For the Last Time

(Miss Hardy to Jack Desmond.)

DEAR MR. Desmond,—I knew I could, trust you not to misunderstand me! I thank you a thousand times for the way in which you have accepted my letter; but why — why ask me now to keep that old promise of mine? You, a man, can afford to speak with a sneer of the “bonds of conventionality;” but I —

My window has just blown open and a flood of sunshine has rushed in, chased by the soft spring wind. The world is warm, and smells of violets. After all, why not take that “ one last ride ” with you? Why not bid a pleasant farewell to my Bohemian days? Let our little Roman world talk, if it pleases! I will go! Get me my favorite Olga, and let the horses be ready to-morrow morning at eight o’clock. I take you at your word and go, feeling quite safe from any allusion to the past.

Your friend as long as you like,

ELEANOR HARDY.

“ Late? Of course you are late! ” said Jack Desmond, at half past eight o’clock the next morning; “ but why should you mind that? Punctuality is at once the most masculine and the most unsympathetic of virtues; how can punctuality and Miss Hardy be anything but incompatible terms? Mind you are light with your curb to-day, Miss Hardy. Olga has not been out for a week.” He swung himself lightly into the saddle; the two horses threw up their heads impatiently, scrambled down the bank by the roadside, and started gayly off in the morning sunshine. The old carriageroad to Ostia is out of the Porta San Sebastiano. On either side of the way the high Roman walls shut out the indiscreet gaze of the passers-by. Here and there an arched stone gateway, surmounted by two moss - covered granite cannon-balls or a half-broken Greek vase, shows a glimpse of some old garden with stately cypress-trees and avenues of trimmed and fantastic box, at the farther end of which some shattered marble figure gleams whitely through the shade.

Eleanor glanced shyly at her companion. “ Is there much of this pavement?” she asked, with an elaborate attempt at establishing their conversation on an easy and impersonal footing; “ I always feel a wild desire to gallop my horse over the stones, in spite of every one’s warnings. Look at that dear Olga! she finds it as tiresome as I do, and is quite longing to make a bolt, at the risk of breaking both our necks! ”

“As you are strong, be merciful,” said Desmond, lightly. “ Olga and yourself are both in my charge to-day, please remember, and Mrs. Van Cordtlandt will hold me responsible for all your joint misdemeanors. Try to curb your impatience as well as your horse until we have reached the church,” he added, pointing forward with his whip; " there’s a glorious place for a canter after that.”

In a few moments more they had passed the rich facade of San Paolo fuori delle Mura, and had clattered along the stone colonnade; they settled themselves back in their saddles, the road gave a sweep, and in another instant the horses were cantering wildly over the strip of short, daisy-whitened turf that borders the foot-path.

“ Ah, this is what I like! ” said Eleanor; “ now we are out of Rome! ” The fresh morning wind blew back the blonde masses of her hair and brought a peachblossom bloom to the pale, flower-like face. “Is n’t this glorious, Mr. Desmond ! I feel like an escaped prisoner. Think of all the poor people who are just getting up to dismal and tepid cups of coffee all over town! ”

“ Dismal? Perhaps! The sun is overcast enough to make an apartment in a narrow street the reverse of cheerful, this morning, but why should all the coffee be tepid, Miss Hardy? Is there anything in your being on horseback so early to account for such a change of temperature in everybody’s breakfast? Or do yon refer figuratively to the blight under which Rome is lying when you leave it? ”

“ You are pleased to be satirical as well as literal-minded, Mr. Desmond,” retorted Eleanor. “ As though you could hope to understand what I feel at the prospect of forty miles on horseback, and not a call to make, not a note to answer, not a stupid person to entertain, and, crowning joy of all, the whole day in a riding-habit, without one’s dress to change! ”

“ But how you will miss your aunt! ” said Desmond. They looked at each other, and both burst out laughing.

“ That is exceedingly wrong of you,” said Eleanor, becoming suddenly grave. “ I only laughed because you took me by surprise. My aunt is very good.”

“ Very,” said Desmond, quickly; “ I am sure no one can doubt that Mrs. Van Cordtlandt is a most interesting companion, and an invaluable authority in case a card is not returned in time, or the Van Rosevelts of Albany are in danger — horrible thought! — of being confounded with the old Van Rosevelts of New York. There is nothing narrow-minded, of course, in such a view of life.”

