"I am sorry," he said, "but I have an engagement with Miss Yates at four."

"You are already late then," the Bishop answered, conscious of a marked relief. "Are you to be in Florence for some time longer?"

"No; I leave Florence for Geneva to-morrow, and as I fear I shall not have time to go to Fiesole, I shall, if I may, ask you to be the bearer of my farewells to Mrs. Blythe. Tell her, please, that I expect to sail from Naples, and so I shall hope to see her when I pass through Florence again."

"Certainly; I will convey your farewells with pleasure," said the Bishop, and then was aware that the reply had not been exactly felicitous. The younger man, however, was too self-absorbed to be conscious of a secondary meaning in the words. He held out his hand, which the Bishop took, and then both men bowed and parted.

"Now, I wonder," said the Bishop to himself, as he watched Walford disappearing down the long aisle-"I wonder why I feel as if I had heard the death-sentence of a soul. After all, what is it that Walford is about to do? To accept a call to one of the most important and influential churches in the country. Is that a tragic destiny?" Then Jean Paul's words floated through his mind: "Tragic destiny is the long-reverberating mountain-echo of a human discord."

"That's it," he murmured; "that's it! It is what a man might have been which jars on what he is. When a man has once stood on the Mount of Vision, when he has once heard the call of God to his soul and has made answer, 'Here am I,' he can never go back to dwell in the valley of commonplace. The miasma there, to which ordinary men have become immune, is deadly to him. It will kill Walford.- I wonder if I did right."

XVII

IT

HOW IT HAPPENED

"I will ride until the end,

Half your lover-all your friend.'

T was one of those Tuscan April days when the earth is pied with violets, and the air is like heady Greek wine, and one carries the goblet of life steadily lest a single precious drop be spilled untasted.

Mrs. Blythe and Fleming came out from the Vincigliata castle; but ignoring their horses, which the groom was holding on the plateau before the postern-gate, they turned and walked in the direction of a knoll commanding a view of hill and valley, pine forest and olive slope, and the lazy outline of the distant hills.

Fleming looked at Anne, and thought he had never seen her so young, so spirited, so tingling with vitality. He felt his own heightened by the companionship.

66

Why is it," Anne was saying, as they reached

the foot of the knoll, "that a restoration like this Vincigliata here leaves us cold, where the merest stump of a ruin can give us quite an emotion?"

"I fancy," Fleming said, "it is because association is a highly volatile essence and must be kept in the original bottle; it escapes in the transfer. And then we Anglo-Saxons begrudge our emotions, anyway. We are willing to part with them for a fair equivalent, but we will not consent to be cheated out of a penny's worth." "I understand that feeling perfectly."

66

66

Naturally. You are an Anglo-Saxon, and cannot escape your inheritance. We all get heartaches from a repression which these Latins never know."

"I am tired," said Anne. "Shall we sit down here where we get the view?"

She threw aside her riding-crop and seated herself in a little clearing under the shadow of a group of pines. Clasping her knees with her hands, she sat gazing hard in front of her- at what? Fleming wondered as he lounged on the carpet of pine-needles at her feet and looked at the landscape because he did not dare to look at Anne.

From the distance came the clear flute-call of a nightingale. The sound gave Mrs. Blythe a sense of freedom, it was so strange, so alien, like this silent, austere landscape, which seemed no

part of her life. She felt as if she and the man beside her had drifted away from the conventions of every-day existence into a still pool where only heaven was reflected. In such surroundings much might be ventured.

Anne gathered a handful of the brown pineneedles and let them slip slowly through her fingers. At last she said:

"Have you seen anything of Mr. Walford lately?"

"As much as I cared to see."

"How much?"

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Nothing at all.”

"You don't find him particularly sympathetic,

?"

do you?

"No; our vices are too dissimilar."

A pause followed. Fleming broke it saying: "And you? Have you seen Mr. Walford often?"

"Once or twice only."

"And that feeling of which you spoke on the night of the musicale

tangible?"

has it grown any more

Anne laughed a nervous little laugh.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you about that.

about that. It died

a natural death; that is, if anything can die which

has never existed."

"Never existed?"