The Englishman is brought up to live his life independently of woman. He considers his masculine solitariness a sign of strength. To be seen in the streets with his wife or sisters is to acknowledge that they are necessary. He feels awkward at being observed publicly in their company. He shows them no gallantries. He walks a little way apart. His conversation with them lacks spontaneity. He is not enjoying himself. He is wanting to be kind and natural, but he dreads lest he should be thought effeminate. His national conception of manliness demands that he should be complete in himself. How he ever so forgets his shyness as to make a woman his wife is one of the unsolved mysteries. Some primeval instinct, deeper than his national training of reserve, goads him to it. On recovering from his madness, he is among the first to marvel.

When Christian had climbed to the top of the hill his sack of sins fell from his back. When an Englishman lands in France, he drops his bundle of moral scruples in the harbor as he passes down the gang-plank. For morality is a matter of temperament, and for the time being his temperament shall be French. Just as a soul newly departed, may look back with pitying resentment on the chill chaotic body that once confined it, so he looks back across the English Channel at the uncharming rectitude of his former self. Being an Englishman has bored him.

I shall never forget the first wild rapture with which I viewed the tall white cliffs of Dieppe. It was about three in the afternoon. The sky was intensely blue, dotted here and there with fleecy islands of cloud. The sun smote down so hotly on the deck that one’s feet felt swollen. Far away the gleaming quaintness of the French fishing-town grew up and stole nearer. It seemed to me that as the wind swept towards us from the land, I caught the merry frou-frou of ten thousand skirts. Fields and woodlands which topped the cliffs, hid laughing eyes and emotional white arms eagerly extended. The staccato chatter of happiness lay before me. I had escaped from the Eveless Paradise of my own countrymen. I had slipped out by the back-door of the world. I was free to act as I liked. I was unobserved. Discretion had lost its most obvious purpose. It excited me to pretend to myself that I was almost willing to be tempted.

That night I sat by the quays at Rouen, observing the groups of men and women, always together, passing up and down. I saw how they drew frankly near to one another. I listened to their scraps of quiet conversation. The lazy laughter, now the hoarse brass of men’s voices, now the silver clearness of a woman’s, rose and fell. Below me barges from Paris creaked against the piles, and the golden Seine swept beneath the bridges, singing like a gay grisette. As night sank down I was stung to loneliness, thinking of the absence of Vi and Fiesole.

I arrived in Paris on the evening of the following day. Hastily depositing my baggage at my hotel in the Rue St. Honoré, I set out to stroll the boulevards. Until three in the morning I wandered from café to café. I searched the faces of passers-by for signs of the gracious abandon to happiness of which I had so often heard. My mind teemed with vivid images of pleasure such as crowd the pages of novels concerning Paris. Flitting moth-like up and down garish tunnels of light I saw a painted death. It simpered at me from under shadows of austere churches. It flirted with me, ogling me with slanted eyes, as I passed beneath the glare of lamps. I crossed the Pont St. Michel going southward, and found it in the guise of girls masquerading in male attire. I went across the bridges again and found it in the Rue de Rivoli, hunting with jaded feverish expression for men. Wherever I went I encountered the same fixed mercenary smile, saw the same lavish display of ankles beneath foamy skirts, and heard the same weary tip-tapping of feet which carried bodies which should be sold to whoever would purchase.

Where was the joy and adventure of which I had heard? The purpose of happiness should be life, not death. Several times that night women turned aside and seated themselves at a table beside me. They roused my pity; pity was quickly changed to disgust by their hot-foot avarice. All around me was a painted death.

Overhead the breeze ruffled the tree-tops. I looked up through the leaves. Stars were going out. I caught between roofs of tired houses a glimpse of the Eternal looking down. Surely the God who kept the wind going and replenished the sky with clouds, meant man to be happy in some better fashion. I went back to my hotel and, gathering together my baggage, fled.

