r sometimes of too
precipitate a readiness. It was pity she had that fault, because if she
had not had it she would really have had none; she would have been as
smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm. If he
was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing
days of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow
irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the
small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He was pleased with
everything; he had never before been pleased with so many things at
once. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening,
going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to
which he prefixed the title of "Rome Revisited." A day or two later he
showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining
to her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of
life by a tribute to the muse.

He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often--he would have
admitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the
fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on his
spirit. But at present he was happy--happier than he had perhaps ever
been in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation. This was
simply the sense of success--the most agreeable emotion of the human
heart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the
irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often reminded
himself. "Ah no, I've not been spoiled; certainly I've not been
spoiled," he used inwardly to repeat. "If I do succeed before I die
I shall thoroughly have earned it." He was too apt to reason as if
"earning" this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it and
might be confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, his
career had not been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator here
and there that he was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were,
some of them, now too old; others had been too easy. The present one had
been less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy--that
is had been rapid--only because he had made an altogether exceptional
effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to make. The
desire to have something or other to show for his "parts"--to show
somehow or other--had been the dream of his youth; but as the years went
on the conditions attached to any marked