed ten minutes in the small sitting-room, talking as well
+as he could. He had no wish to be alone with Aurora or her mother, and
+since the visit had been pressed upon him he was glad that Folco was
+present. But he got away as soon as he could, leaving Corbario to his
+own devices. The Contessa gave him her hand quietly, as if she had not
+expected him to stay, and she did not ask him to come again. Aurora
+merely nodded to him, and he saw that just as he went out she left the
+room by another door, after glancing at him once more with apparent
+coldness.
+
+He walked quickly through the village until he came near to his own
+hotel, and then his pace slackened by degrees. He knew that he had felt
+a strong emotion in seeing Aurora again, and he was already wishing that
+he had not come away so soon. The room had been small, and it had been
+uncomfortable to be there, feeling himself judged and condemned by the
+Contessa and distrusted by Aurora; but he had been in an atmosphere that
+recalled all his youth, with people whose mere presence together brought
+back the memory of his dead mother as nothing else had done since his
+illness. He was just in that state of mind in which he would have broken
+away and freed himself within the hour, at any cost, if he had been
+involved in a common intrigue.
+
+At the same time he had become convinced that Folco had deceived him,
+for some reason or other which he could not guess, and the knowledge was
+the first serious disillusionment of his life. The deception had been
+small, and perhaps intended in some mysterious way to be "for his own
+good"; but it had been a distinct deception and no better than a lie. He
+was sure of that.
+
+He went upstairs slowly and Regina met him at the door of their rooms,
+and took his hat and stick without a word, for she saw that something
+had happened, and she felt suddenly cold. He was quite unlike himself.
+The careless look was gone from his face, his young lips were tightly
+closed, and he looked straight before him, quite unconscious that his
+manner was hurting her desperately.
+
+"Has Settimia been out to-day?" he asked, looking at her quickly.
+
+"I don't know," she answered, surprised. "I went for a long walk this
+morning. She probably went out into the village. I cannot tell. Why do
+you ask?"
+
+"I wish to know whether she sent a note to Saint Moritz by a messenger.
+Can you find out, without asking her a direct question? I am very
+anxious to know."
+
+"I will try, but it will not be easy," said Regina, watching him.
+
+She had made up her mind that the blow was coming, and that Marcello was
+only putting off the moment when she must be told that he meant to leave
+her. She was very quiet, and waited for him to speak again, for she was
+too proud to ask him questions. His inquiry about Settimia was in some
+way connected with what was to come. He sat down by the table, and
+drummed upon it absently with his fingers for a moment. Then he looked
+up suddenly and met her eyes; his look of troubled preoccupation faded
+all at once, and he smiled and held out one hand to draw her nearer.
+
+"Forgive me," he said. "All sorts of things have happened to-day. I have
+been annoyed."
+
+She came and bent over him, turning his face up to hers with her hands,
+very gently. His eyes lightened slowly, and his lips parted a little.
+
+"You are not tired of Regina yet," she said.
+
+"No!" he laughed. "But you were right," he added, almost immediately.
+
+"I knew I was," she answered, but not as she had expected to say the
+words when she had seen him come in.
+
+She dared not hope to keep him always, but she had not lost him yet, and
+that was enough for the moment. The weight had fallen from her heart,
+and the pain was gone.
+
+"Was it what I thought?" she asked softly. "Does your stepfather wish to
+separate us?"
+
+"For a little while," Marcello answered. "He says we ought to part for a
+few weeks, so that I may find out whether I love you enough to marry
+you!"
+
+"And he almost persuaded you that he was right," said Regina. "Is that
+what happened?"
+
+"That--and something else."
+
+"Will you tell me, heart of my heart?"
+
+In the falling twilight he told her all that had passed through his
+mind, from the moment when he had seen Settimia's handwriting on the
+note. Then Regina's lips moved.
+
+"He shall pay!" she was saying under her breath. "He shall pay!"
+
+"What are you saying?" Marcello asked.
+
+"An Ave Maria," she answered. "It is almost dark."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The little house in Trastevere was shut up, but the gardener had the
+keys, and came twice a week to air the rooms and sweep the paths and
+water the shrubs. He was to be informed by Settimia of Regina's return
+in time to have everything ready, but he did not expect any news before
+the end of September; and if he came regularly, on Tuesday and Saturday,
+and did his work, it was because he was a conscientious person in his
+way, elderly, neat, and systematic, a good sort of Roman of the old
+breed. But if he came on other days, as he often did, not to air the
+rooms, but to water and tend certain plants, and to do the many
+incomprehensible things which gardeners do with flower-pots, earth, and
+seeds, that was his own affair, and would bring a little money in the
+autumn when the small florists opened their shops and stands again, and
+the tide of foreigners set once more towards Rome. Also, if he had made
+friends with the gardeners at the beautiful villa on the Janiculum, that
+was not Corbario's business; and they gave him cuttings, and odds and
+ends, such as can be spared from a great garden where money is spent
+generously, but which mean a great deal to a poor man who is anxious to
+turn an honest penny by hard work.
+
+The immediate result of this little traffic was that the gardeners at
+the villa knew all about the little house in Trastevere; and what the
+gardeners knew was known also by the porter, and by the other servants,
+and through them by the servants of other people, and the confidential
+valet told his master, and the maid told her mistress; and so everybody
+had learned where "Consalvi's Regina" lived, and it was likely that
+everybody would know when she came back to Rome, and whether Marcello
+came with her or not.
+
+He had not taken Folco's advice, much to the latter's disappointment and
+annoyance. On the contrary, he and Regina had left the Engadine very
+suddenly, without so much as letting Corbario guess that they were going
+away; and Regina had managed to keep Settimia so very busy and so
+constantly under her eye that the maid had not been able to send Folco a
+word, warning him of the anticipated move. Almost for the first time
+Marcello had made up his mind for himself, and had acted upon his
+decision; and it seemed as if the exercise of his will had made a change
+in his character.
+
+They wandered from place to place; they went to Venice in the hottest
+season, when no one was there, and they came down to Florence and drove
+up to Vallombrosa, where they stumbled upon society, and were stared at
+accordingly. They went down to Siena, they stopped in Orvieto, and drove
+across to Assisi and Perugia; but they were perpetually drawn towards
+Rome, and knew that they longed to be there again.
+
+Marcello had plenty of time to think, and there was little to disturb
+his meditations on the past and future; for Regina was not talkative,
+and was content to be silent for hours, provided that she could see his
+face. He never knew whether she felt her ignorance about all they saw,
+and his own knowledge was by no means great. He told her what he knew
+and read about places they visited, and she remembered what he said, and
+sometimes asked simple questions which he could answer easily enough.
+For instance, she wished to know whether America were a city or an
+island, and who the Jews were, and if the sun rose in the west on the
+other side of the world, since Marcello assured her that the world was
+round.
+
+He was neither shocked nor amused; Ercole had asked him similar
+questions when he had been a boy; so had the peasants in Calabria, and
+there was no reason why Regina should know more than they did. Besides,
+she possessed wonderful tact, and now spoke her own language so well
+that she could pass for a person of average education, so long as she
+avoided speaking of anything that is learned from books. She was very
+quick to understand everything connected with the people she heard of,
+and she never forgot anything that Marcello told her. She was grateful
+to him for never laughing at her, but in reality he was indifferent. If
+she had known everything within bounds of knowledge, she would not have
+been a whit more beautiful, or more loving, or more womanly.
+
+But he himself was beginning to think, now that his faith in Folco had
+been shaken, and he began to realise that he had been strangely torpid
+and morally listless during the past years. The shock his whole system
+had received, the long interval during which his memory had been quite
+gone, the physical languor that had lasted some time after his recovery
+from the fever, had all combined to make the near past seem infinitely
+remote, to cloud his judgment of reality, and to destroy the healthy
+tension of his natural will. A good deal of what Corbario had called
+"harmless dissipation" had made matters worse, and when Regina had
+persuaded him to leave Paris he had really been in that dangerous moral,
+intellectual, and physical condition in which it takes very little to
+send a man to the bad altogether, and not much more to kill him
+outright, if he be of a delicate constitution and still very young.
+Corbario had almost succeeded in his work of destruction.
+
+He would not succeed now, for the worst danger was past, and Marcello
+had found his feet after being almost lost in the quicksand through
+which he had been led.
+
+He had not at first accused Folco of anything worse than that one little
+deception about the arrival of the Contessa, and of having caused him to
+be too closely watched by Settimia. Little by little, however, other
+possibilities had shaped themselves and had grown into certainties at an
+alarming rate. He understood all at once how Folco himself had been
+spending his time, while society had supposed him to be a broken
+hearted widower. A few hints which he had let fall about the things he
+would have shown Marcello in Paris suggested a great deal; his looks and
+manner told the rest, now that Marcello had guessed the main truth. He
+had not waited three months after his wife's death to profit by his
+liberty and the wealth she had left him. Marcello remembered the
+addresses he had given from time to time--Monte Carlo, Hombourg, Pau,
+and Paris very often. He had spoken of business in his letters, as an
+excuse for moving about so much, but "business" did not always take a
+man to places of amusement, and Folco seemed to have visited no others.
+Men whom Marcello had met had seen Corbario, and what they said about
+him was by no means indefinite. He had been amusing himself, and not
+alone, and the young men had laughed at his attempts to cloak his doings
+under an appearance of sorrowing respectability.
+
+As all this became clear to Marcello he suffered acutely at times, and
+he reproached himself bitterly for having been so long blind and
+indifferent. It was bad enough that he should have been leading a wild
+life with Regina in Paris within a few months of his mother's death, but
+even in the depths of his self-reproach he saw how much worse it was
+that Folco should have forgotten her so soon. It was worse than a slight
+upon his mother's memory, it was an insult. The good woman who was gone
+would have shed hot tears if she could have come to life and seen how
+her son was living; but she would have died again, could she have seen
+the husband she adored in the places where many had seen him since her
+death. It was no wonder that Marcello's anger rose at the mere thought.
+
+Moreover, as Marcello's understanding awoke, he realised that Folco had
+encouraged him in all he had done, and had not seemed pleased when he
+had begun to live more quietly. Folco would have made him his companion
+in pleasure, if he could, and the idea was horrible to Marcello as soon
+as it presented itself.
+
+It was the discovery that he had been mistaken in Corbario that most
+directly helped him to regain his foothold in life and his free will.
+There was more in the Spartan method than we are always ready to admit,
+for it is easier to disgust most men by the sight of human degradation
+than to strengthen them against temptation by preaching, or by the
+lessons of example which are so very peculiarly disagreeable to the
+normal man.
+
+"I am virtuous, I am sober, I resist temptation, imitate me!" cries the
+preacher. You say that you are virtuous, and you are apparently sober,
+my friend; and perhaps you are a very good man, though you need not
+scream out the statement at the top of your voice. But how are we to
+know that you have any temptations to resist? Or that your temptations
+are the same as ours, even supposing that you have any? Or that you are
+speaking the truth about yourself, since what you say is so extremely
+flattering to your vanity? Wherever there is preaching, those who are
+preached at are expected to accept a good deal on the mere word of the
+preacher, quite aside from anything they have been brought to believe
+elsewhere.
+
+"Temptation?" said a certain great lady who was not strong in theology.
+"That is what one yields to, isn't it?"
+
+She probably knew what she was talking about, for she had lived in the
+world a good while, as we have. But the preacher is not very often one
+of us, and he knows little of our ways and next to nothing of our real
+feelings; yet he exhorts us to be like him. It would be very odd if we
+succeeded. The world would probably stand still if we did, and most of
+us are so well aware of the fact that we do not even try; and the sermon
+simply has no effect at all, which need not prevent the preacher from
+being richly remunerated for delivering it.
+
+"Vice is very attractive, of course," he says, "but you must avoid it
+because it is sinful."
+
+And every time vice is mentioned we think how attractive it must be,
+since it is necessary to preach against it so much; and the more
+attractive it seems, the greater the temptation.
+
+"Should you like to try a vice or two?" said the Spartan, "Very well.
+Come with me, my boy, and you shall see what vice is; and after that, if
+you care to try it, please yourself, for I shall have nothing more to
+say!"
+
+And forthwith he played upon the string of disgust, which is the most
+sensitive of all the strings that vibrate in the great human instrument;
+and the boy's stomach rose, and he sickened and turned away, and
+remembered for ever, though he might try ever so hard to forget.
+
+Marcello at last saw Folco as he was, though still without understanding
+the worst, and with no suspicion that Folco wished him out of the world,
+and had deliberately set to work to kill him by dissipation; and the
+disgust he felt was the most horrible sensation that he could remember.
+At the same time he saw himself and his whole life, and the perplexity
+of his position frightened him.
+
+It seemed impossible to go back and live under the same roof with
+Corbario now. He flushed with shame when he remembered the luncheon at
+Saint Moritz, and how he had been almost persuaded to leave poor Regina
+suddenly, and to go back to Paris with his stepfather. He saw through
+the devilish cleverness of the man's arguments, and when he remembered
+that his dead mother's name had been spoken, a thrill of real pain ran
+through his body and he clenched his teeth and his hands.
+
+He asked himself how he could meet Folco after that, and the only answer
+was that if they met they must quarrel and part, not to meet again.
+
+He told Regina that he would not go back to the villa after they reached
+Rome, but would live in the little house in Trastevere. To his surprise,
+she looked grave and shook her head. She had never asked him what was
+making him so silent and thoughtful, but she had guessed much of the
+truth from little things; she herself had never trusted Corbario since
+she had first seen his face at the hospital, and she had long foreseen
+the coming struggle.
+
+"Why do you shake your head?" he asked. "Do you not want me at the
+little house?"
+
+"The villa is yours, not his," she said. "He will be glad if you will
+leave him there, for he will be the master. Then he will marry again,
+and live there, and it will be hard to turn him out."
+
+"What makes you think he wishes to marry again?"
+
+"He would be married already, if the girl would have him," answered
+Regina.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"You told me to watch, to find out. I have obeyed you. I know
+everything."
+
+Marcello was surprised, and did not quite understand. He only remembered
+that he had asked her to ascertain whether Settimia had sent a note to
+Folco at Saint Moritz. After a day or two she told him that she was
+quite sure of it. That was all, and Regina had scarcely ever spoken of
+Folco since then. Marcello reminded her of this, and asked her what she
+had done.
+
+"I can read," she said. "I can read writing, and that is very hard, you
+know. I made Settimia teach me. I said with myself, if he should be away
+and should write to me, what should I do? I could not let Settimia read
+his letters, and I am too well dressed to go to a public letter-writer
+in the street, as the peasants do. He would think me an ignorant person,
+and the people in the street would laugh. That would not help me. I
+should have to go to the priest, to my confessor."
+
+"Your confessor? Do you go to confession?"
+
+"Do you take me for a Turk?" Regina asked, laughing. "I go to confession
+at Christmas and Easter. I tell the priest that I am very bad, and am
+sorry, but that it is for you and that I cannot help it. Then he asks me
+if I will promise to leave you and be good. And I say no, that I will
+not promise that. And he tells me to go away and come back when I am
+ready to promise, and that he will give me absolution then. It is always
+the same. He shakes his head and frowns when he sees me coming, and I
+smile. We know each other quite well now. I have told him that when you
+are tired of me, then I will be good. Is not that enough? What can I do?
+I should like to be good, of course, but I like still better to be with
+you. So it is."
+
+"You are better than the priest knows," said Marcello thoughtfully, "and
+I am worse."
+
+"It is not true. But if I had a letter from you, I would not take it to
+the priest to read for me. He would be angry, and tear it up, and send
+me away. I understood this at the beginning, so I made Settimia teach me
+how to read the writing, and I also learned to write myself, not very
+well, but one can understand it."
+
+"I know. I have seen you writing copies. But how has that helped you to
+find out what Folco is doing?"
+
+"I read all Settimia's letters," Regina answered, with perfect
+simplicity.
+
+"Eh?" Marcello thought he had misunderstood her.
+
+"I read all the letters she gets," Regina replied, unmoved. "When she
+was teaching me to read I saw where she kept all her letters. It is
+always the same place. There is a pocket inside a little black bag she
+has, which opens easily, though she locks it. She puts the letters
+there, and when she has read them over she burns them. You see, she has
+no idea that I read them. But I always do, ever since you asked me about
+that note. When I know that she has had a letter, I send her out on an
+errand. Then I read. It is so easy!"
+
+Regina laughed, but Marcello looked displeased.
+
+"It is not honest to do such things," he said.
+
+"Not honest?" Regina stared at him in amazement. "How does honesty enter
+into the question? Is Settimia honest? Then honest people should all be
+in the galleys! And if you knew how he writes to her! Oh, yes! You are
+the 'dear patient,' and I am the 'admirable companion.' They have known
+each other long, those two. They have a language between them, but I
+have learned it. They have no more secrets that I do not know.
+Everything the admirable companion does that makes the dear patient
+better is wrong, and everything that used to make him worse was right.
+They were killing you in Paris, they wanted you to stay there until you
+were dead. Do you know who saved your life? It was the Contessa, when I
+heard her say that you were looking ill! If you ever see her again,
+thank her, for I was blind and she opened my eyes. The devil had blinded
+me, and the pleasure, and I could not see. I see now, thanks to heaven,
+and I know all, and they shall not hurt you. But they shall pay!"
+
+She was not laughing now, as she said the last words under her breath,
+and her beautiful lips just showed her white teeth, set savagely tight
+as though they had bitten through something that could be killed. Folco
+Corbario was not timid, but if he had seen her then, and known that the
+imaginary bite was meant for his life, he would have taken special care
+of his bodily safety whenever she was in his neighbourhood.
+
+Marcello had listened in profound surprise, for what she said threw new
+light on all he had thought out for himself of late.
+
+"And you say that Folco is thinking of marrying again," he said, almost
+ashamed to profit by information obtained as Regina had got it.
+
+"Yes, he is in love with a young girl, and wishes to marry her."
+
+Marcello said nothing.
+
+"Should you like to know her name?" asked Regina.
+
+Still Marcello was silent, as if refusing to answer, and yet wishing
+that she should go on.
+
+"I will tell you," Regina said. "Her name is Aurora dell' Armi."
+
+Marcello started, and looked into her face, doubting her word for the
+first time. He changed colour, too, flushing and then turning pale.
+
+"It is not true!" he cried, rather hoarsely. "It cannot be true!"
+
+"It is true," Regina answered, "but she will not have him. She would not
+marry him, even if her mother would allow it."
+
+"Thank God!" exclaimed Marcello fervently.
+
+Regina sighed, and turned away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Ercole sat on the stone seat that ran along the wall of the inn, facing
+the dusty road. He was waiting in the cool dawn until it should please
+the innkeeper to open the door, and Nino crouched beside him, his head
+resting on his forepaws.
+
+A great many years had passed since Ercole had sat there the last time,
+but nothing had changed, so far as he could see. He had been young, and
+the women had called him handsome; his face had not been shrivelled to
+parchment by the fever, and there had been no grey threads in his thick
+black hair. Nino had not been born then, and now Nino seemed to be a
+part of himself. Nino's grandam had lain in almost the same spot then,
+wolfish and hungry as her descendant was now, and only a trifle less
+uncannily hideous. It was all very much the same, but between that time
+and this there lay all Ercole's life by the Roman shore.
+
+When he had heard, as every one had, how Marcello had been brought to
+Rome on the tail of a wine-cart, he had been sure that the boy had been
+laid upon it while the cart was standing before Paoluccio's inn in the
+night. He knew the road well, and the ways of the carters, and that they
+rarely stopped anywhere else between Frascati and Rome. Again and again
+he had been on the point of tramping up from the seashore to the place,
+to see whether he could not find some clue to Marcello's accident there,
+but something had prevented him, some old dislike of returning to the
+neighbourhood after such a long absence. He knew why he had not gone,
+but he had not confided the reason even to Nino, who was told most
+things. He had, moreover, been tolerably sure that nothing short of
+thumb-screws would extract any information from Paoluccio or his wife,
+for he knew his own people. The only thing that surprised him was that
+the boy should ever have left the inn alive after being robbed of
+everything he had about him that was worth taking.
+
+Moreover, since Marcello had been found, and was alive and well, it was
+of very little use to try and discover exactly what had happened to him
+after he had been last seen by the shore. But the aspect of things had
+changed since Ercole had heard the sailor's story, and his wish to see
+the place where the boy had been hidden so long overcame any repugnance
+he felt to visiting a neighbourhood which had unpleasant associations
+with his younger years.
+
+He sat and waited at the door, and before the sun rose a young woman
+came round the house with the big key and opened the place, just as
+Regina had done in old days. She looked at Ercole, and he looked at her,
+and neither said anything as she went about her work, sprinkling the
+floor with water and then sweeping it, and noisily pulling the heavy
+benches about. When this operation was finished, Ercole rose and went
+in, and sat down at the end of a table. He took some bread and cheese
+from his canvas bag and began to eat, using his clasp-knife.
+
+"If you wish wine," said the woman, "you will have to wait till the
+master comes down."
+
+Ercole only answered by raising his head and throwing out his chin,
+which means "no" in gesture language. He threw pieces of the bread and
+the rind of the cheese to his dog. Nino caught each fragment in the air
+with a snap that would have lamed a horse for a month. The woman glanced
+nervously at the animal, each time she heard his jagged teeth close.
+
+Paoluccio appeared in due time, without coat or waistcoat, and with his
+sleeves rolled up above the elbows, as if he had been washing. If he
+had, the operation had succeeded very imperfectly. He glanced at Ercole
+as he passed in.
+
+"Good-morning," he said, for he made it a point to be polite to
+customers, even when they brought their own food.
+
+"Good-morning," answered Ercole, looking at him curiously.
+
+Possibly there was something unusual in the tone of Ercole's voice, for
+Nino suddenly sat up beside his master's knee, forgetting all about the
+bread, and watched Paoluccio too, as if he expected something. But
+nothing happened. Paoluccio opened a cupboard in the wall with a key he
+carried, took out a bottle of the coarse aniseed spirits which the Roman
+peasants drink, and filled himself a small glass of the stuff, which he
+tossed off with evident pleasure. Then he filled his pipe, lit it
+carefully, and went to the door again. By this time, though he had
+apparently not bestowed the least attention on Ercole, he had made up
+his mind about him, and was not mistaken. Ercole belonged to the better
+class of customers.