At Florence the problem of right and wrong presented itself to me in another aspect. Restraint seemed attended with sadness; license with ugliness and regret. From above dim shrines disfigured Christs bespoke the anguish of crucified passions. On the other hand, Filippino’s tattered Magdalene symbolized the hideous rewards of abandonment. Both restraint and unrestraint brought sorrow, and I wanted to be supremely glad. Life should be an affair of singing. I was fascinated by the thought of woman. With one woman I was in love; in another I was interested. Both of them I must forget. I would not love Fiesole because I could not marry Vi. Yet within me was this capacity for passion, smoldering, leaping, expanding, fighting for an outlet. Surely in a rightly governed world it should find some fine expression! Through the by-ways of every city that I entered the lean hound of vice hunted after nightfall, and behind him stalked the painted death. The cleanness of the country called me. Like a captive stag, I longed to feel the cool touch of leaves against my shoulders.

In the Accademia at Florence I discovered my own dilemma portrayed. It stated my problem, but it offered no solution. However, it gave me a sense of comradeship to find that Botticelli, so many years ago, had peered down over the same precipice. In The Kingdom of Venus one sees a flowered wood; from leafy trees hangs golden fruit; between their trunks drifts in the flaming light that never was on sea or land. Here a band of maidens have met with a solitary youth to celebrate the renewal of spring. In the center of the landscape, a little back from the group, stands a sad-faced Venus, who might equally well be a madonna listening for the dreadful beat of Gabriel’s wings who shall summon her to be mother of a saviour to the world. To her left stand three wanton spirits of earth and air, innocently carnal, eternal in their loveliness. To her right three maidens dance with lifted hands. One of them gazes with melancholy desire towards the youth. He looks away from her unwillingly. In their eyes broods the gloomy foreknowledge of wrong-doing. They would fain be Grecians, but they have bowed to the Vatican. The shadows, the flowers, the rustling leaves are still pagan; but in the young girl’s eyes hangs the memory of the tortured Christ. She is wanton in her scarcely veiled nakedness, but she dares not forget; and while she remembers, she cannot be happy. The lips with which she will woo her lover have worshiped the wound-prints of the pierced hand.

The Renaissance made even its sadness exquisite by using it as the vehicle for poetry; but we, having lost our sense of magic, explain our melancholy in mediaeval terms. Magic was still in the world; I was determined to find it.

I was continually drawn back to the picture. I would sit before it for hours. It explained nothing. If offered no suggestions. It simply told me what I already knew about myself. But in watching it I found rest. Rebellion against social facts which turn love into lust left me. I came to see that a love which is unlawful is only lovely in its unfulfilment. The young girl in the woodland, did she rouse the frenzy in her lover, would lose the purity which was irrecoverable; by evening she would weep among the broken flowers. Perhaps, did I win her, it might be so with Vi.

I tried to find satisfaction by losing myself in memories of the past. The past is always kindlier than the present because, as Carlyle once said, the fear has gone out of it. The heavy actuality of the sorrows of Romeos makes them pleasurable romance only to latter-day observers. In their own day they were scandals. So I wandered through sun-scorched Italian towns, red and white and saffron, and I hung above ancient bridges, looking down on rushing mountain torrents, and I dreamt myself back to the glory of the loves that had once been self-consuming beneath that forgetful hard blue sky.

When I came to Ferrara my mind was stormy with thoughts of Lucrezia Borgia—Lucrezia of the amber hair. It was here that she came in her pageantry of shame to seek her third husband in the unwilling Alphonso. Ferrara had not changed since that day. She had seen it as I saw it. I entered the town at sunset. The golden light smote against the red-brick walls of the Castello. I imagined that I saw her sweet wronged face, half-saint, half-siren, gazing out from the narrow barred windows across the green-scummed moat.

I hired rooms in the primitive Pellegrino e Gaiana. They looked out on the dusty tree-shadowed Piazza Torquato Tasso, where tables with white cloths were spread, on which stood tall bottles of rough country wine. I promised myself that from there, as I sat, I could just discern the Castello. I had my dinner beneath the trees. On the further side of the square was a wine tavern. Men and girls were singing there. Sometimes the door would push open, letting out a rush of light. I tried to think that they were the men-at-arms of long ago. A cool breeze stirred the dust at my feet. The moon was rising. I got up and sauntered through gaunt paved streets, past empty palaces, past Ariosto’s house and out toward the country, where vines hung heavy with grapes, festooning the olivetrees. Italy lay languorous and scented in the night, like a fair deep-bosomed courtesan. The sensuous delight of the present mingled with my thoughts of the past. I had been hardly surprised had Lucrezia stolen out from the dusk towards me, with the breeze whipping about her the golden snakes of her hair.

