Waiting for him there, in the hotel drawing-room, Ragna had passed through all the varying emotions of excitement, hope, fear and nervous dread, the last named possessing her to such an extent that when the step of Angelescu rang in the mosaic paved corridor and sounded on the threshold, she hardly dared raise her eyes to him. All at once it seemed to her a terrible thing to have done,—to have presumed on the words of a letter five years old to such an extent as to throw herself on the generosity of a man, who by this time would have every right to consider her a stranger. The blood burned in her cheeks, tears of shame and misgiving rose in her eyes, and as Angelescu paused in the doorway the beating of her heart almost choked her while a strange thrill ran through her body. Summoning all her courage, she desperately raised her eyes, and meeting his expression of joyful surprise, the eagerness of his look, rose and moved impulsively towards him. It was true then, he still loved her!

The pressure of his arms, however, brought her to a realization of all the barriers the years had raised between them,—she must tell him, and perhaps when he knew all, the light would fade from his eyes, the eager flush from his cheeks! He had greeted her as the Ragna he had parted from in Rome, how would he take the fact of her being the actual wife of another? She was tempted to put off the evil day, to accord herself one hour, at least, of unspoilt happiness, but she was no coward, she recognised that the issue must be faced and at once, that she had already put herself into an equivocal position by accepting his embrace, since he as yet knew nothing. As she freed herself, he made an effort to retain her, but her out-flung hand repelled him.

"No, no!" she said, "you must not. You do not know!"

"I know that the moment for which I have waited so long has come at last! I have awaited your summons five years now. Five years! Think of it, Ragna!"

"But you have not yet learned my reasons—"

"That is true," he assented gravely, "but to me the fact that you have come to me is all-sufficing. I am glad that you have done it of your own accord. Think, Ragna, just two weeks ago, I wrote to your Aunt in Christiania to try and trace you. I—I had grown tired of waiting, I realized that I had been a fool from the first, that I should never have let you slip out of my life, and I did, and for so long."

"Yes, yes," she interrupted breathlessly, "you should not have left me!"

"After your answer to my letter, I was afraid of offending you—I thought it would be better to wait until you made some sign—"

"Oh, my foolish letter!" groaned Ragna. "But I was not myself when I wrote it. I was wild with pain and humiliation, I—"

"I know, dear, I know, and it has been my fault if I have lost sight of you through all these years. I realized that in Rome. When I had tried to find some trace of you there, and failed, I wrote to your Aunt. After all that had happened there, Rome was intolerable to me,—you can understand that—and I came here to await an answer."

"Aunt Gitta is dead," said Ragna. Oh how much there was to say, how much that he must know, before she allowed him to go further! And the things he said, or rather implied—his unchanging devotion, his happiness at finding her, were so perilously sweet to hear. In his presence she felt herself transported to another atmosphere, poles apart from the one she had just left. It transformed her, she felt a different creature already.

Still the past must be dealt with; she gathered herself together for the effort of telling him, but as her lips parted, two English ladies entered the drawing-room, followed by a waiter with a tea-tray. They installed themselves at a small table near a window, casting curious glances the while, at the two standing in the middle of the room,—for both Ragna and Angelescu had been too absorbed in one another to remember the small conventionalities of life.

"What a bore!" said Angelescu impatiently—"and the worst of it is that there is no place in this hotel where we can be by ourselves. What shall we do, Ragna? We must be alone somewhere—is there any place we can drive to?"

"Yes," said Ragna eagerly, guiltily glad of the short reprieve. "Let us drive out into the country, we shall be alone there."

She seated herself while Angelescu went for his hat and tried to collect her ideas, to marshal the facts that must be told. It seemed so cruel that the beauty of their meeting should be dimmed if not destroyed by reason of the very cause that had brought that meeting about. What would he do, what would he say, when he knew? Would it change him? A cold fear gripped her heart, but through it, she felt the happy bound and surge of her pulses at the recollection of the tender expression of his eyes, the radiance of his dear bronzed manly face.