+
+"You come from the Roman shore?" he said, with an interrogation.
+
+"To serve you," Ercole assented, with evident willingness to enter into
+conversation. "I am a keeper and watchman on the lands of Signor
+Corbario."
+
+Paoluccio took his pipe from his mouth and nodded twice.
+
+"That is a very rich gentleman, I have heard," he observed. "He owns
+much land."
+
+"It all belongs to his stepson, now that the young gentleman is of age,"
+Ercole answered. "But as it was his mother's, and she married Signor
+Corbario, we have the habit of the name."
+
+"What is the name of the stepson?" asked Paoluccio.
+
+"Consalvi," Ercole replied.
+
+Paoluccio said nothing to this, but lit his pipe again with a sulphur
+match.
+
+"Evil befall the soul of our government!" he grumbled presently, with
+insufficient logic, but meaning that the government sold bad tobacco.
+
+"You must have heard of the young gentleman," Ercole said. "His name is
+Marcello Consalvi. They say that he lay ill for a long time at an inn on
+this road--"
+
+"For the love of heaven, don't talk to me about Marcello Consalvi!"
+cried Paoluccio, suddenly in a fury. "Blood of a dog! If you had not the
+face of an honest man I should think you were another of those newspaper
+men in disguise, pigs and animals that they are and sons of evil
+mothers, and ill befall their wicked dead, and their little dead ones,
+and those that shall be born to them!"
+
+Paoluccio's eyes were bloodshot and he spat furiously, half across the
+road. Nino watched him and hitched the side of his upper lip on one of
+his lower fangs, which produced the effect of a terrific smile. Ercole
+was unmoved.
+
+"I suppose," he observed, "that they said it happened in your inn."
+
+"And why should it happen in my inn, rather than in any other inn?"
+inquired Paoluccio angrily.
+
+"Indeed," said Ercole, "I cannot imagine why they should say that it
+did! Some one must have put the story about. A servant, perhaps, whom
+you sent away."
+
+"We did not send Regina away," answered Paoluccio, still furious. "She
+ran away in the night, about that time. But, as you say, she may have
+invented the story and sent the newspaper men here to worry our lives
+with their questions, out of mere spite."
+
+"Who was this Regina?" Ercole asked. "What has she to do with it?"
+
+"Regina? She was the servant girl we had before this one. We took her
+out of charity."
+
+"The daughter of some relation, no doubt," Ercole suggested.
+
+"May that never be, if it please the Madonna!" cried Paoluccio. "A
+relation? Thank God we have always been honest people in my father's
+house! No, it was not a relation. She came of a crooked race. Her mother
+took a lover, and her father killed him, here on the Frascati road, and
+almost killed her too; but the law gave him the right and he went free."
+
+"And then, what did he do?" asked Ercole, slowly putting the remains of
+his bread into his canvas bag.
+
+"What did he do? He went away and never came back. What should he do?"
+
+"Quite right. And the woman, what became of her?"
+
+"She took other men, for she had no shame. And at last one of them was
+jealous, and struck her on the head with a paving stone, not meaning to
+kill her; but she died."
+
+"Oh, she died, did she?"
+
+"She died. For she was always spiteful. And so that poor man went to the
+galleys, merely for hitting her on the head, and not meaning to kill
+her."
+
+"And you took the girl for your servant?"
+
+"Yes. She was old enough to work, and very strong, so we took her for
+charity. But for my part, I was glad when she ran away, for she grew up
+handsome, and with that blood there surely would have been a scandal
+some day."
+
+"One sees that you are a very charitable person," Ercole observed
+thoughtfully. "The girl must have been very ungrateful if she told
+untrue stories about your inn, after all you had done for her. You had
+nourished a viper in your house."
+
+"That is what my wife says," Paoluccio answered, now quite calm. "Those
+are my wife's very words. As for believing that the young man was ever
+in this house, I tell you that the story is a wicked lie. Where should
+we have put him? In the cellar with the hogsheads, or in the attic with
+the maid? or in our own room? Tell me where we could have put him! Or
+perhaps they will say that he slept on the ceiling, like the flies? They
+will say anything, chattering, chattering, and coming here with their
+questions and their photographing machines, and their bicycles, and the
+souls of their dead! If you do not believe me, you can see the place
+where they say that he lay! I tell you there is not room for a cat in
+this house. Believe me if you like!"
+
+"How can I not believe such a respectable person as you seem to be?"
+inquired Ercole gravely.
+
+"I thank you. And since it happens that you are in the service of the
+young gentleman himself, I hope you will tell him that if he fancies he
+was in my house, he is mistaken."
+
+"Surely," said Ercole.
+
+"Besides," exclaimed Paoluccio, "how could he know where he was? Are not
+all inns on these roads alike? He was in another, that is all. And what
+had I to do with that?"
+
+"Nothing," assented Ercole. "I thank you for your conversation. I will
+take a glass of the aniseed before I go, if you please."
+
+"Are you going already?" asked Paoluccio, as he went to fetch the bottle
+and the little cast glass from which he himself had drunk.
+
+"Yes," Ercole answered. "I go to Rome. I stopped to refresh myself."
+
+"It will be hot on the road," said Paoluccio, setting the full glass
+down on the table. "Two sous," he added, as Ercole produced his old
+sheepskin purse. "Thank you."
+
+"Thank you," Ercole answered, and tipped the spirits down his throat.
+"Yes, it will be hot, but what can one do? We are used to it, my dog and
+I. We are not of wax to melt in the sun."
+
+"It is true that this dog does not look as if he were wax," Paoluccio
+remarked, for the qualities of Nino had not escaped him.
+
+"No. He is not of wax. He is of sugar, all sugar! He has a very sweet
+nature."
+
+"One would not say so," answered Paoluccio doubtfully. "If you go to the
+city you must muzzle him, or they will make you pay a fine. Otherwise
+they will kill him for you."
+
+"Do you think any one would try to catch him if I let him run loose?"
+asked Ercole, as if in doubt. "He killed a full-grown wolf before he was
+two years old, and not long ago he worried a sheepdog of the Campagna as
+if it had been nothing but a lamb. Do you think any one would try to
+catch him?"
+
+"If it fell to me, I should go to confession first," said Paoluccio.
+
+So Ercole left the inn and trudged along the road to Rome with Nino at
+his heels, without once looking behind him; past the Baldinotti houses
+and into the Via Appia Nuova, and on into the city through the gate of
+San Giovanni, where the octroi men stopped him and made him show them
+what he had in his canvas bag. When they saw that there was no cheese
+left and but little bread, they let him go by without paying anything.
+
+He went up to the left and sat down on the ground under the trees that
+are there, and he filled his little clay pipe and smoked a while,
+without even speaking to his dog. It was quiet, for it was long past the
+hour when the carts come in, and the small boys were all gone to school,
+and the great paved slope between the steps of the basilica and the gate
+was quite deserted, and very white and hot.
+
+Ercole was not very tired, though he had walked all night and a good
+part of the morning. He could have gone on walking till sunset if he had
+chosen, all the way to his little stone house near Ardea, stopping by
+the way to get a meal; and then he would not have slept much longer than
+usual. A Roman peasant in his native Campagna, with enough to eat and a
+little wine, is hard to beat at walking. Ercole had not stopped to rest,
+but to think.
+
+When he had thought some time, he looked about to see if any one were
+looking at him, and he saw that the only people in sight were a long way
+off. He took his big clasp-knife out of his pocket and opened it. As the
+clasp clicked at the back of the blade Nino woke and sat up, for the
+noise generally meant food.
+
+The blade was straight and clean, and tolerably sharp. Ercole looked at
+it critically, drew the edge over his coarse thumb-nail to find if there
+were any nick in the steel, and then scratched the same thumb-nail with
+it, as one erases ink with a knife, to see how sharp it was. The point
+was like a needle, but he considered that the edge was dull, and he drew
+it up and down one of the brown barrels of his gun, as carefully as he
+would have sharpened a razor on a whetstone. After that he stropped it
+on the tough leathern strap by which he slung the gun over his shoulder
+when he walked; when he was quite satisfied, he shut the knife again and
+put it back into his pocket, and fell to thinking once more.
+
+Nino watched the whole operation with bloodshot eyes, his tongue hanging
+out and quivering rhythmically as he panted in the heat to cool himself.
+When the knife disappeared, and the chance of a crust with it, the dog
+got up, deliberately turned his back to his master, and sat down again
+to look at the view.
+
+"You see," said Ercole to himself and Nino, "this is an affair which
+needs thought. One must be just. It is one thing to kill a person's
+body, but it is quite another thing to kill a person's soul. That would
+be a great sin, and besides, it is not necessary. Do I wish harm to any
+one? No. It is justice. Perhaps I shall go to the galleys. Well, I shall
+always have the satisfaction, and it will be greater if I can say that
+this person is in Paradise. For I do not wish harm to any one."
+
+Having said this in a tone which Nino could hear, Ercole sat thinking
+for some time longer, and then he rose and slung his gun over his
+shoulder, and went out from under the trees into the glaring heat, as if
+he were going into the city. But instead of turning to the left, up the
+hill, he went on by the broad road that follows the walls, till he came
+to the ancient church of Santa Croce. He went up the low steps to the
+deep porch and on to the entrance at the left. Nino followed him very
+quietly.
+
+Ercole dipped his finger into the holy water and crossed himself, and
+then went up the nave, making as little noise as he could with his
+hob-nailed boots. An old monk in white was kneeling at a broad
+praying-stool before an altar on the left. Ercole stood still near him,
+waiting for him to rise, and slowly turning his soft hat in his hands,
+as if it were a rosary. He kept his eyes on the monk's face, studying
+the aged features. Presently the old man had finished his prayer and got
+upon his feet slowly, and looked at Ercole and then at Nino. Ercole
+moved forward a step, and stood still in an attitude of respect.
+
+"What do you desire, my son?" asked the monk, very quietly. "Do you wish
+to confess?"
+
+"No, father, not to-day," answered Ercole. "I come to pray you to say
+three masses for the soul of a person who died suddenly. I have also
+brought the money. Only tell me how much it will be, and I will pay."
+
+"You shall give what you will, my son," the monk said, "and I will say
+the masses myself."
+
+Ercole got out his sheepskin purse, untied the strings, and looked into
+it, weighing it in his hand. Then he seemed to hesitate. The monk looked
+on quietly.
+
+"It is of your own free will," he said. "What you choose to give is for
+the community, and for this church, and for the chapel of Saint Helen.
+It is better that you know."
+
+Ercole drew the mouth of the purse together again and returned it to the
+inside of his waistcoat, from which he produced a large old leathern
+pocket-book.
+
+"I will give five francs," he said, "for I know that if you say the
+masses yourself, they will be all good ones."
+
+A very faint and gentle smile flitted over the aged face. Ercole held
+out the small note, and the monk took it.
+
+"Thank you," he said. "Shall I say the masses for a man or a woman?"
+
+"As it pleases you, father," Ercole answered.
+
+"Eh?" The old monk looked surprised.
+
+"It does not matter," Ercole explained. "Is not a mass for a man good
+for a woman also?"
+
+"We say 'his' soul or 'her' soul, as the case may be, my son."
+
+"Is that written in the book of the mass?" inquired Ercole
+distrustfully.
+
+"Yes. Also, most people tell us the baptismal name of the dead person."
+
+"Must I do that too?" Ercole asked, by no means pleased.
+
+"Not unless you like," the monk answered, looking at him with some
+curiosity.
+
+"But it is in the book of the mass that you must say 'his' or 'her'
+soul?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then the masses will not be good unless you say the right word." Ercole
+paused a moment in deep thought, and looked down at his hat. "It will be
+better to say the masses for a female," he said at length, without
+meeting the monk's eyes.
+
+"Very well," the latter answered. "I will say the first mass to-morrow."
+
+"Thank you," said Ercole. "My respects!"
+
+He made a sort of bow and hurried away, followed by Nino. The old monk
+watched him thoughtfully, and shook his head once or twice, for he
+guessed something of the truth, though by no means all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+"One might almost think that you wished to marry Aurora yourself," said
+Corbario, with a sneer.
+
+He was standing with his back to the fire in the great library of the
+villa, for it was late autumn again; it was raining hard and the air was
+raw and chilly.
+
+"You may think what you please," Marcello answered, leaning back in his
+deep leathern chair and taking up a book. "I am not going to argue with
+you."
+
+"Insufferable puppy," growled Folco, almost under his teeth; but
+Marcello heard.
+
+He rose instantly and faced the elder man without the slightest fear or
+hesitation.
+
+"If this were not my house, and you my guest, I would have you put out
+of doors by the servants," he said, in a tone Corbario had never heard
+before. "As it is, I only advise you to go before I lose my temper
+altogether."
+
+Corbario backed till his heels were against the fender, and tried to
+smile.
+
+"My dear Marcello!" he protested. "What nonsense is this? You know I am
+not in earnest!"
+
+"I am," said Marcello quietly enough, but not moving.
+
+The half-invalid boy was not a boy any longer, nor an invalid either,
+and he had found his hold on things, since the days when Folco had been
+used to lead him as easily as if he had no will of his own. No one would
+have judged him to be a weak man now, physically or mentally. His frame
+was spare and graceful still, but there was energy and directness in his
+movements, his shoulders were square and he held his head high; yet it
+was his face that had changed most, though in a way very hard to define.
+A strong manhood sometimes follows a weak boyhood, very much to the
+surprise of those who have long been used to find feebleness where
+strength has suddenly developed. Marcello Consalvi had never been
+cowardly, or even timid; he had only been weak in will as in body, an
+easy prey to the man who had tried to ruin him, body and soul, in the
+hope of sending him to his grave.
+
+"I really cannot understand you, my dear boy," Corbario said very
+sweetly. "You used to be so gentle! But now you fly into a passion for
+the merest thing."
+
+"I told you that I would not argue with you," Marcello said, keeping his
+temper. "This is my house, and I choose that you should leave it at
+once. Go your way, and leave me to go mine. You are amply provided for,
+as long as you live, and you do not need my hospitality any longer,
+since you are no longer my guardian. Live where you please. You shall
+not stay here."
+
+"I certainly don't care to stay here if you don't want me," Folco
+answered. "But this is really too absurd! You must be going mad, to take
+such a tone with me!"
+
+"It is the only one which any honourable man who knows you would be
+inclined to take."
+
+"Take care! You are going too far."
+
+"Because you are under my roof? Yes, perhaps. As my guest, if I have
+been hasty, I apologise for expressing my opinion of you. I am going out
+now. I hope you will find it convenient to have left before I come in."
+
+Thereupon Marcello turned his back on Corbario, crossed the great
+library deliberately, and went out without looking round.
+
+Folco was left alone, and his still face did not even express surprise
+or annoyance. He had indeed foreseen the coming break, ever since he had
+returned to the villa three weeks earlier, when Marcello had received
+him with evident coldness, not even explaining where he had been since
+they had last parted. But Folco had not expected that the rupture would
+come so suddenly, still less that he was literally to be turned out of
+the house which he still regarded as his own, and in which he had spent
+so many prosperous years. There had, indeed, been some coldly angry
+words between the two men. Marcello had told Folco quite plainly that he
+meant to be the master, and that he was of age, and should regulate his
+own life as he pleased, and he had expressed considerable disgust at the
+existence Folco had been leading in Paris and elsewhere; and Folco had
+always tried to laugh it off, calling Marcello prudish and
+hypersensitive in matters of morality, which he certainly was not. Once
+he had attempted an appeal to Marcello's former affection, recalling
+his mother's love for them both, but a look had come into the young
+man's eyes just then which even Corbario did not care to face again, and
+the relations between the two had become more strained from that time
+on.
+
+It might seem almost incredible that a man capable of the crimes
+Corbario had committed in cold blood, for a settled purpose, should show
+so little power of following the purpose to its accomplishment after
+clearing the way to it by a murder; but every one who has had to do with
+criminals is aware that after any great exertion of destructive energy
+they are peculiarly subject to a long reaction of weakness which very
+often leads to their own destruction. If this were not a natural law, if
+criminals could exert continually the same energy and command the same
+superhuman cunning which momentarily helped them to perpetrate a crime,
+the world would be in danger of being possessed and ruled by them,
+instead of being mercifully, and perhaps too much, inclined to treat
+them as degenerates and madmen. Their conduct after committing a murder,
+for instance, seems to depend much more on their nerves than on their
+intelligence, and the time almost invariably comes when their nerves
+break down. It is upon the moment when this collapse of the will sets in
+that the really experienced detective counts, knowing that it may be
+hastened or retarded by circumstances quite beyond the murderer's
+control. The life of a murderer, after the deed, is one long fight with
+such circumstances, and if he once loses his coolness he is himself
+almost as surely lost as a man who is carried away by his temper in a
+duel with swords.
+
+After Folco had killed his wife and had just failed to kill Marcello, he
+had behaved with wonderful calm and propriety for a little while; but
+before long the old wild longing for excitement and dissipation, so long
+kept down during his married life, had come upon him with irresistible
+force, and he had yielded to it. Then, in hours of reaction, in the
+awful depression that comes with the grey dawn after a night of wine and
+pleasure and play, terrible little incidents had come back to his
+memory. He had recalled Kalmon's face and quiet words, and his own
+weakness when he had first come to see Marcello in the hospital--that
+abject terror which both Regina and the doctor must have noticed--and
+his first impression that Marcello no longer trusted him as formerly,
+and many other things; and each time he had been thus disturbed, he had
+plunged deeper into the dissipation which alone could cloud such
+memories and keep them out of sight for a time; till at last he had come
+to live in a continual transition from recklessness to fear and from
+fear to recklessness, and he had grown to detest the very sight of
+Marcello so heartily that an open quarrel was almost a relief.
+
+If he had been his former self, he would undoubtedly have returned to
+his original purpose of killing Marcello outright, since he had not
+succeeded in killing him by dissipation. But his nerve was not what it
+had been, and the circumstances were not in his favour. Moreover,
+Marcello was now of age, and had probably made a will, unknown to
+Corbario, in which case the fortune would no longer revert to the
+latter. The risk was too great, since it would no longer be undertaken
+for a certainty amounting to millions. It was better to be satisfied
+with the life-interest in one-third of the property, which he already
+enjoyed, and which supplied him with abundant means for amusing himself.
+
+It was humiliating to be turned out of the house by a mere boy, as he
+still called Marcello, but he was not excessively sensitive to
+humiliation, and he promised himself some sort of satisfactory vengeance
+before long. What surprised him most was that the first quarrel should
+have been about Aurora. He had more than once said in conversation that
+he meant to marry the girl, and Marcello had chosen to say nothing in
+answer to the statement; but when Folco had gone so far as to hint that
+Aurora was in love with him and was about to accept him, Marcello had as
+good as given him the lie direct, and a few more words had led to the
+outbreak recorded at the beginning of this chapter.
+
+As a matter of fact Corbario understood what had led to it better than
+Marcello himself, who had no very positive reason for entirely
+disbelieving his stepfather's words. The Contessa and her daughter had
+returned to Rome, and Corbario often went to see them, whereas Marcello
+had not been even once. When Marcello had last seen Folco in the
+Engadine, he had left him sitting in their little room at the hotel.
+Folco was not at all too old to marry Aurora; he was rich, at least for
+life, and Aurora was poor; he was good-looking, accomplished, and ready
+with his tongue. It was by no means impossible that he might make an
+impression on the girl and ultimately win her. Besides, Marcello felt
+that odd little resentment against Aurora which very young men sometimes
+feel against young girls, whom they have thought they loved, or are
+really about to love, or are afraid of loving, which makes them rude, or
+unjust, or both, towards those perhaps quite unconscious maidens, and
+which no woman can ever understand.
+
+"My dear Harry, why will you be so disagreeable to Mary?" asks the
+wondering mother. "She is such a charming girl, and only the other day
+she was saying that you are such a nice boy!"
+
+"Humph!" snorts Harry rudely, and forthwith lights his pipe and goes off
+to the stables to growl in peace, or across country, or to his boat, or
+to any other heavenly place not infested by women.
+
+There had been moments when, in his heart, Marcello had almost said that
+it would serve Aurora right to be married to Corbario; yet at the first
+hint from the latter that she was at all in danger of such a fate,
+Marcello had broken out as if the girl's good name had been attacked,
+and had turned his stepfather out of the house in a very summary
+fashion.
+
+Having done so, he left the villa on foot, though it was raining hard,
+and walked quickly past San Pietro in Montorio and down the hill towards
+Trastevere. The southwest wind blew the rain under his umbrella; it was
+chilly as well as wet, and a few big leaves were beginning to fall from
+the plane-trees.
+
+He was not going to the little house, where Regina sat by the window
+looking at the rain and wishing that he would come soon. When he was
+down in the streets he hailed the first cab he saw, gave the man an
+address in the Forum of Trajan, and climbed in under the hood, behind
+the dripping leathern apron, taking his umbrella with him and getting
+thoroughly wet, as is inevitable when one takes a Roman cab in the rain.
+
+The Contessa was out, in spite of the weather, but Marcello asked if
+Aurora would see him, and presently he was admitted to the drawing-room,
+where she was sitting beside a rather dreary little fire, cutting a new
+book. She threw it down and rose to meet him, as little outwardly
+disturbed as if they had seen each other constantly during the past two
+years. She gave him her hand quietly, and they sat down and looked at
+the fire.
+
+"It won't burn," Aurora said, rather disconsolately. "It never did burn
+very well, but those horrid people who have had the apartment for two
+years have spoilt the fireplace altogether."
+
+"I remember that it used to smoke," Marcello answered, going down on his
+knees and beginning to move the little logs into a better position.
+
+"Thank you," Aurora said, watching him. "You won't succeed, but it's
+good of you to try."
+
+Marcello said nothing, and presently he took the queer little Roman
+bellows, and set to work to blow upon the smouldering spots where the
+logs touched each other. In a few seconds a small flame appeared, and
+soon the fire was burning tolerably.
