e would have recognized the old brass
lamp with its three beaks which poor Annetta had so often brought in
lighted when he sat there at dusk. On the shelf in the corner were the
selfsame decanters full of transparent aniseed and pink alchermes and
coarse brown brandy. Stefanone came in, laid his hat upon the bench, and
put his stick in the corner just as he had always done. There was no
change, except that Annetta was not there, and the husband and wife had
grown almost old since those days.

"How often does the post go to Rome?" Gloria asked of Sora Nanna, while
they were at supper.

"Every evening, at one of the night, Signora. There are also many
occasions of sending by the carters."

"I can write to you every day when you are away," said Gloria in English
to Griggs.

She was thinking of those letters which she wrote to Reanda almost in
spite of herself, but the loving smile did not play her false, and
Griggs believed her.

In her, the duality of her being had created two distinct lives. For
him, the two elements of consciousness and perception were merged in one
by his love. All that he felt he saw in her, and all that he saw in her
he felt. The perfection of love, while it lasts, is in that double
certainty from within and from without, which, if once disturbed, can
never be restored again. Singly, the one part or the other may remain
as of old, but the wholeness of the two has but one chance of life.

On that first night Gloria had an evil dream. She had fallen asleep,
tired from the journey and worn out with the endless weariness of her
secret suffering. She awoke in the small hours, and moonlight was
streaming into the room. She was startled to find herself in a strange
place, at first, and then she realized where she was, and gazed at the
clouded panes of common glass as her head lay on the pillow, and she
marked the moonlight on the brick floor by the joints of the bricks, and
watched how it crept silently away. For the moon was waning, and had not
long risen above the black line of the hills.

Her eyelids drooped, but she saw it all distinctly still--more
distinctly than before, she thought. The level light rose slowly from
the floor; very, very slowly, stiff and straight as a stark, shrouded
corpse, and stood upright between her and the window. She felt the heavy
hair rising on her scalp, and an intense horror took possession of her
body, and thrilled through her from head to foot and from her feet t