default in the full splendor of our honeymoon than to have broken with
me afterwards, when I should have moulded my nature forever to your
caresses. We were brought together ... oh, by the orange perfume, by
that cursed Springtime; but you were not meant for me, nor was I ever
meant for you. We are of different breeds. You were born a bourgeois. I
am an out-and-out bohemian! Love and the novelty of my kind quite,
dazzled you. You struggled hard, you beat your wings, to follow me, but
you fell to earth from the very weight of your inherited traits. You
have the appetites and the ambitions of people like you! Now you imagine
you are unhappy! But you'll find you're not when you see yourself become
a personage,' when you count the acreage of your orchards over, when you
see your children growing up to inherit papa's power and fortune. This
business of love for love's sake, mocking at law and morality, scorning
life and peacefulness, that is our privilege, the privilege of us
bohemians--the sole blessing left to us mad creatures whom society looks
upon--quite properly, I suppose--with disdainful mistrust. Each to his
own! The poultry to their quiet roost, where they can fatten in the sun;
the birds of passage to their wandering life of song, sometimes in a
flowering garden, sometimes in the cold and storm!"

And smiling again, as if those words, uttered with such gravity and
conviction, had been too cruel in their effective summary of the whole
story of their love, she added in a jesting tone:

"That was a fine little paragraph, wasn't it? What a pity you didn't
hear it in time to tack it on at the end of your speech!"

The carriage had entered the _Plaza de Oriente_; and was drawing up in
front of Leonora's house.

"May I go in with you?" the deputy asked anxiously, much as a child
might beg for a toy.

"Why? You'll only be bored. It will be the same as here. Upstairs there
is no moon, and there are no orange-trees in bloom. You can't expect two
nights like that in a life like yours. Besides, I don't want Beppa to
see you. She has a vivid recollection of that afternoon in the Hotel de
Roma when I got your note. I'd lose prestige with her if she saw me in
your company."

With a commanding gesture she motioned him to the sidewalk. When the
carriage had gone they stood there together for a moment looking at each
other for the last time.

"Farewell, Rafael. Take good care of yourself, and try not to grow old
so rapidly