THE DESIRE OF LIFE

THE DESIRE OF LIFE
By
MATILDE SERAO
AUTHOR OF
"AFTER THE PARDON,"
"THE CONQUEST OF ROME," ETC.
Translated from the Italian
by
WILLIAM COLLINGE, M.A.
London: GREENING & CO.
New York: BRENTANO'S

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

"How light it is still!" said Don Vittorio Lante, after a long silence.

"Evening falls much later among the high mountains," suggested Lucio Sabini.

The great vault of the sky was ascending, as they were ascending, from the level of the Val Bregaglia; it passed over their heads and kept rising, as their eyes contemplated it quietly, amongst the steep mountain peaks, now quite green with trees and bushes, now bare and rugged; rising so immensely towards the horizon, as if they should not perceive its descending curve. It was the sky of an uncertain summer day that during the afternoon had been softly blue, veiled by transparent clouds, but now had become a very light grey, of great purity and clearness.

"It is eight o'clock," exclaimed Don Vittorio Lante, pursuing his quiet thoughts.

"Eight o'clock," affirmed Lucio Sabini slowly.

The bells of their horses tinkled faintly in their tranquil ascent; the torrent on their right, at times violent and covered with the foam whitening on its rocks, at times clear and narrow like a brook amidst green meadows, rumbled noisily and softly as it descended from the white and cold summits whither they were ascending, on its way to the warm and monotonous plains whence they had come.

"We shall not arrive before half-past eleven," said Vittorio Lante, in a low voice.

"Not before," affirmed Lucio Sabini, in the same tone. Both were smoking cigarettes: fine smoke shadows, not clouds, scarcely floated round their faces, as their carriage continued to ascend, to the calm and regular paces of the horses, along the accustomed road, the long road that climbs, amidst a continual renewing of small and large valleys, of narrow gorges, and vast stretches, between the two mountain sides on right and left. At Chiavenna they found that the diligence had left, owing to a change in the time-table from the previous year, and for five hours a hired carriage had been conveying them towards the austere Grissons, whose outposts were not yet distinguishable.

"What does it matter?" said Vittorio Lante, still continuing his thought aloud. "It is better to arrive late at St. Moritz than lose a night at Chiavenna."

"Or at Vicosoprano," concluded Lucio Sabini, throwing away the end of his cigarette.

Both gentlemen settled themselves better in their places, and drew the large English travelling-rug over their limbs, with the quiet gestures of those who are used to long journeys. Just an hour ago they had halted at Vicosoprano to rest their horses, since they could not obtain a change: they arrived at six and left at seven. After giving a glance at the new, white, and melancholy Hôtel Helvetia, where, in a small meadow in front of the hotel, and around its peristyle, male and female figures moved about aimlessly, dressed indifferently, with the insignificant and bored faces of those who are used to sojourning at solitary pensions on seven francs a day, and while the annoying bell of the round table of the "Helvetia" was dinning in their ears, they descended at the old rustic inn, "The Crown." Round the arch of the low and broad Swiss doorway ran a motto in Gothic characters, and the small central balcony had four or five little bright geranium plants and purple gentians: a resounding and black wooden staircase led to the first floor. The innkeeper's blond and florid daughter, with heightened colour, had served them rapidly and silently with a simple and characteristic dinner: to wit, a thick and steaming vegetable soup, trout in butter, roast fowl, and lastly, English sponge cake, with acid and fresh gooseberry jam. At the door, as they were getting into their carriage to set out again, a very blond Swiss maiden offered them little bunches of cyclamen, which they still wore, although they were already slightly faded.

"Are you going to stop long up there, Vittorio?" asked Lucio Sabini, in a discreet tone.

"Three or four weeks, no longer; and you, Lucio?"

"I don't know; the same I think; I don't know exactly." And a slight smile, mingled with doubt, annoyance, and bitterness, appeared and disappeared about his lips. Even the face of his travelling companion became thoughtful.

Don Vittorio Lante was fair with thick and shining chestnut hair, chestnut eyes, now soft and now proud, but always expressive, and fair, curled moustaches. His features were fine and he seemed much younger than his thirty years; the complexion was delicate but vivacious. On the other hand, Lucio Sabini at thirty-five was distinctly dark, with black eyes, calm and thoughtful, pale complexion, very black hair and moustaches, while he was tall and thin of figure. Vittorio Lante was of medium height, but well made and agile. Both were wrapped in thought, and they no longer smoked. Some time passed; suddenly something far on high gleamed whitely amidst the increasing shadows.

"It is the glacier," said Lucio Sabini; "the Forno Glacier." And as if that whiteness, already expanding in the night at the edge of the Val Bregaglia, had sent them an icy blast, they wrapped the rug closer round them, and hid their gloved hands under its covering.

"Do you expect to amuse yourself in the Engadine, Lucio?" asked Vittorio.

"Of course, I am sure to amuse myself very much, as I do every year."

"Leading a fashionable life?"

"No, making love."

"Have you come to the Engadine to love and to be loved, Lucio?"

"Oh, no," exclaimed the other, with a gentle movement of impatience and an ironical little smile. "I never said that: I said that I go to St. Moritz, as I do every year, to make love."

"That is to say—to flirt."

"Exactly: you say the English word, I the Italian."

Suddenly the whiteness that crowned Monte Forno seemed as if it had been extended to the sky, rendering it more vast; it was a great white cloud, soft and clear, since it preceded the moon. All the country changed its aspect. Before them stood out the great, green wall of trees, with almost the appearance of a peak, which separates the Engadine from the Val Bregaglia. Beneath the appearing and disappearing lunar brightness, behind the white cloud, a sinuous spiral disclosed itself amidst the wood like a soft ribbon that came and went, but ever climbed—the road which leads to the hill of the Maloja. Meanwhile, the carriage, reducing its pace, entered the first bend of the winding way; the clouds continued to increase, and there was a continuous alternating of light and shade, according as they conquered the moon or were conquered by her.

"You like flirting, Lucio?"

"Very much," replied the other, with an intense smile; "and this is an ideal country for love-making, Vittorio."

"I know it is. And do you sometimes grow fond of each other?"

"Sometimes I grow fond of them."

"And, perhaps, sometimes you fall in love?"

"One is always a little in love with the person to whom one makes love," said Lucio Sabini, in a low voice.

"But do you fall in love?" insisted Vittorio.

"Yes, I fall in love, too," Lucio confessed.

"And then? What do you do to cure yourself?" asked Vittorio Lante, with affectionate curiosity; "because you do cure yourself, don't you?"

"I keep on curing myself," replied the other sadly, regarding the clouds that were heaping above, as they became less white, obscuring and hiding all the light of the moon. "I cure myself of myself. And if I do not there is somebody who sees to curing me."

Suddenly it seemed as if a boundless sadness was emanating from what Lucio Sabini was saying and thinking, from what he was not saying and thinking. His head was slightly bowed, and his lowered lashes hid his glance.

"Then you are allowed to come to St. Moritz?" Vittorio asked in a low voice, as if he were afraid of being indiscreet.

"I am allowed to come," Lucio replied rather bitterly. "We can't travel together in summer; some family convenances must be obeyed, certain canons have to be observed—there are so many things, Vittorio! Well, I have two months of liberty, two beautiful months you understand, two long months; sixty times twenty-four hours in which I am free, in which I delude myself and believe I am free—I am free!"

At first his words came sadly, then with increasing violence, while the last words sounded like a cry of revolt from a heart oppressed by its slavery.

"Still, she loves you," said Vittorio sweetly, in a subdued tone.

"Yes, she loves me," admitted Lucio quietly.

"For some time, I think."

"For an eternity, for ten years."

Lucio Sabini in the gloaming looked fixedly at his companion; then without bitterness, without joy, he added in an expressionless voice:

"I love her."

