“If you like. I would rather not see it again.”

“You shall not,” I answered, as I slipped it into my pocket.  “It will be replaced by a new one to-morrow—­one that I hope may be the symbol of more joy to you than this has been.”

And as her eyes turned to my face in all their melting, perfidious languor, I conquered my hatred of her by a strong effort, and stooped and kissed her.  Had I yielded to my real impulses, I would have crushed her cruelly in my arms, and bruised her delicate flesh with the brutal ferocity of caresses born of bitterest loathing, not love.  But no sign of my aversion escaped me—­all she saw was her elderly looking admirer, with his calmly courteous demeanor, chill smile, and almost parental tenderness; and she judged him merely as an influential gentleman of good position and unlimited income, who was about to make her one of the most envied women in all Italy.

The fugitive resemblance she traced in me to her “dead” husband was certainly attributed by her to a purely accidental likeness common to many persons in this world, where every man, they say, has his double, and for that matter every woman also.  Who does not remember the touching surprise of Heinrich Heine when, on visiting the picture-gallery of the Palazzo Durazzo in Genoa, he was brought face to face with the portrait, as he thought, of a dead woman he had loved—­“Maria la morte.”  It mattered not to him that the picture was very old, that it had been painted by Giorgio Barbarelli centuries before his “Maria” could have lived; he simply declares:  “Il est vraiment d une ressemblance admirable, ressemblant jusqu’au silence de la mort!”

Such likenesses are common enough, and my wife, though my resemblance to myself (!) troubled her a little, was very far from imagining the real truth of the matter, as indeed how should she?  What woman, believing and knowing, as far as anything can be known, her husband to be dead and fast buried, is likely to accept even the idea of his possible escape from the tomb!  Not one!—­else the disconsolate widows would indeed have reason to be more inconsolable than they appear!

When I left her that morning I found Andrea Luziani waiting for me at my hotel.  He was seated in the outer entrance hall; I bade him follow me into my private salon.  He did so.  Abashed at the magnificence of the apartment, he paused at the doorway, and stood, red cap in hand, hesitating, though with an amiable smile on his sunburned merry countenance.

“Come in, amico,” I said, with an inviting gesture, “and sit down.  All this tawdry show of velvet and gilding must seem common to your eyes, that have rested so long on the sparkling pomp of the foaming waves, the glorious blue curtain of the sky, and the sheeny white of the sails of the ‘Laura’ gleaming in the gold of the sun.  Would I could live such a life as yours, Andrea!—­there is nothing better under the width of heaven.”