"I must have loved him even then," she marvelled to herself, thinking of their former meetings, for she knew now that she loved him and it seemed to her that it had been so always, ever since she could remember. When she had seen his name in the paper, how spontaneous had been her impulse towards him, how unhesitating the instinct to fly to him for refuge!

"Only, why did I not realize it before?" she asked herself.

Angelescu returned, hat in hand and they walked down the wide staircase and out the door, held open by an attentive flunkey.

"Where shall we go?" asked Angelescu as he beckoned to a cab on the rank.

"To Sta. Margherita a Montici," said Ragna to the driver as she took her seat.

She felt a reckless joy in driving thus publicly with Angelescu. In any ordinary circumstances, common prudence would have forbidden her such an act in defiance of public opinion, but this was her declaration of independence, the burning of her boats, the definite throwing off of the yoke, and she gloried in it.

Angelescu looked at her with undisguised admiration, though the thick veil she wore rather obscured her features. She was more beautiful by far than she had been as a girl, her figure had riper, richer lines while keeping its lissome grace, her hair was as bright and abundant as ever, and the years of stress and storm had given an added delicacy to her features, a depth to her eyes, the subtle air of having lived and suffered to her expression—a complex charm that no merely young and pretty face can ever possess.

They sat silent as the carriage drove through the Via Maggio and down the long, winding Via Romana, but as they left the Porta Romana behind them and the pace slackened on the long hill, Ragna, with a determined effort, broke the silence.

"I have not yet told you that I am married," she said.

"Married!" repeated Angelescu, "married!" He looked at her as though stunned.

The idea that she might have married had never occurred to him. When she had refused him, he had not, in his direct simplicity, thought of the possibility of her giving to another that which she denied to him. He recoiled instinctively at the thought of her possession by another, and this time no accident, no sudden impulse, but with her full consent, as the fact of marriage must necessarily imply. It sickened him. How could she have given herself to another when everything about her proclaimed her love for himself. Could she then pass so lightly from one man's arms to another's? Now she had turned to him, but in the light of her prior action, what value had her present appeal? And why this appeal, since she had already found a protector, a husband? What explanation could there be to her conduct, except that as a frail barque, she drifted where the currents of circumstance and impulse took her? Or was she dominated by fickleness, a fatal longing for change and excitement? But here, his native generosity came to his aid,—the pressure of extraordinary circumstances must have been brought to bear on her, he must hear her out before judging.

So he turned to her, as she sat apprehensively expectant and took her hand in his own, saying:

"Tell me all, dear, don't be afraid. I was surprised, for I had not guessed—"

His voice was tender, affectionate; he spoke as he would to encourage the confidence of a shrinking child, and the beauty of it all was his perfect naturalness, the outcome of his simple generous soul.

To Ragna, realising as she needs must, from his first involuntary start, his look of horror and surprise, what a shock her bald announcement had been to him, his quick recovery, the tender simplicity of his response seemed little short of miraculous; she had not dared hope for so much. A lump rose in her throat and the hand that lay in his trembled.

"There, there, little one, tell me all!"

He spoke again, soothingly, as he would have spoken to a child; he did not guess that the tears welling up in her eyes were tears of relief, of joy, the reaction from the oppression of dread.

So Ragna told her tale, the terrible discovery that she was about to become a mother—

"Why did you not write to me then?" he interrupted.

"Ah, dear," she answered, "I was too ashamed, I only wanted to hide myself from all who knew me, from you, most of all, because you loved me!"

"The very reason why you should have come to me," he reproved quietly; "Ah, well, you did not, more's the pity. Think of it, Ragna, we might have been so happy."

"God knows I should have been a better woman, at least," she said bitterly, "not the hard cynical creature I have become!"

"You hard and cynical, my little Ragna?"

"Wait until you have heard all, and you will see whether I have not had good reason for it," she rejoined.

