From the window of the drawing-room Lavinia Sanviano could see, on the left, the Statue of Garibaldi, where the Corso Regina Maria cut into the Lungarno; on the right, and farther along, the gray-green foliage of the Cascine. Before her the Arno flowed away, sluggish and without a wrinkle or reflection on its turbid surface, into Tuscany. It was past the middle of afternoon, and a steady procession of carriages and mounted officers in pale blue tunics moved below toward the shade of the Cascine.

Lavinia could not see this gay progress very well, for the window-it had only a narrow ledge guarded by an iron grille-was practically filled by her sister, Gheta, and Anna Mantegazza. Occasionally she leaned forward, pressed upon Gheta's shoulder, for a hasty unsatisfactory glimpse.

"You are crushing my sleeves!" Gheta finally and sharply complained. "Do go somewhere else. Anna and I want to talk without your young ears eternally about. When do you return to the convent?"

Lavinia drew back. However, she didn't leave. She was accustomed to her sister's complaining, and-unless the other went to their father-she ignored her hints. Lavinia's curiosity in worldly scenes and topics was almost as full as her imagination thereof. She was sixteen, and would have to endure another year of obscurity before her marriage could be thought of, or she take any part in the social life where Gheta moved with such marked success.

But, Lavinia realized with a sigh, she couldn't expect to be pursued like Gheta, who was very beautiful. Gheta was so exceptional that she had been introduced to the Florentine polite world without the customary preliminary of marriage. She could, almost every one agreed, marry very nearly whomever and whenever she willed. Even now, after the number of years she had been going about with practically all her friends wedded, no one seriously criticized the Sanvianos for not insisting on a match with one of the several eligibles who had unquestionably presented themselves.

Gheta was slender and round; her complexion had the flawless pallid bloom of a gardenia; her eyes and hair were dark, and her lips an enticing scarlet thread. Perhaps her chin was a trifle lacking in definition, her voice a little devoid of warmth; but those were minor defects in a person so precisely radiant. Her dress was always noticeably lovely; at present she wore pink tulle over lustrous gray, with a high silver girdle, a narrow black velvet band and diamond clasp about her delicate full throat.

Anna Mantegazza was more elaborately gowned, in white embroidery, with a little French hat; but Anna Mantegazza was an American with millions, and elaboration was a commonplace with her. Lavinia wore only a simple white slip, confined about her flexible waist with a yellow ribbon; and she was painfully conscious of the contrast she presented to the two women seated in the front of the window.

The fact was that a whole fifth of the Sanvianos' income was spent on Gheta's clothes; and this left only the most meager provision for Lavinia. But this, the latter felt, was just-still in the convent, she required comparatively little personal adornment; while the other's beauty demanded a worthy emphasis. Later Lavinia would have tulle and silver lace. She wished, however, that Gheta would get married; for Lavinia knew that even if she came home she would be held back until the older sister was settled. It was her opinion that Gheta was very silly to show such indifference to Cesare Orsi.... Suddenly she longed to have men-not fat and good-natured like the Neapolitan banker, but austere and romantic-in love with her. She clasped her hands to her fine young breast and a delicate color stained her cheeks. She stood very straight and her breathing quickened through parted lips.

She was disturbed by the echo of a voice from the cool depths of the house, and turned at approaching footfalls. The room was so high and large that its stiff gilt and brocade furnishing appeared insignificant. Three long windows faced the Lungarno, but two were screened with green slatted blinds and heavily draped, and the light within was silvery and illusive. A small man in correct English clothes, with a pointed bald head and a heavy nose, entered impulsively.

"It's Bembo," Lavinia announced flatly.

"Of course it's Bembo," he echoed vivaciously. "Who's more faithful to the Casa Sanviano--"

"At tea time," Lavinia interrupted.

"Lavinia," her sister said sharply, "don't be impertinent. There are so many strangers driving," she continued, to the man; "do stand and tell us who they are. You know every second person in Europe."

He pressed eagerly forward, and Anna Mantegazza turned and patted his hand.

"I wish you were so attentive to Pier and myself," she remarked, both light and serious. "I'd like to buy you-you're indispensable in Florence."

"Contessa!" he protested. "Delighted! At once."

"Bembo," Gheta demanded, "duty-who's that in the little carriage with the bells bowed over the horses?"

He leaned out over the grille, his beady alert gaze sweeping the way below.

"Litolff," he pronounced without a moment's hesitation-"a Russian swell. The girl with him is--" He stopped with a side glance at Lavinia, a slight shrug.

"Positively, Lavinia," Gheta insisted again, more crossly, "you're a nuisance! When do you go back to school?"

"In a week," Lavinia answered serenely.

With Bembo added to the others, she could see almost nothing of the scene below. Across the river the declining sun cast a rosy light on the great glossy hedges and clipped foliage of the Boboli Gardens; far to the left the paved height of the Piazzale Michelangelo rose above the somber sweep of roofs and bridges; an aged bell rang harshly and mingled with the inconsequential clatter on the Lungarno. An overwhelming sense of the mystery of being stabbed, sharp as a knife, at her heart; a choking longing possessed her to experience all-all the wonders of life, but principally love.

