One morning the week before, I had strolled out from the dull hotel; and leaving the street with its tall houses and quaint old fountain, glowing in the day's first freshness, I sauntered on to the walls, and there I first saw her. Below in the valley the silvery olive leaves trembled in the sunshine; wreaths of broad-leaved vines clung to the gray old trees, clothing them with a borrowed beauty of youth and freshness. Hundreds of flowers blushed in the light, and varied odours from herb and blossom filled the air with a subtle languor. Above, on the lichen-covered wall, with a background of purple mountain, a fitting frame to her stately loveliness, she sat, looking out across the sunlit land, with the dreary far-away look in her great deep eyes, and the haughty coldness upon her chiselled face. I lingered about, drinking draughts of beauty; fancying it was my artistic sense that kept me there watching her face, till she rose wearily, and slowly walking down the street, entered the hotel where I was staying. I found on inquiry that a Mrs Vereker and her niece, Miss Mayne, had arrived there the previous evening. I had sometimes met Mrs Vereker in London; and later on in the day, while I was carelessly examining the carving on the fountain in the square I saw her and my vision of the morning standing on the cathedral steps. Mrs Vereker came forward with that friendliness we feel for a slight home acquaintance whom we may chance to meet when abroad. So I joined them, and we strolled on chatting over home news. Miss Mayne seldom spoke, and yet that walk seemed to me a strangely happy one. Mrs Vereker told me they had only been a day in Perugia, and had intended going on at once to Rome; but the mountain air and mountain views were so delightful, they had changed their minds, and intended remaining for some time at Perugia. I had come to the old town to study art; to search the blazoned manuscripts lying hidden in sacristy and convent, and learn from them their secrets of colour and design; to wander through frescoed church and palace, where walls and ceilings are brilliant still as when the hands which wove their gorgeous stories first laid the pencil down and thanked God for the great consoler--Art. I had come to watch the mists rising from the valleys, and wrapping the mountains in soft mystery of cloud--cloud which changes and shifts, and melts at last into the golden and purple, the opaline green of the sunrise; so that I might try to wrest from Nature a faint touch of her magic of shadow and light, of colour and form, and lay it at the feet of the one mistress I had ever known--Art. What I was now studying was a woman's heart--and what I learned was--nothing. I do not think mine is an impressionable nature. I had spent thirty years in the world, and had never loved any woman until I saw Mary Mayne in the morning light sitting above that old gateway; yet in one short week I had grown to love her--well, as few women are ever loved.