The party returning to Marinata had two hours to spend in the gallery and garden of the Villa Borghese. Of the pictures and statues of the palace, of the green undulations, the stone pines, the tempietti of the garden, Lucy afterwards had no recollection. All that she remembered was flight on her part, pursuit on Manisty's, and finally a man triumphant and a girl brought to bay.

It was in a shady corner of the vast garden, where hedges of some fragrant yellow shrub shut in the basin of a fountain, surrounded by a ring of languid nymphs, that Lucy at last found herself face to face with Manisty, and knew that she must submit.

'I do not understand how I have missed Mrs. Burgoyne,' she said hastily, looking round for her companion Mrs. Elliot, who had just left her to overtake her brother and go home; while Lucy was to meet Eleanor and Mr. Neal at this rendezvous.

Manisty looked at her with his most sparkling, most determined air.

'You have missed her—because I have misled her.' Then, as Lucy drew back, he hurried on,—'I cannot understand, Miss Foster, why it is that you have constantly refused all yesterday evening—all to-day—to give me the opportunity I desired! But I, too, have a will,—and it has been roused!

'I don't understand,' said Lucy, growing white.

'Let me explain, then,' said Manisty, coolly. 'Miss Foster, two nights ago you were attacked,—in danger—under my roof, in my care. As your host, you owe it to me, to let me account and apologise for such things—if I can. But you avoid me. You give me no chance of telling you what I had done to protect you—of expressing my infinite sorrow and regret. I can only imagine that you resent our negligence too deeply even to speak of it—that you cannot forgive us!'

'Forgive!' cried Lucy, fairly taken aback. 'What could I have to forgive,
Mr. Manisty?—what can you mean?'

'Explain to me then,' said he, unflinching, 'why you have never had a kind
word for me, or a kind look, since this happened. Please sit down, Miss
Foster'—he pointed to a marble bench close beside her—'I will stand here.
The others are far away. Ten minutes you owe me—ten minutes I claim.'

Lucy sat down, struggling to maintain her dignity and presence of mind.

'I am afraid I have given you very wrong ideas of me,' she said, throwing him a timid smile. 'I of course have nothing to forgive anybody—far, far the contrary. I know that you took all possible pains that no harm should happen to me. And through you—no harm did happen to me.'

She turned away her head, speaking with difficulty. To both that moment of frenzied struggle at the dining-room door was almost too horrible for remembrance. And through both minds there swept once more the thrill of her call to him—of his rush to her aid.

'You knew'—he said eagerly, coming closer.

'I knew—I was in danger—that but for you—perhaps—your poor sister—'

'Oh! don't speak of it,' he said, shuddering.

And leaning over the edge of one of the nymphs' pedestals, beside her, he stared silently into the cool green water.

'There,' said Lucy tremulously, 'you don't want to speak of it. And that was my feeling. Why should we speak of it any more? It must be such a horrible grief to you. And I can't do anything to help you and Miss Manisty. It would be so different if I could.'

'You can,—you must—let me tell you what I had done for your safety that night,' he said firmly, interrupting her. 'I had made such arrangements with Dalgetty—who is a strong woman physically—I had so imprisoned my poor sister, that I could not imagine any harm coming to you or any other of our party. When my aunt said to me that night before she went to bed that she was afraid your door was unsafe, I laughed—"That doesn't matter!" I said to her. I felt quite confident. I sat up all night,—but I was not anxious,—and I suppose it was that which at last betrayed me into sleep. Of course, the fatal thing was that we none of us knew of the chloroform she had hidden away.'

Lucy fidgetted in distress.

'Please—please—don't talk as though anyone were to blame—as though there were anything to make excuses for—'.

'How should there not be? You were disturbed—attacked—frightened. You might—'

He drew in his breath. Then he bent over her.

'Tell me,' he said in a low voice, 'did she attack you in your room?'

Lucy hesitated. 'Why will you talk about it?' she said despairingly.

'I have a right to know.'

