en a toi, beaucoup
trop a toi!_" He seemed to me to regret being mine. I told him so: he
was more angry. It was, I suppose, what you would call a scene. In five
minutes he was penitent, and caressed me as only he can do; and the sun
came out, and we went into the woods and heard the nightingale; but the
remembrance of it alarms me. If he can say as much as this in a month,
what can he say in a year? I do not think I am silly. I had two London
seasons, and all those country houses show one the world. I know people,
when they are married, are always glad to get away from one another;
they are always flirting with other people. But I should be miserable if
I thought it would ever be like that with Piero and me. I worship his
very shadow, and he does--or he did--worship mine. Why should that
change? Why should it not go on forever, as it does in poems? If it
can't, why doesn't one die?

* * * * *

_From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg, to the Princess di
San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset._

What a goose you are, you dearest Gladys! You were always like that. To
all you have said I can only reply, "_connu_." When girls are
romantic--and you always were, though it was quite gone out ages before
our time--they always expect husbands to remain lovers. Now, my pet, you
might just as well expect hay to remain grass. Papa was quite right.
When there is such a lot of steam on, it must go off by degrees. I am
afraid, too, you have begun with the passion, and the rapture, and the
mutual adoration, and all the rest of it, which is _quite, quite gone
out_. People don't feel in that sort of way nowadays. Nobody cares much:
a sort of good-humored liking is the utmost one sees. But you were
always such a goose! And now you must marry an Italian, and expect it
all to be balconies, and guitars, and moonlight, for ever and ever. I
think it quite natural he should want to get to Paris. You should never
have taken him to Coombe. I do remember the rose-gardens, and the
lime-avenues, and the ruins; and I remember being sent down there when I
had too strong a flirtation with Philip Rous, who was in F. O. and had
nothing a year. You were a baby then, and I remember that I was bored to
the very brink of suicide: I have detested the smell of a lime-tree ever
since. I can sympathize with the prince if he longs to get away. There
can't be anything for him to do all day long except smoke. The photo of
him is wond