"Oh, leave it. You won't need it to-night. And it's safer here than at the hotel. Well, good-by. You're a dear to put up with all my pains and aches." "Such dear aches and pains, all caused by my own brutal self!" She held out her hands. He kissed the palms lingeringly, and then swung down the terrace towards the courtyard, where his car was waiting by the tall iron gates. Slim, flexible as a steel blade, small shapely head, aureoled in the setting sun, he trod the air like a young god. Anne looked after him wistfully. As he disappeared around the angle of the house, fatigue mounted about her in dizzy waves, sucked her down, engulfed her in a dark, pulsating embrace, like the swirl of black waters. * * * * * Brilliant afternoon faded into dark, moonless night. Gun-metal clouds obscured, one by one, the beckoning stars. A breeze, warm and sweet-smelling as the breath of cattle, stirred in the tops of the trees. From her deck upon the garden terrace, Anne watched the clouds as, with swollen sails, they scurried like miraged galleons upon an inverted sea. Her headache eased, it had left behind a trail of lassitude. She lay back in her chair, too weary for thought, spent to the point of serenity, at truce with an unsubstantial world. When footsteps cut crisply upon the brick stairway, she did not even trouble to turn her head. "Is that you, Alexis?" she called languidly. Vittorio's voice broke upon her lethargy with the abruptness of a stone thrown into a stagnant pool. "No, it is I, Vittorio." Pierced as by a blade, her numbness fell from her like a mantle. She rose, and leaning against the balustrade, gave vent to a thin cry. "I told you not to come!" "But surely, you didn't expect to be obeyed?" Etched against the sombre heavens, Vittorio loomed disproportionately large. He approached and seized her hands almost roughly. "My mother says you are going to marry this Petrovskey. Tell me it isn't true, Anna mia?" "Yes." She made a feeble effort to withdraw her hands. "But I thought he had a wife already." "She--she died a few weeks ago. Won't you please let go my hands?" His grasp tightened. "How do you know he is telling you the truth?" She threw back her head proudly. The curve of her throat shone through the dusk like a white pillar. "Alexis is not a liar!" Vittorio laughed grimly. It was worse than he had feared. "But you cannot mean to marry him. He is entirely out of your class, an artist, a Bohemian. If you cannot protect yourself from such people, I must do it for you." Anne succeeded in wrenching away her hands. "I have not asked for your protection, Vittorio Torrigiani." "No, madonna mia, but you need it. You suddenly decide to throw away your life and expect me to sit calmly by. I warn you I am desperate. I cannot permit this sacrilege." "Sacrilege? You call this sacrilege? If you had used that word a few months ago you might have come nearer to the truth. But now----!"