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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2), 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: Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2)
+
+Author: F. Marion Crawford
+
+Illustrator: A. Castaigne
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2008 [EBook #26327]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASA BRACCIO, VOLUMES 1 AND 2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO
+
+[Illustration: Emblem]
+
+[Illustration: "He looked at her long and sadly."--Vol. I., p. 239.]
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO
+
+BY
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "PIETRO GHISLERI," ETC.
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+VOL. I.
+
+_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. CASTAIGNE_
+
+                 =New York=
+              MACMILLAN AND CO.
+                 AND LONDON
+                   1895
+
+          _All rights reserved_
+
+          COPYRIGHT, 1894,
+
+          BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
+
+
+          =Norwood Press=
+          J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
+          Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+          THIS STORY, BEING MY TWENTY-FIFTH NOVEL,
+              IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO
+                         MY WIFE
+
+          SORRENTO, 1895
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+          PART I.
+          SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA      1
+
+
+          PART II.
+          GLORIA DALRYMPLE           225
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+                                                         PAGE
+
+          Nanna and Annetta                                15
+
+          Maria Addolorata                                 25
+
+          "Sor Tommaso was lying motionless"               78
+
+          "She had covered her face with the veil"        126
+
+          "An evil death on you!"                         218
+
+          "He looked at her long and sadly"               239
+
+          "Fire and sleet and candle-light;
+              And Christ receive thy soul"                324
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+_SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA._
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+_SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+SUBIACO lies beyond Tivoli, southeast from Rome, at the upper end of a
+wild gorge in the Samnite mountains. It is an archbishopric, and gives a
+title to a cardinal, which alone would make it a town of importance. It
+shares with Monte Cassino the honour of having been chosen by Saint
+Benedict and Saint Scholastica, his sister, as the site of a monastery
+and a convent; and in a cell in the rock a portrait of the holy man is
+still well preserved, which is believed, not without reason, to have
+been painted from life, although Saint Benedict died early in the fifth
+century. The town itself rises abruptly to a great height upon a mass of
+rock, almost conical in shape, crowned by the cardinal's palace, and
+surrounded on three sides by rugged mountains. On the third, it looks
+down the rapidly widening valley in the direction of Vicovaro, near
+which the Licenza runs into the Anio, in the neighbourhood of Horace's
+farm. It is a very ancient town, and in its general appearance it does
+not differ very much from many similar ones amongst the Italian
+mountains; but its position is exceptionally good, and its importance
+has been stamped upon it by the hands of those who have thought it worth
+holding since the days of ancient Rome. Of late it has, of course,
+acquired a certain modernness of aspect; it has planted acacia trees in
+its little piazza, and it has a gorgeously arrayed municipal band. But
+from a little distance one neither hears the band nor sees the trees,
+the grim mediæval fortifications frown upon the valley, and the
+time-stained dwellings, great and small, rise in rugged irregularity
+against the lighter brown of the rocky background and the green of
+scattered olive groves and chestnuts. Those features, at least, have not
+changed, and show no disposition to change during generations to come.
+
+In the year 1844, modern civilization had not yet set in, and Subiaco
+was, within, what it still appears to be from without, a somewhat gloomy
+stronghold of the Middle Ages, rearing its battlements and towers in a
+shadowy gorge, above a mountain torrent, inhabited by primitive and
+passionate people, dominated by ecclesiastical institutions, and,
+though distinctly Roman, a couple of hundred years behind Rome itself in
+all matters ethic and æsthetic. It was still the scene of the Santacroce
+murder, which really decided Beatrice Cenci's fate; it was still the
+gathering place of highwaymen and outlaws, whose activity found an
+admirable field through all the region of hill and plain between the
+Samnite range and the sea, while the almost inaccessible fortresses of
+the higher mountains, towards Trevi and the Serra di Sant' Antonio,
+offered a safe refuge from the halfhearted pursuit of Pope Gregory's
+lazy soldiers.
+
+Something of what one may call the life-and-death earnestness of earlier
+times, when passion was motive and prejudice was law, survived at that
+time and even much later; the ferocity of practical love and hatred
+dominated the theory and practice of justice in the public life of the
+smaller towns, while the patriarchal system subjected the family in
+almost absolute servitude to its head.
+
+There was nothing very surprising in the fact that the head of the house
+of Braccio should have obliged one of his daughters to take the veil in
+the Convent of Carmelite nuns, just within the gate of Subiaco, as his
+sister had taken it many years earlier. Indeed, it was customary in the
+family of the Princes of Gerano that one of the women should be a
+Carmelite, and it was a tradition not unattended with worldly advantages
+to the sisterhood, that the Braccio nun, whenever there was one, should
+be the abbess of that particular convent.
+
+Maria Teresa Braccio had therefore yielded, though very unwillingly, to
+her father's insistence, and having passed through her novitiate, had
+finally taken the veil as a Carmelite of Subiaco, in the year 1841, on
+the distinct understanding that when her aunt died she was to be abbess
+in the elder lady's stead. The abbess herself was, indeed, in excellent
+health and not yet fifty years old, so that Maria Teresa--in religion
+Maria Addolorata--might have a long time to wait before she was promoted
+to an honour which she regarded as hereditary; but the prospect of such
+promotion was almost her only compensation for all she had left behind
+her, and she lived upon it and concentrated her character upon it, and
+practised the part she was to play, when she was quite sure that she was
+not observed.
+
+Nature had not made her for a recluse, least of all for a nun of such a
+rigid Order as the Carmelites. The short taste of a brilliant social
+life which she had been allowed to enjoy, in accordance with an ancient
+tradition, before finally taking the veil, had shown her clearly enough
+the value of what she was to abandon, and at the same time had
+altogether confirmed her father in his decision. Compared with the
+freedom of the present day, the restrictions imposed upon a young girl
+in the Roman society of those times were, of course, tyrannical in the
+extreme, and the average modern young lady would almost as willingly go
+into a convent as submit to them. But Maria Teresa had received an
+impression which nothing could efface. Her intuitive nature had divined
+the possible semi-emancipation of marriage, and her temperament had felt
+in a certain degree the extremes of joyous exaltation and of that
+entrancing sadness which is love's premonition, and which tells maidens
+what love is before they know him, by making them conscious of the
+breadth and depth of his yet vacant dwelling.
+
+She had learned in that brief time that she was beautiful, and she had
+felt that she could love and that she should be loved in return. She had
+seen the world as a princess and had felt it as a woman, and she had
+understood all that she must give up in taking the veil. But she had
+been offered no choice, and though she had contemplated opposition, she
+had not dared to revolt. Being absolutely in the power of her parents,
+so far as she was aware, she had accepted the fatality of their will,
+and bent her fair head to be shorn of its glory and her broad forehead
+to be covered forever from the gaze of men. And having submitted, she
+had gone through it all bravely and proudly, as perhaps she would have
+gone through other things, even to death itself, being a daughter of an
+old race, accustomed to deify honour and to make its divinities of
+tradition. For the rest of her natural life she was to live on the
+memories of one short, magnificent year, forever to be contented with
+the grim rigidity of conventual life in an ancient cloister surrounded
+by gloomy mountains. She was to be a veiled shadow amongst veiled
+shades, a priestess of sorrow amongst sad virgins; and though, if she
+lived long enough, she was to be the chief of them and their ruler, her
+very superiority could only make her desolation more complete, until her
+own shadow, like the others, should be gathered into eternal darkness.
+
+Sister Maria Addolorata had certain privileges for which her companions
+would have given much, but which were traditionally the right of such
+ladies of the Braccio family as took the veil. For instance, she had a
+cell which, though not larger than the other cells, was better situated,
+for it had a little balcony looking over the convent garden, and high
+enough to afford a view of the distant valley and of the hills which
+bounded it, beyond the garden wall. It was entered by the last door in
+the corridor within, and was near the abbess's apartment, which was
+entered from the corridor, through a small antechamber which also gave
+access to the vast linen-presses. The balcony, too, had a little
+staircase leading down into the garden. It had always been the custom to
+carry the linen to and from the laundry through Maria Addolorata's cell,
+and through a postern gate in the garden wall, the washing being done in
+the town. By this plan, the annoyance was avoided of carrying the huge
+baskets through the whole length of the convent, to and from the main
+entrance, which was also much further removed from the house of Sora
+Nanna, the chief laundress. Moreover, Maria Addolorata had charge of all
+the convent linen, and the employment thus afforded her was an undoubted
+privilege in itself, for occupation of any kind not devotional was
+excessively scarce in such an existence.
+
+In the eyes of the other nuns, the constant society of the abbess
+herself was also a privilege, and one not by any means to be despised.
+After all, the abbess and her niece were nearly related, they could talk
+of the affairs of their family, and the abbess doubtless received many
+letters from Rome containing all the interesting news of the day, and
+all the social gossip--perfectly innocent, of course--which was the
+chronicle of Roman life. These were valuable compensations, and the nuns
+envied them. The abbess, too, saw her brother, the archbishop and
+titular cardinal of Subiaco, when the princely prelate came out from
+Rome for the coolness of the mountains in August and September, and his
+conversation was said to be not only edifying, but fascinating. The
+cardinal was a very good man, like many of the Braccio family, but he
+was also a man of the world, who had been sent upon foreign missions of
+importance, and had acquired some worldly fame as well as much
+ecclesiastical dignity in the course of his long life. It must be
+delightful, the nuns thought, to be his own sister, to receive long
+visits from him, and to hear all he had to say about the busy world of
+Rome. To most of them, everything beyond Rome was outer darkness.
+
+But though the nuns envied the abbess and Maria Addolorata, they did not
+venture to say so, and they hardly dared to think so, even when they
+were all alone, each in her cell; for the concentration of conventual
+life magnifies small spiritual sins in the absence of anything really
+sinful, and to admit that she even faintly wishes she might be some one
+else is to tarnish the brightness of the nun's scrupulously polished
+conscience. It would be as great a misdeed, perhaps, as to allow the
+attention to wander to worldly matters during times of especial
+devotion. Nevertheless, the envy showed itself, very perceptibly and
+much against the will of the sisters themselves, in a certain cold
+deference of manner towards the young and beautiful nun who was one day
+to be the superior of them all by force of circumstances for which she
+deserved no credit. She had the position among them, and something of
+the isolation, of a young royal princess amongst the ladies of her queen
+mother's court.
+
+There was about her, too, an undefinable something, like the shadow of
+future fate, a something almost impossible to describe, and yet
+distinctly appreciable to all who saw her and lived with her. It came
+upon her especially when she was silent and abstracted, when she was
+kneeling in her place in the choir, or was alone upon her little balcony
+over the garden. At such times a luminous pallor gradually took the
+place of her fresh and healthy complexion, her eyes grew unnaturally
+dark, with a deep, fixed fire in them, and the regular features took
+upon them the white, set straightness of a death mask. Sometimes, at
+such moments, a shiver ran through her, even in summer, and she drew her
+breath sharply once or twice, as though she were hurt. The expression
+was not one of suffering or pain, but was rather that of a person
+conscious of some great danger which must be met without fear or
+flinching.
+
+She would have found it very hard to explain what she felt just then.
+She might have said that it was a consciousness of something unknown.
+She could not have said more than that. It brought no vision with it,
+beatific or horrifying; it was not the consequence of methodical
+contemplation, as the trance state is; and it was followed by no
+reaction nor sense of uneasiness. It simply came and went as the dark
+shadow of a thundercloud passing between her and the sun, and leaving no
+trace behind.
+
+There was nothing to account for it, unless it could be explained by
+heredity, and no one had ever suggested any such explanation to Maria.
+It was true that there had been more than one tragedy in the Braccio
+family since they had first lifted their heads above the level of their
+contemporaries to become Roman Barons, in the old days before such
+titles as prince and duke had come into use. But then, most of the old
+families could tell of deeds as cruel and lives as passionate as any
+remembered by Maria's race, and Italians, though superstitious in
+unexpected ways, have little of that belief in hereditary fate which is
+common enough in the gloomy north.
+
+"Was Sister Maria Addolorata a great sinner, before she became a nun?"
+asked Annetta, Sora Nanna's daughter, of her mother, one day, as they
+came away from the convent.
+
+"What are you saying!" exclaimed the washerwoman, in a tone of rebuke.
+"She is a great lady, and the niece of the abbess and of the cardinal.
+Sometimes certain ideas pass through your head, my daughter!"
+
+And Sora Nanna gesticulated, unable to express herself.
+
+"Then she sins in her throat," observed Annetta, calmly. "But you do not
+even look at her--so many sheets--so many pillow-cases--and good day!
+But while you count, I look."
+
+"Why should I look at her?" inquired Nanna, shifting the big empty
+basket she carried on her head, hitching her broad shoulders and
+wrinkling her leathery forehead, as her small eyes turned upward. "Do
+you take me for a man, that I should make eyes at a nun?"
+
+"And I? Am I a man? And yet I look at her. I see nothing but her face
+when we are there, and afterwards I think about it. What harm is there?
+She sins in her throat. I know it."
+
+Sora Nanna hitched her shoulders impatiently again, and said nothing.
+The two women descended through the steep and narrow street, slippery
+and wet with slimy, coal black mud that glittered on the rough
+cobble-stones. Nanna walked first, and Annetta followed close behind
+her, keeping step, and setting her feet exactly where her mother had
+trod, with the instinctive certainty of the born mountaineer. With heads
+erect and shoulders square, each with one hand on her hip and the other
+hanging down, they carried their burdens swiftly and safely, with a
+swinging, undulating gait as though it were a pleasure to them to move,
+and would require an effort to stop rather than to walk on forever. They
+wore shoes because they were well-to-do people, and chose to show that
+they were when they went up to the convent. But for the rest they were
+clad in the costume of the neighbourhood,--the coarse white shift, close
+at the throat, the scarlet bodice, the short, dark, gathered skirt, and
+the dark blue carpet apron, with flowers woven on a white stripe across
+the lower end. Both wore heavy gold earrings, and Sora Nanna had eight
+or ten strings of large coral beads around her throat.
+
+Annetta was barely fifteen years old, brown, slim, and active as a
+lizard. She was one of those utterly unruly and untamable girls of whom
+there are two or three in every Italian village, in mountain or plain, a
+creature in whom a living consciousness of living nature took the place
+of thought, and with whom to be conscious was to speak, without reason
+or hesitation. The small, keen, black eyes were set under immense and
+arched black eyebrows which made the eyes themselves seem larger than
+they were, and the projecting temples cast shadows to the cheek which
+hid the rudimentary modelling of the coarse lower lids. The ears were
+flat and ill-developed, but close to the head and not large; the teeth
+very short, though perfectly regular and exceedingly white; the lips
+long, mobile, brown rather than red, and generally parted like those
+of a wild animal. The girl's smoothly sinewy throat moved with every
+step, showing the quick play of the elastic cords and muscles. Her
+blue-black hair was plaited, though far from neatly, and the braids were
+twisted into an irregular flat coil, generally hidden by the flap of the
+white embroidered cloth cross-folded upon her head and hanging down
+behind.
+
+[Illustration: Nanna and Annetta.--Vol. I., p. 15.]
+
+For some minutes the mother and daughter continued to pick their way
+down the winding lanes between the dark houses of the upper village.
+Then Sora Nanna put out her right hand as a signal to Annetta that she
+meant to stop, and she stood still on the steep descent and turned
+deliberately till she could see the girl.
+
+"What are you saying?" she began, as though there had been no pause in
+the conversation. "That Sister Maria Addolorata sins in her throat! But
+how can she sin in her throat, since she sees no man but the gardener
+and the priest? Indeed, you say foolish things!"
+
+"And what has that to do with it?" inquired Annetta. "She must have seen
+enough of men in Rome, every one of them a great lord. And who tells you
+that she did not love one of them and does not wish that she were
+married to him? And if that is not a sin in the throat, I do not know
+what to say. There is my answer."
+
+"You say foolish things," repeated Sora Nanna.
+
+Then she turned deliberately away and began to descend once more, with
+an occasional dissatisfied movement of the shoulders.
+
+"For the rest," observed Annetta, "it is not my business. I would rather
+look at the Englishman when he is eating meat than at Sister Maria when
+she is counting clothes! I do not know whether he is a wolf or a man."
+
+"Eh! The Englishman!" exclaimed Sora Nanna. "You will look so much at
+the Englishman that you will make blood with Gigetto, who wishes you
+well, and when Gigetto has waited for the Englishman at the corner of
+the forest, what shall we all have? The galleys. What do you see in the
+Englishman? He has red hair and long, long teeth. Yes--just like a wolf.
+You are right. And if he pays for meat, why should he not eat it? If he
+did not pay, it would be different. It would soon be finished. Heaven
+send us a little money without any Englishman! Besides, Gigetto said the
+other day that he would wait for him at the corner of the forest. And
+Gigetto, when he says a thing, he does it."
+
+"And why should we go to the galleys if Gigetto waits for the
+Englishman?" inquired Annetta.
+
+"Silly!" cried the older woman. "Because Gigetto would take your
+father's gun, since he has none of his own. That would be enough. We
+should have done it!"
+
+Annetta shrugged her shoulders and said nothing.
+
+"But take care," continued Sora Nanna. "Your father sleeps with one eye
+open. He sees you, and he sees also the Englishman every day. He says
+nothing, because he is good. But he has a fist like a paving-stone. I
+tell you nothing more."
+
+They reached Sora Nanna's house and disappeared under the dark archway.
+For Sora Nanna and Stefanone, her husband, were rich people for their
+station, and their house was large and was built with an arch wide
+enough and high enough for a loaded beast of burden to pass through with
+a man on its back. And, within, everything was clean and well kept,
+excepting all that belonged to Annetta. There were airy upper rooms,
+with well-swept floors of red brick or of beaten cement, furnished with
+high beds on iron trestles, and wooden stools of well-worn brown oak,
+and tables painted a vivid green, and primitive lithographs of Saint
+Benedict and Santa Scholastica and the Addolorata. And there were lofts
+in which the rich autumn grapes were hung up to dry on strings, and
+where chestnuts lay in heaps, and figs were spread in symmetrical order
+on great sheets of the coarse grey paper made in Subiaco. There were
+apples, too, though poor ones, and there were bins of maize and wheat,
+waiting to be picked over before being ground in the primeval household
+mill. And there were hams and sides of bacon, and red peppers, and
+bundles of dried herbs, and great mountain cheeses on shelves. There was
+also a guest room, better than the rest, which Stefanone and his wife
+occasionally let to respectable travellers or to the merchants who came
+from Rome on business to stay a few days in Subiaco. At the present time
+the room was rented by the Englishman concerning whom the discussion had
+arisen between Annetta and her mother.
+
+Angus Dalrymple, M.D., was not an Englishman, as he had tried to explain
+to Sora Nanna, though without the least success. He was, as his name
+proclaimed, a Scotchman of the Scotch, and a doctor of medicine. It was
+true that he had red hair, and an abundance of it, and long white teeth,
+but Sora Nanna's description was otherwise libellously incomplete and
+wholly omitted all mention of the good points in his appearance. In the
+first place, he possessed the characteristic national build in a
+superior degree of development, with all the lean, bony energy which has
+done so much hard work in the world. He was broad-shouldered,
+long-armed, long-legged, deep-chested, and straight, with sinewy hands
+and singularly well-shaped fingers. His healthy skin had that mottled
+look produced by countless freckles upon an almost childlike complexion.
+The large, grave mouth generally concealed the long teeth objected to by
+Sora Nanna, and the lips, though even and narrow, were strong rather
+than thin, and their rare smile was both genial and gentle. There were
+lines--as yet very faint--about the corners of the mouth, which told of
+a nervous and passionate disposition and of the strong Scotch temper, as
+well as of a certain sensitiveness which belongs especially to northern
+races. The pale but very bright blue eyes under shaggy auburn brows were
+fiery with courage and keen with shrewd enterprise. Dalrymple was
+assuredly not a man to be despised under any circumstances,
+intellectually or physically.
+
+His presence in such a place as Subiaco, at a time when hardly any
+foreigners except painters visited the place, requires some explanation;
+for he was not an artist, but a doctor, and had never been even tempted
+to amuse himself with sketching. In the first place, he was a younger
+son of a good family, and received a moderate allowance, quite
+sufficient in those days to allow him considerable latitude of
+expenditure in old-fashioned Italy. Secondly, he had entirely refused to
+follow any of the professions known as 'liberal.' He had no taste for
+the law, and he had not the companionable character which alone can make
+life in the army pleasant in time of peace. His beliefs, or his lack of
+belief, together with an honourable conscience, made him naturally
+opposed to all churches. On the other hand, he had been attracted almost
+from his childhood by scientific subjects, at a period when the
+discoveries of the last fifty years appeared as misty but beatific
+visions to men of science. To the disappointment and, to some extent, to
+the humiliation of his family, he insisted upon studying medicine, at
+the University of St. Andrew's, as soon as he had obtained his ordinary
+degree at Cambridge. And having once insisted, nothing could turn him
+from his purpose, for he possessed English tenacity grafted upon Scotch
+originality, with a good deal of the strength of both races.
+
+While still a student he had once made a tour in Italy, and like many
+northerners had fallen under the mysterious spell of the South from the
+very first. Having a sufficient allowance for all his needs, as has been
+said, and being attracted by the purely scientific side of his
+profession rather than by any desire to become a successful
+practitioner, it was natural enough that on finding himself free to go
+whither he pleased in pursuit of knowledge, he should have visited Italy
+again. A third visit had convinced him that he should do well to spend
+some years in the country; for by that time he had become deeply
+interested in the study of malarious fevers, which in those days were
+completely misunderstood. It would be far too much to say that young
+Dalrymple had at that time formed any complete theory in regard to
+malaria; but his naturally lonely and concentrated intellect had
+contemptuously discarded all explanations of malarious phenomena, and,
+communicating his own ideas to no one, until he should be in possession
+of proofs for his opinions, he had in reality got hold of the beginning
+of the truth about germs which has since then revolutionized medicine.
+
+The only object of this short digression has been to show that Angus
+Dalrymple was not a careless idler and tourist in Italy, only half
+responsible for what he did, and not at all for what he thought. On the
+contrary, he was a man of very unusual gifts, of superior education, and
+of rare enterprise; a strong, silent, thoughtful man, about
+eight-and-twenty years of age, and just beginning to feel his power as
+something greater than he had suspected, when he came to spend the
+autumn months in Subiaco, and hired Sora Nanna's guest room, with a
+little room leading off it, which he kept locked, and in which he had a
+table, a chair, a microscope, some books, a few chemicals and some
+simple apparatus.
+
+His presence had at first roused certain jealous misgivings in the heart
+of the town physician, Sor Tommaso Taddei, commonly spoken of simply as
+'the Doctor,' because there was no other. But Dalrymple was not without
+tact and knowledge of human nature. He explained that he came as a
+foreigner to learn from native physicians how malarious fevers were
+treated in Italy; and he listened with patient intelligence to Sor
+Tommaso's antiquated theories, and silently watched his still more
+antiquated practice. And Sor Tommaso, like all people who think that
+they know a vast deal, highly approved of Dalrymple's submissive
+silence, and said that the young man was a marvel of modesty, and that
+if he could stay about ten years in Subiaco and learn something from Sor
+Tommaso himself, he might really some day be a fairly good
+doctor,--which were extraordinarily liberal admissions on the part of
+the old practitioner, and contributed largely towards reassuring
+Stefanone concerning his lodger's character.
+
+For Stefanone and his wife had their doubts and suspicions. Of course
+they knew that all foreigners except Frenchmen and Austrians were
+Protestants, and ate meat on fast days, and were under the most especial
+protection of the devil, who fattened them in this world that they might
+burn the better in the next. But Stefanone had never seen the real
+foreigner at close quarters, and had not conceived it possible that any
+living human being could devour so much half-cooked flesh in a day as
+Dalrymple desired for his daily portion, paid for, and consumed.
+Moreover, there was no man in Subiaco who could and did swallow such
+portentous draughts of the strong mountain wine, without suffering any
+apparent effects from his potations. Furthermore, also, Dalrymple did
+strange things by day and night in the small laboratory he had arranged
+next to his bedroom, and unholy and evil smells issued at times through
+the cracks of the door, and penetrated from the bedroom to the stairs
+outside, and were distinctly perceptible all over the house. Therefore
+Stefanone maintained for a long time that his lodger was in league with
+the powers of darkness, and that it was not safe to keep him in the
+house, though he paid his bill so very regularly, every Saturday, and
+never quarrelled about the price of his food and drink. On the whole,
+however, Stefanone abstained from interfering, as he had at first been
+inclined to do, and entering the laboratory, with the support of the
+parish priest, a basin of holy water, and a loaded gun--all three of
+which he considered necessary for an exorcism; and little by little, Sor
+Tommaso, the doctor, persuaded him that Dalrymple was a worthy young
+man, deeply engaged in profound studies, and should be respected rather
+than exorcised.
+
+"Of course," admitted the doctor, "he is a Protestant. But then he has a
+passport. Let us therefore let him alone."
+
+The existence of the passport--indispensable in those days--was a strong
+argument in the eyes of the simple Stefanone. He could not conceive
+that a magician whose soul was sold to the devil could possibly have a
+passport and be under the protection of the law. So the matter was
+settled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+[Illustration: Maria Addolorata.--Vol. I., p. 25.]
+
+SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA sat by the open door of her cell, looking across
+the stone parapet of her little balcony, and watching the changing
+richness of the western sky, as the sun went down far out of sight
+behind the mountains. Though the month was October, the afternoon was
+warm; it was very still, and the air had been close in the choir during
+the Benediction service, which was just over. She leaned back in her
+chair, and her lips parted as she breathed, with a perceptible desire
+for refreshment in the breath. She held a piece of needlework in her
+heavy white hands; the needle had been thrust through the linen, but the
+stitch had remained unfinished, and one pointed finger pressed the
+doubled edge against the other, lest the material should slip before she
+made up her mind to draw the needle through. Deep in the garden under
+the balcony the late flowers were taking strangely vivid colours out of
+the bright sky above, and some bits of broken glass, stuck in the mortar
+on the top of the opposite wall as a protection against thieving boys,
+glowed like a line of rough rubies against the misty distance. Even the
+white walls of the bare cell and the coarse grey blanket lying across
+the foot of the small bed drank in a little of the colour, and looked
+less grey and less grim.
+
+From the eaves, high above the open door, the swallows shot down into
+the golden light, striking great circles and reflecting the red gold of
+the sky from their breasts as they wheeled just beyond the wall, with
+steady wings wide-stretched, up and down; and each one, turning at full
+speed, struck upwards again and was out of sight in an instant, above
+the lintel. The nun watched them, her eyes trying to follow each of them
+in turn and to recognize them separately as they flashed into sight
+again and again.
+
+Her lips were parted, and as she sat there she began to sing very softly
+and quite unconsciously. She could not have told what the song was. The
+words were strange and oddly divided, and there was a deadly sadness in
+a certain interval that came back almost with every stave. But the voice
+itself was beautiful beyond all comparison with ordinary voices, full of
+deep and touching vibrations and far harmonics, though she sang so
+softly, all to herself. Notes like hers haunt the ears--and sometimes
+the heart--when she who sang them has been long dead, and many would
+give much to hear but a breath of them again.
+
+It was hard for Maria Addolorata not to sing sometimes, when she was
+all alone in her cell, though it was so strictly forbidden. Singing is a
+gift of expression, when it is a really natural gift, as much as speech
+and gesture and the smile on the lips, with the one difference that it
+is a keener pleasure to him or her that sings than gesture or speech can
+possibly be. Music, and especially singing, are a physical as well as an
+intellectual expression, a pleasure of the body as well as a
+'delectation' of the soul. To sing naturally and spontaneously is most
+generally an endowment of natures physically strong and rich by the
+senses, independently of the mind, though melody may sometimes be the
+audible translation of a silent thought as well as the unconscious
+speech of wordless passion.
+
+And in Maria's song there was a strain of that something unknown and
+fatal, which the nuns sometimes saw in her face and which was in her
+eyes now, as she sang; for they no longer followed the circling of the
+swallows, but grew fixed and dark, with fiery reflexions from the sunset
+sky, and the regular features grew white and straight and square against
+the deepening shadows within the narrow room. The deep voice trembled a
+little, and the shoulders had a short, shivering movement under the
+heavy folds of the dark veil, as the sensation of a presence ran through
+her and made her shudder. But the voice did not break, and she sang on,
+louder, now, than she realized, the full notes swelling in her throat,
+and vibrating between the narrow walls, and floating out through the
+open door to join the flight of the swallows.
+
+The door of the cell opened gently, but she did not hear, and sang on,
+leaning back in her chair and gazing still at the pink clouds above the
+mountains.
+
+          "Death is my love, dark-eyed death--"
+
+she sang.
+
+"Maria!"
+
+The abbess was standing in the doorway and speaking to her, but she did
+not hear.
+
+          "His hands are sweetly cold and gentle--
+           Flowers of leek, and firefly--
+           Holy Saint John!"
+
+"Maria!" cried the abbess, impatiently. "What follies are you singing? I
+could hear you in my room!"
+
+Maria Addolorata started and rose from her seat, still holding her
+needlework, and turning half round towards her superior, with suddenly
+downcast eyes. The elder lady came forward with slow dignity and walked
+as far as the door of the balcony, where she stood still for a moment,
+gazing at the beautiful sky. She was not a stately woman, for she was
+too short and stout, but she had that calm air of assured superiority
+which takes the place of stateliness, and which seems to belong
+especially to those who occupy important positions in the Church. Her
+large features, though too heavy, were imposing in their excessive
+pallor, while the broad, dark brown shadows all around and beneath the
+large black eyes gave the face a depth of expression which did not,
+perhaps, wholly correspond with the original character. It was a
+striking face, and considering the wide interval between the ages of the
+abbess and her niece, and the natural difference of colouring, there was
+a strong family resemblance in the two women.
+
+The abbess sat down upon the only chair, and Maria remained standing
+before her, her sewing in her hands.
+
+"I have often told you that you must not sing in your cell," said the
+abbess, in a coldly severe tone.
+
+Maria's shoulders shook her veil a little, but she still looked at the
+floor.
+
+"I cannot help it," she answered in a constrained voice. "I did not know
+that I was singing--"
+
+"That is ridiculous! How can one sing, and not know it? You are not
+deaf. At least, you do not sing as though you were. I will not have it.
+I could hear you as far away as my own room--a love-song, too!"
+
+"The love of death," suggested Maria.
+
+"It makes no difference," answered the elder lady. "You disturb the
+peace of the sisters with your singing. You know the rule, and you must
+obey it, like the rest. If you must sing, then sing in church."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Very well, that ought to be enough. Must you sing all the time? Suppose
+that the Cardinal had been visiting me, as was quite possible, what
+impression would he have had of our discipline?"
+
+"Oh, Uncle Cardinal has often heard me sing."
+
+"You must not call him 'Uncle Cardinal.' It is like the common people
+who say 'Uncle Priest.' I have told you that a hundred times at least.
+And if the Cardinal has heard you singing, so much the worse."
+
+"He once told me that I had a good voice," observed Maria, still
+standing before her aunt.
+
+"A good voice is a gift of God and to be used in church, but not in such
+a way as to attract attention or admiration. The devil is everywhere, my
+daughter, and makes use of our best gifts as a means of temptation. The
+Cardinal certainly did not hear you singing that witch's love-song which
+I heard just now. He would have rebuked you as I do."
+
+"It was not a love-song. It is about death--and Saint John's eve."
+
+"Well, then it is about witches. Do not argue with me. There is a rule,
+and you must not break it."
+
+Maria Addolorata said nothing, but moved a step and leaned against the
+door-post, looking out into the evening light. The stout abbess sat
+motionless in her straight chair, looking past her niece at the distant
+hills. She had evidently said all she meant to say about the singing,
+and it did not occur to her to talk of anything else. A long silence
+followed. Maria was not timid, but she had been accustomed from her
+childhood to look upon her aunt as an immensely superior person, moving
+in a higher sphere, and five years spent in the convent as novice and
+nun had rather increased than diminished the feeling of awe which the
+abbess inspired in the young girl. There was, indeed, no other sister in
+the community who would have dared to answer the abbess's rebuke at all,
+and Maria's very humble protest really represented an extraordinary
+degree of individuality and courage. Conventual institutions can only
+exist on a basis of absolute submission.
+
+The abbess was neither harsh nor unkind, and was certainly not a very
+terrifying figure, but she possessed undeniable force of character,
+strengthened by the inborn sense of hereditary right and power, and her
+kindness was as imposing as her displeasure was lofty and solemn. She
+had very little sympathy for any weakness in others, but she was always
+ready to dispense the mercy of Heaven, vicariously, so to say, and with
+a certain royally suppressed surprise that Heaven should be merciful.
+On the whole, considering the circumstances, she admitted that Maria
+Addolorata had accepted the veil with sufficient outward grace, though
+without any vocation, and she took it for granted that with such
+opportunities the girl must slowly develop into an abbess not unlike her
+predecessors. She prayed regularly, of course, and with especial
+intention, for her niece, as for the welfare of the order, and assumed
+as an unquestionable result that her prayers were answered with perfect
+regularity, since her own conscience did not reproach her with
+negligence of her young relative's spiritual education.
+
+To the abbess, religion, the order and its duties, presented themselves
+as a vast machine controlled for the glory of God by the Pope. She and
+her nuns were parts of the great engine which must work with perfect
+regularity in order that God might be glorified. Her mind was naturally
+religious, but was at the same time essentially of the material order.
+There is a material imagination, and there is a spiritual imagination.
+There are very good and devout men and women who take the world, present
+and to come, quite literally, as a mere fulfilment of their own
+limitations; who look upon what they know as being all that need be
+known, and upon what they believe of God and Heaven as the mechanical
+consequence of what they know rather than as the cause and goal,
+respectively, of existence and action; to whom the letter of the law is
+the arbitrary expression of a despotic power, which, somehow, must be
+looked upon as merciful; who answer all questions concerning God's logic
+with the tremendous assertion of God's will; whose God is a magnified
+man, and whose devil is a malignant animal, second only to God in
+understanding, while extreme from God in disposition. There are good men
+and women who, to use a natural but not flippant simile, take it for
+granted that the soul is cast into the troubled waters of life without
+the power to swim, or even the possibility of learning to float,
+dependent upon the bare chance that some one may throw it the life-buoy
+of ritual religion as its only conceivable means of salvation. And the
+opponents of each particular form of faith invariably take just such
+good men and women, with all their limitations, as the only true
+exponents of that especial creed, which they then proceed to tear in
+pieces with all the ease such an undue advantage of false premise gives
+them. None of them have thought of intellectual mercy as being, perhaps,
+an integral part of Christian charity. Faith they have in abundance, and
+hope also not a little; but charity, though it be for men's earthly ills
+and, theoretically, if not always practically, for men's spiritual
+shortcomings, is rigidly forbidden for the errors of men's minds. Why?
+No thinking man can help asking the little question which grows great in
+the unanswering silence that follows it.
+
+All this is not intended as an apology for what the young nun, Maria
+Addolorata, afterwards did, though much of it is necessary in
+explanation of her deeds, which, however they may be regarded, brought
+upon her and others their inevitable logical consequences. Still less is
+it meant, in any sense, as an attack upon the conventual system of the
+cloistered orders, which system was itself a consequence of spiritual,
+intellectual and political history, and has a prime right to be judged
+upon the evidence of its causes, and not by the shortcomings of its
+results in changed times. What has been said merely makes clear the fact
+that the characters, minds, and dispositions of Maria Addolorata and of
+her aunt, the abbess, were wholly unsuited to one another. And this one
+fact became a source of life and death, of happiness and misery, of
+comedy and tragedy, to many individuals, even to the present day.
+
+The nun remained motionless, pressing her cheek against the door-post
+and looking out. Her aunt had not quite shut the door by which she had
+entered, and a cool stream of air blew outward from the corridor and
+through the cell, bringing with it that peculiar odour which belongs to
+all large and old buildings inhabited by religious communities. It is
+made up of the cold exhalations from stone walls and paved floors in
+which there is always some dampness, of the acrid smell of the heavy,
+leathern, wadded curtains which shut off the main drafts of air, as the
+swinging doors do in a mine, of a faint but perceptible suggestion of
+incense which penetrates the whole building from the church or the
+chapel, and, not least, of the fumes from the cookery of the great
+quantities of vegetables which are the staple food of the brethren or
+the sisters. It is as imperceptible to the monks and nuns themselves as
+the smell of tobacco to the smoker.
+
+It had been very close in the little cell, and Maria was glad of the
+coolness that came in through the open door. Her eyes were fixed on the
+sky with a longing look. Again the words of her song rose to her lips,
+but she checked them, remembering her aunt's presence, and with the
+effort to be silent came the strong wish to be free, to be over there
+upon those purple hills at evening, to look beyond and watch the sun
+sinking into the distant sea, to breathe her fill of the mountain air,
+to run along the crests of the hills till she should be tired, to sleep
+under the open sky, to see, in dreams, to-morrow's sun rising through
+the trees, to be waked by the song of birds and to find that the dream
+was true.
+
+Instead of that, and instead of all it meant to her, there was to be
+the silent evening meal, the close, lighted chapel, the wearily nasal
+chant of the sisters, her lonely cell, with its close darkness, the
+unrefreshing sleep, broken by the bell calling her to another office in
+the chapel; then, at last, the dawn, and the day that would seem as much
+a prisoner as herself within the convent walls, and the praying and
+nasal chanting, and the counting of sheets and pillow-cases, and doing a
+little sewing, and singing to herself, perhaps, and then the being
+reproved for it--the whole varied by meals of coarse food, and
+periodical stations in her seat in the choir. The day! The very sun
+seemed imprisoned in his corner of the garden wall, dragging slowly at
+his chain, in a short half-circle, from morning till evening, like a
+watch-dog tied up in a yard beside his kennel. The night was better.
+Sometimes she could see the moon-rays through the cracks of the balcony
+door, as she lay in her bed. She could see them against the darkness,
+and the ends of them were straight white lines and round white spots on
+the floor and on the walls. Her thoughts played in them, and her maiden
+fancies caught them and followed them lightly out into the white night
+and far away to the third world, which is dreamland. And in her dreams
+she sang to the midnight stars, and clasped her bare arms round the
+moon's white throat, kissing the moon-lady's pale and passionate cheek,
+till she lost herself in the mysterious eyes, and found herself once
+more, bathed in cool star-showers, the queen of a tender dream.
+
+There sat the abbess, in the only chair, stolid, righteous, imposing.
+The incarnation and representative of the ninety and nine who need no
+forgiveness, exasperatingly and mathematically virtuous as a dogma, a
+woman against whom no sort of reproach could be brought, and at the mere
+sight of whom false witnesses would shrivel up and die, like jelly-fish
+in the sun. She not only approved of the convent life, but she liked it.
+She was at liberty to do a thousand things which were not permitted to
+the nuns, but she had not the slightest inclination to do any of them,
+any more than she was inclined to admit that any of them could possibly
+be unhappy if they would only pray, sing, sleep, and eat boiled cabbage
+at the appointed hours. What had she in common with Maria Addolorata,
+except that she was born a princess and a Braccio?
+
+Of what use was it to be a princess by birth, like a dozen or more of
+the sisters, or even a noble, like all the others? Of what use or
+advantage could anything be, where liberty was not? An even plainer and
+more desperate question rose in the young nun's heart, as she leaned her
+cheek against the door-post, still warm with the afternoon sun. Of what
+use was life, if it was to be lived in the tomb with the accompaniment
+of a lifelong funeral service? Why should not God be as well pleased
+with suicide as with self-burial? Why should not death all at once, by
+the sudden dash of cleanly steel, be as noble and acceptable a sacrifice
+as death by sordid degrees of orderly suffering, systematic starvation,
+and rigidly regulated misery? Was not life, life--and blood,
+blood--whether drawn by drops, or shed from a quick wound in the
+splendid redness of one heroic instant? Surely it would be as grand a
+thing, if a mere sacrifice were the object, to be laid down stark dead,
+with the death-thrust in the heart, at the foot of the altar, in all her
+radiant youth and full young beauty, untempted and unsullied, as to fast
+and pray through forty querulous years of misery in prison.
+
+But then, there was the virtue of patience. Therein, doubtless, lay the
+difference. It was not the death alone that was to please God, but the
+long manner of it, the summed-up account of suffering, the interest paid
+on the capital of life after it was invested in death. God was to be
+pleased with items, and the sum of them. Item, a sleepless night. Item,
+a bad cold, caught by kneeling on the damp stones. Item, a dish of
+sweets refused on a feast-day. Item, the resolution not to laugh when a
+fly settled on the abbess's nose. Item, the resolution not to wish that
+her hair had never been cut off. Item, being stifled in summer and
+frozen in winter, in her cell. Item, appreciating that it was the best
+cell, and that she was better off than the other sisters.
+
+Repeat the items for half a century, sum them up, and offer them to God
+as a meet and fitting sacrifice--the destruction, by fine degrees of
+petty suffering, of one woman's whole life, almost from the beginning,
+and quite to the end, with the total annihilation of all its human
+possibilities, of love, of motherhood, of reasonable enjoyment and
+legitimate happiness. That was the formula for salvation which Maria
+Addolorata had received with the veil.
+
+And not only had she received it. It had been thrust upon her, because
+she chanced to be the only available daughter of the ancient house of
+Braccio, to fill the hereditary seat beneath the wooden canopy, as
+abbess of the Subiaco Carmelites. If there had been another sister, less
+fair, more religiously disposed, that sister would have been chosen in
+Maria's stead. But there was no other; and there must be a young Braccio
+nun, to take the place of the elder one, when the latter should have
+filled her account to overflowing with little items to be paid for with
+the gold of certain salvation.
+
+That a sinful woman, full of sorrows, and weary of the world, might
+silently bow her head under the nun's veil, and wear out with prayerful
+austerity the deep-cut letters of her sin's story, that, at least, was a
+thing Maria could understand. There were faces amongst the sisters that
+haunted her in her solitude, lips that could have told much, but which
+said only 'Miserere'; eyes that had looked on love, and that fixed
+themselves now only on the Cross; cheeks blanched with grief and
+hollowed as the marble of an ancient fountain by often flowing tears;
+hearts that had given all, and had been beaten and bruised and rejected.
+The convent was for them; the life was a life for them; for them there
+was no freedom beyond these walls, in the living world, nor anywhere on
+this side of death. They had done right in coming, and they did right in
+staying; they were reasonable when they prayed that they might have
+time, before they died, to be sorry for their sins and to touch again
+the hem of the garment of innocence.
+
+But even they, if they were told that it would be right, would they not
+rather shorten their time to a day, even to one instant, of aggregated
+pain, and offer up their sacrifice all at once? And why should it not be
+right? Did God delight in pain and suffering for its own sake? The
+passionate girl's heart revolted angrily against a Being that could
+enjoy the sufferings of helpless creatures.
+
+But then, there was that virtue of patience again, which was beyond her
+comprehension. At last she spoke, her face still to the sunset.
+
+"What difference can it make to God how we die?" she asked, scarcely
+conscious that she was speaking.
+
+The abbess must have started a little, for the chair creaked suddenly,
+several seconds before she answered. Her face did not relax, however,
+nor were her hands unclasped from one another as they lay folded on her
+knees.
+
+"That is a foolish question, my daughter," she said at last. "Do you
+think that God was not pleased by the sufferings of the holy martyrs,
+and did not reward them for what they bore?"
+
+"No, I did not mean that," answered Maria, quickly. "But why should we
+not all be martyrs? It would be much quicker."
+
+"Heaven preserve us!" exclaimed the abbess. "What are you thinking of,
+child?"
+
+"It would be so much quicker," repeated Maria. "What are we here for? To
+sacrifice our lives to God. We wish to make this sacrifice, and God
+promises to accept it. Why would it be less complete if we were led to
+the altar as soon as we have finished our novitiate and quickly killed?
+It would be the same, and it would be much quicker. What difference can
+it make how we die, since we are to die in the end, without
+accomplishing anything except dying?"
+
+By this time the abbess's pale hands were unclasped, and one of them
+pressed each knee, as she leaned far forward in her seat, with an
+expression of surprise and horror, her dark lips parted and all the
+lines of her colourless face drawn down.
+
+"Are you mad, Maria?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"Mad? No. Why should you think me mad?" The nun turned and looked down
+at her aunt. "After all, it is the great question. Our lives are but a
+preparation for death. Why need the preparation be so long? Why should
+the death be so slow? Why should it be right to kill ourselves for the
+glory of God by degrees, and wrong to do it all at once, if one has the
+courage? I think it is a very reasonable question."
+
+"Indeed, you are beside yourself! The devil suggests such things to you
+and blinds you to the truth, my child. Penance and prayer, prayer and
+penance--by the grace of Heaven it will pass."
+
+"Penance and prayer!" exclaimed Maria, sadly. "That is it--a slow death,
+but a sure one!"
+
+"I am more than sixty years old," replied the abbess. "I have done
+penance and prayed prayers all my life, and you see--I am well. I am
+stout."
+
+"For charity's sake, do not say so!" cried Maria, making the sign of the
+horns with her fingers, to ward off the evil eye. "You will certainly
+fall ill."
+
+"Our lives are of God. It is our own eyes that are evil. You must not
+make horns with your fingers. It is a heathen superstition, as I have
+often told you. But many of you do it. Maria, I wish to speak to you
+seriously."
+
+"Speak, mother," answered the young nun, the strong habit of submission
+returning instantly with the other's grave tone.
+
+"These thoughts of yours are very wicked. We are placed in the world,
+and we must continue to live in it, as long as God wills that we should.
+When God is pleased to deliver us, He will take us in good time. You and
+I and the sisters should be thankful that during our brief stay on earth
+this sanctuary has fallen to our lot, and this possibility of a holy
+life. We must take every advantage of it, thanking Heaven if our stay be
+long enough for us to repent of our sins and obtain indulgence for our
+venial shortcomings. It is wicked to desire to shorten our lives. It is
+wicked to desire anything which is not the will of God. We are here to
+live, to watch and to pray--not to complain and to rebel."
+
+The abbess was stout, as she herself admitted, and between her sudden
+surprise at her niece's wholly unorthodox, not to say blasphemous,
+suggestion of suicide as a means of grace, and her own attempt at
+eloquence, she grew rapidly warm, in spite of the comparatively cool
+draft which was passing out from the interior of the building. She
+caught the end of her loose over-sleeve and fanned herself slowly when
+she had finished speaking.
+
+But Maria Addolorata did not consider that she was answered. There in
+the cell of a Carmelite convent, in the heart of a young girl who had
+perhaps never heard of Shakespeare and who certainly knew nothing of
+Hamlet, the question of all questions found itself, and she found for it
+such speech as she could command. It broke out passionately and
+impatiently.
+
+"What are we? And why are we what we are? Yes, mother--I know that you
+are good, and that all you say is true. But it is not all. There is all
+the world beyond it. To live, or not to live--but you know that this is
+not living! It is not meant to be living, as the people outside
+understand what living means. What does it all signify but death, when
+we take the veil, and lie before the altar, and are covered with a
+funeral pall? It means dying--then why not altogether dying? Has not God
+angels, in thousands, to praise Him and worship Him, and pray for
+sinners on earth? And they sing and pray gladly, because they are
+blessed and do not suffer, as we do. Why should God want us, poor little
+nuns, to live half dead, and to praise Him with voices that crack with
+the cold in winter, and to kneel till we faint with the heat in summer,
+and to wear out our bodies with fasting and prayer and penance, till it
+is all we can do to crawl to our places in the choir? Not I--I am young
+and strong still--nor you, perhaps, for you are strong still, though you
+are not young. But many of the sisters--yes, they are the best ones, I
+know--they are killing themselves by inches before our eyes. You know
+it--I know it--they know it themselves. Why should they not find some
+shorter way of death for God's glory? Or if not, why should they not
+live happily, since many of them could? Why should God, who made us,
+wish us to destroy ourselves--or if He does, then why may we not do it
+in our own way? Ah--it would be so short--a knife-thrust, and then the
+great peace forever!"
+
+The abbess had risen and was standing before Maria, one hand resting on
+the back of the rush-bottomed chair.
+
+"Blasphemy!" she cried, finding breath at last. "It is blasphemy, or
+madness, or both! It is the evil one's own doing! Forgive her, good God!
+She does not know what she is saying! Almighty and most merciful God,
+forgive her!"
+
+For a moment Maria Addolorata was silent, realizing how far she had
+forgotten herself, and startled by the abbess's terrified eyes and
+excited tone. But she was naturally a far more daring woman than she
+herself knew. Though her face was pale, her lips smiled at her good
+aunt's fright.
+
+"But that is not an answer--just to cry 'blasphemy!'" she said. "The
+question is clear--"
+
+She did not finish the sentence. The abbess was really beside herself
+with religious terror. With almost violent hands she dragged and thrust
+her niece down till Maria fell upon her knees.
+
+"Pray, child! Pray, before it is too late!" she cried. "Pray on your
+knees that this possession may pass, before your soul is lost forever!"
+
+She herself knelt beside the girl upon the stones, still clasping her
+and pressing her down. And she prayed aloud, long, fervently, almost
+wildly, appealing to God for protection against a bodily tempting devil,
+who by his will, and with evil strength, was luring and driving a human
+soul to utter damnation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+"IT is well," said Stefanone. "The world is come to an end. I will not
+say anything more."
+
+He finished his tumbler of wine, leaned back on the wooden bench against
+the brown wall, played with the broad silver buttons of his dark blue
+jacket, and stared hard at Sor Tommaso, the doctor, who sat opposite to
+him. The doctor returned his glance rather unsteadily and betook himself
+to his snuffbox. It was of worn black ebony, adorned in the middle of
+the lid with a small view of Saint Peter's and the colonnades in mosaic,
+with a very blue sky. From long use, each tiny fragment of the mosaic
+was surrounded by a minute black line, which indeed lent some tone to
+the intensely clear atmosphere of the little picture, but gave the
+architecture represented therein a dirty and neglected appearance. The
+snuff itself, however, was of the superior quality known as Sicilian in
+those days, and was of a beautiful light brown colour.
+
+"And why?" asked the doctor very slowly, between the operations of
+pinching, stuffing, snuffing, and dusting. "Why is the world come to an
+end?"
+
+Stefanone's eyes grew sullen, with a sort of dull glare in their
+unwinking gaze. He looked dangerous just then, but the doctor did not
+seem to be in the least afraid of him.
+
+"You, who have made it end, should know why," answered the peasant,
+after a short pause.
+
+Stefanone was a man of the Roman type, of medium height, thick set and
+naturally melancholic, with thin, straight lips that were clean shaven,
+straight black hair, a small but aggressively aquiline nose and heavy
+hands, hairy on the backs of the fingers, between the knuckles. His
+wife, Sora Nanna, said that he had a fist like a paving-stone. He also
+looked as though he might have the constitution of a mule. He was at
+that time about five-and-thirty years of age, and there were a few
+strong lines in his face, notably those curved ones drawn from the
+beginning of the nostrils to the corners of the mouth, which are said to
+denote an uncertain temper.
+
+He wore the dress of the richer peasants of that day, a coarse but
+spotless white shirt, very open at the throat, a jacket and waistcoat of
+stout dark blue cloth, with large and smooth silver buttons,
+knee-breeches, white stockings, and heavy low shoes with steel buckles.
+He combined the occupations of farmer, wine-seller, and carrier. When he
+was on the road between Subiaco and Rome, Gigetto, already mentioned,
+was supposed to represent him. It was understood that Gigetto was to
+marry Annetta--if he could be prevailed upon to do so, for he was the
+younger son of a peasant family which held its head even higher than
+Stefanone, and the young man as well as his people looked upon Annetta's
+wild ways with disapproval, though her fortune, as the only child of
+Stefanone and Sora Nanna, was a very strong attraction. In the meantime,
+Gigetto acted as though he were the older man's partner in the
+wine-shop, and as he was a particularly honest, but also a particularly
+idle, young man with a taste for singing and playing on the guitar, the
+position suited him admirably.
+
+As for Sor Tommaso, with whom Stefanone seemed inclined to quarrel on
+this particular evening, he was a highly respectable personage in a
+narrow-shouldered, high-collared black coat with broad skirts, and a
+snuff-coloured waistcoat. He wore a stock which was decidedly shabby,
+but decent, and the thin cuffs of his shirt were turned back over the
+tight sleeves of his coat, in the old fashion. He also wore amazingly
+tight black trousers, strapped closely over his well-blacked boots. To
+tell the truth, these nether garments, though of great natural
+resistance, had lived so long at a high tension, so to say, that they
+were no longer equally tight at all points, and there were, undoubtedly,
+certain perceptible spots on them; but, on the whole, the general effect
+of the doctor's appearance was fashionable, in the fashion of several
+years earlier and judged by the standard of Subiaco. He wore his hair
+rather long, in a handsome iron-grey confusion, his face was
+close-shaven, and, though he was thin, his complexion was somewhat
+apoplectic.
+
+Having duly and solemnly finished the operation of taking snuff, the
+doctor looked at the peasant.
+
+"I do not wish to have said anything," he observed, by way of a general
+retraction. "These are probably follies."
+
+"And for not having meant to say anything, you have planted this knife
+in my heart!" retorted Stefanone, the veins swelling at his temples.
+"Thank you. I wish to die, if I forget it. You tell me that this
+daughter of mine is making love with the Englishman. And then you say
+that you do not wish to have said anything! May he die, the Englishman,
+he, and whoever made him, with the whole family! An evil death on him
+and all his house!"
+
+"So long as you do not make me die, too!" exclaimed Sor Tommaso, with
+rather a pitying smile.
+
+"Eh! To die--it is soon said! And yet, people do die. You, who are a
+doctor, should know that. And you do not wish to have said anything!
+Bravo, doctor! Words are words. And yet they can sting. And after a
+thousand years, they still sting. You--what can you understand? Are you
+perhaps a father? You have not even a wife. Oh, blessed be God! You do
+not even know what you are saying. You know nothing. You think, perhaps,
+because you are a doctor, that you know more than I do. I will tell you
+that you are an ignorant!"
+
+"Oh, beautiful!" cried the doctor, angrily, stung by what is still
+almost a mortal insult. "You--to me--ignorant! Oh, beautiful, most
+beautiful, this! From a peasant to a man of science! Perhaps you too
+have a diploma from the University of the Sapienza--"
+
+"If I had, I should wrap half a pound of sliced ham--fat ham, you
+know--in it, for the first customer. What should I do with your
+diplomas! I ask you, what do you know? Do you know at all what a
+daughter is? Blood of my blood, heart of my heart, hand of this hand.
+But I am a peasant, and you are a doctor. Therefore, I know nothing."
+
+"And meanwhile you give me 'ignorant' in my face!" retorted Sor Tommaso.
+
+"Yes--and I repeat it!" cried Stefanone, leaning forwards, his clenched
+hand on the table. "I say it twice, three times--ignorant, ignorant,
+ignorant! Have you understood?"
+
+"Say it louder! In that way every one can hear you! Beast of a
+sheep-grazer!"
+
+"And you--crow-feeder! Furnisher of grave-diggers. And then--ignorant!
+Oh--this time I have said it clearly!"
+
+"And it seems to me that it is enough!" roared the doctor, across the
+table. "Ciociaro! Take that!"
+
+"Ciociaro? I? Oh, your soul! If I get hold of you with my hands!"
+
+A 'ciociaro' is a hill-man who wears 'cioce,' or rags, bound upon his
+feet with leathern sandals and thongs. He is generally a shepherd, and
+is held in contempt by the more respectable people of the larger
+mountain towns. To call a man a 'ciociaro' is a bitter insult.
+
+Stefanone in his anger had half risen from his seat. But the wooden
+bench on which he had been sitting was close to the wall behind him, and
+the heavy oak table was pushed up within a few inches of his chest, so
+that his movements were considerably hampered as he stretched out his
+hands rather wildly towards his adversary. The latter, who possessed
+more moral than physical courage, moved his chair back and prepared to
+make his escape, if Stefanone showed signs of coming round the table.
+
+At that moment a tall figure darkened the door that opened upon the
+street, and a quiet, dry voice spoke with a strong foreign accent. It
+was Angus Dalrymple, returning from a botanizing expedition in the
+hills, after being absent all day.
+
+"That is a very uncomfortable way of fighting," he observed, as he stood
+still in the doorway. "You cannot hit a man across a table broader than
+your arm is long, Signor Stefano."
+
+The effect of his words was instantaneous. Stefanone fell back into his
+seat. The doctor's anxious and excited expression resolved itself
+instantly into a polite smile.
+
+"We were only playing," he said suavely. "A little discussion--a mere
+jest. Our friend Stefanone was explaining something."
+
+"If the table had been narrower, he would have explained you away
+altogether," observed Dalrymple, coming forward.
+
+He laid a tin box which he had with him upon the table, and shook hands
+with Sor Tommaso. Then he slipped behind the table and sat down close to
+his host, as a precautionary measure in case the play should be resumed.
+Stefanone would have had a bad chance of being dangerous, if the
+powerful Scotchman chose to hold him down. But the peasant seemed to
+have become as suddenly peaceful as the doctor.
+
+"It was nothing," said Stefanone, quietly enough, though his eyes were
+bloodshot and glanced about the room in an unsettled way.
+
+At that moment Annetta entered from a door leading to the staircase. Her
+eyes were fixed on Dalrymple's face as she came forward, carrying a
+polished brass lamp, with three burning wicks, which she placed upon the
+table. Dalrymple looked up at her, and seeing her expression of inquiry,
+slowly nodded. With a laugh which drew her long red-brown lips back from
+her short white teeth, the girl produced a small flask and a glass,
+which she had carried behind her and out of sight when she came in. She
+set them before Dalrymple.
+
+"I saw you coming," she said, and laughed again. "And then--it is always
+the same. Half a 'foglietta' of the old, just for the appetite."
+
+Sor Tommaso glanced at Stefanone in a meaning way, but the girl's father
+affected not to see him. Dalrymple nodded his thanks, poured a few drops
+of wine into the glass and scattered them upon the brick floor according
+to the ancient custom, both for rinsing the glass and as a libation, and
+then offered to fill the glasses of each of the two men, who smiled,
+shook their heads, and covered their tumblers with their right hands. At
+last Dalrymple helped himself, nodded politely to his companions, and
+slowly emptied the glass which held almost all the contents of the
+little flask. The 'foglietta,' or 'leaflet' of wine, is said to have
+been so called from the twisted and rolled vine leaf which generally
+serves it for a stopper. A whole 'foglietta' contained a scant pint.
+
+"Will you eat now?" asked Annetta, still smiling.
+
+"Presently," answered Dalrymple. "What is there to eat? I am hungry."
+
+"It seems that you have to say so!" laughed the girl. "It is a new
+thing. There is beefsteak or mutton, if you wish to know. And ham--a
+fresh ham cut to-day. It is one of the Grape-eater's, and it seems good.
+You remember, Sor Tommaso, the--speaking with respect to your face--the
+pig we called the Grape-eater last year? Speaking with respect, he was a
+good pig. It is one of his hams that we have cut. There is also salad,
+and fresh bread, which you like. And wine, I will not speak of it. Eh,
+he likes wine, the Englishman! He comes in with a long, long face--and
+when he goes to bed, his face is wide, wide. That is the wine. But then,
+it does nothing else to him. It only changes his face. When I look at
+him, I seem to see the moon waxing."
+
+"You talk too much," said Stefanone.
+
+"Never mind, papa! Words are not pennies. The more one wastes, the more
+one has!"
+
+Dalrymple said nothing; but he smiled as she turned lightly with a toss
+of her small dark head and left the room.
+
+"Fine blood," observed the doctor, with a conciliatory glance at the
+girl's father.
+
+"You will be wanted before long, Sor Tommaso," said Dalrymple, gravely.
+"I hear that the abbess is very ill."
+
+The doctor looked up with sudden interest, and put on his professional
+expression.
+
+"The abbess, you say? Dear me! She is not young! What has she? Who told
+you, Sor Angoscia?"
+
+Now, 'Sor Angoscia' signifies in English 'Sir Anguish,' but the doctor
+in spite of really conscientious efforts could not get nearer to the
+pronunciation of Angus. Nevertheless, with northern persistency,
+Dalrymple corrected him for the hundredth time. The doctor's first
+attempt had resulted in his calling the Scotchman 'Sor Langusta,' which
+means 'Sir Crayfish'--and it must be admitted that 'Anguish' was an
+improvement.
+
+"Angus," said Dalrymple. "My name is Angus. The abbess has caught a
+severe cold from sitting in a draught when she was overheated. It has
+immediately settled on her lungs, and you may be sent for at any moment.
+I passed by the back of the convent on my way down, and the gardener was
+just coming out of the postern. He told me."
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" exclaimed Sor Tommaso, shaking his head.
+"Cold--bronchitis, pleurisy, pneumonia--it is soon done! One would be
+enough! Those nuns, what do they eat? A little grass, a little boiled
+paste, a little broth of meat on Sundays. What strength should they
+have? And then pray, pray, sing, sing! It needs a chest! Poor lungs! I
+will go to my home and get ready--blisters--mustard--a lancet--they
+will not allow a barber in the convent to bleed them. Well--I make
+myself the barber! What a life, what a life! If you wish to die young,
+be a doctor at Subiaco, Sor Angoscia. Good night, dear friend. Good
+night, Stefanone. I wish not to have said anything--you know--that
+little affair. Let us speak no more about it. I am more beast than you,
+because I said anything. Good night."
+
+Sor Tommaso got his stick from a dark corner, pressed his broad catskin
+hat upon his head, and took his respectability away on its tightly
+encased black legs.
+
+"And may the devil go with you," said Stefanone, under his breath, as
+the doctor disappeared.
+
+"Why?" inquired Dalrymple, who had caught the words.
+
+"I said nothing," answered the peasant, thoughtfully trimming one wick
+of the lamp with the bent brass wire which, with the snuffers, hung by a
+chain from the ring by which the lamp was carried.
+
+"I thought you spoke," said the Scotchman. "Well--the abbess is very
+ill, and Sor Tommaso has a job."
+
+"May he do it well! So that it need not be begun again."
+
+"What do you mean?" Dalrymple slowly sipped the remains of his little
+measure of wine.
+
+"Those nuns!" exclaimed Stefanone, instead of answering the question.
+"What are they here to do, in this world? Better make saints of
+them--and good night! There would be one misery less. Do you know what
+they do? They make wine. Good! But they do not drink it. They sell it
+for a farthing less by the foglietta than other people. The devil take
+them and their wine!"
+
+Dalrymple glanced at the angry peasant with some amusement, but did not
+make any answer.
+
+"Eh, Signore!" cried Stefanone. "You who are a foreigner and a
+Protestant, can you not say something, since it would be no sin for
+you?"
+
+"I was thinking of something to say, Signor Stefanone. But as for that,
+who does the business for the convent? They cannot do it themselves, I
+suppose. Who determines the price of their wine for them? Or the price
+of their corn?"
+
+"They are not so stupid as you think. Oh, no! They are not stupid, the
+nuns. They know the price of this, and the cost of that, just as well as
+you and I do. But Gigetto's father, Sor Agostino, is their steward, if
+that is what you wish to know. And his father was before him, and
+Gigetto will be after him, with his pumpkin-head. And the rest is sung
+by the organ, as we say when mass is over. For you know about Gigetto
+and Annetta."
+
+"Yes. And as you cannot quarrel with Sor Agostino on that account, I do
+not see but that you will either have to bear it, or sell your wine a
+farthing cheaper than that of the nuns."
+
+"Eh--that is soon said. A farthing cheaper than theirs! That means half
+a baiocco cheaper than I sell it now. And the best is only five baiocchi
+the foglietta, and the cheapest is two and a half. Good bye profit--a
+pleasant journey to Stefanone. But it is those nuns. They are to blame,
+and the devil will pay them."
+
+"In that case you need not," observed Dalrymple, rising. "I am going to
+wash my hands before supper."
+
+"At your pleasure, Signore," answered Stefanone, politely.
+
+As Dalrymple went out, Annetta passed him at the door, bringing in
+plates and napkins, and knives and forks. The girl glanced at his face
+as he went by.
+
+"Be quick, Signore," she said with a laugh. "The beefsteak of mutton is
+grilling."
+
+He nodded, and went up the dark stairs, his heavy shoes sending back
+echoes as he trod. Stefanone still sat at the table, turning the glass
+wine measure upside down over his tumbler, to let the last drops run
+out. He watched them as they fell, one by one, without looking up at his
+daughter, who began to arrange the plates for Dalrymple's meal.
+
+"I will teach you to make love with the Englishman," he said slowly,
+still watching the dropping wine.
+
+"Me!" cried Annetta, with real or feigned astonishment, and she tossed a
+knife and fork angrily into a plate, with a loud, clattering noise.
+
+"I am speaking with you," answered her father, without raising his eyes.
+"Do you know? You will come to a bad end."
+
+"Thank you!" replied the girl, contemptuously. "If you say so, it must
+be true! Now, who has told you that the Englishman is making love to me?
+An apoplexy on him, whoever he may be!"
+
+"Pretty words for a girl! Sor Tommaso told me. A little more, and I
+would have torn his tongue out. Just then, the Englishman came in. Sor
+Tommaso got off easily."
+
+The girl's tone changed very much when she spoke again, and there was a
+dull and angry light in her eyes. Her long lips were still parted, and
+showed her gleaming teeth, but the smile was altogether gone.
+
+"Yes. Too easily," she said, almost in a whisper, and there was a low
+hiss in the words.
+
+"In the meanwhile, it is true--what he said," continued Stefanone. "You
+make eyes at him. You wait for him and watch for him when he comes back
+from the mountains--"
+
+"Well? Is it not my place to serve him with his supper? If you are not
+satisfied, hire a servant to wait on him. You are rich. What do I care
+for the Englishman? Perhaps it is a pleasure to roast my face over the
+charcoal, cooking his meat for him. As for Sor Tommaso--"
+
+She stopped short in her speech. Her father knew what the tone meant,
+and looked up for the first time.
+
+"O-è!" he exclaimed, as one suddenly aware of a danger, and warning some
+one else.
+
+"Nothing," answered Annetta, looking down and arranging the knives and
+forks symmetrically on the clean cloth she had laid.
+
+"I might have killed him just now in hot blood, when the Englishman came
+in," said Stefanone, reflectively. "But now my blood has grown cold. I
+shall do nothing to him."
+
+"So much the better for him." She still spoke in a low voice, as she
+turned away from the table.
+
+"But I will kill you," said Stefanone, "if I see you making eyes at the
+Englishman."
+
+He rose, and taking up his hat, which lay beside him, he edged his way
+out along the wooden bench, moving cautiously lest he should shake the
+table and upset the lamp or the bottles. Annetta had turned again, at
+the threat he had uttered, and stood still, waiting for him to get out
+into the room, her hands on her hips, and her eyes on fire.
+
+"You will kill me?" she asked, just as he was opposite to her.
+"Well--kill me, then! Here I am. What are you waiting for? For the
+Englishman to interfere? He is washing his hands. He always takes a long
+time."
+
+"Then it is true that you have fallen in love with him?" asked
+Stefanone, his anger returning.
+
+"Him, or another. What does it matter to you? You remind me of the old
+woman who beat her cat, and then cried when it ran away. If you want me
+to stay at home, you had better find me a husband."
+
+"Do you want anything better than Gigetto? Apoplexy! But you have
+ideas!"
+
+"You are making a good business of it with Gigetto, in truth!" cried the
+girl, scornfully. "He eats, he drinks, and then he sings. But he does
+not marry. He will not even make love to me--not even with an eye. And
+then, because I love the Englishman, who is a great lord, though he says
+he is a doctor, I must die. Well, kill me!" She stared insolently at her
+father for a moment. "Oh, well," she added scornfully, "if you have not
+time now, it must be for to-morrow. I am busy."
+
+She turned on her heel with a disdainful fling of her short, dark skirt.
+Stefanone was exasperated, and his anger had returned. Before she was
+out of reach, he struck her with his open hand. Instead of striking her
+cheek, the blow fell upon the back of her head and neck, and sent her
+stumbling forwards. She caught the back of a chair, steadied herself,
+and turned again instantly, at her full height, not deigning to raise
+her hand to the place that hurt her.
+
+"Coward!" she exclaimed. "But I will pay you--and Sor Tommaso--for that
+blow."
+
+"Whenever you like," answered her father gruffly, but already sorry for
+what he had done.
+
+He turned his back, and went out into the night. It was now almost quite
+dark, and Annetta stood still by the chair, listening to his retreating
+footsteps. Then she slowly turned and gazed at the flaring wicks of the
+lamp. With a gesture that suggested the movement of a young animal, she
+rubbed the back of her neck with one hand and leisurely turned her head
+first to one side and then to the other. Her brown skin was unusually
+pale, but there was no moisture in her eyes as she stared at the lamp.
+
+"But I will pay you, Sor Tommaso," she said thoughtfully and softly.
+
+Then turning her eyes from the lamp at last, she took up one of the
+knives from the table, looked at it, felt the edge, and laid it down
+contemptuously. In those days all the respectable peasants in the Roman
+villages had solid silver forks and spoons, which have long since gone
+to the melting-pot to pay taxes. But they used the same blunt, pointless
+knives with wooden handles, which they use to-day.
+
+Annetta started, as she heard Dalrymple's tread upon the stone steps of
+the staircase, but she recovered herself instantly, gave a finishing
+touch to the table, rubbed the back of her head quickly once more, and
+met him with a smile.
+
+"Is the beefsteak of mutton ready?" inquired the Scotchman, cheerfully,
+with his extraordinary accent.
+
+Annetta ran past him, and returned almost before he was seated, bringing
+the food. The girl sat down at the end of the table, opposite the street
+door, and watched him as he swallowed one mouthful of meat after
+another, now and then stopping to drink a tumbler of wine at a draught.
+
+"You must be very strong, Signore," said Annetta, at last, her chin
+resting on her doubled hand.
+
+"Why?" inquired Dalrymple, carelessly, between two mouthfuls.
+
+"Because you eat so much. It must be a fine thing to eat so much meat.
+We eat very little of it."
+
+"Why?" asked the Scotchman, again between his mouthfuls.
+
+"Oh, who knows? It costs much. That must be the reason. Besides, it does
+not go down. I should not care for it."
+
+"It is a habit." Dalrymple drank. "In my country most of the people eat
+oats," he said, as he set down his glass.
+
+"Oats!" laughed the girl. "Like horses! But horses will eat meat, too,
+like you. As for me--good bread, fresh cheese, a little salad, a drink
+of wine and water--that is enough."
+
+"Like the nuns," observed Dalrymple, attacking the ham of the
+'Grape-eater.'
+
+"Oh, the nuns! They live on boiled cabbage! You can smell it a mile
+away. But they make good cakes."
+
+"You often go to the convent, do you not?" asked the Scotchman, filling
+his glass, for the first mouthful of ham made him thirsty again. "You
+take the linen up with your mother, I know."
+
+"Sometimes, when I feel like going," answered the girl, willing to show
+that it was not her duty to carry baskets. "I only go when we have the
+small baskets that one can carry on one's head. I will tell you. They
+use the small baskets for the finer things, the abbess's linen, and the
+altar cloths, and the chaplain's lace, which belongs to the nuns. But
+the sheets and the table linen are taken up in baskets as long as a man.
+It takes four women to carry one of them."
+
+"That must be very inconvenient," said Dalrymple. "I should think that
+smaller ones would always be better."
+
+"Who knows? It has always been so. And when it has always been so, it
+will always be so--one knows that."
+
+Annetta nodded her head rhythmically to convey an impression of the
+immutability of all ancient customs and of this one in particular.
+
+Dalrymple, however, was not much interested in the question of the
+baskets.
+
+"What do the nuns do all day?" he asked. "I suppose you see them,
+sometimes. There must be young ones amongst them."
+
+Annetta glanced more keenly at the Scotchman's quiet face, and then
+laughed.
+
+"There is one, if you could see her! The abbess's niece. Oh, that one is
+beautiful. She seems to me a painted angel!"
+
+"The abbess's niece? What is she like? Let me see, the abbess is a
+princess, is she not?"
+
+"Yes, a great princess of the Princes of Gerano, of Casa Braccio, you
+know. They are always abbesses. And the young one will be the next, when
+this one dies. She is Maria Addolorata, in religion, but I do not know
+her real name. She has a beautiful face and dark eyes. Once I saw her
+hair for a moment. It is fair, but not like yours. Yours is red as a
+tomato."
+
+"Thank you," said Dalrymple, with something like a laugh. "Tell me more
+about the nun."
+
+"If I tell you, you will fall in love with her," objected Annetta. "They
+say that men with red hair fall in love easily. Is it true? If it is, I
+will not tell you any more about the nun. But I think you are in love
+with the poor old Grape-eater. It is good ham, is it not? By Bacchus, I
+fed him on chestnuts with my own hands, and he was always stealing the
+grapes. Chestnuts fattened him and the grapes made him sweet. Speaking
+with respect, he was a pig for a pope."
+
+"He will do for a Scotch doctor then," answered Dalrymple. "Tell me,
+what does this beautiful nun do all day long?"
+
+"What does she do? What can a nun do? She eats cabbage and prays like
+the others. But she has charge of all the convent linen, so I see her
+when I go with my mother. That is because the Princes of Gerano first
+gave the linen to the convent after it was all stolen by the Turks in
+1798. So, as they gave it, their abbesses take care of it."
+
+Dalrymple laughed at the extraordinary historical allusion compounded of
+the very ancient traditions of the Saracens in the south, and of the
+more recent wars of Napoleon.
+
+"So she takes care of the linen," he said. "That cannot be very amusing,
+I should think."
+
+"They are nuns," answered the girl. "Do you suppose they go about
+seeking to amuse themselves? It is an ugly life. But Sister Maria
+Addolorata sings to herself, and that makes the abbess angry, because it
+is against the rules to sing except in church. I would not live in that
+convent--not if they would fill my apron with gold pieces."
+
+"But why did this beautiful girl become a nun, then? Was she unhappy, or
+crossed in love?"
+
+"She? They did not give her time! Before she could shut an eye and say,
+'Little youth, you please me, and I wish you well,' they put her in. And
+that door, when it is shut, who shall open it? The Madonna, perhaps? But
+she was of the Princes of Gerano, and there must be one of them for an
+abbess, and the lot fell upon her. There is the whole history. You may
+hear her singing sometimes, if you stand under the garden wall, on the
+narrow path after the Benediction hour and before Ave Maria. But I am a
+fool to tell you, for you will go and listen, and when you have heard
+her voice you will be like a madman. You will fall in love with her. I
+was a fool to tell you."
+
+"Well? And if I do fall in love with her, who cares?" Dalrymple slowly
+filled a glass of wine.
+
+"If you do?" The young girl's eyes shot a quick, sharp glance at him.
+Then her face suddenly grew grave as she saw that some one was at the
+street door, looking in cautiously. "Come in, Sor Tommaso!" she called,
+down the table. "Papa is out, but we are here. Come in and drink a glass
+of wine!"
+
+The doctor, wrapped in a long broadcloth cloak with a velvet collar,
+and having a case of instruments and medicines under his arm, glanced
+round the room and came in.
+
+"Just a half-foglietta, my daughter," he said. "They have sent for me.
+The abbess is very ill, and I may be there a long time. If you think
+they would remember to offer a Christian a glass up there, you are very
+much mistaken."
+
+"They are nuns," laughed Annetta. "What can they know?"
+
+She rose to get the wine for the doctor. There had not been a trace of
+displeasure in her voice nor in her manner as she spoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+SOR TOMMASO was rarely called to the convent. In fact, he could not
+remember that he had been wanted more than half a dozen times in the
+long course of his practice in Subiaco. Either the nuns were hardly ever
+ill, or else they must have doctored themselves with such simple
+remedies as had been handed down to them from former ages. Possibly they
+had been as well off on the whole as though they had systematically
+submitted to the heroic treatment which passed for medicine in those
+days. As a matter of fact, they suffered chiefly from bad colds; and
+when they had bad colds, they either got well, or died, according to
+their several destinies. Sor Tommaso might have saved some of them; but
+on the other hand, he might have helped some others rather precipitately
+from their cells to that deep crypt, closed, in the middle of the little
+church, by a single square flag of marble, having two brass studs in it,
+and bearing the simple inscription: 'Here lie the bones of the Reverend
+Sisters of the order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.' On the
+whole, it is doubtful whether the practice of not calling in the doctor
+on ordinary occasions had much influence upon the convent's statistics
+of mortality.
+
+But though the abbess had more than once had a cold in her life, she had
+never suffered so seriously as this time, and she had made little
+objection to her niece's strong representations as to the necessity of
+medical aid. Therefore Sor Tommaso had been sent for in the evening and
+in great haste, and had taken with him a supply of appropriate material
+sufficient to kill, if not to cure, half the nuns in the convent. All
+the circumstances which he remembered from former occasions were
+accurately repeated. He rang at the main gate, waited long in the
+darkness, and heard at last the slapping and shuffling of shoes along
+the pavement within, as the portress and another nun came to let him in.
+Then there were faint rays of light from their little lamp, quivering
+through the cracks of the old weather-beaten door upon the cracked
+marble steps on which Sor Tommaso was standing. A thin voice asked who
+was there, and Sor Tommaso answered that he was the doctor. Then he
+heard a little colloquy in suppressed tones between the two nuns. The
+one said that the doctor was expected and must be let in without
+question. The other observed that it might be a thief. The first said
+that in that case they must look through the loophole. The second said
+that she did not know the doctor by sight. The first speaker remarked
+with some truth that one could tell a respectable person from a
+highwayman, and suddenly a small square porthole in the door was opened
+inwards, and a stream of light fell upon Sor Tommaso's face, as the nuns
+held up their little flaring lamp behind the grating. Behind the lamp he
+could distinguish a pair of shadowy eyes under an overhanging veil,
+which was also drawn across the lower part of the face.
+
+"Are you really the doctor?" asked one of the voices, in a doubtful
+tone.
+
+"He himself," answered the physician. "I am the Doctor Tommaso Taddei of
+the University of the Sapienza, and I have been called to render
+assistance to the very reverend the Mother Abbess."
+
+The light disappeared, and the porthole was shut, while a second
+colloquy began. On the whole, the two nuns decided to let him in, and
+then there was a jingling of keys and a clanking of iron bars and a
+grinding of locks, and presently a small door, cut and hung in one leaf
+of the great, iron-studded, wooden gate, was swung back. Sor Tommaso
+stooped and held his case before him, for the entrance was low and
+narrow.
+
+"God be praised!" he exclaimed, when he was fairly inside.
+
+"And praised be His holy name," answered both the sisters, promptly.
+
+Both had dropped their veils, and proceeded to bolt and bar the little
+door again, having set down the lamp upon the pavement. The rays made
+the unctuous dampness of the stone flags glisten, and Sor Tommaso
+shivered in his broadcloth cloak. Then, as before, he was conducted in
+silence through arched ways, and up many steps, and along labyrinthine
+corridors, his strong shoes rousing sharp, metallic echoes, while the
+nuns' slippers slapped and shuffled as one walked on each side of him,
+the one on the left carrying the lamp, according to the ancient rules of
+politeness. At last they reached the door of the antechamber at the end
+of the corridor, through which the way led to the abbess's private
+apartment, consisting of three rooms. The last door on the left, as Sor
+Tommaso faced that which opened into the antechamber, was that of Maria
+Addolorata's cell. The linen presses were entered from within the
+anteroom by a door on the right, so that they were actually in the
+abbess's apartment, an old-fashioned and somewhat inconvenient
+arrangement. Maria Addolorata, her veil drawn down, so that she could
+not see the doctor, but only his feet, and the folds of it drawn across
+her chin and mouth, received him at the door, which she closed behind
+him. The other two nuns set down their lamp on the floor of the
+corridor, slipped their hands up their sleeves, and stood waiting
+outside.
+
+The abbess was very ill, but had insisted upon sitting up in her
+parlour to receive the doctor, dressed and veiled, being propped up in
+her great easy-chair with a pillow which was of green silk, but was
+covered with a white pillow-case finely embroidered with open work at
+each end, through which the vivid colour was visible--that high green
+which cannot look blue even by lamplight. Both in the anteroom and in
+the parlour there were polished silver lamps of precisely the same
+pattern as the brass ones used by the richer peasants, excepting that
+each had a fan-like shield of silver to be used as a shade on one side,
+bearing the arms of the Braccio family in high boss, and attached to the
+oil vessel by a movable curved arm. The furniture of the room was very
+simple, but there was nevertheless a certain ecclesiastical solemnity
+about the high-backed, carved, and gilt chairs, the black and white
+marble pavement, the great portrait of his Holiness, Gregory the
+Sixteenth, in its massive gilt frame, the superb silver crucifix which
+stood on the writing-table, and, altogether, in the solidity of
+everything which met the eye.
+
+It was no easy matter to ascertain the good lady's condition, muffled up
+and veiled as she was. It was only as an enormous concession to
+necessity that Sor Tommaso was allowed to feel her pulse, and it needed
+all Maria Addolorata's eloquent persuasion and sensible argument to
+induce her to lift her veil a little, and open her mouth.
+
+"Your most reverend excellency must be cured by proxy," said Sor
+Tommaso, at his wit's end. "If this reverend mother," he added, turning
+to the young nun, "will carry out my directions, something may be done.
+Your most reverend excellency's life is in danger. Your most reverend
+excellency ought to be in bed."
+
+"It is the will of Heaven," said the abbess, in a very weak and hoarse
+voice.
+
+"Tell me what to do," said Maria Addolorata. "It shall be done as though
+you yourself did it."
+
+Sor Tommaso was encouraged by the tone of assurance in which the words
+were spoken, and proceeded to give his directions, which were many, and
+his recommendations, which were almost endless.
+
+"But if your most reverend excellency would allow me to assist you in
+person, the remedies would be more efficacious," he suggested, as he
+laid out the greater part of the contents of his case upon the huge
+writing-table.
+
+"You seem to forget that this is a religious house," replied the abbess,
+and she might have said more, but was interrupted by a violent attack of
+coughing, during which Maria Addolorata supported her and tried to ease
+her.
+
+"It will be better if you go away," said the nun, at last. "I will do
+all you have ordered, and your presence irritates her. Come back
+to-morrow morning, and I will tell you how she is progressing."
+
+The abbess nodded slowly, confirming her niece's words. Sor Tommaso very
+reluctantly closed his case, placed it under his arm, gathered up his
+broadcloth cloak with his hat, and made a low obeisance before the sick
+lady.
+
+"I wish your most reverend excellency a good rest and speedy recovery,"
+he said. "I am your most reverend excellency's most humble servant."
+
+Maria Addolorata led him out into the antechamber. There she paused, and
+they were alone together for a moment, all the doors being closed. The
+doctor stood still beside her, waiting for her to speak.
+
+"What do you think?" she asked.
+
+"I do not wish to say anything," he answered.
+
+"What do you wish me to say? A stroke of air, a cold, a bronchitis, a
+pleurisy, a pneumonia. Thanks be to Heaven, there is little fever. What
+do you wish me to say? For the stroke of air, a little good wine; for
+the cold, warm covering; for the bronchitis, the tea of marshmallows;
+for the pleurisy, severe blistering; for the pneumonia, a good mustard
+plaster; for the general system, the black draught; above all, nothing
+to eat. Frictions with hot oil will also do good. It is the practice of
+medicine by proxy, my lady mother. What do you wish me to say? I am
+disposed. I am her most reverend excellency's very humble servant. But I
+cannot perform miracles. Pray to the Madonna to perform them. I have
+not even seen the tip of her most reverend excellency's most wise
+tongue. What can I do?"
+
+"Well, then, come back to-morrow morning, and I will see you here," said
+Maria Addolorata.
+
+Sor Tommaso found the nuns waiting for him with their little lamp in the
+corridor, and they led him back through the vaulted passages and
+staircases and let him out into the night without a word.
+
+The night was dark and cloudy. It had grown much darker since he had
+come up, as the last lingering light of evening had faded altogether
+from the sky. The October wind drew down in gusts from the mountains
+above Subiaco, and blew the doctor's long cloak about so that it flapped
+softly now and then like the wings of a night bird. After descending
+some distance, he carefully set down his case upon the stones and
+fumbled in his pockets for his snuffbox, which he found with some
+difficulty. A gust blew up a grain of snuff into his right eye, and he
+stamped angrily with the pain, hurting his foot against a rolling stone
+as he did so. But he succeeded in getting his snuff to his nose at last.
+Then he bent down in the dark to take up his case, which was close to
+his feet, though he could hardly see it. The gusty south wind blew the
+long skirts of his cloak over his head and made them flap about his
+ears. He groped for the box.
+
+[Illustration: "Sor Tommaso was lying motionless."--Vol. I., p. 78.]
+
+Just then the doctor heard light footsteps coming down the path behind
+him. He called out, warning that he was in the way.
+
+"O-è, gently, you know!" he cried. "An apoplexy on the wind!" he added
+vehemently, as his head and hands became entangled more and more in the
+folds of his cloak.
+
+"And another on you!" answered a woman's voice, speaking low through
+clenched teeth.
+
+In the darkness a hand rose and fell with something in it, three times
+in quick succession. A man's low cry of pain was stifled in folds of
+broadcloth. The same light footsteps were heard for a moment again in
+the narrow, winding way, and Sor Tommaso was lying motionless on his
+face across his box, with his cloak over his head. The gusty south wind
+blew up and down between the dark walls, bearing now and then a few
+withered vine leaves and wisps of straw with it; and the night grew
+darker still, and no one passed that way for a long time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+WHEN Angus Dalrymple had finished his supper, he produced a book and sat
+reading by the light of the wicks of the three brass lamps. Annetta had
+taken away the things and had not come back again. Gigetto strolled in
+and took his guitar from the peg on the wall, and idled about the room,
+tuning it and humming to himself. He was a tall young fellow with a
+woman's face and beautiful velvet-like eyes, as handsome and idle a
+youth as you might meet in Subiaco on a summer's feast-day. He exchanged
+a word of greeting with Dalrymple, and, seeing that the place was
+otherwise deserted, he at last slung his guitar over his shoulder,
+pulled his broad black felt hat over his eyes, and strolled out through
+the half-open door, presumably in search of amusement. Gigetto's chief
+virtue was his perfectly childlike and unaffected taste for amusing
+himself, on the whole very innocently, whenever he got a chance. It was
+natural that he and the Scotchman should not care for one another's
+society. Dalrymple looked after him for a moment and then went back to
+his book. A big glass measure of wine stood beside him not half empty,
+and his glass was full.
+
+He was making a strong effort to concentrate his attention upon the
+learned treatise, which formed a part of the little library he had
+brought with him. But Annetta's idle talk about the nuns, and especially
+about Maria Addolorata and her singing, kept running through his head in
+spite of his determination to be serious. He had been living the life of
+a hermit for months, and had almost forgotten the sound of an educated
+woman's voice. To him Annetta was nothing more than a rather pretty wild
+animal. It did not enter his head that she might be in love with him.
+Sora Nanna was simply an older and uglier animal of the same species. To
+a man of Dalrymple's temperament, and really devoted to the pursuit of a
+serious object, a woman quite incapable of even understanding what that
+object is can hardly seem to be a woman at all.
+
+But the young Scotchman was not wanting in that passionate and fantastic
+imagination which so often underlies and even directs the hardy northern
+nature, and the young girl's carelessly spoken words had roused it to
+sudden activity. In spite of himself, he was already forming plans for
+listening under the convent wall, if perchance he might catch the sound
+of the nun's wonderful voice, and from that to the wildest schemes for
+catching a momentary glimpse of the singer was only a step. At the same
+time, he was quite aware that such schemes were dangerous if not
+impracticable, and his reasonable self laughed down his unreasoning
+romance, only to be confronted by it again as soon as he tried to turn
+his attention to his book.
+
+He looked up and saw that he had not finished his wine, though at that
+hour the measure was usually empty, and he wondered why he was less
+thirsty than usual. By force of habit he emptied the full glass and
+poured more into it,--by force of that old northern habit of drinking a
+certain allowance as a sort of duty, more common in those days than it
+is now. Then he began to read again, never dreaming that his strong head
+and solid nerves could be in any way affected by his potations. But his
+imagination this evening worked faster and faster, and his sober reason
+was recalcitrant and abhorred work.
+
+The nun had fair hair and dark eyes and a beautiful face. Those were
+much more interesting facts than he could find in his work. She had a
+wonderful voice. He tried to recall all the extraordinary voices he had
+heard in his life, but none of them had ever affected him very much,
+though he had a good ear and some taste for music. He wondered what sort
+of voice this could be, and he longed to hear it. He shut up his book
+impatiently, drank more wine, rose and went to the open door. The gusty
+south wind fanned his face pleasantly, and he wished he were to sleep
+out of doors.
+
+The Sora Nanna, who had been spending the evening with a friend in the
+neighbourhood, came in, her thin black overskirt drawn over her head to
+keep the embroidered head-cloth in its place. By and by, as Dalrymple
+still stood by the door, Stefanone appeared, having been to play a game
+of cards at a friendly wine-shop. He sat down by Sora Nanna at the
+table. She was mixing some salad in a big earthenware bowl adorned with
+green and brown stripes. They talked together in low tones. Dalrymple
+had nodded to each in turn, but the gusty air pleased him, and he
+remained standing by the door, letting it blow into his face.
+
+It was growing late. Italian peasants are not great sleepers, and it is
+their custom to have supper at a late hour, just before going to bed. By
+this time it was nearly ten o'clock as we reckon the hours, or about
+'four of the night' in October, according to old Italian custom, which
+reckons from a theoretical moment of darkness, supposed to begin at Ave
+Maria, half an hour after sunset.
+
+Suddenly Dalrymple heard Annetta's voice in the room behind him,
+speaking to her mother. He had no particular reason for supposing that
+she had been out of the house since she had cleared the table and left
+him, but unconsciously he had the impression that she had been away,
+and was surprised to hear her in the room, after expecting that she
+should pass him, coming in from the street, as the others had done. He
+turned and walked slowly towards his place at the table.
+
+"I thought you had gone out," he said carelessly, to Annetta.
+
+The girl turned her head quickly.
+
+"I?" she cried. "And alone? Without even Gigetto? When do I ever go out
+alone at night? Will you have some supper, Signore?"
+
+"I have just eaten, thank you," answered Dalrymple, seating himself.
+
+"Three hours ago. It was not yet an hour of the night when you ate.
+Well--at your pleasure. Do not complain afterwards that we make you die
+of hunger."
+
+"Bread, Annetta!" said Stefanone, gruffly but good-naturedly. "And
+cheese, and salt--wine, too! A thousand things! Quickly, my daughter."
+
+"Quicker than this?" inquired the girl, who had already placed most of
+the things he asked for upon the table.
+
+"I say it to say it," answered her father. "'Hunger makes long jumps,'
+and I am hungry."
+
+"Did you win anything?" asked Sora Nanna, with both her elbows on the
+table.
+
+"Five baiocchi."
+
+"It was worth while to pay ten baiocchi for another man's bad wine, for
+the sake of winning so much!" replied Sora Nanna, who was a careful
+soul. "Of course you paid for the wine?"
+
+"Eh--of course. They pay for wine when they come here. One takes a
+little and one gives a little. This is life."
+
+Annetta busied herself with the simple preparations for supper, while
+they talked. Dalrymple watched her idly, and he thought she was pale,
+and that her eyes were very bright. She had set a plate for herself, but
+had forgotten her glass.
+
+"And you? Do you not drink?" asked Stefanone. "You have no glass."
+
+"What does it matter?" She sat down between her father and mother.
+
+"Drink out of mine, my little daughter," said Stefanone, holding his
+glass to her lips with a laugh, as though she had been a little child.
+
+She looked quietly into his eyes for a moment, before she touched the
+wine with her lips.
+
+"Yes," she answered, with a little emphasis. "I will drink out of your
+glass now."
+
+"Better so," laughed Stefanone, who was glad to be reconciled, for he
+loved the girl, in spite of his occasional violence of temper.
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Sora Nanna, her cunning peasant's eyes
+looking from one to the other, and seeming to belie her stupid face.
+
+"Nothing," answered Stefanone. "We were playing together. Signor
+Englishman," he said, turning to Dalrymple, "you must sometimes wish
+that you were married, and had a wife like Nanna, and a daughter like
+Annetta."
+
+"Of course I do," said Dalrymple, with a smile.
+
+Before very long, he took his book and went upstairs to bed, being tired
+and sleepy after a long day spent on the hillside in a fruitless search
+for certain plants which, according to his books, were to be found in
+that part of Italy, but which he had not yet seen. He fell asleep,
+thinking of Maria Addolorata's lovely face and fair hair, on which he
+had never laid eyes. In his dreams he heard a rare voice ringing true,
+that touched him strangely. The gusty wind made the panes of his bedroom
+window rattle, and in the dream he was tapping on Maria Addolorata's
+casement and calling softly to her, to open it and speak to him, or
+calling her by name, with his extraordinary foreign accent. And he
+thought he was tapping louder and louder, upon the glass and upon the
+wooden frame, louder and louder still. Then he heard his name called
+out, and his heart jumped as though it would have turned upside down in
+its place, and then seemed to sink again like a heavy stone falling into
+deep water; for he was awake, and the voice that was calling him was
+certainly not that of the beautiful nun, but gruff and manly; also the
+tapping was not tapping any more upon a casement, but was a vigorous
+pounding against his own bolted door.
+
+Dalrymple sat up suddenly and listened, wide awake at once. The square
+of his window was faintly visible in the darkness, as though the dawn
+were breaking. He called out, asking who was outside.
+
+"Get up, Signore! Get up! You are wanted quickly!" It was Stefanone.
+
+Dalrymple struck a light, for he had a supply of matches with him, a
+convenience of modern life not at that time known in Subiaco, except as
+an expensive toy, though already in use in Rome. As he was, he opened
+the door. Stefanone came in, dressed in his shirt and breeches, pale
+with excitement.
+
+"You must dress yourself, Signore," he said briefly, as he glanced at
+the Scotchman, and then set down the small tin and glass lantern he
+carried.
+
+"What is the matter?" inquired Dalrymple, yawning, and stretching his
+great white arms over his head, till his knuckles struck the low
+ceiling; for he was a tall man.
+
+"The matter is that they have killed Sor Tommaso," answered the peasant.
+
+Dalrymple uttered an exclamation of surprise and incredulity.
+
+"It is as I say," continued Stefanone. "They found him lying across the
+way, in the street, with knife-wounds in him, as many as you please."
+
+"That is horrible!" exclaimed Dalrymple, turning, and calmly trimming
+his lamp, which burned badly at first.
+
+"Then dress yourself, Signore!" said Stefanone, impatiently. "You must
+come!"
+
+"Why? If he is dead, what can I do?" asked the northern man, coolly. "I
+am sorry. What more can I say?"
+
+"But he is not dead yet!" Stefanone was growing excited. "They have
+taken him--"
+
+"Oh! he is alive, is he?" interrupted the Scotchman, dashing at his
+clothes, as though he were suddenly galvanized into life himself. "Then
+why did you tell me they had killed him?" he asked, with a curious, dry
+calmness of voice, as he instantly began to dress himself. "Get some
+clean linen, Signor Stefano. Tear it up into strips as broad as your
+hand, for bandages, and set the women to make a little lint of old
+linen--cotton is not good. Where have they taken Sor Tommaso?"
+
+"To his own house," answered the peasant.
+
+"So much the better. Go and make the bandages."
+
+Dalrymple pushed Stefanone towards the door with one hand, while he
+continued to fasten his clothes with the other.
+
+Stefanone was not without some experience of similar cases, so he
+picked up his lantern and went off. In less than a quarter of an hour,
+he and Dalrymple were on their way to Sor Tommaso's house, which was in
+the piazza of Subiaco, not far from the principal church. Half a dozen
+peasants, who had met the muleteers bringing the wounded doctor home
+from the spot where he had been found, followed the two men, talking
+excitedly in low voices and broken sentences. The dawn was grey above
+the houses, and the autumn mists had floated up to the parapet on the
+side where the little piazza looked down to the valley, and hung
+motionless in the still air, like a stage sea in a theatre. In the
+distance was heard the clattering of mules' shoes, and occasionally the
+deep clanking of the goats' bells. Just as the little party reached the
+small, dark green door of the doctor's house the distant convent bells
+tolled one, then two quick strokes, then three again, and then five, and
+then rang out the peal for the morning Angelus. The door of the dirty
+little coffee shop in the piazza was already open, and a faint light
+burned within. The air was damp, quiet and strangely resonant, as it
+often is in mountain towns at early dawn. The gusty October wind had
+gone down, after blowing almost all night.
+
+The case was far from being as serious as Dalrymple had expected, and he
+soon convinced himself that Sor Tommaso was not in any great danger. He
+had fainted from fright and some loss of blood, but neither of the two
+thrusts which had wounded him had penetrated to his lungs, and the third
+was little more than a scratch. Doubtless he owed his safety in part to
+the fact that the wind had blown his cloak in folds over his shoulders
+and head. But it was also clear that his assailant had possessed no
+experience in the use of the knife as a weapon. When the group of men at
+the door were told that Sor Tommaso was not mortally wounded, they went
+away somewhat disappointed at the insignificant ending of the affair,
+though the doctor was not an unpopular man in the town.
+
+"It is some woman," said one of them, contemptuously. "What can a woman
+do with a knife? Worse than a cat--she scratches, and runs away."
+
+"Some little jealousy," observed another. "Eh! Sor Tommaso--who knows
+where he makes love? But meanwhile he is growing old, to be so gay."
+
+"The old are the worst," replied the first speaker. "Since it is
+nothing, let us have a baiocco's worth of acquavita, and let us go
+away."
+
+So they turned into the dirty little coffee shop to get their pennyworth
+of spirits. Meanwhile Dalrymple was washing and binding up his friend's
+wounds. Sor Tommaso groaned and winced under every touch, and the
+Scotchman, with dry gentleness, did his best to reassure him. Stefanone
+looked on in silence for some time, helping Dalrymple when he was
+needed. The doctor's servant-woman, a somewhat grimy peasant, was
+sitting on the stairs, sobbing loudly.
+
+"It is useless," moaned Sor Tommaso. "I am dead."
+
+"I may be mistaken," answered Dalrymple, "but I think not."
+
+And he continued his operations with a sure hand, greatly to the
+admiration of Stefanone, who had often seen knife-wounds dressed.
+Gradually Sor Tommaso became more calm. His face, from having been
+normally of a bright red, was now very pale, and his watery blue eyes
+blinked at the light helplessly like a kitten's, as he lay still on his
+pillow. Stefanone went away to his occupations at last, and Dalrymple,
+having cleared away the litter of unused bandages and lint, and set
+things in order, sat down by the bedside to keep his patient company for
+a while. He was really somewhat anxious lest the wounds should have
+taken cold.
+
+"If I get well, it will be a miracle," said Sor Tommaso, feebly. "I must
+think of my soul."
+
+"By all means," answered the Scotchman. "It can do your soul no harm,
+and contemplation rests the body."
+
+"You Protestants have not human sentiment," observed the Italian, moving
+his head slowly on the pillow. "But I also think of the abbess. I was
+to have gone there early this morning. She will also die. We shall both
+die."
+
+Dalrymple crossed one leg over the other, and looked quietly at the
+doctor.
+
+"Sor Tommaso," he said, "there is no other physician in Subiaco. I am a
+doctor, properly licensed to practise. It is evidently my duty to take
+care of your patients while you are ill."
+
+"Mercy!" cried Sor Tommaso, with sudden energy, and opening his eyes
+very wide.
+
+"Are you afraid that I shall kill them," asked Dalrymple, with a smile.
+
+"Who knows? A foreigner! And the people say that you have converse with
+the devil. But the common people are ignorant."
+
+"Very."
+
+"And as for the convent--a Protestant--for the abbess! They would rather
+die. Figure to yourself what sort of a scandal there would be! A
+Protestant in a convent, and then, in that convent, too! The abbess
+would much rather die in peace."
+
+"At all events, I will go and offer my services. If the abbess prefers
+to die in peace, she can answer to that effect. I will ask her what she
+thinks about it."
+
+"Ask her!" repeated Sor Tommaso. "Do you imagine that you could see her?
+But what can you know? I tell you that last night she was muffled up in
+her chair, and her face covered. It needed the grace of Heaven, that I
+might feel her pulse! As for her tongue, God knows what it is like! I
+have not seen it. Not so much as the tip of it! Not even her eyes did I
+see. And to-day I was not to be admitted at all, because the abbess
+would be in bed. Imagine to yourself, with blisters and sinapisms, and a
+hundred things. I was only to speak with Sister Maria Addolorata, who is
+her niece, you know, in the anteroom of the abbess's apartment. They
+would not let you in. They would give you a bath of holy water through
+the loophole of the convent door and say, 'Go away, sinner; this is a
+religious house!' You know them very little."
+
+"You are talking too much," observed Dalrymple, who had listened
+attentively. "It is not good for you. Besides, since you are able to
+speak, it would be better if you told me who stabbed you last night,
+that I may go to the police, and have the person arrested, if possible."
+
+"You do not know what you are saying," answered Sor Tommaso, with sudden
+gravity. "The woman has relations--who could handle a knife better than
+she."
+
+And he turned his face away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+THE sun was high when Dalrymple left Sor Tommaso in charge of the old
+woman-servant and went back to Stefanone's house to dress himself with
+more care than he had bestowed upon his hasty toilet at dawn. And now
+that he had plenty of time, he was even more careful of his appearance
+than usual; for he had fully determined to attempt to take Sor Tommaso's
+place in attendance upon the abbess. He therefore put on a coat of a
+sober colour and brushed his straight red hair smoothly back from his
+forehead, giving himself easily that extremely grave and trust-inspiring
+air which distinguishes many Scotchmen, and supports their solid
+qualities, while it seems to deny the possibility of any adventurous and
+romantic tendency.
+
+At that hour nobody was about the house, and Dalrymple, stick in hand,
+sallied forth upon his expedition, looking for all the world as though
+he were going to church in Edinburgh instead of meditating an entrance
+into an Italian convent. He had said nothing more to the doctor on the
+subject. The people in the streets had most of them seen him often and
+knew him by name, and it did not occur to any one to wonder why a
+foreigner should wear one sort of coat rather than another, when he took
+his walks abroad. He walked leisurely; for the sky had cleared, and the
+sun was hot. Moreover, he followed the longer road in order to keep his
+shoes clean, instead of climbing up the narrow and muddy lane in which
+Sor Tommaso had been attacked. He reached the convent door at last,
+brushed a few specks of dust from his coat, settled his high collar and
+the broad black cravat which was then taking the place of the stock, and
+rang the bell with one steady pull. There was, perhaps, no occasion for
+nervousness. At all events, Dalrymple was as deliberate in his movements
+and as calm in all respects as he had ever been in his life. Only, just
+after he had pulled the weather-beaten bell-chain, a half-humorous smile
+bent his even lips and was gone again in a moment.
+
+There was the usual slapping and shuffling of slippers in the vaulted
+archway within, but as it was now day, the loophole was opened
+immediately, and the portress came alone. Dalrymple explained in
+strangely accented but good Italian that Sor Tommaso had met with an
+accident in the night; that he, Angus Dalrymple, was a friend of the
+doctor's and a doctor himself, and had undertaken all of Sor Tommaso's
+duties, and, finally, that he begged the portress to find Sister Maria
+Addolorata, to repeat his story, and to offer his humble services in
+the cause of the abbess's recovery. All of which the veiled nun within
+heard patiently to the end.
+
+"I will speak to Sister Maria Addolorata," she said. "Have the goodness
+to wait."
+
+"Outside?" inquired Dalrymple, as the little shutter of the loophole was
+almost closed.
+
+"Of course," answered the nun, opening it again, and shutting it as soon
+as she had spoken.
+
+Dalrymple waited a long time in the blazing sun. The main entrance of
+the convent faced to the southeast, and it was not yet midday. He grew
+hot, after his walk, and softly wiped his forehead, and carefully folded
+his handkerchief again before returning it to his pocket. At last he
+heard the sound of steps again, and in a few seconds the loophole was
+once more opened.
+
+"Sister Maria Addolorata will speak with you," said the portress's
+voice, as he approached his face to the little grating.
+
+He felt an odd little thrill of pleasant surprise. But so far as seeing
+anything was concerned, he was disappointed. Instead of one veiled nun,
+there were now two veiled nuns.
+
+"Madam," he began, "my friend Doctor Tommaso Taddei has met with an
+accident which prevents him from leaving his bed." And he went on to
+repeat all that he had told the portress, with such further
+explanations as he deemed necessary and persuasive.
+
+While he spoke, Maria Addolorata drew back a little into the deeper
+shadow away from the loophole. Her veil hung over her eyes, and the
+folds were drawn across her mouth, but she gradually raised her head,
+throwing it back until she could see Dalrymple's face from beneath the
+edge of the black material. In so doing she unconsciously uncovered her
+mouth. The Scotchman saw a good part of her features, and gazed intently
+at what he saw, rightly judging that as the sun was behind him, she
+could hardly be sure whether he were looking at her or not.
+
+As for her, she was doubtless inspired by a natural curiosity, but at
+the same time she understood the gravity of the case and wished to form
+an opinion as to the advisability of admitting the stranger. A glance
+told her that Dalrymple was a gentleman, and she was reassured by the
+gravity of his voice and by the fact that he was evidently acquainted
+with the abbess's condition, and must, therefore, be a friend of Sor
+Tommaso. When he had finished speaking, she immediately looked down
+again, and seemed to be hesitating.
+
+"Open the door, Sister Filomena," she said at last.
+
+The portress shook her head almost imperceptibly as she obeyed, but she
+said nothing. The whole affair was in her eyes exceedingly irregular.
+Maria Addolorata should have retired to the little room adjoining the
+convent parlour, and separated from it by a double grating, and
+Dalrymple should have been admitted to the parlour itself, and they
+should have said what they had to say to one another through the bars,
+in the presence of the portress. But Maria Addolorata was the abbess's
+niece. The abbess was too ill to give orders--too ill even to speak, it
+was rumoured. In a few days Maria Addolorata might be 'Her most Reverend
+Excellency.' Meanwhile she was mistress of the situation, and it was
+safer to obey her. Moreover, the portress was only a lay sister, an old
+and ignorant creature, accustomed to do what she was told to do by the
+ladies of the convent.
+
+Dalrymple took off his hat and stooped low to enter through the small
+side-door. As soon as he had passed the threshold, he stood up to his
+height and then made a low bow to Maria Addolorata, whose veil now quite
+covered her eyes and prevented her from seeing him,--a fact which he
+realized immediately.
+
+"Give warning to the sisters, Sister Filomena," said Maria Addolorata to
+the portress, who nodded respectfully and walked away into the gloom
+under the arches, leaving the nun and Dalrymple together by the door.
+
+"It is necessary to give warning," she explained, "lest you should meet
+any of the sisters unveiled in the corridors, and they should be
+scandalized."
+
+Dalrymple again bowed gravely and stood still, his eyes fixed upon Maria
+Addolorata's veiled head, but wandering now and then to her heavy but
+beautifully shaped white hands, which she held carelessly clasped before
+her and holding the end of the great rosary of brown beads which hung
+from her side. He thought he had never seen such hands before. They were
+high-bred, and yet at the same time there was a strongly material
+attraction about them.
+
+He did not know what to say, and as nothing seemed to be expected of
+him, he kept silence for some time. At last Maria Addolorata, as though
+impatient at the long absence of the portress, tapped the pavement
+softly with her sandal slipper, and turned her head in the direction of
+the arches as though to listen for approaching footsteps.
+
+"I hope that the abbess is no worse than when Doctor Taddei saw her last
+night," observed Dalrymple.
+
+"Her most reverend excellency," answered Maria Addolorata, with a little
+emphasis, as though to teach him the proper mode of addressing the
+abbess, "is suffering. She has had a bad night."
+
+"I shall hope to be allowed to give some advice to her most reverend
+excellency," said Dalrymple, to show that he had understood the hint.
+
+"She will not allow you to see her. But you shall come with me to the
+antechamber, and I will speak with her and tell you what she says."
+
+"I shall be greatly obliged, and will do my best to give good advice
+without seeing the patient."
+
+Another pause followed, during which neither moved. Then Maria
+Addolorata spoke again, further reassured, perhaps, by Dalrymple's quiet
+and professional tone. She had too lately left the world to have lost
+the habit of making conversation to break an awkward silence. Years of
+seclusion, too, instead of making her shy and silent, had given her
+something of the ease and coolness of a married woman. This was natural
+enough, considering that she was born of worldly people and had acquired
+the manners of the world in her own home, in childhood.
+
+"You are an Englishman, I presume, Signor Doctor?" she observed, in a
+tone of interrogation.
+
+"A Scotchman, Madam," answered Dalrymple, correcting her and drawing
+himself up a little. "My name is Angus Dalrymple."
+
+"It is the same--an Englishman or a Scotchman," said the nun.
+
+"Pardon me, Madam, we consider that there is a great difference. The
+Scotch are chiefly Celts. Englishmen are Anglo-Saxons."
+
+"But you are all Protestants. It is therefore the same for us."
+
+Dalrymple feared a discussion of the question of religion. He did not
+answer the nun's last remark, but bowed politely. She, of course, could
+not see the inclination he made.
+
+"You say nothing," she said presently. "Are you a Protestant?"
+
+"Yes, Madam."
+
+"It is a pity!" said Maria Addolorata. "May God send you light."
+
+"Thank you, Madam."
+
+Maria Addolorata smiled under her veil at the polite simplicity of the
+reply. She had met Englishmen in Rome.
+
+"It is no longer customary to address us as 'Madam,'" she answered, a
+moment later. "It is more usual to speak to us as 'Sister' or 'Reverend
+Sister'--or 'Sister Maria.' I am Sister Maria Addolorata. But you know
+it, for you sent your message to me."
+
+"Doctor Taddei told me."
+
+At this point the portress appeared in the distance, and Maria
+Addolorata, hearing footsteps, turned her head from Dalrymple, raising
+her veil a little, so that she could recognize the lay sister without
+showing her face to the young man.
+
+"Let us go," she said, dropping her veil again, and beginning to walk
+on. "The sisters are warned."
+
+Dalrymple followed her in silence and at a respectful distance,
+congratulating himself upon his extraordinary good fortune in having got
+so far on the first attempt, and inwardly praying that Sor Tommaso's
+wounds might take a considerable time in healing. It had all come about
+so naturally that he had lost the sensation of doing something
+adventurous which had at first taken possession of him, and he now
+regarded everything as possible, even to being invited to a friendly cup
+of tea in Sister Maria Addolorata's sitting-room; for he imagined her as
+having a sitting-room and as drinking tea there in a semi-luxurious
+privacy. The idea would have amused an Italian of those days, when tea
+was looked upon as medicine.
+
+They reached the end of the last corridor. Dalrymple, like Sor Tommaso,
+was admitted to the antechamber, while the portress waited outside to
+conduct him back again. But Maria did not take him into the abbess's
+parlour, into which she went at once, closing the door behind her.
+Dalrymple sat down upon a carved wooden box-bench, and waited. The nun
+was gone a long time.
+
+"I have kept you waiting," she said, as she entered the little room
+again.
+
+"My time is altogether at your service, Sister Maria Addolorata," he
+answered, rising quickly. "How is her most reverend excellency?"
+
+"Very ill. I do not know what to say. She will not hear of seeing you.
+I fear she will not live long, for she can hardly breathe."
+
+"Does she cough?"
+
+"Not much. Not so much as last night. She complains that she cannot draw
+her breath and that her lungs feel full of something."
+
+The case was evidently serious, and Dalrymple, who was a physician by
+nature, proceeded to extract as much information as he could from the
+nun, who did her best to answer all his questions clearly. The long
+conversation, with its little restraints and its many attempts at a
+mutual understanding, did more to accustom Maria Addolorata to
+Dalrymple's presence and personality than any number of polite speeches
+on his part could have done. There is an unavoidable tendency to
+intimacy between any two people who are together engaged in taking care
+of a sick person.
+
+"I can give you directions and good advice," said Dalrymple, at last.
+"But it can never be the same as though I could see the patient myself.
+Is there no possible means of obtaining her consent? She may die for the
+want of just such advice as I can only give after seeing her. Would not
+her brother, his Eminence the Cardinal, perhaps recommend her to let me
+visit her once?"
+
+"That is an idea," answered the nun, quickly. "My uncle is a man of
+broad views. I have heard it said in Rome. I could write to him that
+Doctor Taddei is unable to come, and that a celebrated foreign physician
+is here--"
+
+"Not celebrated," interrupted Dalrymple, with his literal Scotch
+veracity.
+
+"What difference can it make?" uttered Maria Addolorata, moving her
+shoulders a little impatiently. "He will be the more ready to use his
+influence, for he is much attached to my aunt. Then, if he can persuade
+her, I can send down the gardener to the town for you this afternoon. It
+may not be too late."
+
+"I see that you have some confidence in me," said Dalrymple. "I am of a
+newer school than Doctor Taddei. If you will follow my directions, I
+will almost promise that her most reverend excellency shall not die
+before to-morrow."
+
+He smiled now, as he gave the abbess her full title, for he began to
+feel as though he had known Maria Addolorata for a long time, though he
+had only had one glimpse of her eyes, just when she had raised her head
+to get a look at him through the loophole of the gate. But he had not
+forgotten them, and he felt that he knew them.
+
+"I will do all you tell me," she answered quietly.
+
+Dalrymple had some English medicines with him on his travels, and not
+knowing what might be required of him at the convent, he had brought
+with him a couple of tiny bottles.
+
+"This when she coughs--ten drops," he said, handing the bottles to the
+nun. "And five drops of this once an hour, until her chest feels freer."
+
+He gave her minute directions, as far as he could, about the general
+treatment of the patient, which Maria repeated and got by heart.
+
+"I will let you know before twenty-three o'clock what the cardinal says
+to the plan," she said. "In this way you will be able to come up by
+daylight."
+
+As Dalrymple took his leave, he held out his hand, forgetting that he
+was in Italy.
+
+"It is not our custom," said Maria Addolorata, thrusting each of her own
+hands into the opposite sleeve.
+
+But there was nothing cold in her tone. On the contrary, Dalrymple
+fancied that she was almost on the point of laughing at that moment, and
+he blushed at his awkwardness. But she could not see his face.
+
+"Your most humble servant," he said, bowing to her.
+
+"Good day, Signor Doctor," she answered, through the open door, as the
+portress jingled her keys and prepared to follow Dalrymple.
+
+So he took his departure, not without much satisfaction at the result of
+his first attempt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+SOR TOMMASO recovered but slowly, though his injuries were of themselves
+not dangerous. His complexion was apoplectic and gouty, he was no longer
+young, and before forty-eight hours had gone by his wounds were
+decidedly inflamed and he had a little fever. At the same time he was by
+no means a courageous man, and he was ready to cry out that he was dead,
+whenever he felt himself worse. Besides this, he lost his temper several
+times daily with Dalrymple, who resolutely refused to bleed him, and he
+insisted upon eating and drinking more than was good for him, at a time
+when if he had been his own patient he would have enforced starvation as
+necessary to recovery.
+
+Meanwhile the cardinal had exerted his influence with his sister, the
+abbess, and had so far succeeded that Dalrymple, who went every day to
+the convent, was now made to stand with his back to the abbess's open
+door, in order that he might at least ask her questions and hear her own
+answers. Many an old Italian doctor can tell of even stranger and more
+absurd precautions observed by the nuns of those days. As soon as the
+oral examination was over, Maria Addolorata shut the door and came out
+into the parlour, where Dalrymple finished his visit, prolonging it in
+conversation with her by every means he could devise.
+
+Though encumbered with a little of the northern shyness, Dalrymple was
+not diffident. There is a great difference between shyness and
+diffidence. Diffidence distrusts itself; shyness distrusts the mere
+outward impression made on others. At this time Dalrymple had no object
+beyond enjoying the pleasure of talking with Maria Addolorata, and no
+hope beyond that of some day seeing her face without the veil. As for
+her voice, his present position as doctor to the convent made it foolish
+for him to run the risk of being caught listening for her songs behind
+the garden wall. But he had not forgotten what Annetta had told him, and
+Maria Addolorata's soft intonations and liquid depths of tone in
+speaking led him to believe that the peasant girl had not exaggerated
+the nun's gift of singing.
+
+One day, after he had seen her and talked with her more than half a
+dozen times, he approached the subject, merely for the sake of
+conversation, saying that he had been told of her beautiful voice by
+people who had heard her across the garden.
+
+"It is true," she answered simply. "I have a good voice. But it is
+forbidden here to sing except in church," she added with a sigh. "And
+now that my aunt is ill, I would not displease her for anything."
+
+"That is natural," said Dalrymple. "But I would give anything in the
+world to hear you."
+
+"In church you can hear me. The church is open on Sundays at the
+Benediction service. We are behind the altar in the choir, of course.
+But perhaps you would know my voice from the rest because it is deeper."
+
+"I should know it in a hundred thousand," asseverated the Scotchman,
+with warmth.
+
+"That would be a great many--a whole choir of angels!" And the nun
+laughed softly, as she sometimes did, now that she knew him so much
+better.
+
+There was something warm and caressing in her laughter, short and low as
+it was, that made Dalrymple look at those full white hands of hers and
+wonder whether they might not be warm and caressing too.
+
+"Will you sing a little louder than the rest next Sunday afternoon,
+Sister Maria?" he asked. "I will be in the church."
+
+"That would be a great sin," she answered, but not very gravely.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I should have to be thinking about you instead of about the
+holy service. Do you not know that? But nothing is sinful according to
+you Protestants, I suppose. At all events, come to the church."
+
+"Do you think we are all devils, Sister Maria?" asked Dalrymple, with a
+smile.
+
+"More or less." She laughed again. "They say in the town that you have a
+compact with the devil."
+
+"Do you hear what is said in the town?"
+
+"Sometimes. The gardener brings the gossip and tells it to the cook. Or
+Sora Nanna tells it to me when she brings the linen. There are a
+thousand ways. The people think we know nothing because they never see
+us. But we hear all that goes on."
+
+Dalrymple said nothing in answer for some time. Then he spoke suddenly
+and rather hoarsely.
+
+"Shall I never see you, Sister Maria?" he asked.
+
+"Me? But you see me every day--"
+
+"Yes,--but your face, without the veil."
+
+Maria Addolorata shook her head.
+
+"It is against all rules," she answered.
+
+"Is it not against all rules that we should sit here and make
+conversation every day for half an hour?"
+
+"Yes--I suppose it is. But you are here as a doctor to take care of my
+aunt," she added quickly. "That makes it right. You are not a man. You
+are a doctor."
+
+"Oh,--I understand." Dalrymple laughed a little. "Then I am never to see
+your beautiful face?"
+
+"How do you know it is beautiful, since you have never seen it?"
+
+"From your beautiful hands," answered the young man, promptly.
+
+"Oh!" Maria Addolorata glanced at her hands and then, with a movement
+which might have been quicker, concealed them in her sleeves.
+
+"It is a sin to hide what God has made beautiful," said Dalrymple.
+
+"If I have anything about me that is beautiful, it is for God's glory
+that I hide it," answered Maria, with real gravity this time.
+
+Dalrymple understood that he had gone a little too far, though he did
+not exactly regret it, for the next words she spoke showed him that she
+was not really offended. Nevertheless, in order to exhibit a proper
+amount of contrition he took his leave with a little more formality than
+usual on this particular occasion. Possibly she was willing to show that
+she forgave him, for she hesitated a moment just before opening the
+door, and then, to his great surprise, held out her hand to him.
+
+"It is your custom," she said, just touching his eagerly outstretched
+fingers. "But you must not look at it," she added, drawing it back
+quickly and hiding it in her sleeve with another low laugh. And she
+began to shut the door almost before he had quite gone through.
+
+Dalrymple walked more slowly on that day, as he descended through the
+steep and narrow streets, and though he was surefooted by nature and
+habit, he almost stumbled once or twice on his way down, because,
+somehow, though his eyes looked towards his feet, he did not see exactly
+where he was going.
+
+There is no necessity for analyzing his sensations. It is enough to say
+at once that he was beginning to be really in love with Maria
+Addolorata, and that he denied the fact to himself stoutly, though it
+forced itself upon him with every step which took him further from the
+convent. He felt on that day a strong premonitory symptom in the shape
+of a logical objection, as it were, to his returning again to see the
+nun. The objection was the evident and total futility of the almost
+intimate intercourse into which the two were gliding. The day must soon
+come when the abbess would no longer need his assistance. In all
+probability she would recover, for the more alarming symptoms had
+disappeared, and she showed signs of regaining her strength by slow
+degrees. It was quite clear to Dalrymple that, after her ultimate
+recovery, his chance of seeing and talking with Maria Addolorata would
+be gone forever. Sor Tommaso, indeed, recovered but slowly. Of the two
+his case was the worse, for fever had set in on the third day and had
+not left him yet, so that he assured Dalrymple almost hourly that his
+last moment was at hand. But he also was sure to get well, in the
+Scotchman's opinion, and the latter knew well enough that his own
+temporary privileges as physician to the convent would be withdrawn from
+him as soon as the Subiaco doctor should be able to climb the hill.
+
+It was all, therefore, but a brief incident in his life, which could not
+possibly have any continuation hereafter. He tried in vain to form plans
+and create reasons for seeing Maria Addolorata even once a month for
+some time to come, but his ingenuity failed him altogether, and he grew
+angry with himself for desiring what was manifestly impossible.
+
+With true masculine inconsequence, so soon as he was displeased with
+himself he visited his displeasure upon the object that attracted him,
+and on the earliest possible occasion, on their very next meeting. He
+assumed an air of coldness and reserve such as he had certainly not
+thought necessary to put on at his first visit. Almost without any
+preliminary words of courtesy, and without any attempt to prolong the
+short conversation which always took place before he was made to stand
+with his back to the abbess's open door, he coldly inquired about the
+good lady's condition during the past night, and made one or two
+observations thereon with a brevity almost amounting to curtness.
+
+Maria Addolorata was surprised; but as her face was covered, and her
+hands were quietly folded before her, Dalrymple could not see that his
+behaviour had any effect upon her. She did not answer his last remark at
+all, but quietly bowed her head.
+
+Then followed the usual serio-comic scene, during which Dalrymple stood
+turned away from the open door, asking questions of the sick woman, and
+listening attentively for her low-spoken answers. To tell the truth, he
+judged of her condition more from the sound of her voice than from
+anything else. He had also taught Maria Addolorata how to feel the
+pulse; and she counted the beats while he looked at his watch. His chief
+anxiety was now for the action of the heart, which had been weakened by
+a lifetime of unhealthy living, by food inadequate in quality, even when
+sufficient in quantity, by confinement within doors, and lack of
+life-giving sunshine, and by all those many causes which tend to reduce
+the vitality of a cloistered nun.
+
+When the comedy was over, Maria Addolorata shut the door as usual; and
+she and Dalrymple were alone together in the abbess's parlour, as they
+were every day. The abbess herself could hear that they were talking,
+but she naturally supposed that they were discussing the details of her
+condition; and as she felt that she was really recovering, so far as
+she could judge, and as almost every day, after Dalrymple had gone,
+Maria Addolorata had some new direction of his to carry out, the elder
+lady's suspicions were not aroused. On the contrary, her confidence in
+the Scotch doctor grew from day to day; and in the long hours during
+which she lay thinking over her state and its circumstances, she made
+plans for his conversion, in which her brother, the cardinal, bore a
+principal part. She was grateful to Dalrymple, and it seemed to her that
+the most proper way of showing her gratitude would be to save his soul,
+a point of view unusual in the ordinary relations of life.
+
+On this particular day, Maria Addolorata shut the door, and came forward
+into the parlour as usual. As usual, too, she sat down in the abbess's
+own big easy-chair, expecting that Dalrymple would seat himself opposite
+to her. But he remained standing, with the evident intention of going
+away in a few moments. He said a few words about the patient, gave one
+or two directions, and then stood still in silence for a moment.
+
+Maria Addolorata lifted her head a little, but not enough to show him
+more than an inch of her face.
+
+"Have I displeased you, Signor Doctor?" she asked, in her deep, warm
+voice. "Have I not carried out your orders?"
+
+"On the contrary," answered Dalrymple, with a stiffness which he
+resented in himself. "It is impossible to be more conscientious than you
+always are."
+
+Seeing that he still remained standing, the nun rose to her feet, and
+waited for him to go. She believed that she was far too proud to detain
+him, if he wished to shorten the meeting. But something hurt her, which
+she could not understand.
+
+Dalrymple hesitated a moment, and his lips parted as though he were
+about to speak. The silence was prolonged only for a moment or two.
+
+"Good morning, Sister Maria Addolorata," he said suddenly, and bowed.
+
+"Good morning, Signor Doctor," answered the nun.
+
+She bent her head very slightly, but a keener observer than Dalrymple
+was, just then, would have noticed that as she did so, her shoulders
+moved forward a little, as though her breast were contracted by some
+sudden little pain. Dalrymple did not see it. He bowed again, let
+himself out, and closed the door softly behind him.
+
+When he was gone, Maria Addolorata sat down in the big easy-chair again,
+and uncovered her face, doubling her veil back upon her head, and
+withdrawing the thick folds from her chin and mouth. Her features were
+very pale, as she sat staring at the sky through the window, and her
+eyes fixed themselves in that look which was peculiar to her. Her full
+white hands strained upon each other a little, bringing the colour to
+the tips of her fingers. During some minutes she did not move. Then she
+heard her aunt's voice calling to her hoarsely. She rose at once, and
+went into the bedroom. The abbess's pale face was very thin and yellow
+now, as it lay upon the white pillow; the coverlet was drawn up to her
+chin, and a grimly carved black crucifix hung directly above her head.
+
+"The doctor did not stay long to-day," she said, in a hollow tone.
+
+"No, mother," answered the young nun. "He thinks you are doing very
+well. He wishes you to eat a wing of roast chicken."
+
+"If I could have a little salad," said the abbess. "Maria," she added
+suddenly, "you are careful to keep your face covered when you are in the
+next room, are you not?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"You generally do not raise your veil until you come into this room,
+after the doctor is gone," said the elder lady.
+
+"He went so soon, to-day," answered Maria Addolorata, with perfectly
+innocent truth. "I stayed a moment in the parlour, thinking over his
+directions, and I lifted my veil when I was alone. It is close to-day."
+
+"Go into the garden, and walk a little," said the abbess. "It will do
+you good. You are pale."
+
+If she had felt even a faint uneasiness about her niece's conduct, it
+was removed by the latter's manner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+ONCE more Dalrymple was sitting over his supper at the table in the
+vaulted room on the ground floor which Stefanone used as a wine shop. To
+tell the truth, it was very superior to the ordinary wine shops of
+Subiaco and had an exceptional reputation. The common people never came
+there, because Stefanone did not sell his cheap wine at retail, but sent
+it all to Rome, or took it thither himself for the sake of getting a
+higher price for it. He always said that he did not keep an inn, and
+perhaps as much on account of his relations with Gigetto's family, he
+assumed as far as possible the position of a wine-dealer rather than
+that of a wine-seller. The distinction, in Italian mountain towns, is
+very marked.
+
+"They can have a measure of the best, if they care to pay for it," he
+said. "If they wish a mouthful of food, there is what there is. But I am
+not the village host, and Nanna is not a wine-shop cook, to fry tripe
+and peel onions for Titius and Caius."
+
+The old Roman expression, denoting generally the average public,
+survives still in polite society, and Stefanone had caught it from Sor
+Tommaso.
+
+Dalrymple was sitting as usual over his supper, by the light of the
+triple-beaked brass lamp, his measure of wine beside him, and a
+beefsteak, which on this occasion was really of beef, before him.
+Stefanone was absent in Rome, with a load of wine. Sora Nanna sat on
+Dalrymple's right, industriously knitting in Italian fashion, one of the
+needles stuck into and supported by a wooden sheath thrust into her
+waist-band, while she worked off the stitches with the others. Annetta
+sat opposite the Scotchman, but a little on one side of the lamp, so
+that she could see his face.
+
+"Mother," she said suddenly, without lifting her chin from the hand in
+which it rested, "you do not know anything! This Signor Englishman is
+making love with a nun in the convent! Eh--what do you think of it? Only
+this was wanting. A little more and the lightning will fall upon the
+convent! These Protestants! Oh, these blessed Protestants! They respect
+nothing, not even the saints!"
+
+"My daughter! what are you saying?"
+
+Sora Nanna's fingers did not pause in their work, nor did her eyes look
+up, but the deep furrow showed itself in her thick peasant's forehead,
+and her coarse, hard lips twitched clumsily with the beginning of a
+smile.
+
+"What am I saying? The truth. Ask rather of the Signore whether it is
+not true."
+
+"It is silly," said Dalrymple, growing unnaturally red, and looking up
+sharply at Annetta, before he took his next mouthful.
+
+"Look at him, mother!" laughed the girl. "He is red, red--he seems to me
+a boiled shrimp. Eh, this time I have guessed it! And as for Sister
+Maria Addolorata, she no longer sees with her eyes! To-day, when you
+were carrying in the baskets, you and the other women who went with us,
+I asked her whether the abbess was satisfied with the new doctor, and
+she answered that he was a very wise man, much wiser than Sor Tommaso.
+So I told her that it was a pity, because Sor Tommaso was getting well
+and would not allow the English doctor to come instead of him much
+longer. Then she looked at me. By Bacchus, I was afraid. Certain eyes!
+Not even a cat when you take away her kittens! A little more and she
+would have eaten me. And then her face made itself of marble--like that
+face of a woman that is built into the fountain in the piazza.
+Arch-priest! What a face!"
+
+The girl stared hard at Dalrymple, and her mouth laughed wickedly at his
+evident embarrassment, while there was something very different from
+laughter in her eyes. During the long speech, Sora Nanna had stopped
+knitting, and she looked from her daughter to the Scotchman with a sort
+of half-stupid, half-cunning curiosity.
+
+"But these are sins!" she exclaimed at last.
+
+"And what does it matter?" asked the girl. "Does he go to confession? So
+what does it matter? He keeps the account himself, of his sins. I should
+not like to have them on my shoulders. But as for Sister Maria
+Addolorata--oh, she! I told you that she sinned in her throat. Well, the
+sin is ready, now. What is she waiting for? For the abbess to die? Or
+for Sor Tommaso to get well? Then she will not see the Signor Englishman
+any more. It would be better for her. When she does not see him any
+more, she will knead her pillow with tears, and make her bread of it, to
+bite and eat. Good appetite, Sister Maria!"
+
+"You talk, you talk, and you conclude nothing," observed Sora Nanna.
+"You have certain thoughts in your head! And you do not let the Signore
+say even a word."
+
+"What can he say? He will say that it is not true. But then, who will
+believe him? I should like to see them a little together. I am sure that
+she shows him her face, and that it is 'Signor Doctor' here, and 'Dear
+Signor Doctor' there, and a thousand gentlenesses. Tell the truth,
+Signore. She shows you her face."
+
+"No," said Dalrymple, who had regained his self-possession. "She never
+shows me her face."
+
+"What a shame for a Carmelite nun to show her face to a man!" cried the
+girl.
+
+"But I tell you she is always veiled to her chin," insisted Dalrymple,
+with perfect truth.
+
+"Eh! It is you who say so!" retorted Annetta. "But then, what can it
+matter to me? Make love with a nun, if it goes, Signore. Youth is a
+flower--when it is withered, it is hay, and the beasts eat it."
+
+"This is true," said Sora Nanna, returning to her knitting. "But do not
+pay attention to her, Signore. She is stupid. She does not know what she
+says. Eat, drink, and manage your own affairs. It is better. What can a
+child understand? It is like a little dog that sees and barks, without
+understanding. But you are a much instructed man and have been round the
+whole world. Therefore you know many things. It seems natural."
+
+Though Dalrymple was not diffident, as has been said, he was far from
+vain, on the whole, and in particular he had none of that contemptible
+vanity which makes a man readily believe that every woman he meets is in
+love with him. He had not the slightest idea at that time that Annetta,
+the peasant girl, looked upon him with anything more than the curiosity
+and vague interest usually bestowed on a foreigner in Italy.
+
+He was annoyed, however, by what she said this evening, though he was
+also secretly surprised and delighted. The contradiction is a common
+one. The miser is half mad with joy on discovering that he has much
+more than he supposed, and bitterly resents, at the same time, any
+notice which may be taken of the fact by others.
+
+Annetta did not enjoy his discomfiture and evident embarrassment, for
+she was far more deeply hurt herself than she realized, and every word
+she had spoken about Maria Addolorata had hurt her, though she had taken
+a sort of vague delight in teasing Dalrymple. She relapsed into silence
+now, alternately wishing that he loved her, and then, that she might
+kill him. If she could not have his heart, she would be satisfied with
+his blood. There was a passionate animal longing in the instinct to have
+him for herself, even dead, rather than that any other woman should get
+his love.
+
+Dalrymple was aware only that the girl's words had annoyed him, while
+inwardly conscious that if what she said were true, the truth would make
+a difference in his life. He showed no inclination to talk any more, and
+finished his supper in a rather morose silence, turning to his book as
+soon as he had done. Then Gigetto came in with his guitar and sang and
+talked with the two women.
+
+But he was restless that night, and did not fall asleep until the moon
+had set and his window grew dark. And even in his dreams he was restless
+still, so that when he awoke in the morning he said to himself that he
+had been foolish in his behaviour towards Maria Addolorata on the
+previous day. He felt tired, too, and his colour was less brilliant
+than usual. It was Sunday, and he remembered that if he chose he could
+go in the afternoon to the Benediction in the convent church and hear
+Maria's voice perhaps. But at the usual hour, just before noon, he went
+to make his visit to the abbess.
+
+It was his intention to forget his stiff manner, and to behave as he had
+always behaved until yesterday. Strange to say, however, he felt a
+constraint coming upon him as soon as he was in the nun's presence. She
+received him as usual, there was the usual comic scene at the abbess's
+door, and, as every day, the two were alone together after her door was
+shut.
+
+"Are you ill?" asked Maria Addolorata, after a moment's silence which,
+short as it was, both felt to be awkward.
+
+Dalrymple was taken by surprise. The tone in which she had spoken was
+cold and distant rather than expressive of any concern for his welfare,
+but he did not think of that. He only realized that his manner must seem
+to her very unusual, since she asked such a question. An Italian would
+have observed that his own face was pale, and would have told her that
+he was dying of love.
+
+"No, I am not ill," answered the Scotchman, simply, and in his most
+natural tone of voice.
+
+"Then what is the matter with you since yesterday?" asked Maria
+Addolorata, less coldly, and as though she were secretly amused.
+
+"There is nothing the matter--at least, nothing that I could explain to
+you."
+
+She sat down in the big easy-chair and, as formerly, he took his seat
+opposite to her.
+
+"There is something," she insisted, speaking thoughtfully. "You cannot
+deceive a woman, Signor Doctor."
+
+Dalrymple smiled and looked at her veiled head.
+
+"You said the other day that I was not a man, but a doctor," he
+answered. "I suppose I might answer that you are not a woman, but a
+nun."
+
+"And is not a nun a woman?" asked Maria Addolorata, and he knew that she
+was smiling, too.
+
+"You would not forgive me if I answered you," he said.
+
+"Who knows? I might be obliged to, since I am obliged to meet you every
+day. It may be a sin, but I am curious."
+
+"Shall I tell you?"
+
+As though instinctively, Maria was silent for a moment, and turned her
+veiled face towards the abbess's door. But Dalrymple needed no such
+warning to lower his voice.
+
+"Tell me," she said, and under her veil she could feel that her eyes
+were growing deep and the pupils wide and dark, and she knew that she
+had done wrong.
+
+"How should I know whether you are a saint or only a woman, since I have
+never seen your face?" he asked. "I shall never know--for in a few days
+Doctor Taddei will be well again, and you will not need my services."
+
+He saw the quick tightening of one hand upon the other, and the slight
+start of the head, and in a flash he knew that all Annetta had told him
+was true. The silence that followed seemed longer than the awkward pause
+which had preceded the conversation.
+
+"It cannot be so soon," she said in a very low tone.
+
+"It may be to-morrow," he answered, and to his own astonishment his
+voice almost broke in his throat, and he felt that his own hands were
+twisting each other, as though he were in pain. "I shall die without
+seeing you," he added almost roughly.
+
+Again there was a short silence in the still room.
+
+Suddenly, with quick movements of both hands at once, Maria Addolorata
+threw back the veil from her face, and drew away the folds that covered
+her mouth.
+
+"There, see me!" she exclaimed. "Look at me well this once!"
+
+Her face was as white as marble, and her dark eyes had a wild and
+startled look in them, as though she saw the world for the first time.
+A ringlet of red-gold hair had escaped from the bands of white that
+crossed her forehead in an even line and were drawn down straight on
+either side, for in the quick movement she had made she had loosened the
+pin that held them together under her chin, and had freed the dazzling
+throat down to the high collar.
+
+[Illustration: "She had covered her face with the veil."--Vol. I., p.
+126.]
+
+Dalrymple's pale, bright blue eyes caught fire, and he looked at her
+with all his being, at her face, her throat, her eyes, the ringlet of
+her hair. He breathed audibly, with parted lips, between his clenched
+teeth.
+
+Gradually, as he looked, he saw the red blush rise from the throat to
+the cheeks, from the cheeks to the forehead, and the marble grew more
+beautiful with womanly life. Then, all at once, he saw the hot tears
+welling up in her eyes, and in an instant the vision was gone. With a
+passionate movement she had covered her face with the veil, and throwing
+herself sideways against the high back of the chair, she pressed the
+dark stuff still closer to her eyes and mouth and cheeks. Her whole body
+shook convulsively, and a moment later she was sobbing, not audibly, but
+visibly, as though her heart were breaking.
+
+Dalrymple was again taken by surprise. He had been so completely lost in
+the utterly selfish contemplation of her beauty that he had been very
+far from realizing what she herself must have felt as soon as she
+appreciated what she had done. He at once accused himself of having
+looked too rudely at her, but at the same time he was himself too much
+disturbed to argue the matter. Quite instinctively he rose to his feet
+and tried to take one of her hands from her veil, touching it
+comfortingly. But she made a wild gesture, as though to drive him away.
+
+"Go!" she cried in a low and broken voice, between her sobs. "Go! Go
+quickly!"
+
+She could not say more for her sobbing, but he did not obey her. He only
+drew back a little and watched her, all his blood on fire from the touch
+of her soft white hand.
+
+She stifled her sobs in her veil, and gradually grew more calm. She even
+arranged the veil itself a little better, her face still turned away
+towards the back of the chair.
+
+"Maria! Maria!" The abbess's voice was calling her, hoarsely and almost
+desperately, from the next room.
+
+She started and sat up straight, listening. Then the cry was heard
+again, more desperate, less loud. With a quick skill which seemed
+marvellous in Dalrymple's eyes, Maria adjusted her veil almost before
+she had sprung to her feet.
+
+"Wait!" she said. "Something is the matter!"
+
+She was at the bedroom door in an instant, and in an instant more she
+was at her aunt's bedside.
+
+"Maria--I am dying," said the abbess's voice faintly, as she felt the
+nun's arm under her head.
+
+Dalrymple heard the words, and did not hesitate as he hastily felt for
+something in his pocket.
+
+"Come!" cried Maria Addolorata.
+
+But he was already there, on the other side of the bed, pouring
+something between the sick lady's lips.
+
+It was fortunate that he was there at that moment. He had indeed
+anticipated the possibility of a sudden failure in the action of the
+heart, and he never came to the convent without a small supply of a
+powerful stimulant of his own invention. The liquid, however, was of
+such a nature that he did not like to leave the use of it to Maria
+Addolorata's discretion, for he was aware that she might easily be
+mistaken in the symptoms of the collapse which would really require its
+use.
+
+The abbess swallowed a sufficient quantity of it, and Dalrymple allowed
+her head to lie again upon the pillow. She looked almost as though she
+were dead. Her eyes were turned up, and her jaw had dropped. Maria
+Addolorata believed that all was over.
+
+"She is dead," she said. "Let us leave her in peace."
+
+It is a very ancient custom among Italians to withdraw as soon as a
+dying person is unconscious, if not even before the supreme moment.
+
+"She will probably live through this," answered Dalrymple, shaking his
+head.
+
+Neither he nor the nun spoke again for a long time. Little by little,
+the abbess revived under the influence of the stimulant, the heart beat
+less faintly, and the mouth slowly closed, while the eyelids shut
+themselves tightly over the upturned eyes. The normal regular breathing
+began again, and the crisis was over.
+
+"It is passed," said Dalrymple. "It will not come again to-day. We can
+leave her now, for she will sleep."
+
+"Yes," said the abbess herself. "Let me sleep." Her voice was faint, but
+the words were distinctly articulated.
+
+Then she opened her eyes and looked about her quite naturally. Her
+glance rested on Dalrymple's face. Suddenly realizing that she was not
+veiled, she drew the coverlet up over her face. It is a peculiarity of
+such cases, that the patient returns almost immediately to ordinary
+consciousness when the moment of danger is past.
+
+"Go!" she said, with more energy than might have been expected. "This is
+a religious house. You must not be here."
+
+Dalrymple retired into the parlour again, shutting the door behind him,
+and waited for Maria Addolorata, for it was now indispensable that he
+should give her directions for the night. During the few minutes which
+passed while he was alone, he stood looking out of the window. The
+excitement of the last half-hour had cut off from his present state of
+mind the emotion he had felt before the abbess's cry for help, but had
+not decreased the impression it had left. While he was helping the sick
+lady there had not been one instant in which he had not felt that there
+was more than the life of a half-saintly old woman in the balance, and
+that her death meant the end of his meetings with Maria Addolorata.
+Annetta's words came back to him, 'she will knead her pillow with tears
+and make her bread of it.'
+
+Several minutes passed, and the door opened softly and closed again.
+Maria Addolorata came up to him, where he stood by the window. She did
+not speak for a moment, but he saw that her hand was pressed to her
+side.
+
+"I have spent a bad half-hour," she said at last, with something like a
+gasp.
+
+"It is the worst half-hour I ever spent in my life," answered Dalrymple.
+"I thought it was all over," he added.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I thought it was all over."
+
+He could hear his heart beating in his ears. He could almost hear hers.
+His hand went out toward her, cold and unsteady, but it fell to his side
+again almost instantly. But for the heart-beats, it seemed to him that
+there was an appalling stillness in the air of the quiet room. His
+manly face grew very pale. He slowly bit his lip and looked out of the
+window. An enormous temptation was upon him. He knew that if she moved
+to leave his side he should take her and hold her. There was a tiny drop
+of blood on his lip now. Something in him made him hope against himself
+that she would speak, that she would say some insignificant dry words.
+But every inch of his strong fibre and every ounce of his hot blood
+hoped that she would move, instead of speaking.
+
+She sighed, and the sigh was broken by a quick-drawn breath. Slowly
+Dalrymple turned his white face and gleaming eyes to her veiled head.
+Still she neither spoke nor moved. He, in memory, saw her face, her
+mouth, and her eyes through the thick stuff that hid them. The silence
+became awful to him. His hands opened and shut convulsively.
+
+She heard his breath and she saw the uncertain shadow of his hand,
+moving on the black and white squares of the pavement. She made a
+slight, short movement towards him and then stepped suddenly back,
+overcoming the temptation to go to him.
+
+"No!"
+
+He uttered the single word with a low, fierce cry. In an instant his
+arms were around her, pressing her, lifting her, straining her, almost
+bruising her. In an instant his lips were kissing a face whiter than his
+own, eyes that flamed like summer lightning between his kisses, lips
+crushed and hurt by his, but still not kissed enough, hands that were
+raised to resist, but lingered to be kissed in turn, lest anything
+should be lost.
+
+A little splintering crash, the sound of a glass falling upon a stone
+floor in the next room, broke the stillness. Dalrymple's arms relaxed,
+and the two stood for one moment facing one another, pale, with fire in
+their eyes and hearts beating more loudly than before. Dalrymple raised
+his hand to his forehead, as though he were dazed, and made an uncertain
+step in the direction of the door. Maria raised her white hands towards
+him, and her eyelids drooped, even while she looked into his face.
+
+He kissed her once more with a kiss in which all other kisses seemed to
+meet and live and die a lingering, sweet death. She sank into the deep
+old easy-chair, and when she looked up, he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+IT rained during the afternoon, and Dalrymple sat in his small
+laboratory, among his books and the simple apparatus he used for his
+experiments. His little window was closed, and the southwest wind drove
+the shower against the clouded panes of glass, so that the rain came
+through the ill-fitted strips of lead which joined them, and ran down in
+small streams to the channel in the stone sill, whence the water found
+its way out through a hole running through the wall. He sat in his
+rush-bottomed chair, sideways by the deal table, one long leg crossed
+over the other. His hand lay on an open book, and his fingers
+occasionally tapped the page impatiently, while his eyes were fixed on
+the window, watching the driving rain.
+
+He was not thinking, for he could not think. Over and over again the
+scene of the morning came back to him and sent the hot blood rushing to
+his throat. He tried to reflect, indeed, and to see whether what he had
+done was to have any consequences for him, or was to be left behind in
+his life, like a lovely view seen from a carriage window on a swift
+journey, gone before it is half seen, and never to be seen again,
+except in dreams. But he was utterly unable to look forward and reason
+about the future. Everything dragged him back, up the steep ascent to
+the convent, through the arched ways and vaulted corridors, to the room
+in which he had passed the supreme moments of his life. The only
+distinct impression of the future was the strong desire to feel again
+what he had felt that day; to feel it again and again, and always, as
+long as feeling could last; to stretch out his hands and take, to close
+them and hold, to make his, indubitably, what had been but questionably
+his for an instant, to get the one thing worth having, for himself, and
+only for himself. For the passion of a strong man is loving and taking,
+and the passion of a good woman is loving and giving. Dalrymple reasoned
+well enough, later,--too well, perhaps,--but during those hours he spent
+alone on that day, there was no power of reasoning in him. The world was
+the woman he loved, and the world's orbit was but the circle of his
+clasping arms. Beyond them was chaos, without form and void, clouded as
+the rain-streaked panes of his little window.
+
+He looked at his watch more than once. At last he rose, threw a cloak
+over his shoulders and went out, locking the door of the little
+laboratory behind him as he always did, and thrusting the unwieldy key
+into his pocket.
+
+He climbed the hill to the convent, taking the short cut through the
+narrow lanes. The rain had almost ceased, and the wet mist that blew
+round the corners of the dark houses was pleasant in his face. But he
+scarcely knew what he saw and felt on his way. He reached the convent
+church and went in, and stood by one of the pillars near the door.
+
+It was a small church, built with a great choir for the nuns behind the
+high altar; from each side of the latter a high wooden screen extended
+to the walls, completely cutting off the space. It was dark, too,
+especially in such weather, and almost deserted, save for a number of
+old women who knelt on the damp marble pavement, some leaning against
+the backs of chairs, some resting one arm upon the plastered bases of
+the yellow marble columns. There were many lights on the high altar. Two
+acolytes, rough-headed boys of Subiaco, knelt within the altar rail,
+dressed in black cassocks and clean linen cottas. Two priests and a
+young deacon sat side by side on the right of the altar, with small
+black books in their hands. The nuns were chanting, unseen in the choir.
+No one noticed Dalrymple, wrapped in his cloak, as he leaned against the
+pillar near the door. His head was a little inclined, involuntarily
+respectful to ceremonies he neither believed in nor understood, but
+which had in them the imposing element of devout earnestness. Yet his
+eyes were raised and looked up from under his brows, steadily and
+watchfully, for he knew that Maria Addolorata was behind the screen, and
+from the first moment of entering the church it seemed to him that he
+could distinguish her voice from the rest.
+
+He knew that it was hers, though he had never heard her sing. There was
+in all those sweet, colourless tones one tone that made ringing
+harmonies in his strong heart. Amongst all those mingling accents, there
+was one accent that touched his soul. Amidst the echoes that died softly
+away under the dim arches, there was one echo that died not, but rang on
+and on in his ears. There was a voice not like other voices there, nor
+like any he had ever heard. Many were strong and sweet; this one was not
+sweet and strong only, but alive with a divine life, winged with divine
+wings, essential of immortality, touching beyond tears, passionate as
+the living, breathing, sighing, dying world, grand as a flood of light,
+sad as the twilight of gods, full as a great water swinging to the tide
+of the summer's moon, fine-drawn as star-rays--a voice of gold.
+
+As Dalrymple stood there in the shadow, he heard it singing to him and
+telling him all that he had not been told in words, all that he felt,
+and more also. For there was in it the passion of the woman, and the
+passionate remorse of the nun, the towering love of Maria Braccio,
+woman and princess, and the deep despair of Maria Addolorata, nun and
+sinner, unfaithful spouse of the Lord Christ, accused and self-accusing,
+self-wronged, self-judged, but condemned of God and foretasting the
+ultimate tragedy that is eternal--the tragedy of supreme hell.
+
+The man who stood there knew that it was his doing, and the burden of
+his deeds bowed him bodily as he stood. But still he listened, and, as
+she sung, he watched her lips in the dark, inner mirror of sin's memory,
+and they drew him on.
+
+Little by little, he heard only her voice, and the others chanted but
+faintly as from an infinite distance. And then, not in his thought, but
+in deed, she was singing alone, and the words of 'O Salutaris Hostia,'
+sounded in the dim church as they had never sounded before, nor could
+ever sound again, the appeal of a lost soul's agony to God, the glory of
+golden voice, the accent of transcendent genius, the passion, the
+strength, the despair, of an ancient race.
+
+In the dark church the coarse, sad peasant women bowed themselves upon
+the pavement. One of them sobbed aloud and beat her breast. Angus
+Dalrymple kneeled upon one knee and pressed his brow against the foot of
+the pillar, kneeling neither to God, nor to the Sacred Host, nor to
+man's belief in Heaven or Hell, neither praying nor blaspheming,
+neither hoping nor dreading, but spell-bound upon a wrack of torture
+that was heart-breaking delight, his senses torn and strained to the
+utmost of his strong endurance, to the very scream of passion, his soul
+crucified upon the exquisite loveliness of his sin.
+
+Then all was still for an instant. Again there was a sound of voices, as
+the nuns sang in chorus the 'Tantum Ergo.' But the voice of voices was
+silent among them. The solemn Benediction blessed the just and the
+unjust alike. The short verses and responses of the priests broke the
+air that still seemed alive and trembling.
+
+Dalrymple rose slowly, and wrapped his cloak about him. Above the
+footsteps of the women going out of the church, he could hear the soft
+sound of all the nuns moving together as they left the choir. He knew
+that she was with them, and he stood motionless in his place till
+silence descended as a curtain between him and what had been. Then, with
+bent head, he went out into the rain that poured through the dim
+twilight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+THEY were together on the following day. The abbess was better, and as
+yet there had been no return of the syncope which Dalrymple dreaded.
+
+Contrary to her habit, Maria Addolorata sat on a high chair by the
+table, her head veiled and turned away, her chin supported in her hand.
+Dalrymple was seated not far from her, leaning forward, and trying to
+see her face, silent, and in a dangerous mood. She had refused to let
+him come near her, and even to raise her veil. When she spoke, her voice
+was full of a profound sadness that irritated him instead of touching
+him, for his nerves were strung to passion and out of tune with regret.
+
+"The sin of it; the deadly sin!" she said.
+
+"There is no sin in it," he answered; but she shook her veiled head.
+
+And there was silence again, as on the day before, but the stillness was
+of another kind. It was not the awful lull which goes before the
+bursting of the storm, when the very air seems to start at the fall of a
+leaf for fear lest it be already the thunder-clap. It was more like the
+noiseless rising of the hungry flood that creeps up round the doomed
+house, wherein is desperate, starving life, higher and higher, inch by
+inch--the flood of rising fate.
+
+"You say that there is no sin in it," she said, after a time. "You say
+it, but you do not think it. You are a man--you have honour to lose--you
+understand that, at least--"
+
+"You are a woman, and you have humanity's right to be free. It is an
+honourable right. You gave it up when you took that veil, not knowing
+what it was that you gave up. You have done no wrong. You have done
+nothing that any loving maiden need be ashamed of. I kissed you, for you
+could not help yourself. That is the monstrous crime which you say is to
+be punished with eternal damnation. It is monstrous that you should
+think so. It is blasphemy to say that God made woman to lead a life of
+suffering and daily misery, chained to a cross which it is agony to look
+at, and shame to break from."
+
+"Go--leave me. You are tempting me again." She spoke away from him, not
+changing her position.
+
+"If truth is temptation, I am tempting you, for I am showing you the
+truth. The truth is this. When you were almost a child they began to
+bend you and break you in the way they meant you to grow. You bent, but
+you were not broken. Your nature is too strong. There is a life of your
+own in you. It was against your will, and when you were just grown up,
+they buried you, your beauty, your youth, your fresh young heart, your
+voice and your genius--for it is nothing less. It was all done with
+deliberate intention for the glory of your family, blasphemously
+asserted to be the glory of God. It was pressed upon you, before you
+knew what you were doing, and made pleasant to you before you knew what
+it all meant. Your cross was cushioned for you and your crown of thorns
+was gilded. They made the seat under the canopy seem a seat in heaven.
+They even made you believe that the management of two or three score
+suffering women was government and power. It seemed a great thing to be
+abbess, did it not?"
+
+Maria Addolorata bent her veiled head slowly twice or three times, in a
+heavy-hearted way.
+
+"They made you believe all that," continued Dalrymple, with cold
+earnestness, "and much more besides--a great deal of which I know
+little, I suppose--the life to come, and saintship, and the glories of
+heaven. You have found out what it is all worth. We have found it out
+together. And they frightened you with hell. Do you know what hell is? A
+life without love, when one knows what love can mean. I am not eloquent;
+I wish I were. But I am plain, and I can tell you the truth."
+
+"It is not the truth," answered the nun, slowly. "You tell me it is, to
+tempt me. I cannot drive you away by force. Will you not go? I cannot
+cry out for help--it would ruin me and you. Will you not leave me? But
+for God's grace, I am at your mercy, and there is little grace for me, a
+sinner."
+
+"No, I will not go away," said Dalrymple, and it seemed to Maria that
+his voice was the voice of her fate.
+
+"Then God have mercy!" she cried, in a low tone, and as her head sank
+forward, it was her forehead that rested in her right hand, instead of
+her chin.
+
+"Love is more merciful than God," he answered.
+
+There was a sudden softness in his voice which she had never heard, not
+even yesterday. Rising, he stole near to her, and standing, bent down
+and leaned upon the table by her side and spoke close to her ear. But he
+did not touch her. She could feel his breath through her veil when he
+spoke again. It was vital and fierce, and softly hot, like the breathing
+of a powerful wild beast.
+
+"You are my God," he said. "I worship you, and adore you. But I must
+have you for mine always. I would rather kill you, and have no God, than
+lose you alive. Come with me. You are free. You can get through the
+garden at night--with good horses we can reach the sea to-morrow. There
+is an English ship of war at anchor in Civita Vecchia. The officers are
+my friends. Before to-morrow night we can be safe--married--happy. No
+one will know--no one will follow us. Maria--come--come--come!"
+
+His voice sank to a vibrating whisper as he repeated the word again and
+again, closer and closer to her ear. Her hands had dropped from her
+forehead and lay upon the table. With bent head she listened.
+
+"Come, my darling," he continued, fast and low. "I have a beautiful
+home, my father's home, my mother's--your laws and vows are nothing to
+them. You shall be honoured, loved--ah, dear! adored, worshipped--you do
+not know what we will do for you, to fill your life with sweet things.
+All your life, Maria, from to-morrow. Instead of pain and penance and
+everlasting suffering and weariness, you shall have all that the world
+holds of love and peace and flowers. And you shall sing your whole heart
+out when you will, and have music to play with from year's beginning to
+year's end and year's end again. Sweet, let me tell you how I love
+you--how you are alive in every drop of my blood, beating through me
+like living fire, through heart and soul and head and hand--"
+
+With a quick movement she pressed her palms against her veil upon her
+ears to shut out the sound of his words. She rocked herself a little, as
+though the pain were almost greater than she could bear. But his hands
+moved too, stealthily, strongly, as a tiger's velvet feet, with a
+vibration all through them, to the very ends of his fingers. For he was
+in earnest. And the arm went softly round her, and closed gently upon
+her as her figure swayed in her chair; and the other sought hers, and
+found it cold as ice and trembling, and not strong to stop her hearing.
+And again she listened.
+
+Wild and incoherent words fell from his lips, hot and low, with no
+reason in them but the overwhelming reason of love itself. For he was
+not an eloquent man, and now he took no thought of what he said. He was
+far too natural to be eloquent, and far too deeply stirred to care for
+the shape his love took in speech. There was in his words the strong
+rush of out-bursting truth which even the worst passion has when it is
+real to the roots. Words terrible and gentle, blasphemous and devout,
+wove themselves into a new language such as Maria Addolorata had never
+heard, nor dared to think of hearing. But he dared everything, to tell
+her, to hold her, against God and devil, heaven and earth, and all
+mankind. And he promised all he had, and all that was not his to promise
+nor to give, rending her beliefs to shreds, trampling on the broken
+fragments of all she had worshipped, tearing her chains link from link
+and scattering them like straw down the storm of passionate contempt.
+And then, again, pouring out love, and more love, and love again, as a
+stream of liquid fire let loose to flood all it meets with dazzling
+destruction and hot death.
+
+It is not every woman that knows what it is to be so loved and to listen
+to such words, so spoken. Those who have heard and felt can understand,
+but not the rest. Gradually as he spoke, her veiled face was drawn
+toward his; gradually her hand raised the thick veil and drew it back;
+and again a little, and the hand that had struggled long and silently
+against his, lay still at last, and the face that had appealed in vain
+to Heaven, hid itself against the heart of the strong man.
+
+"The Lord have mercy upon my sinful soul!" she softly prayed.
+
+"I love you!" whispered Dalrymple, folding her to him with both his
+arms, and pressing his lips to her head. "That is all the world holds.
+That is all the Heaven there is, and we have it for our own."
+
+But presently she drew back from him, clinging to him with her hands as
+though to hold him, and yet separating from him and looking up into his
+face.
+
+"And to-morrow?" she said, with a despairing question in her tone.
+
+"We will go away to-night," he answered, "and to-morrow will be ours,
+too, and all the to-morrows after that."
+
+But she shook her head, and her hands loosened their hold upon his arms,
+still lingering on his sleeves.
+
+"And leave her to die?" she asked, with a quick glance at the abbess's
+door.
+
+Then she looked at him, with something of sudden fear as she met his
+eyes again. And almost instantly she turned from him, and threw herself
+forward upon the table as she sat.
+
+"The sin, the deadly sin!" she moaned. "Oh, the horror of it all--the
+sin, the shame, the disgrace! That is the worst to bear--the shame! The
+undying shame of it!"
+
+Dalrymple's brows bent themselves in a heavy frown, for he was in no
+temper to be thwarted, desperate as the risk might be. For himself, he
+knew that he was setting his life on the chances, if she consented, and
+that life would not be worth having if she refused. He knew well enough
+that they must almost certainly be pursued, and that there would be
+little hesitation about shooting him or cutting his throat if they were
+caught and if he resisted, as he knew that he should. He had been in
+love with her for days. The last twenty-four hours had made him
+desperate. And a desperate man is not to be played with, more especially
+if he chance to have any Highland blood in his veins.
+
+"What do you believe in most?" he asked suddenly and almost brutally.
+
+She turned, startled, and looked him in the face.
+
+"Because, if you believe in God, as I suppose you do, I take God to
+witness that I shall be a dead man this night, unless you promise to go
+with me."
+
+She stared, and turned white to the lips, as he had never seen her turn
+pale before. She leaned forward, gazing into his eyes and breathing
+hard.
+
+"You do not mean that," she said, as though trying hard to convince
+herself.
+
+"I mean it," he answered slowly, pale himself, and knowing what he said.
+
+She leaned nearer to him and took his arms with her hands, for she could
+not speak. The terrible question was in his eyes.
+
+"You would kill yourself, if I refused--if I would not go with you?"
+Still she could not believe him.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+Once more the room was very still, as the two looked into one another's
+eyes. But Maria Addolorata said nothing. The frown deepened on
+Dalrymple's face, and his strong mouth was drawn, as a man draws in his
+lips at the moment of meeting death.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, gently loosening himself from her hold.
+
+Her hands dropped and she turned half round, following him as he went
+towards the door. His hand was almost on the latch. He did not turn.
+But as he heard her swift feet behind him, he bent his head a little.
+Her arms went round his throat, reaching up to his great height.
+
+"No! No!" she cried, drawing his head down to her.
+
+But he took her by the wrists and held her away from him at his arms'
+length.
+
+"Are you in earnest?" he asked fiercely. "If you play with me any more,
+you shall die, too."
+
+"But not to-day!" she answered imploringly. "Not to-night! Give me
+time--a day--a little while--"
+
+"To lose you? No. I have been near losing you. I know what it means.
+Make up your mind. Yes, or no."
+
+"To-night? But how? There is not time--these clothes I wear--"
+
+She turned her head distractedly to one side and the other as she spoke,
+while he held her wrists. Dalrymple saw that there was reason in the
+objections she made. So dangerous a flight could not be undertaken
+without some preparation. He loosed her hands and began to pace the
+room, concentrating his mind upon the details. She watched him in
+silence, leaning against the back of the easy-chair. Then he stopped
+just before her.
+
+"My cloak would come down to your feet," he said, measuring her height
+with his eyes. "I have a plaid which would cover your head. Once on
+horseback, no one would notice anything. Can you ride?"
+
+"No. I never learned."
+
+"That is unlucky. But we can manage it. The main thing would be to get a
+long start if possible--that you should not be missed--to get away just
+at the beginning of the longest time during which the nuns would not
+expect to see you. Where is your own room? Is it near this?"
+
+Maria Addolorata told him, and explained the position of the balcony
+with the steps leading down into the garden. He asked her who kept the
+key of the postern. It was in the possession of the gardener, who took
+it away with him at night, but the lock was on the inside, and
+uncovered, as old Italian locks are. By raising the curved spring one
+could push back the bolt. There was a handle on the latter, for that
+purpose. There would be no difficulty about getting out, nor about
+letting Dalrymple in, provided that the night were dark.
+
+"The moon is almost full," said Dalrymple, thoughtfully, and he began to
+walk up and down again. "Never mind. It must be to-morrow night. In your
+dark dress, when the sisters are asleep, if you keep in the shadow along
+the wall, there is not the slightest risk. I will be waiting for you on
+the other side of the gate with my cloak and plaid. I will have the
+horses ready, a little higher up. There is a good mule path which goes
+down into the valley on that side. You have only to reach the gate and
+let yourself out. It is very easy. Tell me at what time to be waiting."
+
+Maria leaned heavily upon the chair, with bent head.
+
+"I cannot do it--oh, I cannot!" she said despairingly. "The shame of it!
+To be the talk of Rome--the scandal of the day--a disgrace to my father
+and mother!"
+
+Dalrymple frowned, and biting his lip, he struck his clenched fist
+softly with the palm of his hand, making a few quick steps backward and
+forward. He stopped suddenly and looked at her with dangerous eyes.
+
+"I have told you," he said. "I will not repeat it. You must choose."
+
+"Oh, you cannot be in earnest--"
+
+"You shall see. It is plain enough," he added, with an accent of scorn.
+"You are more afraid of a little talk and gossip in Rome, than of being
+told to-morrow morning that I died in the night. That is Italian
+courage, I suppose."
+
+She hung her head for a moment. Then, as she heard his footsteps, she
+threw her veil back and saw that he was going towards the door without a
+word.
+
+"You are cruel," she said, half catching her breath. "You know that you
+make me suffer--that I cannot live without you."
+
+"I shall certainly not live without you," he answered. "I mean to have
+you at any price, or I will die in the attempt to get you."
+
+The words have a melodramatic look on paper. But he spoke them not only
+with his lips, but with his whole self. They were not out of keeping
+with his nature. There is no more desperate blood in the world's veins
+than that of the Celt when he is driven to bay or exasperated by
+passion. In him the reckless fatalism of the Asiatic is blended with the
+cool daring of the northerner.
+
+Maria Addolorata had little experience of the world or of men, but she
+had the hereditary instincts of her sex, and as she looked at Dalrymple
+she recognized in him the man who would do what he said, or forfeit his
+life in trying to do it. There is no mistaking the truth about such men,
+at such moments.
+
+"I believe you would," she said, and she felt pride in saying it.
+
+Her own life was in the balance. She bent her head again. Her temples
+were throbbing, and it was hard to think at all connectedly.
+
+"I want your answer," he said, still standing near the door. "Yes or
+no--for to-morrow night?"
+
+"I cannot live without you," she answered slowly, and still looking
+down. "I must go."
+
+But she did not meet his eyes, for she knew that she was wavering still,
+and almost as uncertain as before. All at once Dalrymple's manner
+changed. He came quietly to her side and took one of her hands, which
+hung idly over the back of the chair, in both of his.
+
+"You must be in earnest, as I am, my dear," he said, very calmly and
+gently. "You must not play with a man's life and heart, as though they
+were worth nothing but play. You called me cruel, dear, a moment ago.
+But you are more cruel than I, for I do not hesitate."
+
+"I must go," she repeated, still avoiding his look. "Yes, I must go. I
+should die without you."
+
+"But to-morrow when I come, you will hesitate again," he said, still
+speaking very quietly. "I must be sure. You must give me some promise,
+something more than you have given me yet."
+
+She looked up with startled eyes.
+
+"You do not believe me?" she asked. "What shall I do? I--I promise! You
+yourself have never said that you promised."
+
+"Does it need that?" He pressed the hand he held, with softly increasing
+strength, between his palms.
+
+"No," she answered, looking at him. "I can see it. You will do what you
+say. I have promised, too."
+
+He gazed incredulously into her face.
+
+"Do you doubt me?" she asked.
+
+"Have I not reason to doubt? You change your mind easily. I do not blame
+you. But how am I to believe?"
+
+She grew impatient of his unbelief. Yet as he pressed her hand, the
+power he had over her increased with every second.
+
+"But I will, I will!" she cried, in a low voice. "And still you doubt--I
+see it in your eyes. Have I not promised? What more can I do?"
+
+"I do not know," he answered. "But you must make me believe you." The
+strength of his eyes seemed to be forcing something from her.
+
+"I say it--I promise it--I swear it! Do I not love you? Am I not giving
+my soul for you? Have I not given it already? What more can I do or
+say?"
+
+"I do not know," he answered a second time, holding her with his eyes.
+"I must believe you before I go."
+
+He spoke honestly and earnestly, not meaning to exasperate her,
+searching in her look for what was unmistakably in his own. His hands
+shook, not weakly, as they held hers. His piercing eyes seemed to see
+through and through her. She trembled all over, and the colour rose to
+her face, more in despair of convincing him than in a blush of shame.
+
+"Believe me!" she said, imperiously, and her eyelids contracted with the
+effort of her will.
+
+But he said nothing. She felt that he was immeasurably stronger than
+she. But just then, he was not more desperate. There was a short,
+intense silence. Her face grew pale and was set with the fatal look she
+sometimes had.
+
+"I pledge you with my blood!" she said suddenly.
+
+Her eyes did not waver from his, but she wrenched her right hand from
+him, and before he could take it again, her even teeth had met in the
+flesh. The bright scarlet drops rose high and broke, and trickled in
+vivid stripes across her hand as she held it before his face. Her own
+was very white, but without a trace of pain. Something in the fierce
+action appealed strongly to the fiery Celtic nature of the man. His
+features relaxed instantly.
+
+"I believe you," he said, and she knew it as his arms went round her;
+and the pain of the wound made his kisses sweeter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+WHEN Dalrymple left Maria on that day, he returned as usual to
+Stefanone's house. Sora Nanna was alone, for Stefanone was still absent
+in Rome, and Annetta had gone on the previous day with a number of women
+to the fair at Civitella San Sisto, which took place on Sunday. She was
+expected to return on Monday afternoon. It is usual enough for a party
+of women, with two or three men, to go to the fairs in neighbouring
+towns and to spend the night with the friends of some one of the
+company. It was more common still, in those days.
+
+Sora Nanna gave Dalrymple his dinner and kept him company for a while.
+But he was gloomy and preoccupied, and before long she retired to the
+regions of the laundry, which was installed in a long low building that
+ran out into the vegetable garden at the back of the house. Monday was
+generally the day for ironing the heavy linen of the convent, which was
+taken up on Tuesdays in the huge baskets carried by four women, slung to
+a pole which rested on their shoulders in the old primitive fashion,
+just as litters are still carried in many parts of Asia. It had
+occurred more than once to Dalrymple, during the last two days, that he
+could hide almost anything he chose in one of these baskets, which were
+always delivered directly to Maria Addolorata and which she was at
+liberty to unpack in the privacy of the linen room if she chose.
+
+He thought of this again as he sat over his dinner, and heard the
+endless song of the women, far off, at their work. He knew the habits of
+the house thoroughly and all the customs regarding the carrying up of
+the baskets, and he remembered that several of them would surely be
+taken to the convent on the morrow. He thought that if he could procure
+some more suitable clothes for Maria to wear, this would be a safe means
+of conveying them to her. She could put them on in her cell, just before
+the hour at which she was to expect him, so that there would be no time
+lost and the danger of detection during their flight would be greatly
+diminished. But there were all sorts of difficulties in the way, and he
+realized them one by one, until he almost abandoned the scheme in favour
+of the cloak and plaid which he had first proposed.
+
+He pushed back his chair and went upstairs to his own room. The
+impression made upon him by Maria Addolorata, when she had bitten her
+hand, had been a strong one, but the man's nature, though not exactly
+distrustful, was melancholic and pessimistic. Two hours and more had
+passed since they had been together, and things had a different look. He
+realized more clearly the strength of the ties which bound Maria to her
+convent life, and the effort it must be to her to break them. He
+remembered the arguments he had used, and he saw that they had been
+those of passion rather than of reason. Their effect could not be
+lasting, when he himself was not there to lend them his words and the
+persuasion of his strength. Maria would repent of her promise, and there
+was nothing to bind her to it. Hitherto there had been no risk, no
+common danger. By a chain of natural circumstances he had made his way
+into a most extraordinary position, but it was in her power, in a moment
+of repentance, to force him from it. While the abbess was ill, Maria was
+virtually mistress of the convent. At a word from her the doors might be
+shut in his face. She might promise again, and bite her hand again, but
+when it came to his waiting outside the garden gate, she might be seized
+by a fit of repentance, and he might wait till morning.
+
+As he sat in his room he realized all this, and more, for he knew that
+on calm reflexion he meant to do what he had that morning threatened in
+his haste. He had never been attached to life for its own sake.
+Melancholic men often are not. He had many times thought over the
+subject of suicide with a sort of grim interest in it, which indicated
+the direction his temper would take if he were ever absolutely defeated
+in a matter which he had at heart.
+
+Nothing he had ever felt in his life had taken hold of him as his love
+for Maria Addolorata, for he had never really been in love before and he
+had completely abandoned himself to it, as such a man was sure to do in
+such surroundings. She was beautiful, but that was not all. Since he had
+heard her sing, he knew that her voice and her rare talent together were
+genius and nothing less. But that was far from being all. She was of his
+own class, and he had been seeing her daily, when the peasant women
+amongst whom he lived were little more than good-natured animals; but
+even that was not all. He was at that time of life when a man's
+character is apt to take a violent and sudden turn in its ultimate
+direction, when the forces that have been growing show themselves all at
+once, when passion, having appealed as yet but to the man, has climbed
+and is within reach of his soul, to take hold of it and twist it, or to
+be finally conquered, perhaps, in a holy life. But Dalrymple was very
+far from being the kind of man who could have taken refuge against
+himself in higher things. At a time when materialism was beginning to
+seem a great thing, he was a strong materialist in scientific
+questions. He grasped what he could see and held it, but what he could
+not see had no existence for him. Nothing transcendental attracted him
+beyond the sphere of mathematics. Yet he had not the materialist's
+temperament, for the Highland blood in his veins brought strong fancies
+and sudden passions to his head and heart, such as his chemistry could
+not explain; and when the brain burned and the heart beat fast, it meant
+doing or dying with him, as with many a Scotchman before and since. Life
+had never seemed to be worth much in his eyes, compared with a thing he
+wanted.
+
+He sat still and thought the matter over, and considered the question of
+death, for a few short minutes. There was not a trace of philosophical
+speculation in his reflexions, or they would have lasted longer. He
+merely desired to be sure, with that curious Scotch caution, of his own
+intentions, in order not to be obliged to think the matter over again at
+the last minute.
+
+He had drunk a measure of strong wine with his dinner, as usual. To-day
+it increased the gloom of his temper, and the pessimistic view he took.
+In less than a quarter of an hour he had made up his mind that if Maria
+Addolorata repented at a late hour and refused to leave the convent, he
+would make an attempt to carry her away by force. If he failed, and
+found himself shut off from all possibility of intercourse with her,
+life would not be worth living, and he would throw it away. When strong
+men are in that frame of mind, they generally accomplish what they have
+in view. Moreover, it is a great mistake to think that the people who
+think and talk of suicide will not take their own lives. On the
+contrary, statistics show that it is more often those who speak of it
+the most frequently, who ultimately make away with themselves. The mere
+fact of contemplating and discussing death familiarizes man with it till
+he does not even attribute to it its true value, which is little enough,
+as most of us know. Dalrymple was in earnest, and he knew it.
+
+He rose from his chair and unlocked his little laboratory. Among many
+other things upon the long table there was a plain English oak box,
+filled with small stoppered bottles, each having a label upon it with
+the name of the contents written in his own hand. Some were merely
+medicines, which he carried with him in case his services should ever be
+required, as had happened at the present time. Others were chemicals
+which he used in his experiments, such as he could not easily have
+procured in Italy, outside of the great cities. One even contained the
+common spirits of camphor, of which he had once given Annetta a
+teaspoonful when she had complained of a chill and sickness. One,
+however, was more than half full of a solution of hydrocyanide of
+potassium, a liquid little less suddenly and surely fatal than the
+prussic acid which enters into its composition.
+
+He took out this bottle and held it up to the light. The liquid was
+clear and transparent as water. He watched it curiously as he made it
+run up to the neck and back again. It might have been taken for pure
+alcohol, being absolutely colourless.
+
+"It would not take much of that," he said to himself, with a grim smile.
+
+His meditations were interrupted by the voice of Sora Nanna, who had
+opened his bedroom door without ceremony and stood calling to him. He
+came forward hastily from the laboratory and went up to her.
+
+"You do not know!" she cried, laughing and holding up a letter.
+"Stefanone has written to me from Rome! To me! Who the devil knows what
+he says? I do not understand anything of it. Who should teach me to
+read? He takes me for a priest, that I should know how to read!"
+
+Dalrymple laughed a little as he took the letter. He picked up his hat
+from a chair, for he meant to go out and spend the afternoon alone upon
+the hillside.
+
+"We will read it downstairs," he said. "I am going for a walk."
+
+He read it to her in the common room on the ground floor. It was a
+letter dictated by Stefanone to a public scribe, instructing his wife to
+tell Gigetto that she must send another load of wine to Rome as soon as
+possible, as the price was good in the market. Stefanone would remain in
+the city till it came, and sell it before returning.
+
+"These husbands!" exclaimed Sora Nanna, with a grin. "What they will not
+do! They go, riding, riding, and they come back when it seems good to
+them. Who tells me what he does in Rome? Rome is great."
+
+Dalrymple laughed, put on his hat and went off, leaving Sora Nanna to
+find Gigetto and give the necessary directions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+GIGETTO had refused to accompany Annetta and her party to the fair at
+Civitella San Sisto. He had been to Rome several times, and was far too
+fine a young gentleman to divert himself in such a very primitive place.
+He preferred to spend his leisure hours, which were very many, in
+elegant idleness, according to his lights, between the tobacconist's,
+the chemist's shop, which was the resort of all the superior men of the
+place after four o'clock in the afternoon, and the abundant, though not
+very refined table which was spread twice daily in his father's house.
+Civitella wine, Civitella fireworks, and especially Civitella girls,
+were quite beneath his notice. As for Annetta, he looked upon her with
+something like contempt, though he had a high respect for the fortune
+which must one day be hers. She was to be a necessary encumbrance of his
+future life, and for the present he meant to see as little of her as was
+conveniently possible without relinquishing his claims to her hand. She
+had admired him, in a way, until the arrival of Dalrymple, and he felt a
+little irritation at the Scotchman's presence in the house, so that he
+occasionally frightened Sora Nanna by talking of waiting for him with a
+gun at the corner of the forest. It produced a good impression, he
+thought, to show from time to time that he was not without jealousy. But
+as for going with her on such an expedition as a visit to a country
+fair, it was not to be expected of him.
+
+Nevertheless, Annetta had enjoyed herself thoroughly with her
+companions, and was very glad that Gigetto had not been at her elbow
+with his city notions of propriety, which he applied to her, but made as
+elastic as he pleased for himself. She had been to high mass in the
+village church, crowded to suffocation, she had walked up and down the
+main street half the afternoon, arm in arm with the other girls,
+giggling and showing off her handsome costume to the poorer natives of
+the little place, and smiling wickedly at the handsome youths who stood
+idly in groups at the corners of the streets. She had dined sumptuously,
+and had made her eyes sparkle like rather vulgar little stars by
+drinking a glass of strong old white wine to the health and speedy
+marriage of all the other girls. She had gone out with them at dusk, and
+had watched the pretty fireworks in the small piazza, and had wandered
+on with them afterwards in the moonlight to the ruin of the Cyclopean
+fortress which overlooks the two valleys. Then back to the house of her
+friends, who kept the principal inn, and more tough chicken and tender
+salad and red wine for supper. And on the next day they had all gone
+down to the meagre vineyards, half way to San Vito and just below the
+thick chestnut woods which belong to the Marchese and feudal lord of
+that ancient town. And there amongst the showers of reddening vine
+leaves, she had helped to gather the last grapes of the year, with song
+and jest and laughter. At noon they climbed the hill again in the
+October sun, and dined upon the remains of the previous day's feast;
+then, singing still, they had started on their homeward downward way,
+happy and not half tired yet when they reached Subiaco in the evening
+glow.
+
+They came trooping through the town to the little piazza in which the
+doctor's house was situated. They separated here, some to go up to the
+higher part, while others were to go down in the same direction as
+Annetta. The girl looked up at the doctor's windows, and her small eyes
+flashed viciously. It would be a pleasant ending to the two days'
+holiday to have a look at her work. Now that he was getting well, as
+Dalrymple told her, she was glad that she had not killed him. It was an
+even greater satisfaction to have almost frightened the old coward to
+death. She had been uneasy about the question of confession.
+
+"By Bacchus," she laughed, "I will go and see Sor Tommaso. They say he
+is better."
+
+So she took leave of her companions and entered the narrow door, and
+climbed the short flight of dark steps and knocked. The doctor's
+sleeping-room opened directly upon the staircase. He used the room on
+the ground floor as an office and dining-room, his old peasant
+woman-servant slept in the attic, and the other two rooms were let by
+the year. It was a very small house.
+
+The old woman, whose name was Serafina, opened the bedroom door and
+thrust out her head, covered with a dark and threadbare shawl. There was
+a sibylline gloom about her withered face, as though she had lived a
+lifetime in the face of a horror to come.
+
+"What do you want?" she croaked roughly, and not opening the door any
+wider.
+
+"Eh! What do I want? I am the Annetta of Stefanone, and I have come to
+pay a visit to this dear doctor, because they say that he is better, God
+bless him."
+
+"Oh! I did not recognize you," said the old woman. "I will ask."
+
+Still holding the door almost closed, she drew in her head and spoke
+with Sor Tommaso. Annetta could hear his answer.
+
+"Of course!" he said, in a voice still weak, but singularly oily with
+the politeness of his intention. "Let her favour us!"
+
+The door was opened, and Annetta went in. Sor Tommaso was sitting up
+near the window, in a deep easy-chair covered with ragged green damask.
+The girl was surprised by his pallor, as compared with his formerly
+rubicund complexion. Peasant-like, she glanced about the room to judge
+of its contents before she spoke.
+
+"How are you, dear Sor Tommaso?" she asked after the short pause. "Eh,
+what we have suffered for you, all of us! Who was this barbarian who
+wished to send you to Paradise?"
+
+"Who knows?" returned Sor Tommaso, with amazing blandness. "I trust that
+he may be forgiven as I forgive him."
+
+"What it is to be a wise man!" exclaimed Annetta, with affected
+admiration. "To have such sentiments! It is a beautiful thing. And how
+do you feel now, dear Sor Tommaso? Are you getting your strength again?
+They took your blood, those cowardly murderers! You must make it again."
+
+Their eyes met, and each knew that the other knew and understood. Sor
+Tommaso smiled gently. The savage girl's mouth twitched as though she
+should have liked to laugh.
+
+"Little by little; who goes slowly goes safely," answered the doctor. "I
+am an old man, you must know."
+
+"Old!" Annetta was glad of the opportunity to laugh at last. "Old? Eh,
+on Sunday, when you have on those new black trousers of yours that are
+tight, tight--you seem to me a boy as young as Gigetto. For my part, I
+should prefer you. You are more serious. Gigetto! What must I say? He is
+handsome, he may be good, but he has not a head. There is nothing in
+that pumpkin."
+
+"Blood of youth," answered Sor Tommaso. "It must boil. It must fling its
+chains about. Afterwards it begins to know the chains. Little by little
+it accustoms itself to them. Then it is quiet, quiet, as we old ones
+are. Sit down, my daughter. Serafina! A chair--the one that is not lame.
+These chairs remember the blessed soul of mamma," added Sor Tommaso, in
+explanation of their weakness.
+
+"Requiesca'!" exclaimed Annetta, sitting down.
+
+"Amen," responded Sor Tommaso. "You are so beautiful to-day," he
+continued, looking at her flowered bodice and new apron; "where have you
+been?"
+
+"Where should I go? To Civitella. There was the fair. We ate certain
+chickens--tough! But the air of the mountain consumes. There were also
+fireworks."
+
+"What? Have you walked?" asked Sor Tommaso.
+
+"Even with two legs one can walk," laughed the girl. "But of course a
+beast is better with four. The beasts had all gone to Tivoli with wine
+for Rome. They had not come back yesterday morning. Therefore with
+these two feet I walked. I and many others, girls like me. It is true
+that I am half dead."
+
+"You are fresher than lettuce," observed Sor Tommaso. "And then you have
+climbed up my stairs. This is a true Christian act. God return it to
+you. I am alone all day."
+
+"But the Englishman comes to see you," said Annetta, indifferently.
+
+"The Englishman, yes. He comes. More or less, he has almost cured me.
+But then, for his conversation, I say nothing!"
+
+"Meanwhile he is also curing the abbess. He has a fortunate hand. There
+death, here death--he makes them all alive. Where is death, now? Here,
+perhaps? Hidden in some corner, or under the bed? He has certain
+medicines, that Englishman! Medicines that you do not even dream of.
+Strong! It is I that tell you. Sometimes, the whole house smells of
+them. Death could not resist them a moment. They drive even the flies
+out of the windows. The Englishman gave me some once. I had been in the
+sun and had drunk a gallon of cold water, foolish as I was. I was
+thirsty, as I am now. Well, he gave me a spoonful of something like
+water, mixed in water. I do not tell you anything. At first it burned
+me. Arch-priest, it burned! Then, not even a minute, and I had Paradise
+in my body. And so it passed."
+
+"Who knows? A cordial, perhaps," observed Sor Tommaso, thoughtfully. "I
+have such cordials, too."
+
+"I do not doubt it," answered the girl, suspiciously. "But I would
+rather not taste them. I feel quite well."
+
+It crossed her mind that in return for three knife-thrusts, Sor Tommaso
+would probably not miss so good a chance of paying her with a glass of
+poison. She would certainly have done as much herself, had she been in
+his place.
+
+"Who thought of offering you cordials!" replied the doctor, with a
+polite laugh. "I said it to say it. But if you are thirsty, command me.
+There is water and good wine. They are the best cordials."
+
+"Eh, a little water. I do not refuse. As for the wine, no. I thank you
+the same. I am fasting and have walked. After supper, at home, I will
+drink."
+
+"Serafina!" cried Sor Tommaso, and the old sibyl immediately appeared
+from the stairs, whither she had discreetly retired to wait during
+Annetta's visit. "Bring water, and that bottle of my wine from
+downstairs. You know, the bottle of old wine of Stefanone's that was
+opened."
+
+"No, no. I want no wine," said Annetta, quickly.
+
+"Bring it all the same. Perhaps she will do us the honour to drink it."
+
+Serafina nodded, and her bare feet were heard on the stone steps as she
+descended.
+
+"It is bad to drink pure water when one is very thirsty," said Sor
+Tommaso. "It cramps the stomach. A little wine gives the stomach
+strength. But it is best to eat. If you will eat, there are fresh
+jumbles. I also eat them."
+
+"I thank you the same," answered Annetta. "I wish only water. It is a
+long way from Civitella, and there is no good spring. There is the brook
+that runs out of the pond at the foot of the last hill. But it is heavy
+water, full of stuff."
+
+Serafina came back, bringing two heavy tumblers of pressed glass on a
+little black japanned tray, with a decanter of cold water. In her other
+hand she carried two bottles, one half full of wine, the other
+containing the white and sugary syrup of peach kernels of which Italians
+are so fond.
+
+"I brought this also," she said, holding up the bottle as she set down
+the tray. "Perhaps it is better."
+
+"Yes," said Sor Tommaso, nodding in approbation. "It is better."
+
+"You will drink a little orgeat?" asked the old woman, in a tone of
+persuasion, and mixing it in the glass.
+
+"Water, simply water," said Annetta, who was still suspicious. "Give me
+water in the other glass."
+
+"But I have mixed already in both," answered Serafina. "Eh, you will
+drink it. You will not make an old woman like me go all the way down the
+stairs again. But then, it is good. It is I that tell you. I made it
+myself, yesterday morning, for the doctor, to refresh his blood a
+little."
+
+Annetta had risen to her feet and was watching the glasses, as the old
+woman stirred the white syrup in the water with an old-fashioned,
+long-handled spoon. She did not wish to seem absurdly suspicious, and
+yet she distrusted her enemy. She took one of the glasses, went to his
+side, and held it to his lips as one gives an invalid drink.
+
+"After you," he said, with a polite smile, but raising his hand to take
+the glass.
+
+"Sick people first, well people afterwards," answered Annetta, smiling
+too, but watching him intently.
+
+He had satisfied himself that she really suspected foul play, for he
+knew the peasants well, and was only a degree removed from them himself.
+He at once dismissed her suspicions by drinking half the tumbler at a
+draught. She immediately took the other and emptied it eagerly, as she
+was really very thirsty.
+
+"A little more?" suggested Serafina, in her croaking voice.
+
+"No," interposed Sor Tommaso. "It might hurt her--so much at once."
+
+But Annetta filled the tumbler with pure water, and emptied it again.
+
+"At last!" she exclaimed with a sigh of satisfaction. "What thirst! I
+seemed to have eaten ashes! And now I thank you, Sor Tommaso, and I am
+going home; for it is Ave Maria, and I do not wish to make a bad meeting
+in the dark as happened to you. Ugly assassins! I will never forgive
+them, never! What am I to say at home? That you will come to supper one
+of these days?"
+
+"Eh, if God wills," answered the doctor. "I will be accompanied by
+Serafina."
+
+"I!" exclaimed the old woman. "I am afraid even of a cat! What could I
+do for you?"
+
+"Company is always company," said Sor Tommaso, wisely. "Where one would
+not go, two go bravely. Good evening, my beautiful daughter," he added,
+looking up at Annetta. "The Madonna go with you."
+
+"Thank you, and good evening," answered the girl, dropping half a
+courtsey, with a vicious twinkle in her little eyes.
+
+She turned, and was out of the room in a moment. On the way home through
+the narrow streets in the evening glow, she sang snatches of song to
+herself, and thought of all she had said to Sor Tommaso, and of all he
+had said to her, and of how much afraid he was of her father's knife.
+For otherwise, as she knew, he would have had her arrested.
+
+Suddenly, at the last turning she stopped and turned very pale, clasping
+both hands upon her bodice.
+
+"Assassin!" she groaned, grinding her short white teeth. "_He_ has
+poisoned me, after all! An evil death to him and all his house!
+Assassin!"
+
+She forgot that she had experienced precisely the same sensations once
+before, when she had been overheated and had swallowed too much cold
+water.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+WITH slow steps, and pressing her clasped hands to her bodice, the girl
+reached the door of her father's house at dusk. She knew that he was
+away, and that as she had not come home earlier her mother would be in
+the lower regions preparing Dalrymple's supper for him. The door which
+gave access to the staircase from the street was still open, and she was
+almost sure of being able to reach her own room unobserved, unless she
+chanced to come upon Dalrymple himself on the stairs. Just then she
+would rather have met him than her mother. She was in great pain, and it
+would have been hard to explain to Sora Nanna that she believed herself
+to have been deliberately poisoned.
+
+She crept noiselessly up the stairs, which were almost dark, and she
+came to Dalrymple's door which faced the first landing. She paused and
+hesitated, leaning against the wall. He was a wise man in her opinion,
+and would of course understand her symptoms at once. But then, as she
+was poisoned, he could do nothing for her. If that were true, her next
+thought told her that Sor Tommaso must have poisoned himself. He would
+not do that. She had never heard of antidotes; for though poisoning was
+traditionally familiar to her and the people of her class, it was very
+uncommon. Yet her sharpened wit told her that if Sor Tommaso had
+swallowed the stuff, as he had done, with a smile, he had means at his
+disposal for counteracting it--some medicine which he had doubtless
+taken as soon as she had left him. But if he had medicine to save from
+poison, Dalrymple, who was a far wiser man, must have such medicines,
+too, and even better ones. This reflexion decided her. She was close to
+his door. It was probable that he would be in his room at that hour. She
+was in fear of her life, and she knocked.
+
+But Dalrymple had not come back. He had gone for a long walk alone in
+the hills, had climbed higher as the sun sank lower, and was belated in
+steep paths along which even his mountain-trained feet trod with some
+caution. He was too familiar with the country to lose his way, but he by
+no means found the shortest way there was, nor was he especially anxious
+to do so. The hours would pass sooner in walking than in sitting over
+his books under the flaring little flames of the three brass beaks.
+
+Annetta saw that there was no light in the room, for the hole through
+which the latch-string hung was worn wide with use. She felt dizzy, too,
+and the knife-like pain ran through her so that she bent herself. She
+knew that Dalrymple kept his medicines locked up in the laboratory, and
+that she could not get at them, though she would have had little
+hesitation in swallowing anything she found, in the simple certainty
+that all his medicines must be good in themselves, and therefore
+life-saving and good for her. But he was out, and she was sure that
+there could be nothing in the bedroom. She had herself too often looked
+into every corner when she watered and swept the brick floor each
+morning, and put things in order according to her primitive ideas.
+
+She then and there lost her hold upon life. She was poisoned, and must
+die. She was as sure of it as the Chinaman who has seen an eagle, and
+who, recognizing that his hour is come, calmly lies down and breathes
+his last by the mere suspension of volition. In old countries the lower
+orders, as a rule, have but a low vitality. It may be truer to say that
+the vital volition is weak. Let the learned settle the definition. The
+fact is easily accounted for. During generations upon generations the
+majority of European agricultural populations live upon vegetable food,
+like the majority of Eastern Asiatics, and with the same result. Hard
+labour produces hard muscles, but vegetable food yields a low vital
+tension, so to say. Soldiers know it well enough. The pale-faced city
+clerk who eats meat twice a day will out-fight and out-last and
+out-starve the burly labourer whose big thews and sinews are mostly
+compounded of potatoes, corn, and water.
+
+The girl crept up the stairs stealthily to her lonely little room, and
+lay down to die upon her bed, as though that were the only thing to be
+done under the circumstances. It never occurred to her to go to her
+mother and tell her what had happened and what she suspected, any more
+than it had suggested itself to Sor Tommaso to lay information against
+her for having stabbed him. If her father had been at home, she might
+perhaps have gone to him and told him with her dying breath that the
+doctor had killed her, and that Stefanone must avenge her. But he was
+away. She was stronger than her mother and had always dominated her. She
+knew also that if she complained, Sora Nanna would raise such a scream
+as would bring half Subiaco running to the house. The girl's animal
+instinct was to die alone, and quietly. So she made no sound, and lay
+upon her bed writhing in pain and holding her sides with all her might,
+but with close-set teeth and silent lips.
+
+Looked at from the point of view of fact, it was all ridiculous enough.
+The girl had been all day in the hot autumn sun, had eaten a quantity of
+over-ripe figs and grapes, which might have upset the digestion of an
+ostrich, had tired even her strong limbs with the final walk home, and
+had then, at Sor Tommaso's house, swallowed nearly a quart of ice-cold
+water. It was not surprising that she should be very ill. It was not
+even strange that the theory of poison should suggest itself. To her it
+was tragedy, and meant nothing less than death, when she lay down upon
+her bed.
+
+Between the spasms all sorts of things passed through her mind, when her
+head lay still upon the pillow. Chiefly and particularly her thoughts
+were filled with hatred of Sor Tommaso, and a sort of doglike longing to
+see Dalrymple's face before she died. She was still fascinated by the
+vision of his red hair and bright blue eyes which came back to her
+vividly, with the careless smile his hard face had for her
+half-childish, half-malicious sayings. And with the thought of him came
+also jealousy of Maria Addolorata, and another hatred which was deeper
+and stronger and more vengeful than any she owed Sor Tommaso. She felt,
+rather than understood, that Dalrymple loved the nun with all his heart.
+She had spoken of her to him and had watched his face, and had seen the
+quick, savage glare of his eyes, though his voice had only expressed his
+annoyance. As the vision of him rose before her, she saw him as he had
+been when the angry blush had overspread his face to the roots of his
+hair.
+
+The image fixed itself. In the dim shadow behind it, she saw the face of
+Maria Addolorata like a death-mask, and those strange, deep eyes of the
+nun's looking scornfully at her over the man's shoulder, though she
+forgot him in the woman's deadly fascination. She stared, unable to
+close her lids, as it seemed to her, though she longed to shut out the
+sight. Then a dull noise seemed to be in her ears, a noise that was not
+a sound, but the stunning effect on her brain of a sound not heard but
+imagined. There were great circles of light around the nun's head, which
+cut through Dalrymple's face and then hid it. They were like glories,
+like the halos about the heads of saints. Annetta was angry with them,
+for she was sure that Maria Addolorata was bad, and sinned in her
+throat.
+
+"An evil death on you and all your house!" cried the angry peasant girl,
+in a low voice.
+
+"Death!" She could not tell whence the echo came back to her, in a tone
+strange to her ears--for it was her own, perhaps.
+
+She was startled. The vision vanished, and she sat up on her bed with a
+quick movement, suddenly wide awake. The pain must have passed. No--it
+came again, but with far less keenness. She felt her face with her
+hands, and laughed softly, for she knew that she was alive. It was
+night, and she must have lain some time there all alone, for there was a
+silvery, misty something through the darkness, the white dawn of
+moonrise, which is not like the dawn of day, nor like the departing
+twilight. As she sat up she saw the outline of the hills, jagged against
+the crosses of the lead-joined panes in the window. There was the
+moon-dawn sending up its soft radiance to the sky. A little longer she
+watched, and a single bright point sent one level ray straight into her
+face. A moment more and the room was flooded with light so that she
+could see the smallest objects distinctly.
+
+"But I am alive!" she exclaimed in a soft, glad tone. "The brigand only
+did me a spite. He was afraid to kill me."
+
+The pain seized her again, less sharp than before, but keen enough to
+stir her anger. She still sat up, but bent forward, clasping her bodice.
+In the moonlight she could see her heavy shoes on her feet sticking up
+before her. Realizing that it was a disgraceful thing to lie down with
+them on, she sprang off the bed, and began to dust the coverlet with her
+hand. The pain passed.
+
+After all, she reflected, she had swallowed a quantity of cold water at
+Sor Tommaso's, whether the first glass had contained any poison or not.
+She had not forgotten, either, that the same thing had once happened to
+her before, and that Dalrymple had made it pass with a spoonful of
+something that had stung her mouth and throat, but which had afterwards
+warmed her and cured her. She felt chilly now, and she wished that she
+had some of that same stinging, warming stuff.
+
+Something moved, somewhere in the house. The girl listened intently for
+a moment. Probably Dalrymple had come back and was moving about in his
+room, washing his hands, as he always did before supper, and taking off
+his heavy boots. His room was immediately under hers, facing in the same
+direction. She went towards the door, intending to go down at once and
+ask him for some of his medicine. By this time she was persuaded that
+she was not in any danger, and her common-sense told her that she had
+merely made herself momentarily ill with too many grapes, too much cold
+water, and too long exposure to the sun. She did not care to let her
+mother know anything about it, for Sora Nanna would scold her. It would
+be a simple matter to catch the Scotchman at his door, to get what she
+wanted from him with an easily given promise of secrecy, and then to
+come downstairs as though nothing had happened.
+
+Annetta only hesitated a moment, and then went out into the dark
+staircase, and crept down, as she had crept up, feeling her way at the
+turnings, by the wall. She reached the door, and was surprised to see
+that there was no light within--none of that yellow light which a lamp
+makes, but only the grey glimmer of the moonlight through the shadow,
+creeping out by the hole of the latch-string. Her ears had deceived
+her, and Dalrymple was not there. Nevertheless she believed that he was.
+The moonlight would be in his room as it was in hers, just overhead, and
+he might not have taken the trouble to light his lamp. It was very
+probable. She tapped softly, but there was no answer. She was afraid
+that her mother might come up the stairs and hear her speaking through
+the door, as though by stealth. She put her lips close to the hole of
+the latch and whistled softly. Her whistle was broken by her own smile
+as she fancied that Dalrymple might start at the unexpected sound.
+
+But there was no response. Growing bolder, she called him gently.
+
+"Signor! Are you there?"
+
+There was no answer. Just then, as she stooped, the pain ran through her
+once more. She was so sure that she had heard him that she was convinced
+he must be within, very probably in his little laboratory beyond the
+bedroom. The pain hurt her, and he had the medicine. Very naturally she
+pulled the string and pushed the door open.
+
+He was not there. The moonlight flooded everything, and the whitewashed
+walls reflected it, so that the place was as bright as day. The first
+object that met her eyes was a small bottle standing near the edge of
+the table in the middle of the room, where Dalrymple had carelessly set
+it down in the afternoon when Sora Nanna had called him to read her
+letter. It was directly in the line of the moon's rays, and the stopper
+gleamed like a little star.
+
+Annetta started with joy as she saw it. It was the very bottle from
+which he had given her the camphor, less than a month ago--the same in
+size, in its transparent contents, in its label. It might have deceived
+a keener eye than hers.
+
+The door of the laboratory stood open, as he had left it, being at the
+time preoccupied and careless. She only stopped a moment to assure
+herself that the bottle was the right one, reflecting that he had
+perhaps felt ill and had taken some of it himself. She went on and
+looked into the little room.
+
+"Signore!" she called softly. But there was no answer.
+
+It was clear that Dalrymple was either still out, or was downstairs at
+his supper, with her mother. He might be out, however. It was quite
+possible, on such a fine evening, for he was irregular in his hours. He
+would not like it if he came in suddenly and found her meddling with his
+belongings. She crossed the room again and softly shut the door. At
+least, if he came, she would not be found with the bottle in her hand.
+She could give an excuse.
+
+It was all so natural. It was the same bottle. She knew the right
+quantity, for she had the peasant's memory for such detail. There was a
+glass and a decanter of water on a white plate on the table. She had no
+spoon, but that did not matter. She took out the stopper with her strong
+fingers, though it stuck a little. The pain ran through her again as she
+poured some of the contents into the tumbler, and it made her hand shake
+so that she poured out a little more than necessary. But it did not
+matter. She filled it up with water, held the glass up to the moonlight,
+and drank it at a draught, and set the empty tumbler upon the table
+again.
+
+Instantly her features changed. She felt as though she were struck
+through head and heart and body with red-hot steel. Maria Addolorata's
+death-mask rose before her in the moonlight.
+
+"An evil death on you and all your house!" she tried to say.
+
+But the words were not out of her mouth before she shivered, caught
+herself by the table, sank down, and lay stone dead upon the brick
+floor.
+
+There was no noise. Dying, she thought she screamed, but only the
+faintest moan had passed her lips.
+
+The door was shut, and the quiet moonlight floated in and silvered her
+dark, dead face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+AT moonrise on that evening, Maria Addolorata was standing at the open
+door of her cell, watching the dark clouds in the west, as they caught
+the light one by one, edge by edge. The black shadow of the convent
+covered all the garden still, and one passing could hardly have seen her
+as she stood there. Her veil was raised, and the cold mountain breeze
+chilled her cheeks. But she did not feel it, for she had been long by
+the abbess's bedside, and then long, again, in the close choir of the
+church, and her head was hot and aching.
+
+To her, as she looked towards the western mountains and watched the
+piling clouds, and felt the cool, damp wind, it seemed as though there
+were something strangely tragic in the air that night. The wind whistled
+now and then through the cracks of the convent windows and over the
+crenellations of the old walls, as Death's scythe might whistle if he
+were mowing down men with a right good will, heaps upon heaps of slain.
+The old bell struck the hour, sullenly, with a dead thud in the air
+after each stroke, as a bell tolls for a burial. The very clouds were
+black and silver in the sky, like a funeral pall.
+
+Maria Addolorata leaned against the door-post and looked out, her hand
+white in the shadow against the dark wood, her face whiter still. But on
+her hand there were two marks, visible even in the dimness. They would
+have been red in the day, and the place hurt her from time to time, for
+she had bitten it savagely. It was her pledge, and the pain of it
+reminded her of what she had promised to do.
+
+She needed the reminder; for now that he was not near her, the enormous
+crime stood out, black and lofty as death itself. It was different when
+Dalrymple was at her side. His violent vitality dragged hers into
+action, dragged, drove it, and goaded it, as unwilling soldiers have
+been driven into battle in barbarous armies. Then the fatality seemed
+irresistible, then the dangers seemed small, and the burning red shame
+was pale and weak. Those bony young hands of his had strength in them
+for two, his gleaming eyes burnt out the resistance in hers, and lighted
+them with their own glow. The hearty recklessness of his unbelief drove
+through and through her composite faith, and riddled it with loopholes
+for her soul's escape. Then the reality of her passion made her nobler
+love mad to be free, and to break through the solid walls in which it
+had been born and had grown too strong. When his love was there, hers
+matched itself with his, to smite fortune in the face, to dare and
+out-dare heaven and hell for love's sake, with him, the bursting blood
+made iron of her hand, tingling to buffet coward fate's pale mouth. Then
+she was strong above women; then she was brave as brave men; then,
+having promised, to keep was but the natural hold of will, to die was
+but to dare one little adversary more.
+
+But she was alone now, and thinking, as she looked out into the tragic
+night, and watched the blackness of the monumental clouds. She did not
+return to her former self, as some women do when the goad leaves the
+heart in peace for a moment. She did not say to herself that she would
+order the convent gate to be shut on Angus Dalrymple forever, and
+herself go back to the close choir, to sit in her seat amongst the rest,
+and sing holy songs with the others, restfully unhappy as many of them
+were. She knew far too well how strongly her heart could beat, and how
+icy cold her hands could grow when love was near her. Yet she shuddered
+with horror at what she had promised to do. She would struggle to the
+last, but she must yield when she heard his voice, and felt his hand, at
+the very last moment, when they should be at the garden gate, he drawing
+her on, she looking back.
+
+It was perjury and sacrilege, and earthly shame, and eternal damnation.
+Nothing less. And the words had full and deadly meaning for her. It
+mattered little that he should think differently, being of another
+faith, or rather, of no faith at all. It was all true to her. It was not
+risk; it was certainty. What forgiveness had earth or heaven for a
+faithless nun? He talked of marriage, and he would marry her according
+to a rite that had a meaning in his eyes. Heaven would not divorce the
+sworn and plighted spouse of Christ to be the earthly wife of Angus
+Dalrymple.
+
+Visions of eternal torment rose in her mind, a tangible searing hell
+alive with flame and devils, a sea of liquid fire, an ocean of boiling
+pitch, Satan commanding in the midst, and a myriad of fiends working his
+tormenting will.
+
+Her pale lips curled scornfully in the dark. Those were not the terrors
+that frightened her, nor the horrors from which she shrank. There was a
+question which was not to be answered by her own soul in damnation or
+salvation, but by the lips of men hereafter--the question of the honour
+of her name. The traditions of the good old barons were not dead in that
+day, nor are they all dead yet. Many a Braccio had done evil deeds in
+his or her day, and one, at least, had evil deeds to do after Maria
+Addolorata had been laid in her grave. But sin was one thing, and
+dishonour was quite another, even in the eyes of the nun of Subiaco. For
+her sins she could and must answer with the weal or woe of her own
+soul. But her dishonour would be upon her father and her mother and upon
+all her race. Nor was there any dishonour deeper, more deadly, or more
+lasting than that brought upon a stainless name by a faithless nun.
+Maria Braccio hesitated at disgrace, while Maria Addolorata smiled at
+perdition. It was not the first time that honour had taken God's part
+against the devil in the history of her family.
+
+That was the great obstacle of all, and she knew it now. She was able to
+face all consequences but that, terrible as they might be. The barrier
+was there, the traditional old belief in honour as first, and above
+every consideration. They had played upon that very belief, when, at the
+last, she had hesitated to take the veil. She had gone so far, they had
+told her, that it would be cowardly and dishonourable to turn back at
+the last minute. The same argument existed now. Then, she would at least
+have had human right and ecclesiastical law on her side, if she had
+refused to become a nun. Now, all was against her. Then, she would have
+had to face but the condemning opinion of a few who spoke of implied
+obligation. Now, she must stand up and be ashamed before the whole
+world. There would be a horrible publicity about it. She was too high
+born not to feel that all the world in which she should ever move was as
+one great family. Dalrymple might promise her honour and respect, and
+the affection of his own father and mother for the love of her parents,
+a home, respected wifehood, and all the rest. With his strength, he
+might impose her upon his family, and they might treat her as he should
+dictate, for he was a strong and dominant man. But in their hearts,
+Protestants, English people, foreigners as they were to her race, even
+they could not tell themselves honestly that it was not a shameful thing
+to break such vows as hers, shameful and nothing less. And if, for a
+moment, he were not there to hold them in his check, she should see it
+in their faces, and she must hang her head, for she could have nothing
+to answer. For him, she must not only sacrifice her soul, wrench out her
+faith, break her promise to God, and her vows to the Church. She must
+give herself to public, earthly shame, for his sake.
+
+It was too much. She could bear anything but that. Rather than endure
+that, it was better to die.
+
+The black clouds rose higher in the west, and the gloomy air blew upon
+her face. Her head was no longer hot, for a chilly horror had come upon
+her, like the shadow of something unspeakably awful, close at hand.
+Suddenly, she was afraid to be alone. A bat, lured by the second
+twilight of the moon's rising, whirled down from above, with softly
+flapping wings, and almost brushed her face. She drew back quickly into
+the doorway. It was a very tragic night, she thought. She shut the door,
+and groped her way out beyond her cell to the corridor, dimly
+illuminated by a single light hanging from the vault by a running cord.
+She entered the abbess's apartment. One of the sisters had taken her
+place, but Maria Addolorata sent her away by a gesture, and sat down by
+the bedside.
+
+The old lady was either asleep, or did not notice her niece's coming.
+Her face was grey as ashes, and upturned in the shadow. Upon the stone
+floor stood the primitive Italian night-light, a wick supported in a
+triangular bit of tin by three little corks in oil floating on water in
+a tumbler. The light was very clear and steady, though there was little
+of it, and to Maria, who had been long in comparative darkness, the room
+seemed bright enough. There was little furniture besides the plain bed,
+a little table, a couple of chairs, and a tall, dark wardrobe. A grim
+crucifix hung above the abbess's head, on the white wall, the work of an
+age in which horror was familiar to the eye, and needed exaggeration to
+teach hardened humanity.
+
+Maria was too much occupied with her own thoughts to notice the sick
+woman's condition at once. Besides, during the last two days there had
+been no return of the syncope, and the abbess had seemed to be improving
+steadily. She breathed rather heavily and seemed to be asleep.
+
+Gradually, however, as the nun sat motionless beside her and as the
+storm of thought subsided, she became aware that all was not right. Her
+aunt's face was unnaturally grey, the breathing was unusually slow and
+heavy. When the breath was drawn in, the thin nostrils flattened
+themselves strangely on each side, and the features had a peaked look.
+Maria rose and felt the pulse. It was fluttering, and not always
+perceptible.
+
+At first Maria's attention to these facts was only mechanical. Then,
+with a sudden sinking at her own heart, she realized what they might
+mean--another crisis like the one in which the abbess had so narrowly
+escaped death. It was true that on that occasion she had called for help
+more than once, showing that she had felt herself to be sinking. At
+present she seemed to be unconscious, which, if anything, was a worse
+feature.
+
+Maria drew a long breath and held it, biting her lips, as people do in
+moments of suspense, doubt, and anxiety. It was as though fate had
+thrust the great decision onward at the last moment. The life that hung
+in the balance before her eyes meant the possibility of waiting, with
+the feeble consolation of being yet undecided.
+
+She stood as still as a statue, her face like a mask, her hand on the
+unconscious woman's wrist. The stimulant which Dalrymple had shown her
+how to use was at hand--the glass with which to administer it. It would
+prolong life. It might save it.
+
+Should she give it? The seconds ran to minutes, and the dreadful
+question was unanswered. If the abbess died, as die she almost certainly
+must within half an hour, if the medicine were not given to her--if she
+died, Maria would call the sisters, the portress would be instructed,
+and when Dalrymple came on the morrow, he would be told that all was
+over, and that he was no longer needed. Nothing could be more sure. He
+might do his utmost. He could not enter the convent again.
+
+In a quick vision, as she stood stone-still, Maria saw herself alone in
+the chapel by night, prostrate, repentant, washing the altar steps with
+tears, forgiven of God, since God could still forgive her, honoured on
+earth as before, since none but the silent confessor could ever know
+what she had done, still less what she had meant to do. Her sorrow would
+be real, overwhelming, able to move Heaven to mercy, her penance
+true-hearted and severe as she deserved. Her name would be unspotted and
+unblemished.
+
+It would be so easy, if she had not to see him again. How could she
+resist him, if he could so much as touch her hand? But if she were
+defended from him, she could bury his love and pray for him in the
+memory of the thing dead. All that, if she but let that heavy breathing
+go on a little longer, if she did not raise her hand and set a glass to
+those grey, parted lips.
+
+They were parted now. The laboured breath was drawn through the teeth.
+The eyelids were a little raised, and showed but the white of the
+upturned eyes.
+
+Maria stared fixedly into the pinched face, and a new horror came upon
+her.
+
+It was murder she was doing. Nothing less. The power to save was there,
+and she would not use it. No--it could not be murder--it was not
+possible that she could do murder.
+
+Still with wide eyes she stared. Surely the heavy breath had come more
+quickly a moment ago. It seemed an age between each rise and fall of the
+coverlet. There was a ghastly whistling sound of it between the teeth.
+
+It was slower still. The eyelids were gradually opening--the blind white
+was horrible to see. Each breath was a convulsion that shook the frail
+body.
+
+It was murder. Her hand shot out like lightning and seized the small
+bottle. Let anything come,--love, shame, heaven, damnation; it should
+not be murder.
+
+She forced the unstoppered bottle into the dying woman's mouth with a
+desperate hand. The next breath was drawn with a choking effort. The
+whole body stirred. The thin hand appeared, grasped the coverlet with
+distorting energy, and then lay almost still, twitching convulsively
+second by second. Still Maria tried wildly to pour more of the stimulant
+between the set teeth. When they parted, no breath came, and the fingers
+only moved once more, for the very last time.
+
+It was not murder, but it was death. The wasted old woman had outlived
+by two or three hours the strong, young peasant girl, and fate had laid
+her hand heavily upon the life of Maria Addolorata.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+WHEN Dalrymple came home that evening, he found his supper already on
+the table and half cold. Sora Nanna was busier than her daughter, and
+less patient of the Scotchman's irregularities. If he could not come
+home at a reasonable hour, he must not expect her to keep everything
+waiting for him.
+
+He sat down to the table without even going upstairs as usual to wash
+his hands, simply because the cooked meat would be cold and greasy if he
+let it stand five minutes longer. Being once seated in his place, he did
+not move for a long time. Sora Nanna came in more than once. She was
+very much preoccupied about the load of wine which her husband had
+ordered to be sent, and which, if possible, she meant to send off before
+morning, for she did not wish him to be absent in Rome with money in his
+pocket a day longer than necessary.
+
+Gloomy and preoccupied, without even a book before him, Dalrymple sat
+with his back to the wall, drinking his wine in silence, and staring at
+the lamp. Sora Nanna asked him whether he had seen Annetta. He shook
+his head without speaking. The woman observed that the girls were quite
+capable of spending a second night at Civitella to prolong the
+festivities. Dalrymple nodded, not caring at all.
+
+Annetta being absent, Gigetto had not thought it necessary to put in an
+appearance. But Sora Nanna wished to see him again about the wine. With
+a grin, she asked Dalrymple whether he would keep house if she went out
+for half an hour. Again he nodded in silence. He heard her lock from the
+inside the door which opened from the staircase upon the street, for it
+was already late. Then she came through the common room again, with her
+overskirt over her head, went out, and left the door ajar. Dalrymple was
+alone in the house, unaware that Annetta was lying dead on the floor of
+his room upstairs.
+
+Sora Nanna had not been gone a quarter of an hour when a boy came in
+from the street. Dalrymple knew him, for he was the son of the convent
+gardener.
+
+The lad said that Dalrymple was wanted immediately, as the abbess was
+very ill. That was all he knew. He was rather a dull boy, and he
+repeated mechanically what he had been told. The Scotchman started and
+was about to speak, when he checked himself. He asked the boy two or
+three questions, in the hope of getting more accurate information, but
+could only elicit a repetition of the message. He was wanted
+immediately, as the abbess was very ill.
+
+He covered his eyes with his hand for a few seconds. In a flash he saw
+that if he were ever to carry off Maria Addolorata, it must be to-night.
+The chances were a hundred to one that if there were another crisis, the
+abbess would be dead before he could reach the convent. Once dead, there
+was no knowing what might happen in the confusion that would ensue, and
+during the elaborate funeral ceremonies. The man had that daring temper
+that rises at obstacles as an eagle at a crag, without the slightest
+hesitation. When he dropped his hand upon the table he had made up his
+mind.
+
+It was generally easy to get a good mule at any hour of the night in
+Subiaco. The mules were in their stables then. In the daytime it would
+have been very doubtful, when most of them were away in the vineyards,
+or carrying loads to the neighbouring towns. The convent gardener, who
+was well-to-do in the world, had a very good mule, as Dalrymple knew,
+and its stable was half-way up the ascent. The boy could saddle it with
+the pack-saddle without any difficulty, and meet him anywhere he chose.
+Dalrymple's reputation was excellent as a liberal foreigner who paid
+well, and the gardener would not blame the boy for saddling the mule
+without leave.
+
+In a few words Dalrymple explained what he wanted, and to help the lad's
+understanding he gave him some coppers which filled the little fellow
+with energy and delight. The boy was to be at the top of the mule path
+leading down from above the convent to the valley in half an hour.
+Dalrymple told him that he wished to go to Tivoli, and that the boy
+could come with him if he chose, after the visit to the abbess was over.
+The boy ran away to saddle the mule.
+
+Dalrymple rose quickly, and shut the street door in order to take the
+lamp with him to his room, and not to leave the house open with no light
+in it. The case was urgent. He went upstairs, carrying the lamp, and
+opened the door of his quarters. Instantly he recognized the faint,
+sickly odour of hydrocyanide of potassium, and remembered that he had
+left the bottle with the solution on his table that afternoon in his
+hurry. Then he looked down and saw a white face upon the floor, and the
+flowered bodice and smart skirt of the peasant girl.
+
+He had solid nerves, and possessed that perfect indifference to death as
+a phenomenon which most medical men acquire in the dissecting-room. But
+he was shocked when, bending down, and setting the lamp upon the floor,
+he saw in a few seconds that Annetta had been dead some time. He even
+shook his head a little, very slowly, which meant a great deal for his
+hard nature. Glancing at the unstoppered bottle and at the empty glass,
+side by side on the table, he understood at once that the girl,
+intentionally or by mistake, had swallowed enough of the poison to kill
+half-a-dozen strong men. He remembered instantly how he had once given
+her spirits of camphor when she had felt ill, and he understood all the
+circumstances in a moment, almost as though he had seen them.
+
+Scarcely thinking of what he was doing, though with an effort which any
+one who has attempted to lift a dead body from the ground will
+understand, he took up the lifeless girl, stiff and stark as she was,
+and laid her upon his own bed. It was a mere instinct of humanity. Then
+he went back and took the lamp and held it near her face, and shook his
+head again, thoughtfully. A word of pity escaped his lips, spoken very
+low.
+
+He set the lamp down on the floor by the bedside, for there was no small
+table near. There never is, in peasants' houses. He began to walk up and
+down the room, thinking over the situation, which was grave enough.
+
+Suddenly he smelt the acrid odour of burning cotton. He turned quickly,
+and saw that he had placed the three-beaked lamp so near to the bed that
+the overhanging coverlet was directly above one of the flames, and was
+already smouldering. He smothered it with the stuff itself between his
+hands, brought the lamp into the laboratory, and set it upon the table.
+
+Then, realizing that his own case was urgent, he began to make his
+preparations. He took a clean bottle and poured thirty-five drops of
+laudanum into it, put in the stopper, and thrust it into his pocket.
+Unlocking another box, he took out some papers and a canvas bag of gold,
+such as bankers used to give travellers in those times when it was
+necessary to take a large supply of cash for a journey. He threw on his
+cloak, took his plaid over one arm and went back into his bedroom,
+carrying the lamp in the other hand. Then he hesitated, sniffing the air
+and the smell of the burnt cotton. Suddenly an idea seemed to cross his
+mind, for he put down the lamp and dropped his plaid upon a chair. He
+stood still a moment longer, looking at the dead girl as she lay on the
+bed, biting his lip thoughtfully, and nodding his head once or twice. He
+made a step towards the bed, then hesitated once more, and then made up
+his mind.
+
+He went back to the bedside, and stooping a little lifted the body on
+his arms as though judging of its weight and of his power to carry it.
+His first instinct had been to lock the door of the room behind him, and
+to go up to the convent, leaving the dead girl where she was, whether he
+were destined to come back that night, or never. A moment's reflection
+had told him that if he did so he must certainly be accused of having
+poisoned her. He meant, if it were possible, to take Maria Addolorata on
+board of the English man-of-war at Civita Vecchia within twenty-four
+hours. So far as the carrying off of a nun was concerned, he would be
+safe on the ship; but if he were accused of murder, no matter how
+falsely, the captain would have a right to refuse his protection, even
+though he was Dalrymple's friend. A little chain of circumstances had
+led him to form a plan, in a flash, which, if successfully carried out,
+would account both for the disappearance of Annetta herself, and of
+Maria Addolorata as well.
+
+His eyelids contracted slightly, and his great jaw set itself with the
+determination to overcome all obstacles. In a few seconds he had
+divested the dead girl of her heavy bodice and skirt and carpet apron
+and heavy shoes. He rolled the things into a bundle, tossed them into
+the laboratory, locked the door of the latter, and stuck the key into
+his pocket. He carefully stopped the bottle containing the remainder of
+the prussiate of potassium, and took that also. Then he rolled the body
+up carefully in his great plaid, mummy-like, and tied the ends of the
+shawl with shoe-laces which he had among his things. He drew his soft
+hat firmly down upon his forehead, and threw his cloak over his left
+shoulder. He lifted the body off the bed. It was so stark that it stood
+upright beside him. With his right arm round its waist, he raised it so
+high that he could walk freely, and he drew his wide cloak over it as
+well as he could, and freed his left hand. He grasped the lamp as he
+passed the table, listened at the door, though he knew that the house
+was locked below, and he cautiously and with difficulty descended the
+stairs.
+
+Just inside the street door of the staircase there was a niche, as there
+is in almost all old Italian houses. He set the body in it, and went
+into the common room with the lamp. Taking the bottle with the laudanum
+in it from his pocket, he filled it more than half full of aniseed
+cordial, of which a decanter stood with other liquors upon a sideboard,
+as usual in such places. He returned it to his pocket, and listened
+again. Then he assured himself that he had all he needed--the bottle,
+money, his cloak, and a short, broad knife which he always took with him
+on his walks, more for the sake of cutting a loaf of bread if he stopped
+for refreshment than for any other purpose. His passport he had taken
+with his few other valuable papers from the box.
+
+He left the lamp on the table, and unlocked the street door, though he
+did not pull it open. Brave as he was, his heart beat fast, for it was
+the first decisive moment. If Sora Nanna should come home within the
+next sixty seconds, there would be trouble. But there was no sound.
+
+In the dark he went back to the door of the staircase, unlocked it, and
+opened it wide, looking out. The heavy clouds had so darkened the
+moonlight that he could hardly see. But the street was quiet, for it was
+late, and there were no watchmen in Subiaco at that time. A moment
+later, the door was closed behind him, and he was disappearing round the
+dark corner with Annetta's body in his arms, all wrapped with himself in
+his great cloak.
+
+It was a long and terrible climb. A weaker man would have fainted or
+given it up long before Dalrymple set his foot firmly upon the narrow
+beaten path which ran along between the garden wall at the back of the
+convent, and the precipitous descent on his left. The sweat ran down
+over his hard, pale face in the dark, as he shook off his cloak and laid
+down his ghastly burden under the deep shadow of the low postern. He
+shook his big shoulders and wiped his brow, and stretched out his long
+arms, doubling them and stretching them again, for they were benumbed
+and asleep with the protracted effort. But so far it was done, and no
+one had met him. There had been little chance of that, but he was glad,
+all the same. And if, down at the house, any one went to his room,
+nothing would be found. He had the key of the little laboratory in his
+pocket. It would be long before they broke down the door and found
+Annetta's skirt and bodice and shoes wrapped together in a corner.
+
+He went on up the ascent five minutes further, walking as though on air
+now that he carried no weight in his arms. At the top of the mule path
+the lad was already waiting for him with the mule. He told the little
+fellow that he might have to wait half an hour longer, as he must go
+into the convent to see the abbess before starting for Tivoli. He bid
+him tie the mule by the halter to the low branch of an overhanging
+fig-tree, and sit down to wait.
+
+"It is a cool night," said Dalrymple, though he was hot enough himself.
+"Drink this, my boy."
+
+He gave him the little bottle of aniseed, opening it as he did so. The
+boy smelt it and knew that it was good, for it is a common drink in the
+mountains. He drank half of it, pouring it into his mouth with a
+gurgling sound.
+
+"Drink it all," said Dalrymple. "I brought it for you."
+
+The boy did not hesitate, but drained it to the last drop, and handed
+the bottle back without a word. Dalrymple made him sit down near the
+mule's head, well aside from the path, in case any one should pass. He
+knew that between the unaccustomed dose of spirits and the thirty-five
+drops of opium, the lad would be sound asleep before long. For the rest,
+there was nothing to be done but to trust to luck. He had done the
+impossible already, so far as physical effort was concerned, but Fortune
+must not thwart him at the end. If she did, he had in his other pocket
+enough left of what had killed Annetta to settle his own affairs
+forever, and he might need it. At that moment he was absolutely
+desperate. It would be ill for any one who crossed his path that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+DALRYMPLE wrapped his cloak about him once more, as he turned away, and
+retraced his steps by the garden wall. He glanced at the long dark thing
+that lay in the shadow of the postern, as he went by. It was not
+probable that it would be noticed, even if any one should pass that way,
+which was unlikely, between ten o'clock at night and three in the
+morning. He went on without stopping, and in three or four minutes he
+had gone round the convent to the main entrance, next to the church. He
+rang the bell. The portress was expecting him, and he was admitted
+without a word.
+
+He found Maria Addolorata in the antechamber of the abbess's apartment,
+veiled, and standing with folded hands in the middle of the little hall.
+She must have heard the distant clang of the bell, for she was evidently
+waiting for him.
+
+"Am I in time?" he asked in a tone of anxiety.
+
+She shook her head slowly.
+
+"Is she dead?"
+
+"She was dead before I sent for you," answered Maria Addolorata, in a
+low and almost solemn tone. "No one knows it yet."
+
+"I feared so," said Dalrymple.
+
+He made a step towards the door of the parlour, naturally expecting that
+Maria would speak with him there, as usual. But she stepped back and
+placed herself in his way.
+
+"No," she said briefly.
+
+"Why not?" he asked in quick surprise.
+
+She raised her finger to her veiled lips, and then pointed to the other
+door, to warn him that the portress was there and was almost within
+hearing. With quick suspicion he understood that she was keeping him in
+the antechamber to defend herself, that she had not been able to resist
+the desire to see him once more, and that she intended this to be their
+last meeting.
+
+"Maria," he began, but he only pronounced her name, and stopped short,
+for a great fear took him by the throat.
+
+"Yes," she answered, in her calm, low voice. "I have made up my mind. I
+will not go. God will perhaps forgive me what I have done. I will pray
+for forgiveness. But I will not do more evil. I will not bring shame
+upon my father's house, even for love of you."
+
+Her voice trembled a little at the last words. Even veiled as she was,
+the vital magnetism of the man was creeping upon her already. She had
+resolved that she would see him once more, that she would tell him the
+plain truth that was right, that she would bid him farewell, and
+promise to pray for him, as she must pray for herself. But she had sworn
+to herself that she would not speak of love. Yet with the first words
+she spoke, the word and the vibration of love had come too. Her hands
+disappeared in her sleeves, and her nails pressed the flesh in the
+determination to be strong. She little guessed the tremendous argument
+he had in store.
+
+"It is hard to speak here," he said. "Let us go into the parlour."
+
+She shook her head, and again moved backwards a step, so that her
+shoulders were almost against the door.
+
+"You must say what you have to say here," she answered after a moment's
+pause, and she felt strong again. "For my part, I have spoken. May God
+forget me in my utmost need if I go with you."
+
+Dalrymple seemed little moved by the solemn invocation. It meant little
+enough to him.
+
+"I must tell you a short story," he replied quietly. "Unless I tell you,
+you cannot understand. I have set my life upon your love, and I have
+gone so far that I cannot save my life except by you--my life and my
+honour. Will you listen to me?"
+
+She nodded, and he heard her draw a quick breath. Then he began his
+story, putting it together clearly, from the facts he knew, in very few
+words. He told her how Annetta must have mistaken the bottle on his
+table for camphor, and how he had found her dead. Nothing would save him
+from the accusation of having murdered the girl but the absolute
+disappearance of her body. Maria shuddered and turned her head quickly
+when he told her that the body was lying under the postern arch behind
+the garden wall. He told her, too, that the boy was by this time asleep
+beside the mule on the path beyond. Then he told her of his plan, which
+was short, desperate, and masterly.
+
+"You must tell no one that the abbess is dead," he said. "Go out through
+your cell into the garden, as soon as I am gone, and when I tap at the
+postern open the door. Leave a lamp in your cell. I will do the rest."
+
+"What will you do?" asked Maria, in a low and wondering tone.
+
+"You must lock the door of your cell on the inside and leave the lamp
+there," said Dalrymple. "You will wait for me in the garden by the gate.
+I will carry the poor girl's body in and lay it in your bed. Then I will
+set fire to the bed itself. Of course there is an under-mattress of
+maize leaves--there always is. I will leave the lamp standing on the
+floor by the bedside. I will shut the door and come out to you, and I
+can manage to slip the bolt of the garden gate from the outside by
+propping up the spring from within. You shall see."
+
+"It is horrible!" gasped Maria. "And I do not see--"
+
+"It is simple, and nothing else can save my life. Your cell is of course
+a mere stone vault, and the fire cannot spread. The sisters are asleep,
+except the portress, who will be far away. Long before they break down
+your door, the body will be charred by the fire beyond all recognition.
+They will see the lamp standing close by, and will suppose that you lay
+down to rest, leaving the lamp close to you--too close; that the abbess
+died while you were asleep, and that you had caught fire before you
+waked; that you were burned to death, in fact. The body will be buried
+as yours, and you will be legally dead. Consequently there will not be
+the slightest suspicion upon your good name. As for me, it will be
+supposed that I have procured other clothes for Annetta, thrown hers
+into the laboratory and carried her off. In due time I will send her
+father a large sum of money without comment. If you refuse, I must
+either be arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death for the murder of
+a girl who killed herself without my knowledge, or, as is probable, I
+shall go out now, sit down in a quiet place, and be found dead in the
+morning. It is certain death to me in either case. It would be
+absolutely impossible for me to get rid of the dead body without
+arousing suspicion. If it is wrong to save oneself by burning a dead
+body, it is not a great wrong, and I take it upon myself. It is the only
+wrong in the matter, unless it is wrong to love you and to be willing to
+die for you. Do you understand me?"
+
+Leaning back against the door of the parlour, Maria Addolorata had
+almost unconsciously lifted her veil and was gazing into his eyes. The
+plan was horrible, but she could not help admiring the man's strength
+and daring. In his voice, even when he told her that he loved her, there
+was that quiet courage which imposes itself upon men and women alike.
+The whole situation was as clear as day to her in a moment, for all his
+calculations were absolutely correct,--the fire-proof vault of the cell,
+the certainty that the body would be taken for hers, above all, the
+assurance of her own supposed death, with the utter freedom from
+suspicion which it would mean for her ever afterwards. Was she not to be
+buried with Christian burial, mourned as dead, and freed in one hour
+from all the consequences of her life? It was masterly, though there was
+a horror in it.
+
+She loved him more than her own soul. It was the fear of bringing shame
+upon her father and mother that had held her, far more than any
+spiritual dread. It was not strange that she should waver again when he
+had unfolded his scheme.
+
+She turned, opened the door, and led him into the parlour, where the
+silver lamp was burning brightly.
+
+"You must tell it all again," she said, still standing. "I must be quite
+sure that I understand."
+
+He knew well enough that she had finally yielded, since she went so far.
+In his mind he quickly ran over the details of the plan once more, and
+mentally settled what still remained to be decided. But since she wished
+it, he went over all he had said already. Being able to speak in his
+natural voice without fear of being overheard by the portress, and
+feeling sure of the result, he spoke far more easily and more
+eloquently. Before he had finished he was holding her hand in his, and
+she was gazing intently into his eyes.
+
+"It is life or death for me," he said, when he had told her everything.
+"Which shall it be?"
+
+She was silent for a moment. Then her strong mouth smiled strangely.
+
+"It shall be life for you, if I lose my soul for it," she said.
+
+She felt the quick thrill and pressure of his hand, and all the man's
+tremendous energy was alive again.
+
+"Then let us do it quickly," he answered. "I will go out with the
+portress. Go to your cell before we reach the end of the corridor, and
+shut the door with some noise. She will remember it afterwards. Wait at
+the garden gate till I tap softly, and leave the rest to me. There is no
+danger. Do not be afraid."
+
+"Afraid!" she exclaimed proudly. "How little you know me! It never was
+fear that held me. Besides--with you!"
+
+The two last words told him more than all she had ever said before, and
+for the first time he wholly trusted her. Besides, it was to be only for
+a few minutes, while he went out by the front gate and walked round to
+the back of the convent. The plan was so well conceived that it could
+not fail when put into execution.
+
+They shook hands, as two people who have agreed to do a desperate deed,
+each for the other's sake. Then as their grasp loosened, Dalrymple
+turned towards the door, but turned again almost instantly and took her
+in his arms, and kissed her as men kiss women they love when their lives
+are in the balance. Then he went out, passed through the antechamber,
+and found the portress waiting for him as usual. She took up her little
+lamp and led the way in silence. A moment later he heard Maria come out
+and enter her cell, closing the door loudly behind her.
+
+"Her most reverend excellency is in no danger now," he said to the
+portress, with Scotch veracity.
+
+"Sister Maria Addolorata may then rest a little," answered the lay
+sister, who rarely spoke.
+
+"Precisely so," said Dalrymple, drily.
+
+Five minutes later he was at the garden gate, tapping softly.
+Immediately the door yielded to his gentle pressure, for Maria had
+already unfastened the lock within.
+
+"Stand aside a little," said Dalrymple, in a whisper. "You need not
+see--it is not a pretty sight. Keep the door shut till I come back.
+Where is your cell?"
+
+She pointed to a door that was open above the level of the garden. A
+little light came out. With womanly caution she had set the lamp in the
+corner behind the door when she had opened it, so as to show as little
+as possible from without.
+
+She turned her head away as he passed her with his heavy burden,
+treading softly upon the hard, dry ground. But he was not half across
+the garden before she looked after him. She could not help it. The dark
+thing he carried in his arms attracted her, and a shudder ran through
+her. She closed the gate, and stood with her hand on the lock.
+
+It seemed to her that he was gone an interminable time. Though the moon
+was now high, the clouds were so black that the garden was almost quite
+dark. Suddenly she heard his step, and he was nearer than she thought.
+
+"It is burning well," he said with grim brevity.
+
+He stooped and looked closely in the dimness at the old-fashioned lock.
+It was made as he supposed and could be easily slipped from without. He
+found a pebble under his foot, raised the spring, and placed the small
+stone under it, after examining the position of the cracks in the wood,
+which were many.
+
+"There is plenty of time, now," he said, and he gently pushed her out
+upon the narrow walk, drawing the door after him.
+
+With his big knife, working through the widest crack he teazed the bolt
+into the socket. Then with his shoulder he softly shook the whole door.
+He heard the spring fall into its place, as the pebble dropped upon the
+dry ground.
+
+"No human being can suspect that the door has been opened," he said.
+
+He wrapped her in his long cloak, standing beside her under the wall.
+Very gently he pushed the veil and bands away from her golden hair. She
+helped him, and he kissed the soft locks. Then about her head he laid
+his plaid in folds and drew it forward over her shoulders. She let him
+do it, not realizing what service the shawl had but lately done.
+
+They walked forward. The boy was fast asleep and did not move. The mule
+stamped a little as they came up. Dalrymple lifted Maria upon the
+pack-saddle, sideways, and stretched the packing-cords behind her back.
+
+"Hold on," he said. "I will lead the mule."
+
+[Illustration: "An evil death on you!"--Vol. I., p. 218.]
+
+So it was all over, and the deed was done, for good or evil. But it was
+for evil, for it was a bad deed.
+
+To the last, fortune favoured Dalrymple and Maria, and everything took
+place after their flight just as the strong man had anticipated. Not a
+trace of the truth was left behind. Early in the morning the abbess was
+found dead, and in the little cell near by, upon the still smouldering
+remains of the mattress, lay the charred and burned form of a woman. In
+Stefanone's house, the little bundle of clothes in the locked laboratory
+was all that was left of Annetta. All Subiaco said that the Englishman
+had carried off the peasant girl to his own country.
+
+Up at the convent the nuns buried the abbess in great state, with
+catafalque and canopy, with hundreds of wax candles and endless funeral
+singing. They buried also another body with less magnificence, but with
+more pomp than would have been bestowed upon any of the other sisters,
+and not long afterwards a marble tablet in the wall of the church set
+forth in short good Latin sentences, how the Sister Maria Addolorata, of
+many virtues, had been burned to death in her bed on the eve of the
+feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, and all good Christians were
+enjoined to pray for her soul--which indeed was in need of their
+prayers.
+
+Stefanone returned from Rome, but it was a sad home-coming when he
+found that his daughter was gone, and unconsciously he repeated the very
+words she had last spoken when she was dying in Dalrymple's room all
+alone.
+
+"An evil death on you and all your house!" he said, shaking his fist at
+the door of the room.
+
+And Stefanone swore within himself solemnly that the Englishman should
+pay the price. And he and his paid it in full, and more also, after
+years had passed, even to generations then unborn.
+
+This is the first act, as it were, of all the story, and between this
+one and the beginning of the next a few years must pass quickly, if not
+altogether in silence.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+_GLORIA DALRYMPLE._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+IN the year 1861 Donna Francesca Campodonico was already a widow. Her
+husband, Don Girolamo Campodonico, had died within two years of their
+marriage, which had been one of interest and convenience so far as he
+had been concerned, for Donna Francesca was rich, whereas he had been
+but a younger son and poor. His elder brother was the Duca di Norba, the
+father of another Girolamo, who succeeded him many years later, of
+Gianforte Campodonico, and of the beautiful Bianca, in whose short, sad
+life Pietro Ghisleri afterwards held so large a part. But of these
+latter persons, some were then not yet born, and others were in their
+infancy, so that they play no part in this portion of the present
+history.
+
+Donna Francesca was of the great Braccio family, the last of a
+collateral branch. She had inherited a very considerable estate, which,
+if she had no descendants, was to revert to the Princes of Gerano. She
+had married Don Girolamo in obedience to her guardians' advice, but not
+at all against her will, and she had become deeply attached to him
+during the short two years of their married life. He had never been
+strong, since his childhood, his constitution having been permanently
+injured by a violent attack of malarious fever when he had been a mere
+boy. A second fever, even more severe than the first, caught on a
+shooting expedition near Fiumicino, had killed him, and Donna Francesca
+was left a childless widow, in full possession of her own fortune and of
+a little more in the shape of a small jointure. It was thought that she
+would marry again before very long, but it was too soon to expect this
+as yet.
+
+Among her possessions as the last of her branch of the Braccio family,
+of which the main line, however, was sufficiently well represented, was
+the small but beautiful palace in which she now lived alone. It was
+situated between the Capitoline Hill and the Tiber, surrounded on three
+sides by dark and narrow streets, but facing a small square in which
+there was an ancient church. When it is said that the palace was a small
+one, its dimensions are compared with the great Roman palaces, more than
+one of which could easily lodge a thousand persons. It was built on the
+same general plan as most of them, with a ground floor having heavily
+barred windows; a state apartment in the first story, with three stone
+balconies on the front; a very low second story above that, but not
+coextensive with it, because two of the great state rooms were higher
+than the rest and had clere-story windows; and last of all, a third
+story consisting of much higher rooms than the second, and having a
+spacious attic under the sloping roof, which was, of course, covered
+with red tiles in the old fashion. The palace, at that time known as the
+Palazzo, or 'Palazzetto,' Borgia, was externally a very good specimen of
+Renascence architecture of the period when the florid, 'barocco' style
+had not yet got the upper hand in Rome. The great arched entrance for
+carriages was well proportioned, the stone carvings were severe rather
+than graceful, the cornices had great nobility both of proportion and
+design. The lower story was built of rough-faced blocks of travertine
+stone, above which the masonry was smooth. The whole palace was of that
+warm, time-toned colour, which travertine takes with age, and which is,
+therefore, peculiar to old Roman buildings.
+
+Within, though it could not be said that any part had exactly fallen to
+decay, there were many rooms which had been long disused, in which the
+old frescoes and architectural designs in grey and white, and bits of
+bold perspective painted in the vaults and embrasures, were almost
+obliterated by time, and in which such furniture as there was could not
+survive much longer. About one-half of the state apartment, comprising,
+perhaps, fifteen or twenty rooms, large and small, had been occupied by
+Donna Francesca and her husband, and she now lived in them alone. In
+that part of the palace there was a sort of quiet and stately luxury,
+the result of her own taste, which was strongly opposed to the gaudy
+fashions then introduced from Paris at the height of the Second Empire's
+importance. Girolamo Campodonico had been aware that his young wife's
+judgment was far better than his own in artistic matters, and had left
+all such questions entirely to her.
+
+She had taken much pleasure in unearthing from attics and disused rooms
+all such objects as possessed any intrinsic artistic value, such as old
+carved furniture, tapestries, and the like. Whatever she found worth
+keeping she had caused to be restored just so far as to be useful, and
+she had known how to supply the deficiencies with modern material in
+such a way as not to destroy the harmony of the whole.
+
+It should be sufficiently clear from these facts that Donna Francesca
+Campodonico was a woman of taste and culture, in the modern sense.
+Indeed, the satisfaction of her tastes occupied a much more important
+place in her existence than her social obligations, and had a far
+greater influence upon her subsequent life. Her favourite scheme was to
+make her palace at all points as complete within as its architect had
+made it outside, and she had it in her power to succeed in doing so. She
+was not, as some might think, a great exception in those days. Within
+the narrow limits of a certain class, in which the hereditary
+possession of masterpieces has established artistic intelligence as a
+stamp of caste, no people, until recently, have had a better taste than
+the Italians; as no people, beyond these limits, have ever had a worse.
+There was nothing very unusual in Donna Francesca's views, except her
+constant and industrious energy in carrying them out. Even this might be
+attributed to the fact that she had inherited a beautiful but
+dilapidated palace, which she was desirous of improving until, on a
+small scale, it should be like the houses of the great old families,
+such as the Saracinesca, the Savelli, the Frangipani, and her own near
+relatives, the Princes of Gerano.
+
+She had an invaluable ally in her artistic enterprises in the person of
+an artist, who, in a sort of way, was considered as belonging to Casa
+Braccio, though his extraordinary talent had raised him far above the
+position of a dependent of the family, in which he had been born as the
+son of the steward of the ancient castle and estate of Gerano. As
+constantly happened in those days, the clever boy had been noticed by
+the Prince,--or, perhaps, thrust into notice by his father, who was
+reasonably proud of him. The lad had been taken out of his surroundings
+and thoroughly educated for the priesthood in Rome, but by the time he
+had attained to the age necessary for ordination, his artistic gifts had
+developed to such an extent that in spite of his father's
+disappointment, even the old Prince--the brother of Sister Maria
+Addolorata--advised Angelo Reanda to give up the Church, and to devote
+himself altogether to painting.
+
+Young Reanda had been glad enough of the change in his prospects. Many
+eminent Italians have begun life in a similar way. Cardinal Antonelli
+was not the only one, for there have been Italian prime ministers as
+well as dignitaries of the Church, whose origin was as humble and who
+owed their subsequent distinction to the kindly interest bestowed on
+them by nobles on whose estates their parents were mere peasants, very
+far inferior in station to Angelo Reanda's father, a man of a certain
+education, occupying a position of trust and importance.
+
+Nor was Reanda's priestly education anything but an advantage to him, so
+far as his career was concerned, however much it had raised him above
+the class in which he had been born. So far as latinity and rhetoric
+were to be counted he was better educated than his father's master; for
+with the same advantages he had greater talents, greater originality,
+and greater industry. As an artist, his mental culture made him the
+intellectual superior of most of his contemporaries. As a man, ten years
+of close association with the sons of gentlemen had easily enough made a
+gentleman of one whose instincts were naturally as refined as his
+character was sensitive and upright.
+
+Donna Francesca, as the last of her branch of the family and an orphan
+at an early age, had of course been brought up in the house of her
+relatives of Gerano, and from her childhood had known Reanda's father,
+and Angelo himself, who was fully ten years older than she. Some of his
+first paintings had been done in the great Braccio palace, and many a
+time, as a mere girl, she had watched him at his work, perched upon a
+scaffolding, as he decorated the vault of the main hall. She could not
+remember the time when she had not heard him spoken of as a young
+genius, and she could distinctly recall the discussion which had taken
+place when his fate had been decided for him, and when he had been at
+last told that he might become an artist if he chose. At that time she
+had looked upon him with a sort of wondering admiration in which there
+was much real friendly feeling, and as she grew up and saw what he could
+do, and learned to appreciate it, she silently determined that he should
+one day help her to restore the dilapidated Palazzetto Borgia, where her
+father and mother had died in her infancy, and which she loved with that
+sort of tender attachment which children brought up by distant relations
+often feel for whatever has belonged to their own dimly remembered
+parents.
+
+There was a natural intimacy between the young girl and the artist. Long
+ago she had played at ball with him in the great courtyard of the Gerano
+castle, when he had been at home for his holidays, wearing a black
+cassock and a three-cornered hat, like a young priest. Then, all at
+once, instead of a priest he had been a painter, dressed like other men
+and working in the house in which she lived. She had played with his
+colours, had scrawled with his charcoals upon the white plastered walls,
+had asked him questions, and had talked with him about the famous
+pictures in the Braccio gallery. And all this had happened not once, but
+many times in the course of years. Then she had unfolded to him her
+schemes about her own little palace, and he had promised to help her, by
+and bye, half jesting, half in earnest. She would give him rooms in the
+upper story to live in, she said, disposing of everything beforehand. He
+should be close to his work, and have it under his hand always until it
+was finished. And when there was no more to do, he might still live
+there and have his studio at the top of the old house, with an entrance
+of his own, leading by a narrow staircase to one of the dark streets at
+the back. She had noticed all sorts of peculiarities of the building in
+her occasional visits to it with the governess,--as, for instance, that
+there was a convenient interior staircase leading from the great hall to
+the upper story, by a door once painted like the wall, and hard to
+find, but now hanging on its hinges and hideously apparent. The great
+hall must all be painted again, and Angelo could live overhead and come
+down to his work by those steps. With childish pleasure she praised her
+own ingenuity in so arranging matters beforehand. Angelo was to help her
+in all she did, until the Palazzetto Borgia should be as beautiful as
+the Palazzo Braccio itself, though of course it was much smaller. Then
+she scrawled on the walls again, trying to explain to him, in childishly
+futile sketches, her ideas of decoration, and he would come down from
+his scaffold and do his best with a few broad lines to show her what she
+had really imagined, till she clapped her small, dusty hands with
+delight and was ultimately carried off by her governess to be made
+presentable for her daily drive in the Villa Borghese with the Princess
+of Gerano.
+
+As a girl Francesca had the rare gift of seeing clearly in her mind what
+she wanted, and at last she had found herself possessed of the power to
+carry out her intentions. As a matter of course she had taken Reanda
+into her confidence as her chief helper, and the intimacy which dated
+from her childhood had continued on very much the same footing. His
+talent had grown and been consolidated by ten years of good work, and
+she, as a young married woman, had understood what she had meant when
+she had been a child. Reanda was now admittedly, in his department, the
+first painter in Rome, and that was fame in those days. His high
+education and general knowledge of all artistic matters made him an
+interesting companion in such work as Francesca had undertaken, and he
+had, moreover, a personal charm of manner and voice which had always
+attracted her.
+
+No one, perhaps, would have called him a handsome man, and at this time
+he was no longer in his first youth. He was tall, thin, and very dark,
+though his black beard had touches of a deep gold-brown colour in it,
+which contrasted a little with his dusky complexion. He had a sad face,
+with deep, lustreless, thoughtful eyes, which seemed to peer inward
+rather than outward. In the olive skin there were heavy brown shadows,
+and the bony prominence of the brow left hollows at the temples, from
+which the fine black hair grew with a backward turn which gave something
+unusual to his expression. The aquiline nose which characterizes so many
+Roman faces, was thin and delicate, with sensitive nostrils that often
+moved when he was speaking. The eyebrows were irregular and thick,
+extending in a dark down beyond the lower angles of the forehead, and
+almost meeting between the eyes; but the somewhat gloomy expression
+which this gave him was modified by a certain sensitive grace of the
+mouth, little hidden by the thin black moustache or by the beard, which
+did not grow up to the lower lip, though it was thick and silky from the
+chin downwards.
+
+It was a thoughtful face, but there was creative power in the high
+forehead, as there was direct energy in the long arms and lean, nervous
+hands. Donna Francesca liked to watch him at his work, as she had
+watched him when she was a little girl. Now and then, but very rarely,
+the lustreless eyes lighted up, just before he put in some steady,
+determining stroke which brought out the meaning of the design. There
+was a quick fire in them then, at the instant when the main idea was
+outwardly expressed, and if she spoke to him inadvertently at such a
+moment, he never answered her at once, and sometimes forgot to answer
+her at all. For his art was always first with him. She knew it, and she
+liked him the better for it.
+
+The intimacy between the great lady and the artist was, indeed, founded
+upon this devotion of his to his painting, but it was sustained by a
+sort of community of interests extending far back into darker ages, when
+his forefathers had been bondsmen to her ancestors in the days of
+serfdom. He had grown up with the clearly defined sensation of belonging
+with, if not to, the house of Braccio. His father had been a trusty and
+trusted dependent of the family, and he had imbibed as a mere child its
+hereditary likes and dislikes, its traditions wise and foolish,
+together with an indomitable pride in its high fortunes and position in
+the world. And Francesca herself was a true Braccio, though she was
+descended from a collateral branch, and, next to the Prince of Gerano,
+had been to Reanda by far the most important person bearing the name.
+She had admired him when she had been a child, had encouraged him as she
+grew up, and now she provided his genius with employment, and gave him
+her friendship as a solace and delight both in work and idleness. It is
+said that only Italians can be admitted to such a position with the
+certainty that they will not under any circumstances presume upon it. To
+Angelo Reanda it meant much more than to most men who could have been
+placed as he was. His genius raised him far above the class in which he
+had been born, and his education, with his natural and acquired
+refinement, placed him on a higher level than the majority of other
+Roman artists, who, in the Rome of that day, inhabited a Bohemia of
+their own which has completely disappeared. Their ideas and
+conversation, when they were serious, interested him, but their manners
+were not his, and their gaiety was frankly distasteful to him. He
+associated with them as an artist, but not as a companion, and he
+particularly disliked their wives and daughters, who, in their turn,
+found him too 'serious' for their society, to use the time-honoured
+Italian expression. Nevertheless, his natural gentleness of disposition
+made him treat them all alike with quiet courtesy, and when, as often
+happened, he was obliged to be in their company, he honestly endeavoured
+to be one of them as far as he could.
+
+On the other hand, he had no footing in the society to which Francesca
+belonged, but for which she cared so little. There were, indeed, one or
+two houses where he was received, as he was at Casa Braccio, in a manner
+which, for the very reason that it was familiar, proved his social
+inferiority--where he addressed the head of the house as 'Excellency'
+and was called 'Reanda' by everybody, elders and juniors alike, where he
+was appreciated as an artist, respected as a man, and welcomed
+occasionally as a guest when no other outsider was present, but where he
+was not looked upon as a personage to be invited even with the great
+throng on state occasions. He was as far from receiving such cold
+acknowledgments of social existence as those who received them and
+nothing else were distantly removed from intimacy on an equal footing.
+
+He did not complain of such treatment, nor even inwardly resent it. The
+friendliness shown him was as real as the kindness he had received
+throughout his early youth from the Prince of Gerano, and he was not the
+man to undervalue it because he had not a drop of gentle blood in his
+veins. But his refined nature craved refined intercourse, and preferred
+solitude to what he could get in any lower sphere. The desire for the
+atmosphere of the uppermost class, rather than the mere wish to appear
+as one of its members, often belongs to the artistic temperament, and
+many artists are unjustly disliked by their fellows and pointed at as
+snobs because they prefer, as an atmosphere, inane elegance to inelegant
+intellectuality. It is often forgotten by those who calumniate them that
+hereditary elegance, no matter how empty-headed, is the result of an
+hereditary cultivation of what is thought beautiful, and that the
+vainest, silliest woman who dresses well by instinct is an artist in her
+way.
+
+In Francesca Campodonico there was much more than such superficial
+taste, and in her Reanda found the only true companion he had ever
+known. He might have been for twenty years the intimate friend of all
+Roman society without meeting such another, and he knew it, and
+appreciated his good fortune. For he was not naturally a dissatisfied
+man, nor at all given to complain of his lot. Few men are, who have
+active, creative genius, and whose profession gives them all the scope
+they need. Of late years, too, Francesca had treated him with a sort of
+deference which he got from no one else in the world. He realized that
+she did, without attempting to account for the fact, which, indeed,
+depended on something past his comprehension.
+
+He felt for her something like veneration. The word does not express
+exactly the attitude of his mind towards her, but no other defines his
+position so well. He was not in love with her in the Italian sense of
+the expression, for he did not conceive it possible that she should ever
+love him, whereas he told himself that he might possibly marry, if he
+found a wife to his taste, and be in love with his wife without in the
+least infringing upon his devotion to Donna Francesca.
+
+That she was young and lovely, if not beautiful, he saw and knew. He
+even admitted unconsciously that if she had been an old woman he could
+not have 'venerated' her as he did, though veneration, as such, is the
+due of the old rather than of the young. Her spiritual eyes and virginal
+face were often before him in his dreams and waking thoughts. There was
+a maidenlike modesty, as it were, even about her graceful bodily self,
+which belonged, in his imagination, to a saint upon an altar, rather
+than to a statue upon a pedestal. There was something in the sweep of
+her soft dark brown hair which suggested that it would be sacrilege and
+violence for a man's hand to touch it. There was a dewy delicacy on her
+young lips, as though they could kiss nothing more earthly than a newly
+opened flower, already above the earth, but not yet touched by the sun.
+There was a thoughtful turn of modelling in the smooth, white forehead,
+which it was utterly beyond Reanda's art to reproduce, often as he had
+tried. He thought a great sculptor might succeed, and it was the one
+thing which made him sometimes wish that he had taken the chisel for his
+tool, instead of the brush.
+
+She was never considered one of the great beauties of Rome. She had not
+the magnificent presence and colouring of her kinswoman, Maria
+Addolorata, whose tragic death in the convent of Subiaco--a fictitious
+tragedy accepted as real by all Roman society--had given her a special
+place in the history of the Braccio family. She had not the dark and
+queenly splendour of Corona d'Astradente, her contemporary and the most
+beautiful woman of her time. But she had, for those who loved her,
+something which was quite her own and which placed her beyond them in
+some ways and, in any case, out of competition for the homage received
+by the great beauties. No one recognized this more fully than Angelo
+Reanda, and he would as soon have thought of being in love with her, as
+men love women, as he would have imagined that his father, for instance,
+could have loved Maria Addolorata, the Carmelite nun.
+
+The one human point in his devoted adoration lay in his terror lest
+Francesca Campodonico should die young and leave him to grow old without
+her. He sometimes told her so.
+
+"You should marry," she answered one day, when they were together in the
+great hall which he was decorating.
+
+She was still dressed in black, and as she spoke, he turned and saw the
+outline of her small pure face against the high back of the old chair in
+which she was sitting. It was so white just then that he fancied he saw
+in it that fatal look which belonged to some of the Braccio family, and
+which was always spoken of as having been one of Maria Addolorata's
+chief characteristics. He looked at her long and sadly, leaning against
+an upright of his scaffolding as he stood on the floor near her, holding
+his brushes in his hand.
+
+"I do not think I shall ever marry," he answered at last, looking down
+and idly mixing two colours on his palette.
+
+"Why not?" she asked quickly. "I have heard you say that you might, some
+day."
+
+"Some day, some day--and then, all at once, the 'some day' is past, and
+is not any more in the future. Why should I marry? I am well enough as I
+am; there would only be unhappiness."
+
+"Do you think that every one who marries must be unhappy?" she asked.
+"You are cynical. I did not know it."
+
+"No. I am not cynical. I say it only of myself. There are many reasons.
+I could not marry such a woman as I should wish to have for my wife.
+You must surely understand that. It is very easy to understand."
+
+He made as though he would go up the ladder to his little platform and
+continue his work. But she stopped him.
+
+"What is the use of hurting your eyes?" she asked. "It is late, and the
+light is bad. Besides, I am not so sure that I understand what you mean,
+though you say that it is so easy. We have never talked about it much."
+
+He laid his palette and brushes upon a ragged straw chair and sat down
+upon another, not far from her. There was no other furniture in the
+great vaulted hall, and the brick pavement was bare, and splashed in
+many places with white plaster. Fresco-painting can only be done upon
+stucco just laid on, while it is still moist, and a mason came early
+every day and prepared as much of the wall as Reanda could cover before
+night. If he did not paint over the whole surface, the remainder was
+chipped away and freshly laid over on the following morning.
+
+The evening light already reddened the tall western windows, for it was
+autumn, and the days were shortening quickly. Reanda knew that he could
+not do much more, and sat down, to answer Francesca's question, if he
+could.
+
+"I am not a gentleman, as you understand the word," he said slowly. "And
+yet I am certainly not of the class to which my father belonged. My
+position is not defined. I could not marry a woman of your class, and I
+should not care to marry one of any other. That is all. Is it not
+clear?"
+
+"Yes," answered Francesca. "It is clear enough. But--"
+
+She checked herself, and he looked into her face, expecting her to
+continue. But she said nothing more.
+
+"You were going to find an objection to what I said," he observed.
+
+"No; I was not. I will say it, for you will understand me. What you tell
+me is true enough, and I am sorry that it should be so. Is it not to
+some extent my fault?"
+
+"Your fault?" cried Reanda, leaning forward and looking into her eyes.
+"How? I do not understand."
+
+"I blame myself," answered Francesca, quietly. "I have kept you out of
+the world, perhaps, and in many ways. Here you live, day after day, as
+though nothing else existed for you. In the morning, long before I am
+awake, you come down your staircase through that door, and go up that
+ladder, and work, and work, and work, all day long, until it is dark, as
+you have worked to-day, and yesterday, and for months. And when you
+might and should be out of doors, or associating with other people, as
+just now, I sit and talk to you and take up all your leisure time. It
+is wrong. You ought to see more of other men and women. Do men of genius
+never marry? It seems to me absurd!"
+
+"Genius!" exclaimed Reanda, shaking his head sadly. "Do not use the word
+of me."
+
+"I will do as other people do," answered Francesca. "But that is not the
+question. The truth is that you live pent up in this old house, like a
+bird in a cage. I want you to spread your wings."
+
+"To go away for a time?" asked Reanda, anxiously.
+
+"I did not say that. Perhaps I should. Yes, if you could enjoy a
+journey, go away--for a time."
+
+She spoke with some hesitation and rather nervously, for he had said
+more than she had meant to propose.
+
+"Just to make a change," she added, after a moment's pause, as he said
+nothing. "You ought to see more of other people, as I said. You ought to
+mix with the world. You ought at least to offer yourself the chance of
+marrying, even if you think that you might not find a wife to your
+taste."
+
+"If I do not find one here--" He did not complete the sentence, but
+smiled a little.
+
+"Must you marry a Roman princess?" she asked. "What should you say to a
+foreigner? Is that impossible, too?"
+
+"It would matter little where she came from, if I wished to marry her,"
+he answered. "But I like my life as it is. Why should I try to change
+it? I am happy as I am. I work, and I enjoy working. I work for you, and
+you are satisfied. It seems to me that there is nothing more to be said.
+Why are you so anxious that I should marry?"
+
+Donna Francesca laughed softly, but without much mirth.
+
+"Because I think that in some way it is my fault if you have not
+married," she said. "And besides, I was thinking of a young girl whom I
+met, or rather, saw, the other day, and who might please you. She has
+the most beautiful voice in the world, I think. She could make her
+fortune as a singer, and I believe she wishes to try it. But her father
+objects. They are foreigners--English or Scotch--it is the same. She is
+a mere child, they say, but she seems to be quite grown up. There is
+something strange about them. He is a man of science, I am told, but I
+fancy he is one of those English enthusiasts about Italian liberty. His
+name is Dalrymple."
+
+"What a name!" Reanda laughed. "I suppose they have come to spend the
+winter in Rome," he added.
+
+"Not at all. I hear that they have lived here for years. But one never
+meets the foreigners, unless they wish to be in society. His wife died
+young, they say, and this girl is his only daughter. I wish you could
+hear her sing!"
+
+"For that matter, I wish I might," said Reanda, who was passionately
+fond of music.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+SEVENTEEN years had scored their account on Angus Dalrymple's hard face,
+and one great sorrow had set an even deeper mark upon him--a sorrow so
+deep and so overwhelming that none had ever dared to speak of it to him.
+And he was not the man to bear any affliction resignedly, to feed on
+memory, and find rest in the dreams of what had been. Sullenly and
+fiercely rebellious against his fate, he went down life, rather than
+through it, savage and silent, for the most part, Nero-like in his wish
+that he could end the world at a single blow, himself and all that
+lived. Yet it was characteristic of the man that he had not chosen
+suicide as a means of escape, as he would have done in his earlier
+years, if Maria Addolorata had failed him. It seemed cowardly now, and
+he had never done anything cowardly in his life. Through his grief the
+sense of responsibility had remained with him, and had kept him alive.
+He looked upon his existence not as a state from which he had a right to
+escape, but as a personal enemy to be fought with, to be despised, to be
+ill-treated barbarously, perhaps, but still as an enemy to murder whom
+in cold blood would be an act of cowardice.
+
+There was little more than the mere sense of the responsibility, for he
+did little enough to fulfil his obligations. His wife had borne him a
+daughter, but it was not in Angus Dalrymple's nature to substitute one
+being in his heart for another. He could not love the girl simply
+because her mother was dead. He could only spoil her, with a rough idea
+that she should be spared all suffering as much as possible, but that if
+he gave her what she wanted, he had done all that could be expected of
+him. For the rest, he lived his own life.
+
+He had a good intelligence and superior gifts, together with
+considerable powers of intellectual acquisition. He had believed in his
+youth that he was destined to make great discoveries, and his papers
+afterwards showed that he was really on the track of great and new
+things. But with his bereavement, all ambition as well as all curiosity
+disappeared in one day from his character. Since then he had never gone
+back to his studies, which disgusted him and seemed stale and flat. He
+grew rudely dogmatical when scientific matters were discussed before
+him, as he had become rough, tyrannical, and almost violent in his
+ordinary dealings with the world, whenever he found any opposition to
+his opinions or his will. The only exception he made was in his
+treatment of his daughter, whom he indulged in every way except in her
+desire to be a public singer. It seemed to him that to give her
+everything she wanted was to fulfil all his obligations to her; in the
+one question of appearing on the stage he was inflexible. He simply
+refused to hear of it, rarely giving her any reasons beyond the ordinary
+ones which present themselves in such cases, and which were far from
+answering the impulse of the girl's genius.
+
+They had called her Gloria in the days of their passionate happiness.
+The sentimental name had meant a great deal to them, for Dalrymple had
+at that time developed that sort of uncouth sentimentality which is in
+strong men like a fungus on an oak, and disgusts them afterwards unless
+they are able to forget it. The two had felt that the glory of life was
+in the child, and they had named her for it, as it were.
+
+Years afterwards Dalrymple brought the little girl to Rome, drawn back
+irresistibly to the place by that physical association of impressions
+which moves such men strongly. They had remained, keeping from year to
+year a lodging Dalrymple had hired, at first hired for a few months. He
+never went to Subiaco.
+
+He gave Gloria teachers, the best that could be found, and there were
+good instructors in those days when people were willing to take time in
+learning. In music she had her mother's voice and talent. Her father
+gave her a musician's opportunities, and it was no wonder that she
+should dream of conquering Europe from behind the footlights as Grisi
+had done, and as Patti was just about to do in her turn.
+
+She and her father spoke English together, but Gloria was bilingual, as
+children of mixed marriages often are, speaking English and Italian with
+equal ease. Dalrymple found a respectable middle-aged German governess
+who came daily and spent most of the day with Gloria, teaching her and
+walking with her--worshipping her, too, with that curious faculty for
+idealizing the very human, which belongs to German governesses when they
+like their pupils.
+
+Dalrymple led his own life. Had he chosen to mix in Roman society, he
+would have been well received, as a member of a great Scotch family and
+not very far removed from the head of his house. No one of his relatives
+had ever known the truth about his wife except his father, who had died
+with the secret, and it was not likely that any one should ask
+questions. If any one did, he would certainly not satisfy such
+curiosity. But he cared little for society, and spent his time either
+alone with books and wine, or in occasional excursions into the artist
+world, where his eccentricities excited little remark, and where he met
+men who secretly sympathized with the Italian revolutionary movement,
+and dabbled in conspiracies which rather amused than disquieted the
+papal government.
+
+Though Gloria was at that time but little more than sixteen years of
+age, her father took her with him to little informal parties at the
+studios or even at the houses of artists, where there was often good
+music, and clever if not serious conversation. The conventionalities of
+age were little regarded in such circles. Gloria appeared, too, much
+older than she really was, and her marvellous voice made her a centre of
+attraction at an age when most young girls are altogether in the
+background. Dalrymple never objected to her singing on such occasions,
+and he invariably listened with closed eyes and folded hands, as though
+he were assisting at a religious service. Her voice was like her
+mother's, excepting that it was pitched higher, and had all the compass
+and power necessary for a great soprano. Dalrymple's almost devout
+attitude when Gloria was singing was the only allusion, if one may call
+it so, which he ever made to his dead wife's existence, and no one who
+watched him knew what it meant. But he was often more silent than usual
+after she had sung, and he sometimes went off by himself afterwards and
+sat for hours in one of the old wine cellars near the Capitol, drinking
+gloomily of the oldest and strongest he could find. For he drank more or
+less perpetually in the evening, and wine made him melancholic and
+morose, though it did not seem to affect him otherwise. Little by
+little, however, it was dulling the early keenness of his intellect,
+though it hardly touched his constitution at all. He was lean and bony
+still, as in the old days, but paler in the face, and he had allowed his
+red beard to grow. It was streaked with grey, and there were small,
+nervous lines about his eyes, as well as deep furrows on his forehead
+and face.
+
+Dalrymple had found in the artist world a man who was something of a
+companion to him at times,--a very young man, whom he could not
+understand, though his own dogmatic temper made him as a rule believe
+that he understood most things and most men. But this particular
+individual alternately puzzled, delighted, and irritated the nervous
+Scotchman.
+
+They had made acquaintance at an artists' supper in the previous year,
+had afterwards met accidentally at the bookseller's in the Piazza di
+Spagna, where they both went from time to time to look at the English
+newspapers, and little by little they had fallen into the habit of
+meeting there of a morning, and of strolling in the direction of
+Dalrymple's lodging afterwards. At last Dalrymple had asked his
+companion to come in and look at a book, and so the acquaintance had
+grown. Gloria watched the young stranger, and at first she disliked
+him.
+
+The aforesaid bookseller dealt, and deals still, in photographs and
+prints, as well as in foreign and Italian books. At the present time his
+establishment is distinctively a Roman Catholic one. In those days it
+was almost the only one of its kind, and was patronized alike by Romans
+and foreigners. Even Donna Francesca Campodonico went there from time to
+time for a book on art or an engraving which she and Reanda needed for
+their work. They occasionally walked all the way from the Palazzetto
+Borgia to the Piazza di Spagna together in the morning. When they had
+found what they wanted, Donna Francesca generally drove home in a cab,
+and Reanda went to his midday meal before returning. For the line of his
+intimacy with her was drawn at this point. He had never sat down at the
+same table with her, and he never expected to do so. As the two stood to
+one another at present, though Francesca would willingly have asked him
+to breakfast, she would have hesitated to do so, merely because the
+first invitation would inevitably call attention to the fact that the
+line had been drawn somewhere, whereas both were willing to believe that
+it had never existed at all. Under any pressure of necessity she would
+have driven with him in a cab, but not in her own carriage. They both
+knew it, and by tacit consent never allowed such unknown possibilities
+to suggest themselves. But in the mornings, there was nothing to
+prevent their walking together as far as the Piazza di Spagna, or
+anywhere else.
+
+They went to the bookseller's one day soon after the conversation which
+had led Francesca to mention the Dalrymples. As they walked along the
+east side of the great square, they saw two men before them.
+
+"There goes the Gladiator," said Reanda to his companion, suddenly.
+"There is no mistaking his walk, even at this distance."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Francesca. "Unless I am mistaken, the man who
+is a little the taller, the one in the rough English clothes, is Mr.
+Dalrymple. I spoke of him the other day, you know."
+
+"Oh! Is that he? The other has a still more extraordinary name. He is
+Paul Griggs. He is the son of an American consul who died in Civita
+Vecchia twenty years ago, and left him a sort of waif, for he had no
+money and apparently no relatives. Somehow he has grown up, Heaven knows
+how, and gets a living by journalism. I believe he was at sea for some
+years as a boy. He is really as much Italian as American. I have met him
+with artists and literary people."
+
+"Why do you call him the Gladiator?" asked Francesca, with some
+interest.
+
+"It is a nickname he has got. Cotogni, the sculptor, was in despair for
+a model last year. Griggs and two or three other men were in the
+studio, and somebody suggested that Griggs was very near the standard of
+the ancients in his proportions. They persuaded him to let them measure
+him. You know that in the 'Canons' of proportion, the Borghese
+Gladiator--the one in the Louvre--is given as the best example of an
+athlete. They measured Griggs then and there, and found that he was at
+all points the exact living image of the statue. The name has stuck to
+him. You see what a fellow he is, and how he walks."
+
+"Yes, he looks strong," said Francesca, watching the man with natural
+curiosity.
+
+The young American was a little shorter than Dalrymple, but evidently
+better proportioned. No one could fail to notice the vast breadth of
+shoulder, the firm, columnar throat, and the small athlete's head with
+close-set ears. He moved without any of that swinging motion of the
+upper part of the body which is natural to many strong men and was
+noticeable in Dalrymple, but there was something peculiar in his walk,
+almost undefinable, but conveying the idea of very great strength with
+very great elasticity.
+
+"But he is an ugly man," observed Reanda, almost immediately. "Ugly, but
+not repulsive. You will see, if he turns his head. His face is like a
+mask. It is not the face you would expect with such a body."
+
+"How curious!" exclaimed Francesca, rather idly, for her interest in
+Paul Griggs was almost exhausted.
+
+They went on along the crowded pavement. When they reached the
+bookseller's and went in, they saw that the two men were there before
+them, looking over the foreign papers, which were neatly arranged on a
+little table apart. Dalrymple looked up and recognized Francesca, to
+whom he had been introduced at a small concert given for a charity in a
+private house, on which occasion Gloria had sung. He lifted his hat from
+his head and laid it down upon the newspapers, when Francesca rather
+unexpectedly held out her hand to him in English fashion. He had left a
+card at her house on the day after their meeting, but as she was alone
+in the world, she had no means of returning the civility.
+
+"It would give me great pleasure if you would bring your daughter to see
+me," she said graciously.
+
+"You are very kind," answered Dalrymple, his steely blue eyes
+scrutinizing her pure young features.
+
+She only glanced at him, for she was suddenly conscious that his
+companion was looking at her. He, too, had laid down his hat, and she
+instantly understood what Reanda had meant by comparing his face to a
+mask. The features were certainly very far from handsome. If they were
+redeemed at all, it was by the very deep-set eyes, which gazed into
+hers in a strangely steady way, as though the lids never could droop
+from under the heavy overhanging brow, and then, still unwinking, turned
+in another direction. The man's complexion was of that perfectly even
+but almost sallow colour which often belongs to very strong melancholic
+temperaments. His face was clean-shaven and unnaturally square and
+expressionless, excepting for such life as there was in the deep eyes.
+Dark, straight, closely cut hair grew thick and smooth as a priest's
+skull-cap, low on the forehead and far forward at the temples. The level
+mouth, firmly closed, divided the lower part of the face like the scar
+of a straight sabre-cut. The nose was very thick between the eyes,
+relatively long, with unusually broad nostrils which ran upward from the
+point to the lean cheeks. The man wore very dark clothes of extreme
+simplicity, and at a time when pins and chains were much in fashion, he
+had not anything visible about him of gold or silver. He wore his watch
+on a short, doubled piece of black silk braid slipped through his
+buttonhole. He dressed almost as though he were in mourning.
+
+Francesca unconsciously looked at him so intently for a moment that
+Dalrymple thought it natural to introduce him, fancying that she might
+have heard of him and might wish to know him out of curiosity.
+
+"May I introduce Mr. Griggs?" he said, with the stiff inclination which
+was a part of his manner.
+
+Griggs bowed, and Donna Francesca bent her head a little. Reanda came up
+and shook hands with the American, and Francesca introduced the artist
+to Dalrymple.
+
+"I have long wished to have the pleasure of knowing you, Signor Reanda,"
+said the latter. "We have many mutual acquaintances among the artists
+here. I may say that I am a great admirer of your work, and my daughter,
+too, for that matter."
+
+Reanda said something civil as his hand parted from the Scotchman's.
+Francesca saw an opportunity of bringing Reanda and Gloria together.
+
+"As you like Signor Reanda's painting so much," she said to Dalrymple,
+"will you not bring your daughter this afternoon to see the frescoes he
+is doing in my house? You know the Palazzetto? Of course--you left a
+card, but I had no one to return it," she added rather sadly. "Will you
+also come, Mr. Griggs?" she asked, turning to the American. "It will
+give me much pleasure, and I see you know Signor Reanda. This afternoon,
+if you like, at any time after four o'clock."
+
+Both Dalrymple and Griggs secretly wondered a little at receiving such
+an invitation from a Roman lady whom the one had met but once before,
+and to whom the other had but just been introduced. But they bowed their
+thanks, and promised to come.
+
+After a few more words they separated, Francesca and Reanda to pick out
+the engraving they wanted, and the other two men to return to their
+newspapers. By and bye Francesca passed them again, on her way out.
+
+"I shall expect you after four o'clock," she said, nodding graciously as
+she went by.
+
+Dalrymple looked after her, till she had left the shop.
+
+"That woman is not like other women, I think," he said thoughtfully, to
+his companion.
+
+The mask-like face turned itself deliberately towards him, with shadowy,
+unwinking eyes.
+
+"No," answered Griggs, and he slowly took up his paper again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+DONNA FRANCESCA received her three guests in the drawing-room, on the
+side of the house which she inhabited. Reanda was at his work in the
+great hall.
+
+Gloria entered first, followed closely by her father, and Francesca was
+dazzled by the young girl's brilliancy of colour and expression, though
+she had seen her once before. As she came in, the afternoon sun streamed
+upon her face and turned her auburn hair to red gold, and gleamed upon
+her small white teeth as her strong lips parted to speak the first
+words. She was tall and supple, graceful as a panther, and her voice
+rang and whispered and rang again in quick changes of tone, like a
+waterfall in the woods in summer. With much of her mother's beauty, she
+had inherited from her father the violent vitality of his youth. Yet she
+was not noisy, though her manners were not like Francesca's. Her voice
+rippled and rang, but she did not speak too loud. She moved swiftly and
+surely, but not with rude haste. Nevertheless, it seemed to Francesca
+that there must be some exaggeration somewhere. The elder woman at
+first set it down as a remnant of schoolgirl shyness, and then at once
+felt that she was mistaken, because there was not the smallest
+awkwardness nor lack of self-possession about it. The contrast between
+the young girl and Paul Griggs was so striking as to be almost violent.
+He was cold and funereal in his leonine strength, and his face was more
+like a mask than ever as he bowed and sat down in silence. When he did
+not remind her of a gladiator, he made her think of a black lion with a
+strange, human face, and eyes that were not exactly human, though they
+did not remind her of any animal's eyes which she had ever seen.
