.

Elena rose and shook hands with her friend.

'Already in the field!' exclaimed the Princess.

'Already.'

'And Francesca?'

'She has not come yet.'

Four or five young men--the Duke of Grimiti, Roberto Casteldieri,
Ludovico Barbarisi, Gianetto Rutolo--drew up round them. Others joined
them. The rattle of the rain against the windows almost drowned their
voices.

Elena held out her hand frankly to Sperelli as to everybody else, but
somehow he felt that that handshake set him at a distance from her.
Elena seemed to him cold and grave. That instant sufficed to freeze and
destroy all his dreams; his memories of the preceding evening grew
confused and dim, the torch of hope was extinguished. What had happened
to her?--She was not the same woman. She was wrapped in the folds of a
long otter-skin coat, and wore a toque of the same fur on her head.
There was something hard, almost contemptuous, in the expression of her
face.

'The goblet will not come on for some time yet,' she observed to the
Princess, as she resumed her seat.

Every object passed through her hands. She was much tempted by a centaur
cut in a sardonyx, a very exquisite piece of workmanship, part, perhaps,
of the scattered collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent. She took part in
the bidding, communicating her offers to the auctioneer in a low voice
without raising her eyes to him. Presently the competition stopped; she
obtained the intaglio for a good price.

'A most admirable acquisition,' observed Andrea Sperelli from behind her
chair.

Elena could not repress a slight start. She took up the sardonyx and
handed it to him to look at over her shoulder without turning round. It
was really a very beautiful thing.

'It might be the centaur copied by Donatello,' Andrea added.

And in his heart, with his admiration for the work of art, there rose up
also a sincere admiration for the noble taste of the lady who now filled
all his thoughts. 'What a rare creature both in mind and body!' he
thought. But the higher she rose in his imagination, the further she
seemed removed from him in reality. All the security of the preceding
evening was transformed into uneasiness, and his first doubts re-awoke.
He had dreamed too much last night with waking eyes, bathed in a
felicity that knew no bounds, while the memory of a gesture, a smile, a
turn of the head, a fold of her raiment held him captive as in a net.
Now all this imaginary world had tumbled miserably