mination came directly from a sense of duty, or whether pride, dignity and a desire to conquer in this struggle had not a large share in it.

In this way I passed the whole month of September, and then came October with its skies of mother-of-pearl. The paths of my garden were covered deep with red and yellow leaves. The acacias wasted day by day, the woods grew thin; the roses were almost gone. I understood the deep melancholy of autumn for the first time. "And yet," I thought, "the roses will bloom again, the woods will grow green; it is only I who will have no more leaves, nor flowers."

The rain kept me shut up in the house, and I read a great deal. I asked my cousin if he had not some books to lend me; he answered that he had none that would be suitable for me. I was gradually growing accustomed to this affectation of disdain; it could not possibly be sincere, and conscious that I did not deserve it, I remained unmoved under these blows, struggling with inexpressible melancholy. Perhaps he would have been pleased to see this melancholy written on my face, but I hid it from him as my most cherished secret.

One day we were alone; the short afternoon was closing with a dense, damp mist. Not being able to continue my embroidery in the uncertain light, I rose to put away my work, and find ing myself beside the piano I began mechanically to arrange my music, perhaps to escape from some secret feeling of embarrassment. He must have had some project in his mind, for he approached me with a troubled and inscrutable look. My hand fell on the old song; the memories of that happy night when I sang for him struck at my heart such a blow that I felt the need of self control. I ran my fingers over the keys, playing a gay and well known air. I persisted in it with the visible obstinacy of one who means to shake off thought at any cost. From the corner of my eye I could see his face, full of annoyance, and I thought,

"O, if he should speak now!" But at the same time I was seized with a wild terror which made me hurry my notes into a giddy, noisy dance. Had he said anything? It seemed to me that for a moment his breath had touched me, bringing me a sound; but what had he said? I was afraid to know. No, this was not the time. I had waited for it too long; now I waited no longer-1 was not ready-I was not strong enough. The fatal word that resounded all about me, I must not even think it! Perhaps it was I who spoke, not he! What did I say? Did he guess my secret? Oh, no, no! I threw back my head as if intoxicated with the music, and burst into convulsive laughter. He remained standing, holding in his hand a little ruler that he had taken from the table. Our eyes met in a keen glance, almost ferocious on his part. "I could beat you," he muttered, and in his glance, without which I might have thought he was in jest, I really felt the blow.

A clever woman, or even a woman having some experience of life, and of the human heart, would have known how to put an end to this painful and equivocal position at the first opportune moment. I did not. I recognized my poverty of resource, my insufficiency. I only knew how to love and to suffer. Was that the reason he despised me? Did not he know how to love? Had his spirit never reached that height where the Universe disappears, where without pomp or ritual, in the mystery of nature, the complete sacrifice of one being to another is accomplished? He who had desired to conquer me in a pitiful vulgar amour, did not imagine the flame that consumed me! He did not know it! He did not know it! And yet he knew life so well!

This thought was my sole consolation, my refuge, my pride. But the manner of my cousin was to undergo another change. He was no longer ironical and disdainful, he no longer showed a deliberate intention to offend me, which after all had been one way of expressing an interest in me; he adopted a system of frivolous, imper

tinent gaiety which wounded me much more, and filled me with confusion. It was as if he said, "Poor little woman, did you flatter yourself for an instant, that I was attracted by your faded youth, your dreary house, your narrow little soul! See how my strong youth soars above you, and stand aside! We have nothing in common; I care nothing for you."

After every new conversation, not like those first ones which made me so rich and happy, I felt poorer and more miserable. His evident determination to take from me all that he had given, sympathy, esteem, confidence, devotion, inspiration, actually seemed to create a void around me. The thread that united us grew thinner and thinner at every meeting till it was frightful to see, and the fear that it would break altogether made the days when he did not come pass in indescribable anguish. I longed to bring him back at any price.

O those melancholy winter evenings with Alexis wearied over his picture books, and Ursula and Pietro looking at me in silence with their good kindly eyes, which understood perhaps. How I loved those dear old people whose affections made their life.

