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 He regarded her happily, possessively, joyfully.
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 By 
 MARIE VAN VORST 
 
 Author of 
 
 FIRST LOVE, THE GIRL FROM 
 HIS TOWN, ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 FRANK CRAIG 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 COPYRIGHT 1912 
 THE BOBBS-MEBRILL COMPANY 
 
 BRAUNWORTH & CO. 
 
 BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTIRS 
 
 BROOKLYN. N. V. 

 
 
 
 PS 
 35-^-3 
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 V3 773 4- 
 
 CHAFTER 
 
 
 PAOB 
 
 I 
 
 FOR THE CHILD'S SAKE . 
 
 * I 
 
 II 
 
 WOMEN WHO ARE SACRED 
 
 . * , 17 
 
 III 
 
 MELLOW SAN MARCELLO 
 
 m 33 
 
 IV 
 
 A FRIEND OF THE CONTE 
 
 54 
 
 V 
 
 FREE AND ALONE . 
 
 .: :,, 59 
 
 VI 
 VII 
 
 THE BRIDGE OF LIFE 
 "ITALY, MY ITALY !" 
 
 . 65 
 . 70 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS 
 
 . 87 
 
 IX 
 
 INN OF THE SEVEN DOVES 
 
 . 93 
 
 X 
 
 THE PILGRIM TARRIES . 
 
 . . 107 
 
 XI 
 
 IN THE FRESH MORNING 
 
 . 114 
 
 XII 
 
 WHERE Is LE BALZE? . 
 
 . 124 
 
 XIII 
 
 LITTLE SANDRO'S MOTHER 
 
 . 128 
 
 XIV 
 
 THE HEART OF A HERMIT 
 
 . 138 
 
 XV 
 
 DELL A GANDARA'S WISH 
 
 . 147 
 
 XVI 
 
 THE GIFT OF A SOUL 
 
 . 154 
 
 XVII 
 
 THE TIBER'S FIRST LOVE 
 
 . 163 
 
 XVIII 
 XIX 
 XX 
 
 UP TOWARD THE SNOWS 
 
 MADONNA MARIA . 
 THE GLORY AND THE DREAM 
 
 . 174 
 . 185 
 . 206 
 
 XXI 
 XXII 
 
 THE MIRACLE OF HEALING 
 ON THE FOURTH DAY . 
 
 . 211 
 . 221 
 
 XXIII 
 
 QUESTION AND ANSWER . 
 
 . 229 
 
 XXIV 
 
 THE WISDOM OF AGE 
 
 .. 235 
 
 XXV 
 
 A PASSIONATE PILGRIM . 
 
 . 243 
 
 XXVI 
 
 SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN . 
 
 . 247 
 
 XXVII 
 
 THE SHADOW OF ROME . 
 
 . 255 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 THE Two VOICES . 
 
 . 257 
 
 XXIX 
 
 THE WAY TO HAPPINESS 
 
 . 264 
 
 XXX 
 
 THE MOTHER CHURCH . 
 
 271 
 
 1703839
 
 THE BROKEN BELL
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FOR THE CHILD'S SAKE 
 
 THE Contessa Sant' Alcione glanced at her 
 husband across the table. Between them 
 were a few books and a vase filled with carna 
 tions. 
 
 The Conte Luigi Felice Umberto Sant' Alcione, 
 nearly forty years old, and his wife's senior by 
 ten years, looked at this moment younger than 
 she. His eager face, his ardent expression, made 
 him appear youthful beside the grave beauty of 
 his wife, who now struggled with a strong emo 
 tion. 
 
 "Luigi," she began, but he interruptsd. 
 
 "Maria, won't you call me Gigi ?" 
 
 She acceded. "Gigi, wouldn't it be better to 
 1
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 let things be as they are and just go on as be 
 fore?" 
 
 "Ah, no, how could we do that, Maria ? After 
 a confession like this, how can we go on as be 
 fore? How could we, arnica mia? You are like 
 a frozen saint, and I ... well, never mind 
 me!" 
 
 He extended his slender hands, on whose 
 fingers shone the wedding-ring and a seal. His 
 wife took one of the carnations from the vase 
 and laid the flower gently across her husband's 
 palm. She then went over to the long window 
 and stood looking out. Below the Villa Castel 
 dell' Oro, high on its cypress-sentineled hill, lay 
 all Naples, with its scattered houses, their pink 
 and yellow tapestry marked by the purple and 
 the gray rotundas of the basilicas. Farther on, 
 around the city's port, swept the inimitable sea. 
 
 The Contessa Sant* Alcione had listened for 
 an hour to her husband's point of view. She 
 had been surprised and touched and not a little 
 thankful to discover that as the man confessed
 
 FOR THE CHILD'S SAKE 
 
 to her he still had power to move her : she could 
 still pity him sufficiently to listen without inter 
 rupting by blame. Her husband said to her 
 across the room: 
 
 "Maria, as you stand there now you recall our 
 wedding-day as you stood in the window of our 
 salon in Genoa. Do you remember? Then you 
 were only, seventeen years old." 
 
 A tremor passed through her. She remem 
 bered how she had loved him and that he had 
 seemed to her everything a girl's ideal of a 
 young beautiful husband should be. They had 
 gone to Paris, and within a month he had been 
 unfaithful to her. 
 
 "If you stand there thinking," he cried, "there 
 is no hope for me !" 
 
 He put the carnation his wife had given him 
 back in the glass and went over and joined her 
 where she stood. 
 
 "Tell me," he pleaded, "in spite of everything 
 isn't there one voice, Maria, that speaks for me? 
 Isn't there one voice?" 
 
 3
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Her eyes still fixed on the sea, where across 
 from the island of Capri a vessel steamed 
 through the milky waters, she answered : "Yes, 
 Gigi." 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed her husband. "Little San- 
 dro!" His eyes filled with ready tears. "Ah, 
 Maria !" 
 
 The Contessa Sant' Alcione had not put off 
 mourning for her son until this spring, when he 
 had been dead three years. The husband mur 
 mured : 
 
 "It is a great deal, my dear, but it is not 
 enough." 
 
 She said gravely: "During this last year, as 
 you know, I have been on the point of going 
 away, but I seemed to hear Sandro call, his sweet 
 little voice calling, and that kept me here." 
 
 Sant' Alcione murmured: "Ah, you torture 
 me, Maria." 
 
 "But as you say," she repeated, "it is not 
 enough. I agree with you, Gigi." 
 
 For the hundredth time he had made a clean 
 4
 
 FOR THE CHILD'S SAKE 
 
 breast of his most recent adventure to his wife 
 and had come asking forgiveness. The admira 
 tion she awakened among his friends, the success 
 she marked everywhere when she appeared, 
 roused his pride anew ; he was j ealous of his pos 
 session. He now said : 
 
 "Everything is over of that character, Maria. 
 I assure you there is not a thing to hide from 
 you ; there never will be anything again." 
 
 "If you only knew, Gigi, what truth means to 
 me," she said earnestly. "It is my religion." 
 
 "But you are a Catholic," he asserted, "a good 
 Catholic." 
 
 "Well," she evaded, "I was a Puritan first, 
 and there is an ingrained hatred of a lie in me 
 that only a Puritan can understand." 
 
 After a second he said: "Then you can not 
 understand my case?" 
 
 "Not if you mean weakness before tempta 
 tion," she answered. 
 
 A gloomy expression crossed Sant' Alcione's 
 sensual and usually tranquil face. His wife had 
 5
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 never preached to him and he was profoundly 
 grateful for this. Her silent grace was one of 
 the qualities that made him still love her, in his 
 own way. He was grateful to her. If gratitude 
 is ever awakened in another it results in one of 
 two things according to the nature of the per 
 son : the wish to escape from the benefactor for 
 ever, or a rooted devotion. No one in Naples or 
 Rome who knew Sant' Alcione could have sup 
 posed that he had any longer a devotion to his 
 wife. He was, however, grateful to his wife for 
 the child he had adored. The only pure moments 
 he could recall he used to bring them to mind 
 before going to mass or to confession were 
 those spent with little Sandro. Now, however, his 
 wife's phrase, "weakness before temptation", of 
 fended him. He murmured petulantly : 
 
 "Yes, they always say a good woman is mer 
 ciless ! Think of the Divine Mother. We should 
 be badly off, Maria, if She were as severe as a 
 man's wife!" 
 
 "Are you making a religious confession to me, 
 6
 
 FOR THE CHILD'S SAKE 
 
 Gigi?" The Contessa Sant' Alcione lifted her 
 fine brows, and met his look for the first time 
 since they had begun to talk. 
 
 He did not reply. His wife's eyes had been 
 praised to him many times but now he was 
 startled by the clarity of their gentian-blue color, 
 their stainless blue. When he was a young boy, 
 he had taken with a chum of his a trip through 
 Syria: he remembered suddenly the color of the 
 Galilean sea. 
 
 "No, Maria," he murmured, "no. I am mak 
 ing the confession of a man to a woman, of one 
 human being to another, of a man to the wife he 
 loves." 
 
 "Then," she answered, "you must not be sur 
 prised if I take it humanly ! One of your chief 
 griefs against me is that I am 'cold'. I don't 
 understand disloyalty or infidelity." 
 
 "Don't go on," he besought unhappily. "I 
 ought to be glad you feel so. In that case I am 
 sure of you." 
 
 And she echoed: "Sure of me? But there 
 7
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 are only two kinds of women, honest women and 
 dishonest women. There are no betwixts and be- 
 tweens." 
 
 He agreed eagerly: "Of course, Maria, of 
 course, but it is so different with a man." 
 
 He was not impatient; he was troubled. His 
 wife had forgiven him and been merciful count 
 less times : he had now reason to think that the 
 limit of her patience was reached. She was in 
 the height of her beauty, and steadily she was 
 escaping him. If he had come to her apartments 
 and found her gone at any time he would not 
 have been surprised. With a gesture of despair 
 he exclaimed: 
 
 "Heavens, Maria, be merciful ! Don't send me 
 away desperate, for I have told you everything. 
 There is nothing to conceal and never will be 
 again." But as though he had renounced his 
 cause, Sant' Alcione sank down in an easy-chair 
 at the side of the window, and leaning his elbow 
 on the arm, buried his face in his hands. 
 
 Parting the curtain before the window, his 
 8
 
 FOR THE CHILD'S SAKE 
 
 wife again leaned out. Over the crest of Vesu 
 vius there hung a fine delicate cloud of smoke. 
 The sea was stainless as the sky. Here and there, 
 like red roses scattered upon an amethystine 
 glass, the sails of the fishing-boats lay red upon 
 the sea. She called up every memory of her 
 young love. In a nature as deep as hers, every 
 sentiment, every hope and every memory, lay like 
 shells on the bed of the sea, undisturbed by its 
 storms. There was still tenderness there for her 
 husband, emotion, attachment, and the loyalty 
 that a good woman has for the man who has 
 taught her life. With Maria Sant' Alcione that 
 early love had been pure and delicate. Her love 
 had sweetened the bitter waters of the first year 
 of her marriage, and then for her child's sake she 
 had endured and continued to endure. Every 
 gentle kindly action came obediently as she 
 called up her past. She was perfectly honest, 
 she had never admitted the idea of a rival to her 
 husband, or meditated revenge. There was noth 
 ing but his own conduct between them. She 
 9
 
 dropped the curtain and advanced toward her 
 husband with a flush on her cheek. She put out 
 her hand. Sant' Alcione sprang up. 
 
 "Gigi," she murmured, "don't come back un 
 less you mean to stay." 
 
 He broke into a torrent of gratitude and pro 
 testation ; he fell down at her feet, kneeling. She 
 smiled faintly and made him rise. 
 
 "Get up, Gigi. Don't do that. I am not even 
 a good Catholic. I have not been to mass in two 
 years." 
 
 Excited, happy, radiant, triumphant, Sant' 
 Alcione continued to protest and to bless, and the 
 woman was surprised to see how his happiness 
 affected her, and that she was glad for him 
 and with him. He kissed her hands, regarded 
 her happily, possessively, joyfully. She realized 
 how lonely she had been, how desolate, how silent 
 and hungry-hearted for years. 
 
 This was only one of many explanations, but 
 unlike the others it had been complete, and she 
 believed in his good faith. She felt now the need 
 10
 
 FOR THE CHILD'S SAKE 
 
 of his companionship, for one of the hardest 
 things in her long desertion had been the un- 
 companied solitary hours. 
 
 There was a rap at the door. Her own little 
 maid, Gioconda, came in, a pretty sprightly 
 creature, in her black dress and black apron. 
 Maria dressed her a la Parisienne. 
 
 "The Signer Maggiore Corti," she announced, 
 "is waiting for the conte." 
 
 Maria exclaimed: "Waiting for you, Gigi! 
 But you will send him away? Tell him there is 
 no one at home, Gioconda." 
 
 "Ah, no, Maria!" Her husband was already 
 at the table, where his hat and gloves lay as he 
 had put them when he had come in to see his wife. 
 "We are going to Caserta by the noon train. I 
 promised to Corti yesterday. There are some 
 hunters there; they are to be shown to us to- 
 day." 
 
 His hat was under his arm ; he was putting on 
 his gloves. Gioconda waited behind her master. 
 Maria Sant' Alcione felt the girl's presence dis- 
 11
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 agreeable. Gioconda's eyes were keen upon her 
 with a vulgar curiosity. She had never seen her 
 master and mistress in intimate conversation be 
 fore. 
 
 "Bene" breathed Maria, "bene!" 
 
 Hunters to be shown! Well, she had been 
 hunted and driven home! She had been secured 
 and made captive, and the strong man who owned 
 the bird was locking the cage door and going 
 away. Sant' Alcione smiled at this wife bright 
 ly. His face was younger, eager. His gloves 
 fitted him well, he snapped the patent buttons. 
 
 "One of the horses is light-weight. I fancy 
 he'd just carry you, Maria. We'll see." 
 
 She said to herself: "Perhaps I am too cold, 
 too little exacting as other women can be. I 
 ought to be able to charm him now, if ever." 
 
 Gioconda opened the door. Maria said in 
 French rapidly: "Send Corti away to-day. 
 Let's take the auto and drive to . . ." 
 
 From the door Gioconda announced tran 
 quilly : 
 
 12
 
 FOR THE CHILD'S SAKE 
 
 "The Maggiore is on the stairs. Shall I let 
 him in?" 
 
 "Certainly not," ordered her master. "I am 
 coming at once. It is past eleven. We have just 
 time for the noon train." He turned at the 
 threshold gaily: "A rivederci, Maria, a questa 
 sea." He looked back ; Maria waited by the table. 
 He murmured in French : "A thousand thanks !" 
 When Giocondt had closed the door, and 
 Maria heard her husband greet the officer, and 
 their voices were lost in the distance, she drew 
 out of the vase the carnation carelessly replaced 
 by Sant' Alcione; it hung half-way out of the 
 water. She threw the flower into the waste-paper 
 basket. 
 
 It was not quite noon. Before her were the 
 infilled hours of the idle day. She could senti- 
 lentalize over them, meditate on her early love 
 for Sant' Alcione. The immense sacrifice she 
 lade, the immense forbearance she showed her 
 msband, stood out against his light volatile na- 
 ire. Yet it was not herself she pitied. 
 13
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Poor Gigi," she said aloud, "you don't know 
 what Caserta has cost you. . . ." 
 
 A flame had stirred in her ardent heart which 
 quivered with the right to love. With true emo 
 tion she had welcomed the glow and fire ; now, as 
 if a ruthless hand had struck it out, the flame 
 died suddenly and her heart perished in her 
 breast. She wandered aimlessly about her beau 
 tiful room. Its comfort and luxury mocked her. 
 It was perfection. Everything in it was har 
 monious and lovely. She needed nothing, could 
 think of nothing which would add to her ma 
 terial comfort, could conceive of nothing 
 she wished to purchase, no new addition 
 to her surroundings which would afford her 
 amusement to combine and to buy. She was 
 surfeited materially and starved spiritually. 
 And they might have been so happy here ! The 
 house which was made for companionship, to 
 represent love and home, was nothing but an 
 empty shell. She touched her books. There was 
 nothing new among them; she had read them 
 14
 
 FOR THE CHILD'S SAKE 
 
 all. New music had come from Paris, but she 
 had no heart to try it. The songs would all be 
 of happy or unhappy love. She had wept so 
 many tears that they no longer came readily, 
 and solitary, deserted, she felt humiliated by her 
 position. Finally immobile, in a chair by the 
 window, she sat inert, waiting. Not that she ex 
 pected that anything good would come. Noth 
 ing more interesting than the summons to a lone 
 ly luncheon would disturb her, but her hands 
 clasped, her lovely face intensely melancholy, the 
 Contessa Sant' Alcione waited. 
 
 Gioconda came noiselessly in with fresh carna 
 tions to arrange them in the vase. Maria smelled 
 their fragrance and it recalled her husband's 
 careless indifference to her gift. 
 
 "Take the flowers away," she directed, "I 
 don't want any more carnations, Gioconda." 
 
 "No more carnations!" exclaimed the girl. 
 "But I thought they were the eccellenza's favor 
 ite flowers !" 
 
 Her mistress made no reply, and the Italian, 
 15
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 with both the fresh and faded flowers in her 
 hand, silently left the room. Gioconda turned 
 things over in her light little mind. 
 
 "The poor eccellenze ! He has a wife like the 
 blessed Virgin, and as cold as an icicle."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 WOMEN WHO ARE SACRED 
 
 ONE spring afternoon, eighteen months 
 later, Maria Sant' Alcione walked 
 down through the gardens of her villa with a 
 young priest who had been staying at the 
 house, a member of the last week-end party. Be 
 fore they left the park, where back of them the 
 Villa Castel dell' Oro, with its green blinds and 
 its simple lines, cut out its square of snow at the 
 end of the cypress alley, Father Faversham 
 stopped. 
 
 'Over there, from this point, Contessa, we see 
 little Campo Santo I spoke of yesterday," 
 ind he pointed to the white wall with its cypress 
 )ordering hedge. 
 
 The contessa did not look in the direction in 
 dicated, although she answered her companion : 
 17
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Yes, it's a charming walk up the hill through 
 the olives." 
 
 "One would get a view, I'm sure, from there," 
 he exclaimed. 
 
 "I saw the view once only," she said, "the day 
 I buried my little son in that Campo Santo. I've 
 never been there since. Just think what the 
 Neapolitans say about my cold heart !" 
 
 Father Faversham had found his hostess orig 
 inal and charming. He had been studying her 
 since he came to stay with the Sant' Alciones ten 
 days before. 
 
 "I can't go and weep at a grave, Father Fa 
 versham; I don't even cry at funerals." She 
 stopped and then said shortly : "In spite of that, 
 I buried my youth and everything that I have in 
 that little grave." 
 
 "Not everything," replied the priest calmly. 
 "You did not bury you*r beauty." 
 
 His companion, surprised at such a bald com 
 pliment from a priest and from such an ascetic 
 as she knew her friend to be, exclaimed : 
 18
 
 WOMEN WHO ARE SACRED 
 
 "I did think, Father Faversham, that you 
 would not observe much less speak of a wom 
 an's beauty." 
 
 They had left the gate, and taken their way 
 down toward the Vomero and the cable-cars to 
 the city. Faversham returned undisturbed : 
 
 "Why not, Contessa? There are women in 
 the story of Nazareth on whom my attention is 
 supposed to linger. I hope they were beautiful 
 I believe they were beautiful." 
 
 The priest went over and bought the tickets 
 for the little cars. Maria watched his slender 
 stooping figure, bowed by the life of an indoor 
 man : his rough clothing hung loosely on his thin 
 body. He helped the contessa into the tram and 
 sat down beside her. 
 
 "Oh, but those were sacred women, Father 
 Faversham." 
 
 He met her eyes and the half challenge in 
 them: 
 
 "And aren't you sacred, Contessa?" 
 
 She laughed, clasped her hands in their 
 19
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 wrinkled tan gloves, looked down at them hu 
 morously. 
 
 "Well, scarcely ; one could hardly say that." 
 
 "It is a pity," returned her companion in the 
 same tranquil voice he had used in speaking. 
 "It's a pity your beauty is of that sacred 
 type." 
 
 Before she could reply the car stopped and an 
 Italian officer whom Faversham recognized for 
 one of the constant visitors at the villa, sprang 
 in, greeted them both ardently, and sat down be 
 fore Maria. He was in the uniform of a major 
 in the Piedmont Royal Cavalry, and the priest 
 watched the officer as Maria bade him good morn 
 ing. Faversham for two weeks had been study 
 ing the woman as an artist studies the model he 
 chooses to paint, as the sculptor studies the bust, 
 but the priest's study was more impassioned 
 he was studying her as a soul. 
 
 The day was cold and fresh, laved and washed 
 by the ocean winds that sweep in upon Naples 
 with the vigor of the outer sea. The contessa 
 20
 
 WOMEN WHO ARE SACRED 
 
 wore a small hat of fur, and under her veil with 
 its black dots her cheeks were pale with the ivory 
 clearness of the southern skin. Her face was 
 oval, the lines pure, and there was a fine melan 
 choly in her beauty which no temptations or in 
 dulgences had yet destroyed. These were the 
 words Faversham used to himself as he thought 
 about her and considered her relation to the sur 
 roundings of her husband's home. 
 
 He would have said, had he not known the 
 Spanish in her ancestry, that she was of Jewish 
 extraction, for the low brow and the cavity of 
 her eyes were so stainless and so pure, so oriental 
 in drawing and in mold. Her hair, growing low 
 and firmly on her forehead and about her ears, 
 was black without luster and heavy ; and her eyes, 
 as she raised them to the Maggiore Corti were 
 as blue as the Irish lakes in the county where 
 Faversham was born. The color of her eyes did 
 not spoil the priest's conception of Maria. He 
 thought he had only to substitute for the fash- 
 inable toque with its incongruity of fur and 
 21
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 roses, a blue head-veil falling either side of her 
 face, to transform her into a woman of the East 
 and permit her to join the company of pure and 
 holy Marys. 
 
 She said in Italian to the officer : 
 
 "Corti, you can't come with us Father Fa- 
 versham and I are off a la tourista and you 
 mayn't come. Father Faversham, just beckon 
 to one of those little brown drivers, they are all 
 brigands and cutthroats and tell him, will 
 you?" She lowered her voice as she gave the di 
 rection: "San Marcello." 
 
 Corti cried: "Where? Where did you say, 
 Contessa ?" 
 
 From the opposite square a tiny victoria, 
 drawn by a superb little stallion hung with bells 
 and bright with red leather, tore like mad to 
 them across the cobbles. 
 
 "I don't want you to know, Corti," Maria re 
 plied to the officer, who helped her tenderly in. 
 Faversham awkwardly followed. 
 
 Corti said : "This is very shocking and very
 
 WOMEN WHO ARE SACRED 
 
 compromising. I shall tell all our friends how 
 you have eloped with the padre." 
 
 She was impatient and cried out to the driver : 
 "Andiamo, andiamo" and waved to Corti: "A 
 rivederla, a rivederla, Corti !" 
 
 II Maggiore stood bareheaded as they dashed 
 from the square, and to her companion Maria 
 Sant' Alcione said: 
 
 "Heavens, think, think, that men of that kind 
 and type and quality are the only ones I have 
 seen in ten years ! Are there any others, Father 
 Faversham? Are there any men?" And she 
 laughed a little bitterly, thinking : "How should 
 a priest know?" 
 
 Their carriage, set high, without either springs 
 or rubber tires, bounced them ecstatically over 
 the cobbles. They passed down to the Riviera di 
 Chiaja: a low white wall was between them and 
 the sea. The air smelt fresh. Maria raised her 
 crimson sunshade, and in its suffused light 
 glowed like a flower. Neither of them paid at 
 tention to the vender of violets and roses, who, 
 23
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 under the wheels and the horse's hoofs, thrust 
 out to them fragrant bunches, but when a small 
 fellow presented on Faverham's side a bouquet 
 of red camellias, flaked with white, the priest 
 bought one and laid it in his companion's lap. 
 The contessa lifted her fine brows, again sur 
 prised. 
 
 "They make me think of Marguerite Gau- 
 thier, another woman whom you would not call 
 sacred!" And she fastened the flower with its 
 striped leaves in the lapel of her tailored coat. 
 The camellia lay against the cloth like a spot of 
 blood. 
 
 "Oh, just a moment," she asked, "would you 
 forgive me if I ran into the glove shop a second? 
 Look," she held out her hand where a new glove 
 had split across the palm. "I am too much of a 
 coquette to go on _with a split glove, especially 
 with you who are so kind to me." And as the 
 cocchiere drew up on the Via di Chiaja, Maria 
 sprang out and disappeared within a little door. 
 
 Faversham, on his uncomfortable seat, looked 
 24
 
 WOMEN WHO ARE SACRED 
 
 up the Via di Chiaja, where, narrow, uneven, 
 cobbled, this street of Naples flows like a river 
 of life between the high stucco houses and their 
 overhanging balconies. The verandas are ever 
 draped with human beings, leaning out, leaning 
 over in the sunlight, gazing down on the river of 
 life as women in negligee, men smoking their 
 cigarettes, indolent idle people, stare down upon 
 Naples. On the filthy sidewalks, in the center of 
 the street, the Neapolitans surge and drift, bent 
 on their constant amusements and on their light 
 affairs. Flowers brilliant and beautiful make 
 part of the pageant, and come showering down 
 into the street from the staircases banked high 
 with narcissus and lily and rose. Noisy, ori 
 ental, careless, joyous and enchanting, the com 
 motion had a charm which the pale ascetic ap 
 preciated. But the street scene only made a 
 background, for the priest's mind was consider 
 ing the woman who had gone into the glove shop. 
 She had absorbed him ever since he had come to 
 Naples. 
 
 25
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Faversham had read at Oxford, in Magdalen, 
 with an American called John Fairbanks, and the 
 young man's friendship had been precious to the 
 Irishman. 
 
 "If you chance to poke about Italy, old chap," 
 Fairbanks had said to him, "look up my sister, 
 won't you? Mary Sant' Alcione. I know," 
 Fairbanks had laughed, "it does sound incon 
 gruous. She married at seventeen a dago at 
 Naples. He is a count, if that helps any, and I 
 believe he leads her a dog's life. While I think 
 of it, I'll give you a line to her. She'll like you 
 awfully, especially if you come from me." 
 
 That same year young Fairbanks had been 
 drowned in the Thames, and ten years afterward 
 the priest had taken out the letter of introduc 
 tion in the Hotel Bertolini. 
 
 "Alia Contessa Luigi Sant' Alcione, Villa Cas- 
 tel dell' Oro " 
 
 The answer to the letter he left with his card 
 was an urgent invitation to come to the villa and 
 remain while he was in Naples. He had arrived 
 26
 
 WOMEN WHO ARE SACRED 
 
 on the night of a large dinner, and saw his host 
 ess for the first time in her jewels and dinner 
 dress. He saw as well the heart of Neapolitan 
 society, even so high as the royal duke himself, 
 and Faversham was not impressed. His host, a 
 fashionable Neapolitan with a military bearing, 
 made himself agreeable to Faversham. From 
 then on, there had been constant festivity at the 
 villa. Several people were guests in the house, 
 notably a Madame di Ligni, to whom the count's 
 devotions were not disguised. Faversham ob 
 served his old friend's sister, contenting himself 
 with a few words with her now and then, and un 
 consciously filling the house with the beauty of 
 his influence. He drew his hostess toward him 
 more each day. It had been Maria herself who 
 had suggested the excursion to San Marcello, 
 and Faversham had gladly accepted the plan. 
 
 "It's old," she had told him, "mellow and unre- 
 membered; no one ever goes to San Marcello: 
 you will never see a tourist there, and I want you 
 
 go with me and see Naples from the belfries." 
 27
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Maria Sant' Alcione now appeared at the door 
 of the glove shop. 
 
 "I know I have been horribly long. Will you 
 excuse me for another moment?" 
 
 He begged her not to hurry and she went back 
 into the shop. 
 
 Here in Naples he had learned the story of her 
 life. She had married Sant' Alcione when she 
 was seventeen, during one Roman season when 
 her mother had chosen to introduce her to society 
 in the capital of Italy. Sant' Alcione lived his 
 life as he saw fit, treating Maria to flagrant 
 scandal, apparently indifferent to what she did 
 with her own existence. At first people said she 
 remained with him, for the sake of her son, but 
 after the little boy's death some four years be 
 fore Faversham's visit, every one wondered why 
 she did not leave her husband. Many names had 
 been linked with hers, but there was no ground 
 work for scandal and nothing definite had been 
 said against her. Faversham was not even sure 
 that she loved admiration, although she flirted 
 28
 
 WOMEN WHO ARE SACRED 
 
 desperately. At the end of the fortnight, when 
 the worldly inconsequent whirl of sensual life 
 had gone on around him with complete indiffer 
 ence to his calling and his profession, as though 
 he had been a mountebank, at the end of that 
 time he was sure in his own mind of one thing: 
 that Maria Sant' Alcione was blameless. 
 
 "There is something American about you still, 
 Contessa," he said, as she rejoined him. 
 
 They drove away smartly from the glove shop. 
 
 "However, I have never lived in America, that 
 is, since I was a little child. I remember how the 
 man used to call strawberries in the streets of 
 New York in springtime, and how I 'roller- 
 skated'. Here they tell me that I am a Neapoli 
 tan, and I am never taken for anything but 
 Italian." 
 
 "You're Anglo-Saxon," Faversham said slow 
 ly. "I notice it strongly in one thing your 
 superiority. You come of a race that is still on 
 top. I could not but observe it in your sureness 
 last night as you talked with your guests." 
 29
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Oh, Italian women are easy to down in an ar 
 gument!" The Contessa Sant' Alcione smiled: 
 "Poor dears, they are all superstitious." 
 
 "And you are not superstitious, Contessa?" 
 
 And she answered quickly: "Not at all. If 
 you had lived here for ten years as I have lived, 
 been surrounded by this" she indicated a pro 
 cession which had stopped their carriage, a 
 hearse of gaudy colors preceded by a line of 
 priests in snow-white garments. White-masked 
 and hooded, holding high their great candela 
 bra, they followed the crucifix. "And this" and 
 on the other hand she indicated the Banco di 
 Lotto "you would be either an ardent Catholic 
 and go merrily on your way, or be as I am." 
 
 Faversham did not ask her what that way was 
 and she continued: "My maid was arrested a 
 few months ago. She stole two hundred lira 
 from my purse to buy some old bones from a 
 charlatan who assured her that the bones would 
 disclose to her the successful number of the lot 
 tery." 
 
 30
 
 WOMEN WHO ARE SACRED 
 
 "Well, what will become of her?" Faversham 
 asked. 
 
 "Gigi has bought the judge, and we are going 
 to send her to America" and with a light smile 
 she added : "To the country that is still on top." 
 
 Faversham exclaimed warmly: "That's aw 
 fully jolly of your husband!" 
 
 And the wife answered calmly : "Gioconda has 
 borne him a child." 
 
 Under her sunshade and its soft coloring the 
 face of the woman was pale and sad. .The car 
 riage passed into a shady side street among 
 the Neapolitan venders selling their various 
 wares : nuts, oil, bladders, tomatoes, mandarins, 
 oranges, flowers, bulbs and seeds, books and or 
 naments, food, raiment, objects of use and objects 
 of disgust. In front of a low shop a man stood 
 in full view of the people carving a colossal 
 Christ in wood. The agonized, out-stretched 
 arms leaned against the wall where, beneath a 
 door not five feet high, was the entrance to the 
 wood-carver's hole. 
 
