Whisperings, now slow now more frequent, filled the top of the church dedicated to Santa Maria del Popolo, where the guests invited to the wedding were gathered before the high altar, while the rest of the large central nave preserved the usual solitude and silence of Roman temples. Around the high altar were placed large clumps of palms, and white azaleas with such a wealth of bloom that they seemed as white as snow, without the shadow of a leaf between flower and flower. Some soft dark carpets descended from the altar as far as the first row of seats. The rest of the church, the greater part of it, which it would have been vain to decorate, kept its cold, marbled, and imposing aspect.

Now and then the guests, politely restraining their impatience, turned towards the great door, which was open to the limpid spring sky, to watch if the couple, already late, had arrived. Compared with the vastness of the church, and in spite of their large numbers, they seemed a very small group near the high altar in an oasis of plants and flowers.

All the relations of Casa Fiore were there, together with the Casalta, who are not Romans but Neapolitans, of remote Neapolitan origin but living in Rome for two or three generations. Many had come from the outskirts of Rome, from Umbria and Campania, to be present at the marriage of Marco Fiore and Vittoria Casalta, a marriage so resisted by fate that for a time it had seemed quite broken off, but which had at last become a reality. There was much whispering over the strange story, the lateness of the couple, and the great size of the church.

“How has the bridegroom behaved during this second betrothal?”

“Perfectly.”

“Is he very much in love?”

“Full of affection.”

“Enamoured?”

“With ideal delicacy.”

“How large this church is!”

“But beautiful.”

“The church of Lucretia Borgia, is it not?”

“Certainly. You know that Gregorovius has rehabilitated Lucretia?”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Very cold; I would gladly go out.”

“Oh, they’ll come, they’ll come.”

“They are thirty-five minutes late.”

“Do you think that a lot? At the marriage of Giovanella Farnese we had to wait nearly an hour.”

“What bad form; don’t you think so?”

“Is it true that the bride is very happy?”

“Diamine! Hasn’t she waited four years for the faithless one!”

“Only patient women are right in this world.”

“Does she show her happiness? I want to see her face as she comes into church.”

“You will gather nothing from it; you know that Vittoria is most reserved.”

“Too reserved; she is icy, like this church.”

“But why not have the marriage in Santa Maria della Vittoria? It is a small church and beautiful.”

“It belongs to Casa Colonna, and the Colonna reserve it for their own marriages.”

“Hush! Hush! Here they come!”

Suddenly the whispering ceased; the notes of the organ sounded, heavy and sonorous, waking all the echoes of the church. It was an organ placed up above, on the epistle side of the altar, and the organist was invisible from below. He ought to have been signaled to, for from his invisible hands on the stops escaped the profound and solemn melody of Beethoven’s wedding march, so that every one rose to their feet to honour the bridal pair, who surely had reached the church door at that moment, to be accompanied on their procession to the high altar by Beethoven’s music, which is a noble greeting and invitation, the expression of fine desire, and the satisfaction of a strong and calm affection.

The well-known notes rolled along among the arches of Santa Maria del Popolo. The guests stood silent and attentive behind their seats, but still no one entered. The march continued in its beauty and gravity; the tones grew less and were extinguished. Silence reigned again. With a noise somewhat louder and whisperings a little stronger, the guests—the Ottoboni, Savelli, Farnese, Aldrobrandini, Caracciolo del Sole, Carafa—reseated themselves. The top of the church took more than ever the familiar appearance of a drawing-room. Groups were formed and seats were turned round; there was even a little laughter. In the midst of the general distraction the couple and their escort quite suddenly passed up the church and reached the high altar, greeted by none and unaccompanied by the music.

“That’s an entry missed!” exclaimed Gianni Provana, with a slight and amiable grin.

* * * * * * * *

In the white cloud of her satin dress and in the fleecy white cloud of her veil, the bride knelt at a prie-dieu of brown carved wood on which had been placed a cushion of dark-red velvet. On this cushion she placed her bouquet of orange-blossoms with its long white satin ribbon, and while the religious rite proceeded read from her Prayer-book, a little book bound in white and silver brocade; and her blonde head was slightly bent as she read. The bridegroom was kneeling beside her at another prie-dieu, also with bent head, thoughtful and collected. The Fiore have a long reputation for religious piety in the family, and perhaps conquered by the moment he was praying like a Christian to his God.

After the function had begun he glanced two or three times at Vittoria almost questioningly, for according to Italian tradition he had not led her to the altar. As she had no father alive she had been brought by her eldest brother, and at the house he had only exchanged a rapid greeting in the presence of everybody. Marco looked at his bride to read her thoughts and measure her emotions, but Vittoria’s face, in its indefinably white and virginal purity, had the virtue of never, or scarcely ever, revealing the secret which was weighing on the mind. She kept her eyes bent over the pages of her Prayer-book, and, as she repeated the words of the prayers, her delicate and sinuous lips, accustomed to silence and mystery, scarcely seemed to move.

The special moment arrived. Interrupting the Mass, after the first Gospel, before the Elevation, the celebrant turned to the couple and summoned them to him. They rose from their knees, and mounted the two steps of the sanctuary, where they prostrated themselves. Fabrizio Ottobone, the master of the ceremonies, placed himself beside them, a tall, thin old man, with flowing whiskers, and in spite of his age a very good figure. The usual form of marriage rite proceeded very slowly. Vittoria’s right hand was still gloved, and at a word whispered in her ear by Fabrizio Ottobone, she tried to take the glove off quickly. Not succeeding she tore at it and stripped it off her fingers, and at last the little right hand was stretched on that of Marco Fiore’s. The priest pronounced the sacred words which demand the assent of the man and the woman, and when obtained he declared them united in the name of God. The little hand was closed in Marco’s; he felt it tremble like a leaf. He pressed it in vain, as if to give it the strength of a promise and the support of an oath, and yet the little hand trembled incessantly.

Marco looked at his wife intently. On her pure face, in every beautiful line, in the fold of the fine taciturn mouth, and in the limpid and clear eyes he read in a flash such anguish mixed with hope; he read there anxiety, uncertainty, and fear, so that all his man’s heart filled with pity for her loving, suffering, and fearing. An immense pity welled in his heart, and not being able at that moment to speak a single word to her, he bent his head and prayed with all his might to have the power to console the woman who loved him.

Meanwhile, after completing the nuptial union, the priest stepped back to the altar to continue the Mass, and the couple, now bound for life, returned to their places. The organ again played music well known to all feeling souls. After the first chords from the invisible organist had sounded a cantor took his place, also invisible, but whose sonorous voice diffused itself throughout the church, and was listened to with a sigh of satisfaction by those who recognised the sympathetic timbre of a well-known tenor. He sang the aria di chiesa of Alessandro Stradella. It is a prayer offered to a God of clemency and mercy, but it is one of those musical prayers more vibrant in its mortal sadness than the human voice in its emotional notes can pour forth. With the complacency of an artiste, and perhaps with sincerity, the famous singer lent to the lament of Stradella an emphasis more sorrowful and harrowing than ever. The listeners were taken and subdued by it. Some turned anxiously to the organ; several women in particular became pale with emotion, and their eyes were clouded by tears.

Behind her soft veil Vittoria Casalta let her tears fall silently one by one down her cheeks, nor did she make the slightest attempt to dry them, and only Marco could see that silent weeping. He leant towards her a little.

“Vittoria, don’t cry.”

She made no reply, only a slight movement of the hand to ask his silence, to ask him not to bother about her crying. He became silent. But up above the unseen, but not unknown, singer kept on singing passionately the prayer, so singular for a wedding-day, with its peculiar and painful words: “PietÀ, Signore, di me dolente.” Again all hearts were touched and all souls secretly struck, for there were in that society, rich and almost scintillating with exterior happiness, and among those exquisitely dressed women covered with jewels, many who had suffered, and all such felt the power of the melody, where the soul cries to her God in waves of agony.

The bride continued to weep silently.

“Vittoria, you must not cry!” murmured Marco Fiore softly, but with virile energy in his low voice. She made a slight nod of obedience; gradually her tears dried, and her face became composed. Stradella’s air was finished, the song gave forth its last sobs, and silence reigned again. But in the silence there was a sigh of bitterness from some breast still oppressed; among the rest almost a feeling of relief and a subdued whispering.

“What a singer, that Varisco!”

“Divine.”

“He makes such an impression on me.”

“That air of Stradella’s is so beautiful.”

“But what an idea to sing such an air at a marriage!”

“It is sung everywhere.”

“But it is too, too sad.”

“Do you think matrimony such a gay matter?”

“Does this seem to you the moment to say such a thing?”

“Well, why did you cry?”

“Crying does one good every now and then.”

“In my time we laughed at weddings.”

“Now we manage better.”

“Be quiet, be quiet, it is the Elevation.”

At a hint which reached him the celebrant hurried the end of the Mass. It was late; the young couple had delayed so much, and the day had been completely disorganised thereby. A baritone sang in haste the O Salutaris Hostia, and was scarcely listened to; the special marriage prayers before the second Gospel were said with much rapidity. Every one had the air of wanting to get up and leave even before it was time to do so, since they had been in church nearly two hours. There was a sound of chairs being moved, and even some footsteps resounded on the marble pavement before the end. The procession was again formed at the high altar. This time the bridegroom gave his arm to the bride, and, after having kissed their nearest relations, they descended the steps of the altar together. Marco Fiore’s slightly fragile good looks had for some time assumed a more virile appearance, his physiognomy, which formerly was gracious and sweet with something feminine in it, was composed and settled in an expression of thought and peace. The bride beside him, tall, but not too tall, fairly slender with a white face beneath a shining wave of golden hair, with clear and lively eyes, over which now and then a cloud seemed to pass, with her little mouth like a closed flower, seemed made to be supported and protected by the man. As they proceeded slowly through the church to gather the congratulations and greetings, the organ sounded again for the last time to accompany them out.

It was another march, the one with which the knights and ladies of Thuringia accompanied Elsa of Brabant and Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal, to the nuptial chamber. Involuntarily the procession regulated its step to the rhythm of Wagner’s music, while after it had passed the whispering began again.

“Marco Fiore is always sympathetic.”

“He doesn’t seem exuberantly happy to me.”

“Do you want him to start dancing?”

“How charming the bride is!”

“Poor thing!”

“Why do you pity her?”

“I always pity girls who get married.”

“Yes, she is very pretty, it is true, but I prefer the other.”

“The other? Which other?”

“Oh, you know quite well! Maria Guasco.”

“Sst! You might be overheard.”

“No, no; I liked the other very much. She was a woman.”

“Don’t raise your voice.”

“This one is a figure for a picture; I should place her in a frame and leave her there.”

“You are very naughty.”

“Is everything over, then, between Marco and Maria?”

“Everything, for six or seven months.”

“Do you believe in this ending?”

“I? What does it matter what I believe?”

“Poor girl!”

“There! You see I was right to pity her.”

The music, spreading through the large central nave, still followed the bridal couple and the long procession of guests with its sonorous and precise notes. No word passed between them, and they contented themselves with a handshake to the good wishes which accompanied their passage; only at a certain point it seemed to Vittoria as if Marco’s face was troubled by a secret idea crossing his spirit. Suddenly her little white-gloved hand imperceptibly held his arm on which she was leaning, as she asked him with a tremor in her voice—

“Marco, what is the matter?”

“Nothing,” he replied, seized by his secret and obscure thought.

Wagner’s music seemed to exhale a powerful and settled joy which rocked the deep love of Elsa and Lohengrin, and spoke to them of a future of soft and constant passion, even until death. But Marco’s face became more clouded, as if his secret imaginings had mastered him.

“What is the matter, Marco?” Vittoria asked again a little anxiously, holding him back almost at the threshold of the church, as if she was unwilling to proceed further without an explanation.

“It is the music!” he exclaimed, sadly turning his head the other way.

“Ah!” she exclaimed without further comment, becoming exceedingly pale.

Vittoria had to suppose, with her cruel and devouring internal suspicion, that the music brought recollections of a former time to her husband, of other things, of another person. Her fine and tender mouth closed as if sealed hermetically, and she assumed her aspect of a flower dead and closed.

Meanwhile outside the view spread itself beneath the caressing April sun. The bright, fresh, blue vault of the sky arched itself from the Via Flaminia to the grandiose Piazza del Popolo, and far away the cypresses of Monte Mario, from amidst the green of the Farnesina, bathed by the twisting Tiber, hurled themselves against the almost quivering firmament, while on the left rose the Pincio, with its groves already in leaf. The large fountain in the middle of the Piazza del Popolo raised its monumental marbles which time had obscured nobly, while its waters fell back into the basin in soft spray. In the background the three roads which lead to Rome spread out like a fan; the Corso in the middle, the via di Ripetta on the right, and on the left the via del Babuino.

The morning joy was so complete that the Piazza del Popolo and adjoining streets, often so austerely solitary, now showed a great animation with the movement of passers-by and carriages.

Even the newly-married couple, once outside the large and glacial temple and in the fresh air beneath the enchanting vault of the sky, felt a flutter of exaltation raise their hearts, on which life had already left its traces. That atmosphere of gaiety, so like their flourishing youth, encompassed them, and the usual magnificent allurement of the spring drew them and merged them in its gentle and fervid train. Every recollection vanished, all the wounds seemed healed, and together they began to believe again in life. Blushing Vittoria heard the people’s exclamation of admiration as she got into the carriage: her veil thrown back disclosed the white forehead, and a soft smile appeared on her lips.

To the tender pity which Marco Fiore felt for the comely girl he had married a quarter of an hour ago, by the rite which no human hand can dissolve till death, there was united a kind of feeling of masculine pride, a feeling as it were of a great mission to be accomplished worthy of an upright and affectionate heart. Their two hands joined and their glances spoke of a common hope, of a common faith.

The carriage entered the Corso and the ample and exultant view vanished, and only a little narrow strip of cloud appeared between the big austere palaces. They drove towards the Palazzo Casalta in via della Botteghe Oscure. They were silent now. The two hands little by little disentangled themselves naturally from their pressure, nor did they rejoin. Both looked out of the window. As if she were speaking in a dream, Vittoria asked—

“That last wedding music displeased you, Marco?”

He trembled, and replied suddenly, “Yes.”

“Will you tell me why, Marco?”

“Why do you ask so many things, little Vittoria?” he said sweetly; “it doesn’t do to ask so much.”

“Tell me, tell me, Marco,” she insisted anxiously.

“You are like Elsa,” he murmured, shaking his head.

“What did Elsa do, Marco? She loved Lohengrin passionately.”

“Yes, little Vittoria, passionately. But she was not content with loving him without asking anything more. She wanted to know.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed, growing pale.

“Instead of loving she wanted to know who her spouse was.”

“Wasn’t she right, perhaps?” said Vittoria, trembling a little.

“She was wrong,” replied Marco gravely; “she had to love—that was all—blindly and humbly. Wherefore Elsa’s imperfect and incomplete love led her to deception, to betrayal, and to abandonment.”

Vittoria bit her little lip silently, as if to restrain a secret sigh.

“Haven’t you ever heard Lohengrin, little Vittoria?” murmured Marco, as if speaking to an imaginary being; “at a certain point, in the nuptial chamber, near his loving and faithful wife, the valiant knight discovers the ambuscade of which Elsa is herself an accomplice. Have you never heard, Vittoria, Lohengrin’s lament, deceived and betrayed an hour after the marriage? His dumb cry of delusion and bitterness? The dream of love was over and had vanished. Vittoria, I never could hear that cry without feeling my heart break.”

“That is why, Marco, you suffered when that music accompanied us from the church?”

“That is why, Vittoria.”

“But why was that wedding march played? It is a funeral march, Marco. Why did they play it?” she asked convulsively, bending over him.

“I don’t know,” he replied desolately.

II

After descending from the carriage in the noisy station among the crowd which the train from Florence was pouring forth, Donna Maria hesitated a moment, and behind her soft black veil her eyes seemed to be looking for some one. Her maid, carrying shawls and parcels, stood a few steps away from her. Discovering no one she made a resolute movement and opened a way for herself through the crowd, when a gentleman approached and greeted her, taking her hand to kiss it.

“Welcome, Donna Maria.”

“Good-evening, Provana,” she replied with cold courtesy, “what are you doing here?”

“I have come to meet you,” he said, surprised at the question.

“Very kind of you,” she replied, thanking him with a bow.

She approached the exit with him, followed at two or three steps’ distance by her maid. A servant of Casa Guasco was there; he touched his hat, and inquired after the luggage. Maria drily directed the man to her maid.

“The carriage is here too,” said Gianni fussily.

“You are very kind,” she said.

The great electric lights illuminated the arrival place, and Gianni looked at her intently. The morbid and slightly proud grace of Maria’s face seemed unchanged with its faintly rosy complexion, the large eyes were closed purposely as if absorbed in their interior life. Her undulating figure, even in its simple travelling costume, preserved its fascination. Perhaps her glance was less vivid, and the lines of her face were less decided, nor was the expression of the proud mouth quite so firm, little changes due to fatigue, which in fact gave her an air of languor, new and strangely attractive in her.

She did not speak to Gianni as he accompanied her to the coupÉ, a new and elegant carriage. Before entering she hesitated slightly, and turned to take leave of him. He bowed politely, and asked—

“Will you allow me to accompany you home?”

“Do you think it necessary?”

“To accomplish my duty,” he affirmed, with veiled insistence.

“If it is a duty, yes,” she consented coldly.

The door was closed on them. By the brightness of the electric light Maria discovered a bunch of flowers in the pocket in front of her.

“Are they yours?” she asked.

“No, I wouldn’t allow myself,” he murmured, with a smile. “They are Emilio’s; he has thought of everything. For several days he has busied himself with nothing but your return.”

“You busy yourselves together, it seems to me,” she said, with a fleeting tinge of irony.

“If you like. Emilio considers me, perhaps unworthily, one of the authors of your return. Is he wrong?”

“He is wrong,” she replied precisely.

A silence fell between them. In spite of his wit and scepticism Gianni Provana always felt the distance at which the woman held him, and the confused repugnance, a repugnance sometimes cruelly apparent, with which he inspired her.

“Because of this false idea of his, then,” resumed Provana, “Emilio wished to organise your return with me.”

“And he sent you to the station?”

“He sent me to the station.”

“It was useless.”

“Ought you to have found no one?”

