where she had deserved none, and
it made her inclined to pity herself without reason. She sometimes felt
it after Guido had come, and it stayed with her, a strange yearning
after an unknown happiness that was never to be hers, a half-comforting
and infinitely sad conviction that she was to die young and that people
would mourn for her, but not those, or not that one, who ought to be
most sorry that she was gone. All her books were empty of what she
wanted, and for hours she sat still, doing nothing, or stood leaning on
the window-sill, gazing down through the slats of the blinds at the
glaring street, unconscious of the heat and the strong light, and of the
moving figures that passed.

Occasionally she drove out to the Villa Madama in the afternoon with her
mother, and Guido joined them. Lamberti did not come there, though he
often came to the house in the evening, sometimes with his friend, and
sometimes later. The two always went away together. At the villa,
Cecilia never sat down on the bench by the fountain, but from a distance
she looked at it, and it was like looking at a grave. In dreams she had
sat there too often with another to go there alone now; she had heard
words there that touched her heart too deeply to be so easily forgotten,
and there had been silences too happy to forget. She had buried all that
by the garden seat, but it was better not to go near the place again.
What she had laid out of sight there might not be quite dead yet, and if
she sat in the old place she might hear some piteous cry from beneath
her feet; or its ghost might rise and stare at her, the ghost of a
dream. Then, the yearning and the longing grew stronger and hurt her
sharply, and she turned under the great door, into the hall, and was
very glad when her mother began to chatter about dress and people.

But one day the very thing happened which she had always tried to avert.
Guido insisted on walking up and down the path with her, and they passed
and repassed the bench, till she was sure that he would make her sit
down upon it. She tried to linger at the opposite end, but he was
interested in what he was saying and did not notice her reluctance to
turn back.

Then it came. He stood still by the fountain, and then he sat down quite
naturally, and evidently expecting her readiness to do the same. She
started slightly and looked about, as if to find some means of escape,
but a moment later she had gathered her courage and was sittin