The Point of View | Page 8

and the entrance to the Pincio, I will have the car opened; then we can see all the charming young green, and I will tell you of what these gardens were long ago, and you shall see them with new eyes."
Stella, by some sort of magic, seemed to have recovered her self- possession as his eyes looked into hers, and she chatted to him naturally, and the next half hour passed like some fairy tale. His deep, quiet voice took her into realms of fancy that her imagination had never even dreamed about. His cultivation was immense, and the Rome of the Caesars appeared to be as familiar to him as that of 1911.
The great beauty of the Borghese Gardens was at its height at the end of the day, the nightingales throbbed from the bushes, and the air was full of the fresh, exquisite scents of the late spring, as the day grew toward evening and all nature seemed full of beauty and peace. It can easily be imagined what this drive meant, then, to a fine, sensitive young woman, whose every instinct of youth and freedom and life had been crushed into undeveloped nothingness by years of gray convention in an old-fashioned English cathedral town.
Stella Rawson forgot that she and this Russian were strangers, and she talked to him unrestrainedly, showing glimpses of her inner self that she had not known she possessed. It was certainly heaven, she thought, this drive, and worth all the Aunt Caroline's frowns.
Count Roumovski never said a word of love to her: he treated her with perfect courtesy and infinite respect, but when at last they were turning back again, he permitted himself once more to gaze deeply into her eyes, and Stella knew for the first time in her existence that some silences are more dangerous than words.
"You do not care at all now for the good clergy-man you are affianced to," he said. "No--do not be angry-I am not asking a question, I am stating a fact--when lives have been hedged and controlled and retenu like yours has been, even the feelings lose character, and you cannot be sure of them--but the day is approaching when you will see clearly and--feel much."
"I am sure it is getting very late," said Stella Rawson, and with difficulty she turned her eyes away and looked over the green world.
Count Roumovski laughed softly, as if to himself. And they were silent until they came to the entrance gates again, when the chauffeur stopped and shut the car.
"We have at least snatched some moments of pleasure, have we not?" the owner whispered, "and we have hurt no one. Will you trust me again when I propose something which sounds to you wild?"
"Perhaps I will," Stella murmured rather low.
"When I was hunting lions in Africa I learned to keep my intelligence awake," he said calmly, "it is an advantage to me now in civilization--nothing is impossible if one only keeps cool. If one becomes agitated one instantly connects oneself with all other currents of agitation, and one can no longer act with prudence or sense."
"I think I have always been very foolish," admitted Stella, looking down. "I seem to see everything differently now."
"What we are all striving after is happiness," Count Roumovski said. "Only we will not admit it, and nearly always spoil our own chances by drifting, and allowing outside things to influence us. If you could see the vast plains of snow in my country and the deep forests--with never a human being for miles and miles, you would understand how nature grows to talk to one--and how small the littlenesses of the world appear." Then they were silent again, and it was not until they were rushing up the Via Nazionale and in a moment or two would have reached their destination, that Count Roumovski said:
"Stella--that means star--it is a beautiful name--I can believe you could be a star to shine upon any man's dark night--because you have a pure spirit, although it has been muffled by circumstances for all these years."
Then the automobile drew up by the trees, at perhaps two hundred yards from the hotel, near the baths of Diocletian.
"If you will get out here, it will be best," Count Roumovski told her respectfully, "and walk along on the inner side. I will then drive to the door of the hotel, as usual."
"Thank you, and good-bye," said Stella, and began untying the veil--he helped her at once, and in doing so his hand touched her soft pink cheek. She thrilled with a new kind of mad enjoyment, the like of which she had never felt, and then controlled herself and stamped it out.
"It has been a very great pleasure to me," he said, and nothing more; no "good-bye" or "au revoir" or