Serafino took us through the room of the d’Este Palace telling the driver to meet us at one of the entrances to the grounds.  When we emerged and descended to the Hundred Fountains he turned away giving us the directions to reach the carriage.  He knew that this was a place where lovers would wish to dispense with a guide.

We walked through the avenues of great cypress trees and came to the farther end of the pools whose curbs were decorated with flowering urns.  There we looked at the palace and listened to the song of the merles.  Beside this all was silence, only the stir of the wind against the soft strings of the trees—­the most melodious harp in the world!  We climbed to an eminence, stood by an iron fence and gazed down upon the fisheries surrounded by graceful bushes and trees.  Then we found the Fontana dell’ Ovato, and a seat before it.  It was a semicircle of stone perforated by arches over which the water musically poured.  Here we rested, listening to the merles, the falling water, the whispering of the wind.  Ghosts of dead delight seemed to pass us; unseen presences of passionate gallants and capricious loveliness, hungering hearts wounded by life, by beauty, by desire, spoke to us through the murmuring water, the stir of the wind, the intense silence when all sounds were turned away by the veering of the delicious air.

And Uncle Tom was in Rome at Canape’s drinking with his American cronies!  Only myself knew my starved heart, but surely he knew the heart of Isabel.  What was the attitude of mind in allowing this free association between Isabel and me?  Does the heart of age become deadened?  Does it understand; does it but partly divine these secrets; does it for any of these reasons cease to be sensitive?

Then suddenly, as Isabel and I sat there in these enchanting surroundings, an uncontrollable emotion seized me, one that had no regard for a future, that sought only to realize wholly and at once an ecstatic present.  For what could be between us?  I could not marry Isabel; and what could be?  Blindly, without a thought of any of these things, I took Isabel’s hands and drew her to me frightened and trembling.  Instantly I saw what I had done.  Our life of frank companionship fell away from us.  A new birth was ours; but of what wonder and terror and danger!  Isabel exclaimed:  “Oh, my friend!” Then she lost her voice and whispered, “My friend!” She became relaxed, leaned back her head, closed her eyes.  Tears crept down her cheeks.  And I was silent, in a kind of madness of fear, passion, regret, nameless sorrow.  What could I say, to what could she listen?  There was a long silence.  Then Isabel began to speak.