Her voice broke in a sob—­she made an uncertain step forward, and he sprang to meet her.

“I love you, love you!”—­she cried, passionately—­“Let the whole world forsake me, if only you remain!  I am all yours!—­do with me as you will!”

He caught her in his arms—­straining her to his heart with all the passion of a long-denied lover’s embrace—­their lips met—­and for a brief space they were lost in that sudden and divine rapture that comes but once in a lifetime,—­when like a shivering sense of cold the name again was whispered: 

“Cosmo de Medicis!”

A shadow fell across the scene, and a woman, dark and heavy-featured, stood like a blot in the sunlit brightness of the studio,- -a woman very richly attired, who gazed fixedly at the lovers with round, suspicious eyes and a sneering smile.  The artist turned and saw her—­his face changed from joy to a pale anxiety—­yet, holding his love with one arm, he flung defiance at her with uplifted head and fearless demeanour.

“Spy!”—­he exclaimed—­“Do your worst!  Let us have an end of your serpent vigilance and perfidy!—­better death than the constant sight of you!  What!  Have you not watched us long enough to make discovery easy?  Do your worst, I say, and quickly!”

The cruel smile deepened on the woman’s mouth,—­she made no answer, but simply raised her hand.  In immediate obedience to the signal, a man, clad in the Florentine dress of the sixteenth century, and wearing a singular collar of jewels, stepped out from behind a curtain, attended by two other men, who, by their dress, were, or seemed to be, of inferior rank.  Without a word, these three threw themselves upon the unarmed and defenceless painter with the fury of wild animals pouncing on prey.  There was a brief and breathless struggle—­three daggers gleamed in air—­a shriek rang through the stillness—­another instant and the victim lay dead, stabbed to the heart, while she who had just clung to his living body and felt the warmth of his living lips against hers, dropped on her knees beside the corpse with wild waitings of madness and despair.

“Another crime on your soul, Cosmo de Medicis!”—­she cried—­“Another murder of a nobler life than your own!—­may Heaven curse you for it!  But you have not parted my love from me—­no!—­you have but united us for ever!  We escape you and your spies—­thus!”

And snatching a dagger from the hand of one of the assassins before he could prevent her, she plunged it into her own breast.  She fell without a groan, self-slain,—­and I saw, as in a mist of breath on a mirror, the sudden horror on the faces of the men and the one woman who were left to contemplate the ghastly deed they had committed.  And then—­noting as in some old blurred picture the features of the man who wore the collar of jewels, I felt that I knew him—­yet I could not place him in any corner of my immediate recognition.  Gradually this strange scene of cool white marble vastness with its brilliant vista of flowers and foliage under the bright Italian sky, and the betrayed lovers lying dead beside each other in the presence of their murderers, passed away like a floating cloud,—­and the same slow, calm Voice I had heard once before now spoke again in sad, stern accents: