action in anything
save murder."

Giovanni once more picked up the boots. "I shall leave the signore in
the spring."

"As you please," said Hillard gently.

Giovanni bowed gravely and made off with his boots. Hillard remained
staring thoughtfully at the many-colored squares in the rug under his
feet. It would be lonesome with Giovanni gone. The old man had evidently
made up his mind.... But the Woman with the Voice, would she see the
notice in the paper? And if she did, would she reply to it? What a
foundation for a romance!... Bah! He prepared for bed.

To those who reckon earthly treasures as the only thing worth having,
John Hillard was a fortunate young man. That he was without kith or kin
was considered by many as an additional piece of good fortune. Born in
Sorrento, in one of the charming villas which sweep down to the very
brow of the cliffs, educated in Rome up to his fifteenth year; taken at
that age from the dreamy, drifting land and thrust into the noisy,
bustling life which was his inheritance; fatherless and motherless at
twenty; a college youth who was for ever mixing his Italian with his
English and being laughed at; hating tumult and loving quiet;
warm-hearted and impulsive, yet meeting only habitual reserve from his
compatriots whichever way he turned; it is not to be wondered at that he
preferred the land of his birth to that of his blood.

All this might indicate an artistic temperament, the ability to do petty
things grandly; but Hillard had escaped this. He loved his Raphaels, his
Titians, his Veroneses, his Rubenses, without any desire to make
indifferent copies of them; he admired his Dante, his Petrarch, his
Goldoni, without the wish to imitate them. He was full of sentiment
without being sentimental, a poet who thought but never indited verses.
His father's blood was in his veins, that is to say, the salt of
restraint; thus, his fortune grew and multiplied. The strongest and
reddest corpuscle had been the gift of his mother. She had left him the
legacy of loving all beautiful things in moderation, the legacy of
gentleness, of charity, of strong loves and frank hatreds, of humor, of
living out in the open, of dreaming great things and accomplishing none
of them.

The old house in which he lived was not in the fashionable quarter of
the town; but that did not matter. Nor did it vary externally from any
of its unpretentious neighbors. Inside, however, there were treasures
priceless and uni