f the god. I don't know what I wouldn't give to see it."

"I don't know what she has got. She keeps her things locked up." And
Miss Tita went away, toward the staircase, with the sense evidently that
she had said too much.

I let her go--I wished not to frighten her--and I contented myself with
remarking that Miss Bordereau would not have locked up such a glorious
possession as that--a thing a person would be proud of and hang up in a
prominent place on the parlor wall. Therefore of course she had not any
portrait. Miss Tita made no direct answer to this and, candle in hand,
with her back to me, ascended two or three stairs. Then she stopped
short and turned round, looking at me across the dusky space.

"Do you write--do you write?" There was a shake in her voice--she could
scarcely bring out what she wanted to ask.

"Do I write? Oh, don't speak of my writing on the same day with
Aspern's!"

"Do you write about HIM--do you pry into his life?"

"Ah, that's your aunt's question; it can't be yours!" I said, in a tone
of slightly wounded sensibility.

"All the more reason then that you should answer it. Do you, please?"

I thought I had allowed for the falsehoods I should have to tell; but
I found that in fact when it came to the point I had not. Besides, now
that I had an opening there was a kind of relief in being frank. Lastly
(it was perhaps fanciful, even fatuous), I guessed that Miss Tita
personally would not in the last resort be less my friend. So after a
moment's hesitation I answered, "Yes, I have written about him and I am
looking for more material. In heaven's name have you got any?"

"Santo Dio!" she exclaimed, without heeding my question; and she hurried
upstairs and out of sight. I might count upon her in the last resort,
but for the present she was visibly alarmed. The proof of it was that
she began to hide again, so that for a fortnight I never beheld her. I
found my patience ebbing and after four or five days of this I told the
gardener to stop the flowers.

VI

One afternoon, as I came down from my quarters to go out, I found Miss
Tita in the sala: it was our first encounter on that ground since I had
come to the house. She put on no air of being there by accident; there
was an ignorance of such arts in her angular, diffident directness. That
I might be quite sure she was waiting for me she informed me of the fact
and told me that Miss Bordereau wished to see me: she would take me into