“I ought to have found Emilio,” she said in a low voice, as if to herself. There was a heavy moment of silence.

“Such a meeting, Donna Maria, in public after what has happened! You understand?” he murmured.

“I understand; be silent,” she rejoined, with a decisive gesture.

For some time the carriage proceeded on its way without either speaking. Perhaps, in spite of his tenacity, hidden under an appearance of graciousness and indifference, the man repented of having been involved in that histoire intime, and perhaps the perverse conception he had of life counselled him to be quiet, to be patient, and to wait. It was Maria who resumed the conversation, as the carriage was drawing near its destination.

“Is Emilio in Rome?”

“Yes.”

“Is he at home?”

“He is waiting for you.”

“You will leave me at the house door, Provana,” she added coldly.

“Of course, there is no necessity to order me to do it. I will come to-morrow to greet you.”

“No, Provana.”

“Within a few days, then.”

“The latest possible, and better never.”

“Never is a big word, Donna Maria. Why don’t you want to see me any more?”

“Do you believe that I am what I am, and what I shall always be, a creature of truth? Do you believe that I have come this evening to Emilio Guasco’s home, to my husband’s home, to accomplish a solemn act? Why, then, do you wish me to become a creature of lies? Why, then, do you wish to make grotesque, doubly grotesque, my act of humility, and my husband’s act of pardon.”

“But why ever do you suppose that, Donna Maria?” he asked, a little confused.

“I suppose what is, Provana; that it may please you hugely to be the lover of your best friend’s wife, that it may please you to preserve a friendship with the husband and love the wife; that you have a horror of scandal, of noise, of open and undeniable betrayal; that the miserable and nauseating betrayal of every day pleases you with all its lies and transactions; that for a long time you have known that you wished to do this to Emilio and to me; that no one upset your plan more than he whom you know—and in fact that you have begun to hope again in its success.”

“Every one is allowed to hope for what he ardently desires,” replied Gianni ambiguously.

“I shall only have had one love in my life,” she said, in a clear low voice, “and only one lover. Good-bye, Provana.”

The carriage had driven round the circle of the courtyard of the Guasco Palazzo, in via de’Prefetti, and stopped before the peristyle. Bowing deeply Gianni Provana took his leave, while Maria, preceded by the servants, mounted the stairs very slowly. An inexorable agitation pressed deeply on the soul of the woman who, after the intense love rhapsody in which she had thrown all that was good and bad in her existence as upon a pyre, was retracing her steps and invoking the pardon of him whom she had fatally and unjustly injured. Ah, she would never have returned to the honest, faithful man unless she had seen the magnificent pyre of her passion extinguished, and her life rendered mute and deserted by love!

She had preferred to take time to calm her sorrow, to mature in her conscience the act of remission and humility she had come to accomplish. She had passed five months away from Rome in a villa near Florence, without asking or giving news, and her heart and soul were immersed in a great contrition. They had felt all the weight of the evil done to others, of suffering inflicted undeservedly on the innocent. The sublime idea of reparation had become in Maria so lofty and irrevocable that, at the end of her exile, she was asking to touch the limit of every personal sacrifice, if only to console, heal, and make Emilio Guasco happy again.

In the solitude which she had imposed on herself, in which she had prepared herself for the great work—the greatest and most beautiful work the human soul can accomplish—of giving comfort and happiness, the figure of Emilio Guasco, by his sufferings and the dignity with which he had borne them, and the magnanimity with which he had recalled her to himself, stretching his arms to her in pardon, seemed greater than it had ever been. From the distance Emilio’s love for her seemed immeasurable, since it had resisted betrayal, abandonment, and dishonour. It seemed a different love to her—superior, immovable, eternal, a love which she had never experienced, and, in fact, she felt herself unworthy of having inspired. Contrition was breaking, pulverising, volatilising Maria Guasco’s pride, that secret strength, sin, and virtue of her life.

Slowly she reached the head of the stairs, her heart beating more quickly, as she noticed again the well-known place where she had lived, where again she had to see the well-known face and hear again the familiar voice. She realised that she was holding in her convulsed hand two existences.

Maria had no other feeling as she placed her feet on the threshold of what had been her home, and was to become so again, except that of the humility of the repentant sinner. All her being was humility. She was begging pardon for the sin committed, and for the pardon was offering in exchange the dedication of a soul, the dedication of a life.

In the large ante-room, with its dark-carved panels, the two servants left their mistress, and retired to the other side of the living rooms. Once alone her trembling increased, and she seemed to be falling. Where, then, was Emilio, her husband and judge, her husband and her victim, who had not had the strength to meet her at the station, whom at any rate she had expected to find at the threshold? With an effort of will she kept her step firm, and crossed the drawing-room and the little drawing-room. Both rooms were deserted, and so was her bright boudoir. Where was Emilio? A singular thought crossed her brain, which she rejected as soon as she had accepted it, as she perceived him through the open door of his study, standing by his large writing-table holding in his hand, but not reading, a newspaper. The room was less illuminated than the others, and the lamps were shaded in green, but if it had been inundated with the light of the sun Maria would have noticed nothing, so veiled were her eyes and scattered her senses. However, she advanced towards him, where he was waiting silently for the proper word from her. In spite of her horrible trembling, she turned to him contritely with the sincerest repentance; bending her head and stretching out her hands to him. With a very white face, she exclaimed in unspeakable humility—

“Emilio, I ask your pardon.”

If her knees were not bent nor the body prostrated, the soul was prostrated, waiting for the complete pardon, for the word that absolves, the act that cancels, the gesture that redeems. The woman listened humbly without looking at him.

“I pardon you, Maria,” said the man.

Maria raised her eyes and fixed them on Emilio Guasco, and waited; but he did not look at her, neither did he move. An immense silence, an enormous distance seemed to have come between the man and the woman.

After having helped her into a soft white silk robe and laced her shoes, Chiara, the faithful maid, looked at Donna Maria, expecting orders. It was late, past eleven, and as they had been travelling weariness was overwhelming both. After thinking for an instant, Maria said to Chiara—

“Braid my hair.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Chiara, with the slightest movement of surprise. Chiara had forgotten the old custom. Formerly, when she had entered the service of Donna Maria Guasco Simonetti about six months after her marriage, every evening, whether her young mistress went out or not, sometimes even after a theatre or a ball, Chiara had to undo the great thick mass of chestnut hair, taking out the combs and pins, and having combed the magnificent tresses with an almost caressing movement of the brush and comb, she had to gather them into a long plait, tieing it at the end with a white silk ribbon, while a similar ribbon went round the head in a bow on top. This gave Maria an exceedingly young, almost girlish appearance. When Maria had fled from Casa Guasco with Marco Fiore, and had cloistered her life in the little villa at Santa Maria Maggiore, where Chiara followed her in blind devotion and obedience, the tresses were no longer unloosed by the girl’s expert hands and bound in a plait. Such a fashion perhaps no longer pleased Donna Maria, as she remembered the house she had left, or more likely it did not please her lover, whose delight it was to plunge his fingers and face in the soft and odorous waves of her hair.

“Make me a plait like you used to, Chiara,” Maria murmured, with her eyes closed.

With a slight tinkle the small combs and pins fell on the crystal-covered toilette table, and that well-known sound seemed to strike the two women as if the old life had begun again. When she had finished, Chiara searched for a moment among the silver-topped vials and ivory boxes.

“Here is the ribbon,” she said softly.

The white ribbon was there, as if Chiara had left it the evening before and four years had not passed, or as if a mysterious hand had placed the things there as in former times, so that the singular resurrection should seem like a continuation of life. In every particular Maria found this secret care that every line and tint should produce the quiet and persuasive impression of an existence which had had no interruptions, which was pursuing its development without a break, so that to-day was like yesterday, like a year ago or seven years ago, and to-morrow and the day after like yesterday and to-day. Not only had none of the old furniture been moved, not only had the carpets, portiÈres and curtains preserved their usual aspect, but they had not even grown old. Not only did the hundred well-known and familiar objects attract the glance with the sympathetic fidelity of inanimate objects, but they gave more than ever the sense of unelapsed time, of objects viewed no later than yesterday, and to-day found again sympathetically in their place. Maria found again a little antique clock on a small table near her bed, with the hours marked in blue figures, which she had left on her departure and missed. It was ticking lightly and pointed to half-past eleven, as if it had never ceased to go in all the time that had passed. In some vases there were large bunches of grass, and green leaves without a flower, such as she always liked to have in her bedroom, seeking out the grasses most peculiar and delicate in form, and the leaves the most varied in colour and marking. Formerly she did not care for the perfume of flowers in her bedroom, fearing its insidious poison; but the green of gardens and meadows, of fields and mountains, the healthy green of leaves and grasses pleased her simple open spirit, her sane and beautiful youth. The ink was fresh in the pen on the writing-table, just as if her last letter had been written an instant ago, and near by was a book in a dark-green binding, a book unfinished with the marker in its place—Salammbo, of Gustave Flaubert.

Thus Donna Maria had the feeling of the abolition of time.

“Does Your Excellency want anything else?” asked Chiara, mechanically uttering the words of formerly which had returned to her memory.

“Nothing, Chiara; good-night.”

In greeting her maid Maria’s voice trembled with tenderness. For seven years she had given all her services to Maria, and little by little had become a friendly and devoted shadow, almost as if she no longer existed for her own personality. In every peculiar contingency of these seven years, without speaking, without murmuring, even without judging or thinking, Chiara had continued to serve and obey—the shadow of Donna Maria.

On this day, profound with diverse and contrary sentiments, she returned with her mistress silently and humbly, like her with a contrite heart, to the house from which they had fled together, from which they had been absent so long, and just as Donna Maria strangely began her life again where it had been interrupted, and time and her deeds had seemed abolished, so the poor little shadow of a Chiara returned to that which had been formerly, naturally and tacitly like a faithful shadow.

IV

When Chiara had disappeared and Donna Maria’s eyes had followed her with a little thrill of affection and gratitude for so much altruism in a service requiring such tact, she settled herself in an arm-chair as of yore. She resumed the novel on Carthage where she had left off, removed the marker methodically from the open page, and fixed her eyes on the printed letters, waiting for Emilio, her husband, to come as he used to.

“He will come now,” thought Maria, as her eyes read about the curious refinements of the attiring of Salammbo, as she sets off for the field of the rebels to seize from Matho the veil of Tanith, which he had stolen.

However, her reading was but short. There arose in her soul a dull agitation, which became stronger there where for a moment it had been lulled, as it seemed to her that nothing had happened, and that her life had had no break in its continuity; so much so that she awoke from the calm and peaceful surroundings, speaking of an uninterrupted serenity from which she had obtained a lingering caress of contentment, as in a dream, only to be confronted with a reality. How could she read? Salammbo slid from her knees to the carpet. She rose to her feet, crossed the large room, approached the closed door and listened if Emilio were coming towards her, as formerly, even if differently to formerly so long as he came to that room which had been theirs for years; that she may confront his eyes, that their glances may unite and melt together, that she may seize his hand and clasp it with hers, that she may remember the gentle way he used to open his arms and close her tenderly to his bosom.

“I will weep on his bosom,” she said to herself, “he will weep with me; nothing is better than weeping when we have to pardon and forget, when we have been pardoned and are invoking forgetfulness.”

However, the silence in Casa Guasco was supreme, and Donna Maria heard no step approaching. The boudoir, which preceded her room, was in half-darkness, lit by a single lamp. On the other side was her husband’s study, where they had met an hour ago, and where he had remained silent without following her. The study door was closed. No noise reached from there.

“He is working, perhaps,” she thought. Then suddenly a contradiction arose. “Working? At what? At this hour?”

Like a spectre Maria re-entered her room, praying for calm against the heavy disturbance which was again oppressing her. She sat at her desk, and pressing her burning forehead in her cool hands, endeavoured to subdue herself, to conquer herself.

Again the sentiment of humility, with which she had mortified her proud heart in the months of solitude and repentance which she had passed at Florence, inundated her soul with pity, with affection, and with loving charity. She thought of the state of Emilio’s heart, on that day on which he had accomplished such a noble and tender deed, pardoning a long and atrocious offence, in which he had given a beautiful proof of magnanimity, receiving again into his home the traitress, the truant, who had broken her sacred promises and vows. She thought of how he must have suffered for four eternal years in the same land, in the same society, having no comfort of any kind, having no children and in a deserted house, and of how he must have cursed his destiny and her name.

She thought of what the pardon he had offered her must have cost him in intense moral pain, and in powerful moral sacrifice, which she had only accepted when it was convenient for her to accept it.

Again, the figure of her husband opposed to her egoism, opposed to her love folly, opposed to the delirium of her own passion, seemed to grow large with goodness, and she felt herself mean and unworthy before him. She felt the need of seeing him, of telling him of her gratitude and her admiration, since he alone possessed every virtue and energy of well-doing, while she was a fragile and fallen creature. Thus in the silence, in her solitude, she evoked the presence of her husband. She invoked that presence, in order that she might tell him how a whole life of devotion would compensate for his heroic pardon.

With fixed eyes Maria stood at the door, all ardour, to see it open after the invocation. Her contracted face spoke of a heavy anguish, her sinuous body in its flowing white gown was alert and rigid with waiting. From not seeing her husband appear, as she had thought, hoped, and desired, she suffered the more from the profound silence of the house, from the desert which the house seemed to have become, from that mortal solitude, but especially from her mortal delusion. She suffered acutely. And it was intolerance of such torturing waiting, in all its moments of repression, that exasperated her; she wished through her imperious will to force the destiny of that long night to change.

“I will go and seek him,” she said to herself. Once having decided she crossed the boudoir, reached the door of the study, where she supposed her husband was closeted, and stooped to knock, even to open it violently. But her raised hand did not obey the movement suggested by her will. Quite apart, her feverish and convulsed brain had inspired her with a shock, with an immense fear.

“Suppose he were to think.... Suppose he were to think....” she murmured to herself almost deliriously.

With scarcely perceptible motion, taking every care not to make the slightest noise, holding her breath, she turned back, palpitating and trembling, yet striving to restrain the palpitation and the trembling. At last she reached her room.

Throwing herself on the bed she hid her face in the pillow, even stopping her mouth with it, so that her sobs of bitterness, of fear, and terror may not be heard. Hers was all the shame of a woman, who suddenly was fated to tell herself the hard and cruel truth that she was still a young and beautiful woman, that the man she had sought was still young and her husband as well, that, although the night was late, he who loved her surely, since only he who loves pardons, had not come to look for her dressed as she was as if for a love tryst; but that she had been on the point of knocking at his door, as if not to beg merely a colloquy of sadness, of repentance, of tears—not a colloquy of two bruised souls which sought spiritual healing for their wounds—but a colloquy of love.

“No, no, no,” she kept on saying, scarcely breathing, with her mouth against the fine linen of the pillow, fighting against the unjust accusation of her conscience.

Unjust! She felt herself perfectly pure from such a transgression, one of those miserable and mean transgressions of the inner feminine life which lower and corrupt a woman even to despising herself. Maria had only had, as she said, one love and one lover only, Marco Fiore, had only lived with a complete and intense passion for the three years of separation from Casa Guasco, and at once, but for ever, her heart and her senses had become a heap of ashes. As she had never wished to divide her soul and her person between Emilio Guasco and Marco Fiore at the time of the height of her amorous delirium, as she had forgotten everything, thrown everything aside to belong to one only, and had burnt in a single flame all that life had conceded her of love for Marco Fiore, so she, on returning home, to live again with her husband, had not for a moment thought that her person ought to be offered and given again as a sensible and tangible pledge, as a holocaust to the new conjugal existence. The idea that her husband hearing her knock at that door, hearing the handle creak, and seeing her appear in her soft garment, with her look of former times, late at night when he had not sought her; the idea that he might have believed it a sensual offering, had aroused in her a tempestuous crisis of shuddering, of shame, and of fear. Ah, how the lover was finished, was dead in Maria Guasco, dead with a love which is measured and short, as short as human existence, far, far shorter than all short affairs of which life is composed and in which man, alas, desires to place his eternity! Love was over, the lover was dead, and Maria Guasco felt every glory of the senses extinguished within her. If her soul and fibres at Venice and Rome had proved the immeasurable and inconsolable sorrow of her own sentimental and sensual impotence for her delightful lover, never more could she have love and a lover—not even her husband, Emilio Guasco.

“God has nullified and calmed me,” she thought, soothing the anguish of her spirit little by little. “I can be faithful to the past since I have been touched by death, and I have entered into an extreme quiet.”

But the man who was breathing, moving, living his unknown but powerful life in a room not far from Maria’s, the man who was the first to clasp her, his legitimate spouse, who had kept for her, even during the betrayal, even during the abandonment, all his rights as a husband; the man of whom Maria knew only this absolute and irrefutable right, was he, too, finished with love and dead to the senses?

Had the years which were passed withdrawn him from the inebriating flatteries of passion? Had they withdrawn him from all the burning impulses of life in its fulness? Was he dead? And if he was not, if he was alive, of what was he thinking, what was he desiring, what was he wishing, what could he wish of Maria at the present moment, now so late?

“He used to love me—he did love me,” she said to herself, lifting herself from her pillow, absorbed in the intensity of her thoughts.

And even now Emilio ought to love her. A feminine instinct told the thoughtful woman this; a precise and clear presentiment repeated it to her, and every act in daily reality had confirmed it for her, and his very magnanimity bore testimony to it.

“Only he loves who pardons,” she thought, in a secret torture which kept penetrating her spirit. The singular torture, that is, of all those who do not love, who are unable to love, who could break their hearts, but who could not place love there, and who, instead, are loved with tenderness and enthusiasm; the torture, that is, which life inflicts on thousands and thousands of miserable men and women, inept to love, who must endure the love of another, endure it coldly, and measure all its greatness without participating in it, and, in fact, feel all its weight, all its annoyance, and all its execration!—an ineffable torture indeed, which up to a certain point sent a rush of fear through Maria’s excited and sensible fibres. Rising to her feet and gazing with scared eyes at the door, she feared lest Emilio should appear there, should come to her enamoured as of yore, even more enamoured, and burning with precipitous desire. Maria in all that spiritual fever which flowed through her acutest feelings, her sharpest sensations, retired to the door of her room and wrung her hands in desperation, not knowing where to fly from such a danger. And just as she had evoked and invoked that presence of a good and honourable man which she had rendered so unhappy, that presence from which she had desired to hear the voice repeat to her the words of pardon, to let herself pronounce afresh those words of humility and contrition, so that presence—not one of a brother, not one of a friend, not of a suffering soul to be consoled and healed—that presence of a man, of a husband, strong in his love, strong in his instincts, strong in his right, seemed to her an abyss of abjection, of perdition, into which she would have fallen with all her pride and all her womanly dignity.

