and in silence.

The funeral cypresses stood up straight and motionless in the air; only
their tops, gilded by the sun, trembled lightly. Between the rigid,
greenish-black trunks rose the white tombs--square slabs of stone,
broken pillars, urns, sarcophagi. From the sombre mass of the cypresses
fell a mysterious shadow, a religious peace, a sort of human kindness,
as limpid and beneficent waters gush from the hard rock. The unchanging
regularity of the trees and the chastened whiteness of the sepulchral
monuments affected the spirit with a sense of solemn and sweet repose.
But between the stiff ranks of the trees, standing in line like the deep
pipes of an organ, and interspersed among the tombs, graceful oleanders
swayed their tufts of pink blossom; roses dropped their petals at every
light touch of the breeze, strewing the ground with their fragrant snow;
the eucalyptus shook its pale tresses--now dark, now silvery white;
willows wept over the crosses and crowns; and, here and there, the
cactus displayed the glory of its white blooms like a swarm of sleeping
butterflies or an aigrette of wonderful feathers. The silence was
unbroken save by the cry, now and then, of some solitary bird.

Andrea pointed to the top of the hill.

'The poet's tomb is up there,' he said, 'near that ruin to the left,
just below the last tower.'

She dropped his arm and went on in front of him through the narrow paths
bordered with low myrtle hedges. She walked as if fatigued, turning
round every few minutes to smile back at her lover. She was dressed in
black and wore a black veil that cast over her faint and trembling smile
a shadow of mourning. Her oval chin was paler and purer than the roses
she carried in her hand.

Once, as she turned, one of the roses shed its petals on the path.
Andrea stooped to pick them up. She looked at him and he fell on his
knees before her.

'_Adorata!_' he exclaimed.

A scene rose up before her, vividly as a picture.

'You remember,' she said, 'that morning at Schifanoja when I threw a
handful of leaves down to you from the higher terrace? You bent your
knee to me while I descended the steps. I do not know how it is, but
that time seems to me so near and yet so far away! I feel as if it had
happened yesterday, and then again, a century ago. But perhaps, after
all it only happened in a dream.'

Passing along between the low myrtle hedges, they at last reached the
tower near which lies the tomb of the