Then on the peaceful island was enacted the same old tragedy that has been played all over the world myriads of times before and since. Tedesco’s friend, the architect, also fell in love with the model, and took advantage of the sculptor’s preoccupation with his work to gain the girl’s affection. Early in the morning, while his friend was engaged in preparing his clay and arranging his studio for the day, he would toil up the six hundred stone steps which led to the village of Anacapri, on the plateau above, meet Rubina, and accompany her down as far as the outskirts of the town. Then often, at the close of the day, when the sculptor, oppressed with the hopeless feeling of discouragement and despair which at times comes over every true artist, would give up his favorite stroll with Rubina and remain to gaze at his work and ponder over it, the architect would be sure to take his place. So it went on to the usual climax. Rubina, flattered by the assiduous attentions of the one, and somewhat piqued by the frequent fits of absent-mindedness and preoccupation of the other, at last reluctantly gave her consent to marry the architect, who planned an elopement without exciting a suspicion on the part of the sculptor that his idol was stolen from him. The faithless friend, pretending to the innocent girl that, being of different religions, it was necessary for them to go to the mainland to be married, sailed away with her one morning at daybreak without the knowledge of any one save the two men who were hired to row them to Naples. Where they went, and how long they lived together, I could not find out, for she would not open her lips about that portion of her history. Only after a great deal of persuasive interrogation did I learn that when she came back she brought with her a girl baby a few months old. It was always believed in the village that her husband had died. I drew my own inference about the circumstances of her return.