The tenderness called forth in response to his own had died away under the bitter memories evoked by the recital of her trials. With growing hardness in her voice, she told of Valentini's offer, of her acceptance and of their marriage—and at this point of her tale she dared not look at Angelescu's face but kept her eyes obstinately fixed on the driver's back, and even as she talked, was curiously conscious of the brown and grey stripes of the man's coat and the deep crease in it where it bulged over the iron rail round the top of the box.

She went on and told of her rapid disillusionment, hiding nothing, using words brutal in their revealing frankness, such as she had often used to herself; then of the birth of Mimmo, of that of Beppino, of the increasing unhappiness of her life, as time went on, and lastly of Carolina's story, the death of Fru Boyesen, the loss of her hopes, and the culminating scene of the morning. She reached this point as the carriage drove past the gate of the Torre al Gallo, where Galileo lived and worked, and through the little town of Arcetri, perched on the hill-top.

Both sat silent as they rattled through the long, narrow stone-paved street, Ragna lost again in the horror of all those awful years, now more unbearable than ever as she compared them to what might have been, Angelescu, his brow drawn into deep furrows of thought, the blaze of indignation in his eyes, a muscle working in his lean cheek, just as he had sat listening to her. As they left the last houses behind them, and came to a piece of undulating sunken road running between high stone walls on the tops of which iris and rose ran riot against the gnarled trunks and silvery leaves of the olives, he drew a long sigh and shrugged his shoulders as though throwing off the weight of some incubus.

"Poor little girl!" he said, and his voice shook with the depth of his emotion. After a pause, he spoke again, and this time his voice was full, deep, decided.

"You can't live with him any longer you know, you must come with me."

Then for an instant his anger blazed out like the sudden flare of lightning on a summer evening.

"By God, if ever I see that man,—no, that beast, I shall kill him!"

A thrill of savage joy ran through Ragna,—here then, was the man, the defender! The primitive woman in her leaped in response to his calm taking possession of her. Here was no questioning as to right, merely the assumption of herself and her burdens as the most perfectly obvious and natural thing in the world. Yes, he was right, she was his; she proudly acknowledged his right to command, to take her; she hugged the consciousness of her recognition of his mastery. Here was a lord she acknowledged with all her sentient being, one whom her soul delighted to honour. Mentally she compared with him the man who had been so long her hated and feared master, and the paltriness of Egidio made her wonder how she had let herself feel insulted by the words and actions of one so mean, so morally insignificant. She longed to throw out her arms to the man beside her, in one glorious gesture of self-abandonment, offering all that she was and could be, her whole being.

But the coachman was pointing with his whip to the beauties of the landscape, austere Fiesole and Settignano nestled in the lap of the hills, across the valley, and perched on the scarred pine-crowned hill between the Casa al Vento, all swimming in rosy amethyst, to Monte alle Croci, on which one distinguished the tiny mortuary chapels, the back of S. Miniato, the Arcivescovado masked in scaffolding, the Capucine monastery with its expresses, and nearer still the slopes of silvery olive and green waving grain, where cornflowers and poppies began to appear. So she only leaned forward and looked into Angelescu's eyes, clasping both her hands on his. She had thrown back her veil and her face appeared radiant, lit from within by the light of her love in its passionate consciousness of supremacy.

A steep bit of hill, and the horse, goaded into a momentary effort drew up panting in the little piazza before the Church which stood as on a pinnacle, the land on both sides sweeping away to a deep valley. On the right hand one saw range upon range of bare hill-tops with olive-covered slopes, and down below small white houses, each surrounded by its "podere," with here and there a "fattoria" or a villa, dotted the green valley. On the near hill-slopes the gorse was in blossom, its yellow flowers straggling over the rough ground like a ragged mantle of cloth of gold, and the strong sweet perfume of it assailed the nostrils. Across the piazza, opposite the grey old church was the priest's garden, an old-fashioned straggling garden sweet with wall-flowers, pinks and stocks, planted as borders to the onions, carrots, cabbages and lettuces; misshapen fig-trees ran riot and the nespoli showed the golden glow of ripened fruit among the heavy foliage. Lizards ran to and fro over the wall, from the crevices of which sprouted tufts of grass, snap-dragon, saxifrage and a kind of small fern.

