He came lightly nearer, not seeing her. A flock of homing doves passed over his head; he swung on his heel to look at them and the reluctantly departing sunshine was golden on his upturned face. Lucrezia still watched him, intently, narrowly; he came nearer again, saw her, and paused in confusion, pulling off his black velvet cap. “Come here,” she said in a chill, hoarse voice. He obeyed with an exquisite swiftness and fell on one knee before her; his dropped hand touched the ground a pace beyond the furthest-flung edge of her gown. “Who are you?” she asked. “Ormfredo Orsini, one of the Duke’s gentlemen, Madonna,” he answered. He looked at her frankly surprised to see her alone in the garden at the turn of the day. He was used to see her surrounded by her poets, her courtiers, her women; she was the goddess of a cultured court and persistently worshipped. “One of the Orsini,” she said. “Get up from your knees.” He thought she was thinking of her degraded lineage, of the bad, bad blood in her veins. As he rose he considered these things for the first time. She had lived decorously at Ferrara for twenty-one years, nearly the whole of his lifetime; but he had heard tales, though he had never dwelt on them. “You look as if you were afraid of me—” “Afraid of you–I, Madonna?” “Sit down,” she said. He seated himself on the marble rim and stared at her; his fresh face wore a puzzled expression. “What do you want of me, Madonna?” he asked. “Ahè!” she cried. “How very young you are, Orsini!” Her eyes flickered over him impatiently, greedily; the twilight was beginning to fall over her, a merciful veil; but he saw her for the first time as an old woman. Slightly he drew back, and his lute touched the marble rim as he moved, and the strings jangled. “When I was your age,” she said, “I had been betrothed to one man and married to another, and soon I was wedded to a third. I have forgotten all of them.” “You have been so long our lady here,” he answered. “You may well have forgotten the world, Madonna, beyond Ferrara.” “You are a Roman?” “Yes, Madonna.” She put out her right hand and clasped his arm. “Oh, for an hour of Rome!–in the old days!” Her whole face, with its artificial beauty and undisguisable look of age, was close to his; he felt the sense of her as the sense of something evil. She was no longer the honoured Duchess of Ferrara, but Lucrezia, the Borgia’s lure, Cesare’s sister, Alessandro’s daughter, the heroine of a thousand orgies, the inspiration of a hundred crimes. The force with which this feeling came over him made him shiver; he shrank beneath her hand. “Have you heard things of me?” she asked in a piercing voice. “There is no one in Italy who has not heard of you, Madonna.” “That is no answer, Orsini. And I do not want your barren flatteries.” “You are the Duke’s wife,” he said, “and I am the servant of the Duke.” “Does that mean that you must lie to me?”