of the people, it is deemed that a less strict rule with reference to the matters under consideration is laid on them than on others.  What if a young female artist “perfectly free from ties,” as would be urged, and whose conduct in such a matter could hurt nobody,—­what if such an one chose to form a tie not recognized by the Church?  The Church herself would look very leniently on the venial fault.  And though Paolina was such as she has been described, it was impossible but that such notions, not specially set forth or taught, but pervading all the unconscious teaching of the world around her, should have rendered her less sensitively anxious as to the possibility of misconception lighting on her, than an equally good English girl would have been.  Could she have been indifferent to the danger that slander should tarnish her good name? asks an Englishwoman.  But the whole world in which she lived would not have felt it to be slander.  It would have been too much in the ordinary course of things.

How Paolina felt in the matter, Ludovico was made to understand on that evening which has been so often referred to; and the reader may gather from the conversation that passed between them.

Paolina had worked hard all day.  The mosaics in San Vitale were nearly finished.  Ludovico had been with her on her scaffolding during the few hours of light of the short afternoon.  He had become sensible that the intercourse between him and Paolina had latterly been growing to be less frank, unreserved, and easy than it had been.  He had once been quite sure that Paolina loved him with the whole force of a thoroughly virgin heart.  He had latterly begun almost to think that he had been mistaken in her.  She would turn from him.  She would fall into long silences.  She was embarrassed in speaking to him; and it had often happened lately that talk had passed between them, which had seemed as if they were speaking at cross-purposes—­as if there were something not understood or misunderstood between them.

And Ludovico had come to the house in the Strada di Sta.  Eufemia that evening, safely relying on the expectation that the Signora Orsola would go fast asleep, and determined to bring matters to an understanding between him and Paolina.

“You can hardly, I think, doubt, Paolina mia, that I love you dearly, far more dearly than anything else on the face of the earth.  Do you not see and know that all my life is devoted to you?  You do not doubt, darling, do you?” said Ludovico, as he sat holding one of her hands in his.

She sat silent for awhile, and with her face turned away from him, though she made no attempt to take her hand from his.

“You do not doubt it, Paolina?” he asked again.

“If I did doubt it,—­if I had doubted it, Ludovico, you could not have taught me the lesson which you have taught me—­the lesson which you well know you have so thoroughly taught me, to love you.  We neither of us doubt of the love of the other.  But—.”