nd enlivened certain details in the old story.

"Another time, in the conservatory, when it had been raining
monotonously since morning, she asked, 'Philip'--she used to pronounce
my name just the way you do."

He paused, himself surprised by the primitive simplicity of what he had
just expressed.

"'Do you know,' she asked, 'the story of the English painter Rossetti?'
and she told me the episode, which had so vividly impressed her, how
Rossetti had promised the lady he loved to let her keep forever the
manuscript of the book he had written for her, and if she died, to lay
it beside her in her coffin. She died, and he actually carried out his
promise and buried the manuscript with her. But later, bitten by the
love of glory, he violated his promise and the tomb. 'You will let me
have your book if I die before you, and will not take it back, will
you, Philip?' And I promised laughingly, and she laughed too.

"I recovered from my illness slowly. When I was strong enough, they
told me that she had died. When I was able to go out, they took me to
the tomb, the vast family sepulchre which somewhere hid her new little
coffin.

"There's no use my telling you how miserable I was and how I grieved
for her. Everything reminded me of her. I was full of her, and yet
she was no more! As I recovered from the illness, during which my
memory had faded, each detail brought me a recollection. My grief was
a fearful reawakening of my love. The sight of the manuscript brought
my promise back to me. I put it in a box without reading it again,
although I had forgotten it, things having been blotted out of my mind
during my convalescence. I had the slab removed and the coffin opened,
and a servant put the book in her hands.

"I lived. I worked. I tried to write a book. I wrote dramas and
poems. But nothing satisfied me, and gradually I came to want our book
back.

"I knew it was beautiful and sincere and vibrant with the two hearts
that had given themselves to each other. Then, like a coward, three
years afterward, I tried to re-write it--to show it to the world. Anna,
you must have pity on us all! But I must say it was not only the
desire for glory and praise, as in the case of the English artist,
which impelled me to close my ears to the sweet, gentle voice out of
the past, so strong in its powerlessness, 'You will not take it back
from me, will you, Philip?' It was not only for the sake of showing
off in a boo