Very early in the morning Cecilia fell into a dreamless sleep at last,
and awoke, unrefreshed, after nine o'clock. She felt very tired and
listless as she opened the window a little and let in the light and air,
with the sounds of the busy thoroughfare below. The weather was suddenly
much warmer, and her head was heavy.
It had all been a dream, no doubt, and was gone where dreams go; but it
had been like a fight, out of which she had come alive by a miracle,
bruised and wounded, and offended in her whole being. Never again would
she sit alone at night and look for her image in the shadow, since such
things could come of playing with visions; and she trusted that she
might never again set eyes upon Lamberto Lamberti. She was alone, but at
the thought of meeting him she blushed and bit her lip angrily. How was
it possible that he should know what she had dreamt? For years, in that
dream of the Vestal, a being had played a part, a being too like him in
face to be another man, but who had loved her as a goddess, and whom she
had loved for his matchless bravery and his glorious strength over
himself. It was a long story, that had gradually grown clear in every
detail, that had gone far beyond death to a spiritual life in a place of
light, though it had always ended in something vaguely fearful that
brought her back to the world, and to her present living self, to begin
again. She could not go over it now, but she was conscious, and to her
shame, that the spell of perfect happiness had always been broken at
last by the taint of earthly longing and regret that crept up stealthily
from the world below, an evil mist, laden with poison and fever and
mortality.
That change had been undefined, though it had been horrible and
irresistible; it had been evil, but it had not been brutal, and it had
thrilled her with the certainty of passion and pain to come, realising
neither while dreading and loving both.
She had read the writings of men who believe that by long meditation and
practised intention the real self of man or woman can be separated from
all that darkens it, though not easily, because it is bound up with
fragments, as it were, of the selves of others, with all the
inheritances of a hundred generations of good and bad, with sleeping
instincts and passions any of which may suddenly spring up and overwhelm
the rest. She had also read that the real self, when found at last,
might be far better and purer than the mixed self of every day, which
each of us knows and counts upon; but that it might also be much worse,
much coarser, much more violent, when freed from every other influence,
and that coming upon it unawares and unprepared, men had lost their
reason altogether beyond recovery.
She asked herself now whether this was what had happened to her, and no
answer came; there was only the very weary blank of a great uncertainty,
in which anything might be, or in which there might be nothing; and
then, there was the vivid burning fear of meeting Lamberto Lamberti face
to face. That was by far the strongest and most clearly defined of her
sensations.
If the Princess Anatolie could have known what Cecilia felt that
morning, she would have been exceedingly well pleased, and Cecilia's own
mother would have considered that this was a case in which the powers of
evil had been permitted to work for the accomplishment of a good end.
Nothing could have distressed the excellent Countess more than that her
daughter should accidentally fall in love with Lamberti, who was a
younger son in a numerous family, with no prospects beyond those offered
by his profession. Nothing could have interfered more directly with the
Princess's sensible intentions for her nephew. Perhaps nothing could
have caused greater surprise to Lamberti himself. On the other hand,
Guido d'Este would have been glad, but not surprised. He rarely was.
In the course of the day he left a card at the Palazzo Massimo for the
Countess Fortiguerra, and as he turned away he regretted that he could
not ask for her, and see her, and possibly see her daughter also. That
was evidently out of the question as yet, according to his social laws,
but his regret was real. It was long since any woman's face had left him
more than a vague impression of good looks, or dulness, but he had
thought a good deal about Cecilia Palladio since he had met her, and he
knew that he wished to talk with her again, however much he might resent
the idea that he was meant to marry her. She was the first young girl he
had ever known who had not bored him with platitudes or made
conversation impossible by obstinate silence.
It was true that he had not talked with her much, and at first it had
seemed hard to talk at all, but the ice had been broken suddenly, and
for a few minutes he had found it easy. As for the chilling coldness of
her last words, he could account for that easily enough. Like himself,
she had seen that a marriage had been planned for her without her
knowledge, and, like him, she had resented the trap. For a while she had
forgotten, as he had done, but had remembered suddenly when they were
about to part. She had meant to show him plainly that she had not had
any voice in the matter, and he liked her the better for it, now that he
understood her meaning.
