just spoken to him,' she said. 'He is at his office
in the harbour. He returns at eleven.'

"'I want to see him on a private matter,' I said.

"'To consult him?' she queried.

"'Not professionally, you understand, _signora_, but on a personal
affair.'

"'Then come in the evening. He dines at seven. He is always in until
ten. Will you leave your name?'

"I left my card and wrote on the back of it that I wished to see him
about the relatives of Signorina Rosa Cairola. The woman read it, looked
at me, shivered, murmured 'All right,' and went back to her brazier in
the office.

"It was more cheerful in that marble tunnel in the evening. There were
lights and people about. Not many, but enough to make the place less
like a tomb. Perhaps the gloom of the morning was in myself. The Sibyl
had put a flower in her hair by way of evening dress and was ordering
servants about. I have often wondered who exactly she was. It is the
fate of us who wander over the earth to leave so many by-ways
unexplored. We can only glimpse and conjecture and, generally, forget.
Life for us is like a walk along the broad, modern streets of an Italian
city. Every little while we pass narrow alleys, mere slots in the mass
of marble architecture, which dive down into darkness and mystery. Every
little while we pass low-lying ramps and odd little causeways, where
lighted windows give one sudden vivid pictures of heads and faces and
arms, sudden snatches of gesture and conversation flung out at us as we
pass. We want--I want--to investigate them all, to see what's round the
corner, as they say. And we can't. We've got to go on to our
destinations, and try and find our fun when we get there. But it wasn't
just the vague, generalized appetite for odd characters which made me
contemplate that fusty manageress with interest. It was the sudden
fleeting reflection that, but for me, but for a chance accident, there
was Rosa in years to come, faded, obscure, efficient, querulous and a
failure. And in Hank I saw myself in years to come, only not so
successful, not so rich, not quite so shady, I hope. I watched her
moving about in her funereal draperies, the flower flopping as she
shuffled and gesticulated. Presently she saw me and beckoned, and then I
was shown up those ponderous stone stairs, the marble balustrade covered
with red-baize for fear people might be frozen to it on the way, no
doubt. A pair of vast double doors bore a microscopic inscription of