ight
and snow and fragrance.... I am using his words. Her very name is sweet
to Italian lips. He permitted himself the dreams of other men. He
permitted himself to hope. And then!... These things he told me with
actual tears in the finest dark eyes I have perhaps ever seen, and
without seeming any the less manly for them. He told me, and I believed
him. He came to me, poor fellow, because it was the nearest he could
come to Brenda, and he trusted, I suppose, that I would tell her he had
been. It was a way of sending her a message. He talked more than half
the night, walking the floor, then throwing himself into a chair and
grasping his head. I can't tell you all he said, but it filled me with
pity and respect. It made me his friend."

Mrs. Hawthorne looked soft and sympathetic, but far away, and when he
stopped did not speak, engrossed, it was to be hoped, by the story just
told.

He continued, though discouraged:

"He wanted to know if I thought he would be guilty of an unpardonable
breach should he ask permission to write her one letter before she left.
This parting without farewell is the last bitter touch to his tragedy.
Brenda, when it had been decided that she should leave, sent word to him
by that little pianist who comes here. Again through the same channel he
received word that the day of departure was fixed. Can you think what it
means, Mrs. Hawthorne? Have you in your experience or imagination the
wherewith to form any conception, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, of what it means?
The day of departure fixed! The day of parting! Do you realize? No more
sight or sound of each other! The end! The sea between! Silence! And it
is to befall on Saturday of this week, and we are at Wednesday!"

"All right, Mr. Fane; bring him!" she said in haste. "You've made me
want to cry. I mustn't let myself cry; it makes my nose red. What did
you say his name is?"

"Giglioli."

"Spell it. Gig--no, it's no use. What's the other part of his name?"

"Manlio."

"That's a little better. I guess he'll have to be Manlio to me. Bring
him along, whatever happens, and then let's pray hard to have everything
happen right."

* * * * *

Not much later on the same day Mrs. Hawthorne's brougham might have been
seen climbing Viale dei Colli, with the lady inside, alone, engaged in
meditation.

"It would be a pity," she was thinking, as she alighted before Villa
Foss, "that a little matter of eight t