BOOK FIVE (continued 2)

She found herself beautiful, and yet as she stretched out her arms in longing, she had no desire for the man who had been in her thoughts. What she desired now was love. The tones of Wilhelm's lute floated down to her, yearning and soft.

She clasped her strong hands together, and then pressed their palms against her body. Aghast, she let them fall to her side, her eyes darkened, for as she had watched the movements of her own hands her thoughts had flown to the huge fists of the Russian. She pulled on a nightgown, and slipped into her bunk. Soon she was wrapped in a dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The rattling of chains awoke Diana. She sprang out of bed, and as she opened the port-hole she saw land, flat stones lapped by gentle waves, a few bushes, the whole lit up with the first shafts of the rising sun. On deck she found there was little more to see, save a hillock, a sun-kissed beach, a few cottages, and a couple of dozen fisherfolk who had never seen any other vessel than their own cobles putting into the bay.

It was the island of Leucas that lay before them. Scherer had hunted out this little place, for his friends and he himself wished to avoid Corfu and considered Cephalonia too big. On this particular voyage they none of them wished to run up against acquaintances or strangers whom they might, as in a dream, talk with for one forenoon. Ithaca, which had been Scherer's first choice, had been turned down by the rest of the company. Even more than Syracuse did the place smack of archæological research.

"Good morning! Is this wild enough for you?" called Scherer from the other end of the deck, as Diana appeared up the companion. "The natives here don't even ask for harbour dues!"

"And they catch fish, and milk goats, and our Father who is in heaven provides for their needs," she called back.

"You've got out of bed in biblical vein," said Scherer as he shook hands.

"Say rather in a pagan mood. For this place is rich and lonesome, and within an hour the sun will be burning hot and we shall be walking upon Greek ivy."

"It was here that Dorpfeld sought Ithaca."

"I don't want to hear about that. Ithaca is where I choose it shall be!"

"You are talking like Franklin."

"For today, his way of speaking is the right one! Are we going ashore?"

Diana pointed to a boat that was drawn up alongside.

"Yes. And, I say, what about going really ashore?" retorted Scherer meaningly.

"What's your idea?" she asked.

"Well, since I've caught you alone thus early, why not go to Patras?"

They were standing near the gangway which was still shaking from the heavy tread of the captain who had just left the yacht to go ashore. Such a question, the proposal that they two should do something apart from the others, had never been mooted before. Both rather dreaded the possibility. Patras spelled Athens. Athens was full of certain joint memories that needed careful handling.

Diana said:

"Patras is hardly worth a visit, and it's too late in the year for Athens. Agreed? Besides one might get involved in the Balkan imbroglio and the yacht captured as a prize! Wouldn't you prefer sailing northward?"

"Really northward?" he asked with a smile, for he knew her weakness for Venice.

She laughed. Then tossing her head defiantly, she said:

"One should always avoid the scenes of former happenings, you know—especially if one holds the past in contempt."

Her words were only meant to express her vivid joy of the moment—like a bugle summoning up the morning. But for Scherer they seemed a disavowal of the past, knowing as he did her faith in the mutations of the moment. He looked at her steadily, as if to fix her words upon his retina. She returned his gaze unflinchingly, combative and audacious, until he lowered his eyes and continued unruffled:

"It's to be Venice, then; and after that we'll skirt the coast. Is that your idea? The plan suits me very well, for I should dearly like a chat with Ricci, who is doing propaganda in Italy on behalf of our views. I may learn something useful. If only our captain doesn't fall in love!"

"I'd willingly put temptation in his way for the sake of Venice," she laughed. "But I'm not his type."

"Highly improbable! What you really mean is that he is not a type that appeals to you."

"That's neither here nor there, if one has an end in view."

She spoke with the deliberate coldness she occasionally affected when she wished to mislead even those whom she most trusted.

Scherer did not answer. He was pondering her words. "An end in view? What would be the upshot?"

An hour later they were all being pulled ashore. The silence that brooded over the island, the absence of any sights, the speedy growth of the sun's power, and above all the estrangement which had arisen between Eduard and Kyril since the events of the previous evening, made the little company unusually taciturn. Scherer contemplated Diana from a new angle, and was absorbed in his own thoughts; Eduard did not wish to be with Diana while Kyril was about; Diana had no desire to speak to any one; even Franklin seemed strangely glum since last night.

Wilhelm, alone, was cheerful. He felt more at home on land than at sea, especially when the country was wild and the weather hot. He had been walking for some time at Diana's side, admiring the flowers, the hills, and the tide. Gradually he felt that he had experienced all this before; the landscape and, indeed, the whole excursion was familiar. Such a feeling of reliving past events was one this dreamy poet's nature was accustomed to, and he was never taken aback when things or persons unexpectedly appeared as old friends or as the realization of a dream. The party broke up into groups, rambling whithersoever fancy led: Wilhelm's mood became more and more joyous. He walked along at Diana's side, absorbed in his dreams, the incarnation of youth.

"There does not seem to be any way through up there," Scherer called after the pair.

"All the better," cried Diana, waving her hand. "We'll probably discover a temple!"

"As you will," shouted Scherer from below. "Only I beg you to be aboard again at one."

He invited the remainder of the little band to follow him along a more beaten path which wound away to the right, mounting the cliff, and overlooking the bay. Absentmindedly, the three men followed where Scherer led, not one of them much caring whither they went. Scherer proved right and Diana came to what she had hoped. The track vanished amid a tangle of broom, and she felt thoroughly in her element as she beat a passage for herself through the thicket, Wilhelm following in her wake. Now, at last, she could throw off the burden of thought with which she had been oppressed since her talk with Scherer early that morning.

The broom grew to a man's height in this spot, and its yellow plumes waved aloft in the golden light of the early day. At times the shrub attained the proportions of a tree, and scattered blossoms with profusion as if they were a tropical rain. It was difficult to find a foothold among the thick growth of ivy which covered the ground, a carpet of damp green flecked with the gold of fallen petals. Gnarled fig trees spread their heavy leafage abroad, while myrtles in full blossom formed cascades among the ivy-mantled crags. The prickly fronds of the cactus stuck their grey-green fingers in the air, and here and there one of the plants flaunted the beauty of red buds; violet agave flowers, like thorny fountains, inhaled the light and the warm sunshine with avidity, profiting by every instant of their short-lived glory to nourish the fruit of their blossoming time; and mother earth in her green gown, lying amid a welter of sword-shaped leaves, was already parched from the boiling noonday suns. From a medley of mosses and weeds the delicate stems of olive trees had sprung up, but, affrighted by the rough caresses of the sea winds, they had bowed their heads to earth again. In the general hum of insect and animal life, sounds differentiated themselves so that one could distinguish the rustle of lizards amid leaves, the slithery movement of unseen snakes avoiding the tread of a human foot and yet seemingly on the alert to follow the wayfarer; while, dominating all, came the deep bourdon of the humble bees, and the shrill chirp of the crickets. The hot air was heavy with the scent of honey and parched blossoms, and it was a labour to lift the foot to a higher level on the sweltering hill-side, where the tall, beaker-shaped ferns grew luxuriantly and the stiff stems of the orchis thrust their purple buds amid the green, where the cherry-laurel attained undreamed of heights, displaying its cool leaves to the ardent sun and reflecting the light in the thousand facets of its sombre depths.

Now the sea was again visible, spreading its calm and polished surface beneath the radiant sky, and Diana, catching sight of it, let herself slide to the ground amid the tangle of golden broom, and gazed her fill, breast high among the blossoms. She leaned upon her elbows, her chin cupped in her hands, her eyes fixed upon the distant blue, looking for all the world like a sentry awaiting the arrival of a ship. Thus she lay amid the yellow wilderness, a slender figure in her simple white frock, her wide-brimmed hat flung negligently at her side, absorbed in contemplation of the dazzling waters. Wilhelm, who had discarded his coat and his cap, sat at a little distance from her. He had followed her silently, using his stick and his hands to clear a path for himself. Occasionally he had sprung forward in advance of her, holding branches aside for her passage; then again he would fall to the rear, seeking an easier way.

"You are a shepherdess," said he, his head cocked to one side. "When you talk, I can hardly ever understand, since you are too clever for me. But as you are now, I can understand you very well, just as I used to understand my collie, who was stolen from me last autumn." He spoke very softly, a note of supplication in his voice.

"How gentle a tone, how mute and humble his affection," thought Diana, a smile hovering about her lips. "He hums like one of those great hairy bees, and he, too, is wishing to find honey."

"None of the other men are near," continued Wilhelm, cuddling down beside her, "and I feel sure you will allow me to kiss your hand—but I want to kiss it here, quite high up."

Diana laughed.

"You are but a shepherd lad," she said, "and I'll let you kiss me wherever you please."

Wilhelm bent forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"Ah, Diana, you are a goddess taking your ease among the broom, and you think the shepherd does not recognize you for what you are. But he knows, he recognizes you," and he leaned over her as she lay.

"By what sign do you recognize me, Wilhelm?"

"By your knees," he said roguishly. "Atalanta did not wear stockings, you know!"

She pulled her skirt down.

"Did you like Atalanta?"

"So greatly that I could only gaze and gaze at her, and forget to fall in love with you."

"But I'm in love with you, Wilhelm!"

"Yes, I know; but I make very cautious advances as you see..."

