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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Olive in Italy, by Moray Dalton
+
+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: Olive in Italy
+
+Author: Moray Dalton
+
+Release Date: July 25, 2009 [EBook #29512]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLIVE IN ITALY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mark C. Orton, Sam W. and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+      OLIVE ...
+      IN ITALY
+
+
+   BY MORAY DALTON
+
+
+   [Illustration]
+
+
+       London
+   T. FISHER UNWIN
+       MCMIX
+
+
+
+
+[_All Rights Reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+    "For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the
+    wine is red; it is full mixed, and He poureth out of the
+    same. As for the dregs thereof: all the ungodly of the
+    earth shall drink them...."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    BOOK I.                 PAGE
+
+      SIENA                   17
+
+
+    BOOK II.
+
+      FLORENCE               115
+
+
+    BOOK III.
+
+      ROME                   213
+
+
+
+
+OLIVE IN ITALY
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.--SIENA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"I believe that Olive Agar is going to tell you that she can't pay her
+bill," said the landlady's daughter as she set the breakfast tray down
+on the kitchen table.
+
+"Good gracious, Gwen, how you do startle one! Why?"
+
+"She began again about the toast, and I told her straight that you
+always set yourself against any unnecessary cooking. Meat and
+vegetables must be done, I said, but those who can't relish bread as
+it comes from the baker's, and plain boiled potatoes, can go without,
+I said. Then she says, of course I must do as my mother tells me, and
+would I ask you to step up and see her presently."
+
+"Perhaps you were a bit too sharp with her."
+
+The girl sniffed resentfully. "Good riddance if she goes," she called
+after her mother.
+
+Mrs Simons knocked perfunctorily at the dining-room door.
+
+A young voice bade her come in. "I wanted to tell you that I heard
+from my cousins in Italy this morning. I am going to stay with them
+for a little, so I shall be leaving you at the end of the week."
+
+The landlady's cold stare was disconcerting. There was a distinct note
+of disapproval in her voice as she answered, "I do not know much about
+Italy." She seemed to think it not quite a seemly subject, yet she
+pursued it. "I should have thought it was better for a young lady
+without parents or friends to find some occupation in her own
+country."
+
+Olive smiled. "Ah, but I hate boiled potatoes, and I think I shall
+love Italy and Italian cooking. You remember the Athenians who were
+always seeking some new thing? They had a good time, Mrs Simons."
+
+"I hope you may not live to wish those words unsaid, miss," the woman
+answered primly. "You have as good as sold your birthright, as Esau
+did, in that speech."
+
+"He was much nicer than Jacob."
+
+"Oh, miss, how can you! But, after all, I suppose you are not
+altogether one of us since you have foreign cousins. What's bred in
+the bone comes out in the flesh they say."
+
+"I am quite English, if that is what you mean. My aunt married an
+Italian."
+
+Mrs Simons's eyes had wandered from the girl's face to the heavy
+chandelier tied up in yellow muslin, and thence, by way of "Bubbles,"
+framed in tarnished gilt, to the door. "Ah, well, I shall take your
+notice," she said finally.
+
+She went down again into the kitchen. "I never know where to have
+her," she complained. "There's something queer and foreign about her
+for all she says. What's bred in the bone! I said that to her face,
+and I repeat it to you, Gwendolen."
+
+Mrs Simons might have added that adventures are to the adventurous.
+Olive's father was Jack Agar, of the Agars of Lyme, and he married his
+cousin. If Mrs Simons had known all that must be implied in this
+statement she might have held forth at some length on the subject of
+heredity, and have traced the girl's dislike of boiled potatoes to her
+great-great-uncle's friendship with Lord Byron, and her longing for
+sunshine to a still more remote ancestress, lady-in-waiting to a
+princess at the court of Le Roi Soleil.
+
+Adventures to the adventurous! The Agars were always aware of the
+magnificent possibilities of life and love, and inclined to ignore the
+unpleasant actualities of existence and the married state; hence some
+remarkable histories, and, in the end, ruin. Olive was the last of the
+old name. Jack Agar had died at thirty, leaving his wife and child
+totally unprovided for but for the little annuity that had sufficed
+for dress in the far-off salad days, and that now must be made to
+maintain them. Olive was sent to a cheap boarding-school, where she
+proved herself a fool at arithmetic; history, very good; conduct,
+fair; according to her reports. She was not happy there. She hated
+muddy walks and ink-stained desks and plain dumpling, and all these
+things seemed to be an essential part of life at Miss Blake's.
+
+She left at eighteen, and thereafter she and her mother lived together
+in lodgings at various seaside resorts within their means, practising
+a strict economy, improving their minds at the free library, doing
+their own dressmaking, and keeping body and soul together on potted
+meats, cocoa and patent cereals. Mary Agar rebelled sometimes in
+secret, regretting the lack of "opportunities," _i.e._, of possible
+husbands. She would have been glad to see her daughter settled. The
+Agars never used commonsense in affairs of the heart. Her own marriage
+had been very foolish from a worldly point of view, and her sister
+Alice had run away with her music-master.
+
+"In those days girls had a governess at home and finished with
+masters, and young Signor Menotti came twice a week to our house in
+Russell Square to teach Alice the guitar and mandoline. We shared
+singing and French lessons, but she had him to herself. He was very
+good-looking, dark, and rather haggard, and just shabby enough to make
+one sorry for him. When Alice said she would marry him mamma was
+furious, but she was just of age, and she had a little money of her
+own, an annuity as I have, and she went her own way. They were
+married at a registry office, I think, and soon afterwards they went
+to his home in Italy. Mamma never forgave, but Alice and I used to
+write to each other, and her eldest child was called after me. I don't
+know how it turned out. She never said she was unhappy, but she died
+after eight years, leaving her three little girls to be brought up by
+their father's sister."
+
+Olive knew little more than this of her aunt. Further questioning
+elicited the fact that Signor Menotti's name was Ernesto.
+
+"The girls are your cousins, Olive dear, and you have no other
+relations. I should like to see them."
+
+"So should I."
+
+Olive knew all about the annuity, but she had not realised until her
+mother died quite suddenly, of heart failure after influenza, what it
+means to have no money at all. She was dazed with grief at first, and
+Mrs Simons was as kind as could be expected and did not thrust the
+weekly bill upon her on the morning after the funeral, though it was
+due on that day. But lodgers are not supposed to give much trouble,
+and though death is not quite so heinous as infectious disease or ink
+spilt on the carpet it is still distinctly not a thing to be
+encouraged by too great a display of sympathy, and Olive was soon made
+to understand that it behoved her to seek some means of livelihood,
+some way out into the world.
+
+No proverb is too hackneyed to be comforting at times, and the girl
+reminded herself that blood is thicker than water as she looked among
+her mother's papers for the Menotti address. They were her cousins,
+birds of a feather. She wrote them a queer, shy, charming letter in
+strange Italian, laboriously learnt out of a grammar, and then--since
+some days must elapse before she could get any answer--she
+conscientiously studied the advertisement columns of the papers. She
+might be a nursery governess if only she could be sure of herself at
+long division, or--horrid alternative--a useful help. Mrs Simons
+suggested a shop.
+
+"You have a nice appearance, miss. Perhaps you would do as one of the
+young ladies in the drapery department, beginning with the tapes and
+thread and ribbon counter, you know, and working your way up to the
+showroom."
+
+But Olive altogether declined to be a young lady.
+
+She waited anxiously for her cousins' letter, and it meant so much to
+her that when it came she was half afraid to open it.
+
+It was grotesquely addressed to the
+
+    Genteel Miss Agar Olive,
+            Marsden Street, 159,
+                Brighton,
+              Provincia di Sussex,
+                    Inghilterra.
+
+The post-mark was Siena. It was stamped on the flap, which was also
+decorated with a blue bird carrying a rose in its beak, and was rather
+strongly scented.
+
+    "DEAR COUSIN,--We were so pleased and interested to hear
+    from you, though we greatly regret to have the news of
+    our aunt's death. Our father's sister lives with us
+    since we are orphans. She is a widow and has no children
+    of her own. If you can pay us fifteen lire a week we
+    shall be satisfied, and we will try to get you pupils
+    for English. Kindly let us know the date and hour of
+    your arrival.--Believe us, yours devotedly,
+
+                    "MARIA, GEMMA and CARMELA."
+
+Olive read it carefully twice over, and then sat down at the table and
+began to scribble on the back of the envelope. She convinced herself
+that three times fifteen was forty-five, and that so many lire
+amounted to not quite two pounds. Then there was the fare out to be
+reckoned. Finally, she decided that she would be able to get out to
+Italy and to live there for three weeks before she need call herself
+penniless.
+
+She went to the window and stood for a while looking out. The houses
+opposite and all down the road were exactly alike, all featureless and
+grey, roofed with slate, three-storied, with basement kitchens. Nearly
+every one of them had "Apartments" in gilt letters on the fanlight
+over the front door. It was raining. The pavements were wet and there
+was mud on the roadway. The woman who lived in the corner house was
+spring-cleaning. Olive saw her helping the servant to take down the
+curtains in the front room. Dust and tea-leaves and last year's
+cobwebs. It occurred to her that spring would bring a recurrence of
+these things only if she became a useful help, as she must if she
+stayed in England and earned her living as best she could--only these
+and nothing more. The idea was horrible and she shuddered at it. "I
+shall go," she said aloud. "I shall go."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Olive, advised by a clerk in Cook's office, had taken a through ticket
+to Siena, third class to Dover, first on the boat, second in France
+and Italy. She got to Victoria in good time, had her luggage labelled,
+secured a corner seat, and, having twenty minutes to spare, strolled
+round the bookstall, eyeing the illustrated weeklies and the cheap
+reprints. The blue and gold of a shilling edition of Keats lay ready
+to her hand and she picked it up and opened it.
+
+The girl, true lover of all beauty, flushed with pleasure at the dear,
+familiar word music, the sound of Arcadian pipes heard faintly for a
+moment above the harsh roar of London. For her the dead poet's voice
+rose clearly through the clamour of the living; it was like the silver
+wailing of a violin in a blaring discord of brass instruments.
+
+She laid down the book reluctantly, and turning, met the eager eyes of
+the man who stood beside her. He had just bought an armful of current
+literature, and his business at the bookstall was evidently done, yet
+he lingered for an appreciable instant. He, too, was a lover of
+beauty, and in his heart he was saying, "Oh, English rose!"
+
+He did not look English himself. He wore his black hair rather longer
+than is usual in this country, and there was a curiously vivid look, a
+suggestion of fire about him, which is conspicuously lacking in the
+average Briton, whose ambition it is to look as cool as possible. His
+face was thin and his eyes were deep set, like those of Julius
+Caesar--in fact, the girl was strongly reminded of the emperor's bust
+in the British Museum. He looked about thirty-five, but might have
+been older.
+
+All this Olive saw in the brief instant during which they stood there
+together and aware of each other. When he turned away she bought some
+magazines, without any great regard for their interest or suitability,
+and went to take her place in the third-class compartment she had
+selected.
+
+He would travel first, of course. She watched his leisurely progress
+along the platform, and noted that he was taller than any of the other
+men there, and better-looking. His thin, clean-shaven face compelled
+attention; she saw some women looking at him, and was pleased to
+observe that he did not even glance at them. Then people came hurrying
+up to the door of her compartment to say good-bye to some of her
+fellow-travellers, and she lost sight of him.
+
+The train started and passed through the arid wilderness of backyards
+that lies between each one of the London termini and the clean green
+country.
+
+Olive fluttered the pages of her magazine, but she felt disinclined
+to read. She was pretty; her brown hair framed a rose-tinted face, her
+smile was charming, her blue eyes were gay and honest and kind. Men
+often looked at her, and it cannot be denied that the swift
+appraisement of masculine eyes, the momentary homage of a glance that
+said "you are fair," meant something to her. Such tributes to her
+beauty were minor joys, to be classed with the pleasure to be derived
+from _marrons glaces_ or the scent of violets, but the remembrance of
+them did not often make her dream by day or bring a flush to her
+cheeks.
+
+She roused herself presently and began to look out of the window with
+the remorseful feeling of one who has been neglecting an old friend
+for an acquaintance. After all, this was England, where she was born
+and where her mother had died, and she was leaving it perhaps for
+ever. She tried to fix the varying aspects of the spring in her mind
+for future reference; the tender green of the young larches in the
+plantation, the pale gold of the primroses, and the flowering gorse
+close to the line, the square grey towers of the village churches,
+even the cold, pinched faces of the people waiting on the platforms of
+the little stations. Italy would be otherwise, and she might never see
+these familiar things again.
+
+When the train rushed out on to the pier at Dover she dared not look
+back at the white cliffs, but kept her eyes resolutely seaward. The
+wind was high, and she heard that the crossing would be rough. Caesar
+was close behind her, and she caught a glimpse of him going aft as she
+made her way to the ladies' cabin.
+
+She lay down on one of the red velvet divans in the stuffy saloon, and
+closed her eyes as she had been advised to do, and in ten minutes her
+misery was complete.
+
+"If you are going to be ill nothing will stop you," observed the
+sympathetic stewardess. "It is like Monte Carlo. Most people have a
+system, and sometimes they win, but they are bound to lose in the end.
+Champagne, munching biscuits, patent medicines, lying down as you are
+now. It is all vanity and vexation of spirit, my dear."
+
+Olive joined feebly in her laugh. "I feel better now. Are we nearly
+there?"
+
+"Just coming into harbour."
+
+"Thank heaven!"
+
+When Olive crawled up on deck her one idea, after her luggage, was to
+avoid anyone who had seemed to admire her. She could not bear that the
+man should see her green face, and she was grateful to him for keeping
+his distance in the crush to get off the boat, and for disappearing
+altogether in the station. A porter in a blue linen blouse piloted her
+to the waiting train, and she climbed into the compartment labelled
+"Turin," and settled herself in a window seat.
+
+The country between Calais and Paris can only be described as flat,
+stale and unprofitable by a beauty lover panting for the light and
+glow and colour of the South, and Olive soon got a book out of her bag
+and began to read. Her only fellow-passenger, a middle-aged English
+lady with an indefinite face, spoke to her presently. "You are reading
+a French novel?"
+
+"No, it is in Italian. _La Citta Morta_, by Gabriele D'Annunzio. I
+want to rub up my few words of the language."
+
+"Is he not a very terrible writer?"
+
+Olive was so tired of the disapproving note. "He writes very well, and
+his descriptions are gorgeous. Of course he is horrid sometimes, but
+one can skip those parts."
+
+"Do you?"
+
+Olive smiled. "No, I do not," she said frankly, "but I don't enjoy
+them. They make me tired of life."
+
+"Is not that rather a pity?"
+
+"Perhaps; but you have to sift dirt to find diamonds, don't you? And
+this man says things that are worth tiaras sometimes."
+
+"Surely there must be Italian authors who write books suitable for
+young people in a pretty style?"
+
+"A pretty style? No doubt. But I don't read them."
+
+The older woman sighed, and then smiled quite pleasantly. "I suppose
+you are clever. One of my nieces is, and they find her rather a
+handful. Will you try one of my sandwiches?"
+
+Olive produced her biscuits and bananas, and they munched together in
+amity. After all, an aunt might be worse than stupid, and this one was
+quite good-natured, and so kind that her taste in literature might be
+excused. There were affectionate farewells at the Paris station, where
+she got out with all her accumulation of bags and bundles.
+
+The train rushed on through the woods of Fontainebleau and across wide
+plains intersected by poplar-fringed canals. As the evening mists rose
+lights began to twinkle in cottage windows, and in the villages the
+church bells were ringing the prayer to the Virgin. Olive had laid
+aside her book some time since, and now, wearying of the grey twilit
+world, she fell asleep.
+
+Jean Avenel, too, had watched the waning of the day from his place in
+a smoking first for a while, before he got up and began to prowl
+restlessly about the corridors. "She will be so tired if she does not
+eat," he said to himself. "They ought not to let a child like that
+travel alone. I wonder--" He walked down the corridor again, but this
+time he looked into each compartment. He saw three Englishmen and an
+American playing whist, Germans eating, and French people sleeping,
+and at last he came upon his rose. A small man, mean-featured and
+scrubby-haired, was seated opposite to her, and his shining eyes were
+fixed upon her face. She had taken off her hat and was holding it on
+her lap, and Jean saw that she was clutching at it nervously, and
+that she was pale. He understood that it was probably her first
+experience of the Italian stare, deliberate, merciless, and
+indefinitely prolonged. She flushed as he came forward, and her eyes
+were eloquent as they met his. He sat down beside her.
+
+"Please forgive me," he said quietly, "but I can see this man is
+annoying you. Shall I glare him out of the place? I can."
+
+"Oh, please do," she answered. "He has frightened me so. He was
+talking before you came."
+
+The culprit already looked disconcerted and rather foolish, and now,
+as Jean leant forward and seemed about to speak to him, he began to be
+frightened. He fidgeted, thrusting his hands in his pockets, looking
+out of the window, humming a tune. His ears grew red. He tried to meet
+the other man's level gaze and failed. He got up rather hurriedly. The
+brown eyes watched him slinking out before they allowed themselves a
+second sight of the rose.
+
+"Thank you so much," said Olive. "I feel as if you had killed a spider
+for me, or an earwig. He was more like an earwig. He must have come in
+here while I was asleep."
+
+"A deported waiter going back to his native Naples, I imagine," Jean
+said. "They ought not to have let you travel alone."
+
+She smiled. "I am a law unto myself."
+
+"That is a pity. Will you think me very impertinent if I confess that
+I have been watching over you--at a respectful distance--ever since we
+left Victoria? I do not approve of children wandering--"
+
+She tilted her pretty chin at him. "Children! So you have made
+yourself into a sort of G.F.S. for me?"
+
+"You know," he said gravely, "we have a mutual friend." He drew a blue
+and gold volume from an inner pocket.
+
+Olive flushed scarlet, but she only said, "Oh, Keats!"
+
+She looked at his hands as they turned the pages; they were clever and
+kind, she thought, and she wondered if he was an artist or a doctor.
+Those fingers might set a butterfly's wing, and yet they seemed very
+strong. She did not know she had sighed until he said, "Am I boring
+you?"
+
+"Oh, no," she answered eagerly. "Please don't go yet unless you want
+to. But tell me why you bought that book?"
+
+"If you could have seen yourself as I saw you, you would understand,"
+he answered. "I once saw a woman on my brother's estate pick up a
+piece of gold on the road. She had never had so much money without
+earning it in her life before, I suppose. At any rate she kissed it,
+and her face was radiant. She was old and ugly and worn by her long
+days of toil in the fields, and you-- Well, in spite of the
+differences you reminded me of her, and I am curious to know which
+poem of Keats brought that swift, rapt light of joy."
+
+"It was 'White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine'--"
+
+Jean found the place and marked the passage before returning the book
+to his pocket. "Now," he said, "you will come with me and have some
+dinner."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Many women are shepherded through all life's journeyings by their
+men--fathers, brothers, husbands--who look out their trains for them,
+put them in the care of guards, and shield them from all contact with
+sulky porters and extortionate cabmen. Olive, who had always to take
+her own ticket and fight her own and her mother's battles, now tasted
+the joys of irresponsibility with Avenel. He compounded with Customs
+officials, who bowed low before him, he took part in the midnight
+scramble for pillows at Modane, emerging from the crowd in triumph
+with no less than three of the coveted aids to repose under his arm,
+and he saw Olive comfortably settled in another compartment with two
+motherly German women, and there left her.
+
+At Turin he secured places in the _diretto_ to Florence, and sent his
+man to the buffet for coffee and rolls, and the two broke their fast
+together.
+
+"Italy and the joy of life," Olive said lightly, as she lifted her
+cup, and he looked at her with melancholy brown eyes that yet held the
+ghost of a smile.
+
+"The passing hour," he answered; adding prosaically, "This is good
+coffee."
+
+Referring to the grey silvery trees whose name she bore he assured
+her that he did not think she resembled them. "They are old and you
+seem eternally young. You should have been called Primavera."
+
+She laughed. "Ah, if you had been my godfather--"
+
+"I should not have cared to have held you in my arms when you were a
+bald-headed baby," he answered with perfect gravity.
+
+Apparently he always said what he thought, but his frankness was
+disconcerting, and Olive changed the subject.
+
+"Is Siena beautiful?"
+
+"It is a gem of the Renaissance, and you will love it as I do, I know,
+but I wish you could have seen Florence first. My brother has a villa
+at Settignano and I am going there now. The fruit trees in the orchard
+will be all white with blossom. You remember Romeo's April oath: 'By
+yonder moon that tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops--'"
+
+They lunched in the station restaurant at Genoa, and there he bought
+the girl a basket of fruit. "A poor substitute for the tea you will be
+wanting presently," he explained. "You have no tea-basket with you?
+You will want one if you are going to live with Italians."
+
+"I never thought of it."
+
+"May I send you one?" he asked eagerly. "Do let me."
+
+Olive flushed with pleasure. No one had been so kind to her since her
+mother died. Evidently he liked her--oh! he liked her very much. She
+suddenly realised how much she would miss him when they parted at
+Florence and she had to go on alone. It had been so good to be with
+someone stronger than herself who would take care of her. He had
+seemed happy too, and she thought he looked younger now than he did
+when she first saw him standing by the bookstall at Victoria station.
+
+"It is very good of you," she said. "I should like it. Thank you. I--I
+shall be sorry to say good-bye."
+
+He met her wistful eyes gravely. "I should like you to know that I
+shall never forget this day," he said. "I shall never cease to be
+grateful to you for being so--for being what you are. My wife is
+different."
+
+"Your wife--"
+
+"I don't live with her."
+
+He took a card from his case presently and scribbled an address on it.
+"I dare not hope that I shall ever hear from you again, but that is my
+name, and letters will always be forwarded to me from my brother's
+place. If ever I could do anything--"
+
+She faltered some word of thanks in an uncertain voice. She felt as if
+something had come upon her for which she was unprepared, some shadow
+of the world's pain, some flame of its fires that flickered at her
+heart for a moment and was gone. She was suddenly afraid, not of the
+brown eyes that were fixed so hungrily upon her face, but of herself.
+She could hear the beating of her own heart. The pity of it--the pity
+of it! He was so nice. Why could not they be friends--
+
+The night had fallen long since and they were nearing Florence.
+
+"Don't forget to change at Empoli," he said. "I will send my man on as
+far as that to look after you. Will you let me kiss you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He came over and sat on the seat by her side. "Don't be afraid. I
+won't hurt you," he said gently, and then, seeing her pale, he drew
+back. "No, I won't. It would not be fair. Oh, I beg your pardon! It
+will be enough for me to remember how good you were."
+
+The train passed into the lighted station, and he stood up and took
+his hat and coat from the rack before he turned to her once more.
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"Has anyone seen our cousin?" asked Gemma as she helped herself to
+_spaghetti_.
+
+Her aunt shrugged her fat shoulders. "No! The _donna di servizio_ is
+mistress here, and she has ordained that the cousin shall not be
+disturbed. She has even locked the door, and she carries the key in
+her pocket."
+
+"It is true," old Carolina said placidly. She was accustomed to join
+in the conversation at table when she chose, and Italian servants are
+allowed great freedom of speech. "You were all in your beds when
+Giovanni Scampo drove her here in his cab this morning or you would
+have seen her then. The poor child is half dead with fatigue. Let her
+sleep, I say. There are veal cutlets to come, Signorina Maria; will
+you have more _spaghetti_?"
+
+"A little more."
+
+The old woman shook her head. "You eat too much."
+
+The Menotti lived in a small stuffy flat on the third floor of 25,
+Piazza Tolomei. It had the one advantage of being central, but was
+otherwise extremely inconvenient. The kitchen was hot and airless, and
+the servant had to sleep in a dark cupboard adjoining, in an
+atmosphere compounded of the scent of cheese, black beetles and old
+boots. There were four bedrooms besides, all opening on to the
+dining-room; and a tiny drawing-room, seldom used and never dusted,
+was filled to overflowing with gilt furniture and decorative fantasies
+in wool work.
+
+The Menotti did not entertain. They met their friends at church, or at
+the theatre, or in the Lizza gardens, where they walked every evening
+in the summer. No man had ever seen them other than well dressed, but
+in the house they wore loose white cotton jackets and old skirts. They
+were _en deshabille_ now, though their heads were elaborately dressed
+and their faces powdered, and Maria's waist was considerably larger
+than it appeared to be when she was socially "visible."
+
+"I must breathe sometimes," she said.
+
+The three girls were inclined to stoutness, but Gemma drank vinegar
+and ate sparingly, and so had succeeded in keeping herself slim
+hitherto, though she was only three years younger than Maria, who was
+twenty-nine and looked forty.
+
+Carmela was podgy, but she might lace or not just as she pleased. No
+one would look at her in any case since her kind, good-humoured, silly
+face was marked with smallpox.
+
+Gemma was the pride of her aunt and the hope of the family. The girls
+were poor, and it is hard for such to find husbands, but she had
+recently become engaged to a young lawyer from Lucca, who had been
+staying with friends in Siena when he saw and fell in love with the
+girl whom the students at the University named the "Odalisque."
+
+Hers was the strange, boding loveliness of a pale orchid. She had no
+colour, but her curved lips were faintly pink, as were the palms of
+her soft, idle hands. "I shall be glad when she is married," her aunt
+said often. "It is very well for Maria or Carmela to go through the
+streets alone, but Gemma is otherwise, and I cannot be always running
+after her. Then her temper ... _Dio mio!_"
+
+"Perhaps it is the vinegar," suggested Carolina rather spitefully.
+
+"No. She wants a husband."
+
+When the dinner was over Signora Carosi went to her room to lie down,
+and her two elder nieces followed her example, but Carmela passed into
+the kitchen with Carolina.
+
+"You will let me see the cousin," she said, wheedling. "Gemma thinks
+she will be ugly, with great teeth and a red face like the
+Englishwomen in the Asino, but I do not believe it."
+
+"If the signorina is hoping for a miracle of plainness she will be
+unpleasantly surprised," said the old woman, and her shrivelled face
+was as mischievous as a monkey's as she drew the key of Olive's room
+from her pocket. "I am going to take her some soup now, and you shall
+come with me."
+
+It is quite impossible to be retiring, or even modest, in the
+mid-Victorian sense, in flats. A bedroom cannot remain an inviolate
+sanctuary when it affords the only means of access to the bathroom or
+is a short cut to the kitchen. Olive had had some experience of
+suburban flats during holidays spent with school friends, and had
+suffered the familiarity that breeds weariness in such close quarters.
+As she woke now she was unpleasantly aware of strangers in the room.
+
+"Only a lover or a nurse may look at a woman while she sleeps without
+offence," she said drowsily. "It is an unpardonable liberty in all
+other classes of the population. Are you swains, or sisters of mercy?"
+She opened her eyes and met Carmela's puzzled stare with laughter. "I
+was saying that when one is ill or in love one can endure many
+things," she explained in halting Italian.
+
+"Ah," Carmela said uncomprehendingly, "I am never ill, _grazia a Dio_,
+but when Maria has an indigestion she is cross, and when Gemma is in
+love her temper is dreadful. Perhaps, being a foreigner, you are
+different. Are you tired?"
+
+"Yes, I am, rather, but go on talking to me. I am not sleepy."
+
+Carmela, nothing loth, drew a chair to the bedside. "You need not get
+up yet," she said comfortably. "We always lie down after dinner until
+five, and later we go for a walk. You will see the Via Cavour full of
+people in the evening, officers and students, and mothers with
+daughters to be married, all walking up and down and looking at each
+other. Orazio Lucis first saw Gemma like that, and he followed us
+home, and then found out who we were and asked questions about us.
+Every day we saw him in the Piazza, smoking cigarettes, and waiting
+for us to go out that he might follow us, and Gemma would give him one
+look, and then cast down her eyes ... so!" Carmela caricatured her
+sister's affectation of unconsciousness very successfully, and looked
+to Olive and Carolina for applause.
+
+The servant grinned appreciation. "Yes, the signorina is very
+_civetta_. I, also, have seen her simpering when the _avvocato_ has
+been here, but she soon gets tired of him, and then her face is as God
+made it."
+
+Olive dressed herself leisurely when they had left her, and unpacked
+her clothes and her little store of books. Her cousins, coming to
+fetch her soon after six o'clock, found her ready to go out, but so
+absorbed in a guide-book of Siena that she did not hear Maria's knock
+at the door.
+
+She had resolved that she would apply art and archaeology as plasters
+to the wound life had given her already. She would stay her heart's
+hunger with moods and tenses, but not of the verb "_amare_." Learning
+and teaching, she might make her mind lord of her emotions.
+
+She came forward rather shyly to meet her cousins. The three together
+were somewhat overpowering, flounced and frilled alike, and highly
+scented. Maria and Carmela fat, pleasant and profuse; Gemma silent,
+with dark resentful eyes and scornful lips that never smiled at other
+women.
+
+"You will show me the best things?" Olive said eagerly when they had
+all kissed her. "I want to see the Duomo first, and then the Palazzo
+Vecchio--but that is only open in the mornings, is it? And this is the
+Piazza Tolomei, so the house where Pia lived must be quite near."
+
+Gemma stared, but made no attempt to answer, and Maria looked
+confused.
+
+"I am afraid you will find us all very stupid, _cara_," said Carmela,
+apologetically. "We only go to the Duomo to pray, and as to museums
+and picture-galleries-- And perhaps I had better tell you now, at
+once, that we do not want to learn English. We have got you several
+lessons through friends, but Maria and Carmela say they will not
+fatigue themselves over a foreign language, and I--"
+
+"Oh," began Olive, "I thought--"
+
+Gemma interrupted her. "A thousand thanks," she said rudely. "We are
+not school children; we read about Pia dei Tolomei years ago at the
+_Scuola Normale_, but we do not consider her an amusing subject of
+conversation now."
+
+The rose in Olive's cheeks deepened. "I shall soon learn to know your
+likes and dislikes," she said, "and to understand your manners."
+
+"I hope so," answered Gemma as she left the room. Maria hurried after
+her, but the younger sister caught at Olive's hand.
+
+"You must not listen to Gemma. Come, we will walk together. Let her go
+on; she cannot forgive your nose for being straight."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+A large parcel addressed to Miss Agar was brought to the house a few
+weeks later. Olive was out giving a lesson when it came, and Gemma
+turned it over, examining the post-mark and the writing.
+
+"Shall I open it and see what is inside? She would never know."
+
+Carmela was horrified. "How can you think of such a thing!"
+
+"Besides, it is sealed," added Maria.
+
+These two liked their cousin well enough, and when they wished to
+tease the Odalisque they called her "_carina_" and praised her fresh
+prettiness. It was always so easy to make Gemma angry, and lately she
+had been more capricious and difficult than ever. Her sisters were
+continually trying to excuse her.
+
+"She is so nervous," Maria said loyally, but her paraphrase availed
+nothing. Olive understood her cousin and disliked her extremely,
+though she accorded her a reluctant admiration.
+
+She came in now with her books--an English grammar and a volume of
+translations--under her arm, and seeing that Gemma was watching her,
+she took her parcel with a carefully expressionless phrase of thanks
+to Carmela, who was anxious to cut the string, and carried it into her
+room unopened. It was the tea-basket Jean Avenel had promised her. She
+read the enclosed note, however, before she looked at it.
+
+    "I am going to America and then to Russia. Do not quite
+    forget me. If ever you need anything write to my
+    brother, Hilaire Avenel, Villa Fiorelli, Settignano,
+    near Florence, and he will serve you for my sake as he
+    would for your own if he knew you. I think I have played
+    better since I have known you, my rose. One must suffer
+    much before one can express the divine sorrow of Chopin.
+    I said I would not write, but some promises are made to
+    be broken. Can you forgive me?
+
+                    "JEAN AVENEL."
+
+America and Russia ... the divine sorrow of Chopin ... I have played
+better.... He was a pianist then, and surely a great one. Olive
+remembered the slender brown hands that had seemed to her so supple
+and so strong. But the name of Avenel was strange to her, and she was
+sure she had never seen it on posters, or in the papers and magazines
+that chronicle the doings of musical celebrities.
+
+She took the tea-things out of the basket one by one and looked at
+them with pleasure. The sugar box and the caddy and the spoon were
+all of silver, and engraved with her initials, and the cup and saucer
+were painted with garlands of pale roses.
+
+Tears filled her eyes as she sat down at the little table in the
+window and began to write.
+
+    "You have sent me a tea equipage fit for an empress! It
+    is perfect, and I do not know how to thank you. Yes. I
+    forgive you for writing. Have I really helped you to
+    play? I am so glad. You say Chopin, so I suppose it is
+    the piano? I must tell you that I remember all the
+    stories you told me of Siena, and they add to the
+    interest of my days. I give English lessons, and am
+    making enough money to keep myself, but in the intervals
+    of grammar and '_I Promessi Sposi_' (no less than three
+    of my pupils are translating that interminable romance
+    into so-called English) I study the architecture of the
+    early Renaissance in the old narrow streets, and gaze
+    upon Byzantine Madonnas in the churches. The Duomo is an
+    archangel's dream, and I like to go there with my
+    cousins and steep my soul in its beauty while they say
+    their prayers and fan themselves. One of them is pretty
+    and she hates me; the other two are stout and kind and
+    empty-headed, and their aunt is nothing--a large, heavy
+    nothing--"
+
+Olive laid down her pen. "What will he think if I write him eight
+pages? That I want to begin a correspondence? I do, but he must not
+know it."
+
+She tore her letter up into small pieces and wrote two lines on a
+sheet of note-paper.
+
+    "Thank you very much for your kind present and for what
+    you say. Of course I forgive you ... and I shall not
+    forget.--Yours sincerely,            OLIVE AGAR."
+
+She went to the window and threw the torn scraps of the first letter
+out into the street, and then she sat down again and began to cry; not
+for long. Women who know how precious youth is understand that tears
+are an expensive luxury, and they are sparing of them accordingly.
+They suffer more in the stern repression of their emotions than do
+those who yield easily to grief, but they keep their eyelashes and
+their complexions.
+
+Olive bathed her eyes presently and smoked a cigarette to calm her
+nerves. She was going out that evening to dine with her favourite
+pupil and his mother, and she knew they would be distressed if she
+looked ill or sad.
+
+Aurelia de Sanctis had had troubles enough of her own. She had married
+a patriot, a man with a beautiful eager face and a body spent with
+disease, and a fever that never left him since the days when he lurked
+in the marshes of the Maremma, crouched in a tangle of wet reeds and
+rushes, and watching for the flash of steel in the sunshine.
+
+Austrian bayonets ... he raved of them in his dreams, and called upon
+the names of comrades who had rotted in prisons or died in exile. His
+young wife nursed him devotedly until he died, leaving her a widow at
+twenty-seven. She had a small pension from the Government, and she
+worked at dressmaking to eke it out.
+
+Her only child had grown up to be a hopeless invalid. He could not go
+to school, so he lay all day on the sofa by the window in the tiny
+sitting-room and helped his mother with her sewing. His poor little
+bony hands were very quick and dexterous.
+
+In the evenings he read everything he could get hold of, books and
+newspapers. The professors from the University, who came to see him
+and were kind to him for his father's sake, told each other that he
+was a genius and that his soul was eating up his frail body. They
+wondered, pitifully, what poor Signora Aurelia would do when--
+
+The mother was hopeful, however. "He takes such an interest in
+everything that I think he must have a strong vitality though he seems
+delicate," she said.
+
+He had expressed a wish to learn English, and when Signora Aurelia
+first heard of Olive she wrote asking her to come and see her. The De
+Sancti lived a little way outside the Porta Romana, on the edge of the
+hill and outside the town, and Maria advised her cousin not to go
+there.
+
+"It is so far out on a hot dusty road, and you will grow as thin and
+dry as an old hen's drumstick if you walk so much. And I know the
+signora is poor and will not be able to pay well."
+
+Olive went, nevertheless. Signora Aurelia herself opened the door to
+her and showed evident pleasure at seeing her. The poor woman had been
+beautiful, and now that she was worn by time and sorrow she still
+looked like a goddess, exiled to earth, and altogether shabby--a deity
+in reduced circumstances--but none the less divinely fair and kind.
+Her great love for her child had so moulded her that she seemed the
+very incarnation of motherhood. So might Ceres have appeared as she
+wandered forlornly in search of her lost Persephone, gentle, weary,
+her fineness a little blunted by her woes.
+
+"Are you the English signorina? Come in! My son will be so pleased,"
+she said as she led the girl into the room where Astorre was working
+at embroidery.
+
+Olive saw a boy of seventeen sewing as he lay on the sofa. There were
+some books on the floor within his reach, and a glass of lemonade was
+set upon the window-sill, but he seemed quite absorbed in making fine
+stitches. He looked up, however, as they came in and smiled at his
+mother.
+
+"I have nearly finished," he said. "Presently I shall read the
+sonnet, '_Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra_,' to refresh
+myself."
+
+"This is the signorina who teaches English, _nino mio_."
+
+His face lit up at once and he held out his hand. "I have already
+studied the grammar, but the pronunciation ... ah! that will be hard
+to learn. Will you help me, signorina?"
+
+"Yes, indeed I will. We will read and talk together, and soon you will
+speak English better than I can Italian."
+
+As she spoke and smiled her heart ached to see the hollowness of his
+cheeks and the lines of pain about his young mouth. She guessed that
+his poor body was all twisted and deformed under the rug that covered
+it. Signora Aurelia took her out on to their little terrace garden
+before she left. Twenty miles and more of fair Tuscan earth lay at
+their feet, grey olive groves and green vineyards, and the hills
+beyond all shimmering in the first heat of spring. Olive exclaimed at
+the beauty of the world.
+
+"Yes. On summer evenings Astorre can lie here and watch what he calls
+the pageant of the skies. The poor child is so fond of colour. I know
+you will be very patient with him, signorina. He is so clever, but
+some days he is in pain, and then he gets tired and so cannot learn so
+well. You have kindly promised to come twice a week, but I must tell
+you that I am not rich--" She looked at Olive wistfully.
+
+The girl dared not offer to teach Astorre for nothing. "I can see your
+son will be a very good pupil," she said hastily. "Would one lire the
+lesson suit you?"
+
+"Oh, yes," the signora said with evident relief. "But are you sure
+that is enough? You must not sacrifice yourself, my dear--"
+
+"It will be a pleasure to come," Olive said very sincerely.
+
+The acquaintance soon ripened into a triangular friendship. The
+signora grew to love the girl because she amused Astorre and was never
+obviously sorry for him, or too gentle with him, as were some of the
+well-meaning people who came to see the boy. "An overflow of pity is
+like grease exuding," he said once. "I hate it."
+
+He was very old for his years. He had read everything apparently, and
+he discussed problems of life and death with the air of a man of
+forty. He had no illusions about himself. "I shall die," he said once
+to Olive when his mother was not in the room. "My father gave me a
+spirit that burns like Greek fire and a body like--like a spent
+shell."
+
+The easy, desultory lessons were often prolonged, and then the girl
+stayed to dinner and played dominoes afterwards with him or with his
+mother until ten o'clock, when old Carolina came to fetch her home.
+The withered little serving-woman was voluble, and always cheerfully
+ready to lighten the way with descriptions of the last moments of her
+children. She had had thirteen, and two were still surviving. "One
+grows accustomed, _signorina mia_--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"You have been crying," Astorre said abruptly.
+
+Olive leant against the balustrade of the little terrace. She was
+watching the fireflies that sparkled in the dusk of the vineyards in
+the valley below. A breeze had risen from the sea at sunset, and it
+stirred the leaves of the climbing roses and brought a faint sound of
+convent bells far away. Some stars shone in the clear pale sky.
+
+Dinner had been cleared away, and Signora Aurelia had gone in to
+finish a white dress she was making for a bride. Olive had offered to
+help her. "I would rather you amused yourself with Astorre. I can see
+you are tired," she had answered as she left them together.
+
+"You have been crying," the boy repeated insistently.
+
+She smiled at him then. "May I not shed tears if I choose?"
+
+"I must know why," he answered.