“ Indeed, that is more than can be said for your ideas of life,” said Eleanor, flushing a little as she spoke. “ Artists, and people generally who go in for being ‘ cultivated,’ always pretend to be such broad-minded, tolerant men, and I don’t believe I ever met one yet who could endure for half an hour a conversation on subjects of general interest without being bored, — yes, and showing it, too! ”

“ Subjects of general interest? ” said Desmond, inquiringly; “and this includes all the artists and littérateurs of your acquaintance? Now do you know, Miss Hardy, I’ve always noticed that a woman’s most sweeping attack, her most crushing generalization, is aimed at some particular man. I wonder if it is only my guilty conscience which makes me remember that last reception at the Whytes’, where I had the pleasure of meeting you, and where that pretty Mrs. Dulman’s dress, appearance, and manner, and the momentous question as to whether that exquisite complexion of hers is owing to cosmetics or to nature, were reviewed and criticised all the time we were there, to the exclusion of those other ‘ subjects of general interest ’ by which I and my unlucky friends are supposed to be bored? ”

“ That is not fair, Mr. Desmond! ” cried Eleanor; “ you select a— well, I will admit it ! — a particularly silly conversation, and speak of it as of the type of what we talk about in society. You artistic people, as l said before, claim to monopolize all the tolerance, and yet you shut yourselves up in your shells like a small company of oysters who should agree together to consider all the other fish and sea-things like so many interlopers in their domains! You build a Chinese wall about yourselves, and the rest of the world become mere outsiders. Now I, for one, am a Philistine; and I’m not ashamed of it, either! I love the world. I belong to it, heart and soul. I have not made society, and I can see a hundred points in which I would alter it if I could, but I can’t, and so I accept it and find the world a pleasant place, as it always is to the people who try to please it.”

“ Be witness, Miss Hardy, it was not I who made the discussion a personal one! May I ask, though, how it is that with such strong convictions you are not always of this delightfully optimist opinion? ”

“Because I am ‘young and unreasonable,’ as my aunt says, I suppose,” said Eleanor, lightly; “ I dare say it will pass with time! ”

“ I dare say it will,” assented Desmond, gravely. “ Honesty of impulse does not live long in the atmosphere of a ball-room. You must have had an uncommonly large quantity to start with.”

“ See here, Mr. Desmond,” said Eleanor, facing square round in her saddle, “ I won’t pretend not to understand what you mean. I’ve that much honesty left, whatever you may think,” she went on, indignantly. “ You imagine because ” — she hesitated — ” because I may — well, probably I shall — marry a man older than myself, and very rich, that I can have no good left in me. It is not true ! You are hard, you are unjust to me in every thought of yours! Don’t you suppose I know myself, my own wants and needs, better than you can? Talk of giving up ‘ all for love and the world well lost ’ to a girl accustomed to a simple life, and what wonder if she listens to you, with everything to gain by it and nothing to peril? Talk of it to a girl in my position, brought up as I have been, and, if she is honest, she will answer you as I do: I am accustomed to extreme luxury, I have no fortune of my own, my happiness is centred on things which are offered me freely at the hands of a man for whom I have the utmost respect, and who I believe is very fond of me; why should I not accept them? ”

“ Why not, indeed? ” echoed Desmond.

They rode on a few minutes in silence. His acquiescence had suddenly shocked and puzzled her. She had expected to be argued with vehemently when she threw down her gauntlet, and now the gage of defiance was returned to her with a polite bow by her adversary. Eleanor did not understand it, and, being disconcerted, began to lose her temper.

“ It is so unjust! ” she said, speaking very fast; “ a man will give up anything, will work all his life long, to win a position and become wealthy, and you will all applaud him to the skies for doing it. And yet, let a woman have the same craving for power and influence and ease, let her have an ambition to be more than a cipher in the sum, let her bring into real life one out of the countless lessons she has received since she left the school-room, let her too make an effort to gain her ends, and where will you find epithets with which to qualify her unwomanly heartlessness, her mercenary lack of sentiment! ” Desmond struck his boot absently with his whip, and smiled. ” There are just a few men in the world who do not count money as the crowning good of life, and who cling still to the exploded old belief that women, by the mere fact of their womanhood, are better, nobler, purer than they,” he said. “ And really, Miss Hardy, you exaggerate! Who ever gave anything but praise to a girl who made a ‘ good match ’ in society? ”

The gentle mockery of his tone stung her to the quick. It is one thing to dismiss a lover, but quite another to have him accept his dismissal with equanimity. The woman who does not feel a secret joy and pride in being still “ the one fair woman in all the world ” to the man she has just refused to marry, and does not think of him with a tender, regretful approval, is as rare, perhaps, as the man who is not privately convinced that were merit the only test he would never meet with want of success. A pathetic “ it might have been,” the memory of some hour when it did not seem so improbable that this was to be the companion of her future life, casts its halo around many an otherwise commonplace rejected lover. Until he becomes consoled again, a man never finds a warmer, if need be, a more unscrupulous partisan than in the woman who has just assured him she was indifferent to his love.