He slipped his head on to her breast and caressed her knees.

"You are so gentle and so kindly, Wilhelm, and you taste like strawberries."

"You are the most beautiful of women, Diana, and Wilhelm is the happiest of mortals," and he quietly began to unfasten her dress....

They were startled from an infinitude of slumbrous joy by a sound of crackling nearby, and sprang apart with the frightened shock of lovers surprised by an alien third. But their alarm soon changed to laughter, for the intruder was only a he-goat who was no less startled at finding human stragglers in his haunts than they had been by his intrusion.

"The very creature himself," cried Diana, trying to seize the beast by the horns, "the Dionysian animal arousing us from a Pan-like lethargy. It is just as well that he invaded our sanctum, for otherwise we'd have overslept ourselves, been late for lunch, might even have been left behind and condemned for ever to live on Leucas isle!"

"Would that not have been paradise, indeed? What might I not achieve on Leucas, and you?"

She laughed, glancing up at him shyly from under her lids, as she said:

"I'd make myself a rough canoe..."

"To live in?"

She flung her arms about him and kissed him precipitately, laughing, and looking straight into his eyes.

"No, no! To sail in, to make for Corfu, under cover of night, while you were fast asleep in the cave of Telemachus. Once arrived at Corfu, I'd board a Lloyd steamer and voyage to Rio or to the moon."

Lighter of step than during the upward climb, fleeing from the heights, with the springy gait of a young shepherdess, Diana sped down the hillside, along the path they had beaten, humming softly to herself, until she reached the road and the shore.

The thoughts of the four men who had taken the easier way were concentrated on the person of Diana, during the time that she herself was living a genuine pastoral with the fifth.

As chance would have it, Eduard and Kyril walked side by side along the narrow path. They were silent. Their discovery had aroused in them a sense of hostility: the chance circumstances which had brought them together, seemed to them now, since the previous evening, to have imposed indissoluble and fateful ties; at the same time they both felt that henceforward Diana's relationship towards them would be a more intimate one. This conviction, for the first time, awakened a sense of unwarranted jealousy between the two men, a feeling which served in the case of each to accentuate their inclination towards the lady.

Kyril, however, with his instinctive and deliberately fostered animus against persons of high station, was inclined to rationalize his dislike for the man as contempt for the prince; whereas the latter, being set upon freeing himself from prejudice, did his utmost to draw a clear distinction between Kyril the rival and Kyril the man of ideas. It was Eduard, therefore, who broke the long silence.

"Rather an ominous field of research, astrology, don't you think, Doctor? If one believes in it, one has misgivings, and if one does not believe in it, one has nevertheless a feeling of resentment."

"Just as one has with human beings," responded Kyril gloomily, and with so audible a hint that he wished for the silence to continue, that the prince had plenty of time wherein to ruminate as to whether his neighbour believed in Diana or mistrusted her.

Scherer and Franklin, following the two younger men, had lapsed from the cheerful mood they had begun the day with. Now they were in a critical vein, from which neither the sunshine nor the sea could release them. They had lost their equanimity. Franklin, who had neither in earlier days nor now looked upon Diana with the eyes of a lover, had felt all along a little out of the picture as he watched her relations with the little circle of friends; since the events of last night, however, this vague feeling had become more tangible and he actually fancied she regarded him with contumely. It seemed to him that as poet and as one who prided himself on his knowledge of women, Diana might treat him in less daughterly a fashion, though it was, he had to admit, he himself who had encouraged this attitude in her. Now, quite suddenly, although in his quiet way he had enjoyed the voyage, learning and observing a new kind of life, he felt that what remained to him of youth had forcibly been wrenched away from him. Above all, his suspicions were aroused in regard to Scherer, whose relationship to Diana he had never wholly understood, and whose unwonted buoyancy this morning, in spite of the veneer of worldliness with which the financier masked his feelings, made Franklin more alert than usual.

For since Diana had spoken to him that morning Scherer had been the prey of an inner turmoil; possibilities of all kinds rose in his mind and were rejected, and it seemed to him that of all men Franklin was the one who could inform him as to certain happenings of her youth. Both men had feelers out; both were silent. Scherer waited till Franklin spoke.

"Have you known the young people long?"

"Those two young men ahead of us?" returned Scherer, deliberately misunderstanding Franklin's inquiry.

"Prince Eduard and the girl."

Franklin invariably referred to Diana thus.

"Oh," answered Scherer, "I met the prince in Turkey some time ago, but I did not make Fräulein de Wassilko's acquaintance till considerably later."

"Well, what about the prince? And suppose she takes up with the other...?"

Scherer assumed an air of absolute innocence.

"She must have had nothing but a platonic friendship with him in those days..."

"Platonic? Can she keep that up indefinitely?" exclaimed Franklin.

Scherer smiled.

"You've known her much longer than I have."

"Yes, long ago," rejoined Franklin in a tone of voice as if he were referring to a lost paradise. "The girl was observant and wise in those days. Now—she seems to me to be rather more a woman made for love."

"Since she has been living and working so closely in touch with me, I have found her far more maidenly than most people deem she could possibly be after such an adventure."

"Outwardly, perhaps, Herr Scherer. But inwardly? The cup is filled with blissful delight."

Franklin spoke the last words so loud, tossing them as it were into the air in his rhapsodic way, that they floated as far as Eduard's and Kyril's ears, whereupon the two young men simultaneously turned right about. Scherer, secretly amused, and emboldened by the turn the conversation had taken, wished to give the subject a more conventional twist, so he called to the two who had taken the lead on the path:

"You are missing the best sonnet Herr Franklin has ever composed. He wrote it years ago, taking our huntress as subject, when she was still a priestess."

"May one ask for it to be repeated?" asked Eduard, shaking off the spell that had held him, and falling into line with the elder couple.

"Herr Scherer is the poet this time," protested Franklin, "not I."

"Wares acquire value through rarity," said Eduard mockingly.

"Let's reckon up which of us has burned the greater number of poems, Prince," answered Scherer.

"I never burned any. The few I composed I made into paper boats and set them adrift on the pond in our park at home."

They were by now in merrier mood, and gave themselves up to good-humoured banter.

All, save the Russian, who continued on his way ahead of them, alone and sullen, in the scorching noontide glare.

An hour later the whole party met at lunch on the yacht. The Russian was very uneasy, and, since the prince felt himself to be in rather less serious plight, he assumed the task of finding out how Diana had spent the morning, a matter about which both men were extremely inquisitive.

"I expect you have added to your academic laurels this morning by increasing our knowledge of Homeric times—excavations I mean."

She was determined not to give herself away, so she took refuge in a lie.

"We really did discover something, Wilhelm and I. Higher up, soon after we had left you, a little farther inland, we came upon an olive tree under which, covered with ivy, we saw two stones. On closer inspection they proved to be pieces of a truncated column, late epoch, might even be Roman. But, Wilhelm, you know about these things better than I for you have studied the history of art."

Wilhelm was nonplussed, not so much by her powers of invention in order to shield their secret, as by the calm way in which she appealed to him.

"I think they are called Roman drums," he said diffidently, "but for the moment I want to give my attention to this excellent fish."

The Russian looked inquiringly at the speaker and then turned his eyes upon Diana, while the prince cast a meaning glance at Kyril and Scherer. Immediately Wilhelm, who had so recently deemed himself the favoured one in relation to this much-courted woman, assured that he alone of all on board had enjoyed the favour of her kisses, felt confused, and poverty stricken, and banished from her sight.

As the day was fading, Diana stood alone on the deck. The island was left far behind, its hills rising faint and dreamlike out of the sea. Diana gazed over the waters, absorbed in reverie. "The hand of the past has lain heavy upon me today," she mused. "Scherer, always on the lookout for a wife ... he's missed his chances ... Wilhelm finds a shepherdess ... as that handsome Scottish lad did so many years ago... And what of this taciturn, amiable prince? Is it not dangerous for us to let the favourable moment slip through our fingers? Why does he hesitate?"

A shadow climbed up the companion ladder. Wilhelm stood beside her.

"Diana," he whispered, a caressing note in his voice.

"Good evening," she answered in a louder key.

"Are you happy?"

"Is it not lovely?"

"What?" asked Wilhelm, at a loss to know what she was referring to.

"The sea! And that we are making for Venice!"

CHAPTER NINE

Eduard was sitting at one of the little marble tables in Florian's cafe on the Piazza. He had chosen a seat in the back row, and was fluttering the pages of an illustrated paper. A small glass of vermouth stood on the table beside him. He had at last discarded his yachting jacket and white shoes, and was now clad in a light-coloured summer suit, enjoying the luxury of being ashore again after so many days at sea.

Here, in Venice, ran his thoughts, I hope to stay two days; but I don't mean to spend them in hunting up art treasures. I'm going to be an ascetic so far as such things are concerned. I wonder why she left the yacht so early? The time had certainly come when it was expedient to land somewhere!

Pictures of the last few days aboard the "Excelsior" passed before his eyes. All the cheerfulness of the first days had vanished; monosyllabic courtesy prevailed; laughter had become a stranger. Wilhelm spent half the day in solitude, apart; his friends watched him sadly as he sat crouching on a chair in the bows; he avoided Diana and the prince, and chose only Franklin's company, conversing with him about camels, elephant hair, and crocodile tears. When he played the lute, he touched its strings lightly, making music for himself alone, and he never sang now. Of an evening, he would creep down to where Giorgino, the ship's boy, sat on the companion steps, and Scherer as he went by heard them practising the Venetian dialect together.

