Anne’s villa delighted Alexis, especially the small music room with its frescoed walls and paucity of furniture. It was, he said, the ideal room for music, and they spent their evenings there and many afternoons.

To-day, an outburst of spring rain had driven them gustily indoors. It fell from the skies like a sable veil through which smiling hillsides showed ashen like a woman in mourning. In the garden the cypresses dripped heavily. Water foamed down the gutters in amber cataracts.

A shower of slanting missiles, the rain hurled itself against the windows, drumming upon the panes with the beat of a thousand nervous fingers. Anne shivered a little. From a stool at her side Alexis looked up into her face anxiously. It was pale, and the large eyes gleamed from out dark circles. He took her relaxed hand and stroked it tenderly.

“You look tired, dearest one. Aren’t you well this afternoon?”

“My head aches a little.”

It was palpable to Alexis that her smile came with an effort. He laid his cheek against her hand with a low, crooning caress.

“Poor darling! What could have caused it? I’ve never known you to have one before.”

She passed a hand over her forehead in the futile gesture that accompanies headache. “I have only had one or two in my whole life.”

Her tired smile went to his heart.

“What do you think brought it on?” he persisted. “Have I worn you completely out?”

“Of course not, silly boy!” The over-brilliant eyes hovered upon him restlessly.

“Well, what is it then?” Anxiety rendered him brusque.

“I suppose it was my visit to the Marchesa this morning. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, Alexis.”

“Telling her about us, you mean?”

She nodded wearily. “You see, she has hoped for years that I would marry her son, and it was rather a blow.”

“Poor old lady, of course it was. But didn’t she know that you had no intention of marrying him anyway?”

Anne avoided the searching eyes, with elaborate carelessness. “Yes, but so long as I remained single, she always felt there was a chance of my changing my mind.”

“Ah, poor old thing! I don’t blame her for being upset at losing you. If I were she, I’d want to commit murder. Was she nasty?”

“No-o.” Anne frowned a little. In her delicate way the Marchesa had certainly been a trifle ironic. But you couldn’t blame her for that, as Anne had not felt it incumbent upon herself to tell the truth in its entirety. Yes, she had been a little cutting and the sting of her words lingered in Anne’s heart. Particularly the inference about the nursemaid wives of erratic geniuses. But the pinched look about her mouth, the added pallor upon the frail ivory face had more than excused her. If one chose to wound one’s dearest friends by indulging in what must seem like inexplicable freaks, one must suffer the consequences.

“You seem a little uncertain?” During Anne’s silence, Alexis’ eyes had darkened with renewed suspicion.

His persistence troubled her. She shrugged fatigued shoulders. “Let’s forget it, dear. What’s the good of rubbing it in? The Marchesa took my news a little harder than necessary perhaps. Our conversation was a very unhappy, miserable affair. You see, I couldn’t tell her everything. And so she doesn’t quite understand. She merely thinks I’ve lost my silly old head over a handsome violinist who will some day leave me high and dry for a fresher and prettier woman. Her point of view is natural, quite refreshingly cynical in fact. She suggested I indulge my infatuation by a temporary liaison rather than in marriage, which couldn’t fail to be fatal!”

She burst into a hysterical little laugh, which Alexis resented furiously.

“Wicked old witch! And I was sorry for her a little while ago!”

He drew the stool to Anne’s knees, and leaned his weight against her. “You do love and trust me don’t you, dearest?”

“Of course. Why not?” She used a light tone purposely. Her fatigue would permit of no other.

“I’ve never looked at any other woman but you, Anne. I never even notice women on the street. In my audiences they are just so many blank discs that come to life under my music, and then melt back again into the common mass. No, I shall never be a woman-chasing man. You and my music and the poor little child whom between us, we’re going to make a happy little child, will more than fill my life.”

His enraptured expression struck Anne with a pang. Poor Alexis, there was so much more good in him than he had ever been given credit for. That he was neither light nor sensual she had surmised from the beginning. But even she had never plumbed the depths of nobility that lay concealed beneath the child-like and difficult temperament. Perhaps, after all, the future might turn out to be less dark than she feared. She threw her arms about his shoulders.

