As Olive left the sacristy a tall man came across the aisle towards her. It was Prince Tor di Rocca.

"This is a great pleasure," he said. "But not to you, I am afraid. You are not glad to see me."

"I am surprised. I—do you often come into churches?"

He laughed. "I sometimes follow women in. I saw you coming up the steps just now. You are right in supposing that I am not devout. I want to speak to you. Shall we go out?"

She looked for a way of escape but saw none.

"If—very well," she said rather helplessly.

The hunchback woman at the south door watched them expectantly as they came towards her, and she brightened as she saw the man's hand go to his pocket. He threw her a piece of silver as they passed out. He was in a good humour, his fine lips smiling, a glinting zest in his insolent eyes. He thought he understood women, and he had in fact made a one-sided study of the sex. He had seen their ways of loving, he had listened to the beating of their hearts; but of their endurance, their long patience, their daily life he knew nothing. He was like a man who often wears a bunch of violets in his coat until they fade, and yet has never seen, or cared to see them, growing sparsely, small and sweet, half hidden in leaves on a mossy bank by the stream.

Women amused him. He was seldom much moved by them, and he pursued them without haste or flurry, treading delicately like Agag of old. He had little intrigues everywhere, in Florence, in Naples, in Rome. Young married women, girls walking demurely with their mothers. He liked to know that it was he who brought the colour to their cheeks and that their eyes sought him among the crowd of men standing outside Aragno's in the Corso or on the steps of the club in the Via Tornabuoni. Very often the affair would be one of the eyes only, but sometimes it went farther. Filippo's procedure varied. Sometimes he put advertisements in the personal column of the Popolo Romano, and sometimes he wrote notes. It was always very interesting while it lasted. Occasionally affairs overlapped, as when an appeal to F. to meet Norina once more in the Borghese appeared in print above F.'s request that the signorina in the pink hat would write to him at the Poste Restante.

Olive had nearly yielded to him in Florence, and then she had run away, she had sought safety in flight. Evidently then his battle had been nearly won. But she had reassembled her forces, and he saw that it would be all to fight over again, and that the issue was doubtful.

As they came into the little square piazza of the Capitol she turned to him. "What have you to say? I—I am in a hurry."

"I am sorry for that, but if you are going anywhere I can walk with you, or we can take a vettura and drive together."

She looked past him at the green shining figure of Marcus Aurelius on his horse riding between her and the sun, and said nothing.

"I shall enjoy being with you even if you are inclined to be silent. You are so good to look at."

His brazen stare gave point to his words. Her face was no longer childish in its charm. It had lost the first roundness of youth, but had gained in expression. A soul seemed to be shining through the veil of flesh—white and rose-red flesh, divinely gilt with freckles—and fluttering in the troubled depths of her blue eyes. The nun-like simplicity of her grey dress pleased him: it did not detract from her; it left the eyes free to return to her face, to dwell upon her lips.

"Something has happened," he said. "There is another man. Are you married?"

"No."

"I only came to Rome yesterday. Strange that we should meet so soon. It seems that there is a Destiny that shapes our ends after all."

"You do not believe in free will?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I do not think about such things."

"Well," she said impatiently. "Is that all you have to say? I suppose the Marchesa and Mamie are here too."

He hesitated and seemed to lose some of his assurance. "No, we quarrelled. The girl is insupportable. She is engaged now to a lord of sorts, an Englishman, and they are still in Cairo."

"So you have lost her too."

"It was your fault that Edna gave me up. You owe me something for that. And you behaved badly to me again—afterwards."

"I did not."

He laughed enjoyingly. "I trusted you and you took advantage of a truce to run away."

She moved away from him, but he followed her and kept at her side.

"I never asked you to trust me. I asked you to come the next day for an answer. You came and you had it."

"I came and I had it," he repeated. "Did the old woman give you my message?"

"That we should meet again?"

"That was not all. I said you would come to me one day sooner or later."

They had paused at the top of the steps that lead down from the Capitol into the streets and are guarded by the gigantic figures of Castor and Pollux, great masses of discoloured marble set on pedestals on either side. It was twelve o'clock, and a black stream of hungry, desk-weary men poured out of the Capitoline offices. Many turned to look at the English girl as they hurried by, and one passing close to her muttered "bella" in her ear. She drew back as though she had been stung. Filippo laughed again.

"I only ask to be let alone," she said. "Can't you understand that you remind me of things I want to forget. I am ashamed, oh, can't you understand!"

She left him and went to stand on the outskirts of the crowd that had collected in front of the cage in which the wolves are kept. Evidently she hoped that he would go on, but he meant to disappoint her, and when she went down the steps he was close beside her.

"Why are you so unkind to me?" he said, and as they crossed the road he held her arm.

She wrenched herself away, went up to the carabiniere, who stood at the corner, and spoke to him. The man smiled tolerantly as he glanced from her to Filippo. "Signorina, I cannot help you."

She passed on down the street, knowing that she was being followed, crossed the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and took a tram in the Piazza della Minerva. Tor di Rocca got in too and sat down opposite to her. The conductor turned to him first, and when she proffered her four soldi she found that he had paid for both. Her hand shook as she put the money back in her purse, and her colour rose. Filippo, quite at his ease, leisurely, openly observant of her, whistled "Lucia" softly to himself. Roses, roses all the way, and all for him, he thought amusedly. And yet she bore the ordeal well, betraying no restlessness, keeping her eyes unswervingly fixed on the two lions of the advertisement of Chinina Migone pasted on the glass over his head. At the Ripetta bridge she got out. He followed, saw her go into a house farther down the street, and paused on the threshold to take the number before he went up the stairs after her. She heard him coming. He turned the handle of the door, but she had locked it and it held fast. He knocked once and called to her. Evidently he was not sure of her being within. There was another room on the same landing, and after a while he tried that.

"Are you in there? Carissima, you are wasting time. To-day or to-morrow, sooner or later. Why not to-day, and soon?"

A silence ensued. The girl had taken off her hat and thrown it down upon the table. She stood very still in the middle of the room listening, waiting for him to go away again. Her breath came quickly, and little pearls of sweat broke out upon her forehead. His persistence frightened her.

He waited for an answer, and receiving none, added, "Well, I will come again," and so went away.

She stayed in until it was time to go to Varini's. It was not far, but she was flushed and panting with the haste that she had made as she put on the faded blue silk dress that had been laid out ready for her on the one broken chair in the dressing-room. Rosina came in to her presently from the professor's studio. She wore a man's tweed coat and a striped blanket wrapped about her, and she was smoking a cigarette.

"So you have come back to work here. Your signorino at the Villa Medici is away?"

"Only for a few days. He will not be gone long. The picture is not finished. How is Pasquina?"

Rosina had come over to her and was fastening the hooks of her bodice. "She is very well. How pretty you are." She rearranged the laces at the girl's breast and caught up a torn piece of the silk with a pin. "That is better. Have you been running? You seem hot."

"Oh, Rosina, I have been frightened. A man followed me. I shall be afraid to go home to-night."

The yellow-haired Trasteverina looked at her shrewdly. "He knows where you live? Have you only seen him once?"

"He—he came and tried my door. I am afraid of him."

Rosina nodded. "Si capisce! I will take care of you. I have met so many mascalzoni in twenty years that I have grown used to them. I will come home with you, and if any man so much as looks at us I will scratch his eyes out."

Through the thin partition wall they heard the professor calling for his model. "I must go," she said hurriedly, but as she passed out Olive caught at a fold of the enveloping blanket.

"Come here, I want you." She flung her arms about the other girl's neck and kissed her. "You are good! You are good!"

She went into the class room and climbed the throne as the men came clattering in to take their places. The professor posed her.

"So you have come back to us. Do not let them spoil you at the Villa Medici—your head a little higher—so."

The first drawing in of the figure is not a thing to be taken lightly, and the silence was seldom broken at Varini's on Monday evenings. The two boys, however, found it hard to repress the natural loquacity of their extreme youth.

"Al lavoro, Mario! What are you whispering about? Cesare, zitto!" Bembi stared at them. "Their chins are disappearing," he said. "See their collars. Every day an inch higher. Dio mio! Is that the way to please women? I wear a flannel shirt and my neck is as bare as a plucked chicken, and yet I—" he stopped short.

Mario laughed. "Women are strange," he admitted.

"Mad!" cried Cesare, and then as Bembi still smirked ineffably he appealed to Olive. "Do you admire fowls wrapped in flannel or in arrosto?"

