Julie parted from her with a caress, and paused awhile to watch the small figure till it mounted out of sight.  Her friend had become very dear to her.  A new humility, a new gratitude filled her heart.  Evelyn should not sacrifice herself much longer.  When she had insisted on carrying her patient abroad, Julie had neither mind nor will wherewith to resist.  But now—­the Duke should soon come to his own again.

She herself turned inland for that short walk by which each day she tested her returning strength.  She climbed the winding road to Criante, the lovely village above Cadenabbia; then, turning to the left, she mounted a path that led to the woods which overhang the famous gardens of the Villa Carlotta.

Such a path!  To the left hand, and, as it seemed, steeply beneath her feet, all earth and heaven—­the wide lake, the purple mountains, the glories of a flaming sky.  On the calm spaces of water lay a shimmer of crimson and gold, repeating the noble splendor of the clouds; the midgelike boats crept from shore to shore; and, midway between Bellaggio and Cadenabbia, the steam-boat, a white speck, drew a silver furrow.  To her right a green hill-side—­each blade of grass, each flower, each tuft of heath, enskied, transfigured, by the broad light that poured across it from the hidden west.  And on the very hill-top a few scattered olives, peaches, and wild cherries scrawled upon the blue, their bare, leaning stems, their pearly whites, their golden pinks and feathery grays all in a glory of sunset that made of them things enchanted, aerial, fantastical, like a dance of Botticelli angels on the height.

And presently a sheltered bank in a green hollow, where Julie sat down to rest.  But nature, in this tranquil spot, had still new pageants, new sorceries wherewith to play upon the nerves of wonder.  Across the hollow a great crag clothed in still leafless chestnut-trees reared itself against the lake.  The innumerable lines of stem and branch, warm brown or steely gray, were drawn sharp on silver air, while at the very summit of the rock one superb tree with branching limbs, touched with intense black, sprang high above the rest, the proud plume or ensign of the wood.  Through the trunks the blaze of distant snow and the purples of craggy mountains; in front the glistening spray of peach or cherry blossom, breaking the still wintry beauty of that majestic grove.  And in all the air, dropping from the heaven, spread on the hills, or shimmering on the lake, a diffusion of purest rose and deepest blue, lake and cloud and mountain each melting into the other, as though heaven and earth conspired merely to give value and relief to the year’s new birth, to this near sparkle of young leaf and blossom which shone like points of fire on the deep breast of the distance.