 31
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Maria Sant' Alcione closed her parasol, for 
 the sun could not penetrate the alley, and she 
 lifted her face to the sweet fresh air sweeping in 
 from the sea. The vigorous breeze drowned the 
 smells that rose, the acrid odor of offal, and cook 
 ing food and raw food, and the unmistakable 
 odor of the unwashed poor. As she drew her 
 breath the unchained wind from the bay came 
 divinely like hyssop.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THERE was nothing in the outer wall of 
 faded yellow stucco to suggest that San 
 Marcello might be of interest to the intruder. 
 Faversham, as he paid the cocchiere and turned 
 with his companion to the monastery, saw the 
 long two-storied front of the Italian religious 
 house, beaten by the rains, seared by the winds, 
 kissed by the suns of seven hundred years. 
 
 The priest regarded the building eagerly : the 
 monastical instinct was strong in him, and he 
 felt a fraternity with the unknown brotherhood 
 whose hands, as did his, had pressed against the 
 great door. As the worm-eaten nailed portal 
 swung in, Maria and her companion entered the 
 square of the cloisters. To the single guardian 
 who came up to them, the Contessa Sant* Alcione 
 nodded : 
 
 33
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Good day, Francesco, I think I am your 
 most faithful visitor." 
 
 The old man, with a profile as keen as Sa 
 vonarola's, swept off his cap as he greeted the 
 Contessa Sant' Alcione. 
 
 "The eccellenza is as faithful as the birds ; she 
 returns with them this year." 
 
 He took the money Faversham held out. 
 
 "If the eccellenza will listen in the east clois 
 ter she will hear the oriole who came back yester- 
 day." 
 
 The guardian discreetly left them, replacing 
 his skullcap on his shining old head, yellow and 
 polished as ivory, and pattered back into his 
 lodge, and Faversham with his friend stood be 
 fore the gardens of San Marcello and its lovely 
 walls. 
 
 Before them stretched some hundred feet of 
 old cloister garden. Over the marble fountain 
 in the center grew the abundant, clinging, rov 
 ing, nesting, flowering vines. Through the bril- 
 34
 
 MELLOW SAN MARCELLO 
 
 liant leaves here and there the vivid color of the 
 old stone basin shone out, and the worn curb 
 gleamed like glass. Orange, mandarin, laurel 
 and olive-trees, bent with age and ruin, filled the 
 quadrangle, and at the east corner an umbrella 
 pine, perfect to its plumy velvet crest, reached 
 toward the upper arches of the second story. On 
 three sides -of the garden stretched the cloisters 
 and their arches, the white and yellow stucco 
 flaking off here and there, the colors vague, in 
 tones as soft as those of Egyptian monuments ; 
 and along the west rose the high balcony, its 
 terrace, its railings, its windows and balustrades 
 in tender tones of white and pink. 
 
 "From it we shall see the port and Naples," 
 Maria Sant' Alcione said, "and to the left are 
 the belfries. Come, Father Faversham ! Naples, 
 I think, is always at its best seen from this place 
 of prayer and meditation." She spoke lightly 
 and as if she wished to please her companion 
 with her attitude of mind. "These centuries of
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 prayer must have cast some kind of good into 
 this city of broil, and passion, and beauty." 
 
 "I am sure," returned the priest, "that no 
 prayer was ever said by human lips that did not 
 bring its immediate answer on the same air." 
 
 "Oh !" she cried sharply, and stopped. They 
 had walked together toward the terrace. "How 
 can you say such a thing as that? I prayed for 
 my little boy's life as no woman ever prayed be 
 fore. He died as I prayed." To herself she 
 said : "I have prayed for other things." 
 
 They had come to the first steps of the flight 
 of stone stairs leading to the terrace. Maria laid 
 one hand on the mossy balustrade and in the 
 other she held her parasol. 
 
 Faversham replied: "I mean just what I say, 
 Contessa Sant' Alcione. Indeed, I think your 
 prayer for your child was answered then." 
 
 "Oh, how, Father Faversham !" 
 
 "You asked for the boy's life?" 
 
 "Passionately." 
 
 "Life," said the priest, "is immortal, my dear 
 36
 
 MELLOW SAN MARCELLO 
 
 friend. It was never taken from your little 
 child." 
 
 Shie exclaimed, going slowly up the stairway : 
 "Please don't be subtle with me, don't! My 
 mind is too tired for religious subtleties." 
 
 He followed her along the brick and marble 
 parterre of the old terrace: on one side lay the 
 cloisters and the garden, on the other the wide 
 milky floor of the stainless sea. From brown 
 rock and fortress, from port, from soft promon 
 tory of the Castel dell' Novo around Vesuvius, 
 lay the motionless waters on whose multicolored 
 surface was mirrored in perfection the fisher's 
 sail. Ischia and Capri lay like anchored ships in 
 the mist, and the shores were sown with villages 
 as with the petals of scattered flowers. On the 
 line of the rolling hills, on the stupendous moun 
 tain and its wounded crest, on the vision of that 
 mild and most inconstant sea, Father Faver- 
 sham's glance rested and then came back to Na 
 ples and the port and the humanity as it lay at 
 his feet. 
 
 37
 
 THE BROKEN BELt 
 
 Naples coiled and wound and clung beneath 
 the monastery walls. Naples cried up to them, 
 called up to them, crying, singing, praying, 
 groaning; Naples laughed and cursed up to 
 them, as it had laughed and cursed for centuries 
 below its stones. Directly within their vision 
 was the Porta Capuana quarter, the poorest, 
 vilest, most vivid part of the city. Along the 
 narrow alleys strung the banners of drying 
 clothes. Red and yellow and blue, these rags, 
 irrevocably stained by dirt and dust, hung dis 
 consolately or fluttered arrogantly in the breeze. 
 And line by line with them ran the crimson and 
 the grape-like banners of the dyers' stuffs, hung 
 out from the stews and purlieus of the crowded 
 city. The houses hugged one another, built pell- 
 mell of every color and tint, yellow, shell-white, 
 here and there their ranks disturbed by the 
 stones of an ancient church, and everywhere 
 hung out balconies crowded with the living. 
 
 Above the ceaseless seething tide of the living, 
 there was the dull clamor of a bell from a hid- 
 38
 
 den tower, a cloaked, indistinct pasan drowned by 
 the city's ringing, by the human note, more 
 heaven-reaching, indeed, than the bronze res 
 onance. 
 
 Maria Sant' Alcione, leaning on the high wall, 
 murmured aloud : 
 
 "Down there is the devil, Father Faversham, 
 and beyond is the deep, deep sea," and she smiled 
 slightly. "Perhaps we are between them, even 
 though in this holy place. Do you see the beau 
 tiful tower of Santa Maria del Carmine?" 
 
 She pointed to the soft lines of the old tower, 
 a tower battered, as it were, by time, beaten and 
 blown against by the winds of age. 
 
 "I adore that church," she mused, "it looks to 
 me as though it had been beaten upon by prayer, 
 as though the centuries had prayed against it, as 
 though the lips of the people had kissed it nearly 
 away. There is a miraculous Virgin in Santa 
 Maria: sailors rush to confess to her, and no 
 where in Naples are there so many confessions 
 and so many poor." 
 
 39
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Faversham watched her intently as she leaned 
 against the balustrade, her soft arm and hand 
 on the cold stone, her face musing. The red rose 
 shone bravely against the fur of her hat, the red 
 camellia flushed against her dark dress, and the 
 fine red mounted under her pale skin. A more 
 desirable woman, one more made for love, it 
 would have been hard to imagine. 
 
 Faversham said : "You speak a great deal of 
 prayer, Contessa, for one who doesn't believe in 
 the subtleties of religion," and before she could 
 respond, went on : "If after all, our belief 
 proves to be a mistake and a delusion, if all of us 
 who pray are fated to find ourselves tricked, 
 isn't it curious that religion and prayer and faith 
 still continue to transform the world? Take Na 
 ples for example, with its sensuous beauty and 
 its utter charm: there is nothing from one end 
 of it to the other so wonderful as the picture of 
 that church down there with its walls beaten 
 upon by the breath of seven hundred years of 
 prayer !" 
 
 40
 
 MELLOW SAN MARCELLO 
 
 Maria heard what he said through more ma 
 terial thoughts. 
 
 "There is an attractive seat there," Faver- 
 sham pointed to an old stone bench in a corner 
 of the terrace. "Let's go over and sit a bit in 
 the sunlight." 
 
 He tooK the corner, leaning his shoulder 
 against the. rail, his head in his hands, and pre 
 facing his words by a charming smile, said: 
 "When you suggested that we should come here 
 to-day, I was sure that it was not so much to give 
 me this esthetic pleasure as to talk with me. I 
 hope I am right. Remember that I was your 
 brother's dearest friend." 
 
 "It is more or less true," Maria Sant' Alcione 
 said slowly. She did not continue and Faver- 
 sham was disappointed; and as she remained 
 silent a bird behind them in the olive-tree broke 
 into subdued singing. 
 
 "There," she lifted her finger. "Listen to the 
 bird: isn't it delicious?" 
 
 She did not seem to resent her friend's direct 
 41
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 scrutiny, but she kept her eyes fastened on the 
 sea, and as the priest watched her his expression 
 became severe and the smile faded. 
 
 "Well, Contessa, since you do not speak, and 
 this is probably the only occasion I shall have to 
 be alone with you, I am going to take advantage 
 of it!" 
 
 "Look," said his hostess, holding out her right 
 hand where the glove was sewn across. "See the 
 scar, how it runs ! It's the way I am always do 
 ing, mending up torn things. I am weak and 
 sentimental, for I haven't strength of character 
 to throw away the old and begin the new. I 
 know what you are going to begin with, Father 
 Faversham. You think I am a moral coward to 
 submit as I do to disgrace." 
 
 "I was not, and have not been, thinking of 
 your husband. I am thinking of you." 
 
 She said slowly : "I know it, I have seen your 
 eyes upon me." 
 
 A lizard ran out from between the stones into 
 the sunlight and basked a few feet from the tip
 
 MELLOW SAN MARCELLO 
 
 of the Contessa Sant' Alcione's shoe. "Until 
 last year," she spoke as if her words were un 
 willingly drawn from her, "until last year there 
 was more than one tie, now there is only one. He 
 gave me my child, I am grateful for that." 
 
 "I understand," murmured the priest. 
 
 "Each year it becomes more difficult. It is not 
 easy to rush out of one's own house and leave 
 one's husband." She turned her eyes fully on Fa- 
 versham ; her color deepened. "He has never un 
 til this year brought his infidelities under our 
 roof. You see how degraded I am. I am indiffer 
 ent. I shall remain as I am. Of course there is no 
 divorce in our country. I must remain as I am." 
 
 The priest after a few seconds repeated: "As 
 you are ?" Then said : "That is what no one of 
 us can do ! There is no stationary state, my dear 
 friend ; it is one thing or another every day." 
 
 She tried to change her mood and speak reck 
 lessly, lightly. "You have observed our life for 
 a fortnight ! You can judge pretty well what it 
 is likely to be, Father Faversham."
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Turning to the left, where the round towers of 
 the basilica rose, he asked : 
 
 "Aren't those the belfries below the cupolas?" 
 
 "Yes. Shall we go and see them? We must 
 wind about through the outer galleries." 
 
 The enameled roofs of the two immense basil 
 icas shone in the sunlight like the backs of giant 
 turtles with blue and green and yellow scales. 
 The light squandered itself on the polished tiling 
 and refracted until the balls were like single 
 gems. 
 
 Maria led the way up the narrow staircase to 
 the higher galleries of the inner towers and 
 finally got out on to the roof of the monastery 
 among the little belfries, close to the basilica, 
 rotundas and the gleaming tiles. All Naples lay 
 below, from port to Posilipo, and on the hillside, 
 against its background of cedars, the Villa Cas- 
 tel dell' Oro cut its square of snow. The priest 
 laid his hat on the wall, and the sunlight shone on 
 his blond head, where the hair was slightly au 
 burn and inclined to curl.
 
 MELLOW SAN MARCELLO 
 
 "It is very beautiful," he said, "and I shall 
 think of it in my lonely little parish on the Irish 
 coast." 
 
 "I hope it will bring you pleasant memories, 
 Father Faversham." 
 
 For several months no man had been with 
 Maria alone like this without a sentimental issue 
 at stake. She had welcomed Faversham eagerly 
 for her brother's sake and had grown to admire 
 him deeply for his own. She felt at once an in 
 timacy with him and a great reserve. 
 
 "We are taught that pride is wicked, aren't 
 we?" she said suddenly to him. "Eighteen 
 months ago I took my husband back, Father Fa 
 versham; I mean that I forgot myself and my 
 self-respect, I forgot the horrors and lies be 
 tween us and I took him back. The horrible 
 part of it is" with one of her slender fingers 
 she touched the seam that ran across her glove 
 "the horrible part of it is that I found that I 
 really cared something for him still, and you 
 know what can be done with a guarded flame." 
 45
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 She kept her eyes on the scarred palm of her 
 glove. "I was looking every day for something 
 that never came, for beauty to rise from ashes, 
 for what I had come back for . . . Wait," 
 she said, "don't speak, for I know that is not the 
 right way to hope." She smiled faintly. "Oh, 
 I found out lots of ways, but they were all routes 
 barrees. Gigi didn't really want me, never has 
 really wanted me. It's a pity. I abased myself 
 and accepted everything." She abruptly turned 
 the subject. "Look at this lovely bell, Father 
 Faversham. I came to San Marcello one day, 
 and I broke my heart here for something that 
 could never, never be restored, for the extin 
 guished lamp, for the fire that was trodden un 
 derfoot . . ." 
 
 In a small tower near hung a bell of green and 
 golden bronze. Preserved in its stony hood from 
 rain, it hung like a green lily in its shelter. 
 Drawing off her glove Maria laid her bare right 
 hand on the bell. 
 
 "Look, Father Faversham, isn't it a beautiful 
 46
 
 MELLOW SAN MARCELLO 
 
 bit of bronze! So perfect, so finely molded; no 
 eyes ever see it here, no one ever rings it any 
 more. It has not been tolled for a hundred 
 years. I never come here but I swing it so. 
 Listen !" 
 
 Maria touched the bell, the tongue struck the 
 metal and evoked a muffled sound. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried, and swung it again. "How 
 terrible! The tone is spoiled and it used to be 
 like honey ! Sweeter than the oriole down there 
 in the olive-trees." Maria passed her hand about 
 the bell lovingly as though it were a human 
 thing. "Oh, how sad ! My beautiful bell !" 
 
 On the opposite side from the neck of the bowl 
 she saw now that a fissure split the bronze. The 
 priest watched her as she stood, troubled by the 
 ruin of this object of which she had romantically 
 made a fetish. He said consolingly : 
 
 "The tone is very sweet still; not pure, of 
 course, but sweet. Strike it again." 
 
 "Don't ask me to; it is a broken note, sad as 
 tears. If you had heard the other you would 
 47
 
 realize how this jars. I never want to hear the 
 tragic sound again. I wonder what brutal shock 
 did it." 
 
 Faversham almost thought there were tears in 
 her eyes. 
 
 "Come," she said, "let's go down. This dis 
 appointment has spoiled San Marcello for me!" 
 
 "No," he remonstrated, "not yet," and put his 
 hand out with an authoritative gesture. "My 
 child, there is something here more beautiful 
 than the bell, something that one touch, one con 
 tact with wrong, can spoil for ever. Women 
 have wept their souls out to regain just what 
 you are on the point of destroying. I have 
 watched you, I see and I know. Don't throw 
 away your soul, Maria Sant' Alcione, don't !" 
 
 The priest said nothing further. He waited 
 silently, not expecting her to speak, his hands 
 clasped against his t>reast, as though he wore be 
 neath his dress some emblem which he pressed to 
 the flesh ; a prayer passed his lips and there was 
 a transfiguration of his expression as he bent 
 48
 
 MELLOW SAN MARCELLO 
 
 toward his companion and made over her a rapid 
 sign of the cross. 
 
 Maria, without response except that she bowed 
 her head with meekness, turned to take again the 
 way by which they had come toward the inner 
 staircase leading to the cloisters. 
 
 Her carriage, which she had ordered to come 
 for them, was at the door. She told the man to 
 drive slowly home by the way of Posilipo, and 
 when Father Faversham closed the door, she 
 leaned back in her corner and he saw that she 
 was weeping. After a few minutes she dried her 
 eyes. 
 
 "You may pity me," she said. "I am utterly 
 wretched; but don't be alarmed for my soul. I 
 pass my time as stupidly as possible." 
 
 "Believe me," replied the young ecclesiastic, 
 "I have thought nothing else. But you have no 
 temptations." 
 
 "You think so?" 
 
 "None real enough to endanger a woman such 
 as you are." 
 
 49
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 She murmured : "Perhaps you are right." 
 "I am thinking," he said, "of the time when 
 you will love and when you will be really loved." 
 "Why do you speak of such a possibility?" 
 "Because it is the only thing to fear." 
 She echoed ardently: "To fear! Why, if 
 such a thing came to me in the tragedy of my 
 life, do you for a moment imagine that I would 
 not seize it, thank heaven, and . . ." 
 
 "Lose your soul," finished the priest gently 
 but firmly. 
 
 She repulsed him gently : "Don't confuse re 
 ligion with the big, elemental, natural things of 
 life. If you only knew, if you only understood, 
 if you only guessed how I watch and wait for the 
 right to live, to exist . . . Why do I talk to 
 you like this?" she interrupted herself "you 
 already think me a gross materialist and trem 
 ble for my soul." 
 
 Her companion's calm tranquillity was un 
 shaken by her storm of feeling. He answered 
 mildly: "I do not tremble, Contessa." He 
 50
 
 MELLOW SAN MARCELLO 
 
 turned to her with kindness and compassion as he 
 spoke, and she exclaimed inconsistently: 
 
 "Ah, well, you may tremble if you like, for if 
 it ever does come, I shall be a great sinner." 
 
 "A great saint perhaps," he returned, "there 
 is the choice." 
 
 She made an impatient gesture, and sat back 
 in her corner, musing. 
 
 Through his window Faversham tranquilly 
 regarded the crowded streets through which they 
 made their way, and his expression was benig 
 nant as he looked on the groups of children and 
 the squalid poor, where Naples lived its outdoor 
 life, half naked in the sunlight. As they passed 
 on their way up the Posilipo hill, the power of 
 his silent peace and serenity reached his compan 
 ion's spirit and affected it as his words would 
 have failed to do. Before they turned in at the 
 villa gates, she said to him : 
 
 "I want to go away from Naples and to go 
 away alone. Where can I go, Father Faver 
 sham ; what can I do ?" 
 
 51
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Do you know any one in trouble?" 
 
 She thought for a second. "Yes, yes, some 
 one I want to help and whom Gigi would make 
 no objection to my helping. I could go, but it's 
 a long journey." 
 
 "So much the better," said the priest cheer 
 fully. "Climb high and you will see further, 
 Contessa." 
 
 "It's my little son's nurse, a peasant from the 
 Upper Tiber country. I had to let her go back 
 to her husband and her children. Otherwise I 
 would have kept her for ever, but I have heard 
 that she is very poor, and I should adore going 
 to Le Baize." 
 
 "Do so," Faversham said, "by all means if 
 your husband will consent." 
 
 "He will be delighted. Not only will it leave 
 him free, but he loved his son and anything that 
 had to do with little Sandro . . ." 
 
 "Ah," murmured the priest, "he was a good 
 father?" 
 
 "Yes, he was perfect with his child. Le 
 52
 
 MELLOW SAN MARCELLO 
 
 Baize," she continued, "lies at the source of the 
 Tiber. It is a tiny little village. I don't know 
 how to go, but I long to make the pilgrimage." 
 
 Faversham turned to her with a smile that was 
 like a benediction. 
 
 "Go," he said, "and find the immaculate source 
 of a great river. It is a beautiful pilgrimage."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A FRIEND OF THE CONTE 
 
 SANT' ALCIONE took a keen interest in 
 his wife's prospective journey to Tuscany 
 and Umbria, and he devoted half an hour of his 
 time over his morning chocolate to making out 
 a little itinerary for her. As her journey took 
 her through the village of Pieve San Stefano, 
 Sant' Alcione put his finger to his head and tried 
 to think what the name recalled. 
 
 "Maria," he called, "see !" 
 
 His wife's rooms were on the opposite side of 
 the villa. Gigi Sant' Alcione pretended to ad 
 mire his wife extravagantly. He paid her com 
 pliments, always adding to his friends the com 
 mon excuse "e fredda gelata cold as a stone." 
 
 He sent his man to pray the contessa to come 
 to him, and Maria found her husband in his 
 54
 
 'A FRIEND OF THE CONTE 
 
 dressing-gown, with guide-books and maps on 
 the table before him. 
 
 "So early ready to go out?" he asked. She 
 wore her hat and held her gloves in her hand. 
 "You are becoming an athletic woman, Maria, 
 you will grow thin." He smoked an Egyptian 
 cigarette, flicking the ashes into his empty cup. 
 "Maria, you- pass through Pieve San Stefano." 
 
 "Yes, I believe I do." 
 
 "And also through Borgo San Sepolcro, but 
 the end of the journey is at Pieve. God help 
 you after that, but while you wait for celestial 
 aid, I want you to look up Allesandro della Gan- 
 dara, an old friend of mine, as Padre Faversham 
 was a friend of your brother's." 
 
 His wife replied indifferently. It would have 
 required more than a name to give her a friendly 
 interest in her husband's companions ; indeed, 
 meeting any one spoiled the idea of solitude and 
 charm which had been the attraction of her pros 
 pective pilgrimage. 
 
 "I will give you a note to Sandro ; he will look 
 55
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 after you. The poor devil must know the coun 
 try pretty well by this." 
 
 It was a pain to Maria always to hear her be 
 loved little son's name on any lips, and in order 
 to put an end to the interview she told her hus 
 band that she must go and would see him at 
 luncheon. 
 
 Sant' Alcione, somewhat stirred by this inci 
 dent from his habitual indolence, rose, went to 
 his desk, took out of the drawer an album of 
 photographs. 
 
 "See," he said delighted, "Delia Gandara sent 
 me this years ago. Handsome, isn't he? Poor 
 Sandro ! Poor devil !" 
 
 Maria glanced at the photograph and laid it 
 down. It was the head and shoulders of a man 
 about thirty years of age. His eyes looked 
 straight out from, the picture to the eyes of 
 Maria Sant' Alcione. The face was intensely 
 sad and appealing. 
 
 "Good-looking fellow, Maria, isn't he?" 
 
 "He doesn't look happy," returned his wife. 
 56
 
 A FRIEND OF THE CONTE 
 
 "Poor Sandro," her husband repeated, "there's 
 a story for you. As brilliant a chap as ever you 
 could know women mad about him preparing 
 for a diplomatic career, went up to Umbria on 
 some tomfool's errand he was a rank senti 
 mentalist kissed on a summer's evening a peas 
 ant girl in the vineyards took his peccadillo to 
 heart and married her married her there and 
 then. Just think of it! He has lived in that 
 God-forsaken desolate country for ten years, 
 lost his career and his fortune: his people cut 
 him off." 
 
 She lifted up the picture and said briefly : 
 "If he loved her I daresay he has no regrets." 
 "Pouf !" exclaimed her husband. "A brilliant 
 man of the world living like a peasant in San 
 Stefano with a field-hand! Why, it's the most 
 asinine, disgusting, pathetic story I ever heard. 
 Looks happy, doesn't he?" 
 
 She laid the photograph down again. The 
 eyes seemed to call to her. 
 
 "Father Faversham leaves before luncheon. I 
 57
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 shall drive him to the station, as you do not seem 
 to have thought of doing so." 
 
 "Oh," returned Sant' Alcione reproachfully, 
 "and I have been making out your trip for you, 
 Maria!" 
 
 "Forgive me. You are really very kind, 
 Gigi." 
 
 "You will get the automobile in Rome, and 
 take a guide from there . . ." 
 
 He did not hear her answer.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 FREE AND ALONE 
 
 AT length, alone in the train for Arezzo, 
 she hid in a corner of the carriage fear 
 ing that at the last moment something might pre 
 vent her journey. On the opposite seat she ar 
 ranged her few pieces of hand luggage marked 
 with her initials and coronet, and they were the 
 sole companions of her journey. She had left 
 her maid and had sent her motor back to Naples. 
 The idea of the solitary pilgrimage appealed to 
 her to such an extent that she trembled lest a 
 catastrophe might prevent her flight. 
 
 At the traveling agencies no one could tell her 
 where Le Baize was except that it poised on some 
 extreme peak of the Apennines hung in the 
 unknown. Unused to making inquiries in public 
 offices, the contessa listened blankly to the clerk 
 59
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 who told her that it was a perilous trip at this 
 time of the year, and that, after all, there were 
 no means of reaching Monte Fumaiolo save on 
 horseback. 
 
 "It is where dear Maria Goanelli is, at all 
 events. She got there, poor dear, and I can ; and 
 perhaps something will happen so that I never 
 get there. That would solve the problem !" 
 
 In her compartment of the Arezzo train she 
 was alone as she had not been since her marriage. 
 As the cars rolled out she drew a breath of re 
 lief as though she were being 1 rolled out of her 
 own existence and into another. 
 
 Her husband expected her to be absent about 
 a fortnight. 
 
 "No matter how primitive I find it," she had 
 told him, "I shall rusticate with Maria Goanelli 
 for a few days, and take a fresh-air cure." 
 
 She reflected bitterly that Gigi would find 
 
 plenty of ways to pass his time, and her mind 
 
 went to the woman whom she was going to see, 
 
 the full-breasted girl from the Apennines with 
 
 60
 
 FREE AND ALONE 
 
 eyes like a cow's, and breath as sweet, the girl 
 who had kissed her son, nursed him, loved him 
 and wept over his flower-covered bed. She had 
 five hours to go to Arezzo, and where to stop she 
 had no idea. She looked in her Baedeker at hotels 
 starred, and glanced at the other occupant of 
 her carriage. He was a Frenchman ; his travel 
 ing rug across his knees, and his paper at his 
 side, he was enjoying an Italian outing. He was 
 especially enjoying Maria Sant' Alcione, at 
 whom he had been looking with delight. He 
 hoped no one would disturb them. The good 
 taste of her quiet dress, her gentle adjustment 
 of her belongings, her peaceful meditation and 
 her unusual beauty made her an agreeable diver 
 sion for the Latin. It was not the habit of 
 Italian women of Maria's class to travel alone. 
 He thought her Italian for he had heard her 
 speak to the guard. She was an Italian woman 
 of fashion. Where was she going alone? 
 
 As she glanced up and met his eyes she con 
 tracted her brows and looked quickly away. 
 61
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Pardon, Madame," and he lifted his hat, "do 
 you wish the window open or shall I close it for 
 you?" 
 
 She replied without turning her head, and his 
 attention created the first disturbance of the 
 solitary journey of which she was so jealous. 
 The Frenchman arranged himself comfortably 
 in his corner; he was composedly reading his 
 paper. Maria laughed at herself, her morbid 
 nervousness, and closed her eyes serenely. In her 
 hand-satchel opposite she had a package of let 
 ters which had come to her every day in Rome, 
 during her stay there. They were from the Mag- 
 giore Corti. She had not opened one of them. 
 She had fetched them with her to destroy at her 
 leisure. 
 
 When she had said to Faversham that she 
 wanted to go away alone, she had given expres 
 sion to the desire that had haunted her many 
 times since the first year of her married life, and 
 these last months she had longed for it more in 
 tensely. The miserable pitiful failure of her 
 62
 
 FREE AND ALONE 
 
 life, her little child's death and the mockery of 
 her existence, had wounded her spirit till its 
 wings were fretted with unhappiness and deep 
 with the dust of material things. If she could 
 have left her husband at first it would have been 
 chiefly to escape his infidelities that she would 
 have made her flight. Now her reasons were 
 more complex. She had become to herself an en 
 tity that could not be ignored. She wanted to be 
 alone, not to escape from herself as a woman more 
 actually a sinner might have wished to do ; of late 
 she had developed fast. She read voraciously; 
 she wrote pages in the long evenings when Lent 
 forbade festivities, and in the absence of her 
 husband, when she became an anchoret and re 
 fused to see the Neapolitans. One after another 
 she had received the men of her husband's set, 
 had encouraged them to make love to her, from 
 indifference and desperation, from a spirit of re 
 venge or a spirit of conquest. She had let more 
 than one hope everything, and more than one 
 had cause to call her heartless. She had the 
 63
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 reputation of being a cold and disappointing 
 woman, and her husband's faults were less se 
 verely judged in consequence. 
 
 The motion of the train soothed her. She fell 
 really asleep, and then within a few miles of 
 Arezzo woke, to find her knees covered by a fur 
 rug, the shades of the windows carefully adjusted 
 she was alone. The Frenchman, after having 
 made her comfortable, had gone into the smok 
 ing-carriage.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE BRIDGE OF LIFE 
 
 CERTAIN places are like bridges taking 
 us from the old to the new, and Maria 
 afterward thought of Arezzo as a crossing 
 of the stream of life. Her room in the Al- 
 bergo Grande was the best the hotel offered, 
 and as cold as a tomb; moreover, a sudden 
 gusty wind and snowy rain broke as she left the 
 train, and the window was wet with the March 
 storm. The eager little chambermaid with her 
 chapped hands and her pitiful downtrodden 
 shoes, heaped what comfort she might upon the 
 traveler, lighting a smoky fire that belched from 
 the porcelain stove, piling eider-down quilts like 
 a sunset on the bed, and offering a pot of tea 
 that smelt of the haystack and tasted like a bit 
 ter tonic ! Opening the window to let in the cold 
 sharp air and the threads of rainy snow, Maria 
 65
 
 thought of the snow upon the mountains which 
 the Romans had warned her against, and shiv 
 ered. She was accustomed to no discomfort, she 
 rarely even unbuttoned her own shoes, and re 
 luctantly she shut the door against the little 
 chambermaid, realizing that if she had attained 
 the solitude so intensely desired, she was also face 
 to face with its discomforts. 
 
 She sat down before her bitter tea, the blue 
 milk and the fly-specked sugar. She was faint, 
 she had left Rome at noon and it was now eight 
 o'clock, but she could not drink the tea. She 
 pushed away the tray, took up her little bag and 
 drew out the letters of Corti. The big dashing 
 handwriting she knew in all its forms, as she 
 knew the frank simple soul who had loved her 
 for years. She broke the first seal, drew out the 
 first letter. . . . "Your Giovanni." A faint 
 smile touched her beautiful lips. He was incapa 
 ble of saying anything new. She stuffed the let 
 ters through the door of the stove, down on the 
 black uncompromising fire, and they finally 
 66
 
 THE BRIDGE OF LIFE 
 
 burned away close to the only warmth that they 
 ever kindled. Then she put on her furs and went 
 down to the dining-room, driven out of retire 
 ment by smoke, cold and hunger, and with a 
 sense of desolation to which she could give no 
 name. 
 
 Several degrees colder than her bedroom, the 
 dining-room suggested a place where one waits 
 to be disappointed. So she found when she or 
 dered eggs and chicken that there was nothing 
 on hand but sausage ! She asked for soup and a 
 bottle of wine, and when the simple supper was 
 served to her she ate hungrily of hot macaroni 
 broth and comforted herself with a glass of Chi- 
 anti: the bread went for meat. She took delight 
 in her hunger and was amused to find that the 
 coarse fare satisfied her and tasted better than 
 her dinners at Naples shared by the people who 
 were doing her wrong and who, at a word from 
 her, would have done her still greater wrong ! 
 
