"Perhaps not. But I have stated the facts and hope to get justice."

Her lips curled disdainfully. "There isn't the slightest chance for you,
Alexis. Claire is a devoted daughter of the Church, and they won't risk
losing her for an agnostic like yourself. If I were you, I shouldn't lay
any hopes upon it, but put all my energy into procuring a divorce."

"But Claire refuses to divorce me. It would be easy enough for her, God
knows, if she wanted to!"

"On the charge of desertion, I suppose!" A smile played about the tiny
mouth.

His anger disdained subterfuge. "On the charge of infidelity."

She shook her head, mandarin-wise. "But that would ruin your career."

"Why should it? People don't go to hear an artist because he's a woolly
lamb. Music isn't dependent upon the blue laws. If Puritans were able to
interpret it, I know many a Symphony that would have to be discarded."

Her laugh was full of camaraderie. "You are right. But suppose you
should want to marry again? The scandal might prove a detriment to the
lady."

He looked disconcerted. It had never occurred to him that Anne's
reputation might suffer if his freedom came as the result of scandal. It
had been abominably careless of him. But why worry since Claire refused
to divorce him?

His mother noted his discomfiture with amusement. When she considered
that he had sufficiently digested it, she tackled him once again.

"It is you who must do the divorcing," she announced judicially.

"I?" He stared at her in bewilderment. "But that would be impossible. In
the first place it would be dastardly. In the second, there are no
grounds, as you know."

"Are there not?" Her smile angered him.

"I'm sure I don't know what we are talking about. We are getting
nowhere. If you have any communication to make, please do so at once, as
I have an engagement."

The baby-blue stare narrowed into a slit. "Wasn't it natural that I
should desire to see my own son again?" she asked sweetly.

He looked sulky. "If you are anxious about money, arrangements are being
made for both you and Claire, which ought to secure you an ample income.
That is, if my strong right arm continues to wield the bow."

"That is generous of you, my son." She waved a gracious hand. A
dissatisfied look crept into her eyes. "But since you insist upon being
so frank, I may as well tell you that money has nothing to do with my
invitation. I asked you to come because I can help you, if not in your
career, at least in your happiness."

"My happiness? I don't understand you!"

She continued to smile blandly. "I think I can show you a way out of
your marriage."

"How?" His scornful eyes were incredulous.

Mme. Petrovskey smoothed her silken lap, as a cat smoothes its fur.
"There is a man in Claire's life, Alexis."

"I don't believe you!"

She nodded ponderously. "She is out with him now."

"Oh, you mean the doctor?" There was comical relief in his voice. "What
harm is there in that?"

"Much harm could be construed from it. Besides, the man is in love with
her."

Alexis stared. The idea of any one being in love with Claire seemed both
preposterous and impertinent.

"What makes you think so?"

"He is here almost every day. They go out together at least one night a
week."

"He is probably sorry for her, or lonesome, or both! You're not trying
to insinuate there is anything wrong!" The male's hatred of being
betrayed, even when it affords him a loophole for escape rang in his
voice.

"One must avoid the appearance of evil," she said sanctimoniously.

"Nonsense. What are you driving at? If you don't approve of what they
are doing, why do you permit it, as Claire is presumably under your
protection?"

"Sometimes it is better to let matters run their course." She fixed her
eyes upon him cunningly. A flicker of comprehension twisted his
features.

"So you were willing to abet them?" he retorted with contempt.
"'Adultery made easy for beginners,' or 'Homely Hints from a Fond
Mother-in-law!' Oh, this is detestable! I am going!" He flung his hair
out of his eyes and started towards the hall.

"I merely tried to help you," she followed him with ponderous lightness.
"You may be sorry that you didn't take advantage of my advice."

He started to put on his coat. "But I don't believe any of this, mother.
It is all such utter rot. Claire is incapable of such a thing."

"Perhaps she is, and perhaps she isn't! At any rate, how could she prove
her innocence?"

She laid a heavy hand upon Alexis's arm. He shrank away.

"Do you imagine I would ruin an innocent woman? What kind of a man do
you think I am?"

She shrugged fat shoulders. "Not if it were avoidable, of course. But
how do you know she is innocent? She has had every opportunity to
deceive you. A lonely woman will do desperate things, Alexis. Love is a
great temptation to a girl like Claire, and half a loaf is better than
none!"

"But Claire! I can't imagine Claire being unfaithful. She is the most
loyal creature alive."

"She may be loyal, but she is also passionate. You at least should
retain some memory of that." The innocent eyes concealed amusement.

He flushed. The memory of Claire's surrenders was like a vague but
abject nightmare. Yes, the girl possessed a lurid kind of passivity, a
submission as unlike Anne's goddess-like generosity as night from day.
Mme. Petrovskey pursued her advantage.

"It remains to be seen which of the two traits is the stronger."

"I believe I know. It would take Claire's own words to convince me to
the contrary." But his manner was less ironical, almost receptive.

Mme. Petrovskey took up her theme complacently. "Think it over, Alexis.
Don't permit an obstinate girl to ruin your life. You love another
woman----"

A dangerous gleam in his eye, he checked her quickly. "We will not speak
of that!"

"Very well. Only, as I was going to say before, it is not as if you
loved Claire and she could keep you. By clinging stubbornly to you, she
is merely ruining her own life as well. I believe Dr. Elliott would
marry her if she were free."

A new eagerness flitted over Alexis' face. "If I thought there was a
chance of that!"

"She would have to be forced into it, of course. She is as obstinate
about her religion as she is weak about you."

"I don't intend to force her! I'm sorry I came. When I received your
letter I thought you would have something tangible to suggest. Something
beside these brutalities."

"I offer you freedom and you call me names!" The tiny mouth pursed with
rage. "But wait a moment, I'm afraid you can't go now. They're back from
the movies. Isn't that the elevator?"

The blood receded from Alexis's face. Yes, surely that was Claire's
voice approaching the door. Would to God he had never come!

A key clicked in the lock and Claire stood upon the threshold. Behind
her Dr. Elliott turned white as he saw Alexis. Placing a mechanical arm
about Claire, he piloted her in. She fell into a chair beside the door.

"Alexis!" Tears streamed from her eyes. Her voice was feeble.

He sprang forward with a cry of pity and bent over her. "I'm sorry I
frightened you, Claire."

"I'm so silly," she murmured. "Only last night I dreamed that you had
returned again!"

"Poor child!" His face contracted in a spasm of pain.

"I--I want to tell you how happy I am over your success! I heard you at
the Philharmonic yesterday and--and it was glorious!"

"You are always so generous," he felt broken with shame.

"Generous! You call it that?" she retorted scornfully. Drawing her cape
about her carefully, she preceded them into the living room. "Come in,
Robert, I want you to meet my--my husband," she added, with a pathetic
assumption of ease.

A grim expression on his face, the young doctor broke his silence.

"I can only stay a few minutes. I ought to go back to the hospital," he
said gruffly. But if Claire needed him, he would not fail her.

Mme. Petrovskey smiled, as she caught his belligerent eye. "Do stay, we
will have a nice little chat."

"I hear you have been to the movies," said Alexis, after they had
settled themselves more or less stiffly about the room. Why in hell
didn't the man get out?

"Dr. Elliott is very good to me," broke in Claire naïvely.

Alexis cursed inwardly. Did she expect him to thank the man for taking
her off his hands?

"It is Mrs. Petrovskey who has been good," retorted Elliott more gently.

"I shouldn't place the guilt entirely upon her shoulders!" laughed Mme.
Petrovskey with a kittenish air. "I have often feared that Dr. Elliott
in his kindness of heart, must be neglecting his work. I assure you he
and Claire have been inseparable all winter."

Dr. Elliott glared. "I'm afraid you are exaggerating. But Mrs.
Petrovskey's occasional company has proved a great boon to a lonely chap
like myself."

"Occasional!" exclaimed Mme. Petrovskey. "I should hardly call it that,
dear Dr. Elliott!"

"It has seemed so to me."

"Ah, the young are so impetuous!" She raised innocent eyes to the
ceiling. "They are never contented with less than all."

"You choose to be playful," said the doctor, with a guarded little
smile.

Alexis admired the man's restraint. He, himself, fidgeted uneasily. Did
his mother have no decency at all?

"Aren't we getting rather serious?" he demanded. What a ghastly scene!
Why couldn't the fellow go home? Perhaps he was in love with Claire,
after all?

"It's a serious subject." Mme. Petrovskey was still sprightly.
"Repressed desires are almost as serious as unrepressed."

The doctor laughed. "Ah, now you are getting on familiar ground. When it
comes to Freud, or his fellow Paul Prys," his eye gleamed dangerously,
"I can argue with the best of you."

Mme. Petrovskey nodded gayly. "Do you follow the new method of free
expression?"

"I believe that one's desires, if decent, should be gratified." He fixed
his eyes upon Claire's face with an expression at once baffling and
affectionate.

Mme. Petrovskey bridled. "There are so many standards of decency, aren't
there? And that of a young doctor might be considered lax by an old fogy
like myself."

Alexis shot her a tortured glance. "Since when have you become so
interested in Psycho-Analysis? This is getting too high-brow for Claire
and me, isn't it, Claire?"

She met his harried gaze with an apologetic smile at once pleading and
listless. "I'm afraid I wasn't paying much attention."

Mme. Petrovskey turned towards her punctiliously. Her eyes beneath the
smile seemed to strip the girl to the bone, and Claire cowered away as
from a limelight. "You had better listen, dear child. For the matter
concerns you profoundly."

"Concerns me?" she muttered inexplicably uneasy.

"Yes, indeed," playfully. "We're talking about the doctor's repressed
and unrepressed desires."

"What have I to do with them?" Her voice was cold with dawning fear.

"We are trying to discover in which of the two pigeon-holes you belong."

"Ah!" Claire's pale lips parted on a cry. She half rose from her chair.
Alexis sprang across the room to her side.

"This is too much!" he exclaimed. "Why do you torture the child?"

"Because Mme. Petrovskey wants me to confess that I love Claire!" Dr.
Elliott's tones rang clear.

They all looked at him in amazement. A calm exultation in his eyes, he
faced them squarely.

"Can you deny it?" A smile of triumph played about the older woman's
mouth.

"I can. But I will not!"

Claire hid her face in shaking hands. "Oh, Robert," she sobbed, "please
don't."

He approached and stood over her with quiet strength.

"Why should I deny the most beautiful thing in my life? That would be to
lower it to the level of Mme. Petrovskey's insinuations."

The latter started up from her chair with a cry of suppressed fury. The
baby-blue orbs flashed hell-fire.

"You--you----!" she commenced. Then turned to Alexis with a resumption
of her habitual sweetness. "What did I tell you? Was I not right?"

"Keep quiet," he commanded. "You have made trouble enough for one
evening!" He turned to Dr. Elliott. "So you are in love with my wife?"

The other man looked down upon him from his greater height. "I have done
you no wrong, Petrovskey."

Claire raised a white and streaming face.

"Oh Alexis, you do believe him, don't you?"

He patted her trembling hand, with absent-minded kindliness. "Don't
worry, child. Of course I believe him."

Robert Elliott grasped him by the shoulder. "You are a real man,
Petrovskey. I didn't know you had it in you!" he exclaimed naïvely.

Alexis' smile was a trifle awry. "You are wrong, Elliott. If I were a
real man, all this would never have occurred."

His mother interposed herself between them almost savagely.

"All this magnanimity looks very pretty. But what proof have you that
they are not lying? I, for one, don't believe in this blessed innocence.
Many a divorce has been granted on less substantial grounds than these!"

Claire stumbled to her feet, and stood swaying against the table.

"You are a wicked woman! How dare you lie about me and Dr. Elliott? I
shall not stay under the same roof with you for another night!" She
moved blindly forward towards the corridor. Alexis pursued her.

"Where are you going? What are you going to do?"

She turned upon him like a hounded creature. "Let me alone, I am going
to pack," she cried at bay. "I am going to pack," she repeated wildly.
She stumbled down the corridor towards her room.

Mme. Petrovskey reseated herself. "Running away is hardly the action of
an innocent woman!" she remarked.

"Be silent!" exclaimed Elliott sternly. But he was too late for Claire
had heard.

"Oh!" With a gasping cry she faced them. Then crashed forward like a
felled tree.

"You have killed her!" Alexis ran down the corridor, and knelt beside
the small, prostrate figure. He was about to lift it in his arms when
the doctor interfered.

"Put her down on her back. Here, let me do it." He shifted Claire
expertly. "Don't you know that a fainting patient must never be lifted?
It sometimes kills them, especially in her condition."

"In her condition?" Alexis looked up from rubbing Claire's hands. "What
do you mean? Is her heart affected?"

Squatting upon his haunches the doctor uncorked his brandy flask. As he
leaned over to pour the liquid between Claire's teeth, he looked Alexis
squarely in the eyes.

"Your wife is pregnant," he said shortly. "It is time you knew it."

