illing the air with its odor. The grasses and herbs were
green; here and there an almond tree was in blossom. The dark cypresses
of Hadrian's Villa stood like spires of thunder clouds against the
wonderful azures of this uplifting sky. Before us were the mountains,
pine-clad, vineyard-clad; and far up the gleam of a cascade shone like a
bent sword in the sun.

Serafino took us through the room of the d'Este Palace telling the
driver to meet us at one of the entrances to the grounds. When we
emerged and descended to the Hundred Fountains he turned away giving us
the directions to reach the carriage. He knew that this was a place
where lovers would wish to dispense with a guide.

We walked through the avenues of great cypress trees and came to the
farther end of the pools whose curbs were decorated with flowering urns.
There we looked at the palace and listened to the song of the merles.
Beside this all was silence, only the stir of the wind against the soft
strings of the trees--the most melodious harp in the world! We climbed
to an eminence, stood by an iron fence and gazed down upon the fisheries
surrounded by graceful bushes and trees. Then we found the Fontana dell'
Ovato, and a seat before it. It was a semicircle of stone perforated by
arches over which the water musically poured. Here we rested, listening
to the merles, the falling water, the whispering of the wind. Ghosts of
dead delight seemed to pass us; unseen presences of passionate gallants
and capricious loveliness, hungering hearts wounded by life, by beauty,
by desire, spoke to us through the murmuring water, the stir of the
wind, the intense silence when all sounds were turned away by the
veering of the delicious air.

And Uncle Tom was in Rome at Canape's drinking with his American
cronies! Only myself knew my starved heart, but surely he knew the heart
of Isabel. What was the attitude of mind in allowing this free
association between Isabel and me? Does the heart of age become
deadened? Does it understand; does it but partly divine these secrets;
does it for any of these reasons cease to be sensitive?

Then suddenly, as Isabel and I sat there in these enchanting
surroundings, an uncontrollable emotion seized me, one that had no
regard for a future, that sought only to realize wholly and at once an
ecstatic present. For what could be between us? I could not marry
Isabel; and what could be? Blindly, without a thought of any of these
things, I took Isa