 "This is the kind of food that ascetics live 
 on," she thought. "Father Favcrsham eats noth- 
 67
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 ing, and I doubt if he ever tastes such excellent 
 wine as this." 
 
 She turned it in her glass, where it shone red 
 as fire, and shivered. They had fetched only a 
 basin of charcoal to warm her ; she drew her furs 
 more closely. Father Faversham and his words 
 she did not permit herself to recall. Far off in 
 Le Baize, where the rains and the snows would 
 meet her, she would make a retreat and would 
 then think of Faversham. 
 
 She finished her supper and went up-stairs 
 through the dark corridors to her bedroom, op 
 ening the door reluctantly. The window had 
 blown open ; the room was heavy with smoke, the 
 fire had gone out. Maria, fortified by her sup 
 per, made the best of it, wrapped herself in her 
 silk dressing-gown,_put her friendly cloak about 
 her, threw on the sofa the red eider-downs, fast 
 ened the window and got into the chilly bed. It 
 was as soft as her own. She breathed a sigh of 
 gratitude; it was heavenly to think that no one 
 68
 
 THE BRIDGE OF LIFE 
 
 in the peninsula knew where she was and that no 
 one had the right to disturb her. 
 
 She fell asleep almost immediately, and as she 
 slept the storm passed, the moon rose and hung 
 in the quiet sky over the terrace of Arezzo where 
 the church of San Pietro rings its silver bell. 
 The letters of the Maggiore Corti, packed in a 
 mass in the stove, caught fire about midnight and 
 burned brightly with a clear flame, but the little 
 stir and the gentle commotion they made in their 
 destruction did not disturb Maria Sant' Alcione ; 
 her hair loose on the pillow, her head hidden in 
 the curves of her arm, she slept until the clang 
 ing of church bells woke her at eight o'clock.
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 "ITALY, MY ITALY!" 
 
 '"T^ERMATA QUI," she said to the coc- 
 f chiere. She did not need to wait for her 
 freedom until Le Baize : she was already free as 
 air. She might stop where she chose, see what 
 she liked, go on when the fancy moved her. For 
 a fortnight at least she was a free woman. Her 
 little carriage stopped before the church of San 
 Pietro. Maria left it and went to the edge of 
 the terrace and looked down on the hills and the 
 valley below. 
 
 The first intimation of spring had come. In 
 a week more the apricots and the almonds would 
 be in bloom. The sunlight was furtive but warm, 
 and Maria lifted her face to the air and the light. 
 In the San Marcello gardens where the oriole 
 sang she had seen the first approach of spring. 
 70
 
 "ITALY, MY ITALY!" 
 
 Below her here the olive-trees clung gray on the 
 hill slope. "How sad to look at everything 
 alone," she thought, "how sad to care for every 
 thing alone, to be as I am, always alone !" 
 
 She could, however, think of no one with whom 
 it would give her the slightest pleasure 
 to share the .soft air and the capricious sunlight. 
 Father Faversham, whom she had persuaded to 
 visit her favorite haunt, the exquisite monas 
 tery, had disturbed her rather than calmed her; 
 had troubled her rather than given her pleasure. 
 For one reason and another, as she stood on the 
 parapet gazing on the valley, the recollection 
 came to her of her wedding journey, and she re 
 called the starting away, the arrival in Paris, the 
 short pleasurable excitement of the new life as 
 a titled woman and a married woman, and the 
 brutal introduction into reality. At seventeen 
 her sentimental education had been undertaken 
 by a libertine without conscience or soul; her 
 nerves and her senses and her ideals had been 
 shocked, and her heart bruised. She repeated to 
 71
 
 THE BROKEN BELT 
 
 herself mechanically: "No, no soul," and the 
 thought of her husband disturbed her morning 
 meditation. She walked slowly back to the 
 church. The melancholy which had become in 
 the last years a fixed expression on her brow, now 
 returned heavily. 
 
 "I am too lonely," she confessed, "too danger 
 ously lonely. Father Faversham, Father Fa- 
 versham, what is to become of me?" 
 
 The cocchiere deposited her at the small sta 
 tion before which ran the single narrow track 
 leading, as far as she was concerned, into the un 
 known. The buying of the ticket to San Sepol- 
 cro (the end of the line) amused her, and while 
 she waited for the little train she watched her 
 traveling companions with their baskets of veg 
 etables and their country paraphernalia. A 
 woman with a crate of chickens, a man with kegs 
 of butter, all smelling of market and chatting 
 of business, gathered in the little branch station. 
 There were a couple of target-shooters with their 
 72
 
 "ITALY, MY ITALY!" 
 
 showering cocks' plumes. There was no one 
 above the rank of farmer to keep her company. 
 
 Her mother, like many another American 
 woman, had flirted seriously with Europe. Maria 
 had been fetched abroad when ten years old and 
 had never since seen her own country. In Italy 
 she had received the narrow education of a fash 
 ionable Roman jeune file. Her young friends 
 were Italians who giggled at the idea of a man and 
 made big eyes at life, and Maria, full of ideals, 
 with a superficial education and a tin}' fortune, 
 had been given over to Luigi Sant' Alcione be 
 fore she had passed her eighteenth birthday. 
 The following year her mother had died of ty 
 phoid, and it happened that at the same time in 
 which the young wife told her husband that she 
 was to bear him a child, she learned of his miser 
 able liaisons and infidelities. 
 
 Her brother, denationalized like herself, had 
 
 scarcely finished his studies in England before 
 
 his life had been ended by accident. Over and 
 
 over again she had said to herself: "He was 
 
 73
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 the only person I ever loved," though from what 
 she could remember of her father she thought she 
 would have loved him dearly, and she felt a ten 
 derness for the devoted forgotten man, who had 
 made a fortune for his family to spend and who 
 lived without the solace of children, or the com 
 panionship of wife. She wondered what the rela 
 tion ship of her father and mother could have 
 been, what fate had separated them. She shook 
 her head. The American alternative had become 
 inconceivable to her now. She must reconcile her 
 race and her prejudices with her education and 
 worldly experiences. She was an Italian. 
 
 Even on this sunless afternoon when the soft- 
 colored country was melancholy, there was 
 nothing wintry about the Tuscan landscape. 
 Lying between the low shores Maria caught the 
 flash of a milky-white stream whose rapid eddy 
 ing rush carried it over the lime-like stones. 
 This was her first sight of the infant Tiber whose 
 source now lay not more than fifty miles away. 
 
 Maria lifted her veil and looked out on the 
 74
 
 "ITALY, MY ITALY!" 
 
 copper-colored fields and the melancholy land, 
 then opening the window, breathed in the air 
 with delight. The beaut}'' of the valley, the som 
 ber fields where the white flocks fed, the sweep in 
 the distance of the Apennine wall, the climbing 
 of the hills to the snow-covered peaks, the mys 
 tery of the sky which at any moment might 
 break into supernal blue she responded to it, 
 she loved it all. 
 
 "Italy, Italy !" she murmured, "I adore it ! It 
 has done me harm, perhaps even wrong, but it is 
 my country ; I don't want any other, and part of 
 me is buried here." 
 
 Her eyes looked tenderly on the esthetic love 
 liness. The beauty of the miles she had traversed 
 soothed her ; old wounds were closing and she 
 began to gain mental equilibrium. 
 
 A curve of the road brought into full view the 
 upper sweep of the golden valley whose amethys 
 tine olive vineyards swept to the willows under 
 whose trees the cattle fed on the short-grassed 
 pasture, and through the valley's center the
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Tiber's stream broke its slender way. Maria 
 turned as if she longed to share her pleasure with 
 a companion, and to the empty seat of the car 
 riage said aloud in her mellow agreeable voice : 
 
 "I am too young to be unhappy like this. I 
 am too young not to love and not to be loved. I 
 can't bear it any longer." 
 
 She drew off her gloves and looked at her bare 
 hands, for she had brought no rings ; her wed 
 ding-ring only hung heavy on her finger. Her 
 hands, graceful and capable, were indicative of 
 her nature: there was a caress in every line of 
 them; but as she spread them out now, regard 
 ing them curiously, the gesture was that of an 
 oblation. Their emptiness appealed to her as 
 she remembered how she used to hold them out 
 to her little child, how she had held his little face 
 between her palms. She had cared for him, 
 bathed him, dressed him", as did few women of 
 her world. Her hands were cruelly empty. It 
 was a long time since she had touched anything 
 with affection. It would be a relief perhaps to 
 76
 
 
 "ITALY, MY ITALY!" 
 
 go and bind up the wounds of the maimed and 
 halt. Women with leisure that amounted to en 
 nui took courses in the Red Cross Society and 
 no doubt did a great deal of good, but she 
 thought she was not fitted for that sort of thing. 
 The only object she could recall touching with 
 affection had been the bell in San Marcello, when 
 she had felt it like a live hurt thing under her 
 hands and the fissure like a cruel sharp wound. 
 Binding up wounds and ministering to the sick 
 would not bring her peace in her present state ; 
 Maria was certain of this, and that she had no 
 vocation, nor would a child satisfy her now : she 
 folded her hands across her breast and bent her 
 dark head, supple, graceful, every movement 
 harmonious; she mused, her foot gently swing 
 ing to and fro. 
 
 "Father Faversham," she thought, "is won 
 derful for a priest and a man so young. I be 
 lieve that he would be merciful." 
 
 They waited so long in a station into which 
 e train had drawn that at last she looked out
 
 and found that it was Borgo, and opening the 
 window called to a peasant who lounged on the 
 platform, his shepherd-dog at his heels. Maria 
 induced him to carry out her luggage and to find 
 her a carriage. No sooner had she touched the 
 platform than she saw the uselessness of her last 
 order. 
 
 The station was on the outskirts of a tiny 
 brown town, one of the adorable Italian towns 
 that dot the peninsula like jewels. It did not 
 suggest waiting carriages or hotel buses. 
 
 "An inn, yes, yes, Signora." She must follow 
 him. And the man trotted off up the road, with 
 her bags and her valise, Maria following, her 
 spirit of adventure dulled by the cloudy day and 
 the uncertainty of her destination. There was 
 not a soul in sight^.and she began to be raven 
 ous for a thoroughly good luncheon, for since 
 Rome she had eaten nothing but her poor sup 
 per of the previous night. 
 
 "Am I already beginning to feel the peas in 
 my shoes ?" She smiled, walking bravely on be- 
 78
 
 "ITALY, MY ITALY!" 
 
 hind the trotting porter. It was after two 
 o'clock. The day, still windless, was damp and 
 cold ; the air came straight from the Apennines, 
 where the late snows lay far down the slopes. 
 Before her little Borgo stood out dark and brown 
 like a village cut from velvet, mellow with the 
 bloom of centuries, fragrant with age and the 
 odors of fires that had kindled and died and 
 been rekindled for close on nine hundred years. 
 
 The porter led her over great cobbles in the 
 middle of the streets, trotting like a dog under 
 her luggage, his own dog trotting at his side. 
 The citizens of the town looked curiously at the 
 Contessa Sant' Alcione, suspicious of the elegant 
 woman from her high heels to her toque with its 
 bright red rose. A flock of sheep, driven sud 
 denly round a corner, scattered bleating, and the 
 porter's dog joined in with the shepherd's dog 
 and together the pair drove the flock by. Maria 
 saw the big basin of a fountain through an op 
 ening of the street, the walls of solidly built 
 houses black with time, as she passed between 
 79
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 them following her guide, who made for the door 
 of an ancient building where, over the low en 
 trance, the word "Trattoria" ran. The peasant 
 dropped his burden at the threshold. 
 
 "This, Eccellenza, is the inn" and, his fee in 
 mind, finished : "and it is a very long way from 
 the station !" 
 
 Hopelessly she considered the inn where on the 
 balcony over the door a crowd of peasants, part 
 of a wedding-feast, were singing and drinking; 
 one of the party leaned her red face over the 
 railing, crying : "See, a new guest, welcome." 
 
 "But I can't stay in this tavern," Maria said 
 to her guide, "there must be another hotel." 
 
 "No other," he informed her, "this is an excel 
 lent tavern, Eccellenza !" 
 
 "How far is Pieve San Stefano from here?" 
 
 He shrugged : he did not know. 
 
 The innkeeper, a gaudy-cheeked, black-haired 
 
 matron, brought her odor of garlic and hair-oil 
 
 to the door, and the contessa realized that she 
 
 herself was nearly fainting with hunger. Glanc- 
 
 80
 
 "ITALY, MY ITALY!" 
 
 ing at the lady's luggage and at the traveler 
 herself, the innkeeper decided not to be hospita 
 ble. 
 
 "There is nothing to eat," she informed cool 
 ly, "a large party from the country has just 
 come and eaten up everything." 
 
 Poor Maria exclaimed : "Oh, but you can give 
 me an egg and some chicken." 
 
 Every chicken in the neighborhood, the woman 
 assured her, had been eaten by the wedding 
 guests. 
 
 The contessa took her purse from her small 
 bag and said humbly, smiling on her hostess : 
 
 "I am dreadfully hungry! If you will give 
 me some milk and bread, anything, I will pay 
 you well." 
 
 This was too tempting, and the woman, with 
 out cordiality, beckoned the guest to follow her. 
 
 "I have no room for the night," she called 
 
 over her shoulder, "the wedding party has taken 
 
 the whole inn." And the fat hard-featured 
 
 hostess swayed and undulated up the stairs. 
 
 81
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Maria followed meekly into an ice-cold room 
 from which the windows opened on the balcony, 
 now overflowing with wedding guests. The water 
 stood out on the humid stones, bare tables lined 
 the room, the dampness oozed from the walls. 
 Maria Sant' Alcione sat down at a table, shiver 
 ing in her furs, and waited with a patience and 
 a humility that did her honor and that made 
 her smile. She had never been so hungry in her 
 life. 
 
 The wedding guests, absorbed in their riot 
 ous amusements, did not observe her. At the 
 bridal table a group closed about the little peas 
 ant bride, a pale-featured slender thing, freckled 
 and big-eyed under her virginal veil with its 
 cheap orange-flower garland. She sat like a 
 first communicant, insignificant, all in white, 
 overhung by her big black husband, a fine speci- 
 man of the Tuscan with skin like a pomegranate, 
 and flashing eyes. The best clothes, the bouton- 
 nieres of artificial flowers, the coarse toil-de 
 formed hands as they lifted their glasses and 
 82
 
 "ITALY, MY ITALY!" 
 
 clinked them, the merriment that always in that 
 class has a touch of restraint or shame, made a 
 pathetic impression on Maria. She felt a thrill 
 of tenderness toward the little bride of the age 
 she herself had been when her husband had taken 
 her away. 
 
 "I hope Tie will be good to her !" 
 
 Up the stairs to the room where she sat came 
 the musicians with their fiddles and a flute, and 
 passed out to the balcony. 
 
 "Heavens," Maria thought, remembering what 
 these festivities were like, "they will all come in 
 here to dance and I shall be overwhelmed by 
 them!" 
 
 But the banquet was not yet ended, and the 
 musicians, stormily welcomed, crowded like mice 
 into a corner of the balcony and tuned their poor 
 instruments, while the innkeeper fetched Maria's 
 dinner of milk and a huge piece of sour bread. 
 Maria ate the bread by little bits and drank the 
 milk gratefully. 
 
 "If Pieve is as primitive as this, I shall be a 
 83
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 skeleton by the time I reach Le Baize! A jour 
 ney that begins with a fast should end with a 
 feast! . . ." She smiled to herself, encourag 
 ing her desolation. 
 
 The musicians began to play a tarantella, a 
 medley of horrible discords. Maria glanced at 
 the bridal table where the bridegroom bent down 
 to the little bride, while the others, interested in 
 local bits of humor for the moment, forgot the 
 newly married pair. They were looking into 
 each other's eyes. Maria saw the face of the vir 
 ginal creature light as if a torch had been set to 
 flax. Neither man nor woman moved a muscle: 
 they sat and gazed into each other's eyes, and 
 the bride ceased to suggest a first communicant 
 she was a woman crossing the threshold of 
 life. Maria in looking felt herself to be indis 
 creet and turned away, conscious of a swifter 
 beating of her heart. She finished her meal, and 
 when the hostess returned indolently, swaying 
 along, Maria prayed to be shown a room where 
 she could rest for an hour ; and then : 
 84
 
 "ITALY, MY ITALY!" 
 
 "I want a carriage of some sort and a good 
 driver to take me to San Stefano." 
 
 The innkeeper dropped the money Maria gave 
 her into her apron pocket. 
 
 "Ah, there is nothing easier; the hotel owns 
 an excellent carriage and an excellent horse, and 
 San Stefano is only fifteen miles away !" 
 
 Maria closed the door of the room. Under 
 neath on the balcony the wedding party sang to 
 plaintive fiddling. An excitement ran through 
 her, a sense of freedom, and the interest of her 
 little adventure kept her still from feeling her 
 exhaustion. If her Roman and Neapolitan 
 friends could see her, an unwelcome guest, alone 
 in a wretched room in a fourth-class wayside inn ! 
 
 She had kept her small dressing-bag with her, 
 and when she had taken off her hat and veil, she 
 put the comb through her hair, passed her hand 
 kerchief across the face of the small mirror on 
 the dressing-table, and sat down to consider her 
 own reflection. Father Faversham's words re 
 turned to her : "You did not bury your beauty." 
 85
 
 Much good it did her ! What was the use of it, 
 if she was to wither and grow faded and wrin 
 kled without love? The glass was blurred and 
 her image was reflected as through a veil. As 
 sometimes the consciousness of one's own identity 
 and its immutability sweeps upon the individual, 
 so Maria realized she had accomplished the end 
 of her journey. She was alone with herself. 
 Neither fatuous nor vain, she studied her face 
 with interest, and saw neither line nor shadow 
 marking there. She would have said that her 
 face lacked distinction had it not been for the 
 melancholy that sat like a ghost upon her brow. 
 
 "My little Sandro," she murmured, "left the 
 only deep impression on my life, and it is sad." 
 
 The sharp ache of her heart when she thought 
 of her child made he'r eyes swim, and she brushed 
 her hand across them. 
 
 "If I have not done anything very dreadful," 
 she thought, "I have not done anything good, 
 and I have been going down through sheer weak 
 ness. I am tired of it all."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS 
 
 WHEN the subject had arisen of Mary 
 Fairbanks' marriage with Luigi Sant' 
 Alcione, the young girl's mother had been 
 obliged to consider the question of religion. It 
 was then discovered that the Americans had none. 
 The Catholicism of her companions seemed to 
 Mary picturesque and a little fantastic. Her 
 own people, of course, were Prostestants, which 
 word stood for the indefinite unpractical faith 
 held by her parents and friends. When her 
 mother informed her that she was to be a Catho 
 lic and begin ,to study the catechism with Mon- 
 signor Campanelli, the news made about as much 
 impression on Mary as did the preparation for 
 a fancy dress ball! Her new religion, however, 
 impressed her, from the day of her first com- 
 87
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 munion, with its feasts and fatigue, with the 
 lights and incense. She took a more lively in 
 terest in her approaching marriage, in her 
 fiance, and in her trousseau. 
 
 But after her marriage and during the suc 
 ceeding months when she found the need of 
 her adopted faith, she discovered she had 
 neither seized on nor understood its spirit, 
 and that the rote-learned prayers and the 
 unpractised maxims fell to nothing at her 
 touch. She soon ceased to attend mass and 
 never went to confession, and her Americanism 
 revealed itself in her obstinacy, her temerity and 
 her freedom. One day she said to her husband, 
 who confessed yearly : 
 
 "Don't speak to me of spiritual things, Gigi !" 
 And he had shrugged, leaving her to the loss of 
 her own soul and to her unbelief. If (as she had 
 told Faversham) she were really an unbeliever, 
 what had kept her virtuous? "The Catholic re 
 ligion never kept a woman from love," she 
 thought. "Is it some old Puritan strain in me, 
 88
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS 
 
 some refinement of Protestantism, or, as Father 
 Faversham said, that I have not been tempted?" 
 
 Here at Borgo the face in the dim mirror was 
 her own and yet strange; the reflection had 
 neither being nor tangibility, but was a vision 
 upon glass, purely mental, yet real as though it 
 had been a portrait. Maria looked into the eyes, 
 where the blue was nearly violet, and the brow 
 with its oriental penciling, on the oval face and 
 the melancholy with which she was familiar. But 
 as she gazed the melancholy altered to medita 
 tion, contemplation and a thoughtfulness that 
 was like a transfixed image of prayer. She 
 sighed and passed her hand lightly across the 
 glass. 
 
 "Poor Father Faversham!" she murmured, 
 "his pure mind is filled with the image of holy 
 women: he said I was holy: he said that I was 
 beautiful." 
 
 She mused: a line of one of her old prayers 
 came to her "Maria, mother of all holy desires, 
 or a pro nobis." What a difference the adjective 
 89
 
 fTHE BROKEN BELL 
 
 before "desires" made! If one could strike it 
 out ! . . . Still musing on her image she mur 
 mured half -consciously, her own name, Maria. 
 
 The music from the balcony below came to a 
 stop, and she heard the chairs scrape as the wed 
 ding guests trooped into the room beneath, 
 sabots and new 1 boots and shoes noisy on the 
 stones. A dull shuffling and the indistinct plain 
 tive notes of the little instrument told Maria 
 that the feasters were about to begin their ball. 
 
 From the piazza the church bell rang a cascade 
 of broken tones ; when they ceased three o'clock 
 rolled out from the throat of the duomo bell, and 
 the sound, deep and resonant, came purely on 
 the air to Maria, who started at the irrevocable 
 record of the hour. Well, here in Borgo they 
 had passed it each "and all, the wedding guests 
 at their feast, and the lonely traveler musing on 
 her image in the dingy glass. 
 
 When she had put on her hat and taken her 
 little bag she heard loud voices without in the 
 hall ; part of the company were clattering up the 
 90
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS 
 
 stairs, the little bride in their midst ; behind her 
 the big husband had his hands on her waist, 
 laughing over her shoulder. Small, piteous, her 
 pale face and her wreath and hair in disorder, 
 she fluttered by like a frightened bird. The Con- 
 tessa Sant' Alcione stood aside and the couple 
 passed her. At the door of the room Maria had 
 left, and evidently the best apartment of the inn, 
 the group paused, laughing, singing, jesting, 
 and the bride and bridegroom went into the 
 room. 
 
 As she went down-stairs, Maria wondered 
 whether the little bride would see, back of the 
 orange-flowers and her startled face, the image 
 she herself had made in the glass ! 
 
 A carriage drawn by a stout sorrel horse, 
 stood before the door, and high on his seat a 
 young boy, with a friendly face, waited to drive 
 her to Pieve. He swept his hat off with a grace 
 ful gesture. 
 
 "At your will, Signora !" 
 
 She saw that in their haste to be rid of her the 
 91
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 inn people had already piled her luggage on the 
 seat. 
 
 Oh, yes, the boy knew the way to San Stefano. 
 He drove "nobly". His horse was a "noble and 
 a brave animal". He would take the eccellenza 
 to Pieve San Stefano.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 INN OF THE SEVEN DOVES 
 
 SHE made herself as comfortable as she 
 could in her tiny carriage, settling for 
 the drive into the Tiber country. As they left 
 Borgo there struck out from the gray sky a ra 
 diance of sunlight as soft as a muted violin. On 
 the left the country was rude, barren and rocky, 
 and on the right Maria looked with enchanted 
 eyes to where the yellow pastures came flatly 
 down to the river side. Beyond at the valley's 
 end purple mountains stole upward unto snowy 
 peaks. 
 
 Maria looked on into a great wilderness, into 
 the forest heart of the mountain country, and 
 found it forbidding, inaccessible and cold. She 
 drew her furs about her and the air was as chaste 
 as a cup of celestial wine. The Tiber lay in sil- 
 93
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 ver pools against the dull purple of the land 
 scape. Little Borgo was lost behind her and she 
 pursued her enchanted way into the unknown. 
 
 Maria Goanelli would be overjoyed to see her; 
 she would kiss her and weep over her ; they would 
 remember together; they would talk of Sandro! 
 She could see Maria Goanelli's gestures of de 
 spair and her big eyes dark with tears. 
 
 The Italian driver snapped his whip, but so 
 gently that Maria did not restrain him. 
 
 "Look," said the boy, turning round in his 
 seat, "if the eccellenza will see a beautiful cas 
 tle . . ." 
 
 She saw it rise, a little tower like a golden 
 shaft. On its crenelated walls was a bloom as 
 on a moth's wings the dust and pollen of time. 
 On the top of the tufa hillock an eleventh-cen 
 tury stronghold dominated the valley. 
 
 The driver held his brave horse up sharply, 
 and standing, gesticulated with his whip. 
 
 "Many years ago," he began, as story-tellers 
 do, "there was once upon a time a conte and a 
 94
 
 INN OF THE SEVEN DOVES 
 
 contessa, Eccellenza, and they lived there in the 
 Castello d'Assai." He pointed to a brown bridge 
 arching the stream. "That is the Ponte d'Assai, 
 Eccellenza." 
 
 Maria Sant' Alcione asked patiently: "Why 
 'Assai'?" 
 
 "There was as well a lovely daughter, and she 
 had a sweetheart on the opposite bank of the 
 river, a young man from Borgo, and they would 
 not let him marry her." 
 
 The lady listened, smiling. 
 
 "So every night, Eccellenza, the lover swam 
 the Tiber and climbed up to the tower, and one 
 night he was drowned in the stream; and when 
 the lady saw his dead face in the moonlit river 
 she drowned herself, too." 
 
 "But why," asked Maria, "didn't he use the 
 bridge ?" 
 
 "Oh," exclaimed the boy, "the bridge was 
 
 built by the contessa in memory of the lover and 
 
 of her daughter, and when they used to ask her 
 
 if the bridge had cost her much she would an- 
 
 95
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 swer, 'Assai' (enough), and so they called it the 
 Ponte d' Assai." 
 
 The little Italian driver acutely watched the 
 lady to see what impression his story made. Ap 
 parently he was content, for without further 
 word he sat down and cried "Avanti," and the 
 brave horse started forward with a good will. 
 
 The legend ran in with Maria's dreams. She 
 leaned out and looked back at the brown castello 
 and the little bridge peopled by charming ghosts 
 of love and courage, of passion and death. 
 
 "Assai," she murmured, "assai: 7 can't say 
 that. I am more ready to burn bridges than to 
 build them, and I have not had enough, I have 
 had nothing." 
 
 The miles ran out behind them. Borgo had 
 been inhospitable and beautiful; what would 
 Pieve be? The hunger that she felt now 
 amounted to a faintness that the keen air alone 
 kept from vertigo. She had gone on as though 
 led by fate, thinking little of the several stages. 
 At Arezzo she had left the Maggiore Corti ; at 
 96
 
 INN OF THE SEVEN DOVES 
 
 Borgo she had left lovers in her place; now at 
 Pieve San Stefano . . .? In her dressing-bag, 
 including a complicated motor plan made for her 
 by her husband, and a guide-book, was the letter 
 to the Marchese Allesandro della Gandara, and 
 the strange man's face with the appeal in the eyes 
 revealed itself to her. Her little driver took his 
 horse sharply round a corner and Castello d'As- 
 sai was lost to view. 
 
 "Do you know Pieve San Stefano?" Maria 
 asked her boy, and he turned, delighted : 
 
 "But well! Heavens, Pieve is so small, it is 
 not difficult to know !" 
 
 "Is there an inn?" She asked eagerly, crav 
 ing food and rest as might any travel-worn way 
 farer, and she believed him when he assured her 
 that there was a splendid hotel. . . . She 
 sighed with relief. 
 
 "Do you know any one by the name of Delia 
 Gandara?" 
 
 "But of course, Eccellenza! The Marchese 
 Allesandro della Gandara is very celebrated, and 
 97
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 enormously good. He is the mayor and the 
 doctor, he is everything!" 
 
 "In which case," thought the contessa, "he 
 will be easy to find and hard to escape ! I shall 
 go on to Le Baize to-morrow . . . And Le 
 Baize?" she continued aloud. 
 
 The boy repeated the name vaguely. "I don't 
 know, Signora!" 
 
 And once more the hamlet hung in the un 
 known. 
 
 Peasants from Pieve began now to people the 
 roadside. A woman riding a tiny donkey trotted 
 into view, her brilliant yellow kerchief fluttering 
 in the breeze. In her arms she held a sleeping 
 child, and at the ass's bridle her husband, a fine- 
 looking peasant, walked singing. As the group 
 passed her carriage'she recalled the words : "He 
 took the young child and his mother by night 
 and departed into Egypt." 
 
 The peasants drove their bleating sheep and 
 cattle home ; the air was full of tinkling of bells 
 and bleating of lambs, as the Iwfbwy flocks, un- 
 98
 
 INN OF THE SEVEN DOVES 
 
 certain and plaintive, were driven up with their 
 mothers from the banks where they had been 
 feeding by the bright river. The river narrowed 
 as Maria looked up toward the source. When 
 the pointed tower of the church and the thick 
 roofs of Pieve came into sight, Maria said to the 
 driver : 
 
 "Take me directly to the inn, and you will get 
 supper and put up your horse. Possibly to-mor 
 row you will take me to Le Baize." 
 
 In front of her little Pieve sprang up in the 
 center of a white road which ran through it, and 
 away again out under an old arch at the end of 
 a single street. Here between age-worn walls 
 some three hundred simple creatures gathered and 
 made their home. Borgo had been brown ; Pieve 
 was dull gray, and the Inn of the Seven Doves, 
 white with green blinds, shone with a friendly 
 face to Maria. During a recent season it had 
 received a coat of whitewash and sparkled fair as 
 a lily in the setting of the grayer stones of the 
 town. A balcony ran along the front of the inn, 
 99
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 but there were no wedding guests to greet the 
 traveler ; indeed no one greeted her. 
 
 Pieve seemed deserted, but full of sweet sounds, 
 for she heard the doves coo from under the roof, 
 and the lowing of the cattle, and the bleating of 
 the lambs as they came flocking down the street, 
 their sharp feet pattering on the stones. The 
 dust rose in a cloud as the shepherd girls trotted 
 behind their flocks, their wooden shoes striking 
 the stones with the tiny feet of the sheep, and 
 the softer footsteps of the cattle. Maria had 
 left her carriage, and from the steps of the inn 
 looked down on the herds. Behind her into a 
 large clean kitchen the door was open. 
 
 "It looks almost inviting," she thought; 
 "where can the people be? I am famished it 
 must be past six." 
 
 Her driver had gone round to the back of the 
 inn, and Maria tapped on the open door. As 
 she stood looking toward the ancient gateway 
 whose arch cut out a half circle of the sky, she 
 saw two men coming slowly through the portal. 
 100
 
 INN OF THE SEVEN DOVES 
 
 One of them was unmistakably a peasant, the 
 other unmistakably a gentleman. The latter, in 
 an outing suit of rough tweed, a soft hat on his 
 head, carried a basket, and a fishing rod across 
 his shoulders. 
 
 Maria came slowly down the steps of the inn 
 and approached the two men, who had stopped. 
 She saw the gentleman pause and look up in 
 amazement. Before he had ceased to be amazed 
 at the sight of a woman like the Contessa Sant* 
 Alcione, in her pretty dress, her fur hat with its 
 rose, her small high-heeled boots, she had come 
 up to him. 
 
 "Isn't this the Marchese della Gandara?" she 
 asked in French, for some reason not caring to 
 betray her identity in Italian. 
 
