Belsky; and he poured out upon Gregory the story
of what he had done. "She did not deny anything. She was greatly moved,
but she did not refuse to let me bid you hope--"

"Oh!" Gregory took his head between his hands. "You have spoiled my
life!"

"Spoiled" Belsky stopped aghast.

"I told you my story in a moment of despicable weakness--of impulsive
folly. But how could I dream that you would ever meet her? How could I
imagine that you would speak to her as you have done?" He groaned, and
began to creep giddily about the room in his misery. "Oh, oh, oh! What
shall I do?"

"But I do not understand!" Belsky began. "If I have committed an
error--"

"Oh, an error that never could be put right in all eternity!"

"Then let me go to her--let me tell her--"

"Keep away from her!" shouted Gregory. "Do you hear? Never go near her
again!"

"Gregory!"

"Ah, I beg your pardon! I don't know what I'm doing-saying. What will
she think--what will she think of me!" He had ceased to speak to Belsky;
he collapsed into a chair, and hid his face in his arms stretched out on
the table before him.

Belsky watched him in the stupefaction which the artistic nature feels
when life proves sentient under its hand, and not the mere material of
situations and effects. He could not conceive the full measure of the
disaster he had wrought, the outrage of his own behavior had been lost
to him in his preoccupation with the romantic end to be accomplished. He
had meant to be the friend, the prophet, to these American lovers, whom
he was reconciling and interpreting to each other; but in some point he
must have misunderstood. Yet the error was not inexpiable; and in his
expiation he could put the seal to his devotion. He left the room, where
Gregory made no effort to keep him.

He walked down the street from the hotel to the Arno, and in a few
moments he stood on the bridge, where he had talked with that joker in
the morning, as they looked down together on the boiling river. He had
a strange wish that the joker might have been with him again, to learn
that there were some things which could not be joked away.

The night was blustering, and the wind that blew the ragged clouds
across the face of the moon, swooped in sudden gusts upon the bridge,
and the deluge rolling under it and hoarsely washing against its piers.
Belsky leaned over the parapet and looked down into the eddies and
currents as the fitful light revealed them. He had a fantast