They sat on a terrace overlooking the most beautiful view in the world. They did not look at it, nor did they look at each other. They were beautifully dressed, they lived in the same world and spoke the same tongue; they would have laughed at, if they would not have made, the same jokes. The materials for happiness were heaped before them; but neither of them stretched out a hand to take them. They were both like creatures under an invisible ban. It could not be said that Léon had any cause for a grievance. Madame Gérard had given him what she had offered him, but he had fatally under-estimated how far this gift would fall short of what he wanted. From the moment of their departure from Capri it had come over him that Elise was not beautiful, that she had no particular charm of person nor of mind; she neither touched nor soothed him. There was a fatal alteration in her. She was accessible. Léon could not tell what had caused this change in his feelings--he had been covered so lightly by a rare and perfect tenderness that he had not realized how it warmed and nourished him, until he found himself sharply deprived of it. He felt like some one suddenly pushed into the dark. He fumbled and knocked himself against obstacles, possessed by an intolerable fear, a fear that he shouldn’t get out, shouldn’t ever get back into his light again. He knew now what the light was, he had been in relation to perfect purity, and it was not until the relation ceased that he realized it had not left him as it found him. He no longer wanted anything less. He wanted only his flawless jewel, the deep and incorruptible heart of Rose. And as for the first time he knew the hunger of a real desire, he knew also that he shrank from returning to her after so light and base a sin. He had thought this three days could be nothing, an episode, a chance wayside plucking of a flower, something that he could quite easily put away from him and forget on his return to Rose. He now discovered that it would burn into his heart like a corrosive fluid, and make him fear to seek her presence. It was not that he doubted Rose would forgive him; but he came up against something in himself which would not yield forgiveness. He had too easily gone wrong. He kept his eyes carefully away from Madame Gérard. He hated her with a cold antagonism; he could not make love to her. He fell back on a sharpened irony of attention. She should have all that she wanted and he waited upon her with an exaggerated courtesy; but she was as oblivious of his coldness as she had been of his warmth. Léon had never known so strange a woman. As for Madame Gérard, she had effected her purpose. Last night at the Opera, seated in the front of a box with Léon beside her, she had caught and held the eyes of her enraged husband. That was what she had come to Naples for. Léon had not seen him. Monsieur Gérard sufficiently accompanied to feel that a scene would have been out of place, had swiftly withdrawn.