rge
of stupid, unexplainable tears.

"Well!" said Aurora.

At the sound they were placed back on the exact footing of their last
meeting, before thinking and conjecturing about each other in absence
had built up between them barriers of illusion.

"Well!" he said, but less pleasantly, because he was mortified by the
awareness of himself as an uninviting sight, with his old dressing-gown,
neglected beard, and the unpicturesque manifestations of a cold.

But Aurora's face was reassuring; she did not confuse him with the
accidents of his dressing-gown and beard and cold. Aurora's face beamed,
so much was she rejoicing in her own excellent sense, which had told her
that one look at each other would do a thousand times more to make
things right between them than innumerable letters could have done.

"I didn't know what to think," she said, "so I came to find out. First
I'd think you were mad at me, then I'd think you had gone away and
written me, and the letter hadn't reached me, Gaetano had lost it on the
road. Then I'd think you might be sick, and there was nobody to let your
friends know. I don't know what I didn't think of. What made you not
send me word?"

"I did not know you would be uneasy. I did not rightly measure, it
seems, the depth of your kindness. I should certainly have written to
you before long in case I had continued unable to go to see you."

"How long have you been sick?"

"I am not sick, dearest lady. I only have a cold. In order to make it go
away more quickly I have to remain in the house. But how good, how very
good of you to come! Sit down, please do, and warm yourself. I will ring
for Giovanna, and she will make us some tea."

[Illustration: Gerald turned, and beheld that lady]

Aurora, smiling all the time with the pleasure she felt in not finding
him angry or estranged or in any way altered toward her, took the
arm-chair from which he had just risen, while he drew a lighter chair to
the other side of the chimney-place. His fires were not like hers. Two
half-burned sticks and a form of turf smoldered sparingly on a mound of
hot ashes; he eagerly cast on a fagot, and added wood with, for once, an
extravagant hand. Then, looking over at her, he smiled, too.

"Now tell me all about yourself," she commanded. "I want to know what
you're doing for this cold of yours."

"Please let us not talk about my cold," he at once refused. "Let us talk
about something agreeable. Tell me the news. I hav