Scherer, too, was restless, and tried every expedient to relieve his boredom, asking the captain for information concerning winds and tides, fogs and lighthouses. Eduard and Kyril had long discussions about the people as against the individual, at the end of which, they would fetch the chess board and sit down to a game. Four or five hours would go by, and neither would raise his eyes from the board; and even during the meals that followed, they would remain pensive and chary of words.

Every one on board had become suspect to Kyril, his fundamental mistrust of Diana having now spread to her friends; hardly had the fences which separated the two begun to be pulled down, than he carefully set them up again. On the whole, this state of affairs fell in with Eduard's humour, for the prince's uneasiness concerning Diana's little excursion with Wilhelm had assuaged his jealousy of the Russian, and it seemed to him that the latter's comradely attitude towards Diana was a good one to imitate. Diana herself, since that strangely poignant evening, had been constrained to greater precaution, seeing that the prince held back; indeed, he seemed to be slipping away altogether, and he for his part made no effort to hold her. She could not guess what he had been cogitating for months; all she was aware of was that he revered her instead of taking possession of her; her spirit was rent by the conflict between pride and inclination, a conflict in which pride usually gained the upper hand, and thereby augmented the alienation.

Eduard got up, paid his score, and was making for the colonnade by the public library, wishing to mix with the crowd that always promenaded there towards noon, when he heard himself called by name. As he abruptly turned in response, his sleeve caught the change the waiter had deposited on the little table, and swept it to the ground. Four hands were instantly stretched out to pick the money from the ground, and as the prince, too, stooped in order to help, he saw himself confronted by Kyril and another young Russian. All three laughed as they rose and shook hands.

"That's the first time I've ever seen you groping for money, most honoured Samoroff," cried Eduard. "You always allow it to roll away unheeded at Monte Carlo. Thanks," he added as the coins were returned to his hand.

"It's only to show myself an arrant foe of capitalism in the eyes of my old friend Kyril. We were students together. Otherwise, quand il aura puissance dans l'Institut Smolny, he might put me under lock and key in the dungeons of the Peter-Paul fortress!"

The elegant young gentleman who spoke these words, partly in broken German and partly in excellent French, was nearly as tall as Eduard. His walking cane between his legs, he was preparing to take a seat, when Kyril said, addressing Eduard:

"Dimiter Alexandrovitch will excuse me, I feel sure. He'll be happier chatting with you about the gaming table than with me about Kropotkin whom he met in London and whose samovar is the only thing he has been able to understand! Good-bye, I have other matters in hand."

He then turned to his compatriot, and took leave of him in Russian. Soon he was lost in the crowd. Eduard realized how glad Kyril was at such an easy escape, and with what relish the young man had foisted a compatriot of birth and standing upon himself as one of similar lineage.

"How goes the world with you, cher Prince?" said Dimiter, slipping his hand lightly through Eduard's arm, and leading him towards the colonnade. He seemed a little distrait, but his manner was more cordial towards Eduard than the latter's towards him, for both by education and temperament the German was more reserved than the Russian globe-trotter. While they chatted, Dimiter sauntering easily along, Prince Eduard walking with greater decorum, the latter's mind was occupied with thoughts as to how he could get rid of his fortuitous companion. He feared Dimiter might invite him to lunch, that he, in turn, would have to reciprocate, and he was loath to bring this idler aboard Scherer's yacht since he, as member of the same caste, would thus render himself more or less responsible for the Russian. They had passed a few days together in Cannes a couple of years ago, empty days to be sure, but since Dimiter had just come from those parts, the conversation naturally turned to recollections of that time, whose charm was greatly exaggerated in retrospect by the Russian. In Eduard's memory those same few days were far from appearing so beautiful, and he was determined not to contribute anything to their glamour.

"I hear you've been cruising in the Mediterranean with a newspaper magnate," began Dimiter. But he broke off to say: "Just look, there, the girl on the right—look at the movement of her shoulder under her black shawl, you can actually see it as if it were being X-rayed!" He spoke with the utmost physical unconcern. "Superb," he continued, "only most of them smell so strong. In winter, it's not so bad.... Apropos, Kyril tells me you have a lady on board. Very convenient when one's at sea, only one must be sure the cabin doors open quietly, see that the hinges are well-oiled, otherwise the husband—I speak from experience! Enfin... Not going already?"

Eduard protested that he must rejoin his friends, though in reality he was under no obligation to do so, for it had been agreed among them that each was free to do what he liked ashore. As the prince was about to move away, it suddenly occurred to him that this loose-tongued gossip might give him information about Kyril. He therefore said somewhat irrelevantly: "You know, of course, that Dr. Sergievitch is a great favourite on board the yacht?"

"Naturally," exclaimed Dimiter with vivacity, and he unexpectedly sat himself down on one of the steps of the flagstaff belonging to the church of San Marco, his cane between his legs. "That goes without saying. When we were students together—my father wanted me to take my degree—I was to study law in Switzerland, at Lausanne, for the old man had friends there, exiles from Alexander's reign—and Kyril was to study there likewise. It was charming, for at Ouchy, in Madame Dorée's pension, there lived a most adorable woman, her daughter, you know—seventeen, noli me tangere type, brunette, slim as a boy, only up here, you know.—Eh bien, we were all crazy about this bronze divinity. But this poor devil—— Let's see, we must have been twenty-two at the time—— Yes, that's right, for it was in 1906, a year after the October revolution—— Well, Kyril, who was not in a position to make her a present of even so much as a bracelet, went straight to the goal, just as if this cool and suave young lady were a rutting bitch. Straight there, after seeing her but twice. I bet you it was his regard demoniaque and his magnificent teeth that did the trick." Dimiter struck viciously at the square red slabs with his cane. "Cette canaille!" he exclaimed. Then, unexpectedly, he sat silent, ruminating, filled with jealousy, as if he actually saw the couple before him in the flesh, ignoring the many years that had elapsed and the many successful adventures that had come his way since.

Eduard, standing in front of him, had at first listened, his hands resting on the small of his back, as he balanced himself on the soles of his brown shoes. But, his interest in the story waxing, he brought his face nearer to the speaker, placing one foot upon the step above and gripping the flagstaff with his left hand. He noticed the Russian's preoccupation and respected it for a while. Then, into the silence, he flung a question, lightly, as if he attached but little importance to the answer:

"He was very poor at the time?"

Dimiter looked up, blinking his eyes as he answered:

"Son of a cottager, Ukrainian peasant folk, adopted by some farmer or other. Suddenly wrenched from his natural surroundings and hurled into the vortex of revolutionary intrigue. Then he studied, buried himself in his work. Got subsidies, financed by the party—je ne connais pas les details. Later, I gather, he was sent to Siberia. Escaped, as usual.—En avant! Enough of this camelot! Come along to Danieli's. You must consent to be my guest at lunch, and tell me the most recent Berlin scandals."

"That would be delightful," rejoined Eduard, hoping to hide behind a mask of levity the pensive mood these scraps of information had induced. "Unfortunately I am a slave aboard the galley which you can see from here flaunting her charms in a robe of snow-white innocence. Tomorrow I'll drop you a line at your hotel. For today, I have no choice, I must aboard. Mille pardons!"

As soon as he had shaken the Russian off, Eduard made his way, with greater speed than was customary to him, through the strollers who were by now thronging the Piazza. He hailed a gondola, and, not wishing to be the prey of further questionings, called haphazard the first name that occurred to him:

"All' Accademia!"

He would thus gain time to consider where he would next order the man to go, and meanwhile he could give himself up to meditation. Lounging on the well-worn leather cushions, he saw nothing of the sights around him. His mental vision was filled with Kyril's form; he saw Kyril's eyes asparkle, Kyril's teeth gleaming; he heard Dimiter's envious voice saying, "Straight there, after seeing her but twice," and again Dimiter's tone as he uttered the words "bronze divinity," words that had pierced Eduard's heart. Then the dim interior of a peasant's hut rose before the prince's eyes, a new-born baby was crying, the farmer in his high boots entering and carrying the child away, the snow, the heat, the endless steppe, a resolute lad growing up on a farm, a propagandist on his rounds whispering the word of promise for a brighter future and giving the boy a book, the youngster devouring page after page, his face aglow—now the lad is packing his few things, scraping a handful of coins together, making for the railway station, journeying to Moscow—public meetings, a kopeck or two spent on food, all the rest of his scanty hoard going to buy books, and again books—then, suddenly, reindeer drawing a sleigh over Siberian wastes, Kyril sitting inside it, hastening onwards, for ever hastening, that "they" might not catch him, onward till he reaches the coast—now the youth is aboard a sailing vessel, none of your spick-and-span white yachts—and then the vision of the girl of seventeen summers, a bronze divinity, spurning the advances of the scion of a princely race in order to give herself to the meanly born swain who possessed her then and there as if she were "a rutting bitch." ...

"O—hé! Guarda—mi!"