When she came out she found Rosina waiting for her in the courtyard, a grey shadow with smooth fair hair shining in the moonlight. "The professor let me go at eight so I dressed and came out here," she explained. "The dressing-room is full of dust and spider's webs. I told the porter the other day that he ought to sweep it, but he only laughed at me and said Domeniddio made spiders long before he took a rib out of Adam's side to whip a naughty world."

"Who is the man?" she asked presently as they walked along together. "Do I know him?"

"I do not think so. He is not an artist."

Rosina laid a hand upon her arm. "Is that he?" she said.

They had passed through one of the narrow streets that lead from the Corso towards the river and were come into the Ripetta.

A tall man was walking slowly along on the other side of the road. He did not seem to have noticed the two girls, and yet as he stopped to light a cigarette he was looking towards them. A tram came clanging up, the overhead wires emitting strange noises peculiar to themselves, the gong ringing sharply. Olive glanced up at the red painted triangle fixed to the lamp-post at the corner. "It will stop here. Quick! while it is between us. Perhaps he has not seen—"

They ran to her door and up the stairs together. "It has only just gone on," cried Rosina. "Have you got your key?"

She stayed on the landing while Olive went into the room and lit her candle. There was no sound in the house at all, no step upon the stair. As she peered down over the banisters into the darkness below she listened intently. The rustling of her skirt sounded loud in the stillness, but there was nothing else.

"He did not see us," she said. "I shall go now. Lock your door. Felice notte, piccina."



CHAPTER V

Camille, loitering on the terrace of the old garden of the Villa Medici, was quick to hear the creaking of the iron gate upon its hinges. His pale face brightened as he threw away his cigarette and he went down the path between the ilex trees to meet his model.

"You have come. Oh, I seem to have been years away."

They went up the hill together. It was early yet, and the city was veiled in fine mist through which the river gleamed here and there with a sharpness of steel. The dome of St Peter's was still dark against the greenish pallor of the morning sky.

"I am glad to be in Rome again. Venice is beautiful, but it does not inspire me. It has no associations for me. What do I care for the Doges, or for Titian's fat, golden-haired women with their sore eyes—Caterina Cornaro and the rest. Rome is a crystal in which I seem to see faces of dear women, women who lived and loved and saw the sun set behind that rampart of low hills—Virginia, the Greek slave Acte, Agnes, Cecilia, who sang as she lay dying in her house over there in the Trasteverine quarter. Ah, I shall go away and have the nostalgia of Rome to the end of my life." He paused to light another cigarette. "Come and look at the picture. I have not dared to see it again myself since I came back last night."

The door of his atelier was open; he clattered up the steep wooden stairs and she followed him. The canvas was set up on an easel facing the great north light. Camille went up to it and then backed away.

"Well?"

He was smiling. "It is good," he said. "I shall work on it to-day and to-morrow. Get ready now while I prepare my palette."

He looked at her critically as she took her place. The change in her was indefinable, but he was aware of it. She seemed to be listening.

"Do you feel a draught from the door?" he asked presently.

"No, but I should like it shut."

"Nerves. You need a tonic and probably a change of air and scene. There is nothing the matter?"

She shook her head. Camille was kind, but he could not help her. He could not make the earth open and swallow Tor di Rocca, and sometimes she felt that nothing less than that would satisfy her, and that such a summary ending would contribute greatly to her peace of mind.

She had not seen the Prince for two days and she was beginning to hope that he had gone away, but she was not yet able to feel free of him. Rosina had come home with her every night from Varini's. Once he had followed them, and twice he had come up the stairs and knocked at the door. There had been hours when she had been safe from him, but she had not known them, and the strain, the constant pricking fear of him, was telling upon her. Every day youth and strength and hope seemed to be slipping away and leaving her less able to do and to endure. She dared not look forward, as Camille did, to the end of life. He would die in his bed, full of years and honour, a great artist, a master, the president of many societies, but she—

Sometimes, as she stood facing the semi-circle of men at Varini's, and listened to the busy scratching of charcoal on paper, to Bembi's heavy breathing, and to the ticking of the clock, she wondered if she had done wrong in taking this way of bread earning. Certainly there could be no turning back. The step, once taken, was irrevocable. If artists employed her she would go on, but she could get no other work if this failed. If this failed there must be another struggle between flesh and spirit, and this time it would be decisive—one or other must prevail. Though she dreaded it she knew it was inevitable.

Meanwhile Camille stood in need of her ministrations. He had arranged to show his work on the fifteenth of April, and now he seemed to regard that date as thrice accursed. Often when she came in the morning she would find him prowling restlessly to and fro, or sitting with his head in his hands staring gloomily at the parquet flooring and sighing like a furnace.

"I hate having to invite people who do not know anything, who cannot tell an etching from an oil," he said irritably. "I cannot suffer their ridiculous comments gladly. I would rather have six teeth pulled out than hear my Aholibah called pretty. Pretty!"

"They cannot say anything wrong about the picture of me," she said. "It is splendid. M'sieur le Directeur says so, and I am sure it is. And your Venice sketches look so well on the screen."

"You must be there," he moaned. "If you are not there I shall burst into tears and run away." Then he laughed. "I am always like this. You should see me in Paris on the eve of the opening of the Salon. A pitiable wreck! I had no angel to console me there."

He kissed her hands with unusual fervour.

The girl had not really meant to come at first, but she yielded to his persuasions. "I will look after the food and drink then," she said, and she spent herself on the decoration of the tea-table. They went to Aragno's together in the morning to get cakes and bonbons.

"What flowers?"

She chose mimosa, and he bought a great mass of the fragrant golden boughs, and a bunch of violets for her.

Camille knew a good many people in Rome, and all those he had asked came. The Prix de Rome men were the first arrivals. They came in a body, and on the stroke of the hour named on the invitation cards. Camille watched their faces eagerly as they crowded in and came to a stand before his picture; they knew, and if they approved he cared little for the verdict of all Rome.

Gontrand was the first to break rather a long silence.

"Delicious!" he cried. "It is a triumph."

Camille flushed with pleasure as the others echoed him.

"The scheme of whites," "The fine quality," "So pure."

One after the other they went across the room to talk to the model, who stood by the tea-table waiting to serve them.

"You are wonderful, mademoiselle. If only you would sit for me I might hope to achieve something too."

"When M'sieur Michelin has done with me," she said. "You like the picture?"

"It is adorable—as you are."

Other people were coming now. Camille stayed by the door to receive them while his friend Gontrand showed the drawings in the portfolio, explained the Campagna sketches, and handed plates of cake and sweets. When Olive made fresh tea he brought her more sliced lemons from the lumber room, where Rosina was washing the cups.

"I am useful but not disinterested. Persuade Camille to let you sit for me."

"But you will not be here in the summer," she said wistfully.

"Coffee, madame? These cakes are not very sweet. Yes, I was M'sieur Michelin's model. Yes, it is a beautiful picture."

The crowd thinned towards six o'clock, and there was no one now at the far end of the room but a man who seemed to be looking at the sketches on the screen. Olive thought she might take a cup of tea herself, and she was pouring it out when he turned and came towards her. It was Tor di Rocca.

"Ah," he said smilingly, "the girl in Michelin's picture reminded me of you, but I did not realise that you were indeed the 'Jeune Fille.' I have been away from Rome these last few days. Have you missed me?"

His hot brown eyes lingered over her.

"Don't."

"I should like a cup of coffee."

Her hand shook so as she gave it to him that much was spilled on the floor. She had pitied him once; he remembered that as he saw how she shrank from him. "Michelin has been more fortunate than I have," he said deliberately.

"I beg your pardon."

"You seem to be at home here."

"I suppose you must follow the bent of your mind."

"I suppose I must," he agreed as he stood aside to let her pass. She had defied him that night in Florence. "Never!" she had said. And now he saw that she smiled at Camille as she went by him into the further room, and the old bad blood stirred in him and he ached with a fierce jealousy.

She had denied him. "Never!" she had said.

As he joined the group of men by the door Gontrand turned to him. "Ah, Prince, have you heard that Michelin has already sold his picture?"

"I am not surprised," the Italian answered suavely. "If I was rich—but I am not. Who is the happy man?"

"That stout grey-haired American who left half an hour since. Did you notice him? He is Vandervelde, the great millionaire art collector."

"May one ask the price?"

"Eight thousand francs," answered Camille. He looked tired, but his blue eyes were very bright. "I am glad, and yet I shall be sorry to part with it."

"You will still have the charming original," the Prince said not quite pleasantly.

