and
he saw that she would never for a moment feel the quality that made life
worth while for him. He saw it in a flash, and in that flash he made
his urgent resolve not to see it. From that moment forth his bearing was
poisoned by his secret determination not to think of this, not to admit
it to his mind. And forbidden to come into his presence in its proper
form, this conflict of intellectual temperaments took on strange
disguises, and the gathering tension of his mind sought to relieve
itself along grotesque irrelevant channels.

There was, for example, the remarkable affair of the drive from
Macugnaga to Piedimulera.

They had decided to walk down in a leisurely fashion, but with the
fatigues of the precipitous clamber down from Switzerland still upon
them they found the white road between rock above and gorge below
wearisome, and the valley hot in the late morning sunshine, and already
before they reached the inn they had marked for lunch Amanda had
suggested driving the rest of the way. The inn had a number of
brigand-like customers consuming such sustenance as garlic and salami
and wine; it received them with an indifference that bordered on
disrespect, until the landlord, who seemed to be something of a beauty
himself, discovered the merits of Amanda. Then he became markedly
attentive. He was a large, fat, curly-headed person with beautiful eyes,
a cherished moustache, and an air of great gentility, and when he had
welcomed his guests and driven off the slatternly waiting-maid, and
given them his best table, and consented, at Amanda's request, to open a
window, he went away and put on a tie and collar. It was an attention
so conspicuous that even the group of men in the far corner noticed and
commented on it, and then they commented on Amanda and Benham,
assuming an ignorance of Italian in the visitors that was only partly
justifiable. "Bellissima," "bravissima," "signorina," "Inglesa," one
need not be born in Italy to understand such words as these. Also they
addressed sly comments and encouragements to the landlord as he went to
and fro.

Benham was rather still and stiff during the meal, but it ill becomes
an English aristocrat to discuss the manners of an alien population, and
Amanda was amused by the effusion of the landlord and a little disposed
to experiment upon him. She sat radiating light amidst the shadows.

The question of the vehicle was broached. The landlord was doubtful,
then an idea, it was