+
+As for Dalrymple, she thought that he was singularly haggard and worn
+for a man apparently only in middle age. There was a certain imposing
+air about him, which she liked. Besides, she rarely met foreigners, and
+they interested her. She noticed that both men wore black coats and
+carried their tall hats in their hands. They were therefore not artists,
+nor to be classed with artists. She was still young enough to judge them
+to some extent by details, to which people attached a good deal more
+importance at that time than at present. She made up her mind in the
+course of the next few minutes that both Dalrymple and Griggs belonged
+to her own class, though she did not ask herself where the young
+American had got his manners. But somehow, though Gloria fascinated her
+eyes and her ears, she set down the girl as being inferior to her
+father. She wondered whether Gloria's mother had not been an actress;
+which was a curious reflexion, considering that the dead woman had been
+of her own house and name.
+
+After exchanging a few words with her guests, Francesca suggested that
+they should cross to the other side and see the frescoes, adding that
+Reanda was probably still at work.
+
+"You know him, Mr. Griggs?" she said, as they all rose to leave the
+room.
+
+"Yes," he answered, "as one man knows another."
+
+"What does that mean?" asked Francesca, moving towards the door to lead
+the way.
+
+"It does not mean much," replied the young man, with curious ambiguity.
+
+He was very gentle in his manner, and spoke in a low voice and rather
+diffidently. She looked at him as though mentally determining to renew
+the question at some other time. Her first impression was that of a sort
+of duality about the man, as she found the possibility of a double
+meaning in his answer. His magnificent frame seemed to belong to one
+person, his voice and manner to another. Both might be good in their
+way, but her curiosity was excited by the side which was the less
+apparent.
+
+They all went through the house till they came to a door which divided
+the inhabited part from the hall in which Reanda was working. She
+knocked gently upon it with her knuckles, and then smiled as she saw
+Gloria looking at her.
+
+"We keep it locked," she said. "The masons come in the morning to lay on
+the stucco. One never trusts those people. Signor Reanda keeps the key
+of this door."
+
+The artist opened from within, and stood aside to let the party pass. He
+started perceptibly when he first saw Gloria. As a boy he had seen Maria
+Braccio more than once before she had entered the convent, and he was
+struck by the girl's strong resemblance to her. Francesca, following
+Gloria, saw his movement of surprise, and attributed it merely to
+admiration or astonishment such as she had felt herself a quarter of an
+hour earlier. She smiled a little as she went by, and Reanda knew that
+the smile was for him because he had shown surprise. He understood the
+misinterpretation, and resented it a little.
+
+But she knew Reanda well, and before ten minutes had passed she had
+convinced herself that he was repelled rather than attracted by the
+young girl, in spite of the latter's undisguised admiration of his work.
+It was not mere unintelligent enthusiasm, either, and he might well have
+been pleased and flattered by her unaffected praise.
+
+She was interested, too, in the technical mechanics of fresco-painting,
+which she had never before been able to see at close quarters.
+Everything interested Gloria, and especially everything connected with
+art. As soon as they had all spoken their first words of compliment and
+appreciation, she entered into conversation with the painter, asking him
+all sorts of questions, and listening earnestly to what he said, until
+he realized that she was certainly not assuming an appearance of
+admiration for the sake of flattering him.
+
+Meanwhile Francesca talked with Griggs, and Dalrymple, having gone
+slowly round the hall alone after all the others, came and stood beside
+the two and watched Francesca, occasionally offering a rather dry remark
+in a somewhat absent-minded way. It was all rather commonplace and
+decidedly quiet, and he was not much amused, though from time to time he
+seemed to become absorbed in studying Francesca's face, as though he saw
+something there which was past his comprehension. She noticed that he
+watched her, and felt a little uncomfortable under his steely blue eyes,
+so that she turned her head and talked more with Griggs than with him.
+Remembering what Reanda had told her of the young man's origin, she did
+not like to ask him the common questions about residence in Rome and his
+liking for Italy. She was self-possessed and ready enough at
+conversation, and she chose to talk of general subjects. They talked in
+Italian, of course. Dalrymple, as of old, spoke fluently, but with a
+strange accent. Any one would have taken Paul Griggs for a Roman. At
+last, almost in spite of herself, she made a remark about his speech.
+
+"I was born here," answered Griggs. "It is much more remarkable that
+Miss Dalrymple should speak Italian as she does, having been born in
+Scotland."
+
+"Are you talking about me?" asked the young girl, turning her head
+quickly, though she was standing with Reanda at some distance from the
+others.
+
+"I was speaking of your accent in Italian," said Griggs.
+
+"Is there anything wrong about it?" asked Gloria, with an anxiety that
+seemed exaggerated.
+
+"On the contrary," answered Donna Francesca, "Mr. Griggs was telling me
+how perfectly you speak. But I had noticed it."
+
+"Oh! I thought Mr. Griggs was finding fault," answered Gloria, turning
+to Reanda again.
+
+Dalrymple looked at his daughter as though he were annoyed. The eyes of
+Francesca and Griggs met for a moment. All three were aware that they
+resented the young girl's quick question as one which they themselves
+would not have asked in her place, had they accidentally heard their
+names mentioned in a distant conversation. But Francesca instantly went
+on with the subject.
+
+"To us Italians," she said, "it seems incredible that any one should
+speak our language and English equally well. It is as though you were
+two persons, Mr. Griggs," she added, smiling at the covered expression
+of her thought about him.
+
+"I sometimes think so myself," answered Griggs, with one of his steady
+looks. "In a way, every one must have a sort of duality--a good and evil
+principle."
+
+"God and the devil," suggested Francesca, simply.
+
+"Body and soul would do, I suppose. The one is always in slavery to the
+other. The result is a sinner or a saint, as the case may be. One never
+can tell," he added more carelessly. "I am not sure that it matters. But
+one can see it. The battle is fought in the face."
+
+"I do not understand. What battle?"
+
+"The battle between body and soul. The face tells which way the fight is
+going."
+
+She looked at his own, and she felt that she could not tell. But to a
+certain extent she understood him.
+
+"Griggs is full of theories," observed Dalrymple. "Gloria, come down!"
+he cried in English, suddenly.
+
+Gloria, intent upon understanding how fresco-painting was done, was
+boldly mounting the steps of the ladder towards the top of the little
+scaffolding, which might have been fourteen feet high. For the vault
+had long been finished, and Reanda was painting the walls.
+
+"Nonsense, papa!" answered the young girl, also in English. "There's no
+danger at all."
+
+"Well--don't break your neck," said Dalrymple. "I wish you would come
+down, though."
+
+Francesca was surprised at his indifference, and at his daughter's calm
+disregard of his authority. Timid, too, as most Italian women of higher
+rank, she watched the girl nervously. Griggs raised his eyes without
+lifting his head.
+
+"Gloria is rather wild," said Dalrymple, in a sort of apology. "I hope
+you will forgive her--she is so much interested."
+
+"Oh--if she wishes to see, let her go, of course," answered Francesca,
+concealing a little nervous irritation she felt.
+
+A moment later Gloria and Reanda were on the small platform, on one side
+of which only there was a hand rail. It had been made for him, and his
+head was steady even at a much greater elevation. He was pointing out to
+her the way in which the colours slowly changed as the stucco dried from
+day to day, and explaining how it was impossible to see the effect of
+what was done until all was completely dry. The others continued to talk
+below, but Griggs glanced up from time to time, and Francesca's eyes
+followed his. Dalrymple had become indifferent, allowing his daughter
+to do what she pleased, as usual.
+
+When Gloria had seen all she wished to see, she turned with a quick
+movement to come down again, and on turning, she found herself much
+nearer to the edge than she had expected. She was bending forwards a
+little, and Griggs saw at once that she must lose her balance, unless
+Reanda caught her from behind. But she made no sound, and turned very
+white as she swayed a little, trying to throw herself back.
+
+With a swift movement that was gentle but irresistible, Griggs pushed
+Francesca back, keeping his eyes on the girl above. It all happened in
+an instant.
+
+"Jump!" he cried, in a voice of command.
+
+She had felt that she must spring or fall, and her body was already
+overbalanced as she threw herself off, instinctively gathering her skirt
+with her hands. Dalrymple turned as pale as she. If she struck the bare
+brick floor, she could scarcely escape serious injury. But she did not
+reach it, for Paul Griggs caught her in his arms, swayed with her
+weight, then stood as steady as a rock, and set her gently upon her
+feet, beside her father.
+
+"Maria Santissima!" cried Francesca, terrified, though instantly
+relieved, and dimly understanding the stupendous feat of bodily strength
+which had just been done before her eyes.
+
+Above, Reanda leaned upon the single rail of the scaffolding with
+wide-staring eyes. Gloria was faint with the shock of fear, and grasped
+her father's arm.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he said roughly, in English, but
+in a low voice. "You probably owe your life to Mr. Griggs," he added,
+immediately regaining his self-possession.
+
+Griggs alone seemed wholly unmoved by what had happened. Gloria had held
+one of her gloves loosely in her hand, and it had fallen to the ground
+as she sprang. He picked it up and handed it to her with a curious
+gentleness.
+
+"It must be yours, Miss Dalrymple," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+IT was late before Reanda and Donna Francesca were alone together on
+that afternoon. When the first surprise and shock of Gloria's accident
+had passed, Francesca would not allow Dalrymple to take her away at
+once, as he seemed anxious to do. The girl was not in the least hurt,
+but she was still dazed and frightened. Francesca took them all back to
+the drawing-room and insisted upon giving them tea, because they were
+foreigners, and Gloria, she said, must naturally need something to
+restore her nerves. Roman tea, thirty years ago, was a strange and
+uncertain beverage, as both Gloria and her father knew, but they drank
+what Francesca gave them, and at last went away with many apologies for
+the disturbance they had made. To tell the truth, Francesca was glad
+when they were gone and she was at liberty to return to the hall where
+Reanda was still at work. She found him nervous and irritated. He came
+down from the scaffolding as soon as he heard her open the door. Neither
+spoke until she had seated herself in her accustomed chair, with a very
+frank sigh of relief.
+
+"I am very grateful to you, Donna Francesca," said Reanda, twisting his
+beard round his long, thin fingers, as he glanced at her and then
+surveyed his work.
+
+"It was your fault," she answered, tapping the worm-eaten arms of the
+old chair with both her white hands, for she herself was still annoyed
+and irritated. "Do not make me responsible for the girl's folly."
+
+"Responsibility! May that never be!" exclaimed the artist, in the common
+Italian phrase, but with a little irony. "But as for the responsibility,
+I do not know whose it was. It was certainly not I who invited the young
+lady to go up the ladder."
+
+"Well, it was her fault. Besides, the absent are always wrong. But she
+is handsome, is she not?"
+
+Reanda shrugged his thin shoulders, and looked critically at his hands,
+which were smeared with paint.
+
+"Very handsome," he said indifferently. "But it is a beauty that says
+nothing to me. One must be young to like that kind of beauty. She is a
+beautiful storm, that young lady. For one who seeks peace--" He shrugged
+his shoulders again. "And then, her manners! I do not understand
+English, but I know that her father was telling her to come down, and
+yet she went up. I do not know what education these foreigners have.
+Instruction, yes, as much as you please; but education, no. They have no
+more than barbarians. The father says, 'You must not do that.' And the
+daughter does it. What education is that? Of course, if they were
+friends of yours, I should not say it."
+
+"Nevertheless that girl is very handsome," insisted Francesca. "She has
+the Venetian colouring. Titian would have painted her just as she is,
+without changing anything."
+
+"Beauty, beauty!" exclaimed Reanda, impatiently. "Of course, it is
+beauty! Food for the brush, that says nothing to the heart. The devil
+can also take the shape of a beautiful woman. That is it. There is
+something in that young lady's face--how shall I say? It pleases
+me--little! You must forgive me, princess. My nerves are shaken. Divine
+goodness! To see a young girl flying through the air like Simon Magus!
+It was enough!"
+
+Francesca laughed gently. Reanda shook his head with slow
+disapprobation, and frowned.
+
+"I say the truth," he said. "There is something--I cannot explain. But I
+can show you," he added quickly.
+
+He took up his palette and brushes from the chair on which they lay, and
+reached the white plastered wall in two steps.
+
+"Paint her," said Francesca, to encourage him.
+
+"Yes, I will show her to you--as I think she is," he answered.
+
+He closed his eyes for a moment, calling up the image before him, then
+went back to the chair and took a quantity of colour from a tube which
+lay, with half-a-dozen others, in the hollow of the rush seat. They were
+not the colours he used for fresco-painting, but had been left there
+when he had made a sketch of a head two or three days previously. In a
+moment he was before the wall again. It was roughly plastered from the
+floor to the lower line of the frescoes. With a long, coarse brush he
+began to sketch a gigantic head of a woman. The oil paint lay well on
+the rough, dry surface. He worked in great strokes at the full length of
+his arm.
+
+"Make her beautiful, at least," said Francesca, watching him.
+
+"Oh, yes--very beautiful," he answered.
+
+He worked rapidly for a few minutes, smiling, as his hand moved, but not
+pleasantly. Francesca thought there was an evil look in his face which
+she had never seen there before, and that his smile was wicked and
+spiteful.
+
+"But you are painting a sunset!" she cried suddenly.
+
+"A sunset? That is her hair. It is red, and she has much of it. Wait a
+little."
+
+And he went on. It was certainly something like a sunset, the bright,
+waving streamers of the clouds flying far to right and left, and
+blending away to the neutral tint of the dry plaster as though to a grey
+sky.
+
+"Yes, but it is still a sunset," said Francesca. "I have seen it like
+that from the Campagna in winter."
+
+"She is not 'Gloria' for nothing," answered Reanda. "I am making her
+glorious. You shall see."
+
+Suddenly, with another tone, he brought out the main features of the
+striking face, by throwing in strong shadows from the flaming hair.
+Francesca became more interested. The head was colossal, extraordinary,
+almost unearthly; the expression was strange.
+
+"What a monster!" exclaimed Francesca at last, as he stood aside, still
+touching the enormous sketch here and there with his long brush, at
+arm's length. "It is terrible," she added, in a lower tone.
+
+"Truth is always terrible," answered Reanda. "But you cannot say that it
+is not like her."
+
+"Horribly like. It is diabolical!"
+
+"And yet it is a beautiful head," said the artist. "Perhaps you are too
+near." He himself crossed the hall, and then turned round to look at his
+work. "It is better from here," he said. "Will you come?"
+
+She went to his side. The huge face and wildly streaming hair stood out
+as though in three dimensions from the wall. The great, strong mouth
+smiled at her with a smile that was at once evil and sad and fatal. The
+strange eyes looked her through and through from beneath the vast brow.
+
+"It is diabolical, satanical!" she responded, under her breath.
+
+Reanda still smiled wickedly and watched her. The face seemed to grow
+and grow till it filled the whole range of vision. The dark eyes
+flashed; the lips trembled; the flaming hair quivered and waved and
+curled up like snakes that darted hither and thither. Yet it was
+horribly like Gloria, and the fresh, rich oil colours gave it her
+startling and vivid brilliancy.
+
+It was the sudden and enormous expression of a man of genius, strung and
+stung, till irritation had to find its explosion through the one art of
+which he was absolute master--in a fearful caricature exaggerating
+beauty itself to the bounds of the devilish.
+
+"I cannot bear it!" cried Francesca.
+
+She snatched the big brush from his hand, and, running lightly across
+the room, dashed the colour left in it across the face in all
+directions, over the eyes and the mouth, and through the long red hair.
+In ten seconds nothing remained but confused daubs and splashes of
+brilliant paint.
+
+"There!" cried Francesca. "And I wish I had never seen it!"
+
+Still holding the brush in her hand, she turned her back to the
+obliterated sketch and faced Reanda, with a look of girlish defiance and
+satisfaction. His face was grave now, but he seemed pleased with what he
+had done.
+
+"It makes no difference," he said. "You will never forget it."
+
+He felt that he was revenged for the smile she had bestowed upon his
+apparent surprise at Gloria's beauty, when she had followed the girl
+into the hall, and had seen him start. He could not conceal his triumph.
+
+"That is the young lady whom you thought I might wish to marry," he
+said. "You know me little after so many years, Donna Francesca. You have
+bestowed much kindness upon a man whom you do not know."
+
+"My dear Reanda, who can understand you? But as for kindness, do not let
+me hear the word between you and me. It has no meaning. We are always
+good friends, as we were when I was a little girl and used to play with
+your paints. You have given me far more than I can ever repay you for,
+in your works. I do not flatter you, my friend. Cupid and Psyche, there
+in your frescoes, will outlive me and be famous when I am forgotten--yet
+they are mine, are they not? And you gave them to me."
+
+The sweet young face turned to him with an unaffected, grateful smile.
+His sad features softened all at once.
+
+"Ah, Donna Francesca," he said gently, "you have given me something
+better than Cupid and Psyche, for your gift will live forever in
+heaven."
+
+She looked thoughtfully into his eyes, but with a sort of question in
+her own.
+
+"Your dear friendship," he added, bending his head a little. Then he
+laughed suddenly. "Do not give me a wife," he concluded.
+
+"And you, Reanda--do not make wicked caricatures of women you have only
+seen once! Besides, I go back to it again. I saw you start when she
+passed you at the door. You were surprised at her beauty. You must admit
+that. And then, because you are irritated with her, you take a brush and
+daub that monstrous thing upon the wall! It is a shame!"
+
+"I started, yes. It was not because she struck me as beautiful. It was
+something much more strange. Do you know? She is the very portrait of
+Donna Maria, who was in the Carmelite convent at Subiaco, and who was
+burned to death. I have often told you that I remembered having seen her
+when I was a boy, both at Gerano and at the Palazzo Braccio, before she
+took the veil. There is a little difference in the colouring, I think,
+and much in the expression. But the rest--it is the image!"
+
+Francesca, who could not remember her ill-fated kinswoman, was not much
+impressed by Reanda's statement.
+
+"It makes your caricature all the worse," she answered, "since it was
+also a caricature of that holy woman. As for the resemblance, after all
+these years, it is a mere impression. Who knows? It may be. There is no
+portrait of Sister Maria Addolorata."
+
+"Oh, but I remember well!" insisted Reanda.
+
+"Well, it concludes nothing, after all," returned Francesca, with much
+logic. "It does not make a fiend of the poor nun, who is an angel by
+this time, and it does not make Miss Dalrymple less beautiful. And now,
+Signor Painter," she added, with another girlish laugh, "if we have
+quarrelled enough to restore your nerves, I am going out. It is almost
+dark, and I have to go to the Austrian Embassy before dinner, and the
+carriage has been waiting for an hour."
+
+"You, princess!" exclaimed Reanda, in surprise; for she had not begun to
+go into the world yet since her husband's death.
+
+"It is not a reception. We are to meet there about arranging another of
+those charity concerts for the deaf and dumb."
+
+"I might have known," answered the painter. "As for me, I shall go to
+the theatre to-night. There is the Trovatore."
+
+"That is a new thing for you, too. But I am glad. Amuse yourself, and
+tell me about the singing to-morrow. Remember to lock the door and take
+the key. I do not trust the masons in the morning."
+
+"Do I ever forget?" asked Reanda. "But I will lock it now, as you go
+out; for it is late, and I shall go upstairs."
+
+"Good night," said Francesca, as she turned to leave the room.
+
+"And you forgive the caricature?" asked Reanda, holding the door open
+for her to pass.
+
+"I would forgive you many things," she answered, smiling as she went
+by.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+IN those days the Trovatore was not an old-fashioned opera. It was not
+'threshed-out,' to borrow the vigorous German phrase. Wagner had not
+eclipsed melody with 'tone-poetry,' nor made men feel more than they
+could hear. Many of the great things of this century-ending had not been
+done then, nor even dreamed of, and even musicians listened to the
+Trovatore with pleasure, not dreaming of the untried strength that lay
+waiting in Verdi's vast reserve. It was then the music of youth. To us
+it seems but the music of childhood. Many of us cannot listen to
+Manrico's death-song from the tower without hearing the grind-organ upon
+which its passion has grown so pathetically poor. But one could
+understand that music. The mere statement that it was comprehensible
+raises a smile to-day. It appealed to simple feelings. We are no longer
+satisfied with such simplicity, and even long for powers that do not
+appeal, but twist us with something stronger than our hardened selves,
+until we ourselves appeal to the unknown, in a sort of despairing
+ecstasy of unsatisfied delight, asking of possibility to stretch itself
+out to the impossible. We are in a strange phase of development. We see
+the elaborately artificial world-scape painted by Science on the curtain
+close before our eyes, but our restless hands are thrust through it and
+beyond, opening eagerly and shutting on nothing, though we know that
+something is there.
+
+Angelo Reanda was passionately fond of what was called music in Italy
+more than thirty years ago. He had the true ear and the facile memory
+for melody common to Italians, who are a singing people, if not a
+musical race, and which constituted a talent for music when music was
+considered to be a succession of sounds rather than a series of sensuous
+impressions. He could listen to an opera, understand it without thought,
+enjoy it simply, and remember it without difficulty, like thousands of
+other Romans. Most of us would willingly go back to such childlike
+amusements if we could. A few possess the power even now, and are looked
+upon with friendly contempt by their more cultured, and therefore more
+tortured, musical acquaintances, whose dream it is to be torn to very
+rags in the delirium of orchestral passion.
+
+Reanda went to the Apollo Theatre in search of merely pleasurable
+sensations, and he got exactly what he wanted. The old house was
+brilliant even in those days, less with light than with jewels, it is
+true, but perhaps that illumination was as good as any other. The Roman
+ladies and the ladies of the great embassies used then to sit through
+the whole evening in their boxes, and it was the privilege, as it is
+still in Rome, of the men in the stalls and pit to stand up between the
+acts and admire them and their diamonds as much as they pleased. The
+light was dim enough, compared with what we have nowadays; for gas was
+but just introduced in a few of the principal streets, and the lamps in
+the huge chandelier at the Apollo, and in the brackets around the house,
+were filled with the olive oil which to-day dresses the world's salad.
+But it was a soft warm light, with rich yellow in it, which penetrated
+the shadows and beautified all it touched.
+
+Reanda, like the others, stood up and looked about him after the first
+act. His eyes were instantly arrested by Gloria's splendid hair, which
+caught the light from above. She was seated in the front of a box on the
+third tier, the second row of boxes being almost exclusively reserved in
+those days. Dalrymple was beside his daughter, and the dark, still face
+of Paul Griggs was just visible in the shadow.
+
+Gloria saw the artist almost immediately, for he could not help looking
+at her curiously, comparing her face with the mad sketch he had made on
+the wall. She nodded to him, and then spoke to her father, evidently
+calling his attention to Reanda, for Dalrymple looked down at once, and
+also nodded, while Griggs leaned forward a little and stared vacantly
+into the pit.
+
+"It is an obsession to-day," said Reanda to himself, reflecting that
+though the girl lived in Rome he had never noticed her before, and had
+now seen her twice on the same day.
+
+He mentally added the reflexion that she must have good nerves, and that
+most young girls would be at home with a headache after such a narrow
+escape as hers. She was quite as handsome as he had thought, however,
+and even more so, now that he saw her in her girlish evening gown, which
+was just a little open at the throat, and without even the simplest of
+ornaments. The white material and the shadow around and behind her threw
+her head into strong relief.
+
+The curtain went up again, and Reanda sat down and watched the
+performance and listened to the simple, stirring melodies. But he was
+uncomfortably conscious that Gloria was looking at the back of his head
+from her box. Nervous people know the unpleasant sensation which such a
+delusion can produce. Reanda moved uneasily in his seat, and looked
+round more than once, just far enough to catch sight of Gloria's hair
+without looking up into her eyes.
+
+His thoughts were disturbed, and he recalled vividly the face of the
+dead nun, which he had seen long ago. The resemblance was certainly
+strong. Maria Addolorata had sometimes had a strange expression which
+was quite her own, and which he had not yet seen in Gloria. But he felt
+that he should see it some day. He was sure of it, so sure that he had
+thrown its full force into the sketch on the wall, knowing that it would
+startle Donna Francesca. It was not possible that two women should be so
+much alike and yet that one of them should never have that look. Perhaps
+Gloria had it now and was staring at the back of his head.
+
+An unaccountable nervousness took possession of the sensitive man, and
+he suffered as he sat there. After the curtain dropped he rose and left
+the theatre without looking up, and crossed the narrow street to a
+little coffee shop familiar to him for many years. He drank a cup of
+coffee, broke off the end of a thin black Roman cigar, and smoked for a
+few minutes before he returned.
+
+Gloria had not moved, but Griggs was either gone or had retired further
+back into the shadow. Dalrymple was leaning back in his chair, bony and
+haggard, one of his great hands hanging listlessly over the front of the
+box. Reanda sat down again, and determined that he would not turn round
+before the end of the act. But it was of no use. He irritated his
+neighbours on each side by his restlessness, and his forehead was moist
+as though he were suffering great pain. Again he faced about and stared
+upwards at the box. Gloria, to his surprise, was not looking at him, but
+in the shadow he met the inscrutable eyes of Paul Griggs, fixed upon him
+as though they would never look away. But he cared very little whether
+Griggs looked at him or not. He faced the stage again and was more
+quiet.
+
+It was a good performance, and he began to be glad that he had come. The
+singers were young, the audience was inclined to applaud, and everything
+went smoothly. Reanda thought the soprano rather weak in the great tower
+scene.
+
+          "Calpesta il mio cadavere, ma salva il Trovator!"
+
+she sang in great ascending intervals.
+
+Reanda sighed, for she made no impression on him, and he remembered that
+he had been deeply impressed, even thrilled, when he had first heard the
+phrase. He had realized the situation then and had felt with Leonora.
+Perhaps he had grown too old to feel that sort of young emotion any
+more. He sighed regretfully as he rose from his seat. Looking up once
+more, he saw that Gloria was putting on her cloak, her back turned to
+the theatre. He waited a moment and then moved on with the crowd, to get
+his coat from the cloak-room.
+
+He went out and walked slowly up the Via di Tordinona. It was a dark
+and narrow street in those days. The great old-fashioned lanterns were
+swung up with their oil lamps in them, by long levers held in place by
+chains locked to the wall. Here and there over a low door a red light
+showed that wine was sold in a basement which was almost a cellar. The
+crowd from the theatre hurried along close by the walls, in constant
+danger from the big coaches that dashed past, bringing the Roman ladies
+home, for all had to pass through that narrow street. Landaus were not
+yet invented, and the heavy carriages rumbled loudly through the
+darkness, over the small paving-stones. But the people on foot were used
+to them, and stood pressed against the walls as they went by, or grouped
+for a moment on the low doorsteps of the dark houses.
+
+Reanda went with the rest. He might have gone the other way, by the
+Banchi Vecchi, from the bridge of Sant' Angelo, and it would have been
+nearer, but he had a curious fancy that the Dalrymples might walk home,
+and that he might see Gloria again. Though it was not yet winter, the
+night was bright and cold, and it was pleasant to walk. The regular
+season at the Apollo Theatre did not begin until Christmas, but there
+were often good companies there at other times of the year.
+
+The artist walked on, glancing at the groups he passed in the dim
+street, but neither pausing nor hurrying. He meant to let fate have her
+own way with him that night.
+
+Fate was not far off. He had gone on some distance, and the crowd had
+dispersed in various directions, till he was almost alone as he emerged
+into the open space where the Via del Clementino intersects the Ripetta.
+At that moment he heard a wild and thrilling burst of song.
+
+          "Calpesta il mio cadavere, ma salva il Trovator!"
+
+The great soprano rang out upon the midnight silence, like the voice of
+a despairing archangel, and there was nothing more.
+
+"Hush!" exclaimed a man's voice energetically.
+
+Two or three windows were opened high up, for no one had ever heard such
+a woman's voice in the streets before. Reanda peered before him through
+the gloom, saw three people standing at the next corner, and hastened
+his long steps. An instinct he could not explain told him that Gloria
+had sung the short strain, which had left him cold and indifferent when
+he had heard it in the theatre. He was neither now, and he was possessed
+by the desire to be sure that it had been she.
+
+He was not mistaken. Griggs had recognized him first, and they had
+waited for him at the corner.
+
+"It is an unexpected pleasure to meet twice in the same day," said
+Reanda.
+
+"The pleasure is ours," answered Dalrymple, in the correct phrase, but
+with his peculiar accent. "I suppose you heard my daughter's screams,"
+he added drily. "She was explaining to us how a particular phrase should
+be sung."
+
+"Was I not right?" asked Gloria, quickly appealing to Reanda with the
+certainty of support.
+
+"A thousand times right," he answered. "How could one be wrong with such
+a voice?"
+
+Gloria was pleased, and they all walked on together till they reached
+the door of Dalrymple's lodging.
+
+"Come in and have supper with us," said the Scotchman, who seemed to be
+less gloomy than usual. "I suppose you live in our neighbourhood?"
+
+"No. In the Palazzetto Borgia, where I work."
+
+"This is not exactly on your way home, then," observed Gloria. "You may
+as well rest and refresh yourself."
+
+Reanda accepted the invitation, wondering inwardly at the assurance of
+the foreign girl. With her Italian speech she should have had Italian
+manners, he thought. The three men all carried tapers, as was then
+customary, and they all lit them before they ascended the dark
+staircase.
+
+"This is an illumination," said Dalrymple, looking back as he led the
+way.
+
+Gloria stopped suddenly, and looked round. She was following her father,
+and Reanda came after her, Griggs being the last.
+
+"One, two, three," she counted, and her eyes met Reanda's.
+
+Without the slightest hesitation, she blew out the taper he held in his
+hand. But, for one instant, he had seen in her face the expression of
+the dead nun, distinct in the clear light, and close to his eyes.
+
+"Why did you do that?" asked Dalrymple, who had turned his head again,
+as the taper was extinguished.
+
+"Three lights mean death," said Gloria, promptly; and she laughed, as
+she went quickly up the steps.
+
+"It is true," answered Reanda, in a low voice, as he followed her; and
+it occurred to him that in a flash he had seen death written in the
+brilliant young face.
+
+Ten minutes later, they were seated around the table in the Dalrymples'
+small dining-room. Reanda noticed that everything he saw there evidently
+belonged to the hired lodging, from the old-fashioned Italian silver
+forks, battered and crooked at the prongs, to the heavy cut-glass
+decanters, stained with age and use, at the neck, and between the
+diamond-shaped cuttings. There was supper enough for half-a-dozen
+people, however, and an extraordinary quantity of wine. Dalrymple
+swallowed a big tumbler of it before he ate anything. Paul Griggs filled
+his glass to the brim, and looked at it. He had hardly spoken since
+Reanda had joined the party.
+
+The artist made an effort to be agreeable, feeling that the invitation
+had been a very friendly one, considering the slight acquaintance he had
+with the Dalrymples, an acquaintance not yet twenty-four hours old.
+Presently he asked Gloria if she had felt no ill effects from her
+extraordinary accident in the afternoon.
+
+"I had not thought about it again," she answered. "I have thought of
+nothing but your painting all the evening, until that woman sang that
+phrase as though she were asking the Conte di Luna for more strawberries
+and cream."
+
+She laughed, but her eyes were fixed on his face.
+
+          "'Un altro po' di fravole, e dammi crema ancor,'"
+
+she sang softly, in the Roman dialect.
+
+Then she laughed again, and Reanda smiled at the absurd words--"A few
+more strawberries, and give me some more cream." But even the few notes,
+a lazy parody of the prima donna's singing of the phrase, charmed his
+simple love of melody.
+
+"Don't look so grim, papa," she said in English. "Nobody can hear me
+here, you know."
+
+"I should not think anybody would wish to," answered the Scotchman; but
+he spoke in Italian, in consideration of his guest, who did not
+understand English.
+
+"I do not know why you are always so angry if I sing anything foolish,"
+said the young girl, going back to Italian. "One cannot be always
+serious. But I was talking about your frescoes, Signor Reanda. I have
+thought of nothing else."
+
+Again her eyes met the artist's, but fell before his. He was too great a
+painter not to know the value of such flattering speeches in general,
+and in a way he was inclined to resent the girl's boldness. But at the
+same time, it was hard to believe that she was not really in earnest,
+for she had that power of sudden gravity which lends great weight to
+little speeches. In spite of himself, and perhaps rightly, he believed
+her. Paul Griggs did not, and he watched her curiously.
+
+"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked, turning upon him with a
+little show of temper.
+
+"If your father will allow me to say so, you are the object most worth
+looking at in the room," answered the young man, calmly.
+
+"You will make her vain with your pretty speeches, Griggs," said
+Dalrymple.
+
+"I doubt that," answered Griggs.
+
+He relapsed into silence, and drained a big tumbler of wine. Reanda
+suspected, with a shrewd intuition, that the American admired Gloria,
+but that she did not like him much.
+
+"Miss Dalrymple is doing her best to make me vain with her praise," said
+Reanda.
+
+"I never flattered any one in my life," answered Gloria. "Signor Reanda
+is the greatest painter in Italy. Everybody says so. It would be foolish
+of me to even pretend that after seeing him at work I had thought of
+anything else. We have all said, this evening, that the frescoes were
+wonderful, and that no one, not even Raphael, who did the same thing,
+has ever had a more beautiful idea of the history of Cupid and Psyche.
+Why should we not tell the truth, just because he happens to be here?
+How illogical you are!"
+
+"I believe I excepted Raphael," said Dalrymple, with his national
+accuracy. "But Signor Reanda will not quarrel with me on that account, I
+am sure."
+
+"But I did not except Raphael, nor any one," persisted Gloria, before
+Reanda could speak.
+
+"Really, Signorina, though I am mortal and susceptible, you go a little
+too far. Flattery is not appreciation, you know."
+
+"It is not flattery," she answered, and the colour rose in her face. "I
+am quite in earnest. Nobody ever painted anything better than your Cupid
+and Psyche. Raphael's is dull and uninteresting compared with it."
+
+"I blush, but I cannot accept so much," said the Italian, smiling
+politely, but still trying to discover whether she meant what she said
+or not.
+
+In spite of himself, as before, he continued to believe her, though his
+judgment told him that hers could not be worth much. But he was pleased
+to have made such an impression, and by quick degrees his prejudice
+against her began to disappear. What had seemed like boldness in her no
+longer shocked him, and he described it to himself as the innocent
+frankness of a foreign girl. It was not possible that any one so like
+the dead Maria Braccio could be vulgar or bold. From that moment he
+began to rank Gloria as belonging to the higher sphere from which his
+birth excluded him. It was a curious and quick transition, and he would
+not have admitted that it was due to her exaggerated praise of his work.
+Strange as it must seem to those not familiar with the almost impassable
+barriers of old Italian society, Reanda had that evening, for the first
+time in his life, the sensation of being liked, admired, and talked with
+by a woman of Francesca Campodonico's class; stranger still, it was one
+of the most delicious sensations he had ever experienced. Yet the woman
+in question was but a girl not yet seventeen years old. Before he rose
+to go home, he unconsciously resented Griggs's silent admiration for
+Gloria. To the average Italian, such silence is a sign that a man is in
+love, and Reanda was the more attracted to Gloria because she treated
+Griggs with such perfect indifference.
+
+It was nearly one o'clock when he lighted his taper to descend the
+stairs. Griggs was also ready to go. It was a relief to know that he was
+not going to stay behind and talk with Gloria. They went down in
+silence.
+
+"I wanted to ask you a question," said the American, as they came out
+upon the street, and blew out their tapers. "We live in opposite
+directions, so I must ask it now. Should you mind, if I wrote an article
+on your frescoes for a London paper?"
+
+"Mind!" exclaimed the artist, with a sudden revulsion of feeling in
+favour of the journalist. "I should be delighted--flattered."
+
+"No," said Griggs, coldly. "I shall not write as Miss Dalrymple talks.
+But I shall try and do you justice, and that is a good deal, when one is
+a serious artist, as you are."
+
+Reanda was struck by the cool moderation of the words, which expressed
+his own modest judgment of himself almost too exactly to be agreeable
+after Gloria's unlimited praise. He thanked Griggs warmly, however, and
+they shook hands before they parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THREE months passed, and Reanda was intimate with the Dalrymples. It was
+natural enough, considering the circumstances. They lived much alone,
+and Reanda was like them in this respect, for he rarely went where he
+was obliged to talk. During the day he saw much of Donna Francesca, but
+when it grew dark in the early afternoons of midwinter, the artist was
+thrown upon his own resources. In former years he had now and then done
+as many of the other artists did, and had sometimes for a month or two
+spent most of his evenings at the eating-house where he dined, in
+company with half-a-dozen others who frequented the same establishment.
+Each dropped in, at any hour that chanced to suit him, ate his supper,
+pushed back his chair, and joined in the general conversation, smoking,
+and drinking coffee or a little wine, until it was time to go home.
+There were grey-headed painters who had hardly been absent more than a
+few days in five and twenty years from their accustomed tables at such
+places as the Falcone, the Gabbione, or the Genio. But Reanda had never
+joined in any of these little circles for longer than a month or two,
+by which time he had exhausted the stock of his companions' ideas, and
+returned to solitude and his own thoughts. For he had something which
+they had not, besides his greater talent, his broader intelligence, and
+his deeper artistic insight. Donna Francesca's refining influence
+exerted itself continually upon him, and made much of the common
+conversation tiresome or disagreeable to him. A man whose existence is
+penetrated by the presence of a rarely refined woman seldom cares much
+for the daily society of men. He prefers to be alone, when he cannot be
+with her.
+
+Reanda believed that what he felt for Francesca was a devoted and almost
+devout friendship. The fact that before many weeks had passed after his
+first meeting with Gloria he was perceptibly in love with the girl,
+while he felt not the smallest change in his relations with Donna
+Francesca, satisfactorily proved to him that he was right. It would not
+have been like an Italian and a Latin to compare his feelings for the
+two women by imaginary tests, as, for instance, by asking himself for
+which of the two he would make the greater sacrifice. He took it for
+granted that the one sentiment was friendship and the other love, and he
+acted accordingly.
+
+He was distrustful, indeed, and very suspicious, but not of himself.
+Gloria treated him too well. Her eyes told him more than he felt able to
+believe. It was not natural that a girl so young and fresh and
+beautiful, with the world before her, should fall in love with a man of
+his age. That, at least, was what he thought. But the fact that it was
+unnatural did not prevent it from taking place.
+
+Reanda ignored certain points of great importance. In the first place,
+Gloria had not really the world before her. Her little sphere was
+closely limited by her father's morose selfishness, which led him to
+keep her in Rome because he liked the place himself, and to keep away
+from his countrymen, whom he detested as heartily as Britons living
+abroad sometimes do. On the other hand, a vague dread lest the story of
+his marriage might some day come to the light kept him away from Roman
+society. He had fallen back upon artistic Bohemia for such company as he
+wanted, which was little enough, and as his child grew up he had not
+understood that she was developing early and coming to womanhood while
+she was still under the care of the governess he had provided. He had
+not even made any plans for her future, for he did not love her, though
+he indulged her as a selfish and easy means of fulfilling his paternal
+obligations. It was to get rid of her importunity that he began to take
+her to the houses of some of the married artists when she was only
+sixteen years old, though she looked at least two years older.
+
+But in such society as that, Reanda was easily first, apart from the
+talent which placed him at the head of the whole artistic profession. He
+had been brought up, taught, and educated among gentlemen, sons of one
+of the oldest and most fastidious aristocracies in Europe, and he had
+their manners, their speech, their quiet air of superiority, and
+especially that exterior gentleness and modesty of demeanour which most
+touches some women. In Gloria's opinion, he even had much of their
+appearance, being tall, thin, and dark. Accustomed as she was to living
+with her father, who was gloomy and morose, and to seeing much of Paul
+Griggs, whose powers of silence were phenomenal at that time, Reanda's
+easy grace of conversation charmed and flattered her. He was, by many
+degrees, the superior in talent, in charm, in learning, to any one she
+had ever met, and it must not be forgotten that although he was twenty
+years older than she, he was not yet forty, and that, as he had not a
+grey hair in his head, he could still pass for a young man, though his
+grave disposition made him feel older than he was. Of the three
+melancholic men in whose society she chiefly lived, her father was
+selfish and morose; Griggs was gentle, but silent and incomprehensible,
+though he exerted an undoubted influence over her; Reanda alone, though
+naturally melancholy, was at once gentle, companionable, and talkative
+with her.
+
+Dalrymple accepted the intimacy with indifference and even with a
+certain satisfaction. In his reflexions, he characterized Reanda as a
+rare combination of the great artist and the gentleman. Since Gloria had
+known him she had grown more quiet. She admired him and imitated his
+manner. It was a good thing. He was glad, too, that Reanda was not
+married, for it would have been a nuisance, thought Dalrymple, to have
+the man's wife always about and expecting to be amused.
+
+It began to occur to him that Reanda might be falling in love with
+Gloria, and he did not resent the idea. In fact, though at first sight
+it should have seemed strange to an Englishman, he looked upon the idea
+with favour. He wished to live out his life in Italy, for he had got
+that fierce affection for the country which has overcome and bound many
+northern men, from Sir John Hawkwood to Landor and Browning. Though he
+did not love Gloria, he was attached to her in his own way, and did not
+wish to lose sight of her altogether. But, in consequence of his own
+irregular marriage, he could not marry her to a man of his own rank in
+Rome, who would not fail to make inquiries about her mother. It was most
+natural that he should look upon such a man as Reanda with favour.
+Reanda had many good qualities. Dalrymple's judgment was generally keen
+enough about people, and he had understood that such a woman as Donna
+Francesca Campodonico would certainly not make a personal friend of a
+painter, and allow him to occupy rooms in her palace, unless his
+character were altogether above suspicion.
+
+Gloria was, of course, too young to be married yet, though she seemed to
+be so entirely grown up and altogether a woman. In this respect
+Dalrymple was not prejudiced. His own mother had been married at the age
+of seventeen, and he had lived long in Italy, where early marriages were
+common enough. There could certainly be no serious objection to the
+match on that score, when another year should have passed.
+
+Dalrymple's only anxiety about his daughter concerned her strong
+inclination to be a public singer. The prejudice was by no means
+extraordinary, and as a Scotchman, it had even more weight with him than
+it could have had, for instance, with an Italian. Reanda entirely agreed
+with him on this point, and when Gloria spoke of it, he never failed to
+draw a lively picture of the drawbacks attending stage life. The artist
+spoke very strongly, for one of Gloria's earliest and chiefest
+attractions in his eyes had been the certainty he felt that she belonged
+to Francesca's class. For that reason her flattering admiration had
+brought with it a peculiar savour, especially delightful to the taste of
+a man of humble origin. Dalrymple did not understand that, but he knew
+that if Gloria married the great painter, the latter would effectually
+keep her from the stage.
+
+As for Griggs, the Scotchman was well aware that the poor young
+journalist might easily fall in love with the beautiful girl. But this
+did not deter him at all from having Griggs constantly at the house.
+Griggs was the only man he had ever met who did not bore him, who could
+be silent for an hour at a time, who could swallow as much strong wine
+as he without the slightest apparent effect upon his manner, who
+understood all he said, though sometimes saying things which he could
+not understand--in short, Griggs was a necessity to him. The young man
+was perhaps aware of the fact, and he found Dalrymple congenial to his
+own temper; but he was as excessively proud as he was extremely poor, at
+that time, and he managed to refuse the greater part of the hospitality
+offered to him, simply because he could not return it. It was very
+rarely that he accepted an invitation to a meal, though he now generally
+came in the evening, besides meeting Dalrymple almost every morning when
+they went to the bookseller's together.
+
+He puzzled the Scotchman strangely. He was an odd combination of a
+thinker and an athlete, half literary man, half gladiator. The common
+phrase 'an old head on young shoulders' described him as well as any
+phrase could. The shoulders were perhaps the more remarkable, but the
+head was not to be despised. A man who could break a horseshoe and tear
+in two a pack of cards, and who spent his spare time in studying Hegel
+and Kant, when he was not writing political correspondence for
+newspapers, deserved to be considered an exception. He seemed to have no
+material wants, and yet he had the animal power of enjoying material
+things even in excess, which is rare. He had a couple of rooms in the
+Via della Frezza, between the Corso and the Ripetta, where he lived in a
+rather mysterious way, though he made no secret about it. Occasionally
+an acquaintance climbed the steep stairs, but no one ever got him to
+open the door nor to give any sign that he was at home, if he were
+within. A one-eyed cobbler acted as porter downstairs, from morning till
+night, astride upon his bench and ever at work, an ill-savoured old pipe
+in his mouth.
+
+"You may try," he answered, when any one asked for Griggs. "Who knows?
+Perhaps Sor Paolo will open. Try a little, if you have patience."
+
+Patience being exhausted, the visitor came down the five flights again,
+and remonstrated with the cobbler.
+
+"I did not say anything," he would reply, in a cloud of smoke. "Many
+have tried. I told you to try. Am I to tell you that no one has ever
+got in? Why? To disoblige you? If you want anything of Sor Paolo, say
+it to me. Or come again."
+
+"But he will not open," objected the visitor.
+
+"Oh, that is true," returned the man of one eye. "But if you wish to
+try, I am not here to hinder you. This is the truth."
+
+Now and then, some one more inquisitive suggested that there might be a
+lady in the question. The one eye then fixed itself in a vacant stare.
+
+"Females?" the cobbler would exclaim. "Not even cats. What passes
+through your head? He is alone always. If you do not believe me, you can
+try. I do not say Sor Paolo will not open the door. A door is a door, to
+be opened."
+
+"But since I have tried!"
+
+"And I, what can I do? You have come, you have seen, you have knocked,
+and no one has opened. May the Madonna accompany you! I can do nothing."
+
+So even the most importunate of visitors departed at last. But Griggs
+had taken Dalrymple up to his lodgings more than once, and they had sat
+there for an hour talking over books. Dalrymple observed, indeed, that
+Griggs was more inclined to talk in his own rooms than anywhere else,
+and that his manner then changed so much as to make him almost seem to
+be a different man. There was a look of interest in the stony mask, and
+there was a light in the deep-set eyes which neither wine nor wit could
+bring there at other times. The man wore his armour against the world,
+as it were, a tough shell made up of a poor man's pride, and solid with
+that sense of absolute physical superiority which is an element in the
+character of strong men, and which the Scotchman understood. He himself
+had been of the strong, but not always the strongest. Paul Griggs had
+never yet been matched by any man since he had first got his growth. He
+was the equal of many in intellect, but his bodily strength was not
+equalled by any in his youth and manhood. The secret of his one
+well-hidden vanity lay in that. His moral power showed itself in his
+assumed modesty about it, for it was almost impossible to prevail upon
+him to make exhibition of it. Gloria alone seemed able to induce him,
+for her especial amusement, to break a silver dollar with his fingers,
+or tear a pack of cards, and then only in the presence of her father or
+Reanda, but never before other people.
+
+"You are the strongest man in the world, are you not?" she asked him
+once.
+
+"Yes," he answered. "I probably am, if it is I. I am vain of it, but not
+proud of it. That makes me think sometimes that I am two men in one.
+That might account for it, you know."
+
+"What nonsense!" Gloria laughed.
+
+"Is it? I daresay it is." And he relapsed into indifference, so far as
+she could see.
+
+"What is the other man like?" she asked. "Not the strong man of the two,
+but the other?"
+
+"He is a good man. The strong man is bad. They fight, and the result is
+insignificance. Some day one of the two will get the better of the
+other."
+
+"What will happen then?" she asked lightly, and still inclined to laugh.
+
+"One or the other, or both, will die, I suppose," he answered.
+
+"How very unpleasant!"
+
+She did not at all understand what he meant. At the same time she could
+not help feeling that he was eminently a man to whom she would turn in
+danger or trouble. Girl though she was, she could not mistake his great
+admiration of her, and by degrees, as the winter wore on, she trusted
+him more, though he still repelled her a little, for his saturnine calm
+was opposed to her violent vitality, as a black rock to a tawny torrent.
+Griggs had neither the manner nor the temper which wins women's hearts
+as a rule. Such men are sometimes loved by women when their sorrow has
+chained them to the rock of horror, and grief insatiable tears out their
+broken hearts. But in their strength they are not loved. They cannot
+give themselves yet, for their strength hinders them, and women think
+them miserly of words and of love's little coin of change. If they get
+love at last, it is as the pity which the unhurt weak feel for the
+ruined strong.
+
+Gloria was not above irritating Griggs occasionally, when the fancy took
+her to seek amusement in that way. She knew how to do it, and he rarely
+turned upon her, even in the most gentle way.
+
+"We are good friends, are we not?" she asked one day, when it was
+raining and he was alone with her, waiting for her father to come in.
+
+"I hope so," he answered, turning his impassive face slowly towards her.
+
+"Then you ought to be much nicer to me," she said.
+
+"I am as nice as I know how to be," replied Griggs, with fixed eyes.
+"What shall I do?"
+
+"That is it. You ought to know. You could talk and say pleasant things,
+for instance. Don't you admit that you are very dull to-day?"
+
+"I admit it. I regret it, and I wish I were not."
+
+"You need not be. I am sure you can talk very well, when you please. You
+are not exactly funny at any time, but to-day you are funereal. You
+remind me of those big black horses they use for hearses, you know."
+
+"Thank you, thank you," said Griggs, quietly, repeating the words
+without emphasis.
+
+"I don't like you!" she exclaimed petulantly, but with a little laugh.
+
+"I know that," he answered. "But I like you very much. We were probably
+meant to differ."
+
+"Then you might amuse me. It's awfully dull when it rains. Pull the
+house down, or tear up silver scudi, or something."
+
+"I am not Samson, and I am not a clown," observed Griggs, coldly.
+
+"I shall never like you if you are so disagreeable," said Gloria, taking
+up a book, and settling herself to read.
+
+"I am afraid you never will," answered Griggs, following her example.
+
+A few minutes passed in silence. Then Gloria looked up suddenly.
+
+"Mr. Griggs?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I did not mean to be horrid."
+
+"No, of course not."
+
+"Because, if I were ever in trouble, you know--I should come straight to
+you."
+
+"Thank you," he answered very gently. "But I hope you will never be in
+trouble. If you ever should be--" He stopped.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I do not think you would find anybody who would try harder to help
+you," he said simply.
+
+She wished that his voice would tremble, or that he would put out his
+hand towards her, or show something a little more like emotion. But she
+had to be satisfied.
+
+"Would it be the good man or the bad man that would help me?" she
+asked, remembering the former conversation.
+
+"Both," answered Griggs, without hesitation.
+
+"I am not sure that I might not like the bad man better," said Gloria,
+almost to herself.
+
+"Is Reanda a bad man?" inquired Griggs, slowly, and looking for the
+blush in her face.
+
+"Why?" But she blushed, as he expected.
+
+"Because you like him better than me."
+
+"You are quite different. It is of no use to talk about it, and I want
+to read."
+
+She turned from him and buried herself in her book, but she moved
+restlessly two or three times, and it was some minutes before the
+heightened colour disappeared from her face.
+
+She was very girlish still, and when she had irritated Griggs as far as
+such a man was capable of irritation, she preferred to refuse battle
+rather than deal with the difficulty she had created. But Griggs
+understood, and amongst his still small sufferings he often felt the
+little, dull, hopeless pang which tells a man that he is unlovable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+VERY late, one night in the Carnival season, Paul Griggs was walking the
+streets alone. His sufferings were no longer so small as they had been,
+and the bitterness of solitude was congenial to him.
+
+He had been at the house of a Spanish artist, where there had been
+dancing and music and supper and improvised tableaux. Gloria and her
+father and Reanda had all been there, too, and something had happened
+which had stirred the depths of the young man's slow temper. He hated to
+make an exhibition of himself, and much against his will he had been
+exhibited, as it were, to help the gaiety of the entertainment. Cotogni,
+the great sculptor, had suggested that Griggs should appear as Samson,
+asleep with his head on Delilah's knee, and bound by her with cords
+which he should seem to break as the Philistines rushed in. He had
+refused flatly, again and again, till all the noisy party caught the
+idea and forced him to it.
+
+They had dressed him in silk draperies, his mighty arms bare almost to
+the shoulder, and they had given him a long, dark, theatrical wig. They
+had bound his arms and chest with cords, and had made him lie down and
+pretend to be asleep at the feet of the artist's beautiful wife. They
+had made slipping knots in the cords, so that he could easily wrench
+them loose. Then the curtain had been drawn aside, and there had been a
+pause as the tableau was shown. All at once a mob of artists, draped
+hastily in anything they could lay their hands upon, and with all manner
+of helmets on their heads from the Spaniard's collection, had rushed in.
+
+"The Philistines are upon thee!" cried Delilah in a piercing voice.
+
+He sprang to his feet, his legs being free, and he struggled with the
+cords. The knots would not slip as they were meant to do. The situation
+lasted several seconds, and was ridiculous enough.
+
+People began to laugh.
+
+"Cut off his hair!" cried one.
+
+"Of what use was the wig?" laughed another, and every one tittered.
+
+Griggs could hear Gloria's clear, high laugh above the rest. His blood
+slowly rose in his throat. But no one pulled the curtain across. The
+Philistines, young artists, mad with Carnival, improvised a very
+eccentric dance of triumph, and the laughter increased.
+
+Griggs looked at the cords. Then his mask-like face turned slowly to the
+audience. Only the great veins swelled suddenly at his temples, while
+every one watched him in the general amusement. Suddenly his eyes
+flashed, and he drew a deep breath, for he was angry. In an instant
+there was dead silence in the room. A moment later one of the cords,
+drawn tight round his chest, over the silk robe, snapped like a thread,
+then another, and then a third. Then in a sort of frenzy of anger he
+savagely broke the whole cord into pieces with his hands, tossing the
+bits contemptuously upon the floor. His face was as white as a dead
+man's.
+
+A roar of applause broke the silence when the guests realized what he
+had done. The artists seized him and carried him high in procession
+round the room, the women threw flowers at him, and some one struck up a
+triumphal march on the piano. It was an ovation. Half an hour later,
+dressed again in his ordinary clothes, he found himself next to Gloria.
+
+"You told me the other day that you were not Samson," she said. "You see
+you can be when you choose."
+
+"No," answered Griggs, coldly; "I am a clown."
+
+What she had said was natural enough, but somehow the satisfaction of
+his bodily vanity had stung his moral pride beyond endurance. It seemed
+a despicable thing to be as vain as he was of a gift for which he had
+not paid any price. Deep down, too, he felt bitterly that he had never
+received the slightest praise for any thought of his which he had
+written down and sent to that cauldron of the English daily press in
+which all individual right to distinction disappears, with all claim to
+praise, from written matter, however good it be. He worked, he read, he
+studied, he wrote late, and rose early to observe. But his natural gift
+was to be a mountebank, a clown, a circus Hercules. By stiffening one of
+his senseless arms he could bring down roars of applause. By years of
+bitter labour with his pen he earned the barest living. The muscles that
+a porter might have, offered him opulence, because it was tougher by a
+few degrees than the flesh of other men. The knowledge he had striven
+for just kept him above absolute want.
+
+He slipped away from the gay party as soon as he could. His last glance
+round the room showed him Angelo Reanda and Gloria, sitting in a corner
+apart. The girl's face was grave. There was a gentle and happy light in
+the artist's eyes which Griggs had never seen. That also was the strong
+man's portion.
+
+Wrathfully he strode away from the house, under the dim oil lamps, an
+unlighted cigar between his teeth, his soft felt hat drawn over his
+eyes. He crossed the city towards the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona,
+his cigar still unlighted.
+
+The streets were alive, though it was very late. There was more freedom
+to be gay and more hope of being simply happy in those days. Many men
+and women wandered about in bands of ten or a dozen, singing in soft
+voices, above which now and then rose a few ringing tenor notes. There
+was laughter everywhere in the air; tambourines drummed and thumped and
+jingled, guitars twanged, and mandolines tinkled and quavered. From a
+dark lane somewhere off the broader thoroughfare, a single voice sang
+out in serenade. The Corso was bright with unusual lights, and strewn
+with the birdseed and plaster-of-Paris 'confetti,' with yellow sand and
+sprigs of box leaves, and withering flowers, and there was about all the
+neighbourhood that peculiar smell of plaster and crushed flower-stalks
+which belonged then to the street carnival of Rome. Further on, in the
+dim quarters by the Tiber, the wine shops were all crowded, and men
+stood and drank outside on the pavement, and paid, and went laughing on,
+laughing and singing, singing and laughing, through the night.
+
+Griggs felt the penetrating loneliness of him who cannot laugh amidst
+laughter, and it was congenial to him. He had always been alone, and he
+felt that the world held no companion for him. There was satisfaction in
+knowing that no one could ever guess what went on between his heart and
+his head.
+
+He wandered on with the same even, untiring stride, for a long time,
+through the dark and winding ways, from the Pantheon through the old
+city, through Piazza Paganica and Costaguti to Piazza Montanara, where
+the carters and carriers congregate from the country. There, in the
+middle of the three-cornered open space, a flag in the paving marked the
+spot on which men used to be put to death. To-night even the carriers
+were making merry. Griggs was thirsty, and paused at the door of a wine
+shop. Though it was winter, men were sitting outside, for there was no
+more room within. A flaring torch of pitched rope was stuck in an iron
+ring, and shed an uncertain, smoky light upon the men's faces. A drawer
+in an apron brought Griggs a glass, and he drank standing.
+
+"It makes no difference," said a rough voice in the little crowd. "They
+may cut off my head there on the paving-stone. They would do me a
+favour. If I find him, I kill him. An evil death on him and all his
+house!"
+
+Griggs looked at the speaker without surprise, for he had often heard
+such things said. He saw an iron-grey man in good peasant's clothes of
+dark blue with broad silver buttons, a man with a true Roman face, a
+small aquiline nose, and keen, dark eyes. He turned away, and began to
+retrace his steps.
+
+In half an hour he was at the door of the old Falcone inn, gone now like
+many relics of that day. It stood in the Piazza of Saint Eustace near
+the Pantheon, and in its time was the best of the old-fashioned
+eating-houses. Griggs felt suddenly hungry. He had walked seven or eight
+miles since he had left the party. He entered, and passed through the
+crowded rooms below and up the narrow steps to a small upper chamber,
+where he hoped to be alone. But there, also, every seat was taken.
+
+To his surprise Dalrymple and Reanda were at the table furthest from
+him, in earnest conversation, with a measure of wine between them.
+Griggs had never seen the Italian there before, but the latter caught
+sight of him as he stood in the door, and rose to his feet, making a
+sign which meant that he was going away, and that the chair was vacant.
+Griggs came forward, and looked into his face as they met. There was the
+same gentle and happy light in Reanda's eyes which had been there when
+he was sitting with Gloria in the corner of the Spanish artist's
+drawing-room. Then Griggs understood and knew the truth, and guessed the
+meaning of the unaccustomed pressure of the hand as Reanda greeted him
+without speaking, and hurriedly went out.
+
+Dalrymple had seen Griggs coming and was already calling to a man in a
+spotless white jacket for another glass and more wine. The Scotchman's
+bony face was haggard, but there was a little colour in his cheeks, and
+he seemed pleased.
+
+"Sit down, Griggs," he said. "There are no more chairs, so we can keep
+the table to ourselves. I hope you are half as thirsty as I am."
+
+"Rather more than half," answered the other, and he drank eagerly. "Give
+me some more, please," he said, holding out his glass.
+
+"I see that you are in the right humour to hear good news," said the
+Scot. "Reanda is to marry my daughter in the summer."
+
+"I congratulate you all three," said Griggs, slowly, for he had known
+what was coming. "Let us drink the health of the couple."
+
+"By all means," answered Dalrymple, filling again. "By all means let us
+drink. I could not swallow that sweet stuff at Mendoza's. This is
+better. By all means let us drink as much as we can."
+
+"That might mean a good deal," said Griggs, quickly, and he drained a
+third glass. "Were you ever drunk, Dalrymple?" he inquired gravely.
+
+"No. I never was," answered the Scotchman.
+
+"Nor I. This seems a fitting occasion for trying an experiment. We might
+try to get drunk."
+
+"By all means, let us try," replied Dalrymple. "I have my doubts about
+the possibility of the thing, however."
+
+"So have I."
+
+They sat opposite to one another in silence for some minutes, each
+satisfied that the other was in earnest. Dalrymple solemnly filled the
+glasses and then leaned back in his chair.
+
+"You did not seem much surprised by what I told you," he observed at
+last. "I suppose you expected it."
+
+"Yes. It seemed natural enough, though it is not always the natural
+things that happen."
+
+"I think they are suited to marry. Of course, Reanda is very much older,
+but he is comparatively a young man still."
+
+"Comparatively. He will make a better husband for having had experience,
+I daresay."
+
+"That depends on what experience he has had. When I first saw him I
+thought he was in love with Donna Francesca. It would have been like an
+artist. They are mostly fools. But I was mistaken. He worships at a
+distance."
+
+"And she preserves the distance," Griggs remarked. "You are not drinking
+fair. My glass is empty."
+
+Dalrymple finished his and refilled both.
+
+"I have been here some time," he observed, half apologetically. "But as
+I was saying--or rather, as you were saying--Donna Francesca preserves
+the distance. These Italians do that admirably. They know the difference
+between intimacy and familiarity."
+
+"That is a nice distinction," said Griggs. "I will use it in my next
+letter. No. Donna Francesca could never be familiar with any one. They
+learn it when they are young, I suppose, and it becomes a
+race-characteristic."
+
+"What?" asked Dalrymple, abruptly.
+
+"A certain graceful loftiness," answered the younger man.
+
+The Scotchman's wrinkled eyelids contracted, and he was silent for a few
+moments.
+
+"A certain graceful loftiness," he repeated slowly. "Yes, perhaps so. A
+certain graceful loftiness."
+
+"You seem struck by the expression," said Griggs.
+
+"I am. Drink, man, drink!" added Dalrymple, suddenly, in a different
+tone. "There's no time to be lost if we mean to drink enough to hurt us
+before those beggars go to bed."
+
+"Never fear. They will be up all night. Not that it is a reason for
+wasting time, as you say."
+
+He drank his glass and watched Dalrymple as the latter did likewise,
+with that deliberate intention which few but Scotchmen can maintain on
+such occasions. The wine might have been poured into a quicksand, for
+any effect it had as yet produced.
+
+"Those race-characteristics of families are very curious," continued
+Griggs, thoughtfully.
+
+"Are they?" Dalrymple looked at him suspiciously.
+
+"Very. Especially voices. They run in families, like resemblance of
+features."
+
+"So they do," answered the other, thoughtfully. "So they do."
+
+He had of late years got into the habit of often repeating such short
+phrases, in an absent-minded way.
+
+"Yes," said Griggs. "I noticed Donna Francesca's voice, the first time I
+ever heard it. It is one of those voices which must be inherited. I am
+sure that all her family have spoken as she does. It reminds me of
+something--of some one--"
+
+Dalrymple raised his eyes suddenly again, as though he were irritated.
+
+"I say," he began, interrupting his companion. "Do you feel anything?
+Anything queer in your head?"
+
+"No. Why?"
+
+"You are talking rather disconnectedly, that is all."
+
+"Am I? It did not strike me that I was incoherent. Probably one half of
+me was asleep while the other was talking." He laughed drily, and drank
+again. "No," he said thoughtfully, as he set down his glass. "I feel
+nothing unusual in my head. It would be odd if I did, considering that
+we have only just begun."
+
+"So I thought," answered Dalrymple.
+
+He ordered more wine and relapsed into silence. Neither spoke again for
+a long time.
+
+"There goes another bottle," said Dalrymple, at last, as he drained the
+last drops from the flagon measure. "Drink a little faster. This is slow
+work. We know the old road well enough."
+
+"You are not inclined to give up the attempt, are you?" inquired Griggs,
+whose still face showed no change. "Is it fair to eat? I am hungry."
+
+"Certainly. Eat as much as you like."
+
+Griggs ordered something, which was brought after considerable delay,
+and he began to eat.
+
+"We are not loquacious over our cups," remarked Dalrymple. "Should you
+mind telling me why you are anxious to get drunk to-night for the first
+time in your life?"
+
+"I might ask you the same question," answered Griggs, cautiously.
+
+"Merely because you proposed it. It struck me as a perfectly new idea. I
+have not much to amuse me, you know, and I shall have less when my
+daughter leaves me. It would be an amusement to lose one's head in some
+way."
+
+"In such a way as to be able to get it back, you mean. I was walking
+this evening after the party, and I came to the Piazza Montanara. There
+is a big flagstone there on which people used to leave their heads for
+good."
+
+"Yes. I have seen it. You cannot tell me much about Rome which I do not
+know."
+
+"There were a lot of carriers drinking close by. It was rather grim, I
+thought. An old fellow there had a spite against somebody. You know how
+they talk. 'They may cut off my head there on the paving-stone,' the man
+said. 'If I find him, I kill him. An evil death on him and all his
+house!' You have heard that sort of thing. But the fellow seemed to be
+very much in earnest."
+
+"He will probably kill his man," said Dalrymple.
+
+Suddenly his big, loose shoulders shook a little, and he shivered. He
+glanced towards the window, suspecting that it might be open.
+
+"Are you cold?" asked Griggs, carelessly.
+
+"Cold? No. Some one was walking over my grave, as they say. If we varied
+the entertainment with something stronger, we should get on faster,
+though."
+
+"No," said Griggs. "I refuse to mix things. This may be the longer way,
+but it is the safer."
+
+And he drank again.
+
+"He was a man from Tivoli, or Subiaco," he remarked presently. "He spoke
+with that accent."
+
+"I daresay," answered Dalrymple, who looked down into his glass at that
+moment, so that his face was in shadow.
+
+Just then four men who had occupied a table near the door rose and went
+out. It was late, even for a night in Carnival.
+
+"I hope they are not going to leave us all to ourselves," said
+Dalrymple. "The place will be shut up, and we need at least two hours
+more."
+
+"At least," assented Paul Griggs. "But they expect to be open all night.
+I think there is time."
+
+The men at the other tables showed no signs of moving. They sat quietly
+in their places, drinking steadily, by sips. Some of them were eating
+roasted chestnuts, and all were talking more or less in low tones.
+Occasionally one voice or another rose above the rest in an exclamation,
+but instantly subsided again. Italians of that class are rarely noisy,
+for though the Romans drink deep, they generally have strong heads, and
+would be ashamed of growing excited over their wine.
+
+The air was heavy, for several men were smoking strong cigars. The
+vaulted chamber was lighted by a single large oil lamp with a reflector,
+hung by a cord from the intersection of the cross-arches. The floor was
+of glazed white tiles, and the single window had curtains of Turkey red.
+It was all very clean and respectable and well kept, even at that
+crowded season, but the air was heavy with wine and tobacco, and the
+smell of cooked food,--a peculiar atmosphere in which the old-fashioned
+Roman delighted to sit for hours on holidays.
+
+Dalrymple looked about him, moving his pale blue eyes without turning
+his head. The colour had deepened a little on his prominent cheek bones,
+and his eyes were less bright than usual. But his red hair, growing
+sandy with grey, was brushed smoothly back, and his evening dress was
+unruffled. He and Griggs were so evidently gentlemen, that some of the
+Italians at the other tables glanced at them occasionally in quiet
+surprise, not that they should be there, but that they should remain so
+long, and so constantly renew their order for another bottle of wine.
+
+Giulio, the stout, dark drawer in a spotless jacket, moved about
+silently and quickly. One of the Italians glanced at Griggs and
+Dalrymple and then at the waiter, who also glanced at them quickly and
+then shrugged his shoulders almost perceptibly. Dalrymple saw both
+glances, and his eyes lighted up.
+
+"I believe that fellow is laughing at us," he said to Griggs.
+
+"There is nothing to laugh at," answered the latter, unmoved. "But of
+course, if you think so, throw him downstairs."
+
+Dalrymple laughed drily.
+
+"There is a certain calmness about the suggestion," he said. "It has a
+good, old-fashioned ring to it. You are not a very civilized young man,
+considering your intellectual attainments."
+
+"I grew up at sea and before the mast. That may account for it."
+
+"You seem to have crammed a good deal into a short life," observed
+Dalrymple. "It must have been a classic ship, where they taught Greek
+and Latin."
+
+"The captain used to call her his Ship of Fools. As a matter of fact, it
+was rather classic, as you say. The old man taught us navigation and
+Greek verse by turns for five years. He was a university man with a
+passion for literature, but I never knew a better sailor. He put me
+ashore when I was seventeen with pretty nearly the whole of my five
+years' pay in my pocket, and he made me promise that I would go to
+college and stay as long as my money held out. I got through somehow,
+but I am not sure that I bless him. He is afloat still, and I write to
+him now and then."
+
+"An Englishman, I suppose?"
+
+"No. An American."
+
+"What strange people you Americans are!" exclaimed Dalrymple, and he
+drank again. "You take up a profession, and you wear it for a bit, like
+a coat, and then change it for another," he added, setting down his
+empty glass.
+
+"Very much like you Scotch," answered Griggs. "I have heard you say that
+you were a doctor once."
+
+"A doctor--yes--in a way, for the sake of being a man of science, or
+believing myself to be one. My family was opposed to it," he continued
+thoughtfully. "My father told me it was his sincere belief that science
+did not stand in need of any help from me. He said I was more likely to
+need the help of science, like other lunatics. I will not say that he
+was not right."
+
+He laughed a little and filled his glass.
+
+"Poor Dalrymple!" he exclaimed softly, still smiling.
+
+Paul Griggs raised his slow eyes to his companion's face.
+
+"It never struck me that you were much to be pitied," he observed.
+
+"No, no. Perhaps not. But I will venture to say that the point is
+debatable, and could be argued. 'To be, or not to be' is a question
+admirably calculated to draw out the resources of the intellect in
+argument, if you are inclined for that sort of diversion. It is a very
+good thing, a very good thing for a man to consider and weigh that
+question while he is young. Before he goes to sleep, you know, Griggs,
+before he goes to sleep."
+
+"'For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come--'" Griggs quoted,
+and stopped.
+
+"'When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.' You do not know your
+Shakespeare, young man."
+
+"'Must give us pause,'" continued Griggs. "I was thinking of the dreams,
+not of the rest."
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+          "Fire and sleet and candle-light;
+             And Christ receive thy soul."
+
+--Vol. I., p. 324.]
+
+"Dreams? Yes. There will be dreams there. Dreams, and other
+things--'this ae night of all.' Not that my reason admits that they can
+be more than dreams, you know, Griggs. Reason says 'to sleep--no more.'
+And fancy says 'perchance to dream.' Well, well, it will be a long
+dream, that's all."
+
+"Yes. We shall be dead a long time. Better drink now." And Griggs drank.
+
+          "'Fire and sleet and candle-light,
+              And Christ receive thy soul;'"
+
+said Dalrymple, with a far-away look in his pale eyes. "Do you know the
+Lyke-Wake Dirge, Griggs? It is a grand dirge. Hark to the swing of it.
+
+          "'This ae night, this ae night,
+             Every night and all,
+           Fire and sleet and candle-light,
+             And Christ receive thy soul.'"
+
+He repeated the strange words in a dull, matter-of-fact way, with a
+Scotch accent rarely perceptible in his conversation. Griggs listened.
+He had heard the dirge before, with all its many stanzas, and it had
+always had an odd fascination for him. He said nothing.
+
+"It bodes no good to be singing a dirge at a betrothal," said the
+Scotchman, suddenly. "Drink, man, drink! Drink till the blue devils fly
+away. Drink--
+
+          "'Till a' the seas gang dry, my love,
+              Till a' the seas gang dry.'
+
+Not that it is in the disposition of the Italian inn-keeper to give us
+time for that," he added drily. "As I was saying, I am of a melancholic
+temper. Not that I take you for a gay man yourself, Griggs. Drink a
+little more. It is my opinion that a little more will produce an
+agreeable impression upon you, my young friend. Drink a little more. You
+are too grave for so very young a man. I should not wish to be
+indiscreet, but I might almost take you for a man in love, if I did not
+know you better. Were you ever in love, Griggs?"
+
+"Yes," answered Griggs, quietly. "And you, Dalrymple? Were you never in
+love?"
+
+Dalrymple's loosely hung shoulders started suddenly, and his pale blue
+eyes set themselves steadily to look at Griggs. The red brows were
+shaggy, and there was a bright red spot on each cheek bone. He did not
+answer his companion's question, though his lips moved once or twice as
+though he were about to speak. They seemed unable to form words, and no
+sound came from them.
+
+His anger was near, perhaps, and with another man it might have broken
+out. But the pale and stony face opposite him, and the deep, still eyes,
+exercised a quieting influence, and whatever words rose to his lips were
+never spoken. Griggs understood that he had touched the dead body of a
+great passion, sacred in its death as it must have been overwhelming in
+its life. He struck another subject immediately, and pretended not to
+have noticed Dalrymple's expression.
+
+"I like your queer old Scotch ballads," he said, humouring the man's
+previous tendency to quote poetry.
+
+"There's a lot of life in them still," answered Dalrymple, absently
+twisting his empty glass.
+
+Griggs filled it for him, and they both drank. Little by little the
+Italians had begun to go away. Giulio, the fat, white-jacketed drawer,
+sat nodding in a corner, and the light from the high lamp gleamed on his
+smooth black hair as his head fell forward.
+
+"There is a sincere vitality in our Scotch poets," said Dalrymple, as
+though not satisfied with the short answer he had given. "There is a
+very notable power of active living exhibited in their somewhat
+irregular versification, and in the concatenation of their
+ratiocinations regarding the three principal actions of the early
+Scottish life, which I take to have been birth, stealing, and a violent
+death."
+
+"'But of these three charity is the greatest,'" observed Griggs, with
+something like a laugh, for he saw that Dalrymple was beginning to make
+long sentences, which is a bad sign for a Scotchman's sobriety.
+
+"No," answered Dalrymple, with much gravity. "There I venture--indeed, I
+claim the right--to differ with you. For the Scotchman is hospitable,
+but not charitable. The process of the Scotch mind is unitary, if you
+will allow me to coin a word for which I will pay with my glass."
+
+And he forthwith fulfilled the obligation in a deep draught. Setting
+down the tumbler, he leaned back in his chair and looked slowly round
+the room. His lips moved. Griggs could just distinguish the last lines
+of another old ballad.
+
+          "'Night and day on me she cries,
+            And I am weary of the skies
+            Since--'"
+
+He broke off and shook himself nervously, and looked at Griggs, as
+though wondering whether the latter had heard.
+
+"This wine is good," he said, rousing himself. "Let us have some more.
+Giulio!"
+
+The fat waiter awoke instantly at the call, looked, nodded, went out,
+and returned immediately with another bottle.
+
+"Is this the sixth or the seventh?" asked Dalrymple, slowly.
+
+"Eight with Signor Reanda's," answered the man. "But Signor Reanda paid
+for his as he went out. You have therefore seven. It might be enough."
+Giulio smiled.
+
+"Bring seven more, Giulio," said the Scotchman, gravely. "It will save
+you six journeys."
+
+"Does the Signore speak in earnest?" asked the servant, and he glanced
+at Griggs, who was impassive as marble.
+
+"You flatter yourself," said Dalrymple, impressively, to the man, "if
+you imagine that I would make even a bad joke to amuse you. Bring seven
+bottles." Giulio departed.
+
+"That is a Homeric order," observed Griggs.
+
+"I think--in fact, I am almost sure--that seven bottles more will
+produce an impression upon one of us. But I have a decidedly melancholic
+disposition, and I accustomed myself to Italian wine when I was very
+young. Melancholy people can drink more than others. Besides, what does
+such a bottle hold? I will show you. A tumbler to you, and one to me.
+Drink; you shall see."
+
+He emptied his glass and poured the remainder of the bottle into it.
+
+"Do you see? Half a tumbler. Two and a half are a bottle. Seven bottles
+are seventeen and a half glasses. What is that for you or me in a long
+evening? My blue devils are large. It would take an ocean to float them
+all. I insist upon going to bed in a good humour to-night, for once, in
+honour of my daughter's engagement. By the bye, Griggs, what do you
+think of Reanda?"
+
+"He is a first-rate artist. I like him very well."
+
+"A good man, eh? Well, well--from the point of view of discretion,
+Griggs, I am doing right. But then, as you may very wisely object,
+discretion is only a point of view. The important thing is the view, and
+not the point. Here comes Ganymede with the seven vials of wrath! Put
+them on the table, Giulio," he said, as the fat waiter came noiselessly
+up, carrying the bottles by the necks between his fingers, three in one
+hand and four in the other. "They make a fine show, all together," he
+observed thoughtfully, with his bony head a little on one side.
+
+"And may God bless you!" said Giulio, solemnly. "If you do not die
+to-night, you will never die again."
+
+"I regard it as improbable that we shall die more than once," answered
+Dalrymple. "I believe," he said, turning to Griggs, "that when men are
+drunk they make mistakes about money. We will pay now, while we are
+sober."
+
+Griggs insisted on paying his share. They settled, and Giulio went away
+happy.
+
+The two strong men sat opposite to each other, under the high lamp in
+the small room, drinking on and on. There was something terrifying in
+the Scotchman's determination to lose his senses--something grimly
+horrible in the younger man's marble impassiveness, as he swallowed
+glass for glass in time with his companion. His face grew paler still,
+and colder, but there was a far-off gleaming in the shadowy eyes, like
+the glimmer of a light over a lonely plain through the dark.
+Dalrymple's spirits did not rise, but he talked more and more, and his
+sentences became long and involved, and sometimes had no conclusion. The
+wine was telling on him at last. He had never been so strong as Griggs,
+at his best, and he was no match for him now. The younger man's
+strangely dual nature seemed to place his head beyond anything which
+could affect his senses.
+
+Dalrymple talked on and on, rambling from one subject to another, and
+not waiting for any answer when he asked a question. He quoted long
+ballads and long passages from Shakespeare, and then turned suddenly off
+upon a scientific subject, until some word of his own suggested another
+quotation.
+
+Griggs sat quietly in his seat, drinking as steadily, but paying little
+attention now to what the Scotchman said. Something had got hold of his
+heart, and was grinding it like grain between the millstones, grinding
+it to dust and ashes. He knew that he could not sleep that night. He
+might as well drink, for it could not hurt him. Nothing material had
+power to hurt him, it seemed. He felt the pain of longing for the
+utterly unattainable, knowing that it was beyond him forever. The
+widowhood of the unsatisfied is hell, compared with the bereavement of
+complete possession. He had not so much as told Gloria that he had loved
+her. How could he, being but one degree above a beggar? The unspoken
+words burned furrows in his heart, as molten metal scores smoking
+channels in living flesh. Gloria would laugh, if she knew. The torture
+made his face white. There was the scorn of himself with it, because a
+mere child could hurt him almost to death, and that made it worse. A
+mere child, barely out of the schoolroom, petulant, spoiled, selfish!
+
+But she had the glory of heaven in her voice, and in her face the fatal
+beauty of her dead mother's deadly sin. He need not have despised
+himself for loving her. Her whole being appealed to that in man to which
+no woman ever appealed in vain since the first Adam sold heaven to Satan
+for woman's love.
+
+Dalrymple, leaning on his elbow, one hand in his streaked beard, the
+other grasping his glass, talked on and quoted more and more.
+
+          "'The flame took fast upon her cheek,
+              Took fast upon her chin,
+            Took fast upon her fair body
+              Because of her deadly sin.'"
+
+His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper at the last words, and suddenly,
+regardless of his companion, his hand covered his eyes, and his long
+fingers strained desperately on his bony forehead. Griggs watched him,
+thinking that he was drunk at last.
+
+"Because of her deadly sin," he repeated slowly, and the tone changed.
+"There is no sin in it!" he cried suddenly, in a low voice, that had a
+distant, ghostly ring in it.
+
+He looked up, and his eyes were changed, and Griggs knew that they no
+longer saw him.
+
+"Stiff," he said softly. "Quite stiff. Dead two or three hours, I
+daresay. It stands up on its feet beside me--certainly dead two or three
+hours."
+
+He nodded wisely to himself twice, and then spoke again in the same
+far-off tone, gazing past Griggs, at the wall.
+
+"The clothes-basket is a silly idea. Besides, I should lose the night.
+Rather carry it myself--wrap it up in the plaid. She'll never know, when
+she has it on her head. Who cares?"
+
+A long silence followed. One hand grasped the empty glass. The other lay
+motionless on the table. The blue eyes, with widely dilated pupils,
+stared at the wall, never blinking nor turning. But in the face there
+was the drawn expression of a bodily effort. Presently Griggs saw the
+fine beads of perspiration on the great forehead. Then the voice spoke
+again, but in Italian this time.
+
+"You had better look away while I go by. It is not a pretty sight. No,"
+he continued, changing to English, "not at all a pretty sight. Stiff as
+a board still."
+
+The unwinking eyes dilated. The bright colour was gone from the cheek
+bones.
+
+"It burns very well," he said again in Italian. The whole face quivered
+and the hard lips softened and kissed the air. "It is golden--I can see
+it in the dark--but I must cover it, darling. Quick--this way. At last!
+No--you cannot see the fire, but it is burning well, I am sure. Hold on!
+Hold the pommel of the saddle with both hands--so!"
+
+The voice ceased. Griggs began to understand. He touched Dalrymple's
+sleeve, leaning across the table.
+
+"I say!" he called softly. "Dalrymple!"
+
+The Scotchman started violently, and the pupils of his eyes contracted.
+The empty glass in his right hand rattled on the hard wood. Then he
+smiled vaguely at Griggs.
+
+"By Jove!" he exclaimed in his natural voice. "I think I must have been
+napping--'Sleep'ry Sim of the Lamb-hill, and snoring Jock of
+Suport-mill!' By Jove, Griggs, we have got near the point at last. One
+bottle left, eh? The seventh.
+
+          "'Then up and gat the seventh o' them,
+            And never a word spake he;
+            But he has striped his bright brown brand--'
+
+The rest has no bearing upon the subject," he concluded, filling both
+glasses. "Griggs," he said, before he drank, "I am afraid this settles
+the matter."
+
+"I am afraid it does," said Griggs.
+
+"Yes. I had hopes a little while ago, which appeared well founded. But
+that unfortunate little nap has sent me back to the starting-point. I
+should have to begin all over again. It is very late, I fancy. Let us
+drink this last glass to our own two selves, and then give it up."
+
+Something had certainly sobered the Scotchman again, or at least cleared
+his head, for he had not been drunk in the ordinary sense of the word.
+
+"It cannot be said that we have not given the thing a fair trial," said
+Griggs, gloomily. "I shall certainly not take the trouble to try it
+again."
+
+Nevertheless he looked at his companion curiously, as they both rose to
+their feet together. Dalrymple doubled his long arms as he stood up and
+stretched them out.
+
+"It is curious," he said. "I feel as though I had been carrying a heavy
+weight in my arms. I did once, for some distance," he added
+thoughtfully, "and I remember the sensation."
+
+"Very odd," said Griggs, lighting a cigar.
+
+Giulio, sitting outside, half asleep, woke up as he heard the steady
+tread of the two strong men go by.
+
+"If you do not die to-night, you will never die again!" he said, half
+aloud, as he rose to go in and clear the room where the guests had been
+sitting.
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: "As he stood there repeating the name."--Vol. II., p.
+331.]
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO
+
+BY
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "PIETRO GHISLERI," ETC.
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+VOL. II.
+
+_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. CASTAIGNE_
+
+                 =New York=
+              MACMILLAN AND CO.
+                 AND LONDON
+                    1895
+
+          _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+          COPYRIGHT, 1894,
+          BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
+
+          =Norwood Press=
+          J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
+          Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+          PART II.--_Continued._
+          GLORIA DALRYMPLE                   1
+
+          PART III.
+          DONNA FRANCESCA CAMPODONICO      227
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+VOL. II.
+
+                                                   PAGE
+          "Gloria--forgive me!"                      50
+
+          Stefanone and Gloria                      100
+
+          "The horror of poverty smote him"         123
+
+          "Let us not speak of the dead"            203
+
+          "The last great, true note died away"     219
+
+          "As he stood there repeating the name"    331
+
+
+
+
+Part II.--_Continued._
+
+_GLORIA DALRYMPLE._
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO.
+
+PART II.--_Continued._
+
+_GLORIA DALRYMPLE._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+DURING the first few months of their marriage Reanda and Gloria believed
+themselves happy, and really were, since there is no true criterion of
+man's happiness but his own belief in it. They took a small furnished
+apartment at the corner of the Macel de' Corvi, with an iron balcony
+overlooking the Forum of Trajan. They would have had no difficulty in
+obtaining other rooms adjoining the two Reanda had so long occupied in
+the Palazzetto Borgia, but Gloria was opposed to the arrangement, and
+Reanda did not insist upon it. The Forum of Trajan was within a
+convenient distance of the palace, and he went daily to his work.
+
+"Besides," said Gloria, "you will not always be painting frescoes for
+Donna Francesca. I want you to paint a great picture, and send it to
+Paris and get a medal."
+
+She was ambitious for him, and dreamed of his winning world-wide fame.
+She loved him, and she felt that Francesca had caged him, as Francesca
+herself had once felt. She wished to remove him altogether from the
+latter's influence, both because she was frankly jealous of his
+friendship for the older woman, and wished to have him quite to herself,
+and also in the belief that he could do greater things if he were
+altogether freed from the task of decorating the palace, which had kept
+him far too long in one limited sequence of production. There was,
+moreover, a selfish consideration of vanity in her view, closely linked
+with her unbounded admiration for her husband. She knew that she was
+beautiful, and she wished his greatest work to be a painting of herself.
+
+Gloria, however, wished also to take a position in Roman society, and
+the only person who could help her and her husband to cross the line was
+Francesca Campodonico. It was therefore impossible for Gloria to break
+up the intimacy altogether, however much she might wish to do so.
+Meanwhile, too, Reanda had not finished his frescoes.
+
+Soon after the marriage, which took place in the summer, Dalrymple left
+Rome, intending to be absent but a few months in Scotland, where his
+presence was necessary on account of certain family affairs and
+arrangements consequent upon the death of Lord Redin, the head of his
+branch of the Dalrymples, and of Lord Redin's son only a few weeks
+later, whereby the title went to an aged great-uncle of Angus
+Dalrymple's, who was unmarried, so that Dalrymple's only brother became
+the next heir.
+
+Gloria was therefore quite alone with her husband. Paul Griggs had also
+left Rome for a time on business connected with his journalistic career.
+He had in reality been unwilling to expose himself to the unnecessary
+suffering of witnessing Gloria's happiness, and had taken the earliest
+opportunity of going away. Gloria herself was at first pleased by his
+departure. Later, however, she wished that he would come back. She had
+no one to whom she could turn when she was in need of any advice on
+matters which Reanda could not or would not decide.
+
+Reanda himself was at first as absolutely happy as he had expected to
+be, and Francesca Campodonico congratulated herself on having brought
+about a perfectly successful match. While he continued to work at the
+Palazzetto Borgia, the two were often together for hours, as in former
+times. Gloria had at first come regularly in the course of the morning
+and sat in the hall while her husband was painting, but she had found it
+a monotonous affair after a while. Reanda could not talk perpetually.
+More than once, indeed, he introduced his wife's face amongst the many
+he painted, and she was pleased, though not satisfied. He could not make
+her one of the central figures which appeared throughout the series,
+because the greater part of the work was done already, and it was
+necessary to preserve the continuity of each resemblance. Gloria wished
+to be the first everywhere, though she did not say so.
+
+Little by little, she came less regularly in the mornings. She either
+stayed at home and studied seriously the soprano parts of the great
+operas then fashionable, or invented small errands which kept her out of
+doors. She sometimes met Reanda when he left the palace, and they walked
+home together to their midday breakfast.
+
+Little by little, also, Francesca fell into the habit of visiting Reanda
+in the great hall at hours when she was sure that Gloria would not be
+there. It was not that she disliked to see them together, but rather
+because she felt that Gloria was secretly antagonistic. There was a
+small, perpetual, unexpressed hostility in Gloria's manner which could
+not escape so sensitive a woman as Francesca. Reanda felt it, too, but
+said nothing. He was almost foolishly in love with his wife, and he was
+devotedly attached to Francesca herself. For the present he was very
+simple in his dealings with himself, and he quietly shut his eyes to the
+possibility of a disagreement between the two women, though he felt
+that it was in the air.
+
+Instead of diminishing with his marriage, the obligations under which he
+was placed towards Donna Francesca were constantly increasing. She saw
+and understood his wife's social ambition, and gave herself trouble to
+satisfy it. Reanda felt this keenly, and while his gratitude increased,
+he inwardly wished that each kindness might be the last. But Gloria had
+the ambition and the right to be received in society on a footing of
+equality, and no one but Francesca Campodonico could then give her what
+she wanted.
+
+She did not obtain what is commonly called social success, though many
+people received her and her husband during the following winter. She got
+admiration in plenty, and she herself believed that it was friendship.
+Of the two, Reanda, who had no social ambition at all, was by far the
+more popular. He was, as ever, quiet and unassuming, as became a man of
+his extraordinary talent. He so evidently preferred in society to talk
+with intelligent people rather than to make himself agreeable to the
+very great, that the very great tried to attract him to themselves, in
+order to appear intelligent in the eyes of others. They altogether
+forgot that he was the son of the steward of Gerano, though he sometimes
+spoke unaffectedly of his boyhood.
+
+But Gloria reminded people too often that she had a right to be where
+she was, as the daughter of Angus Dalrymple, who might some day be Lord
+Redin. Fortunately for her, no one knew that Dalrymple had begun life as
+a doctor, and very far from such prospects as now seemed quite within
+the bounds of realization. But even as the possible Lord Redin, her
+father's existence did not interest the Romans at all. They were not
+accustomed to people who thought it necessary to justify their social
+position by allusions to their parentage, and since Francesca
+Campodonico had assured them that Dalrymple was a gentleman, they had no
+further questions to ask, and raised their eyebrows when Gloria
+volunteered information on the subject of her ancestors. They listened
+politely, and turned the subject as soon as they could, because it bored
+them.
+
+But the admiration she got was genuine of its kind, as admiration and as
+nothing else. Her magnificent voice was useful to ancient and charitable
+princesses who wished to give concerts for the benefit of the deserving
+poor, but her face disturbed the hearts of those excellent ladies who
+had unmarried sons, and of other excellent ladies who had gay husbands.
+Her beauty and her voice together were a danger, and must be admired
+from a distance. Gloria and her husband were asked to many houses on
+important occasions. Gloria went to see the princesses and duchesses,
+and found them at home. Their cards appeared regularly at the small
+house in the Macel de' Corvi, but there was always a mystery as to how
+they got there, for the princesses and the duchesses themselves did not
+appear, except once or twice when Francesca Campodonico brought one of
+her friends with her, gently insisting that there should be a proper
+call. Gloria understood, and said bitter things about society when she
+was alone, and by degrees she began to say them to her husband.
+
+"These Romans!" she exclaimed at last. "They believe that there is
+nobody like themselves!"
+
+Angelo Reanda's face had a pained look, as he laid his long thin hand
+upon hers.
+
+"My dear," he said gently. "You have married an artist. What would you
+have? I am sure, people have received us very well."
+
+"Very well! Of course--as though we had not the right to be received
+well. But, Angelo--do not say such things--that I have married an
+artist--"
+
+"It is quite true," he answered, with a smile. "I work with my hands.
+They do not. There is the difference."
+
+"But you are the greatest artist in the world!" she cried
+enthusiastically, throwing her arms round his neck, and kissing him
+again and again. "It is ridiculous. In any other city, in London, in
+Paris, people would run after you, people would not be able to do
+enough for you. But it is not you; it is I. They do not like me, Angelo,
+I know that they do not like me! They want me at their big parties, and
+they want me to sing for them--but that is all. Not one of them wants me
+for a friend. I am so lonely, Angelo."
+
+Her eyes filled with tears, and he tried to comfort her.
+
+"What does it matter, my heart?" he asked, soothingly. "We have each
+other, have we not? I, who adore you, and you, who love me--"
+
+"Love you? I worship you! That is why I wish you to have everything the
+world holds, everything at your feet."
+
+"But I am quite satisfied," objected Reanda, with unwise truth. "Do not
+think of me."
+
+She loved him, but she wished to put upon him some of her uncontrollable
+longing for social success, in order to justify herself. To please her,
+he should have joined in her complaint. Her tears dried suddenly, and
+her eyes flashed.
+
+"I will think of you!" she cried. "I have nothing else to think of. You
+shall have it all, everything--they shall know what a man you are!"
+
+"An artist, my dear, an artist. A little better than some, a little less
+good than others. What can society do for me?"
+
+She sighed, and the colour deepened a little in her cheeks. But she hid
+her annoyance, for she loved him with a love at once passionate and
+intentional, compounded of reality and of a strong inborn desire for
+emotion, a desire closely connected with her longing for the life of the
+stage, but now suddenly thrown with full force into the channel of her
+actual life.
+
+Reanda began to understand that his wife was not happy, and the
+certainty reacted strongly upon him. He became more sad and abstracted
+from day to day, when he was not with her. He longed, as only a man of
+such a nature can long, for a friend in whom he could confide, and of
+whom he could ask advice. He had such a friend, indeed, in Francesca
+Campodonico, but he was too proud to turn to her, and too deeply
+conscious that she had done all she could to give Gloria the social
+position the latter coveted.
+
+Francesca, on her side, was not slow to notice that something was
+radically wrong. Reanda's manner had changed by degrees since his
+marriage. His pride made him more formal with the woman to whom he owed
+so much, and she felt that she could do nothing to break down the
+barrier which was slowly rising between them. She suffered, in her way,
+for she was far more sincerely attached to the man than she recognized,
+or perhaps would have been willing to recognize, when she allowed
+herself to look the situation fairly in the face. For months she
+struggled against anything which could make her regret the marriage she
+had made. But at last she admitted the fact that she regretted it, for
+it thrust itself upon her and embittered her own life. Then she became
+conscious in her heart of a silent and growing enmity for Gloria, and of
+a profound pity for Angelo Reanda. Being ashamed of the enmity, as
+something both sinful in her eyes, and beneath the nobility of her
+nature, she expressed it, if that were expression, by allowing her pity
+for the man to assert itself as it would. That, she told herself, was a
+form of charity, and could not be wrong, however she looked at it.
+
+All mention of Gloria vanished from her conversation with Reanda when
+they were alone together. At such times she did her best to amuse him,
+to interest him, and to take him out of himself. At first she had little
+success. He answered her, and sometimes even entered into an argument
+with her, but as soon as the subject dropped, she saw the look of
+harassed preoccupation returning in his face. So far as his work was
+concerned, what he did was as good as ever. Francesca thought it was
+even better. But otherwise he was a changed man.
+
+In the course of the winter Paul Griggs returned. One day Francesca was
+sitting in the hall with Reanda, when a servant announced that Griggs
+had asked to see her. She glanced at Reanda's face, and instantly
+decided to receive the American alone in the drawing-room, on the other
+side of the house.
+
+"Why do you not receive him here?" asked Reanda, carelessly.
+
+"Because--" she hesitated. "I should rather see him in the
+drawing-room," she added a moment later, without giving any further
+explanation.
+
+Griggs told her that he had come back to stay through the year and
+perhaps longer. She took a kindly interest in the young man, and was
+glad to hear that he had improved his position and prospects during his
+absence. He rarely found sympathy anywhere, and indeed needed very
+little of it. But he was capable of impulse, and he had long ago decided
+that Francesca was good, discreet, and kind. He answered her questions
+readily enough, and his still face warmed a little while she talked with
+him. She, on her part, could not help being interested in the lonely,
+hard-working man who never seemed to need help of any kind, and was
+climbing through life by the strength of his own hands. There was about
+him at that time an air of reserved power which interested though it did
+not attract those who knew him.
+
+Suddenly he asked about Gloria and her husband. There was an odd
+abruptness in the question, and a hard little laugh, quite unnecessary,
+accompanied it. Francesca noted the change of manner, and remembered
+how she had at first conceived the impression that Griggs admired
+Gloria, but that Gloria was repelled by him.
+
+"I suppose they are radiantly happy," he said.
+
+Francesca hesitated, being truthful by nature, as well as loyal. There
+was no reason why Griggs should not ask her the question, which was
+natural enough, but she had many reasons for not wishing to answer it.
+
+"Are they not happy?" he asked quickly, as her silence roused his
+suspicions.
+
+"I have never heard anything to the contrary," answered Francesca,
+dangerously accurate in the statement.
+
+"Oh!" Griggs uttered the ejaculation in a thoughtful tone, but said no
+more.
+
+"I hope I have not given you the impression that there is anything
+wrong," said Francesca, showing her anxiety too much.
+
+"I saw Dalrymple in England," answered Griggs, with ready tact. "He
+seems very well satisfied with the match. By the bye, I daresay you have
+heard that Dalrymple stands a good chance of dying a peer, if he ever
+dies at all. With his constitution that is doubtful."
+
+And he went on to explain to Francesca the matter of the Redin title,
+and that as Dalrymple's elder brother, though married, was childless,
+he himself would probably come into it some day. Then Griggs took his
+leave without mentioning Reanda or Gloria again. But Francesca was aware
+that she had betrayed Reanda's unhappiness to a man who had admired
+Gloria, and had probably loved her before her marriage. She afterwards
+blamed herself bitterly and very unjustly for what she had done.
+
+Griggs went away, and called soon afterwards at the small house in the
+Macel de' Corvi. He found Gloria alone, and she was glad to see him. She
+told him that Reanda would also be delighted to hear of his return.
+Griggs, who wrote about everything which gave him an opportunity of
+using his very various knowledge, wrote also upon art, and besides the
+first article he had written about Reanda, more than a year previously,
+had, since then, frequently made allusion to the artist's great talent
+in his newspaper correspondence. Reanda was therefore under an
+obligation to the journalist, and Gloria herself was grateful. Moreover,
+Englishmen who came to Rome had frequently been to see Reanda's work in
+consequence of the articles. One old gentleman had tried to induce the
+artist to paint a picture for him, but had met with a refusal, on the
+ground that the work at the Palazzetto Borgia would occupy at least
+another year. The Englishman said he should come back and try again.
+
+Between Griggs and Gloria there was the sort of friendly confidence
+which could not but exist under the circumstances. She had known him
+long, and he had been her father's only friend in Rome. She remembered
+him from the time when she had been a mere child, before her sudden
+transition to womanhood. She trusted him. She understood perfectly well
+that he loved her, but she believed that she had it in her power to keep
+his love as completely in the background as he himself had kept it
+hitherto. Her instinct told her also that Griggs might be a strong ally
+in a moment of difficulty. His reserved strength impressed her even more
+than it impressed Francesca Campodonico. She received him gladly, and
+told him to come again.
+
+He came, and she asked him to dinner, feeling sure that Reanda would
+wish to see him. He accepted the first invitation and another which
+followed before long. By insensible degrees, during the winter, Griggs
+became very intimate at the house, as he had been formerly at
+Dalrymple's lodgings.
+
+"That young man loves you, my dear," said Reanda, one day in the
+following spring, with a smile which showed how little anxiety he felt.
+
+Gloria laughed gaily, and patted her husband's hand.
+
+"What men like that call love!" she answered. "Besides--a journalist!
+And hideous as he is!"
+
+"He certainly has not a handsome face," laughed Reanda. "I am not
+jealous," he added, with sudden gravity. "The man has done much for my
+reputation, too, and I know what I owe him. I have good reason for
+wishing to treat him well, and I am all the more pleased, if you find
+him agreeable."
+
+He made the rather formal speech in a decidedly formal tone, and with
+the unconscious intention of justifying himself in some way, though he
+was far too simple by nature to suspect himself of any complicated
+motive. She looked at him, but did not quite understand.
+
+"You surely do not suppose that I ever cared for him!" she said, readily
+suspecting that he suspected her.
+
+He started perceptibly, and looked into her eyes. She was very truly in
+earnest, but her exaggerated self-consciousness had given her tone a
+colour which he did not recognize. Some seconds passed before he
+answered her. Then the gentle light came into his face as he realized
+how much he loved her.
+
+"How foolish you are, love!" he exclaimed. "But Griggs is younger than
+I--it would not be so very unnatural if you had cared for him."
+
+She broke out passionately.
+
+"Younger than you! So am I, much younger than you! But you are young,
+too. I will not have you suggest that you are not young. Of course you
+are. You are unkind, besides. As though it could make the slightest
+difference to me, if you were a hundred years old! But you do not
+understand what my love for you is. You will never understand it. I wish
+I loved you less; I should be happier than I am."
+
+He drew her to him, reluctant, and the pained look which Francesca knew
+so well came into his face.
+
+"Are you unhappy, my heart?" he asked gently. "What is it, dear? Tell
+me!"
+
+She was nervous, and the confession or complaint had been unintentional
+and the result of irritation more than of anything else. The fact that
+he had taken it up made matters much worse. She was in that state in
+which such a woman will make a mountain of a molehill rather than forego
+the sympathy which her constitution needs in a larger measure than her
+small sufferings can possibly claim.
+
+"Oh, so unhappy!" she cried softly, hiding her face against his coat,
+and glad to feel the tears in her eyes.
+
+"But what is it?" he asked very kindly, smoothing her auburn hair with
+one hand, while the other pressed her to him.
+
+As he looked over her head at the wall, his face showed both pain and
+perplexity. He had not the least idea what to do, except to humour her
+as much as he could.
+
+"I am so lonely, sometimes," she moaned. "The days are so long."
+
+"And yet you do not come and sit with me in the mornings, as you used to
+do at first." There was an accent of regret in his voice.
+
+"She is always there," said Gloria, pressing her face closer to his
+coat.
+
+"Indeed she is not!" he cried, and she could feel the little breath of
+indignation he drew. "I am a great deal alone."
+
+"Not half as much as I am."
+
+"But what can I do?" he asked, in despair. "It is my work. It is her
+palace. You are free to come and go as you will, and if you will not
+come--"
+
+"I know, I know," she answered, still clinging to him. "You will say it
+is my fault. It is just like a man. And yet I know that you are there,
+hour after hour, with her, and she is young and beautiful. And she loves
+you--oh, I know she loves you!"
+
+Reanda began to lose patience.
+
+"How absurd!" he exclaimed. "It is ridiculous. It is an insult to Donna
+Francesca to say that she is in love with me."
+
+"It is true." Gloria suddenly raised her head and drew back from him a
+very little. "I am a woman," she said. "I know and I understand. She
+meant to sacrifice herself and make you happy, by marrying you to me,
+and now she regrets it. It is enough to see her. She follows you with
+her eyes as you move, and there is a look in them--"
+
+Reanda laughed, with an effort.
+
+"It is altogether too absurd!" he said. "I do not know what to say. I
+can only laugh."
+
+"Because you know it is true," answered Gloria. "It is for your sake
+that she has done it all, that she makes such a pretence of being
+friendly to me, that she pushes us into society, and brings her friends
+here to see me. They never come unless she brings them," she added
+bitterly. "There is no fear of that. The Duchess of Astrardente would
+not have her black horses seen standing in the Macel de' Corvi, unless
+Donna Francesca made her do it and came with her."
+
+"Why not?" asked Reanda, simply, for his Italian mind did not grasp the
+false shame which Gloria felt in living in a rather humble
+neighbourhood.
+
+"She would not have people know that she had friends living in such a
+place," Gloria answered.
+
+Unwittingly she had dealt Reanda a deadly thrust.
+
+He had fallen in love with her and had married her on the understanding
+with himself, so to say, that she was in all respects as much a great
+lady as Donna Francesca herself, and he had taken it for granted that
+she must be above such pettiness. The lodging was extremely good and had
+the advantage of being very conveniently situated for his work. It had
+never struck him that because it was in an unfashionable position,
+Gloria could imagine that the people she knew would hesitate to come and
+see her. Since their marriage she had done and said many little things
+which had shaken his belief in the thoroughness of her refinement. She
+had suddenly destroyed that belief now, by a single foolish speech. It
+would be hard to build it up again.
+
+Like many men of genius he could not forgive his own mistake, and Gloria
+was involved in this one. Moreover, as an Italian, he fancied that she
+secretly suspected him of meanness, and when Italians are not mean,
+there is nothing which they resent more than being thought to be so. He
+had plenty of money, for he had always lived very simply before his
+marriage, and Dalrymple gave Gloria an allowance.
+
+His tone changed, when he answered her, but she was far from suspecting
+what she had done.
+
+"We will get another apartment at once," he said quietly.
+
+"No," she answered at once, protesting, "you must not do anything of the
+kind! What an idea! To change our home merely because it is not on the
+Corso or the Piazza di Venezia!"
+
+"You would prefer the Corso?" inquired Angelo. "That is natural. It is
+more gay."
+
+The reflexion that the view of the deserted Forum of Trajan was dull
+suggested itself to him as a Roman, knowing the predilection of Roman
+women of the middle class for looking out of the window.
+
+"It is ridiculous!" cried Gloria. "You must not think of it.
+Besides--the expense--"
+
+"The expense does not enter into the question, my dear," he answered,
+having fully made up his mind. "You shall not live in a place to which
+you think your friends may hesitate to come."
+
+"Friends! They are not my friends, and they never mean to be," she
+replied more hotly. "Why should I care whether they will take the
+trouble to come and see me or not? Let them stay away, if I am not good
+enough for them. Tell Donna Francesca not to bring them--not to come
+herself any more. I hate to feel that she is thrusting me down the
+throat of a society that does not want me! She only does it to put me
+under an obligation to her. I am sure she talks about me behind my back
+and says horrid things--"
+
+"You are very unjust," said Reanda, hurt by the vulgarity of the speech
+and deeply wounded in his own pride.
+
+"You defend her! You see!" And the colour rose in Gloria's cheeks.
+
+"She has done nothing that needs defence. She has acted always with the
+greatest kindness to me and to us. You have no right to suppose that she
+says unkind things of you when you are not present. I cannot imagine
+what has come over you to-day. It must be the weather. It is sirocco."
+
+Gloria turned away angrily, thinking that he was laughing at her,
+whereas the suggestion about the weather was a perfectly natural one in
+Rome, where the southeast wind has an undoubted effect upon the human
+temper.
+
+But the seeds of much discussion were sown on that close spring
+afternoon. Reanda was singularly tenacious of small purposes, as he was
+of great ideas where his art was concerned, and his nature though gentle
+was unforgiving, not out of hardness, but because he was so sensitive
+that his illusions were easy to destroy.
+
+He went out and forthwith began to search for an apartment of which his
+wife should have no cause to complain. In the course of a week he found
+what he wanted. It was a part of the second floor of one of the palaces
+on the Corso, not far from the Piazza di Venezia. It was partially
+furnished, and without speaking to Gloria he had it made comfortable
+within a few days. When it was ready, he gave her short warning that
+they were to move immediately.
+
+Strange to say, Gloria was very much displeased, and did not conceal her
+annoyance. She really liked the small house in the Macel de' Corvi, and
+resented the way in which her husband had taken her remarks about the
+situation. To tell the truth, Reanda had deceived himself with the idea
+that she would be delighted at the change, and had spent money rather
+lavishly, in the hope of giving her a pleasant surprise. He was
+proportionately disappointed by her unexpected displeasure.
+
+"What was the use of spending so much money?" she asked, with a
+discontented face. "People will not come to see us because we live in a
+fine house."
+
+"I did not take the house with that intention, my dear," said Reanda,
+gently, but wounded and repelled by the remark and the tone.
+
+"Well then, we might have stayed where we were," she answered. "It was
+much cheaper, and there was more sun for the winter."
+
+"But this is gayer," objected Reanda. "You have the Corso under the
+window."
+
+"As though I looked out of the window!" exclaimed Gloria, scornfully.
+"It was so nice--our little place there."
+
+"You are hard to please, my dear," said the artist, coldly.
+
+Then she saw that she had hurt him, which she had not meant to do. Her
+own nature was self-conscious and greedy of emotion, but not sensitive.
+She threw her arms round him, and kissed him and thanked him.
+
+But Reanda was not satisfied. Day by day when Francesca looked at him,
+she saw the harassed expression deepening in his face, and she felt that
+every furrow was scored in her own heart. And she, in her turn, grew
+very grave and thoughtful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+PAUL GRIGGS was a man compounded of dominant qualities and dormant
+contradictions of them which threatened at any moment to become dominant
+in their turn for a time. He himself almost believed that he had two
+separate individualities, if not two distinct minds.
+
+It may be doubted whether it can be good for any man to dwell long upon
+such an idea in connexion with himself, however distinctly he may see in
+others the foundation of truth on which it rests. To Griggs, however, it
+presented itself so clearly that he found it impossible not to take it
+into consideration in the more important actions of his life. The two
+men were very sharply distinguished in his thoughts. The one man would
+do what the other would not. The other could think thoughts above the
+comprehension of the first.
+
+The one was material, keen, strong, passionate, and selfish;
+pre-eminently adapted for hard work; conscientious in the force of its
+instinct to carry out everything undertaken by it to the very end, and
+judging that whatever it undertook was good and worth finishing; having
+something of the nature of a strong piece of clockwork which being
+wound up must run to the utmost limit before stopping, whether regulated
+to move fast or slow, with a fateful certainty independent of will;
+possessed of such uncommon strength as to make it dangerous if opposed
+while moving, and at the same time having an extraordinary inertia when
+not wound up to do a certain piece of work; self-reliant to a fault, as
+the lion is self-reliant in the superiority of physical endowment;
+gentle when not opposed, because almost incapable of action without a
+determinate object and aim; but developing an irresistible momentum when
+the inertia was overcome; thorough, in the sense in which the tide is
+thorough, in rising evenly and all at the same time, and as ruthless as
+the tide because it was that part of the whole man which was a result,
+and which, therefore, when once set in motion was almost beyond his
+control; reasonable only because, as a result, it followed its causes
+logically, and required a real cause to move it at first.
+
+The other man in him was very different, almost wholly independent of
+the first, and very generally in direct conflict with it, at that time.
+It was an imaginative and meditative personality, easily deceived into
+assuming a false premise, but logical beyond all liability to deception
+when reasoning from anything it had accepted. Its processes were
+intuitively correct and almost instantaneous, while its assumptions
+were arbitrary in the extreme. It might begin to act at any point
+whatsoever, and unlike the material man, which required a will to move
+it at first, it struck spontaneously with the directness of straight
+lightning from one point to another, never misled in its path, though
+often fatally mistaken in the value of the points themselves.
+
+Most men who have thought much, wisely or foolishly, and who have seen
+much, good or bad, are more or less conscious of their two
+individualities. Idle and thoughtless people are not, as a rule. With
+Griggs, the two were singularly distinct and independent. Sometimes it
+seemed to him that he sat in judgment, as a third person, between them.
+At other moments he felt himself wholly identified with the one and
+painfully aware of the opposition of the other. The imaginative part of
+him despised the material part for its pride of life and lust of living.
+The material part laughed to scorn the imaginative one for its false
+assumptions and unfounded beliefs. When he could abstract himself from
+both, he looked upon the intuitive personality as being himself in every
+true sense of the word, and upon the material man as a monstrous
+overgrowth and encumbrance upon his more spiritual self.
+
+When he began to love Gloria Dalrymple, she appealed to both sides of
+his nature. For once, the spiritual instinct coincided with the
+direction given to the material man by a very earthly passion.
+
+The cause of this was plain enough and altogether simple. The spiritual
+instinct had taken the lead. He had known Gloria before she had been a
+woman to be loved. The maiden genius of the girl had spoken to the
+higher man from a sphere above material things, and had created in him
+one of those assumed premises for subsequent spiritual intuition from
+which he derived almost the only happiness he knew. Then, all at once,
+the woman had sprung into existence, and her young beauty had addressed
+itself to the young gladiator with overwhelming force. The woman
+fascinated him, and the angelic being his imagination had assumed in the
+child still enchanted him.
+
+He was not like Reanda; for his sensitiveness was one-sided, and
+therefore only half vulnerable. Gloria's faults were insignificant
+accidents of a general perfectness, the result of having arbitrarily
+assumed a perfect personality. They could not make the path of his
+spiritual intuitive love waver, and they produced no effect at all
+against his direct material passion. To destroy the prime beautiful
+illusion, something must take place which would upset the mistaken
+assumption from a point beyond it, so to say. As for the earthly part of
+his love, it was so strong that it might well stand alone, even if the
+other should disappear altogether.
+
+Then came honour, and the semi-religious morality of the man, defending
+the woman against him, for the sake of the angel he saw through her.
+Chief of all, in her defence, stood his own conviction that she did not
+love him, and never would, nor ever could. To all intents and purposes,
+too, he had been her father's friend, though between the two men there
+had been little but the similarity of their gloomy characters. It was
+the will of the material man to be governed, and as no outward influence
+set it in motion, it remained inert, in unstable equilibrium, as a vast
+boulder may lie for ages on the very edge of a precipice, ready but not
+inclined to fall. There was fatality in its stillness, and in the
+certainty that if moved it must crash through everything it met.
+
+Gloria had not the least understanding of the real man. She thought
+about him often during the months which followed his return, and a week
+rarely passed in which she did not see him two or three times. Her
+thoughts of him were too ignorant to be confused. She was conscious,
+rather than aware, that he loved her, but it seemed quite natural to
+her, at her age, that he should never express his love by any word or
+deed.
+
+But she compared him with her husband, innocently and unconsciously, in
+matters where comparison was almost unavoidable. His leonine strength of
+body impressed her strongly, and she felt his presence in the room,
+even when she was not looking at him. Reanda was physically a weak and
+nervous man. When he was painting, the movements of his hand seemed to
+be independent of his will and guided by a superior unseen power, rather
+than directed by his judgment and will. Paul Griggs never made the
+slightest movement which did not strike Gloria as the expression of his
+will to accomplish something. He was wonderfully skilful with his hands.
+Whatever he meant to do, his fingers did, forthwith, unhesitatingly. His
+mental processes were similar, so far as she could see. If she asked him
+a question, he answered it categorically and clearly, if he were able.
+If not, he said so, and relapsed into silence, studying the problem, or
+trying to force his memory to recall a lost item. Reanda, on the other
+hand, answered most questions with the expression of a vague opinion,
+often right, but apparently not founded on anything particular. The
+accuracy of Griggs sometimes irritated the artist perceptibly, in
+conversation; but he took an interest in what Griggs wrote, and made
+Gloria translate many of the articles to him, reading aloud in Italian
+from the English. Strange to say, they pleased him for the very
+qualities which he disliked in the man's talk. The Italian mind, when it
+has developed favourably, is inclined to specialism rather than to
+generalization, and Griggs wrote of many things as though he were a
+specialist. He had enormous industry and great mechanical power of
+handling language.
+
+"I have no genius," he said one day to Gloria, when she had been
+admiring something he had written, and using the extravagant terms of
+praise which rose easily to her lips. "Your husband has genius, but I
+have none. Some day I shall astonish you all by doing something very
+remarkable. But it will not be a work of genius."
+
+It was in the late autumn days, more than a year and a half after
+Gloria's marriage. The southeast wind was blowing down the Corso, and
+the pavements were yellow and sticky with the moistened sand-blast from
+the African desert. The grains of sand are really found in the air at
+such times. It is said that the undoubted effect of the sirocco on the
+temper of Southern Italy is due to the irritation caused by inhaling the
+fine particles with the breath. Something there is in that especial
+wind, which changes the tempers of men and women very suddenly and
+strangely.
+
+Gloria and her companion were seated in the drawing-room that afternoon,
+and the window was open. The wind stirred the white curtains, and now
+and then blew them inward and twisted them round the inner ones, which
+were of a dark grey stuff with broad brown velvet bands, in a fashion
+then new. Gloria had been singing, and sat leaning sideways on the desk
+of the grand piano. A tall red Bohemian glass stood beside the music on
+one of the little sliding shelves meant for the candles, and there were
+a few flowers in it, fresh an hour ago, but now already half withered
+and drooping under the poisonous breath of the southeast. The warm damp
+breeze came in gusts, and stirred the fading leaves and Gloria's auburn
+hair, and the sheet of music upright on the desk. Griggs sat in a low
+chair not far from her, his still face turned towards her, his shadowy
+eyes fixed on her features, his sinewy hands clasped round his crossed
+knees. The nature of the great athlete showed itself even in repose--the
+broad dark throat set deep in the chest, the square solidity of the
+shoulders, the great curved lines along the straightened arms, the
+small, compact head, with its close, dark hair, bent somewhat forward in
+the general relaxation of the resting muscles. In his complete
+immobility there was the certainty of instant leaping and flash-like
+motion which one feels rather than sees in the sleeping lion.
+
+Gloria looked at him thoughtfully with half-closed lids.
+
+"I shall surprise you all," he repeated slowly, "but it will not be
+genius."
+
+"You will not surprise me," Gloria answered, still meeting his eyes. "As
+for genius, what is it?"
+
+"It is what you have when you sing," said Griggs. "It is what Reanda has
+when he paints."
+
+"Then why not what you do when you write?"
+
+"The difference is simple enough. Reanda does things well because he
+cannot help it. When I do a thing well it is because I work so hard at
+it that the thing cannot help being done by me. Do you understand?"
+
+"I always understand what you tell me. You put things so clearly. Yes, I
+think I understand you better than you understand yourself."
+
+Griggs looked down at his hands and was silent for a moment.
+Mechanically he moved his thumb from side to side and watched the knot
+of muscle between it and the forefinger, as it swelled and disappeared
+with each contraction.
+
+"Perhaps you do understand me. Perhaps you do," he said at last. "I have
+known you a long time. It must be four years, at least--ever since I
+first came here to work. It has been a long piece of life."
+
+"Indeed it has," Gloria answered, and a moment later she sighed.
+
+The wind blew the sheet of music against her. She folded it impatiently,
+threw it aside and resumed her position, resting one elbow on the narrow
+desk. The silence lasted several seconds, and the white curtains flapped
+softly against the heavy ones.
+
+"I wonder whether you understand my life at all," she said presently.
+
+"I am not sure that I do. It is a strange life, in some ways--like
+yourself."
+
+"Am I strange?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+Again he was silent for a time. His face was very still. It would have
+been impossible to guess from it that he felt any emotion at the moment.
+
+"Do you like compliments?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"That depends upon whether I consider them compliments or not," she
+answered, with a little laugh.
+
+"You are a very perfect woman in very imperfect surroundings," said
+Griggs.
+
+"That is not a compliment to the surroundings, at all events. I do not
+know whether to laugh or not. Shall I?"
+
+"If you will. I like to hear you laugh."
+
+"You should hear me cry!" And she laughed again at herself.
+
+"God forbid!" he said gravely.
+
+"I do sometimes," she answered, and her face grew suddenly sad, as he
+watched her.
+
+He felt a quick pain for her in his heart.
+
+"I am sorry you have told me so," he said. "I do not like to think of
+it. Why should you cry? What have you to cry for?"
+
+"What should you think?" she asked lightly, though no smile came with
+the words.
+
+"I cannot guess. Tell me. Is it because you still wish to be a singer?
+Is that it?"
+
+"No. That is not it."
+
+"Then I cannot guess." He looked for the answer in her face. "Will you
+tell me?" he asked after a pause.
+
+"Of what use could it be?" Her eyes met his for a moment, the lids fell,
+and she turned away. "Will you shut the window?" she said suddenly. "The
+wind blows the things about. Besides, it is getting late."
+
+He rose and went to the window. She watched him as he shut it, turning
+his back to her, so that his figure stood out distinct and black against
+the light. She realized what a man he was. With those arms and those
+shoulders he could do anything, as he had once caught her in the air and
+saved her life, and then, again, as he had broken the cords that night
+at Mendoza's house. There was nothing physical which such a man could
+not do. He was something on which to rely in her limited life, an
+absolute contrast to her husband, whose vagueness irritated her, while
+his deadness of sensibility, where she had wrung his sensitiveness too
+far, humiliated her in her own eyes. She had kept her secret long, she
+thought, though she had kept it for the simple reason that she had no
+one in whom to confide.
+
+Griggs came back from the window and sat down near her again in the low
+chair, looking up into her face.
+
+"Mr. Griggs," she said, turning from his eyes and looking into the
+piano, "you asked me a question just now. I should like to answer it, if
+I were quite sure of you."
+
+"Are you not sure of me?" he asked. "I think you might be, by this time.
+We were just saying that we had known each other so long."
+
+"Yes. But--all sorts of things have happened in that time, you know. I
+am not the same as I was when I first knew you."
+
+"No. You are married. That is one great difference."
+
+"Too great," said she. "Honestly, do you think me improved since my
+marriage?"
+
+"Improved? No. Why should you improve? You are just what you were meant
+to be, as you always were."
+
+"I know. You called me a perfect woman a little while ago, and you said
+my surroundings were imperfect. You must have meant that they did not
+suit me, or that I did not suit them. Which was it?"
+
+"They ought to suit you," said Griggs. "If they do not, it is not your
+fault."
+
+"But I might have done something to make them suit me. I sometimes think
+that I have not treated them properly."
+
+"Why should you blame yourself? You did not make them, and they cannot
+unmake you. You have a right to be yourself. Everybody has. It is the
+first right. Your surroundings owe you more than you owe to them,
+because you are what you are, and they are not what they ought to be.
+Let them bear the blame. As for not treating them properly, no one could
+accuse you of that."
+
+"I do not know--some one might. People are so strange, sometimes."
+
+She stopped, and he answered nothing. Looking down into the open piano,
+she idly watched the hammers move as she pressed the keys softly with
+one hand.
+
+"Some people are just like this," she said, smiling, and repeating the
+action. "If you touch them in a certain way, they answer. If you press
+them gently, they do not understand. Do you see? The hammer comes just
+up to the string, and then falls back again without making any noise. I
+suppose those are my surroundings. Sometimes they answer me, and
+sometimes they do not. I like things I can be sure of."
+
+"And by things you mean people," suggested Griggs.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And by your surroundings you mean--what?"
+
+"You know," she answered in a low voice, turning her face still further
+away from him.
+
+"Reanda?"
+
+She hesitated for a moment, knowing that her answer must have weight on
+the man.
+
+"I suppose so," she said at last. "I ought not to say so--ought I? Tell
+me the truth."
+
+"The truth is, you are unhappy," he answered slowly. "There is no reason
+why you should not tell me so. Perhaps I might help you, if you would
+let me."
+
+He almost regretted that he had said so much, little as it was. But she
+had wished him to say it, and more, also. Still turning from him, she
+rested her chin in her hand. His face was still, but there was the
+beginning of an expression in it which she had never seen. Now that the
+window was shut it was very quiet in the room, and the air was strangely
+heavy and soft and dim. Now and then the panes rattled a little. Griggs
+looked at the graceful figure as Gloria sat thinking what she should
+say. He followed the lines till his eyes rested on what he could see of
+her averted face. Then he felt something like a sharp, quick blow at his
+temples, and the blood rose hot to his throat. At the same instant came
+the bitter little pang he had known long, telling him that she had never
+loved him and never could.
+
+"Are you really my friend?" she asked softly.
+
+"Yes." The word almost choked him, for there was not room for it and for
+the rest.
+
+She turned quietly and surveyed the marble mask with curious inquiry.
+
+"Why do you say it like that," she asked; "as though you would rather
+not? Do you grudge it?"
+
+"No." He spoke barely above his breath.
+
+"How you say it!" she exclaimed, with a little laugh that could not
+laugh itself out, for there was a strange tension in the air, and on her
+and on him. "You might say it better," she added, the pupils of her eyes
+dilating a little so that the room looked suddenly larger and less
+distinct.
+
+She knew the sensation of coming emotion, and she loved it. She had
+never thought before that she could get it by talking with Paul Griggs.
+He did not answer her.
+
+"Perhaps you meant it," she said presently. "I hardly know. Did you?"
+
+"Please be reasonable," said Griggs, indistinctly, and his hands gripped
+each other on his knee.
+
+"How oddly you talk!" she exclaimed. "What have I said that was
+unreasonable?"
+
+She felt that the emotion she had expected was slipping from her, and
+her nerves unconsciously resented the disappointment. She was out of
+temper in an instant.
+
+"You cannot understand," he answered. "There is no reason why you
+should. Forgive me. I am nervous to-day."
+
+"You? Nervous?" She laughed again, with a little scorn. "You are not
+capable of being nervous."
+
+She was dimly conscious that she was provoking him to something, she
+knew not what, and that he was resisting her. He did not answer her last
+words. She went back to the starting-point again, dropping her voice to
+a sadder key.
+
+"Honestly, will you be my friend?" she asked, with a gentle smile.
+
+"Heart and soul--and hand, too, if you want it," he said, for he had
+recovered his speech. "Tell me what the trouble is. If I can, I will
+take you out of it."
+
+It was rather an odd speech, and she was struck by the turn of the
+phrase, which expressed more strength than doubt of power to do anything
+he undertook.
+
+"I believe you could," she said, looking at him. "You are so strong. You
+could do anything."
+
+"Things are never so hard as they look, if one is willing to risk
+everything," he answered. "And when one has nothing to lose," he added,
+as an after-thought.
+
+She sighed, and turned away again, half satisfied.
+
+"There is nothing to risk," she said. "It is not a case of danger. And
+you cannot take my trouble and tear it up like a pack of cards with
+those hands of yours. I wish you could. I am unhappy--yes, I have told
+you so. But what can you do to help me? You cannot make my surroundings
+what they are not, you know."
+
+"No--I cannot change your husband," said Griggs.
+
+She started a little, but still looked away.
+
+"No. You cannot make him love me," she said, softly and sadly.
+
+The big hands lost their hold on one another, and the deep eyes opened a
+little wider. But she was not watching him.
+
+"Do you mean to say--" He stopped.
+
+She slowly bent her head twice, but said nothing.
+
+"Reanda does not love you?" he said, in wondering interrogation. "Why--I
+thought--" He hesitated.
+
+"He cares no more for me than--that!" The hand that stretched towards
+him across the open piano tapped the polished wood once, and sharply.
+
+"Are you in serious earnest?" asked Griggs, bending forward, as though
+to catch her first look when she should turn.
+
+"Does any one jest about such things?" He could just see that her lips
+curled a little as she spoke.
+
+"And you--you love him still?" he asked, with pressing voice.
+
+"Yes--I love him. The more fool I."
+
+The words did not grate on him, as they would have jarred on her
+husband's ear. The myth he had imagined made perfections of the woman's
+faults.
+
+"It is a pity," he said, resting his forehead in his hand. "It is a
+deadly pity."
+
+Then she turned at last and saw his attitude.
+
+"You see," she said. "There is nothing to be done. Is there? You know my
+story now. I have married a man I worship, and he does not care for me.
+Take it and twist it as you may, it comes to that and nothing else. You
+can pity me, but you cannot help me. I must bear it as well as I can,
+and as long as I must. It will end some day--or I will make it end."
+
+"For God's sake do not talk like that!"
+
+"How should I talk? What should I say? Is it of any use to speak to him?
+Do you think I have not begged him, implored him, besought him, almost
+on my knees, to give up that work and do other things?"
+
+Griggs looked straight into her eyes a moment and then almost understood
+what she meant.
+
+"You mean that he--that when he is painting there--" He hesitated.
+
+"Of course. All day long. All the bitter live-long day! They sit there
+together on pretence of talking about it. You know--you can guess at
+least--it is the old, old story, and I have to suffer for it. She could
+not marry him--because she is a princess and he an artist--good enough
+for me--God knows, I love him! Too good for her, ten thousand times too
+good! But yet not good enough for her to marry! He needed a wife, and
+she brought us together, and I suppose he told her that I should do very
+well for the purpose. I was a good subject. I fell in love with
+him--that was what they wanted. A wife for her favourite! O God! When I
+think of it--"
+
+She stopped suddenly and buried her face in both her hands, as she
+leaned upon the piano.
+
+"It is not to be believed!" The strong man's voice vibrated with the
+rising storm of anger.
+
+She looked up again with flashing eyes and pale cheeks.
+
+"No!" she cried. "It is not to be believed! But you see it now. You see
+what it all is, and how my life is wrecked and ruined before it is half
+begun. It would be bad enough if I had married him for his fame, for his
+face, for his money, for anything he has or could have. But I married
+him because I loved him with all my soul, and worshipped him and
+everything he did."
+
+"I know. We all saw it."
+
+"Of course--was it anything to hide? And I thought he loved me, too. Do
+you know?" She grew more calm. "At first I used to go and sit in the
+hall when he was at work. Then he grew silent, and I felt that he did
+not want me. I thought it was because he was such a great artist, and
+could not talk and work, and wanted to be alone. So I stayed away. Then,
+once, I went there, and she was there, sitting in that great chair--it
+shows off the innocence of her white face, you know! The innocence of
+it!" Gloria laughed bitterly. "They were talking when I came, and they
+stopped as soon as the door opened. I am sure they were talking about
+me. Then they seemed dreadfully uncomfortable, and she went away. After
+that I went several times. Once or twice she came in while I was there.
+Then she did not come any more. He must have told her, of course. He
+kept looking at the door, though, as if he expected her at any moment.
+But she never came again in those days. I could not bear it--his trying
+to talk to me, and evidently wishing all the time that she would come. I
+gave up going altogether at last. What could I do? It was unbearable. It
+was more than flesh and blood could stand."
+
+"I do not wonder that you hate her," said Griggs. "I have often thought
+you did."
+
+Gloria smiled sadly.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "I hate her with all my heart. She has robbed me of
+the only thing I ever had worth having--if I ever had it. I sometimes
+wonder--or rather, no. I do not wonder, for I know the truth well
+enough. I have been over and over it again and again in the night. He
+never loved me. He never could love any one but her. He knew her long
+ago, and has loved her all his life. Why should he put me in her place?
+He admired me. I was a beautiful plaything--no, not beautiful--" She
+paused.
+
+"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said Paul Griggs, with
+deep conviction.
+
+He saw the blush of pleasure in her face, saw the fluttering of the
+lids. But he neither knew that she had meant him to say it, nor did he
+judge of the vast gulf her mind must have instantaneously bridged, from
+the outpouring of her fancied injuries and of her hatred for Francesca
+Campodonico, to the unconcealable satisfaction his words gave her.
+
+"I have heard him say that, too," she answered a moment later. "But he
+did not mean it. He never meant anything he said to me--not one word of
+it all. You do not know what that means," she went on, working herself
+back into a sort of despairing anger again. "You do not know. To have
+built one's whole life on one thing, as I did! To have believed only one
+thing, as I did! To find that it is all gone, all untrue, all a wretched
+piece of acting--oh, you do not know! That woman's face haunts me in the
+dark--she is always there, with him, wherever I look, as they are
+together now at her house. Do you understand? Do you know what I feel?
+You pity me--but do you know? Oh, I have longed for some one--I have
+wished I had a dog to listen to me--sometimes--it is so hard to be
+alone--so very hard--"
+
+She broke off suddenly and hid her face again.
+
+"You are not alone. You have me--if you will have me."
+
+Before he had finished speaking the few words, the first sob broke,
+violent, real, uncontrollable. Then came the next, and then the storm of
+tears. Griggs rose instinctively and came to her side. He leaned heavily
+on the piano, bending down a little, helpless, as some men are at such
+moments. She did not notice him, and her sobs filled the still room. As
+he stood over her he could see the bright tears falling upon the black
+and white ivory keys. He laid his trembling hand upon her shoulder. He
+could hardly draw his breath for the sight of her suffering.
+
+"Don't--don't," he said, almost pathetic in his lack of eloquence when
+he thought he most needed it.
+
+One of her hot hands, all wet with tears, went suddenly to her shoulder,
+and grasped his that lay there, with a convulsive pressure, seeming to
+draw him down as she bowed herself almost to the keyboard in her agony
+of weeping. Then, without thought, his other hand, cold as ice, was
+under her throat, bringing her head gently back upon his arm, till the
+white face was turned up to his. Sob by sob, more distantly, the tempest
+subsided, but still the great tears swelled the heavy lids and ran down
+across her face upon his wrist. Then the wet, dark eyes opened and
+looked up to his, above her head.
+
+"Be my friend!" she said softly, and her fingers pressed his very
+gently.
+
+He looked down into her eyes for one moment, and then the passion in him
+got the mastery of his honourable soul.
+
+"How can I?" he cried in a broken, choking voice. "I love you!"
+
+In an instant he was standing up, lifting her high from the floor, and
+the lips that had perhaps never kissed for love before, were pressed
+upon hers. What chance had she, a woman, in those resistless arms of
+his? In her face was the still, fateful look of the dead nun, rising
+from the far grave of a buried tragedy.
+
+In his uncontrollable passion he crushed her to him, holding her up like
+a child. She struggled and freed her hands and pressed them both upon
+his two eyes.
+
+"Please--please!" she cried.
+
+There was a pitiful ring in the tone, like the bleating of a frightened
+lamb. He hurt her too, for he was overstrong when he was thoughtless.
+
+She cried out to him to let her go. But as she hung there, it was not
+all fear that she felt. There came with it an uncertain, half-delirious
+thrill of delight. To feel herself but a feather to his huge strength,
+swung, tossed, kissed, crushed, as he would. There was fear already,
+there was all her innocent maidenlike resistance, beating against him
+with might and anger, there was the feminine sense of injury by
+outrageous violence; but with it all there was also the natural woman's
+delight in the main strength of the natural man, that could kill her in
+an instant if he chose, but that could lift her to itself as a little
+child and surround her and protect her against the whole world.
+
+"Please--please!" she cried again, covering his fierce eyes and white
+face with her hands and trying to push him away. The tone was pathetic
+in its appeal, and it touched him. His arms relaxed, tightened again
+with a sort of spasm, and then she found herself beside him on her feet.
+A long silence followed.
+
+Gloria sank into a chair, glanced at him and saw that his face was
+turned away, looked down again and then watched him. His chest heaved
+once or twice, as though he had run a short sharp race. One hand grasped
+the back of a chair as he stood up. All at once, without looking at her,
+he went to the window and stood there, looking out, but seeing nothing.
+The soft damp wind made the panes of glass rattle. Still neither broke
+the silence. Then he came to her and stood before her, looking down,
+and she looked down, too, and would not see him. She was more afraid of
+him now than when he had lifted her from her feet, and her heart beat
+fast. She wondered what he would say, for she supposed that he meant to
+ask her forgiveness, and she was right.
+
+[Illustration: "Gloria--forgive me!"--Vol. II., p. 50.]
+
+"Gloria--forgive me," he said.
+
+She looked up, a little fear of him still in her face.
+
+"How can I?" she asked, but in her voice there was forgiveness already.
+
+Her womanly instinct, though she was so young, told her that the fault
+was hers, and that considering the provocation it was not a great
+one--what were a few kisses, even such kisses as his, in a lifetime? And
+she had tempted him beyond all bounds and repented of it. Before the
+storm she had raised in him, her fancied woes sank away and seemed
+infinitely small. She knew that she had worked herself up to emotion and
+tears, though not half sure of what she was saying, that she had
+exaggerated all she knew and suggested all she did not know, that she
+had almost been acting a part to satisfy something in her which she
+could not understand. And by her acting she had roused the savage truth
+in her very face and it had swept down everything before it. She had not
+guessed such possibilities. Before the tempest of his love all she had
+ever felt or dreamed of feeling seemed colourless and cold. She
+dreaded to rouse it again, and yet she could never forget the instant
+thrill that had quivered through her when he had lifted her from her
+feet.
+
+When she had answered him with her question, he stood still in silence
+for a moment. She was too perfect in his eyes for him to cast the blame
+upon her, yet he knew that it had not been all his fault. And in the
+lower man was the mad triumph of having kissed her and of having told
+her, once for all, the whole meaning of his being. She looked down, and
+he could not see her eyes. There was no chair near. To see her face he
+dropped upon his knee and lightly touched her hands that lay idly in her
+lap. She started, fearing another outbreak.
+
+"Please--please!" he said softly, using the very word she had used to
+him.
+
+"Yes--but--" She hesitated and then raised her eyes.
+
+The mask of his face was all softened, and his lips trembled a little.
+His hands quivered, too, as they touched hers.
+
+"Please!" he repeated. "I promise. Indeed, I promise. Forgive me."
+
+She smiled, all at once, dreamily. All his emotion, and her desire for
+it, were gone.
+
+"I asked you to be my friend," she said. "I meant it, you know. How
+could you? It was not kind."
+
+"No--but forgive me," he insisted in a pleading tone.
+
+"I suppose I must," she said at last. "But I shall never feel sure of
+you again. How can I?"
+
+"I promise. You will believe me, not to-day, perhaps, nor to-morrow, but
+soon. I will be just what I have always been. I will never do anything
+to offend you again."
+
+"You promise me that? Solemnly?" She still smiled.
+
+"Yes. It is a promise. I will keep it. I will be your friend always.
+Give me something to do for you. It will make it easier."
+
+"What can I ask you to do? I shall never dare to speak to you about my
+life again."
+
+"I think you will, when you see that I am just as I used to be. And you
+forgive me, quite?"
+
+"Yes. I must. We must forget to-day. It must be as though it had never
+happened. Will you forget it?"
+
+"I will try." But of that he knew the utter impossibility.
+
+"If you try, you can succeed. Now get up. Be reasonable."
+
+He took her hand in both of his. She made a movement to withdraw it, and
+then submitted. He barely touched it with his lips and rose to his feet
+instantly.
+
+"Thank you," she said simply.
+
+She had never had such a mastery of charm over him as at that moment.
+But his mood was changed, and there was no breaking out of the other man
+in him, though he felt again the quick sharp throb in the temples, and
+the rising blood at his throat. The higher self was dominant once more,
+and the features was as still as a statue's.
+
+He took leave of her very quickly and went out into the damp street and
+faced the gusty southeast wind.
+
+When he was gone, she rose and went to the window with a listless step,
+and gazed idly through the glass at the long row of windows in the
+palace opposite, and then went back and sank down, as though very weary,
+upon a sofa far from the light. There was a dazed, wondering look in her
+face and she sat very still for a long time, till it began to grow dark.
+In the dusk she rose and went to the piano and sang softly to herself.
+Her voice never swelled to a full note, and the chords which her fingers
+sought were low and gentle and dreamy.
+
+While she was singing, the door opened noiselessly, and Reanda came in
+and stood beside her. She broke off and looked up, a little startled.
+The same wondering, half-dazed look was in her face. Her husband bent
+down and kissed her, and she kissed him silently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+DONNA FRANCESCA had put off her mourning, and went into the world again
+during that winter. The world said that she might marry if she so
+pleased, and was somewhat inclined to wonder that she did not. She could
+have made a brilliant match if she had chosen. But instead, though she
+appeared everywhere where society was congregated together, she showed a
+tendency to religion which surprised her friends.
+
+A tendency to religion existed in the Braccio family, together with
+various other tendencies not at all in harmony with it, nor otherwise
+edifying. Those other tendencies seemed to be absent in Francesca, and
+little by little her acquaintances began to speak of her as a devout
+person. The Prince of Gerano even hinted that she might some day be an
+abbess in the Carmelite Convent at Subiaco, as many a lady of the great
+house had been before her. But Francesca was not prepared to withdraw
+from the world altogether, though at the present time she was very
+unhappy.
+
+She suspected herself of a great sin, besides reproaching herself
+bitterly with many of her deeds which deserved no blame at all. Yet she
+was by no means morbid, nor naturally inclined to perpetual
+self-examination. On the contrary, she had always been willing to accept
+life as a simple affair which could not offer any difficulties provided
+that one were what she meant by "good"--that is, honest in word and
+deed, and scrupulous in doing thoroughly and with right intention those
+things which her religion required of her, but in which only she herself
+could judge of her own sincerity.
+
+Of late, however, she had felt that there was something very wrong in
+all her recent life. The certainty of it dawned by degrees, and then
+burst upon her suddenly one day when she was with Reanda.
+
+She had long ago noticed the change in his manner, the harassed look,
+and the sad ring in his voice, and for a time his suffering was her
+sorrow, and there was a painful pleasure in being able to feel for him
+with all her heart. He had gone through a phase which had lasted many
+months, and the change was great between his former and his present
+self. He had suffered, but indifference was creeping upon him. It was
+clear enough. Nothing interested him but his art, and perhaps her own
+conversation, though even that seemed doubtful to her.
+
+They were alone together on a winter's afternoon in the great hall. The
+work was almost done, and they had been talking of the more mechanical
+decorations, and of the style of the furniture.
+
+"It is a big place," said Francesca, "but I mean to fill it. I like
+large rooms, and when it is finished, I will take up my quarters here,
+and call it my boudoir."
+
+She smiled at the idea. The hall was at least fifty feet long by thirty
+wide.
+
+"All the women I know have wretched little sitting-rooms in which they
+can hardly turn round," she said. "I will have all the space I like, and
+all the air and all the light. Besides, I shall always have the dear
+Cupid and Psyche, to remind me of you."
+
+She spoke the last words with the simplicity of absolute innocence.
+
+"And me?" he asked, as innocently and simply as she. "What will you do
+with me?"
+
+"Whatever you like," she said, taking it quite for granted, as he did,
+that he was to work for her all his life. "You can have a studio in the
+house, just as it used to be, if you please. And you can paint the great
+canvas for the ceiling of the dining-room. Or shall I restore the old
+chapel? Which should you rather do--oil-painting, or fresco?"
+
+"You would not want the altar piece which I should paint," he said, with
+sudden sadness.
+
+"Santa Francesca?" she asked. "It would have to be Santa Francesca. The
+chapel is dedicated to her. You could make a beautiful picture of her--a
+portrait, perhaps--" she stopped.
+
+"Of yourself? Yes, I could do that," he answered quickly.
+
+"No," she said, and hesitated. "Of your wife," she added rather
+abruptly.
+
+He started and looked at her, and she was sorry that she had spoken.
+Gloria's beautiful face had risen in her mind, and it had seemed
+generous to suggest the idea. Finding a difficulty in telling him, she
+had thought it her duty to be frank.
+
+He laughed harshly before he answered her.
+
+"No," he said. "Certainly not a portrait of my wife. Not even to please
+you. And that is saying much."
+
+He spoke very bitterly. In the few words, he poured out the pent-up
+suffering of many months. Francesca turned pale.
+
+"I know, and it is my fault," she said in a low voice.
+
+"Your fault? No! But it is not mine."
+
+His hands trembled violently as he took up his palette and brushes and
+began to mix some colours, not knowing what he was doing.
+
+"It is my fault," said Francesca, still very white, and staring at the
+brick floor. "I have seen it. I could not speak of it. You are
+unhappy--miserable. Your life is ruined, and I have done it. I!"
+
+She bit her lip almost before the last word was uttered; for it was
+stronger and louder than she had expected it to be, and the syllable
+rang with a despairing echo in the empty hall.
+
+Reanda shook his head, and bent over his colours with shaking hands, but
+said nothing.
+
+"I was so happy when you were married," said Francesca, forcing herself
+to speak calmly. "She seemed such a good wife for you--so young, so
+beautiful. And she loves you--"
+
+"No." He shook his head energetically. "She does not love me. Do not say
+that, for it is not true. One does not love in that way--to-day a kiss,
+to-morrow a sting--to-day honey, to-morrow snake-poison. Do not say that
+it is love, for it is not true. The heart tells the truth, all alone in
+the breast. A thousand words cannot make it tell one lie. But for me--it
+is finished. Let us speak no more of love. Let us talk of our good
+friendship. It is better."
+
+"Eh, let us speak of it, of this friendship! It has cost tears of
+blood!"
+
+Francesca, in the sincerity of what she felt, relapsed into the Roman
+dialect. Almost all Romans do, under any emotion.
+
+"Everything passes," answered Reanda, laying his palette aside, and
+beginning to walk up and down, his hands in his pockets. "This also
+will pass," he added, as he turned. "We are men. We shall forget."
+
+"But not I. For I did it. Your sadness cuts my heart, because I did it.
+I--I alone. But for me, you would be free."
+
+"Would to Heaven!" exclaimed the artist, almost under his breath. "But I
+will not have you say that it is your fault!" he cried, stopping before
+her. "I was the fool that believed. A man of my age--oh, a serious
+man--to marry a child! I should have known. At first, I do not say. I
+was the first. She thought she had paradise in her arms. A husband! They
+all want it, the husband. But I, who had lived and seen, I should have
+known. Fool, fool! Ignorant fool!"
+
+The words came out vehemently in the strong dialect, and the nervous,
+heart-wrung man struck his breast with his clenched fist, and his eyes
+looked upward.
+
+"Reanda, Reanda! What are you saying? When I tell you that I made you
+marry her! It was here,--I was in this very chair,--and I told you about
+her. And I asked her here with intention, that you might see how
+beautiful she was. And then, neither one nor two, she fell in love with
+you! It would have been a miracle if you had not married her. And her
+father, he was satisfied. May that day be accursed when I brought them
+here to torment you!"
+
+She spoke excitedly, and her lip quivered. He began to walk again with
+rapid, uncertain strides.
+
+"For that--yes!" he said. "Let the day bear the blame. But I was the
+madman. Who leaves the old way and follows the new knows what he leaves,
+but not what he may find. I might have been contented. I was so happy!
+God knows how happy I was!"
+
+"And I!" exclaimed Francesca, involuntarily; but he did not hear her.
+
+She felt a curious sense of elation, though she was so truly sorry for
+him, and it disturbed her strangely. She looked at him and smiled, and
+then wondered why the smile came. There is a ruthless cruelty in the
+half-unconscious impulses of the purest innocence, of which vice itself
+might be ashamed in its heart. It is simple humanity's assertion of its
+prior right to be happy. She smiled spontaneously because she knew that
+Reanda no longer loved Gloria, and she felt that he could not love her
+again; and for a while she was too simply natural to quarrel with
+herself for it, or to realize what it meant.
+
+He was nervous, melancholy, and unstrung, and he began to talk about
+himself and his married life for the first time, pouring out his
+sufferings and thoughtless of what Francesca might think and feel. He,
+too, was natural. Unlike his wife, he detested emotion. To be angry was
+almost an illness to his over-finely organized temperament. In a way,
+Griggs had been right in saying that Reanda seemed to paint as an agent
+in the power of an unseen, directing influence. Beauty made him feel
+itself, and feel for it in his turn with his brush. The conception was
+before him, guiding his hand, before a stroke of the work was done.
+There was the lightning-like co-respondence and mutual reaction between
+thought and execution, which has been explained by some to be the
+simultaneous action of two minds in man, the subjective and the
+objective. In doing certain things he had the patience and the delicacy
+of one for whom time has no meaning. He could not have told whether his
+hand followed his eye, or his eye followed his hand. His whole being was
+of excessively sensitive construction, and emotion of any kind, even
+pleasure, jarred upon its hair-fine sensibilities. And yet, behind all
+this, there was the tenacity of the great artist and the phenomenal
+power of endurance, in certain directions, which is essential to
+prize-winning in the fight for fame. There was the quality of nerve
+which can endure great tension in one way, but can bear nothing in other
+ways.
+
+He went on, giving vent to all he felt, talking to himself rather than
+to Francesca. He could not reproach his wife with any one action of
+importance. She was fond of Paul Griggs. But it was only Griggs! He
+smiled. In his eyes, the cold-faced man was no more than a stone. In
+their excursions into society she had met men whom he considered far
+more dangerous, men young, handsome, rich, having great names. They
+admired her and said so to her in the best language they had, which was
+no doubt often very eloquent. Had she ever looked twice at one of them?
+No. He could not reproach her with that. The Duchess of Astrardente was
+not more cold to her admirers than Gloria was. It was not that. There
+were little things, little nothings, but in thousands. He tried to
+please her with something, and she laughed in his face, or found fault.
+She had small hardnesses and little vulgarities of manner that drove him
+mad.
+
+"I had thought her like you," he said suddenly, turning to Francesca.
+"She is not. She is coarse-grained. She has the soul of a peasant, with
+the face of a Madonna. What would you have? It is too much. Love is an
+illusion. I will have no more of it. Besides, love is dead. It would be
+easier to wake a corpse. I shall live. I may forget. Meanwhile there is
+our friendship. That is of gold."
+
+Francesca listened in silence, thoughtful and with downcast eyes, as the
+short, disjointed sentences broke vehemently from his lips, each one
+accusing her in her own heart of having wrought the misery of two lives,
+one of which was very dear to her. Too dear, as she knew at last. The
+scarlet shame would have burned her face, if she had owned to herself
+that she loved this man, whom she had married to another, believing that
+she was making his happiness. She would not own it. Had she admitted it
+then, she would have been capable of leaving him within the hour, and of
+shutting herself up forever in the Convent at Subiaco to expiate the sin
+of the thought. It was monstrous in her eyes, and she would still refuse
+to see it.
+
+But she owned that there was the suspicion, and that Angelo Reanda was
+far dearer to her than anything else on earth. Her innocence was so
+strong and spotless that it had a right to its one and only
+satisfaction. But what she felt for Reanda was either love, or it was
+blasphemy against the holy thing in whose place he stood in her temple.
+It must not be love, and therefore, as anything else, it was too much.
+And the strange joy she felt because Gloria was nothing to him, still
+filled her heart, though it began to torment her with the knowledge of
+evil which she had never understood.
+
+There was much else against him, too, in her pride of race, and it
+helped her just then, for it told her how impossible it was that she, a
+princess of the house of Braccio, should love a mere artist, the son of
+a steward, whose forefathers had been bondsmen to her ancestors from
+time immemorial. It was out of the question, and she would not believe
+it of herself. Yet, as she looked into his delicate, spiritual face and
+watched the shades of expression that crossed it, she felt that it made
+little difference whence he came, since she understood him and he
+understood her.
+
+She became confused by her own thoughts and grasped at the idea of a
+true and perfect friendship, with a somewhat desperate determination to
+see it and nothing else in it, for the rest of her life, rather than
+part with Angelo Reanda.
+
+"Friends," she said thoughtfully. "Yes--always friends, you and I. But
+as a friend, Reanda, what can I do? I cannot help you."
+
+"The time for help is past, if it ever came. You are a saint--pray for
+me. You can do that."
+
+"But there is more than that to be done," she said, ready to sacrifice
+anything or everything just then. "Do not tell me it is hopeless. I will
+see your wife often and I will talk to her. I am older than she, and I
+can make her understand many things."
+
+"Do not try it," said Reanda, in an altered tone. "I advise you not to
+try it. You can do no good there, and you might find trouble."
+
+"Find trouble?" repeated Francesca, not understanding him. "What do you
+mean? Does she dislike me?"
+
+"Have you not seen it?" he asked, with a bitter smile.
+
+Francesca did not answer him at once, but bent her head again. Once or
+twice she looked up as though she were about to speak.
+
+"It is as I tell you," said Reanda, nodding his head slowly.
+
+Francesca made up her mind, but the scarlet blood rose in her face.
+
+"It is better to be honest and frank," she said. "Is Gloria jealous of
+me?" She was so much ashamed that she could hardly look at him just
+then.
+
+"Jealous! She would kill you!" he cried, and there was anger in his
+voice at the thought. "Do not go to her. Something might happen."
+
+The blush in Francesca's face deepened and then subsided, and she grew
+very pale again.
+
+"But if she is jealous, she loves you," she said earnestly and
+anxiously.
+
+He shrugged his high thin shoulders, and the bitter smile came back to
+his face.
+
+"It is a stage jealousy," he said cruelly. "How could she pass the time
+without something to divert her? She is always acting."
+
+"But what is she jealous of?" asked Francesca. "How can she be jealous
+of me? Because you work here? She is free to come if she likes, and to
+stay all day. I do not understand."
+
+"Who can understand her? God, who made her, understands her. I am only a
+man. I know only one thing, that I loved her and do not love her. And
+she makes a scene for every day. One day it is you, and another day it
+is the walls she does not like. You will forgive me, Princess. I speak
+frankly what comes to my mouth from my heart. The whole story is this.
+She makes my life intolerable. I am not an idle man, the first you may
+meet in society, to spend my time from morning to night in studying my
+wife's caprices. I am an artist. When I have worked I must have peace. I
+do not ask for intelligent conversation like yours. But I must have
+peace. One of these days I shall strangle her with my hands. The Lord
+will forgive me and understand. I am full of nerves. Is it my fault? She
+twists them as the women wring out clothes at the fountain. It is not a
+life; it is a hell."
+
+"Poor Reanda! Poor Reanda!" repeated Francesca, softly.
+
+"I do not pity myself," he said scornfully. "I have deserved it, and
+much more. But I am human. If it goes on a little longer, you may take
+me to Santo Spirito, for I am going mad. At least I should be there in
+holy peace. After her, the madmen would all seem doctors of wisdom. Do
+you know what will happen this evening? I go home. 'Where have you
+been?' she will ask. 'At the Palazzetto.' 'What have you been doing?'
+'Painting--it is my trade.' 'Was Donna Francesca there?' 'Of course. She
+is mistress in her own house.' 'And what did you talk of?' 'How should I
+remember? We talked.' Then it will begin. It will be an inferno, as it
+always is. 'Leave hope behind, all ye that enter here!' I can say it, if
+ever man could! You are right to pity me. Before it is finished you will
+have reason to pity me still more. Let us hope it may finish soon.
+Either San Lorenzo, or Santo Spirito--with the mad or with the dead."
+
+"Poor Reanda!"
+
+"Yes--poor Reanda, if you like. People envy me, they say I am a great
+artist. If they think so, let them say it. It seems to them that I am
+somebody." He laughed, almost hysterically. "Somebody! Stuff for Santo
+Spirito! That is all she has left me in two years--not yet two years."
+
+"Do not talk of Santo Spirito," said Francesca. "You shall not go mad.
+When you are unhappy, think of our friendship and of all the hours you
+have here every day." She hesitated and seemed to make an effort over
+herself. "But it is impossible that it should be all over, so hopelessly
+and so soon. She is nervous, perhaps. The climate does not suit her--"
+
+Reanda laughed wildly, for he was rapidly losing all control of himself.
+
+"Therefore I should take her away and go and live somewhere else!" he
+cried. "That would be the end! I should tear her to pieces with my
+hands--"
+
+"Hush, hush! You are talking madly--"
+
+"I know it. There is reason. It will end badly, one of these days,
+unless I end first, and that may happen also. Without you it would have
+happened long ago. You are the good angel in my life, the one friend God
+has sent me in my tormented existence, the one star in my black sky. Be
+my friend still, always, for ever and ever, and I shall live forever
+only to be your friend. As for love--the devil and his demons will know
+what to do with it--they will find their account in it. They have lent
+it, and they will take their payment in blood and tears of those who
+believe them."
+
+"But there is love in the world, somewhere," said Francesca, gently.
+
+"Yes--and in hell! But not in heaven--where you will be."
+
+Francesca sighed unconsciously, and looked long away towards the great
+windows at the end of the hall. Reanda gathered up his palette and
+brushes with a steadier hand. His anger had not spent itself, but it
+made him suddenly strong, and the outburst had relieved him, though it
+was certain that it would be followed by a reaction of profound
+despondency.
+
+All at once he came close to Francesca. She looked up, half startled by
+his sudden movement.
+
+"At least it is true--this one thing," he said. "I can count upon you."
+
+"Yes. You can count upon me," she answered, gazing into his eyes.
+
+He did not move. The one hand held his palette, the other hung free by
+his side. All at once she took it in hers, still looking up into his
+eyes.
+
+"I am very fond of you," she said earnestly. "You can count upon me as
+long as we two live."
+
+"God bless you," he said, more quietly than he had spoken yet, and his
+hand pressed hers a little.
+
+There could be no harm in saying as much as that, she thought, when it
+was so true and so simply said. It was all she could ever say to him, or
+to herself, and there was no reason why she should not say it. He would
+not misunderstand her. No man could have mistaken the innocence that was
+the life and light of her clear eyes. She was glad she had said it, and
+she was glad long afterwards that she had said it on that day, quietly,
+when no one could hear them in the great still hall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+REANDA went home that evening in a very disturbed state of mind. He had
+been better so long as he had not given vent to what he felt; for, as
+with many southern men of excitable temper and weak nerves, his thoughts
+about himself, as distinguished from his pursuits, did not take positive
+shape in his mind until he had expressed them in words. Amongst the
+Latin races the phrase, 'he cannot think without speaking,' has more
+truth as applied to some individuals than the Anglo-Saxon can easily
+understand.
+
+For many months the artist had been most unhappy. His silence concerning
+his grief had been almost exemplary, and had been broken only now and
+then by a hasty exclamation of annoyance when Gloria's behaviour had
+irritated him beyond measure. He was the gentlest of men; and even when
+he had lost his temper with her, he had never spoken roughly.
+
+"You are hard to please, my dear," he had sometimes said.
+
+But that had been almost the strongest expression of his displeasure. It
+was not, indeed, that he had exercised very great self-control in the
+matter, for he had little power of that sort over himself. If he was
+habitually mild and gentle in his manner with Gloria, it was rather
+because, like many Italians, he dreaded emotion as something like an
+illness, and could avoid it to some extent merely by not speaking freely
+of what he felt. Silence was generally easy to him; and he had not
+broken out more than two or three times in all his life, as he had done
+on that afternoon alone with Francesca.
+
+The inevitable consequence followed immediately,--a consequence as much
+physical as mental, for when he went away from the Palazzetto, his clear
+dark eyes were bloodshot and yellow, and his hands had trembled so that
+he had hardly been able to find the armholes of his great-coat in
+putting it on. He walked with an uncertain and agitated step, glancing
+to right and left of him as he went, half-fiercely, half-timidly, as
+though he expected a new adversary to spring upon him from every corner.
+The straight line of the houses waned and shivered in the dusk, as he
+looked at them, and he saw flashes of light in the air. His head was hot
+and aching, and his hat hurt him. Altogether he was in a dangerous
+state, not unlike that which, with northern men, sometimes follows hard
+drinking.
+
+He hated to go home that evening. So far as he was conscious, he had
+neither misrepresented nor in any way exaggerated the miseries of his
+domestic existence; and he felt that it was before him now, precisely as
+he had described it. There would be the same questions, to which he
+would give the same answers, at which Gloria would put on the same
+expression of injured hopelessness, unless she broke out and lost her
+temper, which happened often enough. The prospect was intolerable.
+Reanda thrust his hands deep into the pocket of his overcoat, and glared
+about him as he turned the corner of the Via degli Astalli, and saw the
+Corso in the distance. But he did not slacken his pace as he went along
+under the gloomy walls of the Austrian Embassy--the Palace of
+Venice--the most grim and fortress-like of all Roman palaces.
+
+He felt as a poor man may feel when, hot and feverish from working by a
+furnace, he knows that he must face the winter storm of freezing sleet
+and piercing wind in his thin and ragged jacket to go home--a plunge, as
+it were, from molten iron into ice, with no protection from the cold.
+Every step of the homeward way was hateful to him. Yet he knew his own
+weakness well enough not to hesitate. Had he stopped, he might have been
+capable of turning in some other direction, and of spending the whole
+evening with some of his fellow-artists, going home late in the night,
+when Gloria would be asleep. The thought crossed his mind. If he did
+that, he was sure to be carried away into speaking of his troubles to
+men with whom he had no intimacy. He was too proud for that. He wished
+he could go back to Francesca, and pour out his woes again. He had not
+said half enough. He should like to have it out, to the very end, and
+then lie down and close his eyes, and hear Francesca's voice soothing
+him and speaking of their golden friendship. But that was impossible, so
+he went home to face his misery as best he could.
+
+There was exaggeration in all he thought, but there was none in the
+effect of his thoughts upon himself. He had married a woman unsuited to
+him in every way, as he was unsuited to her. The whole trouble lay
+there. Possibly he was not a man to marry at all, and should have led
+his solitary life to the end, illuminated from the outside, as it were,
+by Francesca Campodonico's faithful friendship and sweet influence. All
+causes of disagreement, considered as forces in married life, are
+relative in their value to the comparative solidity of the characters on
+which they act--a truism which ought to be the foundation of social
+charity, but is not. Reanda could not be blamed for his brittle
+sensitivenesses, nor Gloria for a certain coarse-grained streak of
+cruelty, which she had inherited from her father, and which had
+combined strangely with the rare gifts and great faults of her dead
+mother--the love of emotion for its own sake, and the tendency to do
+everything which might produce it in herself and those about her.
+Emotion was poison to Reanda. It was his wife's favourite food.
+
+He reached his home, and went up the well-lighted marble staircase,
+wishing that he were ascending the narrow stone steps at the back of the
+Palazzetto Borgia, taper in hand, to his old bachelor quarters, to light
+his lamp, to smoke in peace, and to spend the evening over a sketch, or
+with a book, or dreaming of work not yet done. He paused on the landing,
+before he rang the bell of his apartment. The polished door irritated
+him, with its brass fittings and all that it meant of married life and
+irksome social obligation. He never carried a key, because the Roman
+keys of those times were large and heavy; but he had been obliged to use
+one formerly, when he had lived by himself. The necessity of ringing the
+bell irritated him again, and he felt a nervous shock of unwillingness
+as he pulled the brass knob. He set his teeth against the tinkling and
+jangling that followed, and his eyelids quivered. Everything hurt him.
+He did not feel sure of his hands when he wanted to use them. He was
+inclined to strike the silent and respectful man-servant who opened the
+door, merely because he was silent and respectful. He went straight to
+his own dressing-room, and shut himself in. It would be a relief to
+change his clothes. He and Gloria were to go to a reception in the
+evening, and he would dress at once. In those days few Romans dressed
+for dinner every day.
+
+He dropped a stud, for his hands were shaking so that he could hardly
+hold anything; and he groped for the thing on his knees. The blood went
+to his head, and hurt him violently, as though he had received a blow.
+
+Gloria's room was next to his, and she heard him moving about. She
+knocked and tried the door, but it was locked; and she heard him utter
+an exclamation of annoyance, as he hunted for the stud. She thought it
+was meant for her, and turned angrily back from the door. On any other
+day he would have called her, for he had heard her trying to get in. But
+he shrugged his lean shoulders impatiently, glanced once towards her
+room, found his stud, and went on dressing.
+
+He really made an effort to get control of himself while he was alone.
+But to all intents and purposes he was actually ill. His face was drawn
+and sallow; his eyes were yellow and bloodshot; and there were deep,
+twitching lines about his mouth. His nostrils moved spasmodically when
+he drew breath, and his long thin hands fumbled helplessly at the studs
+and buttons of his clothes. At last he was dressed, and went into the
+drawing-room. Gloria was already there, waiting by the fireside, with an
+injured and forbidding expression in her beautiful face.
+
+Reanda came to the fireside, and stood there, spreading out his
+trembling hands to the blaze. He dreaded the first word, as a man lying
+ill of brain fever dreads each cracking explosion in a thunderstorm.
+Strained as their relations had been for a long time, he had never
+failed to kiss Gloria when he came home. This evening he barely glanced
+at her, and stood watching the dancing tongues of the wood fire, not
+daring to think of the sound of his wife's voice. It came at last cool
+and displeased.
+
+"Are you ill?" she asked, looking steadily at him.
+
+"No," he answered with an effort, and his outstretched hands shook
+before the fire.
+
+"Then what is the matter with you?"
+
+"Nothing." He did not even turn his eyes to her, as he spoke the single
+word.
+
+A silence followed, during which he suffered. Nevertheless, the first
+dreaded shock of hearing her voice was over. Though he had barely
+glanced at her, he had known from her face what the sound of the voice
+would be.
+
+Gloria leaned back in her chair and watched the fire, and sighed. Griggs
+had been with her in the afternoon, and she had been happy, quite
+innocently, as she thought. The man's dominating strength and profound
+earnestness, which would have been intolerably dull to many women,
+smoothed Gloria, as it were. She said that he ironed the creases out of
+her life for her. It was not a softening influence, but a calming one,
+bred of strength pressing heavily on caprice. She resisted it, but took
+pleasure in finding that it was irresistible. Now and then it was not
+merely a steady pressure. He had a sledge hammer amongst his
+intellectual weapons, and once in a while it fell upon one of her
+illusions. She laughed at the destruction, and had no pity for the
+fragments. They were not illusions integral with her vanity, for he
+thought her perfect, and he would not have struck at her faults if he
+had seen them. Her faults grew, for they had root in her vital nature,
+and drew nourishment from his enduring strength, which surrounded them
+and protected them in the blind, whole-heartedness of his love. For the
+rest, he had kept his word. She had seen him turn white and bite his
+lip, sometimes, and more than once he had left her abruptly, and had not
+come back again for several days. But he had never forgotten his
+promise, in any word or deed since he had given it.
+
+It is a dangerous thing to pile up a mountain of massive reality from
+which to look out upon the fading beauty of a fleeting illusion. In his
+influence on Gloria's life, the strong man had overtopped the man of
+genius by head and shoulders. And she loved the strange mixture of
+attraction and repulsion she felt when she was with Griggs--the
+something that wounded her vanity because she could not understand it,
+and the protecting shield that overspread that same vanity, and gave it
+freedom to be vain beyond all bounds. She would not have admitted that
+she loved the man. It was her nature to play upon his pity with the
+wounds her love for her husband had suffered. Yet she knew that if she
+were free she should marry him, because she could not resist him, and
+there was pleasure in the idea that she controlled so irresistible a
+force. The contrast between him and Reanda was ever before her, and
+since she had learned how weak genius could be, the comparison was
+enormously in favour of the younger man.
+
+As Reanda stood there before the fire that evening, she despised him,
+and her heart rebelled against his nature. His nervousness, his
+trembling hands, his almost evident fear of being questioned, were
+contemptible. He was like a hunted animal, she thought. Two hours
+earlier her friend had stood there, solid, leonine, gladiatorial,
+dominating her with his square white face, and still, shadowy eyes,
+quietly stretching to the flames two hands that could have torn her in
+pieces,--a man imposing in his stern young sadness, almost solemn in his
+splendid physical dignity.
+
+She looked at Reanda, and her lip curled with scorn of herself for
+having loved such a thing. It was long since she had seen the gentle
+light in his face which had won her heart two years ago. She was
+familiar with his genius, and it no longer surprised her into
+overlooking his frailty. His fame no longer flattered her. His
+gentleness was gone, and had left, not hardness nor violence, in its
+place, but a sort of irritable palsy of discontent. That was what she
+called it as she watched him.
+
+"You used to kiss me when you came home," she said suddenly, leaning far
+back in her chair.
+
+Mechanically he turned his head. The habit was strong, and she had
+reminded him of it. He did not wish to quarrel, and he did not reason.
+He moved a step to her side and bent down to kiss her forehead. The
+automatic conjugality of the daily kiss might have a good effect. That
+was what he thought, if he thought at all.
+
+But she put up her hands suddenly, and thrust him back rudely.
+
+"No," she said. "That sort of thing is not worth much, if I have to
+remind you to do it."
+
+Her lip curled again. His high shoulders went up, and he turned away.
+
+"You are hard to please," he said, and the words were as mechanical as
+the action that had preceded them.
+
+"It cannot be said that you have taken much pains to please me of late,"
+she answered coldly.
+
+The servant announced dinner at that moment, and Reanda made no answer,
+though he glanced at her nervously. They went into the dining-room and
+sat down.
+
+The storm brewed during the silent meal. Reanda scarcely ate anything,
+and drank a little weak wine and water.
+
+"You hardly seem well enough to go out this evening," said Gloria, at
+last, but there was no kindness in the tone.
+
+"I am perfectly well," he answered impatiently. "I will go with you."
+
+"There is not the slightest necessity," replied his wife. "I can go
+alone, and you can go to bed."
+
+"I tell you I am perfectly well!" he said with unconcealed annoyance.
+"Let me alone."
+
+"Certainly. Nothing is easier."
+
+The voice was full of that injured dignity which most surely irritated
+him, as Gloria knew. But the servant was in the room, and he said
+nothing, though it was a real effort to be silent. His tongue had been
+free that day, and it was hard to be bound again.
+
+They finished dinner almost in silence, and then went back to the
+drawing-room by force of habit. Gloria was still in her walking-dress,
+but there was no hurry, and she resumed her favourite seat by the fire
+for a time, before going to dress for the reception.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+THERE was something exasperating in the renewal of the position exactly
+as it had been before dinner. To make up for having eaten nothing,
+Reanda drank two cups of coffee in silence.
+
+"You might at least speak to me," observed Gloria, as he set down the
+second cup. "One would almost think that we had quarrelled!"
+
+The hard laugh that followed the words jarred upon him more painfully
+than anything that had gone before. He laughed, too, after a moment's
+silence, half hysterically.
+
+"Yes," he said; "one might almost think that we had quarrelled!" And he
+laughed again.
+
+"The idea seems to amuse you," said Gloria, coldly.
+
+"As it does you," he answered. "We both laughed. Indeed, it is very
+amusing."
+
+"Donna Francesca has sent you home in a good humour. That is rare. I
+suppose I ought to be grateful."
+
+"Yes. I am in a fine humour. It seems to me that we both are." He bit
+his cigar, and blew out short puffs.
+
+"You need not include me. Please do not smoke into my face."
+
+The smoke was not very near her, but she made a movement with her hands
+as though brushing it away.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said politely, and he moved to the other side of
+the fireplace.
+
+"How nervous you are!" she exclaimed. "Why can you not sit down?"
+
+"Because I wish to stand," he answered, with returning impatience.
+"Because I am nervous, if you choose."
+
+"You told me that you were perfectly well."
+
+"So I am."
+
+"If you were perfectly well, you would not be nervous," she replied.
+
+He felt as though she were driving a sharp nail into his brain.
+
+"It does not make any difference to you whether I am nervous or not," he
+said, and his eye began to lighten, as he sat down.
+
+"It certainly makes no difference to you whether you are rude or not."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, said nothing, and smoked in silence. One thin
+leg was crossed over the other and swung restlessly.
+
+"Is this sort of thing to last forever?" she inquired coldly, after a
+silence which had lasted a full minute.
+
+"I do not know what you mean," said Reanda.
+
+"You know very well what I mean."
+
+"This is insufferable!" he exclaimed, rising suddenly, with his cigar
+between his teeth.
+
+"You might take your cigar out of your mouth to say so," retorted
+Gloria.
+
+He turned on her, and an exclamation of anger was on his lips, but he
+did not utter it. There was a remnant of self-control. Gloria leaned
+back in her chair, and took up a carved ivory fan from amongst the
+knick-knacks on the little table beside her. She opened it, shut it, and
+opened it again, and pretended to fan herself, though the room was cool.
+
+"I should really like to know," she said presently, as he walked up and
+down with uneven steps.
+
+"What?" he asked sharply.
+
+"Whether this is to last for the rest of our lives."
+
+"What?"
+
+"This peaceful existence," she said scornfully. "I should really like to
+know whether it is to last. Could you not tell me?"
+
+"It will not last long, if you make it your principal business to
+torment me," he said, stopping in his walk.
+
+"I?" she exclaimed, with an air of the utmost surprise. "When do I ever
+torment you?"
+
+"Whenever I am with you, and you know it."
+
+"Really! You must be ill, or out of your mind, or both. That would be
+some excuse for saying such a thing."
+
+"It needs none. It is true." He was becoming exasperated at last. "You
+seem to spend your time in finding out how to make life intolerable. You
+are driving me mad. I cannot bear it much longer."
+
+"If it comes to bearing, I think I have borne more than you," said
+Gloria. "It is not little. You leave me to myself. You neglect me. You
+abuse the friends I am obliged to find rather than be alone. You neglect
+me in every way--and you say that I am driving you mad. Do you realize
+at all how you have changed in this last year? You may have really gone
+mad, for all I know, but it is I who have to suffer and bear the
+consequences. You neglect me brutally. How do I know how you pass your
+time?"
+
+Reanda stood still in the middle of the room, gazing at her. For a
+moment he was surprised by the outbreak. She did not give him time to
+answer.
+
+"You leave me in the morning," she went on, working her coldness into
+anger. "You often go away before I am awake. You come back at midday,
+and sometimes you do not speak a word over your breakfast. If I speak,
+you either do not answer, or you find fault with what I say; and if I
+show the least enthusiasm for anything but your work, you preach me down
+with proverbs and maxims, as though I were a child. I am foolish,
+young, impatient, silly, not fit to take care of myself, you say! Have
+you taken care of me? Have you ever sacrificed one hour out of your long
+day to give me a little pleasure? Have you ever once, since we were
+married, stayed at home one morning and asked me what I would do--just
+to make one holiday for me? Never. Never once! You give me a fine house
+and enough money, and you think you have given me all that a woman
+wants."
+
+"And what do you want?" asked Reanda, trying to speak calmly.
+
+"A little kindness, a little love--the least thing of all you promised
+me and of all I was so sure of having! Is it so much to ask? Have you
+lied to me all this time? Did you never love me? Did you marry me for my
+face, or for my voice? Was it all a mere empty sham from the beginning?
+Have you deceived me from the first? You said you loved me. Was none of
+it true?"
+
+"Yes. I loved you," he answered, and suddenly there was a dulness in his
+voice.
+
+"You loved me--"
+
+She sighed, and in the stillness that followed the little ivory fan
+rattled as she opened and shut it. To his ear, the tone in which she had
+spoken had rung false. If only he could have heard her voice speaking as
+it had once sounded, he must have been touched.
+
+"Yes," she continued. "You loved me, or at least you made me think you
+did. I was young and I believed you. You do not even say it now. Perhaps
+because you know how hard it would be to make me believe you."
+
+"No. That is not the reason."
+
+She waited a moment, for it was not the answer she had expected.
+
+"Angelo--" she began, and waited, but he said nothing, though he looked
+at her. "It is not true, it cannot be true!" she said, suddenly turning
+her face away, for there was a bitter humiliation in it.
+
+"It is much better to say it at once," he said, with the supernaturally
+calm indifference which sometimes comes upon very sensitive people when
+they are irritated beyond endurance. "I did love you, or I should not
+have married you. But I do not love you any longer. I am sorry. I wish I
+did."
+
+"And you dare to tell me so!" she cried, turning upon him suddenly.
+
+A moment later she was leaning forward, covering her face with her
+hands, and speaking through them.
+
+"You have the heart to tell me so, after all I have been to you--the
+devotion of years, the tenderness, the love no man ever had of any
+woman! Oh, God! It is too much!"
+
+"It is said now. It is of no use to go back to a lie," observed Reanda,
+with an indifference that would have seemed diabolical even to himself,
+had he believed her outbreak to be quite genuine. "Of what use would it
+be to pretend again?"
+
+"You admit that you have only pretended to love me?" She raised her
+flushed face and gleaming eyes.
+
+"Of late--if you call it a pretence--"
+
+"Oh, not that--not that! I have seen it--but at first. You did love me.
+Say that, at least."
+
+"Certainly. Why should I have married you?"
+
+"Yes--why? In spite of her, too--it is not to be believed."
+
+"In spite of her? Of whom? Are you out of your mind?"
+
+Gloria laughed in a despairing sort of way.
+
+"Do not tell me that Donna Francesca ever wished you to be married!" she
+said.
+
+"She brought us together. You know it. It is the only thing I could ever
+reproach her with."
+
+"She made you marry me?"
+
+"Made me? No! You are quite mad."
+
+He stamped his foot impatiently, and turned away to walk up and down
+again. His cigar had gone out, but he gnawed at it angrily. He was
+amazed at what he could still bear, but he was fast losing his head. The
+mad desire to strangle her tingled in his hands, and the light of the
+lamp danced when he looked at it.
+
+"She has made you do so many things!" said Gloria.
+
+Her tone had changed again, growing hard and scornful, when she spoke of
+Donna Francesca.
+
+"What has she made me do that you should speak of her in that way?"
+asked Reanda, angrily, re-crossing the room.
+
+"She has made you hate me--for one thing," Gloria answered.
+
+"That is not true!" Reanda could hardly breathe, and he felt his voice
+growing thick.
+
+"Not true! Then, if not she, who else? You are with her there all
+day--she talks about me, she finds fault with me, and you come home and
+see the faults she finds for you--"
+
+"There is not a word of truth in what you say--"
+
+"Do not be so angry, then! If it were not true, why should you care? I
+have said it, and I will say it. She has robbed me of you. Oh, I will
+never forgive her! Never fear! One does not forget such things! She has
+got you, and she will keep you, I suppose. But you shall regret it! She
+shall pay me for it!"
+
+Her voice shook, for her jealousy was real, as was all her emotion while
+it lasted.
+
+"You shall not speak of her in that way," said Reanda, fiercely. "I owe
+her and her family all that I am, all that I have in the world--"
+
+"Including me!" interrupted Gloria. "Pay her then--pay her with your
+love and yourself. You can satisfy your conscience in that way, and you
+can break my heart."
+
+"There is not the slightest fear of that," answered Reanda, cruelly.
+
+She rose suddenly to her feet and stood before him, blazing with anger.
+
+"If I could find yours--if you had any--I would break it," she said.
+"You dare to say that I have no heart, when you can see that every word
+you say thrusts it through like a knife, when I have loved you as no
+woman ever loved man! I said it, and I repeat it--when I have given you
+everything, and would have given you the world if I had it! Indeed, you
+are utterly heartless and cruel and unkind--"
+
+"At least, I am honest. I do not play a part as you do. I say plainly
+that I do not love you and that I am sorry for it. Yes--really sorry."
+His voice softened for an instant. "I would give a great deal to love
+you as I once did, and to believe that you loved me--"
+
+"You will tell me that I do not--"
+
+"Indeed, I will tell you so, and that you never did--"
+
+"Angelo--take care! You will go too far!"
+
+"I could never go far enough in telling you that truth. You never loved
+me. You may have thought you did. I do not care. You talk of devotion
+and tenderness and all the like! Of being left alone and neglected! Of
+going too far! What devotion have you ever shown to me, beyond
+extravagantly praising everything I painted, for a few months after we
+were married. Then you grew tired of my work. That is your affair. What
+is it to me whether you admire my pictures or Mendoza's, or any other
+man's? Do you think that is devotion? I know far better than you which
+are good and which are bad. But you call it devotion. And it was
+devotion that kept you away from me when I was working, when I was
+obliged to work--for it is my trade, after all--and when you might have
+been with me day after day! And it was devotion to meet me with your
+sour, severe look every day when I came home, as though I were a secret
+enemy, a conspirator, a creature to be guarded against like a thief--as
+though I had been staying away from you on purpose, and of my
+will--instead of working for you all day long. That was your way of
+showing your love. And to torment me with questions, everlastingly
+believing that I spend my time in talking against you to Donna
+Francesca--"
+
+"You do!" cried Gloria, who had not been able to interrupt his
+incoherent speech. "You love her as you never loved me--as you hate
+me--as you both hate me!"
+
+She grasped his sleeve in her anger, shaking his arm, and staring into
+his eyes.
+
+"You make me hate you!" he answered, trying to shake her off.
+
+"And you succeed, between you--You and your--"
+
+In his turn he grasped her arm with his long, thin fingers, with nervous
+roughness.
+
+"You shall not speak of her--"
+
+"Shall not? It is the only right I have left--that and the right to hate
+you--you and that infamous woman you love--yes--you and your
+mistress--your pretty Francesca!" Her laugh was almost a scream.
+
+His fury overflowed. After all, he was the son of a countryman, of the
+steward of Gerano. He snatched the ivory fan from her hand and struck
+her across the face with it. The fragile thing broke to shivers, and the
+fragments fell between them.
+
+Gloria turned deadly white, but there was a bright red bar across her
+cheek. She looked at him a moment, and into her face there came that
+fateful look that was like her dead mother's.
+
+Then without a word she turned and left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+THE daughter of Angus Dalrymple and Maria Braccio was not the woman to
+bear a blow tamely, or to hesitate long as to the surest way of
+resenting it. Before she had reached the door she had determined to
+leave the house at once, and ten minutes had not passed before she found
+herself walking down the Corso, veiled and muffled in a cloak, and
+having all the money she could call her own, in her pocket, together
+with a few jewels of little value, given her by her father.
+
+Reanda had sunk into a chair when the door had closed behind her, half
+stunned by the explosion of his own anger. He looked at the bits of
+broken ivory on the carpet, and wondered vaguely what they meant. He
+felt as though he had been in a dream of which he could not remember the
+distorted incidents at all clearly. His breath came irregularly, his
+heart fluttered and stood still and fluttered again, and his hands
+twitched at the fringe on the arms of the chair. By and bye, the butler
+came in to take away the coffee cups and he saw that his master was ill.
+Under such circumstances nothing can equal the gentleness of an Italian
+servant. The man called some one to help him, and got Reanda to his
+dressing-room, and undressed him and laid him upon the long leathern
+sofa. Then they knocked at the bedroom door, but there was no answer.
+
+"Do not disturb the signora," said Reanda, feebly. "She wishes to be
+alone. We shall not want the carriage."
+
+Those were the only words he spoke that evening, and the servants
+understood well enough that something had happened between husband and
+wife, and that it was best to be silent and to obey. No one tried the
+door of the bedroom. If any one had turned the handle, it would have
+been found to be locked. The key lay on the table in the hall, amongst
+the visiting-cards. Dalrymple's daughter had inherited some of his quick
+instinct and presence of mind. She had felt sure that if she locked the
+door of her room when she left the house, her husband would naturally
+suppose that she had shut herself in, not wishing to be disturbed, and
+would respect her desire to be alone. It would save trouble, and give
+her time to get away. He could sleep on the sofa in his dressing-room,
+as he actually did, in the illness of his anger, treated as Italians
+know how to treat such common cases, of which the consequences are
+sometimes fatal. Many an Italian has died from a fit of rage. A single
+blood-vessel, in the brain, a little weaker than the rest, and all is
+over in an apoplexy. But Reanda was not of an apoplectic constitution.
+The calming treatment acted very soon, he fell asleep, and did not wake
+till daylight, quite unaware that Gloria was not in the next room,
+sleeping off her anger as he had done.
+
+She had gone out in her first impulse to leave the house of the man who
+had so terribly insulted her. Under her veil the hot blood scorched her
+where the blow had left its red bar, and her rage and wounded pride
+chased one another from her heart to her head while with every beating
+of her pulse the longing for revenge grew wilder and stronger.
+
+She had left the house with one first idea--to find Paul Griggs and tell
+him what had happened. No other thought crossed her mind, and her steps
+turned mechanically down the Corso, for he still lived in his two rooms
+in the Via della Frezza.
+
+It was early still. People dined at six o'clock in those days, and it
+was not yet eight when Gloria found herself in the street. It was quiet,
+though there were many people moving about. During the hours between
+dinner and the theatre there were hardly any carriages out, and the
+sound of many footsteps and of many low voices filled the air. Gloria
+kept to the right and walked swiftly along, never turning her head. She
+had never been out in the streets alone at night in her life, and even
+in her anger she felt a sort of intoxication of freedom that was quite
+new to her, a beginning of satisfaction upon him who had injured her.
+There was Highland blood in her veins, as well as Italian passion.
+
+The southeast wind was blowing down the street behind her, that same
+strange and tragic wind, tragic and passionate, that had blown so
+gustily down upon Subiaco from the mountains, on that night long ago
+when Maria Addolorata had stood aside by the garden gate to let
+Dalrymple pass, bearing something in his arms. Gloria knew it by its sad
+whisper and by the faint taste of it and smell of it, through her
+close-drawn veil.
+
+On she went, down the Corso, till she came to the Piazza Colonna, and
+saw far on her left, beyond the huge black shaft of the column, the
+brilliant lights from the French officers' Club. She hesitated then, and
+slackened her speed a little. The sight of the Club reminded her of
+society, of what she was doing, and of what it might mean. As she walked
+more slowly, the wind gained upon her, as it were, from behind, and
+tried to drive her on. It seemed to be driving her from her husband's
+house with all its might, blowing her skirts before her and her thick
+veil. She passed the square, keeping close to the shutters of the shops
+under the Palazzo Piombino--gone now, to widen the open space. A gust,
+stronger than any she had felt yet, swept down the pavement. She paused
+a moment, leaning against the closed shutters of the clockmaker Ricci,
+whose shop used to be a sort of landmark in the Corso. Just then a clock
+within struck eight strokes. She heard them all distinctly through the
+shutters.
+
+She hesitated an instant. It was eight o'clock. She had not realized
+what time it was. If she found the street door shut in the Via della
+Frezza, it would be hard to get at Griggs. She had passed the house more
+than once in her walks, and she knew that Griggs lived high up in the
+fifth story. It might be already too late. She hesitated and looked up
+and down the pavement. A young French officer of Zouaves was coming
+towards her; his high wrinkled and varnished boots gleamed in the
+gaslight. He had a black beard and bright young eyes, and was smoking a
+cigarette. He was looking at her and slackened his pace as he came near.
+She left her place and walked swiftly past him, down the Corso.
+
+All at once she felt in the gust that drove her a cool drop of rain just
+behind her ear, and a moment later, passing a gas-lamp, she saw the dark
+round spots on the grey pavement. In her haste, she had brought no
+umbrella. She hurried on, and the wind blew her forward with all its
+might, so that she felt her steps lightened by its help. The Corso was
+darker and there were fewer people. The rain fell fast when she reached
+San Carlo, where the street widens, and she gathered her cloak about
+her as well as she could and crossed to the other side, hoping to find
+more shelter. She was nearing the Via della Frezza, and she knew some of
+the ins and outs of the narrow streets behind the tribune of the great
+church. It was very dark as she turned the semicircle of the apse, and
+the rain fell in torrents, but it was shorter to go that way, for Griggs
+lived nearer to the Ripetta than to the Corso, and she followed a sort
+of crooked diagonal, in the direction of his house. She thought the
+streets led by that way to the point she wished to reach, and she walked
+as fast as she could. The flare of an occasional oil lamp swung out high
+at the end of its lever showed her the way, and showed her, too, the
+rush of the yellow water down the middle channel of the street. She
+looked in vain for the turning she expected on her right. She had not
+lost her way, but she had not found the short cut she had looked for.
+Emerging upon the broad Ripetta, she paused an instant at the corner and
+looked about, though she knew which way to turn. Just then there were
+heavy splashing footsteps close to her.
+
+"Permit me, Signora," said a voice that was rough and had an odd accent,
+though the tone was polite, and a huge umbrella was held over her head.
+
+She shrank back against the wall quickly, in womanly fear of a strange
+man.
+
+"No, thank you!" she exclaimed in answer.
+
+"But yes!" said the man. "It rains. You are getting an illness,
+Signora."
+
+The faint light showed her that she would be safe enough in accepting
+the offer. The man was evidently a peasant from the mountains, and he
+was certainly not young. His vast black cloak was turned back a little
+by his arm and showed the lining of green flannel and the blue clothes
+with broad silver buttons which he wore.
+
+"Thank you," she said, for she was glad of the shelter, and she stood
+still under the enormous blue cotton umbrella, with its battered brass
+knob and its coloured stripes.
+
+"But I will accompany you," said the man. "It is certainly not beginning
+to finish. Apoplexy! It rains in pieces!"
+
+"Thank you. I am not going far," said Gloria. "You are very kind."
+
+"It seems to be the act of a Christian," observed the peasant.
+
+She began to move, and he walked beside her. He would have thought it
+bad manners to ask whither she was going. Through the torrents of rain
+they went on in silence. In less than five minutes she had found the
+door of Griggs's house. To her intense relief it was still open, and
+there was the glimmer of a tiny oil lamp from a lantern in the stairway.
+Gloria felt for the money in her pocket. The man did not wait, nor
+speak, and was already going away. She called him.
+
+[Illustration: Stefanone and Gloria.--Vol. II., p. 100.]
+
+"I wish to give you something," said Gloria.
+
+"To me?" exclaimed the man, in surprise. "No, Signora. It seems that you
+make a mistake."
+
+"Excuse me," Gloria answered. "In the dark, I did not see. I am very
+grateful to you. You are from the country?"
+
+She wished to repair the mistake she had made, by some little civility.
+The man stood on the doorstep, with his umbrella hanging backward over
+his shoulder, and she could see his face distinctly,--a typical Roman
+face with small aquiline features, keen dark eyes, a square jaw, and
+iron-grey hair.
+
+"Yes, Signora. Stefanone of Subiaco, wine merchant, to serve you. If you
+wish wine of Subiaco, ask for me at Piazza Montanara. Signora, it rains
+columns. With permission, I go."
+
+"Thank you again," she answered.
+
+He disappeared into the torrent, and she was left alone at the foot of
+the gloomy stairs, under the feeble light of the little oil lamp. She
+had thrown back her veil, for it was soaked with water and stuck to her
+face. Little rivulets ran down upon the stones from her wet clothes,
+which felt intolerably heavy as she stood there, resting one gloved hand
+against the damp wall and staring at the lantern. Her thoughts had
+been disturbed by her brief interview with the peasant; the rain chilled
+her, and her face burned. She touched her cheek with her hand where
+Reanda had struck her. It felt bruised and sore, for the blow had not
+been a light one. The sensation of the wet leather disgusted her, and
+she drew off the glove with difficulty, turning it inside out over her
+full white hand. Then she touched the place again, and patted it,
+softly, and felt it. But her eyes did not move from the lantern.
+
+There was one of those momentary lulling pauses in the rush of events
+which seem sent to confuse men's thoughts and unsettle their purposes.
+Had she reached the house five minutes earlier, she would not have
+hesitated a moment at the foot of the stairs. Suddenly she turned back
+to the door, and stood there looking out. It looked very black. She
+gathered her dripping skirt back as she bent forward a little and peered
+into the darkness. The rain fell in sheets, now, with the unquavering
+sound of a steadily rushing torrent. It would be madness to go out into
+it. A shiver ran through her, and another. She was very cold and
+miserable. No doubt Griggs had a fire upstairs, and a pleasant light in
+his study. He would be there, hard at work. She would knock, and he
+would open, and she would sit down by the fire and dry herself, and pour
+out her misery. The red bar was still across her face--she had seen it
+in the looking-glass when she had put on her hat.
+
+To go back, to see her husband that night--it was impossible. Later,
+perhaps, when he should be asleep, Griggs would find a carriage and take
+her home. No one would ever know where she had been, and she would never
+tell any more than Griggs would. She felt that she must see him and tell
+him everything, and feel his strength beside her. After all, he was the
+only friend she had in the world, and it was natural that she should
+turn to him for help, in her father's absence. He was her father's
+friend, too.
+
+She shivered again and again from head to foot, and she drew back from
+the door. For a moment she hesitated. Then with a womanly action she
+began to shake the rain out of her cloak and her skirts as well as she
+could, wetting her hands to the wrists. As she bent down, shaking the
+hem of the skirt, the blood rushed to her face again, and the place he
+had struck burned and smarted. It was quite a different sensation from
+what she had felt when she had touched it with her cool wet hand. She
+straightened herself with a spring and threw back her head, and her eyes
+flashed fiercely in the dark. The accidents of fate closed round her,
+and the hands of her destiny had her by the throat, choking her as she
+breathed.
+
+There was no more hesitation. With quick steps she began to ascend the
+short, steep flights. It was dark, beyond the first turning, but she
+went on, touching the damp walls with her hands. Then there was a
+glimmer again, and a second lantern marked the first landing and shone
+feebly upon a green door with a thin little square of white marble
+screwed to it for a door-plate and a name in black. She glanced at it
+and went on, for she knew that Griggs lived on the fifth floor. She was
+surefooted, like her father, as she went firmly up, panting a little,
+for her drenched clothes weighed her down. There was one more light, and
+then there were no more. She counted the landings, feeling the doors
+with her hands as she went by, dizzy from the constant turning in the
+darkness. At last she thought she had got to the end, and groping with
+her hands she found a worsted string and pulled it, and a cracked little
+bell jangled and beat against the wood inside. She heard a pattering of
+feet, and a shrill, nasal child's voice called out the customary
+question, inquiring who was there. She asked for Griggs.
+
+"He is not here," answered the child, and she heard the footsteps
+running away again, though she called loudly.
+
+Her heart sank. But she groped her way on. The staircase ended, for it
+was the top of the house, and she found another door, and felt for a
+string like the one she had pulled, but there was none. Something told
+her that she was right, and with the sudden, desperate longing to be
+inside, with her strong protector, in the light and warmth, she beat
+upon the door with the palms of her hands, her face almost touching the
+cold painted wood studded with nails, that smelled of wet iron.
+
+Then came the firm, regular footsteps of the strong man, and his clear,
+stern voice spoke from within, not in a question, but in a curt refusal
+to open.
+
+"Go away," he said, in Italian. "You have mistaken the door."
+
+But she beat with her hands upon the heavy wood.
+
+"Let me in!" she cried in English. "Let me in!"
+
+There was a deep exclamation of surprise, and the oiled bolt clanked
+back in its socket. The door opened inward, and Paul Griggs held up a
+lamp with a green shade, throwing the light into Gloria's face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+GLORIA pushed past Griggs and stood beside him in the narrow entry. He
+shut the door mechanically, and turned slowly towards her, still holding
+up the lamp so that it shone upon her face.
+
+"What has happened to you?" he asked, slowly and steadily, his shadowed
+eyes fixed upon her.
+
+"He has beaten me, and I have come to you. Look at my face."
+
+He saw the red bar across her cheek. He did not raise his voice, and
+there was little change in his features, but his eyes glowed suddenly,
+like the eyes of a wild beast, and he swore an oath so terrible that
+Gloria turned a little pale and shrank from him. Then he was silent, and
+they stood together. She could hear his breath. She could see him trying
+to swallow, for his throat was suddenly as dry as cinders. Very slowly
+his frown deepened to a scowl, and two straight furrows clove their way
+down between his eyes, his dark eyebrows were lifted evilly, upward and
+outward, and little by little the strong, clean shaven upper lip rose at
+the corners and showed two gleaming, wolfish teeth. The smooth, close
+hair bristled from the point where it descended upon his forehead.
+
+Gloria shrank a little. She had seen such a look in an angry lion; just
+the look, without a motion of the limbs. Then it all disappeared, and
+the still face she knew so well was turned to hers.
+
+"Will you come in?" he asked in a constrained tone. "It is my work-room.
+I will light a fire, and you must dry yourself. How did you get so wet?
+You did not come on foot?"
+
+He opened the door while he was speaking, and led the way with the lamp.
+Gloria shivered as she followed, for there was a small window open in
+the entry, and her clothes clung to her in the cold draught. She closed
+the door behind her, as she went in. It was very little warmer within
+than without, and the small fireplace was black and cold. Instinctively
+she glanced at Griggs. He wore a rough pilot coat that had seen much
+service, buttoned to his throat. He set the little lamp with its green
+shade down upon the table amidst a mass of papers and books, and drew
+forward the only easy-chair there was, a dilapidated piece of furniture
+covered with faded yellow reps and ragged fringes that dragged on the
+floor. He took a great cloak from a clothes-horse in the corner and
+threw it over the chair, smoothing it carefully with his hands.
+
+"If you will sit down, I will try and make a fire," he said quietly.
+
+She sat down as he bade her, wondering a little at his calmness, but
+remembering the awful words that had escaped his lips when she had
+spoken, and the look of the wild beast and incarnate devil that had been
+one moment in his face. She looked about her while he began to make a
+fire, not hindering him, for she was shivering. The room was large, but
+very poorly furnished. There were two great tables, covered with books
+and papers; there was a deal bookcase along one wall and an antiquated
+cabinet between the two windows, one of its legs propped up with a dingy
+faded paper. The coarse green carpet was threadbare, but still whole.
+There were half-a-dozen plain chairs with green and white rush seats in
+various parts of the room. On the narrow white marble mantel-shelf stood
+two china candlesticks, in one of which there was a piece of candle that
+had guttered when last burning. In the middle a cheap American clock of
+white metal ticked loudly, and the hands pointed to twenty minutes
+before nine. In one corner was the clothes-horse, with two or three
+overcoats hanging on it, and two hats, one of which was hanging half
+over on one side. It looked as though two cloaked skeletons in hats were
+embracing. In another corner by the door a black stick and an umbrella
+stood side by side. But for the books the place would have had a
+desolate look. The air smelt of strong tobacco.
+
+Gloria looked about her curiously, though her heart was beating fast.
+The man was familiar to her, dear to her in many ways, and over much in
+her life. The place where he lived contained a part of him which she did
+not know. Her breath came quickly in the anticipation of an emotion
+greater even than what she had felt already, but her eyes wandered in
+curiosity from one object to another. Suddenly she heard the loud
+cracking of breaking wood. There was a blaze of paper from the
+fireplace, illuminating all the room, and some light pieces he was
+throwing on kindled quickly. He was breaking them--she looked--it was
+one of the rush-bottomed chairs.
+
+"What are you doing?" she cried, leaning suddenly far forward.
+
+"Making a good fire," he answered. "There happened to be only one bit of
+wood in my box, so I am taking these things."
+
+He broke the legs and the rails of the chair in his hands, as a child
+would break twigs, and heaped them up upon the blaze.
+
+"There are five more," he observed. "They will make a good fire."
+
+He arranged the burning mass to suit him, looked at it, and then turned.
+
+"You ought to be a little nearer," he said, and he lifted the chair with
+her in it and set her before the fireplace.
+
+It had all looked and felt desperately desolate half a minute earlier.
+It was changed now. He went to a corner and filled a small glass with
+wine from a straw-covered flask and brought it to her. She thanked him
+with her eyes and drank half of it eagerly. He knelt down before the
+fire again, for as the paper burned away underneath, the light sticks
+fell inward and might go out. When he had arranged it all again, he
+looked round and met her eyes, still kneeling.
+
+"Is that better?" he asked quietly.
+
+"You are so good," said Gloria, letting her eyelids droop as she looked
+from him to the pleasant flame.
+
+He put out his hand and gently touched the hem of her cloth skirt.
+
+"You are drenched," he said.
+
+Then, before she realized what he was doing, he bent down and kissed the
+wet cloth, and without looking at her rose to his feet, got another
+chair and sat down near her. A soft blush of pleasure had risen in her
+cheeks. They were little things that he did, but they were like him,
+unaffected, strong, direct. Another man would have made apologies for
+having no wood and would have tried to make a fire of the single stick.
+Another man would have made excuses for the disorder of his room, or for
+the poverty of its furniture, perhaps. The other man she thought of was
+her husband, and possibly she had her father in her mind, too.
+
+"When you are rested, tell me your story," he said, and his face
+hardened all at once.
+
+She began to speak in a low and uncertain voice, reciting almost
+mechanically many things which she had often told him before. He
+listened without moving a muscle. Her voice was dear to him, whether she
+repeated the endless history of her woes for the tenth or the hundredth
+time. Where she was concerned he had no judgment, and he had no
+criterion, for he had never loved another woman with whom he could
+compare her. All that was of her was of paramount interest and weighty
+importance. He could not hear it too often. But to-night her first words
+had told him of the violent crisis in her life with Reanda, and he
+listened to all she said, before she reached that point, with an
+interest he had never felt before. But he would not look at her, for he
+must have taken her in his arms, as he had done once, months before now.
+She had come for protection and for help, and her need was the life
+spring of his honour.
+
+As she went on, her voice took colour from her emotion, her hands moved
+now and then in short swift gestures, and her dark eyes burned. The
+marvellous dramatic power she possessed blazed out under the lash of her
+wrongs, and she found words she had only groped for until that moment.
+She described the miserably nervous feebleness of the man with scathing
+contempt, her tone made evil deeds of his shortcomings, her scorn made
+his weakness a black crime; her jealous anger fastened upon Francesca
+Campodonico and tore her honour to shreds and her virtues to rags of
+abomination; and her flaming pride blazed out in searing hatred and
+contempt for the coward who had struck her in the face.
+
+"He broke my fan across my face!" she cried with the ascending
+intonation of a fury rising still, and still more fiercely beautiful.
+"He slashed my face with it and broke it and threw the bits down at my
+feet! There, look at it! That is his work--oh, give it back to him, kill
+him for me, tear him to pieces for me--make him feel what I have felt
+to-day!"
+
+She had pushed her brown hat and veil back from her head, and her wet
+cloak had long ago fallen from her shoulders. One straight, white hand
+shot out and fastened upon her companion's arm, as he sat beside her,
+and she shook it in savage confidence of his iron strength.
+
+A dead silence followed, but the fire made of the broken chairs roared
+and blazed on the low brick hearth. The man kept his eyes upon it
+fixedly, as though it were his salvation, for he felt that if he looked
+at her he was lost. She had come to him not for love, but for
+protection, of her own free will. Yet he felt that his honour was
+burning in him, with no longer life, if she stayed there, than the
+short, quick fire itself. His voice was thick when he answered, as
+though he were speaking through a velvet pall.
+
+"I will kill him, if he will fight," he answered, with an effort. "I
+will not murder him, even for you."
+
+She started, for she had not realized how he would take literally what
+she said. She had no experience of desperate men in her limited life.
+
+"Murder him? No!" she said, snatching back her hand from his arm. "No,
+no! I never meant that."
+
+"I am glad you did not. If you did, I should probably break down and do
+it to please you. But if he will fight like a man, I will kill him to
+please myself. Now I will go and get a carriage and take you home."
+
+He rose to his feet and, turning, turned away from her, going toward the
+corner to get an overcoat. She followed him with her eyes, in silence.
+
+"You are not afraid to be left alone for a quarter of an hour?" he
+asked, buttoning his coat, and looking toward his umbrella.
+
+"Do not go just yet," she answered softly.
+
+"I must. It is getting late. I shall not find a carriage if I wait any
+longer. I must go now."
+
+"Do not go."
+
+She heard him breathe hard once or twice. Then with quick strides he was
+beside her, and speaking to her.
+
+"Gloria, I cannot stand it--I warn you. I love you in a way you cannot
+understand. You must not keep me here."
+
+"Do not go," she said again, in the deep, soft tone of her golden voice.
+
+"I must."
+
+He turned from her and went towards the door. Soft and swift she
+followed him, but he was in the entry before her hand was on his arm. It
+was almost dusk out there. He stopped.
+
+"I cannot go back to him," she said, and he could see the light in her
+eyes, and very faintly the red bar across the face he loved.
+
+"You should--there is nowhere else for you to go," he said, and in the
+dark his hand was finding the bolt of the door to the stairs.
+
+"No--there is nowhere else--I cannot go back to him," she answered, and
+the voice quavered uncertainly as the night breeze sighing amongst
+reeds.
+
+"You must--you must," he tried to say.
+
+Her weight was all upon his arm, but it was nothing to him. He steadily
+drew back the bolt. He turned up his face so that he could not see her.
+
+With sudden strength her white hands went round his sinewy dark throat
+as he threw back his head.
+
+"You are all I have in the world!" she half said, half whispered. "I
+will not let you go!"
+
+"You?" His voice broke out as through a bursting shell.
+
+"Yes. Come back!"
+
+His arm fell like lead to his side. Gently she drew him back to the door
+of the study. The blaze of the fire shot into her face.
+
+"Come," she said. "See how well it burns."
+
+"Yes," he said, mechanically, "it is burning well."
+
+He stood aside an instant at the door to let her pass. His eyelids
+closed and his face became rigid as a death mask of a man dead in
+passion. One moment only; then he followed her and softly shut the
+door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+THE brilliant winter morning had an intoxicating quality in it, after
+the heavy rain which had fallen in the night, and Paul Griggs felt that
+it was good to be alive as he threaded the narrow streets between his
+lodging and the Piazza Colonna. He avoided the Corso; for he did not
+know whom he might meet, and he had no desire to meet any one, except
+Angelo Reanda.
+
+Naturally enough, his first honourable impulse was to go to the artist,
+to tell him something of the truth, and to give him an opportunity of
+demanding the common satisfaction of a hostile meeting. It did not occur
+to him that Reanda would not wish to exchange shots with him and have
+the chance of taking his life. Griggs was not the man to refuse such an
+encounter, and at that moment he felt so absolutely sure of himself that
+the idea of being killed was very far removed from his thoughts. It was
+without the slightest emotion that he enquired for Reanda at the
+latter's house, but he was very much surprised to hear that the painter
+had gone out as usual at his customary hour. He hesitated a moment and
+then decided not to leave a card, upon which he could not have written
+a message intelligible to Reanda which should not have been understood
+also by the servant who received it. Griggs made up his mind that he
+would write a formal note later in the day. He took it for granted that
+Reanda must be searching for his wife.
+
+It was necessary to find a better lodging than the one in the Via della
+Frezza, and to provide as well as he could for Gloria's comfort. He was
+met by a difficulty upon which he had not reflected as yet, though he
+had been dimly aware of it more than once during the past twelve hours.
+
+He was almost penniless, and he had no means of obtaining money at short
+notice. The payments he received from the newspapers for which he worked
+came regularly, but were not due for at least three weeks from that day.
+Alone in his bachelor existence he could have got through the time very
+well and without any greater privations than his capriciously ascetic
+nature had often imposed upon itself.
+
+He was not an improvident man, but in his lonely existence he had no
+sense of future necessities, and the weakest point in his judgment was
+his undiscriminating generosity. Of the value of money as a store
+against possible needs, he had no appreciation at all, and he gave away
+what he earned beyond his most pressing requirements in secret and often
+ill-judged charities, whenever an occasion of doing so presented
+itself, though he never sought one. For himself, he was able to subsist
+on bread and water, and the meagre fare was scarcely a privation to his
+hardy constitution. If he chanced to have no money to spare for fuel, he
+bore the cold and buttoned up his old pea-jacket to the throat while he
+sat at work at his table. His self-respect made him wise and careful in
+regard to his dress, but in other matters many a handicraftsman was
+accustomed to more luxury than he. At the present juncture he had been
+taken unawares, and he found himself in great difficulty. He had left
+himself barely enough for subsistence until the arrival of the next
+remittance, and that meant but a very few scudi; and yet he knew that
+certain expenses must be met immediately, almost within the twenty-four
+hours. The very first thing was to get a lodging suitable for Gloria. It
+would be necessary to pay at least one month's rent in advance. Even if
+he were able to do that, he would be left without a penny for daily
+expenses. He had no bank account; for he cashed the drafts he received
+and kept the money in his room. He had never borrowed of an
+acquaintance, and the idea was repulsive to him and most humiliating.
+Had he possessed any bit of jewelry, or anything of value, he would have
+sold the object, but he had nothing of the kind. His books were
+practically valueless, consisting of such volumes as he absolutely
+needed for his daily use, chiefly cheap editions, poorly bound and well
+worn. He needed at least fifty scudi, and he did not possess quite ten.
+Three weeks earlier he had sent a hundred, anonymously, to free a
+starving artist from debt.
+
+His position was only very partially enviable just then, but the bright
+north wind seemed to blow his troubles back from him as he faced it,
+walking home from his ineffectual attempt to meet Reanda. It was very
+unlike the man to return to his lodging without having accomplished
+anything, but he was hardly conscious of the fact. The face of the
+ancient city was suddenly changed, and it seemed as though nothing could
+go wrong if he would only allow fortune to play her own game without
+interference. He walked lightly, and there was a little colour in his
+face. He tried to think of what he should do to meet his present
+difficulties, but when he thought of them they were whirled away,
+shapeless and unrecognizable, and he felt a sense of irresistible power
+with each breath of the crisp dry air.
+
+As he went along he glanced at the houses he passed, and on some of the
+doors were little notices scrawled in queer handwritings and telling
+that a lodging was to let. Occasionally he paused, looked up and
+hesitated, and then he went on. The difficulty was suddenly before him,
+and he knew that even if he looked at the rooms he could not hire them,
+as he had not enough money to cover the first month's rent. Immediately
+he attempted to devise some means of raising the sum he needed, but
+before he had reached the very next corner the clear north wind had
+blown the trouble away like a cobweb. With all his strength and industry
+and determination, he was still a very young man, and perplexity had no
+hold upon him since passion had taken its own way.
+
+He reached the corner of his own street and stood still for a few
+moments. He could almost have smiled at himself as he paused. He had
+been out more than an hour and had done nothing, thought out nothing,
+made no definite plan for the future. His present poverty, which was
+desperate enough, had put on a carnival mask and laughed at him, as it
+were, and ran away when he tried to grapple with it and look it in the
+face. Gloria was there, upstairs in that tall house on which the morning
+sun was shining, and nothing else could possibly matter. But if anything
+mattered, it would be simple to talk it over together and to decide it
+in common.
+
+Suddenly he felt ashamed of himself and of the confusion of his own
+intelligence. There was something meek and childish in standing still at
+the street corner, watching the people as they went by, listening to the
+regularly recurring yell of the man who was selling country vegetables
+from a hand-cart, and looking into the faces of people who went by, as
+though expecting to find there some solution of a difficulty which his
+disturbed powers of concentration did not clearly grasp. He could not
+think connectedly, much less could he reason sensibly. He made a few
+steps forward towards his house, and then stopped again, asking himself
+what he was going to do. He felt that he had no right to go back to
+Gloria until he had decided something for the future. He felt like a boy
+who has been sent on an errand, and who comes back having forgotten what
+he was to do. All at once he had lost his hold upon the logic of
+common-sense, and when he groped for a thread that might lead him, he
+was suddenly dazzled by the blaze of his happiness and deafened by the
+voice of his own joy.
+
+He went on again and came to his own door. The one-eyed cobbler was at
+work, astride of his little bench with a brown pot of coals beside him.
+From time to time, when he had drawn the waxed yarn out through the
+leather on both sides, he blew into his black hands. Griggs stood still
+and looked at him in idle indetermination, and only struggling against
+the power that drew him towards the stairs.
+
+"A fine north wind," observed Griggs, by way of salutation.
+
+"It seems that it must be said," grunted the old man, punching a fresh
+hole in the sole he was cobbling. "To me, my fingers say it. It has
+always been a fine trade, this cobbling. It is a gentleman's trade
+because one is always sitting down."
+
+"I am going to change my lodging," said Griggs.
+
+The cobbler looked up, resting his dingy fists upon the bench on each
+side of the shoe, his awl in one hand, the other half encased in a
+leathern sheath, black with age.
+
+"After so many years!" he exclaimed. "The world will also come to an
+end. I expected that it would. Now where will you take lodging?"
+
+"Where I can find one. I want a little apartment--"
+
+"It seems that your affairs go better," observed the old man,
+scrutinizing the other's face with his one eye.
+
+"No. No better. That is the trouble. I want a little apartment, and I do
+not want to pay for it till the end of the first month."
+
+"Then wait till the end of the month before you move to it, Signore."
+
+"That is impossible."
+
+"Then there is a female," said the cobbler, without the slightest
+hesitation. "I understand. Why did you not say so?"
+
+Griggs hesitated. The man's guess had taken him by surprise. He
+reflected that it could make no difference whether the old cobbler knew
+of Gloria's coming or not.
+
+"There is a signora--a relation of mine--who has come to Rome."
+
+"A fair signora? Very beautiful? With a little eye of the devil? I have
+seen. Thanks be to heaven, one eye is still good. You are dark, and your
+family is fair. How can it interest me?"
+
+"What? Has she gone out?" asked Griggs, in sudden anxiety. "When?"
+
+"I had guessed!" exclaimed the cobbler, with a grunting laugh, and he
+ran the delicate bristles, which pointed the yarn, in opposite
+directions through the hole he had made, caught one yarn round the knot
+on the handle of the awl and the other round the leather sheath on his
+left hand. He drew the yarn tight to his arm's length with a vicious
+jerk.
+
+"When did the signora go out?" enquired Griggs, repeating his question.
+
+"It may be half an hour ago. Apoplexy! If your relations are all as
+beautiful as that!"
+
+But Griggs was already moving towards the staircase. The cobbler called
+him back, and he stood still at the foot of the steps.
+
+"There is the little apartment on the left, on the third floor," said
+the man. "The lodgers went away yesterday. I was going to ask you to
+write me a notice to put up on the door. As for paying, the padrone will
+not mind, seeing that you are an old lodger. It is good, do you know?
+There is sun. There is also a kitchen. There are five rooms with the
+entry."
+
+[Illustration: "The horror of poverty smote him."--Vol. II., p. 123.]
+
+"I will take it," said Griggs, instantly, and he ran up the stairs.
+
+He was breathless with anxiety as he entered his work-room, and looked
+about him for something which should tell him where Gloria was gone.
+Almost instantly his eyes fell upon a sheet of paper lying before his
+accustomed seat. The writing on it was hers.
+
+"I have gone to tell him. I shall be back soon."
+
+That was all it said, but it was enough to blacken the sun that streamed
+through the windows upon the old carpet. Griggs sat down and rested his
+head in his hand. With the cloud that came between him and happiness,
+his powers of reason returned, and he saw quickly, in the pre-vision of
+logic, a scene of violence and anger between husband and wife, a
+possible reconciliation, and the instant wreck of his storm-driven love.
+It was impossible to know what Gloria would tell Reanda.
+
+At the same instant the difficulties of his position rushed upon him and
+demanded an instant solution. He looked about him at the poor room, the
+miserable furniture, and the worn-out carpet, and the horror of poverty
+smote him in the face. He had allowed Gloria to come to him, and he knew
+that he could not support her decently. He had never found himself in
+so desperate a position in the course of his short and adventurous life.
+He could face anything when he alone was to suffer privation, but it was
+horrible to force misery upon the woman he loved.
+
+Then, too, he asked himself what was to happen to Gloria if Reanda
+killed him, as was possible enough. And if he were not killed, there was
+Dalrymple, her father, who might return at any moment. No one could
+foretell what the Scotchman would do. It would be like him to do nothing
+except to refuse ever to see his daughter again. But he, also, might
+choose to fight, though his English traditions would be against it. In
+any case, Gloria ran the risk of being left alone, ruined and
+unprotected.
+
+But the present problem was a meaner one, though not less desperate in
+its way. He reproached himself with having wasted even an hour when the
+case was so urgent. Without longer hesitation, he began to write letters
+to the editors for whom he worked, requesting them as a favour to
+advance the next remittance. Even then, he could scarcely expect to have
+money in less than ten days, and there was no one to whom he would
+willingly turn for help. Under ordinary circumstances he would have gone
+without food for days rather than have borrowed of an acquaintance, but
+he realized that he must overcome any such false pride within a day or
+two, at the risk of making Gloria suffer.
+
+In those first hours he was not conscious of any question of right or
+wrong in what had taken place. Honour, in a rather worldly sense, had
+always supplied for him the place of all other moral considerations. The
+woman he loved had been ill-treated by her husband, and had come to him
+for protection. He had done his best, in spite of his love, to make her
+go back, and she had known how to refuse. Men, as men, would not blame
+him for what he was doing. Gloria, as a woman, could never reproach him
+with having tempted her. He might suffer for his deeds, but he could
+never blush for them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+MEANWHILE, Gloria had gone out alone, intending to find her husband and
+to tell him that the die was cast, that she had left him in haste and
+anger, but that she never would return to his house. She felt that she
+must live through the chain of emotions to the very last link, as it
+were, until she could feel no more. It was like her to go straight to
+Reanda and take up the battle where she had interrupted it. Her anger
+had been sudden, but it was not brief. She had left weakness, and had
+found strength to add to her own, and she wished the man who had hurt
+her to feel how strong she was, and how she was able to take her life
+out of his hands and to keep it for herself, and live it as she pleased
+in spite of him and every one. The wild blood that ran in her veins was
+free, now, and she meant that no one but herself should ever again have
+the right to thwart it, to tell her heart that it should beat so many
+times in each minute and no more. She was perfectly well aware that she
+was accepting social ruin with her freedom, but she had long nourished a
+rancorous hatred for the society which had seemed to accept her under
+protest, for Francesca's sake, and she was ready enough to turn her back
+on it before it should finally make up its polite mind to relegate her
+to the middle distance of indifferent toleration.
+
+As for Reanda, on that first morning she hated him with all her soul,
+for himself, and for what he had done to her. She had words ready for
+him, and she turned and fitted them in her heart that they might cut him
+and stab him as long as he could feel. The selfishness with a tendency
+to cruelty which was a working spring of her father's character was
+strong in her, and craved the satisfaction of wounding. A part of the
+sudden joy in life which she felt as she walked towards what had been
+her home, lay in the certainty of dealing back fourfold hurt for every
+real and fancied injury she had ever suffered at Reanda's hands.
+
+She felt quite sure of finding him. She did not imagine it possible that
+after what had happened he should go to the Palazzetto Borgia to work as
+usual. Besides, he must have discovered her absence by this time, and
+would in all probability be searching for her. She smiled at the idea,
+and she went swiftly on, keenly ready to give all the pain she could.
+
+At her own door the servant seemed surprised to see her. Every one had
+supposed that she was still in her room, for it was not yet midday, and
+she sometimes slept very late. She glanced at the hall table and saw
+her key lying amongst the cards where she had thrown it when she had
+left the house. The servant did not see her take it, for she made a
+pretence of turning the cards over to find some particular one. She
+asked indifferently about her husband. The man said that Reanda had gone
+out as usual. Gloria started a little in surprise, and inquired whether
+he had left no message for her. On hearing that he had given none, she
+sent the servant away, went to her own room, and locked herself in.
+
+With a curious Scotch caution very much at variance with her conduct,
+she reflected that as the servants were evidently not aware of what had
+taken place, they might as well be kept in the dark. In a few moments
+she gave the room the appearance which it usually had in the morning.
+With perfect calmness she dressed for the day, and then rang for her
+maid.
+
+She told the woman that she had slept badly, had got up early, and had
+gone out for a long walk; that she now intended to leave Rome for a few
+days, for a change of air, and must have what she needed packed within
+an hour. She gave a few orders, clearly and concisely, and then went out
+again, leaving word that if Reanda returned he should be told that she
+was coming back very soon.
+
+Clearly, she thought, he must have supposed that she was still sleeping,
+and he had gone to his painting without any further thought of her.
+Again she smiled, and a line of delicate cruelty was faintly shadowed
+about her lips. She left the house and walked in the direction of the
+Palazzetto. Reanda always came home to the midday breakfast, and it was
+nearly time for him to be on his way. Gloria knew every turning which he
+would take, and she hoped to meet him. Her eyes flashed in anticipation
+of the contest, and she felt that he would not be able to meet them.
+They would be too bright for him. There was a small mark on her cheek
+still, where one of the sharp edges of the ivory slats had scratched her
+fair skin, and there was a slight redness on that side, but the bright
+red bar was gone. She was glad of it, as she nodded to a passing
+acquaintance.
+
+She wished to assure herself that her husband was really at the
+Palazzetto, and she inquired of the porter at the great gate whether
+Reanda had been seen that morning. The man said that he had come at the
+usual hour, and stood aside for her to pass, but she turned from him
+abruptly and went away without a word.
+
+The blood rose in her cheeks, and her heart beat angrily. He had
+attached no more importance than this to what he had done, and had gone
+to his painting as though nothing had happened. He had not even tried to
+see her in the morning to beg her pardon for having struck her. Strange
+to say, in spite of what she herself had done, that was what most roused
+her anger. She demanded the satisfaction of his asking her forgiveness,
+as though she had no fault to find with herself. In comparison with his
+cowardly violence to her, her leaving him for Griggs was as nothing in
+her eyes.
+
+She walked more slowly as she went homewards, and the unspoken
+bitterness of her heart choked her, and the sharp words she could not
+speak cut her cruelly. She compared the hand that had dared to hurt
+though it had not strength to kill, with that other, dearer, gentler,
+more terrible hand, which could have killed anything, but which would
+rather be burned to the wrist than let one of its fingers touch her
+roughly. She compared them, and she loved the one and she loathed the
+other, with all her heart. And with that same hand Reanda, at that same
+moment, was painting some goddess's face, and it had forgotten whose
+divinely lovely cheek it had struck. It was painting unless, perhaps, it
+lay in Francesca's. But Gloria had not forgotten, and she would repay
+before the day darkened.
+
+Her husband, since he was calm enough to go to his work, would come home
+for his breakfast when he was hungry. Gloria went back to her room and
+superintended the packing of what she needed. But she was not so calm as
+she had been half an hour earlier, and she waited impatiently for her
+husband's return and for the last scene of the drama. When the things
+were packed, she had the box taken out to the hall and sent for a cab.
+As she foresaw the situation, she would leave the house forever as soon
+as the last word was spoken. Then she went into the drawing-room and
+waited, watching the clock.
+
+There, on the mantelpiece, lay the broken fan, where the fragments had
+been placed by the servant. Gloria looked at them, handled them
+curiously, and felt her cheek softly with her hand. He must have struck
+her with all his might, she thought, to have hurt her as he had with so
+light a weapon; and the whole quarrel came back to her vividly, in every
+detail, and with every spoken word.
+
+She could not regret what she had done. With an attempt at
+self-examination, which was only a self-justification, she tried to
+recall the early days when she had loved her husband, and to conjure up
+the face with the gentle light in it. She failed, of course, and the
+picture that came disgusted her and was unutterably contemptible and
+weak and full of cowardice. The face of Paul Griggs came in its place a
+moment later, and she heard in her ears the deep, stern voice, quavering
+with strength rather than with weakness, and she could feel the arms she
+loved about her, pressing her almost to pain, able to press her to death
+in their love-clasp.
+
+The hands of the clock went on, and Reanda did not come. She was
+surprised to find how long she had waited, and with a revulsion of
+feeling she rose to her feet. If he would not come, she would not wait
+for him. She was hungry, too. It was absurd, perhaps, but she would not
+eat his bread nor sit at his table, not even alone. She went to her
+writing-table and wrote a note to him, short, cruel, and decisive. She
+wrote that if her father had been in Rome she would have gone to him for
+protection. As he was absent, she had gone to her father's best friend
+and her own--to Paul Griggs. She said nothing more. He might interpret
+the statement as he pleased. She sealed the note and addressed it, and
+before she went out of the house she gave it to the servant, to be given
+to Reanda as soon as he came home. The man-servant went downstairs with
+her, and stood looking after the little open cab; he saw Gloria speak to
+the coachman, who nodded and changed his direction before they were out
+of sight.
+
+At the door in the Via della Frezza the cabman let down Gloria's luggage
+and drove away. She stood still a moment and looked at the one-eyed
+cobbler.
+
+"You have given the signore a beautiful fright," observed the old man.
+"I told him you had gone out. With one jump he was upstairs. By this
+time he cries."
+
+Gloria took a silver piece of two pauls from her purse.
+
+"Can you carry up these things for me?" she inquired, concealing her
+annoyance at the man's speech.
+
+"I am not a porter," said the cobbler, with his head on one side. "But
+one must live. With courage and money one makes war. There are three
+pieces. One at a time. But you must watch the door while I carry up the
+box. If any one should steal my tools, it would be a beautiful day's
+work. Without them I should be in the middle of the street. You will
+understand, Signora. It is not to do you a discourtesy, but my tools are
+my bread. Without them I cannot eat. There is also the left boot of Sor
+Ercole. If any one were to steal it, Sor Ercole would go upon one leg.
+Imagine the disgrace!"
+
+"I will stay here," said Gloria. "Do not be afraid."
+
+The cobbler, who was a strong old man, got hold of the trunk and
+shouldered it with ease. When he stood up, Gloria saw that he was
+bandy-legged and very short.
+
+She turned and stood on the threshold of the street door as she had
+stood on the previous night. No one would have believed that a few hours
+earlier the rain had fallen in torrents, for the pavement was dry, and
+even under the arch there seemed to be no dampness. Looking up the
+street towards the Corso, she saw that there was a wine shop, a few
+doors higher on the opposite side. Two or three men were standing before
+it, under the brown bush which served for a sign, and amongst them she
+saw a peasant in blue cloth clothes with silver buttons and clean white
+stockings. She recognized him as the man who had held his umbrella over
+her in the storm. He also saw her, lifted his felt hat and came
+forwards, crossing the street. His look was fixed on her face with a
+stare of curiosity as he stood before her.
+
+"I hope you have not caught cold, Signora," he said, with steady,
+unwinking eyes. "We passed a beautiful storm. Signora, I sell wine to
+that host. If you should need wine, I recommend him to you." He pointed
+to the shop.
+
+"You told me to ask for you at the Piazza Montanara," said Gloria,
+smiling.
+
+"With that water you could not see the shop," answered Stefanone.
+"Signora, you are very beautiful. With permission, I say that you should
+not walk alone at night."
+
+"It was the first and last time," said Gloria. "Fortunately, I met a
+person of good manners. I thank you again."
+
+"Signora, you are so beautiful that the Madonna and her angels always
+accompany you. With permission, I go. Good day."
+
+To the last, until he turned, he kept his eyes steadily fixed on
+Gloria's face, as though searching for a resemblance in her features.
+She noticed his manner and remembered him very distinctly after the
+second meeting.
+
+The cobbler came back again, closely followed by Griggs himself, who
+said nothing, but took possession of the small valise and bag which
+Gloria had brought in addition to her box. He led the way, and she
+followed him swiftly. Inside the door of his lodging he turned and
+looked at her.
+
+"Please do not go away suddenly without telling me," he said in a low
+voice. "I am easily frightened about you."
+
+"Really?"
+
+Gloria held out her two hands to meet him. He nodded as he took them.
+
+"That is better than anything you have ever said to me." She drew him to
+her.
+
+It was natural, for she was thinking how Reanda had calmly gone back to
+his work that morning, without so much as asking for her. The contrast
+was too great and too strong, between love and indifference.
+
+They went into the work-room together, and Gloria sat down on one of the
+rush chairs, and told Griggs what she had done. He walked slowly up and
+down while she was speaking, his eyes on the pattern of the old carpet.
+
+"I might have stayed," she said at last. "The servants did not even know
+that I had been out of the house."
+
+"You should have stayed," said Griggs. "I ought to say it, at least."
+
+But as he spoke the mask softened and the rare smile beautified for one
+instant the still, stern face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+REANDA neither wished to see Gloria again, nor to take vengeance upon
+Paul Griggs. He was not a brave man, morally or physically, and he was
+glad that his wife had left him. She had put him in the right, and he
+had every reason for refusing ever to see her again. With a cynicism
+which would have been revolting if it had not been almost childlike in
+its simplicity, he discharged his servants, sold his furniture, gave up
+his apartment in the Corso, and moved back to his old quarters in the
+Palazzetto Borgia. But he did not acknowledge Gloria's note in any other
+way.
+
+She had left him, and he wished to blot out her existence as though he
+had never known her, not even remembering the long two years of his
+married life. She was gone. There was no Gloria, and he wished that
+there never had been any woman with her name and face.
+
+On the third day, he met Paul Griggs in the street. The younger man saw
+Reanda coming, and stood still on the narrow pavement, in order to show
+that he had no intention of avoiding him. As the artist came up, Griggs
+lifted his hat gravely. Reanda mechanically raised his hand to his own
+hat and passed the man who had injured him, without a word. Griggs saw a
+slight, nervous twitching in the delicate face, but that was all. He
+thought that Reanda looked better, less harassed and less thin, than for
+a long time. He had at once returned to his old peaceful life and
+enjoyed it, and had evidently not the smallest intention of ever
+demanding satisfaction of his former friend.
+
+Francesca Campodonico had listened in nervous silence to Reanda's story.
+
+"She has done me a kindness," he concluded. "It is the first. She has
+given me back my freedom. I shall not disturb her."
+
+The colour was in Francesca's face, and her eyes looked down. Her
+delicate lips were a little drawn in, as though she were making an
+effort to restrain her words, for it was one of the hardest moments of
+her life. Being what she was, it was impossible for her to understand
+Gloria's conduct. But at the same time she felt that she was liberated
+from something which had oppressed her, and the colour in her cheeks was
+a flash of satisfaction and relief mingled with a certain displeasure at
+her own sensations and the certainty that she should be ashamed of them
+by and bye.
+
+It was not in her nature to accept such a termination for Reanda's
+married life, however he himself might be disposed to look upon it.
+
+"You are to blame almost as much as Gloria," she said, and she was
+sincerely in earnest.
+
+She was too good and devout a woman to believe in duelling, but she was
+far too womanly to be pleased with Reanda's indifference. It was wicked
+to fight duels and unchristian to seek revenge. She knew that, and it
+was a conviction as well as an opinion. But a man who allowed another to
+take his wife from him and did not resent the injury could not command
+her respect. Something in her blood revolted against such tameness,
+though she would not for all the world have had Reanda take Gloria back.
+Between the two opposites of conviction and instinct, she did not know
+what to do. Moreover, Reanda had struck his wife. He admitted it, though
+apologetically and with every extenuating circumstance which he could
+remember.
+
+"Yes," he answered. "I know that I did wrong. Am I infallible? Holy
+Saint Patience! I could bear no more. But it is clear that she was
+waiting for a reason for leaving me. I gave it to her, and she should be
+grateful. She also is free, as I am."
+
+"It is horrible!" exclaimed Francesca, with sorrowful emphasis.
+
+She blamed herself quite as much as Reanda or Gloria, because she had
+brought them together and had suggested the marriage. Reanda's thin
+shoulders went up, and he smiled incredulously.
+
+"I do not see what is so horrible," he answered. "Two people think they
+are in love. They marry. They discover their mistake. They separate.
+Well? It is finished. Let us make the sign of the cross over it."
+
+The common Roman phrase, signifying that a matter is ended and buried,
+as it were, jarred upon Francesca, for whom the smallest religious
+allusion had a real meaning.
+
+"It is not the sign of the cross which should be made," she said sadly
+and gravely, and the colour was gone from her face now. "There are two
+lives wrecked, and a human soul in danger. We cannot say that it is
+finished, and pass on."
+
+"What would you have me do?" asked Reanda, almost impatiently. "Take her
+back?"
+
+"No!" exclaimed Francesca, with a sharp intonation as though she were
+hurt.
+
+"Well, then, what? I do not see that anything is to be done. She herself
+can think of her soul. It is her property. She has made me suffer
+enough--let some one else suffer. I have enough of it."
+
+"You will forgive her some day," said Francesca. "You are angry still,
+and you speak cruelly. You will forgive her."
+
+"Never," answered Reanda, with emphasis. "I will not forgive her for
+what she made me bear, any more than I will forgive Griggs for receiving
+her when she left me. I will not touch them, but I will not forgive
+them. I am not angry. Why should I be?"
+
+Francesca sighed, for she did not understand the man, though hitherto
+she had always understood him, or thought that she had, ever since she
+had been a mere child, playing with his colours and brushes in the
+Palazzo Braccio. She left the hall and went to her own sitting-room on
+the other side of the house. As soon as she was alone, the tears came to
+her eyes. She was hardly aware of them, and when she felt them on her
+cheeks she wondered why she was crying, for she did not often shed
+tears, and was a woman of singularly well balanced nature, able to
+control herself on the rare occasions when she felt any strong emotion.
+
+In spite of Reanda's conduct, she determined not to leave matters as
+they were without attempting to improve them. She wrote a note to Paul
+Griggs, asking him to come and see her during the afternoon.
+
+He could not refuse to answer the summons, knowing, as he did, that he
+must in honour respond to any demand for an explanation coming from
+Reanda's side. Gloria wished him to reply to the note, giving an excuse
+and hinting that no good could come of any meeting.
+
+"It is a point of honour," he answered briefly, and she yielded, for he
+dominated her altogether.
+
+Francesca received him in her own small sitting-room, which overlooked
+the square before the Palazzetto. It was very quiet, and there were
+roses in old Vienna vases. It was a very old-fashioned room, the air was
+sweet with the fresh flowers, and the afternoon sun streamed in through
+a single tall window. Francesca sat on a small sofa which stood
+crosswise between the window and the writing-table. She had a frame
+before her on which was stretched a broad band of deep red satin, a
+piece of embroidery in which she was working heraldic beasts and
+armorial bearings in coloured silks.
+
+She did not rise, nor hold out her hand, but pointed to a chair near
+her, as she spoke.
+
+"I asked you to come," she said, "because I wish to speak to you about
+Gloria."
+
+Griggs bent his head, sat down, and waited with a perfectly impassive
+face. Possibly there was a rather unusual aggressiveness in the straight
+lines of his jaw and his even lips. There was a short silence before
+Francesca spoke again.
+
+"Do you know what you have done?" she asked, finishing a stitch and
+looking quietly into the man's deep eyes.
+
+He met her glance calmly, but said nothing, merely bending his head
+again, very slightly.
+
+"It is very wicked," said she, and she began to make another stitch,
+looking down again.
+
+"I have no doubt that you think so," answered Paul Griggs, slowly
+nodding a third time.
+
+"It is not a question of opinion. It is a matter of fact. You have
+ruined the life of an innocent woman."
+
+"If social position is the object of existence, you are right," he
+replied. "I have nothing to say."
+
+"I am not speaking of social position," said Donna Francesca, continuing
+to make stitches.
+
+"Then I am afraid that I do not understand you."
+
+"Can you conceive of nothing more important to the welfare of men and
+women than social position?"
+
+"It is precisely because I do, that I care so little what society
+thinks. I do not understand you."
+
+"I have known you some time," said Francesca. "I had not supposed that
+you were a man without a sense of right and wrong. That is the question
+which is concerned now."
+
+"It is a question which may be answered from more than one point of
+view. You look at it in one way, and I in another. With your permission,
+we will differ about it, since we can never agree."
+
+"There is no such thing as differing about right and wrong," answered
+Donna Francesca, with a little impatience. "Right is right, and wrong is
+wrong. You cannot possibly believe that you have done right. Therefore
+you know that you have done wrong."
+
+"That sort of logic assumes God at the expense of man," said Griggs,
+calmly.
+
+Francesca looked up with a startled expression in her eyes, for she was
+shocked, though she did not understand him.
+
+"God is good, and man is sinful," she answered, in the words of her
+simple faith.
+
+"Why?" asked Griggs, gravely.
+
+He waited for her answer to the most tremendous question which man can
+ask, and he knew that she could not answer him, though she might satisfy
+herself.
+
+"I have never talked about religion with an atheist," she said at last,
+slowly pushing her needle through the heavy satin.
+
+"I am not an atheist, Princess."
+
+"A Protestant, then--"
+
+"I am not a Protestant. I am a Catholic, as you are."
+
+She looked up suddenly and faced him with earnest eyes.
+
+"Then you are not a good Catholic," she said. "No good Catholic could
+speak as you do."
+
+"Even the Apostles had doubts," answered Griggs. "But I do not pretend
+to be good. Since I am a man, I have a right to be a man, and to be
+treated as a man. If the right is not given me freely, I will take it.
+You cannot expect a body to behave as though it were a spirit. A man
+cannot imitate an invisible essence, any more than a sculptor can
+imitate sound with a shape of clay. When we are spirits, we shall act as
+spirits. Meanwhile we are men and women. As a man, I have not done
+wrong. You have no right to judge me as an angel. Is that clear?"
+
+"Terribly clear!" Francesca slowly shook her head. "And terribly
+mistaken," she added.
+
+"You see," answered the young man. "It is impossible to argue the point.
+We do not speak the same language. You, by your nature, believe that you
+can imitate a spirit. You are spiritual by intuition and good by
+instinct, according to the spiritual standard of good. I am, on the
+contrary, a normal man, and destined to act as men act. I cannot
+understand you and you, if you will allow me to say so, cannot possibly
+understand me. That is why I propose that we should agree to differ."
+
+"And do you think you can sweep away all right and wrong, belief and
+unbelief, salvation and perdition, with such a statement as that?"
+
+"Not at all," replied Griggs. "You tell me that I am wicked. That only
+means that I am not doing what you consider right. You deny my right of
+judgment, in favour of your own. You make witnesses of spirits against
+the doings of men. You judge my body and condemn my soul. And there is
+no possible appeal from your tribunal, because it is an imaginary one.
+But if you will return to the facts of the case, you will find it hard
+to prove that I have ruined the life of an innocent woman, as you told
+me that I had."
+
+"You have! There is no denying it."
+
+"Socially, and it is the fault of society. But society is nothing to me.
+I would be an outcast from society for a much less object than the love
+of a woman, provided that I had not to do anything dishonourable."
+
+"Ah, that is it! You forget that a man's honour is his reputation at the
+club, while the honour of a woman is founded in religion, and maintained
+upon a single one of God's commandments--as you men demand that it shall
+be."
+
+Griggs was silent for a moment. He had never heard a woman state the
+case so plainly and forcibly, and he was struck by what she said. He
+could have answered her quickly enough. But the answer would not have
+been satisfactory to himself.
+
+"You see, you have nothing to say," she said. "But in one way you are
+right. We cannot argue this question. I did not ask you to come in order
+to discuss it. I sent for you to beg you to do what is right, as far as
+you can. And you could do much."
+
+"What should you think right?" asked Griggs, curious to know what she
+thought.
+
+"You should take Gloria to her father, as you are his friend. Since she
+has left her husband, she should live with her father."
+
+"That is a very simple idea!" exclaimed the young man, with something
+almost like a laugh.
+
+"Right is always simple," answered Francesca, quietly. "There is never
+any doubt about it."
+
+She looked at him once, and then continued to work at her embroidery.
+His eyes rested on the pure outline of her maidenlike face, and he was
+silent for a moment. Somehow, he felt that her simplicity of goodness
+rebuked the simplicity of his sin.
+
+"You forget one thing," said Griggs at last. "You make a spiritual
+engine of mankind, and you forget the mainspring of the world. You leave
+love out of the question."
+
+"Perhaps--as you understand love. But you will not pretend to tell me
+that love is necessarily right, whatever it involves."
+
+"Yes," answered the young man. "That is what I mean. Unless your God is
+a malignant and maleficent demon, the overwhelming passions which take
+hold of men, and against which no man can fight beyond a certain point,
+are right, because they exist and are irresistible. As for what you
+propose that I should do, I cannot do it."
+
+"You could, if you would," said Francesca. "There is nothing to hinder
+you, if you will."
+
+"There is love, and I cannot."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+PAUL GRIGGS left Francesca with the certainty in his own mind that she
+had produced no impression whatever upon him, but he was conscious that
+his opinion of her had undergone a change. He was suddenly convinced
+that she was the best woman he had ever known, and that Gloria's
+accusations were altogether unjust and unfounded. Recalling her face,
+her manner, and her words, he knew that whatever influence she might
+have had upon Reanda, there could be no ground for Gloria's jealousy.
+She certainly disturbed him strangely, for Gloria was perfect in his
+eyes, and he accepted all she said almost blindly. The fact that Reanda
+had struck her now stood in his mind as the sole reason for the
+separation of husband and wife.
+
+Gloria was far from realizing what influence she had over the man she
+loved. It seemed to her, on the contrary, that she was completely
+dominated by him, and she was glad to feel his strength at every turn.
+Her enormous vanity was flattered by his care of her, and by his
+uncompromising admiration of her beauty as well as of her character, and
+she yielded to him purposely in small things that she might the better
+feel his strength, as she supposed. The truth, had she known it, was
+that he hardly asserted himself at all, and was ready to make any and
+every sacrifice for her comfort and happiness. He had sacrificed his
+pride to borrow money from a friend to meet the first necessities of
+their life together. He would have given his life as readily.
+
+They led a strangely lonely existence in the little apartment in the Via
+della Frezza. The world had very soon heard of what had happened, and
+had behaved according to its lights. Walking alone one morning while
+Griggs was at work, Gloria had met Donna Tullia Meyer, whom she had
+known in society, and thoughtlessly enough had bowed as though nothing
+had happened. Donna Tullia had stared at her coldly, and then turned
+away. After that, Gloria had realized what she had already understood,
+and had either not gone out without Griggs, or, when she did, had kept
+to the more secluded streets, where she would not easily meet
+acquaintances.
+
+Griggs worked perpetually, and she watched him, delighting at first in
+the difference between his way of working and that of Angelo Reanda;
+delighted, too, to be alone with him, and to feel that he was writing
+for her. She could sit almost in silence for hours, half busy with some
+bit of needlework, and yet busy with him in her thoughts. It seemed to
+her that she understood him--she told him so, and he believed her, for
+he felt that he could not be hard to understand.
+
+He was as singularly methodical as Reanda was exceptionally intuitive.
+She felt that his work was second to her in his estimation of it, but
+that, since they both depended upon it for their livelihood, they had
+agreed together to put it first. With Reanda, art was above everything
+and beyond all other interests, and he had made her feel that he worked
+for art's sake rather than for hers. There was a vast difference in the
+value placed upon her by the two men, in relation to their two
+occupations.
+
+"I have no genius," said Griggs to her one day. "I have no intuitions of
+underlying truth. But I have good brains, and few men are able to work
+as hard as I. By and bye, I shall succeed and make money, and it will be
+less dull for you."
+
+"It is never dull for me when I can be with you," she answered.
+
+As he looked, the sunshine caught her red auburn hair, and the
+love-lights played with the sunshine in her eyes. Griggs knew that life
+had no more dulness for him while she lived, and as for her, he believed
+what she said.
+
+Without letting him know what she was doing, she wrote to her father. It
+was not an easy letter to write, and she thought that she knew the
+savage old Scotchman's temper. She told him everything. At such a
+distance, it was easy to throw herself upon his mercy, and it was safer
+to write him all while he was far away, so that there might be nothing
+left to rouse his anger if he returned. She had no lack of words with
+which to describe Reanda's treatment of her; but she was also willing to
+take all the blame of the mistake she had made in marrying him. She had
+ruined her life before it had begun, she said. She had taken the law
+into her own hands, to mend it as best she could. Her father knew that
+Paul Griggs was not like other men--that he was able to protect her
+against all comers, and that he could make the world fear him if he
+could not make it respect her. Her father must do as he thought right.
+He would be justified, from the world's point of view, in casting her
+off and never remembering her existence again, but she begged him to
+forgive her, and to think kindly of her. Meanwhile, she and Griggs were
+wretchedly poor, and she begged her father to continue her allowance.
+
+If Paul Griggs had seen this letter, he would have been startled out of
+some of his belief in Gloria's perfection. There was a total absence of
+any moral sense of right or wrong in what she wrote, which would have
+made a more cynical man than Griggs was look grave. The request for the
+continuation of the allowance would have shocked him and perhaps
+disgusted him. The whole tone was too calm and business-like. It was too
+much as though she were fulfilling a duty and seeking to gain an object
+rather than appealing to Dalrymple to forgive her for yielding to the
+overwhelming mastery of a great passion. It was cold, it was
+calculating, and it was, in a measure, unwomanly.
+
+When she had sent the letter, she told Griggs what she had done, but her
+account of its contents satisfied him with one of those brilliant false
+impressions which she knew so well how to convey. She told him rather
+what she should have said than what she had really written, and, as
+usual, he found that she had done right.
+
+It was not that she would not have written a better letter if she had
+been able to compose one. She had done the best that she could. But the
+truth lay there, or the letter was composed as an expression of what she
+knew that she ought to feel, and was not the actual outpouring of an
+overfull heart. She could not be blamed for not feeling more deeply, nor
+for her inability to express what she did not feel. But when she spoke
+of it to the man she loved, she roused herself to emotion easily enough,
+and her words sounded well in her own ears and in his. To the last, he
+never understood that she loved such emotion for its own sake, and that
+he helped her to produce it in herself. In the comparatively simple
+view of human nature which he took in those days, it seemed to him that
+if a woman were willing to sacrifice everything, including social
+respectability itself, for any man, she must love him with all her
+heart. He could not have understood that any woman should give up
+everything, practically, in the attempt to feel something of which she
+was not capable.
+
+In reply to her letter, Dalrymple sent a draft for a considerable sum of
+money, through his banker. The fact that it was addressed to her at Via
+della Frezza was the only indication that he had received her letter. In
+due time, Gloria wrote to thank him, but he took no notice of the
+communication.
+
+"He never loved me," she said to Griggs as the days went by and brought
+her nothing from her father. "I used to think so, when I was a mere
+child, but I am sure of it now. You are the only human being that ever
+loved me."
+
+She was pale that day, and her white hand sought his as she spoke, with
+a quiver of the lip.
+
+"I am glad of it," he answered. "I shall not divide you with any one."
+
+So their life went on, somewhat monotonously after the first few weeks.
+Griggs worked hard and earned more money than formerly, but he
+discovered very soon that it would be all he could do to support Gloria
+in bare comfort. He would not allow her to use her own money for
+anything which was to be in common, or in which he had any share
+whatever.
+
+"You must spend it on yourself," he said. "I will not touch it. I will
+not accept anything you buy with it--not so much as a box of cigarettes.
+You must spend it on your clothes or on jewels."
+
+"You are unkind," she answered. "You know how much pleasure it would
+give me to help you."
+
+"Yes. I know. You cannot understand, but you must try. Men never do that
+sort of thing."
+
+And, as usual, he dominated her, and she dropped the subject, inwardly
+pleased with him, and knowing that he was right.
+
+His strength fascinated her, and she admired his manliness of heart and
+feeling as she had never admired any qualities in any one during her
+life. But he did not amuse her, even as much as she had been amused by
+Reanda. He was melancholic, earnest, hard working, not inclined to
+repeat lightly the words of love once spoken in moments of passion. He
+meant, perhaps, to show her how he loved her by what he would do for her
+sake, rather than tell her of it over and over again. And he worked as
+he had never worked before, hour after hour, day after day, sitting at
+his writing-table almost from morning till night. Besides his
+correspondence, he was now writing a book, from which he hoped great
+things--for her. It was a novel, and he read her day by day the pages he
+wrote. She talked over with him what he had written, and her
+imagination and dramatic intelligence, forever grasping at situations of
+emotion for herself and others, suggested many variations upon his plan.
+
+"It is my book," she often said, when they had been talking all the
+evening.
+
+It was her book, and it was a failure, because it was hers and not his.
+Her imagination was disorderly, to borrow a foreign phrase, and she was
+altogether without any sense of proportion in what she imagined. He did
+not, indeed, look upon her as intellectually perfect, though for him she
+was otherwise unapproachably superior to every other woman in the world.
+But he loved her so wholly and unselfishly that he could not bear to
+disappoint her by not making use of her suggestions. When she was
+telling him of some scene she had imagined, her voice and manner, too,
+were so thoroughly dramatic that he was persuaded of the real value of
+the matter. Divested of her individuality and transferred in his rather
+mechanically over-correct language to the black and white of pen and
+ink, the result was disappointing, even when he read it to her. He knew
+that it was, and wasted time in trying to improve what was bad from the
+beginning. She saw that he failed, and she felt that he was not a man of
+genius. Her vanity suffered because her ideas did not look well on his
+paper.
+
+Before he had finished the manuscript, she had lost her interest in it.
+Feeling that she had, and seeing it in her face, he exerted his strength
+of will in the attempt to bring back the expression of surprise and
+delight which the earlier readings had called up, but he felt that he
+was working uphill and against heavy odds. Nevertheless he completed the
+work, and spent much time in fancied improvement of its details. At a
+later period in his life he wrote three successful books in the time he
+had bestowed upon his first failure, but he wrote them alone.
+
+Gloria's face brightened when he told her that it was done. She took the
+manuscript and read over parts of it to herself, smiling a little from
+time to time, for she knew that he was watching her. She did not read it
+all.
+
+"Dedicate it to me," she said, holding out one hand to find his, while
+she settled the pages on her knees with the other.
+
+"Of course," he answered, and he wrote a few words of dedication to her
+on a sheet of paper.
+
+He sent it to a publisher in London whom he knew. It was returned with
+some wholesome advice, and Gloria's vanity suffered another blow, both
+in the failure of the book which contained so many of her ideas and in
+the failure of the man to be successful, for in her previous life she
+had not been accustomed to failure of any sort.
+
+"I am afraid I am only a newspaper man, after all," said Paul Griggs,
+quietly. "You will have to be satisfied with me as I am. But I will try
+again."
+
+"No," answered Gloria, more coldly than she usually spoke. "When you
+find that you cannot do a thing naturally, leave it alone. It is of no
+use to force talent in one direction when it wants to go in another."
+
+She sighed softly, and busied herself with some work. Griggs felt that
+he was a failure, and he felt lonely, too, for a moment, and went to his
+own room to put away the rejected manuscript in a safe place. It was not
+his nature to destroy it angrily, as some men might have done at his
+age.
+
+When he came back to the door of the sitting-room he heard her singing,
+as she often did when she was alone. But to-day she was singing an old
+song which he had not heard for a long time, and which reminded him
+painfully of that other house in which she had lived and of that other
+man whom she never saw, but who was still her husband.
+
+He entered the room rather suddenly, after having paused a moment
+outside, with his hand on the door.
+
+"Please do not sing that song!" he said quickly, as he entered.
+
+"Why not?" she asked, interrupting herself in the middle of a stave.
+
+"It reminds me of unpleasant things."
+
+"Does it? I am sorry. I will not sing it again."
+
+But she knew what it meant, for it reminded her of Reanda. She was no
+longer so sure that the reminiscence was all painful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+IN spite of all that Griggs could do, and he did his utmost, it was hard
+to live in anything approaching to comfort on the meagre remuneration he
+received for his correspondence, and his pride altogether forbade him to
+allow Gloria to contribute anything to the slender resources of the
+small establishment. At first, it had amused her to practise little
+economies, even in the matter of their daily meals. Griggs denied
+himself everything which was not absolutely necessary, and it pleased
+Gloria to imitate him, for it made her feel that she was helping him.
+The housekeeping was a simple affair enough, and she undertook it
+readily. They had one woman servant as cook and maid-of-all-work, a
+strong young creature, not without common-sense, and plentifully gifted
+with that warm, superficial devotion which is common enough in Italian
+servants. Gloria had kept house for her father long enough to understand
+what she had undertaken, and it seemed easy at first to do the same
+thing for Griggs, though on a much more restricted scale.
+
+But the restriction soon became irksome. In a more active and
+interesting existence, she would perhaps not have felt the constant
+pinching of such excessive economy. If there had been more means within
+her reach for satisfying her hungry vanity, she could have gone through
+the daily round of little domestic cares with a lighter heart or, at
+least, with more indifference. But she and Griggs led a very lonely
+life, and, as in all lonely lives, the smallest details became
+important.
+
+It was not long before Gloria wished herself in her old home in the
+Corso, not indeed with Reanda, but with Paul Griggs. He had made her
+promise to use only the money he gave her himself for their
+housekeeping. She secretly deceived him and drew upon her own store, and
+listened in silence to his praise of her ingenuity in making the little
+he was able to give her go so far. He trusted her so completely that he
+suspected nothing.
+
+She expected that at the end of three months her father would send her
+another draft, but the day passed, and she received nothing, so that she
+at last wrote to him again, asking for money. It came, as before,
+without any word of inquiry or greeting. Dalrymple evidently intended to
+take this means of knowing from time to time that his daughter was alive
+and well. She would be obliged to write to him whenever she needed
+assistance. It was a humiliation, and she felt it bitterly, for she had
+thought that she had freed herself altogether and she found herself
+still bound by the necessity of asking for help.
+
+It seemed very hard to be thus shut off from the world in the prime of
+her youth, and beauty, and talent. To a woman who craved admiration for
+all she did and could do, it was almost unbearable. Paul Griggs worked
+and looked forward to success, and was satisfied in his aspirations, and
+more than happy in the companionship of the woman he so dearly loved.
+
+"I shall succeed," he said quietly, but with perfect assurance. "Before
+long we shall be able to leave Rome, and begin life somewhere else,
+where nobody will know our story. It will not be so dull for you there."
+
+"It is never dull when I am with you," said Gloria, but there was no
+conviction in the tone any more. "If you would let me go upon the
+stage," she added, with a change of voice, "things would be very
+different. I could earn a great deal of money."
+
+But Paul Griggs was as much opposed to the project as Reanda had been,
+and in this one respect he really asserted his will. He was so confident
+of ultimately attaining to success and fortune by his pen that he would
+not hear of Gloria's singing in public.
+
+"Besides," he said, after giving her many and excellent reasons, "if you
+earned millions, I would not touch the money."
+
+She sighed for the lost opportunities of brilliant popularity, but she
+smiled at his words, knowing how she had used her own money for him, and
+in spite of him. But for her own part she had lost all belief in his
+talent since the failure of the book he had written.
+
+The long summer days were hard to bear. He was not able to leave Rome,
+for he was altogether dependent upon his regular correspondence for what
+he earned, and he did not succeed in persuading his editors to employ
+him anywhere else, for the very reason that he did so well what was
+required of him where he was.
+
+The weather grew excessively hot, and it was terribly dreary and dull in
+the little apartment in the Via della Frezza. All day long the windows
+were tightly closed to keep out the fiery air, both the old green blinds
+and the glass within them. Griggs had moved his writing-table to the
+feeble light, and worked away as hard as ever. Gloria spent most of the
+hot hours in reading and dreaming. They went out together early in the
+morning and in the evening, when there was some coolness, but during the
+greater part of the day they were practically imprisoned by the heat.
+
+Gloria watched the strong man and wondered at his power of working under
+any circumstances. He was laborious as well as industrious. He often
+wrote a page over two and three times, in the hope of improving it, and
+he was capable of spending an hour in finding a quotation from a great
+writer, not for the sake of quoting it, but in order to satisfy himself
+that he had authority for using some particular construction of phrase.
+He kept notebooks in which he made long indexed lists of words which in
+common language were improperly used, with examples showing how they
+should be rightly employed.
+
+"I am constructing a superiority for myself," he said once. "No one
+living takes so much pains as I do."
+
+But Gloria had no faith in his painstaking ways, though she wondered at
+his unflagging perseverance. Her own single great talent lay in her
+singing, and she had never given herself any trouble about it. Reanda,
+too, though he worked carefully and often slowly, worked without effort.
+It was true that Griggs never showed fatigue, but that was due to his
+amazing bodily strength. The intellectual labour was apparent, however,
+and he always seemed to be painfully overcoming some almost unyielding
+difficulty by sheer force of steady application, though nothing came of
+it, so far as she could see.
+
+"I cannot understand why you take so much trouble," she said. "They are
+only newspaper articles, after all, to be read to-day and forgotten
+to-morrow."
+
+"I am learning to write," he answered. "It takes a long time to learn
+anything unless one has a great gift, as you have for singing. I have
+failed with one book, but I will not fail with another. The next will
+not be an extraordinary book, but it will succeed."
+
+Nothing could disturb him, and he sat at his table day after day. He was
+moved by the strongest incentives which can act upon a man, at the time
+when he himself is strongest; namely, necessity and love. Even Gloria
+could never discover whether he had what she would have called ambition.
+He himself said that he had none, and she compared him with Reanda, who
+believed in the divinity of art, the temple of fame, and the reality of
+glory.
+
+In the young man's nature, Gloria had taken the place of all other
+divinities, real and imaginary. His enduring nature could no more be
+wearied in its worship of her than it could be tired in toiling for her.
+He only resented the necessity of cutting out such a main part of the
+day for work as left him but little time to be at leisure with her.
+
+She complained of his industry, for she was tired of spending her life
+with novels, and the hours hung like leaden weights upon her, dragging
+with her as she went through the day.
+
+"Give yourself a rest," she said, not because she thought he needed it,
+but because she wished him to amuse her.
+
+"I am never tired of working for you," he answered, and the rare smile
+came to his face.
+
+With any other man in the world she might have told the truth and might
+have said frankly that her life was growing almost unbearable, buried
+from the world as she was, and cut off from society. But she was
+conscious that she should never dare to say as much to Paul Griggs. She
+was realizing, little by little, that his love for her was greater than
+she had dreamed of, and immeasurably stronger than what she felt for
+him.
+
+Then she knew the pain of receiving more than she had to give. It was a
+genuine pain of its kind, and in it, as in many other things, she
+suffered a constant humiliation. She had taken herself for a heroic
+character in the great moment when she had resolved to leave her
+husband, intuitively sure that she loved Paul Griggs with all her heart,
+and that she should continue to love him to the end in spite of the
+world. She knew now that there was no endurance in the passion.
+
+The very efforts she made to sustain it contributed to its destruction;
+but she continued to play her part. Her strong dramatic instinct told
+her when to speak and when to be silent, and how to modulate her voice
+to a tender appeal, to a touching sadness, to the strength of suppressed
+emotion. It was for a good object, she told herself, and therefore it
+must be right. He was giving his life for her, day by day, and he must
+never know that she no longer loved him. It would kill him, she thought;
+for with him it was all real. She grew melancholy and thought of death.
+If she died young, he should never guess that she had not loved him to
+the very last.
+
+In her lonely thoughts she dwelt upon the possibility, for it was a
+possibility now. There was that before her which, when it came, might
+turn life into death very suddenly. She had moments of tenderness when
+she thought of her own dead face lying on the white pillow, and the
+picture was so real that her eyes filled with tears. She would be very
+beautiful when she was dead.
+
+The idea took root in her mind; for it afforded her an inward emotion
+which touched her strangely and cost her nothing. It gained in
+fascination as she allowed it to come back when it would, and the
+details of death came vividly before her imagination, as she had read of
+them in books,--her own white face, the darkened room, the candles, Paul
+Griggs standing motionless beside her body.
+
+One day he looked from his work and saw tears on her cheeks. He dropped
+his pen as though something had struck him unawares; and he was beside
+her in a moment, looking anxiously into her eyes.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, and his hands were on hers and pressed them.
+
+"It is nothing," she answered. "It is natural, I suppose--"
+
+"No. It is not natural. You are unhappy. Tell me what is the matter."
+
+"It is foolish," she said, turning her face from him. "I see you working
+so hard day after day. I am a burden to you--it would be better if I
+were out of the way. You are working yourself to death. If you could see
+your face sometimes!" And more tears trickled down.
+
+His strong hands shook suddenly.
+
+"I am not working too hard--for me," he answered, but his voice trembled
+a little. "One of your tears hurts me more than a hundred years of hard
+work. Even if it were true--I would rather die for you than live to be
+the greatest man that ever breathed--without you."
+
+She threw her arms about his neck, and hid her face upon his shoulder.
+
+"Tell me you love me!" she cried. "You are all I have in the world!"
+
+"Does it need telling?" he asked, soothing her.
+
+Then all at once his arms tightened so that she could hardly draw breath
+for a moment, and his head was bent down and rested for an instant upon
+her neck as though he himself sought rest and refuge.
+
+"I think you know, dear," he said.
+
+She knew far better than he could tell her, for the truth of his
+passion shook the dramatic and artificial fabric of her own to its
+foundations; and even as she pressed him to her, she felt that secret
+repugnance which those who do not love feel for those who love them
+overmuch. It was mingled with a sense of shame which made her hate
+herself, and she began to suffer acutely.
+
+When she thought of Reanda, as she now often did, she longed for what
+she had felt for him, rather than for anything she had ever felt for
+Paul Griggs. In the pitiful reaching after something real, she groped
+for memories of true tenderness, and now and then they came back to her
+from beyond the chaos which lay between, as memories of home come to a
+man cast after many storms upon a desert island. She dwelt upon them and
+tried to construct an under-life out of the past, made up only of sweet
+things amongst which all that had not been good should be forgotten. She
+went for comfort to the days when she had loved Reanda, before their
+marriage--or when she had loved his genius as though it were himself,
+believing that it was all for her.
+
+Beside her always, with even, untiring strength, Paul Griggs toiled on,
+his whole life based and founded in hers, every penstroke for her, every
+dream of her, every aspiration and hope for her alone. He was splendidly
+unconscious of his own utter loneliness, blankly unaware of the
+life-comedy--or tragedy--which Gloria was acting for him out of pity
+for the heart she could break, and out of shame at finding out what her
+own heart was. Had he known the truth, the end would have come quickly
+and terribly. But he did not know it. The woman's gifts were great, and
+her beauty was greater. Greater than all was his whole-souled belief in
+her. He had never conceived it possible, in his ignorance of women, that
+a woman should really love him. She, whom he had first loved so
+hopelessly, had given him all she had to give, which was herself,
+frankly and freely. And after she had come to him, she loved him for a
+time, beyond even self-deception. But when she no longer loved him, she
+hid her secret and kept it long and well; for she feared him. He was not
+like Reanda. He would not strike only; he would kill and make an end of
+both.
+
+But she might have gone much nearer to the truth without danger. It was
+not his nature to ask anything nor to expect much, and he had taken all
+there was to take, and knew it, and was satisfied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+THE summer passed, with its monotonous heat. Rain fell in August and
+poisoned the campagna with fever for six weeks, and the clear October
+breezes blew from the hills, and the second greenness of the late season
+was over everything for a brief month of vintage and laughter. Then came
+November with its pestilent sirocco gales and its dampness, pierced and
+cut through now and then by the first northerly winds of winter.
+
+And then, one day, there was a new life in the little apartment in the
+Via della Frezza. Fate, relentless, had brought to the light a little
+child, to be the grandson of that fated Maria Braccio who had died long
+ago, to have his day of happiness and his night of suffering in his turn
+and to be a living bond between Gloria and the man who loved her.
+
+They called the boy Walter Crowdie for a relative of Angus Dalrymple,
+who had been the last of the name. It was convenient, and he would never
+need any other, nor any third name after the two given to him in
+baptism.
+
+For a few days after the child's birth, Griggs left his writing-table.
+He was almost too happy to work, and he spent many hours by Gloria's
+side, not talking, for he knew that she must be kept quiet, but often
+holding her hand and always looking at her face, with the strong, dumb
+devotion of a faithful bloodhound.
+
+Often she pretended to be sleeping when he was there, though she was
+wide awake and could have talked well enough. But it was easier to seem
+to be asleep than to play the comedy now, while she was so weak and
+helpless. With the simplicity of a little child Griggs watched her, and
+when her eyes were closed believed that she was sleeping. As soon as she
+opened them he spoke to her. She understood and sometimes smiled in
+spite of herself, with close-shut lids. He thought she was dreaming of
+him, or of the child, and was smiling in her sleep.
+
+As she lay there and thought over all that had happened, she knew that
+she hated him as she had never loved him, even in the first days. And
+she hated the child, for its life was the last bond, linking her to Paul
+Griggs and barring her from the world forever. Until it had been there
+she had vaguely felt that if she had the courage and really wished it,
+she might in some way get back to her old life. She knew that all hope
+of that was gone from her now.
+
+In the deep perspective of her loosened intelligence the endless years
+to come rolled away, grey and monotonous, to their vanishing point. She
+had made her choice and had not found heart to give it up, after she had
+made it, while there was yet time. Time itself took shape before her
+closed eyes, as many succeeding steps, and she saw herself toiling up
+them, a bent, veiled figure of great weariness. It was terrible to look
+forward to such truth, and the present was no better. She grasped at the
+past and dragged it up to her and looked at its faded prettiness, and
+would have kissed it, as though it had been a living thing. But she knew
+that it was dead and that what lived was horrible to her.
+
+She wished that she might die, as she had often thought she might during
+the long summer months. In those days her eyes had filled with tears of
+pity for herself. They were dry now, for the suffering was real and the
+pain was in her bodily heart. Yet she was so strong, and she feared Paul
+Griggs with such an abject fear, that she played the comedy when she
+could not make him think that she was asleep.
+
+"My only thought is for you," she said. "It is another burden on you."
+
+He was utterly happy, and he laughed aloud.
+
+"It is another reason for working," he said.
+
+And even as he said it she saw the writing-table, the poor room, his
+stern, determined face and busy hand, and herself seated in her own
+chair, with a half-read novel on her lap, staring at the grey future of
+mediocrity and mean struggling that loomed like a leaden figure above
+his bent head. Year after year, perhaps, she was to sit in that chair
+and watch the same silent battle for bare existence. It was too horrible
+to be borne. If only he were a man of genius, she could have suffered it
+all, she thought, and more also. But he himself said that he had no
+genius. His terrible mechanics of mind killed the little originality he
+had. His gloomy sobriety over his work made her desperate. But she
+feared him. The belief grew on her that if he ever found out that she
+did not love him, he would end life then, for them both--perhaps for
+them all three.
+
+Surely, hell had no tortures worse than hers, she thought. Yet she bore
+them, in terror of him. And he was perfectly happy and suspected
+nothing. She could not understand how with his melancholy nature and his
+constant assertion that he had but a little talent and much industry for
+all his stock in trade, he could believe in his own future as he did. It
+was an anomaly, a contradiction of terms, a weak point in the low level
+of his unimaginative, dogged strength. She thought often of the poor
+book he had written. She had heard that talent was stirred to music by a
+great passion that strung it and struck it, till its heartstrings rang
+wild changes and breathed deep chords, and burst into rushing harmonies
+of eloquence. But his love was dumb and dull, though it might be deadly.
+There had been neither eloquence nor music in his book. It had been an
+old story, badly told. He had said that he was only fit to be a
+newspaper man, and it was true, so far as she could see. His letters to
+the paper were excellent in their way, but that was all he could do. And
+she had given him, in the child, another reason for being what he was,
+hard-working, silent--dull.
+
+She looked at him and wondered; for there was a mystery in his shadowy
+eyes and still face, which had promised much more than she had ever
+found in him. There was something mysterious and dreadful, too, in his
+unnatural strength. The fear of him grew upon her, and sometimes when he
+kissed her she burst into tears out of sheer terror at his touch.
+
+"They are tears of happiness," she said, trembling and drying her eyes
+quickly.
+
+She smiled, and he believed her, happier every day in her and in the
+child.
+
+Then came the realization of the grey dream of misery. Again she was
+seated by the window in her accustomed chair, and he was in his place,
+pen in hand, eyes on paper, thoughts fixed like steel in that obstinate
+effort to do better, while she had the certainty of his failure before
+her. And between them, in a straw cradle with a hood, all gauze and
+lace and blue ribbons, lay the thing that bound her to him and cut her
+off forever from the world,--little Walter Crowdie, the child without a
+name, as she called him in her thoughts. And above the child, between
+her and Paul Griggs, floated the little imaginary stage on which she was
+to go on acting her play over and over again till all was done. She had
+not even the right to shed tears for herself without telling him that
+they were for the happiness he expected of her.
+
+He would not leave her. He had scarcely been out of the house for weeks,
+though the only perceptible effect of remaining indoors so long was that
+he had grown a little paler. She implored him to go out. In a few days
+she would be able to go with him, and meanwhile there was no reason why
+he should be perpetually at her side. He yielded to her importunity at
+last, and she was left alone with the child.
+
+It was a relief even greater than she had anticipated. She could cry,
+she could laugh, she could sing, and he was not there to ask questions.
+For one moment after she had heard the outer door close behind him she
+almost hesitated as to which she should do, for she was half hysterical
+with the long outward restraint of herself while, inwardly, she had
+allowed her thoughts to run wild as they would. She stood for a moment,
+and there was a vague, uncertain look in her face. Then her breast
+heaved, and she burst into tears, weeping as never before in her short
+life, passionately, angrily, violently, without thought of control, or
+indeed of anything definite.
+
+Before an hour had passed Griggs came back. She was seated quietly in
+her chair, as when he had left her. The light was all behind her, and he
+could not see the slight redness of her eyes. Pale as she was, he
+thought she had never been more beautiful. There was a gentleness in her
+manner, too, beyond what he was accustomed to. He believed that perhaps
+she might be the better for being left to herself for an hour or two
+every day, until she should be quite strong again. On the following day
+she again suggested that he should go out for a walk, and he made no
+objection.
+
+Again, as soon as he was gone, she burst into tears, almost in spite of
+herself, though she unconsciously longed for the relief they had brought
+her the first time. But to-day the fit of weeping did not pass so soon.
+The spasms of sobbing lasted long after her eyes were dry, and she had
+less time to compose herself before Griggs returned. Still, he noticed
+nothing. The tears had refreshed her, and he found that same gentleness
+which had touched him on the previous day.
+
+Several times, after that, he went out and left her alone in the
+afternoon. Then, one day, while he was walking, a heavy shower came on,
+and he made his way home as fast as he could. He opened the door quickly
+and came upon her to find her sobbing as though her heart would break.
+
+He turned very pale and stood still for a moment. There was terror in
+her face when she saw him, but in an instant he was holding her in his
+arms and kissing her hair, asking her what was the matter.
+
+"I am a millstone around your neck!" she sobbed. "It is breaking my
+heart--I shall die, if I see you working so!"
+
+He tried to comfort her, soothing her and laughing at her fears for him,
+but believing her, as he always did. Little by little, her sobs
+subsided, and she was herself again, as far as he could see. He tried to
+argue the case fairly on its merits.
+
+She listened to him, and listening was a new torture, knowing as she did
+what her tears were shed for. But she had to play the comedy again, at
+short notice, not having had the time to compose herself and enjoy the
+relief she found in crying alone.
+
+It was a relief which she sought again and again. When she thought of it
+afterwards, it was as an indescribable, half-painful, half-pleasant
+emotion through which she passed every day. When she felt that it was
+before her, as soon as Griggs was out of the house, she made a slight
+effort to resist it, for she was sensible enough to understand that it
+was becoming a habit which she could not easily break.
+
+Even after she was quite strong again, Griggs often left her to herself
+for an hour, and he did not again come in accidentally and find her in
+tears. He thought it natural that she should sometimes wish to be alone.
+
+One day, when she had dried her eyes, she took a sheet of paper from his
+table and began to write. She had no distinct intention, but she knew
+that she was going to write about herself and her sufferings. It gave
+her a strange and unhealthy pleasure to set down in black and white all
+that she suffered. She could look at it, turn it, change it, and look at
+it again. Constantly, as the pen ran on, the tears came to her eyes
+afresh, and she brushed them away with a smile.
+
+Then, all at once, she looked at the clock--the same cheap little
+American clock which had ticked so long on the mantelpiece in Griggs's
+old lodging upstairs. She knew that he would be back before long, and
+she tore the sheets she had covered into tiny strips and threw them into
+the waste-paper basket. When Griggs returned, she was singing softly to
+herself over her needlework.
+
+But she had enjoyed a rare delight in writing down the story of her
+troubles. The utter loneliness of her existence, when Griggs was not
+with her, made it natural enough. Then a strange thought crossed her
+mind. She would write to Reanda and tell him that she had forgiven him,
+and had expiated the wrong she had done him. She craved the excitement
+of confession, and it could do no harm. He might, perhaps, answer her.
+Griggs would never know, for she always received the letters and sorted
+them for him, merely to save him trouble. The correspondence of a
+newspaper man is necessarily large, covering many sources of his
+information.
+
+It was rather a wild idea, she thought, but it attracted her, or rather
+it distracted her thoughts by taking her out of the daily comedy she was
+obliged to keep up. There was in it, too, a very slight suggestion of
+danger; for it was conceivable, though almost impossible, that some
+letter of hers or her husband's might fall into Griggs's hands. There
+was a perverseness about it which was seductive to her tortuous mind.
+
+At the first opportunity she wrote a very long letter. It was the letter
+of a penitent. She told him all that she had told herself a hundred
+times, and it was a very different production from the one she had sent
+to her father nearly a year earlier. There were tears in the phrases,
+there were sobs in the broken sentences. And there were tears in her own
+eyes when she sealed it.
+
+She was going to ring for the woman servant to take it, and her hand
+was on the bell. She paused, looked at the addressed envelope, glanced
+furtively round the room, and then kissed it passionately. Then she
+rang.
+
+Griggs came home later than usual, but he thought she was preoccupied
+and absent-minded.
+
+"Has anything gone wrong?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Wrong?" she repeated. "Oh no!" She sighed. "It is the same thing. I am
+always anxious about you. You were a little pale before you went out and
+you had hardly eaten anything at breakfast."
+
+"There is nothing the matter with me," laughed Griggs. "I am
+indestructible. I defy fate."
+
+She started perceptibly, for she was too much of an Italian not to be a
+little superstitious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+STEPHANONE was often seen in the Via della Frezza, for the host of the
+little wine shop was one of his good customers. The neighbourhood was
+very quiet and respectable, and the existence of the wine shop was a
+matter of convenience and almost of necessity to the respectable
+citizens who dwelt there. They sent their women servants or came
+themselves at regular hours, bringing their own bottles and vessels of
+all shapes and of many materials for the daily allowance of wine; they
+invariably paid in cash, and they never went away in the summer. The
+business was a very good one; for the Romans, though they rarely drink
+too much and are on the whole a sober people, consume an amount of
+strong wine which would produce a curious effect upon any other race, in
+any other climate. Stefanone, though his wife had formerly thought him
+extravagant, had ultimately turned out to be a very prudent person, and
+in the course of a thirty years' acquaintance with Rome had selected his
+customers with care, judgment, and foresight. Whenever he was in Rome
+and had time to spare he came to the little shop in the Via della
+Frezza. He had stood godfather for one of the host's children, which in
+those days constituted a real tie between parents and god-parents.
+
+But he had another reason for his frequent visits since that night on
+which he had accompanied Gloria and had shielded her from the rain with
+his gigantic brass-tipped umbrella. He took an interest in her, and
+would wait a long time in the hope of seeing her, sitting on a
+rush-bottomed stool outside the wine shop, and generally chewing the end
+of a wisp of broom. He had the faculty of sitting motionless for an hour
+at a time, his sturdy white-stockinged legs crossed one over the other,
+his square peasant's hands crossed upon his knee,--the sharp angles of
+the thumb-bones marked the labouring race,--his soft black hat tilted a
+little forward over his eyes, his jacket buttoned up when the weather
+was cool, thrown back and showing the loosened shirt open far below the
+throat when the day was warm.
+
+Gloria reminded him of Dalrymple. The process of mind was a very simple
+one and needs no analysis. He had sought Dalrymple for years, but in
+vain, and Gloria had something in her face which recalled her father,
+though the latter's features were rough and harshly accentuated.
+Stefanone had made the acquaintance of the one-eyed cobbler without
+difficulty and had ascertained that there was a mystery about Gloria,
+whom the cobbler had first seen on the morning after Stefanone had met
+her in the storm. It was of course very improbable that she should be
+the daughter of Dalrymple and Annetta, but even the faint possibility of
+being on the track of his enemy had a strong effect upon the unforgiving
+peasant. If he ever found Dalrymple, he intended to kill him. In the
+meanwhile he had found a simple plan for finding out whether Gloria was
+the Scotchman's daughter or not. He waited patiently for the spring, and
+he came to Rome now every month for a week at a time.
+
+More than once during the past year he had brought small presents of
+fruit and wine and country cakes for Gloria, and both she and Griggs
+knew all about him, and got their wine from the little shop which he
+supplied. Gloria was pleased by the decent, elderly peasant's admiration
+of her beauty, which he never failed to express when he got a chance of
+speaking to her. When little Walter Crowdie was first carried out into
+the sun, Stefanone was in the street, and he looked long and earnestly
+into the baby's face.
+
+"There is the same thing in the eyes," he muttered, as he turned away,
+after presenting the nurse with a beautiful jumble, which looked as
+though it had been varnished, and was adorned with small drops of hard
+pink sugar. "If it is he--an evil death on him and all his house."
+
+And he strolled slowly back to the wine shop, his hand fumbling with the
+big, curved, brass-handled knife which he carried in the pocket of his
+blue cloth breeches.
+
+He was certainly mistaken about the baby's eyes, which were remarkably
+beautiful and of a very soft brown; whereas Dalrymple's were hard, blue,
+and steely, and it was not possible that anything like an hereditary
+expression should be recognizable in the face of a child three weeks
+old. But his growing conviction made his imagination complete every link
+which chanced to be missing in the chain.
+
+One day, in the spring, he met Griggs when the latter was going out
+alone.
+
+"A word, Signore, if you permit," he said politely.
+
+"Twenty," replied Griggs, giving the common Roman answer.
