Clara Green had just come in. She received Andrea with childish delight.

No doubt she would have preferred to dine alone with him, but she accepted the invitation without hesitating, wrote a note to excuse herself from a previous engagement, and sent the key of her box at the theatre to a lady friend. She seemed overjoyed. She told him a string of sentimental stories and vowed that she had never been able to forget him; holding Andrea's hands in hers while she talked.

I love you more than words can say, Andrew:

She was still young. With her pure and regular profile, her pale gold hair parted and knotted very low on her neck, she looked like a beauty in a Keepsake. A certain affectation of aestheticism clung to her since her liaison with the poet-painter Adolphus Jeckyll, a disciple in poetry of Keats, in painting of Holman Hunt; a composer of obscure sonnets, a painter of subjects from the _Vita Nuova_. She had sat to him for a _Sibylla Palmifera_ and a _Madonna with the Lily_. She had also sat to Andrea for a study of the head of Isabella in Boccaccio's story. Art therefore had conferred upon her the stamp of n.o.bility. But, at bottom, she possessed no spiritual qualities whatsoever; she even became tiresome in the long-run by reason of that sentimental romanticism so often affected by English _demi-mondaines_ which contrasts so strangely with the depravity of their licentiousness.

'Who would have thought that we should ever be together again, Andrew?'

An hour later, Andrea left her and returned to the Palazzo Zuccari by the little flight of steps leading from the Piazza Mignanelli to the Trinita. The murmur of the city floated up the solitary little stairway through the mild air of the October evening. The stars twinkled in a cool pure sky. Down below, at the Palazzo Casteldelfina, the shrubs inside the little gate cast vague uncertain shadows in the mysterious light, like marine plants waving at the bottom of an aquarium. From the palace, through a lighted window with red curtains, came the tinkle of a piano. The church bells were ringing. Andrea felt his heart suddenly grow heavy. The recollection of Donna Maria came back to him with a rush, filling him with a dim sense of regret, almost of remorse. What was she doing at this moment? Thinking? Suffering? Deep sadness fell upon him. He felt as if something in the depths of his heart had taken flight--he could not define what it was, but it affected him as some irreparable loss.

He thought of his plan of the morning--an evening of solitude in the rooms to which some day perhaps she might come, an evening, sad yet sweet, in company with remembrances and dreams, in company with her spirit, an evening of meditation and self-communings. In truth, he had kept well to his promises! He was on his way to a dinner with friends and _demi-mondaines_ and, doubtless, would go home with Clara Green afterwards.

His regret was so poignant, so intolerable, that he dressed with unwonted rapidity, jumped into his brougham and arrived at the hotel before the appointed time. He found Clara ready and waiting, and offered her a drive round the streets of Rome to pa.s.s the time till eight o'clock.

They drove through the Via del Babuino, round the obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo, along the Corso and to the right down the Via della Fontanella di Borghese, returning by the Montecitorio to the Corso which they followed as far as the Piazza di Venezia and so to the Teatro n.a.z.ionale. Clara kept up an incessant chatter, bending, every other minute, towards her companion to press a kiss on the corner of his mouth, screening the furtive caress behind a fan of white feathers which gave out a delicate odour of 'white rose.' But Andrea appeared not to hear her, and even her caress only drew from him a slight smile.

'_Che pensi?_' she asked, p.r.o.nouncing the Italian words with a certain hesitation which was very taking.

'Nothing,' returned Andrea, taking up one of her ungloved hands and examining the rings.

_'Chi lo sa!_' she sighed, throwing a vast amount of expression into these three words, which foreign women pick up at once, because they imagine that they contain all the pensive melancholy of Italian love.

'_Chi lo sa!_'

With a sudden change of humour, Andrea kissed her on the ear, slipped an arm round her waist and proceeded to say a host of foolish things to her. The Corso was very lively, the shop windows resplendent, newspaper-vendors yelled, public and private vehicles crossed the path of their carriage; all the stir and animation of Roman evening life was in full swing from the Piazza Colonna to the Piazza di Venezia.

