out having reached anything so vulgar as a
conclusion.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Emma Verplanck stood in the _loggia_ of her tiny villa and
winced in the focus of the curiosities she despised. She scanned the
white road that rimmed her valley before descending sharply to Florence
beyond the hill, and especially the crescent of dust where an approaching
figure would first appear. Now and then, as if for a rest, her eye traced
the line of flaming willows down toward the plunge of her brook into the
larger valley, or the file of spectral poplars that led into the
vineyards hanging on the declivity of Fiesole. Above all, the gaunt and
gashed bulk of Monte Ceceri glistened hotly against a pale blue sky, for
if it was a backward April, the first stirring of summer was already in
the air. She thrilled with disgust as she asked herself why she dreaded
this call. Why should she fear lest an elementary test, a very simple
explanation such as she planned for that afternoon, should compromise an
established friendship?

Interrupting this self-examination the mighty but unwieldy form of Morton
Crocker loomed in the white dust crescent, and his premature panama
swiftly followed the curve of the low grey wall towards her gate. As his
steps were heard, her mind flew to the forbidding St. Michael on his gold
background in her den and she could fairly hear Harwood saying to all of
us, "Three to one on the Saint, who takes me?" The jangling of the bell
recalled her to Crocker, and she braced herself in the full sunlight to
receive him. For a moment, as he loomed in the archway, she indulged that
especial pride which we reserve for that which we might possess but
austerely deny ourselves.

Her mingled moods produced an unusual softness. Crocker felt it and
wondered as she gave him her hand and had him sit for a prudent moment
outside. All the hot way up the valley he had had a sense of a crisis. It
was odd to be summoned whither he had been drifting for four years, and
now the sight of Emma disarmed, perplexed him. It seemed ominous. One
finds such transparent kindness in clever people generally at parting,
when one would be remembered for one's self and not for a phrase. Then
Crocker for an instant glimpsed the wilder hope that the softening was
for him and not for an occasion. Emma had never seemed more desirable
than to-day. A white strand or two in her yellow hair, the tiny wrinkles
at the corners of her