+
+"Signore, Subiaco is a beautiful place," said the peasant. "In spring it
+is an enchantment. In summer, I tell you nothing. It is as fresh as
+Paradise. There is water, water, as much as you please. Wine is not
+wanting, and it seems that you know that. The butcher kills calves twice
+a week, and sometimes an ox when there is an old one, or one lame. Eh,
+in Subiaco, one is well."
+
+"I do not doubt it when I look at you," answered Griggs, without a
+smile.
+
+"Thanks be to Heaven, my health still assists me. But I am thinking of
+you and of your beautiful lady and of that little angel, whom God
+preserve. In truth, you appear to me as the Holy Family. I should not
+say it to every one, but the air of Subiaco is thin, the water is light,
+and, for a house, mine is of the better ones. One knows that we are
+country people, but we are clean people; there are neither chickens nor
+children. If you find a flea, I will have him set in gold. You shall
+say, 'This is the flea that was found in Stefanone's house.' In that way
+every one will know. I do not speak of the beds. The pope could sleep in
+the one in the large room at the head of the staircase, the pope with
+all his cardinals. They would say, 'Now we know that this is indeed a
+bed.' Do you wish better than this? I do not know. But if you will bring
+your lady and the baby, you will see. Eyes tell no lies."
+
+"And the price?" inquired Griggs, struck by the good sense of the
+suggestion.
+
+"Whatever you choose to give. If you give nothing, we shall have had
+your company. In general, we take three pauls a day, and we give the
+wine. You shall make the price as you like it. Who thinks of these
+things? We are Christians."
+
+When Griggs spoke of the project to Gloria, she embraced it eagerly. He
+said that he should be obliged to come to Rome every week on account of
+his correspondence. But Subiaco was no longer as inaccessible as
+formerly, and there was now a good carriage road all the way and a daily
+public conveyance. He should be absent three days, and would spend the
+other four with her.
+
+It was a sacrifice on his part, as she guessed from the way in which he
+spoke, but it was clearly necessary that Gloria and the child should
+have country air during the coming summer. He had often reproached
+himself with not having made some such arrangement for the preceding hot
+season, but he had seen that she did not suffer from the heat, and his
+presence in the capital had been very necessary for his work. Now,
+however, it looked possible enough, and before Stefanone went back to
+the country for his next trip a preliminary agreement had been made.
+
+Gloria looked forward with impatience to the liberty she was to gain by
+his regular absences, for her life was becoming unbearable. She felt
+that she could not much longer sustain the perpetual comedy she was
+acting, unless she could get an interval of rest from time to time. At
+first, the hour he gave her daily when he went out alone had been a
+relief and had sufficed. The tears she shed, the letters she wrote to
+Reanda, rested her and refreshed her. For she had written others since
+that first one, though he had never answered any of them. But the small
+daily interruption of her acting was no longer enough. The taste of
+liberty had bred an intense craving for more of it, and she dreamed of
+being alone for days together.
+
+She wrote to Reanda now without the slightest hope of receiving any
+reply, as madmen sometimes write endless letters to women they love,
+though they have never exchanged a word with them. It was a vent for her
+pent-up suffering. It could make no difference, and Griggs could never
+know. Her strange position put the point of faithfulness out of the
+question. She was in love with her husband, and the man who loved her
+held her to her play of love by the terror she felt of what lay behind
+his gentleness. She dreamed once that he had found out the truth, and
+was tearing her head from her body with those hands of his, slowly,
+almost gently, with mysterious eyes and still face. She woke, and found
+that the heavy tress of her hair was twisted round her throat and was
+choking her; but the impression remained, and her dread of Griggs
+increased, and it became harder and harder to act her part.
+
+At the same time the attraction of secretly writing to her husband grew
+stronger, day by day. She did not send him all she wrote, nor a tenth
+part of all, and the greater portion of her outpourings went into the
+fire, or they were torn to infinitesimal bits and thrown into the
+waste-paper basket. She was critical, in a strangely morbid way, of what
+she wrote. The fact that she was acting for Griggs, and knew it, made
+her dread to write anything to Reanda which could possibly seem
+insincere. No aspiring young author ever took greater pains over his
+work than she sometimes bestowed upon the composition of these letters,
+or judged his work more conscientiously and severely than she. And the
+result was that she told of her life with wonderful sincerity and truth.
+Truth was her only luxury in the midst of the great lie she had to
+sustain. She revelled in it, and yet, fearing to lose it, she used it
+with a conscientiousness which she had never exhibited in anything she
+had done before. It was her single delight, and she treasured it with
+scrupulous and miserly care. In her letters, at least, she could be
+really herself.
+
+But the strain was telling upon her visibly, and Griggs was very anxious
+about her, and hastened their departure for Subiaco as soon as the
+weather began to grow warm, hoping that the mountain air would bring the
+colour back to her pale cheeks. For her beauty's sake, he could almost
+have deprecated the prospect, strange to say, for she had never seemed
+more perfectly beautiful than now. She was thinner than she had formerly
+been, and her pallor had refined her by softening the look of hard and
+brilliant vitality which had characterized her before she had left
+Reanda. There is perhaps no beauty which is not beautified by a touch
+of sadness. Griggs saw it, and while his eyes rejoiced, his heart sank.
+
+He knew what an utterly lonely life she was leading, even as he judged
+her existence, and the tender string was touched in his deep nature. She
+had sacrificed everything for him, as he told himself many a time in his
+solitary walks. All the love he had given and had to give could never
+repay her for what she had given him. Marriage, he reflected, was often
+a bargain, but such devotion as hers was a gift for which there could be
+no return. She had ruined herself in the eyes of the world for him, but
+the world would never accuse him, nor shut its doors upon him because he
+had accepted what she had so freely given. He was not an emotional man,
+but even he longed for some turn of life in which for her sake he might
+do something above the dead level of that commonplace heroism which
+begins in hard work and ends in the attainment of ordinary necessities.
+He felt his strength in him and about him, and he wished that he could
+let it loose upon some adversary in the physical satisfaction of
+fighting for what he loved. It was not a high aspiration, but it was a
+manly one.
+
+He drew upon his resources to the utmost, in order to make her
+comfortable in Subiaco when they should get there. He was not a dreamer,
+though he dreamed when he had time. It was his nature to take all the
+things which came to him to be done and to do them one after another
+with untiring energy. He worked at his correspondence, and got
+additional articles to write for periodicals, though it was no easy
+matter in that day when the modern periodical was in its infancy.
+
+Gloria, acting her part, complained sadly that he worked too hard. Work
+as he might, he had no such stress to fear as was wearing out her life.
+She hated him, she feared him, and she envied him. Sometimes she pitied
+him, and then it was easier for her to act the play. As for Griggs, he
+laughed and told her for the hundredth time that he was indestructible
+and defied fate.
+
+So far as he could see what he had to deal with, he could defy anything.
+But there was that beyond of which he could not dream, and destiny, with
+leaden hands, was already upon him, on the day when a great,
+old-fashioned carriage, loaded with boxes and belongings, brought him
+and his to the door of Stefanone's house in Subiaco.
+
+Sora Nanna, grey-haired, and withered as a brown apple, but tough as
+leather still, stood on the threshold to receive them. She no longer
+wore the embroidered napkin on her hair, for civilization had advanced a
+generation in Subiaco, and a coloured handkerchief flapped about her
+head, and she had caught one corner of it in her teeth to keep it out of
+her eyes, as the afternoon breeze blew it across her leathery face.
+
+First at the door of the carriage she saw the baby, held up by its
+nurse, and the old woman threw up her hands and clapped them, and crowed
+to the child till it laughed. Then Griggs got out. And then, out of the
+dark shadow of the coach, a face looked at Sora Nanna, and it was a face
+she had known long ago, with dark eyes, beautiful and deadly pale, and
+very fateful.
+
+She turned white herself, and her teeth chattered.
+
+"Madonna Santissima!" she cried, shrinking back.
+
+She crossed herself, and did not dare to meet Gloria's eyes again for
+some time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+
+SORA NANNA showed her new lodgers their rooms. They were the ones
+Dalrymple had occupied long ago, together with a third, opening
+separately from the same landing. In what had been the Scotchman's
+laboratory, and which was now turned into a small bedroom, a large chest
+stood in a corner, of the sort used by the peasant women to this day for
+their wedding outfits.
+
+"If it is not in your way, I will leave it here," said Sora Nanna.
+"There are certain things in it."
+
+"What things?" asked Gloria, idly, and for the sake of making
+acquaintance with the woman, rather than out of curiosity.
+
+"Things, things," answered Nanna. "Things of that poor girl's. We had a
+daughter, Signora."
+
+"Did she die long ago?" inquired Gloria, in a tone of sympathy.
+
+"We lost her, Signora," said Nanna, simply. "Look at these beds! They
+are new, new! No one has ever slept in them. And linen there is, as much
+as you can ask for. We are country people, Signora, but we are good
+people. I do not say that we are rich. One knows--in Rome everything is
+beautiful. Even the chestnuts are of gold. Here, we are in the country,
+Signora. You will excuse, if anything is wanting."
+
+But Gloria was by no means inclined to find fault. She breathed more
+freely in the mountain air, she was tired with the long drive from
+Tivoli, where they had spent the previous night, and she was more hungry
+than she had been for a long time.
+
+It was not dark when they sat down to supper in the old guest chamber
+which opened upon the street. Nanna was anxious and willing to bring
+them their supper upstairs, but Gloria preferred the common room. She
+said it would amuse her, and in reality it was easier for her not to be
+alone with Griggs, and by going downstairs on the first evening she
+meant to establish a precedent for the whole summer. He had told her
+that he must go back to Rome for his work on the next day but one, and
+she counted the hours before her up to the minute when she should be
+free and alone.
+
+They sat down at the old table at which Dalrymple had eaten his solitary
+meals so often, more than twenty years earlier. There was no change.
+There were the same solid, old-fashioned silver forks and spoons, there
+were plates of the same coarse china, tumblers of the same heavy pressed
+glass. Had Dalrymple been there, he would have recognized the old brass
+lamp with its three beaks which poor Annetta had so often brought in
+lighted when he sat there at dusk. On the shelf in the corner were the
+selfsame decanters full of transparent aniseed and pink alchermes and
+coarse brown brandy. Stefanone came in, laid his hat upon the bench, and
+put his stick in the corner just as he had always done. There was no
+change, except that Annetta was not there, and the husband and wife had
+grown almost old since those days.
+
+"How often does the post go to Rome?" Gloria asked of Sora Nanna, while
+they were at supper.
+
+"Every evening, at one of the night, Signora. There are also many
+occasions of sending by the carters."
+
+"I can write to you every day when you are away," said Gloria in English
+to Griggs.
+
+She was thinking of those letters which she wrote to Reanda almost in
+spite of herself, but the loving smile did not play her false, and
+Griggs believed her.
+
+In her, the duality of her being had created two distinct lives. For
+him, the two elements of consciousness and perception were merged in one
+by his love. All that he felt he saw in her, and all that he saw in her
+he felt. The perfection of love, while it lasts, is in that double
+certainty from within and from without, which, if once disturbed, can
+never be restored again. Singly, the one part or the other may remain
+as of old, but the wholeness of the two has but one chance of life.
+
+On that first night Gloria had an evil dream. She had fallen asleep,
+tired from the journey and worn out with the endless weariness of her
+secret suffering. She awoke in the small hours, and moonlight was
+streaming into the room. She was startled to find herself in a strange
+place, at first, and then she realized where she was, and gazed at the
+clouded panes of common glass as her head lay on the pillow, and she
+marked the moonlight on the brick floor by the joints of the bricks, and
+watched how it crept silently away. For the moon was waning, and had not
+long risen above the black line of the hills.
+
+Her eyelids drooped, but she saw it all distinctly still--more
+distinctly than before, she thought. The level light rose slowly from
+the floor; very, very slowly, stiff and straight as a stark, shrouded
+corpse, and stood upright between her and the window. She felt the heavy
+hair rising on her scalp, and an intense horror took possession of her
+body, and thrilled through her from head to foot and from her feet to
+her head. But she could not move. She felt that something held her and
+pressed on her, as though the air were moulded about her like cast iron.
+
+The thing stood between her and the window, stiff and white. It showed
+its face, and the face was white, too. It was Angelo Reanda. She knew
+it, though there seemed to be no eyes in the white thing. She felt its
+dead voice speaking to her.
+
+"An evil death on you and all your house," it said.
+
+The face was gone again, but the thing was still there. Very, very
+slowly, stiff and white, it lay back, straight from the heel upwards,
+unbending as it sank, till it laid itself upon the floor, and she was
+staring at the joints of the bricks in the moonlight.
+
+Then she shrieked aloud and awoke. The moonlight had moved a foot or
+more, and she knew that she had been asleep.
+
+"It was only a dream," she said to Griggs in the morning. "I thought I
+saw you dead, dear. It frightened me."
+
+"I am not dead yet," he laughed. "It was that salad--there were potatoes
+in it."
+
+She turned away; for the contrast between the triviality of what he said
+and the horror of what she had felt brought an expression to her face
+which even her consummate art could not have concealed.
+
+The impression lasted all day, and when she went to bed she carefully
+closed the shutters so that the moonlight should not fall upon the
+floor. The dream did not return.
+
+"It must have been the salad," said Griggs, when she told him that she
+had not been disturbed again.
+
+But Gloria was thinking of death, and his words jarred upon her
+horribly, as a trivial jest would jar on a condemned man walking from
+his cell to the scaffold. In the evening Griggs went by the diligence to
+Rome, and Gloria was left alone with her child and the nurse.
+
+Then she sat down and wrote to Reanda with a full heart and a trembling
+hand. She told him of her dream, and how the fear of his death had
+broken her nerves. She implored him to come out and see her when Griggs
+was in Rome. She could let him know when to start, if he would write one
+word. It was but a little journey, she said, and the cool mountain air
+would do him good. But if he would not come, she besought him to write
+to her, if it were only a line, to say that he was alive. She could not
+forget the dream until she should know that he was safe.
+
+She was not critical of her writing any more, for she was no longer in
+fear of being misunderstood, and she wrote desperately. It seemed to her
+that she was writing with her blood. She had sent him many letters
+without hope of answer, but something told her that she could not appeal
+in vain forever, and that he would at last reply to her.
+
+Two days passed, and she spent much of her time with the child. She
+felt that in time she might love it, if Griggs were not beside her. Then
+he came back, and in the great joy of seeing her again after that first
+short separation, the stern voice grew as soft as a woman's, and the
+still face was moved. She had looked forward with dread to his return,
+and she shivered when he touched her; she would have given all she had
+if only he would not kiss her. Then, when she felt that he might have
+found her cold to him at the first moment, that he might guess, that he
+might find out her secret, she shivered again from head to heel, in fear
+of him, and she forced the smile upon her face with all her will.
+
+"I am so glad, that I am almost frightened!" she cried, and lest the
+smile should be imperfect, she hid it against his shoulder.
+
+She could have bitten the cloth and the tough arm under it, as she felt
+him kiss the back of her neck just at the roots of the hair; as it was,
+she grasped his arm convulsively.
+
+"How strong you are!" he laughed, as he felt the pressure of her
+fingers.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "It is the mountain air--and you," she added.
+
+And, as ever, it seemed to him true. The days he spent with her were
+heavenly to him as they were days of living earthly hell to her. He did
+not even leave her alone for an hour or two, as he had done in the
+city, for when he was in Rome without her he did double work and
+shortened his sleep by half, that he might lengthen the time he was to
+have with her. The heat of the capital and the late hours brought out
+dark shadows under his eyes, and gave her another excuse for saying that
+he was overworking for her sake, and that she was a burden upon him--she
+and the child.
+
+On the morning before he next went to Rome, she received a letter from
+Reanda. The blood rushed scarlet to her face, but Griggs was busy with
+his own letters and did not see it.
+
+She went to the baby's room. The child had been taken out by the nurse,
+and she sat down in the nurse's chair by the empty cradle and broke the
+seal of the note. There was a big sheet of paper inside, on which were
+written these lines in the artist's small, nervous handwriting:--
+
+"I am perfectly well, but I understand your anxiety about my health. I
+do not wish to see you, but as human life is uncertain I have given
+instructions that you may be at once informed of the good news of my
+death, if you outlive me."
+
+Gloria's hand closed upon the sheet of paper, and she reeled forward and
+sideways in the chair, as though she had received a stunning blow. She
+heard heavy footsteps on the brick floor in the next room and with a
+desperate effort at consciousness she hid the crumpled letter in her
+bosom before the door opened. But the room swam with her as she grasped
+the straw cradle and tried to steady herself.
+
+In an agony of terror she heard the footsteps coming nearer and nearer,
+then retreating again, then turning back towards her. She prayed to God
+at that moment that Griggs might not open the door. To gain strength,
+she forced herself to rise to her feet and stand upright, but with the
+first step she took, she stumbled against the chest that contained
+Annetta's belongings. The physical pain roused her. She drew breath more
+freely, and listened. Griggs was moving about in the other room,
+probably putting together some few things which he meant to take to Rome
+with him that evening. It seemed an hour before she heard him go away,
+and the echo of his footsteps came more and more faintly as he went down
+the stairs. He evidently had not guessed that she was in the little room
+which served as a nursery--the room which had once been Dalrymple's
+laboratory.
+
+She did not read the letter again, but she found a match and set fire to
+it, and watched it as it burned to black, gossamer-like ashes on the
+brick floor. It was long before she had the courage to go down and face
+Griggs and say that she was ready for the daily walk together before the
+midday meal. And all that day she went about dreamily, scarcely knowing
+what she did or said, though she was sure that she did not fail in
+acting her part, for the habit was so strong that the acting was
+natural to her, except when something waked her to herself too suddenly.
+
+He went away at last in the evening, and she was free to do what she
+pleased with herself, to close the deadly wound she had received, if
+that were possible, to forget it even for an hour, if she could.
+
+But she could not. She felt that it was her death-wound, for it had
+killed a hope which she had tended and fostered into an inner life for
+herself. She felt that her husband hated her, as she hated Paul Griggs.
+
+She was impelled to fall upon her knees and pray to Something,
+somewhere, though she knew not what, but she was ashamed to do it when
+she thought of her life. That Something would turn upon her and curse
+her, as Reanda had cursed her in her dream--and in the cruel words he
+had written.
+
+She hardly slept that night, and she rose in the morning heavy-eyed and
+weary. Going out into the old garden behind the house she met Sora Nanna
+with a basket of clothes on her head, just starting to go up to the
+convent, followed by two of her women.
+
+"Signora," said the old woman, with her leathern smile, "you are
+consuming yourself because the husband is in Rome. You are doing
+wrong."
+
+Gloria started, stared at her, and then understood, and nodded.
+
+"Come up to the convent with us," said Nanna. "You will divert yourself,
+and while they take in the clothes, I will show you the church. It is
+beautiful. I think that even in Rome it would be a beautiful church. I
+will show you where the sisters are buried and I will tell you how
+Sister Maria Addolorata was burned in her cell. But she was not buried
+with the rest. When you come back, you will eat with a double appetite,
+and I will make gnocchi of polenta for dinner. Do you like gnocchi,
+Signora? There is much resistance in them."
+
+Gloria went with the washerwomen. She was strong and kept pace with
+them, burdened as they were with their baskets. It was good to be with
+them, common creatures with common, human hearts, knowing nothing of her
+strange trouble. Sora Nanna took her into the church and showed her the
+sights, explaining them in her strident, nasal voice without the
+slightest respect for the place so long as no religious service was
+going on. The woman showed her the little tablet erected in memory of
+Maria Addolorata, and she told the story as she had heard it, and dwelt
+upon the funeral services and the masses which had been said.
+
+"At least, she is in peace," said Gloria, in a low voice, staring at the
+tablet.
+
+[Illustration: "Let us not speak of the dead."--Vol. II., p. 203.]
+
+"Poor Annetta used to say that Sister Maria Addolorata sinned in her
+throat," said Nanna. "But you see. God can do everything. She went
+straight from her cell to heaven. Eh, she is in peace, Signora, as you
+say. Requiesca'. Come, Signora, it takes at least three-quarters of an
+hour to make gnocchi."
+
+And they did not know. She was standing on her daughter's grave, and the
+tablet was a memorial of the mother of the woman beside her.
+
+"You make me think of her, Signora," said the peasant. "You have her
+face. If you had her voice, to sing, I should think that you were she,
+returned from the dead."
+
+"Could she sing?" asked Gloria, dreamily, as they left the church.
+
+"Like the angels in Paradise," answered Nanna. "I think that now, when
+she sings, they are ashamed and stand silent to listen to her. If God
+wills that I make a good death, I shall hear her again."
+
+She glanced at her companion's dreamy, fateful face.
+
+"Let us not speak of the dead!" she concluded. "To-day we will make
+gnocchi of polenta."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+
+IN the afternoon Gloria called Sora Nanna to move the chest against
+which she had stumbled in the morning. It would be more convenient, she
+said, to put it under the bed, if it could not be taken away altogether.
+It was a big, old-fashioned chest of unpainted, unvarnished wood, brown
+with age, and fastened by a hasp, through which a splinter of white
+chestnut wood had been stuck instead of a padlock. Gloria saw that it
+was heavy, as Sora Nanna dragged it and pushed it across the room. She
+remarked that, if it held only clothes, it must be packed very full.
+
+Sora Nanna, glad to rest from her efforts, stood upright with her hand
+on her hip and took breath.
+
+"Signora," she said, "who knows what is in it? Things, certain things!
+There are the clothes of that poor girl. This I know. And then, certain
+other things. Who knows what is in it? It may be a thousand years since
+I looked. Signora, shall we open it? But I think there are certain
+things that belonged to the Englishman."
+
+"The Englishman?" asked Gloria, with some curiosity.
+
+She was glad of anything which could interest her a little. For the
+moment she had not yet the courage to begin to write again after
+Reanda's message. Anything which had power to turn the current of her
+thoughts was a relief. She was sitting in the same chair beside the
+cradle in which she had sat in the morning, for she had called Nanna to
+move the box at a time when the child had been taken out for its second
+airing. She leaned back, resting her auburn hair against the bare wall,
+the waxen whiteness of her face contrasting with the bluish whitewash.
+
+"What Englishman?" she asked again, wearily, but with a show of interest
+in her half-closed eyes.
+
+"Who knows? An Englishman. They called him Sor Angoscia." Nanna sat down
+on the heavy box, and dropped her skinny hands far apart upon her knees.
+"We have cursed him much. He took our daughter. It was a night of evil.
+In that night the abbess died, and Sister Maria Addolorata was burned in
+her cell, and the Englishman took our daughter. He took our one
+daughter, Signora. We have not seen her more, not even her little
+finger. It will be twenty-two years on the eve of the feast of St. Luke.
+That is in October, Signora. He took our daughter. Poor little one! She
+was young, young--perhaps she did not know what she did."
+
+Gloria leaned forward, resting her chin in her hand and her elbow on
+her knee, gazing at the old woman.
+
+"She was a flower," said Nanna, simply. "He tore her from us with the
+roots. Who knows what he did with her? She will be dead by this time.
+May the Madonna obtain grace for her! Signora, she seemed one of those
+flowers that grow on the hillside, just as God wills. Rain, sun, she was
+always fresh. Then came the storm. Who could find her any more? Poor
+little one!"
+
+"Poor child!" exclaimed Gloria.
+
+And she made Nanna tell all she knew, and how they had found the girl's
+peasant dress in a corner of that very room.
+
+"Signora, if you wish to see, I will content you," said Nanna, rising at
+last.
+
+She opened the box. It exhaled the peculiar odour of heavy cloth which
+has been worn and has then been kept closely shut up for years. On the
+top lay Annetta's carpet apron. Nanna held it up, and there were tears
+in her eyes, glistening on her dry skin like water in a crevice of brown
+rock.
+
+"Signora, there are moths in it, see! Who cares for these things? They
+are a memory. And this is her skirt, and this is her bodice. Eh, it was
+beautiful once. The shoes, Signora, I wore them, for we had the same
+feet. What would you? It seemed a sin to let them mould, because they
+were hers. The apron, too, I might have worn it. Who knows why I did
+not wear it? It was the affection. We are all so, we women. And now
+there are moths in it. I might have worn it. At least it would not have
+been lost."
+
+Gloria peered into the box, and saw under the clothes a number of books
+packed neatly with a box made of English oak. She stretched down her
+hand and took one of the volumes. It was an English medical treatise.
+She looked at the fly-leaf.
+
+A loud cry from Gloria startled the old woman.
+
+"Angus Dalrymple--but--" Gloria read the name and stared at Nanna.
+
+"Eh, eh!" assented Nanna, nodding violently and smiling a little as she
+at last recognized the Scotchman's name which she had never been able to
+pronounce. "Yes--that is it. That was the name of the Englishman. An
+evil death on him and all his house! Stefanone says it always. I also
+may say it once. It was he. He took our daughter. Stefanone went after
+them, but they had the beast of the convent gardener. It was a good
+beast, and they made it run. Stefanone heard of them all the way to the
+sea, but the twenty-four hours had passed, and the war-ship was far out.
+He could see it. Could he go to the war-ship? It had cannons. They would
+have killed him. Then I should have had neither daughter nor husband. So
+he came back."
+
+The long habit of acting had made Gloria strong, but her hands shook on
+the closed volume. She had known that her mother had been an Italian,
+that they had left Italy suddenly and had been married on board an
+English man-of-war by the captain, that same Walter Crowdie, a relative
+of Dalrymple's, after whom Gloria and Griggs had named the child. More
+than that Dalrymple had never been willing to tell her. She remembered,
+too, that though she had once or twice begged him to take her to Tivoli
+and Subiaco, he had refused rather abruptly. It was clear enough now.
+Her mother had been this Annetta whom Dalrymple had stolen away in the
+night.
+
+And the wrinkled, leathery old hag, with her damp, coarse mouth, her skinny
+hands, and her cunning, ignorant eyes, was her grandmother--Stefanone
+was her grandfather--her mother had been a peasant, like them, beautified
+by one of nature's mad miracles.
+
+There could be no doubt about it. That was the truth, and it fell upon
+her with its cruel, massive weight, striking her where many other truths
+had struck her before this one, in her vanity.
+
+She grasped the book tightly with both hands and set her teeth. After
+that, she did not know what Nanna said, and the old woman, thinking
+Gloria was not paying a proper attention to her remarks, pushed and
+heaved the box across the room rather discontentedly. It would not go
+under the bed, being too high, so she wedged it in between the foot of
+the bedstead and the wall. There was just room for it there.
+
+"Signora, if ever your one child leaves you without a word, you will
+understand," said Nanna, a little offended at finding no sympathy.
+
+"I understand too well," answered Gloria.
+
+Then she suddenly realized what the woman wanted, and with great
+self-control she held out her hand kindly. Nanna took it and smiled, and
+pressed it in her horny fingers.
+
+"You are young, Signora. When you are old, you will understand many
+things, when evils have pounded your heart in a mortar. Oil is sweet,
+vinegar is sour; with both one makes salad. This is our life. Rest
+yourself, Signora, for you walked well this morning. I go."
+
+Gloria felt the pressure of the rough fingers on hers, after Nanna had
+left her. The acrid odour of peeled vegetables clung to her own hand,
+and she rose and washed it carefully, though she was scarcely conscious
+of what she was doing. Suddenly she dropped the towel and went back to
+the box. It had crossed her mind that the single book she had opened
+might have been borrowed from her father and that she might find another
+name in the others--that Nanna might have been mistaken in thinking that
+she recognized the English name--that it might all be a mistake, after
+all.
+
+With violent hands she dragged out the moth-eaten clothes and threw them
+behind her upon the floor, and seized the books, opening them
+desperately one after the other. In each there was the name, 'Angus
+Dalrymple,' in her father's firm young handwriting of twenty years ago.
+She threw them down and lifted out the oak box. A little brass plate was
+let into the lid, and bore the initials, 'A. D.' There was no doubt
+left. The books all bore dates prior to 1844, the year in which, as she
+knew, her father had been married. It was impossible to hesitate, for
+the case was terribly clear.
+
+She rose to her feet and carried the box to the window and set it upon a
+chair, sitting down upon another before it. It was not locked. She
+raised the lid, and saw that it was a medicine chest. There was a
+drawer, or little tray, on the top, full of small boxes and very minute
+vials, lying on their sides. Lifting this out, she saw a number of
+little stoppered bottles set in holes made in a thin piece of board for
+a frame. One was missing, and there were eleven left. She counted them
+mechanically, not knowing why she did so. Then she took them out and
+looked at the labels. The first she touched contained spirits of
+camphor. It chanced to be the only one of which the contents were
+harmless. The others were strong tinctures and acids, vegetable poisons,
+belladonna, aconite, and the like, sulphuric acid, nitric acid,
+hydrochloric acid, and others.
+
+Gloria looked at them curiously and set them back, one by one, put in
+the little tray and closed the lid. Then she sat still a long time and
+gazed out of the window at the rugged line of the hills.
+
+Between her and the pale sky she saw her own life, and the hideous
+failure of it all, culminating in the certainty that she was of the
+blood of the old peasant couple to whose house a seeming chance had
+brought her to die. She felt that she could not live, and would not live
+if she could. It was all too wildly horrible, too utterly desolate.
+
+The only human being that clung to her was the one of all others whom
+she most feared and hated, whose very touch sent a cold shiver through
+her. She and fate together had pounded her heart in a mortar, as the old
+woman had said. With a bitterness that sickened her she thought of her
+brief married life, of her poor social ambition, of her hopeless efforts
+to be some one amongst the great. What could she be, the daughter of
+peasants, what could she have ever been? Probably some one knew the
+truth about her, in all that great society. Such things might be known.
+Francesca Campodonico's delicate noble face rose faintly between her and
+the sky, and she realized with excruciating suddenness the distance that
+separated her from the woman she hated, the woman who perhaps knew that
+Gloria Dalrymple was the daughter of a peasant and a fit wife by her
+birth for Angelo Reanda, the steward's son.
+
+The ruin of her life spread behind her and before her. She could not
+face it. The confusion of it all seemed to blind her, and the confusion
+was pierced by the terrible thought that on the next day but one Griggs
+would return again, the one being who would not leave her, who believed
+in her, who worshipped her, and whom she hated for himself and for the
+destruction of her existence which had come by him.
+
+In the box before her was death, painful perhaps, but sure as the grave
+itself. She was not a coward, except when she was afraid of Paul Griggs,
+and the fear lest he, too, should find out the truth was worse than the
+fear of mortal pain.
+
+She sat still in her place, staring out of the window. After a long
+time, the nurse came in, carrying the child asleep in her arms, covered
+with a thin gauze veil. Gloria started, and then smiled mechanically as
+she had trained herself to smile whenever the child was brought to her.
+The nurse laid the small thing in its cradle, and Gloria, as in a dream,
+put the books and the clothes back into the box, and was glad that the
+nurse asked no questions. When she had shut down the lid, she rose to
+her feet and saw that she had left the medicine chest on the chair. She
+took it into the bedroom and set it upon the table.
+
+Then she sat down and wrote to Reanda. There was no haste in the
+writing, and her head was clear and cool, for she was not afraid. Griggs
+could not return for two days, and she had plenty of time. She went over
+her story, as she had gone over it many times before in her letters. She
+told him all, but not the discovery she had just made. That should die
+with her, if it could. It would be easy enough, on the next day, when
+the nurse was out, to open the box again, and to tear out the fly-leaf
+from each book and so destroy the name. As for the medicine chest,
+Griggs might see that it had belonged to her father, but he would
+suppose that she had brought it amongst her belongings. He would never
+guess that it had lain hidden in the old box for more than twenty years.
+That was her plan, and it was simple enough. But she should have to wait
+until the next day. It was better so. She could think of what she was
+going to do, and nobody would disturb her. She finished her letter.
+
+"You have killed me," she wrote at the end. "If I had not loved you to
+the very end, I would tell you that my death is on your soul. But it is
+not all your fault, if I have loved you to death. I would not die if I
+could be free in any other way, but I cannot live to be touched and
+caressed again by this man whom I loathe with all my soul. I tell you
+that when he kisses me it is as though I were stung by a serpent of ice.
+It is for your sake that I hate him as I do. For your sake I have
+suffered hell on earth for more than a whole year. For your sake I die.
+I cannot live without you. I have told you so again and a hundred times
+again, and you have not believed me. You write to-day and you tell me
+that I shall be free, when you die, to marry Paul Griggs. I would rather
+marry Satan in hell. But I shall be free to-morrow, for I shall be dead.
+God will forgive me, for God knows what I suffer. Good-bye. I love you,
+Angelo. I shall love you to-morrow, when the hour comes, and after that
+I shall love you always. This is the end. Good-bye. I love you; I kiss
+your soul with my soul. Good-bye, good-bye.
+                                                           "GLORIA."
+
+She cut a lock from her auburn hair and twisted it round and round her
+wedding ring, and thrust it into the envelope.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+
+TWO days later, Paul Griggs stood beside Gloria. She was not dead yet,
+but no earthly power could save her. She lay white and motionless on the
+high trestle bed, unconscious of his presence. They had sent a messenger
+for him, and he had come. The door was locked. Stefanone and his wife
+whispered together on the landing. In the third room, beyond, the nurse
+was shedding hysterical tears over the sleeping child.
+
+The strong man stood stone still with shadowy, unblinking eyes, gazing
+into the dying face. Not a muscle moved, not a feature was distorted,
+his breath was regular and slow, for his grief had taken hold upon his
+soul, and his body was unconscious of time, as though it were already
+dead.
+
+She had suffered horrible agonies for two nights and one day, and now
+the end was very near, for the wracked nerves could no longer feel. She
+lay on her back, lightly covered, one white arm and hand above the
+coverlet, the other hidden beneath it.
+
+The room was very hot, and the sun streamed through the narrow aperture
+of the nearly closed shutters, and made a bright streak on the red
+bricks, for it was morning still.
+
+The purple lids opened, and Gloria looked up. There was no shiver now,
+as she recognized the man she feared, for the nerves were almost dead.
+Perhaps there was less fear, for she knew that it was almost over. The
+dark eyes were fixed on his with a mysterious, wondering look.
+
+He tried to speak, and his lips moved, but he could make no sound, and
+his chest heaved convulsively, once. He knew what she had done, for they
+had told him. He knew, now that he tried to speak and could not, that he
+was half killed by grief. She saw the effort and understood, and faintly
+smiled.
+
+"Why?"
+
+He wrenched the single broken word out of himself by an enormous effort,
+and his throat swelled and was dry. Suddenly a single great drop of
+sweat rolled down his pale forehead.
+
+"I could not live," she answered, in a cool, far voice beyond suffering,
+and still she smiled.
+
+"Why? Why?"
+
+The repeated word broke out twice like two sobs, but not a feature
+moved. The dying woman's eyelids quivered.
+
+"I was a burden to you," she said faintly and distinctly. "You are free
+now, you have--only the child."
+
+His calm broke.
+
+"Gloria, Gloria! In the name of God Almighty, do not leave me so!"
+
+He clasped her in his arms and lifted her a little, pressing his lips to
+her face. She was inert as a statue. She feared him still, and she felt
+the shiver of horror at his touch, but it could not move her limbs any
+more. Her eyes opened and looked into his, very close, but his were
+shut. The mask was gone. The man's whole soul was in his agonized face,
+and his arm shook with her. Her mind was clear and she understood. She
+was still herself, acting her play out in the teeth of death.
+
+"I could not live," she said. "I could not be a millstone, dragging you
+down, watching you as you killed yourself in working for me. It was to
+be one of us. It was better so."
+
+In his agony he laid his head beside hers on the pillow.
+
+"Gloria--for Christ's sake--don't leave me--" The deep moan came from
+his tortured heart.
+
+"Bring--the child--Walter--" she said very faintly.
+
+Even in death she could not bear to be alone with him. He straightened
+himself, stood up, and saw the light fading in her eyes. Then, indeed, a
+shiver ran through her and shook her. Then the lids opened wide, and she
+cried out loudly.
+
+"Quick--I am going--"
+
+Rather than that she should not have what she wished, he tore himself
+away and wrenched the door open, forgetting that it was locked.
+
+"Bring the child!" he cried, into the face of old Nanna, who was
+standing there, and he pushed her towards the door of the other room
+with one hand, while he already turned back to Gloria.
+
+He started, for she was sitting up, with wide eyes and outstretched
+hands, gazing at the patch of sunlight on the floor. Dying, she saw the
+awful vision of her dream again, rising stiff and stark from the bricks
+to its upright horror between her and the light. Her hands pointed at it
+and shook, and her jaw dropped, but she was motionless as she sat.
+
+Nanna, sobbing, came in suddenly, holding up the little child straight
+before her, that it might see its mother before she was gone forever.
+The baby hands feebly beat its little sides, and it gasped for breath.
+
+Words came from Gloria's open mouth, articulate, clear, but very far in
+sound.
+
+"An evil death on you and all your house!" the words said, as though
+spoken by another.
+
+The outstretched hands sank slowly, as the vision laid itself down
+before her, straight and corpse-like. The beautiful head fell back upon
+Griggs's arm, and the eyes met his.
+
+[Illustration: "The last great, true note died away."--Vol. II., p.
+219.]
+
+Nanna prayed aloud, holding up the child mechanically, and the small
+eyes were fixed, horrorstruck, upon the bed. A low cry trembled in the
+air. Stefanone, his hat in his hand, stood against the door, bowed a
+little, as though he were in church. The cry came again. Then there was
+a sort of struggle.
+
+In an instant Gloria was standing up on the bed to her full height. And
+the hot, still room rang with a burst of desperate, ear-breaking song,
+in majestic, passionate, ascending intervals.
+
+          "Calpesta il mio cadavere, ma salva il Trovator!"
+
+The last great, true note died away. For one instant she stood up still,
+with outstretched hands, white, motionless. Then the flame in the dark
+eyes broke and went out, and Gloria fell down dead.
+
+"Maria Addolorata! Maria Addolorata!" Nanna screamed in deadly terror,
+as she heard the transcendent voice that one time, like a voice from the
+grave.
+
+She sank down, fainting upon the floor, and the little child rolled from
+her slackened arms upon the coarse bricks and lay on its face, moaning
+tremulously. No one heeded it.
+
+Stefanone, with instinctive horror of death, turned and went blindly
+down the steps, not knowing what he had seen, the death notes still
+ringing in his ears.
+
+On the bed, the man lay dumb upon the dead woman. Only the poor little
+child seemed to be alive, and clutched feebly at the coarse red bricks,
+and moaned and bruised its small face. It bore the slender inheritance
+of fatal life, the inheritance of vows broken and of faith outraged, and
+with it, perhaps, the implanted seed of a lifelong terror, not
+remembered, but felt throughout life, as real and as deadly as an
+inheritance of mortal disease. Better, perhaps, if death had taken it,
+too, to the lonely grave of the outcast and suicide woman, among the
+rocks, out of earshot of humanity. Death makes strange oversights and
+leaves strange gleanings for life, when he has reaped his field and
+housed his harvest.
+
+They would not give Gloria Christian burial, for it was known throughout
+Subiaco that she had poisoned herself, and those were still the old
+days, when the Church's rules were the law of the people.
+
+Paul Griggs took the body of the woman he had loved, and loved beyond
+death, and he laid her in a deep grave in a hollow of the hillside. Such
+words as he had to speak to those who helped him, he spoke quietly, and
+none could say that they had seen the still face moved by sorrow. But as
+they watched him, a human sort of fear took hold of them, at his great
+quiet, and they knew that his grief was beyond anything which could be
+shown or understood. It was night, and they filled the grave after he
+had thrown earth into it with his hands. He sent them away, and they
+left him alone with the dead, leaving also one of their lanterns upon a
+stone near by.
+
+All that night he lay on the grave, dumb. Then, when the dawn came upon
+him, he kissed the loose earth and stones, and got upon his feet and
+went slowly down the hillside to the town beyond the torrent. He went
+into the house noiselessly, and lay down upon the bed on which she had
+died. And so he did for two nights and two days. On the third, a great
+carriage came from Rome, bringing twelve men, singers of the Sistine
+Chapel and of the choir of Saint Peter's and of Saint John Lateran,
+twelve men having very beautiful voices, as sweet as any in the world.
+He had sent for them when he had been told that she could not have
+Christian burial.
+
+They were talking and laughing together when they came, but when they
+saw his face they grew very quiet, and followed him in silence where he
+led them. Two little boys followed them, too, wondering what was to
+happen, and what the thirteen men were going to do, all dressed in
+black, walking so steadily together.
+
+When they all came to the hollow in the hillside, they saw a mound, as
+of a grave, amidst the stones, and on it there lay a cross of black
+wood. The singers looked at one another in silence, and they understood
+that whoever lay in the grave had been refused a place in the
+churchyard, for some great sin. But they said nothing. The man who led
+them stood still at the head of the cross and took off his hat, and
+looked at his twelve companions, who uncovered their heads. They had
+sheets of written music with them, and they passed them quietly about
+from one to another and looked towards one who was their leader.
+
+Overhead, the summer sky was pale, and there were twin mountains of
+great clouds in the northwest, hiding the sun, and in the southeast,
+whence the parching wind was blowing in fierce gusts. It blew the dry
+dust from the clods of earth on the grave, and the dust settled on the
+black clothes of the men as they stood near.
+
+The voices struck the first chord softly together, and the music for the
+dead went up to heaven, and was borne far across the torrent to the
+distance in the arms of the hot wind. And one voice climbed above the
+others, sweet and clear, as though to reach heaven itself; and another
+sank deep and true and soft in the full close of the stave, as though it
+would touch and comfort the heart that was quite still at last in the
+deep earth.
+
+Then one who was young stood a little before the rest, a strong, pale
+singer, with an angel's voice. And he sang alone to the sky and the
+dusty rocks and the solemn grave. He sang the 'Cujus animam gementem
+pertransivit gladius' of the Stabat Mater, as none had sung it before
+him, nor perhaps has ever sung it since that day--he alone, without
+other music.
+
+They came also to the words 'Fac ut animæ donetur Paradisi gloria,' and
+the word was a name to him who listened silently in their midst.
+
+Besides these they sang also a 'Miserere,' and last of all, 'Requiem
+eternam dona eis.'
+
+Then there was silence, and they looked at the still face, as though
+asking what they should do. The mysterious eyes met theirs with shadows.
+The pale head bent itself in thanks, twice or thrice, but there were no
+words.
+
+So they turned and left him there on the hillside, and went back to the
+town, awestruck by the vastness of the man's sorrow. And afterwards, for
+many years, when any of them heard of a great grief, he shook his head
+and said that he and those who had sung with him over a lonely grave in
+the mountains, alone knew what a man could feel and yet live.
+
+And Paul Griggs lived through those days, and is still alive. His grief
+could not spend itself, but his stern strength took hold of life again,
+and he took the child with him and went back to Rome, to work for it
+from that time forward, and to shield it from evil if he could, and to
+bring it up to be a man, ignorant of what had happened in Subiaco in
+those summer days, ignorant of the tie that made it his, to be a man
+free from the burden of past fates and sins and broken vows and trampled
+faith, and of the death his dead mother had died, having a clean name of
+his own, with which there could be no memories of misery and fear and
+horror.
+
+He wrote a few short words to Angus Dalrymple, now Lord Redin at last,
+to tell him the truth as far as he knew it. The hand that had laboured
+so bravely for Gloria could hardly trace the words that told of her
+death.
+
+Then, when the summer heat was passed, he took little Walter Crowdie
+with him, hiring an Englishwoman to tend the child, and he crossed the
+ocean and gave it to certain kinsfolk of his in America, telling them
+that it was the child of one who had been very dear to him, that he had
+taken it as his own, and would provide for it and take it back when it
+should be older. And so he did, and little Walter Crowdie grew up with
+an angel's voice, and other gifts which made him famous in his day. But
+many things happened before that time came.
+
+He could do no better than that. For a time he strove to earn money with
+his pen in his own country. But the land was still trembling from the
+convulsion of a great war, and there were many before him, and he was
+little known. After a year had passed, he saw that he could not then
+succeed, and very heavy at heart he set his face eastward again, to
+toil at his old calling as a correspondent for a great London paper, to
+earn bread for himself and for the one living being that he loved.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+_DONNA FRANCESCA CAMPODONICO._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+
+NOT long after this Dalrymple returned to Rome, after an absence of
+several years. Family affairs had kept him in England and Scotland
+during his daughter's married life with Reanda; and after she had left
+the latter, it was natural that he should not wish to be in the same
+city with her, considering the view he took of her actions. Then, after
+he had learned from Griggs's brief note that she was dead, he felt that
+he could not return at once, hard and unforgiving as he was. But at last
+the power that attracted him was too strong to be resisted any longer,
+and he yielded to it and came back.
+
+He took up his abode in a hotel in the Piazza di Spagna, not far from
+his old lodgings. Long as he had lived in Rome, he was a foreigner there
+and liked the foreigners' quarter of the city. He intended once more to
+get a lodging and a servant, and to live in his morose solitude as of
+old, but on his first arrival he naturally went to the hotel. He did not
+know whether Griggs were in Rome. Reanda was alive, and living at the
+Palazzetto Borgia; for the two had exchanged letters twice a year,
+written in the constrained tone of mutual civility which suited the
+circumstances in which they were placed towards each other.
+
+In Dalrymple's opinion, Reanda had been to blame to a certain extent, in
+having maintained his intimacy with Francesca when he was aware that it
+displeased his wife. At the same time, the burden of the fault was
+undoubtedly the woman's, and her father felt in a measure responsible
+for it. Whether he felt much more than that it would be hard to say. His
+gloomy nature had spent itself in secret sorrow for his wife, with a
+faithfulness of grief which might well atone for many shortcomings. It
+is certain that he was not in any way outwardly affected by the news of
+Gloria's death. He had never loved her, she had disgraced him, and now
+she was dead. There was nothing more to be said about it.
+
+He was not altogether indifferent to the inheritance of title and
+fortune which had fallen to him in his advanced middle age. But if
+either influenced his character, the result was rather an increased
+tendency to live his own life in scorn and defiance of society, for it
+made him conscious that he should find even less opposition to his
+eccentricities than in former days, when he had been relatively a poor
+man without any especial claim to consideration.
+
+Two or three days after he had arrived in Rome, he went to the
+Palazzetto Borgia and sent in his card, asking to see Francesca
+Campodonico. In order that she might know who he was, he wrote his name
+in pencil, as she would probably not have recognized him as Lord Redin.
+In this he was mistaken, for Reanda, who had heard the news, had told
+her of it. She received him in the drawing-room. She looked very ill, he
+thought, and was much thinner than in former times, but her manner was
+not changed. They talked upon indifferent subjects, and there was a
+constraint between them. Dalrymple broke through it roughly at last.
+
+"Did you ever see my daughter after she left her husband?" he asked, as
+though he were inquiring about a mere acquaintance.
+
+Francesca started a little.
+
+"No," she answered. "It would not have been easy."
+
+She remembered her interview with Griggs, but resolved not to speak of
+it. She would have changed the subject abruptly if he had given her
+time.
+
+"It certainly was not to be expected that you should," said Lord Redin,
+thoughtfully. "When a woman chooses to break with society, she knows
+perfectly well what she is doing, and one may as well leave her to
+herself."
+
+Francesca was shocked by the cynicism of the speech. The colour rose
+faintly in her cheeks.
+
+"She was your daughter," she said, reproachfully. "Since she is dead,
+you should speak less cruelly of her."
+
+"I did not speak cruelly. I merely stated a fact. She disgraced herself
+and me, and her husband. The circumstance that she is dead does not
+change the case, so far as I can see."
+
+"Do you know how she died?" asked Francesca, moved to righteous anger,
+and willing to pain him if she could.
+
+He looked up suddenly, and bent his shaggy brows.
+
+"No," he answered. "That man Griggs wrote me that she had died suddenly.
+That was all I heard."
+
+"She did not die a natural death."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"She poisoned herself. She could not bear the life. It was very
+dreadful." Francesca's voice sank to a low tone.
+
+Lord Redin was silent for a few moments, and his bony face had a grim
+look. Perhaps something in the dead woman's last act appealed to him, as
+nothing in her life had done.
+
+"Tell me, please. I should like to know. After all, she was my
+daughter."
+
+"Yes," said Francesca, gravely. "She was your daughter. She was very
+unhappy with Paul Griggs, and she found out very soon that she had made
+a dreadful mistake. She loved her husband, after all."
+
+"Like a woman!" interjected Lord Redin, half unconsciously.
+
+Francesca paid no attention to the remark, except, perhaps, that she
+raised her eyebrows a little.
+
+"They went out to spend the summer at Subiaco--"
+
+"At Subiaco?" Dalrymple's steely blue eyes fixed themselves in a look of
+extreme attention.
+
+"Yes, during the heat. They lodged in the house of a man called
+Stefanone--a wine-seller--a very respectable place."
+
+Lord Redin had started nervously at the name, but he recovered himself.
+
+"Very respectable," he said, in an odd tone.
+
+"You know the house?" asked Francesca, in surprise.
+
+"Very well indeed. I was there nearly five and twenty years ago. I
+supposed that Stefanone was dead by this time."
+
+"No. He and his wife are alive, and take lodgers."
+
+"Excuse me, but how do you know all this?" asked Lord Redin, with sudden
+curiosity.
+
+"I have been there," answered Francesca. "I have often been to the
+convent. You know that one of our family is generally abbess. A
+Cardinal Braccio was archbishop, too, a good many years ago. Casa
+Braccio owns a good deal of property there."
+
+"Yes. I know that you are of the family."
+
+"My name was Francesca Braccio," said Francesca, quietly. "Of course I
+have always known Subiaco, and every one there knows Stefanone, and the
+story of his daughter who ran away with an Englishman many years ago,
+and never was heard of again."
+
+Lord Redin grew a trifle paler.
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed. "Does every one know that story?"
+
+There was something so constrained in his tone that Francesca looked at
+him curiously.
+
+"Yes--in Subiaco," she answered. "But Gloria--" she lingered a little
+sadly on the name--"Gloria wrote letters to her husband from there and
+begged him to go and see her."
+
+"He could hardly be expected to do that," said Lord Redin, his hard tone
+returning. "Did you advise him to go?"
+
+"He consulted me," answered Francesca, rather coldly. "I told him to
+follow his own impulse. He did not go. He did not believe that she was
+sincere."
+
+"I do not blame him. When a woman has done that sort of thing, there is
+no reason for believing her."
+
+"He should have gone. I should have influenced him, I think, and I did
+wrong. She wrote him one more letter and then killed herself. She
+suffered horribly and only died two days afterwards. Shall I tell you
+more?"
+
+"If there is more to tell," said Lord Redin, less hardly.
+
+"There is not much. I went out there last year. They had refused her
+Christian burial. Paul Griggs bought a piece of land amongst the rock,
+on the other side of the torrent, and buried her there. It is surrounded
+by a wall, and there is a plain slab without a name. There are flowers.
+He pays Stefanone to have it cared for. They told me all they knew--it
+is too terrible. She died singing--she was out of her mind. It must have
+been dreadful. Old Nanna, Stefanone's wife, was in the room, and fainted
+with terror. It seems that poor Gloria, oddly enough, had an
+extraordinary resemblance to that unfortunate nun of our family who was
+burned to death in the convent, and whom Nanna had often seen. She sang
+like her, too--at the last minute Nanna thought she saw poor sister
+Maria Addolorata standing up dead and singing. It was rather strange."
+
+Lord Redin said nothing. He had bowed his head so that Francesca could
+not see his face, but she saw that his hands were trembling violently.
+She thought that she had misjudged the man, and that he was really very
+deeply moved by the story of his daughter's death. Doubtless, his
+emotion had made him wish to control himself, and he had overshot the
+mark and spoken cruelly only in order to seem calm. No one had ever
+spoken to him of his wife, and even now he could hardly bear to hear her
+name. It was long before he looked up. Then he rose almost immediately.
+
+"Will you allow me to come and see you occasionally?" he asked, with a
+gentleness not at all like his usual manner.
+
+Francesca was touched at last, misunderstanding the cause of the change.
+She told him to come as often as he pleased. As he was going, he
+remembered that he had not asked after his son-in-law. Reanda had always
+seemed to belong to Francesca, and it was natural enough that he should
+inquire of her.
+
+"Where is Reanda to be found?" he asked.
+
+"He is very ill," said Francesca, in a low voice. "I am afraid you
+cannot see him."
+
+"Where does he live? I will at least inquire. I am sorry to hear that he
+is ill."
+
+"He lives here," she answered with a little hesitation. "He is in his
+old rooms upstairs."
+
+"Oh! Yes--thank you." Their eyes met for a moment. Lord Redin's
+glittered, but Francesca's were clear and true. "I am sure you take good
+care of him," he added. "Good-bye."
+
+He left her alone, and when he was gone, she sat down wearily and laid
+her head back against a cushion, with half-closed eyes. Her lips were
+almost colourless, and her mouth had grown ten years older.
+
+Reanda was dying, and she knew it, and with him the light was going out
+of her life, as it had gone out long ago from Dalrymple's, as it had
+gone out of the life of Paul Griggs. The idea crossed her mind that
+these two men, with herself, were linked and bound together by some
+strange fatality which she could not understand, but from which there
+was no escape, and which was bringing them slowly and surely to the
+blank horror of lonely old age.
+
+The same thought occurred to Lord Redin as he slowly threaded the
+streets, going back to his hotel, to his lonely dinner, his lonely
+evening, his lonely, sleepless night. He alone of the three now knew all
+that there was to know, and in the chronicle of his far memories all led
+back to that day at Subiaco, long ago, when he had first knocked at the
+convent gate--beyond that, to the evening when poor Annetta had told him
+of the beautiful nun with the angel's voice. Many lives had been wrecked
+since that first day, and every one of them owed its ruin to him. He
+felt strangely drawn to Francesca Campodonico. There was something in
+her face that very faintly reminded him of his dead wife, her
+kinswoman, and of his dead daughter, another of her race. His gloomy
+northern nature felt the fatality of it all. He never could repent of
+what he had done. The golden light of his one short happiness shone
+through the shrouding veil of fatal time. In his own eyes, with his
+beliefs, he had not even sinned in taking what he had loved so well. But
+all the sorrow he saw, came from that deed. Francesca Campodonico's eyes
+were as clear and true as her heart. But he knew that Reanda's life was
+everything on earth to her, and he guessed that she was to lose that,
+too, before long. He would willingly have parted with his own, but
+through all his being there was a rough, manly courage that forbade the
+last act of fear, and there was a stern old Scottish belief that it was
+wrong--plainly wrong.
+
+He did not wish to see Paul Griggs any more than he had wished to see
+his daughter after she had left her husband. But no thought of vengeance
+crossed his mind. It seemed to him fruitless to think of avenging
+himself upon fate; for, after all, it was fate that had done the dire
+mischief. Possibly, he thought, as he walked slowly towards his hotel,
+fate had brought him back to Rome now, to deal with him as she had dealt
+with his. He should be glad of it, for he found little in life that was
+not gloomy and lonely beyond any words. He did not know why he had come.
+He had acted upon an impulse in going to see Francesca that day.
+
+When he reached the Corso, instead of going to his hotel he walked down
+the street in the direction of the Piazza del Popolo. He wished to see
+the house in which Gloria had lived with Griggs, and he remembered the
+street and the number from her having written to him when she wanted
+money. He reached the corner of the Via della Frezza, and turned down,
+looking up at the numbers as he went along. He glanced at the little
+wine shop on the left, with its bush, its red glass lantern, and its
+rush-bottomed stools set out by the door. In the shadow within he saw
+the gleam of silver buttons on a dark blue jacket. There was nothing
+uncommon in the sight.
+
+He found the house, paused, looked up at the windows, and looked twice
+at the number.
+
+"Do you seek some one?" inquired the one-eyed cobbler, resting his black
+hands on his knees.
+
+"Did Mr. Paul Griggs ever live here?" asked Lord Redin.
+
+"Many years," answered the cobbler, laconically.
+
+"Where does he live now?"
+
+"Always here, except when he is not here. Third floor, on the left. You
+can ring the bell. Who knows? Perhaps he will open. I do not wish to
+tell lies."
+
+The old man grunted, bent down over the shoe, and ran his awl through
+the sole. He was profoundly attached to Paul Griggs, who had always been
+kind to him, and since Gloria's death he defended him from visitors with
+more determination than ever.
+
+Lord Redin stood still and said nothing. In ten seconds the cobbler
+looked up with a surly frown.
+
+"If you wish to go up, go up," he growled. "If not, favour me by getting
+out of my light."
+
+The Scotchman looked at him.
+
+"You do not remember me," he observed. "I used to come here with the
+Signore."
+
+"Well? I have told you. If you want him, there is the staircase."
+
+"No. I do not want him," said Lord Redin, and he turned away abruptly.
+
+"As you please," growled the cobbler without looking up again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+
+PAUL GRIGGS had gone back to the house in the Via della Frezza after his
+return from America, and lived alone in the little apartment in which
+the happy days of his life had been spent. He was a man able to live two
+lives,--the one in the past, the other in the active present. It was his
+instinct to be alone in his sorrow, and alone in the struggle which lay
+before him, for himself and his child. But he would have with him all
+that could make the memory of Gloria real. The reality of such things
+softened with their contrast the hardness of life.
+
+He had taken the same rooms again. Out of boxes and trunks stored in a
+garret of the house, he had taken many things which had belonged to
+Gloria. Alone, he had arranged the rooms as they used to be. His
+writing-table stood in the same place, and near it was Gloria's chair;
+beside it, the little stand with her needlework, her silks, her
+scissors, and her thimble, all as it used to be. A novel she had once
+read when sitting there lay upon the chair. Many little objects which
+had belonged to her were all in their accustomed places. On the
+mantelpiece the cheap American clock ticked loudly as in old days.
+
+Day after day, as of old, he sat in his place at work. He had made the
+room so alive with her that sometimes, looking up from a long spell of
+writing, he forgot, and stared an instant at the bedroom door, and
+listened for her footstep. Those were his happiest moments, though each
+was killed in turn by the vision of a lonely grave among rocks.
+
+With intensest longing he called her back to him. In his sleep, the last
+words he had spoken to her were spoken again by his unconscious lips in
+the still, dark night. Everything in him called her, his living soul and
+his strong bodily self. There were times when he knew that if he opened
+his eyes, shut to see her, he should see her really, there in her chair.
+He looked, trembling, and there was nothing. In dreams he sought her and
+could not find her, though he wandered in dark places, across endless
+wastes of broken clods of earth and broken stone. It was as though her
+grave covered the whole world round, and his path lay on the shadowed
+arms of an infinite great cross. And again the grey dawn awoke him from
+the search, to feel that, for pity's sake, she must be alive and near
+him. But he was always alone.
+
+Silent, iron-browed, iron-handed, he faced the world alone, doing all
+that was required of him, and more also. As he had said to Gloria in
+that very room, he was building up a superiority for himself, since
+genius was not his. He had in the rough ore of his strength the metal
+which some few men receive as a birth-gift from nature, ready smelted
+and refined, ready for them to coin at a single stroke, and throw
+broadcast to the applauding world. He had not much, perhaps, but he had
+something of the true ore, and in the furnace of his untiring energy he
+would burn out the dross and find the precious gold at last. It could
+not be for her, now. It was not for himself, but it was to be for the
+little child, growing up in a far country with a clean name--to be his
+father's friend, and nothing more, but to be happy, for the dead woman's
+sake who bore him.
+
+As in all that made a part of Paul Griggs, there was in his memory of
+Gloria and in his sorrow for her that element of endurance which was the
+foundation of his nature. That portion of his life was finished, and
+there could never be anything like it again; but it was to be always
+present with him, so long as he lived. He was sure of that. It would
+always be in his power to close his eyes and believe that she was near
+him. If it were possible, he loved her more dead than he had loved her
+living.
+
+And she had loved him to the last, and had given her life in the mad
+thought of lightening his burden. Her last words to him had told him
+so. Her last wish had been to see the child. And the greatest sacrifice
+he could now make to her was to separate himself from the child, and let
+him grow up to look upon the man who provided for him as his friend, but
+as nothing more. It was an exaggerated idea, perhaps, though it was by
+far the wisest course. Yet in doing what he did, Griggs deprived himself
+for months at a time of something that was of her, and he did it for her
+sake. He knew that in her heart there had been the unspoken shame of her
+ruined life. Shame should never come near little Walter Crowdie. The
+secret could be kept, and Paul Griggs meant to keep it, as he kept many
+things from the world.
+
+All his lonely life grew in the perfect memory, cut short though it was
+by fate's cruel scythe-stroke. Even that one fearful day held no shadow
+of unfaithfulness. She had been mad, but she had loved him. She had done
+a deed of horror upon herself, but she had loved him, and madly had done
+it for his sake. She had laid down her life for him. All that he could
+do would be nothing compared with that. All that he could tear from the
+world and lay tenderly as an offering at her feet would be but a handful
+of dust in comparison with what she had done in the madness of love.
+
+His heart strings wound themselves about their treasure, closer and
+closer, stronger and stronger. The two natures that strove together in
+him, the natures of body and soul, were at one with her, and drew life
+from her though she was gone. It seemed impossible that they could ever
+again part and smite one another for the mastery, as of old, for one
+sorrow had overwhelmed them both, and together they knew the depths of
+one grief.
+
+Again, as of old, he defied fate. Death could take the child from him,
+but could not separate the three in death or life. So long as the child
+lived, to do or die for him was the question, while life should last.
+But Paul Griggs defied fate, for fate's grim hand could not uproot his
+heart from the strong place of his great dead love, to buffet it and
+tear it again. He was alone, bodily, but he was safe forever.
+
+Out of the dimness of twilight shadows the pale face came to him, and
+the sweet lips kissed his; in a light not earthly the dark eyes
+lightened, and the red auburn hair gleamed and fell about him. In the
+darkness, a tender hand stole softly upon his, and words yet more tender
+stirred the stillness. He knew that she was near him, close to him, with
+him. The truth of what had been made the half dream all true. Only in
+his sleep he could not find her, and was wandering ever over a dreary
+grave that covered the whole world.
+
+So his life went on with little change, inwardly or outwardly, from day
+to day, in the absolute security from danger which the dead give us of
+themselves. The faith that had gone beyond her death could go beyond his
+own life, too. He defied fate.
+
+Then fate, silent, relentless, awful, knocked at his door.
+
+He was at work as usual. It was a bright winter's day, and the high sun
+of the late morning streamed across one corner of his writing-table. He
+was thinking of nothing but his writing, and upon that his thoughts were
+closely intent in that everlasting struggle to do better which had
+nearly driven poor Gloria mad.
+
+The little jingling bell rang and thumped against the outer door to
+which it was fastened. He paid no attention to it, till it rang again,
+an instant later. Then he looked up and waited, listening. Again, again,
+and again he heard it, at equal intervals, five times in all. That was
+the old cobbler's signal, and the only one to which Griggs ever
+responded. He laid down his pen and went to the door. The one-eyed man,
+his shoemaker's apron twisted round his waist, stood on the landing, and
+gave him a small, thick package, tied with a black string, under which
+was thrust a note. Griggs took it without a word, and the bandy-legged
+old cobbler swung away from the door with a satisfied grunt.
+
+Griggs took the parcel back to his work-room, and stood by the window
+looking at the address on the note. He recognized Francesca
+Campodonico's handwriting, though he had rarely seen it, and he broke
+the seal with considerable curiosity, for he could not imagine why Donna
+Francesca should write to him. He even wondered at her knowing that he
+was in Rome. He had never spoken with her since that day long ago, when
+she had sent for him and begged him to take Gloria back to her father.
+He read the note slowly. It was in Italian, and the language was rather
+formal.
+
+          "SIGNORE:--My old and dear friend, Signor Angelo
+          Reanda, died the day before yesterday after a long
+          illness. During the last hours of his life he
+          asked me to do him a service, and I gave him the
+          solemn promise which I fulfil in sending you the
+          accompanying package. You will see that it was
+          sealed by him and addressed to you by himself,
+          probably before he was taken ill, and he saw it
+          before he died and said that it was the one he
+          meant me to send. That was all he told me
+          regarding it, and I am wholly ignorant of the
+          contents. I have ascertained that you are in Rome,
+          and are living, as formerly, in the Via della
+          Frezza, and to that address I send the parcel.
+          Pray inform me that you have received it.
+
+          "Believe me, Signore, with perfect esteem,
+                                    "FRANCESCA CAMPODONICO."
+
+Griggs read the note twice through to the end, and laid it upon the
+table. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets, and turned
+thoughtfully to the window without touching the parcel, of which he had
+not even untied the black string.
+
+So Reanda was dead at last. It was nothing to him, now, though it might
+have meant much if the man had died two years earlier. Living people
+were very little to Paul Griggs. They might as well be dead, he thought.
+Nevertheless, the bald fact that Reanda was gone, made him thoughtful.
+Another figure had disappeared out of his life, though it had not meant
+very much. He believed, and had always believed, that Reanda had loved
+Francesca in secret, though she had treated him as a mere friend, as a
+protectress should treat one who needs her protection.
+
+Griggs turned and took up the note to look at it keenly, for he believed
+himself a judge of handwriting, and he thought that he might detect in
+hers the indications of any great suffering. The lines ran down a little
+at the end, but otherwise the large, careful hand was the same as ever,
+learned in a convent and little changed since, even as the woman herself
+had changed little. She was the same always, simple, honest, strangely
+maidenlike, thoroughly good.
+
+He turned to the window again. So Reanda was dead. He would not find
+Gloria, to whatsoever place he was gone. The shadow of a smile wreathed
+itself about the mouth of the lonely man--the last that was there for a
+long time after that day. Gloria was dead, but Gloria was his, and he
+hers, for ever and ever. Neither heaven nor hell could tear up his heart
+nor loosen the strong hold of all of him that clung to her and had grown
+about her and through her, till he and she were quite one.
+
+Then, all at once, he wondered what it could be that Reanda had wished
+to send him from beyond the grave. He turned, took the parcel, and
+snapped the black string with his fingers, and took off the paper.
+Within was the parcel, wrapped in a second paper and firmly tied with
+broad tape. A few words were written on the outside.
+
+"To be given to Paul Griggs when I am dead. A. R."
+
+The superscription told nothing, but he looked at it curiously as one
+does at such things, when the sender is beyond answer. He cut the white
+tape, for it was tied so tightly that he could not slip a finger under
+it to break it. There was something of hard determination in the way it
+was tied.
+
+It contained letters in their envelopes, as they had reached Reanda
+through the post, all of the same size, laid neatly one upon the
+other--a score or more of them.
+
+Griggs felt his hand shake, for he recognized Gloria's writing. His
+first impulse was to burn the whole package, as it was, reverently, as
+something which had belonged to Gloria, in which he had no part, or
+share, or right. He laid his hand upon the pile of letters, and looked
+at the small fire to see whether it were burning well. Under his hand he
+felt something hard inside the uppermost envelope. His fate was upon
+him--the fate he had so often defied to do its worst, since all that he
+had was dead and was his forever.
+
+Without another thought, he took from the envelope the letter it
+contained, and the hard thing which was inside the letter. He held it a
+moment in his hand, and it flamed in the beam of sunlight that fell
+across the end of the table, and dazzled him. Then he realized what it
+was. It was Gloria's wedding ring, and twisted round and round it and in
+and out of it was a lock of her red auburn hair, serpent-like, flaming
+in the sunshine, with a hundred little tongues that waved and moved
+softly under his breath.
+
+An icy chill smote him in the neck, and his strong limbs shook to his
+feet as he laid the thing down upon the corner of the table. There was a
+fearful fascination in it. The red gold hairs stirred and moved in the
+sunlight still, even when he no longer breathed upon them. It was her
+hair, and it seemed alive.
+
+In his other hand he still held the letter. Fate had him now, and would
+not let him go while he could feel. Again and again the cruel chill
+smote him in the back. He opened the doubled sheet, and saw the date and
+the name of the place,--Subiaco,--and the first words--'Heart of my
+heart, this is my last cry to you'--and it was to Angelo Reanda.
+
+Rigid and feeling as though great icy hands were drawing him up by the
+neck from the ground, he stood still and read every word, with all the
+message of loathing and abject fear and horror of his touch, which every
+word brought him, from the dead, through the other dead.
+
+Slowly, regularly, without wavering, moved by a power not his own, his
+hands took the other letters and opened them, and his eyes read all the
+words, from the last to the first. One by one the sheets fell upon the
+table, and all alone in the midst the lock of red auburn hair sent up
+its little lambent flame in the sunshine.
+
+Paul Griggs stood upright, stark with the stress of rending soul and
+breaking heart.
+
+As he stood there, he was aware of a man in black beside him, like
+himself, ghastly to see, with shadows and fires for eyes, and thin,
+parted lips that showed wolfish teeth, strong, stern, with iron hands.
+
+"You are dead," said his own voice out of the other's mouth. "You are
+dead, and I am Gorlias."
+
+Then the strong teeth were set and the lips closed, and the gladiator's
+unmatched arms wound themselves upon the other's strength, with grip and
+clutch and strain not of earthly men.
+
+Silent and terrible, they wrestled in fight, arm to arm, bone to bone,
+breath to breath. Hour after hour they strove in the still room. The sun
+went westering away, the shadows deepened. The night came stealing black
+and lonely through the window. Foot to foot, breast to breast, in the
+dark, they bowed themselves one upon the other, dumb in the agony of
+their reeling strife.
+
+Late in the night, in the cold room, Paul Griggs felt the carpet under
+his hands as he lay upon his back.
+
+His heart was broken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+
+LORD REDIN had barely glanced at the man in the blue jacket with silver
+buttons, whom he had seen in the deep shadow of the little wine shop as
+he strolled down the Via della Frezza. But Stefanone had seen him and
+had gone to the door as he passed, watching him when he stood talking to
+the one-eyed cobbler, and keeping his keen eyes on him as he passed
+again on his homeward way. And all the way to the hotel in the Piazza di
+Spagna Stefanone had followed him at a distance, watching the great
+loose-jointed frame and the slightly stooping head, till the Scotchman
+disappeared under the archway, past the porter, who stood aside, his
+gold-laced cap in his hand, bowing low to the 'English lord.'
+
+Stefanone waited a few moments and then accosted the porter civilly.
+
+"Do you know if the proprietor wishes to buy some good wine of last
+year, at a cheap rate?" he asked. "You understand. I am of the country.
+I cannot go in and look for the proprietor. But you are doubtless the
+director and you manage these things for him. That is why I ask you."
+
+The porter smiled at the flattery, but said that he believed wine had
+been bought for the whole year.
+
+"The hotel is doubtless full of rich foreigners," observed Stefanone.
+"It is indeed beautiful. I should prefer it to the Palazzo Borghese. Is
+it not full?"
+
+"Quite full," answered the porter, proud of the establishment.
+
+"For instance," said Stefanone, "I saw a great signore going in, just
+before I took the liberty of speaking with you. I am sure that he is a
+great English signore. Not perhaps a mylord. But a great signore, having
+much money."
+
+"What makes you think that?" inquired the porter, with a superior smile.
+
+"Eh, the reasons are two. First, you bowed to him, as though he were
+some personage, and you of course know who he is. Secondly, he lifted
+his hat to you. He is therefore a real signore, as good perhaps as a
+Roman prince. We say a proverb in the country--'to salute is courtesy,
+to answer is duty.' Therefore when any one salutes a real signore, he
+answers and lifts his hat. These are the reasons why I say this one must
+be a great one."
+
+"For that matter, you are right," laughed the porter. "That signore is
+an English lord. What a combination! You have guessed it. His name is
+Lord Redin."
+
+Stefanone's sharp eyes fixed themselves vacantly, for he did not wish to
+betray his surprise at not hearing the name he had expected.
+
+"Eh!" he exclaimed. "Names? What are they, when one is a prince. Prince
+of this. Duke of that. Our Romans are full of names. I daresay this
+signore has four or five."
+
+But the porter knew of no other, and presently Stefanone departed,
+wondering whether he had made a mistake, after all, and recalling the
+features of the man he had followed to compare them with those younger
+ones he remembered so distinctly. He went back to the Via della Frezza
+and drank a glass of wine. Then he filled the glass again and carried it
+carefully across the street to his friend the cobbler.
+
+"Drink," he said. "It will do you good. A drop of wine at sunset gives
+force to the stomach."
+
+The one-eyed man looked up, and smiled at his friend, a phenomenon
+rarely observed on his wrinkled and bearded face. He shrugged one round
+shoulder, by way of assent, held his head a little on one side and
+stretched out his black hand with the glass in it, to the light. He
+tasted it, smelt it, and looked up at Stefanone before he drank in
+earnest.
+
+"Black soul!" he exclaimed by way of an approving asseveration. "This is
+indeed wine!"
+
+"He took it for vinegar!" observed Stefanone, speaking to the air.
+
+"It is wine," answered the cobbler when he had drained the glass. "It is
+a consolation."
+
+Then they began to talk together, and Stefanone questioned him about his
+interview with the tall gentleman an hour earlier. The cobbler really
+knew nothing about him, though he remembered having seen him several
+times, years ago, before Gloria had come.
+
+"You know nothing," said Stefanone. "That signore is the father of Sor
+Paolo's signora, who died in my house."
+
+"You are joking," returned the cobbler, gravely. "He would have come to
+see his daughter while she lived--requiescat!"
+
+"And I say that I am not joking. Do you wish to hear the truth? Well.
+You have much confidence with Sor Paolo. Tell him that the father of the
+poor Signora Gloria came to the door and asked questions. You shall hear
+what he will say. He will say that it is possible. Then he will ask you
+about him. You will tell him, so and so--a very tall signore, all made
+of pieces that swing loosely when he walks, with a beard like the Moses
+of the fountain, and hard blue eyes that strike you like two balls from
+a gun, and hair that is neither red nor white, and a bony face like an
+old horse."
+
+"It is true," said the cobbler, reflectively. "It is he. It is his
+picture."
+
+"You will also say that he is now an English lord, but that formerly
+they called him Sor Angoscia. You, who are friends with Sor Paolo, you
+should tell him this. It may be that Sor Angoscia wishes him evil. Who
+knows? In this world the combinations are so many!"
+
+It was long before the cobbler got an opportunity of speaking with
+Griggs, and when he had the chance, he forgot all about it, though
+Stefanone reminded him of it from time to time. But when he at last
+spoke of the matter he was surprised to find that Stefanone had been
+quite right, as Griggs admitted without the least hesitation. He told
+Stefanone so, and the peasant was satisfied, though he had long been
+positive that he had found his man at last, and recognized him in spite
+of his beard and his age.
+
+After that Stefanone haunted the Piazza di Spagna in the morning,
+talking a little with the models who used to stand there in their
+mountain costumes to be hired by painters in the days when pictures of
+them were the fashion. Many of them came from the neighbourhood of
+Subiaco, and knew Stefanone by sight. When Lord Redin came out of the
+hotel, as he generally did between eleven and twelve if the day were
+fine, Stefanone put his pipe out, stuck it into his breeches' pocket
+with his brass-handled clasp-knife, and strolled away a hundred yards
+behind his enemy.
+
+If Lord Redin noticed him once or twice, it was merely to observe that
+men still came to Rome wearing the old-fashioned dress of the
+respectable peasants. Being naturally fearless, and at present wholly
+unsuspicious, it never struck him that any one could be dogging his
+footsteps whenever he went out of his hotel. In the evening he went out
+very little and then generally in a carriage. Two or three times, on a
+Sunday, he walked over to Saint Peter's and listened to the music at
+Vespers, as many foreigners used to do. Stefanone followed him into the
+church and watched him from a distance. Once the peasant saw Donna
+Francesca, whom he knew by sight as a member of the Braccio family,
+sitting within the great gate of the Chapel of the Choir, where the
+service was held. Lord Redin always followed the frequented streets,
+which led in an almost direct line from the Piazza di Spagna by the Via
+Condotti to the bridge of Saint Angelo. It was the nearest way. He never
+went back to the Via della Frezza, for he had no desire to see Paul
+Griggs, and his curiosity had been satisfied by once looking at the
+house in which his daughter had lived. He spent his evenings alone in
+his rooms with a bottle of wine and a book. Luxury had become a habit
+with him, and he now preferred a draught of Château Lafitte to the rough
+Roman wine barely a year old, while three or four glasses of a certain
+brandy, twenty years in bottle, which he had discovered in the hotel,
+were a necessary condition of his comfort. He had the intention of going
+out one evening, in cloak and soft hat, as of old, to dine in his old
+corner at the Falcone, but he put it off from day to day, feeling no
+taste for the coarser fare and the rougher drink when the hour came.
+
+He often went to see Francesca Campodonico in the middle of the day, at
+which hour the Roman ladies used to be visible to their more intimate
+friends. An odd sort of sympathy had grown up between the two, though
+they scarcely ever alluded to past events, and then only by an accident
+which both regretted. Francesca exercised a refining influence upon the
+gloomy Scotchman, and as he knew her better, he even took the trouble to
+be less rough and cynical when he was with her. In character she was
+utterly different from his dead wife, but there was something of family
+resemblance between the two which called up memories very dear to him.
+
+Her influence softened him. In his wandering life he had more than once
+formed acquaintances with men of tastes more or less similar to his own,
+which might have ripened into friendships for a man of less morose
+character. But in that, he and Paul Griggs were very much alike. They
+found an element in every acquaintance which roused their distrust, and
+as men to men they were both equally incapable of making a confidence.
+Dalrymple's life had not brought him into close relations with any woman
+except his wife. For her sake he had kept all others at a distance in a
+strange jealousy of his own heart which had made her for him the only
+woman in the world. Then, too, he had hated, for her, the curiosity of
+those who had evidently wished to know her story. That had been always a
+secret. He had told it to his father, and his father had died with it.
+No one else had ever known whence Maria had come, nor what her name had
+been. If Captain Crowdie had ever guessed the truth, which was doubtful,
+he had held his tongue.
+
+But Angus Dalrymple was no longer the man he had been in those days. He
+had changed very much in the past two or three years; for though he had
+almost outlived the excesses into which he had fallen in his first
+sorrow, his hardy constitution had been shaken, if not weakened, by
+them. Physically his nerves were almost as good as ever, but morally he
+was not the same man. He felt the need of sympathy and confidence, which
+with such natures is the first sign of breaking down, and of the
+degeneration of pride.
+
+That was probably the secret of what he felt when he was with Francesca.
+She had that rarest quality in women, too, which commands men without
+inspiring love. It is very hard to explain what that quality is, but
+most men who have lived much and seen much have met with it at least
+once in their lives.
+
+There is a sort of manifested goodness for which the average man of the
+world has a profound and unreasonable contempt. And there is another
+sort which most wholly commands the respect of that man who has lived
+hardest. From a religious point of view, both may be equally real and
+conducive to salvation. The cynic, the worn out man of the world, the
+man whose heart is broken, all look upon the one as a weakness and the
+other as a strength. Perhaps there is more humanity in the one than in
+the other. A hundred women may rebuke a man for something he has done,
+and he will smile at the reproach, though he may smile sadly. The one
+will say to him the same words, and he will be gravely silent and will
+feel that she is right and will like her the better for it ever
+afterwards. And she is not, as a rule, the woman whom such men would
+love.
+
+"I have never before met a woman whom I should wish to have for my
+friend," said Lord Redin, one day when he was alone with Francesca. "I
+daresay I am not at all the kind of man you would select for purposes of
+friendship," he added, with a short laugh.
+
+Francesca smiled a little at the frankness of the words, and shook her
+head.
+
+"Perhaps not," she said. "Who knows? Life brings strange changes when
+one thinks that one knows it best."
+
+"It has brought strange things to me," answered Lord Redin.
+
+Then he was silent for a time. He felt the strong desire to speak out,
+for no good reason or purpose, and to tell her the story of his life.
+She would be horrorstruck at first. He fancied he could see the
+expression which would come to her face. But he held his peace, for she
+had not met him half-way, and he was ashamed of the weakness that was
+upon him.
+
+"Yes," she said thoughtfully, after a little pause. "You must have had a
+strange life, and a very unhappy one. You speak of friendship as men
+speak who are in earnest, because there is no other hope for them. I
+know something of that."
+
+She ceased, and her clear eyes turned sadly away from him.
+
+"I know you do," he answered softly.
+
+She looked at him again, and she liked him better than ever before, and
+pitied him sincerely. She had discovered that with all his faults he was
+not a bad man, as men go, for she did not know of that one deed of his
+youth which to her would have seemed a monstrous crime of sacrilege,
+beyond all forgiveness on earth or in heaven.
+
+Then she began to speak of other things, for her own words, and his,
+had gone too near her heart, and presently he left her and strolled
+homeward through the sunny streets. He walked slowly and thoughtfully,
+unconscious of the man in a blue jacket with silver buttons, who
+followed him and watched him with keen, unwinking eyes set under heavy
+brows.
+
+But Stefanone was growing impatient, and his knife was every day a
+little sharper as he whetted it thoughtfully upon a bit of smooth
+oilstone which he carried in his pocket. Would the Englishman ever turn
+down into some quiet street or lane where no one would be looking? And
+Stefanone's square face grew thinner and his aquiline features more and
+more eagle-like, till the one-eyed cobbler noticed the change, and spoke
+of it.
+
+"You are consuming yourself for some female," he said. "You have white
+hair. This is a shameful thing."
+
+But Stefanone laughed, instead of resenting the speech--a curiously
+nervous laugh.
+
+"What would you have?" he replied. "We are men, and the devil is
+everywhere."
+
+As he sat on the doorstep by the cobbler's bench, which was pushed far
+forward to get the afternoon light, he took up the short sharp
+shoemaker's knife, looked at it, held it in his hands and pared his
+coarse nails with it, whistling a little tune.
+
+"That is a good knife," he observed carelessly.
+
+The cobbler looked up and saw what he was doing.
+
+"Black soul!" he cried out angrily. "That is my welt-knife, like a
+razor, and he pares his hoofs with it!"
+
+But Stefanone dropped it into the little box of tools on the front of
+the bench, and whistled softly.
+
+"You seem to me a silly boy!" said the cobbler, still wrathful.
+
+"Apoplexy, how you talk!" answered Stefanone. "But I seem so to myself,
+sometimes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+
+THE life of Paul Griggs was not less lonely than it had been before the
+day on which he had received and read Gloria's letters to Reanda, but it
+was changed. Everything which had belonged to the dead woman was gone
+from the room in which he sat and worked as usual. Even the position of
+the furniture was changed. But he worked on as steadily as before.
+
+Outwardly he was very much the same man as ever. Any one who knew him
+well--if such a person had existed--would have seen that there was a
+little difference in the expression of his impassive face. The jaw was,
+if possible, more firmly set than ever, but there was a line in the
+forehead which had not been there formerly, and which softened the iron
+front, as it were, with something more human. It had come suddenly, and
+had remained. That was all.
+
+But within, the difference was great and deep. He felt that the man who
+sat all day long at the writing-table doing his work was not himself any
+longer, but another being, his double and shadow, and in all respects
+his slave, except in one.
+
+That other man sometimes paused in his work, fingering the pen
+unconsciously, as men do who hold it all day long, and thinking of
+Gloria with an expression of horror and suffering in his eyes. But he,
+the real Paul Griggs, never thought of her. The link was broken, the
+thread that had carried the message of dead love between him and the
+lonely grave beyond Subiaco was definitely broken. Stefanone came to
+receive the small sum which Griggs paid him monthly for his care of the
+place, and Griggs paid him as he would have paid his tailor,
+mechanically, and made a note of the payment in his pocket-book. When
+the man was gone, Griggs felt that his double was staring at the wall as
+a man stares at the dark surface of the pool in which the thing he loves
+has sunk for the last time.
+
+It was always the other self that felt at such moments. He could
+abstract himself from it, and feel that he was watching it; he could
+direct it and make it do what he pleased; but he could neither control
+its thoughts nor feel any sympathy for them. Until the fatal day, the
+world had all been black to him; only by closing his eyes could he bring
+into it the light that hovered about a dead woman's face.
+
+But now the black was changed to a flat and toneless white in which
+there was never the least variation. Life was to him a vast blank, in
+which, without interest or sensation, he moved in any direction he
+pleased, and he pleased that it should be always the same direction,
+from the remembrance of a previous intention and abiding principle. But
+it might as well have been any other, backwards, or to right or left. It
+was all precisely the same, and it was perfectly inconceivable to him
+that he should ever care whether in the endless journey he ever came
+upon a spot or point in the blank waste which should prove to him that
+he had moved at all. Nothing could make any difference. He was beyond
+that state in which any difference was apprehensible between one thing
+and another.
+
+His double had material wants, and was ruled by material circumstances.
+His double was a broken-hearted creature, toiling to make money for a
+little child to which it felt itself bound by every responsibility which
+can bind father to son; acknowledging the indebtedness in every act of
+its laborious life, denying itself every luxury, and almost every
+comfort, that there might be a little more for the child, now and in
+time to come; weary beyond earthly weariness, but untiring in the
+mechanical performance of its set task; fatally strong and destined,
+perhaps, to live on through sixty or seventy years of the same unceasing
+toil; fatally weak in its one deep wound, and horribly sensitive within
+itself, but outwardly expressionless, strong, merely a little more pale
+and haggard than Paul Griggs had been.
+
+This was the being whom Paul Griggs employed, as it were, to work for
+him, which he thoroughly understood and could control in every part
+except in its thoughts, and they were its own. But he himself existed in
+another sphere, in which there were neither interests nor
+responsibilities, nor landmarks, nor touches of human feeling, neither
+memories for the dead nor hopes for the living; in which everything was
+the same, because there was nothing but a sort of universal impersonal
+consciousness, no more attached to himself than to the beings he saw
+about him, or to that particular being which was his former self,--in
+which he chose to reside, merely because he required a bodily evidence
+of some sort in order to be alive--and there was no particular reason
+why he should not be alive. He therefore did not cease to live, but a
+straw might have turned the balance to the side of death.
+
+It was certainly true that, so far as it could be said that there was
+any link between him and humanity, it lay in the existence of the little
+boy beyond the water. But it would have been precisely the same if
+little Walter Crowdie had died. He did not wish to see the child, for he
+had no wishes at all. Life being what it was, it would be very much
+better if the child were to die at once. Since it happened to be alive,
+he forced his double to work for it. It was no longer any particular
+child so far as he himself was concerned. It belonged to his double,
+which seemed to be attached to it in an unaccountable way and did not
+complain at being driven to labour for it.
+
+At certain moments, when he seemed to have got rid of his double
+altogether for a time, a question presented itself to his real self. The
+question was the great and old one--What was it for? And to what was it
+tending? Then the people he saw in the streets appeared to him to be
+very small, like ants, running hither and thither upon the ant-hill and
+about it, moved by something which they could not understand, but which
+made them do certain things with an appearance of logical sequence, just
+as he forced his double to work for little Walter Crowdie from morning
+till night. So the people ran about anxiously, or strolled lazily
+through the hours, careful or careless, as the case might be, but quite
+unconscious that they were of no consequence and of no use, and that it
+was quite immaterial whether they were alive or dead. Most of them
+thought that they cared a good deal for life on the whole, and that it
+held a multitude of pleasant and interesting things to be liked and
+sought, and an equal number of unpleasant and dangerous things to be
+avoided; all of which things had no real existence whatever, as the
+impersonal consciousness of Paul Griggs was well aware. He watched the
+people curiously, as though they merely existed to perform tricks for
+his benefit. But they did not amuse him, for nothing could amuse him,
+nor interest him when he had momentarily got rid of his double, as
+sometimes happened when he was out of doors.
+
+One day, the month having passed again, Stefanone came for his money. It
+was very little, and the old peasant would willingly have undertaken
+that the work should be done for nothing. But he was interested in Paul
+Griggs, and he was growing very impatient because he could not get an
+opportunity of falling upon Lord Redin in a quiet place. He had formed a
+new plan of almost childlike simplicity. When Griggs had paid him the
+money, he lingered a moment and looked about the room.
+
+"Signore, you have changed the furniture," he observed. "That chair was
+formerly here. This table used to be there. There are a thousand
+changes."
+
+"Yes," said Griggs, taking up his pen to go on with his work. "You have
+good eyes," he added good-naturedly.
+
+"Two," assented Stefanone; "each better than the other. For instance, I
+will tell you. When that chair was by the window, there was a little
+table beside it. On the table was the work-basket of your poor Signora,
+whom may the Lord preserve in glory! Is it truth?"
+
+"Yes," answered Griggs, with perfect indifference. "It is quite true."
+
+The allusion did not pain him, the man who was talking with Stefanone.
+It would perhaps hurt the other man when he thought of it later.
+
+"Signore," said Stefanone, who evidently had something in his mind, "I
+was thinking in the night, and this thought came to me. The dead are
+dead. Requiescant! It is better for the living to live in holy peace.
+You never see the father of the Signora. There is bad blood between you.
+This was my thought--let them be reconciled, and spend an evening
+together. They will speak of the dead one. They will shed tears. They
+will embrace. Let the enmity be finished. In this way they will enjoy
+life more."
+
+"You are crazy, Stefanone," answered Griggs, impatiently. "But how do
+you know who is the father of the Signora?"
+
+"Every one knows it, Signore!" replied the peasant, with well-feigned
+sincerity. "Every one knows that it is the great English lord who lives
+at the hotel in the Piazza di Spagna this year. Signore, I have said a
+word. You must not take it ill. Enmity is bad. Friendship is a good
+thing. And then it is simple. With maccaroni one makes acquaintance
+again. There is the Falcone, but it would be better here. We will cook
+the maccaroni in the kitchen; you will eat on this table. What are all
+these papers for? Study, study! A dish of good paste is better, with
+cheese. I will bring a certain wine--two flasks. Then you will be
+friends, for you will drink together. And if the English lord drinks too
+much, I will go home with him to the hotel in the Piazza di Spagna. But
+you will only have to go to bed. Once in a year, what is it to be a
+little gay with good wine? At least you will be good friends. Then
+things will end well."
+
+Griggs looked at Stefanone curiously, while the old peasant was
+speaking, for he knew the people well, and he suspected something though
+he did not know what to think.
+
+"Perhaps some day we may take your advice," he said coldly. "Good
+morning, Stefanone; I have much to write."
+
+"I remove the inconvenience," answered Stefanone, in the stock Italian
+phrase for taking leave.
+
+"No inconvenience," replied Griggs, civilly, as is the custom. "But I
+have to work."
+
+"Study, study!" grumbled Stefanone, going towards the door. "What does
+it all conclude, this great study? Headache. For a flask of wine you
+have the same thing, and the pleasure besides. It is enough. Signore,"
+he added, reluctantly turning the handle, "I go. Think of what I have
+said to you. Sometimes an old man says a wise word."
+
+He went away very much discontented with the result of the conversation.
+His mind was a medley of cunning and simplicity backed by an absolutely
+unforgiving temper and great caution. His plan had seemed exceedingly
+good. Lord Redin and Griggs would have supped together, and the former
+would very naturally have gone home alone. Stefanone was oddly surprised
+that Griggs should not have acceded to the proposition at once, though
+in reality there was not the slightest of small reasons for his doing
+so.
+
+It was long since anything had happened to rouse Griggs into thinking
+about any individual human being as anything more than a bit of the
+world's furniture, to be worn out and thrown away in the course of time,
+out of sight. But something in the absolutely gratuitous nature of
+Stefanone's advice moved his suspicions. He saw, with his intimate
+knowledge of the Roman peasant's character, the whole process of the old
+wine-seller's mind, if only, in the first place, the fellow had the
+desire to harass Dalrymple. That being granted, the rest was plain
+enough. Dalrymple, if he really came to supper with Griggs, would stay
+late into the night and finish all the wine there might be. On his way
+home through the deserted streets, Stefanone could kill him at his
+leisure and convenience, and nobody would be the wiser. The only
+difficulty lay in establishing some sufficient reason why Stefanone
+should wish to kill him at all, and in this Griggs signally failed,
+which was not surprising.
+
+All at once, as generally happened now, he lost all interest in the
+matter and returned to his work; or rather, to speak as he might have
+spoken, he set his mechanical self to work for him, while his own being
+disappeared in blank indifference and unconsciousness. But on the
+following day, which chanced to be a Sunday, he went out in the morning
+for a walk. He rarely worked on Sundays, having long ago convinced
+himself that a day of rest was necessary in the long run.
+
+As he was coming home, he saw Lord Redin walking far in front of him
+down the Corso, easily recognizable by his height and his loose,
+swinging gait. Griggs had not proceeded many steps further when
+Stefanone passed him, walking at a swinging stride. The peasant had
+probably seen him, but chose to take no notice of him. Griggs allowed
+him to get a fair start and then quickened his own pace, so as to keep
+him in view. Lord Redin swung along steadily and turned up the Via
+Condotti. Stefanone almost ran, till he, too, had turned the corner of
+the street. Griggs, without running, nearly overtook him as he took the
+same turn a moment later.
+
+It was perfectly clear that Stefanone was dogging the Scotchman's
+steps. The latter crossed the Piazza di Spagna, and entered the deep
+archway of his hotel. The peasant slackened his speed at once and
+lounged across the square towards the foot of the great stairway which
+leads up to the Trinità de' Monti. Griggs followed him, and came up with
+him just as he sat down upon a step beside one of the big stone posts,
+to take breath and light his pipe. The man looked up, touched his hat,
+smiled, and struck a sulphur match, which he applied to the tobacco in
+the red clay bowl before the sulphur was half burned out, after the
+manner of his kind.
+
+"You have taken a walk, Signore," he observed, puffing away at the
+willow stem and watching the match.
+
+"You walk fast, Stefanone," answered Griggs. "You can walk as fast as
+Lord Redin."
+
+Stefanone did not show the least surprise. He pressed down the burning
+tobacco with one horny finger, and carefully laid the last glowing bit
+of the burnt-out wooden match upon it.
+
+"For this, we are people of the mountains," he answered slowly. "We can
+walk."
+
+"Why do you wish to kill that signore?" inquired Griggs, calmly.
+
+Stefanone looked up, and the pale lids of his keen eyes were contracted
+as he stared hard and long at the other's face.
+
+"What are you saying?" he asked, with a short, harsh laugh. "What is
+passing through your head? What have I to do with the Englishman?
+Nothing. These are follies!"
+
+And still he gazed keenly at Griggs, awaiting the latter's reply. Griggs
+answered him contemptuously in the dialect.
+
+"You take me for a foreigner! You might know better."
+
+"I do not know what you mean," answered Stefanone, doggedly. "It is
+Sunday. I am at leisure. I walk to take a little air. It is my affair.
+Besides, at this hour, who would follow a man to kill him? It is about
+to ring midday. There are a thousand people in the street. Those who
+kill wait at the corners of streets when it is night. You say that I
+take you for a foreigner. You have taken me for an assassin. At your
+pleasure. So much the worse for me. An assassin! Only this was wanting.
+It is better that I go back to Subiaco. At least they know me there.
+Here in Rome--not even dogs would stay here. Beautiful town! Where one
+is called assassin for breakfast, without counting one, nor two."
+
+By this time Griggs was convinced that he was right. He knew the man
+well, and all his kind. The long speech of complaint, with its peculiar
+tone, half insolent, half of injured innocence, was to cover the
+fellow's embarrassment. Griggs answered him in his own strain.
+
+"A man is not an assassin who kills his enemy for a good reason,
+Stefanone," he observed. "How do I know what he may have done to you?"
+
+"To me? Nothing." The peasant shrugged his sturdy shoulders.
+
+"Then I have made a mistake," said Griggs.
+
+"You have made a mistake," assented Stefanone. "Let us not talk about it
+any more."
+
+"Very well."
+
+Griggs turned away and walked slowly towards the hotel, well aware that
+Stefanone was watching him and would think that he was going to warn
+Lord Redin of his danger. That, indeed, was Griggs's first impulse, and
+it was probably his wisest course, whatever might come of the meeting.
+But the Scotchman had made up his mind that he would not see Griggs
+under any circumstances, and though the latter had seen him enter the
+hotel less than ten minutes earlier, the servant returned almost
+immediately and said that Lord Redin was not at home. Griggs understood
+and turned away, thoughtfully.
+
+Before he went down the Via Condotti again, he looked over his shoulder
+towards the steps, and he saw that Stefanone was gone. As he walked
+along the street, the whole incident began to fade away in his mind, as
+all real matters so often did, nowadays. All at once he stopped short,
+and roused himself by an effort--directing his double, as he would have
+said, perhaps. There was no denying the fact that a man's life was
+hanging in the balance of a chance, and to the man, if not to Griggs,
+that life was worth something. If it had been any other man in the
+world, even that fact would have left him indifferent enough. Why should
+he care who lived or died? But Dalrymple was a man he had injured, and
+he was under an obligation of honour to save him, if he could.
+
+There was only one person in Rome who could help him--Francesca
+Campodonico. She knew much of what had happened; she might perhaps
+understand the present case. At all events, even if she had not seen
+Lord Redin of late, she could not be supposed to have broken relations
+with him; she could send for him and warn him. The case was urgent, as
+Griggs knew. After what he had said to Stefanone, the latter, if he
+meant to kill his man, would not lose a day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+
+IT was past midday when Paul Griggs reached the Palazzetto Borgia and
+inquired for Donna Francesca. He was told that she was out. It was her
+custom, the porter said, always to breakfast on Sundays with her
+relatives, the Prince and Princess of Gerano. Griggs asked at what time
+she might be expected to return. The porter put on a vague look and said
+that it was impossible to tell. Sometimes she went to Saint Peter's on
+Sunday afternoon, to hear Vespers. Vespers began at twenty-two o'clock,
+or half-past twenty-two--between half-past three and four by French
+time, at that season of the year.
+
+Griggs turned away, and wandered about for half an hour in the vicinity
+of the palace, uncertain as to what he should do, and yet determined not
+to lose sight of the necessity for immediate action of some sort. At
+last he went back to the Piazza di Spagna, intending to write a word of
+warning to Lord Redin, though he knew that the latter would pay very
+little attention to anything of such a nature. Like most foreigners, he
+would laugh at the idea of being attacked in the streets. Even in an
+interview it would not be easy to persuade him of the truth which Griggs
+had discovered more by intuition and through his profound knowledge of
+the Roman character than by any chain of evidence.
+
+Lord Redin had gone out, he was told. It was impossible to say with any
+certainty whether this were true or not, and Griggs wrote a few words on
+his card, sealed the latter in an envelope, and left it to be delivered
+to the Scotchman. Then he went back to the Via della Frezza, determined
+to renew his attempt to see Francesca Campodonico, at a later hour.
+
+At the door of the little wine shop Stefanone was seated on one of the
+rush stools, his hat tilted over his eyes, and his white-stockinged legs
+crossed. He was smoking and looking down, but he recognized Griggs's
+step at some distance, and raised his eyes. Griggs nodded to him
+familiarly, passing along on the other side of the narrow street, and he
+saw Stefanone's expression. There was a look of cunning and amusement in
+the contraction of the pale lids, which the younger man did not like.
+Stefanone spoke to him across the street.
+
+"You are well returned, Signore," he said, in the common phrase of
+greeting after an absence.
+
+The words were civil enough, but there was something of mockery in the
+tone. Griggs might not have noticed it at any other time, but his
+thoughts had been occupied with Stefanone during the last two hours,
+and he resented what sounded like insolence. The tone implied that he
+had been on a fool's errand, and that Stefanone knew it. He said
+nothing, but stood still and scrutinized the man's face. There was an
+unwonted colour about the cheek bones, and the keen eyes sparkled under
+the brim of the soft hat. Stefanone had a solid head, and was not given
+to drinking, especially in the morning; but Griggs guessed that to-day
+he had drunk more than usual. The man's next words convinced him of the
+fact.
+
+"Signore," he said, slowly rising, "will you favour us by tasting the
+wine I brought last week? There is no one in the shop yet, for it is
+early. If you will, we can drink a glass."
+
+"Thank you," answered Griggs. "I have not eaten yet."
+
+"Then Sor Angoscia did not ask you to breakfast!" laughed Stefanone,
+insolently. "At midday, too! It was just the hour! But perhaps he
+invited you to his supper, for it is ordered."
+
+And he laughed again. Griggs glanced at him once more, and then went
+quietly on towards his own door. He saw that the man had drunk too much,
+and the idea of bandying words in the attempt to rebuke him was
+distasteful. Griggs had very rarely lost his temper, so far as to strike
+a man, even in former days, and it had seemed to him of late that he
+could never be really angry again. Nothing could ever again be of
+enough importance to make it worth while. If a man of his own class had
+insulted him, he would have directed his double, as it were, to resent
+the offence, but he himself would have remained utterly indifferent.
+
+The one-eyed cobbler was not in his place, as it was Sunday. If he had
+been there, Griggs would very possibly have told him to watch Stefanone
+and to try and keep him in the wine shop until he should grow heavy over
+his wine and fall asleep. In that state he would at least be harmless.
+But the cobbler was not there. Griggs went up to his rooms to wait until
+a later hour, when he might hope to find Francesca.
+
+Stefanone, being left alone, sat down again, pulled his hat over his
+eyes once more and felt in his pocket for his clasp-knife. His mind was
+by no means clear, for he had eaten nothing, he had swallowed a good
+deal of strong wine, and he had made up his mind that he must kill his
+enemy on that day or never. The intention was well-defined, but that was
+all. He had put off his vengeance too long. It was true that he had not
+yet caught Dalrymple alone in a quiet street at night, that is to say,
+under the most favourable circumstances imaginable; but more than once
+he might have fallen upon him suddenly from a doorway in a narrow lane,
+in which there had been but a few women and children to see the deed, if
+they saw it at all. He knew well enough that in Rome the fear of being
+in any way implicated in a murder, even as a witness, would have made
+women, and probably men, too, run indoors or out of the way, rather than
+interfere or pursue him. He told himself therefore that he had been
+unreasonably cautious, and that unless he acted quickly Lord Redin,
+being warned by Griggs, would take measures of self-defence which might
+put him beyond the reach of the clasp-knife forever. Stefanone's ideas
+about the power of an 'English lord' were vague in the extreme.
+
+He had not been exactly frightened by Griggs's sudden accusation that
+morning, but he had been made nervous and vicious by the certainty that
+his intentions had been discovered. Peasant-like, not being able to hit
+on a plan for immediate success, he had excited himself and stimulated
+his courage with drink. His eyes were already a little bloodshot, and
+the flush on his high cheek bones showed that he was in the first stage
+of drunkenness, which under present circumstances was the most dangerous
+and might last all day with a man of his age and constitution, provided
+that he did not drink too fast. And there was little fear of that, for
+the Roman is cautious in his cups, and drinks slowly, never wishing to
+lose his head, and indeed very much ashamed of ever being seen in a
+helpless condition.
+
+By this time he was well acquainted with Lord Redin's habits; and though
+Griggs had been told that the Scotchman was out, Stefanone knew very
+well that he was at home and would not leave the hotel for another hour
+or more.
+
+Leaning back against the wall and tipping the stool, he swung his
+white-stockinged legs thoughtfully.
+
+"One must eat," he remarked aloud, to himself.
+
+He held his head a little on one side, thoughtfully considering the
+question of food. Then he turned his face slowly towards the low door of
+the shop and sniffed the air. Something was cooking in the back regions
+within. Stefanone nodded to himself, rose, pulled out a blue and red
+cotton handkerchief, and proceeded to dust his well-blacked low shoes
+and steel buckles with considerable care, setting first one foot and
+then the other upon the stool.
+
+"Let us eat," he said aloud, folding his handkerchief again and
+returning it to his pocket.
+
+He went in and sat down at one of the trestle tables,--a heavy board,
+black with age. The host was nodding on a chair in the corner, a fat man
+in a clean white apron, with a round red face and fat red prominences
+over his eyes, with thin eyebrows that were scarcely perceptible.
+
+Stefanone rapped on the board with his knuckles; the host awoke, looked
+at him with a pleased smile, made an interrogatory gesture, and having
+received an affirmative nod for an answer retired into the dark kitchen.
+In a moment he returned with a huge earthenware plate of soup in which a
+couple of large pieces of fat meat bobbed lazily as he set the dish on
+the table. Then he brought bread, a measure of wine, an iron spoon, and
+a two-pronged fork.
+
+Stefanone eat the soup without a word, breaking great pieces of bread
+into it. Then he pulled out his clasp-knife and opened it; the long
+blade, keen as a razor and slightly curved, but dark and dull in colour,
+snapped to its place, as the ring at the back fell into the
+corresponding sharp notch. With affected delicacy, Stefanone held it
+between his thumb and one finger and drew the edge across the fat boiled
+meat, which fell into pieces almost at a touch, though it was tough and
+stringy. The host watched the operation approvingly. At that time it was
+forbidden to carry such knives in Rome, unless the point were round and
+blunt. The Roman always stabs; he never cuts his man's throat in a fight
+or in a murder.
+
+"It is a prohibited weapon," observed the fat man, smiling, "but it is
+very beautiful. Poor Christian, if he finds it between his ribs! He
+would soon be cold. It is a consolation at night to have such a toy."
+
+"Truly, it is the consolation of my soul," answered Stefanone.
+
+"Say a little, dear friend," said the fat man, sitting down and resting
+his bare elbows upon the table, "that arm, has it ever sent any one to
+Paradise?"
+
+"And then I should tell you!" exclaimed Stefanone, laughing, and he
+sipped some wine and smacked his lips. "But no," he added presently. "I
+am a pacific man. If they touch me--woe! But I, to touch any one? Not
+even a fly."
+
+"Thus I like men," said the host, "serious, full of scruples, people who
+drink well, quiet, quiet, and pay better."
+
+"So we are at Subiaco," answered Stefanone.
+
+He cleaned his knife on a piece of bread very carefully, laid it open
+beside him, and threw the crust to a lean dog that appeared suddenly
+from beneath the table, as though it had come up through a trap-door;
+the half-famished creature bolted the bread with a snap and a gulp and
+disappeared again as suddenly and silently, just in time to avoid the
+fat man's slow, heavy hand.
+
+When he had finished eating, Stefanone produced his little piece of
+oilstone, which he carried wrapped in dingy paper, and having greased it
+proceeded to draw the blade over it slowly and smoothly.
+
+"Apoplexy!" ejaculated the host. "Are you not contented? Or perhaps you
+wish to shave with it?"
+
+"Thus I keep it," answered the peasant, smiling. "A minute here, a
+minute there. The time costs nothing. What am I doing? Nothing. I
+digest. To pass the time I sharpen the knife. I am like this. I say it
+is a sin to waste time."
+
+Every now and then he sipped his wine, but there was no perceptible
+change in his manner, for he was careful to keep himself just at the
+same level of excitement, neither more nor less.
+
+Half an hour later he was smoking his pipe in the Piazza di Spagna,
+lounging near the great fountain in the sunshine, his eyes generally
+turned towards the door of the hotel. He waited a long time, and
+replenished his pipe more than once.
+
+"This would be the only thing wanting," he said impatiently and half
+aloud. "That just to-day he should not go out."
+
+But Lord Redin appeared at last, dressed as though he were going to make
+a visit. He looked about the square, standing still on the threshold for
+a moment, and a couple of small open cabs drove up. But he shook his
+head, consulted his watch, and strode away in the direction of the
+Propaganda.
+
+Stefanone guessed that he was going to the Palazzetto Borgia, and
+followed him as usual at a safe distance, threading the winding ways
+towards the Piazza di Venezia. There used to be a small café then under
+the corner of that part of the Palazzo Torlonia which has now been
+pulled down. Lord Redin entered it, and Stefanone lingered on the other
+side of the street. A man passed him who sold melon seeds and aquavitæ,
+and Stefanone drank a glass of the one and bought a measure of the
+other. The Romans are fond of the taste of the tiny dry kernel which is
+found inside the broad white shell of the seed. Presently Lord Redin
+came out, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, and went on. Stefanone
+followed him again, walking fast when his enemy had turned a corner and
+slackening his speed as soon as he caught sight of him again.
+
+Francesca was out. He saw Lord Redin's look of annoyance as the latter
+turned away after speaking with the porter, and he fell back into the
+shadow of a doorway, expecting that the Scotchman would take the street
+by which he had come. But Dalrymple turned down the narrow lane beside
+the palace, in the direction of the Tiber. Stefanone's bloodshot eyes
+opened suddenly as he sprang after him; with a quick movement he got his
+knife out, opened it, and thrust his hand with it open into the wide
+pocket of his jacket. Lord Redin had never gone down that lane before,
+to Stefanone's knowledge, and it was a hundred to one that at that hour
+no one would be about. Stefanone himself did not know the place.
+
+Dalrymple must have heard the quick and heavy footsteps of the peasant
+behind him, but it would not have been at all like him to turn his
+head. With loose, swinging gait he strode along, and his heavy stick
+made high little echoes as it struck the dry cobble-stones.
+
+Stefanone was very near him. His eyes glared redly, and his hand with
+the knife in it was half out of his pocket. In ten steps more he would
+spring and strike upwards, as Romans do. He chose the spot on the dark
+overcoat where his knife should go through, below the shoulder-blade, at
+the height of the small ribs on the left side. His lips were parted and
+dry.
+
+There was a loud scream of anger, a tremendous clattering noise, and a
+sound of feet. Stefanone turned suddenly pale, and his hand went to the
+bottom of his pocket again.
+
+On an open doorstep lay a copper 'conca'--the Roman water jar--a
+wretched dog was rushing down the street with something in its mouth, in
+front of Lord Redin, a woman was pursuing it with yells, swinging a
+small wooden stool in her right hand, to throw it at the dog, and the
+neighbours were on their doorsteps in a moment. Stefanone slunk under
+the shadow of the wall, grinding his teeth. The chance was gone. The
+streets beyond were broader and more populous.
+
+Lord Redin went steadily onward, evidently familiar with every turn of
+the way, down to the Tiber, across the Bridge of Quattro Capi, and over
+the island of Saint Bartholomew to Trastevere, turning then to the right
+through the straight Lungaretta, past Santa Maria and under the heights
+of San Pietro in Montorio, and so to the Lungara and by Santo Spirito to
+the Piazza of Saint Peter's. He walked fast, and Stefanone twice wiped
+the perspiration from his forehead on the way, for he was nervous from
+the tension and the disappointment, and felt suddenly weak.
+
+The Scotchman never paused, but crossed the vast square and went up the
+steps of the basilica. He was evidently going to hear the Vespers. Then
+Stefanone, instead of following him into the church, sat down outside
+the wine shop on the right, just opposite the end of the Colonnade. He
+ordered a measure of wine and prepared to wait, for he guessed that Lord
+Redin would remain in the church at least an hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+
+LORD REDIN lifted the heavy leathern curtain of the door on the right of
+the main entrance to the basilica, and went into the church. For some
+reason or other, the majority of people go in by that door rather than
+the other. It may be that the reason is a very simple one, after all.
+Most people are right handed, and of any two doors side by side leading
+into the same place, will instinctively take the one on the right. The
+practice of passing to the left in the street, in almost all old
+countries, was for the sake of safety, in order that a man might have
+his sword hand towards any one he met.
+
+The air of the church was warm, and had a faint odour of incense in it.
+The temperature of the vast building varies but little with the seasons;
+going into it in winter, it seems warm, in summer it is very cold. On
+that day there were not many people in the nave, though a soft sound of
+unceasing footsteps broke the stillness. Very far away an occasional
+strain of music floated on the air from the Chapel of the Choir, the
+last on the left before the transept is reached. Lord Redin walked
+leisurely in the direction of the sound.
+
+The chapel was full, and the canons were intoning the psalms of the
+office. At the conclusion of each one the choir sang the 'Gloria' from
+the great organ loft on the right. It chanced that there were a number
+of foreigners on that day, and they had filled all the available space
+within the gate, and there was a small crowd outside, pressing as close
+as possible in order to hear the voices more distinctly. Lord Redin was
+taller than most men, and looking over the heads of the others he saw
+Francesca Campodonico's pale profile in the thick of the press. She
+evidently wished to extricate herself, and she seemed to be suffering
+from the closeness, for she pressed her handkerchief nervously to her
+lips, and her eyes were half closed. Lord Redin forced his way to her
+without much consideration for the people who hindered him. A few
+minutes later he brought her out on the side towards the transept.
+
+"Thank you," said Francesca. "I should like to sit down. I had almost
+fainted--there was a woman next to me who had musk about her."
+
+They went round the pillar of the dome to the south transept where there
+are almost always a number of benches set along the edges of a huge
+green baize carpet. They sat down together on the end of one of the
+seats.
+
+"We can go back, by and bye, and hear the music, if you like," said
+Francesca. "The psalms will last some time longer."
+
+"I would rather sit here and talk, since I have had the good luck to
+meet you," answered Lord Redin, resting his elbows on his knees, and
+idly poking the green carpet with the end of his stick. "I went to your
+house, and they told me that you would very probably be here."
+
+"Yes. I often come. But you know that, for we have met here before. I
+only stay at home on Sundays when it rains."
+
+"Oh! Is that the rule?"
+
+"Yes, if you call it a rule," answered Francesca.
+
+"I like to know about the things you do, and how you spend your life,"
+said the Scotchman, thoughtfully.
+
+"Do you? Why? There is nothing very interesting about my existence, it
+seems to me."
+
+"It interests me. It makes me feel less lonely to know about some one
+else--some one I like very much."
+
+Francesca looked at her companion with an expression of pity. She was
+lonely, too, but in a different way. The little drama of her life had
+run sadly and smoothly. She was willing to give the man her friendship
+if it could help him, rather because he seemed to ask for it in a mute
+fashion than because she desired his.
+
+"Lord Redin," she said, after a little pause, "do you always mean to
+live in this way?"
+
+"Alone? Yes. It is the only way I can live, at my age."
+
+"At your age--would it make any difference if you were younger?" asked
+Francesca. She dropped her voice to a low key. "You would never marry
+again, even if you were much younger."
+
+"Marry!" His shoulders moved with a sort of little start. "You do not
+know what you are saying!" he added, almost under his breath, though she
+heard the words distinctly.
+
+She looked at him again, in silence, during several seconds, and she saw
+how the colour sank away from his face, till the skin was like old
+parchment. The hand that held the heavy stick tightened round it and
+grew yellow at the knuckles.
+
+"Forgive me," she said gently. "I am very thoughtless--it is the second
+time."
+
+He did not speak for some moments, but she understood his silence and
+waited. The air was very quiet, and the enormous pillar of the dome
+almost completely shut off the echo of the distant music. The low
+afternoon sun streamed levelly through the great windows of the apse,
+for the basilica is built towards the west. There were very few people
+in the church that day. The sun made visible beams across the high
+shadows overhead.
+
+Suddenly Lord Redin spoke again. There was something weak and tremulous
+in the tone of his rough voice.
+
+"I am very much attached to you, for two reasons," he said. "We have
+known each other long, but not intimately."
+
+"That is true. Not very intimately."
+
+Francesca did not know exactly what to say. But for his manner and for
+his behaviour a few moments earlier, she might have fancied that he was
+about to offer himself to her, but such an idea was very far from her
+thoughts. Her woman's instinct told her that he was going to tell her
+something in the nature of a confidence.
+
+"Precisely," he continued. "We have never been intimate. The reason why
+we have not been intimate is one of the reasons why I am more attached
+to you than you have ever guessed."
+
+"That is complicated," said Francesca, with a smile. "Perhaps the other
+reason may be simpler."
+
+"It is very simple, very simple indeed, though it will not seem natural
+to you. You are the only very good woman I ever knew, who made me feel
+that she was good instead of making me see it. Perhaps you think it
+unnatural that I should be attracted by goodness at all. But I am not
+very bad, as men go."
+
+"No. I do not believe you are. And I am not so good as you think." She
+sighed softly.
+
+"You are much better than I once thought," answered Lord Redin. "Once
+upon a time--well, I should only offend you, and I know better now.
+Forgive me for thinking of it. I wish to tell you something else."
+
+"If it is something which has been your secret, it is better not told,"
+said Francesca, quietly. "One rarely makes a confidence that one does
+not regret it."
+
+"You are a wise woman." He looked at her thoughtfully. "And yet you must
+be very young."
+
+"No. But though I have had my own life apart, I have lived outwardly
+very much in the world, although I am still young. Most of the secrets
+which have been told me have been repeated to me by the people in whom
+others had confided."
+
+"All that is true," he answered. "Nevertheless--" He paused. "I am
+desperate!" he exclaimed, with sudden energy. "I cannot bear this any
+longer--I am alone, always, always. Sometimes I think I shall go mad!
+You do not know what a life I lead. I have not even a vice to comfort
+me!" He laughed low and savagely. "I tried to drink, but I am sick of
+it--it does no good! A man who has not even a vice is a very lonely
+man."
+
+Francesca's clear eyes opened wide with a startled look, and gazed
+towards his averted face, trying to catch his glance. She felt that she
+was close to something very strong and dreadful which she could not
+understand.
+
+"Do not speak like that!" she said. "No one is lonely who believes in
+God."
+
+"God!" he exclaimed bitterly. "God has forgotten me, and the devil will
+not have me!" He looked at her at last, and saw her face. "Do not be
+shocked," he said, with a sorrowful smile. "If I were as bad as I seem
+to you just now, I should have cut my throat twenty years ago."
+
+"Hush! Hush!" Francesca did not know what to say.
+
+His manner changed a little, and he spoke more calmly.
+
+"I am not eloquent," he said, looking into her eyes. "You may not
+understand. But I have suffered a great deal."
+
+"Yes. I know that. I am very sorry for you."
+
+"I think you are," he answered. "That is why I want to be honest and
+tell you the truth about myself. For that reason, and because I cannot
+bear it any longer. I cannot, I cannot!" he repeated in a low,
+despairing tone.
+
+"If it will help you to tell me, then tell me," said Francesca, kindly.
+"But I do not ask you to. I do not see why we should not be the best of
+friends without my knowing this thing which weighs on your mind."
+
+"You will understand when I have told you," answered Lord Redin. "Then
+you can judge whether you will have me for a friend or not. It will seem
+very bad to you. Perhaps it is. I never thought so. But you are a Roman
+Catholic, and that makes a difference."
+
+"Not in a question of right and wrong."
+
+"It makes the question what it is. You shall hear."
+
+He paused a moment, and the lines and furrows deepened in his face. The
+sun was sinking fast, and the long beams had faded away out of the
+shadows. There was no one in sight now, but the music of the benediction
+service echoed faintly in the distance. Francesca felt her heart beating
+with a sort of excitement she could not understand, and though she did
+not look at her companion, her ears were strained to catch the first
+word he spoke.
+
+"I married a nun," he said simply.
+
+Francesca started.
+
+"A Sister of Charity?" she asked, after a moment's dead silence. "They
+do not take vows--"
+
+"No. A nun from the Carmelite Convent of Subiaco."
+
+His words were very distinct. There was no mistaking what he said.
+Francesca shrank from him instinctively, and uttered a low exclamation
+of repugnance and horror.
+
+"That is not all," continued Lord Redin, with a calm that seemed
+supernatural. "She was your kinswoman. She was Maria Braccio, whom every
+one believed was burned to death in her cell."
+
+"But her body--they found it! It is impossible!" She thought he must be
+mad.
+
+"No. They found another body. I put it into the bed and set fire to the
+mattress. It was burned beyond recognition, and they thought it was
+Maria. But it was the body of old Stefanone's daughter. I lived in his
+house. The girl poisoned herself with some of my chemicals--I was a
+young doctor in those days. Maria and I were married on board an English
+man-of-war, and we lived in Scotland after that. Gloria was the daughter
+of Maria Braccio, the Carmelite nun--your kinswoman."
+
+Francesca pressed her handkerchief to her lips. She felt as though she
+were losing her senses. Minute after minute passed, and she could say
+nothing. From time to time, Lord Redin glanced sideways at her. He
+breathed hard once or twice, and his hands strained upon his stick as
+though they would break it in two.
+
+"Then she died," he said. When he had spoken the three words, he
+shivered from head to foot, and was silent.
+
+Still Francesca could not speak. The sacrilege of the deed was horrible
+in itself. To her, who had grown up to look upon Maria Braccio as a holy
+woman, cut off in her youth by a frightful death, the truth was
+overwhelmingly awful. She strove within herself to find something upon
+which she could throw the merest shadow of an extenuation, but she could
+find nothing.
+
+"You understand now why, as an honourable man, I wished to tell you the
+truth about myself," he said, speaking almost coldly in the effort he
+was making at self-control. "I could not ask for your friendship until I
+had told you."
+
+Francesca turned her white face slowly towards him in the dusk, and her
+lips moved, but she did not speak. She could not in that first moment
+find the words she wanted. She felt that she shrank from him, that she
+never wished to touch his hand again. Doubtless, in time, she might get
+over the first impression. She wished that he would leave her to think
+about it.
+
+"Can you ever be my friend now?" he asked gravely.
+
+"Your friend--" she stopped, and shook her head sadly. "I--I am
+afraid--" she could not go on.
+
+Lord Redin rose slowly to his feet.
+
+"No. I am afraid not," he said.
+
+He waited a moment, but there was no reply.
+
+"May I take you to your carriage?" he asked gently.
+
+"No, thank you. No--that is--I am going home in a cab. I would rather be
+alone--please."
+
+"Then good-bye."
+
+The lonely man went away and left her there. His head was bent, and she
+thought that he walked unsteadily, as she watched him. Suddenly a great
+wave of pity filled her heart. He looked so very lonely. What right had
+she to judge him? Was she perfect, because he called her good? She
+called him before he turned the great pillar of the dome.
+
+"Lord Redin! Lord Redin!"
+
+But her voice was weak, and in the vast, dim place it did not reach him.
+He went on alone, past the high altar, round the pillar, down the nave.
+The benediction service was not quite over yet, but every one who was
+not listening to the music had left the church. He went towards the door
+by which he had entered. Before going out he paused, and looked towards
+the little chapel on the right of the entrance. He hesitated, and then
+went to it and stood leaning with his hands upon the heavy marble
+balustrade, that was low for his great height as he stood on the step.
+
+A single silver lamp sent a faint light upwards that lingered upon the
+Pietà above the altar, upon the marble limbs of the dead Christ, upon
+the features of the Blessed Virgin, the Addolorata--the sorrowing
+mother.
+
+Bending a little, as though very weary, the friendless, wifeless,
+childless man raised his furrowed face and looked up. There was no hope
+any more, and his despair was heavy upon him whose young love had
+blasted the lives of many.
+
+His teeth were set--he could have bitten through iron. He trembled a
+little, and as he looked upward, two dreadful tears--the tears of the
+strong that are as blood--welled from his eyes and trickled down upon
+his cheeks.
+
+"Maria Addolorata!" he whispered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+
+FRANCESCA had half risen from her seat when she had seen that Lord Redin
+did not hear her voice, calling to him. Then she realized that she could
+not overtake him without running, since he had got so far, and she kept
+her place, leaning back once more, and trying to collect her thoughts
+before going home. The music was still going on in the Chapel of the
+Choir, and though it was dusk in the vast church, it would not be dark
+for some time. The vergers did not make their rounds to give warning of
+the hour of closing until sunset. Francesca sat still and tried to
+understand what she had heard. She was nervous and shaken, and she
+wished that she were already at home. The great dimness of the lonely
+transept was strangely mysterious--and the tale of the dead girl, burned
+to take the place of the living, was grewsome, and made her shiver with
+disgust and horror. She started nervously at the sound of a distant
+footstep.
+
+But the strongest impression she had, was that of abhorrence for the
+unholy deeds of the man who had just left her. To a woman for whom
+religion in its forms as well as in its meaning was the mainstay of
+life on earth and the hope of life to come, the sacrilege of the crime
+seemed supernatural. She felt as though it must be in some way her duty
+to help in expiating it, lest the punishment of it should fall upon all
+her race. And as she thought it over, trying to look at it as simply as
+she could, she surveyed at a glance the whole chain of the fatal story,
+and saw how many terrible things had followed upon that one great sin,
+and how very nearly she herself had been touched by its consequences.
+She had been involved in it and had become a part of it. She had felt it
+about her for years, in her friendship for Reanda. It had contributed to
+the causes of his death, if it had not actually caused it. She, in
+helping to bring about his marriage with the daughter of her sinning
+kinswoman, had unconsciously made a link in the chain. Her friendship
+for the artist no longer looked as innocent as formerly. Gloria had
+accused him of loving her, Francesca. Had she not loved him? Whether she
+had or not, she had done things which had wounded his innocent young
+wife. In a sudden and painful illumination of the past, she saw that she
+herself had not been sinless; that she had been selfish, if nothing
+worse; that she had craved Reanda's presence and devoted friendship, if
+nothing more; that death had taken from her more than a friend. She saw
+all at once the vanity of her own belief in her own innocence, and she
+accused herself very bitterly of many things which had been quite hidden
+from her until then.
+
+She was roused by a footstep behind her, and she started at the sound of
+a voice she knew, but which had changed oddly since she had last heard
+it. It was stern, deep, and clear still, but the life was gone out of
+it. It had an automatic sound.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Princess," said Paul Griggs, stopping close to her
+behind the bench. "May I speak to you for a moment?"
+
+She turned her head. As the sun went down, the church grew lighter for a
+little while, as it often does. Yet she could hardly see the man's eyes
+at all, as she looked into his face. They were all in the shadow and had
+no light in them.
+
+"Sit down," she said mechanically.
+
+She could not refuse to speak to him, and, indeed, she would not have
+refused to receive him had she been at home when he had called that day.
+Socially speaking, according to the standards of those around her, he
+had done nothing which she could very severely blame. A woman he had
+dearly loved had come to him for protection, and he had not driven her
+away. That was the social value of what he had done. The moral view of
+it all was individual with herself. Society gave her no right to treat
+him rudely because she disapproved of his past life. For the rest, she
+had liked him in former times, and she believed that there was much more
+good in him than at first appeared.
+
+She was almost glad that he had disturbed her solitude just then, for a
+nervous sense of loneliness was creeping upon her; and though there had
+been nothing to prevent her from rising and going away, she had felt
+that something was holding her in her seat, a shadowy something that was
+oppressive and not natural, that descended upon her out of the gloomy
+heights, and that rose around her from the secret depths below, where
+the great dead lay side by side in their leaden coffins.
+
+"Sit down," she repeated, as Griggs came round the bench.
+
+He sat down beside her. There was a little distance between them, and he
+sat rather stiffly, holding his hat on his knees.
+
+"I should apologize for disturbing you," he began. "I have been twice to
+your house to-day, but you were out. What I wish to speak of is rather
+urgent. I heard that you might be here, and so I came."
+
+"Yes," she said, and waited for him to say more.
+
+"What is it?" she asked presently, as he did not speak at once.
+
+"It is about Dalrymple--about Lord Redin," he said at last. "You used to
+know him. Do you ever see him now?"
+
+Francesca looked at him with a little surprise, but she answered
+quietly, as though the question were quite a natural one.
+
+"He was here five minutes ago. Yes, I often see him."
+
+"Would you do him a service?" asked Griggs, in his calm and indifferent
+tone.
+
+He was forcing himself to do what was plainly his duty, but he was
+utterly incapable of taking any interest in the matter. Francesca
+hesitated before she answered. An hour earlier she would have assented
+readily enough, but now the idea of doing anything which could tend to
+bring her into closer relations with Lord Redin was disagreeable.
+
+"I do not think you will refuse," said Griggs, as she did not speak.
+"His life is in danger."
+
+She turned quickly and scrutinized the expressionless features. In the
+glow of the sunset the church was quite light. The total unconcern of
+the man's manner contrasted strangely with the importance of what he
+said. Francesca felt that something must be wrong.
+
+"You say that very coolly," she observed, and her tone showed that she
+was incredulous.
+
+"And you do not believe me," answered Griggs, quite unmoved. "It is
+natural, I suppose. I will try to explain."
+
+"Please do. I do not understand at all."
+
+Nevertheless, she was startled, though she concealed her nervousness.
+She had not spoken with Griggs for a long time; and as he talked, she
+saw what a great change had taken place. He was very quiet, as he had
+always been, but he was almost too quiet. She could not make out his
+eyes. She knew of his superhuman strength, and his stillness seemed
+unnatural. What he said did not sound rational. An impression got hold
+of her that he had gone mad, and she was physically afraid of him. He
+began to explain. She felt a singing in her ears, and she could not
+follow what he said. It was like an evil dream, and it grew upon her
+second by second.
+
+He talked on in the same even, monotonous tone. The words meant nothing
+to her. She crossed her feet nervously and tried to get a soothing
+sensation by stroking her sable muff. She made a great effort at
+concentration and failed to understand anything.
+
+All at once it grew dark, as the sunset light faded out of the sky.
+Again she felt the desire to rise and the certainty that she could not,
+if she tried. He ceased speaking and seemed to expect her to say
+something, but she had not understood a word of his long explanation. He
+sat patiently waiting. She could hardly distinguish his face in the
+gloom.
+
+The sound of irregular, shuffling footsteps and low voices moved the
+stillness. The vergers were making their last round in a hurried,
+perfunctory way. They passed across the transept to the high altar. It
+was so dark that Francesca could only just see their shadows moving in
+the blackness. She did not realize what they were doing, and her
+imagination made ghosts of them, rushing through the silence of the
+deserted place, from one tomb to another, waking the dead for the night.
+They did not even glance across, as they skirted the wall of the church.
+Even if they had looked, they might not have seen two persons in black,
+against the blackness, sitting silently side by side on the dark bench.
+They saw nothing and passed on, out of sight and out of hearing.
+
+"May I ask whether you will give him the message?" inquired Griggs at
+last, moving in his seat, for he knew that it was time to be going.
+
+Francesca started, at the sound of his voice.
+
+"I--I am afraid--I have not understood," she said. "I beg your pardon--I
+was not paying attention. I am nervous."
+
+"It is growing late," said Griggs. "We had better be going--I will tell
+you again as we walk to the door."
+
+"Yes--no--just a moment!" She made a strong effort over herself. "Tell
+me in three words," she said. "Who is it that threatens Lord Redin's
+life?"
+
+"A peasant of Subiaco called Stefanone. Really, Princess, we must be
+going; it is quite dark--"
+
+"Stefanone!" exclaimed Francesca, while he was speaking the last words,
+which she did not hear. "Stefanone of Subiaco--of course!"
+
+"We must really be going," said Griggs, rising to his feet, and
+wondering indifferently why it was so hard to make her understand.
+
+She rose to her feet slowly. Lord Redin's story was intricately confused
+in her mind with the few words which she had retained of what Griggs had
+said.
+
+"Yes--yes--Stefanone," she said in a low voice, as though to herself,
+and she stood still, comprehending the whole situation in a flash, and
+imagining that Griggs knew the whole truth and had been telling it to
+her as though she had not known it. "But how did you know that Lord
+Redin took the girl's body and burnt it?" she asked, quite certain that
+he had mentioned the fact.
+
+"What girl?" asked Griggs in wonder.
+
+"Why, the body of Stefanone's daughter, which he managed to burn in the
+convent when he carried off my cousin! How did you know about it?"
+
+"I did not know about it," said Griggs. "Your cousin? I do not
+understand."
+
+"My cousin--yes--Maria Braccio--Gloria's mother! You have just been
+talking about her--"
+
+"I?" asked Griggs, bewildered.
+
+Francesca stepped back from him, suddenly guessing that she had revealed
+Lord Redin's secret.
+
+"Is it possible?" she asked in a low voice. "Oh, it is all a mistake!"
+she cried suddenly. "I have told you his story--oh, I am losing my
+head!"
+
+"Come," said Griggs, authoritatively. "We must get out of the church, at
+all events, or we shall be locked in."
+
+"Oh no!" answered Francesca. "There is always somebody here--"
+
+"There is not. You must really come."
+
+"Yes--but there is no danger of being locked in. Yes--let us walk down
+the nave. There is more light."
+
+They walked slowly, for she was too much confused to hasten her steps.
+Her inexplicable mistake troubled her terribly. She remembered how she
+had warned Lord Redin not to tell her any secrets, and how seriously
+she, the most discreet of women, had resolved never to reveal what he
+had said. But the impression of his story had been so much more direct
+and strong than even the first words Griggs had spoken, that so soon as
+she had realized that the latter was speaking approximately of the same
+subject, she had lost the thread of what he was saying and had seemed to
+hear Lord Redin's dreadful tale all over again. She thought that she was
+losing her head.
+
+It was almost quite dark when they reached the other side of the high
+altar. Griggs walked beside her in silence, trying to understand the
+meaning of what she had said.
+
+The gloom was terrible. The enormous statues loomed faintly like vast
+ghosts, high up, between the floor and the roof, their whiteness
+glimmering where there seemed to be nothing else but darkness below them
+and above them. A low, far sound that was a voice but not a word,
+trembled in the air. Francesca shuddered.
+
+"They have not gone yet," said Griggs. "They are still talking. But we
+must hurry."
+
+"No," said Francesca, "that was not any one talking." And her teeth
+chattered. "Give me your arm, please--I am frightened."
+
+He held out his arm till she could feel it in the dark, and she took it.
+He pressed her hand to his side and drew her along, for he feared that
+the doors might be already shut.
+
+"Not so fast! Oh, not so fast, please!" she cried. "I shall fall. They
+do not shut the doors--"
+
+"Yes, they do! Let me carry you. I can run with you in the dark--there
+is no time to be lost!"
+
+"No, no! I can walk faster--but there is really no danger--"
+
+It is a very long way from the high altar to the main entrance of the
+church. Francesca was breathless when they reached the door and Griggs
+lifted the heavy leathern curtain. If the door had been still open, he
+would have seen the twilight from the porch at once. Instead, all was
+black and close and smelled of leather. Francesca was holding his
+sleeve, afraid of losing him.
+
+"It is too late," he said quietly. "We are probably locked in. We will
+try the door of the Sacristy."
+
+He seized her arm and hurried her along into the south aisle. He struck
+his shoulder violently against the base of the pillar he passed in the
+darkness, but he did not stop. Almost instinctively he found the door,
+for he could not see it. Even the hideous skeleton which supports a
+black marble drapery above it was not visible in the gloom. He found the
+bevelled edge of the smoothly polished panel and pushed. But it would
+not yield.
+
+"We are locked in," he said, in the same quiet tone as before.
+
+Francesca uttered a low cry of terror and then was silent.
+
+"Cannot you break the door?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"No," he answered. "Nothing short of a battering-ram could move it."
+
+"Try," she said. "You are so strong--the lock might give way."
+
+To satisfy her he braced himself and heaved against the panel with all
+his gigantic strength. In the dark she could hear his breath drawn
+through his nostrils.
+
+"It will not move," he said, desisting. "We shall have to spend the
+night here. I am very sorry."
+
+For some moments Francesca said nothing, overcome by her terror of the
+situation. Griggs stood still, with his back to the polished door,
+trying to see her in the gloom. Then he felt her closer to him and heard
+her small feet moving on the pavement.
+
+"We must make the best of it," he said at last. "It is never quite dark
+near the high altar. I daresay, too, that there is still a little
+twilight where we were sitting. At least, there is a carpet there and
+there are benches. We can sit there until it is later. Then you can lie
+down upon the bench. I will make a pillow for you with my overcoat. It
+is warm, and I shall not need it."
+
+He made a step forwards, and she heard him moving.
+
+"Do not leave me!" she cried, in sudden terror.
+
+He felt her grasp his arm convulsively in the dark, and he felt her
+hands shaking.
+
+"Do not be frightened," he said, in his quiet voice. "Dead people do no
+harm, you know. It is only imagination."
+
+She shuddered as he groped his way with her toward the nave. They
+passed the pillar and saw the soft light of the ninety little flames of
+the huge golden lamps around the central shrine below the high altar.
+Far beyond, the great windows showed faintly in the height of the
+blackness. They walked more freely, keeping in the middle of the church.
+In the distant chapels on each side a few little lamps glimmered like
+fireflies. Before the last chapel on the right, the Chapel of the
+Sacrament, Francesca paused, instinctively holding fast to Griggs's arm,
+and they both bent one knee, as all Catholics do, who pass before it.
+But when they reached the shrine, Francesca loosed her hold and sank
+upon her knees, resting her arms upon the broad marble of the
+balustrade. Griggs knelt a moment beside her, by force of habit, then
+rose and waited, looking about him into the depths of blackness, and
+reflecting upon the best spot in which to pass the night.
+
+She remained kneeling a long time, praying more or less consciously, but
+aware that it was a relief to be near a little light after passing
+through the darkness. Her mind was as terribly confused as her
+companion's was utterly calm and indifferent. If he had been alone he
+would have sat down upon a step until he was sleepy and then he would
+have stretched himself upon one of the benches in the transept. But to
+Francesca it was unspeakably dreadful.
+
+The strangeness of the whole situation forced itself upon her more and
+more, when she thought of rising from her knees and going back to the
+bench. She felt a womanly shyness about keeping close to her companion,
+her hand on his arm, for hours together, but she knew that the terror
+she should feel of being left alone, even for an instant, or of merely
+thinking that she was to be left alone, would more than overcome that if
+she went away from the lights. She would grasp his arm and hold it
+tightly.
+
+Then she felt ashamed of herself. She had always been told that she came
+of a brave race. She had never been in danger, and there was really no
+danger now. It was absurd to remain on her knees for the sake of the
+lamps. She rose to her feet and turned. Griggs was not looking at her,
+but at the ornaments on the altar. The soft glimmer lighted up his dark
+face. A moment after she had risen he came forward. She meant to propose
+that they should go back to the transept, but just then she shuddered
+again.
+
+"Let us sit down here, on the step," she said, suddenly.
+
+"If you like," he answered. "Wait a minute," he added, and he pulled off
+his overcoat.
+
+He spread a part of it on the step, and rolled the rest into a pillow
+against which she could lean, and he held it in place while she sat
+down. She thanked him, and he sat down beside her. At first, as she
+turned from the lamps, the nave was like a fathomless black wall.
+Neither spoke for some time. Griggs broke the silence when he supposed
+that she was sufficiently recovered to talk quietly, for he had been
+thinking of what she had said, and it was almost clear to him at last.
+
+"I should like to speak to you quite frankly, if you will allow me," he
+said gravely. "May I?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"The few words you said about Lord Redin's story have explained a great
+many things which I never understood," said Griggs. "Is it too much to
+ask that you should tell me everything you know?"
+
+"I would rather not say anything more," answered Francesca. "I am very
+much ashamed of having betrayed his secret. Besides, what is to be
+gained by your knowing a few more details? It is bad enough as it is."
+
+"It is more or less the story of my life," he said, almost
+indifferently.
+
+She turned her head slowly and tried to see his face. She could just
+distinguish the features, cold and impassive.
+
+"I came to you to ask you to warn Dalrymple of a danger," he continued,
+as she did not speak. "I knew that fact, but not the reason why his life
+was and is threatened. Unless I have mistaken what you said, I
+understand it now. It is a much stronger one than I should ever have
+guessed. Lord Redin ran away with your cousin, and made it appear that
+he had carried off Stefanone's daughter. Stefanone has waited patiently
+for nearly a quarter of a century. He has found Dalrymple at last and
+means to kill him. He will succeed, unless you can make Dalrymple
+understand that the danger is real. I have no evidence on which I could
+have the man arrested, and I have no personal influence in Rome. You
+have. You would find no difficulty in having Stefanone kept out of the
+city. And you can make Dalrymple see the truth, since he has confided in
+you. Will you do that? He will not believe me, and you can save him.
+Besides, he will not see me. I have tried twice to-day. He has made up
+his mind that he will not see me."
+
+"I will do my best," said Francesca, leaning her head back against the
+marble rail, and half closing her eyes. "How terrible it all is!"
+
+"Yes. I suppose that is the word," said Griggs, indifferently.
+"Sacrilege, suicide, and probably murder to come."
+
+She was shocked by the perfectly emotionless way in which he spoke of
+Gloria's death, so much shocked that she drew a short, quick breath
+between her teeth as though she had hurt herself. Griggs heard it.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing," she said.
+
+"I thought something hurt you."
+
+"No--nothing."
+
+She was silent again.
+
+"Yes," he continued, in a tone of cold speculation, "I suppose that any
+one would call it terrible. At all events, it is curious, as a sequence
+of cause and effect, from one tragedy to another."
+
+"Please--please do not speak of it all like that--" Francesca felt
+herself growing angry with him.
+
+"How should I speak of it?" he asked. "It is an extraordinary
+concatenation of events. I look upon the whole thing as very curious,
+especially since you have given me the key to it all."
+
+Francesca was moved to anger, taking the defence of the dead Gloria, as
+almost any woman would have done. At the moment Paul Griggs repelled her
+even more than Lord Redin. It seemed to her that there was something
+dastardly in his indifference.
+
+"Have you no heart?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"No, I am dead," he answered, in his clear, lifeless voice, that might
+have been a ghost's.
+
+The words made her shiver, and she felt as though her hair were moving.
+From his face, as she had last seen it, and from his voice, he might
+almost have been dead, as he said he was, like the thousands of silent
+ones in the labyrinths under her feet, and she alone alive in the midst
+of so much death.
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked, and her own voice trembled in spite of
+herself.
+
+"It is very like being dead," he answered thoughtfully. "I cannot feel
+anything. I cannot understand why any one else should. Everything is the
+same to me. The world is a white blank to me, and one place is exactly
+like any other place."
+
+"But why? What has happened to you?" asked Francesca.
+
+"You know. You sent me those letters."
+
+"What letters?"
+
+"The package Reanda gave you before he died."
+
+"Yes. What was in it? I told you that I did not know, when I wrote to
+you. I remember every word I wrote."
+
+"I know. But I thought that you at least guessed. They were Gloria's
+letters to her husband."
+
+"Her old letters, before--" Francesca stopped short.
+
+"No," he answered, with the same unnatural quiet. "All the letters she
+wrote him afterwards--when we were together."
+
+"All those letters?" cried Francesca, suddenly understanding. "Oh
+no--no! It is not possible! He could not, he would not, have done
+anything so horrible."
+
+"He did," said Griggs, calmly. "I had supposed that she loved me. He had
+his vengeance. He proved to me that she did not. I hope he is satisfied
+with the result. Yes," he continued, after a moment's pause, "it was the
+cruelest thing that ever one man did to another. I spent a bad night, I
+remember. On the top of the package was the last letter she wrote him,
+just before she killed herself. She loathed me, she said, she hated me,
+she shivered at my touch. She feared me so that she acted a comedy of
+love, in terror of her life, after she had discovered that she hated me.
+She need not have been afraid. Why should I have hurt her? In that last
+letter, she put her wedding ring with a lock of her hair wound in and
+out of it. Reanda knew what he was doing when he sent it to me. Do you
+wonder that it has deadened me to everything?"
+
+"Oh, how could he do it? How could he!" Francesca repeated, for the
+worst of it all to her was the unutterable cruelty of the man she had
+believed so gentle.
+
+"I suppose it was natural," said Griggs. "I loved the woman, and he knew
+it. I fancy few men have loved much more sincerely than I loved her,
+even after she was dead. I was not always saying so. I am not that kind
+of man. Besides, men who live by stringing words together for money do
+not value them much in their own lives. But I worked for her. I did the
+best I could. Even she must have known that I loved her."
+
+"I know you did. I cannot understand how you can speak of her at all."
+Francesca wondered at the man.
+
+"She? She is no more to me than Queen Christina, over there in her tomb
+in the dark! For that matter, nothing else has any meaning, either."
+
+For a long time Francesca said nothing. She sat quite still, resting the
+back of her head against the marble, in the awful silence under the
+faint lights that glimmered above the great tomb.
+
+"You have told me the most dreadful thing I ever heard," she said at
+last, in a low tone. "Is she nothing to you? Really nothing? Can you
+never think kindly of her again?"
+
+"No. Why should I? That is--" he hesitated. "I could not explain it," he
+said, and was silent.
+
+"It does not seem human," said Francesca. "You would have a memory of
+her--something--some touch of sadness--I wonder whether you really loved
+her as much as you thought you did?"
+
+Griggs turned upon Francesca slowly, his hands clasped upon one knee.
+
+"You do not know what such love means," he said slowly. "It is
+God--faith--goodness--everything. It is heaven on earth, and earth in
+heaven, in one heart. When it is gone there is nothing left. It went
+hard. It will not come back now. The heart itself is gone. There is
+nothing for it to come to. You think me cold, you are shocked because I
+speak indifferently of her. She lied to me. She lied and acted in every
+word and deed of her life with me. She deceived herself a little at
+first, and she deceived me mortally afterwards. It was all an immense,
+loathsome, deadly lie. I lived through the truth. Why should I wish to
+go back to the lie again? She died, telling me that she died for me. She
+died, having written to Reanda that she died for him. I do not judge
+her. God will. But God Himself could not make me love the smallest
+shadow of her memory. It is impossible. I am beyond life. I am outside
+it. My eternity has begun."
+
+"Is it not a little for her sake that you wish to save her father?"
+asked Francesca.
+
+"No. It is a matter of honour, and nothing else, since I injured him, as
+the world would say, by taking his daughter from her husband. Do you
+understand? Can you put yourself a little in my position? It is not
+because I care whether he lives or dies, or dies a natural death or is
+stabbed in the back by a peasant. It is because I ought to care. I do
+many things because I ought to care to do them, though the things and
+their consequences are all one to me, now."
+
+"It cannot last," said Francesca, sadly. "You will change as you grow
+older."
+
+"No. That is a thing you can never understand," he answered. "I am two
+individuals. The one is what you see, a man more or less like other men,
+growing older--a man who has a certain mortal, earthly memory of that
+dead woman, when the real man is unconscious. But the real man is beyond
+growing old, because he is beyond feeling anything. He is stationary,
+outside of life. The world is a blank to him and always will be."
+
+His voice grew more and more expressionless as he spoke. Francesca felt
+that she could not pity him as she had pitied poor Lord Redin when she
+had seen him going away alone. The man beside her was in earnest, and
+was as far beyond woman's pity as he was beyond woman's love. Yet she no
+longer felt repelled by him since she had understood what he had
+suffered. Perhaps she herself, suffering still in her heart, wished that
+she might be even as he was, beyond the possibility of pain, even though
+beyond the hope of happiness. He wanted nothing, he asked for nothing,
+and he was not afraid to be alone with his own soul, as she was
+sometimes. The other man had asked for her friendship. It could mean
+nothing to Paul Griggs. If love were nothing, what could friendship be?
+
+Yet there was something lofty and grand about such loneliness as his.
+She could not but feel that, now that she knew all. She thought of him
+as she sat beside him in the monumental silence of the enormous
+sepulchre, and she guessed of depths in his soul like the deepness of
+the shadows above her and before her and around her.
+
+"My suffering seems very small, compared with yours," she said softly,
+almost to herself.
+
+Somehow she knew that he would understand her, though perhaps her
+knowledge was only hope.
+
+"Why should you suffer at all?" he asked. "You have never done anything
+wrong. Nothing, of all this, is your fault. It was all fatal, from the
+first, and you cannot blame yourself for anything that has happened."
+
+"I do," she answered, in a low voice. "Indeed I do."
+
+"You are wrong. You are not to blame. Dalrymple was--Maria
+Braccio--I--Gloria--we four. But you! What have you done? Compared with
+us you are a saint on earth!"
+
+She hesitated a moment before she spoke. Then her voice came in a broken
+way.
+
+"I loved Angelo Reanda. I know it, now that I have lost him."
+
+Griggs barely heard the last words, but he bent his head gravely, and
+said nothing in answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+
+THE stillness was all around them and seemed to fold them together as
+they sat side by side. A deep sigh quivered and paused and was drawn
+again almost with a gasp that stirred the air. Suddenly Francesca's face
+was hidden in her hands, and her head was bowed almost to her knees. A
+moment more, and she sobbed aloud, wordless, as though her soul were
+breaking from her heart.
+
+In the great gloom there was something unearthly in the sound of her
+weeping. The man who could neither suffer any more himself nor feel
+human pity for another's suffering, turned and looked at her with
+shadowy eyes. He understood, though he could not feel, and he knew that
+she had borne more than any one had guessed.
+
+She shed many tears, and it was long before her sobbing ceased to call
+down pitiful, heart-breaking echoes from the unseen heights of darkness.
+Her head was bent down upon her knees as she sat there, striving with
+herself.
+
+He could do nothing, and there was nothing that he could say. He could
+not comfort her, he could not deny her grief. He only knew that there
+was one more being still alive and bearing the pain of sins done long
+ago. Truly the judgment upon that man by whom the offence had come,
+should be heavy and relentless and enduring.
+
+At last all was still again. Francesca did not move, but sat bowed
+together, her hands pressing her face. Very softly, Griggs rose to his
+feet, and she did not see that he was no longer seated beside her. He
+stood up and leaned upon the broad marble of the balustrade. When she at
+last raised her head, she thought that he was gone.
+
+"Where are you?" she asked, in a startled voice.
+
+Then, looking round, she saw him standing by the rail. She understood
+why he had moved--that she might not feel that he was watching her and
+seeing her tears.
+
+"I am not ashamed," she said. "At least you know me, now."
+
+"Yes. I know."
+
+She also rose and stood up, and leaned upon the balustrade and looked
+into his face.
+
+"I am glad you know," she said, and he saw how pale she was, and that
+her cheeks were wet. "Now that it is over, I am glad that you know," she
+said again. "You are beyond sympathy, and beyond pitying any one, though
+you are not unkind. I am glad, that if any one was to know my secret, it
+should be you. I could not bear pity. It would hurt me. But you are not
+unkind."
+
+"Nor kind--nor anything," he said.
+
+"No. It is as though I had spoken to the grave--or to eternity. It is
+safe with you."
+
+"Yes. Quite safe. Safer than with the dead."
+
+"He never knew it. Thank God! He never knew it! To me he was always the
+same faithful friend. To you he was an enemy, and cruel. I thought him
+above cruelty, but he was human, after all. Was it not human, that he
+should be cruel to you?"
+
+"Yes," answered Griggs, wondering a little at her speech and tone. "It
+was very human."
+
+"And you forgive him for it?"
+
+"I?" There was surprise in his tone.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "I want your forgiveness for him. He died without
+your forgiveness. It is the only thing I ask of you--I have not the
+right to ask anything, I know, but is it so very much?"
+
+"It is nothing," said Griggs. "There is no such thing as forgiveness in
+my world. How could there be? I resent nothing."
+
+"But then, if you do not resent what he did, you have forgiven him. Have
+you not?"
+
+"I suppose so." He was puzzled.
+
+"Will you not say it?" she pleaded.
+
+"Willingly," he answered. "I forgive him. I remember nothing against
+him."
+
+"Thank you. You are a good man."
+
+He shook his head gravely, but he took her outstretched hand and pressed
+it gently.
+
+"Thank you," she repeated, withdrawing hers. "Do not think it strange
+that I should ask such a thing. It means a great deal to me. I could not
+bear to think that he had left an enemy in the world and was gone where
+he could not ask forgiveness for what he had done. So I asked it of you,
+for him. I know that he would have wished me to. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes," said Griggs, thoughtfully. "I understand."
+
+Again there was silence for a long time as they stood there. The tears
+dried upon the woman's sweet pale face, and a soft light came where the
+tears had been.
+
+"Will you come with me?" she asked at last, looking up.
+
+He did not guess what she meant to do, but he left the step on which he
+was standing and stood ready.
+
+"It must be late," he said. "Should you like to try and rest? I will
+arrange a place for you as well as I can."
+
+"Not yet," she answered. "If you will come with me--" she hesitated.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I will say a prayer for the dead," she said, in a low voice. "I always
+do, every night, since he died."
+
+Griggs bent his head, and she came down from the step. He walked beside
+her, down the silent nave into the darkness. Before the Chapel of the
+Sacrament they both paused and bent the knee. Then she hesitated.
+
+"I should like to go to the Pietà," she said timidly. "It seems so far.
+Do you mind?"
+
+He held out his arm silently. She felt it and laid her hand upon it, and
+they went on. It was very dark. They knew that they were passing the
+pillars when they could not see the little lights from the chapels in
+the distance on their left. Then by the echo of their own footsteps they
+knew that they were near the great door, and at last they saw the single
+tiny flame in the silver lamp hanging above the altar they sought.
+
+Guided by it, they went forward, and the solitary ray showed them the
+marble rail. They knelt down side by side.
+
+"Let us pray for them all," said Francesca, very softly.
+
+She looked up to the marble face of Christ's mother, the Addolorata, the
+mother of sorrows, and she thought of that sinning nun, dead long ago,
+who had been called Addolorata.
+
+"Let us pray for them all," she repeated. "For Maria Braccio, for
+Gloria--for Angelo Reanda."
+
+She lowered her head upon her hands. Then, presently, she looked up
+again, and Griggs heard her sweet voice in the darkness repeating the
+ancient Commemoration for the Dead, from the Canon of the Mass.
+
+"Remember also, O Lord, thy servants who are gone before us with the
+sign of faith, and sleep the sleep of peace. Give them, O Lord, and to
+all who rest in Christ, a place of refreshment, light, and peace, for
+that Christ's sake, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of
+the Holy Spirit. Amen."
+
+Once more she bent her head and was silent for a time. Then as she
+knelt, her hands moved silently along the marble and pressed the two
+folded hands of the man beside her, and she looked at him.
+
+"Let us be friends," she said simply.
+
+"Such as I am, I am yours."
+
+Then their hands clasped. They both started and looked down, for the
+fingers were cold and wet and dark.
+
+It was the blood of Angus Dalrymple that had sealed their friendship.
+
+The swift sure blade had struck him as he stood there, repeating the
+name of his dead wife. There had been no one near the door and none to
+see the quick, black deed. Strong hands had thrown his falling body
+within the marble balustrade, that was still wet with his heart's blood.
+
+There Paul Griggs found him, lying on his back, stretched to his length
+in the dim shadow between the rail and the altar. He had paid the price
+at last, a loving, sinning, suffering, faithful, faultful man.
+
+But the friendship that was so grimly consecrated on that night, was the
+truest that ever was between man and woman.
+
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+THE RALSTONS.
+
+BY
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD.
+
+2 vols. 16mo. Cloth. $2.00.
+
+PRESS COMMENTS.
+
+          "The interest is unflagging throughout. Never has
+          the author done more brilliant, artistic work than
+          here."--_Ohio State Journal._
+
+          "It is immensely entertaining; once in the full
+          swing of the narrative, one is carried on quite
+          irresistibly to the end. The style throughout is
+          easy and graceful, and the text abounds in wise
+          and witty reflections on the realities of
+          existence."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+          "As a picture of a certain kind of New York life,
+          it is correct and literal; as a study of human
+          nature it is realistic enough to be modern, and
+          romantic enough to be of the age of
+          Trollope."--_Chicago Herald._
+
+          "The whole group of character studies is strong
+          and vivid."--_The Literary World._
+
+          "There is a long succession of exceedingly strong
+          dramatic situations which hold the reader's
+          attention enchained to the end. This is one of the
+          strong books of the year, and will have a large
+          circle of readers."--_New Orleans Picayune._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+UNIFORM EDITION
+
+OF THE WORKS OF
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD.
+
+=12mo. Cloth. Price $1.00 per volume.=
+
+
+KATHARINE LAUDERDALE.
+
+=The first of a series of novels dealing with New York life.=
+
+          "Mr. Crawford at his best is a great novelist, and
+          in 'Katharine Lauderdale' we have him at his
+          best."--_Boston Daily Advertiser._
+
+          "A most admirable novel, excellent in style,
+          flashing with humor, and full of the ripest and
+          wisest reflections upon men and women."--_The
+          Westminster Gazette._
+
+          "It is the first time, we think, in American
+          fiction that any such breadth of view has shown
+          itself in the study of our social
+          framework."--_Life._
+
+          "It need scarcely be said that the story is
+          skilfully and picturesquely written, portraying
+          sharply individual characters in well-defined
+          surroundings."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
+
+          "'Katharine Lauderdale' is a tale of New York, and
+          is up to the highest level of his work. In some
+          respects it will probably be regarded as his best.
+          None of his works, with the exception of 'Mr.
+          Isaacs,' shows so clearly his skill as a literary
+          artist."--_San Francisco Evening Bulletin._
+
+
+PIETRO GHISLERI.
+
+          "The imaginative richness, the marvellous
+          ingenuity of plot, the power and subtlety of the
+          portrayal of character, the charm of the romantic
+          environment,--the entire atmosphere, indeed,--rank
+          this novel at once among the great
+          creations."--_The Boston Budget._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+WITH THE IMMORTALS.
+
+          "Altogether an admirable piece of art worked in
+          the spirit of a thorough artist. Every reader of
+          cultivated tastes will find it a book prolific in
+          entertainment of the most refined description, and
+          to all such we commend it heartily."--_Boston
+          Saturday Evening Gazette._
+
+          "The strange central idea of the story could have
+          occurred only to a writer whose mind was very
+          sensitive to the current modern thought and
+          progress, while its execution, the setting it
+          forth in proper literary clothing, could be
+          successfully attempted only by one whose active
+          literary ability should be fully equalled by his
+          power of assimilative knowledge both literary and
+          scientific, and no less by his courage and
+          capacity for hard work. The book will be found to
+          have a fascination entirely new for the habitual
+          reader of novels. Indeed, Mr. Crawford has
+          succeeded in taking his readers quite above the
+          ordinary plane of novel interest."--_Boston
+          Advertiser._
+
+
+MARZIO'S CRUCIFIX.
+
+          "We take the liberty of saying that this work
+          belongs to the highest department of
+          character-painting in words."--_Churchman._
+
+          "We have repeatedly had occasion to say that Mr.
+          Crawford possesses in an extraordinary degree the
+          art of constructing a story. His sense of
+          proportion is just, and his narrative flows along
+          with ease and perspicuity. It is as if it could
+          not have been written otherwise, so naturally does
+          the story unfold itself, and so logical and
+          consistent is the sequence of incident after
+          incident. As a story 'Marzio's Crucifix' is
+          perfectly constructed."--_New York Commercial
+          Advertiser._
+
+
+KHALED.
+
+A Story of Arabia.
+
+          "Throughout the fascinating story runs the
+          subtlest analysis, suggested rather than
+          elaborately worked out, of human passion and
+          motive, the building out and development of the
+          character of the woman who becomes the hero's wife
+          and whose love he finally wins, being an
+          especially acute and highly finished example of
+          the story-teller's art. . . . That it is beautifully
+          written and holds the interest of the reader,
+          fanciful as it all is, to the very end, none who
+          know the depth and artistic finish of Mr.
+          Crawford's work need be told."--_The Chicago
+          Times._
+
+
+PAUL PATOFF.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+ZOROASTER.
+
+          "The field of Mr. Crawford's imagination appears
+          to be unbounded. . . . In 'Zoroaster' Mr. Crawford's
+          winged fancy ventures a daring flight. . . . Yet
+          'Zoroaster' is a novel rather than a drama. It is
+          a drama in the force of its situations and in the
+          poetry and dignity of its language; but its men
+          and women are not men and women of a play. By the
+          naturalness of their conversation and behavior
+          they seem to live and lay hold of our human
+          sympathy more than the same characters on a stage
+          could possibly do."--_The Times._
+
+
+A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH.
+
+          "It is a pleasure to have anything so perfect of
+          its kind as this brief and vivid story. . . . It is
+          doubly a success, being full of human sympathy, as
+          well as thoroughly artistic in its nice balancing
+          of the unusual with the commonplace, the clever
+          juxtaposition of innocence and guilt, comedy and
+          tragedy, simplicity and intrigue."--_Critic._
+
+          "Of all the stories Mr. Crawford has written, it
+          is the most dramatic, the most finished, the most
+          compact. . . . The taste which is left in one's mind
+          after the story is finished is exactly what the
+          fine reader desires and the novelist intends. . . .
+          It has no defects. It is neither trifling nor
+          trivial. It is a work of art. It is
+          perfect."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+
+AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+A CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE.
+
+          "It is a touching romance, filled with scenes of
+          great dramatic power."--_Boston Commercial
+          Bulletin._
+
+          "It is full of life and movement, and is one of
+          the best of Mr. Crawford's books."--_Boston
+          Saturday Evening Gazette._
+
+          "The interest is unflagging throughout. Never has
+          Mr. Crawford done more brilliant realistic work
+          than here. But his realism is only the case and
+          cover for those intense feelings which, placed
+          under no matter what humble conditions, produce the
+          most dramatic and the most tragic situations. . . .
+          This is a secret of genius, to take the most coarse
+          and common material, the meanest surroundings, the
+          most sordid material prospects, and out of the
+          vehement passions which sometimes dominate all
+          human beings to build up with these poor elements
+          scenes and passages, the dramatic and emotional
+          power of which at once enforce attention and awaken
+          the profoundest interest."--_New York Tribune._
+
+
+
+GREIFENSTEIN.
+
+          "'Greifenstein' is a remarkable novel, and while
+          it illustrates once more the author's unusual
+          versatility, it also shows that he has not been
+          tempted into careless writing by the vogue of his
+          earlier books. . . . There is nothing weak or small
+          or frivolous in the story. The author deals with
+          tremendous passions working at the height of their
+          energy. His characters are stern, rugged,
+          determined men and women, governed by powerful
+          prejudices and iron conventions, types of a
+          military people, in whom the sense of duty has
+          been cultivated until it dominates all other
+          motives, and in whom the principle of 'noblesse
+          oblige' is, so far as the aristocratic class is
+          concerned, the fundamental rule of conduct. What
+          such people may be capable of is startlingly
+          shown."--_New York Tribune._
+
+
+A ROMAN SINGER.
+
+          "One of Mr. Crawford's most charming stories--a
+          love romance pure and simple."--_Boston Home
+          Journal._
+
+          "'A Roman Singer' is one of his most finished,
+          compact, and successful stories, and contains a
+          splendid picture of Italian life."--_Toronto
+          Mail._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+MR. ISAACS.
+
+A Tale of Modern India.
+
+          "The writer first shows the hero in relation with
+          the people of the East and then skilfully brings
+          into connection the Anglo-Saxon race. It is in this
+          showing of the different effects which the two
+          classes of minds have upon the central figure of
+          the story that one of its chief merits lies. The
+          characters are original, and one does not recognize
+          any of the hackneyed personages who are so apt to
+          be considered indispensable to novelists, and
+          which, dressed in one guise or another, are but the
+          marionettes, which are all dominated by the same
+          mind, moved by the same motive force. The men are
+          all endowed with individualism and independent life
+          and thought. . . . There is a strong tinge of
+          mysticism about the book which is one of its
+          greatest charms."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+          "No story of human experience that we have met
+          with since 'John Inglesant' has such an effect of
+          transporting the reader into regions differing
+          from his own. 'Mr. Isaacs' is the best novel that
+          has ever laid its scenes in our Indian
+          dominions."--_The Daily News, London._
+
+
+DR. CLAUDIUS.
+
+A True Story.
+
+          "There is a suggestion of strength, of a mastery
+          of facts, of a fund of knowledge, that speaks well
+          for future production. . . . To be thoroughly
+          enjoyed, however, this book must be read, as no
+          mere cursory notice can give an adequate idea of
+          its many interesting points and excellences, for
+          without a doubt 'Dr. Claudius' is the most
+          interesting book that has been published for many
+          months, and richly deserves a high place in the
+          public favor."--_St. Louis Spectator._
+
+          "To our mind it by no means belies the promises of
+          its predecessor. The story, an exceedingly
+          improbable and romantic one, is told with much
+          skill; the characters are strongly marked without
+          any suspicion of caricature, and the author's
+          ideas on social and political subjects are often
+          brilliant and always striking. It is no
+          exaggeration to say that there is not a dull page
+          in the book, which is peculiarly adapted for the
+          recreation of student or thinker."--_Living
+          Church._
+
+
+TO LEEWARD.
+
+          "A story of remarkable power."--_Review of
+          Reviews._
+
+          "Mr. Crawford has written many strange and
+          powerful stories of Italian life, but none can be
+          any stranger or more powerful than 'To Leeward,'
+          with its mixture of comedy and tragedy, innocence
+          and guilt."--_Cottage Hearth._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+SARACINESCA.
+
+          "His highest achievement, as yet, in the realms of
+          fiction. The work has two distinct merits, either
+          of which would serve to make it great,--that of
+          telling a perfect story in a perfect way, and of
+          giving a graphic picture of Roman society in the
+          last days of the pope's temporal power. . . . The
+          story is exquisitely told."--_Boston Traveler._
+
+          "One of the most engrossing novels we have ever
+          read."--_Boston Times._
+
+
+SANT' ILARIO.
+
+A sequel to "Saracinesca."
+
+          "The author shows steady and constant improvement
+          in his art. 'Sant' Ilario' is a continuation of the
+          chronicles of the Saracinesca family. . . . A
+          singularly powerful and beautiful story. . . .
+          Admirably developed, with a naturalness beyond
+          praise. . . . It must rank with 'Greifenstein' as
+          the best work the author has produced. It fulfils
+          every requirement of artistic fiction. It brings
+          out what is most impressive in human action,
+          without owing any of its effectiveness to
+          sensationalism or artifice. It is natural, fluent
+          in evolution, accordant with experience, graphic in
+          description, penetrating in analysis, and absorbing
+          in interest."--_New York Tribune._
+
+
+
+DON ORSINO.
+
+A continuation of "Saracinesca" and "Sant' Ilario."
+
+          "The third in a rather remarkable series of novels
+          dealing with three generations of the Saracinesca
+          family, entitled respectively 'Saracinesca,'
+          'Sant' Ilario,' and 'Don Orsino,' and these novels
+          present an important study of Italian life,
+          customs, and conditions during the present
+          century. Each one of these novels is worthy of
+          very careful reading, and offers exceptional
+          enjoyment in many ways, in the fascinating
+          absorption of good fiction, in interest of
+          faithful historic accuracy, and in charm of style.
+          The 'new Italy' is strikingly revealed in 'Don
+          Orsino.'"--_Boston Budget._
+
+          "We are inclined to regard the book as the most
+          ingenious of all Mr. Crawford's fictions.
+          Certainly it is the best novel of the
+          season."--_Evening Bulletin._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+THE THREE FATES.
+
+          "The strength of the story lies in its portrayal
+          of the aspirations, disciplinary efforts, trials,
+          and triumphs of the man who is a born writer, and
+          who, by long and painful experiences, learns the
+          good that is in him and the way in which to give
+          it effectual expression. The analytical quality of
+          the book is excellent, and the individuality of
+          each one of the very dissimilar three fates is set
+          forth in an entirely satisfactory manner. . . . Mr.
+          Crawford has manifestly brought his best qualities
+          as a student of human nature and his finest
+          resources as a master of an original and
+          picturesque style to bear upon this story. Taken
+          for all in all it is one of the most pleasing of
+          all his productions in fiction, and it affords a
+          view of certain phases of American, or perhaps we
+          should say of New York, life that have not
+          hitherto been treated with anything like the same
+          adequacy and felicity."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+
+CHILDREN OF THE KING.
+
+A Tale of Southern Italy.
+
+          "A sympathetic reader cannot fail to be impressed
+          with the dramatic power of this story. The
+          simplicity of nature, the uncorrupted truth of a
+          soul, have been portrayed by a master-hand. The
+          suddenness of the unforeseen tragedy at the last
+          renders the incident of the story powerful beyond
+          description. One can only feel such sensations as
+          the last scene of the story incites. It may be
+          added that if Mr. Crawford has written some
+          stories unevenly, he has made no mistakes in the
+          stories of Italian life. A reader of them cannot
+          fail to gain a clearer, fuller acquaintance with
+          the Italians and the artistic spirit that pervades
+          the country."--M. L. B. in _Syracuse Journal_.
+
+
+THE WITCH OF PRAGUE.
+
+A Fantastic Tale.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY W. J. HENNESSY.
+
+          "'The Witch of Prague' is so remarkable a book as
+          to be certain of as wide a popularity as any of
+          its predecessors. The keenest interest for most
+          readers will lie in its demonstration of the
+          latest revelations of hypnotic science. . . . It is
+          a romance of singular daring and power."--_London
+          Academy._
+
+          "Mr. Crawford has written in many keys, but never
+          in so strange a one as that which dominates 'The
+          Witch of Prague.' . . . The artistic skill with
+          which this extraordinary story is constructed and
+          carried out is admirable and delightful. . . . Mr.
+          Crawford has scored a decided triumph, for the
+          interest of the tale is sustained throughout. . . .
+          A very remarkable, powerful, and interesting
+          story."--_New York Tribune._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Vol. 1
+
+Page 50, "retractation" changed to "retraction" (of a general
+retraction)
+
+Page 83, "baiscchi" changed to "baiocchi" (ten baiocchi for)
+
+
+Vol. 2
+
+Page 27, "premiss" changed to "premise" (a false premise)
+
+Page 29, "premisses" changed to "premises" (assumed premises)
+
+Page 118, "np" changed to "up" (paused, looked up)
+
+Page 152, "orf" changed to "or" (or the letter was)
+
+Page 219, "Calpasta" changed to "Calpesta" (Calpesta il mio)
+
+Page xvi, letter "i" missing in "generations" replaced (generations of
+the Saracinesca)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2), by 
+F. Marion Crawford
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASA BRACCIO, VOLUMES 1 AND 2 ***
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Casa Braccio, by F. Marion Crawford.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2), 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: Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2)
+
+Author: F. Marion Crawford
+
+Illustrator: A. Castaigne
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2008 [EBook #26327]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASA BRACCIO, VOLUMES 1 AND 2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 387px;">
+<img src="images/cover01.jpg" width="387" height="600" alt="Cover" title="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+<h1>CASA BRACCIO</h1>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/emblem.png" width="150" height="41" alt="Emblem" title="Emblem" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 369px;">
+<img src="images/gs01.jpg" width="369" height="500" alt="&quot;He looked at her long and sadly.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p. 239." title="&quot;He looked at her long and sadly.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p. 239." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;He looked at her long and sadly.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., <a href="#Page_239">p. 239.</a></span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>CASA BRACCIO</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>F. MARION CRAWFORD</h2>
+
+<div class='center'><span class="smcap">Author of "Saracinesca," "Pietro Ghisleri," etc.</span><br />
+<br /><br />
+<br />IN TWO VOLUMES<br />
+
+<br />VOL. I.<br /><br /><br /><br />
+
+<i>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. CASTAIGNE</i><br />
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<b>New York</b><br />
+MACMILLAN AND CO.<br />
+<small>AND LONDON</small><br />
+<br />
+1895<br />
+<br />
+<small><i>All rights reserved</i></small><br />
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='copyright'>
+<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1894,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">By F. MARION CRAWFORD.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<b>Norwood Press</b><br />
+J. S. Cushing &amp; Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith<br />
+Norwood Mass. U.S.A.<br />
+</div><hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+THIS STORY, BEING MY TWENTY-FIFTH NOVEL,<br />
+IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO<br />
+MY WIFE<br /></div>
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<span class="smcap">Sorrento, 1895</span><br /></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>PART I.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Sister Maria Addolorata&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />PART II.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Gloria Dalrymple</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Vol. I.</span></h3>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Nanna and Annetta</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Maria Addolorata</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Sor Tommaso was lying motionless"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"She had covered her face with the veil"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"An evil death on you!"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"He looked at her long and sadly"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Fire and sleet and candle-light;<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Christ receive thy soul"</span></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_324">324</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="smcap">Part I.</span></h2>
+
+<h3><i>SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA.</i></h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CASA BRACCIO.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><span class="smcap">Part I.</span></h2>
+
+<h3><i>SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA.</i></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Subiaco</span> lies beyond Tivoli, southeast from
+Rome, at the upper end of a wild gorge in the
+Samnite mountains. It is an archbishopric, and
+gives a title to a cardinal, which alone would make
+it a town of importance. It shares with Monte
+Cassino the honour of having been chosen by Saint
+Benedict and Saint Scholastica, his sister, as the
+site of a monastery and a convent; and in a cell in
+the rock a portrait of the holy man is still well
+preserved, which is believed, not without reason, to
+have been painted from life, although Saint Benedict
+died early in the fifth century. The town
+itself rises abruptly to a great height upon a mass
+of rock, almost conical in shape, crowned by the
+cardinal's palace, and surrounded on three sides by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+rugged mountains. On the third, it looks down
+the rapidly widening valley in the direction of
+Vicovaro, near which the Licenza runs into the
+Anio, in the neighbourhood of Horace's farm. It
+is a very ancient town, and in its general appearance
+it does not differ very much from many similar
+ones amongst the Italian mountains; but its
+position is exceptionally good, and its importance
+has been stamped upon it by the hands of those
+who have thought it worth holding since the days of
+ancient Rome. Of late it has, of course, acquired
+a certain modernness of aspect; it has planted
+acacia trees in its little piazza, and it has a gorgeously
+arrayed municipal band. But from a little
+distance one neither hears the band nor sees the
+trees, the grim medi&aelig;val fortifications frown upon
+the valley, and the time-stained dwellings, great
+and small, rise in rugged irregularity against the
+lighter brown of the rocky background and the
+green of scattered olive groves and chestnuts.
+Those features, at least, have not changed, and
+show no disposition to change during generations
+to come.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1844, modern civilization had not
+yet set in, and Subiaco was, within, what it still
+appears to be from without, a somewhat gloomy
+stronghold of the Middle Ages, rearing its battlements
+and towers in a shadowy gorge, above a
+mountain torrent, inhabited by primitive and passionate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+people, dominated by ecclesiastical institutions,
+and, though distinctly Roman, a couple of
+hundred years behind Rome itself in all matters
+ethic and &aelig;sthetic. It was still the scene of the
+Santacroce murder, which really decided Beatrice
+Cenci's fate; it was still the gathering place of
+highwaymen and outlaws, whose activity found
+an admirable field through all the region of hill
+and plain between the Samnite range and the
+sea, while the almost inaccessible fortresses of the
+higher mountains, towards Trevi and the Serra di
+Sant' Antonio, offered a safe refuge from the halfhearted
+pursuit of Pope Gregory's lazy soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>Something of what one may call the life-and-death
+earnestness of earlier times, when passion
+was motive and prejudice was law, survived at
+that time and even much later; the ferocity of
+practical love and hatred dominated the theory
+and practice of justice in the public life of the
+smaller towns, while the patriarchal system subjected
+the family in almost absolute servitude to
+its head.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing very surprising in the fact
+that the head of the house of Braccio should have
+obliged one of his daughters to take the veil in the
+Convent of Carmelite nuns, just within the gate of
+Subiaco, as his sister had taken it many years
+earlier. Indeed, it was customary in the family
+of the Princes of Gerano that one of the women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+should be a Carmelite, and it was a tradition not
+unattended with worldly advantages to the sisterhood,
+that the Braccio nun, whenever there was
+one, should be the abbess of that particular convent.</p>
+
+<p>Maria Teresa Braccio had therefore yielded,
+though very unwillingly, to her father's insistence,
+and having passed through her novitiate, had finally
+taken the veil as a Carmelite of Subiaco, in the
+year 1841, on the distinct understanding that when
+her aunt died she was to be abbess in the elder
+lady's stead. The abbess herself was, indeed, in
+excellent health and not yet fifty years old, so
+that Maria Teresa&mdash;in religion Maria Addolorata&mdash;might
+have a long time to wait before she was
+promoted to an honour which she regarded as
+hereditary; but the prospect of such promotion was
+almost her only compensation for all she had left
+behind her, and she lived upon it and concentrated
+her character upon it, and practised the part she
+was to play, when she was quite sure that she was
+not observed.</p>
+
+<p>Nature had not made her for a recluse, least of
+all for a nun of such a rigid Order as the Carmelites.
+The short taste of a brilliant social life
+which she had been allowed to enjoy, in accordance
+with an ancient tradition, before finally taking the
+veil, had shown her clearly enough the value of
+what she was to abandon, and at the same time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+had altogether confirmed her father in his decision.
+Compared with the freedom of the present day, the
+restrictions imposed upon a young girl in the
+Roman society of those times were, of course,
+tyrannical in the extreme, and the average modern
+young lady would almost as willingly go into a
+convent as submit to them. But Maria Teresa had
+received an impression which nothing could efface.
+Her intuitive nature had divined the possible semi-emancipation
+of marriage, and her temperament
+had felt in a certain degree the extremes of joyous
+exaltation and of that entrancing sadness which is
+love's premonition, and which tells maidens what
+love is before they know him, by making them
+conscious of the breadth and depth of his yet
+vacant dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>She had learned in that brief time that she was
+beautiful, and she had felt that she could love and
+that she should be loved in return. She had seen
+the world as a princess and had felt it as a woman,
+and she had understood all that she must give up
+in taking the veil. But she had been offered no
+choice, and though she had contemplated opposition,
+she had not dared to revolt. Being absolutely
+in the power of her parents, so far as she was aware,
+she had accepted the fatality of their will, and bent
+her fair head to be shorn of its glory and her
+broad forehead to be covered forever from the gaze
+of men. And having submitted, she had gone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+through it all bravely and proudly, as perhaps she
+would have gone through other things, even to
+death itself, being a daughter of an old race, accustomed
+to deify honour and to make its divinities
+of tradition. For the rest of her natural life she
+was to live on the memories of one short, magnificent
+year, forever to be contented with the grim
+rigidity of conventual life in an ancient cloister
+surrounded by gloomy mountains. She was to be
+a veiled shadow amongst veiled shades, a priestess
+of sorrow amongst sad virgins; and though, if she
+lived long enough, she was to be the chief of them
+and their ruler, her very superiority could only
+make her desolation more complete, until her own
+shadow, like the others, should be gathered into
+eternal darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Sister Maria Addolorata had certain privileges
+for which her companions would have given much,
+but which were traditionally the right of such
+ladies of the Braccio family as took the veil. For
+instance, she had a cell which, though not larger
+than the other cells, was better situated, for it had
+a little balcony looking over the convent garden,
+and high enough to afford a view of the distant
+valley and of the hills which bounded it, beyond
+the garden wall. It was entered by the last door
+in the corridor within, and was near the abbess's
+apartment, which was entered from the corridor,
+through a small antechamber which also gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+access to the vast linen-presses. The balcony, too,
+had a little staircase leading down into the garden.
+It had always been the custom to carry the
+linen to and from the laundry through Maria
+Addolorata's cell, and through a postern gate in
+the garden wall, the washing being done in the
+town. By this plan, the annoyance was avoided
+of carrying the huge baskets through the whole
+length of the convent, to and from the main entrance,
+which was also much further removed from
+the house of Sora Nanna, the chief laundress.
+Moreover, Maria Addolorata had charge of all the
+convent linen, and the employment thus afforded
+her was an undoubted privilege in itself, for occupation
+of any kind not devotional was excessively
+scarce in such an existence.</p>
+
+<p>In the eyes of the other nuns, the constant
+society of the abbess herself was also a privilege,
+and one not by any means to be despised. After
+all, the abbess and her niece were nearly related,
+they could talk of the affairs of their family, and
+the abbess doubtless received many letters from
+Rome containing all the interesting news of the
+day, and all the social gossip&mdash;perfectly innocent,
+of course&mdash;which was the chronicle of Roman
+life. These were valuable compensations, and the
+nuns envied them. The abbess, too, saw her
+brother, the archbishop and titular cardinal of
+Subiaco, when the princely prelate came out from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+Rome for the coolness of the mountains in August
+and September, and his conversation was said to
+be not only edifying, but fascinating. The cardinal
+was a very good man, like many of the Braccio
+family, but he was also a man of the world, who
+had been sent upon foreign missions of importance,
+and had acquired some worldly fame as well as
+much ecclesiastical dignity in the course of his
+long life. It must be delightful, the nuns thought,
+to be his own sister, to receive long visits from
+him, and to hear all he had to say about the busy
+world of Rome. To most of them, everything
+beyond Rome was outer darkness.</p>
+
+<p>But though the nuns envied the abbess and
+Maria Addolorata, they did not venture to say so,
+and they hardly dared to think so, even when they
+were all alone, each in her cell; for the concentration
+of conventual life magnifies small spiritual
+sins in the absence of anything really sinful, and
+to admit that she even faintly wishes she might
+be some one else is to tarnish the brightness of
+the nun's scrupulously polished conscience. It
+would be as great a misdeed, perhaps, as to allow
+the attention to wander to worldly matters during
+times of especial devotion. Nevertheless, the envy
+showed itself, very perceptibly and much against
+the will of the sisters themselves, in a certain cold
+deference of manner towards the young and beautiful
+nun who was one day to be the superior of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+them all by force of circumstances for which she
+deserved no credit. She had the position among
+them, and something of the isolation, of a young
+royal princess amongst the ladies of her queen
+mother's court.</p>
+
+<p>There was about her, too, an undefinable something,
+like the shadow of future fate, a something
+almost impossible to describe, and yet distinctly
+appreciable to all who saw her and lived with her.
+It came upon her especially when she was silent
+and abstracted, when she was kneeling in her
+place in the choir, or was alone upon her little balcony
+over the garden. At such times a luminous
+pallor gradually took the place of her fresh and
+healthy complexion, her eyes grew unnaturally
+dark, with a deep, fixed fire in them, and the
+regular features took upon them the white, set
+straightness of a death mask. Sometimes, at such
+moments, a shiver ran through her, even in summer,
+and she drew her breath sharply once or twice, as
+though she were hurt. The expression was not
+one of suffering or pain, but was rather that of a
+person conscious of some great danger which must
+be met without fear or flinching.</p>
+
+<p>She would have found it very hard to explain
+what she felt just then. She might have said that
+it was a consciousness of something unknown.
+She could not have said more than that. It
+brought no vision with it, beatific or horrifying;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+it was not the consequence of methodical contemplation,
+as the trance state is; and it was followed
+by no reaction nor sense of uneasiness. It simply
+came and went as the dark shadow of a thundercloud
+passing between her and the sun, and leaving
+no trace behind.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to account for it, unless it
+could be explained by heredity, and no one had
+ever suggested any such explanation to Maria.
+It was true that there had been more than one
+tragedy in the Braccio family since they had first
+lifted their heads above the level of their contemporaries
+to become Roman Barons, in the old
+days before such titles as prince and duke had
+come into use. But then, most of the old families
+could tell of deeds as cruel and lives as passionate
+as any remembered by Maria's race, and Italians,
+though superstitious in unexpected ways, have
+little of that belief in hereditary fate which is
+common enough in the gloomy north.</p>
+
+<p>"Was Sister Maria Addolorata a great sinner,
+before she became a nun?" asked Annetta, Sora
+Nanna's daughter, of her mother, one day, as they
+came away from the convent.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you saying!" exclaimed the washerwoman,
+in a tone of rebuke. "She is a great lady,
+and the niece of the abbess and of the cardinal.
+Sometimes certain ideas pass through your head,
+my daughter!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And Sora Nanna gesticulated, unable to express
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Then she sins in her throat," observed Annetta,
+calmly. "But you do not even look at her&mdash;so
+many sheets&mdash;so many pillow-cases&mdash;and good
+day! But while you count, I look."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I look at her?" inquired Nanna,
+shifting the big empty basket she carried on her
+head, hitching her broad shoulders and wrinkling
+her leathery forehead, as her small eyes turned
+upward. "Do you take me for a man, that I
+should make eyes at a nun?"</p>
+
+<p>"And I? Am I a man? And yet I look at
+her. I see nothing but her face when we are
+there, and afterwards I think about it. What
+harm is there? She sins in her throat. I know
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Sora Nanna hitched her shoulders impatiently
+again, and said nothing. The two women descended
+through the steep and narrow street,
+slippery and wet with slimy, coal black mud that
+glittered on the rough cobble-stones. Nanna
+walked first, and Annetta followed close behind
+her, keeping step, and setting her feet exactly
+where her mother had trod, with the instinctive
+certainty of the born mountaineer. With heads
+erect and shoulders square, each with one hand on
+her hip and the other hanging down, they carried
+their burdens swiftly and safely, with a swinging,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+undulating gait as though it were a pleasure to
+them to move, and would require an effort to stop
+rather than to walk on forever. They wore shoes
+because they were well-to-do people, and chose to
+show that they were when they went up to the
+convent. But for the rest they were clad in the
+costume of the neighbourhood,&mdash;the coarse white
+shift, close at the throat, the scarlet bodice, the
+short, dark, gathered skirt, and the dark blue
+carpet apron, with flowers woven on a white stripe
+across the lower end. Both wore heavy gold earrings,
+and Sora Nanna had eight or ten strings of
+large coral beads around her throat.</p>
+
+<p>Annetta was barely fifteen years old, brown,
+slim, and active as a lizard. She was one of those
+utterly unruly and untamable girls of whom there
+are two or three in every Italian village, in mountain
+or plain, a creature in whom a living consciousness
+of living nature took the place of thought, and
+with whom to be conscious was to speak, without
+reason or hesitation. The small, keen, black eyes
+were set under immense and arched black eyebrows
+which made the eyes themselves seem larger
+than they were, and the projecting temples cast
+shadows to the cheek which hid the rudimentary
+modelling of the coarse lower lids. The ears were
+flat and ill-developed, but close to the head and
+not large; the teeth very short, though perfectly
+regular and exceedingly white; the lips long, mobile,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+brown rather than red, and generally parted
+like those of a wild animal. The girl's smoothly
+sinewy throat moved with every step, showing the
+quick play of the elastic cords and muscles. Her
+blue-black hair was plaited, though far from neatly,
+and the braids were twisted into an irregular flat
+coil, generally hidden by the flap of the white embroidered
+cloth cross-folded upon her head and
+hanging down behind.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 249px;">
+<img src="images/gs02.jpg" width="249" height="500" alt="Nanna and Annetta.&mdash;Vol. I., p. 15." title="Nanna and Annetta.&mdash;Vol. I., p. 15." />
+<span class="caption">Nanna and Annetta.&mdash;Vol. I., p.&nbsp;15.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>For some minutes the mother and daughter continued
+to pick their way down the winding lanes
+between the dark houses of the upper village. Then
+Sora Nanna put out her right hand as a signal to
+Annetta that she meant to stop, and she stood still
+on the steep descent and turned deliberately till
+she could see the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you saying?" she began, as though
+there had been no pause in the conversation.
+"That Sister Maria Addolorata sins in her throat!
+But how can she sin in her throat, since she sees
+no man but the gardener and the priest? Indeed,
+you say foolish things!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what has that to do with it?" inquired
+Annetta. "She must have seen enough of men in
+Rome, every one of them a great lord. And who
+tells you that she did not love one of them and
+does not wish that she were married to him? And
+if that is not a sin in the throat, I do not know
+what to say. There is my answer."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You say foolish things," repeated Sora Nanna.</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned deliberately away and began to
+descend once more, with an occasional dissatisfied
+movement of the shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"For the rest," observed Annetta, "it is not my
+business. I would rather look at the Englishman
+when he is eating meat than at Sister Maria when
+she is counting clothes! I do not know whether
+he is a wolf or a man."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! The Englishman!" exclaimed Sora Nanna.
+"You will look so much at the Englishman that
+you will make blood with Gigetto, who wishes you
+well, and when Gigetto has waited for the Englishman
+at the corner of the forest, what shall we all
+have? The galleys. What do you see in the
+Englishman? He has red hair and long, long
+teeth. Yes&mdash;just like a wolf. You are right.
+And if he pays for meat, why should he not eat
+it? If he did not pay, it would be different. It
+would soon be finished. Heaven send us a little
+money without any Englishman! Besides, Gigetto
+said the other day that he would wait for him at
+the corner of the forest. And Gigetto, when he
+says a thing, he does it."</p>
+
+<p>"And why should we go to the galleys if Gigetto
+waits for the Englishman?" inquired Annetta.</p>
+
+<p>"Silly!" cried the older woman. "Because
+Gigetto would take your father's gun, since he has
+none of his own. That would be enough. We
+should have done it!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Annetta shrugged her shoulders and said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"But take care," continued Sora Nanna. "Your
+father sleeps with one eye open. He sees you, and
+he sees also the Englishman every day. He says
+nothing, because he is good. But he has a fist like
+a paving-stone. I tell you nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>They reached Sora Nanna's house and disappeared
+under the dark archway. For Sora Nanna
+and Stefanone, her husband, were rich people for
+their station, and their house was large and was
+built with an arch wide enough and high enough
+for a loaded beast of burden to pass through with
+a man on its back. And, within, everything was
+clean and well kept, excepting all that belonged to
+Annetta. There were airy upper rooms, with well-swept
+floors of red brick or of beaten cement, furnished
+with high beds on iron trestles, and wooden
+stools of well-worn brown oak, and tables painted
+a vivid green, and primitive lithographs of Saint
+Benedict and Santa Scholastica and the Addolorata.
+And there were lofts in which the rich autumn
+grapes were hung up to dry on strings, and where
+chestnuts lay in heaps, and figs were spread in
+symmetrical order on great sheets of the coarse
+grey paper made in Subiaco. There were apples,
+too, though poor ones, and there were bins of maize
+and wheat, waiting to be picked over before being
+ground in the primeval household mill. And there
+were hams and sides of bacon, and red peppers, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+bundles of dried herbs, and great mountain cheeses
+on shelves. There was also a guest room, better
+than the rest, which Stefanone and his wife occasionally
+let to respectable travellers or to the merchants
+who came from Rome on business to stay
+a few days in Subiaco. At the present time the
+room was rented by the Englishman concerning
+whom the discussion had arisen between Annetta
+and her mother.</p>
+
+<p>Angus Dalrymple, M.D., was not an Englishman,
+as he had tried to explain to Sora Nanna, though
+without the least success. He was, as his name
+proclaimed, a Scotchman of the Scotch, and a
+doctor of medicine. It was true that he had red
+hair, and an abundance of it, and long white teeth,
+but Sora Nanna's description was otherwise libellously
+incomplete and wholly omitted all mention
+of the good points in his appearance. In the first
+place, he possessed the characteristic national build
+in a superior degree of development, with all the
+lean, bony energy which has done so much hard
+work in the world. He was broad-shouldered,
+long-armed, long-legged, deep-chested, and straight,
+with sinewy hands and singularly well-shaped fingers.
+His healthy skin had that mottled look
+produced by countless freckles upon an almost
+childlike complexion. The large, grave mouth
+generally concealed the long teeth objected to by
+Sora Nanna, and the lips, though even and narrow,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+were strong rather than thin, and their rare smile
+was both genial and gentle. There were lines&mdash;as
+yet very faint&mdash;about the corners of the mouth,
+which told of a nervous and passionate disposition
+and of the strong Scotch temper, as well as of a
+certain sensitiveness which belongs especially to
+northern races. The pale but very bright blue eyes
+under shaggy auburn brows were fiery with courage
+and keen with shrewd enterprise. Dalrymple was
+assuredly not a man to be despised under any circumstances,
+intellectually or physically.</p>
+
+<p>His presence in such a place as Subiaco, at a
+time when hardly any foreigners except painters
+visited the place, requires some explanation; for
+he was not an artist, but a doctor, and had never
+been even tempted to amuse himself with sketching.
+In the first place, he was a younger son of
+a good family, and received a moderate allowance,
+quite sufficient in those days to allow him considerable
+latitude of expenditure in old-fashioned
+Italy. Secondly, he had entirely refused to follow
+any of the professions known as 'liberal.' He
+had no taste for the law, and he had not the
+companionable character which alone can make
+life in the army pleasant in time of peace. His
+beliefs, or his lack of belief, together with an
+honourable conscience, made him naturally opposed
+to all churches. On the other hand, he had been
+attracted almost from his childhood by scientific<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+subjects, at a period when the discoveries of the
+last fifty years appeared as misty but beatific
+visions to men of science. To the disappointment
+and, to some extent, to the humiliation of his
+family, he insisted upon studying medicine, at the
+University of St. Andrew's, as soon as he had
+obtained his ordinary degree at Cambridge. And
+having once insisted, nothing could turn him from
+his purpose, for he possessed English tenacity
+grafted upon Scotch originality, with a good deal
+of the strength of both races.</p>
+
+<p>While still a student he had once made a tour
+in Italy, and like many northerners had fallen
+under the mysterious spell of the South from the
+very first. Having a sufficient allowance for all
+his needs, as has been said, and being attracted by
+the purely scientific side of his profession rather
+than by any desire to become a successful practitioner,
+it was natural enough that on finding
+himself free to go whither he pleased in pursuit
+of knowledge, he should have visited Italy again.
+A third visit had convinced him that he should do
+well to spend some years in the country; for by
+that time he had become deeply interested in the
+study of malarious fevers, which in those days
+were completely misunderstood. It would be far
+too much to say that young Dalrymple had at that
+time formed any complete theory in regard to
+malaria; but his naturally lonely and concentrated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+intellect had contemptuously discarded all explanations
+of malarious phenomena, and, communicating
+his own ideas to no one, until he
+should be in possession of proofs for his opinions,
+he had in reality got hold of the beginning of
+the truth about germs which has since then revolutionized
+medicine.</p>
+
+<p>The only object of this short digression has been
+to show that Angus Dalrymple was not a careless
+idler and tourist in Italy, only half responsible
+for what he did, and not at all for what he
+thought. On the contrary, he was a man of very
+unusual gifts, of superior education, and of rare
+enterprise; a strong, silent, thoughtful man, about
+eight-and-twenty years of age, and just beginning
+to feel his power as something greater than he
+had suspected, when he came to spend the autumn
+months in Subiaco, and hired Sora Nanna's guest
+room, with a little room leading off it, which he
+kept locked, and in which he had a table, a chair,
+a microscope, some books, a few chemicals and
+some simple apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>His presence had at first roused certain jealous
+misgivings in the heart of the town physician, Sor
+Tommaso Taddei, commonly spoken of simply as
+'the Doctor,' because there was no other. But
+Dalrymple was not without tact and knowledge
+of human nature. He explained that he came as
+a foreigner to learn from native physicians how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+malarious fevers were treated in Italy; and he
+listened with patient intelligence to Sor Tommaso's
+antiquated theories, and silently watched his
+still more antiquated practice. And Sor Tommaso,
+like all people who think that they know a vast
+deal, highly approved of Dalrymple's submissive
+silence, and said that the young man was a
+marvel of modesty, and that if he could stay
+about ten years in Subiaco and learn something
+from Sor Tommaso himself, he might really some
+day be a fairly good doctor,&mdash;which were extraordinarily
+liberal admissions on the part of the
+old practitioner, and contributed largely towards
+reassuring Stefanone concerning his lodger's
+character.</p>
+
+<p>For Stefanone and his wife had their doubts and
+suspicions. Of course they knew that all foreigners
+except Frenchmen and Austrians were Protestants,
+and ate meat on fast days, and were under the most
+especial protection of the devil, who fattened them
+in this world that they might burn the better in the
+next. But Stefanone had never seen the real foreigner
+at close quarters, and had not conceived it possible
+that any living human being could devour so
+much half-cooked flesh in a day as Dalrymple desired
+for his daily portion, paid for, and consumed.
+Moreover, there was no man in Subiaco who could
+and did swallow such portentous draughts of the
+strong mountain wine, without suffering any apparent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+effects from his potations. Furthermore,
+also, Dalrymple did strange things by day and
+night in the small laboratory he had arranged
+next to his bedroom, and unholy and evil smells
+issued at times through the cracks of the door, and
+penetrated from the bedroom to the stairs outside,
+and were distinctly perceptible all over the house.
+Therefore Stefanone maintained for a long time
+that his lodger was in league with the powers of
+darkness, and that it was not safe to keep him
+in the house, though he paid his bill so very
+regularly, every Saturday, and never quarrelled
+about the price of his food and drink. On the
+whole, however, Stefanone abstained from interfering,
+as he had at first been inclined to do, and
+entering the laboratory, with the support of the
+parish priest, a basin of holy water, and a loaded
+gun&mdash;all three of which he considered necessary
+for an exorcism; and little by little, Sor Tommaso,
+the doctor, persuaded him that Dalrymple was a
+worthy young man, deeply engaged in profound
+studies, and should be respected rather than
+exorcised.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," admitted the doctor, "he is a
+Protestant. But then he has a passport. Let us
+therefore let him alone."</p>
+
+<p>The existence of the passport&mdash;indispensable
+in those days&mdash;was a strong argument in the
+eyes of the simple Stefanone. He could not conceive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+that a magician whose soul was sold to
+the devil could possibly have a passport and be
+under the protection of the law. So the matter
+was settled.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 435px;">
+<img src="images/gs03.jpg" width="435" height="500" alt="Maria Addolorata.&mdash;Vol. I., p. 25." title="Maria Addolorata.&mdash;Vol. I., p. 25." />
+<span class="caption">Maria Addolorata.&mdash;Vol. I., p. 25.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sister Maria Addolorata</span> sat by the open door
+of her cell, looking across the stone parapet of her
+little balcony, and watching the changing richness
+of the western sky, as the sun went down far out
+of sight behind the mountains. Though the month
+was October, the afternoon was warm; it was very
+still, and the air had been close in the choir during
+the Benediction service, which was just over. She
+leaned back in her chair, and her lips parted as
+she breathed, with a perceptible desire for refreshment
+in the breath. She held a piece of needlework
+in her heavy white hands; the needle had
+been thrust through the linen, but the stitch had
+remained unfinished, and one pointed finger pressed
+the doubled edge against the other, lest the material
+should slip before she made up her mind to
+draw the needle through. Deep in the garden
+under the balcony the late flowers were taking
+strangely vivid colours out of the bright sky above,
+and some bits of broken glass, stuck in the mortar
+on the top of the opposite wall as a protection
+against thieving boys, glowed like a line of rough
+rubies against the misty distance. Even the white<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+walls of the bare cell and the coarse grey blanket
+lying across the foot of the small bed drank in a
+little of the colour, and looked less grey and less
+grim.</p>
+
+<p>From the eaves, high above the open door, the
+swallows shot down into the golden light, striking
+great circles and reflecting the red gold of the sky
+from their breasts as they wheeled just beyond the
+wall, with steady wings wide-stretched, up and
+down; and each one, turning at full speed, struck
+upwards again and was out of sight in an instant,
+above the lintel. The nun watched them, her
+eyes trying to follow each of them in turn and to
+recognize them separately as they flashed into
+sight again and again.</p>
+
+<p>Her lips were parted, and as she sat there she
+began to sing very softly and quite unconsciously.
+She could not have told what the song was. The
+words were strange and oddly divided, and there
+was a deadly sadness in a certain interval that
+came back almost with every stave. But the voice
+itself was beautiful beyond all comparison with
+ordinary voices, full of deep and touching vibrations
+and far harmonics, though she sang so softly,
+all to herself. Notes like hers haunt the ears&mdash;and
+sometimes the heart&mdash;when she who sang
+them has been long dead, and many would give
+much to hear but a breath of them again.</p>
+
+<p>It was hard for Maria Addolorata not to sing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+sometimes, when she was all alone in her cell,
+though it was so strictly forbidden. Singing is
+a gift of expression, when it is a really natural
+gift, as much as speech and gesture and the smile
+on the lips, with the one difference that it is a
+keener pleasure to him or her that sings than
+gesture or speech can possibly be. Music, and
+especially singing, are a physical as well as an
+intellectual expression, a pleasure of the body as
+well as a 'delectation' of the soul. To sing naturally
+and spontaneously is most generally an
+endowment of natures physically strong and rich
+by the senses, independently of the mind, though
+melody may sometimes be the audible translation
+of a silent thought as well as the unconscious
+speech of wordless passion.</p>
+
+<p>And in Maria's song there was a strain of that
+something unknown and fatal, which the nuns
+sometimes saw in her face and which was in her
+eyes now, as she sang; for they no longer followed
+the circling of the swallows, but grew fixed and
+dark, with fiery reflexions from the sunset sky,
+and the regular features grew white and straight
+and square against the deepening shadows within
+the narrow room. The deep voice trembled a
+little, and the shoulders had a short, shivering
+movement under the heavy folds of the dark veil,
+as the sensation of a presence ran through her and
+made her shudder. But the voice did not break,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+and she sang on, louder, now, than she realized,
+the full notes swelling in her throat, and vibrating
+between the narrow walls, and floating out through
+the open door to join the flight of the swallows.</p>
+
+<p>The door of the cell opened gently, but she did
+not hear, and sang on, leaning back in her chair
+and gazing still at the pink clouds above the
+mountains.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"Death is my love, dark-eyed death&mdash;"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>she sang.</div>
+
+<p>"Maria!"</p>
+
+<p>The abbess was standing in the doorway and
+speaking to her, but she did not hear.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"His hands are sweetly cold and gentle&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Flowers of leek, and firefly&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Holy Saint John!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Maria!" cried the abbess, impatiently. "What
+follies are you singing? I could hear you in my
+room!"</p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata started and rose from her
+seat, still holding her needlework, and turning
+half round towards her superior, with suddenly
+downcast eyes. The elder lady came forward with
+slow dignity and walked as far as the door of the
+balcony, where she stood still for a moment, gazing
+at the beautiful sky. She was not a stately woman,
+for she was too short and stout, but she had that
+calm air of assured superiority which takes the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+place of stateliness, and which seems to belong
+especially to those who occupy important positions
+in the Church. Her large features, though
+too heavy, were imposing in their excessive pallor,
+while the broad, dark brown shadows all around
+and beneath the large black eyes gave the face a
+depth of expression which did not, perhaps, wholly
+correspond with the original character. It was
+a striking face, and considering the wide interval
+between the ages of the abbess and her niece, and
+the natural difference of colouring, there was a
+strong family resemblance in the two women.</p>
+
+<p>The abbess sat down upon the only chair, and
+Maria remained standing before her, her sewing
+in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I have often told you that you must not sing
+in your cell," said the abbess, in a coldly severe
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>Maria's shoulders shook her veil a little, but she
+still looked at the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot help it," she answered in a constrained
+voice. "I did not know that I was singing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That is ridiculous! How can one sing, and
+not know it? You are not deaf. At least, you
+do not sing as though you were. I will not have
+it. I could hear you as far away as my own room&mdash;a
+love-song, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"The love of death," suggested Maria.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes no difference," answered the elder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+lady. "You disturb the peace of the sisters with
+your singing. You know the rule, and you must
+obey it, like the rest. If you must sing, then sing
+in church."</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, that ought to be enough. Must
+you sing all the time? Suppose that the Cardinal
+had been visiting me, as was quite possible, what
+impression would he have had of our discipline?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Uncle Cardinal has often heard me sing."</p>
+
+<p>"You must not call him 'Uncle Cardinal.' It is
+like the common people who say 'Uncle Priest.' I
+have told you that a hundred times at least. And
+if the Cardinal has heard you singing, so much the
+worse."</p>
+
+<p>"He once told me that I had a good voice,"
+observed Maria, still standing before her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"A good voice is a gift of God and to be used
+in church, but not in such a way as to attract
+attention or admiration. The devil is everywhere,
+my daughter, and makes use of our best gifts as a
+means of temptation. The Cardinal certainly did
+not hear you singing that witch's love-song which
+I heard just now. He would have rebuked you as
+I do."</p>
+
+<p>"It was not a love-song. It is about death&mdash;and
+Saint John's eve."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then it is about witches. Do not argue
+with me. There is a rule, and you must not
+break it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata said nothing, but moved a
+step and leaned against the door-post, looking out
+into the evening light. The stout abbess sat motionless
+in her straight chair, looking past her
+niece at the distant hills. She had evidently said
+all she meant to say about the singing, and it did
+not occur to her to talk of anything else. A long
+silence followed. Maria was not timid, but she
+had been accustomed from her childhood to look
+upon her aunt as an immensely superior person,
+moving in a higher sphere, and five years spent in
+the convent as novice and nun had rather increased
+than diminished the feeling of awe which the abbess
+inspired in the young girl. There was, indeed, no
+other sister in the community who would have
+dared to answer the abbess's rebuke at all, and
+Maria's very humble protest really represented an
+extraordinary degree of individuality and courage.
+Conventual institutions can only exist on a basis of
+absolute submission.</p>
+
+<p>The abbess was neither harsh nor unkind, and
+was certainly not a very terrifying figure, but she
+possessed undeniable force of character, strengthened
+by the inborn sense of hereditary right and
+power, and her kindness was as imposing as her
+displeasure was lofty and solemn. She had very
+little sympathy for any weakness in others, but
+she was always ready to dispense the mercy of
+Heaven, vicariously, so to say, and with a certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+royally suppressed surprise that Heaven should be
+merciful. On the whole, considering the circumstances,
+she admitted that Maria Addolorata had
+accepted the veil with sufficient outward grace,
+though without any vocation, and she took it for
+granted that with such opportunities the girl must
+slowly develop into an abbess not unlike her predecessors.
+She prayed regularly, of course, and with
+especial intention, for her niece, as for the welfare
+of the order, and assumed as an unquestionable
+result that her prayers were answered with perfect
+regularity, since her own conscience did not reproach
+her with negligence of her young relative's
+spiritual education.</p>
+
+<p>To the abbess, religion, the order and its duties,
+presented themselves as a vast machine controlled
+for the glory of God by the Pope. She and her
+nuns were parts of the great engine which must
+work with perfect regularity in order that God
+might be glorified. Her mind was naturally religious,
+but was at the same time essentially of the
+material order. There is a material imagination,
+and there is a spiritual imagination. There are
+very good and devout men and women who take the
+world, present and to come, quite literally, as a
+mere fulfilment of their own limitations; who look
+upon what they know as being all that need be
+known, and upon what they believe of God and
+Heaven as the mechanical consequence of what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+they know rather than as the cause and goal, respectively,
+of existence and action; to whom the
+letter of the law is the arbitrary expression of a
+despotic power, which, somehow, must be looked
+upon as merciful; who answer all questions concerning
+God's logic with the tremendous assertion
+of God's will; whose God is a magnified man, and
+whose devil is a malignant animal, second only to
+God in understanding, while extreme from God
+in disposition. There are good men and women
+who, to use a natural but not flippant simile, take
+it for granted that the soul is cast into the troubled
+waters of life without the power to swim, or even
+the possibility of learning to float, dependent upon
+the bare chance that some one may throw it the
+life-buoy of ritual religion as its only conceivable
+means of salvation. And the opponents of each
+particular form of faith invariably take just such
+good men and women, with all their limitations, as
+the only true exponents of that especial creed,
+which they then proceed to tear in pieces with all
+the ease such an undue advantage of false premise
+gives them. None of them have thought of intellectual
+mercy as being, perhaps, an integral part of
+Christian charity. Faith they have in abundance,
+and hope also not a little; but charity, though it
+be for men's earthly ills and, theoretically, if not
+always practically, for men's spiritual shortcomings,
+is rigidly forbidden for the errors of men's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+minds. Why? No thinking man can help asking
+the little question which grows great in the unanswering
+silence that follows it.</p>
+
+<p>All this is not intended as an apology for what
+the young nun, Maria Addolorata, afterwards did,
+though much of it is necessary in explanation of
+her deeds, which, however they may be regarded,
+brought upon her and others their inevitable logical
+consequences. Still less is it meant, in any sense,
+as an attack upon the conventual system of the cloistered
+orders, which system was itself a consequence
+of spiritual, intellectual and political history, and
+has a prime right to be judged upon the evidence of
+its causes, and not by the shortcomings of its results
+in changed times. What has been said merely
+makes clear the fact that the characters, minds,
+and dispositions of Maria Addolorata and of her
+aunt, the abbess, were wholly unsuited to one another.
+And this one fact became a source of life
+and death, of happiness and misery, of comedy and
+tragedy, to many individuals, even to the present
+day.</p>
+
+<p>The nun remained motionless, pressing her cheek
+against the door-post and looking out. Her aunt
+had not quite shut the door by which she had
+entered, and a cool stream of air blew outward from
+the corridor and through the cell, bringing with it
+that peculiar odour which belongs to all large and
+old buildings inhabited by religious communities.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+It is made up of the cold exhalations from stone
+walls and paved floors in which there is always
+some dampness, of the acrid smell of the heavy,
+leathern, wadded curtains which shut off the main
+drafts of air, as the swinging doors do in a mine,
+of a faint but perceptible suggestion of incense
+which penetrates the whole building from the
+church or the chapel, and, not least, of the fumes
+from the cookery of the great quantities of vegetables
+which are the staple food of the brethren or
+the sisters. It is as imperceptible to the monks and
+nuns themselves as the smell of tobacco to the
+smoker.</p>
+
+<p>It had been very close in the little cell, and
+Maria was glad of the coolness that came in
+through the open door. Her eyes were fixed on
+the sky with a longing look. Again the words of
+her song rose to her lips, but she checked them,
+remembering her aunt's presence, and with the
+effort to be silent came the strong wish to be free,
+to be over there upon those purple hills at evening,
+to look beyond and watch the sun sinking into the
+distant sea, to breathe her fill of the mountain air,
+to run along the crests of the hills till she should
+be tired, to sleep under the open sky, to see, in
+dreams, to-morrow's sun rising through the trees,
+to be waked by the song of birds and to find that
+the dream was true.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of that, and instead of all it meant to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+her, there was to be the silent evening meal, the
+close, lighted chapel, the wearily nasal chant of
+the sisters, her lonely cell, with its close darkness,
+the unrefreshing sleep, broken by the bell
+calling her to another office in the chapel; then,
+at last, the dawn, and the day that would seem as
+much a prisoner as herself within the convent
+walls, and the praying and nasal chanting, and
+the counting of sheets and pillow-cases, and doing
+a little sewing, and singing to herself, perhaps,
+and then the being reproved for it&mdash;the whole
+varied by meals of coarse food, and periodical
+stations in her seat in the choir. The day! The
+very sun seemed imprisoned in his corner of the
+garden wall, dragging slowly at his chain, in a
+short half-circle, from morning till evening, like
+a watch-dog tied up in a yard beside his kennel.
+The night was better. Sometimes she could see
+the moon-rays through the cracks of the balcony
+door, as she lay in her bed. She could see them
+against the darkness, and the ends of them were
+straight white lines and round white spots on the
+floor and on the walls. Her thoughts played in
+them, and her maiden fancies caught them and
+followed them lightly out into the white night and
+far away to the third world, which is dreamland.
+And in her dreams she sang to the midnight stars,
+and clasped her bare arms round the moon's white
+throat, kissing the moon-lady's pale and passionate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+cheek, till she lost herself in the mysterious eyes,
+and found herself once more, bathed in cool star-showers,
+the queen of a tender dream.</p>
+
+<p>There sat the abbess, in the only chair, stolid,
+righteous, imposing. The incarnation and representative
+of the ninety and nine who need no
+forgiveness, exasperatingly and mathematically
+virtuous as a dogma, a woman against whom no
+sort of reproach could be brought, and at the mere
+sight of whom false witnesses would shrivel up
+and die, like jelly-fish in the sun. She not only
+approved of the convent life, but she liked it.
+She was at liberty to do a thousand things which
+were not permitted to the nuns, but she had not
+the slightest inclination to do any of them, any
+more than she was inclined to admit that any of
+them could possibly be unhappy if they would
+only pray, sing, sleep, and eat boiled cabbage at
+the appointed hours. What had she in common
+with Maria Addolorata, except that she was born
+a princess and a Braccio?</p>
+
+<p>Of what use was it to be a princess by birth,
+like a dozen or more of the sisters, or even a noble,
+like all the others? Of what use or advantage
+could anything be, where liberty was not? An
+even plainer and more desperate question rose in
+the young nun's heart, as she leaned her cheek
+against the door-post, still warm with the afternoon
+sun. Of what use was life, if it was to be lived<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+in the tomb with the accompaniment of a lifelong
+funeral service? Why should not God be as well
+pleased with suicide as with self-burial? Why
+should not death all at once, by the sudden dash
+of cleanly steel, be as noble and acceptable a
+sacrifice as death by sordid degrees of orderly
+suffering, systematic starvation, and rigidly regulated
+misery? Was not life, life&mdash;and blood,
+blood&mdash;whether drawn by drops, or shed from a
+quick wound in the splendid redness of one heroic
+instant? Surely it would be as grand a thing, if
+a mere sacrifice were the object, to be laid down
+stark dead, with the death-thrust in the heart, at
+the foot of the altar, in all her radiant youth and
+full young beauty, untempted and unsullied, as to
+fast and pray through forty querulous years of
+misery in prison.</p>
+
+<p>But then, there was the virtue of patience.
+Therein, doubtless, lay the difference. It was not
+the death alone that was to please God, but the
+long manner of it, the summed-up account of suffering,
+the interest paid on the capital of life after
+it was invested in death. God was to be pleased
+with items, and the sum of them. Item, a sleepless
+night. Item, a bad cold, caught by kneeling on
+the damp stones. Item, a dish of sweets refused
+on a feast-day. Item, the resolution not to laugh
+when a fly settled on the abbess's nose. Item, the
+resolution not to wish that her hair had never been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+cut off. Item, being stifled in summer and frozen
+in winter, in her cell. Item, appreciating that it
+was the best cell, and that she was better off than
+the other sisters.</p>
+
+<p>Repeat the items for half a century, sum them
+up, and offer them to God as a meet and fitting
+sacrifice&mdash;the destruction, by fine degrees of petty
+suffering, of one woman's whole life, almost from
+the beginning, and quite to the end, with the total
+annihilation of all its human possibilities, of love,
+of motherhood, of reasonable enjoyment and legitimate
+happiness. That was the formula for salvation
+which Maria Addolorata had received with
+the veil.</p>
+
+<p>And not only had she received it. It had been
+thrust upon her, because she chanced to be the
+only available daughter of the ancient house of
+Braccio, to fill the hereditary seat beneath the
+wooden canopy, as abbess of the Subiaco Carmelites.
+If there had been another sister, less
+fair, more religiously disposed, that sister would
+have been chosen in Maria's stead. But there was
+no other; and there must be a young Braccio nun,
+to take the place of the elder one, when the latter
+should have filled her account to overflowing with
+little items to be paid for with the gold of certain
+salvation.</p>
+
+<p>That a sinful woman, full of sorrows, and weary
+of the world, might silently bow her head under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+the nun's veil, and wear out with prayerful austerity
+the deep-cut letters of her sin's story, that,
+at least, was a thing Maria could understand.
+There were faces amongst the sisters that haunted
+her in her solitude, lips that could have told much,
+but which said only 'Miserere'; eyes that had
+looked on love, and that fixed themselves now
+only on the Cross; cheeks blanched with grief and
+hollowed as the marble of an ancient fountain by
+often flowing tears; hearts that had given all,
+and had been beaten and bruised and rejected.
+The convent was for them; the life was a life for
+them; for them there was no freedom beyond
+these walls, in the living world, nor anywhere on
+this side of death. They had done right in coming,
+and they did right in staying; they were
+reasonable when they prayed that they might have
+time, before they died, to be sorry for their sins
+and to touch again the hem of the garment of
+innocence.</p>
+
+<p>But even they, if they were told that it would
+be right, would they not rather shorten their time
+to a day, even to one instant, of aggregated pain,
+and offer up their sacrifice all at once? And why
+should it not be right? Did God delight in pain
+and suffering for its own sake? The passionate
+girl's heart revolted angrily against a Being that
+could enjoy the sufferings of helpless creatures.</p>
+
+<p>But then, there was that virtue of patience<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+again, which was beyond her comprehension. At
+last she spoke, her face still to the sunset.</p>
+
+<p>"What difference can it make to God how we
+die?" she asked, scarcely conscious that she was
+speaking.</p>
+
+<p>The abbess must have started a little, for the
+chair creaked suddenly, several seconds before she
+answered. Her face did not relax, however, nor
+were her hands unclasped from one another as
+they lay folded on her knees.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a foolish question, my daughter," she
+said at last. "Do you think that God was not
+pleased by the sufferings of the holy martyrs, and
+did not reward them for what they bore?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I did not mean that," answered Maria,
+quickly. "But why should we not all be martyrs?
+It would be much quicker."</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven preserve us!" exclaimed the abbess.
+"What are you thinking of, child?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be so much quicker," repeated Maria.
+"What are we here for? To sacrifice our lives to
+God. We wish to make this sacrifice, and God
+promises to accept it. Why would it be less complete
+if we were led to the altar as soon as we
+have finished our novitiate and quickly killed? It
+would be the same, and it would be much quicker.
+What difference can it make how we die, since we
+are to die in the end, without accomplishing anything
+except dying?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By this time the abbess's pale hands were unclasped,
+and one of them pressed each knee, as
+she leaned far forward in her seat, with an expression
+of surprise and horror, her dark lips parted
+and all the lines of her colourless face drawn
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you mad, Maria?" she asked in a low
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Mad? No. Why should you think me mad?"
+The nun turned and looked down at her aunt.
+"After all, it is the great question. Our lives are
+but a preparation for death. Why need the preparation
+be so long? Why should the death be so
+slow? Why should it be right to kill ourselves
+for the glory of God by degrees, and wrong to do
+it all at once, if one has the courage? I think it
+is a very reasonable question."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, you are beside yourself! The devil
+suggests such things to you and blinds you to the
+truth, my child. Penance and prayer, prayer and
+penance&mdash;by the grace of Heaven it will pass."</p>
+
+<p>"Penance and prayer!" exclaimed Maria, sadly.
+"That is it&mdash;a slow death, but a sure one!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am more than sixty years old," replied the
+abbess. "I have done penance and prayed prayers
+all my life, and you see&mdash;I am well. I am stout."</p>
+
+<p>"For charity's sake, do not say so!" cried Maria,
+making the sign of the horns with her fingers, to
+ward off the evil eye. "You will certainly fall ill."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Our lives are of God. It is our own eyes that
+are evil. You must not make horns with your
+fingers. It is a heathen superstition, as I have
+often told you. But many of you do it. Maria, I
+wish to speak to you seriously."</p>
+
+<p>"Speak, mother," answered the young nun, the
+strong habit of submission returning instantly
+with the other's grave tone.</p>
+
+<p>"These thoughts of yours are very wicked.
+We are placed in the world, and we must continue
+to live in it, as long as God wills that we should.
+When God is pleased to deliver us, He will take us
+in good time. You and I and the sisters should be
+thankful that during our brief stay on earth this
+sanctuary has fallen to our lot, and this possibility
+of a holy life. We must take every advantage of
+it, thanking Heaven if our stay be long enough for
+us to repent of our sins and obtain indulgence for
+our venial shortcomings. It is wicked to desire to
+shorten our lives. It is wicked to desire anything
+which is not the will of God. We are here to live,
+to watch and to pray&mdash;not to complain and to rebel."</p>
+
+<p>The abbess was stout, as she herself admitted,
+and between her sudden surprise at her niece's
+wholly unorthodox, not to say blasphemous, suggestion
+of suicide as a means of grace, and her own
+attempt at eloquence, she grew rapidly warm, in
+spite of the comparatively cool draft which was
+passing out from the interior of the building. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+caught the end of her loose over-sleeve and fanned
+herself slowly when she had finished speaking.</p>
+
+<p>But Maria Addolorata did not consider that she
+was answered. There in the cell of a Carmelite
+convent, in the heart of a young girl who had perhaps
+never heard of Shakespeare and who certainly
+knew nothing of Hamlet, the question of
+all questions found itself, and she found for it such
+speech as she could command. It broke out passionately
+and impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"What are we? And why are we what we are?
+Yes, mother&mdash;I know that you are good, and that
+all you say is true. But it is not all. There is all
+the world beyond it. To live, or not to live&mdash;but
+you know that this is not living! It is not meant
+to be living, as the people outside understand what
+living means. What does it all signify but death,
+when we take the veil, and lie before the altar, and
+are covered with a funeral pall? It means dying&mdash;then
+why not altogether dying? Has not God
+angels, in thousands, to praise Him and worship
+Him, and pray for sinners on earth? And they
+sing and pray gladly, because they are blessed and
+do not suffer, as we do. Why should God want us,
+poor little nuns, to live half dead, and to praise Him
+with voices that crack with the cold in winter, and
+to kneel till we faint with the heat in summer,
+and to wear out our bodies with fasting and prayer
+and penance, till it is all we can do to crawl to our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+places in the choir? Not I&mdash;I am young and
+strong still&mdash;nor you, perhaps, for you are strong
+still, though you are not young. But many of the
+sisters&mdash;yes, they are the best ones, I know&mdash;they
+are killing themselves by inches before our
+eyes. You know it&mdash;I know it&mdash;they know it
+themselves. Why should they not find some
+shorter way of death for God's glory? Or if not,
+why should they not live happily, since many of
+them could? Why should God, who made us, wish
+us to destroy ourselves&mdash;or if He does, then why
+may we not do it in our own way? Ah&mdash;it would
+be so short&mdash;a knife-thrust, and then the great
+peace forever!"</p>
+
+<p>The abbess had risen and was standing before
+Maria, one hand resting on the back of the rush-bottomed
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Blasphemy!" she cried, finding breath at last.
+"It is blasphemy, or madness, or both! It is the
+evil one's own doing! Forgive her, good God!
+She does not know what she is saying! Almighty
+and most merciful God, forgive her!"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Maria Addolorata was silent,
+realizing how far she had forgotten herself, and
+startled by the abbess's terrified eyes and excited
+tone. But she was naturally a far more daring
+woman than she herself knew. Though her
+face was pale, her lips smiled at her good aunt's
+fright.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But that is not an answer&mdash;just to cry 'blasphemy!'"
+she said. "The question is clear&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She did not finish the sentence. The abbess was
+really beside herself with religious terror. With
+almost violent hands she dragged and thrust her
+niece down till Maria fell upon her knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, child! Pray, before it is too late!" she
+cried. "Pray on your knees that this possession
+may pass, before your soul is lost forever!"</p>
+
+<p>She herself knelt beside the girl upon the
+stones, still clasping her and pressing her down.
+And she prayed aloud, long, fervently, almost
+wildly, appealing to God for protection against a
+bodily tempting devil, who by his will, and with
+evil strength, was luring and driving a human soul
+to utter damnation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">It</span> is well," said Stefanone. "The world is
+come to an end. I will not say anything more."</p>
+
+<p>He finished his tumbler of wine, leaned back on
+the wooden bench against the brown wall, played
+with the broad silver buttons of his dark blue
+jacket, and stared hard at Sor Tommaso, the
+doctor, who sat opposite to him. The doctor returned
+his glance rather unsteadily and betook
+himself to his snuffbox. It was of worn black
+ebony, adorned in the middle of the lid with a
+small view of Saint Peter's and the colonnades in
+mosaic, with a very blue sky. From long use, each
+tiny fragment of the mosaic was surrounded by a
+minute black line, which indeed lent some tone
+to the intensely clear atmosphere of the little
+picture, but gave the architecture represented
+therein a dirty and neglected appearance. The
+snuff itself, however, was of the superior quality
+known as Sicilian in those days, and was of a
+beautiful light brown colour.</p>
+
+<p>"And why?" asked the doctor very slowly, between
+the operations of pinching, stuffing, snuffing,
+and dusting. "Why is the world come to an end?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stefanone's eyes grew sullen, with a sort of dull
+glare in their unwinking gaze. He looked dangerous
+just then, but the doctor did not seem to
+be in the least afraid of him.</p>
+
+<p>"You, who have made it end, should know why,"
+answered the peasant, after a short pause.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone was a man of the Roman type, of
+medium height, thick set and naturally melancholic,
+with thin, straight lips that were clean
+shaven, straight black hair, a small but aggressively
+aquiline nose and heavy hands, hairy on
+the backs of the fingers, between the knuckles.
+His wife, Sora Nanna, said that he had a fist like
+a paving-stone. He also looked as though he might
+have the constitution of a mule. He was at that
+time about five-and-thirty years of age, and there
+were a few strong lines in his face, notably those
+curved ones drawn from the beginning of the
+nostrils to the corners of the mouth, which are
+said to denote an uncertain temper.</p>
+
+<p>He wore the dress of the richer peasants of that
+day, a coarse but spotless white shirt, very open
+at the throat, a jacket and waistcoat of stout dark
+blue cloth, with large and smooth silver buttons,
+knee-breeches, white stockings, and heavy low shoes
+with steel buckles. He combined the occupations
+of farmer, wine-seller, and carrier. When he was
+on the road between Subiaco and Rome, Gigetto,
+already mentioned, was supposed to represent him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+It was understood that Gigetto was to marry
+Annetta&mdash;if he could be prevailed upon to do so,
+for he was the younger son of a peasant family
+which held its head even higher than Stefanone,
+and the young man as well as his people looked
+upon Annetta's wild ways with disapproval, though
+her fortune, as the only child of Stefanone and
+Sora Nanna, was a very strong attraction. In the
+meantime, Gigetto acted as though he were the
+older man's partner in the wine-shop, and as he
+was a particularly honest, but also a particularly
+idle, young man with a taste for singing and playing
+on the guitar, the position suited him admirably.</p>
+
+<p>As for Sor Tommaso, with whom Stefanone
+seemed inclined to quarrel on this particular evening,
+he was a highly respectable personage in a
+narrow-shouldered, high-collared black coat with
+broad skirts, and a snuff-coloured waistcoat. He
+wore a stock which was decidedly shabby, but
+decent, and the thin cuffs of his shirt were turned
+back over the tight sleeves of his coat, in the old
+fashion. He also wore amazingly tight black
+trousers, strapped closely over his well-blacked
+boots. To tell the truth, these nether garments,
+though of great natural resistance, had lived so
+long at a high tension, so to say, that they were
+no longer equally tight at all points, and there
+were, undoubtedly, certain perceptible spots on
+them; but, on the whole, the general effect of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+the doctor's appearance was fashionable, in the
+fashion of several years earlier and judged by the
+standard of Subiaco. He wore his hair rather
+long, in a handsome iron-grey confusion, his face
+was close-shaven, and, though he was thin, his
+complexion was somewhat apoplectic.</p>
+
+<p>Having duly and solemnly finished the operation
+of taking snuff, the doctor looked at the peasant.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish to have said anything," he observed,
+by way of a general <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'retractation'">retraction</ins>. "These
+are probably follies."</p>
+
+<p>"And for not having meant to say anything, you
+have planted this knife in my heart!" retorted
+Stefanone, the veins swelling at his temples.
+"Thank you. I wish to die, if I forget it. You
+tell me that this daughter of mine is making love
+with the Englishman. And then you say that you
+do not wish to have said anything! May he die,
+the Englishman, he, and whoever made him, with
+the whole family! An evil death on him and all
+his house!"</p>
+
+<p>"So long as you do not make me die, too!" exclaimed
+Sor Tommaso, with rather a pitying smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! To die&mdash;it is soon said! And yet,
+people do die. You, who are a doctor, should
+know that. And you do not wish to have said
+anything! Bravo, doctor! Words are words. And
+yet they can sting. And after a thousand years,
+they still sting. You&mdash;what can you understand?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+Are you perhaps a father? You have not even
+a wife. Oh, blessed be God! You do not even
+know what you are saying. You know nothing.
+You think, perhaps, because you are a doctor, that
+you know more than I do. I will tell you that you
+are an ignorant!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, beautiful!" cried the doctor, angrily, stung
+by what is still almost a mortal insult. "You&mdash;to
+me&mdash;ignorant! Oh, beautiful, most beautiful,
+this! From a peasant to a man of science! Perhaps
+you too have a diploma from the University
+of the Sapienza&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If I had, I should wrap half a pound of sliced
+ham&mdash;fat ham, you know&mdash;in it, for the first
+customer. What should I do with your diplomas!
+I ask you, what do you know? Do you know at
+all what a daughter is? Blood of my blood, heart
+of my heart, hand of this hand. But I am a
+peasant, and you are a doctor. Therefore, I know
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"And meanwhile you give me 'ignorant' in my
+face!" retorted Sor Tommaso.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;and I repeat it!" cried Stefanone, leaning
+forwards, his clenched hand on the table. "I
+say it twice, three times&mdash;ignorant, ignorant, ignorant!
+Have you understood?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say it louder! In that way every one can hear
+you! Beast of a sheep-grazer!"</p>
+
+<p>"And you&mdash;crow-feeder! Furnisher of grave-diggers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+And then&mdash;ignorant! Oh&mdash;this time
+I have said it clearly!"</p>
+
+<p>"And it seems to me that it is enough!" roared
+the doctor, across the table. "Ciociaro! Take
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ciociaro? I? Oh, your soul! If I get hold
+of you with my hands!"</p>
+
+<p>A 'ciociaro' is a hill-man who wears 'cioce,' or
+rags, bound upon his feet with leathern sandals and
+thongs. He is generally a shepherd, and is held
+in contempt by the more respectable people of the
+larger mountain towns. To call a man a 'ciociaro'
+is a bitter insult.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone in his anger had half risen from his
+seat. But the wooden bench on which he had been
+sitting was close to the wall behind him, and the
+heavy oak table was pushed up within a few inches
+of his chest, so that his movements were considerably
+hampered as he stretched out his hands rather
+wildly towards his adversary. The latter, who possessed
+more moral than physical courage, moved
+his chair back and prepared to make his escape,
+if Stefanone showed signs of coming round the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a tall figure darkened the door
+that opened upon the street, and a quiet, dry voice
+spoke with a strong foreign accent. It was Angus
+Dalrymple, returning from a botanizing expedition
+in the hills, after being absent all day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That is a very uncomfortable way of fighting,"
+he observed, as he stood still in the doorway.
+"You cannot hit a man across a table broader than
+your arm is long, Signor Stefano."</p>
+
+<p>The effect of his words was instantaneous. Stefanone
+fell back into his seat. The doctor's anxious
+and excited expression resolved itself instantly into
+a polite smile.</p>
+
+<p>"We were only playing," he said suavely. "A
+little discussion&mdash;a mere jest. Our friend Stefanone
+was explaining something."</p>
+
+<p>"If the table had been narrower, he would have
+explained you away altogether," observed Dalrymple,
+coming forward.</p>
+
+<p>He laid a tin box which he had with him upon
+the table, and shook hands with Sor Tommaso.
+Then he slipped behind the table and sat down
+close to his host, as a precautionary measure in
+case the play should be resumed. Stefanone would
+have had a bad chance of being dangerous, if the
+powerful Scotchman chose to hold him down. But
+the peasant seemed to have become as suddenly
+peaceful as the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"It was nothing," said Stefanone, quietly enough,
+though his eyes were bloodshot and glanced about
+the room in an unsettled way.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Annetta entered from a door
+leading to the staircase. Her eyes were fixed on
+Dalrymple's face as she came forward, carrying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+a polished brass lamp, with three burning wicks,
+which she placed upon the table. Dalrymple looked
+up at her, and seeing her expression of inquiry,
+slowly nodded. With a laugh which drew her long
+red-brown lips back from her short white teeth, the
+girl produced a small flask and a glass, which she
+had carried behind her and out of sight when she
+came in. She set them before Dalrymple.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw you coming," she said, and laughed again.
+"And then&mdash;it is always the same. Half a 'foglietta'
+of the old, just for the appetite."</p>
+
+<p>Sor Tommaso glanced at Stefanone in a meaning
+way, but the girl's father affected not to see him.
+Dalrymple nodded his thanks, poured a few drops
+of wine into the glass and scattered them upon the
+brick floor according to the ancient custom, both
+for rinsing the glass and as a libation, and then
+offered to fill the glasses of each of the two men,
+who smiled, shook their heads, and covered their
+tumblers with their right hands. At last Dalrymple
+helped himself, nodded politely to his companions,
+and slowly emptied the glass which held
+almost all the contents of the little flask. The
+'foglietta,' or 'leaflet' of wine, is said to have
+been so called from the twisted and rolled vine
+leaf which generally serves it for a stopper. A
+whole 'foglietta' contained a scant pint.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you eat now?" asked Annetta, still
+smiling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Presently," answered Dalrymple. "What is
+there to eat? I am hungry."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems that you have to say so!" laughed
+the girl. "It is a new thing. There is beefsteak
+or mutton, if you wish to know. And ham&mdash;a
+fresh ham cut to-day. It is one of the Grape-eater's,
+and it seems good. You remember, Sor
+Tommaso, the&mdash;speaking with respect to your
+face&mdash;the pig we called the Grape-eater last year?
+Speaking with respect, he was a good pig. It is
+one of his hams that we have cut. There is also
+salad, and fresh bread, which you like. And wine,
+I will not speak of it. Eh, he likes wine, the Englishman!
+He comes in with a long, long face&mdash;and
+when he goes to bed, his face is wide, wide.
+That is the wine. But then, it does nothing else
+to him. It only changes his face. When I look
+at him, I seem to see the moon waxing."</p>
+
+<p>"You talk too much," said Stefanone.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, papa! Words are not pennies.
+The more one wastes, the more one has!"</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple said nothing; but he smiled as she
+turned lightly with a toss of her small dark head
+and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine blood," observed the doctor, with a conciliatory
+glance at the girl's father.</p>
+
+<p>"You will be wanted before long, Sor Tommaso,"
+said Dalrymple, gravely. "I hear that the abbess
+is very ill."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The doctor looked up with sudden interest, and
+put on his professional expression.</p>
+
+<p>"The abbess, you say? Dear me! She is not
+young! What has she? Who told you, Sor
+Angoscia?"</p>
+
+<p>Now, 'Sor Angoscia' signifies in English 'Sir
+Anguish,' but the doctor in spite of really conscientious
+efforts could not get nearer to the pronunciation
+of Angus. Nevertheless, with northern
+persistency, Dalrymple corrected him for the hundredth
+time. The doctor's first attempt had
+resulted in his calling the Scotchman 'Sor Langusta,'
+which means 'Sir Crayfish'&mdash;and it must
+be admitted that 'Anguish' was an improvement.</p>
+
+<p>"Angus," said Dalrymple. "My name is Angus.
+The abbess has caught a severe cold from sitting
+in a draught when she was overheated. It has
+immediately settled on her lungs, and you may be
+sent for at any moment. I passed by the back
+of the convent on my way down, and the gardener
+was just coming out of the postern. He told me."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, dear me!" exclaimed Sor Tommaso,
+shaking his head. "Cold&mdash;bronchitis, pleurisy,
+pneumonia&mdash;it is soon done! One would be enough!
+Those nuns, what do they eat? A little grass, a
+little boiled paste, a little broth of meat on Sundays.
+What strength should they have? And then pray,
+pray, sing, sing! It needs a chest! Poor lungs!
+I will go to my home and get ready&mdash;blisters&mdash;mustard&mdash;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+lancet&mdash;they will not allow a barber
+in the convent to bleed them. Well&mdash;I make myself
+the barber! What a life, what a life! If you
+wish to die young, be a doctor at Subiaco, Sor
+Angoscia. Good night, dear friend. Good night,
+Stefanone. I wish not to have said anything&mdash;you
+know&mdash;that little affair. Let us speak no
+more about it. I am more beast than you, because
+I said anything. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>Sor Tommaso got his stick from a dark corner,
+pressed his broad catskin hat upon his head, and
+took his respectability away on its tightly encased
+black legs.</p>
+
+<p>"And may the devil go with you," said Stefanone,
+under his breath, as the doctor disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" inquired Dalrymple, who had caught
+the words.</p>
+
+<p>"I said nothing," answered the peasant, thoughtfully
+trimming one wick of the lamp with the bent
+brass wire which, with the snuffers, hung by a
+chain from the ring by which the lamp was carried.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you spoke," said the Scotchman.
+"Well&mdash;the abbess is very ill, and Sor Tommaso
+has a job."</p>
+
+<p>"May he do it well! So that it need not be
+begun again."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Dalrymple slowly
+sipped the remains of his little measure of wine.</p>
+
+<p>"Those nuns!" exclaimed Stefanone, instead of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+answering the question. "What are they here to
+do, in this world? Better make saints of them&mdash;and
+good night! There would be one misery less.
+Do you know what they do? They make wine.
+Good! But they do not drink it. They sell it
+for a farthing less by the foglietta than other people.
+The devil take them and their wine!"</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple glanced at the angry peasant with
+some amusement, but did not make any answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, Signore!" cried Stefanone. "You who
+are a foreigner and a Protestant, can you not say
+something, since it would be no sin for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking of something to say, Signor
+Stefanone. But as for that, who does the business
+for the convent? They cannot do it themselves,
+I suppose. Who determines the price of their
+wine for them? Or the price of their corn?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are not so stupid as you think. Oh, no!
+They are not stupid, the nuns. They know the
+price of this, and the cost of that, just as well as
+you and I do. But Gigetto's father, Sor Agostino,
+is their steward, if that is what you wish to
+know. And his father was before him, and Gigetto
+will be after him, with his pumpkin-head. And
+the rest is sung by the organ, as we say when
+mass is over. For you know about Gigetto and
+Annetta."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And as you cannot quarrel with Sor
+Agostino on that account, I do not see but that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+you will either have to bear it, or sell your wine
+a farthing cheaper than that of the nuns."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh&mdash;that is soon said. A farthing cheaper
+than theirs! That means half a baiocco cheaper
+than I sell it now. And the best is only five
+baiocchi the foglietta, and the cheapest is two and
+a half. Good bye profit&mdash;a pleasant journey to
+Stefanone. But it is those nuns. They are to
+blame, and the devil will pay them."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case you need not," observed Dalrymple,
+rising. "I am going to wash my hands before
+supper."</p>
+
+<p>"At your pleasure, Signore," answered Stefanone,
+politely.</p>
+
+<p>As Dalrymple went out, Annetta passed him at
+the door, bringing in plates and napkins, and
+knives and forks. The girl glanced at his face as
+he went by.</p>
+
+<p>"Be quick, Signore," she said with a laugh.
+"The beefsteak of mutton is grilling."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, and went up the dark stairs, his
+heavy shoes sending back echoes as he trod.
+Stefanone still sat at the table, turning the glass
+wine measure upside down over his tumbler, to
+let the last drops run out. He watched them as
+they fell, one by one, without looking up at his
+daughter, who began to arrange the plates for
+Dalrymple's meal.</p>
+
+<p>"I will teach you to make love with the Englishman,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+he said slowly, still watching the dropping
+wine.</p>
+
+<p>"Me!" cried Annetta, with real or feigned
+astonishment, and she tossed a knife and fork
+angrily into a plate, with a loud, clattering noise.</p>
+
+<p>"I am speaking with you," answered her father,
+without raising his eyes. "Do you know? You
+will come to a bad end."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you!" replied the girl, contemptuously.
+"If you say so, it must be true! Now, who has
+told you that the Englishman is making love to
+me? An apoplexy on him, whoever he may be!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty words for a girl! Sor Tommaso told
+me. A little more, and I would have torn his
+tongue out. Just then, the Englishman came in.
+Sor Tommaso got off easily."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's tone changed very much when she
+spoke again, and there was a dull and angry light
+in her eyes. Her long lips were still parted, and
+showed her gleaming teeth, but the smile was
+altogether gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Too easily," she said, almost in a whisper,
+and there was a low hiss in the words.</p>
+
+<p>"In the meanwhile, it is true&mdash;what he said,"
+continued Stefanone. "You make eyes at him.
+You wait for him and watch for him when he
+comes back from the mountains&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well? Is it not my place to serve him with
+his supper? If you are not satisfied, hire a servant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+to wait on him. You are rich. What do I
+care for the Englishman? Perhaps it is a pleasure
+to roast my face over the charcoal, cooking
+his meat for him. As for Sor Tommaso&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped short in her speech. Her father
+knew what the tone meant, and looked up for the
+first time.</p>
+
+<p>"O-&egrave;!" he exclaimed, as one suddenly aware of
+a danger, and warning some one else.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," answered Annetta, looking down and
+arranging the knives and forks symmetrically on
+the clean cloth she had laid.</p>
+
+<p>"I might have killed him just now in hot blood,
+when the Englishman came in," said Stefanone,
+reflectively. "But now my blood has grown cold.
+I shall do nothing to him."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better for him." She still spoke
+in a low voice, as she turned away from the table.</p>
+
+<p>"But I will kill you," said Stefanone, "if I see
+you making eyes at the Englishman."</p>
+
+<p>He rose, and taking up his hat, which lay beside
+him, he edged his way out along the wooden bench,
+moving cautiously lest he should shake the table
+and upset the lamp or the bottles. Annetta had
+turned again, at the threat he had uttered, and
+stood still, waiting for him to get out into the
+room, her hands on her hips, and her eyes on fire.</p>
+
+<p>"You will kill me?" she asked, just as he was
+opposite to her. "Well&mdash;kill me, then! Here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+I am. What are you waiting for? For the Englishman
+to interfere? He is washing his hands.
+He always takes a long time."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it is true that you have fallen in love
+with him?" asked Stefanone, his anger returning.</p>
+
+<p>"Him, or another. What does it matter to
+you? You remind me of the old woman who beat
+her cat, and then cried when it ran away. If you
+want me to stay at home, you had better find me
+a husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want anything better than Gigetto?
+Apoplexy! But you have ideas!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are making a good business of it with
+Gigetto, in truth!" cried the girl, scornfully. "He
+eats, he drinks, and then he sings. But he does
+not marry. He will not even make love to me&mdash;not
+even with an eye. And then, because I love
+the Englishman, who is a great lord, though he
+says he is a doctor, I must die. Well, kill me!"
+She stared insolently at her father for a moment.
+"Oh, well," she added scornfully, "if you have
+not time now, it must be for to-morrow. I am
+busy."</p>
+
+<p>She turned on her heel with a disdainful fling
+of her short, dark skirt. Stefanone was exasperated,
+and his anger had returned. Before she
+was out of reach, he struck her with his open
+hand. Instead of striking her cheek, the blow fell
+upon the back of her head and neck, and sent her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+stumbling forwards. She caught the back of a
+chair, steadied herself, and turned again instantly,
+at her full height, not deigning to raise her hand
+to the place that hurt her.</p>
+
+<p>"Coward!" she exclaimed. "But I will pay
+you&mdash;and Sor Tommaso&mdash;for that blow."</p>
+
+<p>"Whenever you like," answered her father
+gruffly, but already sorry for what he had done.</p>
+
+<p>He turned his back, and went out into the night.
+It was now almost quite dark, and Annetta stood
+still by the chair, listening to his retreating footsteps.
+Then she slowly turned and gazed at the
+flaring wicks of the lamp. With a gesture that
+suggested the movement of a young animal, she
+rubbed the back of her neck with one hand and
+leisurely turned her head first to one side and then
+to the other. Her brown skin was unusually pale,
+but there was no moisture in her eyes as she stared
+at the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>"But I will pay you, Sor Tommaso," she said
+thoughtfully and softly.</p>
+
+<p>Then turning her eyes from the lamp at last, she
+took up one of the knives from the table, looked at
+it, felt the edge, and laid it down contemptuously.
+In those days all the respectable peasants in the
+Roman villages had solid silver forks and spoons,
+which have long since gone to the melting-pot to
+pay taxes. But they used the same blunt, pointless
+knives with wooden handles, which they use to-day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Annetta started, as she heard Dalrymple's tread
+upon the stone steps of the staircase, but she recovered
+herself instantly, gave a finishing touch
+to the table, rubbed the back of her head quickly
+once more, and met him with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Is the beefsteak of mutton ready?" inquired
+the Scotchman, cheerfully, with his extraordinary
+accent.</p>
+
+<p>Annetta ran past him, and returned almost
+before he was seated, bringing the food. The girl
+sat down at the end of the table, opposite the
+street door, and watched him as he swallowed
+one mouthful of meat after another, now and then
+stopping to drink a tumbler of wine at a draught.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be very strong, Signore," said Annetta,
+at last, her chin resting on her doubled hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" inquired Dalrymple, carelessly, between
+two mouthfuls.</p>
+
+<p>"Because you eat so much. It must be a fine
+thing to eat so much meat. We eat very little
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" asked the Scotchman, again between
+his mouthfuls.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, who knows? It costs much. That must
+be the reason. Besides, it does not go down. I
+should not care for it."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a habit." Dalrymple drank. "In my
+country most of the people eat oats," he said, as
+he set down his glass.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oats!" laughed the girl. "Like horses! But
+horses will eat meat, too, like you. As for me&mdash;good
+bread, fresh cheese, a little salad, a drink of
+wine and water&mdash;that is enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Like the nuns," observed Dalrymple, attacking
+the ham of the 'Grape-eater.'</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the nuns! They live on boiled cabbage!
+You can smell it a mile away. But they make
+good cakes."</p>
+
+<p>"You often go to the convent, do you not?"
+asked the Scotchman, filling his glass, for the first
+mouthful of ham made him thirsty again. "You
+take the linen up with your mother, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes, when I feel like going," answered
+the girl, willing to show that it was not her duty
+to carry baskets. "I only go when we have the
+small baskets that one can carry on one's head. I
+will tell you. They use the small baskets for the
+finer things, the abbess's linen, and the altar cloths,
+and the chaplain's lace, which belongs to the nuns.
+But the sheets and the table linen are taken up in
+baskets as long as a man. It takes four women to
+carry one of them."</p>
+
+<p>"That must be very inconvenient," said Dalrymple.
+"I should think that smaller ones would
+always be better."</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? It has always been so. And
+when it has always been so, it will always be so&mdash;one
+knows that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Annetta nodded her head rhythmically to convey
+an impression of the immutability of all ancient
+customs and of this one in particular.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple, however, was not much interested
+in the question of the baskets.</p>
+
+<p>"What do the nuns do all day?" he asked. "I
+suppose you see them, sometimes. There must be
+young ones amongst them."</p>
+
+<p>Annetta glanced more keenly at the Scotchman's
+quiet face, and then laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one, if you could see her! The
+abbess's niece. Oh, that one is beautiful. She
+seems to me a painted angel!"</p>
+
+<p>"The abbess's niece? What is she like? Let
+me see, the abbess is a princess, is she not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a great princess of the Princes of Gerano,
+of Casa Braccio, you know. They are always
+abbesses. And the young one will be the next,
+when this one dies. She is Maria Addolorata, in
+religion, but I do not know her real name. She
+has a beautiful face and dark eyes. Once I saw
+her hair for a moment. It is fair, but not like
+yours. Yours is red as a tomato."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Dalrymple, with something
+like a laugh. "Tell me more about the nun."</p>
+
+<p>"If I tell you, you will fall in love with her,"
+objected Annetta. "They say that men with red
+hair fall in love easily. Is it true? If it is, I
+will not tell you any more about the nun. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+I think you are in love with the poor old Grape-eater.
+It is good ham, is it not? By Bacchus,
+I fed him on chestnuts with my own hands, and
+he was always stealing the grapes. Chestnuts fattened
+him and the grapes made him sweet. Speaking
+with respect, he was a pig for a pope."</p>
+
+<p>"He will do for a Scotch doctor then," answered
+Dalrymple. "Tell me, what does this beautiful
+nun do all day long?"</p>
+
+<p>"What does she do? What can a nun do? She
+eats cabbage and prays like the others. But she
+has charge of all the convent linen, so I see her
+when I go with my mother. That is because
+the Princes of Gerano first gave the linen to the
+convent after it was all stolen by the Turks in
+1798. So, as they gave it, their abbesses take care
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple laughed at the extraordinary historical
+allusion compounded of the very ancient
+traditions of the Saracens in the south, and of the
+more recent wars of Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>"So she takes care of the linen," he said. "That
+cannot be very amusing, I should think."</p>
+
+<p>"They are nuns," answered the girl. "Do you
+suppose they go about seeking to amuse themselves?
+It is an ugly life. But Sister Maria
+Addolorata sings to herself, and that makes the
+abbess angry, because it is against the rules to sing
+except in church. I would not live in that convent&mdash;not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+if they would fill my apron with gold
+pieces."</p>
+
+<p>"But why did this beautiful girl become a nun,
+then? Was she unhappy, or crossed in love?"</p>
+
+<p>"She? They did not give her time! Before
+she could shut an eye and say, 'Little youth, you
+please me, and I wish you well,' they put her in.
+And that door, when it is shut, who shall open it?
+The Madonna, perhaps? But she was of the
+Princes of Gerano, and there must be one of them
+for an abbess, and the lot fell upon her. There
+is the whole history. You may hear her singing
+sometimes, if you stand under the garden wall,
+on the narrow path after the Benediction hour and
+before Ave Maria. But I am a fool to tell you,
+for you will go and listen, and when you have
+heard her voice you will be like a madman. You
+will fall in love with her. I was a fool to tell
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well? And if I do fall in love with her, who
+cares?" Dalrymple slowly filled a glass of wine.</p>
+
+<p>"If you do?" The young girl's eyes shot a
+quick, sharp glance at him. Then her face suddenly
+grew grave as she saw that some one was at
+the street door, looking in cautiously. "Come in,
+Sor Tommaso!" she called, down the table. "Papa
+is out, but we are here. Come in and drink a glass
+of wine!"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor, wrapped in a long broadcloth cloak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+with a velvet collar, and having a case of instruments
+and medicines under his arm, glanced round
+the room and came in.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a half-foglietta, my daughter," he said.
+"They have sent for me. The abbess is very ill,
+and I may be there a long time. If you think they
+would remember to offer a Christian a glass up
+there, you are very much mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>"They are nuns," laughed Annetta. "What can
+they know?"</p>
+
+<p>She rose to get the wine for the doctor. There
+had not been a trace of displeasure in her voice
+nor in her manner as she spoke.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sor Tommaso</span> was rarely called to the convent.
+In fact, he could not remember that he had been
+wanted more than half a dozen times in the long
+course of his practice in Subiaco. Either the nuns
+were hardly ever ill, or else they must have doctored
+themselves with such simple remedies as
+had been handed down to them from former ages.
+Possibly they had been as well off on the whole as
+though they had systematically submitted to the
+heroic treatment which passed for medicine in
+those days. As a matter of fact, they suffered
+chiefly from bad colds; and when they had bad
+colds, they either got well, or died, according to
+their several destinies. Sor Tommaso might have
+saved some of them; but on the other hand, he
+might have helped some others rather precipitately
+from their cells to that deep crypt, closed, in the
+middle of the little church, by a single square flag
+of marble, having two brass studs in it, and bearing
+the simple inscription: 'Here lie the bones of
+the Reverend Sisters of the order of the Blessed
+Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.' On the whole, it
+is doubtful whether the practice of not calling in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+the doctor on ordinary occasions had much influence
+upon the convent's statistics of mortality.</p>
+
+<p>But though the abbess had more than once had a
+cold in her life, she had never suffered so seriously
+as this time, and she had made little objection to
+her niece's strong representations as to the necessity
+of medical aid. Therefore Sor Tommaso had
+been sent for in the evening and in great haste, and
+had taken with him a supply of appropriate material
+sufficient to kill, if not to cure, half the nuns
+in the convent. All the circumstances which he
+remembered from former occasions were accurately
+repeated. He rang at the main gate, waited long
+in the darkness, and heard at last the slapping and
+shuffling of shoes along the pavement within, as
+the portress and another nun came to let him in.
+Then there were faint rays of light from their
+little lamp, quivering through the cracks of the
+old weather-beaten door upon the cracked marble
+steps on which Sor Tommaso was standing. A
+thin voice asked who was there, and Sor Tommaso
+answered that he was the doctor. Then he heard
+a little colloquy in suppressed tones between the
+two nuns. The one said that the doctor was
+expected and must be let in without question.
+The other observed that it might be a thief.
+The first said that in that case they must look
+through the loophole. The second said that she
+did not know the doctor by sight. The first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+speaker remarked with some truth that one could
+tell a respectable person from a highwayman, and
+suddenly a small square porthole in the door was
+opened inwards, and a stream of light fell upon Sor
+Tommaso's face, as the nuns held up their little flaring
+lamp behind the grating. Behind the lamp he
+could distinguish a pair of shadowy eyes under an
+overhanging veil, which was also drawn across the
+lower part of the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you really the doctor?" asked one of the
+voices, in a doubtful tone.</p>
+
+<p>"He himself," answered the physician. "I am
+the Doctor Tommaso Taddei of the University of
+the Sapienza, and I have been called to render
+assistance to the very reverend the Mother Abbess."</p>
+
+<p>The light disappeared, and the porthole was
+shut, while a second colloquy began. On the
+whole, the two nuns decided to let him in, and
+then there was a jingling of keys and a clanking
+of iron bars and a grinding of locks, and presently
+a small door, cut and hung in one leaf of the
+great, iron-studded, wooden gate, was swung back.
+Sor Tommaso stooped and held his case before
+him, for the entrance was low and narrow.</p>
+
+<p>"God be praised!" he exclaimed, when he was
+fairly inside.</p>
+
+<p>"And praised be His holy name," answered both
+the sisters, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>Both had dropped their veils, and proceeded to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+bolt and bar the little door again, having set down
+the lamp upon the pavement. The rays made the
+unctuous dampness of the stone flags glisten, and
+Sor Tommaso shivered in his broadcloth cloak.
+Then, as before, he was conducted in silence
+through arched ways, and up many steps, and
+along labyrinthine corridors, his strong shoes rousing
+sharp, metallic echoes, while the nuns' slippers
+slapped and shuffled as one walked on each side of
+him, the one on the left carrying the lamp, according
+to the ancient rules of politeness. At last
+they reached the door of the antechamber at the
+end of the corridor, through which the way led to
+the abbess's private apartment, consisting of three
+rooms. The last door on the left, as Sor Tommaso
+faced that which opened into the antechamber, was
+that of Maria Addolorata's cell. The linen presses
+were entered from within the anteroom by a door
+on the right, so that they were actually in the
+abbess's apartment, an old-fashioned and somewhat
+inconvenient arrangement. Maria Addolorata,
+her veil drawn down, so that she could not
+see the doctor, but only his feet, and the folds of
+it drawn across her chin and mouth, received him
+at the door, which she closed behind him. The
+other two nuns set down their lamp on the floor of
+the corridor, slipped their hands up their sleeves,
+and stood waiting outside.</p>
+
+<p>The abbess was very ill, but had insisted upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+sitting up in her parlour to receive the doctor,
+dressed and veiled, being propped up in her great
+easy-chair with a pillow which was of green silk,
+but was covered with a white pillow-case finely
+embroidered with open work at each end, through
+which the vivid colour was visible&mdash;that high
+green which cannot look blue even by lamplight.
+Both in the anteroom and in the parlour there
+were polished silver lamps of precisely the same
+pattern as the brass ones used by the richer
+peasants, excepting that each had a fan-like shield
+of silver to be used as a shade on one side, bearing
+the arms of the Braccio family in high boss, and
+attached to the oil vessel by a movable curved arm.
+The furniture of the room was very simple, but
+there was nevertheless a certain ecclesiastical
+solemnity about the high-backed, carved, and gilt
+chairs, the black and white marble pavement, the
+great portrait of his Holiness, Gregory the Sixteenth,
+in its massive gilt frame, the superb silver
+crucifix which stood on the writing-table, and,
+altogether, in the solidity of everything which met
+the eye.</p>
+
+<p>It was no easy matter to ascertain the good
+lady's condition, muffled up and veiled as she was.
+It was only as an enormous concession to necessity
+that Sor Tommaso was allowed to feel her pulse,
+and it needed all Maria Addolorata's eloquent persuasion
+and sensible argument to induce her to lift
+her veil a little, and open her mouth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Your most reverend excellency must be cured by
+proxy," said Sor Tommaso, at his wit's end. "If
+this reverend mother," he added, turning to the
+young nun, "will carry out my directions, something
+may be done. Your most reverend excellency's
+life is in danger. Your most reverend
+excellency ought to be in bed."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the will of Heaven," said the abbess, in a
+very weak and hoarse voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what to do," said Maria Addolorata.
+"It shall be done as though you yourself did it."</p>
+
+<p>Sor Tommaso was encouraged by the tone of assurance
+in which the words were spoken, and proceeded
+to give his directions, which were many, and
+his recommendations, which were almost endless.</p>
+
+<p>"But if your most reverend excellency would
+allow me to assist you in person, the remedies
+would be more efficacious," he suggested, as he
+laid out the greater part of the contents of his
+case upon the huge writing-table.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to forget that this is a religious
+house," replied the abbess, and she might have said
+more, but was interrupted by a violent attack of
+coughing, during which Maria Addolorata supported
+her and tried to ease her.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be better if you go away," said the nun,
+at last. "I will do all you have ordered, and your
+presence irritates her. Come back to-morrow morning,
+and I will tell you how she is progressing."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The abbess nodded slowly, confirming her niece's
+words. Sor Tommaso very reluctantly closed his
+case, placed it under his arm, gathered up his broadcloth
+cloak with his hat, and made a low obeisance
+before the sick lady.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish your most reverend excellency a good
+rest and speedy recovery," he said. "I am your
+most reverend excellency's most humble servant."</p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata led him out into the antechamber.
+There she paused, and they were alone
+together for a moment, all the doors being closed.
+The doctor stood still beside her, waiting for her
+to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish to say anything," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you wish me to say? A stroke of
+air, a cold, a bronchitis, a pleurisy, a pneumonia.
+Thanks be to Heaven, there is little fever. What
+do you wish me to say? For the stroke of air, a
+little good wine; for the cold, warm covering; for
+the bronchitis, the tea of marshmallows; for the
+pleurisy, severe blistering; for the pneumonia, a
+good mustard plaster; for the general system, the
+black draught; above all, nothing to eat. Frictions
+with hot oil will also do good. It is the practice
+of medicine by proxy, my lady mother. What do
+you wish me to say? I am disposed. I am her
+most reverend excellency's very humble servant.
+But I cannot perform miracles. Pray to the Madonna<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+to perform them. I have not even seen the
+tip of her most reverend excellency's most wise
+tongue. What can I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, come back to-morrow morning, and
+I will see you here," said Maria Addolorata.</p>
+
+<p>Sor Tommaso found the nuns waiting for him
+with their little lamp in the corridor, and they led
+him back through the vaulted passages and staircases
+and let him out into the night without a word.</p>
+
+<p>The night was dark and cloudy. It had grown
+much darker since he had come up, as the last
+lingering light of evening had faded altogether
+from the sky. The October wind drew down in
+gusts from the mountains above Subiaco, and blew
+the doctor's long cloak about so that it flapped
+softly now and then like the wings of a night bird.
+After descending some distance, he carefully set
+down his case upon the stones and fumbled in his
+pockets for his snuffbox, which he found with
+some difficulty. A gust blew up a grain of snuff
+into his right eye, and he stamped angrily with the
+pain, hurting his foot against a rolling stone as he
+did so. But he succeeded in getting his snuff to
+his nose at last. Then he bent down in the dark
+to take up his case, which was close to his feet,
+though he could hardly see it. The gusty south
+wind blew the long skirts of his cloak over his
+head and made them flap about his ears. He
+groped for the box.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/gs04.jpg" width="370" height="500" alt="&quot;Sor Tommaso was lying motionless.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p. 78." title="&quot;Sor Tommaso was lying motionless.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p. 78." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Sor Tommaso was lying motionless.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p.&nbsp;78.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Just then the doctor heard light footsteps coming
+down the path behind him. He called out,
+warning that he was in the way.</p>
+
+<p>"O-&egrave;, gently, you know!" he cried. "An apoplexy
+on the wind!" he added vehemently, as
+his head and hands became entangled more and
+more in the folds of his cloak.</p>
+
+<p>"And another on you!" answered a woman's
+voice, speaking low through clenched teeth.</p>
+
+<p>In the darkness a hand rose and fell with something
+in it, three times in quick succession. A
+man's low cry of pain was stifled in folds of broadcloth.
+The same light footsteps were heard for a
+moment again in the narrow, winding way, and
+Sor Tommaso was lying motionless on his face
+across his box, with his cloak over his head. The
+gusty south wind blew up and down between the
+dark walls, bearing now and then a few withered
+vine leaves and wisps of straw with it; and the
+night grew darker still, and no one passed that
+way for a long time.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Angus Dalrymple had finished his supper,
+he produced a book and sat reading by the light
+of the wicks of the three brass lamps. Annetta
+had taken away the things and had not come back
+again. Gigetto strolled in and took his guitar
+from the peg on the wall, and idled about the room,
+tuning it and humming to himself. He was a tall
+young fellow with a woman's face and beautiful
+velvet-like eyes, as handsome and idle a youth as
+you might meet in Subiaco on a summer's feast-day.
+He exchanged a word of greeting with
+Dalrymple, and, seeing that the place was otherwise
+deserted, he at last slung his guitar over
+his shoulder, pulled his broad black felt hat
+over his eyes, and strolled out through the half-open
+door, presumably in search of amusement.
+Gigetto's chief virtue was his perfectly childlike
+and unaffected taste for amusing himself, on the
+whole very innocently, whenever he got a chance.
+It was natural that he and the Scotchman should
+not care for one another's society. Dalrymple
+looked after him for a moment and then went back
+to his book. A big glass measure of wine stood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+beside him not half empty, and his glass was
+full.</p>
+
+<p>He was making a strong effort to concentrate his
+attention upon the learned treatise, which formed
+a part of the little library he had brought with
+him. But Annetta's idle talk about the nuns, and
+especially about Maria Addolorata and her singing,
+kept running through his head in spite of his determination
+to be serious. He had been living the
+life of a hermit for months, and had almost forgotten
+the sound of an educated woman's voice.
+To him Annetta was nothing more than a rather
+pretty wild animal. It did not enter his head that
+she might be in love with him. Sora Nanna was
+simply an older and uglier animal of the same
+species. To a man of Dalrymple's temperament,
+and really devoted to the pursuit of a serious
+object, a woman quite incapable of even understanding
+what that object is can hardly seem to be
+a woman at all.</p>
+
+<p>But the young Scotchman was not wanting in
+that passionate and fantastic imagination which so
+often underlies and even directs the hardy northern
+nature, and the young girl's carelessly spoken words
+had roused it to sudden activity. In spite of himself,
+he was already forming plans for listening
+under the convent wall, if perchance he might
+catch the sound of the nun's wonderful voice, and
+from that to the wildest schemes for catching a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+momentary glimpse of the singer was only a step.
+At the same time, he was quite aware that such
+schemes were dangerous if not impracticable, and
+his reasonable self laughed down his unreasoning
+romance, only to be confronted by it again as soon
+as he tried to turn his attention to his book.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up and saw that he had not finished
+his wine, though at that hour the measure was
+usually empty, and he wondered why he was less
+thirsty than usual. By force of habit he emptied
+the full glass and poured more into it,&mdash;by force
+of that old northern habit of drinking a certain
+allowance as a sort of duty, more common in those
+days than it is now. Then he began to read again,
+never dreaming that his strong head and solid
+nerves could be in any way affected by his potations.
+But his imagination this evening worked faster
+and faster, and his sober reason was recalcitrant
+and abhorred work.</p>
+
+<p>The nun had fair hair and dark eyes and a beautiful
+face. Those were much more interesting facts
+than he could find in his work. She had a wonderful
+voice. He tried to recall all the extraordinary
+voices he had heard in his life, but none of them
+had ever affected him very much, though he had a
+good ear and some taste for music. He wondered
+what sort of voice this could be, and he longed to
+hear it. He shut up his book impatiently, drank
+more wine, rose and went to the open door. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+gusty south wind fanned his face pleasantly, and
+he wished he were to sleep out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>The Sora Nanna, who had been spending the
+evening with a friend in the neighbourhood, came
+in, her thin black overskirt drawn over her head to
+keep the embroidered head-cloth in its place. By
+and by, as Dalrymple still stood by the door,
+Stefanone appeared, having been to play a game
+of cards at a friendly wine-shop. He sat down by
+Sora Nanna at the table. She was mixing some
+salad in a big earthenware bowl adorned with green
+and brown stripes. They talked together in low
+tones. Dalrymple had nodded to each in turn, but
+the gusty air pleased him, and he remained standing
+by the door, letting it blow into his face.</p>
+
+<p>It was growing late. Italian peasants are not
+great sleepers, and it is their custom to have
+supper at a late hour, just before going to bed.
+By this time it was nearly ten o'clock as we reckon
+the hours, or about 'four of the night' in October,
+according to old Italian custom, which reckons
+from a theoretical moment of darkness, supposed
+to begin at Ave Maria, half an hour after sunset.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Dalrymple heard Annetta's voice in
+the room behind him, speaking to her mother.
+He had no particular reason for supposing that
+she had been out of the house since she had
+cleared the table and left him, but unconsciously
+he had the impression that she had been away,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+and was surprised to hear her in the room, after
+expecting that she should pass him, coming in from
+the street, as the others had done. He turned and
+walked slowly towards his place at the table.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you had gone out," he said carelessly,
+to Annetta.</p>
+
+<p>The girl turned her head quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I?" she cried. "And alone? Without even
+Gigetto? When do I ever go out alone at night?
+Will you have some supper, Signore?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have just eaten, thank you," answered Dalrymple,
+seating himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Three hours ago. It was not yet an hour of
+the night when you ate. Well&mdash;at your pleasure.
+Do not complain afterwards that we make you die
+of hunger."</p>
+
+<p>"Bread, Annetta!" said Stefanone, gruffly but
+good-naturedly. "And cheese, and salt&mdash;wine, too!
+A thousand things! Quickly, my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Quicker than this?" inquired the girl, who
+had already placed most of the things he asked for
+upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>"I say it to say it," answered her father.
+"'Hunger makes long jumps,' and I am hungry."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you win anything?" asked Sora Nanna,
+with both her elbows on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Five baiocchi."</p>
+
+<p>"It was worth while to pay ten <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'baiscchi'">baiocchi</ins> for
+another man's bad wine, for the sake of winning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+so much!" replied Sora Nanna, who was a careful
+soul. "Of course you paid for the wine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh&mdash;of course. They pay for wine when
+they come here. One takes a little and one gives
+a little. This is life."</p>
+
+<p>Annetta busied herself with the simple preparations
+for supper, while they talked. Dalrymple
+watched her idly, and he thought she was pale,
+and that her eyes were very bright. She had set
+a plate for herself, but had forgotten her glass.</p>
+
+<p>"And you? Do you not drink?" asked Stefanone.
+"You have no glass."</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter?" She sat down between
+her father and mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Drink out of mine, my little daughter," said
+Stefanone, holding his glass to her lips with a
+laugh, as though she had been a little child.</p>
+
+<p>She looked quietly into his eyes for a moment,
+before she touched the wine with her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered, with a little emphasis.
+"I will drink out of your glass now."</p>
+
+<p>"Better so," laughed Stefanone, who was glad
+to be reconciled, for he loved the girl, in spite of
+his occasional violence of temper.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it mean?" asked Sora Nanna, her
+cunning peasant's eyes looking from one to the
+other, and seeming to belie her stupid face.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," answered Stefanone. "We were
+playing together. Signor Englishman," he said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+turning to Dalrymple, "you must sometimes wish
+that you were married, and had a wife like Nanna,
+and a daughter like Annetta."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I do," said Dalrymple, with a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>Before very long, he took his book and went
+upstairs to bed, being tired and sleepy after a
+long day spent on the hillside in a fruitless search
+for certain plants which, according to his books,
+were to be found in that part of Italy, but which
+he had not yet seen. He fell asleep, thinking
+of Maria Addolorata's lovely face and fair hair, on
+which he had never laid eyes. In his dreams he
+heard a rare voice ringing true, that touched him
+strangely. The gusty wind made the panes of his
+bedroom window rattle, and in the dream he was
+tapping on Maria Addolorata's casement and calling
+softly to her, to open it and speak to him, or
+calling her by name, with his extraordinary foreign
+accent. And he thought he was tapping louder
+and louder, upon the glass and upon the wooden
+frame, louder and louder still. Then he heard his
+name called out, and his heart jumped as though
+it would have turned upside down in its place, and
+then seemed to sink again like a heavy stone falling
+into deep water; for he was awake, and the voice
+that was calling him was certainly not that of
+the beautiful nun, but gruff and manly; also the
+tapping was not tapping any more upon a casement,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+but was a vigorous pounding against his
+own bolted door.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple sat up suddenly and listened, wide
+awake at once. The square of his window was
+faintly visible in the darkness, as though the dawn
+were breaking. He called out, asking who was
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up, Signore! Get up! You are wanted
+quickly!" It was Stefanone.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple struck a light, for he had a supply
+of matches with him, a convenience of modern life
+not at that time known in Subiaco, except as an
+expensive toy, though already in use in Rome.
+As he was, he opened the door. Stefanone came
+in, dressed in his shirt and breeches, pale with
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"You must dress yourself, Signore," he said
+briefly, as he glanced at the Scotchman, and then
+set down the small tin and glass lantern he
+carried.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter?" inquired Dalrymple,
+yawning, and stretching his great white arms over
+his head, till his knuckles struck the low ceiling;
+for he was a tall man.</p>
+
+<p>"The matter is that they have killed Sor Tommaso,"
+answered the peasant.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple uttered an exclamation of surprise
+and incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>"It is as I say," continued Stefanone. "They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+found him lying across the way, in the street, with
+knife-wounds in him, as many as you please."</p>
+
+<p>"That is horrible!" exclaimed Dalrymple, turning,
+and calmly trimming his lamp, which burned
+badly at first.</p>
+
+<p>"Then dress yourself, Signore!" said Stefanone,
+impatiently. "You must come!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? If he is dead, what can I do?" asked
+the northern man, coolly. "I am sorry. What
+more can I say?"</p>
+
+<p>"But he is not dead yet!" Stefanone was
+growing excited. "They have taken him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! he is alive, is he?" interrupted the
+Scotchman, dashing at his clothes, as though he
+were suddenly galvanized into life himself. "Then
+why did you tell me they had killed him?" he
+asked, with a curious, dry calmness of voice, as
+he instantly began to dress himself. "Get some
+clean linen, Signor Stefano. Tear it up into strips
+as broad as your hand, for bandages, and set the
+women to make a little lint of old linen&mdash;cotton
+is not good. Where have they taken Sor
+Tommaso?"</p>
+
+<p>"To his own house," answered the peasant.</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better. Go and make the bandages."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple pushed Stefanone towards the door
+with one hand, while he continued to fasten his
+clothes with the other.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone was not without some experience of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+similar cases, so he picked up his lantern and went
+off. In less than a quarter of an hour, he and
+Dalrymple were on their way to Sor Tommaso's
+house, which was in the piazza of Subiaco, not far
+from the principal church. Half a dozen peasants,
+who had met the muleteers bringing the wounded
+doctor home from the spot where he had been
+found, followed the two men, talking excitedly in
+low voices and broken sentences. The dawn was
+grey above the houses, and the autumn mists had
+floated up to the parapet on the side where the
+little piazza looked down to the valley, and hung
+motionless in the still air, like a stage sea in a
+theatre. In the distance was heard the clattering
+of mules' shoes, and occasionally the deep clanking
+of the goats' bells. Just as the little party
+reached the small, dark green door of the doctor's
+house the distant convent bells tolled one, then
+two quick strokes, then three again, and then
+five, and then rang out the peal for the morning
+Angelus. The door of the dirty little coffee shop
+in the piazza was already open, and a faint light
+burned within. The air was damp, quiet and
+strangely resonant, as it often is in mountain towns
+at early dawn. The gusty October wind had gone
+down, after blowing almost all night.</p>
+
+<p>The case was far from being as serious as Dalrymple
+had expected, and he soon convinced himself
+that Sor Tommaso was not in any great danger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+He had fainted from fright and some loss of blood,
+but neither of the two thrusts which had wounded
+him had penetrated to his lungs, and the third was
+little more than a scratch. Doubtless he owed his
+safety in part to the fact that the wind had blown
+his cloak in folds over his shoulders and head.
+But it was also clear that his assailant had possessed
+no experience in the use of the knife as a
+weapon. When the group of men at the door were
+told that Sor Tommaso was not mortally wounded,
+they went away somewhat disappointed at the insignificant
+ending of the affair, though the doctor
+was not an unpopular man in the town.</p>
+
+<p>"It is some woman," said one of them, contemptuously.
+"What can a woman do with a knife?
+Worse than a cat&mdash;she scratches, and runs away."</p>
+
+<p>"Some little jealousy," observed another. "Eh!
+Sor Tommaso&mdash;who knows where he makes love?
+But meanwhile he is growing old, to be so gay."</p>
+
+<p>"The old are the worst," replied the first
+speaker. "Since it is nothing, let us have a
+baiocco's worth of acquavita, and let us go away."</p>
+
+<p>So they turned into the dirty little coffee shop
+to get their pennyworth of spirits. Meanwhile
+Dalrymple was washing and binding up his
+friend's wounds. Sor Tommaso groaned and
+winced under every touch, and the Scotchman,
+with dry gentleness, did his best to reassure him.
+Stefanone looked on in silence for some time,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+helping Dalrymple when he was needed. The
+doctor's servant-woman, a somewhat grimy peasant,
+was sitting on the stairs, sobbing loudly.</p>
+
+<p>"It is useless," moaned Sor Tommaso. "I am
+dead."</p>
+
+<p>"I may be mistaken," answered Dalrymple,
+"but I think not."</p>
+
+<p>And he continued his operations with a sure
+hand, greatly to the admiration of Stefanone,
+who had often seen knife-wounds dressed. Gradually
+Sor Tommaso became more calm. His face,
+from having been normally of a bright red, was
+now very pale, and his watery blue eyes blinked at
+the light helplessly like a kitten's, as he lay still
+on his pillow. Stefanone went away to his occupations
+at last, and Dalrymple, having cleared
+away the litter of unused bandages and lint, and
+set things in order, sat down by the bedside to
+keep his patient company for a while. He was
+really somewhat anxious lest the wounds should
+have taken cold.</p>
+
+<p>"If I get well, it will be a miracle," said Sor
+Tommaso, feebly. "I must think of my soul."</p>
+
+<p>"By all means," answered the Scotchman. "It
+can do your soul no harm, and contemplation
+rests the body."</p>
+
+<p>"You Protestants have not human sentiment,"
+observed the Italian, moving his head slowly on
+the pillow. "But I also think of the abbess. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+was to have gone there early this morning. She
+will also die. We shall both die."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple crossed one leg over the other, and
+looked quietly at the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Sor Tommaso," he said, "there is no other
+physician in Subiaco. I am a doctor, properly
+licensed to practise. It is evidently my duty to
+take care of your patients while you are ill."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy!" cried Sor Tommaso, with sudden
+energy, and opening his eyes very wide.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you afraid that I shall kill them," asked
+Dalrymple, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? A foreigner! And the people
+say that you have converse with the devil. But
+the common people are ignorant."</p>
+
+<p>"Very."</p>
+
+<p>"And as for the convent&mdash;a Protestant&mdash;for
+the abbess! They would rather die. Figure to
+yourself what sort of a scandal there would be!
+A Protestant in a convent, and then, in that convent,
+too! The abbess would much rather die
+in peace."</p>
+
+<p>"At all events, I will go and offer my services.
+If the abbess prefers to die in peace, she can
+answer to that effect. I will ask her what she
+thinks about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask her!" repeated Sor Tommaso. "Do you
+imagine that you could see her? But what can
+you know? I tell you that last night she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+muffled up in her chair, and her face covered.
+It needed the grace of Heaven, that I might feel
+her pulse! As for her tongue, God knows what
+it is like! I have not seen it. Not so much as
+the tip of it! Not even her eyes did I see. And
+to-day I was not to be admitted at all, because the
+abbess would be in bed. Imagine to yourself, with
+blisters and sinapisms, and a hundred things. I
+was only to speak with Sister Maria Addolorata,
+who is her niece, you know, in the anteroom of the
+abbess's apartment. They would not let you in.