+
+"Oh, a castle in Spain."
+
+He looked at her searchingly. "And a castellan?"
+
+"Yes. I want a man, and I cannot have him. _Ecco!_"
+
+She did not expect him to take her seriously, but he was often
+perversely inclined. "Of course," he said in a matter-of-fact tone,
+"all women want a man or men. Do you think I have been lying here all
+these years without finding that out? That need is the mainspring of
+life, the key to heaven, and the root of all evil. If--if I were
+different someone would want me--" His voice broke.
+
+Olive looked away from him. "How still the night is," she said. "The
+nightingales are singing in the woods below, Astorre. Do you hear
+them?"
+
+"I am not deaf," he answered in a muffled voice, "I hear them. Will
+you hear me?"
+
+Watching her closely he saw that she shrank from him. "Do not be
+afraid," he said gruffly. "I am not going to be a fool. No man on
+earth is worth your tears. That is all I wanted to say."
+
+"Ah, child, you are young for all your wisdom. I was not sorry for him
+but for myself."
+
+"Liar!" he cried petulantly, and then caught at her hand. "Forgive me!
+Come now and read me a sonnet of your Keats and then translate it to
+me."
+
+Obediently she stooped to pick up the book. The flame of the little
+lamp on the table at his side burned steadily.
+
+He lay with closed eyes and lips that moved, repeating the words after
+her. "It is very good to listen to your voice while you are here with
+me alone under the stars," he said presently. "Tell me, does this man
+love you?"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Does he love you?"
+
+"I think he did, but perhaps he has forgotten me now."
+
+"I love you," the boy said deliberately.
+
+"I cannot come again if you talk like this, Astorre."
+
+"I shall never say it again," he answered, "but I want you to remember
+that it is so, because it may comfort you. Such words never come amiss
+to women. They feed on the hunger of our hearts."
+
+"Don't say that!" she cried. "It is true that I like you to be fond of
+me, and I love you. In the best way, Astorre--oh, do believe that it
+is the best way!"
+
+"With your soul, I suppose? Do you think I am an angel because I am a
+cripple?" he asked bitterly.
+
+"I am sorry--"
+
+"Poor little girl," he said more gently, "I have hurt you instead of
+comforting you, as I meant to do. But how can I give what is not mine?
+How can I cry 'Peace,' when there is no peace? You will suffer still
+when I am at rest."
+
+The boy's mother put down her work presently and came out to them, and
+the three sat silently watching the moon rise beyond the hills. It was
+as though a veil had been withdrawn to show the glimmer of distant
+streams, the white walls of peasant dwellings set among their vines,
+the belfry tower of an old Carthusian monastery belted in by tall dark
+cypresses, and the twisted shadows thrown by the gnarled trunks and
+outstanding roots of the olive trees.
+
+"All blue and silver," cried the girl after a while. "Thank God for
+Italy!"
+
+"She has cost her children dear," the elder woman answered, sighing.
+"Beyond that rampart of hills lies the Maremma, and swamps, marshes,
+forests are to be drained now, they say, and made profitable. You will
+see some peasants from over there in our streets at the time of the
+Palio. Poor souls! They are so lean and haggard and yellow that their
+bones seem to be piercing through their discoloured skins."
+
+"The Palio! I think Signor Lucis is coming to Siena to see it," Olive
+said.
+
+"Is that the man your cousin Gemma is to marry?" the dressmaker asked
+curiously. "I had heard that she was engaged, but one hears so many
+things. Do you like her?"
+
+"Not very much, but really I see very little of her. I am out all day
+teaching."
+
+The door-bell clanged as the girl rose to go. "That is Carolina come
+for her stray sheep," she said, smiling. "They will not believe that I
+can come home by myself at night."
+
+"They are quite right. If your aunt's servant did not come for you I
+should take you back to the Piazza Tolomei myself."
+
+"You forget that I am English."
+
+Olive never attempted to explain her code; she stated her nationality
+and went on her way. Her first pupils had all been young girls, but as
+it became known that she was really English her circle widened. The
+prior of a Dominican convent near San Giorgio, and two privates from a
+regiment of Lancers stationed in the Fortezza, came to her to be
+taught, and some of Astorre's friends, students at the University,
+were very anxious for lessons, and as the Menotti refused to have them
+in their house Olive had to hire a room to receive them.
+
+The aunt disapproved. "It is not right," she said, and when Olive
+assured her that she could not afford to lose good pupils she shook
+her large head.
+
+"You will go your own way, I suppose, but do not bring your men here.
+I cannot have soldiers scratching up the carpet with their spurs, or
+monks dropping snuff on it."
+
+Olive's days were filled, and she, having no time for the
+self-tormentings of idle women, was content to be not quite unhappy.
+She needed love and could not rest without it, and she was at least
+partially satisfied. Astorre and his mother adored her, thought her
+perfect, held her dear. All her pupils seemed to like her, and some of
+the students brought her little gifts of flowers, and packets of
+chocolate and almond-rock that Maria ate for her. The prior gave her a
+plaster statuette of St Catherine. "She was clever, and so are you,"
+he said.
+
+"Carmela, I am not really _antipatica_?"
+
+"What foolishness! No."
+
+"Why does Gemma hate me then? No one else does, or if they do they
+hide it, but she looks daggers at me always."
+
+Carmela had been invited to tea in her cousin's bedroom. The water did
+not boil yet, but her mouth was already full of cake.
+
+"What happened the other night when Gemma let you in?" she mumbled.
+
+"Did she say anything to you?"
+
+"No, but I am not blind or deaf. You have not spoken to each other
+since."
+
+Olive lifted the kettle off the spirit lamp. "You like it weak, I
+know."
+
+"Yes, and three lumps of sugar. Tell me what happened, _cara_."
+
+"Well, as I came up the stairs that night I noticed a strong scent of
+tobacco--good tobacco. Sienese boys smoke cheap cigarettes, and the
+older men get black Tuscan cigars, but this was different. It reminded
+me of-- Oh, well, never mind. When I came to the first landing I felt
+sure there was someone standing close against the wall waiting for me
+to go by, and yet when I spoke no one answered. You know how dark it
+is on the stairs at night. I could not see anything, but I listened,
+and, Carmela, a watch was ticking quite near me, by my ear. I could
+not move for a moment, and then I heard Carolina calling--she was
+with me, you know, but she had gone up first--and I got up somehow.
+Gemma let us in. She said she had been asleep, and I noticed that her
+hair was all loose and tumbled. I told her I fancied there was someone
+lurking on the stairs, and she said it must have been the cat, but I
+knew from the way she said it that she was angry. She lit her candle
+and marched off into her own room without saying good-night, and I was
+sorry because I have always wanted to be friends with her. I thought I
+would try to say something about it, so I went to her door and
+knocked. She opened it directly. 'Go away, spy,' she said very
+distinctly, and then I grew angry too. I laughed. 'So there was a man
+on the stairs,' I said."
+
+Carmela stirred her tea thoughtfully. "Ah!" she said. "How nice these
+spoons are. I wish you would tell me who gave them to you."
+
+She helped herself to another cake. "Gemma is difficult, and we shall
+all be glad when September comes and she is safely married. She is
+lazy. You have seen us of a morning, cutting out, basting, stitching
+at her wedding clothes, while she sits with her hands folded. Are you
+coming out with us this evening?"
+
+The Menotti strolled down to the Lizza nearly every day after the
+_siesta_, and Carmela often persuaded her cousin to accompany them.
+The gardens were set on an outlying spur of the hill on which the
+wolf's foster son, Remus, built the city that was to be fairer than
+Rome. The winter winds, coming swiftly from the sea, whipped the
+laurels into strange shapes, shook the brown seed pods from the bare
+boughs of the acacias, and froze the water that dripped from the
+Medicean balls on the old wall of the Fortezza. Even in summer a
+little breeze would spring up towards sunset, and the leaves that had
+hung heavy and flaccid on the trees in the blazing heat of noon would
+be stirred by it to some semblance of life, while the shadows
+lengthened, and the incessant maddening scream of the locusts died
+down into silence. The gardens were a favourite resort. As the church
+bells rang the Ave Maria the people came to them by Camollia and San
+Domenico, to see each other and to talk over the news of the day.
+
+Smart be-ribboned nurses carrying babies on white silk cushions tied
+with pink or blue rosettes, young married women with their children,
+stout mothers chaperoning the elaborate vivacity of their daughters,
+occupied seats near the bandstand, or lingered about the paths as they
+chattered and fanned themselves incessantly to the strains of the
+Intermezzo from _Cavalleria Rusticana_ or some march of Verdi's. A
+great gulf was fixed between the sexes on these occasions. The young
+men congregated about the base of Garibaldi's statue; more or less
+gilded youths devoted to "le Sport," wearing black woollen jerseys
+and perforated cycling shoes, while lady-killers braved strangulation
+in four-inch collars. There were soldiers too, cavalry lieutenants,
+slender, erect, and very conscious of their charms, and dark-faced
+priests, who listened to the music carefully with their eyes fixed on
+the ground, as being in the crowd but not of it. Olive watched them
+all with mingled amusement and impatience. If only the boys would talk
+to their friends' sisters instead of eyeing them furtively from afar;
+if only the girls would refrain from useless needlework and empty
+laughter. They talked incessantly and called every mortal--and
+immortal--thing _carina_. Queen Margherita was _carina_, and so was
+the new cross-stitch, and so was this blue-eyed Olive. Yes, they
+admitted her alien charm. She was _strana_, too, but they did not use
+that word when she was there or she would have rejoiced over such an
+enlargement of their vocabulary.
+
+"They are amiable," she told Astorre, "but we have not one idea in
+common."
+
+"Ah," he said, "can one woman ever praise another without that 'but'?
+Do you think them pretty?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, but one does not notice them when Gemma is there."
+
+"That is the pale one, isn't it? I have heard of her from the
+students, and also from the professors of the University. One of my
+friends raves about her Greek profile and her straight black brows. He
+calls her his silent Sappho, but I fancy Odalisque is a better name
+for her. There is no brain or heart, is there?"
+
+"I don't know," she answered uncertainly. "She seldom speaks to
+anyone, never to me."
+
+"She is jealous of you probably."
+
+The heats of July tried the boy. He was not so well as he had been in
+the spring, and lately he had not been able to help his mother with
+her needlework. The hours of enforced idleness seemed very long, and
+he watched for Olive's coming with pathetic eagerness. She never
+failed to appear on Tuesdays and Saturdays, though the lessons had
+been given up since his head ached when he tried to learn. Signora
+Aurelia met her always at the door with protestations of gratitude.
+"You amuse him and make him laugh, my dear, because you are so fresh,
+and you do not mind what you say. It is good of you to come so far in
+the sun."
+
+The girl's heart ached to see the haggard young face so white against
+the dark velvet of the piled-up cushions. The deep grey eyes lit up
+with pleasure at the sight of her, but she found it hard to meet their
+yearning with a smile.
+
+Sometimes she found old men sitting with him, grave and potent
+signiors, professors from the University, who, on being introduced,
+beamed paternally and asked her questions about Oxford and Cambridge.
+There were bashful youths too, who blushed when she entered and rose
+hurriedly with muttered excuses. If they could be induced to stay,
+Olive, seeing that it pleased Astorre to see them shuffling their feet
+and writhing on their chairs in an agony of embarrassment before her,
+did her best to make them uncomfortable.
+
+"Your friends are all so timid," she said. He looked at her with a
+kind of triumph, a pride of possession.
+
+"They do not understand you as I do. Fausto admires you, but you
+frighten him."
+
+"Is he Gemma's adorer?" she asked with a careful display of
+indifference.
+
+"Yes, he is always _amoroso_."
+
+"Ah! Does he smoke?"
+
+"Yes. Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothing," she said. She did not really believe that the man on
+the stairs could have been Fausto. Gemma would not look twice at such
+a harmless infant now. When she was forty-five, perhaps, she might
+smile on boys, but at twenty-six--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Olive sat in her little bedroom correcting exercises.
+
+It was the drowsy middle of the afternoon and the heat was intense.
+All the grey-green and golden land of Tuscany lay still and helpless
+at the mercy of the sun. The birds had long ceased singing, and only
+the thin shrilling of the locusts broke the August silence. The
+parched earth was pale, and great cracks that only the autumn rains
+could fill had opened on the hillsides, but the ripening maize lay
+snug within its narrow sheaths of green, and the leaves of the vines
+hid great bunches of purpling grapes. In the fields men rested awhile
+from their labours, and the patient white oxen stood in the shade of
+the mulberries, while the sunburnt lads who drove them bathed their
+tired bodies in the stream, or lay idly in the lush grass at the
+water's edge.
+
+In the town the walls of houses that had fronted the morning sun were
+scorching to the touch, and there was no coolness even in the steep
+northward streets that were always in shadow, or in the grey
+stone-paved courts of the palaces. There were few people about at this
+hour, and the little stream of traffic had run dry in the Via Cavour.
+A vendor of melons drew his barrow close up to the battered old column
+in the Piazza Tolomei, and squatted down on the ground beside it.
+"_Cocomeri! Fresc' e buoni!_" he cried once or twice, and then rolled
+over and went to sleep. A peasant girl carrying a basket of eggs
+passed presently, and she looked wistfully at the fruit, but she did
+not disturb his slumbers.
+
+"Is that the aunt of your friend's mother? No, it is the sister of my
+niece's governess." Olive laid down her pen. She was only partially
+dressed and her hair hung loosely about her bare white shoulders. The
+heat made hairpins seem a burden and outer garments superfluous. "My
+niece's governess is the last. Thank Heaven for that!" she said, and
+she sat down on the brick floor to take off her stockings. Gemma's
+_fidanzato_, her lawyer from Lucca, was coming to Siena for a week. He
+would lodge next door and come in to the Menotti for most of his
+meals, and already poor old Carolina was busy in the hot, airless
+kitchen, beating up eggs for a _zabajone_, and Signora Carosi had gone
+out to buy ice for the wine and sweet cakes to be handed round with
+little glasses of _vin_ Santo or Marsala.
+
+Carmela came into her cousin's room soon after four o'clock. "I have
+just taken Gemma a cup of black coffee. Her head aches terribly."
+
+"I heard her moving about her room in the night," Olive answered, and
+she added, under her breath, "Poor Gemma!"
+
+Carmela lowered her voice too. "Of course Maria and I know that you
+see what is going on as well as we do. There is some man ... she lets
+down a basket from her window at nights for letters, and I believe she
+meets him when my aunt thinks she has gone to Mass. It is dreadful.
+How glad we shall be when she is safely married and away."
+
+"Who is the man?"
+
+"Hush! I don't know. Do you hear the beating of a drum? One of the
+_Contrade_ is coming."
+
+The two girls ran to the window, and Olive opened the green shutters a
+little way that they might see out without being seen. The day of the
+Palio was close at hand, and the pages and _alfieri_ of the rival
+parishes, whose horses were to run in the race, were already going
+about the town. Olive never tired of watching the flash of bright
+colours as the flags were flung up and deftly caught again, and she
+cried out now with pleasure as the little procession moved leisurely
+across the piazza.
+
+"I wonder why they come here," Carmela said, as the first _alfiero_
+let the heavy folds of silk ripple about his head, twisted the staff,
+seemed to drop it, and gathered it to him again easily with his left
+hand. The page stood aside with a grave assumption of the gilded
+graces of the thirteenth century. He was handsome in his dress of
+green and white and scarlet velvet.
+
+"Why does he look up here?"
+
+Olive laughed a little. "He is the son of the cobbler who mends my
+boots," she whispered. "He is trying to learn English and I have lent
+him some books, and that is why he has come to do us honour. I think
+it is charming of him."
+
+She took a white magnolia blossom from a glass dish on her table.
+"Shall I be mediaeval too?"
+
+The boy raised smiling eyes as the pale flower came fluttering down to
+him. One of the _alfieri_ laughed aloud.
+
+"_O Romeo, sei bello!_"
+
+"_Son' felice!_" he answered, and he kissed the waxen petals ardently.
+
+Olive softly clapped her hands together. "Is he not delicious! What an
+actor! Oh, Italy!"
+
+Now that the performance was over the _alfieri_ strolled across the
+piazza to the barrow that was still drawn up by the column.
+"_Cocomeri! Fresc' e buoni!_"
+
+"I never know what will please you," Carmela said as she sat down.
+"But foreigners always like the Palio. You will see many English and
+Americans and Germans on the stands."
+
+"Yes, I love it all. Yesterday I passed through the Piazza del Campo
+and saw the workmen putting palings all about the centre, and
+hammering at the stands, while others strewed sand on the course and
+fastened mattresses to the side of the house by San Martino."
+
+"Ah, the _fantini_ are often thrown there and flung against the wall.
+If there were no mattresses ... crack!" Carmela made a sound as of
+breaking bones and hummed a few bars of Chopin's _Marche Funebre_.
+
+Olive shuddered. "You are an impressionist, Carmela. Two dabs of
+scarlet and a smear--half a word and a shrug of the shoulders--and you
+have expressed a five-act tragedy. I think you could act."
+
+"Oh, I am not clever; I should never be able to remember my part."
+
+"You would improvise," Olive was beginning, when Carmela sprang up and
+ran to the window again.
+
+"It is Orazio!" she cried. "He has come in a cab."
+
+The _vetturino_ had pulled his horse up with a jerk of the reins after
+the manner of his kind; the wretched animal had slipped and he was now
+beating it about the head with the butt end of his whip. His fare had
+got out and was looking on calmly.
+
+Olive hastily picked up one of her shoes and flung it at them. It
+struck the _vetturino_ just above the ear. "A nasty crack," she said.
+"His language is evidently frightful. It is a good thing I can't
+understand it, Carmela."
+
+She looked down at the angry, bewildered men, and the _vetturino_,
+catching a glimpse of the flushed face framed in a soft fluff of brown
+hair, shook his fist and roared a curse upon it.
+
+"Touch that horse again and I'll throw a jug of boiling water over
+you," she cried as she drew the green shutters to; and then, in quite
+another tone, "Oh, Giovanni, be good. What has the poor beast ever
+done to you?" She turned to Carmela. "I know him. His wife does
+washing for Signora Aurelia," she explained.
+
+A slow grin overspread the man's heavy face as he rubbed his head.
+
+"Mad English," he said, and then looked closely at the coin the
+Lucchese had tendered him.
+
+"Your legal fare," Orazio began pompously.
+
+"Santo Diavolo--"
+
+"I am a lawyer."
+
+"_Si capisce!_ Will you give the signorina her shoe?" He handed it to
+Orazio, who took it awkwardly.
+
+"The incident is closed," Olive said as she came back to her cooling
+tea. "I hope there is a heaven for horses and a hell for men. Oh, how
+I hate cruelty! Carmela, if that is Orazio I must say I sympathise
+with Gemma. How could any woman love a mean, narrow-shouldered,
+whitey-brown paper thing like that?"
+
+"It is a pity," sighed Carmela as she moved towards the door. "But
+after all they are all alike in the end. I must go now to help Maria
+lace. I pull a little, and then wait a few minutes. _E un martirio!_"
+
+"Why does she do it?"
+
+"Why does an ostrich bury its head in the sand? Why does a camel try
+to get through the eye of a needle? (But perhaps he does not.) I often
+tell her fat cannot be hidden, but she will not believe."
+
+When Olive went into the _salotto_ a few minutes before seven she
+found the family assembled. Signor Lucis rose from his place at
+Gemma's side as the aunt uttered the introductory formula. He brought
+his heels together and bowed stiffly from the waist, and when Olive
+gave him her hand in English fashion he took it limply and held it for
+a moment before he dropped it. His string-coloured moustache was
+brushed up from a loose-lipped mouth, and he showed bad teeth when he
+smiled.
+
+"The signorina speaks Italian?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Ah, does she come from London?"
+
+"I had no settled home in England."
+
+"Ah! The sun never shines there?"
+
+She laughed. "Not as it does here," she admitted. "Where is my shoe?"
+
+"It was yours then?" he said with an attempt at playfulness. "Gemma
+has been quite jealous of the unknown owner, but she says it is much
+larger than any of hers." The girls' eyes met but neither spoke, and
+Orazio babbled on, unheeding: "Her feet are _carini_, and I can span
+her ankle with my thumb and forefinger; but you are small made too,
+signorina."
+
+Carolina poked her head in at the door. "_Al suo comodo e pronto_,"
+she said, referring to the dinner, and hurried away again to dish up
+the veal cutlets.
+
+The young man contrived to remain behind in the _salotto_ for a moment
+and to keep Gemma with him. Olive looked at them as they took their
+places at table, and she understood that the girl had had to submit to
+some caress. She looked sick and her lips were quite white, and if
+Lucis had been a man of quick perceptions he would have realised, her
+face must have shown him, that she loathed him. He was dense, however,
+and though he commented on her silence later on it was evident that he
+attributed it to shyness.
+
+Olive, thinking to do well, flung herself into the conversational
+breach. Her cousins had nothing to say, and the aunt's thoughts were
+set on the dinner and cumbered with much serving. So she talked to him
+as in duty bound, and he seemed inclined to banter her.
+
+Her feet, her temper, her relations with _vetturini_. He was
+execrable, but she would not take offence.
+
+After dinner they all sat in the little _salotto_ until it was time to
+go to the theatre, and still Olive talked and laughed with Orazio,
+teaching him English words and making fun of his pronunciation of
+them. Gemma watched her sombrely and judged her by her own standards,
+and Carmela caught at her cousin's arm presently as they passed down
+the crowded Via Cavour together.
+
+"Why did you make her so angry? She will always hate you now. I did
+not know you were _civetta_."
+
+Olive looked startled. "Angry? What do you mean?"
+
+"Why did you speak so much to Orazio? Gemma thought you wanted to take
+her husband from her and she will not forgive."
+
+"Why, I could see it made her ill to look at him and that she shrank
+from his touch, and I did as I would be done by. I distracted his
+attention."
+
+Carmela laughed in spite of herself. "Oh, Olive, and I thought you
+were so clever. Do you not understand that one can be jealous of a man
+one does not love? I know that though I am stupid. All Italians are
+jealous. You must remember that."
+
+"I am sorry," Olive said ruefully after a pause. "I see you are right.
+She will never believe that I wanted to help her. If only you could
+persuade her to give up Orazio. Surely the other man would come
+forward then. You and Maria talk of getting her safely married and
+away, but I see farther. There can be no safety in union with the
+wrong man--"
+
+Carmela shook her head. "She wants a husband," she said stolidly,
+"and Orazio will make a good one. You do not understand us, my dear.
+You can please yourself with dreams and fancies, but we are
+different."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Olive was careful to sit down with Carmela on one side of their box on
+the second tier, leaving two chairs in front for the _fidanzati_, but
+the young man made several efforts to include her in the conversation
+and she understood that she had put herself in a false position.
+Orazio had misunderstood her because her manners were not the manners
+of Lucca, and he knew no others. It annoyed her to see that he plumed
+himself on his conquest, but her sense of humour enabled her to avoid
+his glances with a good grace, especially as she realised that she had
+brought them on herself.
+
+She felt nothing but pity for her cousin now. It would be terrible to
+marry a man like that, she thought, and she wondered that so many
+women could rush in where angels feared to tread. She believed that
+there were infinite possibilities of happiness in the holy state of
+matrimony, but it seemed to her that perhaps the less said of some
+actualities the better.
+
+Carmela was right. At this time she pastured on dreams and fancies.
+Her emotions were not starved, but they were kept down and only
+allowed to nibble. She thought often of the man who had been kind to
+her, and sometimes she wished that he had kissed her. It would have
+been something to remember. Often, if she closed her eyes, she could
+almost cheat herself into believing him there close beside her, his
+brown gaze upon her, his lips quivering with a strange eagerness that
+troubled her and yet made her glad. Jean Avenel. It was a good name.
+
+He had gone to America and she assured herself that he must have
+forgotten her, but she did not try to forget him. She nursed the
+little wistful sorrow for what might have been, as women will, and
+would not bind up the scratch he had inflicted. Already she had
+learned that some pain is pleasant, and that a stinging sweetness may
+be distilled from tears. Sometimes at night, when it was too hot to
+sleep and she lay watching the fine silver lines of moonlight passing
+across the floor, she asked herself if she would see him again, and
+when, and how, and wove all manner of cobweb fancies about what might
+be.
+
+She ripened quickly as fruit ripens in the hot sunshine of Italy; her
+lips were more sweetly curved and coloured, and her blue eyes were
+shadowed now. They were like sapphires seen through a veil.
+
+Maria gave her the opera-glasses and she raised them to scan the
+house. It was a gala night and the theatre was hung with flags and
+brilliantly illuminated. There were candles everywhere, and the great
+chandelier that hung from the ceiling was lit. The heat was stifling,
+and the incessant fluttering of fans gave the women in the _parterre_
+and in the crowded boxes a look of unrest that was belied by their
+placid, expressionless faces. Many glanced up at the Menotti in their
+box. There was some criticism of Gemma's Lucchese.
+
+"He is ugly, but she could not expect to get a husband here where she
+is so well known. They say--"
+
+"The Capuan Psyche and a rose from the garden of Eden," said a man in
+the stage box, who had discerned Olive's fresh, eager prettiness
+beyond the pale beauty of the Odalisque.
+
+He handed the glasses to his neighbour. "Choose."
+
+"The _role_ of Paris is a thankless one; it involved death in the end
+for the shepherd prince."
+
+"Yes, but you are not a shepherd prince."
+
+The man addressed was handsome as a faun might be and as a tiger is.
+Not sleek, but lean and brown, with hot, insolent eyes and a fine and
+cruel mouth. A great emerald sparkled on the little finger of his left
+hand. He was one of the few in the house who wore evening dress, and
+he was noticeable on that account, but he had been standing talking
+with some other men at the back of his box hitherto. He came forward
+now and Gemma saw him. Her set lips relaxed and seemed to redden as
+she met his bold, lifted gaze, but as his eyes left hers and he
+raised his glasses to stare past her at Olive her face contracted so
+that for the moment she was almost ugly.
+
+The performance was timed to begin at nine, but at twenty minutes past
+the hour newsvendors were still going to and fro with bundles of
+evening papers, and the orchestra was represented by a melancholy
+bald-headed man with a cornet. The other musicians came in leisurely,
+one by one, and at last the conductor took his place and the audience
+settled down and was comparatively quiet while the Royal March was
+being played. The orchestra had begun the overture to _Rigoletto_ when
+some of the men who stood in the packed arena behind the _palchi_
+cried out and their friends in other parts of the house joined in.
+They howled like wolves, and for a few minutes the uproar was
+terrific, and Verdi's music was overwhelmed by the clamour of voices
+until the conductor, turning towards the audience, said something
+inaudible with a deprecating bow and a quick movement of his hands.
+
+"_Ora, zitti!_" yelled a voice from the gallery.
+
+Silence was instant, and the whole house rose and stood reverently,
+listening to a weird and confused jumble of broken chords that yet
+could stir the pulses and quicken the beating of young hearts.
+
+Olive had risen with the rest. "What is it?" she whispered to Maria.
+
+"Garibaldi's Hymn."
+
+It seemed a red harmony of rebellious souls, climbing, struggling,
+clutching at the skirts of Freedom. The patter of spent shot, the
+heavy breathing of hunted fugitives, the harsh crying of dying men,
+the rush of feet that stumbled as they came over the graves of the
+Past; all these sounds of bygone strife rang, as it were, faintly,
+beyond the strange music, as the sea echoes, sighing, in a shell.
+
+Signora Aurelia had told Olive how in the years before Italy was free
+and united under the king, when Guiseppe Verdi was a young man, the
+students would call his name in the theatre until the house rang to
+the cry of "_Viva Verdi! Viva Verdi!_" A little because they loved
+their music-maker, more because V. E. R. D. I. meant Vittor Emanuele,
+Re D'Italia, and they liked to sing his forbidden praises in the very
+ears of the white-coat Austrians.
+
+They had their Victor. Had he not sufficed? Olive knew that the
+authorities scarcely countenanced the playing of the Republican hymn.
+Was it because it made men long for some greater ruler than a king, or
+for no ruler at all? Freedom is more elusive even than happiness.
+Never yet has she yielded herself to men, though she makes large
+promises and exacts sacrifices as cruel as ever those of Moloch could
+have been. Her altars stream with blood, but she ... she is talking,
+or she is pursuing, or she is on a journey, or peradventure she
+sleepeth ... and her prophets must still call upon her and cut
+themselves with knives.
+
+As the curtain went up Olive leant forward that she might see the
+stage. It was her first opera. Music is a necessity in Italy, but in
+England it is a luxury, and somehow she and her mother had never been
+able to afford even seats in the gallery at Covent Garden.
+
+Now all her thoughts, all her fancies, were swept away in the flood of
+charming melody. The story, when she understood it, shocked and
+repelled her. It seemed strange that crime should be set to music, and
+that one should have to see abduction, treachery, vice, and a murder
+brutally committed in full view of the audience, while the tenor sang
+the lightest of all his lyrics: "_La donna e mobile_."
+
+Gemma asked for an ice during the second _entr'acte_, and Orazio
+hurried out to get one for her at the buffet. The girl looked tired,
+but she was kind to her lover in her silent, languid way, listening to
+his whispered inanities, and allowing him to hold her hand, though her
+flesh shrank from the damp clamminess of his grasp, and she hated his
+nearness and wished him away.
+
+The man who sat alone now in the stage box could see no flaw in her
+composure, and she seemed to him as perfectly calm as she was
+perfectly beautiful, though he had noticed that not once had she
+looked towards the stage. She kept her eyes down, and they were
+shadowed by the long black lashes. Ah, she was beautiful! The man's
+lean brown face was troubled and he sighed under his breath. He went
+out in the middle of the third act, and he did not come back again.
+
+After a while Gemma moved restlessly. "Orazio, _per carita_! Your hand
+is so hot and sticky! I shall change places with Carmela," she said.
+She released her fingers from the young man's grasp with the air of
+one crushing a forward insect or removing a bramble from the path, and
+she actually beckoned to her sister to come.
+
+Orazio flushed red and he seemed about to speak as Carmela rose from
+her seat, but the aunt interposed hurriedly.
+
+"Sit still, Gemma, you are tired or you would not speak so. The lights
+hurt your eyes and make your head ache."
+
+"Yes, I am tired," the girl said wearily. "I slept ill last night.
+Forgive me, Orazio, if I was cross. I am sorry."
+
+Her dull submission touched Olive with a sudden sense of pity and of
+fear, but Orazio was blind and deaf to all things written between the
+lines of life, and he could not interpret it.
+
+"I do not always understand you," he said stiffly, and he would not
+relax until presently she drew nearer to him of her own accord.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The Vicolo dei Moribondi is the narrowest of all the steep stone-paved
+streets that lead from the upper town to the market-place of Siena,
+and the great red bulk of the Palazzo Pubblico overshadows it. Olive
+had come that way once from the Porta Romana, and seeing the legend:
+"_Affitasi una camera_" displayed in the doorway of one of the shabby
+houses, had been moved to climb the many stairs to see the room in
+question.
+
+It proved to be a veritable eyrie, large, bare, passably clean, and
+very well lighted. From the window she saw the hillside below the
+church of San Giuseppe, a huddle of red roofs and grey olive orchards
+melting into a blue haze of distance beyond the city walls, and the
+crowning heights of San Quirico. Leaning out over the sill of
+crumbling stone she looked down into the Vicolo as into a well.
+
+The rent was very low, and the woman who had the room to let seemed a
+decent though a frowsy old soul, and so the matter was settled there
+and then, and Olive had left the house with the key of her new domain
+in her pocket.
+
+She had bought a table and two chairs and a shelf for her books at a
+second-hand furniture shop near the Duomo, and had given her first
+lesson there two days later, and soon the quiet place seemed more like
+home to her than the stuffy flat in the Piazza Tolomei. What matter if
+she came to it breathless from climbing five flights of stairs? It was
+good to be high up above the stale odours of the streets. The window
+was always open. There were no woollen mats to be faded or waxen
+fruits to be melted by the sun's heat. A little plaster bust of Dante
+stood on the table, and Olive kept the flowers her pupils gave her,
+pink oleander blossoms and white roses from the terrace gardens, in a
+jar of majolica ware, but otherwise the place was unadorned.
+
+"It is like a convent," Carmela said when she came there with Maria
+and her aunt for an English tea-drinking.
+
+Signora Carosi had sipped a little tea and eaten a good many of the
+cakes Olive had bought from the _pasticceria_. "The situation is
+impossible," she remarked, as she brushed the crumbs off her lap.
+
+"The stairs are a drawback," Olive admitted, not without malice, "but
+fortunately my pupils are all young and strong."
+
+"You are English. I always say that when I am asked how I can permit
+such things. 'What would you? She teaches men grammar alone in an
+attic. I cannot help it. She is English.'"
+
+Gemma had been asked to come too on this occasion, but she had excused
+herself. She so often had headaches when the others were going out,
+and they would leave her lying down in her room. When they came back
+she was always up and better, and yet she seemed feverish and strange.
+Then sometimes of a morning, when Maria and the aunt had gone out
+marketing, and Carmela, shapeless and dishevelled in her white cotton
+jacket, was dusting or ironing, the beautiful idle sister would come
+out of her room, dressed for the street and carrying a prayer-book.
+Carmela would remonstrate with her. "You are not going alone?"
+
+"Only to mass."
+
+On the morning of the fifteenth of August she did not go with the
+others to the parish church at six o'clock, but she was up early,
+nevertheless. She wrote a letter, and presently, having sealed it, she
+dropped it out of the window. A boy who had been lingering about the
+piazza since dawn, and staring up at the close-shuttered fronts of the
+tall houses, picked it up and ran off with it. When Maria and Carmela
+came back with their aunt soon after seven they drank their black
+coffee in the kitchen before going to their rooms to rest. Carolina
+took Olive's breakfast in to her on a tray when they were gone. The
+English girl had milk with her coffee and some slices of bread spread
+with rancid butter. Gemma lay in wait for the old woman and stopped
+her as she came from the kitchen.
+
+"Find out what she is going to do to-day," she whispered.
+
+Carolina nodded and her shrivelled monkey face was puckered into a
+smile. She came back presently. "She is going to the Duomo and then to
+_colazione_ with the De Sancti. She will go with Signora Aurelia to
+see the Palio and only come back here to supper."
+
+Gemma went back to her room to finish her dressing. She put on a pink
+muslin frock and a hat of white straw wreathed with roses and leaves.
+Surely her beauty should avail to give her all she desired, light and
+warmth always, diamonds and fine laces, and silks to clothe her and
+give her grace, and the possession of the one man's heart, with his
+name and a place in the world beside him. Surely she was not destined
+to live with Orazio and his tiresome mother, penned up in a shabby
+little house in Lucca, and there growing old and hideous. She sat
+before her glass thinking these thoughts and waiting until she heard
+Olive's quick, light step in the passage and then the opening and
+shutting of the front door. Carolina was in the kitchen and the others
+had gone to lie down, but she went into the dining-room and listened
+for a moment there before she ventured into her cousin's room. She had
+often been in to pry when alone in the flat, and she knew where to
+look for the key of the attic in the Vicolo. Olive always kept it in a
+corner of the table drawer and it was there now. Gemma smiled her rare
+slow smile as she put it in her purse. There was a photograph of her
+aunt--Olive's mother--on the dressing-table, and a Tauchnitz edition
+of Swinburne's _Atalanta in Calydon_ lay beside it, the embroidered
+tassel of the marker being one of Astorre's pitiful little gifts. She
+swept them off on to the floor and poured the contents of the
+ink-stand over them. She had acted on a spiteful impulse, and she was
+half afraid when she saw the black stream trickling over the book and
+blotting out the face of the woman who had been of her kin. It seemed
+unlucky, a _malore_, and she was vexed with herself. She looked into
+the kitchen on her way out. "Carolina, if they ask where I am I have
+gone to church."
+
+The old woman nodded. "Very well, signorina, but you are becoming too
+devout. _Bada, figlia mia!_"
+
+Siena is a city dedicated to the Virgin, and the feast of her
+Assumption is the greatest of all her red-letter days. The streets had
+echoed at dawn to the feet of _contadini_ coming in by the Porta
+Romana, the Porta Camollia, the Porta Pespini. The oxen had been fed
+and left in their stalls; there was no ploughing in the fields on this
+day, no gathering of figs, no sound of singing voices and laughter in
+the vineyards. The brown wrinkled old men and women, the lithe,
+slender youths in their suits of black broadcloth--wood gods disguised
+by cheap tailoring--all had left their work and come many a mile along
+the dusty roads and across fields to the town for the dear Madonna's
+sake, and to see the Palio. The country girls had all new dresses for
+the _Ferragosto_ and they strutted in the Via Cavour like little
+pigeons pluming themselves in the sunshine. They were nearly all
+pretty, and the flapping hats of Tuscan straw half hid and half
+revealed charming curves of cheek and chin, little tip-tilted noses,
+soft brown eyes. Many of the townsfolk were out too on this day of
+days and the streets were crowded with gay, vociferous people. There
+was so much to see. The old picture-gallery was free to all, and the
+very beggars might go in to see the sly, pale, almond-eyed Byzantine
+Madonne in their gilt frames, and Sodoma's tormented Christ at the
+Pillar with the marks of French bullets in the plaster. All the
+palaces too were hung with arras, flags fluttered everywhere, church
+bells were ringing.
+
+Gemma passed down a side street and went a little out of her way to
+avoid the Piazza del Campo, but she had to cross the Via Ricasoli, and
+the crowd was so dense there that she was forced to stand on a
+doorstep for a while before she could get by.
+
+"What are they all staring at?" she asked impatiently of a woman near
+her.
+
+"It is the horse of the _Montone_! They are taking him to be blessed
+at the parish church."
+
+The poor animal was led by the _fantino_ who was to ride him in the
+race, and followed by the page. He was small and lean and grey, with
+outstanding ribs and the dry scar of an old wound on his flank. The
+people eyed him curiously. "An ugly beast!" "Yes, but you should see
+him run when the cognac is in him."
+
+Gemma began to be afraid that she would be late, and that He might
+find the door shut and go away again, and she pushed her way through
+the crowd and hurried down the Vicolo and into the house numbered
+thirteen. She was very breathless, being tightly laced and unused to
+so many stairs, and she stumbled a little as she crossed the
+threshold. She was glad to sit down on one of the chairs by the open
+window. The bare room no longer seemed conventual now that its
+unaccustomed air was stirred by the movement of her fan and tainted by
+the faint scent of her violet powder.
+
+Outside, in the market-place, the country women were sitting in the
+shade of their enormous red and blue striped umbrellas beside their
+stalls of fruit, while the people who came to buy moved to and fro
+from one to the other, beating down prices, chaffering eagerly with
+little cries of "_Per carita!_" and "_Dio mio!_" shrugging their
+shoulders, moving away, until at last the peasants would abate their
+price by one soldo. A clinking of coppers followed, and the green
+peaches and small black figs would be pushed into a string bag with a
+bit of meat wrapped in a back number of the _Vedetta Senese_, a half
+kilo of _pasta_, and perhaps a tiny packet of snuff from the shop
+where they sell salt and tobacco and picture postcards of the Pope and
+La Bella Otero.
+
+In the old days the scaffold and the gallows had been set up there,
+and the Street of the Dying had earned its name then, so many doomed
+wretches had passed down it from the Justice Hall and the prisons to
+the place of expiation. Weighed down by chains they had gone
+reluctantly, dragging their feet upon their last journey, trying to
+listen to the priest's droning of prayers, or to see some friendly
+face in the crowd.
+
+The memory of old sorrows and torments lay heavy sometimes here on
+those who had eyes to see and ears to hear the things of the past, and
+Olive was often pitifully aware of the Moribondi. Rain had streamed
+down their haggard faces, washing their tears away, the sun had shone
+upon them, dazzling their tired eyes as they turned the corner where
+the cobbler had his stall now, and came to the place from whence they
+might have their first glimpse of the scaffold. Poor frightened souls!
+But Gemma knew nothing of them, and she would have cared nothing if
+she had known. She was not imaginative, and her own ills and the
+present absorbed her, since now she heard the man's step upon the
+stair.
