emed
incredibly far off and yet incredibly large. He stood where he was for a
while, looking around. What to other eyes would have been impenetrable
darkness, was to him no more than deep twilight. The gravel path
being painful to his bare feet, he walked upon the greensward, where,
moreover, his footfall made no sound. So light was his tread that he
felt as if soaring.

"Has my mood changed," he thought, "since those days when, as a man of
thirty, I sought such adventures? Do I not now, as then, feel all the
ardors of desire and all the sap of youth course through my veins? Am I
not, as of old, Casanova? Being Casanova, why should I be subject, as
others are subject, to the pitiful law which is called age!"

Growing bolder, he asked himself: "Why am I creeping in disguise to
Marcolina? Is not Casanova a better man than Lorenzi, even though he be
thirty years older? Is not she the one woman who would have understood
the incomprehensible? Was it needful to commit this lesser rascality,
and to mislead another man into the commission of a greater rascality?
Should I not, with a little patience, have reached the same goal?
Lorenzi would in any case have gone to-morrow, whilst I should have
remained. Five days, three days, and she would have given herself to me,
knowing me to be Casanova."

He stood close to the wall of the house beneath Marcolina's window,
which was still closed. His thoughts ran on: "Is it too late? I
could come back to-morrow or the next day. Could begin the work of
seduction--in honorable fashion, so to speak. To-night would be but a
foretaste of the future. Marcolina must not learn that I have been here
to-day--or not until much later."

CHAPTER TEN.

Marcolina's window was still closed. There was no sign from within. It
wanted a few minutes to midnight. Should he make his presence known in
any way? By tapping gently at the window? Since nothing of this sort had
been arranged, it might arouse Marcolina's suspicions. Better wait. It
could not be much longer. The thought that she might instantly recognize
him, might detect the fraud before he had achieved his purpose, crossed
his mind--not for the first time, yet as a passing fancy, as a remote
possibility which it was logical to take into account, but not anything
to be seriously dreaded.

A ludicrous adventure now recurred to his mind. Twenty years ago he had
spent a night with a middle-aged ugly vixen in Soleure, when he had
imagined hi