Very slowly, to the soft and gentle tinkling of the horses' bells, the carriage traversed the tortuous road, through the wood and past some majestic walls, and, like a vision, the small castle of Renesse appeared on high, now to the right and now to the left. The air continued to grow colder. The coachman on the box seemed to be asleep or dreaming, as he drove his horses, with bent shoulders and bowed head; even the two horses seemed to be asleep or dreaming of the ascent to the Maloja, as they tinkled their bells. And in a dream firmament the clouds galloped bizarrely, as they were scattered by the wind, which up above must be blowing strongly.

"There is nothing more delightful or pleasing than to make love to these foreigners," resumed Lucio, in a light tone, but with a slight shade of emotion; "there are some adorable little women, and girls especially. Some of them are very fashionable and complex, others are simple and frank; but some are very inquisitive and quite distrustful of all Italians."

"How's that?" asked Vittorio Lante, not without anxiety.

"We Italians have a very bad reputation," Lucio replied calmly, as he lit a cigarette. "They obstinately believe us to be liars and inconstant in love affairs. Actors is the defensive word of these foreign women. But all the same they allow themselves to be attracted equally by our charm—because the men of their races do not trouble themselves to be charming—and by our ardour, assumed or real—because they never see their men ardent—and also by a certain invincible poetry that surrounds our country and ourselves."

"So an Italian can please and conquer mightily up there?"

"Very much so," replied Lucio serenely.

"And conquer seriously?" again added Vittorio.

"Seriously, no," answered Lucio. "We must not deceive ourselves; our attractions are for the most part of brief duration. When August is over at St. Moritz, to pass the first long week of September together at Lucerne, afterwards a few days in Paris—that suffices!"

"They forget?"

"They forget; our fascination comes from our presence. At a distance the lover dwindles: their English and Austrians, their Americans and Russians take them back—and all is over. A post card or two with a poetical motto; then nothing more."

"But if they don't forget?"

"That is seldom," murmured Lucio thoughtfully; "but it does happen. A Viennese, fair, slim, and most sympathetic ... two years ago ... she still remembers me."

"She hoped? She hopes?"

"She hoped; she hopes," replied Lucio thoughtfully.

"She didn't know...?"

"She knew nothing: the dear creatures never know anything: I try to make them know nothing."

"They think you free?"

"Most free."

"You deceive them?"

"I do not deceive them; I am silent"—and he smiled slowly.

"And what if one of them, more passionate, were to fall in love with you, and you seriously with her, Lucio?"

"That would be very serious indeed," murmured Lucio sadly.

"In fact, you are bound for ever, Lucio?" asked Vittorio, with melancholy.

"Yes; for ever," he affirmed, with that inexpressive voice of his, as if declaring an irrefutable fact.

A great gust of icy wind caught them, causing them to shudder and tremble with the cold. The great wall was passed, still a few minutes more and they would find themselves at the hill of the Maloja. The sky was quite white with little white clouds on one side, because the moon was passing behind them, while about the Margna—the great mountain with twin peaks nearly always covered with snow—the clouds had become black and threatening with rain and storm.

"Vittorio, Vittorio," exclaimed Lucio Sabini, in an altered voice; "adultery is a land of madness, of slavery and death. Don't give your youth and life to it as I have given mine, even to my last day. Beatrice and I have been intoxicated with happiness, but we are two unfortunates. I was twenty-five then, Vittorio, and she was three years older; but we never thought that we should throw away our every good, that is the one, the great, the only good—liberty! We are lost, Beatrice and I, in every way, both in our social life and in our consciences, not through remorse for our sin—no, for that was dear to us—but because of the ashes and poison it contains."

"Haven't you tried to free yourselves?" asked Vittorio timidly.

"I tried, but I was unsuccessful. Beatrice is older than I am," said Lucio gloomily, "and the idea of being left horrifies her."

"But she loves you, doesn't she? How can she see you unhappy?"

"Because she loved me, even she tried, the poor dear, to free me," Lucio Sabini resumed, with a voice almost oppressed with tears; "last year she wanted me to marry Bertha Meyer, the beautiful Viennese—an exquisite creature—but then she never succeeded. Poor, dear Beatrice! She suffered a thousand deaths. We suffered together. I love her tenderly, you understand; and, above all, I cannot see her suffer."

A sad and heavy silence fell upon the twain. Their teeth almost chattered from the severe cold which had surprised them, at that advanced hour of the evening on the high plain of the Maloja.

"Still," continued Lucio Sabini, "every now and then I feel my body, senses, and spirit weakened in this terrible slavery. Then, during these horrible crises, here and there I meet with other women, another woman—Bertha Meyer, who was so exquisite, or someone else—young, beautiful, free, with heart intact and fresh soul. In her come from afar, from countries which I know not, from a race that is foreign to me, I feel mysteriously the secret of my peace and repose, of the life that remains for me to live. Ah! what deep, what pungent nostalgia wounds me, Vittorio, through this fresh soul which has come to me from afar with all the gifts of existence in her white hands. I must let the white hands open, which I sadly repel, and allow the precious treasures they contain to fall—and all is lost."

"You make the renunciation?" asked Vittorio sadly.

"I make the renunciation," replied Lucio simply.

The immense and gloomy amphitheatre of the Maloja disclosed itself, stretched and prolonged itself in almost incalculable distances before their eyes, through the singular light that came from the immense sky, traversed by thick clouds, now white, now grey, now black, through the whiteness that came from the snows gathered amidst the twin peaks of the colossal Margna, and through the snows of Monte Lunghino. The mountains hemmed in the amphitheatre in an embrace bristling with peaks, bare, sharp, and black, without the shade of trees or vegetation; and on the rocks were tracks, yellowish and whitish tracks, not of paths but of rocky veins. All was rock from foot to summit; rocks with angry, desperate, tragic profiles. Here and there on the level, browner shadows in the obscurity of the night, appeared three or four uninhabited châlets, without sound and without light; but below, where the amphitheatre seemed to continue interminably, flickering lights in a row indicated a house, or rather a large edifice, where living beings were.

The deep and most extraordinary silence of the high land was uninterrupted by human sound or voice, only the violent gusts of wind produced a giant sigh and a dull rumbling. Suddenly the moon freed herself from the clouds and a spreading brightness was diffused on all the scene, rendering it less tragic, but not less sad. Even the wind and bare mountains, wrapped in cold and silvery light, preserved their disdainful and hopeless aspect, the aspect of rocks that have seen the ages without ever a blade of grass or a flower. Yet whiter seemed the snows of the Margna and the Lunghino; and below, behind the glimmering light of the moon, scintillated like a great metal shield the lake of Sils. Now and then the night wind screeched in fury.

"Shall we close the carriage?" Vittorio Lante asked. "Are you cold?"

"I am cold; but unless you insist on it, I prefer not to close it. In a closed carriage time becomes eternal."

"Eternal; that's true! This is a long night."

"And the country is so desolate!" said Lucio Sabini. "But it doesn't matter; you will have delightful evenings where you are going."

"And you will as well," murmured Vittorio Lante, with a smile.

"Are you going to flirt too?"

"If there is nothing better to do," replied the other ambiguously.

"Better to do?"

"Yes."

Now they had passed the Maloja Kursaal, that hotel of four hundred rooms, so isolated amidst the black and bare mountains, on a desert spot before a deserted and motionless lake. Some of the windows of the caravanserai were illuminated, but no sound reached from them. They skirted the lake, where all the high shadows and the brightness of the sky were curiously reflected, as their tints changed from moment to moment.

"Do you want to get married, then?" asked Lucio Sabini, scrutinising his friend's face, but with a kindly glance.

"I don't want to; I must," replied Vittorio Lante, halting nervously at the second verb.

"You must?"

"Ay," affirmed the other, shaking his shoulders and head, with the double gesture of one who is resigned to his destiny.

"And why rid yourself of that most precious benefit—liberty?" murmured Lucio Sabini, seriously but benevolently.

"Because, dear Lucio," he replied, with a motion of familiarity and confidence, "I can do nothing with my liberty. What use would it be to me?"

The other listened very intently, chewing his cigarette.