Slowly I turned back to the town. At the Castello I halted, peering across the moat at the sullen darkness of the walls on the other side. As I stood smoking my cigar, I saw an English girl coming towards me across the Piazza Savonarola. Her nationality was unmistakable; she walked with a healthy air of self-reliance which you do not find in Latin women. I was surprised to see her. July is not the month for tourists. So far, save for a few Americans, I had had Italy to myself. And I was surprised for another reason—she was unaccompanied.

As she drew nearer, I turned my back so that she should not be offended by my staring. I heard her step coming closer. It halted at my side. I looked round, supposing she had lost her direction and was about to question me.

“You—you here!” I exclaimed and remained staring.

“I didn’t think you’d expect me,” she laughed shyly.

“Of course I didn’t. How should I? What brought you?”

“I was on my way to Venice; but remembering you were here, I stayed over for the night. You don’t mind?”

“Mind! I should say not. Where are you staying?”

“At the Albergo Europa. I was just on my way over to the Pellegrino e Gaiana to inquire if you were there. I’ve asked at all the other hotels.”

While we had been speaking I had been watching her closely. What was it that was changed in her? Was it the voluptuousness of the Italian night that made her more splendidly feminine? She had lost her laughing tone of laziness. Her beauty was strong wine and fire. Something had become earnest in her. Then I asked myself why had she come—was she really on her way to Venice?

“I’m jolly glad you came,” I said impetuously; “I’ve been missing you ever since I left.”

“And I you.”

She took my arm, giving it a friendly hug, just as Ruthita did when she was glad. We walked over to the Piazza Torquato Tasso. Seating ourselves at a table beneath the trees, we called for wine. The light from the trattoria fell softly on her face. The air was dreamy with fragrance of limes. At tables nearby other men and women were sitting. Across the way in the tavern my men-at-arms were still singing and carousing.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, leaning across towards me.

“I was thinking that I now begin to understand you.”

“In what way?” She jerked the question out. It was as though she had flung up her arms to ward off a blow. Her voice panted.

“You’ve always puzzled me,” I said. “You are a mixture of ice and fire. The ice is English and the fire is Italian. You’re different to-night.”

“How?”

“You’re mediaeval. The fire has melted the ice.”

She took my hand gratefully and drew me nearer. “Do you like me better?”

“Much better. I keep thinking how like you are to Simonetta in The Kingdom of Venus. I spent hours sitting before it at the Accademia in Florence. I couldn’t tell what was the attraction. Now I know. It was you I was looking at; you as you are now—not as you were.”

“Dante,” she said, “you can see what is beautiful in a painting or a poem, but you can’t see beauty in things themselves. You’re afraid to—you’re afraid of being disillusioned. You see life as reflected in a mirror.”

“It’s safer,” I smiled.

She took me up sharply. There was pain in what she said. “Ah, yes, safer! You’re always counting the cost and looking ahead for sorrow. You’re a pagan, but fear makes you an ascetic. You have the feeling that joy is something stolen, and you grow timid lest you’re going to be bad.”

“That’s true.”

“Can’t you believe,” she whispered, “that anything that makes two people happy must be right and best?”

“I wish I could.”

“And that anything that makes them sad must be wicked?”

“Fiesole,” I said, “have you been sad?”

She would not answer, but drew herself back into the shadow so I could not see her expression. We sat silent, fingering our glasses, giving ourselves over to the languor of the summer’s night. Through the rapturous stillness we heard the breeze from the mountains rustling across the Emilian plain like a woman in silk attire. At a neighboring table a man and a girl, thinking themselves unobserved, swayed slowly towards one another and kissed, as though constrained by some power stronger than themselves. Through the golden windows of the tavern across the way, one could see the silhouettes of men and women trail stealthily across the white-washed walls. The spirit of Lucrezia and her lover-poets seemed to haunt Ferrara that night.

“You’re going to Venice,” I said abruptly. “So am I. Perhaps we shall meet there.”

