e town stretched out into the plain, but their mingling
discords rose to my ear like the drum of insects. Beyond them, in the
nearer prospect, the land seemed topsy-turvy, a maze of little hills
and valleys. A pink villa flamed against the brown, and its flat,
squat tower, glowing in the sunlight, called to its gaunt neighbor,
rising from a deserted monastery, to cheer up and be merry with it.
Distance levelled the land. It became broad plain, studded with gray
villages and slashed by the Tiber; it rose to higher hills; then lifted
sharply, the brown fading into the whiteness of massed mountain peaks.

This is my fairest prospect. And yet at that moment it offered me no
peace. I was so infinitely lonely. With Penelope at my side, I said,
I could stand here for hours feasting my eyes on so lovely a picture.
To me, alone, it gave nothing. I should be happier with the Bennetts,
forgetting self and self's vague longings in a plunge into the
fraternal dispute.

I turned away into a narrow alley, but I was unaccustomed to Perugian
streets and had not solved the mystery of their windings. Suddenly,
passing a corner, I found myself again in the deserted piazza, and,
looking down the slope, saw the same picture framed by palace walls.
First my eyes grasped the panorama of plain and mountain. Then I saw
only the terrace.

It was not mine any longer to hold in loneliness. I brushed my hand
across my eyes to sweep away the taunting image. But she held there by
the wall, leaning over it, her chin resting in her hands, wrapped in
contemplation. Her face was turned from me, but there was no mistaking
that still, black figure. If she heard my footfalls and the click of
my cane, she gave no sign of being aware of my approach, but looked
straight out over the plain. I checked an impulse to call her name and
stood for a moment watching her. Would she greet me, I asked, with
that same chilling stare with which she had said good-by? I feared it.
But I tiptoed down the slope to the wall, and, leaning over it in
silence, enjoyed the stolen pleasure of her presence. Whether she
would or not, we looked together over the fair land. And what a
prospect it was with Penelope at my side!

"David!" she said.

She took a step back, and stood there, very straight, surveying me, as
though she were not quite sure that it could be. I searched her eyes
for a hostile gleam, but found none, and when her hand met mine it was
with a fr