On the fourth morning, as she was reaching the school, he passed ahead of her, and pushed a letter under the door.
It was inscribed, “To the First who shall enter.” It ran thus:
Signorina,
I write to crave your pardon, and to explain my apparent impertinence in following you on the street. But how could a man of any sensibility endure the thought of so much grazia and gentilezza walking unprotected in a city with whose iniquities he is but too well acquainted? I cannot conceive of the false security or the remissness that so exposes a dove to falcons. Fear not that I shall myself presume to offer the offense which it is my determination to prevent others from offering. Regard me solely as a cavaliere whose courage and strength are dedicated to your service.
Suo devotissimo,
GIULIO FORTI.
How delicate! How knightly! Her climbing of the stairs was sleep-walking. She adjusted the slats of the blind so that, unseen, she could look at him where he loitered in the doorway across the street. He must have very little to do, really, to afford all that time. But of course it was vacation for him as for her. And he had the resource of cigarettes. Now he was talking with the porter, of whom he had just begged a light. He took off his straw hat to fan himself with it, for even on the shady side of the freshly watered street it was hot weather. He was a pretty boy—her words for him were “a handsome man”—with a covering of close black astrakhan to his small round head, a speaking eye, dainty features, and a warm-toned skin agreeably sprinkled with freckles. He wore the carefully fitted clothes of a good class, new, but not too new, and a light silk cravat chosen with thought.
Camilla that day omitted scales and exercises. Her piano could be heard in the street. She played her show pieces, “Les Cloches du Monastère,” “Les Soupirs,” “La Caressante,” various Chopin waltzes.
When she came forth at noon, and her body-guard sprang from his door to fall into the relation of a dog at her heels, he first begged wistfully with his eyes to know by a look from her that he was understood and forgiven. She gave him the look he wanted. A moment later he hustled off the sidewalk a man who, he considered, had passed her too closely. There was a high word or two, then the workman grumblingly fell away from the irate young gentleman shaking his slender cane.
They were new heavens and new earth between which Camilla now moved forth at morning, with an oleander at her breast, token that she was a woman and adorned herself to be the more loved. For there was no supposing that the vague fever in her veins, glowing by day and filling the night with dreams, had not been caught, by a contagion as strange as subtle, from the fever in his brown eyes.