“Un amour rechauffe ne vaut jamais rien,” is one
of those common-places in the book of love, which
are true only of the common-place and unimaginative.
The rich gifts of affection, which surfeit the cold
bosom of the dull, fall upon the fiery heart of genius
like spice-wood and incense, and long after the giver's
prodigality has ceased, the mouldering embers lie
warm beneath the ashes of silence, and a breath will
uncover and rekindle them. The love of common
men is a world without moon or stars. When the
meridian is passed, the shadows lengthen, and the
light departs, and the night that follows is dark indeed.
But as the twilight closes on the bright and warm passion
of the poet, memory lights her pale lamp, like
the moon, and brightens as the darkness deepens; and
the warm sacrifices made in love's noon and eve, go
up to their places like stars, and with the light treasured
from that fervid day, shine in the still heaven of
the past, steadfast though silent. If there is a feature
of the human soul in which more than in all others,
the fiend is manifest, it is the masculine ingratitude
for love. What wrongs, what agonies, what unutterable
sorrows are the reward of lavished affection, of
generous self-abandonment, of unhesitating and idolatrous
trust! Yet who are the ungrateful? Men lacking
the imagination which can reclose the faded form
in its youthful beauty! Men dead to the past—with
no perception but sight and touch—to whom woman
is a flower and no more—fair to look on and sweet to
pluck in her pride and perfume but scarce possessed
ere trampled on and forgotten! Genius alone treasures
the perishing flower and remembers its dew and fragrance,
and so, immemorially and well, poets have been
beloved of women.

I am recording the passions of genius. Let me
say to you, lady! (reading this tale understandingly,
for you have been beloved by a poet), trust neither
absence, nor silence, nor untoward circumstances!
He has loved you once. Let not your eye rest on
him when you meet—and if you speak, speak coldly!
For, with a passion strengthened and embellished
tenfold by a memory all imagination, he will love you
again! The hours you passed with him—the caresses
you gave him, the tears you shed, and the beauty
with which you bewildered him, have been hallowed
in poetry, and glorified in revery and dream, and he
will come back to you as he would spring into paradise
were it so lost and recovered!

But to my story!

Clay's memory had now become the home of an allabsorbing
passion. By a succession of mischances,
or by management so adroit as never to alarm his pride,
a week passed over, and he had found no opportunity
of speaking alone to the object of his adoration. She
favored him in public, talked to him at the opera,
leaned on his arm in the crowd, caressed his genius
with exquisite flattery, and seemed at moments to
escape narrowly from a phrase too tender or a subject
that would lead to the past—yet without a violation
of the most palpable tact, love was still an impossible
topic. That he could have held her hand in his, unforbidden—
that he could have pressed her to his
bosom while she wept—that she could have loved
him ever, though but for an hour—seemed to him
sometimes an incredible dream, sometimes a most
passionate happiness only to believe. He left her at
night to pace the sands of the bay till morning, remembering—
for ever remembering—the scene by the
fountain at Florence; and he passed his day between
her palace and the picture of poor Incontri, who loved
her more hopelessly than himself, but found a sympathy
in the growing melancholy of the poet.

“She has no heart,” said the painter; but Clay had
felt it beat against his own, and he fed his love in
silence on that remembrance.

They sat upon the rocks by the gate of the Villa
Real. The sun was just setting and as the waves
formed near the shore and rode in upon the glassy

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swell of the bay, there seemed to writhe on each wavy
back a golden serpent, who broke on the sands at their
feet in sparkles of fire. At a little distance lay the
swallow-like yacht, in which Clay had threaded the
Archipelago, and as the wish to feel the little craft
bounding once more beneath him, was checked by the
anchor-like heaviness of his heart, an equestrian party
stopped suddenly on the chiaja.

“There is Mr. Clay!” said the thrilling voice of
Julia Beverley, “perhaps he will take us over in the
yacht. Sorrento looks so blue and tempting in the
distance.”

Without waiting for a repetition of the wish he
had overheard, Clay sprang upon a rock, and made
signal for the boat, and before the crimson of the departing
day had faded from the sky, the fair Julia and
her party of cavaliers, were standing on the deck of the
swift vessel, bound on a moonlight voyage to Sorrento,
and watching on their lee the reddening ribs and lurid
eruption of the volcano. The night was Neapolitan,
and the air was the food of love.

