, made new promises, brought to pass new surprises. And this
sense, in some strange way, included Time as well as space. It was as if
he had entered a new region of Time, as if he had escaped from the
moving current of Time into a stationary moment. Alone here, where
modern things or thoughts had never penetrated, alone with the earth and
the sky, the mediaeval castle, the dead ladies, with Annunziata, and the
parroco, and the parroco's Masses and Benedictions--to-day, he would
please himself by fancying, might be a yesterday of long ago that had
somehow dropped out of the calendar and remained, a fragment of the Past
that had been forgotten and left over. The presence of a person of his
own sort, a fellow citizen of his own period, wearing its clothes,
speaking its speech, would have broken the charm, would have seemed as
undesirable and as inappropriate as the introduction of an English
meadow into the Italian landscape.

Yet now such a person had come, and behold, her presence, so far from
breaking the charm, merged with and intensified it,--supplied indeed
the one feature needed to perfect it. A person of his own sort? The
expression is convenient. A fellow citizen, certainly, of his period,
wearing its clothes, speaking its speech. But a person, happily, not of
his own sex, a woman, a beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied
to the poetry of Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like,
the Eternal Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the
walls about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who
lived and breathed, it became dynamic. That was all very well; if he
could have let it rest at that, if he could have confined his interest
in her, his feeling about her, to the plane of pure aesthetics, he would
have had nothing to complain of. But the mischief was that he couldn't.
The thing that perplexed and annoyed him,--and humiliated him too, in
some measure,--was a craving that had sprung up over-night, and was now
strong and constant, to get into personal touch with her, to make her
acquaintance, to talk with her; to find out a little what manner of soul
she had, to establish some sort of human relation with her. It wasn't
in the least as yet a sentimental craving; or, if it was, John at any
rate didn't know it. In its essence, perhaps, it was little more than
curiosity. But it was disturbing, upsetting, it destroyed the peace and
the harmonious leisure of his day. It pe