A quick resentment of Desmond’s selfpossession seized Eleanor. “ Very well! we will see if I cannot make him show he cares, before the day is over! ” she thought revengefully. And she smiled innocently and sweetly, the while, upon her intended victim.

“ Don’t let us discuss,” she said softly; " I never get the better when I quarrel with you, and so ”— The blue eyes looked up to his appealingly and ended the sentence for her. She laughed and touched her horse with her whip; they dashed on up the hill, racing the fleet, light cloud-shadows that flitted over the fresh green of the fields. The sky had the pale, watery blue of an April day. Little gusts of the warm spring wind went and came, now bringing puffs of wild, faint fragrance, now wandering off until lost among the blossomy fields. On either side of the road a rose - flushed shower of perfumed snow covered the bushes of flowering thorn; the birds in the hedge-rows were twittering and trilling under the shelter of the small green leaves, every now and then a hurried rush of wings telling how the tramp of the horses had startled some brooding mother-bird from her nest.

As they rode on, the fields widened; the sky seemed to lift and the horizon to lower; the whole landscape took that indescribable look of being more open, more out-of-doors, which marks the approach to the sea. Behind the riders the sullen, tawny Tiber rolled slowly by, its wicked and reticent-looking waves the only thing in sight that did not seem to feel the gentle influence of the spring sunshine.

“ Did you ever notice, Miss Hardy,” asked Desmond, “how differently the Tiber flows from other rivers ? On the surface it looks smooth enough; indeed, the strong tide hardly ripples the yellow water; but watch it a little while, and you will discover that it moves with a deep pulsation, a regular rhythmic effort, as though the fierce old heart of old Rome were still beating under its waves.”

“ It is a cruel river, and always seems to me as though it were smiling grimly at the thought of the next inundation it means to have,” said Eleanor. “ What do you say to resting a moment, Mr. Desmond ? I 'm beginning to be a little tired.” They dismounted, and Jack led the horses while Eleanor plucked long wreaths of the white stars of the blackberry-vine, and twisted them about her hat. “What a symbolical crown — thorns hidden under flowers! ” she said, with a half sigh. They sat down a moment under the hedge, and listened in silence to all the sweet, small noises of the spring.

“ I should like to be a gypsy! ” said Eleanor.

“ A gypsy à la Watteau, with pink satin boots, and a château to sleep in, you mean, of course,” said Jack.

Eleanor laughed. “ Well, yes, I suppose so! I don’t think I should like the smoky fires and short rations of real gypsydom. I love the country, but then, my ideal landscapes are always landscapes with well - dressed people in the foreground.”

They rode on again, past the long flat reaches of marsh; now and then some of the great white oxen of the Campagna lifted their heads from fields starred with the pale yellow blossoms of the wild narcissus, and looked at them with gentle and melancholy wonder; now and then a noisy caretto passed them, the driver dozing under the shelter of a sheep-skin stretched over a bent pole at the top of the cart, quite away from the sturdy, thick-maned little Campagna horses, that tossed their betasseled heads impatiently and rattled the bells hung at their heavy collars.

“ And there is Ostia! ” said Desmond. “ I wonder if Queen Eleanor will deign to alight and have some lunch? ”

“ Her Majesty is graciously pleased to be most plebeianly hungry,” said Miss Hardy, laughing. “ I shall make a state question of it if we find nothing eatable at that most unpromising of inns! ”

They rode into the court-yard under a queer, pointed stone arch. Half a dozen peasants looked up from the bottle of wine they were drinking at a table outside the door; two or three fair-haired, ragged children ran up to see the beautiful lady dismount. Eleanor gathered up her trailing skirt about her and entered the kitchen; it was a high-ceiled, smoke-blackened room; at one end was a large brick fireplace; around the wall were ranged rows of tables and chairs; five or six hens wandered composedly about the stone floor, in supreme indifference of the old gray cat who came up purring and rubbed against Eleanor’s feet. She stood tapping the table with her whip, the image of amused perplexity. “ But where shall we eat? ” she said.