It was ten minutes past eight by the time they reached Doney's. The other guests were already there. Andrea Sperelli greeted the a.s.sembled company, and taking Clara Green by the hand--

'This,' he said, 'is Miss Clara Green, _ancilla Domini, Sibylla palmifera, candida puella_.'

'_Ora pro n.o.bis!_' replied Musellaro, Barbarisi, and Grimiti in chorus.

The women laughed though they did not understand. Clara smiled, and slipping out of her cloak appeared in a white dress, quite simple and short, with a V-shaped opening back and front, a knot of sea-green ribbon on her left shoulder, and emeralds in her ears, perfectly unabashed by the triple scrutiny of Giulia Arici, Bebe Silva and Maria Fortuna.

Musellaro and Grimiti were old acquaintances; Barbarisi was introduced.

Andrea proceeded--'Mercedes Silva, surnamed Bebe--_chica pero qualsa_.

'Maria Fortuna, a veritable _Fortuna publica_ for our Rome which has the good fortune to possess her.'

Then, turning to Barbarisi--'Do us the honour to present us to this lady who is, if I am not mistaken, the divine Giulia Farnese.'

'No--Arici,' Giulia broke in.

'Oh, I beg your pardon, but really, to believe that, I should have to call upon all my powers of credulity and to consult Pinturicchio in the Fifth Room.'

He uttered these absurdities with a grave smile, amusing himself by bewildering and teasing these pretty fools. In the _demi-monde_ he adopted a manner and style entirely his own, using grotesque phrases, launching the most ridiculous paradoxes or atrocious impertinences under cover of the ambiguity of his words; and all this in most original language, rich in a thousand different flavours, like a Rabelaisian _olla podrida_ full of strong spices and succulent morsels.

'Pinturicchio,' asked Giulia turning to Barbarisi; 'who's that?'

'Pinturicchio,' exclaimed Andrea, 'oh, a sort of feeble house-painter who once took it into his head to paint your picture on a door in the Pope's apartments. Never mind him--he is dead.'

'Dead? How?'

'In a most appalling manner! His wife's lover was a soldier from Perugia in garrison at Sienna--ask Ludovico--he knows all about it, but has never liked to tell you, for fear of hurting your feelings. Allow me to inform you, Bebe, that the Prince of Wales does not begin to smoke till between the second and third courses--never sooner. You are antic.i.p.ating.'

Bebe Silva had lighted a cigarette and was eating oysters, while she let the smoke curl through her nostrils. She was like a restless schoolboy, a little depraved hermaphrodite; pale and thin, the brightness of her eyes heightened by fever and kohl, with lips that were too red, and short and rather woolly hair that covered her head like an astrachan cap. Fixed tightly in her left eye was a single eye-gla.s.s; she wore a high stiff collar, a white necktie, an open waistcoat, a little black coat of masculine cut and a gardenia in her b.u.t.ton-hole. She affected the manners of a dandy and spoke in a deep husky voice. And just therein lay the secret of her attraction--in this imprint of vice, of depravity, of abnormity in her appearance, her att.i.tudes and her words. _Sal y pimienta_.

Maria Fortuna, on the contrary, was of somewhat bovine type, a Madame de Parabere with a tendency to stoutness.

Like the fair mistress of the Regent, she possessed a very white skin, one of those opaque white complexions which seem only to flourish and improve on sensual pleasure. Her liquid violet eyes swam in a faint blue shadow; and her lips, always a little parted, disclosed a vague gleam of pearl behind their soft rosy line, like a half-opened sh.e.l.l.

Giulia Arici took Andrea's fancy very much on account of her golden-brown tints and her great velvety eyes of that soft deep chestnut that sometimes shows tawny gleams. The somewhat fleshy nose, and the full, dewy scarlet, very firm lips gave the lower part of her face a frankly animal look. Her eye-teeth, which were too prominent, raised her upper lip a little and she continually ran the point of her tongue along the edge to moisten it, like the thick petal of a rose running over a row of little white almonds.

'Giulia,' said Andrea with his eyes on her mouth, 'Saint Bernard uses, in one of his sermons, an epithet which would suit you marvellously. And I'll be bound you don't know this either.'

