ove, even the love that has decided on the stony path of
"friendship." He had hoped ... what had he hoped? Down the long vista of
years--what was it that he had glimpsed at the far end, as one glimpses
sunlight at the end of a long, dark tunnel? He sat far into the night
thinking--brooding.

But day brought counsel. He decided that he had jumped to premature
conclusions. He determined to pursue the course that he had at first
planned. At least, in this way, he would arrive at the truth. Now he
only fumbled with conjecture. The first thing must be to win Sophy to a
feeling of confidence in their renewed relations.

And very exquisitely, by fine indirection, he put her at her ease with
him--conveyed the impression that time had done its work-a-day task of
sobering passionate emotion into tranquil esteem.

Life had dealt rather harshly with them both. They had both grasped
Illusion--flower of Maya--and been stung by the serpent coiled beneath.
But a friendship such as this was not illusion. It wore no veils--its
speech was plain and sober--it went clad in honest homespun. Had not
Amaldi himself once told her that he was not a sentimentalist? This
honest, daylight feeling that had now sprung up between them had in it
no sentimentality. She did not want sentiment. She wanted this that
Amaldi gave her--communion and stimulus, clear and bracing as a day of
her Virginian autumn. It was so long--so unbelievably long--since she
had talked pleasantly with a man who was interested in the things that
she found interesting. And they would sit often, over the tea-table on
the sea-lawn, before the others came in from driving or riding,
exchanging ideas on philosophy and religion and poetry and art. She
asked Amaldi about his everyday life. He replied smiling that he had
become as ardent an agriculturist as Cavour had once been. Sophy did not
know about this phase in the great statesman's career. She was deeply
interested. It came out that Amaldi had been asked to give some lectures
on the "Risorgimento" that coming winter at Columbia University. The
idea rather pleased him, he said. He thought of taking Cavour as his
chief subject.

Sophy kindled at the idea. It made her own problems and disappointments
seem insignificant to think of the gigantic odds with which that great
being contended all his life, and to selfless ends.

"How worth while it all was--his struggle and his Victory!" she cried.

Her eyes dilated--grew brilliant a