"You know we never thought of anything else until three days ago, and were perfectly contented. Let's call all this in between a mistake, like taking the wrong road and having to turn back to be where we were before. Let's go back."

"Yes, let's go back. I won't bore you any more."

He had all in an instant changed to cool dryness. They would get no further along with talk on this occasion, that was clear. And to clasp her knees, laying his head on her lap, and penetrate her in silence with the conviction that they belonged together in a manner that turned all the sensible things she said into folly, could not be done outside the world of dreams and fancies. He jumped to his feet.

"I meant, you know, let's go back to Florence. I'm afraid it's high time. We ought to have daylight at least until we get to the foot of the mountain."

"Cross, Geraldino?"

"Not at all."

"Good friends as ever?"

"a.s.suredly."

"Oh, I've had such a beautiful day!" she sighed, getting up by the help of his two hands, and brushing down her dress. "I certainly do love to be with you!"

With the inconsequence of a woman she wanted, in order to console him for rejecting him, to make him sure she loved him deeply nevertheless; and so she said, turning upon him eyes of sweetest, sincerest affection, "I certainly do love to be with you!"

In the carriage they were silent, like people tired out by the long day, talked out, and certain of each other's consent to be still.

The two young fellows on the box were quiet, too. The horses now needed no encouragement to go; the sc.r.a.ping of the brake gave evidence rather of the need to hold them back. The driver's friend, named appropriately Pilade, sat hunched with chilly sleepiness; but Angelo, the driver, was kept visibly alert by the responsibility of making a safe descent in the fast-failing light. Owing to the dilatoriness of the _signori_ they had been later in starting than was prudent.

When they emerged at last from the shadow of the chestnut-trees and the brake blessedly was released, it was accomplished evening. The dome of the firmament spread above them so wonderful for darkly luminous serenity that the signori behind in the carriage arranged themselves to contemplate it comfortably, with their feet on the forward bench, their heads propped on the back of the seat.

Thus they pa.s.sed through glimmering hamlets, between high walls of orchards, past iron gates opening into cypress avenues with dim villas at the other end, terraces of vine-garlanded olive-trees, all of a dark silvery blue, and did not vouchsafe a look at anything but the inverted cup of the nocturnal sky.

Even this they did not see more than in a secondary way, for the interposing thoughts and images.

The eyes of both were wide, and in their fixity the lights of heaven were gla.s.sed. The face of the one burned with a red spot on the visibly-defined cheek-bone; the cheeks of the other were, for a marvel, pale.

Aurora, uplifted on a great wonder and pride and illogical happiness, was thinking of the days to come, the immediate to-morrows, rich in a tenderness profounder still than that which had linked her before to the companion staring at the stars beside her; she thought of how she should through a wise firmness and G.o.d's help steer their course into ways of a safer and longer happiness than that which he had tendered.

"It would seem rather unnecessary--" came from him through the transparent darkness in what was to the young driver's ears a monotonous bar of insignificant sound, "it would seem to me almost imbecile, to say to you that I love you, when for months I have been hovering around you, as must have been evident to the dullest, like the care-burthened honey-fly, possessed with the fixed desire to hide his murmurs in the rose. When for months I have been, in fact, like a dog with his nose on your footprints, asking nothing but to lie down at your feet with his muzzle on your shoe."

She impulsively felt for his hand, and pushed her own into it. "Don't say another word, Gerald. I daresn't do what you wish, I just daresn't.

I'm plain scared to! And I'm such a fool that I'm nearer to it this minute than I like to be by a long sight. I'm fond enough of you for almost anything, and you know it, but I must keep my level head. It can't be done--a greyhound tied down to a mudturtle. I know what I'm like,--no disparagement meant, Mrs. Hawthorne,--and what you're like, and I won't let myself forget. I'm looking out first of all for myself, but I'm looking out for you, too, dear boy. Don't say any more about it to-night, Gerald, please, with the stars shining like that, and the air so sweet that all the fairy-tales you ever heard seem possible. I want to keep solid earth under my feet."

Gerald was not so devoid of the right masculine spark as not to recognize the moment for one of which advantage should be taken by any creature capable of growing a mustache. The thing to be done was to put his arms around her like a man, and lay his head on her shoulder like a child, and treat as not existing the barriers which she described as dividing them.

Often enough in his life Gerald had wished he might have been a masterful man, capable of the like things. But already a vague sickness of soul had succeeded his momentarily dominant mood. Distrust filled him--of his own character, his aims, his talent, his health, and his destiny. His dreams had but recently taken the form in which he had that day expressed them; he had not grown into them. Under the depressing effect of failure he was no more sure than she had professed to be that the proposed union would not be a rash mistake. He saw the wisdom of a return to his gray policy of wanting nothing, asking nothing. Heaviness possessed him; he made no motion.

Signs of the nearing city came thicker and thicker; the street lamps became frequent and consecutive. Aurora sat up and composed her appearance. The lighted house-fronts threw back the skies to inexpressible alt.i.tudes.

