ed that her beauty was
fading away in this unhappy solitude. On her countenance was no
trace of that which he had hoped to see. He swore softly, cast down
from feverish expectancy into bewilderment.

"No," he said, at length, his voice huskier than usual, "this cannot
continue. You are a flower transplanted into a dungeon, and dying on
the stalk. One cannot refashion the past. The future remains.
Perhaps you would flourish again if I sent you back to your father?"

He went to the casement with a heavy step, and stared through a rent
in the oiled linen at the mist, which clung round the castle like a
pall.

"Madonna," he continued, more harshly than ever, in order that she
might not rejoice at his pain, "I ask pardon for the poorness of my
house. Even had my sword made me wealthy I should not have known how
to provide appointments pleasing to a delicate woman. My manners also,
as I have learned since our meeting, are unsuitable. The camps were
my school and few ladies came into them. It was not strange that
when Raffaele Muti presented himself you should have found him more
to your taste. But if on my sudden return I did what I did, and thus
prevented him from boasting up and down Lombardy of another conquest,
it was because I had regard not only for my honour, but for yours.
So I am not asking your pardon on that score."

Lowering her face toward the red embers, she whispered:

"A beast believes all men to be beasts."

"Kiss of Judas! Are women really trapped, then, by that gibberish?
Madonna, these miaowing troubadours have concocted a world that they
themselves will not live in. Have I not sat swigging in tents with
great nobles, and heard all the truth about it? Those fellows always
have, besides the lady that they pretend to worship as inviolate, a
dozen others with whom the harp-twanging stage is stale."

"All false, every word," Madonna Gemma answered.

"Because ladies choose to think so the game goes on. Well, Madonna,
remember this. From the moment when I first saw you I, at least, did
you no dishonour, but married you promptly, and sought your
satisfaction by the means that I possessed. I was not unaware that
few wives come to their husbands with affection. Certainly I did not
expect affection from you at the first, but hoped that it might ensue.
So even Lapo Cercamorte became a flabby fool, when he met one in
comparison with whom all other women seemed mawkish. Since it was
such a fit of drivelling,