“ There is a room up-statrs,” suggested the hostess. “ Clean? Blessed Saint Philomena! other than clean! But will the illustrious signora object to going up a ladder? ”

Eleanor burst, out laughing. “ Oh, Mr. Desmond! ” she cried, “ how can I ever thank you enough for bringing me here? Fancy my aunt’s face when I tell her of the ladder! ”

The room up-stairs was scrupulously clean and bare. The only ornaments of the whitewashed walls were a brass crucifix and a cup for holding holy water, but the table and wooden benches were spotless, and a cool breeze came in at the one small window. Their ride had given them an appetite, and they did full justice to the provisions that an extended experience of Campagna inns had induced Jack to send down the day before.

“ As though you had been sure of my coming with you! ” said Eleanor, half pleased and half provoked at the attention.

Jack laughed. “Do you imagine I could not ride down to Ostia without the protection of your escort? ” he said, teasingly. “ I am sure I could have found some one to take pity on me, had you been unkind enough not to come! ”

The words in themselves were nothing, but the mere fact that he could speak jestingly of her gave Eleanor a curious feeling of blank surprise. He had accepted the situation, and she instantly resented his having done so; she felt injured that having once offered her his love he should so soon have become resigned to her rejection of it. With an odd, feminine inconsistency, the firmer she had been in her refusal of him the more she had secretly gloried in what she had imagined to be the strength of his passion. There had been a bittersweet satisfaction to her in the sacrifice of such a devotion on the altar of her worldly advancement. It had been a sort of test in her eyes, for she had argued with herself, If I can give up such love as this so easily, surely my future life promises me only pleasure. What is there left for me to renounce, after this? Ignoring her own insistence on the fact that all allusions to old times were to be banished from their conversation, she tried to lead Desmond into a vein of half-tender, half-cynical remembrance, and see if even yet she had not the power of awakening the dormant fires of a passion she had held but lightly while it was still hers. In other words, she was a woman, and could pardon her old lover anything — except his forgiving her.

“ How long it seems since I have spent a day out of Rome! ” she said. “ The last time was at Porto d’Anzio. Do you remember the day we were there, Mr. Desmond? I have never forgotten it. I can shut my eyes now, and hear quite plainly again the wash of the waves on the beach. Do you remember the moonlight on the water, coming back? ” she went on dreamily; “ and

Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, her cheek was resting on her hand, she seemed looking far back into the past with those sweet, wistful eyes. Desmond glanced at her a moment, his face turned very pale, and his hand clenched hard under the table; but his voice was calm and he smiled quietly as he answered, —

“ I remember quite well; pretty little place, that Porto d’Anzio is! By the way, it’s a curious thing, do you know, to see with what an instinctive sense of the appropriate people always quote Owen Meredith when they speak of dead and gone flirtations. 'The Flirt’s own Laureate ’ he should be called. There is about as much sham strength and false sentiment in the one as in the other, I suppose,”he added, with a reflective air.

“ Really, I cannot say; I am not good at literary discussions,” answered Eleanor, coldly. “ I am not in the habit of dissecting the things which please me. This room is really getting to be very hot and disagreeable; shall we go? ”

The wind had changed, and the blue April sky was hidden by a gray veil of sirocco clouds.

“ Now, Miss Hardy,” said Desmond, “ Ostia is all before you where to choose. About a mile down that road is the wood of Castel Fusano; that pile of earth and stones you see there is the entrance to the excavations. What is your choice, sunshine or silence ? Will you spend an hour under the pines, like an irresponsible Bohemian; or shall we improve our minds and ' do ’ the ruins, like conscientious tourists? By the way, did you remember to bring your conscience with you? ”

“ No; I left it in Rome with my aunt, for safe keeping,” said Eleanor, demurely; “ and as for your ruins, Mr. Desmond, you may visit them alone, if you please. There are better things to do with a spring day than to spend it in a hole under ground, like an invalid rabbit.!”

They turned down the quiet, grassy lane that leads to Castel Fusano. On either hand stretched long reaches of pasture-land now turned to Fields of the Cloth of Gold by the blaze of yellow marsh-flowers that hid the grass. A tender, half-pathetic color brooded over the landscape; even the stately old pines seemed to bend their proud heads to the breeze and murmur half-forgotten words to the lullaby of the spring wind.

“How I love pine-trees! ” said Eleanor; “ to enjoy them fully one should not look at them, but lie with one’s face to the grass and only hear their grand old chant overhead.”

“ The pines of Ostia have a song all their own,” remarked Jack. “ You know all this ground about here was the open sea in the time of the Romans. I always think the trees remember the dash of the waves, and to me their song is like the breaking of the surf far away on the shore.”

“ Look at my daisies,” said Eleanor; “ I am afraid it is going to rain.” The crimson and white petals of the flowers she held were closing fast.

