Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/59

 would be, she surmised, drives up and down the Iowa hills, between the fields of corn and, quite possibly, boating parties on the river. There would be conversation with her old friends and, conceivably, new ones. Would these petty diversions be sufficient to cause her to forget her egrimony?

The moon had arisen and now she could see very clearly in the room. From a pocket in her travelling-bag she extracted the leather case in which she carried Tony's photograph. As she opened the case and gazed once more at his face, the tears welled into her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Tony! Tony! She sat quite still for a long time regarding the picture of the handsome youth. One of his little mannerisms came into her mind, his habit of employing his left hand alone in rolling a cigarette. She remembered how one day late in March in some Provencal town they had stood together under a flowering mimosa-tree. She could still recall the fragrance of the yellow flowers, heavy with pollen. And, from the casement of a house nearby, came the song of a young girl:

For half an hour or so she contemplated this fatal portrait, with its epithumetic suggestion, revolving