There was a sudden silence. The men all waited for Camille's answer. Beyond, in the next room, they heard the two girls splashing the water, clattering the cups and plates.

The young Frenchman paused in the act of striking a match. He looked surprised. "But this is the original. I have made no copy."

"I meant—" The Prince stopped short. After all, he thought, he goes well who goes slowly.

Camille was waiting. "You meant?"

Tor di Rocca had had time to think. "Nothing," he said sweetly.

Silence was again ensuing but Gontrand flung himself into the breach.

"The Duchess said she wanted her daughter's portrait painted."

"She said the same to me."

"Are you going to do it?"

Camille suppressed a yawn. "I don't know. Qui vivra verra."

He was glad when they were all gone, Gontrand and Tor di Rocca and the rest, and he could stretch himself and sigh, and sing at the top of his voice:

"'Nicholas, je vais me pendre Qu'est-ce que tu vas dire de cela? Si vous vous pendez ou v'vous pendez pas Ca m'est ben egal, Mam'zelle. Si vous vous pendez ou v'vous pendez pas Oh, laissez moi planter mes chous!'"

When Olive came out of the inner room presently he told her that he had sold the "Jeune Fille." "The Duchess has nearly commissioned me to paint her Melanie. It went off well, don't you think so? Come at nine to-morrow."

"Yes, if you want me. Good-night, M'sieur Camille," she said. "Are you coming, Rosina?"

"Why do you wait for her?" he asked curiously. "I should not have thought you had much in common."

"She is my friend. She knows I do not care to be alone."



CHAPTER VI

When Olive came to the atelier on the following morning Camille was not there, but the door was open and he had left a note on the table for her.

"I have had a letter from the Duchess. She is leaving Rome to-day but she wants to see me before she goes. It must be about her daughter's portrait. I must go to her hotel, but I shall drive both ways and be back in half an hour. Wait for me.—C. M."

Olive took off her hat and coat as usual behind the screen. She was choosing a book from the tattered row of old favourites on the shelf when she heard a step outside. She listened, thinking that it was Camille, and fearing that the commission had not been given him. It was not like him to be so silent.

"I thought you would be singing—" she stopped short.

Filippo came on into the room.

"M'sieur Michelin is out," she said.

"So the porter told me. You do not think I want to see him. Will you come with me to Albano to-day?"

She shook her head.

"To-morrow, then. Why not?"

"I have my work."

"Your work! I see you believe you can do without me now. How long do you think you will be able to earn money in this way? All these men will be leaving Rome soon. The schools will be closed until next October. You will have to choose between the devil and the deep sea—"

"What is the good of talking about it?" she said wearily. "I know I have nothing to look forward to. I know that. Please go away."

"Do you know that you have cost me more than any other woman I have ever met? You injured me; will you make no amends?"

She laughed. "So you are the victim."

"Yes," he said passionately, "I told you before that I suffered, and you believed me then. Is it my fault that I am made like this? Since that night in Florence when I held you in my arms I have had no peace."

"You behaved very badly. I can't think why I let myself be sorry for you."

"Badly! Some men would, but I loved you even then."

She looked wistfully towards the door. "I wish you would go. There are so many other women."

"I love you, I want you," he answered, and he caught her in his arms and held her in spite of her struggles. "I have you!" He forced her head down upon his breast and kissed her mouth. She thought the hateful pressure of his lips, the hateful fire of his eyes would kill her, and when, at last, she wrenched herself away she screamed with the despairing violence of some trapped, wild thing.

"Camille! Camille!"

It seemed to her that if he did not hear her this must be the end of all, and she suffered an agony of terror. She thanked God as the door below was flung to and he came running up the stairs.

The Prince let her go and half turned to meet him, but Camille was not inclined to parley. He struck, and struck hard. Filippo slipped on the polished floor, tried to recover himself, and fell heavily at the girl's feet.

He got up at once, and the two men stood glaring at each other. Olive looked from one to the other. "It was nothing. I am sorry," she said breathlessly. "He was trying to—I was frightened. It was nothing, really, but—but I am glad you came."

"So am I," the Frenchman said grimly. His blue eyes were grown grey as steel. "I am waiting, Prince."

A little blood had sprung from Filippo's cut lip and run down his chin. He wiped it with his handkerchief and looked thoughtfully at the stain on the white linen before he spoke.

"Who is your friend?"

"Rene Gontrand."

"No, no!" cried the girl. "Filippo, it was your fault. Can't you be sorry and forget? Camille!"

"Hush, child," he said, "you do not understand."

Tor di Rocca was looking at her now with the old insolent smile in his red-brown eyes. "Ah, you said 'Never!' but presently you will come."

So he left them.

Olive expected to be "poored," but Camille, as it seemed, deliberately took no notice of her. She watched him picking a stick of charcoal from the accumulation of odd brushes, pens and pencils on the table.

"What a handsome devil it is. Lean, lithe and brown. He should go naked as a faun; such things roamed about the primeval woods seeking what they might devour. I wish I had asked him to sit for me."

He went to his easel and began to sketch a head on the canvas he had prepared for the Rosamund. "He has the short Neronic upper lip," he murmured.

Olive lost patience. "I wonder you had the heart to risk spoiling its contour," she said resentfully.

"With my fist, you mean?"

"I—I am very sorry—" she began. He saw that she was crying, and he was perplexed, not quite understanding what she wanted of him.

"What am I to say to you?" He came over and sat down beside her, and she let him hold her hand. "I know so little—not even your name. I have asked no questions, but of course I saw— Why do you not go back to your friends?"

She dried her eyes. "I have cousins in Milan, but I have lost their address, and they would not be able to help me. I have burnt my boats. I used to give lessons, but it was not easy to find pupils, and then I met Rosina. I cannot go back to being a governess after being a model. I have done no wrong, but no one would have me if they knew. You see one has to go on—"

"Have you known Tor di Rocca long? He was here last winter. He has a villa somewhere outside Rome. I think it belonged to his mother. She was an Orsini."

"You are not going to fight him?"

Outside, in the ilex wood, birds were calling to one another. The sun gilded the green of the gnarled old trees; it had rained in the night, and the garden was sweet with the scent of moist earth. The young man sighed. He had meant to take his "little brother" into the Campagna this April day to see the spring pageant of the skies, to hear the singing of larks high up at heaven's gate, the tinkling of sheep bells, the gurgling of water springs half hidden in the green lush grass that grows in the shadow of the ruined Claudian aqueducts.

"Camille, answer me."

He got up and went back to his easel. "You must run away now," he said. "I can't work this morning. I think I shall go to Naples for a few days, but I will let you know when I return. We must get on with the 'Rosamund.'"

She went obediently to put on her hat, but the face she saw reflected in the little hanging mirror was pale and troubled. He came with her to the door, and when she gave him her hand he bent to kiss it. Her eyes filled again with tears. He will be killed, she thought, and for me.

"Don't fight! For my sake, don't. I shall begin to think that I am a creature of ill-omen. They say some women are like that; they have the mal occhio; they give sorrow—"

"That is absurd," he said roughly, and then, in a changed voice, "Good-bye, child."



CHAPTER VII

Olive walked home to Ripetta. She felt tired and shaken, and unhappily conscious of some effort that must be made presently.

"He will be killed—and for me." "For me." "For me." She heard that echo of her thought through all the clamour of the streets, the shrill cries, the clatter of hoofs, the rattling of wheels over the cobble stones. She heard it as she climbed the stairs to her room. When she had taken off her hat and coat she poured some eau-de-cologne with water into a cup and drank it—not this time to Italy or the joy of life. She lay down on her bed and stayed there for a while, not resting, but thinking or trying to think.

Was she really a sort of number thirteen, a grain of spilt salt, ill-omened, disastrous? Camille would not think so; but it seemed to her that she had never been able to make anyone happy, and that there must be some taint in her therefore, some flaw in her nature.

Now, here, at last, was a thing well worth doing. She must risk her soul, lose it, perhaps, or rather, exchange it for a man's life. She had hoarded it hitherto, had been miserly, selfish, seeking to save the poor thing as though it were a pearl of price. Now she saw herself as the veriest rag of flesh parading virtue, useless, comfortless, helpless, clinging to her code, and justifying all the trouble she gave to others by a reference to the impalpable, elusive and possible non-existent immortal and inner self she had held so dear. She was ashamed. Ah, now at last she would give ungrudgingly. Her feet should not falter, nor her eyes be dimmed by any shadow of fear or of regret, though she went by perilous ways to an almost certain end.