“ Do you know that the Campagna daisies look like the Roman girls?” asked Jack. “ See how different they are from the little English daisy, or the delicate rose-and-white pâquerette of France. In spite of their white petals, these are not a blonde flower. They have a bolder look, a deeper dash of red, a straighter, taller stem, and that same calmly-scrutinizing, wide-eyed, unabashed gaze you see in the contadine.

They have a curious association for me, too,” he added, taking up Eleanor’s bunch as he spoke. “ Daisies always remind me of the first time I fell in love. ”

“ Merely because they are innocent spring things, like lambs or veal,” asked Eleanor, mockingly, “or because your inamorata wore them in her hat? I think I can see her now. I know your tastes so well, Mr. Desmond. I can guess at what your first ideal must have been, — a china-doll face, with a simper, and marguerites in her hair; all innocence, white muslin, blue ribbons, and amiable imbecility ! ”

“Indeed she was not,” said Jack. “ Fair hair has been a latter-day revelation to me; in those prehistoric days the Corsair was my patron saint, and I raved about raven tresses and dark, Oriental eyes. She was a very beautiful girl, I remember, and I thought her an angel at the time,” he added, laughing. “ I wonder where she can be now? ”

“ That is so like a man! ” said Eleanor. “ We are angels as long as we don’t care for you, because our eyes are of a particular shape, or the shade of our hair pleases your lordship’s tastes; then we fall in love with you and become ordinary mortals on the spot, and you straightway forget us, or, worse still, quote us as rebukes or examples for the amusement of some other woman! The fact is, the wise woman cares only for herself, and every one immediately falls to caring for her too. It’s the force of example, I suppose.”

“ Oh, the justice of the unfair sex! ” cried Jack, with mock indignation. “ I say of my first love that she looked like a flower and I thought her an angel, and am instantly accused of heartless indifference for saying so. No, I can assure you, my first duel with the ' grand passion ’ was a most desperate affair. In spite of my Corsair proclivities I have no doubt I should have married my Medora, and repented the act in broadcloth and fine linen for the last ten years, had not another and a bolder pirate carried her off before my agonized eyes. You ought to have known me in those days!

I thought I was the proud and happy proprietor of a blighted life, I had sounded the bottomless abyss of all earthly sorrow, and knew to a nicety the depth thereof! It was all the more cruel in Medora since it had been an utter surrender at the first blow, a case of love at first sight, with me.”

“ Speaking of first impressions,” said Eleanor, “I wish you would tell me quite honestly what you thought of me the first time you saw me. I’ve always been curious to know how I strike my contemporaries, and never had such a chance to find out, before. We are so out of the world here, so removed from conventional life, why not drop conventional speech as well, and tell each other quite frankly what we think, for once? ”

It annoyed her to hear him allude even thus lightly to a woman he had evidently cared for very strongly in old times. A vague jealousy prompted her to occupy him with herself, even to the exclusion of dead and buried rivals; and, as she truly said, they were so far removed from every-day life that any question seemed natural to ask. As they lay under the trees in the still afternoon, life was reduced to its simplest expression, and an impulse of Arcadian simplicity seemed to possess them both, for Jack answered at once, “I had much rather not tell you what I thought. I remember it quite well, but it would not be pleasant to either of us to think of it now.”

“Mr. Desmond, you shall tell me! I insist upon it! Do,” she added, coaxingly. “ You won’t refuse me the very first favor I ask you on our last day together? ”

“ Thanks for your kindness in reminding me of that!” said Jack, abruptly, looking away from her,

“ The fact is, I don’t believe in the least you remember where or when we met! ” she pouted.

“ Do you think so? It was at the Whytes’ private theatricals; you were dressed in some sort of blue stuff, with white flowers in your hair, and after the play was over you sang—an air from The Huguenots. Mrs. Whyte introduced me to you, and we talked together for an hour or more, until you left at twelve o’clock to go to the Prussian minister’s ball.”

“ But that is only what you saw. I asked for what you thought. See,” she said, coquettishly, “I’ll give you this bunch of violets, my own pet flowers, that I’ve brought all the way from Rome, if you will tell me what you thought of me! ”

Jack looked at her fixedly a moment, and burst out laughing. “You are a true woman, Eleanor,” he said; “but it would be asking too much, perhaps, to expect you to forego proving your power. I ’ll tell you what I thought, that night! I watched you a long while, and I said to myself, Here at last is a face to live with and to die for, — the frank, loyal face of a girl whose love it were well worth risking one’s life to obtain; a girl above the petty considerations of society; a girl with enough heart to love a man for himself and not for what he could give her, and enough courage to avow it. That, Miss Hardy, was my first impression of you.”