+
+"How clever you are!" Aurora laughed quietly.
+
+Marcello rose and sat upon a low chair, instead of on the sofa beside
+her. For a while neither spoke, and he looked about him rather
+awkwardly, while Aurora watched the flames. It was long since he had
+been in the room, and it looked shabby after the rather excessive
+magnificence of the villa on the Janiculum, for which Corbario's taste
+had been largely responsible. It was just a little shabby, too, compared
+with the dainty simplicity of the small house in Trastevere. The
+furniture, the carpets, and the curtains were two years older than when
+he had seen them last, and had been unkindly used by the tenants to whom
+the Contessa had sub-let the apartment in order to save the rent.
+Marcello missed certain pretty things that he had been used to see
+formerly, some bits of old Saxe, a little panel by an early master, a
+chiselled silver cup in which there always used to be flowers. He
+wondered where these things were, and felt that the room looked rather
+bare without them.
+
+"It burns very well now," said Aurora, still watching the fire.
+
+"What has become of the old silver cup," Marcello asked, "and all the
+little things that used to be about?"
+
+"We took them away with us when we let the apartment, and they are not
+unpacked yet, though we have been here two months."
+
+"Two months?"
+
+"Yes. I was wondering whether you were ever coming to see us again!"
+
+"Were you? I fancied that you would not care very much to see me now."
+
+Aurora said nothing to this, and they both looked at the fire for some
+time. The gentle sound of the little flames was cheerful, and gave them
+both the impression of a third person, talking quietly.
+
+"I should not have come to-day," Marcello said at last, "except that
+something has happened."
+
+"Nothing bad, I hope!" Aurora looked up with a sudden anxiety that
+surprised him.
+
+"Bad? No. At least, I think not. Why are you startled?"
+
+"I have had a headache," Aurora explained. "I am a little nervous, I
+fancy. What is it that has happened?"
+
+Marcello glanced at her doubtfully before he answered. Her quick
+interest in whatever chanced to him took him back to the old times in an
+instant. The place was familiar and quiet; her voice was like forgotten
+music, once delightful, and now suddenly recalled; her face had only
+changed to grow more womanly.
+
+"You never thought of marrying Folco, did you?" he asked, all at once,
+and a little surprised at the sound of his own words.
+
+"I?" Aurora started again, but not with anxiety. "How can you think such
+a thing?"
+
+"I don't think it; but an hour ago, at the villa, he told me in almost
+so many words that you loved him and meant to accept him."
+
+A blush of honest anger rose in the girl's fair face, and subsided
+instantly.
+
+"And what did you say?" she asked, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in
+her tone.
+
+"I turned him out of the house," Marcello answered quietly.
+
+"Turned him out?" Aurora seemed amazed. "You turned him out because he
+told you that?"
+
+"That and other things. But that was the beginning of it. I told him
+that he was lying, and he called me names, and then I told him to go. He
+will be gone when I reach home."
+
+To Marcello's surprise, Aurora got up suddenly, crossed the room and
+went to one of the windows. Marcello rose, too, and stood still. She
+seemed to be looking out at the rain, but she had grasped one of the
+curtains tightly, and it looked as if she were pressing the other hand
+to her left side. For a second her head bent forward a little and her
+graceful shoulders moved nervously, as though she were trying to swallow
+something hard. Marcello watched her a moment, and then crossed the room
+and stood beside her.
+
+"What is it?" he asked in a low voice, and laying his hand gently on
+hers that held the curtain.
+
+She drew her own away quietly and turned her head. Her eyes were dry and
+bright, but there were deep bistre shadows under them that had not been
+there before, and the lower lids were swollen.
+
+"It is nothing," she answered, and then laughed nervously. "I am glad
+you have made your stepfather go away. It was time! I was afraid you
+were as good friends as ever."
+
+"We have not been on good terms since we parted in Pontresina. Do you
+remember when I left him in your sitting-room at the hotel? He had been
+trying to persuade me to go back to Paris with him at once. In fact--"
+he hesitated.
+
+"You intended to go," Aurora said, completing the sentence. "And then
+you changed your mind."
+
+"Yes. I could not do it. I cannot explain everything."
+
+"I understand without any explanation. I think you did right."
+
+She went back to the fireplace and sat down in the corner of the sofa,
+leaning far back and stretching out one foot to the fender in an
+unconscious attitude of perfect grace. In the grey afternoon the
+firelight began to play in her auburn hair. Now and then she glanced at
+Marcello with half-closed lids, and there was a suggestion of a smile on
+her lips. Marcello saw that in her way she was as beautiful as Regina,
+and he remembered how they had kissed, without a word, when the moon's
+rays quivered through the trees by the Roman shore, more than two years
+ago. They had been children then. All at once he felt a great longing to
+kneel down beside the sofa and throw his arms round her waist and kiss
+her once again; but at almost the same instant he thought of Regina,
+waiting for him by the window over there in Trastevere, and he felt the
+shame rising to his face; and he leaned back in his low chair, clasping
+his hands tightly over one knee, as if to keep himself from moving.
+
+"Marcello," Aurora began presently, but she got no further.
+
+"Yes?" Still he did not move.
+
+"I have something on my conscience." She laughed low. "No, it is
+serious!" she went on, as if reproving herself. "I have always felt that
+everything that has happened to you since we parted that morning by the
+shore has been my fault."
+
+"Why?" Marcello seemed surprised.
+
+"Because I called you a baby," she said. "If you had not been angry at
+that, if you had not turned away and left me suddenly--you were quite
+right, you know--you would not have been knocked down, you would not
+have wandered away and lost yourself. You would not have lost your
+memory, or been ill in a strange place, or--or all the rest! So it is
+all my fault, you see, from beginning to end."
+
+"How absurd!" Marcello looked at her and smiled.
+
+"No. I think it is true. But you have changed very much, Marcello. You
+are not a boy any longer. You have a will of your own now; you are a
+man. Do you mind my telling you that?"
+
+"Certainly not!" He smiled again.
+
+"I remember very well what you answered. You said that I should not
+laugh at you again. And that has come true. You said a good many other
+things. Do you remember?"
+
+"No. I was angry. What did I say? Everything that happened before I was
+hurt seems very far off."
+
+"It does not matter," Aurora answered softly. "I am glad you have
+forgotten, for though I was angry too, and did not care at the time, the
+things you said have hurt me since."
+
+"I am sorry," Marcello said gently, "very, very sorry. Forgive me."
+
+"It was all my fault, for I was teasing you for the mere fun of the
+thing. I was nothing but a silly school-girl then."
+
+"Yes. You have changed, too."
+
+"Am I at all what you expected I should be?" Aurora asked, after a
+moment's silence.
+
+Marcello glanced at her, and clasped his hands over his knee more
+tightly than ever.
+
+"I wish you were not," he answered in a low voice.
+
+"Don't wish that." Her tone was even lower than his.
+
+Neither spoke again for some time, and they did not look at each other.
+But the flames flickering in the small fireplace seemed to be talking,
+like a third person in the room. Aurora moved at last, and changed her
+position.
+
+"I am glad that you have quarrelled with your stepfather," she said. "He
+meant to do you all the harm he could. He meant you to die of the life
+you were leading."
+
+"You know that?" Marcello looked up quickly.
+
+"Yes. I have heard my mother and Professor Kalmon talking about it when
+they thought I was not listening. I always pretend that I am not
+listening when anybody talks about you." She laughed a little. "It is so
+much simpler," she added, as if to explain. "The Professor said that
+your stepfather was killing you by inches. Those were his words."
+
+"The Professor never liked him. But he was right. Have you seen him
+often?"
+
+"Yes." Aurora laughed again. "He always turns up wherever we are,
+pretending that it is the most unexpected meeting in the world. He is
+just like a boy!"
+
+"What do you mean? Is he in love with you?"
+
+"With me? No! He is madly in love with my mother! Fancy such a thing!
+When he found that we were coming back to Rome he gave up his
+professorship in Milan, and he has come to live here so as to be able to
+see her. So I hear them talking a great deal, and he seems to have found
+out a great many things about your stepfather which nobody ever knew. He
+takes an extraordinary interest in him for some reason or other."
+
+"What has he found out?" asked Marcello.
+
+"Enough to hang him, if people could be hanged in Italy," Aurora
+answered.
+
+"I should have thought Folco too clever to do anything really against
+the law," said Marcello, who did not seem much surprised at what she
+said.
+
+"The Professor believes that it was he that tried to kill you."
+
+"How is that possible?" Marcello asked, in great astonishment. "You
+would have seen him!"
+
+"I did. You had not been gone three minutes when he came round to the
+gap in the bank where I was standing. He came from the side towards
+which I had seen you go. It was perfectly impossible that he should not
+have met you. The Professor says he must have known that you were there,
+looking at the storm, but that he did not know that I was with you, and
+that he was lying in wait for you to strike you from behind. If we had
+gone back together he would not have shown himself, that's all, and he
+would have waited for a better chance. If I had only followed you I
+should have seen what happened."
+
+"That is the trouble," said Marcello thoughtfully. "No one ever saw what
+happened, and I remember nothing but that I fell forward, feeling that I
+had been struck on the back of the head. Did you not hear any sound?"
+
+"How could I, in such a gale as was blowing? It all looks dreadfully
+likely and quite possible, and the Professor is convinced that your
+stepfather has done some worse things."
+
+"Worse?"
+
+"Yes, because he did not fail in doing them, as he did when he tried to
+kill you."
+
+"But what must such a man be?" cried Marcello, suddenly breaking out in
+anger. "What must his life have been in all the years before my mother
+married him?"
+
+"He was a kind of adventurer in South America. I don't quite know what
+he did there, but Professor Kalmon has found out a great deal about him
+from the Argentine Republic, where he lived until he killed somebody and
+had to escape to Europe. If I were you I would go and see the Professor,
+since he is in Rome. He lives at No. 16, Via Sicilia. He will tell you a
+great deal about that man when he knows that you have parted for good."
+
+"I'll go and see him. Thank you. I cannot imagine that he could tell me
+anything worse than I have already heard."
+
+"Perhaps he may," Aurora answered very gravely.
+
+Then she was silent, and Marcello could not help looking at her as she
+leaned back in the corner of the sofa. Of all things, at that moment, he
+dreaded lest he should lose command of himself under the unexpected
+influence of her beauty, of old memories, of the failing light, of the
+tender shadows that still lingered under her eyes, of that exquisite
+small hand that lay idly on the sofa beside her, just within his reach.
+He rose abruptly, no longer trusting himself.
+
+"I must be going," he said.
+
+"Already? Why?" She looked up at him and their eyes met.
+
+"Because I cannot be alone with you any longer. I do not trust myself."
+
+"Yes, you do. You are a man now, and I trust you."
+
+He had spoken roughly and harshly in his momentary self-contempt, but
+her words were clear and quiet, and rang true. He stood still in silence
+for a moment.
+
+"And besides," she added softly, "she trusts you too."
+
+There was a little emphasis on the word "she" and in her tone that was a
+reproach, and he looked at her in wonder.
+
+"We cannot talk of her, you and I," she said, turning her eyes to the
+fire, "but you know what I mean, Marcello. It is not enough to be kind.
+We women do not think so much of that as you men fancy. You must be true
+as well."
+
+"I know it," Marcello answered, bending his head a little. "Good-bye,
+Aurora."
+
+"No. Not good-bye, for you will come again soon, and then again, and
+often."
+
+"Shall I?"
+
+"Yes, because we can trust each other, though we are fond of each other.
+We are not children any longer, as we used to be."
+
+"Then I will come sometimes."
+
+He took her hand, trying not to feel that it was in his, and he left her
+sitting by the rather dreary little fire, in the rather shabby room, in
+the grey twilight.
+
+As he drove through the wet streets, he went over all she had said, went
+over it again and again, till he knew her words by heart. But he did not
+try, or dare to try, to examine what he felt, and was going to feel. The
+manliness that had at last come to its full growth in him clung to the
+word "true" as she had meant it.
+
+But she, being left alone, leaned forward, resting her elbows on her
+knees and clasping her hands as she gazed at the smouldering remains of
+the fire. She had known well enough that she had loved him before he had
+come; she had known it too well when he had told her how he had driven
+Folco out of his house for having spoken of her too carelessly. Then the
+blood had rushed to her throat, beating hard, and if she had not gone
+quickly to the window she felt that she must have cried for joy. She was
+far too proud to let him guess that, but she was not too proud to love
+him, in spite of everything, though it meant that she compared herself
+with the peasant girl, and envied her, and in all maiden innocence would
+have changed places with her if she could.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+It was late in the evening when Marcello reached the villa, and was told
+that his stepfather had left suddenly with his valet, before sunset,
+taking a good deal of luggage with him. The coachman had driven him to
+the station and had seen no more of him. He had not left any message or
+note for Marcello. This was as it should be, and Marcello did not care
+to know whither he had gone, since he was out of the house. He was glad,
+however, that he had left Rome at once instead of going to an hotel,
+which would have made an interesting topic of conversation for gossips.
+
+Marcello vaguely wondered why Folco had told a perfectly gratuitous
+falsehood about Aurora, and whether he could possibly have lied merely
+for the sake of hurting him. If so, he had got his deserts. It mattered
+very little now, and it was a waste of thought to think of him at all.
+
+The young man had a big fire built in the library, and sat down in his
+favourite leathern chair under the shaded light. He was tired, but not
+sleepy, and he was glad to be alone at last, for he had felt Corbario's
+evil presence in the house, though they had met little of late, and it
+was a great relief to know that he would never return.
+
+He was glad to be alone, and yet he felt lonely, for the one condition
+did not make the other impossible. He was glad to be able to think in
+peace, but when he did think, he longed for some companionship in his
+thoughts, and he found that he was wishing himself back in the room that
+looked down upon the Forum of Trajan, with Aurora, and that she was
+telling him again that she could trust him; and yet the very thought
+seemed to mean that he was not to be trusted.
+
+Psychological problems are only interesting when they concern other
+people than ourselves, for there can be no problem where there is not a
+difficulty, and where the inner self is concerned there can be no
+difficulty that does not demand immediate solution if we are to find
+peace. Some men of very strong and thoughtful character are conscious of
+a sort of second self within themselves, to which they appeal in trouble
+as Socrates to his Daemon; but most men, in trouble and alone, would turn
+to a friend if there were one at hand.
+
+Marcello had none, and he felt horribly lonely in his great house, as
+the faces of two women rose before him, on the right and left.
+
+But he was a man now, and as he sat there he determined to face the
+problem bravely and to solve it once and for ever by doing what was
+right, wheresoever he could convince himself that right lay, and without
+any regard for his own inclinations.
+
+He told himself that this must be possible, because where right and
+wrong were concerned it was never possible to hesitate long. A man is
+never so convinced that right is easy to distinguish and to do as when
+he has lately made up his mind to reform. Indeed, the weakness as well
+as the strength of all reformers lies in their blind conviction that
+whatever strikes them as right must be done immediately, with a haste
+that strongly resembles hurry, and with no regard for consequences. You
+might as well try, when an express train is running at full speed on the
+wrong track, to heave it over to the right one without stopping it and
+without killing the passengers. Yet most reformers of themselves and
+others, from the smallest to the greatest, seem to believe that this can
+be done, ought to be done, and must be done at once.
+
+Marcello was just then a reformer of this sort. He had become aware in
+the course of that afternoon that something was seriously wrong, and as
+his own will and character had served him well of late, he trusted both
+beforehand and set to work to find out the right track, with the
+distinct intention of violently transferring the train of his existence
+to it as soon as it had been discovered. He was very sure of the result.
+
+Besides, he had been brought up by a very religious woman, and a strong
+foundation of belief remained in him, and was really the basis of all
+his thinking about himself. He had been careless, thoughtless, reckless,
+since his mother had died, but he had never lost that something to which
+a man may best go back in trouble. Sometimes it hurt him, sometimes it
+comforted him vaguely, but he was always conscious that it was there,
+and had been there through all his wildest days. It was not a very
+reasoning belief, for he was not an intellectual man, but it was
+unchangeable and solid still in spite of all his past weakness. It bade
+him do right, blindly, and only because right was right; but it did not
+open his eyes to the terrible truth that whereas right is right, the
+Supreme Power, which is always in the right, does not take human life
+into consideration at all, and that a man is under all circumstances
+bound to consider the value of life to others, and sometimes its value
+to himself, when others depend upon him for their happiness, or safety,
+or welfare.
+
+Animated by the most sincere wish to find the right direction and follow
+it--perhaps because Aurora had said that she trusted him--yet blind to
+the dangers that beset his path, there is no knowing how many lives
+Marcello might not have wrecked by acting on the resolutions he
+certainly would have made if he had been left to himself another hour.
+
+He was deep in thought, his feet stretched out to the fire, his head
+leaning back against the leathern cushion of his chair, his eyes half
+closed, feeling that he was quite alone and beyond the reach of every
+one, if he chose to sit there until morning wrestling with his
+psychological problem.
+
+He was roused by the sharp buzz of the telephone instrument which stood
+on the writing-table. It was very annoying, and he wished he had turned
+it off before he had sat down, but since some one was calling he got up
+reluctantly to learn who wanted him at that hour. He glanced at the
+clock, and saw that it was nearly half-past ten. The instrument buzzed
+again as he reached the table.
+
+"I want to see Signor Consalvi at once; is it too late?" asked a man's
+voice anxiously.
+
+"I am Consalvi. Who are you, please?" asked Marcello.
+
+"Kalmon. Is it true that Corbario has left the villa?"
+
+"Yes. He left this afternoon."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"He drove to the railway station. I don't know where he is gone. He left
+no address."
+
+"--railway station--no address--" Marcello heard the words as Kalmon
+spoke to some other person at his elbow, wherever he was.
+
+"May I come at once?" Kalmon asked.
+
+"Yes. I am alone. I'll have the lower gate opened."
+
+"Thanks. I shall be at the gate in twenty minutes. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+Marcello hung up the receiver, rang the bell, and gave the order for the
+gate, adding that the gentleman who came was to be shown in at once.
+Then he sat down and waited.
+
+It was clear that Kalmon had learned of Corbario's departure from
+Aurora, perhaps through her mother. He had probably dined with them, for
+he was intimate at the house, and Aurora had spoken of Marcello's visit.
+There was no reason why she should not have done so, and yet Marcello
+wished that she had kept it to herself a little longer. It had meant so
+much to him, and it suddenly seemed as if it had meant nothing at all to
+her. She had perhaps repeated to her mother everything that had been
+said, or almost everything, for she was very fond of her.
+
+Marcello told himself roughly that since he had no right to love her,
+and was determined not to, he had no claim upon such little delicacies
+of discretion and silence on her part; and his problem stuck up its head
+again out of the deep water in which it lived, and glared at him, and
+shot out all sorts of questions like the wriggling tentacles of an
+octopus, inviting him to wrestle with them, if only to see how useless
+all wrestling must be. He rose again impatiently, took a cigar from a
+big mahogany box on the table, lit it and smoked savagely, walking up
+and down.
+
+It was half finished when the door opened and Kalmon was ushered in. He
+held out his hand as he came forward, with the air of a man who has no
+time to lose.
+
+"I am glad to see you," Marcello said.
+
+"And I am exceedingly glad that you were at home when I called you up,"
+Kalmon answered. "Have you really no idea where Corbario is?"
+
+"Not the slightest. I am only too glad to get rid of him. I suppose the
+Contessa told you--"
+
+"Yes. I was dining there. But she only told me half an hour ago, just as
+I was coming away, and I rushed home to get at the telephone."
+
+It occurred to Marcello that Kalmon need not have driven all the way to
+Via Sicilia from the Forum of Trajan merely for the sake of telephoning.
+
+"But what is the hurry?" asked Marcello. "Do sit down and explain! I
+heard this afternoon that you had strong suspicions as to Folco's part
+in what happened to me."
+
+"Something more than suspicions now," Kalmon answered, settling his big
+frame in a deep chair before the tire; "but I am afraid he has escaped."
+
+"Escaped? He has not the slightest idea that he is suspected!"
+
+"How do you know? Don't you see that as he is guilty, he must have soon
+begun to think that the change in your manner toward him was due to the
+fact that you suspected him, and that you turned him out because you
+guessed the truth, though you could not prove it?"
+
+"Perhaps," Marcello admitted, in a rather preoccupied tone. "The young
+lady seems to have repeated to her mother everything I said this
+afternoon," he added with evident annoyance. "Did the Contessa tell you
+why I quarrelled with Folco to-day?"
+
+"No. She merely said that there had been angry words and that you had
+asked him to leave the house. She herself was surprised, she said, and
+wondered what could have brought matters to a crisis at last."
+
+Marcello's face cleared instantly. Aurora had not told any one that he
+had quarrelled with his stepfather about her; that was quite evident,
+for there were not two more truthful people in the world than the
+Contessa and Kalmon, whose bright brown eyes were at that moment quietly
+studying his face.
+
+"Not that the fact matters in the least," said the Professor, resting
+his feet on the fender and exposing the broad soles of his wet
+walking-boots to the flame. "The important fact is that the man has
+escaped, and we must catch him."
+
+"But how are you so sure that it was he that attacked me? You cannot
+arrest a man on suspicion, without going through a great many
+formalities. You cannot possibly have got an eye-witness to the fact,
+and so it must be a matter of suspicion after all, founded on a certain
+amount of rather weak circumstantial evidence. Now, if it was he that
+tried to kill me, he failed, for I am alive, and perfectly well. Why not
+let him alone, since I have got rid of him?"
+
+"For a very good reason, which I think I had better not tell you."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I am not sure what you would do if you were told it suddenly. Are your
+nerves pretty good? You used to be a delicate boy, though I confess that
+you look much stronger now."
+
+"You need not fear for my nerves," Marcello answered with a short laugh.
+"If they are sound after what I have been through in the last two years
+they will stand anything!"
+
+"Yes. Perhaps you had better know, though I warn you that what I am
+going to say will be a shock to you, of which you do not dream."
+
+"You must be exaggerating!" Marcello smiled incredulously. "You had
+better tell me at once, or I shall imagine it is much worse than it is."