The gondolier's warning cry broke in upon his reverie. The man's voice reminded him of the voice of his first tutor calling to him as he played in the park at home, summoning him back to his quarters in the left wing of the castle. But first he must bring his wooden ducks ashore, lovely white-lacquer birds, with which he had been playing in the marble basin where the goldfish swam; they must not be allowed to stay out over night. "Johann! Johann!" And the old servant would come running along the avenue of yew trees while the youngster stamped about in water, crying: "Johann, catch my ducks! No, not yet; first help me on with my shoes, I've got to be quick, Stefan is already with Herr Hollrigel, we've got to do twice two today!"

At this very hour, Diana was sitting alone in the cool, spacious hall of the Accademia, looking up at Titian's last masterpiece.

"What depth, what weight," thought she. "This is surely the climax of the century when, after so glorious a course, after hundreds of paintings depicting sunlit nudities, red-gold, shimmering hair, lute players twanging love-lorn ditties beside Aphrodite; of pictures of chains and war-harness, of boldness and of freedom—there should be conceived this canvas, showing beneath a green-gold cupola of transcendental loveliness, the dusky and livid body of Our Lord being taken down from the cross before the gloomy eyes of the watchful Magdalen.... To die young ... younger even than He ... in the dread ecstasy of love, in the throes of a twin pulsation, naked, up on a couch within earshot of the surges of a southern sea, under the skies in full view of one's guiding star.... Is my constellation really the Scales? Last night, when I heard them lowering the anchor, and the chain rattled over the cathead, I looked out through the port-hole, straight across to San Giorgio's point, and there was Saturn, the girdled god.... I must get away from this tragical picture.... It was here I saw those enigmatic angel heads of Leonardo's that time when I came away from Rome.... They were under glass, and some one carefully rolled back the cloth that protected them from the light.... They must be over there...."

Diana got up, passed through two other rooms, full of people coming and going and chatting, to reach a little gallery whose walls were adorned with glass cases. The place was deserted but for one other, a glimpse of whose back she caught in the farther corner. She started looking at the pages which were spread out for inspection beneath the glass. They were drawings by Leonardo himself.

She looked long and lovingly at these sweet angel faces with their ecstatic upward gaze and their unearthly, enigmatic smile; herein she read nothing but heavenly love, desireless and candid; and her heart, which had been troubled of late, gradually found ease and quietude from the contemplation of these pure and ethereal beings; she felt her soul flooded with the reflected laughter and devotion of these fanciful creations. The face of the master who had conjured them forth from the recesses of his fancy rose before her, and as peace invaded her and wrapped her round she felt that his spirit must be near at hand. A light footfall to her left brought her back to reality, though for a moment, so greatly was she under the spell of her musings, she thought it was the tread of the great master himself.

The form she had glimpsed as she entered the gallery had detached itself from the shadowy corner, and was now studying the contents of the cases, just as she was, only from the other end. He was a tall man in the middle sixties, dressed in a suit of dark cloth, and, from the position of his body as he bent to look at the drawings, it was difficult to decide whether he would be equally bent when walking or not. He wore no hat, his hair was silvery white, and his delicate face with its long nose and thin lips looked like an etching, especially when seen in profile and when one could appreciate the line of his long, white beard which fell softly over chin and throat. Indeed his head resembled the portrait Leonardo has left us of himself.

It was thus, in profile, as he bent over the cases, that Diana caught sight of him on raising her eyes, her pulses still throbbing from the glory of her vision. She started, for she recognized him at once.

"Father!" she cried, never stirring from where she stood. He looked up, without haste, and she saw his blue eyes turned towards her, kindly and inquiring now, whereas once they had been like shafts of glittering steel.

"Diana! It is you, my dear daughter!"

His voice struck to her very heart, just as his eyes had done. It had become more cordial during these three years since she had heard it last.

"Father!"

Slowly, as if she were a little girl, she went towards him. He raised his arms, but did not open them for an embrace, and kissed her on the forehead. It was as though he were giving her his blessing. They were silent for a while.

"Just before I caught sight of you," she said softly, "the head of this magician loomed near me, and when I heard footsteps approaching I thought it could be none other than he."

"And it turned out to be only your old father! How simply things explain themselves! As I look at you now you seem to me all aglow inside."

"I come from the company of angels," said Diana, casting another look at the drawings under the glass.

"And I am on my way to them, for at my end there were nothing but grimacing devils. I always start down there and make my way upward."

"Shall I have to go down among the devils?"

"Are you afraid of them?" he asked, scrutinizing her closely.

"I fear no one," said she, tossing her head defiantly, and thus making her curls dance around the edge of her cap.

He stood motionless as if captivated. Then he raised his arms once more in that peculiar gesture of his, and spoke in a voice that sounded younger and sweeter:

"Helena! That's just the way Helena had of tossing her head...."

The reference to her mother made Diana long to throw herself at his feet. She stood silent, controlling the impulse, for she knew that at any moment a stranger might appear in the doorway. He, too, made an effort to regain composure.

"Will you stay a little while with me?" he said at last.

"I—shall come with you, Father!"

As she spoke, she remembered other claims, the yacht, the prince, her own desires; and her father was quick to perceive that there was an obstacle to the free disposal of her time, an impediment imposed from without. He said:

"Not long ago I dreamed that I might meet you."

"When was that? Do you remember?"

"I remember not only the day when each of my dreams has occurred, but almost the time as well, for I have written them all down these twelve years past. This one came three days ago, towards evening, when I fell asleep in my arm-chair—a very unusual thing for me to do. It must have been nearly seven o'clock, for when I awoke I saw the little steamer passing by. So I could not have been asleep long."

She nodded her head.

"And at the same hour, three days ago, I was standing on the deck of a pleasure yacht, thinking: We are going to Venice! It is April, perhaps Father will be there!"

"There, you see how simple it all is!" The old man smiled genially. "And now let's go and have some lunch and a good talk."

With the deliberate and courtly gesture appropriate to a man of his years, he offered his daughter an arm. As she took it, a surge of maternal solicitude flooded her heart: she saw the soft hat he held in his hand, and looked up at his silvery head:

"Won't you," she began, "... it is rather cold in these rooms...."

"I cannot wear a hat in the presence of the master's work," he said simply, as they went on their way.

As they were about to descend, she caught sight of the prince who was in the act of landing. He, however, changed his mind, stepping back into the gondola, hastily pulling the curtains around the seat, and thus concealing himself from the passers-by. Since the gondolier had brought his fare to the place he was bidden, the man waited patiently till it should please the gentleman to alight. But Eduard did not stir.

Hidden by the curtains, the prince watched Diana stepping lightly between the huge couchant lions. She looked the embodiment of youth as she accommodated her springy gait to that of the tall old gentleman at her side: she was in a light-coloured coat and skirt that the wind from the lagoon played with as she walked; he in well-tailored black, leaning upon an ivory-handled stick. Eduard's mind was still full of reminiscences of his childhood days, and for him the broad steps were those of his ancestral halls where likewise two couchant lions kept guard, and Diana was descending them, leaning on the arm of his own old father.

As she stepped into a gondola near by, the prince suddenly resolved to follow her.

CHAPTER TEN

The "Excelsior" while at sea had appeared to be the sanctuary of orderliness: here, in port, she had cast her virtues to the wind. No one came punctually to meals; the steward had gone ashore and his substitute proved a broken reed; the captain was invisible; the cabins were hot and stuffy, with port-holes tightly shut; above all, everything was grimed with coal dust, for the yacht was replenishing her bunkers, and the air was filled with the rattle of the operation.

When Scherer arrived, half an hour late, and went to the dining saloon, he found Wilhelm the solitary occupant, waiting patiently before his empty plate, and whiling away the time till his comrades should put in an appearance by cutting initials in the skin of an orange and gently whistling as he worked.

"You must be awfully hungry, my dear fellow," said Scherer apologetically. "I see you are trying to make the best of my unpunctuality by carving the emblems of love. May I have a look?"

Wilhelm turned the fruit towards his host, so that the letters D. W. became visible.

"Are you so very deeply in love?" Scherer asked with a blend of gravity and amusement.

"I don't quite understand."

"Well, you've joined your initial to that of the young lady."

"My initial? Oh no. The letters stand for Diana de Wassilko. When I was cutting the little 'd' which marks her rank, the knife slipped; but one can still make it out if one looks close enough. I meant to put the orange at her place, so that we all might know where she would sit if she happened to turn up for lunch."

Scherer took his seat at the table, and, after a word of excuse, buried himself in the letters he had fetched at the post office.

"If I were to set about carving initials in real earnest," continued Wilhelm, when the meal was at last served, "a number of other letters would have to be grouped round the D."

"What other letters?" asked Scherer pleasantly.

"You are not going to lure any secrets out of me, Herr Scherer," said Wilhelm, trying to copy his host's worldly manner. "All I will tell you is that I'd put an E. and a K. and also an S. under the D."

"An S. too?"

"Of course. But they'd only be there as liabilities, you know, not as assets in relation to the D. Not that, certainly not that."

"And which would be assets?"

"Assets? None at all. Nothing but a D. I seem to be giving a double meaning to everything I say. Honour bright, the D. stands alone."

Eduard and Kyril followed close on one another's heels. The Russian was agitated, he threw his letters down higgledy-piggledy, growling to himself in his native tongue, and all because a packet he had been expecting had failed to come. He asked if Scherer would not like to meet Salvatore, the leader of the socialist press in the town. Scherer countered by offering to introduce Kyril to Ricci. Both men were aware that their two spheres of interest could never be reconciled.

