Torches are burnt out and smolder in their sockets. Night is tattered by the dawn. Amid the havoc of trampled chalices and glass sprawls the wine-stained figure of the dead Lord of Pesaro--the man who, could she have loved him, would have given her all. _La Fiesole! La Fiesole!_ We rose as one man as the curtain dropped. We did not care to think whether this was wrong--it was lovely. She had danced our souls out of their prejudices, out of their walls of restraint into chaos. The rapture of her beauty ran through our veins like wine. Our imaginations pursued her along pale terraces. The fragrance of crushed rose-leaves was in our nostrils and the coolness of night. Our breath came short, as though we had been running. Our senses were reeling and our eyes dazzled. We stood up in our places clutching at the air, calling and calling, hungry for the sight of her. For myself, I was smitten with blindness. My eyes saw the striving throng through a mist and probed into the beyond, where she ran on and on palely, forever from me. I shouted to her, but she grew more distant; never once did she look back or stay her footsteps. I was aware of a deep stillness--a hoarse peal of laughter: thousands of eyes glared up at me and down on me, and mouths gaped mockery. The mist cleared; Fiesole was standing before the curtain. The audience had grown hushed at sight of her while I had continued calling. From the stage, twenty feet away, she was smiling at me, insolent and charming, her body still shuddering with exertion beneath the velvet cloak which lay across her shoulders. What did I care, though to-morrow the whole of Paris should laugh? She had danced my soul into ecstasy. I placed my hands on the edge of the box and leant out drunkenly, shouting her name, “_Fiesole! Fiesole!_” She kissed her hand at me derisively, bowed to the audience, and was gone. I sank in my place, a sickening nostalgia for her upon me. I did not reason; I only knew I wanted her--wanted her as she had once wanted me, with her hands and eyes and body. In a dim way I felt angry with myself for having lost her. She had made me disgusted with my coldness at Venice as I had watched my counterpart, the Duke of Biseglia. From the theatric torture in her face I had learnt something of how brutal a man may be when he fancies that he is righteously moral. She, whom I saw now so remotely, might have been mine; through these chilly years La Fiesole might have been my companion, had I had the faith to take what was offered. I had sought the things that were impossible. I had made a god of my scruples. I had sinned weakly, following Vi who did not belong to me. I had sat down to wait for her, and all the while Life was tapping at the door. I tasted Life to-night---- And who knows? Perhaps I had broken this woman’s heart. I would no longer be niggardly. I would go to her; accuse myself to her; beat down her hatred of me; carry her off.