Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/210

202  me; I deceived you. Now that your deception ceases, mine ceases. Now we are free, with our hundred thousand a year! Excuse me, but it sometimes comes across me! Now we can be good and honest and true. It was all a make-believe virtue before."

"So you read that thing?" I asked: actually—strange as it may seem—for something to say.

"Yes, while you were ill. It was lying with your pen in it, on the table. I read it because I suspected. Otherwise I shouldn't have done so."

"It was the act of a false woman," said I.

"A false woman? No,—simply of a woman. I am a woman, Sir." And she began to smile. "Come, you be a man!"

N this lovely Western Shore, where no tempests rage and roar,

Over olive-bearing mountains, by the deep and violet sea,

There, through each long happy day, winding slowly on our way,

Travellers from across the ocean, toward Italia journeyed we,—

Each long day, that, richer, fairer,

Showed the charming Riviera.

There black war-ships doze at anchor, in the Bay of Villa-Franca;

Eagle-like, gray Esa, clinging to its rocky perch, looks down;

And upon the mountain dim, ruined, shattered, stern, and grim,

Turbia sees us through the ages with its austere Roman frown,—

While we climb, where cooler, rarer

Breezes sweep the Riviera.

Down the hillside steep and stony, through the old streets of Mentone,

Quiet, half-forgotten city of a drowsy prince and time,

Through the mild Italian midnight, rolls upon the wave the moonlight,

Murmuring in our dreams the cadence of a strange Ligurian rhyme,—

Rhymes in which each heart is sharer,

Journeying on the Riviera.

When the morning air comes purer, creeping up in our vettura,

Eastward gleams a rosy tumult with the rising of the day;

Toward the north, with gradual changes, steal along the mountain-ranges

Tender tints of warmer feeling, kissing all their peaks of gray;

And far south the waters wear a

Smile along the Riviera.