More than a month had passed and it was near the end of May; yet Maria had not again exchanged a word with Castiglione. She had seen him twice in the street, from a distance, but she was not sure that he had seen her the second time. If he saw her, he certainly wished her to think that he did not. She never went to the Villa Borghese, nor drove towards Tor di Quinto nor along the beautiful Monte Parioli avenue, lest she should meet him in one of those places where officers ride at all hours of the day. On his side, he avoided the streets through which she was likely to pass. It was easy enough to do that, and as she was in mourning he was sure not to find her where people met in the houses of mutual acquaintances.

For he had no intention of shutting himself up, being much too sensible not to foresee that if he did so people would say he spent his time with her. He showed himself in many places, on the contrary, frequented Teresa Crescenzi’s drawing-room at tea-time, dined assiduously with his cousins the Boccapaduli, at whose house the old-fashioned Romans congregated, and also with the Campodonico, and he was often at the Parenzos’ pretty house in the Via Ludovisi, which was a favourite gathering-place of the political party then in power, and of that portion of the diplomatic corps which was accredited to the Quirinal and not to the Vatican. The Duca di Casalmaggiore had become a friend of Parenzo’s, and Castiglione took a good deal of pains to be seen as often as possible in society by his colonel, who was of an inquisitive turn of mind. In order to make his existence still more patent in the eyes of his comrades, he lodged with one of them, a man of his own age who was also not very well off, and who could hardly help knowing where Baldassare went, what he did, and whether he received many notes addressed in feminine handwriting or not. The consequence of all this, and of his assiduity in matters of duty, was that Teresa Crescenzi’s latest story got little credit, and his brother officers said that he was ambitious and was going in for the career in earnest. The colonel, who was a widower with a son in the navy and a daughter married in Naples, and whom Teresa had once vainly tried to capture for herself, disliked her and so effectually ridiculed her invention that the rest of Castiglione’s comrades fell into the way of laughing at her, too; and they said that after having failed to marry the colonel she had tried to catch Baldassare, and now meant to revenge herself because he would not have her. His chum, too, told them that he certainly had no secret love affair, and that when he was not on duty or at the officers’ club, or where every one could see him, he was in his lodgings reading German books on military tactics. Clearly he was going in for the career.

He did not act or look like a man in love either; not in the least. He had not been talkative before he left the regiment, but since he had returned he took more pains than formerly to join in the conversation. Another point in his favour was that he never had any vague engagement which hindered him from joining in anything that was unexpectedly proposed. Whatever he had to do was open and definite; when it was not duty, it was a real promise to dine with some one whom he named, and he took care to have it known that he went; or else he had agreed to ride somewhere with an acquaintance, and if any one took the trouble to go to that place, there he was, sure enough, with the man he had named. In what was left of society so late in the season, if he once talked especially to any one woman he gave himself as much pains to amuse and interest another on the morrow. He was such a model of a sensible man and such a good officer that the colonel, who was rich enough to have afforded the luxury of a poor son-in-law, wished he had another daughter that he might marry her to Castiglione; and he said so openly, to the great edification of Roman society.

As for Maria Montalto she did not speak of him again to Giuliana, but the latter knew she never let him come to the house and that she had made up her mind to see him as rarely as possible. Giuliana was too simple and natural to care whether this excellent state of things was due to her own advice or to Montalto’s approaching return. It was enough that Maria was doing right and giving the gossips nothing to talk about.

Parenzo and his wife went to England at this time, with the intention of spending three weeks there. The Marchese, it was understood, was entrusted with some special political business, and as a matter of course he took his wife with him; for the first time in her life Maria was glad to part from her old friend.

There are ordeals which it is easier to face alone than under the eyes of others, even of those we love best; there are tortures which are a little easier to bear when our dearest friends are not watching our faces to see if we shall wince.

The date of Montalto’s return was approaching, and the state apartment in the palace was almost ready, thanks to Orlando Schmidt’s quiet energy and to a rather lavish expenditure of money. He was a truly wonderful young man, Maria thought, for he seemed to know everything that was useful and possessed the power of making people work without so much as complaining till they were quite exhausted. He never raised his voice, he never spoke roughly to a workman; but he seemed to inspire something like terror and abject submission in all whom he employed, and they spoke in whispers when he was near and worked till they could work no longer.