There were moments when I was base. When the suffering grew too terrible, I had wild thoughts of asking for a truce, of trying to move his pity. I would have been capable of imploring his pardon only to see him smile once more as in the past, to feel him near me with that silent beating of the heart that speaks of sympathy. Then when he came to see me, hardly would his footsteps reveal his presence, before my wild thoughts fell into the depths of my heart.

I greeted him without a change of voice, I gave him a cold hand; my coldness seemed to grow through some violent reaction, when I had most invoked and longed for him. Perhaps sometimes it was too evident.

One day I was afraid I had betrayed myself. He entered gay and happy as he always did, with a touch of malice VOL. XV. 772

LIVING AGE.

in his eyes which only struck me afterwards, as I recalled it.

"At last I am no longer alone at la Querciaia," he said. "Do you remember the pavilion to the right, which my father built for his botanical collections? Well! I have rented it to two ladies, a mother and daughter who have had a reverse of fortune, and wish to retire to the country. That is good news, is it not? All the more that the daughter is an angel of beauty."

Flashes of light darted across my eyes. He asked me, "Do you not feel well?" in such a tone that if I had any doubt as to his object, I should have doubted no longer.

I answered that I had suffered for some time from a sort of dizziness, and that I thought it came from my sedentary life. I was burning to have some details about the ladies, but I took care not to ask him for them. And he, who was quite as anxious to tell me as I was to hear, dropped me scraps of information with much ostentation of indifference. I learned that the mother was the widow of a colonel, that she was an elegant woman, in very delicate health; that her daughter surrounded her with the most tender care; that it was a pleasure to see them together, bound by the warmest affection, and enduring their solitude with such dignity.

I thought to myself that I too loved my little Alexis very much, that we also were alone, worse than alone, abandoned, and a rush of tears obliged me to look down, coughing and breathing hard, as if I had a cold.

A moment after, as we were talking of other things, my cousin remarked irrelevantly, that the young girl was tall and elegant, and looked a little like the portrait of his great-grandmother.

"It is not possible."

"Why is it not possible? Do you suppose Helen's face was only beautiful to her contemporaries? Everything in nature renews itself."

This idea, or one exactly like it, had already been made use of on my visit to la Querciaia. It was I who had expressed it first, and he looking at my hands, had thought perhaps that they resembled those of his great-grandmother.

How far away all that seemed, and yet only two months had gone. The end of this day seemed sadder than usual. Since I was alone, we had gone back a little to our old habits. Ursula and Pietro came now and then into the salon, trying to divert my melancholy with simple pleasantries which I had known by heart for a quarter of a century, and which could no longer amuse me. I was seized with a kind of terror at the sight of these two beings who had grown old together so peacefully in my house, as unmovable as the two stone vases on the pillars of the iron gate. How many frosts had fallen on them, how many times the almond trees had blossomed, the birds ad sung, the butterflies had sported in the hedge, the box trees ad poured out their fragrance in the forest, and they had asked nothing more from life. Youth had not touched them, old age seemed to have barely reached them, and death waited for them with the open arms of a mother. Once, in a moment of tenderness, I asked them if they had never been in love. The woman said no, the man smiled. Which of them told the truth? I had iearned, nevertheless, the unspeakable melancholy of things. My salon reminded me of a cemetery full of crosses; beside the window I wept the illusions fled, on the crimson threads of my embroidery silks; by the piano, the passionate tones of the song I had longer courage to sing. A little box that he sometimes trifled with as we talked, a cup of bronze he had admired, the place where he used to sit, the chair that he liked best, all these things seemed like stopping places on the path

no

where we had walked together. I said to myself: "It is done; we shall walk there no more." Yes, I felt it all was irrevocably finished, without rapture, without fault, almost without struggle finished.

The regularity of the gradation by which my cousin made his visits constantly fewer and shorter, betrayed the deliberateness of his calculation, and I lost the last lingering hope of a friendly explanation. There was sometimes such ferocity in his indifference, such hardness in his disdain, he took such pleasure in saying whatever he thought would wound me most, that I was relieved when the end of his visit came, and I bade him farewell with the utmost coldness and indiffer

ence.

