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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Indian Summer, by William D. Howells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Indian Summer
+
+Author: William D. Howells
+
+Posting Date: April 12, 2014 [EBook #7359]
+Release Date: January, 2005
+First Posted: April 20, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIAN SUMMER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and
+the Online Distributed Proofreaders Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+INDIAN SUMMER
+
+BY
+
+WILLIAM D. HOWELLS
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM," "A MODERN INSTANCE,"
+"WOMAN'S REASON," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+INDIAN SUMMER
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I
+
+
+Midway of the Ponte Vecchio at Florence, where three arches break the
+lines of the little jewellers' booths glittering on either hand, and
+open an approach to the parapet, Colville lounged against the corner of
+a shop and stared out upon the river. It was the late afternoon of a day
+in January, which had begun bright and warm, but had suffered a change
+of mood as its hours passed, and now, from a sky dimmed with flying grey
+clouds, was threatening rain. There must already have been rain in the
+mountains, for the yellow torrent that seethed and swirled around the
+piers of the bridge was swelling momently on the wall of the Lung' Arno,
+and rolling a threatening flood toward the Cascine, where it lost itself
+under the ranks of the poplars that seemed to file across its course,
+and let their delicate tops melt into the pallor of the low horizon.
+
+The city, with the sweep of the Lung' Arno on either hand, and its domes
+and towers hung in the dull air, and the country with its white villas
+and black cypresses breaking the grey stretches of the olive orchards on
+its hill-sides, had alike been growing more and more insufferable; and
+Colville was finding a sort of vindictive satisfaction in the power to
+ignore the surrounding frippery of landscape and architecture. He
+isolated himself so perfectly from it, as he brooded upon the river,
+that, for any sensible difference, he might have been standing on the
+Main Street Bridge at Des Vaches, Indiana, looking down at the tawny
+sweep of the Wabash. He had no love for that stream, nor for the
+ambitious town on its banks, but ever since he woke that morning he had
+felt a growing conviction that he had been a great ass to leave them. He
+had, in fact, taken the prodigious risk of breaking his life sharp off
+from the course in which it had been set for many years, and of
+attempting to renew it in a direction from which it had long been
+diverted. Such an act could be precipitated only by a strong impulse of
+conscience or a profound disgust, and with Colville it sprang from
+disgust. He had experienced a bitter disappointment in the city to whose
+prosperity he had given the energies of his best years, and in whose
+favour he imagined that he had triumphantly established himself.
+
+He had certainly made the Des Vaches _Democrat-Republican_ a very good
+paper; its ability was recognised throughout the State, and in Des
+Vaches people of all parties were proud of it. They liked every morning
+to see what Colville said; they believed that in his way he was the
+smartest man in the State, and they were fond of claiming that there was
+no such writer on any of the Indianapolis papers. They forgave some
+political heresies to the talent they admired; they permitted him the
+whim of free trade, they laughed tolerantly when he came out in favour
+of civil service reform, and no one had much fault to find when the
+_Democrat-Republican_ bolted the nomination of a certain politician of
+its party for Congress. But when Colville permitted his own name to be
+used by the opposing party, the people arose in their might and defeated
+him by a tremendous majority. That was what the regular nominee said. It
+was a withering rebuke to treason, in the opinion of this gentleman; it
+was a good joke, anyway, with the Democratic managers who had taken
+Colville up, being all in the Republican family; whichever it was, it
+was a mortification for Colville which his pride could not brook. He
+stood disgraced before the community not only as a theorist and
+unpractical doctrinaire, but as a dangerous man; and what was worse, he
+could not wholly acquit himself of a measure of bad faith; his
+conscience troubled him even more than his pride. Money was found, and a
+printer bought up with it to start a paper in opposition to the
+_Democrat-Republican_. Then Colville contemptuously offered to sell out
+to the Republican committee in charge of the new enterprise, and they
+accepted his terms.
+
+In private life he found much of the old kindness returning to him; and
+his successful opponent took the first opportunity of heaping coals of
+fire on his head in the public street, when he appeared to the outer eye
+to be shaking hands with Colville. During the months that he remained to
+close up his affairs after the sale of his paper, the
+_Post-Democrat-Republican_ (the newspaper had agglutinated the titles of
+two of its predecessors, after the fashion of American journals) was
+fulsome in its complimentary allusions to him. It politely invented the
+fiction that he was going to Europe for his health, impaired by his
+journalistic labours, and adventurously promised its readers that they
+might hope to hear from him from time to time in its columns. In some
+of its allusions to him Colville detected the point of a fine irony, of
+which he had himself introduced the practice in the _Democrat-Republican_;
+and he experienced, with a sense of personal impoverishment, the
+curious fact that a journalist of strong characteristics leaves
+the tradition of himself in such degree with the journal he has
+created that he seems to bring very little away. He was obliged
+to confess in his own heart that the paper was as good as ever.
+The assistants, who had trained themselves to write like him, seemed to
+be writing quite as well, and his honesty would not permit him to
+receive the consolation offered him by the friends who told him that
+there was a great falling off in the _Post-Democrat-Republican_. Except
+that it was rather more Stalwart in its Republicanism, and had turned
+quite round on the question of the tariff, it was very much what it had
+always been. It kept the old decency of tone which he had given it, and
+it maintained the literary character which he was proud of. The new
+management must have divined that its popularity, with the women at
+least, was largely due to its careful selections of verse and fiction,
+its literary news, and its full and piquant criticisms, with their long
+extracts from new books. It was some time since he had personally looked
+after this department, and the young fellow in charge of it under him
+had remained with the paper. Its continued excellence, which he could
+not have denied if he had wished, seemed to leave him drained and
+feeble, and it was partly from the sense of this that he declined the
+overtures, well backed up with money, to establish an independent paper
+in Des Vaches. He felt that there was not fight enough in him for the
+work, even if he had not taken that strong disgust for public life which
+included the place and its people. He wanted to get away, to get far
+away, and with the abrupt and total change in his humour he reverted to
+a period in his life when journalism and politics and the ambition of
+Congress were things undreamed of.
+
+At that period he was a very young architect, with an inclination toward
+the literary side of his profession, which made it seem profitable to
+linger, with his Ruskin in his hand, among the masterpieces of Italian
+Gothic, when perhaps he might have been better employed in designing
+red-roofed many-verandaed, consciously mullioned seaside cottages on the
+New England coast. He wrote a magazine paper on the zoology of the
+Lombardic pillars in Verona, very Ruskinian, very scornful of modern
+motive. He visited every part of the peninsula, but he gave the greater
+part of his time to North Italy, and in Venice he met the young girl
+whom he followed to Florence. His love did not prosper; when she went
+away she left him in possession of that treasure to a man of his
+temperament, a broken heart. From that time his vague dreams began to
+lift, and to let him live in the clear light of common day; but he was
+still lingering at Florence, ignorant of the good which had befallen
+him, and cowering within himself under the sting of wounded vanity, when
+he received a letter from his elder brother suggesting that he should
+come and see how he liked the architecture of Des Vaches. His brother
+had been seven years at Des Vaches, where he had lands, and a lead-mine,
+and a scheme for a railroad, and had lately added a daily newspaper to
+his other enterprises. He had, in fact, added two newspapers; for having
+unexpectedly and almost involuntarily become the owner of the Des Vaches
+_Republican_, the fancy of building up a great local journal seized him,
+and he bought the _Wabash Valley Democrat_, uniting them under the name
+of the _Democrat-Republican_. But he had trouble almost from the first
+with his editors, and he naturally thought of the brother with a turn
+for writing who had been running to waste for the last year or two in
+Europe. His real purpose was to work Colville into the management of his
+paper when he invited him to come out and look at the architecture of
+Des Vaches.
+
+Colville went, because he was at that moment in the humour to go
+anywhere, and because his money was running low, and he must begin work
+somehow. He was still romantic enough to like the notion of the place a
+little, because it bore the name given to it by the old French
+_voyageurs_ from a herd of buffalo cows which they had seen grazing on
+the site of their camp there; but when he came to the place itself he
+did not like it. He hated it; but he stayed, and as an architect was the
+last thing any one wanted in Des Vaches since the jail and court-house
+had been built, he became, half without his willing it, a newspaper man.
+He learned in time to relish the humorous intimacy of the life about
+him; and when it was decided that he was no fool--there were doubts,
+growing out of his Eastern accent and the work of his New York tailor,
+at first--he found himself the object of a pleasing popularity. In due
+time he bought his brother out; he became very fond of newspaper life,
+its constant excitements and its endless variety; and six weeks before
+he sold his paper he would have scoffed at a prophecy of his return to
+Europe for the resumption of any artistic purpose whatever. But here he
+was, lounging on the Ponte Vecchio at Florence, whither he had come with
+the intention of rubbing up his former studies, and of perhaps getting
+back to put them in practice at New York ultimately. He had said to
+himself before coming abroad that he was in no hurry; that he should
+take it very easily--he had money enough for that; yet he would keep
+architecture before him as an object, for he had lived long in a
+community where every one was intensely occupied, and he unconsciously
+paid to Des Vaches the tribute of feeling that an objectless life was
+disgraceful to a man.
+
+In the meantime he suffered keenly and at every moment the loss of the
+occupation of which he had bereaved himself; in thinking of quite other
+things, in talk of totally different matters, from the dreams of night,
+he woke with a start to the realisation of the fact that he had no
+longer a newspaper. He perceived now, as never before, that for fifteen
+years almost every breath of his life had been drawn with reference to
+his paper, and that without it he was in some sort lost, and, as it
+were, extinct. A tide of ridiculous home-sickness, which was an
+expression of this passionate regret for the life he had put behind him,
+rather than any longing for Des Vaches, swept over him, and the first
+passages of a letter to the _Post-Democrat-Republican_ began to shape
+themselves in his mind. He had always, when he left home for New York or
+Washington, or for his few weeks of summer vacation on the Canadian
+rivers or the New England coast, written back to his readers, in whom he
+knew he could count upon quick sympathy in all he saw and felt, and he
+now found himself addressing them with that frank familiarity which
+comes to the journalist, in minor communities, from the habit of print.
+He began by confessing to them the defeat of certain expectations with
+which he had returned to Florence, and told them that they must not look
+for anything like the ordinary letters of travel from him. But he was
+not so singular in his attitude toward the place as he supposed; for any
+tourist who comes to Florence with the old-fashioned expectation of
+impressions will probably suffer a disappointment, unless he arrives
+very young and for the first time. It is a city superficially so well
+known that it affects one somewhat like a collection of views of itself;
+they are from the most striking points, of course, but one has examined
+them before, and is disposed to be critical of them. Certain emotions,
+certain sensations failed to repeat themselves to Colville at sight of
+the familiar monuments, which seemed to wear a hardy and indifferent
+air, as if being stared at so many years by so many thousands of
+travellers had extinguished in them that sensibility which one likes to
+fancy in objects of interest everywhere.
+
+The life which was as vivid all about him as if caught by the latest
+instantaneous process made the same comparatively ineffective appeal.
+The operatic spectacle was still there. The people, with their cloaks
+statuesquely draped over their left shoulders, moved down the street, or
+posed in vehement dialogue on the sidewalks; the drama of bargaining,
+with the customer's scorn, the shopman's pathos, came through the open
+shop door; the handsome, heavy-eyed ladies, the bare-headed girls,
+thronged the ways; the caffès were full of the well-remembered figures
+over their newspapers and little cups; the officers were as splendid as
+of old, with their long cigars in their mouths, their swords kicking
+against their beautiful legs, and their spurs jingling; the dandies,
+with their little dogs and their flower-like smiles, were still in front
+of the confectioners' for the inspection of the ladies who passed; the
+old beggar still crouched over her scaldino at the church door, and the
+young man with one leg, whom he thought to escape by walking fast, had
+timed him to a second from the other side of the street. There was the
+wonted warmth in the sunny squares, and the old familiar damp and stench
+in the deep narrow streets. But some charm had gone out of all this. The
+artisans coming to the doors of their shallow booths for the light on
+some bit of carpentering, or cobbling, or tinkering; the crowds swarming
+through the middle of the streets on perfect terms with the wine-carts
+and cab horses; the ineffective grandiosity of the palaces huddled upon
+the crooked thoroughfares; the slight but insinuating cold of the
+southern winter, gathering in the shade and dispersing in the sun, and
+denied everywhere by the profusion of fruit and flowers, and by the
+greenery of gardens showing through the grated portals and over the tops
+of high walls; the groups of idle poor, permanently or temporarily
+propped against the bases of edifices with a southern exposure; the
+priests and monks and nuns in their gliding passage; the impassioned
+snapping of the cabmen's whips; the clangour of bells that at some hours
+inundated the city, and then suddenly subsided and left it to the
+banging of coppersmiths; the open-air frying of cakes, with its
+primitive smell of burning fat; the tramp of soldiery, and the fanfare
+of bugles blown to gay measures--these and a hundred other
+characteristic traits and facts still found a response in the
+consciousness where they were once a rapture of novelty; but the
+response was faint and thin; he could not warm over the old mood in
+which he once treasured them all away as of equal preciousness.
+
+Of course there was a pleasure in recognising some details of former
+experience in Florence as they recurred. Colville had been met at once
+by a _festa_, when nothing could be done, and he was more than consoled
+by the caressing sympathy with which he was assured that his broken
+trunk could not be mended till the day after to-morrow; he had quite
+forgotten about the festas and the sympathy. That night the piazza on
+which he lodged seemed full of snow to the casual glance he gave it;
+then he saw that it was the white Italian moonlight, which he had also
+forgotten....
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Colville had readied this point in that sarcastic study of his own
+condition of mind for the advantage of his late readers in the
+_Post-Democrat-Republican_, when he was aware of a polite rustling of
+draperies, with an ensuing well-bred murmur, which at once ignored him,
+deprecated intrusion upon him, and asserted a common right to the
+prospect on which he had been dwelling alone. He looked round with an
+instinctive expectation of style and poise, in which he was not
+disappointed. The lady, with a graceful lift of the head and a very
+erect carriage, almost Bernhardtesque in the backward fling of her
+shoulders and the strict compression of her elbows to her side, was
+pointing out the different bridges to the little girl who was with her.
+
+"That first one is the Santa Trinità, and the next is the Carraja, and
+that one quite down by the Cascine is the iron bridge. The Cascine you
+remember--the park where we were driving--that clump of woods there----"
+
+A vagueness expressive of divided interest had crept into the lady's
+tone rather than her words. Colville could feel that she was waiting for
+the right moment to turn her delicate head, sculpturesquely defined by
+its toque, and steal an imperceptible glance at him: and he
+involuntarily afforded her the coveted excuse by the slight noise he
+made in changing his position in order to be able to go away as soon as
+he had seen whether she was pretty or not. At forty-one the question is
+still important to every man with regard to every woman.
+
+"Mr. Colville!"
+
+The gentle surprise conveyed in the exclamation, without time for
+recognition, convinced Colville, upon a cool review of the facts, that
+the lady had known him before their eyes met.
+
+"Why, Mrs. Bowen!" he said.
+
+She put out her round, slender arm, and gave him a frank clasp of her
+gloved hand. The glove wrinkled richly up the sleeve of her dress
+half-way to her elbow. She bent on his face a demand for just what
+quality and degree of change he found in hers, and apparently she
+satisfied herself that his inspection was not to her disadvantage, for
+she smiled brightly, and devoted the rest of her glance to an electric
+summary of the facts of Colville's physiognomy; the sufficiently good
+outline of his visage, with its full, rather close-cut, drabbish-brown
+beard and moustache, both shaped a little by the ironical self-conscious
+smile that lurked under them; the non-committal, rather weary-looking
+eyes; the brown hair, slightly frosted, that showed while he stood with
+his hat still off. He was a little above the middle height, and if it
+must be confessed, neither his face nor his figure had quite preserved
+their youthful lines. They were both much heavier than when Mrs. Bowen
+saw them last, and the latter here and there swayed beyond the strict
+bounds of symmetry. She was herself in that moment of life when, to the
+middle-aged observer, at least, a woman's looks have a charm which is
+wanting to her earlier bloom. By that time her character has wrought
+itself more clearly out in her face, and her heart and mind confront you
+more directly there. It is the youth of her spirit which has come to the
+surface.
+
+"I should have known you anywhere," she exclaimed, with friendly
+pleasure in seeing him.
+
+"You are very kind," said Colville. "I didn't know that I had preserved
+my youthful beauty to that degree. But I can imagine it--if you say so,
+Mrs. Bowen."
+
+"Oh, I assure you that you have!" she protested; and now she began
+gently to pursue him with one fine question after another about himself,
+till she had mastered the main facts of his history since they had last
+met. He would not have known so well how to possess himself of hers,
+even if he had felt the same necessity; but in fact it had happened that
+he had heard of her from time to time at not very long intervals. She
+had married a leading lawyer of her Western city, who in due time had
+gone to Congress, and after his term was out had "taken up his
+residence" in Washington, as the newspapers said, "in his elegant
+mansion at the corner of & Street and Idaho Avenue." After that he
+remembered reading that Mrs. Bowen was going abroad for the education of
+her daughter, from which he made his own inferences concerning her
+marriage. And "You knew Mr. Bowen was no longer living?" she said, with
+fit obsequy of tone.
+
+"Yes, I knew," he answered, with decent sympathy.
+
+"This is my little Effie," said Mrs. Bowen after a moment; and now the
+child, hitherto keeping herself discreetly in the background, came
+forward and promptly gave her hand to Colville, who perceived that she
+was not so small as he had thought her at first; an effect of infancy
+had possibly been studied in the brevity of her skirts and the
+immaturity of her corsage, but both were in good taste, and really to
+the advantage of her young figure. There was reason and justice in her
+being dressed as she was, for she really was not so old as she looked by
+two or three years; and there was reason in Mrs. Bowen's carrying in the
+hollow of her left arm the India shawl sacque she had taken off and hung
+there; the deep cherry silk lining gave life to the sombre tints
+prevailing in her dress, which its removal left free to express all the
+grace of her extremely lady-like person. Lady-like was the word for Mrs.
+Bowen throughout--for the turn of her head, the management of her arm
+from the elbow, the curve of her hand from wrist to finger-tips, the
+smile, subdued, but sufficiently sweet, playing about her little mouth,
+which was yet not too little, and the refined and indefinite perfume
+which exhaled from the ensemble of her silks, her laces, and her gloves,
+like an odorous version of that otherwise impalpable quality which women
+call style. She had, with all her flexibility, a certain charming
+stiffness, like the stiffness of a very tall feather.
+
+"And have you been here a great while?" she asked, turning her head
+slowly toward Colville, and looking at him with a little difficulty she
+had in raising her eyelids; when she was younger the glance that shyly
+stole from under the covert of their lashes was like a gleam of
+sunshine, and it was still like a gleam of paler sunshine.
+
+Colville, whose mood was very susceptible to the weather, brightened in
+the ray. "I only arrived last night," he said, with a smile.
+
+"How glad you must be to get back! Did you ever see Florence more
+beautiful than it was this morning?"
+
+"Not for years," said Colville, with another smile for her pretty
+enthusiasm. "Not for seventeen years at the least calculation."
+
+"Is it so many?" cried Mrs. Bowen, with lovely dismay. "Yes, it is," she
+sighed, and she did not speak for an appreciable interval.
+
+He knew that she was thinking of that old love affair of his, to which
+she was privy in some degree, though he never could tell how much; and
+when she spoke he perceived that she purposely avoided speaking of a
+certain person, whom a woman of more tact or of less would have insisted
+upon naming at once. "I never can believe in the lapse of time when I
+get back to Italy; it always makes me feel as young as when I left it
+last."
+
+"I could imagine you'd never left it," said Colville.
+
+Mrs. Bowen reflected a moment. "Is that a compliment?"
+
+"I had an obscure intention of saying something fine; but I don't think
+I've quite made it out," he owned.
+
+Mrs. Bowen gave her small, sweet smile. "It was very nice of you to try.
+But I haven't really been away for some time; I've taken a house in
+Florence, and I've been here two years. Palazzo Pinti, Lung' Arno della
+Zecca. You must come and see me. Thursdays from four till six."
+
+"Thank you," said Colville.
+
+"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Bowen, remotely preparing to offer her hand in
+adieu, "that Effie and I broke in upon some very important cogitations
+of yours." She shifted the silken burden off her arm a little, and the
+child stirred from the correct pose she had been keeping, and smiled
+politely.
+
+"I don't think they deserve a real dictionary word like that," said
+Colville. "I was simply mooning. If there was anything definite in my
+mind, I was wishing that I was looking down on the Wabash in Dos Vaches,
+instead of the Arno in Florence."
+
+"Oh! And I supposed you must be indulging all sorts of historical
+associations with the place. Effie and I have been walking through the
+Via de' Bardi, where Romola lived, and I was bringing her back over the
+Ponte Vecchio, so as to impress the origin of Florence on her mind."
+
+"Is that what makes Miss Effie hate it?" asked Colville, looking at the
+child, whose youthful resemblance to her mother was in all things so
+perfect that a fantastic question whether she could ever have had any
+other parent swept through him. Certainly, if Mrs. Bowen were to marry
+again, there was nothing in this child's looks to suggest the idea of a
+predecessor to the second husband.
+
+"Effie doesn't hate any sort of useful knowledge," said her mother half
+jestingly. "She's just come to me from school at Vevay."
+
+"Oh, then, I think she might," persisted Colville. "Don't you hate the
+origin of Florence a little?" he asked of the child.
+
+"I don't know enough about it," she answered, with a quick look of
+question at her mother, and checking herself in a possibly indiscreet
+smile.
+
+"Ah, that accounts for it," said Colville, and he laughed. It amused him
+to see the child referring even this point of propriety to her mother,
+and his thoughts idled off to what Mrs. Bowen's own untrammelled
+girlhood must have been in her Western city. For her daughter there were
+to be no buggy rides, or concerts, or dances at the invitation of young
+men; no picnics, free and unchaperoned as the casing air; no sitting on
+the steps at dusk with callers who never dreamed of asking for her
+mother; no lingering at the gate with her youthful escort home from the
+ball--nothing of that wild, sweet liberty which once made American
+girlhood a long rapture. But would she be any the better for her
+privations, for referring not only every point of conduct, but every
+thought and feeling, to her mother? He suppressed a sigh for the
+inevitable change, but rejoiced that his own youth had fallen in the
+earlier time, and said, "You will hate it as soon as you've read a
+little of it."
+
+"The difficulty is to read a little of Florentine history. I can't find
+anything in less than ten or twelve volumes," said Mrs. Bowen. "Effie
+and I were going to Viesseux's Library again, in desperation, to see if
+there wasn't something shorter in French."
+
+She now offered Colville her hand, and he found himself very reluctant
+to let it go. Something in her looks did not forbid him, and when she
+took her hand away, he said, "Let me go to Viesseux's with you, Mrs.
+Bowen, and give you the advantage of my unprejudiced ignorance in the
+choice of a book on Florence."
+
+"Oh, I was longing to ask you!" said Mrs. Bowen frankly. "It is really
+such a serious matter, especially when the book is for a young person.
+Unless it's very dry, it's so apt to be--objectionable."
+
+"Yes," said Colville, with a smile at her perplexity. He moved off down
+the slope of the bridge with her, between the jewellers' shops, and felt
+a singular satisfaction in her company. Women of fashion always
+interested him; he liked them; it diverted him that they should take
+themselves seriously. Their resolution, their suffering for their ideal,
+such as it was, their energy in dressing and adorning themselves, the
+pains they were at to achieve the trivialities they passed their lives
+in, were perpetually delightful to him. He often found them people of
+great simplicity, and sometimes of singularly good sense; their frequent
+vein of piety was delicious.
+
+Ten minutes earlier he would have said that nothing could have been less
+welcome to him than this encounter, but now he felt unwilling to leave
+Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"Go before, Effie," she said; and she added, to Colville, "How very
+Florentine all this is! If you dropped from the clouds on this spot
+without previous warning, you would know that you were on the Ponte
+Vecchio, and nowhere else."
+
+"Yes, it's very Florentine," Colville assented. "The bridge is very well
+as a bridge, but as a street I prefer the Main Street Bridge at Des
+Vaches. I was looking at the jewellery before you came up, and I don't
+think it's pretty, even the old pieces of peasant jewellery. Why do
+people come here to look at it? If you were going to buy something for a
+friend, would you dream of coming here for it?"
+
+"Oh _no_!" replied Mrs. Bowen, with the deepest feeling.
+
+They quitted the bridge, and turning to the left, moved down the street
+which with difficulty finds space between the parapet of the river and
+the shops of the mosaicists and dealers in statuary cramping it on the
+other hand.
+
+"Here's something distinctively Florentine too," said Colville. "These
+table-tops, and paper-weights, and caskets, and photograph frames, and
+lockets, and breast-pins; and here, this ghostly glare of undersized
+Psyches and Hebes and Graces in alabaster."
+
+"Oh, you mustn't think of any of them!" Mrs. Bowen broke in with horror.
+"If your friend wishes you to get her something characteristically
+Florentine, and at the same time very tasteful, you must go--"
+
+Colville gave a melancholy laugh. "My friend is an abstraction, Mrs.
+Bowen, without sex or any sort of entity."
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Bowen. Some fine drops had begun to sprinkle the
+pavement. "What a ridiculous blunder! It's raining! Effie, I'm afraid we
+must give up your book for to-day. We're not dressed for damp weather,
+and we'd better hurry home as soon as possible." She got promptly into
+the shelter of a doorway, and gathered her daughter to her, while she
+flung her sacque over her shoulder and caught her draperies from the
+ground for the next movement. "Mr. Colville, will you please stop the
+first closed carriage that comes in sight?"
+
+A figure of _primo tenore_ had witnessed the manoeuvre from the box of
+his cab; he held up his whip, and at a nod from Colville he drove
+abreast of the doorway, his broken-kneed, tremulous little horse gay in
+brass-mounted harness, and with a stiff turkey feather stuck upright at
+one ear in his head-stall.
+
+Mrs. Bowen had no more scruple than another woman in stopping travel and
+traffic in a public street for her convenience. She now entered into a
+brisk parting conversation with Colville, such as ladies love, blocking
+the narrow sidewalk with herself, her daughter, and her open carriage
+door, and making people walk round her cab, in the road, which they did
+meekly enough, with the Florentine submissiveness to the pretensions of
+any sort of vehicle. She said a dozen important things that seemed to
+have just come into her head, and, "Why, how stupid I am!" she called
+out, making Colville check the driver in his first start, after she had
+got into the cab. "We are to have a few people tonight. If you have no
+engagement, I should be so glad to have you come. Can't you?"
+
+"Yes, I can," said Colville, admiring the whole transaction and the
+parties to it with a passive smile.
+
+After finding her pocket, she found that her card-case was not in it,
+but in the purse she had given Effie to carry; but she got her address
+at last, and gave it to Colville, though he said he should remember it
+without. "Any time between nine and eleven," she said. "It's so nice of
+you to promise!"
+
+She questioned him from under her half-lifted eyelids, and he added,
+with a laugh, "I'll come!" and was rewarded with two pretty smiles, just
+alike, from mother and daughter, as they drove away.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Twenty years earlier, when Mrs. Bowen was Miss Lina Ridgely, she used to
+be the friend and confidante of the girl who jilted Colville. They were
+then both so young that they could scarcely have been a year out of
+school before they left home for the year they were spending in Europe;
+but to the young man's inexperience they seemed the wisest and maturest
+of society women. His heart quaked in his breast when he saw them
+talking and laughing together, for fear they should be talking and
+laughing about him; he was even a little more afraid of Miss Ridgely
+than of her friend, who was dashing and effective, where Miss Ridgely
+was serene and elegant, according to his feeling at that time; but he
+never saw her after his rejection, and it was not till he read of her
+marriage with the Hon. Mr. Bowen that certain vague impressions began to
+define themselves. He then remembered that Lina Ridgely in many fine
+little ways had shown a kindness, almost a compassion, for him, as for
+one whose unconsciousness a hopeless doom impended over. He perceived
+that she had always seemed to like him--a thing that had not occurred to
+him in the stupid absorption of his passion for the other--and fragments
+of proof that she had probably defended and advocated him occurred to
+him, and inspired a vain and retrospective gratitude; he abandoned
+himself to regrets, which were proper enough in regard to Miss Ridgely,
+but were certainly a little unlawful concerning Mrs. Bowen.
+
+As he walked away toward his hotel he amused himself with the conjecture
+whether he, with his forty-one years and his hundred and eighty five
+pounds, were not still a pathetic and even a romantic figure to this
+pretty and kindly woman, who probably imagined him as heart-broken as
+ever. He was very willing to see more of her, if she wished; but with
+the rain beginning to fall more thick and chill in the darkening street,
+he could have postponed their next meeting till a pleasanter evening
+without great self-denial. He felt a little twinge of rheumatism in his
+shoulder when he got into his room, for your room in a Florentine hotel
+is always some degrees colder than outdoors, unless you have fire in it;
+and with the sun shining on his windows when he went out after lunch, it
+had seemed to Colville ridiculous to have his morning fire kept up. The
+sun was what he had taken the room for. It was in it, the landlord
+assured him, from ten in the morning till four in the afternoon; and so,
+in fact, it was, when it shone; but even then it was not fully in it,
+but had a trick of looking in at the sides of the window, and painting
+the chamber wall with a delusive glow. Colville raked away the ashes of
+his fire-place, and throwing on two or three fagots of broom and pine
+sprays, he had a blaze that would be very pretty to dress by after
+dinner, but that gave out no warmth for the present. He left it, and
+went down to the reading-room, as it was labelled over the door, in
+homage to a predominance of English-speaking people among the guests;
+but there was no fire there; that was kindled only by request, and he
+shivered at the bare aspect of the apartment, with its cold piano, its
+locked bookcases, and its table, where the London _Times_, the _Neue
+Freie Presse_ of Vienna, and the _Italie_ of Rome exposed their titles,
+one just beyond the margin of the other. He turned from the door and
+went into the dining-room, where the stove was ostentatiously roaring
+over its small logs and its lozenges of peat, But even here the fire had
+been so recently lighted that the warmth was potential rather than
+actual. By stooping down before the stove, and pressing his shoulder
+against its brass doors, Colville managed to lull his enemy, while he
+studied the figures of the woman-headed, woman-breasted hounds
+developing into vines and foliage that covered the frescoed trellising
+of the quadrangularly vaulted ceiling. The waiters, in their veteran
+dress-coats, were putting the final touches to the table, and the sound
+of voices outside the door obliged Colville to get up. The effort
+involved made him still more reluctant about going out to Mrs. Bowen's.
+
+The door opened, and some English ladies entered, faintly acknowledging,
+provisionally ignoring, his presence, and talking of what they had been
+doing since lunch. They agreed that it was really too cold in the
+churches for any pleasure in the pictures, and that the Pitti Gallery,
+where they had those braziers, was the only place you could go with
+comfort. A French lady and her husband came in; a Russian lady followed;
+an Italian gentleman, an American family, and three or four detached men
+of the English-speaking race, whose language at once became the law of
+the table.
+
+As the dinner progressed from soup to fish, and from the _entrée_ to the
+roast and salad, the combined effect of the pleasant cheer and the
+increasing earnestness of the stove made the room warmer and warmer.
+They drank Chianti wine from the wicker-covered flasks, tied with tufts
+of red and green silk, in which they serve table wine at Florence, and
+said how pretty the bottles were, but how the wine did not seem very
+good.
+
+"It certainly isn't so good as it used to be," said Colville.
+
+"Ah, then you have been in Florhence before." said the French lady,
+whose English proved to be much better than the French that he began to
+talk to her in.
+
+"Yes, a great while ago; in a state of pre-existence, in fact," he said.
+
+The lady looked a little puzzled, but interested. "In a state of
+prhe-existence?" she repeated.
+
+"Yes; when I was young," he added, catching the gleam in her eye. "When
+I was twenty-four. A great while ago."
+
+"You must be an Amerhican," said the lady, with a laugh.
+
+"Why do you think so? From my accent?"
+
+"Frhom your metaphysics too. The Amerhicans like to talk in that way."
+
+"I didn't know it," said Colville.
+
+"They like to strhike the key of personality; they can't endure not
+being interhested. They must rhelate everything to themselves or to
+those with whom they are talking."
+
+"And the French, no?" asked Colville.
+
+The lady laughed again. "There is a large Amerhican colony in Parhis.
+Perhaps we have learned to be like you."
+
+The lady's husband did not speak English, and it was probably what they
+had been saying that she interpreted to him, for he smiled, looking
+forward to catch Colville's eye in a friendly way, and as if he would
+not have him take his wife's talk too seriously.
+
+The Italian gentleman on Colville's right was politely offering him the
+salad, which had been left for the guests to pass to one another.
+Colville thanked him in Italian, and they began to talk of Italian
+affairs. One thing led to another, and he found that his new friend, who
+was not yet his acquaintance, was a member of Parliament, and a
+republican.
+
+"That interests me as an American," said Colville. "But why do you want
+a republic in Italy?"
+
+"When we have a constitutional king, why should we have a king?" asked
+the Italian.
+
+An Englishman across the table relieved Colville from the difficulty of
+answering this question by asking him another that formed talk about it
+between them. He made his tacit observation that the English, since he
+met them last, seemed to have grown in the grace of facile speech with
+strangers; it was the American family which kept its talk within itself,
+and hushed to a tone so low that no one else could hear it. Colville did
+not like their mumbling; for the honour of the country, which we all
+have at heart, however little we think it, he would have preferred that
+they should speak up, and not seem afraid or ashamed; he thought the
+English manner was better. In fact, he found himself in an unexpectedly
+social mood; he joined in helping to break the ice; he laughed and
+hazarded comment with those who were new-comers like himself, and was
+very respectful of the opinions of people who had been longer in the
+hotel, when they spoke of the cook's habit of underdoing the vegetables.
+The dinner at the Hotel d'Atene made an imposing show on the _carte du
+jour_; it looked like ten or twelve courses, but in fact it was five,
+and even when eked out with roast chestnuts and butter into six, it
+seemed somehow to stop very abruptly, though one seemed to have had
+enough. You could have coffee afterward if you ordered it. Colville
+ordered it, and was sorry when the last of his commensals, slightly
+bowing him a good-night, left him alone to it.
+
+He had decided that he need not fear the damp in a cab rapidly driven to
+Mrs. Bowen's. When he went to his room he had his doubts about his
+dress-coat; but he put it on, and he took the crush hat with which he
+had provided himself in coming through London. That was a part of the
+social panoply unknown in Des Vaches; he had hardly been a dozen times
+in evening dress there in fifteen years, and his suit was as new as his
+hat. As he turned to the glass he thought himself personable enough, and
+in fact he was one of those men who look better in evening dress than in
+any other: the broad expanse of shirt bosom, with its three small studs
+of gold dropping, points of light, one below the other, softened his
+strong, almost harsh face, and balanced his rather large head. In his
+morning coat, people had to look twice at him to make sure that he did
+not look common; but now he was not wrong in thinking that he had an air
+of distinction, as he took his hat under his arm and stood before the
+pier-glass in his room. He was almost tempted to shave, and wear his
+moustache alone, as he used to do: he had let his beard grow because he
+found that under the lax social regimen at Des Vaches he neglected
+shaving, and went about days at a time with his face in an offensive
+stubble. Taking his chin between his fingers, and peering closer into
+the mirror, he wondered how Mrs. Bowen should have known him; she must
+have remembered him very vividly. He would like to take off his beard
+and put on the youthfulness that comes of shaving, and see what she
+would say. Perhaps, he thought, with a last glance at his toilet, he was
+overdoing it, if she were only to have a few people, as she promised. He
+put a thick neckerchief over his chest so as not to provoke that
+abominable rheumatism by any sort of exposure, and he put on his ulster
+instead of the light spring overcoat that he had gone about with all
+day.
+
+He found that Palazzo Pinti, when you came to it, was rather a grand
+affair, with a gold-banded porter eating salad in the lodge at the great
+doorway, and a handsome gate of iron cutting you off from the regions
+above till you had rung the bell of Mrs. Bowen's apartment, when it
+swung open of itself, and you mounted. At her door a man in modified
+livery received Colville, and helped him off with his overcoat so
+skilfully that he did not hurt his rheumatic shoulder at all; there were
+half a dozen other hats and coats on the carved chests that stood at
+intervals along the wall, and some gayer wraps that exhaled a faint,
+fascinating fragrance on the chilly air. Colville experienced the slight
+exhilaration, the mingled reluctance and eagerness, of a man who
+formally re-enters an assemblage of society after long absence from it,
+and rubbing his hands a little nervously together, he put aside the
+yellow Abruzzi blanket _portière_, and let himself into the brilliant
+interior.
+
+Mrs. Bowen stood in front of the fire in a brown silk of subdued
+splendour, and with her hands and fan and handkerchief tastefully
+composed before her. At sight of Colville she gave a slight start, which
+would have betrayed to him, if he had been another woman, that she had
+not really believed he would come, and came forward with a rustle and
+murmur of pleasure to meet him; he had politely made a rush upon her, so
+as to spare her this exertion, and he was tempted to a long-forgotten
+foppishness of attitude as he stood talking with her during the brief
+interval before she introduced him to any of the company. She had been
+honest with him; there were not more than twenty-five or thirty people
+there; but if he had overdone it in dressing for so small an affair, he
+was not alone, and he was not sorry. He was sensible of a better
+personal effect than the men in frock-coats and cut-aways were making,
+and he perceived with self-satisfaction that his evening dress was of
+better style than that of the others who wore it; at least no one else
+carried a crush hat.--
+
+At forty-one a man is still very much of a boy, and Colville was
+obscurely willing that Mrs. Bowen, whose life since they last met at an
+evening party had been passed chiefly at New York and Washington, should
+see that he was a man of the world in spite of Des Vaches. Before she
+had decided which of the company she should first present him to, her
+daughter came up to his elbow with a cup of tea and some bread and
+butter on a tray, and gave him good-evening with charming correctness of
+manner. "Really," he said, turning about to take the cup, "I thought it
+was you, Mrs. Bowen, who had got round to my side with a sash on. How do
+you and Miss Effie justify yourselves in looking so bewitchingly alike?"
+
+"You notice it, then?" Mrs. Bowen seemed delighted.
+
+"I did every moment you were together to-day. You don't mind my having
+been so personal in my observations?"
+
+"Oh, not at all," said Mrs. Bowen, and Colville laughed.
+
+"It must be true," he said, "what a French lady said to me at the
+_table-d'hôte_ dinner to-night: 'the Amerhicans always strhike the note
+of perhsonality.'" He neatly imitated the French lady's guttural accent.
+
+"I suppose we do," mused Mis. Bowen, "and that we don't mind it in each
+other. I wish _you_ would say which I shall introduce you to," she said,
+letting her glance stray invisibly over her company, where all the
+people seemed comfortably talking.
+
+"Oh, there's no hurry; put it off till to-morrow," said Colville.
+
+"Oh no; that won't do," said Mrs. Bowen, like a woman who has public
+duties to perform, and is resolute to sacrifice her private pleasure to
+them. But she postponed them a moment longer. "I hope you got home
+before the rain," she said.
+
+"Yes," returned Colville. "That is, I don't mind a little sprinkling.
+Who is the Junonian young person at the end of the room?"
+
+"Ah," said Mrs. Bowen, "you can't be introduced to _her_ first. But
+_isn't_ she lovely?"
+
+"Yes. It's a wonderful effect of white and gold."
+
+"You mustn't say that to her. She was doubtful about her dress, because
+she says that the ivory white with her hair makes her look just like
+white and gold furniture."
+
+"Present me at once, then, before I forget not to say it to her."
+
+"No; I must keep you for some other person: anybody can talk to a pretty
+girl."
+
+Colville said he did not know whether to smile or shed tears at this
+embittered compliment, and pretended an eagerness for the acquaintance
+denied him.
+
+Mrs. Bowen seemed disposed to intensify his misery. "Did you ever see a
+more statuesque creature--with those superb broad shoulders and that
+little head, and that thick braid brought round over the top? Doesn't
+her face, with that calm look in those starry eyes, and that peculiar
+fall of the corners of the mouth, remind you of some of those exquisite
+great Du Maurier women? That style of face is very fashionable now: you
+might think he had made it so."
+
+"Is there a fashion in faces?" asked Colville.
+
+"Why, certainly. You must know that."
+
+"Then why aren't all the ladies in the fashion?"
+
+"It isn't one that can be put on. Besides, every one hasn't got Imogene
+Graham's figure to carry it off."
+
+"That's her name, then--Imogene Graham. It's a very pretty name."
+
+"Yes. She's staying with me for the winter. Now that's all I can allow
+you to know for the present. Come! You must!"
+
+"But this is worse than nothing." He made a feint of protesting as she
+led him away, and named him to the lady she wished him to know. But he
+was not really sorry; he had his modest misgivings whether he were equal
+to quite so much young lady as Miss Graham seemed. When he no longer
+looked at her he had a whimsical impression of her being a heroic statue
+of herself.
+
+The lady whom Mrs. Bowen left him with had not much to say, and she made
+haste to introduce her husband, who had a great deal to say. He was an
+Italian, but master of that very efficient English which the Italians
+get together with unimaginable sufferings from our orthography, and
+Colville repeated the republican deputy's saying about a constitutional
+king, which he had begun to think was neat.
+
+"I might prefer a republic myself," said the Italian, "but I think that
+gentleman is wrong to be a republican where he is, and for the present.
+The monarchy is the condition of our unity; nothing else could hold us
+together, and we must remain united if we are to exist as a nation. It's
+a necessity, like our army of half a million men. We may not like it in
+itself, but we know that it is our salvation." He began to speak of the
+economic state of Italy, of the immense cost of freedom and independence
+to a people whose political genius enables them to bear quietly burdens
+of taxation that no other government would venture to impose. He spoke
+with that fond, that appealing patriotism, which expresses so much to
+the sympathetic foreigner in Italy: the sense of great and painful
+uncertainty of Italy's future through the complications of diplomacy,
+the memory of her sufferings in the past, the spirit of quiet and
+inexhaustible patience for trials to come. This resolution, which is
+almost resignation, poetises the attitude of the whole people; it made
+Colville feel as if he had done nothing and borne nothing yet.
+
+"I am ashamed," he said, not without a remote resentment of the
+unworthiness of the republican voters of Des Vaches, "when I hear of
+such things, to think of what we are at home, with all our resources and
+opportunities."
+
+The Italian would have politely excused us to him, but Colville would
+have no palliation of our political and moral nakedness; and he framed a
+continuation of the letter he began on the Ponte Vecchio to the
+_Post-Democrat-Republican_, in which he made a bitterly ironical
+comparison of the achievements of Italy and America in the last ten
+years.
+
+He forgot about Miss Graham, and had only a vague sense of her splendour
+as he caught sight of her in the long mirror which she stood before. She
+was talking to a very handsome young clergyman, and smiling upon him.
+The company seemed to be mostly Americans, but there were a good many
+evident English also, and Colville was dimly aware of a question in his
+mind whether this clergyman was English or American. There were three or
+four Italians and there were some Germans, who spoke English.
+
+Colville moved about from group to group as his enlarging acquaintance
+led, and found himself more interested in society than he could ever
+have dreamed of being again. It was certainly a defect of the life at
+Des Vaches that people, after the dancing and love-making period, went
+out rarely or never. He began to see that the time he had spent so
+busily in that enterprising city had certainly been in some sense
+wasted.
+
+At a certain moment in the evening, which perhaps marked its
+advancement, the tea-urn was replaced by a jug of the rum punch, mild or
+strong according to the custom of the house, which is served at most
+Florentine receptions. Some of the people went immediately after, but
+the young clergyman remained talking with Miss Graham.
+
+Colville, with his smoking glass in his hand, found himself at the side
+of a friendly old gentleman who had refused the punch. They joined in
+talk by a common impulse, and the old gentleman said, directly, "You are
+an American, I presume?"
+
+His accent had already established the fact of his own nationality, but
+he seemed to think it the part of candour to say, when Colville had
+acknowledged his origin, "I'm an American myself."
+
+"I've met several of our countrymen since I arrived," suggested
+Colville.
+
+The old gentleman seemed to like this way of putting it. "Well, yes,
+we're not unfairly represented here in numbers, I must confess. But I'm
+bound to say that I don't find our countrymen so aggressive, so loud, as
+our international novelists would make out. I haven't met any of their
+peculiar heroines as yet, sir."
+
+Colville could not help laughing. "I wish _I_ had. But perhaps they
+avoid people of our years and discretion, or else take such a filial
+attitude toward us that we can't recognise them."
+
+"Perhaps, perhaps," cried the old gentleman, with cheerful assent.
+
+"I was talking with one of our German friends here just now, and he
+complained that the American girls--especially the rich ones--seem very
+calculating and worldly and conventional. I told him I didn't know how
+to account for that. I tried to give him some notion of the ennobling
+influences of society in Newport, as I've had glimpses of it."
+
+The old gentleman caressed his elbows, which he was holding in the palms
+of his hands, in high enjoyment of Colville's sarcasm. "Ah! very good!
+very good!" he said. "I quite agree with you, and I think the other sort
+are altogether preferable."
+
+"I think," continued Colville, dropping his ironical tone, "that we've
+much less to regret in their unsuspecting, unsophisticated freedom than
+in the type of hard materialism which we produce in young girls,
+perfectly wide awake, disenchanted, unromantic, who prefer the worldly
+vanities and advantages deliberately and on principle, recognising
+something better merely to despise it. I've sometimes seen them----"
+
+Mrs. Bowen came up in her gentle, inquiring way. "I'm glad that you and
+Mr. Colville have made acquaintance," she said to the old gentleman.
+
+"Oh, but we haven't," said Colville. "We're entire strangers."
+
+"Then I'll introduce you to Rev. Mr. Waters. And take you away," she
+added, putting her hand through Colville's arm with a delicate touch
+that flattered his whole being, "for your time's come at last, and I'm
+going to present you to Miss Graham."
+
+"I don't know," he said. "Of course, as there is a Miss Graham, I can't
+help being presented to her, but I had almost worked myself up to the
+point of wishing there were none. I believe I'm afraid."
+
+"Oh, I don't believe that at all. A simple schoolgirl like that!" Mrs.
+Bowen's sense of humour had not the national acuteness. She liked joking
+in men, but she did not know how to say funny things back "You'll see,
+as you come up to her."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Miss Graham did, indeed, somehow diminish in the nearer perspective. She
+ceased to be overwhelming. When Colville lifted his eyes from bowing
+before her he perceived that she--was neither so very tall nor so very
+large, but possessed merely a generous amplitude of womanhood. But she
+was even more beautiful, with a sweet and youthful radiance of look that
+was very winning. If she had ceased to be the goddess she looked across
+the length of the _salon_, she had gained much by becoming an extremely
+lovely young girl; and her teeth, when she spoke, showed a fascinating
+little irregularity that gave her the last charm.
+
+Mrs. Bowen glided away with the young clergyman, but Effie remained at
+Miss Graham's side, and seemed to have hold of the left hand which the
+girl let hang carelessly behind her in the volume of her robe. The
+child's face expressed an adoration of Miss Graham far beyond her
+allegiance to her mother.
+
+"I began to doubt whether Mrs. Bowen was going to bring you at all," she
+said frankly, with an innocent, nervous laugh, which made favour for her
+with Colville. "She promised it early in the evening."
+
+"She has used me much worse, Miss Graham," said Colville. "She has kept
+me waiting from the beginning of time. So that I have grown grey on my
+way up to you," he added, by an inspiration. "I was a comparatively
+young man when Mrs. Bowen first told me she was going to introduce me."
+
+"Oh, how _good_!" said Miss Graham joyously. And her companion, after a
+moment's hesitation, permitted herself a polite little titter. She had
+made a discovery; she had discovered that Mr. Colville was droll.
+
+"I'm very glad you like it," he said, with a gravity that did not
+deceive them.
+
+"Oh yes," sighed Miss Graham, with generous ardour. "Who but an American
+could say just such things? There's the loveliest old lady here in
+Florence, who's lived here thirty years, and she's always going back and
+never getting back, and she's so homesick she doesn't know what to do,
+and she always says that Americans may not be _better_ than other
+people, but they are _different_."
+
+"That's very pretty. They're different in everything but thinking
+themselves better. Their native modesty prevents that."
+
+"I don't exactly know what you mean," said Miss Graham, after a little
+hesitation.
+
+"Well," returned Colville, "I haven't thought it out very clearly myself
+yet. I may mean that the Americans differ from other people in not
+thinking well of themselves, or they may differ from them in not
+thinking well enough. But what I said had a very epigrammatic sound, and
+I prefer not to investigate it too closely."
+
+This made Miss Graham and Miss Effie both cry out "Oh!" in delighted
+doubt of his intention. They both insensibly drifted a little nearer to
+him.
+
+"There was a French lady said to me at the _table-d'hote_ this evening
+that she knew I was an American, because the Americans always strike the
+key of personality." He practised these economies of material in
+conversation quite recklessly, and often made the same incident or
+suggestion do duty round a whole company.
+
+"Ah, I don't believe that," said Miss Graham.
+
+"Believe what?"
+
+"That the Americans always talk about themselves."
+
+"I'm not sure she meant that. You never can tell what a person means by
+what he says--or _she_."
+
+"How shocking!".
+
+"Perhaps the French lady meant that we always talk about other people.
+That's in the key of personality too."
+
+"But I don't believe we do," said Miss Graham. "At any rate, _she_ was
+talking about _us_, then."
+
+"Oh, she accounted for that by saying there was a large American colony
+in Paris, who had corrupted the French, and taught them our pernicious
+habit of introspection."
+
+"Do you think we're very introspective?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"I know I'm not. I hardly ever think about myself at all. At any rate,
+not till it's too late. That's the great trouble. I wish I could. But
+I'm always studying other people. They're so much more interesting."
+
+"Perhaps if you knew yourself better you wouldn't think so," suggested
+Colville.
+
+"Yes, I know they are. I don't think any young person can be
+interesting."
+
+"Then what becomes of all the novels? They're full of young persons."
+
+"They're ridiculous. If I were going to write a novel, I should take an
+old person for a hero--thirty-five or forty." She looked at Colville,
+and blushing a little, hastened to add, "I don't believe that they begin
+to be interesting much before that time. Such flat things as young men
+are always saying! Don't you remember that passage somewhere in Heine's
+_Pictures of Travel_, where he sees the hand of a lady coming out from
+under her mantle, when she's confessing in a church, and he knows that
+it's the hand of a young person who has enjoyed nothing and suffered
+nothing, it's so smooth and flower-like? After I read that I hated the
+look of my hands--I was only sixteen, and it seemed as if I had had no
+more experience than a child. Oh, I like people to go _through_
+something. Don't you?"
+
+"Well, yes, I suppose I do. Other people."
+
+"No; but don't you like it for yourself?"
+
+"I can't tell; I haven't been through anything worth speaking of yet."
+
+Miss Graham looked at him dubiously, but pursued with ardour: "Why, just
+getting back to Florence, after not having been here for so long--I
+should think it would be so romantic. Oh dear! I wish I were here for
+the second time."
+
+"I'm afraid you wouldn't like it so well," said Colville. "I wish I were
+here for the first time. There's nothing like the first time in
+everything."
+
+"Do you really think so?"
+
+"Well, there's nothing like the first time in Florence."
+
+"Oh, I can't imagine it. I should think that recalling the old emotions
+would be perfectly fascinating."
+
+"Yes, if they'd come when you do call them. But they're as
+contrary-minded as spirits from the vasty deep. I've been shouting
+around here for my old emotions all day, and I haven't had a responsive
+squeak."
+
+"Oh!" cried Miss Graham, staring full-eyed at him. "How delightful!"
+Effie Bowen turned away her pretty little head and laughed, as if it
+might not be quite kind to laugh at a person's joke to his face.
+
+Stimulated by their appreciation, Colville went on with more nonsense.
+"No; the only way to get at your old emotions in regard to Florence is
+to borrow them from somebody who's having them fresh. What do _you_
+think about Florence, Miss Graham?"
+
+"I? I've been here two months."
+
+"Then it's too late?"
+
+"No, I don't know that it is. I keep feeling the strangeness all the
+time. But I can't tell you. It's very different from Buffalo, I can
+assure you."
+
+"Buffalo? I can imagine the difference. And it's not altogether to the
+disadvantage of Buffalo."
+
+"Oh, have you been there?" asked Miss Graham, with a touching little
+eagerness. "Do you know anybody in Buffalo?"
+
+"Some of the newspaper men; and I pass through there once a year on my
+way to New York--or used to. It's a lively place."
+
+"Yes, it is," sighed Miss Graham fondly.
+
+"Do the girls of Buffalo still come out at night and dance by the light
+of the moon?"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Ah, I see," said Colville, peering at her under his thoughtfully
+knitted brows, "you do belong to another era. You don't remember the old
+negro minstrel song."
+
+"No," said Miss Graham. "I can only remember the end of the war."
+
+"How divinely young!" said Colville. "Well," he added, "I wish that
+French lady could have overheard us, Miss Graham. I think she would have
+changed her mind about Americans striking the note of personality in
+their talk."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed the girl reproachfully, after a moment of swift
+reflection and recognition, "I don't see how you could let me do it! You
+don't suppose that I should have talked so with every one? It was
+because you were another American, and such an old friend of Mrs.
+Bowen's."
+
+"That is what I shall certainly tell the French lady if she attacks me
+about it," said Colville. He glanced carelessly toward the end of the
+room, and saw the young clergyman taking leave of Mrs. Bowen; all the
+rest of the company were gone. "Bless me!" he said, "I must be going."
+
+Mrs. Bowen had so swiftly advanced upon him that she caught the last
+words. "Why?" she asked.
+
+"Because it's to-morrow, I suspect, and the invitation was for one day
+only."
+
+"It was a season ticket," said Mrs. Bowen, with gay hospitality, "and it
+isn't to-morrow for half an hour yet. I can't think of letting you go.
+Come up to the fire, all, and let's sit down by it. It's at its very
+best."
+
+Effie looked a pretty surprise and a pleasure in this girlish burst from
+her mother, whose habitual serenity made it more striking in contrast,
+and she forsook Miss Graham's hand and ran forward and disposed the
+easy-chairs comfortably about the hearth.
+
+Colville and Mrs. Bowen suddenly found themselves upon those terms which
+often succeed a long separation with people who have felt kindly toward
+each other at a former meeting and have parted friends: they were much
+more intimate than they had supposed themselves to be, or had really any
+reason for being.
+
+"Which one of your guests do you wish me to offer up, Mrs. Bowen?" he
+asked, from the hollow of the arm-chair, not too low, which he had sunk
+into. With Mrs. Bowen in a higher chair at his right hand, and Miss
+Graham intent upon him from the sofa on his left, a sense of delicious
+satisfaction filled him from head to foot. "There isn't one I would
+spare if you said the word."
+
+"And there isn't one I want destroyed, I'm sorry to say," answered Mrs.
+Bowen. "Don't you think they were all very agreeable?"
+
+"Yes, yes; agreeable enough--agreeable enough, I suppose. But they
+stayed too long. When I think we might have been sitting here for the
+last half-hour, if they'd only gone sooner, I find it pretty hard to
+forgive them."
+
+Mrs. Bowen and Miss Graham exchanged glances above his head--a glance
+which demanded, "Didn't I tell you?" for a glance that answered, "Oh, he
+_is_!" Effie Bowen's eyes widened; she kept them fastened upon Colville
+in silent worship.
+
+He asked who were certain of the company that he had noticed, and Mrs.
+Bowen let him make a little fun of them: the fun was very good-natured.
+He repeated what the German had said about the worldly ambition of
+American girls; but she would not allow him so great latitude in this.
+She said they were no worldlier than other girls. Of course, they were
+fond of society, and some of them got a little spoiled. But they were in
+no danger of becoming too conventional.
+
+Colville did not insist. "I missed the military to-night, Mrs. Bowen,"
+he said. "I thought one couldn't get through an evening in Florence
+without officers?"
+
+"We have them when there is dancing," returned Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"Yes, but they don't know anything but dancing," Miss Graham broke in.
+"I like some one who can talk something besides compliments."
+
+"You are very peculiar, you know, Imogene," urged Mrs. Bowen gently. "I
+don't think our young men at home do much better in conversation, if you
+come to that, though."
+
+"Oh, _young_ men, yes! They're the same everywhere. But here, even when
+they're away along in the thirties, they think that girls can only enjoy
+flattery. _I_ should like a gentleman to talk to me without a single
+word or look to show that he thought I was good-looking."
+
+"Ah, how could he be?" Colville insinuated, and the young girl coloured.
+
+"I mean, if I were pretty. This everlasting adulation is insulting."
+
+"Mr. Morton doesn't flatter," said Mrs. Bowen thoughtfully, turning the
+feather screen she held at her face, now edgewise, now flatwise, toward
+Colville.
+
+"Oh no," owned Miss Graham. "He's a clergyman."
+
+Mrs. Bowen addressed herself to Colville. "You must go to hear him some
+day. He's very interesting, if you don't mind his being rather Low
+Church."
+
+Colville was going to pretend to an advanced degree of ritualism; but it
+occurred to him that it might be a serious matter to Mrs. Bowen, and he
+asked instead who was the Rev. Mr. Waters.
+
+"Oh, isn't he lovely?" cried Miss Graham. "There, Mrs. Bowen! Mr.
+Waters's manner is what I call _truly_ complimentary. He always talks to
+you as if he expected you to be interested in serious matters, and as if
+you were his intellectual equal. And he's so _happy_ here in Florence!
+He gives you the impression of feeling every breath he breathes here a
+privilege. You ought to hear him talk about Savonarola, Mr. Colville."
+
+"Well," said Colville, "I've heard a great many people talk about
+Savonarola, and I'm rather glad he talked to me about American girls."
+
+"American girls!" uttered Miss Graham, in a little scream. "Did Mr.
+Waters talk to you about _girls_?"
+
+"Yes. Why not? He was probably in love with one once."
+
+"Mr. Waters?" cried the girl. "What nonsense!"
+
+"Well, then, with some old lady. Would you like that better?"
+
+Miss Graham looked at Mrs. Bowen for permission, as it seemed, and then
+laughed, but did not attempt any reply to Colville.
+
+"You find even that incredible of such pyramidal antiquity," he resumed.
+"Well, it _is_ hard to believe. I told him what that German said, and we
+agreed beautifully about another type of American girl which we said we
+preferred."
+
+"Oh! What could it be?" demanded Miss Graham.
+
+"Ah, it wouldn't be so easy to say right off-hand," answered Colville
+indolently.
+
+Mrs. Bowen put her hand under the elbow of the arm holding her screen.
+"I don't believe I should agree with you so well," she said, apparently
+with a sort of didactic intention.
