PART I

I.

Motionless under the white coverlet of her bed, Anna appeared to have

been sleeping soundly for the past two hours.

Her sister Laura, who occupied a little cot at the other end of the

big room, had that evening much prolonged her customary reading,

which followed the last gossip of the day between the girls. But no

sooner had she put out her candle than Anna opened her eyes and fixed

them upon Laura's bed, which glimmered vaguely white in the distance.

Anna was wide awake.

She dared not move, she dared not even sigh; and all her life was in

her gaze, trying to penetrate the secret of the dusk--trying to see

whether really her sister was asleep. It was a winter's night, and as

the hour advanced the room became colder and colder; but Anna did not

feel it.

The moment the light had been extinguished a flame had leapt from

her heart to her brain, diffusing itself through all her members,

scalding her veins, scorching her flesh, quickening the beating of

her pulses. As in the height of fever, she felt herself burning up;

her tongue was dry, her head was hot; and the icy air that entered

her lungs could not quench the fire in her, could not subdue the

tumultuous irruption of her young blood.

Often, to relieve herself, she had longed to cry out, to moan; but

the fear of waking Laura held her silent. It was not, however, so

much from the great heat throbbing at her temples that she suffered,

as from her inability to know for certain whether her sister was

asleep.

Sometimes she thought of moving noisily, so that her bed should

creak; then if Laura was awake, she would move in hers, and thus Anna

could make sure. But the fear of thereby still further lengthening

this time of waiting, kept her from letting the thought become an

action. She lay as motionless as if her limbs were bound down by a

thousand chains.

She had lost all track of time, too; she had forgotten to count the

last strokes of the clock--the clock that could be heard from the

sitting-room adjoining. It seemed to her that she had been lying like

this for years, that she had been waiting for years, burning with

this maddening fire for years, that she had spent years trying to

pierce the darkness with her eyes.

And then the horrible thought crossed her mind--What if the hour had

passed? Perhaps it had passed without her noticing it; she who had

waited for it so impatiently had let it escape.

But no. Presently, deadened by the distance and the doors closed

between, she heard the clock ring out.

The hour had come.

Thereupon, with an infinite caution, born of infinite fear, slowly,

trembling, holding her breath at every sound, pausing, starting back,

going on, she sat up in bed, and at last slipped out of it.

That vague spot of whiteness in the distance, where her sister lay,

still fascinated her; she kept her head turned in its direction,

while with her hands she felt for her shoes and stockings and

clothes. They were all there, placed conveniently near; but every

little difficulty she had to overcome in dressing, so as not to make

the slightest noise, represented a world of precautions, of pauses,

and of paralysing fears.

When at last she had got on her frock of white serge, which shone out

in the darkness, "Perhaps Laura sees me," she thought.

But she had made ready a big heavy black shawl, and in this she now

wrapped herself from head to foot, and the whiteness of her frock was

hidden.

Then, having accomplished the miracle of dressing herself, she stood

still at her bedside; she had not dared to take a step as yet, sure

that by doing so she would wake Laura.

"A little strength--Heaven send me a little strength," she prayed

inwardly.

Then she set forth stealthily across the room. In the middle of it,

seized by a sudden audacious impulse, she called her sister's name,

in a whisper, "Laura, Laura," listening intensely.

No answer. She went on, past the door, through the sitting-room,

the drawing-room, feeling her way amidst the chairs and tables.

She struck her shoulder against the frame of the door between the

sitting-room and the drawing-room, and halted for a moment, with a

beating heart.

"_Madonna mia! Madonna mia!_" she murmured in an agony of terror.

Then she had to pass before the room of her governess, Stella

Martini; but the poor, good lady was a sound sleeper, and Anna knew

it.

When she reached the dining-room, it seemed to her that she must have

traversed a hundred separate chambers, a hundred entire apartments,

an endless chain of chambers and apartments.

At last she opened the door that gave upon the terrace, and ran out

into the night, the cold, the blackness. She crossed the terrace to

the low dividing-wall between it and the next.

"Giustino--Giustino," she called.

Suddenly the shadow of a man appeared on the other terrace, very

near, very close to the wall of division.

A voice answered: "Here I am, Anna."

But she, taking his hand, drew him towards her, saying: "Come, come."

He leapt over the little wall.

Covered by her black mantle, without speaking, Anna bent her head and

broke into sobs.

"What is it? What is wrong?" he asked, trying to see her face.

Anna wept without answering.

"Don't cry, don't cry. Tell me what's troubling you," he murmured

earnestly, with a caress in his words and in his voice.

"Nothing, nothing. I was so frightened," she stammered.

"Dearest, dearest, dearest!" he whispered.

"Oh, I'm a poor creature--a poor thing," said she, with a desolate

gesture.

"I love you so," said Giustino, simply, in a low voice.

"Oh, say that again," she begged, ceasing to weep.

"I love you so, Anna."

"I adore you--my soul, my darling."

"If you love me, you must be calm."

"I adore you, my dearest one."

"Promise me that you won't cry any more, then."

"I adore you, I adore you, I adore you!" she repeated, her voice

heavy with emotion.

He did not speak. It seemed as if he could find no words fit for

responding to such a passion. A cold gust of wind swept over them.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

"No: feel." And she gave him her hand.

Her little hand, between those of Giustino, was indeed not cold; it

was burning.

"That is love," said she.

He lifted the hand gently to his lips, and kissed it lightly. And

thereupon, her eyes glowed in the darkness, like human stars of

passion.

"My love is consuming me," she went on, as if speaking to herself. "I

can feel nothing else; neither cold, nor night, nor danger--nothing.

I can only feel _you_. I want nothing but your love. I only want

to live near you always--till death, and after death--always with

you--always, always."

"Ah me!" sighed he, under his breath.

"What did you say?" she cried, eagerly.

"It was a sigh, dear one; a sigh over our dream."

"Don't talk like that; don't say that," she exclaimed.

"Why shouldn't I say it, Anna? The sweet dream that we have been

dreaming together--any day we may have to wake from it. They aren't

willing that we should live together."

"Who--they?"

"He who can dispose of you as he wishes, Cesare Dias."

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes; to-day."

"And he won't consent?"

"He won't consent."

"Why not?"

"Because you have money, and I have none. Because you are noble, and

I'm not."

"But I adore you, Giustino."

"That matters little to your guardian."

"He's a bad man."

"He's a man," said Giustino, shortly.

"But it's an act of cruelty that he's committing," she cried, lifting

her hands towards heaven.

Giustino did not speak.

"What did you answer? What did you plead? Didn't you tell him again

that you love me, that I adore you, that I shall die if we are

separated? Didn't you describe our despair to him?"

"It was useless," replied Giustino, sadly.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! You didn't tell him of our love, of our

happiness? You didn't implore him, weeping? You didn't try to move

his hard old heart? But what sort of man are you; what sort of soul

have you, that you let them sentence us to death like this? O Lord! O

Lord!--what man have I been loving?"

"Anna, Anna!" he said, softly.

"Why didn't you defy him? Why didn't you rebel? You're young; you're

brave. How could Cesare Dias, almost an old man, with ice in his

veins, how could he frighten you?"

"Because Cesare Dias was right, Anna," he answered quietly.

"Oh, horror! Horrible sacrilege of love!" cried Anna, starting back.

In her despair she had unconsciously allowed her shawl to drop from

her shoulders; it had fallen to the ground, at her feet. And now

she stood up before him like a white, desolate phantom, impelled by

sorrow to wander the earth on a quest that can never have an end.

But he had a desperate courage, though it forced him to break with

the only woman he had ever loved.

"Cesare Dias was right, my dearest Anna. I couldn't answer him. I'm a

poor young fellow, without a farthing."

"Love is stronger than money."

"I am a commoner, I have no title to give you."

"Love is stronger than a title."

"Everything is against our union, Anna."

"Love is stronger than everything; stronger even than death."

After this there befell a silence. But he felt that he must go to the

bottom of the subject. He saw his duty, and overcame his pain.

"Think a little, Anna. Our souls were made for each other; but our

persons are placed in such different circumstances, separated by so

many things, such great distances, that not even a miracle could

unite them. You accuse me of being a traitor to our love, which is

our strength; but is it unworthy of us to conquer ourselves in such

a pass? Anna, Anna, it is I who lose everything; and yet I advise

you to forget this youthful fancy. You are young; you are beautiful;

you are rich; you are noble, and you love me; yet it is my duty to

say to you, forget me--forget me. Consider how great the sacrifice

is, and see if it is not our duty, as two good people, to make it

courageously. Anna, you will be loved again, better still, by a

better man. You deserve the purest and the noblest love. You won't

be unhappy long. Life is still sweet for you. You weep, yes; you

suffer; because you love me, because you are a dear, loving woman.

But afterwards, afterwards you will find your path broad and flowery.

It is I who will have nothing left; the light of my life will go out,

the fire in my heart. But what does it matter? You will forget me,

Anna."

Anna, motionless, listened to him, uttering no word.

"Speak," he said, anxiously.

"I can't forget you," she answered.

"Try--make the effort. Let us try not to see each other."

"No, no; it's useless," she said, her voice dying on her lips.

"What do you wish us to do?"

"I don't know. I don't know."

A great impulse of pity, greater than his own sorrow, assailed him.

He took her hands; they were cold now.

"What is the matter with you? Are you ill?"

She did not answer. She leant her head on his shoulder, and he

caressed her rich, brown hair.

"Anna, what is it?" he whispered, thrilled by a wild emotion.

"You don't love me."

"How can you doubt it?"

"If you loved me," she began, sobbing, "you would not propose our

separation. If you loved me you would not think such a separation

possible. If you loved me it would be like death to you to forget

and be forgotten. Giustino, you don't love me."

"Anna, Anna!"

"Judge by me," she went on, softly. "I'm a poor, weak woman; yet I

resist, I struggle. And we would conquer, we would conquer, if you

loved me."

"Anna!"

"Ah, don't call my name; don't speak my name. All this

tenderness--what's the use of it? It is good; it is wise; it is

comforting. But it is only tenderness; it isn't love. You can think,

reflect, determine. That isn't love. You speak of duty, of being

worthy--worthy of her who adores you, who sees nothing but you in

the whole wide world. I know nothing of all that. I love you. I know

nothing. And only now I realise that your love isn't love. You are

silent. I don't understand you. You can't understand me. Good-bye,

love!"

