n and looked at him.

"Surely not! Where?"

In a few words he reminded her of that quaint street in the old Italian
town, and of the half-ruined Palazzo di Vechi. He had seen her only for
a few minutes, but her face had never been forgotten; the way in which
he told her so, although he did not dwell upon it, told her also that it
had been no ordinary memory--that it had held a separate place in his
thoughts, as was indeed the case. Something in the manner of his
allusion to it showed her too, as though he had laid his whole mind
bare, with what interest, almost reverence, he had guarded it, and all
that it had meant to him; and as she listened a faint color stole into
her cheeks, with which the fire had nothing to do. She held her screen
the closer, and bent her head lest he should see it.

But there was no fear of that; indeed, he had no thought of the kind.
Leaving the dangerous ground behind him, he glided easily and naturally
into impersonal subjects. From Italy he began to talk of Florence, of
Pico della Mirandola, and the painters of the Renaissance. He strove his
utmost to interest her, and with his vast stock of acquired knowledge,
and his wonderfully artistic felicity of expression, he talked on and
on, wandering from country to country, and age to age, till it all
seemed to her like a strangely beautiful poem, full of yellow light and
gleaming shadow, sometimes passionate and intense, at others fantastic
and almost ethereal. Now and then she half closed her eyes, and his
words, and their meaning, the form and the substance, seemed to come to
her like richly blended music, stirring all her senses and quickening
all her dormant faculties. Then she opened them again, and looked
steadily upon the dark, wan face, with its sharp thin outline and
strange poetic abstraction. By chance he spoke for a moment of De
Quincey, and a shudder passed through all her being. Could such a face
as that be a murderer's face? The utter morbidness of such a thought
oppressed her only for a moment. If to-morrow it was to be her duty to
loathe this man, then it should be so; but those few minutes were too
precious to be disturbed by such thoughts. A new life was stirring
within her, and its first breath was too sweet to be crushed on the
threshold. After to-night--anything! But to-night she would have for her
own.

And so the time passed on, and the evening slipped away. Mr. Thurwell
had looked in, but seeing them so engrossed he h