+They would give you a bath of holy water
+through the loophole of the convent door and
+say, 'Go away, sinner; this is a religious house!'
+You know them very little."</p>
+
+<p>"You are talking too much," observed Dalrymple,
+who had listened attentively. "It is not
+good for you. Besides, since you are able to
+speak, it would be better if you told me who
+stabbed you last night, that I may go to the
+police, and have the person arrested, if possible."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not know what you are saying," answered
+Sor Tommaso, with sudden gravity. "The
+woman has relations&mdash;who could handle a knife
+better than she."</p>
+
+<p>And he turned his face away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> sun was high when Dalrymple left Sor
+Tommaso in charge of the old woman-servant and
+went back to Stefanone's house to dress himself
+with more care than he had bestowed upon his
+hasty toilet at dawn. And now that he had plenty
+of time, he was even more careful of his appearance
+than usual; for he had fully determined to
+attempt to take Sor Tommaso's place in attendance
+upon the abbess. He therefore put on a coat of
+a sober colour and brushed his straight red hair
+smoothly back from his forehead, giving himself
+easily that extremely grave and trust-inspiring air
+which distinguishes many Scotchmen, and supports
+their solid qualities, while it seems to deny the
+possibility of any adventurous and romantic tendency.</p>
+
+<p>At that hour nobody was about the house, and
+Dalrymple, stick in hand, sallied forth upon his
+expedition, looking for all the world as though he
+were going to church in Edinburgh instead of meditating
+an entrance into an Italian convent. He
+had said nothing more to the doctor on the subject.
+The people in the streets had most of them seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+him often and knew him by name, and it did not
+occur to any one to wonder why a foreigner should
+wear one sort of coat rather than another, when he
+took his walks abroad. He walked leisurely; for
+the sky had cleared, and the sun was hot. Moreover,
+he followed the longer road in order to keep
+his shoes clean, instead of climbing up the narrow
+and muddy lane in which Sor Tommaso had been
+attacked. He reached the convent door at last,
+brushed a few specks of dust from his coat, settled
+his high collar and the broad black cravat which
+was then taking the place of the stock, and rang
+the bell with one steady pull. There was, perhaps,
+no occasion for nervousness. At all events,
+Dalrymple was as deliberate in his movements and
+as calm in all respects as he had ever been in his
+life. Only, just after he had pulled the weather-beaten
+bell-chain, a half-humorous smile bent his
+even lips and was gone again in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>There was the usual slapping and shuffling of
+slippers in the vaulted archway within, but as it
+was now day, the loophole was opened immediately,
+and the portress came alone. Dalrymple explained
+in strangely accented but good Italian that Sor
+Tommaso had met with an accident in the night;
+that he, Angus Dalrymple, was a friend of the
+doctor's and a doctor himself, and had undertaken
+all of Sor Tommaso's duties, and, finally, that he
+begged the portress to find Sister Maria Addolorata,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+to repeat his story, and to offer his humble
+services in the cause of the abbess's recovery. All
+of which the veiled nun within heard patiently to
+the end.</p>
+
+<p>"I will speak to Sister Maria Addolorata," she
+said. "Have the goodness to wait."</p>
+
+<p>"Outside?" inquired Dalrymple, as the little
+shutter of the loophole was almost closed.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," answered the nun, opening it again,
+and shutting it as soon as she had spoken.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple waited a long time in the blazing
+sun. The main entrance of the convent faced to
+the southeast, and it was not yet midday. He
+grew hot, after his walk, and softly wiped his forehead,
+and carefully folded his handkerchief again
+before returning it to his pocket. At last he heard
+the sound of steps again, and in a few seconds the
+loophole was once more opened.</p>
+
+<p>"Sister Maria Addolorata will speak with you,"
+said the portress's voice, as he approached his face
+to the little grating.</p>
+
+<p>He felt an odd little thrill of pleasant surprise.
+But so far as seeing anything was concerned, he
+was disappointed. Instead of one veiled nun, there
+were now two veiled nuns.</p>
+
+<p>"Madam," he began, "my friend Doctor Tommaso
+Taddei has met with an accident which prevents
+him from leaving his bed." And he went on
+to repeat all that he had told the portress, with such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+further explanations as he deemed necessary and
+persuasive.</p>
+
+<p>While he spoke, Maria Addolorata drew back a
+little into the deeper shadow away from the loophole.
+Her veil hung over her eyes, and the folds
+were drawn across her mouth, but she gradually
+raised her head, throwing it back until she could
+see Dalrymple's face from beneath the edge of the
+black material. In so doing she unconsciously uncovered
+her mouth. The Scotchman saw a good
+part of her features, and gazed intently at what he
+saw, rightly judging that as the sun was behind
+him, she could hardly be sure whether he were
+looking at her or not.</p>
+
+<p>As for her, she was doubtless inspired by a natural
+curiosity, but at the same time she understood
+the gravity of the case and wished to form an
+opinion as to the advisability of admitting the
+stranger. A glance told her that Dalrymple was
+a gentleman, and she was reassured by the gravity
+of his voice and by the fact that he was evidently
+acquainted with the abbess's condition, and must,
+therefore, be a friend of Sor Tommaso. When he
+had finished speaking, she immediately looked
+down again, and seemed to be hesitating.</p>
+
+<p>"Open the door, Sister Filomena," she said at
+last.</p>
+
+<p>The portress shook her head almost imperceptibly
+as she obeyed, but she said nothing. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+whole affair was in her eyes exceedingly irregular.
+Maria Addolorata should have retired to the little
+room adjoining the convent parlour, and separated
+from it by a double grating, and Dalrymple
+should have been admitted to the parlour itself,
+and they should have said what they had to say
+to one another through the bars, in the presence
+of the portress. But Maria Addolorata was the
+abbess's niece. The abbess was too ill to give
+orders&mdash;too ill even to speak, it was rumoured.
+In a few days Maria Addolorata might be 'Her
+most Reverend Excellency.' Meanwhile she was
+mistress of the situation, and it was safer to obey
+her. Moreover, the portress was only a lay sister,
+an old and ignorant creature, accustomed to do
+what she was told to do by the ladies of the
+convent.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple took off his hat and stooped low to
+enter through the small side-door. As soon as he
+had passed the threshold, he stood up to his
+height and then made a low bow to Maria Addolorata,
+whose veil now quite covered her eyes and
+prevented her from seeing him,&mdash;a fact which he
+realized immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Give warning to the sisters, Sister Filomena,"
+said Maria Addolorata to the portress, who nodded
+respectfully and walked away into the gloom under
+the arches, leaving the nun and Dalrymple together
+by the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is necessary to give warning," she explained,
+"lest you should meet any of the sisters unveiled
+in the corridors, and they should be scandalized."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple again bowed gravely and stood still,
+his eyes fixed upon Maria Addolorata's veiled head,
+but wandering now and then to her heavy but
+beautifully shaped white hands, which she held
+carelessly clasped before her and holding the end
+of the great rosary of brown beads which hung
+from her side. He thought he had never seen
+such hands before. They were high-bred, and yet
+at the same time there was a strongly material
+attraction about them.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know what to say, and as nothing
+seemed to be expected of him, he kept silence for
+some time. At last Maria Addolorata, as though
+impatient at the long absence of the portress,
+tapped the pavement softly with her sandal
+slipper, and turned her head in the direction of
+the arches as though to listen for approaching footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope that the abbess is no worse than when
+Doctor Taddei saw her last night," observed Dalrymple.</p>
+
+<p>"Her most reverend excellency," answered Maria
+Addolorata, with a little emphasis, as though to
+teach him the proper mode of addressing the abbess,
+"is suffering. She has had a bad night."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall hope to be allowed to give some advice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+to her most reverend excellency," said Dalrymple,
+to show that he had understood the hint.</p>
+
+<p>"She will not allow you to see her. But you
+shall come with me to the antechamber, and I will
+speak with her and tell you what she says."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be greatly obliged, and will do my best
+to give good advice without seeing the patient."</p>
+
+<p>Another pause followed, during which neither
+moved. Then Maria Addolorata spoke again, further
+reassured, perhaps, by Dalrymple's quiet and
+professional tone. She had too lately left the
+world to have lost the habit of making conversation
+to break an awkward silence. Years of seclusion,
+too, instead of making her shy and silent, had
+given her something of the ease and coolness of
+a married woman. This was natural enough, considering
+that she was born of worldly people and
+had acquired the manners of the world in her own
+home, in childhood.</p>
+
+<p>"You are an Englishman, I presume, Signor
+Doctor?" she observed, in a tone of interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"A Scotchman, Madam," answered Dalrymple,
+correcting her and drawing himself up a little.
+"My name is Angus Dalrymple."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the same&mdash;an Englishman or a Scotchman,"
+said the nun.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, Madam, we consider that there is
+a great difference. The Scotch are chiefly Celts.
+Englishmen are Anglo-Saxons."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But you are all Protestants. It is therefore
+the same for us."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple feared a discussion of the question
+of religion. He did not answer the nun's last
+remark, but bowed politely. She, of course, could
+not see the inclination he made.</p>
+
+<p>"You say nothing," she said presently. "Are
+you a Protestant?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Madam."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pity!" said Maria Addolorata. "May
+God send you light."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Madam."</p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata smiled under her veil at the
+polite simplicity of the reply. She had met Englishmen
+in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>"It is no longer customary to address us as
+'Madam,'" she answered, a moment later. "It is
+more usual to speak to us as 'Sister' or 'Reverend
+Sister'&mdash;or 'Sister Maria.' I am Sister Maria
+Addolorata. But you know it, for you sent your
+message to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor Taddei told me."</p>
+
+<p>At this point the portress appeared in the distance,
+and Maria Addolorata, hearing footsteps,
+turned her head from Dalrymple, raising her veil
+a little, so that she could recognize the lay sister
+without showing her face to the young man.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go," she said, dropping her veil again,
+and beginning to walk on. "The sisters are
+warned."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple followed her in silence and at a
+respectful distance, congratulating himself upon
+his extraordinary good fortune in having got so
+far on the first attempt, and inwardly praying that
+Sor Tommaso's wounds might take a considerable
+time in healing. It had all come about so naturally
+that he had lost the sensation of doing
+something adventurous which had at first taken
+possession of him, and he now regarded everything
+as possible, even to being invited to a friendly cup
+of tea in Sister Maria Addolorata's sitting-room;
+for he imagined her as having a sitting-room and
+as drinking tea there in a semi-luxurious privacy.
+The idea would have amused an Italian of those
+days, when tea was looked upon as medicine.</p>
+
+<p>They reached the end of the last corridor. Dalrymple,
+like Sor Tommaso, was admitted to the
+antechamber, while the portress waited outside
+to conduct him back again. But Maria did not
+take him into the abbess's parlour, into which she
+went at once, closing the door behind her. Dalrymple
+sat down upon a carved wooden box-bench,
+and waited. The nun was gone a long time.</p>
+
+<p>"I have kept you waiting," she said, as she
+entered the little room again.</p>
+
+<p>"My time is altogether at your service, Sister
+Maria Addolorata," he answered, rising quickly.
+"How is her most reverend excellency?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very ill. I do not know what to say. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+will not hear of seeing you. I fear she will not
+live long, for she can hardly breathe."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she cough?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not much. Not so much as last night. She
+complains that she cannot draw her breath and
+that her lungs feel full of something."</p>
+
+<p>The case was evidently serious, and Dalrymple,
+who was a physician by nature, proceeded to extract
+as much information as he could from the
+nun, who did her best to answer all his questions
+clearly. The long conversation, with its little
+restraints and its many attempts at a mutual
+understanding, did more to accustom Maria Addolorata
+to Dalrymple's presence and personality
+than any number of polite speeches on his part
+could have done. There is an unavoidable tendency
+to intimacy between any two people who
+are together engaged in taking care of a sick
+person.</p>
+
+<p>"I can give you directions and good advice,"
+said Dalrymple, at last. "But it can never be the
+same as though I could see the patient myself. Is
+there no possible means of obtaining her consent?
+She may die for the want of just such advice as
+I can only give after seeing her. Would not her
+brother, his Eminence the Cardinal, perhaps recommend
+her to let me visit her once?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is an idea," answered the nun, quickly.
+"My uncle is a man of broad views. I have heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+it said in Rome. I could write to him that Doctor
+Taddei is unable to come, and that a celebrated
+foreign physician is here&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not celebrated," interrupted Dalrymple, with
+his literal Scotch veracity.</p>
+
+<p>"What difference can it make?" uttered Maria
+Addolorata, moving her shoulders a little impatiently.
+"He will be the more ready to use his
+influence, for he is much attached to my aunt.
+Then, if he can persuade her, I can send down the
+gardener to the town for you this afternoon. It
+may not be too late."</p>
+
+<p>"I see that you have some confidence in me,"
+said Dalrymple. "I am of a newer school than
+Doctor Taddei. If you will follow my directions,
+I will almost promise that her most reverend excellency
+shall not die before to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled now, as he gave the abbess her full
+title, for he began to feel as though he had known
+Maria Addolorata for a long time, though he had
+only had one glimpse of her eyes, just when she
+had raised her head to get a look at him through
+the loophole of the gate. But he had not forgotten
+them, and he felt that he knew them.</p>
+
+<p>"I will do all you tell me," she answered quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple had some English medicines with him
+on his travels, and not knowing what might be
+required of him at the convent, he had brought
+with him a couple of tiny bottles.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"This when she coughs&mdash;ten drops," he said,
+handing the bottles to the nun. "And five drops
+of this once an hour, until her chest feels freer."</p>
+
+<p>He gave her minute directions, as far as he
+could, about the general treatment of the patient,
+which Maria repeated and got by heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I will let you know before twenty-three o'clock
+what the cardinal says to the plan," she said. "In
+this way you will be able to come up by daylight."</p>
+
+<p>As Dalrymple took his leave, he held out his
+hand, forgetting that he was in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not our custom," said Maria Addolorata,
+thrusting each of her own hands into the opposite
+sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing cold in her tone. On the
+contrary, Dalrymple fancied that she was almost
+on the point of laughing at that moment, and he
+blushed at his awkwardness. But she could not
+see his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Your most humble servant," he said, bowing
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Good day, Signor Doctor," she answered,
+through the open door, as the portress jingled
+her keys and prepared to follow Dalrymple.</p>
+
+<p>So he took his departure, not without much
+satisfaction at the result of his first attempt.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sor Tommaso</span> recovered but slowly, though his
+injuries were of themselves not dangerous. His
+complexion was apoplectic and gouty, he was no
+longer young, and before forty-eight hours had
+gone by his wounds were decidedly inflamed and
+he had a little fever. At the same time he was by
+no means a courageous man, and he was ready to
+cry out that he was dead, whenever he felt himself
+worse. Besides this, he lost his temper several
+times daily with Dalrymple, who resolutely refused
+to bleed him, and he insisted upon eating and
+drinking more than was good for him, at a time
+when if he had been his own patient he would
+have enforced starvation as necessary to recovery.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the cardinal had exerted his influence
+with his sister, the abbess, and had so far succeeded
+that Dalrymple, who went every day to the convent,
+was now made to stand with his back to the
+abbess's open door, in order that he might at least
+ask her questions and hear her own answers.
+Many an old Italian doctor can tell of even
+stranger and more absurd precautions observed by
+the nuns of those days. As soon as the oral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+examination was over, Maria Addolorata shut the
+door and came out into the parlour, where Dalrymple
+finished his visit, prolonging it in conversation
+with her by every means he could devise.</p>
+
+<p>Though encumbered with a little of the northern
+shyness, Dalrymple was not diffident. There is
+a great difference between shyness and diffidence.
+Diffidence distrusts itself; shyness distrusts the
+mere outward impression made on others. At this
+time Dalrymple had no object beyond enjoying the
+pleasure of talking with Maria Addolorata, and no
+hope beyond that of some day seeing her face without
+the veil. As for her voice, his present position
+as doctor to the convent made it foolish for him to
+run the risk of being caught listening for her songs
+behind the garden wall. But he had not forgotten
+what Annetta had told him, and Maria Addolorata's
+soft intonations and liquid depths of tone in speaking
+led him to believe that the peasant girl had
+not exaggerated the nun's gift of singing.</p>
+
+<p>One day, after he had seen her and talked with
+her more than half a dozen times, he approached
+the subject, merely for the sake of conversation,
+saying that he had been told of her beautiful
+voice by people who had heard her across the
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true," she answered simply. "I have a
+good voice. But it is forbidden here to sing except
+in church," she added with a sigh. "And now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+that my aunt is ill, I would not displease her for
+anything."</p>
+
+<p>"That is natural," said Dalrymple. "But I
+would give anything in the world to hear you."</p>
+
+<p>"In church you can hear me. The church is
+open on Sundays at the Benediction service. We
+are behind the altar in the choir, of course. But
+perhaps you would know my voice from the rest
+because it is deeper."</p>
+
+<p>"I should know it in a hundred thousand,"
+asseverated the Scotchman, with warmth.</p>
+
+<p>"That would be a great many&mdash;a whole choir
+of angels!" And the nun laughed softly, as she
+sometimes did, now that she knew him so much
+better.</p>
+
+<p>There was something warm and caressing in her
+laughter, short and low as it was, that made Dalrymple
+look at those full white hands of hers and
+wonder whether they might not be warm and
+caressing too.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you sing a little louder than the rest next
+Sunday afternoon, Sister Maria?" he asked. "I
+will be in the church."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be a great sin," she answered, but
+not very gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I should have to be thinking about
+you instead of about the holy service. Do you
+not know that? But nothing is sinful according<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+to you Protestants, I suppose. At all events, come
+to the church."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think we are all devils, Sister Maria?"
+asked Dalrymple, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"More or less." She laughed again. "They
+say in the town that you have a compact with
+the devil."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear what is said in the town?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes. The gardener brings the gossip and
+tells it to the cook. Or Sora Nanna tells it to me
+when she brings the linen. There are a thousand
+ways. The people think we know nothing because
+they never see us. But we hear all that goes on."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple said nothing in answer for some time.
+Then he spoke suddenly and rather hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I never see you, Sister Maria?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Me? But you see me every day&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&mdash;but your face, without the veil."</p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"It is against all rules," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not against all rules that we should sit here
+and make conversation every day for half an hour?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I suppose it is. But you are here as a
+doctor to take care of my aunt," she added quickly.
+"That makes it right. You are not a man. You
+are a doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh,&mdash;I understand." Dalrymple laughed a
+little. "Then I am never to see your beautiful
+face?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How do you know it is beautiful, since you
+have never seen it?"</p>
+
+<p>"From your beautiful hands," answered the
+young man, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Maria Addolorata glanced at her hands
+and then, with a movement which might have been
+quicker, concealed them in her sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a sin to hide what God has made beautiful,"
+said Dalrymple.</p>
+
+<p>"If I have anything about me that is beautiful,
+it is for God's glory that I hide it," answered
+Maria, with real gravity this time.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple understood that he had gone a little
+too far, though he did not exactly regret it, for the
+next words she spoke showed him that she was not
+really offended. Nevertheless, in order to exhibit
+a proper amount of contrition he took his leave
+with a little more formality than usual on this particular
+occasion. Possibly she was willing to show
+that she forgave him, for she hesitated a moment
+just before opening the door, and then, to his great
+surprise, held out her hand to him.</p>
+
+<p>"It is your custom," she said, just touching his
+eagerly outstretched fingers. "But you must not
+look at it," she added, drawing it back quickly and
+hiding it in her sleeve with another low laugh.
+And she began to shut the door almost before he
+had quite gone through.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple walked more slowly on that day, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+he descended through the steep and narrow streets,
+and though he was surefooted by nature and habit,
+he almost stumbled once or twice on his way down,
+because, somehow, though his eyes looked towards
+his feet, he did not see exactly where he was
+going.</p>
+
+<p>There is no necessity for analyzing his sensations.
+It is enough to say at once that he was
+beginning to be really in love with Maria Addolorata,
+and that he denied the fact to himself stoutly,
+though it forced itself upon him with every step
+which took him further from the convent. He felt
+on that day a strong premonitory symptom in the
+shape of a logical objection, as it were, to his
+returning again to see the nun. The objection was
+the evident and total futility of the almost intimate
+intercourse into which the two were gliding. The
+day must soon come when the abbess would no
+longer need his assistance. In all probability she
+would recover, for the more alarming symptoms
+had disappeared, and she showed signs of regaining
+her strength by slow degrees. It was quite clear
+to Dalrymple that, after her ultimate recovery, his
+chance of seeing and talking with Maria Addolorata
+would be gone forever. Sor Tommaso, indeed,
+recovered but slowly. Of the two his case was the
+worse, for fever had set in on the third day and
+had not left him yet, so that he assured Dalrymple
+almost hourly that his last moment was at hand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+But he also was sure to get well, in the Scotchman's
+opinion, and the latter knew well enough
+that his own temporary privileges as physician
+to the convent would be withdrawn from him as
+soon as the Subiaco doctor should be able to climb
+the hill.</p>
+
+<p>It was all, therefore, but a brief incident in his
+life, which could not possibly have any continuation
+hereafter. He tried in vain to form plans
+and create reasons for seeing Maria Addolorata
+even once a month for some time to come, but his
+ingenuity failed him altogether, and he grew angry
+with himself for desiring what was manifestly
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>With true masculine inconsequence, so soon as
+he was displeased with himself he visited his displeasure
+upon the object that attracted him, and
+on the earliest possible occasion, on their very
+next meeting. He assumed an air of coldness and
+reserve such as he had certainly not thought necessary
+to put on at his first visit. Almost without
+any preliminary words of courtesy, and without any
+attempt to prolong the short conversation which
+always took place before he was made to stand
+with his back to the abbess's open door, he coldly
+inquired about the good lady's condition during
+the past night, and made one or two observations
+thereon with a brevity almost amounting to curtness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata was surprised; but as her face
+was covered, and her hands were quietly folded
+before her, Dalrymple could not see that his behaviour
+had any effect upon her. She did not
+answer his last remark at all, but quietly bowed
+her head.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed the usual serio-comic scene,
+during which Dalrymple stood turned away from
+the open door, asking questions of the sick woman,
+and listening attentively for her low-spoken answers.
+To tell the truth, he judged of her condition
+more from the sound of her voice than from
+anything else. He had also taught Maria Addolorata
+how to feel the pulse; and she counted the
+beats while he looked at his watch. His chief
+anxiety was now for the action of the heart, which
+had been weakened by a lifetime of unhealthy
+living, by food inadequate in quality, even when
+sufficient in quantity, by confinement within doors,
+and lack of life-giving sunshine, and by all those
+many causes which tend to reduce the vitality of
+a cloistered nun.</p>
+
+<p>When the comedy was over, Maria Addolorata
+shut the door as usual; and she and Dalrymple
+were alone together in the abbess's parlour, as
+they were every day. The abbess herself could
+hear that they were talking, but she naturally
+supposed that they were discussing the details of
+her condition; and as she felt that she was really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+recovering, so far as she could judge, and as almost
+every day, after Dalrymple had gone, Maria Addolorata
+had some new direction of his to carry out,
+the elder lady's suspicions were not aroused. On
+the contrary, her confidence in the Scotch doctor
+grew from day to day; and in the long hours
+during which she lay thinking over her state and
+its circumstances, she made plans for his conversion,
+in which her brother, the cardinal, bore a
+principal part. She was grateful to Dalrymple,
+and it seemed to her that the most proper way
+of showing her gratitude would be to save his
+soul, a point of view unusual in the ordinary
+relations of life.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular day, Maria Addolorata shut
+the door, and came forward into the parlour as
+usual. As usual, too, she sat down in the abbess's
+own big easy-chair, expecting that Dalrymple
+would seat himself opposite to her. But he remained
+standing, with the evident intention of
+going away in a few moments. He said a few
+words about the patient, gave one or two directions,
+and then stood still in silence for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata lifted her head a little, but
+not enough to show him more than an inch of her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I displeased you, Signor Doctor?" she
+asked, in her deep, warm voice. "Have I not
+carried out your orders?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary," answered Dalrymple, with
+a stiffness which he resented in himself. "It is
+impossible to be more conscientious than you
+always are."</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that he still remained standing, the nun
+rose to her feet, and waited for him to go. She
+believed that she was far too proud to detain him,
+if he wished to shorten the meeting. But something
+hurt her, which she could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple hesitated a moment, and his lips
+parted as though he were about to speak. The
+silence was prolonged only for a moment or two.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Sister Maria Addolorata," he
+said suddenly, and bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Signor Doctor," answered the
+nun.</p>
+
+<p>She bent her head very slightly, but a keener
+observer than Dalrymple was, just then, would have
+noticed that as she did so, her shoulders moved
+forward a little, as though her breast were contracted
+by some sudden little pain. Dalrymple
+did not see it. He bowed again, let himself out,
+and closed the door softly behind him.</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone, Maria Addolorata sat down
+in the big easy-chair again, and uncovered her
+face, doubling her veil back upon her head, and
+withdrawing the thick folds from her chin and
+mouth. Her features were very pale, as she sat
+staring at the sky through the window, and her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+eyes fixed themselves in that look which was
+peculiar to her. Her full white hands strained
+upon each other a little, bringing the colour to the
+tips of her fingers. During some minutes she did
+not move. Then she heard her aunt's voice calling
+to her hoarsely. She rose at once, and went into
+the bedroom. The abbess's pale face was very
+thin and yellow now, as it lay upon the white
+pillow; the coverlet was drawn up to her chin,
+and a grimly carved black crucifix hung directly
+above her head.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor did not stay long to-day," she said,
+in a hollow tone.</p>
+
+<p>"No, mother," answered the young nun. "He
+thinks you are doing very well. He wishes you
+to eat a wing of roast chicken."</p>
+
+<p>"If I could have a little salad," said the abbess.
+"Maria," she added suddenly, "you are careful to
+keep your face covered when you are in the next
+room, are you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Always."</p>
+
+<p>"You generally do not raise your veil until you
+come into this room, after the doctor is gone," said
+the elder lady.</p>
+
+<p>"He went so soon, to-day," answered Maria
+Addolorata, with perfectly innocent truth. "I
+stayed a moment in the parlour, thinking over his
+directions, and I lifted my veil when I was alone.
+It is close to-day."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Go into the garden, and walk a little," said the
+abbess. "It will do you good. You are pale."</p>
+
+<p>If she had felt even a faint uneasiness about her
+niece's conduct, it was removed by the latter's
+manner.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Once</span> more Dalrymple was sitting over his supper
+at the table in the vaulted room on the ground
+floor which Stefanone used as a wine shop. To
+tell the truth, it was very superior to the ordinary
+wine shops of Subiaco and had an exceptional
+reputation. The common people never came there,
+because Stefanone did not sell his cheap wine at
+retail, but sent it all to Rome, or took it thither
+himself for the sake of getting a higher price for
+it. He always said that he did not keep an inn,
+and perhaps as much on account of his relations
+with Gigetto's family, he assumed as far as possible
+the position of a wine-dealer rather than that of a
+wine-seller. The distinction, in Italian mountain
+towns, is very marked.</p>
+
+<p>"They can have a measure of the best, if they
+care to pay for it," he said. "If they wish a mouthful
+of food, there is what there is. But I am not
+the village host, and Nanna is not a wine-shop cook,
+to fry tripe and peel onions for Titius and Caius."</p>
+
+<p>The old Roman expression, denoting generally
+the average public, survives still in polite society,
+and Stefanone had caught it from Sor Tommaso.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple was sitting as usual over his supper,
+by the light of the triple-beaked brass lamp, his
+measure of wine beside him, and a beefsteak, which
+on this occasion was really of beef, before him.
+Stefanone was absent in Rome, with a load of wine.
+Sora Nanna sat on Dalrymple's right, industriously
+knitting in Italian fashion, one of the needles
+stuck into and supported by a wooden sheath
+thrust into her waist-band, while she worked off
+the stitches with the others. Annetta sat opposite
+the Scotchman, but a little on one side of the lamp,
+so that she could see his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," she said suddenly, without lifting her
+chin from the hand in which it rested, "you do
+not know anything! This Signor Englishman is
+making love with a nun in the convent! Eh&mdash;what
+do you think of it? Only this was wanting.
+A little more and the lightning will fall upon the
+convent! These Protestants! Oh, these blessed
+Protestants! They respect nothing, not even the
+saints!"</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter! what are you saying?"</p>
+
+<p>Sora Nanna's fingers did not pause in their
+work, nor did her eyes look up, but the deep
+furrow showed itself in her thick peasant's forehead,
+and her coarse, hard lips twitched clumsily
+with the beginning of a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I saying? The truth. Ask rather
+of the Signore whether it is not true."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is silly," said Dalrymple, growing unnaturally
+red, and looking up sharply at Annetta, before
+he took his next mouthful.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at him, mother!" laughed the girl. "He
+is red, red&mdash;he seems to me a boiled shrimp. Eh,
+this time I have guessed it! And as for Sister
+Maria Addolorata, she no longer sees with her
+eyes! To-day, when you were carrying in the
+baskets, you and the other women who went with
+us, I asked her whether the abbess was satisfied
+with the new doctor, and she answered that he was
+a very wise man, much wiser than Sor Tommaso.
+So I told her that it was a pity, because Sor Tommaso
+was getting well and would not allow the
+English doctor to come instead of him much longer.
+Then she looked at me. By Bacchus, I was afraid.
+Certain eyes! Not even a cat when you take away
+her kittens! A little more and she would have
+eaten me. And then her face made itself of marble&mdash;like
+that face of a woman that is built into
+the fountain in the piazza. Arch-priest! What a
+face!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl stared hard at Dalrymple, and her
+mouth laughed wickedly at his evident embarrassment,
+while there was something very different
+from laughter in her eyes. During the long speech,
+Sora Nanna had stopped knitting, and she looked
+from her daughter to the Scotchman with a sort
+of half-stupid, half-cunning curiosity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But these are sins!" she exclaimed at last.</p>
+
+<p>"And what does it matter?" asked the girl.
+"Does he go to confession? So what does it
+matter? He keeps the account himself, of his
+sins. I should not like to have them on my
+shoulders. But as for Sister Maria Addolorata&mdash;oh,
+she! I told you that she sinned in her throat.
+Well, the sin is ready, now. What is she waiting
+for? For the abbess to die? Or for Sor Tommaso
+to get well? Then she will not see the Signor
+Englishman any more. It would be better for her.
+When she does not see him any more, she will
+knead her pillow with tears, and make her bread of
+it, to bite and eat. Good appetite, Sister Maria!"</p>
+
+<p>"You talk, you talk, and you conclude nothing,"
+observed Sora Nanna. "You have certain thoughts
+in your head! And you do not let the Signore say
+even a word."</p>
+
+<p>"What can he say? He will say that it is not
+true. But then, who will believe him? I should
+like to see them a little together. I am sure that
+she shows him her face, and that it is 'Signor
+Doctor' here, and 'Dear Signor Doctor' there, and
+a thousand gentlenesses. Tell the truth, Signore.
+She shows you her face."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Dalrymple, who had regained his self-possession.
+"She never shows me her face."</p>
+
+<p>"What a shame for a Carmelite nun to show her
+face to a man!" cried the girl.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But I tell you she is always veiled to her chin,"
+insisted Dalrymple, with perfect truth.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! It is you who say so!" retorted Annetta.
+"But then, what can it matter to me? Make love
+with a nun, if it goes, Signore. Youth is a flower&mdash;when
+it is withered, it is hay, and the beasts eat
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"This is true," said Sora Nanna, returning to
+her knitting. "But do not pay attention to her,
+Signore. She is stupid. She does not know what
+she says. Eat, drink, and manage your own affairs.
+It is better. What can a child understand? It is
+like a little dog that sees and barks, without
+understanding. But you are a much instructed man and
+have been round the whole world. Therefore you
+know many things. It seems natural."</p>
+
+<p>Though Dalrymple was not diffident, as has been
+said, he was far from vain, on the whole, and in
+particular he had none of that contemptible vanity
+which makes a man readily believe that every
+woman he meets is in love with him. He had not
+the slightest idea at that time that Annetta, the
+peasant girl, looked upon him with anything more
+than the curiosity and vague interest usually
+bestowed on a foreigner in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>He was annoyed, however, by what she said this
+evening, though he was also secretly surprised and
+delighted. The contradiction is a common one.
+The miser is half mad with joy on discovering that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+he has much more than he supposed, and bitterly
+resents, at the same time, any notice which may be
+taken of the fact by others.</p>
+
+<p>Annetta did not enjoy his discomfiture and evident
+embarrassment, for she was far more deeply
+hurt herself than she realized, and every word she
+had spoken about Maria Addolorata had hurt her,
+though she had taken a sort of vague delight in
+teasing Dalrymple. She relapsed into silence now,
+alternately wishing that he loved her, and then,
+that she might kill him. If she could not have
+his heart, she would be satisfied with his blood.
+There was a passionate animal longing in the
+instinct to have him for herself, even dead, rather
+than that any other woman should get his love.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple was aware only that the girl's words
+had annoyed him, while inwardly conscious that if
+what she said were true, the truth would make a
+difference in his life. He showed no inclination to
+talk any more, and finished his supper in a rather
+morose silence, turning to his book as soon as he
+had done. Then Gigetto came in with his guitar
+and sang and talked with the two women.</p>
+
+<p>But he was restless that night, and did not fall
+asleep until the moon had set and his window grew
+dark. And even in his dreams he was restless still,
+so that when he awoke in the morning he said to
+himself that he had been foolish in his behaviour
+towards Maria Addolorata on the previous day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+He felt tired, too, and his colour was less brilliant
+than usual. It was Sunday, and he remembered
+that if he chose he could go in the afternoon to
+the Benediction in the convent church and hear
+Maria's voice perhaps. But at the usual hour,
+just before noon, he went to make his visit to the
+abbess.</p>
+
+<p>It was his intention to forget his stiff manner,
+and to behave as he had always behaved until
+yesterday. Strange to say, however, he felt a
+constraint coming upon him as soon as he was in the
+nun's presence. She received him as usual, there
+was the usual comic scene at the abbess's door,
+and, as every day, the two were alone together after
+her door was shut.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ill?" asked Maria Addolorata, after a
+moment's silence which, short as it was, both felt
+to be awkward.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple was taken by surprise. The tone in
+which she had spoken was cold and distant rather
+than expressive of any concern for his welfare, but
+he did not think of that. He only realized that
+his manner must seem to her very unusual, since
+she asked such a question. An Italian would have
+observed that his own face was pale, and would
+have told her that he was dying of love.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am not ill," answered the Scotchman,
+simply, and in his most natural tone of voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what is the matter with you since yesterday?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+asked Maria Addolorata, less coldly, and as
+though she were secretly amused.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing the matter&mdash;at least, nothing
+that I could explain to you."</p>
+
+<p>She sat down in the big easy-chair and, as formerly,
+he took his seat opposite to her.</p>
+
+<p>"There is something," she insisted, speaking
+thoughtfully. "You cannot deceive a woman,
+Signor Doctor."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple smiled and looked at her veiled head.</p>
+
+<p>"You said the other day that I was not a man,
+but a doctor," he answered. "I suppose I might
+answer that you are not a woman, but a nun."</p>
+
+<p>"And is not a nun a woman?" asked Maria
+Addolorata, and he knew that she was smiling, too.</p>
+
+<p>"You would not forgive me if I answered you,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? I might be obliged to, since I am
+obliged to meet you every day. It may be a sin,
+but I am curious."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I tell you?"</p>
+
+<p>As though instinctively, Maria was silent for a
+moment, and turned her veiled face towards the
+abbess's door. But Dalrymple needed no such
+warning to lower his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," she said, and under her veil she
+could feel that her eyes were growing deep and the
+pupils wide and dark, and she knew that she had
+done wrong.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How should I know whether you are a saint or
+only a woman, since I have never seen your face?"
+he asked. "I shall never know&mdash;for in a few days
+Doctor Taddei will be well again, and you will not
+need my services."</p>
+
+<p>He saw the quick tightening of one hand upon
+the other, and the slight start of the head, and in
+a flash he knew that all Annetta had told him was
+true. The silence that followed seemed longer than
+the awkward pause which had preceded the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot be so soon," she said in a very low
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be to-morrow," he answered, and to his
+own astonishment his voice almost broke in his
+throat, and he felt that his own hands were twisting
+each other, as though he were in pain. "I
+shall die without seeing you," he added almost
+roughly.</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a short silence in the still room.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, with quick movements of both hands
+at once, Maria Addolorata threw back the veil from
+her face, and drew away the folds that covered her
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"There, see me!" she exclaimed. "Look at me
+well this once!"</p>
+
+<p>Her face was as white as marble, and her dark
+eyes had a wild and startled look in them, as
+though she saw the world for the first time. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+ringlet of red-gold hair had escaped from the bands
+of white that crossed her forehead in an even line
+and were drawn down straight on either side, for
+in the quick movement she had made she had loosened
+the pin that held them together under her
+chin, and had freed the dazzling throat down to
+the high collar.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 397px;">
+<img src="images/gs05.jpg" width="397" height="500" alt="&quot;She had covered her face with the veil.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p. 126." title="&quot;She had covered her face with the veil.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p. 126." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;She had covered her face with the veil.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p.&nbsp;126.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dalrymple's pale, bright blue eyes caught fire,
+and he looked at her with all his being, at her face,
+her throat, her eyes, the ringlet of her hair. He
+breathed audibly, with parted lips, between his
+clenched teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, as he looked, he saw the red blush
+rise from the throat to the cheeks, from the cheeks
+to the forehead, and the marble grew more beautiful
+with womanly life. Then, all at once, he
+saw the hot tears welling up in her eyes, and in an
+instant the vision was gone. With a passionate
+movement she had covered her face with the veil,
+and throwing herself sideways against the high
+back of the chair, she pressed the dark stuff still
+closer to her eyes and mouth and cheeks. Her
+whole body shook convulsively, and a moment later
+she was sobbing, not audibly, but visibly, as though
+her heart were breaking.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple was again taken by surprise. He had
+been so completely lost in the utterly selfish contemplation
+of her beauty that he had been very far
+from realizing what she herself must have felt as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+soon as she appreciated what she had done. He at
+once accused himself of having looked too rudely
+at her, but at the same time he was himself too
+much disturbed to argue the matter. Quite instinctively
+he rose to his feet and tried to take one
+of her hands from her veil, touching it comfortingly.
+But she made a wild gesture, as though to
+drive him away.</p>
+
+<p>"Go!" she cried in a low and broken voice, between
+her sobs. "Go! Go quickly!"</p>
+
+<p>She could not say more for her sobbing, but he
+did not obey her. He only drew back a little and
+watched her, all his blood on fire from the touch
+of her soft white hand.</p>
+
+<p>She stifled her sobs in her veil, and gradually
+grew more calm. She even arranged the veil itself
+a little better, her face still turned away towards
+the back of the chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Maria! Maria!" The abbess's voice was calling
+her, hoarsely and almost desperately, from the
+next room.</p>
+
+<p>She started and sat up straight, listening. Then
+the cry was heard again, more desperate, less loud.
+With a quick skill which seemed marvellous in
+Dalrymple's eyes, Maria adjusted her veil almost
+before she had sprung to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" she said. "Something is the matter!"</p>
+
+<p>She was at the bedroom door in an instant, and
+in an instant more she was at her aunt's bedside.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Maria&mdash;I am dying," said the abbess's voice
+faintly, as she felt the nun's arm under her head.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple heard the words, and did not hesitate
+as he hastily felt for something in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Come!" cried Maria Addolorata.</p>
+
+<p>But he was already there, on the other side of
+the bed, pouring something between the sick lady's
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>It was fortunate that he was there at that moment.
+He had indeed anticipated the possibility
+of a sudden failure in the action of the heart, and
+he never came to the convent without a small supply
+of a powerful stimulant of his own invention.
+The liquid, however, was of such a nature that he
+did not like to leave the use of it to Maria Addolorata's
+discretion, for he was aware that she might
+easily be mistaken in the symptoms of the collapse
+which would really require its use.</p>
+
+<p>The abbess swallowed a sufficient quantity of it,
+and Dalrymple allowed her head to lie again upon
+the pillow. She looked almost as though she were
+dead. Her eyes were turned up, and her jaw had
+dropped. Maria Addolorata believed that all was
+over.</p>
+
+<p>"She is dead," she said. "Let us leave her in
+peace."</p>
+
+<p>It is a very ancient custom among Italians to
+withdraw as soon as a dying person is unconscious,
+if not even before the supreme moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She will probably live through this," answered
+Dalrymple, shaking his head.</p>
+
+<p>Neither he nor the nun spoke again for a long
+time. Little by little, the abbess revived under
+the influence of the stimulant, the heart beat less
+faintly, and the mouth slowly closed, while the
+eyelids shut themselves tightly over the upturned
+eyes. The normal regular breathing began again,
+and the crisis was over.</p>
+
+<p>"It is passed," said Dalrymple. "It will not
+come again to-day. We can leave her now, for she
+will sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the abbess herself. "Let me sleep."
+Her voice was faint, but the words were distinctly
+articulated.</p>
+
+<p>Then she opened her eyes and looked about her
+quite naturally. Her glance rested on Dalrymple's
+face. Suddenly realizing that she was not veiled,
+she drew the coverlet up over her face. It is a
+peculiarity of such cases, that the patient returns
+almost immediately to ordinary consciousness when
+the moment of danger is past.</p>
+
+<p>"Go!" she said, with more energy than might
+have been expected. "This is a religious house.
+You must not be here."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple retired into the parlour again, shutting
+the door behind him, and waited for Maria
+Addolorata, for it was now indispensable that he
+should give her directions for the night. During<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+the few minutes which passed while he was alone,
+he stood looking out of the window. The excitement
+of the last half-hour had cut off from his
+present state of mind the emotion he had felt
+before the abbess's cry for help, but had not
+decreased the impression it had left. While he
+was helping the sick lady there had not been
+one instant in which he had not felt that there
+was more than the life of a half-saintly old woman
+in the balance, and that her death meant the end
+of his meetings with Maria Addolorata. Annetta's
+words came back to him, 'she will knead her
+pillow with tears and make her bread of it.'</p>
+
+<p>Several minutes passed, and the door opened
+softly and closed again. Maria Addolorata came
+up to him, where he stood by the window. She
+did not speak for a moment, but he saw that her
+hand was pressed to her side.</p>
+
+<p>"I have spent a bad half-hour," she said at last,
+with something like a gasp.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the worst half-hour I ever spent in my
+life," answered Dalrymple. "I thought it was all
+over," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, "I thought it was all over."</p>
+
+<p>He could hear his heart beating in his ears. He
+could almost hear hers. His hand went out toward
+her, cold and unsteady, but it fell to his side again
+almost instantly. But for the heart-beats, it seemed
+to him that there was an appalling stillness in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+air of the quiet room. His manly face grew very
+pale. He slowly bit his lip and looked out of the
+window. An enormous temptation was upon him.
+He knew that if she moved to leave his side he
+should take her and hold her. There was a tiny
+drop of blood on his lip now. Something in him
+made him hope against himself that she would
+speak, that she would say some insignificant dry
+words. But every inch of his strong fibre and
+every ounce of his hot blood hoped that she would
+move, instead of speaking.</p>
+
+<p>She sighed, and the sigh was broken by a quick-drawn
+breath. Slowly Dalrymple turned his white
+face and gleaming eyes to her veiled head. Still
+she neither spoke nor moved. He, in memory, saw
+her face, her mouth, and her eyes through the thick
+stuff that hid them. The silence became awful to
+him. His hands opened and shut convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>She heard his breath and she saw the uncertain
+shadow of his hand, moving on the black and white
+squares of the pavement. She made a slight, short
+movement towards him and then stepped suddenly
+back, overcoming the temptation to go to him.</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p>He uttered the single word with a low, fierce cry.
+In an instant his arms were around her, pressing
+her, lifting her, straining her, almost bruising her.
+In an instant his lips were kissing a face whiter
+than his own, eyes that flamed like summer lightning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+between his kisses, lips crushed and hurt by
+his, but still not kissed enough, hands that were
+raised to resist, but lingered to be kissed in turn,
+lest anything should be lost.</p>
+
+<p>A little splintering crash, the sound of a glass
+falling upon a stone floor in the next room, broke
+the stillness. Dalrymple's arms relaxed, and the
+two stood for one moment facing one another, pale,
+with fire in their eyes and hearts beating more
+loudly than before. Dalrymple raised his hand to
+his forehead, as though he were dazed, and made
+an uncertain step in the direction of the door.
+Maria raised her white hands towards him, and her
+eyelids drooped, even while she looked into his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her once more with a kiss in which
+all other kisses seemed to meet and live and die a
+lingering, sweet death. She sank into the deep
+old easy-chair, and when she looked up, he was
+gone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> rained during the afternoon, and Dalrymple
+sat in his small laboratory, among his books and
+the simple apparatus he used for his experiments.
+His little window was closed, and the southwest
+wind drove the shower against the clouded panes
+of glass, so that the rain came through the ill-fitted
+strips of lead which joined them, and ran down in
+small streams to the channel in the stone sill,
+whence the water found its way out through a hole
+running through the wall. He sat in his rush-bottomed
+chair, sideways by the deal table, one long
+leg crossed over the other. His hand lay on an
+open book, and his fingers occasionally tapped the
+page impatiently, while his eyes were fixed on the
+window, watching the driving rain.</p>
+
+<p>He was not thinking, for he could not think.
+Over and over again the scene of the morning came
+back to him and sent the hot blood rushing to his
+throat. He tried to reflect, indeed, and to see
+whether what he had done was to have any consequences
+for him, or was to be left behind in his
+life, like a lovely view seen from a carriage window
+on a swift journey, gone before it is half seen, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+never to be seen again, except in dreams. But he
+was utterly unable to look forward and reason
+about the future. Everything dragged him back,
+up the steep ascent to the convent, through the
+arched ways and vaulted corridors, to the room in
+which he had passed the supreme moments of his
+life. The only distinct impression of the future
+was the strong desire to feel again what he had
+felt that day; to feel it again and again, and
+always, as long as feeling could last; to stretch
+out his hands and take, to close them and hold, to
+make his, indubitably, what had been but questionably
+his for an instant, to get the one thing worth
+having, for himself, and only for himself. For the
+passion of a strong man is loving and taking, and
+the passion of a good woman is loving and giving.
+Dalrymple reasoned well enough, later,&mdash;too well,
+perhaps,&mdash;but during those hours he spent alone on
+that day, there was no power of reasoning in him.
+The world was the woman he loved, and the world's
+orbit was but the circle of his clasping arms. Beyond
+them was chaos, without form and void,
+clouded as the rain-streaked panes of his little
+window.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his watch more than once. At last
+he rose, threw a cloak over his shoulders and went
+out, locking the door of the little laboratory behind
+him as he always did, and thrusting the unwieldy
+key into his pocket.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He climbed the hill to the convent, taking the
+short cut through the narrow lanes. The rain had
+almost ceased, and the wet mist that blew round
+the corners of the dark houses was pleasant in his
+face. But he scarcely knew what he saw and felt
+on his way. He reached the convent church and
+went in, and stood by one of the pillars near the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>It was a small church, built with a great choir
+for the nuns behind the high altar; from each side
+of the latter a high wooden screen extended to the
+walls, completely cutting off the space. It was
+dark, too, especially in such weather, and almost
+deserted, save for a number of old women who
+knelt on the damp marble pavement, some leaning
+against the backs of chairs, some resting one arm
+upon the plastered bases of the yellow marble
+columns. There were many lights on the high
+altar. Two acolytes, rough-headed boys of Subiaco,
+knelt within the altar rail, dressed in
+black cassocks and clean linen cottas. Two priests
+and a young deacon sat side by side on the right
+of the altar, with small black books in their hands.
+The nuns were chanting, unseen in the choir. No
+one noticed Dalrymple, wrapped in his cloak, as
+he leaned against the pillar near the door. His
+head was a little inclined, involuntarily respectful
+to ceremonies he neither believed in nor understood,
+but which had in them the imposing element<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+of devout earnestness. Yet his eyes were raised
+and looked up from under his brows, steadily and
+watchfully, for he knew that Maria Addolorata
+was behind the screen, and from the first moment
+of entering the church it seemed to him that he
+could distinguish her voice from the rest.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that it was hers, though he had never
+heard her sing. There was in all those sweet,
+colourless tones one tone that made ringing harmonies
+in his strong heart. Amongst all those
+mingling accents, there was one accent that
+touched his soul. Amidst the echoes that died
+softly away under the dim arches, there was one
+echo that died not, but rang on and on in his ears.
+There was a voice not like other voices there,
+nor like any he had ever heard. Many were
+strong and sweet; this one was not sweet and
+strong only, but alive with a divine life, winged
+with divine wings, essential of immortality, touching
+beyond tears, passionate as the living, breathing,
+sighing, dying world, grand as a flood of
+light, sad as the twilight of gods, full as a great
+water swinging to the tide of the summer's moon,
+fine-drawn as star-rays&mdash;a voice of gold.</p>
+
+<p>As Dalrymple stood there in the shadow, he
+heard it singing to him and telling him all that
+he had not been told in words, all that he felt,
+and more also. For there was in it the passion
+of the woman, and the passionate remorse of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+nun, the towering love of Maria Braccio, woman
+and princess, and the deep despair of Maria
+Addolorata, nun and sinner, unfaithful spouse of
+the Lord Christ, accused and self-accusing, self-wronged,
+self-judged, but condemned of God and
+foretasting the ultimate tragedy that is eternal&mdash;the
+tragedy of supreme hell.</p>
+
+<p>The man who stood there knew that it was his
+doing, and the burden of his deeds bowed him
+bodily as he stood. But still he listened, and, as
+she sung, he watched her lips in the dark, inner
+mirror of sin's memory, and they drew him on.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little, he heard only her voice, and the
+others chanted but faintly as from an infinite distance.
+And then, not in his thought, but in deed,
+she was singing alone, and the words of 'O Salutaris
+Hostia,' sounded in the dim church as they had
+never sounded before, nor could ever sound again,
+the appeal of a lost soul's agony to God, the glory
+of golden voice, the accent of transcendent genius,
+the passion, the strength, the despair, of an ancient
+race.</p>
+
+<p>In the dark church the coarse, sad peasant
+women bowed themselves upon the pavement.
+One of them sobbed aloud and beat her breast.
+Angus Dalrymple kneeled upon one knee and
+pressed his brow against the foot of the pillar,
+kneeling neither to God, nor to the Sacred Host,
+nor to man's belief in Heaven or Hell, neither<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+praying nor blaspheming, neither hoping nor
+dreading, but spell-bound upon a wrack of torture
+that was heart-breaking delight, his senses torn
+and strained to the utmost of his strong endurance,
+to the very scream of passion, his soul crucified
+upon the exquisite loveliness of his sin.</p>
+
+<p>Then all was still for an instant. Again there
+was a sound of voices, as the nuns sang in chorus
+the 'Tantum Ergo.' But the voice of voices was
+silent among them. The solemn Benediction
+blessed the just and the unjust alike. The short
+verses and responses of the priests broke the air
+that still seemed alive and trembling.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple rose slowly, and wrapped his cloak
+about him. Above the footsteps of the women
+going out of the church, he could hear the soft
+sound of all the nuns moving together as they
+left the choir. He knew that she was with them,
+and he stood motionless in his place till silence
+descended as a curtain between him and what had
+been. Then, with bent head, he went out into the
+rain that poured through the dim twilight.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">They</span> were together on the following day. The
+abbess was better, and as yet there had been no
+return of the syncope which Dalrymple dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>Contrary to her habit, Maria Addolorata sat on a
+high chair by the table, her head veiled and turned
+away, her chin supported in her hand. Dalrymple
+was seated not far from her, leaning forward, and
+trying to see her face, silent, and in a dangerous
+mood. She had refused to let him come near her,
+and even to raise her veil. When she spoke, her
+voice was full of a profound sadness that irritated
+him instead of touching him, for his nerves were
+strung to passion and out of tune with regret.</p>
+
+<p>"The sin of it; the deadly sin!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no sin in it," he answered; but she
+shook her veiled head.</p>
+
+<p>And there was silence again, as on the day
+before, but the stillness was of another kind. It
+was not the awful lull which goes before the bursting
+of the storm, when the very air seems to start
+at the fall of a leaf for fear lest it be already the
+thunder-clap. It was more like the noiseless rising
+of the hungry flood that creeps up round the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+doomed house, wherein is desperate, starving life,
+higher and higher, inch by inch&mdash;the flood of rising
+fate.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that there is no sin in it," she said,
+after a time. "You say it, but you do not think
+it. You are a man&mdash;you have honour to lose&mdash;you
+understand that, at least&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are a woman, and you have humanity's
+right to be free. It is an honourable right. You
+gave it up when you took that veil, not knowing
+what it was that you gave up. You have done no
+wrong. You have done nothing that any loving
+maiden need be ashamed of. I kissed you, for you
+could not help yourself. That is the monstrous
+crime which you say is to be punished with eternal
+damnation. It is monstrous that you should think
+so. It is blasphemy to say that God made woman
+to lead a life of suffering and daily misery, chained
+to a cross which it is agony to look at, and shame
+to break from."</p>
+
+<p>"Go&mdash;leave me. You are tempting me again."
+She spoke away from him, not changing her position.</p>
+
+<p>"If truth is temptation, I am tempting you, for
+I am showing you the truth. The truth is this.
+When you were almost a child they began to bend
+you and break you in the way they meant you to
+grow. You bent, but you were not broken. Your
+nature is too strong. There is a life of your own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+in you. It was against your will, and when you
+were just grown up, they buried you, your beauty,
+your youth, your fresh young heart, your voice and
+your genius&mdash;for it is nothing less. It was all done
+with deliberate intention for the glory of your
+family, blasphemously asserted to be the glory of
+God. It was pressed upon you, before you knew
+what you were doing, and made pleasant to you
+before you knew what it all meant. Your cross
+was cushioned for you and your crown of thorns
+was gilded. They made the seat under the canopy
+seem a seat in heaven. They even made you
+believe that the management of two or three score
+suffering women was government and power. It
+seemed a great thing to be abbess, did it not?"</p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata bent her veiled head slowly
+twice or three times, in a heavy-hearted way.</p>
+
+<p>"They made you believe all that," continued
+Dalrymple, with cold earnestness, "and much more
+besides&mdash;a great deal of which I know little, I
+suppose&mdash;the life to come, and saintship, and the
+glories of heaven. You have found out what it is
+all worth. We have found it out together. And
+they frightened you with hell. Do you know what
+hell is? A life without love, when one knows
+what love can mean. I am not eloquent; I wish I
+were. But I am plain, and I can tell you the
+truth."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not the truth," answered the nun, slowly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+"You tell me it is, to tempt me. I cannot drive
+you away by force. Will you not go? I cannot
+cry out for help&mdash;it would ruin me and you.
+Will you not leave me? But for God's grace, I
+am at your mercy, and there is little grace for me,
+a sinner."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I will not go away," said Dalrymple, and
+it seemed to Maria that his voice was the voice of
+her fate.</p>
+
+<p>"Then God have mercy!" she cried, in a low
+tone, and as her head sank forward, it was her
+forehead that rested in her right hand, instead of
+her chin.</p>
+
+<p>"Love is more merciful than God," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden softness in his voice which
+she had never heard, not even yesterday. Rising,
+he stole near to her, and standing, bent down and
+leaned upon the table by her side and spoke close
+to her ear. But he did not touch her. She could
+feel his breath through her veil when he spoke
+again. It was vital and fierce, and softly hot, like
+the breathing of a powerful wild beast.</p>
+
+<p>"You are my God," he said. "I worship you,
+and adore you. But I must have you for mine
+always. I would rather kill you, and have no God,
+than lose you alive. Come with me. You are
+free. You can get through the garden at night&mdash;with
+good horses we can reach the sea to-morrow.
+There is an English ship of war at anchor in Civita<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+Vecchia. The officers are my friends. Before to-morrow
+night we can be safe&mdash;married&mdash;happy.
+No one will know&mdash;no one will follow us. Maria&mdash;come&mdash;come&mdash;come!"</p>
+
+<p>His voice sank to a vibrating whisper as he
+repeated the word again and again, closer and
+closer to her ear. Her hands had dropped from
+her forehead and lay upon the table. With bent
+head she listened.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, my darling," he continued, fast and low.
+"I have a beautiful home, my father's home, my
+mother's&mdash;your laws and vows are nothing to
+them. You shall be honoured, loved&mdash;ah, dear!
+adored, worshipped&mdash;you do not know what we
+will do for you, to fill your life with sweet things.
+All your life, Maria, from to-morrow. Instead of
+pain and penance and everlasting suffering and
+weariness, you shall have all that the world holds
+of love and peace and flowers. And you shall sing
+your whole heart out when you will, and have
+music to play with from year's beginning to year's
+end and year's end again. Sweet, let me tell you
+how I love you&mdash;how you are alive in every drop
+of my blood, beating through me like living fire,
+through heart and soul and head and hand&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>With a quick movement she pressed her palms
+against her veil upon her ears to shut out the
+sound of his words. She rocked herself a little, as
+though the pain were almost greater than she could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+bear. But his hands moved too, stealthily, strongly,
+as a tiger's velvet feet, with a vibration all through
+them, to the very ends of his fingers. For he was
+in earnest. And the arm went softly round her,
+and closed gently upon her as her figure swayed in
+her chair; and the other sought hers, and found it
+cold as ice and trembling, and not strong to stop
+her hearing. And again she listened.</p>
+
+<p>Wild and incoherent words fell from his lips, hot
+and low, with no reason in them but the overwhelming
+reason of love itself. For he was not an eloquent
+man, and now he took no thought of what he
+said. He was far too natural to be eloquent, and
+far too deeply stirred to care for the shape his love
+took in speech. There was in his words the strong
+rush of out-bursting truth which even the worst
+passion has when it is real to the roots. Words
+terrible and gentle, blasphemous and devout, wove
+themselves into a new language such as Maria
+Addolorata had never heard, nor dared to think of
+hearing. But he dared everything, to tell her, to hold
+her, against God and devil, heaven and earth, and all
+mankind. And he promised all he had, and all
+that was not his to promise nor to give, rending
+her beliefs to shreds, trampling on the broken
+fragments of all she had worshipped, tearing her
+chains link from link and scattering them like
+straw down the storm of passionate contempt. And
+then, again, pouring out love, and more love, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+love again, as a stream of liquid fire let loose to
+flood all it meets with dazzling destruction and hot
+death.</p>
+
+<p>It is not every woman that knows what it is to
+be so loved and to listen to such words, so spoken.
+Those who have heard and felt can understand, but
+not the rest. Gradually as he spoke, her veiled
+face was drawn toward his; gradually her hand
+raised the thick veil and drew it back; and again a
+little, and the hand that had struggled long and
+silently against his, lay still at last, and the face
+that had appealed in vain to Heaven, hid itself
+against the heart of the strong man.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord have mercy upon my sinful soul!"
+she softly prayed.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you!" whispered Dalrymple, folding her
+to him with both his arms, and pressing his lips to
+her head. "That is all the world holds. That is
+all the Heaven there is, and we have it for our
+own."</p>
+
+<p>But presently she drew back from him, clinging
+to him with her hands as though to hold him, and
+yet separating from him and looking up into his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"And to-morrow?" she said, with a despairing
+question in her tone.</p>
+
+<p>"We will go away to-night," he answered, "and
+to-morrow will be ours, too, and all the to-morrows
+after that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But she shook her head, and her hands loosened
+their hold upon his arms, still lingering on his
+sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>"And leave her to die?" she asked, with a quick
+glance at the abbess's door.</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked at him, with something of
+sudden fear as she met his eyes again. And
+almost instantly she turned from him, and threw
+herself forward upon the table as she sat.</p>
+
+<p>"The sin, the deadly sin!" she moaned. "Oh,
+the horror of it all&mdash;the sin, the shame, the disgrace!
+That is the worst to bear&mdash;the shame!
+The undying shame of it!"</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple's brows bent themselves in a heavy
+frown, for he was in no temper to be thwarted,
+desperate as the risk might be. For himself, he
+knew that he was setting his life on the chances,
+if she consented, and that life would not be worth
+having if she refused. He knew well enough that
+they must almost certainly be pursued, and that
+there would be little hesitation about shooting him
+or cutting his throat if they were caught and if he
+resisted, as he knew that he should. He had been
+in love with her for days. The last twenty-four
+hours had made him desperate. And a desperate
+man is not to be played with, more especially if
+he chance to have any Highland blood in his veins.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you believe in most?" he asked suddenly
+and almost brutally.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She turned, startled, and looked him in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Because, if you believe in God, as I suppose
+you do, I take God to witness that I shall be a
+dead man this night, unless you promise to go with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>She stared, and turned white to the lips, as he
+had never seen her turn pale before. She leaned
+forward, gazing into his eyes and breathing hard.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not mean that," she said, as though
+trying hard to convince herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean it," he answered slowly, pale himself,
+and knowing what he said.</p>
+
+<p>She leaned nearer to him and took his arms with
+her hands, for she could not speak. The terrible
+question was in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You would kill yourself, if I refused&mdash;if I
+would not go with you?" Still she could not
+believe him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the room was very still, as the two
+looked into one another's eyes. But Maria Addolorata
+said nothing. The frown deepened on Dalrymple's
+face, and his strong mouth was drawn, as
+a man draws in his lips at the moment of meeting
+death.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye," he said, gently loosening himself
+from her hold.</p>
+
+<p>Her hands dropped and she turned half round,
+following him as he went towards the door. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+hand was almost on the latch. He did not turn.
+But as he heard her swift feet behind him, he bent
+his head a little. Her arms went round his throat,
+reaching up to his great height.</p>
+
+<p>"No! No!" she cried, drawing his head down
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>But he took her by the wrists and held her
+away from him at his arms' length.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in earnest?" he asked fiercely. "If
+you play with me any more, you shall die, too."</p>
+
+<p>"But not to-day!" she answered imploringly.
+"Not to-night! Give me time&mdash;a day&mdash;a little
+while&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To lose you? No. I have been near losing
+you. I know what it means. Make up your mind.
+Yes, or no."</p>
+
+<p>"To-night? But how? There is not time&mdash;these
+clothes I wear&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head distractedly to one side and
+the other as she spoke, while he held her wrists.
+Dalrymple saw that there was reason in the objections
+she made. So dangerous a flight could not be
+undertaken without some preparation. He loosed
+her hands and began to pace the room, concentrating
+his mind upon the details. She watched him
+in silence, leaning against the back of the easy-chair.
+Then he stopped just before her.</p>
+
+<p>"My cloak would come down to your feet," he
+said, measuring her height with his eyes. "I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+a plaid which would cover your head. Once on
+horseback, no one would notice anything. Can
+you ride?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I never learned."</p>
+
+<p>"That is unlucky. But we can manage it.
+The main thing would be to get a long start if
+possible&mdash;that you should not be missed&mdash;to
+get away just at the beginning of the longest
+time during which the nuns would not expect
+to see you. Where is your own room? Is it
+near this?"</p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata told him, and explained the
+position of the balcony with the steps leading
+down into the garden. He asked her who kept
+the key of the postern. It was in the possession
+of the gardener, who took it away with him at
+night, but the lock was on the inside, and uncovered,
+as old Italian locks are. By raising the
+curved spring one could push back the bolt. There
+was a handle on the latter, for that purpose.
+There would be no difficulty about getting out,
+nor about letting Dalrymple in, provided that the
+night were dark.</p>
+
+<p>"The moon is almost full," said Dalrymple,
+thoughtfully, and he began to walk up and down
+again. "Never mind. It must be to-morrow night.
+In your dark dress, when the sisters are asleep, if
+you keep in the shadow along the wall, there is not
+the slightest risk. I will be waiting for you on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+other side of the gate with my cloak and plaid.
+I will have the horses ready, a little higher up.
+There is a good mule path which goes down into
+the valley on that side. You have only to reach
+the gate and let yourself out. It is very easy.
+Tell me at what time to be waiting."</p>
+
+<p>Maria leaned heavily upon the chair, with bent
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot do it&mdash;oh, I cannot!" she said despairingly.
+"The shame of it! To be the talk
+of Rome&mdash;the scandal of the day&mdash;a disgrace to
+my father and mother!"</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple frowned, and biting his lip, he struck
+his clenched fist softly with the palm of his hand,
+making a few quick steps backward and forward.
+He stopped suddenly and looked at her with dangerous
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you," he said. "I will not repeat
+it. You must choose."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you cannot be in earnest&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall see. It is plain enough," he added,
+with an accent of scorn. "You are more afraid of
+a little talk and gossip in Rome, than of being told
+to-morrow morning that I died in the night. That
+is Italian courage, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>She hung her head for a moment. Then, as she
+heard his footsteps, she threw her veil back and
+saw that he was going towards the door without
+a word.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You are cruel," she said, half catching her
+breath. "You know that you make me suffer&mdash;that
+I cannot live without you."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall certainly not live without you," he
+answered. "I mean to have you at any price, or
+I will die in the attempt to get you."</p>
+
+<p>The words have a melodramatic look on paper.
+But he spoke them not only with his lips, but with
+his whole self. They were not out of keeping with
+his nature. There is no more desperate blood in
+the world's veins than that of the Celt when he is
+driven to bay or exasperated by passion. In him
+the reckless fatalism of the Asiatic is blended with
+the cool daring of the northerner.</p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata had little experience of the
+world or of men, but she had the hereditary instincts
+of her sex, and as she looked at Dalrymple
+she recognized in him the man who would do what
+he said, or forfeit his life in trying to do it. There
+is no mistaking the truth about such men, at such
+moments.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you would," she said, and she felt
+pride in saying it.</p>
+
+<p>Her own life was in the balance. She bent her
+head again. Her temples were throbbing, and it
+was hard to think at all connectedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I want your answer," he said, still standing
+near the door. "Yes or no&mdash;for to-morrow
+night?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I cannot live without you," she answered
+slowly, and still looking down. "I must go."</p>
+
+<p>But she did not meet his eyes, for she knew that
+she was wavering still, and almost as uncertain as
+before. All at once Dalrymple's manner changed.
+He came quietly to her side and took one of her
+hands, which hung idly over the back of the chair,
+in both of his.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be in earnest, as I am, my dear," he
+said, very calmly and gently. "You must not play
+with a man's life and heart, as though they were
+worth nothing but play. You called me cruel,
+dear, a moment ago. But you are more cruel than
+I, for I do not hesitate."</p>
+
+<p>"I must go," she repeated, still avoiding his
+look. "Yes, I must go. I should die without
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"But to-morrow when I come, you will hesitate
+again," he said, still speaking very quietly. "I
+must be sure. You must give me some promise,
+something more than you have given me yet."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up with startled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not believe me?" she asked. "What
+shall I do? I&mdash;I promise! You yourself have
+never said that you promised."</p>
+
+<p>"Does it need that?" He pressed the hand he
+held, with softly increasing strength, between his
+palms.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she answered, looking at him. "I can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+see it. You will do what you say. I have promised,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>He gazed incredulously into her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you doubt me?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I not reason to doubt? You change your
+mind easily. I do not blame you. But how am I
+to believe?"</p>
+
+<p>She grew impatient of his unbelief. Yet as he
+pressed her hand, the power he had over her increased
+with every second.</p>
+
+<p>"But I will, I will!" she cried, in a low voice.
+"And still you doubt&mdash;I see it in your eyes.
+Have I not promised? What more can I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," he answered. "But you must
+make me believe you." The strength of his eyes
+seemed to be forcing something from her.</p>
+
+<p>"I say it&mdash;I promise it&mdash;I swear it! Do I not
+love you? Am I not giving my soul for you?
+Have I not given it already? What more can I
+do or say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," he answered a second time,
+holding her with his eyes. "I must believe you
+before I go."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke honestly and earnestly, not meaning
+to exasperate her, searching in her look for what
+was unmistakably in his own. His hands shook,
+not weakly, as they held hers. His piercing eyes
+seemed to see through and through her. She
+trembled all over, and the colour rose to her face,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+more in despair of convincing him than in a blush
+of shame.</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me!" she said, imperiously, and her
+eyelids contracted with the effort of her will.</p>
+
+<p>But he said nothing. She felt that he was
+immeasurably stronger than she. But just then,
+he was not more desperate. There was a short,
+intense silence. Her face grew pale and was set
+with the fatal look she sometimes had.</p>
+
+<p>"I pledge you with my blood!" she said suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes did not waver from his, but she
+wrenched her right hand from him, and before
+he could take it again, her even teeth had met in
+the flesh. The bright scarlet drops rose high and
+broke, and trickled in vivid stripes across her
+hand as she held it before his face. Her own was
+very white, but without a trace of pain. Something
+in the fierce action appealed strongly to
+the fiery Celtic nature of the man. His features
+relaxed instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you," he said, and she knew it as his
+arms went round her; and the pain of the wound
+made his kisses sweeter.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Dalrymple left Maria on that day, he
+returned as usual to Stefanone's house. Sora
+Nanna was alone, for Stefanone was still absent
+in Rome, and Annetta had gone on the previous
+day with a number of women to the fair at Civitella
+San Sisto, which took place on Sunday. She
+was expected to return on Monday afternoon. It
+is usual enough for a party of women, with two
+or three men, to go to the fairs in neighbouring
+towns and to spend the night with the friends of
+some one of the company. It was more common
+still, in those days.</p>
+
+<p>Sora Nanna gave Dalrymple his dinner and kept
+him company for a while. But he was gloomy and
+preoccupied, and before long she retired to the
+regions of the laundry, which was installed in a
+long low building that ran out into the vegetable
+garden at the back of the house. Monday was
+generally the day for ironing the heavy linen of
+the convent, which was taken up on Tuesdays in
+the huge baskets carried by four women, slung to
+a pole which rested on their shoulders in the old
+primitive fashion, just as litters are still carried in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+many parts of Asia. It had occurred more than
+once to Dalrymple, during the last two days, that
+he could hide almost anything he chose in one of
+these baskets, which were always delivered directly
+to Maria Addolorata and which she was at liberty
+to unpack in the privacy of the linen room if she
+chose.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of this again as he sat over his dinner,
+and heard the endless song of the women, far
+off, at their work. He knew the habits of the house
+thoroughly and all the customs regarding the carrying
+up of the baskets, and he remembered that
+several of them would surely be taken to the convent
+on the morrow. He thought that if he could
+procure some more suitable clothes for Maria to
+wear, this would be a safe means of conveying
+them to her. She could put them on in her cell,
+just before the hour at which she was to expect
+him, so that there would be no time lost and
+the danger of detection during their flight would
+be greatly diminished. But there were all sorts of
+difficulties in the way, and he realized them one
+by one, until he almost abandoned the scheme in
+favour of the cloak and plaid which he had first
+proposed.</p>
+
+<p>He pushed back his chair and went upstairs to
+his own room. The impression made upon him
+by Maria Addolorata, when she had bitten her
+hand, had been a strong one, but the man's nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+though not exactly distrustful, was melancholic
+and pessimistic. Two hours and more had passed
+since they had been together, and things had a different
+look. He realized more clearly the strength
+of the ties which bound Maria to her convent life,
+and the effort it must be to her to break them.
+He remembered the arguments he had used, and
+he saw that they had been those of passion rather
+than of reason. Their effect could not be lasting,
+when he himself was not there to lend them his
+words and the persuasion of his strength. Maria
+would repent of her promise, and there was
+nothing to bind her to it. Hitherto there had
+been no risk, no common danger. By a chain of
+natural circumstances he had made his way into
+a most extraordinary position, but it was in her
+power, in a moment of repentance, to force him
+from it. While the abbess was ill, Maria was
+virtually mistress of the convent. At a word from
+her the doors might be shut in his face. She might
+promise again, and bite her hand again, but when
+it came to his waiting outside the garden gate,
+she might be seized by a fit of repentance, and
+he might wait till morning.</p>
+
+<p>As he sat in his room he realized all this, and
+more, for he knew that on calm reflexion he meant
+to do what he had that morning threatened in his
+haste. He had never been attached to life for its
+own sake. Melancholic men often are not. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+had many times thought over the subject of suicide
+with a sort of grim interest in it, which indicated
+the direction his temper would take if he were ever
+absolutely defeated in a matter which he had at
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing he had ever felt in his life had taken
+hold of him as his love for Maria Addolorata, for
+he had never really been in love before and he
+had completely abandoned himself to it, as such a
+man was sure to do in such surroundings. She
+was beautiful, but that was not all. Since he had
+heard her sing, he knew that her voice and her
+rare talent together were genius and nothing less.
+But that was far from being all. She was of his
+own class, and he had been seeing her daily, when
+the peasant women amongst whom he lived were
+little more than good-natured animals; but even that
+was not all. He was at that time of life when a
+man's character is apt to take a violent and sudden
+turn in its ultimate direction, when the forces that
+have been growing show themselves all at once,
+when passion, having appealed as yet but to the man,
+has climbed and is within reach of his soul, to take
+hold of it and twist it, or to be finally conquered,
+perhaps, in a holy life. But Dalrymple was very
+far from being the kind of man who could have
+taken refuge against himself in higher things. At
+a time when materialism was beginning to seem a
+great thing, he was a strong materialist in scientific<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+questions. He grasped what he could see and held
+it, but what he could not see had no existence for
+him. Nothing transcendental attracted him beyond
+the sphere of mathematics. Yet he had not the
+materialist's temperament, for the Highland blood
+in his veins brought strong fancies and sudden passions
+to his head and heart, such as his chemistry
+could not explain; and when the brain burned and the
+heart beat fast, it meant doing or dying with him,
+as with many a Scotchman before and since. Life
+had never seemed to be worth much in his eyes,
+compared with a thing he wanted.</p>
+
+<p>He sat still and thought the matter over, and
+considered the question of death, for a few short
+minutes. There was not a trace of philosophical
+speculation in his reflexions, or they would have
+lasted longer. He merely desired to be sure, with
+that curious Scotch caution, of his own intentions,
+in order not to be obliged to think the matter over
+again at the last minute.</p>
+
+<p>He had drunk a measure of strong wine with his
+dinner, as usual. To-day it increased the gloom of
+his temper, and the pessimistic view he took. In
+less than a quarter of an hour he had made up his
+mind that if Maria Addolorata repented at a late
+hour and refused to leave the convent, he would
+make an attempt to carry her away by force. If
+he failed, and found himself shut off from all possibility
+of intercourse with her, life would not be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+worth living, and he would throw it away. When
+strong men are in that frame of mind, they generally
+accomplish what they have in view. Moreover,
+it is a great mistake to think that the people
+who think and talk of suicide will not take their
+own lives. On the contrary, statistics show that
+it is more often those who speak of it the most
+frequently, who ultimately make away with themselves.
+The mere fact of contemplating and discussing
+death familiarizes man with it till he
+does not even attribute to it its true value, which
+is little enough, as most of us know. Dalrymple
+was in earnest, and he knew it.</p>
+
+<p>He rose from his chair and unlocked his little
+laboratory. Among many other things upon the long
+table there was a plain English oak box, filled with
+small stoppered bottles, each having a label upon it
+with the name of the contents written in his own
+hand. Some were merely medicines, which he carried
+with him in case his services should ever be
+required, as had happened at the present time.
+Others were chemicals which he used in his experiments,
+such as he could not easily have procured in
+Italy, outside of the great cities. One even contained
+the common spirits of camphor, of which he
+had once given Annetta a teaspoonful when she
+had complained of a chill and sickness. One, however,
+was more than half full of a solution of hydrocyanide
+of potassium, a liquid little less suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+and surely fatal than the prussic acid which enters
+into its composition.</p>
+
+<p>He took out this bottle and held it up to the
+light. The liquid was clear and transparent as
+water. He watched it curiously as he made it run
+up to the neck and back again. It might have been
+taken for pure alcohol, being absolutely colourless.</p>
+
+<p>"It would not take much of that," he said to himself,
+with a grim smile.</p>
+
+<p>His meditations were interrupted by the voice of
+Sora Nanna, who had opened his bedroom door
+without ceremony and stood calling to him. He
+came forward hastily from the laboratory and went
+up to her.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not know!" she cried, laughing and
+holding up a letter. "Stefanone has written to
+me from Rome! To me! Who the devil knows
+what he says? I do not understand anything of
+it. Who should teach me to read? He takes me
+for a priest, that I should know how to read!"</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple laughed a little as he took the letter.
+He picked up his hat from a chair, for he meant to
+go out and spend the afternoon alone upon the hillside.</p>
+
+<p>"We will read it downstairs," he said. "I am
+going for a walk."</p>
+
+<p>He read it to her in the common room on the
+ground floor. It was a letter dictated by Stefanone
+to a public scribe, instructing his wife to tell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+Gigetto that she must send another load of wine to
+Rome as soon as possible, as the price was good in
+the market. Stefanone would remain in the city
+till it came, and sell it before returning.</p>
+
+<p>"These husbands!" exclaimed Sora Nanna, with
+a grin. "What they will not do! They go, riding,
+riding, and they come back when it seems good
+to them. Who tells me what he does in Rome?
+Rome is great."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple laughed, put on his hat and went off,
+leaving Sora Nanna to find Gigetto and give the
+necessary directions.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gigetto</span> had refused to accompany Annetta and
+her party to the fair at Civitella San Sisto. He
+had been to Rome several times, and was far too
+fine a young gentleman to divert himself in such a
+very primitive place. He preferred to spend his
+leisure hours, which were very many, in elegant
+idleness, according to his lights, between the tobacconist's,
+the chemist's shop, which was the resort
+of all the superior men of the place after four
+o'clock in the afternoon, and the abundant, though
+not very refined table which was spread twice daily
+in his father's house. Civitella wine, Civitella fireworks,
+and especially Civitella girls, were quite
+beneath his notice. As for Annetta, he looked upon
+her with something like contempt, though he had
+a high respect for the fortune which must one day
+be hers. She was to be a necessary encumbrance
+of his future life, and for the present he meant to
+see as little of her as was conveniently possible
+without relinquishing his claims to her hand. She
+had admired him, in a way, until the arrival of Dalrymple,
+and he felt a little irritation at the Scotchman's
+presence in the house, so that he occasionally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+frightened Sora Nanna by talking of waiting for
+him with a gun at the corner of the forest. It
+produced a good impression, he thought, to show
+from time to time that he was not without jealousy.
+But as for going with her on such an expedition
+as a visit to a country fair, it was not
+to be expected of him.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Annetta had enjoyed herself thoroughly
+with her companions, and was very glad
+that Gigetto had not been at her elbow with his
+city notions of propriety, which he applied to her,
+but made as elastic as he pleased for himself. She
+had been to high mass in the village church,
+crowded to suffocation, she had walked up and
+down the main street half the afternoon, arm in
+arm with the other girls, giggling and showing off
+her handsome costume to the poorer natives of
+the little place, and smiling wickedly at the handsome
+youths who stood idly in groups at the corners
+of the streets. She had dined sumptuously,
+and had made her eyes sparkle like rather vulgar
+little stars by drinking a glass of strong old white
+wine to the health and speedy marriage of all the
+other girls. She had gone out with them at dusk,
+and had watched the pretty fireworks in the small
+piazza, and had wandered on with them afterwards
+in the moonlight to the ruin of the Cyclopean
+fortress which overlooks the two valleys. Then
+back to the house of her friends, who kept the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+principal inn, and more tough chicken and tender
+salad and red wine for supper. And on the next
+day they had all gone down to the meagre vineyards,
+half way to San Vito and just below the
+thick chestnut woods which belong to the Marchese
+and feudal lord of that ancient town. And there
+amongst the showers of reddening vine leaves, she
+had helped to gather the last grapes of the year,
+with song and jest and laughter. At noon they
+climbed the hill again in the October sun, and
+dined upon the remains of the previous day's feast;
+then, singing still, they had started on their homeward
+downward way, happy and not half tired yet
+when they reached Subiaco in the evening glow.</p>
+
+<p>They came trooping through the town to the
+little piazza in which the doctor's house was situated.
+They separated here, some to go up to the
+higher part, while others were to go down in the
+same direction as Annetta. The girl looked up
+at the doctor's windows, and her small eyes flashed
+viciously. It would be a pleasant ending to the
+two days' holiday to have a look at her work.
+Now that he was getting well, as Dalrymple told
+her, she was glad that she had not killed him. It
+was an even greater satisfaction to have almost
+frightened the old coward to death. She had been
+uneasy about the question of confession.</p>
+
+<p>"By Bacchus," she laughed, "I will go and see
+Sor Tommaso. They say he is better."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So she took leave of her companions and entered
+the narrow door, and climbed the short flight of
+dark steps and knocked. The doctor's sleeping-room
+opened directly upon the staircase. He used
+the room on the ground floor as an office and
+dining-room, his old peasant woman-servant slept in
+the attic, and the other two rooms were let by the
+year. It was a very small house.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman, whose name was Serafina, opened
+the bedroom door and thrust out her head, covered
+with a dark and threadbare shawl. There was a
+sibylline gloom about her withered face, as though
+she had lived a lifetime in the face of a horror to
+come.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" she croaked roughly, and
+not opening the door any wider.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! What do I want? I am the Annetta of
+Stefanone, and I have come to pay a visit to this
+dear doctor, because they say that he is better, God
+bless him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I did not recognize you," said the old
+woman. "I will ask."</p>
+
+<p>Still holding the door almost closed, she drew in
+her head and spoke with Sor Tommaso. Annetta
+could hear his answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" he said, in a voice still weak, but
+singularly oily with the politeness of his intention.
+"Let her favour us!"</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened, and Annetta went in. Sor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+Tommaso was sitting up near the window, in a deep
+easy-chair covered with ragged green damask. The
+girl was surprised by his pallor, as compared with
+his formerly rubicund complexion. Peasant-like,
+she glanced about the room to judge of its contents
+before she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, dear Sor Tommaso?" she asked
+after the short pause. "Eh, what we have suffered
+for you, all of us! Who was this barbarian
+who wished to send you to Paradise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows?" returned Sor Tommaso, with
+amazing blandness. "I trust that he may be forgiven
+as I forgive him."</p>
+
+<p>"What it is to be a wise man!" exclaimed Annetta,
+with affected admiration. "To have such
+sentiments! It is a beautiful thing. And how do
+you feel now, dear Sor Tommaso? Are you getting
+your strength again? They took your blood,
+those cowardly murderers! You must make it
+again."</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met, and each knew that the other
+knew and understood. Sor Tommaso smiled gently.
+The savage girl's mouth twitched as though she
+should have liked to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Little by little; who goes slowly goes safely,"
+answered the doctor. "I am an old man, you must
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Old!" Annetta was glad of the opportunity
+to laugh at last. "Old? Eh, on Sunday, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+you have on those new black trousers of yours that
+are tight, tight&mdash;you seem to me a boy as young
+as Gigetto. For my part, I should prefer you.
+You are more serious. Gigetto! What must I
+say? He is handsome, he may be good, but he has
+not a head. There is nothing in that pumpkin."</p>
+
+<p>"Blood of youth," answered Sor Tommaso. "It
+must boil. It must fling its chains about. Afterwards
+it begins to know the chains. Little by little
+it accustoms itself to them. Then it is quiet, quiet,
+as we old ones are. Sit down, my daughter. Serafina!
+A chair&mdash;the one that is not lame. These
+chairs remember the blessed soul of mamma," added
+Sor Tommaso, in explanation of their weakness.</p>
+
+<p>"Requiesca'!" exclaimed Annetta, sitting down.</p>
+
+<p>"Amen," responded Sor Tommaso. "You are
+so beautiful to-day," he continued, looking at her
+flowered bodice and new apron; "where have you
+been?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where should I go? To Civitella. There was
+the fair. We ate certain chickens&mdash;tough! But
+the air of the mountain consumes. There were
+also fireworks."</p>
+
+<p>"What? Have you walked?" asked Sor Tommaso.</p>
+
+<p>"Even with two legs one can walk," laughed the
+girl. "But of course a beast is better with four.
+The beasts had all gone to Tivoli with wine for
+Rome. They had not come back yesterday morning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+Therefore with these two feet I walked.
+I and many others, girls like me. It is true that
+I am half dead."</p>
+
+<p>"You are fresher than lettuce," observed Sor
+Tommaso. "And then you have climbed up my
+stairs. This is a true Christian act. God return it
+to you. I am alone all day."</p>
+
+<p>"But the Englishman comes to see you," said
+Annetta, indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"The Englishman, yes. He comes. More or
+less, he has almost cured me. But then, for his
+conversation, I say nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile he is also curing the abbess. He
+has a fortunate hand. There death, here death&mdash;he
+makes them all alive. Where is death, now?
+Here, perhaps? Hidden in some corner, or under
+the bed? He has certain medicines, that Englishman!
+Medicines that you do not even dream of.
+Strong! It is I that tell you. Sometimes, the
+whole house smells of them. Death could not resist
+them a moment. They drive even the flies out
+of the windows. The Englishman gave me some
+once. I had been in the sun and had drunk a gallon
+of cold water, foolish as I was. I was thirsty,
+as I am now. Well, he gave me a spoonful of
+something like water, mixed in water. I do not
+tell you anything. At first it burned me. Arch-priest,
+it burned! Then, not even a minute, and
+I had Paradise in my body. And so it passed."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? A cordial, perhaps," observed
+Sor Tommaso, thoughtfully. "I have such cordials,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not doubt it," answered the girl, suspiciously.
+"But I would rather not taste them.
+I feel quite well."</p>
+
+<p>It crossed her mind that in return for three
+knife-thrusts, Sor Tommaso would probably not
+miss so good a chance of paying her with a glass
+of poison. She would certainly have done as much
+herself, had she been in his place.</p>
+
+<p>"Who thought of offering you cordials!" replied
+the doctor, with a polite laugh. "I said it to say
+it. But if you are thirsty, command me. There
+is water and good wine. They are the best cordials."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, a little water. I do not refuse. As for
+the wine, no. I thank you the same. I am fasting
+and have walked. After supper, at home, I will
+drink."</p>
+
+<p>"Serafina!" cried Sor Tommaso, and the old
+sibyl immediately appeared from the stairs, whither
+she had discreetly retired to wait during Annetta's
+visit. "Bring water, and that bottle of my wine
+from downstairs. You know, the bottle of old
+wine of Stefanone's that was opened."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. I want no wine," said Annetta, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring it all the same. Perhaps she will do us
+the honour to drink it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Serafina nodded, and her bare feet were heard
+on the stone steps as she descended.</p>
+
+<p>"It is bad to drink pure water when one is very
+thirsty," said Sor Tommaso. "It cramps the stomach.
+A little wine gives the stomach strength.
+But it is best to eat. If you will eat, there are
+fresh jumbles. I also eat them."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you the same," answered Annetta.
+"I wish only water. It is a long way from Civitella,
+and there is no good spring. There is the
+brook that runs out of the pond at the foot of the
+last hill. But it is heavy water, full of stuff."</p>
+
+<p>Serafina came back, bringing two heavy tumblers
+of pressed glass on a little black japanned tray,
+with a decanter of cold water. In her other hand
+she carried two bottles, one half full of wine, the
+other containing the white and sugary syrup of
+peach kernels of which Italians are so fond.</p>
+
+<p>"I brought this also," she said, holding up the
+bottle as she set down the tray. "Perhaps it is
+better."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Sor Tommaso, nodding in approbation.
+"It is better."</p>
+
+<p>"You will drink a little orgeat?" asked the old
+woman, in a tone of persuasion, and mixing it in
+the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Water, simply water," said Annetta, who was
+still suspicious. "Give me water in the other
+glass."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But I have mixed already in both," answered
+Serafina. "Eh, you will drink it. You will not
+make an old woman like me go all the way down
+the stairs again. But then, it is good. It is I that
+tell you. I made it myself, yesterday morning, for
+the doctor, to refresh his blood a little."</p>
+
+<p>Annetta had risen to her feet and was watching
+the glasses, as the old woman stirred the white
+syrup in the water with an old-fashioned, long-handled
+spoon. She did not wish to seem absurdly
+suspicious, and yet she distrusted her enemy.
+She took one of the glasses, went to his side, and
+held it to his lips as one gives an invalid drink.</p>
+
+<p>"After you," he said, with a polite smile, but
+raising his hand to take the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Sick people first, well people afterwards,"
+answered Annetta, smiling too, but watching him
+intently.</p>
+
+<p>He had satisfied himself that she really suspected
+foul play, for he knew the peasants well,
+and was only a degree removed from them himself.
+He at once dismissed her suspicions by drinking
+half the tumbler at a draught. She immediately
+took the other and emptied it eagerly, as she was
+really very thirsty.</p>
+
+<p>"A little more?" suggested Serafina, in her
+croaking voice.</p>
+
+<p>"No," interposed Sor Tommaso. "It might
+hurt her&mdash;so much at once."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Annetta filled the tumbler with pure water,
+and emptied it again.</p>
+
+<p>"At last!" she exclaimed with a sigh of satisfaction.
+"What thirst! I seemed to have eaten
+ashes! And now I thank you, Sor Tommaso, and
+I am going home; for it is Ave Maria, and I do not
+wish to make a bad meeting in the dark as happened
+to you. Ugly assassins! I will never forgive
+them, never! What am I to say at home?
+That you will come to supper one of these
+days?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, if God wills," answered the doctor. "I will
+be accompanied by Serafina."</p>
+
+<p>"I!" exclaimed the old woman. "I am afraid
+even of a cat! What could I do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Company is always company," said Sor Tommaso,
+wisely. "Where one would not go, two go
+bravely. Good evening, my beautiful daughter,"
+he added, looking up at Annetta. "The Madonna
+go with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, and good evening," answered the
+girl, dropping half a courtsey, with a vicious twinkle
+in her little eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She turned, and was out of the room in a moment.
+On the way home through the narrow streets in
+the evening glow, she sang snatches of song to herself,
+and thought of all she had said to Sor Tommaso,
+and of all he had said to her, and of how
+much afraid he was of her father's knife. For<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+otherwise, as she knew, he would have had her
+arrested.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, at the last turning she stopped and
+turned very pale, clasping both hands upon her
+bodice.</p>
+
+<p>"Assassin!" she groaned, grinding her short
+white teeth. "<i>He</i> has poisoned me, after all! An
+evil death to him and all his house! Assassin!"</p>
+
+<p>She forgot that she had experienced precisely
+the same sensations once before, when she had been
+overheated and had swallowed too much cold water.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">With</span> slow steps, and pressing her clasped hands
+to her bodice, the girl reached the door of her
+father's house at dusk. She knew that he was
+away, and that as she had not come home earlier
+her mother would be in the lower regions preparing
+Dalrymple's supper for him. The door which gave
+access to the staircase from the street was still
+open, and she was almost sure of being able to
+reach her own room unobserved, unless she chanced
+to come upon Dalrymple himself on the stairs.
+Just then she would rather have met him than her
+mother. She was in great pain, and it would have
+been hard to explain to Sora Nanna that she believed
+herself to have been deliberately poisoned.</p>
+
+<p>She crept noiselessly up the stairs, which were
+almost dark, and she came to Dalrymple's door
+which faced the first landing. She paused and
+hesitated, leaning against the wall. He was a
+wise man in her opinion, and would of course understand
+her symptoms at once. But then, as she
+was poisoned, he could do nothing for her. If that
+were true, her next thought told her that Sor Tommaso
+must have poisoned himself. He would not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+do that. She had never heard of antidotes; for
+though poisoning was traditionally familiar to her
+and the people of her class, it was very uncommon.
+Yet her sharpened wit told her that if Sor Tommaso
+had swallowed the stuff, as he had done, with a
+smile, he had means at his disposal for counteracting
+it&mdash;some medicine which he had doubtless
+taken as soon as she had left him. But if he had
+medicine to save from poison, Dalrymple, who
+was a far wiser man, must have such medicines,
+too, and even better ones. This reflexion decided
+her. She was close to his door. It was probable
+that he would be in his room at that hour. She
+was in fear of her life, and she knocked.</p>
+
+<p>But Dalrymple had not come back. He had
+gone for a long walk alone in the hills, had climbed
+higher as the sun sank lower, and was belated
+in steep paths along which even his mountain-trained
+feet trod with some caution. He was too
+familiar with the country to lose his way, but he
+by no means found the shortest way there was,
+nor was he especially anxious to do so. The hours
+would pass sooner in walking than in sitting over
+his books under the flaring little flames of the three
+brass beaks.</p>
+
+<p>Annetta saw that there was no light in the room,
+for the hole through which the latch-string hung
+was worn wide with use. She felt dizzy, too, and
+the knife-like pain ran through her so that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+bent herself. She knew that Dalrymple kept his
+medicines locked up in the laboratory, and that she
+could not get at them, though she would have had
+little hesitation in swallowing anything she found,
+in the simple certainty that all his medicines must
+be good in themselves, and therefore life-saving and
+good for her. But he was out, and she was sure
+that there could be nothing in the bedroom. She
+had herself too often looked into every corner when
+she watered and swept the brick floor each morning,
+and put things in order according to her
+primitive ideas.</p>
+
+<p>She then and there lost her hold upon life. She
+was poisoned, and must die. She was as sure of
+it as the Chinaman who has seen an eagle, and
+who, recognizing that his hour is come, calmly lies
+down and breathes his last by the mere suspension
+of volition. In old countries the lower orders, as
+a rule, have but a low vitality. It may be truer
+to say that the vital volition is weak. Let the
+learned settle the definition. The fact is easily
+accounted for. During generations upon generations
+the majority of European agricultural populations
+live upon vegetable food, like the majority
+of Eastern Asiatics, and with the same result.
+Hard labour produces hard muscles, but vegetable
+food yields a low vital tension, so to say. Soldiers
+know it well enough. The pale-faced city clerk
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>who eats meat twice a day will out-fight and out-last
+and out-starve the burly labourer whose big
+thews and sinews are mostly compounded of potatoes,
+corn, and water.</p>
+
+<p>The girl crept up the stairs stealthily to her
+lonely little room, and lay down to die upon her
+bed, as though that were the only thing to be done
+under the circumstances. It never occurred to her
+to go to her mother and tell her what had happened
+and what she suspected, any more than it had suggested
+itself to Sor Tommaso to lay information
+against her for having stabbed him. If her father
+had been at home, she might perhaps have gone to
+him and told him with her dying breath that the
+doctor had killed her, and that Stefanone must
+avenge her. But he was away. She was stronger
+than her mother and had always dominated her.
+She knew also that if she complained, Sora Nanna
+would raise such a scream as would bring half
+Subiaco running to the house. The girl's animal
+instinct was to die alone, and quietly. So she
+made no sound, and lay upon her bed writhing
+in pain and holding her sides with all her might,
+but with close-set teeth and silent lips.</p>
+
+<p>Looked at from the point of view of fact, it was
+all ridiculous enough. The girl had been all day
+in the hot autumn sun, had eaten a quantity of
+over-ripe figs and grapes, which might have upset
+the digestion of an ostrich, had tired even her
+strong limbs with the final walk home, and had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+then, at Sor Tommaso's house, swallowed nearly a
+quart of ice-cold water. It was not surprising that
+she should be very ill. It was not even strange
+that the theory of poison should suggest itself. To
+her it was tragedy, and meant nothing less than
+death, when she lay down upon her bed.</p>
+
+<p>Between the spasms all sorts of things passed
+through her mind, when her head lay still upon
+the pillow. Chiefly and particularly her thoughts
+were filled with hatred of Sor Tommaso, and a sort
+of doglike longing to see Dalrymple's face before
+she died. She was still fascinated by the vision
+of his red hair and bright blue eyes which came
+back to her vividly, with the careless smile his
+hard face had for her half-childish, half-malicious
+sayings. And with the thought of him came also
+jealousy of Maria Addolorata, and another hatred
+which was deeper and stronger and more vengeful
+than any she owed Sor Tommaso. She felt,
+rather than understood, that Dalrymple loved the
+nun with all his heart. She had spoken of her
+to him and had watched his face, and had seen the
+quick, savage glare of his eyes, though his voice
+had only expressed his annoyance. As the vision
+of him rose before her, she saw him as he had been
+when the angry blush had overspread his face to
+the roots of his hair.</p>
+
+<p>The image fixed itself. In the dim shadow
+behind it, she saw the face of Maria Addolorata<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+like a death-mask, and those strange, deep eyes of
+the nun's looking scornfully at her over the man's
+shoulder, though she forgot him in the woman's
+deadly fascination. She stared, unable to close
+her lids, as it seemed to her, though she longed
+to shut out the sight. Then a dull noise seemed
+to be in her ears, a noise that was not a sound,
+but the stunning effect on her brain of a sound not
+heard but imagined. There were great circles of
+light around the nun's head, which cut through
+Dalrymple's face and then hid it. They were like
+glories, like the halos about the heads of saints.
+Annetta was angry with them, for she was sure
+that Maria Addolorata was bad, and sinned in her
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>"An evil death on you and all your house!" cried
+the angry peasant girl, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Death!" She could not tell whence the echo
+came back to her, in a tone strange to her ears&mdash;for
+it was her own, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>She was startled. The vision vanished, and she
+sat up on her bed with a quick movement, suddenly
+wide awake. The pain must have passed.
+No&mdash;it came again, but with far less keenness.
+She felt her face with her hands, and laughed
+softly, for she knew that she was alive. It was
+night, and she must have lain some time there all
+alone, for there was a silvery, misty something
+through the darkness, the white dawn of moonrise,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+which is not like the dawn of day, nor like the
+departing twilight. As she sat up she saw the
+outline of the hills, jagged against the crosses of
+the lead-joined panes in the window. There was
+the moon-dawn sending up its soft radiance to the
+sky. A little longer she watched, and a single
+bright point sent one level ray straight into her
+face. A moment more and the room was flooded
+with light so that she could see the smallest objects
+distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am alive!" she exclaimed in a soft, glad
+tone. "The brigand only did me a spite. He
+was afraid to kill me."</p>
+
+<p>The pain seized her again, less sharp than before,
+but keen enough to stir her anger. She still sat
+up, but bent forward, clasping her bodice. In the
+moonlight she could see her heavy shoes on her
+feet sticking up before her. Realizing that it was
+a disgraceful thing to lie down with them on, she
+sprang off the bed, and began to dust the coverlet
+with her hand. The pain passed.</p>
+
+<p>After all, she reflected, she had swallowed a
+quantity of cold water at Sor Tommaso's, whether
+the first glass had contained any poison or not.
+She had not forgotten, either, that the same thing
+had once happened to her before, and that Dalrymple
+had made it pass with a spoonful of something
+that had stung her mouth and throat, but which
+had afterwards warmed her and cured her. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+felt chilly now, and she wished that she had some
+of that same stinging, warming stuff.</p>
+
+<p>Something moved, somewhere in the house. The
+girl listened intently for a moment. Probably
+Dalrymple had come back and was moving about
+in his room, washing his hands, as he always did
+before supper, and taking off his heavy boots. His
+room was immediately under hers, facing in the
+same direction. She went towards the door, intending
+to go down at once and ask him for some
+of his medicine. By this time she was persuaded
+that she was not in any danger, and her common-sense
+told her that she had merely made herself
+momentarily ill with too many grapes, too much
+cold water, and too long exposure to the sun. She
+did not care to let her mother know anything about
+it, for Sora Nanna would scold her. It would be
+a simple matter to catch the Scotchman at his door,
+to get what she wanted from him with an easily
+given promise of secrecy, and then to come downstairs
+as though nothing had happened.</p>
+
+<p>Annetta only hesitated a moment, and then went
+out into the dark staircase, and crept down, as she
+had crept up, feeling her way at the turnings, by
+the wall. She reached the door, and was surprised
+to see that there was no light within&mdash;none of
+that yellow light which a lamp makes, but only
+the grey glimmer of the moonlight through the
+shadow, creeping out by the hole of the latch-string.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+Her ears had deceived her, and Dalrymple was not
+there. Nevertheless she believed that he was.
+The moonlight would be in his room as it was in
+hers, just overhead, and he might not have taken
+the trouble to light his lamp. It was very probable.
+She tapped softly, but there was no answer.
+She was afraid that her mother might come up the
+stairs and hear her speaking through the door, as
+though by stealth. She put her lips close to the
+hole of the latch and whistled softly. Her whistle
+was broken by her own smile as she fancied that
+Dalrymple might start at the unexpected sound.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no response. Growing bolder,
+she called him gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Signor! Are you there?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer. Just then, as she stooped,
+the pain ran through her once more. She was so
+sure that she had heard him that she was convinced
+he must be within, very probably in his little
+laboratory beyond the bedroom. The pain hurt
+her, and he had the medicine. Very naturally
+she pulled the string and pushed the door open.</p>
+
+<p>He was not there. The moonlight flooded everything,
+and the whitewashed walls reflected it, so
+that the place was as bright as day. The first
+object that met her eyes was a small bottle standing
+near the edge of the table in the middle of the
+room, where Dalrymple had carelessly set it down
+in the afternoon when Sora Nanna had called him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+to read her letter. It was directly in the line of
+the moon's rays, and the stopper gleamed like a
+little star.</p>
+
+<p>Annetta started with joy as she saw it. It was
+the very bottle from which he had given her the
+camphor, less than a month ago&mdash;the same in size,
+in its transparent contents, in its label. It might
+have deceived a keener eye than hers.</p>
+
+<p>The door of the laboratory stood open, as he had
+left it, being at the time preoccupied and careless.
+She only stopped a moment to assure herself that
+the bottle was the right one, reflecting that he had
+perhaps felt ill and had taken some of it himself.
+She went on and looked into the little room.</p>
+
+<p>"Signore!" she called softly. But there was
+no answer.</p>
+
+<p>It was clear that Dalrymple was either still out,
+or was downstairs at his supper, with her mother.
+He might be out, however. It was quite possible,
+on such a fine evening, for he was irregular in his
+hours. He would not like it if he came in suddenly
+and found her meddling with his belongings.
+She crossed the room again and softly shut the
+door. At least, if he came, she would not be
+found with the bottle in her hand. She could
+give an excuse.</p>
+
+<p>It was all so natural. It was the same bottle.
+She knew the right quantity, for she had the peasant's
+memory for such detail. There was a glass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+and a decanter of water on a white plate on the
+table. She had no spoon, but that did not matter.
+She took out the stopper with her strong fingers,
+though it stuck a little. The pain ran through her
+again as she poured some of the contents into the
+tumbler, and it made her hand shake so that she
+poured out a little more than necessary. But it
+did not matter. She filled it up with water, held
+the glass up to the moonlight, and drank it at a
+draught, and set the empty tumbler upon the table
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly her features changed. She felt as
+though she were struck through head and heart
+and body with red-hot steel. Maria Addolorata's
+death-mask rose before her in the moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>"An evil death on you and all your house!" she
+tried to say.</p>
+
+<p>But the words were not out of her mouth before
+she shivered, caught herself by the table, sank
+down, and lay stone dead upon the brick floor.</p>
+
+<p>There was no noise. Dying, she thought she
+screamed, but only the faintest moan had passed
+her lips.</p>
+
+<p>The door was shut, and the quiet moonlight
+floated in and silvered her dark, dead face.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">At</span> moonrise on that evening, Maria Addolorata
+was standing at the open door of her cell, watching
+the dark clouds in the west, as they caught
+the light one by one, edge by edge. The black
+shadow of the convent covered all the garden still,
+and one passing could hardly have seen her as she
+stood there. Her veil was raised, and the cold
+mountain breeze chilled her cheeks. But she did
+not feel it, for she had been long by the abbess's
+bedside, and then long, again, in the close choir of
+the church, and her head was hot and aching.</p>
+
+<p>To her, as she looked towards the western mountains
+and watched the piling clouds, and felt the
+cool, damp wind, it seemed as though there were
+something strangely tragic in the air that night.
+The wind whistled now and then through the
+cracks of the convent windows and over the crenellations
+of the old walls, as Death's scythe might
+whistle if he were mowing down men with a right
+good will, heaps upon heaps of slain. The old
+bell struck the hour, sullenly, with a dead thud
+in the air after each stroke, as a bell tolls for
+a burial. The very clouds were black and silver
+in the sky, like a funeral pall.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Maria Addolorata leaned against the door-post
+and looked out, her hand white in the shadow
+against the dark wood, her face whiter still. But
+on her hand there were two marks, visible even in
+the dimness. They would have been red in the
+day, and the place hurt her from time to time, for
+she had bitten it savagely. It was her pledge, and
+the pain of it reminded her of what she had
+promised to do.</p>
+
+<p>She needed the reminder; for now that he was
+not near her, the enormous crime stood out, black
+and lofty as death itself. It was different when
+Dalrymple was at her side. His violent vitality
+dragged hers into action, dragged, drove it, and
+goaded it, as unwilling soldiers have been driven
+into battle in barbarous armies. Then the fatality
+seemed irresistible, then the dangers seemed small,
+and the burning red shame was pale and weak.
+Those bony young hands of his had strength in
+them for two, his gleaming eyes burnt out the
+resistance in hers, and lighted them with their
+own glow. The hearty recklessness of his unbelief
+drove through and through her composite faith,
+and riddled it with loopholes for her soul's escape.
+Then the reality of her passion made her nobler
+love mad to be free, and to break through the
+solid walls in which it had been born and had
+grown too strong. When his love was there, hers
+matched itself with his, to smite fortune in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+face, to dare and out-dare heaven and hell for
+love's sake, with him, the bursting blood made
+iron of her hand, tingling to buffet coward fate's
+pale mouth. Then she was strong above women;
+then she was brave as brave men; then, having
+promised, to keep was but the natural hold of
+will, to die was but to dare one little adversary
+more.</p>
+
+<p>But she was alone now, and thinking, as she
+looked out into the tragic night, and watched the
+blackness of the monumental clouds. She did not
+return to her former self, as some women do when
+the goad leaves the heart in peace for a moment.
+She did not say to herself that she would order
+the convent gate to be shut on Angus Dalrymple
+forever, and herself go back to the close choir, to
+sit in her seat amongst the rest, and sing holy
+songs with the others, restfully unhappy as many
+of them were. She knew far too well how strongly
+her heart could beat, and how icy cold her hands
+could grow when love was near her. Yet she
+shuddered with horror at what she had promised
+to do. She would struggle to the last, but she
+must yield when she heard his voice, and felt his
+hand, at the very last moment, when they should
+be at the garden gate, he drawing her on, she
+looking back.</p>
+
+<p>It was perjury and sacrilege, and earthly shame,
+and eternal damnation. Nothing less. And the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+words had full and deadly meaning for her. It
+mattered little that he should think differently,
+being of another faith, or rather, of no faith at all.
+It was all true to her. It was not risk; it was
+certainty. What forgiveness had earth or heaven
+for a faithless nun? He talked of marriage, and
+he would marry her according to a rite that had
+a meaning in his eyes. Heaven would not divorce
+the sworn and plighted spouse of Christ to be the
+earthly wife of Angus Dalrymple.</p>
+
+<p>Visions of eternal torment rose in her mind, a
+tangible searing hell alive with flame and devils,
+a sea of liquid fire, an ocean of boiling pitch, Satan
+commanding in the midst, and a myriad of fiends
+working his tormenting will.</p>
+
+<p>Her pale lips curled scornfully in the dark.
+Those were not the terrors that frightened her,
+nor the horrors from which she shrank. There
+was a question which was not to be answered by
+her own soul in damnation or salvation, but by the
+lips of men hereafter&mdash;the question of the honour
+of her name. The traditions of the good old barons
+were not dead in that day, nor are they all dead
+yet. Many a Braccio had done evil deeds in his
+or her day, and one, at least, had evil deeds to do
+after Maria Addolorata had been laid in her grave.
+But sin was one thing, and dishonour was quite
+another, even in the eyes of the nun of Subiaco.
+For her sins she could and must answer with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+weal or woe of her own soul. But her dishonour
+would be upon her father and her mother and
+upon all her race. Nor was there any dishonour
+deeper, more deadly, or more lasting than that
+brought upon a stainless name by a faithless nun.
+Maria Braccio hesitated at disgrace, while Maria
+Addolorata smiled at perdition. It was not the
+first time that honour had taken God's part against
+the devil in the history of her family.</p>
+
+<p>That was the great obstacle of all, and she knew
+it now. She was able to face all consequences but
+that, terrible as they might be. The barrier was
+there, the traditional old belief in honour as first,
+and above every consideration. They had played
+upon that very belief, when, at the last, she had
+hesitated to take the veil. She had gone so far,
+they had told her, that it would be cowardly and
+dishonourable to turn back at the last minute.
+The same argument existed now. Then, she would
+at least have had human right and ecclesiastical
+law on her side, if she had refused to become a
+nun. Now, all was against her. Then, she would
+have had to face but the condemning opinion of a
+few who spoke of implied obligation. Now, she
+must stand up and be ashamed before the whole
+world. There would be a horrible publicity about
+it. She was too high born not to feel that all the
+world in which she should ever move was as
+one great family. Dalrymple might promise her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+honour and respect, and the affection of his own
+father and mother for the love of her parents, a
+home, respected wifehood, and all the rest. With
+his strength, he might impose her upon his family,
+and they might treat her as he should dictate, for
+he was a strong and dominant man. But in their
+hearts, Protestants, English people, foreigners as
+they were to her race, even they could not tell
+themselves honestly that it was not a shameful
+thing to break such vows as hers, shameful and
+nothing less. And if, for a moment, he were not
+there to hold them in his check, she should see it
+in their faces, and she must hang her head, for she
+could have nothing to answer. For him, she must
+not only sacrifice her soul, wrench out her faith,
+break her promise to God, and her vows to the
+Church. She must give herself to public, earthly
+shame, for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>It was too much. She could bear anything but
+that. Rather than endure that, it was better to
+die.</p>
+
+<p>The black clouds rose higher in the west, and
+the gloomy air blew upon her face. Her head was
+no longer hot, for a chilly horror had come upon
+her, like the shadow of something unspeakably
+awful, close at hand. Suddenly, she was afraid to
+be alone. A bat, lured by the second twilight of
+the moon's rising, whirled down from above, with
+softly flapping wings, and almost brushed her face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+She drew back quickly into the doorway. It was
+a very tragic night, she thought. She shut the
+door, and groped her way out beyond her cell to
+the corridor, dimly illuminated by a single light
+hanging from the vault by a running cord. She
+entered the abbess's apartment. One of the sisters
+had taken her place, but Maria Addolorata sent her
+away by a gesture, and sat down by the bedside.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady was either asleep, or did not notice
+her niece's coming. Her face was grey as ashes,
+and upturned in the shadow. Upon the stone
+floor stood the primitive Italian night-light, a wick
+supported in a triangular bit of tin by three little
+corks in oil floating on water in a tumbler. The
+light was very clear and steady, though there was
+little of it, and to Maria, who had been long in
+comparative darkness, the room seemed bright
+enough. There was little furniture besides the
+plain bed, a little table, a couple of chairs, and
+a tall, dark wardrobe. A grim crucifix hung above
+the abbess's head, on the white wall, the work of an
+age in which horror was familiar to the eye, and
+needed exaggeration to teach hardened humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Maria was too much occupied with her own
+thoughts to notice the sick woman's condition
+at once. Besides, during the last two days there
+had been no return of the syncope, and the abbess
+had seemed to be improving steadily. She breathed
+rather heavily and seemed to be asleep.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gradually, however, as the nun sat motionless
+beside her and as the storm of thought subsided,
+she became aware that all was not right. Her
+aunt's face was unnaturally grey, the breathing
+was unusually slow and heavy. When the breath
+was drawn in, the thin nostrils flattened themselves
+strangely on each side, and the features had a
+peaked look. Maria rose and felt the pulse. It
+was fluttering, and not always perceptible.</p>
+
+<p>At first Maria's attention to these facts was
+only mechanical. Then, with a sudden sinking
+at her own heart, she realized what they might
+mean&mdash;another crisis like the one in which the
+abbess had so narrowly escaped death. It was
+true that on that occasion she had called for help
+more than once, showing that she had felt herself
+to be sinking. At present she seemed to
+be unconscious, which, if anything, was a worse
+feature.</p>
+
+<p>Maria drew a long breath and held it, biting her
+lips, as people do in moments of suspense, doubt,
+and anxiety. It was as though fate had thrust
+the great decision onward at the last moment.
+The life that hung in the balance before her eyes
+meant the possibility of waiting, with the feeble
+consolation of being yet undecided.</p>
+
+<p>She stood as still as a statue, her face like a
+mask, her hand on the unconscious woman's wrist.
+The stimulant which Dalrymple had shown her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+how to use was at hand&mdash;the glass with which
+to administer it. It would prolong life. It might
+save it.</p>
+
+<p>Should she give it? The seconds ran to minutes,
+and the dreadful question was unanswered.
+If the abbess died, as die she almost certainly
+must within half an hour, if the medicine were not
+given to her&mdash;if she died, Maria would call the
+sisters, the portress would be instructed, and when
+Dalrymple came on the morrow, he would be told
+that all was over, and that he was no longer
+needed. Nothing could be more sure. He might
+do his utmost. He could not enter the convent
+again.</p>
+
+<p>In a quick vision, as she stood stone-still, Maria
+saw herself alone in the chapel by night, prostrate,
+repentant, washing the altar steps with tears, forgiven
+of God, since God could still forgive her,
+honoured on earth as before, since none but the
+silent confessor could ever know what she had
+done, still less what she had meant to do. Her
+sorrow would be real, overwhelming, able to move
+Heaven to mercy, her penance true-hearted and
+severe as she deserved. Her name would be unspotted
+and unblemished.</p>
+
+<p>It would be so easy, if she had not to see him
+again. How could she resist him, if he could so
+much as touch her hand? But if she were defended
+from him, she could bury his love and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+pray for him in the memory of the thing dead.
+All that, if she but let that heavy breathing go
+on a little longer, if she did not raise her hand
+and set a glass to those grey, parted lips.</p>
+
+<p>They were parted now. The laboured breath
+was drawn through the teeth. The eyelids were
+a little raised, and showed but the white of the
+upturned eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Maria stared fixedly into the pinched face, and a
+new horror came upon her.</p>
+
+<p>It was murder she was doing. Nothing less.
+The power to save was there, and she would not
+use it. No&mdash;it could not be murder&mdash;it was
+not possible that she could do murder.</p>
+
+<p>Still with wide eyes she stared. Surely the
+heavy breath had come more quickly a moment
+ago. It seemed an age between each rise and
+fall of the coverlet. There was a ghastly whistling
+sound of it between the teeth.</p>
+
+<p>It was slower still. The eyelids were gradually
+opening&mdash;the blind white was horrible to see.
+Each breath was a convulsion that shook the
+frail body.</p>
+
+<p>It was murder. Her hand shot out like lightning
+and seized the small bottle. Let anything
+come,&mdash;love, shame, heaven, damnation; it should
+not be murder.</p>
+
+<p>She forced the unstoppered bottle into the
+dying woman's mouth with a desperate hand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+The next breath was drawn with a choking effort.
+The whole body stirred. The thin hand appeared,
+grasped the coverlet with distorting energy, and
+then lay almost still, twitching convulsively second
+by second. Still Maria tried wildly to pour more
+of the stimulant between the set teeth. When
+they parted, no breath came, and the fingers only
+moved once more, for the very last time.</p>
+
+<p>It was not murder, but it was death. The
+wasted old woman had outlived by two or three
+hours the strong, young peasant girl, and fate had
+laid her hand heavily upon the life of Maria
+Addolorata.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Dalrymple came home that evening, he
+found his supper already on the table and half
+cold. Sora Nanna was busier than her daughter,
+and less patient of the Scotchman's irregularities.
+If he could not come home at a reasonable hour,
+he must not expect her to keep everything waiting
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down to the table without even going upstairs
+as usual to wash his hands, simply because
+the cooked meat would be cold and greasy if he let
+it stand five minutes longer. Being once seated
+in his place, he did not move for a long time.
+Sora Nanna came in more than once. She was very
+much preoccupied about the load of wine which
+her husband had ordered to be sent, and which,
+if possible, she meant to send off before morning,
+for she did not wish him to be absent in
+Rome with money in his pocket a day longer than
+necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Gloomy and preoccupied, without even a book
+before him, Dalrymple sat with his back to the
+wall, drinking his wine in silence, and staring at
+the lamp. Sora Nanna asked him whether he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+seen Annetta. He shook his head without speaking.
+The woman observed that the girls were
+quite capable of spending a second night at Civitella
+to prolong the festivities. Dalrymple nodded,
+not caring at all.</p>
+
+<p>Annetta being absent, Gigetto had not thought
+it necessary to put in an appearance. But Sora
+Nanna wished to see him again about the wine.
+With a grin, she asked Dalrymple whether he
+would keep house if she went out for half an hour.
+Again he nodded in silence. He heard her lock
+from the inside the door which opened from the
+staircase upon the street, for it was already late.
+Then she came through the common room again,
+with her overskirt over her head, went out, and
+left the door ajar. Dalrymple was alone in the
+house, unaware that Annetta was lying dead on
+the floor of his room upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Sora Nanna had not been gone a quarter of an
+hour when a boy came in from the street. Dalrymple
+knew him, for he was the son of the convent
+gardener.</p>
+
+<p>The lad said that Dalrymple was wanted immediately,
+as the abbess was very ill. That was all he
+knew. He was rather a dull boy, and he repeated
+mechanically what he had been told. The Scotchman
+started and was about to speak, when he
+checked himself. He asked the boy two or three
+questions, in the hope of getting more accurate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+information, but could only elicit a repetition of
+the message. He was wanted immediately, as the
+abbess was very ill.</p>
+
+<p>He covered his eyes with his hand for a few
+seconds. In a flash he saw that if he were ever to
+carry off Maria Addolorata, it must be to-night.
+The chances were a hundred to one that if there
+were another crisis, the abbess would be dead before
+he could reach the convent. Once dead, there
+was no knowing what might happen in the confusion
+that would ensue, and during the elaborate
+funeral ceremonies. The man had that daring
+temper that rises at obstacles as an eagle at a crag,
+without the slightest hesitation. When he dropped
+his hand upon the table he had made up his mind.</p>
+
+<p>It was generally easy to get a good mule at any
+hour of the night in Subiaco. The mules were in
+their stables then. In the daytime it would have
+been very doubtful, when most of them were away
+in the vineyards, or carrying loads to the neighbouring
+towns. The convent gardener, who was
+well-to-do in the world, had a very good mule, as
+Dalrymple knew, and its stable was half-way up
+the ascent. The boy could saddle it with the pack-saddle
+without any difficulty, and meet him anywhere
+he chose. Dalrymple's reputation was excellent
+as a liberal foreigner who paid well, and
+the gardener would not blame the boy for saddling
+the mule without leave.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In a few words Dalrymple explained what he
+wanted, and to help the lad's understanding he gave
+him some coppers which filled the little fellow
+with energy and delight. The boy was to be at the
+top of the mule path leading down from above the
+convent to the valley in half an hour. Dalrymple
+told him that he wished to go to Tivoli, and that
+the boy could come with him if he chose, after the
+visit to the abbess was over. The boy ran away
+to saddle the mule.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple rose quickly, and shut the street door
+in order to take the lamp with him to his room,
+and not to leave the house open with no light in it.
+The case was urgent. He went upstairs, carrying
+the lamp, and opened the door of his quarters.
+Instantly he recognized the faint, sickly odour of
+hydrocyanide of potassium, and remembered that
+he had left the bottle with the solution on his
+table that afternoon in his hurry. Then he looked
+down and saw a white face upon the floor, and
+the flowered bodice and smart skirt of the peasant
+girl.</p>
+
+<p>He had solid nerves, and possessed that perfect
+indifference to death as a phenomenon which most
+medical men acquire in the dissecting-room. But
+he was shocked when, bending down, and setting
+the lamp upon the floor, he saw in a few seconds
+that Annetta had been dead some time. He even
+shook his head a little, very slowly, which meant a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+great deal for his hard nature. Glancing at the
+unstoppered bottle and at the empty glass, side by
+side on the table, he understood at once that the
+girl, intentionally or by mistake, had swallowed
+enough of the poison to kill half-a-dozen strong
+men. He remembered instantly how he had once
+given her spirits of camphor when she had felt
+ill, and he understood all the circumstances in a
+moment, almost as though he had seen them.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely thinking of what he was doing, though
+with an effort which any one who has attempted
+to lift a dead body from the ground will understand,
+he took up the lifeless girl, stiff and stark
+as she was, and laid her upon his own bed. It
+was a mere instinct of humanity. Then he went
+back and took the lamp and held it near her
+face, and shook his head again, thoughtfully. A
+word of pity escaped his lips, spoken very low.</p>
+
+<p>He set the lamp down on the floor by the bedside,
+for there was no small table near. There
+never is, in peasants' houses. He began to walk
+up and down the room, thinking over the situation,
+which was grave enough.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he smelt the acrid odour of burning
+cotton. He turned quickly, and saw that he had
+placed the three-beaked lamp so near to the bed
+that the overhanging coverlet was directly above
+one of the flames, and was already smouldering.
+He smothered it with the stuff itself between his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+hands, brought the lamp into the laboratory, and
+set it upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>Then, realizing that his own case was urgent, he
+began to make his preparations. He took a clean
+bottle and poured thirty-five drops of laudanum
+into it, put in the stopper, and thrust it into his
+pocket. Unlocking another box, he took out some
+papers and a canvas bag of gold, such as bankers
+used to give travellers in those times when it was
+necessary to take a large supply of cash for a journey.
+He threw on his cloak, took his plaid over
+one arm and went back into his bedroom, carrying
+the lamp in the other hand. Then he hesitated,
+sniffing the air and the smell of the burnt
+cotton. Suddenly an idea seemed to cross his
+mind, for he put down the lamp and dropped his
+plaid upon a chair. He stood still a moment
+longer, looking at the dead girl as she lay on the
+bed, biting his lip thoughtfully, and nodding his
+head once or twice. He made a step towards the
+bed, then hesitated once more, and then made up
+his mind.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the bedside, and stooping a little
+lifted the body on his arms as though judging
+of its weight and of his power to carry it. His
+first instinct had been to lock the door of the room
+behind him, and to go up to the convent, leaving
+the dead girl where she was, whether he were
+destined to come back that night, or never. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+moment's reflection had told him that if he did so
+he must certainly be accused of having poisoned
+her. He meant, if it were possible, to take Maria
+Addolorata on board of the English man-of-war at
+Civita Vecchia within twenty-four hours. So far
+as the carrying off of a nun was concerned, he would
+be safe on the ship; but if he were accused of
+murder, no matter how falsely, the captain would
+have a right to refuse his protection, even though
+he was Dalrymple's friend. A little chain of circumstances
+had led him to form a plan, in a flash,
+which, if successfully carried out, would account
+both for the disappearance of Annetta herself, and
+of Maria Addolorata as well.</p>
+
+<p>His eyelids contracted slightly, and his great
+jaw set itself with the determination to overcome
+all obstacles. In a few seconds he had divested
+the dead girl of her heavy bodice and skirt and
+carpet apron and heavy shoes. He rolled the
+things into a bundle, tossed them into the laboratory,
+locked the door of the latter, and stuck the
+key into his pocket. He carefully stopped the
+bottle containing the remainder of the prussiate of
+potassium, and took that also. Then he rolled the
+body up carefully in his great plaid, mummy-like,
+and tied the ends of the shawl with shoe-laces
+which he had among his things. He drew his soft
+hat firmly down upon his forehead, and threw his
+cloak over his left shoulder. He lifted the body<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+off the bed. It was so stark that it stood upright
+beside him. With his right arm round its waist,
+he raised it so high that he could walk freely, and
+he drew his wide cloak over it as well as he could,
+and freed his left hand. He grasped the lamp as
+he passed the table, listened at the door, though
+he knew that the house was locked below, and
+he cautiously and with difficulty descended the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Just inside the street door of the staircase there
+was a niche, as there is in almost all old Italian
+houses. He set the body in it, and went into the
+common room with the lamp. Taking the bottle
+with the laudanum in it from his pocket, he filled
+it more than half full of aniseed cordial, of which
+a decanter stood with other liquors upon a sideboard,
+as usual in such places. He returned it to
+his pocket, and listened again. Then he assured
+himself that he had all he needed&mdash;the bottle,
+money, his cloak, and a short, broad knife which
+he always took with him on his walks, more for
+the sake of cutting a loaf of bread if he stopped for
+refreshment than for any other purpose. His
+passport he had taken with his few other valuable
+papers from the box.</p>
+
+<p>He left the lamp on the table, and unlocked the
+street door, though he did not pull it open. Brave
+as he was, his heart beat fast, for it was the first
+decisive moment. If Sora Nanna should come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+home within the next sixty seconds, there would
+be trouble. But there was no sound.</p>
+
+<p>In the dark he went back to the door of the
+staircase, unlocked it, and opened it wide, looking
+out. The heavy clouds had so darkened the moonlight
+that he could hardly see. But the street was
+quiet, for it was late, and there were no watchmen
+in Subiaco at that time. A moment later, the door
+was closed behind him, and he was disappearing
+round the dark corner with Annetta's body in his
+arms, all wrapped with himself in his great cloak.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long and terrible climb. A weaker man
+would have fainted or given it up long before
+Dalrymple set his foot firmly upon the narrow
+beaten path which ran along between the garden
+wall at the back of the convent, and the precipitous
+descent on his left. The sweat ran down over his
+hard, pale face in the dark, as he shook off his
+cloak and laid down his ghastly burden under the
+deep shadow of the low postern. He shook his big
+shoulders and wiped his brow, and stretched out
+his long arms, doubling them and stretching them
+again, for they were benumbed and asleep with the
+protracted effort. But so far it was done, and no
+one had met him. There had been little chance of
+that, but he was glad, all the same. And if, down
+at the house, any one went to his room, nothing
+would be found. He had the key of the little
+laboratory in his pocket. It would be long before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+they broke down the door and found Annetta's
+skirt and bodice and shoes wrapped together in a
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>He went on up the ascent five minutes further,
+walking as though on air now that he carried no
+weight in his arms. At the top of the mule path
+the lad was already waiting for him with the mule.
+He told the little fellow that he might have to wait
+half an hour longer, as he must go into the convent
+to see the abbess before starting for Tivoli. He
+bid him tie the mule by the halter to the low branch
+of an overhanging fig-tree, and sit down to wait.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a cool night," said Dalrymple, though he
+was hot enough himself. "Drink this, my boy."</p>
+
+<p>He gave him the little bottle of aniseed, opening
+it as he did so. The boy smelt it and knew
+that it was good, for it is a common drink in the
+mountains. He drank half of it, pouring it into
+his mouth with a gurgling sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Drink it all," said Dalrymple. "I brought it
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>The boy did not hesitate, but drained it to the
+last drop, and handed the bottle back without a
+word. Dalrymple made him sit down near the
+mule's head, well aside from the path, in case any
+one should pass. He knew that between the unaccustomed
+dose of spirits and the thirty-five drops
+of opium, the lad would be sound asleep before
+long. For the rest, there was nothing to be done<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+but to trust to luck. He had done the impossible
+already, so far as physical effort was concerned,
+but Fortune must not thwart him at the end. If
+she did, he had in his other pocket enough left of
+what had killed Annetta to settle his own affairs
+forever, and he might need it. At that moment
+he was absolutely desperate. It would be ill for
+any one who crossed his path that night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dalrymple</span> wrapped his cloak about him once
+more, as he turned away, and retraced his steps by
+the garden wall. He glanced at the long dark thing
+that lay in the shadow of the postern, as he went by.
+It was not probable that it would be noticed, even
+if any one should pass that way, which was unlikely,
+between ten o'clock at night and three in the
+morning. He went on without stopping, and in
+three or four minutes he had gone round the convent
+to the main entrance, next to the church. He
+rang the bell. The portress was expecting him,
+and he was admitted without a word.</p>
+
+<p>He found Maria Addolorata in the antechamber
+of the abbess's apartment, veiled, and standing with
+folded hands in the middle of the little hall. She
+must have heard the distant clang of the bell, for
+she was evidently waiting for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I in time?" he asked in a tone of anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was dead before I sent for you," answered
+Maria Addolorata, in a low and almost solemn tone.
+"No one knows it yet."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I feared so," said Dalrymple.</p>
+
+<p>He made a step towards the door of the parlour,
+naturally expecting that Maria would speak with
+him there, as usual. But she stepped back and
+placed herself in his way.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said briefly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he asked in quick surprise.</p>
+
+<p>She raised her finger to her veiled lips, and
+then pointed to the other door, to warn him that
+the portress was there and was almost within hearing.
+With quick suspicion he understood that she
+was keeping him in the antechamber to defend herself,
+that she had not been able to resist the desire
+to see him once more, and that she intended this
+to be their last meeting.</p>
+
+<p>"Maria," he began, but he only pronounced her
+name, and stopped short, for a great fear took him
+by the throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered, in her calm, low voice.
+"I have made up my mind. I will not go. God
+will perhaps forgive me what I have done. I will
+pray for forgiveness. But I will not do more evil.
+I will not bring shame upon my father's house, even
+for love of you."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice trembled a little at the last words.
+Even veiled as she was, the vital magnetism of the
+man was creeping upon her already. She had
+resolved that she would see him once more, that
+she would tell him the plain truth that was right,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+that she would bid him farewell, and promise to
+pray for him, as she must pray for herself. But
+she had sworn to herself that she would not speak
+of love. Yet with the first words she spoke, the
+word and the vibration of love had come too. Her
+hands disappeared in her sleeves, and her nails
+pressed the flesh in the determination to be strong.
+She little guessed the tremendous argument he had
+in store.</p>
+
+<p>"It is hard to speak here," he said. "Let us go
+into the parlour."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, and again moved backwards
+a step, so that her shoulders were almost against
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"You must say what you have to say here," she
+answered after a moment's pause, and she felt
+strong again. "For my part, I have spoken. May
+God forget me in my utmost need if I go with
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple seemed little moved by the solemn
+invocation. It meant little enough to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I must tell you a short story," he replied
+quietly. "Unless I tell you, you cannot understand.
+I have set my life upon your love, and I
+have gone so far that I cannot save my life except
+by you&mdash;my life and my honour. Will you listen
+to me?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, and he heard her draw a quick
+breath. Then he began his story, putting it together<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+clearly, from the facts he knew, in very few
+words. He told her how Annetta must have mistaken
+the bottle on his table for camphor, and how
+he had found her dead. Nothing would save him
+from the accusation of having murdered the girl
+but the absolute disappearance of her body. Maria
+shuddered and turned her head quickly when he
+told her that the body was lying under the postern
+arch behind the garden wall. He told her,
+too, that the boy was by this time asleep beside
+the mule on the path beyond. Then he told
+her of his plan, which was short, desperate, and
+masterly.</p>
+
+<p>"You must tell no one that the abbess is dead,"
+he said. "Go out through your cell into the garden,
+as soon as I am gone, and when I tap at the
+postern open the door. Leave a lamp in your cell.
+I will do the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"What will you do?" asked Maria, in a low and
+wondering tone.</p>
+
+<p>"You must lock the door of your cell on the
+inside and leave the lamp there," said Dalrymple.
+"You will wait for me in the garden by the gate.
+I will carry the poor girl's body in and lay it in
+your bed. Then I will set fire to the bed itself.
+Of course there is an under-mattress of maize leaves&mdash;there
+always is. I will leave the lamp standing
+on the floor by the bedside. I will shut the door
+and come out to you, and I can manage to slip the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+bolt of the garden gate from the outside by propping
+up the spring from within. You shall see."</p>
+
+<p>"It is horrible!" gasped Maria. "And I do not
+see&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is simple, and nothing else can save my life.
+Your cell is of course a mere stone vault, and the
+fire cannot spread. The sisters are asleep, except
+the portress, who will be far away. Long before
+they break down your door, the body will be
+charred by the fire beyond all recognition. They
+will see the lamp standing close by, and will suppose
+that you lay down to rest, leaving the lamp
+close to you&mdash;too close; that the abbess died
+while you were asleep, and that you had caught
+fire before you waked; that you were burned to
+death, in fact. The body will be buried as yours,
+and you will be legally dead. Consequently there
+will not be the slightest suspicion upon your good
+name. As for me, it will be supposed that I have
+procured other clothes for Annetta, thrown hers
+into the laboratory and carried her off. In due
+time I will send her father a large sum of money
+without comment. If you refuse, I must either be
+arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death for the
+murder of a girl who killed herself without my
+knowledge, or, as is probable, I shall go out now,
+sit down in a quiet place, and be found dead in the
+morning. It is certain death to me in either case.
+It would be absolutely impossible for me to get rid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+of the dead body without arousing suspicion. If
+it is wrong to save oneself by burning a dead body,
+it is not a great wrong, and I take it upon myself.
+It is the only wrong in the matter, unless it is
+wrong to love you and to be willing to die for you.
+Do you understand me?"</p>
+
+<p>Leaning back against the door of the parlour,
+Maria Addolorata had almost unconsciously lifted
+her veil and was gazing into his eyes. The plan
+was horrible, but she could not help admiring the
+man's strength and daring. In his voice, even
+when he told her that he loved her, there was that
+quiet courage which imposes itself upon men and
+women alike. The whole situation was as clear as
+day to her in a moment, for all his calculations
+were absolutely correct,&mdash;the fire-proof vault of
+the cell, the certainty that the body would be taken
+for hers, above all, the assurance of her own supposed
+death, with the utter freedom from suspicion
+which it would mean for her ever afterwards. Was
+she not to be buried with Christian burial, mourned
+as dead, and freed in one hour from all the consequences
+of her life? It was masterly, though
+there was a horror in it.</p>
+
+<p>She loved him more than her own soul. It was
+the fear of bringing shame upon her father and
+mother that had held her, far more than any spiritual
+dread. It was not strange that she should
+waver again when he had unfolded his scheme.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She turned, opened the door, and led him into
+the parlour, where the silver lamp was burning
+brightly.</p>
+
+<p>"You must tell it all again," she said, still standing.
+"I must be quite sure that I understand."</p>
+
+<p>He knew well enough that she had finally yielded,
+since she went so far. In his mind he quickly ran
+over the details of the plan once more, and mentally
+settled what still remained to be decided.
+But since she wished it, he went over all he had
+said already. Being able to speak in his natural
+voice without fear of being overheard by the portress,
+and feeling sure of the result, he spoke far
+more easily and more eloquently. Before he had
+finished he was holding her hand in his, and she
+was gazing intently into his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It is life or death for me," he said, when he had
+told her everything. "Which shall it be?"</p>
+
+<p>She was silent for a moment. Then her strong
+mouth smiled strangely.</p>
+
+<p>"It shall be life for you, if I lose my soul for
+it," she said.</p>
+
+<p>She felt the quick thrill and pressure of his
+hand, and all the man's tremendous energy was
+alive again.</p>
+
+<p>"Then let us do it quickly," he answered. "I
+will go out with the portress. Go to your cell before
+we reach the end of the corridor, and shut the
+door with some noise. She will remember it afterwards.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+Wait at the garden gate till I tap softly,
+and leave the rest to me. There is no danger.
+Do not be afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid!" she exclaimed proudly. "How little
+you know me! It never was fear that held me.
+Besides&mdash;with you!"</p>
+
+<p>The two last words told him more than all she
+had ever said before, and for the first time he
+wholly trusted her. Besides, it was to be only for
+a few minutes, while he went out by the front gate
+and walked round to the back of the convent.
+The plan was so well conceived that it could not
+fail when put into execution.</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands, as two people who have agreed
+to do a desperate deed, each for the other's sake.
+Then as their grasp loosened, Dalrymple turned
+towards the door, but turned again almost instantly
+and took her in his arms, and kissed her as men
+kiss women they love when their lives are in the
+balance. Then he went out, passed through the
+antechamber, and found the portress waiting for
+him as usual. She took up her little lamp and
+led the way in silence. A moment later he heard
+Maria come out and enter her cell, closing the
+door loudly behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Her most reverend excellency is in no danger
+now," he said to the portress, with Scotch veracity.</p>
+
+<p>"Sister Maria Addolorata may then rest a little,"
+answered the lay sister, who rarely spoke.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Precisely so," said Dalrymple, drily.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later he was at the garden gate,
+tapping softly. Immediately the door yielded to
+his gentle pressure, for Maria had already unfastened
+the lock within.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand aside a little," said Dalrymple, in a whisper.
+"You need not see&mdash;it is not a pretty sight.
+Keep the door shut till I come back. Where is
+your cell?"</p>
+
+<p>She pointed to a door that was open above the
+level of the garden. A little light came out.
+With womanly caution she had set the lamp in the
+corner behind the door when she had opened it, so
+as to show as little as possible from without.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head away as he passed her with
+his heavy burden, treading softly upon the hard,
+dry ground. But he was not half across the garden
+before she looked after him. She could not help
+it. The dark thing he carried in his arms attracted
+her, and a shudder ran through her. She
+closed the gate, and stood with her hand on the lock.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her that he was gone an interminable
+time. Though the moon was now high, the
+clouds were so black that the garden was almost
+quite dark. Suddenly she heard his step, and he
+was nearer than she thought.</p>
+
+<p>"It is burning well," he said with grim brevity.</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and looked closely in the dimness at
+the old-fashioned lock. It was made as he supposed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+and could be easily slipped from without.
+He found a pebble under his foot, raised the
+spring, and placed the small stone under it, after
+examining the position of the cracks in the wood,
+which were many.</p>
+
+<p>"There is plenty of time, now," he said, and he
+gently pushed her out upon the narrow walk, drawing
+the door after him.</p>
+
+<p>With his big knife, working through the widest
+crack he teazed the bolt into the socket. Then
+with his shoulder he softly shook the whole door.
+He heard the spring fall into its place, as the pebble
+dropped upon the dry ground.</p>
+
+<p>"No human being can suspect that the door has
+been opened," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He wrapped her in his long cloak, standing beside
+her under the wall. Very gently he pushed
+the veil and bands away from her golden hair.
+She helped him, and he kissed the soft locks.
+Then about her head he laid his plaid in folds and
+drew it forward over her shoulders. She let him
+do it, not realizing what service the shawl had but
+lately done.</p>
+
+<p>They walked forward. The boy was fast asleep
+and did not move. The mule stamped a little as
+they came up. Dalrymple lifted Maria upon the
+pack-saddle, sideways, and stretched the packing-cords
+behind her back.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on," he said. "I will lead the mule."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 391px;">
+<img src="images/gs06.jpg" width="391" height="500" alt="&quot;An evil death on you!&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p. 218." title="&quot;An evil death on you!&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p. 218." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;An evil death on you!&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p.&nbsp;218.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>So it was all over, and the deed was done, for
+good or evil. But it was for evil, for it was a bad
+deed.</p>
+
+<p>To the last, fortune favoured Dalrymple and
+Maria, and everything took place after their flight
+just as the strong man had anticipated. Not a
+trace of the truth was left behind. Early in the
+morning the abbess was found dead, and in the
+little cell near by, upon the still smouldering remains
+of the mattress, lay the charred and burned
+form of a woman. In Stefanone's house, the little
+bundle of clothes in the locked laboratory was all
+that was left of Annetta. All Subiaco said that
+the Englishman had carried off the peasant girl to
+his own country.</p>
+
+<p>Up at the convent the nuns buried the abbess in
+great state, with catafalque and canopy, with hundreds
+of wax candles and endless funeral singing.
+They buried also another body with less magnificence,
+but with more pomp than would have been
+bestowed upon any of the other sisters, and not
+long afterwards a marble tablet in the wall of the
+church set forth in short good Latin sentences, how
+the Sister Maria Addolorata, of many virtues, had
+been burned to death in her bed on the eve of the
+feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, and all good
+Christians were enjoined to pray for her soul&mdash;which
+indeed was in need of their prayers.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone returned from Rome, but it was a sad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+home-coming when he found that his daughter was
+gone, and unconsciously he repeated the very words
+she had last spoken when she was dying in Dalrymple's
+room all alone.</p>
+
+<p>"An evil death on you and all your house!" he
+said, shaking his fist at the door of the room.</p>
+
+<p>And Stefanone swore within himself solemnly
+that the Englishman should pay the price. And he
+and his paid it in full, and more also, after years
+had passed, even to generations then unborn.</p>
+
+<p>This is the first act, as it were, of all the story,
+and between this one and the beginning of the next
+a few years must pass quickly, if not altogether in
+silence.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Part II.</span></h2>
+
+
+<h3><i>GLORIA DALRYMPLE.</i></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the year 1861 Donna Francesca Campodonico
+was already a widow. Her husband, Don Girolamo
+Campodonico, had died within two years of their
+marriage, which had been one of interest and convenience
+so far as he had been concerned, for Donna
+Francesca was rich, whereas he had been but a
+younger son and poor. His elder brother was the
+Duca di Norba, the father of another Girolamo,
+who succeeded him many years later, of Gianforte
+Campodonico, and of the beautiful Bianca, in whose
+short, sad life Pietro Ghisleri afterwards held so
+large a part. But of these latter persons, some
+were then not yet born, and others were in their
+infancy, so that they play no part in this portion of
+the present history.</p>
+
+<p>Donna Francesca was of the great Braccio family,
+the last of a collateral branch. She had inherited
+a very considerable estate, which, if she had no
+descendants, was to revert to the Princes of Gerano.
+She had married Don Girolamo in obedience to her
+guardians' advice, but not at all against
+her will, and she had become deeply attached to
+him during the short two years of their married<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+life. He had never been strong, since his childhood,
+his constitution having been permanently
+injured by a violent attack of malarious fever
+when he had been a mere boy. A second fever,
+even more severe than the first, caught on a shooting
+expedition near Fiumicino, had killed him, and
+Donna Francesca was left a childless widow, in full
+possession of her own fortune and of a little more
+in the shape of a small jointure. It was thought
+that she would marry again before very long, but
+it was too soon to expect this as yet.</p>
+
+<p>Among her possessions as the last of her branch
+of the Braccio family, of which the main line, however,
+was sufficiently well represented, was the
+small but beautiful palace in which she now lived
+alone. It was situated between the Capitoline Hill
+and the Tiber, surrounded on three sides by dark
+and narrow streets, but facing a small square in
+which there was an ancient church. When it is
+said that the palace was a small one, its dimensions
+are compared with the great Roman palaces, more
+than one of which could easily lodge a thousand
+persons. It was built on the same general plan as
+most of them, with a ground floor having heavily
+barred windows; a state apartment in the first
+story, with three stone balconies on the front; a
+very low second story above that, but not coextensive
+with it, because two of the great state
+rooms were higher than the rest and had clere-story<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+windows; and last of all, a third story consisting
+of much higher rooms than the second, and
+having a spacious attic under the sloping roof, which
+was, of course, covered with red tiles in the old
+fashion. The palace, at that time known as the
+Palazzo, or 'Palazzetto,' Borgia, was externally a
+very good specimen of Renascence architecture of
+the period when the florid, 'barocco' style had not
+yet got the upper hand in Rome. The great arched
+entrance for carriages was well proportioned, the
+stone carvings were severe rather than graceful,
+the cornices had great nobility both of proportion
+and design. The lower story was built of rough-faced
+blocks of travertine stone, above which the
+masonry was smooth. The whole palace was of
+that warm, time-toned colour, which travertine
+takes with age, and which is, therefore, peculiar
+to old Roman buildings.</p>
+
+<p>Within, though it could not be said that any part
+had exactly fallen to decay, there were many rooms
+which had been long disused, in which the old frescoes
+and architectural designs in grey and white,
+and bits of bold perspective painted in the vaults
+and embrasures, were almost obliterated by time,
+and in which such furniture as there was could not
+survive much longer. About one-half of the state
+apartment, comprising, perhaps, fifteen or twenty
+rooms, large and small, had been occupied by Donna
+Francesca and her husband, and she now lived in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+them alone. In that part of the palace there was
+a sort of quiet and stately luxury, the result of her
+own taste, which was strongly opposed to the gaudy
+fashions then introduced from Paris at the height
+of the Second Empire's importance. Girolamo
+Campodonico had been aware that his young wife's
+judgment was far better than his own in artistic
+matters, and had left all such questions entirely
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>She had taken much pleasure in unearthing from
+attics and disused rooms all such objects as possessed
+any intrinsic artistic value, such as old carved
+furniture, tapestries, and the like. Whatever she
+found worth keeping she had caused to be restored
+just so far as to be useful, and she had known how to
+supply the deficiencies with modern material in such
+a way as not to destroy the harmony of the whole.</p>
+
+<p>It should be sufficiently clear from these facts
+that Donna Francesca Campodonico was a woman
+of taste and culture, in the modern sense. Indeed,
+the satisfaction of her tastes occupied a much more
+important place in her existence than her social
+obligations, and had a far greater influence upon
+her subsequent life. Her favourite scheme was to
+make her palace at all points as complete within
+as its architect had made it outside, and she had it
+in her power to succeed in doing so. She was not,
+as some might think, a great exception in those
+days. Within the narrow limits of a certain class,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+in which the hereditary possession of masterpieces
+has established artistic intelligence as a stamp of
+caste, no people, until recently, have had a better
+taste than the Italians; as no people, beyond these
+limits, have ever had a worse. There was nothing
+very unusual in Donna Francesca's views, except her
+constant and industrious energy in carrying them
+out. Even this might be attributed to the fact
+that she had inherited a beautiful but dilapidated
+palace, which she was desirous of improving until,
+on a small scale, it should be like the houses of
+the great old families, such as the Saracinesca,
+the Savelli, the Frangipani, and her own near
+relatives, the Princes of Gerano.</p>
+
+<p>She had an invaluable ally in her artistic enterprises
+in the person of an artist, who, in a sort of
+way, was considered as belonging to Casa Braccio,
+though his extraordinary talent had raised him
+far above the position of a dependent of the
+family, in which he had been born as the son of
+the steward of the ancient castle and estate of
+Gerano. As constantly happened in those days,
+the clever boy had been noticed by the Prince,&mdash;or,
+perhaps, thrust into notice by his father,
+who was reasonably proud of him. The lad had
+been taken out of his surroundings and thoroughly
+educated for the priesthood in Rome, but by the
+time he had attained to the age necessary for ordination,
+his artistic gifts had developed to such an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+extent that in spite of his father's disappointment,
+even the old Prince&mdash;the brother of Sister Maria
+Addolorata&mdash;advised Angelo Reanda to give up
+the Church, and to devote himself altogether to
+painting.</p>
+
+<p>Young Reanda had been glad enough of the
+change in his prospects. Many eminent Italians
+have begun life in a similar way. Cardinal Antonelli
+was not the only one, for there have been
+Italian prime ministers as well as dignitaries of
+the Church, whose origin was as humble and who
+owed their subsequent distinction to the kindly
+interest bestowed on them by nobles on whose
+estates their parents were mere peasants, very far
+inferior in station to Angelo Reanda's father, a
+man of a certain education, occupying a position
+of trust and importance.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was Reanda's priestly education anything
+but an advantage to him, so far as his career was
+concerned, however much it had raised him above
+the class in which he had been born. So far as
+latinity and rhetoric were to be counted he was
+better educated than his father's master; for with
+the same advantages he had greater talents, greater
+originality, and greater industry. As an artist, his
+mental culture made him the intellectual superior
+of most of his contemporaries. As a man, ten
+years of close association with the sons of gentlemen
+had easily enough made a gentleman of one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+whose instincts were naturally as refined as his
+character was sensitive and upright.</p>
+
+<p>Donna Francesca, as the last of her branch of
+the family and an orphan at an early age, had of
+course been brought up in the house of her relatives
+of Gerano, and from her childhood had known
+Reanda's father, and Angelo himself, who was fully
+ten years older than she. Some of his first paintings
+had been done in the great Braccio palace, and
+many a time, as a mere girl, she had watched him
+at his work, perched upon a scaffolding, as he
+decorated the vault of the main hall. She could
+not remember the time when she had not heard
+him spoken of as a young genius, and she could
+distinctly recall the discussion which had taken
+place when his fate had been decided for him, and
+when he had been at last told that he might become
+an artist if he chose. At that time she had looked
+upon him with a sort of wondering admiration in
+which there was much real friendly feeling, and as
+she grew up and saw what he could do, and learned
+to appreciate it, she silently determined that he
+should one day help her to restore the dilapidated
+Palazzetto Borgia, where her father and mother
+had died in her infancy, and which she loved with
+that sort of tender attachment which children
+brought up by distant relations often feel for whatever
+has belonged to their own dimly remembered
+parents.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was a natural intimacy between the young
+girl and the artist. Long ago she had played at
+ball with him in the great courtyard of the Gerano
+castle, when he had been at home for his holidays,
+wearing a black cassock and a three-cornered hat,
+like a young priest. Then, all at once, instead of
+a priest he had been a painter, dressed like other
+men and working in the house in which she lived.
+She had played with his colours, had scrawled
+with his charcoals upon the white plastered walls,
+had asked him questions, and had talked with him
+about the famous pictures in the Braccio gallery.
+And all this had happened not once, but many
+times in the course of years. Then she had unfolded
+to him her schemes about her own little
+palace, and he had promised to help her, by and
+bye, half jesting, half in earnest. She would give
+him rooms in the upper story to live in, she said,
+disposing of everything beforehand. He should
+be close to his work, and have it under his hand
+always until it was finished. And when there was
+no more to do, he might still live there and have
+his studio at the top of the old house, with an
+entrance of his own, leading by a narrow staircase
+to one of the dark streets at the back. She had
+noticed all sorts of peculiarities of the building in
+her occasional visits to it with the governess,&mdash;as,
+for instance, that there was a convenient interior
+staircase leading from the great hall to the upper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+story, by a door once painted like the wall, and
+hard to find, but now hanging on its hinges and
+hideously apparent. The great hall must all be
+painted again, and Angelo could live overhead and
+come down to his work by those steps. With
+childish pleasure she praised her own ingenuity in
+so arranging matters beforehand. Angelo was to
+help her in all she did, until the Palazzetto Borgia
+should be as beautiful as the Palazzo Braccio
+itself, though of course it was much smaller.
+Then she scrawled on the walls again, trying to
+explain to him, in childishly futile sketches, her
+ideas of decoration, and he would come down from
+his scaffold and do his best with a few broad lines
+to show her what she had really imagined, till she
+clapped her small, dusty hands with delight and
+was ultimately carried off by her governess to be
+made presentable for her daily drive in the Villa
+Borghese with the Princess of Gerano.</p>
+
+<p>As a girl Francesca had the rare gift of seeing
+clearly in her mind what she wanted, and at last
+she had found herself possessed of the power to
+carry out her intentions. As a matter of course
+she had taken Reanda into her confidence as her
+chief helper, and the intimacy which dated from
+her childhood had continued on very much the same
+footing. His talent had grown and been consolidated
+by ten years of good work, and she, as a
+young married woman, had understood what she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+had meant when she had been a child. Reanda was
+now admittedly, in his department, the first painter
+in Rome, and that was fame in those days. His
+high education and general knowledge of all artistic
+matters made him an interesting companion in
+such work as Francesca had undertaken, and he
+had, moreover, a personal charm of manner and
+voice which had always attracted her.</p>
+
+<p>No one, perhaps, would have called him a handsome
+man, and at this time he was no longer in
+his first youth. He was tall, thin, and very dark,
+though his black beard had touches of a deep gold-brown
+colour in it, which contrasted a little with
+his dusky complexion. He had a sad face, with
+deep, lustreless, thoughtful eyes, which seemed to
+peer inward rather than outward. In the olive
+skin there were heavy brown shadows, and the
+bony prominence of the brow left hollows at the
+temples, from which the fine black hair grew with
+a backward turn which gave something unusual
+to his expression. The aquiline nose which characterizes
+so many Roman faces, was thin and delicate,
+with sensitive nostrils that often moved when he
+was speaking. The eyebrows were irregular and
+thick, extending in a dark down beyond the lower
+angles of the forehead, and almost meeting between
+the eyes; but the somewhat gloomy expression
+which this gave him was modified by a certain
+sensitive grace of the mouth, little hidden by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+thin black moustache or by the beard, which did
+not grow up to the lower lip, though it was thick
+and silky from the chin downwards.</p>
+
+<p>It was a thoughtful face, but there was creative
+power in the high forehead, as there was direct
+energy in the long arms and lean, nervous hands.
+Donna Francesca liked to watch him at his work,
+as she had watched him when she was a little girl.
+Now and then, but very rarely, the lustreless eyes
+lighted up, just before he put in some steady,
+determining stroke which brought out the meaning
+of the design. There was a quick fire in them
+then, at the instant when the main idea was outwardly
+expressed, and if she spoke to him inadvertently
+at such a moment, he never answered her at
+once, and sometimes forgot to answer her at all.
+For his art was always first with him. She knew
+it, and she liked him the better for it.</p>
+
+<p>The intimacy between the great lady and the
+artist was, indeed, founded upon this devotion of
+his to his painting, but it was sustained by a sort
+of community of interests extending far back into
+darker ages, when his forefathers had been bondsmen
+to her ancestors in the days of serfdom. He
+had grown up with the clearly defined sensation of
+belonging with, if not to, the house of Braccio.
+His father had been a trusty and trusted dependent
+of the family, and he had imbibed as a mere child
+its hereditary likes and dislikes, its traditions wise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+and foolish, together with an indomitable pride in
+its high fortunes and position in the world. And
+Francesca herself was a true Braccio, though she
+was descended from a collateral branch, and, next
+to the Prince of Gerano, had been to Reanda by
+far the most important person bearing the name.
+She had admired him when she had been a child,
+had encouraged him as she grew up, and now she
+provided his genius with employment, and gave
+him her friendship as a solace and delight both in
+work and idleness. It is said that only Italians
+can be admitted to such a position with the certainty
+that they will not under any circumstances
+presume upon it. To Angelo Reanda it meant
+much more than to most men who could have been
+placed as he was. His genius raised him far above
+the class in which he had been born, and his education,
+with his natural and acquired refinement,
+placed him on a higher level than the majority of
+other Roman artists, who, in the Rome of that day,
+inhabited a Bohemia of their own which has completely
+disappeared. Their ideas and conversation,
+when they were serious, interested him, but their
+manners were not his, and their gaiety was frankly
+distasteful to him. He associated with them as an
+artist, but not as a companion, and he particularly
+disliked their wives and daughters, who, in their
+turn, found him too 'serious' for their society, to
+use the time-honoured Italian expression. Nevertheless,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+his natural gentleness of disposition made
+him treat them all alike with quiet courtesy, and
+when, as often happened, he was obliged to be in
+their company, he honestly endeavoured to be one
+of them as far as he could.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, he had no footing in the
+society to which Francesca belonged, but for which
+she cared so little. There were, indeed, one or
+two houses where he was received, as he was at
+Casa Braccio, in a manner which, for the very
+reason that it was familiar, proved his social inferiority&mdash;where
+he addressed the head of the house
+as 'Excellency' and was called 'Reanda' by everybody,
+elders and juniors alike, where he was appreciated
+as an artist, respected as a man, and welcomed
+occasionally as a guest when no other outsider
+was present, but where he was not looked upon as
+a personage to be invited even with the great
+throng on state occasions. He was as far from
+receiving such cold acknowledgments of social
+existence as those who received them and nothing
+else were distantly removed from intimacy on an
+equal footing.</p>
+
+<p>He did not complain of such treatment, nor even
+inwardly resent it. The friendliness shown him
+was as real as the kindness he had received throughout
+his early youth from the Prince of Gerano, and
+he was not the man to undervalue it because he
+had not a drop of gentle blood in his veins. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+his refined nature craved refined intercourse, and
+preferred solitude to what he could get in any
+lower sphere. The desire for the atmosphere of
+the uppermost class, rather than the mere wish to
+appear as one of its members, often belongs to the
+artistic temperament, and many artists are unjustly
+disliked by their fellows and pointed at as snobs
+because they prefer, as an atmosphere, inane elegance
+to inelegant intellectuality. It is often forgotten
+by those who calumniate them that hereditary elegance,
+no matter how empty-headed, is
+the result of an hereditary cultivation of what
+is thought beautiful, and that the vainest, silliest
+woman who dresses well by instinct is an artist in
+her way.</p>
+
+<p>In Francesca Campodonico there was much more
+than such superficial taste, and in her Reanda found
+the only true companion he had ever known. He
+might have been for twenty years the intimate
+friend of all Roman society without meeting such
+another, and he knew it, and appreciated his good
+fortune. For he was not naturally a dissatisfied
+man, nor at all given to complain of his lot. Few
+men are, who have active, creative genius, and
+whose profession gives them all the scope they
+need. Of late years, too, Francesca had treated
+him with a sort of deference which he got from no
+one else in the world. He realized that she did,
+without attempting to account for the fact, which,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+indeed, depended on something past his comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>He felt for her something like veneration. The
+word does not express exactly the attitude of his
+mind towards her, but no other defines his position
+so well. He was not in love with her in the Italian
+sense of the expression, for he did not conceive it
+possible that she should ever love him, whereas he
+told himself that he might possibly marry, if he
+found a wife to his taste, and be in love with his
+wife without in the least infringing upon his devotion
+to Donna Francesca.</p>
+
+<p>That she was young and lovely, if not beautiful,
+he saw and knew. He even admitted unconsciously
+that if she had been an old woman he could not
+have 'venerated' her as he did, though veneration,
+as such, is the due of the old rather than of the
+young. Her spiritual eyes and virginal face were
+often before him in his dreams and waking thoughts.
+There was a maidenlike modesty, as it were, even
+about her graceful bodily self, which belonged, in
+his imagination, to a saint upon an altar, rather
+than to a statue upon a pedestal. There was
+something in the sweep of her soft dark brown
+hair which suggested that it would be sacrilege
+and violence for a man's hand to touch it. There
+was a dewy delicacy on her young lips, as though
+they could kiss nothing more earthly than a newly
+opened flower, already above the earth, but not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+yet touched by the sun. There was a thoughtful
+turn of modelling in the smooth, white forehead,
+which it was utterly beyond Reanda's art to reproduce,
+often as he had tried. He thought a great
+sculptor might succeed, and it was the one thing
+which made him sometimes wish that he had taken
+the chisel for his tool, instead of the brush.</p>
+
+<p>She was never considered one of the great
+beauties of Rome. She had not the magnificent
+presence and colouring of her kinswoman, Maria
+Addolorata, whose tragic death in the convent of
+Subiaco&mdash;a fictitious tragedy accepted as real by
+all Roman society&mdash;had given her a special place
+in the history of the Braccio family. She had not
+the dark and queenly splendour of Corona d'Astradente,
+her contemporary and the most beautiful
+woman of her time. But she had, for those who
+loved her, something which was quite her own and
+which placed her beyond them in some ways and,
+in any case, out of competition for the homage received
+by the great beauties. No one recognized
+this more fully than Angelo Reanda, and he would
+as soon have thought of being in love with her, as
+men love women, as he would have imagined that
+his father, for instance, could have loved Maria
+Addolorata, the Carmelite nun.</p>
+
+<p>The one human point in his devoted adoration
+lay in his terror lest Francesca Campodonico should
+die young and leave him to grow old without her.
+He sometimes told her so.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You should marry," she answered one day,
+when they were together in the great hall which
+he was decorating.</p>
+
+<p>She was still dressed in black, and as she spoke,
+he turned and saw the outline of her small pure
+face against the high back of the old chair in
+which she was sitting. It was so white just then
+that he fancied he saw in it that fatal look which
+belonged to some of the Braccio family, and which
+was always spoken of as having been one of Maria
+Addolorata's chief characteristics. He looked at
+her long and sadly, leaning against an upright of
+his scaffolding as he stood on the floor near her,
+holding his brushes in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think I shall ever marry," he answered
+at last, looking down and idly mixing two colours
+on his palette.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" she asked quickly. "I have heard
+you say that you might, some day."</p>
+
+<p>"Some day, some day&mdash;and then, all at once,
+the 'some day' is past, and is not any more in the
+future. Why should I marry? I am well enough
+as I am; there would only be unhappiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that every one who marries must
+be unhappy?" she asked. "You are cynical. I
+did not know it."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I am not cynical. I say it only of myself.
+There are many reasons. I could not marry such
+a woman as I should wish to have for my wife.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+You must surely understand that. It is very easy
+to understand."</p>
+
+<p>He made as though he would go up the ladder
+to his little platform and continue his work. But
+she stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the use of hurting your eyes?" she
+asked. "It is late, and the light is bad. Besides,
+I am not so sure that I understand what you mean,
+though you say that it is so easy. We have never
+talked about it much."</p>
+
+<p>He laid his palette and brushes upon a ragged
+straw chair and sat down upon another, not far
+from her. There was no other furniture in the
+great vaulted hall, and the brick pavement was
+bare, and splashed in many places with white plaster.
+Fresco-painting can only be done upon stucco
+just laid on, while it is still moist, and a mason
+came early every day and prepared as much of the
+wall as Reanda could cover before night. If he
+did not paint over the whole surface, the remainder
+was chipped away and freshly laid over on the following
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>The evening light already reddened the tall
+western windows, for it was autumn, and the days
+were shortening quickly. Reanda knew that he
+could not do much more, and sat down, to answer
+Francesca's question, if he could.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not a gentleman, as you understand the
+word," he said slowly. "And yet I am certainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+not of the class to which my father belonged. My
+position is not defined. I could not marry a woman
+of your class, and I should not care to marry one
+of any other. That is all. Is it not clear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Francesca. "It is clear
+enough. But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She checked herself, and he looked into her face,
+expecting her to continue. But she said nothing
+more.</p>
+
+<p>"You were going to find an objection to what I
+said," he observed.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I was not. I will say it, for you will
+understand me. What you tell me is true enough,
+and I am sorry that it should be so. Is it not to
+some extent my fault?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your fault?" cried Reanda, leaning forward
+and looking into her eyes. "How? I do not
+understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I blame myself," answered Francesca, quietly.
+"I have kept you out of the world, perhaps, and
+in many ways. Here you live, day after day, as
+though nothing else existed for you. In the morning,
+long before I am awake, you come down your
+staircase through that door, and go up that ladder,
+and work, and work, and work, all day long, until it
+is dark, as you have worked to-day, and yesterday,
+and for months. And when you might and should
+be out of doors, or associating with other people,
+as just now, I sit and talk to you and take up all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+your leisure time. It is wrong. You ought to see
+more of other men and women. Do men of genius
+never marry? It seems to me absurd!"</p>
+
+<p>"Genius!" exclaimed Reanda, shaking his head
+sadly. "Do not use the word of me."</p>
+
+<p>"I will do as other people do," answered Francesca.
+"But that is not the question. The truth
+is that you live pent up in this old house, like a
+bird in a cage. I want you to spread your wings."</p>
+
+<p>"To go away for a time?" asked Reanda,
+anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not say that. Perhaps I should. Yes,
+if you could enjoy a journey, go away&mdash;for a
+time."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with some hesitation and rather nervously,
+for he had said more than she had meant
+to propose.</p>
+
+<p>"Just to make a change," she added, after a
+moment's pause, as he said nothing. "You ought
+to see more of other people, as I said. You ought
+to mix with the world. You ought at least to
+offer yourself the chance of marrying, even if you
+think that you might not find a wife to your
+taste."</p>
+
+<p>"If I do not find one here&mdash;" He did not complete
+the sentence, but smiled a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Must you marry a Roman princess?" she
+asked. "What should you say to a foreigner?
+Is that impossible, too?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It would matter little where she came from,
+if I wished to marry her," he answered. "But I
+like my life as it is. Why should I try to change
+it? I am happy as I am. I work, and I enjoy
+working. I work for you, and you are satisfied.
+It seems to me that there is nothing more to be
+said. Why are you so anxious that I should
+marry?"</p>
+
+<p>Donna Francesca laughed softly, but without
+much mirth.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I think that in some way it is my
+fault if you have not married," she said. "And
+besides, I was thinking of a young girl whom I
+met, or rather, saw, the other day, and who might
+please you. She has the most beautiful voice in
+the world, I think. She could make her fortune
+as a singer, and I believe she wishes to try it.
+But her father objects. They are foreigners&mdash;English
+or Scotch&mdash;it is the same. She is a mere
+child, they say, but she seems to be quite grown
+up. There is something strange about them. He
+is a man of science, I am told, but I fancy he is
+one of those English enthusiasts about Italian
+liberty. His name is Dalrymple."</p>
+
+<p>"What a name!" Reanda laughed. "I suppose
+they have come to spend the winter in Rome," he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. I hear that they have lived here
+for years. But one never meets the foreigners,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+unless they wish to be in society. His wife died
+young, they say, and this girl is his only daughter.
+I wish you could hear her sing!"</p>
+
+<p>"For that matter, I wish I might," said Reanda,
+who was passionately fond of music.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Seventeen</span> years had scored their account on
+Angus Dalrymple's hard face, and one great sorrow
+had set an even deeper mark upon him&mdash;a
+sorrow so deep and so overwhelming that none had
+ever dared to speak of it to him. And he was not
+the man to bear any affliction resignedly, to feed
+on memory, and find rest in the dreams of what
+had been. Sullenly and fiercely rebellious against
+his fate, he went down life, rather than through
+it, savage and silent, for the most part, Nero-like
+in his wish that he could end the world at a single
+blow, himself and all that lived. Yet it was
+characteristic of the man that he had not chosen
+suicide as a means of escape, as he would have
+done in his earlier years, if Maria Addolorata had
+failed him. It seemed cowardly now, and he had
+never done anything cowardly in his life. Through
+his grief the sense of responsibility had remained
+with him, and had kept him alive. He looked
+upon his existence not as a state from which he
+had a right to escape, but as a personal enemy to
+be fought with, to be despised, to be ill-treated
+barbarously, perhaps, but still as an enemy to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+murder whom in cold blood would be an act of
+cowardice.</p>
+
+<p>There was little more than the mere sense of the
+responsibility, for he did little enough to fulfil his
+obligations. His wife had borne him a daughter,
+but it was not in Angus Dalrymple's nature to substitute
+one being in his heart for another. He could
+not love the girl simply because her mother was
+dead. He could only spoil her, with a rough idea
+that she should be spared all suffering as much as
+possible, but that if he gave her what she wanted,
+he had done all that could be expected of him.
+For the rest, he lived his own life.</p>
+
+<p>He had a good intelligence and superior gifts,
+together with considerable powers of intellectual
+acquisition. He had believed in his youth that he
+was destined to make great discoveries, and his
+papers afterwards showed that he was really on
+the track of great and new things. But with his
+bereavement, all ambition as well as all curiosity
+disappeared in one day from his character. Since
+then he had never gone back to his studies, which
+disgusted him and seemed stale and flat. He
+grew rudely dogmatical when scientific matters
+were discussed before him, as he had become rough,
+tyrannical, and almost violent in his ordinary dealings
+with the world, whenever he found any opposition
+to his opinions or his will. The only exception
+he made was in his treatment of his daughter,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+whom he indulged in every way except in her
+desire to be a public singer. It seemed to him
+that to give her everything she wanted was to fulfil
+all his obligations to her; in the one question
+of appearing on the stage he was inflexible. He
+simply refused to hear of it, rarely giving her any
+reasons beyond the ordinary ones which present
+themselves in such cases, and which were far from
+answering the impulse of the girl's genius.</p>
+
+<p>They had called her Gloria in the days of their
+passionate happiness. The sentimental name had
+meant a great deal to them, for Dalrymple had
+at that time developed that sort of uncouth sentimentality
+which is in strong men like a fungus on
+an oak, and disgusts them afterwards unless they
+are able to forget it. The two had felt that the
+glory of life was in the child, and they had named
+her for it, as it were.</p>
+
+<p>Years afterwards Dalrymple brought the little
+girl to Rome, drawn back irresistibly to the place
+by that physical association of impressions which
+moves such men strongly. They had remained,
+keeping from year to year a lodging Dalrymple
+had hired, at first hired for a few months. He
+never went to Subiaco.</p>
+
+<p>He gave Gloria teachers, the best that could be
+found, and there were good instructors in those
+days when people were willing to take time in
+learning. In music she had her mother's voice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+and talent. Her father gave her a musician's
+opportunities, and it was no wonder that she should
+dream of conquering Europe from behind the footlights
+as Grisi had done, and as Patti was just
+about to do in her turn.</p>
+
+<p>She and her father spoke English together, but
+Gloria was bilingual, as children of mixed marriages
+often are, speaking English and Italian with equal
+ease. Dalrymple found a respectable middle-aged
+German governess who came daily and spent most
+of the day with Gloria, teaching her and walking
+with her&mdash;worshipping her, too, with that curious
+faculty for idealizing the very human, which belongs
+to German governesses when they like their
+pupils.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple led his own life. Had he chosen to
+mix in Roman society, he would have been well
+received, as a member of a great Scotch family and
+not very far removed from the head of his house.
+No one of his relatives had ever known the truth
+about his wife except his father, who had died
+with the secret, and it was not likely that any one
+should ask questions. If any one did, he would
+certainly not satisfy such curiosity. But he cared
+little for society, and spent his time either alone
+with books and wine, or in occasional excursions
+into the artist world, where his eccentricities excited
+little remark, and where he met men who
+secretly sympathized with the Italian revolutionary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+movement, and dabbled in conspiracies which
+rather amused than disquieted the papal government.</p>
+
+<p>Though Gloria was at that time but little more
+than sixteen years of age, her father took her with
+him to little informal parties at the studios or even
+at the houses of artists, where there was often
+good music, and clever if not serious conversation.
+The conventionalities of age were little regarded
+in such circles. Gloria appeared, too, much older
+than she really was, and her marvellous voice made
+her a centre of attraction at an age when most
+young girls are altogether in the background. Dalrymple
+never objected to her singing on such occasions,
+and he invariably listened with closed eyes
+and folded hands, as though he were assisting at a
+religious service. Her voice was like her mother's,
+excepting that it was pitched higher, and had all
+the compass and power necessary for a great
+soprano. Dalrymple's almost devout attitude when
+Gloria was singing was the only allusion, if one
+may call it so, which he ever made to his dead
+wife's existence, and no one who watched him
+knew what it meant. But he was often more silent
+than usual after she had sung, and he sometimes
+went off by himself afterwards and sat for hours
+in one of the old wine cellars near the Capitol,
+drinking gloomily of the oldest and strongest he
+could find. For he drank more or less perpetually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+in the evening, and wine made him melancholic
+and morose, though it did not seem to affect him
+otherwise. Little by little, however, it was dulling
+the early keenness of his intellect, though it
+hardly touched his constitution at all. He was
+lean and bony still, as in the old days, but paler
+in the face, and he had allowed his red beard to
+grow. It was streaked with grey, and there were
+small, nervous lines about his eyes, as well as deep
+furrows on his forehead and face.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple had found in the artist world a man
+who was something of a companion to him at
+times,&mdash;a very young man, whom he could not
+understand, though his own dogmatic temper made
+him as a rule believe that he understood most
+things and most men. But this particular individual
+alternately puzzled, delighted, and irritated
+the nervous Scotchman.</p>
+
+<p>They had made acquaintance at an artists' supper
+in the previous year, had afterwards met accidentally
+at the bookseller's in the Piazza di Spagna,
+where they both went from time to time to look
+at the English newspapers, and little by little they
+had fallen into the habit of meeting there of a
+morning, and of strolling in the direction of Dalrymple's
+lodging afterwards. At last Dalrymple
+had asked his companion to come in and look at a
+book, and so the acquaintance had grown. Gloria
+watched the young stranger, and at first she disliked
+him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The aforesaid bookseller dealt, and deals still,
+in photographs and prints, as well as in foreign
+and Italian books. At the present time his establishment
+is distinctively a Roman Catholic one.
+In those days it was almost the only one of its
+kind, and was patronized alike by Romans and
+foreigners. Even Donna Francesca Campodonico
+went there from time to time for a book on art or
+an engraving which she and Reanda needed for
+their work. They occasionally walked all the way
+from the Palazzetto Borgia to the Piazza di Spagna
+together in the morning. When they had found
+what they wanted, Donna Francesca generally
+drove home in a cab, and Reanda went to his midday
+meal before returning. For the line of his
+intimacy with her was drawn at this point. He
+had never sat down at the same table with her, and
+he never expected to do so. As the two stood to
+one another at present, though Francesca would
+willingly have asked him to breakfast, she would
+have hesitated to do so, merely because the first invitation
+would inevitably call attention to the fact
+that the line had been drawn somewhere, whereas
+both were willing to believe that it had never
+existed at all. Under any pressure of necessity
+she would have driven with him in a cab, but not
+in her own carriage. They both knew it, and by
+tacit consent never allowed such unknown possibilities
+to suggest themselves. But in the mornings,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+there was nothing to prevent their walking together
+as far as the Piazza di Spagna, or anywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>They went to the bookseller's one day soon after
+the conversation which had led Francesca to mention
+the Dalrymples. As they walked along the
+east side of the great square, they saw two men
+before them.</p>
+
+<p>"There goes the Gladiator," said Reanda to his
+companion, suddenly. "There is no mistaking
+his walk, even at this distance."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" asked Francesca. "Unless
+I am mistaken, the man who is a little the
+taller, the one in the rough English clothes, is Mr.
+Dalrymple. I spoke of him the other day, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Is that he? The other has a still more
+extraordinary name. He is Paul Griggs. He is
+the son of an American consul who died in Civita
+Vecchia twenty years ago, and left him a sort of
+waif, for he had no money and apparently no relatives.
+Somehow he has grown up, Heaven knows
+how, and gets a living by journalism. I believe
+he was at sea for some years as a boy. He is
+really as much Italian as American. I have met
+him with artists and literary people."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you call him the Gladiator?" asked
+Francesca, with some interest.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a nickname he has got. Cotogni, the
+sculptor, was in despair for a model last year.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+Griggs and two or three other men were in the
+studio, and somebody suggested that Griggs was
+very near the standard of the ancients in his proportions.
+They persuaded him to let them measure
+him. You know that in the 'Canons' of proportion,
+the Borghese Gladiator&mdash;the one in the
+Louvre&mdash;is given as the best example of an
+athlete. They measured Griggs then and there,
+and found that he was at all points the exact living
+image of the statue. The name has stuck to him.
+You see what a fellow he is, and how he walks."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he looks strong," said Francesca, watching
+the man with natural curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>The young American was a little shorter than
+Dalrymple, but evidently better proportioned. No
+one could fail to notice the vast breadth of shoulder,
+the firm, columnar throat, and the small athlete's
+head with close-set ears. He moved without
+any of that swinging motion of the upper part of
+the body which is natural to many strong men and
+was noticeable in Dalrymple, but there was something
+peculiar in his walk, almost undefinable, but
+conveying the idea of very great strength with
+very great elasticity.</p>
+
+<p>"But he is an ugly man," observed Reanda,
+almost immediately. "Ugly, but not repulsive.
+You will see, if he turns his head. His face is
+like a mask. It is not the face you would expect
+with such a body."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How curious!" exclaimed Francesca, rather
+idly, for her interest in Paul Griggs was almost
+exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>They went on along the crowded pavement.
+When they reached the bookseller's and went in,
+they saw that the two men were there before them,
+looking over the foreign papers, which were neatly
+arranged on a little table apart. Dalrymple looked
+up and recognized Francesca, to whom he had been
+introduced at a small concert given for a charity
+in a private house, on which occasion Gloria had
+sung. He lifted his hat from his head and laid it
+down upon the newspapers, when Francesca rather
+unexpectedly held out her hand to him in English
+fashion. He had left a card at her house on the
+day after their meeting, but as she was alone in the
+world, she had no means of returning the civility.</p>
+
+<p>"It would give me great pleasure if you would
+bring your daughter to see me," she said graciously.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very kind," answered Dalrymple, his
+steely blue eyes scrutinizing her pure young features.</p>
+
+<p>She only glanced at him, for she was suddenly
+conscious that his companion was looking at her.
+He, too, had laid down his hat, and she instantly
+understood what Reanda had meant by comparing
+his face to a mask. The features were certainly
+very far from handsome. If they were redeemed at
+all, it was by the very deep-set eyes, which gazed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+into hers in a strangely steady way, as though
+the lids never could droop from under the heavy
+overhanging brow, and then, still unwinking,
+turned in another direction. The man's complexion
+was of that perfectly even but almost sallow
+colour which often belongs to very strong melancholic
+temperaments. His face was clean-shaven
+and unnaturally square and expressionless, excepting
+for such life as there was in the deep eyes.
+Dark, straight, closely cut hair grew thick and
+smooth as a priest's skull-cap, low on the forehead
+and far forward at the temples. The level mouth,
+firmly closed, divided the lower part of the face
+like the scar of a straight sabre-cut. The nose
+was very thick between the eyes, relatively long,
+with unusually broad nostrils which ran upward
+from the point to the lean cheeks. The man wore
+very dark clothes of extreme simplicity, and at a
+time when pins and chains were much in fashion,
+he had not anything visible about him of gold or
+silver. He wore his watch on a short, doubled
+piece of black silk braid slipped through his
+buttonhole. He dressed almost as though he
+were in mourning.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca unconsciously looked at him so intently
+for a moment that Dalrymple thought it
+natural to introduce him, fancying that she might
+have heard of him and might wish to know him
+out of curiosity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"May I introduce Mr. Griggs?" he said, with
+the stiff inclination which was a part of his manner.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs bowed, and Donna Francesca bent her
+head a little. Reanda came up and shook hands
+with the American, and Francesca introduced the
+artist to Dalrymple.</p>
+
+<p>"I have long wished to have the pleasure of
+knowing you, Signor Reanda," said the latter.
+"We have many mutual acquaintances among the
+artists here. I may say that I am a great admirer
+of your work, and my daughter, too, for that
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>Reanda said something civil as his hand parted
+from the Scotchman's. Francesca saw an opportunity
+of bringing Reanda and Gloria together.</p>
+
+<p>"As you like Signor Reanda's painting so much,"
+she said to Dalrymple, "will you not bring your
+daughter this afternoon to see the frescoes he is
+doing in my house? You know the Palazzetto?
+Of course&mdash;you left a card, but I had no one to
+return it," she added rather sadly. "Will you
+also come, Mr. Griggs?" she asked, turning to the
+American. "It will give me much pleasure, and
+I see you know Signor Reanda. This afternoon,
+if you like, at any time after four o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>Both Dalrymple and Griggs secretly wondered
+a little at receiving such an invitation from a
+Roman lady whom the one had met but once before,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+and to whom the other had but just been introduced.
+But they bowed their thanks, and promised
+to come.</p>
+
+<p>After a few more words they separated, Francesca
+and Reanda to pick out the engraving they wanted,
+and the other two men to return to their newspapers.
+By and bye Francesca passed them again,
+on her way out.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall expect you after four o'clock," she said,
+nodding graciously as she went by.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple looked after her, till she had left the
+shop.</p>
+
+<p>"That woman is not like other women, I think,"
+he said thoughtfully, to his companion.</p>
+
+<p>The mask-like face turned itself deliberately
+towards him, with shadowy, unwinking eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered Griggs, and he slowly took up
+his paper again.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Donna Francesca</span> received her three guests in
+the drawing-room, on the side of the house which
+she inhabited. Reanda was at his work in the
+great hall.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria entered first, followed closely by her
+father, and Francesca was dazzled by the young
+girl's brilliancy of colour and expression, though
+she had seen her once before. As she came in, the
+afternoon sun streamed upon her face and turned
+her auburn hair to red gold, and gleamed upon her
+small white teeth as her strong lips parted to speak
+the first words. She was tall and supple, graceful
+as a panther, and her voice rang and whispered
+and rang again in quick changes of tone, like a
+waterfall in the woods in summer. With much of
+her mother's beauty, she had inherited from her
+father the violent vitality of his youth. Yet she
+was not noisy, though her manners were not like
+Francesca's. Her voice rippled and rang, but she
+did not speak too loud. She moved swiftly and
+surely, but not with rude haste. Nevertheless, it
+seemed to Francesca that there must be some
+exaggeration somewhere. The elder woman at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+first set it down as a remnant of schoolgirl shyness,
+and then at once felt that she was mistaken,
+because there was not the smallest awkwardness
+nor lack of self-possession about it. The contrast
+between the young girl and Paul Griggs was so
+striking as to be almost violent. He was cold and
+funereal in his leonine strength, and his face was
+more like a mask than ever as he bowed and sat
+down in silence. When he did not remind her of
+a gladiator, he made her think of a black lion with
+a strange, human face, and eyes that were not
+exactly human, though they did not remind her
+of any animal's eyes which she had ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>As for Dalrymple, she thought that he was
+singularly haggard and worn for a man apparently
+only in middle age. There was a certain imposing
+air about him, which she liked. Besides, she
+rarely met foreigners, and they interested her.
+She noticed that both men wore black coats and
+carried their tall hats in their hands. They were
+therefore not artists, nor to be classed with artists.
+She was still young enough to judge them to some
+extent by details, to which people attached a good
+deal more importance at that time than at present.
+She made up her mind in the course of the next
+few minutes that both Dalrymple and Griggs belonged
+to her own class, though she did not ask
+herself where the young American had got his manners.
+But somehow, though Gloria fascinated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+her eyes and her ears, she set down the girl as
+being inferior to her father. She wondered
+whether Gloria's mother had not been an actress;
+which was a curious reflexion, considering that the
+dead woman had been of her own house and name.</p>
+
+<p>After exchanging a few words with her guests,
+Francesca suggested that they should cross to the
+other side and see the frescoes, adding that Reanda
+was probably still at work.</p>
+
+<p>"You know him, Mr. Griggs?" she said, as they
+all rose to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered, "as one man knows another."</p>
+
+<p>"What does that mean?" asked Francesca, moving
+towards the door to lead the way.</p>
+
+<p>"It does not mean much," replied the young man,
+with curious ambiguity.</p>
+
+<p>He was very gentle in his manner, and spoke in
+a low voice and rather diffidently. She looked at
+him as though mentally determining to renew the
+question at some other time. Her first impression
+was that of a sort of duality about the man, as she
+found the possibility of a double meaning in his
+answer. His magnificent frame seemed to belong
+to one person, his voice and manner to another.
+Both might be good in their way, but her curiosity
+was excited by the side which was the less apparent.</p>
+
+<p>They all went through the house till they came
+to a door which divided the inhabited part from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+hall in which Reanda was working. She knocked
+gently upon it with her knuckles, and then smiled
+as she saw Gloria looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>"We keep it locked," she said. "The masons
+come in the morning to lay on the stucco. One
+never trusts those people. Signor Reanda keeps
+the key of this door."</p>
+
+<p>The artist opened from within, and stood aside
+to let the party pass. He started perceptibly
+when he first saw Gloria. As a boy he had seen
+Maria Braccio more than once before she had
+entered the convent, and he was struck by the
+girl's strong resemblance to her. Francesca, following
+Gloria, saw his movement of surprise, and
+attributed it merely to admiration or astonishment
+such as she had felt herself a quarter of an hour
+earlier. She smiled a little as she went by, and
+Reanda knew that the smile was for him because
+he had shown surprise. He understood the misinterpretation,
+and resented it a little.</p>
+
+<p>But she knew Reanda well, and before ten minutes
+had passed she had convinced herself that he
+was repelled rather than attracted by the young
+girl, in spite of the latter's undisguised admiration
+of his work. It was not mere unintelligent
+enthusiasm, either, and he might well have been
+pleased and flattered by her unaffected praise.</p>
+
+<p>She was interested, too, in the technical mechanics
+of fresco-painting, which she had never before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+been able to see at close quarters. Everything
+interested Gloria, and especially everything connected
+with art. As soon as they had all spoken
+their first words of compliment and appreciation,
+she entered into conversation with the painter,
+asking him all sorts of questions, and listening
+earnestly to what he said, until he realized that
+she was certainly not assuming an appearance of
+admiration for the sake of flattering him.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Francesca talked with Griggs, and
+Dalrymple, having gone slowly round the hall
+alone after all the others, came and stood beside
+the two and watched Francesca, occasionally
+offering a rather dry remark in a somewhat
+absent-minded way. It was all rather commonplace
+and decidedly quiet, and he was not much
+amused, though from time to time he seemed to
+become absorbed in studying Francesca's face, as
+though he saw something there which was past his
+comprehension. She noticed that he watched her,
+and felt a little uncomfortable under his steely
+blue eyes, so that she turned her head and talked
+more with Griggs than with him. Remembering
+what Reanda had told her of the young man's
+origin, she did not like to ask him the common
+questions about residence in Rome and his liking
+for Italy. She was self-possessed and ready enough
+at conversation, and she chose to talk of general
+subjects. They talked in Italian, of course. Dalrymple,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+as of old, spoke fluently, but with a strange
+accent. Any one would have taken Paul Griggs
+for a Roman. At last, almost in spite of herself,
+she made a remark about his speech.</p>
+
+<p>"I was born here," answered Griggs. "It is
+much more remarkable that Miss Dalrymple should
+speak Italian as she does, having been born in
+Scotland."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you talking about me?" asked the young
+girl, turning her head quickly, though she was
+standing with Reanda at some distance from the
+others.</p>
+
+<p>"I was speaking of your accent in Italian," said
+Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything wrong about it?" asked
+Gloria, with an anxiety that seemed exaggerated.</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary," answered Donna Francesca,
+"Mr. Griggs was telling me how perfectly you
+speak. But I had noticed it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I thought Mr. Griggs was finding fault,"
+answered Gloria, turning to Reanda again.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple looked at his daughter as though he
+were annoyed. The eyes of Francesca and Griggs
+met for a moment. All three were aware that they
+resented the young girl's quick question as one
+which they themselves would not have asked in
+her place, had they accidentally heard their names
+mentioned in a distant conversation. But Francesca
+instantly went on with the subject.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"To us Italians," she said, "it seems incredible
+that any one should speak our language and English
+equally well. It is as though you were two persons,
+Mr. Griggs," she added, smiling at the covered
+expression of her thought about him.</p>
+
+<p>"I sometimes think so myself," answered Griggs,
+with one of his steady looks. "In a way, every
+one must have a sort of duality&mdash;a good and evil
+principle."</p>
+
+<p>"God and the devil," suggested Francesca,
+simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Body and soul would do, I suppose. The one
+is always in slavery to the other. The result is
+a sinner or a saint, as the case may be. One never
+can tell," he added more carelessly. "I am not
+sure that it matters. But one can see it. The
+battle is fought in the face."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not understand. What battle?"</p>
+
+<p>"The battle between body and soul. The face
+tells which way the fight is going."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at his own, and she felt that she could
+not tell. But to a certain extent she understood
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Griggs is full of theories," observed Dalrymple.
+"Gloria, come down!" he cried in English, suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria, intent upon understanding how fresco-painting
+was done, was boldly mounting the steps
+of the ladder towards the top of the little scaffolding,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+which might have been fourteen feet high.
+For the vault had long been finished, and Reanda
+was painting the walls.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, papa!" answered the young girl,
+also in English. "There's no danger at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;don't break your neck," said Dalrymple.
+"I wish you would come down, though."</p>
+
+<p>Francesca was surprised at his indifference, and
+at his daughter's calm disregard of his authority.
+Timid, too, as most Italian women of higher rank,
+she watched the girl nervously. Griggs raised his
+eyes without lifting his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Gloria is rather wild," said Dalrymple, in a
+sort of apology. "I hope you will forgive her&mdash;she
+is so much interested."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;if she wishes to see, let her go, of
+course," answered Francesca, concealing a little
+nervous irritation she felt.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later Gloria and Reanda were on the
+small platform, on one side of which only there was
+a hand rail. It had been made for him, and his
+head was steady even at a much greater elevation.
+He was pointing out to her the way in which the
+colours slowly changed as the stucco dried from
+day to day, and explaining how it was impossible
+to see the effect of what was done until all was
+completely dry. The others continued to talk
+below, but Griggs glanced up from time to time,
+and Francesca's eyes followed his. Dalrymple<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+had become indifferent, allowing his daughter to
+do what she pleased, as usual.</p>
+
+<p>When Gloria had seen all she wished to see, she
+turned with a quick movement to come down again,
+and on turning, she found herself much nearer to
+the edge than she had expected. She was bending
+forwards a little, and Griggs saw at once that she
+must lose her balance, unless Reanda caught her
+from behind. But she made no sound, and turned
+very white as she swayed a little, trying to throw
+herself back.</p>
+
+<p>With a swift movement that was gentle but irresistible,
+Griggs pushed Francesca back, keeping
+his eyes on the girl above. It all happened in an
+instant.</p>
+
+<p>"Jump!" he cried, in a voice of command.</p>
+
+<p>She had felt that she must spring or fall, and
+her body was already overbalanced as she threw
+herself off, instinctively gathering her skirt with
+her hands. Dalrymple turned as pale as she. If
+she struck the bare brick floor, she could scarcely
+escape serious injury. But she did not reach it,
+for Paul Griggs caught her in his arms, swayed
+with her weight, then stood as steady as a rock,
+and set her gently upon her feet, beside her father.</p>
+
+<p>"Maria Santissima!" cried Francesca, terrified,
+though instantly relieved, and dimly understanding
+the stupendous feat of bodily strength which
+had just been done before her eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Above, Reanda leaned upon the single rail of
+the scaffolding with wide-staring eyes. Gloria was
+faint with the shock of fear, and grasped her
+father's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he said
+roughly, in English, but in a low voice. "You
+probably owe your life to Mr. Griggs," he added,
+immediately regaining his self-possession.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs alone seemed wholly unmoved by what
+had happened. Gloria had held one of her gloves
+loosely in her hand, and it had fallen to the ground
+as she sprang. He picked it up and handed it to
+her with a curious gentleness.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be yours, Miss Dalrymple," he said.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was late before Reanda and Donna Francesca
+were alone together on that afternoon.
+When the first surprise and shock of Gloria's
+accident had passed, Francesca would not allow
+Dalrymple to take her away at once, as he seemed
+anxious to do. The girl was not in the least hurt,
+but she was still dazed and frightened. Francesca
+took them all back to the drawing-room and insisted
+upon giving them tea, because they were foreigners,
+and Gloria, she said, must naturally need something
+to restore her nerves. Roman tea, thirty
+years ago, was a strange and uncertain beverage,
+as both Gloria and her father knew, but they
+drank what Francesca gave them, and at last
+went away with many apologies for the disturbance
+they had made. To tell the truth, Francesca
+was glad when they were gone and she was at
+liberty to return to the hall where Reanda was
+still at work. She found him nervous and irritated.
+He came down from the scaffolding as
+soon as he heard her open the door. Neither spoke
+until she had seated herself in her accustomed
+chair, with a very frank sigh of relief.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am very grateful to you, Donna Francesca,"
+said Reanda, twisting his beard round his long,
+thin fingers, as he glanced at her and then surveyed
+his work.</p>
+
+<p>"It was your fault," she answered, tapping the
+worm-eaten arms of the old chair with both her
+white hands, for she herself was still annoyed and
+irritated. "Do not make me responsible for the
+girl's folly."</p>
+
+<p>"Responsibility! May that never be!" exclaimed
+the artist, in the common Italian phrase,
+but with a little irony. "But as for the responsibility,
+I do not know whose it was. It was certainly
+not I who invited the young lady to go up
+the ladder."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was her fault. Besides, the absent
+are always wrong. But she is handsome, is she
+not?"</p>
+
+<p>Reanda shrugged his thin shoulders, and looked
+critically at his hands, which were smeared with
+paint.</p>
+
+<p>"Very handsome," he said indifferently. "But
+it is a beauty that says nothing to me. One must
+be young to like that kind of beauty. She is a
+beautiful storm, that young lady. For one who
+seeks peace&mdash;" He shrugged his shoulders again.
+"And then, her manners! I do not understand
+English, but I know that her father was telling
+her to come down, and yet she went up. I do not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+know what education these foreigners have. Instruction,
+yes, as much as you please; but education,
+no. They have no more than barbarians.
+The father says, 'You must not do that.' And
+the daughter does it. What education is that?
+Of course, if they were friends of yours, I should
+not say it."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless that girl is very handsome," insisted
+Francesca. "She has the Venetian colouring.
+Titian would have painted her just as she is,
+without changing anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Beauty, beauty!" exclaimed Reanda, impatiently.
+"Of course, it is beauty! Food for the
+brush, that says nothing to the heart. The devil
+can also take the shape of a beautiful woman.
+That is it. There is something in that young
+lady's face&mdash;how shall I say? It pleases me&mdash;little!
+You must forgive me, princess. My
+nerves are shaken. Divine goodness! To see a
+young girl flying through the air like Simon
+Magus! It was enough!"</p>
+
+<p>Francesca laughed gently. Reanda shook his
+head with slow disapprobation, and frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"I say the truth," he said. "There is something&mdash;I
+cannot explain. But I can show you,"
+he added quickly.</p>
+
+<p>He took up his palette and brushes from the
+chair on which they lay, and reached the white
+plastered wall in two steps.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Paint her," said Francesca, to encourage him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will show her to you&mdash;as I think she
+is," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>He closed his eyes for a moment, calling up the
+image before him, then went back to the chair and
+took a quantity of colour from a tube which lay,
+with half-a-dozen others, in the hollow of the rush
+seat. They were not the colours he used for fresco-painting,
+but had been left there when he had
+made a sketch of a head two or three days previously.
+In a moment he was before the wall
+again. It was roughly plastered from the floor to
+the lower line of the frescoes. With a long, coarse
+brush he began to sketch a gigantic head of a
+woman. The oil paint lay well on the rough, dry
+surface. He worked in great strokes at the full
+length of his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Make her beautiful, at least," said Francesca,
+watching him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes&mdash;very beautiful," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>He worked rapidly for a few minutes, smiling,
+as his hand moved, but not pleasantly. Francesca
+thought there was an evil look in his face which
+she had never seen there before, and that his smile
+was wicked and spiteful.</p>
+
+<p>"But you are painting a sunset!" she cried
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"A sunset? That is her hair. It is red, and
+she has much of it. Wait a little."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And he went on. It was certainly something
+like a sunset, the bright, waving streamers of the
+clouds flying far to right and left, and blending
+away to the neutral tint of the dry plaster as
+though to a grey sky.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it is still a sunset," said Francesca.
+"I have seen it like that from the Campagna in
+winter."</p>
+
+<p>"She is not 'Gloria' for nothing," answered
+Reanda. "I am making her glorious. You shall
+see."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, with another tone, he brought out the
+main features of the striking face, by throwing in
+strong shadows from the flaming hair. Francesca
+became more interested. The head was colossal,
+extraordinary, almost unearthly; the expression
+was strange.</p>
+
+<p>"What a monster!" exclaimed Francesca at last,
+as he stood aside, still touching the enormous
+sketch here and there with his long brush, at
+arm's length. "It is terrible," she added, in a
+lower tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Truth is always terrible," answered Reanda.
+"But you cannot say that it is not like her."</p>
+
+<p>"Horribly like. It is diabolical!"</p>
+
+<p>"And yet it is a beautiful head," said the artist.
+"Perhaps you are too near." He himself crossed
+the hall, and then turned round to look at his
+work. "It is better from here," he said. "Will
+you come?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She went to his side. The huge face and wildly
+streaming hair stood out as though in three dimensions
+from the wall. The great, strong mouth
+smiled at her with a smile that was at once evil
+and sad and fatal. The strange eyes looked her
+through and through from beneath the vast brow.</p>
+
+<p>"It is diabolical, satanical!" she responded,
+under her breath.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda still smiled wickedly and watched her.
+The face seemed to grow and grow till it filled the
+whole range of vision. The dark eyes flashed;
+the lips trembled; the flaming hair quivered and
+waved and curled up like snakes that darted
+hither and thither. Yet it was horribly like
+Gloria, and the fresh, rich oil colours gave it her
+startling and vivid brilliancy.</p>
+
+<p>It was the sudden and enormous expression of a
+man of genius, strung and stung, till irritation had
+to find its explosion through the one art of which
+he was absolute master&mdash;in a fearful caricature
+exaggerating beauty itself to the bounds of the
+devilish.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot bear it!" cried Francesca.</p>
+
+<p>She snatched the big brush from his hand, and,
+running lightly across the room, dashed the colour
+left in it across the face in all directions, over the
+eyes and the mouth, and through the long red
+hair. In ten seconds nothing remained but confused
+daubs and splashes of brilliant paint.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There!" cried Francesca. "And I wish I had
+never seen it!"</p>
+
+<p>Still holding the brush in her hand, she turned
+her back to the obliterated sketch and faced Reanda,
+with a look of girlish defiance and satisfaction. His
+face was grave now, but he seemed pleased with
+what he had done.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes no difference," he said. "You will
+never forget it."</p>
+
+<p>He felt that he was revenged for the smile she
+had bestowed upon his apparent surprise at Gloria's
+beauty, when she had followed the girl into the
+hall, and had seen him start. He could not conceal
+his triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the young lady whom you thought I
+might wish to marry," he said. "You know me
+little after so many years, Donna Francesca. You
+have bestowed much kindness upon a man whom
+you do not know."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Reanda, who can understand you?
+But as for kindness, do not let me hear the word
+between you and me. It has no meaning. We are
+always good friends, as we were when I was a little
+girl and used to play with your paints. You have
+given me far more than I can ever repay you for,
+in your works. I do not flatter you, my friend.
+Cupid and Psyche, there in your frescoes, will outlive
+me and be famous when I am forgotten&mdash;yet
+they are mine, are they not? And you gave them
+to me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sweet young face turned to him with an unaffected,
+grateful smile. His sad features softened
+all at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Donna Francesca," he said gently, "you
+have given me something better than Cupid and
+Psyche, for your gift will live forever in heaven."</p>
+
+<p>She looked thoughtfully into his eyes, but with
+a sort of question in her own.</p>
+
+<p>"Your dear friendship," he added, bending his
+head a little. Then he laughed suddenly. "Do
+not give me a wife," he concluded.</p>
+
+<p>"And you, Reanda&mdash;do not make wicked caricatures
+of women you have only seen once! Besides,
+I go back to it again. I saw you start when
+she passed you at the door. You were surprised
+at her beauty. You must admit that. And then,
+because you are irritated with her, you take a
+brush and daub that monstrous thing upon the
+wall! It is a shame!"</p>
+
+<p>"I started, yes. It was not because she struck
+me as beautiful. It was something much more
+strange. Do you know? She is the very portrait
+of Donna Maria, who was in the Carmelite convent
+at Subiaco, and who was burned to death. I have
+often told you that I remembered having seen her
+when I was a boy, both at Gerano and at the
+Palazzo Braccio, before she took the veil. There is a
+little difference in the colouring, I think, and much
+in the expression. But the rest&mdash;it is the image!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Francesca, who could not remember her ill-fated
+kinswoman, was not much impressed by Reanda's
+statement.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes your caricature all the worse," she
+answered, "since it was also a caricature of that
+holy woman. As for the resemblance, after all
+these years, it is a mere impression. Who knows?
+It may be. There is no portrait of Sister Maria
+Addolorata."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I remember well!" insisted Reanda.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it concludes nothing, after all," returned
+Francesca, with much logic. "It does not make a
+fiend of the poor nun, who is an angel by this time,
+and it does not make Miss Dalrymple less beautiful.
+And now, Signor Painter," she added, with
+another girlish laugh, "if we have quarrelled enough
+to restore your nerves, I am going out. It is almost
+dark, and I have to go to the Austrian Embassy
+before dinner, and the carriage has been waiting
+for an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"You, princess!" exclaimed Reanda, in surprise;
+for she had not begun to go into the world yet since
+her husband's death.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not a reception. We are to meet there
+about arranging another of those charity concerts
+for the deaf and dumb."</p>
+
+<p>"I might have known," answered the painter.
+"As for me, I shall go to the theatre to-night.
+There is the Trovatore."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That is a new thing for you, too. But I am
+glad. Amuse yourself, and tell me about the singing
+to-morrow. Remember to lock the door and
+take the key. I do not trust the masons in the
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Do I ever forget?" asked Reanda. "But I
+will lock it now, as you go out; for it is late, and
+I shall go upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night," said Francesca, as she turned to
+leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>"And you forgive the caricature?" asked Reanda,
+holding the door open for her to pass.</p>
+
+<p>"I would forgive you many things," she answered,
+smiling as she went by.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> those days the Trovatore was not an old-fashioned
+opera. It was not 'threshed-out,' to
+borrow the vigorous German phrase. Wagner
+had not eclipsed melody with 'tone-poetry,' nor
+made men feel more than they could hear. Many
+of the great things of this century-ending had not
+been done then, nor even dreamed of, and even
+musicians listened to the Trovatore with pleasure,
+not dreaming of the untried strength that lay waiting
+in Verdi's vast reserve. It was then the
+music of youth. To us it seems but the music of
+childhood. Many of us cannot listen to Manrico's
+death-song from the tower without hearing the
+grind-organ upon which its passion has grown so
+pathetically poor. But one could understand that
+music. The mere statement that it was comprehensible
+raises a smile to-day. It appealed to simple
+feelings. We are no longer satisfied with such
+simplicity, and even long for powers that do not
+appeal, but twist us with something stronger than
+our hardened selves, until we ourselves appeal to
+the unknown, in a sort of despairing ecstasy of
+unsatisfied delight, asking of possibility to stretch
+itself out to the impossible. We are in a strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+phase of development. We see the elaborately
+artificial world-scape painted by Science on the
+curtain close before our eyes, but our restless
+hands are thrust through it and beyond, opening
+eagerly and shutting on nothing, though we know
+that something is there.</p>
+
+<p>Angelo Reanda was passionately fond of what
+was called music in Italy more than thirty years
+ago. He had the true ear and the facile memory
+for melody common to Italians, who are a singing
+people, if not a musical race, and which constituted
+a talent for music when music was considered to
+be a succession of sounds rather than a series of
+sensuous impressions. He could listen to an opera,
+understand it without thought, enjoy it simply, and
+remember it without difficulty, like thousands of
+other Romans. Most of us would willingly go back
+to such childlike amusements if we could. A few
+possess the power even now, and are looked upon
+with friendly contempt by their more cultured, and
+therefore more tortured, musical acquaintances,
+whose dream it is to be torn to very rags in the
+delirium of orchestral passion.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda went to the Apollo Theatre in search of
+merely pleasurable sensations, and he got exactly
+what he wanted. The old house was brilliant even
+in those days, less with light than with jewels, it
+is true, but perhaps that illumination was as good
+as any other. The Roman ladies and the ladies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+of the great embassies used then to sit through
+the whole evening in their boxes, and it was the
+privilege, as it is still in Rome, of the men in
+the stalls and pit to stand up between the acts
+and admire them and their diamonds as much as
+they pleased. The light was dim enough, compared
+with what we have nowadays; for gas was
+but just introduced in a few of the principal streets,
+and the lamps in the huge chandelier at the Apollo,
+and in the brackets around the house, were filled
+with the olive oil which to-day dresses the world's
+salad. But it was a soft warm light, with rich
+yellow in it, which penetrated the shadows and
+beautified all it touched.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda, like the others, stood up and looked
+about him after the first act. His eyes were instantly
+arrested by Gloria's splendid hair, which
+caught the light from above. She was seated in
+the front of a box on the third tier, the second row
+of boxes being almost exclusively reserved in those
+days. Dalrymple was beside his daughter, and
+the dark, still face of Paul Griggs was just visible
+in the shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria saw the artist almost immediately, for he
+could not help looking at her curiously, comparing
+her face with the mad sketch he had made on the
+wall. She nodded to him, and then spoke to her
+father, evidently calling his attention to Reanda,
+for Dalrymple looked down at once, and also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>
+nodded, while Griggs leaned forward a little and
+stared vacantly into the pit.</p>
+
+<p>"It is an obsession to-day," said Reanda to himself,
+reflecting that though the girl lived in Rome
+he had never noticed her before, and had now seen
+her twice on the same day.</p>
+
+<p>He mentally added the reflexion that she must
+have good nerves, and that most young girls would
+be at home with a headache after such a narrow
+escape as hers. She was quite as handsome as he
+had thought, however, and even more so, now that
+he saw her in her girlish evening gown, which was
+just a little open at the throat, and without even
+the simplest of ornaments. The white material
+and the shadow around and behind her threw her
+head into strong relief.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain went up again, and Reanda sat down
+and watched the performance and listened to the
+simple, stirring melodies. But he was uncomfortably
+conscious that Gloria was looking at the back
+of his head from her box. Nervous people know
+the unpleasant sensation which such a delusion can
+produce. Reanda moved uneasily in his seat, and
+looked round more than once, just far enough to
+catch sight of Gloria's hair without looking up into
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts were disturbed, and he recalled
+vividly the face of the dead nun, which he had
+seen long ago. The resemblance was certainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+strong. Maria Addolorata had sometimes had a
+strange expression which was quite her own, and
+which he had not yet seen in Gloria. But he felt
+that he should see it some day. He was sure of it,
+so sure that he had thrown its full force into the
+sketch on the wall, knowing that it would startle
+Donna Francesca. It was not possible that two
+women should be so much alike and yet that one
+of them should never have that look. Perhaps
+Gloria had it now and was staring at the back of
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>An unaccountable nervousness took possession
+of the sensitive man, and he suffered as he sat
+there. After the curtain dropped he rose and
+left the theatre without looking up, and crossed
+the narrow street to a little coffee shop familiar
+to him for many years. He drank a cup of
+coffee, broke off the end of a thin black Roman
+cigar, and smoked for a few minutes before he
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria had not moved, but Griggs was either
+gone or had retired further back into the shadow.
+Dalrymple was leaning back in his chair, bony and
+haggard, one of his great hands hanging listlessly
+over the front of the box. Reanda sat down again,
+and determined that he would not turn round before
+the end of the act. But it was of no use. He
+irritated his neighbours on each side by his restlessness,
+and his forehead was moist as though he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+were suffering great pain. Again he faced about
+and stared upwards at the box. Gloria, to his surprise,
+was not looking at him, but in the shadow
+he met the inscrutable eyes of Paul Griggs, fixed
+upon him as though they would never look away.
+But he cared very little whether Griggs looked at
+him or not. He faced the stage again and was
+more quiet.</p>
+
+<p>It was a good performance, and he began to be
+glad that he had come. The singers were young,
+the audience was inclined to applaud, and everything
+went smoothly. Reanda thought the soprano
+rather weak in the great tower scene.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"Calpesta il mio cadavere, ma salva il Trovator!"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>she sang in great ascending intervals.</div>
+
+<p>Reanda sighed, for she made no impression on
+him, and he remembered that he had been deeply
+impressed, even thrilled, when he had first heard
+the phrase. He had realized the situation then
+and had felt with Leonora. Perhaps he had grown
+too old to feel that sort of young emotion any
+more. He sighed regretfully as he rose from his
+seat. Looking up once more, he saw that Gloria
+was putting on her cloak, her back turned to the
+theatre. He waited a moment and then moved on
+with the crowd, to get his coat from the cloak-room.</p>
+
+<p>He went out and walked slowly up the Via di<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+Tordinona. It was a dark and narrow street in
+those days. The great old-fashioned lanterns were
+swung up with their oil lamps in them, by long
+levers held in place by chains locked to the wall.
+Here and there over a low door a red light showed
+that wine was sold in a basement which was almost
+a cellar. The crowd from the theatre hurried along
+close by the walls, in constant danger from the big
+coaches that dashed past, bringing the Roman
+ladies home, for all had to pass through that
+narrow street. Landaus were not yet invented,
+and the heavy carriages rumbled loudly through
+the darkness, over the small paving-stones. But
+the people on foot were used to them, and stood
+pressed against the walls as they went by, or
+grouped for a moment on the low doorsteps of the
+dark houses.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda went with the rest. He might have
+gone the other way, by the Banchi Vecchi, from
+the bridge of Sant' Angelo, and it would have been
+nearer, but he had a curious fancy that the Dalrymples
+might walk home, and that he might see
+Gloria again. Though it was not yet winter, the
+night was bright and cold, and it was pleasant to
+walk. The regular season at the Apollo Theatre
+did not begin until Christmas, but there were often
+good companies there at other times of the year.</p>
+
+<p>The artist walked on, glancing at the groups he
+passed in the dim street, but neither pausing nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+hurrying. He meant to let fate have her own way
+with him that night.</p>
+
+<p>Fate was not far off. He had gone on some distance,
+and the crowd had dispersed in various
+directions, till he was almost alone as he emerged
+into the open space where the Via del Clementino
+intersects the Ripetta. At that moment he heard
+a wild and thrilling burst of song.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"Calpesta il mio cadavere, ma salva il Trovator!"<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The great soprano rang out upon the midnight
+silence, like the voice of a despairing archangel,
+and there was nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" exclaimed a man's voice energetically.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three windows were opened high up, for
+no one had ever heard such a woman's voice in the
+streets before. Reanda peered before him through
+the gloom, saw three people standing at the next
+corner, and hastened his long steps. An instinct
+he could not explain told him that Gloria had sung
+the short strain, which had left him cold and indifferent
+when he had heard it in the theatre. He
+was neither now, and he was possessed by the
+desire to be sure that it had been she.</p>
+
+<p>He was not mistaken. Griggs had recognized
+him first, and they had waited for him at the
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>"It is an unexpected pleasure to meet twice in
+the same day," said Reanda.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The pleasure is ours," answered Dalrymple, in
+the correct phrase, but with his peculiar accent.
+"I suppose you heard my daughter's screams," he
+added drily. "She was explaining to us how a
+particular phrase should be sung."</p>
+
+<p>"Was I not right?" asked Gloria, quickly appealing
+to Reanda with the certainty of support.</p>
+
+<p>"A thousand times right," he answered. "How
+could one be wrong with such a voice?"</p>
+
+<p>Gloria was pleased, and they all walked on together
+till they reached the door of Dalrymple's
+lodging.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in and have supper with us," said the
+Scotchman, who seemed to be less gloomy than
+usual. "I suppose you live in our neighbourhood?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. In the Palazzetto Borgia, where I work."</p>
+
+<p>"This is not exactly on your way home, then,"
+observed Gloria. "You may as well rest and
+refresh yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Reanda accepted the invitation, wondering inwardly
+at the assurance of the foreign girl. With
+her Italian speech she should have had Italian
+manners, he thought. The three men all carried
+tapers, as was then customary, and they all lit them
+before they ascended the dark staircase.</p>
+
+<p>"This is an illumination," said Dalrymple, looking
+back as he led the way.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria stopped suddenly, and looked round.
+She was following her father, and Reanda came
+after her, Griggs being the last.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"One, two, three," she counted, and her eyes
+met Reanda's.</p>
+
+<p>Without the slightest hesitation, she blew out
+the taper he held in his hand. But, for one instant,
+he had seen in her face the expression of the dead
+nun, distinct in the clear light, and close to his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you do that?" asked Dalrymple, who
+had turned his head again, as the taper was
+extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>"Three lights mean death," said Gloria, promptly;
+and she laughed, as she went quickly up the
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true," answered Reanda, in a low voice,
+as he followed her; and it occurred to him that in
+a flash he had seen death written in the brilliant
+young face.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later, they were seated around the
+table in the Dalrymples' small dining-room. Reanda
+noticed that everything he saw there evidently
+belonged to the hired lodging, from the
+old-fashioned Italian silver forks, battered and
+crooked at the prongs, to the heavy cut-glass decanters,
+stained with age and use, at the neck,
+and between the diamond-shaped cuttings. There
+was supper enough for half-a-dozen people, however,
+and an extraordinary quantity of wine.
+Dalrymple swallowed a big tumbler of it before
+he ate anything. Paul Griggs filled his glass to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+the brim, and looked at it. He had hardly spoken
+since Reanda had joined the party.</p>
+
+<p>The artist made an effort to be agreeable, feeling
+that the invitation had been a very friendly one,
+considering the slight acquaintance he had with
+the Dalrymples, an acquaintance not yet twenty-four
+hours old. Presently he asked Gloria if she
+had felt no ill effects from her extraordinary accident
+in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"I had not thought about it again," she answered.
+"I have thought of nothing but your
+painting all the evening, until that woman sang
+that phrase as though she were asking the Conte di
+Luna for more strawberries and cream."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, but her eyes were fixed on his face.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"'Un altro po' di fravole, e dammi crema ancor,'"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>she sang softly, in the Roman dialect.</div>
+
+<p>Then she laughed again, and Reanda smiled at
+the absurd words&mdash;"A few more strawberries,
+and give me some more cream." But even the
+few notes, a lazy parody of the prima donna's
+singing of the phrase, charmed his simple love of
+melody.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't look so grim, papa," she said in English.
+"Nobody can hear me here, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I should not think anybody would wish to,"
+answered the Scotchman; but he spoke in Italian,
+in consideration of his guest, who did not understand
+English.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I do not know why you are always so angry
+if I sing anything foolish," said the young girl,
+going back to Italian. "One cannot be always
+serious. But I was talking about your frescoes,
+Signor Reanda. I have thought of nothing else."</p>
+
+<p>Again her eyes met the artist's, but fell before
+his. He was too great a painter not to know the
+value of such flattering speeches in general, and
+in a way he was inclined to resent the girl's boldness.
+But at the same time, it was hard to believe
+that she was not really in earnest, for she had that
+power of sudden gravity which lends great weight
+to little speeches. In spite of himself, and perhaps
+rightly, he believed her. Paul Griggs did
+not, and he watched her curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked,
+turning upon him with a little show of temper.</p>
+
+<p>"If your father will allow me to say so, you are
+the object most worth looking at in the room,"
+answered the young man, calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"You will make her vain with your pretty
+speeches, Griggs," said Dalrymple.</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt that," answered Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>He relapsed into silence, and drained a big tumbler
+of wine. Reanda suspected, with a shrewd
+intuition, that the American admired Gloria, but
+that she did not like him much.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Dalrymple is doing her best to make me
+vain with her praise," said Reanda.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I never flattered any one in my life," answered
+Gloria. "Signor Reanda is the greatest painter
+in Italy. Everybody says so. It would be foolish
+of me to even pretend that after seeing him at
+work I had thought of anything else. We have
+all said, this evening, that the frescoes were wonderful,
+and that no one, not even Raphael, who
+did the same thing, has ever had a more beautiful
+idea of the history of Cupid and Psyche. Why
+should we not tell the truth, just because he
+happens to be here? How illogical you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I excepted Raphael," said Dalrymple,
+with his national accuracy. "But Signor Reanda
+will not quarrel with me on that account, I am
+sure."</p>
+
+<p>"But I did not except Raphael, nor any one,"
+persisted Gloria, before Reanda could speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Signorina, though I am mortal and
+susceptible, you go a little too far. Flattery is
+not appreciation, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not flattery," she answered, and the colour
+rose in her face. "I am quite in earnest. Nobody
+ever painted anything better than your Cupid and
+Psyche. Raphael's is dull and uninteresting compared
+with it."</p>
+
+<p>"I blush, but I cannot accept so much," said the
+Italian, smiling politely, but still trying to discover
+whether she meant what she said or not.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of himself, as before, he continued to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
+believe her, though his judgment told him that
+hers could not be worth much. But he was pleased
+to have made such an impression, and by quick
+degrees his prejudice against her began to disappear.
+What had seemed like boldness in her no
+longer shocked him, and he described it to himself
+as the innocent frankness of a foreign girl. It
+was not possible that any one so like the dead
+Maria Braccio could be vulgar or bold. From
+that moment he began to rank Gloria as belonging
+to the higher sphere from which his birth excluded
+him. It was a curious and quick transition, and
+he would not have admitted that it was due to
+her exaggerated praise of his work. Strange as
+it must seem to those not familiar with the almost
+impassable barriers of old Italian society, Reanda
+had that evening, for the first time in his life, the
+sensation of being liked, admired, and talked with
+by a woman of Francesca Campodonico's class;
+stranger still, it was one of the most delicious
+sensations he had ever experienced. Yet the
+woman in question was but a girl not yet seventeen
+years old. Before he rose to go home, he
+unconsciously resented Griggs's silent admiration
+for Gloria. To the average Italian, such silence
+is a sign that a man is in love, and Reanda was
+the more attracted to Gloria because she treated
+Griggs with such perfect indifference.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly one o'clock when he lighted his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
+taper to descend the stairs. Griggs was also ready
+to go. It was a relief to know that he was not
+going to stay behind and talk with Gloria. They
+went down in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to ask you a question," said the
+American, as they came out upon the street, and
+blew out their tapers. "We live in opposite directions,
+so I must ask it now. Should you mind, if
+I wrote an article on your frescoes for a London
+paper?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mind!" exclaimed the artist, with a sudden
+revulsion of feeling in favour of the journalist.
+"I should be delighted&mdash;flattered."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Griggs, coldly. "I shall not write
+as Miss Dalrymple talks. But I shall try and do
+you justice, and that is a good deal, when one is
+a serious artist, as you are."</p>
+
+<p>Reanda was struck by the cool moderation of
+the words, which expressed his own modest judgment
+of himself almost too exactly to be agreeable
+after Gloria's unlimited praise. He thanked Griggs
+warmly, however, and they shook hands before
+they parted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Three</span> months passed, and Reanda was intimate
+with the Dalrymples. It was natural enough,
+considering the circumstances. They lived much
+alone, and Reanda was like them in this respect,
+for he rarely went where he was obliged to talk.
+During the day he saw much of Donna Francesca,
+but when it grew dark in the early afternoons of
+midwinter, the artist was thrown upon his own
+resources. In former years he had now and then
+done as many of the other artists did, and had sometimes
+for a month or two spent most of his evenings
+at the eating-house where he dined, in company with
+half-a-dozen others who frequented the same establishment.
+Each dropped in, at any hour that
+chanced to suit him, ate his supper, pushed back
+his chair, and joined in the general conversation,
+smoking, and drinking coffee or a little wine,
+until it was time to go home. There were grey-headed
+painters who had hardly been absent more
+than a few days in five and twenty years from their
+accustomed tables at such places as the Falcone,
+the Gabbione, or the Genio. But Reanda had never
+joined in any of these little circles for longer than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+a month or two, by which time he had exhausted
+the stock of his companions' ideas, and returned
+to solitude and his own thoughts. For he had
+something which they had not, besides his greater
+talent, his broader intelligence, and his deeper
+artistic insight. Donna Francesca's refining influence
+exerted itself continually upon him, and made
+much of the common conversation tiresome or disagreeable
+to him. A man whose existence is penetrated
+by the presence of a rarely refined woman
+seldom cares much for the daily society of men.
+He prefers to be alone, when he cannot be with her.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda believed that what he felt for Francesca
+was a devoted and almost devout friendship. The
+fact that before many weeks had passed after his
+first meeting with Gloria he was perceptibly in
+love with the girl, while he felt not the smallest
+change in his relations with Donna Francesca, satisfactorily
+proved to him that he was right. It
+would not have been like an Italian and a Latin to
+compare his feelings for the two women by imaginary
+tests, as, for instance, by asking himself for
+which of the two he would make the greater sacrifice.
+He took it for granted that the one sentiment
+was friendship and the other love, and he acted
+accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>He was distrustful, indeed, and very suspicious,
+but not of himself. Gloria treated him too well.
+Her eyes told him more than he felt able to believe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+It was not natural that a girl so young and
+fresh and beautiful, with the world before her,
+should fall in love with a man of his age. That,
+at least, was what he thought. But the fact that
+it was unnatural did not prevent it from taking
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda ignored certain points of great importance.
+In the first place, Gloria had not really
+the world before her. Her little sphere was closely
+limited by her father's morose selfishness, which
+led him to keep her in Rome because he liked the
+place himself, and to keep away from his countrymen,
+whom he detested as heartily as Britons living
+abroad sometimes do. On the other hand, a vague
+dread lest the story of his marriage might some
+day come to the light kept him away from Roman
+society. He had fallen back upon artistic Bohemia
+for such company as he wanted, which was little
+enough, and as his child grew up he had not understood
+that she was developing early and coming to
+womanhood while she was still under the care of
+the governess he had provided. He had not even
+made any plans for her future, for he did not love
+her, though he indulged her as a selfish and easy
+means of fulfilling his paternal obligations. It
+was to get rid of her importunity that he began
+to take her to the houses of some of the married
+artists when she was only sixteen years old, though
+she looked at least two years older.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But in such society as that, Reanda was easily
+first, apart from the talent which placed him at
+the head of the whole artistic profession. He had
+been brought up, taught, and educated among
+gentlemen, sons of one of the oldest and most fastidious
+aristocracies in Europe, and he had their
+manners, their speech, their quiet air of superiority,
+and especially that exterior gentleness and
+modesty of demeanour which most touches some
+women. In Gloria's opinion, he even had much
+of their appearance, being tall, thin, and dark.
+Accustomed as she was to living with her father,
+who was gloomy and morose, and to seeing much
+of Paul Griggs, whose powers of silence were phenomenal
+at that time, Reanda's easy grace of conversation
+charmed and flattered her. He was, by
+many degrees, the superior in talent, in charm, in
+learning, to any one she had ever met, and it must
+not be forgotten that although he was twenty years
+older than she, he was not yet forty, and that, as
+he had not a grey hair in his head, he could still
+pass for a young man, though his grave disposition
+made him feel older than he was. Of the three
+melancholic men in whose society she chiefly lived,
+her father was selfish and morose; Griggs was
+gentle, but silent and incomprehensible, though he
+exerted an undoubted influence over her; Reanda
+alone, though naturally melancholy, was at once
+gentle, companionable, and talkative with her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple accepted the intimacy with indifference
+and even with a certain satisfaction. In his reflexions,
+he characterized Reanda as a rare combination
+of the great artist and the gentleman. Since
+Gloria had known him she had grown more quiet.
+She admired him and imitated his manner. It was
+a good thing. He was glad, too, that Reanda was
+not married, for it would have been a nuisance,
+thought Dalrymple, to have the man's wife always
+about and expecting to be amused.</p>
+
+<p>It began to occur to him that Reanda might be
+falling in love with Gloria, and he did not resent
+the idea. In fact, though at first sight it should
+have seemed strange to an Englishman, he looked
+upon the idea with favour. He wished to live out
+his life in Italy, for he had got that fierce affection
+for the country which has overcome and bound many
+northern men, from Sir John Hawkwood to Landor
+and Browning. Though he did not love Gloria,
+he was attached to her in his own way, and did
+not wish to lose sight of her altogether. But,
+in consequence of his own irregular marriage, he
+could not marry her to a man of his own rank in
+Rome, who would not fail to make inquiries about
+her mother. It was most natural that he should
+look upon such a man as Reanda with favour.
+Reanda had many good qualities. Dalrymple's
+judgment was generally keen enough about people,
+and he had understood that such a woman as Donna<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+Francesca Campodonico would certainly not make
+a personal friend of a painter, and allow him to
+occupy rooms in her palace, unless his character
+were altogether above suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria was, of course, too young to be married
+yet, though she seemed to be so entirely grown up
+and altogether a woman. In this respect Dalrymple
+was not prejudiced. His own mother had been
+married at the age of seventeen, and he had lived
+long in Italy, where early marriages were common
+enough. There could certainly be no serious objection
+to the match on that score, when another year
+should have passed.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple's only anxiety about his daughter
+concerned her strong inclination to be a public
+singer. The prejudice was by no means extraordinary,
+and as a Scotchman, it had even more weight
+with him than it could have had, for instance, with
+an Italian. Reanda entirely agreed with him on
+this point, and when Gloria spoke of it, he never
+failed to draw a lively picture of the drawbacks
+attending stage life. The artist spoke very strongly,
+for one of Gloria's earliest and chiefest attractions
+in his eyes had been the certainty he felt that she
+belonged to Francesca's class. For that reason her
+flattering admiration had brought with it a peculiar
+savour, especially delightful to the taste of a
+man of humble origin. Dalrymple did not understand
+that, but he knew that if Gloria married the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
+great painter, the latter would effectually keep
+her from the stage.</p>
+
+<p>As for Griggs, the Scotchman was well aware
+that the poor young journalist might easily fall in
+love with the beautiful girl. But this did not
+deter him at all from having Griggs constantly at
+the house. Griggs was the only man he had ever
+met who did not bore him, who could be silent for
+an hour at a time, who could swallow as much
+strong wine as he without the slightest apparent
+effect upon his manner, who understood all he
+said, though sometimes saying things which he
+could not understand&mdash;in short, Griggs was a
+necessity to him. The young man was perhaps
+aware of the fact, and he found Dalrymple congenial
+to his own temper; but he was as excessively
+proud as he was extremely poor, at that time, and
+he managed to refuse the greater part of the hospitality
+offered to him, simply because he could not
+return it. It was very rarely that he accepted an
+invitation to a meal, though he now generally came
+in the evening, besides meeting Dalrymple almost
+every morning when they went to the bookseller's
+together.</p>
+
+<p>He puzzled the Scotchman strangely. He was
+an odd combination of a thinker and an athlete,
+half literary man, half gladiator. The common
+phrase 'an old head on young shoulders' described
+him as well as any phrase could. The shoulders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+were perhaps the more remarkable, but the head
+was not to be despised. A man who could break a
+horseshoe and tear in two a pack of cards, and who
+spent his spare time in studying Hegel and Kant,
+when he was not writing political correspondence
+for newspapers, deserved to be considered an
+exception. He seemed to have no material wants,
+and yet he had the animal power of enjoying material
+things even in excess, which is rare. He had
+a couple of rooms in the Via della Frezza, between
+the Corso and the Ripetta, where he lived in a
+rather mysterious way, though he made no secret
+about it. Occasionally an acquaintance climbed
+the steep stairs, but no one ever got him to open
+the door nor to give any sign that he was at home,
+if he were within. A one-eyed cobbler acted as
+porter downstairs, from morning till night, astride
+upon his bench and ever at work, an ill-savoured
+old pipe in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"You may try," he answered, when any one
+asked for Griggs. "Who knows? Perhaps Sor
+Paolo will open. Try a little, if you have patience."</p>
+
+<p>Patience being exhausted, the visitor came down
+the five flights again, and remonstrated with the
+cobbler.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not say anything," he would reply, in a
+cloud of smoke. "Many have tried. I told you
+to try. Am I to tell you that no one has ever got<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+in? Why? To disoblige you? If you want anything
+of Sor Paolo, say it to me. Or come again."</p>
+
+<p>"But he will not open," objected the visitor.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that is true," returned the man of one eye.
+"But if you wish to try, I am not here to hinder
+you. This is the truth."</p>
+
+<p>Now and then, some one more inquisitive suggested
+that there might be a lady in the question.
+The one eye then fixed itself in a vacant stare.</p>
+
+<p>"Females?" the cobbler would exclaim. "Not
+even cats. What passes through your head? He
+is alone always. If you do not believe me, you
+can try. I do not say Sor Paolo will not open the
+door. A door is a door, to be opened."</p>
+
+<p>"But since I have tried!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I, what can I do? You have come, you
+have seen, you have knocked, and no one has
+opened. May the Madonna accompany you! I
+can do nothing."</p>
+
+<p>So even the most importunate of visitors departed
+at last. But Griggs had taken Dalrymple up to
+his lodgings more than once, and they had sat there
+for an hour talking over books. Dalrymple observed,
+indeed, that Griggs was more inclined to
+talk in his own rooms than anywhere else, and
+that his manner then changed so much as to make
+him almost seem to be a different man. There
+was a look of interest in the stony mask, and there
+was a light in the deep-set eyes which neither wine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+nor wit could bring there at other times. The
+man wore his armour against the world, as it were,
+a tough shell made up of a poor man's pride, and
+solid with that sense of absolute physical superiority
+which is an element in the character of strong
+men, and which the Scotchman understood. He
+himself had been of the strong, but not always
+the strongest. Paul Griggs had never yet been
+matched by any man since he had first got his
+growth. He was the equal of many in intellect,
+but his bodily strength was not equalled by any
+in his youth and manhood. The secret of his one
+well-hidden vanity lay in that. His moral power
+showed itself in his assumed modesty about it, for
+it was almost impossible to prevail upon him to
+make exhibition of it. Gloria alone seemed able
+to induce him, for her especial amusement, to break
+a silver dollar with his fingers, or tear a pack of
+cards, and then only in the presence of her father
+or Reanda, but never before other people.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the strongest man in the world, are
+you not?" she asked him once.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered. "I probably am, if it is I.
+I am vain of it, but not proud of it. That makes
+me think sometimes that I am two men in one.
+That might account for it, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense!" Gloria laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it? I daresay it is." And he relapsed into
+indifference, so far as she could see.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is the other man like?" she asked.
+"Not the strong man of the two, but the other?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is a good man. The strong man is bad.
+They fight, and the result is insignificance. Some
+day one of the two will get the better of the
+other."</p>
+
+<p>"What will happen then?" she asked lightly,
+and still inclined to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"One or the other, or both, will die, I suppose,"
+he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"How very unpleasant!"</p>
+
+<p>She did not at all understand what he meant.
+At the same time she could not help feeling that
+he was eminently a man to whom she would turn
+in danger or trouble. Girl though she was, she
+could not mistake his great admiration of her, and
+by degrees, as the winter wore on, she trusted him
+more, though he still repelled her a little, for his
+saturnine calm was opposed to her violent vitality,
+as a black rock to a tawny torrent. Griggs had
+neither the manner nor the temper which wins
+women's hearts as a rule. Such men are sometimes
+loved by women when their sorrow has
+chained them to the rock of horror, and grief insatiable
+tears out their broken hearts. But in their
+strength they are not loved. They cannot give
+themselves yet, for their strength hinders them,
+and women think them miserly of words and of
+love's little coin of change. If they get love at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>
+last, it is as the pity which the unhurt weak feel
+for the ruined strong.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria was not above irritating Griggs occasionally,
+when the fancy took her to seek amusement
+in that way. She knew how to do it, and he rarely
+turned upon her, even in the most gentle way.</p>
+
+<p>"We are good friends, are we not?" she asked
+one day, when it was raining and he was alone
+with her, waiting for her father to come in.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so," he answered, turning his impassive
+face slowly towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you ought to be much nicer to me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I am as nice as I know how to be," replied
+Griggs, with fixed eyes. "What shall I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is it. You ought to know. You could
+talk and say pleasant things, for instance. Don't
+you admit that you are very dull to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"I admit it. I regret it, and I wish I were not."</p>
+
+<p>"You need not be. I am sure you can talk very
+well, when you please. You are not exactly funny
+at any time, but to-day you are funereal. You
+remind me of those big black horses they use for
+hearses, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, thank you," said Griggs, quietly,
+repeating the words without emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like you!" she exclaimed petulantly,
+but with a little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that," he answered. "But I like you
+very much. We were probably meant to differ."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then you might amuse me. It's awfully dull
+when it rains. Pull the house down, or tear up
+silver scudi, or something."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not Samson, and I am not a clown,"
+observed Griggs, coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never like you if you are so disagreeable,"
+said Gloria, taking up a book, and settling
+herself to read.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid you never will," answered Griggs,
+following her example.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes passed in silence. Then Gloria
+looked up suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Griggs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not mean to be horrid."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not."</p>
+
+<p>"Because, if I were ever in trouble, you know&mdash;I
+should come straight to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he answered very gently. "But
+I hope you will never be in trouble. If you ever
+should be&mdash;" He stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think you would find anybody who
+would try harder to help you," he said simply.</p>
+
+<p>She wished that his voice would tremble, or that
+he would put out his hand towards her, or show
+something a little more like emotion. But she had
+to be satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>"Would it be the good man or the bad man that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+would help me?" she asked, remembering the
+former conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Both," answered Griggs, without hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure that I might not like the bad
+man better," said Gloria, almost to herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Reanda a bad man?" inquired Griggs,
+slowly, and looking for the blush in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" But she blushed, as he expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Because you like him better than me."</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite different. It is of no use to talk
+about it, and I want to read."</p>
+
+<p>She turned from him and buried herself in her
+book, but she moved restlessly two or three times,
+and it was some minutes before the heightened
+colour disappeared from her face.</p>
+
+<p>She was very girlish still, and when she had
+irritated Griggs as far as such a man was capable
+of irritation, she preferred to refuse battle rather
+than deal with the difficulty she had created. But
+Griggs understood, and amongst his still small
+sufferings he often felt the little, dull, hopeless
+pang which tells a man that he is unlovable.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Very</span> late, one night in the Carnival season,
+Paul Griggs was walking the streets alone. His
+sufferings were no longer so small as they had
+been, and the bitterness of solitude was congenial
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>He had been at the house of a Spanish artist,
+where there had been dancing and music and supper
+and improvised tableaux. Gloria and her
+father and Reanda had all been there, too, and
+something had happened which had stirred the
+depths of the young man's slow temper. He hated
+to make an exhibition of himself, and much against
+his will he had been exhibited, as it were, to help
+the gaiety of the entertainment. Cotogni, the
+great sculptor, had suggested that Griggs should
+appear as Samson, asleep with his head on Delilah's
+knee, and bound by her with cords which he should
+seem to break as the Philistines rushed in. He
+had refused flatly, again and again, till all the
+noisy party caught the idea and forced him to it.</p>
+
+<p>They had dressed him in silk draperies, his
+mighty arms bare almost to the shoulder, and they
+had given him a long, dark, theatrical wig. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+had bound his arms and chest with cords, and had
+made him lie down and pretend to be asleep at the
+feet of the artist's beautiful wife. They had made
+slipping knots in the cords, so that he could easily
+wrench them loose. Then the curtain had been
+drawn aside, and there had been a pause as the
+tableau was shown. All at once a mob of artists,
+draped hastily in anything they could lay their
+hands upon, and with all manner of helmets on
+their heads from the Spaniard's collection, had
+rushed in.</p>
+
+<p>"The Philistines are upon thee!" cried Delilah
+in a piercing voice.</p>
+
+<p>He sprang to his feet, his legs being free, and
+he struggled with the cords. The knots would not
+slip as they were meant to do. The situation lasted
+several seconds, and was ridiculous enough.</p>
+
+<p>People began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Cut off his hair!" cried one.</p>
+
+<p>"Of what use was the wig?" laughed another,
+and every one tittered.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs could hear Gloria's clear, high laugh
+above the rest. His blood slowly rose in his
+throat. But no one pulled the curtain across.
+The Philistines, young artists, mad with Carnival,
+improvised a very eccentric dance of triumph, and
+the laughter increased.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs looked at the cords. Then his mask-like
+face turned slowly to the audience. Only the great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+veins swelled suddenly at his temples, while every
+one watched him in the general amusement.
+Suddenly his eyes flashed, and he drew a deep
+breath, for he was angry. In an instant there was
+dead silence in the room. A moment later one of
+the cords, drawn tight round his chest, over the
+silk robe, snapped like a thread, then another, and
+then a third. Then in a sort of frenzy of anger
+he savagely broke the whole cord into pieces with
+his hands, tossing the bits contemptuously upon
+the floor. His face was as white as a dead man's.</p>
+
+<p>A roar of applause broke the silence when the
+guests realized what he had done. The artists
+seized him and carried him high in procession
+round the room, the women threw flowers at him,
+and some one struck up a triumphal march on the
+piano. It was an ovation. Half an hour later,
+dressed again in his ordinary clothes, he found himself
+next to Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>"You told me the other day that you were not
+Samson," she said. "You see you can be when
+you choose."</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered Griggs, coldly; "I am a clown."</p>
+
+<p>What she had said was natural enough, but somehow
+the satisfaction of his bodily vanity had stung
+his moral pride beyond endurance. It seemed a
+despicable thing to be as vain as he was of a gift
+for which he had not paid any price. Deep down,
+too, he felt bitterly that he had never received the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+slightest praise for any thought of his which he
+had written down and sent to that cauldron of the
+English daily press in which all individual right
+to distinction disappears, with all claim to praise,
+from written matter, however good it be. He
+worked, he read, he studied, he wrote late, and
+rose early to observe. But his natural gift was to
+be a mountebank, a clown, a circus Hercules. By
+stiffening one of his senseless arms he could bring
+down roars of applause. By years of bitter labour
+with his pen he earned the barest living. The
+muscles that a porter might have, offered him opulence,
+because it was tougher by a few degrees than
+the flesh of other men. The knowledge he had
+striven for just kept him above absolute want.</p>
+
+<p>He slipped away from the gay party as soon as
+he could. His last glance round the room showed
+him Angelo Reanda and Gloria, sitting in a corner
+apart. The girl's face was grave. There was a
+gentle and happy light in the artist's eyes which
+Griggs had never seen. That also was the strong
+man's portion.</p>
+
+<p>Wrathfully he strode away from the house, under
+the dim oil lamps, an unlighted cigar between his
+teeth, his soft felt hat drawn over his eyes. He
+crossed the city towards the Pantheon and the
+Piazza Navona, his cigar still unlighted.</p>
+
+<p>The streets were alive, though it was very late.
+There was more freedom to be gay and more hope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+of being simply happy in those days. Many men
+and women wandered about in bands of ten or a
+dozen, singing in soft voices, above which now
+and then rose a few ringing tenor notes. There
+was laughter everywhere in the air; tambourines
+drummed and thumped and jingled, guitars twanged,
+and mandolines tinkled and quavered. From a
+dark lane somewhere off the broader thoroughfare,
+a single voice sang out in serenade. The Corso
+was bright with unusual lights, and strewn with
+the birdseed and plaster-of-Paris 'confetti,' with
+yellow sand and sprigs of box leaves, and withering
+flowers, and there was about all the neighbourhood
+that peculiar smell of plaster and crushed flower-stalks
+which belonged then to the street carnival of
+Rome. Further on, in the dim quarters by the
+Tiber, the wine shops were all crowded, and men
+stood and drank outside on the pavement, and paid,
+and went laughing on, laughing and singing, singing
+and laughing, through the night.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs felt the penetrating loneliness of him
+who cannot laugh amidst laughter, and it was congenial
+to him. He had always been alone, and he
+felt that the world held no companion for him.
+There was satisfaction in knowing that no one could
+ever guess what went on between his heart and his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>He wandered on with the same even, untiring
+stride, for a long time, through the dark and winding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+ways, from the Pantheon through the old city,
+through Piazza Paganica and Costaguti to Piazza
+Montanara, where the carters and carriers congregate
+from the country. There, in the middle of
+the three-cornered open space, a flag in the paving
+marked the spot on which men used to be put to
+death. To-night even the carriers were making
+merry. Griggs was thirsty, and paused at the door
+of a wine shop. Though it was winter, men were
+sitting outside, for there was no more room within.
+A flaring torch of pitched rope was stuck in an iron
+ring, and shed an uncertain, smoky light upon the
+men's faces. A drawer in an apron brought
+Griggs a glass, and he drank standing.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes no difference," said a rough voice in
+the little crowd. "They may cut off my head there
+on the paving-stone. They would do me a favour.
+If I find him, I kill him. An evil death on him
+and all his house!"</p>
+
+<p>Griggs looked at the speaker without surprise,
+for he had often heard such things said. He saw
+an iron-grey man in good peasant's clothes of dark
+blue with broad silver buttons, a man with a true
+Roman face, a small aquiline nose, and keen, dark
+eyes. He turned away, and began to retrace his
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>In half an hour he was at the door of the old
+Falcone inn, gone now like many relics of that
+day. It stood in the Piazza of Saint Eustace near<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
+the Pantheon, and in its time was the best of the
+old-fashioned eating-houses. Griggs felt suddenly
+hungry. He had walked seven or eight miles since
+he had left the party. He entered, and passed
+through the crowded rooms below and up the
+narrow steps to a small upper chamber, where he
+hoped to be alone. But there, also, every seat was
+taken.</p>
+
+<p>To his surprise Dalrymple and Reanda were at
+the table furthest from him, in earnest conversation,
+with a measure of wine between them. Griggs
+had never seen the Italian there before, but the
+latter caught sight of him as he stood in the door,
+and rose to his feet, making a sign which meant
+that he was going away, and that the chair was
+vacant. Griggs came forward, and looked into his
+face as they met. There was the same gentle and
+happy light in Reanda's eyes which had been there
+when he was sitting with Gloria in the corner of
+the Spanish artist's drawing-room. Then Griggs
+understood and knew the truth, and guessed the
+meaning of the unaccustomed pressure of the hand
+as Reanda greeted him without speaking, and hurriedly
+went out.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple had seen Griggs coming and was
+already calling to a man in a spotless white jacket
+for another glass and more wine. The Scotchman's
+bony face was haggard, but there was a little colour
+in his cheeks, and he seemed pleased.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, Griggs," he said. "There are no
+more chairs, so we can keep the table to ourselves.
+I hope you are half as thirsty as I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather more than half," answered the other,
+and he drank eagerly. "Give me some more,
+please," he said, holding out his glass.</p>
+
+<p>"I see that you are in the right humour to hear
+good news," said the Scot. "Reanda is to marry
+my daughter in the summer."</p>
+
+<p>"I congratulate you all three," said Griggs,
+slowly, for he had known what was coming. "Let
+us drink the health of the couple."</p>
+
+<p>"By all means," answered Dalrymple, filling
+again. "By all means let us drink. I could not swallow
+that sweet stuff at Mendoza's. This is better.
+By all means let us drink as much as we can."</p>
+
+<p>"That might mean a good deal," said Griggs,
+quickly, and he drained a third glass. "Were
+you ever drunk, Dalrymple?" he inquired
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I never was," answered the Scotchman.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I. This seems a fitting occasion for trying
+an experiment. We might try to get drunk."</p>
+
+<p>"By all means, let us try," replied Dalrymple.
+"I have my doubts about the possibility of the
+thing, however."</p>
+
+<p>"So have I."</p>
+
+<p>They sat opposite to one another in silence for
+some minutes, each satisfied that the other was in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+earnest. Dalrymple solemnly filled the glasses
+and then leaned back in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"You did not seem much surprised by what
+I told you," he observed at last. "I suppose you
+expected it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It seemed natural enough, though it is
+not always the natural things that happen."</p>
+
+<p>"I think they are suited to marry. Of course,
+Reanda is very much older, but he is comparatively
+a young man still."</p>
+
+<p>"Comparatively. He will make a better husband
+for having had experience, I daresay."</p>
+
+<p>"That depends on what experience he has had.
+When I first saw him I thought he was in love
+with Donna Francesca. It would have been like
+an artist. They are mostly fools. But I was
+mistaken. He worships at a distance."</p>
+
+<p>"And she preserves the distance," Griggs remarked.
+"You are not drinking fair. My glass
+is empty."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple finished his and refilled both.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been here some time," he observed, half
+apologetically. "But as I was saying&mdash;or rather,
+as you were saying&mdash;Donna Francesca preserves
+the distance. These Italians do that admirably.
+They know the difference between intimacy and
+familiarity."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a nice distinction," said Griggs. "I
+will use it in my next letter. No. Donna Francesca<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+could never be familiar with any one. They
+learn it when they are young, I suppose, and it
+becomes a race-characteristic."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" asked Dalrymple, abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"A certain graceful loftiness," answered the
+younger man.</p>
+
+<p>The Scotchman's wrinkled eyelids contracted,
+and he was silent for a few moments.</p>
+
+<p>"A certain graceful loftiness," he repeated
+slowly. "Yes, perhaps so. A certain graceful
+loftiness."</p>
+
+<p>"You seem struck by the expression," said
+Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>"I am. Drink, man, drink!" added Dalrymple,
+suddenly, in a different tone. "There's no time
+to be lost if we mean to drink enough to hurt us
+before those beggars go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear. They will be up all night. Not
+that it is a reason for wasting time, as you say."</p>
+
+<p>He drank his glass and watched Dalrymple as
+the latter did likewise, with that deliberate intention
+which few but Scotchmen can maintain on
+such occasions. The wine might have been poured
+into a quicksand, for any effect it had as yet
+produced.</p>
+
+<p>"Those race-characteristics of families are very
+curious," continued Griggs, thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Are they?" Dalrymple looked at him suspiciously.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Very. Especially voices. They run in families,
+like resemblance of features."</p>
+
+<p>"So they do," answered the other, thoughtfully.
+"So they do."</p>
+
+<p>He had of late years got into the habit of often
+repeating such short phrases, in an absent-minded
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Griggs. "I noticed Donna Francesca's
+voice, the first time I ever heard it. It
+is one of those voices which must be inherited.
+I am sure that all her family have spoken as
+she does. It reminds me of something&mdash;of some
+one&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple raised his eyes suddenly again, as
+though he were irritated.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," he began, interrupting his companion.
+"Do you feel anything? Anything queer in your
+head?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are talking rather disconnectedly, that
+is all."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I? It did not strike me that I was incoherent.
+Probably one half of me was asleep while
+the other was talking." He laughed drily, and
+drank again. "No," he said thoughtfully, as he
+set down his glass. "I feel nothing unusual in
+my head. It would be odd if I did, considering
+that we have only just begun."</p>
+
+<p>"So I thought," answered Dalrymple.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He ordered more wine and relapsed into silence.
+Neither spoke again for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>"There goes another bottle," said Dalrymple,
+at last, as he drained the last drops from the flagon
+measure. "Drink a little faster. This is slow
+work. We know the old road well enough."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not inclined to give up the attempt,
+are you?" inquired Griggs, whose still face
+showed no change. "Is it fair to eat? I am
+hungry."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. Eat as much as you like."</p>
+
+<p>Griggs ordered something, which was brought
+after considerable delay, and he began to eat.</p>
+
+<p>"We are not loquacious over our cups," remarked
+Dalrymple. "Should you mind telling
+me why you are anxious to get drunk to-night for
+the first time in your life?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might ask you the same question," answered
+Griggs, cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Merely because you proposed it. It struck me
+as a perfectly new idea. I have not much to
+amuse me, you know, and I shall have less when
+my daughter leaves me. It would be an amusement
+to lose one's head in some way."</p>
+
+<p>"In such a way as to be able to get it back, you
+mean. I was walking this evening after the party,
+and I came to the Piazza Montanara. There is a
+big flagstone there on which people used to leave
+their heads for good."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I have seen it. You cannot tell me
+much about Rome which I do not know."</p>
+
+<p>"There were a lot of carriers drinking close by.
+It was rather grim, I thought. An old fellow
+there had a spite against somebody. You know
+how they talk. 'They may cut off my head there
+on the paving-stone,' the man said. 'If I find
+him, I kill him. An evil death on him and all his
+house!' You have heard that sort of thing. But
+the fellow seemed to be very much in earnest."</p>
+
+<p>"He will probably kill his man," said Dalrymple.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly his big, loose shoulders shook a little,
+and he shivered. He glanced towards the window,
+suspecting that it might be open.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you cold?" asked Griggs, carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Cold? No. Some one was walking over my
+grave, as they say. If we varied the entertainment
+with something stronger, we should get on
+faster, though."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Griggs. "I refuse to mix things.
+This may be the longer way, but it is the safer."</p>
+
+<p>And he drank again.</p>
+
+<p>"He was a man from Tivoli, or Subiaco," he
+remarked presently. "He spoke with that accent."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay," answered Dalrymple, who looked
+down into his glass at that moment, so that his
+face was in shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Just then four men who had occupied a table<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+near the door rose and went out. It was late, even
+for a night in Carnival.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope they are not going to leave us all to ourselves,"
+said Dalrymple. "The place will be shut
+up, and we need at least two hours more."</p>
+
+<p>"At least," assented Paul Griggs. "But they
+expect to be open all night. I think there is time."</p>
+
+<p>The men at the other tables showed no signs of
+moving. They sat quietly in their places, drinking
+steadily, by sips. Some of them were eating roasted
+chestnuts, and all were talking more or less in low
+tones. Occasionally one voice or another rose above
+the rest in an exclamation, but instantly subsided
+again. Italians of that class are rarely noisy, for
+though the Romans drink deep, they generally have
+strong heads, and would be ashamed of growing
+excited over their wine.</p>
+
+<p>The air was heavy, for several men were smoking
+strong cigars. The vaulted chamber was
+lighted by a single large oil lamp with a reflector,
+hung by a cord from the intersection of the cross-arches.
+The floor was of glazed white tiles, and
+the single window had curtains of Turkey red. It
+was all very clean and respectable and well kept,
+even at that crowded season, but the air was heavy
+with wine and tobacco, and the smell of cooked
+food,&mdash;a peculiar atmosphere in which the old-fashioned
+Roman delighted to sit for hours on
+holidays.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple looked about him, moving his pale
+blue eyes without turning his head. The colour
+had deepened a little on his prominent cheek
+bones, and his eyes were less bright than usual.
+But his red hair, growing sandy with grey, was
+brushed smoothly back, and his evening dress was
+unruffled. He and Griggs were so evidently gentlemen,
+that some of the Italians at the other
+tables glanced at them occasionally in quiet surprise,
+not that they should be there, but that they
+should remain so long, and so constantly renew
+their order for another bottle of wine.</p>
+
+<p>Giulio, the stout, dark drawer in a spotless jacket,
+moved about silently and quickly. One of the
+Italians glanced at Griggs and Dalrymple and then
+at the waiter, who also glanced at them quickly
+and then shrugged his shoulders almost perceptibly.
+Dalrymple saw both glances, and his eyes
+lighted up.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe that fellow is laughing at us," he said
+to Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to laugh at," answered the
+latter, unmoved. "But of course, if you think so,
+throw him downstairs."</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple laughed drily.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a certain calmness about the suggestion,"
+he said. "It has a good, old-fashioned ring
+to it. You are not a very civilized young man,
+considering your intellectual attainments."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I grew up at sea and before the mast. That
+may account for it."</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to have crammed a good deal into a
+short life," observed Dalrymple. "It must have
+been a classic ship, where they taught Greek and
+Latin."</p>
+
+<p>"The captain used to call her his Ship of Fools.
+As a matter of fact, it was rather classic, as you
+say. The old man taught us navigation and Greek
+verse by turns for five years. He was a university
+man with a passion for literature, but I never knew
+a better sailor. He put me ashore when I was
+seventeen with pretty nearly the whole of my five
+years' pay in my pocket, and he made me promise
+that I would go to college and stay as long as my
+money held out. I got through somehow, but I am
+not sure that I bless him. He is afloat still, and I
+write to him now and then."</p>
+
+<p>"An Englishman, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. An American."</p>
+
+<p>"What strange people you Americans are!" exclaimed
+Dalrymple, and he drank again. "You
+take up a profession, and you wear it for a bit, like
+a coat, and then change it for another," he added,
+setting down his empty glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Very much like you Scotch," answered Griggs.
+"I have heard you say that you were a doctor
+once."</p>
+
+<p>"A doctor&mdash;yes&mdash;in a way, for the sake of being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+a man of science, or believing myself to be
+one. My family was opposed to it," he continued
+thoughtfully. "My father told me it was his
+sincere belief that science did not stand in need of
+any help from me. He said I was more likely to
+need the help of science, like other lunatics. I
+will not say that he was not right."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed a little and filled his glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Dalrymple!" he exclaimed softly, still
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Griggs raised his slow eyes to his companion's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"It never struck me that you were much to be
+pitied," he observed.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. Perhaps not. But I will venture to
+say that the point is debatable, and could be argued.
+'To be, or not to be' is a question admirably calculated
+to draw out the resources of the intellect
+in argument, if you are inclined for that sort of
+diversion. It is a very good thing, a very good
+thing for a man to consider and weigh that question
+while he is young. Before he goes to sleep,
+you know, Griggs, before he goes to sleep."</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 443px;">
+<img src="images/gs07.jpg" width="443" height="500" alt="&quot;Fire and sleet and candle-light; And Christ receive thy soul.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p. 324." title="&quot;Fire and sleet and candle-light; And Christ receive thy soul.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I., p. 324." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Fire and sleet and candle-light;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And Christ receive thy soul.&quot;</span>
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">&mdash;Vol. I., p.&nbsp;324.</span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"'For in that sleep of death, what dreams may
+come&mdash;'" Griggs quoted, and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"'When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.'
+You do not know your Shakespeare, young man."</p>
+
+<p>"'Must give us pause,'" continued Griggs. "I
+was thinking of the dreams, not of the rest."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>"Dreams? Yes. There will be dreams there.
+Dreams, and other things&mdash;'this ae night of all.'
+Not that my reason admits that they can be more
+than dreams, you know, Griggs. Reason says 'to
+sleep&mdash;no more.' And fancy says 'perchance to
+dream.' Well, well, it will be a long dream, that's
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. We shall be dead a long time. Better
+drink now." And Griggs drank.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'Fire and sleet and candle-light,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And Christ receive thy soul;'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>said Dalrymple, with a far-away look in his pale
+eyes. "Do you know the Lyke-Wake Dirge,
+Griggs? It is a grand dirge. Hark to the swing
+of it.</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'This ae night, this ae night,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Every night and all,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Fire and sleet and candle-light,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And Christ receive thy soul.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>He repeated the strange words in a dull, matter-of-fact
+way, with a Scotch accent rarely perceptible
+in his conversation. Griggs listened. He had
+heard the dirge before, with all its many stanzas,
+and it had always had an odd fascination for him.
+He said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"It bodes no good to be singing a dirge at a
+betrothal," said the Scotchman, suddenly. "Drink,
+man, drink! Drink till the blue devils fly away.
+Drink&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'Till a' the seas gang dry, my love,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Till a' the seas gang dry.'</span><br />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Not that it is in the disposition of the Italian
+inn-keeper to give us time for that," he added
+drily. "As I was saying, I am of a melancholic
+temper. Not that I take you for a gay man yourself,
+Griggs. Drink a little more. It is my opinion
+that a little more will produce an agreeable impression
+upon you, my young friend. Drink a little
+more. You are too grave for so very young a man.
+I should not wish to be indiscreet, but I might
+almost take you for a man in love, if I did not
+know you better. Were you ever in love, Griggs?"</div>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Griggs, quietly. "And you,
+Dalrymple? Were you never in love?"</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple's loosely hung shoulders started suddenly,
+and his pale blue eyes set themselves steadily
+to look at Griggs. The red brows were shaggy,
+and there was a bright red spot on each cheek bone.
+He did not answer his companion's question, though
+his lips moved once or twice as though he were
+about to speak. They seemed unable to form words,
+and no sound came from them.</p>
+
+<p>His anger was near, perhaps, and with another
+man it might have broken out. But the pale and
+stony face opposite him, and the deep, still eyes,
+exercised a quieting influence, and whatever words
+rose to his lips were never spoken. Griggs understood
+that he had touched the dead body of a great
+passion, sacred in its death as it must have been
+overwhelming in its life. He struck another subject<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>
+immediately, and pretended not to have noticed
+Dalrymple's expression.</p>
+
+<p>"I like your queer old Scotch ballads," he said,
+humouring the man's previous tendency to quote
+poetry.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a lot of life in them still," answered
+Dalrymple, absently twisting his empty glass.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs filled it for him, and they both drank.
+Little by little the Italians had begun to go away.
+Giulio, the fat, white-jacketed drawer, sat nodding
+in a corner, and the light from the high lamp
+gleamed on his smooth black hair as his head fell
+forward.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a sincere vitality in our Scotch poets,"
+said Dalrymple, as though not satisfied with the
+short answer he had given. "There is a very notable
+power of active living exhibited in their somewhat
+irregular versification, and in the concatenation
+of their ratiocinations regarding the three
+principal actions of the early Scottish life, which
+I take to have been birth, stealing, and a violent
+death."</p>
+
+<p>"'But of these three charity is the greatest,'"
+observed Griggs, with something like a laugh, for
+he saw that Dalrymple was beginning to make long
+sentences, which is a bad sign for a Scotchman's
+sobriety.</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered Dalrymple, with much gravity.
+"There I venture&mdash;indeed, I claim the right&mdash;to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+differ with you. For the Scotchman is hospitable,
+but not charitable. The process of the Scotch mind
+is unitary, if you will allow me to coin a word for
+which I will pay with my glass."</p>
+
+<p>And he forthwith fulfilled the obligation in a
+deep draught. Setting down the tumbler, he
+leaned back in his chair and looked slowly round
+the room. His lips moved. Griggs could just
+distinguish the last lines of another old ballad.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'Night and day on me she cries,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And I am weary of the skies</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Since&mdash;'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>He broke off and shook himself nervously, and
+looked at Griggs, as though wondering whether
+the latter had heard.</p>
+
+<p>"This wine is good," he said, rousing himself.
+"Let us have some more. Giulio!"</p>
+
+<p>The fat waiter awoke instantly at the call,
+looked, nodded, went out, and returned immediately
+with another bottle.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this the sixth or the seventh?" asked Dalrymple,
+slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Eight with Signor Reanda's," answered the
+man. "But Signor Reanda paid for his as he went
+out. You have therefore seven. It might be
+enough." Giulio smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring seven more, Giulio," said the Scotchman,
+gravely. "It will save you six journeys."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Does the Signore speak in earnest?" asked the
+servant, and he glanced at Griggs, who was impassive
+as marble.</p>
+
+<p>"You flatter yourself," said Dalrymple, impressively,
+to the man, "if you imagine that I would
+make even a bad joke to amuse you. Bring seven
+bottles." Giulio departed.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a Homeric order," observed Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>"I think&mdash;in fact, I am almost sure&mdash;that seven
+bottles more will produce an impression upon one
+of us. But I have a decidedly melancholic disposition,
+and I accustomed myself to Italian wine
+when I was very young. Melancholy people can
+drink more than others. Besides, what does such
+a bottle hold? I will show you. A tumbler to
+you, and one to me. Drink; you shall see."</p>
+
+<p>He emptied his glass and poured the remainder
+of the bottle into it.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see? Half a tumbler. Two and a half
+are a bottle. Seven bottles are seventeen and a
+half glasses. What is that for you or me in a long
+evening? My blue devils are large. It would
+take an ocean to float them all. I insist upon
+going to bed in a good humour to-night, for once,
+in honour of my daughter's engagement. By the
+bye, Griggs, what do you think of Reanda?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is a first-rate artist. I like him very well."</p>
+
+<p>"A good man, eh? Well, well&mdash;from the point
+of view of discretion, Griggs, I am doing right.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+But then, as you may very wisely object, discretion
+is only a point of view. The important thing is
+the view, and not the point. Here comes Ganymede
+with the seven vials of wrath! Put them on
+the table, Giulio," he said, as the fat waiter came
+noiselessly up, carrying the bottles by the necks
+between his fingers, three in one hand and four in
+the other. "They make a fine show, all together,"
+he observed thoughtfully, with his bony head a
+little on one side.</p>
+
+<p>"And may God bless you!" said Giulio, solemnly.
+"If you do not die to-night, you will
+never die again."</p>
+
+<p>"I regard it as improbable that we shall die
+more than once," answered Dalrymple. "I believe,"
+he said, turning to Griggs, "that when men
+are drunk they make mistakes about money. We
+will pay now, while we are sober."</p>
+
+<p>Griggs insisted on paying his share. They settled,
+and Giulio went away happy.</p>
+
+<p>The two strong men sat opposite to each other,
+under the high lamp in the small room, drinking
+on and on. There was something terrifying in the
+Scotchman's determination to lose his senses&mdash;something
+grimly horrible in the younger man's
+marble impassiveness, as he swallowed glass for
+glass in time with his companion. His face grew
+paler still, and colder, but there was a far-off
+gleaming in the shadowy eyes, like the glimmer of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
+a light over a lonely plain through the dark. Dalrymple's
+spirits did not rise, but he talked more
+and more, and his sentences became long and involved,
+and sometimes had no conclusion. The
+wine was telling on him at last. He had never
+been so strong as Griggs, at his best, and he was
+no match for him now. The younger man's
+strangely dual nature seemed to place his head
+beyond anything which could affect his senses.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple talked on and on, rambling from one
+subject to another, and not waiting for any answer
+when he asked a question. He quoted long ballads
+and long passages from Shakespeare, and then
+turned suddenly off upon a scientific subject, until
+some word of his own suggested another quotation.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs sat quietly in his seat, drinking as steadily,
+but paying little attention now to what the
+Scotchman said. Something had got hold of his
+heart, and was grinding it like grain between the
+millstones, grinding it to dust and ashes. He
+knew that he could not sleep that night. He might
+as well drink, for it could not hurt him. Nothing
+material had power to hurt him, it seemed. He
+felt the pain of longing for the utterly unattainable,
+knowing that it was beyond him forever. The
+widowhood of the unsatisfied is hell, compared
+with the bereavement of complete possession. He
+had not so much as told Gloria that he had loved
+her. How could he, being but one degree above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
+a beggar? The unspoken words burned furrows
+in his heart, as molten metal scores smoking channels
+in living flesh. Gloria would laugh, if she
+knew. The torture made his face white. There
+was the scorn of himself with it, because a mere
+child could hurt him almost to death, and that
+made it worse. A mere child, barely out of the
+schoolroom, petulant, spoiled, selfish!</p>
+
+<p>But she had the glory of heaven in her voice,
+and in her face the fatal beauty of her dead mother's
+deadly sin. He need not have despised himself
+for loving her. Her whole being appealed to that
+in man to which no woman ever appealed in vain
+since the first Adam sold heaven to Satan for
+woman's love.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple, leaning on his elbow, one hand in
+his streaked beard, the other grasping his glass,
+talked on and quoted more and more.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'The flame took fast upon her cheek,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Took fast upon her chin,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Took fast upon her fair body</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Because of her deadly sin.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper at the
+last words, and suddenly, regardless of his companion,
+his hand covered his eyes, and his long
+fingers strained desperately on his bony forehead.
+Griggs watched him, thinking that he was drunk
+at last.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Because of her deadly sin," he repeated slowly,
+and the tone changed. "There is no sin in it!"
+he cried suddenly, in a low voice, that had a distant,
+ghostly ring in it.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up, and his eyes were changed, and
+Griggs knew that they no longer saw him.</p>
+
+<p>"Stiff," he said softly. "Quite stiff. Dead
+two or three hours, I daresay. It stands up on
+its feet beside me&mdash;certainly dead two or three
+hours."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded wisely to himself twice, and then
+spoke again in the same far-off tone, gazing past
+Griggs, at the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"The clothes-basket is a silly idea. Besides,
+I should lose the night. Rather carry it myself&mdash;wrap
+it up in the plaid. She'll never know, when
+she has it on her head. Who cares?"</p>
+
+<p>A long silence followed. One hand grasped the
+empty glass. The other lay motionless on the
+table. The blue eyes, with widely dilated pupils,
+stared at the wall, never blinking nor turning.
+But in the face there was the drawn expression of
+a bodily effort. Presently Griggs saw the fine
+beads of perspiration on the great forehead. Then
+the voice spoke again, but in Italian this time.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better look away while I go by. It is
+not a pretty sight. No," he continued, changing
+to English, "not at all a pretty sight. Stiff as a
+board still."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The unwinking eyes dilated. The bright colour
+was gone from the cheek bones.</p>
+
+<p>"It burns very well," he said again in Italian.
+The whole face quivered and the hard lips softened
+and kissed the air. "It is golden&mdash;I can see it in
+the dark&mdash;but I must cover it, darling. Quick&mdash;this
+way. At last! No&mdash;you cannot see the fire,
+but it is burning well, I am sure. Hold on! Hold
+the pommel of the saddle with both hands&mdash;so!"</p>
+
+<p>The voice ceased. Griggs began to understand.
+He touched Dalrymple's sleeve, leaning across the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>"I say!" he called softly. "Dalrymple!"</p>
+
+<p>The Scotchman started violently, and the pupils
+of his eyes contracted. The empty glass in his
+right hand rattled on the hard wood. Then he
+smiled vaguely at Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove!" he exclaimed in his natural voice.
+"I think I must have been napping&mdash;'Sleep'ry
+Sim of the Lamb-hill, and snoring Jock of Suport-mill!'
+By Jove, Griggs, we have got near the
+point at last. One bottle left, eh? The seventh.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'Then up and gat the seventh o' them,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And never a word spake he;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But he has striped his bright brown brand&mdash;'</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>The rest has no bearing upon the subject," he
+concluded, filling both glasses. "Griggs," he said,
+before he drank, "I am afraid this settles the
+matter."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span></div>
+
+<p>"I am afraid it does," said Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I had hopes a little while ago, which
+appeared well founded. But that unfortunate
+little nap has sent me back to the starting-point.
+I should have to begin all over again. It is very
+late, I fancy. Let us drink this last glass to our
+own two selves, and then give it up."</p>
+
+<p>Something had certainly sobered the Scotchman
+again, or at least cleared his head, for he had not
+been drunk in the ordinary sense of the word.</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot be said that we have not given the
+thing a fair trial," said Griggs, gloomily. "I shall
+certainly not take the trouble to try it again."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless he looked at his companion curiously,
+as they both rose to their feet together.
+Dalrymple doubled his long arms as he stood up
+and stretched them out.</p>
+
+<p>"It is curious," he said. "I feel as though I had
+been carrying a heavy weight in my arms. I did
+once, for some distance," he added thoughtfully,
+"and I remember the sensation."</p>
+
+<p>"Very odd," said Griggs, lighting a cigar.</p>
+
+<p>Giulio, sitting outside, half asleep, woke up as he
+heard the steady tread of the two strong men go by.</p>
+
+<p>"If you do not die to-night, you will never die
+again!" he said, half aloud, as he rose to go in and
+clear the room where the guests had been sitting.</p>
+
+
+<h3>END OF VOL. I.</h3><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_i" id="Page_V2_i">[i]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 377px;">
+<img src="images/cover02.jpg" width="377" height="600" alt="Cover" title="Cover" />
+</div>
+<h1>CASA BRACCIO</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/emblem.png" width="150" height="41" alt="Emblem" title="Emblem" />
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_ii" id="Page_V2_ii">[ii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 361px;">
+<img src="images/gs21.jpg" width="361" height="500" alt="&quot;As he stood there repeating the name.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p. 331." title="&quot;As he stood there repeating the name.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p. 331." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;As he stood there repeating the name.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., <a href="#Page_V2_331">p.&nbsp;331.</a></span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_iii" id="Page_V2_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>CASA BRACCIO</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>F. MARION CRAWFORD</h2>
+
+<div class='center'><span class="smcap">Author of "Saracinesca," "Pietro Ghisleri," etc.</span><br />
+<br /><br />
+<br />IN TWO VOLUMES<br />
+
+<br />VOL. II.<br /><br /><br /><br />
+
+<i>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. CASTAIGNE</i><br />
+
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<b>New York</b><br />
+MACMILLAN AND CO.<br />
+<small>AND LONDON</small><br />
+<br />
+1895<br />
+<br />
+<small><i>All rights reserved</i></small><br />
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_iv" id="Page_V2_iv">[iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='copyright'>
+<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1894,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> F. MARION CRAWFORD.<br />
+<br />
+<b>Norwood Press</b><br />
+J. S. Cushing &amp; Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith<br />
+Norwood Mass. U.S.A.<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_v" id="Page_V2_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>PART II.&mdash;<i>Continued.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Gloria Dalrymple</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_V2_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />PART III.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Donna Francesca Campodonico</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_V2_227">227</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_vii" id="Page_V2_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Vol. II.</span></h3>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Gloria&mdash;forgive me!"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_V2_50">50</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Stefanone and Gloria</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_V2_100">100</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"The horror of poverty smote him"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_V2_123">123</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Let us not speak of the dead"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_V2_203">203</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"The last great, true note died away"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_V2_219">219</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"As he stood there repeating the name"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_V2_ii">331</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_1" id="Page_V2_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>Part II.&mdash;<i>Continued.</i></h2>
+
+<h3><i>GLORIA DALRYMPLE.</i></h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_3" id="Page_V2_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2>CASA BRACCIO.</h2>
+
+<h2><span class="smcap">Part II.</span>&mdash;<i>Continued.</i></h2>
+
+<h3><i>GLORIA DALRYMPLE.</i></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">During</span> the first few months of their marriage
+Reanda and Gloria believed themselves happy, and
+really were, since there is no true criterion of
+man's happiness but his own belief in it. They
+took a small furnished apartment at the corner of
+the Macel de' Corvi, with an iron balcony overlooking
+the Forum of Trajan. They would have
+had no difficulty in obtaining other rooms adjoining
+the two Reanda had so long occupied in the Palazzetto
+Borgia, but Gloria was opposed to the arrangement,
+and Reanda did not insist upon it.
+The Forum of Trajan was within a convenient distance
+of the palace, and he went daily to his work.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," said Gloria, "you will not always be
+painting frescoes for Donna Francesca. I want<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_4" id="Page_V2_4">[4]</a></span>
+you to paint a great picture, and send it to Paris
+and get a medal."</p>
+
+<p>She was ambitious for him, and dreamed of his
+winning world-wide fame. She loved him, and she
+felt that Francesca had caged him, as Francesca
+herself had once felt. She wished to remove him
+altogether from the latter's influence, both because
+she was frankly jealous of his friendship
+for the older woman, and wished to have him
+quite to herself, and also in the belief that he could
+do greater things if he were altogether freed from
+the task of decorating the palace, which had kept
+him far too long in one limited sequence of production.
+There was, moreover, a selfish consideration
+of vanity in her view, closely linked with her
+unbounded admiration for her husband. She knew
+that she was beautiful, and she wished his greatest
+work to be a painting of herself.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria, however, wished also to take a position
+in Roman society, and the only person who could
+help her and her husband to cross the line was
+Francesca Campodonico. It was therefore impossible
+for Gloria to break up the intimacy altogether,
+however much she might wish to do so.
+Meanwhile, too, Reanda had not finished his
+frescoes.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the marriage, which took place in the
+summer, Dalrymple left Rome, intending to be
+absent but a few months in Scotland, where his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_5" id="Page_V2_5">[5]</a></span>
+presence was necessary on account of certain family
+affairs and arrangements consequent upon the death
+of Lord Redin, the head of his branch of the Dalrymples,
+and of Lord Redin's son only a few weeks
+later, whereby the title went to an aged great-uncle
+of Angus Dalrymple's, who was unmarried, so that
+Dalrymple's only brother became the next heir.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria was therefore quite alone with her husband.
+Paul Griggs had also left Rome for a time
+on business connected with his journalistic career.
+He had in reality been unwilling to expose himself
+to the unnecessary suffering of witnessing Gloria's
+happiness, and had taken the earliest opportunity
+of going away. Gloria herself was at first pleased
+by his departure. Later, however, she wished
+that he would come back. She had no one to
+whom she could turn when she was in need of any
+advice on matters which Reanda could not or would
+not decide.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda himself was at first as absolutely happy
+as he had expected to be, and Francesca Campodonico
+congratulated herself on having brought
+about a perfectly successful match. While he continued
+to work at the Palazzetto Borgia, the two
+were often together for hours, as in former times.
+Gloria had at first come regularly in the course of
+the morning and sat in the hall while her husband
+was painting, but she had found it a monotonous
+affair after a while. Reanda could not talk perpetually.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_6" id="Page_V2_6">[6]</a></span>
+More than once, indeed, he introduced
+his wife's face amongst the many he painted, and
+she was pleased, though not satisfied. He could
+not make her one of the central figures which
+appeared throughout the series, because the greater
+part of the work was done already, and it was necessary
+to preserve the continuity of each resemblance.
+Gloria wished to be the first everywhere,
+though she did not say so.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little, she came less regularly in the
+mornings. She either stayed at home and studied
+seriously the soprano parts of the great operas then
+fashionable, or invented small errands which kept
+her out of doors. She sometimes met Reanda when
+he left the palace, and they walked home together
+to their midday breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little, also, Francesca fell into the habit
+of visiting Reanda in the great hall at hours when
+she was sure that Gloria would not be there. It
+was not that she disliked to see them together, but
+rather because she felt that Gloria was secretly
+antagonistic. There was a small, perpetual, unexpressed
+hostility in Gloria's manner which could
+not escape so sensitive a woman as Francesca.
+Reanda felt it, too, but said nothing. He was
+almost foolishly in love with his wife, and he was
+devotedly attached to Francesca herself. For the
+present he was very simple in his dealings with
+himself, and he quietly shut his eyes to the possibility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_7" id="Page_V2_7">[7]</a></span>
+of a disagreement between the two women,
+though he felt that it was in the air.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of diminishing with his marriage, the
+obligations under which he was placed towards
+Donna Francesca were constantly increasing. She
+saw and understood his wife's social ambition,
+and gave herself trouble to satisfy it. Reanda
+felt this keenly, and while his gratitude increased,
+he inwardly wished that each kindness might be
+the last. But Gloria had the ambition and the
+right to be received in society on a footing of
+equality, and no one but Francesca Campodonico
+could then give her what she wanted.</p>
+
+<p>She did not obtain what is commonly called
+social success, though many people received her
+and her husband during the following winter.
+She got admiration in plenty, and she herself believed
+that it was friendship. Of the two, Reanda,
+who had no social ambition at all, was by far the
+more popular. He was, as ever, quiet and unassuming,
+as became a man of his extraordinary
+talent. He so evidently preferred in society to
+talk with intelligent people rather than to make
+himself agreeable to the very great, that the very
+great tried to attract him to themselves, in order
+to appear intelligent in the eyes of others. They
+altogether forgot that he was the son of the
+steward of Gerano, though he sometimes spoke
+unaffectedly of his boyhood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_8" id="Page_V2_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Gloria reminded people too often that she
+had a right to be where she was, as the daughter
+of Angus Dalrymple, who might some day be Lord
+Redin. Fortunately for her, no one knew that
+Dalrymple had begun life as a doctor, and very
+far from such prospects as now seemed quite within
+the bounds of realization. But even as the possible
+Lord Redin, her father's existence did not interest
+the Romans at all. They were not accustomed
+to people who thought it necessary to justify
+their social position by allusions to their parentage,
+and since Francesca Campodonico had assured
+them that Dalrymple was a gentleman, they had
+no further questions to ask, and raised their eyebrows
+when Gloria volunteered information on the
+subject of her ancestors. They listened politely,
+and turned the subject as soon as they could,
+because it bored them.</p>
+
+<p>But the admiration she got was genuine of its
+kind, as admiration and as nothing else. Her
+magnificent voice was useful to ancient and charitable
+princesses who wished to give concerts for the
+benefit of the deserving poor, but her face disturbed
+the hearts of those excellent ladies who had unmarried
+sons, and of other excellent ladies who
+had gay husbands. Her beauty and her voice together
+were a danger, and must be admired from a
+distance. Gloria and her husband were asked to
+many houses on important occasions. Gloria went<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_9" id="Page_V2_9">[9]</a></span>
+to see the princesses and duchesses, and found them
+at home. Their cards appeared regularly at the
+small house in the Macel de' Corvi, but there was
+always a mystery as to how they got there, for the
+princesses and the duchesses themselves did not
+appear, except once or twice when Francesca Campodonico
+brought one of her friends with her, gently
+insisting that there should be a proper call.
+Gloria understood, and said bitter things about
+society when she was alone, and by degrees she
+began to say them to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"These Romans!" she exclaimed at last. "They
+believe that there is nobody like themselves!"</p>
+
+<p>Angelo Reanda's face had a pained look, as he
+laid his long thin hand upon hers.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," he said gently. "You have married
+an artist. What would you have? I am sure,
+people have received us very well."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well! Of course&mdash;as though we had not
+the right to be received well. But, Angelo&mdash;do
+not say such things&mdash;that I have married an
+artist&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is quite true," he answered, with a smile. "I
+work with my hands. They do not. There is the
+difference."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are the greatest artist in the world!"