Soon after noon she got up and prepared to face the world again, and towards three o'clock she returned to the Villa Medici. She had to ring the porter's bell as the garden gate was shut, and the old man came grumblingly as usual.

"Monsieur Michelin will see no one. Did he not tell you so this morning?"

"But I have come for Monsieur Gontrand," she said.

She hoped now above all things to find the black Gascon alone in his atelier near the Belvedere. The first move depended upon him, and there was no time to spare. She determined to await his return in the wood if he were out, but there was no need. He opened his door at once in answer to her knocking.

"I have come—may I speak to you for a moment?" she began rather confusedly. He looked tired and worried, and was so evidently alarmed at the sight of her, and afraid of what she was going to say next, that she could hardly help smiling. "I want to ask you two questions. I hope you will answer them."

"I should be glad to please you, mademoiselle, but—"

She hurried on. "First, when are they going to fight? Oh, tell me, tell me! I know you were to be with him. I know you are his friend. Be mine too! What harm can it do? I swear I will keep it secret."

"Ah, well, if you promise that," he said. "It is to be to-morrow afternoon."

"Where?"

He shook his head. "I really cannot tell you that."

"Well, the hour is fixed. It will not be changed?"

"No, the Prince preferred the early morning, but Michelin has an appointment he must keep with Vandervelde at noon."

"Nothing will persuade him to alter it then?" she insisted.

"Nothing."

"That is well," she said sighing. "Good-bye, M'sieur Gontrand. You—you will do your best for Camille."

"You may rely on me," he answered.

She went down the steps of Trinita del Monte, and across the Piazza di Spagna to the English book-shop at the corner, where she bought a Roman Herald. Three minutes study of the visitors' list sufficed to inform her that the Prince was staying at the Hotel de Russie close by. The afternoon was waning, and already the narrow streets of the lower town were in shadow; soon the shops would be lit up and gay with the gleam of marbles, the glimmer of Roman pearls and silks, and the green, grotesque bronzes that strangers buy.

Olive walked down the Via Babuino past the ugly English church, crossed the road, and entered the hall of the hotel in the wake of a party of Americans. They went on towards the lift and left her uncertain which way to turn, so she appealed to the gold-laced, gigantic, and rather awful porter.

"Prince Tor di Rocca?"

He softened at her mention of the illustrious name.

"If you will go into the lounge there I will send to see if the Prince is in. What name shall I say?"

"Miss Agar. I have no card with me."

She chose a window-seat near a writing-table at the far end of the room, and there Filippo found her when he came in five minutes later. He was prepared for anything but the smile in the blue eyes lifted to his, and he paled as he took the hand she gave and raised it to his lips.

"Ah," he said fervently, "if you were always kind."

"You would be good?"

"Yes."

"For a week, or a month? But you need not answer me. Filippo, I should like some tea."

"Of course," he said eagerly. "Forgive me," and he hurried away to order it.

When he returned his dark face was radiant. "Do you know that is the second time you have called me by my name? You said Filippo this morning. Ah, I heard you, and I have thought of it since."

The girl hardened her heart. She realised—she had always realised that this man was dangerous. A fire consumed him. It was a fire that blazed up to destroy, no pleasant light and warmth upon the hearth of a good life, but women were apt to flutter, moth-like, into the flame of it nevertheless.

He sat down beside her and took her hand in his.

"I know I was violent this morning; I could not help myself. I am a Tor di Rocca. It would be so easy for you to make me happy—"

She listened quietly.

A waiter brought the tea and set it on a little table between them.

"You had coffee yesterday," she said. "It seems years ago."

"I have forgotten yesterday, Incipit vita nuova! Do you remember I came to you dressed in Dante's red lucco?"

"Yes, but you are not a bit like him."

She came to the point presently. "Filippo, you say you want me?"

"More than anything in this world."

Her eyes met his and held them. "Well, if you will get out of fighting M'sieur Michelin I will come to you—meet you—anywhere and at any hour after noon to-morrow."

"Ah, you make conditions."

"Of course."

"How can I get out of fighting him? The man struck me, insulted me."

"Yes," she said, "and you know why!"

"I have asked your pardon for that," he said with an effort that brought the colour into his face.

"Yes, but that is not enough. I don't choose that this unpleasantness should go any further. Write a letter to him now—we will concoct it together—and—and—I will be nice to you."

She smiled at him, and there was no shadow of fear or of regret in the blue eyes that looked towards the almost certain end.

"Well, I must be let down easily," he said unwillingly. "I am not going to lick his boots."

They sat down at the writing-table together, and she began to dictate. "Just scribble this, and if it does you can make a fair copy afterwards.

"'DEAR MONSIEUR MICHELIN,—On reflection I understand that your conduct this morning was justifiable from your point of view, and I withdraw—'"

Filippo laid down the pen. "I shall not say that."

"Begin again then," she said patiently.

"'I have been asked to write to you by a third person whom I wish to please. She tells me that this morning's unpleasantness resulted from a misunderstanding. She says she has deceived you, and she hopes that you will forgive her. I suppose from what she has said that your hasty action was excusable, as you thought her other than she is, and I think that you may now regret it and agree with me that this need go no farther—'"

"This is better for me," he said.

"Yes." She took the pen from him and wrote under his signature: "You will be sorry to know that your child is a liar. Try to forget her existence."

"You can send it now by someone who must wait for an answer," she explained. "I shall stay here until it comes."

"Very well," he said sulkily, and he went out into the hall to confer with the porter. "An important letter, Eccellenza? A vetturino will take it for you—"

Olive heard the opening and shutting of doors, the shrill whistle answered by harsh, raucous cries, the rattling of wheels. Filippo came back to her.

"I have done my part." Then, looking at her closely, he saw that she was very pale. "Is all you have implied and I have written true?"

"No."

"You must love him very much."

"I? Not at all, as you understand love."

The ensuing half-hour seemed long to the girl; Filippo talked desultorily, but there were intervals of silence. She was too tired to attempt to answer him, and, besides, his evident restlessness, his inattention, afforded her some acrid amusement. He was like a boy, eager in pursuit of the bird in the bush, heedless of the poor thing fluttering, dying in his hand. It was now near the dinner-hour, and people were coming into the lounge to await the sounding of the gong; from where Olive sat she could see all the entrances and exits—as in a glass darkly—in the clouded surface of a mirror that hung on the wall and reflected the white gleam of shirt fronts, the shimmer of silks, and she was quick to note that Filippo was interested in what she saw as a pink blur.

His love was as fully winged for flight as any Beast of the book of Revelations; it was swift as a sword to pierce and be withdrawn. He could not be altogether loyal for a day. Olive's heart was filled with pity for the women who had cared.

When, at last, the answer to the letter came, the Prince gave it to her to read. It was very short, a mere scrawl of scarlet ink on the brown, rough-edged paper that was one of Camille's affectations.

"My zeal was evidently misplaced and I regret its excess."

Olive was speechless; her eyes were dimmed, her throat ached with tears. How easily he believed the worst—this man who had been her friend. She rose to go, but Filippo laid a detaining hand upon her arm.

"To-morrow." He had already told her where and when to meet him, and had given her two keys.

"Are you sure you want me?" she said hurriedly. "There are so many women in your life. You remind me of the South American Republic that made—and shot—seventeen presidents in six months."

He laughed. "Do I? You remind me of an eel, or a little grey mouse trying to get out of a trap. There is no way out, my dear, unless, of course, you want me to kill your Frenchman. I am a good shot."

"I will come."

She looked for pink as she went out of the room, and saw a very pretty woman in rose-coloured tulle sitting alone and near the door.

She had given ungrudgingly, unfaltering, and there was no shadow of regret in her eyes; it was nothing to her that he should care for this other little body, for bare white shoulders and a fluff of yellow hair. He had never been more to her than a means to an end, and he was to be that now.

She took a tram from the Piazza del Popolo to the Rotonda. There was a large ironmonger's shop at the corner; she remembered having noticed it before. She went in and asked to look at some of the pistols they had in the window. Several were brought out for her to see, and she chose a small one. The young man who served her showed her how to load it and pull the trigger. He wrapped it in brown paper and made a loop in the string for her to carry it by. She thanked him.

The bells of all the churches were ringing the Ave Maria when she left the Hotel de Russie an hour ago, and it was dark when she reached her own room. The stars were bright, shining through a rift of clouds that hid the crescent moon. Olive laid the awkwardly-shaped parcel she carried down upon the table while she lit her candle. Then she got her scissors and cut the string. This was the key of a door through which she must pass. Death was the way out.