"Ah, what a weight—a great past, a great name!" exclaimed Vittorio, as if he were speaking to himself, looking at the quiet, brown waters of the lake of Sils. "I am a Lante, but of the branch of La Scala; for three generations now the Lante della Scala have been ever declining as to fortune, power, and relationship, while the cousins, the Lante della Rovere, have not only kept, but have increased their fortunes, always allying themselves for the better with the most powerful, noblest, and richest families of Europe. My father was already poor when he had me, and I am thirty and very poor. I am not ashamed to tell you about it, who have known me for such a time and wish me well, and certainly sympathise with me."

A frank and almost ingenuous sorrow emanated from every word of the young man, and nothing base escaped from such a distressing acknowledgment as his own poverty.

"You would like to make a grand marriage?" asked Lucio Sabini, quite without irony.

"My mother, who loves and adores me and suffers from our decadence, wishes it. She desires, dreams of, and invokes millions and millions for her Vittorio, for the house of Lante della Scala, to restore the great palace at Terni, so as not to sell the park where they want to found a factory."

"St. Moritz is not lacking in youths who are on the look-out for a large dowry," said Lucio, thoughtfully and doubtfully.

"I know that," exclaimed Vittorio mournfully. "I know quite well that St. Moritz is a meeting-place of big and little dowry-hunters, from him who seeks two hundred thousand francs to him who seeks ten million. And I know that people recognise them and that very often they are adventurers. Nothing makes me shudder more, Lucio, than to be mistaken for them. I am not an adventurer. I am an unfortunate gentleman, whose lot it is to bear a great name without the means to sustain it and who has not been taught how to work. I am a loving son, upon whom an adorable mother has imposed the duty of setting forth to try a conjugal adventure up there or somewhere, in homage to the lustre and claims of the Lante della Scala."

"If you dislike it so much, why attempt it? Why don't you convince your mother how much there is that is deplorable, and perhaps humiliating, in these adventures?"

"Because I would have to convince myself first," confessed Vittorio Lante sadly. "I, too, suffer from poverty; I, too, endure our slow agony; I, too, envy and almost hate my proud cousins—the others; I, too, keenly desire luxury and power. How is it to be helped? We have inherited souls, we have inherited nerves and feelings! Every now and then, through a feeling of personal dignity, I rebel against this dowry-hunting which I have been doing for two or three years; but directly afterwards obscurity and want inspire me with genuine horror. What a greedy man I must seem to you, Lucio! Still, I am a chivalrous man: I am a gentleman."

"I know others like you honourable and gentle and good, like you constrained by their destiny," observed Lucio Sabini, with tender sympathy.

Silently grateful, Vittorio Lante pressed his hand. As they proceeded the scene changed, and the views became more attractive. The big clouds had grown denser above their shoulders, towards the hill of the Maloja, which they had left some time, and the Val Bregaglia.

Denser they grew and gloomier, laden with the whirlwind of approaching night. The moon on high hung over the gentle bends of the lake of Sils.

Along the lake, full of deep nocturnal greens, which a band of light cut in the middle, ran banks quite green with large and small pines, and even on the travellers' left, along the high mountain wall they were skirting, little meadows appeared and disappeared. Amidst the rocks, trees and shrubs reared themselves, and often the carriage-wheels beat down flowers from fragrant hedges.

"Ah, if I had another name and another soul," said Vittorio Lante, after a brief silence.

"What would you do?"

"I would be content with what I have. My mother and I between us have fifteen hundred lire a month: this will be left us after we have sold everything and paid our creditors. Fifteen hundred lire! With another name and another soul one could, to all appearance, live comfortably on this sum; and I could marry Livia Lante della Scala."

"A relation?"

"A cousin—so graceful, so sweet, and such a dear."

"Poor?"

"Even poorer than I am: not a penny—a great name, a great past, and not a pennyworth of dowry!"

"Does she love you?"

"She loves me quietly, in silence, without any hope. Ah, what a dear creature!"

He sighed deeply as he gazed below at the white, modest houses of Sils Maria amidst tall trees.

"Do you love her, Vittorio?"

"I am very fond of Livia, nothing more."

"Would you be happy with her?"

"Yes, if I were another man."

For a long stretch of road they said nothing more. By one of those very rapid changes, that in the high mountains astonish by their violence or their intense sweetness, the night sky had become as clear as crystal: the air had become so limpid that great distances could be clearly distinguished by the moon's rays. A rustling, cold, refreshing breeze came from afar, ruffling the waters of the lake; but behind them, very far-away, there was a mass of black clouds which they did not turn round to look at. On that summer night the noble, solitary mountains pencilled themselves in great precise lines, whose virgin snows threw a whiteness upon the lakes and the large woods and spinneys which skirted their waters, forming beneath the light of the moon many peninsulas and little promontories, and upon the immense meadows, where amidst the soft green grass coursed brooks and little torrents with gentle singing; also upon the villages seized by slumber, with little barred windows upon whose sills tiny rose plants, geraniums, and gentians slept in floral slumber.

On high, amidst the dark green of the last spinney, the bright turrets of the Villa Storey pointed to the accomplishment of their journey. The two gentlemen, who had almost reached the end of their long drive, tired and bruised of limb, exalted by their deep, mutual striving, and by having confessed, almost unconsciously, how great was the pitiable and fatal essence of their lot, and exalted by a singular increase of their life, by the solemnity of the solitary night, the immense, austere, yet persuasive silence that surrounded them, by that pacifying light, and by the presence of a beauty—the simplicity and purity of which they perceived, almost without thinking about it—desired, yes, desired a new heart, a new soul, and another destiny. They desired that nothing of what had happened to them should happen again, that all the past should vanish, that everything should change—persons, sentiments, deeds. For an instant strongly did they desire this—for an instant!

The rocky banks of the Inn were in front of them, and their carriage bumped up and down on the small wooden bridge that spans the noisy little river at the entrance of St. Moritz Bad. Around them were little white houses; on the banks amidst the trees the church spires dominating the heights, and the imposing hotels upon which fluttered to the cold mountain breeze the red flag with white cross. Up above on a small hill was the village of St. Moritz Dorf, all white beneath the moon.

Every pure, fine, pious desire vanished in a trice. They remembered them no more and became the men of old, of always. Their nerves and senses were anxiously stretched out to pleasure, to luxury, to caprice; and they were bitten by a pungent curiosity for new joys, new loves, new fantasies—to last an hour, a day, a month, then afterwards suddenly to be forgotten.

CHAPTER II

Smiling softly and showing her little flashing teeth, in a mouth as red as a carnation and whimsically opened, Mabel Clarke was counting with the point of her umbrella the boxes on the truck—large boxes of yellow or maroon leather, either long and soft or high and massive, with shining brass clasps and locks, and long stripes painted a vivid white and red, upon which was described a large red "C." Standing beneath the roof of the pretty little station of Coire, amongst the crowd that surged, as it waited from minute to minute the departure of the Engadine Express, Mabel Clarke, tall, slender, upright, in her pearl-grey, tailor-made dress, which outlined all her youthful grace, not wanting in a certain expression of robustness and strength, watched the porters who were placing their boxes in the train. She counted up to eighteen, of all forms and dimensions, with the great clamorous "C" in blood red.

"Eighteen," she exclaimed, turning round. "Eighteen, isn't that so, dear Broughton?"

An elderly woman, with hair more white than grey, quietly dressed in black, nodded her head, with a gesture not lacking in respect.

"Are you sure that is all?" resumed Mabel Clarke, with a slight frown of her dark chestnut eyebrows on the white forehead. "Eighteen seems very few for mamma and me."

"Mrs. Clarke expects four boxes from Paris. Everything was not ready from the tailor's to leave with us."

"Ah, very well, then!" murmured Mabel Clarke, nodding her head. Turning her back, she approached her mother, who, patiently seated beneath the station roof near a little buffet table, had been served with a cup of coffee, which she was not drinking.

Mabel had continually to pass different groups of people who were massing together for departure. Pushed about and jostled, she reached her mother at last, and asked, with a little smile:

"All right, mamma?"

"All right, rather bored," replied Mrs. Clarke, shaking her head, as she regarded the crowd with a lofty and silent expression of fastidiousness.

