their like, varied or repeated, returned, in a thousandfold interest of colour and sparkle, the soft investment of the tapers—enough, but not too many—in their beauty. One velvet cloth had been swept from its place, spilling upon a rug, where it sprawled unregarded, its costly burden of a begemmed chalice, a pair of perfumed gloves, and an illuminated volume of sonnets in a jewelled cover, dedicated to the goddess herself, and celebrating, in letters of gold and silver on vellum, her incomparable seductions. She had pulled them over, no doubt, when she reached for the orange which now, untasted, filled her hand, soft and covetous as a child’s. The warmth and drowsy stillness of the room penetrated her as she lay holding it. Gradually her lids closed, her bare arm drooped from its sleeve, and the orange rolled on the floor. Her thoughts and expectations had been already busy for an hour with, ’Will he come? Will he come? Will he come?’ It had been like counting sheep trotting through a hedge—one, two, three, four—up to a hundred—and now her drugged brain confused the tally, and she seemed to herself to swerve all in a moment into a luminous mist. He entered like a pale scented flower into her dream—a soft and shapely thing, melting into its ecstasy, fulfilling its enchantment. She held him, and whispered to him: ’The hour, sweet love! Is it mine at last?’—and, so murmuring, stirred and opened her eyes. He was there, close by her, looking down upon her as she lay. How pale was his face, and how wistful. His walk through the icy dark had but just tinted it, as when November flaws blow the snow from the rose’s dead cheek. He looked dispirited and tired. The childlike pathos of his eyes moved her heart-strings no less than did the red, combative swelling of his lips. She longed to master him in order to be mastered. Her hedonism’s highest moral attainment was always in pleasing herself by surrendering herself to the pleasure of another; and how, knowing herself, could she doubt the irresistible persuasiveness of her faith? She did not speak for a little, the wine of slumber in her brain emboldening her in the meanwhile to dare this vision with her beauty, to seek her response in its eyes. Her cheeks, her half-closed lids, were, like a baby’s, flushed with sleep. Suddenly she stirred, and, smiling and murmuring, held out white arms to it:— ’The hour thou sang’st to me! Bernardo, hast thou come to make that mine?’ He stood as if stricken—white, dumfoundered. She stretched her shoulders a little, and, raising her hands, put their rosy knuckles to her eyes; and so relaxed all, and drooped. ’I was dreaming,’ she murmured. ’I thought thou camest to me and said: "Beatrice, I will forego that heaven for thy sake. Give me the hour, to kiss and shame." She stole a glance at him, and dropped her clasped hands to her lap, and hung her head. ’And I answered,’ she whispered, ’"Take it, and make one woman happy."’