arling, you
will be better soon. I must get you away from here."

Gently he drew her hands away from her face and lifted them to his
lips; the soft palms were wet with tears.

They were standing on the threshold of an inner room. "You can go in
here until I have done with Tor di Rocca," he said. "But first I must
tell you that Gertrude has written to me asking me to get a divorce.
There is a man, of course, and the case will not be defended. Olive,
will you marry me when I am free?"

"Oh, Jean, I--I am so glad."

"You will marry me then?" he insisted.

"How thin you are, my dear. Just a very nice bag of bones. Were--were
you sorry when I came away?"

"You little torment," he said. "Answer me."

"Ask again. I want to hear."

"Will you marry me?"

"Yes, of course."

A nightingale began to sing in the garden; broken notes, a mere echo
of what the stars heard at night, but infinitely sweet as the soul of
a rose made audible; and as he sang a sudden ray of sunshine shot the
grey rain with silver. It seemed to Jean that rose-sweetness was all
about him in this his short triumph of love; that a flower's heart
beat against his own, that a flower's lips caressed the lean darkness
of his cheek. There were threads of gold in the soft brown tangle of
hair--gold unalloyed as was the hard-won happiness that made him feel
himself invincible, panoplied in an armour of joy that should defend
them from all slings and arrows. He was happy, and so the world seemed
full of music; there was harmony in the swaying of tall dark
cypresses, moved by winds that strewed the grass with torn petals of
orange blossoms from the trees by the lake side, in the clouds'
processional, in the patter of rain on the green shining laurel
leaves.

Laurels--his laurels had been woven in with rue, and latterly with
rosemary for dear remembrance; he had never cared greatly for his fame
and it seemed worthless to him now that he had realised his dream and
gathered his rose.

He was impatient to be gone, to take the woman he loved out of this
house of sad memories, of empty echoes, of dust and rust and decay.
Already he seemed to feel the rush of the cold night air, to hear the
roar of Arno, hurrying to the sea, above the steady throbbing of the
car; to see the welcoming lights of home shining out of the dark at
the steep edge of the hills above Settignano.

"About the Prince," he said presently. "Am I to fight him?"

She started. "Oh, no! That w