 "At your service, Madame," replied the gen 
 tleman and lifted his hat. His hair was as 
 dark as her own and a little gray at the temples. 
 
 "My husband, Luigi Sant' Alcione, has given 
 me a letter to you. He told me I should find you 
 in Pieve." 
 
 101
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Why, it can't be possible ! Gigi, good old 
 Gigi ! Let me make you welcome !" 
 
 He held out his hand, and as she gave him hers 
 it seemed to her to be the first thing she had 
 touched since the broken bell. His hand took 
 her own strongly, completely, firmly. 
 
 "You have just arrived in Pieve? Where did 
 you come from?" 
 
 She told him in a word but he did not appear 
 to listen, looking at her delightedly, eagerly, 
 curiously, as though she were an arrival from 
 another sphere. He gave his fishing basket and 
 rod to the man. 
 
 "But certainly there is some one at the inn! 
 No, they are not all dead ! Unfortunately no one 
 dies in Pieve. They live for ever here, Contessa. 
 Come with me. I will make you persona grata 
 with Elena." 
 
 He preceded her into the inn, into the kitchen, 
 and called, "Hola, Elena," threw his hat down 
 on the table, and smiled radiantly on Maria Sant' 
 Alcione. 
 
 102
 
 INN OF THE SEVEN DOVES 
 
 "You are tired and hungry? Well, we will 
 squeeze Pieve for you. You shall have the best. 
 Hola, Elena! Possibly they are all dead." He 
 laughed but did not cease to look at her. 
 
 "See," he cried to a sweet-faced old woman 
 who came in. "See, my Elena! Were you 
 asleep ? Here is a great lady come to do you the 
 honor of staying at the Seven Doves." He 
 spoke quickly, eagerly, with a charming inflec 
 tion. "You will give her your best room, and 
 warm it, my friend, with a brazier, and warm the 
 linen as well." 
 
 "Ah," interrupted Maria, amused at the 
 woman's face, "I am not so difficult to please. 
 Don't terrify her. See," she said reassuringly to 
 the old thing, "we shall get on splendidly, Sig- 
 nora ! Just a bed and some food !" 
 
 "Ecco, ecco, Eccellenza," murmured the 
 woman timidly. 
 
 "Food of course," cried Delia Gandara, "and 
 a fire in the parlor at once. Fetch some coals 
 and I will light the wood." 
 103
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 The big room proved to be the parlor and 
 Maria had thought it the kitchen ! 
 
 The floor was polished bright as glass ; in the 
 vast fireplace, waiting to be lighted, piled long 
 logs, and a few deal chairs and tables highly pol 
 ished as well, stood soberly around the wall. Mon- 
 astical in its simplicity and scrupulously clean, 
 the homely place had a gentle charm. Over the 
 chimney hung a picture of the Virgin, her hands 
 pressed against the pierced heart aflame upon 
 her breast. 
 
 "Thank you," Maria said to Delia Gandara, 
 "you are very good. At Borgo I was almost 
 driven out of the inn ; I think they suspected me 
 of being an adventuress. I starved and froze at 
 Arezzo, and here . . ." She stopped. 
 
 Delia Gandara, with a naivete that was incon 
 gruous with his manner and age, gazed at her 
 absorbedly. He repeated : "Here in Pieve you 
 will ... be happy." He went abruptly to 
 the fireplace, calling, "Elena, Elena, fetch the 
 coals." 
 
 104
 
 INN OF THE SEVEN DOVES 
 
 He did not turn about again until he had made 
 a great blaze, and the loud crackling and snap 
 ping as the twigs caught flame was a voice of 
 cheer in the room. 
 
 "Signora," Maria said beseechingly to the old 
 woman, "I am horribly hungry. How soon may 
 I have some supper?" 
 
 She laid her veil and gloves on the table, and 
 sat down with a sigh of content. 
 
 The old woman made an apologetic gesture. 
 
 "But there is no fire in the stove, Eccellenza ! 
 I shall make one at once, but it will take time." 
 
 Delia Gandara addressed her commandingly : 
 
 "You will hurry, Elena, you will cajole the 
 fire, and what can you give the contessa to eat, 
 my good creature?" He said in French to 
 Maria: "I am afraid it will be very bad and 
 very scant, Madame." 
 
 "Oh, don't say so ! It will be food, and I am 
 actually starving." 
 
 But he did not believe her, and he laughed, 
 looking at her with the same eager delight. 
 105
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Good good! Elena, what have you in the 
 house?" 
 
 "Nothing !" exclaimed the woman mournfully, 
 "absolutely nothing !" 
 
 "Dio TTzio/" cried Delia Gandara violently, 
 "don't dare to say such a thing. Go at once and 
 get something. Go!" 
 
 And as she fluttered out like a chased hen, 
 Delia Gandara said : 
 
 "I'm afraid it's true. These creatures keep no 
 provisions ; they live on broth and macaroni." 
 
 "Let her give me that," cried poor Maria, 
 "call her and tell her to fetch what she can." 
 
 "I will go myself," said Delia Gandara. "I 
 will make the fire and superintend your supper."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE PILGRIM TARRIES 
 
 SHE waited patiently in the shining parlor 
 by the great fire, and drew her chair up to 
 it and put out her feet in their web-like silk 
 stockings and little shoes suitable for the Corso 
 at Rome on a fine morning. 
 
 The fire burned magnificently in the wide 
 hearth; from the sweet cones the resin ran out 
 unctuously, and its odor like incense filled the 
 room and rose to the altar made by the picture 
 of the Virgin over the hearth. Maria heard the 
 voices of the field-hands trooping home, and the 
 sputtering of the kitchen stove. She heard the 
 breaking of sticks and the subdued and apolo 
 getic voice of the poor innkeeper, and the eager 
 commanding voice of Delia Gandara. She closed 
 her eyes and listened, found it delightful, deli- 
 107
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 clous, restful, promising care and nourishment 
 and peace. She was grateful to Delia Gandara 
 and to Elena. She had nearly reached the goal 
 of her pilgrimage Le Baize! What a singu 
 larly magnetic and appealing face this man had ! 
 And how strange for him to be buried here for 
 ever, she reflected, and sat musing, fanned by the 
 fire's fragrance, when he came in, followed by 
 Elena, who fetched a table-cloth and knives and 
 forks. 
 
 Delia Gandara stood between the fire and 
 Maria, a big beautifully-made man, broad-shoul 
 dered, with muscles and fiber fine as silk and 
 strong as steel. 
 
 "Do you know," he asked abruptly, "how un 
 usual a sight you are in Pieve, Contessa? We 
 are mountaineers you come from the valley, 
 from many towns we are the only town. We 
 are really the first town on the Tiber, prouder 
 than Rome and as wild as wolves." 
 
 "Really?" she smiled. "You look as gentle 
 as lambs ! Your streets are full of lambs. I 
 108
 
 THE PILGRIM TARRIES 
 
 never saw such flocks. And I am going on to 
 Le Baize. That is the first town on the Tiber 
 and it must be wilder still." 
 
 "Le Baize?" he shrugged. "Le Baize is noth 
 ing but a hovel. We are a city with a cathedral, 
 a mayor, a doctor I know, for they are all be 
 fore you. 7 am all of them except the priest. I 
 am not a priest." 
 
 Elena, who had come in, whispered humbly : 
 
 "If the noble Signora will turn around, she 
 will see what her servant has done for her." 
 
 Maria turned, to see on a platter two small 
 broiled fish, a dish of macaroni swimming in 
 grease, a piece of bread with a crust like wood, 
 and of wood color, and a glass of pale wine. 
 Delia Gandara placed a chair for her. The fish 
 were fried in rancid butter, and had been badly 
 cleaned. Poor Maria swallowed a mouthful of 
 the vinegar in her glass which burned her throat 
 like fire. 
 
 Delia Gandara watched her. 
 
 "No, no," he said in a low tone, "it is too 
 109
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 dreadful. And I can see that the macaroni will 
 be worse. Elena ! Madonna mia ... !" And 
 he broke forth in a fury as wild as the wolves he 
 had spoken of. Under his scolding the old 
 woman ran out weeping. When she had gone 
 Maria succeeded in attracting his attention. 
 
 "I beg pardon," he said absent-mindedly. 
 
 "Why, you are quite terrible! I wouldn't 
 have you speak like that to her for worlds ! Poor 
 thing, she will wish me out of the house." 
 
 "It will teach her a lesson. They are all bar 
 barians. She will have to find provisions; What 
 will you think of Pieve!" 
 
 Hoping against hope she broke a piece of 
 bread. It was as sour as the wine but she de 
 voured it hungrily. Delia Gandara walked up 
 and down the room~v not at all hungry himself, 
 he was unable to fathom how Maria craved food. 
 His anger cooled. 
 
 "Couldn't you get me a glass of fresh milk, 
 perhaps?" she pleaded. "I am sure the cows 
 have all been driven in at any rate !" 
 110
 
 THE PILGRIM TARRIES 
 
 "Of course, of course, why didn't we think of 
 it? Elena, Elena !" he called. He ran out where 
 the old thing stood weeping by her stove. He 
 thrust a straw-covered bottle into her hand and 
 sent her like Rachel to the fountain. 
 
 To Father Faversham Maria had said she was 
 not superstitious, and she thought of it as she 
 waited for the milk. 
 
 "I am being starved evidently for some pur 
 pose. What does it mean that I am not permit 
 ted to eat?" 
 
 She would not complain, however. It seemed 
 ridiculous and already she was causing bother 
 enough and trouble enough in the town, but she 
 fancied that her very eyes and face must seem 
 famished. 
 
 Delia Gandara sat down by the table, leaning 
 on it. 
 
 "How does it happen," he asked her, "that 
 Sant' Alcione lets you come here like this alone? 
 Don't answer me if I am rude, but how does it 
 happen ?" 
 
 Ill
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 For some reason or other she thought it would 
 be amusing to mystify him. 
 
 "Oh, women do many things alone nowadays," 
 she replied. "And I am an American. We are 
 very emancipated." 
 
 Delia Gandara repeated "American" with hor 
 ror in his voice, then said: 
 
 "Oh, pray don't say such a thing ; French per 
 haps, never American. I have seen them touring 
 in Rome." 
 
 "But I am really Italian," she smiled, "and 
 have nearly forgotten that there is anything but 
 Italy in the way of a country." 
 
 He murmured to himself: "American!" then 
 added: "I thought you came from far away 
 when you appeared at the gate, as far away at 
 least as the Corso, but I did not know that you 
 came from such a dreadful distance. ... I had 
 heard of Gigi's marriage too, but I had forgot 
 ten it." 
 
 She saw a quick cloud gather and settle on his 
 face until it was positively black. 
 112
 
 THE PILGRIM TARRIES 
 
 "I have forgotten many things," he finished, 
 and rose abruptly, as he did everything, in a 
 manner almost savage in its bruskness. 
 
 "Here is Elena. This time she seems to have 
 brought you the contents of a whole cow. Drink, 
 Madame, and be blessed." 
 
 Elena, with an air of triumph, put on the 
 table a bottle holding nearly a gallon of milk. 
 The milk was warm; Maria felt it through the 
 bottle. Delia Gandara left her, asking if he 
 might return later to see how she was faring, 
 and Elena went to prepare her room.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 IN THE FRESH MORNING 
 
 IT was past midnight when she found herself 
 alone. Under her feet the floor was bare; 
 there was a tiny window opening on the roof, 
 where the doves had gone to sleep in a soft bunch. 
 A small bed with spotless linen, a small table, 
 formed the furnishings. Over the bed hung a 
 crucifix. The place was as remote and comfort 
 less as a cell. 
 
 Delia Gandara had tried to persuade her that 
 no one had ever heard of Le Baize. 
 
 "It may exist, undoubtedly does, since you say 
 so, but you mustn't "go to it; it would be madness 
 in this weather ; the snows are deep on the moun 
 tains." 
 
 "I must go to-morrow." 
 
 "You must at least wait until you have seen 
 the wonderful monastery of Sant' Angelo." 
 114
 
 IN THE FRESH MORNING 
 
 Maria, with the remembrance of San Marcello 
 vivid in her mind, said that she did not wish to 
 see a religious house. 
 
 "Are you anti-clerical?" Delia Gandara had 
 asked her, and followed with, "I half believe that 
 you came here on a pilgrimage." 
 
 He had stayed talking with her before the fire 
 until she herself had risen and bidden him good 
 night. 
 
 Maria's bed was higK and narrow ; she felt the 
 mattress, it was filled with straw. There was not 
 a single sound to break the silence. 
 
 The following morning she was wakened at 
 cockcrow, and one after another the outdoor 
 sounds came bravely: the lowing of the cows 
 driven to pasture, the bleating of sheep driven to 
 the fields ; the singing of the shepherds and the 
 shrill cry of their pipes. No one came to her, 
 and when she rose and called for Elena there was 
 no response. She folded herself in her dressing- 
 gown, slipped through the open granary to the 
 115
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 head of the stairs, and called. To her astonish 
 ment Delia Gandara answered : 
 
 "Good morning, good morning !" 
 
 She retired precipitately. 
 
 "Please stay where you are. Good morning! 
 Where is Elena?" 
 
 "Do you need her?" 
 
 Poor Maria ! Water, a bath, food, a hand to 
 help, she needed everything. She told him that 
 she would come down at once, dashed cold water 
 over her face, made what toilet she could. In her 
 mirror she saw her hair frame a countenance 
 which should have been full of fatigue. On the 
 contrary there was a blossom-like freshness on 
 her cheek. Without putting on her hat she ran 
 down-stairs eagerly, and as though he had waited 
 there without moving since the night before, 
 Delia Gandara leaned against the door of the 
 parlor. In his hand he had a great bunch of 
 apricot blossoms. 
 
 "How did you sleep, Contessa?" 
 
 She took the flowers ; they filled her arms. 
 116
 
 "Poor Elena," he explained, "has gone to care 
 for a woman whose husband has been gored by a 
 bull. I have done what I could for the man. He 
 is a philosopher and resigned : it is his wife who 
 makes the scene !" 
 
 "I don't believe the woman needs Elena half 
 as much as I do," said the contessa. "However, 
 I shall not make a scene, but I think if I don't 
 have something to eat, and that very shortly, I 
 shall die!" 
 
 He made a gesture of despair. His eager face 
 clouded. 
 
 "Cara Contessa," he exclaimed. "You can't 
 imagine how troubled I am! What boors and 
 barbarians you must think us ! You were so gra 
 cious to come to Pieve, and it doesn't extend you 
 hospitality. Will you not forgive us? Be as 
 indulgent as you can." 
 
 He turned with her from bare cupboard to 
 bare cupboard : it was as though there had been 
 a famine in the land. A sudden dizziness and 
 faintness seized her. She murmured: 
 117
 
 THE BROKEN BELt 
 
 "I seem to be under a ban of excommunication. 
 I think I am destined to starve to death." 
 
 Delia Gandara opened a wooden box desper 
 ately and found a great loaf of sour bread. 
 
 "Look!" he cried triumphantly. "Here is 
 your breakfast ! I will run home and fetch you 
 honey and milk. Here is water," he said, lifting 
 a pitcher from the window-sill. "I shall be back 
 directly." 
 
 Maria broke the bread to bits and ate it me 
 chanically, and smiled at herself. She ate with 
 content. Delia Gandara had seized his soft hat 
 and flown. She poured herself out a glass of 
 water and drank it ; the cool liquid had the taste 
 of flowers : it was soft and sweet. 
 
 "How alive he is," she thought, "what spirit 
 and vigor! My miserable weakness does not 
 touch him. He looks as though he lived on moun 
 tain air." 
 
 Through the front of the house a little girl 
 came rushing in, calling shrilly : 
 
 "Mama mia! il dottore, il signore dottore!" 
 118
 
 IN THE FRESH MORNING 
 
 Maria saw a child of some ten years of age in 
 wooden shoes, her wild hair about a wild face, a 
 shepherd's cloak around her shoulders. 
 
 "The doctor is not here," Maria told her. 
 "What is wrong, my child?" 
 
 "Father," said the child, staring. "His band 
 age has slipped. He is bleeding to death. He 
 was trying to get to mother." 
 
 Maria pushed her to the door. 
 
 "The doctor has gone home. Run after him, 
 you will meet him on the way. Run !" 
 
 The child kicked off her sabots and ran bare 
 foot, her shepherd's cloak, her brown hair stream 
 ing. 
 
 On the table at Maria's side lay the boughs of 
 apricot blossoms, fine as shells in color; at her 
 feet were the sabots of the dirty little peasant. 
 
 "No wonder," she mused, "he seems so full of 
 life. How useful and important he is to them 
 all here." 
 
 She finished her bread and drank another glass 
 of water, and bareheaded wandered slowly 
 119
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 through the kitchen to the porch, descended the 
 stone steps to the street, now filled with cattle 
 and flocks and shepherds. Above them shone 
 the sunlight. The gray sky rifted and over 
 Pieve floated a great expanse of blue. Maria 
 walked uncertainly in the direction the little girl 
 had taken with her flying bare feet. 
 
 She was regarded curiously by the peasants as 
 she made her way through the arch where Delia 
 Gandara and the child had disappeared. Before 
 her stretched a white road, and side by side 
 Maria saw the child and Gandara, the little 
 thing's running steps keeping pace with the 
 man's long strides. 
 
 To the north the walls of the Apennines lifted 
 their defenses, scarred with time and bright with 
 the morning, their, sides in the light like banks of 
 violets in English woods, and far down them 
 spread the snows. Following the figures before 
 her, Maria took a road to the right toward a 
 brown hut, the color of the earth, where from 
 the chimney rose a fillet of azure smoke. She 
 120
 
 IN THE FRESH MORNING 
 
 followed the others into a cabin, blackened like 
 ebony with the fires of centuries. 
 
 A man lay on the ground, his head in the lap 
 of Elena of the Seven} Doves, and a moaning 
 sound came from a kneeling woman who pressed 
 the peasant's feet to her breast. The woman 
 might have been a ghoul, she was so warped and 
 yellow. She was the man's mother and ninety 
 years old. Close by the hearth, which was but a 
 hole in the floor, stood the only bed, and on it 
 cowered a young woman, a nursing child at her 
 breast. She was weeping and wringing her 
 hands. 
 
 The face of the wounded man impressed 
 Maria. His face was, deadly white, his black 
 mustache and black hair were like velvet against 
 ivory, and the linen on his breast was red with 
 blood. 
 
 As he bent over the man, Delia Gandara heard 
 a gentle voice ask him : 
 
 "Let me help ? won't you ? I will be better than 
 the child." 
 
 121
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 He gave Maria a quick look of thanks, took 
 her presence for granted, and directed her sharp 
 ly. With hands that trembled and yet were 
 strong, she helped him bind the bleeding man. 
 Once she said in French to him: 
 
 "Can't you beat that woman and silence her? 
 Why does she keep the bed and give her husband 
 the floor?" 
 
 Delia Gandara answered : "She is paralyzed." 
 
 When she finally found herself with Delia 
 Gandara outside the door the white road and the 
 landscape went round her in dizzy circles. A 
 mist red as blood swam before her eyes ; she was 
 conscious of his voice, then a sea drowned every 
 thing and she felt his arm about her and knew 
 that she leaned a moment against him. She had 
 never fainted ; she Was ashamed of her weakness. 
 The little girl held up a glass of goat's milk, 
 warm from the udder ; Maria drained it : it was 
 like nectar. She asked for more weakly, and 
 while the shepherdess milked at her side, Maria 
 leaned on Delia Gandara's arm and drank again. 
 122
 
 IN THE FRESH MORNING 
 
 The old mother came out, her pockets full of 
 the lira Maria had given her. 
 
 "The grace of God go with you, Madonna," 
 she said, and made the sign of the cross. 
 
 As they walked back to Pieve the bells she had 
 heard the night before rang distinctly, and Delia 
 Gandara told her that they were the bells of 
 Sant' Angelo, where he had wished to take her.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 WHERE IS LE BALZE? 
 
 THE rain fell sharply. Maria refused 
 Delia Gandara's hat and coat and shook 
 the drops from her hair; her shoulders were wet 
 when she reached the inn. 
 
 During her absence the Seven Doves had be 
 come animated. A chattering group of habitues 
 peasants waiting for the diligence to San Se- 
 polcro crowded round the table in the parlor, 
 eating bread and drinking Chianti. They stared 
 at the lady who passed through to the kitchen 
 where a big-eyed serving woman was cooking 
 macaroni. 
 
 Maria pointed to the dish, and begged : "Give 
 me some," and smiled with anticipation. Eager 
 ly and without sitting down she ate hun 
 grily ; then asked of the woman :
 
 WHERE IS LE BALZE? 
 
 "Did you ever hear of Le Baize?" 
 
 "Peppo," returned the woman, "he is in there 
 now, and Adamo Calendro are from Le Baize, 
 but I do not know where it is." 
 
 "Hush," said the contessa, "don't call them." 
 
 She glanced at the half-drunken peasant. 
 
 Delia Gandara, on the way home, had flatly 
 refused to hear of her going. 
 
 "It means eight hours in the saddle," he said, 
 "even if there were a saddle or a horse. This 
 afternoon if the sun shines, I shall take you to 
 Sant' Angelo." 
 
 She now went back to her room, where, in her 
 absence, the servant had made order. She took 
 off her wet clothes, wrapped herself in her trav 
 eling-cloak, and threw herself down to rest. 
 These were the first moments of quiet she had 
 known since morning, and as soon as she closed 
 her eyes the form and face of Delia Gandara 
 filled her mind. She remembered his expression 
 when she had first come down that morning, when 
 he had given her the branches of apricot blos- 
 125
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 soms. He had in reality asked her how she slept, 
 but his voice, his face, said : 
 
 "Since I left you I have thought of nothing 
 but you." 
 
 At the foot of the bed, where she had slipped 
 them off, were her high-heeled silver-buckled 
 shoes, covered with dirt and mud. She had 
 fetched stouter ones in her bag, foreseeing a 
 mountain climb. She would go to Le Baize to 
 morrow whether Delia Gandara helped her or not. 
 Sandro della Gandara ! She had seen his pic 
 ture indifferently in Naples, and here she was 
 cast with him in this desolate town. Maria had 
 been charmed by his delicacy and strength as he 
 had held wine to the lips of the wounded peasant, 
 and had lifted the wife from her bed, carried her 
 to her husband that he might embrace her, and, 
 without so much as a flush on his cool dark cheek, 
 had replaced the woman on her own cot. 
 
 Thinking of Della Gandara, she fell asleep, 
 and old Elena came softly in at noon and waked 
 her. 
 
 126
 
 WHERE IS LE BALZE? 
 
 "Signora, the Marchese della Gandara is 
 waiting." 
 
 Maria sprang up confused. Old Elena looked 
 at her curiously, and picked up the dusty shoes. 
 
 "How could one walk in such things, Signora 
 mia?" 
 
 She tenderly shod Maria's feet and dusted the 
 shoes with her apron. 
 
 As she had asked of the servant, Maria now 
 asked of Elena : 
 
 "Where is Le Baize? I must go there. I 
 have come to Pieve to go to Le Baize." 
 
 Maria with a sweeping gesture spread out her 
 loosened hair, coiled it, put in the great pins. 
 The flush of sleep was bright in her cheeks and 
 eyes. 
 
 "Le Baize," returned the old Elena, "why, 
 it is at the top of the Apennines, Signora. Peo 
 ple come from there but no one ever goes there." 
 
 Maria laughed and ran down the narrow 
 stairs.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LITTLE SANDRO's MOTHER 
 
 SHE found Delia Gandara walking up and 
 down the polished floor, his hands behind 
 his back. 
 
 "Were you wet?" he asked her. "Did you get 
 dry ? Ah !" he flung out his hands. "You look 
 as though you had blossomed after the shower. 
 Did you keep the apricot blossoms ?" 
 
 Behind him the fire burned loudly. 
 
 "It is letting forth its imprisoned suns," he 
 said to her. "Think how many years that burn 
 ing wood has held the light, Madame !" 
 
 He drew a chair out for her, took one himself, 
 threw himself on it rather, and offered her a 
 cigarette from his case. 
 
 "I slept deliciously," Maria told him. "The 
 air is wonderful. It will be even more wonder- 
 128
 
 LITTLE SANDRO'S MOTHER 
 
 ful at Le Baize. I have asked Elena if she knows 
 where it is, but . . ." 
 
 He threw away his cigarette sharply. It hit 
 the logs and was whirled up in a little flame. 
 
 "What is this about Le Baize?" he asked 
 directly. "Tell me, and why are you really here ? 
 Are you eccentric?" He nodded and smiled. 
 "No, you are only a foolish woman : you are not 
 strong-minded, you would not wear high-heeled 
 shoes and thin silk stockings in bad weather if 
 you were. You need to be scolded. But really, 
 really, Le Baize in the cold spring ! Why no one 
 would go there for a tour of pleasure at any 
 time." 
 
 When she started to answer he interrupted 
 her with a quick gesture : 
 
 "Never mind, I don't want to hear. It would 
 make me angry, I dare say. At any rate, you 
 mustn't go." 
 
 He looked her frankly in the eyes. His face 
 expressed the pure entire satisfaction of one who 
 sees a beautiful object and finds it to his liking. 
 129
 
 "Do you know how long It is, Contessa, since 
 I have seen a woman like you ?" 
 
 She did not wish him to know that she had any 
 suspicion of his mistaken marriage. 
 
 "My husband told me that you were some 
 thing of a hermit. Do you never come to 
 Rome?" 
 
 He exclaimed: "I never leave Pieve. I have 
 not left this valley for ten years." 
 
 She said slowly : "Pieve must be a magnetic 
 place. It drew you originally and it has kept 
 you." 
 
 "And it has drawn you, too," he cried quickly, 
 "but it will not keep you." He laughed. "After 
 all, Le Baize is the magnet, but you shall not go 
 there if I can help it." 
 
 Here the storm, like a bird, threw its wings 
 and beat its beak against the pane. 
 
 "Listen," he murmured, "that's the way the 
 Tiber country talks !" 
 
 Maria observed him with interest; his dress, 
 his linen, the cut of his clothes, were irrcproach- 
 130
 
 able, worldly and fashionable, though suited to 
 his country life. 
 
 "You don't look in the least like an expatri 
 ate," she said. 
 
 "Don't I?" he returned. "Well, I am glad of 
 it. Certain things always persist, don't they? 
 If some day you find me tilling the fields, I shall 
 still have my shirts made in Bond Street and or 
 der my clothes from Poole's." 
 
 She laughed. His companionship was begin 
 ning to be delightful to her. From the first she 
 had felt a sense of friendliness for this big 
 splendid man. 
 
 "Now," he cried, "talk to me. Tell me things. 
 Give me a taste and a sight of the Corso, and the 
 Riviera di Chiaja. What is the last new book 
 and the last new scandal?" 
 
 He talked quickly, his eyes intent upon her, 
 and he suddenly stopped himself and said : 
 
 "It is curious, Contessa, but I have an idea 
 that to get away from that sort of thing you 
 have come to Umbria on this singular journey. 
 131
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Are you trying to escape what I have 'denied my 
 self for ten years ? I expect you have been feed 
 ing on it too richly." 
 
 "And you, on the contrary, have been starv 
 ing?" she asked, and immediately regretted the 
 personal question. 
 
 He answered : "No, I have not been starving 
 for any of those things. If I could have fed on 
 such things as those I should not be so . . ." 
 He did not finish. 
 
 "Then," said the contessa, "I am to envy 
 you?" 
 
 Even as she said this she felt a great disap 
 pointment. " . . . You are one of those con 
 tented pastoral philosophers, and a happy man ?" 
 
 Delia Gandara threw his head up and ex 
 claimed : 
 
 "I am intensely, profoundly wretched. I 
 don't believe there is a more miserable man in the 
 world." 
 
 He held the last word between his teeth and 
 looked at her almost defiantly. She saw his 
 132
 
 LITTLE SANDRO'S MOTHER 
 
 hands tighten and grow white, and his face fall 
 into profound melancholy. His deep-set eyes 
 were the same as those which had appealed to her 
 in the photograph her husband had showed her 
 in Naples. In spite of the fact that his words 
 laid bare to her an intense unhappiness, Maria 
 felt the rising of a tide, the stirring of her na 
 ture, the beating against her breast of impris 
 oned wings. In a low tone she murmured : 
 
 "I, too, am profoundly unhappy : that is why 
 I have come away from Naples." 
 
 "Ah," he breathed, leaning across the table, 
 "Sanf Alcione is a fool and a brute ... I beg 
 your pardon if I have made you angry." 
 
 "I am sorry that you do not make me angry," 
 she returned. 
 
 He went on: "When I heard for we hear 
 things in Pieve that Gigi had married a rich 
 American, I pitied the poor girl." 
 
 Turning upon her with almost a crude impet- 
 uousness, he asked: 
 
 "Does he make you suffer?" 
 133
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "No," she exclaimed, "oh, no!" 
 
 "Then you don't love him." 
 
 He drew the conclusion with satisfaction, and 
 repeated his assertion as a question : 
 
 "Do you love him?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Delia Gandara sprang up, went over to the 
 fire and laid on more fagots and more cones. 
 The light shone redly upon him, and the rich 
 incense floated out into the room. The ruddy re 
 flection of the flames shone upon the glass of the 
 Virgin's picture and flickered on the pierced 
 heart. From outside, there came the sound of 
 children's feet, and at the latch of the door there 
 were little hands feeling to turn the knob. The 
 door was cautiously opened: Maria looked up 
 to see two children, a tiny girl with eyes like vio 
 lets and a rosy little boy ; each carried a basket. 
 They wore dark blue cloaks and woolen caps, 
 from under which curls came in abundance. Very 
 timidly the children crossed the floor toward 
 Maria. 
 
 134
 
 LITTLE SANDRO'S MOTHER 
 
 "See," whispered the little boy, "see Armando 
 andLilli!" 
 
 Where he stood by the fire Delia Gandara 
 turned and beckoned to them. Maria took the 
 baskets from their hands. 
 
 "They have brought you eggs and honey, 
 Madame; they couldn't carry anything more 
 weighty. They have never spoken to a stranger 
 before." 
 
 Little Sandro's mother leaned toward them. 
 Children ! Children ! 
 
 It was her habit to avoid them everywhere. 
 Her friends never brought their children to see 
 her. She passed children by cruelly in the street. 
 The little chap was sturdy and vigorous: his 
 round fascinated eyes fixed themselves on the 
 lady: his lips were a little uncertain as he held 
 out the basket stiffly. Maria kissed him on his 
 firm cheeks. He smelled fresh and sweet with the 
 indescribable odor of childhood and babyhood. 
 She buried her face in his soft neck and kissed 
 him passionately, and then pushed him away and 
 135
 
 THE BROKEN BELU 
 
 rising hastily fled up-stairs, where she burst into 
 a tempest of tears. Her face was buried in her 
 hands, she stood shaking in her grief, and she 
 was so overwhelmed that when Delia Gandara put 
 his hand on her shoulder she was not surprised 
 at his presence. 
 
 "Ah !" he exclaimed ardently, "something has 
 hurt you. Forgive me ; forgive me ! I see that 
 I have done you harm. Don't weep so, don't! 
 What have I done? What did the children 
 do?" 
 
 "Go," she begged him, "what have you come 
 up here for? Go down. Don't be disturbed. 
 It's nothing. Leave me !" 
 
 She did not look at him, hid her face in her 
 hands, and heard him plead that she would come 
 back. 
 