His urgent imperious look left her no choice. She felt his will, and yielded. In very simple words, faltering yet restrained, she told the whole story. Manisty followed every word with breathless attention.

'My God!' he said, when she paused, 'my God!' And he hid his eyes with his hand a moment. Then—

'You knew she had a weapon?' he said.

'I supposed so,' she said quietly. 'All the time she was in my room, she kept her poor hand closed on something.'

'Her poor hand!'—the little phrase seemed to Manisty extraordinarily touching. There was a moment's pause—then he broke out:

'Upon my word, this has been a fine ending to the whole business. Miss Foster, when you came out to stay with us, you imagined, I suppose, that you were coming to stay with friends? You didn't know much of us; but after the kindness my aunt and I had experienced from your friends and kinsfolk in Boston—to put it in the crudest way—you might have expected at least that we should welcome you warmly—do all we could for you—take you everywhere—show you everything?'

Lucy coloured—then laughed.

'I don't know in the least what you mean, Mr. Manisty! I knew you would be kind to me; and of course—of course—you have been!'

She looked in distress first at the little path leading from the fountain, by which he barred her exit, and then at him. She seemed to implore, either that he would let her go, or that he would talk of something else.

'Not I,' he said with decision. 'I admit that since Alice appeared on the scene you have been my chief anxiety. But before that, I treated you, Miss Foster, with a discourtesy, a forgetfulness, that you can't, that you oughtn't to forget; I made no plans for your amusement; I gave you none of my time. On your first visit to Rome, I let you mope away day after day in that stifling garden, without taking a single thought for you. I even grudged it when Mrs. Burgoyne looked after you. To be quite, quite frank, I grudged your coming to us at all. Yet I was your host—you were in my care—I had invited you. If there ever was an ungentlemanly boor, it was I. There! Miss Foster, there is my confession. Can you forgive it? Will you give me another chance?'

He stood over her, his broad chest heaving with an agitation that, do what she would, communicated itself to her. She could not help it. She put out her hand, with a sweet look, half smiling, half appealing—and he took it. Then, as she hurriedly withdrew it, she repeated:

'There is nothing—nothing—to forgive. You have all been good to me. And as for Mrs. Burgoyne and Aunt Pattie, they have been just angels!'

Manisty laughed.

'I don't grudge them their wings. But I should like to grow a pair of my own. You have a fortnight more with us—isn't it so?' Lucy started and looked down. 'Well, in a fortnight, Miss Foster, I could yet redeem myself; I could make your visit really worth while. It is hot, but we could get round the heat. I have many opportunities here—friends who have the keys of things not generally seen. Trust yourself to me. Take me for a guide, a professor, a courier! At last I will give you a good time!'

He smiled upon her eagerly, impetuously. It was like him, this plan for mending all past errors in a moment, for a summary and energetic repentance. She could hardly help laughing; yet far within her heart made a leap towards him—beaten back at once by its own sad knowledge.

She turned away from him—away from his handsome face, and that touch in him of the 'imperishable child,' which moved and pleased her so. Playing with some flowers on her lap, she said shyly—

'Shall I tell you what you ought to do with this fortnight?'

'Tell me,' said Manisty, stooping towards her. It was well for her that she could not see his expression, as he took in with covetous delight her maidenly simpleness and sweetness.

'Oughtn't you—to finish the book? You could—couldn't you? And Mrs.
Burgoyne has been so disappointed. It makes one sad to see her.'

Her words gave her courage. She looked at him again with a grave, friendly air.

Manisty drew himself suddenly erect. After a pause, he said in another voice: 'I thought I had explained to you before that the book and I had reached a cul de sac—that I no longer saw my way with it.'

Lucy thought of the criticisms upon it she had heard at the Embassy, and was uncomfortably silent.

'Miss Foster!' said Manisty suddenly, with determination.

Lucy's heart stood still.

'I believe I see the thought in your mind. Dismiss it! There have been rumours in Rome—in which even perhaps my aunt has believed. They are unjust—both to Eleanor and to me. She would be the first to tell you so.'