It was a voyage of silence, for the sweetness of lifein
such an atmosphere and in the midst of that matchless
bay, lay like a voluptuous burthen in the heart,
and the ripple under the clearing prow was language
enough for all. Incontri leaned against the mast,
watching the moonlit features of the signora with his
melancholy but idolizing gaze, and Clay lay on the
deck at her feet, trying with pressed-down lids to recall
the tearful eyes of the Julia Beverley he had loved at
the fountain.

It was midnight when the breath of the orange
groves of Sorrento, stealing seaward, slackened the
way of the little craft, and running in close under the
rocky foundations of the house of Tasso, Clay dropped
his anchor, and landed his silent party at their haven.
Incontri was sent forward to the inn to prepare their
apartments, and leaning on Clay's arm and her husband's,
the superb Englishwoman ascended to the
overhanging balcony of the dwelling of the Italian
bard, and in a few words of eloquent sympathy in the
homage paid by the world to these shrines of genius,
added to the overflowing heart of her gifted lover one
more intoxicating drop of flattery and fascination.
They strolled onward to the inn, and he bade her good
night at the gate, for he could no longer endure the
fetter of another's presence, and the emotion stifled in
his heart and lips.

I have forgotten the name of that pleasant inn at
Sorrento, built against the side of its mountain shore,
with terraced orange-groves piled above its roof, and
the golden fruit nodding in at its windows. From the
principal floor, you will remember, projects a broad
verandah, jutting upon one of these fruit-darkened
alleys. If you have ever slept there after a scramble
over Scaricatoja, you have risen, even from your
fatigued slumber, to go out and pace awhile that overhanging
garden, oppressed with the heavy perfume of
the orange flowers. Strange that I should forget the
name of that inn! I thought, when the busy part of
my life should be well over, I should go back and die
there.

The sea had long closed over the orbed forehead of
the moon, and still Clay restlessly hovered around the
garden of the inn. Mounting at last to the alley on
a level with the principal chambers of the house, he
saw outlined in shadow upon the curtain of a long
window, a female figure holding a book, with her
cheek resting on her hand. He threw himself on the
grass and gazed steadily. The hand moved from the
cheek, and raised a pencil from the table, and wrote
upon the margin of the volume, and then the pencil
was laid down, and the slender fingers raised the
masses of fallen hair from the shoulder, and threaded
the wavy ringlets indolently as she read: From the
slightest motion of that statuary hand, from the most
fragmented outline of that bird-like neck, Clay would
have known Julia Beverley; and as he watched her
graceful shadow, the repressed and pent-up feelings
of that evening of restraint, fed as they had been by
every voluptuous influence known beneath the moon,
rose to a height that absorbed brain and soul in one
wild tumult of emotion. He sprang to his feet to rush
into her presence, but at that instant a footstep started
from the darkness of a tree, at the extremity of the
alley. He paused and the shadow arose, and laying
aside the book, leaned back, and lifted the tapering
arms, and wound up the long masses of fallen hair,
and then kneeling, remained a few minutes motionless,
with the face buried in the hands.

Clay trembled and felt rebuked.

Once more the flowing drapery swept across the
curtain, the light was extinguished, and the window
thrown open to the night air; and then all was still.

Clay walked to and fro in an agitation bordering on
delirium. “I must speak to her!” he said, murmuring
audibly, and advancing toward the window. But
hurried footsteps started again from the shadow of the
pine, and he stopped to listen. All was silent, and
he stood a moment pressing his hands on his brow,
and trying to struggle with the wild impulse in his
brain. His closed eyes brought back instantly the
unfading picture of Julia Beverley, weeping on his
breast at the fountain, and with one rapid movement
he divided the curtains and stood breathless in her
chamber.

The heavy breathing of the unconscious husband
fell like music on his ear.

“Julia!” he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, “I am
here—Ernest Clay!”

“You are frantic, Ernest!” said a voice so calm
that it fell on his ear like an assurance of despair.
“I have no feeling for you that answers to this freedom.
Leave my chamber!”

“No!” said Clay, dropping the curtain behind him,
and advancing into the room, “wake your husband if
you will—this is the only spot on earth where I can
breathe, and if you are relentless, here will I die!
Was it false when you said you loved me? Speak,
Julia!”

“Ernest!” she said, in a less assured tone, “I have
done wrong not to check this wild passion earlier, and
I have that to say to you which, perhaps, had better
be said now. I will come to you in the garden.”

“My vessel waits, and in an hour—”

“Nay, nay, you mistake me. But go! I will
follow instantly!”