The little flame of the candle gleamed on the polished steel. It was almost a pretty thing, so smooth and shining. It was well worth the money she had paid for it; it was going to be useful, indispensable to-morrow.

Suddenly, in spite of herself, she began to think of her grave. It would be dug soon. She would be brought to it in a black covered cart. No prayers would be said, and there would be no sound at all but that of the earth falling upon the coffin.

She sprang up, her face chalk white, her eyes wide and dark with terror. She was afraid, horribly afraid of this lonely and violent end. Jean would never know that she died rather than let another man—Jean would never know—Jean—

"I can't! I can't!" she said aloud piteously.

She was trembling so that she had to cling to the banisters as she went down the stairs to save herself from falling. There was a post-office at the corner. She went in and explained that she wanted to send a telegram. The young woman behind the counter glanced at the clock.

"Where to? You have half an hour."

"To Florence." She wrote it and gave it in.

"To JEAN AVENEL, Villa Fiorelli, Settignano, Florence.

"If you would help me come if you can to the Villino Bella Vista at Albano to-morrow soon after noon; watch for me and follow me in. I know it may not be possible, but the danger is real to me and I want you so much. In any case remember that my heart was yours only.—OLIVE."



CHAPTER VIII

Jean sat leaning forward that he might see the road. The night was dark, starless, and very wet, and he and the chauffeur were all streaming with rain and splashed with liquid mud that spattered up from the car wheels. Now and again they rattled over the rough cobble stones of a village street, but the way for the most part lay through deep woods and by mountain gorges. The roar of Arno in flood, swollen with melted snows, and hurrying on its way to the sea, was with them for a while, but other sounds there were none save the rustling of leaves in the coverts, the moaning of wind in the tree-tops, the drip-drip of the rain, and the steady throbbing of the car.

When the darkness lightened to the grey glimmer of a cheerless dawn Jean changed places with the chauffeur; Vincenzo was a careful driver, and he dared not trust his own impatience any longer. His hands were numbed with cold, and now he took off his gloves to chafe them, but first he felt in his inner pocket for the flimsy sheets of paper that lay there safe against his heart.

He had been sitting alone at the piano in the music-room, not playing, but softly touching the keys and dreaming in the dark, when Hilaire came in to him.

"You need not write to her after all. She has sent for you. Hear what she says." He stood in the doorway to read the message by the light that filtered in from the hall. Jean listened carefully.

"The car—I must tell Vincenzo." The lines of the strong, lean face seemed to have softened, and the brown eyes were very bright. His brother smiled as he laid a kindly hand upon his arm. "The car will be round soon. I have sent word, and you have plenty of time. Assure Olive of my brotherly regard, and tell her that my books are still waiting to be catalogued. If she will come here for a while she will be doing a kindness to a lonely man."

"I wonder what she is frightened of," Jean said thoughtfully, and frowning a little. "She says 'was yours' too; I don't like that."

"Well, you must do your best for her," Hilaire answered in his most matter-of-fact tone. "Be prepared."

Jean agreed, and when he went to get ready he transferred a pistol from a drawer of the bureau to his coat pocket. "I shall bring her back with me if I can. Good-bye."

The sun shone for a few minutes after its rising through a rift in the clouds, but soon went in again; the rain still poured down, and the distance was hidden in mist that clung to the hillsides and filled each ravine and cranny in the rocks. They were near Orvieto when the car broke down; Vincenzo was out on the road at once, but his master sat quite still. He could not endure the thought of any delay.

"What is it? Will it take long?" He had forced himself to wait a minute before he asked the question, but still his lips felt stiff, and all the colour had gone out of them.

The man reassured him. "It is nothing."

Jean went to help him, and soon they were able to go on again.

They came presently to the fen lands—the Campagna that so greatly needs the magic and glamour of the Roman sunshine, the vault of the blue sky above, and the sound of larks singing to adorn it. It seemed a desolate and dreary waste, wind-swept, and shivering under the lash of the rain on such a morning as this, and the car was a very small thing moving in that apparently illimitable plain along a road that might be endless. Jean saw a herd of the wild, black buffaloes standing in a pool at the foot of a broken arch of the Claudian aqueduct, and now and again he caught a glimpse of fragments of masonry, or a ruined tower, ancient stronghold of one or other of the robber barons who preyed on Rome-ward pilgrims in the age of faith and rapine.

They reached Albano soon after eleven o'clock, and Jean left his man in the car while he went in to the Ristorante of the Albergo della Posta. He ordered a cup of coffee, and sat down at one of the little marble tables near the door to drink it. There was no one else in the place at the moment.

"Can you tell me the way to the Villino Bella Vista?"

The waiter looked at him curiously. "It is down in the olive woods and quite near the lake, and you must go to it by a lane from the Galleria di Sopra, the upper road to Castel Gandolfo." After a momentary hesitation he added, "Scusi! But are you thinking of taking it, signore?"

Jean started. It had not occurred to him that the house might be empty. "I don't know," he answered cautiously. "Has it been to let long?"

"Oh, yes," the man said. "The Princess Tor di Rocca spent her last years there, alone, and after her death the agent in Rome found tenants. But lately no one has come to it, even to see." He lowered his voice. "The place has a bad name hereabouts. The contadini—rough, ignorant folk, signore—say she still walks in the garden at moonrise, waiting for the husband and son who never came; and the women who go to wash their linen in the lake will not come back that way at night for fear of seeing her dead eyes peering at them through the bars of the gate."

"Ah, that is very interesting," Jean said appreciatively. He finished his coffee, paid for it with a piece of silver, and waited to light a cigarette before he went out.

Vincenzo sat still in the car, a model of patient impassivity, but he turned a hungry eye on his master as he came down the steps.

"You can go and get something to eat. I shall drive up to the Galleria di Sopra, and you must follow me there. You will find the car at the side of the road. Stay with it until I come, and if anyone asks questions you need not answer them."

Jean drove up the steep hill towards the lake. The rain was still heavy, and the squalid streets of the little town were running with mud. He turned to the left by the Calvary at the foot of the ilex avenue by the Capuchin church, and stopped the car some way further down the road. The lane the waiter had told him of was not hard to find. It was a narrow path between high walls of olive orchards; it led straight down to the lake, and the entrance to the Villino was quite close to the water's edge. Nothing could be seen of it from the lane but the name painted on the gate-posts and one glimpse of a shuttered window, forlorn and viewless as a blind eye, and half hidden by flowering laurels. Jean looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to twelve, and she had written "after noon," but he could not be sure that she had not come already, and since he had heard the name of Tor di Rocca he was more than ever anxious to be with her.

He tried the gate but it was locked; there was nothing for it but to climb the wall, and as he was light and active he scrambled over without much difficulty and landed in a green tangle of roses and wild vines. He knocked at the house door, and stood for a while listening to the empty answering echoes and to the drip-drip of rain from the eaves. Evidently there was no one there. He drew back into the shrubberies; great showers of drops were shaken down on him from the gold-powdered mimosa blossoms that met above his head; he shook himself impatiently, like a dog that is disturbed while on guard. From where he stood he could see the gate and the grass-grown path that led from it to the house. The time passed very slowly. He looked at his watch four times in the next fifteen minutes, and he was beginning to wonder if he had not left Florence on a fool's errand when Olive came.

He saw her fumbling with the key; it was hard to turn in the rusty lock, and she had to close her umbrella and stand it against the wall so as to have both hands free. The gate swung open slowly, creaking on its warped hinges. Jean noticed that she left it unlatched and that she looked back over her shoulder twice as she came down the path, as though she thought someone might be following her.

She opened the house door with a key she had and went in, and he came after her. He stood for a moment on the threshold listening. She was hurrying from room to room, opening the shutters and the windows and letting in the light and air; the doors banged after her, and muslin curtains flapped like wings as the wind blew them.

His heart was beating so that he thought she must hear it before she saw him, before his step sounded in the passage. As he came in she gave a sort of little cry and ran to him, and he put his arms about her and kissed her again and again; her dear lips that were wet and cold with rain, her soft brown hair, the curves of cheek and chin that were as sweet to feel as to see. One small hand held the lapel of his coat, and he was pleasantly aware of the other being laid about his neck. She had wanted him so much—and he had come.

"Thank God, you are here, Jean. Oh, if you knew how frightened I have been."

He kissed her once more, and then, framing her face with his hands, he looked down into her eyes. The blue eyes yearned to his, but there was fear in them still, and he saw the colour he had brought into her cheeks fading.