Men, women, and children were coming and going; strolling, stopping, and running. There were old ladies dressed in black, with awkward round hats from which hung a dark blue or brown veil, and who were pressing round their necks large fur tippets against the cold which had surprised them on leaving the train. There were young women dressed brightly, with large, light travelling-cloaks left open, beneath which appeared short skirts and elegantly booted feet, and hats enveloped in white veils. There were children of various ages, watched over carefully by nurses and governesses, and there was even a nurse with a dress of white and grey stripes, a large white and grey cloak, and an encircling cap of white ribbons above her mass of hair: she carried the baby in her arms, wrapped in a little white fur jacket, all rosy in its infantile sleep.

Men of every race and age mingled with the women they were accompanying: they separated from them, returned and disputed. There were fine old men—tall and thin, of energetic and handsome countenance—beardless old men, with invincible, lordly stamp in face and person, and other old men, stout, with heightened complexion and heavy moustaches, with a gay and thoughtless air; then middle-aged men, some of a consumptive appearance, but bearing traces of former virile beauty, others showing signs of pleasures enjoyed too violently. There were robust young men, well made, whose faces, though regular and perfect in feature, lacked expression; while other youths, whose appearance was fashionable, but slender and delicate, had colourless complexions, and in all their aspect an absence of health. On all this curious and attractive variety—a great mass of men of every age—there was a decided ugliness, a common awkwardness, though varied in form, and a proud, harsh expression. According to their ages and conditions this rudeness, imperiousness, and clownishness assumed different aspects, but it was manifest in the high and insolent voices that spoke German, in the gestures, now grotesque and now solemn, but ever imperious—the German crowd dominating nearly all the other nations.

Beyond the peculiar character of their clothes there were to be recognised those whom the trains from Calais, Brussels, Vienna, and Berlin had brought together at Paris or Basle to make up the great cosmopolitan Engadine train: the Englishman with white shoes, check overcoat, turned-up trousers, cloth cap; the Frenchman with light cloak, which he was wrapping round himself, as he already felt chilly and caught by the keen mountain air. Finally, and above all, there was the great mass of Germans, clothed in suits which were too baggy, or too long, or too short, of strange cut and gloomy colours, and in stranger cloaks. But especially there was the Tyrolese costume, with its short breeches, jacket of big pleats, and belt of the same cloth; on the head a green cap always too small, with a narrow crease, a myrtle-green cap, like the suit, with a Tyrolese feather behind that resembled an interrogation mark. These suits were worn on fat bodies and thin, or broad and bony, and the cap on a square head, with ruddy cheeks, blond moustaches, and peeling neck in reddish-purple folds. Lower down, standing apart, one of them, one only, had an imposing stature and a robust head, a face with a black beard, rough and bristly, with two eyes of sweetest blue; he the only one among so many, apart, solitary, and silent.

While the long and complicated work of loading the baggage of the crowd was being accomplished, Mabel Clarke, keeping close to her mother, watched with her large grey eyes, full of an ardent curiosity of life, those who were moving around her. Not far from her two ladies were seated round another café table. One of them was of uncertain age, dressed in black, with a black hat and a decided grey veil; the other was a very young figure, bending as she wrote the addresses on several post cards. Nothing was revealed save the lines of a white and delicate face and the curve of a pretty mouth, closed and smileless. Beneath the light blue veil her hair was very blond and pleasant to the eye, while the hand that ran over the cards as she wrote was very white.

"English," said Mabel, almost to herself, with a rather pretty little laugh of disparagement.

"Yes," replied her mother, with a rather more pronounced laugh. The writer raised her head, and revealed a quite pale face beneath whose very transparent complexion coursed a pink flush. The tout ensemble was white and virginal, an appearance which was still more increased by the white travelling-dress. The smile round Mabel Clarke's beautiful but jesting mouth increased.

"Poitrinaire, peut-être," murmured her mother in French, with a strong American accent.

The daughter's eyes were averted, attracted by another feminine figure: a young woman who beside her was sprinkling drops of water on a bunch of roses that she was pressing to herself, which appeared faded owing to the length of the journey.

She was slender and tall, with a little erect and proud head, and a refined face with charming features, without true beauty, but charming in their harmony, with a staidness of postures and gestures and a ladylike and disdainful aloofness from whatever was happening around her. Two or three times Mabel regarded her and made some lively movement to attract her attention. The other did not turn round and observed nothing in her gracious and proud aloofness.

"French: exquisite," sighed Mabel Clarke.

"Exquisite," sighed her mother, even more deeply.

Meanwhile the guttural German cries announced the departure for the Engadine, and the crowd thronged at the doors, carrying characteristic hand luggage; tennis-rackets in their coverings, travelling-cloaks, sticks with chamois-horn handles and iron-spiked tips, and leather cases with golf-clubs.

As they clambered up, from short skirts the ladies disclosed dainty feet, shod some of them as if they were to walk through the boulevards of Paris, and others as if they must immediately climb the Bernina. Mabel Clarke and her mother, followed step by step, like a shadow, by Mrs. Broughton, approached without undue hurry the large compartment which they had reserved. A railway official advanced, as if searching amidst the crowd, with a yellow envelope in his hands.

At once Mrs. Clarke summoned him.

"A telegram for Clarke?"

"Ja," said the man, offering the envelope.

Mrs. Clarke read her telegram quietly.

Mabel in a whisper asked:

"Papa! all right?"

"All right."

Loudly the German voices of the railway officials resounded.

"Thusis, Preda, Bergun, Tiefenkastel, St. Moritz—St. Moritz—St. Moritz."

As the train left overflowing with travellers, from the lowered windows there was an appearing and disappearing of heads, veiled in white and grey, in blue and brown; there was a fluctuating of faces, fresh or consumptive, while some large German face all aflame, with great yellow moustaches and green Tyrolese cap that pressed the square forehead, would lean out to exchange loud and harsh German words with a friend, who might have been his brother, so much did he resemble him, as he raised his head from the station platform.

"St. Moritz! St. Moritz! St. Moritz!"

This was the last feeble echo which reached the travellers who were already on their way. For some minutes there was a sound of windows being raised rapidly against the fresh, almost cold, evening air; and no face leant out throughout the long train to gaze at the country where the Tamina places its whirlpool gorges beneath high rocks, while the flowering gardens of La Rezia smile around pretty white villas, which are more Italian than Swiss. For some time no one passed in the narrow corridor that flanked the first-class compartments; everyone remained quietly in his place.

In their reserved compartment—six places for three people—Mrs. Clarke and Miss Mabel Clarke of the great house of Clarke of New York, of which John Clarke, husband and father, was the soul, with his great talent and magnificent business activity—the house of Clarke rated at six hundred actual millions, John Clarke himself at three hundred millions, and Miss Mabel credited with a dowry of fifty millions—mother and daughter, silent and quiet, were receiving the most minute attentions from Mrs. Broughton, so that the remainder of the journey of three hours and a half might be comfortable for the two ladies. Mrs. Clarke especially accepted these attentions with the aspect of a cold and silent idol. Mrs. Broughton opened some large travelling rugs of fur and the little white and grey feathers of the eider, and wrapped them round the two ladies. She drew forth five or six cushions of stamped leather and Liberty silk, and placed them behind Mrs. Clarke's shoulders and at her side; she made long play with a silver and cut-glass scent bottle, sending into the air, on the windows and seats of the compartment, a little shower of eau de Cologne, together with another, rather stronger, perfume, perhaps a disinfectant; and she hung on the linings of the compartment two or three portable electric lamps to illuminate them when night came, and to enable them to read better. In an open, red leather case, a nécessaire, full of everything for making tea in the train, shone with its warm tones of silver-gilt. Afterwards she gave a questioning and respectful glance to her chief mistress, Mrs. Clarke, who either did not notice her, or did not deign to do so, and another glance at Mabel Clarke, who replied with the shortest little nod in the negative. Mrs. Broughton settled herself in a far corner of the compartment, drew forth from a bag a long note-book, and with a small pencil began to write some notes and figures therein. Suddenly Mrs. Clarke awoke from her proud torpor, and said:

"Broughton, the big and small boxes?"