+
+"You have come then," she cried.
+
+He made no answer, but he put his arms about her, holding her close,
+and kissed her again and again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"Filippo! Let me go! Let me breathe, _carissimo_! I want to speak to
+you."
+
+He did not seem to hear her. He had drawn the long steel pins out of
+her hat and had thrown the pretty thing down on the floor, and the
+loosened coils of shining hair fell over his hands as his strong lips
+bruised the pale, flower-like curves of her mouth.
+
+Filippo had loved many women in the only way possible to him, and they
+had been won by his brutality and his insolence, and by the glamour of
+his name. The annals of mediaeval Italy were stained with blood and
+tears because of the Tor di Rocca, and their loves that ended always
+in cruelty and horror, and Filippo had all the instincts of his
+decadent race. In love he was pitiless; no impulses of tenderness or
+of chivalry restrained him, and his methods were primeval and violent.
+Probably the Rape of the Sabines was his ideal of courtship, but the
+subsequent domesticity, the settling down of the Romans with their
+stolen wives, would have been less to his taste.
+
+"Filippo!" Gemma cried again, and this time he let her go.
+
+"You may breathe for one minute," he said, looking at his watch.
+"There is not much time."
+
+He drew the chair towards the table and sat down. "Come!" he said
+imperatively, but she shook her head.
+
+"Ah, Filippo, I love you, but you must listen. Did you see my
+_fidanzato_ in our box at the theatre last night?"
+
+"Yes, and I am glad he is so ugly. I shall not be jealous. You must
+give me your address in Lucca," he said coolly.
+
+Her face fell. "You will let me marry him? You--you do not mind?"
+
+He made a grimace. "I do not like it, but I cannot help it."
+
+"But he makes me sick," she said tremulously. "I hate him to touch
+me."
+
+It seemed that her words lit some fire in him. His hot eyes sparkled
+as he stretched out his arms to her. "Ah, come to me now then."
+
+She stood still by the table watching him fearfully. "Filippo, I
+hoped--I thought you would take me away."
+
+"It is impossible. I cannot even see you again until after Christmas.
+It will be safer--better not. But in January I will come to Lucca, and
+then--"
+
+He hesitated, weighing his words, weighing his thought and his desire.
+
+"And then?" she said.
+
+He looked at her closely, deliberately, divining the beauty that was
+half hidden from him. Her parted lips were lovely, and the texture of
+her white skin was satin smooth as the petals of a rose; there was no
+fault in the pure oval of her face, in the line of her black brows. He
+could see no flaw in her now, and he believed that she would still
+seem unsurpassably fair after a lapse of time.
+
+"Then, if you still wish it, I will take you away. You shall have a
+villa at San Remo--"
+
+"I understand," she said hurriedly, and she covered her face with her
+hands.
+
+She had hoped to be the Princess Tor di Rocca, and he had offered to
+keep her still as his _amica_. Presently, if she wished it and it
+still suited him, he would set her feet on the way that led to the
+streets. "Then if you wish it--" To her the insult seemed to lie in
+the proposed delay. She loved him, and she had no love for virtue. She
+loved him, and if he had urged her to go with him on the instant she
+would have yielded easily. But she must await his convenience; next
+year, perhaps; and meanwhile she must go to Lucca, she must be married
+to the other man.
+
+She was crying, and tears oozed out between her fingers and dripped on
+the floor. "He is horrible to me," she said brokenly.
+
+Filippo rose then and came to her; he loved her in his way, and she
+moved him as no woman had done yet.
+
+"Why need you marry him? Do not. Wait for me here and I will surely
+come for you," he said as he drew her to him.
+
+She hid her face on his shoulder. "I dare not send him away," she
+whispered. "All Siena would laugh at me, and I should be ashamed to be
+seen. No other man would ever take me after such a scandal. Besides,
+you know I must be married. You know that, Filippo! And if you did not
+come--"
+
+"I shall come."
+
+She clung to him in silence for a while before she spoke again.
+
+"Why not until January?"
+
+"You will be good if I tell you?" he asked when he had kissed her.
+
+"Yes, yes; only hold me."
+
+"Gemma, you must know that I am poor. I have told you often how the
+palace in Florence is shabby, eaten up with moth and rust. The Villa
+at Certaldo is falling into ruins too. I am poor."
+
+"You have an automobile, servants, horses; you stay here at the best
+hotel."
+
+"I should not be poor for a _contadino_ but I am for a prince," he
+said impatiently and with emphasis. "Believe me, I want money, and I
+must have it. I cannot steal it or earn it, or win it in the lottery
+unfortunately, so I must marry it."
+
+She cowered down as though he had struck her, and made an effort to
+escape from him, but he held her fast. She tried to speak, but the
+pain in her throat prevented her from uttering an articulate sound.
+
+"Do not think of the woman," he said hurriedly. "You need not. I do
+not. Once I am married I shall go my own way, of course, but her
+father is in Naples now, and he is a tiresome old fool."
+
+"_Santissimo Dio!_" she gasped presently. "When--when--"
+
+"In December."
+
+"Is she beautiful?"
+
+He laughed as he gave the answer she hoped for. "She is an American,"
+he added, "and it sets one's teeth on edge to hear her trying to talk
+Italian. Her accent! She is a small dry thing like a grasshopper."
+
+"I wish she was dead."
+
+He set himself to soothe and comfort her, but it was not easy.
+
+"I might as well be ugly," she cried again and again.
+
+It was the simple expression of her defeat. The beauty she had held to
+be a shield against sorrow and a key to the garden of delights was but
+a poor thing after all. It had not availed her, and she had nothing
+else. She was stripped now, naked, alone and defenceless in a hard
+world.
+
+"_Carissima_, be still. Have patience. I love you, and I shall come
+for you," whispered Tor di Rocca, and she tried to believe him, and to
+persuade herself that the flame in his brown eyes would burn for her
+always.
+
+Slowly, as the passion of grief ebbed, the tide of love rose in her
+and flushed her wan, tear-stained face and made it beautiful. The
+door of the room was opened, but neither she nor the man heard it, or
+saw it closed again. It was their last hour, this bare room was their
+world and they were alone in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The table was set for lunch out on the terrace where Astorre lay
+gazing upon his Tuscany, veiled in a shimmering haze of heat and
+crowned with August blue. The best coffee cups of majolica ware had
+been set out, and signora had made a _zabajone_ in honour of
+_Ferragosto_. It was meant to please Olive, who was childishly fond of
+its thick yellow sweetness, but she seemed restless and depressed;
+Astorre looked ill, and his mother's eyes were anxious as they dwelt
+on him, and so the dainty was eaten in silence, and passed away
+unhonoured and unsung as though it were humble pie or a funeral baked
+meat.
+
+Later in the afternoon, when the signora had gone to lie down, Astorre
+began to ask questions.
+
+"Is your face hot?"
+
+"Yes--no--what makes you think--"
+
+"You are flushed," he said bluntly, "and you will not meet my eyes.
+Why? Why?"
+
+"Don't ask," she answered. "I cannot tell you."
+
+The haggard, aquiline face changed and hardened. "Someone has been
+rude to you, or has frightened you."
+
+"No." She moved away to escape the inquisition of his eyes. "Some of
+these plants want water. I shall fetch some." She was going in when
+he called to her.
+
+"Olive," he said haltingly. "Perhaps we ought to have told you before.
+My mother heard of some people who want an English governess from a
+friend of hers who is a music mistress in Florence. They are rich and
+would pay well, and we should have told you when we heard of it, three
+days ago, but I could not bear the thought of your leaving Siena
+while--while I am still here. But if those people in the Piazza
+Tolomei are unkind--"
+
+She came back then and sat down beside him. "I do not want to leave
+Siena," she said gently.
+
+"Thank you," he answered, and added: "It will not be for long. Why
+should I pretend to you?" he went on. "I have suffered, but now I have
+no pain at all, only I am very weak. Look!"
+
+He held up his hand; it was yellowish white and so thin as to be
+almost transparent, and it seemed to Olive to be most pathetic because
+it was not very small or very finely made. It held the broken promise
+of power, she thought sorrowfully, and she stroked the outstretched
+palm gently as though it were a half-frozen bird that she would bring
+to life again.
+
+He closed his eyes, smiling. "Ah, your little fingers are soft and
+warm."
+
+"You were at the theatre last night," he said presently. "Fausto saw
+you. How do you like your cousin's _fidanzato_?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Olive, do you know that they say strange things about the Odalisque?
+I am afraid there will be trouble if her Lucchese hears--"
+
+"I do not care to hear that nickname," she said coldly. "It is
+impertinent and absurd."
+
+"Oh, do not let go of my hand," he implored. "Keep on stroking it. I
+love it! I love it! If I were a cat you would hear me purring. Tell me
+about England and Shakespeare and Shelley. Anything. I will be good."
+
+"I--I have not brought the book I promised you. I would have fetched
+it on my way here, but--but I had not the key. I am sorry, _nino_.
+Yes, let us talk of nice things."
+
+She was quick to relent, and soon seemed to be herself again, and he
+kept his fever-bright eyes on her, watching her as in the old days men
+may have watched the stars as they waited for the dawn that was to see
+them pass by the Vicolo dei Moribondi.
+
+Soon, very soon, Signora Aurelia would come out to them, and she would
+stay beside her son while Olive went to put on her hat, and then they
+would say "_Addio_" and leave him. And perhaps he would indeed go to
+God, or to some place where he would see the dear ones no more. The
+boy's beautiful lips were shut close, but the grey eyes darkened and
+dilated painfully.
+
+"Astorre! Are you ill? Do not look so. Oh, I will not go to the
+Palio. I will stay with you."
+
+"No, you must go, and to-morrow you can tell me all about it. But will
+you kiss me now? Do."
+
+"You need not ask twice, dear Astorre," she whispered, as she leant
+over him and touched his forehead with her lips.
+
+"_Ma che!_" he said ungratefully. "That's nothing. Kiss me properly
+and at once."
+
+When the boy's mother came out on to the terrace a moment later
+Olive's blue eyes were full of tears and the rose flush of her cheeks
+had deepened, but she looked at her friend very kindly as she uttered
+the word he had been afraid to hear.
+
+"_Addio!_"
+
+The Piazza del Campo was crowded as the Signora Aurelia and Olive
+passed through it to their seats on the second best stand, and the
+_carabinieri_ were clearing the course. The thousands of people in the
+central space, who had been chewing melon seeds, fanning themselves,
+and talking vociferously as they waited, grew quieter, and all began
+to look one way towards the narrow street from whence the procession
+should appear.
+
+Olive sat wedged between Signora Aurelia and an old country priest
+whose shabby soutane was stained with the mud his housekeeper should
+have brushed off after the last rains, a fortnight before. He had a
+kind, worn face that smiled when Olive helped him put his cotton
+umbrella in a safe place between them.
+
+"I shall not need it yet," he said. "But there is a storm coming. Do
+you not feel the heaviness of the air, and the heat, _Dio mio_!"
+
+The deep bell of the Mangia tower tolled, and then the signal was
+given, _un colpo di mortaletto_, and the pageant began.
+
+Slowly they came, the grave, armoured knights riding with their visors
+up that all might see how well the tanner, Giovanni, and Enrico Lupi
+of the wine-shop, looked in chain mail; gay, velvet-clad pages
+carrying the silk-embroidered standards of their _contrade_ with all
+the fine airs of the lads who stand about the bier of Saint Catherine
+in Ghirlandaio's fresco in the Duomo; lithe, slender _alfieri_ tossing
+their flags, twisting them about in the carefully-concerted movements
+that look so easy and are so difficult, until the whole great Piazza
+was girdled with fluttering light and colour, while it echoed to the
+thrilling and disquieting beat of the drums. Each _contrada_ had its
+_tamburino_, and each _tamburino_ beat upon his drum incessantly until
+his arms tired and the sweat poured down his face.
+
+Olive's head began to ache, but she was excited and happy, enjoying
+the spectacle as a child enjoys its first pantomime, not thinking but
+feeling, and steeping her senses in the southern glow and gaiety that
+was all about her. For the moment her cousin's shame and sorrow, and
+her friend's pain seemed old, unhappy, far-off things, and she could
+not realise them here.
+
+The _contrada_ of the Oca was the last to go by; it was a favourite
+with the people because its colours were those of the Italian flag,
+red, white and green, and the Evvivas broke out as it passed. Olive's
+page, her cobbler's son, looked gravely up at her as he went by, and
+she smiled at him and was glad to see that he still wore the magnolia
+bud she had thrown him in his hood of parti-coloured silk.
+
+Presently they were all seated--the knights and pages with their
+standard-bearers and esquires--on their own stand in the place of
+honour before the great central gates of the Palazzo Pubblico.
+
+"Now the horses will run," explained the signora. "Many people like
+this part best, but I do not. Poor beasts! They are half drunk, and
+they are often hurt or killed. The _fantini_ lash at each other with
+their hide whips. Once I saw the _Montone_ strike the _Lupa_ just as
+they passed here; the crimson flashed out across his face, and in his
+pain he pulled his horse aside, and it fell heavily against the
+palings and threw him so that the horse of the _Bruco_ coming on
+behind could not avoid going over him. They said it was terrible to
+see that livid weal across his mouth as he lay in his coffin."
+
+"He died then?"
+
+"_Ma! Sicuro!_"
+
+Olive looked up at the window where the Menotti should have been, and
+saw strange faces there. They had not come then. They had not, and
+Astorre could not. Astorre was very ill ... the times were out of
+joint. Her cousin's shame and sorrow and her friend's pain seemed to
+come near again, and to be once more a part of her life, and she saw
+"gold tarnished, and the grey above the green." When the horses came
+clattering by, urged by their riders, maddened by the roar of the
+crowd, she tried to shut her eyes, but she could not. The horse of the
+_Dragone_ stumbled at the turn by San Martino and the rider was
+thrown, and another fell by the Chigi palace as they came round the
+second time. Olive covered her face with her hands. The thin, panting
+flanks, marked with half-healed scars and stained with sweat, the poor
+broken knees, the strained, suffering eyes ...
+
+"Are you ill, signorina?" the old priest asked kindly.
+
+"No, but the poor horses--I cannot look. Who has won?"
+
+He rose to his feet. "The _Oca_!" he cried excitedly. A great roar of
+voices acclaimed the favourite's victory, and when the spent horse
+came to a standstill the _fantino_ slipped off its back and was
+instantly surrounded by men and boys of his _contrada_, dancing and
+shouting with joy, kissing him on both cheeks, pulling him this way
+and that, until the _carabinieri_ came up and took him away amongst
+them.
+
+"The _Bruco_ hoped to win," the priest said, "and the _Oca's fantino_
+might get a knife in his back if he were not taken care of."
+
+Already the crowd was dispersing. The victorious _contrada_ had been
+given the painted standard of the Palio, and were bearing it in
+triumph to the parish church, where it would remain until the next
+_Ferragosto_. The others were going their separate ways, pages and
+_alfieri_ in silk doublets and parti-coloured hosen arm-in-arm with
+their friends in black broadcloth, standard-bearers smoking
+cigarettes, knights unhelmed and wiping heated brows with red cotton
+handkerchiefs.
+
+"I will go down the Via Ricasoli with you," Olive said.
+
+"It is I who should take you home."
+
+"Oh, I do not mind the crowd, and I know you are anxious to get back
+to Astorre."
+
+"Astorre--yes. Olive, you don't think he looks more delicate, do you?"
+
+The girl felt that she could not have answered truly if her life had
+depended on her veracity.
+
+"Oh, no," she said. "He is rather tired, I think. The heat tries him.
+He will be better later on."
+
+The poor mother seemed relieved.
+
+"You are right; he is always pale in the summer," she said, trying to
+persuade herself that it was so. "You will come to-morrow to tell him
+about the Palio?"
+
+"Yes, surely."
+
+There were to be fireworks later on at the Fortezza and illuminations
+of the Lizza gardens, so the human tide set that way and left the
+outlying parts of the city altogether. The quiet, tree-shadowed
+piazzetta before the church of Santa Maria dei Servi was quite
+deserted. Children played there in the mornings, and old men and women
+lingered there and sat on the wooden benches in the sun, but they were
+all away now; the bells had rung for the Ave Maria, the church doors
+were closed, and the sacristan had gone to his supper.
+
+A little mist had crept up from the valley; steep red roofs and old
+walls that had glowed in the sun's last rays were shadowed as the
+light waned, and black clouds came up from the horizon and blotted out
+the stars.
+
+"Go home quickly now, Olive. There will be a storm. The poor mad
+people will howl to-night in the Manicomio. I hear them sometimes when
+I am lying awake. Good-night, my dear."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Olive was tired, and now that she was alone she knew that she was also
+a little afraid, so that she lingered on the way and went slowly up
+the stairs of the house in the Piazza Tolomei. Carmela answered her
+ring at the bell; her face was swollen and her eyes were red with
+crying, and the little lamp she carried shook in her hand.
+
+"Oh, Olive," she said, "Orazio says he will not marry her. He has
+heard such things about her from his friends, and even in the Cafe
+Greco.... It is a scandal."
+
+She put her lamp down on the floor, and took out her handkerchief to
+wipe away the tears that were running down her cheeks.
+
+Olive came in and shut the door after her.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"They are all in the dining-room. Aunt sent Carolina out for the
+evening, and it is a good thing, because of course in the kitchen she
+could hear everything. He sent a message to say he could not go to the
+Palio, and Gemma's head ached when she came back from church, so we
+all stayed in. He came half an hour ago--"
+
+"What does Gemma say?"
+
+"Nothing. She looks like a stone."
+
+"I must go through the dining-room to get to my room," Olive said
+uncertainly. "What shall I do? Pass through very quickly or wait here
+in the passage?"
+
+"Better go in," advised Carmela. "They may not even notice you. He
+keeps on talking so loudly, and aunt and Maria are crying."
+
+"Poor things! I am so sorry!"
+
+The two girls clung together for a moment, and Olive's eyes filled
+with tears as she kissed her cousin's poor trembling lips. Then
+Carmela stooped to pick up her lamp and put it out, and they went on
+together down the passage.
+
+The lamp was lit on the table that Carolina had laid for supper before
+she went out, and the Menotti sat in their accustomed places as though
+they were at a meal. Orazio Lucis was walking to and fro and
+gesticulating. His boots creaked, and the noise they made grated on
+the women's nerves as he talked loudly and incessantly, and they
+listened. Maria kept her face hidden in her hands, but Gemma held
+herself erect as ever, and she did not move when the two girls came
+in, though her sombre eyes were full of shame.
+
+"What shall I say to my friends in Lucca?" raved Orazio. "What shall I
+say to my mother? Even if I still consented to marry you she would not
+permit it; she would refuse to live in the same house with such a
+person--and she would be right. _Mamma mia!_ She is always right. She
+said, 'The girl is beautiful, but she has no money, and I tell you to
+think twice.' I have been trapped here by all you women. You all
+knew."
+
+He pointed an accusing finger at Signora Carosi. She sobbed
+helplessly, bitterly, as she tried to answer him, and Olive, who had
+waited in the shadow by the door, hoping that he would move on and
+enable her to pass into her own room, came forward and stood beside
+her aunt. She had thought she would feel abashed before this man who
+had been wronged, but he had made her angry instead, and now she would
+not have left the room if he had asked her, or have told him the truth
+if he had begged for it.
+
+"Many girls have been offered me," he went on excitedly, "but I would
+not hear of them because you were beautiful, and I thought you would
+make a good wife. There was Annina Giannini; she had five thousand
+lire, and more to come, and now she is married to a doctor in Lucca. I
+gave her up for you, and you are dust of the streets."
+
+Gemma flinched then as though he had struck her. The insult was
+flagrant, and it was time to make an end. She rose from her chair
+slowly, as though she were very tired, and filled her glass from the
+decanter on the table with a hand that trembled so that half the wine
+was spilled.
+
+"Orazio," she said, and her dark eyes sought his and held them so that
+he was compelled to stand still looking at her. "Orazio, I hope you
+and your ugly fool of a mother will die slowly of a horrible disease,
+and be tormented in hell for ever. May your flesh be covered with
+sores while your bones rot and are gnawed by worms. _Cosi sia!_"
+
+She crossed herself devoutly, and then drank some of the wine and
+flung the glass over her shoulder. It fell to the floor and crashed to
+splinters.
+
+The man's jaw dropped and his mouth fell open, but he had no words to
+answer her. She made a curious movement with her hands as though she
+would cleanse them of some impurity, and then turned and went quickly
+into her own room. They all heard the bolts drawn and the key turned
+in the lock.
+
+Olive was the first to speak, and her voice sounded strange and
+unnatural to herself.
+
+"She has said her say and left us, Signor Lucis. Will you not go too?
+You will not marry her. _Benissimo!_ We wish you good-evening."
+
+"You are very easy, signorina _mia_," he answered resentfully; "but I
+cannot forgive."
+
+"Who asked your forgiveness?" she retorted. "It is you who should beg
+our pardon--you, who are so ready to believe the tales that are told
+in the _cafes_ and to come here to abuse helpless women. You are a
+coward, signore. Oh, how I hate men ... Judges in Israel ... I would
+have them stoned first. _What's that?_"
+
+There was shouting in the street, and then a loud knocking on the
+house door. The women looked at each other with frightened eyes.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+Carmela ran to Gemma's door and shook the handle, calling to her to
+come out. There was no answer, and perhaps they had a dreadful
+premonition of the truth even then; Olive left them huddled together
+like frightened sheep. The knocking still continued, and it sounded
+very loud when she came out of the flat on to the stairs. She was
+beside herself; that is, she was aware of two Olives, one who spoke in
+a strange voice and trembled, and was now going down into the
+darkness, stumbling at nearly every step and moaning incoherent
+prayers to God, and one who watched and listened and was surprised at
+what was said and done.
+
+When she opened the great house door a man stood aside to let her come
+out. She looked at him and knew him to be one of the neighbours, and
+she wondered why he had run out into the street in his shirt-sleeves.
+He was pale, too, and looked ill, and he seemed to want to speak to
+her, but she could not listen.
+
+A crowd had collected about something that was lying on the pavement
+near their house wall; Olive looked up and saw Gemma's window opened
+wide, and then she knew what it was. The people made way for her and
+let her come to where the dead thing lay on its back with the knees
+drawn up. Some woman had already covered the face with a handkerchief,
+and dark blood was oozing out from under it. Olive crouched down
+beside its pitiful disarray.
+
+"Will someone help me carry her into the house?" she said.
+
+No one answered her, and after a while she spoke again.
+
+"Will someone fetch a doctor quickly?"
+
+"It is useless, _figlia mia_; she is dead."
+
+"At least"--her voice broke, and she had to begin again, making a
+painful effort to control the words that she might be quite
+intelligible--"at least help me to carry her in from the street. Is
+there no Christian here?"
+
+Two _carabinieri_ came running up now, and they made the people stand
+back so that a space of pavement was left clear; the younger man spoke
+to Olive.
+
+"We cannot move the body until the authorities come, signorina. It
+must stay where it is, but we shall guard it and keep the people off,
+and you can fetch a sheet from the house to cover it."
+
+"Oh, God!" she said, "when will they come?"
+
+He slightly shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I do not know. We have sent to tell them. In a few minutes, perhaps,
+or in two hours, three hours."
+
+"And we must leave her here?"
+
+"Yes, signorina."
+
+"I will get the sheet."
+
+He helped her to rise from her knees. Looking down she saw a stain of
+blood on her skirt, and she clung to his arm for a moment, swaying as
+though she would fall. There was a murmur among the people of pity and
+sympathy. "_Poveretta! Che disgrazia!_"
+
+"_Coraggio!_" the _carabiniere_ said gently.
+
+Up again, up all the dark stairs, wondering if the others knew and
+were afraid to come down, wondering if there had been much pain,
+wondering if it was not all a dreadful dream from which she must wake
+presently. They knew.
+
+The younger girl met her cousin at the door; Maria had fainted, and
+_la zia_ was hysterical; as to Orazio, he was sitting on the sofa
+crying, with his mean, mouse-coloured head buried in the cushions.
+
+"I looked out of your bedroom window as I could not get into her
+room," whispered Carmela. "Oh, Olive, what shall we do?"
+
+"I am going to take down a sheet as they will not let us bring her in.
+You can come with me, and we will stay beside her and say prayers."
+
+"Yes, yes. Oh, Olive, that is a good idea."
+
+The two came out into the street together and spread the white linen
+covering carefully over the stark body before they knelt, one on each
+side. Of the thousands who had filled the Piazzale at sunset hundreds
+came now to see them mourning the broken thing that lay between.
+Olive was aware of many faces, of the murmuring of a great crowd, and
+shame was added to the horror that held her fast. She folded her hands
+and tried to keep her eyes fixed upon them. Then she began to pray
+aloud.
+
+"_Pater noster, qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum--_"
+
+The clear voice was tremulous at first, but it gathered strength as it
+went on, and Carmela said the words too. The men in the crowd
+uncovered, and the women crossed themselves.
+
+Rain was falling now, slowly at first and in heavy drops that splashed
+upon the stones, and there was a threatening sound--a rumbling of
+thunder--away in the south.
+
+Olive knew no more prayers in Latin, but her cousin began the
+Miserere.
+
+"_Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam, et secundum
+multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam._"
+
+Among the many who had come to look their last upon the Odalisque were
+men who had made free with her poor name, had been unsparing in their
+utterance of the truth concerning her and ready to drag her down, and
+some of these moved away now shamefacedly, but more stayed, and one
+after another took up the words.
+
+"_Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea: et a peccato meo munda me._"
+
+Gemma herself had trodden out the fire that consumed her, but who
+could dare say of the grey cold ashes, "These are altogether vile."
+
+"_Tibi soli peccavi, et malum coram te feci: ut justificeris in
+sermonibus tuis et vincas cum judicaris._"
+
+She had sinned, and she had been punished; she had suffered fear and
+shame.
+
+"_Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor, lavabis me, et super nivem
+dealbabor._"
+
+There had been some taint in her blood, some flaw in her will.
+
+"_Cor mundum crea in me, Deus, et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus
+meis._"
+
+A dark-eyed slender boy, wearing the green and white and scarlet of
+his _contrade_, pushed his way to the front presently. It was Romeo,
+and he carried a great bunch of magnolia blossoms.
+
+"Oh, signorina," he said, half crying, "the _alfieri_ and I wanted to
+give you these because you brought us good luck so that we won the
+Palio. I little thought--"
+
+He stopped short, hesitating, and afraid to come nearer. He thought
+she looked like one of the stone angels that kneel on the sculptured
+tombs in the Campo Santo; her face seemed rough hewn in the harsh
+white glare of the electric light, so deep were the shadows under her
+eyes and the lines of pain about the praying lips. His heart ached
+with pity for her.
+
+"Give them to me," she said, and he was allowed to come into the space
+that the _carabiniere_ kept clear.
+
+He thrust the bunch hurriedly into her hands, faltering, "_Dio vi
+benedica_."
+
+"_Andatevi con Dio_," she replied, and then laid the pale flowers and
+the shimmering green crown of leaves down upon the still breast.
+"Gemma, if ever I hurt you, forgive me now!"
+
+It was raining heavily, and as the sheet grew damp it clung more
+closely to the body of the girl who lay there with arms outstretched
+and knees drawn up as though she were nailed to a cross.
+
+The boy still lingered. "You will be drenched. Go into the house," he
+urged. Then, seeing he could not move her, he took off his velvet
+embroidered cloak and put it about her shoulders. A woman in the crowd
+came forward with a shawl for Carmela.
+
+So the hours passed.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.--FLORENCE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+October can be cold enough sometimes in the Val d'Arno when the snow
+falls on the Apennines, and the woods of Vallombrosa are sere, and
+Florence, the flower city, lies then at the mercy of the winds. Mamie
+Whittaker, who, in her own phrase, "hated to be blown about anyhow,"
+had not been out all day. She lolled in an armchair before a crackling
+fire of olive wood in the room that she "lit with herself when alone,"
+though scarcely in the Tennysonian sense. Hers was a vivid
+personality, and older women who disliked her called her flamboyant,
+and referred to an evident touch of the tar-brush that would make her
+socially impossible in America though it passed unnoticed in Italy.
+Her age was seventeen, and she dressed after Carmen to please herself,
+and read Gyp with the same intention. She was absorbed now in _Les
+Amoureux_, and had to be told twice that her cousin had come before
+she would look up.
+
+"Miss Marvel? Show her in."
+
+She rose and went forward to greet her relative, whom she had not
+seen for some years, and the two met at the door and kissed each other
+with enthusiasm.
+
+"Edna! My! Well, you have not grown anyway. What a tiny thing! Come
+and sit down right here." She rang for tea while her visitor slowly
+and rather shyly divested herself of her sables and laid them on a
+side table. Edna Marvel was the elder of the two by three years, but
+she was so small that she seemed a mere child. Her sallow little face
+resembled that of a tired monkey, yet it had an elfin charm, and her
+hands were beautiful as carved toys of ivory made in the East for a
+king's son to play with. They might hold a man's heart perhaps, but
+Mamie did not notice them, her own allurements being of more obvious
+description.
+
+She thought Edna was real homely, and her spirits rose accordingly.
+"Where are you staying?"
+
+"At the Bristol. Poppa guessed we would take a villa later on if we
+felt like it."
+
+Mamie rang again. "Bring some more cakes, and tell Miss Agar to come
+and pour out the tea."
+
+"Who is Miss Agar?"
+
+"My companion, a sort of governess person. She takes me out walks, and
+sits by when my music-master comes, and so forth. She is new, and she
+won't do, but I may as well make her useful while she stays."
+
+"Why won't she do?"
+
+"Oh, she just won't. Momma don't like her much, and I'm not singing
+her praises."
+
+Edna looked curiously at the slender girl in the black dress who came
+in and took her place at the table.
+
+She said "Good afternoon" in her pleasant little voice.
+
+The governess person seemed rather surprised that she should address
+her.
+
+"Good afternoon," she replied. "Do you take milk and sugar?"
+
+"Bring them round for us to help ourselves," dictated Mamie.
+
+Olive only smiled as she repeated her question, but Edna was
+distressed at her cousin's rudeness, and her sensitive face was quite
+pink as she hurriedly declined sugar. She came to the table to fetch
+her cup, but Miss Whittaker waited for hers to be brought to her.
+
+"How do you like this room, Edna? I had it fixed up for myself, and
+everything in it is mine." She looked complacently up at the hangings
+of primrose silk that hid the fifteenth century frescoes on the walls.
+
+Her cousin hesitated. "I guess it must have cost some."
+
+"Yes. The Marchese does not like it. He is so set on his worm-eaten
+old tapestries and carved chairs, and he wanted momma to refurnish the
+palace to match, but not she! Louis Quinze, she said, and Louis
+Quinze it is, more or less. I tell the Marchese that if he is so fond
+of the musty Middle Ages he ought to go about in armour himself by
+rights. But the old sinner is not really a bit romantic."
+
+It occurred to Olive that the right kind of governess would utter a
+word in season. "It is not usual for young girls to refer to their
+stepfathers as you do," she said drily.
+
+"Wait until you know mine better," Mamie answered unabashed. "Last
+night he said your complexion was miraculous. Next thing he'll try if
+it comes off. Are you coming to dinner to-night, Edna?"
+
+"Yes, auntie asked us. The--the Prince will be here, won't he?"
+
+Mamie looked down her nose. "Oh, yes," she said carelessly. "Your beau
+will come. People generally do when we ask them. The food is all
+right, and we have real good music afterwards sometimes. You know
+Avenel stays in Florence whiles because his brother has a Villa at
+Settignano. Well, momma guessed she would get him to play here for
+nothing once. Of course she was willing to pay any money for him
+really, but she just thought she would try it on. She asked him to
+dinner with a lot of other people, and made him take her in, though
+there were two Neapolitan dukes among the guests. The food was
+first-rate; she had told the cook to do his best, and she really
+thought the _entree_ would have made Vitellius sit up. It was
+perfect. Well, afterwards she asked Avenel to play, and he just smiled
+and said he could not. Why, she said, he gave a recital the day before
+for nothing, for a charity, and played the people's souls out of their
+bodies, made them act crazy, as he always does. Couldn't he play for
+friendship? No, he said, he couldn't just then because one must be
+filled with sorrow oneself before one can make others feel, and he
+inferred that he had no room even for regret. 'I play Chopin on a
+biscuit,' he said."
+
+"He must be rather a pig," was Edna's comment.
+
+"Not a bit of it. Momma said he really had not eaten much; in fact she
+had noticed that he left a bit of that lovely _entree_. Perhaps he is
+afraid of getting fat. Momma was real mad with him."
+
+Olive's cheeks were flushed and her hands trembled as she arranged the
+cups on the tray. She was thankful for the shelter afforded by the
+great silver tea-pot. Mamie's back was turned to her, but Edna seemed
+desirous of including her in the conversation.
+
+"Have you heard Avenel, Miss Agar?" she asked presently in her gentle,
+drawling way.
+
+"No. Is he very famous? I have never heard of him as a pianist."
+
+"Oh, his professional name is Meryon, of course. He is billed as that
+and known all the world over, though he only began to play in public
+three years ago when his wife left him. She was always a horrid woman,
+and she made him marry her when he was quite a boy, they say. They say
+he plays to forget things as other men take to drink. He has been
+twice to New York, and I know a girl who says he gave her a lock of
+his hair, but I don't believe her. It is dark brown, almost black, but
+I guess she cut it off a switch. He's not that kind."
+
+Olive said nothing.
+
+"You need not stay if you don't want to," Mamie said unceremoniously.
+"Be ready to come down after dinner. I might want you to play my
+accompaniments."
+
+"I can't think why you say she won't do," cried Edna when she was gone
+out of the room. "I call her perfectly sweet. Rather sad-looking, but
+just lovely."
+
+Mamie sniffed. "Glad you admire her," she said.
+
+The governess was expected to appear at luncheon, but dinner was
+served to her in her own room, where she must sit in solitary state,
+dressed in her best and waiting for a summons, until eleven o'clock,
+when she might assume that she would not be wanted and go to bed. This
+evening Olive lingered rather anxiously over her dressing, trying to
+make the best of herself, since it seemed that she was really to come
+down to-night into the yellow drawing-room where she spent so many
+weary hours of a morning listening to Mamie scraping her Strad while
+the German who was supposed to teach her possessed his soul in
+patience. She put on her black silk dress. It was a guinea robe bought
+at a sale in Oxford Street the year before, a reach-me-down garment
+for women to sneer at and men to describe vaguely as something dark,
+and she hated the poor thing.
+
+Most women believe that the men who like them in cotton frocks would
+adore them in cloth of gold, and are convinced that the secret of
+Cleopatra's charm lay in her extensive wardrobe.
+
+Avenel. It had shocked Olive to hear his name uttered by alien lips,
+as it hurt her to suppose that he came often to the Palazzo Lorenzoni.
+She would not suppose it, and, indeed, nothing that Mamie had said
+could lead her to think that he was a friend of the family. They had
+clutched at him greedily, and he had repaid with an impertinence. That
+was all.
+
+The third footman, whose duty it was to attend upon her, brought two
+covered dishes on a tray at eight o'clock, and soon after nine he came
+again to fetch her.
+
+There was a superabundance of gorgeous lackeys in the corridors that
+had been dusty and deserted five years before, and a gigantic _Suisse_
+stood always on guard now outside the palace gates. The Marchesa would
+have liked to have had outriders in her scarlet livery when she went
+out driving in the streets of Florence, but her husband warned her
+that some mad anarchist might take her for the Queen, and so she
+contented herself with a red racing motor. The millions old Whittaker
+had made availed to keep his widow and the man who had given her a
+title in almost regal state. They entertained largely, and the Via
+Tornabuoni was often blocked with the carriages and motors that
+brought their guests. Olive, sitting alone in her chilly bedroom,
+mending her stockings or trying to read, heard voices and laughter as
+the doors opened--harsh Florentine and high English voices, and the
+shrill sounds of American mirth--night after night. But the Lorenzoni
+dined _en famille_ sometimes, as even marquises and millionaires may
+do, and there were but two shirt-fronts and comparatively few diamonds
+in the great golden shining room when she entered it.
+
+The Marchesa, handsome, hard-featured, gorgeous in grey and silver,
+did not choose to notice her daughter's governess; she was deep in
+talk with her brother-in-law; but men could not help looking at Olive.
+Mr Marvel stood up and bowed as she passed, and the silent, saturnine
+Marchese stared. His black eyes were intent upon her as she came to
+the piano where Mamie was restlessly turning over the music, and no
+one watching him could fail to see that he was making comparisons
+that were probably to the disadvantage of his step-daughter.
+
+Fast men are not necessarily fond of the patchouli atmosphere in their
+own homes, and somehow Mamie seemed to reek of that scent, though in
+fact she never used it. She was clever and fairly well educated, and
+she had always been sheltered and cared for, but she was born to the
+scarlet, and everything she said and did, her way of walking, the use
+she made already of her black eyes, proclaimed it. To-night, though
+she wore the red she loved--a wonderful, flaring frock of chiffon
+frills and flounces--she looked ill, and her dark face was sullen.
+
+"The beastly wind has given me a stiff neck," she complained. "Here, I
+want to have this."
+
+She chose a coon's lullaby out of the pile of songs, and Olive sat
+down obediently and began the accompaniment. It was a pretty little
+ditty of the usual moony order, and Mamie sang it well enough. Mr
+Marvel looked up when it was over to say, "Thank you, my dear. Very
+nice."
+
+"It is a silly thing," Mamie answered ungraciously. "I'll sing you a
+_canzonetta_ now."
+
+She turned over the music, scattering marches and sonatas, and
+throwing some of them on the floor in her impatience. Olive, wondering
+at her temper, presently divined the cause of it. The folding doors
+that led into the library were half closed. No lamps, but a flicker of
+firelight and the hush of lowered voices, Edna's pleasant little pipe
+and a man's brief, murmured answers, and there were short spaces of
+silence too. The American girl and her prince were there.
+
+The Marchese had raised his eyebrows at the first words of the
+_canzonetta_, and at the end of the second verse he was smiling
+broadly.
+
+"Little devil!" he said.
+
+No one heard him. His wife was showing her brother-in-law some of her
+most treasured bits of china. She was quite calm, as though her
+knowledge of Italian was fair the Neapolitan dialect was beyond her.
+Mr Marvel, of course, knew not a syllable of any language but his own,
+and the slang of Southern gutters was as Greek to Olive. Their
+placidity amused the Marchese, and so did the thought of the little
+scene that he knew was being enacted in the library.
+
+"Shall we join the others now, Edna, _carissima_?"
+
+"If--if you like."
+
+He nearly laughed aloud as he saw the silk curtains drawn. The Prince
+stood aside to allow Edna to pass in first, and Olive, glancing up
+momentarily from the unfamiliar notes, saw the green gleam of an
+emerald on the strong brown hand as the brocaded folds were lifted
+up. Her own hands swerved, blundered, and she perpetrated a hopeless
+discord.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said confusedly.
+
+Mamie shrugged her shoulders. "Never mind," she answered lightly. "The
+last verse don't matter anyway. Come to here, Edna. Momma wants to
+hear your fiddle-playing."
+
+"Yes, play us something, my dear."
+
+The little girl came forward shyly.
+
+As the Prince and the Marchese stood together by the fireplace at the
+other end of the long room Mamie joined them. "You sang that devil's
+nocturne inimitably," observed her stepfather, drily. "I am quite
+sorry to have to ask you not to do it again."
+
+"Not again? Why not?"
+
+She perched herself on the arm of one of the great gilt chairs. The
+Prince raised his eyes from the thoughtful contemplation of her ankles
+to stare at her impudent red parted lips.
+
+"Why not! Need I explain, _cara_? It was delicious; I enjoyed it, but,
+alas!" He heaved an exaggerated sigh and then laughed, and the young
+man and the girl shared in his merriment.
+
+"I am sorry to make so many mistakes," Olive said apologetically as
+she laboured away at her part of an easy piece arranged for violin and
+piano.
