'Can you bear it? Can you be comfortable?' said Lucy, in some dismay.

They were in one of the four or five bare rooms that had been given up to them. A bed with a straw palliasse, one or two broken chairs, and bits of worm-eaten furniture filled what had formerly been one of a row of cells running along an upper corridor. The floor was of brick and very dirty. Against the wall a tattered canvas, a daub of St. Laurence and his gridiron, still recalled the former uses of the room.

They had given orders for a few comforts to be sent out from Orvieto, but the cart conveying them had not yet arrived. Meanwhile Marie was crying in the next room, and the contadina was looking on astonished and a little sulky. The people who came from Orvieto never complained. What was wrong with the ladies?

Eleanor looked round her with a faint smile.

'It doesn't matter,' she said under her breath. Then she looked at Lucy.

'What care we take of you! How well we look after you!'

And she dropped her head on her hands in a fit of hysterical laughter—very near to sobs.

'I!' cried Lucy. 'As if I couldn't sleep anywhere, and eat anything! But you—that's another business. When the cart comes, we can fix you up a little better—but to-night!'

She looked, frowning, round the empty room.

'There is nothing to do anything with—or I'd set to work right away.'

'Ecco, Signora!' said the farmer's wife. She carried triumphantly in her hands a shaky carpet-chair, the only article of luxury apparently that the convent provided.

Eleanor thanked her, and the woman stood with her hands on her hips, surveying them. She frowned, but only because she was thinking hard how she could somehow propitiate these strange beings, so well provided, as it seemed, with superfluous lire.

'Ah!' she cried suddenly; 'but the ladies have not seen our bella vista!—our loggia! Santa Madonna! but I have lost my senses! Signorina! venga—venga lei.'

And beckoning to Lucy she pulled open a door that had remained unnoticed in the corner of the room.

Lucy and Eleanor followed.

Even Eleanor joined her cry of delight to Lucy's.

'Ecco!' said the massaja proudly, as though the whole landscape were her chattel,—'Monte Amiata! Selvapendente—the Paglia—does the Signora see the bridge down there?—veda lei, under Selvapendente? Those forests on the mountain there—they belong all to the Casa Guerrini—tutto, tutto! as far as the Signorina can see! And that little house there, on the hill—that casa di caccia—that was poor Don Emilio's, that was killed in the war.'

And she chattered on, in a patois not always intelligible, even to Eleanor's trained ear, about the widowed Contessa, her daughter, and her son; about the new roads that Don Emilio had made through the woods; of the repairs and rebuilding at the Villa Guerrini—all stopped since his death; of the Sindaco of Selvapendente, who often came up to Torre Amiata for the summer; of the nuns in the new convent just built there under the hill, and their fattore,—whose son was with Don Emilio after he was wounded, when the poor young man implored his own men to shoot him and put him out of his pain—who had stayed with him till he died, and had brought his watch and pocket-book back to the Contessa—

'Is the Contessa here?' said Eleanor, looking at the woman with the strained and startled air that was becoming habitual to her, as though each morsel of passing news only served somehow to make life's burden heavier.

But certainly the Contessa was here! She and Donna Teresa were always at the Villa. Once they used to go to Rome and Florence part of the year, but now—no more!

A sudden uproar arose from below—of crying children and barking dogs. The woman threw up her hands. 'What are they doing to me with the baby?' she cried, and disappeared.

Lucy went back to fetch the carpet-chair. She caught up also a couple of Florentine silk blankets that were among their wraps. She laid them on the bricks of the loggia, found a rickety table in Eleanor's room, her travelling-bag, and a shawl.

'Don't take such trouble about me!' said Eleanor, almost piteously, as Lucy established her comfortably in the chair, with a shawl over her knees and a book or two beside her.

Lucy with a soft little laugh stooped and kissed her.

'Now I must go and dry Marie's tears. Then I shall dive downstairs and discover the kitchen. They say they've got a cook, and the dinner'll soon be ready. Isn't that lovely? And I'm sure the cart'll be here directly. It's the most beautiful place I ever saw in my life!' said Lucy, clasping her hands a moment in a gesture familiar to her, and turning towards the great prospect of mountain, wood, and river. 'And it's so strange—so strange! It's like another Italy! Why, these woods—they might be just in a part of Maine I know. You can't see a vineyard—not one. And the air—isn't it fresh? Isn't it lovely? Wouldn't you guess you were three thousand feet up? I just know this—we're going to make you comfortable. I'm going right down now to send that cart back to Orvieto for a lot of things. And you're going to get ever, ever so much better, aren't you? Say you will!'