'Of course,' said Lucy hurriedly, 'of course,'—and then did not know what to say, torn as she was between her Puritan dread of falsehood, her natural woman's terror of betraying Eleanor, and her burning consciousness of the man and the personality beside her.

'No!—you still doubt. You have heard some gossip and you believe it.'

He threw away the cigarette with which he had been playing, and came to sit down on the curving marble bench beside her.

'I think you must listen to me,' he said, with a quiet and manly force that became him. 'The friendship between my cousin and me has been unusual, I know. It has been of a kind that French people, rather than English, understand; because for French people literature and conversation are serious matters, not trifles that don't count, as they are with us. She has been all sweetness and kindness to me, and I suppose that she, like a good many other people, has found me an unsatisfactory and disappointing person to work with!'

'She is so ill and tired,' said Lucy, in a low voice.

'Is she?' said Manisty, concerned. 'But she never can stand heat. She will pick up when she gets to England.—But now suppose we grant all my enormities. Then please tell me what I am to do? How am I to appease Eleanor?—and either transform the book, to satisfy Neal,—or else bury it decently? Beastly thing!—as if it were worth one tithe of the trouble it has cost her and me. Yet there are some uncommon good things in it too!' he said, with a change of tone.

'Well, if you did bury it,' said Lucy, half laughing, yet trying to pluck up courage to obey the Ambassador,—'what would you do? Go back to England?—and—and to your property?'

'What! has that dear old man been talking to you?' he said with amusement.
'I thought as much. He has snubbed my views and me two or three times
lately. I don't mind. He is one of the privileged. So the Ambassador thinks
I should go home?'

He threw one arm over the back of the seat, and threw her a brilliant hectoring look which led her on.

'Don't people in England think so too?'

'Yes—some of them,' he said considering. 'I have been bombarded with letters lately as to politics, and the situation, and a possible new constituency. A candid friend says to me this morning, "Hang the Italians!—what do you know about them,—and what do they matter? English people can only be frightened by their own bogies. Come home, for God's sake! There's a glorious fight coming, and if you're not in it, you'll be a precious fool."'

'I daren't be as candid as that!' said Lucy, her face quivering with suppressed fun.

Their eyes met in a common flash of laughter. Then Manisty fell heavily back against the seat.

'What have I got to go home for?' he said abruptly, his countenance darkening.

Lucy's aspect changed too, instantly. She waited.

Manisty's lower jaw dropped a little. A sombre bitterness veiled the eyes fixed upon the distant vistas of the garden.

'I hate my old house,' he said slowly. 'Its memories are intolerable. My father was a very eminent person, and had many friends. His children saw nothing of him, and had not much reason to love him. My mother died there—of an illness it is appalling to think of. No, no—not Alice's illness!—not that. And now, Alice,—I should see her ghost at every corner!'

Lucy watched him with fascination. Every note of the singular voice, every movement of the picturesque ungainly form, already spoke to her, poor child, with a significance that bit these passing moments into memory, as an etcher's acid bites upon his plate.

'Oh! she will recover!' she said, softly, leaning towards him unconsciously.

'No!—she will never recover,—never! And if she did, she and I have long ceased to be companions and friends. No, Miss Foster, there is nothing to call me home,—except politics. I may set up a lodging in London, of course. But as for playing the country squire—' He laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. 'No,—I shall let the place as soon as I can. Anyway, I shall never return to it—alone!'

He turned upon her suddenly. The tone in which the last word was spoken, the steady ardent look with which it was accompanied, thrilled the hot May air.

A sickening sense of peril, of swift intolerable remorse, rushed upon Lucy.
It gave her strength.

She changed her position, and spoke with perfect self-possession, gathering up her parasol and gloves.

'We really must find the others, Mr. Manisty. They will wonder what has become of us.'

She rose as she spoke. Manisty drew a long breath as he still sat observing her. Her light, cool dignity showed him that he was either not understood—or too well understood. In either case he was checked. He took back his move; not without a secret pleasure that she was not too yielding—too much of the ingÉnue!