She continued aloud for Gerald to hear a conversation she had been holding mentally:

"Estelle says we must go away somewhere for the summer, because it's awfully hot down here in Florence, we're told. We're thinking of taking some sort of place at the seash.o.r.e for the bathing season. You'll be coming down to visit us, won't you? Then by and by, when I've had pretty near enough of the kind of life I'm leading, tell you what I'm thinking I'll do. Give up the house I've got and take another, different, and fit it up for a children's hospital, a small one, of course, to be within my means, and run it myself, and do what I can of the nursing. I've been thinking of it for some time as a good thing to do instead of spending my money and nothing to show for it. It would be something to do for the sake of little Dan, to make it so it wouldn't be the same as if he never had pa.s.sed through the world. Then I shall have my work just as you have yours, Gerald. And so we'll live on, each so interested in all the other does. And you'll come to see me, and I'll go to see you--chaperoned, if you insist, though I understand a studio can be visited without impropriety, and--"

"You can leave me out of your plans for the future. I am going away to forget you."

"Oh, no, you're not. You're coming to see me to-morrow. Five o'clock at the very latest, hear?"

"I'm afraid you will have to excuse me."

"You wouldn't break my heart like that for anything, Gerald Fane! You wouldn't let the foolish doings of this day destroy all the months have built up! You're not so mean. When I tell you it'll be all right and just as it was before--"

But he stubbornly would not agree, and they quarreled, as so often, half in play, half in real exasperation, each calling the other selfish.

But at her door, when he took her hands to thank her for the day she had given him, he dropped quite naturally, "Until to-morrow, then," and she entered her great white hall with a happy, shining face.

In the half-light of the solitary hall-lamp the white-and-gold door between the curving halves of the stairway stood open on to the blackness of the unlighted ball-room. At the threshold appeared Estelle, and stood with folded arms until the servant who answered the bell had been heard retreating down the back stairs. She came forward with a tired, troubled, pallid, and severe face.

"Well, I'm glad you've got back!" she said, as much as to say that she had given up looking for her. And as Aurora unexpectedly cast mischievous, muscular arms around her and tried to squeeze the breath out of her, she gasped amid spasms of resistance: "Stop! Don't try to pacify me! I'm in no mood for fooling! I'm as cross with you as I can be!"

"You little slate-pencil! You little lemon-drop, you!" said Aurora, squeezing harder, then suddenly letting go.

"I'm in no mood to be funny, you--you county-fair prize punkin! I've been worried half to death. Where've you been so long, 'way into the night, long past eleven o'clock?"

"Didn't you find my note on the pin-cushion? That informed you where I've been."

"I thought you must have met with an accident, to make you so terribly late, or else made up your mind to go off with that young man for good and all. Tell you the truth, I didn't quite know which I should prefer, which would be better for you in the end."

"Do you mean to tell me you've been sitting here all day stewing and fretting about that? Didn't you ever in your life go buggy-riding with a feller, and did it always ends with the grand plunge? You know it didn't. You know you could ride from Provincetown to Boston, with the moon shining, too, and not even exchange a chaste salute."

"Nell, there's one thing I know, and it's that my scolding and warning and beseeching will do exactly as much good as an old cow mooing with her neck stretched over a stone wall. You know what I think. I've had plenty of time for reflection, walking up and down the floor in there in the dark; and long before you finally got home I'd made up my mind not to be an idiot and make myself a nuisance trying to influence you. It's your funeral. What you choose to do is none of my business. What I said when you came in just escaped me.--Stand off and let me look at you."

While making the request, she herself drew off to get a more comprehensive view of her friend.

Something of the sunshine, the mountain sweetness, the unpolluted breezes and wide perspectives of the heights, the dreams of the starlit homeward ride, the triumph in man's love, was shining forth from Aurora, with her fresh sunburn, her untidied hair, and softly luminous eyes.

Estelle felt herself suddenly on the point of tears. But she stiffened.

"Well, you do look as if you'd had a good time, you crazy thing!" she said dryly. "What made you put your best dress on if you were going to sit round on the ground? You've got it all gra.s.s stains. Oh, Nell," she melted, "while you've been off gallivanting, I've just about worried myself sick over a paper Leslie left. I've been longing for you to get back to see what you make of it."

"A paper? What do you mean?"

"A newspaper. Come on upstairs. I left it on the desk. Leslie called in the forenoon, but I had gone out. Then she came again in the afternoon, so I knew it must be something special. But I simply couldn't bring myself to see her and let her know you'd gone off for the whole day with Gerald Fane. So I got the maid to tell her we were both out. Everybody does that over here. Anyhow, I went and stood on the terrace while the maid was delivering my message. So Leslie went off, but she left this Italian paper for the maid to give us. And, my dear,--now don't faint,--there's a long piece in it about you."

"For goodness' sakes! About me? Why? Where?"

"There. It isn't marked, and I was the longest time trying to discover why Leslie had left the paper. After I'd gone all over it hunting for a marked pa.s.sage, I thought it must be a mistake and that she'd simply left it because she was tired of carrying it round, and the maid hadn't understood. But going over it column by column, I at last saw the word Hawthorne and those other names. '_Una Americana_'--'An American'--the article is ent.i.tled. It looks to me, Nell, as if your whole life's history might be printed there."

"For the land's sake! Now, who do you suppose can have done that? What on earth would anybody want to--"

"I've been puzzling over it and puzzling over it till I'm about played out trying to make sense of it, and my head aches like fury. Oh, never mind my head! Now you've got back I don't care."