The woman understood at once, and rising, pointed to two long boxes, or rather coffers, on the rack, of yellow leather with steel locks and clasps, and added:

"I checked them before starting."

Suddenly Mabel asked:

"Mamma, did you bring your large pearl necklace?"

"Yes, dear."

"And the large diadem?"

"Of course."

"And, mamma, did you bring the tiara?"

"The tiara, of course! It was necessary."

Mabel approved, with a charming smile. Then she resumed:

"Mamma, they say the Italians at St. Moritz have extraordinary jewels."

"Do you believe it, Mabel?"

"They say so. Also some South American ladies have great pearls and diamonds, mamma."

"Do you believe all of them can be more beautiful than my jewels? Mabel, do you think so?"

And a keen expression of uneasiness, the first that had animated that marble countenance, seized her.

"To me it seems impossible," added Mabel thoughtfully.

"Also to me it seems impossible."

In the next compartment were two ladies alone, who had also taken six places for themselves. One was a woman of thirty, with a very white face slightly coloured as to the cheeks, with two marvellous large eyes of deep grey, somewhat velvety, while the whites of the pupils had a blue reflection. Her mouth was vivid and sinuous, more expressive than beautiful. Her hair was of a very bright and fine chestnut, massed round the neck and waving over the temples. Only the temples showed a streak of blue veins, and the little ears were exceedingly white. One of the hands, bared of its kid glove, showed long, graceful, but bony fingers. She who accompanied her was the image of her, though with thirty more years; but she was very fat, with an expression of perfect good-nature on the broad face and an unexplainable sense of fear in the eyes that had remained childish.

The younger woman was dressed in white cloth; but she wore a long jacket of otter with chinchilla facings of a soft grey, which suited her rather morbid beauty, and she remained huddled in her furs, as if cold, with her head snuggled in the collar. Sometimes she coughed a little. Then her mother started, became disturbed, and questioned her a little anxiously in German. The daughter scarcely replied, in a whisper, and settled herself better in her corner, as she dreamed with closed eyes. A scent of sandal emanated from her, and all the minute, very elegant luggage bore her initials, an "E." and an "L."—Else Landau—with a baronial coronet.

All was silent, too, in a compartment further on, full of ladies. The exquisite French lady, of the faded roses, preserved her aspect of one who neither sees nor hears, since she neither wishes to see nor hear. Her hands, gloved in new white gloves, held an open book, whose title was not to be discovered, since it was hidden in an antique silk book cover. She turned over the pages very seldom, perhaps keeping the book open so as not to occupy herself with her neighbours. There was a dark lady, with fine arched eyebrows, black, passionate eyes, a carnal and florid mouth, and all this beauty augmented and made artificial by the rouge on the cheeks, the black beneath the eyes, and the carmine on the lips. She was still a very young woman, but she was got up like an old one. Every now and then the dark woman, so strangely embellished, exchanged a word with her husband, who came to see her from another compartment, where he had found a seat. The husband was tall and gross, with a rather truculent countenance and big rings on his fingers. They spoke Spanish. The third lady, the English girl, she who was writing post cards in the station at Coire, kept silence behind the window that gave on to the corridor. Now all the virginal purity of her very white face was apparent beneath the slightly blue shadow of her veil. Beneath the mother-of-pearl complexion a rosiness spread itself almost at every beating of the arteries. The closed lips, together with the eyes of periwinkle-blue, which gazed in sweetness and candour, all spoke of the fragile and fascinating beauty of Anglo-Saxon women, whose grace is invincible. Her companion was beside her; but she must have been used to the patient silences of long journeys.

As the train climbed in bizarre curves and loops the great pass of Albula, crossing daring bridges and more daring viaducts, ever climbing from Thusis, from Solis, from Tiefenkastel, not one of those travellers gave a thought to the singular and powerful ascent of the train, as it elevated itself ever more and more towards its lofty point of arrival. Here there was a lively chattering in German, in French, in English, especially in German; there someone was slumbering in his seat; here two men and two women were playing bridge. Others were trying to read big papers like the "Koelnische Zeitung," "The Times," and the "Temps." Some governesses and nurses were watching two or three compartments full of children. A French preceptor, a priest, was talking in a low voice to a youth who was accompanying him; the nurse was walking with her baby in the corridor with slow and heavy step. Now and then some young man came and went hurriedly in the corridor, giving a glance at all the compartments where the ladies were, stopping behind the windows where some feminine profile was to be seen, with particular curiosity at the last compartment, where Mrs. Clarke, very bored with the slow journey, as she said, had lowered the blinds.

No one knew anything, or wished to, of that summer night and its cold gusts passing over the heights of the Lenzerhorn and mounting to Preda, to Filisur, to Bergun, penetrating the heart of the mountains, and issuing from them to cross the deep valleys, leaving to right and left peaks covered with snow, to which no one gave a glance through the windows as they rumbled across fantastic bridges that joined two precipices. No one knew or wished to know how rich with Alpine perfumes was the summer night, nor how the voices of forest, meadow, and waters around the train were forming the great mountain chorus without words. No one knew or wished to know what a tremendous and mortal thing it had been for mind and hands and life of man to construct that iron road of the high mountains, and how many existences had been scattered there. Each trembled with impatience, anticipating the halting of the train at little stations all of wood behind which some houses gleamed white or a church tower rose.

The women were slumbering or thinking or dreaming behind their veils. Each repressed her impatience to arrive up there, whither she was carrying either a great, keen longing, or one more subdued, or an unrestrainable curiosity, a need of health, or a humble, secret dream. Some were talking to cheat the waiting, and exchanging names of hotels; and old frequenters of the Engadine were instructing novices with a knowing air. There was not one of them who was not aspiring with secret ardour—sprung from the idlest or perhaps most puerile instincts, or moral and material necessity, or from a dream—to the goal, to St. Moritz; careless of everything except of arriving up there, where their life should suffer the whip's lash, or the triumph of vanity, or the victory of ambition, or health regained, or pleasure broadly conquered, or an unknown fortune taken by assault. And when in the evening the word Samaden was clearly and precisely heard, and each felt that the goal was almost touched, every torpor was scattered, every silence was interrupted, every dream released before the reality. Jumping to their feet in extreme impatience, all of them crowded to the windows and doors. Still some minutes and yet more, and then the word resounded from carriage to carriage, repeated softly and loudly from a hundred voices:

"St. Moritz! St. Moritz! St. Moritz!"

In the obscurity of the night the spectacle unfolded itself as if in a broad, deep stage setting. All the hill was gleaming with lights, now feeble, now flaming. In capricious and charming lines burnt the lights of the Palace Hotel, in lines direct and uniform those of the Schweizerhof; like an immense edifice perforated with a thousand windows, like a colossal plaything of giant babies, flamed the white Grand Hotel, and further on high, at the summit, in triple lines, gleamed at the foot of the mountains, the Hôtel Kulm. Around these mastodons shone the other houses and smaller hotels.

The blaze of lights from the Palace and the Grand hotels, and from the whole crown of large lamps which illuminated the road from the village to the baths, was wonderfully reflected in the dark lake; thus the lights were multiplied and eyes and soul were dazed thereby. On the opposite bank the wood, which skirted the lake, the Acla Silva, had neither house nor light in its sylvan austerity. Directly above on the Rosatch and Curvatsch the whiteness of the snow became even purer in the dark night. Very far-away, in a circle on the horizon, the snows of the Julier, the Polaschin, and the Albana gleamed whitely, and still further away at the extremity glistened the Margna with her twin peaks. A thousand eyes could not turn away from that beacon of light which streamed from hotels and houses in patches, while from below, from the Bad, long green streaks of colour flickered as they were reflected in the lake. At the vision which scorched eyes and heart, as the train drew up at the little terminus, there was a crowding and jostling to descend and touch that land of every promise, and to be immersed in that light.

