at I should have a summer
after my own literary heart, and the sense of holding my opportunity
was much greater than the sense of losing it. There could be no Venetian
business without patience, and since I adored the place I was much more
in the spirit of it for having laid in a large provision. That spirit
kept me perpetual company and seemed to look out at me from the revived
immortal face--in which all his genius shone--of the great poet who was
my prompter. I had invoked him and he had come; he hovered before me
half the time; it was as if his bright ghost had returned to earth to
tell me that he regarded the affair as his own no less than mine and
that we should see it fraternally, cheerfully to a conclusion. It was
as if he had said, "Poor dear, be easy with her; she has some natural
prejudices; only give her time. Strange as it may appear to you she was
very attractive in 1820. Meanwhile are we not in Venice together, and
what better place is there for the meeting of dear friends? See how it
glows with the advancing summer; how the sky and the sea and the rosy
air and the marble of the palaces all shimmer and melt together." My
eccentric private errand became a part of the general romance and the
general glory--I felt even a mystic companionship, a moral fraternity
with all those who in the past had been in the service of art. They
had worked for beauty, for a devotion; and what else was I doing? That
element was in everything that Jeffrey Aspern had written, and I was
only bringing it to the light.

I lingered in the sala when I went to and fro; I used to watch--as long
as I thought decent--the door that led to Miss Bordereau's part of the
house. A person observing me might have supposed I was trying to cast a
spell upon it or attempting some odd experiment in hypnotism. But I was
only praying it would open or thinking what treasure probably lurked
behind it. I hold it singular, as I look back, that I should never
have doubted for a moment that the sacred relics were there; never have
failed to feel a certain joy at being under the same roof with them.
After all they were under my hand--they had not escaped me yet; and they
made my life continuous, in a fashion, with the illustrious life they
had touched at the other end. I lost myself in this satisfaction to the
point of assuming--in my quiet extravagance--that poor Miss Tita also
went back, went back, as I used to phrase it. She did indeed, the gentle
spinste