fear and tradition, and the solidarity of nigh two thousand years of dominion.”
Gamba listened in respectful silence; then he replied with a faint smile: “All that your Highness says is true; but I beg leave to relate to your Highness a tale which I read lately in an old book of your library. According to this story it appears that when the early Christians of Alexandria set out to destroy the pagan idols in the temples they were seized with great dread at sight of the god Serapis; for even those that did not believe in the old gods feared them, and none dared raise a hand against the sacred image. But suddenly a soldier who was bolder than the rest flung his battle-axe at the figure—and when it broke in pieces, there rushed out nothing worse than a great company of rats.”…
***
The Duke had promised to visit Fulvia that evening. For several days his state of indecision had made him find pretexts for avoiding her; but now that the charter was signed and he had ordered its proclamation, he craved the contact of her unwavering faith.
He found her alone in the dusk of the convent parlour; but he had hardly crossed the threshold before he was aware of an indefinable change in his surroundings. She advanced with an impulsiveness out of harmony with the usual tranquillity of their meetings, and he felt her hand tremble and burn in his. In the twilight it seemed to him that her very dress had a warmer rustle and glimmer, that there emanated from her glance and movements some heady fragrance of a long-past summer. He smiled to think that this phantom coquetry should have risen at the summons of an academic degree; but some deeper sense in him was stirred as by a vision of waste riches adrift on the dim seas of chance.
For a moment she sat silent, as in the days when they had been too near each other for many words; and there was something indescribably soothing in this dreamlike return to the past. It was he who roused himself first.
“How young you look!” he said, giving involuntary utterance to his thought.
“Do I?” she answered gaily. “I am glad of that, for I feel extraordinarily young tonight. Perhaps it is because I have been thinking a great deal of the old days—of Venice and Turin—and of the high-road to Vercelli, for instance.” She glanced at him with a smile.
“Do you know,” she went on, moving to a seat at his side, and laying a hand on the arm of his chair, “that there is one secret of mine you have never guessed in all these years?”
Odo returned her smile. “What is it, I wonder?” he said.
She fixed him with bright bantering eyes. “I knew why you deserted us at Vercelli.” He uttered an exclamation, but she lifted a hand to his lips.
“Ah, how angry I was then—but why be angry now? It all happened so long ago; and if it had not happened— who knows?—perhaps you would never have pitied me enough to love me as you did.” She laughed softly, reminiscently, leaning back as if to let the tide of memories ripple over her. Then she raised her head suddenly, and said in a changed voice: “Are your plans fixed for tomorrow?”
Odo glanced at her in surprise. Her mind seemed to move as capriciously as Maria Clementina’s.
“The constitution is signed,” he answered, “and my ministers proclaim it tomorrow morning.” He looked at her a moment, and lifted her hand to his lips. “Everything has been done according to your wishes,” he said.
She drew away with a start, and he saw that she had turned pale. “No, no—not as I wish,” she murmured. “It must not be because
she broke off and her hand slipped from his.
“You have taught me to wish as you wish,” he answered gently. “Surely you would not disown your pupil now?”
Her agitation increased. “Do not call yourself that!” she exclaimed.
“Not even in jest. What you have done has been done of your own choice—because you thought it best for your people. My nearness or absence could have made no difference.”
He looked at her with growing wonder. “Why this sudden modesty?” he said with a smile. “I thought you prided yourself on your share in the great work.”
She tried to force an answering smile, but the curve broke into a quiver of distress, and she came close to him, with a gesture that seemed to take flight from herself.
“Don’t say it, don’t say it!” she broke out. “What right have they to call it my doing? I but stood aside and watched you and gloried in you—is there any guilt to a woman in THAT?” She clung to him a moment, hiding her face in his breast.
He loosened her arms gently, that he might draw back and look at her.
“Fulvia,” he asked, “what ails you? You are not yourself tonight. Has anything happened to distress you? Have you been annoyed or alarmed in any way?—It is not possible,” he broke off, “that Trescorre has been here—?”
She drew away, flushed and protesting. “No, no,” she exclaimed. “Why should Trescorre come here? Why should you fancy that any one has been here? I am excited, I know; I talk idly; but it is because I have been thinking too long of these things—”
“Of what things?”
“Of what people say—how can one help hearing that?” I sometimes fancy that the more withdrawn one lives the more distinctly one hears the outer noises.”
“But why should you heed the outer noises? You have never done so before.”
“Perhaps I was wrong not to do so before. Perhaps I should have listened sooner. Perhaps others have seen— understood—sooner than I—oh, the thought is intolerable!”
She moved a pace or two away, and then, regaining the mastery of her lips and eyes, turned to him with a show of calmness.
“Your heart was never in this charter—” she began.
“Fulvia!” he cried protestingly; but she lifted a silencing hand. “Ah, I have seen it—I have felt it—but I was
