ght him up, "if their taste were greater, their
prosperity would be less?"

"I don't know," said he. "The Greeks were fairly prosperous, were n't
they? And the Venetians? And the French are not yet quite bankrupt."

Still again she laughed--always with that little air of humorous
meditation.

"You--you don't exactly overwhelm one with compliments," she observed.

He looked alarm, anxiety.

"Don't I? What have I neglected?" he cried.

"You 've never once evinced the slightest curiosity to learn what I
think of the book in question."

"Oh, I'm sure you like it," he rejoined hardily. "You have 'the seeing
eye.'"

"And yet I'm just a humble member of the Anglo-Saxon public."

"No--you're a distinguished member of the Anglo-Saxon 'remnant.' Thank
heaven, there's a remnant, a little scattered remnant. I'm perfectly
sure you like 'A Man of Words.'"

"'Like it' is a proposition so general. Perhaps I am burning to tell
someone what I think of it in detail."

She smiled into his eyes, a trifle oddly.

"If you are, then I know someone who is burning to hear you," he avowed.

"Well, then, I think--I think..." she began, on a note of deliberation.
"But I 'm afraid, just now, it would take too long to formulate my
thought. Perhaps I'll try another day."

She gave him a derisory little nod--and in a minute was well up the
lawn, towards the castle.

Peter glared after her, his fists clenched, teeth set.

"You fiend!" he muttered. Then, turning savagely upon himself, "You
duffer!"

Nevertheless, that evening, he said to Marietta, "The plot thickens.
We've advanced a step. We've reached what the vulgar call a
psychological moment. She's seen my Portrait of a Lady. But as yet, if
you can believe me, she doesn't dream who painted it; and she has n't
recognised the subject. As if one were to face one's image in the glass,
and take it for another's! 3--I 'll--I 'll double your wages--if you
will induce events to hurry up."

However, as he spoke English, Marietta was in no position to profit by
his offer.

XIII

Peter was walking in the high-road, on the other side of the river--the
great high-road that leads from Bergamo to Milan.

It was late in the afternoon, and already, in the west, the sky was
beginning to put on some of its sunset splendours. In the east, framed
to Peter's vision by parallel lines of poplars, it hung like a curtain
of dark-blue velvet.

Peter sat on the grass, by the roadside, in