ld--so deeply was he in love with her already.
But this love was quite different from anything that he had ever felt
before. It had in it both mysticism and fatality. It was a desire of the
soul as well as of the body. He had had "loves" before--this was Love.

And in Sophy's mind was the consciousness of what Olive Arundel had
told her, only the day before, about the tragedy of Amaldi's life. It
seemed that when he was only twenty-three he had made a _mariage de
convenance_ to please his father. He had married his cousin, Clelia
Castelli. Two years afterwards she had been unfaithful to him. Amaldi
had fought with her lover. Then husband and wife had separated. There is
no divorce in Italy.

Sophy was thinking now: "When he was twenty-five--two years younger than
I am--he was fighting his wife's lover with a bare sword. He was living
out those real, dreadful things when he was a mere boy."

And she could not help glancing curiously at his hand, to which a seal
ring of sapphire engraved with his arms gave such a foreign look....
Only thirty-one, and cut off forever by the laws of his country and its
religion from family, from children.... Yes--that was tragic. That was
real tragedy.

Amaldi said suddenly in his grave voice:

"May I know how you came to call your book _The Shadow of a Flame_?"

"Yes; it's very simple," she answered. "I was rather unhappy. I had
stayed awake all night--reading by candle-light. My window looked to the
east. When the sun rose, my candle was still burning. And as I started
to blow it out, I noticed that in the sunlight, its flame cast a shadow
on the page of my book. And it came to me that we were all like
that--like little flames casting shadows in some greater light. And that
our passions were also like little flames that cast shadows--of sorrow
... regret ... despair ... weariness...."

"Yes," said Amaldi, "yes--it is like that...."

Something in the timbre of her voice as she said the words, "sorrow ...
regret ... despair ... weariness," moved him deeply. He did not dare to
say more. He was not at any time a man of fluent speech, now his earnest
desire not to be "indiscreet" in the least degree made him feel oddly
dumb.

Sophy herself changed the note of their conversation to a lighter key.

"Tell me," she said suddenly, "is the home that you care for most in the
town or in the country? I can't help thinking that your real home is in
some beautiful country part of Italy."

"Y