The next day, she arrived at the Palazzo dei Sabini, her heart beating fast under a bunch of violets.

Andrea was looking out for her at the door of the concert-hall.

'Thanks,' he said, and pressed her hand.

He conducted her to a seat and sat down beside her.

'I thought the anxiety of waiting for you would have killed me,' he murmured. 'I was so afraid you would not come. How grateful I am to you! Late last night,' he went on, 'I passed your house. There was a light in one window—the third looking towards the Quirinal—I would have given much to know if you were up there. Who gave you those violets?' he asked abruptly.

'Delfina,' she answered.

'Did Delfina tell you of our meeting this morning in the Piazza di Spagna?'

'Yes—all.'

The concert began with a Quartett by Mendelssohn. The hall was already nearly full, the audience consisting, for the most part, of foreign ladies—fair-haired women very quietly and simply dressed, grave of attitude, religiously silent, as in some sacred spot. The wave of music passing over these motionless heads spread out into the golden light, a light that filtered from above through faded yellow curtains and was reflected from the bare white walls. It was the old hall of the Philharmonic concerts. The whiteness of the walls was unbroken by any ornament, with only here and there a trace of former frescoes and its meagre blue portiÈres threatening to come down at any moment. It had all the air of a place that had been closed for a century and opened again that day for the first time. But just this faded look of age, the air of poverty, the nakedness of the walls lent a curious additional flavour to the exquisite enjoyment of the audience, making their delight seem more absorbing, loftier, purer by contrast. It was the 2nd of February; at Montecitorio the Parliament was disputing over the massacre of Dogali; the neighbouring streets and squares swarmed with the populace and with soldiers.

Musical memories of Schifanoja came back to the lovers, a reflected gleam from those fair autumn days illumined their thoughts. Mendelssohn's Minuet called up before them a vision of the villa by the sea, of rooms filled with the perfume of the terraced garden, of cypresses lifting their dark heads into the soft sky, of flaming sails upon a glassy sea.

Bending towards his companion, Andrea whispered softly: 'What are you thinking about?'

With a smile so faint that he hardly caught it, she answered:

'Do you remember the 22nd of September?'

Andrea had no very clear recollection of this date, but he nodded his head.

The Andante, calm, broad and solemn, dominated by a wonderful and pathetic melody, had ended in a sudden outburst of grief. The Finale lingered in a certain rhythmic monotony full of plaintive weariness.

'Now comes your favourite Bach,' said Donna Maria.

And when the music commenced they both felt an instinctive desire to draw closer to each other. Their shoulders touched; at the end of each part Andrea leant over her to read the programme which she held open in her hands, and in so doing pressed against her arm, inhaling the perfume of her violets, and sending a wild thrill of ecstasy through her. The Adagio rose with so exultant a song, soared with so jubilant a strain to the topmost summits of rapture, and flowed wide into the Infinite, that it seemed like the voice of some celestial being pouring out the joy of a deathless victory. The spirits of the audience were borne along on that irresistible torrent of sound. When the music ceased, the tremor of the instruments continued for a moment in the hearers. A murmur ran from one end of the hall to the other. A moment later and the applause broke forth vehemently.

The lovers turned simultaneously and looked at one another with swimming eyes.

The music continued; the light began to fade; a gentle warmth pervaded the air, and Donna Maria's violets breathed a fuller fragrance. Seeing nobody near him whom he knew, Andrea almost felt as if he were alone with her.

But he was mistaken. Turning round in one of the pauses, he caught sight of Elena standing at the back of the hall with the Princess of Ferentino. Instantly their eyes met. As he bowed to her, he seemed to catch a singular smile on Elena's lips.

'To whom are you bowing?' asked Donna Maria, turning round too, 'who are those ladies?'

'Lady Heathfield and the Princess of Ferentino.'

She noticed a tremor of annoyance in his voice.

'Which of them is the Princess of Ferentino?'

'The fair one.'

'The other is very beautiful.'

Andrea said nothing.

'But is she English?' she asked again.

'No, she is a Roman. She was the widow of the Duke of Scerni, and now married again to Lord Heathfield.'

