inking, whilst his arm was round her, his
head against her shoulders, his body against hers, just behind
her. He was still asleep.

She watched the sunshine coming in bars through the
persiennes, and her immediate surroundings again melted
away.

She was in some other land, some other world, where the old
restraints had dissolved and vanished, where one moved freely,
not afraid of one's fellow men, nor wary, nor on the defensive,
but calm, indifferent, at one's ease. Vaguely, in a sort of
silver light, she wandered at large and at ease. The bonds of
the world were broken. This world of England had vanished away.
She heard a voice in the yard below calling:

"O Giovann'--O'-O'-O'-Giovann'----!"

And she knew she was in a new country, in a new life. It was
very delicious to lie thus still, with one's soul wandering
freely and simply in the silver light of some other, simpler,
more finely natural world.

But always there was a foreboding waiting to command her. She
became more aware of Skrebensky. She knew he was waking up. She
must modify her soul, depart from her further world, for
him.

She knew he was awake. He lay still, with a concrete
stillness, not as when he slept. Then his arm tightened almost
convulsively upon her, and he said, half timidly:

"Did you sleep well?"

"Very well."

"So did I."

There was a pause.

"And do you love me?" he asked.

She turned and looked at him searchingly. He seemed outside
her.

"I do," she said.

But she said it out of complacency and a desire not to be
harried. There was a curious breach of silence between them,
which frightened him.

They lay rather late, then he rang for breakfast. She wanted
to be able to go straight downstairs and away from the place,
when she got up. She was happy in this room, but the thought of
the publicity of the hall downstairs rather troubled her.

A young Italian, a Sicilian, dark and slightly pock-marked,
buttoned up in a sort of grey tunic, appeared with the tray. His
face had an almost African imperturbability, impassive,
incomprehensible.

"One might be in Italy," Skrebensky said to him, genially. A
vacant look, almost like fear, came on the fellow's face. He did
not understand.

"This is like Italy," Skrebensky explained.

The face of the Italian flashed with a non-comprehending
smile, he finished setting out the tray, and was gone. He did
not understand: he would understand nothing: he disappeared from
the door li