+she cried enthusiastically, throwing her arms round
+his neck, and kissing him again and again. "It is
+ridiculous. In any other city, in London, in Paris,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_10" id="Page_V2_10">[10]</a></span>
+people would run after you, people would not be
+able to do enough for you. But it is not you; it is
+I. They do not like me, Angelo, I know that they
+do not like me! They want me at their big parties,
+and they want me to sing for them&mdash;but that is
+all. Not one of them wants me for a friend. I
+am so lonely, Angelo."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes filled with tears, and he tried to comfort
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter, my heart?" he asked,
+soothingly. "We have each other, have we not?
+I, who adore you, and you, who love me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Love you? I worship you! That is why I
+wish you to have everything the world holds,
+everything at your feet."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am quite satisfied," objected Reanda,
+with unwise truth. "Do not think of me."</p>
+
+<p>She loved him, but she wished to put upon him
+some of her uncontrollable longing for social success,
+in order to justify herself. To please her,
+he should have joined in her complaint. Her tears
+dried suddenly, and her eyes flashed.</p>
+
+<p>"I will think of you!" she cried. "I have
+nothing else to think of. You shall have it all,
+everything&mdash;they shall know what a man you
+are!"</p>
+
+<p>"An artist, my dear, an artist. A little better
+than some, a little less good than others. What
+can society do for me?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_11" id="Page_V2_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She sighed, and the colour deepened a little in
+her cheeks. But she hid her annoyance, for she
+loved him with a love at once passionate and intentional,
+compounded of reality and of a strong
+inborn desire for emotion, a desire closely connected
+with her longing for the life of the stage,
+but now suddenly thrown with full force into the
+channel of her actual life.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda began to understand that his wife was
+not happy, and the certainty reacted strongly upon
+him. He became more sad and abstracted from day
+to day, when he was not with her. He longed,
+as only a man of such a nature can long, for a
+friend in whom he could confide, and of whom he
+could ask advice. He had such a friend, indeed,
+in Francesca Campodonico, but he was too proud
+to turn to her, and too deeply conscious that she
+had done all she could to give Gloria the social
+position the latter coveted.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca, on her side, was not slow to notice
+that something was radically wrong. Reanda's
+manner had changed by degrees since his marriage.
+His pride made him more formal with the woman
+to whom he owed so much, and she felt that she
+could do nothing to break down the barrier which
+was slowly rising between them. She suffered, in
+her way, for she was far more sincerely attached
+to the man than she recognized, or perhaps would
+have been willing to recognize, when she allowed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_12" id="Page_V2_12">[12]</a></span>
+herself to look the situation fairly in the face.
+For months she struggled against anything which
+could make her regret the marriage she had made.
+But at last she admitted the fact that she regretted
+it, for it thrust itself upon her and embittered her
+own life. Then she became conscious in her heart
+of a silent and growing enmity for Gloria, and
+of a profound pity for Angelo Reanda. Being
+ashamed of the enmity, as something both sinful
+in her eyes, and beneath the nobility of her nature,
+she expressed it, if that were expression, by allowing
+her pity for the man to assert itself as it would.
+That, she told herself, was a form of charity, and
+could not be wrong, however she looked at it.</p>
+
+<p>All mention of Gloria vanished from her conversation
+with Reanda when they were alone together.
+At such times she did her best to amuse him, to
+interest him, and to take him out of himself. At
+first she had little success. He answered her, and
+sometimes even entered into an argument with
+her, but as soon as the subject dropped, she saw the
+look of harassed preoccupation returning in his
+face. So far as his work was concerned, what he
+did was as good as ever. Francesca thought it was
+even better. But otherwise he was a changed
+man.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the winter Paul Griggs returned.
+One day Francesca was sitting in the hall with
+Reanda, when a servant announced that Griggs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_13" id="Page_V2_13">[13]</a></span>
+had asked to see her. She glanced at Reanda's
+face, and instantly decided to receive the American
+alone in the drawing-room, on the other side of the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you not receive him here?" asked
+Reanda, carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Because&mdash;" she hesitated. "I should rather
+see him in the drawing-room," she added a moment
+later, without giving any further explanation.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs told her that he had come back to stay
+through the year and perhaps longer. She took a
+kindly interest in the young man, and was glad to
+hear that he had improved his position and prospects
+during his absence. He rarely found sympathy
+anywhere, and indeed needed very little of it.
+But he was capable of impulse, and he had long
+ago decided that Francesca was good, discreet, and
+kind. He answered her questions readily enough,
+and his still face warmed a little while she talked
+with him. She, on her part, could not help being
+interested in the lonely, hard-working man who
+never seemed to need help of any kind, and was
+climbing through life by the strength of his own
+hands. There was about him at that time an air
+of reserved power which interested though it did
+not attract those who knew him.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he asked about Gloria and her husband.
+There was an odd abruptness in the question, and
+a hard little laugh, quite unnecessary, accompanied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_14" id="Page_V2_14">[14]</a></span>
+it. Francesca noted the change of manner, and
+remembered how she had at first conceived the
+impression that Griggs admired Gloria, but that
+Gloria was repelled by him.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose they are radiantly happy," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca hesitated, being truthful by nature,
+as well as loyal. There was no reason why Griggs
+should not ask her the question, which was natural
+enough, but she had many reasons for not wishing
+to answer it.</p>
+
+<p>"Are they not happy?" he asked quickly, as her
+silence roused his suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>"I have never heard anything to the contrary,"
+answered Francesca, dangerously accurate in the
+statement.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Griggs uttered the ejaculation in a
+thoughtful tone, but said no more.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I have not given you the impression that
+there is anything wrong," said Francesca, showing
+her anxiety too much.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Dalrymple in England," answered Griggs,
+with ready tact. "He seems very well satisfied
+with the match. By the bye, I daresay you have
+heard that Dalrymple stands a good chance of dying
+a peer, if he ever dies at all. With his constitution
+that is doubtful."</p>
+
+<p>And he went on to explain to Francesca the
+matter of the Redin title, and that as Dalrymple's
+elder brother, though married, was childless, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_15" id="Page_V2_15">[15]</a></span>
+himself would probably come into it some day.
+Then Griggs took his leave without mentioning
+Reanda or Gloria again. But Francesca was aware
+that she had betrayed Reanda's unhappiness to a
+man who had admired Gloria, and had probably
+loved her before her marriage. She afterwards
+blamed herself bitterly and very unjustly for what
+she had done.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs went away, and called soon afterwards at
+the small house in the Macel de' Corvi. He found
+Gloria alone, and she was glad to see him. She
+told him that Reanda would also be delighted to
+hear of his return. Griggs, who wrote about everything
+which gave him an opportunity of using his
+very various knowledge, wrote also upon art, and
+besides the first article he had written about Reanda,
+more than a year previously, had, since then,
+frequently made allusion to the artist's great talent
+in his newspaper correspondence. Reanda was
+therefore under an obligation to the journalist,
+and Gloria herself was grateful. Moreover, Englishmen
+who came to Rome had frequently been
+to see Reanda's work in consequence of the articles.
+One old gentleman had tried to induce the artist to
+paint a picture for him, but had met with a refusal,
+on the ground that the work at the Palazzetto Borgia
+would occupy at least another year. The Englishman
+said he should come back and try again.</p>
+
+<p>Between Griggs and Gloria there was the sort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_16" id="Page_V2_16">[16]</a></span>
+of friendly confidence which could not but exist
+under the circumstances. She had known him
+long, and he had been her father's only friend in
+Rome. She remembered him from the time when
+she had been a mere child, before her sudden transition
+to womanhood. She trusted him. She understood
+perfectly well that he loved her, but she
+believed that she had it in her power to keep his
+love as completely in the background as he himself
+had kept it hitherto. Her instinct told her also
+that Griggs might be a strong ally in a moment of
+difficulty. His reserved strength impressed her
+even more than it impressed Francesca Campodonico.
+She received him gladly, and told him to
+come again.</p>
+
+<p>He came, and she asked him to dinner, feeling
+sure that Reanda would wish to see him. He
+accepted the first invitation and another which
+followed before long. By insensible degrees, during
+the winter, Griggs became very intimate at the
+house, as he had been formerly at Dalrymple's
+lodgings.</p>
+
+<p>"That young man loves you, my dear," said
+Reanda, one day in the following spring, with a
+smile which showed how little anxiety he felt.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria laughed gaily, and patted her husband's
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"What men like that call love!" she answered.
+"Besides&mdash;a journalist! And hideous as he is!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_17" id="Page_V2_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He certainly has not a handsome face," laughed
+Reanda. "I am not jealous," he added, with sudden
+gravity. "The man has done much for my
+reputation, too, and I know what I owe him. I
+have good reason for wishing to treat him well,
+and I am all the more pleased, if you find him
+agreeable."</p>
+
+<p>He made the rather formal speech in a decidedly
+formal tone, and with the unconscious intention of
+justifying himself in some way, though he was far
+too simple by nature to suspect himself of any
+complicated motive. She looked at him, but did
+not quite understand.</p>
+
+<p>"You surely do not suppose that I ever cared
+for him!" she said, readily suspecting that he
+suspected her.</p>
+
+<p>He started perceptibly, and looked into her eyes.
+She was very truly in earnest, but her exaggerated
+self-consciousness had given her tone a colour
+which he did not recognize. Some seconds passed
+before he answered her. Then the gentle light
+came into his face as he realized how much he
+loved her.</p>
+
+<p>"How foolish you are, love!" he exclaimed.
+"But Griggs is younger than I&mdash;it would not be
+so very unnatural if you had cared for him."</p>
+
+<p>She broke out passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"Younger than you! So am I, much younger
+than you! But you are young, too. I will not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_18" id="Page_V2_18">[18]</a></span>
+have you suggest that you are not young. Of
+course you are. You are unkind, besides. As
+though it could make the slightest difference to
+me, if you were a hundred years old! But you
+do not understand what my love for you is. You
+will never understand it. I wish I loved you less;
+I should be happier than I am."</p>
+
+<p>He drew her to him, reluctant, and the pained
+look which Francesca knew so well came into his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you unhappy, my heart?" he asked gently.
+"What is it, dear? Tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>She was nervous, and the confession or complaint
+had been unintentional and the result of irritation
+more than of anything else. The fact that he had
+taken it up made matters much worse. She was
+in that state in which such a woman will make a
+mountain of a molehill rather than forego the sympathy
+which her constitution needs in a larger
+measure than her small sufferings can possibly
+claim.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so unhappy!" she cried softly, hiding her
+face against his coat, and glad to feel the tears in
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"But what is it?" he asked very kindly, smoothing
+her auburn hair with one hand, while the other
+pressed her to him.</p>
+
+<p>As he looked over her head at the wall, his
+face showed both pain and perplexity. He had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_19" id="Page_V2_19">[19]</a></span>
+not the least idea what to do, except to humour her
+as much as he could.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so lonely, sometimes," she moaned. "The
+days are so long."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you do not come and sit with me in
+the mornings, as you used to do at first." There
+was an accent of regret in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"She is always there," said Gloria, pressing her
+face closer to his coat.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed she is not!" he cried, and she could
+feel the little breath of indignation he drew. "I
+am a great deal alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Not half as much as I am."</p>
+
+<p>"But what can I do?" he asked, in despair. "It
+is my work. It is her palace. You are free to
+come and go as you will, and if you will not
+come&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know, I know," she answered, still clinging
+to him. "You will say it is my fault. It is just
+like a man. And yet I know that you are there,
+hour after hour, with her, and she is young and
+beautiful. And she loves you&mdash;oh, I know she
+loves you!"</p>
+
+<p>Reanda began to lose patience.</p>
+
+<p>"How absurd!" he exclaimed. "It is ridiculous.
+It is an insult to Donna Francesca to say
+that she is in love with me."</p>
+
+<p>"It is true." Gloria suddenly raised her head
+and drew back from him a very little. "I am a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_20" id="Page_V2_20">[20]</a></span>
+woman," she said. "I know and I understand.
+She meant to sacrifice herself and make you happy,
+by marrying you to me, and now she regrets
+it. It is enough to see her. She follows you
+with her eyes as you move, and there is a look in
+them&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Reanda laughed, with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"It is altogether too absurd!" he said. "I do
+not know what to say. I can only laugh."</p>
+
+<p>"Because you know it is true," answered Gloria.
+"It is for your sake that she has done it all, that
+she makes such a pretence of being friendly to me,
+that she pushes us into society, and brings her
+friends here to see me. They never come unless
+she brings them," she added bitterly. "There is
+no fear of that. The Duchess of Astrardente would
+not have her black horses seen standing in the
+Macel de' Corvi, unless Donna Francesca made her
+do it and came with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" asked Reanda, simply, for his Italian
+mind did not grasp the false shame which
+Gloria felt in living in a rather humble neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>"She would not have people know that she had
+friends living in such a place," Gloria answered.</p>
+
+<p>Unwittingly she had dealt Reanda a deadly
+thrust.</p>
+
+<p>He had fallen in love with her and had married
+her on the understanding with himself, so to say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_21" id="Page_V2_21">[21]</a></span>
+that she was in all respects as much a great lady
+as Donna Francesca herself, and he had taken it
+for granted that she must be above such pettiness.
+The lodging was extremely good and had the
+advantage of being very conveniently situated for
+his work. It had never struck him that because it
+was in an unfashionable position, Gloria could
+imagine that the people she knew would hesitate
+to come and see her. Since their marriage she
+had done and said many little things which had
+shaken his belief in the thoroughness of her refinement.
+She had suddenly destroyed that belief now,
+by a single foolish speech. It would be hard to
+build it up again.</p>
+
+<p>Like many men of genius he could not forgive
+his own mistake, and Gloria was involved in this
+one. Moreover, as an Italian, he fancied that she
+secretly suspected him of meanness, and when
+Italians are not mean, there is nothing which they
+resent more than being thought to be so. He had
+plenty of money, for he had always lived very
+simply before his marriage, and Dalrymple gave
+Gloria an allowance.</p>
+
+<p>His tone changed, when he answered her, but
+she was far from suspecting what she had done.</p>
+
+<p>"We will get another apartment at once," he
+said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she answered at once, protesting, "you
+must not do anything of the kind! What an idea!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_22" id="Page_V2_22">[22]</a></span>
+To change our home merely because it is not on the
+Corso or the Piazza di Venezia!"</p>
+
+<p>"You would prefer the Corso?" inquired Angelo.
+"That is natural. It is more gay."</p>
+
+<p>The reflexion that the view of the deserted
+Forum of Trajan was dull suggested itself to him
+as a Roman, knowing the predilection of Roman
+women of the middle class for looking out of the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>"It is ridiculous!" cried Gloria. "You must
+not think of it. Besides&mdash;the expense&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The expense does not enter into the question,
+my dear," he answered, having fully made up his
+mind. "You shall not live in a place to which
+you think your friends may hesitate to come."</p>
+
+<p>"Friends! They are not my friends, and they
+never mean to be," she replied more hotly. "Why
+should I care whether they will take the trouble
+to come and see me or not? Let them stay away,
+if I am not good enough for them. Tell Donna
+Francesca not to bring them&mdash;not to come herself
+any more. I hate to feel that she is thrusting me
+down the throat of a society that does not want
+me! She only does it to put me under an obligation
+to her. I am sure she talks about me behind
+my back and says horrid things&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are very unjust," said Reanda, hurt by
+the vulgarity of the speech and deeply wounded in
+his own pride.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_23" id="Page_V2_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You defend her! You see!" And the colour
+rose in Gloria's cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"She has done nothing that needs defence.
+She has acted always with the greatest kindness
+to me and to us. You have no right to suppose
+that she says unkind things of you when you are
+not present. I cannot imagine what has come
+over you to-day. It must be the weather. It is
+sirocco."</p>
+
+<p>Gloria turned away angrily, thinking that he was
+laughing at her, whereas the suggestion about the
+weather was a perfectly natural one in Rome, where
+the southeast wind has an undoubted effect upon
+the human temper.</p>
+
+<p>But the seeds of much discussion were sown on
+that close spring afternoon. Reanda was singularly
+tenacious of small purposes, as he was of
+great ideas where his art was concerned, and his
+nature though gentle was unforgiving, not out of
+hardness, but because he was so sensitive that his
+illusions were easy to destroy.</p>
+
+<p>He went out and forthwith began to search for
+an apartment of which his wife should have no
+cause to complain. In the course of a week he
+found what he wanted. It was a part of the second
+floor of one of the palaces on the Corso, not far from
+the Piazza di Venezia. It was partially furnished,
+and without speaking to Gloria he had it made
+comfortable within a few days. When it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_24" id="Page_V2_24">[24]</a></span>
+ready, he gave her short warning that they were to
+move immediately.</p>
+
+<p>Strange to say, Gloria was very much displeased,
+and did not conceal her annoyance. She really
+liked the small house in the Macel de' Corvi, and
+resented the way in which her husband had taken
+her remarks about the situation. To tell the truth,
+Reanda had deceived himself with the idea that
+she would be delighted at the change, and had
+spent money rather lavishly, in the hope of giving
+her a pleasant surprise. He was proportionately
+disappointed by her unexpected displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>"What was the use of spending so much
+money?" she asked, with a discontented face.
+"People will not come to see us because we live in
+a fine house."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not take the house with that intention,
+my dear," said Reanda, gently, but wounded and
+repelled by the remark and the tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Well then, we might have stayed where we
+were," she answered. "It was much cheaper, and
+there was more sun for the winter."</p>
+
+<p>"But this is gayer," objected Reanda. "You
+have the Corso under the window."</p>
+
+<p>"As though I looked out of the window!"
+exclaimed Gloria, scornfully. "It was so nice&mdash;our
+little place there."</p>
+
+<p>"You are hard to please, my dear," said the
+artist, coldly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_25" id="Page_V2_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then she saw that she had hurt him, which she
+had not meant to do. Her own nature was self-conscious
+and greedy of emotion, but not sensitive.
+She threw her arms round him, and kissed him and
+thanked him.</p>
+
+<p>But Reanda was not satisfied. Day by day when
+Francesca looked at him, she saw the harassed
+expression deepening in his face, and she felt that
+every furrow was scored in her own heart. And
+she, in her turn, grew very grave and thoughtful.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_26" id="Page_V2_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paul Griggs</span> was a man compounded of dominant
+qualities and dormant contradictions of them
+which threatened at any moment to become dominant
+in their turn for a time. He himself almost
+believed that he had two separate individualities,
+if not two distinct minds.</p>
+
+<p>It may be doubted whether it can be good for
+any man to dwell long upon such an idea in connexion
+with himself, however distinctly he may see
+in others the foundation of truth on which it rests.
+To Griggs, however, it presented itself so clearly
+that he found it impossible not to take it into
+consideration in the more important actions of his
+life. The two men were very sharply distinguished
+in his thoughts. The one man would do what the
+other would not. The other could think thoughts
+above the comprehension of the first.</p>
+
+<p>The one was material, keen, strong, passionate,
+and selfish; pre-eminently adapted for hard work;
+conscientious in the force of its instinct to carry
+out everything undertaken by it to the very end,
+and judging that whatever it undertook was good
+and worth finishing; having something of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_27" id="Page_V2_27">[27]</a></span>
+nature of a strong piece of clockwork which being
+wound up must run to the utmost limit before stopping,
+whether regulated to move fast or slow, with
+a fateful certainty independent of will; possessed
+of such uncommon strength as to make it dangerous
+if opposed while moving, and at the same time
+having an extraordinary inertia when not wound
+up to do a certain piece of work; self-reliant to a
+fault, as the lion is self-reliant in the superiority
+of physical endowment; gentle when not opposed,
+because almost incapable of action without a determinate
+object and aim; but developing an irresistible
+momentum when the inertia was overcome;
+thorough, in the sense in which the tide is thorough,
+in rising evenly and all at the same time, and as
+ruthless as the tide because it was that part of the
+whole man which was a result, and which, therefore,
+when once set in motion was almost beyond his
+control; reasonable only because, as a result, it
+followed its causes logically, and required a real
+cause to move it at first.</p>
+
+<p>The other man in him was very different, almost
+wholly independent of the first, and very generally
+in direct conflict with it, at that time. It was an
+imaginative and meditative personality, easily deceived
+into assuming a false <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'premiss'">premise</ins>, but logical
+beyond all liability to deception when reasoning
+from anything it had accepted. Its processes were
+intuitively correct and almost instantaneous, while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_28" id="Page_V2_28">[28]</a></span>
+its assumptions were arbitrary in the extreme. It
+might begin to act at any point whatsoever, and
+unlike the material man, which required a will to
+move it at first, it struck spontaneously with the
+directness of straight lightning from one point to
+another, never misled in its path, though often
+fatally mistaken in the value of the points themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Most men who have thought much, wisely or
+foolishly, and who have seen much, good or bad,
+are more or less conscious of their two individualities.
+Idle and thoughtless people are not, as a
+rule. With Griggs, the two were singularly distinct
+and independent. Sometimes it seemed to
+him that he sat in judgment, as a third person,
+between them. At other moments he felt himself
+wholly identified with the one and painfully aware
+of the opposition of the other. The imaginative
+part of him despised the material part for its pride
+of life and lust of living. The material part
+laughed to scorn the imaginative one for its false
+assumptions and unfounded beliefs. When he
+could abstract himself from both, he looked upon
+the intuitive personality as being himself in every
+true sense of the word, and upon the material man
+as a monstrous overgrowth and encumbrance upon
+his more spiritual self.</p>
+
+<p>When he began to love Gloria Dalrymple, she
+appealed to both sides of his nature. For once, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_29" id="Page_V2_29">[29]</a></span>
+spiritual instinct coincided with the direction given
+to the material man by a very earthly passion.</p>
+
+<p>The cause of this was plain enough and altogether
+simple. The spiritual instinct had taken
+the lead. He had known Gloria before she had
+been a woman to be loved. The maiden genius of
+the girl had spoken to the higher man from a
+sphere above material things, and had created in
+him one of those assumed <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'premisses'">premises</ins> for subsequent
+spiritual intuition from which he derived almost
+the only happiness he knew. Then, all at once,
+the woman had sprung into existence, and her
+young beauty had addressed itself to the young
+gladiator with overwhelming force. The woman
+fascinated him, and the angelic being his imagination
+had assumed in the child still enchanted him.</p>
+
+<p>He was not like Reanda; for his sensitiveness
+was one-sided, and therefore only half vulnerable.
+Gloria's faults were insignificant accidents of a
+general perfectness, the result of having arbitrarily
+assumed a perfect personality. They could not
+make the path of his spiritual intuitive love waver,
+and they produced no effect at all against his direct
+material passion. To destroy the prime beautiful
+illusion, something must take place which would
+upset the mistaken assumption from a point beyond
+it, so to say. As for the earthly part of his love,
+it was so strong that it might well stand alone,
+even if the other should disappear altogether.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_30" id="Page_V2_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then came honour, and the semi-religious morality
+of the man, defending the woman against him,
+for the sake of the angel he saw through her.
+Chief of all, in her defence, stood his own conviction
+that she did not love him, and never would, nor
+ever could. To all intents and purposes, too, he
+had been her father's friend, though between the
+two men there had been little but the similarity of
+their gloomy characters. It was the will of the
+material man to be governed, and as no outward
+influence set it in motion, it remained inert, in
+unstable equilibrium, as a vast boulder may lie for
+ages on the very edge of a precipice, ready but not
+inclined to fall. There was fatality in its stillness,
+and in the certainty that if moved it must
+crash through everything it met.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria had not the least understanding of the
+real man. She thought about him often during the
+months which followed his return, and a week
+rarely passed in which she did not see him two or
+three times. Her thoughts of him were too ignorant
+to be confused. She was conscious, rather
+than aware, that he loved her, but it seemed quite
+natural to her, at her age, that he should never
+express his love by any word or deed.</p>
+
+<p>But she compared him with her husband, innocently
+and unconsciously, in matters where comparison
+was almost unavoidable. His leonine
+strength of body impressed her strongly, and she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_31" id="Page_V2_31">[31]</a></span>
+felt his presence in the room, even when she was
+not looking at him. Reanda was physically a
+weak and nervous man. When he was painting,
+the movements of his hand seemed to be independent
+of his will and guided by a superior unseen
+power, rather than directed by his judgment and
+will. Paul Griggs never made the slightest movement
+which did not strike Gloria as the expression
+of his will to accomplish something. He was
+wonderfully skilful with his hands. Whatever
+he meant to do, his fingers did, forthwith, unhesitatingly.
+His mental processes were similar, so
+far as she could see. If she asked him a question,
+he answered it categorically and clearly, if he were
+able. If not, he said so, and relapsed into silence,
+studying the problem, or trying to force his memory
+to recall a lost item. Reanda, on the other hand,
+answered most questions with the expression of a
+vague opinion, often right, but apparently not
+founded on anything particular. The accuracy of
+Griggs sometimes irritated the artist perceptibly,
+in conversation; but he took an interest in what
+Griggs wrote, and made Gloria translate many of
+the articles to him, reading aloud in Italian from
+the English. Strange to say, they pleased him for
+the very qualities which he disliked in the man's
+talk. The Italian mind, when it has developed
+favourably, is inclined to specialism rather than to
+generalization, and Griggs wrote of many things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_32" id="Page_V2_32">[32]</a></span>
+as though he were a specialist. He had enormous
+industry and great mechanical power of handling
+language.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no genius," he said one day to Gloria,
+when she had been admiring something he had
+written, and using the extravagant terms of praise
+which rose easily to her lips. "Your husband has
+genius, but I have none. Some day I shall astonish
+you all by doing something very remarkable. But
+it will not be a work of genius."</p>
+
+<p>It was in the late autumn days, more than a
+year and a half after Gloria's marriage. The
+southeast wind was blowing down the Corso, and
+the pavements were yellow and sticky with the
+moistened sand-blast from the African desert. The
+grains of sand are really found in the air at such
+times. It is said that the undoubted effect of the
+sirocco on the temper of Southern Italy is due to
+the irritation caused by inhaling the fine particles
+with the breath. Something there is in that
+especial wind, which changes the tempers of men
+and women very suddenly and strangely.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria and her companion were seated in the
+drawing-room that afternoon, and the window was
+open. The wind stirred the white curtains, and
+now and then blew them inward and twisted them
+round the inner ones, which were of a dark grey
+stuff with broad brown velvet bands, in a fashion
+then new. Gloria had been singing, and sat leaning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_33" id="Page_V2_33">[33]</a></span>
+sideways on the desk of the grand piano. A tall
+red Bohemian glass stood beside the music on one
+of the little sliding shelves meant for the candles,
+and there were a few flowers in it, fresh an hour
+ago, but now already half withered and drooping
+under the poisonous breath of the southeast. The
+warm damp breeze came in gusts, and stirred the
+fading leaves and Gloria's auburn hair, and the sheet
+of music upright on the desk. Griggs sat in a low
+chair not far from her, his still face turned towards
+her, his shadowy eyes fixed on her features, his
+sinewy hands clasped round his crossed knees. The
+nature of the great athlete showed itself even in
+repose&mdash;the broad dark throat set deep in the
+chest, the square solidity of the shoulders, the great
+curved lines along the straightened arms, the small,
+compact head, with its close, dark hair, bent somewhat
+forward in the general relaxation of the resting
+muscles. In his complete immobility there
+was the certainty of instant leaping and flash-like
+motion which one feels rather than sees in the
+sleeping lion.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria looked at him thoughtfully with half-closed
+lids.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall surprise you all," he repeated slowly,
+"but it will not be genius."</p>
+
+<p>"You will not surprise me," Gloria answered,
+still meeting his eyes. "As for genius, what
+is it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_34" id="Page_V2_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is what you have when you sing," said
+Griggs. "It is what Reanda has when he paints."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why not what you do when you write?"</p>
+
+<p>"The difference is simple enough. Reanda does
+things well because he cannot help it. When I do
+a thing well it is because I work so hard at it that
+the thing cannot help being done by me. Do you
+understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"I always understand what you tell me. You
+put things so clearly. Yes, I think I understand
+you better than you understand yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Griggs looked down at his hands and was silent
+for a moment. Mechanically he moved his thumb
+from side to side and watched the knot of muscle
+between it and the forefinger, as it swelled and
+disappeared with each contraction.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you do understand me. Perhaps you
+do," he said at last. "I have known you a long
+time. It must be four years, at least&mdash;ever since
+I first came here to work. It has been a long piece
+of life."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it has," Gloria answered, and a moment
+later she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>The wind blew the sheet of music against her.
+She folded it impatiently, threw it aside and
+resumed her position, resting one elbow on the
+narrow desk. The silence lasted several seconds,
+and the white curtains flapped softly against the
+heavy ones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_35" id="Page_V2_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether you understand my life at
+all," she said presently.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure that I do. It is a strange life,
+in some ways&mdash;like yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I strange?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very."</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>Again he was silent for a time. His face was
+very still. It would have been impossible to guess
+from it that he felt any emotion at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like compliments?" he asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"That depends upon whether I consider them
+compliments or not," she answered, with a little
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a very perfect woman in very imperfect
+surroundings," said Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>"That is not a compliment to the surroundings,
+at all events. I do not know whether to laugh or
+not. Shall I?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you will. I like to hear you laugh."</p>
+
+<p>"You should hear me cry!" And she laughed
+again at herself.</p>
+
+<p>"God forbid!" he said gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I do sometimes," she answered, and her face
+grew suddenly sad, as he watched her.</p>
+
+<p>He felt a quick pain for her in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry you have told me so," he said. "I
+do not like to think of it. Why should you cry?
+What have you to cry for?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_36" id="Page_V2_36">[36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What should you think?" she asked lightly,
+though no smile came with the words.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot guess. Tell me. Is it because you
+still wish to be a singer? Is that it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. That is not it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I cannot guess." He looked for the
+answer in her face. "Will you tell me?" he asked
+after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Of what use could it be?" Her eyes met his
+for a moment, the lids fell, and she turned away.
+"Will you shut the window?" she said suddenly.
+"The wind blows the things about. Besides, it is
+getting late."</p>
+
+<p>He rose and went to the window. She watched
+him as he shut it, turning his back to her, so that
+his figure stood out distinct and black against the
+light. She realized what a man he was. With
+those arms and those shoulders he could do anything,
+as he had once caught her in the air and
+saved her life, and then, again, as he had broken
+the cords that night at Mendoza's house. There
+was nothing physical which such a man could not
+do. He was something on which to rely in her
+limited life, an absolute contrast to her husband,
+whose vagueness irritated her, while his deadness
+of sensibility, where she had wrung his sensitiveness
+too far, humiliated her in her own eyes. She
+had kept her secret long, she thought, though she
+had kept it for the simple reason that she had no
+one in whom to confide.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_37" id="Page_V2_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Griggs came back from the window and sat down
+near her again in the low chair, looking up into
+her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Griggs," she said, turning from his eyes
+and looking into the piano, "you asked me a question
+just now. I should like to answer it, if I were
+quite sure of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not sure of me?" he asked. "I think
+you might be, by this time. We were just saying
+that we had known each other so long."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But&mdash;all sorts of things have happened
+in that time, you know. I am not the same as I
+was when I first knew you."</p>
+
+<p>"No. You are married. That is one great
+difference."</p>
+
+<p>"Too great," said she. "Honestly, do you think
+me improved since my marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Improved? No. Why should you improve?
+You are just what you were meant to be, as you
+always were."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. You called me a perfect woman a
+little while ago, and you said my surroundings
+were imperfect. You must have meant that they
+did not suit me, or that I did not suit them.
+Which was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"They ought to suit you," said Griggs. "If
+they do not, it is not your fault."</p>
+
+<p>"But I might have done something to make them
+suit me. I sometimes think that I have not treated
+them properly."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_38" id="Page_V2_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why should you blame yourself? You did not
+make them, and they cannot unmake you. You
+have a right to be yourself. Everybody has. It
+is the first right. Your surroundings owe you
+more than you owe to them, because you are what
+you are, and they are not what they ought to be.
+Let them bear the blame. As for not treating them
+properly, no one could accuse you of that."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know&mdash;some one might. People are
+so strange, sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped, and he answered nothing. Looking
+down into the open piano, she idly watched the
+hammers move as she pressed the keys softly with
+one hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Some people are just like this," she said, smiling,
+and repeating the action. "If you touch them
+in a certain way, they answer. If you press them
+gently, they do not understand. Do you see? The
+hammer comes just up to the string, and then falls
+back again without making any noise. I suppose
+those are my surroundings. Sometimes they answer
+me, and sometimes they do not. I like things I
+can be sure of."</p>
+
+<p>"And by things you mean people," suggested
+Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"And by your surroundings you mean&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know," she answered in a low voice, turning
+her face still further away from him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_39" id="Page_V2_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Reanda?"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated for a moment, knowing that her
+answer must have weight on the man.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so," she said at last. "I ought not
+to say so&mdash;ought I? Tell me the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"The truth is, you are unhappy," he answered
+slowly. "There is no reason why you should not
+tell me so. Perhaps I might help you, if you
+would let me."</p>
+
+<p>He almost regretted that he had said so much,
+little as it was. But she had wished him to say
+it, and more, also. Still turning from him, she
+rested her chin in her hand. His face was still,
+but there was the beginning of an expression in it
+which she had never seen. Now that the window
+was shut it was very quiet in the room, and the air
+was strangely heavy and soft and dim. Now and
+then the panes rattled a little. Griggs looked at
+the graceful figure as Gloria sat thinking what she
+should say. He followed the lines till his eyes
+rested on what he could see of her averted face.
+Then he felt something like a sharp, quick blow at
+his temples, and the blood rose hot to his throat.
+At the same instant came the bitter little pang he
+had known long, telling him that she had never
+loved him and never could.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you really my friend?" she asked softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." The word almost choked him, for there
+was not room for it and for the rest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_40" id="Page_V2_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She turned quietly and surveyed the marble
+mask with curious inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you say it like that," she asked; "as
+though you would rather not? Do you grudge it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No." He spoke barely above his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"How you say it!" she exclaimed, with a little
+laugh that could not laugh itself out, for there was
+a strange tension in the air, and on her and on
+him. "You might say it better," she added, the
+pupils of her eyes dilating a little so that the room
+looked suddenly larger and less distinct.</p>
+
+<p>She knew the sensation of coming emotion, and
+she loved it. She had never thought before that
+she could get it by talking with Paul Griggs. He
+did not answer her.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you meant it," she said presently. "I
+hardly know. Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please be reasonable," said Griggs, indistinctly,
+and his hands gripped each other on his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"How oddly you talk!" she exclaimed. "What
+have I said that was unreasonable?"</p>
+
+<p>She felt that the emotion she had expected was
+slipping from her, and her nerves unconsciously
+resented the disappointment. She was out of
+temper in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot understand," he answered. "There
+is no reason why you should. Forgive me. I am
+nervous to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"You? Nervous?" She laughed again, with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_41" id="Page_V2_41">[41]</a></span>
+little scorn. "You are not capable of being nervous."</p>
+
+<p>She was dimly conscious that she was provoking
+him to something, she knew not what, and that he
+was resisting her. He did not answer her last
+words. She went back to the starting-point again,
+dropping her voice to a sadder key.</p>
+
+<p>"Honestly, will you be my friend?" she asked,
+with a gentle smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Heart and soul&mdash;and hand, too, if you want
+it," he said, for he had recovered his speech.
+"Tell me what the trouble is. If I can, I will
+take you out of it."</p>
+
+<p>It was rather an odd speech, and she was struck
+by the turn of the phrase, which expressed more
+strength than doubt of power to do anything he
+undertook.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you could," she said, looking at him.
+"You are so strong. You could do anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Things are never so hard as they look, if
+one is willing to risk everything," he answered.
+"And when one has nothing to lose," he added,
+as an after-thought.</p>
+
+<p>She sighed, and turned away again, half satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to risk," she said. "It is not
+a case of danger. And you cannot take my trouble
+and tear it up like a pack of cards with those hands
+of yours. I wish you could. I am unhappy&mdash;yes,
+I have told you so. But what can you do to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_42" id="Page_V2_42">[42]</a></span>
+help me? You cannot make my surroundings
+what they are not, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;I cannot change your husband," said
+Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>She started a little, but still looked away.</p>
+
+<p>"No. You cannot make him love me," she said,
+softly and sadly.</p>
+
+<p>The big hands lost their hold on one another,
+and the deep eyes opened a little wider. But she
+was not watching him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say&mdash;" He stopped.</p>
+
+<p>She slowly bent her head twice, but said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Reanda does not love you?" he said, in wondering
+interrogation. "Why&mdash;I thought&mdash;" He
+hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"He cares no more for me than&mdash;that!" The
+hand that stretched towards him across the open
+piano tapped the polished wood once, and sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in serious earnest?" asked Griggs,
+bending forward, as though to catch her first look
+when she should turn.</p>
+
+<p>"Does any one jest about such things?" He
+could just see that her lips curled a little as she
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"And you&mdash;you love him still?" he asked, with
+pressing voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I love him. The more fool I."</p>
+
+<p>The words did not grate on him, as they would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_43" id="Page_V2_43">[43]</a></span>
+have jarred on her husband's ear. The myth he
+had imagined made perfections of the woman's
+faults.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pity," he said, resting his forehead in
+his hand. "It is a deadly pity."</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned at last and saw his attitude.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," she said. "There is nothing to be
+done. Is there? You know my story now. I
+have married a man I worship, and he does not
+care for me. Take it and twist it as you may, it
+comes to that and nothing else. You can pity me,
+but you cannot help me. I must bear it as well
+as I can, and as long as I must. It will end some
+day&mdash;or I will make it end."</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake do not talk like that!"</p>
+
+<p>"How should I talk? What should I say? Is
+it of any use to speak to him? Do you think I
+have not begged him, implored him, besought him,
+almost on my knees, to give up that work and do
+other things?"</p>
+
+<p>Griggs looked straight into her eyes a moment
+and then almost understood what she meant.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that he&mdash;that when he is painting
+there&mdash;" He hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. All day long. All the bitter live-long
+day! They sit there together on pretence of
+talking about it. You know&mdash;you can guess at
+least&mdash;it is the old, old story, and I have to suffer
+for it. She could not marry him&mdash;because she is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_44" id="Page_V2_44">[44]</a></span>
+a princess and he an artist&mdash;good enough for me&mdash;God
+knows, I love him! Too good for her, ten
+thousand times too good! But yet not good enough
+for her to marry! He needed a wife, and she
+brought us together, and I suppose he told her that
+I should do very well for the purpose. I was a
+good subject. I fell in love with him&mdash;that was
+what they wanted. A wife for her favourite! O
+God! When I think of it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped suddenly and buried her face in
+both her hands, as she leaned upon the piano.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not to be believed!" The strong man's
+voice vibrated with the rising storm of anger.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up again with flashing eyes and pale
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" she cried. "It is not to be believed!
+But you see it now. You see what it all is, and
+how my life is wrecked and ruined before it is half
+begun. It would be bad enough if I had married
+him for his fame, for his face, for his money, for
+anything he has or could have. But I married
+him because I loved him with all my soul, and
+worshipped him and everything he did."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. We all saw it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course&mdash;was it anything to hide? And I
+thought he loved me, too. Do you know?" She
+grew more calm. "At first I used to go and sit in
+the hall when he was at work. Then he grew
+silent, and I felt that he did not want me. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_45" id="Page_V2_45">[45]</a></span>
+thought it was because he was such a great artist,
+and could not talk and work, and wanted to be
+alone. So I stayed away. Then, once, I went
+there, and she was there, sitting in that great
+chair&mdash;it shows off the innocence of her white
+face, you know! The innocence of it!" Gloria
+laughed bitterly. "They were talking when I
+came, and they stopped as soon as the door opened.
+I am sure they were talking about me. Then they
+seemed dreadfully uncomfortable, and she went
+away. After that I went several times. Once or
+twice she came in while I was there. Then she
+did not come any more. He must have told her,
+of course. He kept looking at the door, though,
+as if he expected her at any moment. But she
+never came again in those days. I could not bear
+it&mdash;his trying to talk to me, and evidently wishing
+all the time that she would come. I gave up
+going altogether at last. What could I do? It
+was unbearable. It was more than flesh and blood
+could stand."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wonder that you hate her," said
+Griggs. "I have often thought you did."</p>
+
+<p>Gloria smiled sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered. "I hate her with all my
+heart. She has robbed me of the only thing I ever
+had worth having&mdash;if I ever had it. I sometimes
+wonder&mdash;or rather, no. I do not wonder,
+for I know the truth well enough. I have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_46" id="Page_V2_46">[46]</a></span>
+over and over it again and again in the night. He
+never loved me. He never could love any one but
+her. He knew her long ago, and has loved her all
+his life. Why should he put me in her place? He
+admired me. I was a beautiful plaything&mdash;no,
+not beautiful&mdash;" She paused.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the most beautiful woman in the
+world," said Paul Griggs, with deep conviction.</p>
+
+<p>He saw the blush of pleasure in her face, saw
+the fluttering of the lids. But he neither knew
+that she had meant him to say it, nor did he judge
+of the vast gulf her mind must have instantaneously
+bridged, from the outpouring of her fancied
+injuries and of her hatred for Francesca Campodonico,
+to the unconcealable satisfaction his words
+gave her.</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard him say that, too," she answered
+a moment later. "But he did not mean it. He
+never meant anything he said to me&mdash;not one
+word of it all. You do not know what that means,"
+she went on, working herself back into a sort of
+despairing anger again. "You do not know. To
+have built one's whole life on one thing, as I did!
+To have believed only one thing, as I did! To find
+that it is all gone, all untrue, all a wretched piece
+of acting&mdash;oh, you do not know! That woman's
+face haunts me in the dark&mdash;she is always there,
+with him, wherever I look, as they are together
+now at her house. Do you understand? Do you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_47" id="Page_V2_47">[47]</a></span>
+know what I feel? You pity me&mdash;but do you
+know? Oh, I have longed for some one&mdash;I have
+wished I had a dog to listen to me&mdash;sometimes&mdash;it
+is so hard to be alone&mdash;so very hard&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She broke off suddenly and hid her face again.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not alone. You have me&mdash;if you will
+have me."</p>
+
+<p>Before he had finished speaking the few words,
+the first sob broke, violent, real, uncontrollable.
+Then came the next, and then the storm of tears.
+Griggs rose instinctively and came to her side. He
+leaned heavily on the piano, bending down a little,
+helpless, as some men are at such moments. She
+did not notice him, and her sobs filled the still
+room. As he stood over her he could see the bright
+tears falling upon the black and white ivory keys.
+He laid his trembling hand upon her shoulder. He
+could hardly draw his breath for the sight of her
+suffering.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't&mdash;don't," he said, almost pathetic in
+his lack of eloquence when he thought he most
+needed it.</p>
+
+<p>One of her hot hands, all wet with tears, went
+suddenly to her shoulder, and grasped his that lay
+there, with a convulsive pressure, seeming to draw
+him down as she bowed herself almost to the keyboard
+in her agony of weeping. Then, without
+thought, his other hand, cold as ice, was under her
+throat, bringing her head gently back upon his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_48" id="Page_V2_48">[48]</a></span>
+arm, till the white face was turned up to his. Sob
+by sob, more distantly, the tempest subsided, but
+still the great tears swelled the heavy lids and ran
+down across her face upon his wrist. Then the
+wet, dark eyes opened and looked up to his, above
+her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Be my friend!" she said softly, and her fingers
+pressed his very gently.</p>
+
+<p>He looked down into her eyes for one moment,
+and then the passion in him got the mastery of his
+honourable soul.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I?" he cried in a broken, choking
+voice. "I love you!"</p>
+
+<p>In an instant he was standing up, lifting her
+high from the floor, and the lips that had perhaps
+never kissed for love before, were pressed upon
+hers. What chance had she, a woman, in those
+resistless arms of his? In her face was the still,
+fateful look of the dead nun, rising from the far
+grave of a buried tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>In his uncontrollable passion he crushed her to
+him, holding her up like a child. She struggled
+and freed her hands and pressed them both upon
+his two eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Please&mdash;please!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pitiful ring in the tone, like the
+bleating of a frightened lamb. He hurt her too,
+for he was overstrong when he was thoughtless.</p>
+
+<p>She cried out to him to let her go. But as she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_49" id="Page_V2_49">[49]</a></span>
+hung there, it was not all fear that she felt. There
+came with it an uncertain, half-delirious thrill of
+delight. To feel herself but a feather to his huge
+strength, swung, tossed, kissed, crushed, as he
+would. There was fear already, there was all her
+innocent maidenlike resistance, beating against
+him with might and anger, there was the feminine
+sense of injury by outrageous violence; but with it
+all there was also the natural woman's delight in
+the main strength of the natural man, that could
+kill her in an instant if he chose, but that could
+lift her to itself as a little child and surround her
+and protect her against the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>"Please&mdash;please!" she cried again, covering his
+fierce eyes and white face with her hands and
+trying to push him away. The tone was pathetic
+in its appeal, and it touched him. His arms
+relaxed, tightened again with a sort of spasm, and
+then she found herself beside him on her feet. A
+long silence followed.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria sank into a chair, glanced at him and saw
+that his face was turned away, looked down again
+and then watched him. His chest heaved once or
+twice, as though he had run a short sharp race.
+One hand grasped the back of a chair as he stood
+up. All at once, without looking at her, he went to
+the window and stood there, looking out, but seeing
+nothing. The soft damp wind made the panes of
+glass rattle. Still neither broke the silence. Then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_50" id="Page_V2_50">[50]</a></span>
+he came to her and stood before her, looking down,
+and she looked down, too, and would not see him.
+She was more afraid of him now than when he had
+lifted her from her feet, and her heart beat fast.
+She wondered what he would say, for she supposed
+that he meant to ask her forgiveness, and she was
+right.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 363px;">
+<img src="images/gs22.jpg" width="363" height="500" alt="&quot;Gloria&mdash;forgive me!&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p. 50." title="&quot;Gloria&mdash;forgive me!&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p. 50." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Gloria&mdash;forgive me!&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p.&nbsp;50.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Gloria&mdash;forgive me," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up, a little fear of him still in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I?" she asked, but in her voice there
+was forgiveness already.</p>
+
+<p>Her womanly instinct, though she was so young,
+told her that the fault was hers, and that considering
+the provocation it was not a great one&mdash;what
+were a few kisses, even such kisses as his, in a lifetime?
+And she had tempted him beyond all bounds
+and repented of it. Before the storm she had
+raised in him, her fancied woes sank away and
+seemed infinitely small. She knew that she had
+worked herself up to emotion and tears, though not
+half sure of what she was saying, that she had
+exaggerated all she knew and suggested all she did
+not know, that she had almost been acting a part to
+satisfy something in her which she could not understand.
+And by her acting she had roused the
+savage truth in her very face and it had swept
+down everything before it. She had not guessed
+such possibilities. Before the tempest of his love
+all she had ever felt or dreamed of feeling seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_51" id="Page_V2_51">[51]</a></span>
+colourless and cold. She dreaded to rouse it again,
+and yet she could never forget the instant thrill
+that had quivered through her when he had lifted
+her from her feet.</p>
+
+<p>When she had answered him with her question,
+he stood still in silence for a moment. She was
+too perfect in his eyes for him to cast the blame
+upon her, yet he knew that it had not been all his
+fault. And in the lower man was the mad triumph
+of having kissed her and of having told her, once for
+all, the whole meaning of his being. She looked
+down, and he could not see her eyes. There was no
+chair near. To see her face he dropped upon his
+knee and lightly touched her hands that lay idly
+in her lap. She started, fearing another outbreak.</p>
+
+<p>"Please&mdash;please!" he said softly, using the
+very word she had used to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but&mdash;" She hesitated and then raised
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The mask of his face was all softened, and his
+lips trembled a little. His hands quivered, too,
+as they touched hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Please!" he repeated. "I promise. Indeed, I
+promise. Forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, all at once, dreamily. All his emotion,
+and her desire for it, were gone.</p>
+
+<p>"I asked you to be my friend," she said. "I
+meant it, you know. How could you? It was not
+kind."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_52" id="Page_V2_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;but forgive me," he insisted in a pleading
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I must," she said at last. "But I
+shall never feel sure of you again. How can I?"</p>
+
+<p>"I promise. You will believe me, not to-day,
+perhaps, nor to-morrow, but soon. I will be just
+what I have always been. I will never do anything
+to offend you again."</p>
+
+<p>"You promise me that? Solemnly?" She still
+smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It is a promise. I will keep it. I will
+be your friend always. Give me something to do
+for you. It will make it easier."</p>
+
+<p>"What can I ask you to do? I shall never dare
+to speak to you about my life again."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you will, when you see that I am just
+as I used to be. And you forgive me, quite?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I must. We must forget to-day. It
+must be as though it had never happened. Will
+you forget it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will try." But of that he knew the utter
+impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>"If you try, you can succeed. Now get up. Be
+reasonable."</p>
+
+<p>He took her hand in both of his. She made a
+movement to withdraw it, and then submitted. He
+barely touched it with his lips and rose to his feet
+instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," she said simply.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_53" id="Page_V2_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She had never had such a mastery of charm over
+him as at that moment. But his mood was changed,
+and there was no breaking out of the other man in
+him, though he felt again the quick sharp throb in
+the temples, and the rising blood at his throat.
+The higher self was dominant once more, and the
+features was as still as a statue's.</p>
+
+<p>He took leave of her very quickly and went out
+into the damp street and faced the gusty southeast
+wind.</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone, she rose and went to the
+window with a listless step, and gazed idly through
+the glass at the long row of windows in the palace
+opposite, and then went back and sank down, as
+though very weary, upon a sofa far from the light.
+There was a dazed, wondering look in her face and
+she sat very still for a long time, till it began to
+grow dark. In the dusk she rose and went to the
+piano and sang softly to herself. Her voice never
+swelled to a full note, and the chords which her
+fingers sought were low and gentle and dreamy.</p>
+
+<p>While she was singing, the door opened noiselessly,
+and Reanda came in and stood beside her.
+She broke off and looked up, a little startled. The
+same wondering, half-dazed look was in her face.
+Her husband bent down and kissed her, and she
+kissed him silently.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_54" id="Page_V2_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Donna Francesca</span> had put off her mourning,
+and went into the world again during that winter.
+The world said that she might marry if she so
+pleased, and was somewhat inclined to wonder that
+she did not. She could have made a brilliant
+match if she had chosen. But instead, though she
+appeared everywhere where society was congregated
+together, she showed a tendency to religion which
+surprised her friends.</p>
+
+<p>A tendency to religion existed in the Braccio
+family, together with various other tendencies not
+at all in harmony with it, nor otherwise edifying.
+Those other tendencies seemed to be absent in
+Francesca, and little by little her acquaintances
+began to speak of her as a devout person. The
+Prince of Gerano even hinted that she might some
+day be an abbess in the Carmelite Convent at
+Subiaco, as many a lady of the great house had
+been before her. But Francesca was not prepared
+to withdraw from the world altogether, though at
+the present time she was very unhappy.</p>
+
+<p>She suspected herself of a great sin, besides reproaching
+herself bitterly with many of her deeds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_55" id="Page_V2_55">[55]</a></span>
+which deserved no blame at all. Yet she was by
+no means morbid, nor naturally inclined to perpetual
+self-examination. On the contrary, she had
+always been willing to accept life as a simple
+affair which could not offer any difficulties provided
+that one were what she meant by "good"&mdash;that
+is, honest in word and deed, and scrupulous in doing
+thoroughly and with right intention those
+things which her religion required of her, but in
+which only she herself could judge of her own sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>Of late, however, she had felt that there was
+something very wrong in all her recent life. The
+certainty of it dawned by degrees, and then burst
+upon her suddenly one day when she was with
+Reanda.</p>
+
+<p>She had long ago noticed the change in his manner,
+the harassed look, and the sad ring in his
+voice, and for a time his suffering was her sorrow,
+and there was a painful pleasure in being able to
+feel for him with all her heart. He had gone
+through a phase which had lasted many months,
+and the change was great between his former and
+his present self. He had suffered, but indifference
+was creeping upon him. It was clear enough.
+Nothing interested him but his art, and perhaps
+her own conversation, though even that seemed
+doubtful to her.</p>
+
+<p>They were alone together on a winter's afternoon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_56" id="Page_V2_56">[56]</a></span>
+in the great hall. The work was almost done, and
+they had been talking of the more mechanical decorations,
+and of the style of the furniture.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a big place," said Francesca, "but I mean
+to fill it. I like large rooms, and when it is finished,
+I will take up my quarters here, and call it
+my boudoir."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled at the idea. The hall was at least
+fifty feet long by thirty wide.</p>
+
+<p>"All the women I know have wretched little
+sitting-rooms in which they can hardly turn round,"
+she said. "I will have all the space I like, and
+all the air and all the light. Besides, I shall
+always have the dear Cupid and Psyche, to remind
+me of you."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke the last words with the simplicity of
+absolute innocence.</p>
+
+<p>"And me?" he asked, as innocently and simply
+as she. "What will you do with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever you like," she said, taking it quite
+for granted, as he did, that he was to work for
+her all his life. "You can have a studio in the
+house, just as it used to be, if you please. And
+you can paint the great canvas for the ceiling
+of the dining-room. Or shall I restore the old
+chapel? Which should you rather do&mdash;oil-painting,
+or fresco?"</p>
+
+<p>"You would not want the altar piece which I
+should paint," he said, with sudden sadness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_57" id="Page_V2_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Santa Francesca?" she asked. "It would
+have to be Santa Francesca. The chapel is dedicated
+to her. You could make a beautiful picture
+of her&mdash;a portrait, perhaps&mdash;" she stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Of yourself? Yes, I could do that," he answered
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said, and hesitated. "Of your wife,"
+she added rather abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>He started and looked at her, and she was sorry
+that she had spoken. Gloria's beautiful face had
+risen in her mind, and it had seemed generous to
+suggest the idea. Finding a difficulty in telling
+him, she had thought it her duty to be frank.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed harshly before he answered her.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said. "Certainly not a portrait of my
+wife. Not even to please you. And that is saying
+much."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke very bitterly. In the few words, he
+poured out the pent-up suffering of many months.
+Francesca turned pale.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, and it is my fault," she said in a low
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Your fault? No! But it is not mine."</p>
+
+<p>His hands trembled violently as he took up his
+palette and brushes and began to mix some colours,
+not knowing what he was doing.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my fault," said Francesca, still very white,
+and staring at the brick floor. "I have seen it.
+I could not speak of it. You are unhappy&mdash;miserable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_58" id="Page_V2_58">[58]</a></span>
+Your life is ruined, and I have done
+it. I!"</p>
+
+<p>She bit her lip almost before the last word was
+uttered; for it was stronger and louder than she
+had expected it to be, and the syllable rang with a
+despairing echo in the empty hall.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda shook his head, and bent over his colours
+with shaking hands, but said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"I was so happy when you were married," said
+Francesca, forcing herself to speak calmly. "She
+seemed such a good wife for you&mdash;so young, so
+beautiful. And she loves you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No." He shook his head energetically. "She
+does not love me. Do not say that, for it is not
+true. One does not love in that way&mdash;to-day a
+kiss, to-morrow a sting&mdash;to-day honey, to-morrow
+snake-poison. Do not say that it is love, for it is
+not true. The heart tells the truth, all alone in
+the breast. A thousand words cannot make it tell
+one lie. But for me&mdash;it is finished. Let us speak
+no more of love. Let us talk of our good friendship.
+It is better."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, let us speak of it, of this friendship! It
+has cost tears of blood!"</p>
+
+<p>Francesca, in the sincerity of what she felt,
+relapsed into the Roman dialect. Almost all
+Romans do, under any emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything passes," answered Reanda, laying
+his palette aside, and beginning to walk up and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_59" id="Page_V2_59">[59]</a></span>
+down, his hands in his pockets. "This also will
+pass," he added, as he turned. "We are men.
+We shall forget."</p>
+
+<p>"But not I. For I did it. Your sadness cuts
+my heart, because I did it. I&mdash;I alone. But for
+me, you would be free."</p>
+
+<p>"Would to Heaven!" exclaimed the artist,
+almost under his breath. "But I will not have
+you say that it is your fault!" he cried, stopping
+before her. "I was the fool that believed. A
+man of my age&mdash;oh, a serious man&mdash;to marry
+a child! I should have known. At first, I do
+not say. I was the first. She thought she had
+paradise in her arms. A husband! They all
+want it, the husband. But I, who had lived
+and seen, I should have known. Fool, fool!
+Ignorant fool!"</p>
+
+<p>The words came out vehemently in the strong
+dialect, and the nervous, heart-wrung man struck
+his breast with his clenched fist, and his eyes
+looked upward.</p>
+
+<p>"Reanda, Reanda! What are you saying?
+When I tell you that I made you marry her! It
+was here,&mdash;I was in this very chair,&mdash;and I told
+you about her. And I asked her here with intention,
+that you might see how beautiful she was.
+And then, neither one nor two, she fell in love with
+you! It would have been a miracle if you had not
+married her. And her father, he was satisfied.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_60" id="Page_V2_60">[60]</a></span>
+May that day be accursed when I brought them
+here to torment you!"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke excitedly, and her lip quivered. He
+began to walk again with rapid, uncertain strides.</p>
+
+<p>"For that&mdash;yes!" he said. "Let the day bear
+the blame. But I was the madman. Who leaves
+the old way and follows the new knows what he
+leaves, but not what he may find. I might have
+been contented. I was so happy! God knows how
+happy I was!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I!" exclaimed Francesca, involuntarily;
+but he did not hear her.</p>
+
+<p>She felt a curious sense of elation, though she
+was so truly sorry for him, and it disturbed her
+strangely. She looked at him and smiled, and then
+wondered why the smile came. There is a ruthless
+cruelty in the half-unconscious impulses of the
+purest innocence, of which vice itself might be
+ashamed in its heart. It is simple humanity's
+assertion of its prior right to be happy. She
+smiled spontaneously because she knew that Reanda
+no longer loved Gloria, and she felt that he could
+not love her again; and for a while she was too
+simply natural to quarrel with herself for it, or to
+realize what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>He was nervous, melancholy, and unstrung, and
+he began to talk about himself and his married life
+for the first time, pouring out his sufferings and
+thoughtless of what Francesca might think and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_61" id="Page_V2_61">[61]</a></span>
+feel. He, too, was natural. Unlike his wife, he
+detested emotion. To be angry was almost an
+illness to his over-finely organized temperament.
+In a way, Griggs had been right in saying that
+Reanda seemed to paint as an agent in the power
+of an unseen, directing influence. Beauty made
+him feel itself, and feel for it in his turn with his
+brush. The conception was before him, guiding
+his hand, before a stroke of the work was done.
+There was the lightning-like co-respondence and
+mutual reaction between thought and execution,
+which has been explained by some to be the simultaneous
+action of two minds in man, the subjective
+and the objective. In doing certain things he
+had the patience and the delicacy of one for whom
+time has no meaning. He could not have told
+whether his hand followed his eye, or his eye followed
+his hand. His whole being was of excessively
+sensitive construction, and emotion of any
+kind, even pleasure, jarred upon its hair-fine sensibilities.
+And yet, behind all this, there was the
+tenacity of the great artist and the phenomenal
+power of endurance, in certain directions, which is
+essential to prize-winning in the fight for fame.
+There was the quality of nerve which can endure
+great tension in one way, but can bear nothing in
+other ways.</p>
+
+<p>He went on, giving vent to all he felt, talking to
+himself rather than to Francesca. He could not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_62" id="Page_V2_62">[62]</a></span>
+reproach his wife with any one action of importance.
+She was fond of Paul Griggs. But it was
+only Griggs! He smiled. In his eyes, the cold-faced
+man was no more than a stone. In their
+excursions into society she had met men whom he
+considered far more dangerous, men young, handsome,
+rich, having great names. They admired
+her and said so to her in the best language they
+had, which was no doubt often very eloquent. Had
+she ever looked twice at one of them? No. He
+could not reproach her with that. The Duchess of
+Astrardente was not more cold to her admirers
+than Gloria was. It was not that. There were
+little things, little nothings, but in thousands. He
+tried to please her with something, and she laughed
+in his face, or found fault. She had small hardnesses
+and little vulgarities of manner that drove
+him mad.</p>
+
+<p>"I had thought her like you," he said suddenly,
+turning to Francesca. "She is not. She is coarse-grained.
+She has the soul of a peasant, with the
+face of a Madonna. What would you have? It is
+too much. Love is an illusion. I will have no
+more of it. Besides, love is dead. It would be
+easier to wake a corpse. I shall live. I may forget.
+Meanwhile there is our friendship. That is
+of gold."</p>
+
+<p>Francesca listened in silence, thoughtful and
+with downcast eyes, as the short, disjointed sentences<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_63" id="Page_V2_63">[63]</a></span>
+broke vehemently from his lips, each one
+accusing her in her own heart of having wrought
+the misery of two lives, one of which was very dear
+to her. Too dear, as she knew at last. The scarlet
+shame would have burned her face, if she had
+owned to herself that she loved this man, whom
+she had married to another, believing that she was
+making his happiness. She would not own it.
+Had she admitted it then, she would have been
+capable of leaving him within the hour, and of
+shutting herself up forever in the Convent at
+Subiaco to expiate the sin of the thought. It was
+monstrous in her eyes, and she would still refuse to
+see it.</p>
+
+<p>But she owned that there was the suspicion, and
+that Angelo Reanda was far dearer to her than
+anything else on earth. Her innocence was so
+strong and spotless that it had a right to its one
+and only satisfaction. But what she felt for Reanda
+was either love, or it was blasphemy against the
+holy thing in whose place he stood in her temple.
+It must not be love, and therefore, as anything else,
+it was too much. And the strange joy she felt
+because Gloria was nothing to him, still filled her
+heart, though it began to torment her with the
+knowledge of evil which she had never understood.</p>
+
+<p>There was much else against him, too, in her
+pride of race, and it helped her just then, for it
+told her how impossible it was that she, a princess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_64" id="Page_V2_64">[64]</a></span>
+of the house of Braccio, should love a mere artist,
+the son of a steward, whose forefathers had been
+bondsmen to her ancestors from time immemorial.
+It was out of the question, and she would not
+believe it of herself. Yet, as she looked into his
+delicate, spiritual face and watched the shades of
+expression that crossed it, she felt that it made
+little difference whence he came, since she understood
+him and he understood her.</p>
+
+<p>She became confused by her own thoughts and
+grasped at the idea of a true and perfect friendship,
+with a somewhat desperate determination to see it
+and nothing else in it, for the rest of her life,
+rather than part with Angelo Reanda.</p>
+
+<p>"Friends," she said thoughtfully. "Yes&mdash;always
+friends, you and I. But as a friend,
+Reanda, what can I do? I cannot help you."</p>
+
+<p>"The time for help is past, if it ever came.
+You are a saint&mdash;pray for me. You can do that."</p>
+
+<p>"But there is more than that to be done," she
+said, ready to sacrifice anything or everything just
+then. "Do not tell me it is hopeless. I will see
+your wife often and I will talk to her. I am older
+than she, and I can make her understand many
+things."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not try it," said Reanda, in an altered tone.
+"I advise you not to try it. You can do no good
+there, and you might find trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Find trouble?" repeated Francesca, not understanding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_65" id="Page_V2_65">[65]</a></span>
+him. "What do you mean? Does she
+dislike me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you not seen it?" he asked, with a bitter
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca did not answer him at once, but bent
+her head again. Once or twice she looked up as
+though she were about to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"It is as I tell you," said Reanda, nodding his
+head slowly.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca made up her mind, but the scarlet
+blood rose in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"It is better to be honest and frank," she said.
+"Is Gloria jealous of me?" She was so much
+ashamed that she could hardly look at him just
+then.</p>
+
+<p>"Jealous! She would kill you!" he cried, and
+there was anger in his voice at the thought. "Do
+not go to her. Something might happen."</p>
+
+<p>The blush in Francesca's face deepened and then
+subsided, and she grew very pale again.</p>
+
+<p>"But if she is jealous, she loves you," she said
+earnestly and anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his high thin shoulders, and the
+bitter smile came back to his face.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a stage jealousy," he said cruelly.
+"How could she pass the time without something
+to divert her? She is always acting."</p>
+
+<p>"But what is she jealous of?" asked Francesca.
+"How can she be jealous of me? Because you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_66" id="Page_V2_66">[66]</a></span>
+work here? She is free to come if she likes, and
+to stay all day. I do not understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Who can understand her? God, who made
+her, understands her. I am only a man. I know
+only one thing, that I loved her and do not love
+her. And she makes a scene for every day. One
+day it is you, and another day it is the walls she
+does not like. You will forgive me, Princess. I
+speak frankly what comes to my mouth from my
+heart. The whole story is this. She makes my
+life intolerable. I am not an idle man, the first
+you may meet in society, to spend my time from
+morning to night in studying my wife's caprices.
+I am an artist. When I have worked I must have
+peace. I do not ask for intelligent conversation
+like yours. But I must have peace. One of these
+days I shall strangle her with my hands. The
+Lord will forgive me and understand. I am full
+of nerves. Is it my fault? She twists them as
+the women wring out clothes at the fountain. It
+is not a life; it is a hell."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Reanda! Poor Reanda!" repeated Francesca,
+softly.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not pity myself," he said scornfully. "I
+have deserved it, and much more. But I am
+human. If it goes on a little longer, you may take
+me to Santo Spirito, for I am going mad. At least
+I should be there in holy peace. After her, the
+madmen would all seem doctors of wisdom. Do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_67" id="Page_V2_67">[67]</a></span>
+you know what will happen this evening? I go
+home. 'Where have you been?' she will ask.
+'At the Palazzetto.' 'What have you been doing?'
+'Painting&mdash;it is my trade.' 'Was Donna Francesca
+there?' 'Of course. She is mistress in her
+own house.' 'And what did you talk of?' 'How
+should I remember? We talked.' Then it will
+begin. It will be an inferno, as it always is.
+'Leave hope behind, all ye that enter here!' I
+can say it, if ever man could! You are right to
+pity me. Before it is finished you will have reason
+to pity me still more. Let us hope it may finish
+soon. Either San Lorenzo, or Santo Spirito&mdash;with
+the mad or with the dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Reanda!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;poor Reanda, if you like. People envy
+me, they say I am a great artist. If they think
+so, let them say it. It seems to them that I am
+somebody." He laughed, almost hysterically.
+"Somebody! Stuff for Santo Spirito! That is all
+she has left me in two years&mdash;not yet two years."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not talk of Santo Spirito," said Francesca.
+"You shall not go mad. When you are unhappy,
+think of our friendship and of all the hours you
+have here every day." She hesitated and seemed
+to make an effort over herself. "But it is impossible
+that it should be all over, so hopelessly and
+so soon. She is nervous, perhaps. The climate
+does not suit her&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_68" id="Page_V2_68">[68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Reanda laughed wildly, for he was rapidly losing
+all control of himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Therefore I should take her away and go and
+live somewhere else!" he cried. "That would be
+the end! I should tear her to pieces with my
+hands&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, hush! You are talking madly&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it. There is reason. It will end
+badly, one of these days, unless I end first, and
+that may happen also. Without you it would have
+happened long ago. You are the good angel in my
+life, the one friend God has sent me in my tormented
+existence, the one star in my black sky.
+Be my friend still, always, for ever and ever, and
+I shall live forever only to be your friend. As
+for love&mdash;the devil and his demons will know
+what to do with it&mdash;they will find their account in
+it. They have lent it, and they will take their
+payment in blood and tears of those who believe
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"But there is love in the world, somewhere,"
+said Francesca, gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;and in hell! But not in heaven&mdash;where
+you will be."</p>
+
+<p>Francesca sighed unconsciously, and looked long
+away towards the great windows at the end of the
+hall. Reanda gathered up his palette and brushes
+with a steadier hand. His anger had not spent
+itself, but it made him suddenly strong, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_69" id="Page_V2_69">[69]</a></span>
+outburst had relieved him, though it was certain
+that it would be followed by a reaction of profound
+despondency.</p>
+
+<p>All at once he came close to Francesca. She
+looked up, half startled by his sudden movement.</p>
+
+<p>"At least it is true&mdash;this one thing," he said.
+"I can count upon you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You can count upon me," she answered,
+gazing into his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He did not move. The one hand held his
+palette, the other hung free by his side. All at
+once she took it in hers, still looking up into his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very fond of you," she said earnestly.
+"You can count upon me as long as we two live."</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you," he said, more quietly than he
+had spoken yet, and his hand pressed hers a little.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no harm in saying as much as
+that, she thought, when it was so true and so
+simply said. It was all she could ever say to him,
+or to herself, and there was no reason why she
+should not say it. He would not misunderstand
+her. No man could have mistaken the innocence
+that was the life and light of her clear eyes. She
+was glad she had said it, and she was glad long
+afterwards that she had said it on that day, quietly,
+when no one could hear them in the great still hall.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_70" id="Page_V2_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Reanda</span> went home that evening in a very disturbed
+state of mind. He had been better so long
+as he had not given vent to what he felt; for, as
+with many southern men of excitable temper and
+weak nerves, his thoughts about himself, as distinguished
+from his pursuits, did not take positive
+shape in his mind until he had expressed them in
+words. Amongst the Latin races the phrase, 'he
+cannot think without speaking,' has more truth as
+applied to some individuals than the Anglo-Saxon
+can easily understand.</p>
+
+<p>For many months the artist had been most unhappy.
+His silence concerning his grief had been
+almost exemplary, and had been broken only now
+and then by a hasty exclamation of annoyance
+when Gloria's behaviour had irritated him beyond
+measure. He was the gentlest of men; and even
+when he had lost his temper with her, he had
+never spoken roughly.</p>
+
+<p>"You are hard to please, my dear," he had sometimes
+said.</p>
+
+<p>But that had been almost the strongest expression
+of his displeasure. It was not, indeed, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_71" id="Page_V2_71">[71]</a></span>
+he had exercised very great self-control in the
+matter, for he had little power of that sort over
+himself. If he was habitually mild and gentle in
+his manner with Gloria, it was rather because, like
+many Italians, he dreaded emotion as something
+like an illness, and could avoid it to some extent
+merely by not speaking freely of what he felt.
+Silence was generally easy to him; and he had not
+broken out more than two or three times in all his
+life, as he had done on that afternoon alone with
+Francesca.</p>
+
+<p>The inevitable consequence followed immediately,&mdash;a
+consequence as much physical as mental,
+for when he went away from the Palazzetto, his
+clear dark eyes were bloodshot and yellow, and his
+hands had trembled so that he had hardly been
+able to find the armholes of his great-coat in putting
+it on. He walked with an uncertain and
+agitated step, glancing to right and left of him as
+he went, half-fiercely, half-timidly, as though he
+expected a new adversary to spring upon him from
+every corner. The straight line of the houses
+waned and shivered in the dusk, as he looked at
+them, and he saw flashes of light in the air. His
+head was hot and aching, and his hat hurt him.
+Altogether he was in a dangerous state, not unlike
+that which, with northern men, sometimes follows
+hard drinking.</p>
+
+<p>He hated to go home that evening. So far as he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_72" id="Page_V2_72">[72]</a></span>
+was conscious, he had neither misrepresented nor
+in any way exaggerated the miseries of his domestic
+existence; and he felt that it was before him
+now, precisely as he had described it. There would
+be the same questions, to which he would give the
+same answers, at which Gloria would put on the
+same expression of injured hopelessness, unless
+she broke out and lost her temper, which happened
+often enough. The prospect was intolerable.
+Reanda thrust his hands deep into the pocket of
+his overcoat, and glared about him as he turned
+the corner of the Via degli Astalli, and saw the
+Corso in the distance. But he did not slacken his
+pace as he went along under the gloomy walls of
+the Austrian Embassy&mdash;the Palace of Venice&mdash;the
+most grim and fortress-like of all Roman
+palaces.</p>
+
+<p>He felt as a poor man may feel when, hot and
+feverish from working by a furnace, he knows that
+he must face the winter storm of freezing sleet
+and piercing wind in his thin and ragged jacket to
+go home&mdash;a plunge, as it were, from molten iron
+into ice, with no protection from the cold. Every
+step of the homeward way was hateful to him.
+Yet he knew his own weakness well enough not to
+hesitate. Had he stopped, he might have been
+capable of turning in some other direction, and of
+spending the whole evening with some of his
+fellow-artists, going home late in the night, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_73" id="Page_V2_73">[73]</a></span>
+Gloria would be asleep. The thought crossed his
+mind. If he did that, he was sure to be carried
+away into speaking of his troubles to men with
+whom he had no intimacy. He was too proud for
+that. He wished he could go back to Francesca,
+and pour out his woes again. He had not said half
+enough. He should like to have it out, to the very
+end, and then lie down and close his eyes, and hear
+Francesca's voice soothing him and speaking of
+their golden friendship. But that was impossible,
+so he went home to face his misery as best he
+could.</p>
+
+<p>There was exaggeration in all he thought, but
+there was none in the effect of his thoughts upon
+himself. He had married a woman unsuited to
+him in every way, as he was unsuited to her. The
+whole trouble lay there. Possibly he was not a
+man to marry at all, and should have led his solitary
+life to the end, illuminated from the outside,
+as it were, by Francesca Campodonico's faithful
+friendship and sweet influence. All causes of disagreement,
+considered as forces in married life, are
+relative in their value to the comparative solidity
+of the characters on which they act&mdash;a truism
+which ought to be the foundation of social charity,
+but is not. Reanda could not be blamed for his
+brittle sensitivenesses, nor Gloria for a certain
+coarse-grained streak of cruelty, which she had
+inherited from her father, and which had combined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_74" id="Page_V2_74">[74]</a></span>
+strangely with the rare gifts and great faults of
+her dead mother&mdash;the love of emotion for its own
+sake, and the tendency to do everything which
+might produce it in herself and those about her.
+Emotion was poison to Reanda. It was his wife's
+favourite food.</p>
+
+<p>He reached his home, and went up the well-lighted
+marble staircase, wishing that he were ascending
+the narrow stone steps at the back of the
+Palazzetto Borgia, taper in hand, to his old bachelor
+quarters, to light his lamp, to smoke in peace, and
+to spend the evening over a sketch, or with a book,
+or dreaming of work not yet done. He paused on
+the landing, before he rang the bell of his apartment.
+The polished door irritated him, with its
+brass fittings and all that it meant of married life
+and irksome social obligation. He never carried a
+key, because the Roman keys of those times were
+large and heavy; but he had been obliged to use
+one formerly, when he had lived by himself. The
+necessity of ringing the bell irritated him again,
+and he felt a nervous shock of unwillingness as he
+pulled the brass knob. He set his teeth against
+the tinkling and jangling that followed, and his
+eyelids quivered. Everything hurt him. He did
+not feel sure of his hands when he wanted to
+use them. He was inclined to strike the silent
+and respectful man-servant who opened the door,
+merely because he was silent and respectful. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_75" id="Page_V2_75">[75]</a></span>
+went straight to his own dressing-room, and shut
+himself in. It would be a relief to change his
+clothes. He and Gloria were to go to a reception
+in the evening, and he would dress at once. In
+those days few Romans dressed for dinner every
+day.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped a stud, for his hands were shaking
+so that he could hardly hold anything; and he
+groped for the thing on his knees. The blood
+went to his head, and hurt him violently, as
+though he had received a blow.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria's room was next to his, and she heard him
+moving about. She knocked and tried the door,
+but it was locked; and she heard him utter an
+exclamation of annoyance, as he hunted for the
+stud. She thought it was meant for her, and
+turned angrily back from the door. On any other
+day he would have called her, for he had heard her
+trying to get in. But he shrugged his lean shoulders
+impatiently, glanced once towards her room,
+found his stud, and went on dressing.</p>
+
+<p>He really made an effort to get control of himself
+while he was alone. But to all intents and
+purposes he was actually ill. His face was drawn
+and sallow; his eyes were yellow and bloodshot;
+and there were deep, twitching lines about his
+mouth. His nostrils moved spasmodically when
+he drew breath, and his long thin hands fumbled
+helplessly at the studs and buttons of his clothes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_76" id="Page_V2_76">[76]</a></span>
+At last he was dressed, and went into the drawing-room.
+Gloria was already there, waiting by the
+fireside, with an injured and forbidding expression
+in her beautiful face.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda came to the fireside, and stood there,
+spreading out his trembling hands to the blaze.
+He dreaded the first word, as a man lying ill of
+brain fever dreads each cracking explosion in a
+thunderstorm. Strained as their relations had been
+for a long time, he had never failed to kiss Gloria
+when he came home. This evening he barely
+glanced at her, and stood watching the dancing
+tongues of the wood fire, not daring to think of
+the sound of his wife's voice. It came at last
+cool and displeased.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ill?" she asked, looking steadily at
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered with an effort, and his outstretched
+hands shook before the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what is the matter with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing." He did not even turn his eyes to
+her, as he spoke the single word.</p>
+
+<p>A silence followed, during which he suffered.
+Nevertheless, the first dreaded shock of hearing
+her voice was over. Though he had barely glanced
+at her, he had known from her face what the sound
+of the voice would be.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria leaned back in her chair and watched
+the fire, and sighed. Griggs had been with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_77" id="Page_V2_77">[77]</a></span>
+in the afternoon, and she had been happy, quite
+innocently, as she thought. The man's dominating
+strength and profound earnestness, which
+would have been intolerably dull to many women,
+smoothed Gloria, as it were. She said that he
+ironed the creases out of her life for her. It
+was not a softening influence, but a calming one,
+bred of strength pressing heavily on caprice. She
+resisted it, but took pleasure in finding that it was
+irresistible. Now and then it was not merely a
+steady pressure. He had a sledge hammer amongst
+his intellectual weapons, and once in a while it fell
+upon one of her illusions. She laughed at the
+destruction, and had no pity for the fragments.
+They were not illusions integral with her vanity,
+for he thought her perfect, and he would not have
+struck at her faults if he had seen them. Her
+faults grew, for they had root in her vital nature,
+and drew nourishment from his enduring strength,
+which surrounded them and protected them in the
+blind, whole-heartedness of his love. For the rest,
+he had kept his word. She had seen him turn
+white and bite his lip, sometimes, and more than
+once he had left her abruptly, and had not come
+back again for several days. But he had never
+forgotten his promise, in any word or deed since
+he had given it.</p>
+
+<p>It is a dangerous thing to pile up a mountain of
+massive reality from which to look out upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_78" id="Page_V2_78">[78]</a></span>
+fading beauty of a fleeting illusion. In his influence
+on Gloria's life, the strong man had overtopped
+the man of genius by head and shoulders.
+And she loved the strange mixture of attraction
+and repulsion she felt when she was with Griggs&mdash;the
+something that wounded her vanity because
+she could not understand it, and the protecting
+shield that overspread that same vanity, and gave
+it freedom to be vain beyond all bounds. She
+would not have admitted that she loved the man.
+It was her nature to play upon his pity with the
+wounds her love for her husband had suffered.
+Yet she knew that if she were free she should
+marry him, because she could not resist him, and
+there was pleasure in the idea that she controlled
+so irresistible a force. The contrast between
+him and Reanda was ever before her, and
+since she had learned how weak genius could be,
+the comparison was enormously in favour of the
+younger man.</p>
+
+<p>As Reanda stood there before the fire that evening,
+she despised him, and her heart rebelled
+against his nature. His nervousness, his trembling
+hands, his almost evident fear of being questioned,
+were contemptible. He was like a hunted
+animal, she thought. Two hours earlier her friend
+had stood there, solid, leonine, gladiatorial, dominating
+her with his square white face, and still,
+shadowy eyes, quietly stretching to the flames two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_79" id="Page_V2_79">[79]</a></span>
+hands that could have torn her in pieces,&mdash;a man
+imposing in his stern young sadness, almost solemn
+in his splendid physical dignity.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at Reanda, and her lip curled with
+scorn of herself for having loved such a thing. It
+was long since she had seen the gentle light in his
+face which had won her heart two years ago. She
+was familiar with his genius, and it no longer surprised
+her into overlooking his frailty. His fame
+no longer flattered her. His gentleness was gone,
+and had left, not hardness nor violence, in its place,
+but a sort of irritable palsy of discontent. That
+was what she called it as she watched him.</p>
+
+<p>"You used to kiss me when you came home,"
+she said suddenly, leaning far back in her chair.</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically he turned his head. The habit
+was strong, and she had reminded him of it. He
+did not wish to quarrel, and he did not reason.
+He moved a step to her side and bent down to kiss
+her forehead. The automatic conjugality of the
+daily kiss might have a good effect. That was
+what he thought, if he thought at all.</p>
+
+<p>But she put up her hands suddenly, and thrust
+him back rudely.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said. "That sort of thing is not
+worth much, if I have to remind you to do it."</p>
+
+<p>Her lip curled again. His high shoulders went
+up, and he turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"You are hard to please," he said, and the words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_80" id="Page_V2_80">[80]</a></span>
+were as mechanical as the action that had preceded
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot be said that you have taken much
+pains to please me of late," she answered coldly.</p>
+
+<p>The servant announced dinner at that moment,
+and Reanda made no answer, though he glanced at
+her nervously. They went into the dining-room
+and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>The storm brewed during the silent meal. Reanda
+scarcely ate anything, and drank a little weak wine
+and water.</p>
+
+<p>"You hardly seem well enough to go out this
+evening," said Gloria, at last, but there was no
+kindness in the tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I am perfectly well," he answered impatiently.
+"I will go with you."</p>
+
+<p>"There is not the slightest necessity," replied
+his wife. "I can go alone, and you can go to
+bed."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you I am perfectly well!" he said with
+unconcealed annoyance. "Let me alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. Nothing is easier."</p>
+
+<p>The voice was full of that injured dignity which
+most surely irritated him, as Gloria knew. But the
+servant was in the room, and he said nothing, though
+it was a real effort to be silent. His tongue had
+been free that day, and it was hard to be bound
+again.</p>
+
+<p>They finished dinner almost in silence, and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_81" id="Page_V2_81">[81]</a></span>
+went back to the drawing-room by force of habit.
+Gloria was still in her walking-dress, but there
+was no hurry, and she resumed her favourite seat
+by the fire for a time, before going to dress for the
+reception.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_82" id="Page_V2_82">[82]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> was something exasperating in the renewal
+of the position exactly as it had been before
+dinner. To make up for having eaten nothing,
+Reanda drank two cups of coffee in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You might at least speak to me," observed
+Gloria, as he set down the second cup. "One
+would almost think that we had quarrelled!"</p>
+
+<p>The hard laugh that followed the words jarred
+upon him more painfully than anything that had
+gone before. He laughed, too, after a moment's
+silence, half hysterically.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said; "one might almost think that
+we had quarrelled!" And he laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"The idea seems to amuse you," said Gloria,
+coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"As it does you," he answered. "We both
+laughed. Indeed, it is very amusing."</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Francesca has sent you home in a good
+humour. That is rare. I suppose I ought to be
+grateful."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I am in a fine humour. It seems to me
+that we both are." He bit his cigar, and blew out
+short puffs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_83" id="Page_V2_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You need not include me. Please do not smoke
+into my face."</p>
+
+<p>The smoke was not very near her, but she made
+a movement with her hands as though brushing it
+away.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," he said politely, and he
+moved to the other side of the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>"How nervous you are!" she exclaimed. "Why
+can you not sit down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I wish to stand," he answered, with
+returning impatience. "Because I am nervous, if
+you choose."</p>
+
+<p>"You told me that you were perfectly well."</p>
+
+<p>"So I am."</p>
+
+<p>"If you were perfectly well, you would not be
+nervous," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>He felt as though she were driving a sharp nail
+into his brain.</p>
+
+<p>"It does not make any difference to you whether
+I am nervous or not," he said, and his eye began
+to lighten, as he sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly makes no difference to you whether
+you are rude or not."</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders, said nothing, and
+smoked in silence. One thin leg was crossed over
+the other and swung restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this sort of thing to last forever?" she inquired
+coldly, after a silence which had lasted a
+full minute.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_84" id="Page_V2_84">[84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what you mean," said Reanda.</p>
+
+<p>"You know very well what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"This is insufferable!" he exclaimed, rising
+suddenly, with his cigar between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"You might take your cigar out of your mouth
+to say so," retorted Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>He turned on her, and an exclamation of anger
+was on his lips, but he did not utter it. There
+was a remnant of self-control. Gloria leaned back
+in her chair, and took up a carved ivory fan from
+amongst the knick-knacks on the little table beside
+her. She opened it, shut it, and opened it again,
+and pretended to fan herself, though the room was
+cool.</p>
+
+<p>"I should really like to know," she said presently,
+as he walked up and down with uneven steps.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" he asked sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Whether this is to last for the rest of our lives."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"This peaceful existence," she said scornfully.
+"I should really like to know whether it is to last.
+Could you not tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It will not last long, if you make it your principal
+business to torment me," he said, stopping in
+his walk.</p>
+
+<p>"I?" she exclaimed, with an air of the utmost
+surprise. "When do I ever torment you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whenever I am with you, and you know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Really! You must be ill, or out of your mind,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_85" id="Page_V2_85">[85]</a></span>
+or both. That would be some excuse for saying
+such a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"It needs none. It is true." He was becoming
+exasperated at last. "You seem to spend your
+time in finding out how to make life intolerable.
+You are driving me mad. I cannot bear it much
+longer."</p>
+
+<p>"If it comes to bearing, I think I have borne
+more than you," said Gloria. "It is not little.
+You leave me to myself. You neglect me. You
+abuse the friends I am obliged to find rather than
+be alone. You neglect me in every way&mdash;and you
+say that I am driving you mad. Do you realize
+at all how you have changed in this last year?
+You may have really gone mad, for all I know, but
+it is I who have to suffer and bear the consequences.
+You neglect me brutally. How do I
+know how you pass your time?"</p>
+
+<p>Reanda stood still in the middle of the room,
+gazing at her. For a moment he was surprised by
+the outbreak. She did not give him time to answer.</p>
+
+<p>"You leave me in the morning," she went on,
+working her coldness into anger. "You often go
+away before I am awake. You come back at midday,
+and sometimes you do not speak a word over
+your breakfast. If I speak, you either do not
+answer, or you find fault with what I say; and if
+I show the least enthusiasm for anything but your
+work, you preach me down with proverbs and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_86" id="Page_V2_86">[86]</a></span>
+maxims, as though I were a child. I am foolish,
+young, impatient, silly, not fit to take care of myself,
+you say! Have you taken care of me? Have
+you ever sacrificed one hour out of your long day
+to give me a little pleasure? Have you ever once,
+since we were married, stayed at home one morning
+and asked me what I would do&mdash;just to make
+one holiday for me? Never. Never once! You
+give me a fine house and enough money, and you
+think you have given me all that a woman wants."</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you want?" asked Reanda, trying
+to speak calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"A little kindness, a little love&mdash;the least thing
+of all you promised me and of all I was so sure
+of having! Is it so much to ask? Have you lied
+to me all this time? Did you never love me? Did
+you marry me for my face, or for my voice? Was
+it all a mere empty sham from the beginning?
+Have you deceived me from the first? You said
+you loved me. Was none of it true?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I loved you," he answered, and suddenly
+there was a dulness in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"You loved me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She sighed, and in the stillness that followed the
+little ivory fan rattled as she opened and shut it.
+To his ear, the tone in which she had spoken had
+rung false. If only he could have heard her voice
+speaking as it had once sounded, he must have been
+touched.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_87" id="Page_V2_87">[87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she continued. "You loved me, or at
+least you made me think you did. I was young
+and I believed you. You do not even say it now.
+Perhaps because you know how hard it would be
+to make me believe you."</p>
+
+<p>"No. That is not the reason."</p>
+
+<p>She waited a moment, for it was not the answer
+she had expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Angelo&mdash;" she began, and waited, but he said
+nothing, though he looked at her. "It is not true,
+it cannot be true!" she said, suddenly turning her
+face away, for there was a bitter humiliation in it.</p>
+
+<p>"It is much better to say it at once," he said,
+with the supernaturally calm indifference which
+sometimes comes upon very sensitive people when
+they are irritated beyond endurance. "I did love
+you, or I should not have married you. But I do
+not love you any longer. I am sorry. I wish I
+did."</p>
+
+<p>"And you dare to tell me so!" she cried, turning
+upon him suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later she was leaning forward, covering
+her face with her hands, and speaking through
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"You have the heart to tell me so, after all I
+have been to you&mdash;the devotion of years, the tenderness,
+the love no man ever had of any woman!
+Oh, God! It is too much!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is said now. It is of no use to go back to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_88" id="Page_V2_88">[88]</a></span>
+lie," observed Reanda, with an indifference that
+would have seemed diabolical even to himself, had
+he believed her outbreak to be quite genuine. "Of
+what use would it be to pretend again?"</p>
+
+<p>"You admit that you have only pretended to
+love me?" She raised her flushed face and gleaming
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Of late&mdash;if you call it a pretence&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not that&mdash;not that! I have seen it&mdash;but
+at first. You did love me. Say that, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. Why should I have married you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;why? In spite of her, too&mdash;it is not to
+be believed."</p>
+
+<p>"In spite of her? Of whom? Are you out of
+your mind?"</p>
+
+<p>Gloria laughed in a despairing sort of way.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not tell me that Donna Francesca ever
+wished you to be married!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"She brought us together. You know it. It is
+the only thing I could ever reproach her with."</p>
+
+<p>"She made you marry me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Made me? No! You are quite mad."</p>
+
+<p>He stamped his foot impatiently, and turned
+away to walk up and down again. His cigar had
+gone out, but he gnawed at it angrily. He was
+amazed at what he could still bear, but he was fast
+losing his head. The mad desire to strangle her
+tingled in his hands, and the light of the lamp
+danced when he looked at it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_89" id="Page_V2_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She has made you do so many things!" said
+Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>Her tone had changed again, growing hard and
+scornful, when she spoke of Donna Francesca.</p>
+
+<p>"What has she made me do that you should speak
+of her in that way?" asked Reanda, angrily, re-crossing
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>"She has made you hate me&mdash;for one thing,"
+Gloria answered.</p>
+
+<p>"That is not true!" Reanda could hardly
+breathe, and he felt his voice growing thick.</p>
+
+<p>"Not true! Then, if not she, who else? You
+are with her there all day&mdash;she talks about me,
+she finds fault with me, and you come home and
+see the faults she finds for you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There is not a word of truth in what you
+say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Do not be so angry, then! If it were not true,
+why should you care? I have said it, and I will
+say it. She has robbed me of you. Oh, I will
+never forgive her! Never fear! One does not
+forget such things! She has got you, and she
+will keep you, I suppose. But you shall regret it!
+She shall pay me for it!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice shook, for her jealousy was real, as
+was all her emotion while it lasted.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not speak of her in that way," said
+Reanda, fiercely. "I owe her and her family all
+that I am, all that I have in the world&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_90" id="Page_V2_90">[90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Including me!" interrupted Gloria. "Pay her
+then&mdash;pay her with your love and yourself. You
+can satisfy your conscience in that way, and you
+can break my heart."</p>
+
+<p>"There is not the slightest fear of that," answered
+Reanda, cruelly.</p>
+
+<p>She rose suddenly to her feet and stood before
+him, blazing with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"If I could find yours&mdash;if you had any&mdash;I would
+break it," she said. "You dare to say that I have
+no heart, when you can see that every word you
+say thrusts it through like a knife, when I have
+loved you as no woman ever loved man! I said it,
+and I repeat it&mdash;when I have given you everything,
+and would have given you the world if I had
+it! Indeed, you are utterly heartless and cruel
+and unkind&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"At least, I am honest. I do not play a part as
+you do. I say plainly that I do not love you and
+that I am sorry for it. Yes&mdash;really sorry." His
+voice softened for an instant. "I would give a
+great deal to love you as I once did, and to believe
+that you loved me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You will tell me that I do not&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I will tell you so, and that you never
+did&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Angelo&mdash;take care! You will go too far!"</p>
+
+<p>"I could never go far enough in telling you that
+truth. You never loved me. You may have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_91" id="Page_V2_91">[91]</a></span>
+thought you did. I do not care. You talk of
+devotion and tenderness and all the like! Of
+being left alone and neglected! Of going too far!
+What devotion have you ever shown to me, beyond
+extravagantly praising everything I painted, for a
+few months after we were married. Then you grew
+tired of my work. That is your affair. What is
+it to me whether you admire my pictures or Mendoza's,
+or any other man's? Do you think that is
+devotion? I know far better than you which are
+good and which are bad. But you call it devotion.
+And it was devotion that kept you away from me
+when I was working, when I was obliged to work&mdash;for
+it is my trade, after all&mdash;and when you
+might have been with me day after day! And it
+was devotion to meet me with your sour, severe
+look every day when I came home, as though I
+were a secret enemy, a conspirator, a creature to be
+guarded against like a thief&mdash;as though I had been
+staying away from you on purpose, and of my will&mdash;instead
+of working for you all day long. That
+was your way of showing your love. And to torment
+me with questions, everlastingly believing
+that I spend my time in talking against you to
+Donna Francesca&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You do!" cried Gloria, who had not been able
+to interrupt his incoherent speech. "You love her
+as you never loved me&mdash;as you hate me&mdash;as you
+both hate me!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_92" id="Page_V2_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She grasped his sleeve in her anger, shaking his
+arm, and staring into his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You make me hate you!" he answered, trying
+to shake her off.</p>
+
+<p>"And you succeed, between you&mdash;You and
+your&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>In his turn he grasped her arm with his long,
+thin fingers, with nervous roughness.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not speak of her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Shall not? It is the only right I have left&mdash;that
+and the right to hate you&mdash;you and that infamous
+woman you love&mdash;yes&mdash;you and your mistress&mdash;your
+pretty Francesca!" Her laugh was
+almost a scream.</p>
+
+<p>His fury overflowed. After all, he was the son
+of a countryman, of the steward of Gerano. He
+snatched the ivory fan from her hand and struck
+her across the face with it. The fragile thing
+broke to shivers, and the fragments fell between
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria turned deadly white, but there was a
+bright red bar across her cheek. She looked at
+him a moment, and into her face there came that
+fateful look that was like her dead mother's.</p>
+
+<p>Then without a word she turned and left the
+room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_93" id="Page_V2_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> daughter of Angus Dalrymple and Maria
+Braccio was not the woman to bear a blow tamely,
+or to hesitate long as to the surest way of resenting
+it. Before she had reached the door she had
+determined to leave the house at once, and ten
+minutes had not passed before she found herself
+walking down the Corso, veiled and muffled in a
+cloak, and having all the money she could call her
+own, in her pocket, together with a few jewels of
+little value, given her by her father.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda had sunk into a chair when the door had
+closed behind her, half stunned by the explosion of
+his own anger. He looked at the bits of broken
+ivory on the carpet, and wondered vaguely what
+they meant. He felt as though he had been in a
+dream of which he could not remember the distorted
+incidents at all clearly. His breath came
+irregularly, his heart fluttered and stood still and
+fluttered again, and his hands twitched at the
+fringe on the arms of the chair. By and bye, the
+butler came in to take away the coffee cups and he
+saw that his master was ill. Under such circumstances
+nothing can equal the gentleness of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_94" id="Page_V2_94">[94]</a></span>
+Italian servant. The man called some one to help
+him, and got Reanda to his dressing-room, and
+undressed him and laid him upon the long leathern
+sofa. Then they knocked at the bedroom door,
+but there was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not disturb the signora," said Reanda,
+feebly. "She wishes to be alone. We shall not
+want the carriage."</p>
+
+<p>Those were the only words he spoke that evening,
+and the servants understood well enough that something
+had happened between husband and wife, and
+that it was best to be silent and to obey. No one
+tried the door of the bedroom. If any one had
+turned the handle, it would have been found to be
+locked. The key lay on the table in the hall,
+amongst the visiting-cards. Dalrymple's daughter
+had inherited some of his quick instinct and presence
+of mind. She had felt sure that if she locked
+the door of her room when she left the house, her
+husband would naturally suppose that she had shut
+herself in, not wishing to be disturbed, and would
+respect her desire to be alone. It would save
+trouble, and give her time to get away. He could
+sleep on the sofa in his dressing-room, as he
+actually did, in the illness of his anger, treated as
+Italians know how to treat such common cases,
+of which the consequences are sometimes fatal.
+Many an Italian has died from a fit of rage. A
+single blood-vessel, in the brain, a little weaker<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_95" id="Page_V2_95">[95]</a></span>
+than the rest, and all is over in an apoplexy. But
+Reanda was not of an apoplectic constitution. The
+calming treatment acted very soon, he fell asleep,
+and did not wake till daylight, quite unaware that
+Gloria was not in the next room, sleeping off her
+anger as he had done.</p>
+
+<p>She had gone out in her first impulse to leave the
+house of the man who had so terribly insulted her.
+Under her veil the hot blood scorched her where
+the blow had left its red bar, and her rage and
+wounded pride chased one another from her heart
+to her head while with every beating of her pulse
+the longing for revenge grew wilder and stronger.</p>
+
+<p>She had left the house with one first idea&mdash;to
+find Paul Griggs and tell him what had happened.
+No other thought crossed her mind, and her steps
+turned mechanically down the Corso, for he still
+lived in his two rooms in the Via della Frezza.</p>
+
+<p>It was early still. People dined at six o'clock
+in those days, and it was not yet eight when Gloria
+found herself in the street. It was quiet, though
+there were many people moving about. During the
+hours between dinner and the theatre there were
+hardly any carriages out, and the sound of many
+footsteps and of many low voices filled the air.
+Gloria kept to the right and walked swiftly along,
+never turning her head. She had never been out
+in the streets alone at night in her life, and even
+in her anger she felt a sort of intoxication of freedom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_96" id="Page_V2_96">[96]</a></span>
+that was quite new to her, a beginning of
+satisfaction upon him who had injured her. There
+was Highland blood in her veins, as well as Italian
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>The southeast wind was blowing down the street
+behind her, that same strange and tragic wind,
+tragic and passionate, that had blown so gustily
+down upon Subiaco from the mountains, on that
+night long ago when Maria Addolorata had stood
+aside by the garden gate to let Dalrymple pass,
+bearing something in his arms. Gloria knew it
+by its sad whisper and by the faint taste of it and
+smell of it, through her close-drawn veil.</p>
+
+<p>On she went, down the Corso, till she came to
+the Piazza Colonna, and saw far on her left, beyond
+the huge black shaft of the column, the brilliant
+lights from the French officers' Club. She hesitated
+then, and slackened her speed a little. The
+sight of the Club reminded her of society, of what
+she was doing, and of what it might mean. As
+she walked more slowly, the wind gained upon her,
+as it were, from behind, and tried to drive her on.
+It seemed to be driving her from her husband's
+house with all its might, blowing her skirts before
+her and her thick veil. She passed the square,
+keeping close to the shutters of the shops under the
+Palazzo Piombino&mdash;gone now, to widen the open
+space. A gust, stronger than any she had felt yet,
+swept down the pavement. She paused a moment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_97" id="Page_V2_97">[97]</a></span>
+leaning against the closed shutters of the clockmaker
+Ricci, whose shop used to be a sort of landmark
+in the Corso. Just then a clock within
+struck eight strokes. She heard them all distinctly
+through the shutters.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated an instant. It was eight o'clock.
+She had not realized what time it was. If she
+found the street door shut in the Via della Frezza,
+it would be hard to get at Griggs. She had passed
+the house more than once in her walks, and she
+knew that Griggs lived high up in the fifth story.
+It might be already too late. She hesitated and
+looked up and down the pavement. A young
+French officer of Zouaves was coming towards her;
+his high wrinkled and varnished boots gleamed in
+the gaslight. He had a black beard and bright
+young eyes, and was smoking a cigarette. He was
+looking at her and slackened his pace as he came
+near. She left her place and walked swiftly past
+him, down the Corso.</p>
+
+<p>All at once she felt in the gust that drove her a
+cool drop of rain just behind her ear, and a moment
+later, passing a gas-lamp, she saw the dark round
+spots on the grey pavement. In her haste, she
+had brought no umbrella. She hurried on, and the
+wind blew her forward with all its might, so that
+she felt her steps lightened by its help. The Corso
+was darker and there were fewer people. The rain
+fell fast when she reached San Carlo, where the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_98" id="Page_V2_98">[98]</a></span>
+street widens, and she gathered her cloak about her
+as well as she could and crossed to the other side,
+hoping to find more shelter. She was nearing the
+Via della Frezza, and she knew some of the ins and
+outs of the narrow streets behind the tribune of
+the great church. It was very dark as she turned
+the semicircle of the apse, and the rain fell in
+torrents, but it was shorter to go that way, for
+Griggs lived nearer to the Ripetta than to the
+Corso, and she followed a sort of crooked diagonal,
+in the direction of his house. She thought the
+streets led by that way to the point she wished to
+reach, and she walked as fast as she could. The
+flare of an occasional oil lamp swung out high at
+the end of its lever showed her the way, and
+showed her, too, the rush of the yellow water down
+the middle channel of the street. She looked in
+vain for the turning she expected on her right.
+She had not lost her way, but she had not found the
+short cut she had looked for. Emerging upon the
+broad Ripetta, she paused an instant at the corner
+and looked about, though she knew which way to
+turn. Just then there were heavy splashing footsteps
+close to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me, Signora," said a voice that was
+rough and had an odd accent, though the tone was
+polite, and a huge umbrella was held over her head.</p>
+
+<p>She shrank back against the wall quickly, in
+womanly fear of a strange man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_99" id="Page_V2_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you!" she exclaimed in answer.</p>
+
+<p>"But yes!" said the man. "It rains. You are
+getting an illness, Signora."</p>
+
+<p>The faint light showed her that she would be safe
+enough in accepting the offer. The man was evidently
+a peasant from the mountains, and he was
+certainly not young. His vast black cloak was
+turned back a little by his arm and showed the
+lining of green flannel and the blue clothes with
+broad silver buttons which he wore.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," she said, for she was glad of the
+shelter, and she stood still under the enormous blue
+cotton umbrella, with its battered brass knob and
+its coloured stripes.</p>
+
+<p>"But I will accompany you," said the man. "It
+is certainly not beginning to finish. Apoplexy!
+It rains in pieces!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. I am not going far," said Gloria.
+"You are very kind."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to be the act of a Christian," observed
+the peasant.</p>
+
+<p>She began to move, and he walked beside her.
+He would have thought it bad manners to ask
+whither she was going. Through the torrents of
+rain they went on in silence. In less than five
+minutes she had found the door of Griggs's house.
+To her intense relief it was still open, and there
+was the glimmer of a tiny oil lamp from a lantern
+in the stairway. Gloria felt for the money in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_100" id="Page_V2_100">[100]</a></span>
+pocket. The man did not wait, nor speak, and was
+already going away. She called him.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 363px;">
+<img src="images/gs23.jpg" width="363" height="500" alt="Stefanone and Gloria.&mdash;Vol. II., p. 100." title="Stefanone and Gloria.&mdash;Vol. II., p. 100." />
+<span class="caption">Stefanone and Gloria.&mdash;Vol. II., p.&nbsp;100.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"I wish to give you something," said Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>"To me?" exclaimed the man, in surprise.
+"No, Signora. It seems that you make a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me," Gloria answered. "In the dark,
+I did not see. I am very grateful to you. You
+are from the country?"</p>
+
+<p>She wished to repair the mistake she had made,
+by some little civility. The man stood on the
+doorstep, with his umbrella hanging backward over
+his shoulder, and she could see his face distinctly,&mdash;a
+typical Roman face with small aquiline features,
+keen dark eyes, a square jaw, and iron-grey
+hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Signora. Stefanone of Subiaco, wine
+merchant, to serve you. If you wish wine of
+Subiaco, ask for me at Piazza Montanara. Signora,
+it rains columns. With permission, I go."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you again," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>He disappeared into the torrent, and she was left
+alone at the foot of the gloomy stairs, under the
+feeble light of the little oil lamp. She had thrown
+back her veil, for it was soaked with water and
+stuck to her face. Little rivulets ran down
+upon the stones from her wet clothes, which felt
+intolerably heavy as she stood there, resting one
+gloved hand against the damp wall and staring at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_101" id="Page_V2_101">[101]</a></span>
+the lantern. Her thoughts had been disturbed by
+her brief interview with the peasant; the rain
+chilled her, and her face burned. She touched her
+cheek with her hand where Reanda had struck her.
+It felt bruised and sore, for the blow had not been
+a light one. The sensation of the wet leather
+disgusted her, and she drew off the glove with difficulty,
+turning it inside out over her full white
+hand. Then she touched the place again, and
+patted it, softly, and felt it. But her eyes did not
+move from the lantern.</p>
+
+<p>There was one of those momentary lulling pauses
+in the rush of events which seem sent to confuse
+men's thoughts and unsettle their purposes. Had
+she reached the house five minutes earlier, she would
+not have hesitated a moment at the foot of the
+stairs. Suddenly she turned back to the door, and
+stood there looking out. It looked very black.
+She gathered her dripping skirt back as she bent
+forward a little and peered into the darkness. The
+rain fell in sheets, now, with the unquavering
+sound of a steadily rushing torrent. It would be
+madness to go out into it. A shiver ran through
+her, and another. She was very cold and miserable.
+No doubt Griggs had a fire upstairs, and a
+pleasant light in his study. He would be there,
+hard at work. She would knock, and he would
+open, and she would sit down by the fire and dry
+herself, and pour out her misery. The red bar was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_102" id="Page_V2_102">[102]</a></span>
+still across her face&mdash;she had seen it in the
+looking-glass when she had put on her hat.</p>
+
+<p>To go back, to see her husband that night&mdash;it
+was impossible. Later, perhaps, when he should
+be asleep, Griggs would find a carriage and take
+her home. No one would ever know where she
+had been, and she would never tell any more than
+Griggs would. She felt that she must see him and
+tell him everything, and feel his strength beside
+her. After all, he was the only friend she had in
+the world, and it was natural that she should turn
+to him for help, in her father's absence. He was
+her father's friend, too.</p>
+
+<p>She shivered again and again from head to foot,
+and she drew back from the door. For a moment
+she hesitated. Then with a womanly action she
+began to shake the rain out of her cloak and her
+skirts as well as she could, wetting her hands to
+the wrists. As she bent down, shaking the hem of
+the skirt, the blood rushed to her face again, and the
+place he had struck burned and smarted. It was
+quite a different sensation from what she had felt
+when she had touched it with her cool wet hand.
+She straightened herself with a spring and threw
+back her head, and her eyes flashed fiercely in the
+dark. The accidents of fate closed round her, and
+the hands of her destiny had her by the throat,
+choking her as she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>There was no more hesitation. With quick steps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_103" id="Page_V2_103">[103]</a></span>
+she began to ascend the short, steep flights. It was
+dark, beyond the first turning, but she went on,
+touching the damp walls with her hands. Then
+there was a glimmer again, and a second lantern
+marked the first landing and shone feebly upon a
+green door with a thin little square of white marble
+screwed to it for a door-plate and a name in black.
+She glanced at it and went on, for she knew that
+Griggs lived on the fifth floor. She was surefooted,
+like her father, as she went firmly up,
+panting a little, for her drenched clothes weighed
+her down. There was one more light, and then there
+were no more. She counted the landings, feeling
+the doors with her hands as she went by, dizzy
+from the constant turning in the darkness. At last
+she thought she had got to the end, and groping
+with her hands she found a worsted string and
+pulled it, and a cracked little bell jangled and beat
+against the wood inside. She heard a pattering of
+feet, and a shrill, nasal child's voice called out the
+customary question, inquiring who was there. She
+asked for Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>"He is not here," answered the child, and she
+heard the footsteps running away again, though
+she called loudly.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart sank. But she groped her way on.
+The staircase ended, for it was the top of the house,
+and she found another door, and felt for a string
+like the one she had pulled, but there was none.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_104" id="Page_V2_104">[104]</a></span>
+Something told her that she was right, and with
+the sudden, desperate longing to be inside, with
+her strong protector, in the light and warmth, she
+beat upon the door with the palms of her hands,
+her face almost touching the cold painted wood
+studded with nails, that smelled of wet iron.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the firm, regular footsteps of the
+strong man, and his clear, stern voice spoke from
+within, not in a question, but in a curt refusal to
+open.</p>
+
+<p>"Go away," he said, in Italian. "You have
+mistaken the door."</p>
+
+<p>But she beat with her hands upon the heavy
+wood.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me in!" she cried in English. "Let
+me in!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a deep exclamation of surprise, and
+the oiled bolt clanked back in its socket. The
+door opened inward, and Paul Griggs held up a
+lamp with a green shade, throwing the light into
+Gloria's face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_105" id="Page_V2_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gloria</span> pushed past Griggs and stood beside him
+in the narrow entry. He shut the door mechanically,
+and turned slowly towards her, still holding
+up the lamp so that it shone upon her face.</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened to you?" he asked, slowly
+and steadily, his shadowed eyes fixed upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"He has beaten me, and I have come to you.
+Look at my face."</p>
+
+<p>He saw the red bar across her cheek. He did
+not raise his voice, and there was little change in
+his features, but his eyes glowed suddenly, like the
+eyes of a wild beast, and he swore an oath so terrible
+that Gloria turned a little pale and shrank
+from him. Then he was silent, and they stood together.
+She could hear his breath. She could see
+him trying to swallow, for his throat was suddenly
+as dry as cinders. Very slowly his frown deepened
+to a scowl, and two straight furrows clove
+their way down between his eyes, his dark eyebrows
+were lifted evilly, upward and outward, and
+little by little the strong, clean shaven upper lip
+rose at the corners and showed two gleaming, wolfish
+teeth. The smooth, close hair bristled from
+the point where it descended upon his forehead.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_106" id="Page_V2_106">[106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gloria shrank a little. She had seen such a
+look in an angry lion; just the look, without a
+motion of the limbs. Then it all disappeared,
+and the still face she knew so well was turned
+to hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come in?" he asked in a constrained
+tone. "It is my work-room. I will light a fire,
+and you must dry yourself. How did you get so
+wet? You did not come on foot?"</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door while he was speaking, and
+led the way with the lamp. Gloria shivered as she
+followed, for there was a small window open in the
+entry, and her clothes clung to her in the cold
+draught. She closed the door behind her, as she
+went in. It was very little warmer within than
+without, and the small fireplace was black and cold.
+Instinctively she glanced at Griggs. He wore a
+rough pilot coat that had seen much service, buttoned
+to his throat. He set the little lamp with
+its green shade down upon the table amidst a mass
+of papers and books, and drew forward the only
+easy-chair there was, a dilapidated piece of furniture
+covered with faded yellow reps and ragged
+fringes that dragged on the floor. He took a great
+cloak from a clothes-horse in the corner and threw
+it over the chair, smoothing it carefully with his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will sit down, I will try and make a
+fire," he said quietly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_107" id="Page_V2_107">[107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She sat down as he bade her, wondering a little
+at his calmness, but remembering the awful words
+that had escaped his lips when she had spoken, and
+the look of the wild beast and incarnate devil that
+had been one moment in his face. She looked
+about her while he began to make a fire, not hindering him,
+for she was shivering. The room was
+large, but very poorly furnished. There were two
+great tables, covered with books and papers; there
+was a deal bookcase along one wall and an antiquated
+cabinet between the two windows, one of
+its legs propped up with a dingy faded paper.
+The coarse green carpet was threadbare, but still
+whole. There were half-a-dozen plain chairs with
+green and white rush seats in various parts of the
+room. On the narrow white marble mantel-shelf
+stood two china candlesticks, in one of which there
+was a piece of candle that had guttered when last
+burning. In the middle a cheap American clock
+of white metal ticked loudly, and the hands pointed
+to twenty minutes before nine. In one corner was
+the clothes-horse, with two or three overcoats
+hanging on it, and two hats, one of which was
+hanging half over on one side. It looked as though
+two cloaked skeletons in hats were embracing. In
+another corner by the door a black stick and an
+umbrella stood side by side. But for the books
+the place would have had a desolate look. The
+air smelt of strong tobacco.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_108" id="Page_V2_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gloria looked about her curiously, though her
+heart was beating fast. The man was familiar to
+her, dear to her in many ways, and over much in
+her life. The place where he lived contained a
+part of him which she did not know. Her breath
+came quickly in the anticipation of an emotion
+greater even than what she had felt already, but
+her eyes wandered in curiosity from one object to
+another. Suddenly she heard the loud cracking
+of breaking wood. There was a blaze of paper
+from the fireplace, illuminating all the room, and
+some light pieces he was throwing on kindled
+quickly. He was breaking them&mdash;she looked&mdash;it
+was one of the rush-bottomed chairs.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing?" she cried, leaning suddenly
+far forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Making a good fire," he answered. "There
+happened to be only one bit of wood in my box,
+so I am taking these things."</p>
+
+<p>He broke the legs and the rails of the chair in
+his hands, as a child would break twigs, and heaped
+them up upon the blaze.</p>
+
+<p>"There are five more," he observed. "They will
+make a good fire."</p>
+
+<p>He arranged the burning mass to suit him, looked
+at it, and then turned.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be a little nearer," he said, and
+he lifted the chair with her in it and set her before
+the fireplace.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_109" id="Page_V2_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It had all looked and felt desperately desolate
+half a minute earlier. It was changed now. He
+went to a corner and filled a small glass with wine
+from a straw-covered flask and brought it to her.
+She thanked him with her eyes and drank half of
+it eagerly. He knelt down before the fire again,
+for as the paper burned away underneath, the light
+sticks fell inward and might go out. When he had
+arranged it all again, he looked round and met her
+eyes, still kneeling.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that better?" he asked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"You are so good," said Gloria, letting her eyelids
+droop as she looked from him to the pleasant flame.</p>
+
+<p>He put out his hand and gently touched the hem
+of her cloth skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"You are drenched," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Then, before she realized what he was doing, he
+bent down and kissed the wet cloth, and without
+looking at her rose to his feet, got another chair
+and sat down near her. A soft blush of pleasure
+had risen in her cheeks. They were little things
+that he did, but they were like him, unaffected,
+strong, direct. Another man would have made
+apologies for having no wood and would have tried
+to make a fire of the single stick. Another man
+would have made excuses for the disorder of his
+room, or for the poverty of its furniture, perhaps.
+The other man she thought of was her husband,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_110" id="Page_V2_110">[110]</a></span>
+and possibly she had her father in her mind,
+too.</p>
+
+<p>"When you are rested, tell me your story," he
+said, and his face hardened all at once.</p>
+
+<p>She began to speak in a low and uncertain voice,
+reciting almost mechanically many things which
+she had often told him before. He listened without
+moving a muscle. Her voice was dear to him,
+whether she repeated the endless history of her
+woes for the tenth or the hundredth time. Where
+she was concerned he had no judgment, and he had
+no criterion, for he had never loved another woman
+with whom he could compare her. All that was of
+her was of paramount interest and weighty importance.
+He could not hear it too often. But to-night
+her first words had told him of the violent crisis in
+her life with Reanda, and he listened to all she
+said, before she reached that point, with an interest
+he had never felt before. But he would not look
+at her, for he must have taken her in his arms, as
+he had done once, months before now. She had
+come for protection and for help, and her need was
+the life spring of his honour.</p>
+
+<p>As she went on, her voice took colour from her
+emotion, her hands moved now and then in short
+swift gestures, and her dark eyes burned. The
+marvellous dramatic power she possessed blazed
+out under the lash of her wrongs, and she found
+words she had only groped for until that moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_111" id="Page_V2_111">[111]</a></span>
+She described the miserably nervous feebleness of
+the man with scathing contempt, her tone made
+evil deeds of his shortcomings, her scorn made his
+weakness a black crime; her jealous anger fastened
+upon Francesca Campodonico and tore her honour
+to shreds and her virtues to rags of abomination;
+and her flaming pride blazed out in searing hatred
+and contempt for the coward who had struck her
+in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"He broke my fan across my face!" she cried
+with the ascending intonation of a fury rising still,
+and still more fiercely beautiful. "He slashed my
+face with it and broke it and threw the bits down
+at my feet! There, look at it! That is his work&mdash;oh,
+give it back to him, kill him for me, tear
+him to pieces for me&mdash;make him feel what I have
+felt to-day!"</p>
+
+<p>She had pushed her brown hat and veil back
+from her head, and her wet cloak had long ago
+fallen from her shoulders. One straight, white
+hand shot out and fastened upon her companion's
+arm, as he sat beside her, and she shook it in savage
+confidence of his iron strength.</p>
+
+<p>A dead silence followed, but the fire made of the
+broken chairs roared and blazed on the low brick
+hearth. The man kept his eyes upon it fixedly, as
+though it were his salvation, for he felt that if he
+looked at her he was lost. She had come to him
+not for love, but for protection, of her own free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_112" id="Page_V2_112">[112]</a></span>
+will. Yet he felt that his honour was burning in
+him, with no longer life, if she stayed there, than
+the short, quick fire itself. His voice was thick
+when he answered, as though he were speaking
+through a velvet pall.</p>
+
+<p>"I will kill him, if he will fight," he answered,
+with an effort. "I will not murder him, even for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>She started, for she had not realized how he
+would take literally what she said. She had no
+experience of desperate men in her limited life.</p>
+
+<p>"Murder him? No!" she said, snatching back
+her hand from his arm. "No, no! I never meant
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you did not. If you did, I should
+probably break down and do it to please you. But
+if he will fight like a man, I will kill him to please
+myself. Now I will go and get a carriage and take
+you home."</p>
+
+<p>He rose to his feet and, turning, turned away
+from her, going toward the corner to get an overcoat.
+She followed him with her eyes, in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not afraid to be left alone for a quarter
+of an hour?" he asked, buttoning his coat, and
+looking toward his umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not go just yet," she answered softly.</p>
+
+<p>"I must. It is getting late. I shall not find a
+carriage if I wait any longer. I must go now."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not go."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_113" id="Page_V2_113">[113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She heard him breathe hard once or twice. Then
+with quick strides he was beside her, and speaking
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Gloria, I cannot stand it&mdash;I warn you. I love
+you in a way you cannot understand. You must
+not keep me here."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not go," she said again, in the deep, soft
+tone of her golden voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I must."</p>
+
+<p>He turned from her and went towards the door.
+Soft and swift she followed him, but he was in the
+entry before her hand was on his arm. It was
+almost dusk out there. He stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot go back to him," she said, and he
+could see the light in her eyes, and very faintly
+the red bar across the face he loved.</p>
+
+<p>"You should&mdash;there is nowhere else for you to
+go," he said, and in the dark his hand was finding
+the bolt of the door to the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;there is nowhere else&mdash;I cannot go back
+to him," she answered, and the voice quavered
+uncertainly as the night breeze sighing amongst reeds.</p>
+
+<p>"You must&mdash;you must," he tried to say.</p>
+
+<p>Her weight was all upon his arm, but it was
+nothing to him. He steadily drew back the bolt.
+He turned up his face so that he could not see her.</p>
+
+<p>With sudden strength her white hands went
+round his sinewy dark throat as he threw back
+his head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_114" id="Page_V2_114">[114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You are all I have in the world!" she half said,
+half whispered. "I will not let you go!"</p>
+
+<p>"You?" His voice broke out as through a
+bursting shell.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Come back!"</p>
+
+<p>His arm fell like lead to his side. Gently she
+drew him back to the door of the study. The
+blaze of the fire shot into her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," she said. "See how well it burns."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, mechanically, "it is burning well."</p>
+
+<p>He stood aside an instant at the door to let her
+pass. His eyelids closed and his face became rigid
+as a death mask of a man dead in passion. One
+moment only; then he followed her and softly shut
+the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_115" id="Page_V2_115">[115]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> brilliant winter morning had an intoxicating
+quality in it, after the heavy rain which had
+fallen in the night, and Paul Griggs felt that it
+was good to be alive as he threaded the narrow
+streets between his lodging and the Piazza Colonna.
+He avoided the Corso; for he did not know whom
+he might meet, and he had no desire to meet any
+one, except Angelo Reanda.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally enough, his first honourable impulse
+was to go to the artist, to tell him something of the
+truth, and to give him an opportunity of demanding
+the common satisfaction of a hostile meeting.
+It did not occur to him that Reanda would not wish
+to exchange shots with him and have the chance of
+taking his life. Griggs was not the man to refuse
+such an encounter, and at that moment he felt so
+absolutely sure of himself that the idea of being killed
+was very far removed from his thoughts. It was
+without the slightest emotion that he enquired for
+Reanda at the latter's house, but he was very much
+surprised to hear that the painter had gone out as
+usual at his customary hour. He hesitated a moment
+and then decided not to leave a card, upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_116" id="Page_V2_116">[116]</a></span>
+which he could not have written a message intelligible
+to Reanda which should not have been understood
+also by the servant who received it. Griggs
+made up his mind that he would write a formal
+note later in the day. He took it for granted that
+Reanda must be searching for his wife.</p>
+
+<p>It was necessary to find a better lodging than
+the one in the Via della Frezza, and to provide as
+well as he could for Gloria's comfort. He was met
+by a difficulty upon which he had not reflected as
+yet, though he had been dimly aware of it more
+than once during the past twelve hours.</p>
+
+<p>He was almost penniless, and he had no means
+of obtaining money at short notice. The payments
+he received from the newspapers for which he
+worked came regularly, but were not due for at
+least three weeks from that day. Alone in his
+bachelor existence he could have got through the
+time very well and without any greater privations
+than his capriciously ascetic nature had often imposed
+upon itself.</p>
+
+<p>He was not an improvident man, but in his
+lonely existence he had no sense of future necessities,
+and the weakest point in his judgment was
+his undiscriminating generosity. Of the value of
+money as a store against possible needs, he had no
+appreciation at all, and he gave away what he earned
+beyond his most pressing requirements in secret
+and often ill-judged charities, whenever an occasion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_117" id="Page_V2_117">[117]</a></span>
+of doing so presented itself, though he never sought
+one. For himself, he was able to subsist on bread
+and water, and the meagre fare was scarcely a
+privation to his hardy constitution. If he chanced to
+have no money to spare for fuel, he bore the cold
+and buttoned up his old pea-jacket to the throat
+while he sat at work at his table. His self-respect
+made him wise and careful in regard to his dress,
+but in other matters many a handicraftsman was
+accustomed to more luxury than he. At the present
+juncture he had been taken unawares, and he
+found himself in great difficulty. He had left himself
+barely enough for subsistence until the arrival
+of the next remittance, and that meant but a very
+few scudi; and yet he knew that certain expenses
+must be met immediately, almost within the twenty-four
+hours. The very first thing was to get a lodging
+suitable for Gloria. It would be necessary to
+pay at least one month's rent in advance. Even if
+he were able to do that, he would be left without a
+penny for daily expenses. He had no bank account;
+for he cashed the drafts he received and kept the
+money in his room. He had never borrowed of an
+acquaintance, and the idea was repulsive to him
+and most humiliating. Had he possessed any bit
+of jewelry, or anything of value, he would have
+sold the object, but he had nothing of the kind.
+His books were practically valueless, consisting of
+such volumes as he absolutely needed for his daily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_118" id="Page_V2_118">[118]</a></span>
+use, chiefly cheap editions, poorly bound and well
+worn. He needed at least fifty scudi, and he did
+not possess quite ten. Three weeks earlier he had
+sent a hundred, anonymously, to free a starving
+artist from debt.</p>
+
+<p>His position was only very partially enviable
+just then, but the bright north wind seemed to
+blow his troubles back from him as he faced it,
+walking home from his ineffectual attempt to meet
+Reanda. It was very unlike the man to return to
+his lodging without having accomplished anything,
+but he was hardly conscious of the fact. The face
+of the ancient city was suddenly changed, and it
+seemed as though nothing could go wrong if he
+would only allow fortune to play her own game
+without interference. He walked lightly, and there
+was a little colour in his face. He tried to think
+of what he should do to meet his present difficulties,
+but when he thought of them they were
+whirled away, shapeless and unrecognizable, and
+he felt a sense of irresistible power with each
+breath of the crisp dry air.</p>
+
+<p>As he went along he glanced at the houses he
+passed, and on some of the doors were little notices
+scrawled in queer handwritings and telling that a
+lodging was to let. Occasionally he paused, looked <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'np'">up</ins>
+and hesitated, and then he went on. The difficulty
+was suddenly before him, and he knew that even if
+he looked at the rooms he could not hire them, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_119" id="Page_V2_119">[119]</a></span>
+he had not enough money to cover the first month's
+rent. Immediately he attempted to devise some
+means of raising the sum he needed, but before he
+had reached the very next corner the clear north
+wind had blown the trouble away like a cobweb.
+With all his strength and industry and determination,
+he was still a very young man, and perplexity
+had no hold upon him since passion had taken its
+own way.</p>
+
+<p>He reached the corner of his own street and
+stood still for a few moments. He could almost
+have smiled at himself as he paused. He had
+been out more than an hour and had done nothing,
+thought out nothing, made no definite plan for the
+future. His present poverty, which was desperate
+enough, had put on a carnival mask and laughed at
+him, as it were, and ran away when he tried to
+grapple with it and look it in the face. Gloria was
+there, upstairs in that tall house on which the morning
+sun was shining, and nothing else could possibly
+matter. But if anything mattered, it would
+be simple to talk it over together and to decide it
+in common.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he felt ashamed of himself and of the
+confusion of his own intelligence. There was something
+meek and childish in standing still at the
+street corner, watching the people as they went by,
+listening to the regularly recurring yell of the man
+who was selling country vegetables from a hand-cart,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_120" id="Page_V2_120">[120]</a></span>
+and looking into the faces of people who went
+by, as though expecting to find there some solution
+of a difficulty which his disturbed powers of
+concentration did not clearly grasp. He could not think
+connectedly, much less could he reason sensibly. He
+made a few steps forward towards his house, and
+then stopped again, asking himself what he was going
+to do. He felt that he had no right to go back
+to Gloria until he had decided something for the
+future. He felt like a boy who has been sent on
+an errand, and who comes back having forgotten
+what he was to do. All at once he had lost his
+hold upon the logic of common-sense, and when he
+groped for a thread that might lead him, he was
+suddenly dazzled by the blaze of his happiness and
+deafened by the voice of his own joy.</p>
+
+<p>He went on again and came to his own door.
+The one-eyed cobbler was at work, astride of his
+little bench with a brown pot of coals beside him.
+From time to time, when he had drawn the waxed
+yarn out through the leather on both sides, he blew
+into his black hands. Griggs stood still and looked
+at him in idle indetermination, and only struggling
+against the power that drew him towards the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"A fine north wind," observed Griggs, by way
+of salutation.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems that it must be said," grunted the
+old man, punching a fresh hole in the sole he
+was cobbling. "To me, my fingers say it. It has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_121" id="Page_V2_121">[121]</a></span>
+always been a fine trade, this cobbling. It is a
+gentleman's trade because one is always sitting
+down."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to change my lodging," said Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>The cobbler looked up, resting his dingy fists
+upon the bench on each side of the shoe, his awl
+in one hand, the other half encased in a leathern
+sheath, black with age.</p>
+
+<p>"After so many years!" he exclaimed. "The
+world will also come to an end. I expected that
+it would. Now where will you take lodging?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where I can find one. I want a little apartment&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems that your affairs go better," observed
+the old man, scrutinizing the other's face with his
+one eye.</p>
+
+<p>"No. No better. That is the trouble. I want
+a little apartment, and I do not want to pay for it
+till the end of the first month."</p>
+
+<p>"Then wait till the end of the month before you
+move to it, Signore."</p>
+
+<p>"That is impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there is a female," said the cobbler, without
+the slightest hesitation. "I understand. Why
+did you not say so?"</p>
+
+<p>Griggs hesitated. The man's guess had taken
+him by surprise. He reflected that it could make no
+difference whether the old cobbler knew of Gloria's
+coming or not.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_122" id="Page_V2_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There is a signora&mdash;a relation of mine&mdash;who
+has come to Rome."</p>
+
+<p>"A fair signora? Very beautiful? With a little
+eye of the devil? I have seen. Thanks be to
+heaven, one eye is still good. You are dark, and
+your family is fair. How can it interest me?"</p>
+
+<p>"What? Has she gone out?" asked Griggs, in
+sudden anxiety. "When?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had guessed!" exclaimed the cobbler, with a
+grunting laugh, and he ran the delicate bristles,
+which pointed the yarn, in opposite directions
+through the hole he had made, caught one yarn
+round the knot on the handle of the awl and the
+other round the leather sheath on his left hand.
+He drew the yarn tight to his arm's length with a
+vicious jerk.</p>
+
+<p>"When did the signora go out?" enquired
+Griggs, repeating his question.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be half an hour ago. Apoplexy! If
+your relations are all as beautiful as that!"</p>
+
+<p>But Griggs was already moving towards the staircase.
+The cobbler called him back, and he stood
+still at the foot of the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"There is the little apartment on the left, on
+the third floor," said the man. "The lodgers went
+away yesterday. I was going to ask you to write
+me a notice to put up on the door. As for paying,
+the padrone will not mind, seeing that you are an
+old lodger. It is good, do you know? There is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_123" id="Page_V2_123">[123]</a></span>
+sun. There is also a kitchen. There are five
+rooms with the entry."</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 345px;">
+<img src="images/gs24.jpg" width="345" height="500" alt="&quot;The horror of poverty smote him.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p. 123." title="&quot;The horror of poverty smote him.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p. 123." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;The horror of poverty smote him.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p.&nbsp;123.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"I will take it," said Griggs, instantly, and he
+ran up the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>He was breathless with anxiety as he entered
+his work-room, and looked about him for something
+which should tell him where Gloria was gone.
+Almost instantly his eyes fell upon a sheet of
+paper lying before his accustomed seat. The writing
+on it was hers.</p>
+
+<p>"I have gone to tell him. I shall be back soon."</p>
+
+<p>That was all it said, but it was enough to
+blacken the sun that streamed through the windows
+upon the old carpet. Griggs sat down and
+rested his head in his hand. With the cloud that
+came between him and happiness, his powers of
+reason returned, and he saw quickly, in the pre-vision
+of logic, a scene of violence and anger
+between husband and wife, a possible reconciliation,
+and the instant wreck of his storm-driven
+love. It was impossible to know what Gloria
+would tell Reanda.</p>
+
+<p>At the same instant the difficulties of his position
+rushed upon him and demanded an instant
+solution. He looked about him at the poor room,
+the miserable furniture, and the worn-out carpet,
+and the horror of poverty smote him in the face.
+He had allowed Gloria to come to him, and he
+knew that he could not support her decently. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_124" id="Page_V2_124">[124]</a></span>
+had never found himself in so desperate a position
+in the course of his short and adventurous life.
+He could face anything when he alone was to
+suffer privation, but it was horrible to force misery
+upon the woman he loved.</p>
+
+<p>Then, too, he asked himself what was to happen
+to Gloria if Reanda killed him, as was possible
+enough. And if he were not killed, there was
+Dalrymple, her father, who might return at any
+moment. No one could foretell what the Scotchman
+would do. It would be like him to do nothing
+except to refuse ever to see his daughter
+again. But he, also, might choose to fight, though
+his English traditions would be against it. In any
+case, Gloria ran the risk of being left alone, ruined
+and unprotected.</p>
+
+<p>But the present problem was a meaner one,
+though not less desperate in its way. He reproached
+himself with having wasted even an hour
+when the case was so urgent. Without longer
+hesitation, he began to write letters to the editors
+for whom he worked, requesting them as a favour
+to advance the next remittance. Even then, he
+could scarcely expect to have money in less than
+ten days, and there was no one to whom he would
+willingly turn for help. Under ordinary
+circumstances he would have gone without food for days
+rather than have borrowed of an acquaintance, but
+he realized that he must overcome any such false<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_125" id="Page_V2_125">[125]</a></span>
+pride within a day or two, at the risk of making
+Gloria suffer.</p>
+
+<p>In those first hours he was not conscious of any
+question of right or wrong in what had taken
+place. Honour, in a rather worldly sense, had
+always supplied for him the place of all other
+moral considerations. The woman he loved had
+been ill-treated by her husband, and had come to
+him for protection. He had done his best, in spite
+of his love, to make her go back, and she had
+known how to refuse. Men, as men, would not
+blame him for what he was doing. Gloria, as a
+woman, could never reproach him with having
+tempted her. He might suffer for his deeds, but
+he could never blush for them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_126" id="Page_V2_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Meanwhile</span>, Gloria had gone out alone, intending
+to find her husband and to tell him that the die
+was cast, that she had left him in haste and anger,
+but that she never would return to his house. She
+felt that she must live through the chain of emotions
+to the very last link, as it were, until she
+could feel no more. It was like her to go straight
+to Reanda and take up the battle where she had
+interrupted it. Her anger had been sudden, but it
+was not brief. She had left weakness, and had
+found strength to add to her own, and she wished
+the man who had hurt her to feel how strong she
+was, and how she was able to take her life out of
+his hands and to keep it for herself, and live it as
+she pleased in spite of him and every one. The
+wild blood that ran in her veins was free, now,
+and she meant that no one but herself should ever
+again have the right to thwart it, to tell her heart
+that it should beat so many times in each minute
+and no more. She was perfectly well aware that
+she was accepting social ruin with her freedom,
+but she had long nourished a rancorous hatred for
+the society which had seemed to accept her under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_127" id="Page_V2_127">[127]</a></span>
+protest, for Francesca's sake, and she was ready
+enough to turn her back on it before it should
+finally make up its polite mind to relegate her to
+the middle distance of indifferent toleration.</p>
+
+<p>As for Reanda, on that first morning she hated
+him with all her soul, for himself, and for what
+he had done to her. She had words ready for him,
+and she turned and fitted them in her heart that
+they might cut him and stab him as long as he
+could feel. The selfishness with a tendency to
+cruelty which was a working spring of her father's
+character was strong in her, and craved the
+satisfaction of wounding. A part of the sudden joy in
+life which she felt as she walked towards what
+had been her home, lay in the certainty of dealing
+back fourfold hurt for every real and fancied injury
+she had ever suffered at Reanda's hands.</p>
+
+<p>She felt quite sure of finding him. She did not
+imagine it possible that after what had happened
+he should go to the Palazzetto Borgia to work as
+usual. Besides, he must have discovered her
+absence by this time, and would in all probability
+be searching for her. She smiled at the idea, and
+she went swiftly on, keenly ready to give all
+the pain she could.</p>
+
+<p>At her own door the servant seemed surprised
+to see her. Every one had supposed that she was
+still in her room, for it was not yet midday, and
+she sometimes slept very late. She glanced at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_128" id="Page_V2_128">[128]</a></span>
+hall table and saw her key lying amongst the
+cards where she had thrown it when she had left
+the house. The servant did not see her take it,
+for she made a pretence of turning the cards over
+to find some particular one. She asked indifferently
+about her husband. The man said that Reanda
+had gone out as usual. Gloria started a little
+in surprise, and inquired whether he had left no
+message for her. On hearing that he had given
+none, she sent the servant away, went to her own
+room, and locked herself in.</p>
+
+<p>With a curious Scotch caution very much at variance
+with her conduct, she reflected that as the servants
+were evidently not aware of what had taken
+place, they might as well be kept in the dark. In
+a few moments she gave the room the appearance
+which it usually had in the morning. With perfect
+calmness she dressed for the day, and then
+rang for her maid.</p>
+
+<p>She told the woman that she had slept badly,
+had got up early, and had gone out for a long walk;
+that she now intended to leave Rome for a few
+days, for a change of air, and must have what she
+needed packed within an hour. She gave a few
+orders, clearly and concisely, and then went out
+again, leaving word that if Reanda returned he
+should be told that she was coming back very soon.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, she thought, he must have supposed that
+she was still sleeping, and he had gone to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_129" id="Page_V2_129">[129]</a></span>
+painting without any further thought of her. Again
+she smiled, and a line of delicate cruelty was faintly
+shadowed about her lips. She left the house and
+walked in the direction of the Palazzetto. Reanda
+always came home to the midday breakfast, and it
+was nearly time for him to be on his way. Gloria
+knew every turning which he would take, and she
+hoped to meet him. Her eyes flashed in anticipation
+of the contest, and she felt that he would
+not be able to meet them. They would be too
+bright for him. There was a small mark on her
+cheek still, where one of the sharp edges of the
+ivory slats had scratched her fair skin, and there
+was a slight redness on that side, but the bright
+red bar was gone. She was glad of it, as she
+nodded to a passing acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>She wished to assure herself that her husband
+was really at the Palazzetto, and she inquired of
+the porter at the great gate whether Reanda had
+been seen that morning. The man said that he
+had come at the usual hour, and stood aside for
+her to pass, but she turned from him abruptly
+and went away without a word.</p>
+
+<p>The blood rose in her cheeks, and her heart beat
+angrily. He had attached no more importance
+than this to what he had done, and had gone to
+his painting as though nothing had happened.
+He had not even tried to see her in the morning to
+beg her pardon for having struck her. Strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_130" id="Page_V2_130">[130]</a></span>
+to say, in spite of what she herself had done, that
+was what most roused her anger. She demanded
+the satisfaction of his asking her forgiveness, as
+though she had no fault to find with herself. In
+comparison with his cowardly violence to her, her
+leaving him for Griggs was as nothing in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She walked more slowly as she went homewards,
+and the unspoken bitterness of her heart choked
+her, and the sharp words she could not speak cut
+her cruelly. She compared the hand that had
+dared to hurt though it had not strength to kill,
+with that other, dearer, gentler, more terrible
+hand, which could have killed anything, but which
+would rather be burned to the wrist than let one
+of its fingers touch her roughly. She compared
+them, and she loved the one and she loathed the
+other, with all her heart. And with that same
+hand Reanda, at that same moment, was painting
+some goddess's face, and it had forgotten whose
+divinely lovely cheek it had struck. It was painting
+unless, perhaps, it lay in Francesca's. But
+Gloria had not forgotten, and she would repay
+before the day darkened.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband, since he was calm enough to go to
+his work, would come home for his breakfast when
+he was hungry. Gloria went back to her room
+and superintended the packing of what she needed.
+But she was not so calm as she had been half an
+hour earlier, and she waited impatiently for her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_131" id="Page_V2_131">[131]</a></span>
+husband's return and for the last scene of the
+drama. When the things were packed, she had
+the box taken out to the hall and sent for a cab.
+As she foresaw the situation, she would leave the
+house forever as soon as the last word was spoken.
+Then she went into the drawing-room and waited,
+watching the clock.</p>
+
+<p>There, on the mantelpiece, lay the broken fan,
+where the fragments had been placed by the servant.
+Gloria looked at them, handled them curiously,
+and felt her cheek softly with her hand.
+He must have struck her with all his might, she
+thought, to have hurt her as he had with so light a
+weapon; and the whole quarrel came back to her
+vividly, in every detail, and with every spoken
+word.</p>
+
+<p>She could not regret what she had done. With
+an attempt at self-examination, which was only a
+self-justification, she tried to recall the early days
+when she had loved her husband, and to conjure
+up the face with the gentle light in it. She failed,
+of course, and the picture that came disgusted her
+and was unutterably contemptible and weak and
+full of cowardice. The face of Paul Griggs came
+in its place a moment later, and she heard in her
+ears the deep, stern voice, quavering with strength
+rather than with weakness, and she could feel the
+arms she loved about her, pressing her almost to
+pain, able to press her to death in their love-clasp.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_132" id="Page_V2_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The hands of the clock went on, and Reanda did
+not come. She was surprised to find how long she
+had waited, and with a revulsion of feeling she
+rose to her feet. If he would not come, she would
+not wait for him. She was hungry, too. It was
+absurd, perhaps, but she would not eat his bread
+nor sit at his table, not even alone. She went to
+her writing-table and wrote a note to him, short,
+cruel, and decisive. She wrote that if her father
+had been in Rome she would have gone to him for
+protection. As he was absent, she had gone to
+her father's best friend and her own&mdash;to Paul
+Griggs. She said nothing more. He might interpret
+the statement as he pleased. She sealed the
+note and addressed it, and before she went out of
+the house she gave it to the servant, to be given
+to Reanda as soon as he came home. The man-servant
+went downstairs with her, and stood looking
+after the little open cab; he saw Gloria speak
+to the coachman, who nodded and changed his
+direction before they were out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>At the door in the Via della Frezza the cabman
+let down Gloria's luggage and drove away. She
+stood still a moment and looked at the one-eyed
+cobbler.</p>
+
+<p>"You have given the signore a beautiful fright,"
+observed the old man. "I told him you had gone
+out. With one jump he was upstairs. By this
+time he cries."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_133" id="Page_V2_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gloria took a silver piece of two pauls from her
+purse.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you carry up these things for me?" she
+inquired, concealing her annoyance at the man's
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not a porter," said the cobbler, with his
+head on one side. "But one must live. With
+courage and money one makes war. There are
+three pieces. One at a time. But you must watch
+the door while I carry up the box. If any one
+should steal my tools, it would be a beautiful day's
+work. Without them I should be in the middle of
+the street. You will understand, Signora. It is
+not to do you a discourtesy, but my tools are my
+bread. Without them I cannot eat. There is
+also the left boot of Sor Ercole. If any one were
+to steal it, Sor Ercole would go upon one leg.
+Imagine the disgrace!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will stay here," said Gloria. "Do not be
+afraid."</p>
+
+<p>The cobbler, who was a strong old man, got hold
+of the trunk and shouldered it with ease. When
+he stood up, Gloria saw that he was bandy-legged
+and very short.</p>
+
+<p>She turned and stood on the threshold of the
+street door as she had stood on the previous night.
+No one would have believed that a few hours
+earlier the rain had fallen in torrents, for the
+pavement was dry, and even under the arch there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_134" id="Page_V2_134">[134]</a></span>
+seemed to be no dampness. Looking up the street
+towards the Corso, she saw that there was a wine
+shop, a few doors higher on the opposite side.
+Two or three men were standing before it, under
+the brown bush which served for a sign, and
+amongst them she saw a peasant in blue cloth
+clothes with silver buttons and clean white stockings.
+She recognized him as the man who had
+held his umbrella over her in the storm. He also
+saw her, lifted his felt hat and came forwards,
+crossing the street. His look was fixed on her
+face with a stare of curiosity as he stood before her.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you have not caught cold, Signora," he
+said, with steady, unwinking eyes. "We passed a
+beautiful storm. Signora, I sell wine to that host.
+If you should need wine, I recommend him to you."
+He pointed to the shop.</p>
+
+<p>"You told me to ask for you at the Piazza Montanara,"
+said Gloria, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"With that water you could not see the shop,"
+answered Stefanone. "Signora, you are very beautiful.
+With permission, I say that you should not
+walk alone at night."</p>
+
+<p>"It was the first and last time," said Gloria.
+"Fortunately, I met a person of good manners. I
+thank you again."</p>
+
+<p>"Signora, you are so beautiful that the Madonna
+and her angels always accompany you. With
+permission, I go. Good day."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_135" id="Page_V2_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To the last, until he turned, he kept his eyes
+steadily fixed on Gloria's face, as though searching
+for a resemblance in her features. She noticed his
+manner and remembered him very distinctly after
+the second meeting.</p>
+
+<p>The cobbler came back again, closely followed by
+Griggs himself, who said nothing, but took possession
+of the small valise and bag which Gloria had
+brought in addition to her box. He led the way,
+and she followed him swiftly. Inside the door of
+his lodging he turned and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Please do not go away suddenly without telling
+me," he said in a low voice. "I am easily frightened
+about you."</p>
+
+<p>"Really?"</p>
+
+<p>Gloria held out her two hands to meet him. He
+nodded as he took them.</p>
+
+<p>"That is better than anything you have ever
+said to me." She drew him to her.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural, for she was thinking how Reanda
+had calmly gone back to his work that morning,
+without so much as asking for her. The contrast
+was too great and too strong, between love and
+indifference.</p>
+
+<p>They went into the work-room together, and
+Gloria sat down on one of the rush chairs, and told
+Griggs what she had done. He walked slowly up
+and down while she was speaking, his eyes on the
+pattern of the old carpet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_136" id="Page_V2_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I might have stayed," she said at last. "The
+servants did not even know that I had been out of
+the house."</p>
+
+<p>"You should have stayed," said Griggs. "I
+ought to say it, at least."</p>
+
+<p>But as he spoke the mask softened and the rare
+smile beautified for one instant the still, stern face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_137" id="Page_V2_137">[137]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Reanda</span> neither wished to see Gloria again, nor
+to take vengeance upon Paul Griggs. He was not
+a brave man, morally or physically, and he was
+glad that his wife had left him. She had put him
+in the right, and he had every reason for refusing
+ever to see her again. With a cynicism which
+would have been revolting if it had not been
+almost childlike in its simplicity, he discharged
+his servants, sold his furniture, gave up his apartment
+in the Corso, and moved back to his old
+quarters in the Palazzetto Borgia. But he did not
+acknowledge Gloria's note in any other way.</p>
+
+<p>She had left him, and he wished to blot out her
+existence as though he had never known her, not
+even remembering the long two years of his married
+life. She was gone. There was no Gloria, and he
+wished that there never had been any woman with
+her name and face.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day, he met Paul Griggs in the
+street. The younger man saw Reanda coming, and
+stood still on the narrow pavement, in order to
+show that he had no intention of avoiding him.
+As the artist came up, Griggs lifted his hat gravely.
+Reanda mechanically raised his hand to his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_138" id="Page_V2_138">[138]</a></span>
+hat and passed the man who had injured him,
+without a word. Griggs saw a slight, nervous
+twitching in the delicate face, but that was all.
+He thought that Reanda looked better, less harassed
+and less thin, than for a long time. He
+had at once returned to his old peaceful life and
+enjoyed it, and had evidently not the smallest
+intention of ever demanding satisfaction of his
+former friend.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca Campodonico had listened in nervous
+silence to Reanda's story.</p>
+
+<p>"She has done me a kindness," he concluded.
+"It is the first. She has given me back my freedom.
+I shall not disturb her."</p>
+
+<p>The colour was in Francesca's face, and her eyes
+looked down. Her delicate lips were a little
+drawn in, as though she were making an effort to
+restrain her words, for it was one of the hardest
+moments of her life. Being what she was, it was
+impossible for her to understand Gloria's conduct.
+But at the same time she felt that she was liberated
+from something which had oppressed her, and the
+colour in her cheeks was a flash of satisfaction and
+relief mingled with a certain displeasure at her
+own sensations and the certainty that she should
+be ashamed of them by and bye.</p>
+
+<p>It was not in her nature to accept such a termination
+for Reanda's married life, however he
+himself might be disposed to look upon it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_139" id="Page_V2_139">[139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You are to blame almost as much as Gloria,"
+she said, and she was sincerely in earnest.</p>
+
+<p>She was too good and devout a woman to believe
+in duelling, but she was far too womanly to be
+pleased with Reanda's indifference. It was wicked
+to fight duels and unchristian to seek revenge.
+She knew that, and it was a conviction as well as
+an opinion. But a man who allowed another to
+take his wife from him and did not resent the
+injury could not command her respect. Something
+in her blood revolted against such tameness,
+though she would not for all the world have had
+Reanda take Gloria back. Between the two opposites
+of conviction and instinct, she did not know
+what to do. Moreover, Reanda had struck his
+wife. He admitted it, though apologetically and
+with every extenuating circumstance which he
+could remember.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered. "I know that I did wrong.
+Am I infallible? Holy Saint Patience! I could
+bear no more. But it is clear that she was waiting
+for a reason for leaving me. I gave it to her, and
+she should be grateful. She also is free, as I am."</p>
+
+<p>"It is horrible!" exclaimed Francesca, with sorrowful
+emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>She blamed herself quite as much as Reanda or
+Gloria, because she had brought them together and
+had suggested the marriage. Reanda's thin shoulders
+went up, and he smiled incredulously.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_140" id="Page_V2_140">[140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I do not see what is so horrible," he answered.
+"Two people think they are in love. They marry.
+They discover their mistake. They separate.
+Well? It is finished. Let us make the sign of
+the cross over it."</p>
+
+<p>The common Roman phrase, signifying that a
+matter is ended and buried, as it were, jarred upon
+Francesca, for whom the smallest religious allusion
+had a real meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not the sign of the cross which should be
+made," she said sadly and gravely, and the colour
+was gone from her face now. "There are two
+lives wrecked, and a human soul in danger. We
+cannot say that it is finished, and pass on."</p>
+
+<p>"What would you have me do?" asked Reanda,
+almost impatiently. "Take her back?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" exclaimed Francesca, with a sharp intonation
+as though she were hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, what? I do not see that anything
+is to be done. She herself can think of her soul.
+It is her property. She has made me suffer enough&mdash;let
+some one else suffer. I have enough of it."</p>
+
+<p>"You will forgive her some day," said Francesca.
+"You are angry still, and you speak cruelly. You
+will forgive her."</p>
+
+<p>"Never," answered Reanda, with emphasis. "I
+will not forgive her for what she made me bear,
+any more than I will forgive Griggs for receiving
+her when she left me. I will not touch them, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_141" id="Page_V2_141">[141]</a></span>
+I will not forgive them. I am not angry. Why
+should I be?"</p>
+
+<p>Francesca sighed, for she did not understand the
+man, though hitherto she had always understood
+him, or thought that she had, ever since she had
+been a mere child, playing with his colours and
+brushes in the Palazzo Braccio. She left the hall
+and went to her own sitting-room on the other side
+of the house. As soon as she was alone, the
+tears came to her eyes. She was hardly aware of
+them, and when she felt them on her cheeks she
+wondered why she was crying, for she did not often
+shed tears, and was a woman of singularly well
+balanced nature, able to control herself on the rare
+occasions when she felt any strong emotion.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of Reanda's conduct, she determined
+not to leave matters as they were without attempting
+to improve them. She wrote a note to Paul
+Griggs, asking him to come and see her during the
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>He could not refuse to answer the summons,
+knowing, as he did, that he must in honour
+respond to any demand for an explanation coming
+from Reanda's side. Gloria wished him to reply
+to the note, giving an excuse and hinting that no
+good could come of any meeting.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a point of honour," he answered briefly,
+and she yielded, for he dominated her altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca received him in her own small sitting-room,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_142" id="Page_V2_142">[142]</a></span>
+which overlooked the square before the
+Palazzetto. It was very quiet, and there were roses
+in old Vienna vases. It was a very old-fashioned
+room, the air was sweet with the fresh flowers, and
+the afternoon sun streamed in through a single
+tall window. Francesca sat on a small sofa which
+stood crosswise between the window and the writing-table.
+She had a frame before her on which was
+stretched a broad band of deep red satin, a piece of
+embroidery in which she was working heraldic
+beasts and armorial bearings in coloured silks.</p>
+
+<p>She did not rise, nor hold out her hand, but
+pointed to a chair near her, as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I asked you to come," she said, "because I
+wish to speak to you about Gloria."</p>
+
+<p>Griggs bent his head, sat down, and waited with
+a perfectly impassive face. Possibly there was a
+rather unusual aggressiveness in the straight lines
+of his jaw and his even lips. There was a short
+silence before Francesca spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what you have done?" she asked,
+finishing a stitch and looking quietly into the
+man's deep eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He met her glance calmly, but said nothing,
+merely bending his head again, very slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very wicked," said she, and she began to
+make another stitch, looking down again.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no doubt that you think so," answered
+Paul Griggs, slowly nodding a third time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_143" id="Page_V2_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is not a question of opinion. It is a matter
+of fact. You have ruined the life of an innocent
+woman."</p>
+
+<p>"If social position is the object of existence,
+you are right," he replied. "I have nothing to
+say."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not speaking of social position," said
+Donna Francesca, continuing to make stitches.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am afraid that I do not understand
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you conceive of nothing more important to
+the welfare of men and women than social position?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is precisely because I do, that I care so little
+what society thinks. I do not understand you."</p>
+
+<p>"I have known you some time," said Francesca.
+"I had not supposed that you were a man without
+a sense of right and wrong. That is the question
+which is concerned now."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a question which may be answered from
+more than one point of view. You look at it in
+one way, and I in another. With your permission,
+we will differ about it, since we can never agree."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no such thing as differing about right
+and wrong," answered Donna Francesca, with a
+little impatience. "Right is right, and wrong is
+wrong. You cannot possibly believe that you have
+done right. Therefore you know that you have
+done wrong."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_144" id="Page_V2_144">[144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That sort of logic assumes God at the expense
+of man," said Griggs, calmly.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca looked up with a startled expression
+in her eyes, for she was shocked, though she did
+not understand him.</p>
+
+<p>"God is good, and man is sinful," she answered,
+in the words of her simple faith.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" asked Griggs, gravely.</p>
+
+<p>He waited for her answer to the most tremendous
+question which man can ask, and he knew that she
+could not answer him, though she might satisfy
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I have never talked about religion with an
+atheist," she said at last, slowly pushing her needle
+through the heavy satin.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not an atheist, Princess."</p>
+
+<p>"A Protestant, then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not a Protestant. I am a Catholic, as
+you are."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up suddenly and faced him with
+earnest eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are not a good Catholic," she said.
+"No good Catholic could speak as you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Even the Apostles had doubts," answered
+Griggs. "But I do not pretend to be good. Since
+I am a man, I have a right to be a man, and to be
+treated as a man. If the right is not given me
+freely, I will take it. You cannot expect a body
+to behave as though it were a spirit. A man cannot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_145" id="Page_V2_145">[145]</a></span>
+imitate an invisible essence, any more than a
+sculptor can imitate sound with a shape of clay.
+When we are spirits, we shall act as spirits. Meanwhile
+we are men and women. As a man, I have
+not done wrong. You have no right to judge me
+as an angel. Is that clear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Terribly clear!" Francesca slowly shook her
+head. "And terribly mistaken," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," answered the young man. "It is
+impossible to argue the point. We do not speak
+the same language. You, by your nature, believe
+that you can imitate a spirit. You are spiritual
+by intuition and good by instinct, according to the
+spiritual standard of good. I am, on the contrary,
+a normal man, and destined to act as men act. I
+cannot understand you and you, if you will allow
+me to say so, cannot possibly understand me. That
+is why I propose that we should agree to differ."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you think you can sweep away all right
+and wrong, belief and unbelief, salvation and perdition,
+with such a statement as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," replied Griggs. "You tell me that
+I am wicked. That only means that I am not
+doing what you consider right. You deny my
+right of judgment, in favour of your own. You
+make witnesses of spirits against the doings of
+men. You judge my body and condemn my soul.
+And there is no possible appeal from your tribunal,
+because it is an imaginary one. But if you will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_146" id="Page_V2_146">[146]</a></span>
+return to the facts of the case, you will find it hard
+to prove that I have ruined the life of an innocent
+woman, as you told me that I had."</p>
+
+<p>"You have! There is no denying it."</p>
+
+<p>"Socially, and it is the fault of society. But
+society is nothing to me. I would be an outcast
+from society for a much less object than the love
+of a woman, provided that I had not to do anything
+dishonourable."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that is it! You forget that a man's honour
+is his reputation at the club, while the honour of
+a woman is founded in religion, and maintained
+upon a single one of God's commandments&mdash;as
+you men demand that it shall be."</p>
+
+<p>Griggs was silent for a moment. He had never
+heard a woman state the case so plainly and forcibly,
+and he was struck by what she said. He
+could have answered her quickly enough. But
+the answer would not have been satisfactory to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, you have nothing to say," she said.
+"But in one way you are right. We cannot argue
+this question. I did not ask you to come in order
+to discuss it. I sent for you to beg you to do
+what is right, as far as you can. And you could
+do much."</p>
+
+<p>"What should you think right?" asked Griggs,
+curious to know what she thought.</p>
+
+<p>"You should take Gloria to her father, as you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_147" id="Page_V2_147">[147]</a></span>
+are his friend. Since she has left her husband, she
+should live with her father."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a very simple idea!" exclaimed the
+young man, with something almost like a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Right is always simple," answered Francesca,
+quietly. "There is never any doubt about it."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him once, and then continued to
+work at her embroidery. His eyes rested on the
+pure outline of her maidenlike face, and he was
+silent for a moment. Somehow, he felt that her
+simplicity of goodness rebuked the simplicity of
+his sin.</p>
+
+<p>"You forget one thing," said Griggs at last.
+"You make a spiritual engine of mankind, and you
+forget the mainspring of the world. You leave
+love out of the question."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps&mdash;as you understand love. But you
+will not pretend to tell me that love is necessarily
+right, whatever it involves."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered the young man. "That is
+what I mean. Unless your God is a malignant
+and maleficent demon, the overwhelming passions
+which take hold of men, and against which no man
+can fight beyond a certain point, are right, because
+they exist and are irresistible. As for what you
+propose that I should do, I cannot do it."</p>
+
+<p>"You could, if you would," said Francesca.
+"There is nothing to hinder you, if you will."</p>
+
+<p>"There is love, and I cannot."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_148" id="Page_V2_148">[148]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paul Griggs</span> left Francesca with the certainty
+in his own mind that she had produced no impression
+whatever upon him, but he was conscious that
+his opinion of her had undergone a change. He
+was suddenly convinced that she was the best
+woman he had ever known, and that Gloria's accusations
+were altogether unjust and unfounded.
+Recalling her face, her manner, and her words, he
+knew that whatever influence she might have had
+upon Reanda, there could be no ground for Gloria's
+jealousy. She certainly disturbed him strangely,
+for Gloria was perfect in his eyes, and he accepted
+all she said almost blindly. The fact that Reanda
+had struck her now stood in his mind as the sole
+reason for the separation of husband and wife.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria was far from realizing what influence she
+had over the man she loved. It seemed to her, on
+the contrary, that she was completely dominated
+by him, and she was glad to feel his strength at
+every turn. Her enormous vanity was flattered by
+his care of her, and by his uncompromising admiration
+of her beauty as well as of her character, and
+she yielded to him purposely in small things that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_149" id="Page_V2_149">[149]</a></span>
+she might the better feel his strength, as she supposed.
+The truth, had she known it, was that he
+hardly asserted himself at all, and was ready to
+make any and every sacrifice for her comfort and
+happiness. He had sacrificed his pride to borrow
+money from a friend to meet the first necessities
+of their life together. He would have given his
+life as readily.</p>
+
+<p>They led a strangely lonely existence in the
+little apartment in the Via della Frezza. The
+world had very soon heard of what had happened,
+and had behaved according to its lights. Walking
+alone one morning while Griggs was at work, Gloria
+had met Donna Tullia Meyer, whom she had known
+in society, and thoughtlessly enough had bowed as
+though nothing had happened. Donna Tullia had
+stared at her coldly, and then turned away. After
+that, Gloria had realized what she had already
+understood, and had either not gone out without
+Griggs, or, when she did, had kept to the more
+secluded streets, where she would not easily meet
+acquaintances.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs worked perpetually, and she watched
+him, delighting at first in the difference between
+his way of working and that of Angelo Reanda; delighted,
+too, to be alone with him, and to feel that
+he was writing for her. She could sit almost in
+silence for hours, half busy with some bit of needlework,
+and yet busy with him in her thoughts. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_150" id="Page_V2_150">[150]</a></span>
+seemed to her that she understood him&mdash;she told
+him so, and he believed her, for he felt that he
+could not be hard to understand.</p>
+
+<p>He was as singularly methodical as Reanda was
+exceptionally intuitive. She felt that his work
+was second to her in his estimation of it, but that,
+since they both depended upon it for their livelihood,
+they had agreed together to put it first.
+With Reanda, art was above everything and beyond
+all other interests, and he had made her feel
+that he worked for art's sake rather than for hers.
+There was a vast difference in the value placed
+upon her by the two men, in relation to their two
+occupations.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no genius," said Griggs to her one day.
+"I have no intuitions of underlying truth. But I
+have good brains, and few men are able to work as
+hard as I. By and bye, I shall succeed and make
+money, and it will be less dull for you."</p>
+
+<p>"It is never dull for me when I can be with you,"
+she answered.</p>
+
+<p>As he looked, the sunshine caught her red auburn hair,
+and the love-lights played with the sunshine
+in her eyes. Griggs knew that life had no
+more dulness for him while she lived, and as for
+her, he believed what she said.</p>
+
+<p>Without letting him know what she was doing,
+she wrote to her father. It was not an easy letter
+to write, and she thought that she knew the savage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_151" id="Page_V2_151">[151]</a></span>
+old Scotchman's temper. She told him everything.
+At such a distance, it was easy to throw herself
+upon his mercy, and it was safer to write him all
+while he was far away, so that there might be
+nothing left to rouse his anger if he returned. She
+had no lack of words with which to describe Reanda's
+treatment of her; but she was also willing to take
+all the blame of the mistake she had made in
+marrying him. She had ruined her life before it
+had begun, she said. She had taken the law into
+her own hands, to mend it as best she could. Her
+father knew that Paul Griggs was not like other
+men&mdash;that he was able to protect her against all
+comers, and that he could make the world fear him
+if he could not make it respect her. Her father
+must do as he thought right. He would be justified,
+from the world's point of view, in casting her
+off and never remembering her existence again, but
+she begged him to forgive her, and to think kindly
+of her. Meanwhile, she and Griggs were wretchedly
+poor, and she begged her father to continue her
+allowance.</p>
+
+<p>If Paul Griggs had seen this letter, he would
+have been startled out of some of his belief in
+Gloria's perfection. There was a total absence of
+any moral sense of right or wrong in what she
+wrote, which would have made a more cynical man
+than Griggs was look grave. The request for the
+continuation of the allowance would have shocked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_152" id="Page_V2_152">[152]</a></span>
+him and perhaps disgusted him. The whole tone
+was too calm and business-like. It was too much
+as though she were fulfilling a duty and seeking to
+gain an object rather than appealing to Dalrymple
+to forgive her for yielding to the overwhelming
+mastery of a great passion. It was cold, it
+was calculating, and it was, in a measure, unwomanly.</p>
+
+<p>When she had sent the letter, she told Griggs
+what she had done, but her account of its contents
+satisfied him with one of those brilliant false impressions
+which she knew so well how to convey.
+She told him rather what she should have said than
+what she had really written, and, as usual, he found
+that she had done right.</p>
+
+<p>It was not that she would not have written a
+better letter if she had been able to compose one.
+She had done the best that she could. But the
+truth lay there, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'orf'">or</ins> the letter was composed as an
+expression of what she knew that she ought to
+feel, and was not the actual outpouring of an overfull
+heart. She could not be blamed for not feeling
+more deeply, nor for her inability to express what
+she did not feel. But when she spoke of it to the
+man she loved, she roused herself to emotion easily
+enough, and her words sounded well in her own
+ears and in his. To the last, he never understood
+that she loved such emotion for its own sake, and
+that he helped her to produce it in herself. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_153" id="Page_V2_153">[153]</a></span>
+comparatively simple view of human nature which
+he took in those days, it seemed to him that if a
+woman were willing to sacrifice everything, including
+social respectability itself, for any man, she
+must love him with all her heart. He could not
+have understood that any woman should give up
+everything, practically, in the attempt to feel
+something of which she was not capable.</p>
+
+<p>In reply to her letter, Dalrymple sent a draft for
+a considerable sum of money, through his banker.
+The fact that it was addressed to her at Via della
+Frezza was the only indication that he had received
+her letter. In due time, Gloria wrote to thank him,
+but he took no notice of the communication.</p>
+
+<p>"He never loved me," she said to Griggs as the
+days went by and brought her nothing from her
+father. "I used to think so, when I was a mere
+child, but I am sure of it now. You are the only
+human being that ever loved me."</p>
+
+<p>She was pale that day, and her white hand sought
+his as she spoke, with a quiver of the lip.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad of it," he answered. "I shall not
+divide you with any one."</p>
+
+<p>So their life went on, somewhat monotonously
+after the first few weeks. Griggs worked hard
+and earned more money than formerly, but he discovered
+very soon that it would be all he could do
+to support Gloria in bare comfort. He would not
+allow her to use her own money for anything which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_154" id="Page_V2_154">[154]</a></span>
+was to be in common, or in which he had any share
+whatever.</p>
+
+<p>"You must spend it on yourself," he said. "I
+will not touch it. I will not accept anything you
+buy with it&mdash;not so much as a box of cigarettes.
+You must spend it on your clothes or on jewels."</p>
+
+<p>"You are unkind," she answered. "You know
+how much pleasure it would give me to help you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I know. You cannot understand, but you
+must try. Men never do that sort of thing."</p>
+
+<p>And, as usual, he dominated her, and she dropped
+the subject, inwardly pleased with him, and knowing
+that he was right.</p>
+
+<p>His strength fascinated her, and she admired his
+manliness of heart and feeling as she had never
+admired any qualities in any one during her life.
+But he did not amuse her, even as much as she had
+been amused by Reanda. He was melancholic,
+earnest, hard working, not inclined to repeat lightly
+the words of love once spoken in moments of passion.
+He meant, perhaps, to show her how he
+loved her by what he would do for her sake, rather
+than tell her of it over and over again. And he
+worked as he had never worked before, hour after
+hour, day after day, sitting at his writing-table
+almost from morning till night. Besides his correspondence,
+he was now writing a book, from which
+he hoped great things&mdash;for her. It was a novel,
+and he read her day by day the pages he wrote.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_155" id="Page_V2_155">[155]</a></span>
+She talked over with him what he had written,
+and her imagination and dramatic intelligence, forever
+grasping at situations of emotion for herself
+and others, suggested many variations upon his
+plan.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my book," she often said, when they had
+been talking all the evening.</p>
+
+<p>It was her book, and it was a failure, because it
+was hers and not his. Her imagination was disorderly,
+to borrow a foreign phrase, and she was
+altogether without any sense of proportion in what
+she imagined. He did not, indeed, look upon her
+as intellectually perfect, though for him she was
+otherwise unapproachably superior to every other
+woman in the world. But he loved her so wholly
+and unselfishly that he could not bear to disappoint
+her by not making use of her suggestions. When
+she was telling him of some scene she had imagined,
+her voice and manner, too, were so thoroughly
+dramatic that he was persuaded of the real value
+of the matter. Divested of her individuality and
+transferred in his rather mechanically over-correct
+language to the black and white of pen and ink,
+the result was disappointing, even when he read it
+to her. He knew that it was, and wasted time in
+trying to improve what was bad from the beginning.
+She saw that he failed, and she felt that he
+was not a man of genius. Her vanity suffered
+because her ideas did not look well on his paper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_156" id="Page_V2_156">[156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before he had finished the manuscript, she had
+lost her interest in it. Feeling that she had, and
+seeing it in her face, he exerted his strength of will
+in the attempt to bring back the expression of surprise
+and delight which the earlier readings had
+called up, but he felt that he was working uphill
+and against heavy odds. Nevertheless he completed
+the work, and spent much time in fancied
+improvement of its details. At a later period in
+his life he wrote three successful books in the time
+he had bestowed upon his first failure, but he wrote
+them alone.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria's face brightened when he told her that it
+was done. She took the manuscript and read over
+parts of it to herself, smiling a little from time to
+time, for she knew that he was watching her. She
+did not read it all.</p>
+
+<p>"Dedicate it to me," she said, holding out one
+hand to find his, while she settled the pages on her
+knees with the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he answered, and he wrote a few
+words of dedication to her on a sheet of paper.</p>
+
+<p>He sent it to a publisher in London whom he
+knew. It was returned with some wholesome
+advice, and Gloria's vanity suffered another blow,
+both in the failure of the book which contained so
+many of her ideas and in the failure of the man
+to be successful, for in her previous life she had
+not been accustomed to failure of any sort.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_157" id="Page_V2_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid I am only a newspaper man, after
+all," said Paul Griggs, quietly. "You will have to
+be satisfied with me as I am. But I will try
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered Gloria, more coldly than she
+usually spoke. "When you find that you cannot
+do a thing naturally, leave it alone. It is of no
+use to force talent in one direction when it wants
+to go in another."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed softly, and busied herself with some
+work. Griggs felt that he was a failure, and he
+felt lonely, too, for a moment, and went to his own
+room to put away the rejected manuscript in a safe
+place. It was not his nature to destroy it angrily,
+as some men might have done at his age.</p>
+
+<p>When he came back to the door of the sitting-room
+he heard her singing, as she often did when
+she was alone. But to-day she was singing an old
+song which he had not heard for a long time, and
+which reminded him painfully of that other house
+in which she had lived and of that other man whom
+she never saw, but who was still her husband.</p>
+
+<p>He entered the room rather suddenly, after having
+paused a moment outside, with his hand on the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"Please do not sing that song!" he said quickly,
+as he entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" she asked, interrupting herself in
+the middle of a stave.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_158" id="Page_V2_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It reminds me of unpleasant things."</p>
+
+<p>"Does it? I am sorry. I will not sing it
+again."</p>
+
+<p>But she knew what it meant, for it reminded
+her of Reanda. She was no longer so sure that the
+reminiscence was all painful.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_159" id="Page_V2_159">[159]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> spite of all that Griggs could do, and he
+did his utmost, it was hard to live in anything
+approaching to comfort on the meagre remuneration
+he received for his correspondence, and his
+pride altogether forbade him to allow Gloria to
+contribute anything to the slender resources of
+the small establishment. At first, it had amused
+her to practise little economies, even in the matter
+of their daily meals. Griggs denied himself everything
+which was not absolutely necessary, and it
+pleased Gloria to imitate him, for it made her feel
+that she was helping him. The housekeeping was
+a simple affair enough, and she undertook it
+readily. They had one woman servant as cook
+and maid-of-all-work, a strong young creature, not
+without common-sense, and plentifully gifted with
+that warm, superficial devotion which is common
+enough in Italian servants. Gloria had kept house
+for her father long enough to understand what she
+had undertaken, and it seemed easy at first to do
+the same thing for Griggs, though on a much more
+restricted scale.</p>
+
+<p>But the restriction soon became irksome. In a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_160" id="Page_V2_160">[160]</a></span>
+more active and interesting existence, she would
+perhaps not have felt the constant pinching of such
+excessive economy. If there had been more means
+within her reach for satisfying her hungry vanity,
+she could have gone through the daily round of little
+domestic cares with a lighter heart or, at least,
+with more indifference. But she and Griggs led
+a very lonely life, and, as in all lonely lives, the
+smallest details became important.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before Gloria wished herself in
+her old home in the Corso, not indeed with Reanda,
+but with Paul Griggs. He had made her promise
+to use only the money he gave her himself for
+their housekeeping. She secretly deceived him
+and drew upon her own store, and listened in
+silence to his praise of her ingenuity in making
+the little he was able to give her go so far. He
+trusted her so completely that he suspected nothing.</p>
+
+<p>She expected that at the end of three months her
+father would send her another draft, but the day
+passed, and she received nothing, so that she at last
+wrote to him again, asking for money. It came, as
+before, without any word of inquiry or greeting.
+Dalrymple evidently intended to take this means
+of knowing from time to time that his daughter
+was alive and well. She would be obliged to write
+to him whenever she needed assistance. It was
+a humiliation, and she felt it bitterly, for she had
+thought that she had freed herself altogether and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_161" id="Page_V2_161">[161]</a></span>
+she found herself still bound by the necessity of
+asking for help.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed very hard to be thus shut off from the
+world in the prime of her youth, and beauty, and
+talent. To a woman who craved admiration for all
+she did and could do, it was almost unbearable.
+Paul Griggs worked and looked forward to success,
+and was satisfied in his aspirations, and more than
+happy in the companionship of the woman he so
+dearly loved.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall succeed," he said quietly, but with perfect
+assurance. "Before long we shall be able to
+leave Rome, and begin life somewhere else, where
+nobody will know our story. It will not be so dull
+for you there."</p>
+
+<p>"It is never dull when I am with you," said
+Gloria, but there was no conviction in the tone any
+more. "If you would let me go upon the stage,"
+she added, with a change of voice, "things would be
+very different. I could earn a great deal of money."</p>
+
+<p>But Paul Griggs was as much opposed to the
+project as Reanda had been, and in this one respect
+he really asserted his will. He was so confident
+of ultimately attaining to success and fortune by
+his pen that he would not hear of Gloria's singing
+in public.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," he said, after giving her many and
+excellent reasons, "if you earned millions, I would
+not touch the money."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_162" id="Page_V2_162">[162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She sighed for the lost opportunities of brilliant
+popularity, but she smiled at his words, knowing
+how she had used her own money for him, and
+in spite of him. But for her own part she had
+lost all belief in his talent since the failure of the
+book he had written.</p>
+
+<p>The long summer days were hard to bear. He
+was not able to leave Rome, for he was altogether
+dependent upon his regular correspondence for
+what he earned, and he did not succeed in persuading
+his editors to employ him anywhere else, for
+the very reason that he did so well what was required
+of him where he was.</p>
+
+<p>The weather grew excessively hot, and it was
+terribly dreary and dull in the little apartment in
+the Via della Frezza. All day long the windows
+were tightly closed to keep out the fiery air, both
+the old green blinds and the glass within them.
+Griggs had moved his writing-table to the feeble
+light, and worked away as hard as ever. Gloria
+spent most of the hot hours in reading and dreaming.
+They went out together early in the morning
+and in the evening, when there was some coolness,
+but during the greater part of the day they were
+practically imprisoned by the heat.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria watched the strong man and wondered at
+his power of working under any circumstances.
+He was laborious as well as industrious. He often
+wrote a page over two and three times, in the hope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_163" id="Page_V2_163">[163]</a></span>
+of improving it, and he was capable of spending
+an hour in finding a quotation from a great writer,
+not for the sake of quoting it, but in order to satisfy
+himself that he had authority for using some
+particular construction of phrase. He kept notebooks
+in which he made long indexed lists of words
+which in common language were improperly used,
+with examples showing how they should be rightly
+employed.</p>
+
+<p>"I am constructing a superiority for myself," he
+said once. "No one living takes so much pains as
+I do."</p>
+
+<p>But Gloria had no faith in his painstaking ways,
+though she wondered at his unflagging perseverance.
+Her own single great talent lay in her singing,
+and she had never given herself any trouble
+about it. Reanda, too, though he worked carefully
+and often slowly, worked without effort. It was
+true that Griggs never showed fatigue, but that
+was due to his amazing bodily strength. The intellectual
+labour was apparent, however, and he always
+seemed to be painfully overcoming some almost
+unyielding difficulty by sheer force of steady application,
+though nothing came of it, so far as she
+could see.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot understand why you take so much
+trouble," she said. "They are only newspaper
+articles, after all, to be read to-day and forgotten
+to-morrow."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_164" id="Page_V2_164">[164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am learning to write," he answered. "It
+takes a long time to learn anything unless one has
+a great gift, as you have for singing. I have failed
+with one book, but I will not fail with another.
+The next will not be an extraordinary book, but
+it will succeed."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could disturb him, and he sat at his
+table day after day. He was moved by the strongest
+incentives which can act upon a man, at the
+time when he himself is strongest; namely, necessity
+and love. Even Gloria could never discover
+whether he had what she would have called ambition.
+He himself said that he had none, and she compared
+him with Reanda, who believed in the divinity of
+art, the temple of fame, and the reality of glory.</p>
+
+<p>In the young man's nature, Gloria had taken the
+place of all other divinities, real and imaginary.
+His enduring nature could no more be wearied in
+its worship of her than it could be tired in toiling
+for her. He only resented the necessity of cutting
+out such a main part of the day for work as left
+him but little time to be at leisure with her.</p>
+
+<p>She complained of his industry, for she was tired
+of spending her life with novels, and the hours
+hung like leaden weights upon her, dragging with
+her as she went through the day.</p>
+
+<p>"Give yourself a rest," she said, not because she
+thought he needed it, but because she wished him
+to amuse her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_165" id="Page_V2_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am never tired of working for you," he
+answered, and the rare smile came to his face.</p>
+
+<p>With any other man in the world she might
+have told the truth and might have said frankly
+that her life was growing almost unbearable, buried
+from the world as she was, and cut off from
+society. But she was conscious that she should
+never dare to say as much to Paul Griggs. She
+was realizing, little by little, that his love for
+her was greater than she had dreamed of, and immeasurably
+stronger than what she felt for him.</p>
+
+<p>Then she knew the pain of receiving more than
+she had to give. It was a genuine pain of its
+kind, and in it, as in many other things, she suffered
+a constant humiliation. She had taken herself
+for a heroic character in the great moment
+when she had resolved to leave her husband, intuitively
+sure that she loved Paul Griggs with all her
+heart, and that she should continue to love him to
+the end in spite of the world. She knew now that
+there was no endurance in the passion.</p>
+
+<p>The very efforts she made to sustain it contributed
+to its destruction; but she continued to play
+her part. Her strong dramatic instinct told her
+when to speak and when to be silent, and how to
+modulate her voice to a tender appeal, to a touching
+sadness, to the strength of suppressed emotion.
+It was for a good object, she told herself, and
+therefore it must be right. He was giving his life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_166" id="Page_V2_166">[166]</a></span>
+for her, day by day, and he must never know that
+she no longer loved him. It would kill him, she
+thought; for with him it was all real. She grew
+melancholy and thought of death. If she died
+young, he should never guess that she had not
+loved him to the very last.</p>
+
+<p>In her lonely thoughts she dwelt upon the possibility,
+for it was a possibility now. There was
+that before her which, when it came, might turn
+life into death very suddenly. She had moments
+of tenderness when she thought of her own dead
+face lying on the white pillow, and the picture
+was so real that her eyes filled with tears. She
+would be very beautiful when she was dead.</p>
+
+<p>The idea took root in her mind; for it afforded
+her an inward emotion which touched her strangely
+and cost her nothing. It gained in fascination as
+she allowed it to come back when it would, and
+the details of death came vividly before her imagination,
+as she had read of them in books,&mdash;her
+own white face, the darkened room, the candles,
+Paul Griggs standing motionless beside her body.</p>
+
+<p>One day he looked from his work and saw tears
+on her cheeks. He dropped his pen as though
+something had struck him unawares; and he was
+beside her in a moment, looking anxiously into her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" he asked, and his hands were
+on hers and pressed them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_167" id="Page_V2_167">[167]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is nothing," she answered. "It is natural,
+I suppose&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No. It is not natural. You are unhappy.
+Tell me what is the matter."</p>
+
+<p>"It is foolish," she said, turning her face from
+him. "I see you working so hard day after day.
+I am a burden to you&mdash;it would be better if I
+were out of the way. You are working yourself
+to death. If you could see your face sometimes!"
+And more tears trickled down.</p>
+
+<p>His strong hands shook suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not working too hard&mdash;for me," he
+answered, but his voice trembled a little. "One
+of your tears hurts me more than a hundred years
+of hard work. Even if it were true&mdash;I would
+rather die for you than live to be the greatest man
+that ever breathed&mdash;without you."</p>
+
+<p>She threw her arms about his neck, and hid her
+face upon his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me you love me!" she cried. "You are
+all I have in the world!"</p>
+
+<p>"Does it need telling?" he asked, soothing her.</p>
+
+<p>Then all at once his arms tightened so that she
+could hardly draw breath for a moment, and his
+head was bent down and rested for an instant upon
+her neck as though he himself sought rest and
+refuge.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you know, dear," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She knew far better than he could tell her, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_168" id="Page_V2_168">[168]</a></span>
+the truth of his passion shook the dramatic and
+artificial fabric of her own to its foundations; and
+even as she pressed him to her, she felt that secret
+repugnance which those who do not love feel for
+those who love them overmuch. It was mingled
+with a sense of shame which made her hate herself,
+and she began to suffer acutely.</p>
+
+<p>When she thought of Reanda, as she now often
+did, she longed for what she had felt for him,
+rather than for anything she had ever felt for Paul
+Griggs. In the pitiful reaching after something
+real, she groped for memories of true tenderness,
+and now and then they came back to her from
+beyond the chaos which lay between, as memories
+of home come to a man cast after many storms
+upon a desert island. She dwelt upon them and
+tried to construct an under-life out of the past,
+made up only of sweet things amongst which all
+that had not been good should be forgotten. She
+went for comfort to the days when she had loved
+Reanda, before their marriage&mdash;or when she had
+loved his genius as though it were himself, believing
+that it was all for her.</p>
+
+<p>Beside her always, with even, untiring strength,
+Paul Griggs toiled on, his whole life based and
+founded in hers, every penstroke for her, every
+dream of her, every aspiration and hope for her
+alone. He was splendidly unconscious of his own
+utter loneliness, blankly unaware of the life-comedy&mdash;or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_169" id="Page_V2_169">[169]</a></span>
+tragedy&mdash;which Gloria was acting for
+him out of pity for the heart she could break, and
+out of shame at finding out what her own heart
+was. Had he known the truth, the end would have
+come quickly and terribly. But he did not know
+it. The woman's gifts were great, and her beauty
+was greater. Greater than all was his whole-souled
+belief in her. He had never conceived it
+possible, in his ignorance of women, that a woman
+should really love him. She, whom he had first
+loved so hopelessly, had given him all she had to
+give, which was herself, frankly and freely. And
+after she had come to him, she loved him for a
+time, beyond even self-deception. But when she
+no longer loved him, she hid her secret and kept
+it long and well; for she feared him. He was not
+like Reanda. He would not strike only; he would
+kill and make an end of both.</p>
+
+<p>But she might have gone much nearer to the
+truth without danger. It was not his nature to
+ask anything nor to expect much, and he had
+taken all there was to take, and knew it, and was
+satisfied.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_170" id="Page_V2_170">[170]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> summer passed, with its monotonous heat.
+Rain fell in August and poisoned the campagna
+with fever for six weeks, and the clear October
+breezes blew from the hills, and the second greenness
+of the late season was over everything for a
+brief month of vintage and laughter. Then came
+November with its pestilent sirocco gales and its
+dampness, pierced and cut through now and then
+by the first northerly winds of winter.</p>
+
+<p>And then, one day, there was a new life in the
+little apartment in the Via della Frezza. Fate,
+relentless, had brought to the light a little child,
+to be the grandson of that fated Maria Braccio
+who had died long ago, to have his day of happiness
+and his night of suffering in his turn and to
+be a living bond between Gloria and the man who
+loved her.</p>
+
+<p>They called the boy Walter Crowdie for a relative
+of Angus Dalrymple, who had been the last
+of the name. It was convenient, and he would
+never need any other, nor any third name after
+the two given to him in baptism.</p>
+
+<p>For a few days after the child's birth, Griggs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_171" id="Page_V2_171">[171]</a></span>
+left his writing-table. He was almost too happy
+to work, and he spent many hours by Gloria's side,
+not talking, for he knew that she must be kept
+quiet, but often holding her hand and always looking
+at her face, with the strong, dumb devotion of
+a faithful bloodhound.</p>
+
+<p>Often she pretended to be sleeping when he was
+there, though she was wide awake and could have
+talked well enough. But it was easier to seem to
+be asleep than to play the comedy now, while she
+was so weak and helpless. With the simplicity of
+a little child Griggs watched her, and when her
+eyes were closed believed that she was sleeping.
+As soon as she opened them he spoke to her. She
+understood and sometimes smiled in spite of herself,
+with close-shut lids. He thought she was
+dreaming of him, or of the child, and was smiling
+in her sleep.</p>
+
+<p>As she lay there and thought over all that had
+happened, she knew that she hated him as she had
+never loved him, even in the first days. And she
+hated the child, for its life was the last bond, linking
+her to Paul Griggs and barring her from the
+world forever. Until it had been there she had
+vaguely felt that if she had the courage and really
+wished it, she might in some way get back to her
+old life. She knew that all hope of that was gone
+from her now.</p>
+
+<p>In the deep perspective of her loosened intelligence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_172" id="Page_V2_172">[172]</a></span>
+the endless years to come rolled away, grey
+and monotonous, to their vanishing point. She
+had made her choice and had not found heart to
+give it up, after she had made it, while there was
+yet time. Time itself took shape before her closed
+eyes, as many succeeding steps, and she saw herself
+toiling up them, a bent, veiled figure of great
+weariness. It was terrible to look forward to such
+truth, and the present was no better. She grasped
+at the past and dragged it up to her and looked at
+its faded prettiness, and would have kissed it, as
+though it had been a living thing. But she knew
+that it was dead and that what lived was horrible
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>She wished that she might die, as she had often
+thought she might during the long summer months.
+In those days her eyes had filled with tears of pity
+for herself. They were dry now, for the suffering
+was real and the pain was in her bodily heart.
+Yet she was so strong, and she feared Paul Griggs
+with such an abject fear, that she played the
+comedy when she could not make him think that
+she was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"My only thought is for you," she said. "It is
+another burden on you."</p>
+
+<p>He was utterly happy, and he laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"It is another reason for working," he said.</p>
+
+<p>And even as he said it she saw the writing-table,
+the poor room, his stern, determined face and busy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_173" id="Page_V2_173">[173]</a></span>
+hand, and herself seated in her own chair, with a
+half-read novel on her lap, staring at the grey
+future of mediocrity and mean struggling that
+loomed like a leaden figure above his bent head.
+Year after year, perhaps, she was to sit in that
+chair and watch the same silent battle for bare
+existence. It was too horrible to be borne. If
+only he were a man of genius, she could have suffered
+it all, she thought, and more also. But he
+himself said that he had no genius. His terrible
+mechanics of mind killed the little originality he
+had. His gloomy sobriety over his work made her
+desperate. But she feared him. The belief grew
+on her that if he ever found out that she did not
+love him, he would end life then, for them both&mdash;perhaps
+for them all three.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, hell had no tortures worse than hers,
+she thought. Yet she bore them, in terror of him.
+And he was perfectly happy and suspected nothing.
+She could not understand how with his melancholy
+nature and his constant assertion that he had but
+a little talent and much industry for all his stock
+in trade, he could believe in his own future as he
+did. It was an anomaly, a contradiction of terms,
+a weak point in the low level of his unimaginative,
+dogged strength. She thought often of the poor
+book he had written. She had heard that talent
+was stirred to music by a great passion that strung
+it and struck it, till its heartstrings rang wild<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_174" id="Page_V2_174">[174]</a></span>
+changes and breathed deep chords, and burst into
+rushing harmonies of eloquence. But his love
+was dumb and dull, though it might be deadly.
+There had been neither eloquence nor music in his
+book. It had been an old story, badly told. He
+had said that he was only fit to be a newspaper
+man, and it was true, so far as she could see. His
+letters to the paper were excellent in their way,
+but that was all he could do. And she had given
+him, in the child, another reason for being what he
+was, hard-working, silent&mdash;dull.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him and wondered; for there was
+a mystery in his shadowy eyes and still face, which
+had promised much more than she had ever found
+in him. There was something mysterious and
+dreadful, too, in his unnatural strength. The fear
+of him grew upon her, and sometimes when he
+kissed her she burst into tears out of sheer terror
+at his touch.</p>
+
+<p>"They are tears of happiness," she said, trembling
+and drying her eyes quickly.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, and he believed her, happier every
+day in her and in the child.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the realization of the grey dream of
+misery. Again she was seated by the window in
+her accustomed chair, and he was in his place, pen
+in hand, eyes on paper, thoughts fixed like steel in
+that obstinate effort to do better, while she had the
+certainty of his failure before her. And between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_175" id="Page_V2_175">[175]</a></span>
+them, in a straw cradle with a hood, all gauze and
+lace and blue ribbons, lay the thing that bound her
+to him and cut her off forever from the world,&mdash;little
+Walter Crowdie, the child without a name, as
+she called him in her thoughts. And above the
+child, between her and Paul Griggs, floated the
+little imaginary stage on which she was to go on
+acting her play over and over again till all was
+done. She had not even the right to shed tears
+for herself without telling him that they were for
+the happiness he expected of her.</p>
+
+<p>He would not leave her. He had scarcely been
+out of the house for weeks, though the only perceptible
+effect of remaining indoors so long was that
+he had grown a little paler. She implored him to
+go out. In a few days she would be able to go
+with him, and meanwhile there was no reason why
+he should be perpetually at her side. He yielded
+to her importunity at last, and she was left alone
+with the child.</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief even greater than she had
+anticipated. She could cry, she could laugh, she could
+sing, and he was not there to ask questions. For
+one moment after she had heard the outer door
+close behind him she almost hesitated as to which
+she should do, for she was half hysterical with the
+long outward restraint of herself while, inwardly,
+she had allowed her thoughts to run wild as they
+would. She stood for a moment, and there was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_176" id="Page_V2_176">[176]</a></span>
+vague, uncertain look in her face. Then her breast
+heaved, and she burst into tears, weeping as never
+before in her short life, passionately, angrily, violently,
+without thought of control, or indeed of anything
+definite.</p>
+
+<p>Before an hour had passed Griggs came back.
+She was seated quietly in her chair, as when he
+had left her. The light was all behind her, and he
+could not see the slight redness of her eyes. Pale
+as she was, he thought she had never been more
+beautiful. There was a gentleness in her manner,
+too, beyond what he was accustomed to. He
+believed that perhaps she might be the better for
+being left to herself for an hour or two every day,
+until she should be quite strong again. On the
+following day she again suggested that he should
+go out for a walk, and he made no objection.</p>
+
+<p>Again, as soon as he was gone, she burst into
+tears, almost in spite of herself, though she unconsciously
+longed for the relief they had brought her
+the first time. But to-day the fit of weeping did
+not pass so soon. The spasms of sobbing lasted
+long after her eyes were dry, and she had less time
+to compose herself before Griggs returned. Still,
+he noticed nothing. The tears had refreshed her,
+and he found that same gentleness which had
+touched him on the previous day.</p>
+
+<p>Several times, after that, he went out and left
+her alone in the afternoon. Then, one day, while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_177" id="Page_V2_177">[177]</a></span>
+he was walking, a heavy shower came on, and he
+made his way home as fast as he could. He
+opened the door quickly and came upon her to find
+her sobbing as though her heart would break.</p>
+
+<p>He turned very pale and stood still for a moment.
+There was terror in her face when she saw him,
+but in an instant he was holding her in his arms
+and kissing her hair, asking her what was the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>"I am a millstone around your neck!" she
+sobbed. "It is breaking my heart&mdash;I shall die, if
+I see you working so!"</p>
+
+<p>He tried to comfort her, soothing her and laughing
+at her fears for him, but believing her, as he
+always did. Little by little, her sobs subsided,
+and she was herself again, as far as he could see.
+He tried to argue the case fairly on its merits.</p>
+
+<p>She listened to him, and listening was a new
+torture, knowing as she did what her tears were
+shed for. But she had to play the comedy again,
+at short notice, not having had the time to compose
+herself and enjoy the relief she found in crying
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief which she sought again and again.
+When she thought of it afterwards, it was as an
+indescribable, half-painful, half-pleasant emotion
+through which she passed every day. When she
+felt that it was before her, as soon as Griggs
+was out of the house, she made a slight effort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_178" id="Page_V2_178">[178]</a></span>
+to resist it, for she was sensible enough to understand
+that it was becoming a habit which she could not easily
+break.</p>
+
+<p>Even after she was quite strong again, Griggs
+often left her to herself for an hour, and he did
+not again come in accidentally and find her in
+tears. He thought it natural that she should sometimes
+wish to be alone.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when she had dried her eyes, she took
+a sheet of paper from his table and began to write.
+She had no distinct intention, but she knew that
+she was going to write about herself and her sufferings.
+It gave her a strange and unhealthy pleasure
+to set down in black and white all that she
+suffered. She could look at it, turn it, change it,
+and look at it again. Constantly, as the pen ran
+on, the tears came to her eyes afresh, and she
+brushed them away with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>Then, all at once, she looked at the clock&mdash;the
+same cheap little American clock which had ticked
+so long on the mantelpiece in Griggs's old lodging
+upstairs. She knew that he would be back before
+long, and she tore the sheets she had covered into
+tiny strips and threw them into the waste-paper
+basket. When Griggs returned, she was singing
+softly to herself over her needlework.</p>
+
+<p>But she had enjoyed a rare delight in writing
+down the story of her troubles. The utter loneliness
+of her existence, when Griggs was not with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_179" id="Page_V2_179">[179]</a></span>
+her, made it natural enough. Then a strange
+thought crossed her mind. She would write to
+Reanda and tell him that she had forgiven him,
+and had expiated the wrong she had done him.
+She craved the excitement of confession, and it
+could do no harm. He might, perhaps, answer
+her. Griggs would never know, for she always
+received the letters and sorted them for him, merely
+to save him trouble. The correspondence of a
+newspaper man is necessarily large, covering many
+sources of his information.</p>
+
+<p>It was rather a wild idea, she thought, but it
+attracted her, or rather it distracted her thoughts
+by taking her out of the daily comedy she was
+obliged to keep up. There was in it, too, a very
+slight suggestion of danger; for it was conceivable,
+though almost impossible, that some letter of hers
+or her husband's might fall into Griggs's hands.
+There was a perverseness about it which was seductive
+to her tortuous mind.</p>
+
+<p>At the first opportunity she wrote a very long
+letter. It was the letter of a penitent. She told
+him all that she had told herself a hundred times,
+and it was a very different production from the
+one she had sent to her father nearly a year earlier.
+There were tears in the phrases, there were sobs in
+the broken sentences. And there were tears in her
+own eyes when she sealed it.</p>
+
+<p>She was going to ring for the woman servant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_180" id="Page_V2_180">[180]</a></span>
+to take it, and her hand was on the bell. She
+paused, looked at the addressed envelope, glanced
+furtively round the room, and then kissed it passionately.
+Then she rang.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs came home later than usual, but he
+thought she was preoccupied and absent-minded.</p>
+
+<p>"Has anything gone wrong?" he asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong?" she repeated. "Oh no!" She sighed.
+"It is the same thing. I am always anxious about
+you. You were a little pale before you went out
+and you had hardly eaten anything at breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing the matter with me," laughed
+Griggs. "I am indestructible. I defy fate."</p>
+
+<p>She started perceptibly, for she was too much of
+an Italian not to be a little superstitious.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_181" id="Page_V2_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class='smcap'>Stefanone</span> was often seen in the Via della
+Frezza, for the host of the little wine shop was one
+of his good customers. The neighbourhood was
+very quiet and respectable, and the existence of
+the wine shop was a matter of convenience and
+almost of necessity to the respectable citizens who
+dwelt there. They sent their women servants or
+came themselves at regular hours, bringing their
+own bottles and vessels of all shapes and of many
+materials for the daily allowance of wine; they
+invariably paid in cash, and they never went away
+in the summer. The business was a very good
+one; for the Romans, though they rarely drink too
+much and are on the whole a sober people, consume
+an amount of strong wine which would produce a
+curious effect upon any other race, in any other
+climate. Stefanone, though his wife had formerly
+thought him extravagant, had ultimately turned
+out to be a very prudent person, and in the course
+of a thirty years' acquaintance with Rome had
+selected his customers with care, judgment, and
+foresight. Whenever he was in Rome and had
+time to spare he came to the little shop in the Via<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_182" id="Page_V2_182">[182]</a></span>
+della Frezza. He had stood godfather for one of
+the host's children, which in those days constituted
+a real tie between parents and god-parents.</p>
+
+<p>But he had another reason for his frequent visits
+since that night on which he had accompanied
+Gloria and had shielded her from the rain with his
+gigantic brass-tipped umbrella. He took an interest
+in her, and would wait a long time in the hope
+of seeing her, sitting on a rush-bottomed stool
+outside the wine shop, and generally chewing the
+end of a wisp of broom. He had the faculty of
+sitting motionless for an hour at a time, his sturdy
+white-stockinged legs crossed one over the other,
+his square peasant's hands crossed upon his knee,&mdash;the
+sharp angles of the thumb-bones marked the
+labouring race,&mdash;his soft black hat tilted a little
+forward over his eyes, his jacket buttoned up when
+the weather was cool, thrown back and showing the
+loosened shirt open far below the throat when the
+day was warm.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria reminded him of Dalrymple. The process
+of mind was a very simple one and needs no
+analysis. He had sought Dalrymple for years, but
+in vain, and Gloria had something in her face
+which recalled her father, though the latter's features
+were rough and harshly accentuated. Stefanone
+had made the acquaintance of the one-eyed
+cobbler without difficulty and had ascertained that
+there was a mystery about Gloria, whom the cobbler<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_183" id="Page_V2_183">[183]</a></span>
+had first seen on the morning after Stefanone
+had met her in the storm. It was of course very
+improbable that she should be the daughter of
+Dalrymple and Annetta, but even the faint possibility
+of being on the track of his enemy had a
+strong effect upon the unforgiving peasant. If he
+ever found Dalrymple, he intended to kill him.
+In the meanwhile he had found a simple plan for
+finding out whether Gloria was the Scotchman's
+daughter or not. He waited patiently for the
+spring, and he came to Rome now every month for
+a week at a time.</p>
+
+<p>More than once during the past year he had
+brought small presents of fruit and wine and country
+cakes for Gloria, and both she and Griggs knew all
+about him, and got their wine from the little shop
+which he supplied. Gloria was pleased by the
+decent, elderly peasant's admiration of her beauty,
+which he never failed to express when he got a
+chance of speaking to her. When little Walter
+Crowdie was first carried out into the sun, Stefanone
+was in the street, and he looked long and earnestly
+into the baby's face.</p>
+
+<p>"There is the same thing in the eyes," he muttered,
+as he turned away, after presenting the
+nurse with a beautiful jumble, which looked as
+though it had been varnished, and was adorned
+with small drops of hard pink sugar. "If it is he&mdash;an
+evil death on him and all his house."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_184" id="Page_V2_184">[184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And he strolled slowly back to the wine shop,
+his hand fumbling with the big, curved, brass-handled
+knife which he carried in the pocket of
+his blue cloth breeches.</p>
+
+<p>He was certainly mistaken about the baby's
+eyes, which were remarkably beautiful and of a
+very soft brown; whereas Dalrymple's were hard,
+blue, and steely, and it was not possible that anything
+like an hereditary expression should be
+recognizable in the face of a child three weeks old.
+But his growing conviction made his imagination
+complete every link which chanced to be missing
+in the chain.</p>
+
+<p>One day, in the spring, he met Griggs when the
+latter was going out alone.</p>
+
+<p>"A word, Signore, if you permit," he said
+politely.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty," replied Griggs, giving the common
+Roman answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Signore, Subiaco is a beautiful place," said the
+peasant. "In spring it is an enchantment. In
+summer, I tell you nothing. It is as fresh as
+Paradise. There is water, water, as much as you
+please. Wine is not wanting, and it seems that
+you know that. The butcher kills calves twice a
+week, and sometimes an ox when there is an old
+one, or one lame. Eh, in Subiaco, one is well."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not doubt it when I look at you," answered
+Griggs, without a smile.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_185" id="Page_V2_185">[185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Thanks be to Heaven, my health still assists
+me. But I am thinking of you and of your beautiful
+lady and of that little angel, whom God preserve.
+In truth, you appear to me as the Holy
+Family. I should not say it to every one, but the
+air of Subiaco is thin, the water is light, and, for
+a house, mine is of the better ones. One knows
+that we are country people, but we are clean people;
+there are neither chickens nor children. If
+you find a flea, I will have him set in gold. You
+shall say, 'This is the flea that was found in
+Stefanone's house.' In that way every one will
+know. I do not speak of the beds. The pope
+could sleep in the one in the large room at the
+head of the staircase, the pope with all his cardinals.
+They would say, 'Now we know that this is
+indeed a bed.' Do you wish better than this? I
+do not know. But if you will bring your lady and
+the baby, you will see. Eyes tell no lies."</p>
+
+<p>"And the price?" inquired Griggs, struck by
+the good sense of the suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever you choose to give. If you give
+nothing, we shall have had your company. In
+general, we take three pauls a day, and we give the
+wine. You shall make the price as you like it.
+Who thinks of these things? We are Christians."</p>
+
+<p>When Griggs spoke of the project to Gloria, she
+embraced it eagerly. He said that he should be
+obliged to come to Rome every week on account of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_186" id="Page_V2_186">[186]</a></span>
+his correspondence. But Subiaco was no longer as
+inaccessible as formerly, and there was now a good
+carriage road all the way and a daily public conveyance.
+He should be absent three days, and would
+spend the other four with her.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sacrifice on his part, as she guessed
+from the way in which he spoke, but it was clearly
+necessary that Gloria and the child should have
+country air during the coming summer. He had
+often reproached himself with not having made
+some such arrangement for the preceding hot
+season, but he had seen that she did not suffer from
+the heat, and his presence in the capital had been
+very necessary for his work. Now, however, it
+looked possible enough, and before Stefanone went
+back to the country for his next trip a preliminary
+agreement had been made.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria looked forward with impatience to the
+liberty she was to gain by his regular absences, for
+her life was becoming unbearable. She felt that
+she could not much longer sustain the perpetual
+comedy she was acting, unless she could get an
+interval of rest from time to time. At first, the
+hour he gave her daily when he went out alone
+had been a relief and had sufficed. The tears she
+shed, the letters she wrote to Reanda, rested her
+and refreshed her. For she had written others
+since that first one, though he had never answered
+any of them. But the small daily interruption of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_187" id="Page_V2_187">[187]</a></span>
+her acting was no longer enough. The taste of
+liberty had bred an intense craving for more of it,
+and she dreamed of being alone for days together.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote to Reanda now without the slightest
+hope of receiving any reply, as madmen sometimes
+write endless letters to women they love, though
+they have never exchanged a word with them. It
+was a vent for her pent-up suffering. It could
+make no difference, and Griggs could never know.
+Her strange position put the point of faithfulness
+out of the question. She was in love with her
+husband, and the man who loved her held her to
+her play of love by the terror she felt of what lay
+behind his gentleness. She dreamed once that he
+had found out the truth, and was tearing her head
+from her body with those hands of his, slowly,
+almost gently, with mysterious eyes and still face.
+She woke, and found that the heavy tress of her
+hair was twisted round her throat and was choking
+her; but the impression remained, and her dread
+of Griggs increased, and it became harder and
+harder to act her part.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the attraction of secretly writing
+to her husband grew stronger, day by day. She
+did not send him all she wrote, nor a tenth part of
+all, and the greater portion of her outpourings went
+into the fire, or they were torn to infinitesimal bits
+and thrown into the waste-paper basket. She was
+critical, in a strangely morbid way, of what she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_188" id="Page_V2_188">[188]</a></span>
+wrote. The fact that she was acting for Griggs,
+and knew it, made her dread to write anything to
+Reanda which could possibly seem insincere. No
+aspiring young author ever took greater pains over
+his work than she sometimes bestowed upon the
+composition of these letters, or judged his work
+more conscientiously and severely than she. And
+the result was that she told of her life with wonderful
+sincerity and truth. Truth was her only
+luxury in the midst of the great lie she had to sustain.
+She revelled in it, and yet, fearing to lose
+it, she used it with a conscientiousness which she
+had never exhibited in anything she had done
+before. It was her single delight, and she treasured
+it with scrupulous and miserly care. In her
+letters, at least, she could be really herself.</p>
+
+<p>But the strain was telling upon her visibly, and
+Griggs was very anxious about her, and hastened
+their departure for Subiaco as soon as the weather
+began to grow warm, hoping that the mountain air
+would bring the colour back to her pale cheeks.
+For her beauty's sake, he could almost have deprecated
+the prospect, strange to say, for she had
+never seemed more perfectly beautiful than now.
+She was thinner than she had formerly been, and
+her pallor had refined her by softening the look
+of hard and brilliant vitality which had characterized
+her before she had left Reanda. There is
+perhaps no beauty which is not beautified by a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_189" id="Page_V2_189">[189]</a></span>
+touch of sadness. Griggs saw it, and while his
+eyes rejoiced, his heart sank.</p>
+
+<p>He knew what an utterly lonely life she was
+leading, even as he judged her existence, and the
+tender string was touched in his deep nature. She
+had sacrificed everything for him, as he told himself
+many a time in his solitary walks. All the love
+he had given and had to give could never repay
+her for what she had given him. Marriage, he reflected,
+was often a bargain, but such devotion as
+hers was a gift for which there could be no return.
+She had ruined herself in the eyes of the world for
+him, but the world would never accuse him, nor
+shut its doors upon him because he had accepted
+what she had so freely given. He was not an emotional
+man, but even he longed for some turn of
+life in which for her sake he might do something
+above the dead level of that commonplace heroism
+which begins in hard work and ends in the attainment
+of ordinary necessities. He felt his strength
+in him and about him, and he wished that he could
+let it loose upon some adversary in the physical
+satisfaction of fighting for what he loved. It was
+not a high aspiration, but it was a manly one.</p>
+
+<p>He drew upon his resources to the utmost, in
+order to make her comfortable in Subiaco when
+they should get there. He was not a dreamer,
+though he dreamed when he had time. It was his
+nature to take all the things which came to him to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_190" id="Page_V2_190">[190]</a></span>
+be done and to do them one after another with untiring
+energy. He worked at his correspondence,
+and got additional articles to write for periodicals,
+though it was no easy matter in that day when the
+modern periodical was in its infancy.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria, acting her part, complained sadly that
+he worked too hard. Work as he might, he had
+no such stress to fear as was wearing out her life.
+She hated him, she feared him, and she envied
+him. Sometimes she pitied him, and then it was
+easier for her to act the play. As for Griggs, he
+laughed and told her for the hundredth time that
+he was indestructible and defied fate.</p>
+
+<p>So far as he could see what he had to deal with,
+he could defy anything. But there was that beyond
+of which he could not dream, and destiny,
+with leaden hands, was already upon him, on the
+day when a great, old-fashioned carriage, loaded
+with boxes and belongings, brought him and his to
+the door of Stefanone's house in Subiaco.</p>
+
+<p>Sora Nanna, grey-haired, and withered as a brown
+apple, but tough as leather still, stood on the threshold
+to receive them. She no longer wore the embroidered
+napkin on her hair, for civilization had
+advanced a generation in Subiaco, and a coloured
+handkerchief flapped about her head, and she had
+caught one corner of it in her teeth to keep it out
+of her eyes, as the afternoon breeze blew it across
+her leathery face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_191" id="Page_V2_191">[191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>First at the door of the carriage she saw the
+baby, held up by its nurse, and the old woman
+threw up her hands and clapped them, and crowed
+to the child till it laughed. Then Griggs got out.
+And then, out of the dark shadow of the coach, a
+face looked at Sora Nanna, and it was a face she
+had known long ago, with dark eyes, beautiful and
+deadly pale, and very fateful.</p>
+
+<p>She turned white herself, and her teeth chattered.</p>
+
+<p>"Madonna Santissima!" she cried, shrinking
+back.</p>
+
+<p>She crossed herself, and did not dare to meet
+Gloria's eyes again for some time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_192" id="Page_V2_192">[192]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sora Nanna</span> showed her new lodgers their
+rooms. They were the ones Dalrymple had occupied
+long ago, together with a third, opening separately
+from the same landing. In what had been
+the Scotchman's laboratory, and which was now
+turned into a small bedroom, a large chest stood in
+a corner, of the sort used by the peasant women to
+this day for their wedding outfits.</p>
+
+<p>"If it is not in your way, I will leave it here,"
+said Sora Nanna. "There are certain things
+in it."</p>
+
+<p>"What things?" asked Gloria, idly, and for the
+sake of making acquaintance with the woman,
+rather than out of curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"Things, things," answered Nanna. "Things of
+that poor girl's. We had a daughter, Signora."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she die long ago?" inquired Gloria, in a
+tone of sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"We lost her, Signora," said Nanna, simply.
+"Look at these beds! They are new, new! No
+one has ever slept in them. And linen there is,
+as much as you can ask for. We are country
+people, Signora, but we are good people. I do not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_193" id="Page_V2_193">[193]</a></span>
+say that we are rich. One knows&mdash;in Rome
+everything is beautiful. Even the chestnuts are
+of gold. Here, we are in the country, Signora.
+You will excuse, if anything is wanting."</p>
+
+<p>But Gloria was by no means inclined to find
+fault. She breathed more freely in the mountain
+air, she was tired with the long drive from Tivoli,
+where they had spent the previous night, and she
+was more hungry than she had been for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>It was not dark when they sat down to supper in
+the old guest chamber which opened upon the
+street. Nanna was anxious and willing to bring
+them their supper upstairs, but Gloria preferred
+the common room. She said it would amuse her,
+and in reality it was easier for her not to be alone
+with Griggs, and by going downstairs on the first
+evening she meant to establish a precedent for the
+whole summer. He had told her that he must go
+back to Rome for his work on the next day but
+one, and she counted the hours before her up to
+the minute when she should be free and alone.</p>
+
+<p>They sat down at the old table at which Dalrymple
+had eaten his solitary meals so often, more
+than twenty years earlier. There was no change.
+There were the same solid, old-fashioned silver
+forks and spoons, there were plates of the same
+coarse china, tumblers of the same heavy pressed
+glass. Had Dalrymple been there, he would have
+recognized the old brass lamp with its three beaks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_194" id="Page_V2_194">[194]</a></span>
+which poor Annetta had so often brought in lighted
+when he sat there at dusk. On the shelf in the
+corner were the selfsame decanters full of transparent
+aniseed and pink alchermes and coarse
+brown brandy. Stefanone came in, laid his hat
+upon the bench, and put his stick in the corner
+just as he had always done. There was no change,
+except that Annetta was not there, and the husband
+and wife had grown almost old since those
+days.</p>
+
+<p>"How often does the post go to Rome?" Gloria
+asked of Sora Nanna, while they were at supper.</p>
+
+<p>"Every evening, at one of the night, Signora.
+There are also many occasions of sending by the
+carters."</p>
+
+<p>"I can write to you every day when you are
+away," said Gloria in English to Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>She was thinking of those letters which she
+wrote to Reanda almost in spite of herself, but the
+loving smile did not play her false, and Griggs
+believed her.</p>
+
+<p>In her, the duality of her being had created two
+distinct lives. For him, the two elements of consciousness
+and perception were merged in one by
+his love. All that he felt he saw in her, and all
+that he saw in her he felt. The perfection of
+love, while it lasts, is in that double certainty
+from within and from without, which, if once
+disturbed, can never be restored again. Singly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_195" id="Page_V2_195">[195]</a></span>
+the one part or the other may remain as of old,
+but the wholeness of the two has but one chance
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>On that first night Gloria had an evil dream.
+She had fallen asleep, tired from the journey and
+worn out with the endless weariness of her secret
+suffering. She awoke in the small hours, and
+moonlight was streaming into the room. She was
+startled to find herself in a strange place, at first,
+and then she realized where she was, and gazed at
+the clouded panes of common glass as her head lay
+on the pillow, and she marked the moonlight on
+the brick floor by the joints of the bricks, and
+watched how it crept silently away. For the moon
+was waning, and had not long risen above the
+black line of the hills.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyelids drooped, but she saw it all distinctly
+still&mdash;more distinctly than before, she thought.
+The level light rose slowly from the floor; very,
+very slowly, stiff and straight as a stark, shrouded
+corpse, and stood upright between her and the window.
+She felt the heavy hair rising on her scalp,
+and an intense horror took possession of her body,
+and thrilled through her from head to foot and
+from her feet to her head. But she could not
+move. She felt that something held her and
+pressed on her, as though the air were moulded
+about her like cast iron.</p>
+
+<p>The thing stood between her and the window,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_196" id="Page_V2_196">[196]</a></span>
+stiff and white. It showed its face, and the face
+was white, too. It was Angelo Reanda. She knew
+it, though there seemed to be no eyes in the white
+thing. She felt its dead voice speaking to her.</p>
+
+<p>"An evil death on you and all your house," it
+said.</p>
+
+<p>The face was gone again, but the thing was still
+there. Very, very slowly, stiff and white, it lay
+back, straight from the heel upwards, unbending
+as it sank, till it laid itself upon the floor, and she
+was staring at the joints of the bricks in the moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>Then she shrieked aloud and awoke. The moonlight
+had moved a foot or more, and she knew that
+she had been asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"It was only a dream," she said to Griggs in
+the morning. "I thought I saw you dead, dear.
+It frightened me."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not dead yet," he laughed. "It was that
+salad&mdash;there were potatoes in it."</p>
+
+<p>She turned away; for the contrast between the
+triviality of what he said and the horror of what
+she had felt brought an expression to her face
+which even her consummate art could not have
+concealed.</p>
+
+<p>The impression lasted all day, and when she
+went to bed she carefully closed the shutters so
+that the moonlight should not fall upon the floor.
+The dream did not return.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_197" id="Page_V2_197">[197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It must have been the salad," said Griggs,
+when she told him that she had not been disturbed
+again.</p>
+
+<p>But Gloria was thinking of death, and his words
+jarred upon her horribly, as a trivial jest would jar
+on a condemned man walking from his cell to the
+scaffold. In the evening Griggs went by the
+diligence to Rome, and Gloria was left alone with
+her child and the nurse.</p>
+
+<p>Then she sat down and wrote to Reanda with a
+full heart and a trembling hand. She told him
+of her dream, and how the fear of his death had
+broken her nerves. She implored him to come out
+and see her when Griggs was in Rome. She could
+let him know when to start, if he would write one
+word. It was but a little journey, she said, and
+the cool mountain air would do him good. But if
+he would not come, she besought him to write to
+her, if it were only a line, to say that he was alive.
+She could not forget the dream until she should
+know that he was safe.</p>
+
+<p>She was not critical of her writing any more, for
+she was no longer in fear of being misunderstood,
+and she wrote desperately. It seemed to her that
+she was writing with her blood. She had sent him
+many letters without hope of answer, but something
+told her that she could not appeal in vain forever,
+and that he would at last reply to her.</p>
+
+<p>Two days passed, and she spent much of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_198" id="Page_V2_198">[198]</a></span>
+time with the child. She felt that in time she
+might love it, if Griggs were not beside her. Then
+he came back, and in the great joy of seeing her
+again after that first short separation, the stern
+voice grew as soft as a woman's, and the still face
+was moved. She had looked forward with dread
+to his return, and she shivered when he touched
+her; she would have given all she had if only he
+would not kiss her. Then, when she felt that he
+might have found her cold to him at the first
+moment, that he might guess, that he might find
+out her secret, she shivered again from head to
+heel, in fear of him, and she forced the smile upon
+her face with all her will.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so glad, that I am almost frightened!"
+she cried, and lest the smile should be imperfect,
+she hid it against his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>She could have bitten the cloth and the tough
+arm under it, as she felt him kiss the back of her
+neck just at the roots of the hair; as it was, she
+grasped his arm convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"How strong you are!" he laughed, as he felt
+the pressure of her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered. "It is the mountain air&mdash;and
+you," she added.</p>
+
+<p>And, as ever, it seemed to him true. The days
+he spent with her were heavenly to him as they
+were days of living earthly hell to her. He did
+not even leave her alone for an hour or two, as he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_199" id="Page_V2_199">[199]</a></span>
+had done in the city, for when he was in Rome
+without her he did double work and shortened his
+sleep by half, that he might lengthen the time he
+was to have with her. The heat of the capital and
+the late hours brought out dark shadows under his
+eyes, and gave her another excuse for saying that
+he was overworking for her sake, and that she was
+a burden upon him&mdash;she and the child.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning before he next went to Rome,
+she received a letter from Reanda. The blood
+rushed scarlet to her face, but Griggs was busy
+with his own letters and did not see it.</p>
+
+<p>She went to the baby's room. The child had
+been taken out by the nurse, and she sat down in
+the nurse's chair by the empty cradle and broke
+the seal of the note. There was a big sheet of
+paper inside, on which were written these lines in
+the artist's small, nervous handwriting:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am perfectly well, but I understand your
+anxiety about my health. I do not wish to see
+you, but as human life is uncertain I have given
+instructions that you may be at once informed of
+the good news of my death, if you outlive me."</p>
+
+<p>Gloria's hand closed upon the sheet of paper,
+and she reeled forward and sideways in the chair,
+as though she had received a stunning blow. She
+heard heavy footsteps on the brick floor in the next
+room and with a desperate effort at consciousness
+she hid the crumpled letter in her bosom before the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_200" id="Page_V2_200">[200]</a></span>
+door opened. But the room swam with her as she
+grasped the straw cradle and tried to steady herself.</p>
+
+<p>In an agony of terror she heard the footsteps
+coming nearer and nearer, then retreating again,
+then turning back towards her. She prayed to
+God at that moment that Griggs might not open
+the door. To gain strength, she forced herself to
+rise to her feet and stand upright, but with the
+first step she took, she stumbled against the chest
+that contained Annetta's belongings. The physical
+pain roused her. She drew breath more freely,
+and listened. Griggs was moving about in the
+other room, probably putting together some few
+things which he meant to take to Rome with him
+that evening. It seemed an hour before she heard
+him go away, and the echo of his footsteps came
+more and more faintly as he went down the stairs.
+He evidently had not guessed that she was in the
+little room which served as a nursery&mdash;the room
+which had once been Dalrymple's laboratory.</p>
+
+<p>She did not read the letter again, but she found
+a match and set fire to it, and watched it as it
+burned to black, gossamer-like ashes on the brick
+floor. It was long before she had the courage to go
+down and face Griggs and say that she was ready
+for the daily walk together before the midday meal.
+And all that day she went about dreamily, scarcely
+knowing what she did or said, though she was sure
+that she did not fail in acting her part, for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_201" id="Page_V2_201">[201]</a></span>
+habit was so strong that the acting was natural to
+her, except when something waked her to herself
+too suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>He went away at last in the evening, and she
+was free to do what she pleased with herself, to
+close the deadly wound she had received, if that
+were possible, to forget it even for an hour, if she
+could.</p>
+
+<p>But she could not. She felt that it was her
+death-wound, for it had killed a hope which she
+had tended and fostered into an inner life for
+herself. She felt that her husband hated her, as
+she hated Paul Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>She was impelled to fall upon her knees and
+pray to Something, somewhere, though she knew
+not what, but she was ashamed to do it when she
+thought of her life. That Something would turn
+upon her and curse her, as Reanda had cursed her
+in her dream&mdash;and in the cruel words he had
+written.</p>
+
+<p>She hardly slept that night, and she rose in the
+morning heavy-eyed and weary. Going out into
+the old garden behind the house she met Sora
+Nanna with a basket of clothes on her head, just
+starting to go up to the convent, followed by two
+of her women.</p>
+
+<p>"Signora," said the old woman, with her leathern
+smile, "you are consuming yourself because the
+husband is in Rome. You are doing wrong."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_202" id="Page_V2_202">[202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gloria started, stared at her, and then understood,
+and nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Come up to the convent with us," said Nanna.
+"You will divert yourself, and while they take in
+the clothes, I will show you the church. It is
+beautiful. I think that even in Rome it would be
+a beautiful church. I will show you where the
+sisters are buried and I will tell you how Sister
+Maria Addolorata was burned in her cell. But she
+was not buried with the rest. When you come
+back, you will eat with a double appetite, and I
+will make gnocchi of polenta for dinner. Do you
+like gnocchi, Signora? There is much resistance
+in them."</p>
+
+<p>Gloria went with the washerwomen. She was
+strong and kept pace with them, burdened as they
+were with their baskets. It was good to be with
+them, common creatures with common, human
+hearts, knowing nothing of her strange trouble.
+Sora Nanna took her into the church and showed
+her the sights, explaining them in her strident,
+nasal voice without the slightest respect for the
+place so long as no religious service was going on.
+The woman showed her the little tablet erected in
+memory of Maria Addolorata, and she told the story
+as she had heard it, and dwelt upon the funeral
+services and the masses which had been said.</p>
+
+<p>"At least, she is in peace," said Gloria, in a low
+voice, staring at the tablet.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 376px;">
+<img src="images/gs25.jpg" width="376" height="500" alt="&quot;Let us not speak of the dead.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p. 203." title="&quot;Let us not speak of the dead.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p. 203." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Let us not speak of the dead.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p.&nbsp;203.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_203" id="Page_V2_203">[203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Poor Annetta used to say that Sister Maria
+Addolorata sinned in her throat," said Nanna.
+"But you see. God can do everything. She
+went straight from her cell to heaven. Eh, she is
+in peace, Signora, as you say. Requiesca'. Come,
+Signora, it takes at least three-quarters of an hour
+to make gnocchi."</p>
+
+<p>And they did not know. She was standing on
+her daughter's grave, and the tablet was a memorial
+of the mother of the woman beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"You make me think of her, Signora," said the
+peasant. "You have her face. If you had her
+voice, to sing, I should think that you were she,
+returned from the dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Could she sing?" asked Gloria, dreamily, as
+they left the church.</p>
+
+<p>"Like the angels in Paradise," answered Nanna.
+"I think that now, when she sings, they are
+ashamed and stand silent to listen to her. If God
+wills that I make a good death, I shall hear her
+again."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at her companion's dreamy, fateful
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us not speak of the dead!" she concluded.
+"To-day we will make gnocchi of polenta."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_204" id="Page_V2_204">[204]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the afternoon Gloria called Sora Nanna to
+move the chest against which she had stumbled in
+the morning. It would be more convenient, she
+said, to put it under the bed, if it could not be
+taken away altogether. It was a big, old-fashioned
+chest of unpainted, unvarnished wood, brown with
+age, and fastened by a hasp, through which a
+splinter of white chestnut wood had been stuck
+instead of a padlock. Gloria saw that it was
+heavy, as Sora Nanna dragged it and pushed it
+across the room. She remarked that, if it held
+only clothes, it must be packed very full.</p>
+
+<p>Sora Nanna, glad to rest from her efforts, stood
+upright with her hand on her hip and took breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Signora," she said, "who knows what is in it?
+Things, certain things! There are the clothes of
+that poor girl. This I know. And then, certain
+other things. Who knows what is in it? It may
+be a thousand years since I looked. Signora, shall
+we open it? But I think there are certain things
+that belonged to the Englishman."</p>
+
+<p>"The Englishman?" asked Gloria, with some
+curiosity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_205" id="Page_V2_205">[205]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was glad of anything which could interest
+her a little. For the moment she had not yet the
+courage to begin to write again after Reanda's message.
+Anything which had power to turn the current
+of her thoughts was a relief. She was sitting
+in the same chair beside the cradle in which she had
+sat in the morning, for she had called Nanna to move
+the box at a time when the child had been taken
+out for its second airing. She leaned back, resting
+her auburn hair against the bare wall, the waxen
+whiteness of her face contrasting with the bluish
+whitewash.</p>
+
+<p>"What Englishman?" she asked again, wearily,
+but with a show of interest in her half-closed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? An Englishman. They called
+him Sor Angoscia." Nanna sat down on the heavy
+box, and dropped her skinny hands far apart upon
+her knees. "We have cursed him much. He took
+our daughter. It was a night of evil. In that
+night the abbess died, and Sister Maria Addolorata
+was burned in her cell, and the Englishman took
+our daughter. He took our one daughter, Signora.
+We have not seen her more, not even her little
+finger. It will be twenty-two years on the eve of
+the feast of St. Luke. That is in October, Signora.
+He took our daughter. Poor little one! She was
+young, young&mdash;perhaps she did not know what she
+did."</p>
+
+<p>Gloria leaned forward, resting her chin in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_206" id="Page_V2_206">[206]</a></span>
+hand and her elbow on her knee, gazing at the old
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>"She was a flower," said Nanna, simply. "He
+tore her from us with the roots. Who knows what
+he did with her? She will be dead by this time.
+May the Madonna obtain grace for her! Signora,
+she seemed one of those flowers that grow on the
+hillside, just as God wills. Rain, sun, she was
+always fresh. Then came the storm. Who could
+find her any more? Poor little one!"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child!" exclaimed Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>And she made Nanna tell all she knew, and how
+they had found the girl's peasant dress in a corner
+of that very room.</p>
+
+<p>"Signora, if you wish to see, I will content
+you," said Nanna, rising at last.</p>
+
+<p>She opened the box. It exhaled the peculiar
+odour of heavy cloth which has been worn and has
+then been kept closely shut up for years. On the
+top lay Annetta's carpet apron. Nanna held it
+up, and there were tears in her eyes, glistening on
+her dry skin like water in a crevice of brown rock.</p>
+
+<p>"Signora, there are moths in it, see! Who cares
+for these things? They are a memory. And this
+is her skirt, and this is her bodice. Eh, it was
+beautiful once. The shoes, Signora, I wore them,
+for we had the same feet. What would you? It
+seemed a sin to let them mould, because they were
+hers. The apron, too, I might have worn it. Who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_207" id="Page_V2_207">[207]</a></span>
+knows why I did not wear it? It was the affection.
+We are all so, we women. And now there are
+moths in it. I might have worn it. At least it
+would not have been lost."</p>
+
+<p>Gloria peered into the box, and saw under the
+clothes a number of books packed neatly with a box
+made of English oak. She stretched down her hand
+and took one of the volumes. It was an English
+medical treatise. She looked at the fly-leaf.</p>
+
+<p>A loud cry from Gloria startled the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Angus Dalrymple&mdash;but&mdash;" Gloria read the
+name and stared at Nanna.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, eh!" assented Nanna, nodding violently
+and smiling a little as she at last recognized the
+Scotchman's name which she had never been able
+to pronounce. "Yes&mdash;that is it. That was the
+name of the Englishman. An evil death on him
+and all his house! Stefanone says it always. I
+also may say it once. It was he. He took our
+daughter. Stefanone went after them, but they
+had the beast of the convent gardener. It was a
+good beast, and they made it run. Stefanone heard
+of them all the way to the sea, but the twenty-four
+hours had passed, and the war-ship was far out.
+He could see it. Could he go to the war-ship? It
+had cannons. They would have killed him. Then
+I should have had neither daughter nor husband.
+So he came back."</p>
+
+<p>The long habit of acting had made Gloria strong,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_208" id="Page_V2_208">[208]</a></span>
+but her hands shook on the closed volume. She
+had known that her mother had been an Italian,
+that they had left Italy suddenly and had been
+married on board an English man-of-war by the
+captain, that same Walter Crowdie, a relative of
+Dalrymple's, after whom Gloria and Griggs had
+named the child. More than that Dalrymple had
+never been willing to tell her. She remembered,
+too, that though she had once or twice begged him
+to take her to Tivoli and Subiaco, he had refused
+rather abruptly. It was clear enough now. Her
+mother had been this Annetta whom Dalrymple
+had stolen away in the night.</p>
+
+<p>And the wrinkled, leathery old hag, with her
+damp, coarse mouth, her skinny hands, and her
+cunning, ignorant eyes, was her grandmother&mdash;Stefanone
+was her grandfather&mdash;her mother had
+been a peasant, like them, beautified by one of
+nature's mad miracles.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no doubt about it. That was the
+truth, and it fell upon her with its cruel, massive
+weight, striking her where many other truths had
+struck her before this one, in her vanity.</p>
+
+<p>She grasped the book tightly with both hands
+and set her teeth. After that, she did not know
+what Nanna said, and the old woman, thinking
+Gloria was not paying a proper attention to her
+remarks, pushed and heaved the box across the
+room rather discontentedly. It would not go under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_209" id="Page_V2_209">[209]</a></span>
+the bed, being too high, so she wedged it in between
+the foot of the bedstead and the wall. There was
+just room for it there.</p>
+
+<p>"Signora, if ever your one child leaves you without
+a word, you will understand," said Nanna, a
+little offended at finding no sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand too well," answered Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>Then she suddenly realized what the woman
+wanted, and with great self-control she held out
+her hand kindly. Nanna took it and smiled, and
+pressed it in her horny fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"You are young, Signora. When you are old,
+you will understand many things, when evils have
+pounded your heart in a mortar. Oil is sweet,
+vinegar is sour; with both one makes salad. This
+is our life. Rest yourself, Signora, for you walked
+well this morning. I go."</p>
+
+<p>Gloria felt the pressure of the rough fingers on
+hers, after Nanna had left her. The acrid odour of
+peeled vegetables clung to her own hand, and she
+rose and washed it carefully, though she was
+scarcely conscious of what she was doing. Suddenly
+she dropped the towel and went back to the
+box. It had crossed her mind that the single book
+she had opened might have been borrowed from
+her father and that she might find another name
+in the others&mdash;that Nanna might have been mistaken
+in thinking that she recognized the English
+name&mdash;that it might all be a mistake, after all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_210" id="Page_V2_210">[210]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With violent hands she dragged out the moth-eaten
+clothes and threw them behind her upon the
+floor, and seized the books, opening them desperately
+one after the other. In each there was the
+name, 'Angus Dalrymple,' in her father's firm
+young handwriting of twenty years ago. She threw
+them down and lifted out the oak box. A little
+brass plate was let into the lid, and bore the
+initials, 'A. D.' There was no doubt left. The
+books all bore dates prior to 1844, the year in
+which, as she knew, her father had been married.
+It was impossible to hesitate, for the case was
+terribly clear.</p>
+
+<p>She rose to her feet and carried the box to the
+window and set it upon a chair, sitting down upon
+another before it. It was not locked. She raised
+the lid, and saw that it was a medicine chest.
+There was a drawer, or little tray, on the top, full
+of small boxes and very minute vials, lying on
+their sides. Lifting this out, she saw a number of
+little stoppered bottles set in holes made in a thin
+piece of board for a frame. One was missing, and
+there were eleven left. She counted them mechanically,
+not knowing why she did so. Then she
+took them out and looked at the labels. The first
+she touched contained spirits of camphor. It
+chanced to be the only one of which the contents
+were harmless. The others were strong tinctures
+and acids, vegetable poisons, belladonna, aconite,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_211" id="Page_V2_211">[211]</a></span>
+and the like, sulphuric acid, nitric acid, hydrochloric
+acid, and others.</p>
+
+<p>Gloria looked at them curiously and set them
+back, one by one, put in the little tray and closed
+the lid. Then she sat still a long time and
+gazed out of the window at the rugged line of
+the hills.</p>
+
+<p>Between her and the pale sky she saw her own
+life, and the hideous failure of it all, culminating
+in the certainty that she was of the blood of the
+old peasant couple to whose house a seeming chance
+had brought her to die. She felt that she could
+not live, and would not live if she could. It was
+all too wildly horrible, too utterly desolate.</p>
+
+<p>The only human being that clung to her was the
+one of all others whom she most feared and hated,
+whose very touch sent a cold shiver through her.
+She and fate together had pounded her heart in a
+mortar, as the old woman had said. With a bitterness
+that sickened her she thought of her brief
+married life, of her poor social ambition, of her
+hopeless efforts to be some one amongst the great.
+What could she be, the daughter of peasants, what
+could she have ever been? Probably some one knew
+the truth about her, in all that great society. Such
+things might be known. Francesca Campodonico's
+delicate noble face rose faintly between her and
+the sky, and she realized with excruciating suddenness
+the distance that separated her from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_212" id="Page_V2_212">[212]</a></span>
+woman she hated, the woman who perhaps knew
+that Gloria Dalrymple was the daughter of a peasant
+and a fit wife by her birth for Angelo Reanda,
+the steward's son.</p>
+
+<p>The ruin of her life spread behind her and before
+her. She could not face it. The confusion of it
+all seemed to blind her, and the confusion was
+pierced by the terrible thought that on the next
+day but one Griggs would return again, the one
+being who would not leave her, who believed in
+her, who worshipped her, and whom she hated for
+himself and for the destruction of her existence
+which had come by him.</p>
+
+<p>In the box before her was death, painful perhaps,
+but sure as the grave itself. She was not a
+coward, except when she was afraid of Paul Griggs,
+and the fear lest he, too, should find out the truth
+was worse than the fear of mortal pain.</p>
+
+<p>She sat still in her place, staring out of the window.
+After a long time, the nurse came in, carrying
+the child asleep in her arms, covered with a
+thin gauze veil. Gloria started, and then smiled
+mechanically as she had trained herself to smile
+whenever the child was brought to her. The
+nurse laid the small thing in its cradle, and Gloria,
+as in a dream, put the books and the clothes back
+into the box, and was glad that the nurse asked no
+questions. When she had shut down the lid, she
+rose to her feet and saw that she had left the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_213" id="Page_V2_213">[213]</a></span>
+medicine chest on the chair. She took it into the
+bedroom and set it upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>Then she sat down and wrote to Reanda. There
+was no haste in the writing, and her head was clear
+and cool, for she was not afraid. Griggs could not
+return for two days, and she had plenty of time.
+She went over her story, as she had gone over it
+many times before in her letters. She told him
+all, but not the discovery she had just made. That
+should die with her, if it could. It would be easy
+enough, on the next day, when the nurse was out,
+to open the box again, and to tear out the fly-leaf
+from each book and so destroy the name. As for
+the medicine chest, Griggs might see that it had
+belonged to her father, but he would suppose that
+she had brought it amongst her belongings. He
+would never guess that it had lain hidden in the
+old box for more than twenty years. That was her
+plan, and it was simple enough. But she should
+have to wait until the next day. It was better so.
+She could think of what she was going to do, and
+nobody would disturb her. She finished her letter.</p>
+
+<p>"You have killed me," she wrote at the end.
+"If I had not loved you to the very end, I would
+tell you that my death is on your soul. But it is
+not all your fault, if I have loved you to death. I
+would not die if I could be free in any other way,
+but I cannot live to be touched and caressed again
+by this man whom I loathe with all my soul. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_214" id="Page_V2_214">[214]</a></span>
+tell you that when he kisses me it is as though I
+were stung by a serpent of ice. It is for your sake
+that I hate him as I do. For your sake I have
+suffered hell on earth for more than a whole year.
+For your sake I die. I cannot live without you.
+I have told you so again and a hundred times
+again, and you have not believed me. You write
+to-day and you tell me that I shall be free, when
+you die, to marry Paul Griggs. I would rather
+marry Satan in hell. But I shall be free to-morrow,
+for I shall be dead. God will forgive me, for
+God knows what I suffer. Good-bye. I love you,
+Angelo. I shall love you to-morrow, when the
+hour comes, and after that I shall love you always.
+This is the end. Good-bye. I love you; I kiss
+your soul with my soul. Good-bye, good-bye.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+"<span class="smcap">Gloria.</span>"<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>She cut a lock from her auburn hair and twisted
+it round and round her wedding ring, and thrust it
+into the envelope.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_215" id="Page_V2_215">[215]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XL.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Two</span> days later, Paul Griggs stood beside Gloria.
+She was not dead yet, but no earthly power could
+save her. She lay white and motionless on the
+high trestle bed, unconscious of his presence.
+They had sent a messenger for him, and he had
+come. The door was locked. Stefanone and his
+wife whispered together on the landing. In the
+third room, beyond, the nurse was shedding hysterical
+tears over the sleeping child.</p>
+
+<p>The strong man stood stone still with shadowy,
+unblinking eyes, gazing into the dying face. Not
+a muscle moved, not a feature was distorted, his
+breath was regular and slow, for his grief had
+taken hold upon his soul, and his body was unconscious
+of time, as though it were already dead.</p>
+
+<p>She had suffered horrible agonies for two nights
+and one day, and now the end was very near, for
+the wracked nerves could no longer feel. She lay
+on her back, lightly covered, one white arm and
+hand above the coverlet, the other hidden beneath
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The room was very hot, and the sun streamed
+through the narrow aperture of the nearly closed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_216" id="Page_V2_216">[216]</a></span>
+shutters, and made a bright streak on the red
+bricks, for it was morning still.</p>
+
+<p>The purple lids opened, and Gloria looked up.
+There was no shiver now, as she recognized the
+man she feared, for the nerves were almost dead.
+Perhaps there was less fear, for she knew that it
+was almost over. The dark eyes were fixed on his
+with a mysterious, wondering look.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to speak, and his lips moved, but he
+could make no sound, and his chest heaved convulsively,
+once. He knew what she had done, for they
+had told him. He knew, now that he tried to speak
+and could not, that he was half killed by grief.
+She saw the effort and understood, and faintly
+smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>He wrenched the single broken word out of himself
+by an enormous effort, and his throat swelled
+and was dry. Suddenly a single great drop of
+sweat rolled down his pale forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not live," she answered, in a cool, far
+voice beyond suffering, and still she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>The repeated word broke out twice like two sobs,
+but not a feature moved. The dying woman's
+eyelids quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"I was a burden to you," she said faintly and
+distinctly. "You are free now, you have&mdash;only
+the child."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_217" id="Page_V2_217">[217]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His calm broke.</p>
+
+<p>"Gloria, Gloria! In the name of God Almighty,
+do not leave me so!"</p>
+
+<p>He clasped her in his arms and lifted her a little,
+pressing his lips to her face. She was inert as a
+statue. She feared him still, and she felt the
+shiver of horror at his touch, but it could not move
+her limbs any more. Her eyes opened and looked
+into his, very close, but his were shut. The mask
+was gone. The man's whole soul was in his agonized
+face, and his arm shook with her. Her mind
+was clear and she understood. She was still herself,
+acting her play out in the teeth of death.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not live," she said. "I could not be a
+millstone, dragging you down, watching you as
+you killed yourself in working for me. It was to
+be one of us. It was better so."</p>
+
+<p>In his agony he laid his head beside hers on the
+pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"Gloria&mdash;for Christ's sake&mdash;don't leave me&mdash;"
+The deep moan came from his tortured heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring&mdash;the child&mdash;Walter&mdash;" she said very
+faintly.</p>
+
+<p>Even in death she could not bear to be alone
+with him. He straightened himself, stood up, and
+saw the light fading in her eyes. Then, indeed,
+a shiver ran through her and shook her. Then the
+lids opened wide, and she cried out loudly.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick&mdash;I am going&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_218" id="Page_V2_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Rather than that she should not have what she
+wished, he tore himself away and wrenched the
+door open, forgetting that it was locked.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring the child!" he cried, into the face of old
+Nanna, who was standing there, and he pushed her
+towards the door of the other room with one hand,
+while he already turned back to Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>He started, for she was sitting up, with wide eyes
+and outstretched hands, gazing at the patch of
+sunlight on the floor. Dying, she saw the awful
+vision of her dream again, rising stiff and stark
+from the bricks to its upright horror between her
+and the light. Her hands pointed at it and shook,
+and her jaw dropped, but she was motionless as
+she sat.</p>
+
+<p>Nanna, sobbing, came in suddenly, holding up
+the little child straight before her, that it might
+see its mother before she was gone forever. The
+baby hands feebly beat its little sides, and it
+gasped for breath.</p>
+
+<p>Words came from Gloria's open mouth, articulate,
+clear, but very far in sound.</p>
+
+<p>"An evil death on you and all your house!" the
+words said, as though spoken by another.</p>
+
+<p>The outstretched hands sank slowly, as the vision
+laid itself down before her, straight and corpse-like.
+The beautiful head fell back upon Griggs's
+arm, and the eyes met his.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/gs26.jpg" width="350" height="500" alt="&quot;The last great, true note died away.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p. 219." title="&quot;The last great, true note died away.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p. 219." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;The last great, true note died away.&quot;&mdash;Vol. II., p.&nbsp;219.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nanna prayed aloud, holding up the child mechanically,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_219" id="Page_V2_219">[219]</a></span>
+and the small eyes were fixed, horrorstruck,
+upon the bed. A low cry trembled in the
+air. Stefanone, his hat in his hand, stood against
+the door, bowed a little, as though he were in
+church. The cry came again. Then there was a
+sort of struggle.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant Gloria was standing up on the bed
+to her full height. And the hot, still room rang
+with a burst of desperate, ear-breaking song, in
+majestic, passionate, ascending intervals.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Calpasta'">Calpesta</ins> il mio cadavere, ma salva il Trovator!"<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The last great, true note died away. For one
+instant she stood up still, with outstretched hands,
+white, motionless. Then the flame in the dark
+eyes broke and went out, and Gloria fell down
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>"Maria Addolorata! Maria Addolorata!" Nanna
+screamed in deadly terror, as she heard the transcendent
+voice that one time, like a voice from the
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>She sank down, fainting upon the floor, and the
+little child rolled from her slackened arms upon
+the coarse bricks and lay on its face, moaning tremulously.
+No one heeded it.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone, with instinctive horror of death,
+turned and went blindly down the steps, not knowing
+what he had seen, the death notes still ringing
+in his ears.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_220" id="Page_V2_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the bed, the man lay dumb upon the dead
+woman. Only the poor little child seemed to be
+alive, and clutched feebly at the coarse red bricks,
+and moaned and bruised its small face. It bore
+the slender inheritance of fatal life, the inheritance
+of vows broken and of faith outraged, and with it,
+perhaps, the implanted seed of a lifelong terror,
+not remembered, but felt throughout life, as real
+and as deadly as an inheritance of mortal disease.
+Better, perhaps, if death had taken it, too, to the
+lonely grave of the outcast and suicide woman,
+among the rocks, out of earshot of humanity.
+Death makes strange oversights and leaves strange
+gleanings for life, when he has reaped his field and
+housed his harvest.</p>
+
+<p>They would not give Gloria Christian burial, for
+it was known throughout Subiaco that she had
+poisoned herself, and those were still the old days,
+when the Church's rules were the law of the people.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Griggs took the body of the woman he had
+loved, and loved beyond death, and he laid her in
+a deep grave in a hollow of the hillside. Such
+words as he had to speak to those who helped him,
+he spoke quietly, and none could say that they had
+seen the still face moved by sorrow. But as they
+watched him, a human sort of fear took hold of
+them, at his great quiet, and they knew that his
+grief was beyond anything which could be shown
+or understood. It was night, and they filled the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_221" id="Page_V2_221">[221]</a></span>
+grave after he had thrown earth into it with his
+hands. He sent them away, and they left him
+alone with the dead, leaving also one of their lanterns
+upon a stone near by.</p>
+
+<p>All that night he lay on the grave, dumb. Then,
+when the dawn came upon him, he kissed the loose
+earth and stones, and got upon his feet and went
+slowly down the hillside to the town beyond the
+torrent. He went into the house noiselessly, and
+lay down upon the bed on which she had died.
+And so he did for two nights and two days. On
+the third, a great carriage came from Rome, bringing
+twelve men, singers of the Sistine Chapel and
+of the choir of Saint Peter's and of Saint John
+Lateran, twelve men having very beautiful voices,
+as sweet as any in the world. He had sent for
+them when he had been told that she could not
+have Christian burial.</p>
+
+<p>They were talking and laughing together when
+they came, but when they saw his face they grew
+very quiet, and followed him in silence where he
+led them. Two little boys followed them, too,
+wondering what was to happen, and what the thirteen
+men were going to do, all dressed in black,
+walking so steadily together.</p>
+
+<p>When they all came to the hollow in the hillside,
+they saw a mound, as of a grave, amidst the
+stones, and on it there lay a cross of black wood.
+The singers looked at one another in silence, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_222" id="Page_V2_222">[222]</a></span>
+they understood that whoever lay in the grave had
+been refused a place in the churchyard, for some
+great sin. But they said nothing. The man who
+led them stood still at the head of the cross and
+took off his hat, and looked at his twelve companions,
+who uncovered their heads. They had sheets
+of written music with them, and they passed them
+quietly about from one to another and looked
+towards one who was their leader.</p>
+
+<p>Overhead, the summer sky was pale, and there
+were twin mountains of great clouds in the northwest,
+hiding the sun, and in the southeast, whence
+the parching wind was blowing in fierce gusts. It
+blew the dry dust from the clods of earth on the
+grave, and the dust settled on the black clothes of
+the men as they stood near.</p>
+
+<p>The voices struck the first chord softly together,
+and the music for the dead went up to heaven, and
+was borne far across the torrent to the distance in
+the arms of the hot wind. And one voice climbed
+above the others, sweet and clear, as though to
+reach heaven itself; and another sank deep and
+true and soft in the full close of the stave, as
+though it would touch and comfort the heart that
+was quite still at last in the deep earth.</p>
+
+<p>Then one who was young stood a little before
+the rest, a strong, pale singer, with an angel's
+voice. And he sang alone to the sky and the dusty
+rocks and the solemn grave. He sang the 'Cujus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_223" id="Page_V2_223">[223]</a></span>
+animam gementem pertransivit gladius' of the
+Stabat Mater, as none had sung it before him, nor
+perhaps has ever sung it since that day&mdash;he alone,
+without other music.</p>
+
+<p>They came also to the words 'Fac ut anim&aelig;
+donetur Paradisi gloria,' and the word was a name
+to him who listened silently in their midst.</p>
+
+<p>Besides these they sang also a 'Miserere,' and
+last of all, 'Requiem eternam dona eis.'</p>
+
+<p>Then there was silence, and they looked at the
+still face, as though asking what they should do.
+The mysterious eyes met theirs with shadows. The
+pale head bent itself in thanks, twice or thrice, but
+there were no words.</p>
+
+<p>So they turned and left him there on the hillside,
+and went back to the town, awestruck by the vastness
+of the man's sorrow. And afterwards, for
+many years, when any of them heard of a great
+grief, he shook his head and said that he and those
+who had sung with him over a lonely grave in the
+mountains, alone knew what a man could feel and
+yet live.</p>
+
+<p>And Paul Griggs lived through those days, and
+is still alive. His grief could not spend itself,
+but his stern strength took hold of life again, and
+he took the child with him and went back to Rome,
+to work for it from that time forward, and to shield
+it from evil if he could, and to bring it up to be a
+man, ignorant of what had happened in Subiaco<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_224" id="Page_V2_224">[224]</a></span>
+in those summer days, ignorant of the tie that
+made it his, to be a man free from the burden of
+past fates and sins and broken vows and trampled
+faith, and of the death his dead mother had died,
+having a clean name of his own, with which there
+could be no memories of misery and fear and
+horror.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote a few short words to Angus Dalrymple,
+now Lord Redin at last, to tell him the truth as
+far as he knew it. The hand that had laboured so
+bravely for Gloria could hardly trace the words
+that told of her death.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when the summer heat was passed, he took
+little Walter Crowdie with him, hiring an Englishwoman
+to tend the child, and he crossed the ocean
+and gave it to certain kinsfolk of his in America,
+telling them that it was the child of one who had
+been very dear to him, that he had taken it as his
+own, and would provide for it and take it back
+when it should be older. And so he did, and little
+Walter Crowdie grew up with an angel's voice, and
+other gifts which made him famous in his day. But
+many things happened before that time came.</p>
+
+<p>He could do no better than that. For a time he
+strove to earn money with his pen in his own country.
+But the land was still trembling from the
+convulsion of a great war, and there were many
+before him, and he was little known. After a
+year had passed, he saw that he could not then succeed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_225" id="Page_V2_225">[225]</a></span>
+and very heavy at heart he set his face eastward
+again, to toil at his old calling as a correspondent
+for a great London paper, to earn bread
+for himself and for the one living being that he
+loved.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_227" id="Page_V2_227">[227]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Part III.</span></h2>
+
+<h3><i>DONNA FRANCESCA CAMPODONICO.</i></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_229" id="Page_V2_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XLI.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Not</span> long after this Dalrymple returned to Rome,
+after an absence of several years. Family affairs
+had kept him in England and Scotland during his
+daughter's married life with Reanda; and after she
+had left the latter, it was natural that he should
+not wish to be in the same city with her, considering
+the view he took of her actions. Then, after
+he had learned from Griggs's brief note that she
+was dead, he felt that he could not return at once,
+hard and unforgiving as he was. But at last the
+power that attracted him was too strong to be resisted
+any longer, and he yielded to it and came
+back.</p>
+
+<p>He took up his abode in a hotel in the Piazza
+di Spagna, not far from his old lodgings. Long
+as he had lived in Rome, he was a foreigner there
+and liked the foreigners' quarter of the city. He
+intended once more to get a lodging and a servant,
+and to live in his morose solitude as of old, but on
+his first arrival he naturally went to the hotel.
+He did not know whether Griggs were in Rome.
+Reanda was alive, and living at the Palazzetto
+Borgia; for the two had exchanged letters twice a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_230" id="Page_V2_230">[230]</a></span>
+year, written in the constrained tone of mutual
+civility which suited the circumstances in which
+they were placed towards each other.</p>
+
+<p>In Dalrymple's opinion, Reanda had been to
+blame to a certain extent, in having maintained
+his intimacy with Francesca when he was aware
+that it displeased his wife. At the same time, the
+burden of the fault was undoubtedly the woman's,
+and her father felt in a measure responsible for it.
+Whether he felt much more than that it would be
+hard to say. His gloomy nature had spent itself
+in secret sorrow for his wife, with a faithfulness
+of grief which might well atone for many shortcomings.
+It is certain that he was not in any way
+outwardly affected by the news of Gloria's death.
+He had never loved her, she had disgraced him,
+and now she was dead. There was nothing more
+to be said about it.</p>
+
+<p>He was not altogether indifferent to the inheritance
+of title and fortune which had fallen to him
+in his advanced middle age. But if either influenced
+his character, the result was rather an increased
+tendency to live his own life in scorn and
+defiance of society, for it made him conscious that
+he should find even less opposition to his eccentricities
+than in former days, when he had been
+relatively a poor man without any especial claim
+to consideration.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three days after he had arrived in Rome,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_231" id="Page_V2_231">[231]</a></span>
+he went to the Palazzetto Borgia and sent in his
+card, asking to see Francesca Campodonico. In
+order that she might know who he was, he wrote
+his name in pencil, as she would probably not have
+recognized him as Lord Redin. In this he was
+mistaken, for Reanda, who had heard the news,
+had told her of it. She received him in the drawing-room.
+She looked very ill, he thought, and was
+much thinner than in former times, but her manner
+was not changed. They talked upon indifferent
+subjects, and there was a constraint between them.
+Dalrymple broke through it roughly at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever see my daughter after she left her
+husband?" he asked, as though he were inquiring
+about a mere acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca started a little.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she answered. "It would not have been
+easy."</p>
+
+<p>She remembered her interview with Griggs, but
+resolved not to speak of it. She would have
+changed the subject abruptly if he had given her
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly was not to be expected that you
+should," said Lord Redin, thoughtfully. "When
+a woman chooses to break with society, she knows
+perfectly well what she is doing, and one may as
+well leave her to herself."</p>
+
+<p>Francesca was shocked by the cynicism of the
+speech. The colour rose faintly in her cheeks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_232" id="Page_V2_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She was your daughter," she said, reproachfully.
+"Since she is dead, you should speak less
+cruelly of her."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not speak cruelly. I merely stated a fact.
+She disgraced herself and me, and her husband.
+The circumstance that she is dead does not change
+the case, so far as I can see."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know how she died?" asked Francesca,
+moved to righteous anger, and willing to pain him
+if she could.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up suddenly, and bent his shaggy
+brows.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered. "That man Griggs wrote
+me that she had died suddenly. That was all I
+heard."</p>
+
+<p>"She did not die a natural death."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed?"</p>
+
+<p>"She poisoned herself. She could not bear the
+life. It was very dreadful." Francesca's voice
+sank to a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Redin was silent for a few moments, and
+his bony face had a grim look. Perhaps something
+in the dead woman's last act appealed to him, as
+nothing in her life had done.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, please. I should like to know. After
+all, she was my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Francesca, gravely. "She was your
+daughter. She was very unhappy with Paul
+Griggs, and she found out very soon that she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_233" id="Page_V2_233">[233]</a></span>
+made a dreadful mistake. She loved her husband,
+after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Like a woman!" interjected Lord Redin, half
+unconsciously.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca paid no attention to the remark, except,
+perhaps, that she raised her eyebrows a
+little.</p>
+
+<p>"They went out to spend the summer at Subiaco&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"At Subiaco?" Dalrymple's steely blue eyes
+fixed themselves in a look of extreme attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, during the heat. They lodged in the
+house of a man called Stefanone&mdash;a wine-seller&mdash;a
+very respectable place."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Redin had started nervously at the name,
+but he recovered himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Very respectable," he said, in an odd tone.</p>
+
+<p>"You know the house?" asked Francesca, in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well indeed. I was there nearly five and
+twenty years ago. I supposed that Stefanone was
+dead by this time."</p>
+
+<p>"No. He and his wife are alive, and take
+lodgers."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, but how do you know all this?"
+asked Lord Redin, with sudden curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been there," answered Francesca. "I
+have often been to the convent. You know that
+one of our family is generally abbess. A Cardinal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_234" id="Page_V2_234">[234]</a></span>
+Braccio was archbishop, too, a good many years
+ago. Casa Braccio owns a good deal of property
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I know that you are of the family."</p>
+
+<p>"My name was Francesca Braccio," said Francesca,
+quietly. "Of course I have always known
+Subiaco, and every one there knows Stefanone, and
+the story of his daughter who ran away with an
+Englishman many years ago, and never was heard
+of again."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Redin grew a trifle paler.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" he exclaimed. "Does every one know
+that story?"</p>
+
+<p>There was something so constrained in his tone
+that Francesca looked at him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;in Subiaco," she answered. "But
+Gloria&mdash;" she lingered a little sadly on the name&mdash;"Gloria
+wrote letters to her husband from there
+and begged him to go and see her."</p>
+
+<p>"He could hardly be expected to do that," said
+Lord Redin, his hard tone returning. "Did you
+advise him to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"He consulted me," answered Francesca, rather
+coldly. "I told him to follow his own impulse.
+He did not go. He did not believe that she was
+sincere."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not blame him. When a woman has done
+that sort of thing, there is no reason for believing
+her."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_235" id="Page_V2_235">[235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He should have gone. I should have influenced
+him, I think, and I did wrong. She wrote him
+one more letter and then killed herself. She
+suffered horribly and only died two days afterwards.
+Shall I tell you more?"</p>
+
+<p>"If there is more to tell," said Lord Redin, less
+hardly.</p>
+
+<p>"There is not much. I went out there last year.
+They had refused her Christian burial. Paul
+Griggs bought a piece of land amongst the rock,
+on the other side of the torrent, and buried her
+there. It is surrounded by a wall, and there is a
+plain slab without a name. There are flowers.
+He pays Stefanone to have it cared for. They told
+me all they knew&mdash;it is too terrible. She died
+singing&mdash;she was out of her mind. It must have
+been dreadful. Old Nanna, Stefanone's wife, was
+in the room, and fainted with terror. It seems
+that poor Gloria, oddly enough, had an extraordinary
+resemblance to that unfortunate nun of our
+family who was burned to death in the convent, and
+whom Nanna had often seen. She sang like her,
+too&mdash;at the last minute Nanna thought she saw
+poor sister Maria Addolorata standing up dead and
+singing. It was rather strange."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Redin said nothing. He had bowed his
+head so that Francesca could not see his face, but
+she saw that his hands were trembling violently.
+She thought that she had misjudged the man, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_236" id="Page_V2_236">[236]</a></span>
+that he was really very deeply moved by the story
+of his daughter's death. Doubtless, his emotion
+had made him wish to control himself, and he had
+overshot the mark and spoken cruelly only in order
+to seem calm. No one had ever spoken to him of
+his wife, and even now he could hardly bear to
+hear her name. It was long before he looked up.
+Then he rose almost immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you allow me to come and see you occasionally?"
+he asked, with a gentleness not at all
+like his usual manner.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca was touched at last, misunderstanding
+the cause of the change. She told him to come as
+often as he pleased. As he was going, he remembered
+that he had not asked after his son-in-law.
+Reanda had always seemed to belong to Francesca,
+and it was natural enough that he should inquire
+of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Reanda to be found?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He is very ill," said Francesca, in a low voice.
+"I am afraid you cannot see him."</p>
+
+<p>"Where does he live? I will at least inquire.
+I am sorry to hear that he is ill."</p>
+
+<p>"He lives here," she answered with a little hesitation.
+"He is in his old rooms upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Yes&mdash;thank you." Their eyes met for a
+moment. Lord Redin's glittered, but Francesca's
+were clear and true. "I am sure you take good
+care of him," he added. "Good-bye."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_237" id="Page_V2_237">[237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He left her alone, and when he was gone, she sat
+down wearily and laid her head back against a
+cushion, with half-closed eyes. Her lips were
+almost colourless, and her mouth had grown ten
+years older.</p>
+
+<p>Reanda was dying, and she knew it, and with
+him the light was going out of her life, as it had
+gone out long ago from Dalrymple's, as it had gone
+out of the life of Paul Griggs. The idea crossed
+her mind that these two men, with herself, were
+linked and bound together by some strange fatality
+which she could not understand, but from which
+there was no escape, and which was bringing them
+slowly and surely to the blank horror of lonely
+old age.</p>
+
+<p>The same thought occurred to Lord Redin as
+he slowly threaded the streets, going back to his
+hotel, to his lonely dinner, his lonely evening, his
+lonely, sleepless night. He alone of the three now
+knew all that there was to know, and in the chronicle
+of his far memories all led back to that day at
+Subiaco, long ago, when he had first knocked at
+the convent gate&mdash;beyond that, to the evening
+when poor Annetta had told him of the beautiful
+nun with the angel's voice. Many lives had been
+wrecked since that first day, and every one of them
+owed its ruin to him. He felt strangely drawn to
+Francesca Campodonico. There was something in
+her face that very faintly reminded him of his dead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_238" id="Page_V2_238">[238]</a></span>
+wife, her kinswoman, and of his dead daughter,
+another of her race. His gloomy northern nature
+felt the fatality of it all. He never could repent
+of what he had done. The golden light of his one
+short happiness shone through the shrouding veil
+of fatal time. In his own eyes, with his beliefs,
+he had not even sinned in taking what he had loved
+so well. But all the sorrow he saw, came from
+that deed. Francesca Campodonico's eyes were as
+clear and true as her heart. But he knew that
+Reanda's life was everything on earth to her, and
+he guessed that she was to lose that, too, before
+long. He would willingly have parted with his
+own, but through all his being there was a rough,
+manly courage that forbade the last act of fear,
+and there was a stern old Scottish belief that it
+was wrong&mdash;plainly wrong.</p>
+
+<p>He did not wish to see Paul Griggs any more
+than he had wished to see his daughter after she
+had left her husband. But no thought of vengeance
+crossed his mind. It seemed to him fruitless
+to think of avenging himself upon fate; for,
+after all, it was fate that had done the dire mischief.
+Possibly, he thought, as he walked slowly
+towards his hotel, fate had brought him back to
+Rome now, to deal with him as she had dealt with
+his. He should be glad of it, for he found little
+in life that was not gloomy and lonely beyond any
+words. He did not know why he had come. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_239" id="Page_V2_239">[239]</a></span>
+had acted upon an impulse in going to see Francesca
+that day.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the Corso, instead of going to
+his hotel he walked down the street in the direction
+of the Piazza del Popolo. He wished to see the
+house in which Gloria had lived with Griggs, and
+he remembered the street and the number from her
+having written to him when she wanted money.
+He reached the corner of the Via della Frezza, and
+turned down, looking up at the numbers as he went
+along. He glanced at the little wine shop on the
+left, with its bush, its red glass lantern, and its
+rush-bottomed stools set out by the door. In the
+shadow within he saw the gleam of silver buttons
+on a dark blue jacket. There was nothing uncommon
+in the sight.</p>
+
+<p>He found the house, paused, looked up at the
+windows, and looked twice at the number.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you seek some one?" inquired the one-eyed
+cobbler, resting his black hands on his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Did Mr. Paul Griggs ever live here?" asked
+Lord Redin.</p>
+
+<p>"Many years," answered the cobbler, laconically.</p>
+
+<p>"Where does he live now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Always here, except when he is not here.
+Third floor, on the left. You can ring the bell.
+Who knows? Perhaps he will open. I do not
+wish to tell lies."</p>
+
+<p>The old man grunted, bent down over the shoe,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_240" id="Page_V2_240">[240]</a></span>
+and ran his awl through the sole. He was profoundly
+attached to Paul Griggs, who had always been kind to
+him, and since Gloria's death he defended him from
+visitors with more determination than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Redin stood still and said nothing. In ten
+seconds the cobbler looked up with a surly frown.</p>
+
+<p>"If you wish to go up, go up," he growled. "If
+not, favour me by getting out of my light."</p>
+
+<p>The Scotchman looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not remember me," he observed.
+"I used to come here with the Signore."</p>
+
+<p>"Well? I have told you. If you want him,
+there is the staircase."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I do not want him," said Lord Redin,
+and he turned away abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"As you please," growled the cobbler without
+looking up again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_241" id="Page_V2_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XLII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paul Griggs</span> had gone back to the house in the
+Via della Frezza after his return from America,
+and lived alone in the little apartment in which
+the happy days of his life had been spent. He
+was a man able to live two lives,&mdash;the one in the
+past, the other in the active present. It was his
+instinct to be alone in his sorrow, and alone in the
+struggle which lay before him, for himself and his
+child. But he would have with him all that could
+make the memory of Gloria real. The reality of
+such things softened with their contrast the hardness
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>He had taken the same rooms again. Out of
+boxes and trunks stored in a garret of the house,
+he had taken many things which had belonged to
+Gloria. Alone, he had arranged the rooms as they
+used to be. His writing-table stood in the same
+place, and near it was Gloria's chair; beside it,
+the little stand with her needlework, her silks, her
+scissors, and her thimble, all as it used to be. A
+novel she had once read when sitting there lay upon
+the chair. Many little objects which had belonged
+to her were all in their accustomed places. On<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_242" id="Page_V2_242">[242]</a></span>
+the mantelpiece the cheap American clock ticked
+loudly as in old days.</p>
+
+<p>Day after day, as of old, he sat in his place at
+work. He had made the room so alive with her
+that sometimes, looking up from a long spell of
+writing, he forgot, and stared an instant at the
+bedroom door, and listened for her footstep. Those
+were his happiest moments, though each was killed
+in turn by the vision of a lonely grave among rocks.</p>
+
+<p>With intensest longing he called her back to
+him. In his sleep, the last words he had spoken
+to her were spoken again by his unconscious lips
+in the still, dark night. Everything in him called
+her, his living soul and his strong bodily self.
+There were times when he knew that if he opened
+his eyes, shut to see her, he should see her really,
+there in her chair. He looked, trembling, and
+there was nothing. In dreams he sought her and
+could not find her, though he wandered in dark
+places, across endless wastes of broken clods of
+earth and broken stone. It was as though her
+grave covered the whole world round, and his path
+lay on the shadowed arms of an infinite great cross.
+And again the grey dawn awoke him from the
+search, to feel that, for pity's sake, she must be
+alive and near him. But he was always alone.</p>
+
+<p>Silent, iron-browed, iron-handed, he faced the
+world alone, doing all that was required of him,
+and more also. As he had said to Gloria in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_243" id="Page_V2_243">[243]</a></span>
+very room, he was building up a superiority for
+himself, since genius was not his. He had in the
+rough ore of his strength the metal which some
+few men receive as a birth-gift from nature, ready
+smelted and refined, ready for them to coin at a
+single stroke, and throw broadcast to the applauding
+world. He had not much, perhaps, but he had
+something of the true ore, and in the furnace of his
+untiring energy he would burn out the dross and
+find the precious gold at last. It could not be for
+her, now. It was not for himself, but it was to
+be for the little child, growing up in a far country
+with a clean name&mdash;to be his father's friend, and
+nothing more, but to be happy, for the dead
+woman's sake who bore him.</p>
+
+<p>As in all that made a part of Paul Griggs, there
+was in his memory of Gloria and in his sorrow for
+her that element of endurance which was the foundation
+of his nature. That portion of his life was
+finished, and there could never be anything like it
+again; but it was to be always present with him,
+so long as he lived. He was sure of that. It
+would always be in his power to close his eyes and
+believe that she was near him. If it were possible,
+he loved her more dead than he had loved her
+living.</p>
+
+<p>And she had loved him to the last, and had
+given her life in the mad thought of lightening his
+burden. Her last words to him had told him so.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_244" id="Page_V2_244">[244]</a></span>
+Her last wish had been to see the child. And the
+greatest sacrifice he could now make to her was to
+separate himself from the child, and let him grow
+up to look upon the man who provided for him as
+his friend, but as nothing more. It was an exaggerated
+idea, perhaps, though it was by far the
+wisest course. Yet in doing what he did, Griggs
+deprived himself for months at a time of something
+that was of her, and he did it for her sake. He
+knew that in her heart there had been the unspoken
+shame of her ruined life. Shame should never
+come near little Walter Crowdie. The secret could
+be kept, and Paul Griggs meant to keep it, as he
+kept many things from the world.</p>
+
+<p>All his lonely life grew in the perfect memory,
+cut short though it was by fate's cruel scythe-stroke.
+Even that one fearful day held no shadow
+of unfaithfulness. She had been mad, but she had
+loved him. She had done a deed of horror upon
+herself, but she had loved him, and madly had
+done it for his sake. She had laid down her life
+for him. All that he could do would be nothing
+compared with that. All that he could tear from
+the world and lay tenderly as an offering at her
+feet would be but a handful of dust in comparison
+with what she had done in the madness of love.</p>
+
+<p>His heart strings wound themselves about their
+treasure, closer and closer, stronger and stronger.
+The two natures that strove together in him, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_245" id="Page_V2_245">[245]</a></span>
+natures of body and soul, were at one with her,
+and drew life from her though she was gone. It
+seemed impossible that they could ever again part
+and smite one another for the mastery, as of old,
+for one sorrow had overwhelmed them both, and
+together they knew the depths of one grief.</p>
+
+<p>Again, as of old, he defied fate. Death could
+take the child from him, but could not separate
+the three in death or life. So long as the child
+lived, to do or die for him was the question, while
+life should last. But Paul Griggs defied fate, for
+fate's grim hand could not uproot his heart from
+the strong place of his great dead love, to buffet it
+and tear it again. He was alone, bodily, but he
+was safe forever.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the dimness of twilight shadows the pale
+face came to him, and the sweet lips kissed his; in
+a light not earthly the dark eyes lightened, and the
+red auburn hair gleamed and fell about him. In
+the darkness, a tender hand stole softly upon his,
+and words yet more tender stirred the stillness.
+He knew that she was near him, close to him, with
+him. The truth of what had been made the half
+dream all true. Only in his sleep he could not find
+her, and was wandering ever over a dreary grave
+that covered the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>So his life went on with little change, inwardly
+or outwardly, from day to day, in the absolute
+security from danger which the dead give us of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_246" id="Page_V2_246">[246]</a></span>
+themselves. The faith that had gone beyond her
+death could go beyond his own life, too. He defied
+fate.</p>
+
+<p>Then fate, silent, relentless, awful, knocked at
+his door.</p>
+
+<p>He was at work as usual. It was a bright winter's
+day, and the high sun of the late morning
+streamed across one corner of his writing-table.
+He was thinking of nothing but his writing, and
+upon that his thoughts were closely intent in that
+everlasting struggle to do better which had nearly
+driven poor Gloria mad.</p>
+
+<p>The little jingling bell rang and thumped against
+the outer door to which it was fastened. He paid
+no attention to it, till it rang again, an instant
+later. Then he looked up and waited, listening.
+Again, again, and again he heard it, at equal intervals,
+five times in all. That was the old cobbler's
+signal, and the only one to which Griggs
+ever responded. He laid down his pen and went
+to the door. The one-eyed man, his shoemaker's
+apron twisted round his waist, stood on the landing,
+and gave him a small, thick package, tied with
+a black string, under which was thrust a note.
+Griggs took it without a word, and the bandy-legged
+old cobbler swung away from the door with
+a satisfied grunt.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs took the parcel back to his work-room,
+and stood by the window looking at the address on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_247" id="Page_V2_247">[247]</a></span>
+the note. He recognized Francesca Campodonico's
+handwriting, though he had rarely seen it, and he
+broke the seal with considerable curiosity, for he
+could not imagine why Donna Francesca should
+write to him. He even wondered at her knowing
+that he was in Rome. He had never spoken with
+her since that day long ago, when she had sent for
+him and begged him to take Gloria back to her
+father. He read the note slowly. It was in
+Italian, and the language was rather formal.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Signore</span>:&mdash;My old and dear friend, Signor
+Angelo Reanda, died the day before yesterday
+after a long illness. During the last hours of his
+life he asked me to do him a service, and I gave
+him the solemn promise which I fulfil in sending
+you the accompanying package. You will see that
+it was sealed by him and addressed to you by himself,
+probably before he was taken ill, and he saw
+it before he died and said that it was the one he
+meant me to send. That was all he told me regarding
+it, and I am wholly ignorant of the contents.
+I have ascertained that you are in Rome, and are
+living, as formerly, in the Via della Frezza, and
+to that address I send the parcel. Pray inform me
+that you have received it.</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me, Signore, with perfect esteem,</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+"<span class="smcap">Francesca Campodonico</span>."<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Griggs read the note twice through to the end,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_248" id="Page_V2_248">[248]</a></span>
+and laid it upon the table. Then he thrust his
+hands into his pockets, and turned thoughtfully
+to the window without touching the parcel, of
+which he had not even untied the black string.</p>
+
+<p>So Reanda was dead at last. It was nothing to
+him, now, though it might have meant much if
+the man had died two years earlier. Living people
+were very little to Paul Griggs. They might as
+well be dead, he thought. Nevertheless, the bald
+fact that Reanda was gone, made him thoughtful.
+Another figure had disappeared out of his life,
+though it had not meant very much. He believed,
+and had always believed, that Reanda had loved
+Francesca in secret, though she had treated him as
+a mere friend, as a protectress should treat one
+who needs her protection.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs turned and took up the note to look at it
+keenly, for he believed himself a judge of handwriting,
+and he thought that he might detect in
+hers the indications of any great suffering. The
+lines ran down a little at the end, but otherwise
+the large, careful hand was the same as ever,
+learned in a convent and little changed since, even
+as the woman herself had changed little. She was
+the same always, simple, honest, strangely maidenlike,
+thoroughly good.</p>
+
+<p>He turned to the window again. So Reanda was
+dead. He would not find Gloria, to whatsoever
+place he was gone. The shadow of a smile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_249" id="Page_V2_249">[249]</a></span>
+wreathed itself about the mouth of the lonely man&mdash;the
+last that was there for a long time after that
+day. Gloria was dead, but Gloria was his, and he
+hers, for ever and ever. Neither heaven nor hell
+could tear up his heart nor loosen the strong hold
+of all of him that clung to her and had grown about
+her and through her, till he and she were quite
+one.</p>
+
+<p>Then, all at once, he wondered what it could be
+that Reanda had wished to send him from beyond
+the grave. He turned, took the parcel, and snapped
+the black string with his fingers, and took off the
+paper. Within was the parcel, wrapped in a second
+paper and firmly tied with broad tape. A few
+words were written on the outside.</p>
+
+<p>"To be given to Paul Griggs when I am dead.
+A. R."</p>
+
+<p>The superscription told nothing, but he looked
+at it curiously as one does at such things, when
+the sender is beyond answer. He cut the white
+tape, for it was tied so tightly that he could not
+slip a finger under it to break it. There was something
+of hard determination in the way it was tied.</p>
+
+<p>It contained letters in their envelopes, as they
+had reached Reanda through the post, all of the
+same size, laid neatly one upon the other&mdash;a score
+or more of them.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs felt his hand shake, for he recognized
+Gloria's writing. His first impulse was to burn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_250" id="Page_V2_250">[250]</a></span>
+the whole package, as it was, reverently, as something
+which had belonged to Gloria, in which he
+had no part, or share, or right. He laid his hand
+upon the pile of letters, and looked at the small
+fire to see whether it were burning well. Under
+his hand he felt something hard inside the uppermost
+envelope. His fate was upon him&mdash;the fate
+he had so often defied to do its worst, since all that
+he had was dead and was his forever.</p>
+
+<p>Without another thought, he took from the envelope
+the letter it contained, and the hard thing
+which was inside the letter. He held it a moment
+in his hand, and it flamed in the beam of sunlight
+that fell across the end of the table, and dazzled
+him. Then he realized what it was. It was
+Gloria's wedding ring, and twisted round and
+round it and in and out of it was a lock of her red
+auburn hair, serpent-like, flaming in the sunshine,
+with a hundred little tongues that waved and
+moved softly under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>An icy chill smote him in the neck, and his
+strong limbs shook to his feet as he laid the thing
+down upon the corner of the table. There was a
+fearful fascination in it. The red gold hairs stirred
+and moved in the sunlight still, even when he no
+longer breathed upon them. It was her hair, and
+it seemed alive.</p>
+
+<p>In his other hand he still held the letter. Fate
+had him now, and would not let him go while he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_251" id="Page_V2_251">[251]</a></span>
+could feel. Again and again the cruel chill smote
+him in the back. He opened the doubled sheet,
+and saw the date and the name of the place,&mdash;Subiaco,&mdash;and
+the first words&mdash;'Heart of my heart,
+this is my last cry to you'&mdash;and it was to Angelo
+Reanda.</p>
+
+<p>Rigid and feeling as though great icy hands were
+drawing him up by the neck from the ground, he
+stood still and read every word, with all the message
+of loathing and abject fear and horror of his
+touch, which every word brought him, from the
+dead, through the other dead.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, regularly, without wavering, moved by
+a power not his own, his hands took the other letters
+and opened them, and his eyes read all the
+words, from the last to the first. One by one the
+sheets fell upon the table, and all alone in the midst
+the lock of red auburn hair sent up its little lambent
+flame in the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Griggs stood upright, stark with the stress
+of rending soul and breaking heart.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood there, he was aware of a man in
+black beside him, like himself, ghastly to see, with
+shadows and fires for eyes, and thin, parted lips
+that showed wolfish teeth, strong, stern, with iron
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"You are dead," said his own voice out of the
+other's mouth. "You are dead, and I am Gorlias."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_252" id="Page_V2_252">[252]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then the strong teeth were set and the lips
+closed, and the gladiator's unmatched arms wound
+themselves upon the other's strength, with grip
+and clutch and strain not of earthly men.</p>
+
+<p>Silent and terrible, they wrestled in fight, arm
+to arm, bone to bone, breath to breath. Hour
+after hour they strove in the still room. The sun
+went westering away, the shadows deepened. The
+night came stealing black and lonely through the
+window. Foot to foot, breast to breast, in the
+dark, they bowed themselves one upon the other,
+dumb in the agony of their reeling strife.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the night, in the cold room, Paul Griggs
+felt the carpet under his hands as he lay upon his
+back.</p>
+
+<p>His heart was broken.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_253" id="Page_V2_253">[253]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XLIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lord Redin</span> had barely glanced at the man in
+the blue jacket with silver buttons, whom he had
+seen in the deep shadow of the little wine shop as
+he strolled down the Via della Frezza. But Stefanone
+had seen him and had gone to the door as he
+passed, watching him when he stood talking to the
+one-eyed cobbler, and keeping his keen eyes on him
+as he passed again on his homeward way. And
+all the way to the hotel in the Piazza di Spagna
+Stefanone had followed him at a distance, watching
+the great loose-jointed frame and the slightly stooping
+head, till the Scotchman disappeared under the
+archway, past the porter, who stood aside, his gold-laced
+cap in his hand, bowing low to the 'English
+lord.'</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone waited a few moments and then accosted
+the porter civilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know if the proprietor wishes to buy
+some good wine of last year, at a cheap rate?" he
+asked. "You understand. I am of the country.