+
+"It could not be," Kalmon answered. "It is hard even to tell, and not
+only because what happened was in a distant way my fault."
+
+"Your fault? For heaven's sake tell me what the matter is, and let us be
+done with it!"
+
+"Corbario wanted to get possession of your whole fortune. That is why he
+tried to kill you."
+
+"Yes. Is that all? You have made me understand that already."
+
+"He had conceived the plan before your mother's death," said Kalmon.
+
+"That would not surprise me either. But how do you know it?"
+
+"Do you remember that discovery of mine, that I called 'the sleeping
+death'?"
+
+"Yes. What has that to do with it?" Marcello's expression changed.
+
+"Corbario stole one of the tablets from the tube in my pocket, while I
+was asleep that night."
+
+"What?" Marcello began to grow pale.
+
+"Your mother died asleep," said Kalmon in a very low voice.
+
+Marcello was transfixed with horror, and grasped the arms of his chair.
+His face was livid. Kalmon watched him, and continued.
+
+"Yes. Corbario did it. Your mother used to take phenacetine tablets when
+she had headaches. They were very like the tablets of my poison in size
+and shape. Corbario stole into my room when I was sound asleep, took one
+of mine, and dropped in one of hers. Then he put mine amongst the
+phenacetine ones. She took it, slept, and died."
+
+Marcello gasped for breath, his eyes starting from his head.
+
+"You see," Kalmon went on, "it was long before I found that my tablets
+had been tampered with. There had been seven in the tube. I knew that,
+and when I glanced at the tube next day there were seven still. The tube
+was of rather thick blue glass, if you remember, so that the very small
+difference between the one tablet and the rest could not be seen through
+it. I went to Milan almost immediately, and when I got home I locked up
+the tube in a strong-box. It was not until long afterwards, when I
+wanted to make an experiment, that I opened the tube and emptied the
+contents into a glass dish. Then I saw that one tablet was unlike the
+rest. I saw that it had been made by a chemist and not by myself. I
+analysed it and found five grains of phenacetine."
+
+Marcello leaned back, listening intently, and still deadly pale.
+
+"You did not know that I was trying to find out how you had been hurt,
+that I was in communication with the police from the first, that I came
+to Rome and visited you in the hospital before you recovered your
+memory. The Contessa was very anxious to know the truth about her old
+friend's son, and I did what I could. That was natural. Something told
+me that Corbario had tried to kill you, and I suspected him, but it is
+only lately that I have got all the evidence we need. There is not a
+link lacking. Well, when I came to Rome that time, it chanced that I met
+Corbario at the station. He had come by the same train, and was looking
+dreadfully ill. That increased my suspicion, for I knew that his anxiety
+must be frightful, since you might have seen him when he struck you, and
+might recognise him, and accuse him. Yet he could not possibly avoid
+meeting you. Imagine what that man must have felt. He tried to smile
+when he saw me, and said he wished he had one of those sleeping tablets
+of mine. You understand. He thought I had already missed the one he had
+taken, though I had not, and that he had better disarm any possible
+suspicion by speaking of the poison carelessly. Then his face turned
+almost yellow, and he nearly fainted. He said it was the heat, and I
+helped him to his carriage. He looked like a man terrified out of his
+senses, and I remembered the fact afterwards, when I found that one
+tablet had been stolen; but at the time I attributed it all to his fear
+of facing you. Now we know the truth. He tried to murder you, and on the
+same day he poisoned your mother."
+
+Kalmon sat quite still when he had finished, and for a long time
+Marcello did not move, and made no sound. At last he spoke in a dull
+voice.
+
+"I want to kill him myself."
+
+The Professor glanced at him and nodded slowly, as if he understood the
+simple instinct of justice that moved him.
+
+"If I see him, I shall kill him," Marcello said slowly. "I am sure I
+shall."
+
+"I am afraid that he has escaped," Kalmon answered. "Of course there is
+a possibility that he may have had some object in deceiving your
+coachman by driving to the railway station, but it is not at all likely.
+He probably took the first train to the north."
+
+"But he can be stopped at the frontier!"
+
+"Do you think Corbario is the man to let himself be trapped easily if he
+knows that he is pursued?" asked Kalmon incredulously. "I do not."
+
+He rose from his chair and began to walk up and down, his hands behind
+him and his head bent.
+
+Marcello paid no attention to him and was silent for a long time,
+sitting quite motionless and scarcely seeming to breathe. What he felt
+he never could have told afterwards; he only knew that he suffered in
+every fibre of his brain and body, with every nerve of his heart and in
+every secret recess of his soul. His mother seemed to have been dead so
+long, beyond the break in his memory. The dreadful truth he had just
+heard made her die again before his eyes, by the hand of the man whom he
+and she had trusted.
+
+"Kalmon," he said at last, and the Professor stopped short in his walk.
+"Kalmon, do you think she knows?"
+
+It was like the cry of a child, but it came from a man who was already
+strong. Kalmon could only shake his head gravely; he could find nothing
+to say in answer to such a question, and yet he was too human and kind
+and simple-hearted not to understand the words that rose to Marcello's
+lips.
+
+"Then she was happy to the end--then she still believes in him."
+
+Kalmon turned his clear eyes thoughtfully towards Marcello's face.
+
+"She is gone," he answered. "She knows the great secret now. The rest is
+nothing to the dead. But we are living and it is much to us. The man
+must be brought to justice, and you must help me to bring him down, if
+we have to hunt him round the world."
+
+"By God, I will!" said Marcello, in the tone of one who takes a solemn
+obligation.
+
+He rose and stood upright, as if he were ready, and though he was still
+pale there was no look of weak horror left in his face, nor any weakness
+at all.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Kalmon. "I would rather see you so. Now listen to me,
+and collect your thoughts, Marcello. Ercole is in Rome. You remember
+Ercole, your keeper at the cottage by the shore? Yes. I got the last
+link in the evidence about Corbario's attack on you from him to-day. He
+is a strange fellow. He has known it since last summer and has kept it
+to himself. But he is one of those diabolically clever peasants that one
+meets in the Campagna, and he must have his reasons. I told him to sleep
+at my house to-night, and when I went home he was sitting up in the
+entry with his dog. I have sent him to the station to find out whether
+Corbario really left or not. You don't think he will succeed? I tell you
+there are few detectives to be compared with one of those fellows when
+they are on the track of a man they hate. I told him to come here, no
+matter how late it might be, since he is your man. I suppose he can get
+in?"
+
+"Of course. There is a night-bell for the porter. Ercole knows that.
+Besides, the porter will not go to bed as long as you are here. While we
+are waiting for him, tell me what Ercole has found out."
+
+They sat down again, and Kalmon told Marcello the sailor's story of what
+his captain had seen from the deck of the brigantine. Marcello listened
+gravely.
+
+"I remember that there was a small vessel very far in," he said. "Aurora
+will remember it, too, for she watched it and spoke of it. We thought it
+must run aground on the bar, it was so very near."
+
+"Yes. She remembers it, too. The evidence is complete."
+
+There was silence again. Marcello threw another log upon the fire, and
+they waited. Kalmon smoked thoughtfully, but Marcello leaned back in his
+chair, covering his eyes with one hand. The pain had not begun to be
+dulled yet, and he could only sit still and bear it.
+
+At last the door opened, and a servant said that Ercole was waiting, and
+had been ordered to come, no matter how late it was. A moment later he
+appeared, and for once without his dog.
+
+He stood before the door as it closed behind him waiting to be told to
+come forward. Marcello spoke kindly to him.
+
+"Come here," he said. "It is a long time since we saw each other, and
+now we are in a hurry."
+
+Ercole's heavy boots rang on the polished floor as he obeyed and came up
+to the table. He looked gloomily and suspiciously at both men.
+
+"Well?" said Kalmon, encouraging him to speak.
+
+"He is still in Rome," Ercole answered. "How do I know it? I began to
+ask the porters and the under station-masters who wear red caps, and the
+woman who sells newspapers and cigars at the stand, and the man who
+clips the tickets at the doors of the waiting-rooms. 'Did you see a
+gentleman, so and so, with a servant, so and so, and much luggage, going
+away by the train? For I am his keeper from the Roman shore, and he told
+me to be here when he went away, to give him a certain answer.' So I
+said, going from one to another, and weeping to show that it was a very
+urgent matter. And many shook their heads and laughed at me. But at last
+a porter heard, and asked if the gentleman were so and so. And I said
+yes, that he was so and so, and his servant was so and so, and that the
+gentleman was a rich gentleman. And the porter said, 'See what a
+combination! That is the gentleman who had all his luggage brought in
+this afternoon, to be weighed; but it was not weighed, for he came back
+after a quarter of an hour, and took some small things and had them put
+upon a cab, but the other boxes were left in deposit.' Then I took out
+four sous and showed them to the porter, and he led me to a certain
+hall, and showed me the luggage, which is that of the man we seek, and
+it is marked 'F.C.' So when I had seen, I made a show of being joyful,
+and gave the porter five sous instead of four. And he was very
+contented. This is the truth. So I say, he is still in Rome."
+
+"I told you so," said Kalmon, looking at Marcello.
+
+"Excuse me, but what did you tell the young gentleman?" asked Ercole
+suspiciously.
+
+"That you would surely find out," Kalmon answered.
+
+"I have found out many things," said Ercole gloomily.
+
+His voice was very harsh just then, as if speaking so much had made him
+hoarse.
+
+"He took some of his things away because he meant to spend the night in
+Rome," Kalmon said thoughtfully. "He means to leave to-morrow, perhaps
+by an early train. If we do not find him to-night, we shall not catch
+him in Rome at all."
+
+"Surely," said Ercole, "but Rome is very big, and it is late."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It was still raining when the three men left the villa, and the night
+was very dark, for the young moon had already set. The wind howled round
+San Pietro in Montorio and the Spanish Academy, and whistled through the
+branches of the plane-trees along the winding descent, and furiously
+tore the withering leaves. They struck Ercole's weather-beaten face as
+he sat beside the coachman with bent head, with his soft hat pulled down
+over his eyes, and the rain dripped from his coarse moustache. Kalmon
+and Marcello leaned as far back as they could, under the deep hood and
+behind the high leathern apron.
+
+"There is some animal following us," the cabman said to Ercole as they
+turned a corner.
+
+"It is my dog," Ercole answered.
+
+"It sounds like a calf," said the cabman, turning his head to listen
+through the storm.
+
+"It is not a calf," answered Ercole gruffly. "It is my dog. Or if you
+wish it to be the were-wolf, it will be the were-wolf."
+
+The cabman glanced uneasily at his companion on the box, for the
+were-wolf is a thing of terror to Romans. But he could not see the
+countryman's features in the gloom, and he hastened his horse's pace
+down the hill, for he did not like the sound of those galloping feet
+behind his cab, in that lonely road, in the dark and the rain.
+
+"Where am I to go?" he asked, as he came near the place where a turn to
+the right leads out of the Via Garibaldi down to the Via Luciano Manara.
+
+But Kalmon knew where they were, even better than Marcello, to whom the
+road was familiar by day and night, in all weathers.
+
+"We must leave that message first," said the Professor to Marcello. "We
+are coming to the turning."
+
+"To Santa Cecilia," Marcello called out to the cabman, thrusting his
+head forward into the rain, "then I will tell you where to go."
+
+"Santa Cecilia," echoed the cabman.
+
+Ercole growled something quite unintelligible, to which his companion
+paid no attention, and the cab rattled on through the rain down the long
+paved street. It made such a noise that the dog's feet could not be
+heard any more. There were more lamps, too, and it seemed less gloomy
+than up there under the plane-trees, though there were no lights in the
+windows at that late hour.
+
+"Now to the right," said Ercole, as they reached the back of Saint
+Cecilia's at the Via Anicia.
+
+"To the right!" Marcello called out a second later from under the hood.
+
+"You seem to know the way," said the cabman to Ercole. "Why don't you
+give me the address of the house at once and be done with it?"
+
+"I know the house, but not the street, nor the number."
+
+"I understand. Does your dog also know the house?"
+
+To this question Ercole made no answer, for he considered that it was
+none of the cabman's business, and, moreover, he regretted having shown
+that he knew where his master was going. Marcello now gave the final
+direction to the cabman, who drew up before a door in a wall, in a
+narrow lane, where the walls were high and the doors were few. It was
+the garden entrance to the little house in Trastevere.
+
+Marcello got out, opened the door with the key he carried, and went in.
+It was raining hard, and he disappeared into the darkness, shutting the
+door behind him. It had a small modern lock with a spring latch that
+clicked sharply as it shut. The cab had stopped with the door on the
+left, and therefore on the side on which Ercole was sitting. Nino, the
+dog, came up from behind, with his tongue hanging out, blood-red in the
+feeble light of the cab's lamp; he put his head up above the low front
+wheel to have a look at Ercole. Being satisfied, he at once lay down on
+the wet stones, with his muzzle towards the door.
+
+Two or three minutes passed thus, in total silence. The cab-horse hung
+his head patiently under the driving rain, but neither stamped on the
+paving stones nor shook himself, nor panted audibly, for he was a pretty
+good horse, as cab-horses go, and was not tired.
+
+Suddenly Nino growled without moving, the ominous low growl of a dog
+that can kill, and Ercole growled at him in turn, making a sound
+intended to impose silence. There was no reason why Nino should growl at
+Marcello. But Nino rose slowly upon his quarters, as if he were about to
+spring at the door, and his rough coat bristled along his back. Then
+Ercole distinctly heard the latch click as it had done when Marcello
+went in, and Nino put his muzzle to the crack of the closed door and
+sniffed up and down it, and then along the stone step. To Ercole it was
+clear that some person within had opened the door noiselessly a little
+way and had shut it again rather hurriedly, on hearing the dog and
+seeing the cab. Whoever it was had wished to see if there were any one
+outside, without being seen, or perhaps had meant to slip out without
+being heard by any one in the house.
+
+Kalmon, leaning back inside, had not heard the sound of the latch, and
+paid no attention to Nino's growl. It was natural that such an animal
+should growl and snarl for nothing, he thought, especially on a rainy
+night, when the lamps of a cab throw strange patches of light on the
+glistening pavement.
+
+There was some reason why Ercole, who had heard, did not get down and
+tell the Professor, who had noticed nothing. One reason, and a good
+enough one, was that whoever it was that had opened the door so
+cautiously, it certainly was not the man they were all hunting that
+night. Yet since Ercole knew the little house, and probably knew who
+lived there, and that it belonged to Marcello, it might have been
+supposed that he would have told the latter, whose footsteps were heard
+on the gravel a few moments afterwards. But though Marcello stood a
+moment by the wheel close to Ercole, and spoke across him to the cabman,
+Ercole said nothing. Nino had not growled at Marcello, even before the
+latter had appeared, for Nino had a good memory, for a dog, and
+doubtless remembered long days spent by the Roman shore, and copious
+leavings thrown to him from luxurious luncheons. Before they had left
+the villa he had sniffed at Marcello's clothes and hands in a manner
+that was meant to be uncommonly friendly, though it might not have
+seemed reassuring to a stranger; and Marcello had patted his huge head,
+and called him by name.
+
+The young man had given the cabman the address of the office of the
+Chief of Police, and when he had got in and hooked up the leathern
+apron, the cab rolled away over the stones through the dark streets,
+towards the bridge of Saint Bartholomew.
+
+Within the house Regina sat alone, as Marcello had found her, her chin
+resting on the back of her closed hand, her elbow on her knee, her eyes
+gazing at the bright little fire that blazed on the polished hearth. Her
+hair was knotted for the night, low down on her neck, and the loose
+dressing-gown of dove-coloured silk plush was unfastened at the neck,
+where a little lace fell about her strong white throat.
+
+She had sprung to her feet in happy surprise when Marcello had entered
+the room, though it was not two hours since he had left her, and she
+could still smell the smoke of his last cigarette. She had felt a
+sudden chill when she had seen his face, for she never saw him look
+grave and preoccupied without believing that he had grown suddenly tired
+of her, and that the end had come. But then she had seen his eyes
+lighten for her, and she had known that he was not tired of her, but
+only very much in earnest and very much in a hurry.
+
+He had bidden her find out from Settimia where Corbario was, if the
+woman knew it; he had told her to find out at any cost, and had put a
+great deal of emphasis on the last words. In answer to the one question
+she asked, he told her that Corbario was a murderer, and was trying to
+escape. He had not time to explain more fully, but he knew that he could
+count on her. She did not love Folco Corbario, and she came of a race
+that could hate, for it was the race of the Roman hill peasants. So he
+left her quickly and went on.
+
+But when he was gone, Regina sat quite still for some time, looking at
+the fire. Settimia was safe in her own room, and was probably asleep. It
+would be soon enough to wake her when Regina had considered what she
+should say in order to get the information Marcello wanted. Settimia
+would deny having had any communication with Corbario, or that she knew
+anything of his whereabouts. The next step would probably be to tempt
+her with money or other presents. If this failed, what was to be done?
+Somehow Regina guessed that a bribe would not have much effect on the
+woman.
+
+Marcello had wished to send her away long ago, but Regina had persuaded
+him to let her stay. It was part of her hatred of Corbario to accumulate
+proofs against him, and they were not lacking in the letters he wrote to
+Settimia. Regina could not understand the relation in which they stood
+to each other, but now and then she had found passages in the letters
+which referred neither to herself nor Marcello, but to things that had
+happened a good many years ago in another country. She was convinced
+that the two had once been companions in some nefarious business, of
+which they had escaped the consequences. It was her intention to find
+out exactly what the deed had been, and then to bring Corbario to ruin
+by exposing it. It was a simple scheme, but it seemed a sure one, and
+Regina was very patient. Corbario had tried to separate her from
+Marcello, and she had sworn that he should pay her for that; and
+besides, he had wished to kill Marcello in order to get his money. That
+was bad, undoubtedly--very bad; but to her peasant mind it was not
+unnatural. She had heard all her life of crimes committed for the sake
+of an inheritance; and so have most of us, and in countries that fondly
+believe themselves much more civilised than Italy. That was extremely
+wicked, but the attempt had failed, and it sank into insignificance in
+comparison with the heinous crime of trying to separate two lovers by
+treachery. That was what Regina would not forgive Corbario.
+
+Nor would she pardon Settimia, who had been Corbario's instrument and
+helper; and as she meant to include the woman in her vengeance, she
+would not let her go, but kept her, and treated her so generously and
+unsuspiciously that Settimia was glad to stay, since Corbario still
+wished it.
+
+Regina looked at the little travelling-clock that stood on the low table
+at her elbow, and saw that it was half-past eleven. Behind the drawn
+curtains she could hear the rain beating furiously against the shutters,
+but all was quiet within the house. Regina listened, for Settimia's room
+was overhead, and when she moved about her footsteps could be heard in
+the sitting-room. Regina had heard her just before Marcello had come in,
+but there was no sound now; she had probably gone to bed. Regina lit a
+candle and went into her own room.
+
+On a shelf near the little toilet-table there was a box, covered with
+old velvet, in which she kept the few simple pins and almost necessary
+bits of jewellery which she had been willing to accept from Marcello.
+She took it down, set it upon the toilet-table and opened it. A small
+silver-mounted revolver lay amongst the other things, for Marcello had
+insisted that she should have a weapon of some kind, because the house
+seemed lonely to him. He had shown her how to use it, but she had
+forgotten. She took it out, and turned it over and over in her hands,
+with a puzzled look. She did not even know whether it was loaded or not,
+and did not remember how to open the chamber. She wondered how the thing
+worked, and felt rather afraid of it. Besides, if she had to use it, it
+would make a dreadful noise; so she put it back carefully amongst the
+things.
+
+There were the cheap little earrings she had worn ever since she had
+been a child, till Marcello had made her take them out and wear none at
+all. There was a miserable little brooch of tarnished silver which she
+had bought with her own money at a country fair, and which had once
+seemed very fine to her. She had not the slightest sentiment about such
+trifles, for Italian peasants are altogether the least sentimental
+people in the world; the things were not even good enough to give to
+Settimia, and yet it seemed wrong to throw them away, so she had always
+kept them, with a vague idea of giving them to some poor little girl, to
+whom they would represent happiness. With them lay the long pin she used
+to stick through her hair on Sundays when she went to church.
+
+It had been her mother's, and it was the only thing she possessed which
+had belonged to the murdered woman who had given her birth. It was
+rather a fine specimen of the pins worn by the hill peasant women, and
+was made like a little cross-hilted sword, with a blade of fire-gilt
+steel about eight inches long. A little gilt ball was screwed upon the
+point, intended to keep the pin from coming out after it was thrust
+through the hair. Regina took the ball off and felt the point, which was
+as sharp as that of a pen-knife; and she tried the blade with her hands
+and found that it did not bend easily. It was strong enough for what she
+wanted of it. She stuck it through the heavy knot of her hair, rather
+low down at the back of her neck, where she could easily reach it with
+her right hand; but she did not screw on the ball. It was not likely
+that the pin would fall out. She was very deliberate in all she did; she
+even put up her hand two or three times, without looking at herself in
+the mirror, to be quite sure where to find the hilt of the pin if she
+should need it. Marcello had told her to get the information he wanted
+"at any cost."
+
+Then she went back, with her candle, through the cheerful sitting-room,
+and out through a small vestibule that was now dark, and up the narrow
+staircase to find Settimia.
+
+She knocked, and the woman opened, and Regina was a little surprised to
+see that she was still dressed. She was pale, and looked very anxious as
+she faced her mistress in the doorway.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, rather nervously.
+
+"Nothing," Regina answered in a reassuring tone. "I had forgotten to
+tell you about a little change I want in the trimming of that hat, and
+as I heard you moving about, I came up before going to bed."
+
+Settimia had taken off her shoes more than half an hour earlier in order
+to make no noise, and her suspicions and her fears were instantly
+aroused. She drew her lids together a little and looked over Regina's
+shoulder through the open door towards the dark staircase. She was not a
+tall woman, and was slightly made, but she was energetic and could be
+quick when she chose, as Regina knew. Regina quietly shut the door
+behind her and came forward into the room, carrying her candle-stick,
+which she set down upon the table near the lamp.