+
+They entered into a discussion which is always fruitful with
+Americans--the discussion of American girlhood, and Colville contended
+for the old national ideal of girlish liberty as wide as the continent,
+as fast as the Mississippi. Mrs. Bowen withstood him with delicate
+firmness. "Oh," he said, "you're Europeanised."
+
+"I certainly prefer the European plan of bringing up girls," she replied
+steadfastly. "I shouldn't think of letting a daughter of mine have the
+freedom I had."
+
+"Well, perhaps it will come right in the next generation, then; she will
+let her daughter have the freedom she hadn't."
+
+"Not if I'm alive to prevent it," cried Mrs. Bowen.
+
+Colville laughed. "Which plan do you prefer, Miss Graham?"
+
+"I don't think it's quite the same now as it used to be," answered the
+girl evasively.
+
+"Well, then, all I can say is that if I had died before this chance, I
+had lived a blessed time. I perceive more and more that I'm obsolete.
+I'm in my dotage; I prattle of the good old times, and the new spirit of
+the age flouts me. Miss Effie, do you prefer the Amer----"
+
+"No, thank you," said her mother quickly.
+
+"Effie is out of the question. It's time you were in bed, Effie."
+
+The child came with instant submissiveness and kissed her mother
+good-night; she kissed Miss Graham, and gave her hand to Colville. He
+held it a moment, letting her pull shyly away from him, while he lolled
+back in his chair, and laughed at her with his sad eyes. "It's past the
+time _I_ should be in bed, my dear, and I'm sitting up merely because
+there's nobody to send me. It's not that I'm really such a very bad boy.
+Good night. Don't put me into a disagreeable dream; put me into a nice
+one." The child bridled at the mild pleasantry, and when Colville
+released her hand she suddenly stooped forward and kissed him.
+
+"You're so _funny_!" she cried, and ran and escaped beyond the
+_portière_.
+
+Mrs. Bowen stared in the same direction, but not with severity. "Really,
+Effie has been carried a little beyond herself."
+
+"Well," said Colville, "that's _one_ conquest since I came to Florence.
+And merely by being funny! When I was in Florence before, Mrs. Bowen,"
+he continued, after a moment, "there were two ladies here, and I used to
+go about quite freely with either of them. They were both very pretty,
+and we were all very young. Don't you think it was charming?" Mrs. Bowen
+coloured a lovely red, and smiled, but made no other response. "Florence
+has changed very much for the worse since that time. There used to be a
+pretty flower-girl, with a wide-flapping straw hat, who flung a heavy
+bough full of roses into my lap when she met me driving across the
+Carraja bridge. I spent an hour looking for that girl to-day, and
+couldn't find her. The only flower-girl I could find was a fat one of
+fifty, who kept me fifteen minutes in Via Tornabuoni while she was
+fumbling away at my button-hole, trying to poke three second-hand
+violets and a sickly daisy into it. Ah, youth! youth! I suppose a young
+fellow could have found that other flower-girl at a glance; but _my_ old
+eyes! No, we belong, each of us, to our own generation. Mrs. Bowen," he
+said, with a touch of tragedy--whether real or affected, he did not well
+know himself--in his hardiness, "what has become of Mrs. Pilsbury?"
+
+"Mrs. Milbury, you mean?" gasped Mrs. Bowen, in affright at his
+boldness.
+
+"Milbury, Bilbury, Pilsbury--it's all one, so long as it isn't----"
+
+"They're living in Chicago!" she hastened to reply, as if she were
+afraid he was going to say, "so long as it isn't Colville," and she
+could not have borne that.
+
+Colville clasped his hands at the back of his head and looked at Mrs.
+Bowen with eyes that let her know that he was perfectly aware she had
+been telling Miss Graham of his youthful romance, and that he had now
+touched it purposely. "And you wouldn't," he said, as if that were quite
+relevant to what they had been talking about--"you wouldn't let Miss
+Graham go out walking alone with a dotard like me?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Mrs. Bowen.
+
+Colville got to his feet by a surprising activity. "Good-bye, Miss
+Graham." He offered his hand to her with burlesque despair, and then
+turned to Mrs. Bowen. "Thank you for _such_ a pleasant evening! What was
+your day, did you say?"
+
+"Oh, any day!" said Mrs. Bowen cordially, giving her hand.
+
+"Do you know whom you look like?" he asked, holding it.
+
+"No."
+
+"Lina Ridgely."
+
+The ladies stirred softly in their draperies after he was gone. They
+turned and faced the hearth, where a log burned in a bed of hot ashes,
+softly purring and ticking to itself, and whilst they stood pressing
+their hands against the warm fronts of their dresses, as the fashion of
+women is before a fire, the clock on the mantel began to strike twelve.
+
+"Was that her name?" asked Miss Graham, when the clock had had its say.
+"Lina Ridgely?"
+
+"No; that was _my_ name," answered Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"Oh yes!" murmured the young girl apologetically.
+
+"She led him on; she certainly encouraged him. It was shocking. He was
+quite wild about it."
+
+"She must have been a cruel girl. How _could_ he speak of it so
+lightly?"
+
+"It was best to speak of it, and have done with it," said Mrs. Bowen.
+"He knew that I must have been telling you something about it."
+
+"Yes. How bold it was! A _young_ man couldn't have done it! Yes, he's
+fascinating. But how old and sad he looked, as he lay back there in the
+chair!"
+
+"Old? I don't think he looked old. He looked sad. Yes, it's left its
+mark on him."
+
+The log burned quite through to its core, and fell asunder, a bristling
+mass of embers. They had been looking at it with downcast heads. Now
+they lifted their faces, and saw the pity in each other's eyes, and the
+beautiful girl impulsively kissed the pretty woman good-night.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Colville fell asleep with the flattered sense which abounds in the heart
+of a young man after his first successful evening in society, but which
+can visit maturer life only upon some such conditions of long exile and
+return as had been realised in his. The looks of these two charming
+women followed him into his dreams; he knew he must have pleased them,
+the dramatic homage of the child was evidence of that; and though it had
+been many years since he had found it sufficient cause of happiness to
+have pleased a woman, the desire to do so was by no means extinct in
+him. The eyes of the girl hovered above him like stars; he felt in their
+soft gaze that he was a romance to her young heart, and this made him
+laugh; it also made him sigh.
+
+He woke at dawn with a sharp twinge in his shoulder, and he rose to give
+himself the pleasure of making his own fire with those fagots of broom
+and pine twigs which he had enjoyed the night before, promising himself
+to get back into bed when the fire was well going, and sleep late. While
+he stood before the open stove, the jangling of a small bell outside
+called him to the window, and he saw a procession which had just issued
+from the church going to administer the extreme unction to some dying
+person across the piazza. The parish priest went first, bearing the
+consecrated wafer in its vessel, and at his side an acolyte holding a
+yellow silk umbrella over the Eucharist; after them came a number of
+_facchini_ in white robes and white hoods that hid their faces; their
+tapers burned sallow and lifeless in the new morning light; the bell
+jangled dismally.
+
+"They even die dramatically in this country," thought Colville, in whom
+the artist was taken with the effectiveness of the spectacle before his
+human pity was stirred for the poor soul who was passing. He reproached
+himself for that, and instead of getting back to bed, he dressed and
+waited for the mature hour which he had ordered his breakfast for. When
+it came at last, picturesquely borne on the open hand of Giovanni,
+steaming coffee, hot milk, sweet butter in delicate disks, and two white
+eggs coyly tucked in the fold of a napkin, and all grouped upon the wide
+salver, it brought him a measure of the consolation which good cheer
+imparts to the ridiculous human heart even in the house where death is.
+But the sad incident tempered his mind with a sort of pensiveness that
+lasted throughout the morning, and quite till lunch. He spent the time
+in going about the churches; but the sunshine which the day began with
+was overcast, as it was the day before, and the churches were rather too
+dark and cold in the afternoon. He went to Viesseux's reading-room and
+looked over the English papers, which he did not care for much; and he
+also made a diligent search of the catalogue for some book about
+Florence for little Effie Bowen: he thought he would like to surprise
+her mother with his interest in the matter. As the day waned toward
+dark, he felt more and more tempted to take her at her word, when she
+had said that any day was her day to him, and go to see her. If he had
+been a younger man he would have anxiously considered this indulgence
+and denied himself, but after forty a man denies himself no reasonable
+and harmless indulgence; he has learned by that time that it is a pity
+and a folly to do so.
+
+Colville found Mrs. Bowen's room half full of arriving and departing
+visitors, and then he remembered that it was this day she had named to
+him on the Ponte Vecchio, and when Miss Graham thanked him for coming
+his first Thursday, he made a merit of not having forgotten it, and said
+he was going to come every Thursday during the winter. Miss Graham drew
+him a cup of tea from the Russian samovar which replaces in some
+Florentine houses the tea-pot of Occidental civilisation, and Colville
+smiled upon it and upon her, bending over the brazen urn with a
+flower-like tilt of her beautiful head. She wore an aesthetic dress of
+creamy camel's-hair, whose colour pleased the eye as its softness would
+have flattered the touch.
+
+"What a very Tourguéneffish effect the samovar gives!" he said, taking a
+biscuit from the basket Effie Bowen brought him, shrinking with
+redoubled shyness from the eyebrows which he arched at her. "I wonder
+you can keep from calling me Fedor Colvillitch. Where is your mother,
+Effie Bowenovna?" he asked of the child, with a temptation to say
+Imogene Grahamovna.
+
+They both looked mystified, but Miss Graham said, "I'm sorry to say you
+won't see Mrs. Bowen today. She has a very bad headache, and has left
+Effie and me to receive. We feel very incompetent, but she says it will
+do us good."
+
+There were some people there of the night before, and Colville had to
+talk to them. One of the ladies asked him if he had met the Inglehart
+boys as he came in.
+
+"The Inglehart boys? No. What are the Inglehart boys?"
+
+"They were here all last winter, and they've just got back. It's rather
+exciting for Florence." She gave him a rapid sketch of that interesting
+exodus of a score of young painters from the art school at Munich, under
+the head of the singular and fascinating genius by whose name they
+became known. "They had their own school for a while in Munich, and then
+they all came down into Italy in a body. They had their studio things
+with them, and they travelled third class, and they made the greatest
+excitement everywhere, and had the greatest fun. They were a great
+sensation in Florence. They went everywhere, and were such favourites. I
+hope they are going to stay."
+
+"I hope so too," said Colville. "I should like to see them."
+
+"Dear me!" said the lady, with a glance at the clock. "It's five! I must
+be going."
+
+The other ladies went, and Colville approached to take leave, but Miss
+Graham detained him.
+
+"What is Tourguéneffish?" she demanded.
+
+"The quality of the great Russian novelist, Tourguéneff," said Colville,
+perceiving that she had not heard of him.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"You ought to read him. The samovar sends up its agreeable odour all
+through his books. Read _Lisa_ if you want your heart really broken.
+
+"I'm glad you approve of heart-breaks in books. So many people won't
+read anything but cheerful books. It's the only quarrel I have with Mrs.
+Bowen. She says there are so many sad things in life that they ought to
+be kept out of books."
+
+"Ah, there I perceive a divided duty," said Colville. "I should like to
+agree with both of you. But if Mrs. Bowen were here I should remind her
+that if there are so many sad things in life that is a very good reason
+for putting them in books too."
+
+"Of course I shall tell her what you said."
+
+"Why, I don't object to a certain degree of cheerfulness in books; only
+don't carry it too far--that's all."
+
+This made the young girl laugh, and Colville was encouraged to go on. He
+told her of the sight he had seen from his window at daybreak, and he
+depicted it all very graphically, and made her feel its pathos perhaps
+more keenly than he had felt it. "Now, that little incident kept with me
+all day, tempering my boisterous joy in the Giottos, and reducing me to
+a decent composure in the presence of the Cimabues; and it's pretty hard
+to keep from laughing at some of them, don't you think?"
+
+The young people perceived that he was making fun again; but he
+continued with an air of greater seriousness. "Don't you see what a very
+good thing that was to begin one's day with? Why, even in Santa Croce,
+with the thermometer ten degrees below zero in the shade of Alfieri's
+monument, I was no gayer than I should have been in a church at home. I
+suppose Mrs. Bowen would object to having that procession go by under
+one's window in a book; but I can't really see how it would hurt the
+reader, or damp his spirits permanently. A wholesome reaction would
+ensue, such as you see now in me, whom the thing happened to in real
+life."
+
+He stirred his tea, and shook with an inward laugh as he carried it to
+his lips.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Graham thoughtfully, and she looked at him searchingly
+in the interval of silence that ensued. But she only added, "I wish it
+would get warmer in the churches. I've seen hardly anything of them
+yet."
+
+"From the way I felt in them to-day," sighed Colville, "I should think
+the churches would begin to thaw out about the middle of May. But if one
+goes well wrapped up in furs, and has a friend along to rouse him and
+keep him walking when he is about to fall into that lethargy which
+precedes death by freezing, I think they may be visited even now with
+safety. Have you been in Santa Maria Novella yet?"
+
+"No," said Miss Graham, with a shake of the head that expressed her
+resolution to speak the whole truth if she died for it, "not even in
+Santa Maria Novella."
+
+"What a wonderful old place it is! That curious façade, with the dials
+and its layers of black and white marble soaked golden-red in a hundred
+thousand sunsets! That exquisite grand portal!" He gesticulated with the
+hand that the tea-cup left free, to suggest form and measurement as
+artists do. "Then the inside! The great Cimabue, with all that famous
+history on its back--the first divine Madonna by the first divine
+master, carried through the streets in a triumph of art and religion!
+Those frescoes of Ghirlandajo's with real Florentine faces and figures
+in them, and all lavished upon the eternal twilight of that choir--but I
+suppose that if the full day were let in on them, once, they would
+vanish like ghosts at cock-crow! You must be sure to see the Spanish
+chapel; and the old cloister itself is such a pathetic place. There's a
+boys' school, as well as a military college, in the suppressed convent
+now, and the colonnades were full of boys running and screaming and
+laughing and making a joyful racket; it was so much more sorrowful than
+silence would have been there. One of the little scamps came up to me,
+and the young monk that was showing me round, and bobbed us a mocking
+bow and bobbed his hat off; then they all burst out laughing again and
+raced away, and the monk looked after them and said, so sweetly and
+wearily, 'They're at their diversions: we must have patience.' There are
+only twelve monks left there; all the rest are scattered and gone." He
+gave his cup to Miss Graham for more tea.
+
+"Don't you think," she asked, drawing it from the samovar, "that it is
+very sad having the convents suppressed?"
+
+"It was very sad having slavery abolished--for some people," suggested
+Colville; he felt the unfairness of the point he had made.
+
+"Yes," sighed Miss Graham.
+
+Colville stood stirring his second cup of tea, when the _portière_
+parted, and showed Mrs. Bowen wistfully pausing on the threshold. Her
+face was pale, but she looked extremely pretty there.
+
+"Ah, come in, Mrs. Bowen!" he called gaily to her. "I won't give you
+away to the other people. A cup of tea will do you good."
+
+"Oh, I'm a great deal better," said Mrs. Bowen, coming forward to give
+him her hand. "I heard your voice, and I couldn't resist looking in."
+
+"That was very kind of you," said Colville gratefully: and her eyes met
+his in a glance that flushed her face a deep red. "You find me here--_I_
+don't know why!--in my character of old family friend, doing my best to
+make life a burden to the young ladies."
+
+"I wish you would stay to a family dinner with us," said Mrs. Bowen, and
+Miss Graham brightened in cordial support of the hospitality. "Why can't
+you?"
+
+"I don't know, unless it's because I'm a humane person, and have some
+consideration for your headache."
+
+"Oh, that's all gone," said Mrs. Bowen. "It was one of those convenient
+headaches--if you ever had them, you'd know--that go off at sunset."
+
+"But you'd have another to-morrow."
+
+"No, I'm safe for a whole fortnight from another."
+
+"Then you leave me without an excuse, and I was just wishing I had
+none," said Colville.
+
+After dinner Mrs. Bowen sent Effie to bed early to make up for the late
+hours of the night before, but she sat before the fire with Miss Graham
+rather late, talking Colville over, when he was gone.
+
+"He's very puzzling to me," said Miss Graham. "Sometimes you think he's
+nothing but an old cynic, from his talk, and then something so sweet and
+fresh comes out that you don't know what to do. Don't you think he has
+really a very poetical mind, and that he's putting all the rest on?"
+
+"I think he likes to make little effects," said Mrs. Bowen judiciously.
+"He always did, rather."
+
+"Why, was he like this when he was young?"
+
+"I don't consider him very old now."
+
+"No, of course not. I meant when you knew him before." Miss Graham had
+some needlework in her hand; Mrs. Bowen, who never even pretended to
+work at that kind of thing, had nothing in hers but the feather screen.
+
+"He is old, compared with you, Imogene; but you'll find, as you live
+along, that your contemporaries are always young. Mr. Colville is very
+much improved. He used to be painfully shy, but he put on a bold front,
+and now the bold front seems to have become a second nature with him."
+
+"I like it," said Miss Graham, to her needle.
+
+"Yes; but I suspect he's still shy, at heart. He used to be very
+sentimental, and was always talking Ruskin. I think if he hadn't talked
+Ruskin so much, Jenny Milbury might have treated him better. It was very
+priggish in him."
+
+"Oh, I can't imagine Mr. Colville's being priggish!"
+
+"He's very much improved. He used to be quite a sloven in his dress; you
+know how very slovenly most American gentlemen are in their dress, at
+any rate. I think that influenced her against him too."
+
+"He isn't slovenly now," suggested Miss Graham.
+
+"Oh no; he's quite swell," said Mrs. Bowen, depriving the adjective of
+slanginess by the refinement of her tone.
+
+"Well," said Miss Graham, "I don't see how you could have endured her
+after that. It was atrocious."
+
+"It was better for her to break with him, if she found out she didn't
+love him, than to marry him. That," said Mrs. Bowen, with a depth of
+feeling uncommon for her, "would have been a thousand times worse."
+
+"Yes, but she ought to have found out before she led him on so far."
+
+"Sometimes girls can't. They don't know themselves; they think they're
+in love when they're not. She was very impulsive, and of course she was
+flattered by it; he was so intellectual. But at last she found that she
+couldn't bear it, and she had to tell him so."
+
+"Did she ever say why she didn't love him?"
+
+"No; I don't suppose she could. The only thing I remember her saying was
+that he was 'too much of a mixture.'"
+
+"What _did_ she mean by that?"
+
+"I don't know exactly."
+
+"Do you think he's insincere?"
+
+"Oh no. Perhaps she meant that he wasn't single-minded."
+
+"Fickle?"
+
+"No. He certainly wasn't that in her case."
+
+"Undecided?"
+
+"He was decided enough with her--at last."
+
+Imogene dropped the hopeless quest, "How can a man ever stand such a
+thing?" she sighed.
+
+"He stood it very nobly. That was the best thing about it; he took it in
+the most delicate way. She showed me his letter. There wasn't a word or
+a hint of reproach in it; he seemed to be anxious about nothing but her
+feeling badly for him. Of course he couldn't help showing that he was
+mortified for having pursued her with attentions that were disagreeable
+to her; but that was delicate too. Yes, it was a very large-minded
+letter."
+
+"It was shocking in her to show it."
+
+"It wasn't very nice. But it was a letter that any girl might have been
+proud to show."
+
+"Oh, she _couldn't_ have done it to gratify her vanity!"
+
+"Girls are very queer, my dear," said Mrs. Bowen, as if the fact were an
+abstraction. She mused upon the flat of her screen, while Miss Graham
+plied her needle in silence.
+
+The latter spoke first. "Do you think he was very much broken by it?"
+
+"You never can tell. He went out west then, and there he has stayed ever
+since. I suppose his life would have been very different if nothing of
+the kind had happened. He had a great deal of talent. I always thought I
+should hear of him in some way."
+
+"Well, it was a heartless, shameless thing! I don't see how you can
+speak of it so leniently as you do, Mrs. Bowen. It makes all sorts of
+coquetry and flirtation more detestable to me than ever. Why, it has
+ruined his life!"
+
+"Oh, he was young enough then to outlive it. After all, they were a boy
+and girl."
+
+"A boy and girl! How old were they?"
+
+"He must have been twenty-three or four, and she was twenty."
+
+"My age! Do you call that being a girl?"
+
+"She was old enough to know what she was about," said Mrs. Bowen justly.
+
+Imogene fell back in her chair, drawing out her needle the full length
+of its thread, and then letting her hand fall. "I don't know. It seems
+as if I never should be grown up, or anything but a child. Yes, when I
+think of the way young men talk, they do seem boys. Why can't they talk
+like Mr. Colville? I wish I could talk like him. It makes you forget how
+old and plain he is."
+
+She remained with her eyelids dropped in an absent survey of her sewing,
+while Mrs. Bowen regarded her with a look of vexation, impatience,
+resentment, on the last refinement of these emotions, which she banished
+from her face before Miss Graham looked up and said, with a smile "How
+funny it is to see Effie's infatuation with him! She can't take her eyes
+off him for a moment, and she follows him round the room so as not to
+lose a word he is saying. It was heroic of her to go to bed without a
+murmur before he left to-night."
+
+"Yes, she sees that he is good," said Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"Oh, she sees that he's something very much more. Mr. Waters is good."
+
+Miss Graham had the best of the argument, and so Mrs. Bowen did not
+reply.
+
+"I feel," continued the young girl, "as if it were almost a shame to
+have asked him to go to that silly dancing party with us. It seems as if
+we didn't appreciate him. I think we ought to have kept him for high
+aesthetic occasions and historical researches."
+
+"Oh, I don't think Mr. Colville was very deeply offended at being asked
+to go with us."
+
+"No," said Imogene, with another sigh, "he didn't seem so. I suppose
+there's always an undercurrent of sadness--of tragedy--in everything for
+him."
+
+"I don't suppose anything of the kind," cried Mrs. Bowen gaily. "He's
+had time enough to get over it."
+
+"Do people _ever_ get over such things?"
+
+"Yes--men."
+
+"It must be because he was young, as you say. But if it had happened
+_now_?"
+
+"Oh, it _couldn't_ happen now. He's altogether too cool and
+calculating."
+
+"Do you think he's cool and calculating?"
+
+"No. He's too old for a broken heart--a new one."
+
+"Mrs. Bowen," demanded the girl solemnly, "could _you_ forgive yourself
+for such a thing if you had done it?"
+
+"Yes, perfectly well, if I wasn't in love with him."
+
+"But if you'd made him _think_ you were?" pursued the girl breathlessly.
+
+"If I were a flirt--yes."
+
+"_I_ couldn't," said Imogene, with tragic depth.
+
+"Oh, be done with your intensities, and go to bed, Imogene," said Mrs.
+Bowen, giving her a playful push.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+It was so long since Colville had been at a dancing party that Mrs.
+Bowen's offer to take him to Madame Uccelli's had first struck his sense
+of the ludicrous. Then it had begun to flatter him; it implied that he
+was still young enough to dance if he would, though he had stipulated
+that they were not to expect anything of the kind from him. He liked
+also the notion of being seen and accepted in Florentine society as the
+old friend of Mrs. Bowen's, for he had not been long in discovering that
+her position in Florence was, among the foreign residents, rather
+authoritative. She was one of the very few Americans who were asked to
+Italian houses, and Italian houses lying even beyond the neutral ground
+of English-speaking intermarriages. She was not, of course, asked to the
+great Princess Strozzi ball, where the Florentine nobility appeared in
+the mediaeval pomp--the veritable costumes--of their ancestors; only a
+rich American banking family went, and their distinction was spoken of
+under the breath; but any glory short of this was within Mrs. Bowen's
+reach. So an old lady who possessed herself of Colville the night before
+had told him, celebrating Mrs. Bowen at length, and boasting of her
+acceptance among the best English residents, who, next after the
+natives, seem to constitute the social ambition of Americans living in
+Italian cities.
+
+It interested him to find that some geographical distinctions which are
+fading at home had quite disappeared in Florence. When he was there
+before, people from quite small towns in the East had made pretty Lina
+Ridgely and her friend feel the disadvantage of having come from the
+Western side of an imaginary line; he had himself been at the pains
+always to let people know, at the American watering-places where he
+spent his vacations, that though presently from Des Vaches, Indiana, he
+was really born in Rhode Island; but in Florence it was not at all
+necessary. He found in Mrs. Bowen's house people from Denver, Chicago,
+St. Louis, Boston, New York, and Baltimore, all meeting as of apparently
+the same civilisation, and whether Mrs. Bowen's own origin was, like
+that of the Etruscan cities, lost in the mists of antiquity, or whether
+she had sufficiently atoned for the error of her birth by subsequent
+residence in the national capital and prolonged sojourn in New York, it
+seemed certainly not to be remembered against her among her Eastern
+acquaintance. The time had been when the fact that Miss Graham came from
+Buffalo would have gone far to class her with the animal from which her
+native city had taken its name; but now it made no difference, unless it
+was a difference in her favour. The English spoke with the same vague
+respect of Buffalo and of Philadelphia; and to a family of real
+Bostonians Colville had the courage to say simply that he lived in Des
+Vaches, and not to seek to palliate the truth in any sort. If he wished
+to prevaricate at all, it was rather to attribute himself to Mrs.
+Bowen's city in Ohio.
+
+She and Miss Graham called for him with her carriage the next night,
+when it was time to go to Madame Uccelli's.
+
+"This gives me a very patronised and effeminate feeling," said Colville,
+getting into the odorous dark of the carriage, and settling himself upon
+the front seat with a skill inspired by his anxiety not to tear any of
+the silken spreading white wraps that inundated the whole interior.
+"Being come for by ladies!" They both gave some nervous joyful laughs,
+as they found his hand in the obscurity, and left the sense of a gloved
+pressure upon it. "Is this the way you used to do in Vesprucius, Mrs.
+Bowen?"
+
+"Oh no, indeed!" she answered. "The young gentlemen used to find out
+whether I was going, and came for me with a hack, and generally, if the
+weather was good, we walked home."
+
+"That's the way we still do in Des Vaches. Sometimes, as a tremendous
+joke, the ladies come for us in leap-year. How do you go to balls in
+Buffalo, Miss Graham? Or, no; I withdraw the embarrassing question."
+Some gleams from the street lamps, as they drove along, struck in
+through the carriage windows, and flitted over the ladies' faces and
+were gone again. "Ah! this is very trying. Couldn't you stop him at the
+next corner, and let me see how radiant you ladies really are? I may be
+in very great danger; I'd like to know just how much."
+
+"It wouldn't be of any use," cried the young girl gaily. "We're all
+wrapped up, and you couldn't form any idea of us. You must wait, and let
+us burst upon you when we come out of the dressing-room at Madame
+Uccelli's."
+
+"But then it may be too late," he urged. "Is it very far?"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen. "It's ridiculously far. It's outside the Roman
+Gate. I don't see why people live at that distance."
+
+"In order to give the friends you bring the more pleasure of your
+company, Mrs. Bowen."
+
+"Ah! that's very well. But you're not logical."
+
+"No," said Colville; "you can't be logical and complimentary at the same
+time. It's too much to ask. How delicious your flowers are!" The ladies
+each had a bouquet in her hand, which she was holding in addition to her
+fan, the edges of her cloak, and the skirt of her train.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen; "we are so much obliged to you for them."
+
+"Why, I sent you _no flowers_," said Colville, startled into untimely
+earnest.
+
+"Didn't you?" triumphed Mrs. Bowen. "I thought gentlemen always sent
+flowers to ladies when they were going to a ball with them. They used
+to, in Columbus."
+
+"And in Buffalo they always do," Miss Graham added.
+
+"Ah! they don't in Des Vaches," said Colville. They tried to mystify him
+further about the bouquets; they succeeded in being very gay, and in
+making themselves laugh a great deal. Mrs. Bowen was even livelier than
+the young girl.
+
+Her carriage was one of the few private equipages that drove up to
+Madame Uccelli's door; most people had not even come in a _remise_, but,
+after the simple Florentine fashion, had taken the little cabs, which
+stretched in a long line up and down the way; the horses had let their
+weary heads drop, and were easing their broken knees by extending their
+forelegs while they drowsed; the drivers, huddled in their great-coats,
+had assembled around the doorway to see the guests alight, with that
+amiable, unenvious interest of the Italians in the pleasure of others.
+The deep sky glittered with stars; in the corner of the next villa
+garden the black plumes of some cypresses blotted out their space among
+them.
+
+"_Isn't_ it Florentine?" demanded Mrs. Bowen, giving the hand which
+Colville offered in helping her out of the carriage a little vivid
+pressure, full of reminiscence and confident sympathy. A flush of youth
+warmed his heart; he did not quail even when the porter of the villa
+intervened between her and her coachman, whom she was telling when to
+come back, and said that the carriages were ordered for three o'clock.
+
+"Did you ever sit up so late as that in Des Vaches?" asked Miss Graham
+mischievously.
+
+"Oh yes; I was editor of a morning paper," he explained. But he did not
+like the imputation of her question.
+
+Madame Uccelli accepted him most hospitably among her guests when he was
+presented. She was an American who had returned with her Italian husband
+to Italy, and had long survived him in the villa which he had built with
+her money. Such people grow very queer with the lapse of time. Madame
+Uccelli's character remained inalienably American, but her manners and
+customs had become largely Italian; without having learned the language
+thoroughly, she spoke it very fluently, and its idioms marked her
+Philadelphia English. Her house was a menagerie of all the
+nationalities; she was liked in Italian society, and there were many
+Italians; English-speaking Russians abounded; there were many genuine
+English, Germans, Scandinavians, Protestant Irish, American Catholics,
+and then Americans of all kinds. There was a superstition of her
+exclusiveness among her compatriots, but one really met every one there
+sooner or later; she was supposed to be a convert to the religion of her
+late husband, but no one really knew what religion she was of, probably
+not even Madame Uccelli herself. One thing you were sure of at her
+house, and that was a substantial supper; it is the example of such
+resident foreigners which has corrupted the Florentines, though many
+native families still hold out against it.
+
+The dancing was just beginning, and the daughter of Madame Uccelli, who
+spoke both English and Italian much better than her mother, came forward
+and possessed herself of Miss Graham, after a polite feint of pressing
+Mrs. Bowen to let her find a partner for her.
+
+Mrs. Bowen cooed a gracious refusal, telling Fanny Uccelli that she knew
+very well that she never danced now. The girl had not much time for
+Colville; she welcomed him, but she was full of her business of starting
+the dance, and she hurried away without asking him whether she should
+introduce him to some lady for the quadrille that was forming. Her
+mother, however, asked him if he would not go out and get himself some
+tea, and she found a lady to go with him to the supper-room. This lady
+had daughters whom apparently she wished to supervise while they were
+dancing, and she brought Colville back very soon. He had to stand by the
+sofa where she sat till Madame Uccelli found him and introduced him to
+another mother of daughters. Later he joined a group formed by the
+father of one of the dancers and the non-dancing husband of a dancing
+wife. Their conversation was perfunctory; they showed one another that
+they had no pleasure in it.
+
+Presently the father went to see how his daughter looked while dancing;
+the husband had evidently no such curiosity concerning his wife; and
+Colville went with the father, and looked at Miss Graham. She was very
+beautiful, and she obeyed the music as if it were her breath; her face
+was rapt, intense, full of an unsmiling delight, which shone in her dark
+eyes, glowing like low stars. Her _abandon_ interested Colville, and
+then awed him; the spectacle of that young, unjaded capacity for
+pleasure touched him with a profound sense of loss. Suddenly Imogene
+caught sight of him, and with the coming of a second look in her eyes
+the light of an exquisite smile flashed over her face. His heart was in
+his throat.
+
+"_Your_ daughter?" asked the fond parent at his elbow. "That is mine
+yonder in red."
+
+Colville did not answer, nor look at the young lady in red. The dance
+was ceasing; the fragments of those kaleidoscopic radiations were
+dispersing themselves; the tormented piano was silent.
+
+The officer whom Imogene had danced with brought her to Mrs. Bowen, and
+resigned her with the regulation bow, hanging his head down before him
+as if submitting his neck to the axe. She put her hand in Colville's
+arm, where he stood beside Mrs. Bowen. "Oh, _do_ take me to get
+something to eat!"
+
+In the supper-room she devoured salad and ices with a childish joy in
+them. The place was jammed, and she laughed from her corner at
+Colville's struggles in getting the things for her and bringing them to
+her. While she was still in the midst of an ice, the faint note of the
+piano sounded. "Oh, they're beginning again. It's the Lancers!" she
+said, giving him the plate back. She took his arm again; she almost
+pulled him along on their return.
+
+"Why don't _you_ dance?" she demanded mockingly.
+
+"I would if you'd let me dance with you."
+
+"Oh, that's impossible! I'm engaged ever so many deep." She dropped his
+arm instantly at sight of a young Englishman who seemed to be looking
+for her. This young Englishman had a zeal for dancing that was
+unsparing; partners were nothing to him except as a means of dancing;
+his manner expressed a supreme contempt for people who made the
+slightest mistake, who danced with less science or less conscience than
+himself. "I've been looking for you," he said, in a tone of cold rebuke,
+without looking at her. "We've been waiting."
+
+Colville wished to beat him, but Imogene took his rebuke meekly, and
+murmured some apologies about not hearing the piano before. He hurried
+her off without recognising Colville's existence in any way.
+
+The undancing husband of the dancing wife was boring himself in a
+corner; Colville decided that the chances with him were better than with
+the fond father, and joined him, just as a polite officer came up and
+entreated him to complete a set. "Oh, I never danced in my life," he
+replied; and then he referred the officer to Colville. "Don't _you_
+dance?"
+
+"I used to dance," Colville began, while the officer stood looking
+patiently at him. This was true. He used to dance the Lancers, too, and
+very badly, seventeen years before. He had danced it with Lina Ridgely
+and the other one, Mrs. Milbury. His glance wandered to the vacant place
+on the floor; it was the same set which Miss Graham was in; she smiled
+and beckoned derisively. A vain and foolish ambition fired him. "Oh yes,
+I can dance a little," he said.
+
+A little was quite enough for the eager officer. He had Colville a
+partner in an instant, and the next he was on the floor.
+
+"Oh, what fun!" cried Miss Graham; but the fun had not really begun yet.
+
+Colville had forgotten everything about the Lancers. He walked round
+like a bear in a pen: he capered to and fro with a futile absurdity;
+people poked him hither and thither; his progress was attended by
+rending noises from the trains over which he found his path. He smiled
+and cringed, and apologised to the hardening faces of the dancers: even
+Miss Graham's face had become very grave.
+
+"This won't do," said the Englishman at last, with cold insolence. He
+did not address himself to any one; he merely stopped; they all stopped,
+and Colville was effectively expelled the set; another partner was found
+for his lady, and he wandered giddily away. He did not know where to
+turn; the whole room must have seen what an incredible ass he had made
+of himself, but Mrs. Bowen looked as if she had not seen.
+
+He went up to her, resolved to make fun of himself at the first sign she
+gave of being privy to his disgrace. But she only said, "Have you found
+your way to the supper-room yet?"
+
+"Oh yes; twice," he answered, and kept on talking with her and Madame
+Uccelli. After five minutes or so something occurred to Colville. "Have
+_you_ found the way to the supper-room yet, Mrs. Bowen?"
+
+"No!" she owned, with a small, pathetic laugh, which expressed a certain
+physical faintness, and reproached him with insupportable gentleness for
+his selfish obtuseness.
+
+"Let me show you the way," he cried.
+
+"Why, I _am_ rather hungry," said Mrs. Bowen, taking his arm, with a
+patient arrangement first of her fan, her bouquet, and her train, and
+then moving along by his side with a delicate footed pace, which
+insinuated and deprecated her dependence upon him.
+
+There were only a few people in the supper-room, and they had it
+practically to themselves. She took a cup of tea and a slice of buttered
+bread, with a little salad, which she excused herself from eating
+because it was the day after her headache. "I shouldn't have thought you
+_were_ hungry, Mrs. Bowen," he said, "if you hadn't told me so," and he
+recalled that, as a young girl, her friend used to laugh at her for
+having such a butterfly appetite; she was in fact one of those women who
+go through life the marvels of such of our brutal sex as observe the
+ethereal nature of their diet. But in an illogical revulsion of feeling.
+Colville, who was again cramming himself with all the solids and fluids
+in reach, and storing up a vain regret against the morrow, preferred her
+delicacy to the magnificent rapacity of Miss Graham: Imogene had passed
+from salad to ice, and at his suggestion had frankly reverted to salad
+again and then taken a second ice, with the robust appetite of perfect
+health and perfect youth. He felt a desire to speak against her to Mrs.
+Bowen, he did not know why and he did not know how; he veiled his
+feeling in an open attack. "Miss Graham has just been the cause of my
+playing the fool, with her dancing. She dances so superbly that she
+makes you want to dance too--she made me feel as if I _could_ dance."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen; "it was very kind of you to complete the set. I
+saw you dancing," she added, without a glimmer of guilty consciousness
+in her eyes.
+
+It was very sweet, but Colville had to protest. "Oh no; you didn't see
+me _dancing_; you saw me _not dancing_. I am a ruined man, and I leave
+Florence to-morrow; but I have the sad satisfaction of reflecting that I
+don't leave an unbroken train among the ladies of that set. And I have
+made one young Englishman so mad that there is a reasonable hope of his
+not recovering."
+
+"Oh no; you _don't_ think of going away for that!" said Mrs. Bowen, not
+heeding the rest of his joking.
+
+"Well, the time has been when I have left Florence for loss," said
+Colville, with the air of preparing himself to listen to reason.
+
+"You mustn't," said Mrs. Bowen briefly.
+
+"Oh, very well, then, I won't," said Colville whimsically, as if that
+settled it.
+
+Mrs. Bowen would not talk of the matter any more; he could see that with
+her kindness, which was always more than her tact, she was striving to
+get away from the subject. As he really cared for it no longer, this
+made him persist in clinging to it; he liked this pretty woman's being
+kind to him. "Well," he said finally, "I consent to stay in Florence on
+condition that you suggest some means of atonement for me which I can
+also make a punishment to Miss Graham."
+
+Mrs. Bowen did not respond to the question of placating and punishing
+her _protégée_ with sustained interest. They went back to Madame
+Uccelli, and to the other elderly ladies in the room that opened by
+archways upon the dancing-room.
+
+Imogene was on the floor, dancing not merely with unabated joy, but with
+a zest that seemed only to freshen from dance to dance. If she left the
+dance, it was to go out on her partner's arm to the supper-room.
+Colville could not decently keep on talking to Mrs. Bowen the whole
+evening; it would be too conspicuous; he devolved from frump to frump;
+he bored himself; he yawned in his passage from one of these mothers or
+fathers to another. The hours passed; it was two o'clock; Imogene was
+going out to the supper-room again. He was taking out his watch. She saw
+him, and "Oh, don't!" she cried, laughing, as she passed.
+
+The dancing went on; she was waltzing now in the interminable german.
+Some one had let down, a window in the dancing-room, and he was feeling
+it in his shoulder. Mrs. Bowen, across the room, looked heroically
+patient, but weary. He glanced, down at the frump on the sofa near, and
+realised that she had been making a long speech to him, which, he could
+see from her look, had ended in some sort of question.
+
+Three o'clock came, and they had to wait till the german was over. He
+felt that Miss Graham was behaving badly, ungratefully, selfishly; on
+the way home in the carriage he was silent from utter boredom and
+fatigue, but Mrs. Bowen was sweetly sympathetic with the girl's rapture.
+Imogene did not seem to feel his moodiness; she laughed, she joked, she
+told a number of things that happened, she hummed the air of the last
+waltz. "Isn't it divine?" she asked. "Oh! I feel as if I could dance for
+a week." She was still dancing; she gave Colville's foot an accidental
+tap in keeping time on the floor of the carriage to the tune she was
+humming. No one said anything about a next meeting when they parted at
+the gate of Palazzo Pinti, and Mrs. Bowen bade her coachman drive
+Colville to his hotel. But both the ladies' voices called good-night to
+him as he drove away. He fancied a shade of mocking in Miss Graham's
+voice.
+
+The great outer door of the hotel was locked, of course, and the poor
+little porter kept Colville thumping at it some time before he unlocked
+it, full of sleepy smiles and apologies. "I'm sorry to wake you up,"
+said Colville kindly.
+
+"It is my duty," said the porter, with amiable heroism. He discharged
+another duty by lighting a whole new candle, which would be set down to
+Colville's account, and went before him to his room, up the wide stairs,
+cold in their white linen path, and on through the crooked corridors
+haunted by the ghosts of extinct _tables d'hôte_, and full of goblin
+shadows. He had recovered a noonday suavity by the time he reached
+Colville's door, and bowed himself out, after lighting the candles
+within, with a sweet plenitude of politeness, which Colville, even in
+his gloomy mood, could not help admiring in a man in his shirt sleeves,
+with only one suspender up.
+
+If there had been a fire, Colville would have liked to sit down before
+it, and take an account of his feelings, but the atmosphere of a
+bed-chamber in a Florentine hotel at half-past three o'clock on a winter
+morning is not one that invites to meditation; and he made haste to get
+into bed, with nothing clearer in his mind than a shapeless sense of
+having been trifled with. He ought not to have gone to a dancing party,
+to begin with, and then he certainly ought not to have attempted to
+dance; so far he might have been master of the situation, and was
+responsible for it; but he was, over and above this, aware of not having
+wished to do either, of having been wrought upon against his convictions
+to do both. He regarded now with supreme loathing a fantastic purpose
+which he had formed while tramping round on those women's dresses, of
+privately taking lessons in dancing, and astonishing Miss Graham at the
+next ball where they met. Miss Graham? What did he care for that child?
+Or Mrs. Bowen either, for the matter of that? Had he come four thousand
+miles to be used, to be played with, by them? At this point Colville was
+aware of the brutal injustice of his mood. They were ladies, both of
+them, charming and good, and he had been a fool; that was all. It was
+not the first time he had been a fool for women. An inexpressible
+bitterness for that old wrong, which, however he had been used to laugh
+at it and despise it, had made his life solitary and barren, poured upon
+his soul; it was as if it had happened to him yesterday.
+
+A band of young men burst from one of the narrow streets leading into
+the piazza and straggled across it, letting their voices flare out upon
+the silence, and then drop extinct one by one. A whole world of faded
+associations flushed again in Colville's heart. This was Italy; this was
+Florence; and he execrated the hour in which he had dreamed of
+returning.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The next morning's sunshine dispersed the black mood of the night
+before; but enough of Colville's self-disgust remained to determine him
+not to let his return to Florence be altogether vain, or his sojourn so
+idle as it had begun being. The vague purpose which he had cherished of
+studying the past life and character of the Florentines in their
+architecture shaped itself anew in the half-hour which he gave himself
+over his coffee; and he turned it over in his mind with that mounting
+joy in its capabilities which attends the contemplation of any sort of
+artistic endeavour. No people had ever more distinctly left the impress
+of their whole temper in their architecture, or more sharply
+distinguished their varying moods from period to period in their palaces
+and temples. He believed that he could not only supply that brief
+historical sketch of Florence which Mrs. Bowen had lamented the want of,
+but he could make her history speak an unintelligible, an unmistakeable
+tongue in every monument of the past, from the Etruscan wall at Fiesole
+to the cheap, plain, and tasteless shaft raised to commemorate Italian
+Unity in the next piazza. With sketches from his own pencil,
+illustrative of points which he could not otherwise enforce, he could
+make such a book on Florence as did not exist, such a book as no one had
+yet thought of making. With this object in his mind, making and keeping
+him young, he could laugh with any one who liked at the vanity of the
+middle-aged Hoosier who had spoiled a set in the Lancers at Madame
+Uccelli's party; he laughed at him now alone, with a wholly impersonal
+sense of his absurdity.
+
+After breakfast he went without delay to Viesseux's reading-room, to
+examine his catalogue, and see what there was in it to his purpose.
+While he was waiting his turn to pay his subscription, with the people
+who surrounded the proprietor, half a dozen of the acquaintances he had
+made at Mrs. Bowen's passed in and out. Viesseux's is a place where
+sooner or later you meet every one you know among the foreign residents
+at Florence; the natives in smaller proportion resort there too; and
+Colville heard a lady asking for a book in that perfect Italian which
+strikes envy to the heart of the stranger sufficiently versed in the
+language to know that he never shall master it. He rather rejoiced in
+his despair, however, as an earnest of his renewed intellectual life.
+Henceforth his life would be wholly intellectual. He did not regret his
+little excursion into society; it had shown him with dramatic sharpness
+how unfit for it he was.
+
+"Good _morning_!" said some one in a bland undertone full of a pleasant
+recognition of the claims to quiet of a place where some others were
+speaking in their ordinary tones.
+
+Colville looked round on the Rev. Mr. Waters, and took his friendly
+hand. "Good morning--glad to see you," he answered.
+
+"Are you looking for that short Florentine history for Mrs. Bowen's
+little girl?" asked Mr. Waters, inclining his head slightly for the
+reply. "She mentioned it to me."
+
+By day Colville remarked more distinctly that the old gentleman was
+short and slight, with a youthful eagerness in his face surviving on
+good terms with the grey locks that fell down his temples from under the
+brim of his soft felt hat. With the boyish sweetness of his looks
+blended a sort of appreciative shrewdness, which pointed his smiling
+lips slightly aslant in what seemed the expectation rather than the
+intention of humour.
+
+"Not exactly," said Colville, experiencing a difficulty in withholding
+the fact that in some sort he was just going to write a short Florentine
+history, and finding a certain pleasure in Mrs. Bowen's having
+remembered that he had taken an interest in Effie's reading. He had a
+sudden wish to tell Mr. Waters of his plan, but this was hardly the time
+or place.
+
+They now found themselves face to face with the librarian, and Mr.
+Waters made a gesture of waiving himself in Colville's favour.
+
+"No, no!" said the latter; "you had better ask. I am going to put this
+gentleman through rather an extended course of sprouts."
+
+The librarian smiled with the helplessness of a foreigner, who knows his
+interlocutor's English, but not the meaning of it.
+
+"Oh, I merely wanted to ask," said Mr. Waters, addressing the librarian,
+and explaining to Colville, "whether you had received that book on
+Savonarola yet. The German one."
+
+"I shall see," said the librarian, and he went upon a quest that kept
+him some minutes.
+
+"You're not thinking of taking Savonarola's life, I suppose?" suggested
+Colville.
+
+"Oh no. Villari's book has covered the whole ground for ever, it seems
+to me. It's a wonderful book. You've read it?"
+
+"Yes. It's a thing that makes you feel that, after all, the Italians
+have only to make a real effort in any direction, and they go ahead of
+everybody else. What biography of the last twenty years can compare with
+it?"
+
+"You're right, sir--you're right," cried the old man enthusiastically.
+"They're a gifted race, a people of genius."
+
+"I wish for their own sakes they'd give their minds a little to
+generalship," said Colville, pressed by the facts to hedge somewhat.
+"They did get so badly smashed in their last war, poor fellows."
+
+"Oh, I don't think I should like them any better if they were better
+soldiers. Perhaps the lesson of noble endurance that they've given our
+times is all that we have the right to demand of them in the way of
+heroism; no one can say they lack courage. And sometimes it seems to me
+that in simply outgrowing the different sorts of despotism that had
+fastened upon them, till their broken bonds fell away without positive
+effort on their part, they showed a greater sublimity than if they had
+violently conquered their freedom. Most nations sink lower and lower
+under tyranny; the Italians grew steadily more and more civilised, more
+noble, more gentle, more grand. It was a wonderful spectacle--like a
+human soul perfected through suffering and privation. Every period of
+their history is full of instruction. I find my ancestral puritanism
+particularly appealed to by the puritanism of Savonarola."
+
+"Then Villari hasn't satisfied you that Savonarola wasn't a Protestant?"
+
+"Oh yes, he has. I said his puritanism. Just now I'm interested in
+justifying his failure to myself, for it's one of the things in history
+that I've found it hardest to accept. But no doubt his puritanic state
+fell because it was dreary and ugly, as the puritanic state always has
+been. It makes its own virtues intolerable; puritanism won't let you see
+how good and beautiful the Puritans often are. It was inevitable that
+Savonarola's enemies should misunderstand and hate him."
+
+"You are one of the last men I should have expected to find among the
+_Arrabiati_," said Colville.
+
+"Oh, there's a great deal to be said for the Florentine Arrabiati, as
+well as for the English Malignants, though the Puritans in neither case
+would have known how to say it. Savonarola perished because he was
+excessive. I am studying him in this aspect; it is fresh ground. It is
+very interesting to inquire just at what point a man's virtues become
+mischievous and intolerable."
+
+These ideas interested Colville; he turned to them with relief from the
+sense of his recent trivialities; in this old man's earnestness he found
+support and encouragement in the new course he had marked out for
+himself. Sometimes it had occurred to him not only that he was too old
+for the interests of his youth at forty, but that there was no longer
+time for him to take up new ones. He considered Mr. Waters's grey hairs,
+and determined to be wiser. "I should like to talk these things over
+with you--and some other things," he said.
+
+The librarian came toward them with the book for Mr. Waters, who was
+fumbling near-sightedly in his pocket-book for his card. "I shall be
+very happy to see you at my room," he said. "Ah, thank you," he added,
+taking his book, with a simple relish as if it were something whose
+pleasantness was sensible to the touch. He gave Colville the scholar's
+far-off look as he turned to go: he was already as remote as the
+fifteenth century through the magic of the book, which he opened and
+began to read at once. Colville stared after him; he did not wish to
+come to just that yet, either. Life, active life, life of his own day,
+called to him; he had been one of its busiest children: could he turn
+his back upon it for any charm or use that was in the past? Again that
+unnerving doubt, that paralysing distrust, beset him, and tempted him to
+curse the day in which he had returned to this outworn Old World. Idler
+on its modern surface, or delver in its deep-hearted past, could he
+reconcile himself to it? What did he care for the Italians of to-day, or
+the history of the Florentines as expressed in their architectural
+monuments? It was the problems of the vast, tumultuous American life,
+which he had turned his back on, that really concerned him. Later he
+might take up the study that fascinated yonder old man, but for the
+present it was intolerable.
+
+He was no longer young, that was true; but with an ache of old regret he
+felt that he had not yet lived his life, that his was a baffled destiny,
+an arrested fate. A lady came up and took his turn with the librarian,
+and Colville did not stay for another. He went out and walked down the
+Lung' Arno toward the Cascine. The sun danced on the river, and bathed
+the long line of pale buff and grey houses that followed its curve, and
+ceased in the mist of leafless tree-tops where the Cascine began. It was
+not the hour of the promenade, and there was little driving; but the
+sidewalks were peopled thickly enough with persons, in groups, or
+singly, who had the air of straying aimlessly up or down, with no
+purpose but to be in the sun, after the rainy weather of the past week.
+There were faces of invalids, wistful and thin, and here and there a
+man, muffled to the chin, lounged feebly on the parapet and stared at
+the river. Colville hastened by them; they seemed to claim him as one of
+their ailing and aging company, and just then he was in the humour of
+being very young and strong.
+
+A carriage passed before him through the Cascine gates, and drove down
+the road next the river. He followed, and when it had got a little way
+it stopped at the roadside, and a lady and little girl alighted, who
+looked about and caught sight of him, and then obviously waited for him
+to come up with them. It was Imogene and Effie Bowen, and the young girl
+called to him: "We _thought_ it was you. Aren't you astonished to find
+us here at this hour?" she demanded, as soon as he came up, and gave him
+her hand. "Mrs. Bowen sent us for our health--or Effie's health--and I
+was just making the man stop and let us out for a little walk."
+
+"My health is very much broken too, Miss Effie," said Colville. "Will
+you let me walk with you?" The child smiled, as she did at Colville's
+speeches, which she apparently considered all jokes, but diplomatically
+referred the decision to Imogene with an upward glance.
+
+"We shall be very glad indeed," said the girl.
+
+"That's very polite of you. But Miss Effie makes no effort to conceal
+her dismay," said Colville.
+
+The little girl smiled again, and her smile was so like the smile of
+Lina Ridgely, twenty years ago, that his next words were inevitably
+tinged with reminiscence.
+
+"Does one still come for one's health to the Cascine? When I was in
+Florence before, there was no other place if one went to look for it
+with young ladies--the Cascine or the Boboli Gardens. Do they keep the
+fountain of youth turned on here during the winter still?"
+
+"I've never seen it," said Imogene gaily.
+
+"Of course not. You never looked for it. Neither did I when I was here
+before. But it wouldn't escape me now."
+
+Since he had met them he had aged again, in spite of his resolutions to
+the contrary; somehow, beside their buoyancy and bloom, the youth in his
+heart faded.
+
+Imogene had started forward as soon as he joined them, and Colville,
+with Effie's gloved hand stolen shyly in his, was finding it quite
+enough to keep up with her in her elastic advance.
+
+She wore a long habit of silk, whose fur-trimmed edge wandered
+diagonally across her breast and down to the edge of her walking dress.
+To Colville, whom her girlish slimness in her ball costume had puzzled
+after his original impressions of Junonian abundance, she did not so
+much dwindle as seem to vanish from the proportions his visions had
+assigned her that first night when he saw her standing before the
+mirror. In this outdoor avatar, this companionship with the sun and
+breeze, she was new to him again, and he found himself searching his
+consciousness for his lost acquaintance with her, and feeling as if he
+knew her less and less. Perhaps, indeed, she had no very distinctive
+individuality; perhaps at her age no woman has, but waits for it to come
+to her through life, through experience. She was an expression of youth,
+of health, of beauty, and of the moral loveliness that comes from a
+fortunate combination of these; but beyond this she was elusive in a way
+that seemed to characterise her even materially. He could not make
+anything more of the mystery as he walked at her side, and he went
+thinking--formlessly, as people always think--that with the child or
+with her mother he would have had a community of interest and feeling
+which he lacked with this splendid girlhood! he was both too young and
+too old for it; and then, while he answered this or that to Imogene's
+talk aptly enough, his mind went back to the time when this mystery was
+no mystery, or when he was contemporary with it, and if he did not
+understand it, at least accepted it as if it wore the most natural thing
+in the world. It seemed a longer time now since it had been in his world
+than it was since he was a child.
+
+"Should you have thought," she asked, turning her face back toward him,
+"that it would be so hot in the sun to-day? _Oh_, that beautiful river!
+How it twists and writhes along! Do you remember that sonnet of
+Longfellow's--the one he wrote in Italian about the Ponte Vecchio, and
+the Arno twisting like a dragon underneath it? They say that Hawthorne
+used to live in a villa just behind the hill over there; we're going to
+look it up as soon as the weather is settled. Don't you think his books
+are perfectly fascinating?"
+
+"Yes," said Colville; "only I should want a good while to say it."
+
+"_I_ shouldn't!" retorted the girl. "When you've said fascinating,
+you've said everything. There's no other word for them. Don't you like
+to talk about the books you've read?"
+
+"I would if I could remember the names of the characters. But I get them
+mixed up."
+
+"Oh, _I_ never do! I remember the least one of them, and all they do and
+say."
+
+"I used to."
+
+"It seems to me you _used_ to do everything."
+
+"It seems to me as if I did."
+
+  "'I remember, when I think,
+   That my youth was half divine.'"
+
+
+"Oh, Tennyson--yes! _He's_ fascinating. Don't you think he's
+fascinating?"
+
+"Very," said Colville. He was wondering whether this were the kind of
+talk that he thought was literary when he was a young fellow.
+
+"How perfectly weird the 'Vision of Sin' is!" Imogene continued. "Don't
+you like _weird_ things?"
+
+"Weird things?" Colville reflected. "Yes; but I don't see very much in
+them any more. The fact is, they don't seem to come to anything in
+particular."
+
+"Oh, _I_ think they do! I've had dreams that I've lived on for days. Do
+you ever have prophetic dreams?"
+
+"Yes; but they never come true. When they do, I know that I didn't have
+them."
+
+"What _do_ you mean?"
+
+"I mean that we are all so fond of the marvellous that we can't trust
+ourselves about any experience that seems supernatural. If a ghost
+appeared to me I should want him to prove it by at least two other
+reliable, disinterested witnesses before I believed my own account of
+the matter."
+
+"Oh!" cried the girl, half puzzled, half amused. "Then of course you
+don't believe in ghosts?"
+
+"Yes; I expect to be one myself some day. But I'm in no hurry to mingle
+with them."
+
+Imogene smiled vaguely, as if the talk pleased her, even when it mocked
+the fancies and whims which, after so many generations that have
+indulged them, she was finding so fresh and new in her turn.
+
+"Don't you like to walk by the side of a river?" she asked, increasing
+her eager pace a little. "I feel as if it were bearing me along."
+
+"I feel as if I were carrying it," said Colville. "It's as fatiguing as
+walking on railroad ties."
+
+"Oh, that's too bad!" cried the girl. "How can you be so prosaic? Should
+you ever have believed that the sun could be so hot in January? And look
+at those ridiculous green hillsides over the river there! Don't you like
+it to be winter when it _is_ winter?"
+
+She did not seem to have expected anything from Colville but an
+impulsive acquiescence, but she listened while he defended the mild
+weather. "I think it's very well for Italy," he said. "It has always
+seemed to me--that is, it seems to me now for the first time, but one
+has to begin the other way--as if the seasons here had worn themselves
+out like the turbulent passions of the people. I dare say the winter was
+much fiercer in the times of the Bianchi and Neri."
+
+"Oh, how delightful! Do you really believe that?"
+
+"No, I don't know that I do. But I shouldn't have much difficulty in
+proving it, I think, to the sympathetic understanding."
+
+"I wish you would prove it to mine. It sounds so pretty, I'm sure it
+must be true."
+
+"Oh, then, it isn't necessary. I'll reserve my arguments for Mrs.
+Bowen."
+
+"You had better. She isn't at all romantic. She says it's very well for
+me she isn't--that her being matter-of-fact lets me be as romantic as I
+like."
+
+"Then Mrs. Bowen isn't as romantic as she would like to be if she hadn't
+charge of a romantic young lady?"
+
+"Oh, I don't say that. Dear me! I'd no idea it _could_ be so hot in
+January." As they strolled along beside the long hedge of laurel, the
+carriage slowly following them at a little distance, the sun beat strong
+upon the white road, blotched here and there with the black irregular
+shadows of the ilexes. The girl undid the pelisse across her breast,
+with a fine impetuosity, and let it swing open as she walked. She
+stopped suddenly. "Hark! What bird was that?"
+
+"'It was the nightingale, and not the lark,'" suggested Colville lazily.
+
+"Oh, _don't_ you think _Romeo and Juliet_ is divine?" demanded Imogene,
+promptly dropping the question of the bird.
+
+"I don't know about Romeo," returned Colville, "but it's sometimes
+occurred to me that Juliet was rather forth-putting."
+
+"You _know_ she wasn't. It's my favourite play. I could go every night.
+It's perfectly amazing to me that they can play anything else."
+
+"You would like it five hundred nights in the year, like _Hazel Kirke_?