The prince, for his part, was pensive, taciturn, saying he had seen nothing, and that Dimiter had bored him. Kyril laughed, and begged the prince to forgive him his desertion. This was the first day Eduard had seen the Russian laugh, and the splendid teeth that were disclosed in the act made the prince uneasy.

Finally came Franklin, making what speed he could, his necktie askew, preoccupied and uncompanionable.

"I'm afraid I can't raise your spirits by handing you some pleasant correspondence," said Scherer. "There were no letters for you."

"I fetched them myself," answered Franklin mendaciously, as he continued to eat in silence.

One of the crew stepped up to Scherer at that moment, and handed him a letter, telling him that the messenger was awaiting an answer. Scherer tore open the envelope, ran his eyes over the note, and then read it aloud to the company.

"I have met my father ashore. Till the yacht sails, I should like to stay with him. Please ask Mary to come to me. You, dear Herr Scherer, and your friends are cordially invited to come and see us tomorrow.

"Yours, "D. W."

Wilhelm was the first to break the silence which had fallen upon the party, completely taken aback by the news. He lifted the orange he had carved, saying:

"You see, Gentlemen, there are the letters, prophetic, D. W., as in the note."

Scherer opened another envelope, enclosed within Diana's, and read:

"Grigori de Wassilko

asks the pleasure of your company ... tomorrow evening at seven o'clock. Palazzo Tiepoletto."

"There are four similar cards, one for each of you," continued Scherer, dealing the invitations out to his guests.

Wilhelm took his, read it, turned it over, endeavouring to solve the mystery of a visiting card, and to infuse with poesy the display of a name on an oblong of white pasteboard.

"Tiepoletto," queried Scherer, "are there not three palaces of that name?"

"This one is the last as you leave the harbour," explained Eduard, pocketing his card.

"You know...?"

All eyes were raised from the cards and fixed on Eduard's face.

"Elderly gentleman, white beard, carefully tended," explained the prince with assumed indifference. "I propose that we, too, send an avalanche of cards!"

Scherer undertook to accept the invitation in the name of his guests, and while he was penning his note, the others stood about the dining saloon, chary of words, reserved, while the coal rattled into the bunkers, a hostile symbol as it were, racking to ears accustomed for many days to the monotonous bourdon of seas and winds. Wilhelm, submissive young simpleton that he was, had got over his pastoral adventure with Diana in the best way he could, by forcing himself to regard it in silence as a bitter-sweet jest—for never since she had on that first evening, rejected his advances in a friendly enough fashion, had he again ventured to approach her as a lover. Eduard, at a loose end like a wooer who just before declaring himself has to leave his beloved if only for a day, was a bundle of nerves, restlessness, and impatience. Kyril and Franklin had had strange and disquieting news. Nothing was to be got from the latter, but when all the others had gone ashore he had his trunks carried down the gangway, and when his host returned that same evening a note was all that was left to tell of Franklin's presence.

"A letter was awaiting me here which summoned me to Vienna, urging me to use the utmost speed as the matter concerned my official duties. I am thus constrained to leave the white ship earlier than we had planned, a step I regret all the more when I remember how generously you have played your part as host. Forgive me for departing in this unceremonious way without a personal leave-taking, but it is expedient that I should catch the night train; now it is already six o'clock, and there is no sign of your return.

"A day will come when I shall be able to thank you in person.

"FRANKLIN."

Folded within this sheet was another, written in a more youthful hand, the lines running in curves, rhapsodic and divided into rhythmical versicles:

"No! There must be truth between friends. May I count you my friend, today? There was no letter, no night train at all. A meeting merely. Just fancy! A meeting in a little street... Languid embraces, melancholy, staring eyes... Forgetting culture, ambition, knowledge! You smile? At my age one does not find that the gods often trouble to bestow ecstatic hours. Yes, it is true, during these last days, when it has seemed that a greater intimacy has sprung up between me and the girl, my senses have become confused, I have felt rejuvenated—and I am happy to acknowledge the fact: it is the huntress who has sent me into this Venetian beggar-woman's arms, has sent me to this queen. Her hair is like what one sees in the elder Palma's pictures, but her skin is like Franklin's the younger."

After lunch, Eduard had tried to get a siesta, but he was still agitated with his morning adventure, and presently decided to leave the noisy, dusty ship. He was pulled ashore in company with Kyril and Wilhelm, the two latter having agreed to explore a distant quarter of the town together, each wishing, though from very different motives, to rub shoulders with the common people. The Russian spoke very little Italian, but Wilhelm had bicycled all over Italy, learning old songs and new, and in the process becoming a master of the language. Now they had cajoled Giorgino into acting as guide, for though the lad had come originally from Vicenza, he knew Venice very well.

Eduard, though attracted by the excursion, could not bring himself to make one of the party. It seemed to him impossible to walk with this Russian among people whom, no more than a couple of hours ago, he had regarded with a blend of envy and timidity as aboriginals. When he turned to leave his two companions, Wilhelm's faithful, doglike glance smote him to the heart, and he asked himself why it was that people should find it so hard to understand one another. He went on his way aimlessly, dreading the long afternoon that lay ahead, and suddenly realizing that all the hours till seven the following evening had to be spent somehow. "I ought to have joined forces with Scherer," he thought as he strolled along streets which at this hour were always empty.—"Women... One could spend the time in a woman's company... Adelheid might be better than nothing... They have a lovely house ... and even if Umberto, the husband, does talk exclusively of Principe Doria, she herself is a fine figure of a woman, and invariably gracious...." Now he found himself accosted by a flower girl whose nosegays of narcissus suggested a lady's boudoir.... Hailing a gondola, he asked to be taken to the palazzo....

"Eduard," cried a plump and handsome woman entering the little salon precipitately, his card still in her hand. "Eduard the Confessor! How nice to see you again."

"1042 to 1066, my dear Adelaide," said Eduard, allowing himself to be embraced. "I have not come here as a confessor this time, but as a true and faithful knight, to lay these narcissi upon your ever youthful breast!"

She took the proffered nosegay, and, without a look at the flowers, stuck them in her bodice. The whole thing was done in so matter-of-fact a way, in so stereotyped a manner, that Eduard could not help thinking how different Diana's reaction would have been, how graciously she would have taken a bouquet from the hands that offered it. He could not now understand how he had managed to be even a little in love with this woman a few years ago, though she was amiability personified, and at that time had been slim and graceful.

"On the contrary, I am no longer old enough to act the mother confessor as I did when you were here before, because your noble family has unfortunately determined to turn so Protestant a face to the world. But, Dio mio, what are you doing now? How's uncle Heinrich? And Elisabeth? And Katharina? And where do you come from now?"

Eduard gave a pithy report of these family matters, and then turned the conversation to the lady's husband and children. The former, he learned, had gone to Rome, the latter had gone for a day's excursion to the country. He was shown countless photographs of the youngsters, indeed every table was laden with these effigies, so that his cup of steaming tea, as he pleasantly remarked, looked like an offering of incense at the shrine of Margherita, his little cousin. This cheerful, worldly-wise woman had a wholesome effect upon Eduard, relieving him from his depression; and, after half an hour in which she had made many more references to the days of their youth, he congratulated himself on the impulse which had made him come to see her, and on finding her alone.

"The view from here is really too Baedekerish, Adelaide," he said, looking through the slats of the green Venetian blind.

"Please use the German version of my name."

"The other is Beethoven's version," bowing profoundly and then coming towards her again. "I recollect that when I was still a little boy in sailor suits and Therese sang the song I always conceived of the beloved lady as having red-gold hair like yours."

"Caro mio, one is doomed to become grey, and that very soon now; that much-praised landscape is not a little to blame in the process. When I first came here, a young and inexperienced girl, everything seemed like heaven to me. But, dear cousin, to have nothing to look out upon during fifteen years beyond water and black boats, with never a motor car to relieve the monotony, not even a motor boat allowed on the canals—it becomes melancholy in the long run! In fact when one sees these romantic Venetians at close quarters, it puts a gloom on one's spirits. It's all very well to love in such melancholy surroundings, but when it comes to marriage—I'm all for dry land, my dear."

"Neither damp nor dry, Adelheid! Unmated one can fly freely in the third element."

"Or one roasts in the fourth," cried she, drawing him down to her side on the blue baroque sofa. "And now your confession, Eduard the Confessor, just as in old times, on this very sofa. Tell me, when is it to be, and, above all, on whom has your choice fallen?"

"Stefan must lead the way," he said, evasively.

"Stefan is a sick man, and, though Heinrich has been married these three years, he has no children. It's up to you, Eduard, to make the succession safe. You surely ought to do it for the throne's sake, even if the claims of the altar mean nothing to you."

"My younger brothers will cater for countless heirs, it's such a delightful society game!"

"Fi donc," she protested, laughing.

"Why? Don't you agree?"

She laughed more heartily, saying:

"No doubt you have had experiences of the sort?"

"Only theoretical knowledge."

"No young sprigs of your own?"

"I am alone; am unfortunately not in a position..."

"But there must be beautiful young women about, who will pose with as little on as Phidias's statues—or was it Michelangelo?"