An ashy pallor overspread Alexis' face. His heart leaped sickeningly.
Then tolled against his ribs like a knell. It tolled so raspingly--it
tolled so loudly that all the world--that Anne herself must hear it.

"Why didn't you let me know?" he demanded softly. Was he never to cease
paying for the feeble nightmare which had made Claire his? "Why was I
not told?" he repeated with the same irate quiet.

Robert Elliott looked at him with grudging compassion. So the fellow
could feel after all? Well, it was time he did! A throb of hatred seared
him. "She did not wish to have you know. It was a matter of pride. She
had no use for your pity, she only wanted you----" he hesitated over the
word, "your love."

Before the suffering in the man's eyes, Alexis lowered his own. They
fell upon the pinched features of the swooning girl.

"She is coming to," he whispered, between dry lips.

Like folded pansies, the dark eyes slowly unfurled. Into their shadowed
depths Alexis plunged his agony and his shame. "Claire, what have I done
to you?" he groaned.

The pansies opened wide. Terror crept into their wounded depths. The
pale lips twisted.

"You have told him?" She looked up at Robert Elliott reproachfully.

He nodded. "Yes." His voice died into a hoarse murmur.

"How dared you when I'd forbidden it?" she cried weakly. Great tears
slid down the hollow cheeks. She suddenly burst into uncontrollable,
frenzied sobs that shook the feeble body.

Fear gripped Alexis as he watched her writhe in a vain effort to control
herself.

"Don't, dear Claire," he cried, touching with clumsy fingers a lock of
hair which clung against the drenched cheek.

"I wanted to spare you this," she gasped, raising drowned eyes to his.

A flood of shame swept over Alexis, together with an unbearable,
wrenching pity. Pity for the suffering he had inflicted. Shame for the
unheeded seed sowed so wantonly and without love. Despair that his heart
should be empty of all save compassion. Futile, shameful anger against
Claire that it was she, the unloved, and not Anne, who was to mother his
first-born. Face drawn and gray, he bent over Claire in an agony of
contrition.

"Don't, Claire, don't. You will hurt yourself!" He looked up at the
doctor, who had risen and was trying to appear unconscious of a scene
which was literally tearing at his very marrow. "Hadn't we better carry
her into her room and put her to bed, Elliott?"

The power of speech had deserted Elliott. He nodded. They were about to
gather her up in their arms, but Claire pushed them away, almost with
violence.

"No, I will not stop here another night, with Aunt. I couldn't bear it!"

Alexis shot a desperate look at the other man, who shook his head
gravely. "She had better be humored," he said decisively.

Claire's sobs grew fainter. She looked up at Dr. Elliott gratefully.

Alexis forced himself to a bitter decision. "How would you like to go to
my apartment in Gramercy Park?" he asked with dreadful reluctance.

Surprise choked back Claire's sobs. "Do you mean it? Wouldn't I be
awfully in your way?"

"Of course not. There is a day-bed in the studio where I can sleep. I
have often used it."

That was true enough. A burning mist clouded his eyes. He turned away to
conceal it. With what memories of Anne was the alcove not hallowed?

Eyes upon his averted face, Claire's lips quivered. "Have you given up
your house in Long Island?"

He avoided her glance with a sense of pity. "I still have it until the
first of April. However, I always sleep in town on concert days, and
very often at other times. But you needn't worry about being a nuisance,
for I am leaving on tour the day after to-morrow."

"Ah, yes, I had forgotten." Claire's voice sounded dreary. "There was
something in the paper about it. If you will help me up, I think I'll go
and dress."

Their arms beneath hers, she struggled to her feet.

"Do you feel able to dress?" asked Elliott as she swayed a little. "Why
do you hurry?"

"Yes, oh yes," she pushed the hair back from her damp brow. "I must go
at once."

She walked slowly towards her bedroom. The clumsy gait, the fragile,
swollen body struck Alexis for the first time. Filled with compassion
and a sick sort of repulsion of which he was fiercely ashamed, he turned
to Dr. Elliott.

"Will you please see that Claire has a nurse? A nice, cheerful one. I
don't want her to be lonely. There is a cleaning woman who comes in by
the day who will cook for them until we can procure some one better."

"I'll telephone for one." Elliott shot a glance charged with meaning
after the tragic figure retreating up the hall. "For God's sake be kind
to her, Petrovskey!" He whispered huskily, as Claire's door closed
behind her.

Alexis passed a hand over his trembling mouth. "I'll try to, God knows!
But you ought to have married her, Elliott. You could have made her
happy!" he replied with aching humility.

They walked slowly back to the living room.

Elliott slipped into the ante-room to telephone. As he waited for his
number there was a stoic, Indian savagery about his face. Wild, unbidden
thoughts rose like green scum to the clear surface of his mind. If
Claire's child should die, all might yet be well. The last link between
her and Alexis sundered, she might possibly be induced to give him up
forever. But if--it lived----! With a knowing leer, temptation nudged
his elbow, puffing its vile breath into his clean nostrils. He shook the
beast off angrily and responded to the operator's voice when it came
with detached calm.

Meanwhile, Alexis had flung himself into a chair beside the living-room
table, burying his face upon its surface. For him the radiant dream was
over. He had awakened to the same grim and joyless world which had once
before tried to slay him.

Mme. Petrovskey had come out from her room at the sound of their return.
She approached Alexis stealthily. Her bulk cast a bloated shadow on the
wall. It crouched over him like a beast of prey. "So you have let
yourself be conquered by a nobody, an unloved waif? Fie, you are weak!
You are allowing yourself to be dragged into a mediocrity more loathsome
than death. That is not for you. You are a genius. Spread your wings,
fly away before you lose all capacity to soar. Fly away! Your bird of
paradise awaits you. Do such as you mate with the sparrows?"

His mother's words, or his own subconscious mind? What matter? It voiced
his weeping soul.

                              CHAPTER XXV

                              SACRIFICIAL

The city was muffled in fog. It brooded over Fifth Avenue, oozing rain
like an enormous sponge. Beneath its clammy drip, dirty snow melted into
unwholesome puddles, street lamps haloed goldenly. It was after midnight
and the broad, deserted pavement glistened like some dark river upon
which a few rare craft slid by in ghostly procession. Occasional
passers-by, beneath outspreading umbrellas, looked strangely fungoid.
Their breath issuing in small clouds, seemed to congeal and solidify
upon reaching the air as if the fog itself were composed of the warm
emanations of mankind. Alexis hurried drearily up the avenue. With
Claire safely installed in the apartment and companioned by a nurse,
there was nothing further for him to do. He was free momentarily. Free
to savor to the full the bitterness of the cup he had set to his lips.
But the evening had left him numb as well as distraught. He was
conscious only of an overmastering impulse to rush out into the streets,
to drown identity in fog, lose self in some demoniac outburst.

Huge gulps of the chill air in his lungs, he staggered forward as if
propelled by a monster wind, eyes fixed in front of him, burning a path
through the drizzling mist. An empty taxi glided close to the curb. He
hailed it mechanically and gave the man Anne's address. A moment later
they had joined the current on the black and glistening river.

Of course, he would not disturb Anne. That would be sheer cruelty. But
he must be near to her somehow. That was an exquisite torture which he
was too weak to forego. Once there, he would dismiss his taxi and hug
close to the wall which sheltered her. After that he had no plans. The
future was not more dark nor indefinite than the immediate night before
him. There was only one thing certain in his mind. He could not return
to Gramercy Park. That was a grinning horror which his embryonic
Quixotry was too feeble to face.

A rapid transit up the avenue brought them to the shrouded park. They
skirted its graveyard shore to the Seventies, and then swerved into
Anne's street. As they neared the house Alexis smothered a cry of
irritation. The façade was brilliant with lights. It shone luminous
through the fog like the golden exit from a tunnel.

Of course, how foolish to have forgotten! This was Anne's night at the
opera, and she was having some people in afterwards. He had been invited
to join them but had refused as usual. The hilarious horde was his
particular abomination, and it was seldom that Anne could persuade him
into one of these parties. She did not try very hard, for as the season
progressed she herself had become utterly wearied with it all. It was
only fear of appearing both snobbish and unkind which prevented her from
breaking away altogether. And Alexis knew his presence made it more
difficult. The malice of Ellen, who could not forgive Anne for not
confiding in her, the jealousy of Gerald, created a tension. So,
although always invited, Alexis' absence had evolved into a kind of
unwritten law.

But to-night was different. A desperate night, created for the breaking
of all rules. A frantic, lawless night, lying between the boundaries of
time like a savage bandit-ridden tract, dividing two civilized states.
To-night all forms of excitement were unabhorrent, even the ribald
efforts of the horde. At any rate, their presence would afford an
opportunity to see Anne, to be near her, to breathe in the beloved
atmosphere while she still remained unconscious of the barrier which had
fallen between them forever.

Fever surging in his veins, Alexis dismissed his taxi.

Inside the house, there was the usual uproar of music and dancing.
Unperceived for the moment, Alexis stood upon the threshold of the huge
living room. His eyes flashed through the swirling couples, searching
for Anne. But she was not upon the floor. Seated at the Steinway, Gerald
was playing with delicate ferocity. His young, almost beautiful face,
glowered cynically as he glanced at the dancers. Grotesque syncopations
dripped from his swooping fingertips.

Alexis started to wedge his way to the other end of the room. The eyes
of the two men met with a shock. A smile distorted Gerald's lips. The
music ceased almost discordantly. Everybody stopped dancing. For a
moment the world stood still.

"Look who's here!"

In a flame-colored chiffon frock, Olive Fay darted up to Alexis.

"Please dance with me, Mr. Petrovskey?"

"Of course, that's what I came for!" His hard gaze hovered over her
naked young shoulders. "But first, where is my hostess?"

She pouted. "How old-fashioned of you to remember your hostess! But come
along, Old Ironsides, if you must."

The dancing had recommenced. They dashed through revolving couples to
the sofa in front of the fire, where Anne was sitting with a large, dark
man, whom Alexis recognized as Del Re, the South American opera singer.
In a dream-like dance dress of sapphire tulle over pale-green chiffon,
the emerald pendant upon her breast, Anne watched their approach with
concealed astonishment. So Alexis had come after all! Why? The brilliant
eyes, the twisted smile puzzled her. Had he been listening to some rumor
about Del Re? Was the old serpent of jealousy once more coiling to
strike her long-suffering head?

"How nice of you to change your mind!" she murmured, a question beneath
her composure, "Have you met Señor Del Re? Mr. Petrovskey."

The familiar pang gnawing at his vitals, Alexis suppressed it savagely.
"Who does not know the celebrated Mephisto? You have given me many a
thrill, Señor."

"Is there a thrill left in New York?" Del Re's crooked eyebrow curved
whimsically. "I thought they were all in your violin, Petrovskey!
Thrills? You are the master there!" There was genuine admiration in the
cello-like tones.

"Yes, isn't he wonderful?" shrilled Olive. "I am going to dance with him
this very minute. I've simply got to be seen in his company, that's
all!"

"Very flattering, isn't she!" Flashing a blazing glance into Anne's
face, Alexis laughed loudly, then turned to Olive. "Did you bring your
press-agent along?"

"Mean thing!" She dragged him on to the floor with another shrill
squeal. They danced away. Her mocking eyes on his face, she cackled
gayly.

"No use in looking at Anne like that, Mr. Petrovskey. Might as well make
up your mind to lose her. He can get 'em whenever he wants to."

Dragging his eyes from Anne's face, Alexis hid his crimson anger like a
wound. "He has a record, has he?" He crushed Olive to him savagely.

"Oh yes," she gasped, mistaking his clasp for ardor. "And what he hasn't
been through! Thrust in the stomach with bayonets. Scarred with
shrapnel. Face lifted at least twice. You know they say he is almost
seventy. But what with Steinach and surgery, you'd never dream it, would
you?"

"Never!" They circled the room in abandoned unison. As they reached the
sofa again, Alexis rudely relaxed his hold and sank into the couch upon
the other side of Anne. With a chagrined laugh, Olive fell into a chair
next to Del Re.

"He doesn't seem to appreciate me, does he?"

"Will you dance with me?" Alexis whispered into Anne's ear.

"Of course!" She did not know Alexis in this reckless, Byronical mood.
Could he have had a little too much to drink? She watched him down the
whisky and soda just passed by the footman.

Alexis caught her troubled glance. He nodded gayly. "It's all right.
Don't be frightened. I'm not drunk with anything except you. You are
crème de Menthe in a dark-blue glass, and very intoxicating." He pointed
to the green lining of the sapphire gown.

Laughingly, they started to dance. Almost of equal height, faces on a
level, their breath mingled in a single stream. Their bodies swayed to
the rhythmic breeze of a waltz. Radio music this time. Dance orchestra
from the Drake Hotel, Chicago. And although unromantically canned, most
peppy and enticing; vitamins intact. As she and Alexis swung by Ellen,
Anne caught her amused smile. Sitting between Gerald, who was smoking
furiously, and Caldenas, doing nothing at all in his usual cherubic
fashion, she appeared serenely malicious, like some complaisant goddess
of the senses.