“We’re going to be happy, aren’t we?” Her voice unconsciously pleaded.

Eyes closed, he snuggled against her.

“Happy? I shall be exultant as a god. As for you, you’re such an angel that my joy may be enough for you! But I shall try, how I shall try to make you happy, too. How proud I shall be of my wife. When people see you sitting in a box at my concerts, they will ask who is that radiant creature? And the answer will be ‘Mme. Alexis Petrovskey.’ ‘Is she not wonderful?’ Men will go mad over you. They will want to fight duels over you with me. But I shall laugh in their faces. For you will be mine.”

“Silly boy!” Her hand caressed his shoulder.

“In another six weeks we will be in Paris together. Anne and music and Paris! I don’t dare think of it! I’m afraid something will happen, that I’ll burst of joy perhaps first!”

“You ought to be able to count on lasting through the next few weeks without asking too much of the gods,” laughed Anne.

“I don’t know. They are said to be jealous! But enough gloom! Do you still like your ring dear?”

“I’m crazy about it. It’s the most beautiful I have ever seen!”

She held out her hand and they admired the ring with rather comical gravity. An enormous emerald cut square and set in a delicate lacework of diamonds and platinum, it etherealized the white hand to the point of fragility.

“My collection of emeralds ought to be complete. First my bracelet, then the pendant, and now my ring.”

He protested scornfully. “Complete, I should say not! I intend to hang ropes of emeralds all over you yet, when I’m really famous,” he boasted with boyish glee.

“Until I fall dead beneath their weight, like the princess in the fairy tale!” Her arm dropped from about his shoulder wearily.

With a remorseful look at her pale face, he left her and walked to the window.

“Look, the rain has stopped. It was only a shower after all. The hillsides are smiling again. And the garden is as fresh and dewy as a pretty woman after her bath. Shall we go out?”

He opened the French window and they stepped out on to the flagged terrace. Polished by rain, diamond-studded, in the late afternoon sun, the garden sent up renewed incense, a symphony of rare fragrance, that mounted into the air like music.

“It reminds me of one of Liszt’s rhapsodies,” said Alexis, his fingers wielding an imaginary bow.

“Some day I shall compose a rhapsody of my own and call it, ‘To a Tuscan Garden.’”

“Ah, but next month when the roses are out, that is the most enchanting of all,” sighed Anne dreamily.

“But we shall not be here then,” he retorted. “We shall already be on our way to Paris—I mean to Paradise!” He laughed unsteadily. “Anne, think of it. Think of you and me alone in the wagon-lit. Won’t it be deliciously improper? I shall boast before the guards. It will be my wife desires this, and that. ‘Please close the window. My wife doesn’t like a draught!’” He was so comic in his pantomime that Anne laughed until the tears came.

“You young rogue!”

He pressed her arm against his side.

“How is the poor head, dear? How would you like to lie down in the hammock and let me play to you, while the sun sinks back of the city, and sets the old Duomo on fire!”

“What a Neronic inspiration!” She smiled with an effort. “But dear, would you think it beastly of me if I sent you home now? My head is really rather bad and if I don’t make an effort to get rid of it, it may get the better of me.”

Immediately, he was full of remorse.

“Of course not. Why didn’t you send me packing a long time ago? I’ll run right along and you go to bed like a good girl. Shall I see you in the morning?”

“Weren’t we going to the Uffizi? I know you detest sightseeing as much as I do. But there are some things you simply mustn’t miss.”

He looked doubtful. “But are you fit to go, darling?”

“Indeed I am. All I need to put me on my feet is a good night’s rest. To-morrow I shall be right as rain.”

“Well, if you aren’t, I’ll come up and nurse you myself. Shall I take my violin back with me, or leave it here as usual?”

“Oh, leave it. You won’t need it to-night. And it’s safer here than at the hotel. Well, good-by. You’re a dear to put up with all my pains and aches.”

“Such dear aches and pains, all caused by my own brutal self!”

