ation in order to avoid the
fulfilment of a secretly recognised claim, to say nothing of his quiet
settlement of himself and investment of his florins, when, it would be
clear, his benefactor's fate had not been certified. It was at least
provisionally wise to act as if nothing had happened, and for the
present he would suspend decisive thought; there was all the night for
meditation, and no one would know the precise moment at which he had
received the letter.

So he entered the room on the second storey--where Romola and her father
sat among the parchment and the marble, aloof from the life of the
streets on holidays as well as on common days--with a face only a little
less bright than usual, from regret at appearing so late: a regret which
wanted no testimony, since he had given up the sight of the Corso in
order to express it; and then set himself to throw extra animation into
the evening, though all the while his consciousness was at work like a
machine with complex action, leaving deposits quite distinct from the
line of talk; and by the time he descended the stone stairs and issued
from the grim door in the starlight, his mind had really reached a new
stage in its formation of a purpose.

And when, the next day, after he was free from his professorial work, he
turned up the Via del Cocomero towards the convent of San Marco, his
purpose was fully shaped. He was going to ascertain from Fra Luca
precisely how much he conjectured of the truth, and on what grounds he
conjectured it; and, further, how long he was to remain at San Marco.
And on that fuller knowledge he hoped to mould a statement which would
in any case save him from the necessity of quitting Florence. Tito had
never had occasion to fabricate an ingenious lie before: the occasion
was come now--the occasion which circumstance never fails to beget on
tacit falsity; and his ingenuity was ready. For he had convinced
himself that he was not bound to go in search of Baldassarre. He had
once said that on a fair assurance of his father's existence and
whereabout, he would unhesitatingly go after him. But, after all, _why_
was he bound to go? What, looked at closely, was the end of all life,
but to extract the utmost sum of pleasure? And was not his own blooming
life a promise of incomparably more pleasure, not for himself only, but
for others, than the withered wintry life of a man who was past the time
of keen enjoyment, and whose ideas had stiffened i