will send you a line to let you know when I can see you again.'

'Thank you,' answered Andrea.

'Good-bye then,' she said, holding out her hand.

'Shall I see you down to the street? There is no one there.'

'Yes--come down with me.'

She looked about her a little hesitatingly.

'Have you forgotten anything?' asked Andrea.

She was looking at the flowers, but she answered, 'Ah--yes--my
card-case.'

Andrea sprang to fetch it from the table. '_A stranger here_?' he read
as he handed it to her.

'_No, my dear, a friend_----'

Her answer was quick, her voice eager. Then suddenly with a smile
peculiarly her own, half imploring, half seductive, a mixture of
timidity and tenderness, she said: '_Give me a rose._'

Andrea went from vase to vase gathering all the roses into one great
bunch which he could scarcely hold in his hands--some of them shed their
petals.

'They were for you--all of them,' he said without looking at her.

Elena hung her head and turned to go in silence followed by Andrea. They
descended the stairs still in silence. He could see the nape of her neck
so fair and delicate where the little dark curls mingled with the
gray-blue fur.

'Elena!' he cried her name in a low voice, incapable any longer of
fighting against the passion that filled his heart to bursting.

She turned round to him with a finger on her lips--a gesture of agonised
entreaty--but her eyes burned through the shadow. She hastened her
steps, flung herself into the carriage and felt rather than saw him lay
the roses in her lap.

'Good-bye! Good-bye!'

And when the carriage turned away she threw herself back exhausted and
burst into a passion of sobs, tearing the roses to pieces with her poor
frenzied hands.

CHAPTER III

So she had come, she had come! She had re-entered the rooms in which
every piece of furniture, every object must retain some memory for her,
and she had said--'I am yours no more, can never be yours again, never!'
and--'Could you suffer to share me with another?'--Yes, she had dared to
fling those words in his face, in that room, in sight of all these
things!

A rush of pain--atrocious, immeasurable, made up of a thousand wounds,
each distinct from the other and one more piercing than the other, came
over him and goaded him to desperation. Passion enveloped him once more
in a thousand tongues of fire, re-kindling in him an inextinguishable
desire for this woman who belonged to him no more, re-a