The omnibus conductors of the great hotels were running hither and thither as they gathered together their travellers; noisily luggage was piled upon luggage, and carriages departed and carriages returned in rapid movement. White, green, and grey omnibuses were crammed with travellers, and the laden vehicles turned and disappeared to the rapid trot of their good horses, towards the upper village and the baths on the shores of the lake. St. Moritz Dorf flamed scintillatingly in the night, and flamed more blandly and afar St. Moritz Bad.

Around Mrs. Clarke and the smiling Mabel Clarke a circle of railway officials, servants, and porters was formed; the secretary of the "Palace" arrived in a hurry in a private carriage, and was obsequiously talking in English in a low voice. Mollified, the mother received the homage, and Mabel smiled at the flaming lights of the uplands where for a month she was to pass a gay and vivid existence, where her fresh and strong youth should be intoxicated with joy. They left in the carriage with Mrs. Broughton and the secretary.

The exquisite French lady also left alone in a carriage, still tranquil, still aloof, gave the address of the "Palace." The Viennese, Else von Landau, with the large otter furs, who coughed and smelled of sandal-wood, got into a carriage, and the mother with the startled eyes climbed in with her and gave an address towards St. Moritz Bad.

The young Spanish woman, so made up, who was bound for the Grand Hotel, departed, disputing in rapid Spanish with her husband and appearing annoyed at going to an hotel different from the Palace Hotel, whither she had seen so many people of aristocratic appearance bound. But no one, whether climbing into omnibus, or jumping into carriage, or taking on foot the path that leads to the Dorf, gave a single glance to the majestic mountains that had seen the passing of the ages, to the proud and solitary peaks so near to the sky, to the quiet and dark waters of the lake, to the brown woods, whence came fresh and sharp fragrances. None gave them a glance. All were trembling with satisfaction at having arrived at last; and were eager to immerse themselves in the exalting stream of life up there amidst the light and the luxury and joy of fantasy and senses. The young English girl only, of the virginal countenance, before climbing into the "Kulm" bus, raised her veil, and gazed with her periwinkle-blue eyes at the white heights so deserted and imposing. A smile for the first time bloomed on the pure mouth.

CHAPTER III

The large clock with face all of blue and hours marked in gold, which adorns the slender, upright spire of the English church, sounded ten; its grave and harmonious tones spread themselves in long, far-reaching waves from the Dorf upon the light and fresh morning air. Standing at the door of the Hôtel Caspar Badruth, Lucio Sabini, who was just dressed, aristocratically fashionable, with his slender, tall figure, and calm and peaceful countenance beneath the brim of his soft, dark grey felt hat, compared the time with his watch. With even and elastic step, casting a limpid, tranquil glance, now at the bright celestial blue of the horizon, now at the deep, dense greenery of the pines, now at the bright green of the dewy meadows, regarding everything with eyes that were kindly and at times full of tenderness, he descended the footpath from the Dorf to St. Moritz Bad. Ahead of him a woman's figure was also going with even step, in a costume of correct cut, though perhaps a little severe, of a rather purple hue, with a white hat surrounded by a purple veil. In the features and very fair hair, proud profile, and pale cheeks he recognised the Comtesse Marcella de la Ferté Guyon, a young French lady whom he knew slightly, from meeting her for two or three years at St. Moritz, and who always exercised upon him the attraction of silent and proud women who surround themselves with mystery, to conceal a love, a sorrow, a tragedy, or even to hide their aridness and coldness for all such things which for a long time have been dead within them.

"Do I disturb you, madam?" he asked, placing himself beside the Countess, after having greeted her, with the easy yet serious grace that was particularly his.

"Oh, no!" she replied, with a very slight smile, both courteous and proud. "I am going to St. Moritz Bad."

"So am I. You are going for a walk like me?"

"Like you, I think not," she murmured, but kindly.

"And why, Signora?"

The Countess was silent for an instant, as if hesitating in her reserve.

"I am going to church," she replied hurriedly, sotto voce.

"Ah," exclaimed the other, reproved, "is it a festival to-day?"

"No, it is not a feast day," she murmured, without adding anything further.

"Are you going to the Catholic church of the Bad?"

"Yes; it is less full of well-known people, of smart people," she murmured, with lowered eyes.

"I imagine, madam, that you will pray for all sinners?" he asked, forcing a smile, to enliven the gloomy conversation.

"I try to," she replied vaguely.

"Then through you I am sure to obtain grace from Heaven," he concluded, with a smile.

The lady glanced at him with her proud, already distant eyes, from which in the past rivers of tears must have flowed, clouding them for ever. Lucio bowed, pressed the hand she offered him, and left her, walking a little more rapidly to get away and leave her in freedom.

"She is a tower of ivory, but so interesting," he thought, as he lightly resumed his way in the soft air.

For an instant, moved by a keen desire to conquer and penetrate that solitary, closed soul, he thought of getting Francis Mornand, who was the fashionable chronicler of the Engadine, to tell him the private history of the Comtesse Marcella de la Ferté Guyon, to lay siege to that heart, and with a complete knowledge of its long agony, to obtain a precious victory there, where no one should again penetrate. That sudden and strange desire of his of conquest over the prisoner who believed in her own freedom fascinated him. But a young woman's face was smiling at him from some distance as she came towards him, and he halted beside a young girl who was climbing towards the Dorf with rapid steps, while her mother, a middle-aged woman, followed more slowly. She was a girl of rare beauty, with large, dark eyes furnished with long, dark lashes, a lovely mouth curved up a little at the corners, like that of a Greek statue of Erigone, and a white complexion over which was suffused a flush of health.

Still, every now and then the eyes became hard, with a scrutinising glance—the mouth closed with a half-mocking and half-disdainful smile, and her whole countenance, that resembled a flower of youth and beauty, seemed a flower laden with poison. Lucio Sabini and Lia Norescu, a young Roumanian, immediately plunged into a lively, gay, and slightly sarcastic conversation, while the mother listened silently, with an air of complacency and indulgence.

"Ah, here is our divine Lia!" Lucio exclaimed, as he held the little gloved hand in his. "St. Moritz was dead without you."

"The Society For The Embellishment of St. Moritz made me come," she replied, laughing; "the Kurverein wrote to me, and I couldn't resist."

"And how many suitors? How many flirts?"

"Many, far too many; I can spare some for other girls."

"New and old?"

"Many new and few old; nearly all new."

"Handsome, rich, amusing?"

"Nearly all tiresome."

And a gesture of contempt contracted her mouth, that so much resembled a flower, and the eyes became wicked.

"And with whom are you flirting, Sabini?"

"I should like to flirt with you; but you have always spurned me."

"Always!"

"Even now?"

"Even now. Why don't you flirt with Madame Lawrence, the beautiful Lawrence, the divine Lawrence, this year's professional beauty?"

"Thanks! She is too beautiful for me. Like you, she has twelve flirts."

"I have fourteen," replied Lia Norescu promptly, as she flashed her magnificent eyes. "And Miss Clarke, with her dowry of fifty, one hundred, or one hundred and fifty millions; why not pay court to her?"

Never in a soft womanly voice, in a voice young and sweet, in a French pronounced exquisitely, hissed such irony and such bitterness.

"I do not pay court to millionaire girls," replied Lucio Sabini, a little coldly.

"You court the others, the poor ones," replied Lia vivaciously; "but you marry neither: you don't want to marry anyone."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, I am always well informed," replied Lia profoundly; "it is impossible to deceive me."

"Then you are a girl without illusions?"

"I am a monster, Sabini; I have no illusions." And they left each other, both laughing loudly and falsely at the last word. Ah, he knew the secret of Lia Norescu, the beautiful Roumanian girl, who spoke and wrote five languages perfectly, who was of high mettle, and who for five years had been everywhere cosmopolitan society was to be found, at Cairo, Nice, Rome, St. Moritz, Ostend, and Biarritz, in search of a rich husband—very rich, immensely rich—for she had not even a penny for a dowry. Her father and mother, her brothers and cousins, all urged on the beautiful girl this marriage of money, and some of them, at an immense sacrifice, provided the travelling expenses; some gave the dresses, and some the cloaks and hats. Lia Norescu appeared everywhere, like a flower laden with an irresistible attraction, followed by the quiet and indulgent mother who adored her daughter, and everywhere she had her court of admirers, an ever-changing court. No one held out more than one or two seasons, all vanished and others appeared. But no one remained, and the flower within her soul contained an ever greater poison of disillusion.

