mely things, I knew that I should look away vaguely, as I
looked now, at distant mountains, wondering where Penelope was and how
the world went with her.

After two years of absence from her and utter silence, I could drag out
of my memory no pictures of her save old ones, and one by one I brought
them forth, my favorite portraits, and saw her sitting in the carved
chair pouring tea or driving down the Avenue, very still and very
straight in her victoria. She must be in New York, I said, for in late
October she would be hurrying back to town for the old futile routine.
I went on, recklessly fancying Penelope leading that life, dancing,
dining and driving, as though this were all in the world she could
possibly be doing. I knew that she had not married Talcott. I had
learned this much of her from a stray newspaper which announced the
breaking of the engagement. I knew that it could make no difference to
me if she had married some one else. That was highly possible, yet it
was not a possibility on which I cared to dwell in my moments of
rumination. This day my mind dwelt on it, whether I would or not.
Over the plain, just beyond the mountains, I saw Penelope in my
visionary eye, and I asked myself if I should find another in that
coveted place from which I was barred. A bit of land, a bit of sea,
and there was home. In a few hours the same sun would be smiling on
it. At that moment I dreaded to go on. It was my duty, yet, could I,
I would have turned back to the Sudan, to ride again over the yellow
sands in the dust of marching regiments. I wanted action. Poor,
pitiful action it was to walk, but with every fall of my feet and every
click of my cane I could say to myself that I was going home, to my
boyhood's home, and it mattered little if I had no other. The clatter
of the Corso jarred on me. My mood demanded quiet places. The little
streets called to me from their stillness, and I answered them. They
led me higher and higher to the summit of the town. I crossed a
deserted piazza, and by a gentle slope was carried down to the terrace
of the Porta Sola.

There was in this secluded spot a soothing shade and silence. Old
palaces, ghosts of another age, cast their shadows over it. Steps
wound from its quiet, down the hill into the clatter of the lower town.
A rampart guarded the sheer cliff, and with elbows resting there and
chin cupped in my hands I looked away to the Apennines. Below me two
arms of th