The car had turned an abrupt corner and stopped before the house. Regina opened the door, a metamorphosed Regina clad in concert regalia, very respectable and solid. Upon her face an expression of exaltation was overlaid by one of anxiety. Anne attributed the exaltation to the concert. Regina had all the Latin’s adoration for music. But the anxiety was somewhat puzzling.

“Has Mr. Petrovskey arrived?”

Regina nodded. The black brows knitted themselves above troubled eyes. “He awaits in the sitting-room, Signora.”

Something was very much the matter. Had Alexis been snubbing the poor old dear? Anne assumed a gay nonchalance.

“Well, was it not a concert after your own heart, Regina? A triumph and a marvel?”

The woman raised knotted hands to heaven. “He is an angel, Signora! Inspired by the Madonna and all the saints. He could melt the heart of the devil himself, not to speak of poor old Regina!” Her face fell suddenly. “After a trionfo like that, he should be gay as the bird. But he is not, Signora mia. He walk up the stairs with a face like one black cloud. He never say a word to poor Regina!”

“He is tired. You must excuse him. He is usually so nice to you, you know.”

“Ah, si, si!”

Anne proceeded slowly up the stairs. So she would have to cope with a mood! Ennui surged over her. In that moment she understood fully the weary distaste of a man who has to deal with a hysterical woman. Oh, why was Alexis so temperamental? She shrugged, and turning the knob of the sitting room door, entered.

Apparently unoccupied, the only light came from the cheerful fire which chuckling upon the hearth like a contented hen, lent an amber glow to the paneled walls where Sargent’s portrait of Anne’s mother smiled gently in its antiquated garb. Anne pressed her finger on the electric button by the door. A golden stream flooded the shadowy corners. Upon a sofa at the extreme end of the room lay Alexis. At her approach, he drew an audible, almost sobbing breath, and sat up and faced her. The thick hair rumpled into a comb over knotted brows, his eyes were somber.

“Where have you been? I thought you would never come!” He walked swiftly towards her.

As Anne heard the stricken note in his voice, her heart melted into a pool of tears. She ran forward and encircled him with her arms, as one would a sorrowful child.

“I didn’t think you would be here so soon,” she exclaimed contritely. “I imagined there would be a swarm of people waiting to fall upon you with congratulations. Was I wrong?”

He trembled beneath her hold. She released him with a weary little sigh. Her doubt had evidently ruffled his vanity.

“Of course there was a crowd. But I only spoke to a few personal friends, and one or two reporters. Rosenfield told the rest I was too exhausted to speak to them, which, was a lie, God knows, for I never felt less tired in all my life. You see, I was thinking of you and this meeting.” He laughed loudly.

She ignored his angry eyes with a feeling of guilt. “But Alexis, what a triumph! How proud you have made me!” She caressed his shoulders with gentle hands.

He flung himself from her hold. “Then why, if you are so proud and happy, have you kept me waiting while you go motoring with another man?”

A milk-white pallor overspread Anne’s cheeks. She flung off her coat and seated herself before the fire.

“So that is what is the matter?” In the glow of the flames her hair encircled her face like a brazen nimbus. Alabaster skin shone luminous against the opaque white of the gardenias upon her shoulder. Alexis’ gaze bit into her beauty angrily.

“Isn’t that enough? Isn’t it enough that you should leave me to-night for another man? To-night which was mine by right? Desert me for a stranger at the very doors of Carnegie Hall?” The clenched hands became livid.

“But Alexis, give me a chance to explain. It was all an accident. Entirely unpremeditated.”

“An accident! I shouldn’t call it exactly that! Who was this man with whom a tÊte-À-tÊte was so necessary that you couldn’t wait until to-morrow?”

“It was the Marchese Torrigiani, since you ask. I would have told you before if your torrential abuse had permitted.” She replied quietly.

“But I thought he was in Italy!”

“So he will be in another week. He is sailing to-morrow.” The regret in her tone angered Alexis.

“But what is he doing in New York again? Or has he been here all the time?” He inquired with quick suspicion.

“I am not in the habit of lying, Alexis.”

Her composure frightened him. He threw out his arms in a beseeching gesture.

“Have pity on me, Anne. I don’t mean to hurt you. But I’m so unhappy!”

The cold light died out of her eyes.

“There’s nothing to be so miserable about, Alexis. Torrigiani has been in Mexico all this time. He merely stopped on his way back to Italy. He hadn’t even let me know that he was here. He happened to be passing by Carnegie Hall to-night and saw the notices of your concert. Our meeting was entirely accidental, and nothing to torture yourself about. As it seemed to be our only chance for a talk, I drove him around the park and left him at his hotel.”

