no one in the little
reading-room. In that reading-room Maria and Giovanni had spent two
happy hours, hand in hand, talking with hushed voices, often trembling
in fear lest some one should come in.

"Do you remember," said Maria, "that there was a fireplace in the room,
near the sofa where we sat?"

"Yes, dear."

"And that it was cold, although it was May; so cold that the waiter came
in to light the fire?"

"Yes, and it was then I made you cry."

"Could you repeat those same words to-day?"

"Oh, no!"

So saying, Giovanni kissed his wife's white forehead reverently, as if
it were a holy thing. When the waiter came in to light the fire in the
little salon at Hergyswyl, Giovanni had dropped the beloved hand, and
had said, while the servant still lingered:

"The old log will surely burn on to the end, but who can tell how long
the youthful flame will last?" Maria had not answered, but had looked
at him, her eyes dilating, and dimmed by the cold touch of the unjust
suspicion, as the glass of a hothouse is dimmed by the touch of a frost
outside.

No, Giovanni had never again harboured such a thought. He and Maria
often said to each other that perhaps there was no other union on earth
like theirs, so penetrated with, so full of peace derived from the
solemnly sweet and grave certainty that, no matter how God might order
their existence after death, their spirits would surely be united in the
love of the Divine Will. Nevertheless, they did not neglect to lay the
desire of their souls before the Almighty. The prayer they had just
prayed together, both wrapt in inward contemplation, had been composed
by Giovanni, and ran as follows:

"Father, let it be with us as Jesus prayed that last night; life with
Him in Thee, for all eternity."

Even in the present they were two in one, in the narrowest, the most
accurate sense of the phrase, for their duality was also perceptible
in their spiritual union; as, when a green current mingles with a blue
current, it sometimes happens, at the beginning of their united course,
that broken waves flash here and there--some the colour of the woods,
some as blue as the sky. Giovanni was a mystic, who harmonised all
human affections with Divine love, in his heart. His wife, who had come
through him from Protestantism to a Catholicism thirsting for reason,
had entered into his mystic soul as far as was possible; but love for
Giovanni predominated in her over every other sentiment. She w