o it, serious things and
manly--politics.

Charlie came in with Francesca, who at the door doffed her domino and
mask. Both, heated from dancing, were ready for a rest and a little more
of the Champagne-cup.

"By the way, Gerald," said Charlie, "that's a jolly good painting, old
chap, you made of our charming hostess."

"Glad you like it!" answered Gerald carelessly, without irony.

He did not at the moment dislike Charlie.

He was genially inclined to-night toward all the world. While he had
been tying on his white cravat before the glass in preparation for the
_veglione_, it had dawned on him, to his surprise and glimmering
relief, that he felt something resembling pleasure in the prospect of
the confused and promiscuous affair he was enlisted for. He had
constated that something like normal responsiveness to the common
exterior solicitations to enjoyment was returning to his spirit, his
nerves. The tang of life was pleasant to his palate.

A dim gladness moved him, as at coming across a precious thing one had
supposed lost, in remembering that he was young....

He laid all this to the mere passage of time, and thanked the gods that
unless one dies of one's hurts one finally recovers.

Under these circumstances it is conceivable that he should not
momentarily feel hate or impatience toward any fellow-passenger on the
amusing old Ship of the World.

Scraps of poetry stirred in the wells of memory where they are dropped
and lost sight of. "I feel peaceful as old age," he quoted.

But his eye falling on the white carnation which Giovanna, knowing her
signorino was going _in serata_, had provided for his buttonhole,
lines less grey came to his lips: "_Neque tu choreas_...." He
fished for the half-forgotten words. "_Donec virenti canities
abest...._"

Because a positive sense of health pervaded him, he, with a philosophy
founded upon observation, remarked that by this sign no doubt he was on
the verge of an illness. But he absentmindedly neglected the practices
preventive of misfortune, believed in not solely by the _popolino_
of Italy, but recommended to him in boyhood by the excellent physician
who after curing his mumps had taught him to make horns with his fingers
against calamity of any sort that might threaten.

So, being in a good humor, and made further contented by the uplifting
privilege of a broad unmistakable wink from a lady, he did not dislike
Charlie as usual; he even, as he looked at him, lus