Vesuvius was burning with an almost smokeless
flame when Clay stood again in the night-air, and every
object was illuminated with the clearness of a conflagration.
At the first glance around, he fancied he
saw figures gliding behind the lurid body of a pine
opposite the window, but in the next moment the curtain
again parted, and Julia Beverley, wrapped in a
cloak, stood beside him on the verandah.

“Stand back!” she said, as he endeavored to put
his arm around her, “I have more than one defender
within call, and I must speak to you where I am.
Will you listen to me, Ernest?”

Clay's breast heaved; but he folded his arms and
leaned against the slender column of the verandah in
silence.

“Were it any other person who had so far forgotten
himself,” she continued, “it would be sufficient
to say, `I can never love you,' and leave my privacy
to be defended by my natural protector. But I wish
to show to you, Ernest, not only that you can have
no hope in loving me, but that you have made me the
mischievous woman I have become. From an humble
wife to a dangerous coquette, the change may
well seem startling—but it is of your working.”

“Mine, madam!” said Clay, whose pride was

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aroused with the calm self-possession and repulse of
her tone and manner.

“I have never answered the letter you wrote me.”

“Pardon and spare me!” said Clay, who remembered
at the instant only the whim under which it
was written.

“It awoke me to a new existence,” she continued,
without heeding his confusion, “for it first made me
aware that I could ever be the theme of eloquent admiration.
I had never been praised but in idle compliment,
and by those whose intellect I despised; and
though as a girl I had a vague feeling that I was
slighted and unappreciated, I yielded gradually to the
conviction that the world was right, and that women
sung by poets and described in the glowing language
of romance, were of another mould, I scarce reasoned
upon it. I remember, on first arriving in Italy,
drawing a comparison favorable to myself between
my own beauty and the Fornarina's, and the portraits
of Laura and Leonora D'Este; but as I was loved by
neither painters nor poets, I accused myself of presumption,
and with a sigh, returned to my humility.
My life seemed more vacant than it should be, and I
sometimes wept from an unhappiness I could not define;
and I once or twice met persons who seemed
to have begun to love me, and appreciate my beauty
as I wished, and in this lies the history of my heart
up to the time of your writing to me. That letter,
Ernest—”

“You believed that I loved you then!” passionately
interrupted her listener, “you know now that I
loved you! Tell me so, I implore you!”

“My dear poet,” said the self-possessed beauty,
with a smile expressive of as much mischief as frankness,
“let us be honest. You never loved me! I
never believed it but for one silly hour! Stay!—
stay!—you shall not answer me! I have not left my
bed at this unseasonable hour to listen to protestations.
At least, let me first conclude the history of
my metempsychosis! I can tell it to nobody else,
and like the Ancient Mariner's, it is a tale that must
be told. Revenons! Your very brilliant letter awoke
me from the most profound lethargy by which beauty
such as mine was ever overtaken. A moment's inventory
of my attractions satisfied me that your exquisite
description (written, I have since suspected,
to amuse an idle hour, but done, nevertheless, with
the fine memory and graphic power of genius) was
neither fanciful nor over-colored, and for the first time
in my life I felt beautiful. You are an anatomist of
the heart, and I may say to you that I looked at my
own dark eyes and fine features and person with the
admiration and wonder of a blind beauty restored to
sight and beholding herself in a mirror. You will
think, perhaps, that love for the writer of this magic
letter should have been the inevitable sequel. But I
am here to avert the consequences of my coquetry,
and I will be frank with you. I for got you in a day!
In the almost insane desire to be seen and appreciated,
painted, sung, and loved, which took possession of me
when the tumult of my first feeling had passed away,
your self-controlled and manageable passion seemed
to me frivolous and shallow.”

“Have you been better loved?” coldly asked Clay.

“I will answer that question before we part. I did
not suffer myself to think of a love that could be
returned—for I had husband and children—and
though I felt that a mutual passion such as I could
imagine, would have absorbed, under happier circumstances,
every energy of my soul, I had no disposition
to make a wreck of another's happiness and honor,
whatever the temptation. Still I must be loved—I
must come out from my obscurity and shine—I must
be the idol of some gifted circle—I must control the
painter's pencil and the poet's pen and the statesman's
scheme—I must sun my beauty in men's eyes, and
be caressed and conspicuous—I must use my gift and
fulfil my destiny! I told my husband this. He secured
my devotion to his peace and honor for ever, by
giving me unlimited control over his fortune and himself.
We came to Naples, and my star, hitherto
clouded in its own humility, sprang at once to the ascendant.
The “attraction of unconscious beauty” is
a poet's fiction, believe me! Set it down in your
books, Ernest—we are our own nomenclators—the
belle as well as the hero! I claimed to be beautiful,
and queened it to the top of my bent—and all Naples
is at my feet! Oh, Ernest! it is a delicious power
to hold human happiness in your control—to be the
loadstar of eminent men and bright intellects! Perhaps
a woman who is absorbed in one passion, finds
in her lover's character and fame room enough for her
pride and her thirst for influence; but to me, giving
nothing in return but the light of my eyes, there
seems scarce in the world celebrity, rank, genius
enough, to limit my ambition. I would be Helen!
I would be Mary of Scots! I would have my beauty
as undisputed and renowned as the Apollo's! Am I
insane or heartless?”

