But artists’ passions are like flowers, fragrant, but quickly languishing.  The rough German musician was a simple person, unstable, fickle, ready to be amused at any new plaything.  Leonora admitted to Rafael that she could have lived to old age submissively at Keller’s side, pampering his whims and selfish caprices.  But one day Keller deserted her, as she had deserted others, to take up with a sickly, languid contralto, whose best charms could have been hardly comparable to the morbid delicacy of a hot-house flower.  Leonora, mad with love and jealousy, pursued him, knocking at his door like a servant.  For the first time she felt the voluptuous bitterness of being scorned, discarded, until reaction from despair brought her back to her former pride and self-control!

Love was over.  She had had enough of artists; though an interesting sort of folk they were in their way.  Far preferable were the ordinary, normal men she had known before Keller’s time!  The foolisher—­the more commonplace—­the better!  She would never fall in love again!

Wearied, broken in spirit, disillusioned, she went back into her old world.  But now the legend of her past beset her.  Again men came, passionately besieging her, offering her wealth in return for a little love.  They talked of killing themselves if she resisted, as if it were her duty to surrender, as if refusal on her part were treachery.  The gloomy Macchia committed suicide in Naples.  Why?  Because she did not capitulate to his melancholy sonnets!  In Vienna there had been a duel, in which one of her admirers was slain.  An eccentric Englishman followed her about, looming in her pathway everywhere like the shadow of a fatal Destiny, vowing to kill anybody she should prefer to him....  She had had enough at last!  She was wearied of such a life, disgusted at the male voracity that dogged her every step.  She longed to fall out of sight, disappear, find rest and quiet in a complete surrender to some boundless dream.  And the thought—­a comforting, soothing thought, it had been—­of the distant land of her childhood came back to her, the thought of her simple, pious aunt, the sole survivor of her family, who wrote to her twice every year, urging her to reconcile her soul with God—­to which end the good old Dona Pepa was herself aiding with prayer!

She felt, too, somehow, without knowing just why, that a visit to her native soil would soften the painful memory of the ingratitude that had cost her father’s life.  She would care for the poor old woman!  Her presence would bring a note of cheer into that gray, monotonous existence that had gone on without the slightest change, ever.  And suddenly, one night, after an “Isolde” in Florence, she ordered Beppa, the loyal and silent companion of her wandering life, to pack her things!

Home!  Home!  Off for her native land!  And might she find there something to keep her ever from returning to the troubled stirring world she was leaving!