She turned away from him, to move off. But he detained her.

"What do you want to do?" he whispered.

"If I can't live with you, I must die," she said, quietly, with her

eyes closed, as if she were thus awaiting death.

"Don't speak of dying, Anna. Don't make my regret worse than it is.

It's I who have spoiled your life."

"It doesn't matter."

"It's I who have put bitterness into your sweet youth."

"It doesn't matter."

"It's I who have stirred you up to rebel against Cesare Dias, against

your sister Laura, against the wish of your parents and all your

friends."

"It doesn't matter."

"It is I who have called you from your sleep, who have exposed you to

a thousand dangers. Think, if you were discovered here you would be

lost."

"It doesn't matter. Take me away."

And Giustino, in spite of the darkness, could see her fond eyes

glowing.

"If you would only take me away," she sighed.

"But where?"

"Anywhere--to any country. You will be my country."

"Elope? A noble young girl--elope like an adventuress?"

"Love will secure my pardon."

"I will pardon you; no others will."

"You will be my family, my all. Take me away."

"Anna, Anna, where should we find refuge? Without means, without

friends, having committed a great fault, our life would be most

unhappy."

"No, no, no! Take me away. We'll have a little time of poverty, after

which I shall get possession of my fortune. Take me away."

"And I shall be accused of having made a good speculation. No, no,

Anna, it's impossible. I couldn't bear such a shame."

She started away from him, pushing him back with a movement of horror.

"What?" she cried. "What? You would be ashamed? It's your shame that

preoccupies you? And mine? Honoured, esteemed, loved, I care nothing

for this honour, this love, and am willing to lose all, the respect

of people, the affection of my relations--and you think of yourself!

I could have chosen any one of a multitude of young men of my own

rank, my own set, and I have chosen you because you were good and

honest and clever. And you are ashamed of what bad people and stupid

people may say of you! I--I brave everything. I lie, I deceive. I

leave my bed at the dead of night, steal out during my sister's

sleep--out of my room, out of my house, like a guilty servant, so

that they might call me the lowest of the low. I do all this to come

to you; and you are thinking of speculations, of what the world will

say about you. Oh, how strong you are, you men! How well you know

your way; how straight you march, never listening to the voices that

call to you, never feeling the hands that try to stop you--nothing,

nothing, nothing! You are men, and have your honour to look after,

your dignity to preserve, your delicate reputation to safeguard. You

are right, you are reasonable. And so we are fools; we are mad, who

step out of the path of honour and dignity for the love of you--we

poor silly creatures of our hearts!"

Giustino had not attempted to protest against this outburst of

violent language; but every word of it, hot with wrath, vibrant

with sorrowful anger, stirred him to the quick, held him silenced,

frightened, shaken by her voice, by the tumult of her passion. Now

the fire which he had rashly kindled burnt up the whole beautiful,

simple, stable edifice of his planning, and all he could see left of

it was a smoking ruin. He loved her--she loved him; and though he

knew it was wild and unreasonable. "Forgive me," he said; "let us go

away."

She put her hand upon his head, and he heard her murmur, under her

voice, "O God!"

They both felt that their life was decided, that they had played the

grand stake of their existence.

There was a long pause; she was the first to break it.

"Listen, Giustino. Before we fly let me make one last attempt. You

have spoken to Cesare Dias; you have told him that you love me, that

I adore you; but he didn't believe you----"

"It is true. He smiled incredulously."

"He is a man who has seen a great deal of the world, who has been

loved, who has loved; but of all that nothing is left to him. He is

cold and solitary. He never speaks of his scepticism, but he believes

in nothing. He's a miserable, arid creature. I know that he despises

me, thinking me silly and enthusiastic. I pity him as I pity every

one who has no love in his heart. And yet--I will speak to Cesare

Dias. The truth will well up from me with such impetus that he cannot

refuse to believe me. I'll tell him everything. In spite of his

forty years, in spite of the corruption of his mind, in spite of all

his scorn, all his irony, true love will find convincing words. He'll

give his consent."

"Can't you first persuade your sister? There we'd have an

affectionate ally," said Giustino, tentatively.

"My sister is worse than Cesare Dias," she answered, with a slight

tremor of the voice; "I should never dare to depend on her."

"You are afraid of her?"

"Pray don't speak of her, don't speak of her. It's a subject which

pains me."

"And yet----"

"No, no. Laura knows nothing; she must know nothing; it would be

dreadful if she knew. I'd a thousand times rather speak to him. He

will remember his past; Laura has no past--she has nothing--she's a

dead soul. I will speak with him; he will believe me."

"And if he shouldn't believe you?"

"He _will_ believe me."

"But, Anna, Anna, if he shouldn't?"

"Then--we will elope. But I ought to make this last attempt. Heaven

will give me strength. Afterwards--I will write to you, I will tell

you everything. I daren't come here any more. It's too dangerous. If

any one should see me it would be the ruin of all our hopes. I'll

write to you. You'll arrange your own affairs in the meantime--as if

you were at the point of death, as if you were going to leave this

country never to return. You must be ready at any instant."

"I'll be ready."

"Surely?"

"Surely."

"Without a regret?"

"Without a regret." But his voice died on his lips.

"Thank you; you love me. We shall be so happy! You will see. Happier

than any one in the world!"

"So happy!" murmured Giustino, faithful but sad.

"And may Heaven help us," she concluded, fervently, putting out her

hand to leave him.

He took her hand, and his pressure of it was a silent vow; but it was

the vow of a friend, of a brother, simple and austere.

She moved slowly away, as if tired. He remained where he was, waiting

a little before returning to his own terrace. Not until some ten

minutes had passed, during which he heard no sound, no movement,

could he feel satisfied that Anna had safely reached her room.

Once at home, he found himself used up, exhausted, without ideas,

without emotions. And speedily he fell asleep.

She also was exhausted by the great moral crisis through which she

had passed. An immense burden seemed to bow her down, to make heavy

her footsteps, as she groped her way through the silent house.

When she reached the sitting-room she stopped with sudden terror. A

light was burning in the bedroom. Laura would be awake, would have

remarked her absence, would be waiting for her.

She stood still a long while. She could hear a sound as of the pages

of a book being turned. Laura was reading.

At last she pushed open the door, and crossed the threshold.

Laura looked at her, smiled haughtily, and did not speak.

Anna fell on her knees before her, crying, "Forgive me. For pity's

sake, Laura, forgive me. Laura, Laura, Laura!"

But the child remained silent, white and cold and virginal, never

ceasing to smile scornfully.

Anna lay on the floor, weeping. And the winter dawn found her there,

weeping, weeping; while her sister slept peacefully.

II.

The letter ran thus:

"DEAREST LOVE,--I have had my interview with Cesare

Dias. What a man! His mere presence seemed to freeze me; it

was enough if he looked at me, with his big clear blue eyes,

for speech to fail me. There is something in his silence

which frightens me; and when he speaks, his sharp voice

quells me by its tone as well as by the hard things he says.

"And yet this morning when he came for his usual visit, I

was bold enough to speak to him of my marriage. I spoke

simply, briefly, without trembling, though I could see that

the courtesy with which he listened was ironical. Laura was

present, taciturn and absent-minded as usual. She shrugged

her shoulders indifferently, disdainfully, and then, getting

up, left the room with that light footstep of hers which

scarcely seems to touch the earth.

"Cesare Dias smiled without looking at me, and his smile

disconcerted me horribly, putting all my thoughts into

confusion. But I felt that I ought

to make the attempt--I ought. I had promised it to you, my

darling, and to myself. My life had become insupportable;

the more so because of my sister, who knew my secret, who

tortured me with her contempt--the contempt of a person who

has never loved for one who does--who might at any moment

betray me, and tell the story of that wintry night.

"Cesare Dias smiled, and didn't seem to care in the least

to hear what I had to say. However, in spite of my emotion,

in spite of the fact that I was talking to a man who cared

nothing for me and for whom I cared nothing, in spite of the

gulf that divides a character like mine from that of Cesare

Dias, I had the courage to tell him that I adored you, that

I wished to live and die with you, that my fortune would

suffice for our needs, that I would never marry any one but

you; and finally, that, humbly, earnestly, I besought him, as

my guardian, my nearest relation, my wisest friend, to give

his consent to our marriage.

"He had listened, with his eyes cast down, giving no sign of

interest. And now at the end he simply uttered a dry little

'No.'

"And then took place a dreadful scene. I implored, I wept, I

rebelled, I declared that my heart was free, that my person

was free; and always I found that I was addressing a man of

stone, hard and dry, with a will of iron, an utterly false

point of view, a conventional standard based upon the opinion

of the world, and a total lack of

good feeling. Cesare Dias denied that I loved you, denied

that you loved me, denied that any such thing as real love

could exist--real love for which people live and die! He

denied that love was a thing not to be forgotten; denied that

love is the only thing that makes life worth while. His one

word was No--no, no, no, from the beginning to the end of our

talk. He made the most specious, extravagant, and cynical

arguments to convince me that I was deceiving myself, that we

were deceiving ourselves, and that it was his duty to oppose

himself to our folly. Oh, how I wept! How I abased my spirit

before that man, who reasoned in this cold strain! and how

it hurts me now to think of the way I humiliated myself! I

remember that while my love for you, dearest, was breaking

out in wild utterance, I saw that he was looking admiringly

at me, as in a theatre he might admire an actor who was

cleverly feigning passion. He did not believe me; and two or

three times my anger rose to such a point that I stooped to

threaten him; I threatened to make a public scandal.

"'The scandal will fall on the person who makes it,' he said

severely, getting up, to cut short the conversation.

"He went away. In the drawing-room I heard him talking

quietly with Laura, as if nothing had happened, as if he

hadn't left me broken-hearted, as if he didn't know that I

was on my knees, in despair, calling upon the names of the

Madonna and the Saints for help. But that man has no

soul; and I am surrounded by people who think me a mad

enthusiast.

