tle Torno with its great round oleanders
and its houses crowding to the shore, the boatman sang. Gathering
courage as his own voice dispersed his melancholy, and the warm hopes of
his youth spread their wings once more, roused by the words of love his
lips were uttering, he fearlessly sent out his song. Love in the South
was in it, love in the sun, embraces in warm scented nights, longings
in moonlight, attainment in darkness. The boy had forgotten the veiled
lady, whose shrouded face and whose silence had for a moment saddened
him. His hot, bold nature reasserted itself, the fire of his youth
blazed up again. He sang as if only the other boatman had been there and
they had seen the girls they loved among the trees upon the shore.

And the soul writhed, like an animal stretched and strapped upon the
board, to whom no anaesthetic, had been given.

Never before would it have been possible to Lady Holme to believe that
the mere sound of a word could inflict such torment upon a heart as the
sound of the word _amore_, coming from the boatman's lips, now inflicted
upon hers. Each time it came, with its soft beauty, its languor of
sweetness--like a word reclining--it flayed her soul alive, and showed
her red, raw bareness.

Yet she did not ask the man to stop singing. Few people in the hands
of Fate ask Fate for favours. Instinct speaks in the soul and says, "Be
silent."

The boat rounded the point of Torno and came at once into a lonelier
region of the lake. Autumn was more definite here. Its sadness spoke
more plainly. Habitations on the shores were fewer. The mountains were
more grim, though grander. And their greyness surely closed in a little
upon the boat, the rowers, the veiled woman who was being taken to Casa
Felice.

Perhaps to combat the gathering gloom of Nature the boatman sang more
loudly, with the full force of his voice. But suddenly he seemed to be
struck by the singular contrast opposed to his expansive energy by the
silent figure opposite to him. A conscious look came into his face. His
voice died away abruptly. After a pause he said,

"Perhaps the signora is not fond of music?"

Lady Holme wanted to speak, but she could not. She and this bright-eyed
boy were not in the same world. That was what she felt. He did not know
it, but she knew it. And one world cannot speak through infinite space
with another.

She said nothing. The boy looked over his shoulder at his companion.
Then, in silence, they bo