+That would be a good deal of Romeo, not to say Juliet."
+
+"They ought to do it out of respect to Shakespeare. Don't you like
+Shakespeare?"
+
+"Well, I've seen the time when I preferred Alexander Smith," said
+Colville evasively.
+
+"Alexander Smith? Who in the world is Alexander Smith?"
+
+"How recent you are! Alexander Smith was an immortal who flourished
+about the year 1850."
+
+"That was before I was born. How could I remember him? But I don't feel
+so very recent for all that."
+
+"Neither do I, this morning," said Colville. "I was up at one of
+Pharaoh's balls last night, and I danced too much."
+
+He gave Imogene a droll glance, and then bent it upon Effie's discreet
+face. The child dropped her eyes with a blush like her mother's, having
+first sought provisional counsel of Imogene, who turned away. He rightly
+inferred that they all had been talking him over at breakfast, and he
+broke into a laugh which they joined in, but Imogene said nothing in
+recognition of the fact.
+
+With what he felt to be haste for his relief she said, "Don't you hate
+to be told to read a book?"
+
+"I used to--quarter of a century ago," said Colville, recognising that
+this was the way young people talked, even then.
+
+"Used to?" she repeated. "Don't you now?"
+
+"No; I'm a great deal more tractable now. I always say that I shall get
+the book out of the library. I draw the line at buying. I still hate to
+buy a book that people recommend."
+
+"What kind of books do you like to buy?"
+
+"Oh, no kind. I think we ought to get all our books out of the library."
+
+"Do you never like to talk in earnest?"
+
+"Well, not often," said Colville. "Because, if you do, you can't say
+with a good conscience afterward that you were only in fun."
+
+"Oh! And do you always like to talk so that you can get out of things
+afterward?"
+
+"No. I didn't say that, did I?"
+
+"Very nearly, I should think."
+
+"Then I'm glad I didn't quite."
+
+"I like people to be outspoken--to say everything they think," said the
+girl, regarding him with a puzzled look.
+
+"Then I foresee that I shall become a favourite," answered Colville. "I
+say a great deal more than I think."
+
+She looked at him again with envy, with admiration, qualifying her
+perplexity. They had come to a point where some moss-grown,
+weather-beaten statues stood at the corners of the road that traversed
+the bosky stretch between the avenues of the Cascine. "Ah, how beautiful
+they are!" he said, halting, and giving himself to the rapture that a
+blackened garden statue imparts to one who beholds it from the
+vantage-ground of sufficient years and experience.
+
+"Do you remember that story of Heine's," he resumed, after a moment, "of
+the boy who steals out of the old castle by moonlight, and kisses the
+lips of the garden statue, fallen among the rank grass of the ruinous
+parterres? And long afterward, when he looks down on the sleep of the
+dying girl where she lies on the green sofa, it seems to him that she
+and that statue are the same?"
+
+"Oh!" deeply sighed the young girl. "No, I never read it. Tell me what
+it is. I _must_ read it."
+
+"The rest is all talk--very good talk; but I doubt whether it would
+interest you. He goes on to talk of a great many things---of the way
+Bellini spoke French, for example. He says it was bloodcurdling,
+horrible, cataclysmal. He brought out the poor French words and broke
+them upon the wheel, till you thought the whole world must give way with
+a thunder-crash. A dead hush reigned in the room; the women did not know
+whether to faint or fly; the men looked down at their pantaloons, and
+tried to realise what they had on."
+
+"Oh, how perfectly delightful! how shameful!" cried the girl. "I _must_
+read it. What is it in? What is the name of the story?"
+
+"It isn't a story," said Colville. "Did you ever see anything lovelier
+than these statues?"
+
+"No," said Imogene. "_Are_ they good?"
+
+"They are much better than good--they are the very worst rococo."
+
+"What makes you say they are beautiful, then?"
+
+"Why, don't you see? They commemorate youth, gaiety, brilliant, joyous
+life. That's what that kind of statues was made for--to look on at rich,
+young, beautiful people and their gallantries; to be danced before by
+fine ladies and gentlemen playing at shepherd and shepherdesses; to be
+driven past by marcheses and contessinas flirting in carriages; to be
+hung with scarfs and wreaths; to be parts of eternal _fétes champêtres_.
+Don't you see how bored they look? When I first came to Italy I should
+have detested and ridiculed their bad art; but now they're
+exquisite--the worse, the better."
+
+"I don't know what in the world you _do_ mean," said Imogene, laughing
+uneasily.
+
+"Mrs. Bowen would. It's a pity Mrs. Bowen isn't here with us. Miss
+Effie, if I lift you up to one of those statues, will you kindly ask it
+if it doesn't remember a young American signor who was here just before
+the French Revolution? I don't believe it's forgotten me."
+
+"No, no," said Imogene. "It's time we were walking back. Don't you like
+Scott!" she added. "I should think you would if you like those romantic
+things. I used to like Scott so _much_. When I was fifteen I wouldn't
+read anything but Scott. Don't you like Thackeray? Oh, he's so
+_cynical_! It's perfectly delightful."
+
+"Cynical?" repeated Colville thoughtfully. "I was looking into _The
+Newcomes_ the other day, and I thought he was rather sentimental."
+
+"Sentimental! Why, what an idea! That is the strangest thing I ever
+heard of. Oh!" she broke in upon her own amazement, "don't you think
+Browning's 'Statue and the Bust' is splendid? Mr. Morton read it to
+us--to Mrs. Bowen, I mean."
+
+Colville resented this freedom of Mr. Morton's, he did not know just
+why; then his pique was lost in sarcastic recollection of the time when
+he too used to read poems to ladies. He had read that poem to Lina
+Ridgely and the other one.
+
+"Mrs. Bowen asked him to read it," Imogene continued.
+
+"Did she?" asked Colville pensively.
+
+"And then we discussed it afterward. We had a long discussion. And then
+he read us the 'Legend of Pornic,' and we had a discussion about that.
+Mrs. Bowen says it was real gold they found in the coffin; but I think
+it was the girl's 'gold hair.' I don't know which Mr. Morton thought.
+Which do you? Don't you think the 'Legend of Pornic' is splendid?"
+
+"Yes, it's a great poem, and deep," said Colville. They had come to a
+place where the bank sloped invitingly to the river. "Miss Effie," he
+asked, "wouldn't you like to go down and throw stones into the Arno?
+That's what a river is for," he added, as the child glanced toward
+Imogene for authorisation, "to have stones thrown into it."
+
+"Oh, let us!" cried Imogene, rushing down to the brink. "I don't want to
+throw stones into it, but to get near it--to get near to any bit of
+nature. They do pen you up so from it in Europe!" She stood and watched
+Colville skim stones over the current. "When you stand by the shore of a
+swift river like this, or near a railroad train when it comes whirling
+by, don't you ever have a morbid impulse to fling yourself forward?"
+
+"Not at my time of life," said Colville, stooping to select a flat
+stone. "Morbid impulses are one of the luxuries of youth." He threw the
+stone, which skipped triumphantly far out into the stream. "That was
+beautiful, wasn't it, Miss Effie?"
+
+"Lovely!" murmured the child.
+
+He offered her a flat pebble. "Would you like to try one?"
+
+"It would spoil my gloves," she said, in deprecating refusal.
+
+"Let _me_ try it!" cried Imogene. "I'm not afraid of my gloves."
+
+Colville yielded the pebble, looking at her with the thought of how
+intoxicating he should once have found this bit of wilful _abandon_, but
+feeling rather sorry for it now. "Oh, perhaps not?" he said, laying his
+hand upon hers, and looking into her eyes.
+
+She returned his look, and then she dropped the pebble and put her hand
+back in her muff, and turned and ran up the bank. "There's the carriage.
+It's time we should be going." At the top of the bank she became a
+mirror of dignity, a transparent mirror to his eye. "Are you going back
+to town, Mr. Colville?" she asked, with formal state. "We could set you
+down anywhere!"
+
+"Thank you, Miss Graham. I shall be glad to avail myself of your very
+kind offer. Allow me." He handed her ceremoniously to the carriage; he
+handed Effie Bowen even more ceremoniously to the carriage, holding his
+hat in one hand while he offered the other. Then he mounted to the seat
+in front of them. "The weather has changed," he said.
+
+Imogene hid her face in her muff, and Effie Bowen bowed hers against
+Imogene's shoulder.
+
+A sense of the girl's beauty lingered in Colville's thought all day, and
+recurred to him again and again; and the ambitious intensity and
+enthusiasm of her talk came back in touches of amusement and compassion.
+How divinely young it all was, and how lovely! He patronised it from a
+height far aloof.
+
+He was not in the frame of mind for the hotel table, and he went to
+lunch, at a restaurant. He chose a simple trattoria, the first he came
+to, and he took his seat at one of the bare, rude tables, where the
+joint saucers for pepper and salt, and a small glass for toothpicks,
+with a much-scraped porcelain box for matches, expressed an uncorrupted
+Florentinity of custom. But when he gave his order in offhand Italian,
+the waiter answered in the French which waiters get together for the
+traveller's confusion in Italy, and he resigned himself to whatever
+chance of acquaintance might befall him. The place had a companionable
+smell of stale tobacco, and the dim light showed him on the walls of a
+space dropped a step or two lower, at the end of the room, a variety of
+sketches and caricatures. A waiter was laying a large table in this
+space, and when Colville came up to examine the drawings he jostled him,
+with due apologies, in the haste of a man working against time for
+masters who will brook no delay. He was hurrying still when a party of
+young men came in and took their places at the table, and began to rough
+him for his delay. Colville could recognise several of them in the
+vigorous burlesques on the walls, and as others dropped in the grotesque
+portraitures made him feel as if he had seen them before. They all
+talked at once, each man of his own interests, except when they joined
+in a shout of mockery and welcome for some new-comer. Colville, at his
+_risotto_, almost the room's length away, could hear what they thought,
+one and another, of Botticelli and Michelangelo; of old Piloty's things
+at Munich; of the dishes they had served to them, and of the quality of
+the Chianti; of the respective merits of German and Italian tobacco; of
+whether Inglehart had probably got to Venice yet; of the personal habits
+of Billings, and of the question whether the want of modelling in
+Simmons's nose had anything to do with his style of snoring; of the
+overrated colouring of some of those Venetian fellows; of the delicacy
+of Mino da Fiesole, and of the genius of Babson's tailor. Babson was
+there to defend the cut of his trousers, and Billings and Simmons were
+present to answer for themselves at the expense of the pictures of those
+who had called their habits and features into question. When it came to
+this all the voices joined in jolly uproar. Derision and denial broke
+out of the tumult, and presently they were all talking quietly of a
+reception which some of them were at the day before. Then Colville heard
+one of them saying that he would like a chance to paint some lady whose
+name he did not catch, and "She looks awfully sarcastic," one of the
+young fellows said.
+
+"They say she _is_," said another. "They say she's awfully
+intellectual."
+
+"Boston?" queried a third.
+
+"No, Kalamazoo. The centre of culture is out there now."
+
+"She knows how to dress, anyhow," said the first commentator. "I wonder
+what Parker would talk to her about when he was painting her. He's never
+read anything but Poe's 'Ullalume.'"
+
+"Well, that's a good subject--'Ullalume.'"
+
+"I suppose she's read it?"
+
+"She's read 'most everything, they say."
+
+"What's an Ullalume, anyway, Parker?"
+
+One of the group sprang up from the table and drew on the wall what he
+labelled "An Ullalume." Another rapidly depicted Parker in the moment of
+sketching a young lady; her portrait had got as far as the eyes and nose
+when some one protested: "Oh, hello! No personalities."
+
+The draughtsman said, "Well, all right!" and sat down again.
+
+"Hall talked with her the most. What did she say, Hall?"
+
+"Hall can't remember words in three syllables, but he says it was mighty
+brilliant and mighty deep."
+
+"They say she's a niece of Mrs. Bowen's. She's staying with Mrs. Bowen."
+
+Then it was the wisdom and brilliancy and severity of Imogene Graham
+that these young men stood in awe of! Colville remembered how the minds
+of girls of twenty had once dazzled him. "And yes," he mused, "she must
+have believed that we were talking literature in the Cascine. Certainly
+I should have thought it an intellectual time when I was at that age,"
+he owned to himself with forlorn irony.
+
+The young fellows went on to speak of Mrs. Bowen, whom it seemed they
+had known the winter before. She had been very polite to them; they
+praised her as if she were quite an old woman.
+
+"But she must have been a very pretty girl," one of them put in.
+
+"Well, she has a good deal of style yet."
+
+"Oh yes, but she never could have been a beauty like the other one."
+
+On her part, Imogene was very sober when she met Mrs. Bowen, though she
+had come in flushed and excited from the air and the morning's
+adventure. Mrs. Bowen was sitting by the fire, placidly reading; a vase
+of roses on the little table near her diffused the delicate odour of
+winter roses through the room; all seemed very still and dim, and of
+another time, somehow.
+
+Imogene kept away from the fire, sitting down, in the provisional
+fashion of women, with her things on; but she unbuttoned her pelisse and
+flung it open. Effie had gone to her room.
+
+"Did you have a pleasant drive?" asked Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"Very," said the girl.
+
+"Mr. Morton brought you these roses," continued Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"Oh," said Imogene, with a cold glance at them.
+
+"The Flemmings have asked us to a party Thursday. There is to be
+dancing."
+
+"The Flemmings?"
+
+"Yes." As if she now saw reason to do so, Mrs. Bowen laid the book face
+downward in her lap. She yawned a little, with her hand on her mouth.
+"Did you meet any one you knew?"
+
+"Yes; Mr. Colville." Mrs. Bowen cut her yawn in half. "We got out to
+walk in the Cascine, and we saw him coming in at the gate. He came up
+and asked if he might walk with us."
+
+"Did you have a pleasant walk?" asked Mrs. Bowen, a breath more chillily
+than she had asked if they had a pleasant drive.
+
+"Yes, pleasant enough. And then we came back and went down the river
+bank, and he skipped stones, and we took him to his hotel."
+
+"Was there anybody you knew in the Cascine?"
+
+"Oh no; the place was a howling wilderness. I never saw it so deserted,"
+said the girl impatiently. "It was terribly hot walking. I thought I
+should burn up."
+
+Mrs. Bowen did not answer anything; she let the book lie in her lap.
+
+"What an odd person Mr. Colville is!" said Imogene, after a moment.
+"Don't you think he's very different from other gentlemen?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, he has such a peculiar way of talking."
+
+"What peculiar way?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Plenty of the young men I see talk cynically, and I
+do sometimes myself--desperately, don't you know. But then I know very
+well we don't mean anything by it."
+
+"And do you think Mr. Colville does? Do you think he talks cynically?"
+
+Imogene leaned back in her chair and reflected. "No," she returned
+slowly, "I can't say that he does. But he talks lightly, with a kind of
+touch and go that makes you feel that he has exhausted all feeling. He
+doesn't parade it at all. But you hear between the words, don't you
+know, just as you read between the lines in some kinds of poetry. Of
+course it's everything in knowing what he's been through. He's perfectly
+unaffected; and don't you think he's good?"
+
+"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Bowen. "In his way."
+
+"But he sees through you. Oh, quite! Nothing escapes him, and pretty
+soon he lets out that he has seen through you, and then you feel so
+_flat_! Oh, it's perfectly intoxicating to be with him. I would give the
+world to talk as he does."
+
+"What was your talk all about?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I suppose it would have been called rather
+intellectual."
+
+Mrs. Bowen smiled infinitesimally. But after a moment she said gravely,
+"Mr. Colville is very much older than you. He's old enough to be your
+father."
+
+"Yes, I know that. You feel that he feels old, and it's perfectly
+tragical. Sometimes when he turns that slow, dull, melancholy look on
+you, he seems a thousand years old."
+
+"I don't mean that he's positively old," said Mrs. Bowen. "He's only old
+comparatively."
+
+"Oh yes; I understand that. And I don't mean that he really seems a
+thousand years old. What I meant was, he seems a thousand years off, as
+if he were still young, and had got left behind somehow. He seems to be
+on the other side of some impassable barrier, and you want to get over
+there and help him to our side, but you can't do it. I suppose his
+talking in that light way is merely a subterfuge to hide his feeling, to
+make him forget."
+
+Mrs. Bowen fingered the edges of her book. "You mustn't let your fancy
+run away with you, Imogene," she said, with a little painful smile.
+
+"Oh, I _like_ to let it run away with me. And when I get such a subject
+as Mr. Colville, there's no stopping. I can't stop, and I don't _wish_
+to stop. Shouldn't you have thought that he would have been perfectly
+crushed at the exhibition he made of himself in the Lancers last night?
+He wasn't the least embarrassed when he met me, and the only allusion he
+made to it was to say that he had been up late, and had danced too much.
+Wasn't it wonderful he could do it? Oh, if _I_ could do that!"
+
+"I wish he could have avoided the occasion for his bravado," said Mrs.
+Bowen.
+
+"I think I was a little to blame, perhaps," said the girl. "I beckoned
+him to come and take the vacant place."
+
+"I don't see that that was an excuse," returned Mrs. Bowen primly.
+
+Imogene seemed insensible to the tone, as it concerned herself; it only
+apparently reminded her of something. "Guess what Mr. Colville said,
+when I had been silly, and then tried to make up for it by being very
+dignified all of a sudden?"
+
+"I don't know. How had you been silly?"
+
+The servant brought in some cards. Imogene caught up the pelisse which
+she had been gradually shedding as she sat talking to Mrs. Bowen, and
+ran out of the room by another door.
+
+They did not recur to the subject. But that night, when Mrs. Bowen went
+to say good night to Effie, after the child had gone to bed, she
+lingered.
+
+"Effie," she said at last, in a husky whisper, "what did Imogene say to
+Mr. Colville to-day that made him laugh?"
+
+"I don't know," said the child. "They kept laughing at so many things."
+
+"Laughing?"
+
+"Yes; he laughed. Do you mean toward the last, when he had been throwing
+stones into the river?"
+
+"It must have been then."
+
+The child stretched herself drowsily. "Oh I couldn't understand it all.
+She wanted to throw a stone in the river, but he told her she had better
+not. But that didn't make _him_ laugh. She was so very stiff just
+afterward that he said the weather had changed, and that made _us_
+laugh."
+
+"Was that all?"
+
+"We kept laughing ever so long. I never saw any one like Mr. Colville.
+How queerly the fire shines on your face! It gives you such a beautiful
+complexion."
+
+"Does it?"
+
+"Yes, lovely." The child's mother stooped over and kissed her. "You're
+the prettiest mamma in the world," she said, throwing her arms round her
+neck. "Sometimes I can't tell whether Imogene is prettier or not, but
+to-night I'm certain you are. Do you like to have me think that?"
+
+"Yes--yes. But don't pull me down so; you hurt my neck. Good night."
+
+The child let her go. "I haven't said my prayer yet, mamma. I was
+thinking."
+
+"Well, say it now, then," said the mother gently.
+
+When the child had finished she turned upon her cheek. "Good night,
+mamma."
+
+Mrs. Bowen went about the room a little while, picking up its pretty
+disorder. Then she sat down in a chair by the hearth, where a log was
+still burning. The light of the flame flickered upon her face, and threw
+upon the ceiling a writhing, fantastic shadow, the odious caricature of
+her gentle beauty.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+In that still air of the Florentine winter, time seems to share the
+arrest of the natural forces, the repose of the elements. The pale blue
+sky is frequently overcast, and it rains two days out of five;
+sometimes, under extraordinary provocation from the north a snow-storm
+whirls along under the low grey dome, and whitens the brown roofs, where
+a growth of spindling weeds and grass clothes the tiles the whole year
+round, and shows its delicate green above the gathered flakes. But for
+the most part the winds are laid, and the sole change is from quiet sun
+to quiet shower. This at least is the impression which remains in the
+senses of the sojourning stranger, whose days slip away with so little
+difference one from another that they seem really not to have passed,
+but, like the grass that keeps the hillsides fresh round Florence all
+the winter long, to be waiting some decisive change of season before
+they begin.
+
+The first of the Carnival sights that marked the lapse of a month since
+his arrival took Colville by surprise. He could not have believed that
+it was February yet if it had not been for the straggling maskers in
+armour whom he met one day in Via Borgognissanti, with their visors up
+for their better convenience in smoking. They were part of the chorus at
+one of the theatres, and they were going about to eke out their salaries
+with the gifts of people whose windows the festival season privileged
+them to play under. The silly spectacle stirred Colville's blood a
+little, as any sort of holiday preparation was apt to do. He thought
+that it afforded him a fair occasion to call at Palazzo Pinti, where he
+had not been so much of late as in the first days of his renewed
+acquaintance with Mrs. Bowen. He had at one time had the fancy that Mrs.
+Bowen was cool toward him. He might very well have been mistaken in
+this; in fact, she had several times addressed him the politest
+reproaches for not coming, but he made some evasion, and went only on
+the days when she was receiving other people, and when necessarily he
+saw very little of the family.
+
+Miss Graham was always very friendly, but always very busy, drawing tea
+from the samovar, and looking after others. Effie Bowen dropped her eyes
+in re-established strangeness when she brought the basket of cake to
+him. There was one moment when he suspected that he had been talked over
+in family council, and put under a certain regimen. But he had no proof
+of this, and it had really nothing to do with his keeping away, which
+was largely accidental. He had taken up, with as much earnestness as he
+could reasonably expect of himself, that notion of studying the
+architectural expression of Florentine character at the different
+periods. He had spent a good deal of money in books, he had revived his
+youthful familiarity with the city, and he had made what acquaintance he
+could with people interested in such matters. He met some of these in
+the limited but very active society in which he mingled daily and
+nightly. After the first strangeness to any sort of social life had worn
+off, he found himself very fond of the prompt hospitalities which his
+introduction at Mrs. Bowen's had opened to him. His host--or more
+frequently it was his hostess--had sometimes merely an apartment at a
+hotel; perhaps the family was established in one of the furnished
+lodgings which stretch the whole length of the Lung' Arno on either
+hand, and abound in all the new streets approaching the Cascine, and had
+set up the simple and facile housekeeping of the sojourner in Florence
+for a few months; others had been living in the villa or the palace they
+had taken for years.
+
+The more recent and transitory people expressed something of the
+prevailing English and American aestheticism in the decoration of their
+apartments, but the greater part accepted the Florentine drawing-room as
+their landlord had imagined it for them, with furniture and curtains in
+yellow satin, a cheap ingrain carpet thinly covering the stone floor,
+and a fire of little logs ineffectually blazing on the hearth, and
+flickering on the carved frames of the pictures on the wall and the
+nakedness of the frescoed allegories in the ceiling. Whether of longer
+or shorter stay, the sojourners were bound together by a common language
+and a common social tradition; they all had a Day, and on that day there
+was tea and bread and butter for every comer. They had one another to
+dine; there were evening parties, with dancing and without dancing.
+Colville even went to a fancy ball, where he was kept in countenance by
+several other Florentines of the period of Romola. At all these places
+he met nearly the same people, whose alien life in the midst of the
+native community struck him as one of the phases of modern civilisation
+worthy of note, if not particular study; for he fancied it destined to a
+wider future throughout Europe, as the conditions in England and America
+grow more tiresome and more onerous. They seemed to see very little of
+Italian society, and to be shut out from practical knowledge of the
+local life by the terms upon which they had themselves insisted. Our
+race finds its simplified and cheapened London or New York in all its
+Continental resorts now, but nowhere has its taste been so much studied
+as in Italy, and especially in Florence. It was not, perhaps, the real
+Englishman or American who had been considered, but a _forestière_
+conventionalised from the Florentine's observation of many Anglo-Saxons.
+But he had been so well conjectured that he was hemmed round with a very
+fair illusion of his national circumstances.
+
+It was not that he had his English or American doctor to prescribe for
+him when sick, and his English or American apothecary to compound his
+potion; it was not that there was an English tailor and an American
+dentist, an English bookseller and an English baker, and chapels of
+every shade of Protestantism, with Catholic preaching in English every
+Sunday. These things were more or less matters of necessity, but
+Colville objected that the barbers should offer him an American shampoo;
+that the groceries should abound in English biscuit and our own canned
+fruit and vegetables, and that the grocers' clerks should be ambitious
+to read the labels of the Boston baked beans. He heard--though he did
+not prove this by experiment--that the master of a certain trattoria had
+studied the doughnut of New England till he had actually surpassed the
+original in the qualities that have undermined our digestion as a
+people. But above all it interested him to see that intense expression
+of American civilisation, the horse-car, triumphing along the
+magnificent avenues that mark the line of the old city walls; and he
+recognised an instinctive obedience to an abtruse natural law in the
+fact that whereas the omnibus, which the Italians have derived from the
+English, was not filled beyond its seating capacity, the horse-car was
+overcrowded without and within at Florence, just as it is with us who
+invented it.
+
+"I wouldn't mind even that," he said one day to the lady who was drawing
+him his fifth or sixth cup of tea for that afternoon, and with whom he
+was naturally making this absurd condition of things a matter of
+personal question; "but you people here pass your days in a round of
+unbroken English, except when you talk with your servants. I'm not sure
+you don't speak English with the shop people. I can hardly get them to
+speak Italian to me."
+
+"Perhaps they think you can speak English better," said the lady.
+
+This went over Florence; in a week it was told to Colville as something
+said to some one else. He fearlessly reclaimed it as said to himself,
+and this again was told. In the houses where he visited he had the
+friendly acceptance of any intelligent and reasonably agreeable person
+who comes promptly and willingly when he is asked, and seems always to
+have enjoyed himself when he goes away. But besides this sort of general
+favour, he enjoyed a very pleasing little personal popularity which came
+from his interest in other people, from his good-nature, and from his
+inertness. He slighted no acquaintance, and talked to every one with the
+same apparent wish to be entertaining. This was because he was incapable
+of the cruelty of open indifference when his lot was cast with a dull
+person, and also because he was mentally too lazy to contrive pretences
+for getting away; besides he did not really find anybody altogether a
+bore, and he had no wish to shine. He listened without shrinking to
+stories that he had heard before, and to things that had already been
+said to him; as has been noted, he had himself the habit of repeating
+his ideas with the recklessness of maturity, for he had lived long
+enough to know that this can be done with almost entire safety.
+
+He haunted the studios a good deal, and through a retrospective affinity
+with art, and a human sympathy with the sacrifice which it always
+involves, he was on friendly terms with sculptors and painters who were
+not in every case so friendly with one another. More than once he saw
+the scars of old rivalries, and he might easily have been an adherent of
+two or three parties. But he tried to keep the freedom of the different
+camps without taking sides; and he felt the pathos of the case when they
+all told the same story of the disaster which the taste for bric-à-brac
+had wrought to the cause of art; how people who came abroad no longer
+gave orders for statues and pictures, but spent their money on curtains
+and carpets, old chests and chairs, and pots and pans. There were some
+among these artists whom he had known twenty years before in Florence,
+ardent and hopeful beginners; and now the backs of their grey or bald
+heads, as they talked to him with their faces towards their work, and a
+pencil or a pinch of clay held thoughtfully between their fingers,
+appealed to him as if he had remained young and prosperous, and they had
+gone forward to age and hard work. They were very quaint at times. They
+talked the American slang of the war days and of the days before the
+war; without a mastery of Italian, they often used the idioms of that
+tongue in their English speech. They were dim and vague about the
+country, with whose affairs they had kept up through the newspapers.
+Here and there one thought he was going home very soon; others had
+finally relinquished all thoughts of return. These had, perhaps without
+knowing it, lost the desire to come back; they cowered before the
+expensiveness of life in America, and doubted of a future with which,
+indeed, only the young can hopefully grapple. But in spite of their
+accumulated years, and the evil times on which they had fallen, Colville
+thought them mostly very happy men, leading simple and innocent lives in
+a world of the ideal, and rich in the inexhaustible beauty of the city,
+the sky, the air. They all, whether they were ever going back or not,
+were fervent Americans, and their ineffaceable nationality marked them,
+perhaps, all the more strongly for the patches of something alien that
+overlaid it in places. They knew that he was or had been a newspaper
+man; but if they secretly cherished the hope that he would bring them to
+the _dolce lume_ of print, they never betrayed it; and the authorship of
+his letter about the American artists in Florence, which he printed in
+the _American Register_ at Paris, was not traced to him for a whole
+week.
+
+Colville was a frequent visitor of Mr. Waters, who had a lodging in
+Piazza San Marco, of the poverty which can always be decent in Italy. It
+was bare, but for the books that furnished it; with a table for his
+writing, on a corner of which he breakfasted, a wide sofa with cushions
+in coarse white linen that frankly confessed itself a bed by night, and
+two chairs of plain Italian walnut; but the windows, which had no sun,
+looked out upon the church and the convent sacred to the old Socinian
+for the sake of the meek, heroic mystic whom they keep alive in all the
+glory of his martyrdom. No two minds could well have been further apart
+than the New England minister and the Florentine monk, and no two souls
+nearer together, as Colville recognised with a not irreverent smile.
+
+When the old man was not looking up some point of his saint's history in
+his books, he was taking with the hopefulness of youth and the patience
+of age a lesson in colloquial Italian from his landlady's daughter,
+which he pronounced with a scholarly scrupulosity and a sincere atonic
+Massachusetts accent. He practised the language wherever he could,
+especially at the trattoria where he dined, and where he made occasions
+to detain the waiter in conversation. They humoured him, out of their
+national good-heartedness and sympathy, and they did what they could to
+realise a strange American dish for him on Sundays--a combination of
+stockfish and potatoes boiled, and then fried together in small cakes.
+They revered him as a foreign gentleman of saintly amiability and
+incomprehensible preferences; and he was held in equal regard at the
+next green-grocer's where he spent every morning five centessimi for a
+bunch of radishes and ten for a little pat of butter to eat with his
+bread and coffee; he could not yet accustom himself to mere bread and
+coffee for breakfast, though he conformed as completely as he could to
+the Italian way of living. He respected the abstemiousness of the race;
+he held that it came from a spirituality of nature to which the North
+was still strange, with all its conscience and sense of individual
+accountability. He contended that he never suffered in his small
+dealings with these people from the dishonesty which most of his
+countrymen complained of; and he praised their unfailing gentleness of
+manner; this could arise only from goodness of heart, which was perhaps
+the best kind of goodness after all.
+
+None of these humble acquaintance of his could well have accounted for
+the impression they all had that he was some sort of ecclesiastic. They
+could never have understood--nor, for that matter, could any one have
+understood through European tradition--the sort of sacerdotal office
+that Mr. Waters had filled so long in the little deeply book-clubbed New
+England village where he had outlived most of his flock, till one day he
+rose in the midst of the surviving dyspeptics and consumptives and,
+following the example of Mr. Emerson, renounced his calling for ever. By
+that time even the pale Unitarianism thinning out into paler doubt was
+no longer tenable with him. He confessed that while he felt the Divine
+goodness more and more, he believed that it was a mistake to preach any
+specific creed or doctrine, and he begged them to release him from their
+service. A young man came to fill his place in their pulpit, but he kept
+his place in their hearts. They raised a subscription of seventeen
+hundred dollars and thirty-five cents; another being submitted to the
+new button manufacturer, who had founded his industry in the village, he
+promptly rounded it out to three thousand, and Mr. Waters came to
+Florence. His people parted with him in terms of regret as delicate as
+they were awkward, and their love followed him. He corresponded
+regularly with two or three ladies, and his letters were sometimes read
+from his pulpit.
+
+Colville took the Piazza San Marco in on his way to Palazzo Pinti on the
+morning when he had made up his mind to go there, and he stood at the
+window looking out with the old man, when some more maskers passed
+through the place--two young fellows in old Florentine dress, with a
+third habited as a nun.
+
+"Ah," said the old man gently, "I wish they hadn't introduced the nun!
+But I suppose they can't help signalising their escape from the
+domination of the Church on all occasions. It's a natural reaction. It
+will all come right in time."
+
+"You preach the true American gospel," said Colville.
+
+"Of course; there is no other gospel. That is the gospel."
+
+"Do you suppose that Savonarola would think it had all come out right,"
+asked Colville, a little maliciously, "if he could look from the window
+with us here and see the wicked old Carnival, that he tried so hard to
+kill four hundred years ago, still alive? And kicking?" he added, in
+cognisance of the caper of one of the maskers.
+
+"Oh yes; why not? By this time he knows that his puritanism was all a
+mistake, unless as a thing for the moment only. I should rather like to
+have Savonarola here with us; he would find these costumes familiar;
+they are of his time. I shall make a point of seeing all I can of the
+Carnival, as part of my study of Savonarola, if nothing else."
+
+"I'm afraid you'll have to give yourself limitations," said Colville, as
+one of the maskers threw his arm round the mock-nun's neck. But the old
+man did not see this, and Colville did not feel it necessary to explain
+himself.
+
+The maskers had passed out of the piazza, now, and "Have you seen our
+friends at Palazzo Pinti lately?" said Mr. Waters.
+
+"Not very," said Colville. "I was just on my way there."
+
+"I wish you would make them my compliments. Such a beautiful young
+creature."
+
+"Yes," said Colville; "she is certainly a beautiful girl."
+
+"I meant Mrs. Bowen," returned the old man quietly.
+
+"Oh, I thought you meant Miss Graham. Mrs. Bowen is my contemporary, and
+so I didn't think of her when you said young. I should have called her
+pretty rather than beautiful."
+
+"No; she's beautiful. The young girl is good-looking--I don't deny that;
+but she is very crude yet."
+
+Colville laughed. "Crude in looks? I should have said Miss Graham was
+rather crude in mind, though I'm not sure I wouldn't have stopped at
+saying _young_."
+
+"No," mildly persisted the old man; "she couldn't be crude in mind
+without being crude in looks."
+
+"You mean," pursued Colville, smiling, but not wholly satisfied, "that
+she hasn't a lovely nature?"
+
+"You never can know what sort of nature a young girl has. Her nature
+depends so much upon that of the man whose fate she shares."
+
+"The woman is what the man makes her? That is convenient for the woman,
+and relieves her of all responsibility."
+
+"The man is what the woman makes him, too, but not so much so. The man
+was cast into a deep sleep, you know----"
+
+"And the woman was what he dreamed her. I wish she were."
+
+"In most cases she is," said Mr. Waters.
+
+They did not pursue the matter. The truth that floated in the old
+minister's words pleased Colville by its vagueness, and flattered the
+man in him by its implication of the man's superiority. He wanted to say
+that if Mrs. Bowen were what the late Mr. Bowen had dreamed her, then
+the late Mr. Bowen, when cast into his deep sleep, must have had Lina
+Ridgely in his eye. But this seemed to be personalising the fantasy
+unwarrantably, and pushing it too far. For like reason he forbore to say
+that if Mr. Waters's theory were correct, it would be better to begin
+with some one whom nobody else had dreamed before; then you could be
+sure at least of not having a wife to somebody else's mind rather than
+your own. Once on his way to Palazzo Pinti, he stopped, arrested by a
+thought that had not occurred to him before in relation to what Mr.
+Waters had been saying, and then pushed on with the sense of security
+which is the compensation the possession of the initiative brings to our
+sex along with many responsibilities. In the enjoyment of this, no man
+stops to consider the other side, which must wait his initiative,
+however they mean to meet it.
+
+In the Por San Maria Colville found masks and dominoes filling the shop
+windows and dangling from the doors. A devil in red and a clown in white
+crossed the way in front of him from an intersecting street; several
+children in pretty masquerading dresses flashed in and out among the
+crowd. He hurried to the Lung' Arno, and reached the palace where Mrs.
+Bowen lived, with these holiday sights fresh in his mind. Imogene turned
+to meet him at the door of the apartment, running from the window where
+she had left Effie Bowen still gazing.
+
+"We saw you coming," she said gaily, without waiting to exchange formal
+greetings. "We didn't know at first but it might be somebody else
+disguised as you. We've been watching the maskers go by. Isn't it
+exciting?"
+
+"Awfully," said Colville, going to the window with her, and putting his
+arm on Effie's shoulder, where she knelt in a chair looking out. "What
+have you seen?"
+
+"Oh, only two Spanish students with mandolins," said Imogene; "but you
+can see they're _beginning_ to come."
+
+"They'll stop now," murmured Effie, with gentle disappointment; "it's
+commencing to rain."
+
+"Oh, too bad!" wailed the young girl. But just then two mediaeval
+men-at-arms came in sight, carrying umbrellas. "Isn't that too
+delicious? Umbrellas and chain-armour!"
+
+"You can't expect them to let their chain-armour get rusty," said
+Colville. "You ought to have been with me--minstrels in scale-armour,
+Florentines of Savonarola's times, nuns, clowns, demons, fairies--no end
+to them."
+
+"It's very well saying we ought to have been with you; but we can't go
+anywhere alone."
+
+"I didn't say alone," said Colville. "Don't you think Mrs. Bowen would
+trust you with me to see these Carnival beginnings?" He had not meant at
+all to do anything of this kind, but that had not prevented his doing
+it.
+
+"How do we know, when she hasn't been asked?" said Imogene, with a touch
+of burlesque dolor, such as makes a dignified girl enchanting, when she
+permits it to herself. She took Effie's hand in hers, the child having
+faced round from the window, and stood smoothing it, with her lovely
+head pathetically tilted on one side.
+
+"What haven't I been asked yet?" demanded Mrs. Bowen, coming lightly
+toward them from a door at the side of the _salon_. She gave her hand to
+Colville with the prettiest grace, and a cordiality that brought a flush
+to her cheek. There had really been nothing between them but a little
+unreasoned coolness, if it were even so much as that; say rather a
+dryness, aggravated by time and absence, and now, as friends do, after a
+thing of that kind, they were suddenly glad to be good to each other.
+
+"Why, you haven't been asked how you have been this long time," said
+Colville.
+
+"I have been wanting to tell you for a whole week," returned Mrs. Bowen,
+seating the rest and taking a chair for herself. "Where have you been?"
+
+"Oh, shut up in my cell at Hotel d'Atene, writing a short history of the
+Florentine people for Miss Effie."
+
+"Effie, take Mr. Colville's hat," said her mother. "We're going to make
+you stay to lunch," she explained to him.
+
+"Is that so?" he asked, with an effect of polite curiosity.
+
+"Yes." Imogene softly clapped her hands, unseen by Mrs. Bowen, for
+Colville's instruction that all was going well. If it delights women to
+pet an undangerous friend of our sex, to use him like one of themselves,
+there are no words to paint the soft and flattered content with which
+his spirit purrs under their caresses. "You must have nearly finished
+the history," added Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"Well, I could have finished it," said Colville, "if I had only begun
+it. You see, writing a short history of the Florentine people is such
+quick work that you have to be careful how you actually put pen to
+paper, or you're through with it before you've had any fun out of it."
+
+"I think Effie will like to read that kind of history," said her mother.
+
+The child hung her head, and would not look at Colville; she was still
+shy with him; his absence must have seemed longer to a child, of course.
+
+At lunch they talked of the Carnival sights that had begun to appear. He
+told of his call upon Mr. Waters, and of the old minister's purpose to
+see all he could of the Carnival in order to judge intelligently of
+Savonarola's opposition to it.
+
+"Mr. Waters is a very good man," said Mrs. Bowen, with the air of not
+meaning to approve him quite, nor yet to let any notion of his be made
+fun of in her presence. "But for my part I wish there were not going to
+be any Carnival; the city will be in such an uproar for the next two
+weeks."
+
+"O Mrs. Bowen!" cried Imogene reproachfully; Effie looked at her mother
+in apparent anxiety lest she should be meaning to put forth an
+unquestionable power and stop the Carnival.
+
+"The last Carnival, I thought there was never going to be any end to it;
+I was so glad when Lent came."
+
+"Glad when _Lent_ came!" breathed Imogene, in astonishment; but she
+ventured upon nothing more insubordinate, and Colville admired to see
+this spirited girl as subject to Mrs. Bowen as her own child. There is
+no reason why one woman should establish another woman over her, but
+nearly all women do it in one sort or another, from love of a voluntary
+submission, or from a fear of their own ignorance, if they are younger
+and more inexperienced than their lieges. Neither the one passion nor
+the other seems to reduce them to a like passivity as regards their
+husbands. They must apparently have a fetish of their own sex. Colville
+could see that Imogene obeyed Mrs. Bowen not only as a _protégée_ but as
+a devotee.
+
+"Oh, I suppose _you_ will have to go through it all," said Mrs. Bowen,
+in reward of the girl's acquiescence.
+
+"You're rather out of the way of it up here," said Colville. "You had
+better let me go about with the young ladies--if you can trust them to
+the care of an old fellow like me."
+
+"Oh, I don't think you're so very old, at all times," replied Mrs.
+Bowen, with a peculiar look, whether indulgent or reproachful he could
+not quite make out.
+
+But he replied, boldly, in his turn: "I have certainly my moments of
+being young still; I don't deny it. There's always a danger of their
+occurrence."
+
+"I was thinking," said Mrs. Bowen, with a graceful effect of not
+listening, "that you would let me go too. It would be quite like old
+times."
+
+"Only too much honour and pleasure," returned Colville, "if you will
+leave out the old times. I'm not particular about having them along."
+Mrs. Bowen joined in laughing at the joke, which they had to themselves.
+"I was only consulting an explicit abhorrence of yours in not asking you
+to go at first," he explained.
+
+"Oh yes; I understand that."
+
+The excellence of the whole arrangement seemed to grow upon Mrs. Bowen.
+"Of course," she said, "Imogene ought to see all she can of the
+Carnival. She may not have another chance, and perhaps if she had, _he_
+wouldn't consent."
+
+"I'll engage to get _his_ consent," said the girl. "What I was afraid of
+was that I couldn't get yours, Mrs. Bowen."
+
+"Am I so severe as that?" asked Mrs. Bowen softly.
+
+"Quite," replied Imogene.
+
+"Perhaps," thought Colville, "it isn't always silent submission."
+
+For no very good reason that any one could give, the Carnival that year
+was not a brilliant one. Colville's party seemed to be always meeting
+the same maskers on the street, and the maskers did not greatly increase
+in numbers. There were a few more of them after nightfall, but they were
+then a little more bacchanal, and he felt it was better that the ladies
+had gone home by that time. In the pursuit of the tempered pleasure of
+looking up the maskers he was able to make the reflection that their
+fantastic and vivid dresses sympathised in a striking way with the
+architecture of the city, and gave him an effect of Florence which he
+could not otherwise have had. There came by and by a little attempt at a
+_corso_ in Via Cerratani and Via Tornabuoni. There were some masks in
+carriages, and from one they actually threw plaster _confetti_; half a
+dozen bare-legged boys ran before and beat one another with bladders,
+Some people, but not many, watched the show from the windows, and the
+footways were crowded.
+
+Having proposed that they should see the Carnival together, Colville had
+made himself responsible for it to the Bowen household. Imogene said,
+"Well is this the famous Carnival of Florence?"
+
+"It certainly doesn't compare with the Carnival last year," said Mrs.
+Bowen.
+
+"Your reproach is just, Mrs. Bowen," he acknowledged. "I've managed it
+badly. But you know I've been out of practice a great while there in Des
+Vaches."
+
+"Oh, poor Mr. Colville!" cried Imogene. "He isn't altogether to blame."
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs. Bowen, humouring the joke in her turn. "It
+seems to me that if he had consulted us a little earlier, he might have
+done better."
+
+He drove home with the ladies, and Mrs. Bowen made him stay to tea. As
+if she felt that he needed to be consoled for the failure of his
+Carnival, she was especially indulgent with him. She played to him on
+the piano some of the songs that were in fashion when they were in
+Florence together before.
+
+Imogene had never heard them; she had heard her mother speak of them.
+One or two of them were negro songs, such as very pretty young ladies
+used to sing without harm to themselves or offence to others; but
+Imogene decided that they were rather rowdy. "Dear me, Mrs. Bowen! Did
+_you_ sing such songs? You wouldn't let Effie!"
+
+"No, I wouldn't let Effie. The times are changed. I wouldn't let Effie
+go to the theatre alone with a young gentleman."
+
+"The times are changed for the worse," Colville began. "What harm ever
+came to a young man from a young lady's going alone to the theatre with
+him?"
+
+He stayed till the candles were brought in, and then went away only
+because, as he said, they had not asked him to stay to dinner.
+
+He came nearly every day, upon one pretext or another, and he met them
+oftener than that at the teas and on the days of other ladies in
+Florence; for he was finding the busy idleness of the life very
+pleasant, and he went everywhere. He formed the habit of carrying
+flowers to the Palazzo Pinti, excusing himself on the ground that they
+were so cheap and so abundant as to be impersonal. He brought violets to
+Effie and roses to Imogene; to Mrs. Bowen he always brought a bunch of
+the huge purple anemones which grow so abundantly all winter long about
+Florence. "I wonder why _purple_ anemones?" he asked her one day in
+presenting them to her.
+
+"Oh, it is quite time I should be wearing purple," she said gently.
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Bowen!" he reproached her. "Why do I bring purple violets to
+Miss Effie?"
+
+"You must ask Effie!" said Mrs. Bowen, with a laugh.
+
+After that he stayed away forty-eight hours, and then appeared with a
+bunch of the red anemones, as large as tulips, which light up the meadow
+grass when it begins to stir from its torpor in the spring. "They grew
+on purpose to set me right with you," he said, "and I saw them when I
+was in the country."
+
+It was a little triumph for him, which she celebrated by putting them in
+a vase on her table, and telling people who exclaimed over them that
+they were some Mr. Colville gathered in the country. He enjoyed his
+privileges at her house with the futureless satisfaction of a man. He
+liked to go about with the Bowens; he was seen with the ladies driving
+and walking, in most of their promenades. He directed their visits to
+the churches and the galleries; he was fond of strolling about with
+Effie's daintily-gloved little hand in his. He took her to Giocosa's and
+treated her to ices; he let her choose from the confectioner's prettiest
+caprices in candy; he was allowed to bring the child presents in his
+pockets. Perhaps he was not as conscientious as he might have been in
+his behaviour with the little girl. He did what he could to spoil her,
+or at least to relax the severity of the training she had received; he
+liked to see the struggle that went on in the mother's mind against
+this, and then the other struggle with which she overcame her opposition
+to it. The worst he did was to teach Effie some picturesque Western
+phrases, which she used with innocent effectiveness; she committed the
+crimes against convention which he taught her with all the conventional
+elegance of her training. The most that he ever gained for her were some
+concessions in going out in weather that her mother thought unfit, or
+sitting up for half-hours after her bed-time. He ordered books for her
+from Goodban's, and it was Colville now, and not the Rev. Mr. Morton,
+who read poetry aloud to the ladies on afternoons when Mrs. Bowen gave
+orders that she and Miss Graham should be denied to all other comers.
+
+It was an intimacy; and society in Florence is not blind, and especially
+it is not dumb. The old lady who had celebrated Mrs. Bowen to him the
+first night at Palazzo Pinti led a life of active questions as to what
+was the supreme attraction to Colville there, and she referred her doubt
+to every friend with whom she drank tea. She philosophised the situation
+very scientifically, and if not very conclusively, how few are the
+absolute conclusions of science upon any point!
+
+"He is a bachelor, and there is a natural affinity between bachelors and
+widows--much more than if he were a widower too. If he were a widower I
+should say it was undoubtedly mademoiselle. If he were a little _bit_
+younger, I should have no doubt it was madame; but men of that age have
+such an ambition to marry young girls! I suppose that they think it
+proves they are not so very old, after all. And certainly he isn't too
+old to marry. If he were wise--which he probably isn't, if he's like
+other men in such matters--there wouldn't be any question about Mrs.
+Bowen. Pretty creature! And so much sense! Too much for him. Ah, my
+dear, how we are wasted upon that sex!"
+
+Mrs. Bowen herself treated the affair with masterly frankness. More than
+once in varying phrase, she said: "You are very good to give us so much
+of your time, Mr. Colville, and I won't pretend I don't know it. You're
+helping me out with a very hazardous experiment. When I undertook to see
+Imogene through a winter in Florence, I didn't reflect what a very gay
+time girls have at home, in Western towns especially. But I haven't
+heard her breathe Buffalo once. And I'm sure it's doing her a great deal
+of good here. She's naturally got a very good mind; she's very ambitious
+to be cultivated. She's read a good deal, and she's anxious to know
+history and art; and your advice and criticism are the greatest possible
+advantage to her."
+
+"Thank you," said Colville, with a fine, remote dissatisfaction. "I
+supposed I was merely enjoying myself."
+
+He had lately begun to haunt his banker's for information in regard to
+the Carnival balls, with the hope that something might be made out of
+them.
+
+But either there were to be no great Carnival balls, or it was a mistake
+to suppose that his banker ought to know about them. Colville went
+experimentally to one of the people's balls at a minor theatre, which he
+found advertised on the house walls. At half-past ten the dancing had
+not begun, but the masks were arriving; young women in gay silks and
+dirty white gloves; men in women's dresses, with enormous hands; girls
+as pages; clowns, pantaloons, old women, and the like. They were all
+very good-humoured; the men, who far outnumbered the women, danced
+contentedly together. Colville liked two cavalry soldiers who waltzed
+with each other for an hour, and then went off to a battery on
+exhibition in the pit, and had as much electricity as they could hold.
+He liked also two young citizens who danced together as long as he
+stayed, and did not leave off even for electrical refreshment. He came
+away at midnight, pushing out of the theatre through a crowd of people
+at the door, some of whom were tipsy. This certainly would not have done
+for the ladies, though the people were civilly tipsy.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+The next morning Paolo, when he brought up Colville's breakfast, brought
+the news that there was to be a veglione at the Pergola Theatre. This
+news revived Colville's courage. "Paolo," he said, "you ought to open a
+banking-house." Paolo was used to being joked by foreigners who could
+not speak Italian very well; he smiled as if he understood.
+
+The banker had his astute doubts of Paolo's intelligence; the banker in
+Europe doubts all news not originating in his house; but after a day or
+two the advertisements in the newspapers carried conviction even to the
+banker.
+
+When Colville went to the ladies with news of the veglione, he found
+that they had already heard of it. "Should you like to go?" he asked
+Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"I don't know. What do you think?" she asked in turn.
+
+"Oh, it's for you to do the thinking. I only know what I want."
+
+Imogene said nothing, while she watched the internal debate as it
+expressed itself in Mrs. Bowen's face.
+
+"People go in boxes," she said thoughtfully; "but you would feel that a
+box wasn't the same thing exactly?"
+
+"_We_ went on the floor," suggested Colville.
+
+"It was very different then. And, besides, Mrs. Finlay had absolutely
+_no_ sense of propriety." When a woman has explicitly condemned a given
+action, she apparently gathers courage for its commission under a little
+different conditions. "Of course, if we went upon the floor, I shouldn't
+wish it to be known at all, though foreigners can do almost anything
+they like."
+
+"Really," said Colville, "when it comes to that, I don't see any harm in
+it."
+
+"And you say go?"
+
+"I say whatever you say."
+
+Mrs. Bowen looked from him to Imogene. "I don't either," she said
+finally, and they understood that she meant the harm which he had not
+seen.
+
+"Which of us has been so good as to deserve this?" asked Colville.
+
+"Oh, you have all been good," she said. "We shall go in masks and
+dominoes," she continued. "Nothing will happen, and who should know us
+if anything did?" They had received tickets to the great Borghese ball,
+which is still a fashionable and desired event of the Carnival to
+foreigners in Florence; but their preconceptions of the veglione threw
+into the shade the entertainment which the gentlemen of Florence offered
+to favoured sojourners.
+
+"Come," said Mrs. Bowen, "you must go with us and help us choose our
+dominoes."
+
+A prudent woman does not do an imprudent thing by halves. Effie was to
+be allowed to go to the veglione too, and she went with them to the shop
+where they were to hire their dominoes. It would be so much more fun,
+Mrs. Bowen said, to choose the dresses in the shop than to have them
+sent home for you to look at. Effie was to be in black; Imogene was to
+have a light blue domino, and Mrs. Bowen chose a purple one; even where
+their faces were not to be seen they considered their complexions in
+choosing the colours. If you happened to find a friend, and wanted to
+unmask, you would not want to look horrid. The shop people took the
+vividest interest in it all, as if it were a new thing to them, and
+these were the first foreigners they had ever served with masks and
+dominoes. They made Mrs. Bowen and Imogene go into an inner room and
+come out for the mystification of Colville, hulking about in the front
+shop with his mask and domino on.
+
+"Which is which?" the ladies both challenged him, in the mask's
+conventional falsetto, when they came out.
+
+With a man's severe logic he distinguished them according to their
+silks, but there had been time for them to think of changing, and they
+took off their masks to laugh in his face.
+
+They fluttered so airily about among the pendent masks and dominoes,
+from which they shook a ghostly perfume of old carnivals, that his heart
+leaped.
+
+"Ah, you'll never be so fascinating again!" he cried. He wanted to take
+them in his arms, they were both so delicious; a man has still only that
+primitive way of expressing his supreme satisfaction in women. "Now,
+which am I?" he demanded of them, and that made them laugh again. He had
+really put his arm about Effie.
+
+"Do you think you will know your papa at the veglione?" asked one of the
+shop-women, with a mounting interest in the amiable family party.
+
+They all laughed; the natural mistake seemed particularly droll to
+Imogene.
+
+"Come," cried Mrs. Bowen; "it's time we should be going."
+
+That was true; they had passed so long a time in the shop that they did
+not feel justified in seriously attempting to beat down the price of
+their dresses. They took them at the first price. The woman said with
+reason that it was Carnival, and she could get her price for the things.
+
+They went to the veglione at eleven, the ladies calling for Colville, as
+before, in Mrs. Bowen's carriage. He felt rather sheepish, coming out of
+his room in his mask and domino, but the corridors of the hotel were
+empty, and for the most part dark; there was no one up but the porter,
+who wished him a pleasant time in as matter-of-fact fashion as if he
+were going out to an evening party in his dress coat. His spirits
+mounted in the atmosphere of adventure which the ladies diffused about
+them in the carriage; Effie Bowen laughed aloud when he entered, in
+childish gaiety of heart.
+
+The narrow streets roared with the wheels of cabs and carriages coming
+and going; the street before the theatre was so packed that it was some
+time before they could reach the door. Masks were passing in and out;
+the nervous joy of the ladies expressed itself in a deep-drawn quivering
+sigh. Their carriage door was opened by a servant of the theatre, who
+wished them a pleasant veglione, and the next moment they were in the
+crowded vestibule, where they paused a moment, to let Imogene and Effie
+really feel that they were part of a masquerade.
+
+"Now, keep all together," said Mrs. Bowen, as they passed through the
+inner door of the vestibule, and the brilliantly lighted theatre flashed
+its colours and splendours upon them. The floor of the pit had been
+levelled to that of the stage, which, stripped of the scenic apparatus,
+opened vaster spaces for the motley crew already eddying over it in the
+waltz. The boxes, tier over tier, blazed with the light of candelabra
+which added their sparkle to that of the gas jets.
+
+"You and Effie go before," said Mrs. Bowen to Imogene. She made them
+take hands like children, and mechanically passed her own hand through
+Colville's arm.
+
+A mask in red from head to foot attached himself to the party, and began
+to make love to her in excellent pantomime.
+
+Colville was annoyed. He asked her if he should tell the fellow to take
+himself off.
+
+"Not on any account!" she answered. "It's perfectly delightful. It
+wouldn't be the veglione without it. Did you ever see such good acting?"
+
+"I don't think it's remarkable for anything but its fervour," said
+Colville.
+
+"I should like to see you making love to some lady," she rejoined
+mischievously.
+
+"I will make love to you, if you like," he said, but he felt in an
+instant that his joke was in bad taste.
+
+They went the round of the theatre. "That is Prince Strozzi, Imogene,"
+said Mrs. Bowen, leaning forward to whisper to the girl. She pointed out
+other people of historic and aristocratic names in the boxes, where
+there was a democracy of beauty among the ladies, all painted and
+powdered to the same marquise effect.
+
+On the floor were gentlemen in evening dress, without masks, and here
+and there ladies waltzing, who had masks but no dominoes. But for the
+most part people were in costume; the theatre flushed and flowered in
+gay variety of tint that teased the eye with its flow through the dance.
+
+Mrs. Bowen had circumscribed the adventure so as to exclude dancing from
+it. Imogene was not to dance. One might go to the veglione and look on
+from a box; if one ventured further and went on the floor, decidedly one
+was not to dance.
+
+This was thoroughly understood beforehand, and there were to be no
+petitions or murmurs at the theatre. They found a quiet corner, and sat
+down to look on.
+
+The mask in red followed, and took his place at a little distance,
+where, whenever Mrs. Bowen looked that way, he continued to protest his
+passion.
+
+"You're sure he doesn't bore you?" suggested Colville.
+
+"No, indeed. He's very amusing."
+
+"Oh, all right!"
+
+The waltz ceased; the whirling and winding confusion broke into an
+irregular streaming hither and thither, up and down. They began to pick
+out costumes and characters that interested them. Clowns in white, with
+big noses, and harlequins in their motley, with flat black masks,
+abounded. There were some admirable grasshoppers in green, with long
+antennae quivering from their foreheads. Two or three Mephistos reddened
+through the crowd. Several knights in armour got about with difficulty,
+apparently burdened by their greaves and breastplates.
+
+A group of leaping and dancing masks gathered around a young man in
+evening dress, with long hair, who stood leaning against a pillar near
+them, and who underwent their mockeries with a smile of patience, half
+amused, half tormented.
+
+When they grew tired of baiting him, and were looking about for other
+prey, the red mask redoubled his show of devotion to Mrs. Bowen, and the
+other masks began to flock round and approve.
+
+"Oh, now," she said, with a little embarrassed laugh, in which there was
+no displeasure, "I think you may ask him to go away. But don't be harsh
+with him," she added, at a brusque movement which Colville made toward
+the mask.
+
+"Oh, why should I be harsh with him? We're not rivals." This was not in
+good taste either, Colville felt. "Besides, I'm an Italian too," he
+said, to retrieve himself. He made a few paces toward the mask, and said
+in a low tone, with gentle suggestion, "Madame finds herself a little
+incommoded."
+
+The mask threw himself into an attitude of burlesque despair, bowed low
+with his hand on his heart, in token of submission, and vanished into
+the crowd. The rest dispersed with cries of applause.
+
+"How very prettily you did it, both of you!" said Mrs. Bowen. "I begin
+to believe you are an Italian, Mr. Colville. I shall be afraid of you."
+
+"You weren't afraid of him."
+
+"Oh, he was a real Italian."
+
+"It seems to me that mamma is getting all the good of the veglione,"
+said Effie, in a plaintive murmur. The well-disciplined child must have
+suffered deeply before she lifted this seditious voice.
+
+"Why, so I am, Effie," answered her mother, "and I don't think it's fair
+myself. What shall we do about it?"
+
+"I should like something to eat," said the child.