The girl fell on her knees beside Eleanor, and took the other's thin hands into her own. Her face, thrown back, had lost its gaiety; her mouth quivered.

Eleanor met the girl's tender movement dry-eyed. For the hundredth time that day she asked herself the feverish, torturing question—'Does she love him?'

'Of course I shall get better,' she said lightly, stroking the girl's hair; 'or if not—what matter?'

Lucy shook her head.

'You must get better,' she said in a low, determined voice. 'And it must all come right.'

Eleanor was silent. In her own heart she knew more finally, more irrevocably every hour that for her it would never come right. But how say to Lucy that her whole being hung now—not on any hope for herself, but on the fierce resolve that there should be none for Manisty?

Lucy gave a long sigh, rose to her feet, and went off to household duties.

Eleanor was left alone. Her eyes, bright with fever, fixed themselves, unseeing, on the sunset sky, and the blue, unfamiliar peaks beneath it.

Cheerful sounds of rioting children and loud-voiced housewives came from below. Presently there was a distant sound of wheels, and the carro from Orvieto appeared, escorted by the whole village, who watched its unpacking with copious comment on each article, and a perpetual scuffling for places in the front line of observation. Even the padre parroco and the doctor paused as they passed along the road, and Lucy as she flitted about caught sight of the smiling young priest, in his flat broad-brimmed hat and caped soutane, side by side with the meditative and gloomy countenance of the doctor, who stood with his legs apart, smoking like a chimney.

But Lucy had no time to watch the crowd. She was directing the men with the carro where to place the cooking-stove that had been brought from Orvieto, in the dark and half-ruinous kitchen on the lower floor of the convent; marvelling the while at the risotto and the pollo that the local artist, their new cook, the sister of the farmer's wife, was engaged in producing, out of apparently nothing in the way either of fire or tools. She was conferring with Cecco the little manservant, who, with less polish than Alfredo, but with a like good-will, was running hither and thither, intent only on pleasing his ladies, and on somehow finding enough spoons and forks to lay a dinner-table with; or she was alternately comforting and laughing at Marie, who was for the moment convinced that Italy was pure and simple Hades, and Torre Amiata the lowest gulf thereof.

Thus—under the soft, fresh evening—the whole forlorn and ruinous building was once more alive with noise and gaiety, with the tread of men carrying packages, with the fun of skirmishing children, with the cries of the cook and Cecco, with Lucy's stumbling yet sweet Italian.

Eleanor only was alone—but how terribly alone!

She sat where Lucy had left her—motionless—her hands hanging listlessly. She had been always thin, but in the last few weeks she had become a shadow. Her dress had lost its old perfection, though its carelessness was still the carelessness of instinctive grace, of a woman who could not throw on a shawl or a garden-hat without a natural trick of hand, that held even through despair and grief. The delicacy and emaciation of the face had now gone far beyond the bounds of beauty. It spoke of disease, and drew the pity of the passer-by.

Her loneliness grew upon her—penetrated and pursued her. She could not resign herself to it. She was always struggling with it, beating it away, as a frightened child might struggle with the wave that overwhelms it on the beach. A few weeks ago she had been so happy, so rich in friends—the world had been so warm and kind!

And now it seemed to her that she had no friends; no one to whom she could turn; no one she wished to see, except this girl—this girl she had known barely a couple of months—by whom she had been made desolate!

She thought of those winter gatherings in Rome which she had enjoyed with so keen a pleasure; the women she had liked, who had liked her in return, to whom her eager wish to love and be loved had made her delightful. But beneath her outward sweetness she carried a proud and often unsuspected reserve. She had made a confidante of no one. That her relation to Manisty was accepted and understood in Rome; that it was regarded as a romance, with which it was not so much ill-natured as ridiculous to associate a breath of scandal—a romance which all kind hearts hoped might end as most of such things should end—all this she knew. She had been proud of her place beside him, proud of Rome's tacit recognition of her claim upon him. But she had told her heart to nobody. Her wild scene with Lucy stood out unique, unparalleled in the story of her life.

And now there was no one she craved to see—not one. With the instinct of the stricken animal she turned from her kind. Her father? What had he ever been to her? Aunt Pattie? Her very sympathy and pity made Eleanor thankful to be parted from her. Other kith and kin? No! Happy, she could have loved them; miserable, she cared for none of them. Her unlucky marriage had numbed and silenced her for years. From that frost the waters of life had been loosened, only to fail now at their very source.