Eduard was honestly pleased that Diana should have been introduced into the conversation. His thoughts lingered upon the vision of her as Atalanta, he saw her ankles, her throat, again, and the dauntless line of her profile. Hard upon the vision came one of her in a close-fitting sweater, standing in the bows of a ship; then, another, when she wore a black evening dress, low-cut; he lost all sense of the passage of time as a hundred other postures, talks, looks, and thoughts drifted by, till at last the scene enacted this very morning on the flight of steps, between the two guardian lions, rose to his mind.... He sat brooding longer than Adelheid had expected, and it was with instinctive delicacy that she asked very softly:

"Or am I perhaps indiscreet?"

Eduard, who had lost his mother early and had no sisters, had from childhood been on brotherly terms of affection with this cousin. As a lieutenant, then eighteen years of age, he had confided his first and only love affair to Adelheid who was ten years his senior and the mother of two boys. The confidence had taken place on this very sofa, as she had just reminded him. After the manner of young men, his avowal to a woman who was still charming with the freshness of youth and who had not yet become resigned to her fate, moved him to a deeper sentiment towards his confidante, so that his regard for her, hitherto quasi-filial, became sublimer, verging on love. Yet it was all no more than a breath, a sigh, on a September day, as evening was drawing near.

This afternoon, in the dimly lit room, as he sat near so good a friend, after the strange happenings of the morning, after the cruise in which the tides of love had ebbed and flowed along his lonely shores, the old-time trust revived in his heart, and he said, as he leaned back among the cushions, a cigarette between his teeth, with unwonted gravity in his voice:

"Don't you worry on my account, dear Adelheid. But, since rumour has travelled to your lagoon, I will make the fatal confession that I do not like the lady spoken of casually—at least I would prefer if you did not do so..."

"Oh," she cried softly, taken aback.

"Well, you see," he continued tranquilly, "this is a far more serious affair than that other long ago, although at that time we had to do with a young duchess. Meanwhile, for these ten years, calm has prevailed, no wind has stirred to fill the sails of my outlandish vessel. And even now—I hardly know if I dare venture on the voyage..."

She was all ears, eager and inspired.

"Is it to be a long journey?" she inquired at length.

He stood up, saying curtly:

"It will be this journey, dear Adelheid, or not at all."

He frightened her. Eduard was looked upon by his family as a crank and a libertarian, but one nevertheless who would guard the old traditions from tarnish or decay. Now it seemed all at once as if he were resolved to break with the conventions proper to a ruling house. Confused and perplexed, she asked:

"Does your—does anyone know?..."

"No one can know what does not yet exist—although Papa has had his medicine to swallow already... But I wanted you to know what a jade fate is. As for me," and now he spoke with his customary persiflage, "usque ad naufragium I'll sail alone—a simpler and cheaper way. Please forgive me the melodramatic intermezzo I've been inflicting upon you. The danger is not great.... Have you heard from Papa? Heinrich writes me that the doctor finds him much as usual. Don't you think I ought to go and see him?"

"Are you then on the homeward road? You told me, did you not, that you have been yachting, with friends.... Where have you been, and how has the cruise pleased you, if one may ask?"

"Mediterranean, Adriatic. Exquisite aimlessness, sometimes under sail, at others by steam. No museums; nothing but wind and deck chairs. When we leave here, we're to cruise down the Dalmatian coast...."

"That reminds me. Last Tuesday Countess Münsterberg was here. You remember, the woman with the feline movements, and the rather mad vagaries. Ah, you were the more fortunate onlooker!"

"On her way home?"

"She wanted to take the steamer to Ragusa next day; it's a tiresome journey via Trieste, you know. I can't understand how any one can bear to live in so out-of-the-way a place!"

Eduard made some quick mental calculations: If we call on Olivia, Diana will at length find a background. A unique opportunity to see her in such surroundings. What for, though? Know everything beforehand. All the same...

Then he said:

"Yes, my dear Adelheid! How can anyone bear to live in so out-of-the-way a place?"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The morning light shone down limpid and warm in the courtyard of the Armenian monastery on the island in the lagoon; and as the slanting shadows of column and arch fell athwart the cloistered ways, the shafts and crosses and arches were figured on the marble flooring, creating as it were a second architectural masterpiece.

Two human shadows came to mix their contours with those of the masonry. A tall, black-robed elderly monk was leaning against one of the pillars, and was speaking quietly but earnestly to an old man, likewise clad in black, who was bending his head in order to be on a level with the eyes of his interlocutor, and was listening attentively. Both men had flowing white beards. In the court round which the cloisters were built, there was a little fountain plashing in the sunshine, and on the edge of its basin sat a young woman lazily stroking a great cat which responded with sensual delight to her caresses, arching its back and raising its tail as her hand passed from its neck and down its spine.

All four of these sentient creatures were being penetrated with the sun's rays, and three of them appeared to be so content as to be wholly without a desire of any sort. Only he who had vowed to renounce the world, seemed to be a prey to passionate impulses.

"Even a convent is unable to kill the impulsive force of man," thought Diana, as her eyes travelled from the calm face of her father, to the glossy coat of the animal, now stroked into ecstatic quietude; as she considered her own mood, and then compared these three states of beatific tranquillity with the secret flame which consumed the monk. "Maybe my father only attained his present condition of meditative peace after death had deprived him of his companion. Helena! The name rose from his very heart when he uttered it yesterday. And she died in giving birth to a son whom he never sees...."

The two men separated, and her father turned to seek her out. With infinite precaution, lest she disturb the sleeping cat, she slid down from the basin's rim and crossed the flags to where he stood. As she went, she noticed that the well-tended beds were planted with vegetables, and the aroma of damp earth rose to her nostrils.

"They must have watered the young shoots before the sun got round," she thought, vaguely.

The conversation which the meeting with the monk had interrupted was now resumed as father and daughter paced up and down beneath the Gothic arches.

"As I looked at you both," began Diana, "the layman seemed to be the more spiritual of the two. What had occurred to excite the Armenian?"

"I have known him these twenty years," said the old man, passing his ivory-handled stick into the small of his back and resting his two hands on it at either end. "In those days, when I was engaged on excavation work in Anatolia, he spoke with just the same animation. His people out there are still being harried by the Turks, and he imagines I can pull strings on Armenia's behalf because I occasionally dine at the embassy in London."

"Have you ties out there?"

"I don't keep them up now. But you were in those parts not so long ago, and at cross purposes, it seemed to me."

"Not at cross purposes, Father."

"What about the heart—did you not write to me that...?"

She hung on his arm, saying:

"When will my heart beat a steady rhythm?"

"As soon as it beats slower, Diana," he assured her, looking at her out of friendly eyes, while she clung to him more resolutely than ever.

"When did your heart begin to beat slower, Father?"

"A long while ago."

"How long?"

"When my hair turned white."

"I wish mine were grey," she said, a smile on her lips.

"I have no wish that mine be brown again. I love age. It seems to me like a statue one has dug up out of the ground: more lovely than a new one could ever be, even though a limb should be lacking."

He paused by a capital which had fallen from one of the columns in the cloisters and now lay amid the grass, surrounded by purple iris, looking for all the world as if it had just been shovelled out of the earth and the column to which it belonged lay still beneath the soil.

"What purpose can this old thing serve, I wonder?" He stood contemplating it pensively.

"It will catch the dews from heaven in its convolutions so that birds may come and slake their thirst," answered Diana.

He looked up, and they resumed their walk.

"How charmingly you choose your words," he said after a while. "But my birds are all flown and seek other springs."

"Let me fly free a little longer, spreading my wings over the endless seas that lie beyond this lagoon. Do you hear how the gulls are calling?"

She pulled herself away from his arm as if to get nearer to the waters which lapped round the island's sandy shores. He stood awaiting her pleasure, a smile irradiating his face. He watched her as she took off her wide-brimmed hat and swung it over her arm, while shaking out her curls as if to feel the sea-wind through her locks. Soon, she turned to him again, took his hand in hers, and kissed it.

"Forgive me," she said. "It is barely a day since I left the yacht, and the scream of a seagull fills me with longing. How will the bird fare inland?"

"And what about Sidney?"

"Sidney? Would you not like to have him back with you again?"

"He left of his own accord, two years ago. I cannot put constraint upon grown-up children."

"Is he getting—sufficient money from you?"

"Only a little sum, hardly enough to live even modestly upon, the same I wanted you to have when you decided to fend for yourself. I have no more to give."

"But he needs a great deal."

"He's never written to ask for more. Is he earning nothing? Is he not drawing?"

"He did—a little modelling recently."

"Ah? Caricatures? Animals?"

"No, a figure."

"A man's?"

"No, mine."

The father asked no further. He had an allegorical turn of mind, and the faculty of seeing symbolical meanings in things. He saw his two children before him in fancy, and marvelled at the idea that one of them should serve as the beautiful material for the art of the other. The sense of liberation, which he was invariably aware of when confronted by the work of a master, became associated with this symbolical conception, so that he felt only allegory and form, and that the two were mysteriously intertwined. He lost himself in a series of strange conclusions, wherein a mythical brother wedded his mythical sister; he then returned to his own fatherhood and let his fancy roam on the thought how the mother of these two children (who had always seemed to him the symbol of beauty) was reproduced in the form of Diana, while his own plastic talents had been reincarnated in Sidney's hands. Thus plunged in meditation, the old man strolled along at Diana's side. After a while he seemed to arouse himself as if from slumber, and was about to ask if the modelling had been successful, when he became aware of a quickening in Diana's step, a tall apparition arising in the path, and of greetings exchanged.