"Poor little girl, poor little girl," murmured Sabini to himself, with sincere sympathy, as he withdrew. He was sorry for that splendid creature, forced at twenty-two to fight a hard fate without results, when her beauty had the most imperious right to riches and luxury. And softly his spirit fell in love with the idea of being able to offer to the young woman of irresistible beauty the treasures of the earth, of offering her a rich and powerful friend, or a brother of his, or himself, perhaps, so that all the deep poison which rendered that flower venomous might vanish, and Lia Norescu might be a colour, a perfume, a splendour without cark and fret, without blemish.

By then his steps had absently led him to the meadows that surround the Catholic church of St. Moritz Bad, and the soft grass bathed by dew, and brushed by hidden rivulets, exhaled a pungent fragrance. Desirous of sensations even more intense in their simplicity, he ascended a path that leads to a wood dominating the lake. Already the path, in that vivid, bright hour, in which the colour almost of heaven was reflected on everything, with an air which to breathe was almost to drink the elixir of life, was being traversed by men and women, in couples and groups; some walking hurriedly in their desire to immerse themselves in the shade of the wood, others more slowly, but nearly all silently. Lucio Sabini's acute eye, on the alert for every fresh face, a lady's especially, discovered here and there those who, as they traversed the little path bathed by the sun, which further on penetrates beneath the trees, as under a soft arch of verdure, carried in their hearts and glances and actions the soft and exhilarating beginning of a little, or perhaps a big love affair. Even more acutely he scrutinised the faces and expressions of those who, tired and oppressed by a love declaration too long prolonged, at which they had grown accustomed, now refreshed and rested, were again joining hands up there, as they recognised the clasp of yore amongst the protecting trees.

He entered the wood alone. A secret, biting nostalgia seized him because of his solitude on that heavenly morning. More restlessly and inquisitively his eyes sought those he met, the eyes of women and girls who, dressed in white—graceful matutinal sprites—came and went beneath the verdure of the trees, which here and there the sun's rays rendered bright and yellow. In a corner of the wood, beneath a lofty pine he discovered a well-known figure. The woman was seated on a great white boulder, and with lowered eyes was tracing with her parasol amongst the grass and stones some strange letters of a name or a word. Approaching softly he recognised a Hungarian lady, who was staying alone in the same hotel—a Clara Howath, who always appeared at meal-times carrying a book which she read during the repast. She had a rather dissipated face, with two vague, sad eyes and a little pale mouth like a dead rose: she was fashionably dressed, as seemed natural to her. Lucio drew nearer, and when he was close to the Hungarian lady he noticed that she was weeping silently.

"Are you in trouble, Madame?" he asked in a low voice, discreetly.

Clara Howath showed no surprise at his approach, or that he should be talking to her and asking her so much. She raised her tear-stricken face, and replied naturally:

"Yes, Signor."

"Can I help you?" he insisted in an insinuating voice, slightly moved.

"No, Signor," she replied simply.

As he stood beside her and hid her from those who were passing in the little path, he looked at her attentively. Her right hand was loaded with precious stones, the other wore on the ring finger a gold circlet, a love token.

"Have you lost someone—someone who was dear to you?"

Oh, what desolation there was in the woman's eyes as she raised them to him, so supplicatingly and so desperately.

"Is he dead?" he asked, disturbed.

"No," she said, "I have lost him, but he is not dead."

The pale mouth was twisted in sorrow, as if she wished to stifle a great cry, or a sob. Slightly pale, Lucio Sabini said in a low voice:

"I beg your pardon, Signora."

"It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter," she replied, with sad sweetness, shaking her head.

Lucio Sabini's step became slower as he withdrew into the wood. Suddenly the shining light of the sun amidst the high branches seemed colourless to him, and feeble the twittering of the little birds among the bushes, and languishing the flight of the white butterflies amidst the fragrant clumps of wild mint and dark wild vanilla. His heart contracted with sorrow for the strange lady, Clara Howath, whose name alone he knew, whose deep grief, breathed forth from her soul, made her no longer recognise either the shame of tears or womanly reserve, to such an extent as to tell all her misery to a stranger in a public road, amongst strange people passing and staring. He would have liked to have been the other; he who was not dead but whom the deserted woman had lost for ever. He would have liked to have been the other, so far-off and forgetful, the traitor who had perjured himself and forgotten; so that he might return to the wood, where the azure of the firmament and the blue of the lake peeped amidst the trees, to take that unhappy woman in his arms and kiss away her tears.

Drawing farther away he was once more Lucio Sabini, and the visions seen that morning were already settling in his imagination; but still more feverishly within him became the need of the unknown love, of the unknown lady whom he had come to seek amongst the mountains, of the woman whom he should love an hour, a day, a month, and whom he should never see again, who perhaps might love him for a summer evening or a summer morning: but an unknown woman of another land and another race.

Up above, in a remote corner of the wood, he halted and sat down on a tree trunk, which perhaps had been struck down by lightning in an autumnal storm, or perhaps had been transported from the heights of Corvatsch by the fury of the torrent in winter. The trunk lay there amongst the tall grass and rocks, the little violas with yellow eyes, and tall and slender marguerites. Lucio sat down and drew from his coat pocket a lady's purse which he had found the day before, towards dusk, at the Dorf, in a solitary lane close to the tennis-courts. It was a smallish purse of chain silver, with a broad encircling silver hinge adorned with three large turquoises; a silver chain kept it suspended through two rings. For the fourth time Lucio opened the lady's purse, and again examined its contents, minutely and curiously. First of all there was a little handkerchief of white cambric, adorned with a fine embroidery of white flowers, and in the corner was a tiny initial—an "L." From the cambric a subtle and feverish perfume exhaled: every time as Lucio placed it to his nostrils he had a sense of delight. He repeated the gesture, and again he had the same sensation. The purse also contained, slipped through a gold ring, some charms in silver and gold: a medal for a good journey with a figure of St. Christopher; a golden olive, harbinger of peace; a little bluish-green scarab; another medal with just a name inscribed and nothing else—Lilian; and a small hand on which were engraved some oriental figures. One by one Lucio for the fourth time passed these small jewels in review, turning and returning them between his fingers, seeking to discover something fresh. Then he set himself to study the last object which that feminine purse contained.

The last object, the most mysterious and important, was a little pocket-book of dark blue leather, closed by a slender silver pencil. Inside, on the first page, was stuck down a four-leaved clover, a little shamrock that had been sought for and found in the fields, and after being dried, had been pasted on the first leaf, and underneath it in fine letters, firm and long, was the name—ever that name—Lilian. Many of the pages of the pocket-book were covered with lines of writing, sometimes in ink, sometimes in pencil. They seemed to be notes thrown there according to the day and the state of the soul. Without stirring from his ruined tree trunk, the dark bark of which was peeling, with his feet amidst the deep grass and woodland flowers, Lucio re-read page for page what the unknown Lilian had written in the pocket-book. A date in English on a page, a date which went back two years, to December, and still in English, Portia's exclamation in The Merchant of Venice: "The world is too heavy for my little body." Further, still in English, a singular phrase: "One must wait in hope and faith. Someone will come: surely he will come." Then, in a medley, the name of a French or German woman, with some address in Paris or Vienna. On another page, another character, still feminine, had written in English a farewell: "Dear, dearest Lilian, don't forget me; I won't forget you," with a signature—Ethel. Lucio Sabini read on with immense attention, examining the phrases, words, and letters, seeking to divine even more than they said and showed. In French, on another page, again in the writing of the mysterious one, were two questions: "Must one live to love? Must one die to love?" And at last on the penultimate page, in a scrawling writing, like a child that is striving to write something he does not understand, in almost round letters, was a verse of Dante's, copied with an orthographical error: "Amor che a cor gentil ratto si apprende."