"Look, Bembo!" Anna Mantegazza suddenly exclaimed. "No; there-approaching! Who's that singular person in the hired carriage?"

Her interest was so roused that Lavinia, once more forgetful of Gheta's sleeves, leaned over her sister's shoulder, and immediately distinguished the object of their curiosity.

An open cab was moving slowly, almost directly under the window, with a single patron-a slender man, sitting rigidly erect, in a short, black shell jacket, open upon white linen, a long black tie, and a soft narrow scarlet sash. He wore a wide-brimmed stiff felt hat slanted over a thin countenance burned by the sun as dark as green bronze; his face was as immobile as metal, too; it bore, as if permanently molded, an expression of excessive contemptuous pride.

Bembo's voice rose in a babble of excited information.

"'Singular?' Why, that's one of the most interesting men alive. It's Abrego y Mochales, the greatest bullfighter in existence, the Flower of Spain. I've seen him in the ring and at San Sebastian with the King; and I can assure you that one was hardly more important than the other. He's idolized by every one in Spain and South America; women of all classes fall over each other with declarations and gifts."

As if he had heard the pronouncement of his name the man in the cab turned sharply and looked up. Gheta was leaning out, and his gaze fastened upon her with a sudden and extraordinary intensity. Lavinia saw that her sister, without dissembling her interest, sat forward, statuesque and lovely. It seemed to the former that the cab was an intolerable time passing; she wished to draw Gheta back, to cover her indiscretion from Anna Mantegazza's prying sight. She sighed with inexplicable relief when she saw that the man had driven beyond them and that he did not turn.

A bull-fighter! A blurred picture formed in Lavinia's mind from the various details she had read and heard of the cruelty of the Spanish national sport-torn horses, stiff on blood-soaked sand; a frenzied and savage populace; and charging bulls, drenched with red froth. She shuddered.

"What a brute!" she spoke aloud unintentionally.

Gheta glanced at her out of a cool superiority, but Anna Mantegazza nodded vigorously.

"He would be a horrid person!" she affirmed.

"How silly!" Gheta responded. "It's an art, like the opera; he's an artist in courage. Personally I find it rather fascinating. Most men are so-so mild."

Lavinia knew that the other was thinking of Cesare Orsi, and she agreed with her sister that Orsi was far too mild. Without the Orsi fortune-he had much more even than Anna Mantegazza-Cesare would simply get nowhere. The Spaniard-Lavinia could not recall his name, although it hung elusively among her thoughts-was different; women of all classes, Bembo had said, pursued him with favors. He could be cruel, she decided, and shivered a little vicariously. She half heard Bembo's rapid high-pitched excitement over trifles.

"You are going to the Guarinis' sale to-morrow afternoon? But, of course, every one is. Well, if I come across Abrego y Mochales before then, and I'm almost certain to, and he'll come, I'll bring him. He's as proud as the devil-duchesses, you see-so no airs with him. The Flower of Spain. A king of sport sits high at the table-" He went on, apparently interminable; but Lavinia turned away to where tea was being laid in a far angle.

Others approached over the tiled hall and the Marchese Sanviano entered with Cesare Orsi. The window was deserted, and the women trailed gracefully toward the bubbling minor note of the alcohol lamp. Both Sanviano and Orsi were big men-the former, like Bembo, wore English clothes; but Orsi's ungainly body had been tightly garbed by a Southern military tailor, making him-Lavinia thought-appear absolutely ridiculous. His collar was both too tight and too high, although perspiration promised relief from the latter.

A general and unremarkable conversation mingled with the faint rattle of passing cups and low directions to a servant. Lavinia was seated next to Cesare Orsi, but she was entirely oblivious of his heavy kindly face and almost anxiously benevolent gaze. He spoke to her, and because she had comprehended nothing of his speech she smiled at him with an absent and illuminating charm. He smiled back, happy in her apparent pleasure; and his good-nature was so insistent that she was impelled to reward it with a remark.

She thought, she said, that Gheta was particularly lovely this afternoon. He agreed eagerly; and Lavinia wondered whether she had been clumsy. She simply couldn't imagine marrying Cesare Orsi, but she knew that such a match for Gheta was freely discussed, and she hoped that her sister would not make difficulties. She wouldn't have dresses so fussy as Gheta's-in figure, anyhow, she was perhaps her sister's superior-fine materials, simply cut, with a ruffle at the throat and hem, a satin wrap pointed at the back, with a soft tassel....

Orsi was talking to Gheta, and she was answering him with a brevity that had cast a shade of annoyance over the Marchese Sanviano's large features. Lavinia agreed with her father that Gheta was a fool. She must be thirty, the younger suddenly realized. Bembo was growing hysterical from the tea and his own shrill anecdotes. He resembled a grotesque performing bird with a large beak. Lavinia's mind returned to the silent dark man who had passed in a cab. She wished, now, that she had been sitting at the front of the window-the object of his unsparing intense gaze. She realized that he was extremely handsome, and contrasted his erect slim carriage with Orsi's thick slouched shoulders. The latter interrupted her look, misinterpreted it, and said something about candy from Giacosa's.