'We shall soon discover them,' he said carelessly, relighting his cigarette. 'By the way, I saw what company you were in after lunch! You didn't hear any good of the book or me—there!'

'I liked them all,' she said with spirit. 'They love their country, and they believe in her. Where, Mr. Manisty, did you leave Mr. Neal and Mrs. Burgoyne?'

'I will show you,' he said, unwillingly. 'They are in a part of the garden you don't know.'

Her eye was bright, a little hostile. She moved resolutely forward, and Manisty followed her. Both were conscious of a hidden amazement. But a minute, since he had spoken that word, looked that look? How strange a thing is human life! He would not let himself think,—talked of he hardly knew what.

'They love their country, you say? Well, I grant you that particular group has pure hands, and isn't plundering their country's vitals like the rest—as far as I know. A set of amiable dreamers, however, they appear to me; fiddling at small reforms, while the foundations are sinking from under them. However, you liked them,—that's enough. Now then, when and how shall we begin our campaign? Where will you go?—what will you see? The crypt of St. Peter's?—that wants a Cardinal's order. The Villa Albani?—closed to the public since the Government laid hands on the Borghese pictures,—but it shall open to you. The great function at the Austrian Embassy next week with all the Cardinals? Give me your orders,—it will be hard if I can't compass them!'

But she was silent, and he saw that she still hurried, that her look sought the distance, that her cheek was flushed. Why? What new thing had he said to press—to disturb her? A spark of emotion passed through him. He approached her gently, persuasively, as one might approach a sweet, resisting child—

You'll come? You'll let me make amends?'

'I thought,' said Lucy, uncertainly, 'that you were going home directly—at the beginning of June. Oh! please, Mr. Manisty, will you look? Is that Mrs. Burgoyne?'

Manisty frowned.

'They are not in that direction.—As to my going home, Miss Foster, I have no engagements that I cannot break.'

The wounded feeling in the voice was unmistakable. It hurt her ear.

'I should love to see all those things,' she said vaguely, still trying, as it seemed to him, to outstrip him, to search the figures in the distance; 'but—but—plans are so difficult. Oh! that is—that is Mr. Neal!'

She began to run towards the approaching figure, and presently Manisty could hear her asking breathlessly for Mrs. Burgoyne.

Manisty stood still. Then as they approached him, he said—

'Neal!—well met! Will you take these ladies to the station, or, at any rate, put them in their cab? It is time for their train. I dine in Rome.'

He raised his hat formally to Lucy, turned, and went his way.

* * * * *

It was night at the villa.

Eleanor was in her room, the western room overlooking the olive-ground and the Campagna, which Lucy had occupied for a short time on her first arrival.

It was about half an hour since Eleanor had heard Manisty's cab arrive, and his voice in the library giving his orders to Alfredo. She and Lucy Foster and Aunt Pattie had already dispersed to their rooms. It was strange that he should have dined in town. It had been expressly arranged on their way to Rome that he should bring them back.

Eleanor was sitting in a low chair beside a table that carried a paraffin lamp. At her back was the window, which was open save for the sun-shutter outside, and the curtains, both of which had been drawn close. A manuscript diary lay on Eleanor's lap, and she was listlessly turning it over, with eyes that saw nothing, and hands that hardly knew what they touched. Her head, with its aureole of loosened hair, was thrown back against the chair, and the crude lamplight revealed each sharpened feature with a merciless plainness. She was a woman no longer young—ill—and alone.

By the help of the entries before her she had been living the winter over again.

How near and vivid it was,—how incredibly, tangibly near!—and yet as dead as the CÆsars on the Palatine.

For instance:—

'November 22. To-day we worked well. Three hours this morning—nearly three this afternoon. The survey of the financial history since 1870 is nearly finished. I could not have held out so long, but for his eagerness, for my head ached, and last night it seemed to me that Rome was all bells, and that the clocks never ceased striking.