Eleanor turned very pale. Something in his emotion had touched her; here, in the country, away from Rome and from her aunt, it seemed so much more difficult to realize satisfactorily the wisdom of her choice. Everything about her was young and full of hope; all the softness of the spring seemed to whisper to her that life is short, and love the one good of life. It was hard to have to renounce it all, and something in Desmond’s expression, “ a girl with enough heart to love a man for himself and not fur what he could give her,”seemed suddenly to cast a new light, and not a pleasant one at that, on her own motives and intentions. She was at once humiliated and angry; she admired Jack for his contempt of what she coveted, a hundred times more than she had ever done before; but while acknowledging his superiority to herself, she would have punished him for it if she had had the power to do it.

“ And what is your last impression of me? ” she asked, slowly.

Desmond had risen and was gathering up her hat and fan and cloak. “ I shall not tell you what I think of you now,” he answered, quietly.

“Why don’t you say at once that you despise me! ” she cried, impetuously. “ Don’t you suppose I understand what you mean? ”

“ No, I don’t think you do,” he answered slowly. “I have loved you too well ever to despise you; hut I am sorry, very sorry for you, Eleanor. I do not blame you, mind that! It is not your fault if I was fool enough to imagine in you qualities you do not possess. You may not be what I once thought you, but no one who sees, you can dispute your charm.”

The grave, dispassionate pity in his voice seemed to Eleanor to give the finishing touch to her mortification. A sudden fear lest she had lowered herself irretrievably in his eyes made her silent; a sudden disgust of her own aims, tastes, and wishes kept her from speaking as they walked slowly back to the inn. The violets she had offered him had fallen unheeded at his feet as she rose to go, and a sharp pang of regret passed through her as she noticed his utter indifference to her gift. “ Well, I have no one but myself to thank for it! ” she thought, with a desperate effort at philosophy. “Better so. The day, or something in the strangeness of our being so long alone together, has made me weak and sentimental. I shall be myself again when I get home.”

At the first turn in the road Desmond stopped suddenly. “ Excuse me a moment,” he said. “ I must see if I left my cigar-case under that tree.”

Eleanor sat down on the bank by the road-side while he ran quickly back to where they had been sitting.

“ At least I shall have that much of you, my darling! ” he said, half aloud, as he picked up her withered and bruised bunch of violets, and put them tenderly away in his note-case.

In another moment he was again at her side, and they walked quietly, almost sadly, back to Ostia. It was now almost six o’clock. The sun had sunk low down to the utmost verge of the mist-veiled horizon; long shadows were falling across the fields, and at the pasture-gates the cattle were crowded together, waiting to be driven home. As Eleanor stood in the court-yard of the inn, waiting for Jack, who had gone to see after their horses, a neat-looking young woman with a little child in her arms came up and asked for alms. Eleanor looked at her. “ Is your husband living ? ” she asked.

“ Yes,” said the woman.

“ Why does he let you beg in this way, then? ”

It was a bad year, the beggar told her, and her husband was out of work; he worked at the quarries when he could, but nothing had been done there for a long time.

“ Is he good to you? do you love him in spite of his doing nothing for you ? ”

He was the best man, yes, and the handsomest, too, in the village, his wife answered, flushing as she spoke. Eleanor hastily emptied her purse into the child’s hand. “ There are people in the world more to be pitied than you are,” she said, bitterly. “What! back already, Mr. Desmond? We had better start at once, then. It is growing late, and I am afraid my aunt will be displeased that I stayed so long.”

They rode slowly back towards Rome. The sun was setting in the golden glory that so often transfigures the last hour of a sirocco day. Birds were twittering on all the branches, or hurriedly flying homeward across the level marshes, where here and there a pool of water was turned to a sheet of pale, liquid gold, until the color deepened, and long lines of crimson barred the western sky.

“ I wonder why it is that there is such pathetic suggestion in a net-work of branches against an evening sky? ” said Eleanor. “ Do you know, I never see the hedge-rows against a red sunset without feeling that somewhere, some time, — ages ago, in another life, perhaps, — I have seen the same thing and been very unhappy at the time. I always feel as though there were something for me to be wretched about; they hint of some bygone grief which I cannot remember, and make me vaguely sad at the loss of some forgotten joy.”

“ ‘ For joy once lost is pain,’ ” quoted Jack, absently. “ Well, it is something, after all, to have had the joy! This morning, when I woke up, I said to myself, 'The pleasantness of life is not over for me yet. I have still a claim on it for one long, perfect day.’ And now — I have had it: my day is well-nigh past!”