Her whole nature was one wound. At the moment when, standing spell-bound in the shadow, she had seen Manisty stooping over the unconscious Lucy, and had heard his tender breathless words, the sword had fallen, dividing the very roots of being.

And now—strange irony!—the only heart on which she leant, the only hand to which she clung, were the heart and the hand of Lucy!

'Why, why are we here?' she cried to herself with a sudden change of position and of anguish.

Was not their flight a mere absurdity?—humiliation for herself, since it revealed what no woman should reveal—but useless, ridiculous as any check on Manisty! Would he give up Lucy because she might succeed in hiding her for a few weeks? Was that passionate will likely to resign itself to the momentary defeat she had inflicted on it? Supposing she succeeded in despatching Lucy to America without any further interview between them; are there no steamers and trains to take impatient lovers to their goal? What childish folly was the whole proceeding!

And would she even succeed so far? Might he not even now be on their track? How possible that he should remember this place—its isolation—and her pleasure in it! She started in her chair. It seemed to her that she already heard his feet upon the road.

Then her thought rebounded in a fierce triumph, an exultation that shook the feeble frame. She was secure! She was entrenched, so to speak, in Lucy's heart. Never would that nature grasp its own joy at the cost of another's agony. No! no!—she is not in love with him!—the poor hurrying brain insisted. She has been interested, excited, touched. That, he can always achieve with any woman, if he pleases. But time and change soon wear down these first fancies of youth. There is no real congruity between them—there never, never could be.

But supposing it were not so—supposing Lucy could be reached and affected by Manisty's pursuit, still Eleanor was safe. She knew well what had been the effect, what would now be the increasing effect of her weakness and misery on Lucy's tender heart. By the mere living in Lucy's sight she would gain her end. From the first she had realised the inmost quality of the girl's strong and diffident personality. What Manisty feared she counted on.

Sometimes, just for a moment, as one may lean over the edge of a precipice, she imagined herself yielding, recalling Manisty, withdrawing her own claim, and the barrier raised by her own vindictive agony. The mind sped along the details that might follow—the girl's loyal resistance—Manisty's ardour—Manisty's fascination—the homage and the seduction, the quarrels and the impatience with which he would surround her—the scenes in which Lucy's reserve mingling with her beauty would but evoke on the man's side all the ingenuity, all the delicacy of which he was capable—and the final softening of that sweet austerity which hid Lucy's heart of gold.—

No!—Lucy had no passion!—she would tell herself with a feverish, an angry vehemence. How would she ever bear with Manisty, with the alternate excess and defect of his temperament?

And suddenly, amid the shadows of the past winter Eleanor would see herself writing, and Manisty stooping over her,—his hand taking her pen, his shoulder touching hers. His hand was strong, nervous, restless like himself. Her romantic imagination that was half natural, half literary, delighted to trace in it both caprice and power. When it touched her own slender fingers, it seemed to her they could but just restrain themselves from nestling into his. She would draw herself back in haste, lest some involuntary movement should betray her. But not before the lightning thought had burnt its way through her—'What if one just fell back against his breast—and all was said—all ventured in a moment! Afterwards—ecstasy, or despair—what matter!'—

When would Lucy have dared even such a dream? Eleanor's wild jealousy would secretly revenge itself on the girl's maidenly coldness, on the young stiffness, Manisty had once mocked at. How incredible that she should have attracted him!—how, impossible that she should continue to attract him! All Lucy's immaturities and defects passed through Eleanor's analysing thought.

For a moment she saw her coldly, odiously, as an enemy might see her.

And then!—quick revulsion—a sudden loathing of herself—a sudden terror of these new meannesses and bitterness that were invading her, stealing from her her very self, robbing her of the character that unconsciously she had loved in herself, as other people loved it—knowing that in deed and truth she was what others thought her to be, kind, and gentle, and sweet-natured.

And last of all—poor soul!—an abject tenderness and repentance towards Lucy, which yet brought no relief, because it never affected for an instant the fierce tension of will beneath.

A silvery night stole upon the sunset, absorbed, transmuted all the golds and crimsons of the west into its own dimly shining blue.

Eleanor was in bed; Lucy's clever hands had worked wonders with her room; and now Eleanor had been giving quick remorseful directions to Marie to concern herself a little with Miss Foster's comfort and Miss Foster's luggage.

