"No," he replied, firmly, yet showing his appreciation of her thought for him, "she has endured enough already. The very mention of her husband can only revive unhappy memories. She shall at least be spared any further pleading on my behalf."

At last the doctor p.r.o.nounced the danger-point pa.s.sed, and the relief which the announcement brought gave Armstrong the necessary strength to enable him to take upon himself the details of packing and closing up the house, and getting everything in readiness to leave for home as soon as Helen should be strong enough to travel.

"The place has been hateful to her all these weeks," he explained, "and she must be freed from every scene which suggests what has pa.s.sed."

As he went from one part of the villa to another, he was constantly reminded with painful forcefulness of the days which they had first enjoyed there together. The flowers in the garden, the singing of the birds in the trees, the distant view of the city--each possessed a personal significance. "I love the present," she had said to him--"I love the sky, the air, the sunshine, and the flowers."

Happy, buoyant nature--the natural humanist! She a.s.similated all that was best in life, and had he given her the opportunity would have breathed it out again to those around her richer and more inspiring because of its contact with her own rare self! Fool that he had been!

With the riches of the past lying at his hand to be drawn upon for material, he had selfishly insisted that his own methods of using them were the only ones, recognizing too late the inspiration and the real a.s.sistance which she was amply able to give him in transforming these riches into even purer gold by the magic touch of the present. Armstrong groaned as the irony of it came to him.

Helen recovered slowly, and with a sweetness which touched the hearts of all about her. Inez and Uncle Peabody were with her much of the time, but Armstrong, true to his conviction that he had become distasteful to her, waited to be asked for; and Helen did not ask. The only event which happened to interrupt the even tenor of the days was a call from the Contessa Morelli, who was solicitous for her condition.

"Make some excuse," Helen said, quietly, to Inez, who announced the visitor. "Don't say anything to hurt her feelings, but I really can't see her. She does not understand the life I know and love, and I don't want to understand hers."

So it was Jack whom the contessa met as she took her departure.

"I am so relieved to know that your wife is in no danger," she said, sympathetically.

"So are we all," Armstrong replied, in a perfunctory way, still feeling ill at ease in the contessa's presence. "This villa will soon be considered as a hospital if any more of us become invalids."

"Miss Thayer is not ill?" inquired the contessa, smiling archly.

"She is quite well, I believe," he replied, coldly, but with an effort to be civil.

"How fortunate!" Amelie continued. "With Mrs. Armstrong in no danger and Miss Thayer in good health, you will soon, no doubt, resume your charming _tete-a-tetes_ at the library?"

The contessa was endeavoring to be mischievous, but Armstrong was in no mood for her pleasantries. He resented the words no less than the expression upon her face. Yet he himself was partially responsible, and this thought kept back the words upon his lips which if spoken would have been regretted. He looked intently into her face before he answered, and the contessa's smile faded.

"Instead of replying to your question," Armstrong said, quietly, with his eyes still fixed upon her, "may I not ask you a favor?"

"Surely you may ask it," she replied; "but that does not mean that I must grant it, does it?"

"You need not grant it unless you choose," pursued Armstrong; "but at least I shall have the satisfaction of asking it: will you not add one more cla.s.s into which you separate the men you meet?"

The contessa laughed merrily. "What a curious request to be made so seriously!" she exclaimed. "Of whom shall the new cla.s.s be composed?"

"Of those men who are husbands and who love their wives," Armstrong replied, feelingly; "who despise intrigue and disloyalty and hypocrisy in either s.e.x; who consider honor and life as synonyms; and who, even for the sake of civility, cannot allow misinterpretations to cast a shadow upon the sanct.i.ty of marriage."

"_Mon Dieu!_" cried the contessa, making a pretty _moue_ as she rose and moved toward the veranda; "and I thought he had no temperament! Shall I put you in this exotic cla.s.s? Oh no; you would be so lonesome!"

"I could not expect you to understand," Armstrong replied, in a low tone, biting his lip with vexation.

Amelie watched his expression intently, a complete change coming over her manner. The flippant bearing was gone; the smile, aggravating as it was attractive, vanished. She took a step toward him as she spoke.

"But I do understand," she said, slowly, in a low, tense voice. "Perhaps I ought to feel shamed by your contempt and indignant at your criticism.

On the contrary, I am glad that I incurred both, for by it I have learned that a man can be honest, and that appearances are not always the safest guides. What you have said is what a woman understands by instinct; anything different is what she learns--from men. Will you forgive me? I shall not offend again."

His surprise at this new and unexpected view of the contessa's character was so great that it was only instinctively that he pressed the dainty hand which was held out to him. For a moment their eyes met.

