so weary of life, so destitute of comfort.

Had she met the great opportunity of her life, the turning point, and
missed it? I do not think so. It was not for her.

* * * * *

A year later the duke died.

He made a dignified exit. An attack of vertigo to which he was liable
came on when he was on horseback. He was thrown and dragged, and only
survived a few days as by a miracle. His wife, who had seen little of
him during the last year, saw still less of him during the days of his
short illness. But when the end was close at hand he sent for her, and
asked her to remain in a distant recess of his room during the painful
hours.

"It will be a happier memory for you," he said gently to her between the
paroxysms of suffering, "to think that you were there."

And so propped high in a great carved bedstead in the octagonal room
where the Colle Altos were born, and where, when they could choose, they
died, the duke lay awaiting the end.

He had received extreme unction. The chanting choir had gone. The priest
had closed his pale fingers upon the crucifix, when he desired to be
left alone with his wife.

She drew near timidly and stood beside his bed.

He bent his tranquil, kindly eyes upon her.

"Good-bye, my Francesca," he said. "May God and his angels protect you,
and give you peace."

A belated compunction seized her.

"I wish I had been a better wife to you, Andrea," she said brokenly,
laying her hand on his.

He made the ghost of a courteous, deprecating gesture, and raised her
hand to his lips. The effort exhausted him. He closed his eyes and his
hand fell out of hers.

Through the open window came a sudden waft of hot carnations, a long
drawn breath of the rapturous Italian spring.

It reached the duke. He stirred slightly, and opened his eyes once more.
Once more they fell on Fay, and it seemed to her as if with the last
touch of his cold lips upon her hand their relation of husband and wife
had ceased. Even at that moment she realised with a sinking sense of
impotence how slight her hold on him from first to last had been.
Clearly he had already forgotten it, passed beyond it, would never
remember it again.

"It is spring," he said, looking full at her with tender fixity, and for
a moment she thought his mind was wandering. "Spring once more. The sun
shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. Since a year
he does not see them. Francesca, how much lo