Lucy escaped from the rooms littered with trunks and clothes. She took her hat and a light cape, and stole out into the broad passage, on either side of which opened the long series of small rooms which had once been Carmelite cells. Only the four or five rooms at the western end, the bare 'apartment' which they occupied, were still whole and water-tight. Half-way down the passage, as Lucy had already discovered, you came to rooms where the windows had no glass and the plaster had dropped from the walls, and the ceilings hung down in great gaps and rags of ruin. There was a bay window at the eastern end of the passage, which had been lately glazed for the summer tenants' sake. The rising moon streamed through on the desolation of the damp-stained walls and floors. And a fresh upland wind was beginning to blow and whistle through the empty and windowless cells. Even Lucy shivered a little. It was perhaps not wonderful that the French maid should be in revolt.

Then she went softly down an old stone staircase to the lower floor. Here was the same long passage with rooms on either side, but in even worse condition. At the far end was a glow of light and a hum of voices, coming from the corner of the building occupied by the contadino, and their own kitchen. But between the heavy front door, that Lucy was about to open, and the distant light, was an earthen floor full of holes and gaps, and on either side—caverns of desolation—the old wine and oil stores, the kitchens and wood cellars of the convent, now black dens avoided by the cautious, and dark even at midday because of the rough boarding-up of the windows. There was a stable smell in the passage, and Lucy already knew that one of the further dens held the contadino's donkey and mule.

'Can we stay here?' she said to herself, half laughing, half doubtful.

Then she lifted the heavy iron bar that closed the old double door, and stepped out into the courtyard that surrounded the convent, half of which was below the road as it rapidly descended from the village, and half above it.

She took a few steps to the right.

Exquisite!

There opened out before her a little cloister, with double shafts carrying Romanesque arches; and at the back of the court, the chapel, and a tiny bell-tower. The moon shone down on every line and moulding. Under its light, stucco and brick turned to ivory and silver. There was an absolute silence, an absolute purity of air; and over all the magic of beauty and of night. Lucy thought of the ruined frescoes in the disused chapel, of the faces of saints and angels looking out into the stillness.

Then she mounted some steps to the road, and turned downwards towards the forest that crept up round them on all sides.

Ah! was there yet another portion of the convent?—a wing running at right angles to the main building in which they were established, and containing some habitable rooms? In the furthest window of all was a light, and a figure moving across it. A tall black figure—surely a priest? Yes!—as the form came nearer to the window, seen from the back, Lucy perceived distinctly the tonsured head and the soutane.

How strange! She had heard nothing from the massaja of any other tenant. And this tall gaunt figure had nothing in common with the little smiling parroco she had seen in the crowd.

She moved on, wondering.

Oh, those woods! How they sank, like great resting clouds below her, to the shining line of the river, and rose again on the further side! They were oak woods, and spoke strangely to Lucy of the American and English north. Yet, as she came nearer, the moon shone upon delicate undergrowth of heath and arbutus, that chid her fancy back to the 'Saturnian land.'

And beyond all, the blue mountains, Ætherially light, like dreams on the horizon; and above all, the radiant serenity of the sky.

Ah! there spoke the nightingales, and that same melancholy note of the little brown owl which used to haunt the olive grounds of Marinata. Lucy held her breath. The tears rushed into her eyes—tears of memory, tears of longing.

But she drove them back. Standing on a little cleared space beside the road that commanded the whole night scene, she threw herself into the emotion and poetry which could be yielded to without remorse, without any unnerving of the will. How far, far she was from Uncle Ben, and that shingled house in Vermont! It was near midsummer, and all the English and Americans had fled from this Southern Italy. Italy was at home, and at ease in her own house, living her own rich immemorial life, knowing and thinking nothing of the foreigner. Nor indeed on those uplands and in those woods had she ever thought of him; though below in the valley ran the old coach road from Florence to Rome, on which Goethe and Winckelmann had journeyed to the Eternal City. Lucy felt as though, but yesterday a tourist and stranger, she had now crept like a child into the family circle. Nay, she had raised a corner of Italy's mantle, and drawn close to the warm breast of one of the great mother-lands of the world.

Ah! but feeling sweeps fast and far, do what we will. Soon she was struggling out of her depth. These weeks of rushing experience had been loosening soul and tongue. To-night how she could have talked of these things to one now parted from her, perhaps for ever! How he would have listened to her—impatiently often! How he would have mocked and rent her! But then the quick softening—and the beautiful kindling eye—the dogmatism at once imperative and sweet—the tyranny that a woman might both fight and love!

Yet how painful was the thought of Manisty! She was ashamed—humiliated. Their flight assumed as a certainty what after all, let Eleanor say what she would, he had never, never said to her—what she had no clear authority to believe. Where was he? What was he thinking? For a moment, her heart fluttered towards him like a homing bird.