“What shall I do; whatever shall I do?” she exclaimed, as if invoking succour.

But the silence of Casa Guasco was so profound and absolute! Conquering her terror, Maria recrossed the room and mechanically, with the rigid movements of one who obeys her will rather than dispute with it, she left the boudoir and turned the knob of the electric light. The shadow increased in the brightly lit room, and all fell into obscurity. Entering her own room she closed the door without making any noise, but dared not turn the key. Clothed as she was, leaving the lamp lit, she threw herself on the bed, commanding all her exhausted forces to arouse her, all her tired fibres not to abandon her, so much did she fear to fall asleep since some one could enter her room, since she had not had the courage to shut herself in.

Two or three times, in the torpor by which her mind and limbs were conquered, she tossed about and then sat up in bed, only to fall again without having heard or seen anything. Then a deep sleep fell upon her.

V

On entering the room at the usual hour, Chiara found her mistress asleep and dressed on the bed with the electric light on, while outside the sun was high. She turned out the light quietly, half opened the shutters, and re-arranged the scattered things, knowing that her mistress would be awakened. Turning round Chiara saw that Maria’s eyes were open and that she was very pale; she wished her good-morning, and received a feeble reply. Maria closed her eyes again and buried her head in the pillow, as if she had need of escaping the spectacle of the living things around her. A torpor held her on the rumpled bed, a desire to know, to hear, to see nothing. The young maid entered and left two or three times with her rhythmical and noiseless step, till at last Maria raised her head, and asked—

“Is it late?”

“Almost nine. Shall I prepare the bath?”

“Later on,” she replied in a weak voice.

Chiara looked at her with such tender pity in her eyes that Maria gave her a reassuring nod.

“It is nothing. I am all right.” And at the same time she made a questioning movement which the loving soul understood—

“The master has gone out.”

“Gone out; where?”

“On business to Velletri. He returns this evening.”

“When did he go?”

“This morning at seven. Gaspare, the valet, called him very early.”

“But where did he sleep?” asked Maria, after a little hesitation.

“In his new room, Excellency.”

“His new room?”

“Over there, behind the billiard-room.”

There was a silence between the two women.

“How long has your master occupied this room?”

“For some time,” said the girl, lowering her eyes.

“Tell me how long, Chiara,” insisted Maria.

“Since Your Excellency left.”

“Ah!” replied Donna Maria without further observation, letting her head fall on the pillow. Chiara stood waiting for orders.

“Are there any letters for me?” resumed Maria in a feeble voice.

“No, Excellency.”

“Has your master left a note for me?”

“Nothing, Excellency. It seems, though, that he has been awake all the night.”

“Who told you that?”

“Gaspare.”

“Ah!”

Not another word passed between the two women.

Beginning her first day after the pardon, Maria read in her mind these clear and indelible words: “He has pardoned me, but he avoids me; he has pardoned me, but he hates me; he has pardoned me, but he despises me.” And all sense of life was lost within her.

VI

Vittoria Fiore was alone in her room at the HÔtel de la Paix, dressed ready to go out. She went to and fro from the balcony to the door, waiting for her husband who was nearly an hour late, and every time she withdrew from the balcony overlooking the white Lungarno and the river, and went towards the door to peep into the corridor, to see if Marco were coming, a sorrowful impatience contracted her youthful figure. Passing before a large mirror, two or three times she threw a rapid glance at herself, then shook her head sadly. On the face of the newly made bride there was not shining that smile of gentle delight, of mutual love which trusts in a long future of serene joy. She was thoughtful, agitated, and sometimes completely tormented, as if her inmost soul could find no peace.

But Marco did not return. Where was he then? For an instant the spasm of impatience was so strong that her pale face became livid, and she placed her hand to her heart, as if she felt it stopping. A step sounded in the corridor. In an instant the lines of her face composed themselves, a light wave of blood mounted to her cheeks. The expression of her face became so tranquil and serene that it would have deceived the most expert eye. To complete the deception she pretended to be buttoning her glove.

Marco entered with a great bunch of white lilies and red velvety roses, which shed their delicate fragrance in the room.

“I had to wait a little, Vittoria,” he said; “but in compensation I have brought you these flowers.”

“I have waited a little, but I didn’t notice it,” she replied untruthfully.

“I had something to do,” he added vaguely, without offering further information; “don’t you like the flowers?”

“Yes, I like them,” she replied quickly, without any enthusiasm. “Thank you, Marco, they are beautiful flowers.” And she immersed her face in them.

He had thrown himself into a chair as if tired from a long walk or fastidiousness, as if he had forgotten that he had come to take her out. Vittoria herself, who had remained standing near the table, where she had placed the flowers, now sat down and placed her purse, and parasol there.

“What magnificent flowers Florence has,” added Marco, with an abstracted smile, “every time I return here I am seized with a madness to have such a lot of them, in fact, all if it were possible in my arms and my room.”

“You have been several times to Florence?” she asked coldly, almost imperiously.

“Yes,” he replied, without heeding either the question or its tone; “not all understand this country, and so not all can love it. It is a country of love and poesy,” he ended in saying, almost to himself, with a far-away expression of recollection.

Silent and serene Vittoria seemed to have heard nothing, and, as Marco was not getting up from his seat, nor expressing a wish to go out, she drew off her gloves slowly, stretched them one after the other, and placed them on the table beside the purse and the parasol.

“You have never seen it in the evening and at night, Vittoria, but I assure you it is a dreamland. Shall we go this evening, would you like to?”

“We will go,” she replied tranquilly, slightly distractedly, while she raised her long white hands to draw the two large pearl-headed pins from her hat.

“We must go if the evening is beautiful,” he continued, absorbed in his plan. “Is there a moon, Vittoria?”

“Yes, I think so,” she replied, lifting the flowers of her hat with her white fingers, and not appearing to give much attention to her husband’s discourse.

“Very well, if there is a moon, and it rises late, we must go to the Loggia di Orcagna. Do you remember you saw the Loggia di Orcagna yesterday?”

“Yes, I saw it yesterday,” she replied, folding her white veil accurately.

“At that hour there are no people in the streets of Florence, and it is a city recollected and a little melancholy. Then we must sit on the steps of the Loggia di Orcagna, beneath the statue of Judith, holding in her hand the head of Holofernes, and look around the Piazza della Signoria, and all the visions come to him who knows how to dream.”

“What visions? What dreams?” she demanded coldly, playing with the charms on her gold chain.

Marco looked at her, marvelling a little.

“Do you never dream, little Vittoria?” he asked, with some irony.

“Never,” she replied drily.

“Not even of me when I am not there?” and the tone became still more ironical.

“When you are not there I wait for you; that is all,” she murmured, without further observation.

“That is not a great deal; but still it doesn’t matter!” and he broke into a laugh.

She lowered her eyelids, as she always did to hide the trouble of her eyes, and closed her lips to repress her words; but these actions were so imperceptible that the man hardly ever noticed them.

“Aren’t you going to put your flowers in water? don’t you like them?”

“I am just going to,” she replied.

Then very slowly she took the flowers and untied them, almost without looking at them, separating them on the table with a mechanical working of the hands.

“It is eleven,” he said, looking at his watch. “I should like to lie down a little; I am so tired. It is the spring perhaps.”

“Go and sleep; you have an hour and a half before lunch,” Vittoria replied, without turning.

“Aren’t you tired?”

“No, I haven’t been out.”

“That is true. Doesn’t the spring tire you?”

“No.”

“I feel exhausted,” he added vaguely, “I am going to sleep. What are you going to do?”

“I am going to write home.”

“Brava! Write for me too; tell them everything, little Vittoria.”

“You haven’t written to any one, Marco,” she observed.

“I am a poor letter-writer, little Vittoria.”

“Have you always been?” and the question seemed conventional and polite.

“Not always,” he replied, falling into the trap; “au revoir, Vittoria; occupy yourself with the flowers, and this evening we will go under the Loggia di Orcagna.”

He disappeared into the other room. For several minutes she continued to gather together the branches of odorous lilies and fragrant roses. Then she went on tip-toe to the bedroom door, looked in, and listened. Marco was asleep, and his face was wasted with weariness. Then she returned to the table, threw herself into a chair, and buried her face in her hands, completely unstrung.

“O my God! my God!” she cried, through her clenched teeth, so as not to be heard. But the fresh flowers, the lilies and rich red roses, which were beneath her face and hands, repelled her as something horrid, fell to the ground, and lay there while she sobbed and invoked Heaven desperately in a stifled voice.

VII

“Decide, little Vittoria,” said Marco, spreading a small map on the marble table, “you must decide. Here we are in Milan; we have seen the Cathedral, the Brera Gallery, and the Sforza Castle. There is nothing else to see; decide.”

“I decide to leave because you don’t wish to remain,” Vittoria replied, with her usual reserve.

“But by which route shall we go to Paris? Right through from here by the Gothard? Or shall we step off at Turin and go by Mont Cenis? Look at the map carefully and decide.”

Ever since they had started on their travels, he had kept up this amiable and slightly teasing tone, that of a travelling companion, a little bored, who has seen everything, but is good-natured enough to lend himself as the cicerone of a tyro. All his concern and care was protecting. He had the expression of a person who spends for the diversion and happiness of another without participating himself in the diversion or the happiness. It was impossible to conceal this expression, and Vittoria, with her common-sense, had understood his peculiar behaviour. Of Florence, Pisa, Siena, Bologna, nothing mattered to Marco Fiore, nor did it concern him to be in one hotel more than another, nor did it matter to him whether he left by this or that train-de-luxe—but that his little Vittoria should see and appreciate everything, should pass a happy day without being too tired, that all the Palace Hotels should give her hospitality, and that all the wagon-lits should make the journey less heavy and tiresome for her, was his care and occupation. Certainly he was indifferent to all the sights and changes, to the arrivals and departures, like one who has seen everything and could see nothing more.

“Decide, then, Vittoria, for the Gothard or the Cenis?”

Was he not treating her like a child, of whom he was the affectionate tutor? Vittoria looked at the map without the least understanding it, and, raising her eyes, said to him—

“You, Marco, by which route would you go?”

“Oh, I?” he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders, “I have been so often one way or the other.”

“Ah,” she said, “then it is quite indifferent to you.”

“To me, yes; though the Gothard route is the more beautiful.”

“Let us take the other then,” she added.

“Would you always be a spirit of contradiction, Vittorietta? Why do you prefer the less beautiful?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

He frowned. Sometimes her cold replies surprised him, freezing all the gentle concern he had in seeing her content and happy. When that pleasant face grew fixed and the lips closed, she seemed like a little unopened flower which no ray of the sun could open, and he experienced a sense of delusion and melancholy. The control he exerted over himself was very great. To be so abundantly affectionate he required so much moral and sentimental effort, and she understood nothing of it. With a word or a gesture she cut off all his tender good-will.

But to accomplish his sentimental existence of a mission, of a duty which should fill the immense empty place of his dead love, was not Marco bound to Vittoria’s good and happiness? Was it not his concern, little by little, by daily sympathy and affection, by loving tenderness, to heal the heart wounded by a long and cruel abandonment and betrayal? Should he not make her forget all she had suffered for him? And if that jealous and offended soul was not completely reassured, if that disdainful soul martyred by waiting did not expand and tremble with joy, she was right perhaps. He must be patient and sweet with her, as with an invalid who has scarcely reached convalescence, and has still the horror of the disease in the mind.

“Now, little Vittoria, melt all the ice which surrounds your soul, have a desire and a will, my lady,” he resumed, in the half-mocking, half-affectionate tone he liked to take with her. The poor cold soul who only felt the affection of courteous words and the brilliant glance of the clear eyes, asked—

“What do you wish, then, Marco?”

“That you express an idea, expound a plan for the continuance of our journey. Don’t you know; can’t you decide? I will help you, little Vittoria. Do you wish to go to Paris?”

“Yes.”

“At once?”

“This very evening.”

“Very good; this evening, then, by the Cenis. You won’t see the best part of the journey, but that doesn’t matter. How long would you like to stay in Paris?”

“As long as seems necessary to you,” she replied, with a little uncertain smile.

“Well, ten days or a fortnight. To which hotel would you like to go?”

She started at this question, and lowered her eyes.

“Is it all the same to you perhaps? If it is——”

“It isn’t all the same to me,” she murmured, with an evident control of her will. “I should like to go to a new hotel where you have never been.”

Her face grew pale for having once dared to tell her secret thought; then she blushed, and tears came to her eyes.

“If it is only that,” said Marco slowly, moved, “if it is only that, it is easy. We will go to the ElysÈe Palace.”

“Thanks,” she replied, “thanks.”

She dared not press his hand because they were in the large hall of the HÔtel Milan, among a crowd of travellers coming and going, where every one gave a glance to the handsome couple, above all to the blonde, with her pale complexion and attractive beauty.

“And at Paris, what life do you intend to lead, Vittorietta?”

“Ah, that I don’t know,” she added serenely; “I have always heard from my childhood of this fascinating and terrible place; but no one ever told me anything exactly about it. You know they leave us girls very ignorant in Rome, and you must find me so stupid sometimes, Marco.”

“Well, in a few sentences I am going to tell how to live in two ways in Paris for ten days or a fortnight. You know that we have relations and friends there, and quite well that our marriage has been announced in the Figaro and Gaulois, in fact that every one knows that we are coming to Paris. Bear in mind the gravity of what I am telling you, Vittoria,” he interrupted in emphatic tones.

“I understand deeply,” she replied smilingly, backing him up.

“There is more. At Paris there is my Great Aunt, the Aunt of all the Fiore, the Great Aunt of the family, whom we have respected and venerated ever since we were born, the Duchess of Altomonte, the legitimist, who has been exiled from Italy for forty years; a femme terrible, with whom they used to frighten us at night, when we were small and could not sleep.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Vittoria, smiling.

“Very well, dear Vittoria, also flower of flowers, as the poet of Spello said at our wedding, there is the first method of life at Paris. It is that of arriving officially, of making a request to the Duchess of Altomonte to be permitted to kiss her hand, if not her foot; to warn all the other minor aunts, cousins, and friends; to accept all the invitations to lunch, dinner and tea, to the theatre and to supper; every day to have three luncheons and two dinners, three theatres and two suppers; to have no more peace or liberty, not to be able to speak to each other for a minute, falling asleep at night, and the next minute it is morning with the oppression of all the worldly fatigues of the day.

“Naturally you will put on all your best dresses, for the theatre, for the garden party, or a ball, all your jewels en grande toilette, and the little time which will remain at your disposal you will use to change your costume, your hat, or your gloves—five times a day.”

“Does all that seem amusing to you?” she asked expressionlessly.

“Does it seem amusing to you?”

“Tell me the other way, Marco, to enable me to judge.”

“To enable you to choose, dear Minerva, the other way is: to arrive and remain perfectly incognito; to let the proud and ferocious Duchess of Altomonte go, let all the relations and friends go; not to place, and prevent it from being placed, any notice of our arrival in the papers; to live in perfect obscurity and liberty, only going where we wish, only frequenting the places where we wish to amuse ourselves freely, going for excursions in the neighbourhood of Paris, especially those of beauty, poetry, and freshness, from Fontainebleau to Saint Germain, from Chantilly to Enghien—true idylls, Vittoria. Otherwise than the Imperial salon, dry and hard as the Duchess of Altomonte, who has been infesting it for the last forty years! In fact a life gay and sympathetic, especially free, without a single boring or heavy duty.”

Vittoria lowered her eyes wrapped in thought, then she asked—

“I suppose you have always, or nearly always, visited Paris in the second way?”

“Not nearly always—always.”

“Well then, Marco,” she replied coldly and drily, “I choose the first way. It seems more proper to me.”

“You are right, Minerva; let it be so!” he exclaimed, even more coldly.

VIII

Seated in an arm-chair of the most upright Empire style, a carved curial chair of darkest mahogany, with bronze bosses and ornaments, cushioned in a myrtle pattern, Vittoria sat upright before her Great Aunt and kept respectful silence. The bride in this third and last visit to the Duchess of Altomonte, a visit of thanks and farewell, wore a rich dress of pleated silver, gay with handsome embroidery; in her little ears she wore solitaires, a large hat with a silver-grey feather on her blond tresses, and amid the lace of her corsage an antique necklace of diamonds and emeralds. She was dressed so luxuriously because, on the first visit made to the proud and austere Bourbon grande dame, the Duchess had suddenly observed to her nephew that his wife was dressed too humbly, and not suitably to her position and the visit she had come to make.

“Vittoria is very simple in her toilette,” Marco had replied philosophically.

“It is one of the mistakes of society in modern times, this affectation of simplicity,” the Duchess had replied immediately.

So at the state dinner, which the Duchess had given to the young couple, to which had been asked all the old gentlemen and ladies who had remained faithful to the King of the Two Sicilies, and had followed him in exile to Paris, Vittoria had not only put on her most expensive evening dress, but wore in her hair the diadem given her by her mother-in-law, Donna Arduina, and round her neck a necklace, a gift from Marco.

Under the weight of the glittering jewels, in that respectable but melancholy society, the pretty bride had not pronounced a single word.

Now, a day before their departure, she had come to present her compliments to her Great Aunt, and intimidated by her surroundings, but especially by the Duchess of Altomonte, Vittoria sat on her Empire chair, with closed mouth and drooping eyes waiting for her great new relation to condescend a word and speak to her.

The Duchess of Altomonte, Donna Guilia de’ Masi, born of the family of Castropignano, had completed eighty years. Her abundant hair, which she preserved to that age, was of the finest shining white, and dressed in old-fashioned style, framing a face which in youth and maturity must have reflected a majestic and imperious beauty. Of the past it was true there remained only an expression of power in the still bright eyes, and the proud smile, wonderful in its energy at that age. Certainly the shoulders were bent and the step a little slow, but, even in this decadence of years and the signs of dissolution, the Duchess had known how to impress and be imposing. The great Empire chair, where she liked to sit for hours together, with a big embroidered cushion in the fashion of the period beneath her feet shod in black velvet, resembled a throne, and the very black ebony stick with the curved silver handle, on which she leaned her tottering steps, resembled a sceptre. Her whole person gave a sense of immense respect, of silent devotion, of a past of honour and fidelity to all promises and oaths, of a past of lofty sacrifice accomplished in silence without a request for compensation, of a life entirely rigid and firm, where perhaps there was wanting a sense of kindness and indulgence, but where all the other virtues had triumphed.

