een the busts of the Caesars along the walls, lamps with
milky globes shaped like lilies shed an even, tempered light. The
profusion of palms and flowering plants gave the whole place the look of
a sumptuous conservatory. The music floated through the warm-scented air
under the vaulted roof and over all this mythology like a breeze though
an enchanted garden.

'Can you love me?' he asked: 'tell me if you think you can ever love
me.'

'I came only for you,' she returned slowly.

'Tell me that you will love me,' he repeated, while every drop of blood
seemed to rush in a tumult of joy to his heart.

'Perhaps----' she answered, and she looked into his face with that same
look which, on the preceding evening, had seemed to hold a divine
promise, that ineffable gaze which acts like the velvet touch of a
loving hand. Neither of them spoke; they listened to the sweet and
fitful strains of the music, now slow and faint as a zephyr, now loud
and rushing like a sudden tempest.

'Shall we dance?' he asked with a secret tremor of delight at the
prospect of encircling her with his arm.

She hesitated a moment before replying. 'No; I would rather not.'

Then, seeing the Duchess of Bugnare, her aunt, entering the gallery with
the Princess Alberoni and the French ambassadress, she added hurriedly,
'Now--be prudent, and leave me.'

She held out her gloved hand to him and advanced alone to meet the
ladies with a light firm step. Her long white train lent an additional
grace to her figure, the wide and heavy folds of brocade serving to
accentuate the slenderness of her waist. Andrea, as he followed her with
his eyes, kept repeating her words to himself, 'I came for you alone--I
came for you alone!' The orchestra suddenly took up the waltz measure
with a fresh impetus. And never, through all his life, did he forget
that music, nor the attitude of the woman he loved, nor the sumptuous
folds of the brocade trailing over the floor, nor the faintest shadow on
the rich material, nor one single detail of that supreme moment.

CHAPTER V

Elena left the Farnese palace very soon after this, almost stealthily,
without taking leave of Andrea or of any one else. She had therefore not
stayed more than half an hour at the ball. Her lover searched for her
through all the rooms in vain. The next morning, he sent a servant to
the Palazzo Barberini to inquire after the duchess, and learned from him
that she was ill. In the evening he went