'

'Our love,' broke she in scoffingly. 'What a mockery! The poor offspring
of some weak sentimentality, the sickly cant of some dreamy sonneteer.
These men never knew what love was, or they had not dared to profane
it by their tawdry sentiments. Is it in nature,' cried she wildly, 'to
declare trumpet-tongued to the world the secrets on which the heart
feeds to live, the precious thoughts that to the dearest could not be
revealed? These are your poets! Over and over have I wished for you to
tell you this--to tear out of your memory that wretched heresy we then
believed a faith.'

'You have done your work well,' said he sorrowfully. 'Good-bye for
ever!'

'I wish you would not go, Gherardi,' said she, laying her hand on his
arm, and gazing at him with a look of the deepest meaning. 'To me,
alone and orphaned, you represent a family and kindred. The old ties are
tender ones.'

'Why will you thus trifle with me?' said he, half angrily.

'Is it to rekindle the flame you would extinguish afterward?'

'And why not return to that ancient faith? You were happier when you
loved me--when I learned my verses by your side, and sang the wild songs
of my own wild land. Do you remember this one; it was a favourite once
with you?' And, turning to the piano, she struck a few chords, and in
a voice of liquid melody sang a little Calabrese peasant song, whose
refrain ended with the words--

'Ti am' ancor, ti am' ancor.'

'After the avowal you have made me, Marietta, it were base in me to be
beguiled thus,' said he, moving away. 'You love another: be it so. Live
in that love, and be happy.'

'This, too, Gherardi, we used to sing together,' said she, beginning
another air. 'Let us see if your memory, of which you boast so much,
equals mine. Come, this is your verse,' said she caressingly. 'Ah,
fratello mio, how much more lovable you were long ago! I remember a
certain evening, that glided into a long night, when we leaned together,
with arms around each other's necks, out of a little window; it was a
poor, melancholy street beneath, but to us it was like an alley between
cedar-trees. Well, on that same night, you swore to me a vow of eternal
love; you told me a miraculous story: that, though poor and friendless,
you were of birth and blood; and that birth and blood meant rank and
fortune in some long hereafter, for which neither of us was impatient.
It was on that same night you drew a picture to my mind of our life of
happi