The third side of the piazza, was bounded by a low wall, connecting the orto with the church and presbytery, and a flight of stone steps led to the terraced plantations below, where grain grew between the olives, and wild gladiolus, cornflower and poppy starred the undulating green surface.

Ragna, one of whose favourite haunts it was, led the way to the lichen-covered steps. At the foot of them an uneven grassy slope stretched downward, winding in and out among the terraces, and down this they wandered. The grass was still green for the summer heat and drought were yet far off, and many flowers grew in the light shade of the trees.

Ragna, full of the exuberance of the moment, laughed joyously and long like a child; she threw back her head, eyes half closed, the parted lips showing her white even teeth, and her laughter pulsated in her throat, rose in clear ripples. It reminded Angelescu of the song of a bird, of the clear water bubbling up in a spring. She had thrown off the weary years of pain as one casts off a dark cloak; all the youth, the girlish insouciance so long repressed rose triumphant to the surface, she irradiated the wonderful joy of life, of love. The sunlight, flecked with narrow, quivering shadow illuminated her white dress, the gold of her hair, the rosy flush of her cheek. She was like a bird escaped from its cage, mad with the newness of its freedom, intoxicated with the wine of life.

Her mood was infectious, it caught Angelescu, and he pursued her among the olive trees, following her light bounds, her lithe turnings and twistings. It was a page of Pagan fable,—there in the soft sunlight, under the grey gnarled olives, on the elastic carpet of flower-starred turf, the perfumed breeze fluttering Ragna's skirts as she laughingly eluded her pursuer. They were Apollo and Daphne and the world was young again. But this Daphne was no restive nymph, and when Angelescu caught her at length, panting and rosy, to his breast, she raised her mouth to his and closed her eyes. The colour fled from her face, she became grave with the mysterious gravity of all true passion as in that sacramental kiss she felt the utter surrender of her soul to his.

After this they sat down on the grass, among the twisted olive roots, Ragna with her back against a distorted trunk, Angelescu stretched at full length beside her, his elbow on a root, his head supported by his hand. Dreamily happy, silent, like two people to whom the gates of Paradise have suddenly been set ajar, they gazed out over the valley below, where the shining reaches of the Arno reflected the sky. The pink-tiled roofs of the city trailed out like the embroidered hem of a robe from beyond Monte alle Croci, one could see up the valley as far as Ponte a Sieve and the green peaks of Vallombrosa. The sky was that deep, soft blue shading to amethyst on the horizon, that seems peculiar to Italy, and against it the slender olive leaves, shivering in the gentle breeze, stood out in delicate gold-illumined tracery.

Angelescu heaved a deep sigh of contentment, and Ragna echoed it; her wild exuberance of spirits had fallen and it was now the marvel of it, the beautiful tender mystery of this love, the only real love she had ever known, that dominated her. It seemed to her that all she had been through, the pain, the humiliation, the brutal servitude had been but a preparation for this, but the stony path leading to this summit of perfect happiness, whence she looked out and secure in her bliss, saw the whole of the world beneath her feet. "Stay, fleeting moment!" she half-whispered—and smiled, why should not the fleeting moment be eternal, was it not to be her life hence forward? Had not her path at last led her out of the shadow into the sunshine? Oh, perfect day that had broken her bondage! But even as she looked, the soft plum-coloured shadows lengthened in the valley, the sunlight mellowed with the waning day.

It was Angelescu who first broke the silence, there was still so much to be said, so much to be arranged. He leaned forward and took her hand which was idly playing with a bee-orchid she had plucked.

