friends of hers had succeeded each other as her assistants during the long afternoon. They belonged to the younger generation of Romans, a set of young men whom their parents certainly never dreamt that they were rearing and whom their grandfathers and grandmothers count with the sons of Belial, largely because they love their country better than the decrepit and forlorn traditions of other days. Forty years ago it would not have occurred to a Roman gentleman to call himself an Italian, but to-day most of his children call themselves Italians first and Romans afterwards, and to these younger ones Italy is a great reality. It is true that Romans have not lost their dislike of the inhabitants of almost all other Italian cities, whether of the south or the north. The Roman dislikes the Neapolitan, the Piedmontese and the Bolognese with small difference of degree, and very much as they and the rest all dislike each other. Italy has its sects, like Christianity, which mostly live on bad terms with each other when forcibly brought together in peaceable private life—like Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, and Baptists, not to mention Roman Catholics. But as it is to be hoped that all Christians would unite against an inroad of heathens, so it is quite certain that all Italians would now stand loyally together for their country against any enemy that should try to dismember it. No one who can recall the old time before the unification can help seeing what has been built up. It is a good thing, it is a monument in the history of a race; as it grows, the petty landmarks of past politics disappear in the distance, to be forgotten, or at least forgiven, and the mountain of what Italy has accomplished stands out boldly in the political geography of modern Europe.
Moreover, those who are too young to have helped in the work are nevertheless proud of what has been done; and this is itself a form of patriotism that brings with it the honest and good hope of doing something in the near future not unworthy of what was well done in the recent past.
The young men who helped Maria Montalto to mix lemonade and almond syrup for her stall were of this generation, all between twenty and thirty years old, and mostly of those who follow the line of least resistance from the start of life to the finish. They are all easily amused, because in their hearts they wish to be amused, and for the same reason they are easily bored when there is no amusement at all in the air. They are not bad fellows, they are often good sportsmen, and they are generally not at all vicious. They are not particularly good, it is true, but then they are very far from bad. They have less time for flirting and general mischief than their fathers had, because it now seems to be necessary to spend many hours of each day in a high-speed motor car, which is not conducive to the growth and blooming of the passion flower. It does not promote the development of the intelligence either, but that is a secondary consideration with people who need never know that they have minds. Morally, motoring is probably a good rather than an evil. People who live in constant danger of their lives are usually much more honest and fearless than those who dawdle through an existence of uneventful safety. The soldier in time of peace was the butt and laughing-stock of the ancients in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, and of the Greeks, whom those playwrights copied or adapted, but no such contemptuous use has ever been made of the sailor, whose life is in danger half a dozen times in every year.
Oderisio Boccapaduli was squeezing a lemon into a glass for Maria when he saw her hand shake as if it had been struck, and the spoon which she was going to use for putting the powdered sugar into the glass fell from her fingers upon the metal counter with a sharp clatter. Oderisio glanced sideways at her face without interrupting the squeezing of the lemon, and he saw that the characteristic warmth had disappeared all at once from her natural pallor and that her white cheeks looked as cold as if she were in an ague. She was looking down when she took up the spoon again and drew the polished brass sugar-can nearer to her. The young man was quite sure that something had happened to disturb her, and he could only suppose that she felt suddenly tired and ill, or else that some one had appeared in sight not far from the booth, whose presence was unexpected and disagreeable enough to give her a bad shock.
But he knew much more about her than Angelica Campodonico, for he was six-and-twenty, and had been seventeen himself when Maria had married, and nineteen when Montalto had left her; and since he had finished his military service and had been at large in society he had learned pretty much all that could be known about people who belonged to his set. He therefore scrutinised the faces in the near distance, and presently he saw one which he had not seen in Rome for several years; once more he glanced sideways at Maria, and her hand was unsteady as she gave the full glass to a respectable old gentleman who was waiting for it in an attitude of admiration.
The face was that of a man who was Oderisio’s cousin in a not very distant degree, and who bore the honourable and historical name of Baldassare del Castiglione. He was looking straight at Maria and was coming slowly towards her.
Then Oderisio, who was an honest gentleman, saw that something unpleasant was going to happen, and on pretence of bringing fresh glasses from behind the booth, he slipped under the curtain into the tent; but instead of getting the tumblers he quietly took his hat and stick and went away, telling the servant that he would send his brother or a friend to help the Contessa, as he was obliged to go home. Moreover, he carefully avoided passing in front of the booth lest Maria should think that he was watching her, and he went off to another part of the Kermess.
Meanwhile the old gentleman drank his lemonade, and it chanced that no other customer was at the counter when Castiglione reached it and took off his hat. He was a square-shouldered man of thirty or a little less, with short and thick brown hair and a rather heavy moustache, such as is often affected by cavalrymen; his healthy, sunburnt face made his rather hard eyes look very blue, and the well-shaped aquiline nose of the martial type, with the solid square jaw, conveyed the impression that he was a born fighting man, easily roused and soon dangerous, somewhat lawless and violent by nature, but brave and straightforward.
He took off his hat and bowed as he came up, neither stiffly nor at all familiarly, but precisely as he would have bowed to ninety-nine women out of a hundred whom he knew. He did not put out his hand, and he did not speak for a moment, apparently meaning to give Maria a chance to say something.
Her hand was no longer shaking now, but the warmth had not come back to her face, and when she slowly looked up and met the man’s eyes her own were coldly resentful. She did not speak; she merely met his look steadily, by an effort of will which he was far from understanding at the moment.
‘I have left Milan on a fortnight’s leave,’ he said quietly. ‘Will you let me come and see you?’
‘Certainly not.’
The decided answer was given in a voice as calm as his own, but the tone would have convinced most men that there was to be no appeal from the direct refusal. Castiglione’s features hardened and his jaw seemed more square than ever. There was a look of brutal strength in his face at that moment, though his voice was gentle when he spoke.
‘Have you never thought of forgiving me?’ he asked.
‘I have prayed that I might.’ Maria fixed her eyes fearlessly on his.
‘But your prayer has not been answered, I suppose,’ he said, with some contempt, and with an evident lack of belief in the efficacy of prayer in general.
‘No,’ Maria answered. ‘God has not yet granted what I ask every day.’
Castiglione looked at her still. It was strange that the face of such a man should be capable of many shades of expression, so subtle that only a portrait painter of genius could have defined them and reproduced any one of them, while most men would hardly have noticed them all. Yet every woman with whom he talked felt that his face often said more than his words.
The keen blue light in his eyes softened at Maria’s simple answer to his contemptuous speech; the strength was in his face still, but without the brutality. She saw, and remembered why she had loved him too well, and when he spoke she turned
