poet and of Trelawny. The jasmin
climbing over the old ruin was in flower, but of the violets nothing was
left but their thick carpet of leaves. The tops of the cypresses, which
here just reached the line of vision, were vividly illumined by the last
red gleams of the sun as it sank behind the black cross of the Monte
Testaccio. A great purple cloud edged with burning gold sailed across
the sky in the direction of the Aventino--

'These are two friends whose lives were undivided.
So let their memory be, now they have glided
Under their grave; let not their bones be parted
For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.'

Maria repeated the last line. Then, moved by a delicate
inspiration--'Please unfasten my veil,' she said to Andrea.

She leaned her head back slightly so that he might untie the knot, and
Andrea's fingers touched her hair--that magnificent hair, in the dense
shadow of which he had so often tasted all the delights of his
perfidious imagination, evoked the image of her rival.

'Thank you,' she said.

She then drew the veil from before her face and looked at Andrea with
eyes that were a little dazed. She looked very beautiful. The shadows
round her eyes were darker and deeper, but the eyes themselves burned
with a more intense light. Her hair clung to her temples in heavy
hyacinthine curls tinged with violet. The middle of her forehead, which
was left free, gleamed, by contrast, in moonlike purity. Her features
had fined down and lost something of their materiality through stress of
love and sorrow.

She wound the veil about the stems of the roses, tied the two ends
together with much care, and then buried her face in the flowers,
inhaling their perfume. Then she laid them on the simple stone that
bears the poet's name engraved upon it. There was an indefinable
expression in the gesture, which Andrea could not understand.

As they moved away, he suddenly stopped short, and looking back towards
the tower, 'How did you manage to get those roses?' he asked.

She smiled, but her eyes were wet.

'They are yours--those of that snowy night--they have bloomed again this
evening. Do you not believe it?'

The evening breeze was rising, and behind the hill the sky was
overspread with gold, in the midst of which the purple cloud dissolved,
as if consumed by fire. Against this field of light, the serried ranks
of the cypresses looked more imposing and mysterious than before. The
Psyche a