Anne shivered and drew closer to Alexis. His clasp tightened
tempestuously about the slim, ungirdled body. He danced her out into the
hall. Swooping into a remote corner, he stopped abruptly, and pressed
his lips upon hers. The Sparkling eyes were so close that she felt as if
she were being sucked into the expanded pupils, as into a bottomless
whirlpool. She went pale and a little giddy.

"What is the matter with you to-night, Alexis?" she whispered as they
started to dance again.

His lashes swept her forehead like a caress. He did not reply but
continued to look into her eyes with the same disturbing gaze. Holding
her as in a vise, their limbs interlocked, merged, in rapturous fusion.
Stabbing weakness pierced Anne.

"Don't," she supplicated faintly.

Muffled against her hair, his laugh rumbled dizzily through her head.
His lips brushed her cheek, mumbling softly at the pink lobe of her ear.

"I don't think I like you to-night!" Her whisper was breathless.

The sardonic laughter was repeated. The eyes fixed upon hers flared
hotly. Anne was afraid. As they whirled giddily back into the noisy
room, she welcomed with relief the announcement of supper.

They all trooped into the dining room and seated themselves as they
pleased at small tables, which lent the vast room the festive air of a
récherché little restaurant. Varicolored bowls of copper-hued tulips
with glass candlesticks to match adorned each table, sounding a rich
note against the gray tempera walls. Adroitly shed by Anne, Alexis
discovered himself between a young Roumanian noblewoman, almost as
beautiful as Queen Marie in her prime, and a well-known authoress, whose
Savonarola profile stared austerely beneath close-cropped hair. Opposite
sat a young nondescript, one of those indispensable stop-gaps whose
white shirt-fronts fill the social vacuum so perfectly.

The young countess was, according to the society column, decidedly
vivacious. This was her first visit to the United States, and she was
collecting scalps as well as impressions. Alexis' golden mane was not to
be disdained. She courted him assiduously all through supper and he made
contemptuously free response. The honey-colored hair, the sweet-scented
body intrigued him very little. He knew that he could have her with a
single gesture from his famous fingers. He had met her kind before, a
little less beautiful perhaps, certainly more blatant, but equally
voracious of sensation. A liaison with Alexis Petrovskey or any other
famous artist would furnish welcome tidbit for dainty jaws.

A hectic spot upon each cheek, he ate his supper in a sort of petrified
excitement, scarcely aware of the audacious words his lips were
uttering; absolutely ignorant of the food he put between them. He drank
the sparkling wine feverishly. It spread through his body and was
absorbed like spilled ink upon a blotter. Beyond the saturnine profile
of the authoress, he occasionally caught Anne's eyes fixed upon him from
a neighboring table. Beneath their serene surface he glimpsed a troubled
question. Was she, too, suffering? Did she sense his pain? His
unutterable, stupefying torture? Or did she merely find him volatile and
unstable? Well, she would understand it all soon enough, God knows!

What a nightmare!

Supper over, the crowd overflowed into the living room. Seated at the
piano, Del Re was preparing to sing. Her hand upon his arm, his
beautiful neighbor lured Alexis into a remote window-seat.

"Now, we can listen in comfort," she murmured, approaching felinely. Her
bare flesh grazed his shoulder. He lighted his cigarette from hers,
leaning unnecessarily close. It amused him to whet her genteel
nymphomania.

Del Re sang an aria from Mephisto with diabolic grandeur. Then broke
into a series of Spanish folk songs. The vibrating, cello-like tones,
the lilting accompaniment, were replete with magnetism and created a
furore. Close upon his triumphant heels, followed Olive Fay, who
executed a kicking dance to Gerald's devilishly clever improvisation.
Rosy, rouged knees emerging impudently from slit draperies, she was the
incarnation of Gerald's heady and insinuating jazz.

There was an unsteady silence, a self-conscious, tightened silence. Lips
parted feverishly, the wine-warmed crowd was momentarily uneasy. Then it
relaxed into uproarious applause. Olive was lost amongst a bevy of
shirt-fronts as indispensable to her being as lipstick or rouge, and
about as impersonal.

Later, they called upon Alexis. He came out from his corner smiling and
unexpectedly amiable. To Anne's surprise, he consented to contribute to
the entertainment.

"But you haven't your violin!"

"I don't need it," he replied, laughing lightly. "I intend to be
low-brow."

Running his fingers over the piano keys, he clashed into a disturbing
medley, Chopin, Stravinsky, Mendelssohn and Sowerby, Ornstein and
Tchaikowsky, with a dash of MacDowell as leaven. The audience howled
approbation. "What do you call it?"

He looked up demurely from the keys. "The Petrovskey Blues!"

He broke into a revised version of the popular negro melody,
transforming its plaintive simplicity into symphonic proportions. Then
with a swift transition, he began to ragtime an old Italian opera. With
a broad smile, Del Re strode to the piano and sang an accompaniment, in
the nasal drone of the cabaret favorite. Negroid and scintillating, the
parody ceased upon a plaintive chord, reminiscent of some southern
spiritual.

Listeners crowded about the piano, jaded senses stirred to the shallow
depths. From the background, Anne watched in fascinated silence. She did
not dream Alexis had it in him, and as she looked at the flushed face an
undercurrent of apprehension flowed like an icy stream below the surface
of her pleasure. What could have excited him so to-night that he had
ventured forth from his shell with such uncharacteristic fireworks? At
Anne's elbow, Caldenas grunted appreciatively. He was putting the last
touches to a caricature of the two celebrities at the piano, which, as
he quaintly put it, would immortalize their genius as well as his own.

The little Roumanian leaned over Alexis. Her perfume weighed on his
irritated nerves, nauseatingly heavy. "When are you coming to see me?"

He laughed loudly. His eyes stripped her. "Never!"

She flushed and bit her naturally red lips.

"You are detestable. I am mad about you," she whispered.

"You are maddeningly pretty, but I am immune," he retorted, smiling up
into the flower-like face with curved, saturnine lips.

She rested her hand upon the keyboard next to his.

"Your music makes me feel positively wanton!" The blue eyes swam
amorously.

He flung her hand away, with casual fingers. His glance rent her
unmercifully. "You are wasting your time!"

She crumbled as if struck by lightning. Tears of mortification rose to
the lovely eyes. She stammered in utter rout, "You are a fiend!"

He rose from the piano and looked about him smilingly. "The end of a
perfect day," he remarked in a loud voice. He shook hands with Del Re
and retreated towards Anne.

With meaning looks the group began to break up. Their guard of honor
ranged about them, Ellen and Olive flitted away to the accompaniment of
knowing smiles. An obscure and taciturn husband was claimed by the
authoress and led triumphantly home.

The countess, a little pale, accepted the escort of Gerald and Caldenas.

Alexis waited flagrantly, while Del Re completed ceremonious adieus.

As the door closed upon them all, Anne turned towards Alexis with an
inquiring, slightly apprehensive air. "Are you going to stay, Alexis? It
is very late."

For response he drew her to him in an abrupt convulsive gesture. Leading
her to the sofa, he knelt and buried his head on her lap. She brushed
the hair back from his forehead nervously. It was indiscreet of him to
have remained after the others had gone. She had caught interchanged
glances and knew that the worst interpretation would be made of the
situation. As he remained motionless, she spoke a little wearily.

"What is the matter, dear? Why are you so excited to-night?"

He raised a bloodless face, and she saw that his eyes were swimming in
tears.

"Oh Anne, it is all over. This is the end."

With a smothered sob, he dropped his head back upon her knees.

"What do you mean?" Her voice was shocked. A premonitory thrill sent a
shiver over her body.

"I have taken Claire back again," he gasped.

She uttered a cry and recoiled instinctively.

"I understand and--and I suppose I am glad," she faltered, with quick
pride. She tried to remove his hold but his arms tightened about her
convulsively.

"Oh no, you don't understand at all. I don't love her. It isn't that.
It's----" his eyes widened with horror, "Claire is going to have a
child," he finished brokenly.

"Ah!" Anne's face became suddenly ashen. "I suppose I should have
foreseen this," she murmured, pushing him away from her almost roughly.
"Oh, poor Claire, how she must have suffered! How can I ever forgive
myself?" She wrung her hands in an unfamiliar gesture.

He stumbled to his feet and stood over her. "I didn't know it, Anne. I
never dreamed of such a thing."

"No, I suppose not, but that doesn't make it any easier for Claire, does
it?" Her voice was dry and expressionless. "When--when is it to be?"

He shot her a tortured glance.

"Very soon, I am afraid." He averted his working face. "Oh Anne, don't
despise me. I was mad, beside myself when it all happened. It is
blurred, fantastic, like the memory of some confused dream."

His miserable voice pierced Anne's pride. She put her arms about him and
drew him down on to the couch beside her. "Poor Alexis, my poor, poor
boy," she crooned sorrowfully.

He hid his face against the back of the sofa. "I am cursed, I seem to
blast all those who love me," he choked. "Oh, Anne, if you had seen her
pitiful little face! I am not fit to live!"

"Hush, it is terrible for her, of course. But it was not your fault. You
were horribly unfortunate, that is all." She stroked his shoulder, all
the aching tenderness of her heart in her finger-tips. "And now you are
going to make it all up to her."

He returned her look with dumb, suffering eyes. "How the gods must hate
me!"

A little shudder ran through her. What was the adage? "Whom the gods
destroy, they first make mad"? She placed her hand upon his lips. "Don't
say that. I can't bear to hear you. Nobody hates you, least of all the
gods. It is only that you are not as other men. Suffering seems to be
the price exacted of genius."

"I wish I were a clerk, tied to a desk in some rich man's office. I
might have had some chance at happiness then!"

She shook her head pityingly. "Oh no, that would never do. That life
would kill you. Your wings are powerful. You must soar higher than the
rest of us, even if it means aching loneliness and solitude."

His mother's words on Anne's lips! There must be truth in them, indeed!
He uttered a sorrowful cry. "Oh Anne, I simply cannot believe that this
is the end. Tell me, must it be so?"

She nodded. Great tears coursed down her face. "Yes Alexis, this is the
end. You must stand by Claire now. I shall love you more than ever for
doing it."

"It will kill me to part from you." He pressed a tear-wet cheek against
hers. For an anguished moment, they rocked to and fro in silent grief.

She spoke at last, in a weak little voice, unlike her own. "Better
perhaps that we should part while we still love each other. Then--then
we shall always remember it so."

A bitter-sweet smile twisted his lips. "Were you afraid my love would
get tepid? You were mistaken. If I didn't love you so consumingly, I
couldn't part with you now. If this were only passion," his voice broke,
"I might have been tempted to let things drift as they were until, until
you discovered."

A beautiful look of comprehension crossed her face. She pressed Alexis'
head to her bosom in a passion of tenderness. "You are more noble than I
dreamed."

He groaned. "Not noble at all, only suffering, Anne."

"Tell me what you intend to do? Of course you will go on your tour?"

"Don't ask me, I hardly know as yet, what I shall do on my return. I
will make the best arrangements for Claire that I can. But I will never
live with her as my wife, and perhaps not even under the same roof."

"Poor Alexis, poor boy," Anne felt him shudder as he lay against her.

"Does it hurt you to say good-by?" The whisper was dragged from the
anguish in his heart.

A lump in her throat, she clasped him to her without a word, and their
lips met and clung in sorrowful communion.

He bent over her and touched the emerald pendant about her throat. "Keep
it always in memory of me," he whispered. "Promise?"

She nodded. A rending pain, as of disruption racked her to the bone. "I
promise." Her voice broke. She turned away and flung herself face
downwards on to the pillows. "Go, please go, I cannot bear any more."

He stumbled to his feet and looked down upon her for the final time, a
lingering look, as if he were trying to quench the thirst of the years
to come in one consuming glance.

"Good-by, my very, my only dearest. Try to forgive me if you can.
Remember that I love you, and always shall love you to the very end."

Then he went away.

The door closed behind him with a soft, insistent finality that
resounded against Anne's heart like the first clod of earth upon a
beloved coffin. She suddenly felt old and inexpressibly weary, as if he
had taken her youth away with him forever. She broke into a fit of
passionate weeping.

                              CHAPTER XXVI

                          "WILL YOU TAKE ME--"

Spring had taken possession of Florence. Its glamour, its dewy
freshness, lay over all. The pregnant earth intoxicated with incense of
new-born life.

On the hillside, Anne's garden was abloom. Hyacinths and lilies,
daffodils, jonquils and pansies, bordered the graveled paths.
Morning-glories crept along the rose-tinted walls. In intricate designs,
orderly brigades of tulips, flung heavenwards their gorgeous cups. Lilac
bushes showered fragrance from all sides. The fountain, silent all
winter, gushed forth in renewed lilt. In its center, a marble cupid,
scarred and darkened with years, dimpled, perennially roguish.