'But how his eagerness carries one through, and his frank and generous recognition of all that one does for him! Sometimes I copy and arrange; sometimes he dictates; sometimes I just let him talk till he has got a page or section into shape. Even in this handling of finance, you feel the flame that makes life with him so exciting. It is absurd to say, as his enemies do, that he has no steadiness of purpose. I have seen him go through the most tremendous drudgery the last few weeks,—and then throw it all into shape with the most astonishing ease and rapidity. And he is delightful to work with. He weighs all I say. But no false politeness! If he doesn't like it, he frowns and bites his lip, and tears me to pieces. But very often I prevail, and no one can yield with a better grace. People here talk of his vanity. I don't deny it—perhaps I think it part of his charm.

'He thinks too much of me, far, far too much.

'December 16. A luncheon at the Marchesa's. The Fioravantis were there, and some Liberal Catholics. Manisty was attacked on all sides. At first he was silent and rather sulky—it is not always easy to draw him. Then he fired up,—and it was wonderful how he met them all in an Italian almost as quick as their own. I think they were amazed: certainly I was.

'Of course I sometimes wish that it were conviction with him and not policy. My heart aches, hungers sometimes—for another note. If instead of this praise from outside, this cool praise of religion as the great policeman of the world, if only his voice, his dear voice, spoke for one moment the language of faith!—all barren tension and grief and doubt would be gone then for me, at a breath. But it never, never does. And I remind myself—painfully—that his argument holds whether the arguer believe or no. "Somehow or other you must get conduct out of the masses or society goes to pieces. But you can only do this through religion. What folly, then, for nations like Italy and France to quarrel with the only organisation which can ever get conduct out of the ignorant!—in the way they understand!"—It is all so true. I know it by heart—there is no answering it. But if instead he once said to me—"Eleanor, there is a God!—and it is He that has brought us together in this life and work,—He that will comfort you, and open new ways for me"—Ah then—then!—

* * * * *

'Christmas Day. We went last night to the midnight mass at Santa Maria Maggiore. Edward is always incalculable at these functions; sometimes bored to death, sometimes all enthusiasm and sympathy. Last night the crowd jarred him, and I wished we had not come. But as we walked home through the moonlit streets, full of people hurrying in and out of the churches, of the pifferari with their cloaks and pipes—black and white nuns—brown monks—lines of scarlet seminarists, and the like, he suddenly broke out with the prayer of the First Christmas Mass—I must give it in English, for I have forgotten the Latin:

'"O God, who didst cause this most holy Night to be illumined by the rising of the true Light, we beseech Thee that we who know on earth the secret shining of His splendour may win in Heaven His eternal joys."

'We were passing through Monte Cavallo, beside the Two Divine Horsemen who saved Rome of old. The light shone on the fountains—it seemed as if the two godlike figures were just about to leap, in fierce young strength, upon their horses.

'Edward stopped to look at them.

'"And we say that the world lives by Science! Fools! when has it lived by anything else than Dreams—at Athens, at Rome, or Jerusalem?"

'We stayed by the fountains talking. And as we moved away, I said: "How strange at my age to be enjoying Christmas for the first time!" And he looked at me as though I had given him pleasure, and said with his most delightful smile—"Who else should enjoy life if not you—kind, kind Eleanor?"

'When I got home, and to my room, I opened my windows wide. Our apartment is at the end of the Via Sistina, and has a marvellous view over Rome. It was a gorgeous moon—St. Peter's, the hills, every dome and tower radiantly clear. And at last it seemed to me that I was not a rebel and an outlaw—that beauty and I were reconciled.

'Such peace in the night! It opened and took me in. Oh! my little, little son!—I have had such strange visions of you all these last days. That horror of the whirling river—and the tiny body—tossed and torn. Oh! my God! my God!—has it not filled all my days and nights for eight years? And now I see him so no more. I see him always carried in the arms of dim majestic forms—wrapped close and warm. Sometimes the face that bends over him is that of some great Giotto angel—sometimes, so dim and faint! the pure Mother herself—sometimes the Hands that fold him in are marred. Is it the associations of Rome—the images with which this work with Edward fills my mind? Perhaps.