+
+"Where is that hat?" she asked, so naturally that the woman began to
+think nothing was wrong after all.
+
+Settimia turned to cross the room, in order to get the hat in question
+from a pasteboard bandbox that stood on the floor. Regina followed her,
+and stood beside her as she bent down.
+
+Then without the slightest warning Regina caught her arms from behind
+and threw her to her knees, so that she was forced to crouch down, her
+head almost touching the floor. She was no more than a child in the
+peasant woman's hands as soon as she was fairly caught. But she did not
+scream, and she seemed to be keeping her senses about her.
+
+"What do you want of me?" she asked, speaking with difficulty.
+
+Policemen know that ninety-nine out of a hundred criminals ask that
+question when they are taken.
+
+"I want to know several things," Regina answered.
+
+"Let me go, and I will tell you what I can."
+
+"No, you won't," Regina replied, looking about her for something with
+which to tie the woman's hands, for she had forgotten that this might be
+necessary. "I shall not let you go until I know everything."
+
+She felt that Settimia's thin hands were cautiously trying the strength
+of her own and turning a very little in her grasp. She threw her weight
+upon the woman's shoulders to keep her down, grasped both wrists in one
+hand, and with the other tore off the long silk cord that tied her own
+dressing-gown at the waist. It was new and strong.
+
+"You had better not struggle," she said, as she got the first turn
+round Settimia's wrists and began to pull it tight. "You are in my power
+now. It is of no use to scream either, for nobody will hear you."
+
+"I know it," the woman replied. "What are you going to do with me?"
+
+"I shall ask questions. If you answer them, I shall not hurt you. If you
+do not, I shall hurt you until you do, or until you die. Now I am going
+to tie your wrists to your heels, so that you cannot move. Then I will
+put a pillow under your head, so that you can be pretty comfortable
+while we talk a little."
+
+She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, which terrified Settimia much more
+than any dramatic display of anger or hatred could have done. In a few
+moments the woman was bound hand and foot. Regina turned her upon her
+side, and arranged a pillow under her head as she had promised to do.
+Then she sat down upon the floor beside the pillow and looked at her
+calmly.
+
+"In this way we can talk," she said.
+
+Settimia's rather stony eyes were wide with fear now, as she lay on her
+side, watching Regina's face.
+
+"I have always served you faithfully," she said. "I cannot understand
+why you treat me so cruelly."
+
+"Yes," Regina answered, unmoved, "you have been an excellent maid, and I
+am sorry that I am obliged to tie you up like the calves that are taken
+to the city on carts. Now tell me, where is Signor Corbario?"
+
+"How should I know?" whined Settimia, evidently more frightened. "I
+know nothing about Signor Corbario. I swear that I have hardly ever seen
+him. How can I possibly know where he is? He is probably at his house,
+at this hour."
+
+"No. You know very well that he has left the villa. It will not serve to
+tell lies, nor to say that you know nothing about him, for I am sure you
+do. Now listen. I wish to persuade you with good words. You and Signor
+Corbario were in South America together."
+
+Settimia's face expressed abject terror.
+
+"Never!" she cried, rocking her bound body sideways in an instinctive
+attempt to emphasise her words by a gesture. "I swear before heaven, and
+the saints, and the holy--"
+
+"It is useless," Regina interrupted. "You have not forgotten what you
+and he did in Salta ten years ago. You remember how suddenly Padilla
+died, when 'Doctor' Corbario was attending him, and you were his nurse,
+don't you?"
+
+She fixed her eyes sternly on Settimia's, and the woman turned livid,
+and ground her teeth.
+
+"You are the devil!" she said hoarsely. "But it is all a lie!" she
+cried, suddenly trying denial again. "I was never in South America,
+never, never, never!"
+
+"This is a lie," observed Regina, with perfect calm. "If you do not tell
+me where Signor Corbario is to-night, I shall go to the police to-morrow
+and tell all I know about you."
+
+"You know nothing. What is all this that you are inventing? You are a
+wicked woman!"
+
+"Take care! Perhaps I am a wicked woman. Who knows! I am not a saint,
+but you are not my confessor. It is the contrary, perhaps; and perhaps
+you will have to confess to me this night, before going to the other
+world, if you confess at all. Where is Signor Corbario?"
+
+As she asked the question, she quietly took the long pin from her hair
+and began to play with the point.
+
+"Are you going to murder me?" groaned the wretched woman, watching the
+terrible little weapon.
+
+"I should not call it murder to kill you. This point is sharp. Should
+you like to feel it? You shall. In this way you will perhaps be
+persuaded to speak."
+
+She gently pressed the point against Settimia's cheek.
+
+"Don't move, or you will scratch yourself," she said, as the woman tried
+to draw back her face. "Now, will you tell me where Signor Corbario is?
+I want to know."
+
+Settimia must have feared Corbario more than she feared Regina and the
+sharp pin at that moment, for she shook her head and set her teeth.
+Perhaps she believed that Regina was only threatening her, and did not
+mean to do her any real bodily hurt; but in this she was misled by
+Regina's very quiet manner.
+
+"I shall wait a little while," said Regina, almost indifferently, "and
+then, if you do not tell me, I shall begin to kill you. It may take a
+long time, and you will scream a good deal, but nobody will hear you.
+Now think a little, and decide what you will do."
+
+Regina laid the pin upon the floor beside her, drew up her knees, and
+clasped her hands together over them, as the hill women often sit for
+hours when they are waiting for anything.
+
+Her face hardened slowly until it had an expression which Marcello had
+never seen. It was not a look of cruelty, nor of fierce anticipated
+satisfaction in what she meant to do; it was simply cold and relentless,
+and Settimia gazed with terror on the splendid marble profile, so
+fearfully distinct against the dark wall in the bright light of the
+lamp. The strength of the woman, quietly waiting to kill, seemed to fill
+the room; her figure seemed to grow gigantic in the terrified eyes of
+her prisoner; the slow, regular heave of her bosom as she breathed was
+telling the seconds and minutes of fate, that would never reach an hour.
+
+It is bad to see death very near when one is tied hand and foot and
+cannot fight for life. Most people cannot bear the sight quietly for a
+quarter of an hour; they break down altogether, or struggle furiously,
+like animals, though they know it is perfectly useless and that they
+have no chance. Anything is easier than to lie still, watching the knife
+and wondering when and where it is going to enter into the flesh.
+
+Regina sat thinking and ready. She wished that she had Corbario himself
+in her power, but it was something to have the woman who had helped
+him. She was very glad that she had insisted on keeping Settimia in
+spite of Marcello's remonstrances. It had made it possible to obtain the
+information he wanted, and which, she felt sure, was to lead to
+Corbario's destruction. She was to find out "at any cost"; those had
+been Marcello's words, and she supposed he knew that she would obey him
+to the letter. For she said to herself that he was the master, and that
+if she did not obey him in such a matter, when he seemed so much in
+earnest, he would be disappointed, and angry, and would then grow
+quickly tired of her, and so the end would come. "At any cost," as he
+had said it in his haste, meant to Regina at the cost of blood, and
+life, and limb, if need were. Corbario was the enemy of the man she
+loved; it was her lover's pleasure to find out his enemy and to be
+revenged at last; what sort of woman must she be if she did not help
+him? what was her love worth if she did not obey him? He had been always
+kind to her, and more than kind; but it would have been quite the same
+if he had treated her worse than a dog, provided he did not send her
+away from him. She belonged to him, and he was the master, to do as he
+pleased. If he sent her away, she would go; but if not, he might have
+beaten her and she would never have complained. Now that he had given a
+simple command, she was not going to disobey him. She had pride, but it
+was not for him, and in her veins the blood of sixty generations of
+slaves and serfs had come down to her through two thousand years, the
+blood of men who had killed when they were bidden to kill by their
+masters, whose masters had killed them like sheep in war and often in
+peace, of women who had been reckoned as goods and as chattels with the
+land on which their mothers had borne them--of men and women too often
+familiar with murder and sudden death from their cradles to their
+graves.
+
+The minutes passed and Settimia's terror grew till the room swam with
+her, and she lost hold upon herself, and did not know whether she
+screamed or was silent, as her parched lips opened wide upon her parted
+teeth. But she had made no sound, and Regina did not even look at her.
+Death had not come yet; there was a respite of seconds, perhaps of
+minutes.
+
+At last Regina unclasped her hands and took up the pin again. The
+miserable woman fancied that she already felt the little blade creeping
+through her flesh and blood on its way to her heart. For Regina had said
+she would take a long time to kill her. It must have been a strong
+reason that could keep her silent still, if she knew the answer to the
+question.
+
+Regina turned her head very slowly and looked coldly down at the
+agonised face.
+
+"I am tired," she said. "I cannot wait any longer."
+
+Settimia's eyes seemed to be starting from her head, and her dry lips
+were stretched till they cracked, and she thought she had screamed
+again; but she had not, for her throat was paralysed with fear. Regina
+rose upon her knees beside the pillow, with the pin in her right hand.
+
+"Where is Corbario?" she asked, looking down. "If you will not tell I
+shall hurt you."
+
+Settimia's lips moved, as if she were trying to speak, but no words came
+from them. Regina got up from the floor, went to the washstand and
+poured some water into the glass, for she thought it possible that the
+woman was really unable to utter a sound because her throat was parched
+with fear. But she could speak a little as soon as Regina left her side,
+and the last peril seemed a few seconds less near.
+
+"For the love of God, don't kill me yet," she moaned. "Let me speak
+first!"
+
+Regina came back, knelt down, and set the glass on the floor, beside the
+pin.
+
+"That is all I want," she said quietly, "that you should speak."
+
+"Water," moaned Settimia, turning her eyes to the glass.
+
+Regina held up her head a little and set the tumbler to her lips, and
+she drank eagerly. The fear of death is more parching than wound-fever
+or passion.
+
+"Now you can surely talk a little," Regina said.
+
+"Why do you wish to know where he is?" Settimia asked in a weak voice.
+"Are the police looking for him? What has he done? Why do you want me to
+betray him?"
+
+"These are too many questions," Regina answered. "I have been told to
+make you tell where he is, and I will. That is enough."
+
+"I do not know where he is."
+
+In an instant the point of the sharp little blade was pressing against
+the woman's throat, harder and harder; one second more and it would
+pierce the skin and draw blood.
+
+"Stop," she screamed, with a convulsion of her whole body. "He is in the
+house!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+With a single movement Regina was on her feet, for she had been taken by
+surprise, and her first instinct was to be ready for some new and
+unsuspected danger. In a flash it seemed to her that since Corbario was
+in the house, he might very possibly enter suddenly and take Settimia's
+defence. Regina was not afraid of him, but she was only a woman after
+all, and Corbario was not a man to stop at trifles. He was very likely
+armed, and would perhaps shoot her, in order to make good his escape
+with Settimia, unless, as was quite probable, he killed his old
+accomplice too, before leaving the room.
+
+Regina stood still a moment, reflecting on the dangerous situation. It
+certainly would not be safe to release Settimia yet; for if Corbario
+were really in the house, the two together could easily overpower one
+woman, though she was strong.
+
+"I am sorry that I cannot untie you yet," Regina said, and with a glance
+at the prostrate figure she took up her candle-stick, stuck her pin
+through her hair before the mirror, and went to the door.
+
+She took the key from the lock, put it back on the outside, and turned
+it, and put it into her pocket when she had shut the door after her.
+Then she slowly descended the stairs, stopping now and then to listen,
+and shading her candle with her hand so that she could see over it, for
+she expected to be attacked at any moment. At the slightest sound she
+would have snatched her pin from her hair again, but she heard nothing,
+and went cautiously down till she reached the vestibule outside the
+sitting-room. She entered the latter and sat down to think.
+
+Should she boldly search the house? Settimia could hardly have had any
+object in lying. If she had meant to frighten Regina, she would have
+spoken very differently. She would have made out that Corbario was
+almost within hearing, waiting in a dark corner with a loaded revolver.
+But her words had been the cry of truth, uttered to save her life at the
+moment when death was actually upon her. She would have screamed out the
+truth just as certainly if Corbario had already left Rome, or if he were
+in some hotel for the night--or even if she had really known nothing. In
+the last case Regina would have believed her, and would have let her go.
+There is no mistaking the accent of mortal terror, whether one has ever
+heard it or not.
+
+Corbario was somewhere in the house, Marcello's enemy, and the man she
+herself had long hated. A wild longing came over her to have him in her
+power, bound hand and foot like Settimia, and then to torment him at her
+pleasure until he died. She felt the strength of half a dozen men in
+her, and the courage of an army, as she rose to her feet once more. She
+had seen him. He was not a big man. If she could catch him from behind,
+as she had caught the woman, she might perhaps overpower him. With the
+thought of near revenge the last ray of caution disappeared, and from
+being fearless Regina became suddenly reckless.
+
+But as she rose, she heard a sound overhead, and it was the unmistakable
+sound of footsteps. She started in surprise. It was simply impossible
+that Settimia should have loosed the cord that bound her. Regina had
+been brought up in the low hill country and in the Campagna, and she
+could tie some of the knots used by Roman muleteers and carters, which
+hold as well as those men learn at sea. She had tied Settimia very
+firmly, and short of a miracle the woman could not have freed herself.
+Yet the footsteps had been distinctly audible for a moment. Since
+Settimia was not walking about, Corbario must have got into the room.
+Yet Regina had locked the door, and had the key in her pocket. It was
+perfectly incomprehensible. She left the sitting-room again, carrying
+her candle as before; but at the door she turned back, and set the
+candle-stick upon the table. She would be safer in the dark, and would
+have a better chance of taking Corbario by surprise.
+
+Poor Regina had not grown up amongst people who had a high standard of
+honour, and her own ideas about right and wrong were primitive, to speak
+charitably. But if she had dreamt of the deed that was being done
+upstairs, her heart would have stood still, and she would have felt sick
+at the mere thought of such villainy.
+
+She had left the room and locked the door, and while her footsteps had
+been audible on the stairs no other sound had broken the stillness. But
+a few seconds later a whispered question came from some person out of
+sight.
+
+"Is she gone?" the whisper asked.
+
+"Yes," answered Settimia in a very low voice, which she knew Regina
+could not hear.
+
+Corbario's pale face cautiously emerged from the closet in which he had
+been hidden, and he looked round the room before he stepped out.
+Settimia could not turn over to see him, but she heard him coming
+towards her.
+
+"Cut this cord," she said in an undertone. "Make haste! We can be out of
+the house in less than half a minute."
+
+Corbario knelt beside her, and took out a handsome English clasp-knife.
+But he did not cut the cord. He looked down into Settimia's face, and
+she understood.
+
+"I could not help it," she answered. "She would have killed me!"
+
+Corbario laid his left hand upon her throat.
+
+"If you try to scream I shall strangle you," he said in a whisper. "You
+have betrayed me, and I cannot afford to trust you again. Do you know
+what I am going to do?"
+
+She tried to turn her head, but his hand was heavy on her throat. She
+strained frightfully to move, and her stony eyes lit up with a dying
+glare of terror.
+
+"Do it quickly!" she gasped.
+
+"Hush!" His hand tightened on her throat. "If you were in Salta, you
+should die by tenths of inches, if it took all night! That would be too
+good for you."
+
+He spat in her face as she writhed under his grasp. He looked into her
+living eyes once more with all the cowardly hate that possessed him, he
+struck deep and sure, he saw the light break in the pupils, and heard
+the awful rattle of her last breath.
+
+In an instant he was at the window, and had thrown it wide open. He got
+out quickly, let himself down with his hands, and pushed himself away
+from the wall with his feet as he jumped down backwards, well knowing
+that there was grass below him, and that the earth was as soft as sponge
+with the long rain. He was sure that he could not hurt himself. Yet
+before his feet touched the ground he had uttered a low cry of fear.
+
+He was on his legs now and trying to run, but it was too late. There was
+the flash of a lantern in the wet garden, and between him and the light,
+and just below it, he saw two points of greenish fire coming at him; for
+he saw everything then; and he heard the rush of a heavy beast's feet,
+tearing up the earth with iron claws, and the savage breath, and the
+loud hiss of a man setting the creature on; for he heard every sound
+then; and he knew that the thing of terror would leap up with resistless
+strength and hurl its weight upon him, and bury its jagged fangs in his
+throat and tear him, in an instant that would seem like an hour of
+agony, and that the pain and the fear would be as if he were hung up by
+all the nerves of his body, drawn out and twisted; for he knew
+everything then; and in that immeasurable time which is nothing, and yet
+is infinite, he remembered his evil life, his robberies, his murders,
+and his betrayals, one by one, but he remembered with most frightful
+clearness how he had tried to kill Marcello, how he had corrupted him
+from his childhood, with bad counsels very cunningly, and prepared him
+to go astray, how he had thrust evil in his path and laughed away the
+good, and had led him on, and poisoned him, and would have brought him
+to his death and damnation surely, but for one sinning devoted woman
+that loved him; for he remembered everything then; and from very far
+away, out of memories of his youth, there came a voice that had once
+been gentle and kind, but that rang in his ears now, like the blast of
+the trumpet of the last judgment.
+
+"Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it
+were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and
+that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
+
+Far better, indeed, for it all came, when the immeasurable second's
+length was past, and he was thrown down against the wall, and torn, and
+shaken like a rat; it all came just as he had felt that it was coming,
+and it lasted long, a long, long time, while he tried to howl, and the
+blood only gurgled in his throat. And then, just as many strong hands
+dragged away the thing of terror, and the light of a lantern and of a
+lamp flashed in his eyes, he fell asleep in the wet grass.
+
+For they had caught him fairly and brought him, down. Kalmon had
+watched him long, and had told some of his suspicions to the Chief of
+Police, and the latter, unknown to Kalmon, had caused him to be watched
+from time to time. But he, who had been watched before and had once
+already escaped for his life, had sometimes seen faces near him that he
+did not trust, and when he had turned back from the station that
+afternoon he had seen one of those faces; so he had driven away quickly
+in a cab, by winding ways, so as not to be followed. Yet Kalmon and
+Marcello, talking as they drove, grew more and more sure that he would
+wish to see Settimia before he left Rome, the more certainly if he
+believed himself pursued, as seemed likely from his changing his mind at
+the station. So they had stopped their cab before they had reached their
+destination, and had sent Ercole back to Trastevere with the key of the
+garden gate, bidding him watch, as it was most probable that Corbario
+would try to get out through the garden; and before long they had come
+back to the door of the house that opened upon the street, and had let
+themselves in quietly, just in time to hear the noise of the struggle as
+the dog threw Corbario to the ground. For the other entrance to the
+little vestibule opened upon the garden within, at the very spot where
+Corbario alighted when he jumped from the window.
+
+And now they stood there in the rain round the wounded man, while
+Marcello held the lantern to his face, and Regina thrust a lamp out of
+the lower window which she had thrown open.
+
+"Is he dead?" she asked, in the silence that followed when Ercole had
+got control of the dog again.
+
+At the sound of her voice Ercole started strangely and looked up to her
+face that was not far above his own, and his eyes fixed themselves upon
+her so intently that she looked down at him, while she still held out
+her lamp. She could not remember that she had ever seen him; but he had
+seen her many times since he had made his visit to the inn on the
+Frascati road.
+
+"Is he dead?" she repeated, putting the question directly to him as he
+was nearest.
+
+Still he looked at her in silence, with his deep-set, unwinking eyes.
+Marcello and Kalmon were bending over Corbario, Marcello holding the
+lantern, while the Professor listened for the beating of the heart and
+felt the pulse. They paid no attention to Regina for the moment.
+
+"Why don't you speak?" she asked, surprised by Ercole's silent stare.
+
+"You don't know me," he said slowly, "but I know you."
+
+The rain was beating upon her lamp, and at that moment the shade cracked
+under the cold drops and fell to pieces, and the wind instantly
+extinguished the flame of the flaring wick. Regina withdrew into the
+room to get another light, and Ercole stared after her into the gloom.
+
+"He is alive," said Kalmon, looking up to see why the light had gone
+out. "We must get him inside at once, or he will die here. Come,
+Ercole! Make that dog lie down and keep quiet."
+
+Between them they carried Corbario into the house. Nino watched on the
+step in the rain, but when the door was shut behind him, he crawled down
+to the wet grass and lapped the blood and water in the dark. They
+carried Corbario upstairs to an empty room there was, and as they went
+Regina tried to tell Marcello what she had done. They opened Settimia's
+door, which was still locked, and they found her quite dead, and the
+window was wide open; then Regina understood that Corbario had been
+hidden within hearing, and had killed the woman because she had
+confessed.
+
+The men who had been sent from the central police station at Kalmon's
+request arrived a few minutes later. One was at once sent for a surgeon
+and for more men; the other remained. Soon the little house was full of
+officials, in uniform and in plain clothes. They examined everything,
+they wrote rapidly on big sheets of stamped paper; their chief took the
+first deposition of Regina, and of the three men, and of the surgeon. At
+dawn a man came with a rough pine coffin. Officials came and went, and
+were gravely busy. One man spoke of coffee when it was day, and went and
+made some in the little kitchen, for the two young women who cooked and
+did the work of the house did not sleep there, and would not come till
+past seven o'clock.
+
+During the long hours, when Regina and Marcello were not wanted, they
+were together in the sitting-room downstairs. Regina told Marcello in
+detail everything she knew about the events of the night, and much which
+she had found out earlier about Settimia but had never told him. Kalmon
+came in from time to time and told them what was going on, and that
+Corbario was still alive; but they saw no more of Ercole. He had made
+his first deposition, to the effect that he had been set to watch the
+house, that the murderer had jumped from an upper window, and that the
+dog had pulled him down. The officials looked nervously at the dog,
+produced by Ercole in evidence, and were glad when the beast was out of
+their sight. There were dark stains about the bristles on his jaws, and
+his eyes were bloodshot; but Ercole laid one hand on his uncouth head,
+and he was very quiet, and did not even snarl at the policemen.
+
+Regina and Marcello sat side by side, talking in a low voice, and
+looking at each other now and then. The little house in which they had
+been happy was turned to a place of death and horror, and both knew that
+some change was coming to themselves.
