ooking for it she came upon a volume of Shelley, the one
which Andrea had lent her in Schifanoja, the dear and affecting book in
which, before the excursion to Vicomile, she had underlined the words

'And forget me, for I can _never_
Be thine.'

She took up the book with visible emotion and turned over the pages till
she came to the one which bore the mark of her underlining.

'_Never!_' she murmured with a shake of the head. 'You remember? And
hardly eight months have passed since.'

She pensively turned over a few more leaves and read other verses.

'He is our poet,' she went on. 'How often you promised to take me to the
English Cemetery! You remember, we were to take flowers for his grave.
Shall we go? You might take me before I leave. It will be our last walk
together.'

'Let us go to-morrow,' he answered.

The next evening, when the sun was already declining, they went in a
closed carriage; on her knees lay a bunch of roses. They drove along the
foot of the leafy Aventino and caught a glimpse of the boats laden with
Sicilian wine anchored in the port of Ripa Grande.

In the neighbourhood of the cemetery they left the carriage and went the
rest of the way to the gates on foot and in silence. At the bottom of
her heart, Maria felt that not only was she here to lay flowers on the
tomb of a poet, but that in this place of death she would weep for
something of herself irreparably lost. A _Fragment_ of Shelley, read in
the sleepless watches of the night echoed through her spirit as she
gazed at the cypresses pointing to the sky on the other side of the
white wall.

'Death is here, and Death is there,
Death is busy everywhere;
All around, within, beneath,
Above, is death--and we are death.

Death has set his mark and seal
On all we are and all we feel,
On all we know and all we fear--

First our pleasures die, and then
Our hopes, and then our fears: and when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust--and we die too.

All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish.
Such is our rude mortal lot:
Love itself would, did they not----'

As she passed through the gateway she put her arm through Andrea's and
shivered.

The cemetery was solitary and deserted. A few gardeners were engaged in
watering the plants along by the wall, swinging their watering-cans
from side to side with an even and continuous motion