on to accompany Cennini, but before
he had gone many steps, he was called back by Nello, who saw Maso
approaching.

Maso's message was from Romola. She wished Tito to go to the Via de'
Bardi as soon as possible. She would see him under the loggia, at the
top of the house, as she wished to speak to him alone.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

UNDER THE LOGGIA.

The loggia at the top of Bardo's house rose above the buildings on each
side of it, and formed a gallery round quadrangular walls. On the side
towards the street the roof was supported by columns; but on the
remaining sides, by a wall pierced with arched openings, so that at the
back, looking over a crowd of irregular, poorly-built dwellings towards
the hill of Bogoli, Romola could at all times have a walk sheltered from
observation. Near one of those arched openings, close to the door by
which he had entered the loggia, Tito awaited her, with a sickening
sense of the sunlight that slanted before him and mingled itself with
the ruin of his hopes. He had never for a moment relied on Romola's
passion for him as likely to be too strong for the repulsion created by
the discovery of his secret; he had not the presumptuous vanity which
might have hindered him from feeling that her love had the same root
with her belief in him. But as he imagined her coming towards him in
her radiant beauty, made so loveably mortal by her soft hazel eyes, he
fell into wishing that she had been something lower, if it were only
that she might let him clasp her and kiss her before they parted. He
had had no real caress from her--nothing but now and then a long glance,
a kiss, a pressure of the hand; and he had so often longed that they
should be alone together. They were going to be alone now; but he saw
her standing inexorably aloof from him. His heart gave a great throb as
he saw the door move: Romola was there. It was all like a flash of
lightning: he felt, rather than saw, the glory about her head, the
tearful appealing eyes; he felt, rather than heard, the cry of love with
which she said, "Tito!"

And in the same moment she was in his arms, and sobbing with her face
against his.

How poor Romola had yearned through the watches of the night to see that
bright face! The new image of death; the strange bewildering doubt
infused into her by the story of a life removed from her understanding
and sympathy; the haunting vision, which she seemed not only to hear
uttered by the low ga