She held out her hands. He kissed the palms lingeringly, and then swung down the terrace towards the courtyard, where his car was waiting by the tall iron gates. Slim, flexible as a steel blade, small shapely head, aureoled in the setting sun, he trod the air like a young god.

Anne looked after him wistfully. As he disappeared around the angle of the house, fatigue mounted about her in dizzy waves, sucked her down, engulfed her in a dark, pulsating embrace, like the swirl of black waters.

Brilliant afternoon faded into dark, moonless night. Gun-metal clouds obscured, one by one, the beckoning stars. A breeze, warm and sweet-smelling as the breath of cattle, stirred in the tops of the trees.

From her deck upon the garden terrace, Anne watched the clouds as, with swollen sails, they scurried like miraged galleons upon an inverted sea. Her headache eased, it had left behind a trail of lassitude. She lay back in her chair, too weary for thought, spent to the point of serenity, at truce with an unsubstantial world.

When footsteps cut crisply upon the brick stairway, she did not even trouble to turn her head.

“Is that you, Alexis?” she called languidly.

Vittorio’s voice broke upon her lethargy with the abruptness of a stone thrown into a stagnant pool.

“No, it is I, Vittorio.”

Pierced as by a blade, her numbness fell from her like a mantle. She rose, and leaning against the balustrade, gave vent to a thin cry. “I told you not to come!”

“But surely, you didn’t expect to be obeyed?” Etched against the sombre heavens, Vittorio loomed disproportionately large. He approached and seized her hands almost roughly.

“My mother says you are going to marry this Petrovskey. Tell me it isn’t true, Anna mia?”

“Yes.” She made a feeble effort to withdraw her hands.

“But I thought he had a wife already.”

“She—she died a few weeks ago. Won’t you please let go my hands?”

His grasp tightened. “How do you know he is telling you the truth?”

She threw back her head proudly. The curve of her throat shone through the dusk like a white pillar. “Alexis is not a liar!”

Vittorio laughed grimly. It was worse than he had feared. “But you cannot mean to marry him. He is entirely out of your class, an artist, a Bohemian. If you cannot protect yourself from such people, I must do it for you.”

Anne succeeded in wrenching away her hands.

“I have not asked for your protection, Vittorio Torrigiani.”

“No, madonna mia, but you need it. You suddenly decide to throw away your life and expect me to sit calmly by. I warn you I am desperate. I cannot permit this sacrilege.”

“Sacrilege? You call this sacrilege? If you had used that word a few months ago you might have come nearer to the truth. But now——!”

He broke in quickly. “Ah, that was different. That was only for the time being. This is for life. That was a whim, a condescension. Not to be taken seriously like marriage.”

“I took it seriously,” her voice was quick with reproach.

“I know you did, and I loved you for it, although it nearly broke my heart. To feel that you belonged to another man, that you had given yourself of your own free will was the most fearful hell I hope to ever have to undergo. But this is ten times worse. It isn’t only that I am going to lose you forever, that is bad enough, God knows, but to know that you will be miserable, unhappy, completely out of your sphere. Ah, that is more than I can bear.”

She laid her hand upon his sleeve pleadingly. “But if I can bear it, if I feel that it is the right thing to do? Won’t that help at all, Vittorio?”

“But how can I know that you are not sacrificing yourself again? There is something mysterious about this. You are keeping something back, Anne.”

She turned from him with a hopeless shrug and leaned her elbows on the balustrade.

“There’s nothing mysterious about it, Vittorio. Alexis is alone in the world. He needs me and I am fond of him.”

He went towards her impulsively. “Fond of him! You call that love? Fond, is that a word to build a marriage upon?”

“I’m only quoting you. Haven’t you told me many times that love wasn’t necessary to a happy marriage?”

“If I did I was lying and you knew it, my Anne, or you would have taken me a dozen times over. And I was always patient because I felt that love would come to you finally. And lately, I was so happy, happier than for years. Your letters were so wonderful. I could hear you calling to me between the lines. I felt the time was rapidly approaching when you would awaken to your need of me. Oh, Anne, you’re not a capricious woman. You couldn’t have written to me like that just out of caprice. I feel I have the right to ask for an explanation.”