"I am not worth all the trouble I have given you."

"Perhaps not," he said, smiling. "Hilaire sent you a long message, but I want to hear what we are supposed to be doing here first."

"Dear Hilaire!... Jean, you won't be angry?"

"I don't promise anything," he said. "I shall probably be furious. But in any case, if it is going to be a long story we may as well make ourselves at home."

"Not here! I must tell you quickly, before he comes."

He noticed that she looked towards the door, and he understood that she was listening fearfully for the creaking of the gate, the sound of footsteps on the path outside, the turning of the key in the lock.

"Tor di Rocca, I suppose? When is he coming?"

"Between one and two."

"We have at least half an hour then," he said comfortably, and drew her closer to him with his arm about her shoulders.

"When I first came to Rome I tried for weeks to get something to do, but no one seemed to want lessons. Then one day Signora Aurelia's sister told me how poor she was. She cried, and I was very much upset because I felt I was a burden, and that very afternoon I found out a way of making money ... Jean, you won't be angry?"

"No, dearest."

"I became a model—" She paused, but he said nothing and she went on. "I sat for one man only after the first week, and he was always good and kind to me, always. He painted a picture of me—I think you would like it—and the day before yesterday he had a show of his work. A lot of people came. I did not see Prince Tor di Rocca, but he was there, and after a while he spoke to me. I had met him before and I understood from what he said that Mamie Whittaker had broken her engagement with him.

"The next morning M'sieur Camille had to go out, and I was alone in the studio when the Prince came in and tried to make love to me. I was frightened, and I screamed, and just then Camille returned, and he knocked him down. He got up again at once. Nothing much was said, and he went away, but I understood that they were going to fight. I went home and thought about it, and when I realised that one or other of them might be killed I felt I could not bear it.

"I am so afraid of death, Jean. I try to believe in a future life, but that will be different, and I want the people I love in this one; just human, looking tired sometimes and shabby, or happy and pleased about things. I remember my mother had a blue hat that suited her, and I can't think of it now without tears, because I long to see her pinning it on before the glass and asking me if it is straight, and I suppose I shall never see or hear that again, even if we do meet in heaven. Death is so absolutely the end. If only people are alive distance and absence don't really matter; there is always hope. And then, you know, Camille is so brilliant; it would be a loss to France, to the whole world, if he was killed."

"What did you say his name was?"

"Camille Michelin."

"I know him then. He came to me once in Paris, after a concert, and fell on my neck without an introduction. Afterwards he painted my portrait."

"He is nice, isn't he?" she said eagerly.

He assented. "Well, go on. You could not let them fight—"

"I went to see the Prince at his hotel, and I persuaded him to write a sort of apology."

"You persuaded him. How?"

"Jean, that man is the exact opposite of the centurion's servant; say 'go' and he stays, 'don't do it' and he does it. And I once made the fatal mistake of telling him I could never love him. He did not want me to before, but now— He is a spoilt boy who only cares for the fruit that is forbidden or withheld. It is the scaling of the orchard wall that he enjoys; if he could walk in by the gate in broad daylight I am sure he never would, or, at any rate, he would soon walk out again. I promised to come here alone to meet him, and not to tell Camille, and I have kept my promise. If you knew how frightened I was.... I thought you might be away, and that Hilaire perhaps could not come in your stead, though I knew he would if it were possible."

The man left her then and went to the window, where he stood looking out upon the driving mist and rain that made the troubled waters of the lake seem grey, and shrouded all the wooded hills beyond.

"Suppose I had not come," he said presently. "What would you have done?"

"You ask that?"

He turned upon her. "Yes," he said hardly, "just that."

She took a small pistol from the pocket of her loose sac coat and gave it to him.

"So you were going to shoot him? I thought—"

She tried to still the quivering of her lips. "No, myself. Oh, I am not really inconsistent. I told you I was afraid of death. I will say all now and have done; I am afraid of life too, with its long slow pains, and most of all of what men call love. I don't want to go on," she cried hysterically. "I am sick. I don't want to see, or hear, or feel anything any more. I have had enough. All this year I have struggled, and people have been kind; but friendship is a poor, weak thing, and love—love is hateful."

She hid her face in her hands.

"Rubbish!" he said, and then, in a changed voice, "My darling, you will be better soon. I must get you away from here."

Gently he drew her hands away from her face and lifted them to his lips; the soft palms were wet with tears.

They were standing on the threshold of an inner room. "You can go in here until I have done with Tor di Rocca," he said. "But first I must tell you that Gertrude has written to me asking me to get a divorce. There is a man, of course, and the case will not be defended. Olive, will you marry me when I am free?"

"Oh, Jean, I—I am so glad."

"You will marry me then?" he insisted.

"How thin you are, my dear. Just a very nice bag of bones. Were—were you sorry when I came away?"

"You little torment," he said. "Answer me."

"Ask again. I want to hear."

"Will you marry me?"

"Yes, of course."

A nightingale began to sing in the garden; broken notes, a mere echo of what the stars heard at night, but infinitely sweet as the soul of a rose made audible; and as he sang a sudden ray of sunshine shot the grey rain with silver. It seemed to Jean that rose-sweetness was all about him in this his short triumph of love; that a flower's heart beat against his own, that a flower's lips caressed the lean darkness of his cheek. There were threads of gold in the soft brown tangle of hair—gold unalloyed as was the hard-won happiness that made him feel himself invincible, panoplied in an armour of joy that should defend them from all slings and arrows. He was happy, and so the world seemed full of music; there was harmony in the swaying of tall dark cypresses, moved by winds that strewed the grass with torn petals of orange blossoms from the trees by the lake side, in the clouds' processional, in the patter of rain on the green shining laurel leaves.

Laurels—his laurels had been woven in with rue, and latterly with rosemary for dear remembrance; he had never cared greatly for his fame and it seemed worthless to him now that he had realised his dream and gathered his rose.

He was impatient to be gone, to take the woman he loved out of this house of sad memories, of empty echoes, of dust and rust and decay. Already he seemed to feel the rush of the cold night air, to hear the roar of Arno, hurrying to the sea, above the steady throbbing of the car; to see the welcoming lights of home shining out of the dark at the steep edge of the hills above Settignano.

"About the Prince," he said presently. "Am I to fight him?"

She started. "Oh, no! That would be worse than ever. I thought you were too English for that," she said naively.

He smiled. "Well, perhaps I am, but I suppose there may be a bit of a scuffle. You won't mind that?"

"I don't know," she said helplessly.

A moment later they heard the gate creak as it swung on its hinges. "He is coming."

They kissed hurriedly, with, on her side, a passion of farewell, and he would have made her go into the room beyond, but she clung to him, crying incoherently. "No ... no ... together ..."

Tor di Rocca stopped short by the door; the smile that had been in his hot eyes as they met Olive's faded, and the short, Neronic upper lip lifted in a sort of snarl.

"I don't quite understand," he said. "How did you come here? This is my house, Avenel."

"I know it, and I do not wish to trespass on your hospitality. You will excuse us?"

But the Prince stood in the way. "I am not a child to be played with. I'll not let her go. You may leave us, however," he added, and he stood aside as though to let him pass.

Jean met his angry eyes. "The lady is unwilling. Let that be the end," he said quietly.

Olive watched the Italian fearfully; his face was writhen, and all semblance of beauty had gone out of it; its gnawing, tearing, animal ferocity was appalling. When he called to her she moved instinctively nearer to Jean, and then with the swift prescience of love threw herself on his breast, tried to shelter him, as the other drew his revolver and fired.

Jean had his arm about her, but he let her slip now and fall in a huddled heap at his feet. She was safer there, and out of the way. The two men exchanged several shots, but Jean's went wide; he was hampered by his heavy motor coat, and the second bullet had scored its way through his flesh before he could get at his weapon; there were four in his body when he dropped.

Tor di Rocca leant against the wall; he was unhurt, but he felt a little faint and sick for the moment. Hurriedly he rehearsed what he should say to the Questore presently. He had met the girl in this house of his; Avenel, her lover, had broken in upon them; he had shot her and fired at the Prince himself, but without effect, and he had killed him in self-defence.

That was plain enough, but it was essential that his should be the only version, and when the smoke cleared away he crossed the room to look at the two who must speak no word, and to make sure.

