s was the latest, and not
even the least, cause of annoyance. For it betrayed what he was always
trying to conceal from himself, that there appeared to be an actual
rivalry between him and Billy, a petty, social, silly rivalry. Billy, of
simpler make, a fresher, younger, more contented animal, thought little
of all this, and was irritated by Sir Edmund's assumption of
superiority.

But he had never found Grosse so bearish and difficult before this visit
to Como. As a rule Edmund was suavity itself, but this time even his
gift of gently, almost imperceptibly, making every woman feel him to be
her admirer was failing. How often he had been the life of any party in
any class of society, and that not by starting amusements, not by any
power of initiation, but by a gift for making others feel pleased, first
with themselves, and consequently with life. He could bring the gift to
good use on a royal yacht, at a Bohemian supper party, at a schoolroom
tea, or at a parish mothers' meeting. But now--and he owned that his
liver was out of order--he was suffering from a general disgust with
things. When still a young man in the Foreign Office he had succeeded to
a large fortune, and it had seemed then thoroughly worth while to employ
it for social ends and social joys. Long ago he had attained those ends,
and long ago he had become bored with those joys; and yet he could not
shake himself free from any of the habits of body or mind he had got
into during those years. He could not be indifferent to any shades of
failure or success. He watched the temperature of his popularity as
acutely as many men watch their bodily symptoms. Even during those days
at Como, though despising his company, he knew that he felt a distinct
irritation in a preference for Billy on the part of a lady whom he had
at one time honoured with his notice. In arriving where he was in the
English social world, he had increased, not only the need for luxury of
body, but the sensitiveness and acuteness of certain perceptions as to
his fellow creatures, and these perceptions were not likely to slumber
again.

Edmund was oppressed by several unpleasant thoughts as well as by the
heat of the night on which he arrived in Florence. He decided to sleep
out in the wide brick _loggia_ of the flat, which was nearly at the top
of the great building. There was nothing to distract his gloomy thoughts
from himself, not even a defect in the dinner or in the broad couch of a
bed