'But at least I am strangely comforted—some kind hand seems to be drawing the smart from the deep deep wound. Little golden-head! you lie soft and safe, but often you seem to me to turn your dear eyes—the baby-eyes that still know all—to look out over the bar of heaven—to search for me—to bid me be at peace, at last.

'February 20. How delicious is the first breath of the spring! The almond trees are pink in the Campagna. The snow on the Sabine peaks is going. The Piazza di Spagna is heaped with flowers—anemones and narcissus and roses. And for the first time in my life I too feel the "Sehnsucht"—the longing of the spring! At twenty-nine!'

'March 24, Easter week. I went to a wedding at the English church to-day. Some barrier seems to have fallen between me and life. The bride—a dear girl who has often been my little companion this winter—kissed me as she was going up to take off her dress. And I threw my arms round her with such a rush of joy. Other women have felt all these things ten years earlier perhaps than I. But they are not less heavenly when they come late—into a heart seared with grief.

'March 26. It is my birthday. From the window looking on the Piazza, I have just seen Edward bargaining with the flower woman. Those lilacs and pinks are for me—I know it! Already he has given me the little engraved emerald I wear at my watch-chain. A little genius with a torch is cut upon it. He said I was to take it as the genius of our friendship.

'I changed the orders for my dress to-day. I have discovered that black is positively disagreeable to him. So Mathilda will have to devise something else.

'April 5. He is away at Florence, and I am working at some difficult points for him—about some suppressed monasteries. I have asked Count B—, who knows all about such things, to help me, and am working very hard. He comes back in four days.

'April 9. He came back to-day. Such a gay and happy evening. When he saw what I had done, he took both my hands, and kissed them impetuously. "Eleanor, my queen of cousins!" And now we shall be at the villa directly. And there will be no interruption. There is one visitor coming. But Aunt Pattie will look after her. I think the book should be out in June. Of course there are some doubtful things. But it must, it will have a great effect.—How wonderfully well I have been lately! The doctor last week looked at me in astonishment. He thought that the Shadow and I were to be soon acquainted, when he saw me first!

'I hope that Edward will get as much inspiration from the hills as from Rome. Every little change makes me anxious. Why should we change? Dear beloved, golden Rome!—even to be going fourteen miles away from you somehow tears my heart.'

* * * * *

Yes, there they were, those entries,—mocking, ineffaceable, for ever.

As she had read them, driving through all the memories they suggested, like a keen and bitter wind that kills and blights the spring bloom, there had pressed upon her the last memory of all,—the memory of this forlorn, this intolerable day. Had Manisty ever yet forgotten her so completely—abandoned her so utterly? She had simply dropped out of his thoughts. She had become as much of a stranger to him again, as on her first arrival at Rome. Nay, more! For when two people are first brought into a true contact, there is the secret delightful sense on either side of possibilities, of the unexplored. But when the possibilities are all known, and all exhausted?

What had happened between him and Lucy Foster? Of course she understood that he had deliberately contrived their interview. But as Lucy and she came home together they had said almost nothing to each other. She had a vision of their two silent figures in the railway-carriage side by side,—her hand in Lucy's. And Lucy—so sad and white herself!—with the furrowed brow that betrayed the inner stress of thought.

Had the crisis arrived?—and had she refused him? Eleanor had not dared to ask.

Suddenly she rose from her chair. She clasped her hands above her head, and began to walk tempestuously up and down the bare floor of her room. In this creature so soft, so loving, so compact of feeling and of tears, there had gradually arisen an intensity of personal claim, a hardness, almost a ferocity of determination, which was stiffening and transforming the whole soul. She could waver still—as she had wavered in that despairing, anguished moment with Lucy in the Embassy garden. But the wavering would soon be over. A jealousy so overpowering that nothing could make itself heard against it was closing upon her like a demoniacal possession. Was it the last effort of self-preservation?—the last protest of the living thing against its own annihilation?

He was not to be hers—but this treachery, this wrong should be prevented.