+
+"Oh, it is nothing. I have made ever so many myself, and I ought to
+have turned the page for you."
+
+The gentle voice was rather tremulous.
+
+"That was charming," pronounced the Marchesa. "Now that sonata, Edna.
+I am so fond of it."
+
+"Very well, auntie."
+
+The Prince had gone into the billiard-room with his host, and Mamie
+was with them. They were knocking the balls about and laughing ...
+laughing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+In the Cascine gardens the lush green grass of the glades was strewn
+with leaves; soon the branches would be bare, or veiled only in winter
+mists, and the Arno, swollen with rain, ran yellow as Tiber. It was
+not a day for music, but the sun shone, and many idle Florentines
+drove, or rode, or walked by the Lung'Arno to the Rajah's monument,
+passing and repassing the bench where Olive sat with Madame de
+Sariviere's stout and elderly German Fraeulein. Mamie was not far away;
+flamboyant as ever in her frock of crimson serge, her black curls tied
+with ribbon and streaming in the wind, she was the loud centre of a
+group of girls who played some running game to an accompaniment of
+shrill cries and little screams of laughter.
+
+"Do you like young girls?" Olive asked the question impulsively, after
+a long silence.
+
+"I am fond of my pupils; they are good little things, rather foolish,
+but amiable. But I understand your feeling, my poor Miss Agar. Your
+charge is--"
+
+Olive hesitated. "It is a difficult age; and she has the body of
+twenty and the sense of ten. I am putting it very badly, but--but I
+was hateful years ago too. I think one always is, perhaps. I remember
+at school there were self-righteous little girls; they were narrow and
+intolerant, easily shocked, and rather bad-tempered. The others were
+absurdly vain, sentimental, sly. All that comes away afterwards if one
+is going to be nice."
+
+"They are female but not yet womanly. The newly-awakened instincts
+clamour at first for a hearing; later they learn to wait in silence,
+to efface themselves, to die, even," answered the Fraeulein, gravely.
+
+A victoria passed, then some youths on bicycles, shouting to each
+other and ringing their bells. They were riding all together, but they
+scattered to let Prince Tor di Rocca go by. He was driving tandem, and
+his horses were very fresh. Edna was with him, her small wan face
+rather set in its halo of ashen blonde hair and pale against the rich
+brown of her sables.
+
+When they came by the second time Mamie called to her cousin. The
+Prince drew rein, and the groom sprang down and ran to the leader's
+head.
+
+"My, Edna, how cold you look! It's three days since I saw you, but I
+guess Don Filippo has been doing the honours. Have you seen all the
+old galleries and things? Momma said she noticed you and uncle in a
+box at the Pergola last night."
+
+She stood by the wheel, and as she looked up, not at Edna but at the
+Prince, he glanced smilingly down at her and then away again.
+
+"We are going back to the hotel now," Edna said. "Will you come and
+have tea, Mamie? Is that Miss Agar over there? Ask her if you may, and
+if she will come too."
+
+"I don't need to ask her," the girl answered, but she went back
+nevertheless and spoke to Olive.
+
+"Can the groom take the cart home, Filippo? We will walk back with
+them."
+
+"Yes, Bellina is in spirits, but she will not run away from Giovanni,"
+he said, trying not to seem surprised that she should curtail their
+drive.
+
+They crossed the wide gravelled space outside the gardens and walked
+towards the town by the Lung'Arno. Already the cypresses of San
+Miniato showed black against the sky, and the reflected flame of
+sunset was dying out in the windows of the old houses at the river's
+edge. All the people were going one way now, and leaving the
+tree-shadowed dusk for the brightly-lit streets, Via Tornabuoni, all
+palaces and antiquity shops, and Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, where the
+band would play presently.
+
+The two American girls walked together with Don Filippo and Olive
+followed them. Edna held herself very erect, but Mamie seemed almost
+to lean backwards. She swayed her hips as she went and swung her short
+skirts, and there was affectation and a feverish self-consciousness in
+her every movement. Olive could not help smiling to herself, but she
+remembered that at school she had been afflicted with the idea that a
+pout--the delicious _moue_ of fiction--became her, and so she was
+inclined to leniency. Only seventeen.
+
+The Prince wore riding gloves, and so the green gleam of his emerald
+was hidden from her. If only she could be sure that she had seen him
+before. What then? Nothing--if she could think that he would always be
+kind to gentle little Edna.
+
+Just before they reached the hotel Miss Marvel joined her, leaving her
+cousin to go on with Don Filippo, and began to talk to her.
+
+"The river is just perfect at this hour. Our sitting-room has a
+balcony and I sat there last night watching the moon rise over San
+Miniato. I guess it looked just that way when Dante wrote his sonnets.
+Beatrice must have been real mad with him sometimes, don't you think
+so? She must have been longing to say, 'Come on, and don't keep
+talking.' But she was a nice high-minded girl, and so she never did.
+She simply died."
+
+"If she died for him she must have been a fool," Olive said shortly.
+Her eyes were fixed on the Prince's broad back. He was laughing at
+some sally of Mamie's.
+
+Edna was shocked. "Don't you just worship Dante?"
+
+"Yes, yes," answered the elder girl. "He was a dear, but even he was
+not worth that. At least, I don't know. He was a dear; but I was
+thinking of a girl I knew ... perhaps I may tell you about her some
+day."
+
+"Yes, do," Edna said perfunctorily. She was trying to hear what her
+cousin was saying to Filippo, and wishing she could amuse him as well.
+They passed through the wide hall of the hotel and went up in the
+lift. The Marvels' private sitting-room was on the second floor. They
+were much too rich to condescend to the palms and bamboo tables and
+wicker chairs of the common herd, and tea was served to Edna and her
+guests in a green and white boudoir that was, as the Marchesa might
+have said, more or less Louis Seize.
+
+Mr Marvel came in presently, refusing tea, but asking leave to smoke,
+and the Prince, gracefully deferential to his future father-in-law,
+listened to the little he had to say, answering carefully in his
+perfect English.
+
+"Yes, sir. There is a great deal of poverty here. On my Tuscan estates
+too. Alas! yes."
+
+Mamie sat near him, and in the flickering red light of the fire she
+looked almost pretty. Filippo's eyes strayed towards her now and then.
+Edna came presently to where Olive rested apart on the wide cushioned
+window-seat. "Will you have some more tea?"
+
+"No, thank you. I think we must be going soon. The Marchesa will not
+like it if we stay out too long."
+
+Edna hesitated. "I wanted to ask you a silly question. Had you ever
+seen the Prince before last week?"
+
+There was the slightest perceptible pause before Olive answered, "No,
+never. Why do you ask?"
+
+"I thought you looked as if you had somehow that night at the
+Lorenzoni palace. When we came in you were at the piano, and I thought
+you looked queer--as if--"
+
+"Oh, no," Olive said again, but she wondered afterwards if she had
+done right.
+
+On their way home Mamie drew her attention to a poster, and she saw
+the name of Meryon in great orange letters on a white ground.
+
+"He will be here before Christmas. I'll let you come with me to hear
+him play if you are good," she said, and she took the elder girl's
+hand in hers and pinched it. "I could race you home down this side
+street, but I suppose I must not."
+
+She was gay and good-humoured now, and altogether at her best, and
+Olive tried hard to like her, but she could not help seeing that the
+triumph that overflowed in easy, shallow kindness was an unworthy one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Olive sat alone at the end of one of the tiers of the stone
+amphitheatre built into the hill that rises, ilex clad, to the heights
+of San Giorgio. Some other women were there, mothers with young
+children, nurses and governesses dowdily dressed as she was in
+dark-coloured stuffs, but she knew none of them.
+
+Mamie seldom cared to come to the old Boboli gardens. Its green
+mildewed terraces and crumbling deities of fountain and ilex grove had
+no charm for her, and as a rule she and her friends preferred the
+crowded Lung'Arno and Cascine on the days when there was music, but
+this Thursday she had suggested that they should come across the
+river.
+
+"Daisy Vereker has promised to meet me, and as she is only here a week
+on her way to school in Paris I should hate to disappoint her."
+
+The two girls were lingering now about the grass arena, talking
+volubly, whispering, giggling. Miss Vereker's maid, a yellow-haired
+Swiss, sat not far off with her knitting, and every now and then she
+called harshly to her charge to know the time.
+
+Olive sat very still, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed on the far
+horizon. She loved the old-world silence that was only broken by the
+dripping of water in the pools. No birds sang here, no leaves fell at
+the waning of the year. The seasons had little power over stained
+marble and moss, cypress, and ilex and olive, and as spring brought no
+riot of green and rose and gold in flower, so autumn took nothing
+away. Surely there were ghosts in the shadowed avenues, flitting in
+and out among the trees, joining hands to dance "_la ronde_" about the
+pool of Neptune. Gay abbes, cavaliers, beautiful ladies of the late
+Renaissance, red-heeled, painted, powdered; frail, degenerate children
+of the hard-headed old Florentine citizens pictured in the frescoes of
+Giotto and Masaccio. No greater shades could come to Boboli.
+
+Florence was half hidden by the great yellow bulk of the Pitti palace,
+but Olive could see the slender, exquisite white and rose tower of
+Giotto, and the mellowed red of the cathedral's dome against the faint
+purple of the hills beyond Fiesole, and she looked at them in
+preference to the contorted river gods and exuberant nymphs of the
+fountain in the royal courtyard close by.
+
+After a while she opened her book and began to read. Presently she
+shivered; her jacket was thin, and the air grew chilly as the
+afternoon waned, but her reading absorbed her and she was surprised,
+when at last she raised her eyes, to see that the Pitti palace was
+already dark against the sky. Nurses and children were making their
+way out, and soon those who lingered would hear stentorian shouts from
+the gardeners, "_Ora si chiude!_" and they too would leave by one or
+other of the gates.
+
+Olive climbed down into the arena. Mamie was nowhere in sight, and
+Daisy Vereker and her maid were gone too. Olive, thinking that perhaps
+they might have gone up to the fountain of Neptune, began to climb the
+hill. She asked an old man who was coming down from there if he had
+seen two young ladies, one dressed in red.
+
+"No, signorina."
+
+She hurried back to the arena and spoke to a woman there. "Have you
+seen a young lady in red with black curls?"
+
+She answered readily: "_Sicuro!_ She went towards the Porta Romana
+half an hour ago. I think the other signorina was leaving and she
+wished to accompany her a part of the way. There was an older person
+with them."
+
+Olive's relief was only momentary; it sounded well, but one might walk
+to the Porta Romana and back twice in the time. Soon the gates would
+be closed, and if she had not found Mamie then, and the gardeners made
+her leave with the others, what should she do? She suspected a trick.
+The girl had a mischievous and impish humour that delighted in the
+infliction of small hurts, and she might have gone home, happy in the
+thought that her governess would get a "wigging," or she might be
+hiding about somewhere to give her a fright.
+
+Olive went up the steep path towards the Belvedere, hoping to find her
+there. That part of the garden was not much frequented, and the white
+bodies and uplifted arms of the marble gods gleamed ghostly and
+forlorn in the dusk of the ilex woods that lay between the
+amphitheatre and the gate.
+
+She went on until she saw a glimmer of red through the close-woven
+branches. Mamie was there in the dark wood, and she was not alone. A
+man was with her, and he was holding her easily, as if he knew she
+would not go yet, and laughing as she stood on tiptoe to reach the
+fine cruel lips that touched hers presently, when he chose that they
+should.
+
+Olive turned and ran up the path to the top of the hill, and there she
+stood for a while, trying to get her breath, trying to be calm, and
+sane and tolerant, to see no harm where perhaps there was none after
+all. And yet the treachery and the deceit were so flagrant that surely
+no condonation was possible. She felt sick of men and women, and of
+life itself, since the greatest thing in it seemed to be this
+hateful, miscalled love that preceded sorrow and shame and death. Was
+love always loathsome to look upon? Not in pictures or on the stage,
+where it was represented as a kind of minuet in which the man makes
+graceful advances to a woman who smiles as she draws away, but in real
+life--
+
+"Not real love," she said to herself. "Oh, God, help me to go on
+believing in that."
+
+Raising her eyes she saw the evening star sparkling in a wide, soft,
+clear space of sky. It seemed infinitely pure and remote, and yet
+somehow good and kind, as it had to Dante when he climbed up out of
+hell.
+
+"_Quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle._"
+
+"_Ora si chiude!_" bawled a gardener from the Belvedere.
+
+Mamie came hurrying up the path towards the hill. "Oh, are you there?"
+she said in some confusion. "I went some of the way to the other gate
+with Daisy."
+
+"I was beginning to be afraid you were lost, so I came along hoping to
+meet you," answered Olive.
+
+She said nothing to the girl of what she had seen. It would have been
+useless; nothing could alter or abash her inherent unmorality. But
+after dinner she wrote a note to Edna and went out herself to post it.
+
+The answer came at noon on the following day. Miss Marvel would be at
+home and alone between three and four and would be pleased to see Miss
+Agar then; meanwhile she remained very sincerely her friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"Why do you tell me this now?" asked Edna. "The other day when I asked
+you if you had known him before you said you had not."
+
+"Something that has happened since then determined me."
+
+Edna's room was full of flowers, roses, narcissi and violets, and the
+air was heavy with their scent. Filippo had never failed in his
+_petits soins_. It was so easy to give an order at the florist's, and
+the bill would come in presently, after the wedding, and be paid in
+American dollars. There were boxes of sweets too; and a volume of
+Romola, bound in white and gold, lay on the table. Edna had been
+looking at the inscription on the fly-leaf when Olive came in.
+"_Carissima_" he had written, and she had believed him, but that was
+half an hour ago. Now her small body was shaken with sobs, her face
+was stained with tears because that faith she had had was dying.
+
+The chill at her heart made her feel altogether cold, and she edged
+her chair nearer to the fire, and put her feet up on the fender.
+
+"I wish I could feel it was not true, but somehow though I have been
+so fond of him I have not trusted him. Well, your cousin was
+beautiful, and perhaps he had known her a long time before he knew me.
+He wanted to say good-bye kindly. He was entangled--such things
+happen, I know. He could not help what happened afterwards. That was
+not his fault."
+
+Olive could not meet her pleading eyes. "I thought something like that
+last week," she said. "And that is why I kept silence; but now I know
+he would make you unhappy always. Oh, forgive me for hurting you so."
+She came and knelt down beside the little girl, and put her arms about
+her. "Don't cry, my dear. Don't cry."
+
+"Oh, Olive, I was so fond of him! Now tell me what has happened
+since."
+
+"Put your hands in mine. There, I will rub the poor tiny things and
+warm them. They are so pretty. Yesterday, in the Boboli gardens, I
+missed your cousin, and when I went to look for her I saw her with the
+Prince. He held her and was kissing her."
+
+"Oh!" Edna sprang to her feet. "That settles it. Mamie is common and
+real homely, and if he can run after her I have done with him. I could
+have forgiven the other, especially as she is dead, but Mamie!
+Gracious! Here he is!"
+
+He came into the room leisurely, smiling, very sure of his welcome.
+Olive met the hot insolence of his stare steadily, and Edna turned her
+back on him.
+
+"Olive," she said, "you speak to him. Tell him--ask him--" Her gentle
+voice broke.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked carefully.
+
+"I saw you twice in Siena last summer. Do you remember _Rigoletto_ at
+the Lizza theatre? You were in the stage box. You wore evening dress,
+and I saw that emerald ring you have now on your finger. The next day
+you met my Cousin Gemma in my room in the Vicolo dei Moribondi. Do you
+remember the steep dark stairs and the white walls of the bare place
+where you saw her last?"
+
+He made no answer, and there was still a smile on his lips, but his
+eyes were hard. Edna was looking at him now, but he seemed to have
+forgotten her.
+
+"I suppose you loved her," Olive said slowly. "Do you remember the
+faint pink curve of her mouth, the little cleft in her chin, and her
+hair that was so soft and fine? There were always little stray curls
+on the white nape of her neck. I came to my room that morning to fetch
+a book. When I had climbed the stairs I found that I had not the key
+with me, but the door was unlocked and I saw her there with a man, and
+I saw the green gleam of an emerald."
+
+Men have such a power of silence. No woman but would have made some
+answer now, denying with a show of surprise, making excuses, using
+words in one way or another.
+
+"They were talking about you in the town, though I think they did not
+know who you were--at least I never heard your name--and that night
+Gemma's _fidanzato_ told her he would not marry her. You know best
+what that meant to her. She rushed into her own room and threw herself
+out of the window. Ah, you should have seen the dark blood oozing
+through the fine soft curls! She lay dead in the street for hours
+before they took her away."
+
+"_Santissimo Dio!_ Is this true?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Gemma--I never knew it--" His face was greatly altered now, and he
+had to moisten his lips before he could speak.
+
+"I could have forgiven that," Edna said tremulously after a while.
+"But not yesterday. Your kisses are too cheap, Filippo."
+
+"Oh," he said hoarsely. "So Gemma's cousin saw that too. It was
+nothing, meant nothing. Edna, if you can pardon the other, surely--"
+
+"It was nothing; and it proved that Mamie is nothing, and that you are
+nothing--to me. That is the end of the matter."
+
+He winced now at the contempt underlying her quiet words, and when she
+took off her ring and laid it on the table between them he picked it
+up and flung it into the fire.
+
+"I do not take things back," he said savagely.
+
+When he had left the room Edna began to cry again. "I believe he is
+suffering now, but not for me. Would he care if I killed myself? I
+guess not. I am not pretty, only my hands, and hands don't count."
+
+Olive tried to comfort her.
+
+"Poppa shall take me away right now. I have had enough of Europe, and
+so I shall tell him when he comes in. Must you go now? Well, good-bye,
+my dear, and thank you. You are white all through, and I am glad you
+have acted as you have, though it hurts now. If ever I marry it shall
+be an American ... but I was real fond of Filippo."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Cardinal Jacopo of Portugal was buried in a side chapel of the church
+of San Miniato al Monte, and his counterfeit presentment, wrought in
+stone, lies on the tomb Rossellino made for him. Rossellino, who loved
+to carve garlands of acanthus and small sweet _amorini_, has conferred
+immortality on some of the men whose tombs he adorned in
+_basso-rilievo_, and they are remembered because of him; but the
+cardinal has another claim. He is beautiful in himself as he rests
+there, his young face set in the peace that passes all understanding,
+his thin hands folded on his breast.
+
+Mourners were kneeling in the central aisles of the church, and women
+carrying wreaths passed through it on their way to the Campo Santo
+beyond, for this was the day of All Souls, and there were fresh
+flowers on the new graves, and little black lamps were lit on those
+that were grass grown and decked only with the bead blossoms that are
+kept in glass cases and need not be changed once a year. The afternoon
+was passing, but still Olive lingered by the cardinal's monument.
+Looking at him understandingly she saw that there had been lines of
+pain about the firm mouth. He had suffered in his short life, he had
+suffered until death came to comfort him and give him quiet sleep. The
+mother-sense in her yearned over him, lying there straight and still,
+with closed eyes that had never seen love; and, womanlike, she pitied
+the accomplished loneliness that yet seemed to her the most beautiful
+thing in the world. The old familiar words were in her mind as she
+looked down upon this saint uncanonised: "Cleanse the thoughts of my
+heart by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit!" and she remembered
+Astorre, for whose sake she had come to this church to pray. Once when
+she had been describing a haggard St Francis in the Sienese gallery to
+him, he had said: "Ah, women always pity him and admire his
+picturesque asceticism, but if married men look worried they do not
+notice it. Their troubles are no compliment to your sex."
+
+Poor Astorre had not been devout in any sense, but he had written his
+friend a long letter on the day after Gemma's suicide, and he had
+asked for her prayers then. "Fausto told me how you knelt there in the
+street beside the dead Odalisque and said the Pater-noster and the
+Miserere. Perhaps you will do as much for me one day. Your prayers
+should help the soul that is freed now from the burden of the flesh. I
+cannot complain of flesh myself, but my bones weigh and I shall be
+glad to be rid of them. Come and see me soon, _carissima_ ..."
+
+The next morning his mother sent for the girl, but when she came into
+the darkened room where he lay he had already passed away.
+
+"He asked for you, but he would not see a priest. You know they
+refused to bury his father because he fought for united Italy. Ah!
+Rome never forgets."
+
+After the funeral Signora Aurelia had sold her furniture and gone
+away, and she was living now with a widowed sister in Rome. The
+Menotti had left Siena too and had gone to Milan, and Olive, not
+caring to stay on alone in the place where everyone knew what had
+happened, had come to the Lorenzoni in Florence. She had had a letter
+from Carmela that morning.
+
+"We like Milan as the streets are so gay, and the shops are beautiful.
+We should have got much better mourning here at Bocconi's if we could
+have waited, but of course that was impossible. Our apartment is
+convenient, but small and rather dark. Maria hopes you are fatter. She
+is going to send you some _panforte_ and a box of sugared fruits at
+Christmas. _La Zia_ has begun to crochet another counterpane; that
+will be the eighth, and we have only three beds. _Pazienza!_ It amuses
+her."
+
+Though Olive was not happy at the Palazzo Lorenzoni, she could not
+wish that she had stayed with her cousins. She felt that their little
+life would have stifled her. Thinking of them, she saw them, happier
+than before, since poor Gemma had not been easy to live with, and
+quite satisfied to do the same things every day, waddling out of a
+morning to early mass and the marketing, eating and sleeping during
+the noon hours, and in the evenings going to hear the music _in
+piazza_.
+
+Olive was not happy. She was one of those women whose health depends
+upon their spirits, and of late she had felt her loneliness to be
+almost unbearable. Her youth had cried for all, or nothing. She would
+have her love winged and crowned; he should come to her before all the
+world. Never would she set her foot in secret gardens, or let joy come
+to her by hidden ways, but now she faced the future and saw that it
+was grey, and she was afraid.
+
+It seemed to her that she was destined to live always in the Social
+Limbo, suspended between heaven and earth, an alien in the
+drawing-room and not received in the kitchen. One might as well be
+_declassee_ at once, she thought, and yet she knew that that must be
+hell.
+
+If Avenel came to Florence and sought her out would she be weak as
+Gemma had been, light as Mamie was? Olive knelt for a while on the
+stones, and her lips moved, though her prayer was inarticulate.
+
+Sunset was burning across the Val d'Arno, and the river flowed as a
+stream of pure gold under the dark of the historic bridges. Already
+lights sparkled in the windows of the old houses over the Ponte
+Vecchio, and the bells of all the churches were ringing the Ave Maria
+as she passed through the whining crowd of beggars at the gate of the
+Campo Santo and went slowly down the hill. The blessed hour of peace
+and silence was over now, and she must trudge back through the
+clamorous streets to be with Mamie, to meet the Marchese's horribly
+observant eyes, and to be everlastingly quiet and complacent and
+useful. She was paid for that.
+
+She was going up to her room when the lodge porter ran up the stairs
+after her with a letter. "For you, signorina."
+
+It was from Edna.
+
+    "DEAR OLIVE"--she had written,--"I could not wait for
+    trains so papa has hired a car, and we shall motor
+    straight to Genoa and catch the boat there. I want to go
+    home to America pretty badly.--Your loving friend,
+
+                    "EDNA.
+
+    "_P.S._--I am still right down glad you told me.--E. M."
+
+One of the servants came to Olive's room presently.
+
+"La Signora Marchesa wishes to see you at once in her boudoir."
+
+The Marchesa had come straight from the motor to her own room, her
+head was still swathed in a white veil, and she had not even taken off
+her heavy sable coat. She had switched on the light on her entrance,
+and now she was searching in the drawers of her bureau for her
+cheque-book.
+
+"Ah, well, gold perhaps," she said after a while, impatiently, as she
+snapped open the chain purse that hung from her wrist. "Is that you,
+Miss Agar?"
+
+Olive, seeing her counting out her money, like the queen in the
+nursery rhyme, had stopped short near the door. She paled a little as
+she understood this must be the sequel to what she had done, but she
+held her head high, and there was a light of defiance in the blue
+eyes.
+
+"I have to speak to you very seriously."
+
+The Marchesa, a large woman, was slow and deliberate in all her
+movements. She took her place on a brocaded settee with the air of a
+statue of Juno choosing a pedestal, and began to draw off her gloves.
+"I greatly regret that this should be necessary." She seemed prepared
+to clean Augean stables, and there was something judicial in her
+aspect too, but she did not look at Olive. "You know that I took you
+into my house on the recommendation of the music-teacher, Signora
+Giannini. It was foolish, I see that now. It has come to my knowledge
+that you had no right to enter here, no right to be with my daughter."
+She paused. "You must understand perfectly what I mean," she said
+impressively.
+
+"No, I do not understand," the girl said. "Will you explain,
+Marchesa?"
+
+"Can you deny that you were involved in a most discreditable affair in
+Siena before you came here? That your intrigue--I hate to have to
+enter into the unsavoury details, Miss Agar, but you have forced me to
+it--that your intrigue with your cousin's _fiance_ drove her to
+suicide, and that you were obliged to leave the place in consequence?"
+
+"It is not true."
+
+"Ah, but your cousin killed herself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Her lover was in the house at the time, and you were there too?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You were at the theatre the night before and everyone noticed that he
+paid you great attention?"
+
+"He? Oh," cried Olive, "how horrible, and how clever!"
+
+The hard grey eyes met hers for a moment.
+
+The girl's pale face was flushed now with shame and anger. "So clever!
+Will you congratulate the Prince for me, Marchesa?" she said very
+distinctly.
+
+"You are impertinent. Of course, I cannot keep you. My daughter--"
+
+The Marchesa saw her mistake as she made it and would have passed on,
+but Olive was too quick for her. She smiled. "Your daughter! I do not
+think I can have harmed her."
+
+"You can take your money; I have left it there for you on the bureau.
+Please pack your boxes and be off as soon as possible."
+
+"I am to leave to-night? It is dark already, and I have no friends in
+Florence."
+
+The Marchesa shrugged her shoulders. "I can't help that," she said.
+
+Olive went slowly out into the hall, and stood there hesitating at the
+head of the stairs. She scarcely knew what to do or where to turn, but
+she was determined not to stay longer than she could help under this
+roof. She went down to the porter's lodge in the paved middle court.
+
+"Gigia!"
+
+The old woman came hobbling out to greet her with a toothless smile.
+"Ah, _bella signorina_, there are no more letters for you to-night.
+Have you come to talk to me for a little?"
+
+"I am going away," the girl answered hurriedly. "Will your husband
+come in to fetch my luggage soon? At eight o'clock?"
+
+Gigia laid a skinny hand on Olive's arm, and her sharp old eyes
+blinked anxiously as she said, "Where are you going, _nina mia_?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Not to the Prince?"
+
+"Good heavens! No!"
+
+"Ah, the _padrona_ is hard--and you are pretty. I thought it might be
+that, perhaps. Don Filippo is like his old wolf of a father, and young
+lambs should beware of him."
+
+"Can you tell me of some quiet, decent rooms where I can go to night?"
+
+"_Sicuro!_ My husband's brother keeps the Aquila Verde, and you can go
+there. Giovanni will give you his best room if he hears that you come
+from us, and he will not charge too much. I am sorry you are going,
+_cara_."
+
+Olive squeezed her hand. "Thank you, Gigia. You are the only one I am
+sorry to say good-bye to. I shall not forget you."
+
+The Marchese was coming down the stairs as Olive went up again. He
+smiled at her as he stood aside to let her pass. "You are late, are
+you not? I shall not tell tales but I hope for your sake that my wife
+won't see you."
+
+"She won't see me again. I am going," she answered.
+
+He would have detained her. "One moment," he said eagerly, but she was
+not listening. "I shall miss you."
+
+After all she heard him. "Thank you," she said gravely.
+
+A door was closed on the landing below, and the master of the house
+glanced at it apprehensively. He was not sure--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The Aquila Verde was the oldest of the tall houses in the narrow
+Vicolo dei Donati; the lower windows were barred with iron worn by the
+rains of four hundred years, and there were carved marble pillars on
+either side of the door. The facade had been frescoed once, and some
+flakes of colour, red, green and yellow, still adhered to the wall
+close under the deep protecting eaves.
+
+"It was a palace of the Donati once," the host explained to Olive as
+he set a plate of steaming macaroni swamped in tomato sauce before
+her.
+
+"I thought it might have been a convent, because of the long paved
+corridors and this great room that is like a refectory."
+
+"No, the Donati lived here. Dante's wife, Gemma, perhaps. Who knows!"
+
+Ser Giovanni took up a glass and polished it vigorously with the
+napkin he carried always over his arm before he filled it with red
+Chianti. He had never had a foreigner in his house before, but he had
+heard many tales about them from the waiters in the great
+Anglo-American hotels on the Lung'Arno, and he knew that they craved
+for warmth and an unlimited supply of hot water and tea. Naturally he
+was afraid of them, and he was also shy of stray women, but Olive was
+pretty, and he was a man, and moreover a Florentine, and his brother
+had come with her and had been earnest in his recommendations, so he
+was anxious to please her. "There is no _dolce_ to-night," he said
+apologetically. "But perhaps you will take an orange."
+
+When Olive went up to her room presently she found a great copper jar
+of hot water set beside the tiny washstand. The barred window was high
+in the thickness of the stone wall and the uncarpeted floor was of
+brick. The place was bare and cold as a cell, but the bed, narrow and
+white as that of Mary Mother in Rossetti's picture, invited her, and
+she slept well. She was awakened at eight o'clock by a young waiter
+who brought in her coffee and rolls on a tray. She was a little
+startled by his unceremonious entrance, but it seemed to be so much a
+matter of course that she could not resent it. He took the copper jar
+away with him. "The _padrone_ says you will want some more water," he
+said smilingly.
+
+"Yes. But--but if you bring it back you can leave it outside the
+door."
+
+The coffee was not good, but it was hot, and the rolls were crisp and
+delicious, and Olive ate and drank happily and with an excellent
+appetite. No more listening to mangled scales and murdered nocturnes
+and sonatas, no more interminable meals at which she must sit silent
+and yet avoid "glumness," no more walking at Mamie's heels.
+
+She was free!
+
+Presently she said to herself, more soberly, that nevertheless she
+must work somehow to gain her livelihood. Yes, she must find work
+soon. The Aquila Verde would shelter and feed her for six lire a day.
+Her last month's salary of eighty lire had been paid her four days
+ago, and she had already spent more than half of it on things she
+needed, new boots, an umbrella, gloves, odds and ends. This month's
+money had been given her last night, and she had left a few lire for
+the servant who had always brought up her dinner to her room, and had
+made Gigia a little present. The cabman had bullied her into giving
+him two lire. She had about one hundred remaining to her. Sixes into
+one hundred.... Working it out carefully on the back of an old
+envelope she found that she might live on her means for sixteen days,
+and then go out into the streets with four lire in her pocket--no,
+three, since she could scarcely leave without giving a _mancia_ to the
+young man whom she now heard whistling "Lucia" in the corridor.
+
+"The hot water, signorina."
+
+"A thousand thanks."
+
+Surely in a few days she would find work. It occurred to her that she
+might advertise. "Young English lady would give lessons. Terms
+moderate. Apply O. A., Aquila Verde." She wrote it out presently, and
+took it herself to the office of one of the local papers.
+
+"I have saved fifteen centesimi," she thought as she walked rather
+wearily back by the long Via Cavour.
+
+Three days passed and she was the poorer by eighteen lire. On Sunday
+she spent the morning at the Belle Arti Gallery. Haggard saints peered
+out at her from dark corners. Flora smiled wistfully through her
+tears; she saw the three strong archangels leading boy Tobias home
+across the hills, and Angelico's monks and nuns meeting the Blessed
+Ones in the green, daisied fields of Paradise, and for a little while
+she was able to forget that no one seemed to want English lessons.
+
+On Monday she decided that she must leave the Aquila Verde if she
+could find anyone to take her for four, or even three lire a day. She
+went to Cook's office in the Via Tornabuoni; it was crowded with
+Americans come for their mails, and she had to wait ten minutes before
+one of the young men behind the counter could attend to her.
+
+"What can I do for you?"
+
+"Can you recommend me to a very cheap _pension_?"
+
+She noticed a faint alteration in his manner, as though he had lost
+interest in what she was saying, but when he had looked at her again
+he answered pleasantly, "There is Vinella's in the Piazza
+Indipendenza, six francs, and there is another in the Via dei Bardi, I
+think; but I will ask. Excuse me."
+
+He went to speak to another clerk at the cashier's desk. They both
+stared across at her, and she fancied she heard the words, pretty,
+cheap enough, poor.
+
+"There is a place in the Via Decima kept by a Frau Heylmann. I think
+it might suit you, and I will write the address down. It is really not
+bad and I can recommend it as I am staying there myself," he added
+ingenuously. He seemed really anxious to help now, and Olive thanked
+him.
+
+As she went out she met Prince Tor di Rocca coming in. Their eyes met
+momentarily and he bowed. It seemed strange to her afterwards when she
+thought of it, but she fancied he would have spoken if she had given
+him an opportunity. Did he want to explain, to tell more lies? She had
+thought him too strong to care what women thought of him once they had
+served him and been cast aside. True, she was not precisely one of
+these.
+
+The Via Decima proved to be one of the wide new streets near the Porta
+San Gallo. No. 38 was a pretentious house, a tenement building trying
+to look like a palace, and it was plastered over with dingy yellow
+stucco. Olive went through the hall into a courtyard hung with drying
+linen, and climbed up an outside iron staircase to the fifth floor.
+There was a brass plate on the Frau's door, and Canova's Graces in
+terra cotta smirked in niches on either side. The large pale woman who
+answered the bell wore a grey flannel dressing-gown that was almost
+buttonless, and her light hair was screwed into an absurdly small knot
+on the nape of her neck.
+
+"You want to be taken _en pension_? Come in."
+
+She led the way into a bare and chilly dining-room; the long table was
+covered with black American cloth that reminded Olive of beetles, but
+everything was excessively clean. There was a framed photograph of the
+Kaiser on the sideboard. In a room beyond someone was playing the
+violin.
+
+"How many are you in family?"
+
+"I am alone."
+
+The Frau looked down at the gloved hands. "You are not married?"
+
+"No."
+
+The woman hesitated. "You would be out during the day?"
+
+"Oh, yes," Olive said hopefully. "I shall be giving lessons."
+
+"Ah, well, perhaps-- What would you pay?"
+
+"I am poor, and I thought you would say as little as possible. I
+should be glad to help you in the house."
+
+"There is a good deal of mending," the Frau said thoughtfully; "and
+you might clean your own room. Shall we say twenty-four lire weekly?"
+
+The playing in the other room ceased, and a young man put his head in
+at the door. "_Mutter_," he said, and then begged her pardon, but he
+did not go away.
+
+Olive tried not to look at him, but he was staring at her and his eyes
+were extraordinarily blue. He was pale, and his wide brows and strong
+cleft chin reminded her of Botticelli's steel-clad archangel. He wore
+his smooth fair hair rather long too, in the archangelic manner, he--
+
+"Paid in advance," Frau Heylmann said very sharply. Then she turned
+upon her son. "What do you want, Wilhelm?"
+
+"Oh, I can wait," he said easily.
+
+She snorted. "I am sorry I cannot receive you," she said to the girl.
+"I am not accustomed to have young women in my house. No."
+
+She waddled to the door and Olive followed her meekly, but she could
+not keep her lips from smiling. "I do not blame you," she said as she
+passed out on to the landing. "Your son is charming."
+
+The woman looked at her more kindly now that she was going. "He is
+beautiful," she said, with pride. "Some day he will be great. _Ach!_
+You should hear him play!"
+
+Olive laughed. "You would not let me."
+
+She could not take this rebuff seriously, but as she trudged the
+streets in the thin cold rain that had fallen persistently all that
+morning her sense of humour was blunted by discomfort. The long dark,
+stone-paved hall that was the restaurant of the Aquila Verde seemed
+cold and cheerless. At noon it was always full of hungry men devouring
+macaroni and _vitello alla Milanese_, and the steam of hot food and
+the sound of masticating jaws greeted Olive as she came in and took
+her place at a little table near the stove.
+
+The young waiter, Angelo, brought her a cup of coffee after the cheese
+and celery. "It gives courage," he said. "And I see you need that
+to-day, signorina."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Olive saw the _padrone_ of the Aquila Verde that night before she went
+to her room and told him she was leaving.
+
+His face fell. "Signorina! I am sorry! I told Angelo to bring hot
+water every time, always, when you rang. Have you not been well
+served?"
+
+She reassured him on that point and went on to explain that she was
+going to live alone. "I have made arrangements," she added vaguely. "A
+man will come with a truck to take my box away to-morrow morning."
+
+And the _padrone_ was too much a man of his world to ask any more
+questions.
+
+There had been no rooms vacant in the _pension_ in Piazza
+Indipendenza. The manservant who answered the door had recommended an
+Italian lady who took paying guests, and Olive had gone to see her,
+but her rooms were small, dark and dingy, and they smelt
+overpoweringly of sandal wood and rancid oil. The shabbily-smart
+_padrona_ had been voluble and even affectionate. "I am so fond of the
+English," she said. "My husband is much occupied and I am often
+lonely, but we shall be able to go out together and amuse ourselves,
+you and I. I had been hoping to get an invitation to go to the
+_Trecento_ ball at the Palazzo Vecchio, but Luigi cannot manage it.
+Never mind! We will go to all the _Veglioni_. I love dancing." She
+looked complacently down at her stubby little feet in their
+down-at-heel beaded slippers.
+
+Olive had been glad to get away when she heard the impossible terms,
+but the afternoon was passing, and when she got to the house in the
+Via dei Bardi she saw bills of sale plastered on its walls and a
+litter of straw and torn paper in the courtyard. The porter came out
+of his lodge to tell her that one of the daughters had died.
+
+"They all went away, and the furniture was sold yesterday."
+
+As Olive had never really wished to live and eat with strangers she
+was not greatly depressed by these experiences, but she was cold and
+tired, and her head ached, and when on her way back to the Aquila
+Verde she saw a card, "_Affitasi, una camera, senza mobilia_," in the
+doorway of one of the old houses in the Borgo San Jacopo, she went in
+and up the long flight of steep stone stairs without any definite idea
+of what she wanted beyond a roof to shelter her.
+
+A shrivelled, snuffy old woman showed her the room. It was very large
+and lofty, and it had two great arched windows that looked out upon
+the huddled roofs of Oltr'Arno. The brick floor was worn and
+weather-stained, as were the white-washed walls.
+
+"It was a _loggia_, but some of the arches have been filled in and the
+others glazed. Ten lire a month, signorina. As to water, there is a
+good fountain in the courtyard."
+
+Olive moved in next day.
+
+Heaven helps those who help themselves, she thought, as she borrowed a
+broom from her landlady to sweep the floor. The morning was fine and
+she opened the windows wide and let the sun and air in. At noon she
+went down into the Borgo and bought fried _polenta_ for five soldi and
+a slice of chestnut cake at the cook shop, and filled her kettle with
+clear cold water from the fountain in the courtyard.
+
+Later, as she waited for the water to boil over her little spirit
+lamp, she made a list of absolute necessaries. She had paid a month's
+rent in advance, and fifty-three lire remained to her. Fifty-three
+lire out of which she must buy a straw mattress, a camp-stool, two
+blankets, some crockery and soap.
+
+She went out presently to do her shopping and came back at dusk. She
+was young enough to rather enjoy the novelty of her proceedings, and
+she slept well that night on the floor, pillowless, and wrapped in her
+coarse brown coverings; and though the moon shone in upon her through
+the unshuttered windows for a while she did not dream or wake until
+the dawn.
+
+Olive tried very hard to get work in the days that followed, and she
+went twice to the registry office in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele.
+
+"Ah, you were here before." A stout woman came bustling out from the
+room behind the shop to speak to her the second time. "There is
+nothing for you, _signorina mia_. The ladies who come here will not
+take anyone without a character, and a written reference from Milan or
+Rome is no good. I told you so before. Last winter Contessa Foscoli
+had an English maid with a written character--not from us, I am glad
+to say--and she ran away with the chauffeur after a fortnight, and
+took a diamond ring and the Contessa's pearls with her. If you cannot
+tell me who you were with last I shall not be able to help you."