The Duchess had little by little seen her kindred disappear, some carried away by death, others by destiny, some far away returning now and again, some far away for ever. Her legitimate King was dead, buried in a lonely church in a lonely part of Austria, and every year she went to visit her Queen, a Queen full of sorrow supported with a most brave and admirable mind. The interview between them was usually short, sad, and austere. So everything of the past and present added grandeur to the figure of Guilia de’ Masi, Duchess of Altomonte.

“Marco!” she cried, in a still clear voice, in which there was always a tone of command.

“Yes, aunt,” he replied at once.

“Haven’t you something to see about for your departure? Go and see to it; leave me your wife and return for her.”

Without saying a word he bowed in obedience, and kissed the Duchess’s hand covered with large emerald and topaz rings. He kissed, too, lightly Vittoria’s little gloved hand, who shot him a beseeching glance secretly, and left.

“My daughter,” said the Duchess coldly, playing with her gold watch-chain, “I wanted to speak to you about something alone, so I sent Marco away.”

Without replying Vittoria Fiore kept her eyes fixed on the majestic lady, waiting for her words, not without secret emotion.

“I am very pleased that you have married my nephew, Marco Fiore. Even when your engagement was announced three or four years ago I approved, because I had heard much good of you and your virtues. The Fiore are certainly a greater house than your own, and your dowry hasn’t been so much; but that doesn’t matter. In marrying you Marco has turned his back on a past of folly, and has begun a new life.”

A profound expression of suffering was depicted on the bride’s face, but she kept silent.

“By the way, don’t delude yourself: you haven’t caused this miracle,” continued the imperious lady icily, “he was bound to have enough of the other. You will know later on how men tire of their most impassioned loves. Maria—er—Guasco—I think I am right—was a most beautiful and fascinating woman, and Marco raved about her. He is cured now.”

And her inquisitorial eyes, which had read into a thousand faces and a thousand souls and hearts, read on Vittoria’s face the deep, tormenting and incurable doubt. The old lady raised her eyebrows slightly, on discovering this hidden and torturing truth, and shook her head.

“You don’t believe in this recovery? You are torturing yourself with the fear of the past, my daughter? Your first matrimonial joys have been poisoned by it?”

Seeing that she was understood even to the innermost recess of her soul, Vittoria relaxed her face, and closed her eyes, as if about to faint.

“Well, well,” the Duchess said, in a stronger and harder voice, “why are you ashamed to confess your sufferings to me? Are you perchance a timid person? Have you, maybe, a jealous and reserved heart?”

“Yes, yes,” Vittoria murmured, with a sigh.

“Then you are preparing a sad existence for yourself. Timid characters and reserved and jealous hearts are destined to languish in pain and perish in suffering without the world being aware of it. Make a brave effort over yourself, conquer yourself, and tell your thoughts if they are worthy of being heard and understood; pour forth your feeling if it has truth in it.”

The great lady acquired an even more solemn aspect, and seemed the expression of virtue and nobility of life.

“Ah, I can’t, I can’t!” exclaimed Vittoria, placing her handkerchief to her mouth to repress herself.

“Why can’t you?”

“Because I love him,” she proclaimed.

“He loves you too, I suppose,” replied the Duchess, becoming glacial again.

What uncertain and sorrowful eyes Vittoria raised!

“You think he doesn’t love you?” the Duchess insisted.

The bride humbly and weakly replied, opening her arms—

“I don’t know; I don’t know.”

“You deceive yourself,” resumed the great lady slowly, “Marco is fond of you.”

A great disillusion showed itself on Vittoria’s face, a disillusion mixed with fear and sadness.

“Isn’t it enough for you, my daughter, that he is fond of you? What do you want more? What are you desiring? What are you seeking?”

“Oh, aunt, aunt,” she ventured to cry in the sudden familiarity of suffering, “I want him to love me, to love me with ardour and passion.”

“As the other, in fact.”

“As the other,” the unhappy woman ventured to cry.

“That is impossible,” stated the Duchess.

“Impossible, impossible?” and she placed her two little hands together convulsively.

“It is so. Marco can’t have for you, and you can’t ask it of him, a true and intense passion.”

“But why? But why? Am I not young? Am I not beautiful? Am I not his? Don’t I adore him?”

“All that is of no avail. Learn, my daughter, that one doesn’t have two passions one after the other, that there are entire existences which scarcely arrive at feeling one, that there are other existences, many others, which never feel one, not even the pretence of passion, not even its shadow. Passion is an exceptional thing, it is outside life.”

Terrified and pale the wretched bride listened to the voice which seemed that of her destiny, a grave voice and free from any interest which was not true, a voice which seemed cruel, but whose cruelty contained a lofty common-sense.

“For that matter don’t complain. You will know later on, when you are calm and wise, how rarely a man marries with passion in his heart and feelings for his bride. Men marry nearly always to be quiet, for security from all amorous tempests. Hasn’t Marco done this? I add, to reassure you, that in the rare cases in which marriage has taken place in obedience to passion it has always ended in unhappiness.”

Vittoria listened nervelessly.

“Thus God wills it,” the Duchess pronounced with a voice more profound and touching. “Christian marriage, which faith and the Church consecrate for life and death, ought not, and can not, serve for the satisfaction of the voracious flame of our senses. And if it be so it is a state of sin. We don’t marry, Vittoria, for the intoxication of a short time. It isn’t for this that the Lord calls us and chooses us in marriage blessed by Himself. If we reduce this sacrament to a profane pleasure, we violate a divine law.”

“It is horrible, it is horrible,” cried Vittoria, as if she felt herself suffocated.

“It isn’t so horrible,” cried the Duchess. “Be more Christian than woman in matrimony and more woman than sweetheart. Don’t commit the ugly sin and grave mistake of being your husband’s mistress! Vittoria, Vittoria, don’t degrade yourself in wishing to be like the other! After a little you would be betrayed and despised. Thousands of women have tried to be their husband’s mistresses, falling into a sentimental trap, and other thousands will try it after you, and all, my daughter, all have had, and will have, the same fate—they will be betrayed and despised.”

“But has the world always been so? Will it always be so? But you, you, my aunt,” Vittoria ventured to cry, “weren’t you ardently loved by your husband? You who shone with every virtue, rich, of a great family. Didn’t you love your husband, the Duke of Altomonte, ardently? That is what is known; tell me if it is true.”

The Duchess of Altomonte moved her hand vaguely and slowly, and for the first time a slight smile appeared on her lips.

“All that is so long, long ago!” and emotion rendered her dominating voice less firm, “from the day on which he knew me till that of his death, the Duke of Altomonte had a peaceful and equal tenderness for me, a strong moral sympathy, a tranquil and secure attachment.”

“Nothing more? Nothing more?”

“It was enough for me. I was quite content, and I thanked God for it every day, and even now it still forms the sweetest and pleasantest recollection of my life, now too long.”

“And you, and you, how did you love him?”

“As a Christian, Vittoria. I loved him with respect, devotion, and fidelity.”

“Nothing more? Nothing more?”

“Nothing more.”

“Did it satisfy your husband?”

“He never asked anything else from me. I always saw him serene; he died peacefully with his hand in mine.”

The blond bride, with her beautiful pale face, was silent for a moment, then she raised her eyes resolutely and desperately.

“I shall never have the strength for this renunciation—never, never.”

“Ask for strength, and you will have it.”

“Who will give it to me?”

“Pray, and you will have it.”

“Bless me, aunt,” murmured the unhappy woman, kneeling before the venerable figure and bowing her head.

The face of the Duchess seemed to shine with purest light. She touched Vittoria’s forehead lightly with her hand, and raising her eyes to Heaven, “Bless, O Lord, this my daughter. Give her strength, and she shall have peace.”

Vittoria arose, but neither the prayer nor the blessing had given consolation to her anguish.

IX

“Modane! Modane!” was cried from all sides as the train-de-luxe, arriving from Paris, rumbled heavily into the station.

“At last we re-enter our fatherland,” cried Marco Fiore, with a sigh of relief; and, without waiting for a reply from Vittoria, he placed his grey travelling cap on his head and left the compartment.

“Ought I to come too?” Vittoria asked, as she rejoined him in the corridor.

“If you want a stroll, yes. If not, it isn’t necessary. The station is very grey and gloomy.”

“Very gloomy,” repeated the woman in a low voice.

“But our country is so beautiful. Aren’t you content to return home?”

“I am glad,” she replied, without further observation. He looked at her as he did now and then with a scrutinising eye, but the pure face assumed that cold and closed aspect against which every glance failed.

“I am going for a small stroll,” he said, shrugging his shoulders lightly, “the luggage will be examined later on in the train.”

He disappeared along the corridor, and a little later Vittoria saw him walking up and down in the gloomy station, which not even the late May sun managed to lighten. Then she rose and placed herself before the window on the other side of the compartment, watching another train stop on its way to France. Her eyes were fixed on the train. She tried to discover the faces of those who were travelling within, to question if possible their physiognomies, and read there what was passing.

She heaved a deep sigh, and felt jealous of those who were leaving Italy perhaps for ever, and were travelling to France or England, or further, perhaps, never to return. She would have liked to have been one of those unknown travellers, to turn her back for ever on her country, to take away with her the man she adored, far, far away to unknown countries, losing at last the recollection of her own country, of her own people.

“Oh, this returning, this returning!” she thought to herself so desperately that she almost said it aloud.

She fell back on her seat and searched among the flowers and books in front of her for something to distract herself, a volume or a time-table. Then she leaned her head against the arm of the seat, and closed her eyes in an endeavour not to think, to suppress the subtle and voracious work of the jealousy which caused her to think.

“We are off at last,” said Marco, entering the compartment.

Heavily the train started, leaving the shadow of the gloomy station, and began to run among the green meadows completely covered with flowers, which stretched beneath the mountains around Mont Cenis.

“We are returning home, little Vittoria; we are returning to our own house, to our own bed, where no one else has slept the night before, and where no stranger will sleep the night after. Home, home; no more hotels, no more restaurants where the cooking is of an unknown provision and quantity. I assure you, my dear, that at Casa Fiore there is an excellent cook, whose kitchen presents no mysteries. What a pleasure to dine and sleep in the house of the Fiore in via Bocca di Leone!”

Vittoria listened attentively to Marco’s tirade, with its forced gaiety, where a little irritation was pressing.

“This journey has tired you, Marco?” she asked, as if she had noticed something of no importance.

“Physically, perhaps,” he replied quickly; “I am not so young as I was.”

“You are thirty-two.”

“But I have lived far more than my years,” he replied, with candour.

“That is true,” she replied calmly; “instead of travelling we could have gone to Spello.”

“Oh, Spello isn’t very amusing, dear. You will see it this summer. Besides, oughtn’t you to have a nice honeymoon.”

“I?” she exclaimed, trembling.

“Yes, you, Vittoria. I had to give you, my beauty, a nice, amusing, pleasing honeymoon. You deserved it; I hope I behaved well?”

“Very well,” she replied ambiguously.

“Have I been a good travelling companion—intelligent, zealous, amiable?”

“You have been all that, Marco,” she replied coldly.

“Have I, then, accomplished that part of my mission? Have I accomplished it as I ought to?”

“Have you, Marco, a mission? And what is it?” she asked, not without some harshness.

“That which the priest told me in Santa Maria del Popolo; that which the mayor told us at Campidoglio; that which I have given myself.”

“That is?” she replied, still coldly.

“To make you happy, darling,” he concluded somewhat caressingly, to alleviate the solemnity of the words.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, without further observation.

“Then you give me my first certificate, my wife? Have you been happy or not on your travels? Have I done everything to make you happy?”

“You have done as much as you could,” she replied, without emphasising the words.

“That is all?” he insisted, looking at her.

“All you could.”

He frowned, and was silent. She, too, was silent, turning her head away. An instant afterwards, with a fastidious accent, he added—

“Now I am a little tired, and am glad to return home.”

The train ran on through the country that leads to Susa, and from Susa to Turin.

“Have you written to your mother and sister that we are returning?” he asked absently.

“No,” she replied.

“When do you count on doing it?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking of counter orders, of a prolonging of the journey, of delay. I don’t know,” she said, confused.

“We will telegraph, then, from Turin; we stop two hours there,” he added somewhat drily.

“Are we going straight on to Rome?” she asked a little timidly.

“Naturally, naturally. We arrive at Rome at ten to-morrow.”

“Ah.”

In spite of her intense power of dissimulation, she did not succeed in hiding an expression of fear.

“It seems to me, Vittoria,” said Marco, who had become very bad-tempered, “that you view with little pleasure our returning to Rome.”

“You are mistaken.”

“Perhaps I am not mistaken. All other wives feel a real need of their homes; you, it seems, scarcely experience this need.”

“It isn’t true; it isn’t true,” she stammered.

“Do me the honour not to take me for an idiot,” he retorted quickly; “Casa Fiore doesn’t seem good enough for your presence!”

“Oh, Marco!” she protested, with a voice full of tears.

“Rome seems a capital too small for you? The place where your mother and my mother live seems mean and empty to you, perhaps?”

“Marco! Marco!” she begged.

But her husband was now exasperated. The first angry, violent conjugal dispute had broken out, and she tried in vain to calm it. Trembling prevented her from pronouncing a word. She felt suffocated.

“Can you deny it?” he replied, in a voice where anger and irony hissed. “Do you deny that you don’t share my consolation in returning to Rome?”

Without speaking she clasped her hands as if to implore him to torture her no more.

“I am sorry to tell you, dear Vittoria,” he continued implacably, “that sometimes you lie.”

“Oh! oh!” she exclaimed, with a movement of horror, hiding her face in her hands.

“Or you dissimulate, which amounts to the same thing.”

Although he saw that she was growing pale, he was unable to restrain his indignation.

“Vittoria!” he exclaimed loudly, as if to startle her, “will you answer me?”

Terrified, she looked at him with wide-open eyes.

“I have always been used to truthful women; will you tell me the truth?”

“Yes,” she declared, as if this reminder had offended her mortally, restoring all her strength to her.

“Why aren’t you glad to return home? Why don’t you rejoice to embrace your people again? Why aren’t you happy to find yourself in Rome again to-morrow, to begin your new life? Reply, conceal nothing, and don’t dissimulate. Tell me the truth as it has always been told to me.”

“I hate Rome!” she exclaimed, offended, and making a supreme effort to tell her secret.

“You hate Rome! Why?”

“You know the reason; don’t oblige me to tell it,” she added, with dignity and supplication.

Immediately all the man’s anger evaporated. Again human charity and fraternal pity moved him.

“You are ill, Vittoria,” he said. “You must get well.”

She made a vague gesture of denial and of impossibility, and said nothing more. Nor did he attempt to break the heavy silence.

X

Emilio Guasco is forty. He is tall, thin, dried up, and appears robust. His face is brown, with shining black moustaches. His hair is black, though white at the temples, which brightens and sweetens the swarthiness of his complexion. His eyes are exceedingly black, of an opaque blackness when their glance is tired or in repose, but sometimes a secret force animates them, giving an ardent and gloomy character to his face. The forehead is ample and well-defined, the nose aquiline, the chin long, showing an obstinate will. The profile is somewhat hard and sharp, scarcely tempered by a mouth still fresh and youthful, in which an acute eye can sometimes notice indulgence and good nature.

But in general Emilio’s face is austere, sometimes gloomy, while its lines, if not exactly correct, are at least harmonious. In spite of all this Emilio’s appearance is striking and attractive, with the attraction of all men whose appearance speaks of spirit and energy. A portion of the men he associated with, a small portion certainly, came to him with that species of secure instinct, which human sympathy has for souls which contain a really personal secret of life. Another portion, a larger one, regarded him with a certain respect mixed with repulsion, considering him a dramatic character in a laughable comedy. A last portion, and this the greatest and most frivolous, avoided him as a great bore, who prevented others from amusing themselves and taking life as a farce.

Emilio Guasco belongs to the old Roman bourgeois, and to the old bank which for over a hundred years has been allied with the Roman aristocracy and later to the great Italian society, which has taken up its abode in Rome around the rule of the Quirinal. His ancestors, as well as his father and uncles, have always belonged to the smart set, mixing with it intimately, while in business they had dealings with other important sets of the capital. Frequently they have been the saviours of noble fortunes in danger, and of secret aid to Italian politics, so often in the early days in need of pecuniary assistance.

Emilio is the only son. His father is dead, and he is in partnership with his uncles and cousins in the bank of Guasco and Co. But in spite of the fact that from childhood, boyhood, and youth he has always been in the midst of affairs, and that, during the last ten years, after a violent economic crisis, affairs in Rome are waking up again, he is a very mediocre man of business and banker. He never likes this intellectual work, which is sometimes not without its excitement and poetry, so he works at the Guasco Bank moderately, methodically, aridly, without a gleam of geniality or passion. Thus he continues his father’s work, which had been fervid, efficacious and fortunate; he continues it as a heavy duty, which he limits to the narrowest and most external mechanical participation.

Sometimes he believes that he would gladly leave the bank, leaving the bulk of his capital there but renouncing its management: sometimes he himself has vaguely hinted that he wished to hear nothing more of it. However, his cousin, Robert Guasco, forced him to stay so as not to give the appearance of weakening the bank. Robert, luckily, is a very intelligent banker, capable and laborious, and his mind, strength, and enormous activity compensate for Emilio’s cold inertia.

“Whatever do you want with an idiot and a business nonentity like me? Let me go,” Emilio often said to his cousin, with a wan smile.

“Remain, remain,” Robert would say, without taking any notice of the protest.

