is so much
to do--so many calls to return--such tiring days! I hardly know where to
turn. How warm it is in here! What a delicious smell!'

She was standing in the middle of the room--a little undecided and ill
at ease in spite of her rapid and lightly spoken words. A velvet coat
with Empire sleeves, very full at the shoulders and buttoned closely at
the wrists and with an immense collar of blue fox for sole trimming,
covered her from head to foot, but without disguising the grace of her
figure. She looked at Andrea with eyes in which a curious tremulous
smile softened the flash and sparkle.

'You have changed somehow,' she said; 'I don't quite know what it
is--but round your mouth, for instance, there are bitter lines that used
not to be there.'

She spoke in a tone of affectionate familiarity. The sound of her voice
once more in this room caused him such exquisite delight that he
exclaimed--'Speak again, Elena--go on speaking!'

She laughed. 'Why?' she asked.

'You know why,' he answered, taking her hand again.

She drew her hand away and looked the young man deep in the eyes. 'I
know nothing any more.'

'Then you have changed very much.'

'Yes--very much indeed.'

They had both dropped their bantering tone. Elena's answer threw a
sudden search-light upon much that was problematical before. Andrea
understood, and with that rapid and precise intuition so often found in
minds practised in psychological analysis, he instantly divined the
moral attitude of his visitor, and foresaw the further development of
the coming scene. Moreover, he was already under the spell of this
woman's fascination as in the former days, besides being greatly piqued
by curiosity.

'Will you not sit down?' he asked.

'Yes--for a moment.'

'Here--in this arm-chair.'

'Ah--_my_ arm-chair!' she was on the point of exclaiming, for she
recognised an old friend, but she stopped herself in time.

The chair was deep and roomy, and covered with antique leather on which
pale dragons ramped in relief, after the style of the wall decorations
of one of the rooms in the Chigi palace. The leather had taken on that
warm and sumptuous tone which recalls the background of certain Venetian
portraits, or a fine bronze still retaining traces of former gilding, or
a piece of tortoise-shell with gleams of gold here and there. A great
cushion covered with a piece of a dalmatic of faded colouring--of that
peculiar shade which the Florentine silk merc