"Ragna dear, we must come back to earth again and consider what we are to do."

She started almost resentfully, so far adrift had she been on the happy sea of her realized day-dream that she had lost sight of all other considerations. It seemed to her that thus must she float on and on, from day to day, lapped in the sweetness of her new found love and exalted above all mundane concerns. She turned to him impulsively,

"Oh, why can't we live in dreamland just a little longer?"

He smiled.

"All our life is to be one long dream, darling, from which there will be no awakening,—but we have yet to make it ours."

"Are we not together? Is that not enough?"

"Yes, darling, and you are coming away with me to a new life,—but we must prepare that new life."

She sat up, throwing off her childish unreasonableness, even as she put back the disordered locks of her hair and straightened her hat.

"Tell me what I am to do,—I am all yours, dear, you shall decide for me."

"Have you a friend with whom you can spend the night? I do not like the idea of your going back for even so few hours to—to your husband," he pronounced the word with an effort.

"No," said Ragna quickly, "not my husband. I no longer recognize his right to call himself by that title. You are my husband dear, you and you only!"

He thanked her with a smile.

"And the friend, have you such an one? We can't get away until to-morrow, and we must not give Valentini any occasion to guess our plans or interfere with them, before I get you safely away. A man like him would be capable of anything, out of spite, and we must not play into his hands. He must know nothing until you are well out of reach. But I do hate the thought, ma chÉrie, of your going back to his roof—is there no one you could go to? You could say you had quarreled with him,—anything—"

Ragna thought of Virginia Ferrati, but was afraid of facing her sharp eyes and keen questions.

"Yes, I have a friend, a good friend, but I should have to take her into my confidence, and somehow I don't like the idea. I think that until we get away the less anyone knows of our plans, the better. Besides, dear, what harm is there if I do go home? I can arrange things so as not to see my husband,—I can say I have a headache and lock myself into my room."

"I don't like the thought of you under his vile roof. You are mine, now, Ragna, do you hear? Mine!"

She turned her face flushed with pleasure, and her dewy glistening eyes to him.

"Ah, dear, what does it matter for a few hours more, since we know that we belong to each other? I have borne with it all for over five years,—" his gesture forbade reminiscence,—"now it is over and I am free, I am yours—What can a few hours more or less, matter? And then there are the children—I must see them once again, poor little souls!"

Her voice broke slightly as she said the last words; Mimmo's trusting little face rose before her eyes, but she thrust the vision away,—even he, for the moment was but a part of the hated past which she wished to blot out.

Angelescu's face took on an undefinable expression, part constraint, part displeasure, part pity. In spite of himself, a vague jealousy of these children, the living proofs of Ragna's past, the concrete, undeniable evidence of her relations with other men. He had even felt a sort of elation, when she had told him, in relating the scene of the morning, of Egidio's threat to keep Mimmo, should she leave her home, thus taking advantage of the rights the law conferred on him. Now that he had found Ragna again, he wanted her all to himself; the past could not be helped and he was ready to accept it in the abstract, and to put it away from them both. But a sense of shame came over him, he seemed to be matching himself against the slender strength of a child. Still somebody must suffer, and after all it was Valentini's fault and not his as he was ready to accept the child as part of the burden he assumed, and do his conscientious best by it. Ragna's manner when she had talked to him of Beppino had showed him how evidently she considered the child a part of his father as distinct from herself, and he had been glad of it, for while he could bring himself to accept Mimmo, the other, the child of the hated oppressor of the woman he loved would be a burden beyond his endurance. Beppino had thus been eliminated from the question from the very beginning, and as it seemed, he was to be spared the presence of Mimmo also; Ragna and he were to be free to begin their life on a new basis, unencumbered by the evidences of past bondage. He let his thoughts dwell on these considerations, but was not able to still entirely the pricking of his conscience. It was, perhaps, more to ease this than for any other reason that he gave his consent to Ragna's returning to her home for this one last night.