So Emilio Guasco remains at his work. Sometimes he even asks himself what he would do if he were to leave the firm and had to spend his considerable income alone, and how he would dedicate his time so tiring and boresome. From youth he has always felt the natural sadness of his temperament. He has tried to counteract and drive away this sadness by giving himself to the sports held in honour in Rome for years, and to the new games introduced there recently by the foreign element. Emilio is an expert and daring rider, and few have a better seat. Every year he is a faithful rider to hounds. But to this brilliant and rather fashionable sport he prefers that other hunting, solitary and melancholy, among the large regions about Palidoro, Maccarese, and Pontegalera, where one goes dressed in thick fustian, exchanging a few words with the cow-boys to be met with on horseback, wrapped in brown mantles with a lining of green serge. Sometimes he is absent two or three days at these hunts, so much in keeping with his thoughtful and sad character, sleeping in a buffalo tent as in Africa. His friends tell him of the example of Prospero Ludovisi, a keen hunter, who took a most pernicious fever at Maccarese and died suddenly of it in thirty-six hours. The malaria is especially deadly in that vast and deserted region. Emilio only smiles. Among modern sports he prefers of all the English games, on foot or horse, by sea or land, Golf—Golf, which is the adoration of all spirits fond of the open air, of solitude and silence,—Golf which is the true symbol of the solitary man. At his club he seldom mixes with the many players of poker, but he is a silent and unwearying devotee of bridge.

Emilio Guasco, in his early youth, has had his love affairs. He has not, however, committed any of the follies of the pleasure-seekers, which in public opinion has classed him among the coldest of men to whom women have little or nothing to say. Some, the more spiteful, have accused him of avarice, since love in general, and under certain conditions, implies generosity of spirit and of purse.

He has never compromised any one, and his adventures have been discreet and somewhat mediocre. The heart which he brought when married to the lovely and fascinating Maria Simonetti was one very sane, without perversion and corruption, a sincere heart which gave itself not in mad transports but with seriousness and faith. If not exceedingly in love during his engagement, he was in love.

One could say that he married for love of the enchanting girl who brought him only a good name, but not a soldo of dowry. Nor was his love a smothered flame which alters in marriage, bursting forth as a conflagration of passion. He loved Maria moderately, with a just affection which afterwards had no diminution, but no increase. He had esteemed his fiancÉe deeply, and afterwards his wife, for her character and mettle, her pride and truth; he had even felt a little of her fascination, but not all of it. Especially, he had not experienced in the first year of his marriage that joy of life which causes the hearts of the newly married to vibrate, exalts their souls, and later on seems to make them accept an existence less joyful and less happy through the unforgettable beauty of their first recollections. Emilio did not recognise till later, much later, the immense delusion he had been as a husband to the passionate heart of Maria Simonetti; he became aware of it when there was no longer time and all was lost.

For a long time he believed he had done all he could for his lady, being fond of her, respecting, honouring, and never being false to her, but nothing more. He had not understood that Maria Simonetti’s life and happiness were in his two hands. Not having understood that, he had let Maria’s life languish in sentimental and moral misery; so that she sought elsewhere the way of magnifying all her faculties and sensations. When he understood it was too late: that was afterwards. It was afterwards that, intolerant of lies, inept at deception, Maria Guasco Simonetti had left her husband’s house and had fled with Marco Fiore.

Then Emilio Guasco had seen all the error of his existence, of his indifference, his want of any abandonment, of any enthusiasm. Alone, in a suddenly deserted house and dishonoured, he discovered his original sin, aridity, that grave sin which separates us from everything beautiful and everybody beloved; which makes those flee from us fatally whom we do not know how to love. The tragedy which that day had brought him in the flight of his wife with her lover had still more paralysed Emilio’s mind, which was incapable of efficacious fury, incapable of sustained impulse, and capable only of sorrow and a slow and pointless sadness.

He had not acted and rushed after Maria and Marco; but had remained at home to suffer in silence. A part of the society in which he lived called it an immense disgrace, because to all of them he was what is termed a perfect husband; a smaller part, more intelligent and original, had proclaimed that he deserved no better treatment, since he had not known how to love Maria worthily, and that, in fact, he had annoyed and exasperated her. Secretly, in the long examinations of conscience which every man makes with himself in the hours of moral crisis, Emilio thought those right who had indicted him as the first author of his wife’s funereal act. He saw, on one of his sleepless nights, with the eyes of his soul all that he ought to have been and had not been. Certain deep truths of the spirit and the heart, hitherto unknown to him, appeared to him in vivid light. As in all great revolutions which transform and remake the inner life of a being, many new habits were formed by him in the three years of solitude and abandonment, singular habits different and contradictory to each other.

While Maria’s flight with Marco had given him acute anguish, the moral figure of his wife appeared prouder and bolder in its act of liberation, and if the husband still carried with him all the pain of the offence, so as to feel the impression of a bleeding wound for three years, the man had admired in Maria her lofty contempt of every minor good to obtain the one supreme good. While Maria was far away, as if lost in the vast world, Emilio saw her again near him palpitating with beauty and life, and he began to love her in solitary silence, vainly and uselessly. He surprised himself into desiring and wanting her more than ever, and in his empty love and desire he ended by knowing that powerful and terrible instinct of love—jealousy.

He had always marvelled when he saw in others the interior torturing lashes of jealousy, and its external manifestations. Now he is a victim to this gloomy and fascinating force which comes from the lowest elements of the human system, but which dominates a man entirely. Sometimes he would give his blood to snatch his wife away from the arms of Marco Fiore, at other times he was seized by an exasperation which almost led him to a crime. Then he had to leave Rome and go far away where only memory could follow him. On his return, through the natural power of his equilibrium, he was always calm, patient, and sad.

At last, at the end of three years, so long to a heart which had never known how to love, which perhaps had still not learned to love better but was not inept to suffer, Emilio, with concealed curiosity and anxiety, had learnt that the amorous folly of Marco and Maria had begun to languish, had become a folly’s shadow, and was lapsing into a pale usage. From this knowledge which reached him from reliable sources, from secret inquiries which he had made with extreme caution, knowing how every day that love shadow was vanishing more and more, a unique sentiment, derived from so many opposite sentiments at war with each other, had raised his heart almost to heroism. This was the sentiment of human and Christian pity for a miserable woman who had wanted and still wanted to give her life to her dream, who instead saw all her dream vanish before her in a time which seemed as short as a flash of lightning. Anger long repressed, sorrow long concealed, the offence which wounds without ever a wound appearing, love rendered more supreme and consuming in jealousy itself,—all in Emilio Guasco was sunk in this tender compassion for Maria. He felt within himself all the evangelical virtue of charity, perhaps stronger than any other sentimental impulse. He was the good Samaritan who rescues the dying man on the road-side, doctors his cruel wounds, and pours out the balsam that heals.

Thus the pardon had been offered by Emilio Guasco to the wife who had betrayed and left him. When he had sent her word he had thought nothing more of the past or the future; he had thought only of healing the poor creature’s wounds, struck by passion’s cruel and implacable weapons; he felt within himself a new soul greater, more generous, and superior to sophisms and the world’s axioms. There seemed to be something heroic in his heart, which raised and exalted him as at no other time in his life. The immense tenderness he felt for her reacted on him; he pitied and admired himself like the heroic person in a romance whose story he sometimes read. The nearer the day of her return approached, the more his emotion increased, the more the noble and sublime thing, which is pardon, the law which Christ has given as the most supreme, seemed to find in him a pure interpreter. So on that April evening in the presence of the woman, pale and trembling as he had never seen her before and would never see her again, he had pronounced those Christian words which cancel, absolve, and redeem—

“I pardon you, Maria.”

But suddenly afterwards, in a flash, he felt this unique and noble sentiment, this Christian pity, destroyed within him, as if it could only give him one supreme moment of heroism. He felt all the old sentiments rise again in his mind, contending among themselves—anger, suffering, love and jealousy, and he was seized again in their power without guide or will.

XI

Maria Guasco was proceeding minutely to the completion of her toilette. That morning she was wearing a cloth dress of maroon colour, cut in the English fashion, through the jacket of which a blouse of white Irish lace was to be seen; the full skirt in big pleats discovered the neat feet shod in black kid. A large straw hat, with a circlet of red roses and a thin veil, was placed over the chestnut hair, affording a glimpse of its waves over the forehead, temple and neck. In her simple dress without ornaments, and in its exact lines, she looked enchantingly young. She said to Chiara, who was hovering round offering her gloves, parasol, and purse—

“Let your master know that I am ready and waiting for him here.”

Meanwhile she buttoned her yellow deerskin gloves and verified the contents of her purse.

“The master begs Your Excellency to oblige him with your presence in the study,” said Chiara on returning in a low voice.

Maria frowned slightly, and for an instant the colour left her cheeks. Then, as if her will predominated immediately, she proceeded towards her husband’s study, and not a shadow of her recent emotion appeared on her recomposed face.

Seated behind his desk Emilio was writing a letter and smoking a cigarette. He did not raise his head.

“Well, Emilio,” asked his wife in a soothing voice, standing in the middle of the room, “aren’t you dressed for the meet?”

“No,” he replied, raising his head from his letter absently, “I am not dressed.”

“Wasn’t this the hour?” she continued gently; “ten o’clock, I think.”

“Yes, ten o’clock,” and he lowered his head, resuming his writing.

Maria’s gloved hand nervously clutched the onyx knob of her parasol.

“Well, well,” she asked again, with a certain insistency. Emilio let his pen fall, throwing it on the table, pushed the letter aside, and leaning back in his chair regarded his wife for a long time earnestly without speaking.

“I have decided not to go to this last meet.”

“Ah!” said Maria only.

Then, as if it annoyed her to remain standing before her husband’s desk, her eyes sought a chair. She found one a little bit away and sat down, still holding her parasol and purse, in the attitude of a lady paying a visit.

Both were silent; though, as ever since her return, he fixed his eyes on his wife’s face and person with a curiosity half thoughtful and half observant, with an attitude of acute investigation which sometimes embarrassed Maria.

“Still, Emilio,” she said in a low voice, to break the silence, “you are so fond of fox-hunting.”

“I like it very much, it is true,” he replied.

“And it will be a year before you can begin again.”

“That is true.”

“Didn’t you decide yesterday evening to go?”

“Certainly I did decide to go; but a night has passed on it.”

“You don’t sleep at night and think of the meet at Cecilia Metella?” she asked, trying to joke.

“Eh, one doesn’t always sleep,” he replied, with an irritable gesture of annoyance.

She was silent. Then she raised her head resolutely.

“Since I should have accompanied you, may I consider myself free?” she asked, with some impatience.

“You have other plans?” he murmured, looking at her again fixedly.

“I have had no others from the moment that it was arranged that we should go out together,” she replied quickly.

“I beg your pardon for having made you dress; you have lost a toilette.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, and she began to trace the arabesque designs of the carpet with her parasol.

“Emilio?” she said suddenly.

“Maria!”

“Why don’t you go alone to Cecilia Metella? Go and put on your pink; the victoria is ready, and will take you to where Francesco is waiting with the horses. Go now.”

Her tone was quiet, indifferent, and persuasive.

“No!” he exclaimed, with an angry gesture; “I don’t want to.”

“Emilio,” she continued, in a voice still more persuasive, “I know that it is on my account that you are not going to Cecilia Metella. I beg you not to renounce this pleasure.”

“Thank you; I shall not go,” he said drily.

Maria got up suddenly, as if she had nothing further to say.

“Where are you going?” he exclaimed, rising from his seat and following her for a few steps.

“To my room,” she replied, a little surprised; “then I shall go out.”

“To go where?” he asked again harshly.

“I don’t know; I shall go for a walk somewhere,” she said, still more surprised.

“Where?” and anger trembled in the demand.

“Emilio!” she exclaimed in sweet reproach; “Emilio!”

He changed colour.

“I beg your pardon, Maria, I beg your pardon.”

He threw himself on a large sofa, without taking the hand she offered him. The woman remained standing, and looked at him.

“Shall we go out together, Emilio?” she asked patiently.

“No.”

“Let us go outside the city where there is nobody.”

“No, no.”

“In the carriage to Villa Pamphily? It is such a beautiful morning, and the air is so soft. Come, do.”

“No, no, no!” he exclaimed, without looking at her.

“Well, then, what ought I to do?” she asked patiently.

“Nothing.”

“What do you wish to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you wish me to remain? Do you wish me to go?” and the tone was one of sublime patience.

He understood it and melted.

“Maria, you are treating me like a child. Do you think I am ill? I have white hair, but I am not infirm.”

She noticed all the signs of anger and suffering.

“At times we are ill without knowing it, and we mustn’t repulse an affectionate hand.”

“What charity!” he exclaimed, with irony.

“What are you irritated about, Emilio? Because of the sentiment or the person?” she asked.

“For the two things,” he replied, with asperity.

“Ah!” she said, and her hand, trembling a little, found the handle of her parasol. Again she made as if to go away without greeting him, without turning round.

“Are you offended?” he cried to her back; “you will end by hating me.”

“I am not offended,” she replied, stopping with lowered eyes and speaking slowly; “I have tamed my pride, Emilio, in the contact of life, and I am not offended. I can hate no one.”

He looked at her peculiarly and gloomily, with the strange insistence of a man who wished to extract a tremendous secret from a glance. But she did not see it. The question which was trembling on Emilio’s lips disappeared. He lapsed again into confusion and silence.

“Are you going to your bank?” she asked, to say something.

“Yes, for a moment,” he replied absently.

“Shall you come home to lunch?”

“Yes, at the usual hour.”

“What are you going to do afterwards?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“I am going to stay at home just now, and later——” she continued monotonously.

“Later?” he asked, with a start.

“I have a meeting.”

“Ah!” he replied, looking at her.

“With Flaminia Colonna; a work of charity,” she explained, somewhat coldly.

“Flaminia has always continued to love you.”

“She has continued to,” she answered bitterly, biting her lip, growing a little pale, “like any other friend.”

“Do you go out together?”

“Yes,” she replied, still paler; “are you surprised?” and the question was put harshly.

“No,” he said, speaking with difficulty, so great was his emotion; “Flaminia Colonna is a woman and a friend ... while I——”

“While you?” she asked.

“I am a man, a husband.”

There was a deep silence between them.

“Is that the reason why you didn’t go to Cecilia Metella with me?” she resumed.

“That is the reason,” he replied.

“What were you fearing?” in a voice still deeper.

“Ridicule. Every one would have laughed at me, seeing me with you.”

She fell back. Her eyes grew clouded, but she had the strength not to open her mouth, to walk away without turning, leaving the man who had told his secret stretched on the sofa like a miserable weakling.

XII

The ices were being served and the dinner was drawing to a close. All of a sudden, in the midst of the slightly laboured and frivolous conversation which occasionally gave place to the species of pompous gravity, Francesco Serlupi, a young man celebrated for his blunders, which assumed either a grotesque or dramatic aspect, again committed one of them.

“Do you know that the Fiore couple have returned home from their honeymoon? It seems that things are not going too well.”

A glacial silence fell on all.

Maria Guasco, behind the huge mass of white lilies and red roses, which almost hid her, had not even moved an eyelid; Emilio, taciturn as ever, had lowered his eyes. The other guests, Flaminia Colonna, Gianni Provana, and the Senator, Fabio Guasco, seemed distracted.

“It seems that the Costanzi is to be closed for a week,” remarked Gianni Provana, in an attempt to change the conversation.

But Francesco Serlupi stuck to his gaucherie, and proclaimed obstinately—

“However, it is as I have said, Marco Fiore returned to the club yesterday, the day following his return, and yesterday he was at the races without Vittoria.”

Again a heavy silence. Maria, with a fervid glance, invoked the aid of Flaminia. She promptly, with her penetrating voice, which was the complement of her dark and proud figure, and of her beauty full of grace and expression, said—

“I am not surprised at it. As a matter of fact Marco Fiore has always liked a club life; his mother, Donna Arduina, had always complained to me about it. Besides, Vittoria has such a reserved and timid character.” She emphasised her slow and tactful remark, fixing her sweet grey eyes on Francesco, to make him understand that he must say no more on the subject. He, as usual, understood too late the mischief he had done, and became silent, keeping his head bent over his plate, not daring to look at his hosts, anxious to escape, as he always did, when he discovered he had committed an enormous indiscretion.

“Are these delicious early peaches from Lama, Emilio?” asked Mario Colonna, to divert the conversation better, alluding to the great property of Casa Guasco near Terni.

“Yes,” replied his host immediately, glad to be able to open his mouth and speak of something else; “my gardens there work miracles, and also my gardeners. Every day new flowers and fruit arrive.”

“Oh, you must be very happy about it, Maria,” observed Flaminia, with a good-natured smile on her lips.

“Oh, most happy,” she murmured.

“You ought to love La Lama, Donna Maria,” remarked Francesco Serlupi, in an endeavour to mend matters; “it is some time since you were there?”

But the question was put in a low voice, besides, the dinner was finished, so his hostess rose suddenly without replying to this latest piece of stupidity, and leaning on the arm of Senator Fabio Guasco the other guests followed her, Flaminia Colonna on the arm of Emilio, Gianni Provana, Francesco Serlupi, and Mario Colonna in a group.

“However did it come into your head?” said Gianni Provana to Serlupi, keeping him back a little with Mario Colonna. “No one will ask you to dinner, my dear friend, if you start breaking the dishes in your host’s face at dessert.”

“You are right; I am a proper stupid,” Serlupi declared, as they crossed the two or three rooms before the drawing-room, “I shall go away at once; I can’t stop here.”

“Worse and worse,” observed Colonna; “stop a moment or two longer.”

“You are going away with Donna Flaminia, aren’t you?”

“Yes, we can’t possibly stay. We are going to Madame Takuhira’s last reception at the Japanese Legation.”

“Do me a charity and take me away with you,” begged Serlupi.

“Very well, very well,” said Colonna, laughing, “we will save you even to the last indiscretion.”

A circle was formed in the large drawing-room, all gathering in a corner of it where Maria had formed a little room from the larger with screens, large plants, and furniture, which cut off the space. However, the conversation proceeded languidly, the sort of coldness which had been there since the beginning of dinner had become accentuated after Francesco Serlupi’s escapade. It was the first dinner Emilio and Maria had given after her return home, thus resuming their old custom of giving, during the chief Roman season from December to the end of May, two dinners a week, one to intimates, another of ceremony, the traditional hospitality in Casa Guasco and high Roman society. It had been Flaminia Colonna who had urged her friend to resume the habits of life where they had been relaxed; it had been Flaminia, too, who had said affectionately to Emilio Guasco, with a sweet smile, “Give us a dinner like you used to.”