 "What shall I do without you if you do not? 
 Why should you weep in solitude? Come down 
 and weep by the fire and with me. 
 
 "I am free to-day," he went on, "I have a 
 couple of hours of freedom. No one has sent for 
 136
 
 LITTLE SANDRO'S MOTHER 
 
 me. I am lonely. Will you not be merciful and 
 come down?" 
 
 She promised to do so, and he left her. She 
 dried her tears slowly, cooled her hot cheeks, and 
 under the suffering that the boy's touch had 
 awakened, she was conscious of another emotion.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE HEART OF A HERMIT 
 
 THE wood Delia Gandara had thrown on the 
 fire twisted and broke and burst into joy 
 ous flames of blue and lavender, ruby and scar 
 let, and in the heat one pine-cone, complete in 
 form, bell-like, remained calcinated to ash and 
 yet undestroyed. Its shape recalled to Maria the 
 bell in the belfry of San Marcello. This frail 
 cone had come through a more intense ordeal, the 
 trial by fire. It retained its complete shape, 
 spectral white, made of ash ... As Maria 
 watched it, it dissolved into the flames. 
 
 Delia Gandara and the contessa, on either side 
 of the fire, looked at each other while the rain 
 beat and drove against the inn ; once a gust blew 
 open the door, and terrified by the storm, a dove 
 flew in and around the room, beating the walls. 
 138
 
 THE HEART OF A HERMIT 
 
 Maria would not let him drive it away. It found 
 a shelter over the picture of the Virgin, and hud 
 dled there, a gray ruffled thing in the warm 
 room. As Maria glanced across at him, he said 
 to her : 
 
 "Forgive me. I told you we were barbarians 
 here. I didn't know that we could torture like 
 that. What have I done? Those were my little 
 children. I thought they would do you a kind 
 ness. They have only brought you some singu 
 lar pain. Tell me, is it because . . ." and she 
 was touched to see the softening of his mobile 
 face, "is it because of something you have lost?" 
 
 She bowed her head. 
 
 The man drew a long breath and said : "Ah," 
 with deep feeling. Still looking at her he 
 waited, and though she had not thought to speak 
 to him of such a sacred thing, she began : 
 
 "I had a little child. You know what that 
 
 means, that is, you know* as a father knows. I 
 
 think mothers feel it deeper. I adored him and 
 
 he died. That's all. Please don't speak of it 
 
 139
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 again. It was very uncontrolled of me, but the 
 touch of your little boy's cheek . . ." 
 
 He interrupted her: 
 
 "I know. I see. I sent Armando to comfort 
 you and he hurt you. Of course," he exclaimed 
 passionately, "you can't forgive us." 
 
 "Armando ! Is that his name ?" 
 
 "Yes," said the father, "and the little girl's 
 name is Lilli." 
 
 "And you," said she, "have the same name as 
 my son." 
 
 As though he wanted to change her point of 
 view he said: 
 
 "You have only been here twenty-four hours, 
 Madame. Yesterday when you came I was talk 
 ing under the arch with Giovanni Pullelli. I was 
 telling him how to rub his wife's paralyzed 
 limbs. Now he is worse off than she is. I can 
 never stand there again without seeing you as 
 you appeared in this little forgotten place. It 
 seemed as though you came from the unknown 
 and called to me. Listen to the storm, how it 
 140
 
 THE HEART OF A HERMIT 
 
 beats on the window, and look what a warm and 
 sweet shelter this little inn makes for two. You 
 can not imagine, Madame, what this is to me, for 
 the others here are barbarians. I am the worst 
 of all, because I knew something of civilization 
 and yet chose this life. If you will let me tell you 
 why I did this, you will understand that I must 
 yearn and long for things which I have shut out 
 from myself for ever. You," he continued, ex 
 tending his hand, "are of my world, of the world 
 I knew. You represent what has been shut away 
 from me for ten years. Why, I can't believe my 
 eyes as I see you sit there in your charming 
 dress, civilized, elegant, worldly, and I wonder 
 how soon the dream will break." 
 
 Maria watched his changing positions with 
 pleasure. He was very graceful. The expres 
 sions that crossed his face were charming. He 
 bent over and linked his hands, and the firelight 
 shone on them. From her perch on the frame of 
 the Virgin's picture, the gray dove cooed in her 
 throat. 
 
 141
 
 "I wonder," Delia Gandara asked, "if you 
 would care to hear the story of a lost man." 
 
 "Yes, I should like to hear anything you feel 
 inclined to say." 
 
 "I must smoke as I talk," he returned. "You 
 will let me ?" He lighted a cigarette, then sprang 
 up, pushed his chair aside, and smoking began 
 to walk up and down the long room, looking at 
 her or fastening his eyes on his cigarette. 
 
 "It is not a tragic story, the story of a man's 
 follies is pathetic, but the only tragedy in it is 
 their stupidity. It is really so very easy to avoid 
 our great mistakes." He stopped before her 
 chair and slightly smiled, looking at her in 
 tensely. "Madame," he said, "did you hear the 
 poor old woman in the hut call you Madonna yes 
 terday? She only said what I had already felt. 
 The moment I saw you I had a feeling that I was 
 looking at a face I had always known. . . ." 
 He waited a second, and then added: "And al 
 ways adored. People have often told you of this 
 likeness, have they not?" 
 142
 
 THE HEART OF A HERMIT 
 
 The contessa interrupted him with a shade of 
 pain on her face: 
 
 "Oh, please don't say such a thing. It shocks 
 me horribly !" 
 
 "No doubt," he agreed, "it is absurd but it is 
 probably because you are so perfectly beauti 
 ful." 
 
 His companion flushed hotly and drew her 
 chair away from the fire. 
 
 "Now," he said, and threw up his fine head as 
 though he were taking courage to begin a con 
 fession: "I shall probably monologue for an 
 hour. There is nothing so insatiable of time as 
 the man who starts off on his life-history. To 
 begin with, I was an idealist and a dreamer, and 
 a ridiculously decent young man. I was prepar 
 ing for a diplomatic career and going to take my 
 post in Paris in the autumn. I ran up to Pieve 
 one August to see my old instructor, the Padre 
 Anselmo your husband knows him, knew him 
 rather : he took us to Syria. He later joined the 
 order here in Sant' Angelo, and I wanted his 
 143
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 blessing before I went Into wicked Paris. It wa* 
 hot, wonderful, summer weather. I put up here 
 in this old inn, and went daily to see the father, 
 and one evening I started down from the con 
 vent." 
 
 Delia Gandara regarded his listener. Her 
 eyes were dark, and heavenly, marvelously blue 
 under her straight brows. 
 
 "You have known many men, Contessa," he 
 said, "you know life as every worldly woman 
 knows it, and you will probably not believe me 
 when I tell you that although I was twenty-five 
 years old, I had never looked upon a woman to 
 desire her. My heart and my mind were as clear 
 as glass and as unmarred. I can not explain it 
 except that I was very religious, and that Father 
 Anselmo was a saint, "that I was an out-of-door 
 sportsman, a hunter as my ancestors were hunt 
 ers. Coming out of the convent yard that eve 
 ning, I saw a young girl carrying a line of 
 empty bottles tied around her neck by a leather 
 thong. She began to go down the hill warily, 
 144.
 
 THE HEART OF A HERMIT 
 
 carefully ; her load was heavy, and I followed." 
 
 Maria's companion paused, pulled out a bit of 
 lighted wood from the fire and put the flame to 
 his cigarette. 
 
 "I watched her at first with indifference, and 
 when her burden of bottles seemed too heavy for 
 her, I overtook her and made her let me carry 
 them down the hill. She was an ordinary type 
 of peasant, with a milk-white throat. I don't 
 know really how she looked except that she had 
 red hair. I lingered on at Pieve." Maria found 
 him very tall to look up at as he stood by her 
 :hair. "I shall not tell you any further the story 
 )f my foolish, my unhappy life. I thought her 
 2autiful then. She was a woman, and I must 
 ive been a very ardent and ridiculous young 
 lan. At the Inn of the Seven Doves in those 
 days one lived about as one lives now. Elena 
 jave me macaroni and soup, nice sour bread and 
 )ur wine, and I read political economy up- 
 lirs." He paused. "When I got back to 
 lome I was just throwing the last things into 
 145
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 my boxes preparatory to starting for Paris and 
 my post, when word was brought me that Father 
 Anselmo was dying and wanted to sec me again. 
 I had been away several months, and when I re 
 turned" he smote the chimneypiece with his 
 hand "just here in this room, Madame, old 
 Elena told me that Giulia's father had turned her 
 out that afternoon, and no one knew where she 
 was. As it developed, she had gone by the dili 
 gence to San Sepolcro; from there she intended 
 walking to Rome. Not to find me, she was too 
 proud for that, but to begin a life of ill-fame, as 
 there was nothing else to do." 
 
 He looked down at Maria. "I married her. 
 It killed my mother, I think: she never saw 
 Giulia. My father disinherited me, but the gov 
 ernment made me mayor, and I had learned a lit 
 tle medicine. So I became a country doctor 
 and I have Armando and Lilli."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 BELLA GANDARA'S WISH 
 
 FOR fourteen days she docilely accepted the 
 hospitality of the inn, eating the best 
 Elena could prepare, nearly starving and obey 
 ing implicitly her impetuous magnetic friend. 
 Delia Gandara ruthlessly employed her. He 
 came every morning early and set her tasks, 
 which she performed with patience and sweet 
 ness. He brought her things to sew and she 
 worked at them as though she were making her 
 bread by her labor. He took her to see his sick 
 people and they made their journeys on foot. He 
 seemed to have no thought of fatigue for himself 
 or for her, and she liked his rude courage. He 
 told her that he needed her help with Giovanni 
 Pullelli, and she had gone with him daily on that 
 visit. She rolled bandages. "Binding wounds" 
 147
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 she smiled "ray mission has begun." But al 
 though she bound Giovanni well and skilfully, 
 she did not bind his body so surely as she bound 
 the heart of the man whose hands touched hers as 
 they worked together, whose eyes met hers and 
 lingered in gazing. 
 
 Giovanni was as submissive and silent and 
 grateful as a hurt animal. His patient eyes 
 turned first to Delia Gandara, then to the sig- 
 nora. Neither his wife from her couch, nor the 
 shepherdess, nor the old mother had explained to 
 the invalid who Maria was. 
 
 "Chi e?" he asked Delia Gandara. His fever 
 had gone down and he pointed with one limp fin 
 ger directly at Maria. 
 
 She had worn no hat and borrowed a cape 
 from Elena; around 'her throat folded a low 
 white collar, and her throat bore the exposure 
 well and rose straight, slender. Her dress was of 
 a bright blue, with her sleeves to the elbow, leav 
 ing her bare forearms free. She had never used 
 her capable white hands so well before. 
 148
 
 DELLA GANDARA'S WISH 
 
 "Ohe e?" Giovanni pointed at her. 
 
 Delia Gandara stood behind Maria. He had 
 finished giving Giovanni his medicine and drew 
 his hand from behind his head. Before Delia 
 Gandara could answer, Maria said: 
 
 "A pilgrim, Giovanni, I am only a pilgrim." 
 
 His earnest gaze riveted on her. 
 
 "Slate benedetta" he murmured hesitatingly, 
 then whispered: "Benedlteml, beneditemi." 
 
 Maria rose, smiling and nodding. "You are 
 better, Giovanni, be good and tranquil." 
 
 But she was not thinking of Giovanni. This 
 afternoon, all through their mutual work at the 
 peasant's side, Gandara's sleeve that touched her 
 arm, his hands that touched hers, even his voice 
 seemed to touch her and caress her. Every direc 
 tion he gave had another meaning from his prac 
 tical words. She understood sensitively and she 
 answered without speech as she held the rolled 
 linen, washed the sponges, bending over Gio 
 vanni. 
 
 "Love me, love me," he seemed to say, "how 
 149
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 heavenly it is to work by your side ! How soft 
 your hands are, how quick ! Love me!" 
 
 Now, standing behind her, he said aloud : 
 
 "Giovanni, you must thank the eccellenza : she 
 has a most charitable soul. She has magical 
 hands." 
 
 "Bless me, bless me," Giovanni murmured, and 
 the little shepherd girl plucked at her dress. The 
 old mother, who had been bending over the pot of 
 broth in the embers, at Giovanni's cry of "Mam 
 ma, mamma," hobbled toward his mattress. 
 Giovanni, whose solemn gaze never quitted 
 Maria, said something to the old woman. The 
 little shepherdess and the grandmother whis 
 pered together, the child stared at Maria. She 
 wiped her hands on the clean towel that she had 
 fetched from the Inn of the Seven Doves. 
 
 "Benediteci, benediteci" demanded the old 
 woman and the child together. 
 
 Maria laughed cheerfully. 
 
 "Siete beneditti tutti!" 
 
 The old woman mumbled, blinking at the vis 
 it 50
 
 BELLA GANDARA'S WISH 
 
 itor, and made the sign of the cross, as did the 
 little shepherdess. 
 
 Outside, Maria and Delia Gandara walked 
 along together. She was afraid now to hear him 
 speak and afraid of the words that he had not 
 said. Her -heart beat furiously, her lips trem 
 bled. He was looking at her earnestly. Just 
 without Pieve, at the stone doorway, he broke the 
 silence. 
 
 "Do you know what they thought, Contessa ?" 
 
 "They?" 
 
 "Giovanni and the grandmother. Do you 
 realize ?" 
 
 "No, no," she replied vaguely, "and I do not 
 care." 
 
 "They think that you are the Madonna." 
 
 "Ah !" she cried, hurt and disillusioned. "You 
 are always mocking me, always. Why do you 
 make sport of me so cruelly?" 
 
 He cried: 
 
 "7 make sport of you !" 
 
 They had come up to the gateway where she 
 151
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 had seen him first. Pieve lay before them : back 
 of them the plain flowed to the Apennines. 
 
 "How could one make sport of you? It is 
 curious, but I don't know your name, Contessa. 
 Think of it, I don't know your baptismal name, 
 and there is only one name which should be 
 yours, and I do not want you to have that name." 
 
 "Why ? What do you mean ?" 
 
 "Of course you know the name Maria. I 
 mean Maria." 
 
 "Why don't you want me to have it ? What a 
 curious idea ! Why should I not bear the most 
 common name in Italy ?" 
 
 He said tensely: 
 
 "Because I want you to be sacred to me alone." 
 
 She tried to answer him lightly. From above 
 the vesper bells of Saht' Angelo rang down upon 
 them. 
 
 "How selfish ! How could I be sacred to one 
 alone?" 
 
 "If you are sacred to me as I mean," he an- 
 152
 
 BELLA GANDARA'S WISH 
 
 swered, "these people would not call on you to 
 bless them. I hope you do not bear that name." 
 
 Her pulses rang like bells. She wished to deny 
 her name. (She had said to Father Faversham, 
 "I am not one of those sacred women.") 
 
 Now the sound of loud voices reached them, 
 harsher bells came tinkling, the bells on the 
 necks of the cattle, and the sheep bells as the 
 flocks trooped into Pieve at nightfall, but just 
 before the homing herds, running hand in hand 
 together through the gateway, came two chil 
 dren, their little heads well up Lilli and Ar 
 mando. They were panting hard, they ran ar 
 dently. Their little feet struck bravely on the 
 hard white road, like lambs' feet. 
 
 "Ecco, ecco" she could hear Armando breath 
 lessly calling. She bent her head a little : 
 
 "My name is Maria. My name is nevertheless 
 Maria!"
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE GIFT OF A SOUL 
 
 MARIA might go no farther than the 
 courtyard of Sant' Angclo. Paved with 
 flat stones, beautifully clean, the court was sur 
 rounded by a high white wall, against which the 
 monks had trained their vines. 
 
 To the lay brother who let them in and who 
 gave Delia Gandara the key, he said a few words 
 of greeting; and as the porter at San Marcello 
 had done, the priest turned and left them alone. 
 Above the wall the sky, gray as steel, stretched 
 to the peaks. It was "very cold. 
 
 "Why did you bring me here ?" 
 
 These were the first words she had said to him 
 
 since well down the hill slope, which they had 
 
 mounted slowly, and as they had paused for 
 
 breath he had taken her in his arms. She had 
 
 154
 
 THE GIFT OF A SOUL 
 
 repulsed him and they had stood facing, looking 
 like enemies into each other's eyes. 
 
 "Because, mia adorata, I want you to see a 
 place I love. When a man has a temple in his 
 heart, he brings all the light and flowers that he 
 can find or steal to it; and I want to light every 
 corner of my life and every memory with you." 
 
 He spoke with the assurance of a happy man 
 who denies himself nothing, who has few desires, 
 and who makes of them his destiny. 
 
 "It is melancholy here," Maria spoke as 
 though she had not heard his outburst : "and we 
 are not welcome. I am sure a woman, visitor is 
 not welcome within these walls." 
 
 "Come," he said in his curt fashion of com 
 manding her, "they have a vineyard and a bel 
 fry. I want you to see them. Come." 
 
 He put his hand on the latch of a small door in 
 the wall, pushed it in and went through. Be 
 hind him, down the hill slope stretched the vine 
 yard on whose terraces was the unclad purity of 
 a belated spring. The Tiber valley spread be- 
 155
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 neath them to the Apennines like a sinuous thing, 
 and under the sunless day the river wound to 
 ward Savignono where the island town came jut 
 ting out into the stream. From the monastery 
 walls rose the gray specter of a medieval church. 
 It dominated the valley and lifted its belfry 
 where the bats and owls gathered, and like an eye 
 brooding on danger and ruin, the open belfry 
 stared toward the Apennines whose peaks alone 
 had known no transformation since the Saracens 
 cut their passes and went out for ever from Tus 
 cany. 
 
 Delia Gandara said : 
 
 "The first monks who followed after the in 
 vasion built Sant' Angelo and hung the bell here. 
 You have heard its matins and vespers at Pieve? 
 Come." 
 
 She followed him and they skirted the monas 
 tery wall. The earth was so perfumed and fra 
 grant that it seemed to Maria an incense offered 
 her by the spring. She saw the high windows of 
 the monastery, narrow, rigid, meager apertures. 
 156
 
 THE GIFT OF A SOUL 
 
 Delia Gandara turned the key, pushed in the 
 old door of the church, crossed the threshold, 
 and repeated more gently : "Come." 
 
 Maria glanced over her shoulder at the mellow 
 Tuscan country and followed her companion into 
 the perfumed little sanctuary, black as ancient 
 rock. The supports were of blackened wood, and 
 at the left over a Virgin altar, burned a cluster 
 of spirit-like candles whose lights and slender 
 forms shone like angels in the gloom. 
 
 "It is Holy Thursday," murmured the contes- 
 sa. "I didn't remember it, did you ?" 
 
 On the altar lay a mass of fruit blossoms, the 
 only flowers of the rugged countryside. 
 
 Delia Gandara said: 
 
 "I have forgotten every feast and every sacra 
 ment but you." 
 
 He did not appear to expect her to reply, but 
 he led her abruptly to the dark narrow staircase. 
 
 "The steps are numberless, and hard to climb, 
 but at the top there is the bell, Contessa. Come." 
 
 Hypnotized, fascinated, she followed him, and 
 157
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 climbed the hundred steps without flagging, cer 
 tain, should she stop, that he would turn and 
 carry her in his arms. The gray light met them 
 from the top, and they stood in the belfry where 
 the arched windows opened to the sky. They saw 
 Pieve lie below them like a gray nest in a gray 
 field, and the Tiber scarring the valley. A mist 
 filled the country which toward the Apennines 
 deepened to violet, from whose royal color they 
 rose to the snows. 
 
 The belfry space was small, the boards were 
 rotten under their feet, faced here and there with 
 new wood. Above them hung the bronze bell, not 
 very large but very ancient, the moss of centuries 
 and mold around its rim, and close to the apex 
 housed a bat which their coming did not seem to 
 disturb. 
 
 "A brother to dragons, a companion to owls," 
 Delia Gandara murmured. "I come here alone 
 time and again, Madonna. I lean from this win 
 dow and I people the valley and the mountains 
 with pictures of what I might have been. And 
 158
 
 THE GIFT OF A SOUL 
 
 to-day for the first time I see how foolish these 
 visions are, and how foolish my regrets as well. 
 I have often wanted to die : now I thank Heaven 
 that I have lived until this year. Does it give 
 you vertigo? Does it frighten you?" 
 
 "No." - 
 
 Her heart was beating fast, but not from the 
 effort of mounting the hundred steps that 
 brought her to this eery and forgotten place. It 
 seemed that she had brought with her all of her 
 self, every desire and need and aspiration, and as 
 completely as if she had been disembodied and 
 become the quintessence of woman, she could 
 have offered Delia Gandara her soul in her hands, 
 He and she seemed cut off from all the world, 
 as though they were in a new planet and alone 
 upon it. 
 
 She thought of the belfry at San Marcello. 
 
 "Tell me of the bell. Why did you bring me 
 to see it?" 
 
 He answered shortly 
 
 "Because it is without blemish one of the 
 159
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 most perfect bells in the world. It was cast with 
 out a flaw, it rings like honey. Every note is as 
 pure as heaven. I have leaned here and heard it 
 ring for matins until my very soul seemed shaken 
 out of me. But it was not only to see a perfect 
 bell that I brought you here, anima mia!" 
 
 He took her hands. For a second in which her 
 life rounded and completed, she returned his look, 
 then, as she felt him draw her, the words of 
 Father Faversham by the side of the broken bell 
 came to her, and all the force with which she had 
 been fortifying herself came as well. 
 
 "I can be nothing to you," she murmured, and 
 held him back. "Nothing! I do not want to 
 make you suffer. I am sorry that I came to 
 Pieve, sorry that I stayed. You must let me go." 
 
 Delia Gandara laughed, and so happily that 
 she looked at him, surprised. He dropped her 
 hands and cried : 
 
 "Nothing to me ! But you are my existence, 
 and will be for ever. I am going to have a para 
 dise." 
 
 160
 
 THE GIFT OF A SOUL 
 
 In spite of herself she exclaimed : 
 
 "And I ? What should I have ?" 
 
 "Ah !" he cried, "let me show you." 
 
 He took her again in his arms, and she covered 
 her face with her hands. 
 
 "I implore you," she murmured, "I implore 
 you!" 
 
 She felt his kisses fall upon her neck, on her 
 hair close to the brave red rose, but she kept her 
 hands clasped against her face. "Maria," she 
 prayed, "Mother of all holy desires !" And just 
 then the bell tolled and the shock of it was sud 
 den, standing as they were directly under it. She 
 pushed him from her. The tongue touched the 
 concave side and sang. It struck again and 
 gold fell from its resonance. It was the Angelus. 
 Without flaw or blemish the bronze sent out a 
 tone as pure as heaven. 
 
 Maria stumbled to the head of the stairs and 
 made her way down, eagerly, trembling. The 
 stair was too narrow for Delia Gandara to sup 
 port her. Half-way down in the pitch dark, the 
 161
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 bell singing like an angel above her head, she 
 nearly lost her footing. 
 
 "If he touches me," she thought, "if he 
 touches me !" In the darkness which was a cloak 
 for them she could feel his hand steal along the 
 wall, and stopped, panting like a caged creature : 
 
 She spoke with effort. "Will you go before 
 me? Will you?" 
 
 On the narrow stairs where she clung like a 
 half -dead woman, he passed her, hardly brushing 
 her, and in his short imperative tone comr 
 manded : 
 
 "Put your hand on my shoulder, so. Come." 
 
 They went slowly down, while from the lower 
 door the pale light sent up its illumination. In 
 the church below they were celebrating vespers 
 and the monks chanted behind the lattices. 
 
 Delia Gandara and Maria Sant' Alcione passed 
 together through the church out into the eve 
 ning, and they were well down the mountainside 
 before the bell ceased to ring.
 
 S 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE TIBER'S FIRST LOVE 
 
 IE 
 
 HE had put on her riding-habit, a short 
 divided skirt and boots of brown leather, a 
 little tricorne hat and a short coat. By her side 
 was a small dressing-bag. Delia Gandara, at the 
 foot of the inn stairs, laid his hand on the railing 
 and stood looking up to her. His eyes at once 
 had a flame that warmed and illumined. Every 
 time she met his eyes a torch lighted within her. 
 His words were practical. 
 
 "You must take an umbrella. It rains and 
 snows every few minutes in the mountains." 
 
 She laughed gaily : 
 
 "I can't fancy you with an umbrella, Mar- 
 chese, under any circumstances. You are too 
 picturesque a figure. I can imagine you with a 
 lance or a sword but not with an umbrella. As 
 far as I am concerned, I don't own one." 
 163
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "What a ridiculous excursion !" he exclaimed, 
 almost with irritation. "No one but a modern 
 woman would think of such a thing as coming to 
 this mountain country in the winter and climbing 
 to the snows." 
 
 In front of the door a little basket carriage 
 waited, drawn by a rugged horse who shook 
 countless bells whenever he stirred. 
 
 Her companion helped her in, took his seat by 
 her side; not even the old innkeeper saw them 
 start away. It was only seven o'clock in the 
 morning. 
 
 The Marchese della Gandara had not been able 
 to restrain this wayward woman. She was going 
 to Le Baize. He had only succeeded in getting 
 her permission to allow him to arrange her pil 
 grimage. He was 1o drive her to where she 
 should take her mule and find the guide whom he 
 had secured to penetrate with her the path 
 through the Apennines. 
 
 The horse was fat and slow and the low phaeton 
 anything but a vehicle of luxury. The Italian, 
 164
 
 THE TIBER'S FIRST LOVE 
 
 the reins coiled in one hand, waved to the Tiber 
 valley and talked to the traveler about the coum 
 try. 
 
 "It is as rich as gold, this Tuscany. Every 
 handful of the soil is mellow with memory. Your 
 race and your country are so young, Madame. I 
 have an idea that the United States is like a 
 green apple. You will find it hard and crisp to 
 cut." He pointed to the golden valley, over 
 whose bed the Tiber spread itself, blue as indigo. 
 "Does it not seem that this picture would crum 
 ble if you should touch it rudely? These ancient 
 huts, the silvery little towns jewels set so long 
 in their antique forms. Are they not charm 
 ing?" 
 
 She followed the gesture of his shapely hand. 
 He turned suddenly and lifted her chin, bringing 
 her face toward him. 
 
 "I speak of it with delight," he murmured, 
 "because you are with me. You have made it 
 seem beautiful to me. Until you came I cursed 
 tivery grain of the dust of my exile." 
 165
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 There was not a quiver of Maria's eyelids or 
 of her mouth. The serene blue of her eyes, whose 
 color suggested the Madonna, remained untrou 
 bled. She looked at him tranquilly. He sighed 
 and dropped his hand. 
 
 She returned to what he had said and, as he 
 thought, without emotion in her voice. 
 
 "You think of us as crude, Marchese. Per 
 haps we are. I think we are wonderfully tender, 
 however, if you knew us, and our power of adap 
 tability and our assimilation amount to genius. 
 No one, for instance, ever takes me for anything 
 but an Italian. You didn't believe me when I 
 said I was an American." 
 
 He laughed and shook his head. 
 
 "Car a Contessa," he murmured, "you are the 
 rich ripe fruit, the very atmosphere of Eden. I 
 don't know whether it is Italy that has sunned 
 you to what you are. Go to your shrine in Le 
 Baize. I am glad you are going. You will come 
 back or I shall fetch you. You are mine by every 
 beat of your heart, every voice of your nature." 
 166
 
 THE TIBER'S FIRST LOVE 
 
 After a second she said : 
 
 "On the contrary you must promise me that 
 you will not come to Le Baize." 
 
 "I shall certainly come if you stay beyond 
 three days. I give you no longer. It took only 
 six days to make the world. It should not take 
 longer than three days for a woman to make up 
 her mind. You are going to make up your mind, 
 on what subject I do not know, but I will relin 
 quish you to your feminine and metaphysical 
 problems. Then I will come to you." 
 
 They drove along in silence for a few seconds, 
 and he said: 
 
 "I did not seek you. I did not know that you 
 were coming. Before you came I had almost 
 made up my mind to take a step which has ap 
 pealed to me for several years. I meant to enter 
 the monastery of Sam? Angelo. I did think so 
 until we went to the belfry. I had always 
 thought that I should say my paternosters from 
 those walls." 
 
 She glanced at him. What he said was un- 
 167
 
 sympathetic to her. She could not fancy him a 
 monk. She said aloud : 
 
 "Promise me that you will not go to Le Baize." 
 
 "I can not promise you a lie." 
 
 "There must be another way out of Le Baize. 
 I shall go to Rimini." 
 
 "I will come after you even if you bore a 
 hole to China and go through the very heart of 
 the earth !" 
 
 The little horse, rejoicing in a hilly decline, 
 trotted bravely, and to the right Savignono on 
 its island, bloomed like a brown flower in the 
 stream. He drew the horse up to the side of the 
 road. 
 
 "Let us go in and see the Delia Robbia, Ma 
 dame. It is a Virgin with a stainless brow and 
 eyes like a prayer. "-We say 'Pray for us', and 
 this Virgin's are the only lips I ever saw that an 
 swered 'I pray for you.' She has a child on her 
 breast. I think it is the purest thing I ever saw 
 in art. Come." 
 
 He seemed to Maria to be always saying that 
 168
 
 THE TIBER'S FIRST LOVE 
 
 word to her, short and rapid: "Come, come." 
 She now knew what the appeal was that she saw 
 on his face in Naples. "Come" was written in 
 his eyes. He had said it to her silently when she 
 saw him standing under the arch with poor Gio 
 vanni Pullelli, whom, twenty-five minutes later, 
 the bull had gored ; and after that he had said it 
 constantly and she had gone with him to the poor 
 sick man in the hovel. She had gone to Sant* 
 Angelo, up the dangerous hill, where in the vine 
 yards his lips and eyes, his voice and arms had 
 said "Come", and she had resisted him. She had 
 followed him up the stairs into the tower under 
 the divine bell, where his heart and body called 
 "Come, beloved", and she had had the strength 
 to go from him. Every time now and hereafter 
 Maria knew that she must be deaf to the beauti 
 ful, appealing, commanding voice in answer to 
 which all her soul and body responded. She 
 would not go with him into that adorable little 
 town on its island, across the tiny bridge to the 
 church. They were better here in the open. 
 169
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Delia Gandara sprang out of the carriage and 
 blanketed the pony. 
 
 "Come," he repeated, and Maria gave him her 
 hand and followed him down the hill to the bridge 
 which married Savignono to the shore. The 
 bridge was narrow as a ribbon. They had to 
 wait for a donkey and his rider to amble over it. 
 From the island came the pungent sharp smells 
 of a populous Italian town: its fire, its smoke, 
 and its humming noise. Maria walked over the 
 little bridge that threw a heavy girdle across the 
 river, green as a dragon-fly, and roundabout 
 Savignono the Tiber spread like an emerald and 
 clear as glass. Close to the church there were 
 beggars, there were children and asses, and the 
 city hummed like a hive. 
 
 Once more they crossed the threshold of a 
 medieval church. 
 
 Delia Gandara put his hand on Maria's arm. 
 
 "To the right, in that little chapel, hangs the 
 blue and white Madonna." 
 
 Over the altar set in the stone of the wall was 
 170
 
 THE TIBER'S FIRST LOVE 
 
 one of the masterpieces of ceramic art. The re 
 lief had the whiteness of milk and the beauty of a 
 lily. Around the frame the rich fruits in yellow 
 and blue terra-cotta hung as though ripe to fall. 
 
