She
pushed back the lid a finger's breadth and he saw the pink satin for a
second. She laid the box before him. Would he please do what she
asked? Very timidly she slipped a simple little ring off her finger,
one of those gold ones with the sacred monogram which foreigners
insist upon calling "Pax." She said she had bought it with her own
money, and could give it away. She wished to give it to him. He
protested, refused, but the fathomless violet eyes gazed into his very
reproachfully. He had always been so kind to her, she said; would he
not keep the little ring to remember her by?
So he had taken it, and that same day he had gone all the way to his
lonely vineyard on Monte Mario carrying the chocolate box in his
hands, and he had buried it under the chestnut-tree at the upper end,
where there was some grass; and the breeze always blew there on summer
afternoons. Then he had sat on the roots of the tree for a while,
looking towards Rome.
He would have plenty of time to go to the vineyard now, for in a
little while he should have nothing to do, as the palace was going to
be sold. When he got home, he wrote a formal letter to Donna Sabina,
informing her that he had fulfilled the commands she had deigned to
give him, and ventured to subscribe himself her Excellency's most
devoted, humble and grateful servant, as indeed he was, from the
bottom of his heart.
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