On the raised terrace, overlooking the valley, Anne was pouring tea for
Vittorio's mother. Petite, grande dame, the short snow-white hair
curling tightly all over her head, the Marchesa looked like an
Eighteenth Century porcelain. About the delicately wrinkled old throat
coiled a necklace of pearls as large and round as peas. A Chinese shawl,
youthfully gay and exotic, draped the frail shoulders. She was talking,
as usual, with great animation.

A little pale in her yellow crèpe gown, Anne leaned back in the Manila
chair and listened. A subdued, rather weary, little smile played about
her lips. The old lady stopped her chatter and scanned Anne's face
affectionately. The large black eyes were very bright and uncannily
piercing.

"What is the matter, Anne? You aren't a bit like yourself this spring.
You seem a little fagged. Are you sure that everything is right with
you, dear child?"

Anne's smile brightened. "Cara Marchesa, of course I'm all right. Why
shouldn't I be? Am I not always happy to get back to my beloved
Florence?"

The Marchesa laughed happily, like a reassured child.

"You do love it, don't you? You are a true daughter of the Lily like
myself. Just think, Anne, I haven't been back to America for almost
forty years. And after Vittorio's hectic description of New York, I have
no desire to go."

"What a naughty lady," Anne laughed. "An unpatriotic little fraud!
Nobody would dream you were an old New Yorker, yourself, before your
marriage."

"No," the Marchesa smiled complacently. "They tell me I am thoroughly
Italianized. Frankly, the new America would kill me."

Anne laughed again. The Marchesa's little affectation was rather
endearing. "I believe it would, Marchesa. You belong in a garden like
this, against a background of Tuscan hills." She waved her hand towards
the terraced hillsides.

The Marchesa nodded, pleased at the delicate compliment.

"But Vittorio really likes New York, that is, some aspects of it," she
said courteously.

Anne shook her head with a dry little laugh. "Don't try to spare my
feelings. He hated it. He was horribly bored with us all."

The Marchesa's eyes twinkled. She shook a coquettish finger slightly
crooked from rheumatism in Anne's face.

"Not bored with you, my dear. You cannot make me believe that. You are
the apple of his eye."

Anne helped herself hastily to a buttered scone. "I'm afraid the apple
stuck in his throat more than once," she murmured with a nervous laugh.

The old woman looked at her wistfully. No, certainly, Anne was not
herself. What could be the matter? Some love affair, perhaps?

"When are you going to make us both happy?" The old voice was very
gentle.

"Do you still want me?" With averted head Anne fingered the teacups.

"More than ever, sweet child! I cannot bear to think of poor Vittorio
spending the rest of his life pottering about musty old ruins. And that
is what he will do if you won't have him, my dear. He refuses to look at
any one else!"

"But he loves ruins, doesn't he?" Anne teased, her equanimity somewhat
restored.

The Marchesa laughed ruefully. "Yes, he seems to have an
inextinguishable fondness for antiques, including his mother."

"Perhaps then, if I wait a little longer, I shall acquire more value in
his eyes, become more mellow, you know."

"Wicked child! You speak of yourself as if you were a cheese!"

"Speaking of cheese, that reminds me. I golfed with the Principe this
morning. You know he is in very bad odor here at present? I felt quite
devilish being seen with him."

"Some new scandal?" The black eyes twinkled.

Anne shrugged. "A cinema actress, I believe." She lighted a cigarette
and puffed at it delicately. "He had the temerity to propose to me
again."

The Marchesa's foot tapped upon the bricks. "Impoverished old wretch! I
can't bear to have you exposed to such things, Anne. Why don't you marry
us, and protect yourself against these adventurers?"

Secure in her own immense fortune, the Marchesa serenely felt her son to
be above suspicion.

Anne pretended to be immensely shocked. "The idea of calling the
Principe an adventurer. Why, his one foot in the grave would break off
if he could hear you. He is count of this, marchese of that," she
flicked her ashes flippantly, "and a Spanish Grandee to boot. I ought to
know, he has enumerated his titles to me often enough."

The Marchesa cackled merrily. "I suggest his getting out a catalogue for
the benefit of American heiresses. Old braggart! Why doesn't he ask me?
I'm nearer his age!"

"He is going to invite you to his tennis tea on Sunday," giggled Anne.
"Perhaps you can catch him on the rebound."

"Never say die! If I can't have a daughter-in-law, I might as well get
me a husband!" The Marchesa rose to her feet rheumatically. "But I must
limp along now dear. The sun is beginning to sink behind the Duomo and
my old bones will creak if I linger."

Anne moved towards her quickly. "I hate to have you go, dear lady."

Arm in arm, they strolled towards the balustrade and leaned there
silently. Dotted with occasional villas, the terraced hillsides glowed
russet. Dusky cypresses towered beside stone walls. Olive trees, in
gray-green uniforms elbowed gayly-blossoming fruit trees, "Like soldiers
out with their sweethearts," murmured Anne. "How Florence grows upon
one. What a personality she has! There is something chaste and virginal
about her, which is strange when you consider her history. She is as
unlike Rome or Venice as Botticelli is different from Michael Angelo and
Titian. But I put it so badly!"

"I see what you mean," broke in the Marchesa. "Florence will always be
pre-Raphaelite. She is the Blonde Princess, while Rome and Venice----"
she hesitated.

"Are the wicked brunettes--the red-haired villainesses like myself,"
finished Anne with a laugh. "But it is beautiful. I never get tired of
the Duomo, especially from this distance, do you? Near to, it resembles
a mah jong set a little too closely to suit me in flippant moods."

"Blasphemer!"

In spite of the rheumatism, they lingered while the setting sun cast a
ruddy glow over roofs and buildings and stained the Arno pink, as it
crawled beneath its bridges, and here and there a window gleamed
rose-colored. The crimson dome of the cathedral resembled a mammoth
ruby, its columnar campanile soaring ethereally beside it.

Still arm in arm, the two women sauntered away from the scene
regretfully, and descended the short flight of steps into the garden.

"What are you doing with yourself to-night?" asked Anne as they strolled
down one of the graveled paths.

"I'm looking forward to a perfect evening, child. Dinner by the fire in
the saloto, the companionship of Saint Simon, unexpurgated. And you?"

Anne sighed. "Nothing. I refused a bridge. I wasn't in the mood."

Her sad face fretted the old Marchesa. What ailed the girl? She
certainly must be love-sick. Had Vittorio lost out after all? Her son,
she shrewdly suspected, was remaining in Sicily at Anne's request, for
she had never known him to miss a Florentine spring before. About to
invite Anne to join forces for the evening, she changed her mind
abruptly. If the child wished to work out her problem in solitude, she
herself ought to be the last to prevent her, especially if some good
should come out of it for Vittorio.

They continued in silence to the end of the garden, where a postern gate
in the pink-tinted wall opened on to the Torrigiani property. As the
Marchesa passed through she turned and gazed up into the other's face.
Tall and slim as a jonquil in her yellow crêpe dress, Anne's hair flamed
in the setting sun. The old woman's eyes looked troubled as they rested
upon it.

"My dear, how beautiful you are! I love to look at you! If I were the
typical old lady I'd be telling what a beauty I was myself in my palmy
days. I don't seem to know my cues at all. But as a matter of fact, I'm
a better looking ruin than I ever was girl! If I were more wily, too,
and less wise, I probably wouldn't urge you quite so heartily, to marry
my only son. For there is danger in your beauty, child. But years have
taught me to appreciate danger. And I couldn't be so unkind as to
deprive a son of mine of such a precious stimulant."

With an enigmatic smile she raised herself on tiptoe and pecked daintily
at Anne's chin. The younger woman gathered her impulsively into her arms
and squeezed her.

"You delicious old cynic! No wonder Vittorio adores you. I do myself!"

A wistful expression crossed the delicate old face. "Be good to us, my
dear," she whispered. "We need you terribly in our house." She turned
gayly-shawled shoulders, and trotted up the long avenue towards her
villa.

Anne gazed after the small figure affectionately. Her absent eyes swept
the familiar gardens whose famous boxwood hedges defined the paths with
fantastic precision. Here a strange, antediluvian beast, there a
gigantic globe, so that to the bird's-eye view the gardens appeared like
an enormous chessboard with pawns at play. In the distance, from behind
a mass of towering cypresses, gleamed the villa, its splendid façade
flanked by a long flight of marble steps.

Anne closed the gate and walked back through her own simple garden. She
was anxious to reach the terrace again before all vestige of the sunset
should have disappeared, and she mounted the steps with rapid feet. A
cape over her shoulders, she drew a chair up by the balustrade and sat
there while the henna-colored hills darkened to purple, then faded into
lavender, and a mist rolled up from the valley and curled about the city
like a smoking halo. Pretty soon a few lights gradually emerged with the
evanescent gleam of a flock of fireflies.

Fireflies! Anne's lips curled downward. She closed her eyes behind
smarting tears. Soon would return the season of fireflies and roses.
Would Vittorio be there to wander arm in arm as of old in the Viale,
beneath a golden moon, while swarms of fireflies danced about them and
the scent of roses and verbena ascended to the stars? Anne did not know.
She had not been able to bring herself to the point of meeting him
again, although she had written of her definite rupture with Alexis only
a few weeks after it had taken place. But her heart was still sore from
the uprooting, and the necessity for solitude was urgent as the
primitive instinct of a wounded animal. So she had begged Vittorio to be
patient a little while longer, to give her time to readjust herself to
the old life. And he had been generous as usual, with an ecstatic
undercurrent coursing beneath the sacrifice; a feeling as of crisis
reached and nearly overcome; a premonition of future joys.

Anne had been quick to read this joy concealed between the lines of his
letters. But she had not had either the desire or the heart to quench
it. Her own unhappiness had made her heart very tender towards Vittorio
and she was inexpressibly tired of struggling against the tide. Why not
drift into haven at last? If she were good for nothing else, at least,
she could make Vittorio happy. Alexis had taught her that, and much
besides. No longer the inhibited creature of her first marriage, love
and all it implied, no longer repelled her. She had looked upon its
naked beauty unashamed.

The first bitterness of parting over, she scarcely knew in what mood she
found herself. A great lassitude had fallen upon her. A weariness almost
mortal. Although she had realized from the beginning that rupture was
inevitable, she had not looked for it so soon, and when the blow fell it
stunned her. For days she had gone about her packing numbly, and it was
not until after her arrival in Florence that she had been able to think
about Alexis without tears, she to whom weeping was strange and almost
monstrous.

And yet she had never really loved him as a woman loves a man upon whom
she depends for her daily strength. He had been like a dearly loved,
temperamental child. Torn from her arms, her tenderness was lost without
him. Her heart yearned to mother his sorrow. At times her need of him
was so desperate that she would have even welcomed a scene. To feel the
eager arms about her, to look upon the beautiful, willful face, would
have made up for all. However, in the darkest hour, when the void he had
left ached most intolerably, Anne knew that their parting had all been
for the best. Their chances of enduring happiness had been so
infinitesimal compared to the odds against them. No, even now, hungry
for love and solitary as never before, she could still face facts with a
certain sturdy wisdom, a cynicism that amazed her, and of which she was
even a trifle ashamed.

She found herself reading Vittorio's letters with a growing nostalgia
for his comforting presence. His poise, his masculinity, appealed to her
more than ever before. Weary of leaning upon herself, she longed to take
refuge behind his strength. How soothing, how comfortable, his
untemperamental simplicity, how genuinely lovable his personality. And
besides those qualities for which her fatigue yearned, he possessed rare
ability, brains, and a growing reputation that was rapidly making him an
outstanding figure amongst his colleagues.

Anne rose from her chair by the balustrade and groped her way down into
the garden. Yes, she mused, Vittorio was a remarkable man. He deserved a
better woman than herself. She ought to be ashamed for having kept him
waiting so long. She strolled towards the house, whose lighted windows
flickered welcome from behind closed shutters. Should she write to
Vittorio to come at once? Perhaps? How happy it would make the dear
little Marchesa. Yes, she would write to him now, at once, before the
mood passed.

With a resolute step she walked up to the terrace and entered the villa,
going directly to her desk in the library.

It was perhaps an evasive little letter, after all, she thought, as she
stamped and gave it to the contadine's boy to mail. But it would fetch
Vittorio, of that she was sure. Allowing three or four days for it to
reach him (it might just miss the boat from Naples) she ought to be able
to count upon seeing him within ten days or perhaps even sooner. She
went upstairs and with the help of Regina changed into a loose,
peplum-like tea-gown. Supremely happy in her beloved Firenze, the woman
chattered volubly and flew about the large, austere room, like a
bright-eyed magpie. Amusement curved Anne's lips as she watched her.
What boundless joy it would give Regina when she herself became a
Marchesa.

Gleaming hair wound about her head like a copper helmet, amber draperies
clinging to the long, slim body, she wended her way downstairs and into
the dining room.