She was like the Psyche, he thought, and it occurred to him that he
could buy a cast of the statue. He had always thought it beautiful. He
strolled through narrow streets in the late afternoon till he came to
the shop of a dealer in casts, of whom he had once bought something, and
he went in. The man had what he wanted, and he examined it carefully.
She was not like the Psyche after all, and the crude white plaster
shocked his taste for the first time. If the marble original had been in
Rome, instead of in Naples, he could have gone to see it. He left the
shop disappointed, and walked slowly towards the Farnese palace. The day
seemed endless, and there was no particular reason why all days should
not seem as long. There was nothing to do; nothing amused him, and
nobody asked anything of him. It would be very strange and pleasant to
be of use in the world.
He went home and sat down by the open window that looked across the
Tiber. The wide room was flooded with the evening light, and warm with
much colour that lingered and floated about beautiful objects here and
there. It was not a very luxuriously furnished room, but it was not the
habitation of an ascetic or puritanical man either. Guido cared more for
rare engravings and etchings than for pictures, and a few very fine
framed prints stood on the big writing table; there was Duerer's
Melancholia, and the Saint Jerome, and the Little White Horse, and the
small Saint Anthony, and Rembrandt's Three Trees, all by itself, as the
most wonderful etching in the world deserved to be; and here and there,
about the room, were a few good engravings by Martin Schoengauer, and by
Mantegna, and by Marcantonio Raimondi. The bold, careless, effective
drawing of the Italian engravers contrasted strongly with the profoundly
conscientious work of Schoengauer and Lucas van Leyden, and revealed at a
glance the incomparable mastery of Duerer's dry point and Rembrandt's
etching needle, the deep conviction of the German, and the inexhaustible
richness of the Dutchman's imagination.
A picture hung over the fireplace, the picture of a woman, at half
length and a little smaller than life, holding in exquisite hands a
small covered vessel of silver encrusted with gold, and gazing out into
the warm light with the gentlest hazel eyes. A veil of olive green
covered her head, but the fair hair found its way out, tresses and
ringlets, on each side of the face. The woman was perhaps a Magdalen,
not like any other Magdalen in all the paintings of the world, and more
the great lady of the castle of Magdalon, she of the Golden Legend. When
Andrea del Sarto painted that face, he meant something that he never
told, and it pleased Guido d'Este to try and guess the secret. As he
glanced at the canvas, glowing in the rich light, it struck him that
perhaps Cecilia Palladio was more like the woman in the picture than she
was like the Psyche. Then he almost laughed, and turned away, for he
realised that he was thinking of the girl continually, and saw her face
everywhere.
He turned away impatiently, in spite of the smile. He was annoyed by the
attraction he felt towards Cecilia, because the thought of marrying an
heiress, in order that his aunt might recover money she had literally
thrown away, was grossly repulsive; and also, no doubt, because he was
not docile, though he was good-natured, and he hated to have anything in
his life planned for him by others. He was still less pleased now that
he found himself searching for reasons which should justify him in
marrying Cecilia in spite of all this. Nothing irritates a man more than
his own inborn inconsistency, whereas he enjoys diabolical satisfaction
in convicting any woman of the same fault.
After all, said his Inclination, as if coolly arguing the case, if poor
men were only to marry poor girls, and rich men rich ones, something
unnatural would happen to the distribution of wealth, which was
undesirable for the future of society. Of course, a rich man might marry
a poor girl if he chose. That was done, and the men who did it got an
extraordinary amount of credit for being disinterested, unless they were
laughed at for falling in love with a pretty face. If anything could
prove the hopeless inequality of woman with man, it would be that! No
one thought much the worse of a penniless girl who married for money,
whereas a starving dandy who did the same thing immediately became an
object of derision.
But then, added the Inclination, with subtlety, the opinions of society
were entirely manufactured by women for their own advantage, and that
was an excellent reason for not caring what society thought. The
all-powerful, impersonal "they," of whom we only know what "they say,"
what "they wear," and what "they pretend," are feminine and plural; they
rule all that region of the world within which women do not work with
their hands, and are therefore at full liberty to exercise those gifts
of intelligence which it has pleased Providence to bestow upon them so
plentifully. They do so to some purpose.