"Certainly you must see the children again," he assented gravely.

Ragna glanced at him, her eyes narrowed under thoughtful brows. The constraint of his manner was clearly apparent to her, as was, of course, the cause of it. Would it be the same with this man, as it had been with Egidio? For she recognized the fact that one of the principal reasons of the unhappiness of their marriage, had been the unwelcome presence of Mimmo. Angelescu met her look openly and squarely, he even smiled into her anxious eyes. Ah, she knew, she could not help but see that this man was as far removed from Egidio as the North Pole from the South! However he might suffer, however hard the weight of accepted responsibility might bear on him she would never see the slightest evidence of it, in so far as it should lie in his power to hide it. And his strength lay not only in resolve, but in his power of calmly accepting existing conditions with no looking backward or moody repining; all his energies would be directed towards the future. This much his steadfast eyes told Ragna, and she marvelled anew, as she recognized in this higher more disciplined form the same simplicity of mental attitude towards life as she had envied in Carolina. Still she could not help wondering if the very resolve on his part to accept the past and put it behind them both would not gradually raise a barrier of silence between them, and she saw their ship of happiness wrecked on the reef of the forbidden subject.

Angelescu rose to his feet and held out his hands to Ragna.

"Come, dear, we must be going. We will talk over the rest on the way back. You must not stop out so late as to arouse suspicions."

She took his outstretched hands and sprang up lightly; he drew her to him and kissed her long and tenderly, then, slowly and in silence, they walked hand in hand up the slope.

On the stone steps Ragna paused and turned for a last look down across the olive plantation to the valley; Angelescu's eyes followed hers, it was as though they were unconsciously bidding farewell to the place. Ragna voiced the vague feeling that possessed them both.

"We have been happy here,—we can never be happier than we have been to-day," she said in a low vibrant voice.

Angelescu raised her hand to his lips.

"No happier, perhaps,—I think too, that it would be impossible, but just as happy, dear!"

She stooped and plucked two small ferns growing in a crevice, one she gave to him, the other she laid in her card-case, saying softly,

"See, they are green—that is for hope."

In the little piazza above they found the fiaccheraio asleep on a stone bench, a straw protruding from his mouth, his rusty hat pulled over his eyes. The horse munched at the oats in his nose-bag, in great contentment, as he slouched between the shafts. On being hailed, the man sat up, rubbing his eyes with grimy knuckles.

"Scusino, Signori," he said, "schiacciavo un sonnellino. I did not think the Signori would be ready to leave so soon. Quando si e giovini—when one is young,—" he gave a broad wink. "Do the Signori wish to return by the same way as we came?"

"No," said Ragna, "go round the other way by the Villa Fensi and the Barriera S. Niccolo."

"Benone!" said the Jehu, as he stowed the nose-bag under the seat. He scrambled to the box with an agility astounding in one of his bulk, and with a crack of his whip they were off.

The road wound sharply down away from the church, past white fattorie and peasant-farmers' houses. The hill above cast a soft purple shadow over the road and down into the valley.

"Now, darling," said Angelescu, "I have been thinking about how we are to get away. There is a train to-morrow afternoon at three,—before midnight we can be in Switzerland, out of reach. I shall not try to see you in the morning, it is better to be prudent, but I shall be at the railway station at half past two. I shall wait for you in the first class Sala d'aspetto. You must arrange things so that your absence will not be noticed before we shall have crossed the frontier—after that je ne crains pas le diable en personne!" he ended gaily.

Ragna smiled up into his face.

"Bien, I understand. The first class waiting room at half past two or a quarter to three."

"You must take with you only what you can't do without for a day or two," he added, "just a dressing case, if you can get it out unnoticed. We will get everything else you need."

She saw that he wished her to leave behind all that she owed to Valentini's grudging liberality. And he, reading her unspoken answer to her thought, said,

"I am not a rich man, darling, but I have enough for us both—and I can't bear to think of you dressed in the clothes that—"

"I shall wear nothing in future but what you give me," she answered gravely.