'She is very lovely.'

'What is coming next?' Andrea asked hurriedly.

'The Brahms Quartett in C minor.'

'Do you know it?'

'No.'

'The second movement is marvellous.'

He went on speaking to hide his embarrassment.

'When shall I see you again?' he asked.

'I do not know.'

'To-morrow?'

She hesitated. A cloud seemed to have come over her face.

'To-morrow,' she answered, 'if it is fine I shall take Delfina to the Piazza di Spagna about twelve o'clock.'

'And if it is not fine?'

'On Saturday evening I shall be at the Countess Starnina's——'

The music began once more. The first movement expressed a sombre and virile struggle, the Romance a memory full of passionate but sad desire, followed by a slow uplifting, faltering and tentative, towards the distant dawn. Out of this a clear and melodious phrase developed itself with splendid modulations. The sentiment was very different from that which animated Bach's Adagio; it was more human, more earthly, more elegiacal. A breath of Beethoven ran through this music.

Andrea's nervous perturbation was so great that he feared every moment to betray himself. All his pleasure was embittered. He could not exactly analyse his discomfort; he could neither gather himself together and overcome it, nor put it away from him; he was swayed in turn by the charm of the music and the fascination exercised over him by each of these women without being really dominated by any of the three. He had a vague sensation as of some empty space, in which heavy blows perpetually resounded followed by dolorous echoes. His thoughts seemed to break up and crumble away into a thousand fragments, and the images of the two women to melt into and destroy one another without his being able to disconnect them or to separate his feeling for the one from his feeling for the other. And above all this mental disturbance was the anxiety occasioned by the immediate circumstances, by the necessity for adopting some practical line of action. Donna Maria's slight change of attitude had not escaped him, and he seemed to feel Elena's gaze riveted upon him. What course should he pursue? He could not make up his mind whether to accompany Donna Maria when she left the concert, or to approach Elena, nor could he determine where this incident would be favourable to him or otherwise with either of the ladies.

'I am going,' said Donna Maria, rising at the end of the movement.

'You will not wait till the end?'

'No, I must be home by five o'clock.'

'Do not forget—to-morrow morning——'

She held out her hand. It was perhaps the air of the close room that sent a flush to her pale cheek. A velvet mantle of a dull leaden shade, with a deep border of chinchilla, covered her to her feet, and amid the soft gray fur the violets were dying exquisitely. As she passed out, she moved with such a queenly grace that many of the ladies turned to follow her with their eyes. It was the first time that in this spiritual creature, the pure Siennese Madonna, Andrea also beheld the elegant woman of the world.

The third movement of the Quartett began. The daylight had diminished so much that the yellow curtains had to be drawn back. Several other ladies left. A low hum of conversation was audible here and there. The fatigue and inattention which invariably marks the end of a concert began to make itself apparent in the audience. By one of those strange and abrupt manifestations of moral elasticity, Andrea experienced a sudden sense of relief, not to say gaiety. In a moment, he had forgotten his sentimental and passionate pre-occupations, and all that now appealed to him—to his vanity, to his corrupt senses—was the licentious aspect of the affair. He thought to himself that in granting him these little innocent rendezvous, Donna Maria had already set her foot on the gentle downward slope of the path at the bottom of which lies sin, inevitable even to the most vigilant soul; he also argued that doubtless a little touch of jealousy would do much towards bringing Elena back to his arms and that thus the one intrigue would help on the other—was it not a vague fear, a jealous foreboding that had made Donna Maria consent so quickly to their next meeting? He saw himself, therefore, well on the way to a two-fold conquest, and he could not repress a smile as he reflected that in both adventures the chief difficulty presented itself under the same guise: both women professed a wish to play the part of sister to him; it was for him to transform these sisters in something closer. He remarked upon other resemblances between the two—That voice! How curiously like Elena's were some tones in Donna Maria's voice! A mad thought flashed through his brain. That voice might furnish him with the elements of a study of imagination—by virtue of that affinity, he might resolve the two fair women into one, and thus possess a third, imaginary, mistress, more complex, more perfect, more true because she would be ideal——

The third movement, executed in faultless style, finished in a burst of applause. Andrea rose and approached Elena—

'Oh, there you are, Ugenta! Where have you been all this time?' exclaimed the Princess—'In the "pays du Tendre?"'