+I cannot go in and look for the proprietor. But
+you are doubtless the director and you manage
+these things for him. That is why I ask you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_254" id="Page_V2_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The porter smiled at the flattery, but said that he
+believed wine had been bought for the whole year.</p>
+
+<p>"The hotel is doubtless full of rich foreigners,"
+observed Stefanone. "It is indeed beautiful. I
+should prefer it to the Palazzo Borghese. Is it
+not full?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite full," answered the porter, proud of the
+establishment.</p>
+
+<p>"For instance," said Stefanone, "I saw a great
+signore going in, just before I took the liberty of
+speaking with you. I am sure that he is a great
+English signore. Not perhaps a mylord. But a
+great signore, having much money."</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you think that?" inquired the
+porter, with a superior smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, the reasons are two. First, you bowed to
+him, as though he were some personage, and you
+of course know who he is. Secondly, he lifted his
+hat to you. He is therefore a real signore, as
+good perhaps as a Roman prince. We say a
+proverb in the country&mdash;'to salute is courtesy, to
+answer is duty.' Therefore when any one salutes
+a real signore, he answers and lifts his hat.
+These are the reasons why I say this one must be
+a great one."</p>
+
+<p>"For that matter, you are right," laughed the
+porter. "That signore is an English lord. What
+a combination! You have guessed it. His name
+is Lord Redin."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_255" id="Page_V2_255">[255]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stefanone's sharp eyes fixed themselves vacantly,
+for he did not wish to betray his surprise at not
+hearing the name he had expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh!" he exclaimed. "Names? What are they,
+when one is a prince. Prince of this. Duke of
+that. Our Romans are full of names. I daresay
+this signore has four or five."</p>
+
+<p>But the porter knew of no other, and presently
+Stefanone departed, wondering whether he had
+made a mistake, after all, and recalling the features
+of the man he had followed to compare them with
+those younger ones he remembered so distinctly.
+He went back to the Via della Frezza and drank a
+glass of wine. Then he filled the glass again and
+carried it carefully across the street to his friend
+the cobbler.</p>
+
+<p>"Drink," he said. "It will do you good.
+A drop of wine at sunset gives force to the
+stomach."</p>
+
+<p>The one-eyed man looked up, and smiled at his
+friend, a phenomenon rarely observed on his
+wrinkled and bearded face. He shrugged one
+round shoulder, by way of assent, held his head
+a little on one side and stretched out his black
+hand with the glass in it, to the light. He tasted
+it, smelt it, and looked up at Stefanone before he
+drank in earnest.</p>
+
+<p>"Black soul!" he exclaimed by way of an
+approving asseveration. "This is indeed wine!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_256" id="Page_V2_256">[256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He took it for vinegar!" observed Stefanone,
+speaking to the air.</p>
+
+<p>"It is wine," answered the cobbler when he had
+drained the glass. "It is a consolation."</p>
+
+<p>Then they began to talk together, and Stefanone
+questioned him about his interview with the tall
+gentleman an hour earlier. The cobbler really
+knew nothing about him, though he remembered
+having seen him several times, years ago, before
+Gloria had come.</p>
+
+<p>"You know nothing," said Stefanone. "That
+signore is the father of Sor Paolo's signora, who
+died in my house."</p>
+
+<p>"You are joking," returned the cobbler, gravely.
+"He would have come to see his daughter while
+she lived&mdash;requiescat!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I say that I am not joking. Do you wish
+to hear the truth? Well. You have much confidence
+with Sor Paolo. Tell him that the father of
+the poor Signora Gloria came to the door and asked
+questions. You shall hear what he will say. He
+will say that it is possible. Then he will ask you
+about him. You will tell him, so and so&mdash;a very
+tall signore, all made of pieces that swing loosely
+when he walks, with a beard like the Moses of the
+fountain, and hard blue eyes that strike you like
+two balls from a gun, and hair that is neither red
+nor white, and a bony face like an old horse."</p>
+
+<p>"It is true," said the cobbler, reflectively. "It
+is he. It is his picture."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_257" id="Page_V2_257">[257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You will also say that he is now an English
+lord, but that formerly they called him Sor Angoscia.
+You, who are friends with Sor Paolo, you
+should tell him this. It may be that Sor Angoscia
+wishes him evil. Who knows? In this world the
+combinations are so many!"</p>
+
+<p>It was long before the cobbler got an opportunity
+of speaking with Griggs, and when he had the
+chance, he forgot all about it, though Stefanone
+reminded him of it from time to time. But when
+he at last spoke of the matter he was surprised to
+find that Stefanone had been quite right, as Griggs
+admitted without the least hesitation. He told
+Stefanone so, and the peasant was satisfied, though
+he had long been positive that he had found his
+man at last, and recognized him in spite of his
+beard and his age.</p>
+
+<p>After that Stefanone haunted the Piazza di
+Spagna in the morning, talking a little with the
+models who used to stand there in their mountain
+costumes to be hired by painters in the days when
+pictures of them were the fashion. Many of them
+came from the neighbourhood of Subiaco, and knew
+Stefanone by sight. When Lord Redin came out
+of the hotel, as he generally did between eleven
+and twelve if the day were fine, Stefanone put his
+pipe out, stuck it into his breeches' pocket with
+his brass-handled clasp-knife, and strolled away a
+hundred yards behind his enemy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_258" id="Page_V2_258">[258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If Lord Redin noticed him once or twice, it was
+merely to observe that men still came to Rome
+wearing the old-fashioned dress of the respectable
+peasants. Being naturally fearless, and at present
+wholly unsuspicious, it never struck him that any
+one could be dogging his footsteps whenever he
+went out of his hotel. In the evening he went out
+very little and then generally in a carriage. Two
+or three times, on a Sunday, he walked over to
+Saint Peter's and listened to the music at Vespers,
+as many foreigners used to do. Stefanone followed
+him into the church and watched him from a distance.
+Once the peasant saw Donna Francesca,
+whom he knew by sight as a member of the Braccio
+family, sitting within the great gate of the Chapel
+of the Choir, where the service was held. Lord
+Redin always followed the frequented streets,
+which led in an almost direct line from the Piazza
+di Spagna by the Via Condotti to the bridge of
+Saint Angelo. It was the nearest way. He never
+went back to the Via della Frezza, for he had no
+desire to see Paul Griggs, and his curiosity had been
+satisfied by once looking at the house in which his
+daughter had lived. He spent his evenings alone
+in his rooms with a bottle of wine and a book.
+Luxury had become a habit with him, and he now
+preferred a draught of Ch&acirc;teau Lafitte to the rough
+Roman wine barely a year old, while three or four
+glasses of a certain brandy, twenty years in bottle,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_259" id="Page_V2_259">[259]</a></span>
+which he had discovered in the hotel, were a necessary
+condition of his comfort. He had the intention
+of going out one evening, in cloak and soft
+hat, as of old, to dine in his old corner at the
+Falcone, but he put it off from day to day, feeling
+no taste for the coarser fare and the rougher drink
+when the hour came.</p>
+
+<p>He often went to see Francesca Campodonico in
+the middle of the day, at which hour the Roman
+ladies used to be visible to their more intimate
+friends. An odd sort of sympathy had grown up
+between the two, though they scarcely ever alluded
+to past events, and then only by an accident which
+both regretted. Francesca exercised a refining
+influence upon the gloomy Scotchman, and as he
+knew her better, he even took the trouble to be less
+rough and cynical when he was with her. In
+character she was utterly different from his dead
+wife, but there was something of family resemblance
+between the two which called up memories
+very dear to him.</p>
+
+<p>Her influence softened him. In his wandering
+life he had more than once formed acquaintances
+with men of tastes more or less similar to his own,
+which might have ripened into friendships for a
+man of less morose character. But in that, he and
+Paul Griggs were very much alike. They found
+an element in every acquaintance which roused
+their distrust, and as men to men they were both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_260" id="Page_V2_260">[260]</a></span>
+equally incapable of making a confidence. Dalrymple's
+life had not brought him into close
+relations with any woman except his wife. For
+her sake he had kept all others at a distance in a
+strange jealousy of his own heart which had made
+her for him the only woman in the world. Then,
+too, he had hated, for her, the curiosity of those
+who had evidently wished to know her story. That
+had been always a secret. He had told it to his
+father, and his father had died with it. No one
+else had ever known whence Maria had come, nor
+what her name had been. If Captain Crowdie had
+ever guessed the truth, which was doubtful, he
+had held his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>But Angus Dalrymple was no longer the man he
+had been in those days. He had changed very
+much in the past two or three years; for though
+he had almost outlived the excesses into which he
+had fallen in his first sorrow, his hardy constitution
+had been shaken, if not weakened, by them.
+Physically his nerves were almost as good as ever,
+but morally he was not the same man. He felt
+the need of sympathy and confidence, which with
+such natures is the first sign of breaking down, and
+of the degeneration of pride.</p>
+
+<p>That was probably the secret of what he felt
+when he was with Francesca. She had that rarest
+quality in women, too, which commands men without
+inspiring love. It is very hard to explain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_261" id="Page_V2_261">[261]</a></span>
+what that quality is, but most men who have lived
+much and seen much have met with it at least once
+in their lives.</p>
+
+<p>There is a sort of manifested goodness for which
+the average man of the world has a profound and
+unreasonable contempt. And there is another sort
+which most wholly commands the respect of that
+man who has lived hardest. From a religious
+point of view, both may be equally real and conducive
+to salvation. The cynic, the worn out man
+of the world, the man whose heart is broken, all
+look upon the one as a weakness and the other as a
+strength. Perhaps there is more humanity in the
+one than in the other. A hundred women may
+rebuke a man for something he has done, and he
+will smile at the reproach, though he may smile
+sadly. The one will say to him the same words,
+and he will be gravely silent and will feel that she
+is right and will like her the better for it ever
+afterwards. And she is not, as a rule, the woman
+whom such men would love.</p>
+
+<p>"I have never before met a woman whom I
+should wish to have for my friend," said Lord
+Redin, one day when he was alone with Francesca.
+"I daresay I am not at all the kind of man you
+would select for purposes of friendship," he added,
+with a short laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca smiled a little at the frankness of the
+words, and shook her head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_262" id="Page_V2_262">[262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not," she said. "Who knows? Life
+brings strange changes when one thinks that one
+knows it best."</p>
+
+<p>"It has brought strange things to me," answered
+Lord Redin.</p>
+
+<p>Then he was silent for a time. He felt the
+strong desire to speak out, for no good reason or
+purpose, and to tell her the story of his life. She
+would be horrorstruck at first. He fancied he
+could see the expression which would come to her
+face. But he held his peace, for she had not met
+him half-way, and he was ashamed of the weakness
+that was upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said thoughtfully, after a little
+pause. "You must have had a strange life, and a
+very unhappy one. You speak of friendship as
+men speak who are in earnest, because there is no
+other hope for them. I know something of that."</p>
+
+<p>She ceased, and her clear eyes turned sadly away
+from him.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you do," he answered softly.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him again, and she liked him better
+than ever before, and pitied him sincerely. She
+had discovered that with all his faults he was not
+a bad man, as men go, for she did not know of that
+one deed of his youth which to her would have
+seemed a monstrous crime of sacrilege, beyond all
+forgiveness on earth or in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Then she began to speak of other things, for her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_263" id="Page_V2_263">[263]</a></span>
+own words, and his, had gone too near her heart,
+and presently he left her and strolled homeward
+through the sunny streets. He walked slowly and
+thoughtfully, unconscious of the man in a blue
+jacket with silver buttons, who followed him and
+watched him with keen, unwinking eyes set under
+heavy brows.</p>
+
+<p>But Stefanone was growing impatient, and his
+knife was every day a little sharper as he whetted
+it thoughtfully upon a bit of smooth oilstone
+which he carried in his pocket. Would the Englishman
+ever turn down into some quiet street or
+lane where no one would be looking? And Stefanone's
+square face grew thinner and his aquiline
+features more and more eagle-like, till the one-eyed
+cobbler noticed the change, and spoke of it.</p>
+
+<p>"You are consuming yourself for some female,"
+he said. "You have white hair. This is a shameful
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>But Stefanone laughed, instead of resenting the
+speech&mdash;a curiously nervous laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What would you have?" he replied. "We
+are men, and the devil is everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>As he sat on the doorstep by the cobbler's bench,
+which was pushed far forward to get the afternoon
+light, he took up the short sharp shoemaker's
+knife, looked at it, held it in his hands and pared
+his coarse nails with it, whistling a little tune.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a good knife," he observed carelessly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_264" id="Page_V2_264">[264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The cobbler looked up and saw what he was
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>"Black soul!" he cried out angrily. "That is
+my welt-knife, like a razor, and he pares his hoofs
+with it!"</p>
+
+<p>But Stefanone dropped it into the little box of
+tools on the front of the bench, and whistled softly.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to me a silly boy!" said the cobbler,
+still wrathful.</p>
+
+<p>"Apoplexy, how you talk!" answered Stefanone.
+"But I seem so to myself, sometimes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_265" id="Page_V2_265">[265]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XLIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> life of Paul Griggs was not less lonely than
+it had been before the day on which he had received
+and read Gloria's letters to Reanda, but it
+was changed. Everything which had belonged to
+the dead woman was gone from the room in which
+he sat and worked as usual. Even the position of
+the furniture was changed. But he worked on as
+steadily as before.</p>
+
+<p>Outwardly he was very much the same man as
+ever. Any one who knew him well&mdash;if such a
+person had existed&mdash;would have seen that there
+was a little difference in the expression of his impassive
+face. The jaw was, if possible, more firmly
+set than ever, but there was a line in the forehead
+which had not been there formerly, and which
+softened the iron front, as it were, with something
+more human. It had come suddenly, and had
+remained. That was all.</p>
+
+<p>But within, the difference was great and deep.
+He felt that the man who sat all day long at the
+writing-table doing his work was not himself any
+longer, but another being, his double and shadow,
+and in all respects his slave, except in one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_266" id="Page_V2_266">[266]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That other man sometimes paused in his work,
+fingering the pen unconsciously, as men do who
+hold it all day long, and thinking of Gloria with
+an expression of horror and suffering in his eyes.
+But he, the real Paul Griggs, never thought of
+her. The link was broken, the thread that had
+carried the message of dead love between him and
+the lonely grave beyond Subiaco was definitely
+broken. Stefanone came to receive the small sum
+which Griggs paid him monthly for his care of
+the place, and Griggs paid him as he would have
+paid his tailor, mechanically, and made a note of
+the payment in his pocket-book. When the man
+was gone, Griggs felt that his double was staring
+at the wall as a man stares at the dark surface of
+the pool in which the thing he loves has sunk for
+the last time.</p>
+
+<p>It was always the other self that felt at such
+moments. He could abstract himself from it, and
+feel that he was watching it; he could direct it
+and make it do what he pleased; but he could
+neither control its thoughts nor feel any sympathy
+for them. Until the fatal day, the world had all
+been black to him; only by closing his eyes could
+he bring into it the light that hovered about a dead
+woman's face.</p>
+
+<p>But now the black was changed to a flat and
+toneless white in which there was never the least
+variation. Life was to him a vast blank, in which,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_267" id="Page_V2_267">[267]</a></span>
+without interest or sensation, he moved in any
+direction he pleased, and he pleased that it should
+be always the same direction, from the remembrance
+of a previous intention and abiding principle.
+But it might as well have been any other, backwards,
+or to right or left. It was all precisely the
+same, and it was perfectly inconceivable to him that
+he should ever care whether in the endless journey
+he ever came upon a spot or point in the blank
+waste which should prove to him that he had
+moved at all. Nothing could make any difference.
+He was beyond that state in which any
+difference was apprehensible between one thing
+and another.</p>
+
+<p>His double had material wants, and was ruled
+by material circumstances. His double was a
+broken-hearted creature, toiling to make money
+for a little child to which it felt itself bound by
+every responsibility which can bind father to son;
+acknowledging the indebtedness in every act of its
+laborious life, denying itself every luxury, and
+almost every comfort, that there might be a little
+more for the child, now and in time to come;
+weary beyond earthly weariness, but untiring in
+the mechanical performance of its set task; fatally
+strong and destined, perhaps, to live on through
+sixty or seventy years of the same unceasing toil;
+fatally weak in its one deep wound, and horribly
+sensitive within itself, but outwardly expressionless,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_268" id="Page_V2_268">[268]</a></span>
+strong, merely a little more pale and haggard
+than Paul Griggs had been.</p>
+
+<p>This was the being whom Paul Griggs employed,
+as it were, to work for him, which he thoroughly
+understood and could control in every part except
+in its thoughts, and they were its own. But he
+himself existed in another sphere, in which there
+were neither interests nor responsibilities, nor
+landmarks, nor touches of human feeling, neither
+memories for the dead nor hopes for the living; in
+which everything was the same, because there was
+nothing but a sort of universal impersonal consciousness,
+no more attached to himself than to the
+beings he saw about him, or to that particular
+being which was his former self,&mdash;in which he
+chose to reside, merely because he required a bodily
+evidence of some sort in order to be alive&mdash;and
+there was no particular reason why he should not
+be alive. He therefore did not cease to live, but
+a straw might have turned the balance to the side
+of death.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly true that, so far as it could be
+said that there was any link between him and
+humanity, it lay in the existence of the little boy
+beyond the water. But it would have been precisely
+the same if little Walter Crowdie had died.
+He did not wish to see the child, for he had no
+wishes at all. Life being what it was, it would be
+very much better if the child were to die at once.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_269" id="Page_V2_269">[269]</a></span>
+Since it happened to be alive, he forced his double
+to work for it. It was no longer any particular
+child so far as he himself was concerned. It
+belonged to his double, which seemed to be
+attached to it in an unaccountable way and did
+not complain at being driven to labour for it.</p>
+
+<p>At certain moments, when he seemed to have
+got rid of his double altogether for a time, a question
+presented itself to his real self. The question
+was the great and old one&mdash;What was it for?
+And to what was it tending? Then the people he
+saw in the streets appeared to him to be very small,
+like ants, running hither and thither upon the ant-hill
+and about it, moved by something which they
+could not understand, but which made them do
+certain things with an appearance of logical sequence,
+just as he forced his double to work for
+little Walter Crowdie from morning till night. So
+the people ran about anxiously, or strolled lazily
+through the hours, careful or careless, as the case
+might be, but quite unconscious that they were of
+no consequence and of no use, and that it was quite
+immaterial whether they were alive or dead. Most
+of them thought that they cared a good deal for
+life on the whole, and that it held a multitude of
+pleasant and interesting things to be liked and
+sought, and an equal number of unpleasant and
+dangerous things to be avoided; all of which things
+had no real existence whatever, as the impersonal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_270" id="Page_V2_270">[270]</a></span>
+consciousness of Paul Griggs was well aware. He
+watched the people curiously, as though they
+merely existed to perform tricks for his benefit.
+But they did not amuse him, for nothing could
+amuse him, nor interest him when he had momentarily
+got rid of his double, as sometimes happened
+when he was out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>One day, the month having passed again, Stefanone
+came for his money. It was very little, and
+the old peasant would willingly have undertaken
+that the work should be done for nothing. But
+he was interested in Paul Griggs, and he was
+growing very impatient because he could not get
+an opportunity of falling upon Lord Redin in a
+quiet place. He had formed a new plan of almost
+childlike simplicity. When Griggs had paid him
+the money, he lingered a moment and looked about
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Signore, you have changed the furniture," he
+observed. "That chair was formerly here. This
+table used to be there. There are a thousand
+changes."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Griggs, taking up his pen to go on
+with his work. "You have good eyes," he added
+good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Two," assented Stefanone; "each better than
+the other. For instance, I will tell you. When
+that chair was by the window, there was a little
+table beside it. On the table was the work-basket<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_271" id="Page_V2_271">[271]</a></span>
+of your poor Signora, whom may the Lord preserve
+in glory! Is it truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Griggs, with perfect indifference.
+"It is quite true."</p>
+
+<p>The allusion did not pain him, the man who was
+talking with Stefanone. It would perhaps hurt
+the other man when he thought of it later.</p>
+
+<p>"Signore," said Stefanone, who evidently had
+something in his mind, "I was thinking in the
+night, and this thought came to me. The dead are
+dead. Requiescant! It is better for the living
+to live in holy peace. You never see the father
+of the Signora. There is bad blood between you.
+This was my thought&mdash;let them be reconciled,
+and spend an evening together. They will speak
+of the dead one. They will shed tears. They will
+embrace. Let the enmity be finished. In this
+way they will enjoy life more."</p>
+
+<p>"You are crazy, Stefanone," answered Griggs,
+impatiently. "But how do you know who is the
+father of the Signora?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every one knows it, Signore!" replied the peasant,
+with well-feigned sincerity. "Every one knows
+that it is the great English lord who lives at the
+hotel in the Piazza di Spagna this year. Signore,
+I have said a word. You must not take it ill.
+Enmity is bad. Friendship is a good thing. And
+then it is simple. With maccaroni one makes
+acquaintance again. There is the Falcone, but it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_272" id="Page_V2_272">[272]</a></span>
+would be better here. We will cook the maccaroni
+in the kitchen; you will eat on this table. What
+are all these papers for? Study, study! A dish
+of good paste is better, with cheese. I will bring
+a certain wine&mdash;two flasks. Then you will be
+friends, for you will drink together. And if the
+English lord drinks too much, I will go home with
+him to the hotel in the Piazza di Spagna. But
+you will only have to go to bed. Once in a year,
+what is it to be a little gay with good wine? At
+least you will be good friends. Then things will
+end well."</p>
+
+<p>Griggs looked at Stefanone curiously, while the
+old peasant was speaking, for he knew the people
+well, and he suspected something though he did
+not know what to think.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps some day we may take your advice,"
+he said coldly. "Good morning, Stefanone; I have
+much to write."</p>
+
+<p>"I remove the inconvenience," answered Stefanone,
+in the stock Italian phrase for taking leave.</p>
+
+<p>"No inconvenience," replied Griggs, civilly, as
+is the custom. "But I have to work."</p>
+
+<p>"Study, study!" grumbled Stefanone, going
+towards the door. "What does it all conclude,
+this great study? Headache. For a flask of wine
+you have the same thing, and the pleasure besides.
+It is enough. Signore," he added, reluctantly
+turning the handle, "I go. Think of what I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_273" id="Page_V2_273">[273]</a></span>
+said to you. Sometimes an old man says a wise
+word."</p>
+
+<p>He went away very much discontented with the
+result of the conversation. His mind was a medley
+of cunning and simplicity backed by an absolutely
+unforgiving temper and great caution. His plan
+had seemed exceedingly good. Lord Redin and
+Griggs would have supped together, and the former
+would very naturally have gone home alone. Stefanone
+was oddly surprised that Griggs should not
+have acceded to the proposition at once, though in
+reality there was not the slightest of small reasons
+for his doing so.</p>
+
+<p>It was long since anything had happened to rouse
+Griggs into thinking about any individual human
+being as anything more than a bit of the world's
+furniture, to be worn out and thrown away in the
+course of time, out of sight. But something in
+the absolutely gratuitous nature of Stefanone's
+advice moved his suspicions. He saw, with his
+intimate knowledge of the Roman peasant's character,
+the whole process of the old wine-seller's
+mind, if only, in the first place, the fellow had the
+desire to harass Dalrymple. That being granted,
+the rest was plain enough. Dalrymple, if he really
+came to supper with Griggs, would stay late into the
+night and finish all the wine there might be. On his
+way home through the deserted streets, Stefanone
+could kill him at his leisure and convenience, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_274" id="Page_V2_274">[274]</a></span>
+nobody would be the wiser. The only difficulty lay
+in establishing some sufficient reason why Stefanone
+should wish to kill him at all, and in this
+Griggs signally failed, which was not surprising.</p>
+
+<p>All at once, as generally happened now, he lost
+all interest in the matter and returned to his work;
+or rather, to speak as he might have spoken, he set
+his mechanical self to work for him, while his own
+being disappeared in blank indifference and unconsciousness.
+But on the following day, which
+chanced to be a Sunday, he went out in the morning
+for a walk. He rarely worked on Sundays,
+having long ago convinced himself that a day of
+rest was necessary in the long run.</p>
+
+<p>As he was coming home, he saw Lord Redin
+walking far in front of him down the Corso, easily
+recognizable by his height and his loose, swinging
+gait. Griggs had not proceeded many steps further
+when Stefanone passed him, walking at a
+swinging stride. The peasant had probably seen
+him, but chose to take no notice of him. Griggs
+allowed him to get a fair start and then quickened
+his own pace, so as to keep him in view. Lord
+Redin swung along steadily and turned up the Via
+Condotti. Stefanone almost ran, till he, too, had
+turned the corner of the street. Griggs, without
+running, nearly overtook him as he took the same
+turn a moment later.</p>
+
+<p>It was perfectly clear that Stefanone was dogging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_275" id="Page_V2_275">[275]</a></span>
+the Scotchman's steps. The latter crossed
+the Piazza di Spagna, and entered the deep archway
+of his hotel. The peasant slackened his speed
+at once and lounged across the square towards the
+foot of the great stairway which leads up to the
+Trinit&agrave; de' Monti. Griggs followed him, and
+came up with him just as he sat down upon a step
+beside one of the big stone posts, to take breath
+and light his pipe. The man looked up, touched
+his hat, smiled, and struck a sulphur match, which
+he applied to the tobacco in the red clay bowl before
+the sulphur was half burned out, after the
+manner of his kind.</p>
+
+<p>"You have taken a walk, Signore," he observed,
+puffing away at the willow stem and watching the
+match.</p>
+
+<p>"You walk fast, Stefanone," answered Griggs.
+"You can walk as fast as Lord Redin."</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone did not show the least surprise. He
+pressed down the burning tobacco with one horny
+finger, and carefully laid the last glowing bit of
+the burnt-out wooden match upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"For this, we are people of the mountains," he
+answered slowly. "We can walk."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you wish to kill that signore?" inquired
+Griggs, calmly.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone looked up, and the pale lids of his
+keen eyes were contracted as he stared hard and
+long at the other's face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_276" id="Page_V2_276">[276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What are you saying?" he asked, with a short,
+harsh laugh. "What is passing through your
+head? What have I to do with the Englishman?
+Nothing. These are follies!"</p>
+
+<p>And still he gazed keenly at Griggs, awaiting
+the latter's reply. Griggs answered him contemptuously
+in the dialect.</p>
+
+<p>"You take me for a foreigner! You might know
+better."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what you mean," answered Stefanone,
+doggedly. "It is Sunday. I am at leisure.
+I walk to take a little air. It is my affair.
+Besides, at this hour, who would follow a man to
+kill him? It is about to ring midday. There are
+a thousand people in the street. Those who kill
+wait at the corners of streets when it is night.
+You say that I take you for a foreigner. You have
+taken me for an assassin. At your pleasure. So
+much the worse for me. An assassin! Only this
+was wanting. It is better that I go back to Subiaco.
+At least they know me there. Here in
+Rome&mdash;not even dogs would stay here. Beautiful
+town! Where one is called assassin for breakfast,
+without counting one, nor two."</p>
+
+<p>By this time Griggs was convinced that he was
+right. He knew the man well, and all his kind.
+The long speech of complaint, with its peculiar
+tone, half insolent, half of injured innocence, was
+to cover the fellow's embarrassment. Griggs answered
+him in his own strain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_277" id="Page_V2_277">[277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A man is not an assassin who kills his enemy
+for a good reason, Stefanone," he observed. "How
+do I know what he may have done to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"To me? Nothing." The peasant shrugged his
+sturdy shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I have made a mistake," said Griggs.</p>
+
+<p>"You have made a mistake," assented Stefanone.
+"Let us not talk about it any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well."</p>
+
+<p>Griggs turned away and walked slowly towards
+the hotel, well aware that Stefanone was watching
+him and would think that he was going to warn
+Lord Redin of his danger. That, indeed, was
+Griggs's first impulse, and it was probably his
+wisest course, whatever might come of the meeting.
+But the Scotchman had made up his mind
+that he would not see Griggs under any circumstances,
+and though the latter had seen him enter
+the hotel less than ten minutes earlier, the servant
+returned almost immediately and said that Lord
+Redin was not at home. Griggs understood and
+turned away, thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>Before he went down the Via Condotti again, he
+looked over his shoulder towards the steps, and he
+saw that Stefanone was gone. As he walked along
+the street, the whole incident began to fade away
+in his mind, as all real matters so often did, nowadays.
+All at once he stopped short, and roused
+himself by an effort&mdash;directing his double, as he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_278" id="Page_V2_278">[278]</a></span>
+would have said, perhaps. There was no denying
+the fact that a man's life was hanging in the balance
+of a chance, and to the man, if not to Griggs,
+that life was worth something. If it had been
+any other man in the world, even that fact would
+have left him indifferent enough. Why should he
+care who lived or died? But Dalrymple was a
+man he had injured, and he was under an obligation
+of honour to save him, if he could.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one person in Rome who could
+help him&mdash;Francesca Campodonico. She knew
+much of what had happened; she might perhaps
+understand the present case. At all events, even
+if she had not seen Lord Redin of late, she could
+not be supposed to have broken relations with him;
+she could send for him and warn him. The case
+was urgent, as Griggs knew. After what he had
+said to Stefanone, the latter, if he meant to kill
+his man, would not lose a day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_279" id="Page_V2_279">[279]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XLV.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was past midday when Paul Griggs reached
+the Palazzetto Borgia and inquired for Donna
+Francesca. He was told that she was out. It was
+her custom, the porter said, always to breakfast on
+Sundays with her relatives, the Prince and Princess
+of Gerano. Griggs asked at what time she
+might be expected to return. The porter put on a
+vague look and said that it was impossible to tell.
+Sometimes she went to Saint Peter's on Sunday
+afternoon, to hear Vespers. Vespers began at
+twenty-two o'clock, or half-past twenty-two&mdash;between
+half-past three and four by French time,
+at that season of the year.</p>
+
+<p>Griggs turned away, and wandered about for
+half an hour in the vicinity of the palace, uncertain
+as to what he should do, and yet determined not to
+lose sight of the necessity for immediate action of
+some sort. At last he went back to the Piazza di
+Spagna, intending to write a word of warning to
+Lord Redin, though he knew that the latter would
+pay very little attention to anything of such a
+nature. Like most foreigners, he would laugh at
+the idea of being attacked in the streets. Even in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_280" id="Page_V2_280">[280]</a></span>
+an interview it would not be easy to persuade him
+of the truth which Griggs had discovered more by
+intuition and through his profound knowledge of
+the Roman character than by any chain of evidence.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Redin had gone out, he was told. It was
+impossible to say with any certainty whether this
+were true or not, and Griggs wrote a few words on
+his card, sealed the latter in an envelope, and left
+it to be delivered to the Scotchman. Then he went
+back to the Via della Frezza, determined to renew
+his attempt to see Francesca Campodonico, at a
+later hour.</p>
+
+<p>At the door of the little wine shop Stefanone
+was seated on one of the rush stools, his hat tilted
+over his eyes, and his white-stockinged legs crossed.
+He was smoking and looking down, but he recognized
+Griggs's step at some distance, and raised his
+eyes. Griggs nodded to him familiarly, passing
+along on the other side of the narrow street, and
+he saw Stefanone's expression. There was a look
+of cunning and amusement in the contraction of the
+pale lids, which the younger man did not like.
+Stefanone spoke to him across the street.</p>
+
+<p>"You are well returned, Signore," he said, in
+the common phrase of greeting after an absence.</p>
+
+<p>The words were civil enough, but there was
+something of mockery in the tone. Griggs might
+not have noticed it at any other time, but his
+thoughts had been occupied with Stefanone during<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_281" id="Page_V2_281">[281]</a></span>
+the last two hours, and he resented what sounded
+like insolence. The tone implied that he had been
+on a fool's errand, and that Stefanone knew it. He
+said nothing, but stood still and scrutinized the
+man's face. There was an unwonted colour about
+the cheek bones, and the keen eyes sparkled under
+the brim of the soft hat. Stefanone had a solid
+head, and was not given to drinking, especially in
+the morning; but Griggs guessed that to-day he
+had drunk more than usual. The man's next
+words convinced him of the fact.</p>
+
+<p>"Signore," he said, slowly rising, "will you
+favour us by tasting the wine I brought last week?
+There is no one in the shop yet, for it is early.
+If you will, we can drink a glass."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," answered Griggs. "I have not
+eaten yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Then Sor Angoscia did not ask you to breakfast!"
+laughed Stefanone, insolently. "At midday,
+too! It was just the hour! But perhaps he
+invited you to his supper, for it is ordered."</p>
+
+<p>And he laughed again. Griggs glanced at him
+once more, and then went quietly on towards his
+own door. He saw that the man had drunk too
+much, and the idea of bandying words in the
+attempt to rebuke him was distasteful. Griggs
+had very rarely lost his temper, so far as to strike
+a man, even in former days, and it had seemed to
+him of late that he could never be really angry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_282" id="Page_V2_282">[282]</a></span>
+again. Nothing could ever again be of enough importance
+to make it worth while. If a man of his
+own class had insulted him, he would have directed
+his double, as it were, to resent the offence, but he
+himself would have remained utterly indifferent.</p>
+
+<p>The one-eyed cobbler was not in his place, as it
+was Sunday. If he had been there, Griggs would
+very possibly have told him to watch Stefanone
+and to try and keep him in the wine shop until he
+should grow heavy over his wine and fall asleep.
+In that state he would at least be harmless. But
+the cobbler was not there. Griggs went up to his
+rooms to wait until a later hour, when he might
+hope to find Francesca.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone, being left alone, sat down again,
+pulled his hat over his eyes once more and felt in
+his pocket for his clasp-knife. His mind was by
+no means clear, for he had eaten nothing, he had
+swallowed a good deal of strong wine, and he had
+made up his mind that he must kill his enemy on
+that day or never. The intention was well-defined,
+but that was all. He had put off his vengeance
+too long. It was true that he had not yet caught
+Dalrymple alone in a quiet street at night, that is
+to say, under the most favourable circumstances
+imaginable; but more than once he might have
+fallen upon him suddenly from a doorway in a
+narrow lane, in which there had been but a few
+women and children to see the deed, if they saw it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_283" id="Page_V2_283">[283]</a></span>
+at all. He knew well enough that in Rome the
+fear of being in any way implicated in a murder,
+even as a witness, would have made women, and
+probably men, too, run indoors or out of the way,
+rather than interfere or pursue him. He told himself
+therefore that he had been unreasonably cautious,
+and that unless he acted quickly Lord Redin,
+being warned by Griggs, would take measures of
+self-defence which might put him beyond the reach
+of the clasp-knife forever. Stefanone's ideas
+about the power of an 'English lord' were vague
+in the extreme.</p>
+
+<p>He had not been exactly frightened by Griggs's
+sudden accusation that morning, but he had been
+made nervous and vicious by the certainty that his
+intentions had been discovered. Peasant-like, not
+being able to hit on a plan for immediate success,
+he had excited himself and stimulated his courage
+with drink. His eyes were already a little bloodshot,
+and the flush on his high cheek bones showed
+that he was in the first stage of drunkenness, which
+under present circumstances was the most dangerous
+and might last all day with a man of his age
+and constitution, provided that he did not drink
+too fast. And there was little fear of that, for the
+Roman is cautious in his cups, and drinks slowly,
+never wishing to lose his head, and indeed very
+much ashamed of ever being seen in a helpless
+condition.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_284" id="Page_V2_284">[284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By this time he was well acquainted with Lord
+Redin's habits; and though Griggs had been told
+that the Scotchman was out, Stefanone knew very
+well that he was at home and would not leave the
+hotel for another hour or more.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning back against the wall and tipping the
+stool, he swung his white-stockinged legs thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"One must eat," he remarked aloud, to himself.</p>
+
+<p>He held his head a little on one side, thoughtfully
+considering the question of food. Then he
+turned his face slowly towards the low door of the
+shop and sniffed the air. Something was cooking
+in the back regions within. Stefanone nodded to
+himself, rose, pulled out a blue and red cotton
+handkerchief, and proceeded to dust his well-blacked
+low shoes and steel buckles with considerable
+care, setting first one foot and then the
+other upon the stool.</p>
+
+<p>Let us eat," he said aloud, folding his handkerchief
+again and returning it to his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>He went in and sat down at one of the trestle
+tables,&mdash;a heavy board, black with age. The host
+was nodding on a chair in the corner, a fat man in
+a clean white apron, with a round red face and fat
+red prominences over his eyes, with thin eyebrows
+that were scarcely perceptible.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone rapped on the board with his knuckles;
+the host awoke, looked at him with a pleased smile,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_285" id="Page_V2_285">[285]</a></span>
+made an interrogatory gesture, and having received
+an affirmative nod for an answer retired into the
+dark kitchen. In a moment he returned with a
+huge earthenware plate of soup in which a couple of
+large pieces of fat meat bobbed lazily as he set the
+dish on the table. Then he brought bread, a measure
+of wine, an iron spoon, and a two-pronged fork.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone eat the soup without a word, breaking
+great pieces of bread into it. Then he pulled out
+his clasp-knife and opened it; the long blade, keen
+as a razor and slightly curved, but dark and dull
+in colour, snapped to its place, as the ring at the
+back fell into the corresponding sharp notch. With
+affected delicacy, Stefanone held it between his
+thumb and one finger and drew the edge across the
+fat boiled meat, which fell into pieces almost at a
+touch, though it was tough and stringy. The host
+watched the operation approvingly. At that time
+it was forbidden to carry such knives in Rome,
+unless the point were round and blunt. The
+Roman always stabs; he never cuts his man's
+throat in a fight or in a murder.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a prohibited weapon," observed the fat
+man, smiling, "but it is very beautiful. Poor
+Christian, if he finds it between his ribs! He
+would soon be cold. It is a consolation at night
+to have such a toy."</p>
+
+<p>"Truly, it is the consolation of my soul," answered
+Stefanone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_286" id="Page_V2_286">[286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Say a little, dear friend," said the fat man,
+sitting down and resting his bare elbows upon the
+table, "that arm, has it ever sent any one to Paradise?"</p>
+
+<p>"And then I should tell you!" exclaimed Stefanone,
+laughing, and he sipped some wine and
+smacked his lips. "But no," he added presently.
+"I am a pacific man. If they touch me&mdash;woe!
+But I, to touch any one? Not even a fly."</p>
+
+<p>"Thus I like men," said the host, "serious, full
+of scruples, people who drink well, quiet, quiet,
+and pay better."</p>
+
+<p>"So we are at Subiaco," answered Stefanone.</p>
+
+<p>He cleaned his knife on a piece of bread very
+carefully, laid it open beside him, and threw the
+crust to a lean dog that appeared suddenly from
+beneath the table, as though it had come up through
+a trap-door; the half-famished creature bolted the
+bread with a snap and a gulp and disappeared
+again as suddenly and silently, just in time to
+avoid the fat man's slow, heavy hand.</p>
+
+<p>When he had finished eating, Stefanone produced
+his little piece of oilstone, which he carried wrapped
+in dingy paper, and having greased it proceeded to
+draw the blade over it slowly and smoothly.</p>
+
+<p>"Apoplexy!" ejaculated the host. "Are you
+not contented? Or perhaps you wish to shave
+with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thus I keep it," answered the peasant, smiling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_287" id="Page_V2_287">[287]</a></span>
+"A minute here, a minute there. The time
+costs nothing. What am I doing? Nothing. I
+digest. To pass the time I sharpen the knife. I
+am like this. I say it is a sin to waste time."</p>
+
+<p>Every now and then he sipped his wine, but
+there was no perceptible change in his manner, for
+he was careful to keep himself just at the same
+level of excitement, neither more nor less.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later he was smoking his pipe in
+the Piazza di Spagna, lounging near the great
+fountain in the sunshine, his eyes generally turned
+towards the door of the hotel. He waited a long
+time, and replenished his pipe more than once.</p>
+
+<p>"This would be the only thing wanting," he said
+impatiently and half aloud. "That just to-day he
+should not go out."</p>
+
+<p>But Lord Redin appeared at last, dressed as
+though he were going to make a visit. He looked
+about the square, standing still on the threshold
+for a moment, and a couple of small open cabs
+drove up. But he shook his head, consulted his
+watch, and strode away in the direction of the
+Propaganda.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone guessed that he was going to the
+Palazzetto Borgia, and followed him as usual at a
+safe distance, threading the winding ways towards
+the Piazza di Venezia. There used to be a small
+caf&eacute; then under the corner of that part of the
+Palazzo Torlonia which has now been pulled down.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_288" id="Page_V2_288">[288]</a></span>
+Lord Redin entered it, and Stefanone lingered on
+the other side of the street. A man passed him
+who sold melon seeds and aquavit&aelig;, and Stefanone
+drank a glass of the one and bought a measure of
+the other. The Romans are fond of the taste of
+the tiny dry kernel which is found inside the
+broad white shell of the seed. Presently Lord
+Redin came out, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief,
+and went on. Stefanone followed him
+again, walking fast when his enemy had turned a
+corner and slackening his speed as soon as he
+caught sight of him again.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca was out. He saw Lord Redin's look
+of annoyance as the latter turned away after speaking
+with the porter, and he fell back into the
+shadow of a doorway, expecting that the Scotchman
+would take the street by which he had come.
+But Dalrymple turned down the narrow lane beside
+the palace, in the direction of the Tiber. Stefanone's
+bloodshot eyes opened suddenly as he
+sprang after him; with a quick movement he got
+his knife out, opened it, and thrust his hand with
+it open into the wide pocket of his jacket. Lord
+Redin had never gone down that lane before, to
+Stefanone's knowledge, and it was a hundred to
+one that at that hour no one would be about.
+Stefanone himself did not know the place.</p>
+
+<p>Dalrymple must have heard the quick and heavy
+footsteps of the peasant behind him, but it would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_289" id="Page_V2_289">[289]</a></span>
+not have been at all like him to turn his head.
+With loose, swinging gait he strode along, and his
+heavy stick made high little echoes as it struck the
+dry cobble-stones.</p>
+
+<p>Stefanone was very near him. His eyes glared
+redly, and his hand with the knife in it was half
+out of his pocket. In ten steps more he would
+spring and strike upwards, as Romans do. He
+chose the spot on the dark overcoat where his knife
+should go through, below the shoulder-blade, at the
+height of the small ribs on the left side. His lips
+were parted and dry.</p>
+
+<p>There was a loud scream of anger, a tremendous
+clattering noise, and a sound of feet. Stefanone
+turned suddenly pale, and his hand went to the
+bottom of his pocket again.</p>
+
+<p>On an open doorstep lay a copper 'conca'&mdash;the
+Roman water jar&mdash;a wretched dog was rushing
+down the street with something in its mouth, in
+front of Lord Redin, a woman was pursuing it with
+yells, swinging a small wooden stool in her right
+hand, to throw it at the dog, and the neighbours
+were on their doorsteps in a moment. Stefanone
+slunk under the shadow of the wall, grinding his
+teeth. The chance was gone. The streets beyond
+were broader and more populous.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Redin went steadily onward, evidently
+familiar with every turn of the way, down to the
+Tiber, across the Bridge of Quattro Capi, and over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_290" id="Page_V2_290">[290]</a></span>
+the island of Saint Bartholomew to Trastevere,
+turning then to the right through the straight
+Lungaretta, past Santa Maria and under the heights
+of San Pietro in Montorio, and so to the Lungara
+and by Santo Spirito to the Piazza of Saint
+Peter's. He walked fast, and Stefanone twice
+wiped the perspiration from his forehead on the
+way, for he was nervous from the tension and the
+disappointment, and felt suddenly weak.</p>
+
+<p>The Scotchman never paused, but crossed the
+vast square and went up the steps of the basilica.
+He was evidently going to hear the Vespers. Then
+Stefanone, instead of following him into the church,
+sat down outside the wine shop on the right, just
+opposite the end of the Colonnade. He ordered a
+measure of wine and prepared to wait, for he
+guessed that Lord Redin would remain in the
+church at least an hour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_291" id="Page_V2_291">[291]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XLVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lord Redin</span> lifted the heavy leathern curtain of
+the door on the right of the main entrance to the
+basilica, and went into the church. For some
+reason or other, the majority of people go in by
+that door rather than the other. It may be that the
+reason is a very simple one, after all. Most people
+are right handed, and of any two doors side by side
+leading into the same place, will instinctively take
+the one on the right. The practice of passing to
+the left in the street, in almost all old countries,
+was for the sake of safety, in order that a man
+might have his sword hand towards any one he met.</p>
+
+<p>The air of the church was warm, and had a faint
+odour of incense in it. The temperature of the
+vast building varies but little with the seasons;
+going into it in winter, it seems warm, in summer
+it is very cold. On that day there were not many
+people in the nave, though a soft sound of unceasing
+footsteps broke the stillness. Very far away
+an occasional strain of music floated on the air
+from the Chapel of the Choir, the last on the left
+before the transept is reached. Lord Redin walked
+leisurely in the direction of the sound.</p>
+
+<p>The chapel was full, and the canons were intoning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_292" id="Page_V2_292">[292]</a></span>
+the psalms of the office. At the conclusion of
+each one the choir sang the 'Gloria' from the
+great organ loft on the right. It chanced that
+there were a number of foreigners on that day,
+and they had filled all the available space within
+the gate, and there was a small crowd outside,
+pressing as close as possible in order to hear the
+voices more distinctly. Lord Redin was taller than
+most men, and looking over the heads of the others
+he saw Francesca Campodonico's pale profile in the
+thick of the press. She evidently wished to extricate
+herself, and she seemed to be suffering from
+the closeness, for she pressed her handkerchief nervously
+to her lips, and her eyes were half closed.
+Lord Redin forced his way to her without much
+consideration for the people who hindered him.
+A few minutes later he brought her out on the side
+towards the transept.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Francesca. "I should like
+to sit down. I had almost fainted&mdash;there was a
+woman next to me who had musk about her."</p>
+
+<p>They went round the pillar of the dome to the
+south transept where there are almost always a
+number of benches set along the edges of a huge
+green baize carpet. They sat down together on
+the end of one of the seats.</p>
+
+<p>"We can go back, by and bye, and hear the
+music, if you like," said Francesca. "The psalms
+will last some time longer."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_293" id="Page_V2_293">[293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I would rather sit here and talk, since I have
+had the good luck to meet you," answered Lord
+Redin, resting his elbows on his knees, and idly
+poking the green carpet with the end of his stick.
+"I went to your house, and they told me that you
+would very probably be here."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I often come. But you know that, for
+we have met here before. I only stay at home on
+Sundays when it rains."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Is that the rule?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if you call it a rule," answered Francesca.</p>
+
+<p>"I like to know about the things you do, and
+how you spend your life," said the Scotchman,
+thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you? Why? There is nothing very interesting
+about my existence, it seems to me."</p>
+
+<p>"It interests me. It makes me feel less lonely to
+know about some one else&mdash;some one I like very
+much."</p>
+
+<p>Francesca looked at her companion with an expression
+of pity. She was lonely, too, but in a
+different way. The little drama of her life had
+run sadly and smoothly. She was willing to give
+the man her friendship if it could help him, rather
+because he seemed to ask for it in a mute fashion
+than because she desired his.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Redin," she said, after a little pause, "do
+you always mean to live in this way?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_294" id="Page_V2_294">[294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Alone? Yes. It is the only way I can live,
+at my age."</p>
+
+<p>"At your age&mdash;would it make any difference
+if you were younger?" asked Francesca. She
+dropped her voice to a low key. "You would
+never marry again, even if you were much
+younger."</p>
+
+<p>"Marry!" His shoulders moved with a sort of
+little start. "You do not know what you are saying!"
+he added, almost under his breath, though
+she heard the words distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him again, in silence, during several
+seconds, and she saw how the colour sank away
+from his face, till the skin was like old parchment.
+The hand that held the heavy stick tightened round
+it and grew yellow at the knuckles.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," she said gently. "I am very
+thoughtless&mdash;it is the second time."</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak for some moments, but she
+understood his silence and waited. The air was
+very quiet, and the enormous pillar of the dome
+almost completely shut off the echo of the distant
+music. The low afternoon sun streamed levelly
+through the great windows of the apse, for the
+basilica is built towards the west. There were
+very few people in the church that day. The
+sun made visible beams across the high shadows
+overhead.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Lord Redin spoke again. There was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_295" id="Page_V2_295">[295]</a></span>
+something weak and tremulous in the tone of his
+rough voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very much attached to you, for two reasons,"
+he said. "We have known each other long,
+but not intimately."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true. Not very intimately."</p>
+
+<p>Francesca did not know exactly what to say. But
+for his manner and for his behaviour a few moments
+earlier, she might have fancied that he was about
+to offer himself to her, but such an idea was very
+far from her thoughts. Her woman's instinct told
+her that he was going to tell her something in the
+nature of a confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely," he continued. "We have never
+been intimate. The reason why we have not been
+intimate is one of the reasons why I am more
+attached to you than you have ever guessed."</p>
+
+<p>"That is complicated," said Francesca, with a
+smile. "Perhaps the other reason may be simpler."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very simple, very simple indeed, though
+it will not seem natural to you. You are the
+only very good woman I ever knew, who made
+me feel that she was good instead of making me
+see it. Perhaps you think it unnatural that I
+should be attracted by goodness at all. But I am
+not very bad, as men go."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I do not believe you are. And I am not
+so good as you think." She sighed softly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_296" id="Page_V2_296">[296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You are much better than I once thought," answered
+Lord Redin. "Once upon a time&mdash;well, I
+should only offend you, and I know better now.
+Forgive me for thinking of it. I wish to tell you
+something else."</p>
+
+<p>"If it is something which has been your secret,
+it is better not told," said Francesca, quietly.
+"One rarely makes a confidence that one does not
+regret it."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a wise woman." He looked at her
+thoughtfully. "And yet you must be very young."</p>
+
+<p>"No. But though I have had my own life apart,
+I have lived outwardly very much in the world,
+although I am still young. Most of the secrets
+which have been told me have been repeated to
+me by the people in whom others had confided."</p>
+
+<p>"All that is true," he answered. "Nevertheless&mdash;"
+He paused. "I am desperate!" he exclaimed,
+with sudden energy. "I cannot bear this any
+longer&mdash;I am alone, always, always. Sometimes
+I think I shall go mad! You do not know what
+a life I lead. I have not even a vice to comfort
+me!" He laughed low and savagely. "I tried to
+drink, but I am sick of it&mdash;it does no good! A
+man who has not even a vice is a very lonely
+man."</p>
+
+<p>Francesca's clear eyes opened wide with a startled
+look, and gazed towards his averted face, trying to
+catch his glance. She felt that she was close to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_297" id="Page_V2_297">[297]</a></span>
+something very strong and dreadful which she
+could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not speak like that!" she said. "No one
+is lonely who believes in God."</p>
+
+<p>"God!" he exclaimed bitterly. "God has forgotten
+me, and the devil will not have me!" He
+looked at her at last, and saw her face. "Do not
+be shocked," he said, with a sorrowful smile. "If
+I were as bad as I seem to you just now, I should
+have cut my throat twenty years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! Hush!" Francesca did not know what
+to say.</p>
+
+<p>His manner changed a little, and he spoke more
+calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not eloquent," he said, looking into her
+eyes. "You may not understand. But I have
+suffered a great deal."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I know that. I am very sorry for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are," he answered. "That is why
+I want to be honest and tell you the truth about
+myself. For that reason, and because I cannot
+bear it any longer. I cannot, I cannot!" he repeated
+in a low, despairing tone.</p>
+
+<p>"If it will help you to tell me, then tell me,"
+said Francesca, kindly. "But I do not ask you
+to. I do not see why we should not be the best of
+friends without my knowing this thing which
+weighs on your mind."</p>
+
+<p>"You will understand when I have told you,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_298" id="Page_V2_298">[298]</a></span>
+answered Lord Redin. "Then you can judge
+whether you will have me for a friend or not. It
+will seem very bad to you. Perhaps it is. I never
+thought so. But you are a Roman Catholic, and
+that makes a difference."</p>
+
+<p>"Not in a question of right and wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"It makes the question what it is. You shall
+hear."</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment, and the lines and furrows
+deepened in his face. The sun was sinking fast,
+and the long beams had faded away out of the
+shadows. There was no one in sight now, but the
+music of the benediction service echoed faintly in
+the distance. Francesca felt her heart beating
+with a sort of excitement she could not understand,
+and though she did not look at her companion,
+her ears were strained to catch the first word
+he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I married a nun," he said simply.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca started.</p>
+
+<p>"A Sister of Charity?" she asked, after a moment's
+dead silence. "They do not take vows&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No. A nun from the Carmelite Convent of
+Subiaco."</p>
+
+<p>His words were very distinct. There was no
+mistaking what he said. Francesca shrank from
+him instinctively, and uttered a low exclamation
+of repugnance and horror.</p>
+
+<p>"That is not all," continued Lord Redin, with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_299" id="Page_V2_299">[299]</a></span>
+calm that seemed supernatural. "She was your
+kinswoman. She was Maria Braccio, whom every
+one believed was burned to death in her cell."</p>
+
+<p>"But her body&mdash;they found it! It is impossible!"
+She thought he must be mad.</p>
+
+<p>"No. They found another body. I put it into
+the bed and set fire to the mattress. It was burned
+beyond recognition, and they thought it was Maria.
+But it was the body of old Stefanone's daughter.
+I lived in his house. The girl poisoned herself
+with some of my chemicals&mdash;I was a young doctor
+in those days. Maria and I were married on board
+an English man-of-war, and we lived in Scotland
+after that. Gloria was the daughter of Maria
+Braccio, the Carmelite nun&mdash;your kinswoman."</p>
+
+<p>Francesca pressed her handkerchief to her lips.
+She felt as though she were losing her senses.
+Minute after minute passed, and she could say
+nothing. From time to time, Lord Redin glanced
+sideways at her. He breathed hard once or twice,
+and his hands strained upon his stick as though
+they would break it in two.</p>
+
+<p>"Then she died," he said. When he had spoken
+the three words, he shivered from head to foot, and
+was silent.</p>
+
+<p>Still Francesca could not speak. The sacrilege of
+the deed was horrible in itself. To her, who had
+grown up to look upon Maria Braccio as a holy
+woman, cut off in her youth by a frightful death,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_300" id="Page_V2_300">[300]</a></span>
+the truth was overwhelmingly awful. She strove
+within herself to find something upon which she
+could throw the merest shadow of an extenuation,
+but she could find nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"You understand now why, as an honourable
+man, I wished to tell you the truth about myself,"
+he said, speaking almost coldly in the effort he was
+making at self-control. "I could not ask for your
+friendship until I had told you."</p>
+
+<p>Francesca turned her white face slowly towards
+him in the dusk, and her lips moved, but she did
+not speak. She could not in that first moment
+find the words she wanted. She felt that she
+shrank from him, that she never wished to touch
+his hand again. Doubtless, in time, she might
+get over the first impression. She wished that he
+would leave her to think about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ever be my friend now?" he asked
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Your friend&mdash;" she stopped, and shook her
+head sadly. "I&mdash;I am afraid&mdash;" she could not
+go on.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Redin rose slowly to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I am afraid not," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He waited a moment, but there was no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"May I take you to your carriage?" he asked
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you. No&mdash;that is&mdash;I am going
+home in a cab. I would rather be alone&mdash;please."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_301" id="Page_V2_301">[301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>The lonely man went away and left her there.
+His head was bent, and she thought that he walked
+unsteadily, as she watched him. Suddenly a great
+wave of pity filled her heart. He looked so very
+lonely. What right had she to judge him? Was
+she perfect, because he called her good? She
+called him before he turned the great pillar of the
+dome.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Redin! Lord Redin!"</p>
+
+<p>But her voice was weak, and in the vast, dim
+place it did not reach him. He went on alone,
+past the high altar, round the pillar, down the
+nave. The benediction service was not quite over
+yet, but every one who was not listening to the
+music had left the church. He went towards the
+door by which he had entered. Before going out
+he paused, and looked towards the little chapel on
+the right of the entrance. He hesitated, and then
+went to it and stood leaning with his hands upon
+the heavy marble balustrade, that was low for his
+great height as he stood on the step.</p>
+
+<p>A single silver lamp sent a faint light upwards
+that lingered upon the Piet&agrave; above the altar, upon
+the marble limbs of the dead Christ, upon the
+features of the Blessed Virgin, the Addolorata&mdash;the
+sorrowing mother.</p>
+
+<p>Bending a little, as though very weary, the friendless,
+wifeless, childless man raised his furrowed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_302" id="Page_V2_302">[302]</a></span>
+face and looked up. There was no hope any more,
+and his despair was heavy upon him whose young
+love had blasted the lives of many.</p>
+
+<p>His teeth were set&mdash;he could have bitten
+through iron. He trembled a little, and as he
+looked upward, two dreadful tears&mdash;the tears of
+the strong that are as blood&mdash;welled from his eyes
+and trickled down upon his cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Maria Addolorata!" he whispered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_303" id="Page_V2_303">[303]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XLVII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Francesca</span> had half risen from her seat when
+she had seen that Lord Redin did not hear her
+voice, calling to him. Then she realized that she
+could not overtake him without running, since he
+had got so far, and she kept her place, leaning
+back once more, and trying to collect her thoughts
+before going home. The music was still going on
+in the Chapel of the Choir, and though it was dusk
+in the vast church, it would not be dark for some
+time. The vergers did not make their rounds to
+give warning of the hour of closing until sunset.
+Francesca sat still and tried to understand what
+she had heard. She was nervous and shaken, and
+she wished that she were already at home. The
+great dimness of the lonely transept was strangely
+mysterious&mdash;and the tale of the dead girl, burned
+to take the place of the living, was grewsome, and
+made her shiver with disgust and horror. She
+started nervously at the sound of a distant footstep.</p>
+
+<p>But the strongest impression she had, was that
+of abhorrence for the unholy deeds of the man who
+had just left her. To a woman for whom religion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_304" id="Page_V2_304">[304]</a></span>
+in its forms as well as in its meaning was the
+mainstay of life on earth and the hope of life to
+come, the sacrilege of the crime seemed supernatural.
+She felt as though it must be in some
+way her duty to help in expiating it, lest the
+punishment of it should fall upon all her race.
+And as she thought it over, trying to look at it as
+simply as she could, she surveyed at a glance the
+whole chain of the fatal story, and saw how many
+terrible things had followed upon that one great
+sin, and how very nearly she herself had been
+touched by its consequences. She had been involved
+in it and had become a part of it. She
+had felt it about her for years, in her friendship
+for Reanda. It had contributed to the causes of
+his death, if it had not actually caused it. She,
+in helping to bring about his marriage with the
+daughter of her sinning kinswoman, had unconsciously
+made a link in the chain. Her friendship
+for the artist no longer looked as innocent as
+formerly. Gloria had accused him of loving her,
+Francesca. Had she not loved him? Whether
+she had or not, she had done things which had
+wounded his innocent young wife. In a sudden
+and painful illumination of the past, she saw that
+she herself had not been sinless; that she had
+been selfish, if nothing worse; that she had craved
+Reanda's presence and devoted friendship, if nothing
+more; that death had taken from her more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_305" id="Page_V2_305">[305]</a></span>
+than a friend. She saw all at once the vanity of
+her own belief in her own innocence, and she
+accused herself very bitterly of many things which
+had been quite hidden from her until then.</p>
+
+<p>She was roused by a footstep behind her, and
+she started at the sound of a voice she knew, but
+which had changed oddly since she had last heard
+it. It was stern, deep, and clear still, but the life
+was gone out of it. It had an automatic sound.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, Princess," said Paul Griggs,
+stopping close to her behind the bench. "May I
+speak to you for a moment?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head. As the sun went down, the
+church grew lighter for a little while, as it often
+does. Yet she could hardly see the man's eyes at
+all, as she looked into his face. They were all in
+the shadow and had no light in them.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," she said mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>She could not refuse to speak to him, and, indeed,
+she would not have refused to receive him had she
+been at home when he had called that day.
+Socially speaking, according to the standards of
+those around her, he had done nothing which she
+could very severely blame. A woman he had dearly
+loved had come to him for protection, and he had
+not driven her away. That was the social value of
+what he had done. The moral view of it all was
+individual with herself. Society gave her no right
+to treat him rudely because she disapproved of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_306" id="Page_V2_306">[306]</a></span>
+past life. For the rest, she had liked him in former
+times, and she believed that there was much
+more good in him than at first appeared.</p>
+
+<p>She was almost glad that he had disturbed her
+solitude just then, for a nervous sense of loneliness
+was creeping upon her; and though there had been
+nothing to prevent her from rising and going away,
+she had felt that something was holding her in her
+seat, a shadowy something that was oppressive and
+not natural, that descended upon her out of the
+gloomy heights, and that rose around her from the
+secret depths below, where the great dead lay side
+by side in their leaden coffins.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," she repeated, as Griggs came round
+the bench.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down beside her. There was a little
+distance between them, and he sat rather stiffly,
+holding his hat on his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"I should apologize for disturbing you," he
+began. "I have been twice to your house to-day,
+but you were out. What I wish to speak of is
+rather urgent. I heard that you might be here, and
+so I came."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, and waited for him to say more.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she asked presently, as he did
+not speak at once.</p>
+
+<p>"It is about Dalrymple&mdash;about Lord Redin," he
+said at last. "You used to know him. Do you
+ever see him now?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_307" id="Page_V2_307">[307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Francesca looked at him with a little surprise,
+but she answered quietly, as though the question
+were quite a natural one.</p>
+
+<p>"He was here five minutes ago. Yes, I often
+see him."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you do him a service?" asked Griggs,
+in his calm and indifferent tone.</p>
+
+<p>He was forcing himself to do what was plainly
+his duty, but he was utterly incapable of taking
+any interest in the matter. Francesca hesitated
+before she answered. An hour earlier she would
+have assented readily enough, but now the idea of
+doing anything which could tend to bring her
+into closer relations with Lord Redin was disagreeable.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think you will refuse," said Griggs, as
+she did not speak. "His life is in danger."</p>
+
+<p>She turned quickly and scrutinized the expressionless
+features. In the glow of the sunset the
+church was quite light. The total unconcern of
+the man's manner contrasted strangely with the
+importance of what he said. Francesca felt that
+something must be wrong.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that very coolly," she observed, and
+her tone showed that she was incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>"And you do not believe me," answered Griggs,
+quite unmoved. "It is natural, I suppose. I will
+try to explain."</p>
+
+<p>"Please do. I do not understand at all."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_308" id="Page_V2_308">[308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, she was startled, though she concealed
+her nervousness. She had not spoken with
+Griggs for a long time; and as he talked, she saw
+what a great change had taken place. He was very
+quiet, as he had always been, but he was almost
+too quiet. She could not make out his eyes. She
+knew of his superhuman strength, and his stillness
+seemed unnatural. What he said did not sound
+rational. An impression got hold of her that he
+had gone mad, and she was physically afraid of
+him. He began to explain. She felt a singing in
+her ears, and she could not follow what he said.
+It was like an evil dream, and it grew upon her
+second by second.</p>
+
+<p>He talked on in the same even, monotonous tone.
+The words meant nothing to her. She crossed her
+feet nervously and tried to get a soothing sensation
+by stroking her sable muff. She made a great
+effort at concentration and failed to understand
+anything.</p>
+
+<p>All at once it grew dark, as the sunset light
+faded out of the sky. Again she felt the desire to
+rise and the certainty that she could not, if she
+tried. He ceased speaking and seemed to expect
+her to say something, but she had not understood
+a word of his long explanation. He sat patiently
+waiting. She could hardly distinguish his face in
+the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of irregular, shuffling footsteps and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_309" id="Page_V2_309">[309]</a></span>
+low voices moved the stillness. The vergers were
+making their last round in a hurried, perfunctory
+way. They passed across the transept to the high
+altar. It was so dark that Francesca could only
+just see their shadows moving in the blackness.
+She did not realize what they were doing, and her
+imagination made ghosts of them, rushing through
+the silence of the deserted place, from one tomb to
+another, waking the dead for the night. They did
+not even glance across, as they skirted the wall of
+the church. Even if they had looked, they might
+not have seen two persons in black, against the
+blackness, sitting silently side by side on the dark
+bench. They saw nothing and passed on, out of
+sight and out of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask whether you will give him the message?"
+inquired Griggs at last, moving in his seat,
+for he knew that it was time to be going.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca started, at the sound of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I am afraid&mdash;I have not understood," she
+said. "I beg your pardon&mdash;I was not paying
+attention. I am nervous."</p>
+
+<p>"It is growing late," said Griggs. "We had
+better be going&mdash;I will tell you again as we walk
+to the door."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;no&mdash;just a moment!" She made a
+strong effort over herself. "Tell me in three
+words," she said. "Who is it that threatens Lord
+Redin's life?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_310" id="Page_V2_310">[310]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A peasant of Subiaco called Stefanone. Really,
+Princess, we must be going; it is quite dark&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stefanone!" exclaimed Francesca, while he was
+speaking the last words, which she did not hear.
+"Stefanone of Subiaco&mdash;of course!"</p>
+
+<p>"We must really be going," said Griggs, rising
+to his feet, and wondering indifferently why it was
+so hard to make her understand.</p>
+
+<p>She rose to her feet slowly. Lord Redin's story
+was intricately confused in her mind with the few
+words which she had retained of what Griggs had
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;yes&mdash;Stefanone," she said in a low
+voice, as though to herself, and she stood still,
+comprehending the whole situation in a flash, and
+imagining that Griggs knew the whole truth and
+had been telling it to her as though she had not
+known it. "But how did you know that Lord
+Redin took the girl's body and burnt it?" she
+asked, quite certain that he had mentioned the fact.</p>
+
+<p>"What girl?" asked Griggs in wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the body of Stefanone's daughter, which
+he managed to burn in the convent when he carried
+off my cousin! How did you know about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know about it," said Griggs. "Your
+cousin? I do not understand."</p>
+
+<p>"My cousin&mdash;yes&mdash;Maria Braccio&mdash;Gloria's
+mother! You have just been talking about her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I?" asked Griggs, bewildered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_311" id="Page_V2_311">[311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Francesca stepped back from him, suddenly guessing
+that she had revealed Lord Redin's secret.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible?" she asked in a low voice.
+"Oh, it is all a mistake!" she cried suddenly.
+"I have told you his story&mdash;oh, I am losing my
+head!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said Griggs, authoritatively. "We must
+get out of the church, at all events, or we shall be
+locked in."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no!" answered Francesca. "There is always
+somebody here&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There is not. You must really come."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but there is no danger of being locked
+in. Yes&mdash;let us walk down the nave. There is
+more light."</p>
+
+<p>They walked slowly, for she was too much confused
+to hasten her steps. Her inexplicable mistake
+troubled her terribly. She remembered how
+she had warned Lord Redin not to tell her any
+secrets, and how seriously she, the most discreet of
+women, had resolved never to reveal what he had
+said. But the impression of his story had been so
+much more direct and strong than even the first
+words Griggs had spoken, that so soon as she had
+realized that the latter was speaking approximately
+of the same subject, she had lost the thread of
+what he was saying and had seemed to hear Lord
+Redin's dreadful tale all over again. She thought
+that she was losing her head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_312" id="Page_V2_312">[312]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was almost quite dark when they reached the
+other side of the high altar. Griggs walked beside
+her in silence, trying to understand the meaning of
+what she had said.</p>
+
+<p>The gloom was terrible. The enormous statues
+loomed faintly like vast ghosts, high up, between
+the floor and the roof, their whiteness glimmering
+where there seemed to be nothing else but darkness
+below them and above them. A low, far sound
+that was a voice but not a word, trembled in the
+air. Francesca shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"They have not gone yet," said Griggs. "They
+are still talking. But we must hurry."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Francesca, "that was not any one
+talking." And her teeth chattered. "Give me
+your arm, please&mdash;I am frightened."</p>
+
+<p>He held out his arm till she could feel it in the
+dark, and she took it. He pressed her hand to his
+side and drew her along, for he feared that the
+doors might be already shut.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so fast! Oh, not so fast, please!" she cried.
+"I shall fall. They do not shut the doors&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they do! Let me carry you. I can run
+with you in the dark&mdash;there is no time to be
+lost!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! I can walk faster&mdash;but there is really
+no danger&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It is a very long way from the high altar to the
+main entrance of the church. Francesca was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_313" id="Page_V2_313">[313]</a></span>
+breathless when they reached the door and Griggs
+lifted the heavy leathern curtain. If the door had
+been still open, he would have seen the twilight
+from the porch at once. Instead, all was black
+and close and smelled of leather. Francesca was
+holding his sleeve, afraid of losing him.</p>
+
+<p>"It is too late," he said quietly. "We are
+probably locked in. We will try the door of the
+Sacristy."</p>
+
+<p>He seized her arm and hurried her along into
+the south aisle. He struck his shoulder violently
+against the base of the pillar he passed in the
+darkness, but he did not stop. Almost instinctively
+he found the door, for he could not see it.
+Even the hideous skeleton which supports a black
+marble drapery above it was not visible in the
+gloom. He found the bevelled edge of the smoothly
+polished panel and pushed. But it would not yield.</p>
+
+<p>"We are locked in," he said, in the same quiet
+tone as before.</p>
+
+<p>Francesca uttered a low cry of terror and then
+was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Cannot you break the door?" she asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered. "Nothing short of a battering-ram
+could move it."</p>
+
+<p>"Try," she said. "You are so strong&mdash;the lock
+might give way."</p>
+
+<p>To satisfy her he braced himself and heaved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_314" id="Page_V2_314">[314]</a></span>
+against the panel with all his gigantic strength.
+In the dark she could hear his breath drawn
+through his nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>"It will not move," he said, desisting. "We
+shall have to spend the night here. I am very
+sorry."</p>
+
+<p>For some moments Francesca said nothing, overcome
+by her terror of the situation. Griggs stood
+still, with his back to the polished door, trying to
+see her in the gloom. Then he felt her closer to
+him and heard her small feet moving on the
+pavement.</p>
+
+<p>"We must make the best of it," he said at last.
+"It is never quite dark near the high altar. I
+daresay, too, that there is still a little twilight
+where we were sitting. At least, there is a carpet
+there and there are benches. We can sit there
+until it is later. Then you can lie down upon the
+bench. I will make a pillow for you with my overcoat.
+It is warm, and I shall not need it."</p>
+
+<p>He made a step forwards, and she heard him
+moving.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not leave me!" she cried, in sudden terror.</p>
+
+<p>He felt her grasp his arm convulsively in the
+dark, and he felt her hands shaking.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not be frightened," he said, in his quiet
+voice. "Dead people do no harm, you know. It
+is only imagination."</p>
+
+<p>She shuddered as he groped his way with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_315" id="Page_V2_315">[315]</a></span>
+toward the nave. They passed the pillar and saw
+the soft light of the ninety little flames of the huge
+golden lamps around the central shrine below the
+high altar. Far beyond, the great windows showed
+faintly in the height of the blackness. They
+walked more freely, keeping in the middle of the
+church. In the distant chapels on each side a
+few little lamps glimmered like fireflies. Before
+the last chapel on the right, the Chapel of the
+Sacrament, Francesca paused, instinctively holding
+fast to Griggs's arm, and they both bent one knee,
+as all Catholics do, who pass before it. But when
+they reached the shrine, Francesca loosed her hold
+and sank upon her knees, resting her arms upon
+the broad marble of the balustrade. Griggs knelt
+a moment beside her, by force of habit, then rose
+and waited, looking about him into the depths of
+blackness, and reflecting upon the best spot in
+which to pass the night.</p>
+
+<p>She remained kneeling a long time, praying more
+or less consciously, but aware that it was a relief
+to be near a little light after passing through the
+darkness. Her mind was as terribly confused as
+her companion's was utterly calm and indifferent.
+If he had been alone he would have sat down upon
+a step until he was sleepy and then he would have
+stretched himself upon one of the benches in the
+transept. But to Francesca it was unspeakably
+dreadful.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_316" id="Page_V2_316">[316]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The strangeness of the whole situation forced
+itself upon her more and more, when she thought
+of rising from her knees and going back to the
+bench. She felt a womanly shyness about keeping
+close to her companion, her hand on his arm, for
+hours together, but she knew that the terror she
+should feel of being left alone, even for an instant,
+or of merely thinking that she was to be left alone,
+would more than overcome that if she went away
+from the lights. She would grasp his arm and
+hold it tightly.</p>
+
+<p>Then she felt ashamed of herself. She had
+always been told that she came of a brave race.
+She had never been in danger, and there was really
+no danger now. It was absurd to remain on her
+knees for the sake of the lamps. She rose to
+her feet and turned. Griggs was not looking at
+her, but at the ornaments on the altar. The soft
+glimmer lighted up his dark face. A moment
+after she had risen he came forward. She meant
+to propose that they should go back to the transept,
+but just then she shuddered again.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us sit down here, on the step," she said,
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"If you like," he answered. "Wait a minute,"
+he added, and he pulled off his overcoat.</p>
+
+<p>He spread a part of it on the step, and rolled
+the rest into a pillow against which she could lean,
+and he held it in place while she sat down. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_317" id="Page_V2_317">[317]</a></span>
+thanked him, and he sat down beside her. At
+first, as she turned from the lamps, the nave was
+like a fathomless black wall. Neither spoke for
+some time. Griggs broke the silence when he
+supposed that she was sufficiently recovered to
+talk quietly, for he had been thinking of what she
+had said, and it was almost clear to him at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to speak to you quite frankly, if
+you will allow me," he said gravely. "May I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"The few words you said about Lord Redin's
+story have explained a great many things which I
+never understood," said Griggs. "Is it too much
+to ask that you should tell me everything you
+know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would rather not say anything more," answered
+Francesca. "I am very much ashamed
+of having betrayed his secret. Besides, what is
+to be gained by your knowing a few more details?
+It is bad enough as it is."</p>
+
+<p>"It is more or less the story of my life," he
+said, almost indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head slowly and tried to see his
+face. She could just distinguish the features, cold
+and impassive.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to you to ask you to warn Dalrymple of
+a danger," he continued, as she did not speak. "I
+knew that fact, but not the reason why his life was
+and is threatened. Unless I have mistaken what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_318" id="Page_V2_318">[318]</a></span>
+you said, I understand it now. It is a much
+stronger one than I should ever have guessed.
+Lord Redin ran away with your cousin, and made
+it appear that he had carried off Stefanone's daughter.
+Stefanone has waited patiently for nearly a
+quarter of a century. He has found Dalrymple at
+last and means to kill him. He will succeed, unless
+you can make Dalrymple understand that the
+danger is real. I have no evidence on which I
+could have the man arrested, and I have no personal
+influence in Rome. You have. You would
+find no difficulty in having Stefanone kept out of
+the city. And you can make Dalrymple see the
+truth, since he has confided in you. Will you do
+that? He will not believe me, and you can save
+him. Besides, he will not see me. I have tried
+twice to-day. He has made up his mind that he
+will not see me."</p>
+
+<p>"I will do my best," said Francesca, leaning her
+head back against the marble rail, and half closing
+her eyes. "How terrible it all is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I suppose that is the word," said Griggs,
+indifferently. "Sacrilege, suicide, and probably
+murder to come."</p>
+
+<p>She was shocked by the perfectly emotionless
+way in which he spoke of Gloria's death, so much
+shocked that she drew a short, quick breath between
+her teeth as though she had hurt herself.
+Griggs heard it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_319" id="Page_V2_319">[319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought something hurt you."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;nothing."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he continued, in a tone of cold speculation,
+"I suppose that any one would call it terrible.
+At all events, it is curious, as a sequence of cause
+and effect, from one tragedy to another."</p>
+
+<p>"Please&mdash;please do not speak of it all like
+that&mdash;" Francesca felt herself growing angry
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>"How should I speak of it?" he asked. "It is
+an extraordinary concatenation of events. I look
+upon the whole thing as very curious, especially
+since you have given me the key to it all."</p>
+
+<p>Francesca was moved to anger, taking the defence
+of the dead Gloria, as almost any woman would
+have done. At the moment Paul Griggs repelled
+her even more than Lord Redin. It seemed to her
+that there was something dastardly in his indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you no heart?" she asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am dead," he answered, in his clear, lifeless
+voice, that might have been a ghost's.</p>
+
+<p>The words made her shiver, and she felt as
+though her hair were moving. From his face, as
+she had last seen it, and from his voice, he might
+almost have been dead, as he said he was, like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_320" id="Page_V2_320">[320]</a></span>
+thousands of silent ones in the labyrinths under
+her feet, and she alone alive in the midst of so
+much death.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" she asked, and her own
+voice trembled in spite of herself.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very like being dead," he answered
+thoughtfully. "I cannot feel anything. I cannot
+understand why any one else should. Everything
+is the same to me. The world is a white blank to
+me, and one place is exactly like any other place."</p>
+
+<p>"But why? What has happened to you?" asked
+Francesca.</p>
+
+<p>"You know. You sent me those letters."</p>
+
+<p>"What letters?"</p>
+
+<p>"The package Reanda gave you before he
+died."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. What was in it? I told you that I did
+not know, when I wrote to you. I remember every
+word I wrote."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But I thought that you at least
+guessed. They were Gloria's letters to her husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Her old letters, before&mdash;" Francesca stopped
+short.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered, with the same unnatural
+quiet. "All the letters she wrote him afterwards&mdash;when
+we were together."</p>
+
+<p>"All those letters?" cried Francesca, suddenly
+understanding. "Oh no&mdash;no! It is not possible!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_321" id="Page_V2_321">[321]</a></span>
+He could not, he would not, have done anything so
+horrible."</p>
+
+<p>"He did," said Griggs, calmly. "I had supposed
+that she loved me. He had his vengeance. He
+proved to me that she did not. I hope he is satisfied
+with the result. Yes," he continued, after a
+moment's pause, "it was the cruelest thing that
+ever one man did to another. I spent a bad night,
+I remember. On the top of the package was the
+last letter she wrote him, just before she killed
+herself. She loathed me, she said, she hated me,
+she shivered at my touch. She feared me so that
+she acted a comedy of love, in terror of her life,
+after she had discovered that she hated me. She
+need not have been afraid. Why should I have
+hurt her? In that last letter, she put her wedding
+ring with a lock of her hair wound in and out of
+it. Reanda knew what he was doing when he sent
+it to me. Do you wonder that it has deadened me
+to everything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how could he do it? How could he!"
+Francesca repeated, for the worst of it all to her
+was the unutterable cruelty of the man she had
+believed so gentle.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it was natural," said Griggs. "I
+loved the woman, and he knew it. I fancy few
+men have loved much more sincerely than I loved
+her, even after she was dead. I was not always
+saying so. I am not that kind of man. Besides,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_322" id="Page_V2_322">[322]</a></span>
+men who live by stringing words together for
+money do not value them much in their own lives.
+But I worked for her. I did the best I could.
+Even she must have known that I loved her."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you did. I cannot understand how you
+can speak of her at all." Francesca wondered at
+the man.</p>
+
+<p>"She? She is no more to me than Queen
+Christina, over there in her tomb in the dark!
+For that matter, nothing else has any meaning,
+either."</p>
+
+<p>For a long time Francesca said nothing. She
+sat quite still, resting the back of her head against
+the marble, in the awful silence under the faint
+lights that glimmered above the great tomb.</p>
+
+<p>"You have told me the most dreadful thing I
+ever heard," she said at last, in a low tone. "Is
+she nothing to you? Really nothing? Can you
+never think kindly of her again?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Why should I? That is&mdash;" he hesitated.
+"I could not explain it," he said, and was
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>"It does not seem human," said Francesca.
+"You would have a memory of her&mdash;something&mdash;some
+touch of sadness&mdash;I wonder whether you
+really loved her as much as you thought you did?"</p>
+
+<p>Griggs turned upon Francesca slowly, his hands
+clasped upon one knee.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not know what such love means," he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_323" id="Page_V2_323">[323]</a></span>
+said slowly. "It is God&mdash;faith&mdash;goodness&mdash;everything.
+It is heaven on earth, and earth in
+heaven, in one heart. When it is gone there is
+nothing left. It went hard. It will not come back
+now. The heart itself is gone. There is nothing for
+it to come to. You think me cold, you are shocked
+because I speak indifferently of her. She lied to
+me. She lied and acted in every word and deed of
+her life with me. She deceived herself a little at
+first, and she deceived me mortally afterwards. It
+was all an immense, loathsome, deadly lie. I lived
+through the truth. Why should I wish to go back
+to the lie again? She died, telling me that she
+died for me. She died, having written to Reanda
+that she died for him. I do not judge her. God
+will. But God Himself could not make me love
+the smallest shadow of her memory. It is impossible.
+I am beyond life. I am outside it. My
+eternity has begun."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not a little for her sake that you wish to
+save her father?" asked Francesca.</p>
+
+<p>"No. It is a matter of honour, and nothing else,
+since I injured him, as the world would say, by
+taking his daughter from her husband. Do you
+understand? Can you put yourself a little in my
+position? It is not because I care whether he
+lives or dies, or dies a natural death or is stabbed
+in the back by a peasant. It is because I ought to
+care. I do many things because I ought to care<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_324" id="Page_V2_324">[324]</a></span>
+to do them, though the things and their consequences
+are all one to me, now."</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot last," said Francesca, sadly. "You
+will change as you grow older."</p>
+
+<p>"No. That is a thing you can never understand,"
+he answered. "I am two individuals.
+The one is what you see, a man more or less like
+other men, growing older&mdash;a man who has a certain
+mortal, earthly memory of that dead woman,
+when the real man is unconscious. But the real
+man is beyond growing old, because he is beyond
+feeling anything. He is stationary, outside of life.
+The world is a blank to him and always will be."</p>
+
+<p>His voice grew more and more expressionless as
+he spoke. Francesca felt that she could not pity
+him as she had pitied poor Lord Redin when she
+had seen him going away alone. The man beside
+her was in earnest, and was as far beyond woman's
+pity as he was beyond woman's love. Yet she no
+longer felt repelled by him since she had understood
+what he had suffered. Perhaps she herself,
+suffering still in her heart, wished that she might
+be even as he was, beyond the possibility of pain,
+even though beyond the hope of happiness. He
+wanted nothing, he asked for nothing, and he was
+not afraid to be alone with his own soul, as she
+was sometimes. The other man had asked for her
+friendship. It could mean nothing to Paul Griggs.
+If love were nothing, what could friendship be?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_325" id="Page_V2_325">[325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yet there was something lofty and grand about
+such loneliness as his. She could not but feel
+that, now that she knew all. She thought of him
+as she sat beside him in the monumental silence
+of the enormous sepulchre, and she guessed of
+depths in his soul like the deepness of the shadows
+above her and before her and around her.</p>
+
+<p>"My suffering seems very small, compared with
+yours," she said softly, almost to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow she knew that he would understand
+her, though perhaps her knowledge was only hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you suffer at all?" he asked.
+"You have never done anything wrong. Nothing,
+of all this, is your fault. It was all fatal, from
+the first, and you cannot blame yourself for anything
+that has happened."</p>
+
+<p>"I do," she answered, in a low voice. "Indeed
+I do."</p>
+
+<p>"You are wrong. You are not to blame. Dalrymple
+was&mdash;Maria Braccio&mdash;I&mdash;Gloria&mdash;we
+four. But you! What have you done? Compared
+with us you are a saint on earth!"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a moment before she spoke. Then
+her voice came in a broken way.</p>
+
+<p>"I loved Angelo Reanda. I know it, now that
+I have lost him."</p>
+
+<p>Griggs barely heard the last words, but he bent
+his head gravely, and said nothing in answer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_326" id="Page_V2_326">[326]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XLVIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> stillness was all around them and seemed to
+fold them together as they sat side by side. A
+deep sigh quivered and paused and was drawn
+again almost with a gasp that stirred the air.
+Suddenly Francesca's face was hidden in her hands,
+and her head was bowed almost to her knees. A
+moment more, and she sobbed aloud, wordless, as
+though her soul were breaking from her heart.</p>
+
+<p>In the great gloom there was something unearthly
+in the sound of her weeping. The man
+who could neither suffer any more himself nor feel
+human pity for another's suffering, turned and
+looked at her with shadowy eyes. He understood,
+though he could not feel, and he knew that she had
+borne more than any one had guessed.</p>
+
+<p>She shed many tears, and it was long before her
+sobbing ceased to call down pitiful, heart-breaking
+echoes from the unseen heights of darkness. Her
+head was bent down upon her knees as she sat
+there, striving with herself.</p>
+
+<p>He could do nothing, and there was nothing that
+he could say. He could not comfort her, he could
+not deny her grief. He only knew that there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_327" id="Page_V2_327">[327]</a></span>
+one more being still alive and bearing the pain of
+sins done long ago. Truly the judgment upon that
+man by whom the offence had come, should be
+heavy and relentless and enduring.</p>
+
+<p>At last all was still again. Francesca did not
+move, but sat bowed together, her hands pressing
+her face. Very softly, Griggs rose to his feet,
+and she did not see that he was no longer seated
+beside her. He stood up and leaned upon the broad
+marble of the balustrade. When she at last raised
+her head, she thought that he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you?" she asked, in a startled voice.</p>
+
+<p>Then, looking round, she saw him standing by
+the rail. She understood why he had moved&mdash;that
+she might not feel that he was watching her
+and seeing her tears.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not ashamed," she said. "At least you
+know me, now."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I know."</p>
+
+<p>She also rose and stood up, and leaned upon the
+balustrade and looked into his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you know," she said, and he saw
+how pale she was, and that her cheeks were wet.
+"Now that it is over, I am glad that you know,"
+she said again. "You are beyond sympathy, and
+beyond pitying any one, though you are not unkind.
+I am glad, that if any one was to know my secret,
+it should be you. I could not bear pity. It would
+hurt me. But you are not unkind."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_328" id="Page_V2_328">[328]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nor kind&mdash;nor anything," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"No. It is as though I had spoken to the grave&mdash;or
+to eternity. It is safe with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Quite safe. Safer than with the dead."</p>
+
+<p>"He never knew it. Thank God! He never knew
+it! To me he was always the same faithful friend.
+To you he was an enemy, and cruel. I thought
+him above cruelty, but he was human, after all.
+Was it not human, that he should be cruel to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Griggs, wondering a little at
+her speech and tone. "It was very human."</p>
+
+<p>"And you forgive him for it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I?" There was surprise in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered. "I want your forgiveness
+for him. He died without your forgiveness. It is
+the only thing I ask of you&mdash;I have not the right
+to ask anything, I know, but is it so very much?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is nothing," said Griggs. "There is no such
+thing as forgiveness in my world. How could
+there be? I resent nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"But then, if you do not resent what he did,
+you have forgiven him. Have you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so." He was puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you not say it?" she pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"Willingly," he answered. "I forgive him. I
+remember nothing against him."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. You are a good man."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head gravely, but he took her outstretched
+hand and pressed it gently.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_329" id="Page_V2_329">[329]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," she repeated, withdrawing hers.
+"Do not think it strange that I should ask such a
+thing. It means a great deal to me. I could not
+bear to think that he had left an enemy in the
+world and was gone where he could not ask forgiveness
+for what he had done. So I asked it of you,
+for him. I know that he would have wished me
+to. Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Griggs, thoughtfully. "I understand."</p>
+
+<p>Again there was silence for a long time as they
+stood there. The tears dried upon the woman's
+sweet pale face, and a soft light came where the
+tears had been.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come with me?" she asked at last,
+looking up.</p>
+
+<p>He did not guess what she meant to do, but he
+left the step on which he was standing and stood
+ready.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be late," he said. "Should you like to
+try and rest? I will arrange a place for you as
+well as I can."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," she answered. "If you will come
+with me&mdash;" she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will say a prayer for the dead," she said, in a
+low voice. "I always do, every night, since he
+died."</p>
+
+<p>Griggs bent his head, and she came down from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_330" id="Page_V2_330">[330]</a></span>
+the step. He walked beside her, down the silent
+nave into the darkness. Before the Chapel of the
+Sacrament they both paused and bent the knee.
+Then she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to go to the Piet&agrave;," she said
+timidly. "It seems so far. Do you mind?"</p>
+
+<p>He held out his arm silently. She felt it and
+laid her hand upon it, and they went on. It was
+very dark. They knew that they were passing the
+pillars when they could not see the little lights
+from the chapels in the distance on their left.
+Then by the echo of their own footsteps they knew
+that they were near the great door, and at last they
+saw the single tiny flame in the silver lamp hanging
+above the altar they sought.</p>
+
+<p>Guided by it, they went forward, and the solitary
+ray showed them the marble rail. They
+knelt down side by side.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us pray for them all," said Francesca, very
+softly.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up to the marble face of Christ's
+mother, the Addolorata, the mother of sorrows, and
+she thought of that sinning nun, dead long ago,
+who had been called Addolorata.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us pray for them all," she repeated. "For
+Maria Braccio, for Gloria&mdash;for Angelo Reanda."</p>
+
+<p>She lowered her head upon her hands. Then,
+presently, she looked up again, and Griggs heard
+her sweet voice in the darkness repeating the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_331" id="Page_V2_331">[331]</a></span>
+ancient Commemoration for the Dead, from the
+Canon of the Mass.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember also, O Lord, thy servants who are
+gone before us with the sign of faith, and sleep the
+sleep of peace. Give them, O Lord, and to all
+who rest in Christ, a place of refreshment, light,
+and peace, for that Christ's sake, who liveth and
+reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
+Amen."</p>
+
+<p>Once more she bent her head and was silent for
+a time. Then as she knelt, her hands moved
+silently along the marble and pressed the two
+folded hands of the man beside her, and she looked
+at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us be friends," she said simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Such as I am, I am yours."</p>
+
+<p>Then their hands clasped. They both started
+and looked down, for the fingers were cold and wet
+and dark.</p>
+
+<p>It was the blood of Angus Dalrymple that had
+sealed their friendship.</p>
+
+<p>The swift sure blade had struck him as he stood
+there, repeating the name of his dead wife. There
+had been no one near the door and none to see the
+quick, black deed. Strong hands had thrown his
+falling body within the marble balustrade, that
+was still wet with his heart's blood.</p>
+
+<p>There Paul Griggs found him, lying on his back,
+stretched to his length in the dim shadow between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_332" id="Page_V2_332">[332]</a></span>
+the rail and the altar. He had paid the price at
+last, a loving, sinning, suffering, faithful, faultful
+man.</p>
+
+<p>But the friendship that was so grimly consecrated
+on that night, was the truest that ever was between
+man and woman.</p>
+
+
+<h3>END OF VOL. II.</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_x" id="Page_V2_x">[x]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>THE RALSTONS.</h2>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h3>F. MARION CRAWFORD.</h3>
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+2 vols. 16mo. Cloth. $2.00.<br />
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /></div>
+<h3>PRESS COMMENTS.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The interest is unflagging throughout. Never has the
+author done more brilliant, artistic work than here."&mdash;<i>Ohio
+State Journal.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It is immensely entertaining; once in the full swing of the
+narrative, one is carried on quite irresistibly to the end. The
+style throughout is easy and graceful, and the text abounds in
+wise and witty reflections on the realities of existence."&mdash;<i>Boston
+Beacon.</i></p>
+
+<p>"As a picture of a certain kind of New York life, it is correct
+and literal; as a study of human nature it is realistic enough to
+be modern, and romantic enough to be of the age of Trollope."&mdash;<i>Chicago
+Herald.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The whole group of character studies is strong and vivid."&mdash;<i>The
+Literary World.</i></p>
+
+<p>"There is a long succession of exceedingly strong dramatic
+situations which hold the reader's attention enchained to the
+end. This is one of the strong books of the year, and will have
+a large circle of readers."&mdash;<i>New Orleans Picayune.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO.,<br />
+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.<br />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_xi" id="Page_V2_xi">[xi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>UNIFORM EDITION</h3>
+
+<div class='center'>OF THE WORKS OF</div>
+
+<h2>F. MARION CRAWFORD.</h2>
+
+<h4><b>12mo. Cloth. Price $1.00 per volume.</b></h4>
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+</div>
+<h2>KATHARINE LAUDERDALE.</h2>
+
+<h4>The first of a series of novels dealing with New York life.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. Crawford at his best is a great novelist, and in 'Katharine Lauderdale'
+we have him at his best."&mdash;<i>Boston Daily Advertiser.</i></p>
+
+<p>"A most admirable novel, excellent in style, flashing with humor, and
+full of the ripest and wisest reflections upon men and women."&mdash;<i>The Westminster
+Gazette.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It is the first time, we think, in American fiction that any such breadth
+of view has shown itself in the study of our social framework."&mdash;<i>Life.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It need scarcely be said that the story is skilfully and picturesquely
+written, portraying sharply individual characters in well-defined surroundings."&mdash;<i>New
+York Commercial Advertiser.</i></p>
+
+<p>"'Katharine Lauderdale' is a tale of New York, and is up to the highest
+level of his work. In some respects it will probably be regarded as his best.
+None of his works, with the exception of 'Mr. Isaacs,' shows so clearly his
+skill as a literary artist."&mdash;<i>San Francisco Evening Bulletin.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />PIETRO GHISLERI.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The imaginative richness, the marvellous ingenuity of plot, the power
+and subtlety of the portrayal of character, the charm of the romantic environment,&mdash;the
+entire atmosphere, indeed,&mdash;rank this novel at once among
+the great creations."&mdash;<i>The Boston Budget.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO.,<br />
+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.<br />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_xii" id="Page_V2_xii">[xii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><br />WITH THE IMMORTALS.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Altogether an admirable piece of art worked in the spirit of a thorough
+artist. Every reader of cultivated tastes will find it a book prolific in entertainment
+of the most refined description, and to all such we commend it
+heartily."&mdash;<i>Boston Saturday Evening Gazette.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The strange central idea of the story could have occurred only to a
+writer whose mind was very sensitive to the current modern thought and
+progress, while its execution, the setting it forth in proper literary clothing,
+could be successfully attempted only by one whose active literary ability
+should be fully equalled by his power of assimilative knowledge both literary
+and scientific, and no less by his courage and capacity for hard work. The
+book will be found to have a fascination entirely new for the habitual reader
+of novels. Indeed, Mr. Crawford has succeeded in taking his readers quite
+above the ordinary plane of novel interest."&mdash;<i>Boston Advertiser.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />MARZIO'S CRUCIFIX.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We take the liberty of saying that this work belongs to the highest
+department of character-painting in words."&mdash;<i>Churchman.</i></p>
+
+<p>"We have repeatedly had occasion to say that Mr. Crawford possesses in
+an extraordinary degree the art of constructing a story. His sense of proportion
+is just, and his narrative flows along with ease and perspicuity. It
+is as if it could not have been written otherwise, so naturally does the story
+unfold itself, and so logical and consistent is the sequence of incident after
+incident. As a story 'Marzio's Crucifix' is perfectly constructed."&mdash;<i>New
+York Commercial Advertiser.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />KHALED.</h2>
+
+<h4>A Story of Arabia.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Throughout the fascinating story runs the subtlest analysis, suggested
+rather than elaborately worked out, of human passion and motive, the building
+out and development of the character of the woman who becomes the
+hero's wife and whose love he finally wins, being an especially acute and
+highly finished example of the story-teller's art.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. That it is beautifully
+written and holds the interest of the reader, fanciful as it all is, to the very
+end, none who know the depth and artistic finish of Mr. Crawford's work
+need be told."&mdash;<i>The Chicago Times.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />PAUL PATOFF.</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO.,<br />
+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.<br />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_xiii" id="Page_V2_xiii">[xiii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><br />ZOROASTER.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The field of Mr. Crawford's imagination appears to be unbounded.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
+In 'Zoroaster' Mr. Crawford's winged fancy ventures a daring flight.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Yet
+'Zoroaster' is a novel rather than a drama. It is a drama in the
+force of its situations and in the poetry and dignity of its language; but its
+men and women are not men and women of a play. By the naturalness of
+their conversation and behavior they seem to live and lay hold of our human
+sympathy more than the same characters on a stage could possibly do."&mdash;<i>The
+Times.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is a pleasure to have anything so perfect of its kind as this brief and
+vivid story.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. It is doubly a success, being full of human sympathy, as
+well as thoroughly artistic in its nice balancing of the unusual with the
+commonplace, the clever juxtaposition of innocence and guilt, comedy and
+tragedy, simplicity and intrigue."&mdash;<i>Critic.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Of all the stories Mr. Crawford has written, it is the most dramatic, the
+most finished, the most compact.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. The taste which is left in one's mind
+after the story is finished is exactly what the fine reader desires and the
+novelist intends.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. It has no defects. It is neither trifling nor trivial.
+It is a work of art. It is perfect."&mdash;<i>Boston Beacon.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN.</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO.,<br />
+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.<br />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_xiv" id="Page_V2_xiv">[xiv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><br />A CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is a touching romance, filled with scenes of great dramatic power."&mdash;<i>Boston
+Commercial Bulletin.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It is full of life and movement, and is one of the best of Mr. Crawford's
+books."&mdash;<i>Boston Saturday Evening Gazette.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The interest is unflagging throughout. Never has Mr. Crawford done
+more brilliant realistic work than here. But his realism is only the case and
+cover for those intense feelings which, placed under no matter what humble
+conditions, produce the most dramatic and the most tragic situations.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
+This is a secret of genius, to take the most coarse and common material, the
+meanest surroundings, the most sordid material prospects, and out of the
+vehement passions which sometimes dominate all human beings to build up
+with these poor elements scenes and passages, the dramatic and emotional
+power of which at once enforce attention and awaken the profoundest interest."&mdash;<i>New
+York Tribune.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />GREIFENSTEIN.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Greifenstein' is a remarkable novel, and while it illustrates once more
+the author's unusual versatility, it also shows that he has not been tempted
+into careless writing by the vogue of his earlier books.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. There is
+nothing weak or small or frivolous in the story. The author deals with
+tremendous passions working at the height of their energy. His characters
+are stern, rugged, determined men and women, governed by powerful prejudices
+and iron conventions, types of a military people, in whom the sense of
+duty has been cultivated until it dominates all other motives, and in whom
+the principle of 'noblesse oblige' is, so far as the aristocratic class is concerned,
+the fundamental rule of conduct. What such people may be capable
+of is startlingly shown."&mdash;<i>New York Tribune.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />A ROMAN SINGER.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"One of Mr. Crawford's most charming stories&mdash;a love romance pure
+and simple."&mdash;<i>Boston Home Journal.</i></p>
+
+<p>"'A Roman Singer' is one of his most finished, compact, and successful
+stories, and contains a splendid picture of Italian life."&mdash;<i>Toronto Mail.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO.,<br />
+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.<br />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_xv" id="Page_V2_xv">[xv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><br />MR. ISAACS.</h2>
+
+<h4>A Tale of Modern India.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The writer first shows the hero in relation with the people of the East
+and then skilfully brings into connection the Anglo-Saxon race. It is in
+this showing of the different effects which the two classes of minds have
+upon the central figure of the story that one of its chief merits lies. The
+characters are original, and one does not recognize any of the hackneyed
+personages who are so apt to be considered indispensable to novelists, and
+which, dressed in one guise or another, are but the marionettes, which are
+all dominated by the same mind, moved by the same motive force. The men
+are all endowed with individualism and independent life and thought.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
+There is a strong tinge of mysticism about the book which is one of its
+greatest charms."&mdash;<i>Boston Transcript.</i></p>
+
+<p>"No story of human experience that we have met with since 'John
+Inglesant' has such an effect of transporting the reader into regions differing
+from his own. 'Mr. Isaacs' is the best novel that has ever laid its scenes in
+our Indian dominions."&mdash;<i>The Daily News, London.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />DR. CLAUDIUS.</h2>
+
+<h4>A True Story.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"There is a suggestion of strength, of a mastery of facts, of a fund of
+knowledge, that speaks well for future production.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. To be thoroughly
+enjoyed, however, this book must be read, as no mere cursory notice can
+give an adequate idea of its many interesting points and excellences, for
+without a doubt 'Dr. Claudius' is the most interesting book that has been
+published for many months, and richly deserves a high place in the public
+favor."&mdash;<i>St. Louis Spectator.</i></p>
+
+<p>"To our mind it by no means belies the promises of its predecessor.
+The story, an exceedingly improbable and romantic one, is told with much
+skill; the characters are strongly marked without any suspicion of caricature,
+and the author's ideas on social and political subjects are often brilliant
+and always striking. It is no exaggeration to say that there is not a dull
+page in the book, which is peculiarly adapted for the recreation of student or
+thinker."&mdash;<i>Living Church.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />TO LEEWARD.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A story of remarkable power."&mdash;<i>Review of Reviews.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Crawford has written many strange and powerful stories of Italian
+life, but none can be any stranger or more powerful than 'To Leeward,' with
+its mixture of comedy and tragedy, innocence and guilt."&mdash;<i>Cottage
+Hearth.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO.,<br />
+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.<br />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_xvi" id="Page_V2_xvi">[xvi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><br />SARACINESCA.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"His highest achievement, as yet, in the realms of fiction. The work
+has two distinct merits, either of which would serve to make it great,&mdash;that
+of telling a perfect story in a perfect way, and of giving a graphic picture
+of Roman society in the last days of the pope's temporal power.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. The
+story is exquisitely told."&mdash;<i>Boston Traveler.</i></p>
+
+<p>"One of the most engrossing novels we have ever read."&mdash;<i>Boston
+Times.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />SANT' ILARIO.</h2>
+
+<h4>A sequel to "Saracinesca."</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The author shows steady and constant improvement in his art. 'Sant'
+Ilario' is a continuation of the chronicles of the Saracinesca family.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
+A singularly powerful and beautiful story.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Admirably developed,
+with a naturalness beyond praise.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. It must rank with 'Greifenstein' as
+the best work the author has produced. It fulfils every requirement of
+artistic fiction. It brings out what is most impressive in human action,
+without owing any of its effectiveness to sensationalism or artifice. It is
+natural, fluent in evolution, accordant with experience, graphic in description,
+penetrating in analysis, and absorbing in interest."&mdash;<i>New York
+Tribune.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />DON ORSINO.</h2>
+
+<h4>A continuation of "Saracinesca" and "Sant' Ilario."</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The third in a rather remarkable series of novels dealing with three
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'generat ons'">generations</ins> of the Saracinesca family, entitled respectively 'Saracinesca,'
+'Sant' Ilario,' and 'Don Orsino,' and these novels present an important
+study of Italian life, customs, and conditions during the present century.
+Each one of these novels is worthy of very careful reading, and offers
+exceptional enjoyment in many ways, in the fascinating absorption of good
+fiction, in interest of faithful historic accuracy, and in charm of style. The
+'new Italy' is strikingly revealed in 'Don Orsino.'"&mdash;<i>Boston Budget.</i></p>
+
+<p>"We are inclined to regard the book as the most ingenious of all Mr.
+Crawford's fictions. Certainly it is the best novel of the season."&mdash;<i>Evening
+Bulletin.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO.,<br />
+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.<br />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_V2_xvii" id="Page_V2_xvii">[xvii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><br />THE THREE FATES.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The strength of the story lies in its portrayal of the aspirations, disciplinary
+efforts, trials, and triumphs of the man who is a born writer, and
+who, by long and painful experiences, learns the good that is in him and the
+way in which to give it effectual expression. The analytical quality of the
+book is excellent, and the individuality of each one of the very dissimilar
+three fates is set forth in an entirely satisfactory manner.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Mr. Crawford
+has manifestly brought his best qualities as a student of human nature
+and his finest resources as a master of an original and picturesque style to
+bear upon this story. Taken for all in all it is one of the most pleasing
+of all his productions in fiction, and it affords a view of certain phases of
+American, or perhaps we should say of New York, life that have not hitherto
+been treated with anything like the same adequacy and felicity."&mdash;<i>Boston
+Beacon.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />CHILDREN OF THE KING.</h2>
+
+<h4>A Tale of Southern Italy.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A sympathetic reader cannot fail to be impressed with the dramatic
+power of this story. The simplicity of nature, the uncorrupted truth of a
+soul, have been portrayed by a master-hand. The suddenness of the unforeseen
+tragedy at the last renders the incident of the story powerful beyond
+description. One can only feel such sensations as the last scene of the story
+incites. It may be added that if Mr. Crawford has written some stories
+unevenly, he has made no mistakes in the stories of Italian life. A reader
+of them cannot fail to gain a clearer, fuller acquaintance with the Italians
+and the artistic spirit that pervades the country."&mdash;M. L. B. in <i>Syracuse
+Journal</i>.</p></div>
+
+
+<h2><br />THE WITCH OF PRAGUE.</h2>
+
+<h4>A Fantastic Tale.</h4>
+
+<div class='center'><span class="smcap">Illustrated by W. J. Hennessy.</span></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'The Witch of Prague' is so remarkable a book as to be certain of as
+wide a popularity as any of its predecessors. The keenest interest for most
+readers will lie in its demonstration of the latest revelations of hypnotic
+science.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. It is a romance of singular daring and power."&mdash;<i>London
+Academy.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Crawford has written in many keys, but never in so strange a one
+as that which dominates 'The Witch of Prague.' .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. The artistic skill
+with which this extraordinary story is constructed and carried out is admirable
+and delightful.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Mr. Crawford has scored a decided triumph, for
+the interest of the tale is sustained throughout.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. A very remarkable,
+powerful, and interesting story."&mdash;<i>New York Tribune.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO.,<br />
+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.<br />
+</div>
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+<p>The List of Illustrations for Volume II lists the final illustration as being
+on page 331. While the text is correct for that caption, the actual illustration
+is the frontispiece of the book. The link has been ammended to reflect that
+location.</p>
+<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2), by 
+F. Marion Crawford
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASA BRACCIO, VOLUMES 1 AND 2 ***
+
+***** This file should be named 26327-h.htm or 26327-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2), 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: Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2)
+
+Author: F. Marion Crawford
+
+Illustrator: A. Castaigne
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2008 [EBook #26327]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASA BRACCIO, VOLUMES 1 AND 2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO
+
+[Illustration: Emblem]
+
+[Illustration: "He looked at her long and sadly."--Vol. I., p. 239.]
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO
+
+BY
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "PIETRO GHISLERI," ETC.
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+VOL. I.
+
+_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. CASTAIGNE_
+
+                 =New York=
+              MACMILLAN AND CO.
+                 AND LONDON
+                   1895
+
+          _All rights reserved_
+
+          COPYRIGHT, 1894,
+
+          BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
+
+
+          =Norwood Press=
+          J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
+          Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+          THIS STORY, BEING MY TWENTY-FIFTH NOVEL,
+              IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO
+                         MY WIFE
+
+          SORRENTO, 1895
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+          PART I.
+          SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA      1
+
+
+          PART II.
+          GLORIA DALRYMPLE           225
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+                                                         PAGE
+
+          Nanna and Annetta                                15
+
+          Maria Addolorata                                 25
+
+          "Sor Tommaso was lying motionless"               78
+
+          "She had covered her face with the veil"        126
+
+          "An evil death on you!"                         218
+
+          "He looked at her long and sadly"               239
+
+          "Fire and sleet and candle-light;
+              And Christ receive thy soul"                324
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+_SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA._
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+_SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+SUBIACO lies beyond Tivoli, southeast from Rome, at the upper end of a
+wild gorge in the Samnite mountains. It is an archbishopric, and gives a
+title to a cardinal, which alone would make it a town of importance. It
+shares with Monte Cassino the honour of having been chosen by Saint
+Benedict and Saint Scholastica, his sister, as the site of a monastery
+and a convent; and in a cell in the rock a portrait of the holy man is
+still well preserved, which is believed, not without reason, to have
+been painted from life, although Saint Benedict died early in the fifth
+century. The town itself rises abruptly to a great height upon a mass of
+rock, almost conical in shape, crowned by the cardinal's palace, and
+surrounded on three sides by rugged mountains. On the third, it looks
+down the rapidly widening valley in the direction of Vicovaro, near
+which the Licenza runs into the Anio, in the neighbourhood of Horace's
+farm. It is a very ancient town, and in its general appearance it does
+not differ very much from many similar ones amongst the Italian
+mountains; but its position is exceptionally good, and its importance
+has been stamped upon it by the hands of those who have thought it worth
+holding since the days of ancient Rome. Of late it has, of course,
+acquired a certain modernness of aspect; it has planted acacia trees in
+its little piazza, and it has a gorgeously arrayed municipal band. But
+from a little distance one neither hears the band nor sees the trees,
+the grim mediaeval fortifications frown upon the valley, and the
+time-stained dwellings, great and small, rise in rugged irregularity
+against the lighter brown of the rocky background and the green of
+scattered olive groves and chestnuts. Those features, at least, have not
+changed, and show no disposition to change during generations to come.
+
+In the year 1844, modern civilization had not yet set in, and Subiaco
+was, within, what it still appears to be from without, a somewhat gloomy
+stronghold of the Middle Ages, rearing its battlements and towers in a
+shadowy gorge, above a mountain torrent, inhabited by primitive and
+passionate people, dominated by ecclesiastical institutions, and,
+though distinctly Roman, a couple of hundred years behind Rome itself in
+all matters ethic and aesthetic. It was still the scene of the Santacroce
+murder, which really decided Beatrice Cenci's fate; it was still the
+gathering place of highwaymen and outlaws, whose activity found an
+admirable field through all the region of hill and plain between the
+Samnite range and the sea, while the almost inaccessible fortresses of
+the higher mountains, towards Trevi and the Serra di Sant' Antonio,
+offered a safe refuge from the halfhearted pursuit of Pope Gregory's
+lazy soldiers.
+
+Something of what one may call the life-and-death earnestness of earlier
+times, when passion was motive and prejudice was law, survived at that
+time and even much later; the ferocity of practical love and hatred
+dominated the theory and practice of justice in the public life of the
+smaller towns, while the patriarchal system subjected the family in
+almost absolute servitude to its head.
+
+There was nothing very surprising in the fact that the head of the house
+of Braccio should have obliged one of his daughters to take the veil in
+the Convent of Carmelite nuns, just within the gate of Subiaco, as his
+sister had taken it many years earlier. Indeed, it was customary in the
+family of the Princes of Gerano that one of the women should be a
+Carmelite, and it was a tradition not unattended with worldly advantages
+to the sisterhood, that the Braccio nun, whenever there was one, should
+be the abbess of that particular convent.
+
+Maria Teresa Braccio had therefore yielded, though very unwillingly, to
+her father's insistence, and having passed through her novitiate, had
+finally taken the veil as a Carmelite of Subiaco, in the year 1841, on
+the distinct understanding that when her aunt died she was to be abbess
+in the elder lady's stead. The abbess herself was, indeed, in excellent
+health and not yet fifty years old, so that Maria Teresa--in religion
+Maria Addolorata--might have a long time to wait before she was promoted
+to an honour which she regarded as hereditary; but the prospect of such
+promotion was almost her only compensation for all she had left behind
+her, and she lived upon it and concentrated her character upon it, and
+practised the part she was to play, when she was quite sure that she was
+not observed.
+
+Nature had not made her for a recluse, least of all for a nun of such a
+rigid Order as the Carmelites. The short taste of a brilliant social
+life which she had been allowed to enjoy, in accordance with an ancient
+tradition, before finally taking the veil, had shown her clearly enough
+the value of what she was to abandon, and at the same time had
+altogether confirmed her father in his decision. Compared with the
+freedom of the present day, the restrictions imposed upon a young girl
+in the Roman society of those times were, of course, tyrannical in the
+extreme, and the average modern young lady would almost as willingly go
+into a convent as submit to them. But Maria Teresa had received an
+impression which nothing could efface. Her intuitive nature had divined
+the possible semi-emancipation of marriage, and her temperament had felt
+in a certain degree the extremes of joyous exaltation and of that
+entrancing sadness which is love's premonition, and which tells maidens
+what love is before they know him, by making them conscious of the
+breadth and depth of his yet vacant dwelling.
+
+She had learned in that brief time that she was beautiful, and she had
+felt that she could love and that she should be loved in return. She had
+seen the world as a princess and had felt it as a woman, and she had
+understood all that she must give up in taking the veil. But she had
+been offered no choice, and though she had contemplated opposition, she
+had not dared to revolt. Being absolutely in the power of her parents,
+so far as she was aware, she had accepted the fatality of their will,
+and bent her fair head to be shorn of its glory and her broad forehead
+to be covered forever from the gaze of men. And having submitted, she
+had gone through it all bravely and proudly, as perhaps she would have
+gone through other things, even to death itself, being a daughter of an
+old race, accustomed to deify honour and to make its divinities of
+tradition. For the rest of her natural life she was to live on the
+memories of one short, magnificent year, forever to be contented with
+the grim rigidity of conventual life in an ancient cloister surrounded
+by gloomy mountains. She was to be a veiled shadow amongst veiled
+shades, a priestess of sorrow amongst sad virgins; and though, if she
+lived long enough, she was to be the chief of them and their ruler, her
+very superiority could only make her desolation more complete, until her
+own shadow, like the others, should be gathered into eternal darkness.
+
+Sister Maria Addolorata had certain privileges for which her companions
+would have given much, but which were traditionally the right of such
+ladies of the Braccio family as took the veil. For instance, she had a
+cell which, though not larger than the other cells, was better situated,
+for it had a little balcony looking over the convent garden, and high
+enough to afford a view of the distant valley and of the hills which
+bounded it, beyond the garden wall. It was entered by the last door in
+the corridor within, and was near the abbess's apartment, which was
+entered from the corridor, through a small antechamber which also gave
+access to the vast linen-presses. The balcony, too, had a little
+staircase leading down into the garden. It had always been the custom to
+carry the linen to and from the laundry through Maria Addolorata's cell,
+and through a postern gate in the garden wall, the washing being done in
+the town. By this plan, the annoyance was avoided of carrying the huge
+baskets through the whole length of the convent, to and from the main
+entrance, which was also much further removed from the house of Sora
+Nanna, the chief laundress. Moreover, Maria Addolorata had charge of all
+the convent linen, and the employment thus afforded her was an undoubted
+privilege in itself, for occupation of any kind not devotional was
+excessively scarce in such an existence.
+
+In the eyes of the other nuns, the constant society of the abbess
+herself was also a privilege, and one not by any means to be despised.
+After all, the abbess and her niece were nearly related, they could talk
+of the affairs of their family, and the abbess doubtless received many
+letters from Rome containing all the interesting news of the day, and
+all the social gossip--perfectly innocent, of course--which was the
+chronicle of Roman life. These were valuable compensations, and the nuns
+envied them. The abbess, too, saw her brother, the archbishop and
+titular cardinal of Subiaco, when the princely prelate came out from
+Rome for the coolness of the mountains in August and September, and his
+conversation was said to be not only edifying, but fascinating. The
+cardinal was a very good man, like many of the Braccio family, but he
+was also a man of the world, who had been sent upon foreign missions of
+importance, and had acquired some worldly fame as well as much
+ecclesiastical dignity in the course of his long life. It must be
+delightful, the nuns thought, to be his own sister, to receive long
+visits from him, and to hear all he had to say about the busy world of
+Rome. To most of them, everything beyond Rome was outer darkness.
+
+But though the nuns envied the abbess and Maria Addolorata, they did not
+venture to say so, and they hardly dared to think so, even when they
+were all alone, each in her cell; for the concentration of conventual
+life magnifies small spiritual sins in the absence of anything really
+sinful, and to admit that she even faintly wishes she might be some one
+else is to tarnish the brightness of the nun's scrupulously polished
+conscience. It would be as great a misdeed, perhaps, as to allow the
+attention to wander to worldly matters during times of especial
+devotion. Nevertheless, the envy showed itself, very perceptibly and
+much against the will of the sisters themselves, in a certain cold
+deference of manner towards the young and beautiful nun who was one day
+to be the superior of them all by force of circumstances for which she
+deserved no credit. She had the position among them, and something of
+the isolation, of a young royal princess amongst the ladies of her queen
+mother's court.
+
+There was about her, too, an undefinable something, like the shadow of
+future fate, a something almost impossible to describe, and yet
+distinctly appreciable to all who saw her and lived with her. It came
+upon her especially when she was silent and abstracted, when she was
+kneeling in her place in the choir, or was alone upon her little balcony
+over the garden. At such times a luminous pallor gradually took the
+place of her fresh and healthy complexion, her eyes grew unnaturally
+dark, with a deep, fixed fire in them, and the regular features took
+upon them the white, set straightness of a death mask. Sometimes, at
+such moments, a shiver ran through her, even in summer, and she drew her
+breath sharply once or twice, as though she were hurt. The expression
+was not one of suffering or pain, but was rather that of a person
+conscious of some great danger which must be met without fear or
+flinching.
+
+She would have found it very hard to explain what she felt just then.
+She might have said that it was a consciousness of something unknown.
+She could not have said more than that. It brought no vision with it,
+beatific or horrifying; it was not the consequence of methodical
+contemplation, as the trance state is; and it was followed by no
+reaction nor sense of uneasiness. It simply came and went as the dark
+shadow of a thundercloud passing between her and the sun, and leaving no
+trace behind.
+
+There was nothing to account for it, unless it could be explained by
+heredity, and no one had ever suggested any such explanation to Maria.
+It was true that there had been more than one tragedy in the Braccio
+family since they had first lifted their heads above the level of their
+contemporaries to become Roman Barons, in the old days before such
+titles as prince and duke had come into use. But then, most of the old
+families could tell of deeds as cruel and lives as passionate as any
+remembered by Maria's race, and Italians, though superstitious in
+unexpected ways, have little of that belief in hereditary fate which is
+common enough in the gloomy north.
+
+"Was Sister Maria Addolorata a great sinner, before she became a nun?"
+asked Annetta, Sora Nanna's daughter, of her mother, one day, as they
+came away from the convent.
+
+"What are you saying!" exclaimed the washerwoman, in a tone of rebuke.
+"She is a great lady, and the niece of the abbess and of the cardinal.
+Sometimes certain ideas pass through your head, my daughter!"
+
+And Sora Nanna gesticulated, unable to express herself.
+
+"Then she sins in her throat," observed Annetta, calmly. "But you do not
+even look at her--so many sheets--so many pillow-cases--and good day!
+But while you count, I look."
+
+"Why should I look at her?" inquired Nanna, shifting the big empty
+basket she carried on her head, hitching her broad shoulders and
+wrinkling her leathery forehead, as her small eyes turned upward. "Do
+you take me for a man, that I should make eyes at a nun?"
+
+"And I? Am I a man? And yet I look at her. I see nothing but her face
+when we are there, and afterwards I think about it. What harm is there?
+She sins in her throat. I know it."
+
+Sora Nanna hitched her shoulders impatiently again, and said nothing.
+The two women descended through the steep and narrow street, slippery
+and wet with slimy, coal black mud that glittered on the rough
+cobble-stones. Nanna walked first, and Annetta followed close behind
+her, keeping step, and setting her feet exactly where her mother had
+trod, with the instinctive certainty of the born mountaineer. With heads
+erect and shoulders square, each with one hand on her hip and the other
+hanging down, they carried their burdens swiftly and safely, with a
+swinging, undulating gait as though it were a pleasure to them to move,
+and would require an effort to stop rather than to walk on forever. They
+wore shoes because they were well-to-do people, and chose to show that
+they were when they went up to the convent. But for the rest they were
+clad in the costume of the neighbourhood,--the coarse white shift, close
+at the throat, the scarlet bodice, the short, dark, gathered skirt, and
+the dark blue carpet apron, with flowers woven on a white stripe across
+the lower end. Both wore heavy gold earrings, and Sora Nanna had eight
+or ten strings of large coral beads around her throat.
+
+Annetta was barely fifteen years old, brown, slim, and active as a
+lizard. She was one of those utterly unruly and untamable girls of whom
+there are two or three in every Italian village, in mountain or plain, a
+creature in whom a living consciousness of living nature took the place
+of thought, and with whom to be conscious was to speak, without reason
+or hesitation. The small, keen, black eyes were set under immense and
+arched black eyebrows which made the eyes themselves seem larger than
+they were, and the projecting temples cast shadows to the cheek which
+hid the rudimentary modelling of the coarse lower lids. The ears were
+flat and ill-developed, but close to the head and not large; the teeth
+very short, though perfectly regular and exceedingly white; the lips
+long, mobile, brown rather than red, and generally parted like those
+of a wild animal. The girl's smoothly sinewy throat moved with every
+step, showing the quick play of the elastic cords and muscles. Her
+blue-black hair was plaited, though far from neatly, and the braids were
+twisted into an irregular flat coil, generally hidden by the flap of the
+white embroidered cloth cross-folded upon her head and hanging down
+behind.
+
+[Illustration: Nanna and Annetta.--Vol. I., p. 15.]
+
+For some minutes the mother and daughter continued to pick their way
+down the winding lanes between the dark houses of the upper village.
+Then Sora Nanna put out her right hand as a signal to Annetta that she
+meant to stop, and she stood still on the steep descent and turned
+deliberately till she could see the girl.
+
+"What are you saying?" she began, as though there had been no pause in
+the conversation. "That Sister Maria Addolorata sins in her throat! But
+how can she sin in her throat, since she sees no man but the gardener
+and the priest? Indeed, you say foolish things!"
+
+"And what has that to do with it?" inquired Annetta. "She must have seen
+enough of men in Rome, every one of them a great lord. And who tells you
+that she did not love one of them and does not wish that she were
+married to him? And if that is not a sin in the throat, I do not know
+what to say. There is my answer."
+
+"You say foolish things," repeated Sora Nanna.
+
+Then she turned deliberately away and began to descend once more, with
+an occasional dissatisfied movement of the shoulders.
+
+"For the rest," observed Annetta, "it is not my business. I would rather
+look at the Englishman when he is eating meat than at Sister Maria when
+she is counting clothes! I do not know whether he is a wolf or a man."
+
+"Eh! The Englishman!" exclaimed Sora Nanna. "You will look so much at
+the Englishman that you will make blood with Gigetto, who wishes you
+well, and when Gigetto has waited for the Englishman at the corner of
+the forest, what shall we all have? The galleys. What do you see in the
+Englishman? He has red hair and long, long teeth. Yes--just like a wolf.
+You are right. And if he pays for meat, why should he not eat it? If he
+did not pay, it would be different. It would soon be finished. Heaven
+send us a little money without any Englishman! Besides, Gigetto said the
+other day that he would wait for him at the corner of the forest. And
+Gigetto, when he says a thing, he does it."
+
+"And why should we go to the galleys if Gigetto waits for the
+Englishman?" inquired Annetta.
+
+"Silly!" cried the older woman. "Because Gigetto would take your
+father's gun, since he has none of his own. That would be enough. We
+should have done it!"
+
+Annetta shrugged her shoulders and said nothing.
+
+"But take care," continued Sora Nanna. "Your father sleeps with one eye
+open. He sees you, and he sees also the Englishman every day. He says
+nothing, because he is good. But he has a fist like a paving-stone. I
+tell you nothing more."
+
+They reached Sora Nanna's house and disappeared under the dark archway.
+For Sora Nanna and Stefanone, her husband, were rich people for their
+station, and their house was large and was built with an arch wide
+enough and high enough for a loaded beast of burden to pass through with
+a man on its back. And, within, everything was clean and well kept,
+excepting all that belonged to Annetta. There were airy upper rooms,
+with well-swept floors of red brick or of beaten cement, furnished with
+high beds on iron trestles, and wooden stools of well-worn brown oak,
+and tables painted a vivid green, and primitive lithographs of Saint
+Benedict and Santa Scholastica and the Addolorata. And there were lofts
+in which the rich autumn grapes were hung up to dry on strings, and
+where chestnuts lay in heaps, and figs were spread in symmetrical order
+on great sheets of the coarse grey paper made in Subiaco. There were
+apples, too, though poor ones, and there were bins of maize and wheat,
+waiting to be picked over before being ground in the primeval household
+mill. And there were hams and sides of bacon, and red peppers, and
+bundles of dried herbs, and great mountain cheeses on shelves. There was
+also a guest room, better than the rest, which Stefanone and his wife
+occasionally let to respectable travellers or to the merchants who came
+from Rome on business to stay a few days in Subiaco. At the present time
+the room was rented by the Englishman concerning whom the discussion had
+arisen between Annetta and her mother.
+
+Angus Dalrymple, M.D., was not an Englishman, as he had tried to explain
+to Sora Nanna, though without the least success. He was, as his name
+proclaimed, a Scotchman of the Scotch, and a doctor of medicine. It was
+true that he had red hair, and an abundance of it, and long white teeth,
+but Sora Nanna's description was otherwise libellously incomplete and
+wholly omitted all mention of the good points in his appearance. In the
+first place, he possessed the characteristic national build in a
+superior degree of development, with all the lean, bony energy which has
+done so much hard work in the world. He was broad-shouldered,
+long-armed, long-legged, deep-chested, and straight, with sinewy hands
+and singularly well-shaped fingers. His healthy skin had that mottled
+look produced by countless freckles upon an almost childlike complexion.
+The large, grave mouth generally concealed the long teeth objected to by
+Sora Nanna, and the lips, though even and narrow, were strong rather
+than thin, and their rare smile was both genial and gentle. There were
+lines--as yet very faint--about the corners of the mouth, which told of
+a nervous and passionate disposition and of the strong Scotch temper, as
+well as of a certain sensitiveness which belongs especially to northern
+races. The pale but very bright blue eyes under shaggy auburn brows were
+fiery with courage and keen with shrewd enterprise. Dalrymple was
+assuredly not a man to be despised under any circumstances,
+intellectually or physically.
+
+His presence in such a place as Subiaco, at a time when hardly any
+foreigners except painters visited the place, requires some explanation;
+for he was not an artist, but a doctor, and had never been even tempted
+to amuse himself with sketching. In the first place, he was a younger
+son of a good family, and received a moderate allowance, quite
+sufficient in those days to allow him considerable latitude of
+expenditure in old-fashioned Italy. Secondly, he had entirely refused to
+follow any of the professions known as 'liberal.' He had no taste for
+the law, and he had not the companionable character which alone can make
+life in the army pleasant in time of peace. His beliefs, or his lack of
+belief, together with an honourable conscience, made him naturally
+opposed to all churches. On the other hand, he had been attracted almost
+from his childhood by scientific subjects, at a period when the
+discoveries of the last fifty years appeared as misty but beatific
+visions to men of science. To the disappointment and, to some extent, to
+the humiliation of his family, he insisted upon studying medicine, at
+the University of St. Andrew's, as soon as he had obtained his ordinary
+degree at Cambridge. And having once insisted, nothing could turn him
+from his purpose, for he possessed English tenacity grafted upon Scotch
+originality, with a good deal of the strength of both races.
+
+While still a student he had once made a tour in Italy, and like many
+northerners had fallen under the mysterious spell of the South from the
+very first. Having a sufficient allowance for all his needs, as has been
+said, and being attracted by the purely scientific side of his
+profession rather than by any desire to become a successful
+practitioner, it was natural enough that on finding himself free to go
+whither he pleased in pursuit of knowledge, he should have visited Italy
+again. A third visit had convinced him that he should do well to spend
+some years in the country; for by that time he had become deeply
+interested in the study of malarious fevers, which in those days were
+completely misunderstood. It would be far too much to say that young
+Dalrymple had at that time formed any complete theory in regard to
+malaria; but his naturally lonely and concentrated intellect had
+contemptuously discarded all explanations of malarious phenomena, and,
+communicating his own ideas to no one, until he should be in possession
+of proofs for his opinions, he had in reality got hold of the beginning
+of the truth about germs which has since then revolutionized medicine.
+
+The only object of this short digression has been to show that Angus
+Dalrymple was not a careless idler and tourist in Italy, only half
+responsible for what he did, and not at all for what he thought. On the
+contrary, he was a man of very unusual gifts, of superior education, and
+of rare enterprise; a strong, silent, thoughtful man, about
+eight-and-twenty years of age, and just beginning to feel his power as
+something greater than he had suspected, when he came to spend the
+autumn months in Subiaco, and hired Sora Nanna's guest room, with a
+little room leading off it, which he kept locked, and in which he had a
+table, a chair, a microscope, some books, a few chemicals and some
+simple apparatus.
+
+His presence had at first roused certain jealous misgivings in the heart
+of the town physician, Sor Tommaso Taddei, commonly spoken of simply as
+'the Doctor,' because there was no other. But Dalrymple was not without
+tact and knowledge of human nature. He explained that he came as a
+foreigner to learn from native physicians how malarious fevers were
+treated in Italy; and he listened with patient intelligence to Sor
+Tommaso's antiquated theories, and silently watched his still more
+antiquated practice. And Sor Tommaso, like all people who think that
+they know a vast deal, highly approved of Dalrymple's submissive
+silence, and said that the young man was a marvel of modesty, and that
+if he could stay about ten years in Subiaco and learn something from Sor
+Tommaso himself, he might really some day be a fairly good
+doctor,--which were extraordinarily liberal admissions on the part of
+the old practitioner, and contributed largely towards reassuring
+Stefanone concerning his lodger's character.
+
+For Stefanone and his wife had their doubts and suspicions. Of course
+they knew that all foreigners except Frenchmen and Austrians were
+Protestants, and ate meat on fast days, and were under the most especial
+protection of the devil, who fattened them in this world that they might
+burn the better in the next. But Stefanone had never seen the real
+foreigner at close quarters, and had not conceived it possible that any
+living human being could devour so much half-cooked flesh in a day as
+Dalrymple desired for his daily portion, paid for, and consumed.
+Moreover, there was no man in Subiaco who could and did swallow such
+portentous draughts of the strong mountain wine, without suffering any
+apparent effects from his potations. Furthermore, also, Dalrymple did
+strange things by day and night in the small laboratory he had arranged
+next to his bedroom, and unholy and evil smells issued at times through
+the cracks of the door, and penetrated from the bedroom to the stairs
+outside, and were distinctly perceptible all over the house. Therefore
+Stefanone maintained for a long time that his lodger was in league with
+the powers of darkness, and that it was not safe to keep him in the
+house, though he paid his bill so very regularly, every Saturday, and
+never quarrelled about the price of his food and drink. On the whole,
+however, Stefanone abstained from interfering, as he had at first been
+inclined to do, and entering the laboratory, with the support of the
+parish priest, a basin of holy water, and a loaded gun--all three of
+which he considered necessary for an exorcism; and little by little, Sor
+Tommaso, the doctor, persuaded him that Dalrymple was a worthy young
+man, deeply engaged in profound studies, and should be respected rather
+than exorcised.
+
+"Of course," admitted the doctor, "he is a Protestant. But then he has a
+passport. Let us therefore let him alone."
+
+The existence of the passport--indispensable in those days--was a strong
+argument in the eyes of the simple Stefanone. He could not conceive
+that a magician whose soul was sold to the devil could possibly have a
+passport and be under the protection of the law. So the matter was
+settled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+[Illustration: Maria Addolorata.--Vol. I., p. 25.]
+
+SISTER MARIA ADDOLORATA sat by the open door of her cell, looking across
+the stone parapet of her little balcony, and watching the changing
+richness of the western sky, as the sun went down far out of sight
+behind the mountains. Though the month was October, the afternoon was
+warm; it was very still, and the air had been close in the choir during
+the Benediction service, which was just over. She leaned back in her
+chair, and her lips parted as she breathed, with a perceptible desire
+for refreshment in the breath. She held a piece of needlework in her
+heavy white hands; the needle had been thrust through the linen, but the
+stitch had remained unfinished, and one pointed finger pressed the
+doubled edge against the other, lest the material should slip before she
+made up her mind to draw the needle through. Deep in the garden under
+the balcony the late flowers were taking strangely vivid colours out of
+the bright sky above, and some bits of broken glass, stuck in the mortar
+on the top of the opposite wall as a protection against thieving boys,
+glowed like a line of rough rubies against the misty distance. Even the
+white walls of the bare cell and the coarse grey blanket lying across
+the foot of the small bed drank in a little of the colour, and looked
+less grey and less grim.
+
+From the eaves, high above the open door, the swallows shot down into
+the golden light, striking great circles and reflecting the red gold of
+the sky from their breasts as they wheeled just beyond the wall, with
+steady wings wide-stretched, up and down; and each one, turning at full
+speed, struck upwards again and was out of sight in an instant, above
+the lintel. The nun watched them, her eyes trying to follow each of them
+in turn and to recognize them separately as they flashed into sight
+again and again.
+
+Her lips were parted, and as she sat there she began to sing very softly
+and quite unconsciously. She could not have told what the song was. The
+words were strange and oddly divided, and there was a deadly sadness in
+a certain interval that came back almost with every stave. But the voice
+itself was beautiful beyond all comparison with ordinary voices, full of
+deep and touching vibrations and far harmonics, though she sang so
+softly, all to herself. Notes like hers haunt the ears--and sometimes
+the heart--when she who sang them has been long dead, and many would
+give much to hear but a breath of them again.
+
+It was hard for Maria Addolorata not to sing sometimes, when she was
+all alone in her cell, though it was so strictly forbidden. Singing is a
+gift of expression, when it is a really natural gift, as much as speech
+and gesture and the smile on the lips, with the one difference that it
+is a keener pleasure to him or her that sings than gesture or speech can
+possibly be. Music, and especially singing, are a physical as well as an
+intellectual expression, a pleasure of the body as well as a
+'delectation' of the soul. To sing naturally and spontaneously is most
+generally an endowment of natures physically strong and rich by the
+senses, independently of the mind, though melody may sometimes be the
+audible translation of a silent thought as well as the unconscious
+speech of wordless passion.
+
+And in Maria's song there was a strain of that something unknown and
+fatal, which the nuns sometimes saw in her face and which was in her
+eyes now, as she sang; for they no longer followed the circling of the
+swallows, but grew fixed and dark, with fiery reflexions from the sunset
+sky, and the regular features grew white and straight and square against
+the deepening shadows within the narrow room. The deep voice trembled a
+little, and the shoulders had a short, shivering movement under the
+heavy folds of the dark veil, as the sensation of a presence ran through
+her and made her shudder. But the voice did not break, and she sang on,
+louder, now, than she realized, the full notes swelling in her throat,
+and vibrating between the narrow walls, and floating out through the
+open door to join the flight of the swallows.
+
+The door of the cell opened gently, but she did not hear, and sang on,
+leaning back in her chair and gazing still at the pink clouds above the
+mountains.
+
+          "Death is my love, dark-eyed death--"
+
+she sang.
+
+"Maria!"
+
+The abbess was standing in the doorway and speaking to her, but she did
+not hear.
+
+          "His hands are sweetly cold and gentle--
+           Flowers of leek, and firefly--
+           Holy Saint John!"
+
+"Maria!" cried the abbess, impatiently. "What follies are you singing? I
+could hear you in my room!"
+
+Maria Addolorata started and rose from her seat, still holding her
+needlework, and turning half round towards her superior, with suddenly
+downcast eyes. The elder lady came forward with slow dignity and walked
+as far as the door of the balcony, where she stood still for a moment,
+gazing at the beautiful sky. She was not a stately woman, for she was
+too short and stout, but she had that calm air of assured superiority
+which takes the place of stateliness, and which seems to belong
+especially to those who occupy important positions in the Church. Her
+large features, though too heavy, were imposing in their excessive
+pallor, while the broad, dark brown shadows all around and beneath the
+large black eyes gave the face a depth of expression which did not,
+perhaps, wholly correspond with the original character. It was a
+striking face, and considering the wide interval between the ages of the
+abbess and her niece, and the natural difference of colouring, there was
+a strong family resemblance in the two women.
+
+The abbess sat down upon the only chair, and Maria remained standing
+before her, her sewing in her hands.
+
+"I have often told you that you must not sing in your cell," said the
+abbess, in a coldly severe tone.
+
+Maria's shoulders shook her veil a little, but she still looked at the
+floor.
+
+"I cannot help it," she answered in a constrained voice. "I did not know
+that I was singing--"
+
+"That is ridiculous! How can one sing, and not know it? You are not
+deaf. At least, you do not sing as though you were. I will not have it.
+I could hear you as far away as my own room--a love-song, too!"
+
+"The love of death," suggested Maria.
+
+"It makes no difference," answered the elder lady. "You disturb the
+peace of the sisters with your singing. You know the rule, and you must
+obey it, like the rest. If you must sing, then sing in church."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Very well, that ought to be enough. Must you sing all the time? Suppose
+that the Cardinal had been visiting me, as was quite possible, what
+impression would he have had of our discipline?"
+
+"Oh, Uncle Cardinal has often heard me sing."
+
+"You must not call him 'Uncle Cardinal.' It is like the common people
+who say 'Uncle Priest.' I have told you that a hundred times at least.
+And if the Cardinal has heard you singing, so much the worse."
+
+"He once told me that I had a good voice," observed Maria, still
+standing before her aunt.
+
+"A good voice is a gift of God and to be used in church, but not in such
+a way as to attract attention or admiration. The devil is everywhere, my
+daughter, and makes use of our best gifts as a means of temptation. The
+Cardinal certainly did not hear you singing that witch's love-song which
+I heard just now. He would have rebuked you as I do."
+
+"It was not a love-song. It is about death--and Saint John's eve."
+
+"Well, then it is about witches. Do not argue with me. There is a rule,
+and you must not break it."
+
+Maria Addolorata said nothing, but moved a step and leaned against the
+door-post, looking out into the evening light. The stout abbess sat
+motionless in her straight chair, looking past her niece at the distant
+hills. She had evidently said all she meant to say about the singing,
+and it did not occur to her to talk of anything else. A long silence
+followed. Maria was not timid, but she had been accustomed from her
+childhood to look upon her aunt as an immensely superior person, moving
+in a higher sphere, and five years spent in the convent as novice and
+nun had rather increased than diminished the feeling of awe which the
+abbess inspired in the young girl. There was, indeed, no other sister in
+the community who would have dared to answer the abbess's rebuke at all,
+and Maria's very humble protest really represented an extraordinary
+degree of individuality and courage. Conventual institutions can only
+exist on a basis of absolute submission.
+
+The abbess was neither harsh nor unkind, and was certainly not a very
+terrifying figure, but she possessed undeniable force of character,
+strengthened by the inborn sense of hereditary right and power, and her
+kindness was as imposing as her displeasure was lofty and solemn. She
+had very little sympathy for any weakness in others, but she was always
+ready to dispense the mercy of Heaven, vicariously, so to say, and with
+a certain royally suppressed surprise that Heaven should be merciful.
+On the whole, considering the circumstances, she admitted that Maria
+Addolorata had accepted the veil with sufficient outward grace, though
+without any vocation, and she took it for granted that with such
+opportunities the girl must slowly develop into an abbess not unlike her
+predecessors. She prayed regularly, of course, and with especial
+intention, for her niece, as for the welfare of the order, and assumed
+as an unquestionable result that her prayers were answered with perfect
+regularity, since her own conscience did not reproach her with
+negligence of her young relative's spiritual education.
+
+To the abbess, religion, the order and its duties, presented themselves
+as a vast machine controlled for the glory of God by the Pope. She and
+her nuns were parts of the great engine which must work with perfect
+regularity in order that God might be glorified. Her mind was naturally
+religious, but was at the same time essentially of the material order.
+There is a material imagination, and there is a spiritual imagination.
+There are very good and devout men and women who take the world, present
+and to come, quite literally, as a mere fulfilment of their own
+limitations; who look upon what they know as being all that need be
+known, and upon what they believe of God and Heaven as the mechanical
+consequence of what they know rather than as the cause and goal,
+respectively, of existence and action; to whom the letter of the law is
+the arbitrary expression of a despotic power, which, somehow, must be
+looked upon as merciful; who answer all questions concerning God's logic
+with the tremendous assertion of God's will; whose God is a magnified
+man, and whose devil is a malignant animal, second only to God in
+understanding, while extreme from God in disposition. There are good men
+and women who, to use a natural but not flippant simile, take it for
+granted that the soul is cast into the troubled waters of life without
+the power to swim, or even the possibility of learning to float,
+dependent upon the bare chance that some one may throw it the life-buoy
+of ritual religion as its only conceivable means of salvation. And the
+opponents of each particular form of faith invariably take just such
+good men and women, with all their limitations, as the only true
+exponents of that especial creed, which they then proceed to tear in
+pieces with all the ease such an undue advantage of false premise gives
+them. None of them have thought of intellectual mercy as being, perhaps,
+an integral part of Christian charity. Faith they have in abundance, and
+hope also not a little; but charity, though it be for men's earthly ills
+and, theoretically, if not always practically, for men's spiritual
+shortcomings, is rigidly forbidden for the errors of men's minds. Why?
+No thinking man can help asking the little question which grows great in
+the unanswering silence that follows it.
+
+All this is not intended as an apology for what the young nun, Maria
+Addolorata, afterwards did, though much of it is necessary in
+explanation of her deeds, which, however they may be regarded, brought
+upon her and others their inevitable logical consequences. Still less is
+it meant, in any sense, as an attack upon the conventual system of the
+cloistered orders, which system was itself a consequence of spiritual,
+intellectual and political history, and has a prime right to be judged
+upon the evidence of its causes, and not by the shortcomings of its
+results in changed times. What has been said merely makes clear the fact
+that the characters, minds, and dispositions of Maria Addolorata and of
+her aunt, the abbess, were wholly unsuited to one another. And this one
+fact became a source of life and death, of happiness and misery, of
+comedy and tragedy, to many individuals, even to the present day.
+
+The nun remained motionless, pressing her cheek against the door-post
+and looking out. Her aunt had not quite shut the door by which she had
+entered, and a cool stream of air blew outward from the corridor and
+through the cell, bringing with it that peculiar odour which belongs to
+all large and old buildings inhabited by religious communities. It is
+made up of the cold exhalations from stone walls and paved floors in
+which there is always some dampness, of the acrid smell of the heavy,
+leathern, wadded curtains which shut off the main drafts of air, as the
+swinging doors do in a mine, of a faint but perceptible suggestion of
+incense which penetrates the whole building from the church or the
+chapel, and, not least, of the fumes from the cookery of the great
+quantities of vegetables which are the staple food of the brethren or
+the sisters. It is as imperceptible to the monks and nuns themselves as
+the smell of tobacco to the smoker.
+
+It had been very close in the little cell, and Maria was glad of the
+coolness that came in through the open door. Her eyes were fixed on the
+sky with a longing look. Again the words of her song rose to her lips,
+but she checked them, remembering her aunt's presence, and with the
+effort to be silent came the strong wish to be free, to be over there
+upon those purple hills at evening, to look beyond and watch the sun
+sinking into the distant sea, to breathe her fill of the mountain air,
+to run along the crests of the hills till she should be tired, to sleep
+under the open sky, to see, in dreams, to-morrow's sun rising through
+the trees, to be waked by the song of birds and to find that the dream
+was true.
+
+Instead of that, and instead of all it meant to her, there was to be
+the silent evening meal, the close, lighted chapel, the wearily nasal
+chant of the sisters, her lonely cell, with its close darkness, the
+unrefreshing sleep, broken by the bell calling her to another office in
+the chapel; then, at last, the dawn, and the day that would seem as much
+a prisoner as herself within the convent walls, and the praying and
+nasal chanting, and the counting of sheets and pillow-cases, and doing a
+little sewing, and singing to herself, perhaps, and then the being
+reproved for it--the whole varied by meals of coarse food, and
+periodical stations in her seat in the choir. The day! The very sun
+seemed imprisoned in his corner of the garden wall, dragging slowly at
+his chain, in a short half-circle, from morning till evening, like a
+watch-dog tied up in a yard beside his kennel. The night was better.
+Sometimes she could see the moon-rays through the cracks of the balcony
+door, as she lay in her bed. She could see them against the darkness,
+and the ends of them were straight white lines and round white spots on
+the floor and on the walls. Her thoughts played in them, and her maiden
+fancies caught them and followed them lightly out into the white night
+and far away to the third world, which is dreamland. And in her dreams
+she sang to the midnight stars, and clasped her bare arms round the
+moon's white throat, kissing the moon-lady's pale and passionate cheek,
+till she lost herself in the mysterious eyes, and found herself once
+more, bathed in cool star-showers, the queen of a tender dream.
+
+There sat the abbess, in the only chair, stolid, righteous, imposing.
+The incarnation and representative of the ninety and nine who need no
+forgiveness, exasperatingly and mathematically virtuous as a dogma, a
+woman against whom no sort of reproach could be brought, and at the mere
+sight of whom false witnesses would shrivel up and die, like jelly-fish
+in the sun. She not only approved of the convent life, but she liked it.
+She was at liberty to do a thousand things which were not permitted to
+the nuns, but she had not the slightest inclination to do any of them,
+any more than she was inclined to admit that any of them could possibly
+be unhappy if they would only pray, sing, sleep, and eat boiled cabbage
+at the appointed hours. What had she in common with Maria Addolorata,
+except that she was born a princess and a Braccio?
+
+Of what use was it to be a princess by birth, like a dozen or more of
+the sisters, or even a noble, like all the others? Of what use or
+advantage could anything be, where liberty was not? An even plainer and
+more desperate question rose in the young nun's heart, as she leaned her
+cheek against the door-post, still warm with the afternoon sun. Of what
+use was life, if it was to be lived in the tomb with the accompaniment
+of a lifelong funeral service? Why should not God be as well pleased
+with suicide as with self-burial? Why should not death all at once, by
+the sudden dash of cleanly steel, be as noble and acceptable a sacrifice
+as death by sordid degrees of orderly suffering, systematic starvation,
+and rigidly regulated misery? Was not life, life--and blood,
+blood--whether drawn by drops, or shed from a quick wound in the
+splendid redness of one heroic instant? Surely it would be as grand a
+thing, if a mere sacrifice were the object, to be laid down stark dead,
+with the death-thrust in the heart, at the foot of the altar, in all her
+radiant youth and full young beauty, untempted and unsullied, as to fast
+and pray through forty querulous years of misery in prison.
+
+But then, there was the virtue of patience. Therein, doubtless, lay the
+difference. It was not the death alone that was to please God, but the
+long manner of it, the summed-up account of suffering, the interest paid
+on the capital of life after it was invested in death. God was to be
+pleased with items, and the sum of them. Item, a sleepless night. Item,
+a bad cold, caught by kneeling on the damp stones. Item, a dish of
+sweets refused on a feast-day. Item, the resolution not to laugh when a
+fly settled on the abbess's nose. Item, the resolution not to wish that
+her hair had never been cut off. Item, being stifled in summer and
+frozen in winter, in her cell. Item, appreciating that it was the best
+cell, and that she was better off than the other sisters.
+
+Repeat the items for half a century, sum them up, and offer them to God
+as a meet and fitting sacrifice--the destruction, by fine degrees of
+petty suffering, of one woman's whole life, almost from the beginning,
+and quite to the end, with the total annihilation of all its human
+possibilities, of love, of motherhood, of reasonable enjoyment and
+legitimate happiness. That was the formula for salvation which Maria
+Addolorata had received with the veil.
+
+And not only had she received it. It had been thrust upon her, because
+she chanced to be the only available daughter of the ancient house of
+Braccio, to fill the hereditary seat beneath the wooden canopy, as
+abbess of the Subiaco Carmelites. If there had been another sister, less
+fair, more religiously disposed, that sister would have been chosen in
+Maria's stead. But there was no other; and there must be a young Braccio
+nun, to take the place of the elder one, when the latter should have
+filled her account to overflowing with little items to be paid for with
+the gold of certain salvation.
+
+That a sinful woman, full of sorrows, and weary of the world, might
+silently bow her head under the nun's veil, and wear out with prayerful
+austerity the deep-cut letters of her sin's story, that, at least, was a
+thing Maria could understand. There were faces amongst the sisters that
+haunted her in her solitude, lips that could have told much, but which
+said only 'Miserere'; eyes that had looked on love, and that fixed
+themselves now only on the Cross; cheeks blanched with grief and
+hollowed as the marble of an ancient fountain by often flowing tears;
+hearts that had given all, and had been beaten and bruised and rejected.
+The convent was for them; the life was a life for them; for them there
+was no freedom beyond these walls, in the living world, nor anywhere on
+this side of death. They had done right in coming, and they did right in
+staying; they were reasonable when they prayed that they might have
+time, before they died, to be sorry for their sins and to touch again
+the hem of the garment of innocence.
+
+But even they, if they were told that it would be right, would they not
+rather shorten their time to a day, even to one instant, of aggregated
+pain, and offer up their sacrifice all at once? And why should it not be
+right? Did God delight in pain and suffering for its own sake? The
+passionate girl's heart revolted angrily against a Being that could
+enjoy the sufferings of helpless creatures.
+
+But then, there was that virtue of patience again, which was beyond her
+comprehension. At last she spoke, her face still to the sunset.
+
+"What difference can it make to God how we die?" she asked, scarcely
+conscious that she was speaking.
+
+The abbess must have started a little, for the chair creaked suddenly,
+several seconds before she answered. Her face did not relax, however,
+nor were her hands unclasped from one another as they lay folded on her
+knees.
+
+"That is a foolish question, my daughter," she said at last. "Do you
+think that God was not pleased by the sufferings of the holy martyrs,
+and did not reward them for what they bore?"
+
+"No, I did not mean that," answered Maria, quickly. "But why should we
+not all be martyrs? It would be much quicker."
+
+"Heaven preserve us!" exclaimed the abbess. "What are you thinking of,
+child?"
+
+"It would be so much quicker," repeated Maria. "What are we here for? To
+sacrifice our lives to God. We wish to make this sacrifice, and God
+promises to accept it. Why would it be less complete if we were led to
+the altar as soon as we have finished our novitiate and quickly killed?
+It would be the same, and it would be much quicker. What difference can
+it make how we die, since we are to die in the end, without
+accomplishing anything except dying?"
+
+By this time the abbess's pale hands were unclasped, and one of them
+pressed each knee, as she leaned far forward in her seat, with an
+expression of surprise and horror, her dark lips parted and all the
+lines of her colourless face drawn down.
+
+"Are you mad, Maria?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"Mad? No. Why should you think me mad?" The nun turned and looked down
+at her aunt. "After all, it is the great question. Our lives are but a
+preparation for death. Why need the preparation be so long? Why should
+the death be so slow? Why should it be right to kill ourselves for the
+glory of God by degrees, and wrong to do it all at once, if one has the
+courage? I think it is a very reasonable question."
+
+"Indeed, you are beside yourself! The devil suggests such things to you
+and blinds you to the truth, my child. Penance and prayer, prayer and
+penance--by the grace of Heaven it will pass."
+
+"Penance and prayer!" exclaimed Maria, sadly. "That is it--a slow death,
+but a sure one!"
+
+"I am more than sixty years old," replied the abbess. "I have done
+penance and prayed prayers all my life, and you see--I am well. I am
+stout."
+
+"For charity's sake, do not say so!" cried Maria, making the sign of the
+horns with her fingers, to ward off the evil eye. "You will certainly
+fall ill."
+
+"Our lives are of God. It is our own eyes that are evil. You must not
+make horns with your fingers. It is a heathen superstition, as I have
+often told you. But many of you do it. Maria, I wish to speak to you
+seriously."
+
+"Speak, mother," answered the young nun, the strong habit of submission
+returning instantly with the other's grave tone.
+
+"These thoughts of yours are very wicked. We are placed in the world,
+and we must continue to live in it, as long as God wills that we should.
+When God is pleased to deliver us, He will take us in good time. You and
+I and the sisters should be thankful that during our brief stay on earth
+this sanctuary has fallen to our lot, and this possibility of a holy
+life. We must take every advantage of it, thanking Heaven if our stay be
+long enough for us to repent of our sins and obtain indulgence for our
+venial shortcomings. It is wicked to desire to shorten our lives. It is
+wicked to desire anything which is not the will of God. We are here to
+live, to watch and to pray--not to complain and to rebel."
+
+The abbess was stout, as she herself admitted, and between her sudden
+surprise at her niece's wholly unorthodox, not to say blasphemous,
+suggestion of suicide as a means of grace, and her own attempt at
+eloquence, she grew rapidly warm, in spite of the comparatively cool
+draft which was passing out from the interior of the building. She
+caught the end of her loose over-sleeve and fanned herself slowly when
+she had finished speaking.
+
+But Maria Addolorata did not consider that she was answered. There in
+the cell of a Carmelite convent, in the heart of a young girl who had
+perhaps never heard of Shakespeare and who certainly knew nothing of
+Hamlet, the question of all questions found itself, and she found for it
+such speech as she could command. It broke out passionately and
+impatiently.
+
+"What are we? And why are we what we are? Yes, mother--I know that you
+are good, and that all you say is true. But it is not all. There is all
+the world beyond it. To live, or not to live--but you know that this is
+not living! It is not meant to be living, as the people outside
+understand what living means. What does it all signify but death, when
+we take the veil, and lie before the altar, and are covered with a
+funeral pall? It means dying--then why not altogether dying? Has not God
+angels, in thousands, to praise Him and worship Him, and pray for
+sinners on earth? And they sing and pray gladly, because they are
+blessed and do not suffer, as we do. Why should God want us, poor little
+nuns, to live half dead, and to praise Him with voices that crack with
+the cold in winter, and to kneel till we faint with the heat in summer,
+and to wear out our bodies with fasting and prayer and penance, till it
+is all we can do to crawl to our places in the choir? Not I--I am young
+and strong still--nor you, perhaps, for you are strong still, though you
+are not young. But many of the sisters--yes, they are the best ones, I
+know--they are killing themselves by inches before our eyes. You know
+it--I know it--they know it themselves. Why should they not find some
+shorter way of death for God's glory? Or if not, why should they not
+live happily, since many of them could? Why should God, who made us,
+wish us to destroy ourselves--or if He does, then why may we not do it
+in our own way? Ah--it would be so short--a knife-thrust, and then the
+great peace forever!"
+
+The abbess had risen and was standing before Maria, one hand resting on
+the back of the rush-bottomed chair.
+
+"Blasphemy!" she cried, finding breath at last. "It is blasphemy, or
+madness, or both! It is the evil one's own doing! Forgive her, good God!
+She does not know what she is saying! Almighty and most merciful God,
+forgive her!"
+
+For a moment Maria Addolorata was silent, realizing how far she had
+forgotten herself, and startled by the abbess's terrified eyes and
+excited tone. But she was naturally a far more daring woman than she
+herself knew. Though her face was pale, her lips smiled at her good
+aunt's fright.
+
+"But that is not an answer--just to cry 'blasphemy!'" she said. "The
+question is clear--"
+
+She did not finish the sentence. The abbess was really beside herself
+with religious terror. With almost violent hands she dragged and thrust
+her niece down till Maria fell upon her knees.
+
+"Pray, child! Pray, before it is too late!" she cried. "Pray on your
+knees that this possession may pass, before your soul is lost forever!"
+
+She herself knelt beside the girl upon the stones, still clasping her
+and pressing her down. And she prayed aloud, long, fervently, almost
+wildly, appealing to God for protection against a bodily tempting devil,
+who by his will, and with evil strength, was luring and driving a human
+soul to utter damnation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+"IT is well," said Stefanone. "The world is come to an end. I will not
+say anything more."
+
+He finished his tumbler of wine, leaned back on the wooden bench against
+the brown wall, played with the broad silver buttons of his dark blue
+jacket, and stared hard at Sor Tommaso, the doctor, who sat opposite to
+him. The doctor returned his glance rather unsteadily and betook himself
+to his snuffbox. It was of worn black ebony, adorned in the middle of
+the lid with a small view of Saint Peter's and the colonnades in mosaic,
+with a very blue sky. From long use, each tiny fragment of the mosaic
+was surrounded by a minute black line, which indeed lent some tone to
+the intensely clear atmosphere of the little picture, but gave the
+architecture represented therein a dirty and neglected appearance. The
+snuff itself, however, was of the superior quality known as Sicilian in
+those days, and was of a beautiful light brown colour.
+
+"And why?" asked the doctor very slowly, between the operations of
+pinching, stuffing, snuffing, and dusting. "Why is the world come to an
+end?"
+
+Stefanone's eyes grew sullen, with a sort of dull glare in their
+unwinking gaze. He looked dangerous just then, but the doctor did not
+seem to be in the least afraid of him.
+
+"You, who have made it end, should know why," answered the peasant,
+after a short pause.
+
+Stefanone was a man of the Roman type, of medium height, thick set and
+naturally melancholic, with thin, straight lips that were clean shaven,
+straight black hair, a small but aggressively aquiline nose and heavy
+hands, hairy on the backs of the fingers, between the knuckles. His
+wife, Sora Nanna, said that he had a fist like a paving-stone. He also
+looked as though he might have the constitution of a mule. He was at
+that time about five-and-thirty years of age, and there were a few
+strong lines in his face, notably those curved ones drawn from the
+beginning of the nostrils to the corners of the mouth, which are said to
+denote an uncertain temper.
+
+He wore the dress of the richer peasants of that day, a coarse but
+spotless white shirt, very open at the throat, a jacket and waistcoat of
+stout dark blue cloth, with large and smooth silver buttons,
+knee-breeches, white stockings, and heavy low shoes with steel buckles.
+He combined the occupations of farmer, wine-seller, and carrier. When he
+was on the road between Subiaco and Rome, Gigetto, already mentioned,
+was supposed to represent him. It was understood that Gigetto was to
+marry Annetta--if he could be prevailed upon to do so, for he was the
+younger son of a peasant family which held its head even higher than
+Stefanone, and the young man as well as his people looked upon Annetta's
+wild ways with disapproval, though her fortune, as the only child of
+Stefanone and Sora Nanna, was a very strong attraction. In the meantime,
+Gigetto acted as though he were the older man's partner in the
+wine-shop, and as he was a particularly honest, but also a particularly
+idle, young man with a taste for singing and playing on the guitar, the
+position suited him admirably.
+
+As for Sor Tommaso, with whom Stefanone seemed inclined to quarrel on
+this particular evening, he was a highly respectable personage in a
+narrow-shouldered, high-collared black coat with broad skirts, and a
+snuff-coloured waistcoat. He wore a stock which was decidedly shabby,
+but decent, and the thin cuffs of his shirt were turned back over the
+tight sleeves of his coat, in the old fashion. He also wore amazingly
+tight black trousers, strapped closely over his well-blacked boots. To
+tell the truth, these nether garments, though of great natural
+resistance, had lived so long at a high tension, so to say, that they
+were no longer equally tight at all points, and there were, undoubtedly,
+certain perceptible spots on them; but, on the whole, the general effect
+of the doctor's appearance was fashionable, in the fashion of several
+years earlier and judged by the standard of Subiaco. He wore his hair
+rather long, in a handsome iron-grey confusion, his face was
+close-shaven, and, though he was thin, his complexion was somewhat
+apoplectic.
+
+Having duly and solemnly finished the operation of taking snuff, the
+doctor looked at the peasant.
+
+"I do not wish to have said anything," he observed, by way of a general
+retraction. "These are probably follies."
+
+"And for not having meant to say anything, you have planted this knife
+in my heart!" retorted Stefanone, the veins swelling at his temples.
+"Thank you. I wish to die, if I forget it. You tell me that this
+daughter of mine is making love with the Englishman. And then you say
+that you do not wish to have said anything! May he die, the Englishman,
+he, and whoever made him, with the whole family! An evil death on him
+and all his house!"
+
+"So long as you do not make me die, too!" exclaimed Sor Tommaso, with
+rather a pitying smile.
+
+"Eh! To die--it is soon said! And yet, people do die. You, who are a
+doctor, should know that. And you do not wish to have said anything!
+Bravo, doctor! Words are words. And yet they can sting. And after a
+thousand years, they still sting. You--what can you understand? Are you
+perhaps a father? You have not even a wife. Oh, blessed be God! You do
+not even know what you are saying. You know nothing. You think, perhaps,
+because you are a doctor, that you know more than I do. I will tell you
+that you are an ignorant!"
+
+"Oh, beautiful!" cried the doctor, angrily, stung by what is still
+almost a mortal insult. "You--to me--ignorant! Oh, beautiful, most
+beautiful, this! From a peasant to a man of science! Perhaps you too
+have a diploma from the University of the Sapienza--"
+
+"If I had, I should wrap half a pound of sliced ham--fat ham, you
+know--in it, for the first customer. What should I do with your
+diplomas! I ask you, what do you know? Do you know at all what a
+daughter is? Blood of my blood, heart of my heart, hand of this hand.
+But I am a peasant, and you are a doctor. Therefore, I know nothing."
+
+"And meanwhile you give me 'ignorant' in my face!" retorted Sor Tommaso.
+
+"Yes--and I repeat it!" cried Stefanone, leaning forwards, his clenched
+hand on the table. "I say it twice, three times--ignorant, ignorant,
+ignorant! Have you understood?"
+
+"Say it louder! In that way every one can hear you! Beast of a
+sheep-grazer!"
+
+"And you--crow-feeder! Furnisher of grave-diggers. And then--ignorant!
+Oh--this time I have said it clearly!"
+
+"And it seems to me that it is enough!" roared the doctor, across the
+table. "Ciociaro! Take that!"
+
+"Ciociaro? I? Oh, your soul! If I get hold of you with my hands!"
+
+A 'ciociaro' is a hill-man who wears 'cioce,' or rags, bound upon his
+feet with leathern sandals and thongs. He is generally a shepherd, and
+is held in contempt by the more respectable people of the larger
+mountain towns. To call a man a 'ciociaro' is a bitter insult.
+
+Stefanone in his anger had half risen from his seat. But the wooden
+bench on which he had been sitting was close to the wall behind him, and
+the heavy oak table was pushed up within a few inches of his chest, so
+that his movements were considerably hampered as he stretched out his
+hands rather wildly towards his adversary. The latter, who possessed
+more moral than physical courage, moved his chair back and prepared to
+make his escape, if Stefanone showed signs of coming round the table.
+
+At that moment a tall figure darkened the door that opened upon the
+street, and a quiet, dry voice spoke with a strong foreign accent. It
+was Angus Dalrymple, returning from a botanizing expedition in the
+hills, after being absent all day.
+
+"That is a very uncomfortable way of fighting," he observed, as he stood
+still in the doorway. "You cannot hit a man across a table broader than
+your arm is long, Signor Stefano."
+
+The effect of his words was instantaneous. Stefanone fell back into his
+seat. The doctor's anxious and excited expression resolved itself
+instantly into a polite smile.
+
+"We were only playing," he said suavely. "A little discussion--a mere
+jest. Our friend Stefanone was explaining something."
+
+"If the table had been narrower, he would have explained you away
+altogether," observed Dalrymple, coming forward.
+
+He laid a tin box which he had with him upon the table, and shook hands
+with Sor Tommaso. Then he slipped behind the table and sat down close to
+his host, as a precautionary measure in case the play should be resumed.
+Stefanone would have had a bad chance of being dangerous, if the
+powerful Scotchman chose to hold him down. But the peasant seemed to
+have become as suddenly peaceful as the doctor.
+
+"It was nothing," said Stefanone, quietly enough, though his eyes were
+bloodshot and glanced about the room in an unsettled way.
+
+At that moment Annetta entered from a door leading to the staircase. Her
+eyes were fixed on Dalrymple's face as she came forward, carrying a
+polished brass lamp, with three burning wicks, which she placed upon the
+table. Dalrymple looked up at her, and seeing her expression of inquiry,
+slowly nodded. With a laugh which drew her long red-brown lips back from
+her short white teeth, the girl produced a small flask and a glass,
+which she had carried behind her and out of sight when she came in. She
+set them before Dalrymple.
+
+"I saw you coming," she said, and laughed again. "And then--it is always
+the same. Half a 'foglietta' of the old, just for the appetite."
+
+Sor Tommaso glanced at Stefanone in a meaning way, but the girl's father
+affected not to see him. Dalrymple nodded his thanks, poured a few drops
+of wine into the glass and scattered them upon the brick floor according
+to the ancient custom, both for rinsing the glass and as a libation, and
+then offered to fill the glasses of each of the two men, who smiled,
+shook their heads, and covered their tumblers with their right hands. At
+last Dalrymple helped himself, nodded politely to his companions, and
+slowly emptied the glass which held almost all the contents of the
+little flask. The 'foglietta,' or 'leaflet' of wine, is said to have
+been so called from the twisted and rolled vine leaf which generally
+serves it for a stopper. A whole 'foglietta' contained a scant pint.
+
+"Will you eat now?" asked Annetta, still smiling.
+
+"Presently," answered Dalrymple. "What is there to eat? I am hungry."
+
+"It seems that you have to say so!" laughed the girl. "It is a new
+thing. There is beefsteak or mutton, if you wish to know. And ham--a
+fresh ham cut to-day. It is one of the Grape-eater's, and it seems good.
+You remember, Sor Tommaso, the--speaking with respect to your face--the
+pig we called the Grape-eater last year? Speaking with respect, he was a
+good pig. It is one of his hams that we have cut. There is also salad,
+and fresh bread, which you like. And wine, I will not speak of it. Eh,
+he likes wine, the Englishman! He comes in with a long, long face--and
+when he goes to bed, his face is wide, wide. That is the wine. But then,
+it does nothing else to him. It only changes his face. When I look at
+him, I seem to see the moon waxing."
+
+"You talk too much," said Stefanone.
+
+"Never mind, papa! Words are not pennies. The more one wastes, the more
+one has!"
+
+Dalrymple said nothing; but he smiled as she turned lightly with a toss
+of her small dark head and left the room.
+
+"Fine blood," observed the doctor, with a conciliatory glance at the
+girl's father.
+
+"You will be wanted before long, Sor Tommaso," said Dalrymple, gravely.
+"I hear that the abbess is very ill."
+
+The doctor looked up with sudden interest, and put on his professional
+expression.
+
+"The abbess, you say? Dear me! She is not young! What has she? Who told
+you, Sor Angoscia?"
+
+Now, 'Sor Angoscia' signifies in English 'Sir Anguish,' but the doctor
+in spite of really conscientious efforts could not get nearer to the
+pronunciation of Angus. Nevertheless, with northern persistency,
+Dalrymple corrected him for the hundredth time. The doctor's first
+attempt had resulted in his calling the Scotchman 'Sor Langusta,' which
+means 'Sir Crayfish'--and it must be admitted that 'Anguish' was an
+improvement.
+
+"Angus," said Dalrymple. "My name is Angus. The abbess has caught a
+severe cold from sitting in a draught when she was overheated. It has
+immediately settled on her lungs, and you may be sent for at any moment.
+I passed by the back of the convent on my way down, and the gardener was
+just coming out of the postern. He told me."
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" exclaimed Sor Tommaso, shaking his head.
+"Cold--bronchitis, pleurisy, pneumonia--it is soon done! One would be
+enough! Those nuns, what do they eat? A little grass, a little boiled
+paste, a little broth of meat on Sundays. What strength should they
+have? And then pray, pray, sing, sing! It needs a chest! Poor lungs! I
+will go to my home and get ready--blisters--mustard--a lancet--they
+will not allow a barber in the convent to bleed them. Well--I make
+myself the barber! What a life, what a life! If you wish to die young,
+be a doctor at Subiaco, Sor Angoscia. Good night, dear friend. Good
+night, Stefanone. I wish not to have said anything--you know--that
+little affair. Let us speak no more about it. I am more beast than you,
+because I said anything. Good night."
+
+Sor Tommaso got his stick from a dark corner, pressed his broad catskin
+hat upon his head, and took his respectability away on its tightly
+encased black legs.
+
+"And may the devil go with you," said Stefanone, under his breath, as
+the doctor disappeared.
+
+"Why?" inquired Dalrymple, who had caught the words.
+
+"I said nothing," answered the peasant, thoughtfully trimming one wick
+of the lamp with the bent brass wire which, with the snuffers, hung by a
+chain from the ring by which the lamp was carried.
+
+"I thought you spoke," said the Scotchman. "Well--the abbess is very
+ill, and Sor Tommaso has a job."
+
+"May he do it well! So that it need not be begun again."
+
+"What do you mean?" Dalrymple slowly sipped the remains of his little
+measure of wine.
+
+"Those nuns!" exclaimed Stefanone, instead of answering the question.
+"What are they here to do, in this world? Better make saints of
+them--and good night! There would be one misery less. Do you know what
+they do? They make wine. Good! But they do not drink it. They sell it
+for a farthing less by the foglietta than other people. The devil take
+them and their wine!"
+
+Dalrymple glanced at the angry peasant with some amusement, but did not
+make any answer.
+
+"Eh, Signore!" cried Stefanone. "You who are a foreigner and a
+Protestant, can you not say something, since it would be no sin for
+you?"
+
+"I was thinking of something to say, Signor Stefanone. But as for that,
+who does the business for the convent? They cannot do it themselves, I
+suppose. Who determines the price of their wine for them? Or the price
+of their corn?"
+
+"They are not so stupid as you think. Oh, no! They are not stupid, the
+nuns. They know the price of this, and the cost of that, just as well as
+you and I do. But Gigetto's father, Sor Agostino, is their steward, if
+that is what you wish to know. And his father was before him, and
+Gigetto will be after him, with his pumpkin-head. And the rest is sung
+by the organ, as we say when mass is over. For you know about Gigetto
+and Annetta."
+
+"Yes. And as you cannot quarrel with Sor Agostino on that account, I do
+not see but that you will either have to bear it, or sell your wine a
+farthing cheaper than that of the nuns."
+
+"Eh--that is soon said. A farthing cheaper than theirs! That means half
+a baiocco cheaper than I sell it now. And the best is only five baiocchi
+the foglietta, and the cheapest is two and a half. Good bye profit--a
+pleasant journey to Stefanone. But it is those nuns. They are to blame,
+and the devil will pay them."
+
+"In that case you need not," observed Dalrymple, rising. "I am going to
+wash my hands before supper."
+
+"At your pleasure, Signore," answered Stefanone, politely.
+
+As Dalrymple went out, Annetta passed him at the door, bringing in
+plates and napkins, and knives and forks. The girl glanced at his face
+as he went by.
+
+"Be quick, Signore," she said with a laugh. "The beefsteak of mutton is
+grilling."
+
+He nodded, and went up the dark stairs, his heavy shoes sending back
+echoes as he trod. Stefanone still sat at the table, turning the glass
+wine measure upside down over his tumbler, to let the last drops run
+out. He watched them as they fell, one by one, without looking up at his
+daughter, who began to arrange the plates for Dalrymple's meal.
+
+"I will teach you to make love with the Englishman," he said slowly,
+still watching the dropping wine.
+
+"Me!" cried Annetta, with real or feigned astonishment, and she tossed a
+knife and fork angrily into a plate, with a loud, clattering noise.
+
+"I am speaking with you," answered her father, without raising his eyes.
+"Do you know? You will come to a bad end."
+
+"Thank you!" replied the girl, contemptuously. "If you say so, it must
+be true! Now, who has told you that the Englishman is making love to me?
+An apoplexy on him, whoever he may be!"
+
+"Pretty words for a girl! Sor Tommaso told me. A little more, and I
+would have torn his tongue out. Just then, the Englishman came in. Sor
+Tommaso got off easily."
+
+The girl's tone changed very much when she spoke again, and there was a
+dull and angry light in her eyes. Her long lips were still parted, and
+showed her gleaming teeth, but the smile was altogether gone.
+
+"Yes. Too easily," she said, almost in a whisper, and there was a low
+hiss in the words.
+
+"In the meanwhile, it is true--what he said," continued Stefanone. "You
+make eyes at him. You wait for him and watch for him when he comes back
+from the mountains--"
+
+"Well? Is it not my place to serve him with his supper? If you are not
+satisfied, hire a servant to wait on him. You are rich. What do I care
+for the Englishman? Perhaps it is a pleasure to roast my face over the
+charcoal, cooking his meat for him. As for Sor Tommaso--"
+
+She stopped short in her speech. Her father knew what the tone meant,
+and looked up for the first time.
+
+"O-e!" he exclaimed, as one suddenly aware of a danger, and warning some
+one else.
+
+"Nothing," answered Annetta, looking down and arranging the knives and
+forks symmetrically on the clean cloth she had laid.
+
+"I might have killed him just now in hot blood, when the Englishman came
+in," said Stefanone, reflectively. "But now my blood has grown cold. I
+shall do nothing to him."
+
+"So much the better for him." She still spoke in a low voice, as she
+turned away from the table.
+
+"But I will kill you," said Stefanone, "if I see you making eyes at the
+Englishman."
+
+He rose, and taking up his hat, which lay beside him, he edged his way
+out along the wooden bench, moving cautiously lest he should shake the
+table and upset the lamp or the bottles. Annetta had turned again, at
+the threat he had uttered, and stood still, waiting for him to get out
+into the room, her hands on her hips, and her eyes on fire.
+
+"You will kill me?" she asked, just as he was opposite to her.
+"Well--kill me, then! Here I am. What are you waiting for? For the
+Englishman to interfere? He is washing his hands. He always takes a long
+time."
+
+"Then it is true that you have fallen in love with him?" asked
+Stefanone, his anger returning.
+
+"Him, or another. What does it matter to you? You remind me of the old
+woman who beat her cat, and then cried when it ran away. If you want me
+to stay at home, you had better find me a husband."
+
+"Do you want anything better than Gigetto? Apoplexy! But you have
+ideas!"
+
+"You are making a good business of it with Gigetto, in truth!" cried the
+girl, scornfully. "He eats, he drinks, and then he sings. But he does
+not marry. He will not even make love to me--not even with an eye. And
+then, because I love the Englishman, who is a great lord, though he says
+he is a doctor, I must die. Well, kill me!" She stared insolently at her
+father for a moment. "Oh, well," she added scornfully, "if you have not
+time now, it must be for to-morrow. I am busy."
+
+She turned on her heel with a disdainful fling of her short, dark skirt.
+Stefanone was exasperated, and his anger had returned. Before she was
+out of reach, he struck her with his open hand. Instead of striking her
+cheek, the blow fell upon the back of her head and neck, and sent her
+stumbling forwards. She caught the back of a chair, steadied herself,
+and turned again instantly, at her full height, not deigning to raise
+her hand to the place that hurt her.
+
+"Coward!" she exclaimed. "But I will pay you--and Sor Tommaso--for that
+blow."
+
+"Whenever you like," answered her father gruffly, but already sorry for
+what he had done.
+
+He turned his back, and went out into the night. It was now almost quite
+dark, and Annetta stood still by the chair, listening to his retreating
+footsteps. Then she slowly turned and gazed at the flaring wicks of the
+lamp. With a gesture that suggested the movement of a young animal, she
+rubbed the back of her neck with one hand and leisurely turned her head
+first to one side and then to the other. Her brown skin was unusually
+pale, but there was no moisture in her eyes as she stared at the lamp.
+
+"But I will pay you, Sor Tommaso," she said thoughtfully and softly.
+
+Then turning her eyes from the lamp at last, she took up one of the
+knives from the table, looked at it, felt the edge, and laid it down
+contemptuously. In those days all the respectable peasants in the Roman
+villages had solid silver forks and spoons, which have long since gone
+to the melting-pot to pay taxes. But they used the same blunt, pointless
+knives with wooden handles, which they use to-day.
+
+Annetta started, as she heard Dalrymple's tread upon the stone steps of
+the staircase, but she recovered herself instantly, gave a finishing
+touch to the table, rubbed the back of her head quickly once more, and
+met him with a smile.
+
+"Is the beefsteak of mutton ready?" inquired the Scotchman, cheerfully,
+with his extraordinary accent.
+
+Annetta ran past him, and returned almost before he was seated, bringing
+the food. The girl sat down at the end of the table, opposite the street
+door, and watched him as he swallowed one mouthful of meat after
+another, now and then stopping to drink a tumbler of wine at a draught.
+
+"You must be very strong, Signore," said Annetta, at last, her chin
+resting on her doubled hand.
+
+"Why?" inquired Dalrymple, carelessly, between two mouthfuls.
+
+"Because you eat so much. It must be a fine thing to eat so much meat.
+We eat very little of it."
+
+"Why?" asked the Scotchman, again between his mouthfuls.
+
+"Oh, who knows? It costs much. That must be the reason. Besides, it does
+not go down. I should not care for it."
+
+"It is a habit." Dalrymple drank. "In my country most of the people eat
+oats," he said, as he set down his glass.
+
+"Oats!" laughed the girl. "Like horses! But horses will eat meat, too,
+like you. As for me--good bread, fresh cheese, a little salad, a drink
+of wine and water--that is enough."
+
+"Like the nuns," observed Dalrymple, attacking the ham of the
+'Grape-eater.'
+
+"Oh, the nuns! They live on boiled cabbage! You can smell it a mile
+away. But they make good cakes."
+
+"You often go to the convent, do you not?" asked the Scotchman, filling
+his glass, for the first mouthful of ham made him thirsty again. "You
+take the linen up with your mother, I know."
+
+"Sometimes, when I feel like going," answered the girl, willing to show
+that it was not her duty to carry baskets. "I only go when we have the
+small baskets that one can carry on one's head. I will tell you. They
+use the small baskets for the finer things, the abbess's linen, and the
+altar cloths, and the chaplain's lace, which belongs to the nuns. But
+the sheets and the table linen are taken up in baskets as long as a man.
+It takes four women to carry one of them."
+
+"That must be very inconvenient," said Dalrymple. "I should think that
+smaller ones would always be better."
+
+"Who knows? It has always been so. And when it has always been so, it
+will always be so--one knows that."
+
+Annetta nodded her head rhythmically to convey an impression of the
+immutability of all ancient customs and of this one in particular.
+
+Dalrymple, however, was not much interested in the question of the
+baskets.
+
+"What do the nuns do all day?" he asked. "I suppose you see them,
+sometimes. There must be young ones amongst them."
+
+Annetta glanced more keenly at the Scotchman's quiet face, and then
+laughed.
+
+"There is one, if you could see her! The abbess's niece. Oh, that one is
+beautiful. She seems to me a painted angel!"
+
+"The abbess's niece? What is she like? Let me see, the abbess is a
+princess, is she not?"
+
+"Yes, a great princess of the Princes of Gerano, of Casa Braccio, you
+know. They are always abbesses. And the young one will be the next, when
+this one dies. She is Maria Addolorata, in religion, but I do not know
+her real name. She has a beautiful face and dark eyes. Once I saw her
+hair for a moment. It is fair, but not like yours. Yours is red as a
+tomato."
+
+"Thank you," said Dalrymple, with something like a laugh. "Tell me more
+about the nun."
+
+"If I tell you, you will fall in love with her," objected Annetta. "They
+say that men with red hair fall in love easily. Is it true? If it is, I
+will not tell you any more about the nun. But I think you are in love
+with the poor old Grape-eater. It is good ham, is it not? By Bacchus, I
+fed him on chestnuts with my own hands, and he was always stealing the
+grapes. Chestnuts fattened him and the grapes made him sweet. Speaking
+with respect, he was a pig for a pope."
+
+"He will do for a Scotch doctor then," answered Dalrymple. "Tell me,
+what does this beautiful nun do all day long?"
+
+"What does she do? What can a nun do? She eats cabbage and prays like
+the others. But she has charge of all the convent linen, so I see her
+when I go with my mother. That is because the Princes of Gerano first
+gave the linen to the convent after it was all stolen by the Turks in
+1798. So, as they gave it, their abbesses take care of it."
+
+Dalrymple laughed at the extraordinary historical allusion compounded of
+the very ancient traditions of the Saracens in the south, and of the
+more recent wars of Napoleon.
+
+"So she takes care of the linen," he said. "That cannot be very amusing,
+I should think."
+
+"They are nuns," answered the girl. "Do you suppose they go about
+seeking to amuse themselves? It is an ugly life. But Sister Maria
+Addolorata sings to herself, and that makes the abbess angry, because it
+is against the rules to sing except in church. I would not live in that
+convent--not if they would fill my apron with gold pieces."
+
+"But why did this beautiful girl become a nun, then? Was she unhappy, or
+crossed in love?"
+
+"She? They did not give her time! Before she could shut an eye and say,
+'Little youth, you please me, and I wish you well,' they put her in. And
+that door, when it is shut, who shall open it? The Madonna, perhaps? But
+she was of the Princes of Gerano, and there must be one of them for an
+abbess, and the lot fell upon her. There is the whole history. You may
+hear her singing sometimes, if you stand under the garden wall, on the
+narrow path after the Benediction hour and before Ave Maria. But I am a
+fool to tell you, for you will go and listen, and when you have heard
+her voice you will be like a madman. You will fall in love with her. I
+was a fool to tell you."
+
+"Well? And if I do fall in love with her, who cares?" Dalrymple slowly
+filled a glass of wine.
+
+"If you do?" The young girl's eyes shot a quick, sharp glance at him.
+Then her face suddenly grew grave as she saw that some one was at the
+street door, looking in cautiously. "Come in, Sor Tommaso!" she called,
+down the table. "Papa is out, but we are here. Come in and drink a glass
+of wine!"
+
+The doctor, wrapped in a long broadcloth cloak with a velvet collar,
+and having a case of instruments and medicines under his arm, glanced
+round the room and came in.
+
+"Just a half-foglietta, my daughter," he said. "They have sent for me.
+The abbess is very ill, and I may be there a long time. If you think
+they would remember to offer a Christian a glass up there, you are very
+much mistaken."
+
+"They are nuns," laughed Annetta. "What can they know?"
+
+She rose to get the wine for the doctor. There had not been a trace of
+displeasure in her voice nor in her manner as she spoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+SOR TOMMASO was rarely called to the convent. In fact, he could not
+remember that he had been wanted more than half a dozen times in the
+long course of his practice in Subiaco. Either the nuns were hardly ever
+ill, or else they must have doctored themselves with such simple
+remedies as had been handed down to them from former ages. Possibly they
+had been as well off on the whole as though they had systematically
+submitted to the heroic treatment which passed for medicine in those
+days. As a matter of fact, they suffered chiefly from bad colds; and
+when they had bad colds, they either got well, or died, according to
+their several destinies. Sor Tommaso might have saved some of them; but
+on the other hand, he might have helped some others rather precipitately
+from their cells to that deep crypt, closed, in the middle of the little
+church, by a single square flag of marble, having two brass studs in it,
+and bearing the simple inscription: 'Here lie the bones of the Reverend
+Sisters of the order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.' On the
+whole, it is doubtful whether the practice of not calling in the doctor
+on ordinary occasions had much influence upon the convent's statistics
+of mortality.
+
+But though the abbess had more than once had a cold in her life, she had
+never suffered so seriously as this time, and she had made little
+objection to her niece's strong representations as to the necessity of
+medical aid. Therefore Sor Tommaso had been sent for in the evening and
+in great haste, and had taken with him a supply of appropriate material
+sufficient to kill, if not to cure, half the nuns in the convent. All
+the circumstances which he remembered from former occasions were
+accurately repeated. He rang at the main gate, waited long in the
+darkness, and heard at last the slapping and shuffling of shoes along
+the pavement within, as the portress and another nun came to let him in.
+Then there were faint rays of light from their little lamp, quivering
+through the cracks of the old weather-beaten door upon the cracked
+marble steps on which Sor Tommaso was standing. A thin voice asked who
+was there, and Sor Tommaso answered that he was the doctor. Then he
+heard a little colloquy in suppressed tones between the two nuns. The
+one said that the doctor was expected and must be let in without
+question. The other observed that it might be a thief. The first said
+that in that case they must look through the loophole. The second said
+that she did not know the doctor by sight. The first speaker remarked
+with some truth that one could tell a respectable person from a
+highwayman, and suddenly a small square porthole in the door was opened
+inwards, and a stream of light fell upon Sor Tommaso's face, as the nuns
+held up their little flaring lamp behind the grating. Behind the lamp he
+could distinguish a pair of shadowy eyes under an overhanging veil,
+which was also drawn across the lower part of the face.
+
+"Are you really the doctor?" asked one of the voices, in a doubtful
+tone.
+
+"He himself," answered the physician. "I am the Doctor Tommaso Taddei of
+the University of the Sapienza, and I have been called to render
+assistance to the very reverend the Mother Abbess."
+
+The light disappeared, and the porthole was shut, while a second
+colloquy began. On the whole, the two nuns decided to let him in, and
+then there was a jingling of keys and a clanking of iron bars and a
+grinding of locks, and presently a small door, cut and hung in one leaf
+of the great, iron-studded, wooden gate, was swung back. Sor Tommaso
+stooped and held his case before him, for the entrance was low and
+narrow.
+
+"God be praised!" he exclaimed, when he was fairly inside.
+
+"And praised be His holy name," answered both the sisters, promptly.
+
+Both had dropped their veils, and proceeded to bolt and bar the little
+door again, having set down the lamp upon the pavement. The rays made
+the unctuous dampness of the stone flags glisten, and Sor Tommaso
+shivered in his broadcloth cloak. Then, as before, he was conducted in
+silence through arched ways, and up many steps, and along labyrinthine
+corridors, his strong shoes rousing sharp, metallic echoes, while the
+nuns' slippers slapped and shuffled as one walked on each side of him,
+the one on the left carrying the lamp, according to the ancient rules of
+politeness. At last they reached the door of the antechamber at the end
+of the corridor, through which the way led to the abbess's private
+apartment, consisting of three rooms. The last door on the left, as Sor
+Tommaso faced that which opened into the antechamber, was that of Maria
+Addolorata's cell. The linen presses were entered from within the
+anteroom by a door on the right, so that they were actually in the
+abbess's apartment, an old-fashioned and somewhat inconvenient
+arrangement. Maria Addolorata, her veil drawn down, so that she could
+not see the doctor, but only his feet, and the folds of it drawn across
+her chin and mouth, received him at the door, which she closed behind
+him. The other two nuns set down their lamp on the floor of the
+corridor, slipped their hands up their sleeves, and stood waiting
+outside.
+
+The abbess was very ill, but had insisted upon sitting up in her
+parlour to receive the doctor, dressed and veiled, being propped up in
+her great easy-chair with a pillow which was of green silk, but was
+covered with a white pillow-case finely embroidered with open work at
+each end, through which the vivid colour was visible--that high green
+which cannot look blue even by lamplight. Both in the anteroom and in
+the parlour there were polished silver lamps of precisely the same
+pattern as the brass ones used by the richer peasants, excepting that
+each had a fan-like shield of silver to be used as a shade on one side,
+bearing the arms of the Braccio family in high boss, and attached to the
+oil vessel by a movable curved arm. The furniture of the room was very
+simple, but there was nevertheless a certain ecclesiastical solemnity
+about the high-backed, carved, and gilt chairs, the black and white
+marble pavement, the great portrait of his Holiness, Gregory the
+Sixteenth, in its massive gilt frame, the superb silver crucifix which
+stood on the writing-table, and, altogether, in the solidity of
+everything which met the eye.
+
+It was no easy matter to ascertain the good lady's condition, muffled up
+and veiled as she was. It was only as an enormous concession to
+necessity that Sor Tommaso was allowed to feel her pulse, and it needed
+all Maria Addolorata's eloquent persuasion and sensible argument to
+induce her to lift her veil a little, and open her mouth.
+
+"Your most reverend excellency must be cured by proxy," said Sor
+Tommaso, at his wit's end. "If this reverend mother," he added, turning
+to the young nun, "will carry out my directions, something may be done.
+Your most reverend excellency's life is in danger. Your most reverend
+excellency ought to be in bed."
+
+"It is the will of Heaven," said the abbess, in a very weak and hoarse
+voice.
+
+"Tell me what to do," said Maria Addolorata. "It shall be done as though
+you yourself did it."
+
+Sor Tommaso was encouraged by the tone of assurance in which the words
+were spoken, and proceeded to give his directions, which were many, and
+his recommendations, which were almost endless.
+
+"But if your most reverend excellency would allow me to assist you in
+person, the remedies would be more efficacious," he suggested, as he
+laid out the greater part of the contents of his case upon the huge
+writing-table.
+
+"You seem to forget that this is a religious house," replied the abbess,
+and she might have said more, but was interrupted by a violent attack of
+coughing, during which Maria Addolorata supported her and tried to ease
+her.
+
+"It will be better if you go away," said the nun, at last. "I will do
+all you have ordered, and your presence irritates her. Come back
+to-morrow morning, and I will tell you how she is progressing."
+
+The abbess nodded slowly, confirming her niece's words. Sor Tommaso very
+reluctantly closed his case, placed it under his arm, gathered up his
+broadcloth cloak with his hat, and made a low obeisance before the sick
+lady.
+
+"I wish your most reverend excellency a good rest and speedy recovery,"
+he said. "I am your most reverend excellency's most humble servant."
+
+Maria Addolorata led him out into the antechamber. There she paused, and
+they were alone together for a moment, all the doors being closed. The
+doctor stood still beside her, waiting for her to speak.
+
+"What do you think?" she asked.
+
+"I do not wish to say anything," he answered.
+
+"What do you wish me to say? A stroke of air, a cold, a bronchitis, a
+pleurisy, a pneumonia. Thanks be to Heaven, there is little fever. What
+do you wish me to say? For the stroke of air, a little good wine; for
+the cold, warm covering; for the bronchitis, the tea of marshmallows;
+for the pleurisy, severe blistering; for the pneumonia, a good mustard
+plaster; for the general system, the black draught; above all, nothing
+to eat. Frictions with hot oil will also do good. It is the practice of
+medicine by proxy, my lady mother. What do you wish me to say? I am
+disposed. I am her most reverend excellency's very humble servant. But I
+cannot perform miracles. Pray to the Madonna to perform them. I have
+not even seen the tip of her most reverend excellency's most wise
+tongue. What can I do?"
+
+"Well, then, come back to-morrow morning, and I will see you here," said
+Maria Addolorata.
+
+Sor Tommaso found the nuns waiting for him with their little lamp in the
+corridor, and they led him back through the vaulted passages and
+staircases and let him out into the night without a word.
+
+The night was dark and cloudy. It had grown much darker since he had
+come up, as the last lingering light of evening had faded altogether
+from the sky. The October wind drew down in gusts from the mountains
+above Subiaco, and blew the doctor's long cloak about so that it flapped
+softly now and then like the wings of a night bird. After descending
+some distance, he carefully set down his case upon the stones and
+fumbled in his pockets for his snuffbox, which he found with some
+difficulty. A gust blew up a grain of snuff into his right eye, and he
+stamped angrily with the pain, hurting his foot against a rolling stone
+as he did so. But he succeeded in getting his snuff to his nose at last.
+Then he bent down in the dark to take up his case, which was close to
+his feet, though he could hardly see it. The gusty south wind blew the
+long skirts of his cloak over his head and made them flap about his
+ears. He groped for the box.
+
+[Illustration: "Sor Tommaso was lying motionless."--Vol. I., p. 78.]
+
+Just then the doctor heard light footsteps coming down the path behind
+him. He called out, warning that he was in the way.
+
+"O-e, gently, you know!" he cried. "An apoplexy on the wind!" he added
+vehemently, as his head and hands became entangled more and more in the
+folds of his cloak.
+
+"And another on you!" answered a woman's voice, speaking low through
+clenched teeth.
+
+In the darkness a hand rose and fell with something in it, three times
+in quick succession. A man's low cry of pain was stifled in folds of
+broadcloth. The same light footsteps were heard for a moment again in
+the narrow, winding way, and Sor Tommaso was lying motionless on his
+face across his box, with his cloak over his head. The gusty south wind
+blew up and down between the dark walls, bearing now and then a few
+withered vine leaves and wisps of straw with it; and the night grew
+darker still, and no one passed that way for a long time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+WHEN Angus Dalrymple had finished his supper, he produced a book and sat
+reading by the light of the wicks of the three brass lamps. Annetta had
+taken away the things and had not come back again. Gigetto strolled in
+and took his guitar from the peg on the wall, and idled about the room,
+tuning it and humming to himself. He was a tall young fellow with a
+woman's face and beautiful velvet-like eyes, as handsome and idle a
+youth as you might meet in Subiaco on a summer's feast-day. He exchanged
+a word of greeting with Dalrymple, and, seeing that the place was
+otherwise deserted, he at last slung his guitar over his shoulder,
+pulled his broad black felt hat over his eyes, and strolled out through
+the half-open door, presumably in search of amusement. Gigetto's chief
+virtue was his perfectly childlike and unaffected taste for amusing
+himself, on the whole very innocently, whenever he got a chance. It was
+natural that he and the Scotchman should not care for one another's
+society. Dalrymple looked after him for a moment and then went back to
+his book. A big glass measure of wine stood beside him not half empty,
+and his glass was full.
+
+He was making a strong effort to concentrate his attention upon the
+learned treatise, which formed a part of the little library he had
+brought with him. But Annetta's idle talk about the nuns, and especially
+about Maria Addolorata and her singing, kept running through his head in
+spite of his determination to be serious. He had been living the life of
+a hermit for months, and had almost forgotten the sound of an educated
+woman's voice. To him Annetta was nothing more than a rather pretty wild
+animal. It did not enter his head that she might be in love with him.
+Sora Nanna was simply an older and uglier animal of the same species. To
+a man of Dalrymple's temperament, and really devoted to the pursuit of a
+serious object, a woman quite incapable of even understanding what that
+object is can hardly seem to be a woman at all.
+
+But the young Scotchman was not wanting in that passionate and fantastic
+imagination which so often underlies and even directs the hardy northern
+nature, and the young girl's carelessly spoken words had roused it to
+sudden activity. In spite of himself, he was already forming plans for
+listening under the convent wall, if perchance he might catch the sound
+of the nun's wonderful voice, and from that to the wildest schemes for
+catching a momentary glimpse of the singer was only a step. At the same
+time, he was quite aware that such schemes were dangerous if not
+impracticable, and his reasonable self laughed down his unreasoning
+romance, only to be confronted by it again as soon as he tried to turn
+his attention to his book.
+
+He looked up and saw that he had not finished his wine, though at that
+hour the measure was usually empty, and he wondered why he was less
+thirsty than usual. By force of habit he emptied the full glass and
+poured more into it,--by force of that old northern habit of drinking a
+certain allowance as a sort of duty, more common in those days than it
+is now. Then he began to read again, never dreaming that his strong head
+and solid nerves could be in any way affected by his potations. But his
+imagination this evening worked faster and faster, and his sober reason
+was recalcitrant and abhorred work.
+
+The nun had fair hair and dark eyes and a beautiful face. Those were
+much more interesting facts than he could find in his work. She had a
+wonderful voice. He tried to recall all the extraordinary voices he had
+heard in his life, but none of them had ever affected him very much,
+though he had a good ear and some taste for music. He wondered what sort
+of voice this could be, and he longed to hear it. He shut up his book
+impatiently, drank more wine, rose and went to the open door. The gusty
+south wind fanned his face pleasantly, and he wished he were to sleep
+out of doors.
+
+The Sora Nanna, who had been spending the evening with a friend in the
+neighbourhood, came in, her thin black overskirt drawn over her head to
+keep the embroidered head-cloth in its place. By and by, as Dalrymple
+still stood by the door, Stefanone appeared, having been to play a game
+of cards at a friendly wine-shop. He sat down by Sora Nanna at the
+table. She was mixing some salad in a big earthenware bowl adorned with
+green and brown stripes. They talked together in low tones. Dalrymple
+had nodded to each in turn, but the gusty air pleased him, and he
+remained standing by the door, letting it blow into his face.
+
+It was growing late. Italian peasants are not great sleepers, and it is
+their custom to have supper at a late hour, just before going to bed. By
+this time it was nearly ten o'clock as we reckon the hours, or about
+'four of the night' in October, according to old Italian custom, which
+reckons from a theoretical moment of darkness, supposed to begin at Ave
+Maria, half an hour after sunset.
+
+Suddenly Dalrymple heard Annetta's voice in the room behind him,
+speaking to her mother. He had no particular reason for supposing that
+she had been out of the house since she had cleared the table and left
+him, but unconsciously he had the impression that she had been away,
+and was surprised to hear her in the room, after expecting that she
+should pass him, coming in from the street, as the others had done. He
+turned and walked slowly towards his place at the table.
+
+"I thought you had gone out," he said carelessly, to Annetta.
+
+The girl turned her head quickly.
+
+"I?" she cried. "And alone? Without even Gigetto? When do I ever go out
+alone at night? Will you have some supper, Signore?"
+
+"I have just eaten, thank you," answered Dalrymple, seating himself.
+
+"Three hours ago. It was not yet an hour of the night when you ate.
+Well--at your pleasure. Do not complain afterwards that we make you die
+of hunger."
+
+"Bread, Annetta!" said Stefanone, gruffly but good-naturedly. "And
+cheese, and salt--wine, too! A thousand things! Quickly, my daughter."
+
+"Quicker than this?" inquired the girl, who had already placed most of
+the things he asked for upon the table.
+
+"I say it to say it," answered her father. "'Hunger makes long jumps,'
+and I am hungry."
+
+"Did you win anything?" asked Sora Nanna, with both her elbows on the
+table.
+
+"Five baiocchi."
+
+"It was worth while to pay ten baiocchi for another man's bad wine, for
+the sake of winning so much!" replied Sora Nanna, who was a careful
+soul. "Of course you paid for the wine?"
+
+"Eh--of course. They pay for wine when they come here. One takes a
+little and one gives a little. This is life."
+
+Annetta busied herself with the simple preparations for supper, while
+they talked. Dalrymple watched her idly, and he thought she was pale,
+and that her eyes were very bright. She had set a plate for herself, but
+had forgotten her glass.
+
+"And you? Do you not drink?" asked Stefanone. "You have no glass."
+
+"What does it matter?" She sat down between her father and mother.
+
+"Drink out of mine, my little daughter," said Stefanone, holding his
+glass to her lips with a laugh, as though she had been a little child.
+
+She looked quietly into his eyes for a moment, before she touched the
+wine with her lips.
+
+"Yes," she answered, with a little emphasis. "I will drink out of your
+glass now."
+
+"Better so," laughed Stefanone, who was glad to be reconciled, for he
+loved the girl, in spite of his occasional violence of temper.
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Sora Nanna, her cunning peasant's eyes
+looking from one to the other, and seeming to belie her stupid face.
+
+"Nothing," answered Stefanone. "We were playing together. Signor
+Englishman," he said, turning to Dalrymple, "you must sometimes wish
+that you were married, and had a wife like Nanna, and a daughter like
+Annetta."
+
+"Of course I do," said Dalrymple, with a smile.
+
+Before very long, he took his book and went upstairs to bed, being tired
+and sleepy after a long day spent on the hillside in a fruitless search
+for certain plants which, according to his books, were to be found in
+that part of Italy, but which he had not yet seen. He fell asleep,
+thinking of Maria Addolorata's lovely face and fair hair, on which he
+had never laid eyes. In his dreams he heard a rare voice ringing true,
+that touched him strangely. The gusty wind made the panes of his bedroom
+window rattle, and in the dream he was tapping on Maria Addolorata's
+casement and calling softly to her, to open it and speak to him, or
+calling her by name, with his extraordinary foreign accent. And he
+thought he was tapping louder and louder, upon the glass and upon the
+wooden frame, louder and louder still. Then he heard his name called
+out, and his heart jumped as though it would have turned upside down in
+its place, and then seemed to sink again like a heavy stone falling into
+deep water; for he was awake, and the voice that was calling him was
+certainly not that of the beautiful nun, but gruff and manly; also the
+tapping was not tapping any more upon a casement, but was a vigorous
+pounding against his own bolted door.
+
+Dalrymple sat up suddenly and listened, wide awake at once. The square
+of his window was faintly visible in the darkness, as though the dawn
+were breaking. He called out, asking who was outside.
+
+"Get up, Signore! Get up! You are wanted quickly!" It was Stefanone.
+
+Dalrymple struck a light, for he had a supply of matches with him, a
+convenience of modern life not at that time known in Subiaco, except as
+an expensive toy, though already in use in Rome. As he was, he opened
+the door. Stefanone came in, dressed in his shirt and breeches, pale
+with excitement.
+
+"You must dress yourself, Signore," he said briefly, as he glanced at
+the Scotchman, and then set down the small tin and glass lantern he
+carried.
+
+"What is the matter?" inquired Dalrymple, yawning, and stretching his
+great white arms over his head, till his knuckles struck the low
+ceiling; for he was a tall man.
+
+"The matter is that they have killed Sor Tommaso," answered the peasant.
+
+Dalrymple uttered an exclamation of surprise and incredulity.
+
+"It is as I say," continued Stefanone. "They found him lying across the
+way, in the street, with knife-wounds in him, as many as you please."
+
+"That is horrible!" exclaimed Dalrymple, turning, and calmly trimming
+his lamp, which burned badly at first.
+
+"Then dress yourself, Signore!" said Stefanone, impatiently. "You must
+come!"
+
+"Why? If he is dead, what can I do?" asked the northern man, coolly. "I
+am sorry. What more can I say?"
+
+"But he is not dead yet!" Stefanone was growing excited. "They have
+taken him--"
+
+"Oh! he is alive, is he?" interrupted the Scotchman, dashing at his
+clothes, as though he were suddenly galvanized into life himself. "Then
+why did you tell me they had killed him?" he asked, with a curious, dry
+calmness of voice, as he instantly began to dress himself. "Get some
+clean linen, Signor Stefano. Tear it up into strips as broad as your
+hand, for bandages, and set the women to make a little lint of old
+linen--cotton is not good. Where have they taken Sor Tommaso?"
+
+"To his own house," answered the peasant.
+
+"So much the better. Go and make the bandages."
+
+Dalrymple pushed Stefanone towards the door with one hand, while he
+continued to fasten his clothes with the other.
+
+Stefanone was not without some experience of similar cases, so he
+picked up his lantern and went off. In less than a quarter of an hour,
+he and Dalrymple were on their way to Sor Tommaso's house, which was in
+the piazza of Subiaco, not far from the principal church. Half a dozen
+peasants, who had met the muleteers bringing the wounded doctor home
+from the spot where he had been found, followed the two men, talking
+excitedly in low voices and broken sentences. The dawn was grey above
+the houses, and the autumn mists had floated up to the parapet on the
+side where the little piazza looked down to the valley, and hung
+motionless in the still air, like a stage sea in a theatre. In the
+distance was heard the clattering of mules' shoes, and occasionally the
+deep clanking of the goats' bells. Just as the little party reached the
+small, dark green door of the doctor's house the distant convent bells
+tolled one, then two quick strokes, then three again, and then five, and
+then rang out the peal for the morning Angelus. The door of the dirty
+little coffee shop in the piazza was already open, and a faint light
+burned within. The air was damp, quiet and strangely resonant, as it
+often is in mountain towns at early dawn. The gusty October wind had
+gone down, after blowing almost all night.
+
+The case was far from being as serious as Dalrymple had expected, and he
+soon convinced himself that Sor Tommaso was not in any great danger. He
+had fainted from fright and some loss of blood, but neither of the two
+thrusts which had wounded him had penetrated to his lungs, and the third
+was little more than a scratch. Doubtless he owed his safety in part to
+the fact that the wind had blown his cloak in folds over his shoulders
+and head. But it was also clear that his assailant had possessed no
+experience in the use of the knife as a weapon. When the group of men at
+the door were told that Sor Tommaso was not mortally wounded, they went
+away somewhat disappointed at the insignificant ending of the affair,
+though the doctor was not an unpopular man in the town.
+
+"It is some woman," said one of them, contemptuously. "What can a woman
+do with a knife? Worse than a cat--she scratches, and runs away."
+
+"Some little jealousy," observed another. "Eh! Sor Tommaso--who knows
+where he makes love? But meanwhile he is growing old, to be so gay."
+
+"The old are the worst," replied the first speaker. "Since it is
+nothing, let us have a baiocco's worth of acquavita, and let us go
+away."
+
+So they turned into the dirty little coffee shop to get their pennyworth
+of spirits. Meanwhile Dalrymple was washing and binding up his friend's
+wounds. Sor Tommaso groaned and winced under every touch, and the
+Scotchman, with dry gentleness, did his best to reassure him. Stefanone
+looked on in silence for some time, helping Dalrymple when he was
+needed. The doctor's servant-woman, a somewhat grimy peasant, was
+sitting on the stairs, sobbing loudly.
+
+"It is useless," moaned Sor Tommaso. "I am dead."
+
+"I may be mistaken," answered Dalrymple, "but I think not."
+
+And he continued his operations with a sure hand, greatly to the
+admiration of Stefanone, who had often seen knife-wounds dressed.
+Gradually Sor Tommaso became more calm. His face, from having been
+normally of a bright red, was now very pale, and his watery blue eyes
+blinked at the light helplessly like a kitten's, as he lay still on his
+pillow. Stefanone went away to his occupations at last, and Dalrymple,
+having cleared away the litter of unused bandages and lint, and set
+things in order, sat down by the bedside to keep his patient company for
+a while. He was really somewhat anxious lest the wounds should have
+taken cold.
+
+"If I get well, it will be a miracle," said Sor Tommaso, feebly. "I must
+think of my soul."
+
+"By all means," answered the Scotchman. "It can do your soul no harm,
+and contemplation rests the body."
+
+"You Protestants have not human sentiment," observed the Italian, moving
+his head slowly on the pillow. "But I also think of the abbess. I was
+to have gone there early this morning. She will also die. We shall both
+die."
+
+Dalrymple crossed one leg over the other, and looked quietly at the
+doctor.
+
+"Sor Tommaso," he said, "there is no other physician in Subiaco. I am a
+doctor, properly licensed to practise. It is evidently my duty to take
+care of your patients while you are ill."
+
+"Mercy!" cried Sor Tommaso, with sudden energy, and opening his eyes
+very wide.
+
+"Are you afraid that I shall kill them," asked Dalrymple, with a smile.
+
+"Who knows? A foreigner! And the people say that you have converse with
+the devil. But the common people are ignorant."
+
+"Very."
+
+"And as for the convent--a Protestant--for the abbess! They would rather
+die. Figure to yourself what sort of a scandal there would be! A
+Protestant in a convent, and then, in that convent, too! The abbess
+would much rather die in peace."
+
+"At all events, I will go and offer my services. If the abbess prefers
+to die in peace, she can answer to that effect. I will ask her what she
+thinks about it."
+
+"Ask her!" repeated Sor Tommaso. "Do you imagine that you could see her?
+But what can you know? I tell you that last night she was muffled up in
+her chair, and her face covered. It needed the grace of Heaven, that I
+might feel her pulse! As for her tongue, God knows what it is like! I
+have not seen it. Not so much as the tip of it! Not even her eyes did I
+see. And to-day I was not to be admitted at all, because the abbess
+would be in bed. Imagine to yourself, with blisters and sinapisms, and a
+hundred things. I was only to speak with Sister Maria Addolorata, who is
+her niece, you know, in the anteroom of the abbess's apartment. They
+would not let you in. They would give you a bath of holy water through
+the loophole of the convent door and say, 'Go away, sinner; this is a
+religious house!' You know them very little."
+
+"You are talking too much," observed Dalrymple, who had listened
+attentively. "It is not good for you. Besides, since you are able to
+speak, it would be better if you told me who stabbed you last night,
+that I may go to the police, and have the person arrested, if possible."
+
+"You do not know what you are saying," answered Sor Tommaso, with sudden
+gravity. "The woman has relations--who could handle a knife better than
+she."
+
+And he turned his face away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+THE sun was high when Dalrymple left Sor Tommaso in charge of the old
+woman-servant and went back to Stefanone's house to dress himself with
+more care than he had bestowed upon his hasty toilet at dawn. And now
+that he had plenty of time, he was even more careful of his appearance
+than usual; for he had fully determined to attempt to take Sor Tommaso's
+place in attendance upon the abbess. He therefore put on a coat of a
+sober colour and brushed his straight red hair smoothly back from his
+forehead, giving himself easily that extremely grave and trust-inspiring
+air which distinguishes many Scotchmen, and supports their solid
+qualities, while it seems to deny the possibility of any adventurous and
+romantic tendency.
+
+At that hour nobody was about the house, and Dalrymple, stick in hand,
+sallied forth upon his expedition, looking for all the world as though
+he were going to church in Edinburgh instead of meditating an entrance
+into an Italian convent. He had said nothing more to the doctor on the
+subject. The people in the streets had most of them seen him often and
+knew him by name, and it did not occur to any one to wonder why a
+foreigner should wear one sort of coat rather than another, when he took
+his walks abroad. He walked leisurely; for the sky had cleared, and the
+sun was hot. Moreover, he followed the longer road in order to keep his
+shoes clean, instead of climbing up the narrow and muddy lane in which
+Sor Tommaso had been attacked. He reached the convent door at last,
+brushed a few specks of dust from his coat, settled his high collar and
+the broad black cravat which was then taking the place of the stock, and
+rang the bell with one steady pull. There was, perhaps, no occasion for
+nervousness. At all events, Dalrymple was as deliberate in his movements
+and as calm in all respects as he had ever been in his life. Only, just
+after he had pulled the weather-beaten bell-chain, a half-humorous smile
+bent his even lips and was gone again in a moment.
+
+There was the usual slapping and shuffling of slippers in the vaulted
+archway within, but as it was now day, the loophole was opened
+immediately, and the portress came alone. Dalrymple explained in
+strangely accented but good Italian that Sor Tommaso had met with an
+accident in the night; that he, Angus Dalrymple, was a friend of the
+doctor's and a doctor himself, and had undertaken all of Sor Tommaso's
+duties, and, finally, that he begged the portress to find Sister Maria
+Addolorata, to repeat his story, and to offer his humble services in
+the cause of the abbess's recovery. All of which the veiled nun within
+heard patiently to the end.
+
+"I will speak to Sister Maria Addolorata," she said. "Have the goodness
+to wait."
+
+"Outside?" inquired Dalrymple, as the little shutter of the loophole was
+almost closed.
+
+"Of course," answered the nun, opening it again, and shutting it as soon
+as she had spoken.
+
+Dalrymple waited a long time in the blazing sun. The main entrance of
+the convent faced to the southeast, and it was not yet midday. He grew
+hot, after his walk, and softly wiped his forehead, and carefully folded
+his handkerchief again before returning it to his pocket. At last he
+heard the sound of steps again, and in a few seconds the loophole was
+once more opened.
+
+"Sister Maria Addolorata will speak with you," said the portress's
+voice, as he approached his face to the little grating.
+
+He felt an odd little thrill of pleasant surprise. But so far as seeing
+anything was concerned, he was disappointed. Instead of one veiled nun,
+there were now two veiled nuns.
+
+"Madam," he began, "my friend Doctor Tommaso Taddei has met with an
+accident which prevents him from leaving his bed." And he went on to
+repeat all that he had told the portress, with such further
+explanations as he deemed necessary and persuasive.
+
+While he spoke, Maria Addolorata drew back a little into the deeper
+shadow away from the loophole. Her veil hung over her eyes, and the
+folds were drawn across her mouth, but she gradually raised her head,
+throwing it back until she could see Dalrymple's face from beneath the
+edge of the black material. In so doing she unconsciously uncovered her
+mouth. The Scotchman saw a good part of her features, and gazed intently
+at what he saw, rightly judging that as the sun was behind him, she
+could hardly be sure whether he were looking at her or not.
+
+As for her, she was doubtless inspired by a natural curiosity, but at
+the same time she understood the gravity of the case and wished to form
+an opinion as to the advisability of admitting the stranger. A glance
+told her that Dalrymple was a gentleman, and she was reassured by the
+gravity of his voice and by the fact that he was evidently acquainted
+with the abbess's condition, and must, therefore, be a friend of Sor
+Tommaso. When he had finished speaking, she immediately looked down
+again, and seemed to be hesitating.
+
+"Open the door, Sister Filomena," she said at last.
+
+The portress shook her head almost imperceptibly as she obeyed, but she
+said nothing. The whole affair was in her eyes exceedingly irregular.
+Maria Addolorata should have retired to the little room adjoining the
+convent parlour, and separated from it by a double grating, and
+Dalrymple should have been admitted to the parlour itself, and they
+should have said what they had to say to one another through the bars,
+in the presence of the portress. But Maria Addolorata was the abbess's
+niece. The abbess was too ill to give orders--too ill even to speak, it
+was rumoured. In a few days Maria Addolorata might be 'Her most Reverend
+Excellency.' Meanwhile she was mistress of the situation, and it was
+safer to obey her. Moreover, the portress was only a lay sister, an old
+and ignorant creature, accustomed to do what she was told to do by the
+ladies of the convent.
+
+Dalrymple took off his hat and stooped low to enter through the small
+side-door. As soon as he had passed the threshold, he stood up to his
+height and then made a low bow to Maria Addolorata, whose veil now quite
+covered her eyes and prevented her from seeing him,--a fact which he
+realized immediately.
+
+"Give warning to the sisters, Sister Filomena," said Maria Addolorata to
+the portress, who nodded respectfully and walked away into the gloom
+under the arches, leaving the nun and Dalrymple together by the door.
+
+"It is necessary to give warning," she explained, "lest you should meet
+any of the sisters unveiled in the corridors, and they should be
+scandalized."
+
+Dalrymple again bowed gravely and stood still, his eyes fixed upon Maria
+Addolorata's veiled head, but wandering now and then to her heavy but
+beautifully shaped white hands, which she held carelessly clasped before
+her and holding the end of the great rosary of brown beads which hung
+from her side. He thought he had never seen such hands before. They were
+high-bred, and yet at the same time there was a strongly material
+attraction about them.
+
+He did not know what to say, and as nothing seemed to be expected of
+him, he kept silence for some time. At last Maria Addolorata, as though
+impatient at the long absence of the portress, tapped the pavement
+softly with her sandal slipper, and turned her head in the direction of
+the arches as though to listen for approaching footsteps.
+
+"I hope that the abbess is no worse than when Doctor Taddei saw her last
+night," observed Dalrymple.
+
+"Her most reverend excellency," answered Maria Addolorata, with a little
+emphasis, as though to teach him the proper mode of addressing the
+abbess, "is suffering. She has had a bad night."
+
+"I shall hope to be allowed to give some advice to her most reverend
+excellency," said Dalrymple, to show that he had understood the hint.
+
+"She will not allow you to see her. But you shall come with me to the
+antechamber, and I will speak with her and tell you what she says."
+
+"I shall be greatly obliged, and will do my best to give good advice
+without seeing the patient."
+
+Another pause followed, during which neither moved. Then Maria
+Addolorata spoke again, further reassured, perhaps, by Dalrymple's quiet
+and professional tone. She had too lately left the world to have lost
+the habit of making conversation to break an awkward silence. Years of
+seclusion, too, instead of making her shy and silent, had given her
+something of the ease and coolness of a married woman. This was natural
+enough, considering that she was born of worldly people and had acquired
+the manners of the world in her own home, in childhood.
+
+"You are an Englishman, I presume, Signor Doctor?" she observed, in a
+tone of interrogation.
+
+"A Scotchman, Madam," answered Dalrymple, correcting her and drawing
+himself up a little. "My name is Angus Dalrymple."
+
+"It is the same--an Englishman or a Scotchman," said the nun.
+
+"Pardon me, Madam, we consider that there is a great difference. The
+Scotch are chiefly Celts. Englishmen are Anglo-Saxons."
+
+"But you are all Protestants. It is therefore the same for us."
+
+Dalrymple feared a discussion of the question of religion. He did not
+answer the nun's last remark, but bowed politely. She, of course, could
+not see the inclination he made.
+
+"You say nothing," she said presently. "Are you a Protestant?"
+
+"Yes, Madam."
+
+"It is a pity!" said Maria Addolorata. "May God send you light."
+
+"Thank you, Madam."
+
+Maria Addolorata smiled under her veil at the polite simplicity of the
+reply. She had met Englishmen in Rome.
+
+"It is no longer customary to address us as 'Madam,'" she answered, a
+moment later. "It is more usual to speak to us as 'Sister' or 'Reverend
+Sister'--or 'Sister Maria.' I am Sister Maria Addolorata. But you know
+it, for you sent your message to me."
+
+"Doctor Taddei told me."
+
+At this point the portress appeared in the distance, and Maria
+Addolorata, hearing footsteps, turned her head from Dalrymple, raising
+her veil a little, so that she could recognize the lay sister without
+showing her face to the young man.
+
+"Let us go," she said, dropping her veil again, and beginning to walk
+on. "The sisters are warned."
+
+Dalrymple followed her in silence and at a respectful distance,
+congratulating himself upon his extraordinary good fortune in having got
+so far on the first attempt, and inwardly praying that Sor Tommaso's
+wounds might take a considerable time in healing. It had all come about
+so naturally that he had lost the sensation of doing something
+adventurous which had at first taken possession of him, and he now
+regarded everything as possible, even to being invited to a friendly cup
+of tea in Sister Maria Addolorata's sitting-room; for he imagined her as
+having a sitting-room and as drinking tea there in a semi-luxurious
+privacy. The idea would have amused an Italian of those days, when tea
+was looked upon as medicine.
+
+They reached the end of the last corridor. Dalrymple, like Sor Tommaso,
+was admitted to the antechamber, while the portress waited outside to
+conduct him back again. But Maria did not take him into the abbess's
+parlour, into which she went at once, closing the door behind her.
+Dalrymple sat down upon a carved wooden box-bench, and waited. The nun
+was gone a long time.
+
+"I have kept you waiting," she said, as she entered the little room
+again.
+
+"My time is altogether at your service, Sister Maria Addolorata," he
+answered, rising quickly. "How is her most reverend excellency?"
+
+"Very ill. I do not know what to say. She will not hear of seeing you.
+I fear she will not live long, for she can hardly breathe."
+
+"Does she cough?"
+
+"Not much. Not so much as last night. She complains that she cannot draw
+her breath and that her lungs feel full of something."
+
+The case was evidently serious, and Dalrymple, who was a physician by
+nature, proceeded to extract as much information as he could from the
+nun, who did her best to answer all his questions clearly. The long
+conversation, with its little restraints and its many attempts at a
+mutual understanding, did more to accustom Maria Addolorata to
+Dalrymple's presence and personality than any number of polite speeches
+on his part could have done. There is an unavoidable tendency to
+intimacy between any two people who are together engaged in taking care
+of a sick person.
+
+"I can give you directions and good advice," said Dalrymple, at last.
+"But it can never be the same as though I could see the patient myself.
+Is there no possible means of obtaining her consent? She may die for the
+want of just such advice as I can only give after seeing her. Would not
+her brother, his Eminence the Cardinal, perhaps recommend her to let me
+visit her once?"
+
+"That is an idea," answered the nun, quickly. "My uncle is a man of
+broad views. I have heard it said in Rome. I could write to him that
+Doctor Taddei is unable to come, and that a celebrated foreign physician
+is here--"
+
+"Not celebrated," interrupted Dalrymple, with his literal Scotch
+veracity.
+
+"What difference can it make?" uttered Maria Addolorata, moving her
+shoulders a little impatiently. "He will be the more ready to use his
+influence, for he is much attached to my aunt. Then, if he can persuade
+her, I can send down the gardener to the town for you this afternoon. It
+may not be too late."
+
+"I see that you have some confidence in me," said Dalrymple. "I am of a
+newer school than Doctor Taddei. If you will follow my directions, I
+will almost promise that her most reverend excellency shall not die
+before to-morrow."
+
+He smiled now, as he gave the abbess her full title, for he began to
+feel as though he had known Maria Addolorata for a long time, though he
+had only had one glimpse of her eyes, just when she had raised her head
+to get a look at him through the loophole of the gate. But he had not
+forgotten them, and he felt that he knew them.
+
+"I will do all you tell me," she answered quietly.
+
+Dalrymple had some English medicines with him on his travels, and not
+knowing what might be required of him at the convent, he had brought
+with him a couple of tiny bottles.
+
+"This when she coughs--ten drops," he said, handing the bottles to the
+nun. "And five drops of this once an hour, until her chest feels freer."
+
+He gave her minute directions, as far as he could, about the general
+treatment of the patient, which Maria repeated and got by heart.
+
+"I will let you know before twenty-three o'clock what the cardinal says
+to the plan," she said. "In this way you will be able to come up by
+daylight."
+
+As Dalrymple took his leave, he held out his hand, forgetting that he
+was in Italy.
+
+"It is not our custom," said Maria Addolorata, thrusting each of her own
+hands into the opposite sleeve.
+
+But there was nothing cold in her tone. On the contrary, Dalrymple
+fancied that she was almost on the point of laughing at that moment, and
+he blushed at his awkwardness. But she could not see his face.
+
+"Your most humble servant," he said, bowing to her.
+
+"Good day, Signor Doctor," she answered, through the open door, as the
+portress jingled her keys and prepared to follow Dalrymple.
+
+So he took his departure, not without much satisfaction at the result of
+his first attempt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+SOR TOMMASO recovered but slowly, though his injuries were of themselves
+not dangerous. His complexion was apoplectic and gouty, he was no longer
+young, and before forty-eight hours had gone by his wounds were
+decidedly inflamed and he had a little fever. At the same time he was by
+no means a courageous man, and he was ready to cry out that he was dead,
+whenever he felt himself worse. Besides this, he lost his temper several
+times daily with Dalrymple, who resolutely refused to bleed him, and he
+insisted upon eating and drinking more than was good for him, at a time
+when if he had been his own patient he would have enforced starvation as
+necessary to recovery.
+
+Meanwhile the cardinal had exerted his influence with his sister, the
+abbess, and had so far succeeded that Dalrymple, who went every day to
+the convent, was now made to stand with his back to the abbess's open
+door, in order that he might at least ask her questions and hear her own
+answers. Many an old Italian doctor can tell of even stranger and more
+absurd precautions observed by the nuns of those days. As soon as the
+oral examination was over, Maria Addolorata shut the door and came out
+into the parlour, where Dalrymple finished his visit, prolonging it in
+conversation with her by every means he could devise.
+
+Though encumbered with a little of the northern shyness, Dalrymple was
+not diffident. There is a great difference between shyness and
+diffidence. Diffidence distrusts itself; shyness distrusts the mere
+outward impression made on others. At this time Dalrymple had no object
+beyond enjoying the pleasure of talking with Maria Addolorata, and no
+hope beyond that of some day seeing her face without the veil. As for
+her voice, his present position as doctor to the convent made it foolish
+for him to run the risk of being caught listening for her songs behind
+the garden wall. But he had not forgotten what Annetta had told him, and
+Maria Addolorata's soft intonations and liquid depths of tone in
+speaking led him to believe that the peasant girl had not exaggerated
+the nun's gift of singing.
+
+One day, after he had seen her and talked with her more than half a
+dozen times, he approached the subject, merely for the sake of
+conversation, saying that he had been told of her beautiful voice by
+people who had heard her across the garden.
+
+"It is true," she answered simply. "I have a good voice. But it is
+forbidden here to sing except in church," she added with a sigh. "And
+now that my aunt is ill, I would not displease her for anything."
+
+"That is natural," said Dalrymple. "But I would give anything in the
+world to hear you."
+
+"In church you can hear me. The church is open on Sundays at the
+Benediction service. We are behind the altar in the choir, of course.
+But perhaps you would know my voice from the rest because it is deeper."
+
+"I should know it in a hundred thousand," asseverated the Scotchman,
+with warmth.
+
+"That would be a great many--a whole choir of angels!" And the nun
+laughed softly, as she sometimes did, now that she knew him so much
+better.
+
+There was something warm and caressing in her laughter, short and low as
+it was, that made Dalrymple look at those full white hands of hers and
+wonder whether they might not be warm and caressing too.
+
+"Will you sing a little louder than the rest next Sunday afternoon,
+Sister Maria?" he asked. "I will be in the church."
+
+"That would be a great sin," she answered, but not very gravely.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I should have to be thinking about you instead of about the
+holy service. Do you not know that? But nothing is sinful according to
+you Protestants, I suppose. At all events, come to the church."
+
+"Do you think we are all devils, Sister Maria?" asked Dalrymple, with a
+smile.
+
+"More or less." She laughed again. "They say in the town that you have a
+compact with the devil."
+
+"Do you hear what is said in the town?"
+
+"Sometimes. The gardener brings the gossip and tells it to the cook. Or
+Sora Nanna tells it to me when she brings the linen. There are a
+thousand ways. The people think we know nothing because they never see
+us. But we hear all that goes on."
+
+Dalrymple said nothing in answer for some time. Then he spoke suddenly
+and rather hoarsely.
+
+"Shall I never see you, Sister Maria?" he asked.
+
+"Me? But you see me every day--"
+
+"Yes,--but your face, without the veil."
+
+Maria Addolorata shook her head.
+
+"It is against all rules," she answered.
+
+"Is it not against all rules that we should sit here and make
+conversation every day for half an hour?"
+
+"Yes--I suppose it is. But you are here as a doctor to take care of my
+aunt," she added quickly. "That makes it right. You are not a man. You
+are a doctor."
+
+"Oh,--I understand." Dalrymple laughed a little. "Then I am never to see
+your beautiful face?"
+
+"How do you know it is beautiful, since you have never seen it?"
+
+"From your beautiful hands," answered the young man, promptly.
+
+"Oh!" Maria Addolorata glanced at her hands and then, with a movement
+which might have been quicker, concealed them in her sleeves.
+
+"It is a sin to hide what God has made beautiful," said Dalrymple.
+
+"If I have anything about me that is beautiful, it is for God's glory
+that I hide it," answered Maria, with real gravity this time.
+
+Dalrymple understood that he had gone a little too far, though he did
+not exactly regret it, for the next words she spoke showed him that she
+was not really offended. Nevertheless, in order to exhibit a proper
+amount of contrition he took his leave with a little more formality than
+usual on this particular occasion. Possibly she was willing to show that
+she forgave him, for she hesitated a moment just before opening the
+door, and then, to his great surprise, held out her hand to him.
+
+"It is your custom," she said, just touching his eagerly outstretched
+fingers. "But you must not look at it," she added, drawing it back
+quickly and hiding it in her sleeve with another low laugh. And she
+began to shut the door almost before he had quite gone through.
+
+Dalrymple walked more slowly on that day, as he descended through the
+steep and narrow streets, and though he was surefooted by nature and
+habit, he almost stumbled once or twice on his way down, because,
+somehow, though his eyes looked towards his feet, he did not see exactly
+where he was going.
+
+There is no necessity for analyzing his sensations. It is enough to say
+at once that he was beginning to be really in love with Maria
+Addolorata, and that he denied the fact to himself stoutly, though it
+forced itself upon him with every step which took him further from the
+convent. He felt on that day a strong premonitory symptom in the shape
+of a logical objection, as it were, to his returning again to see the
+nun. The objection was the evident and total futility of the almost
+intimate intercourse into which the two were gliding. The day must soon
+come when the abbess would no longer need his assistance. In all
+probability she would recover, for the more alarming symptoms had
+disappeared, and she showed signs of regaining her strength by slow
+degrees. It was quite clear to Dalrymple that, after her ultimate
+recovery, his chance of seeing and talking with Maria Addolorata would
+be gone forever. Sor Tommaso, indeed, recovered but slowly. Of the two
+his case was the worse, for fever had set in on the third day and had
+not left him yet, so that he assured Dalrymple almost hourly that his
+last moment was at hand. But he also was sure to get well, in the
+Scotchman's opinion, and the latter knew well enough that his own
+temporary privileges as physician to the convent would be withdrawn from
+him as soon as the Subiaco doctor should be able to climb the hill.
+
+It was all, therefore, but a brief incident in his life, which could not
+possibly have any continuation hereafter. He tried in vain to form plans
+and create reasons for seeing Maria Addolorata even once a month for
+some time to come, but his ingenuity failed him altogether, and he grew
+angry with himself for desiring what was manifestly impossible.
+
+With true masculine inconsequence, so soon as he was displeased with
+himself he visited his displeasure upon the object that attracted him,
+and on the earliest possible occasion, on their very next meeting. He
+assumed an air of coldness and reserve such as he had certainly not
+thought necessary to put on at his first visit. Almost without any
+preliminary words of courtesy, and without any attempt to prolong the
+short conversation which always took place before he was made to stand
+with his back to the abbess's open door, he coldly inquired about the
+good lady's condition during the past night, and made one or two
+observations thereon with a brevity almost amounting to curtness.
+
+Maria Addolorata was surprised; but as her face was covered, and her
+hands were quietly folded before her, Dalrymple could not see that his
+behaviour had any effect upon her. She did not answer his last remark at
+all, but quietly bowed her head.
+
+Then followed the usual serio-comic scene, during which Dalrymple stood
+turned away from the open door, asking questions of the sick woman, and
+listening attentively for her low-spoken answers. To tell the truth, he
+judged of her condition more from the sound of her voice than from
+anything else. He had also taught Maria Addolorata how to feel the
+pulse; and she counted the beats while he looked at his watch. His chief
+anxiety was now for the action of the heart, which had been weakened by
+a lifetime of unhealthy living, by food inadequate in quality, even when
+sufficient in quantity, by confinement within doors, and lack of
+life-giving sunshine, and by all those many causes which tend to reduce
+the vitality of a cloistered nun.
+
+When the comedy was over, Maria Addolorata shut the door as usual; and
+she and Dalrymple were alone together in the abbess's parlour, as they
+were every day. The abbess herself could hear that they were talking,
+but she naturally supposed that they were discussing the details of her
+condition; and as she felt that she was really recovering, so far as
+she could judge, and as almost every day, after Dalrymple had gone,
+Maria Addolorata had some new direction of his to carry out, the elder
+lady's suspicions were not aroused. On the contrary, her confidence in
+the Scotch doctor grew from day to day; and in the long hours during
+which she lay thinking over her state and its circumstances, she made
+plans for his conversion, in which her brother, the cardinal, bore a
+principal part. She was grateful to Dalrymple, and it seemed to her that
+the most proper way of showing her gratitude would be to save his soul,
+a point of view unusual in the ordinary relations of life.
+
+On this particular day, Maria Addolorata shut the door, and came forward
+into the parlour as usual. As usual, too, she sat down in the abbess's
+own big easy-chair, expecting that Dalrymple would seat himself opposite
+to her. But he remained standing, with the evident intention of going
+away in a few moments. He said a few words about the patient, gave one
+or two directions, and then stood still in silence for a moment.
+
+Maria Addolorata lifted her head a little, but not enough to show him
+more than an inch of her face.
+
+"Have I displeased you, Signor Doctor?" she asked, in her deep, warm
+voice. "Have I not carried out your orders?"
+
+"On the contrary," answered Dalrymple, with a stiffness which he
+resented in himself. "It is impossible to be more conscientious than you
+always are."
+
+Seeing that he still remained standing, the nun rose to her feet, and
+waited for him to go. She believed that she was far too proud to detain
+him, if he wished to shorten the meeting. But something hurt her, which
+she could not understand.
+
+Dalrymple hesitated a moment, and his lips parted as though he were
+about to speak. The silence was prolonged only for a moment or two.
+
+"Good morning, Sister Maria Addolorata," he said suddenly, and bowed.
+
+"Good morning, Signor Doctor," answered the nun.
+
+She bent her head very slightly, but a keener observer than Dalrymple
+was, just then, would have noticed that as she did so, her shoulders
+moved forward a little, as though her breast were contracted by some
+sudden little pain. Dalrymple did not see it. He bowed again, let
+himself out, and closed the door softly behind him.
+
+When he was gone, Maria Addolorata sat down in the big easy-chair again,
+and uncovered her face, doubling her veil back upon her head, and
+withdrawing the thick folds from her chin and mouth. Her features were
+very pale, as she sat staring at the sky through the window, and her
+eyes fixed themselves in that look which was peculiar to her. Her full
+white hands strained upon each other a little, bringing the colour to
+the tips of her fingers. During some minutes she did not move. Then she
+heard her aunt's voice calling to her hoarsely. She rose at once, and
+went into the bedroom. The abbess's pale face was very thin and yellow
+now, as it lay upon the white pillow; the coverlet was drawn up to her
+chin, and a grimly carved black crucifix hung directly above her head.
+
+"The doctor did not stay long to-day," she said, in a hollow tone.
+
+"No, mother," answered the young nun. "He thinks you are doing very
+well. He wishes you to eat a wing of roast chicken."
+
+"If I could have a little salad," said the abbess. "Maria," she added
+suddenly, "you are careful to keep your face covered when you are in the
+next room, are you not?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"You generally do not raise your veil until you come into this room,
+after the doctor is gone," said the elder lady.
+
+"He went so soon, to-day," answered Maria Addolorata, with perfectly
+innocent truth. "I stayed a moment in the parlour, thinking over his
+directions, and I lifted my veil when I was alone. It is close to-day."
+
+"Go into the garden, and walk a little," said the abbess. "It will do
+you good. You are pale."
+
+If she had felt even a faint uneasiness about her niece's conduct, it
+was removed by the latter's manner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+ONCE more Dalrymple was sitting over his supper at the table in the
+vaulted room on the ground floor which Stefanone used as a wine shop. To
+tell the truth, it was very superior to the ordinary wine shops of
+Subiaco and had an exceptional reputation. The common people never came
+there, because Stefanone did not sell his cheap wine at retail, but sent
+it all to Rome, or took it thither himself for the sake of getting a
+higher price for it. He always said that he did not keep an inn, and
+perhaps as much on account of his relations with Gigetto's family, he
+assumed as far as possible the position of a wine-dealer rather than
+that of a wine-seller. The distinction, in Italian mountain towns, is
+very marked.
+
+"They can have a measure of the best, if they care to pay for it," he
+said. "If they wish a mouthful of food, there is what there is. But I am
+not the village host, and Nanna is not a wine-shop cook, to fry tripe
+and peel onions for Titius and Caius."
+
+The old Roman expression, denoting generally the average public,
+survives still in polite society, and Stefanone had caught it from Sor
+Tommaso.
+
+Dalrymple was sitting as usual over his supper, by the light of the
+triple-beaked brass lamp, his measure of wine beside him, and a
+beefsteak, which on this occasion was really of beef, before him.
+Stefanone was absent in Rome, with a load of wine. Sora Nanna sat on
+Dalrymple's right, industriously knitting in Italian fashion, one of the
+needles stuck into and supported by a wooden sheath thrust into her
+waist-band, while she worked off the stitches with the others. Annetta
+sat opposite the Scotchman, but a little on one side of the lamp, so
+that she could see his face.
+
+"Mother," she said suddenly, without lifting her chin from the hand in
+which it rested, "you do not know anything! This Signor Englishman is
+making love with a nun in the convent! Eh--what do you think of it? Only
+this was wanting. A little more and the lightning will fall upon the
+convent! These Protestants! Oh, these blessed Protestants! They respect
+nothing, not even the saints!"
+
+"My daughter! what are you saying?"
+
+Sora Nanna's fingers did not pause in their work, nor did her eyes look
+up, but the deep furrow showed itself in her thick peasant's forehead,
+and her coarse, hard lips twitched clumsily with the beginning of a
+smile.
+
+"What am I saying? The truth. Ask rather of the Signore whether it is
+not true."
+
+"It is silly," said Dalrymple, growing unnaturally red, and looking up
+sharply at Annetta, before he took his next mouthful.
+
+"Look at him, mother!" laughed the girl. "He is red, red--he seems to me
+a boiled shrimp. Eh, this time I have guessed it! And as for Sister
+Maria Addolorata, she no longer sees with her eyes! To-day, when you
+were carrying in the baskets, you and the other women who went with us,
+I asked her whether the abbess was satisfied with the new doctor, and
+she answered that he was a very wise man, much wiser than Sor Tommaso.
+So I told her that it was a pity, because Sor Tommaso was getting well
+and would not allow the English doctor to come instead of him much
+longer. Then she looked at me. By Bacchus, I was afraid. Certain eyes!
+Not even a cat when you take away her kittens! A little more and she
+would have eaten me. And then her face made itself of marble--like that
+face of a woman that is built into the fountain in the piazza.
+Arch-priest! What a face!"
+
+The girl stared hard at Dalrymple, and her mouth laughed wickedly at his
+evident embarrassment, while there was something very different from
+laughter in her eyes. During the long speech, Sora Nanna had stopped
+knitting, and she looked from her daughter to the Scotchman with a sort
+of half-stupid, half-cunning curiosity.
+
+"But these are sins!" she exclaimed at last.
+
+"And what does it matter?" asked the girl. "Does he go to confession? So
+what does it matter? He keeps the account himself, of his sins. I should
+not like to have them on my shoulders. But as for Sister Maria
+Addolorata--oh, she! I told you that she sinned in her throat. Well, the
+sin is ready, now. What is she waiting for? For the abbess to die? Or
+for Sor Tommaso to get well? Then she will not see the Signor Englishman
+any more. It would be better for her. When she does not see him any
+more, she will knead her pillow with tears, and make her bread of it, to
+bite and eat. Good appetite, Sister Maria!"
+
+"You talk, you talk, and you conclude nothing," observed Sora Nanna.
+"You have certain thoughts in your head! And you do not let the Signore
+say even a word."
+
+"What can he say? He will say that it is not true. But then, who will
+believe him? I should like to see them a little together. I am sure that
+she shows him her face, and that it is 'Signor Doctor' here, and 'Dear
+Signor Doctor' there, and a thousand gentlenesses. Tell the truth,
+Signore. She shows you her face."
+
+"No," said Dalrymple, who had regained his self-possession. "She never
+shows me her face."
+
+"What a shame for a Carmelite nun to show her face to a man!" cried the
+girl.
+
+"But I tell you she is always veiled to her chin," insisted Dalrymple,
+with perfect truth.
+
+"Eh! It is you who say so!" retorted Annetta. "But then, what can it
+matter to me? Make love with a nun, if it goes, Signore. Youth is a
+flower--when it is withered, it is hay, and the beasts eat it."
+
+"This is true," said Sora Nanna, returning to her knitting. "But do not
+pay attention to her, Signore. She is stupid. She does not know what she
+says. Eat, drink, and manage your own affairs. It is better. What can a
+child understand? It is like a little dog that sees and barks, without
+understanding. But you are a much instructed man and have been round the
+whole world. Therefore you know many things. It seems natural."
+
+Though Dalrymple was not diffident, as has been said, he was far from
+vain, on the whole, and in particular he had none of that contemptible
+vanity which makes a man readily believe that every woman he meets is in
+love with him. He had not the slightest idea at that time that Annetta,
+the peasant girl, looked upon him with anything more than the curiosity
+and vague interest usually bestowed on a foreigner in Italy.
+
+He was annoyed, however, by what she said this evening, though he was
+also secretly surprised and delighted. The contradiction is a common
+one. The miser is half mad with joy on discovering that he has much
+more than he supposed, and bitterly resents, at the same time, any
+notice which may be taken of the fact by others.
+
+Annetta did not enjoy his discomfiture and evident embarrassment, for
+she was far more deeply hurt herself than she realized, and every word
+she had spoken about Maria Addolorata had hurt her, though she had taken
+a sort of vague delight in teasing Dalrymple. She relapsed into silence
+now, alternately wishing that he loved her, and then, that she might
+kill him. If she could not have his heart, she would be satisfied with
+his blood. There was a passionate animal longing in the instinct to have
+him for herself, even dead, rather than that any other woman should get
+his love.
+
+Dalrymple was aware only that the girl's words had annoyed him, while
+inwardly conscious that if what she said were true, the truth would make
+a difference in his life. He showed no inclination to talk any more, and
+finished his supper in a rather morose silence, turning to his book as
+soon as he had done. Then Gigetto came in with his guitar and sang and
+talked with the two women.
+
+But he was restless that night, and did not fall asleep until the moon
+had set and his window grew dark. And even in his dreams he was restless
+still, so that when he awoke in the morning he said to himself that he
+had been foolish in his behaviour towards Maria Addolorata on the
+previous day. He felt tired, too, and his colour was less brilliant
+than usual. It was Sunday, and he remembered that if he chose he could
+go in the afternoon to the Benediction in the convent church and hear
+Maria's voice perhaps. But at the usual hour, just before noon, he went
+to make his visit to the abbess.
+
+It was his intention to forget his stiff manner, and to behave as he had
+always behaved until yesterday. Strange to say, however, he felt a
+constraint coming upon him as soon as he was in the nun's presence. She
+received him as usual, there was the usual comic scene at the abbess's
+door, and, as every day, the two were alone together after her door was
+shut.
+
+"Are you ill?" asked Maria Addolorata, after a moment's silence which,
+short as it was, both felt to be awkward.
+
+Dalrymple was taken by surprise. The tone in which she had spoken was
+cold and distant rather than expressive of any concern for his welfare,
+but he did not think of that. He only realized that his manner must seem
+to her very unusual, since she asked such a question. An Italian would
+have observed that his own face was pale, and would have told her that
+he was dying of love.
+
+"No, I am not ill," answered the Scotchman, simply, and in his most
+natural tone of voice.
+
+"Then what is the matter with you since yesterday?" asked Maria
+Addolorata, less coldly, and as though she were secretly amused.
+
+"There is nothing the matter--at least, nothing that I could explain to
+you."
+
+She sat down in the big easy-chair and, as formerly, he took his seat
+opposite to her.
+
+"There is something," she insisted, speaking thoughtfully. "You cannot
+deceive a woman, Signor Doctor."
+
+Dalrymple smiled and looked at her veiled head.
+
+"You said the other day that I was not a man, but a doctor," he
+answered. "I suppose I might answer that you are not a woman, but a
+nun."
+
+"And is not a nun a woman?" asked Maria Addolorata, and he knew that she
+was smiling, too.
+
+"You would not forgive me if I answered you," he said.
+
+"Who knows? I might be obliged to, since I am obliged to meet you every
+day. It may be a sin, but I am curious."
+
+"Shall I tell you?"
+
+As though instinctively, Maria was silent for a moment, and turned her
+veiled face towards the abbess's door. But Dalrymple needed no such
+warning to lower his voice.
+
+"Tell me," she said, and under her veil she could feel that her eyes
+were growing deep and the pupils wide and dark, and she knew that she
+had done wrong.
+
+"How should I know whether you are a saint or only a woman, since I have
+never seen your face?" he asked. "I shall never know--for in a few days
+Doctor Taddei will be well again, and you will not need my services."
+
+He saw the quick tightening of one hand upon the other, and the slight
+start of the head, and in a flash he knew that all Annetta had told him
+was true. The silence that followed seemed longer than the awkward pause
+which had preceded the conversation.
+
+"It cannot be so soon," she said in a very low tone.
+
+"It may be to-morrow," he answered, and to his own astonishment his
+voice almost broke in his throat, and he felt that his own hands were
+twisting each other, as though he were in pain. "I shall die without
+seeing you," he added almost roughly.
+
+Again there was a short silence in the still room.
+
+Suddenly, with quick movements of both hands at once, Maria Addolorata
+threw back the veil from her face, and drew away the folds that covered
+her mouth.
+
+"There, see me!" she exclaimed. "Look at me well this once!"
+
+Her face was as white as marble, and her dark eyes had a wild and
+startled look in them, as though she saw the world for the first time.
+A ringlet of red-gold hair had escaped from the bands of white that
+crossed her forehead in an even line and were drawn down straight on
+either side, for in the quick movement she had made she had loosened the
+pin that held them together under her chin, and had freed the dazzling
+throat down to the high collar.
+
+[Illustration: "She had covered her face with the veil."--Vol. I., p.
+126.]
+
+Dalrymple's pale, bright blue eyes caught fire, and he looked at her
+with all his being, at her face, her throat, her eyes, the ringlet of
+her hair. He breathed audibly, with parted lips, between his clenched
+teeth.
+
+Gradually, as he looked, he saw the red blush rise from the throat to
+the cheeks, from the cheeks to the forehead, and the marble grew more
+beautiful with womanly life. Then, all at once, he saw the hot tears
+welling up in her eyes, and in an instant the vision was gone. With a
+passionate movement she had covered her face with the veil, and throwing
+herself sideways against the high back of the chair, she pressed the
+dark stuff still closer to her eyes and mouth and cheeks. Her whole body
+shook convulsively, and a moment later she was sobbing, not audibly, but
+visibly, as though her heart were breaking.
+
+Dalrymple was again taken by surprise. He had been so completely lost in
+the utterly selfish contemplation of her beauty that he had been very
+far from realizing what she herself must have felt as soon as she
+appreciated what she had done. He at once accused himself of having
+looked too rudely at her, but at the same time he was himself too much
+disturbed to argue the matter. Quite instinctively he rose to his feet
+and tried to take one of her hands from her veil, touching it
+comfortingly. But she made a wild gesture, as though to drive him away.
+
+"Go!" she cried in a low and broken voice, between her sobs. "Go! Go
+quickly!"
+
+She could not say more for her sobbing, but he did not obey her. He only
+drew back a little and watched her, all his blood on fire from the touch
+of her soft white hand.
+
+She stifled her sobs in her veil, and gradually grew more calm. She even
+arranged the veil itself a little better, her face still turned away
+towards the back of the chair.
+
+"Maria! Maria!" The abbess's voice was calling her, hoarsely and almost
+desperately, from the next room.
+
+She started and sat up straight, listening. Then the cry was heard
+again, more desperate, less loud. With a quick skill which seemed
+marvellous in Dalrymple's eyes, Maria adjusted her veil almost before
+she had sprung to her feet.
+
+"Wait!" she said. "Something is the matter!"
+
+She was at the bedroom door in an instant, and in an instant more she
+was at her aunt's bedside.
+
+"Maria--I am dying," said the abbess's voice faintly, as she felt the
+nun's arm under her head.
+
+Dalrymple heard the words, and did not hesitate as he hastily felt for
+something in his pocket.
+
+"Come!" cried Maria Addolorata.
+
+But he was already there, on the other side of the bed, pouring
+something between the sick lady's lips.
+
+It was fortunate that he was there at that moment. He had indeed
+anticipated the possibility of a sudden failure in the action of the
+heart, and he never came to the convent without a small supply of a
+powerful stimulant of his own invention. The liquid, however, was of
+such a nature that he did not like to leave the use of it to Maria
+Addolorata's discretion, for he was aware that she might easily be
+mistaken in the symptoms of the collapse which would really require its
+use.
+
+The abbess swallowed a sufficient quantity of it, and Dalrymple allowed
+her head to lie again upon the pillow. She looked almost as though she
+were dead. Her eyes were turned up, and her jaw had dropped. Maria
+Addolorata believed that all was over.
+
+"She is dead," she said. "Let us leave her in peace."
+
+It is a very ancient custom among Italians to withdraw as soon as a
+dying person is unconscious, if not even before the supreme moment.
+
+"She will probably live through this," answered Dalrymple, shaking his
+head.
+
+Neither he nor the nun spoke again for a long time. Little by little,
+the abbess revived under the influence of the stimulant, the heart beat
+less faintly, and the mouth slowly closed, while the eyelids shut
+themselves tightly over the upturned eyes. The normal regular breathing
+began again, and the crisis was over.
+
+"It is passed," said Dalrymple. "It will not come again to-day. We can
+leave her now, for she will sleep."
+
+"Yes," said the abbess herself. "Let me sleep." Her voice was faint, but
+the words were distinctly articulated.
+
+Then she opened her eyes and looked about her quite naturally. Her
+glance rested on Dalrymple's face. Suddenly realizing that she was not
+veiled, she drew the coverlet up over her face. It is a peculiarity of
+such cases, that the patient returns almost immediately to ordinary
+consciousness when the moment of danger is past.
+
+"Go!" she said, with more energy than might have been expected. "This is
+a religious house. You must not be here."
+
+Dalrymple retired into the parlour again, shutting the door behind him,
+and waited for Maria Addolorata, for it was now indispensable that he
+should give her directions for the night. During the few minutes which
+passed while he was alone, he stood looking out of the window. The
+excitement of the last half-hour had cut off from his present state of
+mind the emotion he had felt before the abbess's cry for help, but had
+not decreased the impression it had left. While he was helping the sick
+lady there had not been one instant in which he had not felt that there
+was more than the life of a half-saintly old woman in the balance, and
+that her death meant the end of his meetings with Maria Addolorata.
+Annetta's words came back to him, 'she will knead her pillow with tears
+and make her bread of it.'
+
+Several minutes passed, and the door opened softly and closed again.
+Maria Addolorata came up to him, where he stood by the window. She did
+not speak for a moment, but he saw that her hand was pressed to her
+side.
+
+"I have spent a bad half-hour," she said at last, with something like a
+gasp.
+
+"It is the worst half-hour I ever spent in my life," answered Dalrymple.
+"I thought it was all over," he added.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I thought it was all over."
+
+He could hear his heart beating in his ears. He could almost hear hers.
+His hand went out toward her, cold and unsteady, but it fell to his side
+again almost instantly. But for the heart-beats, it seemed to him that
+there was an appalling stillness in the air of the quiet room. His
+manly face grew very pale. He slowly bit his lip and looked out of the
+window. An enormous temptation was upon him. He knew that if she moved
+to leave his side he should take her and hold her. There was a tiny drop
+of blood on his lip now. Something in him made him hope against himself
+that she would speak, that she would say some insignificant dry words.
+But every inch of his strong fibre and every ounce of his hot blood
+hoped that she would move, instead of speaking.
+
+She sighed, and the sigh was broken by a quick-drawn breath. Slowly
+Dalrymple turned his white face and gleaming eyes to her veiled head.
+Still she neither spoke nor moved. He, in memory, saw her face, her
+mouth, and her eyes through the thick stuff that hid them. The silence
+became awful to him. His hands opened and shut convulsively.
+
+She heard his breath and she saw the uncertain shadow of his hand,
+moving on the black and white squares of the pavement. She made a
+slight, short movement towards him and then stepped suddenly back,
+overcoming the temptation to go to him.
+
+"No!"
+
+He uttered the single word with a low, fierce cry. In an instant his
+arms were around her, pressing her, lifting her, straining her, almost
+bruising her. In an instant his lips were kissing a face whiter than his
+own, eyes that flamed like summer lightning between his kisses, lips
+crushed and hurt by his, but still not kissed enough, hands that were
+raised to resist, but lingered to be kissed in turn, lest anything
+should be lost.
+
+A little splintering crash, the sound of a glass falling upon a stone
+floor in the next room, broke the stillness. Dalrymple's arms relaxed,
+and the two stood for one moment facing one another, pale, with fire in
+their eyes and hearts beating more loudly than before. Dalrymple raised
+his hand to his forehead, as though he were dazed, and made an uncertain
+step in the direction of the door. Maria raised her white hands towards
+him, and her eyelids drooped, even while she looked into his face.
+
+He kissed her once more with a kiss in which all other kisses seemed to
+meet and live and die a lingering, sweet death. She sank into the deep
+old easy-chair, and when she looked up, he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+IT rained during the afternoon, and Dalrymple sat in his small
+laboratory, among his books and the simple apparatus he used for his
+experiments. His little window was closed, and the southwest wind drove
+the shower against the clouded panes of glass, so that the rain came
+through the ill-fitted strips of lead which joined them, and ran down in
+small streams to the channel in the stone sill, whence the water found
+its way out through a hole running through the wall. He sat in his
+rush-bottomed chair, sideways by the deal table, one long leg crossed
+over the other. His hand lay on an open book, and his fingers
+occasionally tapped the page impatiently, while his eyes were fixed on
+the window, watching the driving rain.
+
+He was not thinking, for he could not think. Over and over again the
+scene of the morning came back to him and sent the hot blood rushing to
+his throat. He tried to reflect, indeed, and to see whether what he had
+done was to have any consequences for him, or was to be left behind in
+his life, like a lovely view seen from a carriage window on a swift
+journey, gone before it is half seen, and never to be seen again,
+except in dreams. But he was utterly unable to look forward and reason
+about the future. Everything dragged him back, up the steep ascent to
+the convent, through the arched ways and vaulted corridors, to the room
+in which he had passed the supreme moments of his life. The only
+distinct impression of the future was the strong desire to feel again
+what he had felt that day; to feel it again and again, and always, as
+long as feeling could last; to stretch out his hands and take, to close
+them and hold, to make his, indubitably, what had been but questionably
+his for an instant, to get the one thing worth having, for himself, and
+only for himself. For the passion of a strong man is loving and taking,
+and the passion of a good woman is loving and giving. Dalrymple reasoned
+well enough, later,--too well, perhaps,--but during those hours he spent
+alone on that day, there was no power of reasoning in him. The world was
+the woman he loved, and the world's orbit was but the circle of his
+clasping arms. Beyond them was chaos, without form and void, clouded as
+the rain-streaked panes of his little window.
+
+He looked at his watch more than once. At last he rose, threw a cloak
+over his shoulders and went out, locking the door of the little
+laboratory behind him as he always did, and thrusting the unwieldy key
+into his pocket.
+
+He climbed the hill to the convent, taking the short cut through the
+narrow lanes. The rain had almost ceased, and the wet mist that blew
+round the corners of the dark houses was pleasant in his face. But he
+scarcely knew what he saw and felt on his way. He reached the convent
+church and went in, and stood by one of the pillars near the door.
+
+It was a small church, built with a great choir for the nuns behind the
+high altar; from each side of the latter a high wooden screen extended
+to the walls, completely cutting off the space. It was dark, too,
+especially in such weather, and almost deserted, save for a number of
+old women who knelt on the damp marble pavement, some leaning against
+the backs of chairs, some resting one arm upon the plastered bases of
+the yellow marble columns. There were many lights on the high altar. Two
+acolytes, rough-headed boys of Subiaco, knelt within the altar rail,
+dressed in black cassocks and clean linen cottas. Two priests and a
+young deacon sat side by side on the right of the altar, with small
+black books in their hands. The nuns were chanting, unseen in the choir.
+No one noticed Dalrymple, wrapped in his cloak, as he leaned against the
+pillar near the door. His head was a little inclined, involuntarily
+respectful to ceremonies he neither believed in nor understood, but
+which had in them the imposing element of devout earnestness. Yet his
+eyes were raised and looked up from under his brows, steadily and
+watchfully, for he knew that Maria Addolorata was behind the screen, and
+from the first moment of entering the church it seemed to him that he
+could distinguish her voice from the rest.
+
+He knew that it was hers, though he had never heard her sing. There was
+in all those sweet, colourless tones one tone that made ringing
+harmonies in his strong heart. Amongst all those mingling accents, there
+was one accent that touched his soul. Amidst the echoes that died softly
+away under the dim arches, there was one echo that died not, but rang on
+and on in his ears. There was a voice not like other voices there, nor
+like any he had ever heard. Many were strong and sweet; this one was not
+sweet and strong only, but alive with a divine life, winged with divine
+wings, essential of immortality, touching beyond tears, passionate as
+the living, breathing, sighing, dying world, grand as a flood of light,
+sad as the twilight of gods, full as a great water swinging to the tide
+of the summer's moon, fine-drawn as star-rays--a voice of gold.
+
+As Dalrymple stood there in the shadow, he heard it singing to him and
+telling him all that he had not been told in words, all that he felt,
+and more also. For there was in it the passion of the woman, and the
+passionate remorse of the nun, the towering love of Maria Braccio,
+woman and princess, and the deep despair of Maria Addolorata, nun and
+sinner, unfaithful spouse of the Lord Christ, accused and self-accusing,
+self-wronged, self-judged, but condemned of God and foretasting the
+ultimate tragedy that is eternal--the tragedy of supreme hell.
+
+The man who stood there knew that it was his doing, and the burden of
+his deeds bowed him bodily as he stood. But still he listened, and, as
+she sung, he watched her lips in the dark, inner mirror of sin's memory,
+and they drew him on.
+
+Little by little, he heard only her voice, and the others chanted but
+faintly as from an infinite distance. And then, not in his thought, but
+in deed, she was singing alone, and the words of 'O Salutaris Hostia,'
+sounded in the dim church as they had never sounded before, nor could
+ever sound again, the appeal of a lost soul's agony to God, the glory of
+golden voice, the accent of transcendent genius, the passion, the
+strength, the despair, of an ancient race.
+
+In the dark church the coarse, sad peasant women bowed themselves upon
+the pavement. One of them sobbed aloud and beat her breast. Angus
+Dalrymple kneeled upon one knee and pressed his brow against the foot of
+the pillar, kneeling neither to God, nor to the Sacred Host, nor to
+man's belief in Heaven or Hell, neither praying nor blaspheming,
+neither hoping nor dreading, but spell-bound upon a wrack of torture
+that was heart-breaking delight, his senses torn and strained to the
+utmost of his strong endurance, to the very scream of passion, his soul
+crucified upon the exquisite loveliness of his sin.
+
+Then all was still for an instant. Again there was a sound of voices, as
+the nuns sang in chorus the 'Tantum Ergo.' But the voice of voices was
+silent among them. The solemn Benediction blessed the just and the
+unjust alike. The short verses and responses of the priests broke the
+air that still seemed alive and trembling.
+
+Dalrymple rose slowly, and wrapped his cloak about him. Above the
+footsteps of the women going out of the church, he could hear the soft
+sound of all the nuns moving together as they left the choir. He knew
+that she was with them, and he stood motionless in his place till
+silence descended as a curtain between him and what had been. Then, with
+bent head, he went out into the rain that poured through the dim
+twilight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+THEY were together on the following day. The abbess was better, and as
+yet there had been no return of the syncope which Dalrymple dreaded.
+
+Contrary to her habit, Maria Addolorata sat on a high chair by the
+table, her head veiled and turned away, her chin supported in her hand.
+Dalrymple was seated not far from her, leaning forward, and trying to
+see her face, silent, and in a dangerous mood. She had refused to let
+him come near her, and even to raise her veil. When she spoke, her voice
+was full of a profound sadness that irritated him instead of touching
+him, for his nerves were strung to passion and out of tune with regret.
+
+"The sin of it; the deadly sin!" she said.
+
+"There is no sin in it," he answered; but she shook her veiled head.
+
+And there was silence again, as on the day before, but the stillness was
+of another kind. It was not the awful lull which goes before the
+bursting of the storm, when the very air seems to start at the fall of a
+leaf for fear lest it be already the thunder-clap. It was more like the
+noiseless rising of the hungry flood that creeps up round the doomed
+house, wherein is desperate, starving life, higher and higher, inch by
+inch--the flood of rising fate.
+
+"You say that there is no sin in it," she said, after a time. "You say
+it, but you do not think it. You are a man--you have honour to lose--you
+understand that, at least--"
+
+"You are a woman, and you have humanity's right to be free. It is an
+honourable right. You gave it up when you took that veil, not knowing
+what it was that you gave up. You have done no wrong. You have done
+nothing that any loving maiden need be ashamed of. I kissed you, for you
+could not help yourself. That is the monstrous crime which you say is to
+be punished with eternal damnation. It is monstrous that you should
+think so. It is blasphemy to say that God made woman to lead a life of
+suffering and daily misery, chained to a cross which it is agony to look
+at, and shame to break from."
+
+"Go--leave me. You are tempting me again." She spoke away from him, not
+changing her position.
+
+"If truth is temptation, I am tempting you, for I am showing you the
+truth. The truth is this. When you were almost a child they began to
+bend you and break you in the way they meant you to grow. You bent, but
+you were not broken. Your nature is too strong. There is a life of your
+own in you. It was against your will, and when you were just grown up,
+they buried you, your beauty, your youth, your fresh young heart, your
+voice and your genius--for it is nothing less. It was all done with
+deliberate intention for the glory of your family, blasphemously
+asserted to be the glory of God. It was pressed upon you, before you
+knew what you were doing, and made pleasant to you before you knew what
+it all meant. Your cross was cushioned for you and your crown of thorns
+was gilded. They made the seat under the canopy seem a seat in heaven.
+They even made you believe that the management of two or three score
+suffering women was government and power. It seemed a great thing to be
+abbess, did it not?"
+
+Maria Addolorata bent her veiled head slowly twice or three times, in a
+heavy-hearted way.
+
+"They made you believe all that," continued Dalrymple, with cold
+earnestness, "and much more besides--a great deal of which I know
+little, I suppose--the life to come, and saintship, and the glories of
+heaven. You have found out what it is all worth. We have found it out
+together. And they frightened you with hell. Do you know what hell is? A
+life without love, when one knows what love can mean. I am not eloquent;
+I wish I were. But I am plain, and I can tell you the truth."
+
+"It is not the truth," answered the nun, slowly. "You tell me it is, to
+tempt me. I cannot drive you away by force. Will you not go? I cannot
+cry out for help--it would ruin me and you. Will you not leave me? But
+for God's grace, I am at your mercy, and there is little grace for me, a
+sinner."
+
+"No, I will not go away," said Dalrymple, and it seemed to Maria that
+his voice was the voice of her fate.
+
+"Then God have mercy!" she cried, in a low tone, and as her head sank
+forward, it was her forehead that rested in her right hand, instead of
+her chin.
+
+"Love is more merciful than God," he answered.
+
+There was a sudden softness in his voice which she had never heard, not
+even yesterday. Rising, he stole near to her, and standing, bent down
+and leaned upon the table by her side and spoke close to her ear. But he
+did not touch her. She could feel his breath through her veil when he
+spoke again. It was vital and fierce, and softly hot, like the breathing
+of a powerful wild beast.
+
+"You are my God," he said. "I worship you, and adore you. But I must
+have you for mine always. I would rather kill you, and have no God, than
+lose you alive. Come with me. You are free. You can get through the
+garden at night--with good horses we can reach the sea to-morrow. There
+is an English ship of war at anchor in Civita Vecchia. The officers are
+my friends. Before to-morrow night we can be safe--married--happy. No
+one will know--no one will follow us. Maria--come--come--come!"
+
+His voice sank to a vibrating whisper as he repeated the word again and
+again, closer and closer to her ear. Her hands had dropped from her
+forehead and lay upon the table. With bent head she listened.
+
+"Come, my darling," he continued, fast and low. "I have a beautiful
+home, my father's home, my mother's--your laws and vows are nothing to
+them. You shall be honoured, loved--ah, dear! adored, worshipped--you do
+not know what we will do for you, to fill your life with sweet things.
+All your life, Maria, from to-morrow. Instead of pain and penance and
+everlasting suffering and weariness, you shall have all that the world
+holds of love and peace and flowers. And you shall sing your whole heart
+out when you will, and have music to play with from year's beginning to
+year's end and year's end again. Sweet, let me tell you how I love
+you--how you are alive in every drop of my blood, beating through me
+like living fire, through heart and soul and head and hand--"
+
+With a quick movement she pressed her palms against her veil upon her
+ears to shut out the sound of his words. She rocked herself a little, as
+though the pain were almost greater than she could bear. But his hands
+moved too, stealthily, strongly, as a tiger's velvet feet, with a
+vibration all through them, to the very ends of his fingers. For he was
+in earnest. And the arm went softly round her, and closed gently upon
+her as her figure swayed in her chair; and the other sought hers, and
+found it cold as ice and trembling, and not strong to stop her hearing.
+And again she listened.
+
+Wild and incoherent words fell from his lips, hot and low, with no
+reason in them but the overwhelming reason of love itself. For he was
+not an eloquent man, and now he took no thought of what he said. He was
+far too natural to be eloquent, and far too deeply stirred to care for
+the shape his love took in speech. There was in his words the strong
+rush of out-bursting truth which even the worst passion has when it is
+real to the roots. Words terrible and gentle, blasphemous and devout,
+wove themselves into a new language such as Maria Addolorata had never
+heard, nor dared to think of hearing. But he dared everything, to tell
+her, to hold her, against God and devil, heaven and earth, and all
+mankind. And he promised all he had, and all that was not his to promise
+nor to give, rending her beliefs to shreds, trampling on the broken
+fragments of all she had worshipped, tearing her chains link from link
+and scattering them like straw down the storm of passionate contempt.
+And then, again, pouring out love, and more love, and love again, as a
+stream of liquid fire let loose to flood all it meets with dazzling
+destruction and hot death.
+
+It is not every woman that knows what it is to be so loved and to listen
+to such words, so spoken. Those who have heard and felt can understand,
+but not the rest. Gradually as he spoke, her veiled face was drawn
+toward his; gradually her hand raised the thick veil and drew it back;
+and again a little, and the hand that had struggled long and silently
+against his, lay still at last, and the face that had appealed in vain
+to Heaven, hid itself against the heart of the strong man.
+
+"The Lord have mercy upon my sinful soul!" she softly prayed.
+
+"I love you!" whispered Dalrymple, folding her to him with both his
+arms, and pressing his lips to her head. "That is all the world holds.
+That is all the Heaven there is, and we have it for our own."
+
+But presently she drew back from him, clinging to him with her hands as
+though to hold him, and yet separating from him and looking up into his
+face.
+
+"And to-morrow?" she said, with a despairing question in her tone.
+
+"We will go away to-night," he answered, "and to-morrow will be ours,
+too, and all the to-morrows after that."
+
+But she shook her head, and her hands loosened their hold upon his arms,
+still lingering on his sleeves.
+
+"And leave her to die?" she asked, with a quick glance at the abbess's
+door.
+
+Then she looked at him, with something of sudden fear as she met his
+eyes again. And almost instantly she turned from him, and threw herself
+forward upon the table as she sat.
+
+"The sin, the deadly sin!" she moaned. "Oh, the horror of it all--the
+sin, the shame, the disgrace! That is the worst to bear--the shame! The
+undying shame of it!"
+
+Dalrymple's brows bent themselves in a heavy frown, for he was in no
+temper to be thwarted, desperate as the risk might be. For himself, he
+knew that he was setting his life on the chances, if she consented, and
+that life would not be worth having if she refused. He knew well enough
+that they must almost certainly be pursued, and that there would be
+little hesitation about shooting him or cutting his throat if they were
+caught and if he resisted, as he knew that he should. He had been in
+love with her for days. The last twenty-four hours had made him
+desperate. And a desperate man is not to be played with, more especially
+if he chance to have any Highland blood in his veins.
+
+"What do you believe in most?" he asked suddenly and almost brutally.
+
+She turned, startled, and looked him in the face.
+
+"Because, if you believe in God, as I suppose you do, I take God to
+witness that I shall be a dead man this night, unless you promise to go
+with me."
+
+She stared, and turned white to the lips, as he had never seen her turn
+pale before. She leaned forward, gazing into his eyes and breathing
+hard.
+
+"You do not mean that," she said, as though trying hard to convince
+herself.
+
+"I mean it," he answered slowly, pale himself, and knowing what he said.
+
+She leaned nearer to him and took his arms with her hands, for she could
+not speak. The terrible question was in his eyes.
+
+"You would kill yourself, if I refused--if I would not go with you?"
+Still she could not believe him.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+Once more the room was very still, as the two looked into one another's
+eyes. But Maria Addolorata said nothing. The frown deepened on
+Dalrymple's face, and his strong mouth was drawn, as a man draws in his
+lips at the moment of meeting death.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, gently loosening himself from her hold.
+
+Her hands dropped and she turned half round, following him as he went
+towards the door. His hand was almost on the latch. He did not turn.
+But as he heard her swift feet behind him, he bent his head a little.
+Her arms went round his throat, reaching up to his great height.
+
+"No! No!" she cried, drawing his head down to her.
+
+But he took her by the wrists and held her away from him at his arms'
+length.
+
+"Are you in earnest?" he asked fiercely. "If you play with me any more,
+you shall die, too."
+
+"But not to-day!" she answered imploringly. "Not to-night! Give me
+time--a day--a little while--"
+
+"To lose you? No. I have been near losing you. I know what it means.
+Make up your mind. Yes, or no."
+
+"To-night? But how? There is not time--these clothes I wear--"
+
+She turned her head distractedly to one side and the other as she spoke,
+while he held her wrists. Dalrymple saw that there was reason in the
+objections she made. So dangerous a flight could not be undertaken
+without some preparation. He loosed her hands and began to pace the
+room, concentrating his mind upon the details. She watched him in
+silence, leaning against the back of the easy-chair. Then he stopped
+just before her.
+
+"My cloak would come down to your feet," he said, measuring her height
+with his eyes. "I have a plaid which would cover your head. Once on
+horseback, no one would notice anything. Can you ride?"
+
+"No. I never learned."
+
+"That is unlucky. But we can manage it. The main thing would be to get a
+long start if possible--that you should not be missed--to get away just
+at the beginning of the longest time during which the nuns would not
+expect to see you. Where is your own room? Is it near this?"
+
+Maria Addolorata told him, and explained the position of the balcony
+with the steps leading down into the garden. He asked her who kept the
+key of the postern. It was in the possession of the gardener, who took
+it away with him at night, but the lock was on the inside, and
+uncovered, as old Italian locks are. By raising the curved spring one
+could push back the bolt. There was a handle on the latter, for that
+purpose. There would be no difficulty about getting out, nor about
+letting Dalrymple in, provided that the night were dark.
+
+"The moon is almost full," said Dalrymple, thoughtfully, and he began to
+walk up and down again. "Never mind. It must be to-morrow night. In your
+dark dress, when the sisters are asleep, if you keep in the shadow along
+the wall, there is not the slightest risk. I will be waiting for you on
+the other side of the gate with my cloak and plaid. I will have the
+horses ready, a little higher up. There is a good mule path which goes
+down into the valley on that side. You have only to reach the gate and
+let yourself out. It is very easy. Tell me at what time to be waiting."
+
+Maria leaned heavily upon the chair, with bent head.
+
+"I cannot do it--oh, I cannot!" she said despairingly. "The shame of it!
+To be the talk of Rome--the scandal of the day--a disgrace to my father
+and mother!"
+
+Dalrymple frowned, and biting his lip, he struck his clenched fist
+softly with the palm of his hand, making a few quick steps backward and
+forward. He stopped suddenly and looked at her with dangerous eyes.
+
+"I have told you," he said. "I will not repeat it. You must choose."
+
+"Oh, you cannot be in earnest--"
+
+"You shall see. It is plain enough," he added, with an accent of scorn.
+"You are more afraid of a little talk and gossip in Rome, than of being
+told to-morrow morning that I died in the night. That is Italian
+courage, I suppose."
+
+She hung her head for a moment. Then, as she heard his footsteps, she
+threw her veil back and saw that he was going towards the door without a
+word.
+
+"You are cruel," she said, half catching her breath. "You know that you
+make me suffer--that I cannot live without you."
+
+"I shall certainly not live without you," he answered. "I mean to have
+you at any price, or I will die in the attempt to get you."
+
+The words have a melodramatic look on paper. But he spoke them not only
+with his lips, but with his whole self. They were not out of keeping
+with his nature. There is no more desperate blood in the world's veins
+than that of the Celt when he is driven to bay or exasperated by
+passion. In him the reckless fatalism of the Asiatic is blended with the
+cool daring of the northerner.
+
+Maria Addolorata had little experience of the world or of men, but she
+had the hereditary instincts of her sex, and as she looked at Dalrymple
+she recognized in him the man who would do what he said, or forfeit his
+life in trying to do it. There is no mistaking the truth about such men,
+at such moments.
+
+"I believe you would," she said, and she felt pride in saying it.
+
+Her own life was in the balance. She bent her head again. Her temples
+were throbbing, and it was hard to think at all connectedly.
+
+"I want your answer," he said, still standing near the door. "Yes or
+no--for to-morrow night?"
+
+"I cannot live without you," she answered slowly, and still looking
+down. "I must go."
+
+But she did not meet his eyes, for she knew that she was wavering still,
+and almost as uncertain as before. All at once Dalrymple's manner
+changed. He came quietly to her side and took one of her hands, which
+hung idly over the back of the chair, in both of his.
+
+"You must be in earnest, as I am, my dear," he said, very calmly and
+gently. "You must not play with a man's life and heart, as though they
+were worth nothing but play. You called me cruel, dear, a moment ago.
+But you are more cruel than I, for I do not hesitate."
+
+"I must go," she repeated, still avoiding his look. "Yes, I must go. I
+should die without you."
+
+"But to-morrow when I come, you will hesitate again," he said, still
+speaking very quietly. "I must be sure. You must give me some promise,
+something more than you have given me yet."
+
+She looked up with startled eyes.
+
+"You do not believe me?" she asked. "What shall I do? I--I promise! You
+yourself have never said that you promised."
+
+"Does it need that?" He pressed the hand he held, with softly increasing
+strength, between his palms.
+
+"No," she answered, looking at him. "I can see it. You will do what you
+say. I have promised, too."
+
+He gazed incredulously into her face.
+
+"Do you doubt me?" she asked.
+
+"Have I not reason to doubt? You change your mind easily. I do not blame
+you. But how am I to believe?"
+
+She grew impatient of his unbelief. Yet as he pressed her hand, the
+power he had over her increased with every second.
+
+"But I will, I will!" she cried, in a low voice. "And still you doubt--I
+see it in your eyes. Have I not promised? What more can I do?"
+
+"I do not know," he answered. "But you must make me believe you." The
+strength of his eyes seemed to be forcing something from her.
+
+"I say it--I promise it--I swear it! Do I not love you? Am I not giving
+my soul for you? Have I not given it already? What more can I do or
+say?"
+
+"I do not know," he answered a second time, holding her with his eyes.
+"I must believe you before I go."
+
+He spoke honestly and earnestly, not meaning to exasperate her,
+searching in her look for what was unmistakably in his own. His hands
+shook, not weakly, as they held hers. His piercing eyes seemed to see
+through and through her. She trembled all over, and the colour rose to
+her face, more in despair of convincing him than in a blush of shame.
+
+"Believe me!" she said, imperiously, and her eyelids contracted with the
+effort of her will.
+
+But he said nothing. She felt that he was immeasurably stronger than
+she. But just then, he was not more desperate. There was a short,
+intense silence. Her face grew pale and was set with the fatal look she
+sometimes had.
+
+"I pledge you with my blood!" she said suddenly.
+
+Her eyes did not waver from his, but she wrenched her right hand from
+him, and before he could take it again, her even teeth had met in the
+flesh. The bright scarlet drops rose high and broke, and trickled in
+vivid stripes across her hand as she held it before his face. Her own
+was very white, but without a trace of pain. Something in the fierce
+action appealed strongly to the fiery Celtic nature of the man. His
+features relaxed instantly.
+
+"I believe you," he said, and she knew it as his arms went round her;
+and the pain of the wound made his kisses sweeter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+WHEN Dalrymple left Maria on that day, he returned as usual to
+Stefanone's house. Sora Nanna was alone, for Stefanone was still absent
+in Rome, and Annetta had gone on the previous day with a number of women
+to the fair at Civitella San Sisto, which took place on Sunday. She was
+expected to return on Monday afternoon. It is usual enough for a party
+of women, with two or three men, to go to the fairs in neighbouring
+towns and to spend the night with the friends of some one of the
+company. It was more common still, in those days.
+
+Sora Nanna gave Dalrymple his dinner and kept him company for a while.
+But he was gloomy and preoccupied, and before long she retired to the
+regions of the laundry, which was installed in a long low building that
+ran out into the vegetable garden at the back of the house. Monday was
+generally the day for ironing the heavy linen of the convent, which was
+taken up on Tuesdays in the huge baskets carried by four women, slung to
+a pole which rested on their shoulders in the old primitive fashion,
+just as litters are still carried in many parts of Asia. It had
+occurred more than once to Dalrymple, during the last two days, that he
+could hide almost anything he chose in one of these baskets, which were
+always delivered directly to Maria Addolorata and which she was at
+liberty to unpack in the privacy of the linen room if she chose.
