At length the sun hung high over the west, preparing to fall into his hidden resting-place that colored all the cloudless heaven with its mounting tinge.  Luigi rose and inspected his work.  Then again he crossed the street and stood below Eve’s window.  It was a long time that he leaned with his arms folded on the bar of the low paling.  Perhaps he meant that she should look at him.  She had closed the last of her receptacles, and, dismissing the matter, for want of better employment, her scissors were tinkering upon a tiny hand-glass with a setting thickly crusted in crystals, a trifle that one clear day a sailor diving from her father’s ship had found upon the bottom of the sea,—­a very mermaid’s glass dropped in some shallow place for Eve herself, a glass that had reflected the rushing of the storm, the sliding of the keel above, the face of many a drowning mariner.  Careless of all that, at the moment, she held it up now to the light to see if further furbishing could brighten it, and as she did so was hastily checked.  She had caught sight of a dark face just framed and mirrored, the sad eyes raised and resting on her own, luminous no more, but heavy, and longing, and dull with a weight of woe.  At the same moment, Paula, who had by no means abandoned the lost love-ribbon, cried from within,—­

“Well, Miss, the lutestring has been spirited away, and no less.  I’ve searched the house through, and nobody has it.”

“Qualcheduno l’ ha,” breathed a sweet, melancholy tone from below; and they turned and saw it in Luigi’s hands, the frosty film of gossamer.  He held it up a moment, pressed it to his lips, folded it again into his breast; and if it was plain that somebody had it, it was plainer still that somebody meant to keep it.  And then, as if twin stars were bending over him out of the bluest deeps of heaven, Luigi kept Eve’s eyes awhile suspended on his despairing gaze, and without other word or gesture turned and went away.

* * * * *

Many days afterward, when it was certain that the little foreign image-vender had indeed departed, Eve stole over to the bench beneath the lofty arches of the elm-tree, all checkered with flickering sunlight, and endeavored to read the sentence carved thereon.  It was at first undecipherable, and then, the text conquered, not easy for her to comprehend.  But when she had made it hers, she rose, bathed with blushes, and stole away home again, feeling only as if Luigi had laid a chain upon her heart.

Years have fled.  The little legend yet remains cut deep into the wood, though he returns no more, and though, since then, her

    “Part in all the pomp that fills
    The circuit of the summer hills
    Is that her grave is green.”

Rain and snow have not effaced its intaglio, nor summer’s dust, nor winter’s wind; and if you ever pass it, you yet may read,—­

    AMOR QUE A NULLO
        AMATO
    AMAR PERDONA.