Maria went to the apartment twice again, once to select the hangings and stuffs for her own rooms out of a quantity that had been sent for her approval, and once again when the furnishing was almost finished. She was quiet and collected, for nothing was left to remind her of the old boudoir and the rest. At her second visit she was surprised to find that the small room had three doors instead of two as formerly, and she asked the steward if the third one was real, or an imitation fastened against the solid wall for the sake of symmetry.

‘It is a real door,’ answered Schmidt. ‘It had been thinly walled up and plastered over long ago, and I found it accidentally, and took the liberty of opening it again. I hope your Excellency will approve.’

‘It looks well,’ Maria said, for it helped to change the aspect of the room; ‘but where does it take one?’

‘To the chapel,’ replied the steward. ‘I found a narrow passage leading directly to a small door on the left side of the altar. You can thus reach the chapel by a private way without going through the apartment. The corridor was quite dark, but I have had electric light put in. The key is here, you see.’

Schmidt moved it and opened the door at the same time with his other hand, and Maria saw a narrow passage, brightly lit up. The walls were white and varnished, and the floor was of plain white tiles.

‘It must have been made in the beginning of the eighteenth century,’ Schmidt said. ‘There was a Countess at that time who was a princess of Saxony and was excessively devout. She died mad.’

‘You know the family history better than I do,’ observed Maria.

‘We have served the Excellent house from father to son more than two hundred years.’

Schmidt said this as if he were telling her the most ordinary fact in the world.

‘Will your Excellency please go to the chapel by the private passage?’ he asked.

Maria let him lead the way and followed him. She was gratified by the use he had made of his discovery, for she thought that it would sometimes be a relief to go to the chapel alone and unnoticed. But she also wished to assure herself that no one else could use the corridor, and that there was a bolt or a lock on the door at the other end. It was not that she distrusted Schmidt; on the contrary, she thought very well of him, and was sure that he had consulted only her convenience in what he had done. But when she thought of what was before her, she felt very defenceless in the great old house, so different from the comfortable little modern apartment in which she had lived with Leone, where there were no hidden staircases, nor secret passages, nor legends of mad countesses in the eighteenth century, nor any ghosts of Maria’s own life.

Apparently Schmidt had told her the exact truth about the passage, which was much longer than she had expected, and turned to the right very soon, and was straight beyond that for twenty yards or more. Maria guessed that it here followed the long wall of the great ball-room, which had no entrances opposite the windows. She reached the door of the chapel, and the electric light showed her a strong new bolt with a brass knob, besides the spring latch.

‘It is quite private, you see,’ said Schmidt. ‘The door can be fastened from this side.’

‘I see. It is very satisfactory. You have thought of everything.’

He opened the door of the small dim chapel, but she would not go in. It had memories for her which she was afraid to stir. She remembered how she had once gone there alone between midnight and morning with a great horror upon her; and how she had knelt down, setting her candlestick on the pavement beside her; and the dawn had found her there still. She knew also that in another week or ten days she would have to kneel there at mass on a Sunday; and Montalto would be kneeling on one side of her, and Leone with his bright blue eyes would be on the other.

‘Thank you,’ she said to the steward. ‘I will not go into the chapel now.’

‘Nothing has been changed there,’ he answered. ‘It has merely been thoroughly cleaned.’

Maria remembered the two hideous barocco angels in impossible gilt draperies that supported a dreadful gilt canopy above the tabernacle; and the absurd decorations of the miniature dome; and the detestable assemblage of many-coloured marbles; and all the details that recalled the atrocious taste introduced under the Spanish influence in the south of Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She had seen nothing of all that when she had come there alone, long after midnight, years ago, with only her one flickering candle to light her through the great dark rooms and to show her where the altar was.

‘I thought the Count would not like to have electric light in the chapel,’ said Schmidt, as he fastened the door carefully. ‘The key for the lights in the passage is here on the wall, your Excellency, just on a level with the lock as you come in.’

‘It is really very well arranged,’ Maria answered, and as the passage was not wide enough for two persons to pass conveniently, she turned and led the way back.

‘I have had the walls varnished, because almost any sort of tinting might rub off on your Excellency’s dress,’ said Schmidt. ‘The passage is so extremely narrow, you see.’

‘It is very nice,’ Maria answered. ‘It was most sensible of you.’