"My love, my darling love, my constant thought--it is then

decided: we must fly. We must fly. Here, like this, I should

die. Anything will be better than this house; it is a prison.

Anything is better than the galleys.

"I know that what I propose is very grave. According to

the common judgment of mankind a young girl who elopes is

everlastingly dishonoured. In spite of the sanctity of

marriage, suspicion never leaves her. I know that I am

throwing away a great deal for a dream of love. But that is

my strange and cruel destiny--the destiny which has given me

a fortune and taken away my father; given me a heart eager

for affection and cut me off from all affection; given me the

dearest and at the same time the least loving sister!

"For whom ought I to sacrifice myself, since those who loved me are

dead, and those who live with me do not love me? I need love; I have

found it; I will attach myself to it; I will not let it go. Who will

weep for me here? No one. Whose hands will be stretched out to call

me back? No one's. What memories will I carry away with me? None.

I am lonely and misunderstood; I am flying from ice and snow to

the warm sunlight of love. You are the sun, you are my love. Don't

think ill of me. I am not like other girls, girls who have a home,

a family, a nest. I am a poor pilgrim, seeking a home, a family, a

nest. I will be your wife, your sweetheart, your servant; I love

you. A life passed in the holy atmosphere of your love will be an

absolution for this fault that I am committing. I know, the world

will not forgive me. But I despise people who can't understand one's

sacrificing everything for love. And those who do not understand

it will pity me. I shall care for nothing but your love; you will

forgive me because you love me.

"So, it is decided. On the third day after you receive

this letter--that is, on Friday--leave your house as if

you were going for a walk, without luggage, and take a cab

to the railway station. Take the train that leaves Naples

for Salerno at one o'clock, and arrives at Pompeii at two.

I shan't be at the station at Pompeii--that might arouse

suspicions; but I shall be in the streets of the dead city,

looking at the ruins. Find me there--come as swiftly as

you can--to the Street of Tombs, leading to the Villa of

Diomedes, near to the grave of Nevoleia Tyche, 'a sweet

Pompeiian child,' according to her epitaph. We will meet

there, and then we will leave for Metaponto or Brindisi, and

sail for the East. I have money. You know, Cesare Dias, to

save himself trouble, has allowed me to receive my entire

income for the past two years. Afterwards--when this money is

spent--well, we will work for our living until I come of age.

"You understand? You needn't worry about me. I shall get

out of the house, go to the station, and arrive at Pompeii

without being surprised. I have a bold and simple plan,

which I can't explain to you. It would not do for us to meet here

in town, the risk would be too great. But leaving for Pompeii

by separate trains, how can any one suspect us? Does my clearness

of mind astonish you? My calmness, my precision? For twenty days

I have been thinking of this matter; I have lain awake at night

studying it in detail.

"Remember, remember: Friday, at noon, leave your house. At

one, leave the station. At half-past two come to me at the

grave of Nevoleia Tyche. Don't forget, for mercy's sake. If

you shouldn't arrive at the right time, what would become of

me, alone, at Pompeii, in anguish, devoured by anxiety?

"My sweetest love, this is the last letter you will receive

from me. Why, as I write these words, does a feeling of

sorrow come upon me, making me bow my head? The word _last_

is always sad, whenever it is spoken. Will you always love

me, even though far from your country, even though poor, even

though unhappy? You won't accuse me of having wronged you?

You will protect me and sustain me with your love? You will

be kind, honest, loyal. You will be all that I care for in

the world.

"This is my last letter, it is true, but soon now our

wondrous future will begin--our life together. Remember,

remember where I shall wait for you.

"ANNA."

Alone in his little house, Giustino Morelli read Anna's letter twice

through, slowly, slowly. Then his head fell upon his breast. He felt

that he was lost, ruined; that Anna was lost and ruined.

* * * * *

At that early morning hour the Church of Santa Chiara, white with

stucco, rich with gold ornamentation, with softly carved marbles and

old pictures, was almost empty. A few pious old women moved vaguely

here and there, wrapped in black shawls; a few knelt praying before

the altar. Anna Acquaviva and her governess, Stella Martini, were

seated in the middle of the church, with their eyes bent on their

prayer-books. Stella Martini had a worn, sunken face, that must have

once been delicately pretty, with that sort of prettiness which

fades before thirty. Anna wore a dark serge frock, with a jacket in

the English fashion; and her black hair was held in place by a comb

of yellow tortoise-shell. The warm pallor of her face was broken by

no trace of colour. Every now and then she bit her lips nervously.

She had held her prayer-book open for a long while without turning

a page. But Stella Martini had not noticed this; she was praying

fervently.

Presently the young girl rose.

"I am going to confession," she said, standing still, holding on to

the back of her chair.

The governess did not seek to detain her. With a light step she

crossed the church and entered a confessional.

There the good priest, with the round, childlike face and the crown

of snow-white hair, asked his usual questions quietly, not surprised

by the tremor in the voice that answered him. He knew the character

of his penitent.

But Anna answered incoherently; often not understanding the sense of

the simple words the priest addressed to her. Sometimes she did not

answer at all, but only sighed behind the grating.

At last her confessor asked with some anxiety: "What is it that

troubles you?"

"Father, I am in great danger," she said in a low voice.

But when he sought to learn what her danger was she would give him no

details. He begged her to speak frankly, to tell him everything; she

only murmured:

"Father, I am threatened with disgrace."

Then he became severe, reminding her that it was a great sin to

come thus and trifle with a sacrament of the church, to come to the

confessional and refuse to confess. He could not give her absolution.

"I will come another time," she said rising.

But now, instead of returning to her governess, who was still praying

with her eyes cast down, Anna stole swiftly out of the church into

the street, where she hailed a cab, and bade the cabman drive to the

railway station. She drew down the blinds of the carriage windows,

and there in the darkness she could scarcely suppress a cry of

mingled joy and pain to find herself at last alone and free.

The cab rolled on and on; it was like the movement of a dream. The

only thing she could think of was this beautiful and terrible idea,

that she, Anna Acquaviva, had abandoned for ever her home and her

family, carrying away only so much of her fortune as the purse in

her pocket could hold, to throw herself into the arms of Giustino

Morelli. No feeling of fear held her back. Her entire past life was

ended, she could never take it up again; it was over, it was over.

In that sort of somnambulism which accompanies a decisive action, she

was as exact and rigid in everything she had to do as an automaton.

At the station she paid her cabman, and mechanically asked for a

ticket to Pompeii at the booking-office.

"Single or return?" inquired the clerk.

"Single," she answered.

As almost every one who went to Pompeii took a return ticket, the

clerk thought he had to do with an Englishwoman or an impassioned

antiquary.

She put the ticket into the opening of her glove, and went into the

first-class waiting-room. She looked about her quite indifferently,

as if it was impossible that Cesare Dias or indeed any one of her

acquaintance should see her there. She was conscious of nothing save

a great need to go on, to go on; nothing else. It was the first time

in her life that she had been out alone like this, yet she felt no

surprise. It seemed to her that she had been travelling alone for

years; that Cesare Dias, Laura Acquaviva, and Stella Martini were

pale shadows of an infinitely distant past, a past anterior to her

present existence; that they were people she had known in another

world. She kept repeating to herself, like a child trying to remember

a word,

"Pompeii, Pompeii, Pompeii."

But when she was climbing into the first-class compartment of the

train, it seemed suddenly as if a force held her back, as if a

mysterious hand forbade her going on. She trembled, and had to make

a violent effort to enter the carriage, as if to brush aside an

invisible obstacle. And, from that moment, a voice within her seemed

to be murmuring confusedly to her conscience, warning her of the

great moral crisis she was approaching; while before her eyes the

blue Neapolitan coast was passing rapidly, where the wintry cold had

given way to a warm scirocco. On, on, the morning train hurried her,

over the land, by the sea, between the white houses of Portici, the

pink houses of Torre del Greco, the houses, pink, white, and yellow,

of Torre Annunziata--on, on. And Anna, motionless in her corner,

gazing out of the window, beheld a vague, delicious vision of flowers

and stars and kisses and caresses; and an icy terror, a sense of

imminent peril, lay upon her heart. Oh, yes! In a brilliant vision

she saw a future of love, of passion and tenderness, a fire-hued

vision of all that soul and body could desire; yet constantly that

still, small voice kept whispering to her conscience: "Don't go,

don't go. If you go, you are lost."

And this presently became so unbearable that, when the train entered

the brown, burnt-up country at the foot of Vesuvius, the country

that surrounds the great ruin of Pompeii, despair was making her

twist the handle of her purse violently with her fingers. The green

vines and the laughing villages had disappeared from the landscape;

the blue sea, with its dancing white waves, had disappeared; she was

crossing a wide, desolate plain; and the volcano, with its eternal

wreath of smoke, rose before her. And also had disappeared for ever

the phantasms of her happiness! Anna was travelling alone, through a

sterile land, where fire had passed, devastating all life, killing

the flowers, destroying the people, their homes, their pleasures,

their loves. And the voice within her cried: "This is a symbol of

Passion, which destroys all things, and then dies itself."

And then she thought that she had chosen ominously in coming to

Pompeii--a city of love, destroyed by fire, an everlasting reminder

to those who saw it of the tragedy of life--Pompeii, with its hard

heart of lava!

She descended from the carriage when the train stopped, and followed

a family of Germans and two English clergymen out of the tiny station.

She went on, looking neither to right nor left, up the narrow, dusty

lane that leads from the railway to the inn at the city's gate.

Neither the Germans nor the clergymen noticed her; the solitary young

woman, with the warm, pale face, and the great brown-black eyes

that gazed straight forward, without interest in what they saw, the

eyes of a soul consumed by an emotion. When they had all entered the

house, she ensconced herself in a corner near a window, and looked

out upon the path she had followed, as if waiting for somebody, or as

if wishing to turn back.

And Anna was praying for the safe coming of Giustino. If she could

but see him, if she could but hear his voice, all her doubts, all her

pains, would fly away.

"I adore him! I adore him!" she thought, and tried thus to find

strength with which to combat her conscience. Her heart was filled

with a single wish--to see Giustino; he would give her strength; he

was the reason for her life--he and love. She looked at her little

child's watch, the only jewel she had brought away; she had a long

time still to wait before two o'clock.

