my own way downstairs. I
remained a while longer, wandering about the bright desert (the sun was
pouring in) of the old house, thinking the situation over on the
spot. Not even the pattering little serva came to look after me, and I
reflected that after all this treatment showed confidence.

IV

Perhaps it did, but all the same, six weeks later, toward the middle of
June, the moment when Mrs. Prest undertook her annual migration, I had
made no measurable advance. I was obliged to confess to her that I had
no results to speak of. My first step had been unexpectedly rapid, but
there was no appearance that it would be followed by a second. I was
a thousand miles from taking tea with my hostesses--that privilege
of which, as I reminded Mrs. Prest, we both had had a vision. She
reproached me with wanting boldness, and I answered that even to be bold
you must have an opportunity: you may push on through a breach but
you can't batter down a dead wall. She answered that the breach I had
already made was big enough to admit an army and accused me of wasting
precious hours in whimpering in her salon when I ought to have been
carrying on the struggle in the field. It is true that I went to see her
very often, on the theory that it would console me (I freely expressed
my discouragement) for my want of success on my own premises. But I
began to perceive that it did not console me to be perpetually chaffed
for my scruples, especially when I was really so vigilant; and I was
rather glad when my derisive friend closed her house for the summer. She
had expected to gather amusement from the drama of my intercourse with
the Misses Bordereau, and she was disappointed that the intercourse, and
consequently the drama, had not come off. "They'll lead you on to your
ruin," she said before she left Venice. "They'll get all your money
without showing you a scrap." I think I settled down to my business with
more concentration after she had gone away.

It was a fact that up to that time I had not, save on a single brief
occasion, had even a moment's contact with my queer hostesses. The
exception had occurred when I carried them according to my promise the
terrible three thousand francs. Then I found Miss Tita waiting for me in
the hall, and she took the money from my hand so that I did not see
her aunt. The old lady had promised to receive me, but she apparently
thought nothing of breaking that vow. The money was contained in a bag
of