ch a
flame of passion that the convalescent was moved to the depths of his
being, and felt the notes drop one by one through his veins, as if all
the blood in his body had stopped in its course to listen. A cold shiver
stirred the roots of his hair, shadows, thick and rapid, passed before
his eyes, he held his breath with excitement. In the weak state of his
nerves his sensations were so poignant that it was all he could do to
keep back his tears.

'Oh, dearest Maria!' exclaimed Donna Francesca, kissing her fondly on
the hair when she stopped.

Andrea could not utter a word; he remained seated where he was, with his
back to the light and his face in shadow.

'Please go on,' said Francesca.

She sang an Arietta by Antonio Salieri, then she played a Toccata by
Leonardo Leo, a Gavotte by Rameau, a Gigue by Sebastian Bach. Under her
magic fingers the music of the eighteenth century lived again--so
melancholy in its dance airs, that sound as if they were intended to be
danced to in a languid afternoon of a Saint Martin's summer, in a
deserted park, amid silent fountains and statueless pedestals, on a
carpet of dead roses by pairs of lovers on the point of ceasing to love
one another.

CHAPTER IV

'Let down a rope of your hair to me that I may climb up,' Andrea called
laughingly from the terrace below to Donna Maria, where she stood
between two pillars of the loggia opening out of her rooms.

It was morning, and she had come out into the sun to dry her wet hair,
which hung round her like a heavy mantle, and accentuated the soft
pallor of her face. The black border of the vivid orange-coloured awning
hung above her head like a frieze, such as one sees round the antique
Greek vases of the Campagna. Had she had a garland of narcissus on her
brows and at her side a great nine-stringed lyre with bas-reliefs of
Apollo and a greyhound, she might have been taken for a pupil of the
school of Mytilene, or a Lesbian musician in repose as imagined by a
Pre-Raphaelite.

'You send me up a madrigal,' she answered in the same playful tone, but
drawing back a little from view.

'Very well, I will go and write one in your honour on the marble
balustrade of the lowest terrace. Come down and read it when you are
ready.'

Andrea proceeded slowly to descend the steps leading to the lower level.
In that September morning his soul seemed to dilate with every breath he
drew. A certain sanctity seemed to pervade the air; the sea