There was a pause, then Ragna said, harking back to the moment on the steps below the church,

"This afternoon has been like a foretaste of Heaven. It has been the most perfect happiness I have ever known."

Angelescu slipped his arm behind her, and drew her close to him; her head sank to his shoulder.

"Ah, darling," he answered, "and to think that we have waited so long for it—that so much has happened that was unnecessary."

"No," she returned slowly, the words falling from her lips as the thoughts took definite shape in her mind, "it is best as it is. I am sincere at this moment, when I say to you that I regret nothing—nothing. If I had not learned what it is to suffer, I should not know how to love you as I do. I see now that it has all been a preparation—for this. If I had gone to you then, I,—we—I think we might not have been so happy. I was too ignorant, I was too hurt and suspicious to appreciate—And I had no real understanding of love. First I had thought it was romance, sentiment,—then I thought I knew it to be passion,—afterwards I thought it must be affection, friendship, esteem. Now I know."

"What is it then?" he asked.

"I don't know that I can explain in words, it is all I have said and more too, it is the feeling I have for you; it is all myself, the essence of my soul, the best that is in me."

There was a short silence, and she continued,

"I said before that I had grown hard and cynical, but I know now that it is not true. Pain has purified me, and I feel, I know—" she drew herself up proudly and turned her face to his, "that I am infinitely more worthy of your love than I was five years ago,—than I was even before Prince Mirko—I was nothing but a silly, vain girl, then, now I am a woman; I know what life is and what I give you I give consciously, in the full knowledge of what it is, of what it means to you, to me, to our life. Yes, I am a better woman."

"Dear!" said Angelescu and his eyes adored her.

He knew that she spoke the truth, that the harsh discipline had unconsciously prepared her for this glorious bursting into bloom, as the cold rains and snows of winter prepare the earth for the flowering of spring, still in his heart of hearts, manlike, he could not help wishing that she might have been his without having been subjected to the bitterness of life. He wished that he might have claimed her, young, innocent, unsuspicious of the evil in the world; he thought that without any experience of the darker side of existence, his love and the happiness she would have found in it, would have sufficed to bring her nature to its perfection of flowering. Unconsciously he resented any influence but his own in the development of the woman he loved. This was his instinct, his reason told him that Ragna was right, and he was thankful, nay, consummately happy, that she should come to him at last, by whatever road, and above all that she should thus surrender herself to him, fully, unreservedly and consciously.

They looked into each other's eyes and their souls met and mingled, even as they had when their lips met under the olives. An ecstasy of joy possessed them but it was no longer the exuberant joy of two hours earlier, rather a joy so deep in its passionate intensity as to confine on the borders of pain. It held them body and soul, in a state of exquisite torture, penetrating every fibre of their united being, throbbing in every particle, drawing them into communion with the pulsating ether about them, absorbing them into the vibrant Universe, their joint soul into the All-Soul. They felt their entire unity, one with the other and with the whole of the Creation. For an instant Life in its entirety was epitomized in their life, Eternity itself concentrated in the immeasurable pause, the innermost secret of existence lay bare before their reverent eyes.

They were driving now through a little valley, a cleft in the hills; the road was bordered by high walls over which hung tangles of banksia rose and jasmine. The still evening air held the fragrance till it seemed almost unbearable to the senses through its very sweetness, and the new consciousness of happiness in their hearts was like the perfume in the air. It was one of those moments when it seems that the soul can bear no more, that the very perfection of bliss bears in it the seed of its own decay, poor human nature being unable to sustain the pitch of perfection. Something must snap, something must give way, the wayfarer cannot breathe long the rarefied air of the heights, his stumbling feet bear him of their own accord to the valley.

