tly. "I have made you uncomfortable;
forgive me."

"Will you take a brandy-and-soda if I give it you?"

"Yes, if you think it will do me good."

Hilaire limped across to the sideboard. He was scarcely gone half a
minute, but when he came back with a glass of the mixture he had
prescribed he saw his brother kneeling at the girl's side, his arms
about her, his face hidden in the folds of her skirt.

"Jean! Get up!" he said very sharply. "Pull yourself together."

Olive sat stiffly erect; her swollen, tear-stained lids hid the blue
eyes, her pale, quivering lips formed words that were inaudible.

Hilaire ground his teeth. "Get up!"

After a while the lover loosed his hold; he bent to kiss the girl's
feet; then he rose and went silently out of the room. Hilaire listened
for the closing of another door before he rang the bell.

CHAPTER X

For some days and nights Olive lived only to eat and sleep. When she
woke it was to hear a kind old voice urging her to take hot milk or
soup, to see a kind old face framed in white hair set off by black
lace lappets; and yet whenever she closed her eyes at first she was
aware of a passionate aching echo of words said that was sad as the
sound of the sea in a shell. "I love you--I love you--" until at last
sleep helped to knit up the ravelled sleave of care.

Every morning there were fresh roses for her.

"The signorino hopes you are better."

"Oh, much better, thank you." And after a while a day came when she
felt really strong enough to get up. She dressed slowly and came down
and out on to the terrace. The crumbling stones of the balustrade were
moss-grown, as was the slender body of the bronze Mercury, poised for
flight and dark against the pale illimitable blue of the December sky.
Hilaire Avenel never tried to make Nature neat; the scarlet leaves of
the Virginia creeper came fluttering down and were scattered on the
worn black and white mosaic of the pavement; they showed like fire
flickering in the sombre green of the cypresses. Beyond and below the
garden, the olive and ilex woods, and the steep red roofs of
Settignano, lay Florence, a city of the plain, and wreathed in a
delicate mist. There was the great dome of Santa Maria dei Fiori; the
tortuous silver streak that was Arno, spanned by her bridges; there
was Giotto's tower, golden-white and rose golden, there the campanile
of the Badia, the grim old Bargello, and the battlemented walls of the
Palazzo Vecchi