The sun was golden upon the paneled walls of Anne’s gay little sitting room. In its uncompromising rays, Torrigiani’s face shown drawn.

Anne looked at him remorsefully.

“Poor Vittorio, I’m not worth all this agony. Indeed, I’m not!”

“And I know I should not inflict it upon you.” His troubled brown eyes rested upon her. “But if you knew what a horror I have gone through this week! Never in all the years that we have known each other have I doubted you, Anne. In spite of what people said (you yourself know only too well how you have always been talked about) my mother and I never have listened. You have always been my Donna Immaculata and always will remain so. Nobody but yourself could dispel my faith, and even then I should feel there had been a mistake somewhere. But this talk, this terrible talk of Ellen, even your letter doesn’t explain it away entirely. I have come to you for the truth. Who is this man with whom you have been staying, Anne? And what is he to you?”

“He is Alexis Petrovskey, the violinist, and—and he is nothing to me—at present. He was very ill and I have been taking care of him. That is all.”

She avoided the earnest, seeking eyes. A vivid crimson stained her cheek. In a tea-gown of peacock blue chiffon with transparent black lace sleeves, she was infinitely desirable.

Torrigiani drew his chair closer to hers. He searched her face wistfully.

“What do you mean he is nothing to you at present? Don’t try to spare me, carissima. I want to know the truth.”

She averted her head, and played nervously with the ends of her turquoise girdle.

“I scarcely know what I mean myself, Vittorio. It is impossible to foresee the future, you know. But—but as I said in my letter, he is very dependent upon my—my friendship. He says that it is I who have brought back his music. Did you know about his misfortune, his breakdown?”

Vittorio nodded.

“Yes, I read about it in the papers. So the music has come back to him, has it? Well, that is not so extraordinary, is it?” He felt his way. “Things like that usually do come back to one, after a certain time.”

“Are you trying to say that I had nothing to do with it?”

“No, cara, of course not. Only I don’t want you to feel too strong a responsibility for this young man. He is probably very much indebted to you, and without doubt very much in love. But are you positive that he needs you as much as he would like you to think?”

Anne’s anger melted into unexpected amusement. She gestured with her cigarette. “How can I tell, Vittorio? But it really looks that way. If I don’t go to see him twice a day, his fever rises and he refuses to eat. And when I first met him on the mountain, his condition was really pitiable. I know that I helped him then.”

Her look of unconscious triumph wounded him to the marrow.

“Tell me about it, Anne. Is it true that he stayed ten days with you in the lodge?”

She met his eyes with renewed serenity.

“Yes, why not? He was alone and ill, and Regina and I took care of him. He didn’t want to return to New York, as he was afraid the newspapers might get hold of it. So I let him stay with me,—tout simplement.”

He looked as if a weight had been taken off his heart.

“But why did you not tell me, cara? That night when I teased you about fallen gods, I little guessed that you were concealing one up in your sitting room. That at that very moment he was toasting those feet of clay at your fireplace. If any one had told me so, I would have laughed in his face. I always thought you scorned underhand methods. It was not like you at all!”

“Of course it wasn’t. But how could I help it? It was his secret, not mine. As a matter of fact, he didn’t arrive until long after our conversation took place. He didn’t want to be seen, so I had to hide him. I didn’t enjoy it. I hate subterfuge, as you know. If I hadn’t always been so aboveboard, there would have been less talk about me. No one knows it better than I do! And now the first time that I have stooped to such methods, everybody puts a false construction upon it.”

“Except myself, Anne. I know you too well. You would never do anything beneath you.”

She flicked her ashes into the grate rather nervously. “Then you know me better than I do myself!”

He leaned towards her, deeply troubled.

“What is the matter, Anne? Won’t you tell me, dear? You’re so different from your former self, so unapproachable. So almost irritable. Are you unhappy about this man? Do you care for him, perhaps? Has love finally come to you after all these years?”

Again she avoided the earnest gaze. “I don’t know. I—I’m afraid not.”

“You don’t know?” he stammered.

“No.” The word came draggingly from pale lips.

“But what is it, dear one? Do you intend to marry this boy? Is that why you say you are afraid?”

“No.” Once more the monosyllable was barely audible. Then she turned and faced the honest eyes squarely.

“I cannot marry Alexis even if I want to. He has a wife already!”

“Ah!” he breathed painfully. “I understand. And yet you love him, my poor Anne? He—he is your lover?”

She shook her head. The firelight leapt up the ivory column of her throat, tinting her hair with living gold.

“No—not yet, Vittorio.”

He uttered a low cry almost of joy.

“Thank God! Then it’s not too late. Ah, Anne, think what it would mean to you to take a lover, you to whom marriage was a crucifixion! Have you forgotten our long talks in the garden? How often you have confided to me your horror of contact? That is why you have always refused to marry again? Even me, your very oldest friend! How could you bear it, then, to have a lover?”

Her face cupped within her hands, Anne gazed into the fire.

“Don’t make it too hard for me, Vittorio. Let me explain.”

He broke in quickly.

“No explanation is necessary. You love at last. And when a woman like you loves, she surrenders all. But think well. The ignoble does not suit you. Your love will not survive it. You will lose caste in your own eyes—you will be talked about—whispered about——”

Anne laughed grimly. “Talked about, whispered about! Am I not accustomed to that!”

“Ah, that was different, beneath your notice. Only the truth can sting a woman like you. Anne, believe me, if you take a lover you will be very unhappy, I—I dread to think of it.” He bowed his head upon the mantel.

She rose, and approaching him, laid her hand upon his thick, black hair.