+
+"So should I," said Colville. "That's reparation your mother owes us
+all. Let's make her take us and get us something. Wouldn't you like an
+ice, Miss Graham?"
+
+"Yes, an _ice_," said Imogene, with an effect of adding, "Nothing more
+for worlds," that made Colville laugh. She rose slowly, like one in a
+dream, and cast a look as impassioned as a look could be made through a
+mask on the scene she was leaving behind her. The band was playing a
+waltz again, and the wide floor swam with circling couples.
+
+The corridor where the tables were set was thronged with people, who
+were drinking beer and eating cold beef and boned turkey and slices of
+huge round sausages. "Oh, how _can_ they?" cried the girl, shuddering.
+
+"I didn't know you were so ethereal-minded about these things," said
+Colville. "I thought you didn't object to the salad at Madame
+Uccelli's."
+
+"Oh, but at the veglione!" breathed the girl for all answer. He laughed
+again, but Mrs. Bowen did not laugh with him; he wondered why.
+
+When they returned to their corner in the theatre they found a mask in a
+black domino there, who made place for them, and remained standing near.
+They began talking freely and audibly, as English-speaking people
+incorrigibly do in Italy, where their tongue is all but the language of
+the country.
+
+"Really," said Colville, "I think I shall stifle in this mask. If you
+ladies will do what you can to surround me and keep me secret, I'll take
+it off a moment."
+
+"I believe I will join you, Mr. Colville," said the mask near them. He
+pushed up his little visor of silk, and discovered the mild, benignant
+features of Mr. Waters.
+
+"Bless my soul!" cried Colville.
+
+Mrs. Bowen was apparently too much shocked to say anything.
+
+"You didn't expect to meet me here?" asked the old man, as if otherwise
+it should be the most natural thing in the world. After that they could
+only unite in suppressing their astonishment. "It's extremely
+interesting," he went on, "extremely! I've been here ever since the
+exercises began, and I have not only been very greatly amused, but
+greatly instructed. It seems to me the key to a great many anomalies in
+the history of this wonderful people."
+
+If Mr. Waters took this philosophical tone about the Carnival, it was
+not possible for Colville to take any other.
+
+"And have you been able to divine from what you have seen here," he
+asked gravely, "the grounds of Savonarola's objection to the Carnival?"
+
+"Not at all," said the old man promptly. "I have seen nothing but the
+most harmless gaiety throughout the evening."
+
+Colville hung his head. He remembered reading once in a passage from
+Swedenborg, that the most celestial angels had scarcely any power of
+perceiving evil.
+
+"Why aren't you young people dancing?" asked Mr. Waters, in a cheerful
+general way, of Mrs. Bowen's party.
+
+Colville was glad to break the silence. "Mrs. Bowen doesn't approve of
+dancing at vegliones."
+
+"No?--why not?" inquired the old man, with invincible simplicity.
+
+Mrs. Bowen smiled her pretty, small smile below her mask.
+
+"The company is apt to be rather mixed," she said quietly.
+
+"Yes," pursued Mr. Waters; "but you could dance with one another. The
+company seems very well behaved."
+
+"Oh, quite so," Mrs. Bowen assented.
+
+"Shortly after I came," said Mr. Waters, "one of the masks asked me to
+dance. I was really sorry that my age and traditions forbade my doing
+so. I tried to explain, but I'm afraid I didn't make myself quite
+clear."
+
+"Probably it passed for a joke with her," said Colville, in order to say
+something.
+
+"Ah, very likely; but I shall always feel that my impressions of the
+Carnival would have been more definite if I could have danced. Now, if I
+were a young man like you----"
+
+Imogene turned and looked at Colville through the eye-holes of her mask;
+even in that sort of isolation he thought her eyes expressed surprise.
+
+"It never occurred to you before that I was a young man," he suggested
+gravely.
+
+She did not reply.
+
+After a little interval, "Imogene," asked Mrs. Bowen, "would you like to
+dance?"
+
+Colville was astonished. "The veglione has gone to your head, Mrs.
+Bowen," he tacitly made his comment. She had spoken to Imogene, but she
+glanced at him as if she expected him to be grateful to her for this
+stroke of liberality.
+
+"What would be the use?" returned the girl.
+
+Colville rose. "After my performance in the Lancers, I can't expect you
+to believe me; but I really do know how to waltz." He had but to extend
+his arms, and she was hanging upon his shoulder, and they were whirling
+away through a long orbit of delight to the girl.
+
+"Oh, why have you let me do you such injustice?" she murmured intensely.
+"I never shall forgive myself."
+
+"It grieved me that you shouldn't have divined that I was really a
+magnificent dancer in disguise, but I bore it as best I could," said
+Colville, really amused at her seriousness. "Perhaps you'll find out
+after a while that I'm not an old fellow either, but only a 'Lost
+Youth.'"
+
+"Hush," she said; "I don't like to hear you talk so."
+
+"How?"
+
+"About--age!" she answered. "It makes me feel----- Don't to-night!"
+
+Colville laughed. "It isn't a fact that my blinking is going to change
+materially. You had better make the most of me as a lost youth. I'm old
+enough to be two of them."
+
+She did not answer, and as they wound up and down through the other
+orbing couples, he remembered the veglione of seventeen years before,
+when he had dreamed through the waltz with the girl who jilted him; she
+was very docile and submissive that night; he believed afterward that if
+he had spoken frankly then, she would not have refused him. But he had
+veiled his passion in words and phrases that, taken in themselves, had
+no meaning--that neither committed him nor claimed her. He could not
+help it; he had not the courage at any moment to risk the loss of her
+for ever, till it was too late, till he must lose her.
+
+"Do you believe in pre-existence?" he demanded of Imogene.
+
+"Oh yes!" she flashed back. "This very instant it was just as if I had
+been here before, long ago."
+
+"Dancing with me?"
+
+"With you? Yes--yes--I think so."
+
+He had lived long enough to know that she was making herself believe
+what she said, and that she had not lived long enough to know this.
+
+"Then you remember what I said to you--tried to say to you--that night?"
+Through one of those psychological juggles which we all practise with
+ourselves at times, it amused him, it charmed him, to find her striving
+to realise this past.
+
+"No; it was so long ago? What was it?" she whispered dreamily.
+
+A turn of the waltz brought them near Mrs. Bowen; her mask seemed to
+wear a dumb reproach.
+
+He began to be weary; one of the differences between youth and later
+life is that the latter wearies so soon of any given emotion.
+
+"Ah, I can't remember, either! Aren't you getting rather tired of the
+waltz and me?"
+
+"Oh no; go on!" she deeply murmured. "Try to remember."
+
+The long, pulsating stream of the music broke and fell. The dancers
+crookedly dispersed in wandering lines. She took his arm; he felt her
+heart leap against it; those innocent, trustful throbs upbraided him. At
+the same time his own heart beat with a sort of fond, protecting
+tenderness; he felt the witchery of his power to make this young,
+radiant, and beautiful creature hang flattered and bewildered on his
+talk; he liked the compassionate worship with which his tacit confidence
+had inspired her, even while he was not without some satirical sense of
+the crude sort of heart-broken hero he must be in the fancy of a girl of
+her age.
+
+"Let us go and walk in the corridor a moment," he said. But they walked
+there till the alluring melancholy music of the waltz began again. In a
+mutual caprice, they rejoined the dance.
+
+It came into his head to ask, "Who is _he_?" and as he had got past
+denying himself anything, he asked it.
+
+"He? What he?"
+
+"He that Mrs. Bowen thought might object to your seeing the Carnival?"
+
+"Oh!--oh yes! That was the not impossible he."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then he's not even the not improbable he?"
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+They waltzed in silence. Then, "Why did you ask me that?" she murmured.
+
+"I don't know. Was it such a strange question?"
+
+"I don't know. You ought to."
+
+"Yes, if it was wrong, I'm old enough to know better."
+
+"You promised not to say 'old' any more."
+
+"Then I suppose I mustn't. But you mustn't get me to ignore it, and then
+laugh at me for it."
+
+"Oh!" she reproached him, "you think I could do that?"
+
+"You could if it was you who were here with me once before."
+
+"Then I know I wasn't."
+
+Again they were silent, and it was he who spoke first. "I wish you would
+tell me why you object to the interdicted topic?"
+
+"Because--because I like every time to be perfect in itself."
+
+"Oh! And this wouldn't be perfect in itself if I were--not so young as
+some people?"
+
+"I didn't mean that. No; but if you didn't mention it, no one else would
+think of it or care for it."
+
+"Did any one ever accuse you of flattering, Miss Graham?"
+
+"Not till now. And you are unjust."
+
+"Well, I withdraw the accusation."
+
+"And will you ever pretend such a thing again?"
+
+"Oh, never!"
+
+"Then I have your promise."
+
+The talk was light word-play, such as depends upon the talker's own mood
+for its point or its pointlessness. Between two young people of equal
+years it might have had meanings to penetrate, to sigh over, to
+question. Colville found it delicious to be pursued by the ingenuous
+fervour of this young girl, eager to vindicate her sincerity in
+prohibiting him from his own ironical depreciation. Apparently, she had
+a sentimental mission of which he was the object; he was to be convinced
+that he was unnecessarily morbid; he was to be cheered up, to be kept in
+heart.
+
+"I must believe in you after this," he said, with a smile which his mask
+hid.
+
+"Thanks," she breathed. It seemed to him that her hand closed
+convulsively upon his in their light clasp.
+
+The pressure sent a real pang to his heart. It forced her name from his
+lips. "Imogene! Ah, I've no right to call you that."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"From this out I promise to be twenty years younger. But no one is to
+know it but you. Do you think you will know it? I shouldn't like to keep
+the secret to myself altogether."
+
+"No; I will help you. It shall be _our_ secret."
+
+She gave a low laugh of delight. He convinced himself that she had
+entered into the light spirit of banter in which he believed that he was
+talking.
+
+The music ceased again. He whirled her to the seat where he had left
+Mrs. Bowen. She was not there, nor the others.
+
+Colville felt the meanness of a man who has betrayed his trust, and his
+self-contempt was the sharper because the trust had been as tacit and
+indefinite as it was generous. The effect of Mrs. Bowen's absence was as
+if she had indignantly flown, and left him to the consequences of his
+treachery.
+
+He sat down rather blankly with Imogene to wait for her return; it was
+the only thing they could do.
+
+It had grown very hot. The air was thick with dust. The lights burned
+through it as through a fog.
+
+"I believe I will take off my mask," she said. "I can scarcely breathe."
+
+"No, no," protested Colville; "that won't do."
+
+"I feel faint," she gasped.
+
+His heart sank. "Don't," he said incoherently. "Come with me into the
+vestibule, and get a breath of air."
+
+He had almost to drag her through the crowd, but in the vestibule she
+revived, and they returned to their place again. He did not share the
+easy content with which she recognised the continued absence of Mrs.
+Bowen.
+
+"Why they must be lost. But isn't it perfect sitting here and watching
+the maskers?"
+
+"Perfect," said Colville distractedly.
+
+"Don't you like to make romances about the different ones?"
+
+It was on Colville's tongue to say that he had made all the romances he
+wished for that evening, but he only answered, "Oh, very."
+
+"Poor Mrs. Bowen," laughed the girl. "It will be such a joke on her,
+with her punctilious notions, getting lost from her _protégée_ at a
+Carnival ball! I shall tell every one."
+
+"Oh no, don't," said Colville, in horror that big mask scarcely
+concealed.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It wouldn't be at all the thing."
+
+"Why, are you becoming Europeanised too?" she demanded. "I thought you
+went in for all sorts of unconventionalities. Recollect your promise.
+You must be as impulsive as I am."
+
+Colville, staring anxiously about in every direction, made for the first
+time the reflection that most young girls probably conform to the
+proprieties without in the least knowing why.
+
+"Do you think," he asked, in desperation, "that you would be afraid to
+be left here a moment while I went about in the crowd and tried to find
+them?"
+
+"Not at all," she said. But she added, "Don't be gone long."
+
+"Oh no," he answered, pulling off his mask. "Be sure not to move from
+here on any account."
+
+He plunged into the midst of the crowd that buffeted him from side to
+side as he struck against its masses. The squeaking and gibbering masks
+mocked in their falsetto at his wild-eyed, naked face thrusting hither
+and thither among them.
+
+"I saw your lady wife with another gentleman," cried one of them, in a
+subtle misinterpretation of the cause of his distraction.
+
+The throng had immensely increased; the clowns and harlequins ran
+shrieking up and down, and leaped over one another's heads.
+
+It was useless. He went back to Imogene with a heart-sickening fear that
+she too might have vanished.
+
+But she was still there.
+
+"You ought to have come sooner," she said gaily. "That red mask has been
+here again. He looked as if he wanted to make love to _me_ this time.
+But he didn't. If you'd been here you might have asked him where Mrs.
+Bowen was."
+
+Colville sat down. He had done what he could to mend the matter, and the
+time had come for philosophical submission. It was now his duty to keep
+up Miss Graham's spirits. They were both Americans, and from the
+national standpoint he was simply the young girl's middle-aged bachelor
+friend. There was nothing in the situation for him to beat his breast
+about.
+
+"Well, all that we can do is to wait for them," he said.
+
+"Oh yes," she answered easily. "They'll be sure to come back in the
+course of time."
+
+They waited a half-hour, talking somewhat at random, and still the
+others did not come. But the red mask came again. He approached
+Colville, and said politely--
+
+"_La signora è partita._"
+
+"The lady gone?" repeated Colville, taking this to be part of the red
+mask's joke.
+
+"_La bambina pareva poco lene._"
+
+"The little one not well?" echoed Colville again, rising. "Are you
+joking?"
+
+The mask made a deep murmur of polite deprecation. "I am not capable of
+such a thing in a serious affair. Perhaps you know me?" he said, taking
+off his mask, and in further sign of good faith he gave the name of a
+painter sufficiently famous in Florence.
+
+"I beg your pardon, and thank you," said Colville. He had no need to
+speak to Imogene--, her hand was already trembling on his arm.
+
+They drove home in silence through the white moonlight of the streets,
+filled everywhere with the gay voices and figures of the Carnival.
+
+Mrs. Bowen met them at the door of her apartment, and received them with
+a manner that justly distributed the responsibility and penalty for
+their escapade. Colville felt that a meaner spirit would have wreaked
+its displeasure upon the girl alone. She made short, quiet answers to
+all his eager inquiries. Most probably it was some childish
+indisposition; Effie had been faint. No, he need not go for the doctor.
+Mr. Waters had called the doctor, who had just gone away. There was
+nothing else that he could do for her. She dropped her eyes, and in
+everything but words dismissed him. She would not even remain with him
+till he could decently get himself out of the house. She left Imogene to
+receive his adieux, feigning that she heard Effie calling.
+
+"I'm--I'm very sorry," faltered the girl, "that we didn't go back to her
+at once."
+
+"Yes; I was to blame," answered the humiliated hero of her Carnival
+dream. The clinging regret with which she kept his hand at parting
+scarcely consoled him for what had happened.
+
+"I will come round in the morning," he said. "I must know how Effie is."
+
+"Yes; come."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Colville went to Palazzo Pinti next day with the feeling that he was
+defying Mrs. Bowen. Upon a review of the facts he could not find himself
+so very much to blame for the occurrences of the night before, and he
+had not been able to prove to his reason that Mrs. Bowen had resented
+his behaviour. She had not made a scene of any sort when he came in with
+Imogene; it was natural that she should excuse herself, and should wish
+to be with her sick child: she had done really nothing. But when a woman
+has done nothing she fills the soul of the man whose conscience troubles
+him with an instinctive apprehension. There is then no safety, his
+nerves tell him, except in bringing the affair, whatever it is, to an
+early issue--in having it out with her. Colville subdued the cowardly
+impulse of his own heart, which would have deceived him with the
+suggestion that Mrs. Bowen might be occupied with Effie, and it would be
+better to ask for Miss Graham. He asked for Mrs. Bowen, and she came in
+directly.
+
+She smiled in the usual way, and gave her hand, as she always did; but
+her hand was cold, and she looked tired, though she said Effie was quite
+herself again, and had been asking for him. "Imogene has been telling
+her about your adventure last night, and making her laugh."
+
+If it had been Mrs. Bowen's purpose to mystify him, she could not have
+done it more thoroughly than by this bold treatment of the affair. He
+bent a puzzled gaze upon her. "I'm glad any of you have found it
+amusing," he said;--"I confess that I couldn't let myself off so lightly
+in regard to it." She did not reply, and he continued: "The fact is, I
+don't think I behaved very well. I abused your kindness to Miss Graham."
+
+"Abused my kindness to Miss Graham?"
+
+"Yes. When you allowed her to dance at the veglione, I ought to have
+considered that you were stretching a point. I ought to have taken her
+back to you very soon, instead of tempting her to go and walk with me in
+the corridor."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen. "So it was you who proposed it? Imogene was
+afraid that she had. What exemplary young people you are! The way each
+of you confesses and assumes all the blame would leave the severest
+chaperone without a word."
+
+Her gaiety made Colville uncomfortable. He said gravely, "What I blame
+myself most for is that I was not there to be of use to you when
+Effie----"
+
+"Oh, you mustn't think of that at all. Mr. Waters was most efficient. My
+admirer in the red mask was close at hand, and between them they got
+Effie out without the slightest disturbance. I fancy most people thought
+it was a Carnival joke. Please don't think of that again."
+
+Nothing could be politer than all this.
+
+"And you won't allow me to punish myself for not being there to give you
+even a moral support?"
+
+"Certainly not. As I told Imogene, young people will be young people;
+and I knew how fond you were of dancing."
+
+Though it pierced him, Colville could not help admiring the neatness of
+this thrust. "I didn't know you were so ironical, Mrs. Bowen."
+
+"Ironical? Not at all."
+
+"Ah! I see I'm not forgiven."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
+
+Imogene and Effie came in. The child was a little pale, and willingly
+let him take her on his knee, and lay her languid head on his shoulder.
+The girl had not aged overnight like himself and Mrs. Bowen; she looked
+as fresh and strong as yesterday.
+
+"Miss Graham," said Colville, "if a person to whom you had done a deadly
+wrong insisted that you hadn't done any wrong at all, should you
+consider yourself forgiven?"
+
+"It would depend upon the person," said the girl, with innocent
+liveliness, recognising the extravagance in his tone.
+
+"Yes," he said, with an affected pensiveness, "so very much depends upon
+the person in such a case."
+
+Mrs. Bowen rose. "Excuse me a moment; I will be back directly. Don't get
+up, please," she said, and prevented him with a quick withdrawal to
+another room, which left upon his sense the impression of elegant grace,
+and a smile and sunny glance. But neither had any warmth in it.
+
+Colville heaved an involuntary sigh. "Do you feel very much used up?" he
+asked Imogene.
+
+"Not at all," she laughed. "Do you?"
+
+"Not in the least. My veglione hasn't ended yet. I'm still practically
+at the Pergola. It's easy to keep a thing of that sort up if you don't
+sleep after you get home."
+
+"Didn't you sleep? I expected to lie awake a long time thinking it over;
+but I dropped asleep at once. I suppose I was very tired. I didn't even
+dream."
+
+"You must have slept hard. You're pretty apt to dream when you're
+waking."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Ah, I've noticed when you've been talking to me. Better not! It's a bad
+habit; it gives you false views of things. I used----"
+
+"But you mustn't say you _used!_ That's forbidden now. Remember your
+promise!"
+
+"My promise? What promise?"
+
+"Oh, if you've forgotten already."
+
+"I remember. But that was last night."
+
+"No, no! It was for all time. Why should dreams be so very misleading? I
+think there's ever so much in dreams. The most wonderful thing is the
+way you make people talk in dreams. It isn't strange that you should
+talk yourself, but that other people should say this and that when you
+aren't at all expecting what they say."
+
+"That's when you're sleeping. But when you're waking, you make people
+say just what you want. And that's why day dreams are so bad. If you
+make people say what you want, they probably don't mean it."
+
+"Don't you think so?"
+
+"Half the time. Do you ever have day dreams?" he asked Effie, pressing
+her cheek against his own.
+
+"I don't know what they are," she murmured, with a soft little note of
+polite regret for her ignorance, if possibly it incommoded him.
+
+"You will by and by," he said, "and then you must look out for them.
+They're particularly bad in this air. I had one of them in Florence once
+that lasted three months."
+
+"What was it about?" asked the child.
+
+Imogene involuntarily bent forward.
+
+"Ah, I can't tell you now. She's trying to hear us."
+
+"No, no," protested the girl, with a laugh. "I was thinking of something
+else."
+
+"Oh, we know her, don't we?" he said to the child, with a playful appeal
+to that passion for the joint possession of a mystery which all children
+have.
+
+"We might whisper it," she suggested.
+
+"No; better wait for some other time." They were sitting near a table
+where a pencil and some loose leaves of paper lay. He pulled his chair a
+little closer, and, with the child still upon his knee, began to
+scribble and sketch at random. "Ah, there's San Miniato," he said, with
+a glance from the window. "Must get its outline in. You've heard how
+there came to be a church up there? No? Well, it shows the sort of man
+San Miniato really was. He was one of the early Christians, and he gave
+the poor pagans a great deal of trouble. They first threw him to the
+wild beasts in the amphitheatre, but the moment those animals set eyes
+on him they saw it would be of no use; they just lay down and died. Very
+well, then; the pagans determined to see what effect the axe would have
+upon San Miniato: but as soon as they struck off his head he picked it
+up, set it back on his shoulders again, waded across the Arno, walked up
+the hill, and when he came to a convenient little oratory up there he
+knelt down and expired. Isn't that a pretty good story? It's like
+fairies, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," whispered the child.
+
+"What nonsense!" said Imogene. "You made it up."
+
+"Oh, did I? Perhaps I built the church that stands there to commemorate
+the fact. It's all in the history of Florence. Not in all histories;
+some of them are too proud to put such stories in, but I'm going to put
+every one I can find into the history I'm writing for Effie. San Miniato
+was beheaded where the church of Santa Candida stands now, and he walked
+all that distance."
+
+"Did he have to die when he got to the oratory?" asked the child, with
+gentle regret.
+
+"It appears so," said Colville, sketching. "He would have been dead by
+this time, anyway, you know."
+
+"Yes," she reluctantly admitted.
+
+"I never quite like those things, either, Effie," he said, pressing her
+to him. "There were people cruelly put to death two or three thousand
+years ago that I can't help feeling would be alive yet if they had been
+justly treated. There are a good many fairy stories about Florence;
+perhaps they used to be true stories; the truth seems to die out of
+stories after a while, simply because people stop believing them. Saint
+Ambrose of Milan restored the son of his host to life when he came down
+here to dedicate the Church of San Giovanni. Then there was another
+saint, San Zenobi, who worked a very pretty miracle after he was dead.
+They were carrying his body from the Church of San Giovanni to the
+Church of Santa Reparata, and in Piazza San Giovanni his bier touched a
+dead elm-tree that stood there, and the tree instantly sprang into leaf
+and flower, though it was in the middle of the winter. A great many
+people took the leaves home with them, and a marble pillar was put up
+there, with a cross and an elm-tree carved on it. Oh, the case is very
+well authenticated."
+
+"I shall really begin to think you believe such things," said Imogene.
+"Perhaps you _are_ a Catholic."
+
+Mrs. Bowen returned to the room, and sat down.
+
+"There's another fairy story, prettier yet," said Colville, while the
+little girl drew a long deep breath of satisfaction and expectation.
+"You've heard of the Buondelmonti?" he asked Imogene.
+
+"Oh, it seems to me as if I'd had _nothing_ but the Buondelmonti dinned
+into me since I came to Florence!" she answered in lively despair.
+
+"Ah, this happened some centuries before the Buondelmonte you've been
+bored with was born. This was Giovanni Gualberto of the Buondelmonti,
+and he was riding along one day in 1003, near the Church of San Miniato,
+when he met a certain man named Ugo, who had killed one of his brothers.
+Gualberto stopped and drew his sword; Ugo saw no other chance of escape,
+and he threw himself face downward on the ground, with his arms
+stretched out in the form of the cross. 'Gualberto, remember Jesus
+Christ, who died upon the cross praying for His enemies.' The story says
+that these words went to Gualberto's heart; he got down from his horse,
+and in sign of pardon lifted his enemy and kissed and embraced him. Then
+they went together into the church, and fell on their knees before the
+figure of Christ upon the cross, and the figure bowed its head in sign
+of approval and pleasure in Gualberto's noble act of Christian piety."
+
+"Beautiful!" murmured the girl; the child only sighed.
+
+"Ah, yes; it's an easy matter to pick up one's head from the ground, and
+set it back on one's shoulders, or to bring the dead to life, or to make
+a tree put forth leaves and flowers in midwinter; but to melt the heart
+of a man with forgiveness in the presence of his enemy--that's a
+different thing; _that's_ no fairy story; that's a real miracle; and I
+believe this one happened--it's so impossible."
+
+"Oh yes, it must have happened," said the girl.
+
+"Do you think it's so very hard to forgive, then?" asked Mrs. Bowen
+gravely.
+
+"Oh, not for ladies," replied Colville.
+
+She flushed, and her eyes shone when she glanced at him.
+
+"I'm sorry to put you down," he said to the child; "but I can't take you
+with me, and I must be going."
+
+Mrs. Bowen did not ask him to stay to lunch; he thought afterward that
+she might have relented as far as that but for the last little thrust,
+which he would better have spared.
+
+"Effie dear," said her mother, when the door closed upon Colville,
+"don't you think you'd better lie down a while? You look so tired."
+
+"Shall I lie down on the sofa here?"
+
+"No, on your bed."
+
+"Well."
+
+"I'll go with you, Effie," said Imogene, "and see that you're nicely
+tucked in."
+
+When she returned alone, Mrs. Bowen was sitting where she had left her,
+and seemed not to have moved. "I think Effie will drop off to sleep,"
+she said; "she seems drowsy." She sat down, and after a pensive moment
+continued, "I wonder what makes Mr. Colville seem so gloomy."
+
+"Does he seem gloomy?" asked Mrs. Bowen unsympathetically.
+
+"No, not gloomy exactly. But different from last night. I wish people
+could always be the same! He was so gay and full of spirits; and now
+he's so self-absorbed. He thinks you're offended with him, Mrs. Bowen."
+
+"I don't think he was very much troubled about it. I only thought he was
+flighty from want of sleep. At your age you don't mind the loss of a
+night."
+
+"Do you think Mr. Colville seems so very old?" asked Imogene anxiously.
+
+Mrs. Bowen appeared not to have heard her. She went to the window and
+looked out. When she came back, "Isn't it almost time for you to have a
+letter from home?" she asked.
+
+"Why, no. I had one from mother day before yesterday. What made you
+think so?"
+
+"Imogene," interrupted Mrs. Bowen, with a sudden excitement which she
+tried to control, but which made her lips tremble, and break a little
+from her restraint, "you know that I am here in the place of your
+mother, to advise you and look after you in every way?"
+
+"Why, yes, Mrs. Bowen," cried the girl, in surprise.
+
+"It's a position of great responsibility in regard to a young lady. I
+can't have anything to reproach myself with afterward."
+
+"No."
+
+"Have I always been kind to you, and considerate of your rights and your
+freedom? Have I ever interfered with you in any way that you think I
+oughtn't?"
+
+"What an idea! You've been loveliness itself, Mrs. Bowen!"
+
+"Then I want you to listen to me, and answer me frankly, and not suspect
+my motives."
+
+"Why, how _could_ I do that?"
+
+"Never mind!" cried Mrs. Bowen impatiently, almost angrily. "People
+can't help their suspicions! Do you think Mr. Morton cares for you?"
+
+The girl hung her head.
+
+"Imogene, answer me!"
+
+"I don't know," answered Imogene coldly; "but if you're troubled about
+that, Mrs. Bowen, you needn't be; I don't care anything for Mr. Morton."
+
+"If I thought you were becoming interested in any one, it would be my
+duty to write to your mother and tell her."
+
+"Of course; I should expect you to do it."
+
+"And if I saw you becoming interested in any one in a way that I thought
+would make you unhappy, it would be my duty to warn you."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Of course, I don't mean that any one would knowingly try to make you
+unhappy?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Men don't go about nowadays trying to break girls' hearts. But very
+good men can be thoughtless and selfish."
+
+"Yes; I understand that," said Imogene, in a falling accent.
+
+"I don't wish to prejudice you against any one. I should consider it
+very wrong and wicked. Besides, I don't care to interfere with you to
+that degree. You are old enough to see and judge for yourself."
+
+Imogene sat silent, passing her hand across the front of her dress. The
+clock ticked audibly from the mantel.
+
+"I will not have it left to me!" cried Mrs. Bowen. "It is hard enough,
+at any rate. Do you think I like to speak to you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Of course it makes me seem inhospitable, and distrustful, and
+detestable."
+
+"I never thought of accusing you," said the girl, slowly lifting her
+eyes.
+
+"I will never, never speak to you of it again," said Mrs. Bowen, "and
+from this time forth I insist upon your feeling just as free as if I
+hadn't spoken." She trembled upon the verge of a sob, from which she
+repelled herself.
+
+Imogene sat still, with a sort of serious, bewildered look.
+
+"You shall have every proper opportunity of meeting any one you like."
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"And I shall be only too gl-glad to take back everything!"
+
+Imogene sat motionless and silent. Mrs. Bowen broke out again with a
+sort of violence; the years teach us something of self-control, perhaps,
+but they weaken and unstring the nerves. In this opposition of silence
+to silence, the woman of the world was no match for the inexperienced
+girl.
+
+"Have you nothing to say, Imogene?"
+
+"I never thought of him in that way at all. I don't know what to say
+yet. It--confuses me. I--I can't imagine it. But if you think that he is
+trying to amuse himself----"
+
+"I never said that!"
+
+"No, I know it."
+
+"He likes to make you talk, and to talk with you. But he is perfectly
+idle here, and--there is too much difference, every way. The very good
+in him makes it the worse. I suppose that after talking with him every
+one else seems insipid."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mrs. Bowen rose and ran suddenly from the room.
+
+Imogene remained sitting cold and still.
+
+No one had been named since they spoke of Mr. Morton.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Colville had not done what he meant in going to Mrs. Bowen's; in fact,
+he had done just what he had not meant to do, as he distinctly perceived
+in coming away. It was then that in a luminous retrospect he discovered
+his motive to have been a wish to atone to her for behaviour that must
+have distressed her, or at least to explain it to her. She had not let
+him do this at once; an instant willingness to hear and to condone was
+not in a woman's nature; she had to make him feel, by the infliction of
+a degree of punishment, that she had suffered. But before she ended she
+had made it clear that she was ready to grant him a tacit pardon, and he
+had answered with a silly sarcasm the question that was to have led to
+peace. He could not help seeing that throughout the whole Carnival
+adventure she had yielded her cherished reluctances to please him, to
+show him that she was not stiff or prudish, to convince him that she
+would not be a killjoy through her devotion to conventionalities which
+she thought he despised. He could not help seeing that he had abused her
+delicate generosity, insulted her subtle concessions. He strolled along
+down the Arno, feeling flat and mean, as a man always does after a
+contest with a woman in which he has got the victory; our sex can
+preserve its self-respect only through defeat in such a case. It gave
+him no pleasure to remember that the glamour of the night before seemed
+still to rest on Imogene unbroken; that, indeed, was rather an added
+pain. He surprised himself in the midst of his poignant reflections by a
+yawn. Clearly the time was past when these ideal troubles could keep him
+awake, and there was, after all, a sort of brutal consolation in the
+fact. He was forty-one years old, and he was sleepy, whatever capacity
+for suffering remained to him. He went to his hotel to catch a little
+nap before lunch. When he woke it was dinner-time. The mists of slumber
+still hung about him, and the events of the last forty-eight hours
+showed vast and shapelessly threatening through them.
+
+When the drama of the _table d'hôte_ reached its climax of roast
+chestnuts and butter, he determined to walk over to San Marco and pay a
+visit to Mr. Waters. He found the old minister from Haddam East Village,
+Massachusetts, Italianate outwardly in almost ludicrous degree. He wore
+a fur-lined overcoat indoors; his feet, cased in thick woollen shoes,
+rested on a strip of carpet laid before his table; a man who had lived
+for forty years in the pungent atmosphere of an air-tight stove,
+succeeding a quarter of a century of roaring hearth fires, contented
+himself with the spare heat of a scaldino, which he held his clasped
+hands over in the very Italian manner; the lamp that cast its light on
+the book open before him was the classic _lucerna_, with three beaks,
+fed with olive oil. He looked up at his visitor over his spectacles,
+without recognising him, till Colville spoke. Then, after their
+greeting, "Is it snowing heavily?" he asked.
+
+"It isn't snowing at all. What made you think that?"
+
+"Perhaps I was drowsing over my book and dreamed it. We become very
+strange and interesting studies to ourselves as we live along."
+
+He took up the metaphysical consideration with the promptness of a man
+who has no small-talk, and who speaks of the mind and soul as if they
+were the gossip of the neighbourhood.
+
+"At times the forty winters that I passed in Haddam East Village seem
+like an alien experience, and I find myself pitying the life I lived
+there quite as if it were the life of some one else. It seems incredible
+that men should still inhabit such climates."
+
+"Then you're not homesick for Haddam East Village?"
+
+"Ah! for the good and striving souls there, yes; especially the souls of
+some women there. They used to think that it was I who gave them
+consolation and spiritual purpose, but it was they who really imparted
+it. Women souls--how beautiful they sometimes are! They seem truly like
+angelic essences. I trust that I shall meet them somewhere some time,
+but it will never be in Haddam East Village. Yes, I must have been
+dreaming when you came in. I thought that I was by my fire there, and
+all round over the hills and in the streets the snow was deep and
+falling still. "How distinctly," he said, closing his eyes, as artists do
+in looking at a picture, "I can see the black wavering lines of the walls
+in the fields sinking into the drifts! the snow billowed over the graves
+by the church where I preached! the banks of snow around the houses! the
+white desolation everywhere! I ask myself at times if the people are
+still there. Yes, I feel as blessedly remote from that terrible winter
+as if I had died away from it, and were in the weather of heaven."
+
+"Then you have no reproach for feeble-spirited fellow-citizens who
+abandon their native climate and come to live in Italy?"
+
+The old man drew his fur coat closer about him and shrugged his
+shoulders in true Florentine fashion. "There may be something to say
+against those who do so in the heyday of life, but I shall not be the
+one to say it. The race must yet revert in its decrepitude, as I have in
+mine, to the climates of the South. Since I have been in Italy I have
+realised what used to occur to me dimly at home--the cruel disproportion
+between the end gained and the means expended in reclaiming the savage
+North. Half the human endeavour, half the human suffering, would have
+made the whole South Protestant and the whole East Christian, and our
+civilisation would now be there. No, I shall never go back to New
+England. New England? New Ireland----New Canada! Half the farms in
+Haddam are in the hands of our Irish friends, and the labour on the rest
+is half done by French Canadians. That is all right and well. New
+England must come to me here, by way of the great middle West and the
+Pacific coast."
+
+Colville smiled at the Emersonian touch, but he said gravely, "I can
+never quite reconcile myself to the thought of dying out of my own
+country."
+
+"Why not? It is very unimportant where one dies. A moment after your
+breath is gone you are in exile for ever--or at home for ever."
+
+Colville sat musing upon this phase of Americanism, as he had upon many
+others. At last he broke the silence they had both let fall, far away
+from the topic they had touched.
+
+"Well," he asked, "how did you enjoy the veglione?"
+
+"Oh, I'm too old to go to such places for pleasure," said the minister
+simply. "But it was very interesting, and certainly very striking:
+especially when I went back, toward daylight, after seeing Mrs. Bowen
+home."
+
+"Did you go back?" demanded Colville, in some amaze.
+
+"Oh yes. I felt that my experience was incomplete without some knowledge
+of how the Carnival ended at such a place."
+
+"Oh! And do you still feel that Savonarola was mistaken?"
+
+"There seemed to be rather more boisterousness toward the close, and, if
+I might judge, the excitement grew a little unwholesome. But I really
+don't feel myself very well qualified to decide. My own life has been
+passed in circumstances so widely different that I am at a certain
+disadvantage."
+
+"Yes," said Colville, with a smile; "I daresay the Carnival at Haddam
+East Village was quite another tiling."
+
+The old man smiled responsively. "I suppose that some of my former
+parishioners might have been scandalised at my presence at a Carnival
+ball, had they known the fact merely in the abstract; but in my letters
+home I shall try to set it before them in an instructive light. I should
+say that the worst thing about such a scene of revelry would be that it
+took us too much out of our inner quiet. But I suppose the same remark
+might apply to almost any form of social entertainment."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But human nature is so constituted that some means of expansion must be
+provided, or a violent explosion takes place. The only question is what
+means are most innocent. I have been looking about," added the old man
+quietly, "at the theatres lately."
+
+"Have you?" asked Colville, opening his eyes, in suppressed surprise.
+
+"Yes; with a view to determining the degree of harmless amusement that
+may be derived from them. It's rather a difficult question. I should be
+inclined to say, however, that I don't think the ballet can ever be
+instrumental for good."
+
+Colville could not deny himself the pleasure of saying, "Well, not the
+highest, I suppose."
+
+"No," said Mr. Waters, in apparent unconsciousness of the irony. "But I
+think the Church has made a mistake in condemning the theatre _in toto_.
+It appears to me that it might always have countenanced a certain order
+of comedy, in which the motive and plot are unobjectionable. Though I
+don't deny that there are moods when all laughter seems low and unworthy
+and incompatible with the most advanced state of being. And I confess,"
+he went on, with a dreamy thoughtfulness, "that I have very great
+misgivings in regard to tragedy. The glare that it throws upon the play
+of the passions--jealousy in its anguish, revenge glutting itself, envy
+eating its heart, hopeless love--their nakedness is terrible. The terror
+may be salutary; it may be very mischievous. I am afraid that I have
+left some of my inquiries till it is too late. I seem to have no longer
+the materials of judgment left in me. If I were still a young man like
+you----"
+
+"Am I still a young man?" interrupted Colville sadly.
+
+"You are young enough to respond to the appeals that sometimes find me
+silent. If I were of your age I should certainly investigate some of
+these interesting problems."
+
+"Ah, but if you become personally interested in the problems, it's as
+bad as if you hadn't the materials of judgment left; you're prejudiced.
+Besides, I doubt my youthfulness very much."
+
+"You are fifty, I presume?" suggested Mr. Waters, in a leading way.
+
+"Not very near--only too near," laughed Colville. "I'm forty-one."
+
+"You are younger than I supposed. But I remember now that at your age I
+had the same feeling which you intimate. It seemed to me then that I had
+really passed the bound which separates us from the further possibility
+of youth. But I've lived long enough since to know that I was mistaken.
+At forty, one has still a great part of youth before him--perhaps the
+richest and sweetest part. By that time the turmoil of ideas and
+sensations is over; we see clearly and feel consciously. We are in a
+sort of quiet in which we peacefully enjoy. We have enlarged our
+perspective sufficiently to perceive things in their true proportion and
+relation; we are no longer tormented with the lurking fear of death,
+which darkens and embitters our earlier years; we have got into the
+habit of life; we have often been ailing and we have not died. Then we
+have time enough behind us to supply us with the materials of reverie
+and reminiscence; the terrible solitude of inexperience is broken; we
+have learned to smile at many things besides the fear of death. We ought
+also to have learned pity and patience. Yes," the old man concluded, in
+cheerful self-corroboration, "it is a beautiful age."
+
+"But it doesn't look so beautiful as it is," Colville protested. "People
+in that rosy prime don't produce the effect of garlanded striplings upon
+the world at large. The women laugh at us; they think we are fat old
+fellows; they don't recognise the slender and elegant youth that resides
+in our unwieldy bulk."
+
+"You take my meaning a little awry. Besides, I doubt if even the ground
+you assume is tenable. If a woman has lived long enough to be truly
+young herself, she won't find a man at forty either decrepit or
+grotesque. He can even make himself youthful to a girl of thought and
+imagination."
+
+"Yes," Colville assented, with a certain discomfort.
+
+"But to be truly young at forty," resumed Mr. Waters, "a man should be
+already married."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I sometimes feel," continued the old man, "that I made a mistake in
+yielding to a disappointment that I met with early in life, and in not
+permitting myself the chance of retrieval. I have missed a beautiful and
+consoling experience in my devotion to a barren regret."
+
+Colville said nothing, but he experienced a mixed feeling of amusement,
+of repulsion, and of curiosity at this.
+
+"We are put into the world to be of it. I am more and more convinced of
+that. We have scarcely a right to separate ourselves from the common lot
+in any way. I justify myself for having lived alone only as a widower
+might. I--lost her. It was a great while ago."
+
+"Yes," said Colville, after the pause which ensued; "I agree with you
+that one has no right to isolate himself, to refuse his portion of the
+common lot; but the effects of even a rebuff may last so long that one
+has no heart to put out his hand a second time--for a second rap over
+the knuckles. Oh, I know how trivial it is in the retrospect, and how
+what is called a disappointment is something to be humbly grateful for
+in most cases; but for a while it certainly makes you doubtful whether
+you were ever really intended to share the common lot." He was aware of
+an insincerity in his words; he hoped that it might not be perceptible,
+but he did not greatly care.
+
+Mr. Waters took no notice of what he had been saying. He resumed from
+another point. "But I should say that it would be unwise for a man of
+mature life to seek his happiness with one much younger than himself. I
+don't deny that there are cases in which the disparity of years counts
+for little or nothing, but generally speaking, people ought to be as
+equally mated in age as possible. They ought to start with the same
+advantages of ignorance. A young girl can only live her life through a
+community of feeling, an equality of inexperience in the man she gives
+her heart to. If he is tired of things that still delight her, the
+chances of unhappiness are increased."
+
+"Yes, that's true," answered Colville gravely. "It's apt to be a mistake
+and a wrong."
+
+"Oh, not always--not always," said the old minister. "We mustn't look at
+it in that way quite. Wrongs are of the will." He seemed to lapse into a
+greater intimacy of feeling with Colville. "Have you seen Mrs. Bowen
+to-day? Or--ah! true! I think you told me."
+
+"No," said Colville. "Have we spoken of her? But I have seen her."
+
+"And was the little one well?"
+
+"Very much better."
+
+"Pretty creatures, both of them," said the minister, with as fresh a
+pleasure in his recognition of the fact as if he had not said nearly the
+same thing once before, "You've noticed the very remarkable resemblance
+between mother and daughter?"
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"There is a gentleness in Mrs. Bowen which seems to me the last
+refinement of a gracious spirit," suggested Mr. Waters. "I have never
+met any lady who reconciled more exquisitely what is charming in society
+with what is lovely in nature."
+
+"Yes," said Colville. "Mrs. Bowen always had that gentle manner. I used
+to know her here as a girl a great while ago."
+
+"Did you? I wonder you allowed her to become Mrs. Bowen."
+
+This sprightliness of Mr. Waters amused Colville greatly. "At that time
+I was preoccupied with my great mistake, and I had no eyes for Mrs.
+Bowen."
+
+"It isn't too late yet," said Mr. Waters, with open insinuation.
+
+A bachelor of forty is always flattered by any suggestion of marriage;
+the suggestion that a beautiful and charming woman would marry him is
+too much for whatever reserves of modesty and wisdom he may have stored
+up Colville took leave of the old minister in better humour with himself
+than he had been for forty-eight hours, or than he had any very good
+reason for being now.
+
+Mr. Waters came with him to the head of the stairs and held up the lamp
+for him to see. The light fell upon the white locks thinly straggling
+from beneath his velvet skull-cap, and he looked like some mediaeval
+scholar of those who lived and died for learning in Florence when
+letters were a passion there almost as strong as love.
+
+The next day Colville would have liked to go at once and ask about
+Effie, but upon the whole he thought he would not go till after he had
+been at the reception where he was going in the afternoon. It was an
+artist who was giving the reception; he had a number of pictures to
+show, and there was to be tea. There are artists and artists. This
+painter was one who had a distinct social importance. It was felt to be
+rather a nice thing to be asked to his reception; one was sure at least
+to meet the nicest people.
+
+This reason prevailed with Colville so far as it related to Mrs. Bowen,
+whom he felt that he would like to tell he had been there. He would
+speak to her of this person and that--very respected and recognised
+social figures,--so that she might see he was not the outlaw, the
+Bohemian, he must sometimes have appeared to her. It would not be going
+too far to say that something like an obscure intention to show himself
+the next Sunday at the English chapel, where Mrs. Bowen went, was not
+forming itself in his mind. As he went along it began to seem not
+impossible that she would be at the reception. If Effie's indisposition
+was no more serious than it appeared yesterday, very probably Mrs. Bowen
+would be there. He even believed that he recognised her carriage among
+those which were drawn up in front of the old palace, under the
+painter's studio windows.
+
+There were a great number of people of the four nationalities that
+mostly consort in Italy. There were English and Americans and Russians
+and the sort of Italians resulting from the native intermarriages with
+them; here and there were Italians of pure blood, borderers upon the
+foreign life through a literary interest, or an artistic relation, or a
+matrimonial intention; here and there, also, the large stomach of a
+German advanced the bounds of the new empire and the new ideal of duty.
+There were no Frenchmen; one may meet them in more strictly Italian
+assemblages, but it is as if the sorrows and uncertainties of France in
+these times discouraged them from the international society in which
+they were always an infrequent element. It is not, of course, imaginable
+that as Frenchmen they have doubts of their merits, but that they have
+their misgivings as to the intelligence of others. The language that
+prevailed was English--in fact, one heard no other,--and the tea which
+our civilisation carries everywhere with it steamed from the cups in all
+hands. This beverage, in fact, becomes a formidable factor in the life
+of a Florentine winter. One finds it at all houses, and more or less
+mechanically drinks it.
+
+"I am turning out a terrible tea toper," said Colville, stirring his cup
+in front of the old lady whom his relations to the ladies at Palazzo
+Pinti had interested so much. "I don't think I drink less than ten cups
+a day; seventy cups a week is a low average for me. I'm really beginning
+to look down at my boots a little anxiously."
+
+Mrs. Amsden laughed. She had not been in America for forty years, but
+she liked the American way of talking better than any other. "Oh, didn't
+you hear about Inglehart when he was here? He was so good-natured that
+he used to drink all the tea people offered him, and then the young
+ladies made tea for him in his studio when they went to look at his
+pictures. It almost killed him. By the time spring came he trembled so
+that the brush flew out of his hands when he took it up. He had to hurry
+off to Venice to save his life. It's just as bad at the Italian houses;
+they've learned to like tea."
+
+"When I was here before, they never offered you anything but coffee,"
+said Colville. "They took tea for medicine, and there was an old joke
+that I thought I should die of, I heard it so often about the Italian
+that said to the English woman when she offered him tea, '_Grazie; sto
+bene_.'"
+
+"Oh, that's all changed now."
+
+"Yes; I've seen the tea, and I haven't heard the joke."
+
+The flavour of Colville's talk apparently encouraged his companion to
+believe that he would like to make fun of their host's paintings with
+her; but whether he liked them, or whether he was principled against
+that sort of return for hospitality, he chose to reply seriously to some
+ironical lures she threw out.
+
+"Oh, if you're going to be good," she exclaimed, "I shall have nothing
+more to say to you. Here comes Mr. Thurston; I can make _him_ abuse the
+pictures. There! You had better go away to a young lady I see alone over
+yonder, though I don't know what you will do with _one_ alone." She
+laughed and shook her head in a way that had once been arch and lively,
+but that was now puckery and infirm--it is affecting to see these things
+in women--and welcomed the old gentleman who came up and superseded
+Colville.
+
+The latter turned, with his cup still in his hand, and wandered about
+through the company, hoping he might see Mrs. Bowen among the groups
+peering at the pictures or solidly blocking the view in front of them.
+He did not find her, but he found Imogene Graham standing somewhat apart
+near a window. He saw her face light up at sight of him, and then darken
+again as he approached.
+
+"Isn't this rather an unnatural state of things?" he asked when he had
+come up. "I ought to be obliged to fight my way to you through
+successive phalanxes of young men crowding round with cups of tea
+outstretched in their imploring hands. Have you had some tea?"
+
+"Thank you, no; I don't wish any," said the young girl, so coldly that
+he could not help noticing, though commonly he was man enough to notice
+very few things.
+
+"How is Effie to-day?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Oh, quite well," said Imogene.
+
+"I don't see Mrs. Bowen," he ventured further.
+
+"No," answered the girl, still very lifelessly; "I came with Mrs.
+Fleming." She looked about the room as if not to look at him.
+
+He now perceived a distinct intention to snub him. He smiled. "Have you
+seen the pictures? There are two or three really lovely ones."
+
+"Mrs. Fleming will be here in a moment, I suppose," said Imogene
+evasively, but not with all her first coldness.
+
+"Let us steal a march on her," said Colville briskly. "When she comes
+you can tell her that I showed you the pictures."
+
+"I don't know," faltered the girl.
+
+"Perhaps it isn't necessary you should," he suggested.
+
+She glanced at him with questioning trepidation.
+
+"The respective duties of chaperone and _protégée_ are rather undefined.
+Where the chaperone isn't there to command, the _protégée_ isn't there
+to obey. I suppose you'd know if you were at home?"
+
+"Oh yes!"
+
+"Let me imagine myself at a loan exhibition in Buffalo. Ah! that appeal
+is irresistible. You'll come, I see."
+
+She hesitated; she looked at the nearest picture, then followed him to
+another. He now did what he had refused to do for the old lady who
+tempted him to it; he made fun of the pictures a little, but so amiably
+and with so much justice to their good points that the painter himself
+would not have minded his jesting. From time to time he made Imogene
+smile, but in her eyes lurked a look of uneasiness, and her manner
+expressed a struggle against his will which might have had its pathos
+for him in different circumstances, but now it only incited him to make
+her forget herself more and more; he treated her as one does a child
+that is out of sorts--coaxingly, ironically.
+
+When they had made the round of the rooms Mrs. Fleming was not at the
+window where she had left Imogene; the girl detected the top of her
+bonnet still in the next room.
+
+"The chaperone is never there when you come back with the _protégée_,"
+said Colville. "It seems to be the nature of the chaperone."
+
+Imogene turned very grave. "I think I ought to go to her," she murmured.
+
+"Oh no; she ought to come to you; I stand out for _protégée_'s rights."
+
+"I suppose she will come directly."
+
+"She sees me with you; she knows you are safe."
+
+"Oh, of course," said the girl. After a constraint which she marked by
+rather a long silence, she added, "How strange a roomful of talking
+sounds, doesn't it? Just like a great caldron boiling up and bubbling
+over. Wouldn't you like to know what they're all saying?"
+
+"Oh, it's quite bad enough to see them," replied Colville frivolously.
+
+"I think a company of gentlemen with their hats off look very queer,
+don't you?" she asked, after another interval.
+
+"Well, really," said Colville, laughing, "I don't know that the
+spectacle ever suggested any metaphysical speculations to me. I rather
+think they look queerer with their hats on."
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"Though there is not very much to choose. We're a queer-looking set,
+anyway."
+
+He got himself another cup of tea, and coming back to her, allowed her
+to make the efforts to keep up the conversation, and was not without a
+malicious pleasure in her struggles. They interested him as social
+exercises which, however abrupt and undexterous now, were destined, with
+time and practice, to become the finesse of a woman of society, and to
+be accepted, even while they were still abrupt and undexterous, as
+touches of character. He had broken up that coldness with which she had
+met him at first, and now he let her adjust the fragments as she could
+to the new situation. He wore that air of a gentleman who has been
+talking a long time to a lady, and who will not dispute her possession
+with a new-comer.
+
+But no one came, though, as he cast his eyes carelessly over the
+company, he found that it had been increased by the accession of eight
+or ten young fellows, with a refreshing light of originality in their
+faces, and little touches of difference from the other men in their
+dress.
+
+"Oh, there are the Inglehart boys!" cried the girl, with a flash of
+excitement.
+
+There was a sensation of interest and friendliness in the company as
+these young fellows, after their moment of social intimidation, began to
+gather round the pictures, and to fling their praise and blame about,
+and talk the delightful shop of the studio.
+
+The sight of their fresh young faces, the sound of their voices, struck
+a pang of regret that was almost envy to Colville's heart.
+
+Imogene followed them with eager eyes. "Oh," she sighed, "shouldn't you
+like to be an artist?"
+
+"I should, very much."
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon; I forgot. I knew you were an architect."
+
+"I should say I used to be, if you hadn't objected to my perfects and
+preterits."
+
+What came next seemed almost an accident.
+
+"I didn't suppose you cared for my objections, so long as I amused you."
+She suddenly glanced at him, as if terrified at her own words.
+
+"Have you been trying to amuse me?" he asked.
+
+"Oh no. I thought----"
+
+"Oh, then," said Colville sharply, "you meant that I was amusing myself
+with you?" She glanced at him in terror of his divination, but could not
+protest. "Has any one told you that?" he pursued, with sudden angry
+suspicion.
+
+"No, _no_ one," began Imogene. She glanced about her, frightened. They
+stood quite alone where they were; the people had mostly wandered off
+into the other rooms. "Oh, don't--I didn't mean--I didn't intend to say
+anything----"
+
+"But you have said something--something that surprises me from _you_,
+and hurts me. I wish to know whether you say it from yourself."
+
+"I don't know--yes. That is, not----Oh, I wish Mrs. Fleming----"
+
+She looked as if another word of pursuit would put it beyond her power
+to control herself.
+
+"Let me take you to Mrs. Fleming," said Colville, with freezing
+_hauteur_; and led the way where the top of Mrs. Fleming's bonnet still
+showed itself. He took leave at once, and hastily parting with his host,
+found himself in the street, whirled in many emotions. The girl had not
+said that from herself, but it was from some woman; he knew that by the
+directness of the phrase and its excess, for he had noticed that women
+who liked to beat about the bush in small matters have a prodigious
+straightforwardness in more vital affairs, and will even call grey black
+in order clearly to establish the presence of the black in that colour.
+He could hardly keep himself from going to Palazzo Pinti.
+
+But he contrived to go to his hotel instead, where he ate a moody
+dinner, and then, after an hour's solitary bitterness in his room, went
+out and passed the evening at the theatre. The play was one of those
+fleering comedies which render contemptible for the time all honest and
+earnest intention, and which surely are a whiff from the bottomless pit
+itself. It made him laugh at the serious strain of self-question that
+had mingled with his resentment; it made him laugh even at his
+resentment, and with its humour in his thoughts, sent him off to sleep
+in a sottish acceptance of whatever was trivial in himself as the only
+thing that was real and lasting.
+
+He slept late, and when Paolo brought up his breakfast, he brought with
+it a letter which he said had been left with the porter an hour before.
+A faint appealing perfume of violet exhaled from the note, and mingled
+with the steaming odours of the coffee and boiled milk, when Colville,
+after a glance at the unfamiliar handwriting of the superscription,
+broke the seal.
+
+"DEAR MR. COLVILLE,--I don't know what you will think of my writing to
+you, but perhaps you can't think worse of me than you do already, and
+anything will be better than the misery that I am in. I have not been
+asleep all night. I hate myself for telling you, but I do want you to
+understand how I have felt. I would give worlds if I could take back the
+words that you say wounded you. I didn't mean to wound you. Nobody is to
+blame for them but me; nobody ever breathed a word about you that was
+meant in unkindness.
+
+"I am not ashamed of writing this, _whatever_ you think, and I will sign
+my name in full. IMOGENE GRAHAM."
+
+
+Colville had commonly a good appetite for his breakfast, but now he let
+his coffee stand long un-tasted. There were several things about this
+note that touched him--the childlike simplicity and directness, the
+generous courage, even the imperfection and crudity of the literature.
+However he saw it afterward, he saw it then in its true intention. He
+respected that intention; through all the sophistications in which life
+had wrapped him, it awed him a little. He realised that if he had been
+younger he would have gone to Imogene herself with her letter. He felt
+for the moment a rush of the emotion which he would once not have
+stopped to examine, which he would not have been capable of examining.
+But now his duty was clear; he must go to Mrs. Bowen. In the noblest
+human purpose there is always some admixture, however slight, of less
+noble motive, and Colville was not without the willingness to see
+whatever embarrassment she might feel when he showed her the letter, and
+to invoke her finest tact to aid him in re-assuring the child.
+
+She was alone in her drawing-room, and she told him in response to his
+inquiry for their health that Imogene and Effie had gone out to drive.
+She looked so pretty in the quiet house dress in which she rose from the
+sofa and stood, letting him come the whole way to greet her, that he did
+not think of any other look in her, but afterward he remembered an
+evidence of inner tumult in her brightened eyes.
+
+He said, smiling, "I'm so glad to see you alone," and this brought still
+another look into her face, which also he afterward remembered. She did
+not reply, but made a sound in her throat like a bird when it stirs
+itself for flight or song. It was a strange, indefinite little note, in
+which Colville thought he detected trepidation at the time, and recalled
+for the sort of expectation suggested in it. She stood waiting for him
+to go on.
+
+"I have come to get you to help me out of trouble."
+
+"Yes?" said Mrs. Bowen, with a vague smile. "I always supposed you would
+be able to help yourself out of trouble. Or perhaps wouldn't mind it if
+you were in it."
+
+"Oh yes, I mind it very much," returned Colville, refusing her banter,
+if it were banter. "Especially this sort of trouble, which involves some
+one else in the discomfort." He went on abruptly: "I have been held up
+to a young lady as a person who was amusing himself with her, and I was
+so absurd as to be angry when she told me, and demanded the name of my
+friend, whoever it was. My behaviour seems to have given the young lady
+a bad night, and this morning she writes to tell me so, and to take all
+the blame on herself, and to assure me that no harm was meant me by any
+one. Of course I don't want her to be distressed about it. Perhaps you
+can guess who has been writing to me."
+
+Colville said all this looking down, in a fashion he had. When he looked
+up he saw a severity in Mrs. Bowen's pretty face, such as he had not
+seen there before.
+
+"I didn't know she had been writing to you, but I know that you are
+talking of Imogene. She told me what she had said to you yesterday, and
+I blamed her for it, but I'm not sure that it wasn't best."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said Colville. "Perhaps you can tell me who put the idea
+into her head?"
+
+"Yes; I did."
+
+A dead silence ensued, in which the fragments of the situation broken by
+these words revolved before Colville's thought with kaleidoscopic
+variety, and he passed through all the phases of anger, resentment,
+wounded self-love, and accusing shame.
+
+At last, "I suppose you had your reasons," he said simply.
+
+"I am in her mother's place here," she replied, tightening the grip of
+one little hand upon another, where she held them laid against the side
+of her waist.
+
+"Yes, I know that," said Colville; "but what reason had you to warn her
+against me as a person who was amusing himself with her? I don't like
+the phrase; but she seems to have got it from you; I use it at third
+hand."
+
+"I don't like the phrase either; I didn't invent it."
