Olive was not happy. She was one of those women whose health depends upon their spirits, and of late she had felt her loneliness to be almost unbearable. Her youth had cried for all, or nothing. She would have her love winged and crowned; he should come to her before all the world. Never would she set her foot in secret gardens, or let joy come to her by hidden ways, but now she faced the future and saw that it was grey, and she was afraid.
It seemed to her that she was destined to live always in the Social Limbo, suspended between heaven and earth, an alien in the drawing-room and not received in the kitchen. One might as well be déclassée at once, she thought, and yet she knew that that must be hell.
If Avenel came to Florence and sought her out would she be weak as Gemma had been, light as Mamie was? Olive knelt for a while on the stones, and her lips moved, though her prayer was inarticulate.
Sunset was burning across the Val d’Arno, and the river flowed as a stream of pure gold under the dark of the historic bridges. Already lights sparkled in the windows of the old houses over the Ponte Vecchio, and the bells of all the churches were ringing the Ave Maria as she passed through the whining crowd of beggars at the gate of the Campo Santo and went slowly down the hill. The blessed hour of peace and silence was over now, and she must trudge back through the clamorous streets to be with Mamie, to meet the Marchese’s horribly observant eyes, and to be everlastingly quiet and complacent and useful. She was paid for that.
She was going up to her room when the lodge porter ran up the stairs after her with a letter. “For you, signorina.”
It was from Edna.
“Dear Olive”—she had written,—“I could not wait for trains so papa has hired a car, and we shall motor straight to Genoa and catch the boat there. I want to go home to America pretty badly.—Your loving friend,
“Edna.
“P.S.—I am still right down glad you told me.—E. M.”
One of the servants came to Olive’s room presently.