Beggars on Horseback

e ceased to be. It struck her as curious that the prevailing note of those weeks should have been a sense of utter peace; not realizing that, peace being the thing his frayed nerves craved, she ther

she had not stopped to analyse what his need w

gination she could project herself into passion, always shrank from any sign of it in actuality, was reserved the doubtful compliment of stirring the passionate side of the man's nature more violently than it had ever been before. He kept the ugly thing well hidden, and she never guessed at it until her own pity and trust and affection made her unwittingly tempt him beyond endurance. Pity, allied to the intellectual pleasure they took in each other, moved her first, for he was unhappy, and she, too, had the habit of pain. She remembered the first whole day they had taken together; how they climbed up to San Miniato and found a field in which they lay and talked, and how he came back with her to the thirteenth-century palace beside the Arno where she lodged. She had a little room with a painted

r good-and strong enough to go on living in the same house with her because, although she made his life a weariness, she was an intensely conventional woman to whom the position of a wife separated from her husband before all th

ee less of him. But Sophia let herself drift, because she liked being with the man so much; and also the fact that he was from her own place, that the relentless gods had brought him to Florence to meet her, and would, in due cou

I thought we should just see each other a few times and quarrel and laugh, and I should revel in your looks and no harm done. And now little Miss Jervis has turned into Sophia, and either I must have Sophia for ever an

r. He argued that because they would be honestly "playing the game" by his wife, Sophia need not mind the meeting; his knowledge of women was curiously insensitive and blunt, and he had no conception of how impossible it would be for Sophia to sit quietly and see another woman doing the honours of his house. In this he was not entirely to blame, for Sophia so contrived to hoodwink him that he never qui

he Turneresque effect of a ruined castle set high amidst a mass of olives which were being blown pale against it. Presently they came to a stream that stormed down the valley and fell into seven successive pools; deep, still pools, as green as ice, with sunlit bubbles sent driving through them by the impetus of the clear arch of descending water. Beside the largest pool, on a smooth grey slab of rock screened by the over-hanging cliff, they sat and ate their lunch of bread and hard-boiled eggs and wine, and the sun shone on the glossy red-brown hair so cunningly folded about Sophia's head, and shone in the depths of her grey eyes and on her tanned skin. When they had finished she lay a little below him, closing her eyes

ake a sketch of the tower for a friend who was "sheeking" some Italian backgrounds. Sophia wander

e it can't be as perfect as yesterday. Nothi

, that she was happy with him and felt the power to make him happy, and that she trusted him utterly. Without realizing it, she tempted him cruelly by her ver

r glove," he

omptings of the pulses? Because she felt no sensuous "thrill" as the tone of command, it never occurred to her to think she could be in love, wherein she was making another common literary mistake-that of thinking that

an in the way it would have, even a day or two ago. I told you th

d moved slig

in a way-of course. I know you'

your hand. D'you know what the life of an average

mean-

d brutally. "Does it make

dwell with any effort of realization on his

u-if you were free to be looked after-you wouldn't have to go to other

I've been in love a good many times. And there's always the big one I've told you about. I feel

proudly, clenching her free hand, "that

o . . . Sophia!" he crie

ia, and to soften the speech she bent her

huskily, and Sophia led

sat up, smoking heavily, most of the night. Towards morning, he wrote her a letter-the f

London must happen, but if I had you by me now I shouldn't care a damn for that. I feel stupid and stockish. There are such millions of things I want to say to you, Sophia-and they're mostly middle-aged things. That's the worst of it. Warnings I feel I ought to give you about myself and my temper and my terrible ease in giving way to adverse circumstances. I've told you I'm not big enough or strong enough for you to care for me except as a useful old pal. You'll find me out and hate me. All sorts of ghastly bogies are waiting to jump out at me. They'll get me. But you, dear, you gr

over a broken gap sat down on a grassy spur of the hillside, with their backs to the terrible little town. As usual, by now, they talked about themselves, chiefly of him, and he told her that though several women had been fond of him as a friend and liked to "mother" him even as she

a bit cut out of life for me to give you. It's taking nothing from her, she doesn't

a sucking of her very soul-and she was filled with horror under it. When he loosed her she turned and buried her face against the wall. For a while they sat in silence, then she saw him kissing her coat, her sleeve, then her head was pressed back against the wall and his mouth came to hers again. She sta

d Florence, they came on a tiny sportsman's hut with a roof of red-fluted tiles and a huge chimney. Sophia peeped and went in; he followed. Within, the hut was only abo

sleep?" he as

inking what I shoul

t wa

esterday. I didn't know it was like th

r hands an

. I didn't know what to think or wish or do

nd peace was stronger than if it had never been broken. Very soon came their last day together. They

l to you. We'll pretend, like children. We'll pretend there's only to-day in the world, t

cted garden of the old castle, left discreetly alone by Lucia and Amadea, the little peasant custodians who lived with a beetle-browed mother and a score of younger children in the tower over the gate. It was Lucia who ventured an opi

nd, with her arms round him, she drew his head on to her breast, and they p

e quoted to her. "Would you d

not?" she

sible!" he cried at last, but she shuddered a lit

very true that "Les bonnes femmes n'ont pas ces tentations-là," partly because of the much greater things she wanted to give-a hearth that would al

for Leghorn. He wrote to her in the train; and bringing her thought

suppose I shall forget my own wickedness and even come to regret that I didn't take more-take all by force or guile-for perhaps, after all, it's better to be a downright brute than a half-and-halfer. If so, shan't I be even more unworthy of all you've given me, you sweet, foolish, lavish child? If you were here now, Sophia, I shouldn't be feeling all this. You'd only have to smile at me and I should get back my pride in having won what I have won. But without you I seem to see more clearly what I am. My sweet, wouldn't you be happier if you saw me so, too? All I feel now is a desperate need of you, your hands and your hair and your eyes and your mouth and your voice and your wit and your dear mothering. And next month? Secret meetings and concerted lies, and all the rest of the filthy game? And I drag you into it all because I want you and because my affairs make it necessary to do it or part for good. I'm trying to look at it clearly and see all the worst-misunderstandings, preoccupation, work, moods, fears, all the things that are going to prevent a wretched thing like me from being where he wants to be and doing what he could for you. I wish from

cha

ruth all these miles away. You see, that brave, wise letter of yours might have meant a huge effort of the will and brain, and not be a direct outflow from the you that gave me those days. Shall I ever see that you again, I wonder? Your letter's like the touch of your lips on my forehead-cooling, healing, bracing and most sweet. Dear, you're not only all I've told you before that you are, but you're wise as well. Oh! child, girl, most wonderfully woman-wise. My sweet, what you could do for me if only we could belong to each other. Sophia, I'm

lles. The last page, which Soph

that at our Castello di Luna. But oh, my dear, I wish it were really true now! There is so much I want from you and must go on wanting. Come to me in thought, my sweet, until we can see and touch and hear each other again. We will always say to each other whatever is in our hearts and minds. And so I'm just starting to go back-Sophia, I can't say 'home.' Home means what you are. Oh, I thought I should go back gaily and take it all up, but it makes me sic

cha

ag. Behind her the sun was near to setting, and the blaze of it lay full on the towers, making them a bright tawny-grey against the sky of deep steel-colour, and turning to tongues of flame the tufts of yellow gillyfl

earably. I wish I hadn't come. I'll go a

the walled garden. Not until she was installed there did she discover that though the house was compara