+
+"The Marchesa Lorenzoni," Olive said.
+
+The woman drew in her breath with a hissing noise, then she smiled,
+not pleasantly. "Why did you not say so before? I have heard of you,
+of course. The little English girl! Well, I can't help you, my dear.
+This is a registry office."
+
+Olive walked out of the shop at once, but she heard the woman calling
+to someone in the room at the back to come and look at her, and she
+felt her cheeks burning as she crossed the road. "The little English
+girl!" What were they saying about her?
+
+One morning she went into one of the English tea-rooms. It was kept
+by two elderly maiden ladies, and one of them came forward to ask her
+what she wanted. The Pagoda was deserted at that hour, a barren
+wilderness of little bamboo tables and chairs, tea-less and cake-less.
+The walls were distempered green and sparsely decorated with Japanese
+paper fans, and Olive noticed them and the pattern of the carpet and
+remembered them afterwards as one remembers the frieze, the
+engravings, the stale periodicals in a dentist's waiting-room.
+
+"Do--do you want a waitress?"
+
+The older woman's face changed. Oh, that change! The girl knew it so
+well now that she saw it ten times a day.
+
+"No. My sister and I manage very well, and we have an Italian maid to
+do the washing up."
+
+"Thank you," Olive said, faltering. "You don't know anyone who wants
+an English girl? I have been very well educated. At least--"
+
+"I am afraid not."
+
+Poor Olive. She was an unskilled workwoman, not especially gifted in
+any way or fitted by her upbringing to earn her daily bread. Long
+years of her girlhood had been spent at a select school, and in the
+result she knew a part of the Book of Kings by heart, with the Mercy
+speech from the _Merchant of Venice_ and the date of the Norman
+Conquest. Every day she bought the _Fieramosca_, and she tried to see
+the other local papers when they came out. Several people advertised
+who wanted to exchange lessons, but no one seemed inclined to pay.
+Once she saw names she knew in the social column.
+
+    "The Marchese Lorenzoni is going to Monte Carlo, and he
+    will join the Marchesa and Miss Whittaker in Cairo later
+    in the season."
+
+    "Prince Tor di Rocca is going to Egypt for Christmas."
+
+It was easy to read between the lines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Florence, in the great days of the Renaissance, bore many men whom now
+she delights to honour, and Ugo Manelli was one of these. He helped to
+build a bridge over the Arno, he had his palace in the Corso frescoed
+by Masaccio, he framed sumptuary laws, and he wrote sonnets, charming
+sonnets that are still read by the people who care for such things.
+The fifth centenary of his birthday, on the twenty-eighth of November,
+was to be kept with great rejoicings therefore. There were to be
+fireworks and illuminations of the streets for the people, and a
+_Trecento_ costume ball at the Palazzo Vecchio for those who had
+influence to procure tickets and money to pay for them.
+
+Mamie, greatly daring, proclaimed her intention of wearing the "_umile
+ed onesto sanguigno_" of Beatrice.
+
+"You will be my Dante, Don Filippo? Momma is going in cloth of gold as
+Giovanna degli Albizzi."
+
+The Marchese looked inquiringly at the Prince. "Shall you add to the
+gaiety of nations, or at least of Florence?"
+
+The young man shrugged his broad shoulders. "I suppose so." He was
+well established as _cavalier servente_ now in the Lorenzoni
+household, and it was understood that Mamie would be a princess some
+day. The girl was so young that the engagement could scarcely be
+announced yet.
+
+"I guess we must wait until you are eighteen, Mamie," her mother said.
+"Keep him amused and don't be exacting or he'll quit. He is still sore
+from his jilting."
+
+"I can manage him," the girl boasted, but she had no real influence
+over him now. The forbidden fruit had allured him, but since it was
+his for the gathering it seemed sour--as indeed it was, and he was not
+the man to allow himself to be tied to the apron-strings of a child.
+When he was in a good humour he watched his future wife amusedly as
+she metaphorically and sometimes literally danced before him, but he
+discouraged the excess of audacity that had attracted him formerly,
+perhaps because he scarcely relished the idea of a Princess Tor di
+Rocca singing, "_O che la gioia mi fe morir_."
+
+Probably he regretted gentle, amenable Edna. At times he was grimly,
+impenetrably silent, and often he said things that would have wounded
+a tender heart past healing. Fortunately there were none such in the
+Palazzo Lorenzoni.
+
+"I shall be ridiculous as the Alighieri, and you must forgive me,
+Mamie, if I say that one scarcely sees in you a reincarnation of
+Monna Beatrice."
+
+"Red is my colour," the girl answered rather defiantly.
+
+The Marchese laughed gratingly.
+
+Filippo dined with the Lorenzoni on the night of the ball. He wore the
+red _lucco_, but had declined to crown himself with laurel. His gaudy
+Muse, however, had no such scruples, and her black curls were wreathed
+with silver leaves. The Prince was not the only guest; there was a
+slender, flaxen-haired girl from New York dressed after Botticelli's
+Judith, an artillery captain as Lorenzo dei Medici, and another man, a
+Roman, in the grey of the order of San Francesco.
+
+"Poppa left for Monte this morning," Mamie explained over the soup.
+"He reckoned dressing up was just foolishness, but the fact is armour
+is hot and heavy, and he would have had to pass from trousers into
+greaves. He has not got the right kind of legs for parti-coloured
+hosen, someway."
+
+The Piazza della Signoria was crowded as it had been on that dreadful
+May day when Girolamo's broken body was burnt to ashes there; as it
+was on the afternoon of the Pazzi conspiracy, when a bishop was hanged
+from one of the windows of the old Palazzo. But the old order had
+changed, giving place to new even here, and the people had come now
+merely to see the fine dresses; there was no thought of murder,
+though there might be some picking of pockets. The night was still and
+cold, and the white, round moon that had risen above the roof of the
+Loggia dei Lanzi shone, unclouded, upon the restless human sea that
+divided here and there to let the carriages and motors pass. The
+guests entered by the side door nearest the Uffizi, and _carabinieri_
+kept the way clear. The crowd was dense thereabouts, and the people
+pushed and jostled one another, leaned forward, and stood on tiptoe to
+see the brocaded ladies in their jewelled coifs and the men, hooded
+and strange, in their gay mediaeval garb.
+
+The Marchesa's cloth of gold drew the prolonged "Oh!" of admiration
+that is only accorded to the better kind of fireworks, and hearing it,
+she smiled, well satisfied. Mamie followed with Filippo. Her dress of
+rose-coloured brocade was exquisite. It clung to her and seemed to be
+her one and only garment; one could almost see the throb of her heart
+through the thin stuff. She let her furred cloak fall as she got out
+of the car and then drew it up again about her bare arms and
+shoulders.
+
+"Who is the black-curled scarlet thing?"
+
+"Beatrice."
+
+"What! half naked! She is more like one of the _donnine_ in the
+_Decameron_."
+
+Her Dante, overhearing, hurried her up the steps. His eyes were
+bright with anger in the shadow of his hood, but they changed and
+darkened as he caught sight of one girl's face in the crowd. At the
+foot of the grand staircase he turned, muttering some excuse and
+leaving Mamie and her mother to go up alone, and hurried back and out
+into the street. He stood aside as though to allow some newcomers to
+pass in. The girl he had come to see was close to him, but she was
+half hidden behind a _carabiniere's_ broad epauletted shoulders.
+
+"_Scusi_," murmured the Prince as he leant across the man to pull at
+her sleeve. "I must see you," he said urgently. "When? Where?"
+
+"When you like," she answered, but her eyes were startled as they met
+his. "No. 27 Borgo San Jacopo. The only door on the sixth landing."
+
+"Very well. To-night, then, and in an hour's time."
+
+The press of incoming masqueraders screened them. The _carabiniere_
+knew the Prince by sight, and he listened with all his might, but they
+spoke English, and he dared not turn to stare at the girl until the
+tall figure in the red _lucco_ had passed up the steps and gone in
+again, and by that time she had slipped away out of sight.
+
+Filippo came to the Borgo a little before midnight and crossed the
+dingy threshold of No. 27 as the bells of the churches rang out the
+hour. The old street was quiet enough now but for the wailing of some
+strayed and starving cats that crept about the shadowed courts and
+under the crumbling archways, and the departing cab woke strange
+echoes as it rattled away over the cobble stones.
+
+The only door on the sixth landing was open.
+
+"What are you doing here?" Filippo said, wonderingly, as he groped his
+way in. The room was in utter darkness but for one ray of moonlight
+athwart it and the faint light of the stars, by which he saw Olive
+leaning against the sill of one of the unshuttered windows, and
+looking, as it seemed, towards him.
+
+"Come in," she said. "You need not be afraid of falling over the
+furniture. There is not much."
+
+"You seem partial to bare attics."
+
+"Ah! you are thinking of my room in the Vicolo dei Moribondi."
+
+"Yes!" he said as he came towards her from the door. "I cannot rest, I
+cannot forget. For God's sake tell me about the end! I have been to
+Siena since I heard, but I dared not ask too many questions. Was
+she--did she suffer very much before she died? Answer me quickly."
+
+"Throw back your hood," she said. "Let me see your face."
+
+Impatiently he thrust the folds of white and scarlet away and stood
+bare-headed. She saw that his strong lips quivered and that his eyes
+were contracted with pain.
+
+"No, she died instantly. They said at the inquest that it must have
+been so."
+
+"Her face--was she--" his voice broke.
+
+"I did not see it. It was covered by a handkerchief," she said gently.
+"Don't! Don't! I did not think you would suffer so much."
+
+"I suffer horribly day and night. Love is the scourge of the world in
+the hands of the devil. That is certain. She is buried near the south
+wall of the Campo Santo. Oh, God! when I think of her sweet flesh
+decaying--"
+
+Olive, scarcely knowing what she did, caught at his hand and held it
+tightly.
+
+"Hush, oh, hush!" she said tremulously. She felt as though she were
+seeing him racked. "I do believe that her soul was borne into heaven,
+God's heaven, on the day she died. She was forgiven."
+
+"Heaven!" he cried. "Where is heaven? I am not guilty of her death.
+She was a fool to die, and I shall not soon forgive her for leaving me
+so. If she came back I would punish her, torment her, make her scream
+with pain--if she came back--oh, Gemma!--_carissima_--"
+
+The hard, hot eyes filled with tears. He tried to drag his hand away,
+but the girl held it fast.
+
+"You are kind and good," he said presently in a changed voice. "I am
+sorry if I did you any harm with the Lorenzoni, but the woman told me
+she meant to send you away in any case because of the Marchese."
+
+Then, as he felt the clasp of her fingers loosening about his wrist,
+"Don't let go," he said quickly. "Is he really going to take you to
+Monte Carlo with him?"
+
+"Does his wife say so? Do you believe it?"
+
+He answered deliberately. "No, not now. But you cannot go on living
+like this."
+
+"No."
+
+He was right. She could not go on. Her little store of coppers was
+dwindling fast, so fast that the beggars at the church doors would
+soon be richer than she was. And she was tired of her straits, tired
+of coarse food and a bare lodging, and of the harsh, clamorous life of
+the streets. The yoke of poverty was very heavy.
+
+Filippo drew a little nearer to her. "I could make you love me."
+
+"Never."
+
+He made no answer in words but he caught her to him. She lay for a
+moment close in his arms, her heart beating on his, before she cried
+to him to let her go.
+
+He released her instantly. "Well?"
+
+"I must light the lamp," she said unsteadily. She was afraid now to be
+alone with him in the dim, starlit room, and she fumbled for the
+matches. He stood still by the window waiting until the little yellow
+flame of the _lucerna_ burnt brightly on the floor between them, then
+he smiled at her, well pleased at her pallor. "You see it would be
+easy," he said.
+
+She answered nothing.
+
+"I am going to Naples to-morrow by the afternoon train. Will you come
+with me? We will go where you like from there, to Capri, or to Sicily;
+and you will help me to forget, and I will teach you to live."
+
+There was silence between them for a while. Olive stared with
+fascinated eyes at this tall, lithe man whose red _lucco_, falling in
+straight folds to his feet, became him well. The upper part of his
+face was in shadow, and she saw only the strong lines of the cleft
+chin, and the beautiful cruel lips that smiled at her as though they
+knew what her answer must be.
+
+She was of those who are apt to prefer one hour of troubled joy to the
+long, grey, eventless years of the women who are said to be happy
+because they have no history, and it seemed to her that the moment had
+come when she must make a choice. This love was not what she had
+dreamed of, longed for; other lips, kinder and more true, should have
+set their seal on her accomplished womanhood. She knew that this that
+was offered was a perilous and sharp-edged thing, a bright sheath
+that held a sword for her heart, and yet that heart sang exultantly
+as it fluttered like a wild bird against the bars of its cage. It sang
+of youth and life and joy that cares not for the morrow.
+
+It sang.
+
+Filippo watched her closely and he saw that she was yielding. Her lips
+parted, and instinctively as he came towards her she closed her eyes
+so nearly that he saw only a narrow line of blue gleaming between her
+lashes. But as he laid his hands upon her shoulders something awoke
+within her, a terror that screamed in her ears.
+
+"I am afraid," she said brokenly. "Leave me and come back to-morrow
+morning if you will. I cannot answer you now."
+
+As he still held her she spoke again. "If I come to you willingly I
+shall be more worth having, and if you do not go now I will never
+come. I will drown myself in the Arno."
+
+"Very well. I will come to-morrow."
+
+When he was gone she went stumblingly across the room to the mattress
+on the floor in the farthest corner, and threw herself down upon it,
+dressed as she was.
+
+There was no more oil in the little lamp, and its flame flickered and
+went out after a while, leaving her in the dark. The clocks were
+striking two. Long since the moon had set behind the hills and now the
+stars were fading, or so it seemed. There was no light anywhere.
+
+Olive did not sleep. Her frightened thoughts ran to and fro busily,
+aimlessly, like ants disturbed, hither and thither, this way and that.
+He could give her so much. Nothing real, indeed, but many bright
+counterfeits. For a while she would seem to be cared for and beloved.
+Yes, but if the true love came she would be shamed. She knew that her
+faith in Dante's Amor, his lord of terrible aspect, made his coming
+possible. The men and women who go about proclaiming that there is no
+such person because they have never seen him were born blind. Like
+those prosy souls who call the poets mad, they mistake impotence for
+common sense.
+
+Besides, the first step always costs so dear, and now that he was gone
+and she could think of him calmly she knew that she was afraid of
+Filippo Tor di Rocca. He was cruel. Then among the forces arrayed
+against him there was the desire of that she called her soul to
+mortify her flesh, to beckon, to lead by stony ways to the heights of
+sacrifice. She could not be sure where that first step would lead her,
+she could not be sure of herself or gauge the depths to which she
+might fall.
+
+"Oh, God!" she said aloud. "Help me! Don't let things be too
+difficult."
+
+The hours of darkness were long, but the grey glimmering dawn came at
+last with a pattering of rain against the uncurtained window. Olive
+rose as soon as it was light, and before eight she had eaten the crust
+of bread she had saved for her breakfast and was gone out. On her way
+down the stairs she met her landlady and spoke to her.
+
+"If anyone comes to see me will you tell them that I have gone out,
+and that I do not know when I shall come in again. And if anything is
+said about my going away you can say that I have changed my mind and
+that I shall not leave Florence."
+
+She would not cross the river for fear of meeting Filippo in any of
+the more-frequented streets on the other side, so she went down the
+Via della Porta Romana and out by the gates into the open country
+beyond. She walked for a long time along muddy roads between the high
+walls of vineyards and olive orchards. She had an umbrella, but her
+skirts were draggled and splashed with mire and the water came through
+the worn soles of her thin shoes. She had nothing to eat and no money
+to buy food. There were some coppers in her purse, but she had
+forgotten to bring that. It was windy, and as she was toiling up the
+steep hill to Bellosguardo her umbrella blew inside out. She threw it
+down by the side of the road and went on, rather glad to be rid of it
+and to feel the rain on her face. She had two hands now to hold her
+skirt and that was better. Soon after noon she knocked at the door of
+a gardener's cottage and asked for something to eat; she was given a
+yellow lump of _polenta_ and a handful of roast chestnuts and she sat
+down on a low wall by the roadside to devour them. She did not think
+much about anything now, she could not even feel that she cared what
+happened to her, but she adhered to the resolution she had made to
+keep out of the way until Tor di Rocca had left Florence. She could
+not sit long. It was cold and she was poorly clad, so poorly that the
+woman in the cottage had believed her to be a beggar. The Prince would
+have had to buy her clothes before he could take her away with him.
+
+She wandered about until nightfall and then made her way back to the
+house in the Borgo, footsore and cold and wretched, but still the
+captain of her soul; ragged, but free and in no man's livery.
+
+The landlady heard her coming slowly up the stairs and came out of her
+room to speak to her.
+
+"A gentleman called for you this morning. I told him you were gone out
+and that you had changed your mind about leaving Florence, and at
+first he seemed angry, and then he laughed. 'Tell her we shall meet
+again,' he said. Then another came this afternoon in an automobile and
+asked if you lived here, and when I said you were out he said he would
+come again this evening. He left his card."
+
+Olive looked at it with dazed eyes. Her pale face flushed, but as she
+went on up the stairs the colour ebbed away until even her lips were
+white. She had to rest twice before she could reach her own landing,
+and when she had entered her room she could go no farther than the
+door. She fell, and it was some time before she could get up again,
+but she still held the card crumpled in her hand.
+
+"Jean Avenel."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The Villa Fiorelli is set high among the olive groves above the
+village of Settignano. There are Medicean balls on a shield over the
+great wrought-iron gates, and the swarthy splendid banker princes
+appear as the Magi in the faded fresco painting of the Nativity in the
+chapel. They have knelt there in the straw of the stable of Bethlehem
+for more than four hundred years. The _nobili_ of Florence were used
+to loiter long ago on the terrace in the shade of the five cypresses,
+and women, famous or infamous, but always beautiful, listened to
+sonnets said and songs sung in their honour in the scented idleness of
+the rose garden. The villa belonged first to handsome, reckless
+Giuliano, the lover of Simonetta and others, and the father of a Pope,
+and when the dagger thrusts of the Pazzi put an end to his short life
+his elder brother and lord, Lorenzo, held it for a while before he
+sold it to the Salviati. So it passed through many hands until at last
+Hilaire Avenel bought it and filled it with the books and armour that
+he loved. There were Spanish suits, gold-chased, in the hall, Moorish
+swords and lances, and steel hauberks on the staircase, and stray
+arquebuses, greaves and gauntlets everywhere. They were all rather
+dusty, since Hilaire was unmarried; but he was well served
+nevertheless. He was not a sociable person, and no Florentine had ever
+partaken of a meal with him, but it was currently reported that he sat
+through a ten-course dinner every night of his life, crumbling the
+bread at the side of his plate, and invariably refusing to partake of
+nine of the dishes that were handed in form by the old butler.
+
+"It's real mean of your brother to keep his lovely garden shut up all
+through the spring," the Marchesa Lorenzoni had said once to Jean, and
+he had replied, "Well, it is his."
+
+That seemed final, but the present Marchesa and late relict of Jonas
+P. Whittaker of Pittsburg was not so easily put off. She was apt to
+motor up to Settignano more than once in the May month of flowers; the
+intractable Hilaire was never at home to her, but she revenged herself
+by multitudinous kind inquiries. He was an invalid, but he disliked to
+be reminded of his infirmities almost as much as he did most women and
+all cackle about the weather.
+
+Jean lived with him when not playing Chopin at the ends of the earth,
+and when the two were together the elder declared himself to be
+perfectly happy. "I only want you."
+
+"And your first editions and your Cellini helmet."
+
+When Jean came back from his American tour his brother was quick to
+notice a change in him, and when on the day after his Florentine
+concert he came in late for a dinner which he ate in silence, Hilaire
+spoke his mind. They were together in the library. Jean had taken a
+book down from the shelves but he was not reading it.
+
+"Bad coffee."
+
+"Was it?"
+
+Hilaire was watching his brother's face. It seemed to him that there
+were lines in it that he had not seen before, and the brown eyes that
+gazed so intently into the fire were surely very tired.
+
+He began again rather awkwardly. "You have been here a week, Jean."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did the concert go off well?"
+
+"Oh, well enough. As usual."
+
+"You went away alone in the Itala car before nine this morning and you
+came back scarcely an hour ago. What is the matter? Is there some new
+trouble? Jean, dear man, I am older than you; I have only you. What is
+it?"
+
+Jean reached out for his tobacco pouch. "Hilaire," he said very
+gravely, after a pause, which he occupied in filling his pipe. "You
+remember I asked you to do anything, anything, for a girl named Olive
+Agar. You have never heard from her or of her?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Ah," he sighed, "I have been to Siena. There was some affair--early
+in September she came to Florence, to the Lorenzoni of all people in
+the world."
+
+Hilaire whistled.
+
+"Yes, I know," the younger man said gloomily, as though he had spoken.
+"That woman! What she must have suffered in these months! Well, she
+left them suddenly at the beginning of November."
+
+"Where is she now?"
+
+"That's just it. I don't know."
+
+"Why did she leave Siena?"
+
+"There was some trouble--a bad business," he answered reluctantly.
+"She lived with some cousins, and one of them committed suicide. She
+came away to escape the horror and all the talk, I suppose."
+
+"Ah, I need not ask why she left the Lorenzoni woman. No girl in her
+senses would stay an hour longer than she could help with her."
+
+"Hilaire, I think I half hoped to see her at the concert yesterday.
+When I came on the platform I looked for her, and I am sure I should
+have seen her in that crowd if she had been there. She is different,
+somehow. I played like a machine for the first time in my life, I
+think, and during the interval the manager asked me why I had not
+given the nocturne that was down on the programme. I said something
+about a necessary alteration at the last moment, but I don't know now
+what I did play. I was thinking of her. A girl alone has a bad time in
+this world."
+
+"You are going to find her? Is she in love with you?"
+
+Jean flushed. "I can't answer that."
+
+"That's all right. What I really wanted to know was if you cared for
+her. I see you do. Oh, Lord!" The older man sighed heavily as he put
+down his coffee-cup. "I wish you would play to me."
+
+Jean went into the music-room, leaving the folding doors between open,
+and sat down at the piano. There was no light but the moon's, and
+Hilaire saw the beloved head dark against the silvery grey of the wall
+beyond. The skilled hands let loose a torrent of harmonies.
+
+"Damn women!" said Hilaire, under cover of the fortissimo.
+
+He spent some hours in the library on the following day re-arranging
+and dusting his books, lingering over them, reading a page here and
+there, patting their old vellum-bound backs fondly before he returned
+them to their shelves. They absorbed him, and yet the footman bringing
+in his tea on a tray heard him saying, "I must not worry."
+
+Jean had always come to him with his troubles ever since he was a
+child, and the worst of all had been brought about by a woman. That
+was years ago now. Hilaire had been away from England, and he had
+come back to find his brother aged and altered--and married.
+
+They had got on so well together without women in these latter years
+that Hilaire had hoped they might live and die in peace, but it seemed
+that it was not to be. Jean had gone out again in the car to look for
+his Olive. Well, if she made him happy Hilaire thought they might get
+on very well after all. But he had forebodings, and later, he sat
+frowning at the white napery and glittering glass and silver reflected
+in the polished walnut wood of his well-appointed table, and he
+refused soup and fish with unnecessary violence. Jean loved this girl
+and she could make him happy if she would, but would she? She was
+evidently not of a "coming-on disposition"; she was good, and Jean
+was, unfortunately, still married to the other.
+
+It had been raining all day. The wind moaned in the trees and sighed
+in the chimney, and now and again the blazing logs on the hearth
+hissed as drops fell on them from above.
+
+"There is a good fire in the signorino's dressing-room, I hope. He has
+been out all day, and it is so stormy that--"
+
+"The signorino has come in, _eccellenza_. He--he brought a lady with
+him. She seemed faint and ill, and I sent for the gardener's wife to
+come and look after her. I have given her the blue room, and the
+housekeeper is with her now. She was busy with the dinner when she
+first came." The old butler rubbed his hands together.
+
+"I hope I did right," he said after a pause.
+
+Hilaire roused himself. "Oh, quite right, of course. She will want
+something to eat."
+
+"I have sent up a tray--"
+
+"Ah, when?"
+
+"He--here he is."
+
+The old man drew back as Jean came in. "I am sorry to be late,
+Hilaire."
+
+"It does not matter."
+
+Thereafter both sat patiently waiting for the end of a dinner that
+seemed age-long. When, at last, they were alone Jean rose to his feet;
+he was very pale and his brown eyes glittered.
+
+"Did Stefano tell you? I have found her and brought her here."
+
+"Oh, she has come, has she?"
+
+"You think less of her for that. Ah, you will misjudge her until you
+know her. Wait."
+
+He hurried out of the room.
+
+Hilaire stood on the hearth with his back to the fire. He repeated his
+formula, but there was a not unkindly light in his tired eyes, and
+when presently the door was opened and the girl came in he smiled.
+
+The club foot, of which he was nervously conscious at times, held him
+to his place, but she came forward until she was close to him.
+
+"You are his brother," she began. "I--what a good fire."
+
+She knelt down on the bear skin and stretched her hands to the blaze.
+Hilaire noticed that she was excessively thin; the rose-flushed cheeks
+were hollow and the curves of the sweet cleft chin too sharp. He
+looked at her as she crouched at his feet; the nape of the slim neck
+showed a very pure white against the shabby black of her dress, there
+were fine threads of gold in the soft brown tangle of her hair.
+
+Jean was dragging one of the great armchairs closer.
+
+"You are cold," he said anxiously. "Come and sit here."
+
+She rose obediently.
+
+"Have you had any dinner?" asked Hilaire.
+
+"Yes; they brought me some soup in my room. I am not hungry now."
+
+She spoke very simply, like a child. Jean had rifled all the other
+chairs to provide her with a sufficiency of cushions, and now he
+brought her a footstool.
+
+"I think I must take my shoes off," she said. "So cold--you see they
+let the water in, and--"
+
+"Take them off at once," ordered Hilaire, and he watched, still with
+that faint smile in his eyes, as Jean knelt to do his bidding.
+
+"That's very nice," sighed the girl. "I never knew before that real
+happiness is just having lots to eat and being warm."
+
+The two men looked at each other.
+
+"I have often wondered about you," she said to Hilaire presently.
+"Your eyes are just like his. I think if I had known that I should
+have had to come before; but you see I promised Cardinal Jacopo of
+Portugal--in San Miniato--that I would not. What am I talking about?"
+Her voice broke and she covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Oh, my God!" Jean would have gone to her, but his brother laid a
+restraining hand on his arm.
+
+"Leave her alone," he said. "She will be all right to-morrow. It's
+only excitement, nervous exhaustion. She must rest and eat. Wait
+quietly and don't look at her."
+
+Jean moved restlessly about the room; Hilaire, gravely silent, seemed
+to see nothing.
+
+So the two men waited until the girl was able to control her sobs.
+
+"I am so sorry," she said presently. "I have made you uncomfortable;
+forgive me."
+
+"Will you take a brandy-and-soda if I give it you?"
+
+"Yes, if you think it will do me good."
+
+Hilaire limped across to the sideboard. He was scarcely gone half a
+minute, but when he came back with a glass of the mixture he had
+prescribed he saw his brother kneeling at the girl's side, his arms
+about her, his face hidden in the folds of her skirt.
+
+"Jean! Get up!" he said very sharply. "Pull yourself together."
+
+Olive sat stiffly erect; her swollen, tear-stained lids hid the blue
+eyes, her pale, quivering lips formed words that were inaudible.
+
+Hilaire ground his teeth. "Get up!"
+
+After a while the lover loosed his hold; he bent to kiss the girl's
+feet; then he rose and went silently out of the room. Hilaire listened
+for the closing of another door before he rang the bell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+For some days and nights Olive lived only to eat and sleep. When she
+woke it was to hear a kind old voice urging her to take hot milk or
+soup, to see a kind old face framed in white hair set off by black
+lace lappets; and yet whenever she closed her eyes at first she was
+aware of a passionate aching echo of words said that was sad as the
+sound of the sea in a shell. "I love you--I love you--" until at last
+sleep helped to knit up the ravelled sleave of care.
+
+Every morning there were fresh roses for her.
+
+"The signorino hopes you are better."
+
+"Oh, much better, thank you." And after a while a day came when she
+felt really strong enough to get up. She dressed slowly and came down
+and out on to the terrace. The crumbling stones of the balustrade were
+moss-grown, as was the slender body of the bronze Mercury, poised for
+flight and dark against the pale illimitable blue of the December sky.
+Hilaire Avenel never tried to make Nature neat; the scarlet leaves of
+the Virginia creeper came fluttering down and were scattered on the
+worn black and white mosaic of the pavement; they showed like fire
+flickering in the sombre green of the cypresses. Beyond and below the
+garden, the olive and ilex woods, and the steep red roofs of
+Settignano, lay Florence, a city of the plain, and wreathed in a
+delicate mist. There was the great dome of Santa Maria dei Fiori; the
+tortuous silver streak that was Arno, spanned by her bridges; there
+was Giotto's tower, golden-white and rose golden, there the campanile
+of the Badia, the grim old Bargello, and the battlemented walls of the
+Palazzo Vecchio; farther still, across the river, the heights of San
+Miniato al Monte, Bellosguardo, and Mont' Oliveto, cypress crowned.
+
+Two white rough-coated sheep-dogs came rushing up the steps from the
+garden to greet Olive with sharp barks of joy, and Hilaire was not
+slow to follow. Olive still thought him very like his brother, an
+older and greyer Jean.
+
+"I have been so looking forward to showing you the garden," he said
+hurriedly in his kind eagerness to put her at her ease. "There are
+still a few late chrysanthemums, and you will find blue and white
+violets in the grass by the sundial."
+
+They passed down the steps together and through the green twilight of
+the orange groves, and came to a little fountain in the midst of a
+space of lawn set about with laurels. Hilaire threw a biscuit into
+the pool, and the dark water gleamed with silver and gold as the fish
+rushed at it.
+
+"I flatter myself that all the living things in this garden know me,"
+he said. "I bar the plainer kinds of insects and scorpions, of course;
+but the small green lizards are charming, aren't they?"
+
+"Mamie Whittaker had one on a gold chain. She used to wear it
+sometimes."
+
+"She would," he said drily. "The young savage! Better go naked than
+torture harmless things."
+
+"This place is perfect," sighed Olive; and then, "You have no home in
+France?"
+
+"We should have; but our great-grandfather was guillotined in Paris
+during the Terror, and his wife and child came to England. Years
+later, when they might have gone back they would not. Why should they?
+Napoleon had given the Avenel estates to one of his ruffians, who had
+since seceded to the Bourbon and so made all secure. Besides, they
+were happy enough. Marie Louis Hilaire gave music lessons, and the
+Marquise scrubbed and cooked and patched their clothes--she, who had
+been the Queen's friend, and so they managed to keep the little home
+together. Presently the young man married, and then Jean Marie
+appeared on the scene. We have a picture of him at the age of five, in
+a nankeen frock and a frill. Our mother was a Hungarian--hence Jean's
+music, I suppose--and there is Romany blood on that side. These are
+our antecedents. You will not be surprised at our vagaries now?"
+
+Olive smiled. "No, I shall remember the red heels of Versailles,
+English bread and butter, and the gipsy caravan."
+
+"Jean has fetched your books from the Monte di Pieta. Marietta found
+the tickets in your coat pocket. You don't mind?"
+
+Looking at her he saw her eyes fill with tears, and he hurried on: "No
+rubbish, I notice. Are you fond of reading?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I was wondering if you would care to undertake a work for me."
+
+"I should be glad to do anything," she said anxiously.
+
+"I have some thousands of books in the villa. Those I have collected
+myself I know--they are all in the library--but there are many that
+were left me by my father, and others that came from an uncle, and
+they are all piled up in heaps in the empty rooms on the second floor.
+I want someone to sort them out, catalogue, and arrange them for me.
+Would you care to do it?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"That's all right then," he said hastily. "I'll get a carpenter in at
+once to put up some more shelves ready for them. And I think you had
+better stay on in the villa, if you don't mind. It will be more
+convenient. The salary will be two hundred lire a month, paid in
+advance."
+
+"Your kindness--I can't express my gratitude--" she began tremulously.
+
+"Nonsense! This is a business transaction, and I am coming out of it
+very well. I should not get a man to do the work for that absurdly
+small sum. I am underpaying you on purpose because I hate women."
+
+Olive laughed. "Commend me to misogynists henceforth."
+
+She wanted to begin at once, but her host assured her that he would
+rather she waited until the shelves were put up.
+
+"You will have to sort them out several times, according to date,
+language and subject. Perhaps Jean can help you when he returns. He is
+away just now."
+
+Watching her, he saw the deepening of the rose.
+
+"I--I can't remember exactly what happened the night I came, Mr
+Avenel. You know I had not been able to find work, and though my
+_padrona_ was kind she was very poor too. She pawned my things for me,
+but they fetched so little, and I had not had anything to eat for ever
+so long when he came. He has not gone away because of me, has he?"
+
+Hilaire threw the fish another biscuit; it fell among the lily leaves
+at the feet of the weather-stained marble nymph of the fountain.
+
+"I must decline to answer," he said gravely, after a pause. "I
+understand that you are twenty-three and old enough therefore to judge
+for yourself, and I do not intend to influence either you or Jean, if
+I can help it. You will be perfectly free to do exactly what you think
+right, my dear girl. I will only give you one bit of advice, and that
+is, look at life with your eyes wide open. Don't blink! This is
+Friday, and Jean is coming to see you on Wednesday."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Olive told herself that Hilaire was very good to her in the days that
+followed. He came sometimes into the room where she was, to find her
+sitting on the floor amid the piles of books she was trying to reduce
+to some kind of order.
+
+"You do not get tired? I am afraid they are rather dusty."
+
+"Oh, not at all," she assured him. She was swathed in a blue linen
+apron of Marietta's and had tied a cotton handkerchief over her hair.
+"I like to feel I am doing something for you," she said. "I wish--you
+have been--you are so kind."
+
+On the Wednesday morning she covered some of the books with brown
+paper and pasted labels on their backs. She tried not to listen for
+the creaking of the great gates as they swung open, for the grating of
+wheels against the stones, for Jean's voice calling to his brother,
+for his quick step upon the stair, but she heard all as she wrote
+_Vita Nuova_ on the slip intended for an early edition of the _Rape of
+the Lock_, and put the _Decameron_ aside with some sermons and
+commentaries that were to be classified as devotional literature. He
+did not come to her then, but she was desperately afraid that he
+might. "I am not ready ... not ..."
+
+When, later, she came into the dining-room she seemed to be perfectly
+at her ease. Jean's eyes had been fixed on the door, and they met hers
+eagerly as she came forward. "Are you better?" he asked, and then bit
+his lip, thinking he had said the wrong thing.
+
+"Oh, yes. But--but you look pale and thinner."
+
+Her little air of gay indifference fell away from her. As he still
+held her hand she felt the tears coming and longed to be able to run
+upstairs and take some more sal volatile, but Hilaire came to the
+rescue.
+
+"Well, let's have lunch," he said. "I hate tepid food."
+
+When they had taken their places Jean gave the girl a letter.
+
+"It came for you to the Lorenzoni. I called at the porter's lodge this
+morning and Ser Gigia gave it me."
+
+"Such a waste of good things I never saw," the butler said afterwards
+to his wife. "As you know, the _padrone_ never eats more than enough
+to fill a bird, but I have seen the signorino hungry, and the young
+lady too. To-day, however, they ate nothing, though the _frittata_ was
+fit to melt in one's mouth. I should not have been ashamed to set it
+before the Archangel Gabriel, and he would have eaten it, since it is
+certain that the Blessed One has never been in love."
+
+After the meal, to which no one indeed had done justice, Hilaire
+explained that he was going to write some letters.
+
+The younger man looked at Olive. "Come with me," he said abruptly. "I
+want to play to you."
+
+"I want to hear you," she said as she rose from the table.
+
+He followed her into the music-room and shut the door. "Well?"
+
+She chose to misunderstand him. "It is charming. Just what a shrine of
+sound should be."
+
+The grand piano stood out from the grey-green background of the walls
+beyond, there was a bronze statuette of Orpheus with his lute on a
+twisted Byzantine column of white and gold mosaic, and a long
+cushioned divan set on one side broke the long lines of light on the
+polished floor.
+
+"What are you going to play?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing, at present," he said, smiling at her. "I want to talk to you
+first. You are not frightened?"
+
+"No." She sat on the divan and he stood before her, looking down into
+her eyes.
+
+"I think I had better try to tell you about my wife," he said. "May I
+sit here? And may I smoke?"
+
+"Yes." She drew her skirts aside to make room for him next to her. "I
+want to hear you," she said again.
+
+"Imagine me, a boy of twenty-two, convalescing in country lodgings
+after an illness that seemed to have taken the marrow out of my bones.
+Hilaire was in Japan, and I--a callow fledgling from the nest--was
+very sick and sorry for myself. There were some people living in
+rather a large house at the other end of the village who took notice
+of me. They were the only ones, and I have thought since that my
+acquaintance with them really did for me with everyone else. They were
+not desirable--but--well, I was too young, and just then too
+physically weak to avoid their more pressing attentions. Old Seldon
+was one of those flushed, swollen men whose collars seem always to be
+too small for them. He tried to be pleasant, but it was not a great
+success. There were two daughters at home, and Gertrude was the
+eldest. She had been married, and the man had died, leaving her
+penniless. As you may suppose she had not come back to veal. I was
+sorry for her then because she seemed a good sort, and she was very
+kind to me; she was five years my senior--"
+
+"Go on," Olive said.
+
+"I used to go to the house nearly every evening. She sang well, and I
+used to play her accompaniments, while the old man hung about the
+sideboard. He never left us alone, and the younger girl, Violet, used
+to meet the rector's son in the stables then. I heard that afterwards.
+They lived anyhow, and owed money to all the tradespeople round.
+
+"One night I was awakened by a knocking outside; my landlady slept at
+the back, and she was deaf besides, so I went down myself. The wind
+put my candle out as I opened the door, but I saw a woman standing
+there in the rain, and I asked her what she wanted. She made no
+answer, but pushed past me into the passage, and went into my
+sitting-room. I followed, of course.
+
+"Well, perhaps you have guessed that it was Gertrude. Her yellow hair
+hung down and about her face; she was only half dressed, and her bare
+arms and shoulders were all wet. Her skirts were torn and stained with
+mud. She told me her father had turned her out of the house in a
+drunken fury and she had come to me. Even then I wondered why she had
+not gone to some woman--surely she might have found shelter--however,
+she had come to me. I was going to call up my landlady, but she would
+not allow it because she said that no one but I need ever know. She
+would creep home through the fields soon after sunrise and her sister
+would let her in. The old man would be sleeping heavily.... The end of
+it was that I let her go up to my room while I lay on the sofa in the
+little parlour. The horsehair bolster was deucedly hard, but I was
+young, and when I did get off I slept well. When I woke it was nearer
+eight than seven, and I had just scrambled up when my landlady came
+in. One look at her face was enough. I understood that Gertrude had
+overslept herself too.
+
+"The sequel was hateful. There was a frightful scandal, of course; the
+father raved, the women cried, the rector talked to me seriously,
+and--Olive, mark this--Gertrude would not say anything. I married her
+and we came away."
+
+"It was a trap," cried Olive.
+
+"We had not one single thing in common, and you know when there is no
+love sex is a barrier set up by the devil between human souls. After
+some years of mutual misery I brought her here. Poor Hilaire has hated
+respectable women ever since--she was that, if that counts when there
+is nothing else. Just virtue, with no saving graces. She is living in
+London now, is much esteemed, and regularly exceeds her allowance."
+
+"Was she pretty?"
+
+Jean had let his pipe go out, and now he relit it. "Oh, yes," he said,
+"I suppose so. Frizzy hair and all that. I fancy she has grown stout
+now. She is the kind that spreads."