After dinner she sat before the fire in the library, whose crowded
bookshelves gleamed like jewels in the light of the flames. A volume of
memoirs upon her knees, she gazed into the blaze absently. About ten
o'clock the gate-bell rang and she heard a car drive into the courtyard.
Perhaps the Principe, or some young officer whom she was in the habit of
meeting at the Tennis Club in the Cascine. Not in the mood for visitors,
she rose and made for the stairs.

"Give my excuses, Sandro," she commenced, as the old butler appeared in
the doorway.

But she was too late, for the visitor had followed close upon the man's
heels. Decidedly annoyed, she turned and faced the intruder, a courteous
smile upon her lips.

If Anne had been a frail woman, she might have fainted. As she was, she
came nearer to it than ever in her life before. The color drained from
her face. She stared with dilated eyes, as a slim, tall man traversed
the distance between them in a few short strides.

"Anne, I have come back. Will you take me?"

Falling at her feet, Alexis encircled her knees with relentless young
arms.

                             CHAPTER XXVII

                             CLAIRE'S CHILD

Anne led Alexis into the library, and fell into a chair before the fire.

"What does this mean? Have you left Claire after all?" Her widened eyes
stared at Alexis coldly. So all his good resolutions had meant just
nothing? The weakling strain would out. She might have guessed it.

But his gaze met hers unflinchingly. "Claire is dead," he whispered. The
words issued from pale lips almost inaudibly.

Hands pressed against the arms of her chair, Anne started up. Her rising
scream was subdued to a whisper. "Claire dead!"

He nodded dumbly. Throwing himself into a chair, he cupped his face in
trembling fingers. "Yes, Anne, Claire is dead. And I have killed her as
surely as if I'd stuck a knife into her, or put poison into her food."

Anne's hands flew instinctly to her mouth to check a cry.

"What do you mean?" Was it possible that----?

His misery-laden eyes encountered the question in hers without
comprehending its horrible significance.

"The child. My child," he replied with tragic simplicity.

"Ah!" Anne leaned her head against the chair-back. She closed her eyes
while a species of lucid swoon swept over her. So Claire was dead. They
had killed her between them. She and Alexis had killed a woman. For if
Alexis was guilty, so was she. Was she not the indirect cause of the
girl's misery? Might not Alexis have gone back to Claire if it had not
been for herself? That was problematical and open to doubt, so her
uncanny lucidity informed her. But the fact remained they had killed her
between them. And yet the very first time that Anne had seen Claire she
already bore within herself the seeds of death. Tragic germ of life,
that contains death! Poor, poor Claire!

"Poor Claire," she moaned beneath her breath almost unconsciously.
"And--the child?" she faltered, sturdily defiant of her fear.

"Lives."

"Thank God." Anne's face was suddenly wet with tears. "Tell me about
it." From a gulf of despair, Anne's voice smote upon his misery.

"It was horrible. Her face, her poor little dead face! I cannot sleep at
night for seeing it." He wrung tortured hands.

Anne shuddered. "Tell me about it," she whispered relentlessly.

He fixed his eyes upon her petrified face with a groan. "Oh, Anne, must
I tell you everything? Can't I spare you anything at all?"

"Tell me everything. I can bear it if you can." Her pupils narrowed in
an agony of pity, as they fell upon his white face.

He continued in a monotonous voice that muffled his suffering as a heavy
mist conceals the lip of a chasm. "I was in Chicago when I received the
telegram. I cancelled my engagements and rushed back to New York on the
next train. But it was too late--Claire was dead." Head heavy on his
chest, his lids drooped leadenly over a waxy face.

"Go on." Anne's voice was thick with tears.

"I went to the apartment. Dr. Elliott met me at the door. He was in his
shirt-sleeves." His voice choked and he was silent for a moment. "You
don't know Dr. Elliott, but he was Claire's friend as well as her
doctor. He--he loved Claire."

Anne showed her astonishment. Was it possible that between them they had
driven the child to such cheap consolation? He sensed her terror.

"No, Anne, Elliott was not Claire's lover. He merely loved her. He would
have liked to marry her if she had been willing to divorce me."

"I see. Poor man!" Anne's lips grew paler.

Alexis continued in the same emotionless tones.

"Yes, poor wretch. He is a fine fellow, and would have made her happy if
it hadn't been for me. So you understand, of course, how much he hates
me, don't you?"

"Of course, it is only natural." Her voice was warm with pity.

Alexis glanced up at her with pathetic gratitude. "He met me at the
door. He gave me one terrible look, a look that I shall never forget,
and said, 'Your wife is dead.' I--I don't know exactly what I did, but I
think I leaned against the wall and I must have looked odd, for he cried
out, 'Christ, this is no time to faint, man. Your wife is dead, I tell
you, and you've got to face it. It's your own neglect that has killed
her!' Those are the very words he used. They are branded into my brain."

He stopped short with a moan. Anne uttered a cry of pity.

"Poor boy, how you have suffered! But go on, I must know it all. That is
the only way I can help you."

Dark with pain and compassion, her eyes endowed him with renewed force.

"He told me horrors, Anne, but I deserved them all. He said there was no
reason why it should not have been a normal birth, except that Claire
had been so weakened by unhappiness that she simply didn't have the
physical stamina to pull her through. And he added that she didn't want
to live, that she felt all along that she wouldn't. That's why she
refused to go to the hospital. She couldn't bear the thought of dying
there. Anne, think of it. Think of poor Claire, knowing she was going to
die, and planning for it like that. Isn't it too pitiful?"

"Yes, it is horrible," Anne whispered, "and that is probably what killed
her. She was so sure she was going to die, that she made no effort to
help herself."

"That is what Elliott said. There wasn't much he didn't say. When he had
finished, he swept by me and out of the house and I haven't seen him
since, excepting----" he hesitated painfully, "at the funeral."

Anne winced. The funeral, how heartrending! She had never thought of
that, somehow. But of course there had had to be one. She avoided his
eyes that brimmed with knowledge of such horrors.

"I shall not speak of that." His voice fluted dangerously. "After
Elliott left I--I almost ran away myself. But the nurse came into the
hall and seemed to expect me to go in and see Claire. I didn't want to,
Anne. It was the most difficult thing I ever did in my life. I somehow
felt as if I hadn't the right to take advantage of her helplessness. But
the nurse couldn't know that, of course, so I followed her into the
room."

He paused and shaded his eyes with quivering fingers. "Anne, she was
beautiful. She looked rested as she used to when we were children
together. Her hair was braided in two plaits on either side of her face.
On one of her tiny hands gleamed the wedding ring. After that first
glimpse I couldn't take my eyes off it. It seemed so pathetic, somehow.
So tragic to have her wear it to the very end--and after. It wrenched at
my heart. I fell down by the bedside and cried. Afterwards," he
faltered.

Anne prompted him tenderly. "Afterwards?"

"Afterwards, when I was in the hall again, the nurse asked me if I
didn't want to see the child. I--I had forgotten all about it! Just to
think of it, Anne, I hadn't even remembered to ask if it had lived. My
own child! What kind of a brute do you think I am?"

"Merely a puzzled and a frightened one, poor Alexis. Certainly not the
monster you imagine. Come, tell me about the baby, dear."

Her compassion fell like oil upon his wounded soul. He loved her for it
and for the beautiful calm with which she suppressed her own sorrow,
which he sensed strongly beneath his own piercing misery.

"She left me for a moment and returned with a bundle in her arms. The
bundle whimpered a little like--like a sick kitten. I was afraid to
look, but the nurse thrust it under my eyes and I had to. It was a very
ugly baby, Anne. The little face was all screwed up. Pale and puny, not
fat and red like the babies in pictures. It made me a little sick at
first. I didn't want to touch it. It was sort of uncanny with its great,
hazy eyes staring out at me. However, she laid it in my arms and I had
to hold it, for fear it might fall on the ground and break if I didn't."

As he stopped for a moment, Anne smiled through tears. How very
masculine, even the most feminine of men can be under certain
conditions.

A new and softer expression spread over his tired face. The eyes
acquired an exalted expression. He continued. "Then an odd thing
happened, Anne, a very odd thing! As I held him away from me, he stirred
in my arms. I could feel his little feet kick my side, and a tiny fist,
like an unopened bud suddenly beat against my breast. A hand, knocking
at my heart, the hand of my son! It sent a thrill coursing all over me,
Anne. I bent over and kissed the pale, pathetic forehead. And as I met
the cloudy eyes, so full of sadness and mystery, I knew that I loved
him. And I vowed that I would make it all up to him, cherish him, bring
him up to be as different from myself as possible, that he might be both
happy and sane. Then, immediately, while he was still in my arms and I
could feel him stir against my heart, I thought of you, Anne. I thought
of you and knew that you would help us. You, who are so strong, so
beautifully sane yourself!"

Alexis rose and threw himself at Anne's feet. He seized her unresisting
hands and covered them with kisses.

"Oh, Anne, take pity on us! Love us if you can. We need you so
terribly!"

She caressed his head with compassionate hands. "Yes, dearest, yes." Her
eyes were tragic as she listened. "We need you so terribly." The words
of the Marchesa! She had used them eons ago, when this self-same
afternoon was young. Poor Marchesa! Poor Vittorio! They would suffer if
they were to lose her. But not like Alexis. Alexis and a baby!
Combination of helplessness! If she, Anne, were to forsake them, what
would become of them at all? And she owed it to Claire. It was the only
reparation she could make for the injuries she had been forced to
inflict upon her. To look after Alexis, to cherish him as the dead girl
had longed to do herself so that his marvelous art might not be stilled
by sorrow, to give her child, poor mite, the love and happiness its
mother had craved and never received. Anne's path seemed to lie clear
before her tear-washed eyes. Once more, Vittorio would have to be
sacrificed. This time forever. But he was strong. His grief would never
break him. He would make of it a staff to further progress. But
Alexis--for Alexis, her refusal might mean return to that dark Limbo
from which she had rescued him once before. And to that fate, so much
more bitter than death, Anne could never condemn him.

She pressed her cheek against the head that lay so humbly upon her
knees. She raised his face and looked down into the tragic young eyes. A
long look, a giving look, a look that poured divine essence of
compassion from her very soul, in a sort of spiritual transfusion, until
the face between her hands became suffused with rapture.

"No Alexis, do not be afraid, I shall not desert you now. Nothing but
your own will can ever separate us."

He looked up at her with the humility of a dumb beast. "Does this mean
you are really going to marry me, Anne?" he asked in hushed tones.

She nodded gravely. "If you wish it."

The rapture on his face brimmed over into tremulous laughter.

"Anne, Anne!" He was about to take her in his arms, but she repulsed him
with gentle dignity.

"No, Alexis, not now dear."

He understood. A subdued expression veiling his joy, he sat down quietly
at a little distance. Anne looked at him gratefully. After all, she
could always count upon his delicacy, which was a great comfort.

"Where is the child?" she inquired, making an effort to shoulder her new
responsibilities.

He looked pleased. "In the apartment in Gramercy Park. He has a trained
nurse, and is getting along very well. I had a cable yesterday. Oh,
Anne, will you try to love him?"

Anne smiled through the leaden lassitude that had suddenly fallen upon
her. "I shan't have to try. He is little and helpless and yours."

"Anne, my beautiful one, my angel!"

This time she did not evade the effusion, but resigned herself to the
hungry young arms.

Much later, after Alexis had gone, and the fire had smouldered into a
mound of white dust, Anne went to the telephone, and sent Vittorio the
wire which was to nullify so completely her summons of a few short hours
ago.

                             CHAPTER XXVIII

                           "PITY THAT PAINS"

Anne's villa delighted Alexis, especially the small music room with its
frescoed walls and paucity of furniture. It was, he said, the ideal room
for music, and they spent their evenings there and many afternoons.

To-day, an outburst of spring rain had driven them gustily indoors. It
fell from the skies like a sable veil through which smiling hillsides
showed ashen like a woman in mourning. In the garden the cypresses
dripped heavily. Water foamed down the gutters in amber cataracts.

A shower of slanting missiles, the rain hurled itself against the
windows, drumming upon the panes with the beat of a thousand nervous
fingers. Anne shivered a little. From a stool at her side Alexis looked
up into her face anxiously. It was pale, and the large eyes gleamed from
out dark circles. He took her relaxed hand and stroked it tenderly.

"You look tired, dearest one. Aren't you well this afternoon?"

"My head aches a little."

It was palpable to Alexis that her smile came with an effort. He laid
his cheek against her hand with a low, crooning caress.

"Poor darling! What could have caused it? I've never known you to have
one before."

She passed a hand over her forehead in the futile gesture that
accompanies headache. "I have only had one or two in my whole life."

Her tired smile went to his heart.

"What do you think brought it on?" he persisted. "Have I worn you
completely out?"

"Of course not, silly boy!" The over-brilliant eyes hovered upon him
restlessly.

"Well, what is it then?" Anxiety rendered him brusque.

"I suppose it was my visit to the Marchesa this morning. It wasn't an
easy thing to do, Alexis."

"Telling her about us, you mean?"

She nodded wearily. "You see, she has hoped for years that I would marry
her son, and it was rather a blow."

