new look came often into her eyes, which he noted; a new tone into her
voice, which he heard. And yet he felt that the experience had not
touched the depths of her being.

While they were on the way from Florence to Rome he had rejoiced every
time he heard her voice ringing with the old merry tones, which showed
that she had for the moment forgotten all sad thoughts. When he was
ostensibly talking to all, he was often really talking only to Barbara,
and watching the expression of her eyes; and he always listened to catch
her first words when any new experience came to their party. He was
really fast getting into a dangerous condition, this young man nearly
thirty years old, but was as unconscious of it as a child.

At Perugia came the night struggle caused by Malcom's words; the dream,
and the morning meeting with Barbara. When his hand touched hers as he
put into them the roses, he felt again for an instant the electric
thrill that ran through him on the birthday night, when he met that
wonderful look in her eyes. It brought a feeling of possession, as if it
were the hand of his Margaret which he had touched,--Margaret, who was
so soon to have been his wife when death claimed her.

He tried to account for it. He was jealous for the beloved dead whose
words, whose ways, whose face had reigned supreme over his heart for so
many years, when he caught himself dwelling on Barbara's words,
recalling her tricks of tone, her individual ways.

He set himself resolutely to the task of overcoming this singular
tendency of his thought; and oh! how the little blind (but all-seeing)
god of love had been laughing at Robert Sumner all through the days
since they reached Rome.