usband
entered the room and passed that way, he would have nodded to Giovanni
Saracinesca as carelessly as though Giovanni had been his wife's
brother--as carelessly as he would have noticed Ugo del Ferice upon her
other side. But in her own heart she knew that there was but one face in
all Rome she loved to see, but one voice she loved, and dreaded too, for
it had the power to make her life seem unreal, till she wondered how long
it would last, and whether there would ever be any change. The difference
between Giovanni and other men had always been apparent. Others would sit
beside her and make conversation, and then occasionally would make
speeches she did not care to hear, would talk to her of love--some
praising it as the only thing worth living for, some with affected
cynicism scoffing at it as the greatest of unrealities, contradicting
themselves a moment later in some passionate declaration to herself. When
they were foolish, she laughed at them; when they went too far, she
quietly rose and left them. Such experiences had grown rare of late, for
she had earned the reputation of being cold and unmoved, and that
protected her. But Giovanni had never talked like the rest of them. He
never mentioned the old, worn subjects that the others harped upon. She
would not have found it easy to say what he talked about, for he talked
indifferently about many subjects. She was not sure whether he spent more
time with her when in society than with other women; she reflected that
he was not so brilliant as many men she knew, not so talkative as the
majority of men she met; she knew only--and it was the thing she most
bitterly reproached herself with--that she preferred his face above all
other faces, and his voice beyond all voices. It never entered her head
to think that she loved him; it was bad enough in her simple creed that
there should be any man whom she would rather see than not, and whom she
missed when he did not approach her. She was a very strong and loyal
woman, who had sacrificed herself to a man who knew the world very
thoroughly, who in the thoroughness of his knowledge was able to see that
the world is not all bad, and who, in spite of all his evil deeds, was
proud of his wife's loyalty. Astrardente had made a bargain when he
married Corona; but he was a wise man in his generation, and he knew and
valued her when he had got her. He knew the precise dangers to which she
was exposed, and he was not so cruel as to ex