“Perhaps.”

“We might travel there together.”

“I should be glad.”

We rose from the table. It was late. The piazza was growing empty. The apple-green shutters before the windows of the houses were closed. Behind some of them were lights which threw gold bars on the pavement. The streets were silent.

“How did you know that I would be here?” I asked.

“You forget—you left me your addresses.”

“So I did. But you didn’t write. Why didn’t you write?”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.”

What she meant by that I could only guess. Perhaps she hardly knew herself. My blood was rushing wildly through my veins. I was breathing the atmosphere of passion. I did not look ahead; I was absorbed in the present. I had been hungry for Vi—well, now I had Fiesole. I had been thirsty for the love of a woman. Fiesole was giving me her comradeship. I was intoxicated with life’s beauty.

The saffron moon looked down, pillowed on a bank of silver cloud. As we passed the Castello, a fish leapt in the moat, and fell back with a splash. I halted, leaning against the parapet.

“And it was here we met.”

She pressed against me. I could feel the wild beating of her heart; it tapped against my side, calling to my heart for entrance. Her voice shook with emotion; it whispered above the surge of conflicting thoughts like the solemn tolling of a sunken bell. “Since then everything has become golden, somehow.”

I dared not trust myself to respond to her tenderness. I was shaken and awed by her intensity. With her lips just a little way from mine, so that my cheeks were fanned by her breath, her face looked into mine, the chin tilted and the long white throat stretched back. I gazed on her motionless, with my arms strained down against my side.

“Fiesole,” I whispered, “how many girls and boys have stood here and said that!”

Her eagerness died out. She slipped her arm into mine. “But we are alive. I was thinking of nobody but our two selves to-night.”

We plunged into the cool deep shadows of the colonnade. We turned into the Corso della Giovecca. Down the long dim street all the houses stood in darkness, save for a faint patch of light which carpeted the pavement in front of her hotel.

“Your maid will be wondering what has happened.”

She looked at me curiously. “She won’t. I didn’t bring her.”

“Good-night until to-morrow.”

“Good-night.”

She looked back once from the doorway and smiled She entered. The sleepy porter came out and swung to the gates.

I was amazed at her bewitching indiscretion. For myself it did not matter. But what of her, if we should be seen together? A man can afford such accidents; but a woman—— I tried to deceive myself. Our meeting was, as she had said, haphazard. We were both alone in Italy. Our routes lay in the same direction. What more natural than that we should travel together? But I knew that this was not the case. I determined to open her eyes to the risks she was taking.

Next morning when I woke, I wondered vaguely what was the cause of this strange elation. Then memory came back. I jumped out of bed and flung the shutters wide. Out in the piazza some earlier risers were already seated at the tables. A man was watering the pavement, singing gaily to himself. Beneath the trees a parrot and a cockatoo screeched, hurling insults at one another from their perches. A soldier showed his teeth and laughed, talking to a broad-hipped peasant girl. At the top of the piazza a slim white figure waited.

I made haste with my dressing. I was extremely happy. I tried to analyze the situation, but lost patience with myself.

Picking up my hat and running down the stairs, I came across her standing outside the Cathedral, in the full glare of the sun. Before I had spoken she turned, darting like a pigeon, instinctively aware of my approach. “I’ve beaten you by nearly two hours,” she called gaily.

We passed into the fruit-market. I bought a basket of ripe figs; sitting down on a bench we ate them together. All round us was stir and bustle. Farmers in their broad straw-hats were unyoking oxen while women spread the wares.

“Fiesole, there’s just one thing I want to say to you, after which I’ll never mention it.”

“I know what it is. I’ve thought it all out.”

“Are you sure you have? Of course no one may ever know. But if by some chance they should find out, are you sure that you think it’s worth while?”

“Reckoning the cost again!” she laughed, helping herself to another fig.

“I’ll pay gladly. It’s you I’m considering,” I said seriously.

She rested her hand on mine. It was cool, and long, and delicate. I was startled at the thrill it gave me. “Dante,” she whispered, “have you ever wanted anything so badly that your whole body ached to get it? When you were very thirsty, say, and you heard a stream, singing ‘Find me. Find me’ out of sight in the hills among the heather? Then you climbed up and up, and the sun beat down, and your throat was dry, and the stream sang louder, and at last you found it. I’m like that. I don’t mind what the bank is like. I lie down full-length and let the water sing against my mouth. I’ve been thirsty for something, Dante, all my life. Yes, I’ve counted the price. If you don’t mind having me, Dannie, I’ll stay with you for the present.”

She rubbed her cheek against my shoulder ever so slightly. I bent towards her. When you’ve wounded a woman, there’s only one way of making recompense. She saw my intent. She drew back laughing, dragging my hand with her. The quick red blood mounted to her forehead. The gold in her green eyes sparkled with gladness. “Not now,” she cried. Then recovering herself, “But you’re a dear to want me like that.”

That morning we visited the Corpus Domini where Lu-crezia Borgia lies buried. We were admitted to a little chapel where all was lonely and silent. Presently a door opened and two nuns dressed in black entered. Their faces were covered from sight by long black veils. All that was human we were permitted to see of them was their eyes, which looked out from two black holes like stars in a dreary night. They had been beautiful perhaps, but because Christ was crucified they had crucified themselves. And these women, who had never tasted life, whose flesh had never throbbed with the sweet torture which was their right, whose bodies were the unremembered sepulchres of little children whose lips had never pressed the breast—these women were the guardians of her who had been the Magdalene of the Renaissance, whose feet had climbed the Calvary of passion, but not the Calvary of sacrifice. Sunlight, amber-colored as Lucrezia’s hair, slipped across the slab which marked her grave. Down there in the unbroken dusk, did her tresses mock decay?

From a hidden cloister the chanting of children’s voices broke the quiet. Its very suddenness took me by the throat. It was the future calling out of the sad and molder-ing content of stupidly misspent lives. Fiesole edged her hand into mine. I smiled into her eyes; then I looked at the nuns again. Who would remember them when three centuries had gone by? Lucrezia, if she had been wanton, had at least given joy; so the world forgave her now that she was buried. We tiptoed out into the tawny street, where water tinkled down the gutters. We had found a new sanction for desire.

It was towards evening that we sighted Venice, floating between sea and sky in a tepid light. Where we parted from the mainland, thin trees ran down to the water’s edge, shivering and gleaming, like naked boys. As the train thundered across the trestled bridge which spans the lagoon, Fiesole and I crowded against the window, tingling with excitement. The salt wind smote upon our faces and loosened a strand of her red-brown hair. Laughing, I fastened it into place. She snatched up my hand and kissed the fingers separately. We were children, so thrilled with happiness that we could speak only by signs and exclamations. A gondola drifted by, rowed by a poppe in a scarlet sash. Though we both saw it, we cried to one another that it was a gondola, and waved. Then the gold sun fell splashing through the clouds; Venice was stained to orange, and the lagoon to the purple of wine.

Not until the train had halted in the station did it occur to me that we had made no plans.

Hotel porters were already fighting to get possession of our baggage.

“Where are you going to stay?” I asked.

“Wherever you like,” she said. “A good place is the Hotel D’Angleterre on the Riva degli Schiavoni.”

So she took it for granted that we should put up at the same hotel! We went aboard the steamer and traveled down the Grand Canal in prosaic fashion, with the nodding black swans of gondolas all about us.

The Hotel D’Angleterre stands facing the Canale di San Marco, looking across to San Maria della Salute. The angle is that from which so many of Canaletto’s Venetian masterpieces were painted.

The proprietor came out to greet us suave and smiling. “A room for Monsieur and Madame?”

“Two rooms,” I said shortly.

When we went upstairs to look at them, we found that they were next door to one another. Fiesole made no objection.

They were both front rooms and faced the Canal. One could hardly find fault with them on the ground that they were too near together.

By the time dinner was over the silver dusk was falling. A hundred yards out two barche, a little distance separated, drifted with swinging lanterns. The tinkling of guitars sounded and the impassioned singing of a girl. Above embattled roofs of palaces to the westward fiery panthers of the sunset crouched. The beauty of it all was stinging—it seemed the misty fabric of a dream which must instantly shatter and fade into a pale and torturing remembrance.

We stepped into a gondola.

S............