'And your incognita?' asked Elena lightly as she pulled a bunch of violets out of her muff and sniffed them.

'She is a great friend of my cousin Francesca's, Donna Maria FerrÈs y Capdevila, the wife of the new minister for Guatemala,' Andrea replied without turning a hair—'a beautiful creature and very cultivated—she was at Schifanoja with Francesca last September.'

'And what of Francesca?' Elena broke in—'do you know when she is coming back?'

'I had the latest news from her a day or two ago—from San Remo. Fernandino is better, but I am afraid she will have to stay on there another month at least, perhaps longer.'

'What a pity!'

The last movement, a very short one, began. Elena and the Princess occupied two chairs at the end of the room, against the wall under a dim mirror in which the melancholy hall was reflected. Elena listened with bent head, slowly drawing through her fingers the long ends of her boa.

The concert over, she said to Sperelli: 'Will you see us to the carriage?'

As she entered her carriage after the Princess, she turned to him again—'Won't you come too? We will drop Eva at the Palazzo Fiano, and I can put you down wherever you like.'

'Thanks,' answered Andrea, nothing loath. On the Corso they were obliged to proceed very slowly, the whole roadway being taken up by a seething, tumultuous crowd. From the Piazza di Montecitorio and the Piazza Colonna came a perfect uproar that swelled and rose and fell and rose again, mingled with shrill trumpet-blasts. The tumult increased as the gray cold twilight deepened. Horror at the tragedy enacted in a far-off land made the populace howl with rage; men broke through the dense crowd running and waving great bundles of newspapers. Through all the clamour, the one word Africa rang distinctly.

'And all this for four hundred brutes who had died the death of brutes!' murmured Andrea, withdrawing his head from the carriage window.

'What are you saying!' cried the Princess.

At the corner of the Chigi palace the commotion assumed the aspect of a riot. The carriage had to stop. Elena leaned forward to look out, and her face emerging from the shadows and lighted up by the glare of the gas and the reflection of the sunset seemed of a ghastly whiteness, an almost icy pallor, reminding Andrea of some head he had seen before, he could not say where or when—in some gallery or chapel.

'Here we are,' said the Princess, as the carriage drew up at last at the Palazzo Fiano. 'Good-bye—we shall meet again at the Angelieris' this evening. Ugenta will come and lunch with us to-morrow? You will find Elena and Barbarella Viti and my cousin there——'

'At what time?'

'Half-past twelve.'

'Thanks, I will.'

The Princess got out. The footman stood at the carriage door awaiting further orders.

'Where shall I take you?' Elena asked Sperelli, who had promptly taken the place of the Princess beside her.

'Far, far away——'

'Nonsense—tell me now,—home?' And without waiting for his answer she said—'To the Palazzo Zuccari, TrinitÀ de' Monti.'

The footman closed the carriage door and they drove off down the Via Frattina leaving all the turmoil of the crowd behind them.

'Oh, Elena—after so long——' Andrea burst out, leaning down to gaze at the woman he so passionately desired and who had shrunk away from him into the shadow as if to avoid his contact.

The brilliant lights of the shop windows pierced the gloom in the carriage as they passed, and he saw on Elena's white face a slow alluring smile.

Still smiling thus, with a rapid movement she unwound the boa from her neck and cast it over Andrea's head like a lasso, and with that soft loop, all fragrant with the same perfume he had noticed in the blue fox of her coat, she drew the young man towards her and silently held up her lips to his.

Well did those two pairs of lips remember the rapture of by-gone days, those terrible and yet deliriously sweet meetings prolonged to anguish. They held their breath to taste the sweetness of that kiss to the full.

Passing through the Via due Macelli the carriage drove up the Via dei Tritone, turned into the Via Sistina and stopped at the door of the Palazzo Zuccari.