An old guide approached her, and offered to show her the ruins. She

followed him mechanically. They traversed the Street of Hope, the

Street of Fortune, where there are the deep marks of carriage wheels

in the stone pavement; they entered houses and shops and squares; she

looked at everything with vacant eyes. Twice the guide said: "Now let

us visit the Street of Tombs and the Villa of Diomedes." Twice she

had answered: "Later on; by-and-by."

Two or three times she had sat down on a stone to rest; and then her

poor old guide had sat down also, at a distance, and let his head

fall forward on his breast, and dozed. She was strangely fatigued;

she had exhausted her forces in making the journey hither; the tumult

of emotion she had gone through had prostrated her. Now she felt

utterly alone and abandoned--a poor, unfortunate creature bearing

through this dead city a heavy burden of solitude and weariness: and

when, after a long rest, she got up to go on again, a great sigh

broke from her lips.

But somehow she must pass the time, and so she went on. She climbed

to the top of the Amphitheatre, seeking to devour the minutes that

separated her from two o'clock.

Presently the old man said, for the third time: "Now let us visit the

Street of Tombs and the Villa of Diomedes."

"Let us go," she responded.

The hours had passed at last; only one more remained. With her watch

in her hand, as the guide pointed out to her the magnificence of

the Villa of Diomedes, she was saying to herself, "Now Giustino is

leaving Naples."

Impatient, no longer able to endure the voice or presence of the

old man, no longer able to hide her own perturbation, she paid and

dismissed him. He hesitated, reluctant to leave her, telling her that

it was forbidden to make sketches, and, above all, to carry anything

away; but he said it timidly, humbly, knowing very well that it was

needless to fear any such infractions from this pale girl with the

dreamy eyes. And he moved off, slowly, slowly, turning back every now

and then to see what she was doing. She sat down on a stone in front

of the tomb of the "sweet freed-woman," Nevoleia Tyche, and waited

there, her hands in her lap, her head bent; nor did she look up when

a party of English passed her, accompanied by a guide. This last hour

seemed interminable to her; it seemed covered by a great shadow, in

which all things were obscured. The name of Giustino, constantly

repeated, was like a single ray of light. She neither heard nor saw

what was going on round about her; her consciousness of the external

world was put out.

Suddenly a shadow fell between her and the grey tomb of the

freed-woman. She looked up, and saw Giustino standing before her,

gazing down on her with an infinite despairing tenderness.

Anna, unable to speak, gave him her hand, and rose. And a smile of

happiness, like a great light, shone from her eyes, and a warm colour

mantled her cheeks. Giustino had never seen her so beautiful. In

an ecstasy of joy, feeling all her doubts die within her, feeling

all the glory of her love spring to full life again, Anna could not

understand why there was an expression of sorrow on Giustino's face.

"Do you love me--a great deal?"

"A great deal."

"You will always care for me?"

"Always."

It was like a sad, soft echo, but the girl did not notice that; a

veil of passion dimmed her perceptions. They walked on together, she

close to him, so happy that her feet scarcely touched the earth,

enjoying this minute of intense love with all the force of feeling

that she possessed, with all the self-surrender of which human nature

is capable. They walked on through the streets of Pompeii, without

seeing, without looking. Only again and again she said softly: "Tell

me that you love me--tell me that you love me!"

Two or three times he had answered simply, "Yes," then he was silent.

Suddenly, Anna, not hearing his answer, stood still, and taking his

arms in her hands, looked deep into his honest eyes, and asked, "What

is the matter?"

Her voice trembled. He lowered his eyes.

"Nothing," he said.

"Why are you so sad?"

"I'm not sad," he answered with an effort.

"You're telling the truth?"

"I'm telling the truth."

"Swear that you love me."

"Do you need me to swear it?" he exclaimed with such sincerity and

such pain that she was convinced, perceiving the sincerity, but not

the pain.

But she was still troubled; there was still a bitterness in her joy.

They were near the Street of the Sea, which leads out of the dead

city.

"Let us go away, let us go away," she said impatiently.

"The train for Metaponto doesn't leave till six o'clock; we've plenty

of time."

"Let us go away! I don't want to stay here any longer. I beg of you,

let us go."

He obeyed her passively and was silent. They entered the inn on their

way to the station, at the same time as the two English clergymen.

Anna was frightened; she didn't care to talk of love to Giustino

before such witnesses, but she looked at him with fond, supplicating

eyes. The two clergymen seated themselves at the table which is

always laid in the chief room of the inn, and while they ate their

dinner one of them read his Bible, the other his Baedeker. The two

lovers were near the window, looking through the glass at the road

that leads to the station; and Anna was holding on to Giustino's arm,

and he, confused, nervous, asked her if she would not like to dine,

taking refuge from his embarrassment in the commonplace. "No; she did

not wish to dine, she wasn't hungry. Afterwards, by-and-by." And her

voice failed her as she looked at the two ecclesiastics.

"I wish----" she began, whispering into Giustino's ear.

"What do you wish?"

"Take me away somewhere else, where I can say something to you."

He hesitated; she blushed; then he left the room to speak to the

landlord; returning presently, "Come," he said.

"Where are we going?"

"Upstairs."

"Upstairs?"

"You will see."

They went upstairs to the first floor, where the waiter who conducted

them opened the door of an apartment consisting of a bedroom and

sitting-room--a big bedroom, a tiny sitting-room--both having

balconies that looked off over the country, and there the waiter left

them alone.

Each of them was pale, silent, confused.

She looked round. The sitting-room was vulgarly furnished with a

green sofa, two green easy-chairs, a centre-table covered with a

nut-coloured jute tablecloth, and a marble console. The thought of

the many strangers who had inhabited it inspired her with a sort of

shame. Then she glanced into the bedroom. It was very large, with two

beds at the farther end, a dressing-table, a sofa, and a wardrobe.

These pieces of furniture seemed lost in the vast bare-looking

chamber. It gave her a shudder merely to look into it; and yet again

she blushed.

She raised her eyes to Giustino's, and she noticed anew that he was

gazing at her with an expression of great sadness.

"What is the matter?" she asked.

He did not answer. He sat down and buried his face in his hands.

"Tell me what it is," she insisted, trembling with anger and anguish.

He remained silent. Perhaps he was weeping behind his hands.

"If you don't tell me what it is, I'll go back to Naples," she said.

He did not speak.

"You despise me because I have left my home."

"No, Anna," he murmured.

"You think I'm dreadful--you think of me as an abandoned creature."

"No, dear one--no."

"Perhaps--you--love another woman."

"You can't think that."

"Perhaps--you have--another tie--without love."

"None; I am bound to no one."

"You have promised yourself to no one?"

"To no one."

"Then why are you so sad? Why do you weep? Why do you tremble? It is

I who ought to weep and tremble, and yet I don't weep unless to see

you weep. Your weeping breaks my heart, makes me desperate."

"Anna, listen to me. By the memory of your mother I implore you

to listen, to understand. I am miserable because of you, on your

account--in thinking of what I have allowed you to do, of how you

are throwing away your future, of the unhappiness that awaits you;

without a home, without a name, persecuted by your family----"

"If you loved me, you wouldn't think these things; you wouldn't say

them."

"I have always said them, Anna; I have always repeated them. I have

ruined you. For three days I have been in an agony of remorse; it is

the same to-day. Though you are the light of my life, I must say it

to you. To-day I can't forgive myself; to-morrow you will be unable

to forgive me. Oh, my love! I am a gentleman, I am a Christian; and

yet I have been weak enough to allow you and me to commit this sin,

this fault."

Speaking thus, with an infinite earnestness, all the honesty of his

noble soul showed itself, a soul bowed down by remorse. She looked at

him and listened to him with stupefaction, amazed at this spectacle

of a rectitude, of a virtue that was greater than love, for she

believed only in love.

"I don't understand you," she said.

"And yet you must--you must. If you don't see the reasons for my

conduct you will despise me, you will hate me. You must try, with

all your heart, with all your mind, to understand. You mustn't let

yourself be carried away by your love. You must be calm, you must be

cool."

"I can't."

"O God!" he said in despair.

Again he was silent. She mechanically, to overcome the trembling

of her hands, pulled at the fringe of the tablecloth. She tried to

reflect, to understand. And always, always, she had the same feeling,

the same idea, and she could not help trying to express it in words:

"You don't love me enough." She looked into his eyes as she spoke,

concentrating her whole soul in her voice and in her gaze.

"It is true, I don't love you enough," he answered.

She made no sound: she was cut to the heart. The little sitting-room,

the inn, Pompeii, the whole world appeared to go whirling round her

dizzily. She had a feeling as if her temples would burst open, and

pressed her hands to them instinctively.

"Ah, then," she said, after a long pause, in a broken voice--"ah,

then, you have deceived me?"

"I have deceived you," he murmured humbly.

"You haven't loved me?"

"Not enough to forget everything else. I have already said so."

"I understand. What was the use of lying?"

"Because you were beautiful and good, and you loved me, and I didn't

see this danger. I didn't dream that you would wish to give up

everything in this way, that I should be unable to prevent you----"

"Words, words. The essential is, you don't love me."

"As you wish to be loved, as you deserve to be loved--no."

"That is, without blind passion?"

"Without blind passion."

"That is, without fire, without enthusiasm?"

"Without fire, without enthusiasm."

"Then, with what?"

"With tenderness, with affection, with devotion."

"It is not enough, not enough, not enough," she said monotonously,

as if talking in her sleep. "Don't you know how to love differently.

More--as I love----?"

"No, I don't know how."

"Do you think you never can? Perhaps you can to-morrow, or in the

future?"

"No, I never can, Anna. I shall always prefer duty to happiness."

"Poor, weak creature," she murmured with immense scorn.

He lifted his eyes towards heaven, as if seeking strength to endure

his martyrdom.

"So," Anna went on, slowly, "if we were to live together, you would

be unhappy?"

"We should both be unhappy, and the sight of your unhappiness, of

which I should be the cause, would kill me."

"Well, then?"

"It's for you to say what you wish."