Behind her, Orlando Schmidt blushed with pleasure at her praise, and watched her graceful moving figure, shown off against the shining white walls by the close-fitting black she wore. They reached the boudoir, and there also Schmidt closed and locked the door. But this time he took out the key and handed it to Maria.

‘As the passage is for your Excellency’s private use, you may prefer to take away the key, since the workmen have nothing more to do there.’

‘Thank you,’ Maria answered.

‘The servants need not know that the door is a real one,’ observed Schmidt.

It chanced that Maria did not much like the maid she had at that time, but as the woman was clever she meant to keep her. It struck her that there was certainly no reason why she need know that her mistress could go from her own rooms to the chapel without being seen, if she wished to say her prayers there in private. As for the chapel itself, its outer door was formerly kept locked, and Montalto had given her a key to it when they had been married. The reason for keeping it shut was that the altar contained a reliquary in which was preserved a comparatively large relic of the Cross, already very long an heirloom in the family. No doubt Schmidt knew this, as he seemed to know everything else about his hereditary employers—or masters, as he would have called them. When one family of men has served another faithfully, those who serve possess a sort of universal knowledge of such details which no ordinary servant could acquire in half a lifetime.

Maria left the boudoir, after putting the key into the small new black Morocco bag, which had taken the place of the rather shabby grey velvet one she had used so long. When she came to live in the palace she meant to keep the key in her writing-desk.

‘The Count wishes me to be here when he comes,’ she said as they passed through the great ball-room. ‘He writes that you will engage servants and see to everything. Our old butler and coachman have never left me. Do you think I may keep them still? I wish to do nothing, however, which does not agree with your instructions.’

‘My master’s orders,’ said Schmidt, ‘are to meet your Excellency’s wishes in every respect. He will not even bring his own man with him, and I have orders to engage a valet for him. If you will tell me what day will be convenient for you to move, I will see that everything is ready.’

‘The Count writes that he will arrive on Sunday afternoon,’ Maria answered. ‘I had better be here two days before that. I will come on Friday morning.’

‘On Friday?’ repeated the steward with a little surprise.

‘Yes. Are you superstitious, Signor Orlando?’

She really could not call him ‘Signor Schmidt’; it was too absurd; yet he was of Italian nationality.

‘No, your Excellency, I am not. But most people are. If the Signora Contessa would be kind enough to call me simply Schmidt,’ he added with a little hesitation, ‘it is an easy name to remember, and does not occur in Ariosto’s poem.’

She looked at him rather curiously, but she smiled at his last words.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘As you like.’

‘It was my mother,’ he explained, blushing shyly. ‘She is very fond of Ariosto, and she insisted on christening me Orlando. On Friday next everything will be ready to receive your Excellency and the young gentleman. Shall I provide for moving the Signora Contessa’s things?’

‘I shall be much obliged,’ said Maria, who was glad that she was to be spared all trouble.

She went home feeling as if she were in a painful dream, from which she must awake before long. In the afternoon, when Agostino was out with Leone and the little house was quiet, she went to the telephone and asked for the number of the Palazzo Boccapaduli. She got it, and was answered by a man-servant. She inquired when Castiglione would be at home, but was told that he was not staying in the house. It was the only address she knew, so she asked where he lived. The servant did not know, but would go and find out, if she would hold the communication.

A few moments later the voice that spoke to her was Oderisio’s, and he asked with whom he was speaking, and on being told, at once inquired if it was she who wanted Castiglione’s address. Yes, it was she; did he know it? Yes, he did; and he gave it. Had Castiglione a telephone? No, but he might be at the officers’ club; did she wish the number of that? No, she did not care for it. Thank you, and good-bye.

At first she was a little annoyed that young Boccapaduli should know she wanted Castiglione’s address. But presently, as she went back to the sitting-room, it struck her that it was just as well. Oderisio would understand that she was not seeing Baldassare often, since she did not know his address after he had been in Rome nearly a month.

She wrote him a short note, which anybody might have read, begging him to come and see her on the following Thursday after half-past two. She addressed it and stamped it, she put on her hat without calling her maid, and she went out to post it in the letter-box at the corner of the railway station.