He flung himself at her feet in his customary gesture of penitence.

“Oh, Anne, forgive me if I seem cruel and suspicious. But are you in love with this man?”

She laid her hand on the tumbled fair hair.

“No, dear, of course not. But I do care for and respect him almost more than any one I know. No one, not even you could ever come between us, and I don’t want you to try.”

He looked at her with tragedy-ridden eyes.

“I have a terrible premonition that you are going to marry Torrigiani some time, and I am ready to kill him when I think of it.”

“Don’t commit any murders as yet!” Her laugh sounded forced. “I am not going to marry him or any other man, yourself included!”

He rose to his feet with the cry of a wounded animal. “You do love him. You cannot hide it from me any longer, Anne. As soon as I leave New York you are going to Italy to meet him. Deny it if you can!”

“Of course I’m going to Italy, Alexis. There could be nothing to keep me here after you go. I am homesick for Florence and my garden. But I’m not going there to meet Vittorio.”

“Yes, you are. And you are afraid to tell me for fear my music will suffer. But it won’t. Nothing can ever take it from me now. Least of all a woman’s whim!”

A grim smile sketched itself upon Anne’s lips. Alexis’ temper she had borne with before. But his ingratitude was new, and wounded.

“If I’m not necessary to you, perhaps it is just as well that we are separating so soon!”

“So I was right, after all!” he exclaimed with a certain tragic satisfaction.

She determined to punish him.

“Perhaps, who knows? Life with Vittorio would at least be peaceful. He is neither temperamental nor a genius. Just a mere man who believes in me. His bruised feelings wouldn’t have to be perpetually coddled!”

“If that is the way you feel about me, Anne, I had better go!” Beads of moisture about his temples, Alexis made for the door.

She followed him, and drew him back into the room.

“Don’t be silly, dearest. You know I don’t want you to go!”

He wheeled in her arms, and kissed her with tragic passion. His face was wet with tears.

“Oh, Anne, if I should lose you!”

“You won’t, poor dear, you won’t!” she cried brokenly.

She drew him down on to the chaise-longue beside her. He laid his head upon her shoulder.

“Torrigiani will not be in Florence,” she explained, leaning her cheek against the thick, soft hair. “He expects to go direct to Sicily. If he were to be there I should not want to go. It would be too humiliating.”

“Does he know? Have you told him about us?” There was a throb of incredulous joy in Alexis’ voice.

“Yes.” Her head drooped beneath the crimson stain that surged up to her forehead.

“Oh, Anne, can you ever forgive me?”

“Yes, dear. Only don’t try me too often. Just take me for granted sometimes.”

“Oh, I mean to, God knows. Only I’m so afraid of losing you. There are so many men in your life. And I am tied.” She laid commanding fingers upon his lips.

“That subject is taboo! Don’t you dare bring it up again! But tell me how did you know about Torrigiani!” she inquired with a certain curiosity. Had the probing blue orbs belonged to Mme. Petrovskey after all?

“My mother told me,” he replied simply. “She saw you go out together. She came behind to see me afterward. However, I scarcely believed her. I thought she must have mistaken some one else for you. She had only seen you once, you know. But when I arrived, and you hadn’t come, I suddenly knew it was all true. I wanted to strangle poor old Regina and her congratulations. That was almost an hour ago. I was just thinking of going when you came.”

She pressed his head against her slim bosom. “Poor darling, it must have been awful. But you didn’t suppose I could forget that I had invited you to supper to-night of all nights?”

“I’m a fool, I realize it. But I’m so mad about you, I’m really not sane,” he whispered, his lips against the satin of her throat. “You’re an angel to put up with me.”

She laughed and put him aside. Springing to her feet she gave the bell-rope a vigorous pull. “Nonsense! No angel could possibly be as hungry as I am at present. Let us see what Regina can do for us.”

But the appetite was rather a pretense on both sides. They were too excited to eat. With a discreet smile, Regina wheeled in the supper on a tea wagon, and insisted upon leaving them immediately, in spite of Alexis’ efforts to make up for his former unamiability.

“The Signorino must eat. Even music must die on the empty stomach.”

There were oysters on the half-shell, cold duck and a varicolored salad that rivaled a Neapolitan sunset. Alexis opened the champagne himself.