+
+"You cannot live here any more," Marcello said at dawn, "not even till
+to-night."
+
+"Where could I go?" Regina asked. "Why should I not stay here? Do you
+think I am afraid of the dead woman?"
+
+"No," Marcello answered, "but you cannot stay here."
+
+He guessed what talking and gossiping there would be when the newspapers
+told what had happened in the little house, how the reporters would
+hang about the street for a week to come, and how fashionable people
+would go out of their way to see the place where a murder had been
+committed by such a well-known person as Corbario, and where he had been
+taken almost in the very act, and himself nearly killed. Besides all
+that, there would be the public curiosity about Regina, who had been so
+intimately concerned in a part of the tragedy, and whose name was
+everywhere associated with his own.
+
+He would have taken her away from Rome at once, if he could have done
+so. But he knew that they would both be called upon during the next few
+days to repeat in court the evidence they had already given in their
+first deposition. There was sure to be the most frightful publicity
+about the whole affair, of which reports would be published not only in
+Rome but throughout Italy, and all over the world. In real life the
+consequences of events generally have the importance which fiction is
+obliged to give the events themselves; which is the reason why the
+things that happen to real people rarely come to any precise conclusion,
+like those reached by a play or a novel. The "conclusion" lies in the
+lives of the people, after the tragedy, or the drama, or the comedy has
+violently upset their existences.
+
+"You cannot stay here," Marcello repeated with conviction.
+
+"You will go on living at your villa," Regina answered. "Why should I
+not go on living in this house? For a few days I will not go out, that
+is all. Is it the end of the world because a person has been killed who
+ought to have died in the galleys? Or because the man who tried to kill
+you was caught in a place that belongs to you? Tell me that."
+
+"You cannot stay here," Marcello repeated a third time.
+
+For a while Regina was silent. They were both very white and heavy-eyed
+in the cold daylight, though they could not have slept. At last she
+looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"If we were married, we should go on living in our own house," she said.
+"Is it true, or not? It is because there will be talking that you are
+ashamed to let me stay where I am, and would like to get me away. This
+is the truth. I know it."
+
+Marcello knew it too and did not answer at once, for it was not easy to
+decide what he ought to do. The problem that had seemed so hard to solve
+a few hours earlier was fast getting altogether beyond solution. There
+was only one thing to be done in the first present difficulty; he must
+take Regina to some other place at once. No doubt this was easy enough.
+He would take an apartment for her elsewhere, as far as possible from
+the scene of the tragedy, and in a few hours she could be installed
+there out of the way of annoyance. He could buy a house for her if he
+chose, for he was very rich. Possibly some house already belonging to
+him was vacant; his lawyer would know.
+
+But after that, what was to come? If Corbario lived, there would be a
+sensational trial in which he and Regina would be witnesses together,
+and Kalmon too, and very surely Aurora and her mother. For Aurora would
+be called upon to tell what she knew of Marcello's movements on the
+morning when he had been knocked down near the gap.
+
+Every moment of his past life would be publicly examined, to prove
+Corbario's guilt. Worse than that, there would be a long inquiry to show
+that Corbario had murdered his mother. Skilled surgeons were tending the
+man's wounds and reviving him by every means that science could suggest.
+Kalmon said that he might live. He was being kept alive in order to be
+condemned to the expiation of his crimes in penal servitude, since
+Italian law could not make him pay for them with his life. The man would
+be watched by day and night, lest he should try to commit suicide, for
+he was to suffer, if he lived. He was to suffer horribly, without doubt,
+and it was right and just that he should. But Marcello would suffer too.
+That was not just. The name of his saintly mother would be in the mouths
+of all kinds of witnesses, in the columns of all sorts of newspapers.
+Lawyers would make speeches about her to excite the pity of the jury and
+to turn the whole tide of feeling against Corbario. Marcello would
+himself be held up to public commiseration, as one of Corbario's
+victims. There would be allusions covert and open to Regina and to the
+position in which she stood to Marcello. There would be talk about
+Aurora. People would suddenly remember her mother's sad story and
+gossip about her; people would certainly say that there had been talk
+about marrying Aurora to Marcello, and that Regina had come between
+them. Yes, there would be much talk about Aurora; that was certain.
+
+All this was coming, and was not far off, if Corbario lived; and even if
+he died there would be a vast amount said and written about all the
+people concerned.
+
+And Regina was there, beside him, telling him that if they were married
+they could go on living in the little house, just as if nothing had
+happened. It was not true, but he could not find heart to tell her so.
+It was the first time that any suggestion of marriage had come from her,
+who had always told him that marriage was impossible. If she wished it
+now, could he refuse?
+
+Suddenly he knew that he had reached one of the great cross-roads in his
+life, and that fate had dragged him violently to it within the last few
+hours, to make him choose his way. The full-grown character of the man
+rebelled against being forced to a decision in spite of himself, but
+revolted at the thought of fearing to do what was right and honourable.
+He was not hesitating as he sat still in silence after Regina had
+spoken. He was thinking, with the firm determination to act as soon as
+he had reached a decision. When a man can do that, his weakness is past.
+
+Regina did not interrupt the current of his thoughts, and as she watched
+him she forgot all about the present; and they were just together, where
+they had so often been happy, and she loved him with all her heart. That
+was her strength. It had nothing to do with right or wrong, honour or
+dishonour, credit or discredit, or any choice of ways. She had no
+choice. She loved. It was a very simple thing.
+
+He looked up at last. She was still wearing the loose dressing-gown she
+had worn all night.
+
+"Could you sleep now?" he asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then you must dress," he said. "While you are dressing I will walk up
+to the villa and give some orders. Then I will come and get you in a
+closed carriage. Put together what you may need for the day, and I will
+have all your things moved before night."
+
+"Are you really going to take me away from here?" Regina asked,
+regretfully.
+
+"Yes. I must. It will be easy to find a place that will please you
+better. Will you do as I have said?"
+
+"Why do you ask? I go."
+
+She rose and stood beside him a moment while he sat still, and her hand
+caressed his short fair hair. She bent down and kissed the close waves
+of it, near his forehead.
+
+"We have been very happy here," she said quietly.
+
+She slipped away as he rose to his feet, with the sudden conviction that
+something had happened.
+
+"What is it?" he asked quickly, and making a step after her.
+
+"I am going to dress," she answered.
+
+She turned her head and smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in the
+look, as if she was saying good-bye. He partly understood, and her
+expression was reflected in his own face. They had been so happy in the
+little house in Trastevere.
+
+When the door had closed Marcello went to find Kalmon. He met him at the
+foot of the stairs.
+
+"The fellow is alive, and will probably recover," said the Professor, in
+answer to the unasked question in Marcello's eyes.
+
+"It would simplify matters if he died," said Marcello. "Will you walk up
+to the villa with me and have coffee? We cannot get a cab at this hour
+on this side of the Tiber."
+
+"Thank you," Kalmon answered, "but I must go home. The house is in
+charge of the police, and there is nothing more to be done here. They
+have already taken the woman's body to San Spirito, and they will move
+Corbario in a few hours. He is badly mauled, but no big arteries are
+torn. I must go home and write a letter. The Contessa must not hear what
+has happened through the newspapers."
+
+"No. Certainly not. As for me, I am going to take Regina away at once. I
+shall bring my own carriage down from the villa."
+
+"By the bye," Kalmon said, "I had thought of that. The house in which I
+live is divided into many small apartments. There is a very good one to
+let, decently furnished. I thought of taking it myself, and I looked at
+it yesterday. You might put the young lady there until you can find what
+you may prefer. She can move in at once."
+
+"Nothing could be better. If you are going home, will you say that I
+take the place and will be there in an hour? No. 16, Via Sicilia, is it
+not?"
+
+"Yes. I'll see to it. Shall I take the lease in your name?"
+
+"No. Any name will do better. The reporters would find her at once under
+mine."
+
+"I'll use my own," said the Professor. "I'll say that she is a lady who
+has arrived to consult me--I daresay she will--and that I'm responsible
+for her."
+
+"Thank you," answered Marcello gratefully. "And thank you for all that
+you have done to help me."
+
+"My dear Marcello," Kalmon said, smiling cheerfully, "in the first
+place, I have done nothing to help you, and secondly, through excess of
+zeal, I have got you into a very unpleasant situation, by indirectly
+causing a woman to be murdered in your house, and the murderer almost
+mauled to death by that very singular wild beast which your man calls a
+dog, and which I had often noticed in old times at the cottage. So there
+is nothing at all to thank me for, though I am most heartily at your
+service."
+
+The Professor was positively in high spirits just then, and Marcello
+envied him as they parted and took opposite directions.
+
+Though the Via Sicilia was a long way from the Janiculum, Marcello had
+been only too glad to accept Kalmon's suggestion at such a moment.
+Regina would feel that she was protected by Marcello's friend, and
+though she might rarely see him, it would be better for her than to be
+lodged in a house where she knew no one. Kalmon was a bachelor and a
+man of assured position, and it had cost him nothing to undertake to
+give Regina his protection; but Marcello was deeply grateful. He had
+already made up his mind as to what he would do next.
+
+It had stopped raining at last, and the wind had fallen to a soft breeze
+that bore the morning mist gently away towards the sea, and hardly
+stirred the wet leaves that strewed the road all the way up to San
+Pietro in Montorio. Marcello found the gate of the villa already open,
+for it was nearly eight o'clock by the time he got there.
+
+He summoned the servants to the library, told them briefly what had
+happened, and warned them that they might be summoned as witnesses at
+the coming trial, as most of them had been in his mother's service. In
+the days before Corbario had lost his head, and when he had controlled
+the household, it had been a part of his policy to have really
+respectable servants about him, and though some of them had never quite
+trusted him, they had all been devoted to the Signora and to Marcello.
+They listened in respectful silence now, and waited till he was out of
+the house before meeting to discuss the tragedy and to decide that
+Corbario had got his deserts at last.
+
+In a few hours Regina was installed in her new lodging with such
+belongings as she needed immediately. Kalmon, having finished writing
+his letter to the Contessa, left nothing undone which could contribute
+to the comfort of the "lady who had arrived to consult him." He had a
+respectable old woman servant, who had been with him for years, and who
+came from his native town. He took her into his confidence to some
+extent, and placed her in charge of Regina. As she thought that
+everything he did must be right, she accepted his statement that the
+young gentleman who would often come to see the young lady was deeply
+interested in the latter's welfare, and that, as the poor young lady had
+no relations, he, the Professor, had taken her under his protection
+while she remained in Rome.
+
+The old servant's name was Teresa, and she belonged to a certain type of
+elderly old maids who take a very kindly interest in the love affairs of
+the young. She smiled, shook her head in a very mild disapprobation, and
+did much more than Kalmon had asked of her; for she took the very first
+opportunity of informing Regina that the Professor was the greatest,
+wisest, best, and kindest of mankind; and Regina recognised in her a
+loyal soul, and forthwith liked her very much.
+
+It was late in the November afternoon when Marcello ascended the stairs
+and stopped before the door of the little apartment. He realised that he
+had no key to it, and that he must ring the bell as if he were a mere
+visitor. It was strange that such a little thing should affect him at
+all, but he was conscious of a sort of chill, as he pulled the metal
+handle and heard the tinkling of one of those cheap little bells that
+feebly imitate their electric betters by means of a rachet and a small
+weighted wheel. It was all so different from the little house in
+Trastevere with its bright varnished doors, its patent locks, its smart
+windows, and its lovely old garden. He wished he had not brought Regina
+to Via Sicilia, though Kalmon's advice had seemed so good. To Kalmon,
+who was used to no great luxury in his own life, the place doubtless
+seemed very well suited for a young person like Regina, who had been
+brought up a poor child in the hills. But the mere anticipation of the
+dark and narrow entry, and the sordid little sitting-room beyond, awoke
+in Marcello a sense of shame, whether for himself or for the woman who
+loved him he hardly knew.
+
+Old Teresa had gone out for something, and Regina opened the door
+herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+"I have come to see if you need anything," Marcello said, when they were
+in the sitting-room. "I am sorry to have been obliged to bring you to
+such a wretched place, but it seemed a good thing that you should be so
+near Kalmon."
+
+"It is not a wretched place," Regina answered. "It is clean, and the
+things are new, and the curtains have been washed. It is not wretched.
+We have been in worse lodgings when we have travelled and stopped in
+small towns. Professor Kalmon has been very kind. It was wise to bring
+me here."
+
+He wished she had seemed discontented.
+
+"Have you rested a little?" he asked.
+
+"I have slept two or three hours. And you? You look tired."
+
+"I have had no time to sleep. I shall sleep to-night."
+
+He leaned back in the small green arm-chair and rested his head against
+a coarse netted antimacassar. His eyes caught Regina's, but she was
+looking down thoughtfully at her hands, which lay in her lap together
+but not clasped. Peasant women often do that; their hands are resting
+then, after hard work, and they are thinking of nothing.
+
+"Look at me," Marcello said after a long time.
+
+Her glance was sad and almost dull, and there was no light in her face.
+She had made up her mind that something dreadful was going to happen to
+her, and that the end was coming soon. She could not have told why she
+felt it, and that made it worse. Her eyes had the indescribable look
+that one sees in those of a beautiful sick animal, the painful
+expression of an unintelligent suffering which the creature cannot
+understand. Regina, roused to act and face to face with danger, was
+brave, clever, and quick, but under the mysterious oppression of her
+forebodings she was the Roman hill woman, apathetic, hopeless,
+unconsciously fatalistic and sleepily miserable.
+
+"What is the matter?" Marcello asked. "What has happened?"
+
+"I shall know when you have told me," Regina answered, slowly shaking
+her head; and again she looked down at her hands.
+
+"What I have come to tell you will not make you sad," Marcello replied.
+
+"Speak, heart of my heart. I listen."
+
+Marcello leaned forward and laid his hand upon hers. She looked up
+quietly, for it was a familiar action of his.
+
+"I am going to marry you," he said, watching her, and speaking
+earnestly.
+
+She kept her eyes on his, but she shook her head again, slowly, from
+side to side, and her lips were pressed together.
+
+"Yes, I am," said Marcello, with a little pressure of his hand to
+emphasise the words.
+
+But she withdrew hers, and leaned far back from him.
+
+"Never," she said. "I have told you so, many times."
+
+"Not if I tell you that nothing else will make me happy?" he asked.
+
+"If I still made you happy, you would not talk of marriage," Regina
+answered.
+
+For the first time since she had loved him he heard a ring of bitterness
+in her voice. They had reached that first node of misunderstanding in
+the love relations of men and women, which lies where the one begins to
+think and act upon a principle while the other still feels and acts from
+the heart.
+
+"That is not reasonable," Marcello said.
+
+"It is truth," she answered.
+
+"But how?"
+
+"How! I feel it, here!"
+
+Her hands sprang to life and pressed her bosom, her voice rang deep and
+her eyes flashed, as if she were impatient of his misunderstanding.
+
+He tried to laugh gently.
+
+"But if I want to marry you, it is because I mean never to part from
+you," he said.
+
+"No!" she cried. "It is because you are afraid that you will leave me,
+unless you are bound to me."
+
+"Regina!" Marcello protested, by his tone.
+
+"It is as I say. It is because you are honourable. It is because you
+wish to be faithful. It is because you want to be true. But what do I
+care for honour, or faith, or truth, if I can only have them of you
+because you are tied to me? I only want love. That is everything. I want
+it, but I have never asked it of you, and never shall. Is love money,
+that you can take it out of your purse and give it? Is love a string,
+that the priest and the mayor can tie the ends so that they can never
+come undone? I do not know what it is, but it is not that!"
+
+She laughed scornfully, as if she were angry at the thought. But
+Marcello had made up his mind, and was obstinate.
+
+"We must be married at once," he said quietly, and fully believing that
+he could impose his will upon hers. "If I had not been weak and foolish,
+we should have been married long ago. But for a long time after my
+illness I had no will of my own. I am sorry. It was my fault."
+
+"It was not your fault, it was the illness, and it was my will. If I had
+said, any day in those first two years, 'Make me your wife, for I wish
+to be a real signora,' would you not have done it?"
+
+"You know I would."
+
+"But I would not, and I will not now. I am not a real signora. I am
+beautiful--yes, I see that. Am I blind when I look into my glass? I am
+very beautiful. We have not often met any woman in our travels as
+beautiful as I am. Am I blind? I have black hair, like the common
+people, but my hair is not coarse, like a mule's tail. It is as fine as
+silk. My eyes are black, and that is common too; but my eyes are not
+like those of the buffaloes in the Campagna, as the other women's are
+where I was born. And I am not dark-skinned; I am as white as the snow
+on Monte Cavo, as white as the milk in the pan. Also I have been told
+that I have beautiful feet, though I cannot tell why. They are small,
+this is the truth, and my hands are like those of a signora. But I am
+not a real signora, though I have all this. How can you marry me? None
+of your friends would speak to me, because I have not even been an
+honest girl. That was for you, but they do not count love. Your servants
+at the villa would laugh at you behind your back, and say, 'The master
+has married one of us!' Do you think I could bear that? Tell me what you
+think! Am I of stone, to bear that people should laugh at you?"
+
+She took breath at last and leaned back again, folding her arms and
+fixing her splendid eyes on his face, and challenging him to answer her.
+
+"We will go and live in Calabria, at San Domenico, for a while," he
+said. "We need not live in Rome at all, unless we please, for we have
+the whole world before us."
+
+"We saw the world together without being married," Regina answered
+obstinately. "What difference would there be, if we were husband and
+wife? Do you wish to know what difference there would be? I will tell
+you. There would be this difference. One day I should see no light in
+your eyes, and your lips would be like stone. Then I should say, 'Heart
+of my heart, you are tired of me, and I go.' But you would answer, 'You
+cannot go, for you are my wife.' What would that be? That would be the
+difference. Do you understand, or do you not understand? If you do not
+understand, I can do nothing. But I will not marry you. Have you ever
+seen a mule go down to the ford in spring, too heavily laden, when there
+is freshet? He drowns, if he is driven in, because the burden is too
+heavy. I will not be the burden; but I should be, if I were your wife,
+because I am not a real signora. Now you know what I think."
+
+"Yes," Marcello answered, "but I do not think in the same way."
+
+He was not sure how to answer her arguments, and he lit a cigarette to
+gain time. He was quietly determined to have his own way, but in order
+to succeed he knew that he must persuade her till she agreed with him.
+He could not drag her to the altar against her will.
+
+Before he had thrown away the match, Regina had risen from her chair.
+She leaned against the little marble mantelpiece, looking down at him.
+
+"There are things that you do not know," she said. "If you knew them you
+would not want to marry me. In all the time we have been together, you
+have hardly ever spoken to me of your mother."
+
+Marcello started a little and looked up, unconsciously showing that he
+was displeased.
+
+"No," he answered. "Why should I?"
+
+"You were right. Your mother is now one of the saints in Paradise. How
+do I know it? Even Settimia knew it. I am not going to talk of her now.
+I am not fit to speak her name in your hearing. Very well. Do you know
+what my mother was?"
+
+"She is dead," Marcello replied, meaning that Regina should let her
+memory alone.
+
+"Or my father?" she asked, going on. "They were bad people. I come of a
+bad race. Perhaps that is why I do wrong easily, for you. My father
+killed a man and left us, though he was allowed to go free, and I never
+saw him again. He had reason to kill the man. I was a little girl, but I
+remember. My mother took other men. They came and went; sometimes they
+were drunk and they beat us. When I was twelve years old one of them
+looked upon me with bad eyes. Then my mother cursed him, and he took up
+a stone and struck her on the head, and she died. They sent him to the
+galleys, and me to work at the inn, because I had no friends. This is
+the family of Regina. It is a race of assassins and wicked women. If I
+were your wife, that would be the family of your wife. If God sent
+children, that would be the blood they would have of me, to mix with
+that of your mother, who is one of the saints in heaven. This is the
+truth. If you think I am telling you one thing for another, let us go to
+the inn on the Frascati road. Paoluccio and Nanna know. They would laugh
+if they could see me dressed like a real signora, and they would say,
+'This girl is her mother's daughter!' And so I am."
+
+She ceased speaking, and again waited for his answer, but he had none
+ready, and there was silence. She had put the ugly truth too plainly
+before him, and he could not shut up his understanding against it; he
+could not deny what she said, he could never teach himself to believe
+that it did not matter. And yet, he did not mean to draw back, or give
+up his purpose, even then. Men of good birth had married peasant women
+before now. They had given up the society of their old friends, they had
+lived in remote places, they had become half peasants themselves, their
+sons had grown up to be rough farmers, and had done obligatory military
+service in the ranks for years, because they could not pass an easy
+examination. But was all that so very terrible after all, in the light
+of the duty that faced him?
+
+The woman had saved his life, had carried him in her arms, had tended
+him like a child, had stolen food to keep him alive, had faced
+starvation for him when she had got him to the hospital, had nursed
+him--had loved him, had given him all she had, and she would have died
+for him, if there had been need. Now, she was giving him something more,
+for she was refusing to be his wife because she was sure that sooner or
+later she must be a burden to him, and that her birth would be a
+reproach to his children. No woman could do more for a man than she had
+done. She had been his salvation and his good angel; when she had found
+out that the life in Paris that amused her was killing him, she had
+brought him back to himself, she had made him at last fit and able to
+face those who would have destroyed him. She had loved him like a
+woman, she had obeyed him and served him like a devoted servant, she had
+watched over him like a faithful dog; and he had given her nothing in
+return for all that, not one thing that deserved to be counted. Perhaps
+he had not even really loved her; most surely his love had been far less
+large and true and devoted than hers, and he felt that it was so. The
+reparation he was determined to make was not really for her honesty's
+sake; it was to be an attempt at repaying a debt that was weighing upon
+his conscience like a debt of honour.
+
+That was it. He felt that unless he could in some way repay her for what
+she had done, his man's honour would not be satisfied. That was very
+well, in its way, but it was not love. It was as if he had said to
+himself, "I cannot love her as she loves me, but I can at least marry
+her; and that is better than nothing, and has the merit of being morally
+right."