Eduard, who had spoken of the San Lazzaro monastery with Diana, and whose thoughts were wholly centred upon her, had come over to the island this morning on the chance of meeting her there. As the father slowly aroused himself from his reverie and observed the cordiality of the encounter between the two young people, it was borne in upon him how far he was removed from the trend of his daughter's destiny. He observed the countenance of the man, suffused with inner happiness, and, guessing all this signified, he turned his eyes away as the two, like a bridal pair, came towards him. Diana introduced the prince, whose bow was deeper than he himself was aware.

"I'm disturbing you, intruding on your morning serenity, I fear," Eduard said hesitantly, and his tone took Diana by surprise, for it had such a boyish ring.

"Certainly not, Your Highness," said the old gentleman. "Diana has been telling me how well you keep the party entertained on board. And to think that on her old father's account she should have had to forgo those pleasures!"

"I have to thank you for your invitation, Herr von Wassilko," and Eduard felt how much more seemly the name sounded when addressed to this white-haired veteran than to the young whipper-snapper in Berlin.

They continued their stroll to the accompaniment of such civilities until they reached a stone bench at the other end of the cloisters. The seat was bathed in sunshine, and the three sat enjoying the warmth. The old man was pleased with the young man's manner, though it seemed a trifle too conventional for his taste, and he asked himself why it was that Diana had singled out this particular member of the yachting party for specially friendly commendation. Diana did not join in the conversation; she was waiting for one of those airy nothings which the prince was wont to indulge in when he talked.

But Eduard was thoroughly enjoying these exchanges. He wanted more of them, and he was delighted when the old gentleman rose to his fly and began to discuss personalities moving in the diplomatic circles of London society. The prince was wholly indifferent to such people as a rule, but he listened now, for the pleasant gossip gave him a sense of security, showed him the social background against which Diana's father moved and had his being. At last he was getting something he had long sought for, the confirmation of his own surmises as to Diana's status and upbringing. Inasmuch as, under stress of the remnant of inherited prejudices which persisted despite all his open-mindedness, he was on the lookout for a uniform in which he could clothe the members of this remarkable family, thereby raising them to his own level—he showed towards this man whose whole demeanour and aspect betokened a rare intelligence, a suavity which his father had never been able to make him exhibit towards his real equals.

"Do you know San Lazzaro, Sir," asked Wassilko, rising and pointing to the monastery buildings. "I fear I am keeping you too long in England when you should be enjoying a glimpse of Armenia."

"I know the place well. Here, too, there is at least one English room."

"Ah, Lord Byron's? Is he a favourite of yours?"

"Now at last," thought Diana, "he will raise his mask."

But the prince was silent. He was asking himself whether Diana, this child of liberty, would ever adapt herself to the laws of his class (at least to the extent of an outward observance of its conventions). In his perplexity, he had been tempted, that morning, to emphasize, before her and her father, his own rank and station. Now, when the name of the English poet cropped up in the air radiant with morning sunlight, he looked past the questioner and Diana, across the glistening waters of the lagoon, and said:

"As a poet I appreciate him greatly. But as a nobleman he seems to me to have been somewhat of a wastrel."

Hardly had he spoken, when Diana realized what was going on within Eduard, and why he separated at this particular moment in time the poet from the nobleman. At the same instant she saw through the whole complicated network of considerations and hesitations in which he had for so long been enmeshed. Nevertheless, she was not going to allow that there was anything amiss in the famous adventurer's conduct; she was on the defensive in his behalf; but her training hindered her from taking up the cudgels by word of mouth until her father had spoken. He, meanwhile, had been tranquilly awaiting the prince's reply and now made ready to answer, beginning with grave formality.

"Sir, your own birth and station would naturally predispose you to consider the nobleman before the poet. But we others, who have no ties either as Englishmen or as noblemen, may be permitted to judge him by his verses, whose beauty even you are willing to concede."

Diana, who had listened in silence while the two men were talking, now seized her opportunity for the defence. "I can see him as he sat at his table in a cell over there in the east wing. He would rise from his stool after hours of toil, for the light of day was fading and he could no longer decipher the words in his Armenian Bible. Approaching the window he would look out, his ear bent towards the town over there, across the lagoon. It must have been in June. He calls his servant, who makes ready the gondola. Byron steps down to the water's edge, indifferent to the little waves which wet his feet. Suddenly, he flings his coat and boots into the boat, plunges into the water, and swims to the town. Dripping, he steps ashore, crosses the Piazzetta, and changes his clothes in the rooms of one of his inamoratas, dances the night through, and returns next morning to the holy fathers to resume his studies and his translation of the sacred text. Yes, indeed, Prince! In such circumstances one may well remain unproductive as a poet—and scandalous as a nobleman!"

Eduard, forgetful of his pose, listened to Diana's tirade with growing appreciation. Her voice, low and melodious at first, had increased in volume as she warmed to her subject, until, at the last, she had flung out the words sharply, turning her shaft against him in a direct attack. He smiled as he said:

"Mademoiselle has sacrificed the poet. Nothing can hinder me now from sacrificing the nobleman."

"You could not venture to speak in that way in England, Diana," commented her father, wishing to pour oil on troubled waters, while he thought: "They must be on very unfriendly terms, I fear."

CHAPTER TWELVE

The simple meal came to an end quicker than any of the party expected, and Scherer was thinking how difficult its preparation must have been, for Herr von Wassilko lived in two rambling, scantily furnished rooms lacking all the amenities that would have tended to make guests comfortable. And yet, in spite of obvious drawbacks, everything had gone off without a hitch. The very simplicity of the entertainment was a factor of its success. Mary had noiselessly attended to every one's needs, and talk flowed easily around the table under the red-shaded lamp, the only spot of light in a room where the shadows lingered. The old gentleman and Scherer had contributed most to the conversation, for they found one another congenial. Diana's attention was divided, for she had to play hostess and see that Mary provided all that was needed for the comfort of her father's guests. Eduard could not take his eyes off her as, sitting there in her flowing lilac gown, she acquitted herself of her part with so much ease and dignity. Before him arose visions of her presiding at other tables, not at official banquets so much, as at homely gatherings, homely both in the worldly and in the idyllic meaning of the word. He fancied himself unobserved, but Diana felt his eyes upon her, and she knew (since she had so suddenly plumbed the depths of his thoughts that morning) that this evening he would come to certain conclusions concerning her, conclusions which would be the result of long previous cogitation.

Kyril, taciturn by nature and only able to give vent to his ideas in spontaneous debates, had met so many party members since his arrival in Venice and had learned of so many underground intrigues, that his tendency to keep silence in the presence of others was accentuated this evening. In addition, his host's appearance fascinated him, and he sat observing the old gentleman attentively. Wilhelm, alone of the company, appeared to be disappointed. He had expected to meet an astrologer, a man who could read the meaning of the stars, or, at least, an alchemist, some wonder-worker whose house would be full of maps and globes, of bottles, retorts, and measuring glasses. Yet in the hall, as he entered this sometime wealthy palace which had now fallen on evil days, instead of armour and chains, all he saw was a row of pegs each bearing a hat belonging to the master of the house. To this display, the newcomers reacted differently. Kyril sneered inwardly at so much needless formality; Scherer mentally appraised their cost; and the prince noted the absence of the tall hat, which might of course be in safe keeping in one of the old man's boxes.

As Herr von Wassilko rose from table, he said:

"I trust you will excuse so primitive an entertainment, it is all the impoverished descendant of an old family can afford. But I prefer to rent a couple of rooms such as these, rather than put up in a hotel. I cannot help envisaging the persons who have been there before me, perhaps vacated the premises an hour before, sat upon the same chairs, eaten from the same spoons, and set the air tingling with the sound of their senseless talk. I cannot help being aware of this as I sit at table; the whole atmosphere is full of it."

They took their places in a semicircle before the open glass doors leading to the balcony, two of the chairs being comfortable modern ones, and the remainder stiff and austere, recalling the furniture of an earlier period. The host, though his guests had pressed him to take one of the easy chairs, elected to sit in a large Gothic chair devoid of any kind of upholstering. Eduard and Scherer, loath to make themselves more comfortable than the old man, had ensconced themselves in equally rigid seats, while Diana, throwing a huge Venetian shawl about her shoulders, had pulled a dumpty to the step leading on to the balcony and had settled down there out of range of the lamp and of Eduard's persistent eyes. Only from time to time was she for a moment lit up in the flickering light of a passing gondola.

"Thus it remains for the two young gentlemen to play the grandfather," said the host pleasantly.

Wilhelm, who had expected as much, immediately threw himself into the depths of one of the arm-chairs, exclaiming:

"That's just what I feel too! And we'll have to be taken great care of for we are the hope of the nation."

"I accept the rôle with pleasure," said Kyril, suiting the action to the word. "It seems to me the only thing I can do under the circumstances, though I don't feel in the least bit grandfatherly. Those other chairs take us back to earlier centuries, reminding us of the might wielded by long extinct courts. At best they should be in a museum, where a protective cord would intimate to the man of the twentieth century that he may only gaze on them from afar—if, that is to say, he ever finds time in this age of hustle to study such antiquities."