Giulia laughed her sonorous rather vacant laugh, exhaling, in the excitement of her hilarity, a more poignant perfume, like a scented shrub when it is shaken.

'What will you give me,' continued Andrea, 'if I extract from the holy sermon a voluptuous motto to fit you?'

'I don't know,' she replied laughing, holding a gla.s.s of Chablis in her long slender fingers. 'Anything you like.'

'The substantive of the adjective.'

'What?'

'We will come back to that presently. The word is: _linguatica_--Messer Ludovico, you can add this clause to your litanies--'_Rosa linguatica, glube nos_.'

'What a pity,' said Musellaro, 'that you are not at the table of a sixteenth-century prince, sitting between a Violante and an Imperia with Pietro Aretino, Giulio Romano, and Marc' Antonio!'

CHAPTER II

The year was dying gracefully. A late wintry sun filled the sky over Rome with a soft, mild, golden light that made the air feel almost spring-like. The streets were full as on a Sunday in May. A stream of carriages pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed rapidly through the Piazza Barberini and the Piazza di Spagna, and from thence a vague and continuous rumble mounted to the Trinita de' Monti and the Via Sistina and even faintly reached the apartments of the Palazzo Zuccari.

The rooms began slowly to fill with the scent exhaled from numberless vases of flowers. Full-blown roses hung their heavy heads over crystal vases that opened like diamond lilies on a golden stem, similar to those standing behind the Virgin in the _tondo_ of Botticelli in the Borghese Gallery. No other shape of vase is to be compared with this for elegance; in that diaphanous prison, the flowers seemed to etherealise and had more the air of a religious than an amatory offering.

For Andrea Sperelli was expecting Elena Muti.

He had met her only yesterday morning in the Via Condotti, where she was looking at the shops. She had returned to Rome a day or two before, after her long and mysterious absence. They had both been considerably agitated by the unexpected encounter, but the publicity of the street compelled them to treat one another with ceremonious, almost cold politeness. However, he had said with a grave, half-mournful air, looking her full in the eyes--'I have much to say to you, Elena; will you come to my rooms to-morrow? Everything is just as it used to be--nothing is changed.' To which she replied quite simply--'Very well, I will come. You may expect me about four o'clock. I too have something to say to you--but leave me now.'

That she should have accepted the invitation so promptly, without demur, without imposing any conditions or seemingly attaching the smallest importance to the matter, roused a certain vague suspicion in Andrea's mind. Was she coming as friend or lover?--to renew old ties or to destroy all hope of such a thing for ever? What vicissitudes had not occurred in this woman's soul during the last two years? Of that he was necessarily ignorant, but he had carried away with him the thrill of emotion called up in him by Elena's glance when they suddenly met in the street and he bent his head in greeting before her. It was the same look as of old--so tender, so deep, so infinitely seductive from under the long lashes.

Everything in the arrangement of the rooms showed evidences of special loving care. Logs of juniper wood burned brightly on the hearth; the little tea-table stood ready with its cups and saucers of Castel-Durante majolica, of antique shape and inimitable grace, whereon were depicted mythological subjects by Luzio Dolci, with lines from Ovid underneath in black characters and a running hand. The light from the windows was tempered by heavy curtains of red brocade embroidered all over with silver pomegranates, trailing leaves and mottos. The declining sun, as it caught the window-panes, cast the shadow of the lace blinds on the carpet.

The clock of the Trinita struck half-past three. He had half an hour still to wait. Andrea rose from the sofa where he had been lying and opened one of the windows; he wandered aimlessly about the room, took up a book, read a few lines and threw it down again; looked about him undecidedly as if searching for something. The suspense was so trying that he felt the necessity of rousing himself, of counteracting his mental disquietude by physical means. He went over to the fireplace, stirred up the logs and put on a fresh one. The glowing ma.s.s collapsed, sending up a shower of sparks, and part of it rolled out as far as the fender. The flames broke into a quant.i.ty of little tongues of blue fire, springing up and disappearing fitfully, while the broken ends of the log smoked.