+
+"Life is all so hateful," sighed the girl. Jean moved away from her
+and went to the window. Hilaire was limping across the terrace
+towards the garden steps. When he was gone out of sight Jean came back
+into the room.
+
+"My brother is unhappy too. The woman he loved died. Oh, Olive, are we
+to be lonely always because the law will not give me a divorce from
+the woman who was never really my wife, never dear to me or near to me
+as you are? Joy is within our reach, a golden rose on the tree of
+life, and it is for you to gather it or to hold your hand. Don't
+answer me yet for God's sake. Wait!"
+
+He went to the piano and opened it.
+
+Rain ... rain dripping on the roof through the long hours of night,
+and the weary moaning of the wakeful wind. Thronging memories of past
+years, past youth, past joy, past laughter echoing and re-echoing in
+one man's hungry heart. Light footsteps of children never to be born
+... and then the heavy tread of men carrying a coffin, and the last
+sound of all--the clanging of an iron door....
+
+The grave ... the grave ... it held the boy who had loved her, and
+presently, surely, it would hold this man too, sealing his kind lips
+with earth, closing his brown eyes in an eternal darkness.
+
+He played, as thousands had said, divinely, not only with his hands
+but with his soul. The music that had been a work of genius became a
+miracle when he interpreted it, and indeed it seemed that virtue went
+out of him. His face was drawn and pale and a pulse beat in his cheek.
+Olive, gazing at him through a blur of tears, knew that she had never
+longed for anything in her life as she longed now to comfort this pain
+expressed in ripples, and low murmurings, and great crashing waves of
+the illimitable sea of sound. Her heart ached with the pity that is a
+woman's way of loving, and as he left the piano she rose too. He
+uttered a sort of cry as she swayed towards him, and clasped her in
+his arms.
+
+"I love you," he said, his lips so close to hers that she felt rather
+than heard the words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Jean came to the villa a little before noon on the following day.
+Hilaire, who was in the library, heard his voice in the hall calling
+the dogs, heard him whistling some little song tune as he opened and
+shut all the doors one after the other.
+
+    "'_O l'amor e' come un nocciuola
+      Se non se apre non si puo mangiarla--_'"
+
+"Hilaire, where are you? I thought I should find you on the terrace
+this fine morning. Where is she?" he added eagerly as he laid a great
+bunch of roses down on the table. "Is her headache better? Has not she
+come down yet?"
+
+He looked across the room to where his brother's grey head just showed
+above the high carved back of his chair.
+
+"Hilaire! Why don't you answer?"
+
+In the silence that ensued he distinctly heard the ticking of the
+clock on the mantelpiece and the falling of the soft wood ashes in the
+grate; the beating of his own heart sounded loud to him. One of the
+dogs was scratching at the door and whining to be let in.
+
+"Hilaire."
+
+"She is gone."
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"Yes. She left this letter for you."
+
+"Ah, give it to me." He opened and read it hurriedly.
+
+"I thought you meant dead at first," he said. His brown eyes had lost
+the light that had been in them and were melancholy as before; he
+stood still by the table looking down upon his roses. They would fade,
+and she would never see them now. Never ... never ...
+
+"Come and sit by the fire and let's talk it over quietly," said
+Hilaire. "Oh, damn women," he mumbled as he drew at his pipe--the
+fifth that morning. It was the first time in a week that he had
+uttered his pet expletive. "What does she say?"
+
+"You can read her letter."
+
+"Would she mind?"
+
+"Oh, no," Jean said bitterly. "She loves you--what she calls
+loving--next best after me. She told me so."
+
+Hilaire carefully smoothed the crumpled, blotted page out on his knee.
+
+    "MY DEAREST JEAN,--I am going away because I am a
+    coward. I dare not live with you, and I dare not ask you
+    to forgive me. Last night as I lay awake I thought and
+    thought about my feeling for you and I was sure that it
+    was love. I used to think of you often last summer and
+    to wonder where you were and what you were doing, and I
+    hoped you had not forgotten me. I did not love you then,
+    but I suppose my thoughts of you kept my heart's door
+    open for you, and certainly they helped to keep out
+    someone else who came and tried to get admittance. Oh,
+    one must suffer to keep love perfect, but isn't it worth
+    while? You may not believe me now when I say that if I
+    cared for you less I should stay, but it is true. Oh,
+    Jean, even when we were so happy for a few minutes
+    yesterday something in me looked beyond into the years
+    to come and was afraid. Not of you; I trust you,
+    dearest; but of the world. Men would stare at me and
+    laugh and whisper together, and women would look away,
+    and I know I should not be able to bear it. I am not
+    brave like that. Oh, every word I write must hurt you, I
+    know. Remember that I love you now and shall always.
+    Good-bye.--Your
+
+                    "OLIVE."
+
+"I should keep this."
+
+"I am going to. Hilaire, did you know she was going? Did she tell
+you?"
+
+The older man answered quietly: "Yes, I knew, and I sent her to the
+station in the motor. I had promised a strict neutrality, Jean, and
+she was right to go. Some women, good women, may be strong enough to
+bear all the suffering that is entailed upon them by a known
+irregularity in their lives. She is not. It would probably have killed
+her though I am not saying that she would not have been happy
+sometimes, when she could forget her shame."
+
+Jean flinched as though his brother had struck him. "Don't use that
+word."
+
+"Well, what else would it be? What else would the world call it? And
+women listen to what the world says. 'Good name in man or woman is the
+immediate jewel of their souls'; Othello said something like that, and
+it's often true. Besides, you know, this woman is pure in herself, and
+from what she told me I understand that she has seen something of the
+seamy side of love lately--enough to inspire her with dread. She is
+afraid, and her fear is exquisite; a very fine and rare thing. It is
+the bloom on the fruit and should not be brushed off with an ungentle
+hand. Poor child! Don't blame her as she blames herself or I shall
+begin to think she is too good for you."
+
+Jean sat leaning forward staring into the fire.
+
+"Do you realise that when I brought her here it was from starvation in
+a garret? Where is she going? What will she do? Oh, God! The poor
+little slender body! Do you remember she said it was happiness just to
+be warm and have enough to eat?"
+
+"That's all right," Hilaire said hastily. "She is going to a good
+woman, a friend she made in Siena. The letter you brought was from
+her, and she wrote to say she had been ill and wished Olive could come
+and be with her for a while."
+
+"I see! And she was glad to get away."
+
+"My dear man, did you really think she would be so easily won? She
+loves you, and you not only made love to her yesterday afternoon; you
+played to her--I heard you--and I knew she would have to say 'Yes' to
+everything. Now she says 'No,' but you must not think she does not
+care." Hilaire got up, came across to where his brother sat, and laid
+a caressing hand on his shoulder. "Dear Jean, will it comfort you to
+hear me swear she means every word of that letter? It's not all over.
+You will come together in the end. Her poor blue eyes were drowned in
+tears--"
+
+"Oh, don't," Jean said brokenly. The hard line of his lips relaxed. He
+hid his face in his hands.
+
+Hilaire went out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.--ROME
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Olive was alone in the compartment of the train that bore her away
+from Florence and from Jean. She had a book; it lay open on her lap,
+and she had tried to read, but the lines all ran together and the
+effort to concentrate her thoughts made her head ache. She was very
+unhappy. It seemed to her that now indeed life was emptied of all
+sweets and the taste of it was as dust and ashes in her mouth. She was
+leaving youth and joy behind; or rather, she had killed them and left
+a man to bury them. At Orvieto she nearly broke down. It would be so
+easy to get out and cross over to the other platform and there await
+the next train back to Florence. She had her hand upon the handle of
+the door when a boy with little flasks of wine in a basket came up and
+asked her to buy, and as she answered him she heard the cry of
+"_Partenza!_" It was too late; the moment had passed, and after a
+while she knew that she was glad she had not yielded. She was doing
+the right thing. What was the old French motto? "_Fais ce que doit,
+advienne que pourra._" The brave words comforted her a little. She was
+very tired, and presently she slept.
+
+She was awakened by the discordant yells of the Roman _facchini_ on
+the station platform. One of them carried her box to the office of the
+Dogana, but a large party of Americans had come by the same train and
+the officials were too busily engaged in turning over the contents of
+their innumerable Saratogas to do more than scrabble in chalk on the
+side of her shabby leather trunk and shake their heads at the
+proffered key, and soon she was in a _vettura_ clattering down the
+wide new Via Nazionale.
+
+Signora de Sanctis lived with her sister in one of the old streets in
+the lower part of the city near the Pantheon--the Via Arco della
+Ciambella. The houses there are built on the foundations of the Baths
+of Agrippa, and a brick arch, part of the great Tepidarium, remains to
+give the street its name. The poor fragment has been Christianised; a
+wayside altar sanctifies it, and a little painted shrine to the
+Madonna adorns the base. The buildings on that side are small and mean
+and overshadowed by the great yellow palace of the Spinola opposite.
+Olive's friends lived over a wine shop, but the entrance was some way
+down the street.
+
+"Fortunately, my dear," as they remarked, "though really the place is
+very quiet. People go outside the gates to get drunk."
+
+Both the women seemed glad to see her. Her room was ready and a meal
+had been prepared and the cloth laid at one end of the work-table. The
+younger sister was a dressmaker too, and the floor was strewn with
+scraps of lining and silk. A white dress lay on the sofa, carefully
+folded and covered with a sheet of tissue paper.
+
+"You look tired, Olive. Were you not happy in Florence?"
+
+The girl admitted that the Lorenzoni had not been very kind to her.
+She had left them and had been living on her savings. It had been hard
+to find other employment. "I want to work," she said. "You will let me
+help you, and I hope to get lessons."
+
+She asked to be allowed to wash the plates and dishes and put them
+away in the tiny kitchen. She was in a mood to bear anything better
+than the idleness that left room for her own sad thoughts, and she
+wished that they would let her do some sewing. "I am not good at
+needlework, but I can hem and put on buttons," she pleaded.
+
+Signora Giulia smiled at her. She was small, and she had a pale,
+dragged look and many lines about her weak eyes. "No, thank you, my
+dear. I have a girl apprentice who comes during the day, and I do the
+cutting out and designing and the embroidery myself. You must not
+tire yourself in the kitchen either. We have an old woman in to do
+_mezzo servizio_."
+
+It was nine o'clock, and the narrow streets were echoing now to the
+hoarse cries of the newsvendors: "_Tribuna!_" "_Tribuna!_"
+
+"I will go and unpack then, and to-morrow I shall find some registry
+offices and try to get English lessons."
+
+"Yes, go, _nina_, and sleep well. You look tired. You must get
+stronger while you are with us."
+
+For a long time she could not sleep. In the summer she had played with
+the thought of love, and then she had been able to close her eyes and
+feel Jean Avenel close beside her, leaning towards her, saying that
+she must not be afraid, that he would not hurt her. It had been a sort
+of game, a childish game of make-believe that seemed to hurt no one,
+not even herself. But now she was hurt indeed; the remembrance of his
+kisses ached upon her lips.
+
+When Tor di Rocca had asked her to go away with him she had felt that
+it might be worth while, that it would be pleasant to be cared for and
+loved, to eat and drink and die on the morrow, but the man himself had
+been nothing to her. A means to an end.
+
+She had been wholly a creature of blind instincts, the will to live,
+to creep out of the dark into the sunshine that is inherent in the
+animal, fighting against that other impulse, trying to root up that
+white fragile flower, watered throughout the centuries with blood and
+tears and rare and precious ointment, that thorn in some women's
+hearts, their pale ideal of inviolate purity.
+
+The spirit had warred against the flesh, and the spirit had won then
+and now. It had won, but not finally. She was dismayed to find that
+temptation was a recurrent thing. Every morning when she woke it
+returned to her. It would be so easy to write "Dearest, come to me."
+It would be so easy to make him happy. She thought little of herself
+now and much of Jean. Would he stay on with his brother or go away
+again? Had she hurt him very much? Would he forget her? Or hate her?
+
+During the day she trudged the streets of Rome and grew to know them
+well. Here, as in Florence, no one wanted to pay for learning, no one
+wanted an English girl for anything apparently. If she had been Swiss,
+and so able to speak three languages incorrectly, she might have found
+a place as nursery-governess; as it was, the people in the registry
+offices grew tired of her and she was afraid to go to them too often.
+
+There was little for her to do in the house. The old woman who came in
+did the cleaning, and they lived on bread and _ricotta_ cheese and a
+cabbage soup that was easily prepared, but sometimes she was able to
+help with the sewing, and now and then she was allowed to take the
+finished work home.
+
+"It is not fit! They will take you for an apprentice, a _sartina_."
+
+Olive laughed rather mirthlessly at that. "I am not proud," she said.
+
+"I sat up until two last night to finish the Contessa's dress. She is
+always in a hurry. If only she would pay what she owes," sighed the
+dressmaker.
+
+Olive promised to bring the money back with her, and she waited a long
+while in the stuffy passage of the Contessa's flat. There were
+imitation Abyssinian trophies on the walls, lances and daggers and
+shields of lathe and cardboard and painted paper. The husband was an
+artillery captain, and his sword stood with the umbrellas in the rack,
+the only real thing in that pretentious armoury.
+
+The Contessa came out to her presently. She was a large woman, and as
+she was angry she seemed to swell and redden and gobble as turkeys do.
+
+"Are you the _giovinetta_? You will take this dress away. It is not
+fit to put on." She held the bodice in her hand, and as she spoke she
+shook it in Olive's face. "The stitches are all awry; they are
+enormous; and half the embroidery is blue and the other half green. I
+shall make her pay for the material. The dress is ruined, and it is
+the last she shall make for me. She must pay me, and you must tell her
+so."
+
+Olive collected her scattered wits. "If the Signora Contessa would
+allow me to look," she said.
+
+The stitches were very large, and her heart sank as she examined them.
+The poor women had toiled so over this work, stooping over it,
+straining their tired eyes. "I think we can alter it to your
+satisfaction, but I must ask you to be indulgent, signora. I will
+bring it back the day after to-morrow, if that will suit you." She
+folded the bodice carefully and wrapped it in the piece of paper she
+had brought it in, fastening the four corners with pins.
+
+"The skirt goes well?"
+
+"It will do," the Contessa admitted as she turned away. "Anacleto!"
+
+A slender, dark-eyed youth emerged from the shadows at the far end of
+the passage, bringing a sound and smell of frying with him. His bare
+brown arms were floury and he wiped them on his striped cotton apron
+as he came forward to open the door. He wore a white camellia thrust
+behind one ear.
+
+"It would be convenient--Signora Manara would be glad if you could pay
+part of her account," faltered Olive.
+
+The Contessa stopped short. "I could, but I will not," she said
+emphatically. "She does her work too badly."
+
+The young servant grinned at the girl as she passed out. She was
+half-way down the stairs when he came out on to the landing and leaned
+over the banisters.
+
+"Never! Never!" he called down to her. "They never pay anyone. I am
+leaving to-morrow."
+
+The white camellia dropped at her feet. She smiled involuntarily as
+she stooped to gather up the token. "Men are rather dears."
+
+She met Ser Giulia coming down the stairs of their house. The little
+woman looked quickly at the bundle she carried as she asked why it had
+been brought back.
+
+"She wants it altered! _Dio mio!_ And I worked so hard at it. How much
+of the money has she given you?"
+
+"She has given nothing; I hope she will pay when I take the work
+back."
+
+But the other began to cry. "Perhaps the stitches are large," she
+said, sobbing. "I know my eyes are weak. No one will pay me, and I owe
+the baker more than ten lire. Soon we shall have to beg our bread in
+the streets."
+
+"Don't," Olive said hurriedly. "Don't. I have been with you more than
+a month and I have not found work yet, but I will not be a burden to
+you much longer. I shall find something to do soon and then you need
+not do so much and we shall manage better."
+
+"Oh, child, I know you do your best."
+
+"Don't cry then. I will get money somehow. Don't be afraid."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Olive sat idly on one of the benches near the great wall in the
+Pincian gardens. She had been to an office in the Piazza di Spagna and
+had there been assured for the seventh time that there was nothing on
+the books. "If the signorina were a cook now, there are many people in
+need of cooks," the young man behind the counter had said smilingly,
+and she had thanked him and come away. What else could she do?
+
+It was getting late, and a fading light filtered through the bare
+interwoven branches of the planes. The shadows were lengthening in the
+avenues and grass-bordered paths where the seminarists had been
+walking in twos and threes among the playing children. They were gone
+now, the grave-faced young men in their black soutanes and broad
+beaver hats; all the people were gone.
+
+"O Pasquina! _Birichina!_"
+
+Olive, turning her head, saw a young woman and a child coming towards
+her. The little thing was clinging to its mother's skirts, stumbling
+at every step, whining to be taken up, and now she dropped the white
+rabbit muff and the doll she was carrying into a puddle.
+
+"O Pasquina!"
+
+The child stared open-mouthed as Olive came forward and stooped to
+pick up the fallen treasures, and though tears were running down her
+little face she made no outcry.
+
+"See, the beautiful lady helps you," the mother said hastily, and she
+sat down on the bench at Olive's side and lifted the baby on to her
+lap to comfort her.
+
+"She is tired. We have been to the Campo Marzo to buy her a fine hat
+with white feathers," she explained.
+
+Olive looked at her with interest. She was not at all pretty; her
+round snubby face was red and she had a bruise on her chin, and yet
+she was somehow attractive. Her small, twinkling blue eyes were so
+kind, and her hair was beautiful, smooth, shining, and yellow as
+straw. She wore no hat.
+
+Her name was Rosina. The signorino was always very good, and he gave
+her an afternoon off when she asked for it. On Christmas night, for
+instance, she had drunk too much wine, and she had fallen down in the
+street and hurt herself. The next day her head ached so, and when the
+signorino saw she was not well he said she might go home and sleep.
+She had been working for him six weeks. What work? She seemed
+surprised at the question.
+
+"I am a model. My face is ugly, as you see," she said in her simple,
+straightforward way; "but otherwise I am beautiful, and I can always
+get work with sculptors. The signorino is an American and he has an
+unpronounceable name. He is doing me as Eve, crouched on the ground
+and hiding my head in my arms. After the Fall, you know. Have you been
+to the Andreoni gallery? There is a statuette of me there called
+'Morning.' This is the pose."
+
+She clasped her hands together behind her head, raising her chin a
+little. Olive observed the smooth long throat, the exquisite lines of
+the shoulders and breast and hips. Pasquina slipped off her mother's
+knees.
+
+"Are you well paid?"
+
+"It depends on the artist. Some are so poor that they cannot give, and
+others will not. The schools allow fifteen soldi an hour, but the
+signorino is paying me twenty-five soldi. In the evenings I sing and
+dance at a _caffe_ near the station."
+
+Olive hesitated. "Do--do artists ever want models dressed?"
+
+Rosina looked at her quickly. "Oh, yes, when they are as pretty as you
+are. But you are well educated--one sees that--it is not fit work for
+such as you."
+
+"Never mind that," Olive said eagerly. "How does one begin being a
+model? I will try that. Will you help me?"
+
+Rosina beamed at her. "_Sicuro!_ We will go to Varini's school in the
+Corso if you like. The woman in the newspaper kiosk in the Piazza di
+Spagna knows me, and I can leave Pasquina with her. _An'iamo!_"
+
+The two girls went together down the wide, shallow steps of the
+Trinita dei Monti with the child between them.
+
+Poor little Pasquina was the outward and visible sign of her mother's
+inward and hopelessly material gracelessness; she symbolised the great
+gulf fixed between smirched Roman Rosina and Jean's English rose in
+their different understanding of their own hearts' uses. Olive
+believed love to be the way to heaven; Rosina knew it, or thought she
+knew it, as a means of livelihood.
+
+The model was very evidently not only familiar with the studios. The
+cabmen on the rank in the piazza hailed her with cries of "Rosi"; she
+was greeted by beggars at the street corners, dustmen, _carabinieri_,
+crossing-sweepers, and Olive was not wholly unembarrassed. Yet Rosina
+escaped the vulgarity of some who might be called her betters as the
+world goes by being simply natural. When she was amused she laughed
+aloud, when she was tired she yawned as openly and flagrantly as any
+duchess. In manners extremes meet, and the giggle and the sneer are
+the disastrous half measures of the ill-bred, the social greasers.
+Rosina had never been sly in her life; she was ever as simply without
+shame as Eve before the Fall, and lawless because she knew no law. The
+darkness of Northern cities is tainted and cold and cannot bring forth
+such kindly things as the _rosine_--little roses--that spring up in
+the warm, sweet Roman dust.
+
+"Here is Varini's."
+
+They passed through a covered passage into a little garden overgrown
+with laurels and gnarled old pepper trees; there was a fountain with
+gold fish, and green arums were springing up about a broken faun's
+head set on a pedestal of _verd' antico_. Some men were standing
+together in the path, a pretty dark-eyed peasant girl with them. They
+all turned to stare, and the _cioccara_ put out her tongue as Olive
+went by. Rosina instantly replied in kind.
+
+"_Ohe! Fortunata! Benedetta ragazza!_ Resting as usual? Does Lorenz
+still beat you?"
+
+She described the antecedents and characteristics of Lorenz.
+
+The slower-witted country girl had a more limited vocabulary. Her eyes
+glared in the shadow of her white coif. "Ah," she gasped. "_Brutta
+bestia!_" and she turned her back.
+
+The men laughed, and Rosina laughed with them as she knocked on a
+green painted door in the wall. It was opened by a burly, bearded
+man, tweed-clad, and swathed in a stained painting apron.
+
+"Oh, _Professore_, here is a friend of mine who wants work."
+
+"Come in," he said shortly, and they followed him into a large untidy
+studio. A Pompeian fruit-seller in a black frame, a study for a
+Judgment of Paris on a draped easel, and on another easel the portrait
+of an old lady just begun. There were stacks of canvases on the floor
+and on all the chairs.
+
+"Turn to the light," the artist said brusquely; and then, as Olive
+obeyed him, "Don't be frightened. You are new, I see. You are so pink
+and white that I thought you were painted. You are not Italian?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What, then?"
+
+She was silent.
+
+He smiled. "Ah, well, it does not matter. You can come to the pavilion
+on Monday at five and sit to the evening class for a week. You
+understand? Wait a minute." He went to the door and called one of the
+young men in from the garden.
+
+"Here is a new model, Mario. I have engaged her for the evening class.
+What do you think of her?"
+
+"_Carina assai_," approved Mario. He was a round-faced, snub-nosed
+youth with clever brown eyes set very far apart, and a humorous mouth.
+"_Carina assai!_" he repeated.
+
+"Fifteen soldi the hour, from five to seven-thirty," said the
+professor. "Come a little before the time on Monday; the porter will
+show you what costume you must wear and I shall be there to pose you."
+
+"Now I shall take you to M'sieur Michelin," Rosina said when they had
+left Varini's. "He is looking for a type, and perhaps you will please
+him. He is _strano_, but good always, and he pays well."
+
+"It is not tiring you?"
+
+"_Ma che!_ I must see that you begin well and with the right people.
+Some painters are _canaglia_. Ah, I know that," the girl said with a
+little sigh and a shrug of her shoulders.
+
+They went by way of the Via Babuino across the Piazza di Spagna, and
+up the little hill past the convent of English nuns to the Villa
+Medici. Rosina rang the gate-bell, and the old braided Cerberus
+admitted them grumblingly. "You are late. But if it is M'sieur
+Camille--"
+
+Camille Michelin, bright particular star of the French Prix de Rome
+constellation, lived and worked in one of the more secluded
+garden-studios of the villa; it was deep set in the ilex wood, and the
+girls came to it by a narrow winding path, box-edged, and strewn with
+dead leaves. A light shone in one of the upper windows; the great man
+was there and he came down the creaking wooden stairs himself to open
+the door.
+
+"Who is it? Rosina? I have put away the Anthony canvas for a month
+and I will let you know when I want you again."
+
+"But, signorino, I have brought you a type."
+
+"What!" he said eagerly, in his execrable Italian. "Fresh, sweet,
+clean?"
+
+"_Sicuro._"
+
+"I do not believe you. You are lying."
+
+Camille was picturesque from the crown of his flaxen head to the soles
+of his brown boots; his pallor was interesting, his blue eyes
+remarkable; he habitually wore rust-coloured velveteen; he smoked
+cigarettes incessantly. All men who knew and loved his work saw in him
+a decadent creature of extraordinary charm; and yet, in spite of his
+"Aholibah," his "Salome," and his horribly beautiful, unfinished study
+of Fulvia piercing the tongue of Cicero, in spite of his
+Byron-cum-Baudelaire after Velasquez and Vandyke exterior he always
+managed to be quite boyishly simple and sincere.
+
+"Where is she?" Then, as his eyes met Olive's, he cried, "Not you,
+mademoiselle?" His surprise was as manifest as his pleasure. "My
+friends have sworn that I could never paint a wholesome picture. Now I
+will show them. When can you come?"
+
+"Monday morning."
+
+"Do not fail me," he implored. "Such harpies have been here to show
+themselves to me; fat, brown, loose-lipped things with purple-shadowed
+eyes. But you are perfect; divine bread-and-butter. They think they are
+clean because they have washed in soap and water, but it is the
+stainless soul I want. It must shine through my canvas as it does
+through Angelico's."
+
+"I hope I shall please you," faltered the girl. "I--I only pose
+draped."
+
+He looked at her quickly. "Very well," he said, "I will remember. It
+is your head I want. You are not Roman; have you sat to any other man
+here?"
+
+"No. I am going to Varini's in the evenings next week."
+
+"Ah! Well, don't let anyone else get hold of you. Gontrand will be
+trying to snap you up. He is so tired of the _cioccare_. What shall I
+call you?"
+
+"Nothing. I have no name."
+
+"I shall give you one. You shall be called child. Come at nine and you
+will find the door open." He fumbled in his pockets for some silver.
+"Here, Rosina, this is for the little one."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The virtue that bruises not only the heel of the Evil One but the
+heart of the beloved is never its own reward. The thought of Jean's
+aching loneliness oppressed Olive far more than her own. She believed
+that she had done right in leaving him, but no consciousness of her
+own rectitude sustained her, and she was pitifully far from any sense
+of self-satisfaction. Her head hung dejectedly in the cold light of
+its aureole. Sometimes she hated herself for being one of the dull
+ninety-and-nine who never stray and who need no forgiveness, and yet
+she clung to her dear ideal of love thorn-crowned, white, and clean.
+
+She had hoped to be able to help her friends, but that hope had faded,
+and she had been very near despair. There was something pathetic now
+in her intense joy at the thought of earning a few pence. She lied to
+the kind women at home because she knew they would not understand.
+They might believe the way to the Villa Medici to be the primrose path
+that leads to everlasting fire--they probably would if they had ever
+heard of Camille. She told them she had found lessons, and the wolf
+seemed to skulk growlingly away from the door as she uttered the
+words.
+
+"You need not be afraid of the baker now," she told Ser Giulia. "He
+shall be paid at the end of the week."
+
+Her waking on the Monday morning was the happiest she had known since
+she left Florence. She was to help to make beautiful things. Her part
+would be passive; but they also serve who only stand and wait. She was
+not of those who see degradation in the lesser forms of labour. Each
+worker is needed to make the perfect whole. The men who wrought the
+gold knots and knops of the sanctuary, who wove the veil for the Holy
+of Holies, were called great, but the hewers of wood and carriers of
+water were temple builders too, even though their part was but to
+raise up scaffoldings that must come down again, or to mix the mortar
+that is unseen though it should weld the whole. Men might pass these
+toilers by in silence, but God would surely praise them.
+
+Praxiteles moulded a goddess in clay, and we still acclaim him after
+the lapse of some two thousand years. What of the woman who wearied
+and ached that his eyes might not fail to learn the least sweet curve
+of her? What of the patient craftsmen who hewed out the block of
+marble, whose eyes were inflamed, whose lungs were scarred by the
+white dust of it? They suffered for beauty's sake--not, as some might
+say, because they must eat and live. Even slaves might get bread by
+easier ways. But, very simply for beauty's sake.
+
+Olive might have soon learnt how vile such service may be in the
+studios of any of the _canaglia_ poor Rosina knew, but Camille, that
+sheep in wolf's clothing, was safe enough. What there was in him of
+perversity, of brute force, he expended in the portrayal of his subtly
+beautiful furies. His art was feverishly decadent, and those who judge
+a man by his work might suppose him to be a monster of iniquity. He
+was, in fact, an extremely clever and rather worldly-wise boy who
+loved violets and stone-pines and moonlight with poetical fervour, who
+preferred milk to champagne, and saunterings in green fields to
+gambling on green cloth.
+
+That February morning was cloudless, and Rome on her seven hills was
+flooded in sunshine. The birds were singing in the ilex wood as Olive
+passed through, and Camille was singing too in his _atelier_:
+
+    "'_Derriere chez mon pere
+      Vive la rose.'
+    Il y a un oranger
+      Vive ci, vive la!
+    Il y a un oranger,
+      Vive la rose et le lilas!_"
+
+"I was afraid you would be late."
+
+"Why?" she asked, smiling, as she came to him across the great room.
+
+"Women always are. But you are not a woman; you are an angel."
+
+He looked at her closely. The strong north light showed her smooth
+skin flawless.
+
+"The white and rose is charming," he said. "And I adore freckles. But
+your eyes are too deep; one can see that you have suffered. There is
+too much in them for the innocent baa-lamb picture I must paint."
+
+Her face fell. "I shan't do then?"
+
+"Dear child, you will," he reassured her. "I shall paint your lashes
+and not your eyes. Your lashes and a curve of pink cheek. Now go
+behind that screen and put on the sprigged cotton frock you will find
+there, with a muslin fichu and a mob cap. I have a basket of wools
+here and a piece of tapestry. The sort of woman I have never painted
+is always doing needlework."
+
+Camille spent half the morning in the arrangement of the accessories
+that were, as he said, to suggest virtuous domesticity; then he
+settled the folds of the girl's skirt, the turn of her head, her
+hands. At last, when he was satisfied, he went to his easel and began
+to work. Olive had never before realised how hard it is to keep quite
+still. The muscles of her neck ached and her face seemed to grow stiff
+and set; she felt her hands quivering.
+
+Hours seemed to pass before his voice broke the silence. "I have
+drawn it in," he announced. "You can rest now. Come down and see some
+of my pictures."
+
+He showed her his "Salome," a Hebrew maenad, whose scarlet, parted lips
+ached for the desert dreamer's death; "Lucrezia Borgia," slow-smiling,
+crowned with golden hair; and a rough charcoal study for Queen
+Eleanor.
+
+"I seem to see you as Henry's Rosamund," he said. "I wonder--the
+haunting shadow of coming sorrow in blue eyes. You have suffered."
+
+"I am hungry," she answered.
+
+He looked at his watch. "Forgive me! It is past noon. Run away, child,
+and come back at two."
+
+The day seemed very long in spite of Camille's easy kindness, and the
+girl shrank from the subsequent sitting at Varini's.
+
+"Why do you pose for those wretched boys?" grumbled the Prix de Rome
+man. "After this week you must come to me only. I must paint a
+Rosamund."
+
+At sunset she hurried down the hill to the Corso, and came by way of
+the corridor and garden to the pavilion. The porter took her into a
+dingy little lumber-filled passage and left her there. A soiled pink
+satin frock was laid ready for her on a broken chair. As she put it on
+she heard a babel of voices in the class-room beyond, and she felt
+something like stage-fright as she fumbled at the hooks and eyes; but
+a clock struck the hour presently, and she went in then and climbed on
+to the throne. At first she saw nothing, but after a while she was
+aware of a group of men who stood near the door regarding her.
+
+"_Carina._"
+
+"Yes, a fine colour, but too thin."
+
+When the professor came in he made her sit in a carved chair, and gave
+her a fan to hold. The men moved about, choosing their places, and
+were silent until he left them with a gruff "_Felice notte_." Olive
+noticed the lad who had been called in to Varini's studio to see her;
+the boy who sat next him had a round, impudent face, and when
+presently she yawned he smiled at her.
+
+"I will ask questions to keep you awake, but you must answer truly.
+Have you taken a fancy to anyone here?"
+
+"I don't dislike you or Mario."
+
+They rose simultaneously and bowed. "We are honoured. But why? Bembi
+here is a fine figure of a man."
+
+"Enough!" growled Bembi. "You talk too much."
+
+During the rest Olive went to look at the boys' work; it was
+brilliantly impressionistic. The younger had evidently founded himself
+on Mario, and Mario was, perhaps, a genius.
+
+They came and sat down, one on either side of her.
+
+"Why are you pretending to be a model?" whispered Mario. "We can see
+you are not. Are you hiding from someone?"
+
+She shook her head. "I am earning my bread," she answered. "Be kind to
+me."
+
+"We will." He patted her bare shoulder with the air of a grandfather,
+but his brown eyes sparkled.
+
+"Why are some of the men so old, and why is some of the work so--"
+
+"Bad." Mario squinted at Bembi's black, smudged drawing. "I will tell
+you. That bald man in the corner is seventy-two; painting is his
+amusement, and he loves models. He wants to marry Fortunata, but she
+won't have him because he is toothless. Once, twenty-five years ago,
+he sold a watercolour for ten lire and he has never forgotten it."
+
+"Really because he is toothless?"
+
+"Oh, he is mad too, and she is afraid of him. Cesare and I are the
+only ones here who will make you look human. It is a pity, as you are
+really _carina_."
+
+He patted her shoulder again and pinched her ear, and Cesare passed
+his arm about her waist. She struggled to free herself.
+
+"Let her go!" cried the other men, and, flushed and dishevelled, she
+took refuge on the throne. The pose was resumed, and the room settled
+down to work again.
+
+She kept very still, but after a while the tears that filled her eyes
+overflowed, ran down her cheeks, and dripped upon the hand that held
+the fan.
+
+"I am sorry," cried Mario.
+
+"And I."
+
+"Forgive me."
+
+"And me."
+
+"I was a _mascalzone_!"
+
+"And I."
+
+"Forgive them for our sakes," growled Bembi, "or they will cackle all
+night."
+
+Olive laughed a little in spite of herself, but she was very tired and
+they had hurt her. The marks of Cesare's fingers showed red still on
+her wrist, and the lace of the short sleeve was torn.
+
+Mario clattered out of the room presently, and came back with a glass
+of water for her. "I am really sorry," he whispered as he gave it. "Do
+stop crying."
+
+After all they had not meant any harm. She was a little comforted, and
+the expressed contrition helped her.
+
+"I shall be better soon," she said gently.
+
+When she got home to the apartment in Via Arco della Ciambella there
+were lies to be told about the lessons, the pupils, the hours. The
+fine edge of her exaltation was already blunted, and she sighed at the
+thought of her morning dreams; sighed and was glad; the first steps
+had not cost much after all, and she had earned five lire and fifteen
+soldi.
+
+The lamp was lit in the little sitting-room, and Ser Giulia was
+there, cutting out a skirt on the table very carefully, in a tense
+silence that was broken only by the click of the scissors and the
+rustle of silk.
+
+"I have lost confidence in myself," she said as she fastened the
+shining lengths together with pins. "This _is_ the right side of the
+material, isn't it, my dear? I can't see."
+
+"Yes, this is right. Let me stitch the seams for you. Where is Signora
+Aurelia?"
+
+"She has gone to bed. Her head ached. She--she does not complain, but
+I think she needs more sun and air than she can get here."
+
+Olive looked at her quickly. "You ought to go away and rest, both of
+you."
+
+"Our brother in Como would be glad to have us with him, but it is
+impossible at present. I paid our rent a few days ago--three months in
+advance."
+
+"I will go to the house-agent in the Piazza di Spagna to-morrow. It
+should not be difficult to get a tenant, and at the end of the time
+the furniture could be warehoused, or you could sell it."
+
+Ser Giulia hesitated. "What would you do then, _figliuola mia_?"
+
+"Oh, I can take care of myself," the girl said easily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+After the first week Olive went only to Camille's _atelier_. He was
+working hard at his "_etude blanche_," but no one had been allowed to
+see it, except, of course, M'sieur le Directeur.
+
+"I almost wish I had asked you to come always heavily veiled. The
+other men are all mad about you, and Gontrand tells me he wants you to
+give him sittings for the head of an oread, but he cannot have you.
+You are mine."
+
+"Is he a lean, black-bearded man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He spoke to me the other day as I was coming through the garden, and
+asked me if you were really painting a '_jeune fille_' picture. I said
+you were painting a picture, and he would probably see it when you had
+your show in April."
+
+Camille laughed. "Good child! We must keep up the mystery." He flung
+down his brushes. "I cannot work any more to-day. Will you come with
+me for a drive into the Campagna?"
+
+She hesitated. "I am not sure--"
+
+"Come as my little brother." He took off his linen painting sleeves,
+and began to dabble his fingers in a pan of turpentine. "My little
+brother! Do you know that the Directeur thinks you are charming, and
+he wonders that I do not love you."
+
+"I am glad you do not," she said, colouring. "If you did--"
+
+He was lighting a cigarette. "If I did?" The little momentary flame of
+the match was reflected in his blue eyes.
+
+"I should go away and not come back again."
+
+"Well, I do not," he said heartily. "I care for you as St Francis did
+for his pet sparrow. So now put your hat on and I will go down and get
+a _vettura_ with a good horse."
+
+He was a creature of moods, and so young in many ways that he appealed
+to the girl as Astorre had done, by the queer, pathetic little flaws
+in his manhood. Some days he worked incessantly from early morning
+until the light failed at his picture, but there were times when he
+seemed unable even to look at it. He made several studies in charcoal
+for "Rosamund."
+
+"It is an inspiration," he said excitedly more than once. "The rose of
+the world that can only be reached by love--or hate--holding the
+clue."
+
+He had promised an American who had bought a picture of his the year
+before that he would do some work for him in Venice in the spring.
+"Very rash of me," he said fractiously. "The 'Jeune Fille' would have
+been quite enough for me to show, and it is dreadful to have to leave
+it unfinished now." And when Gontrand tried to persuade him to let him
+have Olive during his absence he was, as the girl phrased it, quite
+cross. "I have seen enough of that. Last year in the Salon St
+Elizabeth of Hungary, and Clytemnestra, and Malesherbe's _vivandiere_
+were one and the same woman. Besides, oreads are nearly related to
+Bacchantes, Gontrand, and I am not going to allow my little
+sewing-girl to be mixed up with people of that sort."
+
+He made Olive promise not to sit for any of the other men at the Villa
+Medici.
+
+"I shall work at Varini's in the evenings," she said. "And one of the
+men there wants me to come to his studio in the Via Margutta three
+mornings a week. He is a Baron von something."
+
+The Frenchman's face lightened. "Oh, that German! I know him. I saw a
+landscape of his once. It looked as if several tubes of paint had got
+together and burst. What else will you do?"
+
+"Rome, if you will lend me your Baedeker," she answered. "I shall begin
+with A and work my way through Beatrice Cenci and the Borgo Nuovo to
+the Corsini Gallery and the Corso. Some of the letters may be rather
+dull. I am so glad Apollo comes now."
+
+He laughed. "M for Michelin. You will be sure to admire me when my
+turn comes."
+
+Olive was living alone now in a tall old house in Ripetta. The two
+kind women who had been her friends had left Rome and gone to stay
+with their brother at Como. It was evidently the best thing they could
+do, and the girl had assured them that she was quite well able to look
+after herself, but they had been only half convinced by her reasoning.
+She was English and she had done it before. "That is nothing," Ser
+Giulia said. "You may catch a ball once, and the second time it may
+slip through your fingers. And sometimes Life is like the importunate
+widow and goes on asking until one gives what one should not." She
+helped her to find a room, and eked out the furniture from her own
+little store. "Another saucepan, and a kettle, and a blanket. And if
+lessons fail you must come to us, _figliuola mia_. My brother's house
+is large."
+
+The girl had answered her with a kiss, but though she loved them she
+was not altogether sorry to see them go. She could never tell them how
+she had earned the lire that paid the baker's bill. The truth would
+hurt them, and she would not give them a moment's pain if she could
+avoid it, but she was not good at lying. Even the very little white
+ones stuck in her throat, and she was relieved to be no longer under
+the necessity of uttering them.