She was sure of herself, she thought, and she believed she had earned the right to receive Castiglione once again, because she was bravely resolved never to see him alone after she returned to her husband’s house. That resolution had formed itself at the instant when she had told Leone that Montalto was coming back, and she had not wavered in it since, in spite of what she had felt when he had brought her the fallen parasol in the Villa. The greatest and most enduring resolutions in life are rarely made after mature consideration, still less at those times of spiritual exaltation which are too often self-suggested, and sought for the sake of a half-sensuous, half-mysterious agitation of the nerves that is far from healthy. People who are not morbid and are in great trouble generally see the right course rather suddenly and unexpectedly; if they are good they follow it, if they are bad they do not, but if they attempt a careful and subtle examination of conscience they often come to grief. It is hopeless to analyse processes in which conscience and mind are involved together until we can find a constant coefficient for humanity’s ever-varying strength and weakness.

During more than a month Maria had acted and thought under the domination of one idea; she had need of strength, but she had not felt the want of advice or help. She knew better than the harsh old Capuchin, better even than Monsignor Saracinesca, what she must do, and as for help, no living man or woman could have given her any, unless it were Castiglione himself. She had accepted what was laid upon her, and when she went at early morning to kneel at the altar rail in the small oratory, she prayed for strength and for nothing else.

So far it had come to her and had borne her through more than any one who knew her could have guessed; and when she sent for Castiglione, to see him once more and for the last time, she was far from thinking that she did so from any weakness. It seemed only just, for no man could have acted more honourably and courageously than he, and he had a right to know from her own lips what she meant to do.

He came, knowing what was before him, and meaning to do what he could to spare her all pain and useless emotion. More and more often now he called her a saint in his thoughts, and his love for her was sometimes very like veneration.

She had taken care that Leone should not be in the house that afternoon, not because she had any thought of concealing Castiglione’s visit from the child, but out of consideration for the man himself. She knew only too well what he felt when he saw the boy’s blue eyes and his short and thick brown hair.

He came in civilian’s dress, lest his brilliant uniform should attract attention from a distance as he entered the house where she lived. His hand met hers quietly and the two lovers looked into each other’s earnest eyes. By a common impulse they sat down in the places they had generally taken when they had met in the same room before, on opposite sides of the empty fireplace.

‘I know why you have sent for me,’ began Baldassare, very gently. ‘May I try to tell you? It may be a little easier.’

Maria did not attempt to speak for a few moments, and he waited.

‘No,’ she said at last, quite steadily. ‘You could not tell me just what I have to say to you. I asked you to come because you have been so very brave, so very generous——’

She choked a little, but recovered herself quickly.

‘It is only just that I should tell you so before we say good-bye,’ she went on. ‘I knew I could trust you—but oh, I did not know how much!’

‘I have only tried to do my duty,’ he answered.

‘You have done it like the brave man you are,’ said Maria.

‘Please——’ he spoke to interrupt her.

‘Yes,’ she went on, not heeding him. ‘We may not meet again, we two, alone like this. One of us may die before that is possible. So I shall say all that is in my thoughts, if I can. You most know all, you must understand all, even if it hurts very much. My husband is going to take me back altogether; he has forgiven me; he asks me to be his wife again. Can I refuse?’

She had not meant to put the question to him, and he knew that she expected no answer. Her tone showed that. But he would not let her think that in his heart he rebelled against the knife.

‘No,’ he said very slowly. ‘I would not have you refuse what he asks. It would be neither right nor just.’

In spite of the almost intolerable pain she was suffering, a glow of wonder rose in her eyes; and there was no shadow of doubt to dim it. At his worst, in the old days, he had always told the truth.

‘God bless you for that!’ she cried suddenly, and then her voice dropped low. ‘You have travelled far on the good road since we last talked together,’ she said. ‘Further than I.’

He shook his head gravely.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘You have led me, and I have followed.’

‘We have journeyed together,’ she said, ‘though we have been apart. We may be separated, as we must be now, to the end, but we cannot be divided any more. I wanted to tell you something else too, this last time, and you have made it easy to say it, and altogether right. It is this. I do not take back one word of what I said to you and wrote to you before I knew Montalto was coming home. I do not want you to think that I have changed my mind, or that the life we were going to lead seems to me now one little bit less good and true and honourable than it seemed to me that first time we talked together here.’

‘Do you think I doubted you for a moment?’

‘You might. But it is only that other things have changed. We have not, and I know we never shall, and in the end we are to meet where there is peace, and somehow it will be right then, and we shall all three understand that it is. Can you believe that too?’

