perhaps he will bring some positive word about the library;
the cardinal promised last week," said Bardo, apparently pacified by
this hope.

He was silent a little while; then, suddenly flushing, he said--

"I must go on without him, Romola. Get the pen. He has brought me no
new text to comment on; but I must say what I want to say about the New
Platonists. I shall die and nothing will have been done. Make haste,
my Romola."

"I am ready, father," she said, the next minute, holding the pen in her
hand.

But there was silence. Romola took no note of this for a little while,
accustomed to pauses in dictation; and when at last she looked round
inquiringly, there was no change of attitude.

"I am quite ready, father!"

Still Bardo was silent, and his silence was never again broken.

Romola looked back on that hour with some indignation against herself,
because even with the first outburst of her sorrow there had mingled the
irrepressible thought, "Perhaps my life with Tito will be more perfect
now."

For the dream of a triple life with an undivided sum of happiness had
not been quite fulfilled. The rainbow-tinted shower of sweets, to have
been perfectly typical, should have had some invisible seeds of
bitterness mingled with them; the crowned Ariadne, under the snowing
roses, had felt more and more the presence of unexpected thorns. It was
not Tito's fault, Romola had continually assured herself. He was still
all gentleness to her, and to her father also. But it was in the nature
of things--she saw it clearly now--it was in the nature of things that
no one but herself could go on month after month, and year after year,
fulfilling patiently all her father's monotonous exacting demands. Even
she, whose sympathy with her father had made all the passion and
religion of her young years, had not always been patient, had been
inwardly very rebellious. It was true that before their marriage, and
even for some time after, Tito had seemed more unwearying than herself;
but then, of course, the effort had the ease of novelty. We assume a
load with confident readiness, and up to a certain point the growing
irksomeness of pressure is tolerable; but at last the desire for relief
can no longer be resisted. Romola said to herself that she had been
very foolish and ignorant in her girlish time: she was wiser now, and
would make no unfair demands on the man to whom she had given her best
woman's love and worship. The