+
+The room she had taken was on the sixth floor, and from the one
+narrow window she could look across the yellow swirl of Tiber towards
+Monte Mario. She had set up her household gods. The plaster bust of
+Dante, and her books, on the rickety wooden table by her bedside, and,
+such as it was, this place was home.
+
+Camille went by a night train, and Olive began to "see Rome" on the
+following morning. She took the tram to the Piazza Venezia and walked
+from thence to the church of Santa Maria Ara Coeli.
+
+The flight of steps to the west door is very long, and she climbed
+slowly, stopping once or twice to take breath and look back at the
+crowded roofs and many church domes of Rome, and at the green heights
+of the Janiculan hill beyond, with the bronze figure of Garibaldi on
+his horse, dominant, and very clear against the sky.
+
+The cripple at the door lifted the heavy leather curtain for her and
+she put a soldo into his outstretched hand as she went in. The church
+seemed very still, very quiet, after the clamour of the streets. The
+acrid scent of incense was as the breath of spent prayer. Little
+yellow flames flickered in the shrine lamps before each altar, but it
+was early yet and for the moment no mass was being said. An old,
+white-haired monk was sweeping the worn pavement. He was swathed in a
+blue linen apron, and his rusty brown frock was tucked up about his
+ankles. A lean black cat followed him, mewing, and now and then he
+stopped his work to stroke it. There was a great stack of chairs by
+the door, and a few were scattered about the aisles and occupied by
+stray worshippers, women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads in
+deference to St Paul's expressed wishes, two or three old men, and
+some peasants with their market baskets. A be-ribboned nurse carrying
+a baby had just come in to see the Sacro Bambino, and Olive followed
+them into the sacristy and saw the child laid down before the
+bedizened, red-cheeked wooden doll in the glass case. As they passed
+out again the monk who was in attendance gave Olive a coloured card
+with a prayer printed on the back. She heard him asking what was the
+matter with the little one. The woman lifted the lace veil from the
+tiny face and showed him the sightless eyes. He crossed himself.
+"_Poveretto! Dio vi benedica!_"
+
+As Olive left the sacristy a tall man came across the aisle towards
+her. It was Prince Tor di Rocca.
+
+"This is a great pleasure," he said. "But not to you, I am afraid. You
+are not glad to see me."
+
+"I am surprised. I--do you often come into churches?"
+
+He laughed. "I sometimes follow women in. I saw you coming up the
+steps just now. You are right in supposing that I am not devout. I
+want to speak to you. Shall we go out?"
+
+She looked for a way of escape but saw none.
+
+"If--very well," she said rather helplessly.
+
+The hunchback woman at the south door watched them expectantly as they
+came towards her, and she brightened as she saw the man's hand go to
+his pocket. He threw her a piece of silver as they passed out. He was
+in a good humour, his fine lips smiling, a glinting zest in his
+insolent eyes. He thought he understood women, and he had in fact made
+a one-sided study of the sex. He had seen their ways of loving, he had
+listened to the beating of their hearts; but of their endurance, their
+long patience, their daily life he knew nothing. He was like a man who
+often wears a bunch of violets in his coat until they fade, and yet
+has never seen, or cared to see them, growing sparsely, small and
+sweet, half hidden in leaves on a mossy bank by the stream.
+
+Women amused him. He was seldom much moved by them, and he pursued
+them without haste or flurry, treading delicately like Agag of old. He
+had little intrigues everywhere, in Florence, in Naples, in Rome.
+Young married women, girls walking demurely with their mothers. He
+liked to know that it was he who brought the colour to their cheeks
+and that their eyes sought him among the crowd of men standing outside
+Aragno's in the Corso or on the steps of the club in the Via
+Tornabuoni. Very often the affair would be one of the eyes only, but
+sometimes it went farther. Filippo's procedure varied. Sometimes he
+put advertisements in the personal column of the Popolo Romano, and
+sometimes he wrote notes. It was always very interesting while it
+lasted. Occasionally affairs overlapped, as when an appeal to F. to
+meet Norina once more in the Borghese appeared in print above F.'s
+request that the signorina in the pink hat would write to him at the
+Poste Restante.
+
+Olive had nearly yielded to him in Florence, and then she had run
+away, she had sought safety in flight. Evidently then his battle had
+been nearly won. But she had reassembled her forces, and he saw that
+it would be all to fight over again, and that the issue was doubtful.
+
+As they came into the little square piazza of the Capitol she turned
+to him. "What have you to say? I--I am in a hurry."
+
+"I am sorry for that, but if you are going anywhere I can walk with
+you, or we can take a _vettura_ and drive together."
+
+She looked past him at the green shining figure of Marcus Aurelius on
+his horse riding between her and the sun, and said nothing.
+
+"I shall enjoy being with you even if you are inclined to be silent.
+You are so good to look at."
+
+His brazen stare gave point to his words. Her face was no longer
+childish in its charm. It had lost the first roundness of youth, but
+had gained in expression. A soul seemed to be shining through the veil
+of flesh--white and rose-red flesh, divinely gilt with freckles--and
+fluttering in the troubled depths of her blue eyes. The nun-like
+simplicity of her grey dress pleased him: it did not detract from her;
+it left the eyes free to return to her face, to dwell upon her lips.
+
+"Something has happened," he said. "There is another man. Are you
+married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I only came to Rome yesterday. Strange that we should meet so soon.
+It seems that there is a Destiny that shapes our ends after all."
+
+"You do not believe in free will?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "I do not think about such things."
+
+"Well," she said impatiently. "Is that all you have to say? I suppose
+the Marchesa and Mamie are here too."
+
+He hesitated and seemed to lose some of his assurance. "No, we
+quarrelled. The girl is insupportable. She is engaged now to a lord of
+sorts, an Englishman, and they are still in Cairo."
+
+"So you have lost her too."
+
+"It was your fault that Edna gave me up. You owe me something for
+that. And you behaved badly to me again--afterwards."
+
+"I did not."
+
+He laughed enjoyingly. "I trusted you and you took advantage of a
+truce to run away."
+
+She moved away from him, but he followed her and kept at her side.
+
+"I never asked you to trust me. I asked you to come the next day for
+an answer. You came and you had it."
+
+"I came and I had it," he repeated. "Did the old woman give you my
+message?"
+
+"That we should meet again?"
+
+"That was not all. I said you would come to me one day sooner or
+later."
+
+They had paused at the top of the steps that lead down from the
+Capitol into the streets and are guarded by the gigantic figures of
+Castor and Pollux, great masses of discoloured marble set on pedestals
+on either side. It was twelve o'clock, and a black stream of hungry,
+desk-weary men poured out of the Capitoline offices. Many turned to
+look at the English girl as they hurried by, and one passing close to
+her muttered "bella" in her ear. She drew back as though she had been
+stung. Filippo laughed again.
+
+"I only ask to be let alone," she said. "Can't you understand that you
+remind me of things I want to forget. I am ashamed, oh, can't you
+understand!"
+
+She left him and went to stand on the outskirts of the crowd that had
+collected in front of the cage in which the wolves are kept. Evidently
+she hoped that he would go on, but he meant to disappoint her, and
+when she went down the steps he was close beside her.
+
+"Why are you so unkind to me?" he said, and as they crossed the road
+he held her arm.
+
+She wrenched herself away, went up to the _carabiniere_, who stood at
+the corner, and spoke to him. The man smiled tolerantly as he glanced
+from her to Filippo. "Signorina, I cannot help you."
+
+She passed on down the street, knowing that she was being followed,
+crossed the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and took a tram in the Piazza
+della Minerva. Tor di Rocca got in too and sat down opposite to her.
+The conductor turned to him first, and when she proffered her four
+soldi she found that he had paid for both. Her hand shook as she put
+the money back in her purse, and her colour rose. Filippo, quite at
+his ease, leisurely, openly observant of her, whistled "Lucia" softly
+to himself. Roses, roses all the way, and all for him, he thought
+amusedly. And yet she bore the ordeal well, betraying no restlessness,
+keeping her eyes unswervingly fixed on the two lions of the
+advertisement of Chinina Migone pasted on the glass over his head. At
+the Ripetta bridge she got out. He followed, saw her go into a house
+farther down the street, and paused on the threshold to take the
+number before he went up the stairs after her. She heard him coming.
+He turned the handle of the door, but she had locked it and it held
+fast. He knocked once and called to her. Evidently he was not sure of
+her being within. There was another room on the same landing, and
+after a while he tried that.
+
+"Are you in there? _Carissima_, you are wasting time. To-day or
+to-morrow, sooner or later. Why not to-day, and soon?"
+
+A silence ensued. The girl had taken off her hat and thrown it down
+upon the table. She stood very still in the middle of the room
+listening, waiting for him to go away again. Her breath came quickly,
+and little pearls of sweat broke out upon her forehead. His
+persistence frightened her.
+
+He waited for an answer, and receiving none, added, "Well, I will come
+again," and so went away.
+
+She stayed in until it was time to go to Varini's. It was not far, but
+she was flushed and panting with the haste that she had made as she
+put on the faded blue silk dress that had been laid out ready for her
+on the one broken chair in the dressing-room. Rosina came in to her
+presently from the professor's studio. She wore a man's tweed coat and
+a striped blanket wrapped about her, and she was smoking a cigarette.
+
+"So you have come back to work here. Your signorino at the Villa
+Medici is away?"
+
+"Only for a few days. He will not be gone long. The picture is not
+finished. How is Pasquina?"
+
+Rosina had come over to her and was fastening the hooks of her bodice.
+"She is very well. How pretty you are." She rearranged the laces at
+the girl's breast and caught up a torn piece of the silk with a pin.
+"That is better. Have you been running? You seem hot."
+
+"Oh, Rosina, I have been frightened. A man followed me. I shall be
+afraid to go home to-night."
+
+The yellow-haired Trasteverina looked at her shrewdly. "He knows where
+you live? Have you only seen him once?"
+
+"He--he came and tried my door. I am afraid of him."
+
+Rosina nodded. "_Si capisce!_ I will take care of you. I have met so
+many _mascalzoni_ in twenty years that I have grown used to them. I
+will come home with you, and if any man so much as looks at us I will
+scratch his eyes out."
+
+Through the thin partition wall they heard the professor calling for
+his model. "I must go," she said hurriedly, but as she passed out
+Olive caught at a fold of the enveloping blanket.
+
+"Come here, I want you." She flung her arms about the other girl's
+neck and kissed her. "You are good! You are good!"
+
+She went into the class room and climbed the throne as the men came
+clattering in to take their places. The professor posed her.
+
+"So you have come back to us. Do not let them spoil you at the Villa
+Medici--your head a little higher--so."
+
+The first drawing in of the figure is not a thing to be taken lightly,
+and the silence was seldom broken at Varini's on Monday evenings. The
+two boys, however, found it hard to repress the natural loquacity of
+their extreme youth.
+
+"_Al lavoro_, Mario! What are you whispering about? Cesare, _zitto_!"
+Bembi stared at them. "Their chins are disappearing," he said. "See
+their collars. Every day an inch higher. _Dio mio!_ Is that the way to
+please women? I wear a flannel shirt and my neck is as bare as a
+plucked chicken, and yet I--" he stopped short.
+
+Mario laughed. "Women are strange," he admitted.
+
+"Mad!" cried Cesare, and then as Bembi still smirked ineffably he
+appealed to Olive. "Do you admire fowls wrapped in flannel or _in
+arrosto_?"
+
+When she came out she found Rosina waiting for her in the courtyard,
+a grey shadow with smooth fair hair shining in the moonlight. "The
+professor let me go at eight so I dressed and came out here," she
+explained. "The dressing-room is full of dust and spider's webs. I
+told the porter the other day that he ought to sweep it, but he only
+laughed at me and said Domeniddio made spiders long before he took a
+rib out of Adam's side to whip a naughty world."
+
+"Who is the man?" she asked presently as they walked along together.
+"Do I know him?"
+
+"I do not think so. He is not an artist."
+
+Rosina laid a hand upon her arm. "Is that he?" she said.
+
+They had passed through one of the narrow streets that lead from the
+Corso towards the river and were come into the Ripetta.
+
+A tall man was walking slowly along on the other side of the road. He
+did not seem to have noticed the two girls, and yet as he stopped to
+light a cigarette he was looking towards them. A tram came clanging
+up, the overhead wires emitting strange noises peculiar to themselves,
+the gong ringing sharply. Olive glanced up at the red painted triangle
+fixed to the lamp-post at the corner. "It will stop here. Quick! while
+it is between us. Perhaps he has not seen--"
+
+They ran to her door and up the stairs together. "It has only just
+gone on," cried Rosina. "Have you got your key?"
+
+She stayed on the landing while Olive went into the room and lit her
+candle. There was no sound in the house at all, no step upon the
+stair. As she peered down over the banisters into the darkness below
+she listened intently. The rustling of her skirt sounded loud in the
+stillness, but there was nothing else.
+
+"He did not see us," she said. "I shall go now. Lock your door.
+_Felice notte, piccina._"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Camille, loitering on the terrace of the old garden of the Villa
+Medici, was quick to hear the creaking of the iron gate upon its
+hinges. His pale face brightened as he threw away his cigarette and he
+went down the path between the ilex trees to meet his model.
+
+"You have come. Oh, I seem to have been years away."
+
+They went up the hill together. It was early yet, and the city was
+veiled in fine mist through which the river gleamed here and there
+with a sharpness of steel. The dome of St Peter's was still dark
+against the greenish pallor of the morning sky.
+
+"I am glad to be in Rome again. Venice is beautiful, but it does not
+inspire me. It has no associations for me. What do I care for the
+Doges, or for Titian's fat, golden-haired women with their sore
+eyes--Caterina Cornaro and the rest. Rome is a crystal in which I seem
+to see faces of dear women, women who lived and loved and saw the sun
+set behind that rampart of low hills--Virginia, the Greek slave Acte,
+Agnes, Cecilia, who sang as she lay dying in her house over there in
+the Trasteverine quarter. Ah, I shall go away and have the nostalgia
+of Rome to the end of my life." He paused to light another cigarette.
+"Come and look at the picture. I have not dared to see it again myself
+since I came back last night."
+
+The door of his _atelier_ was open; he clattered up the steep wooden
+stairs and she followed him. The canvas was set up on an easel facing
+the great north light. Camille went up to it and then backed away.
+
+"Well?"
+
+He was smiling. "It is good," he said. "I shall work on it to-day and
+to-morrow. Get ready now while I prepare my palette."
+
+He looked at her critically as she took her place. The change in her
+was indefinable, but he was aware of it. She seemed to be listening.
+
+"Do you feel a draught from the door?" he asked presently.
+
+"No, but I should like it shut."
+
+"Nerves. You need a tonic and probably a change of air and scene.
+There is nothing the matter?"
+
+She shook her head. Camille was kind, but he could not help her. He
+could not make the earth open and swallow Tor di Rocca, and sometimes
+she felt that nothing less than that would satisfy her, and that such
+a summary ending would contribute greatly to her peace of mind.
+
+She had not seen the Prince for two days and she was beginning to
+hope that he had gone away, but she was not yet able to feel free of
+him. Rosina had come home with her every night from Varini's. Once he
+had followed them, and twice he had come up the stairs and knocked at
+the door. There had been hours when she had been safe from him, but
+she had not known them, and the strain, the constant pricking fear of
+him, was telling upon her. Every day youth and strength and hope
+seemed to be slipping away and leaving her less able to do and to
+endure. She dared not look forward, as Camille did, to the end of
+life. He would die in his bed, full of years and honour, a great
+artist, a master, the president of many societies, but she--
+
+Sometimes, as she stood facing the semi-circle of men at Varini's, and
+listened to the busy scratching of charcoal on paper, to Bembi's heavy
+breathing, and to the ticking of the clock, she wondered if she had
+done wrong in taking this way of bread earning. Certainly there could
+be no turning back. The step, once taken, was irrevocable. If artists
+employed her she would go on, but she could get no other work if this
+failed. If this failed there must be another struggle between flesh
+and spirit, and this time it would be decisive--one or other must
+prevail. Though she dreaded it she knew it was inevitable.
+
+Meanwhile Camille stood in need of her ministrations. He had arranged
+to show his work on the fifteenth of April, and now he seemed to
+regard that date as thrice accursed. Often when she came in the
+morning she would find him prowling restlessly to and fro, or sitting
+with his head in his hands staring gloomily at the parquet flooring
+and sighing like a furnace.
+
+"I hate having to invite people who do not know anything, who cannot
+tell an etching from an oil," he said irritably. "I cannot suffer
+their ridiculous comments gladly. I would rather have six teeth pulled
+out than hear my Aholibah called pretty. _Pretty!_"
+
+"They cannot say anything wrong about the picture of me," she said.
+"It is splendid. M'sieur le Directeur says so, and I am sure it is.
+And your Venice sketches look so well on the screen."
+
+"You must be there," he moaned. "If you are not there I shall burst
+into tears and run away." Then he laughed. "I am always like this. You
+should see me in Paris on the eve of the opening of the Salon. A
+pitiable wreck! I had no angel to console me there."
+
+He kissed her hands with unusual fervour.
+
+The girl had not really meant to come at first, but she yielded to his
+persuasions. "I will look after the food and drink then," she said,
+and she spent herself on the decoration of the tea-table. They went to
+Aragno's together in the morning to get cakes and bonbons.
+
+"What flowers?"
+
+She chose mimosa, and he bought a great mass of the fragrant golden
+boughs, and a bunch of violets for her.
+
+Camille knew a good many people in Rome, and all those he had asked
+came. The Prix de Rome men were the first arrivals. They came in a
+body, and on the stroke of the hour named on the invitation cards.
+Camille watched their faces eagerly as they crowded in and came to a
+stand before his picture; they knew, and if they approved he cared
+little for the verdict of all Rome.
+
+Gontrand was the first to break rather a long silence.
+
+"Delicious!" he cried. "It is a triumph."
+
+Camille flushed with pleasure as the others echoed him.
+
+"The scheme of whites," "The fine quality," "So pure."
+
+One after the other they went across the room to talk to the model,
+who stood by the tea-table waiting to serve them.
+
+"You are wonderful, mademoiselle. If only you would sit for me I might
+hope to achieve something too."
+
+"When M'sieur Michelin has done with me," she said. "You like the
+picture?"
+
+"It is adorable--as you are."
+
+Other people were coming now. Camille stayed by the door to receive
+them while his friend Gontrand showed the drawings in the portfolio,
+explained the Campagna sketches, and handed plates of cake and sweets.
+When Olive made fresh tea he brought her more sliced lemons from the
+lumber room, where Rosina was washing the cups.
+
+"I am useful but not disinterested. Persuade Camille to let you sit
+for me."
+
+"But you will not be here in the summer," she said wistfully.
+
+"Coffee, madame? These cakes are not very sweet. Yes, I was M'sieur
+Michelin's model. Yes, it is a beautiful picture."
+
+The crowd thinned towards six o'clock, and there was no one now at the
+far end of the room but a man who seemed to be looking at the sketches
+on the screen. Olive thought she might take a cup of tea herself, and
+she was pouring it out when he turned and came towards her. It was Tor
+di Rocca.
+
+"Ah," he said smilingly, "the girl in Michelin's picture reminded me
+of you, but I did not realise that you were indeed the 'Jeune Fille.'
+I have been away from Rome these last few days. Have you missed me?"
+
+His hot brown eyes lingered over her.
+
+"Don't."
+
+"I should like a cup of coffee."
+
+Her hand shook so as she gave it to him that much was spilled on the
+floor. She had pitied him once; he remembered that as he saw how she
+shrank from him. "Michelin has been more fortunate than I have," he
+said deliberately.
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+"You seem to be at home here."
+
+"I suppose you must follow the bent of your mind."
+
+"I suppose I must," he agreed as he stood aside to let her pass. She
+had defied him that night in Florence. "Never!" she had said. And now
+he saw that she smiled at Camille as she went by him into the further
+room, and the old bad blood stirred in him and he ached with a fierce
+jealousy.
+
+She had denied him. "Never!" she had said.
+
+As he joined the group of men by the door Gontrand turned to him. "Ah,
+Prince, have you heard that Michelin has already sold his picture?"
+
+"I am not surprised," the Italian answered suavely. "If I was
+rich--but I am not. Who is the happy man?"
+
+"That stout grey-haired American who left half an hour since. Did you
+notice him? He is Vandervelde, the great millionaire art collector."
+
+"May one ask the price?"
+
+"Eight thousand francs," answered Camille. He looked tired, but his
+blue eyes were very bright. "I am glad, and yet I shall be sorry to
+part with it."
+
+"You will still have the charming original," the Prince said not quite
+pleasantly.
+
+There was a sudden silence. The men all waited for Camille's answer.
+Beyond, in the next room, they heard the two girls splashing the
+water, clattering the cups and plates.
+
+The young Frenchman paused in the act of striking a match. He looked
+surprised. "But this is the original. I have made no copy."
+
+"I meant--" The Prince stopped short. After all, he thought, he goes
+well who goes slowly.
+
+Camille was waiting. "You meant?"
+
+Tor di Rocca had had time to think. "Nothing," he said sweetly.
+
+Silence was again ensuing but Gontrand flung himself into the breach.
+
+"The Duchess said she wanted her daughter's portrait painted."
+
+"She said the same to me."
+
+"Are you going to do it?"
+
+Camille suppressed a yawn. "I don't know. _Qui vivra verra._"
+
+He was glad when they were all gone, Gontrand and Tor di Rocca and the
+rest, and he could stretch himself and sigh, and sing at the top of
+his voice:
+
+      "'Nicholas, je vais me pendre
+    Qu'est-ce que tu vas dire de cela?
+    Si vous vous pendez ou v'vous pendez pas
+      Ca m'est ben egal, Mam'zelle.
+      Si vous vous pendez ou v'vous pendez pas
+    Oh, laissez moi planter mes chous!'"
+
+When Olive came out of the inner room presently he told her that he
+had sold the "Jeune Fille." "The Duchess has nearly commissioned me to
+paint her Melanie. It went off well, don't you think so? Come at nine
+to-morrow."
+
+"Yes, if you want me. Good-night, M'sieur Camille," she said. "Are you
+coming, Rosina?"
+
+"Why do you wait for her?" he asked curiously. "I should not have
+thought you had much in common."
+
+"She is my friend. She knows I do not care to be alone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When Olive came to the _atelier_ on the following morning Camille was
+not there, but the door was open and he had left a note on the table
+for her.
+
+    "I have had a letter from the Duchess. She is leaving
+    Rome to-day but she wants to see me before she goes. It
+    must be about her daughter's portrait. I must go to her
+    hotel, but I shall drive both ways and be back in half
+    an hour. Wait for me.--C. M."
+
+Olive took off her hat and coat as usual behind the screen. She was
+choosing a book from the tattered row of old favourites on the shelf
+when she heard a step outside. She listened, thinking that it was
+Camille, and fearing that the commission had not been given him. It
+was not like him to be so silent.
+
+"I thought you would be singing--" she stopped short.
+
+Filippo came on into the room.
+
+"M'sieur Michelin is out," she said.
+
+"So the porter told me. You do not think I want to see him. Will you
+come with me to Albano to-day?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"To-morrow, then. Why not?"
+
+"I have my work."
+
+"Your work! I see you believe you can do without me now. How long do
+you think you will be able to earn money in this way? All these men
+will be leaving Rome soon. The schools will be closed until next
+October. You will have to choose between the devil and the deep sea--"
+
+"What is the good of talking about it?" she said wearily. "I know I
+have nothing to look forward to. I know that. Please go away."
+
+"Do you know that you have cost me more than any other woman I have
+ever met? You injured me; will you make no amends?"
+
+She laughed. "So you are the victim."
+
+"Yes," he said passionately, "I told you before that I suffered, and
+you believed me then. Is it my fault that I am made like this? Since
+that night in Florence when I held you in my arms I have had no
+peace."
+
+"You behaved very badly. I can't think why I let myself be sorry for
+you."
+
+"Badly! Some men would, but I loved you even then."
+
+She looked wistfully towards the door. "I wish you would go. There are
+so many other women."
+
+"I love you, I want you," he answered, and he caught her in his arms
+and held her in spite of her struggles. "I have you!" He forced her
+head down upon his breast and kissed her mouth. She thought the
+hateful pressure of his lips, the hateful fire of his eyes would kill
+her, and when, at last, she wrenched herself away she screamed with
+the despairing violence of some trapped, wild thing.
+
+"Camille! Camille!"
+
+It seemed to her that if he did not hear her this must be the end of
+all, and she suffered an agony of terror. She thanked God as the door
+below was flung to and he came running up the stairs.
+
+The Prince let her go and half turned to meet him, but Camille was not
+inclined to parley. He struck, and struck hard. Filippo slipped on the
+polished floor, tried to recover himself, and fell heavily at the
+girl's feet.
+
+He got up at once, and the two men stood glaring at each other. Olive
+looked from one to the other. "It was nothing. I am sorry," she said
+breathlessly. "He was trying to--I was frightened. It was nothing,
+really, but--but I am glad you came."
+
+"So am I," the Frenchman said grimly. His blue eyes were grown grey as
+steel. "I am waiting, Prince."
+
+A little blood had sprung from Filippo's cut lip and run down his
+chin. He wiped it with his handkerchief and looked thoughtfully at
+the stain on the white linen before he spoke.
+
+"Who is your friend?"
+
+"Rene Gontrand."
+
+"No, no!" cried the girl. "Filippo, it was your fault. Can't you be
+sorry and forget? Camille!"
+
+"Hush, child," he said, "you do not understand."
+
+Tor di Rocca was looking at her now with the old insolent smile in his
+red-brown eyes. "Ah, you said 'Never!' but presently you will come."
+
+So he left them.
+
+Olive expected to be "poored," but Camille, as it seemed, deliberately
+took no notice of her. She watched him picking a stick of charcoal
+from the accumulation of odd brushes, pens and pencils on the table.
+
+"What a handsome devil it is. Lean, lithe and brown. He should go
+naked as a faun; such things roamed about the primeval woods seeking
+what they might devour. I wish I had asked him to sit for me."
+
+He went to his easel and began to sketch a head on the canvas he had
+prepared for the Rosamund. "He has the short Neronic upper lip," he
+murmured.
+
+Olive lost patience. "I wonder you had the heart to risk spoiling its
+contour," she said resentfully.
+
+"With my fist, you mean?"
+
+"I--I am very sorry--" she began. He saw that she was crying, and he
+was perplexed, not quite understanding what she wanted of him.
+
+"What am I to say to you?" He came over and sat down beside her, and
+she let him hold her hand. "I know so little--not even your name. I
+have asked no questions, but of course I saw-- Why do you not go back
+to your friends?"
+
+She dried her eyes. "I have cousins in Milan, but I have lost their
+address, and they would not be able to help me. I have burnt my boats.
+I used to give lessons, but it was not easy to find pupils, and then I
+met Rosina. I cannot go back to being a governess after being a model.
+I have done no wrong, but no one would have me if they knew. You see
+one has to go on--"
+
+"Have you known Tor di Rocca long? He was here last winter. He has a
+villa somewhere outside Rome. I think it belonged to his mother. She
+was an Orsini."
+
+"You are not going to fight him?"
+
+Outside, in the ilex wood, birds were calling to one another. The sun
+gilded the green of the gnarled old trees; it had rained in the night,
+and the garden was sweet with the scent of moist earth. The young man
+sighed. He had meant to take his "little brother" into the Campagna
+this April day to see the spring pageant of the skies, to hear the
+singing of larks high up at heaven's gate, the tinkling of sheep
+bells, the gurgling of water springs half hidden in the green lush
+grass that grows in the shadow of the ruined Claudian aqueducts.
+
+"Camille, answer me."
+
+He got up and went back to his easel. "You must run away now," he
+said. "I can't work this morning. I think I shall go to Naples for a
+few days, but I will let you know when I return. We must get on with
+the 'Rosamund.'"
+
+She went obediently to put on her hat, but the face she saw reflected
+in the little hanging mirror was pale and troubled. He came with her
+to the door, and when she gave him her hand he bent to kiss it. Her
+eyes filled again with tears. He will be killed, she thought, and for
+me.
+
+"Don't fight! For my sake, don't. I shall begin to think that I am a
+creature of ill-omen. They say some women are like that; they have the
+_mal occhio_; they give sorrow--"
+
+"That is absurd," he said roughly, and then, in a changed voice,
+"Good-bye, child."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Olive walked home to Ripetta. She felt tired and shaken, and unhappily
+conscious of some effort that must be made presently.
+
+"He will be killed--and for me." "For me." "For me." She heard that
+echo of her thought through all the clamour of the streets, the shrill
+cries, the clatter of hoofs, the rattling of wheels over the cobble
+stones. She heard it as she climbed the stairs to her room. When she
+had taken off her hat and coat she poured some eau-de-cologne with
+water into a cup and drank it--not this time to Italy or the joy of
+life. She lay down on her bed and stayed there for a while, not
+resting, but thinking or trying to think.
+
+Was she really a sort of number thirteen, a grain of spilt salt,
+ill-omened, disastrous? Camille would not think so; but it seemed to
+her that she had never been able to make anyone happy, and that there
+must be some taint in her therefore, some flaw in her nature.
+
+Now, here, at last, was a thing well worth doing. She must risk her
+soul, lose it, perhaps, or rather, exchange it for a man's life. She
+had hoarded it hitherto, had been miserly, selfish, seeking to save
+the poor thing as though it were a pearl of price. Now she saw
+herself as the veriest rag of flesh parading virtue, useless,
+comfortless, helpless, clinging to her code, and justifying all the
+trouble she gave to others by a reference to the impalpable, elusive
+and possible non-existent immortal and inner self she had held so
+dear. She was ashamed. Ah, now at last she would give ungrudgingly.
+Her feet should not falter, nor her eyes be dimmed by any shadow of
+fear or of regret, though she went by perilous ways to an almost
+certain end.
+
+Soon after noon she got up and prepared to face the world again, and
+towards three o'clock she returned to the Villa Medici. She had to
+ring the porter's bell as the garden gate was shut, and the old man
+came grumblingly as usual.
+
+"Monsieur Michelin will see no one. Did he not tell you so this
+morning?"
+
+"But I have come for Monsieur Gontrand," she said.
+
+She hoped now above all things to find the black Gascon alone in his
+_atelier_ near the Belvedere. The first move depended upon him, and
+there was no time to spare. She determined to await his return in the
+wood if he were out, but there was no need. He opened his door at once
+in answer to her knocking.
+
+"I have come--may I speak to you for a moment?" she began rather
+confusedly. He looked tired and worried, and was so evidently alarmed
+at the sight of her, and afraid of what she was going to say next,
+that she could hardly help smiling. "I want to ask you two questions.
+I hope you will answer them."
+
+"I should be glad to please you, mademoiselle, but--"
+
+She hurried on. "First, when are they going to fight? Oh, tell me,
+tell me! I know you were to be with him. I know you are his friend. Be
+mine too! What harm can it do? I swear I will keep it secret."
+
+"Ah, well, if you promise that," he said. "It is to be to-morrow
+afternoon."
+
+"Where?"
+
+He shook his head. "I really cannot tell you that."
+
+"Well, the hour is fixed. It will not be changed?"
+
+"No, the Prince preferred the early morning, but Michelin has an
+appointment he must keep with Vandervelde at noon."
+
+"Nothing will persuade him to alter it then?" she insisted.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"That is well," she said sighing. "Good-bye, M'sieur Gontrand.
+You--you will do your best for Camille."
+
+"You may rely on me," he answered.
+
+She went down the steps of Trinita del Monte, and across the Piazza di
+Spagna to the English book-shop at the corner, where she bought a
+_Roman Herald_. Three minutes study of the visitors' list sufficed to
+inform her that the Prince was staying at the Hotel de Russie close
+by. The afternoon was waning, and already the narrow streets of the
+lower town were in shadow; soon the shops would be lit up and gay with
+the gleam of marbles, the glimmer of Roman pearls and silks, and the
+green, grotesque bronzes that strangers buy.
+
+Olive walked down the Via Babuino past the ugly English church,
+crossed the road, and entered the hall of the hotel in the wake of a
+party of Americans. They went on towards the lift and left her
+uncertain which way to turn, so she appealed to the gold-laced,
+gigantic, and rather awful porter.
+
+"Prince Tor di Rocca?"
+
+He softened at her mention of the illustrious name.
+
+"If you will go into the lounge there I will send to see if the Prince
+is in. What name shall I say?"
+
+"Miss Agar. I have no card with me."
+
+She chose a window-seat near a writing-table at the far end of the
+room, and there Filippo found her when he came in five minutes later.
+He was prepared for anything but the smile in the blue eyes lifted to
+his, and he paled as he took the hand she gave and raised it to his
+lips.
+
+"Ah," he said fervently, "if you were always kind."
+
+"You would be good?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"For a week, or a month? But you need not answer me. Filippo, I should
+like some tea."
+
+"Of course," he said eagerly. "Forgive me," and he hurried away to
+order it.
+
+When he returned his dark face was radiant. "Do you know that is the
+second time you have called me by my name? You said Filippo this
+morning. Ah, I heard you, and I have thought of it since."
+
+The girl hardened her heart. She realised--she had always realised
+that this man was dangerous. A fire consumed him. It was a fire that
+blazed up to destroy, no pleasant light and warmth upon the hearth of
+a good life, but women were apt to flutter, moth-like, into the flame
+of it nevertheless.
+
+He sat down beside her and took her hand in his.
+
+"I know I was violent this morning; I could not help myself. I am a
+Tor di Rocca. It would be so easy for you to make me happy--"
+
+She listened quietly.
+
+A waiter brought the tea and set it on a little table between them.
+
+"You had coffee yesterday," she said. "It seems years ago."
+
+"I have forgotten yesterday, _Incipit vita nuova_! Do you remember I
+came to you dressed in Dante's red _lucco_?"
+
+"Yes, but you are not a bit like him."
+
+She came to the point presently. "Filippo, you say you want me?"
+
+"More than anything in this world."
+
+Her eyes met his and held them. "Well, if you will get out of fighting
+M'sieur Michelin I will come to you--meet you--anywhere and at any
+hour after noon to-morrow."
+
+"Ah, you make conditions."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"How can I get out of fighting him? The man struck me, insulted me."
+
+"Yes," she said, "and you know why!"
+
+"I have asked your pardon for that," he said with an effort that
+brought the colour into his face.
+
+"Yes, but that is not enough. I don't choose that this unpleasantness
+should go any further. Write a letter to him now--we will concoct it
+together--and--and--I will be nice to you."
+
+She smiled at him, and there was no shadow of fear or of regret in the
+blue eyes that looked towards the almost certain end.
+
+"Well, I must be let down easily," he said unwillingly. "I am not
+going to lick his boots."
+
+They sat down at the writing-table together, and she began to dictate.
+"Just scribble this, and if it does you can make a fair copy
+afterwards.
+
+"'DEAR MONSIEUR MICHELIN,--On reflection I understand that your
+conduct this morning was justifiable from your point of view, and I
+withdraw--'"
+
+Filippo laid down the pen. "I shall not say that."
+
+"Begin again then," she said patiently.
+
+"'I have been asked to write to you by a third person whom I wish to
+please. She tells me that this morning's unpleasantness resulted from
+a misunderstanding. She says she has deceived you, and she hopes that
+you will forgive her. I suppose from what she has said that your hasty
+action was excusable, as you thought her other than she is, and I
+think that you may now regret it and agree with me that this need go
+no farther--'"
+
+"This is better for me," he said.
+
+"Yes." She took the pen from him and wrote under his signature: "You
+will be sorry to know that your child is a liar. Try to forget her
+existence."
+
+"You can send it now by someone who must wait for an answer," she
+explained. "I shall stay here until it comes."
+
+"Very well," he said sulkily, and he went out into the hall to confer
+with the porter. "An important letter, _Eccellenza_? A _vetturino_
+will take it for you--"
+
+Olive heard the opening and shutting of doors, the shrill whistle
+answered by harsh, raucous cries, the rattling of wheels. Filippo came
+back to her.
+
+"I have done my part." Then, looking at her closely, he saw that she
+was very pale. "Is all you have implied and I have written true?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You must love him very much."
+
+"I? Not at all, as you understand love."
+
+The ensuing half-hour seemed long to the girl; Filippo talked
+desultorily, but there were intervals of silence. She was too tired to
+attempt to answer him, and, besides, his evident restlessness, his
+inattention, afforded her some acrid amusement. He was like a boy,
+eager in pursuit of the bird in the bush, heedless of the poor thing
+fluttering, dying in his hand. It was now near the dinner-hour, and
+people were coming into the lounge to await the sounding of the gong;
+from where Olive sat she could see all the entrances and exits--as in
+a glass darkly--in the clouded surface of a mirror that hung on the
+wall and reflected the white gleam of shirt fronts, the shimmer of
+silks, and she was quick to note that Filippo was interested in what
+she saw as a pink blur.
+
+His love was as fully winged for flight as any Beast of the book of
+Revelations; it was swift as a sword to pierce and be withdrawn. He
+could not be altogether loyal for a day. Olive's heart was filled
+with pity for the women who had cared.
+
+When, at last, the answer to the letter came, the Prince gave it to
+her to read. It was very short, a mere scrawl of scarlet ink on the
+brown, rough-edged paper that was one of Camille's affectations.
+
+    "My zeal was evidently misplaced and I regret its
+    excess."
+
+Olive was speechless; her eyes were dimmed, her throat ached with
+tears. How easily he believed the worst--this man who had been her
+friend. She rose to go, but Filippo laid a detaining hand upon her
+arm.
+
+"To-morrow." He had already told her where and when to meet him, and
+had given her two keys.
+
+"Are you sure you want me?" she said hurriedly. "There are so many
+women in your life. You remind me of the South American Republic that
+made--and shot--seventeen presidents in six months."
+
+He laughed. "Do I? You remind me of an eel, or a little grey mouse
+trying to get out of a trap. There is no way out, my dear, unless, of
+course, you want me to kill your Frenchman. I am a good shot."
+
+"I will come."
+
+She looked for pink as she went out of the room, and saw a very
+pretty woman in rose-coloured tulle sitting alone and near the door.
+
+She had given ungrudgingly, unfaltering, and there was no shadow of
+regret in her eyes; it was nothing to her that he should care for this
+other little body, for bare white shoulders and a fluff of yellow
+hair. He had never been more to her than a means to an end, and he was
+to be that now.
+
+She took a tram from the Piazza del Popolo to the Rotonda. There was a
+large ironmonger's shop at the corner; she remembered having noticed
+it before. She went in and asked to look at some of the pistols they
+had in the window. Several were brought out for her to see, and she
+chose a small one. The young man who served her showed her how to load
+it and pull the trigger. He wrapped it in brown paper and made a loop
+in the string for her to carry it by. She thanked him.
+
+The bells of all the churches were ringing the Ave Maria when she left
+the Hotel de Russie an hour ago, and it was dark when she reached her
+own room. The stars were bright, shining through a rift of clouds that
+hid the crescent moon. Olive laid the awkwardly-shaped parcel she
+carried down upon the table while she lit her candle. Then she got her
+scissors and cut the string. This was the key of a door through which
+she must pass. Death was the way out.
+
+The little flame of the candle gleamed on the polished steel. It was
+almost a pretty thing, so smooth and shining. It was well worth the
+money she had paid for it; it was going to be useful, indispensable
+to-morrow.
+
+Suddenly, in spite of herself, she began to think of her grave. It
+would be dug soon. She would be brought to it in a black covered cart.
+No prayers would be said, and there would be no sound at all but that
+of the earth falling upon the coffin.
+
+She sprang up, her face chalk white, her eyes wide and dark with
+terror. She was afraid, horribly afraid of this lonely and violent
+end. Jean would never know that she died rather than let another
+man--Jean would never know--Jean--
+
+"I can't! I can't!" she said aloud piteously.