"I wish that you and your wife might both have come into my life earlier," she said, simply, and then turned quickly to the door and was in the tonneau of her motor-car before Armstrong could offer to a.s.sist her. So, as the machine moved away, he stood on the veranda, bowing his acknowledgment of her radiant smile into which a new element had entered.

Then Armstrong turned back into the hallway, where he met the doctor and Uncle Peabody coming down the stairs.

"Has she asked for me yet?" he inquired, eagerly.

"Not yet," Dr. Montgomery answered, with that understanding which is a part of the physician's profession. Armstrong turned away to conceal his face, which he felt must show all that was pa.s.sing through his heart.

"I wish you would go to her, anyway," the doctor continued.

"You don't know what you are suggesting, doctor--I want to do it so much--but I must not."

"It will be necessary to talk with her soon about our future plans, Jack," Uncle Peabody said, seeing a way to accomplish their purpose.

"Dr. Montgomery says that Helen is strong enough now to discuss the matter."

Armstrong looked from one to the other with uncertainty. "You are right," he said, at length. "She must be consulted about that, and I am the one to do it."

He chose the morning for his visit to her--a morning filled with the sunshine she loved so well. He plucked a handful of the fragrant blossoms from the garden, hoping that the odor might recall to her some of the happy moments they had experienced together. The very perfume rising from the redolent petals seemed to accuse him as he stood before her door awaiting the nurse's response to his knock.

"May I come in?" he asked, looking across the room to the bed where Helen lay propped up with pillows, so that she could look out of the window into the garden, even though the tops of the trees alone rewarded her gaze.

"Of course," Helen weakly replied, yet with a smile, and the nurse discreetly left them to themselves.

Armstrong seated himself on a chair near the bed and gazed in silence at the thin, pale features of the woman before him. This was the wreck of the beautiful girl he had married and brought here to Florence for her honeymoon. What a honeymoon!

"I am glad you came to me at last," Helen said, quietly, interrupting his convicting thoughts.

"At last!" The words brought him to himself. Mastering his emotion as best he could, he took her thin hand in his, and the fact that she did not withdraw it gave him courage.

"I have longed to come to you each day, but you asked me not to make it harder for you."

"I am glad you came to me at last," she repeated.

How should he begin? The sentences he had thought out carefully, which might convey his necessary message and yet spare her, seemed too cold, too meaningless. He glanced up at her helplessly, and the expression on her face helped him to his purpose. Impulsively drawing his chair still nearer to the bed, he poured out to her the self-incriminations which had haunted him for days. In a torrent of pitiless words he pictured himself without mercy. There was no plea for reconsideration, no thought of future readjustment. The one idea was to let her know how fully he realized all that had happened, how powerless he felt himself to make rest.i.tution, and his determination to do what now remained to make her future as little overcast as possible by the events which had already taken place.

"I would not have come now except that it is necessary," he said, brokenly. "I know that to see me must recall unhappy recollections, but there are some matters which we must talk over together. I have not come to plead for any reconsideration--you were right in what you said the last time we talked about it, as you have been in all else. Our marriage was a mistake, and it is I who have made it so. I no longer ask that we try to restore matters to their former position. The only sacrifice within my power is to give you a chance to recover as much as you can of what I have made you lose. The penalty is hard, but well deserved."

He did not look into her face as he spoke, lest he lose his courage before all was said. "Cerini has told you what you have taught us both, which is another debt I owe you. It should be some little consolation, dear, to know that your expression and your understanding have been so much clearer than those of this librarian, whom I have considered infallible; than those of your husband, whom in the past I know you have respected and loved. Thank G.o.d for that love!" he repeated, abruptly.

"Then it is really true that my 'dear present' is worth something, after all?"

"Your 'dear present' is the saving clause. Without it we limit ourselves beyond the hope of recovery, just as I have done. The glories of the past are as splendid and as important as I ever painted them, but they must be awakened with the breath of present necessities. You have always felt this and expressed it; I have known it only since you taught it to me."

"I am glad," she answered, simply.

"But I am forgetting my errand," Armstrong continued, bracing himself for a final effort. "As soon as you are able to travel you will, of course, wish to return home. It may be that, for the sake of appearances, you will wish me to go with you, in which case I shall make it as easy as possible for you. Or you can return with Uncle Peabody, as he tells me you once spoke to him of doing. He is eager to do anything you wish, but he has plans which need to be arranged after you have once decided."

Helen's gaze rested firmly upon her husband's half-averted face, watching the changing expressions, reading the unspoken words. "He longs for the return to him of the wife he has always loved" rang in her ears, and now for the first time it seemed to ring true. Her mind was moving fast as Armstrong ceased speaking, and even when she replied, a moment later, it was not an answer.