 On the ascetic beauty of divine motherhood 
 Maria's eyes did not linger. It was the child 
 against the Virgin's breast that she saw. But 
 Delia Gandara looked at the Virgin and at Maria 
 Sant' Alcione. 
 
 "Dio, what a marvelous likeness !" 
 
 Maria did not stir. Through the long narrow 
 window above the altar amber light fell on the 
 white Madonna, on the head of the Bambino and 
 on the luscious frame. 
 
 "Come," he repeated, and she followed him as 
 in a dream, and once outside said to him : 
 
 "I have never seen anything so lovely, never ! 
 It should be in Rome." 
 
 "It is exactly like you, Madame," he answered 
 almost angrily, "you might have been the 
 model." 
 
 "You seem to resent it," she smiled slightly. 
 171
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "If it had been a Magdalen, you would have pre 
 ferred the resemblance." 
 
 And he repeated somberly : 
 
 "I want you to be sacred to me alone." 
 
 On either side of them the mountains rose in 
 classic form, tier upon tier, soft as velvet. In a 
 profound gorge the Tiber cut a stormy course, 
 rushing like an impetuous lover. 
 
 "See!" Delia Gandara pointed with his whip. 
 "See how the river encircles Savignono. See how 
 it embraces its first love." 
 
 Around the island the river spread two beauti 
 ful arms encircling the city, then tore foaming 
 on to new towns and to Rome. 
 
 "Rome," said Delia Gandara, "is the lawful 
 spouse, the importajit, triumphant, wedded 
 woman ; but Savignono just see the brown wild 
 beauty of that little town she is the mistress." 
 
 They had slowly climbed the hill and Delia 
 
 Gandara stopped once more and they both looked 
 
 back. The valley was full of the cry and the 
 
 song of the Tiber. Over the white stones the 
 
 172
 
 THE TIBER'S FIRST LOVE 
 
 water laughed in ecstasy and grew profound in 
 violet pools and flowed in purple shadows, and 
 up-stream there was a white mane of foam like a 
 distant hand that signaled. 
 
 "The Tiber will have many loves before it 
 reaches Rome, but this is the only town that it 
 embraces with both arms. Up in the cold where 
 you are going, think of Savignono and its happy 
 fate." He lowered his voice. "And think of me, 
 innamorata mia, think of me."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 UP TOWARD THE SNOWS 
 
 THE road had been deserted but now was 
 peopled by a group of contadini going 
 down to Pieve. From the huts in the valley here 
 where they lay like dry leaves upon a barren 
 floor, the peasants began to journey up the 
 high road to the little village eight miles away. 
 Above their heads now and then an eagle circled, 
 cried out and soared, was swallowed up in the 
 blue, or lost behind a sparkling peak. High, un 
 welcoming, Monte Fumaiolo rose in the center of 
 the hills, lily-like among the green mountains, 
 and there lay Le Baize. There was a miraculous 
 sweetness and freshness in the air. It grew 
 colder. 
 
 "No wonder the women and the men are hand- 
 174
 
 UP TOWARD THE SNOWS 
 
 some here," Maria said, "the air, the light, and 
 the atmosphere are an envelope of beauty." 
 
 "Therese," Delia Gandara replied, nodding, 
 "was the prettiest creature, Contessa, whom one 
 could wish to meet on a spring day in a heather 
 field like this one." He lifted his hand and she 
 followed his glance to the hills. Tier upon tier, 
 russet hillocks stained with wild heather, red as 
 blood, gorse as pale as the daffodils, as the moun 
 tains grew more rugged, more sharp and forbid 
 ding, as the road climbed up, up into the Apen 
 nines. 
 
 "There, Contessa, on that hill, that globe-like 
 little mountain, Therese kept her goats. Below 
 in the valley which you can not see lived her peo 
 ple in a hut as black as time and as noble. 
 Time," Delia Gandara said, "is very noble. It 
 has forgiven and forgotten so many things. 
 Every day from the time she was seven years old, 
 Therese came out barefoot in the summer-time, 
 in sabots in the winter, in her brown cloak and 
 her red skirt; she knitted as she watched her 
 175
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 goats. She had limbs like ivory, Contessa, arms 
 and breast and feet and neck like ivory, and a 
 face prettier than nature should give to those 
 who have no other laws or protection than na 
 ture's. I used to come up here to help the hill 
 people, and I often heard her sing in the heather, 
 often saw her standing there on a cold winter 
 afternoon, a terra-cotta brazier in her hands and 
 her goats around her knees. She looked like a 
 fair child." Delia Gandara interrupted himself 
 to ask: "Do you care for story-telling, Con 
 tessa?" 
 
 He spoke to her profile for she refrained from 
 meeting his eyes. Charmed by his voice and his 
 subject, in which every modulation, even in the 
 most impersonal words, were a direct caress, she 
 answered : 
 
 "I like to hear you talk of Tuscany. I like to 
 hear you speak, Delia Gandara." 
 
 "Fortune-tellers," he replied, "break off in the 
 middle of their telling to demand encouragement. 
 You can not see the place," he waved to the left, 
 176
 
 UP TOWARD THE SNOWS 
 
 "where Therese's patron and landlord lived. He 
 was the Marchese Fasteti from Rimini. He owns 
 all the land thereabout. He came twice a year to 
 this country-seat and Therese loved him. He 
 took her from her field and her goats. He made 
 a princess of her for a time, Madame, and then 
 he came no more. She went back to her people 
 in the hut, and last spring, as I passed by one 
 day, her brothers came running down the road to 
 me to say that no one could find Therese and that 
 the goats were wandering without a herd on the 
 mountainside. I left my horse tied to a birch 
 and went back with them to the hills, and among 
 the others I saw a little kid with a scarlet ribbon 
 round his neck. He ran and his little bell tinkled 
 as loud as his bleating. Therese had tied around 
 the kid's neck a silk garter with a jewel in the 
 clasp, one of the gifts Fasteti had given her 
 when she was a princess. You see how sheer and 
 steep the rock runs up, Contessa. Well, on the 
 other side it cuts a decline of several hundred 
 feet. We found her there. She was quite, quite 
 177
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 dead. Her pretty limbs and neck were like ivory, 
 Contessa : she might have been a lady in Rome or 
 Rimini, she was beautiful enough." 
 
 "And her lover?" asked Maria. 
 
 Delia Gandara shrugged. 
 
 "He will never come back to the Tiber valley. 
 There are wolves there still. He is safer in 
 Rimini or Rome." 
 
 With an irrelevance that would have been naive 
 and something of a pose had it not been for his 
 voice, Delia Gandara said : 
 
 "You know what I think, what I am, what I 
 want. You know I love you." 
 
 "Yes," Maria said. 
 
 "Plena di grazia!" he cried, "and you are em 
 bittered by your life, too. You have the right to 
 doubt me, but you believe me." 
 
 "Yes," she repeated. 
 
 "Plena di grazia!" he repeated tenderly. 
 
 They mounted, mounted the hill steadily into 
 the rugged country. 
 
 "You love me, too," Delia Gandara said, "you 
 178
 
 UP TOWARD THE SNOWS 
 
 love me, too. You know it. You have never 
 loved any one else." 
 
 She turned her face to him : it was as pale as 
 the Virgin's above the altar in the Savignono 
 chapel. He leaned toward her with a cry, and 
 just at that moment they both started as the 
 sound of running feet smote upon the hard white 
 road. 
 
 As though he had been thrown from over the 
 hill above them, a peasant came rushing toward 
 them, and panting reached the side of the car 
 riage. 
 
 "Signore dottore, for the love of God !" 
 
 He clung to the side of the phaeton, his bare 
 neck streaming with the heat of his running, his 
 lips trembling. "Signore dottore!" 
 
 Delia Gandara, to whom his coming was as un 
 welcome as possible, spoke sharply: 
 
 "Well, well ! What is the matter? Speak !" 
 
 "Pardon the Virgin has brought the signore 
 dottore to Sandolo!" panted the man. "I was 
 running to Pieve, running there, and it would 
 179
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 have taken me hours. Meanwhile the child would 
 have been dead." 
 
 "Nonsense," said Delia Gandara coldly. 
 "Come, come, Peppe, go home. Give the baby a 
 dose of hot camomile." 
 
 "Mamma mia," cried the man, "but the signore 
 dottore will come?" 
 
 "I can't come, my good fellow," said Delia 
 Gandara angrily; 'I am on my way to the Le 
 Baize pass." 
 
 The peasant stared, leaned forward, his pale 
 brown face intense and wistful, and humble, too. 
 The people hereabouts adored Delia Gandara; 
 from the Apennines to Pieve he was as welcome 
 as the host, and in many hearts considered as 
 miraculous. 
 
 He said to Maria : " 
 
 "They are lunatics, Madame; they come for 
 me all the way to Pieve if the baby cries." 
 
 "I was running to Pieve," interrupted the man 
 gently above his panting breath. "The bambino 
 is dying, Dottore" 
 
 180
 
 UP TOWARD THE SNOWS 
 
 Maria had taken the reins from her compan 
 ion's hand. 
 
 "Hurry," she ordered, "hurry ! Of course the 
 doctor will go with you," she said consolingly to 
 the peasant. "Go home, go home. Courage, 
 courage !" 
 
 But the man did not glance at her. His wild 
 eyes never left the physician's face. Delia Gan- 
 dara started the horse again and Peppe ran like 
 a dog at his side. Delia Gandara cursed under 
 his breath. 
 
 "Do you know what this means ? Peppe lives 
 two miles in the valley. If I go to his brat I 
 shall have to leave you to start on your way 
 alone. Why were we not invisible ! Why did he 
 find us!" 
 
 "How can you be so brutal," his companion 
 murmured, "you who have children?" 
 
 In a voice that was solemn with feeling, he an 
 swered : 
 
 "I think of nothing but you, nothing but 
 you!" 
 
 181
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 They were hailed again, and this time by a 
 man with a white donkey who waited for them by 
 the roadside. He waved his cap. 
 
 "It is Adamo," said Delia Gandara. "He will 
 take you safely to Le Baize. I can trust Adamo 
 as I could myself. Must I let you go from me 
 for three days ?" 
 
 Adamo, a blond-faced, blue-eyed peasant, 
 greeted them with a radiant smile and a sweeping 
 bow. Delia Gandara told Maria that the peasant 
 would guard her as his life. With a passionate 
 solemnity he put her in Adamo's charge. She 
 saw the peasant listen to him fixedly, accepting 
 his commission with reverence, and before she 
 knew it she was lifted in Delia Gandara's arms 
 and placed on the saddle of the white ass. Hold 
 ing her so, embracing her, his cheek on hers, he 
 whispered : 
 
 "Three days . . ." 
 
 It was a swift, impressive, nervous parting. 
 Peppe waiting, turned his poor hat in his hands, 
 his face pleading that love be set aside for life. 
 182
 
 UP TOWARD THE SNOWS 
 
 The sense of Delia Gandara's arms was so in 
 tense that her sight was clouded. 
 
 "Wait," she lifted her hand. "Wait, Delia 
 Gandara. You have carried me away, you have 
 carried yourself away." Her blue eyes, deep as 
 the Galilean sea, were fixed upon him. "Take 
 this time to forget me, to understand that I can 
 be nothing to you, nothing." 
 
 "Three days," he repeated quietly, ignoring 
 her coldness. "Three days. If you do not re 
 turn, I shall come for you. Miracles have been 
 wrought in a shorter time. Christ performed the 
 resurrection of the body in three days." 
 
 Here the impatient peasant pulled Delia Gan 
 dara by the arm. 
 
 "For the love of God, for the love of God, 
 go!" said the contessa. "Cure his child. See 
 what touching faith he has ! You speak of mira 
 cles: work your own miracle of healing. You 
 speak of coming to me go to him. Everything 
 you do I shall be glad of. Go. Please go !" 
 
 He gave her a long look that left her trem- 
 183
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 bling, although the flame of it warmed her, and 
 he followed hastily after the peasant who had 
 already turned and fled. 
 
 The contessa on the white donkey, the brown 
 hillocks before her, as well as the unknown way 
 which cut into the forest, started on her mountain 
 journey. She turned in her saddle to watch Delia 
 Gandara as he strode across the road. No one 
 waited for her to bring life. She was alone again 
 as she had been for desolate ugly years. She saw 
 Delia Gandara disappear behind a dip in the 
 hills. He did not turn or look back at her, but 
 she understood it and knew that if he had once 
 looked about he could not have gone on his errand 
 of mercy. 
 
 "If the Eccellenza is ready," said the honeyed 
 voice of Adamo, "there is a storm in the air, and 
 one does not wish to be caught in the snow."
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 MADONNA MARIA 
 
 IN spite of them all then, she had boldly be 
 gun her journey, ridden off the high road 
 into the Apennines toward which Delia Gandara 
 and she had been driving slowly for twelve miles. 
 The village of Sandolo already lay in the dis 
 tance below the hillocks whose copper-colored 
 peaks have a legendary charm. She must now 
 climb to Le Baize, hanging high in the snows, 
 and the idea of it became detestable, although it 
 had been a Mecca which for a fortnight had ob 
 stinately drawn her. 
 
 It was detestable because she was deliberately 
 turning her back on Sandro della Gandara, go 
 ing away from him as fast as the donkey's steps 
 could carry her. She was not philosophic, in 
 stinctive rather a blind woman who walked with 
 outstretched hands to find some object to guide 
 185
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 her. To her tortured mind Le Baize had seemed 
 a place of rest from the problems of her un 
 happy married life, and she had groped toward 
 it, now to see that she had made a mistake. 
 
 On her white donkey she entered the odorous 
 forest of cedars and mountain pines, and the de 
 scent was sharp, the trail stony under the don 
 key's feet. The falling pebbles, as the hoofs of 
 the ass displaced them, the crackling of the 
 branches as Adamo held them back, the rustle of 
 the young river in the gorge below, the call of a 
 bird sharply sweet and inquiring, made music for 
 her as she traveled. Once as the donkey cleverly 
 picked her way down a steep descent, Adamo 
 said: 
 
 "Gemma has a soul, Eccellenza. I love her 
 next my wife." 
 
 Mile upon mile of russet-colored, undulating, 
 hill land stretched before her where the country 
 was the color of molten gold. The rocks seemed 
 part of a precious mine. Over the little hillocks 
 the donkey carefully felt her way. 
 186
 
 MADONNA MARIA 
 
 Maria's checks were like roses. A fine sweet 
 color daily blossomed in them. In the distance 
 was a cedar forest outlining the edge of the 
 mountainside, and she must climb it with Adamo, 
 who regarded her curiously. She was the first 
 lady he had ever seen. He was a simple-faced 
 fellow with a devoted look in his eyes and an en 
 chanting smile. 
 
 "Ecco! here is your good Adamo, Eccellen- 
 za," he exclaimed, laying his hand on the flank 
 of the ass. "Gemma is a treasure, Eccellenza, 
 an angel." 
 
 Maria smiled at him and praised the faithful 
 donkey. 
 
 "Yes, yes, Eccellenza, I only have to whisper 
 'Le Baize' in her ear and she will take you there. 
 Not that I would trust the Eccellenza to Gemma ! 
 Surely! The sindaco il signore dottore would 
 take my life he told me so," said Adamo calmly. 
 "He says that he will kill me if any harm comes 
 lo the Eccellenza." 
 
 187
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Adamo walked sturdily, his hand on Gemma. 
 
 "The signore dottore is a great man, Eccel- 
 lenza ; he has but to cross the threshold, and the 
 sick one is well." 
 
 "That is indeed wonderful," exclaimed Maria, 
 and her eyes softened. She looked into the piny 
 growth of forest toward which they drew near: 
 it was cool and sweet and dark. It should have 
 been Delia Gandara walking there by her side, 
 charming her and drawing her, demanding, 
 praying: "Adorata mia!" No, she would not let 
 herself remember that voice or pleading. 
 
 "I can understand what you mean," she said 
 to Adamo, and she could indeed, for she thought 
 that if she were dying and he crossed her thresh 
 old with his triumphant look and his appeal, 
 "Come, come !" she would instantly rise and come 
 to him. 
 
 "Yes," said Adamo, "he is very strong and he 
 came once in winter on foot from Pieve because 
 his horse could not travel ; and my last baby was 
 born then ; he can save everybody, Eccellenza !" 
 188
 
 MADONNA MARIA 
 
 And Maria Sant' Alcione thought: "He can 
 save every one but me, my good Adamo." 
 
 "My baby is named Sandro for the signore 
 dottore, Eccellenza, because he is so very good. 
 There is no one like him," continued the guide. 
 "Nobile slgnori are not like that ; he h'ves in lit 
 tle Pieve to help the poor, and he might be a 
 prince in Rome. It is better than the history of 
 the Marchese Fasteti of Rimini. There are no 
 evil tales about the mayor." 
 
 Behind them now lay the yellow, rolling, dip 
 ping, golden hillocks. Maria looked back on 
 them before entering the wood, the elfin country, 
 weird, melancholy, beautiful, and it separated 
 her from Sandolo and Savignono and Pieve. 
 
 Before them, like a distant voice that called 
 and admonished, that solemnly appealed, she 
 heard the call of Le Baize, and at her side, small, 
 vigorous, already lion-like in strength, she heard 
 the rush of the Tiber running to its love, and 
 Delia Gandara's voice seemed to say : "Think of 
 Savignono and how the Tiber folds it." 
 189
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 No, no, in Le Baize she would think of none of 
 these things. 
 
 Adamo looked up at her with a sweet childlike 
 smile. 
 
 "I will guard you with my life, Eccellenza." 
 
 "You can not guard me from myself, or from 
 him, my good Adamo," she said aloud in English. 
 
 They crossed the forest border, and as if he 
 thought that darkness might startle his lady, 
 Adamo went to the ass's head to put aside the 
 great branches of the trees. 
 
 After they had been plodding for an hour, 
 Maria stopped to eat a bit of bread and cheese, 
 and to drink a little wine that had been strapped 
 on the back of the saddle. She smiled at the 
 avidity with which she devoured these humble 
 victuals. 
 
 It was now a fortnight since she had taken a 
 good meal; food, except as it kept life in her, 
 ceased to occupy any place in her consideration. 
 Adamo waited patiently and Maria broke off in 
 the midst of her humble feast to offer him a bit 
 190
 
 MADONNA MARIA 
 
 of bread and the rest of the bottle of wine. As 
 he took them from her gratefully, he raised his 
 eyes to her: she saw an expression of wonder 
 cross his simple face. 
 
 "Thank you, Eccellenza," he stammered. 
 
 She asked some question about the road, took 
 off her hat, ruffled her dark hair. 
 
 "See, Adamo, how dark it grows. Does it 
 mean rain? I hope it will not mean snow." 
 
 "It may," he answered. "Eccellenza, it will 
 delay us. I will unfold the cape." 
 
 At the back of the saddle she now perceived 
 that Delia Gandara had rolled and strapped his 
 own mantle, one she had often seen him wear 
 gracefully. As the guide put it around her 
 shoulders it infolded her like Delia Gandara's 
 tenderness. 
 
 The snow and rain began to mingle ; her hands 
 grew cold and stiff. An icy wind blew against 
 her face and lips. 
 
 "How far is it, Adamo ? When will we get to 
 Le Baize?" 
 
 191
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 He did not reply: the white ass plodded on 
 tranquilly choosing her way. 
 
 The storm made a singing sound in the leaves. 
 The snow, now an inch deep, crunched under 
 Gemma's hoofs. 
 
 Maria shivered, brushed the snow from her 
 eyes and tried to peer through the dark twilight 
 of the wood. 
 
 "Adamo ! How soon shall we be there?" 
 
 Pulling up her donkey she turned to see Adamo 
 kneeling in the trail, praying. 
 
 "What can it be?" she wondered. "Of what 
 is he afraid? Are we lost? Adamo! Adamo! 
 Come and lead Gemma, let us get on." 
 
 He rose to his feet, made the sign of the cross 
 as he stared at her, then turned and fled, leaving 
 her alone on the Le Baize trail in the falling 
 snow. 
 
 She was frankly terrified and wondered 
 whether to turn Qemma about and retrace her 
 way to Sandolo, or to go on. If it was danger 
 ous to continue, it was as much so to return ; but 
 192
 
 MADONNA MARIA 
 
 Maria had no voice in the matter. Gemma had 
 stoutly made up her mind. Indifferent to 
 Maria's light hand on the rein, and her unaccus 
 tomed voice, the ass sturdily pursued the way she 
 had begun. 
 
 Sometimes the mounting was very difficult and 
 she struggled with the ascent, panting under her 
 burden. With a fidelity that put Adamo to 
 shame, she continued her way as though indeed 
 she bore a sacred woman and would not betray 
 her trust, beast though she was. 
 
 The rider was frozen to the marrow ; her hands 
 grew so stiff she could scarcely hold the leather 
 of Gemma's bridle. "If Gemma should stumble 
 and fall ! If we are snowbound here," she said to 
 herself, "we shall freeze to death." This at all 
 events would be the solution of the problem. Per 
 haps this was why it had been so difficult for her 
 to reach Le Baize. She spoke softly, encourag 
 ingly to the ass. Finally, after making an ascent 
 that seemed almost perpendicular, Gemma stop 
 ped and stood panting and trembling. 
 193
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Good Gemma, brave Gemma'!" The words 
 sounded lonely in the intense cold stillness. 
 
 The Tiber ran under snow and ice at her side. 
 A hand's-breath wide, it was nevertheless an 
 impetuous tearing stream, its impulse already tre 
 mendous, impelled forth from its mountain cav 
 ern by an eternal source. 
 
 Gemma started of her own accord, took her 
 way without command; the forest broke into the 
 open, into the white snow, into the winter twi 
 light. They crossed the first bridge over the 
 Tiber, a tiny medieval structure with a cross at 
 the Le Baize end. Maria saw a rude stone church 
 on the other side of the bridge and a group of 
 torch-bearers coming into the open. They gath 
 ered around an empty bier; as Gemma carried 
 Maria past the mourners, the peasants stared at 
 the lady on her white ass. 
 
 "Good evening," she said graciously, "can you 
 tell me where Maria Goanelli lives ?" 
 
 One of the peasants snatched off his hat and 
 came up to her, his torch flaming in his hand. 
 194
 
 She seemed to shine in the torch-light.
 
 MADONNA MARIA 
 
 "Giulia Goanelli," he said, "it is the first 
 louse." 
 
 She was white with snow, her hat, her cape; 
 she seemed to shine in the torch-light. Her pale 
 beautiful face with the gentian-blue eyes bent on 
 the peasant who had buried his dead. The man 
 murmured something indistinctly, called to his 
 companions, but before they could come up to 
 him, Gemma of her own accord started on. 
 
 Through the falling snow and rain, Maria 
 saw the huddling forms of the village houses 
 where the black hamlet spread its tiny shadow on 
 the snow. She could hardly move her frozen fin 
 gers ; she could feel the tears congealed in her 
 eyes. Here and there from the dark mass of Le 
 Baize shone out a deep-set crimson light from a 
 candle far back in some low thick-walled house. 
 She trembled with fatigue in her saddle. Gemma 
 plodded on through the snow, and at the first 
 house in the village she stopped. A rotten flight 
 of steps led to the first story, over the door hung 
 a sign. This was the inn of the lost hamlet in 
 195
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 the Apennines, of whose existence no one had 
 seemed to know. She remembered now that the 
 Goanellis kept an inn, and Gemma, as though 
 trained humbly to deposit a holy burden, bend 
 ing her fore legs, kneeled meekly down. 
 
 Maria's limbs were so stiff she could scarcely 
 mount the steps, and before her the black door 
 studded with nails shut her away from shelter. 
 As she knocked she heard a child crying within, 
 and the murmur of little voices. Finally she 
 heard a child's voice ask: "Who is there? 
 Chi e la?" 
 
 "A traveler for Giulia Goanelli. Open, open 
 per amore." 
 
 There were little whispers and the bolt was 
 drawn. As she went in she was met by the heavy 
 stench of a room lived in by many persons, the 
 smell of smoking logs, of cooking broth ; and by 
 the light of the fagot fire across a hearth some 
 six feet wide, she saw that she stood in the center 
 of a group of children. The eldest, a little girl 
 not more than ten years of age, held a wailing 
 196
 
 MADONNA MARIA 
 
 baby in her arms. The children stared at her as 
 she smiled, extending her icy hands. 
 
 "Where is the mother? Where is Maria Go- 
 anelli?" 
 
 The six children, beautiful, dirty, half-clcthed, 
 their eyes like velvet, their cheeks like winter 
 roses, clustered in an awed, curious, little group. 
 
 "La mamma is out, and the father as well." 
 
 Maria drew off her soaking gloves. 
 
 "Let me warm myself by the fire." She ap 
 proached it; the water began to drip from her 
 clothes, her hair was damp about her white face. 
 In the recess of the fireplace an iron pot boiled 
 and bubbled, and near to it, in the fireplace itself, 
 stood a little stool. One of the children, a boy of 
 six, ran to the hearth, then crept like a little 
 gnome and took his place by the steaming broth, 
 gazing eagerly into the soup-pot. The tongue 
 of the eldest child was loosed. "Be welcome," 
 she murmured, "the bambino is very sick." 
 
 "Poor little thing!" Maria glanced at the 
 group whose tender years did not offer much help 
 197
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 to her. "My donkey is outside," she said help 
 lessly, "I am afraid she will freeze in the snow 
 and cold." 
 
 "Ecco!" exclaimed the little girl, and to the 
 boy by the soup-pot : "Pietro, go take the asina 
 into the shed, go !" 
 
 She was a mature little thing, already like the 
 mother of a family, with the unselfish sweetness, 
 the maternal authority of an elder sister whose 
 young unformed breast has sheltered little heads, 
 whose hands have washed and tended. 
 
 "But your brother is too small," objected the 
 contessa. 
 
 "Ma chel" said the elder sister. "It is his 
 work for father." The infant in her arms had 
 hushed its crying. 
 
 The traveler took off her wet cape and hung 
 it, dripping, on a chair, then sat down on a settle 
 near the blazing fagots and stretched out her 
 hands to the glow. The children stood around 
 her, staring. 
 
 "Can I have a cup of broth, Bambina?" 
 198
 
 'Surely," nodded the little girl. "Giulia, 
 fetch a cup." 
 
 "I will dip it out myself," Maria offered. The 
 smell of the peasant soup was delicious to her as 
 she bent over the pot, but as she looked in she 
 saw there was scarcely enough to feed three peo 
 ple it had simmered to its ebb. 
 
 "Children," she asked faintly, "is there no 
 more supper, is this all there is for six of you?" 
 
 "It is all, Signora, eat and be welcome." 
 
 Already the other little creatures had drawn 
 near and closed round her, the firelight shining 
 in their eyes. It was not customary to touch the 
 broth until later; the smallest began to cry for 
 "mamma" and supper, and Maria poured the 
 soup back into the pot. 
 
 "Have you any milk or bread?" she asked 
 weakly. 
 
 "Nothing," exclaimed the little mother, "abso 
 lutely nothing." 
 
 The baby began its dolorous wail again. 
 Maria Sant' Alcione held out her hands. "Give 
 199
 
 THE BROKEN BELt 
 
 me the bambino," she prayed desperately. Her 
 arms trembled with fatigue and her hands shook 
 pitifully. 
 
 The little girl gave over the bundle of rags to 
 Maria. 
 
 She had not held a child in her arms since her 
 own had lain there, the first time since three long 
 years. She would have held her husband in those 
 empty arms, but he had not wished for this 
 refuge. Nothing else had come to them until 
 now. Down in Pieve, more than once, looking at 
 Delia Gandara's beautiful head, she had wanted 
 to take it to her breast. Now the feeling of a 
 child's body in her arms sent a shiver through 
 her it seemed to be her own that she held, and 
 to be little Sandro that she looked down upon. 
 Her bosom heave3, her eyes filled with tears. 
 The child was thin and pale, unlike his sturdy 
 brothers and sisters, his meager hands were like 
 bird's claws, his tiny face pinched and appeal 
 ing, and his eyes looked up wonderingly at the 
 strange face, and at the tears. Maria bent over 
 200
 
 MADONNA MARIA 
 
 the baby, consoling it. It stopped its crying, its 
 body relaxed. 
 
 "What is the matter with the bambino ?" 
 
 "Carmela," informed the little sister nodding 
 at Maria and showing her gleaming white teeth. 
 "I am Carmela. I'll be ten years old at Easter 
 and I've been confirmed. The bambino is always 
 ill but to-day he is very ill. We think he will 
 die. La mamma has gone to get the mayor. He 
 is a doctor." 
 
 The mayor? Maria thought of Delia Gan- 
 dara and her heart beat. "Where does the mayor 
 live?" 
 
 "At the end of Le Baize," said the little girl. 
 "One has to climb. The storm has made the 
 mother late." 
 
 Maria looked down at the quieted child whose 
 eyes were fastened on her. It seemed beautiful 
 to her. Exhausted as she was, trembling with 
 fatigue and cold and hunger, her nerves played 
 upon by emotions and warfare, she found her 
 senses blurring, and as she looked down at the 
 201
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 child, it seemed to have become her own baby 
 that she held, but the child she had borne and 
 nursed was not so divine as this. 
 
 "Be blessed," she murmured, and made over it 
 the sign of the cross. "I have suffered," she 
 thought, "God knows I have ; as yet I have done 
 nothing wrong. I may bless it with a clean 
 heart." 
 
 The child smiled on her faintly, and put up its 
 fragile hand to her breast. Carmela-with the 
 others who had come close to the stranger, cried : 
 "See, the bambino is smiling he is laughing, 
 see!" 
 
 Maria heard a sound without the door, which 
 opened, Pietro ran in. "Here is the mother. 
 Ecco!" 
 
 A peasant woman "wrapped in a black cape, 
 with a handsome open countenance, her bare 
 head wet with the storm, came in, followed by a 
 gray-haired man. The little children rushed to 
 the mother but Carmela remained by the 
 stranger's side. 
 
 202
 
 MADONNA MARIA 
 
 "Mammina, mammina!" cried the little girl. 
 "The baby is well, he is smiling. See !" 
 
 Maria Sant' Alcione saw the peasant woman 
 start forward, then pause, and the light of rec 
 ognition on her face changed to awe. Thinking 
 Maria Goanelli recognized her mistress and 
 not wanting to disturb the tranquil child on her 
 breast, the contessa only smiled and nodded, and 
 so sat, her loosened hair about her face, her deep 
 blue eyes tender with love for the woman who 
 had nursed her son. Then as no one moved she 
 cried : 
 
 "Maria, my good Maria, see, I have come 
 to Le Baize after this long time." 
 
 To her dismay the woman fell on her knees, 
 the mayor followed her example. 
 
 "Ah! Bonta Divina, Bonta Divina!" Maria 
 Goanelli cried, "bless us, bless us !" 
 
 The contessa rose, the child in her arms, and 
 went over to the kneeling mother. 
 
 "Don't you know me?" she said calmly, al 
 though pale as death. "Don't you know me? 
 203
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Get up at once, Maria. I have come from Na 
 ples to see you. Here, hold out your arms ; take 
 your baby, the poor little thing seems quiet." 
 
 "Mother of God !" murmured the peasant, ris 
 ing to her feet. "I thought the Eccellenza 
 was the Madonna, and I'm not yet really sure 
 that she isn't. Nobody but the Madonna could 
 get here on such a night." 
 
 She seized her mistress's hands and kissed 
 them, and burst into joyful welcome, saying over 
 and over again that she was only half persuaded, 
 and hustling the poor old mayor into the corner 
 by the fire with Pietro. 
 
