"I went that same evening on which we had met Giraldi at an entertainment at the French Ambassador's to my husband, and told him that I wished to return home--the next day. He had given no reason when he threw up his post and brought me here into this solitude, and I thought I might also keep silence on the reasons which took me from Rome and the world into solitude. Neither did he inquire. He had already seen--had, like all the world, perceived the extraordinary charm which was even more remarkable in the man who had ripened to such splendid maturity under a tropical sun, than in the fascinating youth of former days; he probably remembered what kind friends then no doubt had told him, and what in his pride and self-confidence he had certainly not believed. And now this confidence was not broken; but it was shaken. The past years, so empty and joyless, stood out before his startled eyes in a strange and suspicious light. All I had suffered and been deprived of must have come before him. But it was still not too late, in his eyes. I wished to do my duty apparently by flying from temptation. He accepted silently what in his opinion was a matter of course. We left the next morning, and went home. "And now commenced a dark and fearful drama which I shudder to look upon, even now that the entangled threads have become clear before my eyes. We had curiously changed our parts. Whilst I, proud of the victory I had obtained over myself, held my head up and took a melancholy pleasure in the renunciation to which I doomed myself, he suffered more and more from the disquietude which had until now possessed me; he was tortured by longings after a happiness which I had resigned. He had married me because I was young, handsome, and brilliant; perhaps had also fancied at the time that he loved me, after his fashion. Now he loved me for the first time with all the passion of which he was capable, and which must be the more fatal to him, that he, to whom a calm bearing had always been the ideal of a gentleman, was ashamed of his passion, and would certainly give no expression to it; and, what was worse than all, he must see, or fancy he saw, that he was too late in treading the path which led to my heart--which perhaps even now would have led to it. It is so hard for a woman to shut her heart against the charm which the knowledge that she is loved sheds around her. I saw how he suffered. I suffered terribly under it; for I held it to be impossible that I could ever return his sentiments; yet I suffered with him, and pity is so near akin to love! If children had played around us, perhaps everything would have happened differently, and I truly believe that their gracious influence at this stage of our affairs would have brought about a happier ending. But as it was, the reckoning was not between father and mother, but always between man and wife, and childless marriages are only too fruitful a source of sorrowful home tragedies.