ca's fate, her flavour, and her charm. Like a shadowy
hill-side behind glamorous bars of waning sunlight, she was enveloped in
smiling pride--mysterious; one thinks, even to herself. This pride of
hers took part even in her many generous impulses, kind actions which she
did rather secretly and scoffed at herself for doing. She scoffed at
herself continually, even for putting on dresses of colours which Hilary
was fond of. She would not admit her longing to attract him.

Standing between those two pictures, pressing her mahl-stick against her
bosom, she suggested somewhat the image of an Italian saint forcing the
dagger of martyrdom into her heart.

That other person, who had once brought the thought of Italy into
Cecilia's mind--the man Hughs--had been for the last eight hours or so
walking the streets, placing in a cart the refuses of Life; nor had he at
all suggested the aspect of one tortured by the passions of love and
hate: For the first two hours he had led the horse without expression of
any sort on his dark face, his neat soldier's figure garbed in the
costume which had made "Westminister" describe him as a "dreadful
foreign-lookin' man." Now and then he had spoken to the horse; save for
those speeches, of no great importance, he had been silent. For the next
two hours, following the cart, he had used a shovel, and still his
square, short face, with little black moustache and still blacker eyes,
had given no sign of conflict in his breast. So he had passed the day.
Apart from the fact, indeed, that men of any kind are not too given to
expose private passions to public gaze, the circumstances of a life
devoted from the age of twenty onwards to the service of his country,
first as a soldier, now in the more defensive part of Vestry scavenger,
had given him a kind of gravity. Life had cloaked him with passivity--the
normal look of men whose bread and cheese depends on their not caring
much for anything. Had Hughs allowed his inclinations play, or sought to
express himself, he could hardly have been a private soldier; still less,
on his retirement from that office with an honourable wound, would he
have been selected out of many others as a Vestry scavenger. For such an
occupation as the lifting from the streets of the refuses of Life--a
calling greatly sought after, and, indeed, one of the few open to a man
who had served his country--charm of manner, individuality, or the
engaging quality of self-expressio