Eleanor made no answer.

As they rode on, the twilight deepened about them; a chill crept into the evening air; the color at the horizon faded to ashes of rose; a long, light wreath of mist ascended from the marshes and stole like the ghost of the dead day about the solitary fields. The scattered pools of water gleaming dimly through the dusk reflected the livid tone of the sky. The ineffable melancholy of an evening in the early spring fell upon them. They did not speak, but listened to the regular cadence of the horses’ feet. That part of the road leads through a thicket of birches; every now and then a branch of the overhanging trees brushed against their faces, and a swarm of small white moths started up from under the leaves. Eleanor suddenly struck her horse sharply with her whip, and started down the hill at a mad gallop. The wind blew freshly in her face and there was exhilaration in the very movement; again and again she urged on her horse, taking a wild delight in the sensation of dashing along in the dark, not seeing where she went. It was with some difficulty that she checked her excited horse at the top of a long ascent, in order to wait for Desmond, who had not dared to follow faster, for fear of frightening Olga beyond all control. Eleanor laughed gayly as he rode up a moment after her.

“I enjoyed that. It was great!” she said. “ Did I startle you? Did you think Olga had run away with me? ”

” If you had stumbled you would have killed yourself!” said Desmond, in a voice hoarse with suppressed emotion.

“ Well suppose I had,” she retorted; “ who would have cared ? My friends? Rome would have talked for a week of that poor Miss Hardy, and how very shocking it was, how very distressing for Mr. Desmond! — she was killed under his very eyes, you know, — and how careful one ought to be about accidents on horseback! So very unfortunate! And — and what a pity that those nice Tuesday evening receptions of Mrs. Van Cordtlandt’s will have to stop now for a time! such a loss to us all! As for my aunt — well, I’m afraid my poor aunt’s chief despair would have been caused by the oddity and impropriety of my decease, and she would never be altogether comforted that I did not break my neck more decorously and with a proper escort. You ’re not an eligible escort, you know!” she added, with a reckless laugh.

“ Don’t talk in that way, please,” said Desmond; “you don’t know how much you pain me by doing so. Surely, my poor child, you must believe that there are people who care for you in another way than that.”

“ And why should there be? ” she broke in passionately. “ Have I ever cared for any one, myself? You have been cruel to me to-day after a fashion,” she added slowly. “ I am sorry I ever came here with you. I don’t think I am over-inclined to be romantic, but you have reminded me of what I had almost forgotten — that I am young and that it will be years and years before I shall outgrow the need of being loved. What good has it done you? what have you gained by it? This morning I was ready to marry Mr. Ross, if not with any great joy, at least without any great regret; and now — now you have forever ruined my contentment. I never shall feel as I did, again, and I shall go on doing now what I would have done then, but without ever once shutting my eyes to the fact that I have missed my chance of happiness; that I shall die without ever having lived. Why could you not have left me alone ? I am not going to change all my plans in life because of one day spent with you; why need you have taken the pleasure out of everything for me? Stop! I know what you are going to say, but it is of no use. This is our last ride together; tonight we say good-by. I may marry Mr. Boss without caring for him, but at least I will never see again a man I think I might have loved once; that is, if I had ever had a heart — which I have n’t! Don’t answer me; and let us go faster, please! I want to get home.”

They put their horses to a sharp trot and rode on for several miles in silence. Behind them had risen a watery moon, that glimmered with an uncertain light through the sea of vapor in which it floated. Now and then the white walls of a farm-house started out from the darkness, and the barking dogs made a dash at the horses as they passed. A dark line of trees against the sky marked the undulating course of the Tiber; now and then the moonlight glanced through their branches and cast a long, shining reflection on the water. Strange, fantastic shadows fell across the road, and more than once the horses shied violently at some mysterious black figure lying in their path. Before very long the houses succeeded each other at shorter intervals, and the distant city showed a pale circle of fire at the faroff horizon.

“We are nearing home. Do not go so fast,” said Desmond suddenly; “ this is our last ride, remember. Must it be the last, Eleanor ? ” he cried impulsively, laying his hand on the pommel of her saddle as he spoke.

“The very last,” she said. “You may despise me now, but I should despise myself were I capable of giving Up all the convictions of my life on the impulse of this day. I made a mistake of judgment when I consented to see you again after what had passed between us, and, like all other mistakes, it brings its own punishment with it.

Do you like that quotation better than this morning’s? And what do you think you will do with yourself to-morrow? ” she added, with an abrupt transition to her customary voice. “ By the way, are you going to the races, this year? I am.”

