We sat in the shadow.

She lay between us in the level light of the setting sun, which fell
across her from the wide portal, and once more our eyes met on her
face, but they would not disturb her calm.

His influence was once more upon me.

In the silence--for it was some time before he spoke, and I was
dumb--my accursed eye for detail had taken in the change in him. Yet I
fancied I was not looking at him. I noted that he had aged--that this
was one of the periods in him which I knew so well--when a passion
for work was on him, and the fever and fervor of creation trained him
down like a race-horse, all spirit and force. I noted that he still
wore the velveteens and the broad hat and loose open collar of his
student days.

Sitting on either side of the tomb he had built to enshrine her, on
carved marble seats such as Tuscan poets sat on, in the old days, to
sing to fair women, with our gaze focussed on the long white form
between us--ah, between us indeed!--his voice broke the long silence.

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and the broad brim of his
soft hat swept the marble floor with a gentle rhythmic swish, as it
swung idly from his loosened grasp. I heard it as an accompaniment to
his voice.

His eyes never once strayed from her face.

"You think you are to be pitied," he said. "You are wrong! No one who