 The baby, perfectly quiet, was carried to his 
 bed in the corner, and his mother, her fine eyes 
 sparkling and radiant with delight, took her 
 guest in charge. 
 
 Maria Goanelli was a charming figure among 
 her brood, with her dark hair, her dark eyes, her 
 dignity and her expressive affectionate smile. By 
 her side the Contessa Sant' Alcione was as tall 
 as she, and the two Marias talked together in the 
 204
 
 MADONNA MARIA 
 
 firelight while outside the snows obliterated the 
 path to Pieve and to Rimini, and many other 
 paths, and in her stall Gemma ate her supper be 
 tween a new-born calf and its mother.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE GLORY AND THE DREAM 
 
 MARIA GOANELLI had just left her, 
 after offering to her mistress the best 
 Le Baize afforded in the way of supper and 
 lodging. The supper was a bowl of warm milk, 
 a piece of black bread. Maria had eaten in the 
 midst of the family, the peasant woman kneeling 
 by her side. Now she found herself alone: be 
 fore her the long hours of the night the first 
 night in the distant village, to reach which she 
 had left a husband, and denied herself love. 
 
 In Arezzo she had given to the flames the let 
 ters which told of the petty passion of a man to 
 whom she was indifferent. In Pieve night after 
 night she had struggled with her growing love 
 and here? Perhaps physical weakness had pro 
 duced a state of exaltation. At all events she 
 206
 
 THE GLORY AND THE DREAM 
 
 felt spiritualized and uplifted as though the 
 mountain climbing had really carried her upward 
 for immaterial miles. 
 
 In the attic without, the little children slept, 
 but there was no sound but the rustle of the snow 
 at the window, and Maria could almost hear her 
 heart beat. She began to re-live the hours with 
 the man at Pieve. She heard him say, his dark 
 eyes upon hers : "Three days, innamorata, three 
 days !" 
 
 And this was the first of them ! To think of 
 undressing was out of the question. She had her 
 things for the night in the little parcel Gemma 
 carried on the saddle. She only removed her slip 
 pers, and lay down on the hard bed, shiveringly 
 drawing the eider-down over her, and trembling 
 in a chill. But the blood was in her head and 
 around her heart, and her pulses beat wildly. 
 She had never been so mastered by the thought 
 of any man. How should she pass to-morrow in 
 this hut in the wilderness, without comforts or 
 even food? She seemed to smell the acrid odors 
 207
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 of the room below with its smoking fire and cling 
 ing children. Maria Goanelli, whom she had 
 thought she had wanted to see, was as distant to 
 her interest as was everything that did not touch 
 Delia Gandara. The third day she would return 
 if the snow did not obliterate the paths. God 
 grant it would not. If she stayed, would he come 
 for her as he had threatened to do? During the 
 next forty-eight hours she must find new 
 strength to resist him, to deny him and herself. 
 
 Le Baize, strange, primitive, forgotten spot, 
 must prove itself the shrine, the retreat, that she 
 had believed it would be. She must, by some act 
 of self-immolation and sacrifice, expiate the sin 
 of her desires and assure herself her soul's future 
 peace and his. On the other hand she asked her 
 self : "Why should 1 not choose happiness in 
 stead of peace ? He has been sent to me to com 
 pensate for my starved years. What woman, 
 bound as I am to a man who does not love her, 
 would hesitate to make her own life?" 
 
 She thought that if she did not have some sleep 
 208
 
 THE GLORY AND THE DREAM 
 
 this night that she would fall ill. She might even 
 have pneumonia here in this icy wilderness, and 
 that would end it all. She was, however, very 
 much alive and very cold. Her human thoughts 
 and desires failed to warm her as she lay, glow 
 ing and radiant as they were. Suddenly she 
 fancied that she heard from down-stairs the cry 
 ing of the child, the bambino of Maria Goa- 
 nelli who had awakened, and she remembered how 
 it had quieted lying in her arms. 
 
 "Poor little creature," she thought, "poor 
 Maria Goanelli." 
 
 As she mused the words half aloud, it seemed 
 to her that she again felt in her arms the light 
 weight of the baby's form. Indeed it was so pal 
 pable and so real that it was as though the infant 
 lay there again. Her arms, which were folded 
 across her breast, were once more a cradle. The 
 weight grew heavier, it hung on her like lead, 
 pressing her bosom so cruelly that her heart 
 seemed to break and she could have cried out. 
 Dazed by cold and hunger and fatigue, she mur- 
 209
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 inured: "Is it my wicked love for Sandro della 
 Gandara that weighs so on my mind?" She 
 sighed. 
 
 But it was only the child's form she seemed to 
 hold. She could distinctly feel the soft cheek 
 against her own, distinctly feel the weight of its 
 body in her arms; she murmured the name of 
 her own child, "Sandro, little Sandro," and as 
 the weight lifted she felt a release of her senses 
 and strained nerves ; the agony was passed. She 
 raised herself on her pillow, still seeming to hold 
 the child in her circling arms, and her arms were 
 full of glory. 
 
 Through the icy room a faint light spread 
 palpitating from the bed where she lay. A de 
 licious warmth stole through her cold limbs and 
 body, bringing a heavenly drowsiness and peace ; 
 she sank down gratefully, closing her eyes and 
 thinking she should sleep, and from beneath her 
 eyelids the child she held seemed her own again, 
 yet not her human child, for the face she dreamed 
 upon was too divine.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE MIRACLE OF HEALING 
 
 baby was saved by a miracle, Eccel- 
 lenza." 
 
 "Nonsense, my good Maria, nonsense ! Mira 
 cles do not arrive like that nowadays." 
 
 "A miracle, Eccellenza ! I left him at death's 
 door I return to find him smiling in the Eccel- 
 lenza's arms. He's been like an angel ever 
 since. What else would it be but a miracle?" 
 
 Once again before the fire in the peasant's 
 kitchen, a black shawl around her shoulders, 
 Maria Sant' Alcione sat like a queen enthroned. 
 By her side Maria Goanclli rapidly knitted a 
 stocking for her husband Giulia, always away 
 on some mountain journey. Brooded over by lit 
 tle Carmela, the children whispered in a distant 
 corner with their homely playthings.
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Indeed!" pursued the nurse, nodding. 
 "When I came in and saw the picture before the 
 fire I thought that the Madonna had . . ." 
 
 "Hush, Maria, you are sacrilegious." 
 
 "The Le Baize people thought so, too. They 
 told Pietro so this morning when you passed the 
 church on your white ass." 
 
 "Hush, Maria . . ." 
 
 "At all events," said the peasant, clicking her 
 needles, "it is a miracle that the Eccellenza should 
 come here in the storm to see her servant." 
 
 "I longed to see her, Maria." 
 
 The Italian impulsively leaned over, seized one 
 of her mistress's hands and kissed it. 
 
 "I have always prayed for the Eccellenza 
 . . ." she murmured, and her mistress pursued : 
 
 "I longed to see some one who had held my lit 
 tle child." 
 
 "The angel Sandro," cried the nurse, "what a 
 heavenly little baby, wasn't he, Eccellenza ?" 
 
 The two women gazed and saw each other 
 through tears. ("TAw," Maria Sant' Alcione
 
 THE MIRACLE OF HEALING 
 
 thought, "is what I have come to see. These 
 tears of remembrance in Maria Goanelli's eyes.") 
 
 "And the Eccellenze?" asked the nurse, still 
 sighing. "The Conte Sant' Alcione is in good 
 health?" 
 
 "I believe so, I think so," her mistress indiffer 
 ently replied, and leaning forward said impul 
 sively: "I'm very unhappy, Maria Goanelli. 
 I'm very unhappy, indeed !" 
 
 The peasant stopped knitting, holding her 
 wool closely in her rough hands. 
 
 "Mamma mia, what is the matter, Eccellenza, 
 mia?" 
 
 "No," Maria thought to herself, "this is what 
 I have come all these miles to find, this tender 
 look of comprehension on a human face that 
 loves me." Except for the few words to Delia 
 Gandara, she had never spoken of her griefs 
 before. Faversham had discovered them, but he 
 was a judge and seer; this humble friend, sister, 
 and mother understood life better. She leaned 
 still farther forward, the black coarse shawl 
 213
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 wrapped around her shoulders, her deep blue eyes 
 fixing themselves appealingly on the nurse of 
 her son. 
 
 "My heart is broken, Maria. I came away 
 from Naples because I couldn't bear it any 
 more." 
 
 "Poor Eccellenza. It is because there are no 
 more children, Eccellenza !" 
 
 The contessa shuddered : 
 
 "No, thank goodness, there are no more !" She 
 saw that Maria Goanelli had not understood, 
 and caught herself up. "No," she repeated 
 slowly, "no, little Sandro was all I wanted. 
 There could never be another !" 
 
 "Ecco!" exclaimed the peasant more cheer 
 fully. "They're all so different, Eccellenza. 
 Carmela is a little mother. The father could not 
 get along without Pietro. Angela and Gemma 
 are little devils, but so sweet, so carmo." The 
 maternity of her expression was beautiful. She 
 dropped her voice. "For me, I love the sickly 
 bambino best of all." She put her hand caress-
 
 THE MIRACLE OF HEALING 
 
 ingly on her mistress's knee. "Courage, Eccel- 
 lenza. All will be well . . ." 
 
 Maria Sant' Alcione was silent. It was best 
 that the woman should think this natural thing. 
 What right had she to fetch her sacred griefs to 
 the common .level of a peasant's life? A faint 
 color mounted to her pale cheek. The peasant 
 had taken up her knitting peacefully. 
 
 "The children link the husband and wife to 
 gether, Eccellenza. When we were first married 
 Giulia took too much wine. As each child came, 
 I asked him to make me a fresh promise, and now 
 he only gets drunk at the christenings, poor fel 
 low." 
 
 In the silence that followed, the nurse asked 
 affectionately, with no thought that her query 
 was inhospitable: 
 
 "When does the Eccellenza go back?" 
 
 "Go back where?" responded her mistress 
 vaguely. 
 
 "Back to Naples, Madonna mia!" 
 
 "I shall never go back again," exclaimed her 
 215
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 mistress passionately, "never!" And as she said 
 this Maria Sant' Alcione knew that this had been 
 her intention from the beginning that she had 
 never meant to go ; that she had come away with 
 the definite idea of never returning to her hus 
 band. 
 
 "Mother of God !" exclaimed the nurse. Lit 
 tle Angelo had come up to his mother, and pulled 
 her dress ; she pushed him away, called Carmela, 
 delivered her a rapid injunction to keep the little 
 brood at the other end of the room. "What does 
 the Eccellenza mean?" she persisted, and glanced 
 at the poor room, at the fire, the blackened raft 
 ers and the ladder to the attic. "I am afraid the 
 Eccellenza could not be happy in Le Baize?" 
 
 The shadow of a smile touched Maria Sant' 
 Alcione's lips. 
 
 "No, you dear thing, don't worry ! I have not 
 come to stay in Le Baize! I -have no plans . . . 
 I don't know what I shall do." 
 
 The other ventured timidly : 
 
 "And the Conte?" 
 
 216
 
 THE MIRACLE OF HEALING 
 
 "He will do very well," she replied. 
 
 And the nurse murmured: "The poor conte, 
 he loved little Sandro very much indeed." 
 
 The snow fell in a steady pearl-like curtain 
 around the town, between the world and Maria 
 Sant' Alcione. This was the second day since 
 she had bidden Delia Gandara good-by. To 
 morrow, come what would, she would venture 
 down. 
 
 "Does it often snow like this ?" 
 
 "Oh, often, Eccellenza." 
 
 "When will the snow be over, do you think ?" 
 
 "Eccellenza, that is in the hand of God." 
 
 "Yes, yes, but in a day, or a week, or a month, 
 Maria Goanelli?" 
 
 "A week sometimes," responded the other 
 placidly. "And after the storm the crystals are 
 as beautiful as glass." 
 
 A week? She would die here in a week! A 
 week of snow shut in here with these peasants ! 
 "I shall certainly go away," she consoled herself, 
 "certainly start to-morrow, snow or no snow." 
 217
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Eccellenza," ventured the peasant woman, 
 "speaking of miracles, shall I tell you of a won 
 derful miracle wrought here in Le Baize last 
 summer ?" 
 
 "If you like, do." 
 
 "It was the mayor's pig, Eccellenza, that had 
 the distemper . . ." began Maria Goanelli, and 
 her mistress, half closing her eyes, partly heard, 
 and wholly saw the pathway down the mountain 
 side to Sandolo, a cruel distance between herself 
 and Delia Gandara. 
 
 Heavens, what if he should come to harm in 
 those three days! Dreadful things happen all 
 the time. Sudden accidents, sudden death. Why 
 did she come away so madly and determinedly? 
 Why was she so puritan that she could not take 
 the great gift that nature offered her ? . . . 
 
 "And the mayor," Maria Goanelli was say 
 ing, "carried the pig on his own back up the 
 mountainside. It was hot and the pig squealed, 
 and the mayor puffed like an engine. Oh, it 
 was a beautiful sight, Eccellenza!" 
 218
 
 . . . What indeed if she should be forced to 
 remain here for a week and he should start to 
 come in the storm and be lost in the snow ! She 
 could hear his voice: "Anima mia. Innamorata 
 mia!" Well, he was her soul, that she knew: 
 the life and breath of her now! There would 
 never be anything else but him for her to the 
 end, and it seemed to her that there had never 
 been anything else from the beginning, that she 
 had been going to him daily, answering that 
 vital appealing command : "Come, come !" He 
 had said: "Think of happy Savignono em 
 braced by the Tiber, when you are in the snows." 
 She left her seat on the box, threw off her shawl. 
 Her charming figure in the blouse and short 
 skirt was girlishly young. She was slender by 
 the side of the other woman, who, as the contessa 
 stood, rose as well. 
 
 "Come, let us go out, Maria Goanelli, let us 
 go out." 
 
 "Mamma mia, I dare not open the door. The 
 wind would knock us down." 
 219
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 The guest went to the door and wiped off the 
 mist. 
 
 "Patience, patience," urged her companion, 
 "the weather is too bad. And," she said re 
 proachfully, "the Eccellenza didn't hear the end 
 of the pig story." 
 
 Maria Sant' Alcione laughed ana ran her 
 white hands through her hair, sighed, and re 
 turned vanquished to her box by the fire. 
 
 "Forgive me, dear, I will listen ! _ But call the 
 children to the fire: they are frozen in the cor 
 ner. Come, Carmela, and the babies, come!" she 
 called gaily, "come and hear the end of the pig !"
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 ON THE FOURTH DAY 
 
 THE contessa told the children tales and 
 heard tales old and new, familiar since 
 nursery days at Naples, when she had laughed 
 to see her baby laugh. Beyond control, at the 
 limit of her patience at the end of the third day, 
 wrapped in one of Maria Goanelli's capes, she 
 wrestled with the door against which the snow 
 had heaped, heavy and forbidding, and strug 
 gled to the shed where Gemma, snug and sound, 
 her long ears stiff and straight, peered at her 
 lady. A friendly neighbor had fed Giulia Goa 
 nelli's cattle in the master's absence and Maria 
 met the fellow at the door of the shed. 
 
 "Will it clear to-morrow?" 
 
 "Yes, Eccellenza." 
 
 "And the paths?" 
 
 The man laughed.
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "It will be new cheese. Who cuts through 
 cuts first." 
 
 "If you will take me to Sandolo I will give 
 you twenty-five lira." 
 
 "That's too much," said the man tranquilly, 
 "half of it would pay me if one could find the 
 way." 
 
 "I will give it gladly if you will help me to 
 find the way." 
 
 The bargain was struck. They were to start 
 early the next morning and the rest of the time 
 passed, one fashion or another. She was almost 
 happy, she sang songs for the baby who had lost 
 its look of mystery and was only a black-eyed 
 little thing on the way to health. That night, 
 used now to the cold, the contessa slept heavily 
 and awakened as the sunlight struck her eyelids. 
 Outside the snow was blue in the light, the pines 
 black and mysterious. The trees sparkled and 
 the radiance seemed to reflect from her heart. 
 
 "I am going to him," she said aloud at the 
 window, "I am going to him to-day." 
 222
 
 ON THE FOURTH DAY 
 
 She was all ready to start when she came 
 down-stairs. 
 
 "Madonna mia!" exclaimed Maria Goanelli, 
 horrified. 
 
 "Yes, I am going," said the contessa joyously. 
 "It's useless to try to keep me: I shall find my 
 way." 
 
 "The Eccellenza will be buried in the snows. 
 For the love of God! Not a man in Le Baize 
 would venture . . ." 
 
 "Yes, he will," laughed her mistress, "he is 
 ready out there, with the donkey." 
 
 From the window Maria Goanelli saw her next- 
 door neighbor, muffled up to his chin, standing at 
 the ass's head, his staff in hand. 
 
 The contessa laughed at expostulations and 
 fears. She would have laughed at death itself 
 to-day ! Nothing could make her sad or even 
 thoughtful. Her brain, her pulses, her heart, 
 all sang and laughed ; the sunlight, the blue sky, 
 even the danger said: "I am going to him!" 
 She put her arms around Maria Goanelli.
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Kiss me good-by. You were kind to me here 
 in the snow." And she kissed the nurse on both 
 of her hard brilliant cheeks. 
 
 "Addio, addio, bambini, addio!" 
 
 Maria Goanelli, who seemed dazed and trou 
 bled, held her mistress back and murmured in a 
 low tone: 
 
 "Eccellenza, if you go with Cecco Bambelli, I 
 shall not be afraid. He is a safe guide, 
 but . . ." she paused . . . "back there in Na 
 ples . . .?" 
 
 "Well, Maria, what then?" 
 
 "The Eccellenza will go back to Naples ?" A 
 cloud crossed her face. "I shall pray night and 
 day for the Eccellenza." 
 
 The children fluttered out on the porch like 
 birds in the snow. Cecco lifted the contessa 
 on the donkey. She did not suggest the Ma 
 donna to either of the peasants. She was only a 
 beautiful ardent woman. 
 
 "The Madonna go with you," murmured the 
 servant, "the Madonna give you "
 
 ON THE FOURTH DAY 
 
 She did not finish her wish, but the women 
 looked into each other's eyes: the lady's were 
 deep as the heavens, the peasant's soft and dark, 
 clouded with tears. 
 
 "Addio, cara Maria, addio," murmured the 
 Contessa Sant' Alcione. 
 
 The donkey plunged up to her knees in snow 
 and pulled out again. Cecco Bambelli at her 
 head encouraged her. Maria scarcely saw or 
 cared how the beast struggled and labored: she 
 had no fear, her face was set toward Sandolo. 
 She would surely get there, but it would take 
 time : that she must endure. The exhilaration of 
 the air, its cold pure wine, the sparkle of the 
 snow, the glory of the blue heavens, made an en 
 chanted winter world. She shut her eyes, bowed 
 her head, and the pine and cedar breath, the in 
 cense of the forest, came deliciously to her as she 
 entered the wood. They crossed the iron bridge 
 with its crucifix. There was not a soul to see her 
 225
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 go, at the old church there was neither wedding 
 nor funeral, only the festival of the storm, the 
 snow, the gleaming trees ; the bridal wreaths in 
 the branches, the shroud under foot. 
 
 "The donkey knows her way, Eccellenza, she 
 is a wonderful beast," Cecco Bambclli said after 
 they had been journeying a little time. 
 
 She did not answer him. She knew they would 
 find their way, and that nothing could hinder it ; 
 the path was straight. At the thought of seeing 
 Delia Gandara, her cheeks grew hot, her breath 
 nearly suffocated her, her hands trembled on the 
 lines she held. Under foot the snow and ice 
 melted somewhat as the hot sun penetrated, above 
 her head an eagle circled and cried. There was 
 nothing sacred about this journey. She felt like 
 a pagan queen riding" triumphantly to her king 
 dom. They had been steadily traveling two 
 hours when she made her guide halt to give him 
 the bread and wine Maria Goanelli had prepared. 
 For her part she could not eat. This was not 
 the fast she longed to break. 
 226
 
 Without speaking he took her in his arms.
 
 ON THE FOURTH DAY 
 
 They moved on and on, down and down, until 
 at midday the sun grew hot and warmed them 
 through the openings in the trees. She thought 
 exultantly : "He did not come for me. He did 
 not come. The three days are up. This is the 
 fourth day." 
 
 The donkey stopped suddenly, her ears pointed 
 forward, and Cecco Bambelli called through the 
 trees : 
 
 "Who is there?" 
 
 She heard the crunching of the snow, the fall 
 of pebbles. They stopped on the edge of a 
 brook that gurgled under the ice. She saw Delia 
 Gandara brush the boughs back and leap the 
 brook. He never glanced at her. Abruptly he 
 put his hand in his pocket and drew out some 
 money. 
 
 "Here," he said harshly to Cecco Bambelli, 
 "take this and go back to Le Baize." 
 
 "I promised him a piece of gold," she hurried, 
 and could scarcely find her trembling voice. 
 
 "He has two : let him go," Delia Gandara said, 
 OT
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 and stood immovable until the man retraced his 
 footprints in the snow and his figure was lost. 
 Then Delia Gandara came to her and without 
 speaking took her in his arms, as she sat on the 
 white ass, and lifted her to him and held her as 
 though he would meet her flesh with his, and 
 kissed her on the eyes and brows and lips many 
 times . . . kissed her on the blue eyes that were 
 the color of the Madonna's ; on the brow which 
 the peasants had thought sublime; on the lips 
 that they had prayed would bless them.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 QUESTION AND ANSWER 
 
 MANY hours later they came out on the 
 gnome-like hillocks whose golden points 
 undulated like waves of a molten sea. Pink and 
 red bracken spread along the clay and from a 
 hut in the valley fluttered a thin flag of smoke 
 to welcome them. Delia Gandara said: 
 
 "You are cold and hungry, love. See, a fairy 
 has come to minister to you if one could call 
 Tullia a fairy !" 
 
 He walked by the side of Maria, his arm 
 around her. They had traveled alone together 
 for four hours, and if she felt either cold or hun 
 gry she was unconscious of the fact. On a hil 
 lock a little beyond, sharply outlined, stood the 
 dark figure of a peasant girl against the bril 
 liant afternoon light. A russet cape fell around 
 229
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 her, her skirt was brown as the hillside, and in 
 both hands she held a little brazier to warm her 
 icy fingers. Her herd of goats shook their tink 
 ling bells here and there among the hillocks. At 
 her feet was a mother goat and her kids. 
 
 "Kola, Tullia Ferrati, have you a cup, ragaz- 
 za? Will you milk for the Eccellenza?" 
 
 J.iaria said: 
 
 ' Help me down ; I want to touch foot to the 
 ground." 
 
 He lifted her down, and as he did so, her hand 
 on his shoulder, she said in her low rich voice: 
 
 "Do you know, this is the first time I have 
 touched the earth since I have let myself love 
 you ? The earth has seemed a dreadful place be 
 fore. Now it is sacred." 
 
 He kissed her under the eyes of the goatherd, 
 who had put her brazier down and was milking 
 the goat. When Maria had drunk and forced 
 Delia Gandara to do the same, they went on foot, 
 leading Gemma over the hills, but before they 
 reached the road, the donkey suddenly stood still 
 230
 
 QUESTION AND ANSWER 
 
 and began to bray aloud. From behind a hillock 
 a sorry-looking shamefaced object made his ap 
 pearance. It was Adamo. He gesticulated ap- 
 pealingly to Maria Sant' Alcione. As he per 
 ceived him, Delia Gandara wondered for the first 
 time why he had not been with the contessa. 
 
 "Where do you come from, worthlessness ? 
 Speak !" he thundered. "How is it you did not 
 accompany the lady from Le Baize?" 
 
 "Hush !" Maria put her hand on Delia Gan- 
 dara's arm. "I did not need him in Le Baize. I 
 sent him back. There was no room for another 
 at the inn." 
 
 Delia Gandara fixed his stern eyes on the peas 
 ant, who had ventured to approach his beloved 
 Gemma and stood timidly fingering the ass's 
 nose and ears. 
 
 "Look here," thundered Delia Gandara signifi 
 cantly, "if you have deserted your post, my 
 good Adamo : 
 
 "Pity, Eccellenze," whined the man, "I see 
 that I was wrong, I see." 
 231
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "See what, fool, blockhead? What do you 
 mean ?" 
 
 "I thought the Eccellenza was the Madonna 
 that it was a miracle, and I was afraid." 
 
 "I beseech of you," prayed Maria, "let us go 
 on." 
 
 Ignoring her plea, Delia Gandara said impa 
 tiently : 
 
 "Well, so you thought the Eccellenza was the 
 Madonna, did you, dolt?" 
 
 "It was very foolish, Signore dottore. I see 
 she is only a beautiful lady." Adamo blushed 
 and stammered, and Maria urged her companion 
 on. 
 
 When they reached the gate of Pieve toward 
 evening it was to her as though they had driven 
 out of paradise into gray reality. Before they 
 reached the gate, she said: 
 
 "Stop here. Before we go into the town, tell 
 me again are you sure that you have never 
 loved any one but me in all your life?" 
 
 It was the question of a girl to a young lover. 
 232
 
 QUESTION AND ANSWER 
 
 "Never. But I loved you from the moment I 
 saw you under the arch, Maria. And you?" He 
 searched her eyes whose blue had paled with pas 
 sion that lighted them. She forgot that she had 
 ever thought that she loved her husband . . . 
 had thought she still loved him not ten months 
 ago. 
 
 "I loved you when I saw your picture in Na 
 ples," she said, "your eyes then called me : 'Come, 
 come' !" 
 
 "They say it now," he answered. "Eyes, lips, 
 heart, all of me, Maria." 
 
 They held each other in the open road beneath 
 the evening sky where the first stars shone, and 
 as he kissed her, above from Sant' Angelo came 
 the ringing of the unblemished bell. It tolled 
 long and slowly, deep and mellow. 
 
 "Sandro," she murmured, "Sandro, listen ! It 
 is ringing for the dead." 
 
 "Some brother," he replied easily. "They 
 must die, innamorata : even holy men must die." 
 
 "And the wicked like us, Sandro?" 
 233
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Hush!" he commanded sternly, "don't pro 
 fane our love, Maria." 
 
 They drove on toward the town, but at the 
 knowledge that he must part from her here, Delia 
 Gandara leaned toward her making her repeat 
 her promise. So absorbed was he that he did not 
 see at the gate-side two small figures hand in hand 
 standing waiting to welcome a home-comer. As 
 the wheels clattered under the gate and over the 
 cobbles the little voices rose: 
 
 "See, see ! Armando and Lilli !" 
 
 As they passed by, Maria Sant' Alcione ex 
 claimed : 
 
 "Oh, your little children !" 
 
 But he did not stop. At the door of the inn 
 he bade her good night, and with the deep som- 
 berness that she knew indicated the depths of his 
 passion, he said: 
 
 "You are my children, my family, my wife 
 and my life, Maria !"
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE WISDOM OF AGE 
 
 SHE passed through the doorway of the inn, 
 and heard the gray gentle doves with their 
 young broods coo in the eaves. Up-stairs, in the 
 room she had left five days before, she undid her 
 things and her hands trembled. Cold winds, the 
 breath of mountain pinnacles, had whipped color 
 into her smooth cheeks, and love had whipped 
 ecstasy through her body. She quivered and 
 glowed. The room was close and stuffy after 
 the mountain air, and as she had done before in 
 Borgo San Sepolcro, she gazed steadily into her 
 mirror, mechanically putting her hair in order, 
 and the vigorous beauty she saw there made her 
 pause. She passed her hand lightly over the 
 mirror and smiled: 
 
 285
 
 "I am glad I am like this ! It will give him 
 pleasure. I will keep like this for him." 
 
 There was nothing spiritual in the loveliness 
 reflected here, but there was a radiant triumph, 
 a material glory. 
 
 "It is happiness," she murmured, "how happy 
 I look, how happy he looks! Ah, Sandro, San- 
 dro, the new Sandro !" 
 
 After turning away from the mirror she be 
 gan hastily to put her things together and to 
 pack her dressing-bag. She had changed her 
 riding clothes for her street dress, her tricorne 
 for the hat with fur and roses; she put on her 
 veil, lifting it to her forehead, took her gloves 
 and purse, and was still for she glanced in the 
 mirror again over her shoulder she was still 
 radiant, brilliant, transformed by the fire that 
 lights the hearthstones of the world, that makes 
 the race persist for good or evil, for decay or 
 resurrection. "You did not bury your beauty, 
 Contessa," Faversham had said to her. She 
 glanced about the room where she should not 
 236
 
 THE WISDOM OF AGE 
 
 pass another night, and leaving her bags to be 
 carried by Elena, closed the door, came running 
 down-stairs singing. Her voice startled her; 
 she had not sung aloud in years. To her old 
 hostess she said: 
 
 "Elena, I am going to Borgo to-night. The 
 slgnore dottore says that Benvenuto will drive 
 me and I can get a train for Arezzo." 
 
 "But the Eccellenza is not going without rest- 
 ing?" 
 
 "I can not rest, not yet, Elena. I can not rest 
 here." 
 
 Maria did not think that her little room so 
 near to him and so far could offer her repose. 
 She would wait in the parlor to see the slgnore 
 dottore who had gone to order Benvenuto. 
 Elena considered her visitor. Maria saw an ex 
 pression on the old creature's fine serene counte 
 nance which made the color deepen in her own 
 cheeks. She saw the look that comes across the 
 face of wise age deep with experience, with its 
 knowledge of real tragedies and real romance, 
 237
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 that has learned by heart tales written in flesh 
 and blood, for fifty years. 
 
 "You have served me well, Elena," the trav 
 eler opened her purse. "I wish I could stay 
 longer with you, but I must go" (she did not say 
 go home), "I must go on." 
 
 "Ecco," the old woman replied quietly, "so it 
 is with travelers, Eccellenza." Her work-worn 
 hands were clasped over her apron, her cheeks 
 and brows beaten on by the winds of the north 
 ern countries. Maria realized for the first time 
 that the woman must have been lovely when 
 young. "No, Eccellenza, no," said the innkeep 
 er, refusing the money, "I often take care of the 
 mayor's friends, a thousand thanks." 
 
 The contessa laid a folded note on the table. 
 
 "You must take it, Elena," she said firmly. 
 
 The old woman lifted it and turned it between 
 her fingers. 
 
 "I will give it to the padre for the new altar." 
 
 "As you like, Elena, as you like." 
 
 "I knew the mayor," Elena said tranquilly, 
 238
 
 "when he was very young. He lived up there in 
 the little room you had. He used to tramp up 
 and down the floor late at night. I knew him 
 when he came back later to Pieve and made a 
 great sacrifice. He is good," she said looking 
 into the eyes of Maria Sant' Alcione, "he has a 
 good heart." 
 
 The contessa inclined her head. She heard the 
 bells tinkle on Benvenuto's horse and the rattle 
 of the wheels of the little victoria over the stones, 
 and not until then did the brutal truth that she 
 was going away from him rush in full force 
 upon her. 
 
 "I was with his wife when Armando was 
 born," said Elena, "and again with Lilli, and 
 then she died." 
 
 "Elena," said Maria, "tell some one to fetch 
 down my things." 
 
 Benvenuto thrust his head in at the door. 
 
 "Scusi, but if the Eccellenza wishes to catch 
 the train at Borgo she must come." 
 
