therefore leisure to perceive. Tommy's moment came through
_Marchese Peppino_. Betty observed, abstractedly, between fluctuating
swerves and recoveries:

'Tommy's paper, you know ... has been getting into rows ... being sued
for libel....'

Venables, his eyes on the road, his hand waiting in nervous readiness
for emergency, said:

'Yes?... Mind that flock of goats.' It was, possibly, the distance of
the flock of goats--quite two hundred yards--which partly gave Tommy his
moment of enlightenment. Perhaps he had half known it before; anyhow, he
took in freshly now that the large acceptance did not quite include
_Marchese Peppino_. Even the tolerance of contempt has got, after all,
to draw its line somewhere. Tommy almost took in, too, the slight lift
of the brows, which might be taken to convey 'Does anyone really think
it worth the sueing--that rag?' Venables himself had certainly the air
of not thinking it, under any circumstances, in the least worth the
sueing.

Tommy, his melancholy eyes on Venables' profile, faintly flushed.

CHAPTER VI

GRADONI

'Les clefs des portes sont perdues,
Il faut attendre, il faut attendre,
Les clefs sont tombees de la tour,
Il faut attendre, il faut attendre,
Il faut attendre d'autres jours....'
MAETERLINCK.

There are steep streets called _gradoni_, which climb up from the old
town below to the new town above; their slope is assisted by shallow
steps at intervals. So shallow are the steps that you hardly notice each
as you take it. Not until you arrive at the top and look down on the
ascending way do you perceive how its climbing was assisted. Of like
nature is the ascending alley of human penetration. At the top is the
daylight; in the analogy, perceptiveness quite achieved.

In her ascending alley Betty should, by the end of February, have got
far enough not to have taken Miranda Venables to lunch at the Trattoria
Buonaventura with her friends Gina Lunelli and Morello, the painter. She
met Miranda on Santa Lucia. Miranda remarked:

'I say, I'm jolly glad I've met you. I've lost Prudence. Mother sent me
out with her to look at churches and things, because my ignorance is a
disgrace, and Prudence stayed so long looking at some rotten mosaic
things that I had to come out. Then we somehow missed each other, and
I've been playing about alone. I say, I should think it would do if you
showed me things, if I must see them. But there's nothing to s