She thought of Lucy in Manisty's arms—of that fresh young life against his breast—and the thought maddened her. She was conscious of a certain terror of herself—of this fury in the veins, so strange, so alien, so debasing. But it did not affect her will.

Was Lucy's own heart touched? Over that question Eleanor had been racking herself for days past. But if so it could be only a passing fancy. It made it only the more a duty to protect her from Manisty. Manisty—the soul of caprice and wilfulness—could never make a woman like Lucy happy. He would tire of her and neglect her. And what would be left for Lucy—Lucy the upright, simple, profound—but heartbreak?

Eleanor paused absently in front of the glass, and then looked at herself with a start of horror. That face—to fight with Lucy's!

On the dressing-table there were still lying the two terra-cotta heads from Nemi, the Artemis, and the Greek fragment with the clear brow and nobly parted hair, in which Manisty had seen and pointed out the likeness to Lucy. Eleanor recalled his words in the garden—his smiling, absorbed look as the girl approached.

Yes!—it was like her. There was the same sweetness in strength, the same adorable roundness and youth.

And that was the beauty that Eleanor had herself developed and made doubly visible—as a man may free a diamond from the clay.

A mad impulse swept through her—that touch of kinship with the criminal and the murderer that may reveal itself in the kindest and the noblest.

She took up the little mask, and, reaching to the window, she tore back the curtains and pushed open the sun-shutters outside.

The night burst in upon her, the starry night hanging above the immensity of the Campagna, and the sea. There was still a faint glow in the western heaven. On the plain were a few scattered lights, fires lit, perhaps, by wandering herdsmen against malaria. On the far edge of the land to the south-west, a revolving light flashed its message to the Mediterranean and the passing ships. Otherwise, not a sign of life. Below, a vast abyss of shadow swallowed up the olive-garden, the road, and the lower slopes of the hills.

Eleanor felt herself leaning out above the world, alone with her agony and the balmy peace which mocked it. She lifted her arm, and, stretching forward, she flung the little face violently into the gulf beneath. The villa rose high above the olive-ground, and the olive-ground itself sank rapidly towards the road. The fragment had far to fall. It seemed to Eleanor that in the deep stillness she heard a sound like the striking of a stone among thick branches. Her mind followed with a wild triumph the breaking of the terra-cotta,—the shivering of the delicate features—their burial in the stony earth.

With a long breath she tottered from the window and sank into her chair. A horrible feeling of illness overtook her, and she found herself gasping for breath. 'If I could only reach that medicine on my table!' she thought. But she could not reach it. She lay helpless.

The door opened.

Was it a dream? She seemed to struggle through rushing waters back to land.

There was a low cry. A light step hurried across the room. Lucy Foster sank on her knees beside her and threw her arms about her.

'Give me—those drops—on the table,' said Eleanor, with difficulty.

Lucy said not a word. Quietly, with steady hands, she brought and measured the medicine. It was a strong heart-stimulant, and it did its work. But while her strength came back, Lucy saw that she was shivering with cold, and closed the window.

Then, silently, Lucy looked down upon the figure in the chair. She was almost as white as Eleanor. Her eyes showed traces of tears. Her forehead was still drawn with thought as it had been in the train.

Presently she sank again beside Eleanor.

'I came to see you, because I could not sleep, and I wanted to suggest a plan to you. I had no idea you were ill. You should have called me before.'

Eleanor put out a feeble hand. Lucy took it tenderly, and laid it against her cheek. She could not understand why Eleanor looked, at her with this horror and wildness,—how it was that she came to be up, by this open window, in this state of illness and collapse. But the discovery only served an antecedent process—a struggle from darkness to light—which had brought her to Eleanor's room.

She bent forward and said some words in Eleanor's ear.

Gradually Eleanor understood and responded. She raised herself piteously in her chair. The two women sat together, hand locked in hand, their faces near to each other, the murmur of their voices flowing on brokenly, for nearly an hour.

