Then came Howard’s death, and he realized how deeply she was moved.  A new look came often into her eyes, which he noted; a new tone into her voice, which he heard.  And yet he felt that the experience had not touched the depths of her being.

While they were on the way from Florence to Rome he had rejoiced every time he heard her voice ringing with the old merry tones, which showed that she had for the moment forgotten all sad thoughts.  When he was ostensibly talking to all, he was often really talking only to Barbara, and watching the expression of her eyes; and he always listened to catch her first words when any new experience came to their party.  He was really fast getting into a dangerous condition, this young man nearly thirty years old, but was as unconscious of it as a child.

At Perugia came the night struggle caused by Malcom’s words; the dream, and the morning meeting with Barbara.  When his hand touched hers as he put into them the roses, he felt again for an instant the electric thrill that ran through him on the birthday night, when he met that wonderful look in her eyes.  It brought a feeling of possession, as if it were the hand of his Margaret which he had touched,—­Margaret, who was so soon to have been his wife when death claimed her.

He tried to account for it.  He was jealous for the beloved dead whose words, whose ways, whose face had reigned supreme over his heart for so many years, when he caught himself dwelling on Barbara’s words, recalling her tricks of tone, her individual ways.

He set himself resolutely to the task of overcoming this singular tendency of his thought; and oh! how the little blind (but all-seeing) god of love had been laughing at Robert Sumner all through the days since they reached Rome.

Instead of driving and walking about with the others, he had zealously set himself the task of calling at the studios of all his artist friends; had visited exhibitions; had gone hither and thither by himself; and yet every time had hastened home, though he would not admit it to his own consciousness, in order that he might know where Barbara was, what she was doing, and how she was feeling.  He had busied himself in fitting up a sky-lighted room for a studio, where he resolved to spend many morning hours, forgetting all else save his beloved occupation; and the very first time he sat before his easel a sketch of Barbara’s face grew out of the canvas.  The harder he tried to put her from his thoughts, the less could he do so, and he grew restless and unhappy.

Another cause of troubled, agitated feeling was his decision to return to America and there make his home.  In this he had not faltered, but it oppressed him.  He loved this Italy, with her soft skies, her fair, smiling vineyards and bold mountain backgrounds, her romantic legends, and, above all, her art-treasures.  He had taken her as his foster-mother.  Her atmosphere stimulated him to work in those directions his heart