The cruel, the terrible reality was clear to her; there was only one

thing to be said, and that was so unexpectedly dreadful that she

hesitated to say it. The truth was so horrible, she could not bear to

give it shape in speech. She looked at him--at this man who, to save

her, inflicted such inexpressible pain upon her. And he understood

that Anna could not pronounce the last words. He himself, in spite

of his great courage, could not speak them, those last words, for he

loved the girl wildly. The terrible truth appalled them both.

She got up stiffly and went to the window and leaned her forehead

against the glass, looking out over the country and down the lane

that led to the little station. Twice before that day she had looked

at the same silent landscape; but in the morning, when she was alone,

waiting, thrilling with hope, and again, only an hour ago, leaning on

Giustino's arm, she had possessed entire the priceless treasure of

a great love. Now, now all was over; nevermore, nevermore would she

know the delight of love: all was over, all, all.

Giustino had not moved from where he sat with his face buried in his

hands. Suddenly Anna seized him by the shoulders, forced him to raise

his head, and began to speak, so close to him that he could feel her

warm breath on his cheek.

"And yet you did love me," she said, passionately. "You can't deny

it; I know it. I have seen you turn pale when you met me, as pale as

I myself. If I spoke to you my voice made your eyes brighten, as your

voice made my heart leap. You looked for me everywhere, as I looked

for you, feeling that the world would be colourless without love.

And your letters bore the imprint of a great tenderness. But that is

love, true love, passionate love, which isn't forgotten in a day or

in a year, for which a whole life-time is not sufficient. It isn't

possible that you don't love me any more. You do love me; you are

deceiving me when you say you don't. I don't know why. But speak the

truth--tell me that it is impossible for you to have got over such a

passion."

He felt all his courage leaving him under this tumult of words.

"Giustino, Giustino, think of what you are doing in denying our love.

Think of the two lives you are ruining; for you yourself will be as

miserable as I. Giustino, you will kill me; if you leave me here, I

shall kill myself. Let us go away; let us go away together. Take me

away. You love me. Let us start at once; now is the time."

It seemed for a moment as if he were on the point of giving way. He

was a man with a man's nerves, a man's senses, a man's heart; and he

loved her ardently. But when again she begged him to fly with her,

and he felt himself almost yielding, he made a great effort to resist

her.

"I can't, Anna; I cannot," he said in a low voice.

"Then you wish me to die?"

"You won't die. You are young. You will live to be happy again."

"All is over for me, Giustino. This is death."

"No, it's not death, Anna."

"You talk like Cesare Dias," she cried, moving away from him. "You

speak like a sceptic who has neither love nor faith. You are like

him--corrupt, cynical----"

"You insult me; but you're right."

"I am dishonoured: do you realise that? I am a fugitive from my

people; I am alone here with you in an hotel. I am dishonoured,

dishonoured, coward that you are. You can go home quietly, having had

an amusing adventure; but I--I have no home any more. I was a good

girl; now I am lost."

"Your people know where you are and what you have done--that you have

done nothing wrong. They know that you have done it in response to

a generous impulse for one who was not worthy of you, but who has

respected you."

"And who told them?"

"I."

"When?"

"This morning."

"To whom did you tell it?"

"To your sister and your guardian."

"Did they come to ask you?"

"No, I went to them."

"And what did you agree upon amongst you?"

"That I should come here and meet you."

"And then?"

"That I should leave you."

"When?"

"When Cesare Dias was ready to come and fetch you."

"It's a beautiful plan," she said, icily. "The plan of calm,

practical men. Bravo, bravo! You--you ran to my people, to exculpate

yourself, to accuse me, to reassure them. Good, good! I am a mad

child, guilty of a youthful escapade, which fortunately hasn't

touched my reputation. You denounced me, told them that I wanted to

elope with you; and you are a gentleman! Good! The whole thing was

wonderfully well combined. I am to return home with Cesare Dias as

if I had made a harmless little excursion, and what's done is done.

You're right, of course; Cesare Dias is right; Laura Acquaviva, who

has never loved and who despises those who love, Laura is right;

you are all right. I alone am wrong. Oh, the laughable adventure!

To attempt an elopement, and to fail in it, because the man won't

elope. To return home because your lover has denounced you to your

family! What a comedy! You are right. There has been no catastrophe.

The solution is immensely humorous: I know it. I am like a suicide

who didn't kill herself. You are right. I am wrong. You--you----"

And she looked him full in the face, withering him with her glance.

"Begone! I despise you. Begone!"

"Anna, Anna, don't send me away like this."

"Begone! The cowardly way in which you have behaved is past contempt.

Begone!"

"We mustn't part like this."

"We are already parted, utterly separated. We have always been

separated. Go away."

"Anna, what I have done I have done for your sake, for your good.

Now you send me away. Afterwards you will do me justice. I am an

honourable man--that is my sin."

"I don't know you. Good-day."

"But what will you do alone here?"

"That doesn't concern you. Good-day."

"Let me wait for Cesare Dias."

"If you don't go at once I'll open the window and throw myself from

the balcony," she said, with so much firmness that he believed her.

"Good-bye, then."

"Good-bye."

She stood in the middle of the room, a small red spot burning in

each of her cheeks, and watched him go out, heard him descend the

staircase, slowly, with the heavy step of one bearing a great

burden. She leaned from the window and saw the shadow of a man issue

from the door of the inn--it was Giustino. He stood still for a

moment, and then turned into the high road that leads to Pompeii from

Torre Annunziata, and again stood still, as if to wait for somebody

there. Anna saw him turn towards the windows of the hotel, and gaze

up at them earnestly. At last he moved slowly away and disappeared.

Anna came back into the room, and threw herself upon the sofa, biting

its cushions to keep herself from screaming. Her head was on fire,

but she couldn't weep--not a tear, not a single tear.

And in the midst of her trouble, constantly--whether, as at one

moment, she was pitying herself as a poor child to whom a monstrous

wrong had been done, or as, at the next, burning with scorn as a

great lady offended in her pride; or again, blushing with shame as

she thought of the imminent arrival of Cesare Dias--in the midst of

it all, through it all, constantly, one little agonising, implacable

phrase kept repeating itself: "All is over, all is over, all is over!"

Presently a servant brought in a light.

"Please, madam, do you mean to stay the night?" he asked.

"No."

"The last train for Naples has already left. You can go back by way

of Torre Annunziata in a carriage."

"Some one is coming for me," she said.

The servant left the room.

By-and-by she heard her name called: "Anna! Anna!"

She fell on her knees before Cesare Dias, sobbing: "Forgive me,

forgive me."

He, with a tremor in his voice, murmured, "My poor child."

And at home, in her own house, she said to her sister: "Laura,

forgive me."

"My poor Anna."

III.

For three weeks Anna lay at the point of death, prey to a violent

attack of scarlet fever, alternating between delirium and stupor, and

always moaning in her pain; while Laura, Stella Martini, and a Sister

of Charity watched at her bedside.

But she did not die. The fever reached its crisis, and then, little

by little, day by day, abated.

At last her struggle with death was finished, but Anna had lost in

it the best part of her youth. Thus a valorous warrior survives the

battle indeed, but returns to his friends the phantom of himself--an

object of pity to those who saw him set forth, strong and gallant.

When the early Neapolitan spring began to show itself, at the end of

February, she was convalescent, but so weak that she could scarcely

support the weight of her thick black hair. Stella Martini tried very

patiently to comb it so gently that Anna should not have to move,

braiding it in two long plaits; in this way it would seem less heavy.

From time to time a big tear would roll down the invalid's cheek.

She was weeping silently, slowly; and when Laura or Stella Martini,

or Sister Crocifissa would ask her: "What is it; what can we do for

you?" Anna would answer with a sign which seemed to say: "Let me

weep; perhaps it will do me good to weep."

"Let her weep, it will do her good to weep," was what the great

doctor Antonio Amati had said also. "Let her do whatever pleases her;

refuse her nothing if you can help it."

So her nurses, obedient to the doctor, did not try to prevent her

weeping, did not even try to speak comforting words to her. Perhaps

it was not so much an active sorrow that made her shed these tears,

as a sort of sad relief.

Cesare Dias during this anxious time put aside his occupations of

a gay bachelor, and called two or three times a day at the palace

in Piazza Gerolomini to inquire how Anna was. The two girls had no

nearer relative than he; and he, indeed, was not a relative: he was

their guardian, an old friend of their father's, a companion of the

youthful sports of Francesco Acquaviva. The young wife of Francesco

had died five years after the birth of her second daughter, Laura,

who resembled her closely: and thereupon her husband had proceeded to

shorten his own life by throwing himself into every form of worldly

dissipation. The two children, growing up in the house, motherless

in the midst of profuse luxury, could exert no restraining influence

upon their father, who seemed bent upon enjoying every minute of his

existence as if he realised that its end was near. His constant

companion was the cold, calm, sceptical Cesare Dias, a man who

appeared to despise the very pleasures it was his one business to

pursue. And when Francesco Acquaviva fell ill, and was about to die,

he could think of nothing better than to make the partner of his

follies the guardian of his children.

Cesare Dias had discharged his duties, not without some secret

annoyance, with a gentlemanlike correctness; never treating his wards

with much familiarity, rarely showing himself in public with them,

keeping them at a distance, indeed, and feeling very little interest

in them. He was their guardian--he, a man who, of all things, had

least desired to have a family, who spent the whole of his income

upon himself, who hated sentiment, who had no ideal of friendship.

Cesare Dias, a man without tenderness, without affection, without

sympathy, was the guardian of two young girls. He was this by the

freak of Francesco Acquaviva. Dias would be glad enough when the day

came for the girls to marry. When people congratulated him upon his

situation as a rich bachelor with no obligations, he responded with a

somewhat sarcastic smile: "Pity me rather; I've got two children--a

legacy from Francesco Acquaviva."

"Oh, they'll soon be married."

"I hope so," he murmured devoutly.

As he watched the girls grow up, the character of Laura, haughty,

and reserved, and silent, as if she had already known a thousand

disillusions, began vaguely to please him, as if he saw obscurely

in a looking-glass a face that distantly resembled his own:

a faint admiration which was really but reflex admiration of

himself. The character of Anna, on the contrary, open, loyal,

impressionable and impulsive, a character full of strong likes and

dislikes--imaginative, enthusiastic, generous--had always roused in

him a certain antipathy.