+
+She was trembling so that she had to cling to the banisters as she
+went down the stairs to save herself from falling. There was a
+post-office at the corner. She went in and explained that she wanted
+to send a telegram. The young woman behind the counter glanced at the
+clock.
+
+"Where to? You have half an hour."
+
+"To Florence." She wrote it and gave it in.
+
+    "To JEAN AVENEL, Villa Fiorelli, Settignano, Florence.
+
+    "If you would help me come if you can to the Villino
+    Bella Vista at Albano to-morrow soon after noon; watch
+    for me and follow me in. I know it may not be possible,
+    but the danger is real to me and I want you so much. In
+    any case remember that my heart was yours only.--OLIVE."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Jean sat leaning forward that he might see the road. The night was
+dark, starless, and very wet, and he and the chauffeur were all
+streaming with rain and splashed with liquid mud that spattered up
+from the car wheels. Now and again they rattled over the rough cobble
+stones of a village street, but the way for the most part lay through
+deep woods and by mountain gorges. The roar of Arno in flood, swollen
+with melted snows, and hurrying on its way to the sea, was with them
+for a while, but other sounds there were none save the rustling of
+leaves in the coverts, the moaning of wind in the tree-tops, the
+drip-drip of the rain, and the steady throbbing of the car.
+
+When the darkness lightened to the grey glimmer of a cheerless dawn
+Jean changed places with the chauffeur; Vincenzo was a careful driver,
+and he dared not trust his own impatience any longer. His hands were
+numbed with cold, and now he took off his gloves to chafe them, but
+first he felt in his inner pocket for the flimsy sheets of paper that
+lay there safe against his heart.
+
+He had been sitting alone at the piano in the music-room, not playing,
+but softly touching the keys and dreaming in the dark, when Hilaire
+came in to him.
+
+"You need not write to her after all. She has sent for you. Hear what
+she says." He stood in the doorway to read the message by the light
+that filtered in from the hall. Jean listened carefully.
+
+"The car--I must tell Vincenzo." The lines of the strong, lean face
+seemed to have softened, and the brown eyes were very bright. His
+brother smiled as he laid a kindly hand upon his arm. "The car will be
+round soon. I have sent word, and you have plenty of time. Assure
+Olive of my brotherly regard, and tell her that my books are still
+waiting to be catalogued. If she will come here for a while she will
+be doing a kindness to a lonely man."
+
+"I wonder what she is frightened of," Jean said thoughtfully, and
+frowning a little. "She says 'was yours' too; I don't like that."
+
+"Well, you must do your best for her," Hilaire answered in his most
+matter-of-fact tone. "Be prepared."
+
+Jean agreed, and when he went to get ready he transferred a pistol
+from a drawer of the bureau to his coat pocket. "I shall bring her
+back with me if I can. Good-bye."
+
+The sun shone for a few minutes after its rising through a rift in the
+clouds, but soon went in again; the rain still poured down, and the
+distance was hidden in mist that clung to the hillsides and filled
+each ravine and cranny in the rocks. They were near Orvieto when the
+car broke down; Vincenzo was out on the road at once, but his master
+sat quite still. He could not endure the thought of any delay.
+
+"What is it? Will it take long?" He had forced himself to wait a
+minute before he asked the question, but still his lips felt stiff,
+and all the colour had gone out of them.
+
+The man reassured him. "It is nothing."
+
+Jean went to help him, and soon they were able to go on again.
+
+They came presently to the fen lands--the Campagna that so greatly
+needs the magic and glamour of the Roman sunshine, the vault of the
+blue sky above, and the sound of larks singing to adorn it. It seemed
+a desolate and dreary waste, wind-swept, and shivering under the lash
+of the rain on such a morning as this, and the car was a very small
+thing moving in that apparently illimitable plain along a road that
+might be endless. Jean saw a herd of the wild, black buffaloes
+standing in a pool at the foot of a broken arch of the Claudian
+aqueduct, and now and again he caught a glimpse of fragments of
+masonry, or a ruined tower, ancient stronghold of one or other of the
+robber barons who preyed on Rome-ward pilgrims in the age of faith and
+rapine.
+
+They reached Albano soon after eleven o'clock, and Jean left his man
+in the car while he went in to the Ristorante of the Albergo della
+Posta. He ordered a cup of coffee, and sat down at one of the little
+marble tables near the door to drink it. There was no one else in the
+place at the moment.
+
+"Can you tell me the way to the Villino Bella Vista?"
+
+The waiter looked at him curiously. "It is down in the olive woods and
+quite near the lake, and you must go to it by a lane from the Galleria
+di Sopra, the upper road to Castel Gandolfo." After a momentary
+hesitation he added, "_Scusi!_ But are you thinking of taking it,
+signore?"
+
+Jean started. It had not occurred to him that the house might be
+empty. "I don't know," he answered cautiously. "Has it been to let
+long?"
+
+"Oh, yes," the man said. "The Princess Tor di Rocca spent her last years
+there, alone, and after her death the agent in Rome found tenants. But
+lately no one has come to it, even to see." He lowered his voice. "The
+place has a bad name hereabouts. The _contadini_--rough, ignorant folk,
+signore--say she still walks in the garden at moonrise, waiting for the
+husband and son who never came; and the women who go to wash their
+linen in the lake will not come back that way at night for fear of
+seeing her dead eyes peering at them through the bars of the gate."
+
+"Ah, that is very interesting," Jean said appreciatively. He finished
+his coffee, paid for it with a piece of silver, and waited to light a
+cigarette before he went out.
+
+Vincenzo sat still in the car, a model of patient impassivity, but he
+turned a hungry eye on his master as he came down the steps.
+
+"You can go and get something to eat. I shall drive up to the Galleria
+di Sopra, and you must follow me there. You will find the car at the
+side of the road. Stay with it until I come, and if anyone asks
+questions you need not answer them."
+
+Jean drove up the steep hill towards the lake. The rain was still
+heavy, and the squalid streets of the little town were running with
+mud. He turned to the left by the Calvary at the foot of the ilex
+avenue by the Capuchin church, and stopped the car some way further
+down the road. The lane the waiter had told him of was not hard to
+find. It was a narrow path between high walls of olive orchards; it
+led straight down to the lake, and the entrance to the Villino was
+quite close to the water's edge. Nothing could be seen of it from the
+lane but the name painted on the gate-posts and one glimpse of a
+shuttered window, forlorn and viewless as a blind eye, and half hidden
+by flowering laurels. Jean looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to
+twelve, and she had written "after noon," but he could not be sure
+that she had not come already, and since he had heard the name of Tor
+di Rocca he was more than ever anxious to be with her.
+
+He tried the gate but it was locked; there was nothing for it but to
+climb the wall, and as he was light and active he scrambled over
+without much difficulty and landed in a green tangle of roses and wild
+vines. He knocked at the house door, and stood for a while listening
+to the empty answering echoes and to the drip-drip of rain from the
+eaves. Evidently there was no one there. He drew back into the
+shrubberies; great showers of drops were shaken down on him from the
+gold-powdered mimosa blossoms that met above his head; he shook
+himself impatiently, like a dog that is disturbed while on guard. From
+where he stood he could see the gate and the grass-grown path that led
+from it to the house. The time passed very slowly. He looked at his
+watch four times in the next fifteen minutes, and he was beginning to
+wonder if he had not left Florence on a fool's errand when Olive came.
+
+He saw her fumbling with the key; it was hard to turn in the rusty
+lock, and she had to close her umbrella and stand it against the wall
+so as to have both hands free. The gate swung open slowly, creaking on
+its warped hinges. Jean noticed that she left it unlatched and that
+she looked back over her shoulder twice as she came down the path, as
+though she thought someone might be following her.
+
+She opened the house door with a key she had and went in, and he came
+after her. He stood for a moment on the threshold listening. She was
+hurrying from room to room, opening the shutters and the windows and
+letting in the light and air; the doors banged after her, and muslin
+curtains flapped like wings as the wind blew them.
+
+His heart was beating so that he thought she must hear it before she
+saw him, before his step sounded in the passage. As he came in she
+gave a sort of little cry and ran to him, and he put his arms about
+her and kissed her again and again; her dear lips that were wet and
+cold with rain, her soft brown hair, the curves of cheek and chin that
+were as sweet to feel as to see. One small hand held the lapel of his
+coat, and he was pleasantly aware of the other being laid about his
+neck. She had wanted him so much--and he had come.
+
+"Thank God, you are here, Jean. Oh, if you knew how frightened I have
+been."
+
+He kissed her once more, and then, framing her face with his hands, he
+looked down into her eyes. The blue eyes yearned to his, but there
+was fear in them still, and he saw the colour he had brought into her
+cheeks fading.
+
+"I am not worth all the trouble I have given you."
+
+"Perhaps not," he said, smiling. "Hilaire sent you a long message, but
+I want to hear what we are supposed to be doing here first."
+
+"Dear Hilaire!... Jean, you won't be angry?"
+
+"I don't promise anything," he said. "I shall probably be furious. But
+in any case, if it is going to be a long story we may as well make
+ourselves at home."
+
+"Not here! I must tell you quickly, before he comes."
+
+He noticed that she looked towards the door, and he understood that
+she was listening fearfully for the creaking of the gate, the sound of
+footsteps on the path outside, the turning of the key in the lock.
+
+"Tor di Rocca, I suppose? When is he coming?"
+
+"Between one and two."
+
+"We have at least half an hour then," he said comfortably, and drew
+her closer to him with his arm about her shoulders.
+
+"When I first came to Rome I tried for weeks to get something to do,
+but no one seemed to want lessons. Then one day Signora Aurelia's
+sister told me how poor she was. She cried, and I was very much upset
+because I felt I was a burden, and that very afternoon I found out a
+way of making money ... Jean, you won't be angry?"
+
+"No, dearest."
+
+"I became a model--" She paused, but he said nothing and she went on.
+"I sat for one man only after the first week, and he was always good
+and kind to me, always. He painted a picture of me--I think you would
+like it--and the day before yesterday he had a show of his work. A lot
+of people came. I did not see Prince Tor di Rocca, but he was there,
+and after a while he spoke to me. I had met him before and I
+understood from what he said that Mamie Whittaker had broken her
+engagement with him.
+
+"The next morning M'sieur Camille had to go out, and I was alone in
+the studio when the Prince came in and tried to make love to me. I was
+frightened, and I screamed, and just then Camille returned, and he
+knocked him down. He got up again at once. Nothing much was said, and
+he went away, but I understood that they were going to fight. I went
+home and thought about it, and when I realised that one or other of
+them might be killed I felt I could not bear it.
+
+"I am so afraid of death, Jean. I try to believe in a future life, but
+that will be different, and I want the people I love in this one;
+just human, looking tired sometimes and shabby, or happy and pleased
+about things. I remember my mother had a blue hat that suited her, and
+I can't think of it now without tears, because I long to see her
+pinning it on before the glass and asking me if it is straight, and I
+suppose I shall never see or hear that again, even if we do meet in
+heaven. Death is so absolutely the end. If only people are alive
+distance and absence don't really matter; there is always hope. And
+then, you know, Camille is so brilliant; it would be a loss to France,
+to the whole world, if he was killed."
+
+"What did you say his name was?"
+
+"Camille Michelin."
+
+"I know him then. He came to me once in Paris, after a concert, and
+fell on my neck without an introduction. Afterwards he painted my
+portrait."
+
+"He is nice, isn't he?" she said eagerly.
+
+He assented. "Well, go on. You could not let them fight--"
+
+"I went to see the Prince at his hotel, and I persuaded him to write a
+sort of apology."
+
+"You persuaded him. How?"
+
+"Jean, that man is the exact opposite of the centurion's servant; say
+'go' and he stays, 'don't do it' and he does it. And I once made the
+fatal mistake of telling him I could never love him. He did not want
+me to before, but now-- He is a spoilt boy who only cares for the
+fruit that is forbidden or withheld. It is the scaling of the orchard
+wall that he enjoys; if he could walk in by the gate in broad daylight
+I am sure he never would, or, at any rate, he would soon walk out
+again. I promised to come here alone to meet him, and not to tell
+Camille, and I have kept my promise. If you knew how frightened I
+was.... I thought you might be away, and that Hilaire perhaps could
+not come in your stead, though I knew he would if it were possible."
+
+The man left her then and went to the window, where he stood looking
+out upon the driving mist and rain that made the troubled waters of
+the lake seem grey, and shrouded all the wooded hills beyond.
+
+"Suppose I had not come," he said presently. "What would you have
+done?"
+
+"You ask that?"
+
+He turned upon her. "Yes," he said hardly, "just that."
+
+She took a small pistol from the pocket of her loose sac coat and gave
+it to him.
+
+"So you were going to shoot him? I thought--"
+
+She tried to still the quivering of her lips. "No, myself. Oh, I am
+not really inconsistent. I told you I was afraid of death. I will say
+all now and have done; I am afraid of life too, with its long slow
+pains, and most of all of what men call love. I don't want to go on,"
+she cried hysterically. "I am sick. I don't want to see, or hear, or
+feel anything any more. I have had enough. All this year I have
+struggled, and people have been kind; but friendship is a poor, weak
+thing, and love--love is hateful."
+
+She hid her face in her hands.
+
+"Rubbish!" he said, and then, in a changed voice, "My darling, you
+will be better soon. I must get you away from here."
+
+Gently he drew her hands away from her face and lifted them to his
+lips; the soft palms were wet with tears.
+
+They were standing on the threshold of an inner room. "You can go in
+here until I have done with Tor di Rocca," he said. "But first I must
+tell you that Gertrude has written to me asking me to get a divorce.
+There is a man, of course, and the case will not be defended. Olive,
+will you marry me when I am free?"
+
+"Oh, Jean, I--I am so glad."
+
+"You will marry me then?" he insisted.
+
+"How thin you are, my dear. Just a very nice bag of bones. Were--were
+you sorry when I came away?"
+
+"You little torment," he said. "Answer me."
+
+"Ask again. I want to hear."
+
+"Will you marry me?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+A nightingale began to sing in the garden; broken notes, a mere echo
+of what the stars heard at night, but infinitely sweet as the soul of
+a rose made audible; and as he sang a sudden ray of sunshine shot the
+grey rain with silver. It seemed to Jean that rose-sweetness was all
+about him in this his short triumph of love; that a flower's heart
+beat against his own, that a flower's lips caressed the lean darkness
+of his cheek. There were threads of gold in the soft brown tangle of
+hair--gold unalloyed as was the hard-won happiness that made him feel
+himself invincible, panoplied in an armour of joy that should defend
+them from all slings and arrows. He was happy, and so the world seemed
+full of music; there was harmony in the swaying of tall dark
+cypresses, moved by winds that strewed the grass with torn petals of
+orange blossoms from the trees by the lake side, in the clouds'
+processional, in the patter of rain on the green shining laurel
+leaves.
+
+Laurels--his laurels had been woven in with rue, and latterly with
+rosemary for dear remembrance; he had never cared greatly for his fame
+and it seemed worthless to him now that he had realised his dream and
+gathered his rose.
+
+He was impatient to be gone, to take the woman he loved out of this
+house of sad memories, of empty echoes, of dust and rust and decay.
+Already he seemed to feel the rush of the cold night air, to hear the
+roar of Arno, hurrying to the sea, above the steady throbbing of the
+car; to see the welcoming lights of home shining out of the dark at
+the steep edge of the hills above Settignano.
+
+"About the Prince," he said presently. "Am I to fight him?"
+
+She started. "Oh, no! That would be worse than ever. I thought you
+were too English for that," she said naively.
+
+He smiled. "Well, perhaps I am, but I suppose there may be a bit of a
+scuffle. You won't mind that?"
+
+"I don't know," she said helplessly.
+
+A moment later they heard the gate creak as it swung on its hinges.
+"He is coming."
+
+They kissed hurriedly, with, on her side, a passion of farewell, and
+he would have made her go into the room beyond, but she clung to him,
+crying incoherently. "No ... no ... together ..."
+
+Tor di Rocca stopped short by the door; the smile that had been in his
+hot eyes as they met Olive's faded, and the short, Neronic upper lip
+lifted in a sort of snarl.
+
+"I don't quite understand," he said. "How did you come here? This is
+my house, Avenel."
+
+"I know it, and I do not wish to trespass on your hospitality. You
+will excuse us?"
+
+But the Prince stood in the way. "I am not a child to be played with.
+I'll not let her go. You may leave us, however," he added, and he
+stood aside as though to let him pass.
+
+Jean met his angry eyes. "The lady is unwilling. Let that be the end,"
+he said quietly.
+
+Olive watched the Italian fearfully; his face was writhen, and all
+semblance of beauty had gone out of it; its gnawing, tearing, animal
+ferocity was appalling. When he called to her she moved instinctively
+nearer to Jean, and then with the swift prescience of love threw
+herself on his breast, tried to shelter him, as the other drew his
+revolver and fired.
+
+Jean had his arm about her, but he let her slip now and fall in a
+huddled heap at his feet. She was safer there, and out of the way. The
+two men exchanged several shots, but Jean's went wide; he was hampered
+by his heavy motor coat, and the second bullet had scored its way
+through his flesh before he could get at his weapon; there were four
+in his body when he dropped.
+
+Tor di Rocca leant against the wall; he was unhurt, but he felt a
+little faint and sick for the moment. Hurriedly he rehearsed what he
+should say to the _Questore_ presently. He had met the girl in this
+house of his; Avenel, her lover, had broken in upon them; he had shot
+her and fired at the Prince himself, but without effect, and he had
+killed him in self-defence.
+
+That was plain enough, but it was essential that his should be the
+only version, and when the smoke cleared away he crossed the room to
+look at the two who must speak no word, and to make sure.
+
+The man was still alive for all the lead in him; Tor di Rocca watched,
+with a sort of cruel, boyish interest in the creature he had maimed,
+as slowly, painfully, Jean dragged himself a little nearer to where
+the girl lay, tried to rise, and fell heavily. Surely he was dead
+now--but no; his hands still clawed at the carpet, and when Tor di
+Rocca stamped on his fingers he moaned as he tried to draw them away.
+Olive lived too, but her breathing was so faint that it would be
+easily stifled; the pressure of his hand even, but Filippo shrank from
+that. He could not touch the flesh that would be dust presently
+because of him. He hesitated, and then, muttering to himself, went to
+take one of the cushions from the window seat.
+
+Out in the garden the nightingale had not ceased to sing; the
+cypresses swayed in the winds that shook the promise of fruit from
+the trees; the green and rose and gold of a rainbow made fair the
+clouds' processional. The world was still full of music, of transitory
+life and joy, of dreams that have an ending.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+"_Via!_" said Vincenzo, and his black, oily forefinger, uplifted, gave
+emphasis to his words. "There are no such things as ghosts. This
+princess of yours cannot be seen at moonrise, or at any other time."
+
+There is no room for faith in the swelled head of young Italy, but the
+waiter was a middle-aged man. He paused in the act of re-filling the
+customer's cup. "You do not believe, then?"
+
+The Tuscan looked at him with all the scarcely-veiled contempt of the
+North for the South. "You tell me you are a Calabrian. _Si vede!_ You
+listen to all the priests say; you go down on your knees in the mud
+when the _frati_ are carrying a wax doll about the roads; you think a
+splinter of bone from the ribs of some fool who would not enjoy life
+while it lasted will cure a dropsy or a broken leg; you hope the rain
+will stop because a holy toe-nail is exposed on the altar. Ghosts,
+visions, miracles!"
+
+Vincenzo Torrigiani was the son of a stone-cutter in the village of
+Settignano, and he had worked as a boy in the gardens of the Villa
+Fiorelli. After a while the master had noticed and had taken a fancy
+to him, chiefly on account of his ever-ready and unusually dazzling
+and expansive smile, and he had been sent to a garage in Milan for six
+months. The quick-witted Florentine learned a great many things in a
+short time besides the necessary smattering of mechanics and the
+management of cars, and on his return he displayed many new airs and
+graces in addition, fortunately, to the same old smile. Later on he
+spent the obligatory two years in barracks, in a regiment of
+Bersaglieri, and came back to Avenel's service plus a still more
+varied knowledge of the world, a waxed moustache, and a superficial
+tendency to atheism. He was always delighted to air his views, and he
+fixed the shocked waiter now with a glittering eye as he proceeded to
+recite his unbelief at some length.
+
+"God is merely man's idea of himself at his best, and the devil is his
+idea of other people at their worst," he concluded.
+
+"Would you spend a night alone in this haunted house?"
+
+"_Sicuro!_"
+
+"Perhaps you will have to if your master takes the place. He has gone
+to look at it."
+
+Vincenzo gulped down the last of his coffee. "I must go," he said, but
+he was much too Italian to understand that a man in a hurry need not
+count his change twice over or bite every piece of silver to make
+sure of it.
+
+It was nearly one o'clock when, having outdistanced the pack of
+beggars that followed at his heels through the narrow streets of the
+town, he came out upon the broad, tree-shadowed upper road. He had
+stopped for a moment in the shelter of the high wall of the Capuchin
+convent to light a cigarette, and thereafter he went on unseeingly, in
+a brown study. Had he or had he not paid two soldi more than he should
+have done for the packet? A Calabrian would cheat, if possible, of
+course.
+
+When, after much mental arithmetic, Vincenzo solved the problem to his
+own satisfaction the little scrap of bad tobacco in its paper lining
+was smoked out. He looked at his watch, a Christmas present from Jean,
+and seeing that it was past the hour he began to wonder. There were no
+ghosts, and in any case they were not dangerous in broad daylight.
+There were no ghosts, but what was the signorino doing all this while
+in an empty house? The car was there, drawn up at the side of the road
+under the trees, and Vincenzo fussed round it, pulling the tarpaulin
+covers more over the seats; he had them in place when it occurred to
+him to look underneath for the fur rug. It was not there.
+
+"_Dio mio!_" he cried excitedly. "It has been stolen."
+
+Someone passing by must have seen it and taken it, probably someone
+with a cart, as it would be heavy to carry. The thief could not have
+gone far, and Vincenzo thought that if he drove the car towards Castel
+Gandolfo he might catch him, whoever he was--charcoal-burner from the
+woods beyond Rocca di Papa, peasant carting barrels of Frascati wine,
+or perhaps a _frate_ from the convent. However, he dared not attempt
+it as the signorino had said "Wait."
+
+After a few minutes of miserable uncertainty, during which he invoked
+the assistance of the saints--"_Che fare! Che fare! Santa Vergine,
+aiutatemi!_" he decided to go and find the signorino himself. He was
+half way down the lane when he heard shots. He had been hurrying, but
+he began to run then, and the last echo had not died away when he
+reached the gate of the Villino. It creaked on its hinges as he passed
+in, but no one in the house was listening for it now. He went in at
+the door, and now he was very swift and silent, very intent. There was
+a smell of powder in the passage, and someone was moving about in the
+room beyond. Vincenzo felt for the long sharp knife in his hip pocket
+before he softly turned the handle of the door.
+
+"Signore! What has happened?"
+
+Filippo Tor di Rocca started violently and uttered a sort of cry as he
+turned to see the man who stood on the threshold staring at him. There
+was a queer silence before he spoke, moistening his lips at almost
+every word.
+
+"I--I--you heard shots, I suppose."
+
+The servant's quick eyes noted the recent disorder of the room: chairs
+overturned, white splinters of plaster fallen from the ceiling, a
+mirror broken. Into what trap had his master fallen? What was there
+hidden behind the table--on the floor? There were scrabbled
+finger-marks--red marks--in the dust.
+
+"I was here with a lady whom I wished to take this house when a man
+burst in upon us. He shot her, and tried to shoot me, and I drew upon
+him in self-defence." The Prince spoke haltingly. He had not been
+prepared to lie so soon.
+
+"What are you doing with that cushion?"
+
+Filippo looked down guiltily at the frilled thing he held. "I was
+going to put it under her head," he began, but the other was not
+listening. He had come forward into the room and he had seen. The
+huddled heap of black and grey close at the Prince's feet was human--a
+woman--and he knew the young pale face, veiled as it was in brown,
+loosened hair threaded with gold. A woman; and the man who lay there
+too, his dark head resting on her breast, his lips laid against her
+throat, was his master, Jean Avenel.
+
+He uttered a hoarse cry of rage. "Murderer! You did it!"
+
+But Tor di Rocca had recovered himself somewhat and the bold, hard
+face was a mask through which the red eyes gleamed wickedly. "Fool!"
+he answered impatiently. "It was as I said. The man was mad with
+jealousy. There is his pistol on the floor. I am going now to inform
+the authorities and to fetch the _carabinieri_."
+
+He went out, and Vincenzo did not try to prevent him.
+
+"Signorino! signorino! answer me. _Madonna benedetta!_ What shall I
+say to Ser 'Ilario?" The little man's face worked, and tears ran down
+his cheeks as he knelt there at his master's side, stooping to feel
+for the fluttering of the faint breath, the beating of the pulse of
+life. Surely there was no mortal wound--the shoulder--yes; and the
+side, and the right arm, since all the sleeve was soaked in warm
+blood.
+
+All those who have been dragged down into the great darkness that
+shrouds the gate of Death know that the first sense vouchsafed to
+the returning soul is that of hearing. There was a sound of the sea
+in Jean's ears, a weary sound of wailing and distress, through which
+words came presently by ones and twos and threes. Words that seemed
+a long way off, and yet near, as though they were stones dropped
+upon him from a great height: ... signorina ... not mortal ...
+healed ... care ... twenty masses to the Madonna at the _Santissima
+Annunziata_ ...
+
+Sight came next as the sea that had roared about him seemed to ebb,
+leaving him still on the shore of this world. He opened his eyes and
+lay for a moment staring up at the white ceiling until full
+consciousness returned, and with it the sharp, stabbing pain of his
+wounds, the acrid taste of blood in his mouth, the remembrance of
+love. Olive.... Had he not tried to reach her and failed? He groaned
+as he turned his aching head now on the pillow to see her where she
+lay.
+
+Vincenzo had cared for his master, had slit up that red, wet sleeve
+with his sharp knife, and had bandaged the torn flesh as well as he
+was able; and now, very gently, but without any skill, he was fumbling
+at the girl's breast.
+
+Jean made an effort to speak but his lips made no intelligible sounds
+at first. The servant came running to him joyfully nevertheless.
+"Signorino! You are better?"
+
+The kind brown eyes smiled through the dimness of their pain.
+
+"Good Vincenzo ... well done. She ... she's not dead?"
+
+"Oh, no, signorino--at least--I am not sure," the man faltered.
+
+"The wound is near the heart, is it not? Lay her down here beside me
+and I will keep it closed with my hand," Jean said faintly. "Lift her
+and lay her down here in the hollow of my unhurt arm."
+
+"No ... no!" she had cried. "Together." No other man should touch
+her--if she died it must be in his arms. How still she was, how little
+warmth of life was there to cherish, how small a fluttering of the
+dear heart under his hand's pressure....
+
+"Go now and get help."
+
+Vincenzo made no answer, but his eyes were like those of a faithful
+dog, anguished, appealing, and he knelt to kiss the poor fingers that
+had been bruised under that cruel heel before he went out of the room.
+
+Very softly he closed and locked the door, and then stood for a while
+in the close darkness of the passage, listening. That devil--he wanted
+them to die--suppose he should be lurking somewhere about the house,
+waiting for the servant to go that he might finish his work.
+
+The Tor di Rocca were hard and swift and cruel as steel. That Duchess
+Veronica, who had brought her husband the other woman's severed head,
+wrapped in fine linen of her own weaving, as a New Year's gift!--she
+had been one of them. Then there had lived one Filippo who kept his
+younger brother chained up to the wall of some inner room of his
+Florentine palace for seventeen years, until, at last, a serving-man
+dared to go and tell of the sound of blows in the night hours, the
+moaning, the clank of a chain, and the people broke in, and hanged the
+Prince from the wrought-iron _fanale_ outside his own gate.
+
+Vincenzo knew of all these old, past horrors; the Florentines had
+made ballads of them, and sang them in the streets, and one might buy
+"_L'Assassina_," or "_Il Fratello del Principe_," printed on little
+sheets of coarse paper, on the stalls in the Mercato, for one soldo.
+So, though the house was very still, the little man drew his long
+knife and read the motto scratched on the blade before he climbed the
+stairs.
+
+"_Non ti fidar a me se il cor ti manca._"
+
+Hurriedly he passed through every room, but there was no one there,
+and so he ran out into the dripping green wilderness of torn leaves
+and storm-tossed, drenched blossoms, and up the lane, between the high
+walls of the olive orchards, to the town.
+
+Don Filippo was really gone, and he was waiting now on the platform of
+the Albano station for the train that should take him back to Rome. He
+was not, however, presenting the spectacle of the murderer fleeing
+from his crime. He was quite calm. The heat and cruelty of the Tor di
+Rocca blood flared in him, but it burned with no steady flame. He had
+not the tenacity of his forefathers; and so, though he might kill his
+brother, he would not care to torment him during long years. Hate
+palled on him as quickly as love. He was content to leave the lives of
+Jean Avenel and of Olive on the knees of the gods.
+
+There was no pity, no tenderness in him to be stirred by the
+remembrance of blue eyes dilated with fear, of loosened brown hair, of
+the small thing that had lain in a huddled heap at his feet, and he
+was not afraid of any consequences affecting him. In Italy the plea of
+jealousy covers a multitude of sins, and he was sure that a jury would
+acquit him if he were charged with murder.
+
+How many hundred years had passed since Pilate had called for water to
+wash his hands! Filippo--reminded in some way of the Roman
+governor--felt that same need. His hands were not clean--there was
+dust on them--and it seemed that the one thing that really might clog
+his thoughts and tarnish them later on was the dust on a frilled
+cushion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+To some men their world is most precious when their arms may compass
+it. These are the great lovers. It seemed to Jean now that it mattered
+little whether this grey hour of rain and silence preluded life or
+death. Presently they would come to the edge of the stream called
+Lethe, and then he, making a cup of his hands, would give the woman he
+loved to drink of the waters of forgetfulness, and all remembrance of
+loneliness and tears, and of the pain that ached now in his side and
+in her shot breast would pass away.
+
+He looked down from a great height and saw:
+
+               "_the curled moon
+    Was like a little feather
+    Fluttering far down the gulf;_"
+
+and the round world, a caught fly, wrapped in a web of clouds, hung by
+a slender thread of some huge spider's spinning. There was a dark mark
+upon it that spread and reddened until it seemed to be a stain of
+blood on a woman's breast. She had been pale, but the colour had come
+again when he had kissed her. It was gone now. Was it all in the red
+that oozed between his fingers?
+
+In the twilight of his senses stray thoughts fluttered and passed like
+white moths. Was that the roar of voices? The hall was full and they
+wanted him, but he could not play again. Love was best. He would stay
+in the garden with Olive.
+
+What were they asking for? A nocturne--yes; it was getting dark, and
+the sea was rising--that was the sound of the sea.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The doctor Vincenzo had brought in rose from his knees and stood
+thoughtfully wiping his hands on a piece of lint.
+
+"We must see about extracting the bullets later on. One went clean
+through his arm and so has saved us the trouble. As to her--I am not
+sure--but I think the injury may not be so serious as it now appears.
+She was evidently stunned. She must have struck her head against the
+table in falling."
+
+"Can they be moved?" the servant asked anxiously. "My master would not
+care to stay on here. Can you take them into your house, and--and not
+say anything?"
+
+The doctor hesitated. He was a bald, grey-whiskered man, fat and
+flaccid. His cuffs were frayed and there were wine-stains on his
+shabby clothes. He was very poor.
+
+"I should inform the authorities," he said.
+
+"Oh, I don't think that is necessary. It would be worth your while
+not to."
+
+Jean's fur coat had been thrown across a chair. The doctor eyed it
+carefully. It was worth more lire than he had ever possessed at one
+time.
+
+"Very well," he said. "The vineyard across the lane is mine. We can go
+to my house that way and take them through the gate without ever
+coming out on to the road. I will go and tell my housekeeper to get
+the rooms ready."
+
+Vincenzo's face brightened. "I will go in the car to-night to fetch
+the master's brother. He is very rich. It will be worth your while,"
+he repeated.
+
+"He will be heavy to carry. Shall we be able to do it alone?"
+
+"_Via!_" cried the little man. "I am very strong. Go now and come back
+soon."
+
+When the other had left the room he crouched down again on the floor
+at Jean's feet. "Signorino! Signorino! Speak to me! Look at me!"
+
+But there was no voice now, nor any that answered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a long while, it seemed, Jean was a spent swimmer, struggling to
+reach a distant shore. The cruel cross-currents drew him, great waves
+buffeted him, and the worst of it was they were hot. All the sea was
+bubbling and boiling about him, and the sound in his ears was like
+the roar of steam. There were creatures in the water, too; octopi,
+such as he had seen caught in nets by the Venetian fishermen and flung
+on the yellow sands of the Lido. He saw their tentacles flickering in
+the green curled edges of each wave that threatened to beat him down
+into the depths.
+
+Vincenzo kept them off. He was always there, sitting by the door, and
+when he was called he came running to his master's bedside.
+
+"Where is she? Don't let her be drowned! Don't let the octopi get her!
+Vincenzo! Vincenzo!" he cried, and the good fellow tried to reassure
+him.
+
+"_Sia benedetto_, signorino! They shall not have her. I will cut them
+in pieces with my knife."
+
+"What is the matter? I am quite well. Is it only the tyre? There is
+Orvieto, and the sun just risen. Is it still raining?"
+
+"No, signorino. The sun shines and it has not rained for days. It will
+soon be May."
+
+Very slowly the tide of feverish dreams ebbed, and Jean became aware
+of the iris pattern on the curtains of the bed; of the ray of sunlight
+that danced every morning on the ceiling and passed away; of the old
+woman who gave him his medicine. She was kind, and he liked to see her
+sitting sewing by lamplight, and to watch her distorted shadow
+looming gigantic in an angle of the wall. Hilaire was there too, but
+sometimes he was called away, and then Jean would hear his uneven step
+going to and fro across an uncarpeted floor, and the sound of hushed
+voices in the next room.
+
+"Hilaire, is--is it all right?"
+
+"Yes, do not be afraid. Get well," the elder man answered, but Jean
+still lay with his face turned to the wall. He was afraid. The longing
+to see Olive, to hold her once more in his arms, burned within him. He
+moved restlessly and laid his clenched hands together on the
+half-healed wound in his side.
+
+One night he slept soundly, dreamlessly, as a child sleeps, and woke
+at dawn. He raised himself on his elbow in the bed and looked about
+him, and Vincenzo came to him at once and asked him what he wanted.
+
+"Go out," he said, "and leave me alone for a while."
+
+The green painted window-shutter was unfastened, and it swung open in
+the little wind that had sprung up. Jean saw the morning star shining,
+and the widening rift of pale gold in the grey sky above the hills. He
+heard the stirring of awakened life. Birds fluttered in the laurels. A
+boy was singing as he went to his work among the vines by the lake
+side:
+
+    "_Ho da dirti tante cose._"
+
+It seemed to Jean that he too had many things to say to the woman he
+loved. He called to her faintly, in a weak, hoarse voice: "Olive!"
+
+After a while he heard her answering him from the next room.
+
+"Jean! Oh, Jean!"
+
+He lay still, smiling.
+
+
+
+           EDINBURGH
+    COLSTON AND CO. LIMITED
+           PRINTERS
+
+
+
+
+THE BLUE LAGOON
+
+By =H. DE VERE STACPOOLE=,
+
+Author of "The Crimson Azaleas," etc. 6s.
+
+    The _Times_ says: "Picturesque and original ... full of
+    air and light and motion."
+
+    The _Daily Telegraph_ says: "A hauntingly beautiful
+    story."
+
+    The _Globe_ says: "Weirdly imaginative, remote, and
+    fateful."
+
+    The _Evening Standard_ says: "A masterpiece.... It has
+    the gift of the most vivid description that makes a
+    scene live before your eyes."
+
+    The _Sunday Times_ says: "A very lovely and fascinating
+    tale, by the side of which 'Paul and Virginia' seems
+    tame indeed."
+
+    The _Morning Leader_ says: "It is a true romance, with
+    an atmosphere of true romance which few but the greatest
+    writers achieve."
+
+    The _World_ says: "Original and fascinating."
+
+    The _Nottingham Guardian_ says: "A singularly powerful
+    and brilliantly imagined story."
+
+    The _Daily Chronicle_ says: "Many able authors, an
+    unaccountable number, have written about the South Sea
+    Islands, but none that we know has written so charmingly
+    as Mr. de Vere Stacpoole in 'The Blue Lagoon.'"
+
+
+T. FISHER UNWIN, 1 ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON
+
+
+
+
+T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher,
+
+WORKS BY JOSEPH CONRAD
+
+
+I.
+
+AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS
+
+_Crown 8vo._, _cloth_, =6s.=
+
+"Subject to the qualifications thus disposed of (_vide_ first part of
+notice), 'An Outcast of the Islands' is perhaps the finest piece of
+fiction that has been published this year, as 'Almayer's Folly' was
+one of the finest that was published in 1895.... Surely this is real
+romance--the romance that is real. Space forbids anything but the
+merest recapitulation of the other living realities of Mr. Conrad's
+invention--of Lingard, of the inimitable Almayer, the one-eyed
+Babalatchi, the Naturalist, of the pious Abdulla--all novel, all
+authentic. Enough has been written to show Mr. Conrad's quality. He
+imagines his scenes and their sequence like a master; he knows his
+individualities and their hearts; he has a new and wonderful field in
+this East Indian Novel of his.... Greatness is deliberately written;
+the present writer has read and re-read his two books, and after
+putting this review aside for some days to consider the discretion of
+it, the word still stands."--_Saturday Review_
+
+
+II.
+
+ALMAYER'S FOLLY
+
+_Second Edition._ _Crown 8vo._, _cloth_, =6s.=
+
+    "This startling, unique, splendid book."
+
+                    Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR, M.P.
+
+"This is a decidedly powerful story of an uncommon type, and breaks
+fresh ground in fiction.... All the leading characters in the
+book--Almayer, his wife, his daughter, and Dain, the daughter's native
+lover--are well drawn, and the parting between father and daughter has
+a pathetic naturalness about it, unspoiled by straining after effect.
+There are, too, some admirably graphic passages in the book. The
+approach of a monsoon is most effectively described.... The name of
+Mr. Joseph Conrad is new to us, but it appears to us as if he might
+become the Kipling of the Malay Archipelago."--_Spectator_
+
+
+
+
+THE BEETLE. A MYSTERY
+
+By =RICHARD MARSH=. Illustrated.
+
+Eleventh Edition. 6s.
+
+    The _Daily Graphic_ says: "'The Beetle' is the kind of
+    book which you put down only for the purpose of turning
+    up the gas and making sure that no person or thing is
+    standing behind your chair, and it is a book which no
+    one will put down until finished except for the reason
+    above described."
+
+    The _Speaker_ says: "A story of the most terrific kind
+    is duly recorded in this extremely powerful book. The
+    skill with which its fantastic horrors are presented to
+    us is undeniable."
+
+
+T. FISHER UNWIN, 1 ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Bold text is indicated with equals symbols, =like this=.
+
+Text in languages other than English is preserved as printed.
+
+Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.
+
+The following amendments have been made:
+
+    Page 164--Jocopo amended to Jacopo--"... one of the old
+    houses in the Borgo San Jacopo, ..."
+
+    Page 197--mysogynists amended to misogynists--"Olive
+    laughed. "Commend me to misogynists henceforth.""
+
+    Page 216--newsvenders amended to newsvendors--"... and
+    the narrow streets were echoing now to the hoarse cries
+    of the newsvendors ..."
+
+    Page 228--Babbuino amended to Babuino--"They went by way
+    of the Via Babuino across the Piazza di Spagna, ..."
+
+    Page 293--anyrate amended to any rate--"... I am sure he
+    never would, or, at any rate, he would ..."
+
+    Page 297--it's amended to its--"... its gnawing,
+    tearing, animal ferocity was appalling."
+
+    Second advert page--decidely amended to decidedly--"This
+    is a decidedly powerful story ..."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Olive in Italy, by Moray Dalton
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