She turned towards him blindly as he leaned beside her on the parapet. Their groping hands met and clung. “You have a right to all I can tell you, Vittorio.” Her fingers trembled in his strong clasp. “But there isn’t much to say. When I wrote you I thought I was free. And—then he came—and I discovered that I had made a mistake. So I telegraphed to you not to come.”

The grasp upon her hand tightened nervously. “You mean you discovered that it was he and not I whom you loved after all?”

“Perhaps,” her voice came muffled.

“But don’t you know, dear heart?”

The fingers in his fluttered. “Yes—I know.”

The words were almost inaudible. And he was forced to lean close in order to hear them at all. Then almost before she knew it, his arms were about her. His lips rained kisses upon her averted face.

“Carissima, it is I whom you love. I, Vittorio! How many times shall I have to tell it to you?”

The exultant voice deafened her. Giddy, on the point of defeat, she pushed him away with the palms of her hands, and fell into a chair.

“Don’t. Don’t.” Face hidden in her fingers, she began to sob weakly.

“Yes, yes. It is the only way to save you from yourself.”

Falling on his knees beside the chair, he removed the hands from her tear-wet face. “Now—tell me all,” he commanded.

She faltered out the pitiful story of Claire’s death and Alexis’s remorse.

“So you see how he needs me,” she ended.

“But I—I need you too,” he insisted desperately, crushed by the tragedy of it all.

“Not the way he does,” she interposed. “Oh, Vittorio, I have promised. I cannot break my word even——” her voice faltered—“even for you! Nothing but Alexis’ own will can ever separate us now!”

He groaned. “But you are not happy. You do not love him. You love me. Even he wouldn’t ask you to keep your word if he knew that,” he said miserably.

“But he doesn’t know. He doesn’t dream that I don’t love him, poor boy. I’d rather tear myself in pieces than have him guess. He has been so unhappy, so miserable!”

“But Anne, doesn’t my unhappiness, my misery, mean as much to you as his?”

She turned an anguished face towards him, laying her hands upon his shoulders. “You know what it means to me,” she gasped. “I—I love you, Vittorio.”

His arms closed about her frantically. “This is horrible. You say you love me and yet you are going to marry another man.”

“I have given my word,” she whispered, against his heart.

They were silent for a moment, while the perfumed breeze rustled in the tree-tops and played with the vines upon the wall.

“What was that?” exclaimed Anne, starting up nervously. A new sound, like a stealthy footstep had risen from the path beneath them.

“Nothing, dearest.” Vittorio rose and peered over the parapet, into the black pit that was the garden, “Nothing at all. It must have been a fallen branch.”

“For a moment I thought it was Alexis,” she breathed, hand on bounding heart.

He strolled back to her. “Ah, you see, he frightens you already. He is in the back of your mind constantly. Give him up before it is too late, cara. If you don’t, I shall have to go to him myself and tell him the truth. If he doesn’t release you then, he is a cad.”

She stood up and faced him. “If you do that, I shall never see you again. It would be the act of a fiend. It would kill every spark of love that I ever felt for you.”

“Anne, Anne, are you asking me to give you up again?” He stretched famished arms towards her.

She wrung her hands against a sudden, smiting anguish, that left her weak and trembling. “Yes——” she whispered. “Vittorio!”

She slipped into his outstretched arms with a strangled cry. Their lips met, lingered, then parted unsatisfied.

Only a few words, a woman’s smothered cry, but sufficient to quench forever Alexis’ joy. Only a few words in fewer moments, but enough to send tottering the entire foundation of his being, which less than a minute before had towered to the limitless heavens.