In her presence he seemed even colder and more indifferent than

elsewhere; merciless for all human weakness, disdainful of all human

interests.

It would have been a miracle if two such incompatible natures, each

so positive, had not repelled each other. Sometimes, though, Anna

could not help feeling a certain secret respect for this man, who

perhaps had good reasons--reasons born of suffering--for the contempt

with which he regarded his fellow-beings; and sometimes Dias told

himself that it was ridiculous to be angry with this strange child,

for she was a worthy daughter of Francesco Acquaviva, a man who

had tossed his life to the winds of pleasure. Dias asked himself

scornfully, "What does it matter?"

And so, when he learned that his ward had fallen in love with an

obscure and penniless youth, he shrugged his shoulders, murmuring,

"Rhetoric!" He deemed it wiser not to speak to her about the matter,

for he knew that the flame of love is only fanned by the wind of

contradiction; besides, it is always useless to talk sensibly to a

silly girl.

When Giustino Morelli had called upon him and humbly asked for Anna's

hand, Dias opposed to the ingenuous eloquence of love the cynical

philosophy of the world, and thought his trouble ended when he saw

the young man go away, pale and resigned. "Rhetoric, rhetoric!"

was his mental commentary; and he had a theory that what he called

rhetoric could be trusted to die a natural death. So he went back to

his usual occupation, giving the affair no further thought.

But chemical analysis cannot explain spontaneous generation;

criticism cannot explain genius; and no more can cold reason explain

or understand youthful passion.

When it came to the knowledge of Cesare Dias that Anna had left

her home to give herself into the keeping of a poor nobody, he was

for a moment stupefied; he seemed for a moment to have a vision of

that force whose existence he had hitherto doubted, which can lift

hearts up to dizzy heights, and human beings far above convention. He

was a man of few words, a man of action, but now he was staggered,

nonplussed. A child who could play her reputation and her future

like this, inspired him with a sort of vague respect, a respect for

the power that moved her. Ah, there was a convulsion in the soul of

Cesare Dias, the man of fixed ideas and easy aphorisms, who suddenly

found himself face to face with a moral crisis in which the life of

his young ward might be wrecked. And he felt a pang of self-reproach.

He ought to have watched more carefully over her; he ought to have

been kinder to her; he ought not to have left her to walk unguided

in the dangerous path of youth and love.

He felt a certain pity for the poor weak creature, who had gone,

as it were, headlong over a precipice without calling for help.

He thought that, if she had been his own daughter, he would have

endeavoured to cultivate her common sense, to show her that it was

impossible for people to live constantly at concert pitch. He had,

therefore, failed in his duty towards her, in his office of protector

and friend; and yet what faith her dead father, Francesco Acquaviva,

had had in him, in his wisdom, in his affection! Anna, who had

hitherto inspired him only with that disdain which practical men feel

for sentimentalists, now moved him to compassion, as a defenceless

being exposed to all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

And during his drive from Naples to Pompeii he promised himself that

he would be very kind to her, very gentle. If she had flown from her

home, it was doubtless because the love that Giustino Morelli bore

her had appeared greater to her than the love of her own people;

and doubtless, too, there are hearts to whom love is as necessary

as bread is to the body. Never before had Cesare Dias felt such an

emotion as beset him now during that long drive to Pompeii; for years

he had been on his guard against such emotions.

And, accordingly, after that fatal day on which he brought her back

to her house, he and Laura and Stella Martini all tried to create

round Anna a peaceful atmosphere of kindness and indulgence, as if

she had committed a grave but generous error, by whose consequences

she alone was hurt. Laura--silent, thoughtful, with her dreamy grey

eyes, her placid face--nursed Anna through her fever with quiet

sisterly devotion. Cesare Dias called every morning, entering the

room on tiptoe, inquiring with a glance how the sufferer was doing,

then seating himself at a distance from the bed, without speaking. If

Anna looked up, if he felt her big sorrowful black eyes turned upon

his face, he would ask in a gentle voice, the voice of _that day_,

how she felt; she would answer with a faint smile, "Better," and

would shut her eyes again, and go back to her interior contemplations.

Cesare Dias, after that, would get up noiselessly and go away, to

come again in the afternoon, and still again in the evening, perhaps

for a longer visit.

Laura, always dressed in white, would meet him in the sitting-room;

and he would ask, "Is she better?"

"She seems to be."

"Has she been asleep to-day?"

"No, I don't think she has been asleep."

"Has she said anything."

"Not a word."

"Who is to watch with her to-night."

"I."

"You will wear yourself out."

"No, no."

Nothing else passed between them.

Often he would arrive in the evening wearing his dress-suit; he had

dined at his club, and was off for a card-party or a first night at

a theatre. Then he would remain standing, with his overcoat open,

his hat in his hand. At such a time, a little warmed up by the

dinner he had eaten, or the amusements that awaited him, Cesare Dias

was still a handsome man; his dull eyes shone with some of their

forgotten brightness; his cheeks had a little colour in them; and his

smooth black hair gave him almost an appearance of youth. One who

had seen him in the morning, pale and exhausted, would scarcely have

recognised him. Laura would meet him and part with him, never asking

whence he came or whither he was bound; when he had said good-night

she would return to Anna, slowly, with her light footsteps that

merely brushed the carpet.

Cesare Dias told himself that if he wished to make his sick ward over

morally, now was the time to begin, while her body was weak and her

soul malleable. It would be impossible to transform her spirit after

she had once got back her strength. Anna was completely prostrated,

passing the entire day without moving, her arms stretched out at full

length, her hands pale and cold, her face turned on the side, her

two rich plaits of black hair extended on her pillow; bloodless her

cheeks, her lips, her brow; lifeless the glance of her eyes. When

spoken to, she answered with a slight movement of the head, or, at

most, one or two words--always the same.

"How do you feel?"

"Better."

"Do you wish for anything?"

"Nothing."

"Is there nothing you would like?"

"No, thanks."

Whereupon she would close her eyes again, exhausted. Nothing more

would be said by those round her, but Anna knew that they were there,

silent, talking together by means of significant glances.

One day, Cesare Dias and Laura Acquaviva felt that they could mark a

progress in Anna's convalescence, because two or three times she had

looked at them with an expression of such earnest penitence, with

such an eager prayer for pardon, in her sad dark eyes, that words

were not necessary to tell what she felt. Soon afterwards she seemed

to wish to be left alone with Dias, as if she had a secret to confide

to him; but he cautiously thought it best to defer any private talk.

However, one morning it so happened that he found himself alone in

her room. He was reading a newspaper when a soft voice said:

"Listen."

Cesare Dias looked at her. Her black eyes were again beseeching

forgiveness, and Anna stammered:

"What must you have thought--what must you have said of me!"

"You must not excite yourself, my dear," he said kindly.

"I was so wicked," she sobbed.

"Don't talk like that, dear Anna; you were guilty of nothing more

than a girlish folly."

"A sin, a sin."

"You must call things by their right names, and not let your

imagination get the better of you," he answered, somewhat coldly. "A

youthful folly."

"Well, be it as you wish," she said, humbly; "but if you knew----"

"There, there," murmured Cesare Dias with the shadow of a smile,

"calm yourself; we'll speak of this another day."

Laura had come back into the room, and her presence cut short their

talk.

That evening, by the faint light of a little lamp that hung before

an image of the Virgin at her bedside, Anna saw the big grey eyes of

Laura gazing at her inquiringly; and therewith she raised herself a

little on her pillow and called her sister to her.

"You are good; you don't know----"

"You mustn't excite yourself."

"You are innocent, Laura, but you are my sister. Don't judge me

harshly."

"I don't judge you, Anna."

"Laura, Laura----"

"Be quiet, Anna."

Laura's tone was a little hard, but with her hand she gently caressed

her sister's cheek; and Anna said nothing more.

As her recovery progressed, an expression of humility, of

contrition, seemed to become more and more constant upon her face

when she had to do with Laura or with Dias.

They were very kind to her, with that pitying kindness which we show

to invalids, to old people, and to children--a kindness in marked

contrast to their former indifference, which awoke in her an ever

sharper and sharper remorse. She felt a great difference between

herself and them: they were sane in body and mind, their blood flowed

tranquilly in their veins, their consciences were untroubled; while

she was broken in health, disturbed in spirit, and miserable in

thinking of her past, its deceits, its errors, its thousand shameful

aberrations, its lack of maidenly decorum--and for whom? for whom?

For a fool, a simpleton, a fellow who had neither heart nor courage,

who had never loved her, who was cruel and inept. When she drew a

mental comparison between Giustino Morelli and these two persons

whom she had wished to desert for him--between Giustino, so timid,

so poor in all right feeling, so bankrupt in passion, and them, so

magnanimous, so forgetful of her fault--her repentance grew apace.

It was the exaggerated repentance of a noble nature, which magnifies

the moral gravity of its own transgressions. She felt herself to

be quite undeserving of the sympathy and affection with which they

treated her. Their kindness was an act of gratuitous charity beyond

her merits.

She would look from Laura to Cesare Dias and murmur: "You are good;

you are good." And then at the sound of her own voice she would be

so moved that she would weep; and pale, with great dark circles under

her eyes, she would repeat, "So good, so good."

Her sole desire was to show herself absolutely obedient to whatever

her guardian demanded, to whatever her sister advised.

She gave herself over, bound hand and foot, to these two beings whom

she had so cruelly forgotten on the day of her mad adventure; in her

convalescence she found a great joy in throwing herself absolutely

upon their wisdom and their goodness.

Little by little it seemed to her that she was being born again to

a new life, quiet, placid, irresponsible; a life in which she would

have no will of her own, in which, passively, gladly, she would

be guided and controlled by them. So, whenever they spoke to her,

whenever they asked for her opinion--whether a window should be

opened or closed, whether a bouquet of flowers should be left in the

room or carried out, whether a note should be written to a friend who

had called to inquire how she was--she always said, "Yes," or "As you

think best," emphasising her answer with a gesture and a glance.

