The downward slope was gentle.

In the drawing-room of the Countess Starnina, an indefinable thrill ran
through her when she felt Andrea's gaze upon her bare shoulders and
arms. It was the first time he had seen her in evening dress. Her face
and her hands were all he knew. This evening he saw how exquisite was
the shape of her neck and shoulders and of her arms too, although they
were a little thin.

She was dressed in ivory-white brocade trimmed with sable. A narrow band
of fur edged the low bodice and imparted an indescribable delicacy to
the tints of the skin. The line of the shoulders, from the neck to the
top of the arms, had that gracious slope which is such a sure mark of
physical aristocracy and so rare nowadays. In her magnificent hair,
arranged in the manner affected by Verocchio for his busts, there was
not one jewel, not one flower.

At two or three propitious moments, Andrea murmured words of passionate
admiration in her ear.

'This is the first time we have met in society,' he said to her. 'Give
me a glove as a souvenir.'

'No.'

'Why not, Maria?'

'No, no. Be quiet.'

'Oh, those hands of yours! Do you remember when I copied them at
Schifanoja? I feel as if I had a right to them; as if you ought to grant
them to me; of your whole person they are the part that is most
intimately connected with your soul, the most spiritualised, almost, one
might say, the purest--Oh, hands of kindness--hands of pardon. How
dearly I should love to possess at least a semblance of their form, some
token to which their delicate perfume still clings. You will give me a
glove before you leave?'

She did not answer. The conversation dropped. A short time afterwards,
on being asked to play, she consented, and drawing off her gloves laid
them on the music-stand in front of her. Her fingers, tapering and
glittering with rings, looked very white as she drew off their delicate
covering. On the ring finger of her left hand blazed a great opal.

She played the two Sonata-Fantasias of Beethoven (Op. 27). The one,
dedicated to Giulietta Guicciardi, expressed a hopeless renunciation,
told of an awakening after a dream that had lasted too long. The other,
from the first bars of the _Andante_, described by its full smooth
rhythm the calm that comes after the storm; then, passing through the
disquietude of the second movement, opened out into an _Adagio_ of
luminous serenity, and ended in an _Allegro Vivace_ in which there was a