t know! Well--think! And you will know that it is true. A
rivederci, Emilio!"

His manner had suddenly become almost calm. He turned away and went
towards the door. When he reached it he added:

"To-morrow I shall ask the Signora to allow me to marry the Signorina."

Then he went out.

The gilt clock on the marble table beneath the mirror struck the
half-hour after one. Artois looked at it and at his watch, comparing
them. The action was mechanical, and unaccompanied by any thought
connected with it. When he put his watch back into his pocket he did
not know whether its hands pointed to half-past one or not. He carried
a light chair on to the balcony, and sat down there, crossing his legs,
and leaning one arm on the rail.

"If she touched the fire." Those words of the Marchesino remained in the
mind of Artois--why, he did not know. He saw before him a vision of a
girl and of a flame. The flame aspired towards the girl, but the girl
hesitated, drew back--then waited.

What had happened during the hours of the Festa? Artois did not know.
The Marchesino had told him nothing, except that he--Artois--was madly
in love with Vere. Monstrous absurdity! What trivial nonsense men talked
in moments of anger, when they desired to wound!

And to-morrow the Marchesino would ask Vere to marry him. Of course
Vere would refuse. She had no feeling for him. She would tell him so. He
would be obliged to understand that for once he could not have his own
way. He would go out of Vere's life, abruptly, as he had come into it.

He would go. That was certain. But others would come into Vere's life.
Fire would spring up round about her, the fire of love of men for a girl
who has fire within her, the fire of the love of youth for youth.

Youth! Artois was not by nature a sentimentalist--and he was not a fool.
He knew how to accept the inevitable things life cruelly brings to men,
without futile struggling, without contemptible pretence. Quite calmly,
quite serenely, he had accepted the snows of middle age. He had not
secretly groaned or cursed, railed against destiny, striven to defy it
by travesty, as do many men. He had thought himself to be "above" all
that--until lately. But now, as he thought of the fire, he was conscious
of an immense sadness that had in it something of passion, or a regret
that was, for a moment, desperate, bitter, that seared, that tortured,
that was scarcely to be endured. It is terrible to realize that one is