"Yes" to whatever Cesare Dias suggested to her; Cesare Dias who had

grown in her imagination to the proportions of a superior being, far

removed from human littleness, invincible, dwelling in the highest

spheres of abstract intellect; and "Yes" to whatever Laura Acquaviva

suggested, Laura the pure, the impeccable, who had never had the

weakness to fall in love, who would die rather than be wanting to

her ideal of herself. "Yes" even to whatever her poor governess,

Stella Martini, suggested; Stella so kind, so faithful, whom in the

past she had so heartlessly deceived. "Yes" to the good Sister of

Charity, Maria del Crocifisso, who passed her life in self-sacrifice,

in self-abnegation, in loving devotion to others. "Yes" to everybody.

Anna said nothing but "Yes," because she had been wrong, and they had

all been right.

She was getting well. Nothing remained of her illness except a mortal

weakness, a heaviness of the head, an inability to concentrate her

mind upon one idea, a desire to rest where she was, not to move from

her bed, from her room, not to lift her hands, to keep her eyes

closed, her cheek buried in her pillow. Cesare Dias called daily

after luncheon, at two o'clock, an hour when men of the world have

absolutely nothing to do, for visits are not in order till four.

The girls waited for him every afternoon; Laura with her appearance

of being above all earthly trifles, showing neither curiosity nor

eagerness; Anna with a secret anxiety because he would bring her

a sense of calmness and strength, a breath of the world's air,

and especially because he seemed so firm, so imperturbable, that

she found it restorative merely to look at him, as weaklings find

restorative the sight of those who are robust. He would chat a

little, giving the latest gossip, telling where last night's ball

had been held, who had gone upon a journey, who had got married, but

always with that tone of disdain, that tone of the superior being

who sees but is not moved, and yet who seeks to conceal his boredom,

which was characteristic of him.

Sometimes, though, he would laugh outright at the society he moved

in, at its pleasures, at its people, burlesquing and caricaturing

them, and ridiculing himself for being led by them.

"Oh, you!" cried Anna, with an indescribable intonation of respect.

She listened eagerly to everything he said. Her fragile soul was

like a butterfly that lights on every tiniest flower. These elegant

and meaningless frivolities, these experiences without depth or

significance, these axioms of a social code that turned appearances

into idols, all this worthless baggage delighted her enfeebled

imagination. Her heart seemed to care for nothing but little things.

She admired Cesare Dias as a splendid and austere man whom destiny

had thrown amidst inferior surroundings, and who adapted himself to

them without losing any of his nobler qualities. She told herself

that his was a great soul that had been born too soon, perhaps too

late; he was immeasurably above his times, yet with quiet fortitude

he took them in good part. When he displayed his scorn for all human

ambitions, speaking of how transitory everything pertaining to

this world is in its nature; when he derided human folly and human

beings who in the pursuit of follies lose their fortunes and their

reputations; when he said that the only human thing deserving of

respect was success; when he said that all generosity was born of

some secret motive of selfishness, that all virtue was the result

of some weakness of character or of temperament--she, immensely

impressed, having forgotten during her fever the emotional reasons

to be opposed to such effete and corrupt theories, bowed her head,

answering sadly, "You are right."

Now that she was able to sit up they were often alone together. Laura

would leave them to go and read in the sitting-room, or to receive

callers in the drawing-room, or to walk out with Stella Martini. She

could always find some pretext for taking herself off. She was a

reserved, silent girl, who knew neither how to live nor how to love

as others did. It was best to leave her to her taste for silence, for

self-absorption. Cesare Dias, a little anxious about her, asked Anna:

"What is the matter with Laura?"

"She is good--she is the best girl alive," Anna answered, with the

feeling she always showed when she named her sister.

Cesare Dias looked at her fixedly. He looked at her like this

whenever her voice betrayed emotion. It seemed to him that it was

her old nature revealing itself again; he wished to stamp it out,

to suffocate it. Her heart was defenceless, too impressionable, the

heart of a child: he wished to turn it into a heart of bronze, which

would be unaffected by the breath of passion. Always, therefore,

when Anna allowed her soul to vibrate in her voice, Cesare Dias,

naturally serious and composed enough, seemed to become more serious,

more austere; his eye hardened into glass, and Anna felt that she had

displeased him. She knew that she displeased him as often as anything

in her manner could recall that wild adventure which had sullied the

innocence of her girlhood: as often as she gave any sign of being

deeply moved: if she turned pale, if she bowed her head, if she wept.

Cesare Dias hated all such manifestations of sentimental weakness.

Sometimes, when Anna could no longer control herself, and her emotion

could not be prevented from shining in her eyes, he would pretend not

to notice it. Sometimes he would demand, "What is the matter?"

"Nothing," said she, timidly conscious that by her timidity she but

displeased him the more.

"Always the same--incorrigible," he murmured, shaking his head

hopelessly.

"Forgive me; I can't help it," she besought him with an imploring

glance.

"You shouldn't say of anything that you can't help it. You should be

strong enough to govern yourself in all circumstances," was the axiom

of Cesare Dias.

"I will try."

One day in April, Stella Martini, coming home from a walk with

Laura, brought her some flowers--some beautiful wild rosebuds,

which in Naples blossom so early in the year. Anna was seated in an

easy-chair near the window, through which entered the soft spring

air; and when she saw Laura and Stella come into the house--Laura

dressed in white, breathing peace and youth from every line of

her figure--Stella with her face that seemed to have been scalded

and shrivelled up by tears shed long ago, both bearing great

quantities of fresh sweet roses, the poor girl's heart swelled with

indescribable tenderness.

Holding the roses in her hand, she caressed them, touched them with

her face, buried her lips in them, and said under her voice: "Thank

you, thank you," as if in her weakness she could find no other words

to express her pleasure.

Cesare Dias, arriving a little later, found her in rapt contemplation

over her flowers, her great fond eyes glowing with joy. A shadow

crossed his face.

"See, they have brought me these flowers," she said. "Aren't they

lovely?"

"I see them," he said, drily.

"Aren't you fond of flowers? They're so fresh and fragrant. I hope

you're fond of them; I adore them."

And in the fervour of her last phrase she closed her eyes.

It occurred to him that she had doubtless not so very long ago

spoken the same words of a man; and he realised that, in spite of

her illness, in spite of her repentance, she was ever the same Anna

Acquaviva who had once flown from her home and people. He lifted his

eyebrows, and his ebony walking-stick beat rather nervously against

his chair.

"Would you like a rose?" she asked, to placate him.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't care for flowers."

"What! Not even to wear in your button-hole when you go into

society?" she asked, trying to jest.

"They're not _de rigueur_. Flowers are pretty enough in their way;

but I assure you I have never had the weakness to weep over them, or

to say that I adore them."

"I was wrong, I said too much."

"You always say too much. You lack a sense of proportion. There are a

great many things a girl shouldn't say, lest, if she begins by saying

them, she should end by doing them, The woman who says too much is

lost."

Anna turned as white as the collar of her frock. It had come at last,

the reproof she had so long been waiting for, and secretly dreading.

He had put it in a single brief sentence. The woman who says too much

is lost. Once upon a time, six months ago for instance, she would

have endured such a reproof from no one, such a bitter reference to

her past; she would have retorted hotly, especially if the speaker

had been Cesare Dias. But now! So weakened was she by her illness and

her sorrow, there was not a fibre in her that resented it; her blood

slept in her veins; her heart contained nothing but penitence. "The

woman who says too much is lost!" Cesare Dias was right.

"It is true," she said.

And yet, as she said it, a new grief was born within her, as if she

had renounced some precious possession of her soul, broken some holy

vow.

Cesare's face cleared. He had won a victory.

"Anna," he went on, "every time that you allow yourself to be carried

away by sentimentalism, that you employ exaggerated expressions,

that you indulge in emotional rhetoric, I assure you, you displease

me greatly. How ridiculous if life were to be passed in saying of

people, houses, landscapes, flowers, 'I adore them!' Don't you see

what a convulsive, hysterical frame of mind that is? As if life were

nothing but a smile, a tear, a kiss! Do you know to what this sort of

thing inevitably leads? You know----"

"Spare me, I entreat you."

"I can't, dear. First you must agree with me that your attitude

towards life, though a generous one if you like, is not a wise one,

and that it leads to the gravest errors. Am I right?"

"You are right."

"You must agree with me that that sort of thing can only make

ourselves and others miserable, whereas our duty is to be as happy

and to make others as happy as we can. Everything else is rhetoric.

Am I right?"

"You are right. You are always right."

"Finally, you must agree that it is better to be reasonable than to

be sentimental; better to be arid than to be rhetorical, better to be

silent than to speak out everything that is in one's heart; better

to be strong than to be weak. Am I not right?"

"You are right, always right."

"Anna, do you know what life is?"

"No, I don't know what it really is."

"Life is a thing which is serious and absurd at the same time."

She made no answer; she was silent and pensive.

"It is serious because it is the only thing we know anything about;

because every man and every woman, in whatever rank or condition, is

bound to be honest, well-behaved, worthy and proper; because if one

is rich and noble it is one's duty to be moral in a given way; if one

is poor and humble, it is one's duty to be moral in another way."

He saw that she was listening to him eagerly; he saw that he might

hazard a great stroke.

"Giustino Morelli----" he began softly.

"No!" she cried, pressing her hands to her temples, her face

convulsed with terror.

"Giustino Morelli----" he repeated calmly.

"For Heaven's sake, don't speak of him."

Cesare Dias appeared neither to see nor hear her. He wished to go to

the bottom of the matter, courageously, pitilessly.

"--was a serious person, an honest man," he concluded.

"He was an infamous traitor," said Anna, in a low voice, as if

speaking to herself.

"Anna, he was an honest man. You ought to believe it. You will

believe it."

"Never, never."

"Yes, you will. You ought to do him justice. I, who am a man, I must

do him justice. He might have issued from his obscurity; he might

have had money, a beautiful wife, a wife whom he loved, for he loved

you----"

"No, no."