 Elena went up-stairs. Maria looked eagerly 
 239
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 at the door. He should be here. Delia Gan- 
 dara should have been there ten minutes before. 
 Her heart throbbing, her cheeks already pale, 
 she clasped her hands and waited, crushing down 
 her desire to weep bitterly, and remained immov 
 able by the table where not three weeks before 
 she had sat and talked with him by the fire. 
 Elena fetched down the bags and carried them 
 out and chatted with Benvenuto. The horse 
 shook his irritating little bells. 
 
 In a few seconds Delia Gandara came running. 
 He entered hatless, as pale as death. He came 
 up to her, took her in his arms, strained her to 
 him, kissed her and let her go. She felt his face 
 cold and his eyes cold ; after murmuring the name 
 she had grown to adore, he said rapidly : 
 
 "It is quite understood, Maria, you are to go 
 to Frascati's and wait there and I will come, I 
 will come." 
 
 "Yes, yes," she breathed, clinging to him. 
 
 "In three days." 
 
 "Yes, in three days." 
 
 240
 
 Delia Gandara held her to him, gazed at her 
 as though he would imprint her features on his 
 soul: 
 
 "Come," he said then for the last time, "for 
 you must leave me." 
 
 Maria got into the carriage where Elena had 
 bestowed her things ; Benvenuto mounted to his 
 seat. Maria's blue eyes were wide with the 
 agony of parting, and with the fear just born in 
 her that she should never, never see him again. 
 She leaned toward him, oblivious of Elena, and 
 the peasant. 
 
 "You are going away!" he said between his 
 set lips. 
 
 "But you are coming to me in three days !" 
 
 In the face of them all, he could do no more 
 than say to her, his eyes on her : 
 
 " You are my family, my hearthstone, my chil 
 dren, my life!" 
 
 She held out both her hands, he saw the tears 
 stream over her face. 
 
 "Go," she said, "beloved, addio"
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 She drove out of the town, turned the curve, 
 then she bent forward, sank her face in her 
 hands, bursting into a passion of tears.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 A PASSIONATE PILGRIM 
 
 AT Frascati Maria asked for a suite of 
 rooms, and the proprietor of the reno 
 vated hotel, who stared at her in surprise, has 
 tily ordered a bedroom transformed for the guest 
 into a parlor. Meanwhile she waited for her lug 
 gage in the apartment he showed her. Through 
 the open window in the distance over Rome she 
 saw the mist hang, shot through with sun 
 light. Sweet garden smells, earth and flower 
 scents came to her on the caressing tender air, 
 unlike the rude tang of the mountain country. 
 From a tree close by an orchard thrush sang as 
 if to break his heart. "Pellegrina rondinella" 
 the lines of the school-room verse she had 
 learned long ago when she first began her studies 
 of Italian, came to her and she murmured them 
 243
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 aloud: "Pilgrim bird!" She was a pilgrim, a 
 real one, and had completed her first pilgrimage. 
 From Naples to Le Baize, then to Frascati. It 
 had not proved to be the kind of pilgrimage 
 Father Faversham and she planned together : it 
 had not been the spiritual retreat, the solitary 
 journey she had imagined. 
 
 "Go and find the immaculate source of a great 
 river, my child: it will be a beautiful pilgrim 
 age." She had forgotten that the source of the 
 Tiber was at Le Baize, she had only thought of 
 the River of Love and its relentless welling, its 
 eternal outpouring. She left the window to sit 
 and listen to the bird in the peach-tree while he 
 sang as though his song would rend his throat. 
 
 She could think a little more tranquilly than 
 on her rapid journey" from Pieve. Hitherto she 
 had been as one laid upon by enchantment, una 
 ble to meditate or reflect, able only to feel and to 
 remember. She might have had fever: no food 
 had passed her lips and her body felt parched 
 and dry, as her being was parched and unsatis- 
 244
 
 A PASSIONATE PILGRIM 
 
 fied. Every mile that took her from Delia Gan- 
 dara, from the sound of his voice, the dearness 
 of his presence, the touch of his caress, was a 
 living pain, a palpitating suffering. "If I had 
 been married to him all my life," she said over 
 and over, "I could not be more wedded to him." 
 Every image his fancy had evoked returned with 
 fresh charm to her, with fresh seduction, and if 
 spirits could blend in absence hers blent with his, 
 melted with his, until she quivered like a harp. 
 She had thus far made her lonely passionate pil 
 grimage like a runner obliged on pain of death 
 to reach a point before nightfall, and now she 
 rested, sank back in her comfortable chair, her 
 head against the cushions, her eyes blue under 
 their closed lids. 
 
 For the first time since she had started out a 
 sense of exhaustion overcame her. On her ar 
 rival at Lc Baize after her stormy climb, she had 
 been tired, worn out, healthily so: now she was 
 exhausted. She gave five lira to the maid who 
 came when she rang, made the girl unpack the 
 245
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 bags and prepare the bed and bath. The gentle 
 ministrations of the little maid, the sound of run 
 ning water into the deep marble basin, a por 
 phyry bath raped from the ruins of an antique 
 villa, soothed her, and she dozed until the maid 
 called her. She bathed with delight, remained 
 long in the perfumed water, then crept grate 
 fully into bed, and with the spring air blowing 
 through the open window, slept.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN 
 
 WHEN she awakened it was dark: the 
 window framed a square of blue 
 where one or two stars shone. In the peach-tree 
 the thrush had long ceased to sing, and in his 
 stead a nightingale from the oleander sang as if 
 to break his heart. 
 
 She had slept for five hours, then rose, open 
 ing the door into her sitting-room, and found it 
 ready. The moonlight along the floor lay warm 
 as sunset. Reluctant to look at beauty alone she 
 turned on a light, threw on her dressing-gown 
 and rang for supper. When it was served she 
 smiled at the conventional food and service, for 
 she had become a barbarian, used to primitive 
 and simple things, and the formal luxury of 
 even this unpretentious house was strange. 
 247
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 Later she paced the room with trained eye, to see 
 how she could make it beautiful. To-morrow 
 there should be flowers everywhere, and she 
 would discover some old bits of china and pot 
 tery, some pieces of old brocade in Frascati. 
 After to-morrow there would be two days. Re 
 freshed and rested as she had not been refreshed, 
 away from the impression and dominating power 
 of his presence in this stage between Pieve and 
 her future, she had time to take breath and rest. 
 She had shut her eyes and gone on blindly, 
 conscious that her outstretched hand as she 
 groped touched him at every turn. The fever, 
 the ecstasy, the rush of her feelings had carried 
 her on and she had not let herself think. The 
 struggle of the days before, the principles of her 
 life, had made no apparent impression upon her. 
 Indeed the woman's heart once set free, leaped to 
 her love, more spontaneously from the long re 
 straint. Delia Gandara made a picture that her 
 thoughts quickly found and dwelt on with 
 content. With the beauty of Pieve and its coun- 
 248
 
 SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN 
 
 try around him, his figure was romantic, tender. 
 Maria seemed to see him coming to her as she 
 mused, until the horizon was filled with him, he 
 grew colossal, overpowering . . . She flushed as 
 she sat and dreamed, then mechanically touched 
 the electric button, turned out the light, let the 
 moon stream in upon her, and so sat in the 
 spring night air, leaning upon her hands. 
 
 Slowly, matter-of-fact things one by one be 
 gan to claim place in her mind. Delia Gandara 
 would leave Pieve for ever, the old grandmother 
 would bring up his children. She could not take 
 them. She wanted no more children in her life! 
 Stolidly, cheerfully, hardily, honestly, the mat 
 ter-of-fact things began to take their places in 
 her sensuous idealistic dream. Delia Gandara's 
 future was in her hands now. He would leave 
 Pieve for ever. He would renounce his patients 
 and his sick and his poor, his little humble 
 family, his reputation that reached to Le Baize 
 as being a noble, honorable, self-sacrificing 
 brother of men. She would be alone to bring him 
 249
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 happiness, she must stand to him in place of 
 everything he had left. "I want you to be sacred 
 for me alone." 
 
 She was going to be that: she had made her 
 choice. 
 
 His voice as he had appealed to her in the 
 road before they entered Pieve rang through her 
 now, but she recalled, too, the other voice: 
 
 "But those were sacred women, Father Faver- 
 sham." 
 
 "And are you not sacred?" 
 
 Oh, no, no! 
 
 She stirred where she sat and the moonlight 
 jfell upon her knees like a veil. 
 
 If she had not gone to Pieve, he would have 
 flown to Rome this year; he had told her this, 
 and some other woman would have captured him : 
 or, as he had told her, he would have gone into 
 the Brotherhood of Sant' Angelo, unable longer 
 to endure his state. 
 
 Poor Father Faversham! She pitied the 
 priest who could not dream the bliss she knew ! 
 250
 
 SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN 
 
 As Maria mused there came vividly before her 
 the face of the priest as they stood in San Mar- 
 cello, and there was nothing pitiable in the flash 
 ing eyes, in his serene expression or in his dig 
 nity. 
 
 . . . But those 'were sacred women, Father 
 Faversham. 
 
 . . . And are not you? 
 
 She had never been happy, never until now. 
 It could not mean that she was losing her immor 
 tal soul, or that the bliss with a beloved being, 
 this union, meant that she was selling her salva 
 tion! 
 
 Without him she could not fancy existing any 
 more. Her husband cared so little for her, she 
 was doing him no wrong. What wrong in the 
 sight of God could be done to a man who broke 
 every law of the church and every law of wedded 
 life? She had made every honest effort to re 
 gain him, to remain faithful, she had tried to be 
 a good and dutiful wife, and he had not appre 
 ciated her. If he had once earnestly turned to 
 251
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 her, not even this great passion would have 
 caused her to break her marriage vows. 
 
 He had written her but once during the weeks 
 she had been gone, a letter which she had not 
 opened. She had found it waiting for her in 
 Pieve and had fetched it, still sealed, in her 
 dressing-bag. 
 
 She began to feel the night's chill. She 
 wrapped her traveling-cloak about her and be 
 gan to walk slowly to and fro in the room. The 
 nightingale's song without in the oleander sad 
 dened her. 
 
 The incense of the sweet melancholy music, the 
 lovely lonely song, sweetest when the world is 
 sleeping, the night itself and the perfumed air, 
 struck her as unutterably sad. One should never 
 enjoy beauty alone7- She shut the window, drew 
 the curtain, turned on the ugly commonplace 
 light, and, because it was a disagreeable thing 
 and she wanted to get the duty done, she took 
 her husband's letter from her dressing-bag and 
 opened it : 
 
 252
 
 "Dearest Maria: 
 
 "You have been gone three weeks. It seems 
 a thousand years. If I didn't know your beauti 
 ful character, I should think you had gone away 
 for ever. I'm sometimes afraid that this is so. 
 
 "But no, that couldn't be ! I know you are at 
 Le Baize with good Maria Goanelli, and you 
 are sad with her, thinking of darling Sandro. 
 Maria, do you know I am glad you went away. 
 I needed it. Since you went, everything has been 
 different. I see everything in a new light. It 
 is as though you had been standing in my light, 
 and had gone. The day after you left I sent 
 every one out of the house and closed it. Naples 
 became unendurable to me. I went to Rome and 
 came back. Maria, I have not seen a single soul 
 since you left. 77 Think of it ! No one except 
 ing Padre Moravesto. I confessed, took com 
 munion and went into a retreat. Think of it! 
 Maria, I feel clean as a child! Ah, Maria, that 
 is what I want to speak to you about. If only 
 we had a little child! Not a Sandro of course, 
 but another sweet child. It would save me, 
 Maria, I know it would. I should be a new man. 
 My brother Francesco is very ill. They say he 
 
 253
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 will not recover. When my brother dies I shall 
 be the last of the line. If Sandro had lived he 
 would have been the Duca de Sant' Alcione. 
 There will be nobody now to inherit, and the 
 name will die. I feel old and discouraged, Maria. 
 When I think perhaps you have left me for ever 
 I could die of misery. Be pitiful, Maria, be 
 merciful like the name you bear. Forgive me 
 once again. I am ashamed to ask it of you, but 
 I feel so new-born, so sure of myself. I pray 
 you to come soon. I will be in Rome to meet you 
 whenever you say. My wife! Ah, Maria, it 
 seems as if even now, I hear in the empty rooms 
 the sound of a baby's voice. My eyes are full of 
 tears. Come back to me, Maria. I was a good 
 father ; you said so often. And you were a 
 divine mother ... a sacred mother. Forgive the 
 father of your son.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE SHADOW OF ROME 
 
 THE woman standing at the table in the 
 room which she had taken for the meet 
 ing with her lover, read the letter slowly, turned 
 it over and read it again. She couldn't believe it 
 was from her husband. There was nothing in it 
 to suggest Gigi except the signature. It sounded 
 as though his spirit had suddenly been made 
 whole. There was a coherency in the words, a 
 sincerity. Terrible to her as it was, she was 
 obliged to confess that it sounded real: the need 
 seemed real, the plea seemed real, the words rang 
 true. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried aloud, "how terrible! how 
 cruel ! How dreadful for it to come to me now !" 
 
 She shuddered, gave a little gasping cry, and 
 sank on her knees before the big chair, burying 
 255
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 her face in her hands. After a long time, when 
 she had no more tears to weep, sentient but very 
 tired, she rose to her feet, and as it were heard 
 the great silence around her. She opened the 
 window into the garden, redolent and fragrant 
 with blossoms and flowers. The moonlight had 
 slowly withdrawn its veil, the nightingale had 
 stopped singing with the waning moon, and in 
 the distance, dark against the horizon, she could 
 see the shadow that was Rome.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE driver of the carriage that wound its 
 way from Frascati to Albano had re 
 ceived instructions from the signora to go slow 
 ly. Through the warm morning under a sky of 
 deepest blue the carrozza rolled gently along. 
 
 Maria had been unable to endure the hotel, 
 and had come out as early as possible, and was 
 fortunate to find an available vehicle to drive her 
 into the country. The color her mountain pil 
 grimage had given her was all gone : the fire her 
 love had kindled in her breast burned still, but 
 its radiance was no longer in her face. She sat 
 like a dead woman, blotting herself in the corner 
 of her carriage, her blue eyes unseeing, her 
 hands loosely clasped in her lap. She had said 
 to herself on this morning when with her waking 
 257
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 she realized her mental state: "This is what 
 comes of being a Puritan by stock and race, of 
 having repressed rigid ancestors what comes 
 of being called good. We are not fit to go into 
 paradise, our eyes are so blinded by convention 
 that we can not even see the door. Now," she 
 said to herself as she drove past the tufty cedars 
 and the blue cypress lining the walls of an an 
 cient villa, "it is evident that I do not love San- 
 dro if I can contemplate returning to my hus 
 band." 
 
 There was a clamor at her heart at the idea of 
 this treason, and the going out of her being to 
 Delia Gandara showed her that she loved him 
 with all her nature, all her senses . . . with 
 all her soul ? 
 
 She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and the 
 tears came. 
 
 "Gentile Signora eccellenza," said the coach 
 man turning on his seat, "we have but to climb 
 the hill and we will see the most beautiful view 
 in the country." 
 
 258
 
 THE TWO VOICES 
 
 "Andiamo, andiamo," she murmured. 
 
 There was no divorce in Italy. If she left her 
 husband she could never marry Delia Gandara : 
 Gigi could never marry another woman : all three 
 of them would be outcasts: the future lives of 
 three people would be irregular because of her. 
 If she returned to her husband, she would never 
 see Delia Gandara again. She knew his tempera 
 ment too well. If she returned to her husband 
 she would lose her love for ever. Clasping her 
 hands tightly she leaned forward in the car 
 riage, her attitude appealing as though she 
 called on the unseen to come to her aid. The 
 spring wind blew its pale kiss against her cheek. 
 Alongside the heavy trolley sagged; the horse 
 drawing Maria's carriage stumbled and the 
 coachman smartly cracked his whip. 
 
 . . . So long as he believed that she loved 
 him, neither sea nor land, laws nor ceremonies, 
 life nor death would keep him from her; that 
 she knew. He would overcome everything in or 
 der to hold her again. In order to keep him from 
 259
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 her she would be obliged to make him believe 
 that she was a heartless coquette who had amused 
 herself with his love. Could she do this? A 
 ghostly smile touched her beautiful lips and left 
 them cold and passive. She regretted that she 
 had not remained in Pieve, remained there with 
 him, and, as he had done, made it her exile and 
 her home. In the next moment she felt indiffer 
 ent to it all, apart from it, and could almost feel 
 that her experience had been that of another 
 person of some woman in whose life she must 
 take an interest by force of circumstances. No, 
 evidently she was not worthy a great passion, 
 evidently nothing but a poor creature made to 
 fulfil her humdrum duty. 
 
 She had boasted to Father Faversham : "You 
 shall see: if love comes to me I will be a great 
 sinner." She had been weak, unfaithful in desire 
 and intention, but a great sinner against her hus 
 band she had not been. 
 
 What would the man she loved do with the 
 rest of his life? A little sound in her throat came 
 260
 
 THE TWO VOICES 
 
 like a gasp. He had told her what he would have 
 
 done if she had never come to the Tiber country. 
 
 "Innamorata mia," he had said, "you have 
 
 come in time to save me from great emotion, 
 
 great folly, and who can say, perhaps from 
 
 sainthood as well, for this year I had decided not 
 
 to endure my wretched existence another month. 
 
 I should have gone back into the world, to Rome, 
 
 to Paris, and I should have lived . . . " 
 
 Then they had been entering Pieve and he had 
 
 pointed up to the monastery of Sant' Angelo 
 
 . . . "I should have returned there to have 
 
 finished my life beyond those friendly walls." 
 
 The driver stopped his horse. 
 
 "Here, Signora," he said, indicating with his 
 
 whip, "is the most beautiful view in all the coun- 
 
 try." 
 
 "E bene, e bene" she murmured, "let us stop." 
 
 "I can not let him go," she said under her 
 
 breath. She knew then how she loved him. His 
 
 eyes, his voice, his "Come" that had fetched her 
 
 from Naples and the valley to him, the caresses 
 
 261
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 to which she had responded, all were a tremen 
 dous emotion, and yet it was not supreme. 
 
 Why she asked herself why? What was 
 there in that other "Come, Maria," from a 
 man who had treated her with infamy and shame, 
 what was there that could draw her away from 
 a lover and his tenderness ? she asked. 
 
 By the side of his horse the coachman stood 
 smoking his cigarette, and feeding the animal 
 an occasional wisp of wayside grass. A pair of 
 lovers, young country-folk from Albano, passed 
 arm in arm, radiant, free to love in the spring 
 time, with the right to build themselves a happy 
 nest. 
 
 To the right spread the glorious vista. 
 
 Down through the valley ran the Tiber, wide, 
 milky, gleaming in the sun, sweeping its silver 
 through the golden campagna. Far to the north, 
 Maria knew how far, rose the walls and summits 
 of the Apennines, and a faint gleam marked the 
 snow on the peaks, that melted into the blue of 
 the incomparable heaven. 
 282
 
 THE TWO VOICES 
 
 She knew what snows they were : they had laid 
 their veils, their wreaths, their shrouds around 
 the hut in Le Baize and she had ridden Gemma 
 through them bravely to him; and through the 
 snows he had come to her. Now at the foot of 
 those mountains he waited for her to send him 
 word. She could see the entire sweep of the fer 
 tile valley, jeweled by its ruins, blackly sen 
 tineled by cypress and cedar, honeycombed by 
 its aqueducts, and the winding river as it ran to 
 dazzling Fiemicino. 
 
 Her eyes followed it, heavily, slowly, defi 
 nitely : followed the river as it ran to its mouth, 
 and she relinquished and renounced, committed 
 all to the effacing element which he saw through 
 the mist that whitened the distance where the sea 
 lay. 
 
 "The horse is warm," said the driver lifting 
 his hat. "He is not very strong: the air is 
 fresh." 
 
 "Va bene," said Maria Sant' Alcione, "let us 
 go back to Frascati."
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE WAY TO HAPPINESS 
 
 THE Contessa Sant' Alcione sat in the win 
 dow of her boudoir that looked upon Na 
 ples. The hillside golden with autumn, the gold 
 of the vineyards, the gold of the light itself, 
 glowed under her eyes like a ripe fruit. The 
 beautiful room, full of flowers, sweet with the 
 scent of violets, had the air of being inhabited 
 by some one who loved its environment, of being 
 the home of a woman who is happy and who is 
 at peace. 
 
 Between her fingers the contessa swung to and 
 fro a golden rubber orange on its string before 
 the eyes of a child who sat on her knees, whose 
 hands clutched at the yellow wonder; the baby's 
 laugh was sweet as little bells. 
 
 The mother wore a dress of vivid blue, a 
 264
 
 THE WAY TO HAPPINESS 
 
 woolen dress, for she had been walking, and by 
 her side were her hat and gloves which she had 
 thrown down to take up her child. Her dark 
 hair laid its shadow around her charming face; 
 her blue eyes were fixed on her son, whose gaze 
 followed the swinging ball. He was a vigorous 
 child, less ethereal and exquisite than little San- 
 dro, a child to live, to endure, to struggle up, to 
 sustain his family and his race. 
 
 Maria drew the baby's dark head to her and 
 kissed it passionately, then resting her cheek 
 against its hair she turned her eyes toward Na 
 ples in the autumn light. Her husband was hunt 
 ing, and would not be home until evening. The 
 body of the child was warm against her heart. 
 The baby now held the orange ball in both hands 
 and laughed over it. 
 
 The door slowly opened and a guest to whom 
 the freedom of the charming room was given, 
 came in. 
 
 "Father Faversham," said the contessa with 
 out turning her head. 
 
 265
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 The priest came over and sat down beside the 
 mother and child. The baby looked at the priest 
 with friendly eyes, gave his little hand when 
 asked, then cradled his orange ball and talked 
 to it. 
 
 "Well," said the priest, "I've just come back 
 from San Marcello." 
 
 The contessa turned to him abruptly, almost 
 expectantly. 
 
 "I grew tired of waiting for you, Contessa. I 
 had a feeling you would not cicerone me again, 
 so I went alone." 
 
 "I have never been to San Marcello in the 
 autumn," she said. 
 
 "It was even more lovely than in spring. The 
 yellow leaves filled the garden as though it were 
 a cup brimming with. gold. The cloisters were 
 full of drifted yellow leaves ; the cedar was still 
 green, and the orange tree as well, but I missed 
 the bird. I found it greatly changed as no 
 doubt you know. 'Tis no longer the solitary for 
 gotten place of prayers long said. One of the 
 266
 
 THE WAY TO HAPPINESS 
 
 exiled French Orders has taken it, and some of 
 the brothers are already installed." 
 
 "So you found it unchanged?" murmured 
 Maria Sant' Alcione, for she had not heard him. 
 He smiled. 
 
 "Why, I've just been telling you that it has 
 grown alive and will be a living active good, in 
 stead of a dead relic ; and there is another change, 
 a charming one. Do you remember the broken 
 bell? It has been recast, its tone is unblemished. 
 The guardian tells me that it rings for all the 
 offices. It rang while I was in the belfry. I 
 never heard anything so sweet." 
 
 Maria had now fully turned to the priest and 
 her eyes were on him over the dark head of the 
 child. 
 
 "How very strange!" she said. She seemed 
 again to feel the fissure as it ran along her palm 
 when she had caressed the bronze bell, broken 
 from lip to stem. She heard again the muffled 
 heavy tone, she saw her glove with the scarred 
 palm as it had lain upon the warm stones of the 
 267
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 belfry. Against her heart, which had not yet 
 ceased to ache, she pressed her child. 
 
 "Rather say how beautiful," returned the 
 priest "a mender of old breaches, of waste 
 places, behold all things are made new," he 
 quoted softly, his smiling eyes on the happy face 
 of the baby. 
 
 Maria's chin rested on her son's curls; her 
 face was pale, and her eyes, where the color had 
 deepened, saw beyond the quiet room and Naples, 
 to the snow of Le Baize, to the fragrant forest, 
 to the belfry of Sant' Angelo, and she heard 
 Delia Gandara say : "It is a perfect bell, with 
 out blemish in the casting; listen to its heavenly 
 tone." 
 
 "Contessa," said the priest suddenly, leaning 
 forward. I "There are-as many ways to happiness 
 in this world as there are human souls, believe 
 me. Every soul would find its own bliss if it 
 would walk in its individual road, praying God. 
 There are those who disgrace their ideals, of 
 course, some of us in the belief that desire is 
 268
 
 THE WAY TO HAPPINESS 
 
 happiness, that gratification is pleasure, soil our 
 selves in vain. There are those whose minds and 
 hearts are so clean that only purity and good 
 ness can ever give them any peace. There are 
 women" he lowered his voice, watching her face 
 as it bent over the child, "who, because they are 
 sacred, lay down their luxury and their pleasure, 
 their bodily gratification, their love and their 
 passion at the feet of goodness. Whether they 
 found happiness or not the Book does not say. 
 I think they did I believe they did." J 
 
 Maria's arms were around her child; her face 
 was intent, there was a purity about her expres 
 sion, softened by its motherhood, etherealized by 
 its renunciation. 
 
 "And you," Faversham said, "are one of those 
 sacred women." 
 
 She shook her head, the tears sprang to her 
 eyes, her lip trembled. 
 
 "No, no, Father Faversham," she began ar 
 dently, "you don't dream, you don't know what 
 I am." 
 
 269
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 He lifted his hand and said gently: "Hush, 
 Maria." 
 
 He made over the mother and the child the 
 sign of the cross rapidly and said in Latin: 
 "Peace I give unto you."
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE MOTHER CHURCH 
 
 THAT evening Faversham sat with Sant' 
 Alcione on the terrace of the villa over 
 their liqueurs and cigars, which Alcione alone en 
 joyed. The two men were friends. Sant' Alcione 
 had always liked the Irishman, and the priest 
 found his host very much changed. Sant' 
 Alcione had grown thinner; a long illness in the 
 summer had reduced his weight, and his regular 
 abstemious existence, his inward content, had re 
 fined his features. According to public opinion 
 he had settled down and the Sant' Alciones had 
 become bourgeois and uninteresting as far as the 
 world was concerned. 
 
 Standing within the doorway between terrace 
 and dining-room, in her white dress, Maria lis 
 tened to her husband's conversation with the 
 priest without taking part. 
 271
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 "Maria," her husband called, "I have a letter 
 from Carlo Rospinosi in Rome. He was my best 
 man," he said to Faversham. "You know Delia 
 Gandara who was so hospitable to you in Pieve, 
 Maria P" 
 
 She had taken hold of the curtain that fell at 
 her side and stood immovable. 
 
 "Do you hear, Maria?" repeated Sant' Al- 
 cione, and she was obliged to answer: "Yes, I 
 hear." 
 
 "Well, he has gone into the priesthood; such 
 a gay, wild, harebrained chap, with a curious 
 history," he said to the priest. 
 
 Sant' Alcione struck a match sharply, lighted 
 a fresh cigarette and crossed his legs. 
 
 "But of all things to go into the church, for 
 a man like Sandro! But the priesthood harbors 
 all sorts and conditions of men, non e vero, padre 
 mio?" 
 
 "Yes," returned Father Faversham gently, 
 "its embrace is wide and its heart is profound in 
 deed." 
 
 272
 
 THE MOTHER CHURCH 
 
 To his wife Sant' Alcione said: "He has en 
 tered the brotherhood at Pieve, a very old order, 
 I believe, a fine historic monastery. Possibly you 
 may have visited it, Maria?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, and turned as though she 
 would have gone indoors, then instead came out 
 slowly, her white dress drawing its satin lightly 
 along the floors of the terrace. She stood a sec 
 ond by her husband's side looking at Father Fa- 
 versham, and her eyes met the priest's, then she 
 crossed the terrace and seated herself on the stone 
 wall. Beneath her lay Naples under the night, 
 sown with its lights like an illuminated tapestry. 
 There were the lights of the harbor and port, 
 the lights along the sides of Vesuvius, and the 
 stars overhead. One by one the bells rang out 
 from the belfries, and in the direction of the 
 Porta Capuana quarter she fancied that she dis 
 tinguished the ringing of a bell she had not 
 heard before. She knew the different sounds and 
 loved them all this seemed to call to her across 
 the night, and she thought: "It is perfect now, 
 273
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 it rings at the same hour with the perfect bell 
 that marks his hours of prayer." 
 
 The voices of her husband and the priest were 
 agreeable at her side, in the room above her child 
 was asleep. And the man in Pieve? 
 
 Not once since she had left Frascati, after 
 writing him a letter and a telegram to tell him 
 that it was the mistake of a fickle woman and 
 that she did not love him not once had she dared 
 to let his suffering and his solitude absorb her. 
 She had taken her decision and acted instantly. 
 If she had waited a day or an hour longer she 
 never would have been equal to the sacrifice. She 
 fled from Frascati, as she had fled from Naples, 
 and from Rome, had gone with her husband to 
 travel for a year, and old wounds and old bruises 
 healed in new scenes. "- 
 
 After the birth of Her child, often in quiet 
 times such as this afternoon before the priest 
 had come to tell her of San Marcello and the bell, 
 she had wondered, realizing that she had been 
 saved from great sin as well as having been de- 
 274
 
 THE MOTHER CHURCH 
 
 nied a great love she had wondered what power 
 had saved her. 
 
 She knew that of herself she could not have 
 done this thing: nothing in her wished to be 
 saved. The only existence she had desired was a 
 life with the man she so humanly loved. At these 
 times of wonder she recalled stages of her pil 
 grimage, the passing of the solitary woman 
 through the Le Baize forest, the superstitious 
 Adamo on his knees, the strange woman in the 
 black-raftered inn, Maria Goanelli's sick child 
 at her breast. Once again she heard the nurse 
 exclaim : "Madonna, Madonna !" and the mystic 
 child whose glory had infused her that night in 
 her attic room, became symbolic, and she won 
 dered if, in place of a sinful human woman an 
 angel had not taken her place to save a soul. 
 
 This afternoon, however, Maria found that 
 she had not yet reached an ultimate spiritual 
 height; that she was still a feeling suffering 
 heart. And she acknowledged that always there 
 had been in her mind the hope of a future toward 
 275
 
 THE BROKEN BELL 
 
 which she yearned, and for which she uncon 
 sciously lived. Now the finality of Delia Gan- 
 dara's act, his taking of the orders meant an 
 everlasting separation. His thoughts even would 
 belong to God. She could not reach him now ex 
 cept by prayer. She believed his ardent nature, 
 his fervent spirit, would turn him as passionately 
 to devotion and to God as it had turned him to 
 her. A terrible loneliness swept over her: she 
 could have wept aloud. 
 
 Her husband rose. 
 
 "Maria, you'll be chilled on that cold stone. 
 Come, carissima, let us go indoors." 
 
 She rose, came toward him obediently ; he put 
 his arm around her and led her in. 
 
 Father Faversham followed slowly, but paused 
 at the window to enjoy the autumn night for a 
 few moments more. The motionless sea lay pale 
 beneath the stars ; as he looked a meteor shot 
 across the heavens and was lost. The ship for 
 whose safety they had been anxious lay anchored 
 in the port. He was not thinking of what he saw 
 276
 
 
 His thoughts even would belong to God.
 
 THE MOTHER CHURCH 
 
 but of the woman whose eyes just now had met 
 his with confession and distress. Her soul was 
 precious to him, but he believed it to be safe; 
 her happiness was precious to him, and he be 
 lieved it to be assured. His lips moved silently 
 and he remained for a moment praying, his head 
 bent and his hands held against his breast as 
 though he clasped some emblem there; then he. 
 too, turned and went into the villa. 
 
 THE END
 
 A\\E-UNIVER$//j
 
 
 UCSOUTHERN EGJONA LIBRARY FACJL T^