e's rose-braided mask," and _how_, hating another and having sought,
long and painfully, to reach his victim's heart and pierce to the quick
of it, he might chance to have succeeded in that aim--

"Ask this, my Jules, and be answered straight,
By thy bride--how the painter Lutwyche can hate!"

* * * * *

Phene has said her lesson, but it too has failed. He still is changed.
He is not even thinking of her as she ceases. The name upon his lips is
Lutwyche, not her own. He mutters of "Lutwyche" and "all of them," and
"Venice"; yes, them he will meet at Venice, and it will be their turn.
But with that word--"meet"--he remembers her; he speaks to her--

". . . You I shall not meet:
If I dreamed, saying this would wake me."

Now Phene is again the silent one. We figure to ourselves the dark bent
head, the eyes that dare no more look up, the dreadful acquiescence as
he gives her money. So many others had done that; she had not thought
_he_ would, but she has never understood, and if to give her money is
his pleasure--why, she must take it, as she had taken that of the
others. But he goes on. He speaks of selling all his casts and books and
medals, that the produce may keep her "out of Natalia's clutches"; and
if he survives the meeting with the gang in Venice, there is just one
hope, for dimly she hears him say--

"We might meet somewhere, since the world is wide . . ."

Just that one vague, far hope, and for her _how_ wide the world is, how
very hard to compass! But she stands silent, in her well-learnt
patience; and he is about to speak again, when suddenly from outside a
girl's voice is heard, singing.

"Give her but a least excuse to love me!
When--where--
How--can this arm establish her above me,
If fortune fixed her as my lady there,
There already, to eternally reprove me?"

It is the song the peasants sing of "Kate the Queen"[64:1] and the page
who loved her, and pined "for the grace of her so far above his power of
doing good to"--

"'She never could be wronged, be poor,' he sighed,
'Need him to help her!' . . ."

Pippa, going back towards Asolo, carols it out as she passes; and Jules
listens to the end. It was bitter for the page to know that his lady was
above all need of him; yet men are wont to love so. But why should they
always choose the page's part? _He_ had not, in his dreams of
love. .