"Everybody loves in his own way, my dear," retorted Cesare,

icily. "He loved you. But because he did not wish to be thought

self-interested, because he did not wish the world to say of him

that he had loved you for your money, because he did not wish to

hear you, Anna, some day say the same thing; because he could not

endure the accusation of having seduced a young girl for her fortune;

because he was not willing to let you suffer, as for some years, at

any rate, you would have had to suffer, from poverty and obscurity,

he renounced you. Do you understand? He renounced you because he was

honest. He renounced you, though in doing so he had to face your

anger and your scorn. My dear, that man was a martyr to duty, to use

one of your own phrases. Will you allow me to say something which may

appear ungracious, but which is really friendly?"

Anna consented with a sign.

"Well, you have no just notion of the seriousness of life. All

its responsibilities can be scattered by a caprice, by a passion,

to quote what you yourself have said. You would brush aside all

obstacles; and you would run the risk of losing all respect, all

honour, all peace, all health, thereby. Life, Anna, is a very serious

affair."

With a bowed head, she could only answer by a gesture, a gesture that

said "Yes."

"And, at the same time, it's a trifling matter, Anna."

It was the corrupt, effete nobleman who now re-appeared, the _viveur_

who had drunk at every fountain, who was always bored and always

curious; it was he who now took the place of the moral teacher. Anna

looked up, surprised and shocked.

"Life is absurd, ridiculous, contemptible. The world is full of cruel

parents, of false friends, of wives who betray their husbands, of

husbands who maltreat their wives, of well-dressed swindlers, of

thieving bankers. All of them in turn are judges and criminals. All

appearances are deceitful; all faces lie. If by chance there turns up

a man who seems really honest, nobody believes in him; or, if people

believe in him, they despise him. The man who sacrifices himself,

who makes some great renunciation--poor Morelli--gets nothing but

disdain."

"But--if all this is true?" cried Anna sadly.

"Then, one must have the strength to keep one's own real feelings

hidden; one must wear a mask; one must take other men and women at

their proper value; one must march straight forward."

"Whether happy or miserable?"

She put this question with great anxiety, for she felt that when it

was answered her soul's point of interrogation would be changed to a

full stop.

"The strong are happy; the weak are miserable. Only the strong can

triumph."

She was silent, oppressed and pained by his philosophy, by its

bitterness, its sterile pride, its egotism and cruelty. It seemed as

if he had built a sepulchre from the ruins of her illusions. She felt

that she no longer understood either her own nature or the external

world; a sense of fear and of confusion had taken the place of her

old principles and aspirations. And there was a great home-sickness

in her heart for love, for devotion, for tenderness, for enthusiasm;

a great melancholy at the thought that she would never thrill with

them again, that she would never weep again. She felt a great

indefinable longing, not for the past, not for the present, not

for the future, a longing that related itself to nothing. And

she realised that what Cesare Dias had said was true--horribly,

dreadfully, certainly true. She could be sure of nothing after this,

she had lost her pole-star, she was being swept round and round in a

spiritual whirlpool. And he who had led her into it inspired her with

fear, respect, and a vague admiration. He himself had got beyond the

whirlpool, he was safe in port. Perhaps, in despair, he had thrown

overboard into the furious waves the most precious part of his cargo;

perhaps he was little better than a wreck; but what did it matter? He

was safe in harbour.

She was not sure whether it was better to brave out the tempest, to

lose everything nobly and generously for the sake of love, or to

save appearances, make for still waters, and in them enjoy a selfish

tranquillity.

"You are strong?" she said.

"Yes," he assented.

"And are you happy--really?"

"Very happy. As happy as one can be."

By-and-by she asked: "Have you always been happy?"

Cesare Dias did not answer.

"Tell me, tell me, have you always been happy?"

"What does the past matter? Nothing."

"And--have you ever loved?"

"The person who says too much is lost; the person who wants to know

too much suffers. Don't ask."

She chose a rose and offered it to him. He took it and put it into

his button-hole.

At that instant Laura Acquaviva entered the room.

IV.

At the opening of the San Carlo theatre on Christmas night the opera

was "The Huguenots."

A first night at the San Carlo is always an event for the Neapolitan

public, no matter what opera, old or new, is given; but when the work

happens to be a favourite the excitement becomes tremendous.

The two thousand persons, male and female, who constitute society

in that town of half a million inhabitants, go about for a week

beforehand, from house to house, from café to café, predicting that

the evening will be a success. The chief rôles in "The Huguenots"

were to be taken by De Giuli Borsi and Roberto Stagno, rôles in which

the public was to hear these artists for the first time, though they

were already known to everybody, either by reputation or from having

been heard in other operas.

So, on that Christmas Day, the two thousand members of Neapolitan

society put aside their usual occupations and arranged their time

in such wise as to be ready promptly at eight o'clock, the men in

their dress-suits, the women in rich and beautiful evening toilets.

Everybody gave up something--a walk, a call, a luncheon, a nap--for

the sake of getting betimes to the theatre.

By half-past seven the approaches to San Carlo, its portico, its big

and little entrances, all brilliantly lighted by gas, were swarming

like an ant-hill with eager people. Some came on foot, the collars of

their overcoats turned up, showing freshly shaven faces under their

tall silk opera-hats, or freshly waxed moustaches and beards newly

pointed; others came in cabs; and before the central door, under the

portico, which was draped with flags, passed a constant stream of

private carriages, depositing ladies muffled in opera-cloaks of red

velvet or white embroidery.

By a quarter past eight the house was full.

Anna and Laura Acquaviva, dressed in white silk, and accompanied by

Stella Martini, occupied Box No. 19 of the second tier.

Cesare Dias had a place in Box No. 4 of the first tier.

Anna kept her eyes fixed upon him. He glanced up at her, but did not

bow. He only turned and spoke a few words to the young man next to

him, who thereupon aimed his opera-glass, at the girls' box; he was

a young gentleman of medium height, with a blonde beard, and blonde

hair brushed straight back from his forehead. His brown eyes had an

expression of great kindness.

Anna kept her gaze fixed upon Cesare Dias; if now and then she

turned it towards the stage it would only be for a brief moment.

"That is Luigi Caracciolo," said Laura.

"Who?" asked Anna.

"Luigi Caracciolo, the man next to Dias."

"Ah."

And again, Anna turned her face towards Box No. 4, where Cesare Dias

sat with Luigi Caracciolo. The rest of the theatre hung round her

in a sort of coloured mist; the only thing she clearly saw was the

narrow space where those two men sat together.

Did they feel the magnetism of her gaze?

Cesare Dias, leaning forward, with his arm on the red velvet of the

railing, was listening to the music of Meyerbeer; now and then he

cast an absent-minded glance round the audience, the glance of a man

who knows beforehand that he will find the usual people in the usual

places.

Luigi Caracciolo appeared to give little heed to the music. He was

pulling his blonde beard, and studying the ladies in the house

through his opera-glass, while a slight smile played upon his

lips. Presently he fixed his glass on Anna's box. Had he felt that

magnetism? At any rate, he kept his glass fixed upon Anna's box.

The curtain fell on the first act.

Cesare Dias spoke a word or two to Luigi, and the two men rose and

left their places.

Suddenly it seemed to Anna as if all the lights in the theatre had

been put out.

"Stagno sang divinely," said Stella Martini.

"Yes," responded Laura. "But didn't it strike you that he rather

exaggerated?"

"No, I can't say it did."

Anna did not hear; her eyes were closed.

There was a rumour in the house of moving people; there was a sound

of opening and closing doors. Fans fluttered, men changed their

seats, people went and came, many of the stalls were empty. The round

of visits had begun. Husbands and brothers left their boxes to make

place for other men beside their wives and sisters; to pay their

respects to other men's wives and sisters. There was a babble of many

voices idly chatting. It began in the first and second tiers, and

it rose to the galleries, the stronghold of students, workmen, and

clerks.

Anna gazed sadly at that deserted box below her.

All at once she heard Laura say, "Luigi Caracciolo and Cesare Dias

are with the Contessa d'Alemagna."

Anna turned round, and raised her opera-glass.

They were there indeed, visiting the beautiful Countess; Anna could

see the pale and noble face of Cesare Dias, the youthful face of

Caracciolo. The Contessa d'Alemagna was an Austrian, very clever,

very witty. She wore a costume of red silk, and kept waving a fan of

red feathers, as she talked vivaciously with the two men. She must

have been saying something extremely interesting, to judge by the

close attention with which they listened to her and by the smiles

with which they responded.

When Anna put down her opera-glass, her face had become deathly pale.

"Are you feeling ill?" asked Stella Martini.

"No," the child replied, paler than ever.

"Perhaps it's too hot here for you. Shall I open the door of the

box?" suggested the governess.

"Laura, will you change seats with me?" said Anna.

Laura took Anna's place, and Anna retired to the back of the box,

where she closed her eyes.

"Do you feel better, dear?"

"Thanks. Much better. It was the heat."

And she made as if to return to the front of the box, but Stella

detained her, fearing that the heat there might again disturb her. So

Anna stopped where she was, breathing the fresh air that came through

the open door.

"Do you like 'The Huguenots,' Stella?" she asked, for the sake of

saying something, in the hope, perhaps, of thus forgetting her desire

to see what was going on in the box of the Contessa d'Alemagna.

"Very much. And you?"

"I like it immensely."

"I am afraid--I am afraid that later on you may find it too exciting.

You know the fourth act is very terrible. Don't you dread the

impression it may make upon you?"

"It won't matter, Stella," she said, with a faint smile.

"Perhaps you would like to go home before the fourth act begins. If

you feel nervous about it----"

"I am not nervous," she murmured, as if speaking to herself. "Or, if

I am, I'd rather suffer this way than otherwise."

"We were wrong to come," said Stella, shaking her head.

"No, no, Stella. Let us stay. I am all right; I am enjoying it. Don't

take me home yet."

And she went back to the front of the box, to the seat next to

Laura's.

"Cesare Dias and Luigi Caracciolo have left the Contessa d'Alemagna,"

said Laura.

"Already?"

"Perhaps they will come here," suggested Stella Martini.

"I don't think so. There won't be time," said Laura.

"There won't be time," assented Anna.

The house had become silent again, in anticipation of the second act.

Here and there some one who had delayed too long in a box where he

was visiting, would say good-bye quietly, and return to his place.

A few such visitors, better acquainted with their hosts, remained

seated, determined not to move. Among the latter were, of course, the

lovers of the ladies, the intimate friends of the husbands.