ld. There are several rooms, some
dark and mostly stuffy--a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs,
wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit--German bad taste
without German domesticity broods over that room; also a living-room,
which insensibly glides into a bedroom when the refining influence of
hospitality is absent, and real bedrooms; and last, but not least, the
loggia, where you can live day and night if you feel inclined, drinking
vermouth and smoking cigarettes, with leagues of olive-trees and
vineyards and blue-green hills to watch you.

It was in this house that the brief and inevitable tragedy of Lilia's
married life took place. She made Gino buy it for her, because it was
there she had first seen him sitting on the mud wall that faced the
Volterra gate. She remembered how the evening sun had struck his hair,
and how he had smiled down at her, and being both sentimental and
unrefined, was determined to have the man and the place together. Things
in Italy are cheap for an Italian, and, though he would have preferred
a house in the piazza, or better still a house at Siena, or, bliss above
bliss, a house at Leghorn, he did as she asked, thinking that perhaps
she showed her good taste in preferring so retired an abode.

The house was far too big for them, and there was a general concourse of
his relatives to fill it up. His father wished to make it a patriarchal
concern, where all the family should have their rooms and meet together
for meals, and was perfectly willing to give up the new practice at
Poggibonsi and preside. Gino was quite willing too, for he was an
affectionate youth who liked a large home-circle, and he told it as
a pleasant bit of news to Lilia, who did not attempt to conceal her
horror.

At once he was horrified too; saw that the idea was monstrous; abused
himself to her for having suggested it; rushed off to tell his father
that it was impossible. His father complained that prosperity was
already corrupting him and making him unsympathetic and hard; his mother
cried; his sisters accused him of blocking their social advance. He
was apologetic, and even cringing, until they turned on Lilia. Then
he turned on them, saying that they could not understand, much less
associate with, the English lady who was his wife; that there should be
one master in that house--himself.

Lilia praised and petted him on his return, calling him brave and a hero
and other endearing epithets. But he wa