Madame Marmet, tired of admiring St. Mark, and feeling on her face the burning wind, dragged Miss Bell toward Calzaioli Street in search of a veil.

Therese and Dechartre remained.

“I like him,” continued the sculptor; “I like Saint Mark because I feel in him, much more than in the Saint George, the hand and mind of Donatello, who was a good workman.  I like him even more to-day, because he recalls to me, in his venerable and touching candor, the old cobbler to whom you were speaking so kindly this morning.”

“Ah,” she said, “I have forgotten his name.  When we talk with Monsieur Choulette we call him Quentin Matsys, because he resembles the old men of that painter.”

As they were turning the corner of the church to see the facade, she found herself before the post-box, which was so dusty and rusty that it seemed as if the postman never came near it.  She put her letter in it under the ingenuous gaze of St. Mark.

Dechartre saw her, and felt as if a heavy blow had been struck at his heart.  He tried to speak, to smile; but the gloved hand which had dropped the letter remained before his eyes.  He recalled having seen in the morning Therese’s letters on the hall tray.  Why had she not put that one with the others?  The reason was not hard to guess.  He remained immovable, dreamy, and gazed without seeing.  He tried to be reassured; perhaps it was an insignificant letter which she was trying to hide from the tiresome curiosity of Madame Marmet.

“Monsieur Dechartre, it is time to rejoin our friends at the dressmaker’s.”

Perhaps it was a letter to Madame Schmoll, who was not a friend of Madame Marmet, but immediately he realized that this idea was foolish.

All was clear.  She had a lover.  She was writing to him.  Perhaps she was saying to him:  “I saw Dechartre to-day; the poor fellow is deeply in love with me.”  But whether she wrote that or something else, she had a lover.  He had not thought of that.  To know that she belonged to another made him suffer profoundly.  And that hand, that little hand dropping the letter, remained in his eyes and made them burn.

She did not know why he had become suddenly dumb and sombre.  When she saw him throw an anxious glance back at the post-box, she guessed the reason.  She thought it odd that he should be jealous without having the right to be jealous; but this did not displease her.

When they reached the Corso, they saw Miss Bell and Madame Marmet coming out of the dressmaker’s shop.

Dechartre said to Therese, in an imperious and supplicating voice: 

“I must speak to you.  I must see you alone tomorrow; meet me at six o’clock at the Lungarno Acciaoli.”

She made no reply.

CHAPTER XVI

“To-morrow?”

When, in her Carmelite mantle, she came to the Lungarno Acciaoli, at about half-past six, Dechartre greeted her with a humble look that moved her.  The setting sun made the Arno purple.  They remained silent for a moment.  While they were walking past the monotonous line of palaces to the old bridge, she was the first to speak.