Clay smiled at the abrupt naiveté of the question,
but his eyes were full of visible admiration of the
glowing pictures before him.

“You are beautiful!” was his answer.

“Am I not! Shall I be celebrated hereafter, Ernest?
I should be willing to grow old, if my beauty
were `in amber'—if by some burning line in your
book, some wondrous touch of the pencil, some bold
novelty in sculpture, my beauty would live on men's
lips for ever! Incontri's picture is beautiful and like,
but it is not, if you understand, a conception—it is not
a memoir of the woman as the Cenei's is—it does not
embody a complete fame in itself, like the `Bella' of
Titian, or the `Wife of Giorgione.' If you loved
me, Ernest—”

“If you loved me, Julia!” echoed Clay, with a
tone rather of mockery than sincerity.

“Ah, but you threw me away; and even with my
own consent, I could never be recovered! Believe
me, Ernest, there never was a coquette, who, in some
one of her earlier preferences, had not made a desperate
and single venture of her whole heart's devotion.
That wrecked, she was lost to love. I embarked
with you, soul and heart, and you left to the
mercy of the chance wind a freight that no tide could
bring to port again!”

“You forget the obstacles.”

“A poet! and talk of obstacles in love! Did you
even ask me to run away with you, Ernest! I would
have gone! Ay—coldly as I talk to you now, I
would have followed you to a hovel—for it was first
love to me. Had it been first love to both of us, I
should now be your wife—sharer of your fame! And
oh, how jealous!”

“With your beauty, jealous?”

“Not of flesh-and-blood women, Ernest! With a
wife's opportunities, I could outcharm, with half my
beauty, the whole troop of Circe. I was thinking of
the favors of your pen! Who would I let you describe!
What eyes, what hair, what form but mine—
what character, what name, would I even suffer you
to make immortal! Paul Veronese had a wife with
my avarice. In his hundred pictures there is the
same blue-eyed, golden-haired woman, as much linked
to his fame as Laura to Petrarch's. If he had
drawn her but once, she would have been known as
the woman Paul Veronese painted! She is known
now as the woman he loved. Delicious immortality!”

“Yet she could not have exacted it. That would
have required an intellect which looked abroad—and
poets love no women who are not like birds, content
with the summer around them, and with every thought
in their nest. Paul Veronese's Bionda, with her soft

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mild eyes and fair hair, is the very type of such a
woman, and she would not have foregone a caress for
twenty immortalities.”

“May I ask what was my attraction, then?” said
the proud beauty, with a tone of pique.

“Julia Beverley, unconscious and unintellectual!”
answered Clay, drawing on his gloves with the air of
a man who has got through with an interview. “You
have explained your `metempsychosis,' but I was in
love with the form you have cast off. The night
grows chill. Sweet dreams to you!”

“Stay, Mr. Clay! You asked me if I had been
`better loved,' and I promised you an answer. What
think you of a lover who has forgotten the occupation
that gave him bread, abandoned his ambition, and at
all hours of the night is an unrewarded and hopeless
watcher beneath my window?”

“To-night excepted,” said Clay, looking around.

“Incontri!” called Mrs. Brown, without raising
her voice.

Clay started and frowned, as the painter sprang
from the shadow of the pine-tree which had before
attracted his attention. Falling on his knee, the unhappy
lover kissed the jewelled fingers extended to
him, and giving Clay his hand in rising, the poet
sprang back, for he had clapsed the handle of a stiletto!

“Fear not—she does not love you!” said Incontri,
remarking his surprise, and concealing the weapon in
his sleeve.

“I was destined to be cured of my love, either
way,' said Clay, bowing himself off the verandah with
half a shudder and half a smile.

The curtain closed at the same moment over the
retreating form of Julia Beverley, and so turned
another leaf of Clay's voluminous book of love.