ices. But one day Keller
deserted her, as she had deserted others, to take up with a sickly,
languid contralto, whose best charms could have been hardly comparable
to the morbid delicacy of a hot-house flower. Leonora, mad with love and
jealousy, pursued him, knocking at his door like a servant. For the
first time she felt the voluptuous bitterness of being scorned,
discarded, until reaction from despair brought her back to her former
pride and self-control!

Love was over. She had had enough of artists; though an interesting sort
of folk they were in their way. Far preferable were the ordinary, normal
men she had known before Keller's time! The foolisher--the more
commonplace--the better! She would never fall in love again!

Wearied, broken in spirit, disillusioned, she went back into her old
world. But now the legend of her past beset her. Again men came,
passionately besieging her, offering her wealth in return for a little
love. They talked of killing themselves if she resisted, as if it were
her duty to surrender, as if refusal on her part were treachery. The
gloomy Macchia committed suicide in Naples. Why? Because she did not
capitulate to his melancholy sonnets! In Vienna there had been a duel,
in which one of her admirers was slain. An eccentric Englishman followed
her about, looming in her pathway everywhere like the shadow of a fatal
Destiny, vowing to kill anybody she should prefer to him.... She had had
enough at last! She was wearied of such a life, disgusted at the male
voracity that dogged her every step. She longed to fall out of sight,
disappear, find rest and quiet in a complete surrender to some boundless
dream. And the thought--a comforting, soothing thought, it had been--of
the distant land of her childhood came back to her, the thought of her
simple, pious aunt, the sole survivor of her family, who wrote to her
twice every year, urging her to reconcile her soul with God--to which
end the good old Dona Pepa was herself aiding with prayer!

She felt, too, somehow, without knowing just why, that a visit to her
native soil would soften the painful memory of the ingratitude that had
cost her father's life. She would care for the poor old woman! Her
presence would bring a note of cheer into that gray, monotonous
existence that had gone on without the slightest change, ever. And
suddenly, one night, after an "Isolde" in Florence, she ordered Beppa,
the loyal and silent companion of her wandering life, t