Then in a sharp and stern reaction she rebuked, she chastened herself. Standing there in the night, above the forests, looking over to the dim white cliffs on the side of Monte Amiata, she felt herself, in this strange and beautiful land, brought face to face with calls of the spirit, with deep voices of admonition and pity that rose from her own inmost being.

With a long sigh, like one that lifts a weight she raised her young arms above her head, and then brought her hands down slowly upon her eyes, shutting out sight and sense. There was a murmur—

'Mother!—darling mother!—if you were just here—for one hour—'

She gathered up the forces of the soul.

'So help me God!' she said. And then she started, perceiving into what formula she had slipped, unwittingly.

* * * * *

She moved on a few paces down the road, meaning just to peep into the woods and their scented loneliness. The night was so lovely she was loth to leave it.

Suddenly she became aware of a point of light in front, and the smell of tobacco.

A man rose from the wayside. Lucy stayed her foot, and was about to retreat swiftly when she heard a cheerful—

'Buona sera, Signorina!' She recognised a voice of the afternoon. It was the handsome carabiniere. Lucy advanced with alacrity.

'I came out because it was so fine,' she said. 'Are you on duty still?
Where is your companion?'

He smiled, and pointed to the wood. 'We have a hut there. First Ruggieri sleeps—then I sleep. We don't often come this way; but when there are forestieri, then we must look out.'

'But there are no brigands here?'

He showed his white teeth. 'I shot two once with this gun,' he said, producing it.

'But not here?' she said, startled.

'No—but beyond the mountains—over there—in Maremma.' He waved his hand vaguely towards the west. Then he shook his head. 'Bad country—bad people—in Maremma.'

'Oh yes, I know,' said Lucy, laughing. 'If there is anything bad here, you say it comes from Maremma. When our harness broke this afternoon our driver said, "Che vuole? It was made in Maremma!"—Tell me—who lives in that part of the convent—over there?'

And, turning back, she pointed to the distant window and the light.

The man spat upon the road without replying. After replenishing his pipe he said slowly: 'That, Signorina, is a forestiere, too.'

'A priest—isn't it?'

'A priest—and not a priest,' said the man after another pause.

Then he laughed, with the sudden insouciance of the Italian.

'A priest that doesn't say his Mass!—that's a queer sort of priest—isn't it?'

'I don't understand,' said Lucy.

'Per Dio! what does it matter?' said the man, laughing. 'The people here wouldn't trouble their heads, only—But you understand, Signorina'—he dropped his voice a little—'the priests have much power—molto, molto! Don Teodoro, the parroco there,—it was he founded the cassa rurale. If a contadino wants some money for his seed-corn—or to marry his daughter—or to buy himself a new team of oxen—he must go to the parroco. Since these new banks began, it is the priests that have the money—capisce? If you want it you must ask them! So you understand, Signorina, it doesn't profit to fall out with them. You must love their friends, and—' His grin and gesture finished the sentence.

'But what's the matter?' said Lucy, wondering. 'Has he committed any crime?' And she looked curiously at the figure in the convent window.

'È un prete spretato, Signorina.'

'Spretato?' (unpriested—unfrocked). The word was unfamiliar to her. She frowned over it.

'Scomunicato!' said the carabiniere, with a laugh.

'Excommunicated?' She felt a thrill of pity, mingled with a vague horror.

'Why?—what has he done?'

The carabiniere laughed again. The laugh was odious, but she was already acquainted with that strange instinct of the lower-class Italian which leads him to make mock of calamity. He has passion, but no sentiment; he instinctively hates the pathetic.

'Chi sa, Signorina? He seems a quiet old man. We keep a sharp eye on him; he won't do any harm. He used to give the children confetti, but the mothers have forbidden them to take them. Gianni there'—he pointed to the convent, and Lucy understood that he referred to the contadino—'Gianni went to Don Teodoro, and asked if he should turn him out. But Don Teodoro wouldn't say Yes or No. He pays well, but the village want him to go. They say he will bring them ill-luck with their harvest.'

'And the Padre parroco? Does he not speak to him?'

Antonio laughed.

'When Don Teodoro passes him on the road he doesn't see him—capisce, Signorina? And so with all the other priests. When he comes by they have no eyes. The Bishop sent the word.'

'And everybody here does what the priests tell them?'

Lucy's tone expressed that instinctive resentment which the Puritan feels against a ruling and dominant Catholicism.

Antonio laughed again, but a little stupidly. It was the laugh of a man who knows that it is not worth while even to begin to explain certain matters to a stranger.