The carriage stopped suddenly amid the objurgations of the driver, which were echoed with equal violence from the road where appeared suddenly the form of a burly barocciaio precipitated from his slumbers and also from his perch, where he had been indulging in a nap, by the sudden swerve of his horse at a touch of the fiaccheraio's whip. Loud and long was the altercation studded with violent invective in purest fiorentinaccio, the reputations of the female relatives of both contestants being the chief point of attack. A small cream-coloured Pomeranian rushed frantically to and fro on the top of the laden baroccio, adding his shrill barking to the general uproar. Thus rudely startled from their dream, Ragna and Angelescu looked on, almost dazed.

"Imbecile!" shouted the fiaccheraio, "Bestia! Why don't you have an eye to your horse and keep to your side of the road, instead of drinking yourself stupid? Ubbriaccone!"

The neck of a fiasco protruding from the straw of the baroccio gave point to the accusation.

"Ubbriaccone yourself! Mascalzone!" shrieked the carter. "Have an eye yourself to what you meet on the road! Because you drive aristocrats and imbecile forestieri about, do you think you can throw honest working-men into the dust? I'll drag you before the tribunals! You say I am drunk, you lie! You whipped my beast, I saw you!"

"Socialista! Anarchico! Figlio d'un prete! Assassino!" screamed the fiaccheraio.

"Figlio d'una—!" yelled the barocciaio.

"Here now," said Angelescu authoritatively, thinking they had gone quite far enough and annoyed by the uproar, "stop that bawling or I'll give you both in charge. You were on the wrong side of the road and you were asleep," he said to the lowering barocciaio, "so if you fell off it was your own fault. However, here's a lira for you, and now pull aside and let us pass."

He tossed a silver coin to the man whose ill-humour disappeared as though by magic, he even touched his cap and wished the "Signori" a "Buona passeggiata" as he led his horse by. The little dog had stopped barking and sat on his haunches regarding them with bright intelligent eyes, his fluffy ears pointed forward, a tip of his pink tongue showing under his truffle-like muzzle.

The fiaccheraio shook his head apologetically.

"He vuole, Signore, those people have no education, they will make a bad end. Did you hear what he said about aristocrats? But that is nothing, you should hear what they say in their socialistic meetings! They will end like that Brescia who murdered our good King. It is a bad thing for people of no education to talk too much. Madonna dÉ fiaccherai! to think that such farabutti should take the bread from honest men's mouths!"

"You are hard on them," said Angelescu.

"Ah, Signore mio, you do not know our beceri, and what they are capable of! It is a bad world and one must work hard for a tozzo di pane and a glass of vin nero—and these merli wish to live without working, and that is a thing which has never been since the world began. They say to us others, 'aha, minchioni, we will live on your shoulders!'"

Angelescu amused, continued to draw the old man out; the shrewd mother-wit and quaint phrases of the old Florentine were a source of delight to him. Ragna leaned back, indifferent, lost in the pleasant labyrinth of her day-dreams.

The road came to a sharp turn and the driver instinctively drew rein. Before them, beyond an indeterminate fore-ground of shadow, rose the city, bathed in the rays of the setting sun. Towers pierced the glowing haze, fairest of all the tower of Palazzo Vecchio, slender and tall like some stately lily, and floating bubble-like on the gold, the wonderful airy cupola of the Duomo. The long level mellow rays of sunset gave the scene an unreal aspect; it seemed that as way-worn pilgrims they had come suddenly upon the golden dream city of their desire, a city called up magically before their eyes, a glorious vision evoked by the power and wonder of their love. Above the dome and the towers, pearly clouds merging into amethyst floated in the gold-pink sky. The sound of many church-bells mellowed by the distance to a suggestion of heavenly music floated to their ears. Both felt instinctively that this was the fit ending to their perfect afternoon. In these last few hours they had attained to the apex of human happiness—whatever the future might hold in store for them, nothing could ever mar the transcendent beauty of this day, nor could they ever hope to surpass the joy, the glory of it.