With a feeling of concealed timidity, Emilio had only dared to invite persons of whom he was sure; his uncle, Fabio Guasco, the Colonna couple, and finally that silly Francesco Serlupi, who was a gracious youth incapable of an incivility, but more capable of committing a disaster with a remark, the importance of which he did not understand till later, much later. Maria, as hostess, had endeavoured to give an air of continuity to this resumption of worldly life, decorating her dining-room as formerly, receiving her friends as formerly in that bright and flowery corner of the drawing-room, adorning her person with that studied elegance which distinguished her, and with which she satisfied her Æsthetic tendencies, producing that impression of sympathy and fascination on her surroundings which was so appreciated. That evening she was dressed in black voile, affording a glimpse of neck and bosom, white in their perfect lines. A cluster of fresh red roses was placed at the opening, nestling on the whiteness of the skin, and rendering it more intense. A tall, stiff collar of small pearls in ten rows, with a clasp in front of rubies and diamonds, surrounded her neck; the bodice of the dress had half-sleeves embroidered with black wavy tulle, which did not reach to the elbow, and showed her magnificent white round arms with their delicate wrists. Her hands were loaded with rings, all in the ancient style, and in her hair, amidst its waves and dark abundance, were two little bright red roses. A quite interior exaltation had rendered more splendid her bright eyes, so often closed and disturbed. That evening she had experienced a sudden pride of energy and beauty.

But in spite of this a subtle sense of embarrassment and pain weighed on the dinner, and all the ordered luxury of the table, the exquisiteness of the viands, the richness of the surroundings, the serenity of the hostess, and the solicitous courtesy of the host had not caused this impression to be removed from the mind of their guests. This impression after Francesco Serlupi’s imprudent words became stronger; every one felt oppressed, and sought a decent and amiable excuse for leaving. Donna Maria allowed smoking in her room after dinner; but the men discreetly retired to a far corner, so, as they said, not to fumigate the two ladies. For some minutes Maria and Flaminia Colonna remained alone.

“What a bad experiment, eh, Flaminia, this dinner?” said Maria, with a sneer and a bitter smile.

“One wants much patience, immense patience,” replied the friend, shaking her expressive and gracious Roman head.

“Oh, not for me,” added Maria; “for myself I am ready to endure any pain. It displeases me on Emilio’s account.”

“He suffers, doesn’t he?” asked Flaminia, in a subdued voice.

“He suffers too much,” Maria assented sadly. Then she got up suddenly to serve the coffee and liqueurs, which had been placed before her. Her tall, undulating person possessed a great charm, as she lightly crossed the room, carrying a cup in her hands, while she offered it with a smile on her beautiful mouth to the men. She could see the admiration in all their eyes, and she seemed to see it mixed with confusion in her husband’s. She looked at him rather long, and between them, in those glances exchanged, it seemed as if a whole world of thoughts and sentiments had passed. With her rhythmical step Maria returned to her friend.

“Is it true what has been said?” she asked, sitting down.

“What?”

“That ... Marco and Vittoria already make a couple of doubtful happiness.”

“What does it matter to you?” replied Flaminia, looking at her with suspicion.

“It matters to me,” replied the other seriously; “I wished for their happiness.”

“But what do you desire?” said Flaminia a little diffidently.

“I desire with all my soul that they may be happy,” said Maria.

The friend believed her, because she recognised her as a creature incapable of lies or falseness.

“I believe that your desire of good for them cannot be a reality.”

“Do you know it then?”

“I know it.”

Maria sighed.

“Later on, with time,” concluded Donna Flaminia, with her sense of justice and equilibrium.

“One wants such patience, immense patience,” rejoined Maria Guasco dreamily.

The company began to break up. Flaminia and Mario Colonna had to go to the Japanese Legation. Francesco Serlupi, silently occupied with his flight, followed them, almost holding on to their shoulders, as if to hide himself. When the Senator Fabio Guasco took his leave as well, accustomed to early hours, he kissed his niece’s hand, bowing with much gallantry as he begged her not to forget her old uncle in her invitations. Emilio Guasco, who had not said a single word since dinner, announced that he was going to accompany him. So only Gianni Provana remained, immovable, always tranquil, with his monocle fixed in its orbit. Quietly and tactfully Maria made her way to her husband, and asked him in a low voice—

“Are you going out?”

“Yes,” he replied quietly.

“Why are you going?”

“To accompany uncle.”

“Are you returning soon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take away Gianni Provana too,” she suggested.

“But why?” he asked, with a little irony; “I don’t want you to remain alone.”

“Take him away; take him away,” she murmured, troubled and nervously.

“Are you afraid of him?” the husband asked mockingly.

“No,” she replied proudly, “I am not afraid of any one.”

She turned her back on him, greeting and kissing her friend, giving her hand to the men to kiss, and to her husband as well. Did not his lips seem to linger a little longer on her hand?

Gianni Provana remained as usual, the quiet and tenacious man, who allows nothing to disturb the plan he has formed for his existence. Without glancing at him, Maria threw herself into her favourite arm-chair, took a book with uncut leaves from a table, looked for a paper-knife, and, having found it, with the peculiar noise of cut paper, occupied her beautiful hands.

“I don’t bore you, Donna Maria?”

“No,” she replied, without raising her head.

“You would have preferred me to go with the others?”

“Perhaps,” she replied absently.

“You can’t bear me, isn’t it so?” he asked.

“You are mistaken, Provana.”

“Am I very antipathetic to you?”

“You are not antipathetic to me.”

“At any rate I am not sympathetic?”

“Certainly not,” she replied.

“Then indifferent,” and he bit his lip.

“Exactly; indifferent,” she concluded in a monotonous voice.

He got up quickly.

“Are you going?” she asked, rather surprised.

“For what am I to remain here? To hear this from you? The worst you could have told me you have told.”

The face of the worldling and pleasure-lover expressed at that moment true suffering.

She looked at him.

“Why are you obstinate, Provana,” she asked coldly and courteously, “in bothering about me, of what I think, of what I say, of what I do?”

“Because I am a fool,” he confessed, taking his monocle out of its orbit and looking at her, a familiar trick of his.

“You are not a fool,” she replied, with a little smile; “you are eagerly anxious to get something that seems necessary to you, which would instead be useless and dangerous to you, and which, through your good fortune, you will never obtain.”

“Everything has been said,” he murmured, offering her his hand, “good-night, Donna Maria.”

“Good-night, Provana.”

She offered her hand. He took it and kissed it, holding it a little in his own. In spite of his worldly composure, in spite of his mask of good form, he showed that he was moved.

“Can’t you really manage, Donna Maria, to consider me a man worthy of some attention and curiosity?” he asked, with some anxiety.

“Oh, I know you well!” she replied, shaking her head.

“You could be wrong.”

“No, I can’t be wrong. For several years you have been attempting the conquest of my—attention—let us call it attention—a question of self-love. You have possessed other women more beautiful, more elegant than I. You are accustomed to succeed, so you are irritated and sad because you can’t with me. You have begun to suffer because you can’t succeed with me, and so you have got as far as believing that you are really in love.”

“Alas, it is no supposition!” he replied melancholily, but with an accent of truth.

“Let us not speak of love,” she declared; “I oughtn’t to listen any more to such talk. My greedy ears are satiated with it, they are tired of it, and have become deaf to it for ever and ever.”

“Nevertheless, some one loves you here, Donna Maria.”

“Whoever?”

“Emilio!”

“You are mistaken,” she said gravely; “Emilio no longer loves me.”

“Really?” he asked anxiously.

“Really.”

“Is he not an impassioned lover, an enamoured husband, and a tender friend?”

“None of these things, Provana.”

“What is he, then?”

“An enemy perhaps,” she replied softly.

“But hasn’t he pardoned you?”

“He has pardoned me, yes. He has pardoned me, but nothing more.”

“I never would have believed it,” he said thoughtfully.

“Nor I.”

“But perhaps,” he resumed, questioning her with his glance, “you have frightened him and kept him at a distance with your contempt.”

“I have done all that is possible; I am doing all that is possible,” she said vaguely, as if speaking to herself.

“You don’t love him; he will have understood.”

“I am humiliated and humiliate myself every day!” Maria exclaimed in a sorrowful voice; “and I break my pride every instant before him. But I can’t tell him to love me; neither does he ask it of me. He asks me nothing.”

“And if he were to ask it?” he said.

“He won’t; he won’t. He has understood I can’t lie.”

“Poor Emilio!” he exclaimed.

“Do you pity him? Even I pity him. He has had pity on me, and I return it to him. But beyond this he can do nothing for me, and I can do nothing for him.”

The conversation had suddenly become austere. The worldling appeared preoccupied, the woman with her beautiful hands crossed on her knees was telling her tale as if in a dream. Gianni Provana looked two or three times at her. She was so young still, so flourishing in beauty, with every womanly grace, and he said to her—

“Is it possible that Emilio has no eyes, no heart, no feelings, that he doesn’t experience near you that invincible attraction which has made me ridiculous for years?”

“Who knows! Who knows!” she exclaimed wearily.

“What, in fact, do you think about your life?”

“I think nothing, Provana. I live my life as I do as a duty neither pleasant nor sad. I was hoping, and still hope, to give consolation for the undeserving sorrow I have sown. Now I don’t seem to be walking towards my goal. I don’t seem to be moving.”

“And how if your heart is elsewhere?” he said harshly; “you still love Marco Fiore.”

“If I loved him still I shouldn’t have returned,” she rejoined immediately, firmly. “I often think of him with tenderness and sweetness, but without love.”

“Have you heard? He isn’t happy,” he continued tartly.

“The fault isn’t mine, nor is it his. It is impossible that either he or I could ever be happy again. We knew it when we separated.”

“But Vittoria, it seems, is unhappy!” exclaimed Provana.

“Ah, that is very, very sad,” she said thoughtfully.

“Like your husband, for that matter,” added Provana.

“It is all immensely sad,” she concluded bitterly.

“The fault is neither yours nor Marco’s,” said Provana, with a sneer.

“You can only smile or laugh at all this,” and she glanced at him with disdain.

“Better to smile or laugh, Donna Maria. I am an optimist in my cynicism. Everything will gradually and slowly settle down.”

“How?” she asked, not without anxiety.

“Vittoria and Marco will end by adapting themselves to each other. He will have a son—perhaps two or three—and she will not bother any more about her husband. Marco will be older, and a monotonous frequenter of the club, the races, and other noble pursuits. Perhaps he will have a mistress or two whom he will not love, since he who has loved cannot love another woman with passion.”

“And here?” she asked, with a mocking laugh.

“Here, too, time will do its work. Emilio’s pardon will be, shall we say—active. He will love you tranquilly and faithfully as formerly, and you will again be an exemplary couple. Remorse will have ceased to bite yours and Marco’s heart; you may yet be two beautiful great souls. The years will be passed, and the four of you will even be able to see each other tranquilly.”

A strident and sardonic laugh punctuated the discourse, while he replaced his monocle in its orbit elegantly.

“And you, Provana?” asked the woman, laughing, too, ironically.

“Oh, I!” he exclaimed, with false bonhommie; “I am the man who waits. Vice vers in waiting will come old age and death. So I shall pass to my ancestors with a beautiful and ridiculous epitaph: that of having loved Donna Maria Guasco uselessly.”

“It is even a big something to be able to love,” she remarked thoughtfully.

“That is what they say in novels and dramas; in life it is rather boring. Above everything the man who loves alone is the greatest bore of all. Good-night, Donna Maria.”

“Good-night,” she said, without detaining him.

An uncertain, melancholy, bitter dream settled on Maria’s soul.

* * * * * * * *

A voice awoke her from this dream.

“Good-evening, Maria.”

“Good-evening, Emilio.”

Her husband had entered without her noticing his step. He sat on the seat which Provana had left. It seemed to Maria that his face had become grave and thoughtful. She put down her book, and leaned her head, as if it were too heavy for her, on her beautiful hands. In the harmony of her movements, her womanly grace and fascination, in the silence of the moment, had something penetrating about it.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“Provana went away a minute ago.”

“I met him near here, but he didn’t see me. What fine tales has he been telling you?” he resumed, with a disingenuous accent.

“Nothing very fine,” she replied.

“However, you must have listened to him with interest.”

“What makes you think that?” she said, trembling.

“I suppose it. The conversation has not been short, nor have you cut it short,” he added a little bitterly.

“Ah!” she exclaimed; “ought I to show the door to your Provana?”

“Mine? Mine? Isn’t he your friend?” he interrupted with agitation.

“No,” she replied precisely, “he is not my friend.”

“He makes love to you, however,” observed Emilio.

The tone was intended to appear indifferent, but if Maria had listened carefully and had regarded her husband’s face better, she would have understood that it was a question, and asked with anxiety. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders, and let it go without a reply. He repeated it.

“He makes love to you, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, perhaps; I believe so,” she murmured, letting her reply fall indifferently.

“He has always made love to you, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, he seems to have always done so,” she replied, with the same indifference and distraction.

“And you?” he said, in a sharp, hard voice which hurt her. Was he really Emilio who was questioning her so haughtily like a judge? Up to then the conversation had seemed to Maria one of those usual monotonous conversations in which every one speaks and thinks quite differently to what he says, and the lips pronounce empty words mechanically. Instead, she was suddenly aware that her husband wished imperiously to know the truth of her heart.

“I?” she replied, at once becoming sad and proud.

“You, you,” he replied, without changing his tone.

“What do you want to know from me?”

“If Gianni Provana’s suit pleases you, if it has ever pleased you, if it will ever please you?” he said coldly and cuttingly, drawing near to her, and looking at her with eyes full of anger.

She stepped back a little, certainly not in fright, but to measure this new sentiment of Emilio’s.

“What does it matter to you?” she asked slowly.

“It matters to me,” he replied, without changing either his accent or the expression of his face.

“Gianni Provana’s suit has never pleased me, does not please me, and never will please me.”

She pronounced the words slowly, letting them fall one by one, fixing her husband with her eyes. She saw his face change distinctly, the anger vanish which had transfigured him, and she heard his voice assume a lower tone, veiled with unfamiliar emotion.

“Why?” he asked; “why?”

“Because I despise him,” she concluded honestly, retiring again into a definite silence, as if she had nothing else to say, or wished to say, on that subject.

“I beg your pardon, Maria,” he whispered, drawing near her, his voice saddened and a little disturbed.

She glanced at him.

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied.

“I am certain I have offended you,” he insisted, still troubled.

“Yes, a little, but it doesn’t matter,” she added, with some pride.

“I must have seemed a little bit brutal to you, Maria,” he exclaimed remorsefully.

“A little,” she replied less proudly; “but it doesn’t matter.”

“Does nothing matter to you, then?” he asked, exasperated and sad.

She was silent and lowered her eyes, playing with her rings in a way that Emilio remembered.

“Will you give me your hand in token of peace?” he asked, with a false accent of easiness and frivolity.

“Yes,” she replied, giving him her hand.

“You bear me no rancour, Maria?” he continued with the same studied disingenuousness.

“No.”

“So be it,” he said, and he kissed the hand, and afterwards tried to keep it in his. She did not raise her eyes to his, and remained immobile and silent.

“Otherwise,” he resumed, as if continuing a discourse, “I find it quite reasonable that Gianni Provana should press his suit on you. Don’t get angry again,” he said, pressing the hand which she tried to withdraw, “his name annoys you; I won’t pronounce it again. I say finally that he is right to press his suit on you.”

She listened to him silently.

“Why are you so seducing?” he exclaimed weakly.

Was it the deception of the light, or did a slight flush diffuse itself over his face? But why did she say nothing to the man who was drawing his face nearer to hers and speaking so softly? What thought was restraining her? What sentiment was conquering her? The man was still bending, as if to snatch her from her silence, to snatch a word from her, which would not issue from the tightly closed lips.

“You are not yet thirty, Maria?” he asked, with a sigh.

“I am twenty-eight,” she replied softly.

“And I am old now,” he murmured melancholily, pressing her still hand, “I am so old for you. Youth is a beautiful thing.”

“Youth is a magnificent thing,” she replied, raising her voice with flashing eyes.

The incantation was broken. Violently Emilio let go of her hand. Getting up and withdrawing apart he strode through the room two or three times gloomily, almost blindly striking against the furniture. Sadly she looked at him, seeing him a prey to a sudden access of fury, and before this mystery her woman’s heart quailed anxiously.

“Emilio!” she called two or three times without his hearing.

“Maria,” he replied at last, in a kind of growl, without stopping.

“What is the matter?”

“Nothing,” he replied, between his teeth.

Very gradually his violent perambulations amongst the furniture grew calmer. He stopped near a table at a little distance away and sat there. Leaning his elbows on it, he hid his head in his hands, immersed in deep and terrible thoughts. Thus the time passed, while Maria herself seemed wrapped in thought. At last she seemed to make a decision. She rose, crossed the room, and bending over her husband, without touching him, called him again: “Emilio.”

He only started, but said nothing.

“Emilio, my friend, reply,” she said softly and insinuatingly.

“What do you want?” was the gloomy reply.

“I want to know what is disturbing you.”

“Nothing is disturbing me.”

“Why do you lie? You are very troubled; tell me what is the matter?”

“You would laugh at me.”

“I have never laughed at any one,” she replied patiently.

“Who knows?” he said, looking at her in mad anger, and with the open intention of offending her.

She stopped, and grew pale. But her moral energy was too great.

“He who laughs at the sufferings of another is a knave and a fool; you would not consider me perverse or stupid, Emilio?”

“I am not suffering,” he replied gloomily, rising.

“You are mistaken, my friend. You want to deceive me or yourself. You have some ill in your soul; tell me what it is.”

“I have nothing, and I am not suffering,” he replied gloomily.

She shook her head sadly.

“Perhaps I could give you some consolation, Emilio?”

“No.”

“Every human being who has a feeling heart, and soul, can give comfort.”

“No.”

“Am I not your friend, Emilio? Have you no faith in your friend?”

He sneered horribly.

“Friend? friend? You my friend? You, you? I should have faith in you?”

His laughter caused her to shudder.

“How you must be suffering, Emilio, to speak thus,” she said pityingly, pressing her hands to her breast. The man’s heart at such words, and at such a manifestation of pity, melted. He fell again into his seat and a sigh escaped him.

“Oh, how I suffer!”

An immense compassion transfigured the woman. She bent over him and lightly touched his shoulders with her fingers. He trembled and raised his face, and fixed her with eyes so full of immense, measureless sorrow that he seemed to Maria like the living image itself of anguish.