"Poor old lady, of course it was. But didn't she know that you had no
intention of marrying him anyway?"

Anne avoided the searching eyes, with elaborate carelessness. "Yes, but
so long as I remained single, she always felt there was a chance of my
changing my mind."

"Ah, poor old thing! I don't blame her for being upset at losing you. If
I were she, I'd want to commit murder. Was she nasty?"

"No-o." Anne frowned a little. In her delicate way the Marchesa had
certainly been a trifle ironic. But you couldn't blame her for that, as
Anne had not felt it incumbent upon herself to tell the truth in its
entirety. Yes, she had been a little cutting and the sting of her words
lingered in Anne's heart. Particularly the inference about the nursemaid
wives of erratic geniuses. But the pinched look about her mouth, the
added pallor upon the frail ivory face had more than excused her. If one
chose to wound one's dearest friends by indulging in what must seem like
inexplicable freaks, one must suffer the consequences.

"You seem a little uncertain?" During Anne's silence, Alexis' eyes had
darkened with renewed suspicion.

His persistence troubled her. She shrugged fatigued shoulders. "Let's
forget it, dear. What's the good of rubbing it in? The Marchesa took my
news a little harder than necessary perhaps. Our conversation was a very
unhappy, miserable affair. You see, I couldn't tell her everything. And
so she doesn't quite understand. She merely thinks I've lost my silly
old head over a handsome violinist who will some day leave me high and
dry for a fresher and prettier woman. Her point of view is natural,
quite refreshingly cynical in fact. She suggested I indulge my
infatuation by a temporary liaison rather than in marriage, which
couldn't fail to be fatal!"

She burst into a hysterical little laugh, which Alexis resented
furiously.

"Wicked old witch! And I was sorry for her a little while ago!"

He drew the stool to Anne's knees, and leaned his weight against her.
"You do love and trust me don't you, dearest?"

"Of course. Why not?" She used a light tone purposely. Her fatigue would
permit of no other.

"I've never looked at any other woman but you, Anne. I never even notice
women on the street. In my audiences they are just so many blank discs
that come to life under my music, and then melt back again into the
common mass. No, I shall never be a woman-chasing man. You and my music
and the poor little child whom between us, we're going to make a happy
little child, will more than fill my life."

His enraptured expression struck Anne with a pang. Poor Alexis, there
was so much more good in him than he had ever been given credit for.
That he was neither light nor sensual she had surmised from the
beginning. But even she had never plumbed the depths of nobility that
lay concealed beneath the child-like and difficult temperament. Perhaps,
after all, the future might turn out to be less dark than she feared.
She threw her arms about his shoulders.

"We're going to be happy, aren't we?" Her voice unconsciously pleaded.

Eyes closed, he snuggled against her.

"Happy? I shall be exultant as a god. As for you, you're such an angel
that my joy may be enough for you! But I shall try, how I shall try to
make you happy, too. How proud I shall be of my wife. When people see
you sitting in a box at my concerts, they will ask who is that radiant
creature? And the answer will be 'Mme. Alexis Petrovskey.' 'Is she not
wonderful?' Men will go mad over you. They will want to fight duels over
you with me. But I shall laugh in their faces. For you will be mine."

"Silly boy!" Her hand caressed his shoulder.

"In another six weeks we will be in Paris together. Anne and music and
Paris! I don't dare think of it! I'm afraid something will happen, that
I'll burst of joy perhaps first!"

"You ought to be able to count on lasting through the next few weeks
without asking too much of the gods," laughed Anne.

"I don't know. They are said to be jealous! But enough gloom! Do you
still like your ring dear?"

"I'm crazy about it. It's the most beautiful I have ever seen!"

She held out her hand and they admired the ring with rather comical
gravity. An enormous emerald cut square and set in a delicate lacework
of diamonds and platinum, it etherealized the white hand to the point of
fragility.

"My collection of emeralds ought to be complete. First my bracelet, then
the pendant, and now my ring."

He protested scornfully. "Complete, I should say not! I intend to hang
ropes of emeralds all over you yet, when I'm really famous," he boasted
with boyish glee.

"Until I fall dead beneath their weight, like the princess in the fairy
tale!" Her arm dropped from about his shoulder wearily.

With a remorseful look at her pale face, he left her and walked to the
window.

"Look, the rain has stopped. It was only a shower after all. The
hillsides are smiling again. And the garden is as fresh and dewy as a
pretty woman after her bath. Shall we go out?"

He opened the French window and they stepped out on to the flagged
terrace. Polished by rain, diamond-studded, in the late afternoon sun,
the garden sent up renewed incense, a symphony of rare fragrance, that
mounted into the air like music.

"It reminds me of one of Liszt's rhapsodies," said Alexis, his fingers
wielding an imaginary bow.

"Some day I shall compose a rhapsody of my own and call it, 'To a Tuscan
Garden.'"

"Ah, but next month when the roses are out, that is the most enchanting
of all," sighed Anne dreamily.

"But we shall not be here then," he retorted. "We shall already be on
our way to Paris--I mean to Paradise!" He laughed unsteadily. "Anne,
think of it. Think of you and me alone in the wagon-lit. Won't it be
deliciously improper? I shall boast before the guards. It will be my
wife desires this, and that. 'Please close the window. My wife doesn't
like a draught!'" He was so comic in his pantomime that Anne laughed
until the tears came.

"You young rogue!"

He pressed her arm against his side.

"How is the poor head, dear? How would you like to lie down in the
hammock and let me play to you, while the sun sinks back of the city,
and sets the old Duomo on fire!"

"What a Neronic inspiration!" She smiled with an effort. "But dear,
would you think it beastly of me if I sent you home now? My head is
really rather bad and if I don't make an effort to get rid of it, it may
get the better of me."

Immediately, he was full of remorse.

"Of course not. Why didn't you send me packing a long time ago? I'll run
right along and you go to bed like a good girl. Shall I see you in the
morning?"

"Weren't we going to the Uffizi? I know you detest sightseeing as much
as I do. But there are some things you simply mustn't miss."

He looked doubtful. "But are you fit to go, darling?"

"Indeed I am. All I need to put me on my feet is a good night's rest.
To-morrow I shall be right as rain."

"Well, if you aren't, I'll come up and nurse you myself. Shall I take my
violin back with me, or leave it here as usual?"

"Oh, leave it. You won't need it to-night. And it's safer here than at
the hotel. Well, good-by. You're a dear to put up with all my pains and
aches."

"Such dear aches and pains, all caused by my own brutal self!"

She held out her hands. He kissed the palms lingeringly, and then swung
down the terrace towards the courtyard, where his car was waiting by the
tall iron gates. Slim, flexible as a steel blade, small shapely head,
aureoled in the setting sun, he trod the air like a young god.

Anne looked after him wistfully. As he disappeared around the angle of
the house, fatigue mounted about her in dizzy waves, sucked her down,
engulfed her in a dark, pulsating embrace, like the swirl of black
waters.

Brilliant afternoon faded into dark, moonless night. Gun-metal clouds
obscured, one by one, the beckoning stars. A breeze, warm and
sweet-smelling as the breath of cattle, stirred in the tops of the
trees.

From her deck upon the garden terrace, Anne watched the clouds as, with
swollen sails, they scurried like miraged galleons upon an inverted sea.
Her headache eased, it had left behind a trail of lassitude. She lay
back in her chair, too weary for thought, spent to the point of
serenity, at truce with an unsubstantial world.

When footsteps cut crisply upon the brick stairway, she did not even
trouble to turn her head.

"Is that you, Alexis?" she called languidly.

Vittorio's voice broke upon her lethargy with the abruptness of a stone
thrown into a stagnant pool.

"No, it is I, Vittorio."

Pierced as by a blade, her numbness fell from her like a mantle. She
rose, and leaning against the balustrade, gave vent to a thin cry. "I
told you not to come!"

"But surely, you didn't expect to be obeyed?" Etched against the sombre
heavens, Vittorio loomed disproportionately large. He approached and
seized her hands almost roughly.

"My mother says you are going to marry this Petrovskey. Tell me it isn't
true, Anna mia?"

"Yes." She made a feeble effort to withdraw her hands.

"But I thought he had a wife already."

"She--she died a few weeks ago. Won't you please let go my hands?"

His grasp tightened. "How do you know he is telling you the truth?"

She threw back her head proudly. The curve of her throat shone through
the dusk like a white pillar. "Alexis is not a liar!"

Vittorio laughed grimly. It was worse than he had feared. "But you
cannot mean to marry him. He is entirely out of your class, an artist, a
Bohemian. If you cannot protect yourself from such people, I must do it
for you."

Anne succeeded in wrenching away her hands.

"I have not asked for your protection, Vittorio Torrigiani."

"No, madonna mia, but you need it. You suddenly decide to throw away
your life and expect me to sit calmly by. I warn you I am desperate. I
cannot permit this sacrilege."

"Sacrilege? You call this sacrilege? If you had used that word a few
months ago you might have come nearer to the truth. But now----!"

He broke in quickly. "Ah, that was different. That was only for the time
being. This is for life. That was a whim, a condescension. Not to be
taken seriously like marriage."

"I took it seriously," her voice was quick with reproach.

"I know you did, and I loved you for it, although it nearly broke my
heart. To feel that you belonged to another man, that you had given
yourself of your own free will was the most fearful hell I hope to ever
have to undergo. But this is ten times worse. It isn't only that I am
going to lose you forever, that is bad enough, God knows, but to know
that you will be miserable, unhappy, completely out of your sphere. Ah,
that is more than I can bear."

She laid her hand upon his sleeve pleadingly. "But if I can bear it, if
I feel that it is the right thing to do? Won't that help at all,
Vittorio?"

"But how can I know that you are not sacrificing yourself again? There
is something mysterious about this. You are keeping something back,
Anne."

She turned from him with a hopeless shrug and leaned her elbows on the
balustrade.

"There's nothing mysterious about it, Vittorio. Alexis is alone in the
world. He needs me and I am fond of him."

He went towards her impulsively. "Fond of him! You call that love? Fond,
is that a word to build a marriage upon?"

"I'm only quoting you. Haven't you told me many times that love wasn't
necessary to a happy marriage?"

"If I did I was lying and you knew it, my Anne, or you would have taken
me a dozen times over. And I was always patient because I felt that love
would come to you finally. And lately, I was so happy, happier than for
years. Your letters were so wonderful. I could hear you calling to me
between the lines. I felt the time was rapidly approaching when you
would awaken to your need of me. Oh, Anne, you're not a capricious
woman. You couldn't have written to me like that just out of caprice. I
feel I have the right to ask for an explanation."

She turned towards him blindly as he leaned beside her on the parapet.
Their groping hands met and clung. "You have a right to all I can tell
you, Vittorio." Her fingers trembled in his strong clasp. "But there
isn't much to say. When I wrote you I thought I was free. And--then he
came--and I discovered that I had made a mistake. So I telegraphed to
you not to come."

The grasp upon her hand tightened nervously. "You mean you discovered
that it was he and not I whom you loved after all?"

"Perhaps," her voice came muffled.

"But don't you know, dear heart?"

The fingers in his fluttered. "Yes--I know."

The words were almost inaudible. And he was forced to lean close in
order to hear them at all. Then almost before she knew it, his arms were
about her. His lips rained kisses upon her averted face.

"Carissima, it is I whom you love. I, Vittorio! How many times shall I
have to tell it to you?"

The exultant voice deafened her. Giddy, on the point of defeat, she
pushed him away with the palms of her hands, and fell into a chair.

"Don't. Don't." Face hidden in her fingers, she began to sob weakly.

"Yes, yes. It is the only way to save you from yourself."

Falling on his knees beside the chair, he removed the hands from her
tear-wet face. "Now--tell me all," he commanded.

She faltered out the pitiful story of Claire's death and Alexis's
remorse.

"So you see how he needs me," she ended.

"But I--I need you too," he insisted desperately, crushed by the tragedy
of it all.

"Not the way he does," she interposed. "Oh, Vittorio, I have promised. I
cannot break my word even----" her voice faltered--"even for you!
Nothing but Alexis' own will can ever separate us now!"

He groaned. "But you are not happy. You do not love him. You love me.
Even he wouldn't ask you to keep your word if he knew that," he said
miserably.

"But he doesn't know. He doesn't dream that I don't love him, poor boy.
I'd rather tear myself in pieces than have him guess. He has been so
unhappy, so miserable!"

"But Anne, doesn't my unhappiness, my misery, mean as much to you as
his?"

She turned an anguished face towards him, laying her hands upon his
shoulders. "You know what it means to me," she gasped. "I--I love you,
Vittorio."

His arms closed about her frantically. "This is horrible. You say you
love me and yet you are going to marry another man."

"I have given my word," she whispered, against his heart.

They were silent for a moment, while the perfumed breeze rustled in the
tree-tops and played with the vines upon the wall.

"What was that?" exclaimed Anne, starting up nervously. A new sound,
like a stealthy footstep had risen from the path beneath them.

