iousness! His British inability
to put himself in another person's place, to see things from another's
point of view! Could n't he see, from her point of view, from any point
of view but his own, that it was her right to be told? That the matter
affected her in one way, as much as it affected him in another? That
since she had influenced--since she had contributed to--his life and his
art as she had, it was her right to know it? Couldn't he see that his
'cheek,' his real 'cheek,' began when he withheld from her that great
strange chapter of her own history? Oh, he ought to have told her, he
ought to have told her."

She sank back in her chair, giving her head another rueful shake,
and gazed ruefully away, over the sunny landscape, through the mellow
atmosphere, into the golden-hazy distance.

Peter looked at her--and then, quickly, for caution's sake, looked
elsewhere.

"But there were other things to be taken into account," he said.

The Duchessa raised her eyes. "What other things?" they gravely
questioned.

"Would n't his telling her have been equivalent to a declaration of
love?" questioned he, looking at the signet-ring on the little finger of
his left hand.

"A declaration of love?" She considered for a moment. "Yes, I suppose
in a way it would," she acknowledged. "But even so?" she asked, after
another moment of consideration. "Why should he not have made her a
declaration of love? He was in love with her, wasn't he?"

The point of frank interrogation in her eyes showed clearly, showed
cruelly, how detached, how impersonal, her interest was.

"Frantically," said Peter. For caution's sake, he kept HIS eyes on the
golden-hazy peaks of Monte Sfionto. "He had been in love with her, in a
fashion, of course, from the beginning. But after he met her, he fell in
love with her anew. His mind, his imagination, had been in love with its
conception of her. But now he, the man, loved her, the woman herself,
frantically, with just a downright common human love. There were
circumstances, however, which made it impossible for him to tell her
so."

"What circumstances?" There was the same frank look of interrogation.
"Do you mean that she was married?"

"No, not that. By the mercy of heaven," he pronounced, with energy, "she
was a widow."

The Duchessa broke into an amused laugh.

"Permit me to admire your piety," she said.

And Peter, as his somewhat outrageous ejaculation came back to him,
laughed vaguely too.