Blanden dropped all suspicions, and the project of making Giulia his wife took still deeper root. He had reason to expect that she would be ready to resign the stage, as she had frequently lamented the disappointments to which she was daily more and more exposed in her artistic career; nor did she conceal a feeling, which caused her uneasiness, the conviction that the epoch of her glory was at an end, and that the decadence of her voice was making its announcement gently but perceptibly. Surely therefore was she often so melancholy; who would not, with a heavy heart, bear the claims of a day of reckoning as it crumbles from us one object of pride, one advantage after another, and with such cruel indifference sweeps away all the flowers of our life. _Primavera!_ But there is a spring-time of feeling, which time cannot kill. It was that which bound Giulia to the wintry provincial town, when she might have been celebrating her triumphs in the capitals of the south. This it was that made her await the arrival of her friend with a palpitating heart, as she had once awaited him in the moonlight by Lago Maggiore; and if to her other admirers she made no secret of his visits; if she denied herself to them as soon as he was present, or received him at a time when she was inaccessible to others; in so doing she obeyed no decree of prudence which counselled her not to alienate her other enthusiastic friends by distinguishing the one; it was a necessity, a happiness for her to have him quite alone; happiness that might not be desecrated by contact with the world.