The man was still alive for all the lead in him; Tor di Rocca watched, with a sort of cruel, boyish interest in the creature he had maimed, as slowly, painfully, Jean dragged himself a little nearer to where the girl lay, tried to rise, and fell heavily. Surely he was dead now—but no; his hands still clawed at the carpet, and when Tor di Rocca stamped on his fingers he moaned as he tried to draw them away. Olive lived too, but her breathing was so faint that it would be easily stifled; the pressure of his hand even, but Filippo shrank from that. He could not touch the flesh that would be dust presently because of him. He hesitated, and then, muttering to himself, went to take one of the cushions from the window seat.

Out in the garden the nightingale had not ceased to sing; the cypresses swayed in the winds that shook the promise of fruit from the trees; the green and rose and gold of a rainbow made fair the clouds' processional. The world was still full of music, of transitory life and joy, of dreams that have an ending.



CHAPTER IX

"Via!" said Vincenzo, and his black, oily forefinger, uplifted, gave emphasis to his words. "There are no such things as ghosts. This princess of yours cannot be seen at moonrise, or at any other time."

There is no room for faith in the swelled head of young Italy, but the waiter was a middle-aged man. He paused in the act of re-filling the customer's cup. "You do not believe, then?"

The Tuscan looked at him with all the scarcely-veiled contempt of the North for the South. "You tell me you are a Calabrian. Si vede! You listen to all the priests say; you go down on your knees in the mud when the frati are carrying a wax doll about the roads; you think a splinter of bone from the ribs of some fool who would not enjoy life while it lasted will cure a dropsy or a broken leg; you hope the rain will stop because a holy toe-nail is exposed on the altar. Ghosts, visions, miracles!"

Vincenzo Torrigiani was the son of a stone-cutter in the village of Settignano, and he had worked as a boy in the gardens of the Villa Fiorelli. After a while the master had noticed and had taken a fancy to him, chiefly on account of his ever-ready and unusually dazzling and expansive smile, and he had been sent to a garage in Milan for six months. The quick-witted Florentine learned a great many things in a short time besides the necessary smattering of mechanics and the management of cars, and on his return he displayed many new airs and graces in addition, fortunately, to the same old smile. Later on he spent the obligatory two years in barracks, in a regiment of Bersaglieri, and came back to Avenel's service plus a still more varied knowledge of the world, a waxed moustache, and a superficial tendency to atheism. He was always delighted to air his views, and he fixed the shocked waiter now with a glittering eye as he proceeded to recite his unbelief at some length.

"God is merely man's idea of himself at his best, and the devil is his idea of other people at their worst," he concluded.

"Would you spend a night alone in this haunted house?"

"Sicuro!"

"Perhaps you will have to if your master takes the place. He has gone to look at it."

Vincenzo gulped down the last of his coffee. "I must go," he said, but he was much too Italian to understand that a man in a hurry need not count his change twice over or bite every piece of silver to make sure of it.

It was nearly one o'clock when, having outdistanced the pack of beggars that followed at his heels through the narrow streets of the town, he came out upon the broad, tree-shadowed upper road. He had stopped for a moment in the shelter of the high wall of the Capuchin convent to light a cigarette, and thereafter he went on unseeingly, in a brown study. Had he or had he not paid two soldi more than he should have done for the packet? A Calabrian would cheat, if possible, of course.

When, after much mental arithmetic, Vincenzo solved the problem to his own satisfaction the little scrap of bad tobacco in its paper lining was smoked out. He looked at his watch, a Christmas present from Jean, and seeing that it was past the hour he began to wonder. There were no ghosts, and in any case they were not dangerous in broad daylight. There were no ghosts, but what was the signorino doing all this while in an empty house? The car was there, drawn up at the side of the road under the trees, and Vincenzo fussed round it, pulling the tarpaulin covers more over the seats; he had them in place when it occurred to him to look underneath for the fur rug. It was not there.

"Dio mio!" he cried excitedly. "It has been stolen."

Someone passing by must have seen it and taken it, probably someone with a cart, as it would be heavy to carry. The thief could not have gone far, and Vincenzo thought that if he drove the car towards Castel Gandolfo he might catch him, whoever he was—charcoal-burner from the woods beyond Rocca di Papa, peasant carting barrels of Frascati wine, or perhaps a frate from the convent. However, he dared not attempt it as the signorino had said "Wait."

After a few minutes of miserable uncertainty, during which he invoked the assistance of the saints—"Che fare! Che fare! Santa Vergine, aiutatemi!" he decided to go and find the signorino himself. He was half way down the lane when he heard shots. He had been hurrying, but he began to run then, and the last echo had not died away when he reached the gate of the Villino. It creaked on its hinges as he passed in, but no one in the house was listening for it now. He went in at the door, and now he was very swift and silent, very intent. There was a smell of powder in the passage, and someone was moving about in the room beyond. Vincenzo felt for the long sharp knife in his hip pocket before he softly turned the handle of the door.

"Signore! What has happened?"

Filippo Tor di Rocca started violently and uttered a sort of cry as he turned to see the man who stood on the threshold staring at him. There was a queer silence before he spoke, moistening his lips at almost every word.

"I—I—you heard shots, I suppose."

The servant's quick eyes noted the recent disorder of the room: chairs overturned, white splinters of plaster fallen from the ceiling, a mirror broken. Into what trap had his master fallen? What was there hidden behind the table—on the floor? There were scrabbled finger-marks—red marks—in the dust.

"I was here with a lady whom I wished to take this house when a man burst in upon us. He shot her, and tried to shoot me, and I drew upon him in self-defence." The Prince spoke haltingly. He had not been prepared to lie so soon.

"What are you doing with that cushion?"

Filippo looked down guiltily at the frilled thing he held. "I was going to put it under her head," he began, but the other was not listening. He had come forward into the room and he had seen. The huddled heap of black and grey close at the Prince's feet was human—a woman—and he knew the young pale face, veiled as it was in brown, loosened hair threaded with gold. A woman; and the man who lay there too, his dark head resting on her breast, his lips laid against her throat, was his master, Jean Avenel.

He uttered a hoarse cry of rage. "Murderer! You did it!"

But Tor di Rocca had recovered himself somewhat and the bold, hard face was a mask through which the red eyes gleamed wickedly. "Fool!" he answered impatiently. "It was as I said. The man was mad with jealousy. There is his pistol on the floor. I am going now to inform the authorities and to fetch the carabinieri."

He went out, and Vincenzo did not try to prevent him.

"Signorino! signorino! answer me. Madonna benedetta! What shall I say to Ser 'Ilario?" The little man's face worked, and tears ran down his cheeks as he knelt there at his master's side, stooping to feel for the fluttering of the faint breath, the beating of the pulse of life. Surely there was no mortal wound—the shoulder—yes; and the side, and the right arm, since all the sleeve was soaked in warm blood.

All those who have been dragged down into the great darkness that shrouds the gate of Death know that the first sense vouchsafed to the returning soul is that of hearing. There was a sound of the sea in Jean's ears, a weary sound of wailing and distress, through which words came presently by ones and twos and threes. Words that seemed a long way off, and yet near, as though they were stones dropped upon him from a great height: ... signorina ... not mortal ... healed ... care ... twenty masses to the Madonna at the Santissima Annunziata ...

Sight came next as the sea that had roared about him seemed to ebb, leaving him still on the shore of this world. He opened his eyes and lay for a moment staring up at the white ceiling until full consciousness returned, and with it the sharp, stabbing pain of his wounds, the acrid taste of blood in his mouth, the remembrance of love. Olive.... Had he not tried to reach her and failed? He groaned as he turned his aching head now on the pillow to see her where she lay.

Vincenzo had cared for his master, had slit up that red, wet sleeve with his sharp knife, and had bandaged the torn flesh as well as he was able; and now, very gently, but without any skill, he was fumbling at the girl's breast.

Jean made an effort to speak but his lips made no intelligible sounds at first. The servant came running to him joyfully nevertheless. "Signorino! You are better?"

The kind brown eyes smiled through the dimness of their pain.

"Good Vincenzo ... well done. She ... she's not dead?"

"Oh, no, signorino—at least—I am not sure," the man faltered.

"The wound is near the heart, is it not? Lay her down here beside me and I will keep it closed with my hand," Jean said faintly. "Lift her and lay her down here in the hollow of my unhurt arm."

"No ... no!" she had cried. "Together." No other man should touch her—if she died it must be in his arms. How still she was, how little warmth of life was there to cherish, how small a fluttering of the dear heart under his hand's pressure....

"Go now and get help."

