My Friend Prospero

"Good morning, Prospero," said Annunziata.

"Good morning, Wide-awake," responded John.

He was in the octagonal room on the piano nobile of the castle, where his lost ladies of old years smiled on him from their frames. He had heard an approaching patter of feet on the pavement of the room beyond; and then Annunziata's little grey figure, white face, and big grave eyes, had appeared, one picture the more, in the vast carved and gilded doorway.

"I have been looking everywhere for you," she said, plaintive.

"Poor sweetheart," he commiserated her. "And can't you find me?"

"I couldn't," said Annunziata, bearing on the tense. "But I have found you now."

"Oh? Have you? Where?" asked he.

"Where?" cried she, with a disdainful movement. "But here, of course."

"I wouldn't be too cocksure of that," he cautioned her. "Here is a mighty evasive bird. For, suppose we were elsewhere, then there would be here, and here would be somewhere else."

"No," said Annunziata, with resolution. "Where a person is, that is always here."

"You speak as if a person carried his here with him, like his hat," said John.

"Yes, that is how it is," said Annunziata, nodding.

"You have a remarkably solid little head,-for all its curls, there's no confusing it," said he. "Well, have you your report, drawn up, signed, sealed, sworn to before a Commissioner for Oaths, and ready to be delivered?"

"My report-?" questioned Annunziata, with a glance.

"About the Form," said John. "I caught you yesterday red-handed in the fact of pumping it."

"Yes," said Annunziata. "Her name is Maria Dolores."

"A most becoming name," said he.

"She is very nice," said Annunziata.

"She looks very nice," said he.

"She is twenty-two years and ten months old," continued his informant.

"Fancy. As middle-aged as that," commented he.

"Yes. She is an Austrian."

"Ah."

"And as I told you, she is visiting the Signora Brandi. Only, she calls her Frao Branta."

"Frao Branta?" John turned the name on his tongue. "Branta? Branta?" What familiar German name, at the back of his memory, did it half evoke? Suddenly he had a flash. "Can you possibly mean Frau Brandt?"

Annunziata gave a gesture of affirmation.

"Yes, that is it," she said. "You sound it just as she did!"

"I see," said John. "And Brandt, if there are degrees of unbirth, is even more furiously unborn than Brandi."

"Unborn-?" said Annunziata, frowning.

"Not noble-not of the aristocracy," John explained.

"Very few people are noble," said Annunziata.

"All the more reason, then, why you and I should be thankful that we are," said he.

"You and I?" she expostulated, with a shrug of her little grey shoulders. "Machè! We are not noble."

"Aren't we? How do you know?" asked John. "Anyhow," he impressively moralized, "we can try to be."

"No," said she, with conclusiveness, with fatalism. "It is no good trying. Either you are noble or simple,-God makes you so,-you cannot help it. If I were noble, I should be a contessina. If you were noble, you would be a gransignore.

"And my unassuming appearance assures you that I'm not?" said he, smiling.

"If you were a gransignore," she instructed him, "you would never be such friends with me-you would be too proud."

John laughed.

"You judge people by the company they keep. Well, I will apply the same principle of judgment to your gossip, Maria Dolores. By-the-by," he broke off to inquire, "what is her Pagan name?"

"Her Pagan name? What is that?" asked Annunziata.

"Maria Dolores, I take it, is her Christian name, come by in Holy Baptism," said John. "But I suppose she will have a Pagan name, come by in the way of the flesh, to round it off with,-just as, for instance, a certain flame of mine, whose image, when I die, they'll find engraved upon my heart, has the Pagan name of Casalone."

Annunziata looked up, surprised. "Casalone? That is my name," she said.

"Yes," said John. "Yours will be the image."

Annunziata gave her head a toss. "Maria Dolores did not tell me her Pagan name," she said.

"At any rate," said he, "to judge by the company she keeps, we may safely classify her as unborn. She is probably the daughter of a miller,-of a miller (to judge also a little by the frocks she wears) in rather a large way of business, who (to judge finally by her cultivated voice, her knowledge of languages, and her generally distinguished air) has spared no expense in the matter of her education. I shouldn't wonder a bit if she could even play the piano."