"Nothing, dearest." Vittorio rose and peered over the parapet, into the
black pit that was the garden, "Nothing at all. It must have been a
fallen branch."

"For a moment I thought it was Alexis," she breathed, hand on bounding
heart.

He strolled back to her. "Ah, you see, he frightens you already. He is
in the back of your mind constantly. Give him up before it is too late,
cara. If you don't, I shall have to go to him myself and tell him the
truth. If he doesn't release you then, he is a cad."

She stood up and faced him. "If you do that, I shall never see you
again. It would be the act of a fiend. It would kill every spark of love
that I ever felt for you."

"Anne, Anne, are you asking me to give you up again?" He stretched
famished arms towards her.

She wrung her hands against a sudden, smiting anguish, that left her
weak and trembling. "Yes----" she whispered. "Vittorio!"

She slipped into his outstretched arms with a strangled cry. Their lips
met, lingered, then parted unsatisfied.

Only a few words, a woman's smothered cry, but sufficient to quench
forever Alexis' joy. Only a few words in fewer moments, but enough to
send tottering the entire foundation of his being, which less than a
minute before had towered to the limitless heavens.

A pæan upon the lips, nectar in his veins, he had approached the terrace
as if on air. Anne's head was better, so Regina had told him. She had
gone out into the garden, was sitting alone under the scattered stars.
How surprised she would be when the notes of his violin stole upon her
through the night! He would play the Canzonetta from Tchaikowsky's
Concerto, the one they both loved the best. It was just the thing for a
night like this. A heavy, mysterious night. A night weighted with warm
perfume and the promise of hidden rapture. A quivering, mischievous
smile upon his lips, he had tiptoed to the bottom of the terrace. Violin
tucked beneath his chin, bow raised, ready to sweep the strings, he had
suddenly paused. From the terrace above a man's voice had cut into the
silence. Alexis held his breath. So Anne was not alone after all? A
caller, some unknown man had chosen to-night of all nights to make her a
visit. How annoying! And yet how absurd of him to be upset. Why
shouldn't Anne have a visitor? It was the most natural thing in the
world. Only a monopolist like himself could possibly grudge it her.
Besides, it would be a good opportunity to become acquainted with one of
Anne's friends. He decided to mount the steps and meet the intruder as
cordially as possible, when the sound of Anne's voice, vibrant and
agitated, had reached his ears, and he had listened in spite of himself.

"But he doesn't know, he doesn't dream that I don't love him, poor boy!"
Then the man's voice, pleading, but masterful. "But, Anne, doesn't my
unhappiness mean as much to you as his?"

That answer of Anne's! Those flaying words that laid bare Alexis' soul!
That confession of love, which had undermined his whole structure of
being!

And the entire horror had passed within the space of a moment. The air
still vibrated with Anne's words, was heavy with their import. Stunned,
Alexis had crawled out of hearing and leaned against the base of the
terrace. Dismembered, leaden, his limbs rocked beneath him sickeningly.
Presently, when the strength flowed back into them again, he would creep
away to the gates where his car was waiting. Meanwhile, he must be very
silent. A single, uneven breath, a smothered sob might betray him. And
they must not guess his presence until he was beyond reach or recall. To
steal away was the least he could do. He would steal away out of Anne's
life, like a thief who has stolen another man's treasure, and then come
back surreptitiously, to return it. He, Alexis, was a thief. He had
tried to take what did not belong to him. He was an unsuccessful thief,
moreover, for Anne's love had never been his. From the bottomless abyss,
he knew it now if never before. The woman who had lain in his arms,
whose body he had called his own, had never belonged to him at all. She
had remained remote as a condescending goddess. Pitiful, without doubt,
but fundamentally untouched. "And yet it is her pity that pains me
most."

Anne, his Anne, he had made her suffer! She was suffering at this
moment, only a few feet away. God, how he hated himself! He must get
away immediately, before the sight of her weakened him, the beloved
voice shattered his resolution to tatters. Violin clasped mechanically
to his breast, he crept along the wall and cut across the grass to the
gates. They were still ajar and he slipped through to his car unnoticed.

Haggard, unkempt, he entered his hotel and regardless of curious
glances, strode to the bureau and secured his berth on the midnight
express for Paris.

Two hours later he was on his way.

But he had left behind him a letter for Anne. A taciturn, incoherent
letter that strove to conceal the pain that he knew would wound her so
cruelly. She must not be sad for him. She must not blame herself at all.
It was not her fault that he had overheard her confession. Above all,
she must not be afraid that he would do anything desperate like killing
himself. Those old, unbalanced days were gone forever. He must live for
his child now and his music. He prayed her not to write or to follow
him, as out of her immense pity and charity he was afraid she might be
tempted to do. But to give him this chance to prove himself a man to
them both. He had played with her magnanimity for the last time. He
hoped that she would forgive him all the suffering he had so stupidly
caused her. And finally, he begged her to think of him sometimes and to
keep his gifts for the sake of the great love he would always bear her.

An incoherent letter, every word of which revealed to Anne his bleeding
hurt. With anguished eyes, she visualized, relived his agony. Saw him as
he crouched beneath the terrace and overheard her confess her love to
Vittorio. Followed on his mad ride back to the city. Stood behind him
while he labored over the scrawl which was to conceal from her his pain,
his utter desolation. Accompanied and sat beside him in the wagon-lit as
he steamed put of Florence, out of her life. That same wagon-lit of
which he had spoken so joyously only yesterday. That wagon-lit he had
hoped to share with her as his companion, but in which he had been
destined to ride alone. Behind scalding tears, she saw him throw himself
onto his berth, watched him as he lay wide-eyed and motionless into the
dawn. Passed with him into the future, as exalted, fawned-upon, his
child and his violin by his side, he disappeared over the horizon and
out of her sight, a pathetic, solitary figure.

                                EPILOGUE

                            PURPLE AND GOLD

Urged by a placid breeze, the small boat sped forward with the graceful
glide of a swan, its henna-sail reflected in the rippleless waters like
tarnish on green bronze. Almost grazing the lush banks it passed the
large hotels on the mainland and skirted the island, where the gardens
of the villas sprawl luxuriantly down to the Nile.

Anne settled herself in the stern with a sigh of sheer joy. Beneath a
large sun hat, her shadowed eyes looked like shining green pools in a
dark forest.

"Wail of shadoof, song of sakieh, how I love it," she murmured. She
gazed upon the shore, where polished brown bodies bent rhythmically over
their world-old task. "If you hadn't taken a holiday this year,
Vittorio, I don't know how I should ever have borne it. Let me see, it's
three years since we were last in Assuan, isn't it?"

"Yes, but you know you hated to leave the boys, Anne. As for me, I
wouldn't have enjoyed it without you." His eyes rested upon her fondly.
"How are you enjoying your second honeymoon, cara?" He slipped a
proprietary arm about her slim waist.

Anne laughed happily and looked askance at the gorgeously-appareled
dragoman sitting in the bow with the two sailors. "Really, Vittorio,
after ten years of the matrimonial yoke, your devotion deserves
honorable mention." One eye still upon the dragoman, she squeezed his
hand surreptitiously. "Will you never remember you're married to an old
woman? I'll be forty-three in a few months. Heigh-ho!"

Above the mock-tragic sigh her smile was divinely careless, divinely
assured. The smile of a woman who knows in every fiber of her being that
she is loved. And indeed the years had changed Anne almost not at all. A
trifle less slim, her beauty had deepened and perfected in the mold.
Brilliant, undimmed, her hair shone like beaten copper beneath the
drooping brim of the leghorn.

A little lined, quite gray, certainly more distinguished than before,
Vittorio pressed against her side. "Forty-three! Do you call that a
great age, foolish one? You are fishing! You know perfectly well that
you are as beautiful as ever. If I were jealous, I shouldn't have a
moment's peace with the raft of men you always have about you, at home
in Florence--and the idle brutes at the hotel here, who seem to have
nothing to do but to ogle you from the time you appear in the morning
until you disappear at night with my most fortunate self. Some day I
expect to be murdered by one of your miserable victims!"

"Old villain, if one of your revered colleagues could hear you now! The
celebrated Torrigiani, discoverer of famous relics of infamous
royalties, making love to his own wife as they float along the Nile.
Why, even the Pharaohs would laugh at you for an old-fashioned frump,
although it couldn't have been such a terrible task to be faithful to as
many wives as they had!"

As they neared the end of the long island, the branching Nile curved
broadly. Myriads of tiny islands like diving seals glutted the waters.
Beyond on the shore, the green stopped abruptly, and rolling amber sands
stretched palely golden beneath a sky of melted turquoise. Girdled by
palms, shod with roses, a pink villa nestled within its garden. From the
awninged terrace the sound of faint music wafted upon the scented air,
rose above the wail of the shadoof.

Anne and Vittorio looked at each other in surprise.

"A violin," Anne murmured, and listened. The exquisite tones hummed an
air unfamiliar to her ears, an air at once heart-breaking and
unspeakably beautiful.

"How lovely!" A shade of sadness crept over her face. "The man certainly
knows how to play," she clasped her hands closely. The sound of a violin
still moved her to the marrow.

The gorgeous dragoman turned about abruptly.

"Ah, Madame, ze music please 'er? Zat ees ze mad Englissman."

"The mad Englishman?"

"Ah, yes. 'E is great artiste. But 'e is seek, very seek. He 'ave ze
consump', you know. Eet ees very bad. 'E spit zee blood. 'E seet all day
outside 'e's 'ouse and play ze veolon, and never speak to no ones. 'E's
man, 'e good friend mine, 'e tell me."

Hands still clasped together nervously, Anne leaned forward. "What is
his name?"

"'Ees name? I forget eet. Very strange for Englis name. More like ze
Russie. Pe, Pet, but I forgot how eet finis!"

Pale beneath her large hat, Anne prodded him almost angrily. "Try to
think, Abdul. Is--is it Petrovskey?"

The dragoman beamed. "Ah, yes, zat ees eet. Per'aps Madame, she 'ave
'eard of 'eem?"

Speechless, Anne nodded. Her long white throat worked spasmodically.
Vittorio put an arm about her quivering shoulders.

"Cara mia, perhaps it is not the same man at all. Do not grieve,
dearest."

She shook her head, while the music rose to a crescendo, and stopped
momentarily. "I'm almost sure it must be, Vittorio. Don't you remember
reading in the paper over a year ago that he had retired from the
concert stage on account of ill health? And that I wanted to write to
him, but decided that after all these years it would be better not to?"

Vittorio nodded. A look of suffering crept into his eyes.

"Perhaps you are right, Anne. Maybe it is Petrovskey. What do you want
to do? Would you like to get off and see him?"

She looked at her husband with startled eyes. Was she to see Alexis
again after all these years? Did she have the courage to reopen old
wounds? He might be horribly changed from the boy she had known. Illness
plays such cruel tricks with one. And she wanted so frightfully to
remember him as she had seen him last, when he left her garden over ten
years ago. Then his beauty had been triumphant. Aureoled by setting sun,
his indelible image had stamped itself upon her memory.

Vittorio's eyes rested upon her pityingly. "Darling, I know it will be
hard. If you don't feel able to face it, you mustn't force yourself."

"But if he is ill and lonely?" Her eyes wandered up the garden bank
almost fearfully. She turned a pleading face toward her husband.
"Vittorio, help me! What shall I do? Do you think seeing me again might
do him harm if he is not well?"

Honesty conquering fear, he shook his head. "Why should it? It may even
be good for him. Come coraggio, Anne!"

His noble simplicity shamed her. A lump in her throat, she nodded
dumbly. Vittorio signed to the delighted dragoman. They swung about and
put in at the small landing place. Knees trembling beneath her, Anne
disembarked, and she and Vittorio strolled up the grassy bank towards
the villa.

The music, stilled for the last few minutes, smote the air once more
with a tragic, persistent monotony. The player was evidently improvising
upon some doleful, Arabic theme, perhaps a song of the boatmen. Anne
pressed against Vittorio. "It makes my very soul shed tears," she
murmured.

They had neared the house. Low, rectangular, surrounded by palms and
rosebushes, it rose directly in front of them. Upon the awninged
terrace, iron chair tip-tilted against the pinkish walls, the violinist
suddenly ceased playing. He laid his instrument upon the table next to
him and looked idly into the distance.

Although unspeakably altered, it was undoubtedly Alexis.

Two great tears gliding down her cheeks, Anne signed to Vittorio to wait
for her. She mounted the shallow steps alone and approached Alexis,
touching him lightly where the slim shoulders showed gaunt beneath the
loose linen coat.

"Alexis?"

As if galvanized by the sound of her voice, the motionless figure sprang
suddenly to life. The sunken eyes leaped to Anne's, widened, then
remained fixed. She came a little closer.

"It is I, Anne. Don't you know me, Alexis?" she murmured very gently.