+
+She had told him that if she still made him happy he would not talk of
+marriage. The brutal truth shamed him, now that he knew it from her own
+lips. It was not the whole truth, but it was a great part of it. If he
+was happy with her now, when there was nothing to disturb them, it was
+by force of habit, it was because her beauty appealed to him, it was
+because her touch was dearer to him than her heart's devotion. Now that
+he was a grown man, he knew well enough that he craved something else
+which poor Regina could never give him.
+
+For he felt the want of companionship. Those who have lost what is most
+worth having, whether by death or by their own fault, or by the other's,
+miss the companionship of love more than anything else, when the pain of
+the first wrench is dulled and the heart's blood is staunched, and the
+dreadful bodily loneliness comes only in dreams. Then the longing for
+the old sweet intercourse of thought and word makes itself felt and is
+very hard to bear, though it is not sharp like the first wound; and it
+comes again and again for years, and perhaps for ever.
+
+But where there is no true companionship while love lasts, there is
+something lacking, and such love cannot live long. Men seem to want it
+more than women do; and women, seeing that men want something, often
+fancy they want flattery, and natter the men they love till they disgust
+them; and then the end comes suddenly, much to the astonishment of those
+women.
+
+Regina was too womanly not to feel that Marcello was in real need of
+something which she had not, and could never have. She had known it from
+the first, and had almost told him so. She gave what was hers to give,
+as long as he wanted it; when he wanted it no more, she meant to leave
+him, and it would make no difference what became of her afterwards.
+
+When she had finished speaking, Marcello was very miserable, because he
+could find no answer to what she had said, and he felt that she had no
+right to say it at all. His head ached now, from excitement and want of
+sleep, and he almost wished that he had put off speaking to Regina about
+her marriage. He rested his head in his hand as he sat thinking, and she
+came and stood beside him as she had done in the morning in the little
+house in Trastevere. But it was not the same now. She hoped that he
+would put up his other hand to find hers, without looking at her, as he
+often did, but it gripped his knee as if he did not mean to move it, and
+he did not raise his head.
+
+She looked up from his bent figure to the window and saw that the light
+was reddening with the first tinge of sunset. It would soon be night,
+Marcello would go away, and she would be dreadfully lonely. It was not
+like being in the little house, knowing that he was near her, in the
+great villa on top of the hill, hidden from her only by trees. She was
+in a strange place now, and he would be far away, across the Tiber, and
+the great dark city would be between her and him.
+
+For an instant her lip quivered, and she thought she was going to cry,
+though she had never cried in her life, except for rage and when she had
+been a little girl. She shook her handsome head impatiently at the mere
+sensation, and held it higher than ever. Then Marcello looked up at
+last.
+
+As their eyes met they heard the tinkle of the little bell. Regina at
+once left his side to go and open the door. It was not till she had left
+the room that Marcello rose, asking himself suddenly why it had not
+occurred to him to go himself. He realised that he had always allowed
+her to wait on him without question. Yet if she were his wife, he would
+not think of letting her do what she was doing now. He would even open
+the door of the room for her to go out.
+
+He knew why he had never treated her in that way. She was a peasant
+girl, she had been a servant in an inn; it was natural that she should
+serve him too. She often brought him his shoes when he was going out,
+and she would have put them on for him and laced them if he would have
+let her do it. It seemed natural that she should answer the bell and
+open the door, as it seemed unnatural that she should ever be his wife.
+The thought stung him, and again, he was ashamed.
+
+While these things were passing in his mind, he heard a familiar voice
+in the dark entry.
+
+"Signora, you will excuse me," Ercole was saying. "I asked the Professor
+and he told me. I beg the favour of a few words."
+
+"Come in," Regina answered, and a moment later they both entered the
+sitting-room.
+
+Ercole stood still when he saw Marcello, and began to turn his hat in
+his hands, as if it were a rosary, which he generally did when he was
+embarrassed. Marcello wondered what the man wanted.
+
+"Were you looking for me?" he asked. "Come in! What is it? Has anything
+happened?"
+
+"No, sir, nothing new has happened," answered Ercole.
+
+"What is it, then? Why did you come here?"
+
+Ercole had dressed himself for the occasion in his best clothes. He had
+on a snowy shirt and a new keeper's jacket, and his boots were blacked.
+Furthermore, he had just been shaved, and his shaggy hair had been cut
+rather close. He did not carry his gun about with him in the streets of
+Rome, though he felt that it was slightly derogatory to his dignity to
+be seen without it, and Nino was not with him, having been temporarily
+chained to the wall in the court of the stables at the villa.
+
+He stood still, and looked from Marcello to Regina, and back to Marcello
+again.
+
+"It cannot be done," he said suddenly. "It is useless. It cannot be
+done."
+
+Without another word he turned abruptly and was going to leave the room,
+when Marcello stopped him authoritatively.
+
+"Come here, Ercole!" he cried, as the man was disappearing into the
+entry.
+
+"Did you speak to me, sir?" Ercole inquired, stopping in the doorway.
+
+"Yes. Shut the door and come here." Ercole obeyed with evident
+reluctance. "Now, then," Marcello continued, "come here and tell me what
+you want, and what it is that cannot be done."
+
+"I desire a few words with this lady, and I did not know that you were
+here, sir. Therefore I said, it cannot be done. I mean that while you
+are here, sir, I cannot speak alone with this lady."
+
+"That is clear," Marcello answered. "You cannot be alone with this lady
+while I am in the room. That certainly cannot be done. Why do you wish
+to be alone with her? You can speak before me."
+
+"It will not be so easy, sir. I will come at another time."
+
+"No," Marcello answered, not liking his manner. "You will say what you
+have to say now, or you will say nothing, for you will not come at
+another time. The lady will not let you in, if you come again. Now
+speak."
+
+"It will be a little difficult, sir. I would rather speak to the lady
+alone."
+
+Regina had stood listening in silence, and looking intently at Ercole's
+face.
+
+"Let me speak to him," she said to Marcello. "What is your full name?"
+she asked, turning to Ercole again.
+
+"Spalletta Ercole, to serve you," was the prompt answer.
+
+"Spalletta?" Marcello asked in surprise, for strange as it may seem to
+any but Italians, it was quite natural that he should never have known
+Ercole's family name. "Spalletta? That is your own name, Regina! What a
+strange coincidence!"
+
+"Yes," Ercole said. "I know that the young lady's name is Spalletta. It
+is for this reason that I desire the favour of a few words with her
+alone."
+
+"There is no need," Regina answered. "Since we have the same name, there
+is no doubt. I remember your face now, though until last night I had not
+seen you since I was a little child. Yes. I know what you have come to
+say, and it is quite true."
+
+"What?" asked Marcello with some anxiety.
+
+"This man is my father," Regina said, very quietly.
+
+"Your father!" Marcello made half a step backwards in his surprise.
+
+"Yes. I have told you what he did." She turned to Ercole. "What do you
+want of me? Is it money that you want, perhaps?"
+
+Ercole stiffened himself and seemed to grow taller. His black eyes
+flashed dangerously, and his heavy eyebrows were suddenly stern and
+level, as Regina's were.
+
+"You are your mother's daughter," he said slowly. "Did I take money from
+her? I took blood, and when I was tried for it, I was set free. I was
+told that it was my right under our law. I do not want money. I have
+brought you money. There it is. It will buy you some bread when your
+lover turns you into the street!"
+
+He took out his old sheepskin purse with a quick movement, and laughed
+harshly as he tossed it at her. Marcello sprang forward and caught him
+by the collar, to thrust him out of the room; but Ercole was tough and
+wiry, and resisted.
+
+"Will you hinder me from giving money to my daughter?" he asked
+fiercely. "It was yours, for you paid it to me; but when I knew, I saved
+my wages to give them back, for I will not take your money, sir! Take
+your hands from me, sir! I have a right to be here and to speak. Let me
+go, I tell you! I am not in your service any longer. I do not eat your
+cursed bread. I am this woman's father, and I shall say what I will."
+
+Marcello withdrew his hands and pointed to the door.
+
+"Go!" he said, in a voice of command.
+
+Ercole backed away a little, and then stood still again.
+
+"I have to tell you that I have spent five francs of that money," he
+said, speaking to Regina. "But it was spent for you. I found a good
+monk, and I gave him the five francs to say three masses for your soul.
+The masses were said in August, and now it is November, and you are
+still alive!"
+
+"Go!" cried Marcello, understanding, and advancing upon him once more.
+
+"I go," answered Ercole hoarsely. "Let her live, till you are tired of
+her, and she dies in a ditch! I told the monk to say the masses for a
+female. They will do for the woman who was killed last night. One female
+is worth another, and evil befall them all, as many as they are! Why did
+the Eternal Father ever create them?"
+
+He had turned before he spoke the last words, and he went out
+deliberately, shutting the door behind him. They heard him go out upon
+the landing, and they were alone again. Regina leaned back against the
+mantelpiece, but Marcello began to walk up and down the room.
+
+"You have seen," she said, in a rather unsteady voice. "Now you know of
+what blood I am, and that what I said was true. The son of your mother
+cannot marry the daughter of that man."
+
+"What have you to do with him?" Marcello asked sharply, stopping in his
+walk.
+
+But Regina only shook her head, and turned away. She knew that she was
+right, and that he knew it too, or would know it soon.
+
+"You will never see him again," he said. "Forget that you have seen him
+at all!"
+
+Again she shook her head, not looking at him.
+
+"You will not forget," she answered, "and I shall always remember. He
+should have killed me, as he meant to do. It would have been the end. It
+would have been better, and quicker."
+
+"God forbid!"
+
+"Why? Would it not have been better?"
+
+She came close to him and laid one hand upon his shoulder and gazed into
+his eyes. They were full of trouble and pain, and they did not lighten
+for her; his brow did not relax and his lips did not part. After a
+little while she turned again and went back to the fireplace.
+
+"It would have been better," she said in a low voice. "I knew it this
+morning."
+
+There was silence in the room for a while. Marcello stood beside her,
+holding her hand in his, and trying to see her face. He was very tender
+with her, but there was no thrill in his touch. Something was gone that
+would never come back.
+
+"When all this trouble is over," he said at last, "you shall go back to
+the little house in Trastevere, and it will be just as it was before."
+
+She raised her head rather proudly, as she answered.
+
+"If that could be, it would be now. You would have taken me in your arms
+when he was gone, and you would have kissed my eyes and my hair, and we
+should have been happy, just as it was before. But instead, you want to
+comfort me, you want to be kind to me, you want to be just to me,
+instead of loving me!"
+
+"Regina! I do love you! I do indeed!"
+
+He would have put his arms round her to draw her closer to him, in the
+sudden longing to make her think that there was no change in his love,
+but she quietly resisted him.
+
+"You have been very good to me, dear," she said, "and I know you will
+always be that, whatever comes. And I am always yours, dear, and you are
+the master, whenever you choose to come and see me. For I care for
+nothing that God has made, except you. But it will never be just as it
+used to be."
+
+"It shall!" Marcello tried to put conviction into the words. "It shall!
+It shall!"
+
+"It cannot, my heart," she answered. "I used to say that when this came,
+I would go away. But I will not do that, unless you bid me to, for I
+think you would be sorry, and I should be giving you more pain, and you
+have enough. Only leave me a little while alone, dear, for I am very
+tired, and it is growing late."
+
+He took her hands and kissed them one after the other, and looked into
+her face. His own was very weary.
+
+"Promise me that I shall find you here to-morrow," he said.
+
+"You shall find me," she answered softly.
+
+They parted so, and he left her alone, in the dark, for the glow of the
+sunset had faded and the early November evening was closing in.
+
+Old Teresa came and brought a lamp, and drew the curtains, and gave her
+a message from Kalmon. If she needed anything she was to send for him,
+and he would come at once. She thanked Teresa. It was very kind of the
+Professor, but she needed nothing. Not even a fire; no, she hardly ever
+felt cold. Teresa brought something to eat, and set the little table for
+her. She was not hungry, and she was glad when the good soul was gone.
+
+She could open the windows when she was alone, and look out into the
+silent street. There was moonlight now, and it fell across the walls and
+trees of the Villa Aurora upon her face. It was a young moon, that would
+set before midnight, but it was very clear and bright, and the sky was
+infinitely deep and very clear behind it. Regina fancied that if there
+were really angels in heaven, she should be able to see them on such a
+night.
+
+If she had been in Trastevere she would have gone out to walk up and
+down the old paved paths of the little garden, for she could not sleep,
+though she was so tired. The lamp disturbed her and she put it out, and
+sat down by the window again.
+
+It was very quiet now, for it was past nine o'clock. She heard a step,
+and it almost surprised her. A man with a big dog was walking in the
+shadow on the other side of the street, and when he was opposite the
+house he stood still and looked up at her window. He did not move for
+some time, but the dog came out into the moonlight in a leisurely way,
+and lay down on the paving stones. All dogs think it is warmer in the
+light than in the shadow.
+
+Regina rose, got a long black cloak and a dark veil without lighting a
+candle, and put them on. Then she went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Ercole walked on when he saw some one come out of No. 16, for he did not
+recognise Regina. She followed him at a distance. Even if he should pass
+where there might be many people, she would not lose sight of him easily
+because he had his dog with him. She noticed that his canvas bag was
+hung over one shoulder and that it seemed to be full, and his gun was
+slung over the other. He meant to leave Rome that night on foot. He
+walked fast through the new streets in the upper quarter, turned to the
+right when he reached the Via Venti Settembre, and went straight on,
+past the top of the hill, and along the Quirinal Palace; then down and
+on, down and on, through moonlight and shadow, winding streets and
+straight, till the Colosseum was in sight. He was going towards the
+Porta San Sebastiano to take the road to Ardea.
+
+The air was very clear, and the moonlight made the broad space as bright
+as if there were daylight. Regina walked fast, and began to overtake her
+father, and the dog turned his head and growled at the tall woman in
+black. She came up with Ercole by the ruin of the ancient fountain, and
+the dog snarled at her. Ercole stopped and looked at her sharply, and
+she raised her veil.
+
+"I have followed you," she said. "We are alone here. We can talk in
+peace."
+
+"And what am I to say to you?" Ercole asked, in a low and surly voice.
+
+"What you will, little or much, as you please. You shall speak, and I
+will listen. But we can walk on under the trees there. Then nobody can
+see us."
+
+Ercole began to go on, and Regina walked on his left side. The dog
+sniffed at the hem of her long black cloak. They came under the shade of
+the trees, and Ercole stopped again, and turned, facing the reflection
+of the moonlight on the vast curve of the Colosseum.
+
+"What do you want of me?" he asked. "Why do you follow me in the night?"
+
+"When you saw that the Signore was with me to-day, you said, 'It cannot
+be done.' He is not here now."
+
+She stood quite still, looking at him.
+
+"I understand nothing," he said, in the same surly tone as before.
+
+"You wished to kill me to-day," she answered. "I am here. This is a good
+place."
+
+Ercole looked about him instinctively, peering into the shadows under
+the trees.
+
+"There is no one," Regina said. "This is a good place."
+
+She had not lifted her veil, but she threw back the collar of her cloak,
+and with quick fingers undid the fastenings of her dress, opening it
+wide. Rays of moonlight fell through the trees upon her bosom, and it
+gleamed like fine ivory newly cut.
+
+"I wait," she said.
+
+She stood motionless before him, expecting the knife, but her father's
+hands did not move. His eyes were fixed on hers, though he could not see
+them through the veil.
+
+"So he has left you?" he said slowly.
+
+"No. I am waiting."
+
+Not a fold of her cloak stirred as she stood there to die. It seemed a
+long time, but his hands did not move. Then he heard the sound of her
+voice, very low and sweet, repeating a little prayer, but he only heard
+the last words distinctly.
+
+"--now, and in the hour of our death!"
+
+His right hand moved slowly and found something in his pocket, and then
+there was the sharp click of a strong spring, and a ray of moonlight
+fell upon steel, and her voice was heard again.
+
+"--in the hour of our death. Amen!"
+
+An unearthly sound rent the stillness. The huge dog sat upright on his
+haunches, his head thrown up and back, his terrible lower jaw trembling
+as he howled, and howled again, waking great echoes where the roar of
+wild lions had rung long ago.
+
+Regina started, though she did not move a step; but an unreasoning fear
+fell upon Ercole. He could not see her face, as the dark veil hung down.
+She was so motionless and fearless; only the dead could be as fearless
+of death and as still as she. Her breast was so white; her hands were
+like marble hands, parting a black shroud upon it. She was something
+risen from the grave to haunt him in that lonely place and drive him
+mad; and the appalling howl of the great dog robe deafeningly on the
+silence and trembled and died away, and began again.
+
+Ercole's hand relaxed, and the knife fell gleaming at his feet. One
+instant more and he turned and fled through the trees, towards San
+Gregorio, his dog galloping heavily after him.
+
+Regina's hands fell by her sides, and the folds of her cloak closed
+together and hung straight down. She stared into the shadowy distance a
+moment after her father, and saw his figure twice in the light where the
+trees were wider apart, before he disappeared altogether. She looked
+down and saw the knife at her feet, and she picked it up and felt the
+point. It was as sharp as a needle, for Ercole had whetted it often
+since he had sat by the gate in the early morning last August. It was
+wet, for the grass under the trees had not dried since the rain.
+
+She felt the point and edge with her hand, and sighed. It would have
+been better to have felt it in her breast, but she would not take her
+own life. She was not afraid to do it, and her young hand would have
+been strong enough and sure enough to do it quickly. It was not the
+thought of the pain that made her close the knife; it was the fear of
+hell. Nothing she had done in her life seemed very bad to her, because
+it had all been for Marcello. If Ercole had killed her, she thought that
+God would have forgiven her after a time. But if she killed herself she
+would instantly be seized by devils and thrust into real flames, to
+burn for ever, without the slightest chance of forgiveness. She had been
+taught that, and she believed it, and the thought of the fire made her
+shut the clasp-knife and slip it into her dress with a sigh. It would be
+a pity to throw it away, for it seemed to be a good knife, and her
+father could not have had it very long.
+
+She fastened her frock under her mantle and went a few steps down the
+little slope towards the Colosseum. To go on meant to go home, and she
+stopped again. The place was very lonely and peaceful, and the light on
+the great walls was quiet and good to see. Though she had stood so
+still, waiting to die, and had said her little prayer so calmly, her
+brave heart had been beating slow and hard as if it were counting the
+seconds before it was to stop; and now it beat fast and softly, and
+fluttered a little, so that she felt faint, as even brave people do
+after a great danger is past. I have seen hundreds of men together, just
+escaped from destruction by earthquake, moving about listlessly with
+veiled eyes, yawning as if they were dropping with sleep, and saying
+childish things when they spoke at all. Man's body is the part of
+himself which he least understands, unless he has spent half his life in
+studying its ways. Its many portions can only telegraph to the brain two
+words, 'pain' and 'pleasure,' with different degrees of energy; but that
+is all. The rest of their language belongs to science.
+
+Regina felt faint and sat down, because there was no reason for making
+any effort to go home. Perhaps a cab would pass, returning from some
+outlying part of the city, and she would take it. From the place where
+she sat she could see one far off, if any came.
+
+She sank down on the wet ground, and drew up her knees and pulled her
+cloak round her; and gradually her head bent forward and rested upon her
+hands, till she sat there like a figure of grief outlined in black
+against the moonlight on the great wall. She had forgotten where she
+was, and that there was any time in the world.
+
+Half an hour passed, and the moon sank low, and an hour, and the deadly
+white mist began to rise in the shadow round the base of the Colosseum,
+and crept up under the trees; and if any one had come upon her then, he
+would have seen its dull whiteness crawling round her feet and body, a
+hand-breadth above the wet ground. But she did not know; she had
+forgotten everything.
+
+Nothing was real any more. She could have believed that her father had
+killed her and left her corpse there, strangely sitting, though quite
+dead.
+
+Then she knew that the light had gone out; and suddenly she felt her
+teeth chatter, and a chill ran through her bones that was bad to feel.
+She raised her head and saw that the great walls were dark against the
+starry sky, and she rose with an effort, as if her limbs had suddenly
+become lead. But she could walk, though it was like walking in sleep.
+
+She did not afterwards remember how she got home, but she had a vague
+recollection of having lost her way, and of finding a cab at last, and
+then of letting herself into the little apartment in the dark.
+
+When she was next aware of anything it was broad daylight, and she was
+lying on her bed, still dressed and wearing her cloak; and Kalmon was
+bending over her, his eyes on hers and his fingers on her pulse, while
+old Teresa watched her anxiously from the foot of the bed.
+
+"I'm afraid it is a 'perniciosa,'" he said. "Put her to bed while I call
+a regular doctor."
+
+Regina looked up at him.
+
+"I have fever, have I not?" she asked quite quietly.
+
+"Yes. You have a little fever," he answered, but his big brown eyes were
+very grave.
+
+When Marcello came, an hour later, she did not know him. She stared at
+him with wide, unwinking eyes, and there were bright patches of colour
+in her cheeks. Already there were hollows in them, too, and at her
+temples, for the perniciosa fever is frightfully quick to waste the
+body. In the Campagna, where it is worst, men have died of it in less
+than four hours after first feeling it upon them. Great men have
+discovered wonderful remedies for it, but still it kills.
+
+Kalmon got one of the great men, who was his friend, and they did what
+they could. A nursing sister came and was installed. Marcello was
+summoned away soon after noon by an official person, who brought a
+carriage and said that Corbario was now conscious and able to speak, and
+that it was absolutely necessary that Marcello should be confronted
+with him, as he might not live another day. It was easier to go than it
+would have been if Regina had been conscious, but even so it was very
+hard. The nun and Teresa stayed with her.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE SAT THERE LIKE A FIGURE OF GRIEF OUTLINED IN BLACK
+AGAINST THE MOONLIGHT ON THE GREAT WALL."]
+
+She said little in her delirium, and nothing that had any meaning for
+either of the women. Twice she tried to tear away the linen and lace
+from her throat.
+
+"I wait!" she cried each time, and her eyes fixed themselves on the
+ceiling, while she held her breath.
