The Saint | Page 8

right; let us talk about Memling. But first tell me whether Carlino made you a declaration?"
The girl laughed. "Yes, he made me a declaration of war, and I did likewise to he."
"To him, you should say. I wish he would fall in love with you," added Jeanne seriously. The girl frowned.
"I do not," she said.
"Why? Is he not charming, brilliant, cultured, and distinguished? He is very wealthy too, you know. We may despise riches, but after all they are very good in their way."
Noemi d'Arxel placed her hands on her friend's shoulders, and gazed steadily into her eyes. The blue questioning eyes were grave and sad; the brown eyes, thus scrutinised, bore the gaze with firmness, flashing in turn defiance, embarrassment, and mirth.
"Well," said the girl, "I enjoy seeing Memling with Signor Carlino, playing classical music with him, discussing à Kempis with him, although this affection he has recently developed for à Kempis seems a profanation, when you consider that he believes in nothing. _Je suis catholique autant qu'on peut l'être lorsqu'on ne l'est pas_, but when I hear an unbeliever like your brother read à Kempis so feelingly, I very nearly lose my faith in Christianity as well. I like him for one other reason, dear, because he is your brother. But that is all! Oh! Jeanne Dessalle says such strange things sometimes--such strange things! I do not understand--I really do not understand. But _warte nur, du R?thsel_, as my governess used to say."
"What am I to wait for?"
Noemi threw her arm round her friend's neck, "I will drag your soul with so fine a net that it will bring beautiful great pearls to the surface, perhaps some sea-weed as well, and a little mud from the bottom, or even a very tiny pioeuvre." "You do not know me," answered Jeanne. "You are the only one of my friends who does not know me."
"Of course. You imagine that only those who adore you really know you? Indeed, this belief that everybody adores you is a craze of yours."
Jeanne made the little pouting grimace with which all her friends were familiar.
"What a foolish girl," she said; but at once softened the expression with a kiss and a half-sad, half-quizzical smile.
"Women, as I have always told you, do adore me. Do you mean to say that you do not?"
"Mais point du tout," exclaimed Noemi. Jeanne's eyes sparkled with mischief and kindness.
"In Italian we say: _Si, di tutto cuore_," she answered.
The Dessalles, brother and sister, had spent the preceding summer at Maloja. Jeanne striving to make herself a pleasant companion, and hiding as best she could her incurable wound; Carlino searching out traces of Nietzsche in mystic hours round Sils Maria or in worldly moments flitting like a butterfly from one woman to another, frequently dining at St. Moritz, or at Pontresina, making music with a military attaché of the German Embassy at Rome, or with Noemi d'Arxel, and discussing religious questions with Noemi's sister and brother-in-law. The two d'Arxel sisters, orphans, were Belgian by birth, but of Dutch and Protestant ancestry. The elder, Maria, after a peculiar and romantic courtship, had married the old Italian philosopher Giovanni Selva, who would be famous in his own country, did Italians take a deeper interest in theological questions; for Selva is perhaps the truest representative of progressive Catholicism in Italy. Maria had become a Roman Catholic before her marriage. The Selvas spent the winter in Rome, the rest of the year at Subiaco. Noemi, who had remained true to the faith of her fathers, divided her time between Brussels and Italy. Only a month before, at the end of March, at Brussels, death had claimed the old governess, with whom she had lived. Neither Giovanni Selva nor his wife had been able to come to Noemi at this great crisis, for Selva was seriously ill at the time. Jeanne Dessalle, who had become much attached to Noemi, persuaded her brother to undertake the journey to Belgium, a country with which he was hitherto unacquainted, and then offered to take the Selvas' place in Brussels. It thus happened that towards the end of April Noemi was with the Dessalles at Bruges. They occupied a small villa on the shore of the little mirror of water called "Lac d'Amour." Carlino had fallen in love with Bruges and especially with the Lac d'Amour, the name of which he contemplated giving to the novel he dreamed of writing. As yet, however, the novel existed only in his brain, while he lived in the pleasant anticipation of one day astonishing the world with an exquisite and original work of art.
"En tout cas," Noemi replied--"not with all my heart."
"Why?"
"Because I am thinking of giving my heart to another person."
"To whom?"
"To a monk."
Jeanne shuddered, and Noemi, to whom her friend had