Surely, argued Inclination, it was not very dignified of Guido to care
much, and to care beforehand, for the opinions of a pack of women,
supposing that he should come to like Cecilia enough to wish to marry
her for her own sake. And besides, though he was poor, he was not
uncomfortably so. Poverty meant not having horses and carriages, nor a
yacht, and living in bachelor's rooms, and not giving dinner parties,
and not playing cards, and not giving every woman whatever she fancied,
if it happened to be a pearl or a pigeon's blood ruby. That was poverty,
of course, but it was relative.
If his aunt did not drive him to blow out his brains in a fit of
impatience, there was no reason why Guido should not go on living, as he
lived now, to the far end of a long and sufficiently well-fed life. And
if he married Cecilia and her fortune, it would certainly not be because
he wished to give other women rubies and pearls, nor for the sake of
keeping a couple of hunters, two or three carriages, and a coach; still
less, because he could ever wish to lose money again at baccara, or
poker, or bridge. He had done all those things, and they had not amused
him long. If he ever married Cecilia, it would be because he fell in
love with her, which, thank goodness, had not happened yet. Inclination
was quite sure of that, but was willing to admit the possibility in the
future, merely for the sake of argument.
Before it was time to dress for dinner that evening, Guido received a
long letter from his aunt, written with her own hand, which probably
meant that Monsieur Leroy knew little or nothing of its contents. Guido
glanced at the pages, one after another, and saw that the whole letter
was in the writer's most affectionate manner. Then he read it carefully.
It had been so kind of him to be civil to her friends on the previous
day, said the Princess. He reminded her of his poor father, her dear
brother, who, in all his many misfortunes, had never once lost his
beautiful affability of temper and unfailing courtesy to every one about
him.
This was very pretty, but Guido had heard that his father's beautiful
affability had sometimes been ruffled so far as to allow a certain
harmless violence, such as hurling a light chair at the head of a
faithful courtier and friend who gave him advice that was too good to be
taken, or summarily boxing the ears of his son and heir when the latter
was already over thirty years old.
Guido sometimes wondered why he had not inherited some of that very
unroyal temper, which must have been such a thoroughly satisfactory
relief to the ex-king's feelings. He never felt the least desire to
dance with rage and throw the furniture about the room.
His aunt's letter was evidently meant to please him and flatter his
vanity, and she did not once refer to matters of business. She asked his
opinion about a new novel he had not read yet, and had he thought of
leaving a card on the Countess Fortiguerra? She lived in the Palazzo
Massimo. What a strange girl the daughter was, to be sure! so very
unlike other girls that it was almost disquieting to talk with her. Of
course there was nothing real behind all that superficial talk about
lectures at the Sorbonne, and Nietzsche, and all that. Everybody
pretended to have read Nietzsche nowadays, and after all the girl might
be quite sensible. One could not help wondering what she would make of
her life, with her handsome fortune, and her odd ideas, and no one to
look after her except that dear, gentle, sweet-tempered, foolish mother,
who was in perpetual adoration before her! It would be a brave man who
would marry such a girl, the Princess wrote, in spite of her money; but
there was this to be said, he would not have any trouble with his
mother-in-law.
Subtle, very subtle of the Princess, who left the subject there and
ended her letter by asking a favour of Guido. It was indeed only for the
sake of asking it, she explained, that she was writing to him at all.
Would he allow a great friend of hers to see his Andrea del Sarto? It
was the celebrated art critic, Doctor Baumgarten, of whom he had heard.
Leroy would bring him the next morning about ten o'clock, if Guido had
no objection. He need not answer; he must not take any trouble about the
matter. If he had an engagement at ten, perhaps he would leave orders
that the Doctor should be allowed to see the picture.
Guido did not think at once of any good reason for refusing such a
request. He was very fond of his Andrea del Sarto; indeed, he liked it
much better than a small Raphael of undoubted authenticity which was
hung in another part of the room. The German critic was quite welcome to
see both, and perhaps knew something about prints which might be worth
learning. He was probably writing a book. Germans were always writing
books. Guido wrote a line to thank his aunt for her letter, and to say
that her friend would be welcome at the appointed hour.
