glass from a church window. The cup of tea stood where Andrea had laid
it down on the table, cold and untouched. The chair cushion retained the
impress of the form that had leaned against it. All the objects
surrounding her breathed an ineffable melancholy, which condensed itself
in a heavy weight upon Elena's heart, till it sank beneath the well nigh
insupportable burden.

_'Mio Dio! mio Dio!'_

She wished she could make her escape unseen. A puff of wind inflated the
curtains, made the candles flicker, raised a general rustle through the
room. She shivered, and almost without knowing what she did, she
called--

'Andrea!'

Her own voice--that name in the silence startled her strangely, as if
neither voice nor name had come from her lips. Why was Andrea so long in
returning? She listened.----There was no sound but the dull deep
inarticulate murmur of the city. Not a carriage passed across the piazza
of the Trinita de' Monti. As the wind came in strong gusts from time to
time, she closed the window, catching a glimpse as she did so of the
point of the obelisk, black against the starry sky.

Possibly Andrea had not found a conveyance at once on the Piazza
Barberini. She sat herself down to wait on the sofa and tried to calm
her foolish agitation, avoiding all heartsearchings and endeavouring to
fix her attention on external objects. Her eyes wandered to the figures
on the fire-screen, faintly visible by the light of the dying logs. On
the mantelpiece a great white rose in one of the vases was dropping its
petals softly, languidly, one by one, giving an impression of something
subtly feminine and sensuous. The cup-like petals rested delicately on
the marble, like flakes of snow.

Ah, how sweet that fragrant snow had been _then_! she thought.
Rose-leaves strewed the carpets, the divan, the chairs, and she was
laughing, happy in the midst of the devastation, and her happy lover was
at her feet----

A carriage stopped down in the street. She rose and shook her aching
head to banish the dull weight that seemed to paralyse her. The next
moment, Andrea entered out of breath.

'Forgive me,' he said, 'for keeping you so long, but I could not find
the porter, so I went down to the Piazza di Spagna. The carriage is
waiting for you.'

'Thanks,' answered Elena with a timid glance at him through her black
veil.

He was grave and pale but quite calm.

'I expect my husband to-morrow,' she went on in a low faint voice. 'I