What is your name then?" he asked, with a changed sound in his voice,
and with his fair cheek paler.

"I am Bruno Marcillo; I come from the hills above the Lastra a Signa."

Istriel rose, and looked at him; he had not remembered dead Pippa for
many a year. All in a moment he did remember: the long light days, the
little grey-walled town, the meetings in the vine-hung paths, when
sunset burned the skies; the girl with the pearls on her round brown
throat, the moonlit nights, with the strings of the guitar throbbing,
and the hearts of the lovers leaping; the sweet, eager, thoughtless
passion that swayed them one to another, as two flowers are blown
together in the mild soft winds of summer; he remembered it all now.

And he had forgotten so long; forgotten so utterly; save now and then,
when in some great man's house he had chanced to see some painting done
in his youth, and sold then for a few gold coins, of a tender
tempestuous face, half smiling and half sobbing, full of storm and
sunshine, both in one; and then at such times had thought, "Poor little
fool! she loved me too well;--it is the worst fault a woman has."

Some regret he had felt, and some remorse when he had found the garret
empty, and had lost Pippa from sight in the great sea of chance; but
she had wearied him, importuned him, clung to him; she had had the worst
fault, she had loved him too much. He had been young and poor, and very
ambitious; he had been soon reconciled; he had soon learned to think
that it was a burden best fallen from his shoulders. No doubt she had
suffered; but there was no help for that--some one always suffered when
these ties were broken--so he had said to himself. And then there had
come success and fame, and the pleasures of the world and the triumphs
of art, and Pippa had dropped from his thoughts as dead blossoms from a
bough; and he had loved so many other women, that he could not have
counted them; and the memory of that boy-and-girl romance in the green
hill country of the old Etruscan land had died away from him like a song
long mute.

Now, all at once, Pippa's hand seemed to touch him--Pippa's voice seemed
to rouse him--Pippa's eyes seemed to look at him.

* * *

It was very early in the morning.

There had been heavy rains at night, and there was, when the sun rose,
everywhere, that white fog of the Valdarno country which is like a
silvery cloud hanging over all the earth. It spreads everywhere