Each time at these words so vibrant with love's emotion which the unknown woman's hand had copied letter for letter, which surely she must have understood or someone have explained to her; at these words of the poet Lucio Sabini trembled, charmed as he was by brief loves encompassed by poesy, because of their mystery and their brevity.

Now there came the last page, where in haste the woman had written in pencil in French: "How high and close to heaven are the mountains! I should like to return here in winter, to the highest mountain, amidst the whitest and purest snow...."

There was nothing else. Mechanically Lucio closed the book, replacing the slender silver pencil. He replaced, too, the little cambric kerchief, the charms, and the little book in the purse, thereby stretching the clasp to close it. For some time, as he pursued his fantasy, he dreamed of her who had lost that purse, and he saw in his dream the figures of many ladies who surprised him and looked at him, who smiled and beckoned to him to follow them, and each of them, it seemed to him, might be the unknown Lilian; now dark and handsome, now slender as a reed, now with eyes sky-blue and smiling, now with eyes black and languishing.

Suddenly in the air the Dorf clock, blue with gilded hours, struck ponderously and harmoniously half-past eleven. The sound spread itself along the lake and in the woods. Lucio Sabini burst into laughter at his dream and at himself. Perhaps—in fact surely—she who had lost the purse so full of poetical matter, and bore the floral name of Lilian, might be an English old maid, angular, with pince-nez. Lucio laughed at himself and his dream, which melted in the clear air of that heavenly morning.

CHAPTER IV

At midday, before and after luncheon, the telephones at all the hotels and villas did nothing but ring in their little cupboards, and in German, English, and French—especially in German—there was an incessant calling, questioning and answering. The morning that had spread over the Engadine a sky which seemed a shimmering mantle of azure silk, and that had given to the eye an inexplicable brightness, and to every panting breast a contented appearance, almost as if it were a strange, sublime potion, had developed into a splendid afternoon. Men and women who had lazily passed the morning hours in an hotel room, or in strolling up and down the nearer meeting-places of the Bad and Dorf, were seized with a desire of faring forth, away along the majestic roads and paths and hills—everywhere an afternoon could be lived in the open air.

In the hotel halls and drawing-rooms there was a continual making and organising of plans, a calling up by telephone of other hotels, coach-hirers, and remote restaurants up above and tea-rooms, to summon friends and acquaintances together, to order carriages and bespeak teas for fifteen and twenty persons. Frau Mentzel, the exceedingly wealthy Hamburg Jewess—she herself was a Dutchwoman, her husband an American, and her sons had been born in different countries of the world—who was unable to live without a court of ten or fifteen persons at lunch or dinner, and who could not pass twenty-four hours without changing her dress four times, who threw her money out of the window and yet always talked about money, and quoted the price of her clothes and how much the flowers that adorned her table had cost; Frau Mentzel, courted by all the parasites of both sexes, telephoned to her friends from the "Stahlbad," where she was staying, and which at all hours of the day was filled with the noise of her train, to come at once, as she was setting out for the Fexthal glacier to take tea up there, and on every side the usual parasites said yes; but others, the smart people, whom Frau Mentzel would have liked to have had with her, fenced and adduced excuses of other outings and excursions.

Don Lucio Sabini answered Frau Mentzel at the telephone that he was unable to come since he was engaged for tea elsewhere, moreover the Fexthal glacier was unfortunately too far-off for him to go and look her up. The beautiful Madame Lawrence, from the "Palace," advised all her suitors and a lady friend or two that they were going in five or six carriages to Maloja, that they would leave at three, not later, so as to arrive at five at the Kursaal Maloja; but her lady friends were few, all more or less insignificant as to physiognomies, dresses and hats, in order that she should shine like a jewel among them. Vittorio Lante, who for an evening had attached himself to the court of the divinity of the year, excused himself from going to the Maloja; for with a group of friends he had been invited by Mrs. Clarke to tea at the Golf Club. Countess Fulvia Gioia telephoned from the "Victoria" to two of her friends to ask if they were disposed to walk with her to Pontresina and back, a walk through the woods of about three hours, but so pleasant and peaceful amidst the pines, along the white torrent that descends from the Bernina. Although her second youth was waning, Countess Fulvia kept her beauty, preserving her health by living a life of action, ardour, and open air, passing July at the seaside, August in the mountains, the autumn in the country: so all her youthful fascination lasted, and that in homage to the last powerful and profound love which held her completely, to which she was bound by an indissoluble knot because it was the last. Of the two friends, the Duchesse de Langeais, a French woman of her own age, who treasured her beauty as a precious thing in the half-light, refused, fearing light, air, and fatigue, lest they should all discover the invincible traces of age, and fearing lest certain weaknesses and troubles should be too apparent after such a walk. The other, Donna Carlotta Albano, an old lady, who welcomed without sorrow the end of beauty, youth, and love, as she set herself to love what remains after love is over, accepted.

From Sils Maria the Misses Ellen and Norah West telephoned their friend Mabel Clarke to ask if they could look in at the "Palace" about four o'clock to take her with them to tea at the "Belvoir," the restaurant half-way from Pontresina; but smiling at the telephone Mabel Clarke declared that mamma had invited some delightful young men to tea with them at the Golf Club, and that, even so near as they were to St. Moritz, it was quite impossible that day.

At the Grand Hotel the Spanish lady with the soft eyebrows painted black, and lips painted red, with cheeks disappearing beneath a stratum of veloutine Rachel, but in spite of this of a most alluring beauty, Donna Mercédès de Fuentes, was torturing herself and her husband, really to know where the high society of the Engadine would foregather at tea on that day, and where she could take a sister and her friend, who had arrived the day before from Madrid, to show them this high society. At each different news with which Francis Mornand, the chronicler of the Engadine, whimsically furnished her, Donna Mercédès de Fuentes, restless and agitated, changed her mind, suffering in every fibre from her snobbishness.

By two o'clock, and at three and four, the coming and going, the meeting and disappearing of the large stage-coaches drawn by four horses and full of gentlemen and ladies, of large brakes filled with smiling girls and young men, of landaus drawn by impatient horses, of victorias with solitary couples, became even more vertiginous.

There was a running greeting from one carriage to another, a moment's halt to invite each other to set out together, and a prompt acceptance from someone who was jumping up into his carriage smiling. There was a general giving of appointments for dinner and for the evening, with a gay cry in French, in English, or in German; there was a cracking of whips, a tinkling of horses' bells, and sounding of coach horns, and over all a fluttering of the veils of every colour and shade which surrounded the ladies' heads.

The carriages descended towards Silvaplana, Sils, Fexthal, and the Maloja; they ascended towards Pontresina, the Roseg glacier, and the Morteratch glacier, towards Samaden and Celerina. The departure of the five or six carriages of Madame Lawrence towards the Maloja was impressive. She was in the first in a completely white costume with face and head enveloped in a close green veil, but so transparent that the large grey-blue eyes and the golden hair, strikingly combed into big tresses, were well discernible.

As for Frau Mentzel's party, her stage-coach and other equipages had ascended and descended three times from St. Moritz Bad to St. Moritz Dorf, with a great flourish of horns, to pick up people, but in reality to attract attention. However, it was all done so late that they would never reach the Fexthal glacier, and, at the most, the restaurant for tea. Still that sufficed.

Donna Mercédès de Fuentes, as she descended in her large landau towards the Maloja, experienced a heart-burning at seeing the equipage of Her Royal Highness, the reigning Princess of Salm, directed towards "Belvoir," where, it seemed, Her Royal Highness had invited ten or a dozen French, English, German, and Italian ladies, actually the ten or twelve noblest of the noble. Also the carriage of Her Royal Highness, the Grand Duchess of Gotha, was directed up above; but she was not going to tea. She was going to Celerina, as she did each day, to visit the great doctor who lived there. The Grand Duchess was ill, but to deceive herself into feeling better she went to the doctor daily. And Donna Mercédès de Fuentes registered a vow to herself that if ever she were ill in the Engadine, she would only allow herself to be healed by the doctor of the Grand Duchess at Celerina.