g the house
whence the prisoner had been dragged forth, but though he loitered in
the neighborhood for an hour she did not come forth. And twice he saw
her walking by the canal with the old Contessa; always he marked in
her that same supple poise of body, that steady, level carriage of
the head. But it was not for a couple of weeks that chance served to
give him any speech with her.

And then, as before, it was evening. He had been out on the affairs
of Captain Hahn, and was returning on foot along a path through the
maize fields. The ripe crops made a wall to either hand, bronze red
and man-high, gleaming like burnished metal in the shine of the
sunset; and here, at a turning in the way, he met her face to face.

"Good evening, signorina," he said, stopping.

"Good evening, Signor Tenente," she answered, and would have passed
on but that he barred the way as he stood.

There was no fear, no doubt, in the quiet of her face as she stood
before him. Her eyes were great and dark, but untroubled, and upon
the lips, where he had never seen a smile, was no tremor.

"Signorina!" he burst forth. "I, I have wanted to speak to you ever
since that evening. I cannot bear that you should think of me as you
do."

"I do not think of you," she answered, with the resonance of
bell-music thrilling through the low tones of her voice.

He took a step nearer to her; she did not shrink nor fall back.

"But," he said, "I think of you always!" Her face did not change; its
even quiet was a challenge and an exasperation. "Signorina, what can
I do? This accursed war if it were not for that you would let me
speak and at least you would listen. But now."

He broke off with a gesture of helpless anger. She did not alter the
grave character of her regard.

"What is it that you wish to say to me?" she asked. "You see that I
am listening."

Her very calm, the slender erectness of her body, her fearless and
serious gaze, were a goad to him.

"Listening!" he cried. He choked down an impulse to be noisy. "Well
then, listen! Signorina signorina, I, I am not one of those. That man
who hanged himself, I would have prevented him and saved him. You
heard me give the orders that he was to be watched and fed; fed,
signorina! It was another who took the guards away and left him to
himself."

"That," she said, "I knew."

"Ah!" He came yet closer. "You knew. Then."

He tried to take her hand. The impulse to touch her was irresistible;
it was a