'They understand their business—i preti!'—was all he would say. Then—'Ma!—they are rich—the priests! All these last years—so many banks—so many casse—so many societÂ! That holds the people better than prayers.'

* * * * *

When Lucy turned homewards she found herself watching the light in the far window with an eager attention. A priest in disgrace?—and a foreigner? What could he be hiding here for?—in this remote corner of a district which, as they had been already told at Orvieto, was Catholic, fino al fanatismo?

* * * * *

The morning rose, fresh and glorious, over mountain and forest.

Eleanor watched the streaks of light that penetrated through the wooden sun-shutters grow brighter and brighter on the white-washed wall. She was weary of herself, weary of the night. The old building was full of strange sounds—of murmurs and resonances, of slight creepings and patterings, that tried the nerves. Her room communicated with Lucy's, and their doors were provided with bolts, the newness of which, perhaps, testified to the fears of other summer tenants before them. Nevertheless, Eleanor had been a prey to starts and terrors, and her night had passed in a bitter mingling of moral strife and physical discomfort.

Seven o'clock striking from the village church. She slipped to her feet. Ready to her hand lay one of the soft and elegant wrappers—fresh, not long ago, from Paris—as to which Lucy had often silently wondered how anyone could think it right to spend so much money on such things.

Eleanor, of course, was not conscious of the smallest reproach in the matter. Dainty and costly dress was second nature to her; she never thought about it. But this morning as she first took up the elaborate silken thing, to which pale girls in hot Parisian workrooms had given so much labour of hand and head, and then caught sight of her own face and shoulders in the cracked glass upon the wall, she was seized with certain ghastly perceptions that held her there motionless in the semi-darkness, shivering amid the delicate lace and muslin which enwrapped her. Finished!—for her—all the small feminine joys. Was there one of her dresses that did not in some way speak to her of Manisty?—that had not been secretly planned with a view to tastes and preferences she had come to know hardly less intimately than her own?

She thought of the face of the Orvieto doctor, of certain words that she had stopped on his lips because she was afraid to hear them. A sudden terror of death,—of the desolate, desolate end swept upon her. To die, with this cry of the heart unspent, untold for ever! Unloved, unsatisfied, unrewarded—she whose whole nature gave itself—gave itself perpetually, as a wave breaks upon a barren shore. How can any God send human beings into the world for such a lot? There can be no God. But how is the riddle easier, for thinking Him away?

When at last she rose, it was to make quietly for the door opening on the loggia.

Still there, this radiant marvel of the world!—this pageant of rock and stream and forest, this pomp of shining cloud, this silky shimmer of the wheat, this sparkle of flowers in the grass; while human hearts break, and human lives fail, and the graveyard on the hill yonder packs closer and closer its rows of metal crosses and wreaths!

Suddenly, from a patch of hayfield on the further side of the road, she heard a voice singing. A young man, tall and well made, was mowing in a corner of the field. The swathes fell fast before him: every movement spoke of an assured rejoicing strength. He sang with the sharp stridency which is the rule in Italy—the words clear, the sounds nasal.

Gradually Eleanor made out that the song was the farewell of a maiden to her lover who is going for winter work to the Maremma.

The labourers go to Maremma—
Oh! 'tis long till the days of June,
And my heart is all in a flutter
Alone here, under the moon.

O moon!—all this anguish and sorrow!
Thou know'st why I suffer so—
Oh! send him me back from Maremma,
Where he goes, and I must not go!

The man sang the little song carelessly, commonly, without a thought of the words, interrupting himself every now and then to sharpen his scythe, and then beginning again. To Eleanor it seemed the natural voice of the morning; one more, echo of the cry of universal parting, now for a day, now for a season, now for ever—which fills the world.

* * * * *

She was too restless to enjoy the loggia and the view, too restless to go back to bed. She pushed back the door between her and Lucy, only to see that Lucy was still fast asleep. But there were voices and stops downstairs. The farm-people had been abroad for hours.

She made a preliminary toilette, took her hat, and stole downstairs. As she opened the outer door the children caught sight of her and came crowding round, large-eyed, their fingers in their mouths. She turned towards the chapel and the little cloister that she remembered. The children gave a shout and swooped back into the convent. And when she reached the chapel door, there they were on her skirts again, a big boy brandishing the key.

Eleanor took it and parleyed with them. They were to go away and leave her alone—quite alone. Then when she came back they should have soldi. The children nodded shrewdly, withdrew in a swarm to the corner of the cloister, and watched events.