+
+He thought of this again as he sat over his dinner, and heard the
+endless song of the women, far off, at their work. He knew the habits of
+the house thoroughly and all the customs regarding the carrying up of
+the baskets, and he remembered that several of them would surely be
+taken to the convent on the morrow. He thought that if he could procure
+some more suitable clothes for Maria to wear, this would be a safe means
+of conveying them to her. She could put them on in her cell, just before
+the hour at which she was to expect him, so that there would be no time
+lost and the danger of detection during their flight would be greatly
+diminished. But there were all sorts of difficulties in the way, and he
+realized them one by one, until he almost abandoned the scheme in favour
+of the cloak and plaid which he had first proposed.
+
+He pushed back his chair and went upstairs to his own room. The
+impression made upon him by Maria Addolorata, when she had bitten her
+hand, had been a strong one, but the man's nature, though not exactly
+distrustful, was melancholic and pessimistic. Two hours and more had
+passed since they had been together, and things had a different look. He
+realized more clearly the strength of the ties which bound Maria to her
+convent life, and the effort it must be to her to break them. He
+remembered the arguments he had used, and he saw that they had been
+those of passion rather than of reason. Their effect could not be
+lasting, when he himself was not there to lend them his words and the
+persuasion of his strength. Maria would repent of her promise, and there
+was nothing to bind her to it. Hitherto there had been no risk, no
+common danger. By a chain of natural circumstances he had made his way
+into a most extraordinary position, but it was in her power, in a moment
+of repentance, to force him from it. While the abbess was ill, Maria was
+virtually mistress of the convent. At a word from her the doors might be
+shut in his face. She might promise again, and bite her hand again, but
+when it came to his waiting outside the garden gate, she might be seized
+by a fit of repentance, and he might wait till morning.
+
+As he sat in his room he realized all this, and more, for he knew that
+on calm reflexion he meant to do what he had that morning threatened in
+his haste. He had never been attached to life for its own sake.
+Melancholic men often are not. He had many times thought over the
+subject of suicide with a sort of grim interest in it, which indicated
+the direction his temper would take if he were ever absolutely defeated
+in a matter which he had at heart.
+
+Nothing he had ever felt in his life had taken hold of him as his love
+for Maria Addolorata, for he had never really been in love before and he
+had completely abandoned himself to it, as such a man was sure to do in
+such surroundings. She was beautiful, but that was not all. Since he had
+heard her sing, he knew that her voice and her rare talent together were
+genius and nothing less. But that was far from being all. She was of his
+own class, and he had been seeing her daily, when the peasant women
+amongst whom he lived were little more than good-natured animals; but
+even that was not all. He was at that time of life when a man's
+character is apt to take a violent and sudden turn in its ultimate
+direction, when the forces that have been growing show themselves all at
+once, when passion, having appealed as yet but to the man, has climbed
+and is within reach of his soul, to take hold of it and twist it, or to
+be finally conquered, perhaps, in a holy life. But Dalrymple was very
+far from being the kind of man who could have taken refuge against
+himself in higher things. At a time when materialism was beginning to
+seem a great thing, he was a strong materialist in scientific
+questions. He grasped what he could see and held it, but what he could
+not see had no existence for him. Nothing transcendental attracted him
+beyond the sphere of mathematics. Yet he had not the materialist's
+temperament, for the Highland blood in his veins brought strong fancies
+and sudden passions to his head and heart, such as his chemistry could
+not explain; and when the brain burned and the heart beat fast, it meant
+doing or dying with him, as with many a Scotchman before and since. Life
+had never seemed to be worth much in his eyes, compared with a thing he
+wanted.
+
+He sat still and thought the matter over, and considered the question of
+death, for a few short minutes. There was not a trace of philosophical
+speculation in his reflexions, or they would have lasted longer. He
+merely desired to be sure, with that curious Scotch caution, of his own
+intentions, in order not to be obliged to think the matter over again at
+the last minute.
+
+He had drunk a measure of strong wine with his dinner, as usual. To-day
+it increased the gloom of his temper, and the pessimistic view he took.
+In less than a quarter of an hour he had made up his mind that if Maria
+Addolorata repented at a late hour and refused to leave the convent, he
+would make an attempt to carry her away by force. If he failed, and
+found himself shut off from all possibility of intercourse with her,
+life would not be worth living, and he would throw it away. When strong
+men are in that frame of mind, they generally accomplish what they have
+in view. Moreover, it is a great mistake to think that the people who
+think and talk of suicide will not take their own lives. On the
+contrary, statistics show that it is more often those who speak of it
+the most frequently, who ultimately make away with themselves. The mere
+fact of contemplating and discussing death familiarizes man with it till
+he does not even attribute to it its true value, which is little enough,
+as most of us know. Dalrymple was in earnest, and he knew it.
+
+He rose from his chair and unlocked his little laboratory. Among many
+other things upon the long table there was a plain English oak box,
+filled with small stoppered bottles, each having a label upon it with
+the name of the contents written in his own hand. Some were merely
+medicines, which he carried with him in case his services should ever be
+required, as had happened at the present time. Others were chemicals
+which he used in his experiments, such as he could not easily have
+procured in Italy, outside of the great cities. One even contained the
+common spirits of camphor, of which he had once given Annetta a
+teaspoonful when she had complained of a chill and sickness. One,
+however, was more than half full of a solution of hydrocyanide of
+potassium, a liquid little less suddenly and surely fatal than the
+prussic acid which enters into its composition.
+
+He took out this bottle and held it up to the light. The liquid was
+clear and transparent as water. He watched it curiously as he made it
+run up to the neck and back again. It might have been taken for pure
+alcohol, being absolutely colourless.
+
+"It would not take much of that," he said to himself, with a grim smile.
+
+His meditations were interrupted by the voice of Sora Nanna, who had
+opened his bedroom door without ceremony and stood calling to him. He
+came forward hastily from the laboratory and went up to her.
+
+"You do not know!" she cried, laughing and holding up a letter.
+"Stefanone has written to me from Rome! To me! Who the devil knows what
+he says? I do not understand anything of it. Who should teach me to
+read? He takes me for a priest, that I should know how to read!"
+
+Dalrymple laughed a little as he took the letter. He picked up his hat
+from a chair, for he meant to go out and spend the afternoon alone upon
+the hillside.
+
+"We will read it downstairs," he said. "I am going for a walk."
+
+He read it to her in the common room on the ground floor. It was a
+letter dictated by Stefanone to a public scribe, instructing his wife to
+tell Gigetto that she must send another load of wine to Rome as soon as
+possible, as the price was good in the market. Stefanone would remain in
+the city till it came, and sell it before returning.
+
+"These husbands!" exclaimed Sora Nanna, with a grin. "What they will not
+do! They go, riding, riding, and they come back when it seems good to
+them. Who tells me what he does in Rome? Rome is great."
+
+Dalrymple laughed, put on his hat and went off, leaving Sora Nanna to
+find Gigetto and give the necessary directions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+GIGETTO had refused to accompany Annetta and her party to the fair at
+Civitella San Sisto. He had been to Rome several times, and was far too
+fine a young gentleman to divert himself in such a very primitive place.
+He preferred to spend his leisure hours, which were very many, in
+elegant idleness, according to his lights, between the tobacconist's,
+the chemist's shop, which was the resort of all the superior men of the
+place after four o'clock in the afternoon, and the abundant, though not
+very refined table which was spread twice daily in his father's house.
+Civitella wine, Civitella fireworks, and especially Civitella girls,
+were quite beneath his notice. As for Annetta, he looked upon her with
+something like contempt, though he had a high respect for the fortune
+which must one day be hers. She was to be a necessary encumbrance of his
+future life, and for the present he meant to see as little of her as was
+conveniently possible without relinquishing his claims to her hand. She
+had admired him, in a way, until the arrival of Dalrymple, and he felt a
+little irritation at the Scotchman's presence in the house, so that he
+occasionally frightened Sora Nanna by talking of waiting for him with a
+gun at the corner of the forest. It produced a good impression, he
+thought, to show from time to time that he was not without jealousy. But
+as for going with her on such an expedition as a visit to a country
+fair, it was not to be expected of him.
+
+Nevertheless, Annetta had enjoyed herself thoroughly with her
+companions, and was very glad that Gigetto had not been at her elbow
+with his city notions of propriety, which he applied to her, but made as
+elastic as he pleased for himself. She had been to high mass in the
+village church, crowded to suffocation, she had walked up and down the
+main street half the afternoon, arm in arm with the other girls,
+giggling and showing off her handsome costume to the poorer natives of
+the little place, and smiling wickedly at the handsome youths who stood
+idly in groups at the corners of the streets. She had dined sumptuously,
+and had made her eyes sparkle like rather vulgar little stars by
+drinking a glass of strong old white wine to the health and speedy
+marriage of all the other girls. She had gone out with them at dusk, and
+had watched the pretty fireworks in the small piazza, and had wandered
+on with them afterwards in the moonlight to the ruin of the Cyclopean
+fortress which overlooks the two valleys. Then back to the house of her
+friends, who kept the principal inn, and more tough chicken and tender
+salad and red wine for supper. And on the next day they had all gone
+down to the meagre vineyards, half way to San Vito and just below the
+thick chestnut woods which belong to the Marchese and feudal lord of
+that ancient town. And there amongst the showers of reddening vine
+leaves, she had helped to gather the last grapes of the year, with song
+and jest and laughter. At noon they climbed the hill again in the
+October sun, and dined upon the remains of the previous day's feast;
+then, singing still, they had started on their homeward downward way,
+happy and not half tired yet when they reached Subiaco in the evening
+glow.
+
+They came trooping through the town to the little piazza in which the
+doctor's house was situated. They separated here, some to go up to the
+higher part, while others were to go down in the same direction as
+Annetta. The girl looked up at the doctor's windows, and her small eyes
+flashed viciously. It would be a pleasant ending to the two days'
+holiday to have a look at her work. Now that he was getting well, as
+Dalrymple told her, she was glad that she had not killed him. It was an
+even greater satisfaction to have almost frightened the old coward to
+death. She had been uneasy about the question of confession.
+
+"By Bacchus," she laughed, "I will go and see Sor Tommaso. They say he
+is better."
+
+So she took leave of her companions and entered the narrow door, and
+climbed the short flight of dark steps and knocked. The doctor's
+sleeping-room opened directly upon the staircase. He used the room on
+the ground floor as an office and dining-room, his old peasant
+woman-servant slept in the attic, and the other two rooms were let by
+the year. It was a very small house.
+
+The old woman, whose name was Serafina, opened the bedroom door and
+thrust out her head, covered with a dark and threadbare shawl. There was
+a sibylline gloom about her withered face, as though she had lived a
+lifetime in the face of a horror to come.
+
+"What do you want?" she croaked roughly, and not opening the door any
+wider.
+
+"Eh! What do I want? I am the Annetta of Stefanone, and I have come to
+pay a visit to this dear doctor, because they say that he is better, God
+bless him."
+
+"Oh! I did not recognize you," said the old woman. "I will ask."
+
+Still holding the door almost closed, she drew in her head and spoke
+with Sor Tommaso. Annetta could hear his answer.
+
+"Of course!" he said, in a voice still weak, but singularly oily with
+the politeness of his intention. "Let her favour us!"
+
+The door was opened, and Annetta went in. Sor Tommaso was sitting up
+near the window, in a deep easy-chair covered with ragged green damask.
+The girl was surprised by his pallor, as compared with his formerly
+rubicund complexion. Peasant-like, she glanced about the room to judge
+of its contents before she spoke.
+
+"How are you, dear Sor Tommaso?" she asked after the short pause. "Eh,
+what we have suffered for you, all of us! Who was this barbarian who
+wished to send you to Paradise?"
+
+"Who knows?" returned Sor Tommaso, with amazing blandness. "I trust that
+he may be forgiven as I forgive him."
+
+"What it is to be a wise man!" exclaimed Annetta, with affected
+admiration. "To have such sentiments! It is a beautiful thing. And how
+do you feel now, dear Sor Tommaso? Are you getting your strength again?
+They took your blood, those cowardly murderers! You must make it again."
+
+Their eyes met, and each knew that the other knew and understood. Sor
+Tommaso smiled gently. The savage girl's mouth twitched as though she
+should have liked to laugh.
+
+"Little by little; who goes slowly goes safely," answered the doctor. "I
+am an old man, you must know."
+
+"Old!" Annetta was glad of the opportunity to laugh at last. "Old? Eh,
+on Sunday, when you have on those new black trousers of yours that are
+tight, tight--you seem to me a boy as young as Gigetto. For my part, I
+should prefer you. You are more serious. Gigetto! What must I say? He is
+handsome, he may be good, but he has not a head. There is nothing in
+that pumpkin."
+
+"Blood of youth," answered Sor Tommaso. "It must boil. It must fling its
+chains about. Afterwards it begins to know the chains. Little by little
+it accustoms itself to them. Then it is quiet, quiet, as we old ones
+are. Sit down, my daughter. Serafina! A chair--the one that is not lame.
+These chairs remember the blessed soul of mamma," added Sor Tommaso, in
+explanation of their weakness.
+
+"Requiesca'!" exclaimed Annetta, sitting down.
+
+"Amen," responded Sor Tommaso. "You are so beautiful to-day," he
+continued, looking at her flowered bodice and new apron; "where have you
+been?"
+
+"Where should I go? To Civitella. There was the fair. We ate certain
+chickens--tough! But the air of the mountain consumes. There were also
+fireworks."
+
+"What? Have you walked?" asked Sor Tommaso.
+
+"Even with two legs one can walk," laughed the girl. "But of course a
+beast is better with four. The beasts had all gone to Tivoli with wine
+for Rome. They had not come back yesterday morning. Therefore with
+these two feet I walked. I and many others, girls like me. It is true
+that I am half dead."
+
+"You are fresher than lettuce," observed Sor Tommaso. "And then you have
+climbed up my stairs. This is a true Christian act. God return it to
+you. I am alone all day."
+
+"But the Englishman comes to see you," said Annetta, indifferently.
+
+"The Englishman, yes. He comes. More or less, he has almost cured me.
+But then, for his conversation, I say nothing!"
+
+"Meanwhile he is also curing the abbess. He has a fortunate hand. There
+death, here death--he makes them all alive. Where is death, now? Here,
+perhaps? Hidden in some corner, or under the bed? He has certain
+medicines, that Englishman! Medicines that you do not even dream of.
+Strong! It is I that tell you. Sometimes, the whole house smells of
+them. Death could not resist them a moment. They drive even the flies
+out of the windows. The Englishman gave me some once. I had been in the
+sun and had drunk a gallon of cold water, foolish as I was. I was
+thirsty, as I am now. Well, he gave me a spoonful of something like
+water, mixed in water. I do not tell you anything. At first it burned
+me. Arch-priest, it burned! Then, not even a minute, and I had Paradise
+in my body. And so it passed."
+
+"Who knows? A cordial, perhaps," observed Sor Tommaso, thoughtfully. "I
+have such cordials, too."
+
+"I do not doubt it," answered the girl, suspiciously. "But I would
+rather not taste them. I feel quite well."
+
+It crossed her mind that in return for three knife-thrusts, Sor Tommaso
+would probably not miss so good a chance of paying her with a glass of
+poison. She would certainly have done as much herself, had she been in
+his place.
+
+"Who thought of offering you cordials!" replied the doctor, with a
+polite laugh. "I said it to say it. But if you are thirsty, command me.
+There is water and good wine. They are the best cordials."
+
+"Eh, a little water. I do not refuse. As for the wine, no. I thank you
+the same. I am fasting and have walked. After supper, at home, I will
+drink."
+
+"Serafina!" cried Sor Tommaso, and the old sibyl immediately appeared
+from the stairs, whither she had discreetly retired to wait during
+Annetta's visit. "Bring water, and that bottle of my wine from
+downstairs. You know, the bottle of old wine of Stefanone's that was
+opened."
+
+"No, no. I want no wine," said Annetta, quickly.
+
+"Bring it all the same. Perhaps she will do us the honour to drink it."
+
+Serafina nodded, and her bare feet were heard on the stone steps as she
+descended.
+
+"It is bad to drink pure water when one is very thirsty," said Sor
+Tommaso. "It cramps the stomach. A little wine gives the stomach
+strength. But it is best to eat. If you will eat, there are fresh
+jumbles. I also eat them."
+
+"I thank you the same," answered Annetta. "I wish only water. It is a
+long way from Civitella, and there is no good spring. There is the brook
+that runs out of the pond at the foot of the last hill. But it is heavy
+water, full of stuff."
+
+Serafina came back, bringing two heavy tumblers of pressed glass on a
+little black japanned tray, with a decanter of cold water. In her other
+hand she carried two bottles, one half full of wine, the other
+containing the white and sugary syrup of peach kernels of which Italians
+are so fond.
+
+"I brought this also," she said, holding up the bottle as she set down
+the tray. "Perhaps it is better."
+
+"Yes," said Sor Tommaso, nodding in approbation. "It is better."
+
+"You will drink a little orgeat?" asked the old woman, in a tone of
+persuasion, and mixing it in the glass.
+
+"Water, simply water," said Annetta, who was still suspicious. "Give me
+water in the other glass."
+
+"But I have mixed already in both," answered Serafina. "Eh, you will
+drink it. You will not make an old woman like me go all the way down the
+stairs again. But then, it is good. It is I that tell you. I made it
+myself, yesterday morning, for the doctor, to refresh his blood a
+little."
+
+Annetta had risen to her feet and was watching the glasses, as the old
+woman stirred the white syrup in the water with an old-fashioned,
+long-handled spoon. She did not wish to seem absurdly suspicious, and
+yet she distrusted her enemy. She took one of the glasses, went to his
+side, and held it to his lips as one gives an invalid drink.
+
+"After you," he said, with a polite smile, but raising his hand to take
+the glass.
+
+"Sick people first, well people afterwards," answered Annetta, smiling
+too, but watching him intently.
+
+He had satisfied himself that she really suspected foul play, for he
+knew the peasants well, and was only a degree removed from them himself.
+He at once dismissed her suspicions by drinking half the tumbler at a
+draught. She immediately took the other and emptied it eagerly, as she
+was really very thirsty.
+
+"A little more?" suggested Serafina, in her croaking voice.
+
+"No," interposed Sor Tommaso. "It might hurt her--so much at once."
+
+But Annetta filled the tumbler with pure water, and emptied it again.
+
+"At last!" she exclaimed with a sigh of satisfaction. "What thirst! I
+seemed to have eaten ashes! And now I thank you, Sor Tommaso, and I am
+going home; for it is Ave Maria, and I do not wish to make a bad meeting
+in the dark as happened to you. Ugly assassins! I will never forgive
+them, never! What am I to say at home? That you will come to supper one
+of these days?"
+
+"Eh, if God wills," answered the doctor. "I will be accompanied by
+Serafina."
+
+"I!" exclaimed the old woman. "I am afraid even of a cat! What could I
+do for you?"
+
+"Company is always company," said Sor Tommaso, wisely. "Where one would
+not go, two go bravely. Good evening, my beautiful daughter," he added,
+looking up at Annetta. "The Madonna go with you."
+
+"Thank you, and good evening," answered the girl, dropping half a
+courtsey, with a vicious twinkle in her little eyes.
+
+She turned, and was out of the room in a moment. On the way home through
+the narrow streets in the evening glow, she sang snatches of song to
+herself, and thought of all she had said to Sor Tommaso, and of all he
+had said to her, and of how much afraid he was of her father's knife.
+For otherwise, as she knew, he would have had her arrested.
+
+Suddenly, at the last turning she stopped and turned very pale, clasping
+both hands upon her bodice.
+
+"Assassin!" she groaned, grinding her short white teeth. "_He_ has
+poisoned me, after all! An evil death to him and all his house!
+Assassin!"
+
+She forgot that she had experienced precisely the same sensations once
+before, when she had been overheated and had swallowed too much cold
+water.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+WITH slow steps, and pressing her clasped hands to her bodice, the girl
+reached the door of her father's house at dusk. She knew that he was
+away, and that as she had not come home earlier her mother would be in
+the lower regions preparing Dalrymple's supper for him. The door which
+gave access to the staircase from the street was still open, and she was
+almost sure of being able to reach her own room unobserved, unless she
+chanced to come upon Dalrymple himself on the stairs. Just then she
+would rather have met him than her mother. She was in great pain, and it
+would have been hard to explain to Sora Nanna that she believed herself
+to have been deliberately poisoned.
+
+She crept noiselessly up the stairs, which were almost dark, and she
+came to Dalrymple's door which faced the first landing. She paused and
+hesitated, leaning against the wall. He was a wise man in her opinion,
+and would of course understand her symptoms at once. But then, as she
+was poisoned, he could do nothing for her. If that were true, her next
+thought told her that Sor Tommaso must have poisoned himself. He would
+not do that. She had never heard of antidotes; for though poisoning was
+traditionally familiar to her and the people of her class, it was very
+uncommon. Yet her sharpened wit told her that if Sor Tommaso had
+swallowed the stuff, as he had done, with a smile, he had means at his
+disposal for counteracting it--some medicine which he had doubtless
+taken as soon as she had left him. But if he had medicine to save from
+poison, Dalrymple, who was a far wiser man, must have such medicines,
+too, and even better ones. This reflexion decided her. She was close to
+his door. It was probable that he would be in his room at that hour. She
+was in fear of her life, and she knocked.
+
+But Dalrymple had not come back. He had gone for a long walk alone in
+the hills, had climbed higher as the sun sank lower, and was belated in
+steep paths along which even his mountain-trained feet trod with some
+caution. He was too familiar with the country to lose his way, but he by
+no means found the shortest way there was, nor was he especially anxious
+to do so. The hours would pass sooner in walking than in sitting over
+his books under the flaring little flames of the three brass beaks.
+
+Annetta saw that there was no light in the room, for the hole through
+which the latch-string hung was worn wide with use. She felt dizzy, too,
+and the knife-like pain ran through her so that she bent herself. She
+knew that Dalrymple kept his medicines locked up in the laboratory, and
+that she could not get at them, though she would have had little
+hesitation in swallowing anything she found, in the simple certainty
+that all his medicines must be good in themselves, and therefore
+life-saving and good for her. But he was out, and she was sure that
+there could be nothing in the bedroom. She had herself too often looked
+into every corner when she watered and swept the brick floor each
+morning, and put things in order according to her primitive ideas.
+
+She then and there lost her hold upon life. She was poisoned, and must
+die. She was as sure of it as the Chinaman who has seen an eagle, and
+who, recognizing that his hour is come, calmly lies down and breathes
+his last by the mere suspension of volition. In old countries the lower
+orders, as a rule, have but a low vitality. It may be truer to say that
+the vital volition is weak. Let the learned settle the definition. The
+fact is easily accounted for. During generations upon generations the
+majority of European agricultural populations live upon vegetable food,
+like the majority of Eastern Asiatics, and with the same result. Hard
+labour produces hard muscles, but vegetable food yields a low vital
+tension, so to say. Soldiers know it well enough. The pale-faced city
+clerk who eats meat twice a day will out-fight and out-last and
+out-starve the burly labourer whose big thews and sinews are mostly
+compounded of potatoes, corn, and water.
+
+The girl crept up the stairs stealthily to her lonely little room, and
+lay down to die upon her bed, as though that were the only thing to be
+done under the circumstances. It never occurred to her to go to her
+mother and tell her what had happened and what she suspected, any more
+than it had suggested itself to Sor Tommaso to lay information against
+her for having stabbed him. If her father had been at home, she might
+perhaps have gone to him and told him with her dying breath that the
+doctor had killed her, and that Stefanone must avenge her. But he was
+away. She was stronger than her mother and had always dominated her. She
+knew also that if she complained, Sora Nanna would raise such a scream
+as would bring half Subiaco running to the house. The girl's animal
+instinct was to die alone, and quietly. So she made no sound, and lay
+upon her bed writhing in pain and holding her sides with all her might,
+but with close-set teeth and silent lips.
+
+Looked at from the point of view of fact, it was all ridiculous enough.
+The girl had been all day in the hot autumn sun, had eaten a quantity of
+over-ripe figs and grapes, which might have upset the digestion of an
+ostrich, had tired even her strong limbs with the final walk home, and
+had then, at Sor Tommaso's house, swallowed nearly a quart of ice-cold
+water. It was not surprising that she should be very ill. It was not
+even strange that the theory of poison should suggest itself. To her it
+was tragedy, and meant nothing less than death, when she lay down upon
+her bed.
+
+Between the spasms all sorts of things passed through her mind, when her
+head lay still upon the pillow. Chiefly and particularly her thoughts
+were filled with hatred of Sor Tommaso, and a sort of doglike longing to
+see Dalrymple's face before she died. She was still fascinated by the
+vision of his red hair and bright blue eyes which came back to her
+vividly, with the careless smile his hard face had for her
+half-childish, half-malicious sayings. And with the thought of him came
+also jealousy of Maria Addolorata, and another hatred which was deeper
+and stronger and more vengeful than any she owed Sor Tommaso. She felt,
+rather than understood, that Dalrymple loved the nun with all his heart.
+She had spoken of her to him and had watched his face, and had seen the
+quick, savage glare of his eyes, though his voice had only expressed his
+annoyance. As the vision of him rose before her, she saw him as he had
+been when the angry blush had overspread his face to the roots of his
+hair.
+
+The image fixed itself. In the dim shadow behind it, she saw the face of
+Maria Addolorata like a death-mask, and those strange, deep eyes of the
+nun's looking scornfully at her over the man's shoulder, though she
+forgot him in the woman's deadly fascination. She stared, unable to
+close her lids, as it seemed to her, though she longed to shut out the
+sight. Then a dull noise seemed to be in her ears, a noise that was not
+a sound, but the stunning effect on her brain of a sound not heard but
+imagined. There were great circles of light around the nun's head, which
+cut through Dalrymple's face and then hid it. They were like glories,
+like the halos about the heads of saints. Annetta was angry with them,
+for she was sure that Maria Addolorata was bad, and sinned in her
+throat.
+
+"An evil death on you and all your house!" cried the angry peasant girl,
+in a low voice.
+
+"Death!" She could not tell whence the echo came back to her, in a tone
+strange to her ears--for it was her own, perhaps.
+
+She was startled. The vision vanished, and she sat up on her bed with a
+quick movement, suddenly wide awake. The pain must have passed. No--it
+came again, but with far less keenness. She felt her face with her
+hands, and laughed softly, for she knew that she was alive. It was
+night, and she must have lain some time there all alone, for there was a
+silvery, misty something through the darkness, the white dawn of
+moonrise, which is not like the dawn of day, nor like the departing
+twilight. As she sat up she saw the outline of the hills, jagged against
+the crosses of the lead-joined panes in the window. There was the
+moon-dawn sending up its soft radiance to the sky. A little longer she
+watched, and a single bright point sent one level ray straight into her
+face. A moment more and the room was flooded with light so that she
+could see the smallest objects distinctly.
+
+"But I am alive!" she exclaimed in a soft, glad tone. "The brigand only
+did me a spite. He was afraid to kill me."
+
+The pain seized her again, less sharp than before, but keen enough to
+stir her anger. She still sat up, but bent forward, clasping her bodice.
+In the moonlight she could see her heavy shoes on her feet sticking up
+before her. Realizing that it was a disgraceful thing to lie down with
+them on, she sprang off the bed, and began to dust the coverlet with her
+hand. The pain passed.
+
+After all, she reflected, she had swallowed a quantity of cold water at
+Sor Tommaso's, whether the first glass had contained any poison or not.
+She had not forgotten, either, that the same thing had once happened to
+her before, and that Dalrymple had made it pass with a spoonful of
+something that had stung her mouth and throat, but which had afterwards
+warmed her and cured her. She felt chilly now, and she wished that she
+had some of that same stinging, warming stuff.
+
+Something moved, somewhere in the house. The girl listened intently for
+a moment. Probably Dalrymple had come back and was moving about in his
+room, washing his hands, as he always did before supper, and taking off
+his heavy boots. His room was immediately under hers, facing in the same
+direction. She went towards the door, intending to go down at once and
+ask him for some of his medicine. By this time she was persuaded that
+she was not in any danger, and her common-sense told her that she had
+merely made herself momentarily ill with too many grapes, too much cold
+water, and too long exposure to the sun. She did not care to let her
+mother know anything about it, for Sora Nanna would scold her. It would
+be a simple matter to catch the Scotchman at his door, to get what she
+wanted from him with an easily given promise of secrecy, and then to
+come downstairs as though nothing had happened.
+
+Annetta only hesitated a moment, and then went out into the dark
+staircase, and crept down, as she had crept up, feeling her way at the
+turnings, by the wall. She reached the door, and was surprised to see
+that there was no light within--none of that yellow light which a lamp
+makes, but only the grey glimmer of the moonlight through the shadow,
+creeping out by the hole of the latch-string. Her ears had deceived
+her, and Dalrymple was not there. Nevertheless she believed that he was.
+The moonlight would be in his room as it was in hers, just overhead, and
+he might not have taken the trouble to light his lamp. It was very
+probable. She tapped softly, but there was no answer. She was afraid
+that her mother might come up the stairs and hear her speaking through
+the door, as though by stealth. She put her lips close to the hole of
+the latch and whistled softly. Her whistle was broken by her own smile
+as she fancied that Dalrymple might start at the unexpected sound.
+
+But there was no response. Growing bolder, she called him gently.
+
+"Signor! Are you there?"
+
+There was no answer. Just then, as she stooped, the pain ran through her
+once more. She was so sure that she had heard him that she was convinced
+he must be within, very probably in his little laboratory beyond the
+bedroom. The pain hurt her, and he had the medicine. Very naturally she
+pulled the string and pushed the door open.
+
+He was not there. The moonlight flooded everything, and the whitewashed
+walls reflected it, so that the place was as bright as day. The first
+object that met her eyes was a small bottle standing near the edge of
+the table in the middle of the room, where Dalrymple had carelessly set
+it down in the afternoon when Sora Nanna had called him to read her
+letter. It was directly in the line of the moon's rays, and the stopper
+gleamed like a little star.
+
+Annetta started with joy as she saw it. It was the very bottle from
+which he had given her the camphor, less than a month ago--the same in
+size, in its transparent contents, in its label. It might have deceived
+a keener eye than hers.
+
+The door of the laboratory stood open, as he had left it, being at the
+time preoccupied and careless. She only stopped a moment to assure
+herself that the bottle was the right one, reflecting that he had
+perhaps felt ill and had taken some of it himself. She went on and
+looked into the little room.
+
+"Signore!" she called softly. But there was no answer.
+
+It was clear that Dalrymple was either still out, or was downstairs at
+his supper, with her mother. He might be out, however. It was quite
+possible, on such a fine evening, for he was irregular in his hours. He
+would not like it if he came in suddenly and found her meddling with his
+belongings. She crossed the room again and softly shut the door. At
+least, if he came, she would not be found with the bottle in her hand.
+She could give an excuse.
+
+It was all so natural. It was the same bottle. She knew the right
+quantity, for she had the peasant's memory for such detail. There was a
+glass and a decanter of water on a white plate on the table. She had no
+spoon, but that did not matter. She took out the stopper with her strong
+fingers, though it stuck a little. The pain ran through her again as she
+poured some of the contents into the tumbler, and it made her hand shake
+so that she poured out a little more than necessary. But it did not
+matter. She filled it up with water, held the glass up to the moonlight,
+and drank it at a draught, and set the empty tumbler upon the table
+again.
+
+Instantly her features changed. She felt as though she were struck
+through head and heart and body with red-hot steel. Maria Addolorata's
+death-mask rose before her in the moonlight.
+
+"An evil death on you and all your house!" she tried to say.
+
+But the words were not out of her mouth before she shivered, caught
+herself by the table, sank down, and lay stone dead upon the brick
+floor.
+
+There was no noise. Dying, she thought she screamed, but only the
+faintest moan had passed her lips.
+
+The door was shut, and the quiet moonlight floated in and silvered her
+dark, dead face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+AT moonrise on that evening, Maria Addolorata was standing at the open
+door of her cell, watching the dark clouds in the west, as they caught
+the light one by one, edge by edge. The black shadow of the convent
+covered all the garden still, and one passing could hardly have seen her
+as she stood there. Her veil was raised, and the cold mountain breeze
+chilled her cheeks. But she did not feel it, for she had been long by
+the abbess's bedside, and then long, again, in the close choir of the
+church, and her head was hot and aching.
+
+To her, as she looked towards the western mountains and watched the
+piling clouds, and felt the cool, damp wind, it seemed as though there
+were something strangely tragic in the air that night. The wind whistled
+now and then through the cracks of the convent windows and over the
+crenellations of the old walls, as Death's scythe might whistle if he
+were mowing down men with a right good will, heaps upon heaps of slain.
+The old bell struck the hour, sullenly, with a dead thud in the air
+after each stroke, as a bell tolls for a burial. The very clouds were
+black and silver in the sky, like a funeral pall.
+
+Maria Addolorata leaned against the door-post and looked out, her hand
+white in the shadow against the dark wood, her face whiter still. But on
+her hand there were two marks, visible even in the dimness. They would
+have been red in the day, and the place hurt her from time to time, for
+she had bitten it savagely. It was her pledge, and the pain of it
+reminded her of what she had promised to do.
+
+She needed the reminder; for now that he was not near her, the enormous
+crime stood out, black and lofty as death itself. It was different when
+Dalrymple was at her side. His violent vitality dragged hers into
+action, dragged, drove it, and goaded it, as unwilling soldiers have
+been driven into battle in barbarous armies. Then the fatality seemed
+irresistible, then the dangers seemed small, and the burning red shame
+was pale and weak. Those bony young hands of his had strength in them
+for two, his gleaming eyes burnt out the resistance in hers, and lighted
+them with their own glow. The hearty recklessness of his unbelief drove
+through and through her composite faith, and riddled it with loopholes
+for her soul's escape. Then the reality of her passion made her nobler
+love mad to be free, and to break through the solid walls in which it
+had been born and had grown too strong. When his love was there, hers
+matched itself with his, to smite fortune in the face, to dare and
+out-dare heaven and hell for love's sake, with him, the bursting blood
+made iron of her hand, tingling to buffet coward fate's pale mouth. Then
+she was strong above women; then she was brave as brave men; then,
+having promised, to keep was but the natural hold of will, to die was
+but to dare one little adversary more.
+
+But she was alone now, and thinking, as she looked out into the tragic
+night, and watched the blackness of the monumental clouds. She did not
+return to her former self, as some women do when the goad leaves the
+heart in peace for a moment. She did not say to herself that she would
+order the convent gate to be shut on Angus Dalrymple forever, and
+herself go back to the close choir, to sit in her seat amongst the rest,
+and sing holy songs with the others, restfully unhappy as many of them
+were. She knew far too well how strongly her heart could beat, and how
+icy cold her hands could grow when love was near her. Yet she shuddered
+with horror at what she had promised to do. She would struggle to the
+last, but she must yield when she heard his voice, and felt his hand, at
+the very last moment, when they should be at the garden gate, he drawing
+her on, she looking back.
+
+It was perjury and sacrilege, and earthly shame, and eternal damnation.
+Nothing less. And the words had full and deadly meaning for her. It
+mattered little that he should think differently, being of another
+faith, or rather, of no faith at all. It was all true to her. It was not
+risk; it was certainty. What forgiveness had earth or heaven for a
+faithless nun? He talked of marriage, and he would marry her according
+to a rite that had a meaning in his eyes. Heaven would not divorce the
+sworn and plighted spouse of Christ to be the earthly wife of Angus
+Dalrymple.
+
+Visions of eternal torment rose in her mind, a tangible searing hell
+alive with flame and devils, a sea of liquid fire, an ocean of boiling
+pitch, Satan commanding in the midst, and a myriad of fiends working his
+tormenting will.
+
+Her pale lips curled scornfully in the dark. Those were not the terrors
+that frightened her, nor the horrors from which she shrank. There was a
+question which was not to be answered by her own soul in damnation or
+salvation, but by the lips of men hereafter--the question of the honour
+of her name. The traditions of the good old barons were not dead in that
+day, nor are they all dead yet. Many a Braccio had done evil deeds in
+his or her day, and one, at least, had evil deeds to do after Maria
+Addolorata had been laid in her grave. But sin was one thing, and
+dishonour was quite another, even in the eyes of the nun of Subiaco. For
+her sins she could and must answer with the weal or woe of her own
+soul. But her dishonour would be upon her father and her mother and upon
+all her race. Nor was there any dishonour deeper, more deadly, or more
+lasting than that brought upon a stainless name by a faithless nun.
+Maria Braccio hesitated at disgrace, while Maria Addolorata smiled at
+perdition. It was not the first time that honour had taken God's part
+against the devil in the history of her family.
+
+That was the great obstacle of all, and she knew it now. She was able to
+face all consequences but that, terrible as they might be. The barrier
+was there, the traditional old belief in honour as first, and above
+every consideration. They had played upon that very belief, when, at the
+last, she had hesitated to take the veil. She had gone so far, they had
+told her, that it would be cowardly and dishonourable to turn back at
+the last minute. The same argument existed now. Then, she would at least
+have had human right and ecclesiastical law on her side, if she had
+refused to become a nun. Now, all was against her. Then, she would have
+had to face but the condemning opinion of a few who spoke of implied
+obligation. Now, she must stand up and be ashamed before the whole
+world. There would be a horrible publicity about it. She was too high
+born not to feel that all the world in which she should ever move was as
+one great family. Dalrymple might promise her honour and respect, and
+the affection of his own father and mother for the love of her parents,
+a home, respected wifehood, and all the rest. With his strength, he
+might impose her upon his family, and they might treat her as he should
+dictate, for he was a strong and dominant man. But in their hearts,
+Protestants, English people, foreigners as they were to her race, even
+they could not tell themselves honestly that it was not a shameful thing
+to break such vows as hers, shameful and nothing less. And if, for a
+moment, he were not there to hold them in his check, she should see it
+in their faces, and she must hang her head, for she could have nothing
+to answer. For him, she must not only sacrifice her soul, wrench out her
+faith, break her promise to God, and her vows to the Church. She must
+give herself to public, earthly shame, for his sake.
+
+It was too much. She could bear anything but that. Rather than endure
+that, it was better to die.
+
+The black clouds rose higher in the west, and the gloomy air blew upon
+her face. Her head was no longer hot, for a chilly horror had come upon
+her, like the shadow of something unspeakably awful, close at hand.
+Suddenly, she was afraid to be alone. A bat, lured by the second
+twilight of the moon's rising, whirled down from above, with softly
+flapping wings, and almost brushed her face. She drew back quickly into
+the doorway. It was a very tragic night, she thought. She shut the door,
+and groped her way out beyond her cell to the corridor, dimly
+illuminated by a single light hanging from the vault by a running cord.
+She entered the abbess's apartment. One of the sisters had taken her
+place, but Maria Addolorata sent her away by a gesture, and sat down by
+the bedside.
+
+The old lady was either asleep, or did not notice her niece's coming.
+Her face was grey as ashes, and upturned in the shadow. Upon the stone
+floor stood the primitive Italian night-light, a wick supported in a
+triangular bit of tin by three little corks in oil floating on water in
+a tumbler. The light was very clear and steady, though there was little
+of it, and to Maria, who had been long in comparative darkness, the room
+seemed bright enough. There was little furniture besides the plain bed,
+a little table, a couple of chairs, and a tall, dark wardrobe. A grim
+crucifix hung above the abbess's head, on the white wall, the work of an
+age in which horror was familiar to the eye, and needed exaggeration to
+teach hardened humanity.
+
+Maria was too much occupied with her own thoughts to notice the sick
+woman's condition at once. Besides, during the last two days there had
+been no return of the syncope, and the abbess had seemed to be improving
+steadily. She breathed rather heavily and seemed to be asleep.
+
+Gradually, however, as the nun sat motionless beside her and as the
+storm of thought subsided, she became aware that all was not right. Her
+aunt's face was unnaturally grey, the breathing was unusually slow and
+heavy. When the breath was drawn in, the thin nostrils flattened
+themselves strangely on each side, and the features had a peaked look.
+Maria rose and felt the pulse. It was fluttering, and not always
+perceptible.
+
+At first Maria's attention to these facts was only mechanical. Then,
+with a sudden sinking at her own heart, she realized what they might
+mean--another crisis like the one in which the abbess had so narrowly
+escaped death. It was true that on that occasion she had called for help
+more than once, showing that she had felt herself to be sinking. At
+present she seemed to be unconscious, which, if anything, was a worse
+feature.
+
+Maria drew a long breath and held it, biting her lips, as people do in
+moments of suspense, doubt, and anxiety. It was as though fate had
+thrust the great decision onward at the last moment. The life that hung
+in the balance before her eyes meant the possibility of waiting, with
+the feeble consolation of being yet undecided.
+
+She stood as still as a statue, her face like a mask, her hand on the
+unconscious woman's wrist. The stimulant which Dalrymple had shown her
+how to use was at hand--the glass with which to administer it. It would
+prolong life. It might save it.
+
+Should she give it? The seconds ran to minutes, and the dreadful
+question was unanswered. If the abbess died, as die she almost certainly
+must within half an hour, if the medicine were not given to her--if she
+died, Maria would call the sisters, the portress would be instructed,
+and when Dalrymple came on the morrow, he would be told that all was
+over, and that he was no longer needed. Nothing could be more sure. He
+might do his utmost. He could not enter the convent again.
+
+In a quick vision, as she stood stone-still, Maria saw herself alone in
+the chapel by night, prostrate, repentant, washing the altar steps with
+tears, forgiven of God, since God could still forgive her, honoured on
+earth as before, since none but the silent confessor could ever know
+what she had done, still less what she had meant to do. Her sorrow would
+be real, overwhelming, able to move Heaven to mercy, her penance
+true-hearted and severe as she deserved. Her name would be unspotted and
+unblemished.
+
+It would be so easy, if she had not to see him again. How could she
+resist him, if he could so much as touch her hand? But if she were
+defended from him, she could bury his love and pray for him in the
+memory of the thing dead. All that, if she but let that heavy breathing
+go on a little longer, if she did not raise her hand and set a glass to
+those grey, parted lips.
+
+They were parted now. The laboured breath was drawn through the teeth.
+The eyelids were a little raised, and showed but the white of the
+upturned eyes.
+
+Maria stared fixedly into the pinched face, and a new horror came upon
+her.
+
+It was murder she was doing. Nothing less. The power to save was there,
+and she would not use it. No--it could not be murder--it was not
+possible that she could do murder.
+
+Still with wide eyes she stared. Surely the heavy breath had come more
+quickly a moment ago. It seemed an age between each rise and fall of the
+coverlet. There was a ghastly whistling sound of it between the teeth.
+
+It was slower still. The eyelids were gradually opening--the blind white
+was horrible to see. Each breath was a convulsion that shook the frail
+body.
+
+It was murder. Her hand shot out like lightning and seized the small
+bottle. Let anything come,--love, shame, heaven, damnation; it should
+not be murder.
+
+She forced the unstoppered bottle into the dying woman's mouth with a
+desperate hand. The next breath was drawn with a choking effort. The
+whole body stirred. The thin hand appeared, grasped the coverlet with
+distorting energy, and then lay almost still, twitching convulsively
+second by second. Still Maria tried wildly to pour more of the stimulant
+between the set teeth. When they parted, no breath came, and the fingers
+only moved once more, for the very last time.
+
+It was not murder, but it was death. The wasted old woman had outlived
+by two or three hours the strong, young peasant girl, and fate had laid
+her hand heavily upon the life of Maria Addolorata.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+WHEN Dalrymple came home that evening, he found his supper already on
+the table and half cold. Sora Nanna was busier than her daughter, and
+less patient of the Scotchman's irregularities. If he could not come
+home at a reasonable hour, he must not expect her to keep everything
+waiting for him.
+
+He sat down to the table without even going upstairs as usual to wash
+his hands, simply because the cooked meat would be cold and greasy if he
+let it stand five minutes longer. Being once seated in his place, he did
+not move for a long time. Sora Nanna came in more than once. She was
+very much preoccupied about the load of wine which her husband had
+ordered to be sent, and which, if possible, she meant to send off before
+morning, for she did not wish him to be absent in Rome with money in his
+pocket a day longer than necessary.
+
+Gloomy and preoccupied, without even a book before him, Dalrymple sat
+with his back to the wall, drinking his wine in silence, and staring at
+the lamp. Sora Nanna asked him whether he had seen Annetta. He shook
+his head without speaking. The woman observed that the girls were quite
+capable of spending a second night at Civitella to prolong the
+festivities. Dalrymple nodded, not caring at all.
+
+Annetta being absent, Gigetto had not thought it necessary to put in an
+appearance. But Sora Nanna wished to see him again about the wine. With
+a grin, she asked Dalrymple whether he would keep house if she went out
+for half an hour. Again he nodded in silence. He heard her lock from the
+inside the door which opened from the staircase upon the street, for it
+was already late. Then she came through the common room again, with her
+overskirt over her head, went out, and left the door ajar. Dalrymple was
+alone in the house, unaware that Annetta was lying dead on the floor of
+his room upstairs.
+
+Sora Nanna had not been gone a quarter of an hour when a boy came in
+from the street. Dalrymple knew him, for he was the son of the convent
+gardener.
+
+The lad said that Dalrymple was wanted immediately, as the abbess was
+very ill. That was all he knew. He was rather a dull boy, and he
+repeated mechanically what he had been told. The Scotchman started and
+was about to speak, when he checked himself. He asked the boy two or
+three questions, in the hope of getting more accurate information, but
+could only elicit a repetition of the message. He was wanted
+immediately, as the abbess was very ill.
+
+He covered his eyes with his hand for a few seconds. In a flash he saw
+that if he were ever to carry off Maria Addolorata, it must be to-night.
+The chances were a hundred to one that if there were another crisis, the
+abbess would be dead before he could reach the convent. Once dead, there
+was no knowing what might happen in the confusion that would ensue, and
+during the elaborate funeral ceremonies. The man had that daring temper
+that rises at obstacles as an eagle at a crag, without the slightest
+hesitation. When he dropped his hand upon the table he had made up his
+mind.
+
+It was generally easy to get a good mule at any hour of the night in
+Subiaco. The mules were in their stables then. In the daytime it would
+have been very doubtful, when most of them were away in the vineyards,
+or carrying loads to the neighbouring towns. The convent gardener, who
+was well-to-do in the world, had a very good mule, as Dalrymple knew,
+and its stable was half-way up the ascent. The boy could saddle it with
+the pack-saddle without any difficulty, and meet him anywhere he chose.
+Dalrymple's reputation was excellent as a liberal foreigner who paid
+well, and the gardener would not blame the boy for saddling the mule
+without leave.
+
+In a few words Dalrymple explained what he wanted, and to help the lad's
+understanding he gave him some coppers which filled the little fellow
+with energy and delight. The boy was to be at the top of the mule path
+leading down from above the convent to the valley in half an hour.
+Dalrymple told him that he wished to go to Tivoli, and that the boy
+could come with him if he chose, after the visit to the abbess was over.
+The boy ran away to saddle the mule.
+
+Dalrymple rose quickly, and shut the street door in order to take the
+lamp with him to his room, and not to leave the house open with no light
+in it. The case was urgent. He went upstairs, carrying the lamp, and
+opened the door of his quarters. Instantly he recognized the faint,
+sickly odour of hydrocyanide of potassium, and remembered that he had
+left the bottle with the solution on his table that afternoon in his
+hurry. Then he looked down and saw a white face upon the floor, and the
+flowered bodice and smart skirt of the peasant girl.
+
+He had solid nerves, and possessed that perfect indifference to death as
+a phenomenon which most medical men acquire in the dissecting-room. But
+he was shocked when, bending down, and setting the lamp upon the floor,
+he saw in a few seconds that Annetta had been dead some time. He even
+shook his head a little, very slowly, which meant a great deal for his
+hard nature. Glancing at the unstoppered bottle and at the empty glass,
+side by side on the table, he understood at once that the girl,
+intentionally or by mistake, had swallowed enough of the poison to kill
+half-a-dozen strong men. He remembered instantly how he had once given
+her spirits of camphor when she had felt ill, and he understood all the
+circumstances in a moment, almost as though he had seen them.
+
+Scarcely thinking of what he was doing, though with an effort which any
+one who has attempted to lift a dead body from the ground will
+understand, he took up the lifeless girl, stiff and stark as she was,
+and laid her upon his own bed. It was a mere instinct of humanity. Then
+he went back and took the lamp and held it near her face, and shook his
+head again, thoughtfully. A word of pity escaped his lips, spoken very
+low.
+
+He set the lamp down on the floor by the bedside, for there was no small
+table near. There never is, in peasants' houses. He began to walk up and
+down the room, thinking over the situation, which was grave enough.
+
+Suddenly he smelt the acrid odour of burning cotton. He turned quickly,
+and saw that he had placed the three-beaked lamp so near to the bed that
+the overhanging coverlet was directly above one of the flames, and was
+already smouldering. He smothered it with the stuff itself between his
+hands, brought the lamp into the laboratory, and set it upon the table.
+
+Then, realizing that his own case was urgent, he began to make his
+preparations. He took a clean bottle and poured thirty-five drops of
+laudanum into it, put in the stopper, and thrust it into his pocket.
+Unlocking another box, he took out some papers and a canvas bag of gold,
+such as bankers used to give travellers in those times when it was
+necessary to take a large supply of cash for a journey. He threw on his
+cloak, took his plaid over one arm and went back into his bedroom,
+carrying the lamp in the other hand. Then he hesitated, sniffing the air
+and the smell of the burnt cotton. Suddenly an idea seemed to cross his
+mind, for he put down the lamp and dropped his plaid upon a chair. He
+stood still a moment longer, looking at the dead girl as she lay on the
+bed, biting his lip thoughtfully, and nodding his head once or twice. He
+made a step towards the bed, then hesitated once more, and then made up
+his mind.
+
+He went back to the bedside, and stooping a little lifted the body on
+his arms as though judging of its weight and of his power to carry it.
+His first instinct had been to lock the door of the room behind him, and
+to go up to the convent, leaving the dead girl where she was, whether he
+were destined to come back that night, or never. A moment's reflection
+had told him that if he did so he must certainly be accused of having
+poisoned her. He meant, if it were possible, to take Maria Addolorata on
+board of the English man-of-war at Civita Vecchia within twenty-four
+hours. So far as the carrying off of a nun was concerned, he would be
+safe on the ship; but if he were accused of murder, no matter how
+falsely, the captain would have a right to refuse his protection, even
+though he was Dalrymple's friend. A little chain of circumstances had
+led him to form a plan, in a flash, which, if successfully carried out,
+would account both for the disappearance of Annetta herself, and of
+Maria Addolorata as well.
+
+His eyelids contracted slightly, and his great jaw set itself with the
+determination to overcome all obstacles. In a few seconds he had
+divested the dead girl of her heavy bodice and skirt and carpet apron
+and heavy shoes. He rolled the things into a bundle, tossed them into
+the laboratory, locked the door of the latter, and stuck the key into
+his pocket. He carefully stopped the bottle containing the remainder of
+the prussiate of potassium, and took that also. Then he rolled the body
+up carefully in his great plaid, mummy-like, and tied the ends of the
+shawl with shoe-laces which he had among his things. He drew his soft
+hat firmly down upon his forehead, and threw his cloak over his left
+shoulder. He lifted the body off the bed. It was so stark that it stood
+upright beside him. With his right arm round its waist, he raised it so
+high that he could walk freely, and he drew his wide cloak over it as
+well as he could, and freed his left hand. He grasped the lamp as he
+passed the table, listened at the door, though he knew that the house
+was locked below, and he cautiously and with difficulty descended the
+stairs.
+
+Just inside the street door of the staircase there was a niche, as there
+is in almost all old Italian houses. He set the body in it, and went
+into the common room with the lamp. Taking the bottle with the laudanum
+in it from his pocket, he filled it more than half full of aniseed
+cordial, of which a decanter stood with other liquors upon a sideboard,
+as usual in such places. He returned it to his pocket, and listened
+again. Then he assured himself that he had all he needed--the bottle,
+money, his cloak, and a short, broad knife which he always took with him
+on his walks, more for the sake of cutting a loaf of bread if he stopped
+for refreshment than for any other purpose. His passport he had taken
+with his few other valuable papers from the box.
+
+He left the lamp on the table, and unlocked the street door, though he
+did not pull it open. Brave as he was, his heart beat fast, for it was
+the first decisive moment. If Sora Nanna should come home within the
+next sixty seconds, there would be trouble. But there was no sound.
+
+In the dark he went back to the door of the staircase, unlocked it, and
+opened it wide, looking out. The heavy clouds had so darkened the
+moonlight that he could hardly see. But the street was quiet, for it was
+late, and there were no watchmen in Subiaco at that time. A moment
+later, the door was closed behind him, and he was disappearing round the
+dark corner with Annetta's body in his arms, all wrapped with himself in
+his great cloak.
+
+It was a long and terrible climb. A weaker man would have fainted or
+given it up long before Dalrymple set his foot firmly upon the narrow
+beaten path which ran along between the garden wall at the back of the
+convent, and the precipitous descent on his left. The sweat ran down
+over his hard, pale face in the dark, as he shook off his cloak and laid
+down his ghastly burden under the deep shadow of the low postern. He
+shook his big shoulders and wiped his brow, and stretched out his long
+arms, doubling them and stretching them again, for they were benumbed
+and asleep with the protracted effort. But so far it was done, and no
+one had met him. There had been little chance of that, but he was glad,
+all the same. And if, down at the house, any one went to his room,
+nothing would be found. He had the key of the little laboratory in his
+pocket. It would be long before they broke down the door and found
+Annetta's skirt and bodice and shoes wrapped together in a corner.
+
+He went on up the ascent five minutes further, walking as though on air
+now that he carried no weight in his arms. At the top of the mule path
+the lad was already waiting for him with the mule. He told the little
+fellow that he might have to wait half an hour longer, as he must go
+into the convent to see the abbess before starting for Tivoli. He bid
+him tie the mule by the halter to the low branch of an overhanging
+fig-tree, and sit down to wait.
+
+"It is a cool night," said Dalrymple, though he was hot enough himself.
+"Drink this, my boy."
+
+He gave him the little bottle of aniseed, opening it as he did so. The
+boy smelt it and knew that it was good, for it is a common drink in the
+mountains. He drank half of it, pouring it into his mouth with a
+gurgling sound.
+
+"Drink it all," said Dalrymple. "I brought it for you."
+
+The boy did not hesitate, but drained it to the last drop, and handed
+the bottle back without a word. Dalrymple made him sit down near the
+mule's head, well aside from the path, in case any one should pass. He
+knew that between the unaccustomed dose of spirits and the thirty-five
+drops of opium, the lad would be sound asleep before long. For the rest,
+there was nothing to be done but to trust to luck. He had done the
+impossible already, so far as physical effort was concerned, but Fortune
+must not thwart him at the end. If she did, he had in his other pocket
+enough left of what had killed Annetta to settle his own affairs
+forever, and he might need it. At that moment he was absolutely
+desperate. It would be ill for any one who crossed his path that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+DALRYMPLE wrapped his cloak about him once more, as he turned away, and
+retraced his steps by the garden wall. He glanced at the long dark thing
+that lay in the shadow of the postern, as he went by. It was not
+probable that it would be noticed, even if any one should pass that way,
+which was unlikely, between ten o'clock at night and three in the
+morning. He went on without stopping, and in three or four minutes he
+had gone round the convent to the main entrance, next to the church. He
+rang the bell. The portress was expecting him, and he was admitted
+without a word.
+
+He found Maria Addolorata in the antechamber of the abbess's apartment,
+veiled, and standing with folded hands in the middle of the little hall.
+She must have heard the distant clang of the bell, for she was evidently
+waiting for him.
+
+"Am I in time?" he asked in a tone of anxiety.
+
+She shook her head slowly.
+
+"Is she dead?"
+
+"She was dead before I sent for you," answered Maria Addolorata, in a
+low and almost solemn tone. "No one knows it yet."
+
+"I feared so," said Dalrymple.
+
+He made a step towards the door of the parlour, naturally expecting that
+Maria would speak with him there, as usual. But she stepped back and
+placed herself in his way.
+
+"No," she said briefly.
+
+"Why not?" he asked in quick surprise.
+
+She raised her finger to her veiled lips, and then pointed to the other
+door, to warn him that the portress was there and was almost within
+hearing. With quick suspicion he understood that she was keeping him in
+the antechamber to defend herself, that she had not been able to resist
+the desire to see him once more, and that she intended this to be their
+last meeting.
+
+"Maria," he began, but he only pronounced her name, and stopped short,
+for a great fear took him by the throat.
+
+"Yes," she answered, in her calm, low voice. "I have made up my mind. I
+will not go. God will perhaps forgive me what I have done. I will pray
+for forgiveness. But I will not do more evil. I will not bring shame
+upon my father's house, even for love of you."
+
+Her voice trembled a little at the last words. Even veiled as she was,
+the vital magnetism of the man was creeping upon her already. She had
+resolved that she would see him once more, that she would tell him the
+plain truth that was right, that she would bid him farewell, and
+promise to pray for him, as she must pray for herself. But she had sworn
+to herself that she would not speak of love. Yet with the first words
+she spoke, the word and the vibration of love had come too. Her hands
+disappeared in her sleeves, and her nails pressed the flesh in the
+determination to be strong. She little guessed the tremendous argument
+he had in store.
+
+"It is hard to speak here," he said. "Let us go into the parlour."
+
+She shook her head, and again moved backwards a step, so that her
+shoulders were almost against the door.
+
+"You must say what you have to say here," she answered after a moment's
+pause, and she felt strong again. "For my part, I have spoken. May God
+forget me in my utmost need if I go with you."
+
+Dalrymple seemed little moved by the solemn invocation. It meant little
+enough to him.
+
+"I must tell you a short story," he replied quietly. "Unless I tell you,
+you cannot understand. I have set my life upon your love, and I have
+gone so far that I cannot save my life except by you--my life and my
+honour. Will you listen to me?"
+
+She nodded, and he heard her draw a quick breath. Then he began his
+story, putting it together clearly, from the facts he knew, in very few
+words. He told her how Annetta must have mistaken the bottle on his
+table for camphor, and how he had found her dead. Nothing would save him
+from the accusation of having murdered the girl but the absolute
+disappearance of her body. Maria shuddered and turned her head quickly
+when he told her that the body was lying under the postern arch behind
+the garden wall. He told her, too, that the boy was by this time asleep
+beside the mule on the path beyond. Then he told her of his plan, which
+was short, desperate, and masterly.
+
+"You must tell no one that the abbess is dead," he said. "Go out through
+your cell into the garden, as soon as I am gone, and when I tap at the
+postern open the door. Leave a lamp in your cell. I will do the rest."
+
+"What will you do?" asked Maria, in a low and wondering tone.
+
+"You must lock the door of your cell on the inside and leave the lamp
+there," said Dalrymple. "You will wait for me in the garden by the gate.
+I will carry the poor girl's body in and lay it in your bed. Then I will
+set fire to the bed itself. Of course there is an under-mattress of
+maize leaves--there always is. I will leave the lamp standing on the
+floor by the bedside. I will shut the door and come out to you, and I
+can manage to slip the bolt of the garden gate from the outside by
+propping up the spring from within. You shall see."
+
+"It is horrible!" gasped Maria. "And I do not see--"
+
+"It is simple, and nothing else can save my life. Your cell is of course
+a mere stone vault, and the fire cannot spread. The sisters are asleep,
+except the portress, who will be far away. Long before they break down
+your door, the body will be charred by the fire beyond all recognition.
+They will see the lamp standing close by, and will suppose that you lay
+down to rest, leaving the lamp close to you--too close; that the abbess
+died while you were asleep, and that you had caught fire before you
+waked; that you were burned to death, in fact. The body will be buried
+as yours, and you will be legally dead. Consequently there will not be
+the slightest suspicion upon your good name. As for me, it will be
+supposed that I have procured other clothes for Annetta, thrown hers
+into the laboratory and carried her off. In due time I will send her
+father a large sum of money without comment. If you refuse, I must
+either be arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death for the murder of
+a girl who killed herself without my knowledge, or, as is probable, I
+shall go out now, sit down in a quiet place, and be found dead in the
+morning. It is certain death to me in either case. It would be
+absolutely impossible for me to get rid of the dead body without
+arousing suspicion. If it is wrong to save oneself by burning a dead
+body, it is not a great wrong, and I take it upon myself. It is the only
+wrong in the matter, unless it is wrong to love you and to be willing to
+die for you. Do you understand me?"
+
+Leaning back against the door of the parlour, Maria Addolorata had
+almost unconsciously lifted her veil and was gazing into his eyes. The
+plan was horrible, but she could not help admiring the man's strength
+and daring. In his voice, even when he told her that he loved her, there
+was that quiet courage which imposes itself upon men and women alike.
+The whole situation was as clear as day to her in a moment, for all his
+calculations were absolutely correct,--the fire-proof vault of the cell,
+the certainty that the body would be taken for hers, above all, the
+assurance of her own supposed death, with the utter freedom from
+suspicion which it would mean for her ever afterwards. Was she not to be
+buried with Christian burial, mourned as dead, and freed in one hour
+from all the consequences of her life? It was masterly, though there was
+a horror in it.
+
+She loved him more than her own soul. It was the fear of bringing shame
+upon her father and mother that had held her, far more than any
+spiritual dread. It was not strange that she should waver again when he
+had unfolded his scheme.
+
+She turned, opened the door, and led him into the parlour, where the
+silver lamp was burning brightly.
+
+"You must tell it all again," she said, still standing. "I must be quite
+sure that I understand."
+
+He knew well enough that she had finally yielded, since she went so far.
+In his mind he quickly ran over the details of the plan once more, and
+mentally settled what still remained to be decided. But since she wished
+it, he went over all he had said already. Being able to speak in his
+natural voice without fear of being overheard by the portress, and
+feeling sure of the result, he spoke far more easily and more
+eloquently. Before he had finished he was holding her hand in his, and
+she was gazing intently into his eyes.
+
+"It is life or death for me," he said, when he had told her everything.
+"Which shall it be?"
+
+She was silent for a moment. Then her strong mouth smiled strangely.
+
+"It shall be life for you, if I lose my soul for it," she said.
+
+She felt the quick thrill and pressure of his hand, and all the man's
+tremendous energy was alive again.
+
+"Then let us do it quickly," he answered. "I will go out with the
+portress. Go to your cell before we reach the end of the corridor, and
+shut the door with some noise. She will remember it afterwards. Wait at
+the garden gate till I tap softly, and leave the rest to me. There is no
+danger. Do not be afraid."
+
+"Afraid!" she exclaimed proudly. "How little you know me! It never was
+fear that held me. Besides--with you!"
+
+The two last words told him more than all she had ever said before, and
+for the first time he wholly trusted her. Besides, it was to be only for
+a few minutes, while he went out by the front gate and walked round to
+the back of the convent. The plan was so well conceived that it could
+not fail when put into execution.
+
+They shook hands, as two people who have agreed to do a desperate deed,
+each for the other's sake. Then as their grasp loosened, Dalrymple
+turned towards the door, but turned again almost instantly and took her
+in his arms, and kissed her as men kiss women they love when their lives
+are in the balance. Then he went out, passed through the antechamber,
+and found the portress waiting for him as usual. She took up her little
+lamp and led the way in silence. A moment later he heard Maria come out
+and enter her cell, closing the door loudly behind her.
+
+"Her most reverend excellency is in no danger now," he said to the
+portress, with Scotch veracity.
+
+"Sister Maria Addolorata may then rest a little," answered the lay
+sister, who rarely spoke.
+
+"Precisely so," said Dalrymple, drily.
+
+Five minutes later he was at the garden gate, tapping softly.
+Immediately the door yielded to his gentle pressure, for Maria had
+already unfastened the lock within.
+
+"Stand aside a little," said Dalrymple, in a whisper. "You need not
+see--it is not a pretty sight. Keep the door shut till I come back.
+Where is your cell?"
+
+She pointed to a door that was open above the level of the garden. A
+little light came out. With womanly caution she had set the lamp in the
+corner behind the door when she had opened it, so as to show as little
+as possible from without.
+
+She turned her head away as he passed her with his heavy burden,
+treading softly upon the hard, dry ground. But he was not half across
+the garden before she looked after him. She could not help it. The dark
+thing he carried in his arms attracted her, and a shudder ran through
+her. She closed the gate, and stood with her hand on the lock.
+
+It seemed to her that he was gone an interminable time. Though the moon
+was now high, the clouds were so black that the garden was almost quite
+dark. Suddenly she heard his step, and he was nearer than she thought.
+
+"It is burning well," he said with grim brevity.
+
+He stooped and looked closely in the dimness at the old-fashioned lock.
+It was made as he supposed and could be easily slipped from without. He
+found a pebble under his foot, raised the spring, and placed the small
+stone under it, after examining the position of the cracks in the wood,
+which were many.
+
+"There is plenty of time, now," he said, and he gently pushed her out
+upon the narrow walk, drawing the door after him.
+
+With his big knife, working through the widest crack he teazed the bolt
+into the socket. Then with his shoulder he softly shook the whole door.
+He heard the spring fall into its place, as the pebble dropped upon the
+dry ground.
+
+"No human being can suspect that the door has been opened," he said.
+
+He wrapped her in his long cloak, standing beside her under the wall.
+Very gently he pushed the veil and bands away from her golden hair. She
+helped him, and he kissed the soft locks. Then about her head he laid
+his plaid in folds and drew it forward over her shoulders. She let him
+do it, not realizing what service the shawl had but lately done.
+
+They walked forward. The boy was fast asleep and did not move. The mule
+stamped a little as they came up. Dalrymple lifted Maria upon the
+pack-saddle, sideways, and stretched the packing-cords behind her back.
+
+"Hold on," he said. "I will lead the mule."
+
+[Illustration: "An evil death on you!"--Vol. I., p. 218.]
+
+So it was all over, and the deed was done, for good or evil. But it was
+for evil, for it was a bad deed.
+
+To the last, fortune favoured Dalrymple and Maria, and everything took
+place after their flight just as the strong man had anticipated. Not a
+trace of the truth was left behind. Early in the morning the abbess was
+found dead, and in the little cell near by, upon the still smouldering
+remains of the mattress, lay the charred and burned form of a woman. In
+Stefanone's house, the little bundle of clothes in the locked laboratory
+was all that was left of Annetta. All Subiaco said that the Englishman
+had carried off the peasant girl to his own country.
+
+Up at the convent the nuns buried the abbess in great state, with
+catafalque and canopy, with hundreds of wax candles and endless funeral
+singing. They buried also another body with less magnificence, but with
+more pomp than would have been bestowed upon any of the other sisters,
+and not long afterwards a marble tablet in the wall of the church set
+forth in short good Latin sentences, how the Sister Maria Addolorata, of
+many virtues, had been burned to death in her bed on the eve of the
+feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, and all good Christians were
+enjoined to pray for her soul--which indeed was in need of their
+prayers.
+
+Stefanone returned from Rome, but it was a sad home-coming when he
+found that his daughter was gone, and unconsciously he repeated the very
+words she had last spoken when she was dying in Dalrymple's room all
+alone.
+
+"An evil death on you and all your house!" he said, shaking his fist at
+the door of the room.
+
+And Stefanone swore within himself solemnly that the Englishman should
+pay the price. And he and his paid it in full, and more also, after
+years had passed, even to generations then unborn.
+
+This is the first act, as it were, of all the story, and between this
+one and the beginning of the next a few years must pass quickly, if not
+altogether in silence.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+_GLORIA DALRYMPLE._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+IN the year 1861 Donna Francesca Campodonico was already a widow. Her
+husband, Don Girolamo Campodonico, had died within two years of their
+marriage, which had been one of interest and convenience so far as he
+had been concerned, for Donna Francesca was rich, whereas he had been
+but a younger son and poor. His elder brother was the Duca di Norba, the
+father of another Girolamo, who succeeded him many years later, of
+Gianforte Campodonico, and of the beautiful Bianca, in whose short, sad
+life Pietro Ghisleri afterwards held so large a part. But of these
+latter persons, some were then not yet born, and others were in their
+infancy, so that they play no part in this portion of the present
+history.
+
+Donna Francesca was of the great Braccio family, the last of a
+collateral branch. She had inherited a very considerable estate, which,
+if she had no descendants, was to revert to the Princes of Gerano. She
+had married Don Girolamo in obedience to her guardians' advice, but not
+at all against her will, and she had become deeply attached to him
+during the short two years of their married life. He had never been
+strong, since his childhood, his constitution having been permanently
+injured by a violent attack of malarious fever when he had been a mere
+boy. A second fever, even more severe than the first, caught on a
+shooting expedition near Fiumicino, had killed him, and Donna Francesca
+was left a childless widow, in full possession of her own fortune and of
+a little more in the shape of a small jointure. It was thought that she
+would marry again before very long, but it was too soon to expect this
+as yet.
+
+Among her possessions as the last of her branch of the Braccio family,
+of which the main line, however, was sufficiently well represented, was
+the small but beautiful palace in which she now lived alone. It was
+situated between the Capitoline Hill and the Tiber, surrounded on three
+sides by dark and narrow streets, but facing a small square in which
+there was an ancient church. When it is said that the palace was a small
+one, its dimensions are compared with the great Roman palaces, more than
+one of which could easily lodge a thousand persons. It was built on the
+same general plan as most of them, with a ground floor having heavily
+barred windows; a state apartment in the first story, with three stone
+balconies on the front; a very low second story above that, but not
+coextensive with it, because two of the great state rooms were higher
+than the rest and had clere-story windows; and last of all, a third
+story consisting of much higher rooms than the second, and having a
+spacious attic under the sloping roof, which was, of course, covered
+with red tiles in the old fashion. The palace, at that time known as the
+Palazzo, or 'Palazzetto,' Borgia, was externally a very good specimen of
+Renascence architecture of the period when the florid, 'barocco' style
+had not yet got the upper hand in Rome. The great arched entrance for
+carriages was well proportioned, the stone carvings were severe rather
+than graceful, the cornices had great nobility both of proportion and
+design. The lower story was built of rough-faced blocks of travertine
+stone, above which the masonry was smooth. The whole palace was of that
+warm, time-toned colour, which travertine takes with age, and which is,
+therefore, peculiar to old Roman buildings.
+
+Within, though it could not be said that any part had exactly fallen to
+decay, there were many rooms which had been long disused, in which the
+old frescoes and architectural designs in grey and white, and bits of
+bold perspective painted in the vaults and embrasures, were almost
+obliterated by time, and in which such furniture as there was could not
+survive much longer. About one-half of the state apartment, comprising,
+perhaps, fifteen or twenty rooms, large and small, had been occupied by
+Donna Francesca and her husband, and she now lived in them alone. In
+that part of the palace there was a sort of quiet and stately luxury,
+the result of her own taste, which was strongly opposed to the gaudy
+fashions then introduced from Paris at the height of the Second Empire's
+importance. Girolamo Campodonico had been aware that his young wife's
+judgment was far better than his own in artistic matters, and had left
+all such questions entirely to her.
+
+She had taken much pleasure in unearthing from attics and disused rooms
+all such objects as possessed any intrinsic artistic value, such as old
+carved furniture, tapestries, and the like. Whatever she found worth
+keeping she had caused to be restored just so far as to be useful, and
+she had known how to supply the deficiencies with modern material in
+such a way as not to destroy the harmony of the whole.
+
+It should be sufficiently clear from these facts that Donna Francesca
+Campodonico was a woman of taste and culture, in the modern sense.
+Indeed, the satisfaction of her tastes occupied a much more important
+place in her existence than her social obligations, and had a far
+greater influence upon her subsequent life. Her favourite scheme was to
+make her palace at all points as complete within as its architect had
+made it outside, and she had it in her power to succeed in doing so. She
+was not, as some might think, a great exception in those days. Within
+the narrow limits of a certain class, in which the hereditary
+possession of masterpieces has established artistic intelligence as a
+stamp of caste, no people, until recently, have had a better taste than
+the Italians; as no people, beyond these limits, have ever had a worse.
+There was nothing very unusual in Donna Francesca's views, except her
+constant and industrious energy in carrying them out. Even this might be
+attributed to the fact that she had inherited a beautiful but
+dilapidated palace, which she was desirous of improving until, on a
+small scale, it should be like the houses of the great old families,
+such as the Saracinesca, the Savelli, the Frangipani, and her own near
+relatives, the Princes of Gerano.
+
+She had an invaluable ally in her artistic enterprises in the person of
+an artist, who, in a sort of way, was considered as belonging to Casa
+Braccio, though his extraordinary talent had raised him far above the
+position of a dependent of the family, in which he had been born as the
+son of the steward of the ancient castle and estate of Gerano. As
+constantly happened in those days, the clever boy had been noticed by
+the Prince,--or, perhaps, thrust into notice by his father, who was
+reasonably proud of him. The lad had been taken out of his surroundings
+and thoroughly educated for the priesthood in Rome, but by the time he
+had attained to the age necessary for ordination, his artistic gifts had
+developed to such an extent that in spite of his father's
+disappointment, even the old Prince--the brother of Sister Maria
+Addolorata--advised Angelo Reanda to give up the Church, and to devote
+himself altogether to painting.
+
+Young Reanda had been glad enough of the change in his prospects. Many
+eminent Italians have begun life in a similar way. Cardinal Antonelli
+was not the only one, for there have been Italian prime ministers as
+well as dignitaries of the Church, whose origin was as humble and who
+owed their subsequent distinction to the kindly interest bestowed on
+them by nobles on whose estates their parents were mere peasants, very
+far inferior in station to Angelo Reanda's father, a man of a certain
+education, occupying a position of trust and importance.
+
+Nor was Reanda's priestly education anything but an advantage to him, so
+far as his career was concerned, however much it had raised him above
+the class in which he had been born. So far as latinity and rhetoric
+were to be counted he was better educated than his father's master; for
+with the same advantages he had greater talents, greater originality,
+and greater industry. As an artist, his mental culture made him the
+intellectual superior of most of his contemporaries. As a man, ten years
+of close association with the sons of gentlemen had easily enough made a
+gentleman of one whose instincts were naturally as refined as his
+character was sensitive and upright.
+
+Donna Francesca, as the last of her branch of the family and an orphan
+at an early age, had of course been brought up in the house of her
+relatives of Gerano, and from her childhood had known Reanda's father,
+and Angelo himself, who was fully ten years older than she. Some of his
+first paintings had been done in the great Braccio palace, and many a
+time, as a mere girl, she had watched him at his work, perched upon a
+scaffolding, as he decorated the vault of the main hall. She could not
+remember the time when she had not heard him spoken of as a young
+genius, and she could distinctly recall the discussion which had taken
+place when his fate had been decided for him, and when he had been at
+last told that he might become an artist if he chose. At that time she
+had looked upon him with a sort of wondering admiration in which there
+was much real friendly feeling, and as she grew up and saw what he could
+do, and learned to appreciate it, she silently determined that he should
+one day help her to restore the dilapidated Palazzetto Borgia, where her
+father and mother had died in her infancy, and which she loved with that
+sort of tender attachment which children brought up by distant relations
+often feel for whatever has belonged to their own dimly remembered
+parents.
+
+There was a natural intimacy between the young girl and the artist. Long
+ago she had played at ball with him in the great courtyard of the Gerano
+castle, when he had been at home for his holidays, wearing a black
+cassock and a three-cornered hat, like a young priest. Then, all at
+once, instead of a priest he had been a painter, dressed like other men
+and working in the house in which she lived. She had played with his
+colours, had scrawled with his charcoals upon the white plastered walls,
+had asked him questions, and had talked with him about the famous
+pictures in the Braccio gallery. And all this had happened not once, but
+many times in the course of years. Then she had unfolded to him her
+schemes about her own little palace, and he had promised to help her, by
+and bye, half jesting, half in earnest. She would give him rooms in the
+upper story to live in, she said, disposing of everything beforehand. He
+should be close to his work, and have it under his hand always until it
+was finished. And when there was no more to do, he might still live
+there and have his studio at the top of the old house, with an entrance
+of his own, leading by a narrow staircase to one of the dark streets at
+the back. She had noticed all sorts of peculiarities of the building in
+her occasional visits to it with the governess,--as, for instance, that
+there was a convenient interior staircase leading from the great hall to
+the upper story, by a door once painted like the wall, and hard to
+find, but now hanging on its hinges and hideously apparent. The great
+hall must all be painted again, and Angelo could live overhead and come
+down to his work by those steps. With childish pleasure she praised her
+own ingenuity in so arranging matters beforehand. Angelo was to help her
+in all she did, until the Palazzetto Borgia should be as beautiful as
+the Palazzo Braccio itself, though of course it was much smaller. Then
+she scrawled on the walls again, trying to explain to him, in childishly
+futile sketches, her ideas of decoration, and he would come down from
+his scaffold and do his best with a few broad lines to show her what she
+had really imagined, till she clapped her small, dusty hands with
+delight and was ultimately carried off by her governess to be made
+presentable for her daily drive in the Villa Borghese with the Princess
+of Gerano.
+
+As a girl Francesca had the rare gift of seeing clearly in her mind what
+she wanted, and at last she had found herself possessed of the power to
+carry out her intentions. As a matter of course she had taken Reanda
+into her confidence as her chief helper, and the intimacy which dated
+from her childhood had continued on very much the same footing. His
+talent had grown and been consolidated by ten years of good work, and
+she, as a young married woman, had understood what she had meant when
+she had been a child. Reanda was now admittedly, in his department, the
+first painter in Rome, and that was fame in those days. His high
+education and general knowledge of all artistic matters made him an
+interesting companion in such work as Francesca had undertaken, and he
+had, moreover, a personal charm of manner and voice which had always
+attracted her.
+
+No one, perhaps, would have called him a handsome man, and at this time
+he was no longer in his first youth. He was tall, thin, and very dark,
+though his black beard had touches of a deep gold-brown colour in it,
+which contrasted a little with his dusky complexion. He had a sad face,
+with deep, lustreless, thoughtful eyes, which seemed to peer inward
+rather than outward. In the olive skin there were heavy brown shadows,
+and the bony prominence of the brow left hollows at the temples, from
+which the fine black hair grew with a backward turn which gave something
+unusual to his expression. The aquiline nose which characterizes so many
+Roman faces, was thin and delicate, with sensitive nostrils that often
+moved when he was speaking. The eyebrows were irregular and thick,
+extending in a dark down beyond the lower angles of the forehead, and
+almost meeting between the eyes; but the somewhat gloomy expression
+which this gave him was modified by a certain sensitive grace of the
+mouth, little hidden by the thin black moustache or by the beard, which
+did not grow up to the lower lip, though it was thick and silky from the
+chin downwards.
+
+It was a thoughtful face, but there was creative power in the high
+forehead, as there was direct energy in the long arms and lean, nervous
+hands. Donna Francesca liked to watch him at his work, as she had
+watched him when she was a little girl. Now and then, but very rarely,
+the lustreless eyes lighted up, just before he put in some steady,
+determining stroke which brought out the meaning of the design. There
+was a quick fire in them then, at the instant when the main idea was
+outwardly expressed, and if she spoke to him inadvertently at such a
+moment, he never answered her at once, and sometimes forgot to answer
+her at all. For his art was always first with him. She knew it, and she
+liked him the better for it.
+
+The intimacy between the great lady and the artist was, indeed, founded
+upon this devotion of his to his painting, but it was sustained by a
+sort of community of interests extending far back into darker ages, when
+his forefathers had been bondsmen to her ancestors in the days of
+serfdom. He had grown up with the clearly defined sensation of belonging
+with, if not to, the house of Braccio. His father had been a trusty and
+trusted dependent of the family, and he had imbibed as a mere child its
+hereditary likes and dislikes, its traditions wise and foolish,
+together with an indomitable pride in its high fortunes and position in
+the world. And Francesca herself was a true Braccio, though she was
+descended from a collateral branch, and, next to the Prince of Gerano,
+had been to Reanda by far the most important person bearing the name.
+She had admired him when she had been a child, had encouraged him as she
+grew up, and now she provided his genius with employment, and gave him
+her friendship as a solace and delight both in work and idleness. It is
+said that only Italians can be admitted to such a position with the
+certainty that they will not under any circumstances presume upon it. To
+Angelo Reanda it meant much more than to most men who could have been
+placed as he was. His genius raised him far above the class in which he
+had been born, and his education, with his natural and acquired
+refinement, placed him on a higher level than the majority of other
+Roman artists, who, in the Rome of that day, inhabited a Bohemia of
+their own which has completely disappeared. Their ideas and
+conversation, when they were serious, interested him, but their manners
+were not his, and their gaiety was frankly distasteful to him. He
+associated with them as an artist, but not as a companion, and he
+particularly disliked their wives and daughters, who, in their turn,
+found him too 'serious' for their society, to use the time-honoured
+Italian expression. Nevertheless, his natural gentleness of disposition
+made him treat them all alike with quiet courtesy, and when, as often
+happened, he was obliged to be in their company, he honestly endeavoured
+to be one of them as far as he could.
+
+On the other hand, he had no footing in the society to which Francesca
+belonged, but for which she cared so little. There were, indeed, one or
+two houses where he was received, as he was at Casa Braccio, in a manner
+which, for the very reason that it was familiar, proved his social
+inferiority--where he addressed the head of the house as 'Excellency'
+and was called 'Reanda' by everybody, elders and juniors alike, where he
+was appreciated as an artist, respected as a man, and welcomed
+occasionally as a guest when no other outsider was present, but where he
+was not looked upon as a personage to be invited even with the great
+throng on state occasions. He was as far from receiving such cold
+acknowledgments of social existence as those who received them and
+nothing else were distantly removed from intimacy on an equal footing.
+
+He did not complain of such treatment, nor even inwardly resent it. The
+friendliness shown him was as real as the kindness he had received
+throughout his early youth from the Prince of Gerano, and he was not the
+man to undervalue it because he had not a drop of gentle blood in his
+veins. But his refined nature craved refined intercourse, and preferred
+solitude to what he could get in any lower sphere. The desire for the
+atmosphere of the uppermost class, rather than the mere wish to appear
+as one of its members, often belongs to the artistic temperament, and
+many artists are unjustly disliked by their fellows and pointed at as
+snobs because they prefer, as an atmosphere, inane elegance to inelegant
+intellectuality. It is often forgotten by those who calumniate them that
+hereditary elegance, no matter how empty-headed, is the result of an
+hereditary cultivation of what is thought beautiful, and that the
+vainest, silliest woman who dresses well by instinct is an artist in her
+way.
+
+In Francesca Campodonico there was much more than such superficial
+taste, and in her Reanda found the only true companion he had ever
+known. He might have been for twenty years the intimate friend of all
+Roman society without meeting such another, and he knew it, and
+appreciated his good fortune. For he was not naturally a dissatisfied
+man, nor at all given to complain of his lot. Few men are, who have
+active, creative genius, and whose profession gives them all the scope
+they need. Of late years, too, Francesca had treated him with a sort of
+deference which he got from no one else in the world. He realized that
+she did, without attempting to account for the fact, which, indeed,
+depended on something past his comprehension.
+
+He felt for her something like veneration. The word does not express
+exactly the attitude of his mind towards her, but no other defines his
+position so well. He was not in love with her in the Italian sense of
+the expression, for he did not conceive it possible that she should ever
+love him, whereas he told himself that he might possibly marry, if he
+found a wife to his taste, and be in love with his wife without in the
+least infringing upon his devotion to Donna Francesca.
+
+That she was young and lovely, if not beautiful, he saw and knew. He
+even admitted unconsciously that if she had been an old woman he could
+not have 'venerated' her as he did, though veneration, as such, is the
+due of the old rather than of the young. Her spiritual eyes and virginal
+face were often before him in his dreams and waking thoughts. There was
+a maidenlike modesty, as it were, even about her graceful bodily self,
+which belonged, in his imagination, to a saint upon an altar, rather
+than to a statue upon a pedestal. There was something in the sweep of
+her soft dark brown hair which suggested that it would be sacrilege and
+violence for a man's hand to touch it. There was a dewy delicacy on her
+young lips, as though they could kiss nothing more earthly than a newly
+opened flower, already above the earth, but not yet touched by the sun.
+There was a thoughtful turn of modelling in the smooth, white forehead,
+which it was utterly beyond Reanda's art to reproduce, often as he had
+tried. He thought a great sculptor might succeed, and it was the one
+thing which made him sometimes wish that he had taken the chisel for his
+tool, instead of the brush.
+
+She was never considered one of the great beauties of Rome. She had not
+the magnificent presence and colouring of her kinswoman, Maria
+Addolorata, whose tragic death in the convent of Subiaco--a fictitious
+tragedy accepted as real by all Roman society--had given her a special
+place in the history of the Braccio family. She had not the dark and
+queenly splendour of Corona d'Astradente, her contemporary and the most
+beautiful woman of her time. But she had, for those who loved her,
+something which was quite her own and which placed her beyond them in
+some ways and, in any case, out of competition for the homage received
+by the great beauties. No one recognized this more fully than Angelo
+Reanda, and he would as soon have thought of being in love with her, as
+men love women, as he would have imagined that his father, for instance,
+could have loved Maria Addolorata, the Carmelite nun.
+
+The one human point in his devoted adoration lay in his terror lest
+Francesca Campodonico should die young and leave him to grow old without
+her. He sometimes told her so.
+
+"You should marry," she answered one day, when they were together in the
+great hall which he was decorating.
+
+She was still dressed in black, and as she spoke, he turned and saw the
+outline of her small pure face against the high back of the old chair in
+which she was sitting. It was so white just then that he fancied he saw
+in it that fatal look which belonged to some of the Braccio family, and
+which was always spoken of as having been one of Maria Addolorata's
+chief characteristics. He looked at her long and sadly, leaning against
+an upright of his scaffolding as he stood on the floor near her, holding
+his brushes in his hand.
+
+"I do not think I shall ever marry," he answered at last, looking down
+and idly mixing two colours on his palette.
+
+"Why not?" she asked quickly. "I have heard you say that you might, some
+day."
+
+"Some day, some day--and then, all at once, the 'some day' is past, and
+is not any more in the future. Why should I marry? I am well enough as I
+am; there would only be unhappiness."
+
+"Do you think that every one who marries must be unhappy?" she asked.
+"You are cynical. I did not know it."
+
+"No. I am not cynical. I say it only of myself. There are many reasons.
+I could not marry such a woman as I should wish to have for my wife.
+You must surely understand that. It is very easy to understand."
+
+He made as though he would go up the ladder to his little platform and
+continue his work. But she stopped him.
+
+"What is the use of hurting your eyes?" she asked. "It is late, and the
+light is bad. Besides, I am not so sure that I understand what you mean,
+though you say that it is so easy. We have never talked about it much."
+
+He laid his palette and brushes upon a ragged straw chair and sat down
+upon another, not far from her. There was no other furniture in the
+great vaulted hall, and the brick pavement was bare, and splashed in
+many places with white plaster. Fresco-painting can only be done upon
+stucco just laid on, while it is still moist, and a mason came early
+every day and prepared as much of the wall as Reanda could cover before
+night. If he did not paint over the whole surface, the remainder was
+chipped away and freshly laid over on the following morning.
+
+The evening light already reddened the tall western windows, for it was
+autumn, and the days were shortening quickly. Reanda knew that he could
+not do much more, and sat down, to answer Francesca's question, if he
+could.
+
+"I am not a gentleman, as you understand the word," he said slowly. "And
+yet I am certainly not of the class to which my father belonged. My
+position is not defined. I could not marry a woman of your class, and I
+should not care to marry one of any other. That is all. Is it not
+clear?"
+
+"Yes," answered Francesca. "It is clear enough. But--"
+
+She checked herself, and he looked into her face, expecting her to
+continue. But she said nothing more.
+
+"You were going to find an objection to what I said," he observed.
+
+"No; I was not. I will say it, for you will understand me. What you tell
+me is true enough, and I am sorry that it should be so. Is it not to
+some extent my fault?"
+
+"Your fault?" cried Reanda, leaning forward and looking into her eyes.
+"How? I do not understand."
+
+"I blame myself," answered Francesca, quietly. "I have kept you out of
+the world, perhaps, and in many ways. Here you live, day after day, as
+though nothing else existed for you. In the morning, long before I am
+awake, you come down your staircase through that door, and go up that
+ladder, and work, and work, and work, all day long, until it is dark, as
+you have worked to-day, and yesterday, and for months. And when you
+might and should be out of doors, or associating with other people, as
+just now, I sit and talk to you and take up all your leisure time. It
+is wrong. You ought to see more of other men and women. Do men of genius
+never marry? It seems to me absurd!"
+
+"Genius!" exclaimed Reanda, shaking his head sadly. "Do not use the word
+of me."
+
+"I will do as other people do," answered Francesca. "But that is not the
+question. The truth is that you live pent up in this old house, like a
+bird in a cage. I want you to spread your wings."
+
+"To go away for a time?" asked Reanda, anxiously.
+
+"I did not say that. Perhaps I should. Yes, if you could enjoy a
+journey, go away--for a time."
+
+She spoke with some hesitation and rather nervously, for he had said
+more than she had meant to propose.
+
+"Just to make a change," she added, after a moment's pause, as he said
+nothing. "You ought to see more of other people, as I said. You ought to
+mix with the world. You ought at least to offer yourself the chance of
+marrying, even if you think that you might not find a wife to your
+taste."
+
+"If I do not find one here--" He did not complete the sentence, but
+smiled a little.
+
+"Must you marry a Roman princess?" she asked. "What should you say to a
+foreigner? Is that impossible, too?"
+
+"It would matter little where she came from, if I wished to marry her,"
+he answered. "But I like my life as it is. Why should I try to change
+it? I am happy as I am. I work, and I enjoy working. I work for you, and
+you are satisfied. It seems to me that there is nothing more to be said.
+Why are you so anxious that I should marry?"
+
+Donna Francesca laughed softly, but without much mirth.
+
+"Because I think that in some way it is my fault if you have not
+married," she said. "And besides, I was thinking of a young girl whom I
+met, or rather, saw, the other day, and who might please you. She has
+the most beautiful voice in the world, I think. She could make her
+fortune as a singer, and I believe she wishes to try it. But her father
+objects. They are foreigners--English or Scotch--it is the same. She is
+a mere child, they say, but she seems to be quite grown up. There is
+something strange about them. He is a man of science, I am told, but I
+fancy he is one of those English enthusiasts about Italian liberty. His
+name is Dalrymple."
+
+"What a name!" Reanda laughed. "I suppose they have come to spend the
+winter in Rome," he added.
+
+"Not at all. I hear that they have lived here for years. But one never
+meets the foreigners, unless they wish to be in society. His wife died
+young, they say, and this girl is his only daughter. I wish you could
+hear her sing!"
+
+"For that matter, I wish I might," said Reanda, who was passionately
+fond of music.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+SEVENTEEN years had scored their account on Angus Dalrymple's hard face,
+and one great sorrow had set an even deeper mark upon him--a sorrow so
+deep and so overwhelming that none had ever dared to speak of it to him.
+And he was not the man to bear any affliction resignedly, to feed on
+memory, and find rest in the dreams of what had been. Sullenly and
+fiercely rebellious against his fate, he went down life, rather than
+through it, savage and silent, for the most part, Nero-like in his wish
+that he could end the world at a single blow, himself and all that
+lived. Yet it was characteristic of the man that he had not chosen
+suicide as a means of escape, as he would have done in his earlier
+years, if Maria Addolorata had failed him. It seemed cowardly now, and
+he had never done anything cowardly in his life. Through his grief the
+sense of responsibility had remained with him, and had kept him alive.
+He looked upon his existence not as a state from which he had a right to
+escape, but as a personal enemy to be fought with, to be despised, to be
+ill-treated barbarously, perhaps, but still as an enemy to murder whom
+in cold blood would be an act of cowardice.
+
+There was little more than the mere sense of the responsibility, for he
+did little enough to fulfil his obligations. His wife had borne him a
+daughter, but it was not in Angus Dalrymple's nature to substitute one
+being in his heart for another. He could not love the girl simply
+because her mother was dead. He could only spoil her, with a rough idea
+that she should be spared all suffering as much as possible, but that if
+he gave her what she wanted, he had done all that could be expected of
+him. For the rest, he lived his own life.
+
+He had a good intelligence and superior gifts, together with
+considerable powers of intellectual acquisition. He had believed in his
+youth that he was destined to make great discoveries, and his papers
+afterwards showed that he was really on the track of great and new
+things. But with his bereavement, all ambition as well as all curiosity
+disappeared in one day from his character. Since then he had never gone
+back to his studies, which disgusted him and seemed stale and flat. He
+grew rudely dogmatical when scientific matters were discussed before
+him, as he had become rough, tyrannical, and almost violent in his
+ordinary dealings with the world, whenever he found any opposition to
+his opinions or his will. The only exception he made was in his
+treatment of his daughter, whom he indulged in every way except in her
+desire to be a public singer. It seemed to him that to give her
+everything she wanted was to fulfil all his obligations to her; in the
+one question of appearing on the stage he was inflexible. He simply
+refused to hear of it, rarely giving her any reasons beyond the ordinary
+ones which present themselves in such cases, and which were far from
+answering the impulse of the girl's genius.
+
+They had called her Gloria in the days of their passionate happiness.
+The sentimental name had meant a great deal to them, for Dalrymple had
+at that time developed that sort of uncouth sentimentality which is in
+strong men like a fungus on an oak, and disgusts them afterwards unless
+they are able to forget it. The two had felt that the glory of life was
+in the child, and they had named her for it, as it were.
+
+Years afterwards Dalrymple brought the little girl to Rome, drawn back
+irresistibly to the place by that physical association of impressions
+which moves such men strongly. They had remained, keeping from year to
+year a lodging Dalrymple had hired, at first hired for a few months. He
+never went to Subiaco.
+
+He gave Gloria teachers, the best that could be found, and there were
+good instructors in those days when people were willing to take time in
+learning. In music she had her mother's voice and talent. Her father
+gave her a musician's opportunities, and it was no wonder that she
+should dream of conquering Europe from behind the footlights as Grisi
+had done, and as Patti was just about to do in her turn.
+
+She and her father spoke English together, but Gloria was bilingual, as
+children of mixed marriages often are, speaking English and Italian with
+equal ease. Dalrymple found a respectable middle-aged German governess
+who came daily and spent most of the day with Gloria, teaching her and
+walking with her--worshipping her, too, with that curious faculty for
+idealizing the very human, which belongs to German governesses when they
+like their pupils.
+
+Dalrymple led his own life. Had he chosen to mix in Roman society, he
+would have been well received, as a member of a great Scotch family and
+not very far removed from the head of his house. No one of his relatives
+had ever known the truth about his wife except his father, who had died
+with the secret, and it was not likely that any one should ask
+questions. If any one did, he would certainly not satisfy such
+curiosity. But he cared little for society, and spent his time either
+alone with books and wine, or in occasional excursions into the artist
+world, where his eccentricities excited little remark, and where he met
+men who secretly sympathized with the Italian revolutionary movement,
+and dabbled in conspiracies which rather amused than disquieted the
+papal government.
+
+Though Gloria was at that time but little more than sixteen years of
+age, her father took her with him to little informal parties at the
+studios or even at the houses of artists, where there was often good
+music, and clever if not serious conversation. The conventionalities of
+age were little regarded in such circles. Gloria appeared, too, much
+older than she really was, and her marvellous voice made her a centre of
+attraction at an age when most young girls are altogether in the
+background. Dalrymple never objected to her singing on such occasions,
+and he invariably listened with closed eyes and folded hands, as though
+he were assisting at a religious service. Her voice was like her
+mother's, excepting that it was pitched higher, and had all the compass
+and power necessary for a great soprano. Dalrymple's almost devout
+attitude when Gloria was singing was the only allusion, if one may call
+it so, which he ever made to his dead wife's existence, and no one who
+watched him knew what it meant. But he was often more silent than usual
+after she had sung, and he sometimes went off by himself afterwards and
+sat for hours in one of the old wine cellars near the Capitol, drinking
+gloomily of the oldest and strongest he could find. For he drank more or
+less perpetually in the evening, and wine made him melancholic and
+morose, though it did not seem to affect him otherwise. Little by
+little, however, it was dulling the early keenness of his intellect,
+though it hardly touched his constitution at all. He was lean and bony
+still, as in the old days, but paler in the face, and he had allowed his
+red beard to grow. It was streaked with grey, and there were small,
+nervous lines about his eyes, as well as deep furrows on his forehead
+and face.
+
+Dalrymple had found in the artist world a man who was something of a
+companion to him at times,--a very young man, whom he could not
+understand, though his own dogmatic temper made him as a rule believe
+that he understood most things and most men. But this particular
+individual alternately puzzled, delighted, and irritated the nervous
+Scotchman.
+
+They had made acquaintance at an artists' supper in the previous year,
+had afterwards met accidentally at the bookseller's in the Piazza di
+Spagna, where they both went from time to time to look at the English
+newspapers, and little by little they had fallen into the habit of
+meeting there of a morning, and of strolling in the direction of
+Dalrymple's lodging afterwards. At last Dalrymple had asked his
+companion to come in and look at a book, and so the acquaintance had
+grown. Gloria watched the young stranger, and at first she disliked
+him.
+
+The aforesaid bookseller dealt, and deals still, in photographs and
+prints, as well as in foreign and Italian books. At the present time his
+establishment is distinctively a Roman Catholic one. In those days it
+was almost the only one of its kind, and was patronized alike by Romans
+and foreigners. Even Donna Francesca Campodonico went there from time to
+time for a book on art or an engraving which she and Reanda needed for
+their work. They occasionally walked all the way from the Palazzetto
+Borgia to the Piazza di Spagna together in the morning. When they had
+found what they wanted, Donna Francesca generally drove home in a cab,
+and Reanda went to his midday meal before returning. For the line of his
+intimacy with her was drawn at this point. He had never sat down at the
+same table with her, and he never expected to do so. As the two stood to
+one another at present, though Francesca would willingly have asked him
+to breakfast, she would have hesitated to do so, merely because the
+first invitation would inevitably call attention to the fact that the
+line had been drawn somewhere, whereas both were willing to believe that
+it had never existed at all. Under any pressure of necessity she would
+have driven with him in a cab, but not in her own carriage. They both
+knew it, and by tacit consent never allowed such unknown possibilities
+to suggest themselves. But in the mornings, there was nothing to
+prevent their walking together as far as the Piazza di Spagna, or
+anywhere else.
+
+They went to the bookseller's one day soon after the conversation which
+had led Francesca to mention the Dalrymples. As they walked along the
+east side of the great square, they saw two men before them.
+
+"There goes the Gladiator," said Reanda to his companion, suddenly.
+"There is no mistaking his walk, even at this distance."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Francesca. "Unless I am mistaken, the man who
+is a little the taller, the one in the rough English clothes, is Mr.
+Dalrymple. I spoke of him the other day, you know."
+
+"Oh! Is that he? The other has a still more extraordinary name. He is
+Paul Griggs. He is the son of an American consul who died in Civita
+Vecchia twenty years ago, and left him a sort of waif, for he had no
+money and apparently no relatives. Somehow he has grown up, Heaven knows
+how, and gets a living by journalism. I believe he was at sea for some
+years as a boy. He is really as much Italian as American. I have met him
+with artists and literary people."
+
+"Why do you call him the Gladiator?" asked Francesca, with some
+interest.
+
+"It is a nickname he has got. Cotogni, the sculptor, was in despair for
+a model last year. Griggs and two or three other men were in the
+studio, and somebody suggested that Griggs was very near the standard of
+the ancients in his proportions. They persuaded him to let them measure
+him. You know that in the 'Canons' of proportion, the Borghese
+Gladiator--the one in the Louvre--is given as the best example of an
+athlete. They measured Griggs then and there, and found that he was at
+all points the exact living image of the statue. The name has stuck to
+him. You see what a fellow he is, and how he walks."
+
+"Yes, he looks strong," said Francesca, watching the man with natural
+curiosity.
+
+The young American was a little shorter than Dalrymple, but evidently
+better proportioned. No one could fail to notice the vast breadth of
+shoulder, the firm, columnar throat, and the small athlete's head with
+close-set ears. He moved without any of that swinging motion of the
+upper part of the body which is natural to many strong men and was
+noticeable in Dalrymple, but there was something peculiar in his walk,
+almost undefinable, but conveying the idea of very great strength with
+very great elasticity.
+
+"But he is an ugly man," observed Reanda, almost immediately. "Ugly, but
+not repulsive. You will see, if he turns his head. His face is like a
+mask. It is not the face you would expect with such a body."
+
+"How curious!" exclaimed Francesca, rather idly, for her interest in
+Paul Griggs was almost exhausted.
+
+They went on along the crowded pavement. When they reached the
+bookseller's and went in, they saw that the two men were there before
+them, looking over the foreign papers, which were neatly arranged on a
+little table apart. Dalrymple looked up and recognized Francesca, to
+whom he had been introduced at a small concert given for a charity in a
+private house, on which occasion Gloria had sung. He lifted his hat from
+his head and laid it down upon the newspapers, when Francesca rather
+unexpectedly held out her hand to him in English fashion. He had left a
+card at her house on the day after their meeting, but as she was alone
+in the world, she had no means of returning the civility.
+
+"It would give me great pleasure if you would bring your daughter to see
+me," she said graciously.
+
+"You are very kind," answered Dalrymple, his steely blue eyes
+scrutinizing her pure young features.
+
+She only glanced at him, for she was suddenly conscious that his
+companion was looking at her. He, too, had laid down his hat, and she
+instantly understood what Reanda had meant by comparing his face to a
+mask. The features were certainly very far from handsome. If they were
+redeemed at all, it was by the very deep-set eyes, which gazed into
+hers in a strangely steady way, as though the lids never could droop
+from under the heavy overhanging brow, and then, still unwinking, turned
+in another direction. The man's complexion was of that perfectly even
+but almost sallow colour which often belongs to very strong melancholic
+temperaments. His face was clean-shaven and unnaturally square and
+expressionless, excepting for such life as there was in the deep eyes.
+Dark, straight, closely cut hair grew thick and smooth as a priest's
+skull-cap, low on the forehead and far forward at the temples. The level
+mouth, firmly closed, divided the lower part of the face like the scar
+of a straight sabre-cut. The nose was very thick between the eyes,
+relatively long, with unusually broad nostrils which ran upward from the
+point to the lean cheeks. The man wore very dark clothes of extreme
+simplicity, and at a time when pins and chains were much in fashion, he
+had not anything visible about him of gold or silver. He wore his watch
+on a short, doubled piece of black silk braid slipped through his
+buttonhole. He dressed almost as though he were in mourning.
+
+Francesca unconsciously looked at him so intently for a moment that
+Dalrymple thought it natural to introduce him, fancying that she might
+have heard of him and might wish to know him out of curiosity.
+
+"May I introduce Mr. Griggs?" he said, with the stiff inclination which
+was a part of his manner.
+
+Griggs bowed, and Donna Francesca bent her head a little. Reanda came up
+and shook hands with the American, and Francesca introduced the artist
+to Dalrymple.
+
+"I have long wished to have the pleasure of knowing you, Signor Reanda,"
+said the latter. "We have many mutual acquaintances among the artists
+here. I may say that I am a great admirer of your work, and my daughter,
+too, for that matter."
+
+Reanda said something civil as his hand parted from the Scotchman's.
+Francesca saw an opportunity of bringing Reanda and Gloria together.
+
+"As you like Signor Reanda's painting so much," she said to Dalrymple,
+"will you not bring your daughter this afternoon to see the frescoes he
+is doing in my house? You know the Palazzetto? Of course--you left a
+card, but I had no one to return it," she added rather sadly. "Will you
+also come, Mr. Griggs?" she asked, turning to the American. "It will
+give me much pleasure, and I see you know Signor Reanda. This afternoon,
+if you like, at any time after four o'clock."
+
+Both Dalrymple and Griggs secretly wondered a little at receiving such
+an invitation from a Roman lady whom the one had met but once before,
+and to whom the other had but just been introduced. But they bowed their
+thanks, and promised to come.
+
+After a few more words they separated, Francesca and Reanda to pick out
+the engraving they wanted, and the other two men to return to their
+newspapers. By and bye Francesca passed them again, on her way out.
+
+"I shall expect you after four o'clock," she said, nodding graciously as
+she went by.
+
+Dalrymple looked after her, till she had left the shop.
+
+"That woman is not like other women, I think," he said thoughtfully, to
+his companion.
+
+The mask-like face turned itself deliberately towards him, with shadowy,
+unwinking eyes.
+
+"No," answered Griggs, and he slowly took up his paper again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+DONNA FRANCESCA received her three guests in the drawing-room, on the
+side of the house which she inhabited. Reanda was at his work in the
+great hall.
+
+Gloria entered first, followed closely by her father, and Francesca was
+dazzled by the young girl's brilliancy of colour and expression, though
+she had seen her once before. As she came in, the afternoon sun streamed
+upon her face and turned her auburn hair to red gold, and gleamed upon
+her small white teeth as her strong lips parted to speak the first
+words. She was tall and supple, graceful as a panther, and her voice
+rang and whispered and rang again in quick changes of tone, like a
+waterfall in the woods in summer. With much of her mother's beauty, she
+had inherited from her father the violent vitality of his youth. Yet she
+was not noisy, though her manners were not like Francesca's. Her voice
+rippled and rang, but she did not speak too loud. She moved swiftly and
+surely, but not with rude haste. Nevertheless, it seemed to Francesca
+that there must be some exaggeration somewhere. The elder woman at
+first set it down as a remnant of schoolgirl shyness, and then at once
+felt that she was mistaken, because there was not the smallest
+awkwardness nor lack of self-possession about it. The contrast between
+the young girl and Paul Griggs was so striking as to be almost violent.
+He was cold and funereal in his leonine strength, and his face was more
+like a mask than ever as he bowed and sat down in silence. When he did
+not remind her of a gladiator, he made her think of a black lion with a
+strange, human face, and eyes that were not exactly human, though they
+did not remind her of any animal's eyes which she had ever seen.
+
+As for Dalrymple, she thought that he was singularly haggard and worn
+for a man apparently only in middle age. There was a certain imposing
+air about him, which she liked. Besides, she rarely met foreigners, and
+they interested her. She noticed that both men wore black coats and
+carried their tall hats in their hands. They were therefore not artists,
+nor to be classed with artists. She was still young enough to judge them
+to some extent by details, to which people attached a good deal more
+importance at that time than at present. She made up her mind in the
+course of the next few minutes that both Dalrymple and Griggs belonged
+to her own class, though she did not ask herself where the young
+American had got his manners. But somehow, though Gloria fascinated her
+eyes and her ears, she set down the girl as being inferior to her
+father. She wondered whether Gloria's mother had not been an actress;
+which was a curious reflexion, considering that the dead woman had been
+of her own house and name.
+
+After exchanging a few words with her guests, Francesca suggested that
+they should cross to the other side and see the frescoes, adding that
+Reanda was probably still at work.
+
+"You know him, Mr. Griggs?" she said, as they all rose to leave the
+room.
+
+"Yes," he answered, "as one man knows another."
+
+"What does that mean?" asked Francesca, moving towards the door to lead
+the way.
+
+"It does not mean much," replied the young man, with curious ambiguity.
+
+He was very gentle in his manner, and spoke in a low voice and rather
+diffidently. She looked at him as though mentally determining to renew
+the question at some other time. Her first impression was that of a sort
+of duality about the man, as she found the possibility of a double
+meaning in his answer. His magnificent frame seemed to belong to one
+person, his voice and manner to another. Both might be good in their
+way, but her curiosity was excited by the side which was the less
+apparent.
+
+They all went through the house till they came to a door which divided
+the inhabited part from the hall in which Reanda was working. She
+knocked gently upon it with her knuckles, and then smiled as she saw
+Gloria looking at her.
+
+"We keep it locked," she said. "The masons come in the morning to lay on
+the stucco. One never trusts those people. Signor Reanda keeps the key
+of this door."
+
+The artist opened from within, and stood aside to let the party pass. He
+started perceptibly when he first saw Gloria. As a boy he had seen Maria
+Braccio more than once before she had entered the convent, and he was
+struck by the girl's strong resemblance to her. Francesca, following
+Gloria, saw his movement of surprise, and attributed it merely to
+admiration or astonishment such as she had felt herself a quarter of an
+hour earlier. She smiled a little as she went by, and Reanda knew that
+the smile was for him because he had shown surprise. He understood the
+misinterpretation, and resented it a little.
+
+But she knew Reanda well, and before ten minutes had passed she had
+convinced herself that he was repelled rather than attracted by the
+young girl, in spite of the latter's undisguised admiration of his work.
+It was not mere unintelligent enthusiasm, either, and he might well have
+been pleased and flattered by her unaffected praise.
+
+She was interested, too, in the technical mechanics of fresco-painting,
+which she had never before been able to see at close quarters.
+Everything interested Gloria, and especially everything connected with
+art. As soon as they had all spoken their first words of compliment and
+appreciation, she entered into conversation with the painter, asking him
+all sorts of questions, and listening earnestly to what he said, until
+he realized that she was certainly not assuming an appearance of
+admiration for the sake of flattering him.
+
+Meanwhile Francesca talked with Griggs, and Dalrymple, having gone
+slowly round the hall alone after all the others, came and stood beside
+the two and watched Francesca, occasionally offering a rather dry remark
+in a somewhat absent-minded way. It was all rather commonplace and
+decidedly quiet, and he was not much amused, though from time to time he
+seemed to become absorbed in studying Francesca's face, as though he saw
+something there which was past his comprehension. She noticed that he
+watched her, and felt a little uncomfortable under his steely blue eyes,
+so that she turned her head and talked more with Griggs than with him.
+Remembering what Reanda had told her of the young man's origin, she did
+not like to ask him the common questions about residence in Rome and his
+liking for Italy. She was self-possessed and ready enough at
+conversation, and she chose to talk of general subjects. They talked in
+Italian, of course. Dalrymple, as of old, spoke fluently, but with a
+strange accent. Any one would have taken Paul Griggs for a Roman. At
+last, almost in spite of herself, she made a remark about his speech.
+
+"I was born here," answered Griggs. "It is much more remarkable that
+Miss Dalrymple should speak Italian as she does, having been born in
+Scotland."
+
+"Are you talking about me?" asked the young girl, turning her head
+quickly, though she was standing with Reanda at some distance from the
+others.
+
+"I was speaking of your accent in Italian," said Griggs.
+
+"Is there anything wrong about it?" asked Gloria, with an anxiety that
+seemed exaggerated.
+
+"On the contrary," answered Donna Francesca, "Mr. Griggs was telling me
+how perfectly you speak. But I had noticed it."
+
+"Oh! I thought Mr. Griggs was finding fault," answered Gloria, turning
+to Reanda again.
+
+Dalrymple looked at his daughter as though he were annoyed. The eyes of
+Francesca and Griggs met for a moment. All three were aware that they
+resented the young girl's quick question as one which they themselves
+would not have asked in her place, had they accidentally heard their
+names mentioned in a distant conversation. But Francesca instantly went
+on with the subject.
+
+"To us Italians," she said, "it seems incredible that any one should
+speak our language and English equally well. It is as though you were
+two persons, Mr. Griggs," she added, smiling at the covered expression
+of her thought about him.
+
+"I sometimes think so myself," answered Griggs, with one of his steady
+looks. "In a way, every one must have a sort of duality--a good and evil
+principle."
+
+"God and the devil," suggested Francesca, simply.
+
+"Body and soul would do, I suppose. The one is always in slavery to the
+other. The result is a sinner or a saint, as the case may be. One never
+can tell," he added more carelessly. "I am not sure that it matters. But
+one can see it. The battle is fought in the face."
+
+"I do not understand. What battle?"
+
+"The battle between body and soul. The face tells which way the fight is
+going."
+
+She looked at his own, and she felt that she could not tell. But to a
+certain extent she understood him.
+
+"Griggs is full of theories," observed Dalrymple. "Gloria, come down!"
+he cried in English, suddenly.
+
+Gloria, intent upon understanding how fresco-painting was done, was
+boldly mounting the steps of the ladder towards the top of the little
+scaffolding, which might have been fourteen feet high. For the vault
+had long been finished, and Reanda was painting the walls.
+
+"Nonsense, papa!" answered the young girl, also in English. "There's no
+danger at all."
+
+"Well--don't break your neck," said Dalrymple. "I wish you would come
+down, though."
+
+Francesca was surprised at his indifference, and at his daughter's calm
+disregard of his authority. Timid, too, as most Italian women of higher
+rank, she watched the girl nervously. Griggs raised his eyes without
+lifting his head.
+
+"Gloria is rather wild," said Dalrymple, in a sort of apology. "I hope
+you will forgive her--she is so much interested."
+
+"Oh--if she wishes to see, let her go, of course," answered Francesca,
+concealing a little nervous irritation she felt.
+
+A moment later Gloria and Reanda were on the small platform, on one side
+of which only there was a hand rail. It had been made for him, and his
+head was steady even at a much greater elevation. He was pointing out to
+her the way in which the colours slowly changed as the stucco dried from
+day to day, and explaining how it was impossible to see the effect of
+what was done until all was completely dry. The others continued to talk
+below, but Griggs glanced up from time to time, and Francesca's eyes
+followed his. Dalrymple had become indifferent, allowing his daughter
+to do what she pleased, as usual.
+
+When Gloria had seen all she wished to see, she turned with a quick
+movement to come down again, and on turning, she found herself much
+nearer to the edge than she had expected. She was bending forwards a
+little, and Griggs saw at once that she must lose her balance, unless
+Reanda caught her from behind. But she made no sound, and turned very
+white as she swayed a little, trying to throw herself back.
+
+With a swift movement that was gentle but irresistible, Griggs pushed
+Francesca back, keeping his eyes on the girl above. It all happened in
+an instant.
+
+"Jump!" he cried, in a voice of command.
+
+She had felt that she must spring or fall, and her body was already
+overbalanced as she threw herself off, instinctively gathering her skirt
+with her hands. Dalrymple turned as pale as she. If she struck the bare
+brick floor, she could scarcely escape serious injury. But she did not
+reach it, for Paul Griggs caught her in his arms, swayed with her
+weight, then stood as steady as a rock, and set her gently upon her
+feet, beside her father.
+
+"Maria Santissima!" cried Francesca, terrified, though instantly
+relieved, and dimly understanding the stupendous feat of bodily strength
+which had just been done before her eyes.
+
+Above, Reanda leaned upon the single rail of the scaffolding with
+wide-staring eyes. Gloria was faint with the shock of fear, and grasped
+her father's arm.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he said roughly, in English, but
+in a low voice. "You probably owe your life to Mr. Griggs," he added,
+immediately regaining his self-possession.
+
+Griggs alone seemed wholly unmoved by what had happened. Gloria had held
+one of her gloves loosely in her hand, and it had fallen to the ground
+as she sprang. He picked it up and handed it to her with a curious
+gentleness.
+
+"It must be yours, Miss Dalrymple," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+IT was late before Reanda and Donna Francesca were alone together on
+that afternoon. When the first surprise and shock of Gloria's accident
+had passed, Francesca would not allow Dalrymple to take her away at
+once, as he seemed anxious to do. The girl was not in the least hurt,
+but she was still dazed and frightened. Francesca took them all back to
+the drawing-room and insisted upon giving them tea, because they were
+foreigners, and Gloria, she said, must naturally need something to
+restore her nerves. Roman tea, thirty years ago, was a strange and
+uncertain beverage, as both Gloria and her father knew, but they drank
+what Francesca gave them, and at last went away with many apologies for
+the disturbance they had made. To tell the truth, Francesca was glad
+when they were gone and she was at liberty to return to the hall where
+Reanda was still at work. She found him nervous and irritated. He came
+down from the scaffolding as soon as he heard her open the door. Neither
+spoke until she had seated herself in her accustomed chair, with a very
+frank sigh of relief.
+
+"I am very grateful to you, Donna Francesca," said Reanda, twisting his
+beard round his long, thin fingers, as he glanced at her and then
+surveyed his work.
+
+"It was your fault," she answered, tapping the worm-eaten arms of the
+old chair with both her white hands, for she herself was still annoyed
+and irritated. "Do not make me responsible for the girl's folly."
+
+"Responsibility! May that never be!" exclaimed the artist, in the common
+Italian phrase, but with a little irony. "But as for the responsibility,
+I do not know whose it was. It was certainly not I who invited the young
+lady to go up the ladder."
+
+"Well, it was her fault. Besides, the absent are always wrong. But she
+is handsome, is she not?"
+
+Reanda shrugged his thin shoulders, and looked critically at his hands,
+which were smeared with paint.
+
+"Very handsome," he said indifferently. "But it is a beauty that says
+nothing to me. One must be young to like that kind of beauty. She is a
+beautiful storm, that young lady. For one who seeks peace--" He shrugged
+his shoulders again. "And then, her manners! I do not understand
+English, but I know that her father was telling her to come down, and
+yet she went up. I do not know what education these foreigners have.
+Instruction, yes, as much as you please; but education, no. They have no
+more than barbarians. The father says, 'You must not do that.' And the
+daughter does it. What education is that? Of course, if they were
+friends of yours, I should not say it."
+
+"Nevertheless that girl is very handsome," insisted Francesca. "She has
+the Venetian colouring. Titian would have painted her just as she is,
+without changing anything."
+
+"Beauty, beauty!" exclaimed Reanda, impatiently. "Of course, it is
+beauty! Food for the brush, that says nothing to the heart. The devil
+can also take the shape of a beautiful woman. That is it. There is
+something in that young lady's face--how shall I say? It pleases
+me--little! You must forgive me, princess. My nerves are shaken. Divine
+goodness! To see a young girl flying through the air like Simon Magus!
+It was enough!"
+
+Francesca laughed gently. Reanda shook his head with slow
+disapprobation, and frowned.
+
+"I say the truth," he said. "There is something--I cannot explain. But I
+can show you," he added quickly.
+
+He took up his palette and brushes from the chair on which they lay, and
+reached the white plastered wall in two steps.
+
+"Paint her," said Francesca, to encourage him.
+
+"Yes, I will show her to you--as I think she is," he answered.
+
+He closed his eyes for a moment, calling up the image before him, then
+went back to the chair and took a quantity of colour from a tube which
+lay, with half-a-dozen others, in the hollow of the rush seat. They were
+not the colours he used for fresco-painting, but had been left there
+when he had made a sketch of a head two or three days previously. In a
+moment he was before the wall again. It was roughly plastered from the
+floor to the lower line of the frescoes. With a long, coarse brush he
+began to sketch a gigantic head of a woman. The oil paint lay well on
+the rough, dry surface. He worked in great strokes at the full length of
+his arm.
+
+"Make her beautiful, at least," said Francesca, watching him.
+
+"Oh, yes--very beautiful," he answered.
+
+He worked rapidly for a few minutes, smiling, as his hand moved, but not
+pleasantly. Francesca thought there was an evil look in his face which
+she had never seen there before, and that his smile was wicked and
+spiteful.
+
+"But you are painting a sunset!" she cried suddenly.
+
+"A sunset? That is her hair. It is red, and she has much of it. Wait a
+little."
+
+And he went on. It was certainly something like a sunset, the bright,
+waving streamers of the clouds flying far to right and left, and
+blending away to the neutral tint of the dry plaster as though to a grey
+sky.
+
+"Yes, but it is still a sunset," said Francesca. "I have seen it like
+that from the Campagna in winter."
+
+"She is not 'Gloria' for nothing," answered Reanda. "I am making her
+glorious. You shall see."
+
+Suddenly, with another tone, he brought out the main features of the
+striking face, by throwing in strong shadows from the flaming hair.
+Francesca became more interested. The head was colossal, extraordinary,
+almost unearthly; the expression was strange.
+
+"What a monster!" exclaimed Francesca at last, as he stood aside, still
+touching the enormous sketch here and there with his long brush, at
+arm's length. "It is terrible," she added, in a lower tone.
+
+"Truth is always terrible," answered Reanda. "But you cannot say that it
+is not like her."
+
+"Horribly like. It is diabolical!"
+
+"And yet it is a beautiful head," said the artist. "Perhaps you are too
+near." He himself crossed the hall, and then turned round to look at his
+work. "It is better from here," he said. "Will you come?"
+
+She went to his side. The huge face and wildly streaming hair stood out
+as though in three dimensions from the wall. The great, strong mouth
+smiled at her with a smile that was at once evil and sad and fatal. The
+strange eyes looked her through and through from beneath the vast brow.
+
+"It is diabolical, satanical!" she responded, under her breath.
+
+Reanda still smiled wickedly and watched her. The face seemed to grow
+and grow till it filled the whole range of vision. The dark eyes
+flashed; the lips trembled; the flaming hair quivered and waved and
+curled up like snakes that darted hither and thither. Yet it was
+horribly like Gloria, and the fresh, rich oil colours gave it her
+startling and vivid brilliancy.
+
+It was the sudden and enormous expression of a man of genius, strung and
+stung, till irritation had to find its explosion through the one art of
+which he was absolute master--in a fearful caricature exaggerating
+beauty itself to the bounds of the devilish.
+
+"I cannot bear it!" cried Francesca.
+
+She snatched the big brush from his hand, and, running lightly across
+the room, dashed the colour left in it across the face in all
+directions, over the eyes and the mouth, and through the long red hair.
+In ten seconds nothing remained but confused daubs and splashes of
+brilliant paint.
+
+"There!" cried Francesca. "And I wish I had never seen it!"
+
+Still holding the brush in her hand, she turned her back to the
+obliterated sketch and faced Reanda, with a look of girlish defiance and
+satisfaction. His face was grave now, but he seemed pleased with what he
+had done.
+
+"It makes no difference," he said. "You will never forget it."
+
+He felt that he was revenged for the smile she had bestowed upon his
+apparent surprise at Gloria's beauty, when she had followed the girl
+into the hall, and had seen him start. He could not conceal his triumph.
+
+"That is the young lady whom you thought I might wish to marry," he
+said. "You know me little after so many years, Donna Francesca. You have
+bestowed much kindness upon a man whom you do not know."
+
+"My dear Reanda, who can understand you? But as for kindness, do not let
+me hear the word between you and me. It has no meaning. We are always
+good friends, as we were when I was a little girl and used to play with
+your paints. You have given me far more than I can ever repay you for,
+in your works. I do not flatter you, my friend. Cupid and Psyche, there
+in your frescoes, will outlive me and be famous when I am forgotten--yet
+they are mine, are they not? And you gave them to me."
+
+The sweet young face turned to him with an unaffected, grateful smile.
+His sad features softened all at once.
+
+"Ah, Donna Francesca," he said gently, "you have given me something
+better than Cupid and Psyche, for your gift will live forever in
+heaven."
+
+She looked thoughtfully into his eyes, but with a sort of question in
+her own.
+
+"Your dear friendship," he added, bending his head a little. Then he
+laughed suddenly. "Do not give me a wife," he concluded.
+
+"And you, Reanda--do not make wicked caricatures of women you have only
+seen once! Besides, I go back to it again. I saw you start when she
+passed you at the door. You were surprised at her beauty. You must admit
+that. And then, because you are irritated with her, you take a brush and
+daub that monstrous thing upon the wall! It is a shame!"
+
+"I started, yes. It was not because she struck me as beautiful. It was
+something much more strange. Do you know? She is the very portrait of
+Donna Maria, who was in the Carmelite convent at Subiaco, and who was
+burned to death. I have often told you that I remembered having seen her
+when I was a boy, both at Gerano and at the Palazzo Braccio, before she
+took the veil. There is a little difference in the colouring, I think,
+and much in the expression. But the rest--it is the image!"
+
+Francesca, who could not remember her ill-fated kinswoman, was not much
+impressed by Reanda's statement.
+
+"It makes your caricature all the worse," she answered, "since it was
+also a caricature of that holy woman. As for the resemblance, after all
+these years, it is a mere impression. Who knows? It may be. There is no
+portrait of Sister Maria Addolorata."
+
+"Oh, but I remember well!" insisted Reanda.
+
+"Well, it concludes nothing, after all," returned Francesca, with much
+logic. "It does not make a fiend of the poor nun, who is an angel by
+this time, and it does not make Miss Dalrymple less beautiful. And now,
+Signor Painter," she added, with another girlish laugh, "if we have
+quarrelled enough to restore your nerves, I am going out. It is almost
+dark, and I have to go to the Austrian Embassy before dinner, and the
+carriage has been waiting for an hour."
+
+"You, princess!" exclaimed Reanda, in surprise; for she had not begun to
+go into the world yet since her husband's death.
+
+"It is not a reception. We are to meet there about arranging another of
+those charity concerts for the deaf and dumb."
+
+"I might have known," answered the painter. "As for me, I shall go to
+the theatre to-night. There is the Trovatore."
+
+"That is a new thing for you, too. But I am glad. Amuse yourself, and
+tell me about the singing to-morrow. Remember to lock the door and take
+the key. I do not trust the masons in the morning."
+
+"Do I ever forget?" asked Reanda. "But I will lock it now, as you go
+out; for it is late, and I shall go upstairs."
+
+"Good night," said Francesca, as she turned to leave the room.
+
+"And you forgive the caricature?" asked Reanda, holding the door open
+for her to pass.
+
+"I would forgive you many things," she answered, smiling as she went
+by.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+IN those days the Trovatore was not an old-fashioned opera. It was not
+'threshed-out,' to borrow the vigorous German phrase. Wagner had not
+eclipsed melody with 'tone-poetry,' nor made men feel more than they
+could hear. Many of the great things of this century-ending had not been
+done then, nor even dreamed of, and even musicians listened to the
+Trovatore with pleasure, not dreaming of the untried strength that lay
+waiting in Verdi's vast reserve. It was then the music of youth. To us
+it seems but the music of childhood. Many of us cannot listen to
+Manrico's death-song from the tower without hearing the grind-organ upon
+which its passion has grown so pathetically poor. But one could
+understand that music. The mere statement that it was comprehensible
+raises a smile to-day. It appealed to simple feelings. We are no longer
+satisfied with such simplicity, and even long for powers that do not
+appeal, but twist us with something stronger than our hardened selves,
+until we ourselves appeal to the unknown, in a sort of despairing
+ecstasy of unsatisfied delight, asking of possibility to stretch itself
+out to the impossible. We are in a strange phase of development. We see
+the elaborately artificial world-scape painted by Science on the curtain
+close before our eyes, but our restless hands are thrust through it and
+beyond, opening eagerly and shutting on nothing, though we know that
+something is there.
+
+Angelo Reanda was passionately fond of what was called music in Italy
+more than thirty years ago. He had the true ear and the facile memory
+for melody common to Italians, who are a singing people, if not a
+musical race, and which constituted a talent for music when music was
+considered to be a succession of sounds rather than a series of sensuous
+impressions. He could listen to an opera, understand it without thought,
+enjoy it simply, and remember it without difficulty, like thousands of
+other Romans. Most of us would willingly go back to such childlike
+amusements if we could. A few possess the power even now, and are looked
+upon with friendly contempt by their more cultured, and therefore more
+tortured, musical acquaintances, whose dream it is to be torn to very
+rags in the delirium of orchestral passion.
+
+Reanda went to the Apollo Theatre in search of merely pleasurable
+sensations, and he got exactly what he wanted. The old house was
+brilliant even in those days, less with light than with jewels, it is
+true, but perhaps that illumination was as good as any other. The Roman
+ladies and the ladies of the great embassies used then to sit through
+the whole evening in their boxes, and it was the privilege, as it is
+still in Rome, of the men in the stalls and pit to stand up between the
+acts and admire them and their diamonds as much as they pleased. The
+light was dim enough, compared with what we have nowadays; for gas was
+but just introduced in a few of the principal streets, and the lamps in
+the huge chandelier at the Apollo, and in the brackets around the house,
+were filled with the olive oil which to-day dresses the world's salad.
+But it was a soft warm light, with rich yellow in it, which penetrated
+the shadows and beautified all it touched.
+
+Reanda, like the others, stood up and looked about him after the first
+act. His eyes were instantly arrested by Gloria's splendid hair, which
+caught the light from above. She was seated in the front of a box on the
+third tier, the second row of boxes being almost exclusively reserved in
+those days. Dalrymple was beside his daughter, and the dark, still face
+of Paul Griggs was just visible in the shadow.
+
+Gloria saw the artist almost immediately, for he could not help looking
+at her curiously, comparing her face with the mad sketch he had made on
+the wall. She nodded to him, and then spoke to her father, evidently
+calling his attention to Reanda, for Dalrymple looked down at once, and
+also nodded, while Griggs leaned forward a little and stared vacantly
+into the pit.
+
+"It is an obsession to-day," said Reanda to himself, reflecting that
+though the girl lived in Rome he had never noticed her before, and had
+now seen her twice on the same day.
+
+He mentally added the reflexion that she must have good nerves, and that
+most young girls would be at home with a headache after such a narrow
+escape as hers. She was quite as handsome as he had thought, however,
+and even more so, now that he saw her in her girlish evening gown, which
+was just a little open at the throat, and without even the simplest of
+ornaments. The white material and the shadow around and behind her threw
+her head into strong relief.
+
+The curtain went up again, and Reanda sat down and watched the
+performance and listened to the simple, stirring melodies. But he was
+uncomfortably conscious that Gloria was looking at the back of his head
+from her box. Nervous people know the unpleasant sensation which such a
+delusion can produce. Reanda moved uneasily in his seat, and looked
+round more than once, just far enough to catch sight of Gloria's hair
+without looking up into her eyes.
+
+His thoughts were disturbed, and he recalled vividly the face of the
+dead nun, which he had seen long ago. The resemblance was certainly
+strong. Maria Addolorata had sometimes had a strange expression which
+was quite her own, and which he had not yet seen in Gloria. But he felt
+that he should see it some day. He was sure of it, so sure that he had
+thrown its full force into the sketch on the wall, knowing that it would
+startle Donna Francesca. It was not possible that two women should be so
+much alike and yet that one of them should never have that look. Perhaps
+Gloria had it now and was staring at the back of his head.
+
+An unaccountable nervousness took possession of the sensitive man, and
+he suffered as he sat there. After the curtain dropped he rose and left
+the theatre without looking up, and crossed the narrow street to a
+little coffee shop familiar to him for many years. He drank a cup of
+coffee, broke off the end of a thin black Roman cigar, and smoked for a
+few minutes before he returned.
+
+Gloria had not moved, but Griggs was either gone or had retired further
+back into the shadow. Dalrymple was leaning back in his chair, bony and
+haggard, one of his great hands hanging listlessly over the front of the
+box. Reanda sat down again, and determined that he would not turn round
+before the end of the act. But it was of no use. He irritated his
+neighbours on each side by his restlessness, and his forehead was moist
+as though he were suffering great pain. Again he faced about and stared
+upwards at the box. Gloria, to his surprise, was not looking at him, but
+in the shadow he met the inscrutable eyes of Paul Griggs, fixed upon him
+as though they would never look away. But he cared very little whether
+Griggs looked at him or not. He faced the stage again and was more
+quiet.
+
+It was a good performance, and he began to be glad that he had come. The
+singers were young, the audience was inclined to applaud, and everything
+went smoothly. Reanda thought the soprano rather weak in the great tower
+scene.
+
+          "Calpesta il mio cadavere, ma salva il Trovator!"
+
+she sang in great ascending intervals.
+
+Reanda sighed, for she made no impression on him, and he remembered that
+he had been deeply impressed, even thrilled, when he had first heard the
+phrase. He had realized the situation then and had felt with Leonora.
+Perhaps he had grown too old to feel that sort of young emotion any
+more. He sighed regretfully as he rose from his seat. Looking up once
+more, he saw that Gloria was putting on her cloak, her back turned to
+the theatre. He waited a moment and then moved on with the crowd, to get
+his coat from the cloak-room.
+
+He went out and walked slowly up the Via di Tordinona. It was a dark
+and narrow street in those days. The great old-fashioned lanterns were
+swung up with their oil lamps in them, by long levers held in place by
+chains locked to the wall. Here and there over a low door a red light
+showed that wine was sold in a basement which was almost a cellar. The
+crowd from the theatre hurried along close by the walls, in constant
+danger from the big coaches that dashed past, bringing the Roman ladies
+home, for all had to pass through that narrow street. Landaus were not
+yet invented, and the heavy carriages rumbled loudly through the
+darkness, over the small paving-stones. But the people on foot were used
+to them, and stood pressed against the walls as they went by, or grouped
+for a moment on the low doorsteps of the dark houses.
+
+Reanda went with the rest. He might have gone the other way, by the
+Banchi Vecchi, from the bridge of Sant' Angelo, and it would have been
+nearer, but he had a curious fancy that the Dalrymples might walk home,
+and that he might see Gloria again. Though it was not yet winter, the
+night was bright and cold, and it was pleasant to walk. The regular
+season at the Apollo Theatre did not begin until Christmas, but there
+were often good companies there at other times of the year.
+
+The artist walked on, glancing at the groups he passed in the dim
+street, but neither pausing nor hurrying. He meant to let fate have her
+own way with him that night.
+
+Fate was not far off. He had gone on some distance, and the crowd had
+dispersed in various directions, till he was almost alone as he emerged
+into the open space where the Via del Clementino intersects the Ripetta.
+At that moment he heard a wild and thrilling burst of song.
+
+          "Calpesta il mio cadavere, ma salva il Trovator!"
+
+The great soprano rang out upon the midnight silence, like the voice of
+a despairing archangel, and there was nothing more.
+
+"Hush!" exclaimed a man's voice energetically.
+
+Two or three windows were opened high up, for no one had ever heard such
+a woman's voice in the streets before. Reanda peered before him through
+the gloom, saw three people standing at the next corner, and hastened
+his long steps. An instinct he could not explain told him that Gloria
+had sung the short strain, which had left him cold and indifferent when
+he had heard it in the theatre. He was neither now, and he was possessed
+by the desire to be sure that it had been she.
+
+He was not mistaken. Griggs had recognized him first, and they had
+waited for him at the corner.
+
+"It is an unexpected pleasure to meet twice in the same day," said
+Reanda.
+
+"The pleasure is ours," answered Dalrymple, in the correct phrase, but
+with his peculiar accent. "I suppose you heard my daughter's screams,"
+he added drily. "She was explaining to us how a particular phrase should
+be sung."
+
+"Was I not right?" asked Gloria, quickly appealing to Reanda with the
+certainty of support.
+
+"A thousand times right," he answered. "How could one be wrong with such
+a voice?"
+
+Gloria was pleased, and they all walked on together till they reached
+the door of Dalrymple's lodging.
+
+"Come in and have supper with us," said the Scotchman, who seemed to be
+less gloomy than usual. "I suppose you live in our neighbourhood?"
+
+"No. In the Palazzetto Borgia, where I work."
+
+"This is not exactly on your way home, then," observed Gloria. "You may
+as well rest and refresh yourself."
+
+Reanda accepted the invitation, wondering inwardly at the assurance of
+the foreign girl. With her Italian speech she should have had Italian
+manners, he thought. The three men all carried tapers, as was then
+customary, and they all lit them before they ascended the dark
+staircase.
+
+"This is an illumination," said Dalrymple, looking back as he led the
+way.
+
+Gloria stopped suddenly, and looked round. She was following her father,
+and Reanda came after her, Griggs being the last.
+
+"One, two, three," she counted, and her eyes met Reanda's.
+
+Without the slightest hesitation, she blew out the taper he held in his
+hand. But, for one instant, he had seen in her face the expression of
+the dead nun, distinct in the clear light, and close to his eyes.
+
+"Why did you do that?" asked Dalrymple, who had turned his head again,
+as the taper was extinguished.
+
+"Three lights mean death," said Gloria, promptly; and she laughed, as
+she went quickly up the steps.
+
+"It is true," answered Reanda, in a low voice, as he followed her; and
+it occurred to him that in a flash he had seen death written in the
+brilliant young face.
+
+Ten minutes later, they were seated around the table in the Dalrymples'
+small dining-room. Reanda noticed that everything he saw there evidently
+belonged to the hired lodging, from the old-fashioned Italian silver
+forks, battered and crooked at the prongs, to the heavy cut-glass
+decanters, stained with age and use, at the neck, and between the
+diamond-shaped cuttings. There was supper enough for half-a-dozen
+people, however, and an extraordinary quantity of wine. Dalrymple
+swallowed a big tumbler of it before he ate anything. Paul Griggs filled
+his glass to the brim, and looked at it. He had hardly spoken since
+Reanda had joined the party.
+
+The artist made an effort to be agreeable, feeling that the invitation
+had been a very friendly one, considering the slight acquaintance he had
+with the Dalrymples, an acquaintance not yet twenty-four hours old.
+Presently he asked Gloria if she had felt no ill effects from her
+extraordinary accident in the afternoon.
+
+"I had not thought about it again," she answered. "I have thought of
+nothing but your painting all the evening, until that woman sang that
+phrase as though she were asking the Conte di Luna for more strawberries
+and cream."
+
+She laughed, but her eyes were fixed on his face.
+
+          "'Un altro po' di fravole, e dammi crema ancor,'"
+
+she sang softly, in the Roman dialect.
+
+Then she laughed again, and Reanda smiled at the absurd words--"A few
+more strawberries, and give me some more cream." But even the few notes,
+a lazy parody of the prima donna's singing of the phrase, charmed his
+simple love of melody.
+
+"Don't look so grim, papa," she said in English. "Nobody can hear me
+here, you know."
+
+"I should not think anybody would wish to," answered the Scotchman; but
+he spoke in Italian, in consideration of his guest, who did not
+understand English.
+
+"I do not know why you are always so angry if I sing anything foolish,"
+said the young girl, going back to Italian. "One cannot be always
+serious. But I was talking about your frescoes, Signor Reanda. I have
+thought of nothing else."
+
+Again her eyes met the artist's, but fell before his. He was too great a
+painter not to know the value of such flattering speeches in general,
+and in a way he was inclined to resent the girl's boldness. But at the
+same time, it was hard to believe that she was not really in earnest,
+for she had that power of sudden gravity which lends great weight to
+little speeches. In spite of himself, and perhaps rightly, he believed
+her. Paul Griggs did not, and he watched her curiously.
+
+"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked, turning upon him with a
+little show of temper.
+
+"If your father will allow me to say so, you are the object most worth
+looking at in the room," answered the young man, calmly.
+
+"You will make her vain with your pretty speeches, Griggs," said
+Dalrymple.
+
+"I doubt that," answered Griggs.
+
+He relapsed into silence, and drained a big tumbler of wine. Reanda
+suspected, with a shrewd intuition, that the American admired Gloria,
+but that she did not like him much.
+
+"Miss Dalrymple is doing her best to make me vain with her praise," said
+Reanda.
+
+"I never flattered any one in my life," answered Gloria. "Signor Reanda
+is the greatest painter in Italy. Everybody says so. It would be foolish
+of me to even pretend that after seeing him at work I had thought of
+anything else. We have all said, this evening, that the frescoes were
+wonderful, and that no one, not even Raphael, who did the same thing,
+has ever had a more beautiful idea of the history of Cupid and Psyche.
+Why should we not tell the truth, just because he happens to be here?
+How illogical you are!"
+
+"I believe I excepted Raphael," said Dalrymple, with his national
+accuracy. "But Signor Reanda will not quarrel with me on that account, I
+am sure."
+
+"But I did not except Raphael, nor any one," persisted Gloria, before
+Reanda could speak.
+
+"Really, Signorina, though I am mortal and susceptible, you go a little
+too far. Flattery is not appreciation, you know."
+
+"It is not flattery," she answered, and the colour rose in her face. "I
+am quite in earnest. Nobody ever painted anything better than your Cupid
+and Psyche. Raphael's is dull and uninteresting compared with it."
+
+"I blush, but I cannot accept so much," said the Italian, smiling
+politely, but still trying to discover whether she meant what she said
+or not.
+
+In spite of himself, as before, he continued to believe her, though his
+judgment told him that hers could not be worth much. But he was pleased
+to have made such an impression, and by quick degrees his prejudice
+against her began to disappear. What had seemed like boldness in her no
+longer shocked him, and he described it to himself as the innocent
+frankness of a foreign girl. It was not possible that any one so like
+the dead Maria Braccio could be vulgar or bold. From that moment he
+began to rank Gloria as belonging to the higher sphere from which his
+birth excluded him. It was a curious and quick transition, and he would
+not have admitted that it was due to her exaggerated praise of his work.
+Strange as it must seem to those not familiar with the almost impassable
+barriers of old Italian society, Reanda had that evening, for the first
+time in his life, the sensation of being liked, admired, and talked with
+by a woman of Francesca Campodonico's class; stranger still, it was one
+of the most delicious sensations he had ever experienced. Yet the woman
+in question was but a girl not yet seventeen years old. Before he rose
+to go home, he unconsciously resented Griggs's silent admiration for
+Gloria. To the average Italian, such silence is a sign that a man is in
+love, and Reanda was the more attracted to Gloria because she treated
+Griggs with such perfect indifference.
+
+It was nearly one o'clock when he lighted his taper to descend the
+stairs. Griggs was also ready to go. It was a relief to know that he was
+not going to stay behind and talk with Gloria. They went down in
+silence.
+
+"I wanted to ask you a question," said the American, as they came out
+upon the street, and blew out their tapers. "We live in opposite
+directions, so I must ask it now. Should you mind, if I wrote an article
+on your frescoes for a London paper?"
+
+"Mind!" exclaimed the artist, with a sudden revulsion of feeling in
+favour of the journalist. "I should be delighted--flattered."
+
+"No," said Griggs, coldly. "I shall not write as Miss Dalrymple talks.
+But I shall try and do you justice, and that is a good deal, when one is
+a serious artist, as you are."
+
+Reanda was struck by the cool moderation of the words, which expressed
+his own modest judgment of himself almost too exactly to be agreeable
+after Gloria's unlimited praise. He thanked Griggs warmly, however, and
+they shook hands before they parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THREE months passed, and Reanda was intimate with the Dalrymples. It was
+natural enough, considering the circumstances. They lived much alone,
+and Reanda was like them in this respect, for he rarely went where he
+was obliged to talk. During the day he saw much of Donna Francesca, but
+when it grew dark in the early afternoons of midwinter, the artist was
+thrown upon his own resources. In former years he had now and then done
+as many of the other artists did, and had sometimes for a month or two
+spent most of his evenings at the eating-house where he dined, in
+company with half-a-dozen others who frequented the same establishment.
+Each dropped in, at any hour that chanced to suit him, ate his supper,
+pushed back his chair, and joined in the general conversation, smoking,
+and drinking coffee or a little wine, until it was time to go home.
+There were grey-headed painters who had hardly been absent more than a
+few days in five and twenty years from their accustomed tables at such
+places as the Falcone, the Gabbione, or the Genio. But Reanda had never
+joined in any of these little circles for longer than a month or two,
+by which time he had exhausted the stock of his companions' ideas, and
+returned to solitude and his own thoughts. For he had something which
+they had not, besides his greater talent, his broader intelligence, and
+his deeper artistic insight. Donna Francesca's refining influence
+exerted itself continually upon him, and made much of the common
+conversation tiresome or disagreeable to him. A man whose existence is
+penetrated by the presence of a rarely refined woman seldom cares much
+for the daily society of men. He prefers to be alone, when he cannot be
+with her.
+
+Reanda believed that what he felt for Francesca was a devoted and almost
+devout friendship. The fact that before many weeks had passed after his
+first meeting with Gloria he was perceptibly in love with the girl,
+while he felt not the smallest change in his relations with Donna
+Francesca, satisfactorily proved to him that he was right. It would not
+have been like an Italian and a Latin to compare his feelings for the
+two women by imaginary tests, as, for instance, by asking himself for
+which of the two he would make the greater sacrifice. He took it for
+granted that the one sentiment was friendship and the other love, and he
+acted accordingly.
+
+He was distrustful, indeed, and very suspicious, but not of himself.
+Gloria treated him too well. Her eyes told him more than he felt able to
+believe. It was not natural that a girl so young and fresh and
+beautiful, with the world before her, should fall in love with a man of
+his age. That, at least, was what he thought. But the fact that it was
+unnatural did not prevent it from taking place.
+
+Reanda ignored certain points of great importance. In the first place,
+Gloria had not really the world before her. Her little sphere was
+closely limited by her father's morose selfishness, which led him to
+keep her in Rome because he liked the place himself, and to keep away
+from his countrymen, whom he detested as heartily as Britons living
+abroad sometimes do. On the other hand, a vague dread lest the story of
+his marriage might some day come to the light kept him away from Roman
+society. He had fallen back upon artistic Bohemia for such company as he
+wanted, which was little enough, and as his child grew up he had not
+understood that she was developing early and coming to womanhood while
+she was still under the care of the governess he had provided. He had
+not even made any plans for her future, for he did not love her, though
+he indulged her as a selfish and easy means of fulfilling his paternal
+obligations. It was to get rid of her importunity that he began to take
+her to the houses of some of the married artists when she was only
+sixteen years old, though she looked at least two years older.
+
+But in such society as that, Reanda was easily first, apart from the
+talent which placed him at the head of the whole artistic profession. He
+had been brought up, taught, and educated among gentlemen, sons of one
+of the oldest and most fastidious aristocracies in Europe, and he had
+their manners, their speech, their quiet air of superiority, and
+especially that exterior gentleness and modesty of demeanour which most
+touches some women. In Gloria's opinion, he even had much of their
+appearance, being tall, thin, and dark. Accustomed as she was to living
+with her father, who was gloomy and morose, and to seeing much of Paul
+Griggs, whose powers of silence were phenomenal at that time, Reanda's
+easy grace of conversation charmed and flattered her. He was, by many
+degrees, the superior in talent, in charm, in learning, to any one she
+had ever met, and it must not be forgotten that although he was twenty
+years older than she, he was not yet forty, and that, as he had not a
+grey hair in his head, he could still pass for a young man, though his
+grave disposition made him feel older than he was. Of the three
+melancholic men in whose society she chiefly lived, her father was
+selfish and morose; Griggs was gentle, but silent and incomprehensible,
+though he exerted an undoubted influence over her; Reanda alone, though
+naturally melancholy, was at once gentle, companionable, and talkative
+with her.
+
+Dalrymple accepted the intimacy with indifference and even with a
+certain satisfaction. In his reflexions, he characterized Reanda as a
+rare combination of the great artist and the gentleman. Since Gloria had
+known him she had grown more quiet. She admired him and imitated his
+manner. It was a good thing. He was glad, too, that Reanda was not
+married, for it would have been a nuisance, thought Dalrymple, to have
+the man's wife always about and expecting to be amused.
+
+It began to occur to him that Reanda might be falling in love with
+Gloria, and he did not resent the idea. In fact, though at first sight
+it should have seemed strange to an Englishman, he looked upon the idea
+with favour. He wished to live out his life in Italy, for he had got
+that fierce affection for the country which has overcome and bound many
+northern men, from Sir John Hawkwood to Landor and Browning. Though he
+did not love Gloria, he was attached to her in his own way, and did not
+wish to lose sight of her altogether. But, in consequence of his own
+irregular marriage, he could not marry her to a man of his own rank in
+Rome, who would not fail to make inquiries about her mother. It was most
+natural that he should look upon such a man as Reanda with favour.
+Reanda had many good qualities. Dalrymple's judgment was generally keen
+enough about people, and he had understood that such a woman as Donna
+Francesca Campodonico would certainly not make a personal friend of a
+painter, and allow him to occupy rooms in her palace, unless his
+character were altogether above suspicion.
+
+Gloria was, of course, too young to be married yet, though she seemed to
+be so entirely grown up and altogether a woman. In this respect
+Dalrymple was not prejudiced. His own mother had been married at the age
+of seventeen, and he had lived long in Italy, where early marriages were
+common enough. There could certainly be no serious objection to the
+match on that score, when another year should have passed.
+
+Dalrymple's only anxiety about his daughter concerned her strong
+inclination to be a public singer. The prejudice was by no means
+extraordinary, and as a Scotchman, it had even more weight with him than
+it could have had, for instance, with an Italian. Reanda entirely agreed
+with him on this point, and when Gloria spoke of it, he never failed to
+draw a lively picture of the drawbacks attending stage life. The artist
+spoke very strongly, for one of Gloria's earliest and chiefest
+attractions in his eyes had been the certainty he felt that she belonged
+to Francesca's class. For that reason her flattering admiration had
+brought with it a peculiar savour, especially delightful to the taste of
+a man of humble origin. Dalrymple did not understand that, but he knew
+that if Gloria married the great painter, the latter would effectually
+keep her from the stage.
+
+As for Griggs, the Scotchman was well aware that the poor young
+journalist might easily fall in love with the beautiful girl. But this
+did not deter him at all from having Griggs constantly at the house.
+Griggs was the only man he had ever met who did not bore him, who could
+be silent for an hour at a time, who could swallow as much strong wine
+as he without the slightest apparent effect upon his manner, who
+understood all he said, though sometimes saying things which he could
+not understand--in short, Griggs was a necessity to him. The young man
+was perhaps aware of the fact, and he found Dalrymple congenial to his
+own temper; but he was as excessively proud as he was extremely poor, at
+that time, and he managed to refuse the greater part of the hospitality
+offered to him, simply because he could not return it. It was very
+rarely that he accepted an invitation to a meal, though he now generally
+came in the evening, besides meeting Dalrymple almost every morning when
+they went to the bookseller's together.
+
+He puzzled the Scotchman strangely. He was an odd combination of a
+thinker and an athlete, half literary man, half gladiator. The common
+phrase 'an old head on young shoulders' described him as well as any
+phrase could. The shoulders were perhaps the more remarkable, but the
+head was not to be despised. A man who could break a horseshoe and tear
+in two a pack of cards, and who spent his spare time in studying Hegel
+and Kant, when he was not writing political correspondence for
+newspapers, deserved to be considered an exception. He seemed to have no
+material wants, and yet he had the animal power of enjoying material
+things even in excess, which is rare. He had a couple of rooms in the
+Via della Frezza, between the Corso and the Ripetta, where he lived in a
+rather mysterious way, though he made no secret about it. Occasionally
+an acquaintance climbed the steep stairs, but no one ever got him to
+open the door nor to give any sign that he was at home, if he were
+within. A one-eyed cobbler acted as porter downstairs, from morning till
+night, astride upon his bench and ever at work, an ill-savoured old pipe
+in his mouth.
+
+"You may try," he answered, when any one asked for Griggs. "Who knows?
+Perhaps Sor Paolo will open. Try a little, if you have patience."
+
+Patience being exhausted, the visitor came down the five flights again,
+and remonstrated with the cobbler.
+
+"I did not say anything," he would reply, in a cloud of smoke. "Many
+have tried. I told you to try. Am I to tell you that no one has ever
+got in? Why? To disoblige you? If you want anything of Sor Paolo, say
+it to me. Or come again."
+
+"But he will not open," objected the visitor.
+
+"Oh, that is true," returned the man of one eye. "But if you wish to
+try, I am not here to hinder you. This is the truth."
+
+Now and then, some one more inquisitive suggested that there might be a
+lady in the question. The one eye then fixed itself in a vacant stare.
+
+"Females?" the cobbler would exclaim. "Not even cats. What passes
+through your head? He is alone always. If you do not believe me, you can
+try. I do not say Sor Paolo will not open the door. A door is a door, to
+be opened."
+
+"But since I have tried!"
+
+"And I, what can I do? You have come, you have seen, you have knocked,
+and no one has opened. May the Madonna accompany you! I can do nothing."
+
+So even the most importunate of visitors departed at last. But Griggs
+had taken Dalrymple up to his lodgings more than once, and they had sat
+there for an hour talking over books. Dalrymple observed, indeed, that
+Griggs was more inclined to talk in his own rooms than anywhere else,
+and that his manner then changed so much as to make him almost seem to
+be a different man. There was a look of interest in the stony mask, and
+there was a light in the deep-set eyes which neither wine nor wit could
+bring there at other times. The man wore his armour against the world,
+as it were, a tough shell made up of a poor man's pride, and solid with
+that sense of absolute physical superiority which is an element in the
+character of strong men, and which the Scotchman understood. He himself
+had been of the strong, but not always the strongest. Paul Griggs had
+never yet been matched by any man since he had first got his growth. He
+was the equal of many in intellect, but his bodily strength was not
+equalled by any in his youth and manhood. The secret of his one
+well-hidden vanity lay in that. His moral power showed itself in his
+assumed modesty about it, for it was almost impossible to prevail upon
+him to make exhibition of it. Gloria alone seemed able to induce him,
+for her especial amusement, to break a silver dollar with his fingers,
+or tear a pack of cards, and then only in the presence of her father or
+Reanda, but never before other people.
+
+"You are the strongest man in the world, are you not?" she asked him
+once.
+
+"Yes," he answered. "I probably am, if it is I. I am vain of it, but not
+proud of it. That makes me think sometimes that I am two men in one.
+That might account for it, you know."
+
+"What nonsense!" Gloria laughed.
+
+"Is it? I daresay it is." And he relapsed into indifference, so far as
+she could see.
+
+"What is the other man like?" she asked. "Not the strong man of the two,
+but the other?"
+
+"He is a good man. The strong man is bad. They fight, and the result is
+insignificance. Some day one of the two will get the better of the
+other."
+
+"What will happen then?" she asked lightly, and still inclined to laugh.
+
+"One or the other, or both, will die, I suppose," he answered.
+
+"How very unpleasant!"
+
+She did not at all understand what he meant. At the same time she could
+not help feeling that he was eminently a man to whom she would turn in
+danger or trouble. Girl though she was, she could not mistake his great
+admiration of her, and by degrees, as the winter wore on, she trusted
+him more, though he still repelled her a little, for his saturnine calm
+was opposed to her violent vitality, as a black rock to a tawny torrent.
+Griggs had neither the manner nor the temper which wins women's hearts
+as a rule. Such men are sometimes loved by women when their sorrow has
+chained them to the rock of horror, and grief insatiable tears out their
+broken hearts. But in their strength they are not loved. They cannot
+give themselves yet, for their strength hinders them, and women think
+them miserly of words and of love's little coin of change. If they get
+love at last, it is as the pity which the unhurt weak feel for the
+ruined strong.
+
+Gloria was not above irritating Griggs occasionally, when the fancy took
+her to seek amusement in that way. She knew how to do it, and he rarely
+turned upon her, even in the most gentle way.
+
+"We are good friends, are we not?" she asked one day, when it was
+raining and he was alone with her, waiting for her father to come in.
+
+"I hope so," he answered, turning his impassive face slowly towards her.
+
+"Then you ought to be much nicer to me," she said.
+
+"I am as nice as I know how to be," replied Griggs, with fixed eyes.
+"What shall I do?"
+
+"That is it. You ought to know. You could talk and say pleasant things,
+for instance. Don't you admit that you are very dull to-day?"
+
+"I admit it. I regret it, and I wish I were not."
+
+"You need not be. I am sure you can talk very well, when you please. You
+are not exactly funny at any time, but to-day you are funereal. You
+remind me of those big black horses they use for hearses, you know."
+
+"Thank you, thank you," said Griggs, quietly, repeating the words
+without emphasis.
+
+"I don't like you!" she exclaimed petulantly, but with a little laugh.
+
+"I know that," he answered. "But I like you very much. We were probably
+meant to differ."
+
+"Then you might amuse me. It's awfully dull when it rains. Pull the
+house down, or tear up silver scudi, or something."
+
+"I am not Samson, and I am not a clown," observed Griggs, coldly.
+
+"I shall never like you if you are so disagreeable," said Gloria, taking
+up a book, and settling herself to read.
+
+"I am afraid you never will," answered Griggs, following her example.
+
+A few minutes passed in silence. Then Gloria looked up suddenly.
+
+"Mr. Griggs?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I did not mean to be horrid."
+
+"No, of course not."
+
+"Because, if I were ever in trouble, you know--I should come straight to
+you."
+
+"Thank you," he answered very gently. "But I hope you will never be in
+trouble. If you ever should be--" He stopped.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I do not think you would find anybody who would try harder to help
+you," he said simply.
+
+She wished that his voice would tremble, or that he would put out his
+hand towards her, or show something a little more like emotion. But she
+had to be satisfied.
+
+"Would it be the good man or the bad man that would help me?" she
+asked, remembering the former conversation.
+
+"Both," answered Griggs, without hesitation.
+
+"I am not sure that I might not like the bad man better," said Gloria,
+almost to herself.
+
+"Is Reanda a bad man?" inquired Griggs, slowly, and looking for the
+blush in her face.
+
+"Why?" But she blushed, as he expected.
+
+"Because you like him better than me."
+
+"You are quite different. It is of no use to talk about it, and I want
+to read."
+
+She turned from him and buried herself in her book, but she moved
+restlessly two or three times, and it was some minutes before the
+heightened colour disappeared from her face.
+
+She was very girlish still, and when she had irritated Griggs as far as
+such a man was capable of irritation, she preferred to refuse battle
+rather than deal with the difficulty she had created. But Griggs
+understood, and amongst his still small sufferings he often felt the
+little, dull, hopeless pang which tells a man that he is unlovable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+VERY late, one night in the Carnival season, Paul Griggs was walking the
+streets alone. His sufferings were no longer so small as they had been,
+and the bitterness of solitude was congenial to him.
+
+He had been at the house of a Spanish artist, where there had been
+dancing and music and supper and improvised tableaux. Gloria and her
+father and Reanda had all been there, too, and something had happened
+which had stirred the depths of the young man's slow temper. He hated to
+make an exhibition of himself, and much against his will he had been
+exhibited, as it were, to help the gaiety of the entertainment. Cotogni,
+the great sculptor, had suggested that Griggs should appear as Samson,
+asleep with his head on Delilah's knee, and bound by her with cords
+which he should seem to break as the Philistines rushed in. He had
+refused flatly, again and again, till all the noisy party caught the
+idea and forced him to it.
+
+They had dressed him in silk draperies, his mighty arms bare almost to
+the shoulder, and they had given him a long, dark, theatrical wig. They
+had bound his arms and chest with cords, and had made him lie down and
+pretend to be asleep at the feet of the artist's beautiful wife. They
+had made slipping knots in the cords, so that he could easily wrench
+them loose. Then the curtain had been drawn aside, and there had been a
+pause as the tableau was shown. All at once a mob of artists, draped
+hastily in anything they could lay their hands upon, and with all manner
+of helmets on their heads from the Spaniard's collection, had rushed in.
+
+"The Philistines are upon thee!" cried Delilah in a piercing voice.
+
+He sprang to his feet, his legs being free, and he struggled with the
+cords. The knots would not slip as they were meant to do. The situation
+lasted several seconds, and was ridiculous enough.
+
+People began to laugh.
+
+"Cut off his hair!" cried one.
+
+"Of what use was the wig?" laughed another, and every one tittered.
+
+Griggs could hear Gloria's clear, high laugh above the rest. His blood
+slowly rose in his throat. But no one pulled the curtain across. The
+Philistines, young artists, mad with Carnival, improvised a very
+eccentric dance of triumph, and the laughter increased.
+
+Griggs looked at the cords. Then his mask-like face turned slowly to the
+audience. Only the great veins swelled suddenly at his temples, while
+every one watched him in the general amusement. Suddenly his eyes
+flashed, and he drew a deep breath, for he was angry. In an instant
+there was dead silence in the room. A moment later one of the cords,
+drawn tight round his chest, over the silk robe, snapped like a thread,
+then another, and then a third. Then in a sort of frenzy of anger he
+savagely broke the whole cord into pieces with his hands, tossing the
+bits contemptuously upon the floor. His face was as white as a dead
+man's.
+
+A roar of applause broke the silence when the guests realized what he
+had done. The artists seized him and carried him high in procession
+round the room, the women threw flowers at him, and some one struck up a
+triumphal march on the piano. It was an ovation. Half an hour later,
+dressed again in his ordinary clothes, he found himself next to Gloria.
+
+"You told me the other day that you were not Samson," she said. "You see
+you can be when you choose."
+
+"No," answered Griggs, coldly; "I am a clown."
+
+What she had said was natural enough, but somehow the satisfaction of
+his bodily vanity had stung his moral pride beyond endurance. It seemed
+a despicable thing to be as vain as he was of a gift for which he had
+not paid any price. Deep down, too, he felt bitterly that he had never
+received the slightest praise for any thought of his which he had
+written down and sent to that cauldron of the English daily press in
+which all individual right to distinction disappears, with all claim to
+praise, from written matter, however good it be. He worked, he read, he
+studied, he wrote late, and rose early to observe. But his natural gift
+was to be a mountebank, a clown, a circus Hercules. By stiffening one of
+his senseless arms he could bring down roars of applause. By years of
+bitter labour with his pen he earned the barest living. The muscles that
+a porter might have, offered him opulence, because it was tougher by a
+few degrees than the flesh of other men. The knowledge he had striven
+for just kept him above absolute want.
+
+He slipped away from the gay party as soon as he could. His last glance
+round the room showed him Angelo Reanda and Gloria, sitting in a corner
+apart. The girl's face was grave. There was a gentle and happy light in
+the artist's eyes which Griggs had never seen. That also was the strong
+man's portion.
+
+Wrathfully he strode away from the house, under the dim oil lamps, an
+unlighted cigar between his teeth, his soft felt hat drawn over his
+eyes. He crossed the city towards the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona,
+his cigar still unlighted.
+
+The streets were alive, though it was very late. There was more freedom
+to be gay and more hope of being simply happy in those days. Many men
+and women wandered about in bands of ten or a dozen, singing in soft
+voices, above which now and then rose a few ringing tenor notes. There
+was laughter everywhere in the air; tambourines drummed and thumped and
+jingled, guitars twanged, and mandolines tinkled and quavered. From a
+dark lane somewhere off the broader thoroughfare, a single voice sang
+out in serenade. The Corso was bright with unusual lights, and strewn
+with the birdseed and plaster-of-Paris 'confetti,' with yellow sand and
+sprigs of box leaves, and withering flowers, and there was about all the
+neighbourhood that peculiar smell of plaster and crushed flower-stalks
+which belonged then to the street carnival of Rome. Further on, in the
+dim quarters by the Tiber, the wine shops were all crowded, and men
+stood and drank outside on the pavement, and paid, and went laughing on,
+laughing and singing, singing and laughing, through the night.
+
+Griggs felt the penetrating loneliness of him who cannot laugh amidst
+laughter, and it was congenial to him. He had always been alone, and he
+felt that the world held no companion for him. There was satisfaction in
+knowing that no one could ever guess what went on between his heart and
+his head.
+
+He wandered on with the same even, untiring stride, for a long time,
+through the dark and winding ways, from the Pantheon through the old
+city, through Piazza Paganica and Costaguti to Piazza Montanara, where
+the carters and carriers congregate from the country. There, in the
+middle of the three-cornered open space, a flag in the paving marked the
+spot on which men used to be put to death. To-night even the carriers
+were making merry. Griggs was thirsty, and paused at the door of a wine
+shop. Though it was winter, men were sitting outside, for there was no
+more room within. A flaring torch of pitched rope was stuck in an iron
+ring, and shed an uncertain, smoky light upon the men's faces. A drawer
+in an apron brought Griggs a glass, and he drank standing.
+
+"It makes no difference," said a rough voice in the little crowd. "They
+may cut off my head there on the paving-stone. They would do me a
+favour. If I find him, I kill him. An evil death on him and all his
+house!"
+
+Griggs looked at the speaker without surprise, for he had often heard
+such things said. He saw an iron-grey man in good peasant's clothes of
+dark blue with broad silver buttons, a man with a true Roman face, a
+small aquiline nose, and keen, dark eyes. He turned away, and began to
+retrace his steps.
+
+In half an hour he was at the door of the old Falcone inn, gone now like
+many relics of that day. It stood in the Piazza of Saint Eustace near
+the Pantheon, and in its time was the best of the old-fashioned
+eating-houses. Griggs felt suddenly hungry. He had walked seven or eight
+miles since he had left the party. He entered, and passed through the
+crowded rooms below and up the narrow steps to a small upper chamber,
+where he hoped to be alone. But there, also, every seat was taken.
+
+To his surprise Dalrymple and Reanda were at the table furthest from
+him, in earnest conversation, with a measure of wine between them.
+Griggs had never seen the Italian there before, but the latter caught
+sight of him as he stood in the door, and rose to his feet, making a
+sign which meant that he was going away, and that the chair was vacant.
+Griggs came forward, and looked into his face as they met. There was the
+same gentle and happy light in Reanda's eyes which had been there when
+he was sitting with Gloria in the corner of the Spanish artist's
+drawing-room. Then Griggs understood and knew the truth, and guessed the
+meaning of the unaccustomed pressure of the hand as Reanda greeted him
+without speaking, and hurriedly went out.
+
+Dalrymple had seen Griggs coming and was already calling to a man in a
+spotless white jacket for another glass and more wine. The Scotchman's
+bony face was haggard, but there was a little colour in his cheeks, and
+he seemed pleased.
+
+"Sit down, Griggs," he said. "There are no more chairs, so we can keep
+the table to ourselves. I hope you are half as thirsty as I am."
+
+"Rather more than half," answered the other, and he drank eagerly. "Give
+me some more, please," he said, holding out his glass.
+
+"I see that you are in the right humour to hear good news," said the
+Scot. "Reanda is to marry my daughter in the summer."
+
+"I congratulate you all three," said Griggs, slowly, for he had known
+what was coming. "Let us drink the health of the couple."
+
+"By all means," answered Dalrymple, filling again. "By all means let us
+drink. I could not swallow that sweet stuff at Mendoza's. This is
+better. By all means let us drink as much as we can."
+
+"That might mean a good deal," said Griggs, quickly, and he drained a
+third glass. "Were you ever drunk, Dalrymple?" he inquired gravely.
+
+"No. I never was," answered the Scotchman.
+
+"Nor I. This seems a fitting occasion for trying an experiment. We might
+try to get drunk."
+
+"By all means, let us try," replied Dalrymple. "I have my doubts about
+the possibility of the thing, however."
+
+"So have I."
+
+They sat opposite to one another in silence for some minutes, each
+satisfied that the other was in earnest. Dalrymple solemnly filled the
+glasses and then leaned back in his chair.
+
+"You did not seem much surprised by what I told you," he observed at
+last. "I suppose you expected it."
+
+"Yes. It seemed natural enough, though it is not always the natural
+things that happen."
+
+"I think they are suited to marry. Of course, Reanda is very much older,
+but he is comparatively a young man still."
+
+"Comparatively. He will make a better husband for having had experience,
+I daresay."
+
+"That depends on what experience he has had. When I first saw him I
+thought he was in love with Donna Francesca. It would have been like an
+artist. They are mostly fools. But I was mistaken. He worships at a
+distance."
+
+"And she preserves the distance," Griggs remarked. "You are not drinking
+fair. My glass is empty."
+
+Dalrymple finished his and refilled both.
+
+"I have been here some time," he observed, half apologetically. "But as
+I was saying--or rather, as you were saying--Donna Francesca preserves
+the distance. These Italians do that admirably. They know the difference
+between intimacy and familiarity."
+
+"That is a nice distinction," said Griggs. "I will use it in my next
+letter. No. Donna Francesca could never be familiar with any one. They
+learn it when they are young, I suppose, and it becomes a
+race-characteristic."
+
+"What?" asked Dalrymple, abruptly.
+
+"A certain graceful loftiness," answered the younger man.
+
+The Scotchman's wrinkled eyelids contracted, and he was silent for a few
+moments.
+
+"A certain graceful loftiness," he repeated slowly. "Yes, perhaps so. A
+certain graceful loftiness."
+
+"You seem struck by the expression," said Griggs.
+
+"I am. Drink, man, drink!" added Dalrymple, suddenly, in a different
+tone. "There's no time to be lost if we mean to drink enough to hurt us
+before those beggars go to bed."
+
+"Never fear. They will be up all night. Not that it is a reason for
+wasting time, as you say."
+
+He drank his glass and watched Dalrymple as the latter did likewise,
+with that deliberate intention which few but Scotchmen can maintain on
+such occasions. The wine might have been poured into a quicksand, for
+any effect it had as yet produced.
+
+"Those race-characteristics of families are very curious," continued
+Griggs, thoughtfully.
+
+"Are they?" Dalrymple looked at him suspiciously.
+
+"Very. Especially voices. They run in families, like resemblance of
+features."
+
+"So they do," answered the other, thoughtfully. "So they do."
+
+He had of late years got into the habit of often repeating such short
+phrases, in an absent-minded way.
+
+"Yes," said Griggs. "I noticed Donna Francesca's voice, the first time I
+ever heard it. It is one of those voices which must be inherited. I am
+sure that all her family have spoken as she does. It reminds me of
+something--of some one--"
+
+Dalrymple raised his eyes suddenly again, as though he were irritated.
+
+"I say," he began, interrupting his companion. "Do you feel anything?
+Anything queer in your head?"
+
+"No. Why?"
+
+"You are talking rather disconnectedly, that is all."
+
+"Am I? It did not strike me that I was incoherent. Probably one half of
+me was asleep while the other was talking." He laughed drily, and drank
+again. "No," he said thoughtfully, as he set down his glass. "I feel
+nothing unusual in my head. It would be odd if I did, considering that
+we have only just begun."
+
+"So I thought," answered Dalrymple.
+
+He ordered more wine and relapsed into silence. Neither spoke again for
+a long time.
+
+"There goes another bottle," said Dalrymple, at last, as he drained the
+last drops from the flagon measure. "Drink a little faster. This is slow
+work. We know the old road well enough."
+
+"You are not inclined to give up the attempt, are you?" inquired Griggs,
+whose still face showed no change. "Is it fair to eat? I am hungry."
+
+"Certainly. Eat as much as you like."
+
+Griggs ordered something, which was brought after considerable delay,
+and he began to eat.
+
+"We are not loquacious over our cups," remarked Dalrymple. "Should you
+mind telling me why you are anxious to get drunk to-night for the first
+time in your life?"
+
+"I might ask you the same question," answered Griggs, cautiously.
+
+"Merely because you proposed it. It struck me as a perfectly new idea. I
+have not much to amuse me, you know, and I shall have less when my
+daughter leaves me. It would be an amusement to lose one's head in some
+way."
+
+"In such a way as to be able to get it back, you mean. I was walking
+this evening after the party, and I came to the Piazza Montanara. There
+is a big flagstone there on which people used to leave their heads for
+good."
+
+"Yes. I have seen it. You cannot tell me much about Rome which I do not
+know."
+
+"There were a lot of carriers drinking close by. It was rather grim, I
+thought. An old fellow there had a spite against somebody. You know how
+they talk. 'They may cut off my head there on the paving-stone,' the man
+said. 'If I find him, I kill him. An evil death on him and all his
+house!' You have heard that sort of thing. But the fellow seemed to be
+very much in earnest."
+
+"He will probably kill his man," said Dalrymple.
+
+Suddenly his big, loose shoulders shook a little, and he shivered. He
+glanced towards the window, suspecting that it might be open.
+
+"Are you cold?" asked Griggs, carelessly.
+
+"Cold? No. Some one was walking over my grave, as they say. If we varied
+the entertainment with something stronger, we should get on faster,
+though."
+
+"No," said Griggs. "I refuse to mix things. This may be the longer way,
+but it is the safer."
+
+And he drank again.
+
+"He was a man from Tivoli, or Subiaco," he remarked presently. "He spoke
+with that accent."
+
+"I daresay," answered Dalrymple, who looked down into his glass at that
+moment, so that his face was in shadow.
+
+Just then four men who had occupied a table near the door rose and went
+out. It was late, even for a night in Carnival.
+
+"I hope they are not going to leave us all to ourselves," said
+Dalrymple. "The place will be shut up, and we need at least two hours
+more."
+
+"At least," assented Paul Griggs. "But they expect to be open all night.
+I think there is time."
+
+The men at the other tables showed no signs of moving. They sat quietly
+in their places, drinking steadily, by sips. Some of them were eating
+roasted chestnuts, and all were talking more or less in low tones.
+Occasionally one voice or another rose above the rest in an exclamation,
+but instantly subsided again. Italians of that class are rarely noisy,
+for though the Romans drink deep, they generally have strong heads, and
+would be ashamed of growing excited over their wine.
+
+The air was heavy, for several men were smoking strong cigars. The
+vaulted chamber was lighted by a single large oil lamp with a reflector,
+hung by a cord from the intersection of the cross-arches. The floor was
+of glazed white tiles, and the single window had curtains of Turkey red.
+It was all very clean and respectable and well kept, even at that
+crowded season, but the air was heavy with wine and tobacco, and the
+smell of cooked food,--a peculiar atmosphere in which the old-fashioned
+Roman delighted to sit for hours on holidays.
+
+Dalrymple looked about him, moving his pale blue eyes without turning
+his head. The colour had deepened a little on his prominent cheek bones,
+and his eyes were less bright than usual. But his red hair, growing
+sandy with grey, was brushed smoothly back, and his evening dress was
+unruffled. He and Griggs were so evidently gentlemen, that some of the
+Italians at the other tables glanced at them occasionally in quiet
+surprise, not that they should be there, but that they should remain so
+long, and so constantly renew their order for another bottle of wine.
+
+Giulio, the stout, dark drawer in a spotless jacket, moved about
+silently and quickly. One of the Italians glanced at Griggs and
+Dalrymple and then at the waiter, who also glanced at them quickly and
+then shrugged his shoulders almost perceptibly. Dalrymple saw both
+glances, and his eyes lighted up.
+
+"I believe that fellow is laughing at us," he said to Griggs.
+
+"There is nothing to laugh at," answered the latter, unmoved. "But of
+course, if you think so, throw him downstairs."
+
+Dalrymple laughed drily.
+
+"There is a certain calmness about the suggestion," he said. "It has a
+good, old-fashioned ring to it. You are not a very civilized young man,
+considering your intellectual attainments."
+
+"I grew up at sea and before the mast. That may account for it."
+
+"You seem to have crammed a good deal into a short life," observed
+Dalrymple. "It must have been a classic ship, where they taught Greek
+and Latin."
+
+"The captain used to call her his Ship of Fools. As a matter of fact, it
+was rather classic, as you say. The old man taught us navigation and
+Greek verse by turns for five years. He was a university man with a
+passion for literature, but I never knew a better sailor. He put me
+ashore when I was seventeen with pretty nearly the whole of my five
+years' pay in my pocket, and he made me promise that I would go to
+college and stay as long as my money held out. I got through somehow,
+but I am not sure that I bless him. He is afloat still, and I write to
+him now and then."
+
+"An Englishman, I suppose?"
+
+"No. An American."
+
+"What strange people you Americans are!" exclaimed Dalrymple, and he
+drank again. "You take up a profession, and you wear it for a bit, like
+a coat, and then change it for another," he added, setting down his
+empty glass.
+
+"Very much like you Scotch," answered Griggs. "I have heard you say that
+you were a doctor once."
+
+"A doctor--yes--in a way, for the sake of being a man of science, or
+believing myself to be one. My family was opposed to it," he continued
+thoughtfully. "My father told me it was his sincere belief that science
+did not stand in need of any help from me. He said I was more likely to
+need the help of science, like other lunatics. I will not say that he
+was not right."
+
+He laughed a little and filled his glass.
+
+"Poor Dalrymple!" he exclaimed softly, still smiling.
+
+Paul Griggs raised his slow eyes to his companion's face.
+
+"It never struck me that you were much to be pitied," he observed.
+
+"No, no. Perhaps not. But I will venture to say that the point is
+debatable, and could be argued. 'To be, or not to be' is a question
+admirably calculated to draw out the resources of the intellect in
+argument, if you are inclined for that sort of diversion. It is a very
+good thing, a very good thing for a man to consider and weigh that
+question while he is young. Before he goes to sleep, you know, Griggs,
+before he goes to sleep."
+
+"'For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come--'" Griggs quoted,
+and stopped.
+
+"'When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.' You do not know your
+Shakespeare, young man."
+
+"'Must give us pause,'" continued Griggs. "I was thinking of the dreams,
+not of the rest."
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+          "Fire and sleet and candle-light;
+             And Christ receive thy soul."
+
+--Vol. I., p. 324.]
+
+"Dreams? Yes. There will be dreams there. Dreams, and other
+things--'this ae night of all.' Not that my reason admits that they can
+be more than dreams, you know, Griggs. Reason says 'to sleep--no more.'
+And fancy says 'perchance to dream.' Well, well, it will be a long
+dream, that's all."
+
+"Yes. We shall be dead a long time. Better drink now." And Griggs drank.
+
+          "'Fire and sleet and candle-light,
+              And Christ receive thy soul;'"
+
+said Dalrymple, with a far-away look in his pale eyes. "Do you know the
+Lyke-Wake Dirge, Griggs? It is a grand dirge. Hark to the swing of it.
+
+          "'This ae night, this ae night,
+             Every night and all,
+           Fire and sleet and candle-light,
+             And Christ receive thy soul.'"
+
+He repeated the strange words in a dull, matter-of-fact way, with a
+Scotch accent rarely perceptible in his conversation. Griggs listened.
+He had heard the dirge before, with all its many stanzas, and it had
+always had an odd fascination for him. He said nothing.
+
+"It bodes no good to be singing a dirge at a betrothal," said the
+Scotchman, suddenly. "Drink, man, drink! Drink till the blue devils fly
+away. Drink--
+
+          "'Till a' the seas gang dry, my love,
+              Till a' the seas gang dry.'
+
+Not that it is in the disposition of the Italian inn-keeper to give us
+time for that," he added drily. "As I was saying, I am of a melancholic
+temper. Not that I take you for a gay man yourself, Griggs. Drink a
+little more. It is my opinion that a little more will produce an
+agreeable impression upon you, my young friend. Drink a little more. You
+are too grave for so very young a man. I should not wish to be
+indiscreet, but I might almost take you for a man in love, if I did not
+know you better. Were you ever in love, Griggs?"
+
+"Yes," answered Griggs, quietly. "And you, Dalrymple? Were you never in
+love?"
+
+Dalrymple's loosely hung shoulders started suddenly, and his pale blue
+eyes set themselves steadily to look at Griggs. The red brows were
+shaggy, and there was a bright red spot on each cheek bone. He did not
+answer his companion's question, though his lips moved once or twice as
+though he were about to speak. They seemed unable to form words, and no
+sound came from them.
+
+His anger was near, perhaps, and with another man it might have broken
+out. But the pale and stony face opposite him, and the deep, still eyes,
+exercised a quieting influence, and whatever words rose to his lips were
+never spoken. Griggs understood that he had touched the dead body of a
+great passion, sacred in its death as it must have been overwhelming in
+its life. He struck another subject immediately, and pretended not to
+have noticed Dalrymple's expression.
+
+"I like your queer old Scotch ballads," he said, humouring the man's
+previous tendency to quote poetry.
+
+"There's a lot of life in them still," answered Dalrymple, absently
+twisting his empty glass.
+
+Griggs filled it for him, and they both drank. Little by little the
+Italians had begun to go away. Giulio, the fat, white-jacketed drawer,
+sat nodding in a corner, and the light from the high lamp gleamed on his
+smooth black hair as his head fell forward.
+
+"There is a sincere vitality in our Scotch poets," said Dalrymple, as
+though not satisfied with the short answer he had given. "There is a
+very notable power of active living exhibited in their somewhat
+irregular versification, and in the concatenation of their
+ratiocinations regarding the three principal actions of the early
+Scottish life, which I take to have been birth, stealing, and a violent
+death."
+
+"'But of these three charity is the greatest,'" observed Griggs, with
+something like a laugh, for he saw that Dalrymple was beginning to make
+long sentences, which is a bad sign for a Scotchman's sobriety.
+
+"No," answered Dalrymple, with much gravity. "There I venture--indeed, I
+claim the right--to differ with you. For the Scotchman is hospitable,
+but not charitable. The process of the Scotch mind is unitary, if you
+will allow me to coin a word for which I will pay with my glass."
+
+And he forthwith fulfilled the obligation in a deep draught. Setting
+down the tumbler, he leaned back in his chair and looked slowly round
+the room. His lips moved. Griggs could just distinguish the last lines
+of another old ballad.
+
+          "'Night and day on me she cries,
+            And I am weary of the skies
+            Since--'"
+
+He broke off and shook himself nervously, and looked at Griggs, as
+though wondering whether the latter had heard.
+
+"This wine is good," he said, rousing himself. "Let us have some more.
+Giulio!"
+
+The fat waiter awoke instantly at the call, looked, nodded, went out,
+and returned immediately with another bottle.
+
+"Is this the sixth or the seventh?" asked Dalrymple, slowly.
+
+"Eight with Signor Reanda's," answered the man. "But Signor Reanda paid
+for his as he went out. You have therefore seven. It might be enough."
+Giulio smiled.
+
+"Bring seven more, Giulio," said the Scotchman, gravely. "It will save
+you six journeys."
+
+"Does the Signore speak in earnest?" asked the servant, and he glanced
+at Griggs, who was impassive as marble.
+
+"You flatter yourself," said Dalrymple, impressively, to the man, "if
+you imagine that I would make even a bad joke to amuse you. Bring seven
+bottles." Giulio departed.
+
+"That is a Homeric order," observed Griggs.
+
+"I think--in fact, I am almost sure--that seven bottles more will
+produce an impression upon one of us. But I have a decidedly melancholic
+disposition, and I accustomed myself to Italian wine when I was very
+young. Melancholy people can drink more than others. Besides, what does
+such a bottle hold? I will show you. A tumbler to you, and one to me.
+Drink; you shall see."
+
+He emptied his glass and poured the remainder of the bottle into it.
+
+"Do you see? Half a tumbler. Two and a half are a bottle. Seven bottles
+are seventeen and a half glasses. What is that for you or me in a long
+evening? My blue devils are large. It would take an ocean to float them
+all. I insist upon going to bed in a good humour to-night, for once, in
+honour of my daughter's engagement. By the bye, Griggs, what do you
+think of Reanda?"
+
+"He is a first-rate artist. I like him very well."
+
+"A good man, eh? Well, well--from the point of view of discretion,
+Griggs, I am doing right. But then, as you may very wisely object,
+discretion is only a point of view. The important thing is the view, and
+not the point. Here comes Ganymede with the seven vials of wrath! Put
+them on the table, Giulio," he said, as the fat waiter came noiselessly
+up, carrying the bottles by the necks between his fingers, three in one
+hand and four in the other. "They make a fine show, all together," he
+observed thoughtfully, with his bony head a little on one side.
+
+"And may God bless you!" said Giulio, solemnly. "If you do not die
+to-night, you will never die again."
+
+"I regard it as improbable that we shall die more than once," answered
+Dalrymple. "I believe," he said, turning to Griggs, "that when men are
+drunk they make mistakes about money. We will pay now, while we are
+sober."
+
+Griggs insisted on paying his share. They settled, and Giulio went away
+happy.
+
+The two strong men sat opposite to each other, under the high lamp in
+the small room, drinking on and on. There was something terrifying in
+the Scotchman's determination to lose his senses--something grimly
+horrible in the younger man's marble impassiveness, as he swallowed
+glass for glass in time with his companion. His face grew paler still,
+and colder, but there was a far-off gleaming in the shadowy eyes, like
+the glimmer of a light over a lonely plain through the dark.
+Dalrymple's spirits did not rise, but he talked more and more, and his
+sentences became long and involved, and sometimes had no conclusion. The
+wine was telling on him at last. He had never been so strong as Griggs,
+at his best, and he was no match for him now. The younger man's
+strangely dual nature seemed to place his head beyond anything which
+could affect his senses.
+
+Dalrymple talked on and on, rambling from one subject to another, and
+not waiting for any answer when he asked a question. He quoted long
+ballads and long passages from Shakespeare, and then turned suddenly off
+upon a scientific subject, until some word of his own suggested another
+quotation.
+
+Griggs sat quietly in his seat, drinking as steadily, but paying little
+attention now to what the Scotchman said. Something had got hold of his
+heart, and was grinding it like grain between the millstones, grinding
+it to dust and ashes. He knew that he could not sleep that night. He
+might as well drink, for it could not hurt him. Nothing material had
+power to hurt him, it seemed. He felt the pain of longing for the
+utterly unattainable, knowing that it was beyond him forever. The
+widowhood of the unsatisfied is hell, compared with the bereavement of
+complete possession. He had not so much as told Gloria that he had loved
+her. How could he, being but one degree above a beggar? The unspoken
+words burned furrows in his heart, as molten metal scores smoking
+channels in living flesh. Gloria would laugh, if she knew. The torture
+made his face white. There was the scorn of himself with it, because a
+mere child could hurt him almost to death, and that made it worse. A
+mere child, barely out of the schoolroom, petulant, spoiled, selfish!
+
+But she had the glory of heaven in her voice, and in her face the fatal
+beauty of her dead mother's deadly sin. He need not have despised
+himself for loving her. Her whole being appealed to that in man to which
+no woman ever appealed in vain since the first Adam sold heaven to Satan
+for woman's love.
+
+Dalrymple, leaning on his elbow, one hand in his streaked beard, the
+other grasping his glass, talked on and quoted more and more.
+
+          "'The flame took fast upon her cheek,
+              Took fast upon her chin,
+            Took fast upon her fair body
+              Because of her deadly sin.'"
+
+His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper at the last words, and suddenly,
+regardless of his companion, his hand covered his eyes, and his long
+fingers strained desperately on his bony forehead. Griggs watched him,
+thinking that he was drunk at last.
+
+"Because of her deadly sin," he repeated slowly, and the tone changed.
+"There is no sin in it!" he cried suddenly, in a low voice, that had a
+distant, ghostly ring in it.
+
+He looked up, and his eyes were changed, and Griggs knew that they no
+longer saw him.
+
+"Stiff," he said softly. "Quite stiff. Dead two or three hours, I
+daresay. It stands up on its feet beside me--certainly dead two or three
+hours."
+
+He nodded wisely to himself twice, and then spoke again in the same
+far-off tone, gazing past Griggs, at the wall.
+
+"The clothes-basket is a silly idea. Besides, I should lose the night.
+Rather carry it myself--wrap it up in the plaid. She'll never know, when
+she has it on her head. Who cares?"
+
+A long silence followed. One hand grasped the empty glass. The other lay
+motionless on the table. The blue eyes, with widely dilated pupils,
+stared at the wall, never blinking nor turning. But in the face there
+was the drawn expression of a bodily effort. Presently Griggs saw the
+fine beads of perspiration on the great forehead. Then the voice spoke
+again, but in Italian this time.
+
+"You had better look away while I go by. It is not a pretty sight. No,"
+he continued, changing to English, "not at all a pretty sight. Stiff as
+a board still."
+
+The unwinking eyes dilated. The bright colour was gone from the cheek
+bones.
+
+"It burns very well," he said again in Italian. The whole face quivered
+and the hard lips softened and kissed the air. "It is golden--I can see
+it in the dark--but I must cover it, darling. Quick--this way. At last!
+No--you cannot see the fire, but it is burning well, I am sure. Hold on!
+Hold the pommel of the saddle with both hands--so!"
+
+The voice ceased. Griggs began to understand. He touched Dalrymple's
+sleeve, leaning across the table.
+
+"I say!" he called softly. "Dalrymple!"
+
+The Scotchman started violently, and the pupils of his eyes contracted.
+The empty glass in his right hand rattled on the hard wood. Then he
+smiled vaguely at Griggs.
+
+"By Jove!" he exclaimed in his natural voice. "I think I must have been
+napping--'Sleep'ry Sim of the Lamb-hill, and snoring Jock of
+Suport-mill!' By Jove, Griggs, we have got near the point at last. One
+bottle left, eh? The seventh.
+
+          "'Then up and gat the seventh o' them,
+            And never a word spake he;
+            But he has striped his bright brown brand--'
+
+The rest has no bearing upon the subject," he concluded, filling both
+glasses. "Griggs," he said, before he drank, "I am afraid this settles
+the matter."
+
+"I am afraid it does," said Griggs.
+
+"Yes. I had hopes a little while ago, which appeared well founded. But
+that unfortunate little nap has sent me back to the starting-point. I
+should have to begin all over again. It is very late, I fancy. Let us
+drink this last glass to our own two selves, and then give it up."
+
+Something had certainly sobered the Scotchman again, or at least cleared
+his head, for he had not been drunk in the ordinary sense of the word.
+
+"It cannot be said that we have not given the thing a fair trial," said
+Griggs, gloomily. "I shall certainly not take the trouble to try it
+again."
+
+Nevertheless he looked at his companion curiously, as they both rose to
+their feet together. Dalrymple doubled his long arms as he stood up and
+stretched them out.
+
+"It is curious," he said. "I feel as though I had been carrying a heavy
+weight in my arms. I did once, for some distance," he added
+thoughtfully, "and I remember the sensation."
+
+"Very odd," said Griggs, lighting a cigar.
+
+Giulio, sitting outside, half asleep, woke up as he heard the steady
+tread of the two strong men go by.
+
+"If you do not die to-night, you will never die again!" he said, half
+aloud, as he rose to go in and clear the room where the guests had been
+sitting.
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: "As he stood there repeating the name."--Vol. II., p.
+331.]
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO
+
+BY
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "PIETRO GHISLERI," ETC.
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+VOL. II.
+
+_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. CASTAIGNE_
+
+                 =New York=
+              MACMILLAN AND CO.
+                 AND LONDON
+                    1895
+
+          _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+          COPYRIGHT, 1894,
+          BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
+
+          =Norwood Press=
+          J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
+          Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+          PART II.--_Continued._
+          GLORIA DALRYMPLE                   1
+
+          PART III.
+          DONNA FRANCESCA CAMPODONICO      227
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+VOL. II.
+
+                                                   PAGE
+          "Gloria--forgive me!"                      50
+
+          Stefanone and Gloria                      100
+
+          "The horror of poverty smote him"         123
+
+          "Let us not speak of the dead"            203
+
+          "The last great, true note died away"     219
+
+          "As he stood there repeating the name"    331
+
+
+
+
+Part II.--_Continued._
+
+_GLORIA DALRYMPLE._
+
+
+
+
+CASA BRACCIO.
+
+PART II.--_Continued._
+
+_GLORIA DALRYMPLE._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+DURING the first few months of their marriage Reanda and Gloria believed
+themselves happy, and really were, since there is no true criterion of
+man's happiness but his own belief in it. They took a small furnished
+apartment at the corner of the Macel de' Corvi, with an iron balcony
+overlooking the Forum of Trajan. They would have had no difficulty in
+obtaining other rooms adjoining the two Reanda had so long occupied in
+the Palazzetto Borgia, but Gloria was opposed to the arrangement, and
+Reanda did not insist upon it. The Forum of Trajan was within a
+convenient distance of the palace, and he went daily to his work.
+
+"Besides," said Gloria, "you will not always be painting frescoes for
+Donna Francesca. I want you to paint a great picture, and send it to
+Paris and get a medal."
+
+She was ambitious for him, and dreamed of his winning world-wide fame.
+She loved him, and she felt that Francesca had caged him, as Francesca
+herself had once felt. She wished to remove him altogether from the
+latter's influence, both because she was frankly jealous of his
+friendship for the older woman, and wished to have him quite to herself,
+and also in the belief that he could do greater things if he were
+altogether freed from the task of decorating the palace, which had kept
+him far too long in one limited sequence of production. There was,
+moreover, a selfish consideration of vanity in her view, closely linked
+with her unbounded admiration for her husband. She knew that she was
+beautiful, and she wished his greatest work to be a painting of herself.
+
+Gloria, however, wished also to take a position in Roman society, and
+the only person who could help her and her husband to cross the line was
+Francesca Campodonico. It was therefore impossible for Gloria to break
+up the intimacy altogether, however much she might wish to do so.
+Meanwhile, too, Reanda had not finished his frescoes.
+
+Soon after the marriage, which took place in the summer, Dalrymple left
+Rome, intending to be absent but a few months in Scotland, where his
+presence was necessary on account of certain family affairs and
+arrangements consequent upon the death of Lord Redin, the head of his
+branch of the Dalrymples, and of Lord Redin's son only a few weeks
+later, whereby the title went to an aged great-uncle of Angus
+Dalrymple's, who was unmarried, so that Dalrymple's only brother became
+the next heir.
+
+Gloria was therefore quite alone with her husband. Paul Griggs had also
+left Rome for a time on business connected with his journalistic career.
+He had in reality been unwilling to expose himself to the unnecessary
+suffering of witnessing Gloria's happiness, and had taken the earliest
+opportunity of going away. Gloria herself was at first pleased by his
+departure. Later, however, she wished that he would come back. She had
+no one to whom she could turn when she was in need of any advice on
+matters which Reanda could not or would not decide.
+
+Reanda himself was at first as absolutely happy as he had expected to
+be, and Francesca Campodonico congratulated herself on having brought
+about a perfectly successful match. While he continued to work at the
+Palazzetto Borgia, the two were often together for hours, as in former
+times. Gloria had at first come regularly in the course of the morning
+and sat in the hall while her husband was painting, but she had found it
+a monotonous affair after a while. Reanda could not talk perpetually.
+More than once, indeed, he introduced his wife's face amongst the many
+he painted, and she was pleased, though not satisfied. He could not make
+her one of the central figures which appeared throughout the series,
+because the greater part of the work was done already, and it was
+necessary to preserve the continuity of each resemblance. Gloria wished
+to be the first everywhere, though she did not say so.
+
+Little by little, she came less regularly in the mornings. She either
+stayed at home and studied seriously the soprano parts of the great
+operas then fashionable, or invented small errands which kept her out of
+doors. She sometimes met Reanda when he left the palace, and they walked
+home together to their midday breakfast.
+
+Little by little, also, Francesca fell into the habit of visiting Reanda
+in the great hall at hours when she was sure that Gloria would not be
+there. It was not that she disliked to see them together, but rather
+because she felt that Gloria was secretly antagonistic. There was a
+small, perpetual, unexpressed hostility in Gloria's manner which could
+not escape so sensitive a woman as Francesca. Reanda felt it, too, but
+said nothing. He was almost foolishly in love with his wife, and he was
+devotedly attached to Francesca herself. For the present he was very
+simple in his dealings with himself, and he quietly shut his eyes to the
+possibility of a disagreement between the two women, though he felt
+that it was in the air.
+
+Instead of diminishing with his marriage, the obligations under which he
+was placed towards Donna Francesca were constantly increasing. She saw
+and understood his wife's social ambition, and gave herself trouble to
+satisfy it. Reanda felt this keenly, and while his gratitude increased,
+he inwardly wished that each kindness might be the last. But Gloria had
+the ambition and the right to be received in society on a footing of
+equality, and no one but Francesca Campodonico could then give her what
+she wanted.
+
+She did not obtain what is commonly called social success, though many
+people received her and her husband during the following winter. She got
+admiration in plenty, and she herself believed that it was friendship.
+Of the two, Reanda, who had no social ambition at all, was by far the
+more popular. He was, as ever, quiet and unassuming, as became a man of
+his extraordinary talent. He so evidently preferred in society to talk
+with intelligent people rather than to make himself agreeable to the
+very great, that the very great tried to attract him to themselves, in
+order to appear intelligent in the eyes of others. They altogether
+forgot that he was the son of the steward of Gerano, though he sometimes
+spoke unaffectedly of his boyhood.
+
+But Gloria reminded people too often that she had a right to be where
+she was, as the daughter of Angus Dalrymple, who might some day be Lord
+Redin. Fortunately for her, no one knew that Dalrymple had begun life as
+a doctor, and very far from such prospects as now seemed quite within
+the bounds of realization. But even as the possible Lord Redin, her
+father's existence did not interest the Romans at all. They were not
+accustomed to people who thought it necessary to justify their social
+position by allusions to their parentage, and since Francesca
+Campodonico had assured them that Dalrymple was a gentleman, they had no
+further questions to ask, and raised their eyebrows when Gloria
+volunteered information on the subject of her ancestors. They listened
+politely, and turned the subject as soon as they could, because it bored
+them.
+
+But the admiration she got was genuine of its kind, as admiration and as
+nothing else. Her magnificent voice was useful to ancient and charitable
+princesses who wished to give concerts for the benefit of the deserving
+poor, but her face disturbed the hearts of those excellent ladies who
+had unmarried sons, and of other excellent ladies who had gay husbands.
+Her beauty and her voice together were a danger, and must be admired
+from a distance. Gloria and her husband were asked to many houses on
+important occasions. Gloria went to see the princesses and duchesses,
+and found them at home. Their cards appeared regularly at the small
+house in the Macel de' Corvi, but there was always a mystery as to how
+they got there, for the princesses and the duchesses themselves did not
+appear, except once or twice when Francesca Campodonico brought one of
+her friends with her, gently insisting that there should be a proper
+call. Gloria understood, and said bitter things about society when she
+was alone, and by degrees she began to say them to her husband.
+
+"These Romans!" she exclaimed at last. "They believe that there is
+nobody like themselves!"
+
+Angelo Reanda's face had a pained look, as he laid his long thin hand
+upon hers.
+
+"My dear," he said gently. "You have married an artist. What would you
+have? I am sure, people have received us very well."
+
+"Very well! Of course--as though we had not the right to be received
+well. But, Angelo--do not say such things--that I have married an
+artist--"
+
+"It is quite true," he answered, with a smile. "I work with my hands.
+They do not. There is the difference."
+
+"But you are the greatest artist in the world!" she cried
+enthusiastically, throwing her arms round his neck, and kissing him
+again and again. "It is ridiculous. In any other city, in London, in
+Paris, people would run after you, people would not be able to do
+enough for you. But it is not you; it is I. They do not like me, Angelo,
+I know that they do not like me! They want me at their big parties, and
+they want me to sing for them--but that is all. Not one of them wants me
+for a friend. I am so lonely, Angelo."
+
+Her eyes filled with tears, and he tried to comfort her.
+
+"What does it matter, my heart?" he asked, soothingly. "We have each
+other, have we not? I, who adore you, and you, who love me--"
+
+"Love you? I worship you! That is why I wish you to have everything the
+world holds, everything at your feet."
+
+"But I am quite satisfied," objected Reanda, with unwise truth. "Do not
+think of me."
+
+She loved him, but she wished to put upon him some of her uncontrollable
+longing for social success, in order to justify herself. To please her,
+he should have joined in her complaint. Her tears dried suddenly, and
+her eyes flashed.
+
+"I will think of you!" she cried. "I have nothing else to think of. You
+shall have it all, everything--they shall know what a man you are!"
+
+"An artist, my dear, an artist. A little better than some, a little less
+good than others. What can society do for me?"
+
+She sighed, and the colour deepened a little in her cheeks. But she hid
+her annoyance, for she loved him with a love at once passionate and
+intentional, compounded of reality and of a strong inborn desire for
+emotion, a desire closely connected with her longing for the life of the
+stage, but now suddenly thrown with full force into the channel of her
+actual life.
+
+Reanda began to understand that his wife was not happy, and the
+certainty reacted strongly upon him. He became more sad and abstracted
+from day to day, when he was not with her. He longed, as only a man of
+such a nature can long, for a friend in whom he could confide, and of
+whom he could ask advice. He had such a friend, indeed, in Francesca
+Campodonico, but he was too proud to turn to her, and too deeply
+conscious that she had done all she could to give Gloria the social
+position the latter coveted.
+
+Francesca, on her side, was not slow to notice that something was
+radically wrong. Reanda's manner had changed by degrees since his
+marriage. His pride made him more formal with the woman to whom he owed
+so much, and she felt that she could do nothing to break down the
+barrier which was slowly rising between them. She suffered, in her way,
+for she was far more sincerely attached to the man than she recognized,
+or perhaps would have been willing to recognize, when she allowed
+herself to look the situation fairly in the face. For months she
+struggled against anything which could make her regret the marriage she
+had made. But at last she admitted the fact that she regretted it, for
+it thrust itself upon her and embittered her own life. Then she became
+conscious in her heart of a silent and growing enmity for Gloria, and of
+a profound pity for Angelo Reanda. Being ashamed of the enmity, as
+something both sinful in her eyes, and beneath the nobility of her
+nature, she expressed it, if that were expression, by allowing her pity
+for the man to assert itself as it would. That, she told herself, was a
+form of charity, and could not be wrong, however she looked at it.
+
+All mention of Gloria vanished from her conversation with Reanda when
+they were alone together. At such times she did her best to amuse him,
+to interest him, and to take him out of himself. At first she had little
+success. He answered her, and sometimes even entered into an argument
+with her, but as soon as the subject dropped, she saw the look of
+harassed preoccupation returning in his face. So far as his work was
+concerned, what he did was as good as ever. Francesca thought it was
+even better. But otherwise he was a changed man.
+
+In the course of the winter Paul Griggs returned. One day Francesca was
+sitting in the hall with Reanda, when a servant announced that Griggs
+had asked to see her. She glanced at Reanda's face, and instantly
+decided to receive the American alone in the drawing-room, on the other
+side of the house.
+
+"Why do you not receive him here?" asked Reanda, carelessly.
+
+"Because--" she hesitated. "I should rather see him in the
+drawing-room," she added a moment later, without giving any further
+explanation.
+
+Griggs told her that he had come back to stay through the year and
+perhaps longer. She took a kindly interest in the young man, and was
+glad to hear that he had improved his position and prospects during his
+absence. He rarely found sympathy anywhere, and indeed needed very
+little of it. But he was capable of impulse, and he had long ago decided
+that Francesca was good, discreet, and kind. He answered her questions
+readily enough, and his still face warmed a little while she talked with
+him. She, on her part, could not help being interested in the lonely,
+hard-working man who never seemed to need help of any kind, and was
+climbing through life by the strength of his own hands. There was about
+him at that time an air of reserved power which interested though it did
+not attract those who knew him.
+
+Suddenly he asked about Gloria and her husband. There was an odd
+abruptness in the question, and a hard little laugh, quite unnecessary,
+accompanied it. Francesca noted the change of manner, and remembered
+how she had at first conceived the impression that Griggs admired
+Gloria, but that Gloria was repelled by him.
+
+"I suppose they are radiantly happy," he said.
+
+Francesca hesitated, being truthful by nature, as well as loyal. There
+was no reason why Griggs should not ask her the question, which was
+natural enough, but she had many reasons for not wishing to answer it.
+
+"Are they not happy?" he asked quickly, as her silence roused his
+suspicions.
+
+"I have never heard anything to the contrary," answered Francesca,
+dangerously accurate in the statement.
+
+"Oh!" Griggs uttered the ejaculation in a thoughtful tone, but said no
+more.
+
+"I hope I have not given you the impression that there is anything
+wrong," said Francesca, showing her anxiety too much.
+
+"I saw Dalrymple in England," answered Griggs, with ready tact. "He
+seems very well satisfied with the match. By the bye, I daresay you have
+heard that Dalrymple stands a good chance of dying a peer, if he ever
+dies at all. With his constitution that is doubtful."
+
+And he went on to explain to Francesca the matter of the Redin title,
+and that as Dalrymple's elder brother, though married, was childless,
+he himself would probably come into it some day. Then Griggs took his
+leave without mentioning Reanda or Gloria again. But Francesca was aware
+that she had betrayed Reanda's unhappiness to a man who had admired
+Gloria, and had probably loved her before her marriage. She afterwards
+blamed herself bitterly and very unjustly for what she had done.
+
+Griggs went away, and called soon afterwards at the small house in the
+Macel de' Corvi. He found Gloria alone, and she was glad to see him. She
+told him that Reanda would also be delighted to hear of his return.
+Griggs, who wrote about everything which gave him an opportunity of
+using his very various knowledge, wrote also upon art, and besides the
+first article he had written about Reanda, more than a year previously,
+had, since then, frequently made allusion to the artist's great talent
+in his newspaper correspondence. Reanda was therefore under an
+obligation to the journalist, and Gloria herself was grateful. Moreover,
+Englishmen who came to Rome had frequently been to see Reanda's work in
+consequence of the articles. One old gentleman had tried to induce the
+artist to paint a picture for him, but had met with a refusal, on the
+ground that the work at the Palazzetto Borgia would occupy at least
+another year. The Englishman said he should come back and try again.
+
+Between Griggs and Gloria there was the sort of friendly confidence
+which could not but exist under the circumstances. She had known him
+long, and he had been her father's only friend in Rome. She remembered
+him from the time when she had been a mere child, before her sudden
+transition to womanhood. She trusted him. She understood perfectly well
+that he loved her, but she believed that she had it in her power to keep
+his love as completely in the background as he himself had kept it
+hitherto. Her instinct told her also that Griggs might be a strong ally
+in a moment of difficulty. His reserved strength impressed her even more
+than it impressed Francesca Campodonico. She received him gladly, and
+told him to come again.
+
+He came, and she asked him to dinner, feeling sure that Reanda would
+wish to see him. He accepted the first invitation and another which
+followed before long. By insensible degrees, during the winter, Griggs
+became very intimate at the house, as he had been formerly at
+Dalrymple's lodgings.
+
+"That young man loves you, my dear," said Reanda, one day in the
+following spring, with a smile which showed how little anxiety he felt.
+
+Gloria laughed gaily, and patted her husband's hand.
+
+"What men like that call love!" she answered. "Besides--a journalist!
+And hideous as he is!"
+
+"He certainly has not a handsome face," laughed Reanda. "I am not
+jealous," he added, with sudden gravity. "The man has done much for my
+reputation, too, and I know what I owe him. I have good reason for
+wishing to treat him well, and I am all the more pleased, if you find
+him agreeable."
+
+He made the rather formal speech in a decidedly formal tone, and with
+the unconscious intention of justifying himself in some way, though he
+was far too simple by nature to suspect himself of any complicated
+motive. She looked at him, but did not quite understand.
+
+"You surely do not suppose that I ever cared for him!" she said, readily
+suspecting that he suspected her.
+
+He started perceptibly, and looked into her eyes. She was very truly in
+earnest, but her exaggerated self-consciousness had given her tone a
+colour which he did not recognize. Some seconds passed before he
+answered her. Then the gentle light came into his face as he realized
+how much he loved her.
+
+"How foolish you are, love!" he exclaimed. "But Griggs is younger than
+I--it would not be so very unnatural if you had cared for him."
+
+She broke out passionately.
+
+"Younger than you! So am I, much younger than you! But you are young,
+too. I will not have you suggest that you are not young. Of course you
+are. You are unkind, besides. As though it could make the slightest
+difference to me, if you were a hundred years old! But you do not
+understand what my love for you is. You will never understand it. I wish
+I loved you less; I should be happier than I am."
+
+He drew her to him, reluctant, and the pained look which Francesca knew
+so well came into his face.
+
+"Are you unhappy, my heart?" he asked gently. "What is it, dear? Tell
+me!"
+
+She was nervous, and the confession or complaint had been unintentional
+and the result of irritation more than of anything else. The fact that
+he had taken it up made matters much worse. She was in that state in
+which such a woman will make a mountain of a molehill rather than forego
+the sympathy which her constitution needs in a larger measure than her
+small sufferings can possibly claim.
+
+"Oh, so unhappy!" she cried softly, hiding her face against his coat,
+and glad to feel the tears in her eyes.
+
+"But what is it?" he asked very kindly, smoothing her auburn hair with
+one hand, while the other pressed her to him.
+
+As he looked over her head at the wall, his face showed both pain and
+perplexity. He had not the least idea what to do, except to humour her
+as much as he could.
+
+"I am so lonely, sometimes," she moaned. "The days are so long."
+
+"And yet you do not come and sit with me in the mornings, as you used to
+do at first." There was an accent of regret in his voice.
+
+"She is always there," said Gloria, pressing her face closer to his
+coat.
+
+"Indeed she is not!" he cried, and she could feel the little breath of
+indignation he drew. "I am a great deal alone."
+
+"Not half as much as I am."
+
+"But what can I do?" he asked, in despair. "It is my work. It is her
+palace. You are free to come and go as you will, and if you will not
+come--"
+
+"I know, I know," she answered, still clinging to him. "You will say it
+is my fault. It is just like a man. And yet I know that you are there,
+hour after hour, with her, and she is young and beautiful. And she loves
+you--oh, I know she loves you!"
+
+Reanda began to lose patience.
+
+"How absurd!" he exclaimed. "It is ridiculous. It is an insult to Donna
+Francesca to say that she is in love with me."
+
+"It is true." Gloria suddenly raised her head and drew back from him a
+very little. "I am a woman," she said. "I know and I understand. She
+meant to sacrifice herself and make you happy, by marrying you to me,
+and now she regrets it. It is enough to see her. She follows you with
+her eyes as you move, and there is a look in them--"
+
+Reanda laughed, with an effort.
+
+"It is altogether too absurd!" he said. "I do not know what to say. I
+can only laugh."
+
+"Because you know it is true," answered Gloria. "It is for your sake
+that she has done it all, that she makes such a pretence of being
+friendly to me, that she pushes us into society, and brings her friends
+here to see me. They never come unless she brings them," she added
+bitterly. "There is no fear of that. The Duchess of Astrardente would
+not have her black horses seen standing in the Macel de' Corvi, unless
+Donna Francesca made her do it and came with her."
+
+"Why not?" asked Reanda, simply, for his Italian mind did not grasp the
+false shame which Gloria felt in living in a rather humble
+neighbourhood.
+
+"She would not have people know that she had friends living in such a
+place," Gloria answered.
+
+Unwittingly she had dealt Reanda a deadly thrust.
+
+He had fallen in love with her and had married her on the understanding
+with himself, so to say, that she was in all respects as much a great
+lady as Donna Francesca herself, and he had taken it for granted that
+she must be above such pettiness. The lodging was extremely good and had
+the advantage of being very conveniently situated for his work. It had
+never struck him that because it was in an unfashionable position,
+Gloria could imagine that the people she knew would hesitate to come and
+see her. Since their marriage she had done and said many little things
+which had shaken his belief in the thoroughness of her refinement. She
+had suddenly destroyed that belief now, by a single foolish speech. It
+would be hard to build it up again.
+
+Like many men of genius he could not forgive his own mistake, and Gloria
+was involved in this one. Moreover, as an Italian, he fancied that she
+secretly suspected him of meanness, and when Italians are not mean,
+there is nothing which they resent more than being thought to be so. He
+had plenty of money, for he had always lived very simply before his
+marriage, and Dalrymple gave Gloria an allowance.
+
+His tone changed, when he answered her, but she was far from suspecting
+what she had done.
+
+"We will get another apartment at once," he said quietly.
+
+"No," she answered at once, protesting, "you must not do anything of the
+kind! What an idea! To change our home merely because it is not on the
+Corso or the Piazza di Venezia!"
+
+"You would prefer the Corso?" inquired Angelo. "That is natural. It is
+more gay."
+
+The reflexion that the view of the deserted Forum of Trajan was dull
+suggested itself to him as a Roman, knowing the predilection of Roman
+women of the middle class for looking out of the window.
+
+"It is ridiculous!" cried Gloria. "You must not think of it.
+Besides--the expense--"
+
+"The expense does not enter into the question, my dear," he answered,
+having fully made up his mind. "You shall not live in a place to which
+you think your friends may hesitate to come."
+
+"Friends! They are not my friends, and they never mean to be," she
+replied more hotly. "Why should I care whether they will take the
+trouble to come and see me or not? Let them stay away, if I am not good
+enough for them. Tell Donna Francesca not to bring them--not to come
+herself any more. I hate to feel that she is thrusting me down the
+throat of a society that does not want me! She only does it to put me
+under an obligation to her. I am sure she talks about me behind my back
+and says horrid things--"
+
+"You are very unjust," said Reanda, hurt by the vulgarity of the speech
+and deeply wounded in his own pride.
+
+"You defend her! You see!" And the colour rose in Gloria's cheeks.
+
+"She has done nothing that needs defence. She has acted always with the
+greatest kindness to me and to us. You have no right to suppose that she
+says unkind things of you when you are not present. I cannot imagine
+what has come over you to-day. It must be the weather. It is sirocco."
+
+Gloria turned away angrily, thinking that he was laughing at her,
+whereas the suggestion about the weather was a perfectly natural one in
+Rome, where the southeast wind has an undoubted effect upon the human
+temper.
+
+But the seeds of much discussion were sown on that close spring
+afternoon. Reanda was singularly tenacious of small purposes, as he was
+of great ideas where his art was concerned, and his nature though gentle
+was unforgiving, not out of hardness, but because he was so sensitive
+that his illusions were easy to destroy.
+
+He went out and forthwith began to search for an apartment of which his
+wife should have no cause to complain. In the course of a week he found
+what he wanted. It was a part of the second floor of one of the palaces
+on the Corso, not far from the Piazza di Venezia. It was partially
+furnished, and without speaking to Gloria he had it made comfortable
+within a few days. When it was ready, he gave her short warning that
+they were to move immediately.
+
+Strange to say, Gloria was very much displeased, and did not conceal her
+annoyance. She really liked the small house in the Macel de' Corvi, and
+resented the way in which her husband had taken her remarks about the
+situation. To tell the truth, Reanda had deceived himself with the idea
+that she would be delighted at the change, and had spent money rather
+lavishly, in the hope of giving her a pleasant surprise. He was
+proportionately disappointed by her unexpected displeasure.
+
+"What was the use of spending so much money?" she asked, with a
+discontented face. "People will not come to see us because we live in a
+fine house."
+
+"I did not take the house with that intention, my dear," said Reanda,
+gently, but wounded and repelled by the remark and the tone.
+
+"Well then, we might have stayed where we were," she answered. "It was
+much cheaper, and there was more sun for the winter."
+
+"But this is gayer," objected Reanda. "You have the Corso under the
+window."
+
+"As though I looked out of the window!" exclaimed Gloria, scornfully.
+"It was so nice--our little place there."
+
+"You are hard to please, my dear," said the artist, coldly.
+
+Then she saw that she had hurt him, which she had not meant to do. Her
+own nature was self-conscious and greedy of emotion, but not sensitive.
+She threw her arms round him, and kissed him and thanked him.
+
+But Reanda was not satisfied. Day by day when Francesca looked at him,
+she saw the harassed expression deepening in his face, and she felt that
+every furrow was scored in her own heart. And she, in her turn, grew
+very grave and thoughtful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+PAUL GRIGGS was a man compounded of dominant qualities and dormant
+contradictions of them which threatened at any moment to become dominant
+in their turn for a time. He himself almost believed that he had two
+separate individualities, if not two distinct minds.
+
+It may be doubted whether it can be good for any man to dwell long upon
+such an idea in connexion with himself, however distinctly he may see in
+others the foundation of truth on which it rests. To Griggs, however, it
+presented itself so clearly that he found it impossible not to take it
+into consideration in the more important actions of his life. The two
+men were very sharply distinguished in his thoughts. The one man would
+do what the other would not. The other could think thoughts above the
+comprehension of the first.
+
+The one was material, keen, strong, passionate, and selfish;
+pre-eminently adapted for hard work; conscientious in the force of its
+instinct to carry out everything undertaken by it to the very end, and
+judging that whatever it undertook was good and worth finishing; having
+something of the nature of a strong piece of clockwork which being
+wound up must run to the utmost limit before stopping, whether regulated
+to move fast or slow, with a fateful certainty independent of will;
+possessed of such uncommon strength as to make it dangerous if opposed
+while moving, and at the same time having an extraordinary inertia when
+not wound up to do a certain piece of work; self-reliant to a fault, as
+the lion is self-reliant in the superiority of physical endowment;
+gentle when not opposed, because almost incapable of action without a
+determinate object and aim; but developing an irresistible momentum when
+the inertia was overcome; thorough, in the sense in which the tide is
+thorough, in rising evenly and all at the same time, and as ruthless as
+the tide because it was that part of the whole man which was a result,
+and which, therefore, when once set in motion was almost beyond his
+control; reasonable only because, as a result, it followed its causes
+logically, and required a real cause to move it at first.
+
+The other man in him was very different, almost wholly independent of
+the first, and very generally in direct conflict with it, at that time.
+It was an imaginative and meditative personality, easily deceived into
+assuming a false premise, but logical beyond all liability to deception
+when reasoning from anything it had accepted. Its processes were
+intuitively correct and almost instantaneous, while its assumptions
+were arbitrary in the extreme. It might begin to act at any point
+whatsoever, and unlike the material man, which required a will to move
+it at first, it struck spontaneously with the directness of straight
+lightning from one point to another, never misled in its path, though
+often fatally mistaken in the value of the points themselves.
+
+Most men who have thought much, wisely or foolishly, and who have seen
+much, good or bad, are more or less conscious of their two
+individualities. Idle and thoughtless people are not, as a rule. With
+Griggs, the two were singularly distinct and independent. Sometimes it
+seemed to him that he sat in judgment, as a third person, between them.
+At other moments he felt himself wholly identified with the one and
+painfully aware of the opposition of the other. The imaginative part of
+him despised the material part for its pride of life and lust of living.
+The material part laughed to scorn the imaginative one for its false
+assumptions and unfounded beliefs. When he could abstract himself from
+both, he looked upon the intuitive personality as being himself in every
+true sense of the word, and upon the material man as a monstrous
+overgrowth and encumbrance upon his more spiritual self.
+
+When he began to love Gloria Dalrymple, she appealed to both sides of
+his nature. For once, the spiritual instinct coincided with the
+direction given to the material man by a very earthly passion.
+
+The cause of this was plain enough and altogether simple. The spiritual
+instinct had taken the lead. He had known Gloria before she had been a
+woman to be loved. The maiden genius of the girl had spoken to the
+higher man from a sphere above material things, and had created in him
+one of those assumed premises for subsequent spiritual intuition from
+which he derived almost the only happiness he knew. Then, all at once,
+the woman had sprung into existence, and her young beauty had addressed
+itself to the young gladiator with overwhelming force. The woman
+fascinated him, and the angelic being his imagination had assumed in the
+child still enchanted him.
+
+He was not like Reanda; for his sensitiveness was one-sided, and
+therefore only half vulnerable. Gloria's faults were insignificant
+accidents of a general perfectness, the result of having arbitrarily
+assumed a perfect personality. They could not make the path of his
+spiritual intuitive love waver, and they produced no effect at all
+against his direct material passion. To destroy the prime beautiful
+illusion, something must take place which would upset the mistaken
+assumption from a point beyond it, so to say. As for the earthly part of
+his love, it was so strong that it might well stand alone, even if the
+other should disappear altogether.
+
+Then came honour, and the semi-religious morality of the man, defending
+the woman against him, for the sake of the angel he saw through her.
+Chief of all, in her defence, stood his own conviction that she did not
+love him, and never would, nor ever could. To all intents and purposes,
+too, he had been her father's friend, though between the two men there
+had been little but the similarity of their gloomy characters. It was
+the will of the material man to be governed, and as no outward influence
+set it in motion, it remained inert, in unstable equilibrium, as a vast
+boulder may lie for ages on the very edge of a precipice, ready but not
+inclined to fall. There was fatality in its stillness, and in the
+certainty that if moved it must crash through everything it met.
+
+Gloria had not the least understanding of the real man. She thought
+about him often during the months which followed his return, and a week
+rarely passed in which she did not see him two or three times. Her
+thoughts of him were too ignorant to be confused. She was conscious,
+rather than aware, that he loved her, but it seemed quite natural to
+her, at her age, that he should never express his love by any word or
+deed.
+
+But she compared him with her husband, innocently and unconsciously, in
+matters where comparison was almost unavoidable. His leonine strength of
+body impressed her strongly, and she felt his presence in the room,
+even when she was not looking at him. Reanda was physically a weak and
+nervous man. When he was painting, the movements of his hand seemed to
+be independent of his will and guided by a superior unseen power, rather
+than directed by his judgment and will. Paul Griggs never made the
+slightest movement which did not strike Gloria as the expression of his
+will to accomplish something. He was wonderfully skilful with his hands.
+Whatever he meant to do, his fingers did, forthwith, unhesitatingly. His
+mental processes were similar, so far as she could see. If she asked him
+a question, he answered it categorically and clearly, if he were able.
+If not, he said so, and relapsed into silence, studying the problem, or
+trying to force his memory to recall a lost item. Reanda, on the other
+hand, answered most questions with the expression of a vague opinion,
+often right, but apparently not founded on anything particular. The
+accuracy of Griggs sometimes irritated the artist perceptibly, in
+conversation; but he took an interest in what Griggs wrote, and made
+Gloria translate many of the articles to him, reading aloud in Italian
+from the English. Strange to say, they pleased him for the very
+qualities which he disliked in the man's talk. The Italian mind, when it
+has developed favourably, is inclined to specialism rather than to
+generalization, and Griggs wrote of many things as though he were a
+specialist. He had enormous industry and great mechanical power of
+handling language.
+
+"I have no genius," he said one day to Gloria, when she had been
+admiring something he had written, and using the extravagant terms of
+praise which rose easily to her lips. "Your husband has genius, but I
+have none. Some day I shall astonish you all by doing something very
+remarkable. But it will not be a work of genius."
+
+It was in the late autumn days, more than a year and a half after
+Gloria's marriage. The southeast wind was blowing down the Corso, and
+the pavements were yellow and sticky with the moistened sand-blast from
+the African desert. The grains of sand are really found in the air at
+such times. It is said that the undoubted effect of the sirocco on the
+temper of Southern Italy is due to the irritation caused by inhaling the
+fine particles with the breath. Something there is in that especial
+wind, which changes the tempers of men and women very suddenly and
+strangely.
+
+Gloria and her companion were seated in the drawing-room that afternoon,
+and the window was open. The wind stirred the white curtains, and now
+and then blew them inward and twisted them round the inner ones, which
+were of a dark grey stuff with broad brown velvet bands, in a fashion
+then new. Gloria had been singing, and sat leaning sideways on the desk
+of the grand piano. A tall red Bohemian glass stood beside the music on
+one of the little sliding shelves meant for the candles, and there were
+a few flowers in it, fresh an hour ago, but now already half withered
+and drooping under the poisonous breath of the southeast. The warm damp
+breeze came in gusts, and stirred the fading leaves and Gloria's auburn
+hair, and the sheet of music upright on the desk. Griggs sat in a low
+chair not far from her, his still face turned towards her, his shadowy
+eyes fixed on her features, his sinewy hands clasped round his crossed
+knees. The nature of the great athlete showed itself even in repose--the
+broad dark throat set deep in the chest, the square solidity of the
+shoulders, the great curved lines along the straightened arms, the
+small, compact head, with its close, dark hair, bent somewhat forward in
+the general relaxation of the resting muscles. In his complete
+immobility there was the certainty of instant leaping and flash-like
+motion which one feels rather than sees in the sleeping lion.
+
+Gloria looked at him thoughtfully with half-closed lids.
+
+"I shall surprise you all," he repeated slowly, "but it will not be
+genius."
+
+"You will not surprise me," Gloria answered, still meeting his eyes. "As
+for genius, what is it?"
+
+"It is what you have when you sing," said Griggs. "It is what Reanda has
+when he paints."
+
+"Then why not what you do when you write?"
+
+"The difference is simple enough. Reanda does things well because he
+cannot help it. When I do a thing well it is because I work so hard at
+it that the thing cannot help being done by me. Do you understand?"
+
+"I always understand what you tell me. You put things so clearly. Yes, I
+think I understand you better than you understand yourself."
+
+Griggs looked down at his hands and was silent for a moment.
+Mechanically he moved his thumb from side to side and watched the knot
+of muscle between it and the forefinger, as it swelled and disappeared
+with each contraction.
+
+"Perhaps you do understand me. Perhaps you do," he said at last. "I have
+known you a long time. It must be four years, at least--ever since I
+first came here to work. It has been a long piece of life."
+
+"Indeed it has," Gloria answered, and a moment later she sighed.
+
+The wind blew the sheet of music against her. She folded it impatiently,
+threw it aside and resumed her position, resting one elbow on the narrow
+desk. The silence lasted several seconds, and the white curtains flapped
+softly against the heavy ones.
+
+"I wonder whether you understand my life at all," she said presently.
+
+"I am not sure that I do. It is a strange life, in some ways--like
+yourself."
+
+"Am I strange?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+Again he was silent for a time. His face was very still. It would have
+been impossible to guess from it that he felt any emotion at the moment.
+
+"Do you like compliments?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"That depends upon whether I consider them compliments or not," she
+answered, with a little laugh.
+
+"You are a very perfect woman in very imperfect surroundings," said
+Griggs.
+
+"That is not a compliment to the surroundings, at all events. I do not
+know whether to laugh or not. Shall I?"
+
+"If you will. I like to hear you laugh."
+
+"You should hear me cry!" And she laughed again at herself.
+
+"God forbid!" he said gravely.
+
+"I do sometimes," she answered, and her face grew suddenly sad, as he
+watched her.
+
+He felt a quick pain for her in his heart.
+
+"I am sorry you have told me so," he said. "I do not like to think of
+it. Why should you cry? What have you to cry for?"
+
+"What should you think?" she asked lightly, though no smile came with
+the words.
+
+"I cannot guess. Tell me. Is it because you still wish to be a singer?
+Is that it?"
+
+"No. That is not it."
+
+"Then I cannot guess." He looked for the answer in her face. "Will you
+tell me?" he asked after a pause.
+
+"Of what use could it be?" Her eyes met his for a moment, the lids fell,
+and she turned away. "Will you shut the window?" she said suddenly. "The
+wind blows the things about. Besides, it is getting late."
+
+He rose and went to the window. She watched him as he shut it, turning
+his back to her, so that his figure stood out distinct and black against
+the light. She realized what a man he was. With those arms and those
+shoulders he could do anything, as he had once caught her in the air and
+saved her life, and then, again, as he had broken the cords that night
+at Mendoza's house. There was nothing physical which such a man could
+not do. He was something on which to rely in her limited life, an
+absolute contrast to her husband, whose vagueness irritated her, while
+his deadness of sensibility, where she had wrung his sensitiveness too
+far, humiliated her in her own eyes. She had kept her secret long, she
+thought, though she had kept it for the simple reason that she had no
+one in whom to confide.
+
+Griggs came back from the window and sat down near her again in the low
+chair, looking up into her face.
+
+"Mr. Griggs," she said, turning from his eyes and looking into the
+piano, "you asked me a question just now. I should like to answer it, if
+I were quite sure of you."
+
+"Are you not sure of me?" he asked. "I think you might be, by this time.
+We were just saying that we had known each other so long."
+
+"Yes. But--all sorts of things have happened in that time, you know. I
+am not the same as I was when I first knew you."
+
+"No. You are married. That is one great difference."
+
+"Too great," said she. "Honestly, do you think me improved since my
+marriage?"
+
+"Improved? No. Why should you improve? You are just what you were meant
+to be, as you always were."
+
+"I know. You called me a perfect woman a little while ago, and you said
+my surroundings were imperfect. You must have meant that they did not
+suit me, or that I did not suit them. Which was it?"
+
+"They ought to suit you," said Griggs. "If they do not, it is not your
+fault."
+
+"But I might have done something to make them suit me. I sometimes think
+that I have not treated them properly."
+
+"Why should you blame yourself? You did not make them, and they cannot
+unmake you. You have a right to be yourself. Everybody has. It is the
+first right. Your surroundings owe you more than you owe to them,
+because you are what you are, and they are not what they ought to be.
+Let them bear the blame. As for not treating them properly, no one could
+accuse you of that."
+
+"I do not know--some one might. People are so strange, sometimes."
+
+She stopped, and he answered nothing. Looking down into the open piano,
+she idly watched the hammers move as she pressed the keys softly with
+one hand.
+
+"Some people are just like this," she said, smiling, and repeating the
+action. "If you touch them in a certain way, they answer. If you press
+them gently, they do not understand. Do you see? The hammer comes just
+up to the string, and then falls back again without making any noise. I
+suppose those are my surroundings. Sometimes they answer me, and
+sometimes they do not. I like things I can be sure of."
+
+"And by things you mean people," suggested Griggs.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And by your surroundings you mean--what?"
+
+"You know," she answered in a low voice, turning her face still further
+away from him.
+
+"Reanda?"
+
+She hesitated for a moment, knowing that her answer must have weight on
+the man.
+
+"I suppose so," she said at last. "I ought not to say so--ought I? Tell
+me the truth."
+
+"The truth is, you are unhappy," he answered slowly. "There is no reason
+why you should not tell me so. Perhaps I might help you, if you would
+let me."
+
+He almost regretted that he had said so much, little as it was. But she
+had wished him to say it, and more, also. Still turning from him, she
+rested her chin in her hand. His face was still, but there was the
+beginning of an expression in it which she had never seen. Now that the
+window was shut it was very quiet in the room, and the air was strangely
+heavy and soft and dim. Now and then the panes rattled a little. Griggs
+looked at the graceful figure as Gloria sat thinking what she should
+say. He followed the lines till his eyes rested on what he could see of
+her averted face. Then he felt something like a sharp, quick blow at his
+temples, and the blood rose hot to his throat. At the same instant came
+the bitter little pang he had known long, telling him that she had never
+loved him and never could.
+
+"Are you really my friend?" she asked softly.
+
+"Yes." The word almost choked him, for there was not room for it and for
+the rest.
+
+She turned quietly and surveyed the marble mask with curious inquiry.
+
+"Why do you say it like that," she asked; "as though you would rather
+not? Do you grudge it?"
+
+"No." He spoke barely above his breath.
+
+"How you say it!" she exclaimed, with a little laugh that could not
+laugh itself out, for there was a strange tension in the air, and on her
+and on him. "You might say it better," she added, the pupils of her eyes
+dilating a little so that the room looked suddenly larger and less
+distinct.
+
+She knew the sensation of coming emotion, and she loved it. She had
+never thought before that she could get it by talking with Paul Griggs.
+He did not answer her.
+
+"Perhaps you meant it," she said presently. "I hardly know. Did you?"
+
+"Please be reasonable," said Griggs, indistinctly, and his hands gripped
+each other on his knee.
+
+"How oddly you talk!" she exclaimed. "What have I said that was
+unreasonable?"
+
+She felt that the emotion she had expected was slipping from her, and
+her nerves unconsciously resented the disappointment. She was out of
+temper in an instant.
+
+"You cannot understand," he answered. "There is no reason why you
+should. Forgive me. I am nervous to-day."
+
+"You? Nervous?" She laughed again, with a little scorn. "You are not
+capable of being nervous."
+
+She was dimly conscious that she was provoking him to something, she
+knew not what, and that he was resisting her. He did not answer her last
+words. She went back to the starting-point again, dropping her voice to
+a sadder key.
+
+"Honestly, will you be my friend?" she asked, with a gentle smile.
+
+"Heart and soul--and hand, too, if you want it," he said, for he had
+recovered his speech. "Tell me what the trouble is. If I can, I will
+take you out of it."
+
+It was rather an odd speech, and she was struck by the turn of the
+phrase, which expressed more strength than doubt of power to do anything
+he undertook.
+
+"I believe you could," she said, looking at him. "You are so strong. You
+could do anything."
+
+"Things are never so hard as they look, if one is willing to risk
+everything," he answered. "And when one has nothing to lose," he added,
+as an after-thought.
+
+She sighed, and turned away again, half satisfied.
+
+"There is nothing to risk," she said. "It is not a case of danger. And
+you cannot take my trouble and tear it up like a pack of cards with
+those hands of yours. I wish you could. I am unhappy--yes, I have told
+you so. But what can you do to help me? You cannot make my surroundings
+what they are not, you know."
+
+"No--I cannot change your husband," said Griggs.
+
+She started a little, but still looked away.
+
+"No. You cannot make him love me," she said, softly and sadly.
+
+The big hands lost their hold on one another, and the deep eyes opened a
+little wider. But she was not watching him.
+
+"Do you mean to say--" He stopped.
+
+She slowly bent her head twice, but said nothing.
+
+"Reanda does not love you?" he said, in wondering interrogation. "Why--I
+thought--" He hesitated.
+
+"He cares no more for me than--that!" The hand that stretched towards
+him across the open piano tapped the polished wood once, and sharply.
+
+"Are you in serious earnest?" asked Griggs, bending forward, as though
+to catch her first look when she should turn.
+
+"Does any one jest about such things?" He could just see that her lips
+curled a little as she spoke.
+
+"And you--you love him still?" he asked, with pressing voice.
+
+"Yes--I love him. The more fool I."
+
+The words did not grate on him, as they would have jarred on her
+husband's ear. The myth he had imagined made perfections of the woman's
+faults.
+
+"It is a pity," he said, resting his forehead in his hand. "It is a
+deadly pity."
+
+Then she turned at last and saw his attitude.
+
+"You see," she said. "There is nothing to be done. Is there? You know my
+story now. I have married a man I worship, and he does not care for me.
+Take it and twist it as you may, it comes to that and nothing else. You
+can pity me, but you cannot help me. I must bear it as well as I can,
+and as long as I must. It will end some day--or I will make it end."
+
+"For God's sake do not talk like that!"
+
+"How should I talk? What should I say? Is it of any use to speak to him?
+Do you think I have not begged him, implored him, besought him, almost
+on my knees, to give up that work and do other things?"
+
+Griggs looked straight into her eyes a moment and then almost understood
+what she meant.
+
+"You mean that he--that when he is painting there--" He hesitated.
+
+"Of course. All day long. All the bitter live-long day! They sit there
+together on pretence of talking about it. You know--you can guess at
+least--it is the old, old story, and I have to suffer for it. She could
+not marry him--because she is a princess and he an artist--good enough
+for me--God knows, I love him! Too good for her, ten thousand times too
+good! But yet not good enough for her to marry! He needed a wife, and
+she brought us together, and I suppose he told her that I should do very
+well for the purpose. I was a good subject. I fell in love with
+him--that was what they wanted. A wife for her favourite! O God! When I
+think of it--"
+
+She stopped suddenly and buried her face in both her hands, as she
+leaned upon the piano.
+
+"It is not to be believed!" The strong man's voice vibrated with the
+rising storm of anger.
+
+She looked up again with flashing eyes and pale cheeks.
+
+"No!" she cried. "It is not to be believed! But you see it now. You see
+what it all is, and how my life is wrecked and ruined before it is half
+begun. It would be bad enough if I had married him for his fame, for his
+face, for his money, for anything he has or could have. But I married
+him because I loved him with all my soul, and worshipped him and
+everything he did."
+
+"I know. We all saw it."
+
+"Of course--was it anything to hide? And I thought he loved me, too. Do
+you know?" She grew more calm. "At first I used to go and sit in the
+hall when he was at work. Then he grew silent, and I felt that he did
+not want me. I thought it was because he was such a great artist, and
+could not talk and work, and wanted to be alone. So I stayed away. Then,
+once, I went there, and she was there, sitting in that great chair--it
+shows off the innocence of her white face, you know! The innocence of
+it!" Gloria laughed bitterly. "They were talking when I came, and they
+stopped as soon as the door opened. I am sure they were talking about
+me. Then they seemed dreadfully uncomfortable, and she went away. After
+that I went several times. Once or twice she came in while I was there.
+Then she did not come any more. He must have told her, of course. He
+kept looking at the door, though, as if he expected her at any moment.
+But she never came again in those days. I could not bear it--his trying
+to talk to me, and evidently wishing all the time that she would come. I
+gave up going altogether at last. What could I do? It was unbearable. It
+was more than flesh and blood could stand."
+
+"I do not wonder that you hate her," said Griggs. "I have often thought
+you did."
+
+Gloria smiled sadly.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "I hate her with all my heart. She has robbed me of
+the only thing I ever had worth having--if I ever had it. I sometimes
+wonder--or rather, no. I do not wonder, for I know the truth well
+enough. I have been over and over it again and again in the night. He
+never loved me. He never could love any one but her. He knew her long
+ago, and has loved her all his life. Why should he put me in her place?
+He admired me. I was a beautiful plaything--no, not beautiful--" She
+paused.
+
+"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said Paul Griggs, with
+deep conviction.
+
+He saw the blush of pleasure in her face, saw the fluttering of the
+lids. But he neither knew that she had meant him to say it, nor did he
+judge of the vast gulf her mind must have instantaneously bridged, from
+the outpouring of her fancied injuries and of her hatred for Francesca
+Campodonico, to the unconcealable satisfaction his words gave her.
+
+"I have heard him say that, too," she answered a moment later. "But he
+did not mean it. He never meant anything he said to me--not one word of
+it all. You do not know what that means," she went on, working herself
+back into a sort of despairing anger again. "You do not know. To have
+built one's whole life on one thing, as I did! To have believed only one
+thing, as I did! To find that it is all gone, all untrue, all a wretched
+piece of acting--oh, you do not know! That woman's face haunts me in the
+dark--she is always there, with him, wherever I look, as they are
+together now at her house. Do you understand? Do you know what I feel?
+You pity me--but do you know? Oh, I have longed for some one--I have
+wished I had a dog to listen to me--sometimes--it is so hard to be
+alone--so very hard--"
+
+She broke off suddenly and hid her face again.
+
+"You are not alone. You have me--if you will have me."
+
+Before he had finished speaking the few words, the first sob broke,
+violent, real, uncontrollable. Then came the next, and then the storm of
+tears. Griggs rose instinctively and came to her side. He leaned heavily
+on the piano, bending down a little, helpless, as some men are at such
+moments. She did not notice him, and her sobs filled the still room. As
+he stood over her he could see the bright tears falling upon the black
+and white ivory keys. He laid his trembling hand upon her shoulder. He
+could hardly draw his breath for the sight of her suffering.
+
+"Don't--don't," he said, almost pathetic in his lack of eloquence when
+he thought he most needed it.
+
+One of her hot hands, all wet with tears, went suddenly to her shoulder,
+and grasped his that lay there, with a convulsive pressure, seeming to
+draw him down as she bowed herself almost to the keyboard in her agony
+of weeping. Then, without thought, his other hand, cold as ice, was
+under her throat, bringing her head gently back upon his arm, till the
+white face was turned up to his. Sob by sob, more distantly, the tempest
+subsided, but still the great tears swelled the heavy lids and ran down
+across her face upon his wrist. Then the wet, dark eyes opened and
+looked up to his, above her head.
+
+"Be my friend!" she said softly, and her fingers pressed his very
+gently.
+
+He looked down into her eyes for one moment, and then the passion in him
+got the mastery of his honourable soul.
+
+"How can I?" he cried in a broken, choking voice. "I love you!"
+
+In an instant he was standing up, lifting her high from the floor, and
+the lips that had perhaps never kissed for love before, were pressed
+upon hers. What chance had she, a woman, in those resistless arms of
+his? In her face was the still, fateful look of the dead nun, rising
+from the far grave of a buried tragedy.
+
+In his uncontrollable passion he crushed her to him, holding her up like
+a child. She struggled and freed her hands and pressed them both upon
+his two eyes.
+
+"Please--please!" she cried.
+
+There was a pitiful ring in the tone, like the bleating of a frightened
+lamb. He hurt her too, for he was overstrong when he was thoughtless.
+
+She cried out to him to let her go. But as she hung there, it was not
+all fear that she felt. There came with it an uncertain, half-delirious
+thrill of delight. To feel herself but a feather to his huge strength,
+swung, tossed, kissed, crushed, as he would. There was fear already,
+there was all her innocent maidenlike resistance, beating against him
+with might and anger, there was the feminine sense of injury by
+outrageous violence; but with it all there was also the natural woman's
+delight in the main strength of the natural man, that could kill her in
+an instant if he chose, but that could lift her to itself as a little
+child and surround her and protect her against the whole world.
+
+"Please--please!" she cried again, covering his fierce eyes and white
+face with her hands and trying to push him away. The tone was pathetic
+in its appeal, and it touched him. His arms relaxed, tightened again
+with a sort of spasm, and then she found herself beside him on her feet.
+A long silence followed.
+
+Gloria sank into a chair, glanced at him and saw that his face was
+turned away, looked down again and then watched him. His chest heaved
+once or twice, as though he had run a short sharp race. One hand grasped
+the back of a chair as he stood up. All at once, without looking at her,
+he went to the window and stood there, looking out, but seeing nothing.
+The soft damp wind made the panes of glass rattle. Still neither broke
+the silence. Then he came to her and stood before her, looking down,
+and she looked down, too, and would not see him. She was more afraid of
+him now than when he had lifted her from her feet, and her heart beat
+fast. She wondered what he would say, for she supposed that he meant to
+ask her forgiveness, and she was right.
+
+[Illustration: "Gloria--forgive me!"--Vol. II., p. 50.]
+
+"Gloria--forgive me," he said.
+
+She looked up, a little fear of him still in her face.
+
+"How can I?" she asked, but in her voice there was forgiveness already.
+
+Her womanly instinct, though she was so young, told her that the fault
+was hers, and that considering the provocation it was not a great
+one--what were a few kisses, even such kisses as his, in a lifetime? And
+she had tempted him beyond all bounds and repented of it. Before the
+storm she had raised in him, her fancied woes sank away and seemed
+infinitely small. She knew that she had worked herself up to emotion and
+tears, though not half sure of what she was saying, that she had
+exaggerated all she knew and suggested all she did not know, that she
+had almost been acting a part to satisfy something in her which she
+could not understand. And by her acting she had roused the savage truth
+in her very face and it had swept down everything before it. She had not
+guessed such possibilities. Before the tempest of his love all she had
+ever felt or dreamed of feeling seemed colourless and cold. She
+dreaded to rouse it again, and yet she could never forget the instant
+thrill that had quivered through her when he had lifted her from her
+feet.
+
+When she had answered him with her question, he stood still in silence
+for a moment. She was too perfect in his eyes for him to cast the blame
+upon her, yet he knew that it had not been all his fault. And in the
+lower man was the mad triumph of having kissed her and of having told
+her, once for all, the whole meaning of his being. She looked down, and
+he could not see her eyes. There was no chair near. To see her face he
+dropped upon his knee and lightly touched her hands that lay idly in her
+lap. She started, fearing another outbreak.
+
+"Please--please!" he said softly, using the very word she had used to
+him.
+
+"Yes--but--" She hesitated and then raised her eyes.
+
+The mask of his face was all softened, and his lips trembled a little.
+His hands quivered, too, as they touched hers.
+
+"Please!" he repeated. "I promise. Indeed, I promise. Forgive me."
+
+She smiled, all at once, dreamily. All his emotion, and her desire for
+it, were gone.
+
+"I asked you to be my friend," she said. "I meant it, you know. How
+could you? It was not kind."
+
+"No--but forgive me," he insisted in a pleading tone.
+
+"I suppose I must," she said at last. "But I shall never feel sure of
+you again. How can I?"
+
+"I promise. You will believe me, not to-day, perhaps, nor to-morrow, but
+soon. I will be just what I have always been. I will never do anything
+to offend you again."
+
+"You promise me that? Solemnly?" She still smiled.
+
+"Yes. It is a promise. I will keep it. I will be your friend always.
+Give me something to do for you. It will make it easier."
+
+"What can I ask you to do? I shall never dare to speak to you about my
+life again."
+
+"I think you will, when you see that I am just as I used to be. And you
+forgive me, quite?"
+
+"Yes. I must. We must forget to-day. It must be as though it had never
+happened. Will you forget it?"
+
+"I will try." But of that he knew the utter impossibility.
+
+"If you try, you can succeed. Now get up. Be reasonable."
+
+He took her hand in both of his. She made a movement to withdraw it, and
+then submitted. He barely touched it with his lips and rose to his feet
+instantly.
+
+"Thank you," she said simply.
+
+She had never had such a mastery of charm over him as at that moment.
+But his mood was changed, and there was no breaking out of the other man
+in him, though he felt again the quick sharp throb in the temples, and
+the rising blood at his throat. The higher self was dominant once more,
+and the features was as still as a statue's.
+
+He took leave of her very quickly and went out into the damp street and
+faced the gusty southeast wind.
+
+When he was gone, she rose and went to the window with a listless step,
+and gazed idly through the glass at the long row of windows in the
+palace opposite, and then went back and sank down, as though very weary,
+upon a sofa far from the light. There was a dazed, wondering look in her
+face and she sat very still for a long time, till it began to grow dark.
+In the dusk she rose and went to the piano and sang softly to herself.
+Her voice never swelled to a full note, and the chords which her fingers
+sought were low and gentle and dreamy.
+
+While she was singing, the door opened noiselessly, and Reanda came in
+and stood beside her. She broke off and looked up, a little startled.
+The same wondering, half-dazed look was in her face. Her husband bent
+down and kissed her, and she kissed him silently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+DONNA FRANCESCA had put off her mourning, and went into the world again
+during that winter. The world said that she might marry if she so
+pleased, and was somewhat inclined to wonder that she did not. She could
+have made a brilliant match if she had chosen. But instead, though she
+appeared everywhere where society was congregated together, she showed a
+tendency to religion which surprised her friends.
+
+A tendency to religion existed in the Braccio family, together with
+various other tendencies not at all in harmony with it, nor otherwise
+edifying. Those other tendencies seemed to be absent in Francesca, and
+little by little her acquaintances began to speak of her as a devout
+person. The Prince of Gerano even hinted that she might some day be an
+abbess in the Carmelite Convent at Subiaco, as many a lady of the great
+house had been before her. But Francesca was not prepared to withdraw
+from the world altogether, though at the present time she was very
+unhappy.
+
+She suspected herself of a great sin, besides reproaching herself
+bitterly with many of her deeds which deserved no blame at all. Yet she
+was by no means morbid, nor naturally inclined to perpetual
+self-examination. On the contrary, she had always been willing to accept
+life as a simple affair which could not offer any difficulties provided
+that one were what she meant by "good"--that is, honest in word and
+deed, and scrupulous in doing thoroughly and with right intention those
+things which her religion required of her, but in which only she herself
+could judge of her own sincerity.
+
+Of late, however, she had felt that there was something very wrong in
+all her recent life. The certainty of it dawned by degrees, and then
+burst upon her suddenly one day when she was with Reanda.
+
+She had long ago noticed the change in his manner, the harassed look,
+and the sad ring in his voice, and for a time his suffering was her
+sorrow, and there was a painful pleasure in being able to feel for him
+with all her heart. He had gone through a phase which had lasted many
+months, and the change was great between his former and his present
+self. He had suffered, but indifference was creeping upon him. It was
+clear enough. Nothing interested him but his art, and perhaps her own
+conversation, though even that seemed doubtful to her.
+
+They were alone together on a winter's afternoon in the great hall. The
+work was almost done, and they had been talking of the more mechanical
+decorations, and of the style of the furniture.
+
+"It is a big place," said Francesca, "but I mean to fill it. I like
+large rooms, and when it is finished, I will take up my quarters here,
+and call it my boudoir."
+
+She smiled at the idea. The hall was at least fifty feet long by thirty
+wide.
+
+"All the women I know have wretched little sitting-rooms in which they
+can hardly turn round," she said. "I will have all the space I like, and
+all the air and all the light. Besides, I shall always have the dear
+Cupid and Psyche, to remind me of you."
+
+She spoke the last words with the simplicity of absolute innocence.
+
+"And me?" he asked, as innocently and simply as she. "What will you do
+with me?"
+
+"Whatever you like," she said, taking it quite for granted, as he did,
+that he was to work for her all his life. "You can have a studio in the
+house, just as it used to be, if you please. And you can paint the great
+canvas for the ceiling of the dining-room. Or shall I restore the old
+chapel? Which should you rather do--oil-painting, or fresco?"
+
+"You would not want the altar piece which I should paint," he said, with
+sudden sadness.
+
+"Santa Francesca?" she asked. "It would have to be Santa Francesca. The
+chapel is dedicated to her. You could make a beautiful picture of her--a
+portrait, perhaps--" she stopped.
+
+"Of yourself? Yes, I could do that," he answered quickly.
+
+"No," she said, and hesitated. "Of your wife," she added rather
+abruptly.
+
+He started and looked at her, and she was sorry that she had spoken.
+Gloria's beautiful face had risen in her mind, and it had seemed
+generous to suggest the idea. Finding a difficulty in telling him, she
+had thought it her duty to be frank.
+
+He laughed harshly before he answered her.
+
+"No," he said. "Certainly not a portrait of my wife. Not even to please
+you. And that is saying much."
+
+He spoke very bitterly. In the few words, he poured out the pent-up
+suffering of many months. Francesca turned pale.
+
+"I know, and it is my fault," she said in a low voice.
+
+"Your fault? No! But it is not mine."
+
+His hands trembled violently as he took up his palette and brushes and
+began to mix some colours, not knowing what he was doing.
+
+"It is my fault," said Francesca, still very white, and staring at the
+brick floor. "I have seen it. I could not speak of it. You are
+unhappy--miserable. Your life is ruined, and I have done it. I!"
+
+She bit her lip almost before the last word was uttered; for it was
+stronger and louder than she had expected it to be, and the syllable
+rang with a despairing echo in the empty hall.
+
+Reanda shook his head, and bent over his colours with shaking hands, but
+said nothing.
+
+"I was so happy when you were married," said Francesca, forcing herself
+to speak calmly. "She seemed such a good wife for you--so young, so
+beautiful. And she loves you--"
+
+"No." He shook his head energetically. "She does not love me. Do not say
+that, for it is not true. One does not love in that way--to-day a kiss,
+to-morrow a sting--to-day honey, to-morrow snake-poison. Do not say that
+it is love, for it is not true. The heart tells the truth, all alone in
+the breast. A thousand words cannot make it tell one lie. But for me--it
+is finished. Let us speak no more of love. Let us talk of our good
+friendship. It is better."
+
+"Eh, let us speak of it, of this friendship! It has cost tears of
+blood!"
+
+Francesca, in the sincerity of what she felt, relapsed into the Roman
+dialect. Almost all Romans do, under any emotion.
+
+"Everything passes," answered Reanda, laying his palette aside, and
+beginning to walk up and down, his hands in his pockets. "This also
+will pass," he added, as he turned. "We are men. We shall forget."
+
+"But not I. For I did it. Your sadness cuts my heart, because I did it.
+I--I alone. But for me, you would be free."
+
+"Would to Heaven!" exclaimed the artist, almost under his breath. "But I
+will not have you say that it is your fault!" he cried, stopping before
+her. "I was the fool that believed. A man of my age--oh, a serious
+man--to marry a child! I should have known. At first, I do not say. I
+was the first. She thought she had paradise in her arms. A husband! They
+all want it, the husband. But I, who had lived and seen, I should have
+known. Fool, fool! Ignorant fool!"
+
+The words came out vehemently in the strong dialect, and the nervous,
+heart-wrung man struck his breast with his clenched fist, and his eyes
+looked upward.
+
+"Reanda, Reanda! What are you saying? When I tell you that I made you
+marry her! It was here,--I was in this very chair,--and I told you about
+her. And I asked her here with intention, that you might see how
+beautiful she was. And then, neither one nor two, she fell in love with
+you! It would have been a miracle if you had not married her. And her
+father, he was satisfied. May that day be accursed when I brought them
+here to torment you!"
+
+She spoke excitedly, and her lip quivered. He began to walk again with
+rapid, uncertain strides.
+
+"For that--yes!" he said. "Let the day bear the blame. But I was the
+madman. Who leaves the old way and follows the new knows what he leaves,
+but not what he may find. I might have been contented. I was so happy!
+God knows how happy I was!"
+
+"And I!" exclaimed Francesca, involuntarily; but he did not hear her.
+
+She felt a curious sense of elation, though she was so truly sorry for
+him, and it disturbed her strangely. She looked at him and smiled, and
+then wondered why the smile came. There is a ruthless cruelty in the
+half-unconscious impulses of the purest innocence, of which vice itself
+might be ashamed in its heart. It is simple humanity's assertion of its
+prior right to be happy. She smiled spontaneously because she knew that
+Reanda no longer loved Gloria, and she felt that he could not love her
+again; and for a while she was too simply natural to quarrel with
+herself for it, or to realize what it meant.
+
+He was nervous, melancholy, and unstrung, and he began to talk about
+himself and his married life for the first time, pouring out his
+sufferings and thoughtless of what Francesca might think and feel. He,
+too, was natural. Unlike his wife, he detested emotion. To be angry was
+almost an illness to his over-finely organized temperament. In a way,
+Griggs had been right in saying that Reanda seemed to paint as an agent
+in the power of an unseen, directing influence. Beauty made him feel
+itself, and feel for it in his turn with his brush. The conception was
+before him, guiding his hand, before a stroke of the work was done.
+There was the lightning-like co-respondence and mutual reaction between
+thought and execution, which has been explained by some to be the
+simultaneous action of two minds in man, the subjective and the
+objective. In doing certain things he had the patience and the delicacy
+of one for whom time has no meaning. He could not have told whether his
+hand followed his eye, or his eye followed his hand. His whole being was
+of excessively sensitive construction, and emotion of any kind, even
+pleasure, jarred upon its hair-fine sensibilities. And yet, behind all
+this, there was the tenacity of the great artist and the phenomenal
+power of endurance, in certain directions, which is essential to
+prize-winning in the fight for fame. There was the quality of nerve
+which can endure great tension in one way, but can bear nothing in other
+ways.
+
+He went on, giving vent to all he felt, talking to himself rather than
+to Francesca. He could not reproach his wife with any one action of
+importance. She was fond of Paul Griggs. But it was only Griggs! He
+smiled. In his eyes, the cold-faced man was no more than a stone. In
+their excursions into society she had met men whom he considered far
+more dangerous, men young, handsome, rich, having great names. They
+admired her and said so to her in the best language they had, which was
+no doubt often very eloquent. Had she ever looked twice at one of them?
+No. He could not reproach her with that. The Duchess of Astrardente was
+not more cold to her admirers than Gloria was. It was not that. There
+were little things, little nothings, but in thousands. He tried to
+please her with something, and she laughed in his face, or found fault.
+She had small hardnesses and little vulgarities of manner that drove him
+mad.
+
+"I had thought her like you," he said suddenly, turning to Francesca.
+"She is not. She is coarse-grained. She has the soul of a peasant, with
+the face of a Madonna. What would you have? It is too much. Love is an
+illusion. I will have no more of it. Besides, love is dead. It would be
+easier to wake a corpse. I shall live. I may forget. Meanwhile there is
+our friendship. That is of gold."
+
+Francesca listened in silence, thoughtful and with downcast eyes, as the
+short, disjointed sentences broke vehemently from his lips, each one
+accusing her in her own heart of having wrought the misery of two lives,
+one of which was very dear to her. Too dear, as she knew at last. The
+scarlet shame would have burned her face, if she had owned to herself
+that she loved this man, whom she had married to another, believing that
+she was making his happiness. She would not own it. Had she admitted it
+then, she would have been capable of leaving him within the hour, and of
+shutting herself up forever in the Convent at Subiaco to expiate the sin
+of the thought. It was monstrous in her eyes, and she would still refuse
+to see it.
+
+But she owned that there was the suspicion, and that Angelo Reanda was
+far dearer to her than anything else on earth. Her innocence was so
+strong and spotless that it had a right to its one and only
+satisfaction. But what she felt for Reanda was either love, or it was
+blasphemy against the holy thing in whose place he stood in her temple.
+It must not be love, and therefore, as anything else, it was too much.
+And the strange joy she felt because Gloria was nothing to him, still
+filled her heart, though it began to torment her with the knowledge of
+evil which she had never understood.
+
+There was much else against him, too, in her pride of race, and it
+helped her just then, for it told her how impossible it was that she, a
+princess of the house of Braccio, should love a mere artist, the son of
+a steward, whose forefathers had been bondsmen to her ancestors from
+time immemorial. It was out of the question, and she would not believe
+it of herself. Yet, as she looked into his delicate, spiritual face and
+watched the shades of expression that crossed it, she felt that it made
+little difference whence he came, since she understood him and he
+understood her.
+
+She became confused by her own thoughts and grasped at the idea of a
+true and perfect friendship, with a somewhat desperate determination to
+see it and nothing else in it, for the rest of her life, rather than
+part with Angelo Reanda.
+
+"Friends," she said thoughtfully. "Yes--always friends, you and I. But
+as a friend, Reanda, what can I do? I cannot help you."
+
+"The time for help is past, if it ever came. You are a saint--pray for
+me. You can do that."
+
+"But there is more than that to be done," she said, ready to sacrifice
+anything or everything just then. "Do not tell me it is hopeless. I will
+see your wife often and I will talk to her. I am older than she, and I
+can make her understand many things."
+
+"Do not try it," said Reanda, in an altered tone. "I advise you not to
+try it. You can do no good there, and you might find trouble."
+
+"Find trouble?" repeated Francesca, not understanding him. "What do you
+mean? Does she dislike me?"
+
+"Have you not seen it?" he asked, with a bitter smile.
+
+Francesca did not answer him at once, but bent her head again. Once or
+twice she looked up as though she were about to speak.
+
+"It is as I tell you," said Reanda, nodding his head slowly.
+
+Francesca made up her mind, but the scarlet blood rose in her face.
+
+"It is better to be honest and frank," she said. "Is Gloria jealous of
+me?" She was so much ashamed that she could hardly look at him just
+then.
+
+"Jealous! She would kill you!" he cried, and there was anger in his
+voice at the thought. "Do not go to her. Something might happen."
+
+The blush in Francesca's face deepened and then subsided, and she grew
+very pale again.
+
+"But if she is jealous, she loves you," she said earnestly and
+anxiously.
+
+He shrugged his high thin shoulders, and the bitter smile came back to
+his face.
+
+"It is a stage jealousy," he said cruelly. "How could she pass the time
+without something to divert her? She is always acting."
+
+"But what is she jealous of?" asked Francesca. "How can she be jealous
+of me? Because you work here? She is free to come if she likes, and to
+stay all day. I do not understand."
+
+"Who can understand her? God, who made her, understands her. I am only a
+man. I know only one thing, that I loved her and do not love her. And
+she makes a scene for every day. One day it is you, and another day it
+is the walls she does not like. You will forgive me, Princess. I speak
+frankly what comes to my mouth from my heart. The whole story is this.
+She makes my life intolerable. I am not an idle man, the first you may
+meet in society, to spend my time from morning to night in studying my
+wife's caprices. I am an artist. When I have worked I must have peace. I
+do not ask for intelligent conversation like yours. But I must have
+peace. One of these days I shall strangle her with my hands. The Lord
+will forgive me and understand. I am full of nerves. Is it my fault? She
+twists them as the women wring out clothes at the fountain. It is not a
+life; it is a hell."
+
+"Poor Reanda! Poor Reanda!" repeated Francesca, softly.
+
+"I do not pity myself," he said scornfully. "I have deserved it, and
+much more. But I am human. If it goes on a little longer, you may take
+me to Santo Spirito, for I am going mad. At least I should be there in
+holy peace. After her, the madmen would all seem doctors of wisdom. Do
+you know what will happen this evening? I go home. 'Where have you
+been?' she will ask. 'At the Palazzetto.' 'What have you been doing?'
+'Painting--it is my trade.' 'Was Donna Francesca there?' 'Of course. She
+is mistress in her own house.' 'And what did you talk of?' 'How should I
+remember? We talked.' Then it will begin. It will be an inferno, as it
+always is. 'Leave hope behind, all ye that enter here!' I can say it, if
+ever man could! You are right to pity me. Before it is finished you will
+have reason to pity me still more. Let us hope it may finish soon.
+Either San Lorenzo, or Santo Spirito--with the mad or with the dead."
+
+"Poor Reanda!"
+
+"Yes--poor Reanda, if you like. People envy me, they say I am a great
+artist. If they think so, let them say it. It seems to them that I am
+somebody." He laughed, almost hysterically. "Somebody! Stuff for Santo
+Spirito! That is all she has left me in two years--not yet two years."
+
+"Do not talk of Santo Spirito," said Francesca. "You shall not go mad.
+When you are unhappy, think of our friendship and of all the hours you
+have here every day." She hesitated and seemed to make an effort over
+herself. "But it is impossible that it should be all over, so hopelessly
+and so soon. She is nervous, perhaps. The climate does not suit her--"
+
+Reanda laughed wildly, for he was rapidly losing all control of himself.
+
+"Therefore I should take her away and go and live somewhere else!" he
+cried. "That would be the end! I should tear her to pieces with my
+hands--"
+
+"Hush, hush! You are talking madly--"
+
+"I know it. There is reason. It will end badly, one of these days,
+unless I end first, and that may happen also. Without you it would have
+happened long ago. You are the good angel in my life, the one friend God
+has sent me in my tormented existence, the one star in my black sky. Be
+my friend still, always, for ever and ever, and I shall live forever
+only to be your friend. As for love--the devil and his demons will know
+what to do with it--they will find their account in it. They have lent
+it, and they will take their payment in blood and tears of those who
+believe them."
+
+"But there is love in the world, somewhere," said Francesca, gently.
+
+"Yes--and in hell! But not in heaven--where you will be."
+
+Francesca sighed unconsciously, and looked long away towards the great
+windows at the end of the hall. Reanda gathered up his palette and
+brushes with a steadier hand. His anger had not spent itself, but it
+made him suddenly strong, and the outburst had relieved him, though it
+was certain that it would be followed by a reaction of profound
+despondency.
+
+All at once he came close to Francesca. She looked up, half startled by
+his sudden movement.
+
+"At least it is true--this one thing," he said. "I can count upon you."
+
+"Yes. You can count upon me," she answered, gazing into his eyes.
+
+He did not move. The one hand held his palette, the other hung free by
+his side. All at once she took it in hers, still looking up into his
+eyes.
+
+"I am very fond of you," she said earnestly. "You can count upon me as
+long as we two live."
+
+"God bless you," he said, more quietly than he had spoken yet, and his
+hand pressed hers a little.
+
+There could be no harm in saying as much as that, she thought, when it
+was so true and so simply said. It was all she could ever say to him, or
+to herself, and there was no reason why she should not say it. He would
+not misunderstand her. No man could have mistaken the innocence that was
+the life and light of her clear eyes. She was glad she had said it, and
+she was glad long afterwards that she had said it on that day, quietly,
+when no one could hear them in the great still hall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+REANDA went home that evening in a very disturbed state of mind. He had
+been better so long as he had not given vent to what he felt; for, as
+with many southern men of excitable temper and weak nerves, his thoughts
+about himself, as distinguished from his pursuits, did not take positive
+shape in his mind until he had expressed them in words. Amongst the
+Latin races the phrase, 'he cannot think without speaking,' has more
+truth as applied to some individuals than the Anglo-Saxon can easily
+understand.
+
+For many months the artist had been most unhappy. His silence concerning
+his grief had been almost exemplary, and had been broken only now and
+then by a hasty exclamation of annoyance when Gloria's behaviour had
+irritated him beyond measure. He was the gentlest of men; and even when
+he had lost his temper with her, he had never spoken roughly.
+
+"You are hard to please, my dear," he had sometimes said.
+
+But that had been almost the strongest expression of his displeasure. It
+was not, indeed, that he had exercised very great self-control in the
+matter, for he had little power of that sort over himself. If he was
+habitually mild and gentle in his manner with Gloria, it was rather
+because, like many Italians, he dreaded emotion as something like an
+illness, and could avoid it to some extent merely by not speaking freely
+of what he felt. Silence was generally easy to him; and he had not
+broken out more than two or three times in all his life, as he had done
+on that afternoon alone with Francesca.
+
+The inevitable consequence followed immediately,--a consequence as much
+physical as mental, for when he went away from the Palazzetto, his clear
+dark eyes were bloodshot and yellow, and his hands had trembled so that
+he had hardly been able to find the armholes of his great-coat in
+putting it on. He walked with an uncertain and agitated step, glancing
+to right and left of him as he went, half-fiercely, half-timidly, as
+though he expected a new adversary to spring upon him from every corner.
+The straight line of the houses waned and shivered in the dusk, as he
+looked at them, and he saw flashes of light in the air. His head was hot
+and aching, and his hat hurt him. Altogether he was in a dangerous
+state, not unlike that which, with northern men, sometimes follows hard
+drinking.
+
+He hated to go home that evening. So far as he was conscious, he had
+neither misrepresented nor in any way exaggerated the miseries of his
+domestic existence; and he felt that it was before him now, precisely as
+he had described it. There would be the same questions, to which he
+would give the same answers, at which Gloria would put on the same
+expression of injured hopelessness, unless she broke out and lost her
+temper, which happened often enough. The prospect was intolerable.
+Reanda thrust his hands deep into the pocket of his overcoat, and glared
+about him as he turned the corner of the Via degli Astalli, and saw the
+Corso in the distance. But he did not slacken his pace as he went along
+under the gloomy walls of the Austrian Embassy--the Palace of
+Venice--the most grim and fortress-like of all Roman palaces.
+
+He felt as a poor man may feel when, hot and feverish from working by a
+furnace, he knows that he must face the winter storm of freezing sleet
+and piercing wind in his thin and ragged jacket to go home--a plunge, as
+it were, from molten iron into ice, with no protection from the cold.
+Every step of the homeward way was hateful to him. Yet he knew his own
+weakness well enough not to hesitate. Had he stopped, he might have been
+capable of turning in some other direction, and of spending the whole
+evening with some of his fellow-artists, going home late in the night,
+when Gloria would be asleep. The thought crossed his mind. If he did
+that, he was sure to be carried away into speaking of his troubles to
+men with whom he had no intimacy. He was too proud for that. He wished
+he could go back to Francesca, and pour out his woes again. He had not
+said half enough. He should like to have it out, to the very end, and
+then lie down and close his eyes, and hear Francesca's voice soothing
+him and speaking of their golden friendship. But that was impossible, so
+he went home to face his misery as best he could.
+
+There was exaggeration in all he thought, but there was none in the
+effect of his thoughts upon himself. He had married a woman unsuited to
+him in every way, as he was unsuited to her. The whole trouble lay
+there. Possibly he was not a man to marry at all, and should have led
+his solitary life to the end, illuminated from the outside, as it were,
+by Francesca Campodonico's faithful friendship and sweet influence. All
+causes of disagreement, considered as forces in married life, are
+relative in their value to the comparative solidity of the characters on
+which they act--a truism which ought to be the foundation of social
+charity, but is not. Reanda could not be blamed for his brittle
+sensitivenesses, nor Gloria for a certain coarse-grained streak of
+cruelty, which she had inherited from her father, and which had
+combined strangely with the rare gifts and great faults of her dead
+mother--the love of emotion for its own sake, and the tendency to do
+everything which might produce it in herself and those about her.
+Emotion was poison to Reanda. It was his wife's favourite food.
+
+He reached his home, and went up the well-lighted marble staircase,
+wishing that he were ascending the narrow stone steps at the back of the
+Palazzetto Borgia, taper in hand, to his old bachelor quarters, to light
+his lamp, to smoke in peace, and to spend the evening over a sketch, or
+with a book, or dreaming of work not yet done. He paused on the landing,
+before he rang the bell of his apartment. The polished door irritated
+him, with its brass fittings and all that it meant of married life and
+irksome social obligation. He never carried a key, because the Roman
+keys of those times were large and heavy; but he had been obliged to use
+one formerly, when he had lived by himself. The necessity of ringing the
+bell irritated him again, and he felt a nervous shock of unwillingness
+as he pulled the brass knob. He set his teeth against the tinkling and
+jangling that followed, and his eyelids quivered. Everything hurt him.
+He did not feel sure of his hands when he wanted to use them. He was
+inclined to strike the silent and respectful man-servant who opened the
+door, merely because he was silent and respectful. He went straight to
+his own dressing-room, and shut himself in. It would be a relief to
+change his clothes. He and Gloria were to go to a reception in the
+evening, and he would dress at once. In those days few Romans dressed
+for dinner every day.
+
+He dropped a stud, for his hands were shaking so that he could hardly
+hold anything; and he groped for the thing on his knees. The blood went
+to his head, and hurt him violently, as though he had received a blow.
+
+Gloria's room was next to his, and she heard him moving about. She
+knocked and tried the door, but it was locked; and she heard him utter
+an exclamation of annoyance, as he hunted for the stud. She thought it
+was meant for her, and turned angrily back from the door. On any other
+day he would have called her, for he had heard her trying to get in. But
+he shrugged his lean shoulders impatiently, glanced once towards her
+room, found his stud, and went on dressing.
+
+He really made an effort to get control of himself while he was alone.
+But to all intents and purposes he was actually ill. His face was drawn
+and sallow; his eyes were yellow and bloodshot; and there were deep,
+twitching lines about his mouth. His nostrils moved spasmodically when
+he drew breath, and his long thin hands fumbled helplessly at the studs
+and buttons of his clothes. At last he was dressed, and went into the
+drawing-room. Gloria was already there, waiting by the fireside, with an
+injured and forbidding expression in her beautiful face.
+
+Reanda came to the fireside, and stood there, spreading out his
+trembling hands to the blaze. He dreaded the first word, as a man lying
+ill of brain fever dreads each cracking explosion in a thunderstorm.
+Strained as their relations had been for a long time, he had never
+failed to kiss Gloria when he came home. This evening he barely glanced
+at her, and stood watching the dancing tongues of the wood fire, not
+daring to think of the sound of his wife's voice. It came at last cool
+and displeased.
+
+"Are you ill?" she asked, looking steadily at him.
+
+"No," he answered with an effort, and his outstretched hands shook
+before the fire.
+
+"Then what is the matter with you?"
+
+"Nothing." He did not even turn his eyes to her, as he spoke the single
+word.
+
+A silence followed, during which he suffered. Nevertheless, the first
+dreaded shock of hearing her voice was over. Though he had barely
+glanced at her, he had known from her face what the sound of the voice
+would be.
+
+Gloria leaned back in her chair and watched the fire, and sighed. Griggs
+had been with her in the afternoon, and she had been happy, quite
+innocently, as she thought. The man's dominating strength and profound
+earnestness, which would have been intolerably dull to many women,
+smoothed Gloria, as it were. She said that he ironed the creases out of
+her life for her. It was not a softening influence, but a calming one,
+bred of strength pressing heavily on caprice. She resisted it, but took
+pleasure in finding that it was irresistible. Now and then it was not
+merely a steady pressure. He had a sledge hammer amongst his
+intellectual weapons, and once in a while it fell upon one of her
+illusions. She laughed at the destruction, and had no pity for the
+fragments. They were not illusions integral with her vanity, for he
+thought her perfect, and he would not have struck at her faults if he
+had seen them. Her faults grew, for they had root in her vital nature,
+and drew nourishment from his enduring strength, which surrounded them
+and protected them in the blind, whole-heartedness of his love. For the
+rest, he had kept his word. She had seen him turn white and bite his
+lip, sometimes, and more than once he had left her abruptly, and had not
+come back again for several days. But he had never forgotten his
+promise, in any word or deed since he had given it.
+
+It is a dangerous thing to pile up a mountain of massive reality from
+which to look out upon the fading beauty of a fleeting illusion. In his
+influence on Gloria's life, the strong man had overtopped the man of
+genius by head and shoulders. And she loved the strange mixture of
+attraction and repulsion she felt when she was with Griggs--the
+something that wounded her vanity because she could not understand it,
+and the protecting shield that overspread that same vanity, and gave it
+freedom to be vain beyond all bounds. She would not have admitted that
+she loved the man. It was her nature to play upon his pity with the
+wounds her love for her husband had suffered. Yet she knew that if she
+were free she should marry him, because she could not resist him, and
+there was pleasure in the idea that she controlled so irresistible a
+force. The contrast between him and Reanda was ever before her, and
+since she had learned how weak genius could be, the comparison was
+enormously in favour of the younger man.
+
+As Reanda stood there before the fire that evening, she despised him,
+and her heart rebelled against his nature. His nervousness, his
+trembling hands, his almost evident fear of being questioned, were
+contemptible. He was like a hunted animal, she thought. Two hours
+earlier her friend had stood there, solid, leonine, gladiatorial,
+dominating her with his square white face, and still, shadowy eyes,
+quietly stretching to the flames two hands that could have torn her in
+pieces,--a man imposing in his stern young sadness, almost solemn in his
+splendid physical dignity.
+
+She looked at Reanda, and her lip curled with scorn of herself for
+having loved such a thing. It was long since she had seen the gentle
+light in his face which had won her heart two years ago. She was
+familiar with his genius, and it no longer surprised her into
+overlooking his frailty. His fame no longer flattered her. His
+gentleness was gone, and had left, not hardness nor violence, in its
+place, but a sort of irritable palsy of discontent. That was what she
+called it as she watched him.
+
+"You used to kiss me when you came home," she said suddenly, leaning far
+back in her chair.
+
+Mechanically he turned his head. The habit was strong, and she had
+reminded him of it. He did not wish to quarrel, and he did not reason.
+He moved a step to her side and bent down to kiss her forehead. The
+automatic conjugality of the daily kiss might have a good effect. That
+was what he thought, if he thought at all.
+
+But she put up her hands suddenly, and thrust him back rudely.
+
+"No," she said. "That sort of thing is not worth much, if I have to
+remind you to do it."
+
+Her lip curled again. His high shoulders went up, and he turned away.
+
+"You are hard to please," he said, and the words were as mechanical as
+the action that had preceded them.
+
+"It cannot be said that you have taken much pains to please me of late,"
+she answered coldly.
+
+The servant announced dinner at that moment, and Reanda made no answer,
+though he glanced at her nervously. They went into the dining-room and
+sat down.
+
+The storm brewed during the silent meal. Reanda scarcely ate anything,
+and drank a little weak wine and water.
+
+"You hardly seem well enough to go out this evening," said Gloria, at
+last, but there was no kindness in the tone.
+
+"I am perfectly well," he answered impatiently. "I will go with you."
+
+"There is not the slightest necessity," replied his wife. "I can go
+alone, and you can go to bed."
+
+"I tell you I am perfectly well!" he said with unconcealed annoyance.
+"Let me alone."
+
+"Certainly. Nothing is easier."
+
+The voice was full of that injured dignity which most surely irritated
+him, as Gloria knew. But the servant was in the room, and he said
+nothing, though it was a real effort to be silent. His tongue had been
+free that day, and it was hard to be bound again.
+
+They finished dinner almost in silence, and then went back to the
+drawing-room by force of habit. Gloria was still in her walking-dress,
+but there was no hurry, and she resumed her favourite seat by the fire
+for a time, before going to dress for the reception.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+THERE was something exasperating in the renewal of the position exactly
+as it had been before dinner. To make up for having eaten nothing,
+Reanda drank two cups of coffee in silence.
+
+"You might at least speak to me," observed Gloria, as he set down the
+second cup. "One would almost think that we had quarrelled!"
+
+The hard laugh that followed the words jarred upon him more painfully
+than anything that had gone before. He laughed, too, after a moment's
+silence, half hysterically.
+
+"Yes," he said; "one might almost think that we had quarrelled!" And he
+laughed again.
+
+"The idea seems to amuse you," said Gloria, coldly.
+
+"As it does you," he answered. "We both laughed. Indeed, it is very
+amusing."
+
+"Donna Francesca has sent you home in a good humour. That is rare. I
+suppose I ought to be grateful."
+
+"Yes. I am in a fine humour. It seems to me that we both are." He bit
+his cigar, and blew out short puffs.
+
+"You need not include me. Please do not smoke into my face."
+
+The smoke was not very near her, but she made a movement with her hands
+as though brushing it away.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said politely, and he moved to the other side of
+the fireplace.
+
+"How nervous you are!" she exclaimed. "Why can you not sit down?"
+
+"Because I wish to stand," he answered, with returning impatience.
+"Because I am nervous, if you choose."
+
+"You told me that you were perfectly well."