“Tell me why you suffer, Emilio?” she demanded, with such emotion that his spasms seemed to increase.

“I can’t!” he said desperately.

“Whatever it is you can tell me; I can bear it. Speak, speak, Emilio; don’t be afraid of offending me; don’t be afraid of saddening me. Speak,” she said to him affectionately, at the height of her pity.

“I can’t, I can’t,” he said, in cold desperation.

“My friend, don’t be severe with yourself. Don’t be so implacable with your wounded heart; don’t maltreat your wounded soul. Be more humane, more tender, more compassionate with yourself, my friend, or those bleeding wounds will never close, and you will never feel them heal. You will then sigh away all your best blood, Emilio.”

“It is true,” he murmured, as if to himself.

“Friend, conquer your pride and your amour propre. All of us, all of us, no one is excluded, have suffered, are suffering, and will suffer. It is not a shame or a reproach to suffer. Those who hide their pain proudly are not men, are not Christians, and do not feel the human comfort of weeping.”

“That is true,” he murmured.

“Friend, I know the words that caress sorrow, that rock it and finally send it to sleep. Later on, when it awakes in us, it is more tender and weaker; it is a much duller torment.”

Like a suffering child, he looked at her anxiously.

“My friend, why do you suffer?” she asked, leaning over him with a face transfigured with the grandeur of her loving charity, taking his hand and caressing it like that of a sick child in pain. “You oughtn’t to suffer. You have been an upright and just man. Your life has no remorses; it was guided by a moral conscience, tranquil and firm. You have not sinned—that I know; you have caused sorrow to none. Yours is a life without remorse, and so beautiful that suffering ought not to touch it.”

He looked at her ardently, almost drinking in her words like some divine liquor.

“You ought not to suffer. You are no longer alone in life; your friend is near you, near your heart, desiring one thing only, that you may not suffer, that you may no longer feel lonely, that you may possess a soul near you and for you——”

He looked at her passionately, and every one of her words seemed to intoxicate him. She, too, seemed exhilarated with compassion, tenderness, and devotion.

“Emilio, it is your Maria who is here,” she said solemnly.

Then like a madman he took her in his arms, pressed her madly to his breast in a frenzied embrace, and kissed her long, while she, trembling and lost, closed her eyes as before a mortal peril. But immediately, as if the contact of her person had scorched him, as if the lips which had not given him a kiss had scorched him, he pushed Maria brutally aside, crying out at her—

“You cause me horror!”

“Emilio!” she exclaimed, in complete amazement.

“Go away, go away. You cause me horror!” he yelled in her face like a madman.

She drew back, stupefied and terrified.

“You have pardoned me!” she exclaimed.

“It is true, it is true,” he yelled, “but I can’t forget. Go away, go away; I can’t forget.”

So she went, bent, defeated, and broken by the incomparable weight of the truth.

XIII

In one of the large reception-rooms of Casa Nerola, near a bank formed of an enormous group of Hortense roses, two young girls stand talking and smiling discreetly, slowly moving their little white fans. The one, Theresa Santacroce, is dressed in light blue, with a silver belt, her hair arranged high with a circlet of silver ivy leaves. The other, Stefania Farnese, is dressed in ivory silk, and two large red roses in her chestnut hair give her a Spanish appearance, although her beauty is delicate.

“We thought we were going to be late with mamma.”

“Oh, we dined at seven on purpose.”

“That is why you haven’t been to the tea-room?”

“Of course. Here it is the same as at Court, one has to come before the sovereigns arrive.”

“The most beautiful spectacle is, naturally, the entry of the Emperor.”

“Is it true that all the women are in love with him?”

“So they say. As for me I don’t like Germans.”

“O Stefania, let us be grateful to him. If he hadn’t come to Rome in December we shouldn’t have had the first ball now.”

“Long live the Kaiser, then! Since without him we should have had to wait till the end of February.”

“You are expecting Giovanni Altieri, aren’t you, Stefania?”

“Giovanni Altieri! I don’t want to hear him mentioned. No one is more voluble or frivolous.”

“Really!”

“Certainly. Just think, he has been in love this summer three or four times with foreigners—American, Russian, English. And now the wretch does nothing but speak badly of Italian girls.”

“How all our sweethearts take away these foreign women!”

“Let us give them an exchange. Let us go abroad with our mammas and marry Russian princes, English dukes and American millionaires.”

“A good idea; but our Italians are so sympathetic. Look at Marco Fiore over there; what a handsome youth! I would have married him very gladly.”

“And you would have done very badly.”

“Why?”

“Why ... do you know nothing? you are too simple.”

“Tell me why; tell me.”

“Another time. How late it is, and the ball can’t be opened till the Emperor comes!”

“Shall we see a state quadrille danced?”

“They say he dances beautifully.”

“Will he dance with the Principessa di Nerola?”

“Naturally. You know she is German, and a mediatised princess. That is why she is giving the ball and the Emperor is coming.”

“Are you engaged for the first waltz?”

“Yes, with De Goertz, of the Austrian Embassy.”

“Have you begun, then, with the foreigners?”

“Certainly; and you?”

“Oh, I am dancing with my cousin Roffredo.”

* * * * * * * *

Two old ladies are seated on a sofa of antique brocade in another of the rooms. Their age prohibits them from dancing. Their hair is white, their faces are furrowed with wrinkles, and their bodies bent with senility, so they seldom leave their patriarchal homes except on occasions of great state. They are the Princess of Anticoli and the Duchess of Sutri. Both are dressed in sumptuous dresses, trimmed with valuable lace; the most precious family jewels adorn their white hairs, giving them a certain majesty. Their necks, thin with age, wear scintillating diamond necklaces, and emeralds of old-fashioned style.

The Duchess of Sutri has magnificent eyes, black and vivid, which form a singular contrast to the old age depicted in her face and person. Both their fans are closed in their hands, now so tired of moving them after so many years of balls and festivities. They are talking together slowly, watching with wandering eyes the elegant crowd which is coming and going.

“It wanted an Emperor, Lavinia, to make me leave my home at night.”

“Oh, in other times I wouldn’t have come here at any cost; isn’t he a Lutheran? But all that is changed. My Fabrizio has absolutely stated his wish to enter the Italian army. How was I, a widow, to contradict him? You understand me.”

“You have done well, my poor Lavinia. In fact, perhaps our sons and nephews are more right to accustom themselves to the new state of things than we are to protest. Now I am tired and sorry even of the discussion. I look and smile; sometimes I even laugh.”

“As for me, on the other hand, so many things happen and cause my pity, Livia. But to whom am I to say it? I should offend people by remarking on certain misfortunes and losses.”

“What magnificence, do you remember, in our times?”

“We were all much richer then, Livia.”

“What a lot of us have fallen into the most terrible poverty; it is a real shame.”

“Giovanna della Marsiliana.”

“Poor, poor thing! She lives on her little property near Perugia, just a small house and a garden, I think.”

“Does she stay there summer and winter?”

“Always now.”

“It is a real exile then.”

“But her daughter-in-law, Carolina della Marsiliana, is here. I see her over there.”

“Look, look, she is wearing the Marsiliana pearls!”

“Yes, she has rescued them from the moneylender, Labanchi, for a large sum.”

“Naturally, her father has so many millions.”

“A wholesale boot-manufacturer!”

“Yes, it seems he wants to repurchase the whole of the Marsiliana properties.”

“Carolina is speaking with Arduina Fiore.”

“Why isn’t Arduina wearing her diadem or necklace?”

“She has given them to her two daughters-in-law, Beatrice and Vittoria.”

“They are fortunate, those Casalta girls.”

“Do you think so? This evening they are wearing the jewels of Casa Fiore. Do you notice the two daughters-in-law are following their mother-in-law side by side?”

“Beatrice is very charming.”

“The other is insignificant.”

“A little pale and supercilious. She doesn’t like society, I suppose. How long are you staying, Lavinia?”

“Don’t you know we can’t go away till this Emperor leaves?”

“I knew his grandfather very well at Berlin.”

“And I his father in London, when he came to fetch his bride, Victoria.”

“It is useless to remind him of that.”

“Oh dear, yes.”

Two gentlemen have withdrawn from the flow of people to an embrasure of a window. One is Carlo Savelli, of the great house of Savelli, tall, strong and nervous, looking as if he had dismounted from one of the well-limbed horses of the Campagna, and had changed his large round cow-boy cloak for the evening dress of society. The other is Guglielmo Morici, pale and delicate, of the best Roman bourgeoisie, but allied by business and relationship to the nobility. In the conversation of each the Roman accent is very marked.

“When is the meeting fixed for?”

“For Saturday evening, Guglielmo. You are going to take part if you can get off?”

“Yes, I can get off for two or three days, for the Monday or even till Tuesday morning.”

“Good; we must pray Heaven that it doesn’t rain!”

“I don’t mind a little rain when one is out shooting, a little, but not too much.”

“You are right. We train to Velletri, thence we drive for three hours to Campiglione.”

“Do we get there at midnight?”

“Yes, and go to bed at once. At six o’clock we are off. Breakfast is at a place called L’Æqua Morta, and at night we sleep at Fattino.”

“How I love these shooting trips, dear Carlo! For three days through fields and woods, eating here and there, sleeping here and there. One could believe oneself far away in Africa or Asia.”

“I swear to you, Guglielmo, that everything else is indifferent to me; I rave about the chase. At first it was a hobby, but now it is a passion.”

“Oh, I have had it since a boy.”

“People who do not understand it laugh at us.”

“Let them laugh. Who is coming with us?”

“The usual lot; Mario Colonna, Giovanni Santacroce, and Emilio Guasco.”

“Splendid; have you fixed up everything?”

“This evening we must all meet here to arrange the time-table.”

“Is Emilio coming here too this evening?”

“I believe he is coming with his wife.”

“A beautiful woman!”

“I have always liked her.”

“You are not the only one who has liked her.”

“What are we to do? It is a misfortune for us husbands.”

“However, they are together again now—man and wife!”

“Oh, Emilio is a splendid fellow.”

“I wouldn’t have done it.”

“So one says. But then one has to find oneself in certain predicaments. Watch if you can see them arriving.”

“I see him; Mario Colonna is there.”

“Beckon to him to look for us after the Emperor has entered.”

“He has winked ‘yes.’ Now I see Emilio Guasco.”

“Is he with his wife?”

“Yes, yes. She is more beautiful than ever this evening. Do you know that even I think in looking at her that he was right to have pardoned her.”

“Have you nodded to him?”

“Yes; but I suppose he hasn’t seen me.”

“We will find him as soon as the Emperor has passed. At that moment every one will flock into the ball-room.”

“Is there to be much dancing afterwards?”

“Certainly, on account of the festivities the ladies have been enthusiastic about the Kaiser. My daughter, Maria, will stop late.”

“I think my wife must be very late. She was still dressing when I went out.”

“Oh, these ladies and their toilette!”

“Oh, I leave mine every liberty of being late by setting out first. Thus there is no quarrelling.”

A telephone message from the German Embassy has warned the Principe di Nerola that the Emperor of Germany with his suite has started for the Palazzo di Nerola. It is half-past ten. Court ceremonial ordains that the host honoured by a royal visit, receives His Majesty in the courtyard of his palace, at the foot of the grand staircase. The December evening is very cold. A slight frost covers the roads. The Prince of Nerola is already seventy, and the waiting in the cutting night air worries him secretly, in spite of the high honour which is coming to him from the Imperial visit.

The Roman patrician descends the stairs of his majestic palace wrapped in a fur coat, with his hat on his head. His three sons, Don Marcontonio, Don Camillo, and Don Clemente follow him at a little distance. On every step of the staircase, on right and left, are valets of Casa Nerola in grand livery. At the foot of the staircase footmen, with large lighted candelabra, form a circle round the group formed by the Prince and his sons.

The Nerola palace, in the via Santi Apostoli, is imposing and solemn in its exterior architecture. The courtyard is immense, with a fountain in the middle with a green tiled circle round it. A portico opens on the four sides of the courtyard. The internal architecture resembles the Palazzo Borghese.

Paolo, fifteenth Prince of Nerola, is tall and thin, with flowing white beard. His sons, between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age, all resemble him, but their appearance is less aristocratic and proud than his. Some minutes pass in silence, and suddenly the janitor of Casa Nerola, a Colossus clothed in a livery resplendent with gold, strikes the asphalt three times with his great gold-headed baton, while a dull noise of carriage-wheels reaches from the street.

At once, with youthful agility, Don Paolo frees himself from his cape, and remains in evening dress, his breast covered with decorations. The first imperial carriage enters, containing the aides-de-camp, and stops in front of the grand staircase. The imperial master of ceremonies and three officials in German uniform descend. Salutes are exchanged, and all four group themselves behind the Prince, in waiting. The second carriage enters more slowly, the Prince advances to the door. The Emperor alights, and uncovers at once before the Roman patrician, who bows profoundly and thanks His Imperial Majesty for the honour he is doing to Casa Nerola. The Emperor smiles beneath his light moustaches, curled up proudly, and the procession is formed.

The footmen go slowly in front, holding the magnificent silver candelabra, lit with sweet-scented candles. Behind, at a certain distance, the Emperor. On his left the Prince walks a little apart, and a little behind him a group is formed by the Prince’s sons and the imperial suite. The procession mounts the stairs almost in silence, and with great solemnity. The sovereign is very calm, and talks to his host in German, looking around at the noble beauty of the house he is entering. Above, in the last ante-room, at the entrance to the suite of reception-rooms, the Princess of Nerola is waiting, born Princess Tekla di Salm-Salm. Dressed in white brocade, she wears the closed crown of a mediatised German princess; on her bodice is pinned a German order, which is only given to German ladies of high lineage. Her hair, which had been of the palest flaxen colour, is now quite white. She has that opaque whiteness of colouring, and the rosy cheeks of the descendants of Arminius. Though massive and big-boned, she looks quite the great lady. Immediately her Emperor appears at the door she goes towards him, and almost prostrates herself in profound reverence. Calmly, and almost jokingly, the Emperor takes her hand, kisses it gallantly, and gives her at once her title: “Your Serene Highness.”

The orchestra in the ante-room at once broke into the German National Anthem, in which all the ardent and mysterious power of the German soul is manifested. The procession is again formed, and William, King and Emperor, tall and erect in his uniform of a colonel of the Garde du Corps, gives his arm to the Princess to cross the rooms, glittering with light and magnificently decorated with plants and flowers, showing in all their refulgence the ancient beauty of their sculptural and pictorial decoration, in all the richness of their artistic furniture, an historic luxury, so calm and powerful. Behind the Emperor and the Princess come the Prince, his sons, and the suite. All walk slowly, regulating their step to his. He goes slowly, for he knows the secret of these appearances, and speaks smilingly to the Princess, looking around to right and left at the two lines of men and women who bow profoundly to him, and lower their eyes, if he fixes them with his clear, flashing eyes. It is a double hedge of women especially, in coloured and brilliant gowns, in white and soft gowns, with bare shoulders and arms. It is a double hedge of heads—blondes, brunettes, chestnuts, golden, white—on which feathers flap, on which jewelled stars and shining crescents tremble, on which strange flowers almost open: heads bowed beneath the weight of their thickly dressed hair, little heads almost childish beneath the wavy aureole of golden locks, heads which bow in a salute of reverence, of admiration, of mute feminine sympathy, for this Emperor of legend, of poesy, of ever-renewing self-will. He admires and greets the women with a slightly haughty smile, continuing his way. There is not a word or a whisper as he passes, nothing except the rustling of silk and velvet, or the jingling of the sabres of the suite. In this silence the passing of the Emperor-King acquires a more impressive and imposing character.

Crowded one against the other, dame and damsel had not spoken while he appeared and while he was passing, and indifferent to their surroundings had only thought of seeing him and being seen, of greeting him and receiving his greeting. Mixed among them are old men and young, also intent on bowing to the sovereign. In the famous tapestry-room of Casa Nerola, the room before the ball-room, in the great space cleared in the middle of it to allow the Emperor-King to pass, opposite but far off, divided by the big space and many people, a man and a woman have recognised each other with their eyes, and have remained immobile and silent to gaze at each other.

They are Maria Guasco Simonetti and Marco Fiore.

Since that sad autumn afternoon a year ago, when they had wept their last tears together without either being able to console the other, taking leave of each other for ever, and burying their dead dream of love, they had never seen each other. It is a year ago since, courageously and with broken hearts, they had separated, thinking in that terrible moment that they would never see each other again till death or old age; but so many singular circumstances had happened around them during this time, the change of events has been great, and their fate has changed all its course and aspect. Suddenly and unexpectedly on that December evening, amidst sumptuous and splendid surroundings, amidst flowers, women, jewels, music, and perfumes, the two who had lived their passion of love together, and had placed it desolately in its sepulchre, are face to face, divided by the crowd; but their glances, greedily and intensely attracted, seem as if they never could separate. For a long moment Maria Guasco and Marco Fiore gaze at each other. In their eyes there is only one beautiful, simple, strong expression, sadness free from every ardour, sadness free of every desire; sadness without remorse or hope; a sadness which neither invokes nor offers help. It is an incomparable and immeasurable sadness, which can only be supported by lofty human strength in its humility and innocence. Thus they look at each other and are only sad for that which was and is no more, for that which can never return to them, since nothing which is dead in the soul rises again.

Proud and smiling the Emperor passes, and a flock of people crowd behind the suite and increases near the door, to get near him and surround him. Marco and Maria are separated by the great crowd. But they do not seek each other. Everything has been said in one long glance, in one long moment of intimate understanding.

XIV

As Emilio Guasco helped his wife into her opera-cloak, she felt on her bare shoulders the sensation of something scorching. It was her husband’s hands that had touched her. She turned round quickly, never having seen him so pale. They were alone in the armoury of Casa Nerola, used as a cloak-room. No one is leaving, no one ought to be leaving at the moment when the festival is at its brightest, since the Emperor is dancing in the state quadrille. But Emilio had said to her, coming up unexpectedly, in a decided voice—

“Let us go.”

She obeyed at once. Two valets hastened to help her, but Emilio took the cloak and shawl. How hot the man’s hands felt on the woman’s cold white shoulders. Descending the staircase, with a silent bow he offered his arm to his wife, and, almost as if he feared to see her fall, he pressed hers against his as in a vice. They said not a word, nor did they look at each other. At the bottom of the stairs they waited while the porter called their carriage.

