tumn when Edmund
arrived in Florence. He was glad to get there, and glad to get away from
the gay group he had left in a beautiful villa on Lake Como; and
probably they were glad to see him go.

Edmund had indeed only stayed with them long enough to leave a very
marked impression of low spirits and irritation. "What's come to
Grosse?" was asked by more than one guest of the hostess.

"I don't know, but he really is impossible. It's partly because of
Billy--but I won't condescend to explain that Billy proposed himself and
I could not well refuse."

Billy is the only one of this gay, quarrelsome little group that need be
named here. It was really partly on his account that Edmund so quickly
left them to their gossip alternating with happy phrases of joy in the
beauty of mountains and lakes, and to their quarrels alternating with
moments of love-making, so avowedly brief that only an artist could
believe in its exquisite enjoyment. Neither Edmund nor Billy were
really _habitues_ of this Bohemian circle. They both belonged to a more
conventional social atmosphere; they were at once above and below the
rest of the party. The cause of antipathy to Billy on Sir Edmund's part
was a certain likeness in their lives--contrasting with a most marked
dissimilarity of character.

Sir Edmund could not say that Billy was a fool or a snob, because Billy
did nothing but lead a perfectly useless life as expensively as
possible; and he did the same himself. He could not even say that Billy
lived among fools and snobs, because many of Billy's friends were his
own friends too. He could not say that Billy had been a coward because
he had not volunteered to fight in the Boer war, because Sir Edmund had
not volunteered himself. He could not say that Billy employed the wrong
tailor; it would show only gross ignorance or temper to say so. But just
the things in which he felt himself superior, utterly different in fact
from Billy, were the stupid, priggish things that no one boasts of. He
read a good deal; he thought a good deal; he knew he might have had a
future, and the bitterness of his heart lay in the fact that at fifteen
years later in life than Billy he was still so completely a slave to all
that Billy loved. Every detail of their lives seemed to add to the
irritation. It was only the day he left London that he had discovered
that Billy's new motor was from the same maker as his own; in fact,
except in colour, the motors were twins. Thi