A pÆan upon the lips, nectar in his veins, he had approached the terrace as if on air. Anne’s head was better, so Regina had told him. She had gone out into the garden, was sitting alone under the scattered stars. How surprised she would be when the notes of his violin stole upon her through the night! He would play the Canzonetta from Tchaikowsky’s Concerto, the one they both loved the best. It was just the thing for a night like this. A heavy, mysterious night. A night weighted with warm perfume and the promise of hidden rapture. A quivering, mischievous smile upon his lips, he had tiptoed to the bottom of the terrace. Violin tucked beneath his chin, bow raised, ready to sweep the strings, he had suddenly paused. From the terrace above a man’s voice had cut into the silence. Alexis held his breath. So Anne was not alone after all? A caller, some unknown man had chosen to-night of all nights to make her a visit. How annoying! And yet how absurd of him to be upset. Why shouldn’t Anne have a visitor? It was the most natural thing in the world. Only a monopolist like himself could possibly grudge it her. Besides, it would be a good opportunity to become acquainted with one of Anne’s friends. He decided to mount the steps and meet the intruder as cordially as possible, when the sound of Anne’s voice, vibrant and agitated, had reached his ears, and he had listened in spite of himself.

“But he doesn’t know, he doesn’t dream that I don’t love him, poor boy!” Then the man’s voice, pleading, but masterful. “But, Anne, doesn’t my unhappiness mean as much to you as his?”

That answer of Anne’s! Those flaying words that laid bare Alexis’ soul! That confession of love, which had undermined his whole structure of being!

And the entire horror had passed within the space of a moment. The air still vibrated with Anne’s words, was heavy with their import. Stunned, Alexis had crawled out of hearing and leaned against the base of the terrace. Dismembered, leaden, his limbs rocked beneath him sickeningly. Presently, when the strength flowed back into them again, he would creep away to the gates where his car was waiting. Meanwhile, he must be very silent. A single, uneven breath, a smothered sob might betray him. And they must not guess his presence until he was beyond reach or recall. To steal away was the least he could do. He would steal away out of Anne’s life, like a thief who has stolen another man’s treasure, and then come back surreptitiously, to return it. He, Alexis, was a thief. He had tried to take what did not belong to him. He was an unsuccessful thief, moreover, for Anne’s love had never been his. From the bottomless abyss, he knew it now if never before. The woman who had lain in his arms, whose body he had called his own, had never belonged to him at all. She had remained remote as a condescending goddess. Pitiful, without doubt, but fundamentally untouched. “And yet it is her pity that pains me most.”

Anne, his Anne, he had made her suffer! She was suffering at this moment, only a few feet away. God, how he hated himself! He must get away immediately, before the sight of her weakened him, the beloved voice shattered his resolution to tatters. Violin clasped mechanically to his breast, he crept along the wall and cut across the grass to the gates. They were still ajar and he slipped through to his car unnoticed.

Haggard, unkempt, he entered his hotel and regardless of curious glances, strode to the bureau and secured his berth on the midnight express for Paris.

Two hours later he was on his way.

But he had left behind him a letter for Anne. A taciturn, incoherent letter that strove to conceal the pain that he knew would wound her so cruelly. She must not be sad for him. She must not blame herself at all. It was not her fault that he had overheard her confession. Above all, she must not be afraid that he would do anything desperate like killing himself. Those old, unbalanced days were gone forever. He must live for his child now and his music. He prayed her not to write or to follow him, as out of her immense pity and charity he was afraid she might be tempted to do. But to give him this chance to prove himself a man to them both. He had played with her magnanimity for the last time. He hoped that she would forgive him all the suffering he had so stupidly caused her. And finally, he begged her to think of him sometimes and to keep his gifts for the sake of the great love he would always bear her.

An incoherent letter, every word of which revealed to Anne his bleeding hurt. With anguished eyes, she visualized, relived his agony. Saw him as he crouched beneath the terrace and overheard her confess her love to Vittorio. Followed on his mad ride back to the city. Stood behind him while he labored over the scrawl which was to conceal from her his pain, his utter desolation. Accompanied and sat beside him in the wagon-lit as he steamed put of Florence, out of her life. That same wagon-lit of which he had spoken so joyously only yesterday. That wagon-lit he had hoped to share with her as his companion, but in which he had been destined to ride alone. Behind scalding tears, she saw him throw himself onto his berth, watched him as he lay wide-eyed and motionless into the dawn. Passed with him into the future, as exalted, fawned-upon, his child and his violin by his side, he disappeared over the horizon and out of her sight, a pathetic, solitary figure.