“True. For example, I am far from certain that I know the thought of your New Democracy—what you are striving to do for Italy. And yet,” she added, reflectively, “I think I know.”
“Do you understand that we aim to fill our country with true friends—to teach Italy that it is possible for all her children to live and prosper in their own land?”
“Yes,” she answered, positively, gladly.
“Then you know the thought of the New Democracy.”
Evincing an interest that he felt was not feigned, she asked him how the cause fared, and he told her that among the people it gained, but in Parliament set-backs, discouragements, were almost the rule.
“But you will fight on!” she exclaimed, out of the conviction he gave her of valour.
“Ah, yes; we shall fight on.”
The hush of the night’s first moments had fallen upon the scene. What light tarried in the west showed the mountain’s contour, but relieved the darkness no longer. Yellow windows studded the lower plains and the woody heights. They could see above the trees the shadowy towers of Villa Barbiondi, and only a little way before them now, but still invisible, stood the gates of the villa park.
They had reached the foot of a sharp rise in the road when two blazing orbs shot over the crest of the hill, bathing horses and riders in a stream of light. A motor car came to a standstill, and the older of the two occupants, a tall man in the fifties, sprang down nimbly.
“Hera! Hera!” he cried. “Heaven be praised!”