"_On ne s'appuie que sur ce qui résiste_." For both of them these words were true. Fundamentally, and beyond all passing causes of grief and anger, each was fascinated by the full strength of nature in the other. Neither could ever forget the other. The hours grew electric, and every tiny incident became charged with spiritual meaning. Often for hours together Julie would try to absorb herself in talk with Meredith. But the poor fellow got little joy from it. Presently, at a word or look of Delafield's she would let herself be recaptured, as though with a proud reluctance; they wandered away together; and once more Meredith and the Duchess became the merest by-standers. The Duchess shrugged her shoulders over it, and, though she laughed, sometimes the tears were in her eyes. She felt the hovering of passion, but it was no passion known to her own blithe nature. And if only this strange state of things might end, one way or other, and set her free to throw her arms round her Duke's neck, and beg his pardon for all these weeks of desertion! She said to herself, ruefully, that her babies would indeed have forgotten her. * * * * * Yet she stood stoutly to her post, and the weeks passed quickly by. It was the dramatic energy of the situation--so much more dramatic in truth than either she or Meredith suspected--that made it such a strain upon the onlookers. One evening they had left the boat at Tremezzo, that they might walk back along that most winning of paths that skirts the lake between the last houses of Tremezzo and the inn at Cadenabbia. The sunset was nearly over, but the air was still suffused with its rose and pearl, and fragrant with the scent of flowering laurels. Each mountain face, each white village, either couched on the water's edge or grouped about its slender campanile on some shoulder of the hills, each house and tree and figure seemed still penetrated with light, the glorified creatures of some just revealed and already fading world. The echoes of the evening bell were floating on the lake, and from a boat in front, full of peasant-folk, there rose a sound of singing, some litany of saint or virgin, which stole in harmonies, rudely true, across the water. "They have been to the pilgrimage church above Lenno," said Julie, pointing to the boat, and in order to listen to the singing, she found a seat on a low wall above the lake. There was no reply, and, looking round her, she saw with a start that only Delafield was beside her, that the Duchess and Meredith had already rounded the corner of the Villa Carlotta and were out of sight. Delafield's gaze was fixed upon her. He was very pale, and suddenly Julie's breath seemed to fail her. "I don't think I can bear it any longer," he said, as he came close to her. "Bear what?" "That you should look as you do now." Julie made no reply. Her eyes, very sad and bitter, searched the blue dimness of the lake in silence.