Vincenzo made no answer, but his eyes were like those of a faithful dog, anguished, appealing, and he knelt to kiss the poor fingers that had been bruised under that cruel heel before he went out of the room.

Very softly he closed and locked the door, and then stood for a while in the close darkness of the passage, listening. That devil—he wanted them to die—suppose he should be lurking somewhere about the house, waiting for the servant to go that he might finish his work.

The Tor di Rocca were hard and swift and cruel as steel. That Duchess Veronica, who had brought her husband the other woman's severed head, wrapped in fine linen of her own weaving, as a New Year's gift!—she had been one of them. Then there had lived one Filippo who kept his younger brother chained up to the wall of some inner room of his Florentine palace for seventeen years, until, at last, a serving-man dared to go and tell of the sound of blows in the night hours, the moaning, the clank of a chain, and the people broke in, and hanged the Prince from the wrought-iron fanale outside his own gate.

Vincenzo knew of all these old, past horrors; the Florentines had made ballads of them, and sang them in the streets, and one might buy "L'Assassina," or "Il Fratello del Principe," printed on little sheets of coarse paper, on the stalls in the Mercato, for one soldo. So, though the house was very still, the little man drew his long knife and read the motto scratched on the blade before he climbed the stairs.

"Non ti fidar a me se il cor ti manca."

Hurriedly he passed through every room, but there was no one there, and so he ran out into the dripping green wilderness of torn leaves and storm-tossed, drenched blossoms, and up the lane, between the high walls of the olive orchards, to the town.

Don Filippo was really gone, and he was waiting now on the platform of the Albano station for the train that should take him back to Rome. He was not, however, presenting the spectacle of the murderer fleeing from his crime. He was quite calm. The heat and cruelty of the Tor di Rocca blood flared in him, but it burned with no steady flame. He had not the tenacity of his forefathers; and so, though he might kill his brother, he would not care to torment him during long years. Hate palled on him as quickly as love. He was content to leave the lives of Jean Avenel and of Olive on the knees of the gods.

There was no pity, no tenderness in him to be stirred by the remembrance of blue eyes dilated with fear, of loosened brown hair, of the small thing that had lain in a huddled heap at his feet, and he was not afraid of any consequences affecting him. In Italy the plea of jealousy covers a multitude of sins, and he was sure that a jury would acquit him if he were charged with murder.

How many hundred years had passed since Pilate had called for water to wash his hands! Filippo—reminded in some way of the Roman governor—felt that same need. His hands were not clean—there was dust on them—and it seemed that the one thing that really might clog his thoughts and tarnish them later on was the dust on a frilled cushion.



CHAPTER X

To some men their world is most precious when their arms may compass it. These are the great lovers. It seemed to Jean now that it mattered little whether this grey hour of rain and silence preluded life or death. Presently they would come to the edge of the stream called Lethe, and then he, making a cup of his hands, would give the woman he loved to drink of the waters of forgetfulness, and all remembrance of loneliness and tears, and of the pain that ached now in his side and in her shot breast would pass away.

He looked down from a great height and saw:

"the curled moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf;"

and the round world, a caught fly, wrapped in a web of clouds, hung by a slender thread of some huge spider's spinning. There was a dark mark upon it that spread and reddened until it seemed to be a stain of blood on a woman's breast. She had been pale, but the colour had come again when he had kissed her. It was gone now. Was it all in the red that oozed between his fingers?

In the twilight of his senses stray thoughts fluttered and passed like white moths. Was that the roar of voices? The hall was full and they wanted him, but he could not play again. Love was best. He would stay in the garden with Olive.

What were they asking for? A nocturne—yes; it was getting dark, and the sea was rising—that was the sound of the sea.

* * * * *

The doctor Vincenzo had brought in rose from his knees and stood thoughtfully wiping his hands on a piece of lint.

"We must see about extracting the bullets later on. One went clean through his arm and so has saved us the trouble. As to her—I am not sure—but I think the injury may not be so serious as it now appears. She was evidently stunned. She must have struck her head against the table in falling."

"Can they be moved?" the servant asked anxiously. "My master would not care to stay on here. Can you take them into your house, and—and not say anything?"

The doctor hesitated. He was a bald, grey-whiskered man, fat and flaccid. His cuffs were frayed and there were wine-stains on his shabby clothes. He was very poor.

"I should inform the authorities," he said.

"Oh, I don't think that is necessary. It would be worth your while not to."

Jean's fur coat had been thrown across a chair. The doctor eyed it carefully. It was worth more lire than he had ever possessed at one time.

"Very well," he said. "The vineyard across the lane is mine. We can go to my house that way and take them through the gate without ever coming out on to the road. I will go and tell my housekeeper to get the rooms ready."

Vincenzo's face brightened. "I will go in the car to-night to fetch the master's brother. He is very rich. It will be worth your while," he repeated.

"He will be heavy to carry. Shall we be able to do it alone?"

"Via!" cried the little man. "I am very strong. Go now and come back soon."

When the other had left the room he crouched down again on the floor at Jean's feet. "Signorino! Signorino! Speak to me! Look at me!"

But there was no voice now, nor any that answered.

* * * * *

For a long while, it seemed, Jean was a spent swimmer, struggling to reach a distant shore. The cruel cross-currents drew him, great waves buffeted him, and the worst of it was they were hot. All the sea was bubbling and boiling about him, and the sound in his ears was like the roar of steam. There were creatures in the water, too; octopi, such as he had seen caught in nets by the Venetian fishermen and flung on the yellow sands of the Lido. He saw their tentacles flickering in the green curled edges of each wave that threatened to beat him down into the depths.

Vincenzo kept them off. He was always there, sitting by the door, and when he was called he came running to his master's bedside.

"Where is she? Don't let her be drowned! Don't let the octopi get her! Vincenzo! Vincenzo!" he cried, and the good fellow tried to reassure him.

"Sia benedetto, signorino! They shall not have her. I will cut them in pieces with my knife."

"What is the matter? I am quite well. Is it only the tyre? There is Orvieto, and the sun just risen. Is it still raining?"

"No, signorino. The sun shines and it has not rained for days. It will soon be May."

Very slowly the tide of feverish dreams ebbed, and Jean became aware of the iris pattern on the curtains of the bed; of the ray of sunlight that danced every morning on the ceiling and passed away; of the old woman who gave him his medicine. She was kind, and he liked to see her sitting sewing by lamplight, and to watch her distorted shadow looming gigantic in an angle of the wall. Hilaire was there too, but sometimes he was called away, and then Jean would hear his uneven step going to and fro across an uncarpeted floor, and the sound of hushed voices in the next room.

"Hilaire, is—is it all right?"

"Yes, do not be afraid. Get well," the elder man answered, but Jean still lay with his face turned to the wall. He was afraid. The longing to see Olive, to hold her once more in his arms, burned within him. He moved restlessly and laid his clenched hands together on the half-healed wound in his side.

One night he slept soundly, dreamlessly, as a child sleeps, and woke at dawn. He raised himself on his elbow in the bed and looked about him, and Vincenzo came to him at once and asked him what he wanted.

"Go out," he said, "and leave me alone for a while."

The green painted window-shutter was unfastened, and it swung open in the little wind that had sprung up. Jean saw the morning star shining, and the widening rift of pale gold in the grey sky above the hills. He heard the stirring of awakened life. Birds fluttered in the laurels. A boy was singing as he went to his work among the vines by the lake side:

"Ho da dirti tante cose."

It seemed to Jean that he too had many things to say to the woman he loved. He called to her faintly, in a weak, hoarse voice: "Olive!"

After a while he heard her answering him from the next room.

"Jean! Oh, Jean!"

He lay still, smiling.



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Transcriber's Note

Bold text is indicated with equals symbols, like this.

Text in languages other than English is preserved as printed.

Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.

The following amendments have been made:

Page 164—Jocopo amended to Jacopo—"... one of the old houses in the Borgo San Jacopo, ..."

Page 197—mysogynists amended to misogynists—"Olive laughed. "Commend me to misogynists henceforth.""

Page 216—newsvenders amended to newsvendors—"... and the narrow streets were echoing now to the hoarse cries of the newsvendors ..."

Page 228—Babbuino amended to Babuino—"They went by way of the Via Babuino across the Piazza di Spagna, ..."

Page 293—anyrate amended to any rate—"... I am sure he never would, or, at any rate, he would ..."

Page 297—it's amended to its—"... its gnawing, tearing, animal ferocity was appalling."

Second advert page—decidely amended to decidedly—"This is a decidedly powerful story ..."

THE END