+
+The women could not tell what she was waiting for, and they soothed her
+as best they could. She seemed to doze after that, and when Marcello
+came back she knew him, and took his hand. He sent away the nurses and
+sat by the bedside, and she spoke to him in short sentences, faintly. He
+bent forward, near the pillow, to catch the words.
+
+She was telling him what she had done last night.
+
+"But you promised that I should find you here to-day!" Marcello said,
+with gentle reproach.
+
+"Yes. I did not mean to break my word. But I thought he would do it. It
+seemed so easy."
+
+Her voice was weak with the fever, and sank almost to a whisper. He
+stroked her hand affectionately, hoping that she would go to sleep; and
+so a long time passed. Then Kalmon came in with his friend the great
+doctor. They saw that she was not yet any better; the doctor ordered
+several things to be done and went away. Kalmon drew Marcello out of the
+room.
+
+"You can do nothing," he said. "She has good care, and she is very
+strong. Go home and come back in the morning."
+
+"I must stay here," Marcello answered.
+
+"That is out of the question, on account of the Sister of Charity. But
+you can send for your things and camp in my rooms downstairs. There is a
+good sofa. You can telephone to the villa for what you want."
+
+"Thank you." Marcello's voice dropped and shook. "Will she live?" he
+asked.
+
+"I hope so. She is very strong, and it may be only fever."
+
+"What else could it be?"
+
+"Pneumonia."
+
+Marcello bit his lip and closed his eyes as if he were in bodily pain,
+and a moment later he turned away and went down to Kalmon's apartment.
+
+The Professor went back to Regina's side, and stood quietly watching
+her, with a very sad look in his eyes. She opened hers and saw him, and
+she brought one hand to her chest.
+
+"It burns," she said, almost in a whisper, but with a strange sort of
+eagerness, as if she were glad.
+
+"I wish I could bear it for you, my poor child," Kalmon answered.
+
+She shook her head, and turned uneasily on the pillow. He did not
+understand.
+
+"What is it?" he asked gently. "What can I do for you? Tell me."
+
+"I want to see some one very much. How long shall I live?"
+
+"You will get quite well," said Kalmon, in a reassuring tone. "But you
+must be very quiet." Again she moved her burning cheek on the pillow.
+
+"Do you want to see a priest?" asked the Professor, thinking he had
+guessed. "Is that it?"
+
+"Yes--there is time for that--some one else--could you? Will you?"
+
+"Yes." Kalmon bent down quickly, for he thought the delirium was coming
+again. "Who is it?" he asked.
+
+"Aurora--I mean, the Signorina--can you? Oh, do you think you could?"
+
+"I'll try," Kalmon answered in great surprise.
+
+But now the hoarseness was suddenly gone, and her sweet voice was softly
+humming an old song of the hills, forgotten many years, and the
+Professor saw that she did not know him any more. He nodded to Teresa,
+who was in the room, and went out.
+
+He wondered much at the request, but he remembered that it had been made
+in the full belief that he would say nothing of it to Marcello. If she
+had been willing that Marcello should know, she would have spoken to
+him, rather than to Kalmon. He had seen little enough of Regina, but he
+was sure that she could have no bad motive in wishing to see the young
+girl. Yet, from a social point of view, it was not exactly an easy thing
+to propose, and the Contessa would have a right to be offended at the
+mere suggestion that her daughter should speak to "Consalvi's Regina";
+and there could not be anything clandestine in the meeting, if Aurora
+consented to it. Kalmon was too deeply attached to the Contessa herself
+to be willing to risk her displeasure, or, indeed, to do anything of
+which she would not approve.
+
+He went to her house by the Forum of Trajan, and he found her at home.
+It was late in the afternoon, and the lamp was lighted in the little
+drawing-room, which did not seem at all shabby to Kalmon's accustomed
+eyes and not very exigent taste. The Contessa was reading an evening
+paper before the fire. She put out her hand to the Professor.
+
+"It is a bad business," she said, glancing at the newspaper, which had a
+long account of Corbario's arrest and of the murder of his old
+accomplice. "Poor Marcello!"
+
+"Poor Marcello! Yes, indeed! I'm sorry for him. There is something more
+than is in the papers, and more than I have written to you and told you.
+Regina has the perniciosa fever, complicated with pneumonia, and is not
+likely to live."
+
+"I am sorry," the Contessa answered. "I am very sorry for her. But after
+all, compared with what Marcello has learned about his mother's
+death--and other things Corbario did--"
+
+She stopped, implying by her tone that even if Regina died, that would
+not be the greatest of Marcello's misfortunes. Besides, she had long
+foreseen that the relations of the two could not last, and the simplest
+solution, and the happiest one for the poor devoted girl, was that she
+should die before her heart was broken. Maddalena dell' Armi had often
+wished that her own fate had been as merciful.
+
+"Yes," Kalmon answered. "You are right in that. But Regina has made a
+rather strange request. It was very unexpected, and perhaps I did wrong
+to tell her that I would do my best to satisfy her. I don't think she
+will live, and I felt sorry for her. That is why I came to you. It
+concerns Aurora."
+
+"Aurora?" The Contessa was surprised.
+
+"Yes. The girl knows she is dying, and wishes very much to see Aurora
+for a moment. I suppose it was weak of me to give her any hope."
+
+The Contessa dropped her newspaper and looked into the fire thoughtfully
+before she answered.
+
+"You and I are very good friends," she said. "You would not ask me to do
+anything you would not do yourself, would you? If you had a daughter of
+Aurora's age, should you let her go and see this poor woman, unless it
+were an act of real charity?"
+
+"No," Kalmon answered reluctantly. "I don't think I should."
+
+"Thank you for being so honest," Maddalena answered, and looked at the
+fire again.
+
+Some time passed before she spoke again, still watching the flames.
+Kalmon sighed, for he was very sorry for Regina.
+
+"On the other hand," the Contessa said at last, "it may be a real
+charity. Have you any idea why she wishes to see Aurora?"
+
+"No. I cannot guess."
+
+"I can. At least, I think I can." She paused again. "You know
+everything about me," she continued presently. "In the course of years I
+have told you all my story. Do you think I am a better woman than
+Regina?"
+
+"My dear friend!" cried Kalmon, almost angrily. "How can you suggest--"
+
+She turned her clear, sad eyes to him, and her look cut short his
+speech.
+
+"What has her sin been?" she asked gently. "She has loved Marcello. What
+was mine? That I loved one man too well. Which is the better woman? She,
+the peasant, who knew no better, who found her first love dying, and
+saved him, and loved him--knowing no better, and braving the world? Or
+I, well born, carefully brought up, a woman of the world, and
+married--no matter how--not braving the world at all, but miserably
+trying to deceive it, and my husband, and my child? Do you think I was
+so much better than poor Regina? Would my own daughter think so if she
+could know and understand?"
+
+"If you were not a very good woman now," Kalmon said earnestly, "you
+could not say what you are saying."
+
+"Never mind what I am now. I am not as good as you choose to think. If I
+were, there would not be a bitter thought left. I should have forgiven
+all. Leave out of the question what I am now. Compare me as I was with
+Regina as she is. That is how I put it, and I am right."
+
+"Even if you were," Kalmon answered doubtfully, "the situation would be
+the same, so far as Aurora is concerned."
+
+"But suppose that this poor woman cannot die in peace unless she has
+asked Aurora's pardon and obtained her forgiveness, what then?"
+
+"Her forgiveness? For what?"
+
+"For coming between her and Marcello. Say that, so far as Regina knows,
+my daughter is the only human being she has ever injured, what then?"
+
+"Does Aurora love Marcello?" asked Kalmon, instead of answering the
+question.
+
+"I think she does. I am almost sure of it."
+
+Kalmon was silent for a while.
+
+"But Marcello," he said at last, "what of him?"
+
+"He has always loved Aurora," the Contessa answered. "Do you blame him
+so much for what he has done? Why do you blame some people so easily, my
+dear friend, and others not at all? Do you realise what happened to him?
+He was virtually taken out of the life he was leading, by a blow that
+practically destroyed his memory, and of which the consequences
+altogether destroyed his will for some time. He found himself saved and
+at the same time loved--no, worshipped--by one of the most beautiful
+women in the world. Never mind her birth! She has never looked at any
+other man, before or since, and from what I have heard, she never will.
+Ah, if all women were like her! Marcello, weak from illness, allowed
+himself to be worshipped, and Corbario did the rest. I understand it
+all. Do you blame him very much? I don't. With all your strength of
+character, you would have done the same at his age! And having taken
+what she offered, what could he do, when he grew up and came to himself,
+and felt his will again? Could he cast her off, after all she had done
+for him?"
+
+"He could marry her," observed Kalmon. "I don't see why he should not,
+after all."
+
+"Marriage!" There was a little scornful sadness in Maddalena's voice.
+"Marriage is always the solution! No, no, he is right not to marry her,
+if he has ever thought of it. They would only make each other miserable
+for the rest of their lives. Miserable, and perhaps faithless too. That
+is what happens when men and women are not saints. Look at me!"
+
+"You were never in that position. Others were to blame, who made you
+marry when you were too young to have any will of your own."
+
+"Blame no one," said the Contessa gravely. "I shall give Aurora Regina's
+message, and if she is willing to go and see her, I shall bring her
+to-morrow morning--to-night, if there is no time to be lost. The world
+need never know. Go and tell Regina what I have said. It may comfort her
+a little, poor thing."
+
+"Indeed it will!"
+
+Kalmon's brown eyes beamed with pleasure at the thought of taking the
+kindly message to the dying girl. He rose to his feet at once.
+
+"There is no one like you," he said, as he took her hand.
+
+"It is nothing. It is what Marcello's mother would have done, and she
+was my best friend. All I do is to take the responsibility upon myself,
+however Aurora may choose to act. I will send you word, in either case.
+If Aurora will not go, I will come myself, if I can be of any use, if it
+would make Regina feel happier. I will come, and I will tell her what I
+have told you. Good-night, dear friend."
+
+Kalmon was not an emotional man, but as he went out he felt a little
+lump in his throat, as if he could not swallow.
+
+He had not doubted his friend's kindness, but he had doubted whether she
+would feel that she had a right to "expose her daughter," as the world
+would say, to meeting such a "person," as the world called
+Regina--"Consalvi's Regina."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+All that night and the following day Regina recognised no one; and it
+was night again, and her strength began to fail, but her understanding
+returned. Marcello saw the change, and made a sign to the nurse, who
+went out to tell Kalmon.
+
+It was about nine o'clock when he entered the room, and Regina knew him
+and looked at him anxiously. He, in turn, glanced at Marcello, and she
+understood. She begged Marcello to go and get some rest. Her voice was
+very weak, as if she were suffocating, and she coughed painfully. He did
+not like to go away, but Kalmon promised to call him at midnight; he had
+been in the room six hours, scarcely moving from his seat. He lingered
+at the door, looked back, and at last went out.
+
+"Will she come?" asked Regina, when he was gone.
+
+"In half an hour. I have sent a messenger, for they have no telephone."
+
+A bright smile lighted up the wasted face.
+
+"Heaven will reward you," she said, as the poor say in Rome when they
+receive a charity.
+
+Then she seemed to be resting, for her hands lay still, and she closed
+her eyes. But presently she opened them, looking up gratefully into the
+big man's kind face.
+
+"Shall I be alone with her a little?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, my dear. You shall be alone with her."
+
+Again she smiled, and he left the nurse with her and went and waited
+downstairs at the street door, till the Contessa and Aurora should come,
+in order to take them up to the little apartment. He knew that Marcello
+must have fallen asleep at once, for he had not rested at all for
+twenty-four hours, and very little during several days past. Kalmon was
+beginning to fear that he would break down, though he was so much
+stronger than formerly.
+
+Marcello had always been grateful to Regina, even when he had convinced
+himself that he loved her. Love is not very compatible with gratitude.
+Two people who love each other very much expect everything because they
+are always ready to give everything, not in return or by way of any
+exchange, but as if the two were one in giving and taking. A man cannot
+be grateful to himself. But Marcello had never felt that dear illusion
+with Regina, because there had been no real companionship; and so he had
+always been grateful to her, and now that she was perhaps dying, he was
+possessed by the horribly painful certainty that he could never repay
+her what he owed, and that this debt of honour must remain unpaid for
+ever, if she died. There was much more than that in what he felt, of
+course, for there was his very real affection, tormented by the
+foreboding of the coming wrench, and there was the profound sympathy of
+a very kind man for a suffering woman. But all that together was not
+love like hers for him; it was not love at all.
+
+Kalmon waited, and smoked a little, reflecting on these things, which
+he understood tolerably well. The quiet man of science had watched
+Marcello thoughtfully, and could not help asking himself what look there
+would be in his own eyes, if Maddalena dell' Armi were dying and he were
+standing by her bedside. It would not be Marcello's look.
+
+A closed cab stopped before the entrance, and almost before he could
+throw away his cigarette, the Contessa and Aurora were standing beside
+him on the pavement.
+
+"She is very weak," he said, "but she will not be delirious again for
+some time--if at all."
+
+Neither of the ladies spoke, and they followed him in silence up the
+ill-lighted staircase.
+
+"That is where I live," he said, as he passed his own door on the second
+landing. "Marcello is camping there. He is probably asleep now."
+
+"Asleep!" It was Aurora that uttered the single word, in a puzzled tone.
+
+"He did not go to bed last night," Kalmon explained, going on.
+
+"Oh!" Again the Professor was struck by the young girl's tone.
+
+They reached the third landing, and Kalmon pushed the door, which he had
+left ajar; he shut it when they had all entered, and he ushered the
+mother and daughter into the small sitting-room. There they waited a
+moment while he went to tell Regina that Aurora had come.
+
+The young girl dropped her cloak upon a chair and stood waiting, her
+eyes fixed on the door. She was a little pale, not knowing what was to
+come, yet feeling somehow that it was to make a great difference to her
+ever afterwards. She glanced at her mother, and the Contessa smiled
+gently, as much as to say that she was doing right, but neither spoke.
+
+Presently Kalmon came out with the Sister of Charity, who bent her head
+gravely to the two ladies.
+
+"She wishes to see you alone," Kalmon said, in explanation, while he
+held the door open for Aurora to pass in.
+
+He closed it after her, and the two were together.
+
+When Aurora entered, Regina's eyes were fixed upon her face as if they
+had already found her and seen her while she had been in the other room.
+She came straight to the bedside and took the hand that was stretched
+out to meet hers. It was thin and hot now, and the arm was already
+wasted. Aurora remembered how strongly it had lifted her to the edge of
+the rock, far away by Pontresina.
+
+"You are very kind, Signorina," said the faint voice. "You see how I
+am."
+
+Aurora saw indeed, and kept the hand in hers as she sat down in the
+chair that stood where Marcello had left it.
+
+"I am very, very sorry," she said, leaning forward a little and looking
+into the worn face, colourless now that the fever had subsided for a
+while.
+
+The same bright smile that Kalmon had seen lighted up Regina's features.
+
+"But I am glad!" she answered. "They do not understand that I am glad."
+
+"No, no!" cried Aurora softly. "Don't say you are glad!"
+
+The smile faded, and a very earnest look came into the hollow dark eyes.
+
+"But I have not done it on purpose," Regina said. "I did not know there
+was fever in that place, or I would not have sat down there. You believe
+me, Signorina, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, indeed!"
+
+The smile returned very gradually, and the anxious pressure of the hand
+relaxed.
+
+"You must not think that I was looking for the fever. But since it came,
+and I am going from here, I am glad. I shall not be in the way any more.
+That hindrance will be taken out of his life."
+
+"He would not like to hear you speak like this," Aurora said, with great
+gentleness.
+
+"There is no time for anything except the truth, now. And you are good,
+so good! No, there is no time. To-morrow, I shall be gone. Signorina, if
+I could kneel at your feet, I would kneel. But you see how I am. You
+must think I am kneeling at your feet."
+
+"But why?" asked Aurora, with a little distress.
+
+"To ask you to forgive me for being a hindrance. I want pardon before I
+go. But I found him half dead on the door-step. What could I do? When I
+had seen him, I loved him. I knew that he thought of you. That was all
+he remembered--just your name, and I hated it, because he had forgotten
+all other names, even his own, and his mother, and everything. He was
+like a little child that learns, to-day this, to-morrow that, one thing
+at a time. What could I do? I taught him. I also taught him to love
+Regina. But when the memory came back, I knew how it had been before."
+
+Her voice broke and she coughed, and raised one hand to her chest.
+Aurora supported her tenderly until it was over, and when the weary head
+sank back at last it lay upon the young girl's willing arm.
+
+"You are tiring yourself," Aurora said. "If it was to ask my forgiveness
+that you wished me to come, I forgave you long ago, if there was
+anything to forgive. I forgave you when we met, and I saw what you were,
+and that you loved him for himself, just as I do."
+
+"Is it true? Really true?"
+
+"So may God help me, it is quite true. But if I had thought it was not
+for himself--"
+
+"Oh, yes, it was," Regina answered. "It was, and it is, to the end. Will
+you see? I will show you. For what the eyes see the heart believes more
+easily. Signorina, will you bring the little box covered with old
+velvet? It is there, on the table, and it is open."
+
+Aurora rose, humouring her, and brought the thing she asked for, and sat
+down again, setting it on the edge of the bed. Regina turned her head to
+see it, and raised the lid with one hand.
+
+"This is my little box," she said. "What he has given me is all in it. I
+have no other. Will you see? Here is what I have taken from him. You
+shall look everywhere, if you do not believe."
+
+"But I do believe you!" Aurora cried, feeling that tears were coming to
+her eyes.
+
+"But you must see," Regina insisted. "Or perhaps when I am gone you will
+say to yourself, 'There may have been diamonds and pearls in the little
+box, after all!' You shall know that it was all for himself."
+
+To please her Aurora took up some of the simple trinkets, simpler and
+cheaper even than what she had herself.
+
+"There are dresses, yes, many more than I wanted. But I could not let
+him be ashamed of me when we went out together, and travelled. Do you
+forgive me the dresses, Signorina? I wore them to please him. Please
+forgive me that also!"
+
+Aurora dropped the things into the open box and laid both her hands on
+Regina's, bending down her radiant head and looking very earnestly into
+the anxious eyes.
+
+"Forgiveness is not all from me to you, Regina," she said. "I want yours
+too."
+
+"Mine?" The eyes grew wide and wondering.
+
+"Don't you see that but for me he would have married you, and that I
+have been the cause of a great wrong to you?"
+
+For one instant Regina's face darkened, her brows straightened
+themselves, and her lip curled. She remembered how, only two days ago,
+in the very next room, Marcello had insisted that she should he his
+wife. But as she looked into Aurora's innocent eyes she understood, and
+the cloud passed from her own, and the bright smile came back. Aurora
+had spoken in the simplicity of her true heart, sure that it was only
+the memory of his love for her that had withheld Marcello from first to
+last; and Regina well knew that it had always been present with him, in
+spite of his brave struggle to put it away. That memory of another,
+which Regina had seen slowly reviving in him, had been for something in
+her refusal to marry him.
+
+With the mysterious sure vision of those who are near death, she felt
+that it would hurt Aurora to know the truth, except from Marcello
+himself.
+
+"If you have ever stood between us," she said, "you had the right. He
+loved you first. There is nothing to forgive in that. Afterwards he
+loved me a little. No one can take that from me, no one! It is mine, and
+it is all I have, and though I am going, and though I know that he is
+tired of me, it is still more than the world. To have it, as I have it,
+I would do again what I did, from the first."
+
+The voice was weak and muffled, but the words were distinct, and they
+were the confession of poor Regina's life.
+
+"If he were here," she said, after a moment, "I would lay your hand in
+his. Only let me take that memory with me!"
+
+The young girl rose and bent over her as she answered.
+
+"It is yours, to keep for ever."
+
+She stooped a little lower and kissed the dying woman's forehead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the May moon a little brigantine came sailing up to a low island
+just within sight of Italy; when she was within half a mile of the reefs
+Don Antonino Maresca put her about, for he was a prudent man, and he
+knew that there are just a few more rocks in the sea than are in the
+charts. It was a quiet night, and he was beating up against a gentle
+northerly breeze.
+
+When the head yards were swung, and braced sharp up for the other tack,
+and the little vessel had gathered way again, the mate came aft and
+stood by the captain, watching the light on the island.
+
+"Are there still convicts on this island, Don Antonino?" the young man
+asked.
+
+"Yes, there are the convicts. And there is one among them whom I helped
+to put there. He is an assassin that killed many when he was at liberty.
+But now he sits for seven years in a little cell alone, and sees no
+Christian, and it will be thirty years before he is free."
+
+"Madonna!" ejaculated the mate. "When he has been there thirty years he
+will perhaps understand."
+
+"It is as I say," rejoined the captain. "The world is made so. There are
+the good and the bad. The Eternal Father has created things thus. Get a
+little more on the main sheet, and then flatten in those jibs."
+
+Under the May moon, in the small shaft of white light that fell through
+the narrow grated window, a man sat on the edge of his pallet bed. His
+face was ghastly, and there were strange scars on his bare throat. His
+cell was seven feet by six, and the air was hard to breathe, because the
+wind was not from the south. But the moon was kinder than the sun. He
+heard the ripple of the cool sea, and he tried to dream that a great
+stone was hung to his neck, and that he had been thrown into a deep
+place. Perhaps, some day, the gaoler would forget to take away the
+coarse towel which was brought with the water in the morning. With a
+towel he could hang himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the May moon a small marble cross cast its shadow upon young roses
+and violets and growing myrtle. In the sweet earth below a very loyal
+heart was at rest for ever. But the flowers were planted and still
+tended by a woman with radiant hair; and sometimes, when she stooped to
+train the young roses, bright drops fell quietly upon their bloom. Also,
+on certain days, a man came there alone and knelt upon the marble border
+within which the flowers grew. But the man and the woman never came
+together; and he gave the gardener of that place money, praising him for
+the care of the flowers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the May moon the man and the woman went down from the cottage by
+the Roman shore to the break in the high bank, and stood still a while,
+looking out at the peaceful sea and the moon's broad path. Presently
+they turned to each other, put out their hands, and then their arms, and
+clasped each other silently, and kissed.
+
+
+
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