"No," agreed Annunziata, "that is very likely. But why"-she tilted upwards her inquisitive little profile-"why should you think she is the daughter of a miller?"

"Miller," said John, "I use as a generic term. Her father may be a lexicographer or a dry-salter, a designer of dirigible balloons or a manufacturer of air-pumps; he may even be a person of independent means, who lives in a big, new, stuccoed villa in the suburbs of Vienna, and devotes his leisure to the propagation of orchids: yet all the while a miller. By miller I mean a member of the Bourgeoisie: a man who, though he be well to do, well educated, well bred, does not bear coat-armour, and is therefore to be regarded by those who do with their noses in the air,-especially in Austria. Among Austrians, unless you bear coat-armour, you're impossible, you're nowhere. We mustn't let you become enamoured of her if she doesn't bear coat-armour."

Annunziata's eyes, during this divagation, had wandered to the window, the tall window with its view of the terraced garden, where the mimosa bloomed and the blackcaps carolled. Now she turned them slowly upon John, and he saw from their expression that at last she was coming to what for her (as he had known all along) was the real preoccupation of the moment. They were immensely serious, intensely concerned, and at the same time, in their farther recesses, you felt a kind of fluttering shyness, as if I dare not were hanging upon I would.

"Tell me," she began, on a deep note, a deep coaxing note.... Then I dare not got the better, and she held back.... Then I would took his courage in both hands, and she plunged. "What have you brought for me from Roccadoro?" And after one glance of half-bashful, all-impassioned supplication, she let her eyes drop, and stood before him suspensive, as one awaiting the word of destiny.

John's "radiant blondeur," his yellow beard, pink face, and sea-blue eyes, lighted up, more radiant still, with subcutaneous laughter.

"The shops were shut," he said. "I arrived after closing time."

But something in his tone rendered this grim announcement nugatory. Annunziata drew a long breath, and looked up again. "You have brought me something, all the same," she declared with conviction; and eagerly, eyes gleaming, "What is it? What is it?" she besought him.

John laughed. "You are quite right," he said. "If one can't buy, beg, or borrow, in this world, one can generally steal."

Annunziata drew away, regarded him with misgiving. "Oh, no; you would never steal," she protested.

"I'm not so sure-for one I loved," said he. "What would you have liked me to bring you?"

Annunziata thought. "I liked those chocolate cigars," she said, her face soft with reminiscence of delight.

"Ah, but we mustn't have it toujours perdrix," said John. "Do you, by any chance, like marchpane?"

"Marchpane?-I adore it," she answered, in an outburst of emotion.

"You have your human weaknesses, after all," John laughed. "Well, I stole a pocketful of marchpane."

Annunziata drew away again, her little white forehead furrowed. "Stole?" she repeated, reluctant to believe.

"Yes," said he, brazenly, nodding his head.

"Oh, that was very wrong," said Annunziata, sadly shaking hers.

"No," said he. "Because, in the first place, it's a matter of proverbial wisdom that stolen marchpane's sweetest. And, in the next place, I stole it quite openly, under the eye of the person it belonged to, and she made no effort to defend her property. Seeing which, I even went so far as to explain to her why I was stealing it. 'There's a young limb o' mischief with a sweet tooth at Sant' Alessina,' I explained, 'who regularly levies blackmail upon me. I'm stealing this for her.' And then the lady I was stealing from told me I might steal as much as ever I thought good."

"Oh-h-h," said Annunziata, a long-drawn Oh of relief. "Then you didn't steal it-she gave it to you."

"Well," said John, "if casuistry like that can ease your conscience-if you feel that you can conscientiously receive it-" And he allowed his inflection to complete the sentence.

"Give it to me," said Annunziata, holding out her hands, and dancing up and down in glee and in impatience.