Once Lucy rose to get a guide book that lay on Eleanor's table. And on another occasion, she opened a drawer by Eleanor's direction, took out a leather pocket-book and counted some Italian notes that it contained. Finally she insisted on Eleanor's going to bed, and on helping her to undress.

Eleanor had just sunk into her pillows, when a noise from the library startled them. Eleanor looked up with strained eyes.

'It must be Mr. Manisty,' said Lucy hurriedly. 'He was out when I came through the glass passage. The doors were all open, and his lamp burning.' I am nearly sure that I heard him unbar the front door. I must wait now till he is gone.'

They waited—Eleanor staring into the darkness of the room—till there had been much opening and shutting of doors, and all was quiet again.

Then the two women clung to each other in a strange and pitiful embrace—offered with passion on Lucy's side, accepted with a miserable shame on Eleanor's—and Lucy slipped away.

'He was out?—in the garden?' said Eleanor to herself bewildered. And with those questions on her lips, and a mingled remorse and fever in her blood, she lay sleepless waiting for the morning.

* * * * *

Manisty indeed had also been under the night, bathing passion and doubt in its cool purity.

Again and again had he wandered up and down the terrace in the starlight, proving and examining his own heart, raised by the growth of love to a more manly and more noble temper than had been his for years.

What was in his way? His conduct towards his cousin? He divined what seemed to him the scruple in the girl's sensitive and tender mind. He could only meet it by truth and generosity—by throwing himself on Eleanor's mercy. She knew what their relations had been—she would not refuse him this boon of life and death—the explanation of them to Lucy.

Unless! There came a moment when his restless walk was tormented with the prickly rise of a whole new swarm of fears. He recalled that moment in the library after the struggle with Alice, when Lucy was just awakening from unconsciousness—when Eleanor came in upon them. Had she heard? He remembered that the possibility of it had crossed his mind. Was she in truth working against him—avenging his neglect—establishing a fatal influence over Lucy?

His soul cried out in fierce and cruel protest. Here at last was the great passion of his life. Come what would, Eleanor should not be allowed to strangle it.

Absently he wandered down a little path leading from the terrace to the podere below, and soon found himself pacing the dim grass walks among the olives. The old villa rose above him, dark and fortress-like. That was no longer her room—that western corner? No—he had good cause to remember that she had been moved, to the eastern side, beyond his library, beyond the glass passage! Those were now Eleanor's windows, he believed.

Ah!—what was that sudden light? He threw his head back in astonishment. One of the windows at which he had been looking was flung open, and in the bright lamplight a figure appeared. It stooped forward. Eleanor! Something fell close beside him. He heard the breaking of a branch from one of the olives.

In his astonishment, he stood motionless, watching the window. It remained open for a while. Then again some one appeared—not the same figure as at first. A thrill of delight and trouble ran through him. He sent his salutation, his homage through the night.

But the window shut—the light went out. All was once more still and dark.

Then he struck a match and groped under the tree close by him. Yes, there was the fallen branch. But what had broken it? He lit match after match, holding the light with his left hand while he turned over the dry ground with his knife. Presently he brought up a handful of stones and earth, and laid them on a bit of ruined wall close by. Stooping over them with his dim, sputtering lights, he presently discovered some terra-cotta fragments. His eye, practised in such things, detected them at once. They were the fragments of a head, which had measured about three inches from brow to chin.

The head, or rather the face, which he had given Eleanor at Nemi! The parting of the hair above the brow was intact—so was the beautiful curve of the cheek.

He knew it—and the likeness to Lucy. He remembered his words to Eleanor in the garden. Holding the pieces in his hand, he went slowly back towards the terrace.

Thrown out?—flung out into the night—by Eleanor? But why? He thought—and thought. A black sense of entanglement and fate grew upon him in the darkness, as he thought of the two women together, in the midnight silence, while he was pacing thus, alone. He met it with the defiance of newborn passion—with the resolute planning of a man who feels himself obscurely threatened, and realises that his chief menace lies, not in the power of any outside enemy, but in the very goodness of the woman he loves.