Slightly bending her beautiful head Maria entered the coupÉ drawn by a pair of grey horses, and the door closed behind Emilio with a dull sound. Emilio sat silently in his corner. Twice his wife looked at him in the half-light, and noticed that he was paler than she had ever seen him; his troubled eyes were brightly fixed on her.

She lowered her head. Suddenly he sought her gloved hand in the large velvet and lace sleeve of her mantle, and pressed it so hard that she gave a cry of pain.

“Emilio, you are hurting me!”

He threw the hand aside brutally and laughed loudly. They had reached Casa Guasco. She mounted the stairs rapidly, a prey to a singular trouble caused by an unknown fear, of an unknown shame and sorrow. She did not turn round, but she heard her husband following through the different rooms to the boudoir which preceded her own room, the room whose threshold Emilio had never crossed since she had returned home. In that little room they usually said good-night before separating. She stopped, turned round, and offered her hand to her husband.

“Good-night,” she said, in a feeble voice.

He did not reply, but looked at her strangely, and preceded her into the bedroom. At the threshold before entering she hesitated, and a feminine trembling caused her to vacillate. However, her pride and her courage came to her aid as she entered the room. The man and the woman stood near to each other, looking into each other’s eyes.

“Good-night, Emilio,” she said firmly.

“I want to speak to you,” he managed to say with difficulty, in a hoarse voice.

“Very good,” she replied firmly.

She allowed the shawl, mantle, gloves, and purse to be taken away by Chiara’s deft fingers, who was in the room in attendance on her, almost feeling the gloomy hour which was waiting for them. All these operations are done calmly and dexterously. Quietly Maria removed from her head the grand diadem of diamonds, the pearl collar and necklace, the bracelets from her arms, and poured them into Chiara’s hands, saying quietly—

“You may go.”

“Am I to wait?” whispered the faithful creature, with a timid glance.

“No,” exclaimed Emilio suddenly.

“No,” replied Maria quietly.

With a light step Chiara disappeared. Maria sat down in an arm-chair in her white ball dress, and waited patiently. Her husband stood before her in evening dress, with a flower in his buttonhole, but like a corpse in the face, except that his eyes were shining with an evil flame.

“Maria,” he broke out, “have you decided to make me commit a crime?”

For half-an-hour she had understood that a breath of madness was crossing her husband’s senses, and she believed and hoped she could conquer this madness by calmness and coldness.

“I don’t understand you; will you explain?” she asked in a harmonious voice.

“Don’t lie!” he cried, “don’t lie, as you always do! You know quite well what I am saying. You pretend and dissimulate. You lie, that’s it; and I shall kill some one to make you content.”

“Emilio, Emilio,” she murmured sweetly, “you are wronging me; but I can stand the wrong since I see you are very excited. Calm yourself, I beg of you. Make an effort over your impetuousness; conquer yourself and be tranquil.”

He replied with a horrible laugh.

“Make an end of it, Maria, make an end of this nauseating cataplasm of your pity! Your compassion exasperates me. Go and use it in some hospital. I am sure you understand; and I am going to kill some one. I am going to kill him.”

She shook her head. Her sweetness disappeared with his laughter, and she became thoughtful and sad. He had risen, and was walking up and down the room like a madman talking to himself.

“It shall not be allowed for a miserable woman, yes, for a miserable woman, without honour and without heart, to make a poor gentleman unhappy and ridiculous. An honourable man should not allow her.”

“Are you speaking of me?” she asked, getting up at once proud and erect before him, and forcing him to stop his mad perambulations.

“Exactly; I am speaking of you, dishonour of my life, misfortune of my life!” Emilio cried in her face.

She bent a little under the new injury, but still gathered all her strength not to retaliate or rebel, to dominate her pride, and to use only her goodness and her tenderness.

“Emilio, Emilio, you are raving!” she exclaimed, with immense sadness.

Again he burst into a harsh laugh, false and stridulous.

“So I am a madman, am I? And what are you, Maria? You who lost your head for three years for that waxen-faced doll, for that languishing idiot, for that perverse and mischievous-souled Marco Fiore? Oh yes, call me mad—you, you, who had neither shame nor honour for three years? You who are a spectacle for the laughter and contempt of the whole of Rome for your madness; and dare you tell me that I am raving?”

“Oh, Emilio, Emilio!” she exclaimed, trembling.

“Do you deny it? Do you deny it?” he yelled, almost stammering, so great was his fury.

She looked at her husband. The great danger she was in only made her a little paler and her lips a little drier. She kept silent.

“Haven’t you loved him?” he yelled, coming nearer to her, taking her two hands and squeezing them as in a vice.

She closed her eyes, as if face to face with death. Then she opened them wide, and replied simply—

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you run away from home for him, with him?”

She tried to free her hands, which were closed in his, but he did not let go. Again with simplicity, with loyalty, she had the courage to reply to the furious man—

“Yes.”

“There! there! Didn’t you adore him for three years?”

She tightened her lips, and bit them to conquer the pain of her tortured hands, and without a cry still replied—

“Yes.”

“And you still love him; you’ll always love him!” he cried, and in his anger this time there was mixed deep suffering.

He let go her hands. She fell back exhausted, but replied in a clear, precise voice—

“I do not love him.”

“It is false, it is false; you still love him.”

“If we had still loved each other we should not have left each other,” she declared without hesitation.

“When you returned to this house to laugh at me, to make a fool of your tortured husband, you were in love with Marco Fiore, and Marco Fiore was in love with you.”

“I should not have placed a foot in your house, understand, if I had still loved Marco,” she proclaimed, proudly and coldly.

“Cursed be that evening! Cursed be that hour!” the man exclaimed, mad with jealousy and suffering.

“You called me here,” she stated.

“If not, wouldn’t you have come? Wouldn’t you have come, eh, woman without soul or heart?”

“I should never have come,” she declared.

“You are a monster of pride and aridness!” he cried; but in his voice sorrow conquered anger.

“I have tamed my pride before you, Emilio, don’t forget it,” she replied.

“When? How? You humiliate yourself? You?”

“When I accepted the pardon you offered me. I could have refused it, but I conquered my pride. I bowed and almost prostrated myself before you, and you pardoned me. Remember that; remember that.”

“Cursed be those words; cursed the lips that pronounced them.”

Maria stretched out her hand involuntarily, as if to stop her husband from a mortal fall.

“Weren’t you sincere at that moment?” she asked in a dull voice.

“I was sincere,” he replied, with a gulp.

“Did that pardon come from the bottom of your heart?”

“From the bottom, from the very depths of my heart.”

“Why do you then curse that moment, those words and that sentiment?”

“Because you still love Marco Fiore.”

“No,” she replied.

“You keep his letters.”

“That is true; but I don’t love him. His letters are sacred, like those of one dead, like those of one dear to me.”

“You love him; you love him!” exclaimed Emilio, in a monotony of desperation; “you keep every gift of his.”

“I don’t love him; but what I have is dear to me as a funereal memory.”

“You love him, and he loves you. The house at Santa Maria Maggiore has remained as it was. It belongs to him and you.”

“But I have never been there again,” she replied disdainfully.

“I know, I know. I know where you go. But you will go there to-morrow perhaps, and he will come to-morrow. Oh, this evening, if I had never seen this evening!”

He turned, wringing his hands under a pain he could no longer resist.

“I saw your eyes, Maria; I saw his when you met at Casa Nerola. I saw all. And Vittoria Fiore, the poor unfortunate, saw you. She was as pale as death. This time, understand, I can’t endure the insult; I shall kill you and him. But endure this shame again—never, never!”

She made a supreme effort of courage, subduing her indignation, repressing it at the back of her atrociously offended mind. She remembered that she had returned home to be good, to be sweet, to restore peace and serenity there, to give back happiness to her husband, who had a right to it, to perform works of tenderness, even to the silence and death of her own heart.

“Emilio, Emilio,” she said softly, “tell me what I am to do to soften your mind and pacify your heart. You don’t believe me to-day, you must to-morrow. Tell me all. Shall we leave Rome together for ever?”

“No,” he replied gloomily; “I should think that you wanted to fly from Marco Fiore.”

“Shall we go for a long voyage together?”

“No; you have been everywhere together, that I know.”

“Do you want me to shut myself up at home, to see no one, as if I were dead?”

“No; I should think you were absorbed in memories of him.”

“Well, would you like us to lead a society life together, wild and full of pleasure?”

“No, no. We should meet him every day, every evening, and I should commit a crime, Maria,” and the fixed idea returned to him.

She felt lost for a moment.

“Then what am I to do?”

“There is one only means,” he replied, drawing much nearer to her, speaking with his hot breath in her face.

“What is it?”

“To love me as you loved him.”

The woman frowned two or three times without replying.

“I want to be loved passionately by you, do you understand? You must love me with passion as you loved Marco, as I love you. Have you understood? No more of this pale and flaccid affection, this loving friendship, which I despise and which exasperates me to frenzy. It must be passion. Have you perfectly understood me?”

She stood cold and rigid with staring eyes; but made no reply.

“You want to love me, don’t you? I am your husband, who spoke the first words of love to you, who gave you the first kiss. Remember, remember, you who want to love me. You must love me as I have loved you. Speak; reply.”

She closed her eyes, and replied in a choking and desperate voice—

“I will try; I will try.”

“When?” and the question is like a dull roar.

“Later on, later on,” she said, feeling herself lost, but unable to lie.

“No, no,” he roared. “No, this evening, this very evening, in which you have seen him again, in which you have looked at and understood each other.”

* * * * * * * *

It is late in the night, Maria is alone, stretched in her easy-chair, with dishevelled hair, which covers her face. Her hands hang limply with fingers apart, and her eyes are wide open, almost deprived of their glance. With a supreme effort of will she raised her hand and touched the bell. Her head fell back exhausted. The silence around was intense. No one came, and she had no strength left. But a little step draws near, a familiar face bends over her.

“I am dying,” she cries to the faithful girl.

Chiara suddenly becomes strong, lifts her in her arms, holds her up, and begins to take off her ball dress, while Maria every moment seems to be fainting.

“I am dying,” she repeats.

At last she is free of her gay garments, and the faithful girl tries to make her rise, with infinite patience and tact. At last she stands up, tall, rigid and pale as a ghost.

“I am dying!” she cries.

She grips Chiara with her hands for aid, totters, sways, and falls exhausted in the gloom and silence, as if dead.

XV

Donna Arduina stopped in the centre of the large hall of Palazzo Fiore, with its dark carved wood, and red tapestry bearing the Fiore arms. In spite of her years and life’s troubles she still preserved her noble appearance. Marco bent and kissed her hand tenderly, while she kissed him on the forehead affectionately.

“Good-night, Marco.”

“Good-night, mamma.”

Vittoria had stopped two or three paces behind, wrapped in a white mantle, trimmed with gold, the large chinchilla collar of which suited the delicacy of her face and slender figure. She had placed no shawl on her hair, whose wavy gold was almost oppressed by the weight of the diadem, which shone brightly in the gloom of the hall. Her white and tranquil face is without expression, and her eyes have a distant and dull glance. In her hands she held her shawl, and waited patiently.

“Good-night, Vittoria,” said Donna Arduina, approaching her daughter-in-law.

“Good-night, mother,” she replied, stooping to kiss her hand. Then she drew herself up naturally and avoided the kiss on her forehead which Donna Arduina intended to give her.

Donna Arduina hesitated a moment as if she wished to say something, then, turning her back, she walked slowly and imposingly towards her own apartments. Marco had already started towards his, and his wife followed him without saying a word. As they crossed the various rooms, Marco looked two or three times at Vittoria as if he wished to question her silent, reserved face. She appeared, however, not to notice his questioning glance. Thus they reached their immense bedroom, the room occupied by the eldest sons of Casa Fiore and their wives for more than three hundred years, which modern taste and modern furniture had changed very little, leaving the solemnity and austerity of the old Roman patrician houses. In the majesty of her surroundings, the fragile woman seemed but a fantastic shadow. She sat down, but did not take off her cloak, opening it a little as if she felt warm.

“Aren’t you going to call your maid?” Marco asked, taking the gardenia out of his buttonhole, as if about to undress.

“No,” she replied, “a little later. I must say something to you, Marco.”

He raised his eyebrows slightly, and jokingly sought to change the tone of the conversation.

“We will talk in bed if you like, dear. It is an excellent place for conversation, and I will listen to you with deep attention without going to sleep.”

“No,” she replied dryly, “we must talk as we are.”

“As we are, dressed for society! As we were in Casa Nerola? Very well, dear, but I find the Emperor is missing. We can telephone to him, if you like, to assist at this colloquy?”

And he laughed mischievously. However, Vittoria paid no attention.

“I want to make a request of you, Marco.”

“What is it?”

“I want ten days’ freedom.”

“You, Vittoria?”

“I, yes.”

“To do what?”

“I want to make a retreat at Bambino GesÙ now that Christmas is drawing near,” she concluded, in a low voice.

“A novena!” he exclaimed, internally relieved, but not showing it; “and what prevents you from doing it here?”

“It is impossible, Marco. It isn’t a question of prayer only. One must retire for nine whole days to a convent.”

“To a convent? Are you going to become a nun like Ophelia?”

“Why Ophelia? What do you mean?”

“Nothing, nothing. Go then to your convent; which one?”

“That of the white nuns of GesÙ Bambino in via Merulana.”

“Who put such a strange idea into your head, Vittoria? Doesn’t it seem a little ridiculous to you?”

“It is neither ridiculous nor strange,” she added, shaking her head; “other ladies go there to retire and pray.”

“Old ladies, I suppose?”

“No,” she insisted coldly; “young ladies, and beautiful too; young married women especially.”

“Who are perhaps in mortal sin. Are you in mortal sin, though I didn’t know it, Vittoria?” he laughed loudly, looking at her.

“I hope not,” she replied, lowering her eyes to hide a sudden flash; “but so many people can be in mortal sin, prayers are necessary for us and them.”

“Even for me, dear nun!” he exclaimed mischievously.

“For you also,” she replied expressionlessly.

“When must you enter?”

“To-morrow evening at eight. To-morrow is the fifteenth of December.”

“When do you come out?”

“On the evening of the twenty-fourth.”

“Have you told mamma this?”

“No; please tell her yourself to-morrow.”

“Perhaps mamma will not approve.”

“She knows what it is a question of,” murmured Vittoria; “all Roman ladies know of this retreat in the monastery of GesÙ Bambino. Get her to tell you.”

She blushed slightly. He looked at her, and proceeded more gently with the conversation.

“Are there special prayers in this convent, Vittoria? Are special graces asked for?”

“One grace only,” she replied, with downcast eyes; “one grace only of the Divine Son, Marco.”

“Ah!” he replied without further remark, understanding.

“Do you so very much want to have a son, Vittoria?” he asked in a peculiar tone.

There was a deep silence between them.

“I desire it ardently,” she broke out suddenly, with an impetuous accent, immediately recovering herself, “I desire nothing else now.”

“Also I want one for you,” he said, vaguely and absently.

“Not for yourself?” was the sharp question. But he did not heed the intense expression.

“As for myself, you understand, my brother Giulio has three sons. The house of Fiore has descendants.”

“Beatrice has been fortunate,” she murmured, with a sigh.

“There, there; you, too, will be fortunate,” he resumed jokingly and laughingly; “you will have a quiverful of sons, too many, I tell you, dear Vittoria, for many sons will give you much worry. Don’t doubt; you are not sterile.”

“Who knows,” she said, with a sorrowful shudder.

“Go to your convent, dear, since you are set on it,” he said, laughing; “the Bambino GesÙ will content you, and when you return home He will send you the little one.”

He drew near her to kiss and embrace her. With a cold gesture she repulsed him.

“Hoighty, toighty! Hoighty toighty!” he exclaimed; “why all this rudeness to your lawful husband, Don Marco Fiore?” He tried again to draw her to himself and kiss her. Again still more coldly and hostilely she kept him at a distance.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“We must live from to-day in prayer and mortification,” she replied in glacial tones.

“Therefore?” he asked.

“You resume from to-night your bachelor bedroom.”

“Ah; and am I to keep it for ten days?” he said drily.

“Yes, for ten days, till my return.”

“Brava! Brava! And if I am bored in there all alone?” he continued, with signs of annoyance.

“Oh, you won’t bore yourself there!” she replied, with a slightly bitter smile.

He remembered that in that room everything had remained untouched since he had married, that it was full of portraits, big and small, of Maria Guasco, with recollections of their dead dream, their dead love. He understood more than ever the depth of his wife’s thoughts and feelings; he realised her intense pain. So he tried again in pity and tenderness to make her speak, to make her weep.

“Vittoria, Vittoria!” he exclaimed in sad reproach, “you as usual are dissimulating and lying, and that makes you suffer and becomes unfair to me. I don’t want to be angry, and you should not suffer.”

“You are mistaken,” she replied coldly, “neither do I suffer nor need you be angry. My confessor has told me that the scope of matrimony is not love but children, that one must ask Heaven for children, and pray very much. I am going to pray.”

“Ah!” he said, suddenly becoming cold, “you are convinced that the scope of matrimony is not love?”

“Quite convinced,” she answered harshly.

“All the worse,” he exclaimed in a bad temper; “all the worse; and when did you decide to enter the convent for the novena?”

The question was direct and sharp. She hesitated to reply.

“When, Vittoria? Think and tell the truth.”

“This evening,” she replied, with an effort.

“This evening? At the ball?” he insisted, still more sharply.

“This evening at the ball,” she assented, growing very pale.

But pity, sentiment without strength, was already extinguished in Marco’s heart, and there was substituted, as in every heart unjustly suspected, a dull and cruel indignation. He shrugged his shoulders, took his fur coat and hat, and left with a dry, “Good-night, Vittoria.”

She had no strength to reply. With difficulty she closed the door of her big room where she was alone, desperately alone. She dared not weep, for fear that he might return and find her weeping, for fear that, not being very far away, he might hear her weeping.

XVI

Maria Guasco wrote thus to Marco Fiore—

At the same time Marco wrote to Maria—

In reply to her letter Maria received this from Marco—

“Maria, good and brave, make an appeal to all your goodness and strength. They are great, immense; you can’t measure them, but I can. With your goodness and strength strive to conquer Emilio, the enemy who loves you. Make a friend of him. That is the best way: do it.

“Marco.”