“It was awfully banal to have it,” laughed Anne. “But we simply had to to-night, you know.” She raised her glass and smiled at him, over its miniature golden cauldron. “To Alexis Petrovskey and his triumph!”

“To the power behind the throne,” he countered.

The seething wine whipped their spirits. Between parted lips, their teeth gleamed like crescent moons.

“Oh, Alexis, you don’t know what to-night has meant to me. Your success was as intoxicating as a personal triumph.”

“It was one, wasn’t it? Since I owe every bit of it to you?” His eyes were full of worship.

“Don’t say that. The power was within yourself. I merely set it in motion again. I fully believe it would have returned to you eventually.”

“I’m not so sure of that. I was pretty nearly done for, when you retrieved me. How can I ever thank you enough?”

He got up from the table, and running around to her side, threw his arms about her shoulders. She tossed back her head and their lips met.

“Don’t think of that now,” she murmured, as he dropped to his knees beside her. Conscious of the pathetic weariness in her voice, an icy band tightened about his heart. He must be more careful, or he would lose her entirely. Ah, how clumsy he had been! What a fool to let her slip through his fingers in that mad fashion. Like a woman who fears to lose her lover, he must exert all his charm, every vestige of personality he possessed in order to retain her. The band tightening about his heart, he smiled up at her with pathetic blandishment.

“You are so beautiful to-night in your gown of palest green,” he whispered. “Like Venus rising from the waves. I adore you more every minute.”

She laughed softly in her throat. “You are an incorrigible baby, Alexis. Come, get up and eat a little more supper, or Regina will be disappointed.”

“I will, if I can put my chair next to yours.”

“Of course, foolish one!” She watched with a tender, rather tired little smile, while he moved his chair from across the table.

“Tell me, were you frightened to-night?”

He laughed happily.

“Not for a moment. It seemed as if I had the confidence of a thousand devils!”

“That is more than I can say for myself. I had an awful attack of stage-fright. My knees rattled beneath me!”

“You do care, don’t you?” His voice was exultant.

“Very much more than you will ever guess, Alexis!”

“Darling!” He squeezed her hand ecstatically.

“When you play at the Philharmonic on Friday I’ll not be afraid at all.”

He looked at her tenderly. “Why should you be if I’m not, sweetheart? You mustn’t make yourself ill over me. You’ve heard me play the Brahm’s Concerto many times, and you know that it is mine, or rather that I am its!”

They laughed at his comical way of putting it.

“I intend to play it in Boston next week, too,” he continued. “How I loathe these trips that take me away from you! When the ocean separates us I shall be wild. But you will join me as soon as you can on the Continent? If you don’t want me to come to Florence we can meet in Venice, perhaps. I have set my heart on Venice. Think of us in a palazzo over the pole-shadowed waters. We will wind in and out of the tiny canals, in a gondola beneath a golden moon, and I will play to you.”

“You would take all the trade from the Grand Canal, and we should be solitary for about half a second!”

They laughed.

“Come, is it a bargain?”

“Of course,” she was a little breathless. “And in the mornings we can bathe at the Lido.”

“The mornings! They can take care of themselves! It is the nights, the glorious, moon-ridden nights that I am thinking of. I will hold you in my arms on a dim, star-lit balcony, while the gondolas swish by below and the water laps against the base of our walls.”

“And tourists rend the heavens with raucous laughter!”

He swept her into his arms impetuously.

“Anne, let me stay to-night. Don’t send me back to Gramercy Park alone.”

His heart-beats against her cheek, she demurred faintly.

“Impossible, darling. You must go. Indeed, you ought to be going now. The servants may return at any moment.”

“And what difference does that make? Pray, do they invade your sitting room at this hour of the night?”

“No—but Regina——”

“Can put you to bed, as usual. I shall have gone, you see. But I can come back. There are such things as latch-keys, aren’t there?”

“If you should be caught!” Her heart swooped in delightful fear.

“But I shan’t,” he countered triumphantly. “In the morning I shall creep out long before your lordly butler is awake. Surely, you can’t refuse me anything to-night?”

Her laugh was smothered against his breast. She could feel his heart knocking against her lips.

“Romeo and Juliet all over again, without even omitting the nurse!” she murmured. “It is really awfully unoriginal of us, you know.”

His lips within the brazen gold of her hair, he laughed exultantly.

A few minutes later the street door closed with rather unnecessary emphasis. Roused from her doze in Anne’s bedroom, Regina started up thankfully. The Signorino was gone. That was good. That was as it should be. Now her lady could have a reposeful night. She had looked so weary this evening!