Eleanor entered. From some high lunette windows the cool early sunlight came creeping and playing into the little whitewashed place. On either hand two cinque-cento frescoes had been rescued from the whitewash. They shone like delicate flowers on the rough, yellowish-white of the walls; on one side a martyrdom of St. Catharine, on the other a Crucifixion. Their pale blues and lilacs, their sharp pure greens and thin crimsons, made subtle harmony with the general lightness and cleanness of the abandoned chapel. A poor little altar with a few tawdry furnishings at the further end, a confessional box falling to pieces with age, and a few chairs—these were all that it contained besides.

Eleanor sank kneeling beside one of the chairs. As she looked round her, physical weakness and the concentration of all thought on one subject and one person made her for the moment the victim of an illusion so strong that it was almost an 'apparition of the living.'

Manisty stood before her, in the rough tweed suit he had worn in November, one hand, holding his hat, upon his hip, his curly head thrown back, his eyes just turning from the picture to meet hers; eyes always eagerly confident, whether their owner pronounced on the affinities of a picture or the fate of a country.

'School of Pinturicchio certainly!—but local work. Same hand—don't you think so?—as in that smaller chapel in the cathedral. Eleanor! you remember?'

She gave a gasp, and hid her face, shaking. Was this haunting of eye and ear to pursue her now henceforward? Was the passage of Manisty's being through the world to be—for her—ineffaceable?—so that earth and air retained the impress of his form and voice, and only her tortured heart and sense were needed to make the phantom live and walk and speak again?

She began to pray—brokenly and desperately, as she had often prayed during the last few weeks. It was a passionate throwing of the will against a fate, cruel, unjust, intolerable; a means not to self-renunciation, but to a self-assertion which was in her like madness, so foreign was it to all the habits of the soul.

'That he should make use of me to the last moment, then fling me to the winds—that I should just make room, and help him to his goal—and then die meekly—out of the way—No! He too shall suffer!—and he shall know that it is Eleanor who exacts it!—Eleanor who bars the way!'

And in the very depths of consciousness there emerged the strange and bitter recognition that from the beginning she had allowed him to hold her cheaply; that she had been content, far, far too content, with what he chose to give; that if she had claimed more, been less delicate, less exquisite in loving, he might have feared and regarded her more.

She heard the chapel door open. But at the same moment she became aware that her face was bathed in tears, and she did not dare to look round. She drew down her veil, and composed herself as she best could.

The person behind, apparently, also knelt down. The tread and movements were those of a heavy man—some countryman, she supposed.

But his neighbourhood was unwelcome, and the chapel ceased to be a place of refuge where feeling might have its way. In a few minutes she rose and turned towards the door.

She gave a little cry. The man kneeling at the back of the chapel rose in astonishment and came towards her.

'Madame!'

'Father Benecke! you here,' said Eleanor, leaning against the wall for support—so weak was she, and so startling was this sudden apparition of the man whom she had last seen on the threshold of the glass passage at Marinata, barely a fortnight before.

'I fear, Madame, that I intrude upon you,' said the old priest, staring at her with embarrassment. 'I will retire.'

'No, no,' said Eleanor, putting out her hand, with some recovery of her normal voice and smile. 'It was only so—surprising; so—unexpected. Who could have thought of finding you here, Father?'

The priest did not reply. They left the chapel together. The knot of waiting children in the cloister, as soon as they saw Eleanor, raised a shout of glee, and began to run towards her. But the moment they perceived her companion, they stopped dead.

Their little faces darkened, stiffened, their black eyes shone with malice. Then suddenly the boys swooped on the pebbles of the courtyard, and with cries of 'Bestia!—bestia!' they flung them at the priest over their shoulders, as they all fled helter-skelter, the brothers dragging off the sisters, the big ones the little ones, out of sight.

'Horrid little imps!' cried Eleanor in indignation. 'What is the matter with them? I promised them some soldi. Did they hit you, Father?'

She paused, arrested by the priest's face.

'They?' he said hoarsely. 'Did you mean the children? Oh! no, they did no harm?'

What had happened to him since they met last at the villa? No doubt he had been in conflict with his superiors and his Church. Was he already suspended?—excommunicate? But he still wore the soutane?

Then panic for herself swept in upon and silenced all else. All was over with their plans. Father Benecke either was, or might at any moment be, in communication with Manisty. Alas, alas!—what ill-luck!

They walked together to the road—Eleanor first imagining, then rejecting one sentence after another. At last she said, a little piteously:

'It is so strange, Father—that you should be here!'

