“Then the industrial army,” said Don Riccardo, “would fare better at the hands of the state than the military.” “And it ought to,” Mario returned. “Work is the hope of the world, war is its despair.” Don Riccardo, with a shake of the head, bespoke his doubt as to that idea, and his sister, looking into the face of Hera, was alarmed anew to read there a frank expression of sympathy with Forza’s sentiment. Mario rode with them as far as the gates of the villa, and at parting Hera gave him her hand. “The day will live in my memory,” he told her. “And in mine,” she said. “Good-bye.” Tarsis dined with the Barbiondi next day and took them in an automobile to Milan for the opera. Hera, by his side, spent much of the ten-mile journey in reflections that gave her no peace. Before meeting Mario Forza she had begun to know the calm there is in accepted bitterness. For the sake of others she had resolved to be patiently unhappy. Now the future had a changed outlook--had opened to a sudden gleam, as a cloud opens to sheet lightning at sunset. The sacrifice demanded of her seemed far greater than it did a few days before, and she was conscious of a growing doubt that her strength should prove equal to it. There came a throb of resentment, too, that what she had been calling duty should interpret its law so remorselessly. Not until after the meeting with Forza had the sense of renunciation, of impending loss, been of a positive nature. She had felt only that the future could hold no happiness for her; now she was aware of a joy to be killed, of a destiny that should deny what her soul was quickening with desire to possess. It was as if happiness had come back from the tomb and she dared not receive it. In the box at La Scala she looked on the stage spectacle, but the eyes of her mind saw Mario Forza, and she heard his voice above the music of the drama. The knowledge that she cared for him so brought no feeling of shame, but shame assailed her when she looked upon the ring and the man who had placed it on her hand. In the gold circle and the clear stone she saw only the badge of a hideous bargain. They went to a restaurant where fashionable Milan assembles after the opera. At a table apart from the one where they seated themselves she saw Mario Forza in the company of some men known as leaders of Italy’s political thought; and when Tarsis perceived that Hera had caught sight of him he could not refrain from venting his feelings. Without any leading up to the subject, he spoke contemptuously of the new ideas of government in the air. “I have no patience with them,” he said. “They are no more than the wild flowering of poetic oratory in Parliament.” “And like all wild flowers, they soon will fade,” chimed in Donna Beatrice. “Nevertheless,” Tarsis went on, “these dreamers are doing much harm. They clog the wheels of Italy’s true progress.” “Can nothing be done to put down these dangerous men?” asked Donna Beatrice, in alarm.