+
+"You used it."
+
+"No; it wasn't I who used it. I should have been glad to use another, if
+I could," said Mrs. Bowen, with perfect steadiness.
+
+"Then you mean to say that you believe I've been trifling with the
+feelings of this child?"
+
+"I mean to say nothing. You are very much older; and she is a romantic
+girl, very extravagant. You have tried to make her like you."
+
+"I certainly have. I have tried to make Effie Bowen like me too."
+
+Mrs. Bowen passed this over in serenity that he felt was not far from
+contempt.
+
+He gave a laugh that did not express enjoyment.
+
+"You have no right to laugh!" she cried, losing herself a little, and so
+making her first gain upon him.
+
+"It appears not. Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do about this
+letter?"
+
+"That is for you to decide." She recovered herself, and lost ground with
+him in proportion.
+
+"I thought perhaps that since you were able to judge my motives so
+clearly, you might be able to advise me."
+
+"I don't judge your motives," Mrs. Bowen began. She added suddenly, as
+if by an after-thought, "I don't think you had any."
+
+"I'm obliged to you."
+
+"But you are as much to blame as if you had."
+
+"And perhaps I'm as much to blame as if I had really wronged somebody?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's rather paradoxical. You don't wish me to see her any more?"
+
+"I haven't any wish about it; you must not _say_ that I have," said Mrs.
+Bowen, with dignity.
+
+Colville smiled. "May I _ask_ if you have?"
+
+"Not for myself."
+
+"You put me on very short allowance of conjecture."
+
+"I will not let you trifle with the matter!" she cried. "You have made
+me speak, when a word, a look, ought to have been enough. Oh, I didn't
+think you had the miserable vanity to wish it!"
+
+Colville stood thinking a long time and she waiting. "I see that
+everything is at an end. I am going away from Florence. Good-bye, Mrs.
+Bowen." He approached her, holding out his hand. But if he expected to
+be rewarded for this, nothing of the kind happened. She shrank swiftly
+back.
+
+"No, no. You shall not touch me."
+
+He paused a moment, gazing keenly at her face, in which, whatever other
+feeling showed, there was certainly no fear of him. Then with a slight
+bow he left the room.
+
+Mrs. Bowen ran from it by another door, and shut herself into her own
+room. When she returned to the salotto, Imogene and Effie were just
+coming in. The child went to lay aside her hat and sacque; the girl,
+after a glance at Mrs. Bowen's face, lingered inquiringly.
+
+"Mr. Colville came here with your letter, Imogene."
+
+"Yes," said Imogene faintly. "Do you think I oughtn't to have written
+it?"
+
+"Oh, it makes no difference now. He is going away from Florence."
+
+"Yes?" breathed the girl.
+
+"I spoke openly with him."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I didn't spare him. I made him think I hated and despised him."
+
+Imogene was silent. Then she said, "I know that whatever you have done,
+you have acted for the best."
+
+"Yes, I have a right that you should say that--I have a right that you
+should always say it. I think he has behaved very foolishly, but I don't
+blame him----"
+
+"No! I was to blame."
+
+"I don't _know_ that he was to blame, and I won't let you think he was."
+
+"Oh, he is the best man in the world!"
+
+"He gave up at once; he didn't try to defend himself. It's nothing for
+you to lose a friend at your age; but at mine----"
+
+"I _know_ it, Mrs. Bowen."
+
+"And I wouldn't even shake hands with him when he was going; I----"
+
+"Oh, I don't see how you could be so hard!" cried Imogene. She put up
+her hands to her face, and broke into tears. Mrs. Bowen watched her, dry
+eyed, with her lips parted, and an intensity of question in her face.
+
+"Imogene," she said at last, "I wish you to promise me one thing."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not to write to Mr. Colville again."
+
+"No, no; indeed I won't, Mrs. Bowen!" The girl came up to kiss her; Mrs.
+Bowen turned her cheek.
+
+Imogene was going from the room, when Mrs. Bowen spoke again. "But I
+wish you to promise me this only because you don't feel sure of yourself
+about him. If you care for him--if you think you care for him--then I
+leave you perfectly free."
+
+The girl looked up, scared. "No, no; I'd rather you wouldn't leave me
+free--you mustn't; I shouldn't know what to do."
+
+"Very well, then," said Mrs. Bowen.
+
+They both waited a moment, as if each were staying for the other to
+speak. Then Imogene asked, "Is he--going soon?"
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs. Bowen. "Why should he want to delay? He had
+better go at once. And I hope he will go home--as far from Florence as
+he can. I should think he would _hate_ the place."
+
+"Yes," said the girl, with a quivering sigh; "it must be hateful to
+him." She paused, and then she rushed on with bitter self-reproach. "And
+I--_I_ have helped to make it so! O Mrs. Bowen, perhaps it's _I_ who
+have been trifling with _him_. Trying to make him believe--no, not trying
+to do that, but letting him see that I sympathised--Oh, do you think I
+have?"
+
+"You know what you have been doing, Imogene," said Mrs. Bowen, with the
+hardness it surprises men to know women use with each other, they seem
+such tender creatures in the abstract. "You have no need to ask me."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"As you say, I warned you from the first."
+
+"Oh yes; you did."
+
+"I couldn't do more than hint; it was too much to expect----"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes."
+
+"And if you couldn't take my hints, I was helpless."
+
+"Yes; I see it."
+
+"I was only afraid of saying too much, and all through that miserable
+veglione business I was trying to please you and him, because I was
+afraid I _had_ said too much--gone too far. I wanted to show you that I
+disdained to be suspicious, that I was ashamed to suppose that a girl of
+your age could care for the admiration of a man of his."
+
+"Oh, I didn't care for his admiration. I admired _him_--and pitied him."
+
+Mrs. Bowen apparently would not be kept now from saying all that had
+been rankling in her breast. "I didn't approve of going to the veglione.
+A great many people would be shocked if they knew I went; I wouldn't at
+all like to have it known. But I was not going to have him thinking that
+I was severe with you, and wanted to deny you any really harmless
+pleasure."
+
+"Oh, who could think that? You're only too good to me. You see," said
+the girl, "what a return I have made for your trust. I knew you didn't
+want to go to the veglione. If I hadn't been the most selfish girl in
+the world I wouldn't have let you. But I did. I _forced_ you to go, and
+then, after we got there, I seized every advantage, and abused your
+kindness till I wonder I didn't sink through the floor. Yes; I ought to
+have refused to dance--if I'd had a spark of generosity or gratitude I
+would have done it; and I ought to have come straight back to you the
+instant the waltz was done. And now see what has come of it! I've made
+you think he was trifling with me, and I've made him think that I'm a
+false and hollow-hearted thing."
+
+"You know best what you have done, Imogene," said Mrs. Bowen, with a
+smiling tearfulness that was somehow very bitter. She rose from the
+sofa, as if to indicate that there was no more to be said, and Imogene,
+with a fresh burst of grief, rushed away to her own room.
+
+She dropped on her knees beside her bed, and stretched out her arms upon
+it, an image of that desolation of soul which, when we are young, seems
+limitless, but which in later life we know has comparatively narrow
+bounds beyond the clouds that rest so blackly around us.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+In his room Colville was devouring as best he might the chagrin with
+which he had come away from Palazzo Pinti, while he packed his trunk for
+departure. Now that the thing was over, the worst was past. Again he
+observed that his emotions had no longer the continuity that the
+emotions of his youth possessed. As he remembered, a painful or pleasant
+impression used to last indefinitely; but here he was with this
+humiliating affair hot in his mind, shrugging his shoulders with a sense
+of relief, almost a sense of escape. Does the soul really wear out with
+the body? The question flitted across his mind as he took down a pair of
+trousers, and noticed that they were considerably frayed about the feet;
+he determined to give them to Paolo, and this reminded him to ring for
+Paolo, and send word to the office that he was going to take the evening
+train for Rome.
+
+He went on packing, and putting away with the different garments the
+unpleasant thoughts that he knew he should be sure to unpack with them
+in Rome; but they would then have less poignancy.
+
+For the present he was doing the best he could, and he was not making
+any sort of pretences. When his trunk was locked he kindled himself a
+fire, and sat down before it to think of Imogene. He began with her, but
+presently it seemed to be Mrs. Bowen that he was thinking of; then he
+knew he was dropping off to sleep by the manner in which their two ideas
+mixed. The fatigues and excitements of the week had been great, but he
+would not give way; it was too disgraceful.
+
+Some one rapped at his door. He called out "_Avanti_!" and he would have
+been less surprised to see either of those ladies than Paolo with the
+account he had ordered to be made out. It was a long, pendulous,
+minutely itemed affair, such as the traveller's recklessness in candles
+and firewood comes to in the books of the Continental landlord, and it
+almost swept the floor when its volume was unrolled. But it was not the
+sum-total that dismayed Colville when he glanced at the final figure;
+that, indeed, was not so very great, with all the items; it was the
+conviction, suddenly flashing upon him, that he had not money enough by
+him to pay it. His watch, held close to the fire, told him that it was
+five o'clock; the banks had been closed an hour, and this was Saturday
+afternoon.
+
+The squalid accident had all the effect of intention, as he viewed it
+from without himself, and considered that the money ought to have been
+the first thing in his thoughts after he determined to go away. He must
+get the money somehow, and be off to Rome by the seven o'clock train. A
+whimsical suggestion, which was so good a bit of irony that it made him
+smile, flashed across him: he might borrow it of Mrs. Bowen. She was, in
+fact, the only person in Florence with whom he was at all on borrowing
+terms, and a sad sense of the sweetness of her lost friendship followed
+upon the antic notion. No; for once he could not go to Mrs. Bowen. He
+recollected now the many pleasant talks they had had together,
+confidential in virtue of their old acquaintance, and harmlessly
+intimate in many things. He recalled how, when he was feeling dull from
+the Florentine air, she had told him to take a little quinine, and he
+had found immediate advantage in it. These memories did (not) strike him as
+grotesque or ludicrous; he only felt their pathos. He was ashamed even
+to seem in anywise recreant further. If she should ever hear that he had
+lingered for thirty-six hours in Florence after he had told her he was
+going away, what could she think but that he had repented his decision?
+He determined to go down to the office of the hotel, and see if he could
+not make some arrangement with the landlord. It would be extremely
+distasteful, but his ample letter of credit would be at least a voucher
+of his final ability to pay. As a desperate resort he could go and try
+to get the money of Mr. Waters.
+
+He put on his coat and hat, and opened the door to some one who was just
+in act to knock at it, and whom he struck against in the obscurity.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the visitor.
+
+"Mr. Waters! Is it possible?" cried Colville, feeling something fateful
+in the chance. "I was just going to see you."
+
+"I'm fortunate in meeting you, then. Shall we go to my room?" he asked,
+at a hesitation in Colville's manner.
+
+"No, no," said the latter; "come in here." He led the way back into his
+room, and struck a match to light the candles on his chimney. Their dim
+rays fell upon the disorder his packing had left. "You must excuse the
+look of things," he said. "The fact is, I'm just going away. I'm going
+to Rome at seven o'clock."
+
+"Isn't this rather sudden?" asked the minister, with less excitement
+than the fact might perhaps have been expected to create in a friend. "I
+thought you intended to pass the winter in Florence."
+
+"Yes, I did--sit down, please--but I find myself obliged to cut my stay
+short. Won't you take off your coat?" he asked, taking off his own.
+
+"Thank you; I've formed the habit of keeping it on indoors," said Mr.
+Waters. "And I oughtn't to stay long, if you're to be off so soon."
+
+Colville gave a very uncomfortable laugh. "Why, the fact is, I'm not off
+so very soon unless you help me."
+
+"Ah?" returned the old gentleman, with polite interest.
+
+"Yes, I find myself in the absurd position of a man who has reckoned
+without his host. I have made all my plans for going, and have had my
+hotel bill sent to me in pursuance of that idea, and now I discover that
+I not only haven't money enough to pay it and get to Rome, but I haven't
+much more than half enough to pay it. I have credit galore," he said,
+trying to give the situation a touch of liveliness, "but the bank is
+shut."
+
+Mr. Waters listened to the statement with a silence concerning which
+Colville was obliged to form his conjectures. "That is unfortunate," he
+said sympathetically, but not encouragingly.
+
+Colville pushed on desperately. "It is, unless you can help me, Mr.
+Waters. I want you to lend me fifty dollars for as many hours."
+
+Mr. Waters shook his head with a compassionate smile. "I haven't fifty
+francs in cash. You are welcome to what there is. I'm very forgetful
+about money matters, and haven't been to the bankers."
+
+"Oh, don't excuse yourself to me, unless you wish to embitter my shame.
+I'm obliged to you for offering to share your destitution with me. I
+must try to run my face with the landlord," said Colville.
+
+"Oh no," said Mr. Waters gently. "Is there such haste as all that?"
+
+"Yes, I must go at once."
+
+"I don't like to have you apply to a stranger," said the old man, with
+fatherly kindness. "Can't you remain over till Monday? I had a little
+excursion to propose."
+
+"No, I can't possibly stay; I must go to-night," cried Colville.
+
+The minister rose. "Then I really mustn't detain you, I suppose.
+Good-bye." He offered his hand. Colville took it, but could not let it
+go at once. "I would like extremely to tell you why I'm leaving Florence
+in such haste. But I don't see what good it would do, for I don't want
+you to persuade me to stay."
+
+The old gentleman looked at him with friendly interest.
+
+"The fact is," Colville proceeded, as if he had been encouraged to do
+so, "I have had the misfortune--yes, I'm afraid I've had the fault--to
+make myself very displeasing to Mrs. Bowen, and in such a way that the
+very least I can do is to take myself off as far and as soon as I
+conveniently can."
+
+"Yes?" said Mr. Waters, with the cheerful note of incredulity in his
+voice with which one is apt to respond to others' confession of
+extremity. "Is it so bad as that? I've just seen Mrs. Bowen, and she
+told me you were going."
+
+"Oh," said Colville, with disagreeable sensation, "perhaps she told you
+why I was going."
+
+"No," answered Mr. Waters; "she didn't do that." Colville imagined a
+consciousness in him, which perhaps did not exist. "She didn't allude to
+the subject further than to state the fact, when I mentioned that I was
+coming to see you."
+
+Colville had dropped his hand. "She was very forbearing," he said, with
+bitterness that might well have been incomprehensible to Mr. Waters upon
+any theory but one.
+
+"Perhaps," he suggested, "you are precipitate; perhaps you have
+mistaken; perhaps you have been hasty. These things are often the result
+of impulse in women. I have often wondered how they could make up their
+minds; I believe they certainly ought to be allowed to change them at
+least once."
+
+Colville turned very red. "What in the world do you mean? Do you imagine
+that I have been offering myself to Mrs. Bowen?"
+
+"Wasn't it that which you wished to--which you said you would like to
+tell me?"
+
+Colville was suddenly silent, on the verge of a self-derisive laugh.
+When he spoke, he said gently: "No; it wasn't that. I never thought of
+offering myself to her. We have always been very good friends. But now
+I'm afraid we can't be friends any more--at least we can't be
+acquaintances."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Waters. He waited a while as if for Colville to say
+more, but the latter remained silent, and the old man gave his hand
+again in farewell. "I must really be going. I hope you won't think me
+intrusive in my mistaken conjecture?"
+
+"Oh no."
+
+"It was what I supposed you had been telling me----"
+
+"I understand. You mustn't be troubled," said Colville, though he had to
+own to himself that it seemed superfluous to make this request of Mr.
+Waters, who was taking the affair with all the serenity of age
+concerning matters of sentiment. "I wish you were going to Rome with
+me," he added, to disembarrass the moment of parting.
+
+"Thank you. But I shall not go to Rome for some years. Shall you come
+back on your way in the spring?"
+
+"No, I shall not come to Florence again," said Colville sadly.
+
+"Ah, I'm sorry. Good-bye, my dear young friend. It's been a great
+pleasure to know you." Colville walked down to the door of the hotel
+with his visitor and parted with him there. As he turned back he met the
+landlord, who asked him if he would have the omnibus for the station.
+The landlord bowed smilingly, after his kind, and rubbed his hands. He
+said he hoped Colville was pleased with his hotel, and ran to his desk
+in the little office to get some cards for him, so that he might
+recommend it accurately to American families.
+
+Colville looked absently at the cards. "The fact is," he said, to the
+little bowing, smiling man; "I don't know but I shall be obliged to
+postpone my going till Monday." He smiled too, trying to give the fact a
+jocose effect, and added, "I find myself out of money, and I've no means
+of paying your bill till I can see my bankers."
+
+After all his heroic intention, this was as near as he could come to
+asking the landlord to let him send the money from Rome.
+
+The little man set his head on one side.
+
+"Oh, well, occupy the room until Monday, then," he cried hospitably. "It
+is quite at your disposition. You will not want the omnibus?"
+
+"No, I shall not want the omnibus," said Colville, with a laugh,
+doubtless not perfectly intelligible to the landlord, who respectfully
+joined him in it.
+
+He did not mean to stop that night without writing to Mrs. Bowen, and
+assuring her that though an accident had kept him in Florence till
+Monday, she need not be afraid of seeing him again. But he could not go
+back to his room yet; he wandered about the town, trying to pick himself
+up from the ruin into which he had fallen again, and wondering with a
+sort of alien compassion what was to become of his aimless, empty
+existence. As he passed through the Piazza San Marco he had half a mind
+to pick a pebble from the gardened margin of the fountain there and toss
+it against the Rev. Mr. Waters's window, and when he put his skull-cap
+out, to ask that optimistic agnostic what a man had best do with a life
+that had ceased to interest him. But, for the time being, he got rid of
+himself as he best could by going to the opera. They professed to give
+_Rigoletto_, but it was all Mrs. Bowen and Imogene Graham to Colville.
+
+It was so late when he got back to his hotel that the outer gate was
+shut, and he had to wake up the poor little porter, as on that night
+when he returned from Madame Uccelli's. The porter was again equal to
+his duty, and contrived to light a new candle to show him the way to his
+room. The repetition, almost mechanical, of this small chicane made
+Colville smile, and this apparently encouraged the porter to ask, as if
+he supposed him to have been in society somewhere--
+
+"You have amused yourself this evening?
+
+"Oh, very much."
+
+"I am glad. There is a letter for you.'
+
+"A letter! Where?"
+
+"I sent it to your room. It came just before midnight."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Mrs. Bowen sat before the hearth in her _salon_, with her hands fallen
+in her lap. At thirty-eight the emotions engrave themselves more deeply
+in the face than they do in our first youth, or than they will when we
+have really aged, and the pretty woman looked haggard.
+
+Imogene came in, wearing a long blue robe, flung on as if with desperate
+haste; her thick hair fell crazily out of a careless knot, down her
+back. "I couldn't sleep," she said, with quivering lips, at the sight of
+which Mrs. Bowen's involuntary smile hardened. "Isn't it eleven yet?"
+she added, with a glance at the clock. "It seems years since I went to
+bed."
+
+"It's been a long day," Mrs. Bowen admitted. She did not ask Imogene why
+she could not sleep, perhaps because she knew already, and was too
+honest to affect ignorance.
+
+The girl dropped into a chair opposite her, and began to pull her
+fingers through the long tangle of her hair, while she drew her breath
+in sighs that broke at times on her lips; some tears fell down her
+cheeks unheeded. "Mrs. Bowen," she said, at length, "I should like to
+know what right we have to drive any one from Florence? I should think
+people would call it rather a high-handed proceeding if it were known."
+
+Mrs. Bowen met this feebleness promptly. "It isn't likely to be known.
+But we are not driving Mr. Colville away."
+
+"He is going."
+
+"Yes; he said he would go."
+
+"Don't you believe he will go?"
+
+"I believe he will do what he says."
+
+"He has been very kind to us all; he has been as _good!_"
+
+"No one feels that more than I," said Mrs. Bowen, with a slight tremor
+in her voice. She faltered a moment. "I can't let you say those things
+to me, Imogene."
+
+"No; I know it's wrong. I didn't know what I was saying. Oh, I wish I
+could tell what I ought to do! I wish I could make up my mind. Oh, I
+can't let him go--_so_. I--I don't know what to think any more. Once it
+was clear, but now I'm not sure; no, I'm not sure."
+
+"Not sure about what?"
+
+"I think I am the one to go away, if any one."
+
+"You know you can't go away," said Mrs. Bowen, with weary patience.
+
+"No, of course not. Well, I shall never see any one like him."
+
+Mrs. Bowen made a start in her chair, as if she had no longer the power
+to remain quiet, but only placed herself a little more rigidly in it.
+
+"No," the girl went on, as if uttering a hopeless reverie. "He made
+every moment interesting. He was always thinking of us--he never thought
+of himself. He did as much for Effie as for any one; he tried just as
+hard to make himself interesting to her. He was unselfish. I have seen
+him at places being kind to the stupidest people. You never caught him
+choosing out the stylish or attractive ones, or trying to shine at
+anybody's expense. Oh, he's a true gentleman--I shall always say it. How
+delicate he was, never catching you up, or if you said a foolish thing,
+trying to turn it against you. No, never, never, never! Oh dear! And
+now, what can he think of me? Oh, how frivolous and fickle and selfish
+he must think me!"
+
+"Imogene!" Mrs. Bowen cried out, but quelled herself again.
+
+"Yes," pursued the girl, in the same dreary monotone, "he thinks I
+couldn't appreciate him because he was old. He thinks that I cared for
+his not being handsome! Perhaps--perhaps----" She began to catch her
+breath in the effort to keep back the sobs that were coming. "Oh, I
+can't bear it! I would rather die than let him think it--such a thing as
+that!" She bent her head aside, and cried upon the two hands with which
+she clutched the top of her chair.
+
+Mrs. Bowen sat looking at her distractedly. From time to time she seemed
+to silence a word upon her lips, and in fact she did not speak.
+
+Imogene lifted her head at last, and softly dried her eyes. Then, as she
+pushed her handkerchief back into the pocket of her robe, "What sort of
+looking girl was that other one?"
+
+"That other one?"
+
+"Yes; you know what I mean: the one who behaved so badly to him before."
+
+"Imogene!" said Mrs. Bowen severely, "this is nonsense, and I can't let
+you go on so. I might pretend not to know what you mean; but I won't do
+that; and I tell you that there is no sort of likeness--of
+comparison----"
+
+"No, no," wailed the girl, "there _is_ none. I feel that. She had
+nothing to warn her--he hadn't suffered then; he was young; he was able
+to bear it--you said it yourself, Mrs. Bowen. But now--_now_, what will
+he do? He could make fun of that, and not hate her so much, because she
+didn't know how much harm she was doing. But I did; and what can he
+think of me?"
+
+Mrs. Bowen looked across the barrier between them, that kept her from
+taking Imogene into her arms, and laughing and kissing away her craze,
+with cold dislike, and only said, "You know whether you've really
+anything to accuse yourself of, Imogene. I can't and won't consider Mr.
+Colville in the matter; I _didn't_ consider him in what I said to-day.
+And I tell you again that I will not interfere with you in the slightest
+degree beyond appearances and the responsibility I feel to your mother.
+And it's for you to know your own mind. You are old enough. I will do
+what you say. It's for you to be sure that you wish what you say."
+
+"Yes," said Imogene huskily, and she let an interval that was long to
+them both elapse before she said anything more. "Have I always done what
+you thought best, Mrs. Bowen?"
+
+"Yes, I have never complained of you."
+
+"Then why can't you tell me now what you think best?"
+
+"Because there is nothing to be done. It is all over."
+
+"But if it were not, would you tell me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I--couldn't."
+
+"Then I take back my promise not to write to Mr. Colville. I am going to
+ask him to stay."
+
+"Have you made up your mind to that, Imogene?" asked Mrs. Bowen, showing
+no sign of excitement, except to take a faster hold of her own wrists
+with the slim hands in which she had caught them.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You know the position it places you in?"
+
+"What position?"
+
+"Has he offered himself to you?"
+
+"No!" the girl's face blazed.
+
+"Then, after what's passed, this is the same as offering yourself to
+him."
+
+Imogene turned white. "I must write to him, unless you forbid me."
+
+"Certainly I shall not forbid you." Mrs. Bowen rose and went to her
+writing-desk. "But if you have fully made up your mind to this step, and
+are ready for the consequences, whatever they are----" She stopped,
+before sitting down, and looked back over her shoulder at Imogene.
+
+"Yes," said the girl, who had also risen.
+
+"Then I will write to Mr. Colville for you, and render the proceeding as
+little objectionable as possible."
+
+Imogene made no reply. She stood motionless while Mrs. Bowen wrote.
+
+"Is this what you wished?" asked the latter, offering the sheet:----
+
+"Dear Mr. Colville,--I have reasons for wishing to recall my consent to
+your going away. Will you not come and lunch with us to-morrow, and try
+to forget everything that has passed during a few days?
+
+"Yours very sincerely,
+
+"Evalina Bowen."
+
+"Yes, that will do," gasped Imogene.
+
+Mrs. Bowen rang the bell for the porter, and stood with her back to the
+girl, waiting for him at the salon door. He came after a delay that
+sufficiently intimated the lateness of the hour. "This letter must go at
+once to the Hotel d'Atene," said Mrs. Bowen peremptorily.
+
+"You shall be served," said the porter, with fortitude.
+
+As Mrs. Bowen turned, Imogene ran toward her with clasped hands. "Oh,
+how merciful--how good----"
+
+Mrs. Bowen shrank back. "Don't touch me, Imogene, please!"
+
+It was her letter which Colville found on his table and read by the
+struggling light of his newly acquired candle. Then he sat down and
+replied to it.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Bowen,--I know that you mean some sort of kindness by me, and
+I hope you will not think me prompted by any poor resentment in
+declining to-morrow's lunch. I am satisfied that it is best for me to
+go; and I am ashamed not to be gone already. But a ridiculous accident
+has kept me, and when I came in and found your note I was just going to
+write and ask your patience with my presence in Florence till Monday
+morning.
+
+"Yours sincerely, THEODORE COLVILLE."
+
+He took his note down to the porter, who had lain down again in his
+little booth, but sprang up with a cheerful request to be commanded.
+Colville consulted him upon the propriety of sending the note to Palazzo
+Pinti at once, and the porter, with his head laid in deprecation upon
+one of his lifted shoulders, owned that it was perhaps the very least
+little bit in the world late.
+
+"Send it the first thing in the morning, then," said Colville.
+
+Mrs. Bowen received it by the servant who brought her coffee to the
+room, and she sent it without any word to Imogene. The girl came
+instantly back with it. She was fully dressed, as if she had been up a
+long time, and she wore a very plain, dull dress, in which one of her
+own sex might have read the expression of a potential self-devotion.
+
+"It's just as I wish it, Mrs. Bowen," she said, in a low key of
+impassioned resolution. "_Now_, my conscience is at rest. And you have
+done this for me, Mrs. Bowen!" She stood timidly with the door in her
+hand, watching Mrs. Bowen's slight smile; then, as if at some sign in
+it, she flew to the bed and kissed her, and so fled out of the room
+again.
+
+Colville slept late, and awoke with a vague sense of self-reproach,
+which faded afterward to such poor satisfaction as comes to us from the
+consciousness of having made the best of a bad business; some pangs of
+softer regret mixed with this. At first he felt a stupid obligation to
+keep indoors, and he really did not go out till after lunch. The
+sunshine had looked cold from his window, and with the bright fire which
+he found necessary in his room, he fancied a bitterness in the gusts
+that caught up the dust in the piazza, and blew it against the line of
+cabs on the other side; but when he got out into the weather he found
+the breeze mild and the sun warm. The streets were thronged with people,
+and at all the corners there were groups of cloaked and overcoated
+talkers, soaking themselves full of the sunshine. The air throbbed, as
+always, with the sound of bells, but it was a mellower and opener sound
+than before, and looking at the purple bulk of one of those hills which
+seem to rest like clouds at the end of each avenue in Florence, Colville
+saw that it was clear of snow. He was going up through Via Cavour to
+find Mr. Waters and propose a walk, but he met him before he had got
+half-way to San Marco.
+
+The old man was at a momentary stand-still, looking up at the Riccardi
+Palace, and he received Colville with apparent forgetfulness of anything
+odd in his being still in Florence. "Upon the whole," he said, without
+preliminary of any sort, as Colville turned and joined him in walking
+on, "I don't know any homicide that more distinctly proves the futility
+of assassination as a political measure than that over yonder." He
+nodded his head sidewise toward the palace as he shuffled actively along
+at Colville's elbow.
+
+"You might say that the moment when Lorenzino killed Alessandro was the
+most auspicious for a deed of that kind. The Medici had only recently
+been restored; Alessandro was the first ruler in Florence, who had worn
+a title; no more reckless, brutal, and insolent tyrant ever lived, and
+his right, even such as the Medici might have, to play the despot was
+involved in the doubt of his origin; the heroism of the great siege
+ought still to have survived in the people who withstood the forces of
+the whole German Empire for fifteen months; it seems as if the taking
+off of that single wretch should have ended the whole Medicean
+domination; but there was not a voice raised to second the homicide's
+appeal to the old love of liberty in Florence. The Medici party were
+able to impose a boy of eighteen upon the most fiery democracy that ever
+existed, and to hunt down and destroy Alessandro's murderer at their
+leisure. No," added the old man thoughtfully, "I think that the friends
+of progress must abandon assassination as invariably useless. The
+trouble was not that Alessandro was alive, but that Florence was dead.
+Assassination always comes too early or too late in any popular
+movement. It may be," said Mr. Waters, with a carefulness to do justice
+to assassination which made Colville smile, "that the modern scientific
+spirits may be able to evolve something useful from the principle, but
+considering the enormous abuses and perversions to which it is liable, I
+am very doubtful of it--very doubtful."
+
+Colville laughed. "I like your way of bringing a fresh mind to all these
+questions in history and morals, whether they are conventionally settled
+or not. Don't you think the modern scientific spirit could evolve
+something useful out of the old classic idea of suicide?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Mr. Waters; "I haven't yet thought it over. The worst
+thing about suicide--and this must always rank it below political
+assassination--is that its interest is purely personal. No man ever
+kills himself for the good of others."
+
+"That's certainly against it. We oughtn't to countenance such an
+abominably selfish practice. But you can't bring that charge against
+euthanasy. What have you to say of that?"
+
+"I have heard one of the most benevolent and tender-hearted men I ever
+knew defend it in cases of hopeless suffering. But I don't know that I
+should be prepared to take his ground. There appears to be something so
+sacred about human life that we must respect it even in spite of the
+prayers of the sufferer who asks us to end his irremediable misery."
+
+"Well," said Colville, "I suspect we must at least class murder with the
+ballet as a means of good. One might say there was still some virtue in
+the primal, eldest curse against bloodshed."
+
+"Oh, I don't by any means deny those things," said the old man, with the
+air of wishing to be scrupulously just. "Which way are you walking?"
+
+"Your way, if you will let me," replied Colville. "I was going to your
+house to ask you to take a walk with me."
+
+"Ah, that's good. I was reading of the great siege last night, and I
+thought of taking a look at Michelangelo's bastions. Let us go together,
+if you don't think you'll find it too fatiguing."
+
+"I shall be ashamed to complain if I do."
+
+"And you didn't go to Rome after all?" said Mr. Waters.
+
+"No; I couldn't face the landlord with a petition so preposterous as
+mine. I told him that I found I had no money to pay his bill till I had
+seen my banker, and as he didn't propose that I should send him the
+amount back from Rome, I stayed. Landlords have their limitations; they
+are not imaginative, as a class."
+
+"Well, a day more will make no great difference to you, I suppose," said
+the old man, "and a day less would have been a loss to me. I shall miss
+you."
+
+"Shall you, indeed?" asked Colville, with a grateful stir of the heart.
+"It's very nice of you to say that."
+
+"Oh no. I meet few people who are willing to look at life objectively
+with me, and I have fancied some such willingness in you. What I chiefly
+miss over here is a philosophic lift in the human mind, but probably
+that is because my opportunities of meeting the best minds are few, and
+my means of conversing with them are small. If I had not the whole past
+with me, I should feel lonely at times."
+
+"And is the past such good company always?".
+
+"Yes, in a sense it is. The past is humanity set free from circumstance,
+and history studied where it was once life is the past rehumanised."
+
+As if he found this rarefied air too thin for his lungs, Colville made
+some ineffectual gasps at response, and the old man continued: "What I
+mean is that I meet here the characters I read of, and commune with them
+before their errors were committed, before they had condemned themselves
+to failure, while they were still wise and sane, and still active and
+vital forces."
+
+"Did they all fail? I thought some of the bad fellows had a pretty fair
+worldly success?"
+
+"The blossom of decay."
+
+"Oh! what black pessimism!"
+
+"Not at all! Men fail, but man succeeds. I don't know what it all means,
+or any part of it; but I have had moods in which it seemed as if the
+whole, secret of the mystery were about to flash upon me. Walking along
+in the full sun, in the midst of men, or sometimes in the solitude of
+midnight, poring over a book, and thinking of quite other things, I have
+felt that I had almost surprised it."
+
+"But never quite?"
+
+"Oh, it isn't too late yet."
+
+"I hope you won't have your revelation before I get away from Florence,
+or I shall see them burning you here like the great _frate_."
+
+They had been walking down the Via Calzioli from the Duomo, and now they
+came out into the Piazza della Signoria, suddenly, as one always seems
+to do, upon the rise of the old palace and the leap of its tower into
+the blue air. The history of all Florence is there, with memories of
+every great time in bronze or marble, but the supreme presence is the
+martyr who hangs for ever from the gibbet over the quenchless fire in
+the midst.
+
+"Ah, they _had_ to kill him!" sighed the old man. "It has always been so
+with the benefactors. They have always meant mankind more good than any
+one generation can bear, and it must turn upon them and destroy them."
+
+"How will it be with you, then, when you have read us 'the riddle of the
+painful earth'?"
+
+"That will be so simple that every one will accept it willingly and
+gladly, and wonder that no one happened to think of it before. And,
+perhaps, the world is now grown old enough and docile enough to receive
+the truth without resentment."
+
+"I take back my charge of pessimism," said Colville. "You are an
+optimist of the deepest dye."
+
+They walked out of the Piazza and down to the Lung' Arno, through the
+corridor of the Uffizzi, where the illustrious Florentines stand in
+marble under the arches, all reconciled and peaceful and equal at last.
+Colville shivered a little as he passed between the silent ranks of the
+statues.
+
+"I can't stand those fellows, to-day. They seem to feel such a smirk
+satisfaction at having got out of it all."
+
+They issued upon the river, and he went to the parapet and looked down
+on the water. "I wonder," he mused aloud, "if it has the same Sunday
+look to these Sabbathless Italians as it has to us."
+
+"No; Nature isn't puritan," replied the old minister.
+
+"Not at Haddam East Village?"
+
+"No; there less than here; for she's had to make a harder fight for her
+life there."
+
+"Ah, then you believe in Nature--you're a friend of Nature?" asked
+Colville, following the lines of an oily swirl in the current with
+indolent eye.
+
+"Only up to a certain point." Mr. Waters seemed to be patient of any
+direction which the other might be giving the talk. "Nature is a savage.
+She has good impulses, but you can't trust her altogether."
+
+"Do you know," said Colville, "I don't think there's very much of her
+left in us after we reach a certain point in life? She drives us on at a
+great pace for a while, and then some fine morning we wake up and find
+that Nature has got tired of us and has left us to taste and conscience.
+And taste and conscience are by no means so certain of what they want
+you to do as Nature was."
+
+"Yes," said the minister, "I see what you mean." He joined Colville in
+leaning on the parapet, and he looked out on the river as if he saw his
+meaning there. "But by the time we reach that point in life most of us
+have got the direction which Nature meant us to take, and there's no
+longer any need of her driving us on."
+
+"And what about the unlucky fellows who haven't got the direction, or
+haven't kept it?"
+
+"They had better go back to it."
+
+"But if Nature herself seemed to change her mind about you?"
+
+"Ah, you mean persons of weak will. They are a great curse to themselves
+and to everybody else."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," said Colville. "I've seen cases in which a
+strong will looked very much more like the devil."
+
+"Yes, a perverted will. But there can be no good without a strong will.
+A weak will means inconstancy. It means, even in good, good attempted
+and relinquished, which is always a terrible thing, because it is sure
+to betray some one who relied upon its accomplishment."
+
+"And in evil? Perhaps the evil, attempted and relinquished, turns into
+good."
+
+"Oh, never!" replied the minister fervently. "There is something very
+mysterious in what we call evil. Apparently it has infinitely greater
+force and persistence than good. I don't know why it should be so. But
+so it appears."
+
+"You'll have the reason of that along with the rest of the secret when
+your revelation comes," said Colville, with a smile. He lifted his eyes
+from the river, and looked up over the clustering roofs beyond it to the
+hills beyond them, flecked to the crest of their purple slopes with the
+white of villas and villages. As if something in the beauty of the
+wonderful prospect had suggested the vision of its opposite, he said,
+dreamily, "I don't think I shall go to Rome to-morrow, after all. I will
+go to Des Vaches! Where did you say you were walking, Mr. Waters? Oh
+yes! You told me. I will cross the bridge with you. But I couldn't stand
+anything quite so vigorous as the associations of the siege this
+afternoon. I'm going to the Boboli Gardens, to debauch myself with a
+final sense of nerveless despotism, as it expressed itself in marble
+allegory and formal alleys. The fact is that if I stay with you any
+longer I shall tell you something that I'm too old to tell and you're
+too old to hear." The old man smiled, but offered no urgence or comment,
+and at the thither end of the bridge Colville said hastily, "Good-bye.
+If you ever come to Des Vaches, look me up."
+
+"Good-bye," said the minister. "Perhaps we shall meet in Florence
+again."
+
+"No, no. Whatever happens, that won't."
+
+They shook hands and parted. Colville stood a moment, watching the
+slight bent figure of the old man as he moved briskly up the Via de'
+Bardi, turning his head from, side to side, to look at the palaces as he
+passed, and so losing himself in the dim, cavernous curve of the street.
+As soon as he was out of sight, Colville had an impulse to hurry after
+him and rejoin him; then he felt like turning about and going back to
+his hotel.
+
+But he shook himself together into the shape of resolution, however
+slight and transient. "I must do _something_ I intended to do," he said,
+between his set teeth, and pushed on up through the Via Guicciardini. "I
+will go to the Boboli because I _said_ I would."
+
+As he walked along, he seemed to himself to be merely crumbling away in
+this impulse and that, in one abortive intent and another. What did it
+all mean? Had he been his whole life one of these weak wills which are a
+curse to themselves and others, and most a curse when they mean the
+best? Was that the secret of his failure in life? But for many years he
+had seemed to succeed, to be as other men were, hard, practical men; he
+had once made a good newspaper, which was certainly not a dream of
+romance. Had he given that up at last because he was a weak will? And
+now was he running away from Florence because his will was weak? He
+could look back to that squalid tragedy of his youth, and see that a
+more violent, a more determined man could have possessed himself of the
+girl whom he had lost. And now would it not be more manly, if more
+brutal, to stay here, where a hope, however fleeting, however fitful, of
+what might have been, had revisited him in the love of this young girl?
+He felt sure, if anything were sure, that something in him, in spite of
+their wide disparity of years, had captured her fancy, and now, in his
+abasement, he felt again the charm of his own power over her. They were
+no farther apart in years than many a husband and wife; they would grow
+more and more together; there was youth enough in his heart yet; and who
+was pushing him away from her, forbidding him this treasure that he had
+but to put out his hand and make his own? Some one whom through all his
+thoughts of another he was trying to please, but whom he had made
+finally and inexorably his enemy. Better stay, then, something said to
+him; and when he answered, "I will," something else reminded him that
+this also was not willing but unwilling.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+When he entered the beautiful old garden, its benison of peace fell upon
+his tumult, and he began to breathe a freer air, reverting to his
+purpose to be gone in the morning and resting in it, as he strolled up
+the broad curve of its alley from the gate. He had not been there since
+he walked there with one now more like a ghost to him than any of the
+dead who had since died. It was there that she had refused him; he
+recalled with a grim smile the awkwardness of getting back with her to
+the gate from the point, far within the garden, where he had spoken.
+Except that this had happened in the fall, and now it was early spring,
+there seemed no change since then; the long years that had elapsed were
+like a winter between.
+
+He met people in groups and singly loitering through the paths, and
+chiefly speaking English; but no one spoke to him, and no one invaded
+the solitude in which he walked. But the garden itself seemed to know
+him, and to give him a tacit recognition; the great, foolish grotto
+before the gate, with its statues by Bandinelli, and the fantastic
+effects of drapery and flesh in party-coloured statues lifted high on
+either side of the avenue; the vast shoulder of wall, covered thick with
+ivy and myrtle, which he passed on his way to the amphitheatre behind
+the palace; the alternate figures and urns on their pedestals in the
+hemicycle, as if the urns were placed there to receive the ashes of the
+figures when they became extinct; the white statues or the colossal
+busts set at the ends of the long alleys against black curtains of
+foliage; the big fountain, with its group in the centre of the little
+lake, and the meadow, quiet and sad, that stretched away on one side
+from this; the keen light under the levels of the dense pines and
+ilexes; the paths striking straight on either hand from the avenue
+through which he sauntered, and the walk that coiled itself through the
+depths of the plantations; all knew him, and from them and from the
+winter neglect which was upon the place distilled a subtle influence, a
+charm, an appeal belonging to that combination of artifice and nature
+which is perfect only in an Italian garden under an Italian sky. He was
+right in the name which he mockingly gave the effect before he felt it;
+it was a debauch, delicate, refined, of unserious pensiveness, a smiling
+melancholy, in which he walked emancipated from his harassing hopes, and
+keeping only his shadowy regrets.
+
+Colville did not care to scale the easy height from which you have the
+magnificent view, conscious of many photographs, of Florence. He
+wandered about the skirts of that silent meadow, and seeing himself
+unseen, he invaded its borders far enough to pluck one of those large
+scarlet anemones, such as he had given his gentle enemy. It was tilting
+there in the breeze above the unkempt grass, and the grass was beginning
+to feel the spring, and to stir and stretch itself after its winter
+sleep; it was sprinkled with violets, but these he did not molest. He
+came back to a stained and mossy stone bench on the avenue, fronting a
+pair of rustic youths carved in stone, who had not yet finished some
+game in which he remembered seeing them engaged when he was there
+before. He had not walked fast, but he had walked far, and was warm
+enough to like the whiffs of soft wind on his uncovered head. The spring
+was coming; that was its breath, which you know unmistakably in Italy
+after all the kisses that winter gives. Some birds were singing in the
+trees; down an alley into which he could look, between the high walls of
+green, he could see two people in flirtation: he waited patiently till
+the young man should put his arm round the girl's waist, for the
+fleeting embrace from which she pushed it and fled further down the
+path.
+
+"Yes, it's spring," thought Colville; and then, with the selfishness of
+the troubled soul, he wished that it might be winter still and
+indefinitely. It occurred to him now that he should not go back to Des
+Vaches, for he did not know what he should do there. He would go to New
+York: though he did not know what he should do in New York, either.
+
+He became tired of looking at the people who passed, and of speculating
+about them through the second consciousness which enveloped the sad
+substance of his misgivings like an atmosphere; and he let his eyelids
+fall, as he leaned his head back against the tree behind his bench. Then
+their voices pursued him through the twilight that he had made himself,
+and forced him to the same weary conjecture as if he had seen their
+faces. He heard gay laughter, and laughter that affected gaiety; the
+tones of young men in earnest disquisition reached him through the veil,
+and the talk, falling to whisper, of girls, with the names of men in it;
+sums of money, a hundred francs, forty thousand francs, came in high
+tones; a husband and wife went by quarrelling in the false security of
+English, and snapping at each other as confidingly as if in the
+sanctuary of home. The man bade the woman not be a fool, and she asked
+him how she was to endure his company if she was not a fool.
+
+Colville opened his eyes to look after them, when a voice that he knew
+called out, "Why, it is Mr. Colville!"
+
+It was Mrs. Amsden, and pausing with her, as if they had passed him in
+doubt, and arrested themselves when they had got a little way by, were
+Effie Bowen and Imogene Graham. The old lady had the child by the hand,
+and the girl stood a few paces apart from them. She was one of those
+beauties who have the property of looking very plain at times, and
+Colville, who had seen her in more than one transformation, now beheld
+her somehow clumsy of feature, and with the youth gone from her aspect.
+She seemed a woman of thirty, and she wore an unbecoming walking dress
+of a fashion that contributed to this effect of age. Colville was aware
+afterward of having wished that she was really as old and plain as she
+looked.
+
+He had to come forward, and put on the conventional delight of a
+gentleman meeting lady friends.
+
+"It's remarkable how your having your eyes shut estranged you," said
+Mrs. Amsden. "Now, if you had let me see you oftener in church, where
+people close their eyes a good deal for one purpose or another, I should
+have known you at once."
+
+"I hope you haven't lost a great deal of time, as it is, Mrs. Amsden,"
+said Colville. "Of course I should have had my eyes open if I had known
+you were going by."
+
+"Oh, don't apologise!" cried the old thing, with ready enjoyment of his
+tone.
+
+"I don't apologise for not being recognisable; I apologise for being
+visible," said Colville, with some shapeless impression that he ought to
+excuse his continued presence in Florence to Imogene, but keeping his
+eyes upon Mrs. Amsden, to whom what he said could not be intelligible.
+"I ought to be in Turin to-day."
+
+"In Turin! Are you going away from Florence?"
+
+"I'm going home."
+
+"Why, did _you_ know that?" asked the old lady of Imogene, who slightly
+nodded, and then of Effie, who also assented. "Really, the silence of
+the Bowen family in regard to the affairs of others is extraordinary.
+There never was a family more eminently qualified to live in Florence. I
+dare say that if I saw a little more of them, I might hope to reach the
+years of discretion myself some day. _Why_ are you going away? (You see
+I haven't reached them yet!) Are you tired of Florence already?"
+
+"No," said Colville passively; "Florence is tired of me."
+
+"You're quite sure?"
+
+"Yes; there's no mistaking one of her sex on such a point."
+
+Mrs. Amsden laughed. "Ah, a great many people mistake us, both ways. And
+you're really going back to America. What in the world for?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea."
+
+"Is America fonder of you than Florence?"
+
+"She's never told her love. I suspect it's merely that she's more used
+to me."
+
+They were walking, without any volition of his, down the slope of the
+broad avenue to the fountain, where he had already been.
+
+"Is your mother well?" he asked of the little girl. It seemed to him
+that he had better not speak to Imogene, who still kept that little
+distance from the rest, and get away as soon as he decently could.
+
+"She has a headache," said Effie.
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry," returned Colville.
+
+"Yes, she deputed me to take her young people out for an airing," said
+Mrs. Amsden; "and Miss Graham decided us for the Boboli, where she
+hadn't been yet. I've done what I could to make the place attractive.
+But what is an old woman to do for a girl in a garden? We ought to have
+brought some other young people--some of the Inglehart boys. But we're
+respectable, we Americans abroad; we're decorous, above all things; and
+I don't know about meeting _you_ here, Mr. Colville. It has a very bad
+appearance. Are you sure that you didn't know I was to go by here at
+exactly half-past four?"
+
+"I was living from breath to breath in the expectation of seeing you.
+You must have noticed how eagerly I was looking out for you."
+
+"Yes, and with a single red anemone in your hand, so that I should know
+you without being obliged to put on my spectacles."
+
+"You divine everything, Mrs. Amsden," he said, giving her the flower.
+
+"I shall make my brags to Mrs. Bowen when I see her," said the old lady.
+"How far into the country did you walk for this?"
+
+"As far as the meadow yonder."
+
+They had got down to the sheet of water from which the sea-horses of the
+fountain sprang, and the old lady sank upon a bench near it. Colville
+held out his hand toward Effie. "I saw a lot of violets over there in
+the grass."
+
+"Did you?" She put her hand eagerly into his, and they strolled off
+together. After a first motion to accompany them, Imogene sat down
+beside Mrs. Amsden, answering quietly the talk of the old lady, and
+seeming in nowise concerned about the expedition for violets. Except for
+a dull first glance, she did not look that way. Colville stood in the
+border of the grass, and the child ran quickly hither and thither in it,
+stooping from time to time upon the flowers. Then she came out to where
+he stood, and showed her bunch of violets, looking up into the face
+which he bent upon her, while he trifled with his cane. He had a very
+fatherly air with her.
+
+"I think I'll go and see what they've found," said Imogene irrelevantly,
+to a remark of Mrs. Amsden's about the expensiveness of Madame Bossi's
+bonnets.
+
+"Well," said the old lady. Imogene started, and the little girl ran to
+meet her. She detained Effie with her admiration of the violets till
+Colville lounged reluctantly up. "Go and show them to Mrs. Amsden," she
+said, giving back the violets, which she had been smelling. The child
+ran on. "Mr. Colville, I want to speak with you."
+
+"Yes," said Colville helplessly.
+
+"Why are you going away?"
+
+"Why? Oh, I've accomplished the objects--or no-objects--I came for," he
+said, with dreary triviality, "and I must hurry away to other fields of
+activity." He kept his eyes on her face, which he saw full of a
+passionate intensity, working to some sort of overflow.
+
+"That is not true, and you needn't say it to spare me. You are going
+away because Mrs. Bowen said something to you about me."
+
+"Not quite that," returned Colville gently.
+
+"No; it was something that she said to me about you. But it's the same
+thing. It makes no difference. I ask you not to go for that."
+
+"Do you know what you are saying, Imogene?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Colville waited a long moment. "Then, I thank you, you dear girl, and I
+am going to-morrow, all the same. But I shan't forget this; whatever my
+life is to be, this will make it less unworthy and less unhappy. If it
+could buy anything to give you joy, to add some little grace to the good
+that must come to you, I would give it. Some day you'll meet the young
+fellow whom you're to make immortal, and you must tell him of an old
+fellow who knew you afar off, and understood how to worship you for an
+angel of pity and unselfishness. Ah, I hope he'll understand, too!
+Good-bye." If he was to fly, that was the sole instant. He took her
+hand, and said again, "Good-bye." And then he suddenly cried, "Imogene,
+do you wish me to stay?"
+
+"Yes!" said the girl, pouring all the intensity of her face into that
+whisper.
+
+"Even if there had been nothing said to make me go away--should you
+still wish me to stay?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He looked her in the starry, lucid eyes, where a divine fervour
+deepened. He sighed in nerveless perplexity; it was she who had the
+courage.
+
+"It's a mistake! You mustn't! I am too old for you! It would be a wrong
+and a cruelty! Yes, you must let me go, and forget me. I have been to
+blame. If Mrs. Bowen has blamed me, she was right--I deserved it; I
+deserved all she could say against me."
+
+"She never said anything against you. Do you think I would have let her?
+No; it was I that said it, and I blamed you. It was because I thought
+that you were--you were--"
+
+"Trifling with you? How could you think that?"
+
+"Yes, I know now how it was, and it makes you seem all the grander to
+me. Did you think I cared for your being older than I was? I never cared
+for it--I never hardly thought of it after the very first. I tried to
+make you understand that, and how it hurt me to have you speak of it.
+Don't you think that I could see how good you were? Do you suppose that
+all I want is to be happy? I don't care for that--I despise it, and I
+always hate myself for seeking my own pleasure, if I find myself doing
+it. I have seen enough of life to know what _that_ comes to! And what
+hurt me worst of all was that you seemed to believe that I cared for
+nothing but amusing myself, when I wished to be something better,
+higher! It's nothing whether you are of my age or not, if--if--you care
+for me."
+
+"Imogene!"
+
+"All that I ask is to be with you, and try to make you forget what's
+been sad in your life, and try to be of use to you in whatever you are
+doing, and I shall be prouder and gladder of that than anything that
+people _call_ happiness."
+
+Colville stood holding her hand, while she uttered these ideas and
+incoherent repetitions of them, with a deep sense of powerlessness. "If
+I believed that I could keep you from regretting this--"
+
+"What should I regret? I won't let you depreciate yourself--make
+yourself out not good enough for the best. Oh, I know how it happened!
+But now you shall never think of it again. No; I will not let you. That
+is the only way you could make me regret anything."
+
+"I am going to stay," said Colville. "But on my own terms. I will be
+bound to you, but you shall not be bound to me."
+
+"You doubt me! I would rather have you go! No; stay. And let me prove to
+you how wrong you are. I mustn't ask more than that. Only give me the
+chance to show you how different I am from what you think--how different
+you are, too."
+
+"Yes. But you must be free."
+
+"Well."
+
+"What are they doing so long there?" asked Mrs. Amsden of Effie, putting
+her glasses to her eyes. "I can't see."
+
+"They are just holding hands," said the child, with an easy satisfaction
+in the explanation, which perhaps the old lady did not share. "He always
+holds my hand when he is with me."
+
+"Does he, indeed?" exclaimed Mrs. Amsden, with a cackle. She added,
+"That's very polite of him, isn't it? You must be a great favourite with
+Mr. Colville. You will miss him when he's gone."
+
+"Yes. He's very nice."
+
+Colville and Imogene returned, coming slowly across the loose, neglected
+grass toward the old woman's seat. She rose as they came up.
+
+"You don't seem to have succeeded so well in getting flowers for Miss
+Graham as for the other ladies. But perhaps you didn't find her
+favourite over there. What is your favourite flower, Miss Graham? Don't
+say you have none! I didn't know that I preferred scarlet anemones. Were
+there no forget-me-nots over there in the grass?"
+
+"There was no occasion for them," answered Colville.
+
+"You always did make such pretty speeches!" said the old lady. "And they
+have such an orphic character, too; you can interpret them in so many
+different ways. Should you mind saying just what you meant by that one?"
+
+"Yes, very much," replied Colville.
+
+The old lady laughed with cheerful resignation. She would as lief report
+that reply of his as another. Even more than a man whom she could
+entangle in his speech she liked a man who could slip through the toils
+with unfailing ease. Her talk with such a man was the last consolation
+which remained to her from a life of harmless coquetries.
+
+"I will refer it to Mrs. Bowen," she said. "She is a very wise woman,
+and she used to know you a great while ago."
+
+"If you like, I will do it for you, Mrs. Amsden. I'm going to see her."
+
+"To renew your adieux? Well, why not? Parting is such sweet sorrow! And
+if I were a young man I would go to say good-bye to Mrs. Bowen as often
+as she would let me. Now tell me honestly, Mr. Colville, did you ever
+see such an exquisite, perfect _creature_?"
+
+"Oh, that's asking a good deal."
+
+"What?"
+
+"To tell you a thing honestly. How did you come here, Mrs. Amsden?"
+
+"In Mrs. Bowen's carriage. I sent it round from the Pitti entrance to
+the Porta Romana. It's waiting there now, I suppose."
+
+"I thought you had been corrupted, somehow. Your zeal is
+carriage-bought. It _is_ a delightful vehicle. Do you think you could
+give me a lift home in it?"
+
+"Yes, indeed. I've always a seat for you in my carriage. To Hotel
+d'Atene?"
+
+"No, to Palazzo Pinti."
+
+"This is deliciously mysterious," said Mrs. Amsden, drawing her shawl up
+about her shoulders, which, if no longer rounded, had still a charming
+droop. One realises in looking at such old ladies that there are women
+who could manage their own skeletons winningly. She put up her glasses,
+which were an old-fashioned sort, held to the nose by a handle, and
+perused the different persons of the group. "Mr. Colville concealing an
+inward trepidation under a bold front; Miss Graham agitated but firm;
+the child as much puzzled as the old woman. I feel that we are a very
+interesting group--almost dramatic."
+
+"Oh, call us a passage from a modern novel," suggested Colville, "if
+you're in the romantic mood. One of Mr. James's."
+
+"Don't you think we ought to be rather more of the great world for that?
+I hardly feel up to Mr. James. I should have said Howells. Only nothing
+happens in that case!"
+
+"Oh, very well; that's the most comfortable way. If it's only Howells,
+there's no reason why I shouldn't go with Miss Graham to show her the
+view of Florence from the cypress grove up yonder."
+
+"No; he's very particular when he's on Italian ground," said Mrs.
+Amsden, rising. "You must come another time with Miss Graham, and bring
+Mrs. Bowen. It's quite time we were going home."
+
+The light under the limbs of the trees had begun to grow more liquid.
+The currents of warm breeze streaming through the cooler body of the air
+had ceased to ruffle the lakelet round the fountain, and the naiads rode
+their sea-horses through a perfect calm. A damp, pierced with the fresh
+odour of the water and of the springing grass, descended upon them. The
+saunterers through the different paths and alleys were issuing upon the
+main avenues, and tending in gathering force toward the gate.
+
+They found Mrs. Bowen's carriage there, and drove first to her house,
+beyond which Mrs. Amsden lived in a direct line. On the way Colville
+kept up with her the bantering talk that they always carried on
+together, and found in it a respite from the formless future pressing
+close upon him. He sat with Effie on the front seat, and he would not
+look at Imogene's face, which, nevertheless, was present to some inner
+vision. When the porter opened the iron gate below and rang Mrs. Bowen's
+bell, and Effie sprang up the stairs before them to give her mother the
+news of Mr. Colville's coming, the girl stole her hand into his.
+
+"Shall you--tell her?"
+
+"Of course. She must know without an instant's delay."
+
+"Yes, yes; that is right. Oh!--Shall I go with you?"
+
+"Yes; come!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Mrs. Bowen came in to them, looking pale and pain-worn, as she did that
+evening when she would not let Colville go away with the other
+tea-taking callers to whom she had made her headache an excuse. The
+eyelids which she had always a little difficulty in lifting were heavy
+with suffering, and her pretty smile had an effect of very great
+remoteness. But there was no consciousness of anything unusual or
+unexpected in his presence expressed in her looks or manner. Colville
+had meant to take Imogene by the hand and confront Mrs. Bowen with an
+immediate declaration of what had happened; but he found this
+impossible, at least in the form of his intention; he took, instead, the
+hand of conventional welcome which she gave him, and he obeyed her in
+taking provisionally the seat to which she invited him. At the same time
+the order of his words was dispersed in that wonder, whether she
+suspected anything, with which he listened to her placid talk about the
+weather; she said she had thought it was a chilly day outdoors; but her
+headaches always made her very sensitive.
+
+"Yes," said Colville, "I supposed it was cold myself till I went out,
+for I woke with a tinge of rheumatism." He felt a strong desire to
+excuse, to justify what had happened, and he went on, with a painful
+sense of Imogene's eyes bent in bewildered deference upon him. "I
+started out for a walk with Mr. Waters, but I left him after we got
+across the Ponte Vecchio; he went up to look at the Michelangelo
+bastions, and I strolled over to the Boboli Gardens--where I found your
+young people."
+
+He had certainly brought himself to the point, but he seemed actually
+further from it than at first, and he made a desperate plunge, trying at
+the same time to keep something of his habitual nonchalance. "But that
+doesn't account for my being here. Imogene accounts for that. She has
+allowed me to stay in Florence."