But it is also true that I struggled with a wild desire to embrace his knees, which horrified me, and when he had gone I began again to long for his return. This double life, the violent repressions which could not prevent the existence of my love, injured my health. I could not conceal it, and it was another means by which he could make me suffer. He said my husband was right to leave me in the country, that women were incomplete creatures, a constant obstacle in any strong career, "except"-he added these words with redoubled cruelty-"except a few embodiments of vigorous youth which one must always admire and love."

One wan afternoon in the end of autumn, I was half lying on my divan. As I saw him I tried to rise, pushing back the fur robe that covered me.

"Do not rise, do not rise," said he. "I am quite accustomed to such things now; my neighbor is always ill. That is one of the reasons why I can see you so seldom. I devote all the time at my disposal to her. That is right, is it not?" There was something so hard in his voice that I would not notice it. "Undoubtedly," I answered.

"You are very much flushed." "It must be a passing color, for I am

rather cold than hot. Winter begins badly this year."

"Not at all; it is splendid weather for a walk; however, one must be in health. Miss Emma-did I tell you the young lady was called Emma?"

"I do not know; I do not remember." "Emma! the prettiest name that I know. Do you not think it is a pretty name?"

I did not think so, but a feeling of pride prevented me from contradicting flatly. He insisted, "Is it not so? Is it not so? Say that it is a pretty name." Then I answered indifferently, "If it gives you pleasure, but you must know it is a matter of opinion."

"She is the living image of spring! She does not feel the winter. She needs to move about, to walk. Her mother permits me to accompany her sometimes to the end of the meadowno farther, you understand-but these walks are delightful. Sometimes she goes in front with her beautiful swaying figure, sometimes she stands at my side, intoxicating me with her nearness, with the fresh odor of violets which some girls have. It is strange, but now when I look at you, you look pale."

"Do not notice it."

"Your nerves, I suppose." "Yes, very probably."

So far I had been able to answer him, but a ringing in my ears and a mist over my eyes, made it impossible for me to follow the thread of the conversation. He could not know it, how ever, because I had drawn the fur half over my face and hands. Perhaps he had an impulse of compassion; he delicately arranged the covering around my arms, and I saw in his eyes a ray of the old kindness. I trembled all over and was afraid of myself. How I loved him, since only the touch of his hand could make me happy in spite of so many humiliations!

"Myriam," he said, to test me, as if he were already sorry for his gentleness, "you do not object to my taking you for my confidant."

"Why should I object? I am always she whom you have known."

"She? Which?"

"She who received you a year ago as her only kinsman, and to whom you showed the way to higher truths."

A long silence followed my words; I could have believed for an instant that we were back again in those dear and solemn talks of the past. Suddenly he exclaimed, "You do not know life! You know nothing, absolutely noth

ing!" "Alas," I answered almost involuntarily, "I fear so."

He continued to speak with violence. "Have you even a faint idea of the rights of a man, of his position face to face with existence? Do you know what struggles, what combats are necessary for him? Do you know that his heart is an ardent focus of love? Oh! do not interrupt me! Do not speak to me of your womanish loves made up of tears and sacrifices- In love we wish always to triumph, always to be victorious, and when we fail, our hearts are large enough to find room for hate and vengeance. Poor silly creatures who talk of pardon in the same way that they would reach forth a helpless little hand to put out a conflagration with a cup of water!"

As he said these words he rose. His face wore a sort of fierce sadness, his lips were pressed together, his eyes flashed forth the fire in his heart. Never had I loved him so much as at this moment-I saw and accepted his most intimate thoughts, I took them on myself, into my heart; I understood his struggles, his sadness, his pain. My heart rushed out to him with an irresistible but hidden energy-I wished to speak but I could not say a word.

"I weary you, I will go," he said with a protecting gentleness as if his excitement had calmed him. "Get well."

I gave him my hand in silence; he took it without pressing it. He said, "Are you still cold?" and when I shook my head he turned to leave the room, but he had taken only a step or two, when he looked back.

"Shall I send Ursula ?"

I made an effort to smile. "Thank you; I am well."