“Poor Vittorio, how good you are to me. Much, much too good!”

“I good to you?” he turned beneath the caressing fingers and looked at her in surprise. “But I love you. I would do anything to prevent your suffering. If you will only marry me now, before it is too late, I promise never to demand anything for myself. We will go first to Mexico if you like, and then back home to Italy. It will be just the same as ever between us, only I shall be there to protect you. And with change of scene and distance you will forget all this madness.”

She shook her head dully.

“Oh, no, it is impossible, dear. But why Mexico?” she asked, momentarily diverted.

“Because I want to explore some of the ruins down there. And it is another Egypt, you know, as the idyllic guide books put it. It seems to me that a honeymoon in Mexico, even only a fraternal one,” he added hastily, “would be heavenly.”

With a little moan she turned away and sank into a chair.

“But I can’t. You don’t understand. I’m no longer free. I have promised. If I break my word now I don’t know what will happen to Alexis. He is still very ill. He might lose his music forever, or even die.”

Torrigiani turned about slowly and looked down upon her bowed head. “Do you love this man, Anne?” he inquired with a commanding note in his voice.

Her head thrown wearily against the chair-back, she shook it dully.

“I told you before that I didn’t know, Vittorio.”

He mused down upon her darkly.

“Then it is even worse than I feared. If you had loved him, a certain rapture might have repaid the sacrifice. But if it is only pity! Why, Anne, if it is merely pity, why don’t you take it out on me? Surely, I deserve it after all these years. Am I not equally an object for charity?”

He knelt beside the chair and grasped her hands.

“Ah, but you are a man, Vittorio. Able to stand upon your own feet. He is only a sick boy, an artist, whose art, his only reason for living, had deserted him until only the other day. And I—I seem to be able to help. If I stay by him, it may never leave him again.”

He dropped her hands and rose. His face took on a hard expression, utterly foreign to him. He laughed shortly.

“I see he has appealed to the maternal, the protective instinct. He is clever, if weak. But is the game worth the candle?”

She sighed, and spread her hands in a weary, undecided gesture.

“Is any game worth the candle, Vittorio, if you weigh the wax? But if I can help him to get on his feet again, if I can bring his art back again, I shall feel as if I had been of some use in the world at last.”

Vittorio’s expression became almost a grimace. The curt laugh rang out harshly.

“Aha, it is the old music complex, is it? So we have put our finger upon the little, hungry place that shrieks for fame. Anne, the most exquisite amateur in the world, prefers vicarious success to none at all!”

Her anger melted as she met his suffering eyes.

“That is rather brutal, Vittorio, but very possibly true. Whatever my motive is, the fact remains that I am pledged.”

Her weary candor disarmed him. He stooped and placed his hand upon hers.

“Carissima, it is not yet too late. No man, especially no genius, is worth the sacrifice you intend making. Let him go his own way. After all, one musician more or less will make no great difference to the world, which is well stocked with such as he. But women like you are rare.”

She looked up at him impatiently. “Oh, Vittorio, why do you insist upon placing me on a pedestal? If I am chaste, it is not from principle, but from—repulsion.” She shivered a little. “After all, I’m not a virgin being thrown to the minotaur, you know.” Her laugh was unsteady.

She clasped her hands more firmly.

“But what is there about this man which persuades you against your shrinking flesh? What spell has he cast over you that the rest of us have neglected?”

Anne removed her hands from his hold and pressed them to her breast, in a dramatic gesture, unlike herself.

“It is here that he gets me. His pitifulness has dug deep into my heart. To cast him away would be like refusing to suckle a starving baby when one’s breast was swollen with milk.”

She suddenly raised her hands to her face and Torrigiani saw that she was weeping. He cried out in dismay.

“Anne, Anne, don’t cry like that, carissima! Why, I’ve never seen you cry before! If I have offended, please forgive me. I will go away. I will do anything in the world if only you will stop crying!”

Tears trickling through the slim, white fingers, she nodded her head.

“Yes, go, Vittorio, dear Vittorio. You can do nothing to change me now, and I cannot bear to hurt you so. Perhaps it would be better if we should never see each other again.”

Her voice broke. She turned away her head. He put his arms about her trembling shoulders and pressed her to his heart.

“No, Anne, that could never be. It is meant that I should love you forever. I will go away—but I shall return. If everything has become too much for you, let me know, and I will come. No matter if it is from Africa. And never forget Anna mia, that my offer holds good forever!”

Her head against his shoulder, she stirred uneasily. “Forever? But you forget, Vittorio, that—that I—that things will not be the same?”

He trembled as the copper tendrils of her hair swept against his cheek.

“I forget—nothing. In the things of the body, it is only the spirit which counts.”

She raised her head from his shoulder and looked at him from under heavy lids. “How good you are, Vittorio!” she repeated chokingly. Taking his head between her hands, she pressed her lips upon his. “And now, good-by.”

He held her away from him, and looked lingeringly into her face. A cry escaped him.

“Good-by, my Anne, good-by.”

He released her, and without turning his head, walked swiftly towards the door and closed it quietly behind him.

Anne looked after him dully. An odd pain tugged at her heart. The room became strangely vacant. Deserted by the winter sun, paneled walls gleamed wanly. Upon the hearth, the fire lay smothered within its own embers.

What had she done?

A landmark had been reached and passed; a turning taken. The homely, the familiar highroad lay behind. The perilous forest closed in upon her darkly.

With a weary movement she raised her bare arms above her head, and let them fall heavily against her sides.

The ivory clock upon the mantel chanted five mellow notes.

Anne started up from her chair. It was the hour for the daily visit to Alexis.