Lavinia thanked him and rose; the discussion about the tea table became unbearably stupid, no better than the flat chatter of the nuns at school.

Her room was small and barely furnished, with a thin rug over the stone floor, and opened upon the court about which the house was built. The Sanvianos occupied the second floor. Below, the piano nobile was rented by the proprietor of a great wine industry. It was evident that he was going out to dinner, for his dark blue brougham was waiting at the inner entrance. The horse, a fine sleek animal, was stamping impatiently, with ringing shoes, on the paved court. A flowering magnolia tree against one corner filled the thickening dusk with a heavy palpitating sweetness.

Lavinia stayed for a long while at the ledge of her window. Her hair, which she wore braided in a smooth heavy rope, slid out and hung free. The brougham left, with a clatter of hoofs and a final clang of the great iron-bound door on the street; above, white stars grew visible in a blue dust. She dressed slowly, changing from one plain gown to another hardly less simple. Before the mirror, in an unsatisfactory lamplight, she studied her appearance in comparison with Gheta's.

She lacked the latter's lustrous pallor, the petal-like richness of Gheta's skin. Lavinia's cheeks bore a perceptible flush, which she detested and tried vainly to mask with powder. Her eyes, a clear bluish gray, inherited from the Lombard strain in her mother, were not so much fancied as her sister's brown; but at least they were more uncommon and contrasted nicely with her straight dark bang. Her shoulders and arms she surveyed with frank healthy approbation. Now her hair annoyed her, swinging childishly about her waist, and she secured it in an instinctively effective coil on the top of her head. She decided to leave it there for dinner. Her mother was away for the night; and she knew that Gheta's sarcasm would only stir their father to a teasing mirth.

Later, Gheta departed for a ball, together with the Marchese Sanviano-to be dropped at his club-and Lavinia was left alone. The scene in the court was repeated, but with less flourish than earlier in the evening. Gheta would be nominally in the charge of Anna Mantegazza; but Lavinia knew how laxly the American would hold her responsibility. She wished, moving disconsolately under high painted ceilings through the semi-gloom of still formal chambers, that she was a recognized beauty-free, like Gheta.

The drawing-room, from which they had watched the afternoon procession, was in complete darkness, save for the luminous rectangle of the window they had occupied. Its drapery was still disarranged. Lavinia crossed the room and stood at the grille. The lights strung along the river, curving away like uniform pale bubbles, cast a thin illumination over the Lungarno, through which a solitary vehicle moved. Lavinia idly watched it approach, but her interest increased as it halted directly opposite where she stood. A man got quickly out-a lithe figure with a broad-brimmed hat slanted across his eyes. It was, she realized with an involuntary quickening of her blood, Abrego y Mochales. A second man followed, tendered him a curiously shaped object, and stood by the waiting cab while the bull-fighter walked deliberately forward. He stopped under the window and shifted the thing in his hands.

A rich chord of strings vibrated through the night, another followed, and then a brief pattern of sound was woven from the serious notes of a guitar. Lavinia shrank back within the room-it was, incredibly, a serenade on the stolid Lungarno. It was for Gheta! The romance of the south of Spain had come to life under their window. A voice joined the instrument, melodious and melancholy, singing an air with little variation, but with an insistent burden of desire. The voice and the guitar mingled and fluctuated, drifting up from the pavement exotic and moving. Lavinia could comprehend but little of the Spanish:

"I followed through the acacias,

But it was only the wind.

.... looked for you beyond the limes--"

The thrill at her heart deepened until tears wet her cheeks. It was for Gheta, but it overwhelmed Lavinia with a formless and aching emotion; it was for Gheta, but her response was instant and uncontrollable. It seemed to Lavinia that the sheer beauty of life, which had moved her so sharply, had been magnified unbearably; she had never dreamed of the possibilities of such ecstasy or such delectable grief.

The song ended abruptly, with a sharp jarring note. The man by the carriage moved deferentially forward and took the guitar. She could see the minute pulsating sparks of cigarettes; heard a direction to the driver. Abrego y Mochales and the other got into the cab and it turned and shambled away. Lavinia Sanviano moved forward mechanically, gazing after the dark vanishing shape on the road. She was shaken, almost appalled, by the feeling that stirred her. A momentary terror of living swept over her; the thrills persisted; her hands were icy cold. She had been safely a child until now, when she had lost that small security, and gained-what?

She studied herself, clad in her coarse nightgown with narrow lace, in her inadequate mirror. The color had left her cheeks and her eyes shone darkly from shadows. "Lavinia Sanviano!" she spoke aloud, with the extraordinary sensation of addressing, in her reflection, a stranger. She could never, never wear her hair down again, she thought with an odd pang.