Aurelia--changed from Seraph to calling Siren--could keep me from her
side.

But Aurelia--Aurelia Gualandi, that delicate flower of Siena, that
youngest of the angels, that fount of poesy--what of her? What had she
to say to such a certainty as this of mine? In my mind's eye I saw them
stand together, she and Virginia, those two beautiful girls, Virginia a
head the taller, proudly erect, with arms folded over her chest, and her
dark brows forming a bar across her forehead. I saw her in white bodice
and green petticoat, her arms and neck bare, her feet in old slippers,
her black hair loosely coiled and stuck with a silver pin. I saw her
hold herself aloof and dubious, proud and coldly chaste. "Call me and I
come," she seemed to say to me between her shut lips, "Call me and I
follow you over the world like a dog at your heels. Send me into infamy
and I go; expect me to woo you there and I will die sooner. Yours, if
you will have me; nobody's, anybody's, if you will not!" In my fancy I
could hear her very words, see her steady eyes, her pure and moving
lips.

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