a Sistina and stopped at the door of the
Palazzo Zuccari.

Elena instantly released her captive, saying rather huskily--

'Go now, good-bye.'

'When will you come?'

'_Chi sa!_'

The footman opened the door and Andrea got out. The carriage turned back
to the Via Sistina and Andrea, still vibrating with passion, a veil of
mist before his eyes, stood watching to see if Elena's face would not
appear at the window; but he saw nothing. The carriage drove rapidly
away.

As he ascended the stairs to his apartment, he said to himself--'So she
has come round at last!' The intoxication of her presence was still upon
him, on his lips he still felt the pressure of her kiss, and in his eyes
was the flash of the smile with which she had thrown that sort of smooth
and perfumed snake about his neck. And Donna Maria?--Most assuredly it
was to her he owed these unexpected favours. There was no doubt that at
the bottom of Elena's strange and fantastic behaviour lay a decided
touch of jealousy. Fearing perhaps that he was escaping her she sought
thus to lure him back and rekindle his passion. 'Does she love me, or
does she not?' But what did it matter to him one way or another? What
good would it do him to know? The spell was broken irremediably. No
miracle that ever was wrought could revive the least little atom of the
love that was dead. The only thing that need occupy him now was the
carnal body, and that was divine as ever.

He indulged long in pleasurable meditation on this episode. What
particularly took his fancy was the arch and graceful touch Elena had
given to her caprice. The thought of the boa evoked the image of Donna
Maria's coils, and so, confusedly, all the amorous fancies he had woven
round that virginal mass of hair by which, once on a time, the very
school-girls of the Florentine convent had been enthralled. And again he
let his two loves melt into one and form the third--the Ideal.

The musing mood still upon him while he dressed for dinner, he thought
to himself--'Yesterday, a grand scene of passion almost ending in tears;
to-day, a little episode of mute sensuality--and I seemed to myself as
sincere in my sentiment yesterday as I was in my sensations to-day.
Added to which, scarcely an hour before Elena's kiss, I had a moment of
lofty lyrical emotion at Donna Maria's side. Of all this not one vestige
remains. To-morrow, most assuredly I shall begin the same game over
again. I am unstable as water; incoherent