had been a thoroughly good girl, had married happily, was a thoroughly good wife, and was the conscientious mother of five children; but she was very far from being the saintly heroine her friend’s imagination had made of her.
She was morally lucky. Without in the least depreciating the intrinsic value of her virtue, it is quite fair to ask what she might have done if she had ever been placed in the same situation as her friend. But this never happened to her, though she was apparently not without those gifts and qualities that suggest enterprise on the part of admirers. She had been a very pretty girl, and in spite of much uneventful happiness and five children she was considered to be a beautiful woman at nine-and-twenty; and, moreover, she was extremely smart. In looks she was not at all like a rigid Roman matron.
But temptation had not come her way; it had passed by on the other side, and she could hardly understand how it could exist for others, since it certainly had never existed for her. There are people who go through life without accidents; they cross the ocean in utterly rotten steamers without knowing of the danger, they travel in the last train that runs before the one that is wrecked, they go out in high-speed motors with rash amateur chauffeurs who are killed the very next day, they leave the doomed city on the eve of the great earthquake, and the theatre five minutes before the fire breaks out.
Similarly, there are women who are morally so lucky that an accident to their souls is almost an impossibility. Giuliana Parenzo was one of them, and Maria’s affection gave her credit for strength because she had never faced a storm. Not that it mattered much, after all. The important thing was that Maria, even at the worst crisis of her young life, had always looked upon her spotless friend as her guide and her ideal. Yet there had been a time when it would have been only too easy for her to look another way.
To-day Maria had turned to Giuliana naturally in her difficulty. It was hardly a trouble yet, but Castiglione’s return and his intended visit were the first incidents that had disturbed her outwardly peaceful life in all the seven years that had passed since her husband had left Rome. The rest had been within her.
It would not last long. Castiglione had said that he had only a fortnight’s leave, and with the most moderate desire to avoid him, she need not meet him more than two or three times while he was in Rome. To refuse to receive him once would perhaps look to him like fear or weakness, and she believed that she was strong and brave; yet she did not wish to see him alone, not because she was afraid of him, but because to be alone with him a few moments, even as she had been yesterday afternoon, brought the past too near, and it hurt her.
Giuliana often lunched with her friend, and was far from suspecting that she had been asked for a special reason to-day. The two talked of indifferent matters, much as usual, and presently went into the drawing-room. It was warm already, and the blinds were closed to keep out the blazing sunlight and the reflection from the white street. The friends sat near each other, exchanging a few words now and then, and both were preoccupied, which hindered each from noticing that the other was so.
Leone knelt on a chair at the window looking down into the street between the slits of the green blinds.
‘Summer is coming!’ he suddenly called out, turning to look at his mother.
‘Yes,’ she answered, smiling at him merely because he spoke. ‘It will come soon.’
‘But do you know why? There are two bersaglieri in linen trousers.’
‘Yes, dear. They have probably been drilling.’
‘No,’ answered the small boy. ‘They have no knapsacks and no rifles, and they are not dusty. It is because summer is coming that they wear linen trousers. I can’t see them any more. They walk so fast, you know. When shall I be a bersagliere, mama?’
‘Would you not rather be a sailor?’ asked Giuliana.
‘Oh, no!’ Leone laughed. ‘A sailor? To sit inside an iron box and shoot off guns at other iron boxes? That’s not fighting! But the bersaglieri, they charge the enemy and kill them with their bayonets. And sometimes they are killed themselves. But that doesn’t matter, for they have had the glory!’
‘What glory?’ inquired Maria, watching the small boy’s flashing eyes.
‘They kill the enemies of Italy,’ he answered. ‘That’s glory!’
He turned to look through the blinds again, doubtless in the hope of seeing more soldiers.
‘Your son certainly has a warlike disposition, my dear,’ laughed Giuliana.
But Maria did not laugh; on the contrary, she looked rather grave.
‘All boys want to be soldiers,’ she answered. ‘I’m sure yours do, too!’
‘No,’ said Giuliana, rising. ‘My boys are almost too peaceable! I sometimes wish they had more of Leone’s spirit!’
Maria looked at her thoughtfully, thinking at first of what she had said, but suddenly realised that she had left her seat.
‘You are not going already?’ Maria cried in real anxiety.
‘Yes, dear, I must. It’s a quarter past two, and I have to allow five minutes for driving to the Quirinal.’
‘You did not tell me that you had an audience to-day,’ said Maria, deeply disappointed. ‘I’m so sorry! I had hoped you would stay with me, and that we might go out together by and by. How long shall you be there? Can you not come directly back?’
Giuliana was a little surprised; she shook her head doubtfully.
‘I’ll try to come back, but I really have not the least idea how long I may be kept. You see, it’s a special audience to talk about my working women’s institute, and I have so much to say. I really must be going, dear!’
She glanced again at her little watch, which was fastened high up on the close-fitting dove-coloured body of her frock by a little jade bar carved to imitate the twist of a rope, and just then the very latest invention in the way of indispensable nothings. Giuliana, without the least coquetry and with very little vanity as to her appearance, always seemed to have everything new just a week sooner than any one else. The truth was that her husband was in love with her, and likely to remain so, and as he had spent a good deal of his youth in women’s society, he thoroughly understood such matters; and he superintended the docile and pretty Giuliana’s toilet with quite as much care as he gave to the direction of his subordinates, though he was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with a very promising future before him and a good deal to do.
Giuliana kissed her friend on both cheeks and said good-bye to Leone, who did not like to be kissed at all, and in a moment she was gone.
Maria went to the window where the boy was, and, resting one hand on his shoulder, she bent down beside him and looked through the blinds.
‘Have you seen any more soldiers?’ she asked, after a moment, and as if the question were an important one.
‘Only two,’ he answered. ‘They’re all at dinner now. It’s the time.’
Her face was close to the child’s as she looked out with him; and just then he moved his head and his short and thick brown hair brushed her cheek. She started a little nervously and stood upright, looking down at the top of his head.
‘What is it, mama?’