+
+Mrs. Bowen could not turn paler than her headache had left her, and she
+now underwent no change of complexion. But her throat was not clear
+enough to say to the end, "Allowed you to stay in--" The trouble in her
+throat arrested her again.
+
+Colville became very red. He put out his hand and took Imogene's, and
+now his eyes and Mrs. Bowen's met in the kind of glance in which people
+intercept and turn each other aside before they have reached a
+resting-place in each other's souls. But at the girl's touch his courage
+revived--in some physical sort. "Yes, and if she will let me stay with
+her, we are not going to part again."
+
+Mrs. Bowen did not answer at once, and in the hush Colville heard the
+breathing of all three.
+
+"Of course," he said, "we wished you to know at once, and I came in with
+Imogene to tell you."
+
+"What do you wish me," asked Mrs. Bowen, "to do?"
+
+Colville forced a nervous laugh. "Really, I'm so little used to this
+sort of affair that I don't know whether I have any wish. Imogene is
+here with you, and I suppose I supposed you would wish to do something."
+
+"I will do whatever you think best."
+
+"Thank you: that's very kind of you." He fell into a silence, in which
+he was able only to wish that he knew what was best, and from which he
+came to the surface with, "Imogene's family ought to know, of course."
+
+"Yes; they put her in my charge. They will have to know. Shall I write
+to them?"
+
+"Why, if you will."
+
+"Oh, certainly."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+He had taken to stroking with his right hand the hand of Imogene which
+he held in his left, and now he looked round at her with a glance which
+it was a relief not to have her meet. "And till we can hear from them, I
+suppose you will let me come to see her?"
+
+"You know you have always been welcome here."
+
+"Thank you very much." It seemed as if there ought to be something else
+to say, but Colville could not think of anything except: "We wish to act
+in every way with your approval, Mrs. Bowen. And I know that you are
+very particular in some things"--the words, now that they were said,
+struck him as unfortunate, and even vulgar--"and I shouldn't wish to
+annoy you--"
+
+"Oh, I understand. I think it will be--I have no doubt you will know how
+to manage all that. It isn't as if you were both--"
+
+"Young?" asked Colville. "No; one of us is quite old enough to be
+thoroughly up in the _convenances_. We are qualified, I'm afraid, as far
+as that goes," he added bitterly, "to set all Florence an example of
+correct behaviour."
+
+He knew there must be pain in the face which he would not look at; he
+kept looking at Mrs. Bowen's face, in which certainly there was not much
+pleasure, either.
+
+There was another silence, which became very oppressive before it ended
+in a question from Mrs. Bowen, who stirred slightly in her chair, and
+bent forward as if about to rise in asking it. "Shall you wish to
+consider it an engagement?"
+
+Colville felt Imogene's hand tremble in his, but he received no definite
+prompting from the tremor. "I don't believe I know what you mean."
+
+"I mean, till you have heard from Imogene's mother."
+
+"I hadn't thought of that. Perhaps under the circumstances--" The tremor
+died out of the hand he held; it lay lax between his. "What do you say,
+Imogene?"
+
+"I can't say anything. Whatever you think will be right--for me."
+
+"I wish to do what will seem right and fair to your mother."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Colville heaved a hopeless sigh. Then with a deep inward humiliation, he
+said, "Perhaps if you know Imogene's mother, Mrs. Bowen, you can
+suggest--advise--You--"
+
+"You must excuse me; I can't suggest or advise anything. I must leave
+you perfectly free." She rose from her chair, and they, both rose too
+from the sofa on which he had seated himself at Imogene's side. "I shall
+have to leave you, I'm afraid; my head aches still a little. Imogene!"
+She advanced toward the girl, who stood passively letting her come the
+whole distance. As if sensible of the rebuff expressed in this attitude,
+she halted a very little. Then she added, "I hope you will be very
+happy," and suddenly cast her arms round the girl, and stood long
+pressing her face into her neck. When she released her, Colville
+trembled lest she should be going to give him her hand in
+congratulation. But she only bowed slightly to him, with a sidelong,
+aversive glance, and walked out of the room with a slow, rigid pace,
+like one that controls a tendency to giddiness.
+
+Imogene threw herself on Colville's' breast. It gave him a shock, as if
+he were letting her do herself some wrong. But she gripped him fast, and
+began to sob and to cry. "Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+"What is it?--what is it, my poor girl?" he murmured. "Are you unhappy?
+Are you sorry? Let it all end, then!"
+
+"No, no; it isn't that! But I am very unhappy--yes, very, very unhappy!
+Oh, I didn't suppose I should ever feel so toward any one. I hate her!"
+
+"You hate her?" gasped Colville.
+
+"Yes, I hate her. And she--she is so good to me! It must be that I've
+done her some deadly wrong, without knowing it, or I couldn't hate her
+as I know I do."
+
+"Oh no," said Colville soothingly; "that's just your fancy. You haven't
+harmed her, and you don't hate her."
+
+"Yes, yes, I do! You can't understand how I feel toward her."
+
+"But you can't feel so toward her long," he urged, dealing as he might
+with what was wholly a mystery to him. She is so good--"
+
+"It only makes my badness worse, and makes me hate her more."
+
+"I don't understand. But you're excited now. When you're calmer you'll
+feel differently, of course. I've kept you restless and nervous a long
+time, poor child; but now our peace begins, and everything will be
+bright and--" He stopped: the words had such a very hollow sound.
+
+She pushed herself from him, and dried her eyes. "Oh yes."
+
+"And, Imogene--perhaps--perhaps--Or, no; never mind, now. I must go
+away--" She looked at him, frightened but submissive. "But I will be
+back to-night, or perhaps to-morrow morning. I want to think--to give
+you time to think. I don't want to be selfish about you--I want to
+consider you, all the more because you won't consider yourself.
+Good-bye." He stooped over and kissed her hair. Even in this he felt
+like a thief; he could not look at the face she lifted to his.
+
+Mrs. Bowen sent word from her room that she was not coming to dinner,
+and Imogene did not come till the dessert was put on. Then she found
+Effie Bowen sitting alone at the table, and served in serious formality
+by the man, whom she had apparently felt it right to repress, for they
+were both silent. The little girl had not known how to deny herself an
+excess of the less wholesome dishes, and she was perhaps anticipating
+the regret which this indulgence was to bring, for she was very pensive.
+
+"Isn't mamma coming at _all_?" she asked plaintively, when Imogene sat
+down, and refused everything but a cup of coffee. "Well," she went on,
+"I can't make out what is coming to this family. You were all crying
+last night because Mr. Colville was going away, and now, when he's going
+to stay, it's just as bad. I don't think you make it very pleasant for
+_him_. I should think he would be perfectly puzzled by it, after he's
+done so much to please you all. I don't believe he thinks it's very
+polite. I suppose it _is_ polite, but it doesn't seem so. And he's
+always so cheerful and nice. I should think he would want to visit in
+some family where there was more amusement. There used to be plenty in
+this family, but now it's as dismal! The first of the winter you and
+mamma used to be so pleasant when he came, and would try everything to
+amuse him, and would let me come in to get some of the good of it; but
+now you seem to fly every way as soon as he comes in sight of the house,
+and I'm poked off in holes and corners before he can open his lips. And
+I've borne it about as long as I can. I would rather be back in Vevay.
+Or anywhere." At this point her own pathos overwhelmed her, and the
+tears rolling down her cheeks moistened the crumbs of pastry at the
+corners of her pretty mouth. "What was so strange, I should like to
+know, about his staying, that mamma should pop up like a ghost, when I
+told her he had come home with us, and grab me by the wrist, and twitch
+me about, and ask me all sorts of questions I couldn't answer, and
+frighten me almost to death? I haven't got over it yet. And I don't
+think it's very nice. It used to be a very polite family, and pleasant
+with each other, and always having something agreeable going on in it;
+but if it keeps on very much longer in this way, I shall think the
+Bowens are beginning to lose their good-breeding. I suppose that if Mr.
+Colville were to go down on his knees to mamma and ask her to let him
+take me somewhere now, she wouldn't do it." She pulled her handkerchief
+out of her pocket, and dried her eyes on a ball of it. "I don't see what
+_you've_ been crying about, Imogene. _You've_ got nothing to worry you."
+
+"I'm not very well, Effie," returned the girl gently. "I haven't been
+well all day."
+
+"It seems to me that nobody is well any more. I don't believe Florence
+is a very healthy place. Or at least this house isn't. _I_ think it must
+be the drainage. If we keep on, I suppose we shall all have diphtheria.
+Don't you, Imogene?"
+
+"Yes," asserted the girl distractedly.
+
+"The girls had it at Vevay frightfully. And none of them were as strong
+afterward. Some of the parents came and took them away; but Madame
+Schebres never let mamma know. Do you think that was right?"
+
+"No; it was very wrong."
+
+"I suppose Mr. Colville will have it if we do. That is, if he keeps
+coming here. Is he coming any more?"
+
+"Yes; he's coming to-morrow morning."
+
+"_Is_ he?" A smile flickered over the rueful face. "What time is he
+coming?"
+
+"I don't know exactly," said Imogene, listlessly stirring her coffee.
+"Some time in the forenoon."
+
+"Do you suppose he's going to take us anywhere?"
+
+"Yes--I think so. I can't tell exactly."
+
+"If he asks me to go somewhere, will you tease mamma? She always lets
+you, Imogene, and it seems sometimes as if she just took a pleasure in
+denying me."
+
+"You mustn't talk so of your mother, Effie."
+
+"No; I wouldn't to _every_body. I know that she means for the best; but
+I don't believe she understands how much I suffer when she won't let me
+go with Mr. Colville. Don't you think he's about the nicest gentleman we
+know, Imogene?"
+
+"Yes; he's very kind."
+
+"And I think he's handsome. A good many people would consider him
+old-looking, and of course he isn't so young as Mr. Morton was, or the
+Inglehart boys; but that makes him all the easier to get along with. And
+his being just a little fat, that way, seems to suit so well with his
+character." The smiles were now playing across the child's face, and her
+eyes sparkling. "_I_ think Mr. Colville would make a good Saint
+Nicholas--the kind they have going down chimneys in America. I'm going
+to tell him, for the next veglione. It would be such a nice surprise."
+
+"No, better not tell him that," suggested Imogene.
+
+"Do you think he wouldn't like it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, it would become him. How old do you suppose he is, Imogene?
+Seventy-five?"
+
+"What an idea!" cried the girl fiercely. "He's forty-one."
+
+"I didn't know they had those little jiggering lines at the corners of
+their eyes so quick. But forty-one is pretty old, isn't it? Is Mr.
+Waters--"
+
+"Effie," said her mother's voice at the door behind her, "will you ring
+for Giovanni, and tell him to bring me a cup of coffee in here?" She
+spoke from the _portière_ of the _salotto_.
+
+"Yes, mamma. I'll bring it to you myself."
+
+"Thank you, dear," Mrs. Bowen called from within.
+
+The little girl softly pressed her hands together. "I _hope_ she'll let
+me stay up! I feel so excited, and I hate to lie and think so long
+before I get to sleep. Couldn't you just hint a little to her that I
+might stay up? It's Sunday night."
+
+"I can't, Effie," said Imogene. "I oughtn't to interfere with any of
+your mother's rules."
+
+The child sighed submissively and took the coffee that Giovanni brought
+to her. She and Imogene went into the _salotto_ together. Mrs. Bowen was
+at her writing-desk. "You can bring the coffee here, Effie," she said.
+
+"Must I go to bed at once, mamma?" asked the child, setting the cup
+carefully down.
+
+The mother looked distractedly up from her writing. "No; you may sit up
+a while," she said, looking back to her writing.
+
+"How long, mamma?" pleaded the little girl.
+
+"Oh, till you're sleepy. It doesn't matter _now_."
+
+She went on writing; from time to time she tore up what she had written.
+
+Effie softly took a book from the table, and perching herself on a
+stiff, high chair, bent over it and began to read.
+
+Imogene sat by the hearth, where a small fire was pleasant in the indoor
+chill of an Italian house, even after so warm a day as that had been.
+She took some large beads of the strand she wore about her neck into her
+mouth, and pulled at the strand listlessly with her hand while she
+watched the fire. Her eyes wandered once to the child.
+
+"What made you take such an uncomfortable chair, Effie?"
+
+Effie shut her book over her hand. "It keeps me wakeful longer," she
+whispered, with a glance at her mother from the corner of her eye.
+
+"I don't see why any one should wish to be wakeful," sighed the girl.
+
+When Mrs. Bowen tore up one of her half-written pages Imogene started
+nervously forward, and then relapsed again into her chair. At last Mrs.
+Bowen seemed to find the right phrases throughout, and she finished
+rather a long letter, and read it over to herself. Then she said,
+without leaving her desk, "Imogene, I've been trying to write to your
+mother. Will you look at this?"
+
+She held the sheet over her shoulder, and Imogene came languidly and
+took it; Mrs. Bowen dropped her face forward on the desk, into her
+hands, while Imogene was reading.
+
+"FLORENCE, _March_ 10, 18--
+
+"Dear Mrs. Graham,--I have some very important news to give you in
+regard to Imogene, and as there is no way of preparing you for it, I
+will tell you at once that it relates to her marriage.
+
+"She has met at my house a gentleman whom I knew in Florence when I was
+here before, and of whom I never knew anything but good. We have seen
+him very often, and I have seen nothing in him that I could not approve.
+He is Mr. Theodore Colville, of Prairie des Vaches, Indiana, where he
+was for many years a newspaper editor; but he was born somewhere in New
+England. He is a very cultivated, interesting man; and though not
+exactly a society man, he is very agreeable and refined in his manners.
+I am sure his character is irreproachable, though he is not a member of
+any church. In regard to his means I know nothing whatever, and can only
+infer from his way of life that he is in easy circumstances.
+
+"The whole matter has been a surprise to me, for Mr. Colville is some
+twenty-one or two years older than Imogene, who is very young in her
+feelings for a girl of her age. If I could have realised anything like a
+serious attachment between them sooner, I would have written before.
+Even now I do not know whether I am to consider them engaged or not. No
+doubt Imogene will write you more fully.
+
+"Of course I would rather not have had anything of the kind happen while
+Imogene was under my charge, though I am sure that you will not think I
+have been careless or imprudent about her. I interfered as far as I
+could, at the first moment I could, but it appears that it was then too
+late to prevent what has followed.--Yours sincerely, EVALINA BOWEN."
+
+
+Imogene read the letter twice over, and then she said, "Why isn't he a
+society man?"
+
+Probably Mrs. Bowen expected this sort of approach. "I don't think a
+society man would have undertaken to dance the Lancers as he did at
+Madam Uccelli's," she answered patiently, without lifting her head.
+
+Imogene winced, but "I should despise him if he were merely a society
+man," she said. "I have seen enough of them. I think it's better to be
+intellectual and good."
+
+Mrs. Bowen made no reply, and the girl went on. "And as to his being
+older, I don't see what difference it makes. If people are in sympathy,
+then they are of the same age, no difference how much older than one the
+other is. I have always heard that." She urged this as if it were a
+question.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"And how should his having been a newspaper editor be anything against
+him?"
+
+Mrs. Bowen lifted her face and stared at the girl in astonishment. "Who
+said it was against him?"
+
+"You hint as much. The whole letter is against him."
+
+"Imogene!"
+
+"Yes! Every word! You make him out perfectly detestable. I don't know
+why you should hate _him_, He's done everything he could to satisfy
+you."
+
+Mrs. Bowen rose from her desk, putting her hand to her forehead, as if
+to soften a shock of headache that her change of posture had sent there.
+"I will leave the letter with you, and you can send it or not as you
+think best. It's merely a formality, my writing to your mother. Perhaps
+you'll see it differently in the morning. Effie!" she called to the
+child, who with her book shut upon her hand had been staring at them and
+listening intently. "It's time to go to bed now."
+
+When Effie stood before the glass in her mother's room, and Mrs. Bowen
+was braiding her hair and tying it up for the night, she asked ruefully,
+"What's the matter with Imogene, mamma?"
+
+"She isn't very happy to-night."
+
+"You don't seem very happy either," said the child, watching her own
+face as it quivered in the mirror. "I should think that now Mr.
+Colville's concluded to stay, we would all be happy again. But we don't
+seem to. We're--we're perfectly demoralised!" It was one of the words
+she had picked up from Colville.
+
+The quivering face in the glass broke in a passion of tears, and Effie
+sobbed herself to sleep.
+
+Imogene sat down at Mrs. Bowen's desk, and pushing her letter away,
+began to write.
+
+"FLORENCE, _March_ 10, 18--.
+
+"DEAR MOTHER,---I inclose a letter from Mrs. Bowen which will tell you
+better than I can what I wish to tell. I do not see how I can add
+anything that would give you more of an idea of him, or less, either. No
+person can be put down in cold black and white, and not seem like a mere
+inventory. I do not suppose you expected me to become engaged when you
+sent me out to Florence, and, as Mrs. Bowen says, I don't know whether I
+am engaged or not. I will leave it entirely to Mr. Colville; if he says
+we are engaged, we are. I am sure he will do what is best. I only know
+that he was going away from Florence because he thought I supposed he
+was not in earnest, and I asked him to stay.
+
+"I am a good deal excited to-night, and cannot write very clearly. But I
+will write soon again, and more at length.
+
+"Perhaps something will be decided by that time. With much love to
+father,
+
+"Your affectionate daughter,
+
+"Imogene."
+
+She put this letter into an envelope with Mrs. Bowen's, and leaving it
+unsealed to show her in the morning, she began to write again. This time
+she wrote to a girl with whom she had been on terms so intimate that
+when they left school they had agreed to know each other by names
+expressive of their extremely confidential friendship, and to address
+each other respectively as Diary and Journal. They were going to write
+every day, if only a line or two; and at the end of a year they were to
+meet and read over together the records of their lives as set down in
+these letters. They had never met since, though it was now three years
+since they parted, and they had not written since Imogene came abroad;
+that is, Imogene had not answered the only letter she had received from
+her friend in Florence. This friend was a very serious girl, and had
+wished to be a minister, but her family would not consent, or even
+accept the compromise of studying medicine, which she proposed, and she
+was still living at home in a small city of central New York. Imogene
+now addressed her--
+
+"DEAR DIARY,--You cannot think how far away the events of this day have
+pushed the feelings and ideas of the time when I agreed to write to you
+under this name. Till now it seems to me as if I had not changed in the
+least thing since we parted, and now I can hardly know myself for the
+same person. O dear Di! something very wonderful has come into my life,
+and I feel that it rests with me to make it the greatest blessing to
+myself and others, or the greatest misery. If I prove unworthy of it or
+unequal to it, then I am sure that nothing but wretchedness will come of
+it.
+
+"I am engaged--yes!--and to a man more than twice my own age. It is so
+easy to tell you this, for I know that your large-mindedness will
+receive it very differently from most people, and that you will see it
+as I do. He is the noblest of men, though he tries to conceal it under
+the light, ironical manner with which he has been faithful to a cruel
+disappointment. It was here in Florence, twenty years ago, that a
+girl--I am ashamed to call her a girl--trifled with the priceless
+treasure that has fallen to me, and flung it away. You, Di, will
+understand how I was first fascinated with the idea of trying to atone
+to him here for all the wrong he had suffered. At first it was only the
+vaguest suggestion--something like what I had read in a poem or a
+novel--that had nothing to do with me personally, but it grew upon me
+more and more the more I saw of him, and felt the witchery of his light,
+indifferent manner, which I learned to see was tense with the anguish he
+had suffered. She had killed his youth; she had spoiled his life: if I
+could revive them, restore them! It came upon me like a great flash of
+light at last, and as soon as this thought took possession of me, I felt
+my whole being elevated and purified by it, and I was enabled to put
+aside with contempt the selfish considerations that had occurred to me
+at first. At first the difference between our ages was very shocking to
+me; for I had always imagined it would be some one young; but when this
+light broke upon me, I saw that _he_ was young, younger even than I, as
+a man is at the same age with a girl. Sometimes with my experiences, the
+fancies and flirtations that every one has and _must_ have, however one
+despises them, I felt so _old_ beside him; for he had been true to one
+love all his life, and he had not wavered for a moment. If I could make
+him forget it, if I could lift every feather's weight of sorrow from his
+breast, if I could help him to complete the destiny, grand and beautiful
+as it would have been, which another had arrested, broken off--don't you
+see, Di dear, how rich my reward would be?
+
+"And he, how forbearing, how considerate, how anxious for me, how full
+of generous warning he has been! always putting me in mind, at every
+step, of the difference in years between us; never thinking of himself,
+and shrinking so much from even seeming to control me or sway me, that I
+don't know really whether I have not made all the advances!
+
+"I cannot write his name yet, and you must not ask it till I can; and I
+cannot tell you anything about his looks or his life without seeming to
+degrade him, somehow, and make him a common man like others.
+
+"How can I make myself his companion in everything? How can I convince
+him that there is no sacrifice for me, and that he alone is giving up?
+These are the thoughts that keep whirling through my mind. I hope I
+shall be helped, and I hope that I shall be tried, for that is the only
+way for me to be helped. I feel strong enough for anything that people
+can say. I should _welcome_ criticism and opposition from any quarter.
+But I can see that _he_ is very sensitive--it comes from his keen sense
+of the ridiculous--and if I suffer, it will be on account of this grand
+unselfish nature, and I shall be glad of that.
+
+"I know you will understand me, Di, and I am not afraid of your laughing
+at these ravings. But if you did I should not care. It is such a comfort
+to say these things about him, to exalt him, and get him in the true
+light at last.
+
+"Your faithful JOURNAL.
+
+"I shall tell him about you, one of the first things, and perhaps he can
+suggest some way out of your trouble, he has had so much experience of
+every kind. You will worship him, as I do, when you see him; for you
+will feel at once that he understands you, and that is such a rest.
+
+"J."
+
+
+Before Imogene fell asleep, Mrs. Bowen came to her in the dark, and
+softly closed the door that opened from the girl's room into Effie's.
+She sat down on the bed, and began to speak at once, as if she knew
+Imogene must be awake. "I thought you would come to me, Imogene; but as
+you didn't, I have come to you, for if you can go to sleep with hard
+thoughts of me to-night, I can't let you. You need me for your friend,
+and I wish to be your friend; it would be wicked in me to be anything
+else; I would give the world if your mother were here; but I tried to
+make my letter to her everything that it should be. If you don't think
+it is, I will write it over in the morning."
+
+"No," said the girl coldly; "it will do very well. I don't wish to
+trouble you so much."
+
+"Oh, how can you speak so to me? Do you think that I blame Mr. Colville?
+Is that it? I don't ask you--I shall never ask you--how he came to
+remain, but I know that he has acted truthfully and delicately. I knew
+him long before you did, and no one need take his part with me." This
+was not perhaps what Mrs. Bowen meant to say when she began. "I have
+told you all along what I thought, but if you imagine that I am not
+satisfied with Mr. Colville, you are very much mistaken. I can't burst
+out into praises of him to your mother: that would be very patronising
+and very bad taste. Can't you see that it would?"
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+Mrs. Bowen lingered, as if she expected Imogene to say something more,
+but she did not, and Mrs. Bowen rose. "Then I hope we understand each
+other," she said, and went out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+When Colville came in the morning, Mrs. Bowen received him. They shook
+hands, and their eyes met in the intercepting glance of the night
+before.
+
+"Imogene will be here in a moment," she said, with a naturalness that
+made him awkward and conscious.
+
+"Oh, there is no haste," he answered uncouthly. "That is, I am very glad
+of the chance to speak a moment with you, and to ask your--to profit by
+what you think best. I know you are not very well pleased with me, and I
+don't know that I can ever put myself in a better light with you--the
+true light. It seems that there are some things we must not do even for
+the truth's sake. But that's neither here nor there. What I am most
+anxious for is not to take a shadow of advantage of this child's--of
+Imogene's inexperience, and her remoteness from her family. I feel that
+I must in some sort protect her from herself. Yes--that is my idea. But
+I have to do this in so many ways that I hardly know how to begin. I
+should be very willing, if you thought best, to go away and stay away
+till she has heard from her people, and let her have that time to think
+it all over again. She is very young--so much younger than I! Or, if you
+thought it better, I would stay, and let her remain free while I held
+myself bound to any decision of hers. I am anxious to do what is right.
+At the same time"--he smiled ruefully--"there is such a thing as being
+so _dis_interested that one may seem _un_interested. I may leave her so
+very free that she may begin to suspect that I want a little freedom
+myself. What shall I do? I wish to act with your approval."
+
+Mrs. Bowen had listened with acquiescence and intelligence that might
+well have looked like sympathy, as she sat fingering the top of her
+hand-screen, with her eyelids fallen. She lifted them to say, "I have
+told you that I will not advise you in any way. I cannot. I have no
+longer any wish in this matter. I must still remain in the place of
+Imogene's mother; but I will do only what you wish. Please understand
+that, and don't ask me for advice any more. It is painful." She drew her
+lower lip in a little, and let the screen fall into her lap.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bowen, to do anything--say anything--that is painful to
+you," Colville began. "You know that I would give the world to please
+you----" The words escaped him and left him staring at her.
+
+"What are you saying to me, Theodore Colville?" she exclaimed, flashing
+a full-eyed glance upon him, and then breaking into a laugh, as
+unnatural for her. "Really, I don't believe you know!"
+
+"Heaven knows I meant nothing but what I said," he answered, struggling
+stupidly with a confusion of desires which every man but no woman will
+understand. After eighteen hundred years, the man is still imperfectly
+monogamous. "Is there anything wrong in it?"
+
+"Oh no! Not for you," she said scornfully.
+
+"I am very much in earnest," he went on hopelessly, "in asking your
+opinion, your help, in regard to how I shall treat this affair."
+
+"And I am still more in earnest in telling you that I will give you no
+opinion, no help. I forbid you to recur to the subject." He was silent,
+unable to drop his eyes from hers. "But for her," continued Mrs. Bowen,
+"I will do anything in my power. If she asks my advice I will give it,
+and I will give her all the help I can."
+
+"Thank you," said Colville vaguely.
+
+"I will not have your thanks," promptly retorted Mrs. Bowen, "for I mean
+you no kindness. I am trying to do my duty to Imogene, and when that is
+ended, all is ended. There is no way now for you to please me--as you
+call it--except to keep her from regretting what she has done."
+
+"Do you think I shall fail in that?" he demanded indignantly.
+
+"I can offer you no opinion. I can't tell what you will do."
+
+"There are two ways of keeping her from regretting what she has done;
+and perhaps the simplest and best way would be to free her from the
+consequences, as far as they're involved in me," said Colville.
+
+Mrs. Bowen dropped herself back in her armchair. "If you choose to force
+these things upon me, I am a woman, and can't help myself. Especially, I
+can't help myself against a guest."
+
+"Oh, I will relieve you of my presence," said Colville. "I've no wish to
+force anything upon you--least of all myself." He rose, and moved toward
+the door.
+
+She hastily intercepted him. "Do you think I will let you go without
+seeing Imogene? Do you understand me so little as that? It's _too late_
+for you to go! You know what I think of all this, and I know, better
+than you, what you think. I shall play my part, and you shall play
+yours. I have refused to give you advice or help, and I never shall do
+it. But I know what my duty to her is, and I will fulfil it. No matter
+how distasteful it is to either of us, you must come here as before. The
+house is as free to you as ever--freer. And we are to be as good friends
+as ever--better. You can see Imogene alone or in my presence, and, as
+far as I am concerned, you shall consider yourself engaged or not, as
+you choose. Do you understand?"
+
+"Not in the least," said Colville, in the ghost of his old bantering
+manner. "But don't explain, or I shall make still less of it."
+
+"I mean simply that I do it for Imogene and not for you."
+
+"Oh, I understand that you don't do it for me."
+
+At this moment Imogene appeared between the folds of the _portière_, and
+her timid, embarrassed glance from Mrs. Bowen to Colville was the first
+gleam of consolation that had visited him since he parted with her the
+night before. A thrill of inexplicable pride and fondness passed through
+his heart, and even the compunction that followed could not spoil its
+sweetness. But if Mrs. Bowen discreetly turned her head aside that she
+need not witness a tender greeting between them, the precaution was
+unnecessary. He merely went forward and took the girl's hand, with a
+sigh of relief. "Good morning, Imogene," he said, with a kind of
+compassionate admiration.
+
+"Good morning," she returned half-inquiringly.
+
+She did not take a seat near him, and turned, as if for instruction, to
+Mrs. Bowen. It was probably the force of habit. In any case, Mrs.
+Bowen's eyes gave no response. She bowed slightly to Colville, and
+began, "I must leave Imogene to entertain you for the present, Mr.--"
+
+"No!" cried the girl impetuously; "don't go." Mrs. Bowen stopped. "I
+wish to speak with you--with you and Mr. Colville together. I wish to
+say--I don't know how to say it exactly; but I wish to know--You asked
+him last night, Mrs. Bowen, whether he wished to consider it an
+engagement?"
+
+"I thought perhaps you would rather hear from your mother--"
+
+"Yes, I would be glad to know that my mother approved; but if she
+didn't, I couldn't help it. Mr. Colville said he was bound, but I was
+not. That can't be. I _wish_ to be bound, if he is."
+
+"I don't quite know what you expect me to say."
+
+"Nothing," said Imogene. "I merely wished you to know. And I don't wish
+you to sacrifice anything to us. If you think best, Mr. Colville will
+not see me till I hear from home; though it won't make any difference
+with me _what_ I hear."
+
+"There's no reason why you shouldn't meet," said Mrs. Bowen absently.
+
+"If you wish it to have the same appearance as an Italian
+engagement----"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Bowen, putting her hand to her head with a gesture she
+had; "that would be quite unnecessary. It would be ridiculous under the
+circumstances. I have thought of it, and I have decided that the
+American way is the best."
+
+"Very well, then," said Imogene, with the air of summing up; "then the
+only question is whether we shall make it known or not to other people."
+
+This point seemed to give Mrs. Bowen greater pause than any. She was a
+long time silent, and Colville saw that Imogene was beginning to chafe
+at her indecision. Yet he did not see the moment to intervene in a
+debate in which he found himself somewhat ludicrously ignored, as if the
+affair were solely the concern of these two women, and none of his.
+
+"Of course, Mrs. Bowen," said the girl haughtily, "if it will be
+disagreeable to you to have it known----"
+
+Mrs. Bowen blushed delicately--a blush of protest and of generous
+surprise, or so it seemed to Colville. "I was not thinking of myself,
+Imogene. I only wish to consider you. And I was thinking whether, at
+this distance from home, you wouldn't prefer to have your family's
+approval before you made it known."
+
+"I am sure of their approval. Father will do what mother says, and she
+has always said that she would never interfere with me in--in--such a
+thing."
+
+"Perhaps you would like all the more, then, to show her the deference of
+waiting for her consent."
+
+Imogene started as if stopped short in swift career; it was not hard for
+Colville to perceive that she saw for the first time the reverse side of
+a magnanimous impulse. She suddenly turned to him.
+
+"I think Mrs. Bowen is right," he said gravely, in answer to the eyes of
+Imogene. He continued, with a flicker of his wonted mood: "You must
+consider me a little in the matter. I have some small shreds of
+self-respect about me somewhere, and I would rather not be put in the
+attitude of defying your family, or ignoring them."
+
+"No," said Imogene, in the same effect of arrest.
+
+"When it isn't absolutely necessary," continued Colville. "Especially as
+you say there will be no opposition."
+
+"Of course," Imogene assented; and in fact what he said was very just,
+and he knew it; but he could perceive that he had suffered loss with
+her. A furtive glance at Mrs. Bowen did not assure him that he had made
+a compensating gain in that direction, where, indeed, he had no right to
+wish for any.
+
+"Well, then," the girl went on, "it shall be so. We will wait. It will
+only be waiting. I ought to have thought of you before; I make a bad
+beginning," she said tremulously. "I supposed I was thinking of you; but
+I see that I was only thinking of myself." The tears stood in her eyes.
+Mrs. Bowen, quite overlooked in this apology, slipped from the room.
+
+"Imogene!" said Colville, coming toward her.
+
+She dropped herself upon his shoulder. "Oh, why, why, why am I so
+miserable?"
+
+"Miserable, Imogene!" he murmured, stroking her beautiful hair.
+
+"Yes, yes! Utterly miserable! It must be because I'm unworthy of
+you--unequal every way. If you think so, cast me off at once. Don't be
+weakly merciful!"
+
+The words pierced his heart. "I would give the world to make you happy,
+my child!" he said, with perfidious truth, and a sigh that came from the
+bottom of his soul. "Sit down here by me," he said, moving to the sofa;
+and with whatever obscure sense of duty to her innocent self-abandon, he
+made a space between them, and reduced her embrace to a clasp of the
+hand she left with him. "Now tell me," he said, "what is it makes you
+unhappy?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she answered, drying her averted eyes. "I suppose I
+am overwrought from not sleeping, and from thinking how we should
+arrange it all."
+
+"And now that it's all arranged, can't you be cheerful again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're satisfied with the way we've arranged it? Because if--"
+
+"Oh, perfectly--perfectly!" She hastily interrupted. "I wouldn't have it
+otherwise. Of course," she added, "it wasn't very pleasant having some
+one else suggest what I ought to have thought of myself, and seem more
+delicate about you than I was."
+
+"Some one else?"
+
+"You know! Mrs. Bowen."
+
+"Oh! But I couldn't see that she was anxious to spare me. It occurred to
+me that she was concerned about your family."
+
+"It led up to the other! it's all the same thing."
+
+"Well, even in that case, I don't see why you should mind it. It was
+certainly very friendly of her, and I know that she has your interest at
+heart entirely."
+
+"Yes; she knows how to make it seem so."
+
+Colville hesitated in bewilderment. "Imogene!" he cried at last, "I
+don't understand this. Don't you think Mrs. Bowen likes you?"
+
+"She detests me."
+
+"Oh, no, no, no! That's too cruel an error. You mustn't think that. I
+can't let you. It's morbid. I'm sure that she's devotedly kind and good
+to you."
+
+"Being kind and good isn't liking. I know what she thinks. But of course
+I can't expect to convince you of it; no one else could see it."
+
+"No!" said Colville, with generous fervour. "Because it doesn't exist
+and you mustn't imagine it. You are as sincerely and unselfishly
+regarded in this house as you could be in your own home. I'm sure of
+that. I know Mrs. Bowen. She has her little worldlinesses and
+unrealities of manner, but she is truth and loyalty itself. She would
+rather die than be false, or even unfair. I knew her long ago--"
+
+"Yes," cried the girl, "long before you knew me!"
+
+"And I know her to be the soul of honour," said Colville, ignoring the
+childish outburst. "Honour--like a man's," he added. "And, Imogene, I
+want you to promise me that you'll not think of her any more in that
+way. I want you to think of her as faithful and loving to you, for she
+is so. Will you do it?"
+
+Imogene did not answer him at once. Then she turned upon him a face of
+radiant self-abnegation. "I will do anything you tell me. Only tell me
+things to do."
+
+The next time he came he again saw Mrs. Bowen alone before Imogene
+appeared. The conversation was confined to two sentences.
+
+"Mr. Colville," she said, with perfectly tranquil point, while she
+tilted a shut book to and fro on her knee, "I will thank you not to
+defend me."
+
+Had she overheard? Had Imogene told her? He answered, in a fury of
+resentment for her ingratitude that stupefied him. "I will never speak
+of you again."
+
+Now they were enemies; he did not know how or why, but he said to
+himself, in the bitterness of his heart, that it was better so; and when
+Imogene appeared, and Mrs. Bowen vanished, as she did without another
+word to him, he folded the girl in a vindictive embrace.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, pushing away from him.
+
+"With me?"
+
+"Yes; you seem so excited."
+
+"Oh, nothing," he said, shrinking from the sharpness of that scrutiny in
+a woman's eyes, which, when it begins the perusal of a man's soul,
+astonishes and intimidates him; he never perhaps becomes able to endure
+it with perfect self-control. "I suppose a slight degree of excitement
+in meeting you may be forgiven me." He smiled under the unrelaxed
+severity of her gaze.
+
+"Was Mrs. Bowen saying anything about me?"
+
+"Not a word," said Colville, glad of getting back to the firm truth
+again, even if it were mere literality.
+
+"We have made it up," she said, her scrutiny changing to a lovely appeal
+for his approval. "What there was to make up."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I told her what you had said. And now it's all right between us, and
+you mustn't be troubled at that any more. I did it to please you."
+
+She seemed to ask him with the last words whether she really had pleased
+him, as if something in his aspect suggested a doubt; and he hastened to
+reassure her. "That was very good of you. I appreciate it highly. It's
+extremely gratifying."
+
+She broke into a laugh of fond derision. "I don't believe you really
+cared about it, or else you're not thinking about it now. Sit down here;
+I want to tell you of something I've thought out." She pulled him to the
+sofa, and put his arm about her waist, with a simple fearlessness and
+matter-of-course promptness that made him shudder. He felt that he ought
+to tell her not to do it, but he did not quite know how without wounding
+her. She took hold of his hand and drew his lax arm taut. Then she
+looked up into his eyes, as if some sense of his misgiving had conveyed
+itself to her, but she did not release her hold of his hand.
+
+"Perhaps we oughtn't, if we're not engaged?" she suggested, with such
+utter trust in him as made his heart quake.
+
+"Oh," he sighed, from a complexity of feeling that no explanation could
+wholly declare, "we're engaged enough for that, I suppose."
+
+"I'm glad you think so," she answered innocently. "I knew you wouldn't
+let me if it were not right." Having settled the question, "Of course,"
+she continued, "we shall all do our best to keep our secret; but in
+spite of everything it may get out. Do you see?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, of course it will make a great deal of remark."
+
+"Oh yes; you must be prepared for that, Imogene," said Colville, with as
+much gravity as he could make comport with his actual position.
+
+"I am prepared for it, and prepared to despise it," answered the girl.
+"I shall have no trouble except the fear that you will mind it." She
+pressed his hand as if she expected him to say something to this.
+
+"I shall never care for it," he said, and this was true enough. "My only
+care will be to keep you from regretting. I have tried from the first to
+make you see that I was very much older than you. It would be miserable
+enough if you came to see it too late."
+
+"I have never seen it, and I never shall see it, because there's no such
+difference between us. It isn't the years that make us young or old--who
+is it says that? No matter, it's true. And I want you to believe it. I
+want you to feel that I am your youth--the youth you were robbed
+of--given back to you. Will you do it? Oh, if you could, I should be the
+happiest girl in the world." Tears of fervour dimmed the beautiful eyes
+which looked into his. "Don't speak!" she hurried on. "I won't let you
+till I have said it all. It's been this idea, this hope, with me
+always--ever since I knew what happened to you here long ago--that you
+might go back in my life and take up yours where it was broken off; that
+I might make your life what it would have been--complete your destiny--"
+
+Colville wrenched himself loose from the hold that had been growing more
+tenderly close and clinging. "And do you think I could be such a vampire
+as to let you? Yes, yes; I have had my dreams of such a thing; but I see
+now how hideous they were. You shall make no such sacrifice to me. You
+must put away the fancies that could never be fulfilled, or if by some
+infernal magic they could, would only bring sorrow to you and shame to
+me. God forbid! And God forgive me, if I have done or said anything to
+put this in your head! And thank God it isn't too late yet for you to
+take yourself back."
+
+"Oh," she murmured. "Do you think it is self-sacrifice for me to give
+myself to you? It's self-glorification! You don't understand--I haven't
+told you what I mean, or else I've told it in such a way that I've made
+it hateful to you. Do you think I don't care for you except to be
+something to you? I'm not so generous as that. You are all the world to
+me. If I take myself back from you, as you say, what shall I do with
+myself?"
+
+"Has it come to that?" asked Colville. He sat down again with her, and
+this time he put his arm around her and drew her to him, but it seemed
+to him he did it as if she were his child. "I was going to tell you just
+now that each of us lived to himself in this world, and that no one
+could hope to enter into the life of another and complete it. But now I
+see that I was partly wrong. We two are bound together, Imogene, and
+whether we become all in all or nothing to each other, we can have no
+separate fate."
+
+The girl's eyes kindled with rapture. "Then let us never speak of it
+again. I was going to say something, but now I won't say it."
+
+"Yes, say it."
+
+"No; it will make you think that I am anxious on my own account about
+appearances before people."
+
+"You poor child, I shall never think you are anxious on your own account
+about anything. What were you going to say?"
+
+"Oh, nothing! It was only--are you invited to the Phillipses' fancy
+ball?"
+
+"Yes," said Colville, silently making what he could of the diversion, "I
+believe so."
+
+"And are you going--did you mean to go?" she asked timidly.
+
+"Good heavens, no! What in the world should I do at another fancy ball?
+I walked about with the airy grace of a bull in a china shop at the last
+one."
+
+Imogene did not smile. She faintly sighed. "Well, then, I won't go
+either."
+
+"Did you intend to go?"
+
+"Oh no!"
+
+"Why, of course you did, and it's very right you should. Did you want me
+to go?"
+
+"It would bore you."
+
+"Not if you're there." She gave his hand a grateful pressure. "Come,
+I'll go, of course, Imogene. A fancy ball to please you is a very
+different thing from a fancy ball in the abstract."
+
+"Oh, what nice things you say! Do you know, I always admired your
+compliments? I think they're the most charming compliments in the
+world."
+
+"I don't think they're half so pretty as yours; but they're more
+sincere."
+
+"No, honestly. They flatter, and at the same time they make fun of the
+flattery a little; they make a person feel that you like them, even
+while you laugh at them."
+
+"They appear to be rather an intricate kind of compliment--sort of
+_salsa agradolce_ affair--tutti frutti style--species of moral
+mayonnaise."
+
+"No--be quiet! You know what I mean. What were we talking about? Oh! I
+was going to say that the most fascinating thing about you always was
+that ironical way of yours."
+
+"Have I an ironical way? You were going to tell me something more about
+the fancy ball."
+
+"I don't care for it. I would rather talk about you."
+
+"And I prefer the ball. It's a fresher topic--to me."
+
+"Very well, then. But this I will say. No matter how happy you should
+be, I should always want you to keep that tone of persiflage. You've no
+idea how perfectly intoxicating it is."
+
+"Oh yes, I have. It seems to have turned the loveliest and wisest head
+in the world."
+
+"Oh, do you really think so? I would give anything if you did."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Think I was pretty," she pleaded, with full eyes. "Do you?"
+
+"No, but I think you are wise. Fifty per cent, of truth--it's a large
+average in compliments. What are you going to wear?"
+
+"Wear? Oh! At the ball! Something Egyptian, I suppose. It's to be an
+Egyptian ball. Didn't you understand that?"
+
+"Oh yes. But I supposed you could go in any sort of dress."
+
+"You can't. You must go in some Egyptian character."
+
+"How would Moses do? In the bulrushes, you know. You could be Pharaoh's
+daughter, and recognise me by my three hats. And toward the end of the
+evening, when I became very much bored, I could go round killing
+Egyptians."
+
+"No, no. Be serious. Though I like you to joke, too. I shall always want
+you to joke. Shall you, always?"
+
+"There may be emergencies when I shall fail--like family prayers, and
+grace before meat, and dangerous sickness."
+
+"Why, of course. But I mean when we're together, and there's no reason
+why you shouldn't?"
+
+"Oh, at such times I shall certainly joke."
+
+"And before people, too! I won't have them saying that it's sobered
+you--that you used to be very gay, and now you're cross, and never say
+anything."
+
+"I will try to keep it up sufficiently to meet the public demand."
+
+"And I shall want you to joke me, too. You must satirise me. It does
+more to show me my faults than anything else, and it will show other
+people how perfectly submissive I am, and how I think everything you do
+is just right."
+
+"If I were to beat you a little in company, don't you think it would
+serve the same purpose?"
+
+"No, no; be serious."
+
+"About joking?"
+
+"No, about me. I know that I'm very intense, and you must try to correct
+that tendency in me."
+
+"I will, with pleasure. Which of my tendencies are you going to
+correct?"
+
+"You have none."
+
+"Well, then, neither have you. I'm not going to be outdone in
+civilities."
+
+"Oh, if people could only hear you talk in this light way, and then know
+what _I_ know!"
+
+Colville broke out into a laugh at the deep sigh which accompanied these
+words. As a whole, the thing was grotesque and terrible to him, but
+after a habit of his, he was finding a strange pleasure in its details.
+
+"No, no," she pleaded. "Don't laugh. There are girls that would give
+their eyes for it."
+
+"As pretty eyes as yours?"
+
+"Do you think they're nice?"
+
+"Yes, if they were not so mysterious."
+
+"Mysterious?"
+
+"Yes, I feel that your eyes can't really be as honest as they look. That
+was what puzzled me about them the first night I saw you."
+
+"No--did it, really?"
+
+"I went home saying to myself that no girl could be so sincere as that
+Miss Graham seemed."
+
+"Did you say that?"
+
+"Words to that effect."
+
+"And what do you think now?"
+
+"Ah, I don't know. You had better go as the Sphinx."
+
+Imogene laughed in simple gaiety of heart.
+
+"How far we've got from the ball!" she said, as if the remote excursion
+were a triumph. "What shall we really go as?"
+
+"Isis and Osiris."
+
+"Weren't they gods of some kind?"
+
+"Little one-horse deities--not very much."
+
+"It won't do to go as gods of any kind. They're always failures. People
+expect too much of them."
+
+"Yes," said Colville. "That's human nature under all circumstances. But
+why go to an Egyptian ball at all?"
+
+"Oh, we must go. If we both stayed away it would make talk at once, and
+my object is to keep people in the dark till the very last moment. Of
+course it's unfortunate your having told Mrs. Amsden that you were going
+away, and then telling her just after you came back with me that you
+were going to stay. But it can't be helped now. And I don't really care
+for it. But don't you see why I want you to go to all these things?"
+
+"All these things?"
+
+"Yes, everything you're invited to after this. It's not merely for a
+blind as regards ourselves now, but if they see that you're very fond of
+all sorts of gaieties, they will see that you are--they will
+understand----"
+
+There was no need for her to complete the sentence. Colville rose.
+"Come, come, my dear child," he said, "why don't you end all this at
+once? I don't blame you. Heaven knows I blame no one but myself! I ought
+to have the strength to break away from this mistake, but I haven't. I
+couldn't bear to see you suffer from pain that I should give you even
+for your good. But do it yourself, Imogene, and for pity's sake don't
+forbear from any notion of sparing me. I have no wish except for your
+happiness, and now I tell you clearly that no appearance we can put on
+before the world will deceive the world. At the end of all our trouble I
+shall still be forty----"
+
+She sprang to him and put her hand over his mouth. "I know what you're
+going to say, and I won't let you say it, for you've promised over and
+over again not to speak of that any more. Oh, do you think I care for
+the world, or what it will think or say?"
+
+"Yes, very much."
+
+"That shows how little you understand me. It's because I wish to _defy_
+the world--"
+
+"Imogene! Be as honest with yourself as you are with me."
+
+"I _am_ honest."
+
+"Look me in the eyes, then."
+
+She did so for an instant, and then hid her face on his shoulder.
+
+"You silly girl," he said. "What is it you really do wish?"
+
+"I wish there was no one in the world but you and me."
+
+"Ah, you'd find it very crowded at times," said Colville sadly. "Well,
+well," he added, "I'll go to your fandangoes, because you want me to
+go."
+
+"That's all I wished you to say," she replied, lifting her head, and
+looking him radiantly in the face. "I don't want you to go at all! I
+only want you to promise that you'll come here every night that you're
+invited out, and read to Mrs. Bowen and me."
+
+"Oh, I can't do that," said Colville; "I'm too fond of society. For
+example, I've been invited to an Egyptian fancy ball, and I couldn't
+think of giving that up."
+
+"Oh, how delightful you are! They couldn't any of them talk like you."
+
+He had learned to follow the processes of her thought now. "Perhaps they
+can when they come to my age."
+
+"There!" she exclaimed, putting her hand on his mouth again, to remind
+him of another broken promise. "Why can't you give up the Egyptian
+ball?"
+
+"Because I expect to meet a young lady there--a very beautiful young
+lady."
+
+"But how shall you know her if she's disguised?"
+
+"Why, I shall be disguised too, you know."
+
+"Oh, what delicious nonsense you _do_ talk! Sit down here and tell me
+what you are going to wear."
+
+She tried to pull him back to the sofa. "What character shall you go
+in?"
+
+"No, no," he said, resisting the gentle traction. "I can't; I have
+urgent business down-town."
+
+"Oh! Business in _Florence!"_
+
+"Well, if I stayed, I should tell you what disguise I'm going to the
+ball in."
+
+"I knew it was that. What do you think would be a good character for
+me?"
+
+"I don't know. The serpent of old Nile would be pretty good for you."
+
+"Oh, I know you don't think it!" she cried fondly. She had now let him
+take her hand, and he stood holding it at arm's-length. Effie Bowen came
+into the room. "Good-bye," said Imogene, with an instant assumption of
+society manner.
+
+"Good-bye," said Colville, and went out.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Colville!" she called, before he got to the outer door.
+
+"Yes," he said, starting back.
+
+She met him midway of the dim corridor. "Only to--" She put her arms
+about his neck and sweetly kissed him.
+
+Colville went out into the sunlight feeling like some strange, newly
+invented kind of scoundrel--a rascal of such recent origin and
+introduction that he had not yet had time to classify himself and
+ascertain the exact degree of his turpitude. The task employed his
+thoughts all that day, and kept him vibrating between an instinctive
+conviction of monstrous wickedness and a logical and well-reasoned
+perception that he had all the facts and materials for a perfectly good
+conscience. He was the betrothed lover of this poor child, whose
+affection he could not check without a degree of brutality for which
+only a better man would have the courage. When he thought of perhaps
+refusing her caresses, he imagined the shock it would give her, and the
+look of grief and mystification that would come into her eyes, and he
+found himself incapable of that cruel rectitude. He knew that these were
+the impulses of a white and loving soul; but at the end of all his
+argument they remained a terror to him, so that he lacked nothing but
+the will to fly from Florence and shun her altogether till she had heard
+from her family. This, he recalled, with bitter self-reproach was what
+had been his first inspiration; he had spoken of it to Mrs. Bowen, and
+it had still everything in its favour except that it was impossible.
+
+Imogene returned to the salotto, where the little girl was standing with
+her face to the window, drearily looking out; her back expressed an
+inner desolation which revealed itself in her eyes when Imogene caught
+her head between her hands, and tilted up her face to kiss it.
+
+"What is the matter, Effie?" she demanded gaily.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Oh yes, there is."
+
+"Nothing that you will care for. As long as he's pleasant to you, you
+don't care what he does to me."
+
+"What has he done to you?"
+
+"He didn't take the slightest notice of me when I came into the room. He
+didn't speak to me, or even look at me."
+
+Imogene caught the little grieving, quivering face to her breast "He is
+a wicked, wicked wretch! And I will give him the awfulest scolding he
+ever had when he comes here again. I will teach him to neglect my pet. I
+will let him understand that if he doesn't notice you, he needn't notice
+me. I will tell you, Effie--I've just thought of a way. The next time he
+comes we will both receive him. We will sit up very stiffly on the sofa
+together, and just answer Yes, No, Yes, No, to everything he says, till
+he begins to take the hint, and learns how to behave himself. Will you?"
+
+A smile glittered through the little girl's tears; but she asked, "Do
+you think it would be very polite?"
+
+"No matter, polite or not, it's what he deserves. Of course, as soon as
+he begins to take the hint, we will be just as we always are."
+
+Imogene despatched a note, which Colville got the next morning, to tell
+him of his crime, and apprise him of his punishment, and of the sweet
+compunction that had pleaded for him in the breast of the child. If he
+did not think he could help play the comedy through, he must come
+prepared to offer Effie some sort of atonement.
+
+It was easy to do this: to come with his pockets full of presents, and
+take the little girl on his lap, and pour out all his troubled heart in
+the caresses and tendernesses which would bring him no remorse. He
+humbled himself to her thoroughly, and with a strange sincerity in the
+harmless duplicity, and promised, if she would take him back into
+favour, that he would never offend again. Mrs. Bowen had sent word that
+she was not well enough to see him; she had another of her headaches;
+and he sent back a sympathetic and respectful message by Effie, who
+stood thoughtfully at her mother's pillow after she had delivered it,
+fingering the bouquet Colville had brought her, and putting her head
+first on this side, and then on that to admire it.
+
+"I think Mr. Colville and Imogene are much more affectionate than they
+used to be," she said.
+
+Mrs. Bowen started up on her elbow. "What do you mean, Effie?"
+
+"Oh, they're both so good to me."
+
+"Yes," said her mother, dropping back to her pillow. "Both?"
+
+"Yes; he's the _most_ affectionate."
+
+The mother turned her face the other way. "Then he must be," she
+murmured.
+
+"What?" asked the child.
+
+"Nothing. I didn't know I spoke."
+
+The little girl stood a while still playing with her flowers. "I think
+Mr. Colville is about the pleasantest gentleman that comes here. Don't
+you, mamma?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He's so interesting, and says such nice things. I don't know whether
+children ought to think of such things, but I wish I was going to marry
+some one like Mr. Colville. Of course I should want to be tolerably old
+if I did. How old do you think a person ought to be to marry him?"
+
+"You mustn't talk of such things, Effie," said her mother.
+
+"No; I suppose it isn't very nice." She picked out a bud in her bouquet,
+and kissed it; then she held the nosegay at arm's-length before her, and
+danced away with it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+In the ensuing fortnight a great many gaieties besides the Egyptian ball
+took place, and Colville went wherever he and Imogene were both invited.
+He declined the quiet dinners which he liked, and which his hearty
+appetite and his habit of talk fitted him to enjoy, and accepted
+invitations to all sorts of evenings and At Homes, where dancing
+occupied a modest corner of the card, and usurped the chief place in the
+pleasures. At these places it was mainly his business to see Imogene
+danced with by others, but sometimes he waltzed with her himself, and
+then he was complimented by people of his own age, who had left off
+dancing, upon his vigour. They said they could not stand that sort of
+thing, though they supposed, if you kept yourself in practice, it did
+not come so hard. One of his hostesses, who had made a party for her
+daughters, told him that he was an example to everybody, and that if
+middle-aged people at home mingled more in the amusements of the young,
+American society would not be the silly, insipid, boy-and-girl affair
+that it was now. He went to these places in the character of a young
+man, but he was not readily accepted or recognised in that character.
+They gave him frumps to take out to supper, mothers and maiden aunts,
+and if the mothers were youngish, they threw off on him, and did not
+care for his talk.
+
+At one of the parties Imogene seemed to become aware for the first time
+that the lapels of his dress-coat were not faced with silk.
+
+"Why don't you have them so?" she asked. "All the _other_ young men
+have. And you ought to wear a _boutonnière_."
+
+"Oh, I think a man looks rather silly in silk lapels at my--" He
+arrested himself, and then continued: "I'll see what the tailor can do
+for me. In the meantime, give me a bud out of your bouquet."
+
+"How sweet you are!" she sighed. "You do the least thing so that it is
+ten times as good as if any one else did it."
+
+The same evening, as he stood leaning against a doorway, behind Imogene
+and a young fellow with whom she was beginning a quadrille, he heard her
+taking him to task.
+
+"Why do you say 'Sir' to Mr. Colville?"
+
+"Well, I know the English laugh at us for doing it, and say it's like
+servants; but I never feel quite right answering just 'Yes' and 'No' to
+a man of his age."
+
+This was one of the Inglehart boys, whom he met at nearly all of these
+parties, and not all of whom were so respectful. Some of them treated
+him upon an old-boy theory, joking him as freely as if he were one of
+themselves, laughing his antiquated notions of art to scorn, but
+condoning them because he was good-natured, and because a man could not
+help being of his own epoch anyway. They put a caricature of him among
+the rest on the walls of their _trattoria_, where he once dined with
+them.
+
+Mrs. Bowen did not often see him when he went to call upon Imogene, and
+she was not at more than two or three of the parties. Mrs. Amsden came
+to chaperon the girl, and apparently suffered an increase of unrequited
+curiosity in regard to his relations to the Bowen household, and the
+extraordinary development of his social activity. Colville not only went
+to all those evening parties, but he was in continual movement during
+the afternoon at receptions and at "days," of which he began to think
+each lady had two or three. Here he drank tea, cup after cup, in
+reckless excitement, and at night when he came home from the dancing
+parties, dropping with fatigue, he could not sleep till toward morning.
+He woke at the usual breakfast-hour, and then went about drowsing
+throughout the day till the tea began again in the afternoon. He fell
+asleep whenever he sat down, not only in the reading-room at Viesseux's,
+where he disturbed the people over their newspapers by his
+demonstrations of somnolence, but even at church, whither he went one
+Sunday to please Imogene, and started awake during the service with the
+impression that the clergyman had been making a joke. Everybody but
+Imogene was smiling. At the café he slept without scruple, selecting a
+corner seat for the purpose, and proportioning his _buonamano_ to the
+indulgence of the _giovane_. He could not tell how long he slept at
+these places, but sometimes it seemed to him hours.
+
+One day he went to see Imogene, and while Effie Bowen stood prattling to
+him as he sat waiting for Imogene to come in, he faded light-headedly
+away from himself on the sofa, as if he had been in his corner at the
+café. Then he was aware of some one saying "Sh!" and he saw Effie
+Bowen, with her finger on her lip, turned toward Imogene, a figure of
+beautiful despair in the doorway. He was all tucked up with sofa
+pillows, and made very comfortable, by the child, no doubt. She slipped
+out, seeing him awake, so as to leave him and Imogene alone, as she had
+apparently been generally instructed to do, and Imogene came forward.
+
+"What is the matter, Theodore?" she asked patiently. She had taken to
+calling him Theodore when they were alone. She owned that she did not
+like the name, but she said it was right she should call him by it,
+since it was his. She came and sat down beside him, where he had raised
+himself to a sitting posture, but she did not offer him any caress.
+
+"Nothing," he answered. "But this climate is making me insupportably
+drowsy; or else the spring weather."
+
+"Oh no; it isn't that," she said, with a slight sigh. He had left her in
+the middle of a german at three o'clock in the morning, but she now
+looked as fresh and lambent as a star. "It's the late hours. They're
+killing you."
+
+Colville tried to deny it; his incoherencies dissolved themselves in a
+yawn, which he did not succeed in passing for a careless laugh.
+
+"It won't do," she said, as if speaking to herself; "no, it won't do."
+
+"Oh yes, it will," Colville protested. "I don't mind being up. I've been
+used to it all my life on the paper. It's just some temporary thing.
+It'll come all right."
+
+"Well, no matter," said Imogene. "It makes you ridiculous, going to all
+those silly places, and I'd rather give it up."
+
+The tears began to steal down her cheeks, and Colville sighed. It seemed
+to him that somebody or other was always crying. A man never quite gets
+used to the tearfulness of women.
