ll that had taken place that afternoon. For
all the fatigue of the journey and the bad night spent in a
sleeping-car, he lay there with his eyes open in the dark, going over
and over again in his feverish mind all that Leonora told him during
that final hour of their walk through the garden. Her whole, her real
life's story it had been, recorded in a disordered, a disconnected
way--as if she must unburden herself of the whole thing all at
once--with gaps and leaps that Rafael now filled in from his own lurid
imagination.

Italy, the Italy of his trip abroad, came back to him now, vivid,
palpitant, vitalized, glorified by Leonora's revelations.

The shadowy majestic Gallery of Victor Emmanuel at Milan! The immense
triumphal arch, a gigantic mouth protended to swallow up the Cathedral!
The double arcade, cross-shaped, its walls covered with columns, set
with a double row of windows under a vast crystal roof. Hardly a trace
of masonry on the lower stories; nothing but plate glass--the windows of
book-shops, music shops, cafes, restaurants, jewelry stores,
haberdasheries, expensive tailoring establishments.

At one end, the Duomo, bristling with a forest of statues and perforated
spires; at the other, the monument to Leonardo da Vinci, and the famous
_Teatro de la Scala_! Within the four arms of the Gallery, a continuous
bustle of people, an incessant going and coming of merging, dissolving
crowds: a quadruple avalanche flowing toward the grand square at the
center of the cross, where the Cafe Biffi, known to actors and singers
the world over, spreads its rows of marble tables! A hubbub of cries,
greetings, conversations, footsteps, echoing in the galleries as in an
immense cloister, the lofty skylight quivering with the hum of busy
human ants, forever, day and night, crawling, darting this way and that,
underneath it!

Such is the world's market of song-birds; the world's Rialto of Music;
the world's recruiting office for its army of voices. From that center,
march forth to glory or to the poorhouse, all those who one fine day
have touched their throats and believed they have some talent for
singing. In Milan, from every corner of the earth, all the unhappy
aspirants of art, casting aside their needles, their tools or their
pens, foregather to eat the macaroni of the _trattoria_, trusting that
the world will some day do them justice by strewing their paths with
millions. Beginners, in the first place, who, to make thei