and go for a
drive."

"As you please," she said.

Paul was waiting for us in the dining-room, looking as bored as third
parties usually do in love affairs. I assumed a delighted air, and shook
hands with him with triumphant energy.

"What are you thinking of doing?" he asked.

"First of all, we will go and see a little of the town, and then we might
get a carriage and take a drive in the neighborhood."

We breakfasted almost in silence, and then set out. I dragged Francesca
from palace to palace, and she either looked at nothing or merely glanced
carelessly at the various masterpieces. Paul followed us, growling all
sorts of disagreeable things. Then we all three took a drive in silence
into the country and returned to dinner.

The next day it was the same thing and the next day again; and on the
third Paul said to me: "Look here, I am going to leave you; I am not
going to stop here for three weeks watching you make love to this
creature."

I was perplexed and annoyed, for to my great surprise I had become
singularly attached to Francesca. A man is but weak and foolish, carried
away by the merest trifle, and a coward every time that his senses are
excited or mastered. I clung to this unknown girl, silent and
dissatisfied as she always was. I liked her somewhat ill-tempered face,
the dissatisfied droop of her mouth, the weariness of her look; I liked
her fatigued movements, the contemptuous way in which she let me kiss
her, the very indifference of her caresses. A secret bond, that
mysterious bond of physical love, which does not satisfy, bound me to
her. I told Paul so, quite frankly. He treated me as if I were a fool,
and then said:

"Very well, take her with you."

But she obstinately refused to leave Genoa, without giving any reason. I
besought, I reasoned, I promised, but all was of no avail, and so I
stayed on.

Paul declared that he would go by himself, and went so far as to pack up
his portmanteau; but he remained all the same.

Thus a fortnight passed. Francesca was always silent and irritable, lived
beside me rather than with me, responded to all my requirements and all
my propositions with her perpetual Che mi fa, or with her no less
perpetual Mica.

My friend became more and more furious, but my only answer was, "You can
go if you are tired of staying. I am not detaining you."

Then he called me names, overwhelmed me with reproaches, and exclaimed:
"Where do you think I can go now? We had t