+
+"Oh, don't mind it," he said. "If you wish me to go, I will go! Or die
+in the attempt," he added, with a smile.
+
+Imogene did not smile with him. "I don't wish you to go any more. It was
+a mistake in the first place, and from this out I will adapt myself to
+you."
+
+"And give up all your pleasures? Do you think I would let you do that?
+No, indeed! Neither in this nor in anything else. I will not cut off
+your young life in any way, Imogene--not shorten it or diminish it. If I
+thought I should do that, or you would try to do it for me, I should
+wish I had never seen you."
+
+"It isn't that. I know how good you are, and that you would do anything
+for me."
+
+"Well, then, why don't you go to these fandangoes alone? I can see that
+you have me on your mind all the time, when I'm with you."
+
+"Oughtn't I?"
+
+"Yes, up to a certain point, but not up to the point of spoiling your
+fun. I will drop in now and then, but I won't try to come to all of
+them, after this; you'll get along perfectly well with Mrs. Amsden, and
+I shall be safe from her for a while. That old lady has marked me for
+her prey: I can see it in her glittering eyeglass. I shall fall asleep
+some evening between dances, and then she will get it all out of me."
+
+Imogene still refused to smile. "No; I shall give it up. I don't think
+it's well, going so much without Mrs. Bowen. People will begin to talk."
+
+"Talk?"
+
+"Yes; they will begin to say that I had better stay with her a little
+more, if she isn't well."
+
+"Why, isn't Mrs. Bowen well?" asked Colville, with trepidation.
+
+"No; she's miserable. Haven't you noticed?"
+
+"She sees me so seldom now. I thought it was only her headaches----"
+
+"It's much more than that. She seems to be failing every way. The doctor
+has told her she ought to get away from Florence." Colville could not
+speak; Imogene went on. "She's always delicate, you know. And I feel
+that all that's keeping her here now is the news from home that I--we're
+waiting for."
+
+Colville got up. "This is ghastly! She mustn't do it!"
+
+"How can you help her doing it? If she thinks anything is right, she
+can't help doing it. Who could?"
+
+Colville thought to himself that he could have said; but he was silent.
+At the moment he was not equal to so much joke or so much truth; and
+Imogene went on--
+
+"She'd be all the more strenuous about it if it were disagreeable, and
+rather than accept any relief from _me_ she would die."
+
+"Is she--unkind to you?" faltered Colville.
+
+"She is only _too_ kind. You can feel that she's determined to be
+so--that she's said she will have nothing to reproach herself with, and
+she won't. You don't suppose Mrs. Bowen would be unkind to any one she
+disliked?"
+
+"Ah, I didn't know," sighed Colville.
+
+"The more she disliked them, the better she would use them. It's because
+our engagement is so distasteful to her that she's determined to feel
+that she did nothing to oppose it."
+
+"But how can you tell that it's distasteful, then?"
+
+"She lets you feel it by--not saying anything about it."
+
+"I can't see how--"
+
+"She never speaks of you. I don't believe she ever mentions your name.
+She asks me about the places where I've been, and about the
+people--every one but you. It's very uncomfortable."
+
+"Yes," said Colville, "it's uncomfortable."
+
+"And if I allude to letters from home, she merely presses her lips
+together. It's perfectly wretched."
+
+"I see. It's I whom she dislikes, and I would do anything to please her.
+She must know that," mused Colville aloud. "Imogene!" he exclaimed, with
+a sudden inspiration. "Why shouldn't I go away?"
+
+"Go away?" she palpitated. "What should I do?"
+
+The colours faded from his brilliant proposal. "Oh, I only meant till
+something was settled--determined--concluded; till this terrible
+suspense was over." He added hopelessly, "But nothing can be done!"
+
+"I proposed," said Imogene, "that we should all go away. I suggested Via
+Reggio--the doctor said she ought to have sea air--or Venice; but she
+wouldn't hear of it. No; we must wait."
+
+"Yes, we must wait," repeated Colville hollowly. "Then nothing can be
+done?"
+
+"Why, haven't you said it?"
+
+"Oh yes--yes. I can't go away, and you can't. But couldn't we do
+something--get up something?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean."
+
+"I mean, couldn't we--amuse her somehow? help her to take her mind off
+herself?"
+
+Imogene stared at him rather a long time. Then, as if she had satisfied
+herself in her own mind, she shook her head. "She wouldn't submit to
+it."
+
+"No; she seems to take everything amiss that I do," said Colville.
+
+"She has no right to do that," cried Imogene. "I'm sure that you're
+always considering her, and proposing to do things for her. I won't let
+you humble yourself, as if you had wronged her."
+
+"Oh, I don't call it humbling. I--I should only be too happy if I could
+do _anything_ that was agreeable to her."
+
+"Very well, I will tell her," said the girl haughtily. "Shall you object
+to my joining you in your amusements, whatever they are? I assure you I
+will be very unobtrusive."
+
+"I don't understand all this," replied Colville. "Who has proposed to
+exclude you? Why did you tell me anything about Mrs. Bowen if you didn't
+want me to say or do something? I supposed you did; but I'll withdraw
+the offensive proposition, whatever it was."
+
+"There was nothing offensive. But if you pity her so much, why can't you
+pity me a little?"
+
+"I didn't know anything was the matter with you. I thought you were
+enjoying yourself----"
+
+"Enjoying? Keeping you up at dances till you drop asleep whenever you
+sit down? And then coming home and talking to a person who won't mention
+your name! Do you call that enjoying? I can't speak of you to any one;
+and no one speaks to me----"
+
+"If you like, I will talk to you on the subject," Colville essayed, in
+dreary jest.
+
+"Oh, don't joke about it! This perpetual joking, I believe it's that
+that's wearing me out. When I come to you for a little comfort in
+circumstances that drive me almost distracted, you want to amuse Mrs.
+Bowen, and when I ask to be allowed to share in the amusement, you laugh
+at me! If you don't understand it all, I'm sure _I_ don't."
+
+"Imogene!"
+
+"No! It's very strange. There's only one explanation. You don't care for
+me."
+
+"Not care for you!" cried Colville, thinking of his sufferings in the
+past fortnight.
+
+"And I would have made any--_any_ sacrifice for you. At least I wouldn't
+have made you show yourself a mean and grudging person if you had come
+to me for a little sympathy."
+
+"O poor child!" he cried, and his heart ached with the sense that she
+really was nothing but an unhappy child. "I do sympathise with you, and
+I see how hard it is for you to manage with Mrs. Bowen's dislike for me.
+But you mustn't think of it. I dare say it will be different; I've no
+doubt we can get her to look at me in some brighter light. I--" He did
+not know what he should urge next; but he goaded his invention, and was
+able to declare that if they loved each other they needed not regard any
+one else. This flight, when accomplished, did not strike him as very
+original effect, and it was with a dull surprise that he saw it sufficed
+for her.
+
+"No; no one!" she exclaimed, accepting the platitude as if it were now
+uttered for the first time. She dried her eyes and smiled. "I will tell
+Mrs. Bowen how you feel and what you've said, and I know she will
+appreciate your generosity."
+
+"Yes," said Colville pensively; "there's nothing I won't _propose_ doing
+for people."
+
+She suddenly clung to him, and would not let him go. "Oh, what is the
+matter?" she moaned afresh. "I show out the worst that is in me, and
+only the worst. Do you think I shall always be so narrow-minded with
+you? I thought I loved you enough to be magnanimous. _You_ are. It
+seemed to me that our lives together would be grand and large; and here
+I am, grovelling in the lowest selfishness! I am worrying and scolding
+you because you wish to please some one that has been as good as my own
+mother to me. Do you call that noble?"
+
+Colville did not venture any reply to a demand evidently addressed to
+her own conscience.
+
+But when she asked if he really thought he had better go away, he said,
+"Oh no; that was a mistake."
+
+"Because, if you do, you shall--to punish me."
+
+"My dearest girl, why should I wish to punish you?"
+
+"Because I've been low and mean. Now I want you to do something for Mrs.
+Bowen--something to amuse her; to show that we appreciate her. And I
+don't want you to sympathise with me at all. When I ask for your
+sympathy, it's a sign that I don't deserve it."
+
+"Is that so?"
+
+"Oh, be serious with me. I mean it. And I want to beg your pardon for
+something."
+
+"Yes; what's that?"
+
+"Can't you guess?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You needn't have your lapels silk-lined. You needn't wear
+_boutonnières_."
+
+"Oh, but I've had the coat changed."
+
+"No matter! Change it back! It isn't for me to make you over. I must
+make myself over. It's my right, it's my sacred privilege to conform to
+you in every way, and I humble myself in the dust for having forgotten
+it at the very start. Oh, _do_ you think I can ever be worthy of you? I
+_will_ try; indeed I will! I shall not wear my light dresses another
+time! From this out, I shall dress more in keeping with you. I boasted
+that I should live to comfort and console you, to recompense you for the
+past, and what have I been doing? Wearying and degrading you!"
+
+"Oh no," pleaded Colville. "I am very comfortable. I don't need any
+compensation for the past. I need--sleep. I'm going to bed tonight at
+eight o'clock, and I am going to sleep twenty-four hours. Then I shall
+be fresh for Mrs. Fleming's ball."
+
+"I'm not going," said Imogene briefly.
+
+"Oh yes, you are. I'll come round to-morrow evening and see."
+
+"No. There are to be no more parties."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I can't endure them."
+
+She was looking at him and talking at him, but she seemed far aloof in
+the abstraction of a sublime regret; she seemed puzzled, bewildered at
+herself.
+
+Colville got away. He felt the pathos of the confusion and question to
+which he left her, but he felt himself powerless against it. There was
+but one solution to it all, and that was impossible. He could only
+grieve over her trouble, and wait; grieve for the irrevocable loss which
+made her trouble remote and impersonal to him, and submit.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+The young clergyman whom Colville saw talking to Imogene on his first
+evening at Mrs. Bowen's had come back from Rome, where he had been
+spending a month or two, and they began to meet at Palazzo Pinti again.
+If they got on well enough together, they did not get on very far. The
+suave house-priest manners of the young clergyman offended Colville; he
+could hardly keep from sneering at his taste in art and books, which in
+fact was rather conventional; and no doubt Mr. Morton had his own
+reserves, under which he was perfectly civil, and only too deferential
+to Colville, as to an older man. Since his return, Mrs. Bowen had come
+back to her _salon_. She looked haggard; but she did what she could to
+look otherwise. She was always polite to Colville, and she was politely
+cordial with the clergyman. Sometimes Colville saw her driving out with
+him and Effie; they appeared to make excursions, and he had an
+impression, very obscure, that Mrs. Bowen lent the young clergyman
+money; that he was a superstition of hers, and she a patron of his; he
+must have been ten years younger than she; not more than twenty-five.
+
+The first Sunday after his return, Colville walked home with Mr. Waters
+from hearing a sermon of Mr. Morton's, which they agreed was rather well
+judged, and simply and fitly expressed.
+
+"And he spoke with the authority of the priest," said the old minister.
+"His Church alone of all the Protestant Churches has preserved that to
+its ministers. Sometimes I have thought it was a great thing."
+
+"Not always?" asked Colville, with a smile.
+
+"These things are matters of mood rather than conviction with me,"
+returned Mr. Waters. "Once they affected me very deeply; but now I shall
+so soon know all about it that they don't move me. But at times I think
+that if I were to live my life over again, I would prefer to be of some
+formal, some inflexibly ritualised, religion. At solemnities---weddings
+and funerals--I have been impressed with the advantage of the Anglican
+rite: it is the Church speaking to and for humanity--or seems so," he
+added, with cheerful indifference. "Something in its favour," he
+continued, after a while, "is the influence that every ritualised faith
+has with women. If they apprehend those mysteries more subtly than we,
+such a preference of theirs must mean a good deal. Yes; the other
+Protestant systems are men's systems. Women must have form. They don't
+care for freedom."
+
+"They appear to like the formalist too, as well as the form," said
+Colville, with scorn not obviously necessary.
+
+"Oh yes; they must have everything in the concrete," said the old
+gentleman cheerfully.
+
+"I wonder where Mr. Morton met Mrs. Bowen first," said Colville.
+
+"Here, I think. I believe he had letters to her. Before you came I used
+often to meet him at her house. I think she has helped him with money at
+times."
+
+"Isn't that rather an unpleasant idea?"
+
+"Yes; it's disagreeable. And it places the ministry in a dependent
+attitude. But under our system it's unavoidable. Young men devoting
+themselves to the ministry frequently receive gifts of money."
+
+"I don't like it," cried Colville.
+
+"They don't feel it as others would. I didn't myself. Even at present I
+may be said to be living on charity. But sometimes I have fancied that
+in Mr. Morton's case there might be peculiarly mitigating
+circumstances."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"When I met him first at Mrs. Bowen's I used to think that it was Miss
+Graham in whom he was interested----"
+
+"I can assure you," interrupted Colville, "that she was never interested
+in him."
+
+"Oh no; I didn't suppose that," returned the old man tranquilly. "And
+I've since had reason to revise my opinion. I think he is interested in
+Mrs. Bowen."
+
+"Mrs. Bowen! And you think that would be a mitigating circumstance in
+his acceptance of money from her? If he had the spirit of a man at all,
+it would make it all the more revolting."
+
+"Oh no, oh no," softly pleaded Mr. Waters. "We must not look at these
+things too romantically. He probably reasons that she would give him all
+her money if they were married."
+
+"But he has no right to reason in that way," retorted Colville, with
+heat. "They are not married; it's ignoble and unmanly for him to count
+upon it. It's preposterous. She must be ten years older than he."
+
+"Oh, I don't say that they're to be married," Mr. Waters replied. "But
+these disparities of age frequently occur in marriage. I don't like
+them, though sometimes I think the evil is less when it is the wife who
+is the elder. We look at youth and age in a gross, material way too
+often. Women remain young longer than men. They keep their youthful
+sympathies; an old woman understands a young girl. Do you--or do
+I--understand a young man?"
+
+Colville laughed harshly. "It isn't _quite_ the same thing, Mr. Waters.
+But yes; I'll admit, for the sake of argument, that I don't understand
+young men. I'll go further, and say that I don't like them; I'm afraid
+of them. And you wouldn't think," he added abruptly, "that it would be
+well for me to marry a girl twenty years younger than myself."
+
+The old man glanced up at him with innocent slyness. "I prefer always to
+discuss these things in an impersonal way."
+
+"But you can't discuss them impersonally with me; I'm engaged to Miss
+Graham. Ever since you first found me here after I told you I was going
+away I have wished to tell you this, and this seems as good a time as
+any--or as bad." The defiance faded from his voice, which dropped to a
+note of weary sadness. "Yes, we're engaged--or shall be, as soon as she
+can hear from her family. I wanted to tell you because it seemed somehow
+your due, and because I fancied you had a friendly interest in us both."
+
+"Yes, that is true," returned Mr. Waters. "I wish you joy." He went
+through the form of offering his hand to Colville, who pressed it with
+anxious fervour.
+
+"I confess," he said, "that I feel the risks of the affair. It's not
+that I have any dread for my own part; I have lived my life, such as it
+is. But the child is full of fancies about me that can't be fulfilled.
+She dreams of restoring my youth somehow, of retrieving the past for me,
+of avenging me at her own cost for an unlucky love affair that I had
+here twenty years ago. It's pretty of her, but it's terribly
+pathetic--it's tragic. I know very well that I'm a middle-aged man, and
+that there's no more youth for me. I'm getting grey, and I'm getting
+fat; I wouldn't be young if I could; it's a bore. I suppose I could keep
+up an illusion of youthfulness for five or six years more; and then if I
+could be quietly chloroformed out of the way, perhaps it wouldn't have
+been so very bad."
+
+"I have always thought," said Mr. Waters dreamily, "that a good deal
+might be said for abbreviating hopeless suffering. I have known some
+very good people advocate its practice by science."
+
+"Yes," answered Colville. "Perhaps I've presented that point too
+prominently. What I wished you to understand was that I don't care for
+myself; that I consider only the happiness of this young girl that's
+somehow--I hardly know how--been put in my keeping. I haven't forgotten
+the talks that we've had heretofore on this subject, and it would be
+affectation and bad taste in me to ignore them. Don't be troubled at
+anything you've said; it was probably true, and I'm sure it was sincere.
+Sometimes I think that the kindest--the least cruel--thing I could do
+would be to break with her, to leave her. But I know that I shall do
+nothing of the kind; I shall drift. The child is very dear to me. She
+has great and noble qualities; she's supremely unselfish; she loves me
+through her mistaken pity, and because she thinks she can sacrifice
+herself to me. But she can't. Everything is against that; she doesn't
+know how, and there is no reason why. I don't express it very well. I
+think nobody clearly understands it but Mrs. Bowen, and I've somehow
+alienated her."
+
+He became aware that his self-abnegation was taking the character of
+self-pity, and he stopped.
+
+Mr. Waters seemed to be giving the subject serious attention in the
+silence that ensued. "There is this to be remembered," he began, "which
+we don't consider in our mere speculations upon any phase of human
+affairs; and that is the wonderful degree of amelioration that any given
+difficulty finds in the realisation. It is the anticipation, not the
+experience, that is the trial. In a case of this kind, facts of
+temperament, of mere association, of union, work unexpected mitigations;
+they not only alleviate, they allay. You say that she cherishes an
+illusion concerning you: well, with women, nothing is so indestructible
+as an illusion. Give them any chance at all, and all the forces of their
+nature combine to preserve it. And if, as you say, she is so dear to
+you, that in itself is almost sufficient. I can well understand your
+misgivings, springing as they do from a sensitive conscience; but we may
+reasonably hope that they are exaggerated. Very probably there will not
+be the rapture for her that there would be if--if you were younger; but
+the chances of final happiness are great--yes, very considerable. She
+will learn to appreciate what is really best in you, and you already
+understand her. Your love for her is the key to the future. Without
+that, of course----"
+
+"Oh, of course," interrupted Colville hastily. Every touch of this
+comforter's hand had been a sting; and he parted with him in that
+feeling of utter friendlessness involving a man who has taken counsel
+upon the confession of half his trouble.
+
+Something in Mrs. Bowen's manner when he met her next made him think
+that perhaps Imogene had been telling her of the sympathy he had
+expressed for her ill-health. It was in the evening, and Imogene and Mr.
+Morton were looking over a copy of _The Marble Faun_, which he had
+illustrated with photographs at Rome. Imogene asked Colville to look at
+it too, but he said he would examine it later; he had his opinion of
+people who illustrated _The Marble Faun_ with photographs; it surprised
+him that she seemed to find something novel and brilliant in the idea.
+
+Effie Bowen looked round where she was kneeling on a chair beside the
+couple with the book, and seeing Colville wandering neglectedly about
+before he placed himself, she jumped down and ran and caught his hand.
+
+"Well, what now?" he asked, with a dim smile, as she began to pull him
+toward the sofa. When he should be expelled from Palazzo Pinti he would
+really miss the worship of that little thing. He knew that her impulse
+had been to console him for his exclusion from the pleasures that
+Imogene and Mr. Morton were enjoying.
+
+"Nothing. Just talk," she said, making him fast in a corner of the sofa
+by crouching tight against him.
+
+"What about? About which is the pleasantest season?"
+
+"Oh no; we've talked about that so often. Besides, of course you'd say
+spring, now that it's coming on so nicely."
+
+"Do you think I'm so changeable as that? Haven't I always said winter
+when this question of the seasons was up? And I say it now. Shan't you
+be awfully sorry when you can't have a pleasant little fire on the
+hearth like this any more?"
+
+"Yes; I know. But it's very nice having the flowers, too. The grass was
+all full of daisies to-day--perfectly powdered with them."
+
+"To-day? Where?"
+
+"At the Cascine. And in under the trees there were millions of violets
+and crow's-feet. Mr. Morton helped me to get them for mamma and Imogene.
+And we stayed so long that when we drove home the daisies had all shut
+up, and the little pink leaves outside made it look like a field of red
+clover. Are you never going there any more?"
+
+Mrs. Bowen came in. From the fact that there was no greeting between her
+and Mr. Morton, Colville inferred that she was returning to the room
+after having already been there. She stood a moment, with a little
+uncertainty, when she had shaken hands with him, and then dropped upon
+the sofa beyond Effie. The little girl ran one hand through Colville's
+arm, and the other through her mother's, and gripped them fast. "Now I
+have got you both," she triumphed, and smiled first into her face, and
+then into his.
+
+"Be quiet, Effie," said her mother, but she submitted.
+
+"I hope you're better for your drive to-day, Mrs. Bowen. Effie has been
+telling me about it."
+
+"We stayed out a long time. Yes, I think the air did me good; but I'm
+not an invalid, you know."
+
+"Oh no."
+
+"I'm feeling a little fagged. And the weather was tempting. I suppose
+you've been taking one of your long walks."
+
+"No, I've scarcely stirred out. I usually feel like going to meet the
+spring a little more than half-way; but this year I don't, somehow."
+
+"A good many people are feeling rather languid, I believe," said Mrs.
+Bowen.
+
+"I hope you'll get away from Florence," said Colville.
+
+"Oh," she returned, with a faint flush, "I'm afraid Imogene exaggerated
+that a little." She added, "You are very good."
+
+She was treating him more kindly than she had ever done since that
+Sunday afternoon when he came in with Imogene to say that he was going
+to stay. It might be merely because she had worn out her mood of
+severity, as people do, returning in good-humour to those with whom they
+were offended, merely through the reconciling force of time. She did not
+look at him, but this was better than meeting his eye with that
+interceptive glance. A strange peace touched his heart. Imogene and the
+young clergyman at the table across the room were intent on the book
+still; he was explaining and expatiating, and she listening. Colville
+saw that he had a fine head, and an intelligent, handsome, gentle face.
+When he turned again to Mrs. Bowen it was with the illusion that she had
+been saying something; but she was, in fact, sitting mute, and her face,
+with its bright colour, showed pathetically thin.
+
+"I should imagine that Venice would be good for you," he said.
+
+"It's still very harsh there, I hear. No; when we leave Florence, I
+think we will go to Switzerland."
+
+"Oh, not to Madame Schebres's," pleaded the child, turning upon her.
+
+"No, not to Madame Schebres," consented the mother. She continued,
+addressing Colville: "I was thinking of Lausanne. Do you know Lausanne
+at all?"
+
+"Only from Gibbon's report. It's hardly up to date."
+
+"I thought of taking a house there for the summer," said Mrs. Bowen,
+playing with Effie's fingers. "It's pleasant by the lake, I suppose."
+
+"It's lovely by the lake!" cried the child. "Oh, do go, mamma! I could
+get a boat and learn to row. Here you can't row, the Arno's so swift."
+
+"The air would bring you up," said Colville to Mrs. Bowen.
+"Switzerland's the only country where you're perfectly sure of waking
+new every morning."
+
+This idea interested the child. "Waking new!" she repeated.
+
+"Yes; perfectly made over. You wake up another person. Shouldn't you
+think that would be nice?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I shouldn't, in your place. But in mine, I much prefer to wake up
+another person. Only it's pretty hard on the other person."
+
+"How queer you are!" The child set her teeth for fondness of him, and
+seizing his cheeks between her hands, squeezed them hard, admiring the
+effect upon his features, which in some respects was not advantageous.
+
+"Effie!" cried her mother sternly; and she dropped to her place again,
+and laid hold of Colville's arm for protection. "You are really very
+rude. I shall send you to bed."
+
+"Oh no, don't, Mrs. Bowen," he begged. "I'm responsible for these
+violences. Effie used to be a very well behaved child before she began
+playing with me. It's all my fault."
+
+They remained talking on the sofa together, while Imogene and Mr. Morton
+continued to interest themselves in the book. From time to time she
+looked over at them, and then turned again to the young clergyman, who,
+when he had closed the book, rested his hands on its top and began to
+give an animated account of something, conjecturably his sojourn in
+Rome.
+
+In a low voice, and with pauses adjusted to the occasional silences of
+the young people across the room, Mrs. Bowen told Colville how Mr.
+Morton was introduced to her by an old friend who was greatly interested
+in him. She said, frankly, that she had been able to be of use to him,
+and that he was now going back to America very soon; it was as if she
+were privy to the conjecture that had come to the surface in his talk
+with Mr. Waters, and wished him to understand exactly how matters stood
+with the young clergyman and herself. Colville, indeed, began to be more
+tolerant of him; he succeeded in praising the sermon he had heard him
+preach.
+
+"Oh, he has talent," said Mrs. Bowen.
+
+They fell into the old, almost domestic strain, from which she broke at
+times with an effort, but returning as if helplessly to it. He had the
+gift of knowing how not to take an advantage with women; that sense of
+unconstraint in them fought in his favour; when Effie dropped her head
+wearily against his arm, her mother even laughed in sending her off to
+bed; she had hitherto been serious. Imogene said she would go to see her
+tucked in, and that sent the clergyman to say good-night to Mrs. Bowen,
+and to put an end to Colville's audience.
+
+In these days, when Colville came every night to Palazzo Pinti, he got
+back the tone he had lost in the past fortnight. He thought that it was
+the complete immunity from his late pleasures, and the regular and
+sufficient sleep, which had set him firmly on his feet again, but he did
+not inquire very closely. Imogene went two or three times, after she had
+declared she would go no more, from the necessity women feel of blunting
+the edge of comment; but Colville profited instantly and fully by the
+release from the parties which she offered him. He did not go even to
+afternoon tea-drinkings; the "days" of the different ladies, which he
+had been so diligent to observe, knew him no more. At the hours when
+society assembled in this house or that and inquired for him, or
+wondered about him, he was commonly taking a nap, and he was punctually
+in bed every night at eleven, after his return from Mrs. Bowen's.
+
+He believed, of course, that he went there because he now no longer met
+Imogene elsewhere, and he found the house pleasanter than it had ever
+been since the veglione. Mrs. Bowen's relenting was not continuous,
+however. There were times that seemed to be times of question and of
+struggle with her, when she vacillated between the old cordiality and
+the later alienation; when she went beyond the former, or lapsed into
+moods colder and more repellent than the latter. It would have been
+difficult to mark the moment when these struggles ceased altogether, and
+an evening passed in unbroken kindness between them. But afterwards
+Colville could remember an emotion of grateful surprise at a subtle word
+or action of hers in which she appeared to throw all restraint--scruple
+or rancour, whichever it might be--to the winds, and become perfectly
+his friend again. It must have been by compliance with some wish or
+assent to some opinion of his; what he knew was that he was not only
+permitted, he was invited, to feel himself the most favoured guest. The
+charming smile, so small and sweet, so very near to bitterness, came
+back to her lips, the deeply fringed eyelids were lifted to let the
+sunny eyes stream upon him. She did, now, whatever he asked her. She
+consulted his taste and judgment on many points; she consented to
+resume, when she should be a little stronger, their visits to the
+churches and galleries: it would be a shame to go away from Florence
+without knowing them thoroughly. It came to her asking him to drive with
+her and Imogene in the Cascine; and when Imogene made some excuse not to
+go, Mrs. Bowen did not postpone the drive, but took Colville and Effie.
+
+They drove quite down to the end of the Cascine, and got out there to
+admire the gay monument, with the painted bust, of the poor young Indian
+prince who died in Florence. They strolled all about, talking of the old
+times in the Cascine, twenty years before; and walking up the road
+beside the canal, while the carriage slowly followed, they stopped to
+enjoy the peasants lying asleep in the grass on the other bank. Colville
+and Effie gathered wild-flowers, and piled them in her mother's lap when
+she remounted to the carriage and drove along while they made excursions
+into the little dingles beside the road. Some people who overtook them
+in these sylvan pleasures reported the fact at a reception to which they
+were going, and Mrs. Amsden, whose mind had been gradually clearing
+under the simultaneous withdrawal of Imogene and Colville from society,
+professed herself again as thickly clouded as a weather-glass before a
+storm. She appealed to the sympathy of others against this hardship.
+
+Mrs. Bowen took Colville home to dinner; Mr. Morton was coming, she
+said, and he must come too. At table the young clergyman made her his
+compliment on her look of health, and she said, Yes; she had been
+driving, and she believed that she needed nothing but to be in the air a
+little more, as she very well could, now the spring weather was really
+coming. She said that they had been talking all winter of going to
+Fiesole, where Imogene had never been yet; and upon comparison it
+appeared that none of them had yet been to Fiesole except herself. Then
+they must all go together, she said; the carriage would hold four very
+comfortably.
+
+"Ah! that leaves me out," said Colville, who had caught sight of Effie's
+fallen countenance.
+
+"Oh no. How is that? It leaves Effie out."
+
+"It's the same thing. But I might ride, and Effie might give me her hand
+to hold over the side of the carriage; that would sustain me."
+
+"We could take her between us, Mrs. Bowen," suggested Imogene. "The back
+seat is wide."
+
+"Then the party is made up," said Colville, "and Effie hasn't demeaned
+herself by asking to go where she wasn't invited."
+
+The child turned inquiringly toward her mother, who met her with an
+indulgent smile, which became a little flush of grateful appreciation
+when it reached Colville; but Mrs. Bowen ignored Imogene in the matter
+altogether.
+
+The evening passed delightfully. Mr. Morton had another book which he
+had brought to show Imogene, and Mrs. Bowen sat a long time at the
+piano, striking this air and that of the songs which she used to sing
+when she was a girl: Colville was trying to recall them. When he and
+Imogene were left alone for their adieux, they approached each other in
+an estrangement through which each tried to break.
+
+"Why don't you scold me?" she asked. "I have neglected you the whole
+evening."
+
+"How have you neglected me?"
+
+"How? Ah! if you don't know----"
+
+"No. I dare say I must be very stupid. I saw you talking with Mr.
+Morton, and you seemed interested. I thought I'd better not intrude."
+
+She seemed uncertain of his intention, and then satisfied of its
+simplicity.
+
+"Isn't it pleasant to have Mrs. Bowen in the old mood again?" he asked.
+
+"Is she in the old mood?"
+
+"Why, yes. Haven't you noticed how cordial she is?
+
+"I thought she was rather colder than usual."
+
+"Colder!" The chill of the idea penetrated even through the density of
+Colville's selfish content. A very complex emotion, which took itself
+for indignation, throbbed from his heart. "Is she cold with you,
+Imogene?"
+
+"Oh, if you saw nothing----"
+
+"No; and I think you must be mistaken. She never speaks of you without
+praising you."
+
+"Does she speak of me?" asked the girl, with her honest eyes wide open
+upon him.
+
+"Why, no," Colville acknowledged. "Come to reflect, it's I who speak of
+you. But how--how is she cold with you?"
+
+"Oh, I dare say it's a delusion of mine. Perhaps I'm cold with her."
+
+"Then don't be so, my dear! Be sure that she's your friend--true and
+good. Good night."
+
+He caught the girl in his arms, and kissed her tenderly. She drew away,
+and stood a moment with her repellent fingers on his breast.
+
+"Is it all for me?" she asked.
+
+"For the whole obliging and amiable world," he answered gaily.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+The next time Colville came he found himself alone with Imogene, who
+asked him what he had been doing all day.
+
+"Oh, living along till evening. What have you?"
+
+She did not answer at once, nor praise his speech for the devotion
+implied in it. After a while she said: "Do you believe in courses of
+reading? Mr. Morton has taken up a course of reading in Italian poetry.
+He intends to master it."
+
+"Does he?"
+
+"Yes. Do you think something of the kind would be good for me?"
+
+"Oh, if you thirst for conquest. But I should prefer to rest on my
+laurels if I were you."
+
+Imogene did not smile. "Mr. Morton thinks I should enjoy a course of
+Kingsley. He says he's very earnest."
+
+"Oh, immensely. But aren't you earnest enough already, my dear?"
+
+"Do you think I'm too earnest?"
+
+"No; I should say you were just right."
+
+"You know better than that. I wish you would criticise me sometimes."
+
+"Oh, I'd rather not."
+
+"Why? Don't you see anything to criticise in me? Are you satisfied with
+me in every way? You ought to think. You ought to think now. Do you
+think that I am doing right in all respects? Am I all that I could be to
+you, and to you alone? If I am wrong in the least thing, criticise me,
+and I will try to be better."
+
+"Oh, you might criticise back, and I shouldn't like that."
+
+"Then you don't approve of a course of Kingsley?" asked the girl.
+
+"Does that follow? But if you're going in for earnestness, why don't you
+take up a course of Carlyle?"
+
+"Do you think that would be better than Kingsley?"
+
+"Not a bit. But Carlyle's so earnest that he can't talk straight."
+
+"I can't make out what you mean. Wouldn't you like me to improve?"
+
+"Not much," laughed Colville. "If you did, I don't know what I should
+do. I should have to begin to improve too, and I'm very comfortable as I
+am."
+
+"I should wish to do it to--to be more worthy of you," grieved the girl,
+as if deeply disappointed at his frivolous behaviour.
+
+He could not help laughing, but he was sorry, and would have taken her
+hand; she kept it from him, and removed to the farthest corner of the
+sofa. Apparently, however, her ideal did not admit of open pique, and
+she went on trying to talk seriously with him.
+
+"You think, don't you, that we oughtn't to let a day pass without
+storing away some thought--suggestion----"
+
+"Oh, there's no hurry," he said lazily. "Life is rather a long
+affair--if you live. There appears to be plenty of time, though people
+say not, and I think it would be rather odious to make every day of use.
+Let a few of them go by without doing anything for you! And as for
+reading, why not read when you're hungry, just as you eat? Shouldn't you
+hate to take up a course of roast beef, or a course of turkey?"
+
+"Very well, then," said Imogene. "I shall not begin Kingsley."
+
+"Yes, do it. I dare say Mr. Morton's quite right. He will look at these
+things more from your own point of view. All the Kingsley novels are in
+the Tauchnitz. By all means do what he says."
+
+"I will do what _you_ say."
+
+"Oh, but I say nothing."
+
+"Then I will do nothing."
+
+Colville laughed at this too, and soon after the clergyman appeared.
+Imogene met him so coldly that Colville felt obliged to make him some
+amends by a greater show of cordiality than he felt. But he was glad of
+the effort, for he began to like him as he talked to him; it was easy
+for him to like people; the young man showed sense and judgment, and if
+he was a little academic in his mind and manners, Colville tolerantly
+reflected that some people seemed to be born so, and that he was
+probably not artificial, as he had once imagined from the ecclesiastical
+scrupulosity of his dress.
+
+Imogene ebbed away to the piano in the corner of the room, and struck
+some chords on it. At each stroke the young clergyman, whose eyes had
+wandered a little toward her from the first, seemed to vibrate in
+response. The conversation became incoherent before Mrs. Bowen joined
+them. Then, by a series of illogical processes, the clergyman was
+standing beside Imogene at the piano, and Mrs. Bowen was sitting beside
+Colville on the sofa.
+
+"Isn't there to be any Effie, to-night?" he asked.
+
+"No. She has been up too much of late. And I wished to speak with
+you--about Imogene."
+
+"Yes," said Colville, not very eagerly. At that moment he could have
+chosen another topic.
+
+"It is time that her mother should have got my letter. In less than a
+fortnight we ought to have an answer."
+
+"Well?" said Colville, with a strange constriction of the heart.
+
+"Her mother is a person of very strong character; her husband is
+absorbed in business, and defers to her in everything."
+
+"It isn't an uncommon American situation," said Colville, relieving his
+tension by this excursion.
+
+Mrs. Bowen ignored it. "I don't know how she may look at the affair. She
+may give her assent at once, or she may decide that nothing has taken
+place till--she sees you."
+
+"I could hardly blame her for that," he answered submissively.
+
+"It isn't a question of that," said Mrs. Bowen. "It's a question
+of--others. Mr. Morton was here before you came, and I know he was
+interested in Imogene--I am certain of it. He has come back, and he sees
+no reason why he should not renew his attentions."
+
+"No--o--o," faltered Colville.
+
+"I wish you to realise the fact."
+
+"But what would you----"
+
+"I told you," said Mrs. Bowen, with a full return of that severity whose
+recent absence Colville had found so comfortable, "that I can't advise
+or suggest anything at all."
+
+He was long and miserably silent. At last, "Did you ever think," he
+asked, "did you ever suppose--that is to say, did you ever suspect
+that--she--that Imogene was--at all interested in him?"
+
+"I think she was--at one time," said Mrs. Bowen promptly.
+
+Colville sighed, with a wandering disposition to whistle.
+
+"But that is nothing," she went on. "People have many passing fancies.
+The question is, what are you going to do now? I want to know, as Mr.
+Morton's friend."
+
+"Ah, I wish you wanted to know as _my_ friend, Mrs. Bowen!" A sudden
+thought flashed upon him. "Why shouldn't I go away from Florence till
+Imogene hears from her mother? That seemed to me right in the first
+place. There is no tie that binds her to me. I hold her to nothing. If
+she finds in my absence that she likes this young man better--" An
+expression of Mrs. Bowen's face stopped him. He perceived that he had
+said something very shocking to her; he perceived that the thing was
+shocking in itself, but it was not that which he cared for. "I don't
+mean that I won't hold myself true to her as long as she will. I
+recognise my responsibility fully. I know that I am answerable for all
+this, and that no one else is; and I am ready to bear any penalty. But
+what I can't bear is that you should misunderstand me, that you
+should--I have been so wretched ever since you first began to blame me
+for my part in this, and so happy this past fortnight that I can't--I
+_won't_--go back to that state of things. No; you have no right to
+relent toward me, and then fling me off as you have tried to do
+to-night! I have some feeling too--some rights. You shall receive me as
+a friend, or not at all! How can I live if you----"
+
+She had been making little efforts as if to rise; now she forced herself
+to her feet, and ran from the room.
+
+The young people looked up from their music; some wave of the sensation
+had spread to them, but seeing Colville remain seated, they went on with
+their playing till he rose. Then Imogene called out, "Isn't Mrs. Bowen
+coming back?"
+
+"I don't know; I think not," answered Colville stupidly, standing where
+he had risen.
+
+She hastened questioning toward him. "What is the matter? Isn't she
+well?"
+
+Mr. Morton's face expressed a polite share in her anxiety.
+
+"Oh yes; quite, I believe," Colville replied.
+
+"She heard Effie call, I suppose," suggested the girl.
+
+"Yes, yes; I think so; that is--yes. I must be going. Good night."
+
+He took her hand and went away, leaving the clergyman still there; but
+he lingered only for a report from Mrs. Bowen, which Imogene hurried to
+get. She sent word that she would join them presently. But Mr. Morton
+said that it was late already, and he would beg Miss Graham to say
+good-night for him. When Mrs. Bowen returned Imogene was alone.
+
+She did not seem surprised or concerned at that. "Imogene, I have been
+talking to Mr. Colville about you and Mr. Morton."
+
+The girl started and turned pale.
+
+"It is almost time to hear from your mother, and she may consent to your
+engagement. Then you must be prepared to act."
+
+"Act?"
+
+"To make it known. Matters can't go on as they have been going. I told
+Mr. Colville that Mr. Morton ought to know at once. Don't try to blind yourself, Imogene, to what you see as plainly as I do. He is in love with you."
+
+"Why ought he to know?" asked Imogene, doubtless with that impulse to
+temporise which is natural to the human soul in questions of right and
+interest. She sank into the chair beside which she had been standing.
+
+"If your mother consents, you will feel bound to Mr. Colville?"
+
+"Yes," said the girl.
+
+"And if she refuses?"
+
+"He has my word. I will keep my word to him," replied Imogene huskily.
+"Nothing shall make me break it."
+
+"Very well, then!" exclaimed Mrs. Bowen. "We need not wait for your
+mother's answer. Mr. Morton ought to know, and he ought to know at once.
+Don't try to blind yourself, Imogene, to what you see as plainly as I
+do. He is in love with you."
+
+"Oh," moaned the girl.
+
+"Yes; you can't deny it. And it's cruel, it's treacherous, to let him go
+on thinking that you are free."
+
+"I will never see him again."
+
+"Ah! that isn't enough. He has a claim to know why. I will not let him
+be treated so."
+
+They were both silent. Then, "What did Mr. Colville say?" asked Imogene.
+
+"He? I don't know that he said anything. He----" Mrs. Bowen stopped.
+
+Imogene rose from her chair.
+
+"I will not let him tell Mr. Morton. It would be too indelicate."
+
+"And shall you let it go on so?"
+
+"No. I will tell him myself."
+
+"How will you tell him?"
+
+"I will tell him if he speaks to me."
+
+"You will let it come to that?"
+
+"There is no other way. I shall suffer more than he."
+
+"But you will deserve to suffer, and your suffering will not help him."
+
+Imogene trembled into her chair again.
+
+"I see," said Mrs. Bowen bitterly, "how it will be at last. It will be
+as it has been from the first." She began to walk up and down the room,
+mechanically putting the chairs in place, and removing the disorder in
+which the occupancy of several people leaves a room at the end of an
+evening. She closed the piano, which Imogene had forgot to shut, with a
+clash that jarred the strings from their silence. "But I will do it, and
+I wonder----"
+
+"You will speak to him?" faltered the girl.
+
+"Yes!" returned Mrs. Bowen vehemently, and arresting herself in her
+rapid movements. "It won't do for you to tell him, and you won't let Mr.
+Colville."
+
+"No, I can't," said Imogene, slowly shaking her head. "But I will
+discourage him; I will not see him anymore." Mrs. Bowen silently
+confronted her. "I will not see any one now till I have heard from
+home."
+
+"And how will that help? He must have some explanation, and I will have
+to make it. What shall it be?"
+
+Imogene did not answer. She said: "I will not have any one know what is
+between me and Mr. Colville till I have heard from home. If they try to
+refuse, then it will be for him to take me against their will. But if he
+doesn't choose to do that, then he shall be free, and I won't have him
+humiliated a second time before the world. _This_ time _he_ shall be the
+one to reject. And I don't care who suffers. The more I prize the
+person, the gladder I shall be; and if I could suffer before everybody I
+would. If people ever find it out, I will tell them that it was he who
+broke it off." She rose again from her chair, and stood flushed and
+thrilling with the notion of her self-sacrifice. Out of the tortuous
+complexity of the situation she had evolved this brief triumph, in which
+she rejoiced as if it were enduring success. But she suddenly fell from
+it in the dust. "Oh, what can I do for him? How can I make him feel more
+and more that I would give up anything, everything, for him! It's
+because he asks nothing and wants nothing that it's so hard! If I could
+see that he was unhappy, as I did once! If I could see that he was at
+all different since--since----Oh, what I dread is this smooth
+tranquillity! If our lives could only be stormy and full of cares and
+anxieties and troubles that I could take on myself, then, then I
+shouldn't be afraid of the future! But I'm afraid they won't be so--no,
+I'm afraid that they will be easy and quiet, and then what shall I do? O
+Mrs. Bowen, do you think he cares for me?"
+
+Mrs. Bowen turned white; she did not speak.
+
+The girl wrung her hands. "Sometimes it seems as if he didn't--as if I
+had forced myself on him through a mistake, and he had taken me to save
+me from the shame of knowing that I had made a mistake. Do you think
+that is true? If you can only tell me that it isn't--Or, no! If it is
+true, tell me that! _That_ would be real mercy."
+
+The other trembled, as if physically beaten upon by this appeal. But she
+gathered herself together rigidly. "How can I answer you such a thing as
+that? I mustn't listen to you; you mustn't ask me." She turned and left
+the girl standing still in her attitude of imploring. But in her own
+room, where she locked herself in, sobs mingled with the laughter which
+broke crazily from her lips as she removed this ribbon and that jewel,
+and pulled the bracelets from her wrists. A man would have plunged from
+the house and walked the night away; a woman must wear it out in her
+bed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+In the morning Mrs. Bowen received a note from her banker covering a
+despatch by cable from America. It was from Imogene's mother; it
+acknowledged the letters they had written, and announced that she sailed
+that day for Liverpool. It was dated at New York, and it was to be
+inferred that after perhaps writing in answer to their letters, she had
+suddenly made up her mind to come out.
+
+"Yes, that is it," said Imogene, to whom Mrs. Bowen hastened with the
+despatch. "Why should she have telegraphed to _you_?" she asked coldly,
+but with a latent fire of resentment in her tone.
+
+"You must ask her when she comes," returned Mrs. Bowen, with all her
+gentleness. "It won't be long now."
+
+They looked as if they had neither of them slept; but the girl's vigil
+seemed to have made her wild and fierce, like some bird that has beat
+itself all night against its cage, and still from time to time feebly
+strikes the bars with its wings. Mrs. Bowen was simply worn to apathy.
+
+"What shall you do about this?" she asked.
+
+"Do about it? Oh, I will think. I will try not to trouble you."
+
+"Imogene!"
+
+"I shall have to tell Mr. Colville. But I don't know that I shall tell
+him at once. Give me the despatch, please." She possessed herself of it
+greedily, offensively. "I shall ask you not to speak of it."
+
+"I will do whatever you wish."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+Mrs. Bowen left the room, but she turned immediately to re-open the door
+she had closed behind her.
+
+"We were to have gone to Fiesole to-morrow," she said inquiringly.
+
+"We can still go if the day is fine," returned the girl. "Nothing is
+changed. I wish very much to go. Couldn't we go to-day?" she added, with
+eager defiance.
+
+"It's too late to-day," said Mrs. Bowen quietly. "I will write to remind
+the gentlemen."
+
+"Thank you. I wish we could have gone to-day."
+
+"You can have the carriage if you wish to drive anywhere," said Mrs.
+Bowen.
+
+"I will take Effie to see Mrs. Amsden." But Imogene changed her mind,
+and went to call upon two Misses Guicciardi, the result of an
+international marriage, whom Mrs. Bowen did not like very well. Imogene
+drove with them to the Cascine, where they bowed to a numerous military
+acquaintance, and they asked her if Mrs. Bowen would let her join them
+in a theatre party that evening: they were New-Yorkers by birth, and it
+was to be a theatre party in the New York style; they were to be
+chaperoned by a young married lady; two young men cousins of theirs,
+just out from America, had taken the box.
+
+When Imogene returned home she told Mrs. Bowen that she had accepted
+this invitation. Mrs. Bowen said nothing, but when one of the young men
+came up to hand Imogene down to the carriage, which was waiting with the
+others at the gate, she could not have shown a greater tolerance of his
+second-rate New Yorkiness if she had been a Boston dowager offering him
+the scrupulous hospitalities of her city.
+
+Imogene came in at midnight; she hummed an air of the opera as she took
+off her wraps and ornaments in her room, and this in the quiet of the
+hour had a terrible, almost profane effect: it was as if some other kind
+of girl had whistled. She showed the same nonchalance at breakfast,
+where she was prompt, and answered Mrs. Bowen's inquiries about her
+pleasure the night before with a liveliness that ignored the polite
+resolution that prompted them.
+
+Mr. Morton was the first to arrive, and if his discouragement began at
+once, the first steps masked themselves in a reckless welcome, which
+seemed to fill him with joy, and Mrs. Bowen with silent perplexity. The
+girl ran on about her evening at the opera, and about the weather, and
+the excursion they were going to make; and after an apparently needless
+ado over the bouquet which he brought her, together with one for Mrs.
+Bowen, she put it into her belt, and made Colville notice it when he
+came: he had not thought to bring flowers.
+
+He turned from her hilarity with anxious question to Mrs. Bowen, who did
+not meet his eye, and who snubbed Effie when the child found occasion to
+whisper: "_I_ think Imogene is acting very strangely, for _her_; don't
+you, mamma? It seems as if going with those Guicciardi girls just once
+had spoiled her."
+
+"Don't make remarks about people, Effie," said her mother sharply. "It
+isn't nice in little girls, and I don't want you to do it. You talk too
+much lately."
+
+Effie turned grieving away from this rejection, and her face did not
+light up even at the whimsical sympathy in Colville's face, who saw that
+she had met a check of some sort; he had to take her on his knee and
+coax and kiss her before her wounded feelings were visibly healed. He
+put her down with a sighing wish that some one could take him up and
+soothe his troubled sensibilities too, and kept her hand in his while he
+sat waiting for the last of those last moments in which the hurrying
+delays of ladies preparing for an excursion seem never to end.
+
+When they were ready to get into the carriage, the usual contest of
+self-sacrifice arose, which Imogene terminated by mounting to the front
+seat; Mr. Morton hastened to take the seat beside her, and Colville was
+left to sit with Effie and her mother. "You old people will be safer
+back there," said Imogene. It was a little joke which she addressed to
+the child, but a gleam from her eye as she turned to speak to the young
+man at her side visited Colville in desperate defiance. He wondered what
+she was about in that allusion to an idea which she had shrunk from so
+sensitively hitherto. But he found himself in a situation which he could
+not penetrate at any point. When he spoke with Mrs. Bowen, it was with a
+dark undercurrent of conjecture as to how and when she expected him to
+tell Mr. Morton of his relation to Imogene, or whether she still
+expected him to do it; when his eyes fell upon the face of the young
+man, he despaired as to the terms in which he should put the fact; any
+form in which he tacitly dramatised it remained very embarrassing, for
+he felt bound to say that while he held himself promised in the matter,
+he did not allow her to feel herself so.
+
+A sky of American blueness and vastness, a mellow sun, and a delicate
+breeze did all that these things could for them, as they began the long,
+devious climb of the hills crowned by the ancient Etruscan city. At
+first they were all in the constraint of their own and one another's
+moods, known or imagined, and no talk began till the young clergyman
+turned to Imogene and asked, after a long look at the smiling landscape,
+"What sort of weather do you suppose they are having at Buffalo to-day?"
+
+"At Buffalo?" she repeated, as if the place had only a dim existence in
+her remotest consciousness. "Oh! The ice isn't near out of the lake yet.
+You can't count on it before the first of May."
+
+"And the first of May comes sooner or later, according to the season,"
+said Colville. "I remember coming on once in the middle of the month,
+and the river was so full of ice between Niagara Falls and Buffalo that
+I had to shut the car window that I'd kept open all the way through
+Southern Canada. But we have very little of that local weather at home;
+our weather is as democratic and continental as our political
+constitution. Here it's March or May any time from September till June,
+according as there's snow on the mountains or not."
+
+The young man smiled. "But don't you like," he asked with deference,
+"this slow, orderly advance of the Italian spring, where the flowers
+seem to come out one by one, and every blossom has its appointed time?"
+
+"Oh yes, it's very well in its way; but I prefer the rush of the
+American spring; no thought of mild weather this morning; a warm, gusty
+rain to-morrow night; day after to-morrow a burst of blossoms and
+flowers and young leaves and birds. I don't know whether we were made
+for our climate or our climate was made for us, but its impatience and
+lavishness seem to answer some inner demand of our go-ahead souls. This
+happens to be the week of the peach blossoms here, and you see their
+pink everywhere to-day, and you don't see anything else in the blossom
+line. But imagine the American spring abandoning a whole week of her
+precious time to the exclusive use of peach blossoms! She wouldn't do
+it; she's got too many other things on hand."
+
+Effie had stretched out over Colville's lap, and with her elbow sunk
+deep in his knee, was resting her chin in her hand and taking the facts
+of the landscape thoroughly in. "Do they have just a week?" she asked.
+
+"Not an hour more or less," said Colville. "If they found an almond
+blossom hanging round anywhere after their time came, they would make an
+awful row; and if any lazy little peach-blow hadn't got out by the time
+their week was up, it would have to stay in till next year; the pear
+blossoms wouldn't let it come out."
+
+"Wouldn't they?" murmured the child, in dreamy sympathy with this
+belated peach-blow.
+
+"Well, that's what people say. In America it would be allowed to come
+out any time. It's a free country."
+
+Mrs. Bowen offered to draw Effie back to a posture of more decorum, but
+Colville put his arm round the little girl. "Oh, let her stay! It
+doesn't incommode me, and she must be getting such a novel effect of the
+landscape."
+
+The mother fell back into her former attitude of jaded passivity. He
+wondered whether she had changed her mind about having him speak to Mr.
+Morton; her quiescence might well have been indifference; one could have
+said, knowing the whole situation, that she had made up her mind to let
+things take their course, and struggle with them no longer.
+
+He could not believe that she felt content with him; she must feel far
+otherwise; and he took refuge, as he had the power of doing, from the
+discomfort of his own thoughts in jesting with the child, and mocking
+her with this extravagance and that; the discomfort then became merely a
+dull ache that insisted upon itself at intervals, like a grumbling
+tooth.
+
+The prospect was full of that mingled wildness and subordination that
+gives its supreme charm to the Italian landscape; and without elements
+of great variety, it combined them in infinite picturesqueness. There
+were olive orchards and vineyards, and again vineyards and olive
+orchards. Closer to the farm-houses and cottages there were peaches and
+other fruit trees and kitchen-gardens; broad ribbons of grain waved
+between the ranks of trees; around the white villas the spires of the
+cypresses pierced the blue air. Now and then they came to a villa with
+weather-beaten statues strutting about its parterres. A mild, pleasant
+heat brooded upon the fields and roofs, and the city, dropping lower and
+lower as they mounted, softened and blended its towers and monuments in
+a sombre mass shot with gleams of white.
+
+Colville spoke to Imogene, who withdrew her eyes from it with a sigh,
+after long brooding upon the scene. "You can do nothing with it, I see."
+
+"With what?"
+
+"The landscape. It's too full of every possible interest. What a history
+is written all over it, public and private! If you don't take it simply
+like any other landscape, it becomes an oppression. It's well that
+tourists come to Italy so ignorant, and keep so. Otherwise they couldn't
+live to get home again; the past would crush them."
+
+Imogene scrutinised him as if to extract some personal meaning from his
+words, and then turned her head away. The clergyman addressed him with
+what was like a respectful toleration of the drolleries of a gifted but
+eccentric man, the flavour of whose talk he was beginning to taste.
+
+"You don't really mean that one shouldn't come to Italy as well informed
+as possible?"
+
+"Well, I did," said Colville, "but I don't."
+
+The young man pondered this, and Imogene started up with an air of
+rescuing them from each other--as if she would not let Mr. Morton think
+Colville trivial or Colville consider the clergyman stupid, but would do
+what she could to take their minds off the whole question. Perhaps she
+was not very clear as to how this was to be done; at any rate she did
+not speak, and Mrs. Bowen came to her support, from whatever motive of
+her own. It might have been from a sense of the injustice of letting Mr.
+Morton suffer from the complications that involved herself and the
+others. The affair had been going very hitchily ever since they started,
+with the burden of the conversation left to the two men and that
+helpless girl; if it were not to be altogether a failure she must
+interfere.
+
+"Did you ever hear of Gratiano when you were in Venice?" she asked Mr.
+Morton.
+
+"Is he one of their new water-colourists?" returned the young man. "I
+heard they had quite a school there now."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Bowen, ignoring her failure as well as she could; "he
+was a famous talker; he loved to speak an infinite deal of nothing more
+than any man in Venice."
+
+"An ancestor of mine, Mr. Morton," said Colville; "a poor, honest man,
+who did his best to make people forget that the ladies were silent.
+Thank you, Mrs. Bowen, for mentioning him. I wish he were with us
+to-day."
+
+The young man laughed. "Oh, in the _Merchant of Venice_!"
+
+"No other," said Colville.
+
+"I confess," said Mrs. Bowen, "that I _am_ rather stupid this morning. I
+suppose it's the softness of the air; it's been harsh and irritating so
+long. It makes me drowsy."
+
+"Don't mind _us_," returned Colville. "We will call you at important
+points." They were driving into a village at which people stop sometimes
+to admire the works of art in its church. "Here, for example, is--What
+place is this?" he asked of the coachman.
+
+"San Domenico."
+
+"I should know it again by its beggars." Of all ages and sexes they
+swarmed round the carriage, which the driver had instinctively slowed to
+oblige them, and thrust forward their hands and hats. Colville gave
+Effie his small change to distribute among them, at sight of which they
+streamed down the street from every direction. Those who had received
+brought forward the halt and blind, and did not scruple to propose being
+rewarded for this service. At the same time they did not mind his
+laughing in their faces; they laughed too, and went off content, or as
+nearly so as beggars ever are. He buttoned up his pocket as they drove
+on more rapidly. "I am the only person of no principle--except Effie--in
+the carriage, and yet I am at this moment carrying more blessings out of
+this village than I shall ever know what to do with. Mrs. Bowen, I know,
+is regarding me with severe disapproval. She thinks that I ought to have
+sent the beggars of San Domenico to Florence, where they would all be
+shut up in the Pia Casa di Ricovero, and taught some useful occupation.
+It's terrible in Florence. You can walk through Florence now and have no
+appeal made to your better nature that is not made at the appellant's
+risk of imprisonment. When I was there before, you had opportunities of
+giving at every turn."
+
+"You can send a cheque to the Pia Casa," said Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"Ah, but what good would that do me? When I give I want the pleasure of
+it; I want to see my beneficiary cringe under my bounty. But I've tried
+in vain to convince you that the world has gone wrong in other ways. Do
+you remember the one-armed man whom we used to give to on the Lung'
+Arno? That persevering sufferer has been repeatedly arrested for
+mendicancy, and obliged to pay a fine out of his hard earnings to escape
+being sent to your Pia Casa."
+
+Mrs. Bowen smiled, and said, Was he living yet? in a pensive tone of
+reminiscence. She was even more than patient of Colville's nonsense. It
+seemed to him that the light under her eyelids was sometimes a grateful
+light. Confronting Imogene and the young man whose hopes of her he was
+to destroy at the first opportunity, the lurid moral atmosphere which he
+breathed seemed threatening to become a thing apparent to sense, and to
+be about to blot the landscape. He fought it back as best he could, and
+kept the hovering cloud from touching the earth by incessant effort. At
+times he looked over the side of the carriage, and drew secretly a long
+breath of fatigue. It began to be borne in upon him that these ladies
+were using him ill in leaving him the burden of their entertainment. He
+became angry, but his heart softened, and he forgave them again, for he
+conjectured that he was the cause of the cares that kept them silent. He
+felt certain that the affair had taken some new turn. He wondered if
+Mrs. Bowen had told Imogene what she had demanded of him. But he could
+only conjecture and wonder in the dreary undercurrent of thought that
+flowed evenly and darkly on with the talk he kept going. He made the
+most he could of the varying views of Florence which the turns and
+mounting levels of the road gave him. He became affectionately grateful
+to the young clergyman when he replied promptly and fully, and took an
+interest in the objects or subjects he brought up.
+
+Neither Mrs. Bowen nor Imogene was altogether silent. The one helped on
+at times wearily, and the other broke at times from her abstraction.
+Doubtless the girl had undertaken too much in insisting upon a party of
+pleasure with her mind full of so many things, and doubtless Mrs. Bowen
+was sore with a rankling resentment at her insistence, and vexed at
+herself for having yielded to it. If at her time of life and with all
+her experience of it, she could not rise under this inner load, Imogene
+must have been crushed by it.