He was sealing the note when the door opened and Lamberto Lamberti came
in.
"Will you come and dine with me?" he asked, standing still before the
writing table.
"Let us dine here," answered Guido, without looking up, and examining
the little seal he had made on the envelope. "I daresay there is
something to eat." He held out the note to his servant, who stood in the
open doorway. "Send this at once," he said.
"Yes," said Lamberti, answering the invitation. "I do not care whether
there is anything to eat or not, and it is always quiet here."
"What is the matter?" asked Guido, looking at him attentively for the
first time since he had entered. "Yes," he added to his man, "Signor
Lamberti will dine with me."
The servant disappeared and shut the door. Guido repeated his question,
but Lamberti only shook his head carelessly and relit his half-smoked
cigar. Guido watched him. He was less red than usual, and his eyes
glittered in the light of the wax match. His voice had sounded sharp and
metallic, as Guido had never heard it before.
When two men are intimate friends and really trust each other they do
not overwhelm one another with questions. Each knows that each will
speak when he is ready, or needs help or sympathy.
"I have just been answering a very balmy letter from my aunt," Guido
said, rising from the table. "Sweeter than honey in the honeycomb! Read
it. It has a distinctly literary and biographical turn. The allusion to
my father's gentle disposition is touching."
Lamberti looked through the letter carelessly, dropped it on the table,
and sucked hard at his cigar.
"What did you expect?" he asked, between two puffs. "For the present you
are the apple of her eye. She will handle you as tenderly as a new-laid
egg, until she gets what she wants!"
Lamberti's similes lacked sequence, but not character.
"The Romans," observed Guido, "began with the egg and ended with the
apple. I have an idea that we are going to do the same thing at dinner,
and that there will be nothing between. But we can smoke between the
courses."
"Yes," answered Lamberti, who had not heard a word. "I daresay."
Guido looked at him again, rather furtively. Lamberti never drank and
had iron nerves, but he was visibly disturbed. He was what people
vaguely call "not quite himself."
Guido went to the door of his bedroom.
"Where are you going?" asked Lamberti, sharply.
"I am going to wash my hands before dinner," Guido answered with a
smile. "Do you want to wash yours?"
"No, thank you. I have just dressed."
He turned his back and went to the open window as Guido left the room.
In a few seconds his cigar had gone out again, and he was leaning on the
sill with both hands, staring at the twilight sky in the west. The
colours had all faded away to the almost neutral tint of straw-tempered
steel.
The outline of the Janiculum stood out sharp and black in an uneven
line. Below, there were the scattered lights of Trastevere, the flowing
river, and the silence of the deserted Via Giulia. Lamberti looked
steadily out, biting his extinguished cigar, and his features contracted
as if he were in pain.
He had come to his friend instinctively, as his friend would have come
to him, meaning to tell him what had happened. But he hesitated.
Besides, it might all have been only his imagination; in part it could
have been nothing else, and the rest was a mere coincidence. But he had
never been an imaginative man, and it was strange that he should be so
much affected by a mere illusion.
He started and turned suddenly, sure that some one was close behind him.
But there was no one, and a moment later Guido came back. Anxious not to
annoy his friend by anything like curiosity, he made a pretence of
setting his writing table in order, turned one of the lamps down a
little--he hated electric light--and then looked at the picture over the
fireplace.
"Did you ever hear of that Baumgarten, the German art critic?" he asked,
without turning round.
"Baumgarten--let me see! I fancy I have seen the name to-day." Lamberti
tried to concentrate his attention.
"You just read it in my aunt's letter," Guido answered. "You
remember--she asks if he may come to-morrow. I wonder why."
"To value your property, of course," replied Lamberti, roughly.
"Do you think so?" Guido did not seem at all surprised. "I daresay. She
is quite capable of it. She is welcome to everything I possess if she
will only leave me in peace. But just now, when she has evidently made
up her mind to marry me to this new heiress, it does not seem likely
that she would take trouble to find out what my pictures are worth, does
it?"