Elena instantly released her captive, saying rather huskily—

'Go now, good-bye.'

'When will you come?'

'Chi sa!'

The footman opened the door and Andrea got out. The carriage turned back to the Via Sistina and Andrea, still vibrating with passion, a veil of mist before his eyes, stood watching to see if Elena's face would not appear at the window; but he saw nothing. The carriage drove rapidly away.

As he ascended the stairs to his apartment, he said to himself—'So she has come round at last!' The intoxication of her presence was still upon him, on his lips he still felt the pressure of her kiss, and in his eyes was the flash of the smile with which she had thrown that sort of smooth and perfumed snake about his neck. And Donna Maria?—Most assuredly it was to her he owed these unexpected favours. There was no doubt that at the bottom of Elena's strange and fantastic behaviour lay a decided touch of jealousy. Fearing perhaps that he was escaping her she sought thus to lure him back and rekindle his passion. 'Does she love me, or does she not?' But what did it matter to him one way or another? What good would it do him to know? The spell was broken irremediably. No miracle that ever was wrought could revive the least little atom of the love that was dead. The only thing that need occupy him now was the carnal body, and that was divine as ever.

He indulged long in pleasurable meditation on this episode. What particularly took his fancy was the arch and graceful touch Elena had given to her caprice. The thought of the boa evoked the image of Donna Maria's coils, and so, confusedly, all the amorous fancies he had woven round that virginal mass of hair by which, once on a time, the very school-girls of the Florentine convent had been enthralled. And again he let his two loves melt into one and form the third—the Ideal.

The musing mood still upon him while he dressed for dinner, he thought to himself—'Yesterday, a grand scene of passion almost ending in tears; to-day, a little episode of mute sensuality—and I seemed to myself as sincere in my sentiment yesterday as I was in my sensations to-day. Added to which, scarcely an hour before Elena's kiss, I had a moment of lofty lyrical emotion at Donna Maria's side. Of all this not one vestige remains. To-morrow, most assuredly I shall begin the same game over again. I am unstable as water; incoherent, inconsistent, a very chameleon! All my efforts towards unity of purpose are for ever vain. I must resign myself to my fate. The law of my being is comprised in the one word—Nunc—the will of the Law be done!'

He laughed at himself, and from that moment began a new phase of his moral degradation.

Without mercy, without remorse, without restraint, he set all his faculties to work to compass the realisation of his impure imaginings. To vanquish Maria FerrÈs he had recourse to the most subtle artifices, the most delicate machinations; taking care to deceive her in matters of the soul, of the spiritual, the ideal, the inmost life of the heart. In carrying on the two campaigns—the conquest of the new and the re-conquest of the old love—with equal adroitness, and in turning to the best advantage the chance circumstances of each enterprise, he was led into an infinity of annoying, embarrassing, and ridiculous situations, to extricate himself from which he was obliged to descend to a series of lies and deceptions, of paltry evasions, ignoble subterfuges and equivocal expedients. All Donna Maria's goodness and faith and single mindedness were powerless to disarm him. As the foundation of his work of seduction with her he had taken a verse from one of the Psalms:—Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor—lavabis me et super nirem dealbabor. And she, poor, hapless, devoted creature, imagined that she was saving a soul alive, redeeming an intellect, washing away by her own purity the stains that sin had left on him. She still believed implicitly in the ever-remembered words he had spoken to her in the park, on that Epiphany of Love, within sight of the sea; and it was just in this belief that she found comfort and support in the midst of the religious conflict that rent her conscience; this belief that blinded her to all suspicion and filled her with a soil of mystic intoxication wherein she opened the secret floodgates of her heart and let loose all her pent-up tenderness, and let the sweetest flowers of her womanhood blossom out resplendently.

For the first time in his life, Andrea Sperelli found himself face to face with a real passion—one of those rare and supreme manifestations of woman's capacity for love which occasionally flash their superb and terrible lightnings across the shifting gray sky of earthly loves. But he did not care a jot, and went on with the pitiless work which was to destroy both himself and his victim.