+
+"So I am."
+
+"If you were perfectly well, you would not be nervous," she replied.
+
+He felt as though she were driving a sharp nail into his brain.
+
+"It does not make any difference to you whether I am nervous or not," he
+said, and his eye began to lighten, as he sat down.
+
+"It certainly makes no difference to you whether you are rude or not."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, said nothing, and smoked in silence. One thin
+leg was crossed over the other and swung restlessly.
+
+"Is this sort of thing to last forever?" she inquired coldly, after a
+silence which had lasted a full minute.
+
+"I do not know what you mean," said Reanda.
+
+"You know very well what I mean."
+
+"This is insufferable!" he exclaimed, rising suddenly, with his cigar
+between his teeth.
+
+"You might take your cigar out of your mouth to say so," retorted
+Gloria.
+
+He turned on her, and an exclamation of anger was on his lips, but he
+did not utter it. There was a remnant of self-control. Gloria leaned
+back in her chair, and took up a carved ivory fan from amongst the
+knick-knacks on the little table beside her. She opened it, shut it, and
+opened it again, and pretended to fan herself, though the room was cool.
+
+"I should really like to know," she said presently, as he walked up and
+down with uneven steps.
+
+"What?" he asked sharply.
+
+"Whether this is to last for the rest of our lives."
+
+"What?"
+
+"This peaceful existence," she said scornfully. "I should really like to
+know whether it is to last. Could you not tell me?"
+
+"It will not last long, if you make it your principal business to
+torment me," he said, stopping in his walk.
+
+"I?" she exclaimed, with an air of the utmost surprise. "When do I ever
+torment you?"
+
+"Whenever I am with you, and you know it."
+
+"Really! You must be ill, or out of your mind, or both. That would be
+some excuse for saying such a thing."
+
+"It needs none. It is true." He was becoming exasperated at last. "You
+seem to spend your time in finding out how to make life intolerable. You
+are driving me mad. I cannot bear it much longer."
+
+"If it comes to bearing, I think I have borne more than you," said
+Gloria. "It is not little. You leave me to myself. You neglect me. You
+abuse the friends I am obliged to find rather than be alone. You neglect
+me in every way--and you say that I am driving you mad. Do you realize
+at all how you have changed in this last year? You may have really gone
+mad, for all I know, but it is I who have to suffer and bear the
+consequences. You neglect me brutally. How do I know how you pass your
+time?"
+
+Reanda stood still in the middle of the room, gazing at her. For a
+moment he was surprised by the outbreak. She did not give him time to
+answer.
+
+"You leave me in the morning," she went on, working her coldness into
+anger. "You often go away before I am awake. You come back at midday,
+and sometimes you do not speak a word over your breakfast. If I speak,
+you either do not answer, or you find fault with what I say; and if I
+show the least enthusiasm for anything but your work, you preach me down
+with proverbs and maxims, as though I were a child. I am foolish,
+young, impatient, silly, not fit to take care of myself, you say! Have
+you taken care of me? Have you ever sacrificed one hour out of your long
+day to give me a little pleasure? Have you ever once, since we were
+married, stayed at home one morning and asked me what I would do--just
+to make one holiday for me? Never. Never once! You give me a fine house
+and enough money, and you think you have given me all that a woman
+wants."
+
+"And what do you want?" asked Reanda, trying to speak calmly.
+
+"A little kindness, a little love--the least thing of all you promised
+me and of all I was so sure of having! Is it so much to ask? Have you
+lied to me all this time? Did you never love me? Did you marry me for my
+face, or for my voice? Was it all a mere empty sham from the beginning?
+Have you deceived me from the first? You said you loved me. Was none of
+it true?"
+
+"Yes. I loved you," he answered, and suddenly there was a dulness in his
+voice.
+
+"You loved me--"
+
+She sighed, and in the stillness that followed the little ivory fan
+rattled as she opened and shut it. To his ear, the tone in which she had
+spoken had rung false. If only he could have heard her voice speaking as
+it had once sounded, he must have been touched.
+
+"Yes," she continued. "You loved me, or at least you made me think you
+did. I was young and I believed you. You do not even say it now. Perhaps
+because you know how hard it would be to make me believe you."
+
+"No. That is not the reason."
+
+She waited a moment, for it was not the answer she had expected.
+
+"Angelo--" she began, and waited, but he said nothing, though he looked
+at her. "It is not true, it cannot be true!" she said, suddenly turning
+her face away, for there was a bitter humiliation in it.
+
+"It is much better to say it at once," he said, with the supernaturally
+calm indifference which sometimes comes upon very sensitive people when
+they are irritated beyond endurance. "I did love you, or I should not
+have married you. But I do not love you any longer. I am sorry. I wish I
+did."
+
+"And you dare to tell me so!" she cried, turning upon him suddenly.
+
+A moment later she was leaning forward, covering her face with her
+hands, and speaking through them.
+
+"You have the heart to tell me so, after all I have been to you--the
+devotion of years, the tenderness, the love no man ever had of any
+woman! Oh, God! It is too much!"
+
+"It is said now. It is of no use to go back to a lie," observed Reanda,
+with an indifference that would have seemed diabolical even to himself,
+had he believed her outbreak to be quite genuine. "Of what use would it
+be to pretend again?"
+
+"You admit that you have only pretended to love me?" She raised her
+flushed face and gleaming eyes.
+
+"Of late--if you call it a pretence--"
+
+"Oh, not that--not that! I have seen it--but at first. You did love me.
+Say that, at least."
+
+"Certainly. Why should I have married you?"
+
+"Yes--why? In spite of her, too--it is not to be believed."
+
+"In spite of her? Of whom? Are you out of your mind?"
+
+Gloria laughed in a despairing sort of way.
+
+"Do not tell me that Donna Francesca ever wished you to be married!" she
+said.
+
+"She brought us together. You know it. It is the only thing I could ever
+reproach her with."
+
+"She made you marry me?"
+
+"Made me? No! You are quite mad."
+
+He stamped his foot impatiently, and turned away to walk up and down
+again. His cigar had gone out, but he gnawed at it angrily. He was
+amazed at what he could still bear, but he was fast losing his head. The
+mad desire to strangle her tingled in his hands, and the light of the
+lamp danced when he looked at it.
+
+"She has made you do so many things!" said Gloria.
+
+Her tone had changed again, growing hard and scornful, when she spoke of
+Donna Francesca.
+
+"What has she made me do that you should speak of her in that way?"
+asked Reanda, angrily, re-crossing the room.
+
+"She has made you hate me--for one thing," Gloria answered.
+
+"That is not true!" Reanda could hardly breathe, and he felt his voice
+growing thick.
+
+"Not true! Then, if not she, who else? You are with her there all
+day--she talks about me, she finds fault with me, and you come home and
+see the faults she finds for you--"
+
+"There is not a word of truth in what you say--"
+
+"Do not be so angry, then! If it were not true, why should you care? I
+have said it, and I will say it. She has robbed me of you. Oh, I will
+never forgive her! Never fear! One does not forget such things! She has
+got you, and she will keep you, I suppose. But you shall regret it! She
+shall pay me for it!"
+
+Her voice shook, for her jealousy was real, as was all her emotion while
+it lasted.
+
+"You shall not speak of her in that way," said Reanda, fiercely. "I owe
+her and her family all that I am, all that I have in the world--"
+
+"Including me!" interrupted Gloria. "Pay her then--pay her with your
+love and yourself. You can satisfy your conscience in that way, and you
+can break my heart."
+
+"There is not the slightest fear of that," answered Reanda, cruelly.
+
+She rose suddenly to her feet and stood before him, blazing with anger.
+
+"If I could find yours--if you had any--I would break it," she said.
+"You dare to say that I have no heart, when you can see that every word
+you say thrusts it through like a knife, when I have loved you as no
+woman ever loved man! I said it, and I repeat it--when I have given you
+everything, and would have given you the world if I had it! Indeed, you
+are utterly heartless and cruel and unkind--"
+
+"At least, I am honest. I do not play a part as you do. I say plainly
+that I do not love you and that I am sorry for it. Yes--really sorry."
+His voice softened for an instant. "I would give a great deal to love
+you as I once did, and to believe that you loved me--"
+
+"You will tell me that I do not--"
+
+"Indeed, I will tell you so, and that you never did--"
+
+"Angelo--take care! You will go too far!"
+
+"I could never go far enough in telling you that truth. You never loved
+me. You may have thought you did. I do not care. You talk of devotion
+and tenderness and all the like! Of being left alone and neglected! Of
+going too far! What devotion have you ever shown to me, beyond
+extravagantly praising everything I painted, for a few months after we
+were married. Then you grew tired of my work. That is your affair. What
+is it to me whether you admire my pictures or Mendoza's, or any other
+man's? Do you think that is devotion? I know far better than you which
+are good and which are bad. But you call it devotion. And it was
+devotion that kept you away from me when I was working, when I was
+obliged to work--for it is my trade, after all--and when you might have
+been with me day after day! And it was devotion to meet me with your
+sour, severe look every day when I came home, as though I were a secret
+enemy, a conspirator, a creature to be guarded against like a thief--as
+though I had been staying away from you on purpose, and of my
+will--instead of working for you all day long. That was your way of
+showing your love. And to torment me with questions, everlastingly
+believing that I spend my time in talking against you to Donna
+Francesca--"
+
+"You do!" cried Gloria, who had not been able to interrupt his
+incoherent speech. "You love her as you never loved me--as you hate
+me--as you both hate me!"
+
+She grasped his sleeve in her anger, shaking his arm, and staring into
+his eyes.
+
+"You make me hate you!" he answered, trying to shake her off.
+
+"And you succeed, between you--You and your--"
+
+In his turn he grasped her arm with his long, thin fingers, with nervous
+roughness.
+
+"You shall not speak of her--"
+
+"Shall not? It is the only right I have left--that and the right to hate
+you--you and that infamous woman you love--yes--you and your
+mistress--your pretty Francesca!" Her laugh was almost a scream.
+
+His fury overflowed. After all, he was the son of a countryman, of the
+steward of Gerano. He snatched the ivory fan from her hand and struck
+her across the face with it. The fragile thing broke to shivers, and the
+fragments fell between them.
+
+Gloria turned deadly white, but there was a bright red bar across her
+cheek. She looked at him a moment, and into her face there came that
+fateful look that was like her dead mother's.
+
+Then without a word she turned and left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+THE daughter of Angus Dalrymple and Maria Braccio was not the woman to
+bear a blow tamely, or to hesitate long as to the surest way of
+resenting it. Before she had reached the door she had determined to
+leave the house at once, and ten minutes had not passed before she found
+herself walking down the Corso, veiled and muffled in a cloak, and
+having all the money she could call her own, in her pocket, together
+with a few jewels of little value, given her by her father.
+
+Reanda had sunk into a chair when the door had closed behind her, half
+stunned by the explosion of his own anger. He looked at the bits of
+broken ivory on the carpet, and wondered vaguely what they meant. He
+felt as though he had been in a dream of which he could not remember the
+distorted incidents at all clearly. His breath came irregularly, his
+heart fluttered and stood still and fluttered again, and his hands
+twitched at the fringe on the arms of the chair. By and bye, the butler
+came in to take away the coffee cups and he saw that his master was ill.
+Under such circumstances nothing can equal the gentleness of an Italian
+servant. The man called some one to help him, and got Reanda to his
+dressing-room, and undressed him and laid him upon the long leathern
+sofa. Then they knocked at the bedroom door, but there was no answer.
+
+"Do not disturb the signora," said Reanda, feebly. "She wishes to be
+alone. We shall not want the carriage."
+
+Those were the only words he spoke that evening, and the servants
+understood well enough that something had happened between husband and
+wife, and that it was best to be silent and to obey. No one tried the
+door of the bedroom. If any one had turned the handle, it would have
+been found to be locked. The key lay on the table in the hall, amongst
+the visiting-cards. Dalrymple's daughter had inherited some of his quick
+instinct and presence of mind. She had felt sure that if she locked the
+door of her room when she left the house, her husband would naturally
+suppose that she had shut herself in, not wishing to be disturbed, and
+would respect her desire to be alone. It would save trouble, and give
+her time to get away. He could sleep on the sofa in his dressing-room,
+as he actually did, in the illness of his anger, treated as Italians
+know how to treat such common cases, of which the consequences are
+sometimes fatal. Many an Italian has died from a fit of rage. A single
+blood-vessel, in the brain, a little weaker than the rest, and all is
+over in an apoplexy. But Reanda was not of an apoplectic constitution.
+The calming treatment acted very soon, he fell asleep, and did not wake
+till daylight, quite unaware that Gloria was not in the next room,
+sleeping off her anger as he had done.
+
+She had gone out in her first impulse to leave the house of the man who
+had so terribly insulted her. Under her veil the hot blood scorched her
+where the blow had left its red bar, and her rage and wounded pride
+chased one another from her heart to her head while with every beating
+of her pulse the longing for revenge grew wilder and stronger.
+
+She had left the house with one first idea--to find Paul Griggs and tell
+him what had happened. No other thought crossed her mind, and her steps
+turned mechanically down the Corso, for he still lived in his two rooms
+in the Via della Frezza.
+
+It was early still. People dined at six o'clock in those days, and it
+was not yet eight when Gloria found herself in the street. It was quiet,
+though there were many people moving about. During the hours between
+dinner and the theatre there were hardly any carriages out, and the
+sound of many footsteps and of many low voices filled the air. Gloria
+kept to the right and walked swiftly along, never turning her head. She
+had never been out in the streets alone at night in her life, and even
+in her anger she felt a sort of intoxication of freedom that was quite
+new to her, a beginning of satisfaction upon him who had injured her.
+There was Highland blood in her veins, as well as Italian passion.
+
+The southeast wind was blowing down the street behind her, that same
+strange and tragic wind, tragic and passionate, that had blown so
+gustily down upon Subiaco from the mountains, on that night long ago
+when Maria Addolorata had stood aside by the garden gate to let
+Dalrymple pass, bearing something in his arms. Gloria knew it by its sad
+whisper and by the faint taste of it and smell of it, through her
+close-drawn veil.
+
+On she went, down the Corso, till she came to the Piazza Colonna, and
+saw far on her left, beyond the huge black shaft of the column, the
+brilliant lights from the French officers' Club. She hesitated then, and
+slackened her speed a little. The sight of the Club reminded her of
+society, of what she was doing, and of what it might mean. As she walked
+more slowly, the wind gained upon her, as it were, from behind, and
+tried to drive her on. It seemed to be driving her from her husband's
+house with all its might, blowing her skirts before her and her thick
+veil. She passed the square, keeping close to the shutters of the shops
+under the Palazzo Piombino--gone now, to widen the open space. A gust,
+stronger than any she had felt yet, swept down the pavement. She paused
+a moment, leaning against the closed shutters of the clockmaker Ricci,
+whose shop used to be a sort of landmark in the Corso. Just then a clock
+within struck eight strokes. She heard them all distinctly through the
+shutters.
+
+She hesitated an instant. It was eight o'clock. She had not realized
+what time it was. If she found the street door shut in the Via della
+Frezza, it would be hard to get at Griggs. She had passed the house more
+than once in her walks, and she knew that Griggs lived high up in the
+fifth story. It might be already too late. She hesitated and looked up
+and down the pavement. A young French officer of Zouaves was coming
+towards her; his high wrinkled and varnished boots gleamed in the
+gaslight. He had a black beard and bright young eyes, and was smoking a
+cigarette. He was looking at her and slackened his pace as he came near.
+She left her place and walked swiftly past him, down the Corso.
+
+All at once she felt in the gust that drove her a cool drop of rain just
+behind her ear, and a moment later, passing a gas-lamp, she saw the dark
+round spots on the grey pavement. In her haste, she had brought no
+umbrella. She hurried on, and the wind blew her forward with all its
+might, so that she felt her steps lightened by its help. The Corso was
+darker and there were fewer people. The rain fell fast when she reached
+San Carlo, where the street widens, and she gathered her cloak about
+her as well as she could and crossed to the other side, hoping to find
+more shelter. She was nearing the Via della Frezza, and she knew some of
+the ins and outs of the narrow streets behind the tribune of the great
+church. It was very dark as she turned the semicircle of the apse, and
+the rain fell in torrents, but it was shorter to go that way, for Griggs
+lived nearer to the Ripetta than to the Corso, and she followed a sort
+of crooked diagonal, in the direction of his house. She thought the
+streets led by that way to the point she wished to reach, and she walked
+as fast as she could. The flare of an occasional oil lamp swung out high
+at the end of its lever showed her the way, and showed her, too, the
+rush of the yellow water down the middle channel of the street. She
+looked in vain for the turning she expected on her right. She had not
+lost her way, but she had not found the short cut she had looked for.
+Emerging upon the broad Ripetta, she paused an instant at the corner and
+looked about, though she knew which way to turn. Just then there were
+heavy splashing footsteps close to her.
+
+"Permit me, Signora," said a voice that was rough and had an odd accent,
+though the tone was polite, and a huge umbrella was held over her head.
+
+She shrank back against the wall quickly, in womanly fear of a strange
+man.
+
+"No, thank you!" she exclaimed in answer.
+
+"But yes!" said the man. "It rains. You are getting an illness,
+Signora."
+
+The faint light showed her that she would be safe enough in accepting
+the offer. The man was evidently a peasant from the mountains, and he
+was certainly not young. His vast black cloak was turned back a little
+by his arm and showed the lining of green flannel and the blue clothes
+with broad silver buttons which he wore.
+
+"Thank you," she said, for she was glad of the shelter, and she stood
+still under the enormous blue cotton umbrella, with its battered brass
+knob and its coloured stripes.
+
+"But I will accompany you," said the man. "It is certainly not beginning
+to finish. Apoplexy! It rains in pieces!"
+
+"Thank you. I am not going far," said Gloria. "You are very kind."
+
+"It seems to be the act of a Christian," observed the peasant.
+
+She began to move, and he walked beside her. He would have thought it
+bad manners to ask whither she was going. Through the torrents of rain
+they went on in silence. In less than five minutes she had found the
+door of Griggs's house. To her intense relief it was still open, and
+there was the glimmer of a tiny oil lamp from a lantern in the stairway.
+Gloria felt for the money in her pocket. The man did not wait, nor
+speak, and was already going away. She called him.
+
+[Illustration: Stefanone and Gloria.--Vol. II., p. 100.]
+
+"I wish to give you something," said Gloria.
+
+"To me?" exclaimed the man, in surprise. "No, Signora. It seems that you
+make a mistake."
+
+"Excuse me," Gloria answered. "In the dark, I did not see. I am very
+grateful to you. You are from the country?"
+
+She wished to repair the mistake she had made, by some little civility.
+The man stood on the doorstep, with his umbrella hanging backward over
+his shoulder, and she could see his face distinctly,--a typical Roman
+face with small aquiline features, keen dark eyes, a square jaw, and
+iron-grey hair.
+
+"Yes, Signora. Stefanone of Subiaco, wine merchant, to serve you. If you
+wish wine of Subiaco, ask for me at Piazza Montanara. Signora, it rains
+columns. With permission, I go."
+
+"Thank you again," she answered.
+
+He disappeared into the torrent, and she was left alone at the foot of
+the gloomy stairs, under the feeble light of the little oil lamp. She
+had thrown back her veil, for it was soaked with water and stuck to her
+face. Little rivulets ran down upon the stones from her wet clothes,
+which felt intolerably heavy as she stood there, resting one gloved hand
+against the damp wall and staring at the lantern. Her thoughts had
+been disturbed by her brief interview with the peasant; the rain chilled
+her, and her face burned. She touched her cheek with her hand where
+Reanda had struck her. It felt bruised and sore, for the blow had not
+been a light one. The sensation of the wet leather disgusted her, and
+she drew off the glove with difficulty, turning it inside out over her
+full white hand. Then she touched the place again, and patted it,
+softly, and felt it. But her eyes did not move from the lantern.
+
+There was one of those momentary lulling pauses in the rush of events
+which seem sent to confuse men's thoughts and unsettle their purposes.
+Had she reached the house five minutes earlier, she would not have
+hesitated a moment at the foot of the stairs. Suddenly she turned back
+to the door, and stood there looking out. It looked very black. She
+gathered her dripping skirt back as she bent forward a little and peered
+into the darkness. The rain fell in sheets, now, with the unquavering
+sound of a steadily rushing torrent. It would be madness to go out into
+it. A shiver ran through her, and another. She was very cold and
+miserable. No doubt Griggs had a fire upstairs, and a pleasant light in
+his study. He would be there, hard at work. She would knock, and he
+would open, and she would sit down by the fire and dry herself, and pour
+out her misery. The red bar was still across her face--she had seen it
+in the looking-glass when she had put on her hat.
+
+To go back, to see her husband that night--it was impossible. Later,
+perhaps, when he should be asleep, Griggs would find a carriage and take
+her home. No one would ever know where she had been, and she would never
+tell any more than Griggs would. She felt that she must see him and tell
+him everything, and feel his strength beside her. After all, he was the
+only friend she had in the world, and it was natural that she should
+turn to him for help, in her father's absence. He was her father's
+friend, too.
+
+She shivered again and again from head to foot, and she drew back from
+the door. For a moment she hesitated. Then with a womanly action she
+began to shake the rain out of her cloak and her skirts as well as she
+could, wetting her hands to the wrists. As she bent down, shaking the
+hem of the skirt, the blood rushed to her face again, and the place he
+had struck burned and smarted. It was quite a different sensation from
+what she had felt when she had touched it with her cool wet hand. She
+straightened herself with a spring and threw back her head, and her eyes
+flashed fiercely in the dark. The accidents of fate closed round her,
+and the hands of her destiny had her by the throat, choking her as she
+breathed.
+
+There was no more hesitation. With quick steps she began to ascend the
+short, steep flights. It was dark, beyond the first turning, but she
+went on, touching the damp walls with her hands. Then there was a
+glimmer again, and a second lantern marked the first landing and shone
+feebly upon a green door with a thin little square of white marble
+screwed to it for a door-plate and a name in black. She glanced at it
+and went on, for she knew that Griggs lived on the fifth floor. She was
+surefooted, like her father, as she went firmly up, panting a little,
+for her drenched clothes weighed her down. There was one more light, and
+then there were no more. She counted the landings, feeling the doors
+with her hands as she went by, dizzy from the constant turning in the
+darkness. At last she thought she had got to the end, and groping with
+her hands she found a worsted string and pulled it, and a cracked little
+bell jangled and beat against the wood inside. She heard a pattering of
+feet, and a shrill, nasal child's voice called out the customary
+question, inquiring who was there. She asked for Griggs.
+
+"He is not here," answered the child, and she heard the footsteps
+running away again, though she called loudly.
+
+Her heart sank. But she groped her way on. The staircase ended, for it
+was the top of the house, and she found another door, and felt for a
+string like the one she had pulled, but there was none. Something told
+her that she was right, and with the sudden, desperate longing to be
+inside, with her strong protector, in the light and warmth, she beat
+upon the door with the palms of her hands, her face almost touching the
+cold painted wood studded with nails, that smelled of wet iron.
+
+Then came the firm, regular footsteps of the strong man, and his clear,
+stern voice spoke from within, not in a question, but in a curt refusal
+to open.
+
+"Go away," he said, in Italian. "You have mistaken the door."
+
+But she beat with her hands upon the heavy wood.
+
+"Let me in!" she cried in English. "Let me in!"
+
+There was a deep exclamation of surprise, and the oiled bolt clanked
+back in its socket. The door opened inward, and Paul Griggs held up a
+lamp with a green shade, throwing the light into Gloria's face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+GLORIA pushed past Griggs and stood beside him in the narrow entry. He
+shut the door mechanically, and turned slowly towards her, still holding
+up the lamp so that it shone upon her face.
+
+"What has happened to you?" he asked, slowly and steadily, his shadowed
+eyes fixed upon her.
+
+"He has beaten me, and I have come to you. Look at my face."
+
+He saw the red bar across her cheek. He did not raise his voice, and
+there was little change in his features, but his eyes glowed suddenly,
+like the eyes of a wild beast, and he swore an oath so terrible that
+Gloria turned a little pale and shrank from him. Then he was silent, and
+they stood together. She could hear his breath. She could see him trying
+to swallow, for his throat was suddenly as dry as cinders. Very slowly
+his frown deepened to a scowl, and two straight furrows clove their way
+down between his eyes, his dark eyebrows were lifted evilly, upward and
+outward, and little by little the strong, clean shaven upper lip rose at
+the corners and showed two gleaming, wolfish teeth. The smooth, close
+hair bristled from the point where it descended upon his forehead.
+
+Gloria shrank a little. She had seen such a look in an angry lion; just
+the look, without a motion of the limbs. Then it all disappeared, and
+the still face she knew so well was turned to hers.
+
+"Will you come in?" he asked in a constrained tone. "It is my work-room.
+I will light a fire, and you must dry yourself. How did you get so wet?
+You did not come on foot?"
+
+He opened the door while he was speaking, and led the way with the lamp.
+Gloria shivered as she followed, for there was a small window open in
+the entry, and her clothes clung to her in the cold draught. She closed
+the door behind her, as she went in. It was very little warmer within
+than without, and the small fireplace was black and cold. Instinctively
+she glanced at Griggs. He wore a rough pilot coat that had seen much
+service, buttoned to his throat. He set the little lamp with its green
+shade down upon the table amidst a mass of papers and books, and drew
+forward the only easy-chair there was, a dilapidated piece of furniture
+covered with faded yellow reps and ragged fringes that dragged on the
+floor. He took a great cloak from a clothes-horse in the corner and
+threw it over the chair, smoothing it carefully with his hands.
+
+"If you will sit down, I will try and make a fire," he said quietly.
+
+She sat down as he bade her, wondering a little at his calmness, but
+remembering the awful words that had escaped his lips when she had
+spoken, and the look of the wild beast and incarnate devil that had been
+one moment in his face. She looked about her while he began to make a
+fire, not hindering him, for she was shivering. The room was large, but
+very poorly furnished. There were two great tables, covered with books
+and papers; there was a deal bookcase along one wall and an antiquated
+cabinet between the two windows, one of its legs propped up with a dingy
+faded paper. The coarse green carpet was threadbare, but still whole.
+There were half-a-dozen plain chairs with green and white rush seats in
+various parts of the room. On the narrow white marble mantel-shelf stood
+two china candlesticks, in one of which there was a piece of candle that
+had guttered when last burning. In the middle a cheap American clock of
+white metal ticked loudly, and the hands pointed to twenty minutes
+before nine. In one corner was the clothes-horse, with two or three
+overcoats hanging on it, and two hats, one of which was hanging half
+over on one side. It looked as though two cloaked skeletons in hats were
+embracing. In another corner by the door a black stick and an umbrella
+stood side by side. But for the books the place would have had a
+desolate look. The air smelt of strong tobacco.
+
+Gloria looked about her curiously, though her heart was beating fast.
+The man was familiar to her, dear to her in many ways, and over much in
+her life. The place where he lived contained a part of him which she did
+not know. Her breath came quickly in the anticipation of an emotion
+greater even than what she had felt already, but her eyes wandered in
+curiosity from one object to another. Suddenly she heard the loud
+cracking of breaking wood. There was a blaze of paper from the
+fireplace, illuminating all the room, and some light pieces he was
+throwing on kindled quickly. He was breaking them--she looked--it was
+one of the rush-bottomed chairs.
+
+"What are you doing?" she cried, leaning suddenly far forward.
+
+"Making a good fire," he answered. "There happened to be only one bit of
+wood in my box, so I am taking these things."
+
+He broke the legs and the rails of the chair in his hands, as a child
+would break twigs, and heaped them up upon the blaze.
+
+"There are five more," he observed. "They will make a good fire."
+
+He arranged the burning mass to suit him, looked at it, and then turned.
+
+"You ought to be a little nearer," he said, and he lifted the chair with
+her in it and set her before the fireplace.
+
+It had all looked and felt desperately desolate half a minute earlier.
+It was changed now. He went to a corner and filled a small glass with
+wine from a straw-covered flask and brought it to her. She thanked him
+with her eyes and drank half of it eagerly. He knelt down before the
+fire again, for as the paper burned away underneath, the light sticks
+fell inward and might go out. When he had arranged it all again, he
+looked round and met her eyes, still kneeling.
+
+"Is that better?" he asked quietly.
+
+"You are so good," said Gloria, letting her eyelids droop as she looked
+from him to the pleasant flame.
+
+He put out his hand and gently touched the hem of her cloth skirt.
+
+"You are drenched," he said.
+
+Then, before she realized what he was doing, he bent down and kissed the
+wet cloth, and without looking at her rose to his feet, got another
+chair and sat down near her. A soft blush of pleasure had risen in her
+cheeks. They were little things that he did, but they were like him,
+unaffected, strong, direct. Another man would have made apologies for
+having no wood and would have tried to make a fire of the single stick.
+Another man would have made excuses for the disorder of his room, or for
+the poverty of its furniture, perhaps. The other man she thought of was
+her husband, and possibly she had her father in her mind, too.
+
+"When you are rested, tell me your story," he said, and his face
+hardened all at once.
+
+She began to speak in a low and uncertain voice, reciting almost
+mechanically many things which she had often told him before. He
+listened without moving a muscle. Her voice was dear to him, whether she
+repeated the endless history of her woes for the tenth or the hundredth
+time. Where she was concerned he had no judgment, and he had no
+criterion, for he had never loved another woman with whom he could
+compare her. All that was of her was of paramount interest and weighty
+importance. He could not hear it too often. But to-night her first words
+had told him of the violent crisis in her life with Reanda, and he
+listened to all she said, before she reached that point, with an
+interest he had never felt before. But he would not look at her, for he
+must have taken her in his arms, as he had done once, months before now.
+She had come for protection and for help, and her need was the life
+spring of his honour.
+
+As she went on, her voice took colour from her emotion, her hands moved
+now and then in short swift gestures, and her dark eyes burned. The
+marvellous dramatic power she possessed blazed out under the lash of her
+wrongs, and she found words she had only groped for until that moment.
+She described the miserably nervous feebleness of the man with scathing
+contempt, her tone made evil deeds of his shortcomings, her scorn made
+his weakness a black crime; her jealous anger fastened upon Francesca
+Campodonico and tore her honour to shreds and her virtues to rags of
+abomination; and her flaming pride blazed out in searing hatred and
+contempt for the coward who had struck her in the face.
+
+"He broke my fan across my face!" she cried with the ascending
+intonation of a fury rising still, and still more fiercely beautiful.
+"He slashed my face with it and broke it and threw the bits down at my
+feet! There, look at it! That is his work--oh, give it back to him, kill
+him for me, tear him to pieces for me--make him feel what I have felt
+to-day!"
+
+She had pushed her brown hat and veil back from her head, and her wet
+cloak had long ago fallen from her shoulders. One straight, white hand
+shot out and fastened upon her companion's arm, as he sat beside her,
+and she shook it in savage confidence of his iron strength.
+
+A dead silence followed, but the fire made of the broken chairs roared
+and blazed on the low brick hearth. The man kept his eyes upon it
+fixedly, as though it were his salvation, for he felt that if he looked
+at her he was lost. She had come to him not for love, but for
+protection, of her own free will. Yet he felt that his honour was
+burning in him, with no longer life, if she stayed there, than the
+short, quick fire itself. His voice was thick when he answered, as
+though he were speaking through a velvet pall.
+
+"I will kill him, if he will fight," he answered, with an effort. "I
+will not murder him, even for you."
+
+She started, for she had not realized how he would take literally what
+she said. She had no experience of desperate men in her limited life.
+
+"Murder him? No!" she said, snatching back her hand from his arm. "No,
+no! I never meant that."
+
+"I am glad you did not. If you did, I should probably break down and do
+it to please you. But if he will fight like a man, I will kill him to
+please myself. Now I will go and get a carriage and take you home."
+
+He rose to his feet and, turning, turned away from her, going toward the
+corner to get an overcoat. She followed him with her eyes, in silence.
+
+"You are not afraid to be left alone for a quarter of an hour?" he
+asked, buttoning his coat, and looking toward his umbrella.
+
+"Do not go just yet," she answered softly.
+
+"I must. It is getting late. I shall not find a carriage if I wait any
+longer. I must go now."
+
+"Do not go."
+
+She heard him breathe hard once or twice. Then with quick strides he was
+beside her, and speaking to her.
+
+"Gloria, I cannot stand it--I warn you. I love you in a way you cannot
+understand. You must not keep me here."
+
+"Do not go," she said again, in the deep, soft tone of her golden voice.
+
+"I must."
+
+He turned from her and went towards the door. Soft and swift she
+followed him, but he was in the entry before her hand was on his arm. It
+was almost dusk out there. He stopped.
+
+"I cannot go back to him," she said, and he could see the light in her
+eyes, and very faintly the red bar across the face he loved.
+
+"You should--there is nowhere else for you to go," he said, and in the
+dark his hand was finding the bolt of the door to the stairs.
+
+"No--there is nowhere else--I cannot go back to him," she answered, and
+the voice quavered uncertainly as the night breeze sighing amongst
+reeds.
+
+"You must--you must," he tried to say.
+
+Her weight was all upon his arm, but it was nothing to him. He steadily
+drew back the bolt. He turned up his face so that he could not see her.
+
+With sudden strength her white hands went round his sinewy dark throat
+as he threw back his head.
+
+"You are all I have in the world!" she half said, half whispered. "I
+will not let you go!"
+
+"You?" His voice broke out as through a bursting shell.
+
+"Yes. Come back!"
+
+His arm fell like lead to his side. Gently she drew him back to the door
+of the study. The blaze of the fire shot into her face.
+
+"Come," she said. "See how well it burns."
+
+"Yes," he said, mechanically, "it is burning well."
+
+He stood aside an instant at the door to let her pass. His eyelids
+closed and his face became rigid as a death mask of a man dead in
+passion. One moment only; then he followed her and softly shut the
+door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+THE brilliant winter morning had an intoxicating quality in it, after
+the heavy rain which had fallen in the night, and Paul Griggs felt that
+it was good to be alive as he threaded the narrow streets between his
+lodging and the Piazza Colonna. He avoided the Corso; for he did not
+know whom he might meet, and he had no desire to meet any one, except
+Angelo Reanda.
+
+Naturally enough, his first honourable impulse was to go to the artist,
+to tell him something of the truth, and to give him an opportunity of
+demanding the common satisfaction of a hostile meeting. It did not occur
+to him that Reanda would not wish to exchange shots with him and have
+the chance of taking his life. Griggs was not the man to refuse such an
+encounter, and at that moment he felt so absolutely sure of himself that
+the idea of being killed was very far removed from his thoughts. It was
+without the slightest emotion that he enquired for Reanda at the
+latter's house, but he was very much surprised to hear that the painter
+had gone out as usual at his customary hour. He hesitated a moment and
+then decided not to leave a card, upon which he could not have written
+a message intelligible to Reanda which should not have been understood
+also by the servant who received it. Griggs made up his mind that he
+would write a formal note later in the day. He took it for granted that
+Reanda must be searching for his wife.
+
+It was necessary to find a better lodging than the one in the Via della
+Frezza, and to provide as well as he could for Gloria's comfort. He was
+met by a difficulty upon which he had not reflected as yet, though he
+had been dimly aware of it more than once during the past twelve hours.
+
+He was almost penniless, and he had no means of obtaining money at short
+notice. The payments he received from the newspapers for which he worked
+came regularly, but were not due for at least three weeks from that day.
+Alone in his bachelor existence he could have got through the time very
+well and without any greater privations than his capriciously ascetic
+nature had often imposed upon itself.
+
+He was not an improvident man, but in his lonely existence he had no
+sense of future necessities, and the weakest point in his judgment was
+his undiscriminating generosity. Of the value of money as a store
+against possible needs, he had no appreciation at all, and he gave away
+what he earned beyond his most pressing requirements in secret and often
+ill-judged charities, whenever an occasion of doing so presented
+itself, though he never sought one. For himself, he was able to subsist
+on bread and water, and the meagre fare was scarcely a privation to his
+hardy constitution. If he chanced to have no money to spare for fuel, he
+bore the cold and buttoned up his old pea-jacket to the throat while he
+sat at work at his table. His self-respect made him wise and careful in
+regard to his dress, but in other matters many a handicraftsman was
+accustomed to more luxury than he. At the present juncture he had been
+taken unawares, and he found himself in great difficulty. He had left
+himself barely enough for subsistence until the arrival of the next
+remittance, and that meant but a very few scudi; and yet he knew that
+certain expenses must be met immediately, almost within the twenty-four
+hours. The very first thing was to get a lodging suitable for Gloria. It
+would be necessary to pay at least one month's rent in advance. Even if
+he were able to do that, he would be left without a penny for daily
+expenses. He had no bank account; for he cashed the drafts he received
+and kept the money in his room. He had never borrowed of an
+acquaintance, and the idea was repulsive to him and most humiliating.
+Had he possessed any bit of jewelry, or anything of value, he would have
+sold the object, but he had nothing of the kind. His books were
+practically valueless, consisting of such volumes as he absolutely
+needed for his daily use, chiefly cheap editions, poorly bound and well
+worn. He needed at least fifty scudi, and he did not possess quite ten.
+Three weeks earlier he had sent a hundred, anonymously, to free a
+starving artist from debt.
+
+His position was only very partially enviable just then, but the bright
+north wind seemed to blow his troubles back from him as he faced it,
+walking home from his ineffectual attempt to meet Reanda. It was very
+unlike the man to return to his lodging without having accomplished
+anything, but he was hardly conscious of the fact. The face of the
+ancient city was suddenly changed, and it seemed as though nothing could
+go wrong if he would only allow fortune to play her own game without
+interference. He walked lightly, and there was a little colour in his
+face. He tried to think of what he should do to meet his present
+difficulties, but when he thought of them they were whirled away,
+shapeless and unrecognizable, and he felt a sense of irresistible power
+with each breath of the crisp dry air.
+
+As he went along he glanced at the houses he passed, and on some of the
+doors were little notices scrawled in queer handwritings and telling
+that a lodging was to let. Occasionally he paused, looked up and
+hesitated, and then he went on. The difficulty was suddenly before him,
+and he knew that even if he looked at the rooms he could not hire them,
+as he had not enough money to cover the first month's rent. Immediately
+he attempted to devise some means of raising the sum he needed, but
+before he had reached the very next corner the clear north wind had
+blown the trouble away like a cobweb. With all his strength and industry
+and determination, he was still a very young man, and perplexity had no
+hold upon him since passion had taken its own way.
+
+He reached the corner of his own street and stood still for a few
+moments. He could almost have smiled at himself as he paused. He had
+been out more than an hour and had done nothing, thought out nothing,
+made no definite plan for the future. His present poverty, which was
+desperate enough, had put on a carnival mask and laughed at him, as it
+were, and ran away when he tried to grapple with it and look it in the
+face. Gloria was there, upstairs in that tall house on which the morning
+sun was shining, and nothing else could possibly matter. But if anything
+mattered, it would be simple to talk it over together and to decide it
+in common.
+
+Suddenly he felt ashamed of himself and of the confusion of his own
+intelligence. There was something meek and childish in standing still at
+the street corner, watching the people as they went by, listening to the
+regularly recurring yell of the man who was selling country vegetables
+from a hand-cart, and looking into the faces of people who went by, as
+though expecting to find there some solution of a difficulty which his
+disturbed powers of concentration did not clearly grasp. He could not
+think connectedly, much less could he reason sensibly. He made a few
+steps forward towards his house, and then stopped again, asking himself
+what he was going to do. He felt that he had no right to go back to
+Gloria until he had decided something for the future. He felt like a boy
+who has been sent on an errand, and who comes back having forgotten what
+he was to do. All at once he had lost his hold upon the logic of
+common-sense, and when he groped for a thread that might lead him, he
+was suddenly dazzled by the blaze of his happiness and deafened by the
+voice of his own joy.
+
+He went on again and came to his own door. The one-eyed cobbler was at
+work, astride of his little bench with a brown pot of coals beside him.
+From time to time, when he had drawn the waxed yarn out through the
+leather on both sides, he blew into his black hands. Griggs stood still
+and looked at him in idle indetermination, and only struggling against
+the power that drew him towards the stairs.
+
+"A fine north wind," observed Griggs, by way of salutation.
+
+"It seems that it must be said," grunted the old man, punching a fresh
+hole in the sole he was cobbling. "To me, my fingers say it. It has
+always been a fine trade, this cobbling. It is a gentleman's trade
+because one is always sitting down."
+
+"I am going to change my lodging," said Griggs.
+
+The cobbler looked up, resting his dingy fists upon the bench on each
+side of the shoe, his awl in one hand, the other half encased in a
+leathern sheath, black with age.
+
+"After so many years!" he exclaimed. "The world will also come to an
+end. I expected that it would. Now where will you take lodging?"
+
+"Where I can find one. I want a little apartment--"
+
+"It seems that your affairs go better," observed the old man,
+scrutinizing the other's face with his one eye.
+
+"No. No better. That is the trouble. I want a little apartment, and I do
+not want to pay for it till the end of the first month."
+
+"Then wait till the end of the month before you move to it, Signore."
+
+"That is impossible."
+
+"Then there is a female," said the cobbler, without the slightest
+hesitation. "I understand. Why did you not say so?"
+
+Griggs hesitated. The man's guess had taken him by surprise. He
+reflected that it could make no difference whether the old cobbler knew
+of Gloria's coming or not.
+
+"There is a signora--a relation of mine--who has come to Rome."
+
+"A fair signora? Very beautiful? With a little eye of the devil? I have
+seen. Thanks be to heaven, one eye is still good. You are dark, and your
+family is fair. How can it interest me?"
+
+"What? Has she gone out?" asked Griggs, in sudden anxiety. "When?"
+
+"I had guessed!" exclaimed the cobbler, with a grunting laugh, and he
+ran the delicate bristles, which pointed the yarn, in opposite
+directions through the hole he had made, caught one yarn round the knot
+on the handle of the awl and the other round the leather sheath on his
+left hand. He drew the yarn tight to his arm's length with a vicious
+jerk.
+
+"When did the signora go out?" enquired Griggs, repeating his question.
+
+"It may be half an hour ago. Apoplexy! If your relations are all as
+beautiful as that!"
+
+But Griggs was already moving towards the staircase. The cobbler called
+him back, and he stood still at the foot of the steps.
+
+"There is the little apartment on the left, on the third floor," said
+the man. "The lodgers went away yesterday. I was going to ask you to
+write me a notice to put up on the door. As for paying, the padrone will
+not mind, seeing that you are an old lodger. It is good, do you know?
+There is sun. There is also a kitchen. There are five rooms with the
+entry."
+
+[Illustration: "The horror of poverty smote him."--Vol. II., p. 123.]
+
+"I will take it," said Griggs, instantly, and he ran up the stairs.
+
+He was breathless with anxiety as he entered his work-room, and looked
+about him for something which should tell him where Gloria was gone.
+Almost instantly his eyes fell upon a sheet of paper lying before his
+accustomed seat. The writing on it was hers.
+
+"I have gone to tell him. I shall be back soon."
+
+That was all it said, but it was enough to blacken the sun that streamed
+through the windows upon the old carpet. Griggs sat down and rested his
+head in his hand. With the cloud that came between him and happiness,
+his powers of reason returned, and he saw quickly, in the pre-vision of
+logic, a scene of violence and anger between husband and wife, a
+possible reconciliation, and the instant wreck of his storm-driven love.
+It was impossible to know what Gloria would tell Reanda.
+
+At the same instant the difficulties of his position rushed upon him and
+demanded an instant solution. He looked about him at the poor room, the
+miserable furniture, and the worn-out carpet, and the horror of poverty
+smote him in the face. He had allowed Gloria to come to him, and he knew
+that he could not support her decently. He had never found himself in
+so desperate a position in the course of his short and adventurous life.
+He could face anything when he alone was to suffer privation, but it was
+horrible to force misery upon the woman he loved.
+
+Then, too, he asked himself what was to happen to Gloria if Reanda
+killed him, as was possible enough. And if he were not killed, there was
+Dalrymple, her father, who might return at any moment. No one could
+foretell what the Scotchman would do. It would be like him to do nothing
+except to refuse ever to see his daughter again. But he, also, might
+choose to fight, though his English traditions would be against it. In
+any case, Gloria ran the risk of being left alone, ruined and
+unprotected.
+
+But the present problem was a meaner one, though not less desperate in
+its way. He reproached himself with having wasted even an hour when the
+case was so urgent. Without longer hesitation, he began to write letters
+to the editors for whom he worked, requesting them as a favour to
+advance the next remittance. Even then, he could scarcely expect to have
+money in less than ten days, and there was no one to whom he would
+willingly turn for help. Under ordinary circumstances he would have gone
+without food for days rather than have borrowed of an acquaintance, but
+he realized that he must overcome any such false pride within a day or
+two, at the risk of making Gloria suffer.
+
+In those first hours he was not conscious of any question of right or
+wrong in what had taken place. Honour, in a rather worldly sense, had
+always supplied for him the place of all other moral considerations. The
+woman he loved had been ill-treated by her husband, and had come to him
+for protection. He had done his best, in spite of his love, to make her
+go back, and she had known how to refuse. Men, as men, would not blame
+him for what he was doing. Gloria, as a woman, could never reproach him
+with having tempted her. He might suffer for his deeds, but he could
+never blush for them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+MEANWHILE, Gloria had gone out alone, intending to find her husband and
+to tell him that the die was cast, that she had left him in haste and
+anger, but that she never would return to his house. She felt that she
+must live through the chain of emotions to the very last link, as it
+were, until she could feel no more. It was like her to go straight to
+Reanda and take up the battle where she had interrupted it. Her anger
+had been sudden, but it was not brief. She had left weakness, and had
+found strength to add to her own, and she wished the man who had hurt
+her to feel how strong she was, and how she was able to take her life
+out of his hands and to keep it for herself, and live it as she pleased
+in spite of him and every one. The wild blood that ran in her veins was
+free, now, and she meant that no one but herself should ever again have
+the right to thwart it, to tell her heart that it should beat so many
+times in each minute and no more. She was perfectly well aware that she
+was accepting social ruin with her freedom, but she had long nourished a
+rancorous hatred for the society which had seemed to accept her under
+protest, for Francesca's sake, and she was ready enough to turn her back
+on it before it should finally make up its polite mind to relegate her
+to the middle distance of indifferent toleration.
+
+As for Reanda, on that first morning she hated him with all her soul,
+for himself, and for what he had done to her. She had words ready for
+him, and she turned and fitted them in her heart that they might cut him
+and stab him as long as he could feel. The selfishness with a tendency
+to cruelty which was a working spring of her father's character was
+strong in her, and craved the satisfaction of wounding. A part of the
+sudden joy in life which she felt as she walked towards what had been
+her home, lay in the certainty of dealing back fourfold hurt for every
+real and fancied injury she had ever suffered at Reanda's hands.
+
+She felt quite sure of finding him. She did not imagine it possible that
+after what had happened he should go to the Palazzetto Borgia to work as
+usual. Besides, he must have discovered her absence by this time, and
+would in all probability be searching for her. She smiled at the idea,
+and she went swiftly on, keenly ready to give all the pain she could.
+
+At her own door the servant seemed surprised to see her. Every one had
+supposed that she was still in her room, for it was not yet midday, and
+she sometimes slept very late. She glanced at the hall table and saw
+her key lying amongst the cards where she had thrown it when she had
+left the house. The servant did not see her take it, for she made a
+pretence of turning the cards over to find some particular one. She
+asked indifferently about her husband. The man said that Reanda had gone
+out as usual. Gloria started a little in surprise, and inquired whether
+he had left no message for her. On hearing that he had given none, she
+sent the servant away, went to her own room, and locked herself in.
+
+With a curious Scotch caution very much at variance with her conduct,
+she reflected that as the servants were evidently not aware of what had
+taken place, they might as well be kept in the dark. In a few moments
+she gave the room the appearance which it usually had in the morning.
+With perfect calmness she dressed for the day, and then rang for her
+maid.
+
+She told the woman that she had slept badly, had got up early, and had
+gone out for a long walk; that she now intended to leave Rome for a few
+days, for a change of air, and must have what she needed packed within
+an hour. She gave a few orders, clearly and concisely, and then went out
+again, leaving word that if Reanda returned he should be told that she
+was coming back very soon.
+
+Clearly, she thought, he must have supposed that she was still sleeping,
+and he had gone to his painting without any further thought of her.
+Again she smiled, and a line of delicate cruelty was faintly shadowed
+about her lips. She left the house and walked in the direction of the
+Palazzetto. Reanda always came home to the midday breakfast, and it was
+nearly time for him to be on his way. Gloria knew every turning which he
+would take, and she hoped to meet him. Her eyes flashed in anticipation
+of the contest, and she felt that he would not be able to meet them.
+They would be too bright for him. There was a small mark on her cheek
+still, where one of the sharp edges of the ivory slats had scratched her
+fair skin, and there was a slight redness on that side, but the bright
+red bar was gone. She was glad of it, as she nodded to a passing
+acquaintance.
+
+She wished to assure herself that her husband was really at the
+Palazzetto, and she inquired of the porter at the great gate whether
+Reanda had been seen that morning. The man said that he had come at the
+usual hour, and stood aside for her to pass, but she turned from him
+abruptly and went away without a word.
+
+The blood rose in her cheeks, and her heart beat angrily. He had
+attached no more importance than this to what he had done, and had gone
+to his painting as though nothing had happened. He had not even tried to
+see her in the morning to beg her pardon for having struck her. Strange
+to say, in spite of what she herself had done, that was what most roused
+her anger. She demanded the satisfaction of his asking her forgiveness,
+as though she had no fault to find with herself. In comparison with his
+cowardly violence to her, her leaving him for Griggs was as nothing in
+her eyes.
+
+She walked more slowly as she went homewards, and the unspoken
+bitterness of her heart choked her, and the sharp words she could not
+speak cut her cruelly. She compared the hand that had dared to hurt
+though it had not strength to kill, with that other, dearer, gentler,
+more terrible hand, which could have killed anything, but which would
+rather be burned to the wrist than let one of its fingers touch her
+roughly. She compared them, and she loved the one and she loathed the
+other, with all her heart. And with that same hand Reanda, at that same
+moment, was painting some goddess's face, and it had forgotten whose
+divinely lovely cheek it had struck. It was painting unless, perhaps, it
+lay in Francesca's. But Gloria had not forgotten, and she would repay
+before the day darkened.
+
+Her husband, since he was calm enough to go to his work, would come home
+for his breakfast when he was hungry. Gloria went back to her room and
+superintended the packing of what she needed. But she was not so calm as
+she had been half an hour earlier, and she waited impatiently for her
+husband's return and for the last scene of the drama. When the things
+were packed, she had the box taken out to the hall and sent for a cab.
+As she foresaw the situation, she would leave the house forever as soon
+as the last word was spoken. Then she went into the drawing-room and
+waited, watching the clock.
+
+There, on the mantelpiece, lay the broken fan, where the fragments had
+been placed by the servant. Gloria looked at them, handled them
+curiously, and felt her cheek softly with her hand. He must have struck
+her with all his might, she thought, to have hurt her as he had with so
+light a weapon; and the whole quarrel came back to her vividly, in every
+detail, and with every spoken word.
+
+She could not regret what she had done. With an attempt at
+self-examination, which was only a self-justification, she tried to
+recall the early days when she had loved her husband, and to conjure up
+the face with the gentle light in it. She failed, of course, and the
+picture that came disgusted her and was unutterably contemptible and
+weak and full of cowardice. The face of Paul Griggs came in its place a
+moment later, and she heard in her ears the deep, stern voice, quavering
+with strength rather than with weakness, and she could feel the arms she
+loved about her, pressing her almost to pain, able to press her to death
+in their love-clasp.
+
+The hands of the clock went on, and Reanda did not come. She was
+surprised to find how long she had waited, and with a revulsion of
+feeling she rose to her feet. If he would not come, she would not wait
+for him. She was hungry, too. It was absurd, perhaps, but she would not
+eat his bread nor sit at his table, not even alone. She went to her
+writing-table and wrote a note to him, short, cruel, and decisive. She
+wrote that if her father had been in Rome she would have gone to him for
+protection. As he was absent, she had gone to her father's best friend
+and her own--to Paul Griggs. She said nothing more. He might interpret
+the statement as he pleased. She sealed the note and addressed it, and
+before she went out of the house she gave it to the servant, to be given
+to Reanda as soon as he came home. The man-servant went downstairs with
+her, and stood looking after the little open cab; he saw Gloria speak to
+the coachman, who nodded and changed his direction before they were out
+of sight.
+
+At the door in the Via della Frezza the cabman let down Gloria's luggage
+and drove away. She stood still a moment and looked at the one-eyed
+cobbler.
+
+"You have given the signore a beautiful fright," observed the old man.
+"I told him you had gone out. With one jump he was upstairs. By this
+time he cries."
+
+Gloria took a silver piece of two pauls from her purse.
+
+"Can you carry up these things for me?" she inquired, concealing her
+annoyance at the man's speech.
+
+"I am not a porter," said the cobbler, with his head on one side. "But
+one must live. With courage and money one makes war. There are three
+pieces. One at a time. But you must watch the door while I carry up the
+box. If any one should steal my tools, it would be a beautiful day's
+work. Without them I should be in the middle of the street. You will
+understand, Signora. It is not to do you a discourtesy, but my tools are
+my bread. Without them I cannot eat. There is also the left boot of Sor
+Ercole. If any one were to steal it, Sor Ercole would go upon one leg.
+Imagine the disgrace!"
+
+"I will stay here," said Gloria. "Do not be afraid."
+
+The cobbler, who was a strong old man, got hold of the trunk and
+shouldered it with ease. When he stood up, Gloria saw that he was
+bandy-legged and very short.
+
+She turned and stood on the threshold of the street door as she had
+stood on the previous night. No one would have believed that a few hours
+earlier the rain had fallen in torrents, for the pavement was dry, and
+even under the arch there seemed to be no dampness. Looking up the
+street towards the Corso, she saw that there was a wine shop, a few
+doors higher on the opposite side. Two or three men were standing before
+it, under the brown bush which served for a sign, and amongst them she
+saw a peasant in blue cloth clothes with silver buttons and clean white
+stockings. She recognized him as the man who had held his umbrella over
+her in the storm. He also saw her, lifted his felt hat and came
+forwards, crossing the street. His look was fixed on her face with a
+stare of curiosity as he stood before her.
+
+"I hope you have not caught cold, Signora," he said, with steady,
+unwinking eyes. "We passed a beautiful storm. Signora, I sell wine to
+that host. If you should need wine, I recommend him to you." He pointed
+to the shop.
+
+"You told me to ask for you at the Piazza Montanara," said Gloria,
+smiling.
+
+"With that water you could not see the shop," answered Stefanone.
+"Signora, you are very beautiful. With permission, I say that you should
+not walk alone at night."
+
+"It was the first and last time," said Gloria. "Fortunately, I met a
+person of good manners. I thank you again."
+
+"Signora, you are so beautiful that the Madonna and her angels always
+accompany you. With permission, I go. Good day."
+
+To the last, until he turned, he kept his eyes steadily fixed on
+Gloria's face, as though searching for a resemblance in her features.
+She noticed his manner and remembered him very distinctly after the
+second meeting.
+
+The cobbler came back again, closely followed by Griggs himself, who
+said nothing, but took possession of the small valise and bag which
+Gloria had brought in addition to her box. He led the way, and she
+followed him swiftly. Inside the door of his lodging he turned and
+looked at her.
+
+"Please do not go away suddenly without telling me," he said in a low
+voice. "I am easily frightened about you."
+
+"Really?"
+
+Gloria held out her two hands to meet him. He nodded as he took them.
+
+"That is better than anything you have ever said to me." She drew him to
+her.
+
+It was natural, for she was thinking how Reanda had calmly gone back to
+his work that morning, without so much as asking for her. The contrast
+was too great and too strong, between love and indifference.
+
+They went into the work-room together, and Gloria sat down on one of the
+rush chairs, and told Griggs what she had done. He walked slowly up and
+down while she was speaking, his eyes on the pattern of the old carpet.
+
+"I might have stayed," she said at last. "The servants did not even know
+that I had been out of the house."
+
+"You should have stayed," said Griggs. "I ought to say it, at least."
+
+But as he spoke the mask softened and the rare smile beautified for one
+instant the still, stern face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+REANDA neither wished to see Gloria again, nor to take vengeance upon
+Paul Griggs. He was not a brave man, morally or physically, and he was
+glad that his wife had left him. She had put him in the right, and he
+had every reason for refusing ever to see her again. With a cynicism
+which would have been revolting if it had not been almost childlike in
+its simplicity, he discharged his servants, sold his furniture, gave up
+his apartment in the Corso, and moved back to his old quarters in the
+Palazzetto Borgia. But he did not acknowledge Gloria's note in any other
+way.
+
+She had left him, and he wished to blot out her existence as though he
+had never known her, not even remembering the long two years of his
+married life. She was gone. There was no Gloria, and he wished that
+there never had been any woman with her name and face.
+
+On the third day, he met Paul Griggs in the street. The younger man saw
+Reanda coming, and stood still on the narrow pavement, in order to show
+that he had no intention of avoiding him. As the artist came up, Griggs
+lifted his hat gravely. Reanda mechanically raised his hand to his own
+hat and passed the man who had injured him, without a word. Griggs saw a
+slight, nervous twitching in the delicate face, but that was all. He
+thought that Reanda looked better, less harassed and less thin, than for
+a long time. He had at once returned to his old peaceful life and
+enjoyed it, and had evidently not the smallest intention of ever
+demanding satisfaction of his former friend.
+
+Francesca Campodonico had listened in nervous silence to Reanda's story.
+
+"She has done me a kindness," he concluded. "It is the first. She has
+given me back my freedom. I shall not disturb her."
+
+The colour was in Francesca's face, and her eyes looked down. Her
+delicate lips were a little drawn in, as though she were making an
+effort to restrain her words, for it was one of the hardest moments of
+her life. Being what she was, it was impossible for her to understand
+Gloria's conduct. But at the same time she felt that she was liberated
+from something which had oppressed her, and the colour in her cheeks was
+a flash of satisfaction and relief mingled with a certain displeasure at
+her own sensations and the certainty that she should be ashamed of them
+by and bye.
+
+It was not in her nature to accept such a termination for Reanda's
+married life, however he himself might be disposed to look upon it.
+
+"You are to blame almost as much as Gloria," she said, and she was
+sincerely in earnest.
+
+She was too good and devout a woman to believe in duelling, but she was
+far too womanly to be pleased with Reanda's indifference. It was wicked
+to fight duels and unchristian to seek revenge. She knew that, and it
+was a conviction as well as an opinion. But a man who allowed another to
+take his wife from him and did not resent the injury could not command
+her respect. Something in her blood revolted against such tameness,
+though she would not for all the world have had Reanda take Gloria back.
+Between the two opposites of conviction and instinct, she did not know
+what to do. Moreover, Reanda had struck his wife. He admitted it, though
+apologetically and with every extenuating circumstance which he could
+remember.
+
+"Yes," he answered. "I know that I did wrong. Am I infallible? Holy
+Saint Patience! I could bear no more. But it is clear that she was
+waiting for a reason for leaving me. I gave it to her, and she should be
+grateful. She also is free, as I am."
+
+"It is horrible!" exclaimed Francesca, with sorrowful emphasis.
+
+She blamed herself quite as much as Reanda or Gloria, because she had
+brought them together and had suggested the marriage. Reanda's thin
+shoulders went up, and he smiled incredulously.
+
+"I do not see what is so horrible," he answered. "Two people think they
+are in love. They marry. They discover their mistake. They separate.
+Well? It is finished. Let us make the sign of the cross over it."
+
+The common Roman phrase, signifying that a matter is ended and buried,
+as it were, jarred upon Francesca, for whom the smallest religious
+allusion had a real meaning.
+
+"It is not the sign of the cross which should be made," she said sadly
+and gravely, and the colour was gone from her face now. "There are two
+lives wrecked, and a human soul in danger. We cannot say that it is
+finished, and pass on."
+
+"What would you have me do?" asked Reanda, almost impatiently. "Take her
+back?"
+
+"No!" exclaimed Francesca, with a sharp intonation as though she were
+hurt.
+
+"Well, then, what? I do not see that anything is to be done. She herself
+can think of her soul. It is her property. She has made me suffer
+enough--let some one else suffer. I have enough of it."
+
+"You will forgive her some day," said Francesca. "You are angry still,
+and you speak cruelly. You will forgive her."
+
+"Never," answered Reanda, with emphasis. "I will not forgive her for
+what she made me bear, any more than I will forgive Griggs for receiving
+her when she left me. I will not touch them, but I will not forgive
+them. I am not angry. Why should I be?"
+
+Francesca sighed, for she did not understand the man, though hitherto
+she had always understood him, or thought that she had, ever since she
+had been a mere child, playing with his colours and brushes in the
+Palazzo Braccio. She left the hall and went to her own sitting-room on
+the other side of the house. As soon as she was alone, the tears came to
+her eyes. She was hardly aware of them, and when she felt them on her
+cheeks she wondered why she was crying, for she did not often shed
+tears, and was a woman of singularly well balanced nature, able to
+control herself on the rare occasions when she felt any strong emotion.
+
+In spite of Reanda's conduct, she determined not to leave matters as
+they were without attempting to improve them. She wrote a note to Paul
+Griggs, asking him to come and see her during the afternoon.
+
+He could not refuse to answer the summons, knowing, as he did, that he
+must in honour respond to any demand for an explanation coming from
+Reanda's side. Gloria wished him to reply to the note, giving an excuse
+and hinting that no good could come of any meeting.
+
+"It is a point of honour," he answered briefly, and she yielded, for he
+dominated her altogether.
+
+Francesca received him in her own small sitting-room, which overlooked
+the square before the Palazzetto. It was very quiet, and there were
+roses in old Vienna vases. It was a very old-fashioned room, the air was
+sweet with the fresh flowers, and the afternoon sun streamed in through
+a single tall window. Francesca sat on a small sofa which stood
+crosswise between the window and the writing-table. She had a frame
+before her on which was stretched a broad band of deep red satin, a
+piece of embroidery in which she was working heraldic beasts and
+armorial bearings in coloured silks.
+
+She did not rise, nor hold out her hand, but pointed to a chair near
+her, as she spoke.
+
+"I asked you to come," she said, "because I wish to speak to you about
+Gloria."
+
+Griggs bent his head, sat down, and waited with a perfectly impassive
+face. Possibly there was a rather unusual aggressiveness in the straight
+lines of his jaw and his even lips. There was a short silence before
+Francesca spoke again.
+
+"Do you know what you have done?" she asked, finishing a stitch and
+looking quietly into the man's deep eyes.
+
+He met her glance calmly, but said nothing, merely bending his head
+again, very slightly.
+
+"It is very wicked," said she, and she began to make another stitch,
+looking down again.
+
+"I have no doubt that you think so," answered Paul Griggs, slowly
+nodding a third time.
+
+"It is not a question of opinion. It is a matter of fact. You have
+ruined the life of an innocent woman."
+
+"If social position is the object of existence, you are right," he
+replied. "I have nothing to say."
+
+"I am not speaking of social position," said Donna Francesca, continuing
+to make stitches.
+
+"Then I am afraid that I do not understand you."
+
+"Can you conceive of nothing more important to the welfare of men and
+women than social position?"
+
+"It is precisely because I do, that I care so little what society
+thinks. I do not understand you."
+
+"I have known you some time," said Francesca. "I had not supposed that
+you were a man without a sense of right and wrong. That is the question
+which is concerned now."
+
+"It is a question which may be answered from more than one point of
+view. You look at it in one way, and I in another. With your permission,
+we will differ about it, since we can never agree."
+
+"There is no such thing as differing about right and wrong," answered
+Donna Francesca, with a little impatience. "Right is right, and wrong is
+wrong. You cannot possibly believe that you have done right. Therefore
+you know that you have done wrong."
+
+"That sort of logic assumes God at the expense of man," said Griggs,
+calmly.
+
+Francesca looked up with a startled expression in her eyes, for she was
+shocked, though she did not understand him.
+
+"God is good, and man is sinful," she answered, in the words of her
+simple faith.
+
+"Why?" asked Griggs, gravely.
+
+He waited for her answer to the most tremendous question which man can
+ask, and he knew that she could not answer him, though she might satisfy
+herself.
+
+"I have never talked about religion with an atheist," she said at last,
+slowly pushing her needle through the heavy satin.
+
+"I am not an atheist, Princess."
+
+"A Protestant, then--"
+
+"I am not a Protestant. I am a Catholic, as you are."
+
+She looked up suddenly and faced him with earnest eyes.
+
+"Then you are not a good Catholic," she said. "No good Catholic could
+speak as you do."
+
+"Even the Apostles had doubts," answered Griggs. "But I do not pretend
+to be good. Since I am a man, I have a right to be a man, and to be
+treated as a man. If the right is not given me freely, I will take it.
+You cannot expect a body to behave as though it were a spirit. A man
+cannot imitate an invisible essence, any more than a sculptor can
+imitate sound with a shape of clay. When we are spirits, we shall act as
+spirits. Meanwhile we are men and women. As a man, I have not done
+wrong. You have no right to judge me as an angel. Is that clear?"
+
+"Terribly clear!" Francesca slowly shook her head. "And terribly
+mistaken," she added.
+
+"You see," answered the young man. "It is impossible to argue the point.
+We do not speak the same language. You, by your nature, believe that you
+can imitate a spirit. You are spiritual by intuition and good by
+instinct, according to the spiritual standard of good. I am, on the
+contrary, a normal man, and destined to act as men act. I cannot
+understand you and you, if you will allow me to say so, cannot possibly
+understand me. That is why I propose that we should agree to differ."
+
+"And do you think you can sweep away all right and wrong, belief and
+unbelief, salvation and perdition, with such a statement as that?"
+
+"Not at all," replied Griggs. "You tell me that I am wicked. That only
+means that I am not doing what you consider right. You deny my right of
+judgment, in favour of your own. You make witnesses of spirits against
+the doings of men. You judge my body and condemn my soul. And there is
+no possible appeal from your tribunal, because it is an imaginary one.
+But if you will return to the facts of the case, you will find it hard
+to prove that I have ruined the life of an innocent woman, as you told
+me that I had."
+
+"You have! There is no denying it."
+
+"Socially, and it is the fault of society. But society is nothing to me.
+I would be an outcast from society for a much less object than the love
+of a woman, provided that I had not to do anything dishonourable."
+
+"Ah, that is it! You forget that a man's honour is his reputation at the
+club, while the honour of a woman is founded in religion, and maintained
+upon a single one of God's commandments--as you men demand that it shall
+be."
+
+Griggs was silent for a moment. He had never heard a woman state the
+case so plainly and forcibly, and he was struck by what she said. He
+could have answered her quickly enough. But the answer would not have
+been satisfactory to himself.
+
+"You see, you have nothing to say," she said. "But in one way you are
+right. We cannot argue this question. I did not ask you to come in order
+to discuss it. I sent for you to beg you to do what is right, as far as
+you can. And you could do much."
+
+"What should you think right?" asked Griggs, curious to know what she
+thought.
+
+"You should take Gloria to her father, as you are his friend. Since she
+has left her husband, she should live with her father."
+
+"That is a very simple idea!" exclaimed the young man, with something
+almost like a laugh.
+
+"Right is always simple," answered Francesca, quietly. "There is never
+any doubt about it."
+
+She looked at him once, and then continued to work at her embroidery.
+His eyes rested on the pure outline of her maidenlike face, and he was
+silent for a moment. Somehow, he felt that her simplicity of goodness
+rebuked the simplicity of his sin.
+
+"You forget one thing," said Griggs at last. "You make a spiritual
+engine of mankind, and you forget the mainspring of the world. You leave
+love out of the question."
+
+"Perhaps--as you understand love. But you will not pretend to tell me
+that love is necessarily right, whatever it involves."
+
+"Yes," answered the young man. "That is what I mean. Unless your God is
+a malignant and maleficent demon, the overwhelming passions which take
+hold of men, and against which no man can fight beyond a certain point,
+are right, because they exist and are irresistible. As for what you
+propose that I should do, I cannot do it."
+
+"You could, if you would," said Francesca. "There is nothing to hinder
+you, if you will."
+
+"There is love, and I cannot."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+PAUL GRIGGS left Francesca with the certainty in his own mind that she
+had produced no impression whatever upon him, but he was conscious that
+his opinion of her had undergone a change. He was suddenly convinced
+that she was the best woman he had ever known, and that Gloria's
+accusations were altogether unjust and unfounded. Recalling her face,
+her manner, and her words, he knew that whatever influence she might
+have had upon Reanda, there could be no ground for Gloria's jealousy.
+She certainly disturbed him strangely, for Gloria was perfect in his
+eyes, and he accepted all she said almost blindly. The fact that Reanda
+had struck her now stood in his mind as the sole reason for the
+separation of husband and wife.
+
+Gloria was far from realizing what influence she had over the man she
+loved. It seemed to her, on the contrary, that she was completely
+dominated by him, and she was glad to feel his strength at every turn.
+Her enormous vanity was flattered by his care of her, and by his
+uncompromising admiration of her beauty as well as of her character, and
+she yielded to him purposely in small things that she might the better
+feel his strength, as she supposed. The truth, had she known it, was
+that he hardly asserted himself at all, and was ready to make any and
+every sacrifice for her comfort and happiness. He had sacrificed his
+pride to borrow money from a friend to meet the first necessities of
+their life together. He would have given his life as readily.
+
+They led a strangely lonely existence in the little apartment in the Via
+della Frezza. The world had very soon heard of what had happened, and
+had behaved according to its lights. Walking alone one morning while
+Griggs was at work, Gloria had met Donna Tullia Meyer, whom she had
+known in society, and thoughtlessly enough had bowed as though nothing
+had happened. Donna Tullia had stared at her coldly, and then turned
+away. After that, Gloria had realized what she had already understood,
+and had either not gone out without Griggs, or, when she did, had kept
+to the more secluded streets, where she would not easily meet
+acquaintances.
+
+Griggs worked perpetually, and she watched him, delighting at first in
+the difference between his way of working and that of Angelo Reanda;
+delighted, too, to be alone with him, and to feel that he was writing
+for her. She could sit almost in silence for hours, half busy with some
+bit of needlework, and yet busy with him in her thoughts. It seemed to
+her that she understood him--she told him so, and he believed her, for
+he felt that he could not be hard to understand.
+
+He was as singularly methodical as Reanda was exceptionally intuitive.
+She felt that his work was second to her in his estimation of it, but
+that, since they both depended upon it for their livelihood, they had
+agreed together to put it first. With Reanda, art was above everything
+and beyond all other interests, and he had made her feel that he worked
+for art's sake rather than for hers. There was a vast difference in the
+value placed upon her by the two men, in relation to their two
+occupations.
+
+"I have no genius," said Griggs to her one day. "I have no intuitions of
+underlying truth. But I have good brains, and few men are able to work
+as hard as I. By and bye, I shall succeed and make money, and it will be
+less dull for you."
+
+"It is never dull for me when I can be with you," she answered.
+
+As he looked, the sunshine caught her red auburn hair, and the
+love-lights played with the sunshine in her eyes. Griggs knew that life
+had no more dulness for him while she lived, and as for her, he believed
+what she said.
+
+Without letting him know what she was doing, she wrote to her father. It
+was not an easy letter to write, and she thought that she knew the
+savage old Scotchman's temper. She told him everything. At such a
+distance, it was easy to throw herself upon his mercy, and it was safer
+to write him all while he was far away, so that there might be nothing
+left to rouse his anger if he returned. She had no lack of words with
+which to describe Reanda's treatment of her; but she was also willing to
+take all the blame of the mistake she had made in marrying him. She had
+ruined her life before it had begun, she said. She had taken the law
+into her own hands, to mend it as best she could. Her father knew that
+Paul Griggs was not like other men--that he was able to protect her
+against all comers, and that he could make the world fear him if he
+could not make it respect her. Her father must do as he thought right.
+He would be justified, from the world's point of view, in casting her
+off and never remembering her existence again, but she begged him to
+forgive her, and to think kindly of her. Meanwhile, she and Griggs were
+wretchedly poor, and she begged her father to continue her allowance.
+
+If Paul Griggs had seen this letter, he would have been startled out of
+some of his belief in Gloria's perfection. There was a total absence of
+any moral sense of right or wrong in what she wrote, which would have
+made a more cynical man than Griggs was look grave. The request for the
+continuation of the allowance would have shocked him and perhaps
+disgusted him. The whole tone was too calm and business-like. It was too
+much as though she were fulfilling a duty and seeking to gain an object
+rather than appealing to Dalrymple to forgive her for yielding to the
+overwhelming mastery of a great passion. It was cold, it was
+calculating, and it was, in a measure, unwomanly.
+
+When she had sent the letter, she told Griggs what she had done, but her
+account of its contents satisfied him with one of those brilliant false
+impressions which she knew so well how to convey. She told him rather
+what she should have said than what she had really written, and, as
+usual, he found that she had done right.
+
+It was not that she would not have written a better letter if she had
+been able to compose one. She had done the best that she could. But the
+truth lay there, or the letter was composed as an expression of what she
+knew that she ought to feel, and was not the actual outpouring of an
+overfull heart. She could not be blamed for not feeling more deeply, nor
+for her inability to express what she did not feel. But when she spoke
+of it to the man she loved, she roused herself to emotion easily enough,
+and her words sounded well in her own ears and in his. To the last, he
+never understood that she loved such emotion for its own sake, and that
+he helped her to produce it in herself. In the comparatively simple
+view of human nature which he took in those days, it seemed to him that
+if a woman were willing to sacrifice everything, including social
+respectability itself, for any man, she must love him with all her
+heart. He could not have understood that any woman should give up
+everything, practically, in the attempt to feel something of which she
+was not capable.
+
+In reply to her letter, Dalrymple sent a draft for a considerable sum of
+money, through his banker. The fact that it was addressed to her at Via
+della Frezza was the only indication that he had received her letter. In
+due time, Gloria wrote to thank him, but he took no notice of the
+communication.
+
+"He never loved me," she said to Griggs as the days went by and brought
+her nothing from her father. "I used to think so, when I was a mere
+child, but I am sure of it now. You are the only human being that ever
+loved me."
+
+She was pale that day, and her white hand sought his as she spoke, with
+a quiver of the lip.
+
+"I am glad of it," he answered. "I shall not divide you with any one."
+
+So their life went on, somewhat monotonously after the first few weeks.
+Griggs worked hard and earned more money than formerly, but he
+discovered very soon that it would be all he could do to support Gloria
+in bare comfort. He would not allow her to use her own money for
+anything which was to be in common, or in which he had any share
+whatever.
+
+"You must spend it on yourself," he said. "I will not touch it. I will
+not accept anything you buy with it--not so much as a box of cigarettes.
+You must spend it on your clothes or on jewels."
+
+"You are unkind," she answered. "You know how much pleasure it would
+give me to help you."
+
+"Yes. I know. You cannot understand, but you must try. Men never do that
+sort of thing."
+
+And, as usual, he dominated her, and she dropped the subject, inwardly
+pleased with him, and knowing that he was right.
+
+His strength fascinated her, and she admired his manliness of heart and
+feeling as she had never admired any qualities in any one during her
+life. But he did not amuse her, even as much as she had been amused by
+Reanda. He was melancholic, earnest, hard working, not inclined to
+repeat lightly the words of love once spoken in moments of passion. He
+meant, perhaps, to show her how he loved her by what he would do for her
+sake, rather than tell her of it over and over again. And he worked as
+he had never worked before, hour after hour, day after day, sitting at
+his writing-table almost from morning till night. Besides his
+correspondence, he was now writing a book, from which he hoped great
+things--for her. It was a novel, and he read her day by day the pages he
+wrote. She talked over with him what he had written, and her
+imagination and dramatic intelligence, forever grasping at situations of
+emotion for herself and others, suggested many variations upon his plan.
+
+"It is my book," she often said, when they had been talking all the
+evening.
+
+It was her book, and it was a failure, because it was hers and not his.
+Her imagination was disorderly, to borrow a foreign phrase, and she was
+altogether without any sense of proportion in what she imagined. He did
+not, indeed, look upon her as intellectually perfect, though for him she
+was otherwise unapproachably superior to every other woman in the world.
+But he loved her so wholly and unselfishly that he could not bear to
+disappoint her by not making use of her suggestions. When she was
+telling him of some scene she had imagined, her voice and manner, too,
+were so thoroughly dramatic that he was persuaded of the real value of
+the matter. Divested of her individuality and transferred in his rather
+mechanically over-correct language to the black and white of pen and
+ink, the result was disappointing, even when he read it to her. He knew
+that it was, and wasted time in trying to improve what was bad from the
+beginning. She saw that he failed, and she felt that he was not a man of
+genius. Her vanity suffered because her ideas did not look well on his
+paper.
+
+Before he had finished the manuscript, she had lost her interest in it.
+Feeling that she had, and seeing it in her face, he exerted his strength
+of will in the attempt to bring back the expression of surprise and
+delight which the earlier readings had called up, but he felt that he
+was working uphill and against heavy odds. Nevertheless he completed the
+work, and spent much time in fancied improvement of its details. At a
+later period in his life he wrote three successful books in the time he
+had bestowed upon his first failure, but he wrote them alone.
+
+Gloria's face brightened when he told her that it was done. She took the
+manuscript and read over parts of it to herself, smiling a little from
+time to time, for she knew that he was watching her. She did not read it
+all.
+
+"Dedicate it to me," she said, holding out one hand to find his, while
+she settled the pages on her knees with the other.
+
+"Of course," he answered, and he wrote a few words of dedication to her
+on a sheet of paper.
+
+He sent it to a publisher in London whom he knew. It was returned with
+some wholesome advice, and Gloria's vanity suffered another blow, both
+in the failure of the book which contained so many of her ideas and in
+the failure of the man to be successful, for in her previous life she
+had not been accustomed to failure of any sort.
+
+"I am afraid I am only a newspaper man, after all," said Paul Griggs,
+quietly. "You will have to be satisfied with me as I am. But I will try
+again."
+
+"No," answered Gloria, more coldly than she usually spoke. "When you
+find that you cannot do a thing naturally, leave it alone. It is of no
+use to force talent in one direction when it wants to go in another."
+
+She sighed softly, and busied herself with some work. Griggs felt that
+he was a failure, and he felt lonely, too, for a moment, and went to his
+own room to put away the rejected manuscript in a safe place. It was not
+his nature to destroy it angrily, as some men might have done at his
+age.
+
+When he came back to the door of the sitting-room he heard her singing,
+as she often did when she was alone. But to-day she was singing an old
+song which he had not heard for a long time, and which reminded him
+painfully of that other house in which she had lived and of that other
+man whom she never saw, but who was still her husband.
+
+He entered the room rather suddenly, after having paused a moment
+outside, with his hand on the door.
+
+"Please do not sing that song!" he said quickly, as he entered.
+
+"Why not?" she asked, interrupting herself in the middle of a stave.
+
+"It reminds me of unpleasant things."
+
+"Does it? I am sorry. I will not sing it again."
+
+But she knew what it meant, for it reminded her of Reanda. She was no
+longer so sure that the reminiscence was all painful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+IN spite of all that Griggs could do, and he did his utmost, it was hard
+to live in anything approaching to comfort on the meagre remuneration he
+received for his correspondence, and his pride altogether forbade him to
+allow Gloria to contribute anything to the slender resources of the
+small establishment. At first, it had amused her to practise little
+economies, even in the matter of their daily meals. Griggs denied
+himself everything which was not absolutely necessary, and it pleased
+Gloria to imitate him, for it made her feel that she was helping him.
+The housekeeping was a simple affair enough, and she undertook it
+readily. They had one woman servant as cook and maid-of-all-work, a
+strong young creature, not without common-sense, and plentifully gifted
+with that warm, superficial devotion which is common enough in Italian
+servants. Gloria had kept house for her father long enough to understand
+what she had undertaken, and it seemed easy at first to do the same
+thing for Griggs, though on a much more restricted scale.
+
+But the restriction soon became irksome. In a more active and
+interesting existence, she would perhaps not have felt the constant
+pinching of such excessive economy. If there had been more means within
+her reach for satisfying her hungry vanity, she could have gone through
+the daily round of little domestic cares with a lighter heart or, at
+least, with more indifference. But she and Griggs led a very lonely
+life, and, as in all lonely lives, the smallest details became
+important.
+
+It was not long before Gloria wished herself in her old home in the
+Corso, not indeed with Reanda, but with Paul Griggs. He had made her
+promise to use only the money he gave her himself for their
+housekeeping. She secretly deceived him and drew upon her own store, and
+listened in silence to his praise of her ingenuity in making the little
+he was able to give her go so far. He trusted her so completely that he
+suspected nothing.
+
+She expected that at the end of three months her father would send her
+another draft, but the day passed, and she received nothing, so that she
+at last wrote to him again, asking for money. It came, as before,
+without any word of inquiry or greeting. Dalrymple evidently intended to
+take this means of knowing from time to time that his daughter was alive
+and well. She would be obliged to write to him whenever she needed
+assistance. It was a humiliation, and she felt it bitterly, for she had
+thought that she had freed herself altogether and she found herself
+still bound by the necessity of asking for help.
+
+It seemed very hard to be thus shut off from the world in the prime of
+her youth, and beauty, and talent. To a woman who craved admiration for
+all she did and could do, it was almost unbearable. Paul Griggs worked
+and looked forward to success, and was satisfied in his aspirations, and
+more than happy in the companionship of the woman he so dearly loved.
+
+"I shall succeed," he said quietly, but with perfect assurance. "Before
+long we shall be able to leave Rome, and begin life somewhere else,
+where nobody will know our story. It will not be so dull for you there."
+
+"It is never dull when I am with you," said Gloria, but there was no
+conviction in the tone any more. "If you would let me go upon the
+stage," she added, with a change of voice, "things would be very
+different. I could earn a great deal of money."
+
+But Paul Griggs was as much opposed to the project as Reanda had been,
+and in this one respect he really asserted his will. He was so confident
+of ultimately attaining to success and fortune by his pen that he would
+not hear of Gloria's singing in public.
+
+"Besides," he said, after giving her many and excellent reasons, "if you
+earned millions, I would not touch the money."
+
+She sighed for the lost opportunities of brilliant popularity, but she
+smiled at his words, knowing how she had used her own money for him, and
+in spite of him. But for her own part she had lost all belief in his
+talent since the failure of the book he had written.
+
+The long summer days were hard to bear. He was not able to leave Rome,
+for he was altogether dependent upon his regular correspondence for what
+he earned, and he did not succeed in persuading his editors to employ
+him anywhere else, for the very reason that he did so well what was
+required of him where he was.
+
+The weather grew excessively hot, and it was terribly dreary and dull in
+the little apartment in the Via della Frezza. All day long the windows
+were tightly closed to keep out the fiery air, both the old green blinds
+and the glass within them. Griggs had moved his writing-table to the
+feeble light, and worked away as hard as ever. Gloria spent most of the
+hot hours in reading and dreaming. They went out together early in the
+morning and in the evening, when there was some coolness, but during the
+greater part of the day they were practically imprisoned by the heat.
+
+Gloria watched the strong man and wondered at his power of working under
+any circumstances. He was laborious as well as industrious. He often
+wrote a page over two and three times, in the hope of improving it, and
+he was capable of spending an hour in finding a quotation from a great
+writer, not for the sake of quoting it, but in order to satisfy himself
+that he had authority for using some particular construction of phrase.
+He kept notebooks in which he made long indexed lists of words which in
+common language were improperly used, with examples showing how they
+should be rightly employed.
+
+"I am constructing a superiority for myself," he said once. "No one
+living takes so much pains as I do."
+
+But Gloria had no faith in his painstaking ways, though she wondered at
+his unflagging perseverance. Her own single great talent lay in her
+singing, and she had never given herself any trouble about it. Reanda,
+too, though he worked carefully and often slowly, worked without effort.
+It was true that Griggs never showed fatigue, but that was due to his
+amazing bodily strength. The intellectual labour was apparent, however,
+and he always seemed to be painfully overcoming some almost unyielding
+difficulty by sheer force of steady application, though nothing came of
+it, so far as she could see.
+
+"I cannot understand why you take so much trouble," she said. "They are
+only newspaper articles, after all, to be read to-day and forgotten
+to-morrow."
+
+"I am learning to write," he answered. "It takes a long time to learn
+anything unless one has a great gift, as you have for singing. I have
+failed with one book, but I will not fail with another. The next will
+not be an extraordinary book, but it will succeed."
+
+Nothing could disturb him, and he sat at his table day after day. He was
+moved by the strongest incentives which can act upon a man, at the time
+when he himself is strongest; namely, necessity and love. Even Gloria
+could never discover whether he had what she would have called ambition.
+He himself said that he had none, and she compared him with Reanda, who
+believed in the divinity of art, the temple of fame, and the reality of
+glory.
+
+In the young man's nature, Gloria had taken the place of all other
+divinities, real and imaginary. His enduring nature could no more be
+wearied in its worship of her than it could be tired in toiling for her.
+He only resented the necessity of cutting out such a main part of the
+day for work as left him but little time to be at leisure with her.
+
+She complained of his industry, for she was tired of spending her life
+with novels, and the hours hung like leaden weights upon her, dragging
+with her as she went through the day.
+
+"Give yourself a rest," she said, not because she thought he needed it,
+but because she wished him to amuse her.
+
+"I am never tired of working for you," he answered, and the rare smile
+came to his face.
+
+With any other man in the world she might have told the truth and might
+have said frankly that her life was growing almost unbearable, buried
+from the world as she was, and cut off from society. But she was
+conscious that she should never dare to say as much to Paul Griggs. She
+was realizing, little by little, that his love for her was greater than
+she had dreamed of, and immeasurably stronger than what she felt for
+him.
+
+Then she knew the pain of receiving more than she had to give. It was a
+genuine pain of its kind, and in it, as in many other things, she
+suffered a constant humiliation. She had taken herself for a heroic
+character in the great moment when she had resolved to leave her
+husband, intuitively sure that she loved Paul Griggs with all her heart,
+and that she should continue to love him to the end in spite of the
+world. She knew now that there was no endurance in the passion.
+
+The very efforts she made to sustain it contributed to its destruction;
+but she continued to play her part. Her strong dramatic instinct told
+her when to speak and when to be silent, and how to modulate her voice
+to a tender appeal, to a touching sadness, to the strength of suppressed
+emotion. It was for a good object, she told herself, and therefore it
+must be right. He was giving his life for her, day by day, and he must
+never know that she no longer loved him. It would kill him, she thought;
+for with him it was all real. She grew melancholy and thought of death.
+If she died young, he should never guess that she had not loved him to
+the very last.
+
+In her lonely thoughts she dwelt upon the possibility, for it was a
+possibility now. There was that before her which, when it came, might
+turn life into death very suddenly. She had moments of tenderness when
+she thought of her own dead face lying on the white pillow, and the
+picture was so real that her eyes filled with tears. She would be very
+beautiful when she was dead.
+
+The idea took root in her mind; for it afforded her an inward emotion
+which touched her strangely and cost her nothing. It gained in
+fascination as she allowed it to come back when it would, and the
+details of death came vividly before her imagination, as she had read of
+them in books,--her own white face, the darkened room, the candles, Paul
+Griggs standing motionless beside her body.
+
+One day he looked from his work and saw tears on her cheeks. He dropped
+his pen as though something had struck him unawares; and he was beside
+her in a moment, looking anxiously into her eyes.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, and his hands were on hers and pressed them.
+
+"It is nothing," she answered. "It is natural, I suppose--"
+
+"No. It is not natural. You are unhappy. Tell me what is the matter."
+
+"It is foolish," she said, turning her face from him. "I see you working
+so hard day after day. I am a burden to you--it would be better if I
+were out of the way. You are working yourself to death. If you could see
+your face sometimes!" And more tears trickled down.
+
+His strong hands shook suddenly.
+
+"I am not working too hard--for me," he answered, but his voice trembled
+a little. "One of your tears hurts me more than a hundred years of hard
+work. Even if it were true--I would rather die for you than live to be
+the greatest man that ever breathed--without you."
+
+She threw her arms about his neck, and hid her face upon his shoulder.
+
+"Tell me you love me!" she cried. "You are all I have in the world!"
+
+"Does it need telling?" he asked, soothing her.
+
+Then all at once his arms tightened so that she could hardly draw breath
+for a moment, and his head was bent down and rested for an instant upon
+her neck as though he himself sought rest and refuge.
+
+"I think you know, dear," he said.
+
+She knew far better than he could tell her, for the truth of his
+passion shook the dramatic and artificial fabric of her own to its
+foundations; and even as she pressed him to her, she felt that secret
+repugnance which those who do not love feel for those who love them
+overmuch. It was mingled with a sense of shame which made her hate
+herself, and she began to suffer acutely.
+
+When she thought of Reanda, as she now often did, she longed for what
+she had felt for him, rather than for anything she had ever felt for
+Paul Griggs. In the pitiful reaching after something real, she groped
+for memories of true tenderness, and now and then they came back to her
+from beyond the chaos which lay between, as memories of home come to a
+man cast after many storms upon a desert island. She dwelt upon them and
+tried to construct an under-life out of the past, made up only of sweet
+things amongst which all that had not been good should be forgotten. She
+went for comfort to the days when she had loved Reanda, before their
+marriage--or when she had loved his genius as though it were himself,
+believing that it was all for her.
+
+Beside her always, with even, untiring strength, Paul Griggs toiled on,
+his whole life based and founded in hers, every penstroke for her, every
+dream of her, every aspiration and hope for her alone. He was splendidly
+unconscious of his own utter loneliness, blankly unaware of the
+life-comedy--or tragedy--which Gloria was acting for him out of pity
+for the heart she could break, and out of shame at finding out what her
+own heart was. Had he known the truth, the end would have come quickly
+and terribly. But he did not know it. The woman's gifts were great, and
+her beauty was greater. Greater than all was his whole-souled belief in
+her. He had never conceived it possible, in his ignorance of women, that
+a woman should really love him. She, whom he had first loved so
+hopelessly, had given him all she had to give, which was herself,
+frankly and freely. And after she had come to him, she loved him for a
+time, beyond even self-deception. But when she no longer loved him, she
+hid her secret and kept it long and well; for she feared him. He was not
+like Reanda. He would not strike only; he would kill and make an end of
+both.
+
+But she might have gone much nearer to the truth without danger. It was
+not his nature to ask anything nor to expect much, and he had taken all
+there was to take, and knew it, and was satisfied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+THE summer passed, with its monotonous heat. Rain fell in August and
+poisoned the campagna with fever for six weeks, and the clear October
+breezes blew from the hills, and the second greenness of the late season
+was over everything for a brief month of vintage and laughter. Then came
+November with its pestilent sirocco gales and its dampness, pierced and
+cut through now and then by the first northerly winds of winter.
+
+And then, one day, there was a new life in the little apartment in the
+Via della Frezza. Fate, relentless, had brought to the light a little
+child, to be the grandson of that fated Maria Braccio who had died long
+ago, to have his day of happiness and his night of suffering in his turn
+and to be a living bond between Gloria and the man who loved her.
+
+They called the boy Walter Crowdie for a relative of Angus Dalrymple,
+who had been the last of the name. It was convenient, and he would never
+need any other, nor any third name after the two given to him in
+baptism.
+
+For a few days after the child's birth, Griggs left his writing-table.
+He was almost too happy to work, and he spent many hours by Gloria's
+side, not talking, for he knew that she must be kept quiet, but often
+holding her hand and always looking at her face, with the strong, dumb
+devotion of a faithful bloodhound.
+
+Often she pretended to be sleeping when he was there, though she was
+wide awake and could have talked well enough. But it was easier to seem
+to be asleep than to play the comedy now, while she was so weak and
+helpless. With the simplicity of a little child Griggs watched her, and
+when her eyes were closed believed that she was sleeping. As soon as she
+opened them he spoke to her. She understood and sometimes smiled in
+spite of herself, with close-shut lids. He thought she was dreaming of
+him, or of the child, and was smiling in her sleep.
+
+As she lay there and thought over all that had happened, she knew that
+she hated him as she had never loved him, even in the first days. And
+she hated the child, for its life was the last bond, linking her to Paul
+Griggs and barring her from the world forever. Until it had been there
+she had vaguely felt that if she had the courage and really wished it,
+she might in some way get back to her old life. She knew that all hope
+of that was gone from her now.
+
+In the deep perspective of her loosened intelligence the endless years
+to come rolled away, grey and monotonous, to their vanishing point. She
+had made her choice and had not found heart to give it up, after she had
+made it, while there was yet time. Time itself took shape before her
+closed eyes, as many succeeding steps, and she saw herself toiling up
+them, a bent, veiled figure of great weariness. It was terrible to look
+forward to such truth, and the present was no better. She grasped at the
+past and dragged it up to her and looked at its faded prettiness, and
+would have kissed it, as though it had been a living thing. But she knew
+that it was dead and that what lived was horrible to her.
+
+She wished that she might die, as she had often thought she might during
+the long summer months. In those days her eyes had filled with tears of
+pity for herself. They were dry now, for the suffering was real and the
+pain was in her bodily heart. Yet she was so strong, and she feared Paul
+Griggs with such an abject fear, that she played the comedy when she
+could not make him think that she was asleep.
+
+"My only thought is for you," she said. "It is another burden on you."
+
+He was utterly happy, and he laughed aloud.
+
+"It is another reason for working," he said.
+
+And even as he said it she saw the writing-table, the poor room, his
+stern, determined face and busy hand, and herself seated in her own
+chair, with a half-read novel on her lap, staring at the grey future of
+mediocrity and mean struggling that loomed like a leaden figure above
+his bent head. Year after year, perhaps, she was to sit in that chair
+and watch the same silent battle for bare existence. It was too horrible
+to be borne. If only he were a man of genius, she could have suffered it
+all, she thought, and more also. But he himself said that he had no
+genius. His terrible mechanics of mind killed the little originality he
+had. His gloomy sobriety over his work made her desperate. But she
+feared him. The belief grew on her that if he ever found out that she
+did not love him, he would end life then, for them both--perhaps for
+them all three.
+
+Surely, hell had no tortures worse than hers, she thought. Yet she bore
+them, in terror of him. And he was perfectly happy and suspected
+nothing. She could not understand how with his melancholy nature and his
+constant assertion that he had but a little talent and much industry for
+all his stock in trade, he could believe in his own future as he did. It
+was an anomaly, a contradiction of terms, a weak point in the low level
+of his unimaginative, dogged strength. She thought often of the poor
+book he had written. She had heard that talent was stirred to music by a
+great passion that strung it and struck it, till its heartstrings rang
+wild changes and breathed deep chords, and burst into rushing harmonies
+of eloquence. But his love was dumb and dull, though it might be deadly.
+There had been neither eloquence nor music in his book. It had been an
+old story, badly told. He had said that he was only fit to be a
+newspaper man, and it was true, so far as she could see. His letters to
+the paper were excellent in their way, but that was all he could do. And
+she had given him, in the child, another reason for being what he was,
+hard-working, silent--dull.
+
+She looked at him and wondered; for there was a mystery in his shadowy
+eyes and still face, which had promised much more than she had ever
+found in him. There was something mysterious and dreadful, too, in his
+unnatural strength. The fear of him grew upon her, and sometimes when he
+kissed her she burst into tears out of sheer terror at his touch.
+
+"They are tears of happiness," she said, trembling and drying her eyes
+quickly.
+
+She smiled, and he believed her, happier every day in her and in the
+child.
+
+Then came the realization of the grey dream of misery. Again she was
+seated by the window in her accustomed chair, and he was in his place,
+pen in hand, eyes on paper, thoughts fixed like steel in that obstinate
+effort to do better, while she had the certainty of his failure before
+her. And between them, in a straw cradle with a hood, all gauze and
+lace and blue ribbons, lay the thing that bound her to him and cut her
+off forever from the world,--little Walter Crowdie, the child without a
+name, as she called him in her thoughts. And above the child, between
+her and Paul Griggs, floated the little imaginary stage on which she was
+to go on acting her play over and over again till all was done. She had
+not even the right to shed tears for herself without telling him that
+they were for the happiness he expected of her.
+
+He would not leave her. He had scarcely been out of the house for weeks,
+though the only perceptible effect of remaining indoors so long was that
+he had grown a little paler. She implored him to go out. In a few days
+she would be able to go with him, and meanwhile there was no reason why
+he should be perpetually at her side. He yielded to her importunity at
+last, and she was left alone with the child.
+
+It was a relief even greater than she had anticipated. She could cry,
+she could laugh, she could sing, and he was not there to ask questions.
+For one moment after she had heard the outer door close behind him she
+almost hesitated as to which she should do, for she was half hysterical
+with the long outward restraint of herself while, inwardly, she had
+allowed her thoughts to run wild as they would. She stood for a moment,
+and there was a vague, uncertain look in her face. Then her breast
+heaved, and she burst into tears, weeping as never before in her short
+life, passionately, angrily, violently, without thought of control, or
+indeed of anything definite.
+
+Before an hour had passed Griggs came back. She was seated quietly in
+her chair, as when he had left her. The light was all behind her, and he
+could not see the slight redness of her eyes. Pale as she was, he
+thought she had never been more beautiful. There was a gentleness in her
+manner, too, beyond what he was accustomed to. He believed that perhaps
+she might be the better for being left to herself for an hour or two
+every day, until she should be quite strong again. On the following day
+she again suggested that he should go out for a walk, and he made no
+objection.
+
+Again, as soon as he was gone, she burst into tears, almost in spite of
+herself, though she unconsciously longed for the relief they had brought
+her the first time. But to-day the fit of weeping did not pass so soon.
+The spasms of sobbing lasted long after her eyes were dry, and she had
+less time to compose herself before Griggs returned. Still, he noticed
+nothing. The tears had refreshed her, and he found that same gentleness
+which had touched him on the previous day.
+
+Several times, after that, he went out and left her alone in the
+afternoon. Then, one day, while he was walking, a heavy shower came on,
+and he made his way home as fast as he could. He opened the door quickly
+and came upon her to find her sobbing as though her heart would break.
+
+He turned very pale and stood still for a moment. There was terror in
+her face when she saw him, but in an instant he was holding her in his
+arms and kissing her hair, asking her what was the matter.
+
+"I am a millstone around your neck!" she sobbed. "It is breaking my
+heart--I shall die, if I see you working so!"
+
+He tried to comfort her, soothing her and laughing at her fears for him,
+but believing her, as he always did. Little by little, her sobs
+subsided, and she was herself again, as far as he could see. He tried to
+argue the case fairly on its merits.
+
+She listened to him, and listening was a new torture, knowing as she did
+what her tears were shed for. But she had to play the comedy again, at
+short notice, not having had the time to compose herself and enjoy the
+relief she found in crying alone.
+
+It was a relief which she sought again and again. When she thought of it
+afterwards, it was as an indescribable, half-painful, half-pleasant
+emotion through which she passed every day. When she felt that it was
+before her, as soon as Griggs was out of the house, she made a slight
+effort to resist it, for she was sensible enough to understand that it
+was becoming a habit which she could not easily break.
+
+Even after she was quite strong again, Griggs often left her to herself
+for an hour, and he did not again come in accidentally and find her in
+tears. He thought it natural that she should sometimes wish to be alone.
+
+One day, when she had dried her eyes, she took a sheet of paper from his
+table and began to write. She had no distinct intention, but she knew
+that she was going to write about herself and her sufferings. It gave
+her a strange and unhealthy pleasure to set down in black and white all
+that she suffered. She could look at it, turn it, change it, and look at
+it again. Constantly, as the pen ran on, the tears came to her eyes
+afresh, and she brushed them away with a smile.
+
+Then, all at once, she looked at the clock--the same cheap little
+American clock which had ticked so long on the mantelpiece in Griggs's
+old lodging upstairs. She knew that he would be back before long, and
+she tore the sheets she had covered into tiny strips and threw them into
+the waste-paper basket. When Griggs returned, she was singing softly to
+herself over her needlework.
+
+But she had enjoyed a rare delight in writing down the story of her
+troubles. The utter loneliness of her existence, when Griggs was not
+with her, made it natural enough. Then a strange thought crossed her
+mind. She would write to Reanda and tell him that she had forgiven him,
+and had expiated the wrong she had done him. She craved the excitement
+of confession, and it could do no harm. He might, perhaps, answer her.
+Griggs would never know, for she always received the letters and sorted
+them for him, merely to save him trouble. The correspondence of a
+newspaper man is necessarily large, covering many sources of his
+information.
+
+It was rather a wild idea, she thought, but it attracted her, or rather
+it distracted her thoughts by taking her out of the daily comedy she was
+obliged to keep up. There was in it, too, a very slight suggestion of
+danger; for it was conceivable, though almost impossible, that some
+letter of hers or her husband's might fall into Griggs's hands. There
+was a perverseness about it which was seductive to her tortuous mind.
+
+At the first opportunity she wrote a very long letter. It was the letter
+of a penitent. She told him all that she had told herself a hundred
+times, and it was a very different production from the one she had sent
+to her father nearly a year earlier. There were tears in the phrases,
+there were sobs in the broken sentences. And there were tears in her own
+eyes when she sealed it.
+
+She was going to ring for the woman servant to take it, and her hand
+was on the bell. She paused, looked at the addressed envelope, glanced
+furtively round the room, and then kissed it passionately. Then she
+rang.
+
+Griggs came home later than usual, but he thought she was preoccupied
+and absent-minded.
+
+"Has anything gone wrong?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Wrong?" she repeated. "Oh no!" She sighed. "It is the same thing. I am
+always anxious about you. You were a little pale before you went out and
+you had hardly eaten anything at breakfast."
+
+"There is nothing the matter with me," laughed Griggs. "I am
+indestructible. I defy fate."
+
+She started perceptibly, for she was too much of an Italian not to be a
+little superstitious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+STEPHANONE was often seen in the Via della Frezza, for the host of the
+little wine shop was one of his good customers. The neighbourhood was
+very quiet and respectable, and the existence of the wine shop was a
+matter of convenience and almost of necessity to the respectable
+citizens who dwelt there. They sent their women servants or came
+themselves at regular hours, bringing their own bottles and vessels of
+all shapes and of many materials for the daily allowance of wine; they
+invariably paid in cash, and they never went away in the summer. The
+business was a very good one; for the Romans, though they rarely drink
+too much and are on the whole a sober people, consume an amount of
+strong wine which would produce a curious effect upon any other race, in
+any other climate. Stefanone, though his wife had formerly thought him
+extravagant, had ultimately turned out to be a very prudent person, and
+in the course of a thirty years' acquaintance with Rome had selected his
+customers with care, judgment, and foresight. Whenever he was in Rome
+and had time to spare he came to the little shop in the Via della
+Frezza. He had stood godfather for one of the host's children, which in
+those days constituted a real tie between parents and god-parents.
+
+But he had another reason for his frequent visits since that night on
+which he had accompanied Gloria and had shielded her from the rain with
+his gigantic brass-tipped umbrella. He took an interest in her, and
+would wait a long time in the hope of seeing her, sitting on a
+rush-bottomed stool outside the wine shop, and generally chewing the end
+of a wisp of broom. He had the faculty of sitting motionless for an hour
+at a time, his sturdy white-stockinged legs crossed one over the other,
+his square peasant's hands crossed upon his knee,--the sharp angles of
+the thumb-bones marked the labouring race,--his soft black hat tilted a
+little forward over his eyes, his jacket buttoned up when the weather
+was cool, thrown back and showing the loosened shirt open far below the
+throat when the day was warm.
+
+Gloria reminded him of Dalrymple. The process of mind was a very simple
+one and needs no analysis. He had sought Dalrymple for years, but in
+vain, and Gloria had something in her face which recalled her father,
+though the latter's features were rough and harshly accentuated.
+Stefanone had made the acquaintance of the one-eyed cobbler without
+difficulty and had ascertained that there was a mystery about Gloria,
+whom the cobbler had first seen on the morning after Stefanone had met
+her in the storm. It was of course very improbable that she should be
+the daughter of Dalrymple and Annetta, but even the faint possibility of
+being on the track of his enemy had a strong effect upon the unforgiving
+peasant. If he ever found Dalrymple, he intended to kill him. In the
+meanwhile he had found a simple plan for finding out whether Gloria was
+the Scotchman's daughter or not. He waited patiently for the spring, and
+he came to Rome now every month for a week at a time.
+
+More than once during the past year he had brought small presents of
+fruit and wine and country cakes for Gloria, and both she and Griggs
+knew all about him, and got their wine from the little shop which he
+supplied. Gloria was pleased by the decent, elderly peasant's admiration
+of her beauty, which he never failed to express when he got a chance of
+speaking to her. When little Walter Crowdie was first carried out into
+the sun, Stefanone was in the street, and he looked long and earnestly
+into the baby's face.
+
+"There is the same thing in the eyes," he muttered, as he turned away,
+after presenting the nurse with a beautiful jumble, which looked as
+though it had been varnished, and was adorned with small drops of hard
+pink sugar. "If it is he--an evil death on him and all his house."
+
+And he strolled slowly back to the wine shop, his hand fumbling with the
+big, curved, brass-handled knife which he carried in the pocket of his
+blue cloth breeches.
+
+He was certainly mistaken about the baby's eyes, which were remarkably
+beautiful and of a very soft brown; whereas Dalrymple's were hard, blue,
+and steely, and it was not possible that anything like an hereditary
+expression should be recognizable in the face of a child three weeks
+old. But his growing conviction made his imagination complete every link
+which chanced to be missing in the chain.
+
+One day, in the spring, he met Griggs when the latter was going out
+alone.
+
+"A word, Signore, if you permit," he said politely.
+
+"Twenty," replied Griggs, giving the common Roman answer.
+
+"Signore, Subiaco is a beautiful place," said the peasant. "In spring it
+is an enchantment. In summer, I tell you nothing. It is as fresh as
+Paradise. There is water, water, as much as you please. Wine is not
+wanting, and it seems that you know that. The butcher kills calves twice
+a week, and sometimes an ox when there is an old one, or one lame. Eh,
+in Subiaco, one is well."
+
+"I do not doubt it when I look at you," answered Griggs, without a
+smile.
+
+"Thanks be to Heaven, my health still assists me. But I am thinking of
+you and of your beautiful lady and of that little angel, whom God
+preserve. In truth, you appear to me as the Holy Family. I should not
+say it to every one, but the air of Subiaco is thin, the water is light,
+and, for a house, mine is of the better ones. One knows that we are
+country people, but we are clean people; there are neither chickens nor
+children. If you find a flea, I will have him set in gold. You shall
+say, 'This is the flea that was found in Stefanone's house.' In that way
+every one will know. I do not speak of the beds. The pope could sleep in
+the one in the large room at the head of the staircase, the pope with
+all his cardinals. They would say, 'Now we know that this is indeed a
+bed.' Do you wish better than this? I do not know. But if you will bring
+your lady and the baby, you will see. Eyes tell no lies."
+
+"And the price?" inquired Griggs, struck by the good sense of the
+suggestion.
+
+"Whatever you choose to give. If you give nothing, we shall have had
+your company. In general, we take three pauls a day, and we give the
+wine. You shall make the price as you like it. Who thinks of these
+things? We are Christians."
+
+When Griggs spoke of the project to Gloria, she embraced it eagerly. He
+said that he should be obliged to come to Rome every week on account of
+his correspondence. But Subiaco was no longer as inaccessible as
+formerly, and there was now a good carriage road all the way and a daily
+public conveyance. He should be absent three days, and would spend the
+other four with her.
+
+It was a sacrifice on his part, as she guessed from the way in which he
+spoke, but it was clearly necessary that Gloria and the child should
+have country air during the coming summer. He had often reproached
+himself with not having made some such arrangement for the preceding hot
+season, but he had seen that she did not suffer from the heat, and his
+presence in the capital had been very necessary for his work. Now,
+however, it looked possible enough, and before Stefanone went back to
+the country for his next trip a preliminary agreement had been made.
+
+Gloria looked forward with impatience to the liberty she was to gain by
+his regular absences, for her life was becoming unbearable. She felt
+that she could not much longer sustain the perpetual comedy she was
+acting, unless she could get an interval of rest from time to time. At
+first, the hour he gave her daily when he went out alone had been a
+relief and had sufficed. The tears she shed, the letters she wrote to
+Reanda, rested her and refreshed her. For she had written others since
+that first one, though he had never answered any of them. But the small
+daily interruption of her acting was no longer enough. The taste of
+liberty had bred an intense craving for more of it, and she dreamed of
+being alone for days together.
+
+She wrote to Reanda now without the slightest hope of receiving any
+reply, as madmen sometimes write endless letters to women they love,
+though they have never exchanged a word with them. It was a vent for her
+pent-up suffering. It could make no difference, and Griggs could never
+know. Her strange position put the point of faithfulness out of the
+question. She was in love with her husband, and the man who loved her
+held her to her play of love by the terror she felt of what lay behind
+his gentleness. She dreamed once that he had found out the truth, and
+was tearing her head from her body with those hands of his, slowly,
+almost gently, with mysterious eyes and still face. She woke, and found
+that the heavy tress of her hair was twisted round her throat and was
+choking her; but the impression remained, and her dread of Griggs
+increased, and it became harder and harder to act her part.
+
+At the same time the attraction of secretly writing to her husband grew
+stronger, day by day. She did not send him all she wrote, nor a tenth
+part of all, and the greater portion of her outpourings went into the
+fire, or they were torn to infinitesimal bits and thrown into the
+waste-paper basket. She was critical, in a strangely morbid way, of what
+she wrote. The fact that she was acting for Griggs, and knew it, made
+her dread to write anything to Reanda which could possibly seem
+insincere. No aspiring young author ever took greater pains over his
+work than she sometimes bestowed upon the composition of these letters,
+or judged his work more conscientiously and severely than she. And the
+result was that she told of her life with wonderful sincerity and truth.
+Truth was her only luxury in the midst of the great lie she had to
+sustain. She revelled in it, and yet, fearing to lose it, she used it
+with a conscientiousness which she had never exhibited in anything she
+had done before. It was her single delight, and she treasured it with
+scrupulous and miserly care. In her letters, at least, she could be
+really herself.
+
+But the strain was telling upon her visibly, and Griggs was very anxious
+about her, and hastened their departure for Subiaco as soon as the
+weather began to grow warm, hoping that the mountain air would bring the
+colour back to her pale cheeks. For her beauty's sake, he could almost
+have deprecated the prospect, strange to say, for she had never seemed
+more perfectly beautiful than now. She was thinner than she had formerly
+been, and her pallor had refined her by softening the look of hard and
+brilliant vitality which had characterized her before she had left
+Reanda. There is perhaps no beauty which is not beautified by a touch
+of sadness. Griggs saw it, and while his eyes rejoiced, his heart sank.
+
+He knew what an utterly lonely life she was leading, even as he judged
+her existence, and the tender string was touched in his deep nature. She
+had sacrificed everything for him, as he told himself many a time in his
+solitary walks. All the love he had given and had to give could never
+repay her for what she had given him. Marriage, he reflected, was often
+a bargain, but such devotion as hers was a gift for which there could be
+no return. She had ruined herself in the eyes of the world for him, but
+the world would never accuse him, nor shut its doors upon him because he
+had accepted what she had so freely given. He was not an emotional man,
+but even he longed for some turn of life in which for her sake he might
+do something above the dead level of that commonplace heroism which
+begins in hard work and ends in the attainment of ordinary necessities.
+He felt his strength in him and about him, and he wished that he could
+let it loose upon some adversary in the physical satisfaction of
+fighting for what he loved. It was not a high aspiration, but it was a
+manly one.
+
+He drew upon his resources to the utmost, in order to make her
+comfortable in Subiaco when they should get there. He was not a dreamer,
+though he dreamed when he had time. It was his nature to take all the
+things which came to him to be done and to do them one after another
+with untiring energy. He worked at his correspondence, and got
+additional articles to write for periodicals, though it was no easy
+matter in that day when the modern periodical was in its infancy.
+
+Gloria, acting her part, complained sadly that he worked too hard. Work
+as he might, he had no such stress to fear as was wearing out her life.
+She hated him, she feared him, and she envied him. Sometimes she pitied
+him, and then it was easier for her to act the play. As for Griggs, he
+laughed and told her for the hundredth time that he was indestructible
+and defied fate.
+
+So far as he could see what he had to deal with, he could defy anything.
+But there was that beyond of which he could not dream, and destiny, with
+leaden hands, was already upon him, on the day when a great,
+old-fashioned carriage, loaded with boxes and belongings, brought him
+and his to the door of Stefanone's house in Subiaco.
+
+Sora Nanna, grey-haired, and withered as a brown apple, but tough as
+leather still, stood on the threshold to receive them. She no longer
+wore the embroidered napkin on her hair, for civilization had advanced a
+generation in Subiaco, and a coloured handkerchief flapped about her
+head, and she had caught one corner of it in her teeth to keep it out of
+her eyes, as the afternoon breeze blew it across her leathery face.
+
+First at the door of the carriage she saw the baby, held up by its
+nurse, and the old woman threw up her hands and clapped them, and crowed
+to the child till it laughed. Then Griggs got out. And then, out of the
+dark shadow of the coach, a face looked at Sora Nanna, and it was a face
+she had known long ago, with dark eyes, beautiful and deadly pale, and
+very fateful.
+
+She turned white herself, and her teeth chattered.
+
+"Madonna Santissima!" she cried, shrinking back.
+
+She crossed herself, and did not dare to meet Gloria's eyes again for
+some time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+
+SORA NANNA showed her new lodgers their rooms. They were the ones
+Dalrymple had occupied long ago, together with a third, opening
+separately from the same landing. In what had been the Scotchman's
+laboratory, and which was now turned into a small bedroom, a large chest
+stood in a corner, of the sort used by the peasant women to this day for
+their wedding outfits.
+
+"If it is not in your way, I will leave it here," said Sora Nanna.
+"There are certain things in it."
+
+"What things?" asked Gloria, idly, and for the sake of making
+acquaintance with the woman, rather than out of curiosity.
+
+"Things, things," answered Nanna. "Things of that poor girl's. We had a
+daughter, Signora."
+
+"Did she die long ago?" inquired Gloria, in a tone of sympathy.
+
+"We lost her, Signora," said Nanna, simply. "Look at these beds! They
+are new, new! No one has ever slept in them. And linen there is, as much
+as you can ask for. We are country people, Signora, but we are good
+people. I do not say that we are rich. One knows--in Rome everything is
+beautiful. Even the chestnuts are of gold. Here, we are in the country,
+Signora. You will excuse, if anything is wanting."
+
+But Gloria was by no means inclined to find fault. She breathed more
+freely in the mountain air, she was tired with the long drive from
+Tivoli, where they had spent the previous night, and she was more hungry
+than she had been for a long time.
+
+It was not dark when they sat down to supper in the old guest chamber
+which opened upon the street. Nanna was anxious and willing to bring
+them their supper upstairs, but Gloria preferred the common room. She
+said it would amuse her, and in reality it was easier for her not to be
+alone with Griggs, and by going downstairs on the first evening she
+meant to establish a precedent for the whole summer. He had told her
+that he must go back to Rome for his work on the next day but one, and
+she counted the hours before her up to the minute when she should be
+free and alone.
+
+They sat down at the old table at which Dalrymple had eaten his solitary
+meals so often, more than twenty years earlier. There was no change.
+There were the same solid, old-fashioned silver forks and spoons, there
+were plates of the same coarse china, tumblers of the same heavy pressed
+glass. Had Dalrymple been there, he would have recognized the old brass
+lamp with its three beaks which poor Annetta had so often brought in
+lighted when he sat there at dusk. On the shelf in the corner were the
+selfsame decanters full of transparent aniseed and pink alchermes and
+coarse brown brandy. Stefanone came in, laid his hat upon the bench, and
+put his stick in the corner just as he had always done. There was no
+change, except that Annetta was not there, and the husband and wife had
+grown almost old since those days.
+
+"How often does the post go to Rome?" Gloria asked of Sora Nanna, while
+they were at supper.
+
+"Every evening, at one of the night, Signora. There are also many
+occasions of sending by the carters."
+
+"I can write to you every day when you are away," said Gloria in English
+to Griggs.
+
+She was thinking of those letters which she wrote to Reanda almost in
+spite of herself, but the loving smile did not play her false, and
+Griggs believed her.
+
+In her, the duality of her being had created two distinct lives. For
+him, the two elements of consciousness and perception were merged in one
+by his love. All that he felt he saw in her, and all that he saw in her
+he felt. The perfection of love, while it lasts, is in that double
+certainty from within and from without, which, if once disturbed, can
+never be restored again. Singly, the one part or the other may remain
+as of old, but the wholeness of the two has but one chance of life.
+
+On that first night Gloria had an evil dream. She had fallen asleep,
+tired from the journey and worn out with the endless weariness of her
+secret suffering. She awoke in the small hours, and moonlight was
+streaming into the room. She was startled to find herself in a strange
+place, at first, and then she realized where she was, and gazed at the
+clouded panes of common glass as her head lay on the pillow, and she
+marked the moonlight on the brick floor by the joints of the bricks, and
+watched how it crept silently away. For the moon was waning, and had not
+long risen above the black line of the hills.
+
+Her eyelids drooped, but she saw it all distinctly still--more
+distinctly than before, she thought. The level light rose slowly from
+the floor; very, very slowly, stiff and straight as a stark, shrouded
+corpse, and stood upright between her and the window. She felt the heavy
+hair rising on her scalp, and an intense horror took possession of her
+body, and thrilled through her from head to foot and from her feet to
+her head. But she could not move. She felt that something held her and
+pressed on her, as though the air were moulded about her like cast iron.
+
+The thing stood between her and the window, stiff and white. It showed
+its face, and the face was white, too. It was Angelo Reanda. She knew
+it, though there seemed to be no eyes in the white thing. She felt its
+dead voice speaking to her.
+
+"An evil death on you and all your house," it said.
+
+The face was gone again, but the thing was still there. Very, very
+slowly, stiff and white, it lay back, straight from the heel upwards,
+unbending as it sank, till it laid itself upon the floor, and she was
+staring at the joints of the bricks in the moonlight.
+
+Then she shrieked aloud and awoke. The moonlight had moved a foot or
+more, and she knew that she had been asleep.
+
+"It was only a dream," she said to Griggs in the morning. "I thought I
+saw you dead, dear. It frightened me."
+
+"I am not dead yet," he laughed. "It was that salad--there were potatoes
+in it."
+
+She turned away; for the contrast between the triviality of what he said
+and the horror of what she had felt brought an expression to her face
+which even her consummate art could not have concealed.
+
+The impression lasted all day, and when she went to bed she carefully
+closed the shutters so that the moonlight should not fall upon the
+floor. The dream did not return.
+
+"It must have been the salad," said Griggs, when she told him that she
+had not been disturbed again.
+
+But Gloria was thinking of death, and his words jarred upon her
+horribly, as a trivial jest would jar on a condemned man walking from
+his cell to the scaffold. In the evening Griggs went by the diligence to
+Rome, and Gloria was left alone with her child and the nurse.
+
+Then she sat down and wrote to Reanda with a full heart and a trembling
+hand. She told him of her dream, and how the fear of his death had
+broken her nerves. She implored him to come out and see her when Griggs
+was in Rome. She could let him know when to start, if he would write one
+word. It was but a little journey, she said, and the cool mountain air
+would do him good. But if he would not come, she besought him to write
+to her, if it were only a line, to say that he was alive. She could not
+forget the dream until she should know that he was safe.
+
+She was not critical of her writing any more, for she was no longer in
+fear of being misunderstood, and she wrote desperately. It seemed to her
+that she was writing with her blood. She had sent him many letters
+without hope of answer, but something told her that she could not appeal
+in vain forever, and that he would at last reply to her.
+
+Two days passed, and she spent much of her time with the child. She
+felt that in time she might love it, if Griggs were not beside her. Then
+he came back, and in the great joy of seeing her again after that first
+short separation, the stern voice grew as soft as a woman's, and the
+still face was moved. She had looked forward with dread to his return,
+and she shivered when he touched her; she would have given all she had
+if only he would not kiss her. Then, when she felt that he might have
+found her cold to him at the first moment, that he might guess, that he
+might find out her secret, she shivered again from head to heel, in fear
+of him, and she forced the smile upon her face with all her will.
+
+"I am so glad, that I am almost frightened!" she cried, and lest the
+smile should be imperfect, she hid it against his shoulder.
+
+She could have bitten the cloth and the tough arm under it, as she felt
+him kiss the back of her neck just at the roots of the hair; as it was,
+she grasped his arm convulsively.
+
+"How strong you are!" he laughed, as he felt the pressure of her
+fingers.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "It is the mountain air--and you," she added.
+
+And, as ever, it seemed to him true. The days he spent with her were
+heavenly to him as they were days of living earthly hell to her. He did
+not even leave her alone for an hour or two, as he had done in the
+city, for when he was in Rome without her he did double work and
+shortened his sleep by half, that he might lengthen the time he was to
+have with her. The heat of the capital and the late hours brought out
+dark shadows under his eyes, and gave her another excuse for saying that
+he was overworking for her sake, and that she was a burden upon him--she
+and the child.
+
+On the morning before he next went to Rome, she received a letter from
+Reanda. The blood rushed scarlet to her face, but Griggs was busy with
+his own letters and did not see it.
+
+She went to the baby's room. The child had been taken out by the nurse,
+and she sat down in the nurse's chair by the empty cradle and broke the
+seal of the note. There was a big sheet of paper inside, on which were
+written these lines in the artist's small, nervous handwriting:--
+
+"I am perfectly well, but I understand your anxiety about my health. I
+do not wish to see you, but as human life is uncertain I have given
+instructions that you may be at once informed of the good news of my
+death, if you outlive me."
+
+Gloria's hand closed upon the sheet of paper, and she reeled forward and
+sideways in the chair, as though she had received a stunning blow. She
+heard heavy footsteps on the brick floor in the next room and with a
+desperate effort at consciousness she hid the crumpled letter in her
+bosom before the door opened. But the room swam with her as she grasped
+the straw cradle and tried to steady herself.
+
+In an agony of terror she heard the footsteps coming nearer and nearer,
+then retreating again, then turning back towards her. She prayed to God
+at that moment that Griggs might not open the door. To gain strength,
+she forced herself to rise to her feet and stand upright, but with the
+first step she took, she stumbled against the chest that contained
+Annetta's belongings. The physical pain roused her. She drew breath more
+freely, and listened. Griggs was moving about in the other room,
+probably putting together some few things which he meant to take to Rome
+with him that evening. It seemed an hour before she heard him go away,
+and the echo of his footsteps came more and more faintly as he went down
+the stairs. He evidently had not guessed that she was in the little room
+which served as a nursery--the room which had once been Dalrymple's
+laboratory.
+
+She did not read the letter again, but she found a match and set fire to
+it, and watched it as it burned to black, gossamer-like ashes on the
+brick floor. It was long before she had the courage to go down and face
+Griggs and say that she was ready for the daily walk together before the
+midday meal. And all that day she went about dreamily, scarcely knowing
+what she did or said, though she was sure that she did not fail in
+acting her part, for the habit was so strong that the acting was
+natural to her, except when something waked her to herself too suddenly.
+
+He went away at last in the evening, and she was free to do what she
+pleased with herself, to close the deadly wound she had received, if
+that were possible, to forget it even for an hour, if she could.
+
+But she could not. She felt that it was her death-wound, for it had
+killed a hope which she had tended and fostered into an inner life for
+herself. She felt that her husband hated her, as she hated Paul Griggs.
+
+She was impelled to fall upon her knees and pray to Something,
+somewhere, though she knew not what, but she was ashamed to do it when
+she thought of her life. That Something would turn upon her and curse
+her, as Reanda had cursed her in her dream--and in the cruel words he
+had written.
+
+She hardly slept that night, and she rose in the morning heavy-eyed and
+weary. Going out into the old garden behind the house she met Sora Nanna
+with a basket of clothes on her head, just starting to go up to the
+convent, followed by two of her women.
+
+"Signora," said the old woman, with her leathern smile, "you are
+consuming yourself because the husband is in Rome. You are doing
+wrong."
+
+Gloria started, stared at her, and then understood, and nodded.
+
+"Come up to the convent with us," said Nanna. "You will divert yourself,
+and while they take in the clothes, I will show you the church. It is
+beautiful. I think that even in Rome it would be a beautiful church. I
+will show you where the sisters are buried and I will tell you how
+Sister Maria Addolorata was burned in her cell. But she was not buried
+with the rest. When you come back, you will eat with a double appetite,
+and I will make gnocchi of polenta for dinner. Do you like gnocchi,
+Signora? There is much resistance in them."
+
+Gloria went with the washerwomen. She was strong and kept pace with
+them, burdened as they were with their baskets. It was good to be with
+them, common creatures with common, human hearts, knowing nothing of her
+strange trouble. Sora Nanna took her into the church and showed her the
+sights, explaining them in her strident, nasal voice without the
+slightest respect for the place so long as no religious service was
+going on. The woman showed her the little tablet erected in memory of
+Maria Addolorata, and she told the story as she had heard it, and dwelt
+upon the funeral services and the masses which had been said.
+
+"At least, she is in peace," said Gloria, in a low voice, staring at the
+tablet.
+
+[Illustration: "Let us not speak of the dead."--Vol. II., p. 203.]
+
+"Poor Annetta used to say that Sister Maria Addolorata sinned in her
+throat," said Nanna. "But you see. God can do everything. She went
+straight from her cell to heaven. Eh, she is in peace, Signora, as you
+say. Requiesca'. Come, Signora, it takes at least three-quarters of an
+hour to make gnocchi."
+
+And they did not know. She was standing on her daughter's grave, and the
+tablet was a memorial of the mother of the woman beside her.
+
+"You make me think of her, Signora," said the peasant. "You have her
+face. If you had her voice, to sing, I should think that you were she,
+returned from the dead."
+
+"Could she sing?" asked Gloria, dreamily, as they left the church.
+
+"Like the angels in Paradise," answered Nanna. "I think that now, when
+she sings, they are ashamed and stand silent to listen to her. If God
+wills that I make a good death, I shall hear her again."
+
+She glanced at her companion's dreamy, fateful face.
+
+"Let us not speak of the dead!" she concluded. "To-day we will make
+gnocchi of polenta."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+
+IN the afternoon Gloria called Sora Nanna to move the chest against
+which she had stumbled in the morning. It would be more convenient, she
+said, to put it under the bed, if it could not be taken away altogether.
+It was a big, old-fashioned chest of unpainted, unvarnished wood, brown
+with age, and fastened by a hasp, through which a splinter of white
+chestnut wood had been stuck instead of a padlock. Gloria saw that it
+was heavy, as Sora Nanna dragged it and pushed it across the room. She
+remarked that, if it held only clothes, it must be packed very full.
+
+Sora Nanna, glad to rest from her efforts, stood upright with her hand
+on her hip and took breath.
+
+"Signora," she said, "who knows what is in it? Things, certain things!
+There are the clothes of that poor girl. This I know. And then, certain
+other things. Who knows what is in it? It may be a thousand years since
+I looked. Signora, shall we open it? But I think there are certain
+things that belonged to the Englishman."
+
+"The Englishman?" asked Gloria, with some curiosity.
+
+She was glad of anything which could interest her a little. For the
+moment she had not yet the courage to begin to write again after
+Reanda's message. Anything which had power to turn the current of her
+thoughts was a relief. She was sitting in the same chair beside the
+cradle in which she had sat in the morning, for she had called Nanna to
+move the box at a time when the child had been taken out for its second
+airing. She leaned back, resting her auburn hair against the bare wall,
+the waxen whiteness of her face contrasting with the bluish whitewash.
+
+"What Englishman?" she asked again, wearily, but with a show of interest
+in her half-closed eyes.
+
+"Who knows? An Englishman. They called him Sor Angoscia." Nanna sat down
+on the heavy box, and dropped her skinny hands far apart upon her knees.
+"We have cursed him much. He took our daughter. It was a night of evil.
+In that night the abbess died, and Sister Maria Addolorata was burned in
+her cell, and the Englishman took our daughter. He took our one
+daughter, Signora. We have not seen her more, not even her little
+finger. It will be twenty-two years on the eve of the feast of St. Luke.
+That is in October, Signora. He took our daughter. Poor little one! She
+was young, young--perhaps she did not know what she did."
+
+Gloria leaned forward, resting her chin in her hand and her elbow on
+her knee, gazing at the old woman.
+
+"She was a flower," said Nanna, simply. "He tore her from us with the
+roots. Who knows what he did with her? She will be dead by this time.
+May the Madonna obtain grace for her! Signora, she seemed one of those
+flowers that grow on the hillside, just as God wills. Rain, sun, she was
+always fresh. Then came the storm. Who could find her any more? Poor
+little one!"
+
+"Poor child!" exclaimed Gloria.
+
+And she made Nanna tell all she knew, and how they had found the girl's
+peasant dress in a corner of that very room.
+
+"Signora, if you wish to see, I will content you," said Nanna, rising at
+last.
+
+She opened the box. It exhaled the peculiar odour of heavy cloth which
+has been worn and has then been kept closely shut up for years. On the
+top lay Annetta's carpet apron. Nanna held it up, and there were tears
+in her eyes, glistening on her dry skin like water in a crevice of brown
+rock.
+
+"Signora, there are moths in it, see! Who cares for these things? They
+are a memory. And this is her skirt, and this is her bodice. Eh, it was
+beautiful once. The shoes, Signora, I wore them, for we had the same
+feet. What would you? It seemed a sin to let them mould, because they
+were hers. The apron, too, I might have worn it. Who knows why I did
+not wear it? It was the affection. We are all so, we women. And now
+there are moths in it. I might have worn it. At least it would not have
+been lost."
+
+Gloria peered into the box, and saw under the clothes a number of books
+packed neatly with a box made of English oak. She stretched down her
+hand and took one of the volumes. It was an English medical treatise.
+She looked at the fly-leaf.
+
+A loud cry from Gloria startled the old woman.
+
+"Angus Dalrymple--but--" Gloria read the name and stared at Nanna.
+
+"Eh, eh!" assented Nanna, nodding violently and smiling a little as she
+at last recognized the Scotchman's name which she had never been able to
+pronounce. "Yes--that is it. That was the name of the Englishman. An
+evil death on him and all his house! Stefanone says it always. I also
+may say it once. It was he. He took our daughter. Stefanone went after
+them, but they had the beast of the convent gardener. It was a good
+beast, and they made it run. Stefanone heard of them all the way to the
+sea, but the twenty-four hours had passed, and the war-ship was far out.
+He could see it. Could he go to the war-ship? It had cannons. They would
+have killed him. Then I should have had neither daughter nor husband. So
+he came back."
+
+The long habit of acting had made Gloria strong, but her hands shook on
+the closed volume. She had known that her mother had been an Italian,
+that they had left Italy suddenly and had been married on board an
+English man-of-war by the captain, that same Walter Crowdie, a relative
+of Dalrymple's, after whom Gloria and Griggs had named the child. More
+than that Dalrymple had never been willing to tell her. She remembered,
+too, that though she had once or twice begged him to take her to Tivoli
+and Subiaco, he had refused rather abruptly. It was clear enough now.
+Her mother had been this Annetta whom Dalrymple had stolen away in the
+night.
+
+And the wrinkled, leathery old hag, with her damp, coarse mouth, her skinny
+hands, and her cunning, ignorant eyes, was her grandmother--Stefanone
+was her grandfather--her mother had been a peasant, like them, beautified
+by one of nature's mad miracles.
+
+There could be no doubt about it. That was the truth, and it fell upon
+her with its cruel, massive weight, striking her where many other truths
+had struck her before this one, in her vanity.
+
+She grasped the book tightly with both hands and set her teeth. After
+that, she did not know what Nanna said, and the old woman, thinking
+Gloria was not paying a proper attention to her remarks, pushed and
+heaved the box across the room rather discontentedly. It would not go
+under the bed, being too high, so she wedged it in between the foot of
+the bedstead and the wall. There was just room for it there.
+
+"Signora, if ever your one child leaves you without a word, you will
+understand," said Nanna, a little offended at finding no sympathy.
+
+"I understand too well," answered Gloria.
+
+Then she suddenly realized what the woman wanted, and with great
+self-control she held out her hand kindly. Nanna took it and smiled, and
+pressed it in her horny fingers.
+
+"You are young, Signora. When you are old, you will understand many
+things, when evils have pounded your heart in a mortar. Oil is sweet,
+vinegar is sour; with both one makes salad. This is our life. Rest
+yourself, Signora, for you walked well this morning. I go."
+
+Gloria felt the pressure of the rough fingers on hers, after Nanna had
+left her. The acrid odour of peeled vegetables clung to her own hand,
+and she rose and washed it carefully, though she was scarcely conscious
+of what she was doing. Suddenly she dropped the towel and went back to
+the box. It had crossed her mind that the single book she had opened
+might have been borrowed from her father and that she might find another
+name in the others--that Nanna might have been mistaken in thinking that
+she recognized the English name--that it might all be a mistake, after
+all.
+
+With violent hands she dragged out the moth-eaten clothes and threw them
+behind her upon the floor, and seized the books, opening them
+desperately one after the other. In each there was the name, 'Angus
+Dalrymple,' in her father's firm young handwriting of twenty years ago.
+She threw them down and lifted out the oak box. A little brass plate was
+let into the lid, and bore the initials, 'A. D.' There was no doubt
+left. The books all bore dates prior to 1844, the year in which, as she
+knew, her father had been married. It was impossible to hesitate, for
+the case was terribly clear.
+
+She rose to her feet and carried the box to the window and set it upon a
+chair, sitting down upon another before it. It was not locked. She
+raised the lid, and saw that it was a medicine chest. There was a
+drawer, or little tray, on the top, full of small boxes and very minute
+vials, lying on their sides. Lifting this out, she saw a number of
+little stoppered bottles set in holes made in a thin piece of board for
+a frame. One was missing, and there were eleven left. She counted them
+mechanically, not knowing why she did so. Then she took them out and
+looked at the labels. The first she touched contained spirits of
+camphor. It chanced to be the only one of which the contents were
+harmless. The others were strong tinctures and acids, vegetable poisons,
+belladonna, aconite, and the like, sulphuric acid, nitric acid,
+hydrochloric acid, and others.
+
+Gloria looked at them curiously and set them back, one by one, put in
+the little tray and closed the lid. Then she sat still a long time and
+gazed out of the window at the rugged line of the hills.
+
+Between her and the pale sky she saw her own life, and the hideous
+failure of it all, culminating in the certainty that she was of the
+blood of the old peasant couple to whose house a seeming chance had
+brought her to die. She felt that she could not live, and would not live
+if she could. It was all too wildly horrible, too utterly desolate.
+
+The only human being that clung to her was the one of all others whom
+she most feared and hated, whose very touch sent a cold shiver through
+her. She and fate together had pounded her heart in a mortar, as the old
+woman had said. With a bitterness that sickened her she thought of her
+brief married life, of her poor social ambition, of her hopeless efforts
+to be some one amongst the great. What could she be, the daughter of
+peasants, what could she have ever been? Probably some one knew the
+truth about her, in all that great society. Such things might be known.
+Francesca Campodonico's delicate noble face rose faintly between her and
+the sky, and she realized with excruciating suddenness the distance that
+separated her from the woman she hated, the woman who perhaps knew that
+Gloria Dalrymple was the daughter of a peasant and a fit wife by her
+birth for Angelo Reanda, the steward's son.
+
+The ruin of her life spread behind her and before her. She could not
+face it. The confusion of it all seemed to blind her, and the confusion
+was pierced by the terrible thought that on the next day but one Griggs
+would return again, the one being who would not leave her, who believed
+in her, who worshipped her, and whom she hated for himself and for the
+destruction of her existence which had come by him.
+
+In the box before her was death, painful perhaps, but sure as the grave
+itself. She was not a coward, except when she was afraid of Paul Griggs,
+and the fear lest he, too, should find out the truth was worse than the
+fear of mortal pain.
+
+She sat still in her place, staring out of the window. After a long
+time, the nurse came in, carrying the child asleep in her arms, covered
+with a thin gauze veil. Gloria started, and then smiled mechanically as
+she had trained herself to smile whenever the child was brought to her.
+The nurse laid the small thing in its cradle, and Gloria, as in a dream,
+put the books and the clothes back into the box, and was glad that the
+nurse asked no questions. When she had shut down the lid, she rose to
+her feet and saw that she had left the medicine chest on the chair. She
+took it into the bedroom and set it upon the table.
+
+Then she sat down and wrote to Reanda. There was no haste in the
+writing, and her head was clear and cool, for she was not afraid. Griggs
+could not return for two days, and she had plenty of time. She went over
+her story, as she had gone over it many times before in her letters. She
+told him all, but not the discovery she had just made. That should die
+with her, if it could. It would be easy enough, on the next day, when
+the nurse was out, to open the box again, and to tear out the fly-leaf
+from each book and so destroy the name. As for the medicine chest,
+Griggs might see that it had belonged to her father, but he would
+suppose that she had brought it amongst her belongings. He would never
+guess that it had lain hidden in the old box for more than twenty years.
+That was her plan, and it was simple enough. But she should have to wait
+until the next day. It was better so. She could think of what she was
+going to do, and nobody would disturb her. She finished her letter.
+
+"You have killed me," she wrote at the end. "If I had not loved you to
+the very end, I would tell you that my death is on your soul. But it is
+not all your fault, if I have loved you to death. I would not die if I
+could be free in any other way, but I cannot live to be touched and
+caressed again by this man whom I loathe with all my soul. I tell you
+that when he kisses me it is as though I were stung by a serpent of ice.
+It is for your sake that I hate him as I do. For your sake I have
+suffered hell on earth for more than a whole year. For your sake I die.
+I cannot live without you. I have told you so again and a hundred times
+again, and you have not believed me. You write to-day and you tell me
+that I shall be free, when you die, to marry Paul Griggs. I would rather
+marry Satan in hell. But I shall be free to-morrow, for I shall be dead.
+God will forgive me, for God knows what I suffer. Good-bye. I love you,
+Angelo. I shall love you to-morrow, when the hour comes, and after that
+I shall love you always. This is the end. Good-bye. I love you; I kiss
+your soul with my soul. Good-bye, good-bye.
+                                                           "GLORIA."
+
+She cut a lock from her auburn hair and twisted it round and round her
+wedding ring, and thrust it into the envelope.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+
+TWO days later, Paul Griggs stood beside Gloria. She was not dead yet,
+but no earthly power could save her. She lay white and motionless on the
+high trestle bed, unconscious of his presence. They had sent a messenger
+for him, and he had come. The door was locked. Stefanone and his wife
+whispered together on the landing. In the third room, beyond, the nurse
+was shedding hysterical tears over the sleeping child.
+
+The strong man stood stone still with shadowy, unblinking eyes, gazing
+into the dying face. Not a muscle moved, not a feature was distorted,
+his breath was regular and slow, for his grief had taken hold upon his
+soul, and his body was unconscious of time, as though it were already
+dead.
+
+She had suffered horrible agonies for two nights and one day, and now
+the end was very near, for the wracked nerves could no longer feel. She
+lay on her back, lightly covered, one white arm and hand above the
+coverlet, the other hidden beneath it.
+
+The room was very hot, and the sun streamed through the narrow aperture
+of the nearly closed shutters, and made a bright streak on the red
+bricks, for it was morning still.
+
+The purple lids opened, and Gloria looked up. There was no shiver now,
+as she recognized the man she feared, for the nerves were almost dead.
+Perhaps there was less fear, for she knew that it was almost over. The
+dark eyes were fixed on his with a mysterious, wondering look.
+
+He tried to speak, and his lips moved, but he could make no sound, and
+his chest heaved convulsively, once. He knew what she had done, for they
+had told him. He knew, now that he tried to speak and could not, that he
+was half killed by grief. She saw the effort and understood, and faintly
+smiled.
+
+"Why?"
+
+He wrenched the single broken word out of himself by an enormous effort,
+and his throat swelled and was dry. Suddenly a single great drop of
+sweat rolled down his pale forehead.
+
+"I could not live," she answered, in a cool, far voice beyond suffering,
+and still she smiled.
+
+"Why? Why?"
+
+The repeated word broke out twice like two sobs, but not a feature
+moved. The dying woman's eyelids quivered.
+
+"I was a burden to you," she said faintly and distinctly. "You are free
+now, you have--only the child."
+
+His calm broke.
+
+"Gloria, Gloria! In the name of God Almighty, do not leave me so!"
+
+He clasped her in his arms and lifted her a little, pressing his lips to
+her face. She was inert as a statue. She feared him still, and she felt
+the shiver of horror at his touch, but it could not move her limbs any
+more. Her eyes opened and looked into his, very close, but his were
+shut. The mask was gone. The man's whole soul was in his agonized face,
+and his arm shook with her. Her mind was clear and she understood. She
+was still herself, acting her play out in the teeth of death.
+
+"I could not live," she said. "I could not be a millstone, dragging you
+down, watching you as you killed yourself in working for me. It was to
+be one of us. It was better so."
+
+In his agony he laid his head beside hers on the pillow.
+
+"Gloria--for Christ's sake--don't leave me--" The deep moan came from
+his tortured heart.
+
+"Bring--the child--Walter--" she said very faintly.
+
+Even in death she could not bear to be alone with him. He straightened
+himself, stood up, and saw the light fading in her eyes. Then, indeed, a
+shiver ran through her and shook her. Then the lids opened wide, and she
+cried out loudly.
+
+"Quick--I am going--"
+
+Rather than that she should not have what she wished, he tore himself
+away and wrenched the door open, forgetting that it was locked.
+
+"Bring the child!" he cried, into the face of old Nanna, who was
+standing there, and he pushed her towards the door of the other room
+with one hand, while he already turned back to Gloria.
+
+He started, for she was sitting up, with wide eyes and outstretched
+hands, gazing at the patch of sunlight on the floor. Dying, she saw the
+awful vision of her dream again, rising stiff and stark from the bricks
+to its upright horror between her and the light. Her hands pointed at it
+and shook, and her jaw dropped, but she was motionless as she sat.
+
+Nanna, sobbing, came in suddenly, holding up the little child straight
+before her, that it might see its mother before she was gone forever.
+The baby hands feebly beat its little sides, and it gasped for breath.
+
+Words came from Gloria's open mouth, articulate, clear, but very far in
+sound.
+
+"An evil death on you and all your house!" the words said, as though
+spoken by another.
+
+The outstretched hands sank slowly, as the vision laid itself down
+before her, straight and corpse-like. The beautiful head fell back upon
+Griggs's arm, and the eyes met his.
+
+[Illustration: "The last great, true note died away."--Vol. II., p.
+219.]
+
+Nanna prayed aloud, holding up the child mechanically, and the small
+eyes were fixed, horrorstruck, upon the bed. A low cry trembled in the
+air. Stefanone, his hat in his hand, stood against the door, bowed a
+little, as though he were in church. The cry came again. Then there was
+a sort of struggle.
+
+In an instant Gloria was standing up on the bed to her full height. And
+the hot, still room rang with a burst of desperate, ear-breaking song,
+in majestic, passionate, ascending intervals.
+
+          "Calpesta il mio cadavere, ma salva il Trovator!"
+
+The last great, true note died away. For one instant she stood up still,
+with outstretched hands, white, motionless. Then the flame in the dark
+eyes broke and went out, and Gloria fell down dead.
+
+"Maria Addolorata! Maria Addolorata!" Nanna screamed in deadly terror,
+as she heard the transcendent voice that one time, like a voice from the
+grave.
+
+She sank down, fainting upon the floor, and the little child rolled from
+her slackened arms upon the coarse bricks and lay on its face, moaning
+tremulously. No one heeded it.
+
+Stefanone, with instinctive horror of death, turned and went blindly
+down the steps, not knowing what he had seen, the death notes still
+ringing in his ears.
+
+On the bed, the man lay dumb upon the dead woman. Only the poor little
+child seemed to be alive, and clutched feebly at the coarse red bricks,
+and moaned and bruised its small face. It bore the slender inheritance
+of fatal life, the inheritance of vows broken and of faith outraged, and
+with it, perhaps, the implanted seed of a lifelong terror, not
+remembered, but felt throughout life, as real and as deadly as an
+inheritance of mortal disease. Better, perhaps, if death had taken it,
+too, to the lonely grave of the outcast and suicide woman, among the
+rocks, out of earshot of humanity. Death makes strange oversights and
+leaves strange gleanings for life, when he has reaped his field and
+housed his harvest.
+
+They would not give Gloria Christian burial, for it was known throughout
+Subiaco that she had poisoned herself, and those were still the old
+days, when the Church's rules were the law of the people.
+
+Paul Griggs took the body of the woman he had loved, and loved beyond
+death, and he laid her in a deep grave in a hollow of the hillside. Such
+words as he had to speak to those who helped him, he spoke quietly, and
+none could say that they had seen the still face moved by sorrow. But as
+they watched him, a human sort of fear took hold of them, at his great
+quiet, and they knew that his grief was beyond anything which could be
+shown or understood. It was night, and they filled the grave after he
+had thrown earth into it with his hands. He sent them away, and they
+left him alone with the dead, leaving also one of their lanterns upon a
+stone near by.
+
+All that night he lay on the grave, dumb. Then, when the dawn came upon
+him, he kissed the loose earth and stones, and got upon his feet and
+went slowly down the hillside to the town beyond the torrent. He went
+into the house noiselessly, and lay down upon the bed on which she had
+died. And so he did for two nights and two days. On the third, a great
+carriage came from Rome, bringing twelve men, singers of the Sistine
+Chapel and of the choir of Saint Peter's and of Saint John Lateran,
+twelve men having very beautiful voices, as sweet as any in the world.
+He had sent for them when he had been told that she could not have
+Christian burial.
+
+They were talking and laughing together when they came, but when they
+saw his face they grew very quiet, and followed him in silence where he
+led them. Two little boys followed them, too, wondering what was to
+happen, and what the thirteen men were going to do, all dressed in
+black, walking so steadily together.
+
+When they all came to the hollow in the hillside, they saw a mound, as
+of a grave, amidst the stones, and on it there lay a cross of black
+wood. The singers looked at one another in silence, and they understood
+that whoever lay in the grave had been refused a place in the
+churchyard, for some great sin. But they said nothing. The man who led
+them stood still at the head of the cross and took off his hat, and
+looked at his twelve companions, who uncovered their heads. They had
+sheets of written music with them, and they passed them quietly about
+from one to another and looked towards one who was their leader.
+
+Overhead, the summer sky was pale, and there were twin mountains of
+great clouds in the northwest, hiding the sun, and in the southeast,
+whence the parching wind was blowing in fierce gusts. It blew the dry
+dust from the clods of earth on the grave, and the dust settled on the
+black clothes of the men as they stood near.
+
+The voices struck the first chord softly together, and the music for the
+dead went up to heaven, and was borne far across the torrent to the
+distance in the arms of the hot wind. And one voice climbed above the
+others, sweet and clear, as though to reach heaven itself; and another
+sank deep and true and soft in the full close of the stave, as though it
+would touch and comfort the heart that was quite still at last in the
+deep earth.
+
+Then one who was young stood a little before the rest, a strong, pale
+singer, with an angel's voice. And he sang alone to the sky and the
+dusty rocks and the solemn grave. He sang the 'Cujus animam gementem
+pertransivit gladius' of the Stabat Mater, as none had sung it before
+him, nor perhaps has ever sung it since that day--he alone, without
+other music.
+
+They came also to the words 'Fac ut animae donetur Paradisi gloria,' and
+the word was a name to him who listened silently in their midst.
+
+Besides these they sang also a 'Miserere,' and last of all, 'Requiem
+eternam dona eis.'
+
+Then there was silence, and they looked at the still face, as though
+asking what they should do. The mysterious eyes met theirs with shadows.
+The pale head bent itself in thanks, twice or thrice, but there were no
+words.
+
+So they turned and left him there on the hillside, and went back to the
+town, awestruck by the vastness of the man's sorrow. And afterwards, for
+many years, when any of them heard of a great grief, he shook his head
+and said that he and those who had sung with him over a lonely grave in
+the mountains, alone knew what a man could feel and yet live.
+
+And Paul Griggs lived through those days, and is still alive. His grief
+could not spend itself, but his stern strength took hold of life again,
+and he took the child with him and went back to Rome, to work for it
+from that time forward, and to shield it from evil if he could, and to
+bring it up to be a man, ignorant of what had happened in Subiaco in
+those summer days, ignorant of the tie that made it his, to be a man
+free from the burden of past fates and sins and broken vows and trampled
+faith, and of the death his dead mother had died, having a clean name of
+his own, with which there could be no memories of misery and fear and
+horror.
+
+He wrote a few short words to Angus Dalrymple, now Lord Redin at last,
+to tell him the truth as far as he knew it. The hand that had laboured
+so bravely for Gloria could hardly trace the words that told of her
+death.
+
+Then, when the summer heat was passed, he took little Walter Crowdie
+with him, hiring an Englishwoman to tend the child, and he crossed the
+ocean and gave it to certain kinsfolk of his in America, telling them
+that it was the child of one who had been very dear to him, that he had
+taken it as his own, and would provide for it and take it back when it
+should be older. And so he did, and little Walter Crowdie grew up with
+an angel's voice, and other gifts which made him famous in his day. But
+many things happened before that time came.
+
+He could do no better than that. For a time he strove to earn money with
+his pen in his own country. But the land was still trembling from the
+convulsion of a great war, and there were many before him, and he was
+little known. After a year had passed, he saw that he could not then
+succeed, and very heavy at heart he set his face eastward again, to
+toil at his old calling as a correspondent for a great London paper, to
+earn bread for himself and for the one living being that he loved.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+_DONNA FRANCESCA CAMPODONICO._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+
+NOT long after this Dalrymple returned to Rome, after an absence of
+several years. Family affairs had kept him in England and Scotland
+during his daughter's married life with Reanda; and after she had left
+the latter, it was natural that he should not wish to be in the same
+city with her, considering the view he took of her actions. Then, after
+he had learned from Griggs's brief note that she was dead, he felt that
+he could not return at once, hard and unforgiving as he was. But at last
+the power that attracted him was too strong to be resisted any longer,
+and he yielded to it and came back.
+
+He took up his abode in a hotel in the Piazza di Spagna, not far from
+his old lodgings. Long as he had lived in Rome, he was a foreigner there
+and liked the foreigners' quarter of the city. He intended once more to
+get a lodging and a servant, and to live in his morose solitude as of
+old, but on his first arrival he naturally went to the hotel. He did not
+know whether Griggs were in Rome. Reanda was alive, and living at the
+Palazzetto Borgia; for the two had exchanged letters twice a year,
+written in the constrained tone of mutual civility which suited the
+circumstances in which they were placed towards each other.
+
+In Dalrymple's opinion, Reanda had been to blame to a certain extent, in
+having maintained his intimacy with Francesca when he was aware that it
+displeased his wife. At the same time, the burden of the fault was
+undoubtedly the woman's, and her father felt in a measure responsible
+for it. Whether he felt much more than that it would be hard to say. His
+gloomy nature had spent itself in secret sorrow for his wife, with a
+faithfulness of grief which might well atone for many shortcomings. It
+is certain that he was not in any way outwardly affected by the news of
+Gloria's death. He had never loved her, she had disgraced him, and now
+she was dead. There was nothing more to be said about it.
+
+He was not altogether indifferent to the inheritance of title and
+fortune which had fallen to him in his advanced middle age. But if
+either influenced his character, the result was rather an increased
+tendency to live his own life in scorn and defiance of society, for it
+made him conscious that he should find even less opposition to his
+eccentricities than in former days, when he had been relatively a poor
+man without any especial claim to consideration.
+
+Two or three days after he had arrived in Rome, he went to the
+Palazzetto Borgia and sent in his card, asking to see Francesca
+Campodonico. In order that she might know who he was, he wrote his name
+in pencil, as she would probably not have recognized him as Lord Redin.
+In this he was mistaken, for Reanda, who had heard the news, had told
+her of it. She received him in the drawing-room. She looked very ill, he
+thought, and was much thinner than in former times, but her manner was
+not changed. They talked upon indifferent subjects, and there was a
+constraint between them. Dalrymple broke through it roughly at last.
+
+"Did you ever see my daughter after she left her husband?" he asked, as
+though he were inquiring about a mere acquaintance.
+
+Francesca started a little.
+
+"No," she answered. "It would not have been easy."
+
+She remembered her interview with Griggs, but resolved not to speak of
+it. She would have changed the subject abruptly if he had given her
+time.
+
+"It certainly was not to be expected that you should," said Lord Redin,
+thoughtfully. "When a woman chooses to break with society, she knows
+perfectly well what she is doing, and one may as well leave her to
+herself."
+
+Francesca was shocked by the cynicism of the speech. The colour rose
+faintly in her cheeks.
+
+"She was your daughter," she said, reproachfully. "Since she is dead,
+you should speak less cruelly of her."
+
+"I did not speak cruelly. I merely stated a fact. She disgraced herself
+and me, and her husband. The circumstance that she is dead does not
+change the case, so far as I can see."
+
+"Do you know how she died?" asked Francesca, moved to righteous anger,
+and willing to pain him if she could.
+
+He looked up suddenly, and bent his shaggy brows.
+
+"No," he answered. "That man Griggs wrote me that she had died suddenly.
+That was all I heard."
+
+"She did not die a natural death."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"She poisoned herself. She could not bear the life. It was very
+dreadful." Francesca's voice sank to a low tone.
+
+Lord Redin was silent for a few moments, and his bony face had a grim
+look. Perhaps something in the dead woman's last act appealed to him, as
+nothing in her life had done.
+
+"Tell me, please. I should like to know. After all, she was my
+daughter."
+
+"Yes," said Francesca, gravely. "She was your daughter. She was very
+unhappy with Paul Griggs, and she found out very soon that she had made
+a dreadful mistake. She loved her husband, after all."
+
+"Like a woman!" interjected Lord Redin, half unconsciously.
+
+Francesca paid no attention to the remark, except, perhaps, that she
+raised her eyebrows a little.
+
+"They went out to spend the summer at Subiaco--"
+
+"At Subiaco?" Dalrymple's steely blue eyes fixed themselves in a look of
+extreme attention.
+
+"Yes, during the heat. They lodged in the house of a man called
+Stefanone--a wine-seller--a very respectable place."
+
+Lord Redin had started nervously at the name, but he recovered himself.
+
+"Very respectable," he said, in an odd tone.
+
+"You know the house?" asked Francesca, in surprise.
+
+"Very well indeed. I was there nearly five and twenty years ago. I
+supposed that Stefanone was dead by this time."
+
+"No. He and his wife are alive, and take lodgers."
+
+"Excuse me, but how do you know all this?" asked Lord Redin, with sudden
+curiosity.
+
+"I have been there," answered Francesca. "I have often been to the
+convent. You know that one of our family is generally abbess. A
+Cardinal Braccio was archbishop, too, a good many years ago. Casa
+Braccio owns a good deal of property there."
+
+"Yes. I know that you are of the family."
+
+"My name was Francesca Braccio," said Francesca, quietly. "Of course I
+have always known Subiaco, and every one there knows Stefanone, and the
+story of his daughter who ran away with an Englishman many years ago,
+and never was heard of again."
+
+Lord Redin grew a trifle paler.
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed. "Does every one know that story?"
+
+There was something so constrained in his tone that Francesca looked at
+him curiously.
+
+"Yes--in Subiaco," she answered. "But Gloria--" she lingered a little
+sadly on the name--"Gloria wrote letters to her husband from there and
+begged him to go and see her."
+
+"He could hardly be expected to do that," said Lord Redin, his hard tone
+returning. "Did you advise him to go?"
+
+"He consulted me," answered Francesca, rather coldly. "I told him to
+follow his own impulse. He did not go. He did not believe that she was
+sincere."
+
+"I do not blame him. When a woman has done that sort of thing, there is
+no reason for believing her."
+
+"He should have gone. I should have influenced him, I think, and I did
+wrong. She wrote him one more letter and then killed herself. She
+suffered horribly and only died two days afterwards. Shall I tell you
+more?"
+
+"If there is more to tell," said Lord Redin, less hardly.
+
+"There is not much. I went out there last year. They had refused her
+Christian burial. Paul Griggs bought a piece of land amongst the rock,
+on the other side of the torrent, and buried her there. It is surrounded
+by a wall, and there is a plain slab without a name. There are flowers.
+He pays Stefanone to have it cared for. They told me all they knew--it
+is too terrible. She died singing--she was out of her mind. It must have
+been dreadful. Old Nanna, Stefanone's wife, was in the room, and fainted
+with terror. It seems that poor Gloria, oddly enough, had an
+extraordinary resemblance to that unfortunate nun of our family who was
+burned to death in the convent, and whom Nanna had often seen. She sang
+like her, too--at the last minute Nanna thought she saw poor sister
+Maria Addolorata standing up dead and singing. It was rather strange."
+
+Lord Redin said nothing. He had bowed his head so that Francesca could
+not see his face, but she saw that his hands were trembling violently.
+She thought that she had misjudged the man, and that he was really very
+deeply moved by the story of his daughter's death. Doubtless, his
+emotion had made him wish to control himself, and he had overshot the
+mark and spoken cruelly only in order to seem calm. No one had ever
+spoken to him of his wife, and even now he could hardly bear to hear her
+name. It was long before he looked up. Then he rose almost immediately.
+
+"Will you allow me to come and see you occasionally?" he asked, with a
+gentleness not at all like his usual manner.
+
+Francesca was touched at last, misunderstanding the cause of the change.
+She told him to come as often as he pleased. As he was going, he
+remembered that he had not asked after his son-in-law. Reanda had always
+seemed to belong to Francesca, and it was natural enough that he should
+inquire of her.
+
+"Where is Reanda to be found?" he asked.
+
+"He is very ill," said Francesca, in a low voice. "I am afraid you
+cannot see him."
+
+"Where does he live? I will at least inquire. I am sorry to hear that he
+is ill."
+
+"He lives here," she answered with a little hesitation. "He is in his
+old rooms upstairs."
+
+"Oh! Yes--thank you." Their eyes met for a moment. Lord Redin's
+glittered, but Francesca's were clear and true. "I am sure you take good
+care of him," he added. "Good-bye."
+
+He left her alone, and when he was gone, she sat down wearily and laid
+her head back against a cushion, with half-closed eyes. Her lips were
+almost colourless, and her mouth had grown ten years older.
+
+Reanda was dying, and she knew it, and with him the light was going out
+of her life, as it had gone out long ago from Dalrymple's, as it had
+gone out of the life of Paul Griggs. The idea crossed her mind that
+these two men, with herself, were linked and bound together by some
+strange fatality which she could not understand, but from which there
+was no escape, and which was bringing them slowly and surely to the
+blank horror of lonely old age.
+
+The same thought occurred to Lord Redin as he slowly threaded the
+streets, going back to his hotel, to his lonely dinner, his lonely
+evening, his lonely, sleepless night. He alone of the three now knew all
+that there was to know, and in the chronicle of his far memories all led
+back to that day at Subiaco, long ago, when he had first knocked at the
+convent gate--beyond that, to the evening when poor Annetta had told him
+of the beautiful nun with the angel's voice. Many lives had been wrecked
+since that first day, and every one of them owed its ruin to him. He
+felt strangely drawn to Francesca Campodonico. There was something in
+her face that very faintly reminded him of his dead wife, her
+kinswoman, and of his dead daughter, another of her race. His gloomy
+northern nature felt the fatality of it all. He never could repent of
+what he had done. The golden light of his one short happiness shone
+through the shrouding veil of fatal time. In his own eyes, with his
+beliefs, he had not even sinned in taking what he had loved so well. But
+all the sorrow he saw, came from that deed. Francesca Campodonico's eyes
+were as clear and true as her heart. But he knew that Reanda's life was
+everything on earth to her, and he guessed that she was to lose that,
+too, before long. He would willingly have parted with his own, but
+through all his being there was a rough, manly courage that forbade the
+last act of fear, and there was a stern old Scottish belief that it was
+wrong--plainly wrong.
+
+He did not wish to see Paul Griggs any more than he had wished to see
+his daughter after she had left her husband. But no thought of vengeance
+crossed his mind. It seemed to him fruitless to think of avenging
+himself upon fate; for, after all, it was fate that had done the dire
+mischief. Possibly, he thought, as he walked slowly towards his hotel,
+fate had brought him back to Rome now, to deal with him as she had dealt
+with his. He should be glad of it, for he found little in life that was
+not gloomy and lonely beyond any words. He did not know why he had come.
+He had acted upon an impulse in going to see Francesca that day.
+
+When he reached the Corso, instead of going to his hotel he walked down
+the street in the direction of the Piazza del Popolo. He wished to see
+the house in which Gloria had lived with Griggs, and he remembered the
+street and the number from her having written to him when she wanted
+money. He reached the corner of the Via della Frezza, and turned down,
+looking up at the numbers as he went along. He glanced at the little
+wine shop on the left, with its bush, its red glass lantern, and its
+rush-bottomed stools set out by the door. In the shadow within he saw
+the gleam of silver buttons on a dark blue jacket. There was nothing
+uncommon in the sight.
+
+He found the house, paused, looked up at the windows, and looked twice
+at the number.
+
+"Do you seek some one?" inquired the one-eyed cobbler, resting his black
+hands on his knees.
+
+"Did Mr. Paul Griggs ever live here?" asked Lord Redin.
+
+"Many years," answered the cobbler, laconically.
+
+"Where does he live now?"
+
+"Always here, except when he is not here. Third floor, on the left. You
+can ring the bell. Who knows? Perhaps he will open. I do not wish to
+tell lies."
+
+The old man grunted, bent down over the shoe, and ran his awl through
+the sole. He was profoundly attached to Paul Griggs, who had always been
+kind to him, and since Gloria's death he defended him from visitors with
+more determination than ever.
+
+Lord Redin stood still and said nothing. In ten seconds the cobbler
+looked up with a surly frown.
+
+"If you wish to go up, go up," he growled. "If not, favour me by getting
+out of my light."
+
+The Scotchman looked at him.
+
+"You do not remember me," he observed. "I used to come here with the
+Signore."
+
+"Well? I have told you. If you want him, there is the staircase."
+
+"No. I do not want him," said Lord Redin, and he turned away abruptly.
+
+"As you please," growled the cobbler without looking up again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+
+PAUL GRIGGS had gone back to the house in the Via della Frezza after his
+return from America, and lived alone in the little apartment in which
+the happy days of his life had been spent. He was a man able to live two
+lives,--the one in the past, the other in the active present. It was his
+instinct to be alone in his sorrow, and alone in the struggle which lay
+before him, for himself and his child. But he would have with him all
+that could make the memory of Gloria real. The reality of such things
+softened with their contrast the hardness of life.
+
+He had taken the same rooms again. Out of boxes and trunks stored in a
+garret of the house, he had taken many things which had belonged to
+Gloria. Alone, he had arranged the rooms as they used to be. His
+writing-table stood in the same place, and near it was Gloria's chair;
+beside it, the little stand with her needlework, her silks, her
+scissors, and her thimble, all as it used to be. A novel she had once
+read when sitting there lay upon the chair. Many little objects which
+had belonged to her were all in their accustomed places. On the
+mantelpiece the cheap American clock ticked loudly as in old days.
+
+Day after day, as of old, he sat in his place at work. He had made the
+room so alive with her that sometimes, looking up from a long spell of
+writing, he forgot, and stared an instant at the bedroom door, and
+listened for her footstep. Those were his happiest moments, though each
+was killed in turn by the vision of a lonely grave among rocks.
+
+With intensest longing he called her back to him. In his sleep, the last
+words he had spoken to her were spoken again by his unconscious lips in
+the still, dark night. Everything in him called her, his living soul and
+his strong bodily self. There were times when he knew that if he opened
+his eyes, shut to see her, he should see her really, there in her chair.
+He looked, trembling, and there was nothing. In dreams he sought her and
+could not find her, though he wandered in dark places, across endless
+wastes of broken clods of earth and broken stone. It was as though her
+grave covered the whole world round, and his path lay on the shadowed
+arms of an infinite great cross. And again the grey dawn awoke him from
+the search, to feel that, for pity's sake, she must be alive and near
+him. But he was always alone.
+
+Silent, iron-browed, iron-handed, he faced the world alone, doing all
+that was required of him, and more also. As he had said to Gloria in
+that very room, he was building up a superiority for himself, since
+genius was not his. He had in the rough ore of his strength the metal
+which some few men receive as a birth-gift from nature, ready smelted
+and refined, ready for them to coin at a single stroke, and throw
+broadcast to the applauding world. He had not much, perhaps, but he had
+something of the true ore, and in the furnace of his untiring energy he
+would burn out the dross and find the precious gold at last. It could
+not be for her, now. It was not for himself, but it was to be for the
+little child, growing up in a far country with a clean name--to be his
+father's friend, and nothing more, but to be happy, for the dead woman's
+sake who bore him.
+
+As in all that made a part of Paul Griggs, there was in his memory of
+Gloria and in his sorrow for her that element of endurance which was the
+foundation of his nature. That portion of his life was finished, and
+there could never be anything like it again; but it was to be always
+present with him, so long as he lived. He was sure of that. It would
+always be in his power to close his eyes and believe that she was near
+him. If it were possible, he loved her more dead than he had loved her
+living.
+
+And she had loved him to the last, and had given her life in the mad
+thought of lightening his burden. Her last words to him had told him
+so. Her last wish had been to see the child. And the greatest sacrifice
+he could now make to her was to separate himself from the child, and let
+him grow up to look upon the man who provided for him as his friend, but
+as nothing more. It was an exaggerated idea, perhaps, though it was by
+far the wisest course. Yet in doing what he did, Griggs deprived himself
+for months at a time of something that was of her, and he did it for her
+sake. He knew that in her heart there had been the unspoken shame of her
+ruined life. Shame should never come near little Walter Crowdie. The
+secret could be kept, and Paul Griggs meant to keep it, as he kept many
+things from the world.
+
+All his lonely life grew in the perfect memory, cut short though it was
+by fate's cruel scythe-stroke. Even that one fearful day held no shadow
+of unfaithfulness. She had been mad, but she had loved him. She had done
+a deed of horror upon herself, but she had loved him, and madly had done
+it for his sake. She had laid down her life for him. All that he could
+do would be nothing compared with that. All that he could tear from the
+world and lay tenderly as an offering at her feet would be but a handful
+of dust in comparison with what she had done in the madness of love.
+
+His heart strings wound themselves about their treasure, closer and
+closer, stronger and stronger. The two natures that strove together in
+him, the natures of body and soul, were at one with her, and drew life
+from her though she was gone. It seemed impossible that they could ever
+again part and smite one another for the mastery, as of old, for one
+sorrow had overwhelmed them both, and together they knew the depths of
+one grief.
+
+Again, as of old, he defied fate. Death could take the child from him,
+but could not separate the three in death or life. So long as the child
+lived, to do or die for him was the question, while life should last.
+But Paul Griggs defied fate, for fate's grim hand could not uproot his
+heart from the strong place of his great dead love, to buffet it and
+tear it again. He was alone, bodily, but he was safe forever.
+
+Out of the dimness of twilight shadows the pale face came to him, and
+the sweet lips kissed his; in a light not earthly the dark eyes
+lightened, and the red auburn hair gleamed and fell about him. In the
+darkness, a tender hand stole softly upon his, and words yet more tender
+stirred the stillness. He knew that she was near him, close to him, with
+him. The truth of what had been made the half dream all true. Only in
+his sleep he could not find her, and was wandering ever over a dreary
+grave that covered the whole world.
+
+So his life went on with little change, inwardly or outwardly, from day
+to day, in the absolute security from danger which the dead give us of
+themselves. The faith that had gone beyond her death could go beyond his
+own life, too. He defied fate.
+
+Then fate, silent, relentless, awful, knocked at his door.
+
+He was at work as usual. It was a bright winter's day, and the high sun
+of the late morning streamed across one corner of his writing-table. He
+was thinking of nothing but his writing, and upon that his thoughts were
+closely intent in that everlasting struggle to do better which had
+nearly driven poor Gloria mad.
+
+The little jingling bell rang and thumped against the outer door to
+which it was fastened. He paid no attention to it, till it rang again,
+an instant later. Then he looked up and waited, listening. Again, again,
+and again he heard it, at equal intervals, five times in all. That was
+the old cobbler's signal, and the only one to which Griggs ever
+responded. He laid down his pen and went to the door. The one-eyed man,
+his shoemaker's apron twisted round his waist, stood on the landing, and
+gave him a small, thick package, tied with a black string, under which
+was thrust a note. Griggs took it without a word, and the bandy-legged
+old cobbler swung away from the door with a satisfied grunt.
+
+Griggs took the parcel back to his work-room, and stood by the window
+looking at the address on the note. He recognized Francesca
+Campodonico's handwriting, though he had rarely seen it, and he broke
+the seal with considerable curiosity, for he could not imagine why Donna
+Francesca should write to him. He even wondered at her knowing that he
+was in Rome. He had never spoken with her since that day long ago, when
+she had sent for him and begged him to take Gloria back to her father.
+He read the note slowly. It was in Italian, and the language was rather
+formal.
+
+          "SIGNORE:--My old and dear friend, Signor Angelo
+          Reanda, died the day before yesterday after a long
+          illness. During the last hours of his life he
+          asked me to do him a service, and I gave him the
+          solemn promise which I fulfil in sending you the
+          accompanying package. You will see that it was
+          sealed by him and addressed to you by himself,
+          probably before he was taken ill, and he saw it
+          before he died and said that it was the one he
+          meant me to send. That was all he told me
+          regarding it, and I am wholly ignorant of the
+          contents. I have ascertained that you are in Rome,
+          and are living, as formerly, in the Via della
+          Frezza, and to that address I send the parcel.
+          Pray inform me that you have received it.
+
+          "Believe me, Signore, with perfect esteem,
+                                    "FRANCESCA CAMPODONICO."
+
+Griggs read the note twice through to the end, and laid it upon the
+table. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets, and turned
+thoughtfully to the window without touching the parcel, of which he had
+not even untied the black string.
+
+So Reanda was dead at last. It was nothing to him, now, though it might
+have meant much if the man had died two years earlier. Living people
+were very little to Paul Griggs. They might as well be dead, he thought.
+Nevertheless, the bald fact that Reanda was gone, made him thoughtful.
+Another figure had disappeared out of his life, though it had not meant
+very much. He believed, and had always believed, that Reanda had loved
+Francesca in secret, though she had treated him as a mere friend, as a
+protectress should treat one who needs her protection.
+
+Griggs turned and took up the note to look at it keenly, for he believed
+himself a judge of handwriting, and he thought that he might detect in
+hers the indications of any great suffering. The lines ran down a little
+at the end, but otherwise the large, careful hand was the same as ever,
+learned in a convent and little changed since, even as the woman herself
+had changed little. She was the same always, simple, honest, strangely
+maidenlike, thoroughly good.
+
+He turned to the window again. So Reanda was dead. He would not find
+Gloria, to whatsoever place he was gone. The shadow of a smile wreathed
+itself about the mouth of the lonely man--the last that was there for a
+long time after that day. Gloria was dead, but Gloria was his, and he
+hers, for ever and ever. Neither heaven nor hell could tear up his heart
+nor loosen the strong hold of all of him that clung to her and had grown
+about her and through her, till he and she were quite one.
+
+Then, all at once, he wondered what it could be that Reanda had wished
+to send him from beyond the grave. He turned, took the parcel, and
+snapped the black string with his fingers, and took off the paper.
+Within was the parcel, wrapped in a second paper and firmly tied with
+broad tape. A few words were written on the outside.
+
+"To be given to Paul Griggs when I am dead. A. R."
+
+The superscription told nothing, but he looked at it curiously as one
+does at such things, when the sender is beyond answer. He cut the white
+tape, for it was tied so tightly that he could not slip a finger under
+it to break it. There was something of hard determination in the way it
+was tied.
+
+It contained letters in their envelopes, as they had reached Reanda
+through the post, all of the same size, laid neatly one upon the
+other--a score or more of them.
+
+Griggs felt his hand shake, for he recognized Gloria's writing. His
+first impulse was to burn the whole package, as it was, reverently, as
+something which had belonged to Gloria, in which he had no part, or
+share, or right. He laid his hand upon the pile of letters, and looked
+at the small fire to see whether it were burning well. Under his hand he
+felt something hard inside the uppermost envelope. His fate was upon
+him--the fate he had so often defied to do its worst, since all that he
+had was dead and was his forever.
+
+Without another thought, he took from the envelope the letter it
+contained, and the hard thing which was inside the letter. He held it a
+moment in his hand, and it flamed in the beam of sunlight that fell
+across the end of the table, and dazzled him. Then he realized what it
+was. It was Gloria's wedding ring, and twisted round and round it and in
+and out of it was a lock of her red auburn hair, serpent-like, flaming
+in the sunshine, with a hundred little tongues that waved and moved
+softly under his breath.
+
+An icy chill smote him in the neck, and his strong limbs shook to his
+feet as he laid the thing down upon the corner of the table. There was a
+fearful fascination in it. The red gold hairs stirred and moved in the
+sunlight still, even when he no longer breathed upon them. It was her
+hair, and it seemed alive.
+
+In his other hand he still held the letter. Fate had him now, and would
+not let him go while he could feel. Again and again the cruel chill
+smote him in the back. He opened the doubled sheet, and saw the date and
+the name of the place,--Subiaco,--and the first words--'Heart of my
+heart, this is my last cry to you'--and it was to Angelo Reanda.
+
+Rigid and feeling as though great icy hands were drawing him up by the
+neck from the ground, he stood still and read every word, with all the
+message of loathing and abject fear and horror of his touch, which every
+word brought him, from the dead, through the other dead.
+
+Slowly, regularly, without wavering, moved by a power not his own, his
+hands took the other letters and opened them, and his eyes read all the
+words, from the last to the first. One by one the sheets fell upon the
+table, and all alone in the midst the lock of red auburn hair sent up
+its little lambent flame in the sunshine.
+
+Paul Griggs stood upright, stark with the stress of rending soul and
+breaking heart.
+
+As he stood there, he was aware of a man in black beside him, like
+himself, ghastly to see, with shadows and fires for eyes, and thin,
+parted lips that showed wolfish teeth, strong, stern, with iron hands.
+
+"You are dead," said his own voice out of the other's mouth. "You are
+dead, and I am Gorlias."
+
+Then the strong teeth were set and the lips closed, and the gladiator's
+unmatched arms wound themselves upon the other's strength, with grip and
+clutch and strain not of earthly men.
+
+Silent and terrible, they wrestled in fight, arm to arm, bone to bone,
+breath to breath. Hour after hour they strove in the still room. The sun
+went westering away, the shadows deepened. The night came stealing black
+and lonely through the window. Foot to foot, breast to breast, in the
+dark, they bowed themselves one upon the other, dumb in the agony of
+their reeling strife.
+
+Late in the night, in the cold room, Paul Griggs felt the carpet under
+his hands as he lay upon his back.
+
+His heart was broken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+
+LORD REDIN had barely glanced at the man in the blue jacket with silver
+buttons, whom he had seen in the deep shadow of the little wine shop as
+he strolled down the Via della Frezza. But Stefanone had seen him and
+had gone to the door as he passed, watching him when he stood talking to
+the one-eyed cobbler, and keeping his keen eyes on him as he passed
+again on his homeward way. And all the way to the hotel in the Piazza di
+Spagna Stefanone had followed him at a distance, watching the great
+loose-jointed frame and the slightly stooping head, till the Scotchman
+disappeared under the archway, past the porter, who stood aside, his
+gold-laced cap in his hand, bowing low to the 'English lord.'
+
+Stefanone waited a few moments and then accosted the porter civilly.
+
+"Do you know if the proprietor wishes to buy some good wine of last
+year, at a cheap rate?" he asked. "You understand. I am of the country.
+I cannot go in and look for the proprietor. But you are doubtless the
+director and you manage these things for him. That is why I ask you."
+
+The porter smiled at the flattery, but said that he believed wine had
+been bought for the whole year.
+
+"The hotel is doubtless full of rich foreigners," observed Stefanone.
+"It is indeed beautiful. I should prefer it to the Palazzo Borghese. Is
+it not full?"
+
+"Quite full," answered the porter, proud of the establishment.
+
+"For instance," said Stefanone, "I saw a great signore going in, just
+before I took the liberty of speaking with you. I am sure that he is a
+great English signore. Not perhaps a mylord. But a great signore, having
+much money."
+
+"What makes you think that?" inquired the porter, with a superior smile.
+
+"Eh, the reasons are two. First, you bowed to him, as though he were
+some personage, and you of course know who he is. Secondly, he lifted
+his hat to you. He is therefore a real signore, as good perhaps as a
+Roman prince. We say a proverb in the country--'to salute is courtesy,
+to answer is duty.' Therefore when any one salutes a real signore, he
+answers and lifts his hat. These are the reasons why I say this one must
+be a great one."
+
+"For that matter, you are right," laughed the porter. "That signore is
+an English lord. What a combination! You have guessed it. His name is
+Lord Redin."
+
+Stefanone's sharp eyes fixed themselves vacantly, for he did not wish to
+betray his surprise at not hearing the name he had expected.
+
+"Eh!" he exclaimed. "Names? What are they, when one is a prince. Prince
+of this. Duke of that. Our Romans are full of names. I daresay this
+signore has four or five."
+
+But the porter knew of no other, and presently Stefanone departed,
+wondering whether he had made a mistake, after all, and recalling the
+features of the man he had followed to compare them with those younger
+ones he remembered so distinctly. He went back to the Via della Frezza
+and drank a glass of wine. Then he filled the glass again and carried it
+carefully across the street to his friend the cobbler.
+
+"Drink," he said. "It will do you good. A drop of wine at sunset gives
+force to the stomach."
+
+The one-eyed man looked up, and smiled at his friend, a phenomenon
+rarely observed on his wrinkled and bearded face. He shrugged one round
+shoulder, by way of assent, held his head a little on one side and
+stretched out his black hand with the glass in it, to the light. He
+tasted it, smelt it, and looked up at Stefanone before he drank in
+earnest.
+
+"Black soul!" he exclaimed by way of an approving asseveration. "This is
+indeed wine!"
+
+"He took it for vinegar!" observed Stefanone, speaking to the air.
+
+"It is wine," answered the cobbler when he had drained the glass. "It is
+a consolation."
+
+Then they began to talk together, and Stefanone questioned him about his
+interview with the tall gentleman an hour earlier. The cobbler really
+knew nothing about him, though he remembered having seen him several
+times, years ago, before Gloria had come.
+
+"You know nothing," said Stefanone. "That signore is the father of Sor
+Paolo's signora, who died in my house."
+
+"You are joking," returned the cobbler, gravely. "He would have come to
+see his daughter while she lived--requiescat!"
+
+"And I say that I am not joking. Do you wish to hear the truth? Well.
+You have much confidence with Sor Paolo. Tell him that the father of the
+poor Signora Gloria came to the door and asked questions. You shall hear
+what he will say. He will say that it is possible. Then he will ask you
+about him. You will tell him, so and so--a very tall signore, all made
+of pieces that swing loosely when he walks, with a beard like the Moses
+of the fountain, and hard blue eyes that strike you like two balls from
+a gun, and hair that is neither red nor white, and a bony face like an
+old horse."
+
+"It is true," said the cobbler, reflectively. "It is he. It is his
+picture."
+
+"You will also say that he is now an English lord, but that formerly
+they called him Sor Angoscia. You, who are friends with Sor Paolo, you
+should tell him this. It may be that Sor Angoscia wishes him evil. Who
+knows? In this world the combinations are so many!"
+
+It was long before the cobbler got an opportunity of speaking with
+Griggs, and when he had the chance, he forgot all about it, though
+Stefanone reminded him of it from time to time. But when he at last
+spoke of the matter he was surprised to find that Stefanone had been
+quite right, as Griggs admitted without the least hesitation. He told
+Stefanone so, and the peasant was satisfied, though he had long been
+positive that he had found his man at last, and recognized him in spite
+of his beard and his age.
+
+After that Stefanone haunted the Piazza di Spagna in the morning,
+talking a little with the models who used to stand there in their
+mountain costumes to be hired by painters in the days when pictures of
+them were the fashion. Many of them came from the neighbourhood of
+Subiaco, and knew Stefanone by sight. When Lord Redin came out of the
+hotel, as he generally did between eleven and twelve if the day were
+fine, Stefanone put his pipe out, stuck it into his breeches' pocket
+with his brass-handled clasp-knife, and strolled away a hundred yards
+behind his enemy.
+
+If Lord Redin noticed him once or twice, it was merely to observe that
+men still came to Rome wearing the old-fashioned dress of the
+respectable peasants. Being naturally fearless, and at present wholly
+unsuspicious, it never struck him that any one could be dogging his
+footsteps whenever he went out of his hotel. In the evening he went out
+very little and then generally in a carriage. Two or three times, on a
+Sunday, he walked over to Saint Peter's and listened to the music at
+Vespers, as many foreigners used to do. Stefanone followed him into the
+church and watched him from a distance. Once the peasant saw Donna
+Francesca, whom he knew by sight as a member of the Braccio family,
+sitting within the great gate of the Chapel of the Choir, where the
+service was held. Lord Redin always followed the frequented streets,
+which led in an almost direct line from the Piazza di Spagna by the Via
+Condotti to the bridge of Saint Angelo. It was the nearest way. He never
+went back to the Via della Frezza, for he had no desire to see Paul
+Griggs, and his curiosity had been satisfied by once looking at the
+house in which his daughter had lived. He spent his evenings alone in
+his rooms with a bottle of wine and a book. Luxury had become a habit
+with him, and he now preferred a draught of Chateau Lafitte to the rough
+Roman wine barely a year old, while three or four glasses of a certain
+brandy, twenty years in bottle, which he had discovered in the hotel,
+were a necessary condition of his comfort. He had the intention of going
+out one evening, in cloak and soft hat, as of old, to dine in his old
+corner at the Falcone, but he put it off from day to day, feeling no
+taste for the coarser fare and the rougher drink when the hour came.
+
+He often went to see Francesca Campodonico in the middle of the day, at
+which hour the Roman ladies used to be visible to their more intimate
+friends. An odd sort of sympathy had grown up between the two, though
+they scarcely ever alluded to past events, and then only by an accident
+which both regretted. Francesca exercised a refining influence upon the
+gloomy Scotchman, and as he knew her better, he even took the trouble to
+be less rough and cynical when he was with her. In character she was
+utterly different from his dead wife, but there was something of family
+resemblance between the two which called up memories very dear to him.
+
+Her influence softened him. In his wandering life he had more than once
+formed acquaintances with men of tastes more or less similar to his own,
+which might have ripened into friendships for a man of less morose
+character. But in that, he and Paul Griggs were very much alike. They
+found an element in every acquaintance which roused their distrust, and
+as men to men they were both equally incapable of making a confidence.
+Dalrymple's life had not brought him into close relations with any woman
+except his wife. For her sake he had kept all others at a distance in a
+strange jealousy of his own heart which had made her for him the only
+woman in the world. Then, too, he had hated, for her, the curiosity of
+those who had evidently wished to know her story. That had been always a
+secret. He had told it to his father, and his father had died with it.
+No one else had ever known whence Maria had come, nor what her name had
+been. If Captain Crowdie had ever guessed the truth, which was doubtful,
+he had held his tongue.
+
+But Angus Dalrymple was no longer the man he had been in those days. He
+had changed very much in the past two or three years; for though he had
+almost outlived the excesses into which he had fallen in his first
+sorrow, his hardy constitution had been shaken, if not weakened, by
+them. Physically his nerves were almost as good as ever, but morally he
+was not the same man. He felt the need of sympathy and confidence, which
+with such natures is the first sign of breaking down, and of the
+degeneration of pride.
+
+That was probably the secret of what he felt when he was with Francesca.
+She had that rarest quality in women, too, which commands men without
+inspiring love. It is very hard to explain what that quality is, but
+most men who have lived much and seen much have met with it at least
+once in their lives.
+
+There is a sort of manifested goodness for which the average man of the
+world has a profound and unreasonable contempt. And there is another
+sort which most wholly commands the respect of that man who has lived
+hardest. From a religious point of view, both may be equally real and
+conducive to salvation. The cynic, the worn out man of the world, the
+man whose heart is broken, all look upon the one as a weakness and the
+other as a strength. Perhaps there is more humanity in the one than in
+the other. A hundred women may rebuke a man for something he has done,
+and he will smile at the reproach, though he may smile sadly. The one
+will say to him the same words, and he will be gravely silent and will
+feel that she is right and will like her the better for it ever
+afterwards. And she is not, as a rule, the woman whom such men would
+love.
+
+"I have never before met a woman whom I should wish to have for my
+friend," said Lord Redin, one day when he was alone with Francesca. "I
+daresay I am not at all the kind of man you would select for purposes of
+friendship," he added, with a short laugh.
+
+Francesca smiled a little at the frankness of the words, and shook her
+head.
+
+"Perhaps not," she said. "Who knows? Life brings strange changes when
+one thinks that one knows it best."
+
+"It has brought strange things to me," answered Lord Redin.
+
+Then he was silent for a time. He felt the strong desire to speak out,
+for no good reason or purpose, and to tell her the story of his life.
+She would be horrorstruck at first. He fancied he could see the
+expression which would come to her face. But he held his peace, for she
+had not met him half-way, and he was ashamed of the weakness that was
+upon him.
+
+"Yes," she said thoughtfully, after a little pause. "You must have had a
+strange life, and a very unhappy one. You speak of friendship as men
+speak who are in earnest, because there is no other hope for them. I
+know something of that."
+
+She ceased, and her clear eyes turned sadly away from him.
+
+"I know you do," he answered softly.
+
+She looked at him again, and she liked him better than ever before, and
+pitied him sincerely. She had discovered that with all his faults he was
+not a bad man, as men go, for she did not know of that one deed of his
+youth which to her would have seemed a monstrous crime of sacrilege,
+beyond all forgiveness on earth or in heaven.
+
+Then she began to speak of other things, for her own words, and his,
+had gone too near her heart, and presently he left her and strolled
+homeward through the sunny streets. He walked slowly and thoughtfully,
+unconscious of the man in a blue jacket with silver buttons, who
+followed him and watched him with keen, unwinking eyes set under heavy
+brows.
+
+But Stefanone was growing impatient, and his knife was every day a
+little sharper as he whetted it thoughtfully upon a bit of smooth
+oilstone which he carried in his pocket. Would the Englishman ever turn
+down into some quiet street or lane where no one would be looking? And
+Stefanone's square face grew thinner and his aquiline features more and
+more eagle-like, till the one-eyed cobbler noticed the change, and spoke
+of it.
+
+"You are consuming yourself for some female," he said. "You have white
+hair. This is a shameful thing."
+
+But Stefanone laughed, instead of resenting the speech--a curiously
+nervous laugh.
+
+"What would you have?" he replied. "We are men, and the devil is
+everywhere."
+
+As he sat on the doorstep by the cobbler's bench, which was pushed far
+forward to get the afternoon light, he took up the short sharp
+shoemaker's knife, looked at it, held it in his hands and pared his
+coarse nails with it, whistling a little tune.
+
+"That is a good knife," he observed carelessly.
+
+The cobbler looked up and saw what he was doing.
+
+"Black soul!" he cried out angrily. "That is my welt-knife, like a
+razor, and he pares his hoofs with it!"
+
+But Stefanone dropped it into the little box of tools on the front of
+the bench, and whistled softly.
+
+"You seem to me a silly boy!" said the cobbler, still wrathful.
+
+"Apoplexy, how you talk!" answered Stefanone. "But I seem so to myself,
+sometimes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+
+THE life of Paul Griggs was not less lonely than it had been before the
+day on which he had received and read Gloria's letters to Reanda, but it
+was changed. Everything which had belonged to the dead woman was gone
+from the room in which he sat and worked as usual. Even the position of
+the furniture was changed. But he worked on as steadily as before.
+
+Outwardly he was very much the same man as ever. Any one who knew him
+well--if such a person had existed--would have seen that there was a
+little difference in the expression of his impassive face. The jaw was,
+if possible, more firmly set than ever, but there was a line in the
+forehead which had not been there formerly, and which softened the iron
+front, as it were, with something more human. It had come suddenly, and
+had remained. That was all.
+
+But within, the difference was great and deep. He felt that the man who
+sat all day long at the writing-table doing his work was not himself any
+longer, but another being, his double and shadow, and in all respects
+his slave, except in one.
+
+That other man sometimes paused in his work, fingering the pen
+unconsciously, as men do who hold it all day long, and thinking of
+Gloria with an expression of horror and suffering in his eyes. But he,
+the real Paul Griggs, never thought of her. The link was broken, the
+thread that had carried the message of dead love between him and the
+lonely grave beyond Subiaco was definitely broken. Stefanone came to
+receive the small sum which Griggs paid him monthly for his care of the
+place, and Griggs paid him as he would have paid his tailor,
+mechanically, and made a note of the payment in his pocket-book. When
+the man was gone, Griggs felt that his double was staring at the wall as
+a man stares at the dark surface of the pool in which the thing he loves
+has sunk for the last time.
+
+It was always the other self that felt at such moments. He could
+abstract himself from it, and feel that he was watching it; he could
+direct it and make it do what he pleased; but he could neither control
+its thoughts nor feel any sympathy for them. Until the fatal day, the
+world had all been black to him; only by closing his eyes could he bring
+into it the light that hovered about a dead woman's face.
+
+But now the black was changed to a flat and toneless white in which
+there was never the least variation. Life was to him a vast blank, in
+which, without interest or sensation, he moved in any direction he
+pleased, and he pleased that it should be always the same direction,
+from the remembrance of a previous intention and abiding principle. But
+it might as well have been any other, backwards, or to right or left. It
+was all precisely the same, and it was perfectly inconceivable to him
+that he should ever care whether in the endless journey he ever came
+upon a spot or point in the blank waste which should prove to him that
+he had moved at all. Nothing could make any difference. He was beyond
+that state in which any difference was apprehensible between one thing
+and another.
+
+His double had material wants, and was ruled by material circumstances.
+His double was a broken-hearted creature, toiling to make money for a
+little child to which it felt itself bound by every responsibility which
+can bind father to son; acknowledging the indebtedness in every act of
+its laborious life, denying itself every luxury, and almost every
+comfort, that there might be a little more for the child, now and in
+time to come; weary beyond earthly weariness, but untiring in the
+mechanical performance of its set task; fatally strong and destined,
+perhaps, to live on through sixty or seventy years of the same unceasing
+toil; fatally weak in its one deep wound, and horribly sensitive within
+itself, but outwardly expressionless, strong, merely a little more pale
+and haggard than Paul Griggs had been.
+
+This was the being whom Paul Griggs employed, as it were, to work for
+him, which he thoroughly understood and could control in every part
+except in its thoughts, and they were its own. But he himself existed in
+another sphere, in which there were neither interests nor
+responsibilities, nor landmarks, nor touches of human feeling, neither
+memories for the dead nor hopes for the living; in which everything was
+the same, because there was nothing but a sort of universal impersonal
+consciousness, no more attached to himself than to the beings he saw
+about him, or to that particular being which was his former self,--in
+which he chose to reside, merely because he required a bodily evidence
+of some sort in order to be alive--and there was no particular reason
+why he should not be alive. He therefore did not cease to live, but a
+straw might have turned the balance to the side of death.
+
+It was certainly true that, so far as it could be said that there was
+any link between him and humanity, it lay in the existence of the little
+boy beyond the water. But it would have been precisely the same if
+little Walter Crowdie had died. He did not wish to see the child, for he
+had no wishes at all. Life being what it was, it would be very much
+better if the child were to die at once. Since it happened to be alive,
+he forced his double to work for it. It was no longer any particular
+child so far as he himself was concerned. It belonged to his double,
+which seemed to be attached to it in an unaccountable way and did not
+complain at being driven to labour for it.
+
+At certain moments, when he seemed to have got rid of his double
+altogether for a time, a question presented itself to his real self. The
+question was the great and old one--What was it for? And to what was it
+tending? Then the people he saw in the streets appeared to him to be
+very small, like ants, running hither and thither upon the ant-hill and
+about it, moved by something which they could not understand, but which
+made them do certain things with an appearance of logical sequence, just
+as he forced his double to work for little Walter Crowdie from morning
+till night. So the people ran about anxiously, or strolled lazily
+through the hours, careful or careless, as the case might be, but quite
+unconscious that they were of no consequence and of no use, and that it
+was quite immaterial whether they were alive or dead. Most of them
+thought that they cared a good deal for life on the whole, and that it
+held a multitude of pleasant and interesting things to be liked and
+sought, and an equal number of unpleasant and dangerous things to be
+avoided; all of which things had no real existence whatever, as the
+impersonal consciousness of Paul Griggs was well aware. He watched the
+people curiously, as though they merely existed to perform tricks for
+his benefit. But they did not amuse him, for nothing could amuse him,
+nor interest him when he had momentarily got rid of his double, as
+sometimes happened when he was out of doors.
+
+One day, the month having passed again, Stefanone came for his money. It
+was very little, and the old peasant would willingly have undertaken
+that the work should be done for nothing. But he was interested in Paul
+Griggs, and he was growing very impatient because he could not get an
+opportunity of falling upon Lord Redin in a quiet place. He had formed a
+new plan of almost childlike simplicity. When Griggs had paid him the
+money, he lingered a moment and looked about the room.
+
+"Signore, you have changed the furniture," he observed. "That chair was
+formerly here. This table used to be there. There are a thousand
+changes."
+
+"Yes," said Griggs, taking up his pen to go on with his work. "You have
+good eyes," he added good-naturedly.
+
+"Two," assented Stefanone; "each better than the other. For instance, I
+will tell you. When that chair was by the window, there was a little
+table beside it. On the table was the work-basket of your poor Signora,
+whom may the Lord preserve in glory! Is it truth?"
+
+"Yes," answered Griggs, with perfect indifference. "It is quite true."
+
+The allusion did not pain him, the man who was talking with Stefanone.
+It would perhaps hurt the other man when he thought of it later.
+
+"Signore," said Stefanone, who evidently had something in his mind, "I
+was thinking in the night, and this thought came to me. The dead are
+dead. Requiescant! It is better for the living to live in holy peace.
+You never see the father of the Signora. There is bad blood between you.
+This was my thought--let them be reconciled, and spend an evening
+together. They will speak of the dead one. They will shed tears. They
+will embrace. Let the enmity be finished. In this way they will enjoy
+life more."
+
+"You are crazy, Stefanone," answered Griggs, impatiently. "But how do
+you know who is the father of the Signora?"
+
+"Every one knows it, Signore!" replied the peasant, with well-feigned
+sincerity. "Every one knows that it is the great English lord who lives
+at the hotel in the Piazza di Spagna this year. Signore, I have said a
+word. You must not take it ill. Enmity is bad. Friendship is a good
+thing. And then it is simple. With maccaroni one makes acquaintance
+again. There is the Falcone, but it would be better here. We will cook
+the maccaroni in the kitchen; you will eat on this table. What are all
+these papers for? Study, study! A dish of good paste is better, with
+cheese. I will bring a certain wine--two flasks. Then you will be
+friends, for you will drink together. And if the English lord drinks too
+much, I will go home with him to the hotel in the Piazza di Spagna. But
+you will only have to go to bed. Once in a year, what is it to be a
+little gay with good wine? At least you will be good friends. Then
+things will end well."
+
+Griggs looked at Stefanone curiously, while the old peasant was
+speaking, for he knew the people well, and he suspected something though
+he did not know what to think.
+
+"Perhaps some day we may take your advice," he said coldly. "Good
+morning, Stefanone; I have much to write."
+
+"I remove the inconvenience," answered Stefanone, in the stock Italian
+phrase for taking leave.
+
+"No inconvenience," replied Griggs, civilly, as is the custom. "But I
+have to work."
+
+"Study, study!" grumbled Stefanone, going towards the door. "What does
+it all conclude, this great study? Headache. For a flask of wine you
+have the same thing, and the pleasure besides. It is enough. Signore,"
+he added, reluctantly turning the handle, "I go. Think of what I have
+said to you. Sometimes an old man says a wise word."
+
+He went away very much discontented with the result of the conversation.
+His mind was a medley of cunning and simplicity backed by an absolutely
+unforgiving temper and great caution. His plan had seemed exceedingly
+good. Lord Redin and Griggs would have supped together, and the former
+would very naturally have gone home alone. Stefanone was oddly surprised
+that Griggs should not have acceded to the proposition at once, though
+in reality there was not the slightest of small reasons for his doing
+so.
+
+It was long since anything had happened to rouse Griggs into thinking
+about any individual human being as anything more than a bit of the
+world's furniture, to be worn out and thrown away in the course of time,
+out of sight. But something in the absolutely gratuitous nature of
+Stefanone's advice moved his suspicions. He saw, with his intimate
+knowledge of the Roman peasant's character, the whole process of the old
+wine-seller's mind, if only, in the first place, the fellow had the
+desire to harass Dalrymple. That being granted, the rest was plain
+enough. Dalrymple, if he really came to supper with Griggs, would stay
+late into the night and finish all the wine there might be. On his way
+home through the deserted streets, Stefanone could kill him at his
+leisure and convenience, and nobody would be the wiser. The only
+difficulty lay in establishing some sufficient reason why Stefanone
+should wish to kill him at all, and in this Griggs signally failed,
+which was not surprising.
+
+All at once, as generally happened now, he lost all interest in the
+matter and returned to his work; or rather, to speak as he might have
+spoken, he set his mechanical self to work for him, while his own being
+disappeared in blank indifference and unconsciousness. But on the
+following day, which chanced to be a Sunday, he went out in the morning
+for a walk. He rarely worked on Sundays, having long ago convinced
+himself that a day of rest was necessary in the long run.
+
+As he was coming home, he saw Lord Redin walking far in front of him
+down the Corso, easily recognizable by his height and his loose,
+swinging gait. Griggs had not proceeded many steps further when
+Stefanone passed him, walking at a swinging stride. The peasant had
+probably seen him, but chose to take no notice of him. Griggs allowed
+him to get a fair start and then quickened his own pace, so as to keep
+him in view. Lord Redin swung along steadily and turned up the Via
+Condotti. Stefanone almost ran, till he, too, had turned the corner of
+the street. Griggs, without running, nearly overtook him as he took the
+same turn a moment later.
+
+It was perfectly clear that Stefanone was dogging the Scotchman's
+steps. The latter crossed the Piazza di Spagna, and entered the deep
+archway of his hotel. The peasant slackened his speed at once and
+lounged across the square towards the foot of the great stairway which
+leads up to the Trinita de' Monti. Griggs followed him, and came up with
+him just as he sat down upon a step beside one of the big stone posts,
+to take breath and light his pipe. The man looked up, touched his hat,
+smiled, and struck a sulphur match, which he applied to the tobacco in
+the red clay bowl before the sulphur was half burned out, after the
+manner of his kind.
+
+"You have taken a walk, Signore," he observed, puffing away at the
+willow stem and watching the match.
+
+"You walk fast, Stefanone," answered Griggs. "You can walk as fast as
+Lord Redin."
+
+Stefanone did not show the least surprise. He pressed down the burning
+tobacco with one horny finger, and carefully laid the last glowing bit
+of the burnt-out wooden match upon it.
+
+"For this, we are people of the mountains," he answered slowly. "We can
+walk."
+
+"Why do you wish to kill that signore?" inquired Griggs, calmly.
+
+Stefanone looked up, and the pale lids of his keen eyes were contracted
+as he stared hard and long at the other's face.
+
+"What are you saying?" he asked, with a short, harsh laugh. "What is
+passing through your head? What have I to do with the Englishman?
+Nothing. These are follies!"
+
+And still he gazed keenly at Griggs, awaiting the latter's reply. Griggs
+answered him contemptuously in the dialect.
+
+"You take me for a foreigner! You might know better."
+
+"I do not know what you mean," answered Stefanone, doggedly. "It is
+Sunday. I am at leisure. I walk to take a little air. It is my affair.
+Besides, at this hour, who would follow a man to kill him? It is about
+to ring midday. There are a thousand people in the street. Those who
+kill wait at the corners of streets when it is night. You say that I
+take you for a foreigner. You have taken me for an assassin. At your
+pleasure. So much the worse for me. An assassin! Only this was wanting.
+It is better that I go back to Subiaco. At least they know me there.
+Here in Rome--not even dogs would stay here. Beautiful town! Where one
+is called assassin for breakfast, without counting one, nor two."
+
+By this time Griggs was convinced that he was right. He knew the man
+well, and all his kind. The long speech of complaint, with its peculiar
+tone, half insolent, half of injured innocence, was to cover the
+fellow's embarrassment. Griggs answered him in his own strain.
+
+"A man is not an assassin who kills his enemy for a good reason,
+Stefanone," he observed. "How do I know what he may have done to you?"
+
+"To me? Nothing." The peasant shrugged his sturdy shoulders.
+
+"Then I have made a mistake," said Griggs.
+
+"You have made a mistake," assented Stefanone. "Let us not talk about it
+any more."
+
+"Very well."
+
+Griggs turned away and walked slowly towards the hotel, well aware that
+Stefanone was watching him and would think that he was going to warn
+Lord Redin of his danger. That, indeed, was Griggs's first impulse, and
+it was probably his wisest course, whatever might come of the meeting.
+But the Scotchman had made up his mind that he would not see Griggs
+under any circumstances, and though the latter had seen him enter the
+hotel less than ten minutes earlier, the servant returned almost
+immediately and said that Lord Redin was not at home. Griggs understood
+and turned away, thoughtfully.
+
+Before he went down the Via Condotti again, he looked over his shoulder
+towards the steps, and he saw that Stefanone was gone. As he walked
+along the street, the whole incident began to fade away in his mind, as
+all real matters so often did, nowadays. All at once he stopped short,
+and roused himself by an effort--directing his double, as he would have
+said, perhaps. There was no denying the fact that a man's life was
+hanging in the balance of a chance, and to the man, if not to Griggs,
+that life was worth something. If it had been any other man in the
+world, even that fact would have left him indifferent enough. Why should
+he care who lived or died? But Dalrymple was a man he had injured, and
+he was under an obligation of honour to save him, if he could.
+
+There was only one person in Rome who could help him--Francesca
+Campodonico. She knew much of what had happened; she might perhaps
+understand the present case. At all events, even if she had not seen
+Lord Redin of late, she could not be supposed to have broken relations
+with him; she could send for him and warn him. The case was urgent, as
+Griggs knew. After what he had said to Stefanone, the latter, if he
+meant to kill his man, would not lose a day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+
+IT was past midday when Paul Griggs reached the Palazzetto Borgia and
+inquired for Donna Francesca. He was told that she was out. It was her
+custom, the porter said, always to breakfast on Sundays with her
+relatives, the Prince and Princess of Gerano. Griggs asked at what time
+she might be expected to return. The porter put on a vague look and said
+that it was impossible to tell. Sometimes she went to Saint Peter's on
+Sunday afternoon, to hear Vespers. Vespers began at twenty-two o'clock,
+or half-past twenty-two--between half-past three and four by French
+time, at that season of the year.
+
+Griggs turned away, and wandered about for half an hour in the vicinity
+of the palace, uncertain as to what he should do, and yet determined not
+to lose sight of the necessity for immediate action of some sort. At
+last he went back to the Piazza di Spagna, intending to write a word of
+warning to Lord Redin, though he knew that the latter would pay very
+little attention to anything of such a nature. Like most foreigners, he
+would laugh at the idea of being attacked in the streets. Even in an
+interview it would not be easy to persuade him of the truth which Griggs
+had discovered more by intuition and through his profound knowledge of
+the Roman character than by any chain of evidence.
+
+Lord Redin had gone out, he was told. It was impossible to say with any
+certainty whether this were true or not, and Griggs wrote a few words on
+his card, sealed the latter in an envelope, and left it to be delivered
+to the Scotchman. Then he went back to the Via della Frezza, determined
+to renew his attempt to see Francesca Campodonico, at a later hour.
+
+At the door of the little wine shop Stefanone was seated on one of the
+rush stools, his hat tilted over his eyes, and his white-stockinged legs
+crossed. He was smoking and looking down, but he recognized Griggs's
+step at some distance, and raised his eyes. Griggs nodded to him
+familiarly, passing along on the other side of the narrow street, and he
+saw Stefanone's expression. There was a look of cunning and amusement in
+the contraction of the pale lids, which the younger man did not like.
+Stefanone spoke to him across the street.
+
+"You are well returned, Signore," he said, in the common phrase of
+greeting after an absence.
+
+The words were civil enough, but there was something of mockery in the
+tone. Griggs might not have noticed it at any other time, but his
+thoughts had been occupied with Stefanone during the last two hours,
+and he resented what sounded like insolence. The tone implied that he
+had been on a fool's errand, and that Stefanone knew it. He said
+nothing, but stood still and scrutinized the man's face. There was an
+unwonted colour about the cheek bones, and the keen eyes sparkled under
+the brim of the soft hat. Stefanone had a solid head, and was not given
+to drinking, especially in the morning; but Griggs guessed that to-day
+he had drunk more than usual. The man's next words convinced him of the
+fact.
+
+"Signore," he said, slowly rising, "will you favour us by tasting the
+wine I brought last week? There is no one in the shop yet, for it is
+early. If you will, we can drink a glass."
+
+"Thank you," answered Griggs. "I have not eaten yet."
+
+"Then Sor Angoscia did not ask you to breakfast!" laughed Stefanone,
+insolently. "At midday, too! It was just the hour! But perhaps he
+invited you to his supper, for it is ordered."
+
+And he laughed again. Griggs glanced at him once more, and then went
+quietly on towards his own door. He saw that the man had drunk too much,
+and the idea of bandying words in the attempt to rebuke him was
+distasteful. Griggs had very rarely lost his temper, so far as to strike
+a man, even in former days, and it had seemed to him of late that he
+could never be really angry again. Nothing could ever again be of
+enough importance to make it worth while. If a man of his own class had
+insulted him, he would have directed his double, as it were, to resent
+the offence, but he himself would have remained utterly indifferent.
+
+The one-eyed cobbler was not in his place, as it was Sunday. If he had
+been there, Griggs would very possibly have told him to watch Stefanone
+and to try and keep him in the wine shop until he should grow heavy over
+his wine and fall asleep. In that state he would at least be harmless.
+But the cobbler was not there. Griggs went up to his rooms to wait until
+a later hour, when he might hope to find Francesca.
+
+Stefanone, being left alone, sat down again, pulled his hat over his
+eyes once more and felt in his pocket for his clasp-knife. His mind was
+by no means clear, for he had eaten nothing, he had swallowed a good
+deal of strong wine, and he had made up his mind that he must kill his
+enemy on that day or never. The intention was well-defined, but that was
+all. He had put off his vengeance too long. It was true that he had not
+yet caught Dalrymple alone in a quiet street at night, that is to say,
+under the most favourable circumstances imaginable; but more than once
+he might have fallen upon him suddenly from a doorway in a narrow lane,
+in which there had been but a few women and children to see the deed, if
+they saw it at all. He knew well enough that in Rome the fear of being
+in any way implicated in a murder, even as a witness, would have made
+women, and probably men, too, run indoors or out of the way, rather than
+interfere or pursue him. He told himself therefore that he had been
+unreasonably cautious, and that unless he acted quickly Lord Redin,
+being warned by Griggs, would take measures of self-defence which might
+put him beyond the reach of the clasp-knife forever. Stefanone's ideas
+about the power of an 'English lord' were vague in the extreme.
+
+He had not been exactly frightened by Griggs's sudden accusation that
+morning, but he had been made nervous and vicious by the certainty that
+his intentions had been discovered. Peasant-like, not being able to hit
+on a plan for immediate success, he had excited himself and stimulated
+his courage with drink. His eyes were already a little bloodshot, and
+the flush on his high cheek bones showed that he was in the first stage
+of drunkenness, which under present circumstances was the most dangerous
+and might last all day with a man of his age and constitution, provided
+that he did not drink too fast. And there was little fear of that, for
+the Roman is cautious in his cups, and drinks slowly, never wishing to
+lose his head, and indeed very much ashamed of ever being seen in a
+helpless condition.
+
+By this time he was well acquainted with Lord Redin's habits; and though
+Griggs had been told that the Scotchman was out, Stefanone knew very
+well that he was at home and would not leave the hotel for another hour
+or more.
+
+Leaning back against the wall and tipping the stool, he swung his
+white-stockinged legs thoughtfully.
+
+"One must eat," he remarked aloud, to himself.
+
+He held his head a little on one side, thoughtfully considering the
+question of food. Then he turned his face slowly towards the low door of
+the shop and sniffed the air. Something was cooking in the back regions
+within. Stefanone nodded to himself, rose, pulled out a blue and red
+cotton handkerchief, and proceeded to dust his well-blacked low shoes
+and steel buckles with considerable care, setting first one foot and
+then the other upon the stool.
+
+"Let us eat," he said aloud, folding his handkerchief again and
+returning it to his pocket.
+
+He went in and sat down at one of the trestle tables,--a heavy board,
+black with age. The host was nodding on a chair in the corner, a fat man
+in a clean white apron, with a round red face and fat red prominences
+over his eyes, with thin eyebrows that were scarcely perceptible.
+
+Stefanone rapped on the board with his knuckles; the host awoke, looked
+at him with a pleased smile, made an interrogatory gesture, and having
+received an affirmative nod for an answer retired into the dark kitchen.
+In a moment he returned with a huge earthenware plate of soup in which a
+couple of large pieces of fat meat bobbed lazily as he set the dish on
+the table. Then he brought bread, a measure of wine, an iron spoon, and
+a two-pronged fork.
+
+Stefanone eat the soup without a word, breaking great pieces of bread
+into it. Then he pulled out his clasp-knife and opened it; the long
+blade, keen as a razor and slightly curved, but dark and dull in colour,
+snapped to its place, as the ring at the back fell into the
+corresponding sharp notch. With affected delicacy, Stefanone held it
+between his thumb and one finger and drew the edge across the fat boiled
+meat, which fell into pieces almost at a touch, though it was tough and
+stringy. The host watched the operation approvingly. At that time it was
+forbidden to carry such knives in Rome, unless the point were round and
+blunt. The Roman always stabs; he never cuts his man's throat in a fight
+or in a murder.
+
+"It is a prohibited weapon," observed the fat man, smiling, "but it is
+very beautiful. Poor Christian, if he finds it between his ribs! He
+would soon be cold. It is a consolation at night to have such a toy."
+
+"Truly, it is the consolation of my soul," answered Stefanone.
+
+"Say a little, dear friend," said the fat man, sitting down and resting
+his bare elbows upon the table, "that arm, has it ever sent any one to
+Paradise?"
+
+"And then I should tell you!" exclaimed Stefanone, laughing, and he
+sipped some wine and smacked his lips. "But no," he added presently. "I
+am a pacific man. If they touch me--woe! But I, to touch any one? Not
+even a fly."
+
+"Thus I like men," said the host, "serious, full of scruples, people who
+drink well, quiet, quiet, and pay better."
+
+"So we are at Subiaco," answered Stefanone.
+
+He cleaned his knife on a piece of bread very carefully, laid it open
+beside him, and threw the crust to a lean dog that appeared suddenly
+from beneath the table, as though it had come up through a trap-door;
+the half-famished creature bolted the bread with a snap and a gulp and
+disappeared again as suddenly and silently, just in time to avoid the
+fat man's slow, heavy hand.
+
+When he had finished eating, Stefanone produced his little piece of
+oilstone, which he carried wrapped in dingy paper, and having greased it
+proceeded to draw the blade over it slowly and smoothly.
+
+"Apoplexy!" ejaculated the host. "Are you not contented? Or perhaps you
+wish to shave with it?"
+
+"Thus I keep it," answered the peasant, smiling. "A minute here, a
+minute there. The time costs nothing. What am I doing? Nothing. I
+digest. To pass the time I sharpen the knife. I am like this. I say it
+is a sin to waste time."
+
+Every now and then he sipped his wine, but there was no perceptible
+change in his manner, for he was careful to keep himself just at the
+same level of excitement, neither more nor less.
+
+Half an hour later he was smoking his pipe in the Piazza di Spagna,
+lounging near the great fountain in the sunshine, his eyes generally
+turned towards the door of the hotel. He waited a long time, and
+replenished his pipe more than once.
+
+"This would be the only thing wanting," he said impatiently and half
+aloud. "That just to-day he should not go out."
+
+But Lord Redin appeared at last, dressed as though he were going to make
+a visit. He looked about the square, standing still on the threshold for
+a moment, and a couple of small open cabs drove up. But he shook his
+head, consulted his watch, and strode away in the direction of the
+Propaganda.
+
+Stefanone guessed that he was going to the Palazzetto Borgia, and
+followed him as usual at a safe distance, threading the winding ways
+towards the Piazza di Venezia. There used to be a small cafe then under
+the corner of that part of the Palazzo Torlonia which has now been
+pulled down. Lord Redin entered it, and Stefanone lingered on the other
+side of the street. A man passed him who sold melon seeds and aquavitae,
+and Stefanone drank a glass of the one and bought a measure of the
+other. The Romans are fond of the taste of the tiny dry kernel which is
+found inside the broad white shell of the seed. Presently Lord Redin
+came out, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, and went on. Stefanone
+followed him again, walking fast when his enemy had turned a corner and
+slackening his speed as soon as he caught sight of him again.
+
+Francesca was out. He saw Lord Redin's look of annoyance as the latter
+turned away after speaking with the porter, and he fell back into the
+shadow of a doorway, expecting that the Scotchman would take the street
+by which he had come. But Dalrymple turned down the narrow lane beside
+the palace, in the direction of the Tiber. Stefanone's bloodshot eyes
+opened suddenly as he sprang after him; with a quick movement he got his
+knife out, opened it, and thrust his hand with it open into the wide
+pocket of his jacket. Lord Redin had never gone down that lane before,
+to Stefanone's knowledge, and it was a hundred to one that at that hour
+no one would be about. Stefanone himself did not know the place.
+
+Dalrymple must have heard the quick and heavy footsteps of the peasant
+behind him, but it would not have been at all like him to turn his
+head. With loose, swinging gait he strode along, and his heavy stick
+made high little echoes as it struck the dry cobble-stones.
+
+Stefanone was very near him. His eyes glared redly, and his hand with
+the knife in it was half out of his pocket. In ten steps more he would
+spring and strike upwards, as Romans do. He chose the spot on the dark
+overcoat where his knife should go through, below the shoulder-blade, at
+the height of the small ribs on the left side. His lips were parted and
+dry.
+
+There was a loud scream of anger, a tremendous clattering noise, and a
+sound of feet. Stefanone turned suddenly pale, and his hand went to the
+bottom of his pocket again.
+
+On an open doorstep lay a copper 'conca'--the Roman water jar--a
+wretched dog was rushing down the street with something in its mouth, in
+front of Lord Redin, a woman was pursuing it with yells, swinging a
+small wooden stool in her right hand, to throw it at the dog, and the
+neighbours were on their doorsteps in a moment. Stefanone slunk under
+the shadow of the wall, grinding his teeth. The chance was gone. The
+streets beyond were broader and more populous.
+
+Lord Redin went steadily onward, evidently familiar with every turn of
+the way, down to the Tiber, across the Bridge of Quattro Capi, and over
+the island of Saint Bartholomew to Trastevere, turning then to the right
+through the straight Lungaretta, past Santa Maria and under the heights
+of San Pietro in Montorio, and so to the Lungara and by Santo Spirito to
+the Piazza of Saint Peter's. He walked fast, and Stefanone twice wiped
+the perspiration from his forehead on the way, for he was nervous from
+the tension and the disappointment, and felt suddenly weak.
+
+The Scotchman never paused, but crossed the vast square and went up the
+steps of the basilica. He was evidently going to hear the Vespers. Then
+Stefanone, instead of following him into the church, sat down outside
+the wine shop on the right, just opposite the end of the Colonnade. He
+ordered a measure of wine and prepared to wait, for he guessed that Lord
+Redin would remain in the church at least an hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+
+LORD REDIN lifted the heavy leathern curtain of the door on the right of
+the main entrance to the basilica, and went into the church. For some
+reason or other, the majority of people go in by that door rather than
+the other. It may be that the reason is a very simple one, after all.
+Most people are right handed, and of any two doors side by side leading
+into the same place, will instinctively take the one on the right. The
+practice of passing to the left in the street, in almost all old
+countries, was for the sake of safety, in order that a man might have
+his sword hand towards any one he met.
+
+The air of the church was warm, and had a faint odour of incense in it.
+The temperature of the vast building varies but little with the seasons;
+going into it in winter, it seems warm, in summer it is very cold. On
+that day there were not many people in the nave, though a soft sound of
+unceasing footsteps broke the stillness. Very far away an occasional
+strain of music floated on the air from the Chapel of the Choir, the
+last on the left before the transept is reached. Lord Redin walked
+leisurely in the direction of the sound.
+
+The chapel was full, and the canons were intoning the psalms of the
+office. At the conclusion of each one the choir sang the 'Gloria' from
+the great organ loft on the right. It chanced that there were a number
+of foreigners on that day, and they had filled all the available space
+within the gate, and there was a small crowd outside, pressing as close
+as possible in order to hear the voices more distinctly. Lord Redin was
+taller than most men, and looking over the heads of the others he saw
+Francesca Campodonico's pale profile in the thick of the press. She
+evidently wished to extricate herself, and she seemed to be suffering
+from the closeness, for she pressed her handkerchief nervously to her
+lips, and her eyes were half closed. Lord Redin forced his way to her
+without much consideration for the people who hindered him. A few
+minutes later he brought her out on the side towards the transept.
+
+"Thank you," said Francesca. "I should like to sit down. I had almost
+fainted--there was a woman next to me who had musk about her."
+
+They went round the pillar of the dome to the south transept where there
+are almost always a number of benches set along the edges of a huge
+green baize carpet. They sat down together on the end of one of the
+seats.
+
+"We can go back, by and bye, and hear the music, if you like," said
+Francesca. "The psalms will last some time longer."
+
+"I would rather sit here and talk, since I have had the good luck to
+meet you," answered Lord Redin, resting his elbows on his knees, and
+idly poking the green carpet with the end of his stick. "I went to your
+house, and they told me that you would very probably be here."
+
+"Yes. I often come. But you know that, for we have met here before. I
+only stay at home on Sundays when it rains."
+
+"Oh! Is that the rule?"
+
+"Yes, if you call it a rule," answered Francesca.
+
+"I like to know about the things you do, and how you spend your life,"
+said the Scotchman, thoughtfully.
+
+"Do you? Why? There is nothing very interesting about my existence, it
+seems to me."
+
+"It interests me. It makes me feel less lonely to know about some one
+else--some one I like very much."
+
+Francesca looked at her companion with an expression of pity. She was
+lonely, too, but in a different way. The little drama of her life had
+run sadly and smoothly. She was willing to give the man her friendship
+if it could help him, rather because he seemed to ask for it in a mute
+fashion than because she desired his.
+
+"Lord Redin," she said, after a little pause, "do you always mean to
+live in this way?"
+
+"Alone? Yes. It is the only way I can live, at my age."
+
+"At your age--would it make any difference if you were younger?" asked
+Francesca. She dropped her voice to a low key. "You would never marry
+again, even if you were much younger."
+
+"Marry!" His shoulders moved with a sort of little start. "You do not
+know what you are saying!" he added, almost under his breath, though she
+heard the words distinctly.
+
+She looked at him again, in silence, during several seconds, and she saw
+how the colour sank away from his face, till the skin was like old
+parchment. The hand that held the heavy stick tightened round it and
+grew yellow at the knuckles.
+
+"Forgive me," she said gently. "I am very thoughtless--it is the second
+time."
+
+He did not speak for some moments, but she understood his silence and
+waited. The air was very quiet, and the enormous pillar of the dome
+almost completely shut off the echo of the distant music. The low
+afternoon sun streamed levelly through the great windows of the apse,
+for the basilica is built towards the west. There were very few people
+in the church that day. The sun made visible beams across the high
+shadows overhead.
+
+Suddenly Lord Redin spoke again. There was something weak and tremulous
+in the tone of his rough voice.
+
+"I am very much attached to you, for two reasons," he said. "We have
+known each other long, but not intimately."
+
+"That is true. Not very intimately."
+
+Francesca did not know exactly what to say. But for his manner and for
+his behaviour a few moments earlier, she might have fancied that he was
+about to offer himself to her, but such an idea was very far from her
+thoughts. Her woman's instinct told her that he was going to tell her
+something in the nature of a confidence.
+
+"Precisely," he continued. "We have never been intimate. The reason why
+we have not been intimate is one of the reasons why I am more attached
+to you than you have ever guessed."
+
+"That is complicated," said Francesca, with a smile. "Perhaps the other
+reason may be simpler."
+
+"It is very simple, very simple indeed, though it will not seem natural
+to you. You are the only very good woman I ever knew, who made me feel
+that she was good instead of making me see it. Perhaps you think it
+unnatural that I should be attracted by goodness at all. But I am not
+very bad, as men go."
+
+"No. I do not believe you are. And I am not so good as you think." She
+sighed softly.
+
+"You are much better than I once thought," answered Lord Redin. "Once
+upon a time--well, I should only offend you, and I know better now.
+Forgive me for thinking of it. I wish to tell you something else."
+
+"If it is something which has been your secret, it is better not told,"
+said Francesca, quietly. "One rarely makes a confidence that one does
+not regret it."
+
+"You are a wise woman." He looked at her thoughtfully. "And yet you must
+be very young."
+
+"No. But though I have had my own life apart, I have lived outwardly
+very much in the world, although I am still young. Most of the secrets
+which have been told me have been repeated to me by the people in whom
+others had confided."
+
+"All that is true," he answered. "Nevertheless--" He paused. "I am
+desperate!" he exclaimed, with sudden energy. "I cannot bear this any
+longer--I am alone, always, always. Sometimes I think I shall go mad!
+You do not know what a life I lead. I have not even a vice to comfort
+me!" He laughed low and savagely. "I tried to drink, but I am sick of
+it--it does no good! A man who has not even a vice is a very lonely
+man."
+
+Francesca's clear eyes opened wide with a startled look, and gazed
+towards his averted face, trying to catch his glance. She felt that she
+was close to something very strong and dreadful which she could not
+understand.
+
+"Do not speak like that!" she said. "No one is lonely who believes in
+God."
+
+"God!" he exclaimed bitterly. "God has forgotten me, and the devil will
+not have me!" He looked at her at last, and saw her face. "Do not be
+shocked," he said, with a sorrowful smile. "If I were as bad as I seem
+to you just now, I should have cut my throat twenty years ago."
+
+"Hush! Hush!" Francesca did not know what to say.
+
+His manner changed a little, and he spoke more calmly.
+
+"I am not eloquent," he said, looking into her eyes. "You may not
+understand. But I have suffered a great deal."
+
+"Yes. I know that. I am very sorry for you."
+
+"I think you are," he answered. "That is why I want to be honest and
+tell you the truth about myself. For that reason, and because I cannot
+bear it any longer. I cannot, I cannot!" he repeated in a low,
+despairing tone.
+
+"If it will help you to tell me, then tell me," said Francesca, kindly.
+"But I do not ask you to. I do not see why we should not be the best of
+friends without my knowing this thing which weighs on your mind."
+
+"You will understand when I have told you," answered Lord Redin. "Then
+you can judge whether you will have me for a friend or not. It will seem
+very bad to you. Perhaps it is. I never thought so. But you are a Roman
+Catholic, and that makes a difference."
+
+"Not in a question of right and wrong."
+
+"It makes the question what it is. You shall hear."
+
+He paused a moment, and the lines and furrows deepened in his face. The
+sun was sinking fast, and the long beams had faded away out of the
+shadows. There was no one in sight now, but the music of the benediction
+service echoed faintly in the distance. Francesca felt her heart beating
+with a sort of excitement she could not understand, and though she did
+not look at her companion, her ears were strained to catch the first
+word he spoke.
+
+"I married a nun," he said simply.
+
+Francesca started.
+
+"A Sister of Charity?" she asked, after a moment's dead silence. "They
+do not take vows--"
+
+"No. A nun from the Carmelite Convent of Subiaco."
+
+His words were very distinct. There was no mistaking what he said.
+Francesca shrank from him instinctively, and uttered a low exclamation
+of repugnance and horror.
+
+"That is not all," continued Lord Redin, with a calm that seemed
+supernatural. "She was your kinswoman. She was Maria Braccio, whom every
+one believed was burned to death in her cell."
+
+"But her body--they found it! It is impossible!" She thought he must be
+mad.
+
+"No. They found another body. I put it into the bed and set fire to the
+mattress. It was burned beyond recognition, and they thought it was
+Maria. But it was the body of old Stefanone's daughter. I lived in his
+house. The girl poisoned herself with some of my chemicals--I was a
+young doctor in those days. Maria and I were married on board an English
+man-of-war, and we lived in Scotland after that. Gloria was the daughter
+of Maria Braccio, the Carmelite nun--your kinswoman."
+
+Francesca pressed her handkerchief to her lips. She felt as though she
+were losing her senses. Minute after minute passed, and she could say
+nothing. From time to time, Lord Redin glanced sideways at her. He
+breathed hard once or twice, and his hands strained upon his stick as
+though they would break it in two.
+
+"Then she died," he said. When he had spoken the three words, he
+shivered from head to foot, and was silent.
+
+Still Francesca could not speak. The sacrilege of the deed was horrible
+in itself. To her, who had grown up to look upon Maria Braccio as a holy
+woman, cut off in her youth by a frightful death, the truth was
+overwhelmingly awful. She strove within herself to find something upon
+which she could throw the merest shadow of an extenuation, but she could
+find nothing.
+
+"You understand now why, as an honourable man, I wished to tell you the
+truth about myself," he said, speaking almost coldly in the effort he
+was making at self-control. "I could not ask for your friendship until I
+had told you."
+
+Francesca turned her white face slowly towards him in the dusk, and her
+lips moved, but she did not speak. She could not in that first moment
+find the words she wanted. She felt that she shrank from him, that she
+never wished to touch his hand again. Doubtless, in time, she might get
+over the first impression. She wished that he would leave her to think
+about it.
+
+"Can you ever be my friend now?" he asked gravely.
+
+"Your friend--" she stopped, and shook her head sadly. "I--I am
+afraid--" she could not go on.
+
+Lord Redin rose slowly to his feet.
+
+"No. I am afraid not," he said.
+
+He waited a moment, but there was no reply.
+
+"May I take you to your carriage?" he asked gently.
+
+"No, thank you. No--that is--I am going home in a cab. I would rather be
+alone--please."
+
+"Then good-bye."
+
+The lonely man went away and left her there. His head was bent, and she
+thought that he walked unsteadily, as she watched him. Suddenly a great
+wave of pity filled her heart. He looked so very lonely. What right had
+she to judge him? Was she perfect, because he called her good? She
+called him before he turned the great pillar of the dome.
+
+"Lord Redin! Lord Redin!"
+
+But her voice was weak, and in the vast, dim place it did not reach him.
+He went on alone, past the high altar, round the pillar, down the nave.
+The benediction service was not quite over yet, but every one who was
+not listening to the music had left the church. He went towards the door
+by which he had entered. Before going out he paused, and looked towards
+the little chapel on the right of the entrance. He hesitated, and then
+went to it and stood leaning with his hands upon the heavy marble
+balustrade, that was low for his great height as he stood on the step.
+
+A single silver lamp sent a faint light upwards that lingered upon the
+Pieta above the altar, upon the marble limbs of the dead Christ, upon
+the features of the Blessed Virgin, the Addolorata--the sorrowing
+mother.
+
+Bending a little, as though very weary, the friendless, wifeless,
+childless man raised his furrowed face and looked up. There was no hope
+any more, and his despair was heavy upon him whose young love had
+blasted the lives of many.
+
+His teeth were set--he could have bitten through iron. He trembled a
+little, and as he looked upward, two dreadful tears--the tears of the
+strong that are as blood--welled from his eyes and trickled down upon
+his cheeks.
+
+"Maria Addolorata!" he whispered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+
+FRANCESCA had half risen from her seat when she had seen that Lord Redin
+did not hear her voice, calling to him. Then she realized that she could
+not overtake him without running, since he had got so far, and she kept
+her place, leaning back once more, and trying to collect her thoughts
+before going home. The music was still going on in the Chapel of the
+Choir, and though it was dusk in the vast church, it would not be dark
+for some time. The vergers did not make their rounds to give warning of
+the hour of closing until sunset. Francesca sat still and tried to
+understand what she had heard. She was nervous and shaken, and she
+wished that she were already at home. The great dimness of the lonely
+transept was strangely mysterious--and the tale of the dead girl, burned
+to take the place of the living, was grewsome, and made her shiver with
+disgust and horror. She started nervously at the sound of a distant
+footstep.
+
+But the strongest impression she had, was that of abhorrence for the
+unholy deeds of the man who had just left her. To a woman for whom
+religion in its forms as well as in its meaning was the mainstay of
+life on earth and the hope of life to come, the sacrilege of the crime
+seemed supernatural. She felt as though it must be in some way her duty
+to help in expiating it, lest the punishment of it should fall upon all
+her race. And as she thought it over, trying to look at it as simply as
+she could, she surveyed at a glance the whole chain of the fatal story,
+and saw how many terrible things had followed upon that one great sin,
+and how very nearly she herself had been touched by its consequences.
+She had been involved in it and had become a part of it. She had felt it
+about her for years, in her friendship for Reanda. It had contributed to
+the causes of his death, if it had not actually caused it. She, in
+helping to bring about his marriage with the daughter of her sinning
+kinswoman, had unconsciously made a link in the chain. Her friendship
+for the artist no longer looked as innocent as formerly. Gloria had
+accused him of loving her, Francesca. Had she not loved him? Whether she
+had or not, she had done things which had wounded his innocent young
+wife. In a sudden and painful illumination of the past, she saw that she
+herself had not been sinless; that she had been selfish, if nothing
+worse; that she had craved Reanda's presence and devoted friendship, if
+nothing more; that death had taken from her more than a friend. She saw
+all at once the vanity of her own belief in her own innocence, and she
+accused herself very bitterly of many things which had been quite hidden
+from her until then.
+
+She was roused by a footstep behind her, and she started at the sound of
+a voice she knew, but which had changed oddly since she had last heard
+it. It was stern, deep, and clear still, but the life was gone out of
+it. It had an automatic sound.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Princess," said Paul Griggs, stopping close to her
+behind the bench. "May I speak to you for a moment?"
+
+She turned her head. As the sun went down, the church grew lighter for a
+little while, as it often does. Yet she could hardly see the man's eyes
+at all, as she looked into his face. They were all in the shadow and had
+no light in them.
+
+"Sit down," she said mechanically.
+
+She could not refuse to speak to him, and, indeed, she would not have
+refused to receive him had she been at home when he had called that day.
+Socially speaking, according to the standards of those around her, he
+had done nothing which she could very severely blame. A woman he had
+dearly loved had come to him for protection, and he had not driven her
+away. That was the social value of what he had done. The moral view of
+it all was individual with herself. Society gave her no right to treat
+him rudely because she disapproved of his past life. For the rest, she
+had liked him in former times, and she believed that there was much more
+good in him than at first appeared.
+
+She was almost glad that he had disturbed her solitude just then, for a
+nervous sense of loneliness was creeping upon her; and though there had
+been nothing to prevent her from rising and going away, she had felt
+that something was holding her in her seat, a shadowy something that was
+oppressive and not natural, that descended upon her out of the gloomy
+heights, and that rose around her from the secret depths below, where
+the great dead lay side by side in their leaden coffins.
+
+"Sit down," she repeated, as Griggs came round the bench.
+
+He sat down beside her. There was a little distance between them, and he
+sat rather stiffly, holding his hat on his knees.
+
+"I should apologize for disturbing you," he began. "I have been twice to
+your house to-day, but you were out. What I wish to speak of is rather
+urgent. I heard that you might be here, and so I came."
+
+"Yes," she said, and waited for him to say more.
+
+"What is it?" she asked presently, as he did not speak at once.
+
+"It is about Dalrymple--about Lord Redin," he said at last. "You used to
+know him. Do you ever see him now?"
+
+Francesca looked at him with a little surprise, but she answered
+quietly, as though the question were quite a natural one.
+
+"He was here five minutes ago. Yes, I often see him."
+
+"Would you do him a service?" asked Griggs, in his calm and indifferent
+tone.
+
+He was forcing himself to do what was plainly his duty, but he was
+utterly incapable of taking any interest in the matter. Francesca
+hesitated before she answered. An hour earlier she would have assented
+readily enough, but now the idea of doing anything which could tend to
+bring her into closer relations with Lord Redin was disagreeable.
+
+"I do not think you will refuse," said Griggs, as she did not speak.
+"His life is in danger."
+
+She turned quickly and scrutinized the expressionless features. In the
+glow of the sunset the church was quite light. The total unconcern of
+the man's manner contrasted strangely with the importance of what he
+said. Francesca felt that something must be wrong.
+
+"You say that very coolly," she observed, and her tone showed that she
+was incredulous.
+
+"And you do not believe me," answered Griggs, quite unmoved. "It is
+natural, I suppose. I will try to explain."
+
+"Please do. I do not understand at all."
+
+Nevertheless, she was startled, though she concealed her nervousness.
+She had not spoken with Griggs for a long time; and as he talked, she
+saw what a great change had taken place. He was very quiet, as he had
+always been, but he was almost too quiet. She could not make out his
+eyes. She knew of his superhuman strength, and his stillness seemed
+unnatural. What he said did not sound rational. An impression got hold
+of her that he had gone mad, and she was physically afraid of him. He
+began to explain. She felt a singing in her ears, and she could not
+follow what he said. It was like an evil dream, and it grew upon her
+second by second.
+
+He talked on in the same even, monotonous tone. The words meant nothing
+to her. She crossed her feet nervously and tried to get a soothing
+sensation by stroking her sable muff. She made a great effort at
+concentration and failed to understand anything.
+
+All at once it grew dark, as the sunset light faded out of the sky.
+Again she felt the desire to rise and the certainty that she could not,
+if she tried. He ceased speaking and seemed to expect her to say
+something, but she had not understood a word of his long explanation. He
+sat patiently waiting. She could hardly distinguish his face in the
+gloom.
+
+The sound of irregular, shuffling footsteps and low voices moved the
+stillness. The vergers were making their last round in a hurried,
+perfunctory way. They passed across the transept to the high altar. It
+was so dark that Francesca could only just see their shadows moving in
+the blackness. She did not realize what they were doing, and her
+imagination made ghosts of them, rushing through the silence of the
+deserted place, from one tomb to another, waking the dead for the night.
+They did not even glance across, as they skirted the wall of the church.
+Even if they had looked, they might not have seen two persons in black,
+against the blackness, sitting silently side by side on the dark bench.
+They saw nothing and passed on, out of sight and out of hearing.
+
+"May I ask whether you will give him the message?" inquired Griggs at
+last, moving in his seat, for he knew that it was time to be going.
+
+Francesca started, at the sound of his voice.
+
+"I--I am afraid--I have not understood," she said. "I beg your pardon--I
+was not paying attention. I am nervous."
+
+"It is growing late," said Griggs. "We had better be going--I will tell
+you again as we walk to the door."
+
+"Yes--no--just a moment!" She made a strong effort over herself. "Tell
+me in three words," she said. "Who is it that threatens Lord Redin's
+life?"
+
+"A peasant of Subiaco called Stefanone. Really, Princess, we must be
+going; it is quite dark--"
+
+"Stefanone!" exclaimed Francesca, while he was speaking the last words,
+which she did not hear. "Stefanone of Subiaco--of course!"
+
+"We must really be going," said Griggs, rising to his feet, and
+wondering indifferently why it was so hard to make her understand.
+
+She rose to her feet slowly. Lord Redin's story was intricately confused
+in her mind with the few words which she had retained of what Griggs had
+said.
+
+"Yes--yes--Stefanone," she said in a low voice, as though to herself,
+and she stood still, comprehending the whole situation in a flash, and
+imagining that Griggs knew the whole truth and had been telling it to
+her as though she had not known it. "But how did you know that Lord
+Redin took the girl's body and burnt it?" she asked, quite certain that
+he had mentioned the fact.
+
+"What girl?" asked Griggs in wonder.
+
+"Why, the body of Stefanone's daughter, which he managed to burn in the
+convent when he carried off my cousin! How did you know about it?"
+
+"I did not know about it," said Griggs. "Your cousin? I do not
+understand."
+
+"My cousin--yes--Maria Braccio--Gloria's mother! You have just been
+talking about her--"
+
+"I?" asked Griggs, bewildered.
+
+Francesca stepped back from him, suddenly guessing that she had revealed
+Lord Redin's secret.
+
+"Is it possible?" she asked in a low voice. "Oh, it is all a mistake!"
+she cried suddenly. "I have told you his story--oh, I am losing my
+head!"
+
+"Come," said Griggs, authoritatively. "We must get out of the church, at
+all events, or we shall be locked in."
+
+"Oh no!" answered Francesca. "There is always somebody here--"
+
+"There is not. You must really come."
+
+"Yes--but there is no danger of being locked in. Yes--let us walk down
+the nave. There is more light."
+
+They walked slowly, for she was too much confused to hasten her steps.
+Her inexplicable mistake troubled her terribly. She remembered how she
+had warned Lord Redin not to tell her any secrets, and how seriously
+she, the most discreet of women, had resolved never to reveal what he
+had said. But the impression of his story had been so much more direct
+and strong than even the first words Griggs had spoken, that so soon as
+she had realized that the latter was speaking approximately of the same
+subject, she had lost the thread of what he was saying and had seemed to
+hear Lord Redin's dreadful tale all over again. She thought that she was
+losing her head.
+
+It was almost quite dark when they reached the other side of the high
+altar. Griggs walked beside her in silence, trying to understand the
+meaning of what she had said.
+
+The gloom was terrible. The enormous statues loomed faintly like vast
+ghosts, high up, between the floor and the roof, their whiteness
+glimmering where there seemed to be nothing else but darkness below them
+and above them. A low, far sound that was a voice but not a word,
+trembled in the air. Francesca shuddered.
+
+"They have not gone yet," said Griggs. "They are still talking. But we
+must hurry."
+
+"No," said Francesca, "that was not any one talking." And her teeth
+chattered. "Give me your arm, please--I am frightened."
+
+He held out his arm till she could feel it in the dark, and she took it.
+He pressed her hand to his side and drew her along, for he feared that
+the doors might be already shut.
+
+"Not so fast! Oh, not so fast, please!" she cried. "I shall fall. They
+do not shut the doors--"
+
+"Yes, they do! Let me carry you. I can run with you in the dark--there
+is no time to be lost!"
+
+"No, no! I can walk faster--but there is really no danger--"
+
+It is a very long way from the high altar to the main entrance of the
+church. Francesca was breathless when they reached the door and Griggs
+lifted the heavy leathern curtain. If the door had been still open, he
+would have seen the twilight from the porch at once. Instead, all was
+black and close and smelled of leather. Francesca was holding his
+sleeve, afraid of losing him.
+
+"It is too late," he said quietly. "We are probably locked in. We will
+try the door of the Sacristy."
+
+He seized her arm and hurried her along into the south aisle. He struck
+his shoulder violently against the base of the pillar he passed in the
+darkness, but he did not stop. Almost instinctively he found the door,
+for he could not see it. Even the hideous skeleton which supports a
+black marble drapery above it was not visible in the gloom. He found the
+bevelled edge of the smoothly polished panel and pushed. But it would
+not yield.
+
+"We are locked in," he said, in the same quiet tone as before.
+
+Francesca uttered a low cry of terror and then was silent.
+
+"Cannot you break the door?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"No," he answered. "Nothing short of a battering-ram could move it."
+
+"Try," she said. "You are so strong--the lock might give way."
+
+To satisfy her he braced himself and heaved against the panel with all
+his gigantic strength. In the dark she could hear his breath drawn
+through his nostrils.
+
+"It will not move," he said, desisting. "We shall have to spend the
+night here. I am very sorry."
+
+For some moments Francesca said nothing, overcome by her terror of the
+situation. Griggs stood still, with his back to the polished door,
+trying to see her in the gloom. Then he felt her closer to him and heard
+her small feet moving on the pavement.
+
+"We must make the best of it," he said at last. "It is never quite dark
+near the high altar. I daresay, too, that there is still a little
+twilight where we were sitting. At least, there is a carpet there and
+there are benches. We can sit there until it is later. Then you can lie
+down upon the bench. I will make a pillow for you with my overcoat. It
+is warm, and I shall not need it."
+
+He made a step forwards, and she heard him moving.
+
+"Do not leave me!" she cried, in sudden terror.
+
+He felt her grasp his arm convulsively in the dark, and he felt her
+hands shaking.
+
+"Do not be frightened," he said, in his quiet voice. "Dead people do no
+harm, you know. It is only imagination."
+
+She shuddered as he groped his way with her toward the nave. They
+passed the pillar and saw the soft light of the ninety little flames of
+the huge golden lamps around the central shrine below the high altar.
+Far beyond, the great windows showed faintly in the height of the
+blackness. They walked more freely, keeping in the middle of the church.
+In the distant chapels on each side a few little lamps glimmered like
+fireflies. Before the last chapel on the right, the Chapel of the
+Sacrament, Francesca paused, instinctively holding fast to Griggs's arm,
+and they both bent one knee, as all Catholics do, who pass before it.
+But when they reached the shrine, Francesca loosed her hold and sank
+upon her knees, resting her arms upon the broad marble of the
+balustrade. Griggs knelt a moment beside her, by force of habit, then
+rose and waited, looking about him into the depths of blackness, and
+reflecting upon the best spot in which to pass the night.
+
+She remained kneeling a long time, praying more or less consciously, but
+aware that it was a relief to be near a little light after passing
+through the darkness. Her mind was as terribly confused as her
+companion's was utterly calm and indifferent. If he had been alone he
+would have sat down upon a step until he was sleepy and then he would
+have stretched himself upon one of the benches in the transept. But to
+Francesca it was unspeakably dreadful.
+
+The strangeness of the whole situation forced itself upon her more and
+more, when she thought of rising from her knees and going back to the
+bench. She felt a womanly shyness about keeping close to her companion,
+her hand on his arm, for hours together, but she knew that the terror
+she should feel of being left alone, even for an instant, or of merely
+thinking that she was to be left alone, would more than overcome that if
+she went away from the lights. She would grasp his arm and hold it
+tightly.
+
+Then she felt ashamed of herself. She had always been told that she came
+of a brave race. She had never been in danger, and there was really no
+danger now. It was absurd to remain on her knees for the sake of the
+lamps. She rose to her feet and turned. Griggs was not looking at her,
+but at the ornaments on the altar. The soft glimmer lighted up his dark
+face. A moment after she had risen he came forward. She meant to propose
+that they should go back to the transept, but just then she shuddered
+again.
+
+"Let us sit down here, on the step," she said, suddenly.
+
+"If you like," he answered. "Wait a minute," he added, and he pulled off
+his overcoat.
+
+He spread a part of it on the step, and rolled the rest into a pillow
+against which she could lean, and he held it in place while she sat
+down. She thanked him, and he sat down beside her. At first, as she
+turned from the lamps, the nave was like a fathomless black wall.
+Neither spoke for some time. Griggs broke the silence when he supposed
+that she was sufficiently recovered to talk quietly, for he had been
+thinking of what she had said, and it was almost clear to him at last.
+
+"I should like to speak to you quite frankly, if you will allow me," he
+said gravely. "May I?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"The few words you said about Lord Redin's story have explained a great
+many things which I never understood," said Griggs. "Is it too much to
+ask that you should tell me everything you know?"
+
+"I would rather not say anything more," answered Francesca. "I am very
+much ashamed of having betrayed his secret. Besides, what is to be
+gained by your knowing a few more details? It is bad enough as it is."
+
+"It is more or less the story of my life," he said, almost
+indifferently.
+
+She turned her head slowly and tried to see his face. She could just
+distinguish the features, cold and impassive.
+
+"I came to you to ask you to warn Dalrymple of a danger," he continued,
+as she did not speak. "I knew that fact, but not the reason why his life
+was and is threatened. Unless I have mistaken what you said, I
+understand it now. It is a much stronger one than I should ever have
+guessed. Lord Redin ran away with your cousin, and made it appear that
+he had carried off Stefanone's daughter. Stefanone has waited patiently
+for nearly a quarter of a century. He has found Dalrymple at last and
+means to kill him. He will succeed, unless you can make Dalrymple
+understand that the danger is real. I have no evidence on which I could
+have the man arrested, and I have no personal influence in Rome. You
+have. You would find no difficulty in having Stefanone kept out of the
+city. And you can make Dalrymple see the truth, since he has confided in
+you. Will you do that? He will not believe me, and you can save him.
+Besides, he will not see me. I have tried twice to-day. He has made up
+his mind that he will not see me."
+
+"I will do my best," said Francesca, leaning her head back against the
+marble rail, and half closing her eyes. "How terrible it all is!"
+
+"Yes. I suppose that is the word," said Griggs, indifferently.
+"Sacrilege, suicide, and probably murder to come."
+
+She was shocked by the perfectly emotionless way in which he spoke of
+Gloria's death, so much shocked that she drew a short, quick breath
+between her teeth as though she had hurt herself. Griggs heard it.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing," she said.
+
+"I thought something hurt you."
+
+"No--nothing."
+
+She was silent again.
+
+"Yes," he continued, in a tone of cold speculation, "I suppose that any
+one would call it terrible. At all events, it is curious, as a sequence
+of cause and effect, from one tragedy to another."
+
+"Please--please do not speak of it all like that--" Francesca felt
+herself growing angry with him.
+
+"How should I speak of it?" he asked. "It is an extraordinary
+concatenation of events. I look upon the whole thing as very curious,
+especially since you have given me the key to it all."
+
+Francesca was moved to anger, taking the defence of the dead Gloria, as
+almost any woman would have done. At the moment Paul Griggs repelled her
+even more than Lord Redin. It seemed to her that there was something
+dastardly in his indifference.
+
+"Have you no heart?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"No, I am dead," he answered, in his clear, lifeless voice, that might
+have been a ghost's.
+
+The words made her shiver, and she felt as though her hair were moving.
+From his face, as she had last seen it, and from his voice, he might
+almost have been dead, as he said he was, like the thousands of silent
+ones in the labyrinths under her feet, and she alone alive in the midst
+of so much death.
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked, and her own voice trembled in spite of
+herself.
+
+"It is very like being dead," he answered thoughtfully. "I cannot feel
+anything. I cannot understand why any one else should. Everything is the
+same to me. The world is a white blank to me, and one place is exactly
+like any other place."
+
+"But why? What has happened to you?" asked Francesca.
+
+"You know. You sent me those letters."
+
+"What letters?"
+
+"The package Reanda gave you before he died."
+
+"Yes. What was in it? I told you that I did not know, when I wrote to
+you. I remember every word I wrote."
+
+"I know. But I thought that you at least guessed. They were Gloria's
+letters to her husband."
+
+"Her old letters, before--" Francesca stopped short.
+
+"No," he answered, with the same unnatural quiet. "All the letters she
+wrote him afterwards--when we were together."
+
+"All those letters?" cried Francesca, suddenly understanding. "Oh
+no--no! It is not possible! He could not, he would not, have done
+anything so horrible."
+
+"He did," said Griggs, calmly. "I had supposed that she loved me. He had
+his vengeance. He proved to me that she did not. I hope he is satisfied
+with the result. Yes," he continued, after a moment's pause, "it was the
+cruelest thing that ever one man did to another. I spent a bad night, I
+remember. On the top of the package was the last letter she wrote him,
+just before she killed herself. She loathed me, she said, she hated me,
+she shivered at my touch. She feared me so that she acted a comedy of
+love, in terror of her life, after she had discovered that she hated me.
+She need not have been afraid. Why should I have hurt her? In that last
+letter, she put her wedding ring with a lock of her hair wound in and
+out of it. Reanda knew what he was doing when he sent it to me. Do you
+wonder that it has deadened me to everything?"
+
+"Oh, how could he do it? How could he!" Francesca repeated, for the
+worst of it all to her was the unutterable cruelty of the man she had
+believed so gentle.
+
+"I suppose it was natural," said Griggs. "I loved the woman, and he knew
+it. I fancy few men have loved much more sincerely than I loved her,
+even after she was dead. I was not always saying so. I am not that kind
+of man. Besides, men who live by stringing words together for money do
+not value them much in their own lives. But I worked for her. I did the
+best I could. Even she must have known that I loved her."
+
+"I know you did. I cannot understand how you can speak of her at all."
+Francesca wondered at the man.
+
+"She? She is no more to me than Queen Christina, over there in her tomb
+in the dark! For that matter, nothing else has any meaning, either."
+
+For a long time Francesca said nothing. She sat quite still, resting the
+back of her head against the marble, in the awful silence under the
+faint lights that glimmered above the great tomb.
+
+"You have told me the most dreadful thing I ever heard," she said at
+last, in a low tone. "Is she nothing to you? Really nothing? Can you
+never think kindly of her again?"
+
+"No. Why should I? That is--" he hesitated. "I could not explain it," he
+said, and was silent.
+
+"It does not seem human," said Francesca. "You would have a memory of
+her--something--some touch of sadness--I wonder whether you really loved
+her as much as you thought you did?"
+
+Griggs turned upon Francesca slowly, his hands clasped upon one knee.
+
+"You do not know what such love means," he said slowly. "It is
+God--faith--goodness--everything. It is heaven on earth, and earth in
+heaven, in one heart. When it is gone there is nothing left. It went
+hard. It will not come back now. The heart itself is gone. There is
+nothing for it to come to. You think me cold, you are shocked because I
+speak indifferently of her. She lied to me. She lied and acted in every
+word and deed of her life with me. She deceived herself a little at
+first, and she deceived me mortally afterwards. It was all an immense,
+loathsome, deadly lie. I lived through the truth. Why should I wish to
+go back to the lie again? She died, telling me that she died for me. She
+died, having written to Reanda that she died for him. I do not judge
+her. God will. But God Himself could not make me love the smallest
+shadow of her memory. It is impossible. I am beyond life. I am outside
+it. My eternity has begun."
+
+"Is it not a little for her sake that you wish to save her father?"
+asked Francesca.
+
+"No. It is a matter of honour, and nothing else, since I injured him, as
+the world would say, by taking his daughter from her husband. Do you
+understand? Can you put yourself a little in my position? It is not
+because I care whether he lives or dies, or dies a natural death or is
+stabbed in the back by a peasant. It is because I ought to care. I do
+many things because I ought to care to do them, though the things and
+their consequences are all one to me, now."
+
+"It cannot last," said Francesca, sadly. "You will change as you grow
+older."
+
+"No. That is a thing you can never understand," he answered. "I am two
+individuals. The one is what you see, a man more or less like other men,
+growing older--a man who has a certain mortal, earthly memory of that
+dead woman, when the real man is unconscious. But the real man is beyond
+growing old, because he is beyond feeling anything. He is stationary,
+outside of life. The world is a blank to him and always will be."
+
+His voice grew more and more expressionless as he spoke. Francesca felt
+that she could not pity him as she had pitied poor Lord Redin when she
+had seen him going away alone. The man beside her was in earnest, and
+was as far beyond woman's pity as he was beyond woman's love. Yet she no
+longer felt repelled by him since she had understood what he had
+suffered. Perhaps she herself, suffering still in her heart, wished that
+she might be even as he was, beyond the possibility of pain, even though
+beyond the hope of happiness. He wanted nothing, he asked for nothing,
+and he was not afraid to be alone with his own soul, as she was
+sometimes. The other man had asked for her friendship. It could mean
+nothing to Paul Griggs. If love were nothing, what could friendship be?
+
+Yet there was something lofty and grand about such loneliness as his.
+She could not but feel that, now that she knew all. She thought of him
+as she sat beside him in the monumental silence of the enormous
+sepulchre, and she guessed of depths in his soul like the deepness of
+the shadows above her and before her and around her.
+
+"My suffering seems very small, compared with yours," she said softly,
+almost to herself.
+
+Somehow she knew that he would understand her, though perhaps her
+knowledge was only hope.
+
+"Why should you suffer at all?" he asked. "You have never done anything
+wrong. Nothing, of all this, is your fault. It was all fatal, from the
+first, and you cannot blame yourself for anything that has happened."
+
+"I do," she answered, in a low voice. "Indeed I do."
+
+"You are wrong. You are not to blame. Dalrymple was--Maria
+Braccio--I--Gloria--we four. But you! What have you done? Compared with
+us you are a saint on earth!"
+
+She hesitated a moment before she spoke. Then her voice came in a broken
+way.
+
+"I loved Angelo Reanda. I know it, now that I have lost him."
+
+Griggs barely heard the last words, but he bent his head gravely, and
+said nothing in answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+
+THE stillness was all around them and seemed to fold them together as
+they sat side by side. A deep sigh quivered and paused and was drawn
+again almost with a gasp that stirred the air. Suddenly Francesca's face
+was hidden in her hands, and her head was bowed almost to her knees. A
+moment more, and she sobbed aloud, wordless, as though her soul were
+breaking from her heart.
+
+In the great gloom there was something unearthly in the sound of her
+weeping. The man who could neither suffer any more himself nor feel
+human pity for another's suffering, turned and looked at her with
+shadowy eyes. He understood, though he could not feel, and he knew that
+she had borne more than any one had guessed.
+
+She shed many tears, and it was long before her sobbing ceased to call
+down pitiful, heart-breaking echoes from the unseen heights of darkness.
+Her head was bent down upon her knees as she sat there, striving with
+herself.
+
+He could do nothing, and there was nothing that he could say. He could
+not comfort her, he could not deny her grief. He only knew that there
+was one more being still alive and bearing the pain of sins done long
+ago. Truly the judgment upon that man by whom the offence had come,
+should be heavy and relentless and enduring.
+
+At last all was still again. Francesca did not move, but sat bowed
+together, her hands pressing her face. Very softly, Griggs rose to his
+feet, and she did not see that he was no longer seated beside her. He
+stood up and leaned upon the broad marble of the balustrade. When she at
+last raised her head, she thought that he was gone.
+
+"Where are you?" she asked, in a startled voice.
+
+Then, looking round, she saw him standing by the rail. She understood
+why he had moved--that she might not feel that he was watching her and
+seeing her tears.
+
+"I am not ashamed," she said. "At least you know me, now."
+
+"Yes. I know."
+
+She also rose and stood up, and leaned upon the balustrade and looked
+into his face.
+
+"I am glad you know," she said, and he saw how pale she was, and that
+her cheeks were wet. "Now that it is over, I am glad that you know," she
+said again. "You are beyond sympathy, and beyond pitying any one, though
+you are not unkind. I am glad, that if any one was to know my secret, it
+should be you. I could not bear pity. It would hurt me. But you are not
+unkind."
+
+"Nor kind--nor anything," he said.
+
+"No. It is as though I had spoken to the grave--or to eternity. It is
+safe with you."
+
+"Yes. Quite safe. Safer than with the dead."
+
+"He never knew it. Thank God! He never knew it! To me he was always the
+same faithful friend. To you he was an enemy, and cruel. I thought him
+above cruelty, but he was human, after all. Was it not human, that he
+should be cruel to you?"
+
+"Yes," answered Griggs, wondering a little at her speech and tone. "It
+was very human."
+
+"And you forgive him for it?"
+
+"I?" There was surprise in his tone.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "I want your forgiveness for him. He died without
+your forgiveness. It is the only thing I ask of you--I have not the
+right to ask anything, I know, but is it so very much?"
+
+"It is nothing," said Griggs. "There is no such thing as forgiveness in
+my world. How could there be? I resent nothing."
+
+"But then, if you do not resent what he did, you have forgiven him. Have
+you not?"
+
+"I suppose so." He was puzzled.
+
+"Will you not say it?" she pleaded.
+
+"Willingly," he answered. "I forgive him. I remember nothing against
+him."
+
+"Thank you. You are a good man."
+
+He shook his head gravely, but he took her outstretched hand and pressed
+it gently.
+
+"Thank you," she repeated, withdrawing hers. "Do not think it strange
+that I should ask such a thing. It means a great deal to me. I could not
+bear to think that he had left an enemy in the world and was gone where
+he could not ask forgiveness for what he had done. So I asked it of you,
+for him. I know that he would have wished me to. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes," said Griggs, thoughtfully. "I understand."
+
+Again there was silence for a long time as they stood there. The tears
+dried upon the woman's sweet pale face, and a soft light came where the
+tears had been.
+
+"Will you come with me?" she asked at last, looking up.
+
+He did not guess what she meant to do, but he left the step on which he
+was standing and stood ready.
+
+"It must be late," he said. "Should you like to try and rest? I will
+arrange a place for you as well as I can."
+
+"Not yet," she answered. "If you will come with me--" she hesitated.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I will say a prayer for the dead," she said, in a low voice. "I always
+do, every night, since he died."
+
+Griggs bent his head, and she came down from the step. He walked beside
+her, down the silent nave into the darkness. Before the Chapel of the
+Sacrament they both paused and bent the knee. Then she hesitated.
+
+"I should like to go to the Pieta," she said timidly. "It seems so far.
+Do you mind?"
+
+He held out his arm silently. She felt it and laid her hand upon it, and
+they went on. It was very dark. They knew that they were passing the
+pillars when they could not see the little lights from the chapels in
+the distance on their left. Then by the echo of their own footsteps they
+knew that they were near the great door, and at last they saw the single
+tiny flame in the silver lamp hanging above the altar they sought.
+
+Guided by it, they went forward, and the solitary ray showed them the
+marble rail. They knelt down side by side.
+
+"Let us pray for them all," said Francesca, very softly.
+
+She looked up to the marble face of Christ's mother, the Addolorata, the
+mother of sorrows, and she thought of that sinning nun, dead long ago,
+who had been called Addolorata.
+
+"Let us pray for them all," she repeated. "For Maria Braccio, for
+Gloria--for Angelo Reanda."
+
+She lowered her head upon her hands. Then, presently, she looked up
+again, and Griggs heard her sweet voice in the darkness repeating the
+ancient Commemoration for the Dead, from the Canon of the Mass.
+
+"Remember also, O Lord, thy servants who are gone before us with the
+sign of faith, and sleep the sleep of peace. Give them, O Lord, and to
+all who rest in Christ, a place of refreshment, light, and peace, for
+that Christ's sake, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of
+the Holy Spirit. Amen."
+
+Once more she bent her head and was silent for a time. Then as she
+knelt, her hands moved silently along the marble and pressed the two
+folded hands of the man beside her, and she looked at him.
+
+"Let us be friends," she said simply.
+
+"Such as I am, I am yours."
+
+Then their hands clasped. They both started and looked down, for the
+fingers were cold and wet and dark.
+
+It was the blood of Angus Dalrymple that had sealed their friendship.
+
+The swift sure blade had struck him as he stood there, repeating the
+name of his dead wife. There had been no one near the door and none to
+see the quick, black deed. Strong hands had thrown his falling body
+within the marble balustrade, that was still wet with his heart's blood.
+
+There Paul Griggs found him, lying on his back, stretched to his length
+in the dim shadow between the rail and the altar. He had paid the price
+at last, a loving, sinning, suffering, faithful, faultful man.
+
+But the friendship that was so grimly consecrated on that night, was the
+truest that ever was between man and woman.
+
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+THE RALSTONS.
+
+BY
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD.
+
+2 vols. 16mo. Cloth. $2.00.
+
+PRESS COMMENTS.
+
+          "The interest is unflagging throughout. Never has
+          the author done more brilliant, artistic work than
+          here."--_Ohio State Journal._
+
+          "It is immensely entertaining; once in the full
+          swing of the narrative, one is carried on quite
+          irresistibly to the end. The style throughout is
+          easy and graceful, and the text abounds in wise
+          and witty reflections on the realities of
+          existence."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+          "As a picture of a certain kind of New York life,
+          it is correct and literal; as a study of human
+          nature it is realistic enough to be modern, and
+          romantic enough to be of the age of
+          Trollope."--_Chicago Herald._
+
+          "The whole group of character studies is strong
+          and vivid."--_The Literary World._
+
+          "There is a long succession of exceedingly strong
+          dramatic situations which hold the reader's
+          attention enchained to the end. This is one of the
+          strong books of the year, and will have a large
+          circle of readers."--_New Orleans Picayune._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+UNIFORM EDITION
+
+OF THE WORKS OF
+
+F. MARION CRAWFORD.
+
+=12mo. Cloth. Price $1.00 per volume.=
+
+
+KATHARINE LAUDERDALE.
+
+=The first of a series of novels dealing with New York life.=
+
+          "Mr. Crawford at his best is a great novelist, and
+          in 'Katharine Lauderdale' we have him at his
+          best."--_Boston Daily Advertiser._
+
+          "A most admirable novel, excellent in style,
+          flashing with humor, and full of the ripest and
+          wisest reflections upon men and women."--_The
+          Westminster Gazette._
+
+          "It is the first time, we think, in American
+          fiction that any such breadth of view has shown
+          itself in the study of our social
+          framework."--_Life._
+
+          "It need scarcely be said that the story is
+          skilfully and picturesquely written, portraying
+          sharply individual characters in well-defined
+          surroundings."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
+
+          "'Katharine Lauderdale' is a tale of New York, and
+          is up to the highest level of his work. In some
+          respects it will probably be regarded as his best.
+          None of his works, with the exception of 'Mr.
+          Isaacs,' shows so clearly his skill as a literary
+          artist."--_San Francisco Evening Bulletin._
+
+
+PIETRO GHISLERI.
+
+          "The imaginative richness, the marvellous
+          ingenuity of plot, the power and subtlety of the
+          portrayal of character, the charm of the romantic
+          environment,--the entire atmosphere, indeed,--rank
+          this novel at once among the great
+          creations."--_The Boston Budget._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+WITH THE IMMORTALS.
+
+          "Altogether an admirable piece of art worked in
+          the spirit of a thorough artist. Every reader of
+          cultivated tastes will find it a book prolific in
+          entertainment of the most refined description, and
+          to all such we commend it heartily."--_Boston
+          Saturday Evening Gazette._
+
+          "The strange central idea of the story could have
+          occurred only to a writer whose mind was very
+          sensitive to the current modern thought and
+          progress, while its execution, the setting it
+          forth in proper literary clothing, could be
+          successfully attempted only by one whose active
+          literary ability should be fully equalled by his
+          power of assimilative knowledge both literary and
+          scientific, and no less by his courage and
+          capacity for hard work. The book will be found to
+          have a fascination entirely new for the habitual
+          reader of novels. Indeed, Mr. Crawford has
+          succeeded in taking his readers quite above the
+          ordinary plane of novel interest."--_Boston
+          Advertiser._
+
+
+MARZIO'S CRUCIFIX.
+
+          "We take the liberty of saying that this work
+          belongs to the highest department of
+          character-painting in words."--_Churchman._
+
+          "We have repeatedly had occasion to say that Mr.
+          Crawford possesses in an extraordinary degree the
+          art of constructing a story. His sense of
+          proportion is just, and his narrative flows along
+          with ease and perspicuity. It is as if it could
+          not have been written otherwise, so naturally does
+          the story unfold itself, and so logical and
+          consistent is the sequence of incident after
+          incident. As a story 'Marzio's Crucifix' is
+          perfectly constructed."--_New York Commercial
+          Advertiser._
+
+
+KHALED.
+
+A Story of Arabia.
+
+          "Throughout the fascinating story runs the
+          subtlest analysis, suggested rather than
+          elaborately worked out, of human passion and
+          motive, the building out and development of the
+          character of the woman who becomes the hero's wife
+          and whose love he finally wins, being an
+          especially acute and highly finished example of
+          the story-teller's art. . . . That it is beautifully
+          written and holds the interest of the reader,
+          fanciful as it all is, to the very end, none who
+          know the depth and artistic finish of Mr.
+          Crawford's work need be told."--_The Chicago
+          Times._
+
+
+PAUL PATOFF.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+ZOROASTER.
+
+          "The field of Mr. Crawford's imagination appears
+          to be unbounded. . . . In 'Zoroaster' Mr. Crawford's
+          winged fancy ventures a daring flight. . . . Yet
+          'Zoroaster' is a novel rather than a drama. It is
+          a drama in the force of its situations and in the
+          poetry and dignity of its language; but its men
+          and women are not men and women of a play. By the
+          naturalness of their conversation and behavior
+          they seem to live and lay hold of our human
+          sympathy more than the same characters on a stage
+          could possibly do."--_The Times._
+
+
+A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH.
+
+          "It is a pleasure to have anything so perfect of
+          its kind as this brief and vivid story. . . . It is
+          doubly a success, being full of human sympathy, as
+          well as thoroughly artistic in its nice balancing
+          of the unusual with the commonplace, the clever
+          juxtaposition of innocence and guilt, comedy and
+          tragedy, simplicity and intrigue."--_Critic._
+
+          "Of all the stories Mr. Crawford has written, it
+          is the most dramatic, the most finished, the most
+          compact. . . . The taste which is left in one's mind
+          after the story is finished is exactly what the
+          fine reader desires and the novelist intends. . . .
+          It has no defects. It is neither trifling nor
+          trivial. It is a work of art. It is
+          perfect."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+
+AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+A CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE.
+
+          "It is a touching romance, filled with scenes of
+          great dramatic power."--_Boston Commercial
+          Bulletin._
+
+          "It is full of life and movement, and is one of
+          the best of Mr. Crawford's books."--_Boston
+          Saturday Evening Gazette._
+
+          "The interest is unflagging throughout. Never has
+          Mr. Crawford done more brilliant realistic work
+          than here. But his realism is only the case and
+          cover for those intense feelings which, placed
+          under no matter what humble conditions, produce the
+          most dramatic and the most tragic situations. . . .
+          This is a secret of genius, to take the most coarse
+          and common material, the meanest surroundings, the
+          most sordid material prospects, and out of the
+          vehement passions which sometimes dominate all
+          human beings to build up with these poor elements
+          scenes and passages, the dramatic and emotional
+          power of which at once enforce attention and awaken
+          the profoundest interest."--_New York Tribune._
+
+
+
+GREIFENSTEIN.
+
+          "'Greifenstein' is a remarkable novel, and while
+          it illustrates once more the author's unusual
+          versatility, it also shows that he has not been
+          tempted into careless writing by the vogue of his
+          earlier books. . . . There is nothing weak or small
+          or frivolous in the story. The author deals with
+          tremendous passions working at the height of their
+          energy. His characters are stern, rugged,
+          determined men and women, governed by powerful
+          prejudices and iron conventions, types of a
+          military people, in whom the sense of duty has
+          been cultivated until it dominates all other
+          motives, and in whom the principle of 'noblesse
+          oblige' is, so far as the aristocratic class is
+          concerned, the fundamental rule of conduct. What
+          such people may be capable of is startlingly
+          shown."--_New York Tribune._
+
+
+A ROMAN SINGER.
+
+          "One of Mr. Crawford's most charming stories--a
+          love romance pure and simple."--_Boston Home
+          Journal._
+
+          "'A Roman Singer' is one of his most finished,
+          compact, and successful stories, and contains a
+          splendid picture of Italian life."--_Toronto
+          Mail._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+MR. ISAACS.
+
+A Tale of Modern India.
+
+          "The writer first shows the hero in relation with
+          the people of the East and then skilfully brings
+          into connection the Anglo-Saxon race. It is in this
+          showing of the different effects which the two
+          classes of minds have upon the central figure of
+          the story that one of its chief merits lies. The
+          characters are original, and one does not recognize
+          any of the hackneyed personages who are so apt to
+          be considered indispensable to novelists, and
+          which, dressed in one guise or another, are but the
+          marionettes, which are all dominated by the same
+          mind, moved by the same motive force. The men are
+          all endowed with individualism and independent life
+          and thought. . . . There is a strong tinge of
+          mysticism about the book which is one of its
+          greatest charms."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+          "No story of human experience that we have met
+          with since 'John Inglesant' has such an effect of
+          transporting the reader into regions differing
+          from his own. 'Mr. Isaacs' is the best novel that
+          has ever laid its scenes in our Indian
+          dominions."--_The Daily News, London._
+
+
+DR. CLAUDIUS.
+
+A True Story.
+
+          "There is a suggestion of strength, of a mastery
+          of facts, of a fund of knowledge, that speaks well
+          for future production. . . . To be thoroughly
+          enjoyed, however, this book must be read, as no
+          mere cursory notice can give an adequate idea of
+          its many interesting points and excellences, for
+          without a doubt 'Dr. Claudius' is the most
+          interesting book that has been published for many
+          months, and richly deserves a high place in the
+          public favor."--_St. Louis Spectator._
+
+          "To our mind it by no means belies the promises of
+          its predecessor. The story, an exceedingly
+          improbable and romantic one, is told with much
+          skill; the characters are strongly marked without
+          any suspicion of caricature, and the author's
+          ideas on social and political subjects are often
+          brilliant and always striking. It is no
+          exaggeration to say that there is not a dull page
+          in the book, which is peculiarly adapted for the
+          recreation of student or thinker."--_Living
+          Church._
+
+
+TO LEEWARD.
+
+          "A story of remarkable power."--_Review of
+          Reviews._
+
+          "Mr. Crawford has written many strange and
+          powerful stories of Italian life, but none can be
+          any stranger or more powerful than 'To Leeward,'
+          with its mixture of comedy and tragedy, innocence
+          and guilt."--_Cottage Hearth._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+SARACINESCA.
+
+          "His highest achievement, as yet, in the realms of
+          fiction. The work has two distinct merits, either
+          of which would serve to make it great,--that of
+          telling a perfect story in a perfect way, and of
+          giving a graphic picture of Roman society in the
+          last days of the pope's temporal power. . . . The
+          story is exquisitely told."--_Boston Traveler._
+
+          "One of the most engrossing novels we have ever
+          read."--_Boston Times._
+
+
+SANT' ILARIO.
+
+A sequel to "Saracinesca."
+
+          "The author shows steady and constant improvement
+          in his art. 'Sant' Ilario' is a continuation of the
+          chronicles of the Saracinesca family. . . . A
+          singularly powerful and beautiful story. . . .
+          Admirably developed, with a naturalness beyond
+          praise. . . . It must rank with 'Greifenstein' as
+          the best work the author has produced. It fulfils
+          every requirement of artistic fiction. It brings
+          out what is most impressive in human action,
+          without owing any of its effectiveness to
+          sensationalism or artifice. It is natural, fluent
+          in evolution, accordant with experience, graphic in
+          description, penetrating in analysis, and absorbing
+          in interest."--_New York Tribune._
+
+
+
+DON ORSINO.
+
+A continuation of "Saracinesca" and "Sant' Ilario."
+
+          "The third in a rather remarkable series of novels
+          dealing with three generations of the Saracinesca
+          family, entitled respectively 'Saracinesca,'
+          'Sant' Ilario,' and 'Don Orsino,' and these novels
+          present an important study of Italian life,
+          customs, and conditions during the present
+          century. Each one of these novels is worthy of
+          very careful reading, and offers exceptional
+          enjoyment in many ways, in the fascinating
+          absorption of good fiction, in interest of
+          faithful historic accuracy, and in charm of style.
+          The 'new Italy' is strikingly revealed in 'Don
+          Orsino.'"--_Boston Budget._
+
+          "We are inclined to regard the book as the most
+          ingenious of all Mr. Crawford's fictions.
+          Certainly it is the best novel of the
+          season."--_Evening Bulletin._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+THE THREE FATES.
+
+          "The strength of the story lies in its portrayal
+          of the aspirations, disciplinary efforts, trials,
+          and triumphs of the man who is a born writer, and
+          who, by long and painful experiences, learns the
+          good that is in him and the way in which to give
+          it effectual expression. The analytical quality of
+          the book is excellent, and the individuality of
+          each one of the very dissimilar three fates is set
+          forth in an entirely satisfactory manner. . . . Mr.
+          Crawford has manifestly brought his best qualities
+          as a student of human nature and his finest
+          resources as a master of an original and
+          picturesque style to bear upon this story. Taken
+          for all in all it is one of the most pleasing of
+          all his productions in fiction, and it affords a
+          view of certain phases of American, or perhaps we
+          should say of New York, life that have not
+          hitherto been treated with anything like the same
+          adequacy and felicity."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+
+CHILDREN OF THE KING.
+
+A Tale of Southern Italy.
+
+          "A sympathetic reader cannot fail to be impressed
+          with the dramatic power of this story. The
+          simplicity of nature, the uncorrupted truth of a
+          soul, have been portrayed by a master-hand. The
+          suddenness of the unforeseen tragedy at the last
+          renders the incident of the story powerful beyond
+          description. One can only feel such sensations as
+          the last scene of the story incites. It may be
+          added that if Mr. Crawford has written some
+          stories unevenly, he has made no mistakes in the
+          stories of Italian life. A reader of them cannot
+          fail to gain a clearer, fuller acquaintance with
+          the Italians and the artistic spirit that pervades
+          the country."--M. L. B. in _Syracuse Journal_.
+
+
+THE WITCH OF PRAGUE.
+
+A Fantastic Tale.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY W. J. HENNESSY.
+
+          "'The Witch of Prague' is so remarkable a book as
+          to be certain of as wide a popularity as any of
+          its predecessors. The keenest interest for most
+          readers will lie in its demonstration of the
+          latest revelations of hypnotic science. . . . It is
+          a romance of singular daring and power."--_London
+          Academy._
+
+          "Mr. Crawford has written in many keys, but never
+          in so strange a one as that which dominates 'The
+          Witch of Prague.' . . . The artistic skill with
+          which this extraordinary story is constructed and
+          carried out is admirable and delightful. . . . Mr.
+          Crawford has scored a decided triumph, for the
+          interest of the tale is sustained throughout. . . .
+          A very remarkable, powerful, and interesting
+          story."--_New York Tribune._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          MACMILLAN & CO.,
+          66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Vol. 1
+
+Page 50, "retractation" changed to "retraction" (of a general
+retraction)
+
+Page 83, "baiscchi" changed to "baiocchi" (ten baiocchi for)
+
+
+Vol. 2
+
+Page 27, "premiss" changed to "premise" (a false premise)
+
+Page 29, "premisses" changed to "premises" (assumed premises)
+
+Page 118, "np" changed to "up" (paused, looked up)
+
+Page 152, "orf" changed to "or" (or the letter was)
+
+Page 219, "Calpasta" changed to "Calpesta" (Calpesta il mio)
+
+Page xvi, letter "i" missing in "generations" replaced (generations of
+the Saracinesca)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2), by
+F. Marion Crawford
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASA BRACCIO, VOLUMES 1 AND 2 ***
+
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