"It all depends on what she thinks of the chances that you will marry or
not."
"What do you think of them, yourself?" asked Guido, idly.
He was glad of anything to talk about while Lamberti was in his present
mood.
"What a question!" exclaimed the latter. "How should I know whether you
are going to fall in love with the girl or not?"
"I am half afraid I am," said Guido, thoughtfully.
His man announced dinner, and the two friends crossed the hall to the
little dining room, and sat down under the soft light of the
old-fashioned olive-oil lamp that hung from the ceiling. Everything on
the table was old, worn, and spotless. The silver was all of the style
of the first Empire, with an interlaced monogram surmounted by a royal
crown. The same device was painted in gold in the middle of the plain
white plates, which were more or less chipped at the edges. The glasses
and decanters were of that heavy cut glass, ornamented with gold lines,
which used to be made in Venice in the eighteenth century. Some of them
were chipped, too, like the plates. It had never occurred to Guido to
put the whole service away as a somewhat valuable collection, though he
sometimes thought that it was growing shabby. But he liked the old
things which had come to him from the ex-king, part of the furniture of
a small shooting box that had been left to him, and which he had sold to
an Austrian Archduke.
Lamberti took a little soup and swallowed half a glass of white wine.
"I had an odd dream last night," he said, "and I have had a little
adventure to-day. I will tell you by-and-by."
"Just as you like," Guido answered. "I hope the adventure was not an
accident--you look as if you had been badly shaken."
"Yes. I did not know that I could be so nervous. You see, I do not often
dream. I generally go to sleep when I lay my head upon the pillow and
wake when I have slept seven hours. At sea, I always have to be called
when it is my watch. Yes, I have solid nerves. But last night----"
He stopped, as the man entered, bringing a dish.
"Well?" enquired Guido, who did not suppose that Lamberti could have any
reason for not telling his dream in the presence of the servant.
Lamberti hesitated a moment, and helped himself before he answered.
"Do you believe in dreams?" he asked.
"What do you mean? Do I believe that dreams come true? No. When they do,
it is a coincidence."
"Yes. I suppose so. But this is rather more than a coincidence. I do not
understand it at all. After all, I am a perfectly healthy man. It never
occurred to you that my mind might be unbalanced, did it?"
Guido looked at the rugged Roman head, the muscular throat, the broad
shoulders.
"No," he answered. "It certainly never occurred to me."
"Nor to me either," said Lamberti, and he ate slowly and thoughtfully.
"My friend," observed Guido, "you are just a little enigmatical this
evening."
"Not at all, not at all! I tell you that my nerves are good. You know
something about archaeology, do you not?"
The apparently irrelevant question came after a short pause.
"Not much," Guido answered, supposing that Lamberti wished to change the
subject on account of the servant. "What do you want to know?"
"Nothing," said Lamberti. "The question is, whether what I dreamt last
night was all imagination or whether it was a memory of something I once
knew and had forgotten."
"What did you dream?" Guido sipped his wine and leaned back to listen,
hoping that his friend was going to speak out at last.
"Was the temple of Vesta in the Forum?" enquired Lamberti.
"Certainly."
"But why did they always say that it was the round one in front of Santa
Maria in Cosmedin? I have an old bronze inkstand that is a model of it.
My mother used to tell me it was the temple of Vesta."
"People thought it was--thirty years ago. There is nothing left of the
temple but the round mass of masonry on which it stood. It is between
the Fountain of Juturna and the house of the Vestals. I have Signor
Boni's plans of it. Should you like to see them?"
"Yes--presently," answered Lamberti, with more eagerness than Guido had
expected. "Is there anything like a reconstruction of the temple or of
the house--a picture of one, I mean?"
"I think so," said Guido. "I am sure there is Baldassare Peruzzi's
sketch of the temple, as it was in his day."
"I dreamt that I saw it last night, the temple and the house, and all
the Forum besides, and not in ruins either, but just as everything was
in old times. Could the Vestals' house have had an upper story? Is that
possible?"
