nstead of terror and
self-abasement, he met scorn--the cold contempt of a being rarefied,
and raised above him by centuries of gentler thought and living.
When he laid his paws on her shoulders he felt that he held there a
pale, soft shell empty of her incomprehensible spirit, which at his
touch had vanished into space.

So he stood baffled, with a new longing that groped blindly through
the veils of flesh and blood, like a brute tormented by the dawning
of some insatiable aspiration.

It occurred to him that the delicate creature might be pleased if
her surroundings were less soldierly. So oiled linen was stretched
across her windows, and a carpet laid for her feet at table in the
hall. The board was spread with a white cloth on which she might
wipe her lips, and in spring the pavement of her bower was strewn
with scented herbs. Also he saw to it that her meat was seasoned
with quinces, that her wine was spiced on feast-days.

He got her a little greyhound, but it sickened and died. Remembering
that a comrade-in-arms possessed a Turkish dwarf with an abnormally
large head, he cast about to procure some such monstrosity for her
amusement. He sent her jewellery--necklaces torn by his soldiers
from the breasts of ladies in surrendered towns, rings wrested from
fingers raised in supplication.

She wore none of these trinkets. Indeed, she seemed oblivious of all
his efforts to change her.

He left her alone.

Finally, whenever Lapo Cercamorte met her in the hall his face
turned dark and bitter. Throughout the meal there was no sound
except the growling of dogs among the bones beneath the table, the
hushed voices of the soldiers eating in the body of the hall. Old
one-eyed Baldo, Cercamorte's lieutenant, voiced the general
sentiment when he muttered into his cup:

"This house has become a tomb, and I have a feeling that presently
there may be corpses in it."

"She has the evil eye," another assented.

Furtively making horns with their fingers, they looked up askance
toward the dais, at her pale young beauty glimmering through rays of
dusty sunshine.

"Should there come an alarm our shield-straps would burst and our
weapons crack like glass. If only, when we took Grangioia Castle, a
sword had accidentally cut off her nose!"

"God give us our next fighting in the open, far away from this
_jettatrice_!"

It presently seemed as if that wish were to be granted. All the
Guelph party were then preparing to take th