"Nenni-dà," said John. "Not till after dinner. I'm not going to be a party to the spoiling of a fair, young, healthy appetite."

Pain wrote itself upon Annunziata's brow. "Oh," she grieved, "must I wait till after dinner?"

"Yes," said John.

For a breathing-space she struggled. "Would it be bad of me," she asked, "if I begged for just a little now?"

"Yes," said John, "bad and bootless. You'd find me as unyielding as adamant."

"Ah, well," sighed Annunziata, a deep and tremulous sigh. "Then I will wait."

And, like a true philosopher, she proceeded to occupy her mind with a fresh interest. She looked round the room, she looked out of the window. "Why do you stay here? It is much pleasanter in the garden," she remarked.

"I came here to seek for consolation. To-day began for me with a tragic misadventure," John replied.

Annunziata's eyes grew big, compassionating him, and, at the same time, bespeaking a lively curiosity.

"Poor Prospero," she gently murmured. "What was it?" on tip-toe she demanded.

"Well," he said, "when I rose, to go for my morning swim, I made an elaborate toilet, because I hoped to meet a certain person whom, for reasons connected with my dignity, I wished to impress. But it was love's labour lost. The certain person is an ornament of the uncertain sex, and didn't turn up. So, to console myself, I came here."

Annunziata looked round the room again. "What is there here that can console you?"

"These," said John. His hand swept the pictured walls.

"The paintings?" said she, following his gesture. "How can they console you?"

"They're so well painted," said he, fondly studying the soft-coloured canvases. "Besides, these ladies are dead. I like dead ladies."

Annunziata looked critically at the pictures, and then at him with solemn meaning. "They are very pretty-but they are not dead," she pronounced in her deepest voice.

"Not dead?" echoed John, astonished. "Aren't they?"

"No," said she, with a slow shake of the head.

"Dear me," said he. "And, when they're alone here and no one's looking, do you think they come down from their frames and dance? It must be a sight worth seeing."

"No," said Annunziata. "These are only their pictures. They cannot come down from their frames. But the ladies themselves are not dead. Some of them are still in Purgatory, perhaps. We should pray for them." She made, in parenthesis as it were, a pious sign of the Cross. "Some are perhaps already in Heaven. We should ask their prayers. And others are perhaps in Hell," she pursued, inexorable theologian that she was. "But none of them is dead. No one is dead. There's no such thing as being dead."

"But then," puzzled John, "what is it that people mean when they talk of Death?"

"I will tell you," said Annunziata, her eyes heavy with thought. "Listen, and I will tell you." She seated herself on the big round ottoman, and raised her face to his. "Have you ever been at a pantomime?" she asked.

"Yes," said John, wondering what could possibly be coming.

"Have you been at the pantomime," she continued earnestly, "when there was what they call a transformation-scene?"

"Yes," said John.

"Well," said she, "last winter I was taken to the pantomime at Bergamo, and I saw a transformation-scene. You ask me, what is Death? It is exactly like a transformation-scene. At the pantomime the scene was just like the world. There were trees, and houses, and people, common people, like any one. Then suddenly click! Oh, it was wonderful. Everything was changed. The trees had leaves of gold and silver, and the houses were like fairy palaces, and there were strange lights, red and blue, and there were great garlands of the most beautiful flowers, and the people were like angels, with gems and shining clothes. Well, you understand, at first we had only seen one side of the scene;-then click! everything was turned round, and we saw the other side. That is like life and death. Always, while we are alive, we can see only one side of things. But there is the other side, the under side. Never, so long as we are alive, we can never, never see it. But when we die,-click! It is a transformation-scene. Everything is turned round, and we see the other side. Oh, it will be very different, it will be wonderful. That is what they call Death."

It was John's turn to be grave. It was some time before he spoke. He looked down at her, with a kind of grave laughter in his eyes, admiring, considering. What could he say? ... What he did say, at last, was simply, "Thank you, my dear."

Annunziata jumped up.

"Oh, come," she urged. "Let's go into the garden. It is so much nicer there than here. There are lots of cockchafers. Besides"-she held out as an additional inducement-"we might meet Maria Dolores."

"No," said John. "Though the cockchafers are a temptation, I will stop here. But go you to the garden, by all means. And if you do meet Maria Dolores, tell her what you have just told me. I think she would like to hear it."

"All right," consented Annunziata, moving towards the door. "I'll see you at dinner. You won't forget the marchpane?"

* * *

John was in a state of mind that perplexed and rather annoyed him.

Until the day before yesterday, his detachment here at Sant' Alessina from ordinary human society, the absence of people more or less of his own sort, had been one of the elements of his situation which he had positively, consciously, rejoiced in,-had been an appreciable part of what he had summarized to Lady Blanchemain as "the whole blessed thing." He had his castle, his pictures, his garden, he had the hills and valley, the birds, the flowers, the clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new perspectives, made new promises, brought to pass new surprises. And this sense, in some strange way, included Time as well as space. It was as if he had entered a new region of Time, as if he had escaped from the moving current of Time into a stationary moment. Alone here, where modern things or thoughts had never penetrated, alone with the earth and the sky, the medi?val castle, the dead ladies, with Annunziata, and the parroco, and the parroco's Masses and Benedictions-to-day, he would please himself by fancying, might be a yesterday of long ago that had somehow dropped out of the calendar and remained, a fragment of the Past that had been forgotten and left over. The presence of a person of his own sort, a fellow citizen of his own period, wearing its clothes, speaking its speech, would have broken the charm, would have seemed as undesirable and as inappropriate as the introduction of an English meadow into the Italian landscape.

Yet now such a person had come, and behold, her presence, so far from breaking the charm, merged with and intensified it,-supplied indeed the one feature needed to perfect it. A person of his own sort? The expression is convenient. A fellow citizen, certainly, of his period, wearing its clothes, speaking its speech. But a person, happily, not of his own sex, a woman, a beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied to the poetry of Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like, the Eternal Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the walls about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who lived and breathed, it became dynamic. That was all very well; if he could have let it rest at that, if he could have confined his interest in her, his feeling about her, to the plane of pure ?sthetics, he would have had nothing to complain of. But the mischief was that he couldn't. The thing that perplexed and annoyed him,-and humiliated him too, in some measure,-was a craving that had sprung up over-night, and was now strong and constant, to get into personal touch with her, to make her acquaintance, to talk with her; to find out a little what manner of soul she had, to establish some sort of human relation with her. It wasn't in the least as yet a sentimental craving; or, if it was, John at any rate didn't know it. In its essence, perhaps, it was little more than curiosity. But it was disturbing, upsetting, it destroyed the peace and the harmonious leisure of his day. It perplexed him, it was outside his habits, it was unreasonable. "Not unreasonable to think it might be fun to talk to a pretty woman," he discriminated, "but unreasonable to yearn to talk to her as if your life hung in the balance." And in some measure, too, it humiliated him: it was a confession of weakness, of insufficiency to himself, of dependence for his contentment upon another. He tried to stifle it; he tried to fix his mind on subjects that would lead far from it. Every subject, all subjects, subjects the most discrepant, seemed to possess one common property, that of leading straight back to it. Then he said, "Well, if you can't stifle it, yield to it. Go down into the garden-hunt her up-boldly engage her in conversation." Assurance was the note of the man; but when he pictured himself in the act of "boldly engaging her in conversation," his assurance oozed away, and he was conscious of a thrice-humiliating shyness. Why? What was there in the woman that should turn a brave man shy?

However, the stars were working for him. That afternoon, coming home from a stroll among the olives, he met her face to face at the gate of the garden, whither she had arrived from the direction of the village. Having made his bow, which she accepted with a smile, he could do no less than open the gate for her; and as their ways must thence lie together, up the long ilex-shaded avenue to the castle, it would be an awkward affectation not to speak. And yet (he ground his teeth at having to admit it) his heart had begun to pound so violently, (not from emotion, he told himself,-from a mere ridiculous sort of nervous excitement: what was there in the woman that should excite a sane man like that?) he was afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and betray him. But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they set forwards towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, and to observe, with impressiveness, that it was a fine day.

She had accepted his bow with a smile, amiable and unembarrassed; and at this, in quite the most unembarrassed manner, smiling again,-perhaps with just the faintest, just the gentlest shade of irony, and with just the slightest quizzical upward tremor of the eyebrows,-"Isn't it a day rather typical of the land and season?" she inquired.

It was the first step that had cost. John's assurance was coming swiftly back. Her own air of perfect ease in the circumstances very likely accelerated it. "Yes," he answered her. "But surely that isn't a reason for begrudging it a word of praise?"

By this he was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light gay trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute.

"No," she admitted. "You are right. The day deserves the best we can say of it."

"Her voice," thought John, availing himself of a phrase that had struck him in a book he had lately read, "her voice is like ivory and white velvet." And the touch, never so light, of a foreign accent with which she spoke, rendered her English piquant and pretty,-gave to each syllable a crisp little clean-cut outline. They sauntered on for a minute or two in silence, with half the width of the road-way between them, the shaded road-way, where the earth showed purple through a thin green veil of mosses, and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and there, turned purple and green to red and gold. The warm air, woven of garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely subtile fabric. And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps and thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead. A fine day indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they could say. His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, his assurance had come completely back; and with it had come a curious deep satisfaction, a feeling that for the moment at any rate the world left nothing to be wished for, that the cup of his desire was full. He didn't even, now that he might do so, wish to talk to her. To walk with her was enough,-to enjoy her companionship in silence. Yes, that was it-companionship. He caught at the word. "That is what I have been unconsciously needing all along. I flattered myself that I was luxuriating in the very absence of it. But man is a gregarious animal, and I was deceived." So he could refer the effect of her propinquity to the mere gregarious instinct, not suspecting that a more powerful instinct was already awake. Anyhow, his sense of that propinquity,-his consciousness of her, gracefully moving beside him in the sweet weather, while her summery garments fluttered, and some strange, faint, elusive perfume was shaken from them,-filled him with a satisfaction that for the moment seemed ultimate. He had no wish to talk. Their progress side by side was a conversation without words. They were getting to know each other, they were breaking the ice. Each step they took was as good as a spoken sentence, was a mutual experience, drawing them closer, helping to an understanding. They walked slowly, as by a tacit agreement.

Silence, however, couldn't in the nature of things last for ever. It was she who presently broke it.

"I owe you," she said, in her ivory voice, with her clean-cut enunciation, "a debt of thanks." And still again she smiled, as she looked over towards him, her dark eyes glowing, her dark hair richly drooping, in the shadow of a big hat of wine-coloured straw.

John's eyes were at a loss. "Oh-?" he wondered.

"For a pleasure given me by our friend Annunziata," she explained. "This morning she told me a most interesting parable about Death. And she mentioned that it was you who had suggested to her to tell it me."

"Oh," said John, laughing, while the pink of his skin deepened a shade. "She mentioned that, did she? I'm glad if you don't feel that I took a good deal upon myself. But she had just told the same parable to me, and it seemed a pity it shouldn't have a larger audience."

Then, after a few more paces taken again in silence, "What a marvellous little person she is, Annunziata!" said Maria Dolores.

"She's to a marvellous degree the right product of her milieu," said John.

Maria Dolores did not speak, but her eyes questioned, "Yes? How do you mean?"

"I mean that she's a true child of the presbytery," he replied, "and at the same time a true child of this Italy, where Paganism has never perfectly died. She has been carefully instructed in her catechism, and she has fed upon pious legends, she has breathed an ecclesiastical atmosphere, until the things of the Church have become a part of her very bone. She sees everything in relation to them, translates everything in terms of them. But at the same time odd streaks of Paganism survive in her. They survive a little-don't they?-in all Italians. Wherever she goes her eye reads omens. She will cast your fortune for you with olive-stones. The woods are peopled for her by fauns and dryads. When she takes her walks abroad, I've no doubt, she catches glimpses of Proteus rising from the lake, and hears old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

Maria Dolores looked interested.

"Yes," she said, slowly, thoughtfully, and meditated for an interval. By-and-by, "You know," she recommenced, "she's a sort of little person about whom one can't help feeling rather frightened." And her eyes looked to his for sympathetic understanding.

But his were interrogative. "No? Why should one feel frightened about her?"

"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with a movement, "it isn't exactly easy to tell why. One's fears are vague. But-well, for one thing, she thinks so much about Death. Death and what comes after,-they interest her so much. It doesn't seem natural, it makes one uneasy. And then she's so delicate-looking. Sometimes she's almost transparent. In every way she is too serious. She uses her mind too much, and her body too little. She ought to have more of the gaiety of childhood, she ought to have other children to romp with. She's too much like a disembodied spirit. It all alarms one."

John, as she spoke, frowned, pondering. When she had done, his frown cleared, he shook his head.

"I don't think it need," he said. "Her delicacy, her frailness, have never struck me as indicating weakness,-they seem simply the proper physical accompaniments of her crystalline little soul,-she's made of a fine and delicate clay. She thinks about Death, it is true, but not in a morbid way,-and that's a part of her ecclesiastical tradition; and she thinks quite as much about life,-she thinks about everything. I agree with you, it's a pity she has no other children. But she isn't by any means deficient in the instincts of childhood. She can enjoy a chocolate cigar, for instance, as well as another; and as for marchpane, I have her own word that she adores it."

Maria Dolores gave another light trill of laughter.

"Yes, I'm aware of her passion for marchpane. She confided it to me this morning. And as, in reply to her questions, I admitted that I rather liked it myself, she very generously offered to bring me some this afternoon,-which, to be sure, an hour ago, she did."

She laughed again, and John laughed too.

"All the same" she insisted, "I can't help that feeling of uneasiness about her. Sometimes, when I look at her, I can almost see her wings. What will be her future, if she grows up? One would rather not think of her as married to some poor Italian, and having to give herself to the prosaic sort of existence that would mean."

"The sordid sort of existence," augmented John. "No, one would decidedly rather not. But she will never marry. She will enter religion. Her uncle has it all planned out. He destines her for the Servites."

"Oh? The Servites-the Mantellate? I am glad of that," exclaimed Maria Dolores. "It is a most beautiful order. They have an especial devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows."

"Yes," said John, and remembered it was for Our Lady of Sorrows that she who spoke was named.

Slow though their march had been, by this time they had come to the end of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before the castle. They stopped here, and stood looking off over the garden, with its sombre cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down upon the valley, dim and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, fantastic-shaped clouds, pearl-white with pearl-grey shadows, piled themselves up against the scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and out among the rose-trees near at hand, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised by Annunziata,-big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and business-like competitors, the bees. Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their little glittering, watchful pin-heads of eyes giving sign of life. And of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing.

They stood side by side, within a yard of each other, in silent contemplation of these things, during I don't know how many long and, for John, delicious seconds. Yes, he owned it to himself; it was delicious to feel her standing there beside him, in silent communion with him, contemplating the same things, enjoying the same pleasantnesses. Companionship-companionship: it was what he had been unconsciously needing all along! ... At last she turned, and, withdrawing her eyes lingeringly from the landscape, looked into his, with a smile. She did not speak, but her smile said, just as explicitly as her lips could have done, "What a scene of beauty!"

And John responded aloud, with fervour, "Indeed, indeed it is."

"And so romantic," she added. "It is like a scene out of some old high musical romance."

"The most romantic scene I know," said he. "All my life I have thought so."

"Oh?" said she, looking surprise. "Have you known it all your life?"

"Well,-very nearly," said he, with half a laugh. "I saw it first when I was ten. Then for long years I lost it,-and only recovered it, by accident, a month ago."

Her face showed her interest. "Oh? How was that? How did it happen?"

"When I was ten," John recounted, half laughing again, "I was travelling with my father, and, among the many places we visited, one seemed to me a very vision of romance made real. A vast and stately castle, in a garden, in a valley, with splendid halls and chambers, and countless beautiful pictures of women. All my life I remembered it, dreamed of it, longed to see it again. But I hadn't a notion where it was, save vaguely that it was somewhere in Italy; and, my poor father being dead, there was no one I could ask. Then, wandering in these parts a month ago, I stumbled upon it, and recognized it. Though shrunken a good deal in size, to be sure, it was still recognizable, and as romantic as ever."

Maria Dolores listened pensively. When he had reached his period, her eyes lighted up. "What a charming adventure!" she said. "And so, for you, besides its general romance, the place has a personal one, all your own. I, too, have known it for long years, but only from photographs. I suppose I should never have seen the real thing, except for a friend of mine coming to live here."

"I wonder," said John, "that the people who own it never live here."

"The Prince of Zelt-Neuminster?" said she. "No,-he doesn't like the Italian Government. Since Lombardy passed from Austria to Italy, the family have entirely given up staying at Sant' Alessina."

"In those circumstances," said John, "practical-minded people, I should think, would get rid of the place."

"Oh," said she, laughing, "the Prince, in some ways, is practical-minded enough. He has this great collection of Italian paintings, which, by Italian law, he mayn't remove from Italian soil; and if he were to get rid of Sant' Alessina, where could he house them? In other ways, though, he is perhaps not so practical. He is one of those Utopians who believe that the present Kingdom of Italy must perforce before long make shipwreck; and I think he holds on to Sant' Alessina in the dream of coming here in triumph, and grandly celebrating that event."

"I see," said John, nodding. "That is a beautiful ideal."

"Good-bye," said she, flashing a last quick smile into his eyes; and she moved away, down a garden path, towards the pavilion beyond the clock.

* * *

And now, I should have imagined, for a single session, (and that an initial one), he had had enough. I should have expected him to spend the remainder of his day, a full man, in thankful tranquillity, in agreeable retrospective rumination. But no. Indulgence, it soon appeared, had but whetted his appetite.

After a quarter-hour of walking about the garden, during which his jumble of sensations and impressions,-her soft-glowing eyes, her soft-drooping hair, under her wine-red hat; her slender figure, in its fluttering summery muslin, and the faint, faint perfume (like a far-away memory of rose-leaves) that hovered near her; her smile, and the curves, when she smiled, of her rose-red lips, and the gleam of her snow-white teeth; her laugh, her voice, her ivory voice; her pretty crisp-cut English; her appreciation of Annunziata, her disquieting presentiments concerning her; and his deep satisfaction in her propinquity, her "companionship;" and the long shaded fragrant avenue, and the bird-songs, and the gentle weather,-after a quarter-hour of anything but thankful tranquillity, a quarter-hour of unaccountable excitement and exaltation, during which his jumble of impressions and sensations settled themselves, from ebullition, into some sort of quiescence, he began to grow restlessly aware that, so far from having had enough, he had had just a sufficient taste to make him hunger keenly for more and more. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help it. And as there seemed no manner of likelihood that his hunger would soon be fed, it was trying. At the best, he could not reasonably hope to see her again before to-morrow; and even then-? What ghost of a reason had he to hope that even then he could renew their conversation? He had owed that to-day to the bare hazard of their ways lying together. To-morrow, very likely, at the best, he might get a bow and a smile. Very likely it might be days before he should again have anything approaching a real talk with her. And what-a new consideration, that struck a sudden terror to his soul-what if her visit to Frau Brandt was to be a short one? What if to-morrow even, she were to depart? "Her very ease in talking with me, a stranger, may quite well have been due to the fact that she knew she would never see me again," he argued. ... So he was working himself into a fine state of despondency, and the world was rapidly being resolved into dust and ashes, when Heaven sent him a diversion. Nay, indeed, Heaven sent him two diversions.

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