The dilated eyes traveled over her face. He passed an emaciated hand
over his forehead, beneath dampened locks. "Have I the delirium again?"
His voice was hoarse, almost toneless, not the boyish voice she
remembered so well. More altered, in fact, than the poor face which, at
a distance, still appeared youthful, although near to, it showed lined
and haggard, dry skin stretched taut over hectic cheek-bones.

Anne's heart yearned over him sorrowfully. She sat down beside him, and
took one of the feverish hands between her cool palms. "No, no, don't be
frightened, dear. You are not dreaming. It is really Anne in the flesh.
We--that is to say I, was passing by on the water. I heard your violin
and stopped to listen. From what my dragoman told me, I guessed it must
be you. So I came. Will you forgive me?"

"Forgive you?" The altered voice was full of wonder. He still looked at
her as if he scarcely believed in her reality. The great suffering eyes,
like those of a stray dog who has found a master, wrung her heart.
"Forgive you?" he repeated monotonously.

"Yes. For disobeying you and coming to you after all these years?" Her
voice was tremulous. As he listened the stiff figure suddenly relaxed,
leaned forward with a choked, comprehending cry.

"Anne, Anne, it is really you! Thank God! I have prayed that I might see
you once more before I died. God is merciful after all!"

He grasped her hands, at first timidly, then eagerly with hungry
insatiability. Ran feverish fingers up her arms to her shoulders,
attained her face, caressed it with the groping, seeking gestures of a
blind man. Then, with a smothered cry, he fell back limply in his chair.

"Alexis, my poor boy!" The gaunt, dry hands in hers, Anne pressed them
to her heart.

Cracked lips parted over set teeth, he leaned back, gasping a little.

"Forgive me," he whispered. "I am still rather weak."

She was frightened.

"Isn't there something I can do for you? Some medicine you can take?"

With a feeble movement of the still-graceful hands, he brushed the idea
aside. "The sight of you--is all--I want to cure me completely," he
articulated between difficult, hissing breaths. "You are more beautiful
than ever, Anne."

Her smile was wistful. "Dear Alexis, I am getting old now."

"Old?" He looked genuinely surprised. "I see no difference," he added
with no attempt at compliment. "Oh, Anne, the years, how long they have
been in passing!"

She choked back a sob.

"And yet you shouldn't be too unkind to them, dear Alexis, for they have
brought you fame."

A wan smile rode the gaunt face. "Fame? What is that? A bubble which
dissipates as you grasp it," he snatched at the air. "A flower in your
buttonhole that smells sweet at first, but becomes rank before
nightfall. A nothing for which you pay with your heart's sweat." He
paused and the thin fingers drummed rhythmically on the iron table. "But
you mustn't think I am ungrateful, Anne. The work itself, I love, but
only for itself. It has kept me sane. That--and the boy." His face
brightened. He turned eagerly towards Anne.

"Tell me about him," she whispered. "He must be a big boy by now."

"Almost eleven." The hoarse voice was full of pride. "He is in school in
England--I don't dare to keep him with me now." He pointed to his chest.
"I miss him every minute, Anne. He has always spent his vacations with
me ever since he started going away to school. Before that, we were
together constantly. When he was a baby the little beggar would go to
sleep for my violin, when his nurse could do nothing with him."

Anne smiled through tears. "You must love each other very much."

"Oh, we do. He went with me on all my long tours. We have been
inseparable ever since----" he choked.

She nodded. "Yes, Alexis, I know."

He looked at her somberly. The pent-up tragedy of the years passed by in
his dilated pupils. "We will not speak of that," he whispered.

She shook her head. "No, Alexis, but it was ghastly for me, too. I feel
I must tell you that, at least. I was ill, not myself, for months. I was
on the point of writing you many times but----" she stopped while the
crimson spread to her forehead. It seemed too brutal to tell him about
Vittorio and the children.

He understood her hesitation and smiled bravely.

"So I did the right thing after all! Anne, dearest, don't be afraid to
tell me the truth. Are you happy at last?"

Words were beyond her for the moment. She nodded.

He sighed contentedly. "I am glad--so glad," he breathed. "Are you
married and have you children?" he continued with eager simplicity.

"Vittorio and I have been married for almost ten years," she replied
brokenly. "We have two little boys," she added quickly.

Longing swept the drawn features. "How I should love to see them," he
sighed wearily.

"When you are better you must come to Florence and pay us a long visit,"
she replied, trying to speak brightly.

He spread his hands, in careless fatalism. He smiled oddly. "When I am
better? Yes, when I am better, I'll come."

"And bring the boy," she continued, sturdily ignoring his implication.
"What is his name?"

A light dawned back of the misery in his eyes. "Jack. Just a simple
English name, as unlike his father's as possible. And oh, Anne, he is
unlike me. He cannot play a single musical instrument, although he has
been surrounded by musicians all his life. He has no temperament at all.
And he loves sports. He has won a lot of medals already. He isn't even
very good in his studies."

His naïve pleasure in the latter fact struck Anne as so comical that she
actually laughed.

"Funny Alexis!" she said tenderly. "You certainly make an odd father.
But tell me, what school is Jack in? You must give me his address. Do
you think he would like to come to us for the holidays? That is----" she
added hastily, Alexis was sensitive over receiving favors--"if he has
made no other plans?"

His face was almost radiant. "He is at Eton. He would love to go to you,
I know. If you really want him. I can't have him here----" the smile
faded. "And I was worrying about where to send him. But--are you sure
your husband wouldn't mind?"

"Vittorio? Never," said Anne confidently. "He loves children. And--and
he admires you tremendously, Alexis. There is no, no hard feeling in his
heart for you. Vittorio is a very noble man and he appreciates nobility
in others!"

Alexis bowed his head upon his chest. "Thank you, my Anne. May I call
you that?"

"Oh, yes, of course, Alexis," she patted the hand near hers. She
hesitated a moment. "Vittorio is here with me now. Would you like to see
him, dear? Or would it be too much for you?"

Alexis' face paled. The dry lips quivered. There was a pause before he
replied.

"I should like to see him," he said firmly. "I want to thank him
for--for making you so happy."

"You are sure?" she insisted, a little frightened at her temerity in
bringing the two men together. The two men whose lives had crossed so
fatally, and yet who had never, in the course of events, actually met
face to face. Yet, if she were really to help Alexis during the next few
weeks of their stay, the meeting was inevitable. Her hesitation was
palpable. Alexis reassured her, with pathetic vehemence.

"Of course I am sure. Please call him, Anne darling. Can't you see I've
passed beyond all stage of jealousy? My illness seems to have
extinguished the evil fire forever."

She smiled at him tenderly. "I'll call him, then."

She walked to the edge of the terrace and beckoned towards the garden.
"Vittorio!"

The crystalline tones resounded purely. A tall figure rose from a bench
back of the palms and approached them.

"This is my husband, Alexis." Anne's voice rang slightly tremulous.

Alexis got to his feet rather feebly and the two men clasped hands.
Vittorio was the first to speak.

"I am sorry you are not well," he said gently, as they all sat down.

Alexis smiled. "That is good of you, Marchese. And it is doubly good of
you to permit the Marchesa to see me. I--I am very grateful." The
smiling lips quivered.

Vittorio was touched. The stooping figure, the prematurely haggard young
face filled him with pity. He made an effort to speak casually.

"I hope you will let us both come to see you very often. We shall be
here for at least six weeks."

"You don't know what it will mean to me," said Alexis eagerly. "I've
hardly seen a soul for months," he caught himself up sharply, "but I'm
sure you must be thirsty. I'll order something to drink at once."

"Please don't bother," cried Anne.

With a smiling shake of the head, he struck an iridescent little gong on
the table beside him. Very correct in semitropical livery, an English
servant appeared in the doorway.

"What would you like?" said Alexis, turning to his guests. "Some whisky
and soda, Marchese? Or would you prefer iced sherbet? Hopkins keeps some
on hand for me all the time, as I find it very soothing. Then there is
always Turkish coffee, for which we are famous, aren't we, Hopkins?"

"Yes, sir." The man bowed with the flicker of a pleased smile.

They chose the sherbet. Little spiced cakes from the bazaar were passed
with it. The conversation became light and unstrained. Since the old
days, Alexis had mixed much with the world. Had been a big figure and
had progressed beyond ill-ease. After they finished the sherbet, he
looked longingly at Anne, and asked if she would not like to try some
Slovakian dances with him.

She looked doubtful. "Do you think you ought to to-day, Alexis? Haven't
we tired you sufficiently?"

He shook his head gayly. "Oh, no, I haven't felt so fit for ages. Have
I, Hopkins?"

"No, sir."

Sherbet cups in his hands, Hopkins coughed discreetly. His mild eyes met
Anne's full of respectful warning. She nodded at him behind Alexis'
shoulder.

"I think you've had enough excitement for this afternoon," she said
firmly. "Suppose I come to-morrow for a little while?"

He looked radiant. "To-morrow, and every day while you are here!" he
said with the tyrannical air of a spoiled child. "But you must play with
me now, this minute. The music only arrived yesterday and I haven't
tried it yet." He looked at once so wistful and so happy that Anne
relented.

"Very well, but only for a little while, mind!"

They entered the house. Rather over-elaborate, the long drawing room was
furnished in the French Algerian style with several large divans and an
immense Bokhara rug that covered the entire floor. In the corner stood a
grand piano brought by Alexis from Cairo. Anne seated herself before it
and gave Alexis the key. Hopkins brought up a chair and placed it by the
piano for Alexis. He dropped into it with a sulky little air, and
commenced to tune up.

"Hopkins thinks it tires me to stand," he apologized crossly.

Then he broke into the dance, ancient fire unquenched, technique
magnificently perfected. Plying the keyboard mechanically, Anne
listened, shaken to the very marrow. For a moment it seemed as if time
had never existed and she was back again in Long Island, young lover by
her side, their souls welded in an ecstasy of sound.

Then Alexis stopped suddenly. He reeled in his chair. "I'm--a bit
giddy," he gasped. The violin dropped on to the floor from inert
fingers. Then came the cough, the racking typhoon of a cough that
shattered the frail body in its gust.

Speechless with terror, Anne and Vittorio looked at each other
helplessly. Hopkins poured some medicine into a wine-glass and held it
ready. He shook his head sorrowfully.

"He shouldn't 'ave done it, ma'am. 'Is cough do be cruel such times."

A stained handkerchief to his lips, Alexis lay back in his chair. Anne's
eyes fixed themselves upon the blood with a shudder of pity. The
medicine administered, she took Hopkins aside.

"Tell me the worst," she said below her breath. "Is--is he dying?"

Tears gathered in the man's eyes.

"Oh, yes, ma'am. 'Es very bad. The doctor says 'e can't last six
months."

"Ah!" Anne stifled a cry, "Have you been with him long?"

The puckered lips trembled. "Hit'll be goin' on seven years, ma'am. H'im
sure hi don't know 'at'll become of me when 'es gone. Hi'll feel kinder
lost-like."

Anne looked at him gratefully.

"Hadn't you better get the doctor now?" she whispered above the lump in
her throat.

He shook his head sadly.

"Oh, no, ma'am. There h'ain't nothin' 'e could do for 'im. Jest to lay
down and be quiet like is what 'e needs, ma'am."

Anne took the hint meekly. She went up to the two men, and took hold of
Vittorio's arm where he stood leaning over Alexis.

"We must go now, Vittorio. Alexis needs rest. I'm afraid we should never
have come!" Her sorrowful eyes met Alexis' apologetic gaze.

"Oh, don't say that," he pleaded weakly. "I have an attack like this
very often now."

She held out her hand and he grasped it with feeble fingers.

"It has been heaven to see you again," he whispered. "Now I can die
happy."

Anne knelt down by the chair. From her aching eyes brimmed scalding
tears.

"You are going to get well, dear," she murmured, "we are going to make
him, aren't we, Vittorio?"

But the end was not yet. Several weeks were to pass first. Meanwhile,
Anne went to the villa every day. Once or twice, when Alexis felt
stronger, they played a little. But he tired almost immediately. After a
while they gave it up tragically, tacitly. She read to him instead. And
they talked a little. But day by day he grew perceptibly weaker, and the
coughing spells racked him with greater ferocity.

One day a letter came from Jack at Eton, accepting with glee Anne's
invitation for the holidays. And Alexis, realizing that the end was
near, listened with joy as Anne read it to him, and added of her own
accord that she and Vittorio wanted to look after the boy in the future.

"In that way," she added almost timidly, "I can be a mother to him after
all."

Alexis made no reply. He merely raised emaciated hands to his face, and
Anne saw that he wept.

That afternoon the sunset was unusually resplendent. Purple and gold, it
spread to the horizon where rolling, amber sands merged into saffron
skies. Anne's boat, its henna sail lurid against heaven, floated upon a
sheet of solid gold. Solid gold, Anne's gleaming hair as, hatless, she
crouched weeping in the stern beside Vittorio. While purple clouds faded
into black and black and gold fused into lacquer.

That afternoon the sunset was unusually resplendent, but Anne wept
because Alexis was no longer there to see.