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