glance had burned her brand into his soul. She
had set her seal upon him--he was hers.

He guessed that she knew who he was--he was sure he did not know her
name.

He lingered an instant at the church-door, crossed himself foolishly
with holy water, then passed out into the early morning bustle of the
streets.

The cool air fanned his face, and the gentle breeze caressed his hair.
He put his hand to his brow.

He had left his hat--left it in the church. He turned to go back after
it, but it came over him that another glance from those eyes would melt
him though he were bronze. He would melt as if he had met God face to
face, a thing even Moses dare not do and hope to live.

He stood in the church-door as if he were dazed. The verger came
forward. "My hat, good Stephano, I left it just back of the fair lady."
He handed the man a piece of silver and the verger disappeared. Petrarch
was sure he could not find the lady--she was only a vision, a vision
seen by him alone. He would see.

The verger came back with the hat.

"And the lady--you--you know her name?"

"Oh, she, the lovely lady with the golden hair? That is Laura, the wife
of Hugh de Sade."

"Of course, of course!" said Petrarch, and reaching into a leather
pocket that was suspended from his belt under his cloak he took out a
handful of silver and gave it to the astonished verger, and passed out
and down the street, walking nowhere, needlessly fast.

The verger followed Petrarch to the door and watching the tall
retreating form muttered to himself, "He does not look like a man who
cuts into the grape to excess--and so early in the morning, too!"

* * * * *

That was a foolish saying of Lord Byron, "Man's love is of man's life a
thing apart; 'tis woman's whole existence." Does it not all depend upon
the man and the woman? The extent and quality of a woman's love as
compared with a man's have furnished the physiologists and psychologists
a great field for much innocent speculation. And the whole question is
still unsettled, as it should be, and is left to each new crop of poets
to be used as raw stock, just as though no one had ever dreamed,
meditated and speculated upon it before.

As for Petrarch and Laura, Laura's love was of her life apart, 'twas
Petrarch's whole existence.

Laura was very safely married to a man several years her senior--a
stern, hard-headed, unromantic lawyer, who was what the old ladies call
"a