look how badly the world is arranged. Such
white birds cannot be got for nothing and he has not enough money even to
buy a ribbon. Who knows! Maybe it was this which gave that tragic
quality to his pose by the mantelpiece over there. Yes, that was it.
Though no doubt I didn't see it then. As he didn't offer to move after I
had done speaking I became quite unaffectedly sorry and advised him very
gently to dismiss me from his mind definitely. He moved forward then and
said to me in his usual voice and with his usual smile that it would have
been excellent advice but unfortunately I was one of those women who
can't be dismissed at will. And as I shook my head he insisted rather
darkly: 'Oh, yes, Dona Rita, it is so. Cherish no illusions about that
fact.' It sounded so threatening that in my surprise I didn't even
acknowledge his parting bow. He went out of that false situation like a
wounded man retreating after a fight. No, I have nothing to reproach
myself with. I did nothing. I led him into nothing. Whatever illusions
have passed through my head I kept my distance, and he was so loyal to
what he seemed to think the redeeming proprieties of the situation that
he has gone from me for good without so much as kissing the tips of my
fingers. He must have felt like a man who had betrayed himself for
nothing. It's horrible. It's the fault of that enormous fortune of
mine, and I wish with all my heart that I could give it to him; for he
couldn't help his hatred of the thing that is: and as to his love, which
is just as real, well--could I have rushed away from him to shut myself
up in a convent? Could I? After all I have a right to my share of
daylight."

CHAPTER V

I took my eyes from her face and became aware that dusk was beginning to
steal into the room. How strange it seemed. Except for the glazed
rotunda part its long walls, divided into narrow panels separated by an
order of flat pilasters, presented, depicted on a black background and in
vivid colours, slender women with butterfly wings and lean youths with
narrow birds' wings. The effect was supposed to be Pompeiian and Rita
and I had often laughed at the delirious fancy of some enriched
shopkeeper. But still it was a display of fancy, a sign of grace; but at
that moment these figures appeared to me weird and intrusive and
strangely alive in their attenuated grace of unearthly beings concealing
a power to see and hear.

Without words, w