“ And so it is all over, and henceforth when we meet, we meet as strangers,” said Jack, slowly. “ Well, it was a pleasant dream while it lasted, only, as in all dreams, one must wake up after a while. Excuse me, Miss Hardy; not having had the advantage of frequenting your society all my life, I find I cannot hope to emulate your charming selfpossession. How I envy you that praiseworthy habit of self-control! It is really an admirable triumph of good taste over those dangerous guides, the feelings! You ask about the races. I am so sorry I cannot say that I am going too; but we poor wretches cannot always afford to share in the amusements of our betters. It is quite pardonable, though, that you should forget this; a young lady with your brilliant prospects can hardly be expected to remember that we are not all blessed to the same degree.”

Eleanor did not answer; indeed, she scarcely heard him. “It is our last ride, our last day together,” she thought. “I must never see him again. I dare not! This is the last time, the very last time of all.” She thought with a dull surprise of the change wrought in herself since that morning. “I wonder if we must altogether say good-by? ” she mused. “ Surely, surely he might still go on caring for me a little, be still my friend.”

There came no answer to her question from out the night into whose melancholy depths she gazed with eyes brimming over with tears.

“ Wait a moment,” said Jack, reining in his horse suddenly; “ those two lights at the end of the avenue are your gateway - lamps. The farewell to Bohemia must be said now, Miss Hardy.” He held out his hand and clasped hers firmly for a moment, trying to pierce the darkness with eager eyes that could not be satisfied with taking a last long look. “Good-by,” be said slowly, “good-by forever, Eleanor!”

The trees above them rustled in the darkness; the horses drooped their weary heads together; away in the marshes they heard the desolate, piercing cry of some lonely night-bird. “ Good-by,” he repeated softly, “ good-by, and God bless you, Eleanor ! Our paths part here: yours, I pray, may pass through all the sunny spots of life; mine — well, a man can always find enough to do if he is willing to work. Perhaps — who knows? — I may even learn to forget you, in time,” he added, with a short, bitter laugh. “ What do you say to comparing notes with me, this day ten years hence, Miss Hardy ? ”

Eleanor bent low down over her saddle-bow, and played with the mane of her horse. “ Do come and call on me to-morrow, Mr. Desmond,” she said.

Jack burst out in a wild laugh. “ Call on you?” he cried. “What! you want me to come and talk to you as another man would talk? Perhaps, — if my anecdotes are amusing enough and I know how to keep my place, — perhaps you will even invite me to attend those Tuesday evenings when all Rome goes to the Palazzo Pini to admire the charming Miss Hardy! Good God! Can’t you understand that I love you! Have you lived so much in a drawing-room that you do not know there are passions in this world? Has your life been a parlor comedy for so long that you have forgotten that men are made of flesh and blood, and not merely of black coats and equally correct sentiments, manners, and neck-ties?” He flung her hand away from him with a sort of contempt. “ And to think that I have thrown my heart, my life, my honor, at the feet of a woman so little capable of understanding their worth! Eleanor,” his voice grew gentle as he spoke her name, “ have you never known what it is to love? I love you — do you know what that means to me? Just this! I love you. To me you are simply the one woman in the world, the one being whose presence is perfect joy, whose absence the world and all the glory thereof could not tempt me for an instant to forget. You are full of faults; I see them, and I love them for your sake! You are full of noble qualities, and I bow down and worship them! I love the very glove on your hand, the ribbon at your throat, the faded flower you have worn and thrown away. My feeling towards you is no dainty devotion, ready to fall gracefully into the background at a hint, and be the pleasing, tenderly remembered, lightly forgotten romance of a season. I love you as a man loves the woman he would make his wife,—passionately, strongly, jealously. I want you all to myself, or not at all! Pardon me! I mean — I wanted you,” he added. “ I am speaking of the past. You need not tell me again you do not care for me; I know it now. I will not go and see you. I am your lover, Eleanor; I cannot play at being your friend. ”

Little fleecy clouds had been drifting fast across the face of the moon; now, as he ended, the wind blew them suddenly apart, and a flood of clear, soft light poured down on Eleanor’s bowed head and tight-clasped hands. Some bird in the branches above them, awakened by the sound of Desmond’s voice, gave a sleepy twitter as it turned in its warm nest. The horses shook themselves and stamped, impatient to be home.

“Jack,” said Eleanor, in a meek, small voice, “I don’t think it’s very kind of you to make me say it — but I wish you would come and see me tomorrow— for, look here, Jack — I’ve been thinking — I’m sorry for what I said — and — and I don’t want you to come as my friend, you know! ”

Dudu Fletcher.