er caresses seem to put us far
away from each other, to set some shadow between you and me----I don't
know how to express my thought properly----And afterwards it leaves me
so sad, so sad--I don't know what it is----I feel then so tired--but a
tiredness that has something evil about it----!'

She entreated him, humbly, submissively, fearing to make him angry. Then
she fell to recalling memories of things recent and passed, down to the
smallest details, the most trivial words, the most insignificant facts,
which all had a vast amount of significance for her. But it was towards
the first days of her stay at Schifanoja that her heart returned most
fondly.

'You remember? You remember?'

And suddenly the tears filled her downcast eyes.

One evening Andrea, thinking of her husband, asked her--'Since I knew
you, have you always been _wholly_ mine?'

'Always.'

'I am not speaking of the soul----'

'Hush!----yes, always wholly yours.'

And he, who had never before believed one of his mistresses on this
point, believed Maria without a shadow of doubt as to the truth of her
assertion.

He believed her even while he deceived and profaned her without remorse;
he knew himself to be boundlessly loved by a lofty and noble spirit,
that he was face to face with a grand and all-absorbing passion, and
recognised fully both the grandeur of that passion and his own vileness.
And yet under the lash of his base imaginings he would go so far as to
hurt the mouth of the fond and patient creature, to prevent himself from
crying aloud upon her lips the name that rose invincibly to his; and
that loving and pathetic mouth would murmur, all unconscious, smiling
though it bled--

'Even thus you do not hurt me.'

CHAPTER VIII

It wanted but a few days now to their parting. Miss Dorothy had taken
Delfina to Sienna, and then returned to help her mistress in the last
and most trying arrangements and to accompany her on the journey. In the
mother's house in Sienna the truth of the story was not known, and
Delfina of course knew nothing. Maria had merely written that Don Manuel
had been suddenly recalled by his government. And she made ready to
go--to leave these rooms, so full of cherished things, to the hands of
the public auctioneers who had already drawn up the inventory and fixed
the date of the sale for the 20th of June, at ten in the morning.

On the evening of the 9th, as she was leaving Andrea, she missed a
glove. While l