+
+Her starts from the dreamy oppression, if that were what kept her
+silent, took the form of aggression, when she disagreed with Colville
+about things he was saying, or attacked him for this or that thing which
+he had said in times past. It was an unhappy and unamiable
+self-assertion, which he was not able to compassionate so much when she
+resisted or defied Mrs. Bowen, as she seemed seeking to do at every
+point. Perhaps another would not have felt it so; it must have been
+largely in his consciousness; the young clergyman seemed not to see
+anything in these bursts but the indulgence of a gay caprice, though his
+laughing at them did not alleviate the effect to Colville, who, when he
+turned to Mrs. Bowen for her alliance, was astonished with a prompt
+snub, unmistakable to himself, however imperceptible to others.
+
+He found what diversion and comfort he could in the party of children
+who beset them at a point near the town, and followed the carriage,
+trying to sell them various light and useless trifles made of
+straw--fans, baskets, parasols, and the like. He bought recklessly of
+them and gave them to Effie, whom he assured, without the applause of
+the ladies, and with the grave question of the young clergyman, that the
+vendors were little Etruscan girls, all at least twenty-five hundred
+years old. "It's very hard to find any Etruscans under that age; most of
+the grown-up people are three thousand."
+
+The child humoured his extravagance with the faith in fable which
+children are able to command, and said, "Oh, tell me about them!" while
+she pushed up closer to him, and began to admire her presents, holding
+them up before her, and dwelling fondly upon them one by one.
+
+"Oh, there's very little to tell," answered Colville. "They're mighty
+close people, and always keep themselves very much _to_ themselves. But
+wouldn't you like to see a party of Etruscans of all ages, even down to
+little babies only eleven or twelve hundred years old, come driving into
+an American town? It would make a great excitement, wouldn't it?"
+
+"It would be splendid."
+
+"Yes; we would give them a collation in the basement of the City Hall,
+and drive them out to the cemetery. The Americans and Etruscans are very
+much alike in that--they always show you their tombs."
+
+"Will they in Fiesole?"
+
+"How you always like to burrow into the past!" interrupted Imogene.
+
+"Well, it's rather difficult burrowing into the future," returned
+Colville defensively. Accepting the challenge, he added: "Yes, I should
+really like to meet a few Etruscans in Fiesole this morning. I should
+feel as if I'd got amongst my contemporaries at last; they would
+understand me."
+
+The girl's face flushed. "Then no one else can understand you?"
+
+"Apparently not. I am the great American _incompris_."
+
+"I'm sorry for you," she returned feebly; and, in fact, sarcasm was not
+her strong point.
+
+When they entered the town they found the Etruscans preoccupied with
+other visitors, whom at various points in the quaint little piazza they
+surrounded in dense groups, to their own disadvantage as guides and
+beggars and dealers in straw goods. One of the groups reluctantly
+dispersed to devote itself to the new arrivals, and these then perceived
+that it was a party of artists, scattered about and sketching, which had
+absorbed the attention of the population. Colville went to the
+restaurant to order lunch, leaving the ladies to the care of Mr. Morton.
+When he came back he found the carriage surrounded by the artists, who
+had turned out to be the Inglehart boys. They had walked up to Fiesole
+the afternoon before, and they had been sketching there all the morning.
+With the artist's indifference to the conventional objects of interest,
+they were still ignorant of what ought to be seen in Fiesole by
+tourists, and they accepted Colville's proposition to be of his party in
+going the rounds of the Cathedral, the Museum, and the view from that
+point of the wall called the Belvedere. They found that they had been at
+the Belvedere before without knowing that it merited particular
+recognition, and some of them had made sketches from it--of bits of
+architecture and landscape, and of figure amongst the women with straw
+fans and baskets to sell, who thronged round the whole party again, and
+interrupted the prospect. In the church they differed amongst themselves
+as to the best bits for study, and Colville listened in whimsical
+despair to the enthusiasm of their likings and dislikings. All that was
+so far from him now; but in the Museum, which had only a thin interest
+based upon a small collection of art and archeology, he suffered a real
+affliction in the presence of a young Italian couple, who were probably
+plighted lovers. They went before a grey-haired pair, who might have
+been the girl's father and mother, and they looked at none of the
+objects, though they regularly stopped before them and waited till their
+guide had said his say about them. The girl, clinging tight to the young
+man's arm, knew nothing but him; her mouth and eyes were set in a
+passionate concentration of her being upon him, and he seemed to walk in
+a dream of her. From time to time they peered upon each other's faces,
+and then they paused, rapt and indifferent to all besides.
+
+The young painters had their jokes about it; even Mr. Morton smiled, and
+Mrs. Bowen recognised it. But Imogene did not smile; she regarded the
+lovers with an interest in them scarcely less intense than their
+interest in each other; and a cold perspiration of question broke out on
+Colville's forehead. Was that her ideal of what her own engagement
+should be? Had she expected him to behave in that way to her, and to
+accept from her a devotion like that girl's? How bitterly he must have
+disappointed her! It was so impossible to him that the thought of it
+made him feel that he must break all ties which bound him to anything
+like it. And yet he reflected that the time was when he could have been
+equal to that, and even more.
+
+After lunch the painters joined them again, and they all went together
+to visit the ruins of the Roman theatre and the stretch of Etruscan wall
+beyond it. The former seems older than the latter, whose huge blocks of
+stone lie as firmly and evenly in their courses as if placed there a
+year ago; the turf creeps to the edge at top, and some small trees nod
+along the crest of the wall, whose ancient face, clean and bare, looks
+sternly out over a vast prospect, now young and smiling in the first
+delight of spring. The piety or interest of the community, which guards
+the entrance to the theatre by a fee of certain centesimi, may be
+concerned in keeping the wall free from the grass and vines which are
+stealing the half-excavated arena back to forgetfulness and decay; but
+whatever agency it was, it weakened the appeal that the wall made to the
+sympathy of the spectators.
+
+They could do nothing with it; the artists did not take their
+sketch-blocks from their pockets. But in the theatre, where a few broken
+columns marked the place of the stage, and the stone benches of the
+auditorium were here and there reached by a flight of uncovered steps,
+the human interest returned.
+
+"I suspect that there is such a thing as a ruin's being too old," said
+Colville. "Our Etruscan friends made the mistake of building their wall
+several thousand years too soon for our purpose."
+
+"Yes," consented the young clergyman. "It seems as if our own race
+became alienated from us through the mere effect of time, don't you
+think, sir? I mean, of course, terrestrially."
+
+The artists looked uneasy, as if they had not counted upon anything of
+this kind, and they began to scatter about for points of view. Effie got
+her mother's leave to run up and down one of the stairways, if she would
+not fall. Mrs. Bowen sat down on one of the lower steps, and Mr. Morton
+took his place respectfully near her.
+
+"I wonder how it looks from the top?" Imogene asked this of Colville,
+with more meaning than seemed to belong to the question properly.
+
+"There is nothing like going to see," he suggested. He helped her up,
+giving her his hand from one course of seats to another. When they
+reached the point which commanded the best view of the whole, she sat
+down, and he sank at her feet, but they did not speak of the view.
+
+"Theodore, I want to tell you something," she said abruptly. "I have
+heard from home."
+
+"Yes?" he replied, in a tone in which he did his best to express a
+readiness for any fate.
+
+"Mother has telegraphed. She is coming out. She is on her way now. She
+will be here very soon."
+
+Colville did not know exactly what to say to these passionately
+consecutive statements. "Well?" he said at last.
+
+"Well"--she repeated his word--"what do you intend to do?"
+
+"Intend to do in what event?" he asked, lifting his eyes for the first
+time to the eyes which he felt burning down upon him.
+
+"If she should refuse?"
+
+Again he could not command an instant answer, but when it came it was a
+fair one. "It isn't for me to say what I shall do," he replied gravely.
+"Or, if it is, I can only say that I will do whatever you wish."
+
+"Do _you_ wish nothing?"
+
+"Nothing but your happiness."
+
+"Nothing but my happiness!" she retorted. "What is my happiness to me?
+Have I ever sought it?"
+
+"I can't say," he answered; "but if I did not think you would find it--"
+
+"I shall find it, if ever I find it, in yours," she interrupted. "And
+what shall you do if my mother will not consent to our engagement?"
+
+The experienced and sophisticated man--for that in no ill way was what
+Colville was--felt himself on trial for his honour and his manhood by
+this simple girl, this child. He could not endure to fall short of her
+ideal of him at that moment, no matter what error or calamity the
+fulfilment involved. "If you feel sure that you love me, Imogene, it
+will make no difference to me what your mother says. I would be glad of
+her consent; I should hate to go counter to her will; but I know that I
+am good enough man to be true and keep you all my life the first in all
+my thoughts, and that's enough for me. But if you have any fear, any
+doubt of yourself, now is the time--"
+
+Imogene rose to her feet as in some turmoil of thought or emotion that
+would not suffer her to remain quiet.
+
+"Oh, keep still!" "Don't get up yet!" "Hold on a minute, please!" came
+from the artists in different parts of the theatre, and half a dozen
+imploring pencils were waved in the air.
+
+"They are sketching you," said Colville, and she sank compliantly into
+her seat again.
+
+"I have no doubt for myself--no," she said, as if there had been no
+interruption.
+
+"Then we need have no anxiety in meeting your mother," said Colville,
+with a light sigh, after a moment's pause. "What makes you think she
+will be unfavourable?"
+
+"I don't think that; but I thought--I didn't know but--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Nothing, now." Her lips were quivering; he could see her struggle for
+self-control, but he could not see it unmoved.
+
+"Poor child!" he said, putting out his hand toward her.
+
+"Don't take my hand; they're all looking," she begged.
+
+He forbore, and they remained silent and motionless a little while,
+before she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak again.
+
+"Then we are promised to each other, whatever happens," she said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And we will never speak of this again. But there is one thing. Did Mrs.
+Bowen ask you to tell Mr. Morton of our engagement?"
+
+"She said that I ought to do so."
+
+"And did you say you would?"
+
+"I don't know. But I suppose I ought to tell him."
+
+"I don't wish you to!" cried the girl.
+
+"You don't wish me to tell him?"
+
+"No; I will not have it!"
+
+"Oh, very well; it's much easier not. But it seems to me that it's only
+fair to him."
+
+"Did you think of that yourself?" she demanded fiercely.
+
+"No," returned Colville, with sad self-recognition. "I'm afraid I'm not
+apt to think of the comforts and rights of other people. It was Mrs.
+Bowen who thought of it."
+
+"I knew it!"
+
+"But I must confess that I agreed with her, though I would have
+preferred to postpone it till we heard from your family." He was
+thoughtfully silent a moment; then he said, "But if their decision is to
+have no weight with us, I think he ought to be told at once."
+
+"Do you think that I am flirting with him?"
+
+"Imogene!" exclaimed Colville reproachfully.
+
+"That's what you imply; that's what she implies."
+
+"You're very unjust to Mrs. Bowen, Imogene."
+
+"Oh, you always defend her! It isn't the first time you've told me I was
+unjust to her."
+
+"I don't mean that you are willingly unjust, or could be so, to any
+living creature, least of all to her. But I--we--owe her so much; she
+has been so patient."
+
+"What do we owe her? How has she been patient?"
+
+"She has overcome her dislike to me."
+
+"Oh, indeed!"
+
+"And--and I feel under obligation to her for--in a thousand little ways;
+and I should be glad to feel that we were acting with her approval; I
+should like to please her."
+
+"You wish to tell Mr. Morton?"
+
+"I think I ought."
+
+"To please Mrs. Bowen! Tell him, then! You always cared more to please
+her than me. Perhaps you stayed in Florence to please her!"
+
+She rose and ran down the broken seats and ruined steps so recklessly
+and yet so sure-footedly that it seemed more like a flight than a pace
+to the place where Mrs. Bowen and Mr. Morton were talking together.
+
+Colville followed as he could, slowly and with a heavy heart. A good
+thing develops itself in infinite and unexpected shapes of good; a bad
+thing into manifold and astounding evils. This mistake was whirling away
+beyond his recall in hopeless mazes of error. He saw this generous young
+spirit betrayed by it to ignoble and unworthy excess, and he knew that
+he and not she was to blame.
+
+He was helpless to approach her, to speak with her, to set her right,
+great as the need of that was, and he could see that she avoided him.
+But their relations remained outwardly undisturbed. The artists brought
+their sketches for inspection and comment, and, without speaking to each
+other, he and Imogene discussed them with the rest.
+
+When they started homeward the painters said they were coming a little
+way with them for a send-off, and then going back to spend the night in
+Fiesole. They walked beside the carriage, talking with Mrs. Bowen and
+Imogene, who had taken their places, with Effie between them, on the
+back seat; and when they took their leave, Colville and the young
+clergyman, who had politely walked with them, continued on foot a little
+further, till they came to the place where the highway to Florence
+divided into the new road and the old. At this point it steeply overtops
+the fields on one side, which is shored up by a wall some ten or twelve
+feet deep; and here round a sharp turn of the hill on the other side
+came a peasant driving a herd of the black pigs of the country.
+
+Mrs. Bowen's horses were, perhaps, pampered beyond the habitual
+resignation of Florentine horses to all manner of natural phenomena;
+they reared at sight of the sable crew, and backing violently uphill,
+set the carriage across the road, with its hind wheels a few feet from
+the brink of the wall. The coachman sprang from his seat, the ladies and
+the child remained in theirs as if paralysed.
+
+Colville ran forward to the side of the carriage. "Jump, Mrs. Bowen!
+jump, Effie! Imogene--"
+
+The mother and the little one obeyed. He caught them in his arms and set
+them down. The girl sat still, staring at him with reproachful, with
+disdainful eyes.
+
+He leaped forward to drag her out; she shrank away, and then he flew to
+help the coachman, who had the maddened horses by the bit.
+
+"Let go!" he heard the young clergyman calling to him; "she's safe!" He
+caught a glimpse of Imogene, whom Mr. Morton had pulled from the other
+side of the carriage. He struggled to free his wrist from the curb-bit
+chain of the horse, through which he had plunged it in his attempt to
+seize the bridle. The wheels of the carriage went over the wall; he felt
+himself whirled into the air, and then swung ruining down into the
+writhing and crashing heap at the bottom of the wall.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+When Colville came to himself his first sensation was delight in the
+softness and smoothness of the turf on which he lay. Then the strange
+colour of the grass commended itself to his notice, and presently he
+perceived that the thing under his head was a pillow, and that he was in
+bed. He was supported in this conclusion by the opinion of the young man
+who sat watching him a little way off, and who now smiled cheerfully at
+the expression in the eyes which Colville turned inquiringly upon him.
+
+"Where am I?" he asked, with what appeared to him very unnecessary
+feebleness of voice.
+
+The young man begged his pardon in Italian, and when Colville repeated
+his question in that tongue, he told him that he was in Palazzo Pinti,
+whither he had been brought from the scene of his accident. He added
+that Colville must not talk till the doctor had seen him and given him
+leave, and he explained that he was himself a nurse from the hospital,
+who had been taking care of him.
+
+Colville moved his head and felt the bandage upon it; he desisted in his
+attempt to lift his right arm to it before the attendant could interfere
+in behalf of the broken limb. He recalled dimly and fragmentarily long
+histories that he had dreamed, but he forbore to ask how long he had
+been in his present case, and he accepted patiently the apparition of
+the doctor and other persons who came and went, and were at his bedside
+or not there, as it seemed to him, between the opening and closing of an
+eye. As the days passed they acquired greater permanence and maintained
+a more uninterrupted identity. He was able to make quite sure of Mr.
+Morton and of Mr. Waters; Mrs. Bowen came in, leading Effie, and this
+gave him a great pleasure. Mrs. Bowen seemed to have grown younger and
+better. Imogene was not among the phantoms who visited him; and he
+accepted her absence as quiescently as he accepted the presence of the
+others. There was a cheerfulness in those who came that permitted him no
+anxiety, and he was too weak to invite it by any conjecture. He
+consented to be spared and to spare himself; and there were some things
+about the affair which gave him a singular and perhaps not wholly sane
+content. One of these was the man nurse who had evidently taken care of
+him throughout. He celebrated, whenever he looked at this capable
+person, his escape from being, in the odious helplessness of sickness, a
+burden upon the strength and sympathy of the two women for whom he had
+otherwise made so much trouble. His satisfaction in this had much to do
+with his recovery, which, when it once began, progressed rapidly to a
+point where he was told that Imogene and her mother were at a hotel in
+Florence, waiting till he should be strong enough to see them. It was
+Mrs. Bowen who told him this with an air which she visibly strove to
+render non-committal and impersonal, but which betrayed, nevertheless, a
+faint apprehension for the effect upon him. The attitude of Imogene and
+her mother was certainly not one to have been expected of people holding
+their nominal relation to him, but Colville had been revising his
+impressions of events on the day of his accident; Imogene's last look
+came back to him, and he could not think the situation altogether
+unaccountable.
+
+"Have I been here a long time?" he asked, as if he had not heeded what
+she told him.
+
+"About a fortnight," answered Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"And Imogene--how long has she been away?"
+
+"Since they knew you would get well."
+
+"I will see them any time," he said quietly.
+
+"Do you think you are strong enough?"
+
+"I shall never be stronger till I have seen them," he returned, with a
+glance at her. "Yes; I want them to come to-day. I shall not be excited;
+don't be troubled--if you were going to be," he added. "Please send to
+them at once."
+
+Mrs. Bowen hesitated, but after a moment left the room. She returned in
+half an hour with a lady who revealed even to Colville's languid regard
+evidences of the character which Mrs. Bowen had attributed to Imogene's
+mother. She was a large, robust person, laced to sufficient shapeliness,
+and she was well and simply dressed. She entered the room with a waft of
+some clean, wholesome perfume, and a quiet temperament and perfect
+health looked out of her clear, honest eyes--the eyes of Imogene Graham,
+though the girl's were dark and the woman's were blue. When Mrs. Bowen
+had named them to each other, in withdrawing, Mrs. Graham took
+Colville's weak left hand in her fresh, strong, right, and then lifted
+herself a chair to his bedside, and sat down.
+
+"How do you do to-day, sir?" she said, with a touch of old-fashioned
+respectfulness in the last word. "Do you think you are quite strong
+enough to talk with me?"
+
+"I think so," said Colville, with a faint smile. "At least I can listen
+with fortitude."
+
+Mrs. Graham was not apparently a person adapted to joking. "I don't know
+whether it will require much fortitude to hear what I have to say or
+not," she said, with her keen gaze fixed upon him. "It's simply this: I
+am going to take Imogene home."
+
+She seemed to expect that Colville would make some reply to this, and he
+said blankly, "Yes?"
+
+"I came out prepared to consent to what she wished, after I had seen
+you, and satisfied myself that she was not mistaken; for I had always
+promised myself that her choice should be perfectly untrammelled, and I
+have tried to bring her up with principles and ideas that would enable
+her to make a good choice."
+
+"Yes," said Colville again. "I'm afraid you didn't take her temperament
+and her youth into account, and that she disappointed you."
+
+"No; I can't say that she did. It isn't that at all. I see no reason to
+blame her for her choice. Her mistake was of another kind."
+
+It appeared to Colville that this very sensible and judicial lady found
+an intellectual pleasure in the analysis of the case, which modified the
+intensity of her maternal feeling in regard to it, and that, like many
+people who talk well, she liked to hear herself talk in the presence of
+another appreciative listener. He did not offer to interrupt her, and
+she went on. "No, sir, I am not disappointed in her choice. I think her
+chances of happiness would have been greater, in the abstract, with one
+nearer her own age; but that is a difference which other things affect
+so much that it did not alarm me greatly. Some people are younger at
+your age than at hers. No, sir, that is not the point." Mrs. Graham
+fetched a sigh, as if she found it easier to say what was not the point
+than to say what was, and her clear gaze grew troubled. But she
+apparently girded herself for the struggle. "As far as you are
+concerned, Mr. Colville, I have not a word to say. Your conduct
+throughout has been most high-minded and considerate and delicate."
+
+It is hard for any man to deny merits attributed to him, especially if
+he has been ascribing to himself the opposite demerits. But Colville
+summoned his dispersed forces to protest against this.
+
+"Oh, no, no," he cried. "Anything but that. My conduct has been selfish
+and shameful. If you could understand all--"
+
+"I think I do understand all--at least far more, I regret to say, than
+my daughter has been willing to tell me. And I am more than satisfied
+with you. I thank you and honour you."
+
+"Oh no; don't say that," pleaded Colville. "I really can't stand it."
+
+"And when I came here it was with the full intention of approving and
+confirming Imogene's decision. But I was met at once by a painful and
+surprising state of things. You are aware that you have been very sick?"
+
+"Dimly," said Colville.
+
+"I found you very sick, and I found my daughter frantic at the error
+which she had discovered in herself--discovered too late, as she felt."
+Mrs. Graham hesitated, and then added abruptly, "She had found out that
+she did not love you."
+
+"Didn't love me?" repeated Colville feebly.
+
+"She had been conscious of the truth before, but she had stifled her
+misgivings insanely, and, as I feel, almost wickedly, pushing on, and
+saying to herself that when you were married, then there would be no
+escape, and she _must_ love you."
+
+"Poor girl! poor child! I see, I see."
+
+"But the accident that was almost your death saved her from that
+miserable folly and iniquity. Yes," she continued, in answer to the
+protest in his face, "folly and iniquity. I found her half crazed at
+your bedside. She was fully aware of your danger, but while she was
+feeling all the remorse that she ought to feel--that any one could
+feel--she was more and more convinced that she never had loved you and
+never should. I can give you no idea of her state of mind."
+
+"Oh, you needn't! you needn't! Poor, poor child!"
+
+"Yes, a child indeed. If it had not been for the pity I felt for
+her--But no matter about that. She saw at last that if your heroic
+devotion to her"--Colville did his best to hang his pillowed head for
+shame--"if your present danger did not awaken her to some such feeling
+for you as she had once imagined she had; if they both only increased
+her despair and self-abhorrence, then the case was indeed hopeless. She
+was simply distracted. I had to tear her away almost by force. She has
+had a narrow escape from brain-fever. And now I have come to implore, to
+_demand_"--Mrs. Graham, with all her poise and calm, was rising to the
+hysterical key--"her release from a fate that would be worse than death
+for such a girl. I mean marrying without the love of her whole soul. She
+esteems you, she respects you, she admires you, she likes you; but--"
+Mrs. Graham pressed her lips together, and her eyes shone.
+
+"She is free," said Colville, and with the words a mighty load rolled
+from his heart. "There is no need to demand anything."
+
+"I know."
+
+"There hasn't been an hour, an instant, during--since I--we--spoke
+together that I wouldn't have released her if I could have known what
+you tell me now."
+
+"Of course!--of course!"
+
+"I have had my fears--my doubts; but whenever I approached the point I
+found no avenue by which we could reach a clearer understanding. I could
+not say much without seeming to seek for myself the release I was
+offering her."
+
+"Naturally. And what added to her wretchedness was the suspicion at
+the bottom of all that she had somehow forced herself upon
+you--misunderstood you, and made you say and do things to spare her that
+you would not have done voluntarily." This was advanced tentatively. In
+the midst of his sophistications Colville had, as most of his sex have,
+a native, fatal, helpless truthfulness, which betrayed him at the most
+unexpected moments, and this must now have appeared in his countenance.
+The lady rose haughtily. She had apparently been considering him, but,
+after all, she must have been really considering her daughter. "If
+anything of the kind was the case," she said, "I will ask you to spare
+her the killing knowledge. It's quite enough for _me_ to know it. And
+allow me to say, Mr. Colville, that it would have been far kinder in
+you--"
+
+"Ah, _think,_ my dear madam!" he exclaimed. "How _could_ I?"
+
+She did think, evidently, and when she spoke it was with a generous
+emotion, in which there was no trace of pique.
+
+"You couldn't. You have done right; I feel that, and I will trust you to
+say anything you will to my daughter."
+
+"To your daughter? Shall I see her?"
+
+"She came with me. She wished to beg your forgiveness."
+
+Colville lay silent. "There is no forgiveness to be asked or granted,"
+he said, at length. "Why should she suffer the pain of seeing me?--for
+it would be nothing else. What do you think? Will it do her any good
+hereafter? I don't care for myself."
+
+"I don't know what to think," said Mrs. Graham. "She is a strange child.
+She may have some idea of reparation."
+
+"Oh, beseech her from me not to imagine that any reparation is due!
+Where there has been an error there must be blame; but wherever it lies
+in ours, I am sure it isn't at her door. Tell her I say this; tell her
+that I acquit her with all my heart of every shadow of wrong; that I am
+not unhappy, but glad for her sake and my own that this has ended as it
+has." He stretched his left hand across the coverlet to her, and said,
+with the feebleness of exhaustion, "Good-bye. Bid her good-bye for me."
+
+Mrs. Graham pressed his hand and went out. A moment after the door was
+flung open, and Imogene burst into the room. She threw herself on her
+knees beside his bed. "I will _pray_ to you!" she said, her face intense
+with the passions working in her soul. She seemed choking with words
+which would not come; then, with an inarticulate cry that must stand for
+all, she caught up the hand that lay limp on the coverlet; she crushed
+it against her lips, and ran out of the room.
+
+He sank into a deathly torpor, the physical refusal of his brain to take
+account of what had passed. When he woke from it, little Effie Bowen was
+airily tiptoeing about the room, fondly retouching its perfect order. He
+closed his eyes, and felt her come to him and smooth the sheet softly
+under his chin. Then he knew she must be standing with clasped hands
+admiring the effect. Some one called her in whisper from the door. It
+closed, and all was still again.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Colville got himself out of the comfort and quiet of Mrs. Bowen's house
+as soon as he could. He made the more haste because he felt that if he
+could have remained with the smallest trace of self-respect, he would
+have been glad to stay there for ever.
+
+Even as it was, the spring had advanced to early summer, and the sun was
+lying hot and bright in the piazzas, and the shade dense and cool in the
+narrow streets, before he left Palazzo Pinti; the Lung' Arno was a glare
+of light that struck back from the curving line of the buff houses; the
+river had shrivelled to a rill in its bed; the black cypresses were dim
+in the tremor of the distant air on the hill-slopes beyond; the olives
+seemed to swelter in the sun, and the villa walls to burn whiter and
+whiter. At evening the mosquito began to wind his tiny horn. It was the
+end of May, and nearly everybody but the Florentines had gone out of
+Florence, dispersing to Via Reggio by the sea, to the hills of
+Pistoja, and to the high, cool air of Siena. More than once Colville had
+said that he was keeping Mrs. Bowen after she ought to have got away,
+and she had answered that she liked hot weather, and that this was not
+comparable to the heat of Washington in June. She was looking very well,
+and younger and prettier than she had since the first days of their
+renewed acquaintance in the winter. Her southern complexion enriched
+itself in the sun; sometimes when she came into his room from outdoors
+the straying brown hair curled into loose rings on her temples, and her
+cheeks glowed a deep red.
+
+She said those polite things to appease him as long as he was not well
+enough to go away, but she did not try to detain him after his strength
+sufficiently returned. It was the blow on the head that kept him
+longest. After his broken arm and his other bruises were quite healed,
+he was aware of physical limits to thinking of the future or regretting
+the past, and this sense of his powerlessness went far to reconcile him
+to a life of present inaction and oblivion. Theoretically he ought to
+have been devoured by remorse and chagrin, but as a matter of fact he
+suffered very little from either. Even in people who are in full
+possession of their capacity for mental anguish one observes that after
+they have undergone a certain amount of pain they cease to feel.
+
+Colville amused himself a good deal with Effie's endeavours to entertain
+him and take care of him. The child was with him every moment that she
+could steal from her tasks, and her mother no longer attempted to stem
+the tide of her devotion. It was understood that Effie should joke and
+laugh with Mr. Colville as much as she chose; that she should fan him as
+long as he could stand it; that she should read to him when he woke, and
+watch him when he slept. She brought him his breakfast, she petted him
+and caressed him, and wished to make him a monster of dependence and
+self-indulgence. It seemed to grieve her that he got well so fast.
+
+The last night before he left the house she sat on his knee by the
+window looking out beyond the firefly twinkle of Oltrarno, to the
+silence and solid dark of the solemn company of hills beyond. They had
+not lighted the lamps because of the mosquitoes, and they had talked
+till her head dropped against his shoulder.
+
+Mrs. Bowen came in to get her. "Why, is she asleep?"
+
+"Yes. Don't take her yet," said Colville.
+
+Mrs. Bowen rustled softly into the chair which Effie had left to get
+into Colville's lap. Neither of them spoke, and he was so richly content
+with the peace, the tacit sweetness of the little moment, that he would
+have been glad to have it silently endure forever. If any troublesome
+question of his right to such a moment of bliss obtruded itself upon
+him, he did not concern himself with it.
+
+"We shall have another hot day to-morrow," said Mrs. Bowen at length. "I
+hope you will find your room comfortable."
+
+"Yes: it's at the back of the hotel, mighty high, and wide, and no sun
+ever comes into it except when they show it to foreigners in winter.
+Then they get a few rays to enter as a matter of business, on condition
+that they won't detain them. I dare say I shall stay there some time. I
+suppose you will be getting away from Florence very soon.
+
+"Yes. But I haven't decided where to go yet."
+
+"Should you like some general expression of my gratitude for all you've
+done for me, Mrs. Bowen?"
+
+"No; I would rather not. It has been a great pleasure--to Effie."
+
+"Oh, a luxury beyond the dreams of avarice." They spoke in low tones,
+and there was something in the hush that suggested to Colville the
+feasibility of taking into his unoccupied hand one of the pretty hands
+which the pale night-light showed him lying in Mrs. Bowen's lap. But he
+forbore, and only sighed. "Well, then, I will say nothing. But I shall
+keep on thinking all my life."
+
+She made no answer.
+
+"When you are gone, I shall have to make the most of Mr. Waters," he
+said.
+
+"He is going to stop all summer, I believe."
+
+"Oh yes. When I suggested to him the other day that he might find it too
+hot, he said that he had seventy New England winters to thaw out of his
+blood, and that all the summers he had left would not be more than he
+needed. One of his friends told him that he could cook eggs in his
+piazza in August, and he said that he should like nothing better than to
+cook eggs there. He's the most delightfully expatriated compatriot I've
+ever seen."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"It's well enough for him. Life has no claims on him any more. I think
+it's very pleasant over here, now that everybody's gone," added
+Colville, from a confused resentfulness of collectively remembered Days
+and Afternoons and Evenings. "How still the night is!"
+
+A few feet clapping by on the pavement below alone broke the hush.
+
+"Sometimes I feel very tired of it all, and want to get home," sighed
+Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"Well, so do I."
+
+"I can't believe it's right staying away from the country so long."
+People often say such things in Europe.
+
+"No, I don't either, if you've got anything to do there."
+
+"You can always make something to do there."
+
+"Oh yes." Some young young men, breaking from a street near by, began to
+sing. "We shouldn't have that sort of thing at home."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Bowen pensively.
+
+"I heard just such singing before I fell asleep the night after that
+party at Madame Uccelli's, and it filled me with fury."
+
+"Why should it do that?"
+
+"I don't know. It seemed like voices from our youth--Lina."
+
+She had no resentment of his use of her name in the tone with which she
+asked: "Did you hate that so much?"
+
+"No; the loss of it."
+
+They both fetched a deep breath.
+
+"The Uccellis have a villa near the baths of Lucca," said Mrs. Bowen.
+"They have asked me to go."
+
+"Do you think of going?" inquired Colville. "I've always fancied it must
+be pleasant there."
+
+"No; I declined. Sometimes I think I will just stay on in Florence."
+
+"I dare say you'd find it perfectly comfortable. There's nothing like
+having the range of one's own house in summer." He looked out of the
+window on the blue-black sky.
+
+  "'And deepening through their silent spheres,
+   Heaven over heaven rose the night,'"
+
+
+he quoted. "It's wonderful! Do you remember how I used to read _Mariana
+in the South_ to you and poor Jenny? How it must have bored her! What an
+ass I was!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Bowen breathlessly, in sympathy with his reminiscence
+rather than in agreement with his self-denunciation.
+
+Colville broke into a laugh, and then she began to laugh to; but not
+quite willingly as it seemed.
+
+Effie started from her sleep. "What--what is it?" she asked, stretching
+and shivering as half-wakened children do.
+
+"Bed-time," said her mother promptly, taking her hand to lead her away.
+"Say good-night to Mr. Colville."
+
+The child turned and kissed him. "Good night," she murmured.
+
+"Good night, you sleepy little soul!" It seemed to Colville that he must
+be a pretty good man, after all, if this little thing loved him so.
+
+"Do you always kiss Mr. Colville good-night?" asked her mother when she
+began to undo her hair for her in her room.
+
+"Sometimes. Don't you think it's nice?"
+
+"Oh yes; nice enough."
+
+Colville sat by the window a long time thinking Mrs. Bowen might come
+back; but she did not return.
+
+Mr. Waters came to see him the next afternoon at his hotel.
+
+"Are you pretty comfortable here?" he asked.
+
+"Well, it's a change," said Colville. "I miss the little one awfully."
+
+"She's a winning child," admitted the old man. "That combination of
+conventionality and _naïveté_ is very captivating. I notice it in the
+mother."
+
+"Yes, the mother has it too. Have you seen them to-day?"
+
+"Yes; Mrs. Bowen was sorry to be out when you came."
+
+"I had the misfortune to miss them. I had a great mind to go again
+to-night."
+
+The old man said nothing to this. "The fact is," Colville went on, "I'm
+so habituated to being there that I'm rather spoiled."
+
+"Ah, it's a nice place," Mr. Waters admitted.
+
+"Of course I made all the haste I could to get away, and I have the
+reward of a good conscience. But I don't find that the reward is very
+great."
+
+The old gentleman smiled. "The difficulty is to know conscience from
+self-interest."
+
+"Oh, there's no doubt of it in my case," said Colville. "If I'd
+consulted my own comfort and advantage, I should still be at Palazzo
+Pinti."
+
+"I dare say they would have been glad to keep you."
+
+"Do you really think so?" asked Colville, with sudden seriousness. "I
+wish you would tell me why. Have you any reason--grounds? Pshaw! I'm
+absurd!" He sank back into the easy-chair from whose depths he had
+pulled himself in the eagerness of his demand, and wiped his forehead
+with his handkerchief. "Mr. Waters, you remember my telling you of my
+engagement to Miss Graham?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is broken off--if it were ever really on. It was a great mistake
+for both of us--a tragical one for her, poor child, a ridiculous one for
+me. My only consolation is that it was a mistake and no more; but I
+don't conceal from myself that I might have prevented it altogether if I
+had behaved with greater wisdom and dignity at the outset. But I'm
+afraid I was flattered by an illusion of hers that ought to have pained
+and alarmed me, and the rest followed inevitably, though I was always
+just on the point of escaping the consequences of my weakness--my
+wickedness."
+
+"Ah, there is something extremely interesting in all that," said the old
+minister thoughtfully. "The situation used to be figured under the old
+idea of a compact with the devil. His debtor was always on the point of
+escaping, as you say, but I recollect no instance in which he did not
+pay at last. The myth must have arisen from man's recognition of the
+inexorable sequence of cause from effect, in the moral world, which even
+repentance cannot avert. Goethe tries to imagine an atonement for
+Faust's trespass against one human soul in his benefactions to the race
+at large; but it is a very cloudy business."
+
+"It isn't quite a parallel case," said Colville, rather sulkily. He had,
+in fact, suffered more under Mr. Waters's generalisation than he could
+from a more personal philosophy of the affair.
+
+"Oh no; I didn't think that," consented the old man.
+
+"And I don't think I shall undertake any extended scheme of drainage or
+subsoiling in atonement for my little dream," Colville continued,
+resenting the parity of outline that grew upon him in spite of his
+protest. They were both silent for a while, and then Colville cried out,
+"Yes, yes; they are alike. _I_ dreamed, too, of recovering and restoring
+my own lost and broken past in the love of a young soul, and it was in
+essence the same cruelly egotistic dream; and it's nothing in my defence
+that it was all formless and undirected at first, and that as soon as I
+recognised it I abhorred it."
+
+"Oh yes, it is," replied the old man, with perfect equanimity. "Your
+assertion is the hysterical excess of Puritanism in all times and
+places. In the moral world we are responsible only for the wrong that we
+intend. It can't be otherwise."
+
+"And the evil that's suffered from the wrong we didn't intend?"
+
+"Ah, perhaps that isn't evil."
+
+"It's pain!"
+
+"It's pain, yes."
+
+"And to have wrung a young and innocent heart with the anguish of
+self-doubt, with the fear of wrong to another, with the shame of an
+error such as I allowed, perhaps encouraged her to make--"
+
+"Yes," said the old man. "The young suffer terribly. But they recover.
+Afterward we don't suffer so much, but we don't recover. I wouldn't
+defend you against yourself if I thought you seriously in the wrong. If
+you know yourself to be, you shouldn't let me."
+
+Thus put upon his honour, Colville was a long time thoughtful. "How can
+I tell?" he asked. "You know the facts; you can judge."
+
+"If I were to judge at all, I should say you were likely to do a greater
+wrong than any you have committed."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"Miss Graham is a young girl, and I have no doubt that the young
+clergyman--what was his name?"
+
+"Morton. Do you think--do you suppose there was anything in that?"
+demanded Colville, with eagerness, that a more humorous observer than
+Mr. Waters might have found ludicrous. "He was an admirable young
+fellow, with an excellent head and a noble heart. I underrated him at
+one time, though I recognised his good qualities afterward; but I was
+afraid she did not appreciate him."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," said the old man, with an astuteness of
+manner which Colville thought authorised by some sort of definite
+knowledge.
+
+"I would give the world if it were so!" he cried fervently.
+
+"But you are really very much more concerned in something else."
+
+"In what else?"
+
+"Can't you imagine?"
+
+"No," said Colville; but he felt himself growing very red in the face.
+
+"Then I have no more to say."
+
+"Yes, speak!" And after an interval Colville added, "Is it anything
+about--you hinted at something long ago--Mrs. Bowen?"
+
+"Yes;" the old man nodded his head. "Do you owe her nothing?"
+
+"Owe her nothing? Everything! My life! What self-respect is left me!
+Immeasurable gratitude! The homage of a man saved from himself as far as
+his stupidity and selfishness would permit! Why, I--I love her!" The
+words gave him courage. "In every breath and pulse! She is the most
+beautiful and gracious and wisest and best woman in the world! I have
+loved her ever since I met her here in Florence last winter. Good
+heavens! I must have always loved her! But," he added, falling from the
+rapture of this confession, "she simply loathes _me_!"
+
+"It was certainly not to your credit that you were willing at the same
+time to marry some one else."
+
+"Willing! I wasn't willing! I was bound hand and foot! Yes--I don't care
+what you think of my weakness--I was not a free agent. It's very well to
+condemn one's-self, but it may be carried too far; injustice to others
+is not the only injustice, or the worst. What I was willing to do was to
+keep my word--to prevent that poor child, if possible, from ever finding
+out her mistake."
+
+If Colville expected this heroic confession to impress his listener he
+was disappointed. Mr. Waters made him no reply, and he was obliged to
+ask, with a degree of sarcastic impatience, "I suppose you scarcely
+blame me for that?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know that I blame people for things. There are times when
+it seems as if we were all puppets, pulled this way or that, without
+control of our own movements. Hamlet was able to browbeat Rosencrantz
+and Guildenstern with his business of the pipe; but if they had been in
+a position to answer they might have told him that it required far less
+skill to play upon a man than any other instrument. Most of us, in fact,
+go sounding on without any special application of breath or fingers,
+repeating the tunes that were played originally upon other men. It
+appears to me that you suffered yourself to do something of the kind in
+this affair. We are a long time learning to act with common-sense or
+even common sanity in what are called matters of the affections. A
+broken engagement may be a bad thing in some cases, but I am inclined to
+think that it is the very best thing that could happen in most cases
+where it happens. The evil is done long before; the broken engagement is
+merely sanative, and so far beneficent."
+
+The old gentleman rose, and Colville, dazed by the recognition of his
+own cowardice and absurdity, did not try to detain him. But he followed
+him down to the outer gate of the hotel. The afternoon sun was pouring
+into the piazza a sea of glimmering heat, into which Mr. Waters plunged
+with the security of a salamander. He wore a broad-brimmed Panama hat, a
+sack coat of black alpaca, and loose trousers of the same material, and
+Colville fancied him doubly defended against the torrid waves not only
+by the stored cold of half a century of winters at Haddam East Village,
+but by an inner coolness of spirit, which appeared to diffuse itself in
+an appreciable atmosphere about him. It was not till he was gone that
+Colville found himself steeped in perspiration, and glowing with a
+strange excitement.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Colville went back to his own room, and spent a good deal of time in the
+contemplation of a suit of clothes, adapted to the season, which had
+been sent home from the tailor's just before Mr. Waters came in. The
+coat was of the lightest serge, the trousers of a pearly grey tending to
+lavender, the waistcoat of cool white duck. On his way home from Palazzo
+Pinti he had stopped in Via Tornabuoni and bought some silk gauze
+neckties of a tasteful gaiety of tint, which he had at the time thought
+very well of. But now, as he spread out the whole array on his bed, it
+seemed too emblematic of a light and blameless spirit for his wear. He
+ought to put on something as nearly analogous to sackcloth as a modern
+stock of dry-goods afforded; he ought, at least, to wear the grave
+materials of his winter costume. But they were really insupportable in
+this sudden access of summer. Besides, he had grown thin during his
+sickness, and the things bagged about him. If he were going to see Mrs.
+Bowen that evening, he ought to go in some decent shape. It was perhaps
+providential that he had failed to find her at home in the morning, when
+he had ventured thither in the clumsy attire in which he had been
+loafing about her drawing-room for the past week. He now owed it to her
+to appear before her as well as he could. How charmingly punctilious she
+always was herself!
+
+As he put on his new clothes he felt the moral support which the
+becomingness of dress alone can give. With the blue silk gauze lightly
+tied under his collar, and the lapels of his thin coat thrown back to
+admit his thumbs to his waistcoat pockets, he felt almost cheerful
+before his glass. Should he shave? As once before, this important
+question occurred to him. His thinness gave him some advantages of
+figure, but he thought that it made his face older. What effect would
+cutting off his beard have upon it? He had not seen the lower part of
+his face for fifteen years. No one could say what recent ruin of a
+double chin might not be lurking there. He decided not to shave, at
+least till after dinner, and after dinner he was too impatient for his
+visit to brook the necessary delay.
+
+He was shown into the salotto alone, but Effie Bowen came running in to
+meet him. She stopped suddenly, bridling.
+
+"You never expected to see me looking quite so pretty," said Colville,
+tracing the cause of her embarrassment to his summer splendour. "Where
+is your mamma?"
+
+"She is in the dining-room," replied the child, getting hold of his
+hand. "She wants you to come and have coffee with us."
+
+"By all means--not that I haven't had coffee already, though."
+
+She led the way, looking up at him shyly over her shoulder as they went.
+
+Mrs. Bowen rose, napkin in lap, and gave him a hand of welcome. "How are
+you feeling to-day?" she asked, politely ignoring his finery.
+
+"Like a new man," he said. And then he added, to relieve the strain of
+the situation, "Of the best tailor's make in Florence."
+
+"You look very well," she smiled.
+
+"Oh, I always do when I take pains," said Colville. "The trouble is that
+I don't always take pains. But I thought I would to-night, in upon a
+lady."
+
+"Effie will feel very much flattered," said Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"Don't refuse a portion of the satisfaction," he cried.
+
+"Oh, is it for me too?"
+
+This gave Colville consolation which no religion or philosophy could
+have brought him, and his pleasure was not marred, but rather
+heightened, by the little pangs of expectation, bred by long custom,
+that from moment to moment Imogene would appear. She did not appear, and
+a thrill of security succeeded upon each alarm. He wished her well with
+all his heart; such is the human heart that he wished her arrived home
+the betrothed of that excellent, that wholly unobjectionable young man,
+Mr. Morton.
+
+"Will you have a little of the ice before your coffee?" asked Mrs.
+Bowen, proposing one of the moulded creams with her spoon.
+
+"Yes, thank you. Perhaps I will take it in place of the coffee. They
+forgot to offer us any ice at the _table d'hôte_ this evening."
+
+"This is rather luxurious for us," said Mrs. Bowen. "It's a compromise
+with Effie. She wanted me to take her to Giacosa's this afternoon."
+
+"I _thought_ you would come," whispered the child to Colville.
+
+Her mother made a little face of mock surprise at her. "Don't give
+yourself away, Effie."
+
+"Why, let us go to Giacosa's too," said Colville, taking the ice. "We
+shall be the only foreigners there, and we shall not even feel ourselves
+foreign. It's astonishing how the hot weather has dispersed the
+tourists. I didn't see a Baedeker on the whole way up here, and I walked
+down Via Tornabuoni across through Porta Rosso and the Piazza della
+Signoria and the Uffizzi. You've no idea how comfortable and home-like
+it was--all the statues loafing about in their shirt sleeves, and the
+objects of interest stretching and yawning round, and having a good rest
+after their winter's work."
+
+Effie understood Colville's way of talking well enough to enjoy this;
+her mother did not laugh.
+
+"Walked?" she asked.
+
+"Certainly. Why not?"
+
+"You are getting well again. You'll soon be gone too."
+
+"I've _got_ well. But as to being gone, there's no hurry. I rather think
+I shall wait now to see how long you stay."
+
+"We may keep you all summer," said Mrs. Bowen, dropping her eyelids
+indifferently.
+
+"Oh, very well. All summer it is, then. Mr. Waters is going to stay, and
+he is such a very cool old gentleman that I don't think one need fear
+the wildest antics of the mercury where he is."
+
+When Colville had finished his ice, Mrs. Bowen led the way to the
+salotto; and they all sat down by the window there and watched the
+sunset die on San Miniato. The bronze copy of Michelangelo's David, in
+the Piazzale below the church, blackened in perfect relief against the
+pink sky and then faded against the grey while they talked. They were so
+domestic that Colville realised with difficulty that this was an image
+of what might be rather than what really was; the very ease with which
+he could apparently close his hand upon the happiness within his grasp
+unnerved him. The talk strayed hither and thither, and went and came
+aimlessly. A sound of singing floated in from the kitchen, and Effie
+eagerly asked her mother if she might go and see Maddalena. Maddalena's
+mother had come to see her, and she was from the mountains.
+
+"Yes, go," said Mrs. Bowen; "but don't stay too long."
+
+"Oh, I will be back in time," said the child, and Colville remembered
+that he had proposed going to Giacosa's.
+
+"Yes; don't forget." He had forgotten it himself.
+
+"Maddalena is the cook," explained Mrs. Bowen. "She sings ballads to
+Effie that she learned from her mother, and I suppose Effie wants to
+hear them at first hand."
+
+"Oh yes," said Colville dreamily.
+
+They were alone now, and each little silence seemed freighted with a
+meaning deeper than speech.
+
+"Have you seen Mr. Waters to-day?" asked Mrs. Bowen, after one of these
+lapses.
+
+"Yes; he came this afternoon."
+
+"He is a very strange old man. I should think he would be lonely here."
+
+"He seems not to be. He says he finds company in the history of the
+place. And his satisfaction at having got out of Haddam East Village is
+perennial."
+
+"But he will want to go back there before he dies."
+
+"I don't know. He thinks not. He's a strange old man, as you say. He has
+the art of putting all sorts of ideas into people's heads. Do you know
+what we talked about this afternoon?"
+
+"No, I don't," murmured Mrs. Bowen.
+
+"About you. And he encouraged me to believe--imagine--that I might speak
+to you--ask--tell you that--I loved you, Lina." He leaned forward and
+took one of the hands that lay in her lap. It trembled with a violence
+inconceivable in relation to the perfect quiet of her attitude. But she
+did not try to take it away. "Could you--do you love me?"
+
+"Yes," she whispered; but here she sprang up and slipped from his hold
+altogether, as with an inarticulate cry of rapture he released her hand
+to take her in his arms.
+
+He followed her a pace or two. "And you will--will be my wife?" he
+pursued eagerly.
+
+"Never!" she answered, and now Colville stopped short, while a cold
+bewilderment bathed him from head to foot. It must be some sort of jest,
+though he could not tell where the humour was, and he could not treat it
+otherwise than seriously.
+
+"Lina, I have loved you from the first moment that I saw you this
+winter, and Heaven knows how long before!"
+
+"Yes; I know that."
+
+"And every moment."
+
+"Oh, I know that too."
+
+"Even if I had no sort of hope that you cared for me, I loved you so
+much that I must tell you before we parted--"
+
+"I expected that--I intended it."
+
+"You intended it! and you do love me! And yet you won't--Ah, I don't
+understand!"
+
+"How could _you_ understand? I love you--I blush and burn for shame to
+think that I love you. But I will never marry you; I can at least help
+doing that, and I can still keep some little trace of self-respect. How
+you must really despise me, to think of anything else, after all that
+has happened! Did you suppose that I was merely waiting till that poor
+girl's back was turned, as you were? Oh, how can you be yourself, and
+still be yourself? Yes, Jenny Wheelwright was right. You are too much of
+a mixture, Theodore Colville"--her calling him so showed how often she
+had thought of him so--"too much for her, too much for Imogene, too much
+for me; too much for any woman except some wretched creature who enjoys
+being trampled on and dragged through the dust, as you have dragged me."
+
+"_I_ dragged _you_ through the dust? There hasn't been a moment in the
+past six months when I wouldn't have rolled myself in it to please you."
+
+"Oh, I knew that well enough! And do you think that was flattering to
+me?"
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. I only know that I love you, and that I
+couldn't help wishing to show it even when I wouldn't acknowledge it to
+myself. That is all. And now when I am free to speak, and you own that
+you love me, you won't--I give it up!" he cried desperately. But in the
+next breath he implored, "_Why_ do you drive me from you, Lina?"
+
+"Because you have humiliated me too much." She was perfectly steady, but
+he knew her so well that in the twilight he knew what bitterness there
+must be in the smile which she must be keeping on her lips. "I was here
+in the place of her mother, her best friend, and you made me treat her
+like an enemy. You made me betray her and cast her off."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you! I knew from the very first that you did not really care for
+her, that you were playing with yourself, as you were playing with her,
+and I ought to have warned her."
+
+"It appears to me you did warn her," said Colville, with some resentful
+return of courage.
+
+"I tried," she said simply, "and it made it worse. It made it worse
+because I knew that I was acting for my own sake more than hers, because
+I wasn't--disinterested." There was something in this explanation,
+serious, tragic, as it was to Mrs. Bowen, which made Colville laugh. She
+might have had some perception of its effect to him, or it may have been
+merely from a hysterical helplessness, but she laughed too a little.
+
+"But why," he gathered courage to ask, "do you still dwell upon that?
+Mr. Waters told me that Mr. Morton--that there was--"
+
+"He is mistaken. He offered himself, and she refused him. He told me."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Do you think she would do otherwise, with you lying here between life
+and death? No: you can have no hope from that."
+
+Colville, in fact, had none. This blow crushed and dispersed him. He had
+not strength enough to feel resentment against Mr. Waters for misleading
+him with this _ignis fatuus_.
+
+"No one warned him, and it came to that," said Mrs. Bowen. "It was of a
+piece with the whole affair. I was weak in that too."
+
+Colville did not attempt to reply on this point. He feebly reverted to
+the inquiry regarding himself, and was far enough from mirth in resuming
+it.
+
+"I couldn't imagine," he said, "that you cared anything for me when you
+warned another against me. If I could--"
+
+"You put me in a false position from the beginning. I ought to have
+sympathised with her and helped her instead of making the poor child
+feel that somehow I hated her. I couldn't even put her on guard against
+herself, though I knew all along that she didn't really care for you,
+but was just in love with her own fancy for you, Even after you were
+engaged I ought to have broken it off; I ought to have been frank with
+her; it was my duty; but I couldn't without feeling that I was acting
+for myself too, and I would not submit to that degradation. No! I would
+rather have died. I dare say you don't understand. How could you? You
+are a man, and the kind of man who couldn't. At every point you made me
+violate every principle that was dear to me. I loathed myself for caring
+for a man who was in love with me when he was engaged to another. Don't
+think it was gratifying to me. It was detestable; and yet I did let you
+see that I cared for you. Yes, I even _tried_ to make you care for
+me--falsely, cruelly, treacherously."
+
+"You didn't have to try very hard," said Colville, with a sort of cold
+resignation to his fate.
+
+"Oh no; you were quite ready for any hint. I could have told her for her
+own sake that she didn't love you, but that would have been for my sake
+too; and I would have told you if I hadn't cared for you and known how
+you cared for me. I've saved at least the consciousness of this from the
+wreck."
+
+"I don't think it's a great treasure," said Colville. "I wish that you
+had saved the consciousness of having been frank even to your own
+advantage."
+
+"Do you dare to reproach me, Theodore Colville? But perhaps I've
+deserved this too."
+
+"No, Lina, you certainly don't deserve it, if it's unkindness, from me.
+I won't afflict you with my presence: but will you listen to me before I
+go?"
+
+She sank into a chair in sign of assent. He also sat down. He had a dim
+impression that he could talk better if he took her hand, but he did not
+venture to ask for it. He contented himself with fixing his eyes upon as
+much of her face as he could make out in the dusk, a pale blur in a
+vague outline of dark.
+
+"I want to assure you, Lina--Lina, my love, my dearest, as I shall call
+you for the first and last time!--that I _do_ understand everything, as
+delicately and fully as you could wish, all that you have expressed, and
+all that you have left unsaid. I understand how high and pure your
+ideals of duty are, and how heroically, angelically, you have struggled
+to fulfil them, broken and borne down by my clumsy and stupid
+selfishness from the start. I want you to believe, my dearest love--you
+must forgive me!--that if I didn't see everything at the time, I do see
+it now, and that I prize the love you kept from me far more than any
+love you could have given me to the loss of your self-respect. It isn't
+logic--it sounds more like nonsense, I am afraid--but you know what I
+mean by it. You are more perfect, more lovely to me, than any being in
+the world, and I accept whatever fate you choose for me. I would not win
+you against your will if I could. You are sacred to me. If you say we
+must part, I know that you speak from a finer discernment than mine, and
+I submit. I will try to console myself with the thought of your love, if
+I may not have you. Yes, I submit."
+
+His instinct of forbearance had served him better than the subtlest art.
+His submission was the best defence. He rose with a real dignity, and
+she rose also. "Remember," he said, "that I confess all you accuse me
+of, and that I acknowledge the justice of what you do--because you do
+it." He put out his hand and took the hand which hung nerveless at her
+side. "You are quite right. Good-bye." He hesitated a moment. "May I
+kiss you, Lina?" He drew her to him, and she let him kiss her on the
+lips.
+
+"Good-bye," she whispered. "Go--"
+
+"I am going."
+
+Effie Bowen ran into the room from the kitchen.
+
+"Aren't you going to take--" She stopped and turned to her mother. She
+must not remind Mr. Colville of his invitation; that was what her
+gesture expressed.
+
+Colville would not say anything. He would not seize his advantage, and
+play upon the mother's heart through the feelings of her child, though
+there is no doubt that he was tempted to prolong the situation by any
+means. Perhaps Mrs. Bowen divined both the temptation and the
+resistance. "Tell her," she said, and turned away.
+
+"I can't go with you to-night, Effie," he said, stooping toward her for
+the inquiring kiss that she gave him. "I am--going away, and I must say
+good-bye."
+
+The solemnity of his voice alarmed her. "Going away!" she repeated.
+
+"Yes--away from Florence. I'm afraid I shall not see you again."
+
+The child turned from him to her mother again, who stood motionless.
+Then, as if the whole calamitous fact had suddenly flashed upon her, she
+plunged her face against her mother's breast. "I can't _bear_ it!" she
+sobbed out; and the reticence of her lamentation told more than a storm
+of cries and prayers.
+
+Colville wavered.
+
+"Oh, you must stay!" said Lina, in the self-contemptuous voice of a
+woman who falls below her ideal of herself.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+In the levities which the most undeserving husbands permit themselves
+with the severest of wives, there were times after their marriage when
+Colville accused Lina of never really intending to drive him away, but
+of meaning, after a disciplinary ordeal, to marry him in reward of his
+tested self-sacrifice and obedience. He said that if the appearance of
+Effie was not a _coup de théâtre_ contrived beforehand, it was an
+accident of no consequence whatever; that if she had not come in at that
+moment, her mother would have found some other pretext for detaining
+him. This is a point which I would not presume to decide. I only know
+that they were married early in June before the syndic of Florence, who
+tied a tricolour sash round his ample waist for the purpose, and never
+looked more paternal or venerable than when giving the sanction of the
+Italian state to their union. It is not, of course, to be supposed that
+Mrs. Colville was contented with the civil rite, though Colville may
+have thought it quite sufficient. The religious ceremony took place in
+the English chapel, the assistant clergyman officiating in the absence
+of the incumbent, who had already gone out of town.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Waters gave away the bride, and then went home to Palazzo
+Pinti with the party, the single and singularly honoured guest at their
+wedding feast, for which Effie Bowen went with Colville to Giacosa's to
+order the ices in person. She has never regretted her choice of a step
+father, though when Colville asked her how she would like him in that
+relation she had a moment of hesitation, in which she reconciled herself
+to it; as to him she had no misgivings. He has sometimes found himself
+the object of little jealousies on her part, but by promptly deciding
+all questions between her and her mother in Effie's favour he has
+convinced her of the groundlessness of her suspicions.
+
+In the absence of any social pressure to the contrary, the Colvilles
+spent the summer in Palazzo Pinti. Before their fellow-sojourners
+returned from the _villeggiatura_ in the fall, however, they had turned
+their faces southward, and they are now in Rome, where, arriving as a
+married couple, there was no inquiry and no interest in their past.
+
+It is best to be honest, and own that the affair with Imogene has been
+the grain of sand to them. No one was to blame, or very much to blame;
+even Mrs. Colville says that. It was a thing that happened, but one
+would rather it had not happened.
+
+Last winter, however, Mrs. Colville received a letter from Mrs. Graham
+which suggested, if it did not impart, consolation. "Mr. Morton was here
+the other day, and spent the morning. He has a parish at Erie, and there
+is talk of his coming to Buffalo."
+
+"Oh, Heaven grant it!" said Colville, with sudden piety.
+
+"Why?" demanded his wife.
+
+"Well, I wish she was married."
+
+"You have nothing whatever to do with her."
+
+It took him some time to realise that this was the fact.
+
+"No," he confessed; "but what do you think about it?"
+
+"There is no telling. We are such simpletons! If a man will keep on long
+enough--But if it isn't Mr. Morton, it will be some one else--some
+_young_ person."
+
+Colville rose and went round the breakfast table to her. "I hope so," he
+said. "_I_ have married a young person, and it would only be fair."
+
+This magnanimity was irresistible.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Indian Summer, by William D. Howells
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