"Keep away from her!" shouted Gregory. "Do you hear? Never go near her
again!"

"Gregory!"

"Ah, I beg your pardon! I don't know what I'm doing-saying. What will she
think--what will she think of me!" He had ceased to speak to Belsky; he
collapsed into a chair, and hid his face in his arms stretched out on the
table before him.

Belsky watched him in the stupefaction which the artistic nature feels
when life proves sentient under its hand, and not the mere material of
situations and effects. He could not conceive the full measure of the
disaster he had wrought, the outrage of his own behavior had been lost to
him in his preoccupation with the romantic end to be accomplished. He had
meant to be the friend, the prophet, to these American lovers, whom he
was reconciling and interpreting to each other; but in some point he must
have misunderstood. Yet the error was not inexpiable; and in his
expiation he could put the seal to his devotion. He left the room, where
Gregory made no effort to keep him.

He walked down the street from the hotel to the Arno, and in a few
moments he stood on the bridge, where he had talked with that joker in
the morning, as they looked down together on the boiling river. He had a
strange wish that the joker might have been with him again, to learn that
there were some things which could not be joked away.

The night was blustering, and the wind that blew the ragged clouds across
the face of the moon, swooped in sudden gusts upon the bridge, and the