“I come as a student,” he explained. “It is my second visit this week. The organisation here has no superior in Europe, and in many respects we shall take it as our model.”
“In what respect will you not take it?” she asked, as they passed a broad lawn where pale men and women sat in the sun.
“In our dealing with such as those,” he answered, indicating the convalescents.
“They seem to be dealt with kindly,” she observed. “They look contented.”
“Now, yes. Most of them, you can see, are persons who in health are accustomed to work, and not at light employment. They belong to the class who can rest without starving only when they fall sick and go to a hospital. Most of those patients on the lawn are done with the doctor and the nurse. Time, fresh air, good nourishment, and rest are their needs. In a few days they will be dismissed as cured. The demand for beds is pressing. Their room in the wards is wanted. They must go. They will not be strong enough to do heavy work, the only kind for which most of them are fitted. If a man is friendless he has an excellent chance to starve because the hospital turns him out before he is well enough to earn a living. No employer wants a gaunt-visaged convalescent.”
“You would provide for him until he is able to provide for himself,” she said, comprehendingly.
“Yes. We should not pronounce him cured until he was strong enough to earn his living.”
They entered an avenue of poplars, on either side of which stood the rows of isolated wards, and were alone except for the flitting presence here and there of a white-jacketed attendant or a nurse in sombre gown. Mario told her that what she had made known to him at Palazzo Barbiondi had lit up his world again. When the news of the wedding reached him, he said, his thoughts were black indeed. It was as if the sun had fallen just as it had begun to fill the east with glory. The love of her had given him a new heart, a new mind, new senses. Suddenly all life had been transfigured with an infinite beauty. It was in the railway carriage returning to Milan that he learned of the wedding. He told her of the change that came over his spirit. Bitterly he cried out against her and the universal heart. The rapture that had raised him into heaven broke and he dropped into the pit of hell. And so it was until he learned that she was the dupe of—the forged message. He was glad for the warmth of sympathy that then suffused his being. He saw the cruel facts that had ruled her, the forces that had driven her to the other’s wish.
“Our temple is in ruins,” he said, filled with pity for her and himself; “but perhaps it will some time be rebuilt. It must be!” he declared, passionately. “This love is a necessity of my life, and will be so long as life shall endure.”
“But it must be content now,” she warned him, “to live as does the edelweiss of the Alps—that lonely plant which grows amid the snow.”