"The archaeologists are sure that it had," answered Guido, becoming more
interested. "Do you mean to say that you dreamt you saw it with an upper
story?"
"Yes. And the temple was something like the one they used to call
Vesta's, only it was more ornamented, and the columns seemed very near
together. The round wall, just within the columns, was decorated with
curious designs in low relief--something like a wheel, and scallops, and
curved lines. It is hard to describe, but I can see it all now."
Guido rose from his seat quickly.
"I will get the number that has the drawing in it," he said, explaining.
During the few moments that passed while he was out of the room Lamberti
sat staring at his empty place as fixedly as he had stared at the dark
line of the Janiculum a few minutes earlier. The man-servant, who had
been with him at sea, watched him with a sort of grave sympathy that is
peculiarly Italian. Then, as if an idea of great value had struck him,
he changed Lamberti's plate, poured some red wine into the tumbler, and
filled it up with water. Then he retired and watched to see whether his
old master would drink. But Lamberti did not move.
"Here it is," said Guido, entering the room with a large yellow-covered
pamphlet open in his hands. "Was it like this?"
As he asked the question he laid the pamphlet on the clean plate before
his friend. The pages were opened at Baldassare Peruzzi's rough
pen-and-ink sketch of the temple of Vesta; and as Lamberti looked at it,
his lids slowly contracted, and his features took an expression of
mingled curiosity and interest.
"The man who drew that had seen what I saw," he said at last. "Did he
draw it from some description?"
"He drew it on the spot," answered Guido. "The temple was standing then.
But as for your dream, it is quite possible that you may have seen this
same drawing in a shop window at Spithoever's or Loescher's, for
instance, without noticing it, and that the picture seemed quite new to
you when you dreamt it. That is a simple explanation."
"Very," said Lamberti. "But I saw the whole Forum."
"There are big engravings of imaginary reconstructions of the Forum, in
the booksellers' windows."
"With the people walking about? The two young priests standing in the
morning sun on the steps of the temple of Castor and Pollux? The dirty
market woman trudging past the corner of the Vestals' house with a
basket of vegetables on her head? The door slave sweeping the threshold
of the Regia with a green broom?"
"I thought you knew nothing about the Forum," said Guido, curiously.
"How do you come to know of the Regia?"
"Did I say Regia? I daresay--the name came to my lips."
"Somebody has hypnotised you," said Guido. "You are repeating things you
have heard in your sleep."
"No. I am describing things I saw in my sleep. Am I the sort of man who
is easily hypnotised? I have let men try it once or twice. We were all
interested in hypnotism on my last ship, and the surgeon made some
curious experiments with a lad who went to sleep easily. But last night
I was at home, alone, in my own room, in bed, and I dreamt."
Guido shrugged his shoulders a little indifferently.
"There must be some explanation," he said. "What else did you dream?"
Lamberti's lids drooped as if he were concentrating his attention on the
remembered vision.
"I dreamt," he said, "that I saw a veiled woman in white come out of the
temple door straight into the sunlight, and though I could not see the
face, I knew who she was. She went down the steps and then up the others
to the house of the Vestals, and entered in without looking back. I
followed her. The door was open, and there was no one to stop me."
"That is very improbable," observed Guido. "There must have always been
a slave at the door."
"I went in," continued Lamberti without heeding the interruption, "and
she was standing beside one of the pillars, a little way from the door.
She had one hand on the column, and she was facing the sun; her veil was
thrown back and the light shone through her hair. I came nearer, very
softly. She knew that I was there and was not afraid. When I was close
to her she turned her face to mine. Then I took her in my arms and
kissed her, and she did not resist."
Guido smiled gravely.
"And she turned out to be some one you know in real life, I suppose," he
said.
"Yes," answered Lamberti. "Some one I know--slightly."
"Beautiful, of course. Fair or dark?"
"You need not try to guess," Lamberti said. "I shall not tell you. My
head went round, and I woke."
"Very well. But is it this absurd dream that has made you so nervous?"
"No. Something happened to me to-day."
Lamberti ate a few mouthfuls in silence, before he went on.
"I daresay I might have invented some explanation of the dream," he said
at last. "But it only made me want to see the place. I never cared for
those things, you know. I had never gone down into the Forum in my
life--why should I? I went there this morning."
"And you could not find anything of what you had seen, of course."
"I took one of those guides who hang about the entrance waiting for
foreigners. He showed me where the temple had been, and the house, and
the temple of Castor and Pollux. I did not believe him implicitly, but
the ruins were in the right places. Then I walked up a bridge of boards
to the house of the Vestals, and went in."
"But there was no lady."
"On the contrary," said Lamberti, and his eyes glittered oddly, "the
lady was there."
"The same one whom you had seen in your dream?"
"The same. She was standing facing the sun, for it was still early, and
one of her hands was resting against the brick pillar, just as it had
rested against the column."
"That is certainly very extraordinary," said Guido, his tone changing.
Then he seemed about to speak again, but checked himself.
Lamberti rested his elbows on the table and his chin on his folded
hands, and looked into his friend's eyes in silence. His own face had
grown perceptibly paler in the last few minutes.
"Guido," he said, after what seemed a long pause, "you were going to ask
what happened next. I do not know what you thought, nor what stopped
you, for between you and me there is no such thing as indiscretion, and,
besides, you will never know who the lady was."
"I do not wish to guess. Do not say anything that could help me."
"Of course not. Any woman you know might have taken it into her head to
go to the Forum this morning."
"Certainly."
"This is what happened. I stood perfectly still in surprise. She may
have heard my footstep or not; she knew some one was behind her. Then
she slowly turned her head till we could see each other's faces."
He paused again, and passed one hand lightly over his eyes.
"Yes," said Guido, "I suppose I can guess what is coming."
"No!" Lamberti cried, in such a tone that the other started. "You cannot
guess. We looked at each other. It seemed a very long time--two or three
minutes at least--as if we were both paralysed. Though we recognised
each other perfectly well, we could neither of us speak. Then it seemed
to me that something I could not resist was drawing me towards her, but
I am sure I did not really move the hundredth part of a step. I shall
never forget the look in her face."
Another pause, not long, but strangely breathless.
"I have seen men badly frightened in battle," Lamberti went on. "The
cheeks get hollow all at once, the eyes are wide open, with black rings
round them, the face turns a greenish grey, and the sweat runs down the
forehead into the eyebrows. Men totter with fear, too, as if their
joints were unstrung. But I never saw a woman really terrified before.
There was a sort of awful tension of all her features, as though they
were suddenly made brittle, like beautiful glass, and were going to
shiver into fragments. And her eyes had no visible pupils--her lips
turned violet. I remember every detail. Then, without warning, she
shrieked and staggered backwards; and she turned as I moved to catch
her, and she ran like a deer, straight up the court, past those basins
they have excavated, and up two or three steps, to the dark rooms at the
other end."
"And what did you do?" asked Guido, wondering.
"My dear fellow, I turned and went back as fast as I could, without
exactly running, and I found the guide looking for me below the temple,
for he had not seen me go into the Vestals' house. What else was there
to be done?"
"Nothing, I suppose. You could not pursue a lady who shrieked with fear
and ran away from you. What a strange story! You say you only know her
slightly."
"Literally, very slightly," answered Lamberti.
He had become fluent, telling his story almost excitedly. He now
relapsed into his former mood, and stared at the pamphlet before him a
moment, before shutting it and putting it away from him.
"It is like all those things--perfectly unaccountable, except on a
theory of coincidence," said Guido, at last. "Will you have any cheese?"
Lamberti roused himself and saw the servant at his elbow.
"No, thank you. I forgot one thing. Just as I awoke from that dream last
night, I heard the door of my room softly closed."
"What has that to do with the matter?" enquired Guido, carelessly.
"Nothing, except that the door was locked. I always lock my door. I
first fell into the habit when I was travelling, for I sleep so soundly
that in a hotel any one might come in and steal my things. I should
never wake. So I turn the key before going to bed."
"You may have forgotten to do it last night," suggested Guido.
"No. I got up at once, and the key was turned. No one could have come
in."
"A mouse, then," said Guido, rather contemptuously.