‘I wish to. I shall try to. If anything could make a man believe in God, it is the love of such a woman as you are.’

‘You have my love,’ Maria answered. ‘And some day you will believe as I do, but in your own way, and we shall be together where there are no partings. Yes, I am sure that we could have lived as we meant to, and could have helped each other to rise higher and higher, far above these dying bodies of ours. But we shall reach the good end more quickly by our suffering than we ever could by our happiness.’

‘That may be,’ said Castiglione, ‘but one thing is far more certain: we must part now, cost what it may.’

‘Cost what it may!’ She pressed her hands to her eyes and was silent a little while.

‘Has he spoken of Leone in his letters?’ Castiglione asked after a time, in a tone that was almost timid.

Maria dropped her hands upon her knees at once and met his look.

‘Not to me,’ she answered. ‘But he gave orders about the child’s room to the steward he sent from Montalto. Everything was to be arranged for Leone just as I wished. That was all.’

‘Will he be kind to the boy, do you think?’ asked Castiglione, very low.

‘I know he will try to be,’ Maria answered generously.

That was her greatest cause for fear in the future; it was the stumbling-block she saw in the way of Montalto’s wish to take her back; but although he might treat the boy coldly, and avoid seeing him, and insist that he should be sent away to a school as soon as he was old enough, she believed that her husband would be just, and she was sure she should leave him if he were not. There was one sacrifice which should not be exacted of her: she would not tamely submit to see her child ill-treated. At that she would rebel, and she would be dangerous for any man to face.

‘Yes,’ she repeated, ‘I know he will try to be kind.’

Castiglione merely nodded and said nothing, but Maria saw his looks; and she was not all a saint yet, for with the sight came the thrill of fierce elemental motherhood, rejoicing in the strength of the man who could kill. There was nothing very saintly about that, and she knew it.

‘We must not think of such things,’ she said, as she felt the deep vibrations grow faint and die away. ‘Let us take it for granted that my husband will be very just. That is all I have a right to ask of him.’

Again Castiglione bent his head in assent. Then both were silent for a long time.

‘Am I never to know anything of your life after this?’ he asked suddenly.

‘You will know what every one may know,’ she said.

‘Nothing more? Only to hear that you are ill or well? Never to be told whether he really does what he can to make it bearable for you? May I not have news of you sometimes? Through Giuliana Parenzo, for instance? Is it to be always outer darkness?’

‘Giuliana will know what you all will know, and no more,’ Maria answered. ‘If I must not tell you what I suffer, do you think I would tell her? I shall not tell myself!’ There was one bitter note in that phrase. ‘You will always know something that no one else can,’ she went on, and her voice softened. ‘And so shall I, and that must be enough for us. Is it so little?’

‘Ah, no! It is all of us two that really lives!’

She heard the deeper tone of rising passion not far away, and she interrupted him.

‘It is all I shall have for the rest of my life,’ she said, and she rose suddenly and held out her hand, meaning that it was time to part.

‘Already?’ he asked, not leaving his seat yet, and looking up beseechingly.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You must not stay. We have told each other what had to be said, and to say more would not be right. Less would not have been just to you.’

He also had risen now and stood before her, meaning to be as brave as she, cost what it might.

‘We are only human,’ she went on, ‘only a man and a woman alone together, and if I let you stay longer this one last time, there may be some word, some look, between us that we shall regret. Though Diego is not here yet, I became his wife again in real truth on the day I accepted his forgiveness; and as his wife, no word to you shall pass my lips that he might not hear. We have tried to do right, you and I; if we have not failed altogether, God help us to do better! If we did wrong in those few sweet days, then God pardon us! I thank you from my soul for being brave and true when you might have dragged me down. For the past we have forgiven each other, as we hope to be forgiven. And so good-bye. I would bless you, if I dared; I can ask a blessing for you, and it will come; I am sure it will. If I die first, I shall wait for you somewhere, and you will come. If you are taken before me, wait for me! Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!’

Her voice was sweet and steady to the very end, but when he took her hand at last it was cold, and it quivered in his. He began to lift it to his lips, but it resisted him gently, and he obeyed its resistance.

‘Good-bye,’ he said, as well as he could.

But she hardly heard the syllables; and then, in a moment, he was gone.