And Aurelia—­how did she stand there?  I saw her too in my mind’s eye; dazzlingly, provokingly, like a creature of pure light, with thrown-back head and parted lips, with jewels about her neck, as I had seen her in the theatre at Siena; and jewels also in her hair.  Like a queen of beauty at a love-court, conscious of her power, loving it, proving it; she smiled, she shook her cloudy tresses, she demanded my worship as of right.  “If I choose I shall call thee,” she seemed to say, “and thee—­ and thee—­and thee again, to stand behind my chair, to kneel at my feet, to be my slave.  And wilt thou deny me, Francis—­or thou—­or thou?”

Her soft eyes, how they peered and sparkled!  Her soft lips, how they faltered between laugh and pout!  “If I need him I can have him here,” I heard her say.  “I have but to thrill his name—­to call Checho—­Checho—­ and he comes.  Is it not so, Checho?  Is it not so?”

Call you me, Virginia; call you me in turn, my girl!  What said she now but, “Povera Virginia, che fara?  Don Francesco non ti ama piu.  Ebbene—­ pazienza!” Virginia shrugged her proud shoulders and turned her grey eyes away.  Virginia refused to plead, and was too proud to command.

So stood I, In my fancy, irresolute between these two, their battleground, the prize, it would seem, of one who now refused to fight for it, and of one already sure of victory.  But this was very odd about the affair, that the stiffer Virginia grew, as I saw her there, the more indurate, the more ruggedly of the soil, declining battle, the more Aurelia shrank in my eyes, the less confident her call to me, the more frail her hold of my heart.  Virginia stood apart like a rock and turned away her eyes from me.  “Thou shalt seek me out of thine own will, Francis, for I will never come to thee again of mine!” But Aurelia’s halo had slipped; her wings drooped lifeless, her glitter was dimmed.  Her appeal was now urgent; her arms called me as well as her voice; but I seemed to shrink from them, as if there were danger in her.

This very singular hallucination of mine decided me to go, for now I was curious.  The strife, in which I had had so little to do, had been most vivid, the parties to it so real, that there were moments when I caught myself speaking aloud to one of my phantoms.  That one was always Virginia; therefore I dared to go, knowing full well that she would now go with me.

And it was so.  At six o’clock of an evening I went out of doors and turned my face towards the east.  It was a mild evening as that on which I had seen Virginia for the first time in the wood, her faggot on her head.  I seemed to see her now going bravely before me.  So clearly did she show, I quickened my steps to overtake her; and again my heart beat, and again I thought of the nymphs and all the soft riot of the woodland scents and sounds.  Strange! how the slim figure of the peasant-girl possessed me.  I thought of her as I entered the grove of cypresses which led to the villa, and if my heart was in high trouble as I asked for Donna Aurelia, it was the surmise that I should again see Virginia fluttering among the trees that set my blood a-tingling.