"You would thus appear to be the most advanced among us, and so, I suppose, the youngest, Doctor?"

"His Highness is no older," said Kyril grumpily.

"And now you must draw their horoscopes," cried Wilhelm eagerly. "You have all the necessary apparatus, haven't you?" He sprang up from his chair, ready to fetch the supposed implements, and burning with curiosity to see them. But Scherer held him back.

"We must not trouble Herr von Wassilko today."

"Ah, my daughter has been giving me away! I gather the young gentleman looks upon me as a second Swedenborg."

"Was Swedenborg in Venice once?" asked Diana dreamily. She had paid no heed to the rest of the conversation, but the seer's name had caught her attention, and she sensed an affinity between him and her father, though the latter had seemed inclined to repudiate anything of the kind.

"Yes," he said, "Swedenborg was here, anno 1718. That's nearly two hundred years ago, Diana."

Eduard pricked up his ears. The quiet way in which the words were spoken, the mystery surrounding the Swedish mystic, the old-fashioned use of the Latin word, the affectionate tone in which he had pronounced Diana's beautiful name, the resemblance of his manner of speech to hers, so pensive and comfortable, as if the best had been left unsaid; his movements, as he leaned forward in his high-backed Gothic chair, to address his daughter sitting at the open door; his flowing, white beard, lit up in the rays of the lamp which had been brought over to where they sat; the contrast between this venerable countenance and her face, lifted in childlike expectancy to his, questioning and eager, suffused with a ruddy glow from the shaded lamp—all these things combined to fill Eduard with a sudden rush of tender impatience, and his lonely heart longed to be linked for ever with such fellow mortals as these, persons who realized freedom through self-restraint. Now, for the first time, he wished that Diana might read his feelings clearly in his eyes. He stepped forward towards the circle of light, intending, while turning his back upon the others, to be visible to her alone. But he was arrested half way by a sonorous voice inquiring:

"What, actually, did this man Swedenborg achieve?"

It was Kyril who spoke from the encompassing shadows. Diana turned her eyes from the contemplation of her father towards the spot whence the voice had come, and Eduard perceived that her brows were puckered where a moment before they had been serene. But Wassilko answered unperturbed:

"He left us twenty volumes of natural science, dealing in especial with mineralogy; he was a member of many learned societies; and, on account of his achievements, his name has been entered in the annals of science."

Kyril stirred uneasily. Imbued with a fanatical conception of an imaginary future, ever in conflict with prejudice and tradition, he had found no time, pressed as he was with the tasks imposed by his own spirit and by the position he held in the party, to bring equipoise into his nature. Thus it was that, with all the powers of his mind, he had resisted the daimonic forces within him, banishing them whenever he felt that they were raising their heads, looking upon them as some out-worn conceit that must at all cost be overcome. And yet he was attracted by that other world, lured by the unreasoning realm of emotion, especially by the realm of music; the cosmos of impenetrable laws fascinated him, drawing him away from the tangible laws of economics, and subjecting him against his will to its caprices. Now, when he learned for the first time that a visionary, a man towards whom he felt a fundamental mistrust, had likewise been an investigator in the field of positive science, he realized (for gifted natures almost invariably apply the lessons from the life histories of notable personalities to themselves) that there was a possibility that he himself might some day lapse into a similar state of spiritual depravity. He said after a pause:

"Yet had he produced nothing more than these works of science, he would hardly have penetrated into the ranks of the famous and dwelt in the memories of men. I had myself never heard of his achievements in this field, nor do I fancy have most people."

"That's true enough," confirmed Scherer. "I remember when Professor Somebody-or-Other was giving the memorial lecture at the Stockholm academy, he stated that he himself was far from knowing all the works of the master whose memory he was honouring."

A laugh rippled round the circle, and the old gentleman added:

"You are right, and I, too, am no wiser than that laudator officialis."

Kyril stuck to his point.

"But what about those other works of his which dealt with the occult? His so-called 'supernatural' ideas must be familiar to you. Tell me whether in these there is anything tangible, anything of lasting value."

Diana turned away and gazed down upon the canal, thinking: "He should be climbing in the rigging, using his splendid limbs, or biting into an apple with his dazzling teeth. He is a fish out of water in Venice and in my father's company."

Eduard, who had followed her movement and had dimly caught the expression on her face as she turned away, was thinking: "If I were sitting beside her in that gondola now drifting by, I would try to whisper away all the things that are causing her pain at this moment."

"Such a question is very difficult to answer," said Herr von Wassilko, sitting upright in his high-backed chair. "These things are impalpable, and durability is hardly one of their characteristics. They do not seem bound by time, but only to men (and there have been such since man first began to think) who, following the laws of their own nature, aspire to bring them into closer relation with their own humanity."

"Very ably put," thought Scherer, whose habit it was to evade such transcendental questions by similar generalizations. He felt the old man was his equal as a man of the world, and entirely failed to perceive that the reticence of the reply masked a believing soul and was not the result, as it would have been in Scherer's case, of consideration for a cultured, though thoroughly rational, outlook which had to be upheld from two sides at once.

Kyril was silent. He felt that he had been worsted, and since the others felt the same, they were grateful to Wilhelm for his intervention when he said innocently:

"If only I knew whether one could learn the art of seeing spirits! I once asked an expert in Berlin after a séance, and he said: 'Your friends tell me you play the lute. Well, if one has music in one's heart one is not far from the occult world.'"

"Where is your lute, Wilhelm?" asked Diana.

There was a general sigh of relief at this change of subject. They spoke of musical instruments; and when Wilhelm came back with his lute in his hand (he rarely went out of an evening without it and Venice was the last place in the world where he would neglect to take it), Wassilko said:

"I'm sorry there is neither a piano nor a violin here. But my landlord possesses a wonderful 'cello, and, since I used to play the instrument long ago, he always leaves it in its case in my room whenever I come to stay."

He got up, and after a short absence, returned with the 'cello. His guests hastened to relieve him of his burden, and gathered round to examine it and pass their comments. Wilhelm alone had not risen. He was back in the huge arm-chair, which he had vacated for no more than a minute to fetch the lute. Now he said very softly to Diana:

"No one is going to take this chair from me this evening, after what he said about them—unless, of course, you have a fancy for it, Diana."

His gentle considerateness went to her heart. She felt sundered from Eduard, wounded by Kyril, disturbed by the course the talk had taken; she had more and more cut herself adrift from them all, giving herself up to her own train of thought as she gazed into the darkness without, and was dimly aware from time to time of the lap of waters, the emergent lights, and the cadenced calls, arising from the canal below. The boyish words spoken to her by the young man lounging in the easy chair had fallen with so friendly a lilt upon her ear that she was grateful. Franklin's image rose before her, and she wondered why he had stayed away, whether he dreaded being together with her and her father; then, again, her thoughts turned to the prince.

Meanwhile Kyril had possessed himself of the 'cello, had sat down, tuned it, and had become wholly absorbed in the instrument.

"Will you play something?" asked Scherer.

"Alone?"

"Wilhelm's lute will replace the piano as accompaniment."

Every one was delighted. Wilhelm, who could not read music, playing by ear and adapting his accompaniment to almost any song, agreed to do his best, but insisted he be allowed to remain seated where he was in the "revolutionist's chair" as he called it. Kyril exchanged with the prince so as to sit more commodiously with the instrument. He glanced with misgivings at Wilhelm and the lute; then, without preface or explanation, started to play Bach's suite for 'cello. Wilhelm, who knew it well, was too alarmed to venture an accompaniment. He would not dare to make up something out of his own head to music such as this. So he laid his lute aside. Kyril glanced up for a moment, looked his appreciation, and continued to play alone. As the mellow tones fell into the quietude of this warm spring night, Diana sat up and turned towards the player. At first her blood surged wrathfully through her veins, as if she had been touched with a fencing foil. Then the music subjected her to its mighty melodies. She sat very straight on her low stool, her black shawl slipping unheeded from her shoulders.

The music penetrated her whole being, sapping her combativeness, and luring her eyes to the figure of the Russian as he played his 'cello in the ruddy glow of the lamp. She saw his powerful right hand wielding the bow, the fingers of his left, agile and dexterous, drawing vibrant notes from the strings, his muscular legs pressing the red-brown wood between his knees, and, silhouetted against the carved back of a chair once occupied by a Venetian nobleman, the fair head of a fanatical Russian peasant bent over the instrument as if over a woman he held against him while with his right hand he caressed her to responsiveness and with his left he toyed with her curving throat....

Eduard was all too aware of her absorption in the man who was ravishing the company with his music, and at this minute he would gladly have exchanged the realm of his father and his brothers for the spiriting of his fiddle to his side that he might pit his musicianship against this alien's.

A long silence followed upon the final notes of the suite, broken at last by Wilhelm, who said: "I'm sorry, but I really could not give you any assistance in that. I had thought you were going to give us some Chopin."

They laughed at the speaker's naïve excuses, and the host together with Scherer and Eduard, gave voice to their appreciation. But Diana, awaking as it were from a spell, rose and stepped out on to the balcony, shaking off the magic which had bound her and to which she had surrendered against her will. She leaned for a moment against the iron balustrade, then turned, and, stretching her arms towards the glass door (a gesture which suggested a longing to embrace this evening so pregnant with melancholy) picked up the wrap which had fallen from her shoulders, saying: