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He opened the doubled sheet, and saw the date and the name of the place, Subiaco, and the first words 'Heart of my heart, this is my last cry to you' and it was to Angelo Reanda.
Gloria wished to be the first everywhere, though she did not say so. Little by little, she came less regularly in the mornings. She either stayed at home and studied seriously the soprano parts of the great operas then fashionable, or invented small errands which kept her out of doors. She sometimes met Reanda when he left the palace, and they walked home together to their midday breakfast.
The lines ran down a little at the end, but otherwise the large, careful hand was the same as ever, learned in a convent and little changed since, even as the woman herself had changed little. She was the same always, simple, honest, strangely maidenlike, thoroughly good. He turned to the window again. So Reanda was dead. He would not find Gloria, to whatsoever place he was gone.
But, in consequence of his own irregular marriage, he could not marry her to a man of his own rank in Rome, who would not fail to make inquiries about her mother. It was most natural that he should look upon such a man as Reanda with favour. Reanda had many good qualities.
It is of no use to go back to a lie," observed Reanda, with an indifference that would have seemed diabolical even to himself, had he believed her outbreak to be quite genuine. "Of what use would it be to pretend again?" "You admit that you have only pretended to love me?" She raised her flushed face and gleaming eyes. "Of late if you call it a pretence " "Oh, not that not that!
For the vault had long been finished, and Reanda was painting the walls. "Nonsense, papa!" answered the young girl, also in English. "There's no danger at all." "Well don't break your neck," said Dalrymple. "I wish you would come down, though." Francesca was surprised at his indifference, and at his daughter's calm disregard of his authority.
She nodded to him, and then spoke to her father, evidently calling his attention to Reanda, for Dalrymple looked down at once, and also nodded, while Griggs leaned forward a little and stared vacantly into the pit. "It is an obsession to-day," said Reanda to himself, reflecting that though the girl lived in Rome he had never noticed her before, and had now seen her twice on the same day.
With Reanda, art was above everything and beyond all other interests, and he had made her feel that he worked for art's sake rather than for hers. There was a vast difference in the value placed upon her by the two men, in relation to their two occupations. "I have no genius," said Griggs to her one day. "I have no intuitions of underlying truth.
She follows you with her eyes as you move, and there is a look in them " Reanda laughed, with an effort. "It is altogether too absurd!" he said. "I do not know what to say. I can only laugh." "Because you know it is true," answered Gloria.
In Francesca Campodonico there was much more than such superficial taste, and in her Reanda found the only true companion he had ever known. He might have been for twenty years the intimate friend of all Roman society without meeting such another, and he knew it, and appreciated his good fortune. For he was not naturally a dissatisfied man, nor at all given to complain of his lot.
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