The priest did not answer immediately. He walked with a curiously uncertain gait. Eleanor noticed that his soutane was dusty and torn, and that he was unshaven. The peculiar and touching charm that had once arisen from the contrast between the large-limbed strength which he inherited from a race of Suabian peasants, and an extraordinary delicacy of feature and skin, a childish brightness and sweetness in the eyes, had suffered eclipse. He was dulled and broken. One might have said almost that he had become a mere ungainly, ill-kept old man, red-eyed for lack of sleep, and disorganised by some bitter distress.

'You remember—what I told you and Mr. Manisty, at Marinata?' he said at last, with difficulty.

'Perfectly. You withdrew your letter?'

'I withdrew it. Then I came down here. I have an old friend—a Canon of
Orvieto. He told me once of this place.'

Eleanor looked at him with a sudden return of all her natural kindness and compassion.

'I am afraid you have gone through a great deal, Father,' she said, gravely.

The priest stood still. His hand shook upon his stick.

'I must not detain you, Madame,' he said suddenly, with a kind of tremulous formality. 'You will be wishing to return to your apartment I heard that two English ladies were expected—but I never thought—'

'How could you?' said Eleanor hurriedly. 'I am not in any hurry. It is very early still. Will you not tell me more of what has happened to you? You would'—she turned away her head—'you would have told Mr. Manisty?'

'Ah! Mr. Manisty!' said the priest, with a long, startled sigh. 'I trust he is well, Madame?'

Eleanor flushed.

'I believe so. He and Miss Manisty are still at Marinata. Father Benecke!'

'Madame?'

Eleanor turned aside, poking at the stones on the road with her parasol.

'You would do me a kindness if for the present you would not mention my being here to any of your friends in Rome, to—to anybody, in fact. Last autumn I happened to pass by this place, and thought it very beautiful. It was a sudden determination on my part and Miss Foster's—you remember the American lady who was staying with us?—to come here. The villa was getting very hot, and—and there were other reasons. And now we wish to be quite alone for a little while—to be in retirement even from our friends. You will, I am sure, respect our wish?'

She looked up, breathing quickly. All her sudden colour had gone. Her anxiety and discomposure were very evident. The priest bowed.

'I will be discreet, Madame,' he said, with the natural dignity of his calling. 'May I ask you to excuse me? I have to walk into Selvapendente to fetch a letter.'

He took off his flat beaver hat, bowed low and departed, swinging along at a great pace. Eleanor felt herself repulsed. She hurried back to the convent. The children were waiting for her at the door, and when they saw that she was alone they took their soldi, though with a touch of sulkiness.

And the door was opened to her by Lucy.

'Truant!' said the girl reproachfully, throwing her arm round Eleanor. 'As if you ought to go out without your coffee! But it's all ready for you on the loggia. Where have you been? And why!—what's the matter?'

Eleanor told the news as they mounted to their rooms.

'Ah! that was the priest I saw last night!' cried Lucy. 'I was just going to tell you of my adventure. Father Benecke! How very, very strange! And how very tiresome! It's made you look so tired.'

And before she would hear a word more Lucy had put the elder woman into her chair in the deep shade of the loggia, had brought coffee and bread and fruit from the little table she herself had helped Cecco to arrange, and had hovered round till Eleanor had taken at least a cup of coffee and a fraction of roll. Then she brought her own coffee, and sat down on the rug at Eleanor's feet.

'I know what you're thinking about!' she said, looking up with her sweet, sudden smile. 'You want to go—right away!'

'Can we trust him?' said Eleanor, miserably. 'Edward doesn't know where he is,—but he could write of course to Edward at any moment.'

She turned away her face from Lucy. Any mention of Manisty's name dyed it with painful colour—the shame of the suppliant living on the mercy of the conqueror.

'He might,' said Lucy, thinking. 'But if you asked him? No; I don't believe he would. I am sure his soul is beautiful—like his face.'

'His poor face! You don't know how changed he is.'

'Ah! the carabiniere told me last night. He is excommunicated,' said
Lucy, under her breath.

And she repeated her conversation with the handsome Antonio. Eleanor capped it with the tale of the children.

'It's his book,' said Lucy, frowning. 'What a tyranny!'

They were both silent. Lucy was thinking of the drive to Nemi, of Manisty's words and looks; Eleanor recalled the priest's last visit to the villa and that secret storm of feeling which had overtaken her as she bade him good-bye.

But when Lucy speculated on what might have happened, Eleanor hardly responded. She fell into a dreamy silence from which it was difficult to rouse her. It was very evident to Lucy that Father Benecke's personal plight interested her but little. Her mind could not give it room. What absorbed her was the feverish question: Were they safe any longer at Torre Amiata, or must they strike camp and go further?