"And you loved me still the same!" The words rose like incense from an altar. They fluttered about Rosina's ears like a shower of rose leaves.
The girl listened, spellbound. Never in happier days had she heard Guisseppi sing with such compelling sweetness. There seemed a new and wonderful quality in his voice. With his magical music, he was like a conjurer bending her spirit to his subtle enchantments.
On a golden cloud, she was transported to the sunny shores of Italy. A cavalier sang the serenade in the moonlight to his mandolin and, leaning from her latticed balcony, she dropped a rose to him. The bay of Naples spread its crinkled azure before her. Against the dark, star-spangled crystal of the night, sculptured Vesuvius upheld its canopy of smoke.
As the music steeped her senses, she fancied she could feel its golden filaments being drawn about her, binding her more and more closely in a fairy chain. As if under the charm of melodious hypnotism, her old love returned. All the tenderness and passion of her heart went out again to Guisseppi. The siren influence of his voice was transforming her. Her strength of will was crumbling. She stood swaying, helpless, her eyes glowing with rekindled love,
Suddenly the song ended. The spell was broken. Rosina passed a languid hand over her eyes as if to brush away a film of sleep. She seemed to wake from a trance. Guisseppi stood before her radiant, smiling.
"Now will you believe I am alive? Could a dead man sing like that?"
A look of awe overspread Rosina's face.
"You never sang like that before."
"This is the first time my life and happiness were ever at stake on a song."
"The Guisseppi I used to know could not sing like that. You are not Guisseppi. You are a spirit. Some demon has taught you how to sing so beautifully. You have come back with this new devil's voice of yours to lure my soul to hell."
"Ah, Rosina, how can you delude yourself with such foolish fancies. Do you not see me here solid in flesh and blood?"
"I see you, but I know you are only a shadow from the grave."
"If your eyes deceive you, your ears can not. You have heard me sing."
"That was some devil's necromancy."
Guisseppi fell on his knees before her and stretched out his arms in supplication.
"I love you, Rosina. That is all I can say. The hangman's noose was not able to strangle my love for you. Your love is more to me now than it ever was before. The world has turned cold to me. You are my only hope, my refuge. I need you. I want you with all my soul."
The girl shook her head sorrowfully. Her eyes rested upon him with sadness that was touched with renunciation.
"It can never be," she said firmly. "How you are here, I do not know. You are dead; of that I am sure. My love for you was buried in the grave that was dug for you. You are not the boy I once loved. You are something strange and different. I am afraid of you. It is only with horror that I could fancy the kisses of a dead man on my lips. The thought of a ghost's endearments fills me with loathing. Go back to the dead. I can love and reverence those who are gone, but there is no love anywhere in all the world for the dead returned from the grave."
She turned away and stood with her head bowed in her hands.
Slowly Guisseppi struggled to his feet. He staggered weakly against the wall and buried his face in his arms.
"And you, Rosina!" he sobbed.
This was the final, crushing blow. He felt now that he was indeed dead—dead at the grave of his lost love.
VI.
A TAXICAB stood in the narrow street near Rosina's home, its driver ready at the wheel, its engine purring. Behind the drawn blinds, sat Guisseppi, aflame with excitement, peering eagerly through the curtains from time to time.
Guisseppi was desperate. There was no place for the dead among the living. He had learned that clearly. As a "living dead man," all his experiences had been tragic. He regretted his resuscitation. He longed for the peace of the grave.
His old friends had fallen away from him. Many believed him a spirit damned, who, by some strange dispensation, was spared to life for yet a little while to make more exquisite the final agony reserved for him. Others were intelligent enough to know the truth, but even these were repelled by a certain unwholesomeness, a savor of the sepulchre, that, seemed to cling about him.
The girls he had known in his old, gay days would have nothing to do with him. As handsome as ever, as romantic, with a voice as musical and appealing, he was in their imagination enveloped in an atmosphere of the charnel-house, and the curse of hell was branded on his brow.
His relatives held aloof. Between him and even his mother and father he was conscious that a thin shadow had gradually crept, and the tenderness of their love had been cooled by a ghostly fear of this eerie son who had been down among the dead and read with dead eyes the mysteries beyond the tomb.
He had been unable to find employment. It was as if every business house had up a sign, "No dead men need apply."
In despair and desperation, he fell into his old ways of banditry. He soon had placed to his record a long series of bold robberies. For several of his first. lawless exploits, the police arrested him. But invariably the judges before whom he was arraigned set him at liberty.
So after a while the police refused to arrest him. What was the use? This ghost-man would only be set free again.
. . . While Guisseppi sat hidden from view behind the curtains of his taxicab, ruminating upon the bitterness of his fate, Rosina emerged from her home. Trim and dainty with pink cheeks and sparkling eyes, the young beauty was subtly suggestive of flowers and fragrance as she tripped along the street in the warm sunshine.
As she came abreast of the taxicab, Guisseppi stepped out, caught her in his arms, and swung her into the car. The girl's wild screams shrilled through the slumberous stillness of the quarter and filled the streets with excited throngs as the cab plunged madly forward, dashed around a corner and was soon lost to sight. In a distant part of the city, the ear halted before a weather-stained building. Within the dingy doorway Guisseppi disappeared, bearing the kidnapped maiden in his arms.
A little later, Guisseppi appeared before the marriage license clerk in the city hall.
"I'm sorry," said the clerk, "but I can not give you a marriage license."
"Why not?"
"You are dead. You can not marry."
"But I'm going to marry!" shouted Guisseppi defiantly.
"Impossible. If I went through the formality of filling out a license for you, no minister or priest would perform the wedding service. The marriage altar, orange blossoms, the happiness of domestic love are not for the dead."
"But I'm alive! I am only legally dead."
The clerk smiled tolerantly. With a pencil he drew a circle on a sheet of paper.
(Continued on page 120)
